Category: Wilderness Defence

Wilder­ness defence

Sea Shepherd Dancing Dangerously With the Outlaw Whaling Fleet in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary

11 Jan­u­ary 2012

The nau­ti­cal chess pieces con­tin­ue to move and the board keeps chang­ing in the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary.

11 Jan­u­ary 2012

The nau­ti­cal chess pieces con­tin­ue to move and the board keeps chang­ing in the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary.

The Shonan Maru #2 is no longer chas­ing the Steve Irwin. The secu­ri­ty ves­sel has been replaced by the har­poon ves­sel Yushin Maru #2. It is assumed that the Shonan Maru #2 will now head west towards the Aus­tralian cus­toms ves­sel Ocean Pro­tec­tor to turn over the three Aus­tralian pris­on­ers onboard. With the Yushin Maru #2 now fol­low­ing the Steve Irwin, and the Yushin Maru #3 still at Mac­quar­ie Island, the Nis­shin Maru now has only one har­poon ves­sel left — the Yushin Maru.

Sea Shep­herd has tem­porar­i­ly lost drone con­tact with the Nis­shin Maru and can­not guar­an­tee that whal­ing has not begun. If so, it will pro­ceed with two of the three har­poon ves­sels not involved in killing oper­a­tions. “If we had one more ship, there would be no pos­si­bil­i­ty of any whales dying,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “In July I met with Green­peace rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the IWC and request­ed of them that they send one ship to sup­port us. I told them that one more ship would shut down this entire fleet. They refused, and that is deeply dis­ap­point­ing, and as a result whales may die.”

Sea Shep­herd is work­ing to secure a third large, fast, ice-strength­ened ves­sel to return next sea­son. The Sea Shep­herd fast scout ves­sel Brigitte Bar­dot remains in Fre­man­tle under­go­ing repairs from dam­age caused by the extreme weath­er con­di­tions of the South­ern Ocean.

“We have demon­strat­ed that we can shut these poach­ers down and every year we become more effec­tive than the year before. One more ship will give us the abil­i­ty to throw a blan­ket of inter­ven­tion over them that will com­plete­ly extin­guish their ille­gal oper­a­tions,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son.

The drop­ping away of the Shonan Maru #2 removes the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the trans­fer of the three For­est Res­cue men to the Steve Irwin. The trans­fer of the men to the Steve Irwin would have saved the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars. Mean­while despite being ordered out of the ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters of Australia’s Mac­Quar­ie Island, the Yushin Maru #3 con­tin­ues to ille­gal­ly remain inside the twelve mile ter­ri­to­r­i­al lim­it.

“The Japan­ese whalers act like they own the entire South­ern Ocean,” said Bob Bark­er Cap­tain Alex Cor­nelis­sen of the Nether­lands. “They go where they want, when they want, and do what they want, with com­plete con­tempt for Aus­tralian sov­er­eign­ty.”

 

Scaling tree cutters and trees to halt Corrib pipeline works

Shell today, 9th Jan­u­ary 2012, began to cut down a Coillte plan­ta­tion in the vil­lage of Leen­amore, Co. Mayo. This sur­prise move marks the begin­ning of their attempts to pre­pare the 4km stretch of land between the Augh­oose tun­nelling com­pound and the Bel­lan­aboy refin­ery. Despite a large Gar­da and pri­vate secu­ri­ty pres­ence, cam­paign­ers entered the tree felling area and halt­ed work.

Shell start­ing this sec­tion of the pipeline was com­plete­ly unan­tic­i­pat­ed both by local cam­paign­ers and those of us liv­ing at Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp. Rumour had it that the clear­ing of the plan­ta­tion might not hap­pen until lat­er in the year. As it hap­pened many of us had planned to take the day off actions today to tend the camp gar­dens, carve new wind tur­bine blades, bake bread and work on oth­er projects. The day turned out quite dif­fer­ent to how we planned…

When we arrived at Leen­amore at 11am we saw that they were cut­ting down trees at two dif­fer­ent sec­tions of the road and set­ting up a machin­ery stor­age com­pound. There was a heavy Gar­da pres­ence includ­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic order unit with no num­ber tags. There were twen­ty Gar­daí and at least fifty of Shell’s pri­vate secu­ri­ty IRMS attempt­ing to guard the tree line. There was sev­en of us, basi­cal­ly mean­ing we were out­num­bered by about 10 to 1.

