Occupation of Shell’s proposed refinery site at Bellanaboy & 14 Sept day of action

On Mon­day 27th August 20 peo­ple occu­pied Shel­l’s pro­posed refin­ery site at Bel­lan­aboy, Coun­ty Mayo

After sev­er­al weeks of hol­i­day, work has recom­menced at the pro­posed refin­ery site at Bel­lan­aboy. Main­tain­ing the increased pres­sure that had been applied to Shell in the weeks before the hol­i­day peri­od, at around 8.30am this morn­ing around 20 peo­ple occu­pied the site. The pro­tes­tors bypassed secu­ri­ty and walked in through the main gate onto the site beside a lor­ry that was enter­ing. The group made their way to the main area where work was tak­ing place. Short­ly after their arrival all work on the site stopped. The pro­tes­tors took the site occu­pa­tion as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to inves­ti­gate claims that con­crete and steel that had been used in the ear­ly stages of con­struc­tion was sub­stan­dard. Upon ques­tion­ing (on cam­era) a senior work­er admit­ted that there were prob­lems with the qual­i­ty of mate­ri­als used in the foun­da­tions. Aside from prob­lems with a few over offi­cious secu­ri­ty and more senior work­ers, inter­ac­tion with peo­ple work­ing on site was ami­able and pro­vid­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty for infor­ma­tion shar­ing. After about half an hour three Gar­dai arrived. Their pres­ence was of lit­tle con­se­quence until work on site recom­menced at around 11.30. At this point, when some peo­ple attempt­ed to block trucks from mov­ing, the Gar­dai assault­ed a female pro­tes­tor, result­ing in cuts on her hands. They also attempt­ed to bun­dle anoth­er pro­tes­tor into a Gar­da car even though he had not been arrest­ed. At around 11.45 the pro­tes­tors made a tac­ti­cal deci­sion to leave the site en masse. They joined 20 oth­ers who were wait­ing out­side. A short while lat­er, when a new truck attempt­ed to enter site, the pro­tes­tors stopped its entry. The site was block­ad­ed until the Gar­daí returned half an hour lat­er. The day was wide­ly viewed as a suc­cess.

On Mon­day 27th August 20 peo­ple occu­pied Shel­l’s pro­posed refin­ery site at Bel­lan­aboy, Coun­ty Mayo

After sev­er­al weeks of hol­i­day, work has recom­menced at the pro­posed refin­ery site at Bel­lan­aboy. Main­tain­ing the increased pres­sure that had been applied to Shell in the weeks before the hol­i­day peri­od, at around 8.30am this morn­ing around 20 peo­ple occu­pied the site. The pro­tes­tors bypassed secu­ri­ty and walked in through the main gate onto the site beside a lor­ry that was enter­ing. The group made their way to the main area where work was tak­ing place. Short­ly after their arrival all work on the site stopped. The pro­tes­tors took the site occu­pa­tion as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to inves­ti­gate claims that con­crete and steel that had been used in the ear­ly stages of con­struc­tion was sub­stan­dard. Upon ques­tion­ing (on cam­era) a senior work­er admit­ted that there were prob­lems with the qual­i­ty of mate­ri­als used in the foun­da­tions. Aside from prob­lems with a few over offi­cious secu­ri­ty and more senior work­ers, inter­ac­tion with peo­ple work­ing on site was ami­able and pro­vid­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty for infor­ma­tion shar­ing. After about half an hour three Gar­dai arrived. Their pres­ence was of lit­tle con­se­quence until work on site recom­menced at around 11.30. At this point, when some peo­ple attempt­ed to block trucks from mov­ing, the Gar­dai assault­ed a female pro­tes­tor, result­ing in cuts on her hands. They also attempt­ed to bun­dle anoth­er pro­tes­tor into a Gar­da car even though he had not been arrest­ed. At around 11.45 the pro­tes­tors made a tac­ti­cal deci­sion to leave the site en masse. They joined 20 oth­ers who were wait­ing out­side. A short while lat­er, when a new truck attempt­ed to enter site, the pro­tes­tors stopped its entry. The site was block­ad­ed until the Gar­daí returned half an hour lat­er. The day was wide­ly viewed as a suc­cess.
Resis­tance con­tin­ues at Bel­lan­aboy!

Join the nation­al day of action on the 14th Sep­tem­ber

A nation­al mobil­i­sa­tion for a mass sit­down protest at the refin­ery at Bel­lan­aboy on the morn­ing of Fri­day 14 Sep­tem­ber.

Mass action, sit down block­ade: Sep­tem­ber 14th. Acco­mo­da­tion can be pro­vid­ed. Call 0851141170. If you can’t make it to Mayo, sol­i­dar­i­ty actions are also being called for…

Itoiz Dam — new prisoner

Long term sup­port­ers of ELP will be aware of the Itoiz dam action in Spain, where back in the late 1990s anony­mous eco-activists sab­o­taged the con­struc­tion site of the con­tro­ver­sial Itoiz dam caus­ing so much dam­age the con­struc­tion was delayed by over a year. One of the things the activists did was cut the cab­bles of the machines which took the dam wall blocks to the top of the dam.

Long term sup­port­ers of ELP will be aware of the Itoiz dam action in Spain, where back in the late 1990s anony­mous eco-activists sab­o­taged the con­struc­tion site of the con­tro­ver­sial Itoiz dam caus­ing so much dam­age the con­struc­tion was delayed by over a year. One of the things the activists did was cut the cab­bles of the machines which took the dam wall blocks to the top of the dam.

As ELP report­ed at the time, fol­low­ing the action, eight men, who were all linked to a law­ful cam­paign against the con­struc­tion, were accused of involve­ment in this action. Despite being inno­cent all eight feared they would­n’t get a fair tri­al so all eight went under­ground. How­ev­er despite not hav­ing their sus­pects in deten­tion that did­n’t stop the Span­ish police
who held a tri­al for the eight men in their abscense. And sur­pris­ing­ly enough, as the eight weren’t there to explain their inno­cence, all eight were found guilty and sen­tenced to four years and 10 months impris­on­ment.

As ELP sup­port­ers will be aware, over the fol­low­ing years a small num­ber of the Itoiz Dam sus­pects have been caught by the police and thrown into prison.

The lat­est Itoiz Dam sus­pect to be cap­tured is JULIO VILLANUEVA. He was arrest­ed ten days ago on the 17th of August 2007.

Please send urgent let­ters of sup­port to:

JULIO VILLANUEVA
C.P. PRISION DE PAMPLONA
31080 IRUNA (NAVARRA)
SPAIN

call out for a week of direct action at Hill of Tara, Ireland — starts Sat 1st September 2007

Defend Tara now!

World Her­itage site under attack

Shit is kick­ing off down at Tara/Skryne and the Val­ley of the White Mare, which is part of the ancient com­plex of TARA.

Defend Tara now!

World Her­itage site under attack

Shit is kick­ing off down at Tara/Skryne and the Val­ley of the White Mare, which is part of the ancient com­plex of TARA.

Dig­gers are cur­rent­ly on site work­ing in direct defi­ance of EU orders. Des­e­crat­ing sacred land, destroy­ing trees, carv­ing into neolith­ic hill forts and rip­ping up ances­tral graves, these bas­tards are prepar­ing the route of the M3, a four lane motor­way.

Also they have recent­ly dis­cov­ered a wood­en henge (world her­itage site) 6000BC, pre­dat­ing Stone­henge and the Pyra­mids.

HELP is des­per­ate­ly need­ed as there’s only a hand­ful of pro­test­ers doing their best to defend over 40 ancient sites along the 80km route. Please come along and con­tribute by shar­ing skills and show­ing your sup­port. Any amount of time you can give is valu­able.

The Camp needs food, finan­cial, moral and spir­i­tu­al sup­port, plus equip­ment such as tarps, mobiles, car mobile phone charg­ers, flasks and bat­ter­ies.

HOW TO GET THERE

CAR: take the N3 and then turn left at the TARA sign­post.
FERRY/BUS: get a fer­ry to Dublin fer­ry port, and then take either the Navan, Kells or Cavan bus which leave from Busarus. Get off at TARA CROSS and it is a short walk from there. Tick­ets £26 one way.
COACH: Dublin super saver 19 quid.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion: 086 1758557 (text and get a call back).

For more see www.tarapixie.net

Brecon Gas Pipeline Sabotaged

The Bre­con bea­cons gas pipeline works were sab­o­taged dur­ing a night action as part of the week of action against cli­mate change and in defence of the earth. Armed with only a wreck­ing bar and deter­mi­na­tion a small team was able to bypass the poor secu­ri­ty and ren­der immo­bile a total of 11 machines includ­ing tip­per trucks and exca­va­tors. Major engine and hydraulic com­po­nents were destroyed and the pipeline itself was holed in sev­er­al places.

The Bre­con bea­cons gas pipeline works were sab­o­taged dur­ing a night action as part of the week of action against cli­mate change and in defence of the earth. Armed with only a wreck­ing bar and deter­mi­na­tion a small team was able to bypass the poor secu­ri­ty and ren­der immo­bile a total of 11 machines includ­ing tip­per trucks and exca­va­tors. Major engine and hydraulic com­po­nents were destroyed and the pipeline itself was holed in sev­er­al places.
This action was car­ried out by nor­mal peo­ple and was easy to achieve oth­ers should con­sid­er sim­i­lar actions.
The pipeline is destroy­ing nat­ur­al habi­tats in order to sup­ply a fuel that we can­not burn if the life on this plan­et is to sur­vive. Con­sid­er the costs envi­ron­men­tal tax.

Who are our mystery callers at Barnstaple Quarry?

Some­one came to call at Barn­sta­ble quar­ry aggre­gate indus­tries and cut all the elec­tric cables in the build­ing and dam­aged a pri­vate­ly owned truck, and dam­aged an office and topped up their sta­tion­ary (don’t we all nick sta­tionery from work places!)

Some­one came to call at Barn­sta­ble quar­ry aggre­gate indus­tries and cut all the elec­tric cables in the build­ing and dam­aged a pri­vate­ly owned truck, and dam­aged an office and topped up their sta­tion­ary (don’t we all nick sta­tionery from work places!)

They wiped the white board clean and wrote ‘Earth First’ but oth­er then that not much of a clue as to why any­one would want to break in to an unwork­ing quar­ry..
Any­one got a clue as to what the protest is???

I’m the [rel­a­tive of some­one con­nect­ed to the quar­ry — edit­ed out email address & exact con­nec­tion]

see you all at the cli­mate camp

🙂

[we’ve not heard report of this except through this email con­tact — check out their web­sites at http://www.aggregate.com/ and http://www.aggregate-uk.com/index.html for poten­tial rea­sons this multi­na­tion­al con­struc­tion and build­ing mate­ri­als com­pa­ny was tar­get­ed]

Spirit of Freedom (August 2007) — Produced by EARTH LIBERATION PRISONERS SUPPORT NETWORK

“The whole expe­ri­ence has been tough, but all the kind and strength­en­ing words and wise thoughts from strangers made it much eas­i­er!” (For­mer Swedish Ani­mal Rights Pris­on­er)

“The whole expe­ri­ence has been tough, but all the kind and strength­en­ing words and wise thoughts from strangers made it much eas­i­er!” (For­mer Swedish Ani­mal Rights Pris­on­er)

Wel­come to the August 2007 edi­tion of Spir­it of Free­dom. Reg­u­lar read­ers of Spir­it of Free­dom will notice that this issue of the newslet­ter is slight­ly dif­fer­ent to pre­vi­ous issues. As long-term ELP sup­port­ers will be aware, back in 2000, after the arrests & remand­ings of a group of Irish anti-road pro­test­ers ELP launched its e‑mail “Urgent ELP!” ser­vice. Over the years this ser­vice has proven very pop­u­lar with most of our sup­port­ers now receiv­ing their news via e‑mail with very few peo­ple receiv­ing the newslet­ter in its paper ver­sion. With that in mind, ELP has decid­ed to end its paper ver­sion of its newslet­ter. And because most of the “Court Reports & Legal Updates” news con­tained in Spir­it of Free­dom has already been cir­cu­lat­ed via e‑mail we are drop­ping this from our newslet­ter and from now on “Spir­it of Free­dom” will sole­ly be a pris­on­er list­ing pub­li­ca­tion. How­ev­er, to remind every­one of all the pris­on­ers we do sup­port we will be cir­cu­lat­ing the “Spir­it of Free­dom” pris­on­er list­ing on a month­ly basis, to give every­one a reg­u­lar reminder of all the pris­on­ers we sup­port. Whilst look­ing through the list, if you notice an error, please con­tact ELP and we will cor­rect it imme­di­ate­ly. In the mean­time, remem­ber, no mat­ter where you are in the world, sup­port the eco-pris­on­ers and no com­pro­mise in defence of Moth­er Earth!

ECO-DEFENCE PRISONERS

Fadal­la Idris Ala­jaimy (address unknown). Sudan anti-dam pro­test­er on remand accused of Wag­ing War against the State for protest­ing against the con­struc­tion of a dam.

Mohamed Ahmed Ala­jaimy (address unknown). Sudan anti-dam pro­test­er on remand accused of Wag­ing War against the State for protest­ing against the con­struc­tion of a dam.

Tre Arrow, CS# 05850722, Van­cou­ver Island Region­al Cor­rec­tion Cen­ter, 4216 Wilkin­son Rd., Vic­to­ria, BC, V8Z 5B2, Cana­da. On remand accused of involve­ment with an arson on log­ging trucks and an arson on vehi­cles owned by a sand & grav­el com­pa­ny. Both arsons occurred in the USA. Tre is fight­ing his extra­di­tion to the USA.

Grant Barnes #1533241 22, Den­ver Coun­ty Jail, PO Box 1108, Den­ver, CO 80201, USA. Serv­ing 12 years for set­ting fire to a num­ber of SUV vehi­cles. On one of the vehi­cles the let­ters ELF was spray-paint­ed.

Nathan Block, #36359–086, FCI Lom­poc, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, 3600 Guard Road, Lom­poc, CA 93436, USA. Serv­ing 7 years & 8 months for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an SUV deal­er­ship. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy.

Mar­co Camenisch, Post­fach 3143, CH-8105 Regens­dorf, Switzer­land. Serv­ing 18 years. 1) Ten years for using explo­sives to destroy elec­tric­i­ty pylons lead­ing from nuclear pow­er sta­tions. 2) Eight years for the mur­der of a Swiss Board­er Guard whilst on the run. In ‘02 Mar­co com­plet­ed a 12-year sen­tence in Italy for destroy­ing elec­tric­i­ty pylons in Italy.

Ibai Eder­ra, Car­cel de Pam­plona, C/San Roque. Apdo. 250, 31080 — Iruñez –Pam­plona, Navar­ra (España), Spain. Serv­ing just under 5 years for sab­o­tag­ing machin­ery at the con­tro­ver­sial Itoiz dam con­struc­tion site.

Bet­ty Kraw­czyk, Alou­ette Cor­rec­tion­al Cen­tre for Women, P.O. Box 1000, Maple Ridge, BC, V2X 3K4, Cana­da. Serv­ing 10-months for protest­ing against the devel­op­ment of the Win­ter Olympics site on tra­di­tion­al Squamish ter­ri­to­ry

Jef­frey Luers, #13797671, OSP, 2605 State St. Salem, OR 97310, USA. Serv­ing 22 years & 8 months for arson on a SUV deal­er­ship & the attempt­ed arson of an oil truck.

Ali Mohamed Alhas­sen Mas­sad (address unknown). Sudan anti-dam pro­test­er on remand accused of Wag­ing War against the State for protest­ing against the con­struc­tion of a dam.

Eric McDavid X‑2972521 4E 231A, Sacra­men­to Coun­ty Main Jail, 651 “I” Street, Sacra­men­to, CA 95814, USA. On Remand accused of plan­ning to destroy the prop­er­ty of the U.S. Forestry Ser­vice, mobile phone masts and pow­er plants.

Daniel McGowan, #63794–053, MDC Brook­lyn Met­ro­pol­i­tan Deten­tion Cen­ter, PO Box 329002, Brook­lyn, NY 11232, USA. Serv­ing 7 years for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against a lum­ber com­pa­ny. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy.

Jonathan Paul – See details in Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers List.

Costan­ti­no Ragusa, Casa Cir­con­dar­i­ale, Via Prati Nuovi 7, 27058 Voghera (PV), Italy. Il Sil­vestre activist serv­ing 2½ years. 1) 18-months for bur­gling and fire­bomb­ing a multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny. 2) 12-months for organ­is­ing an anti-GM protest. Costani­no is also await­ing tri­al accused of using explo­sives to dam­age an elec­tric­i­ty pylon in protest at nuclear ener­gy.

Joy­an­na Zach­er, #0707300576, San Bernardi­no CDC, 630 E. Rial­to Ave., San Bernardi­no, CA 92415, USA. Serv­ing 7 years & 8 months for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an SUV deal­er­ship. Also admit­ted her role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy.