A few of us tried to get over the fence or into the trees to pre­vent the tree cut­ting from hap­pen­ing. Five of us suc­ceed­ed in breach­ing lines of secu­ri­ty to impede work at dif­fer­ent times. Some of us were car­ried back over the barbed wire fence by secu­ri­ty guards. The secu­ri­ty guards had real dif­fi­cul­ty in remov­ing us from the area as the ground was extreme­ly uneven and bog­gy. They kept stum­bling as they car­ried us out and it was real­ly dan­ger­ous for the secu­ri­ty them­selves. The Gar­dai were stand­ing out on the road and wouldn’t let us stand on the road.

After try­ing to get in over the fence along the road a few times, sev­er­al cam­paign­ers broke away to try to enter from fur­ther away and dis­ap­peared in the woods.

To everyone’s delight, one cam­paign­er reap­peared about an hour lat­er, on top of a tree-cut­ting dig­ger. Anoth­er cam­paign­er, also reap­peared a hour lat­er, with­out his trousers! His expla­na­tion was that the ski-suit he had been wear­ing had been caus­ing rustling as he approached secu­ri­ty lines so even­tu­al­ly he had to resort to remov­ing them and run in his ther­mals to make it to climb a tree that was in the path of Shell’s destruc­tion. As a new­com­er to the camp, this is his expe­ri­ence of try­ing to stop Shell in his own words;

“I arrived at the camp a few days ago. It’s my first vis­it. I spent the first day help­ing to block lor­ries and got a good chance ot be active against Shell’s destruc­tion. This morn­ing every­one was sur­prised that Shell were start­ing work on the for­est. A few of us went away to come at the machin­ery from anoth­er angle. We crawled through the woods towards the area they were cut­ting slow­ly. As were crawl­ing towards the dig­ger I dart­ed off left. All the secu­ri­ty were shout­ing ‘hold the line’. I kept run­ning until a group of secu­ri­ty broke away from a group at the road and start­ed run­ning after me. I ran back into the woods with them run­ning behind me shout­ing, so I went to ground and hid for 20 min­utes. Then crawled down a bit and looked up to see where they were and they were all around me. I had to run accorss a big gap where they could all see me and into anoth­er patch of woods. With them all run­ning behind me I got into the trees again. I reached the first suit­able tree to climb just to the right of the tree-cut­ting-dig­ger. By the time I was up the secu­ri­ty guards had run past me but couldn’t see me. Fif­teen or twen­ty of them were below film­ing and wan­der­ing around. They shout­ing at me, things like ‘are you going to come down?’ and ‘Chop him down!’. I climbed right to the top to see where the dig­ger was. I swung to anoth­er tree and then to anoth­er to get a bit clos­er to the dig­ger as it moved. I stayed up for about 45 min­utes as the dig­ger broke up the trees beside me. The secu­ri­ty guards start­ed to get more and more angry with me. They start­ed shak­ing the tree and get­ting sticks. I said, ‘I’m real­ly going to want to come down with you doing that!’. I nego­ti­at­ed with them to let me come down safe­ly and agreed that one of them would escourt me out of the woods. I met up with the oth­er campers and camp back to get a cup of tea and some food. A few local peo­ple called in to catch up with us. I feel good to be here to so far. I’ve met some good peo­ple. I found it good to be doing actions with ener­getic peo­ple who have been fight­ing this cam­paign for a long time.”

The oth­er camper up on the tree-cut­ter stayed up to stop work until 6.30pm before com­ing down. This camper report­ed that one of the IRMS secu­ri­ty super­vi­sors that had been run­ning after him in the woods, as he got to the tree-cut­ter, had injured his ankle and had even­tu­al­ly been stretchered off the site. The cam­paign­ers were not arrest­ed as the cut­ting was hap­pen­ing on pri­vate land.

New camp mem­bers are always wel­come and even if you don’t feel like crawl­ing around in the woods in your first few days there is plen­ty of oth­er things to do…

Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp is call­ing for sup­port in advance of this com­ing Fri­day the 13th of Jan­u­ary. Fri­day is the first Day of Sol­i­dar­i­ty of the new year, when peo­ple from around Ire­land are invit­ed to join the protests for a day to show their sup­port for the ongo­ing resis­tance to the Cor­rib Gas Project.

http://www.rossportsolidaritycamp.org
 
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Shell’s tree cutting disrupted for second day running

Dis­rup­tion to the felling of the Coillte wood­land for Shel­l’s planned onshore pipeline (along with the stop­ping of haulage trucks to the Augh­oose com­pound), con­tin­ued today as pro­tes­tors inter­cept­ed a spe­cial­ist 8‑track tree felling machine between the Augh­oose tun­nelling com­pound and Leen­amore for­est.