ANIMAL LIBERATION PRISONERS

Jon Able­white TB4885, HMP Lowd­ham Grange, Lowd­ham, Not­ting­ham, NG14 7DA, Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion.

Gregg Avery TA7450, HMP Win­ches­ter, Rom­sey Road, Win­ches­ter SO22 5DF, Eng­land. On remand accused of con­spir­a­cy to black­mail, in rela­tion to his involve­ment with the SHAC cam­paign.

Natasha Avery NR8987, HMP Bronze­field, Woodthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx. TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. Jailed for breach­ing her parole con­di­tions imposed on her for telling a fox hunt­ing mur­der­ing scum what she thought of them. Also await­ing tri­al accused of con­spir­a­cy to black­mail, in rela­tion to her involve­ment with the SHAC cam­paign.

Nathan Block – See details in Eco Defence Pris­on­ers List.

Jacob Con­roy #93501–011, FCI Vic­torville Medi­um I Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, P.O. Box 5300, Ade­lan­to, CA 92301, USA. Serv­ing 48 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign.

Don­ald Cur­rie TN4593, HMP White­moor, Longhill Road, March, Cambs, PE15 OPR, Eng­land. Serv­ing an Inde­ter­mi­nate Sen­tence, of not less than six actu­al years, for car­ry­ing out arsons against tar­gets asso­ci­at­ed the vivi­sec­tion indus­try includ­ing HLS.

Dar­ius Fullmer #26397–050, FCI Fort Dix Satel­lite Camp, P.O. Box 1000, Fort Dix, NJ 08640 USA. Serv­ing 12 months for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign.

Lau­ren Gaz­zo­la #93497–011, FCI Dan­bury, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, Route #37Danbury, CT 06811, USA. Serv­ing 54 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign.

Sarah Gis­borne, LT5393, HMP Cookham Wood, Rochester, Kent, ME1 3LU, Eng­land. Serv­ing 5½ years for con­spir­a­cy to cause crim­i­nal dam­age fol­low­ing the dam­ag­ing of 8 vehi­cles owned by peo­ple linked to Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ence.

Joshua Harp­er #29429–086, FCI Sheri­dan Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, P.O. Box 5000, Sheri­dan, OR 97378 USA. Serv­ing 36 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign.

Joseph Har­ris TN5728, HMP Bulling­don, Patrick Haugh Road, Arn­cott, Nr. Bices­ter, Oxon, OX25 1WD, Eng­land. Serv­ing 2 years for dam­ag­ing the prop­er­ty of peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences.

Kevin Kjon­aas #93502–011, FCI Sand­stone, PO Box 1000, Sand­stone, MN 55072 USA. Serv­ing 72 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign.

Josephine Mayo PR6508, HMP Drake Hall, Eccle­shall, Staffs, ST21 6LQ, Eng­land. Serv­ing 4 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion.

Daniel McGowan – See details in Eco Defence Pris­on­ers List.

Heather Nichol­son VM4859, HMP Bronze­field, Woodthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx. TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. On remand accused of con­spir­a­cy to black­mail, in rela­tion to her involve­ment with the SHAC cam­paign.

Jonathan Paul, c/o Friends of Jonathan Paul, PMB 267, 2305 Ash­land St., Ste. C, Ash­land, OR 97520, USA. Sen­tenced to 51 months for an ALF arson on a horse meat plant. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy.

John Smith TB4887, HMP Lowd­ham Grange, Lowd­ham, Not­ting­ham, NG14 7DA, Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion.

Andrew Stepan­ian #26399–050, FCI But­ner Medi­um II Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, PO Box 1500, But­ner, NC 27509 USA. Serv­ing 36 months for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign.

Mark Tay­lor TT6636, HMP YOI Onley, Rug­by, Wark­wick­shire, CV23 8AP, Eng­land. Serv­ing four years for organ­is­ing loud demon­stra­tions out­side the offices of com­pa­nies with links to HLS.

Suzanne Tay­lor, TM7154, HMP Fos­ton Hall, Fos­ton, Der­by, Der­byshire, DE65 5DN, Eng­land. Serv­ing two and a half years for help­ing organ­ise loud demon­stra­tions out­side the offices of com­pa­nies with links to HLS.

Ker­ry Whit­burn TB4886, HMP Lowd­ham Grange, Lowd­ham, Not­ting­ham, NG14 7DA, Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion.

Joy­an­na Zach­er – See details in Eco Defence Pris­on­ers List.

PLOUGHSHARES PRISONERS

Helen Wood­son, 03231–045, FMC Car­swell — Admin. Max. Unit, POB 27137, Ft. Worth, TX 76127, USA. Serv­ing 8 years 10 months for actions that focused on the inter­re­la­tion­ship of war & the destruc­tion of the nat­ur­al world. The actions includ­ed pour­ing red paint over the secu­ri­ty desk of a fed­er­al court and mak­ing threat­en­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Pre­vi­ous­ly Helen had served 20½ years for: 1) Using a ham­mer to dis­arm a nuclear mis­sile silo. 2) Burn­ing $25,000 on the floor of a bank whilst denounc­ing war, envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion & eco­nom­ic injus­tice. 3) Mail­ing warn­ing let­ters with bul­lets attached to Gov­ern­ment & cor­po­rate offi­cials.

OTHER ANTI-WAR PRISONERS

Bren­dan Walsh 12473–052, FCI/FSL Elk­ton, PO Box 10, Lis­bon, OH 44432 USA. Serv­ing 5 years for an arson on an army recruit­ment office in protest at the War on Iraq.

THE LECCE FIVE
The Lec­ce Five have been charged with “sub­ver­sive asso­ci­a­tion” accused of dam­ag­ing Esso petrol pumps to oppose the War on Iraq; sab­o­tag­ing the cash machines of a bank which funds an immi­gra­tion cen­tre; and tar­get­ing the multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny Benet­ton in sup­port of Mapuche land rights activists in Chile. All of the defen­dants are cur­rent­ly either under house arrest or released on bail.

ANTIFA PRISONERS

Lasan­dra Bur­well W063658, Ohio Refor­ma­to­ry for Women, 1479 Collins Ave. Marysville, OH 43040, USA. Serv­ing 5 years for tak­ing part in an anti-fas­cist demon­stra­tion which turned into a riot.

Vah­tang Devitlidze, ul. Libbedo­va 42, UO 68/2, otryad 14, briga­da 142, g. Hagyshen­sk, Krasnodarskiy Kray, 352680 Rus­sia. Serv­ing 2½ years for stab­bing a neo-nazi in the leg whilst defend­ing him­self from attack.

Augustin Kraus, Vazeb­ni veznice, PP‑1, Lit­o­merice, 41 201, Czech Repub­lic. Serv­ing 14 months for his par­tic­i­pa­tion in attacks against local neo-nazis. His charge was “bod­i­ly harm”. He speaks Czech, Slo­vak and Pol­ish. You can also write him short post­cards in Eng­lish.

Chris­t­ian Süm­mer­mann, BNR: 727/07/7, JVA Tegel, Sei­del­str. 39, 13507 Berlin, Ger­many. Serv­ing 40 months for breach­ing the peace whilst serv­ing a sus­pend­ed sen­tence issued for anti-fas­cist activ­i­ties.

Tomasz Wiloszews­ki, Zak­lad Karny, Orze­chowa 5, 98–200 Sier­adz, Poland. Serv­ing 15 years for acci­den­tal­ly killing a neo-nazi whilst defend­ing him­self.

OTHER PRISONERS

Oscar San­ta Maria Caro, CERESO, Miahu­at­lan de Por­firio Diaz, Oax­a­ca en Hall B, Cell 5., Mex­i­co. On remand. The exact charges against Oscar are unknown but Oscar is a mem­ber of RATA, a known ani­mal rights group.

Sacra­men­to Delfi­no Cano Her­nan­dez, CERESO, Miahu­at­lan de Por­firio Diaz, Oax­a­ca en Hall B, Cell 5., Mex­i­co. On remand. Co-defen­dant of Oscar San­ta Maria Caro.

Olga Alek­san­drov­na Nevskaya, UU163/5, 7 Otryad, pos. Dzerzhin­skiy, Mozhaysk 140090 Moskovskaya oblast, Rus­sia. Eco-activist serv­ing 6 years for arson, crim­i­nal dam­age and caus­ing explo­sions in protest at the war in Chech­nya.
Due for release in 2009.

Fran Thomp­son, #1090915 HU 1C, WERDCC, PO Box 300, Van­dalia, MO 63382, USA. Serv­ing Life for killing, in self-defence, a stalk­er who had bro­ken into her home. Before her impris­on­ment Fran was an eco, ani­mal & anti-nuke cam­paign­er.

MOVE
MOVE is an eco-rev­o­lu­tion­ary group who car­ried out protests in defence of all life. There are cur­rent­ly eight MOVE activists in prison each serv­ing 100 years after been framed for the mur­der of a cop in 1979. 9th defen­dant, Mer­le Africa, died in prison in 1998.

Deb­bie Simms Africa (006307), Janet Hol­loway Africa (006308) and Janine Philips Africa (006309) all at: SCI Cam­bridge Springs, 451 Fuller­ton Ave, Cam­bridge Springs, PA 16403–1238, USA.

Michael Davis Africa (AM4973) and Charles Simms Africa (AM4975) both at SCI Grate­ford, PO Box 244, Grate­ford, PA 19426–0244, USA.

Edward Good­man Africa (AM4974), 301 Morea Rd, Frackville, PA 17932, USA. William Philips Africa (AM4984) and Del­bert Orr Africa (AM4985) both at SCI Dal­las Draw­er K, Dal­las, PA 18612, USA.

Mumia Abu Jamal, (AM8335), SCI Greene, 175 Progress Dri­ve, Way­nes­burg PA 15370, USA. In 1981 Mumia, for­mer Black Pan­ther and vocal sup­port­er of MOVE, was framed for the mur­der of a cop. He was orig­i­nal­ly sen­tenced to death but is cur­rent­ly await­ing re-sen­tenc­ing fol­low­ing a court hear­ing in 2001.

STATEMENT ON VIOLENCE
Some peo­ple list­ed in this newslet­ter have car­ried out vio­lent actions. ‘Spir­it of Free­dom’ does not con­done vio­lence. But we are also against cen­sor­ship & believe peo­ple can decide for them­selves who they wish to sup­port.

ABOUT E.L.P. SUPPORT NETWORK
ELP is an inter­na­tion­al eco-pris­on­er sup­port net­work found­ed, in Britain, in 1993 to sup­port jailed eco-activists. We sup­port the pris­on­ers by pro­duc­ing var­i­ous reg­u­lar pris­on­er lists:

Spir­it of Free­dom is ELP’s inter­na­tion­al month­ly pris­on­er list­ing which is cir­cu­lat­ed by e‑mail.

Urgent ELP! Bul­letin is an e‑mail ser­vice that dis­trib­utes the names of any new eco-pris­on­er as soon as ELP gets their details. For more info e‑mail ELP4321@hotmail.com

On-Line Newslet­ters – ELP has a num­ber of web­sites that pro­vide news, pris­on­er lists and addi­tion­al info about ELP & the pris­on­ers.

Eng­lish lan­guage ELP Web­site
www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk

North Amer­i­can ELP Web­site
www.ecoprisoners.org

Turk­ish lan­guage ELP Web­site
www.geocities.com/yesilanarsi/elp.htm

ELP Extra is an e‑mail group that cir­cu­lates the details of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, ELP learns about, who do not fall with­in the remit for sup­port by ELP. To sub­scribe to the list e‑mail ELP4321@Hotmail.com

Bel­gium ELP.SN is our Bel­gium con­tact. For more info e‑mail elp_bel@hotmail.com

Ger­man ELP.SN is a pris­on­er led ini­tia­tive run by eco-pris­on­er Mar­co Camenisch. For more info con­tact Mar­co Camenisch, Post­fach 3143, CH-8105 Regens­dorf, Switzer­land.

North Amer­i­can ELP is our North Amer­i­can con­tact. For more infor­ma­tion e‑mail naelpsn@mutualaid.org

Turkey ELP.SN is our Turk­ish con­tact. For more info e‑mail yesilanarsi@yahoo.com

North Amer­i­can ELP Pris­on­er Fund. The North Amer­i­can ELP group has set up a fund where peo­ple can pay mon­ey, for North Amer­i­can Eco-Defence and Ani­mal Rights pris­on­ers, which will then be dis­trib­uted to the North Amer­i­can pris­on­ers. For infor­ma­tion about the Fund and how to make a dona­tion please con­tact naelpsn@mutualaid.org

DEDICATION
This Edi­tion of Spir­it of Free­dom is ded­i­cat­ed to Bill ‘Aval­on’ Rodgers, the Amer­i­can ‘Ore­gon Defen­dant’ who end­ed his own life in Decem­ber 2005 whilst on Remand.

New Earth First Action Update OUT NOW!

The print­ed EF! Action Update is back again! After a bit of a lull a new edi­to­r­i­al col­lec­tive is in place and ready to roll. We have just pro­duced a sum­mer edi­tion in time for the Camp for Cli­mate Action, where you can pick up print­ed copies.

EF! AU logo 1The print­ed EF! Action Update is back again! After a bit of a lull a new edi­to­r­i­al col­lec­tive is in place and ready to roll. We have just pro­duced a sum­mer edi­tion in time for the Camp for Cli­mate Action, where you can pick up print­ed copies.

The Action Update is pro­duced quar­ter­ly to aid the shar­ing of news, infor­ma­tion and ideas amongst those inter­est­ed in tak­ing action. The next newslet­ter will be out in Novem­ber. If you’ve got news to share about your groups, cam­paigns and actions post them straight onto this web­site and we’ll make sure they’re includ­ed in the next edi­tion.

You can also down­load and print out the PDF of the Action Update by click­ing here.

Parnitha fire & protests

Protest fol­low­ing ear­li­er march­es:

The morn­ing of Sun­day 29 July, an inter­ven­tion was made in Mont Parnes (a casi­no in ‚Mount Par­nitha which was recent­ly burned, the same casi­no which tries to expand to the burned grounds of the moun­tain): ban­ners where opened , some slo­gans where shout­ed and red paint was thrown.

Parnitha
Parnitha fire
Parnitha march
Parnitha cops
Protest fol­low­ing ear­li­er march­es:

The morn­ing of Sun­day 29 July, an inter­ven­tion was made in Mont Parnes (a casi­no in ‚Mount Par­nitha which was recent­ly burned, the same casi­no which tries to expand to the burned grounds of the moun­tain): ban­ners where opened , some slo­gans where shout­ed and red paint was thrown.

The mov­ing of the state mech­a­nisms was con­stant, many-sided and long, dif­fer­ent than the days the moun­tain was burn­ing. Riot police, under cov­er police and heli­copters where “guard­ing” the burned for­est of Par­nitha , the “nat­ur­al” source of prof­it. The pro­tec­tion of prof­it and the unblocked work of gam­blers seems to have greater impor­tance than the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment.

26 peo­ple (of the approx­i­mate­ly 35–40 that orig­i­nal­ly went there) were arrest­ed with the help of the casi­no work­ers and the may­or of Thrako­make­dones munic­i­pal­i­ty , Themis Oikodomou. The arrest­ed where beat­en up while they where hand-cuffed and then held in the GADA (Cen­tral Police Con­trol Athens) with­out med­ical help and even with­out water. It is also remark­able that when they com­plained about the con­di­tions of their arrest they where bru­tal­ly attacked inside the police head­quar­ters by a squat of riot police.

Imme­di­ate­ly after their move in GADA a group of peo­ple met in front of the head­quar­ters to express their sol­i­dar­i­ty. They stayed there until late in the night when charges where announced . Dis­tur­bance of peace and unpro­voked dam­ages. The charges where announced after the com­plaint of the Casi­no.

After the holo­caust of Par­nitha and the anx­ious res­cue of the casi­no (while the for­est was indif­fer­ent), the com­pa­ny Regency Εnter­tain­ment, few days before showed it’s hyp­o­crit­i­cal “eco­log­i­cal” feel­ings announc­ing that it will spon­sor the re-forest­ing of the area, after though the bestow­al of 62.5 acres for the expan­sion of Mont Parnes.

Athens, Greece

————-
Some his­tor­i­cal back­ground on the ‘pro­tect­ed’ forests of Par­nitha:

Par­nitha, with its mar­velous forests, a place with rich raw flo­ra, includ­ing a thou­sand species of plants and also some rich wild life (such as deers, chamoi­ses, fox­es, coy­otes, bun­nies, bad­gers, hedge­hogs, squir­rels, rep­tiles, amphib­ians and lots of fly­ing crea­tures, includ­ing rap­tors such as hawks and eagles, as well as lit­tle twit­ting birds, such as red­caps , goldfinch­es and pick­locks) was our favourite moun­tain, the one that host­ed many of our walks around the hills, the tops, the rivers and the canyons.

It has­n’t been more than one year since we last referred to the dan­ger of Par­nitha being destroyed, which, despite being accred­it­ed as a pro­tect­ed nat­ur­al for­est since decades, has the tops of its hills spot­ted by mil­i­tary bases, the broad­cast­ing cen­tre, the tourist shel­ters which work in cor­po­rate inter­est and the well-known Mont Par­ness Hotel/Casino, built by the Nation­al Organ­i­sa­tion of Tourism in 1958 on Mavrovouni top and giv­en to the Hyatt Cor­po­ra­tion in 2002 (and to the BC Part­ners in 2006), the rea­son for a lot of envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion in a wider area where extend­ed con­struc­tions are about to take place.

“Very close to Athens, there is the for­est group of Par­nitha, full of forests, which, not pro­tect­ed at all by the plans of the sta­tists and the hunger of the cap­i­tal­ists, is wait­ing its destruc­tion” (…) ” Giv­en the momen­tum of the cap­i­tal­ists, if the care­less­ness and the apa­thy against their plans keep up, Par­nitha will fol­low the rest of the Atti­ca moun­tains which have had and keep on hav­ing lots of irre­versible destruc­tions (Anar­chist Report, num 41, Octo­ber 2006).

This is why hun­dreds friends of the for­est, held a demon­stra­tion in Par­nitha, against the deci­sion for giv­ing 3 mil­lion square meters of for­est, in the heart of the pro­tect­ed for­est, for build­ing things as hos­tels, restau­rants, shop­ping cen­ters, result­ing to an envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter. (4th March 2002)

Though, there was a more seri­ous dis­as­ter; a real holo­caust was about to hapen in Par­nitha, before the real plans of the Hel­lenic Tourist Estates co. and the BC Part­ners would be imple­ment­ed.

It was a fire that result­ed from sparkles in a high-volt­age pylon of the Elec­tric­i­ty Com­pa­ny, in the vil­lage Stephani in Der­veno­cho­ria, due to the over­load on the net­work, that lead to a fire hur­ri­cane that burnt all over Par­nitha. The crim­i­nal delay in fac­ing the fire, in order to avoid an elec­tric­i­ty black-out in Athens, let the fire climb up the moun­tain and go giant, swal­low­ing the for­est. More than 25 mil­lion square meters of forests, out of the 38 mil­lion square meters of the ker­nel of the Pro­tect­ed for­est were burnt, along with some mil­lions of sq meters on the sur­round­ing area.

Although it was not the first time the fire hit Par­nitha, even if it had been expect­ed since years, as all the sur­round­ing moun­tain forests have been burnt, there was nei­ther an imme­di­ate response, nor a prepa­ra­tion, a basic orga­ni­za­tion and co-ordi­na­tion in order to avoid the worst case and have the nation­al park saved.

The for­est of Par­nitha, along with the rich wild life that lived there, are lost; they became a huge cloud of smoke and ash­es above Athens, spread­ing a dark­some and misty light of apoc­a­lypse. Mil­lions of met­ro­pol­i­tan res­i­dents were watch­ing the ter­ror, pas­sive, in their des­tiny, wor­thy of their future, while the min­is­ter of civ­il order Poly­do­ras was in a ridicu­lous tri­umph for sav­ing the Casi­no.

Final­ly, the unprece­dent­ed eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ter in Par­nitha is not a result just of the stu­pid­i­ty and the inca­pa­bil­i­ty of the ones respon­si­ble. It is a result of the war that the Pow­er has declared against the human and the nature. It is a dis­as­ter with count­less social and cul­tur­al aspects, while the first envi­ron­men­tal con­se­quences will be imme­di­ate­ly notice­able in the fol­low­ing years, includ­ing the dis­as­trous increase of the tem­per­a­ture, dry-outs and floods in Atti­ca val­ley.

The ancient fir­ry for­est of Par­nitha will nev­er be the same, not even in 100 years; it will stay alive, as it used to be, only in our dreams and mem­o­ries. An amaz­ing­ly beau­ti­ful moun­tain­ous par­adise, a school of nature which offered end­less moments of joy, recre­ation, game, adven­ture and emo­tion, turned into an cal­vary place in one night.

As for the ques­tion on who is respon­si­ble for this crime, in this case, as in any sim­i­lar case, it is no-one apart from the sys­tem of the state and the cap­i­tal­ist organ­i­sa­tion of the soci­ety, where all the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­i­cal author­i­ties attack the human­i­ty and the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment, destroy­ing and lut­ing, in an effort to max­i­mize prof­i­teer­ing and social con­trol. We are as guilty, for the destruc­tion and lut­ing which leave behind a burnt ground (both lit­er­al­ly and metaphor­i­cal­ly) in the soci­ety and the nature, as long as we bend in apa­thy just watch­ing.

Ora Nihil 30.6.2007
For the anar­chist report “Black Flag”

ELF hits Rio Tinto Alcan in Essex in solidarity with Saving Iceland

In the ear­ly hours of 30/07/07, sabo­teurs struck at Smur­fit Kap­pa, a plas­tics fac­to­ry owned by Rio Tin­to Alcan in Chelms­ford, Essex. The gates were locked shut, office doors and load­ing bays were sab­o­taged with glue and a mes­sage left paint­ed on the wall. Vehi­cles belong­ing to Rio Tin­to were also sab­o­taged.

In the ear­ly hours of 30/07/07, sabo­teurs struck at Smur­fit Kap­pa, a plas­tics fac­to­ry owned by Rio Tin­to Alcan in Chelms­ford, Essex. The gates were locked shut, office doors and load­ing bays were sab­o­taged with glue and a mes­sage left paint­ed on the wall. Vehi­cles belong­ing to Rio Tin­to were also sab­o­taged.

Rio Tin­to, who have recent­ly acquired the busi­ness have arguably the worse record of any cor­po­ra­tion for abuse of the earth and its peo­ple. Whether they’re spon­sor­ing and train­ing para­mil­i­taries com­mit­ting geno­cide in the South Pacif­ic, remov­ing entire moun­tain tops in Africa or strip min­ing vir­gin rain­for­est that belongs to indige­nous tribes, they must be stopped.

Rio Tin­to’s recent acqui­si­tion of Alcan makes them par­ty to the great­est eco­log­i­cal crime cur­rent­ly being com­mit­ted in Europe. They are look­ing to turn Ice­land’s great wilder­ness­es into a series of mono­lith­ic pow­er sta­tions to pow­er alu­mini­um smelters; one of the most pol­lut­ing and ener­gy inten­sive indus­tries in the world. Rio Tin­to bring repres­sion wher­ev­er they go, in Bouganville in the South Pacif­ic they hired mer­ce­nar­ies to rape and mur­der all who opposed their mas­sive cop­per mine, Pan­gu­na. Their inva­sion into Ice­land is no dif­fer­ent and protests against heavy indus­try are being met with police vio­lence and activists are fit­ted up and sub­ject to state spon­sored slan­der.

It’s nec­es­sary to hit Rio Tin­to where it hurts, on the bot­tom line, the bal­ance sheet. Where it mat­ters.

EARTH LIBERATION FRONT

Gagged! 18 — South Wales Anarchist Newsletter

Heres the pdf — http://lists.riseup.net/www/d_read/gagged/gagged18.pdf
audio to fol­low in the next few days.

Heres the pdf — http://lists.riseup.net/www/d_read/gagged/gagged18.pdf
audio to fol­low in the next few days.

some last minute diary dates:
Sat­ur­day 6pm — Social Ecol­o­gy sem­i­nar ‑at the PAD, An intro­duc­tion by Social
Ecol­o­gy Lon­don
Sun­day noon — after the fry up at the PAD a pre­sen­ta­tion on this years
cli­mate camp, films, talks etc etc
Mon­day 8pm — South Wales Anar­chists forum — a net­work­ing gath­er­ing with
reports from all the local groups & cam­paigns. All wel­come. 8pm, Glam­or­gan
Staff Club, West­gate Street, Cardiff. If what you read in Gagged! inter­ests
you, why not come along!
Tues­day 7pm — at the PAD read­ing group sub­ject ‘Tur­bu­lence’ see
www.turbulence.org.uk

GAGGED! #18 • August 2007• www.gaggedanarchist.tk • FREE
Pro­duced by South Wales Anar­chists • southwalesanarchists.org

War on Ter­ror = War on Civ­il Lib­er­ties

South Wales cops have asked the Home Office for inva­sive pow­ers to stop & search peo­ple in Cardiff fol­low­ing ter­ror attacks in Lon­don & Glas­gow Air­port. In a move which echoes politi­cians’ calls to extend intern­ment with­out charge, the police here are using the ter­ror attacks as an excuse to extend their pow­ers & fur­ther strip away civ­il lib­er­ties. Sec­tion 44 of the Ter­ror­ism Act gives the plod unprece­dent­ed stop & search pow­ers & has already been mis­used to has­sle demon­stra­tors & oth­ers.
Speak­ing at the begin­ning of July Divi­sion­al Com­man­der for Cardiff, Chief Super­in­ten­dent Josh Jones said: ‘Com­mu­ni­ties defeat ter­ror­ism & I ask any­one who is stopped by a police offi­cer over the next few days to help us by engag­ing pos­i­tive­ly & pass­ing on any infor­ma­tion that they may have.’

How­ev­er, Assis­tant Chief Con­sta­ble Giles York also said: ‘We have seen sev­er­al well inten­tioned calls to the police & I am very encour­aged at the vig­i­lance being shown by the pub­lic of South Wales , par­tic­u­lar­ly as there is no spe­cif­ic threat to the area.’

Does any­one else see a bit of a con­tra­dic­tion here? They’ve asked for pow­ers to stop & search peo­ple because of the threat of ter­ror­ism, while at the same time admit­ting there is no threat to peo­ple in Cardiff . This is oppor­tunist non­sense. The cops are yet again using people’s very real fear of ter­ror­ism as an excuse to get more pow­ers for them­selves.

Know your rights

If you’re stopped & searched under Sec­tion 44 of the Ter­ror­ism Act 2000 you have spe­cif­ic & clear rights that cops will ignore unless you make it clear you know them. They may try & get you to give them your per­son­al details, & they may attempt to pho­to­graph you – they are not allowed to do either. Here are some point­ers pro­vid­ed by the civ­il rights group Lib­er­ty:
• The police can only give you a pat down, remove out­er clothes (eg: jack­et, hat) search your bags, & have you emp­ty your pock­ets
• You do not have to give your name or address.
• You do not have to explain why you are there.
• You are not allowed to flee the search, but you are not required to be active­ly com­pli­ant. You are allowed to “go limp” as pas­sive resis­tance dur­ing the search if you do not wish to com­ply.
• There is no per­mis­sion to col­lect DNA data dur­ing the search.
• You do not have to com­ply with any attempt to pho­to­graph or record you (although you can­not wear a mask).
• Women can not be touched by male police dur­ing these search­es.
• Make notes about the offi­cers search­ing you — name, num­ber, & police force.
• Note the time & the events pre­ced­ing the search.
• Note the spe­cif­ic word­ing used by the police to explain their author­i­ty to search.
• Ask police for the rea­son that they are search­ing you. Specif­i­cal­ly, are they search­ing for ter­ror­ists or are they sim­ply try­ing to deter, delay, or incon­ve­nience you?
check out: www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk

Plod Spread Ter­ror Fears

South Wales Police have been bleat­ing to the press about the increased lev­el of calls from fright­ened mem­bers of the pub­lic about so-called ‘sus­pi­cious’ behav­iour. Instead of appeal­ing for calm or just keep­ing their mouths shut, they’ve encour­aged peo­ple to remain ‘vig­i­lant’ against unknown or non-exis­tent threats, & report every para­noid fan­ta­sy to the police.

Assis­tant Chief Con­sta­ble Giles York said: ‘It is not only my offi­cers mak­ing South Wales a hos­tile area for any ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty, but also our com­mu­ni­ties. The pub­lic are our eyes & ears & we are grate­ful for the efforts they have tak­en to report any­thing which is slight­ly out of the ordi­nary.’
Exact­ly what are the best nuggets of ‘intel­li­gence’ a fright­ened pub­lic have passed on to York & his team?

‘We have received calls from busi­ness­es who are report­ing unusu­al pur­chas­es’, he said. ‘One super­mar­ket in South Wales noti­fied us of a group buy­ing a large amount of dig­i­tal cam­eras. In anoth­er call, the man­ag­er of a shop­ping cen­tre noti­fied us of a call he had received in which he was asked for maps of the cen­tre.’

Dig­i­tal cam­eras & maps of Cardiff ? Be afraid. Be very afraid.

York added: ‘Both of these calls turned out to have gen­uine expla­na­tions but I encour­age any­one to get in con­tact with us if they have any con­cerns, no mat­ter how triv­ial they may seem.’

Nobody is ille­gal

A Kebab-house was closed & 5 take­away work­ers arrest­ed when cops & immi­gra­tion bureau­crats raid­ed Cardiff’s ‘Chip Lane’ at the begin­ning of July.

One work­er at Dorothy’s Fish Bar said: “There have been lots of police here, at least 20 offi­cers. They sealed off Car­o­line Street at both ends & have been through all the take­aways look­ing for ille­gals. They checked all the staff’s pass­ports & their sta­tus.”

It isn’t known what peo­ple were nicked for, they could have been so-called ‘ille­gal immi­grants’ or asy­lum seek­ers await­ing Home Office approval to stay in the UK. Under cur­rent laws refugees are not allowed to work or earn mon­ey while their appli­ca­tions to stay are processed, hav­ing to live off tiny state hand­outs. If they work, they are forced into low-pay­ing menial jobs, & if dis­cov­ered they are arrest­ed & deport­ed.

Asy­lum seek­ers are often from coun­tries where there has been mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion by the West or regimes armed & sup­port­ed by the UK. Noth­ing can jus­ti­fy the suf­fer­ing that is imposed on inno­cent peo­ple like those arrest­ed in Cardiff in the name of ‘immi­gra­tion con­trols’. The rich will set­tle in whichev­er coun­try makes them pay the least tax, but the poor are forced to risk their lives to try & make a bet­ter life for them­selves. As Anar­chists we believe in com­plete free­dom of move­ment.

Pick­et lines

Roy­al mail staff in Wales took part in the 1st UK wide postal strike for 11 years on 29th June with anoth­er 24-hour strike begin­ning at 7pm on 12th July. Work­ers are angry at Roy­al Mails ‘mod­erni­sa­tion’ plans, which will result in the loss of 40,000 jobs & cuts in wages & pen­sions. It will also mean high­er stamp prices, less col­lec­tions, lat­er deliv­er­ies, cuts in week­end ser­vices & the clo­sure of even more post offices.

*****

A high school in Den­bighshire, north Wales, was forced to close as teach­ers staged a one day strike. Indus­tri­al action came fol­low­ing a long run­ning dis­pute over new pay arrange­ments intro­duced in 2006 & seri­ous con­cerns with work­ing prac­tices at the school with many staff feel­ing “demor­alised & under­val­ued”. Sound famil­iar? Ah the pre­dictabil­i­ty of cap­i­tal­ist work­ing rela­tions.

*****

Strike action at the trou­bled Grampian Food Group fac­to­ry, Llangefni, Angle­sey was can­celled at the last minute after work­ers accept­ed a 4% pay deal in a bal­lot on the 25th June. Work­ers were due to strike on 26th, 27th & 30th June because of dis­putes over pay, pen­sions & the grow­ing casu­al­i­sa­tion of the work­force.

*****

Health work­ers across the UK are still con­sid­er­ing strike action over a pay rise deal well below the rate of infla­tion. Ear­li­er this year health work­ers were offered a mis­er­able 2.5% pay rise. This was cut even fur­ther when both the gov­ern­ment & employ­ers said that in Wales, Eng­land & North­ern Ire­land this would be staged — with a 1.5% increase giv­en from April & the final 2.5% set­tle­ment paid from Novem­ber. How­ev­er, fol­low­ing work­ers com­plaints & union pres­sure the respec­tive gov­ern­men­tal bod­ies of Wales & North­ern Ire­land were forced to make u‑turns & health work­ers in these coun­tries will now receive their pay rise in full back­dat­ed from April. This does not yet apply to health work­ers in Eng­land. UNISON has con­duct­ed a bal­lot of its health work­er mem­bers (460,000 across the UK) for poten­tial indus­tri­al action sched­uled to take place in Sep­tem­ber 2007. Watch this space!

*****

Hos­pi­tal work­ers at Ysbyti’r Tri Chwm, Ebbw Vale held a demon­stra­tion out­side the hos­pi­tal in protest against £120-a-year car park­ing charges for staff, which were intro­duced in April. A spokesper­son for the Gwent NHS trust stat­ed that charg­ing for car park­ing was now stan­dard prac­tice at near­ly all NHS hos­pi­tals in south Wales & that there was a need to main­tain equi­ty with staff in oth­er hos­pi­tal sites who already pay charges. But many work­ers feel that they are being charged for the priv­i­lege of going to work & that park­ing should be free for all staff, patients & vis­i­tors. Too right!

“Wales?” Same old tory Sto­ry

David Cameron’s “New” Tories have appoint­ed an Eton-edu­cat­ed hered­i­tary peer who knows “absolute­ly noth­ing” about Wales as Welsh Affairs spokesman. Lord Glen­toran, who lives in North­ern Ire­land , said, “As far as the pol­i­tics of Wales is con­cerned, as of 48 hours ago I knew absolute­ly noth­ing. I now know noth­ing, plus a bit. I know noth­ing about the pol­i­tics but I know quite a lot about the geog­ra­phy.” he denied this was a prob­lem as he had once stayed with a “lit­er­al­ly work­ing class fam­i­ly in Bris­tol“ when he was 16, before join­ing the Army. You couldn’t make it up!

NO PIPELINE!

On the morn­ing of 19th June a huge num­ber of police & bailiffs arrived at the anti-pipeline tree camp in Sen­ny­bridge, Bre­con Bea­cons, to evict pro­test­ers from the trees.

The camp has suc­cess­ful­ly pre­vent­ed the destruc­tion of wood­land in the Bre­con Bea­cons Nation­al Park, on the route of the huge LNG pipleine, since Jan­u­ary this year. Pro­test­ers were tak­en to court in ear­ly June & had been await­ing the evic­tion. Some peo­ple were locked on high up in the trees whilst oth­ers were under­ground in tun­nels in order to delay Nation­al Grid’s mul­ti-mil­lion pound destruc­tive & dan­ger­ous project.The A40 road that ran past the camp was closed to traf­fic & police & bailiffs spent two days remov­ing the activists. Many peo­ple head­ed down to give sup­port but few made it onto site, most being kept in a police cor­don out­side with jour­nal­ists.

In total 12 peo­ple were arrest­ed, most receiv­ing cau­tions or con­di­tion­al dis­charge with a court fine. Nation­al Grid instant­ly began strip­ping away the land in order to pre­vent any­one occu­py­ing it again. Per­haps they for­get that the route of the pipe is 200 miles long…plenty of room for more resis­tance!
The camp was suc­cess­ful in rais­ing aware­ness of how the gov­ern­ment & cor­po­ra­tions are pri­ori­tis­ing mon­ey over the future of our envi­ron­ment. Any claim they make to be tak­ing cli­mate change & envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion seri­ous­ly becomes a joke when they hap­pi­ly over­rule objec­tions so they can destroy sup­pos­ed­ly ‘pro­tect­ed’ nat­ur­al land to make way for yet more fos­sil fuels. Check out: www.fightthepipe.co.uk

Who watch­es the watch­ers?

Five secu­ri­ty guards work­ing in Welsh Assem­bly build­ings, Cardiff were caught using CCTV cam­eras to look at near­by homes & hotels. While this has been going on for around two years, the voyeuris­tic secu­ri­ty guards have received noth­ing more than a slap on the wrist. An assem­bly spokesper­son claimed that these were “iso­lat­ed” inci­dences, which were not thought to have infringed any­one’s pri­va­cy. We bet the peo­ple whose hous­es were spied on feel a whole lot bet­ter now!

Wel­fare for the Rich

Work­ing class peo­ple in Wales are sub­si­dis­ing pri­vate indus­try not only through wage slav­ery (where the pay we take home is much less than the val­ue of the work we do), but also in huge pay­outs to busi­ness­es fund­ed by our tax­es.

Tax is meant to be cash we lend the state so that they can pay it back to us in essen­tial ser­vices, edu­ca­tion, health­care, & pen­sions. But politi­cians are giv­ing mil­lions to the rich so they can set up more busi­ness­es.

For 5 years the Welsh Assem­bly Gov­ern­ment has giv­en mil­lions of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey to busi­ness in the form of Assem­bly Invest­ment Grants (AIG) & Region­al Selec­tive Assis­tance (RSA). Dur­ing the first 4 years of the scheme’s oper­a­tions, over 1504 offers of AIG with a com­bined val­ue of £45.8 mil­lion were made to busi­ness­es. In the 7 year peri­od to March 2006 1173 offers of RSA with a com­bined val­ue of a whop­ping £650 mil­lion were made to busi­ness­es under­tak­ing cap­i­tal invest­ment projects in Wales.

These bribes for boss­es are typ­i­cal of the way in which gov­ern­ments oper­ate. Sweet­en­ers for the rich might look attrac­tive to politi­cians, & might even boost the econ­o­my & cre­ate a few jobs in the short-term. But in the long-term the peo­ple of Wales lose out big-time: Once prof­its at these sub­sidised busi­ness­es start to fall they close down their fac­to­ries, sack the work­force & move on to places where the labour is cheap­er & new gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies are to be had.

Under “New” Labour the gap between rich & poor has widened mas­sive­ly. Pay­outs to the rich are a major cause of this inequal­i­ty, the wealthy few can enjoy lives of com­fort & extrav­a­gance while 3 mil­lion British chil­dren live in pover­ty.

COME CAMP WITH US!

Organ­is­ing & strug­gling in our local com­mu­ni­ties is key to build­ing strong social move­ments & bring­ing about last­ing social change. But we also need to con­tin­ue to come togeth­er in mass mobil­i­sa­tions. It is at con­ver­gence spaces like the ones at the recent anti-G8 protests (see Gagged! #17) that we get a glimpse of our col­lec­tive pow­er. They offer us the space to organ­ise & come up with solu­tions to social & envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems with­out the need for lead­ers, where togeth­er we can cre­ate new worlds in the shell of the old. This sum­mer there are at least two major protest camps in the UK — come camp with us: you know you want to!

CAMP FOR CLIMATE ACTION

On 14th-21st August, some­where near Heathrow the 2nd Camp for Cli­mate Action will take place, with 8 days of low-impact, sus­tain­able liv­ing, learn­ing, col­lec­tive deci­sion-mak­ing & direct action to high­light the prob­lems of cli­mate change & solu­tions to halt it.

Cli­mate change is hap­pen­ing now. Peo­ple are dying of starv­ing now. Envi­ron­men­tal refugees are mov­ing now & accord­ing to the Red Cross already out­num­ber those dis­placed by armed con­flict. The sit­u­a­tion is only going to get worse — unless we act now! If we car­ry on with busi­ness as usu­al sci­en­tists pre­dict a pos­si­ble 6 degree rise in tem­per­a­ture. Last time the plan­et expe­ri­enced this was 250 mil­lion years ago & 95% of all life was wiped off the face of the earth.

Our entire way of life is cur­rent­ly struc­tured so that almost every aspect of our lives pro­duces harm­ful car­bon diox­ide emis­sion — trav­el, work, hous­ing, food. In order to cut these emis­sions by the 90% that many sci­en­tists believe nec­es­sary, some very major changes need to occur. So where is this change going to come from? We believe that far from offer­ing any solu­tions to our cur­rent eco­log­i­cal cri­sis gov­ern­ments are part of the prob­lem. Nei­ther can we expect cor­po­ra­tions or the mar­ket to offer any real solu­tions. Although we all need to make changes in the ways we live, it’s not enough just to switch brands. We need to chal­lenge the log­ic of cap­i­tal­ism, which got us into this mess in the first place. Cap­i­tal­ism is based on a very sim­ple prin­ci­ple — per­pet­u­al eco­nom­ic growth. This leads to the con­stant over pro­duc­tion of goods & ser­vices that we just don’t need, the con­sump­tion of the world’s finite resources & ever grow­ing amounts of waste that our ecosys­tem just can’t deal with. Expect­ing cor­po­ra­tions to sort this out is absurd. They are designed for one thing & that is the max­imi­sa­tion of prof­it.

The avi­a­tion indus­try is a major con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change. The main rea­son why the camp will be at Heathrow this year is to high­light the mas­sive con­tra­dic­tion of the gov­ern­ment claim­ing to be work­ing to reduce emis­sions while set­ting the con­di­tions for huge growth in fly­ing, through air­port expan­sion & sub­si­dies on air fuel, which has stim­u­lat­ed a mas­sive increas­ing in cheap flights.
Last year’s camp was a huge suc­cess (see Gagged! #13). Activists from south Wales joined over 600 peo­ple to take direct action against Drax pow­er­sta­tion, the UK’s largest car­bon diox­ide emit­ter & explored, debat­ed & dis­cussed grass roots alter­na­tives to the cur­rent sys­tem. Let’s make this year’s camp an even big­ger suc­cess! Togeth­er we can build a bet­ter world now! Check out: climatecamp.org.uk

No Bor­der Camp 2007

On 19th-24th Sep­tem­ber will be the UK’s first “No Bor­der Camp”, con­tin­u­ing the tra­di­tion of No Bor­der protest camps across the world since the late 1990s. The gov­ern­ment has recent­ly announced its plans to build a new deten­tion cen­tre near Gatwick air­port. This will be anoth­er in a long list of such places around the world. Places where peo­ple are locked up indef­i­nite­ly & with­out tri­al, & from where they can be forcibly deport­ed. Such deten­tion pris­ons are an inte­gral part of a sys­tem­at­ic, racist, & bar­barous pol­i­cy of suf­fer­ing. Togeth­er we can stop this one being built!

The camp will be an exper­i­ment in self-organ­i­sa­tion. A chance to work togeth­er to stop the build­ing of a new deten­tion cen­tre & gath­er ideas for how to build up the fight against migra­tion con­trols. It will be an impor­tant oppor­tu­ni­ty to chal­lenge & over­come the arti­fi­cial bor­ders of class, race, sex, sex­u­al­i­ty, & nation­al­i­ty which divide us from each oth­er, & act in sol­i­dar­i­ty with one anoth­er for a world with­out bor­ders.

‘Free­dom of move­ment’ is such a scary prospect for the wealthy few because migra­tion under­mines a cen­tral dimen­sion of con­tem­po­rary glob­al cap­i­tal­ism — that peo­ple liv­ing in dif­fer­ent parts of the world can be paid dif­fer­ent wages. Bor­ders, migra­tion con­trols, notions of cit­i­zen­ship & the ‘rights’ that these entail are all inte­gral mech­a­nisms through which this unequal, exploita­tive world sys­tem is main­tained. With­out them there would be no way of con­fin­ing peo­ple to a cer­tain place, a cer­tain set of work­ing con­di­tions & rate of pay. Check out: www.noborders.org.uk

COPWATCH

Cop Wankers Part II
Last month Gagged! report­ed how PC Richard Bowen got away with an 18 month sus­pend­ed sen­tence & avoid­ed jail after mas­tur­bat­ing in front of an arrest­ed woman in the back of a pan­da car. He was ordered to do 100 hours com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice as a painter & dec­o­ra­tor on the estate where he grew up. Let’s hope he doesn’t run out of wall­pa­per paste. This month we can reveal that yet anoth­er UK rozzer, Essex Police’s Mar­tin Chap­man, has been sus­pend­ed for the same thing. It must be some­thing about the uni­form. There is a sil­ver-lin­ing though: a few more like this & they might all go blind.

Gwent Cops on Tax Pay­er-Fund­ed fun
Mem­bers of the Gwent Police were liv­ing it up at our expense at major events this sum­mer. Cops were sent on free trips to Glas­ton­bury & Wim­ble­don, alleged­ly to get hints & tips on how to police major events ahead of the Ryder Cup, to be held in New­port in 2010. Super­in­ten­dent Nigel Rus­sell denied any sug­ges­tions cops had been on a jun­ket to Europe’s biggest music fes­ti­val, claim­ing they did not see any bands. “You won’t catch the cops in the mosh­pit,” he said, try­ing des­per­ate­ly not to sound like a cock.

Police Num­bers Fall
Over­paid work-shy plod are retir­ing in their droves & not enough new ones are tak­ing their place, accord­ing to new fig­ures. For the first time in ages more police are leav­ing Welsh forces than are being recruit­ed, because of a rise in retire­ment & res­ig­na­tion rates. The num­ber of cops resign­ing from the four Welsh forces has more than dou­bled since 2002, while retire­ments have also shot up, from 110 in 2002 to 269 last year.

Cop Cars Trashed at Gyp­sy Camp
Two South Wales Police vehi­cles had their win­dows smashed in a dis­tur­bance at an offi­cial traveller’s camp. A Gyp­sy Coun­cil spokesman told the press he didn’t know any­thing about the inci­dent, but added: “I’m sur­prised the police left their cars unat­tend­ed. It doesn’t mat­ter where they go on hous­ing estates any­where in the coun­try, they shouldn’t leave them unat­tend­ed. I don’t know any police force that would leave their cars.”

Welsh Plod Ignored Male Rape Vic­tim
Police have apol­o­gised to a rape vic­tim after their han­dling of his case was crit­i­cised by the Inde­pen­dent Police Com­plaints Com­mis­sion. Geof­frey Cole, from Neath, was sex­u­al­ly assault­ed in Octo­ber 2005. When he report­ed the crime, police offi­cers didn’t take him seri­ous­ly, & failed to make ade­quate efforts to exam­ine the crime scene for evi­dence. Mr Cole’s attack­er has nev­er been caught.

Diary Dates ‑If you are unsure about attend­ing any of the events list­ed below, why not get in touch?

August
1–5 — Big Green Gath­er­ing — Sus­tain­able liv­ing, music & hip­pies. Som­er­set. www.big-green-gathering.com
6 — South Wales Anar­chists forum — a net­work­ing gath­er­ing with reports from all the local groups & cam­paigns. All wel­come. 8pm, Glam­or­gan Staff Club, West­gate Street, Cardiff.
11 — No Bor­ders Info-day & Social — to mobilise for the No Bor­der camp; with speak­ers, films, food & live music. From 1pm at the PAD.
14–21 — Camp for Cli­mate Action – near Heathrow air­port. www.climatecamp.org.uk
27–30 — Smash EDO Action Camp — Direct Action against the war machine. www.smashedo.org.uk
Sep­tem­ber
11 — Dis­arm Desi — actions against Defence Sys­tems & Equip­ment Inter­na­tion­al arms fair. ExCel Cen­tre, Lon­don. www.dsei.org
19–24 — No Bor­ders Camp, near Gatwick. www.noborders.org.uk

Got any news or an event you want us to cov­er? send details to news@gaggedanarchist.tk

An audio ver­sion of Gagged! is avail­able, just check out www.gaggedanarchist.tk, where you can also sub­scribe online. Five thou­sand copies of each issue are dis­trib­uted through­out the region, we always look­ing to get Gagged! into new places. If you are inter­est­ed in get­ting involved in any way, please get in touch info@gaggedanarchist.tk

Peo­ples Autonomous Des­ti­na­tion
a phys­i­cal space in Cardiff for groups & indi­vid­u­als who can­not or will not work with­in the con­straints of gov­ern­men­tal or cor­po­rate con­trol.
Veg­an fryup every sun­day from 12noon.
Not-for-prof­it-shop every wednes­day from 5pm. Plus free shop all the time.
meet­ings every wednes­day from 7pm.
& lots more, check our notice board!
118 Clifton Street, Cardiff CF24 1LW • www.thepad.org.uk

Cam­paign Groups
Cardiff Ris­ing Tide
is a grass­roots group com­mit­ted to tak­ing action & build­ing a move­ment against cli­mate change. Meet irreg­u­lar­ly, get in con­tact for details.
cardiff@risingtide.org.uk
www.risingtide.org.uk
No Bor­ders Wales
organ­is­es on migra­tion issues & acts to break down bound­aries that divide us. Meet thurs­days 7pm at PAD.
noborderswales@riseup.net
www.noborders.org.uk
Cardiff Read­ing Anti-Cap­i­tal­ism
is a study/reading group explor­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary vision & strat­e­gy. Meet 7pm last tues­day of the month at PAD.

Cardiff Anar­chist Net­work (CAN) is a col­lec­tive of peo­ple who want to pur­sue polit­i­cal demon­stra­tions through direct action. There are no lead­ers, just like mind­ed indi­vid­u­als. cardiffanarchists@riseup.net myspace.com/cardiffanarchists Meet 8pm mon­days at PAD.

Gwent Anar­chists are like mind­ed indi­vid­u­als believ­ing in auton­o­my, respect & jus­tice; against all forms of exploita­tion & big­otry. Aim­ing to increase the knowl­edge of, & cre­ate a resis­tance to gov­ern­ments & big busi­ness abus­ing peo­ple & the earth. gwentanarchists@yahoo.co.uk myspace.com/gwentanarchists Meet 8.30pm every oth­er mon­day at the Murenger House, High Street, New­port.

Pem­brokeshire Anar­chists is a group of like mind­ed peo­ple who believe in direct action, jus­tice, free­dom & auton­o­my, are against cap­i­tal­ism, exploita­tion & big­otry. pembrokeshireanarchists@riseup.net myspace.com/pembrokeshireanarchists

Rhond­da Cyon Taf Anar­chists are an autonomous group of free-think­ing indi­vid­u­als who reject cap­i­tal­ism & resist state con­trol through direct action. We work towards the cre­ation of a world based on jus­tice & free­dom. rctanarchists@riseup.net

For more news from all over the world like the sort you find in Gagged! take a look at: www.schnews.org.uk www.indymedia.org.uk www.libcom.org www.anarkismo.net www.infoshop.org

info@gaggedanarchist.tk
http://www.gaggedanarchist.tk