A Bar­ret­t’s truck trans­port­ing the machine was halt­ed as it made the 1km jour­ney at 7am this morn­ing by a small band of mer­ry pro­tes­tors, one of whom quick­ly ascend­ed the arm and set­tled into posi­tion as a lone Gar­da looked on. Sev­er­al more Gar­daí soon came to join her sup­port­ed by a large num­ber of IRMS staff who have been posi­tioned along the road by the for­est since yes­ter­day.

As a win­tery dawn broke over the beseiged bog the Gar­daí “removal” team arrived along with their “trans­porter”, dri­ven by Sgt Aidan Gill, who then pro­ceed­ed to ini­ti­ate Gar­da attacks on the gath­er­ing sup­port­ers, in the name of health and safe­ty.

Fol­low­ing some hasty posi­tion­ing of ‘crash-mat­tress­es’ and blan­kets (!!) on and around the machine an attempt was made to remove the pro­tes­tors, only for the Gar­daí to dis­cov­er that the pro­tes­tor had D‑locked her neck to the machine.

In an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly reck­less move, the Gar­daí then decid­ed to use an angle grinder just mil­lime­ters away from the pro­tes­tors’ head, all to enable the con­tin­u­a­tion of Shel­l’s work for the day.

How­ev­er the delay of 3 & 1/2 hours to the tree felling had also thwart­ed all deliv­er­ies of stone and removals of peat at the Augh­oose com­pound as the dri­ver of the truck car­ry­ing the machine had been swerv­ing so much, as to end up pre­vent­ing the pas­sage of any oth­er trucks on the road.
After being tak­en down the pro­tes­tor was arrest­ed and charged and is due to appear in Bel­mul­let court along with 4 oth­er cam­paign­ers.

Lat­er on in the evening anoth­er protest was called for out­side Bel­lan­aboy, how­ev­er it seems the lat­est activ­i­ty has result­ed in a fur­ther increase in the amount of Gar­daí loi­ter­ing in the area. About 15 Gar­daí were imme­di­ate­ly on hand and so not too many trucks were stopped in the evening.

Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp is call­ing for sup­port in advance of this com­ing Fri­day the 13th of Jan­u­ary. Fri­day is the first Day of Sol­i­dar­i­ty of the new year, when peo­ple from around Ire­land are invit­ed to join the protests for a day to show their sup­port for the ongo­ing resis­tance to the Cor­rib Gas Project.

 

 

Call-out! Eco-education centre reopened, Forest of dean, help needed!

This is a call out for sup­port.

Last night the For­est of Dean Eco-vil­lage swooped and reclaimed an envi­ron­men­tal edu­ca­tion cen­tre closed by the cuts, we intend to reopen it and run it as a free edu­ca­tion space for the local com­mu­ni­ty and beyond.

We invite you to come join us on our jour­ney towards cre­at­ing a sus­tain­able future.

This is a call out for sup­port.

Last night the For­est of Dean Eco-vil­lage swooped and reclaimed an envi­ron­men­tal edu­ca­tion cen­tre closed by the cuts, we intend to reopen it and run it as a free edu­ca­tion space for the local com­mu­ni­ty and beyond.

We invite you to come join us on our jour­ney towards cre­at­ing a sus­tain­able future.

We need peo­ple to come help hold down the space, work on the build­ings, gar­dens, wood­lands, run work­shops, skill shares and help use this rare resource to its max­i­mum poten­tial.

If you have some­thing to con­tribute in terms of time, ener­gy, ideas, skills and resources you are wel­come to join us.

If you are inter­est­ed please con­tact us at…

admin [at] apokaluptein [dot] org [dot] uk

tel:0781 172 6372

See you in the woods!

Sea Shepherd Intercepts the Japanese Whaling Fleet with Drones

24.12.11

Japanese Security Ships Move In On the Steve Irwin

The Sea Shep­herd crew has inter­cept­ed the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet on Christ­mas Day, a thou­sand miles north of the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary.

24.12.11

Japanese Security Ships Move In On the Steve Irwin

The Sea Shep­herd crew has inter­cept­ed the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet on Christ­mas Day, a thou­sand miles north of the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary.

The Sea Shep­herd ship, Steve Irwin, deployed a drone to suc­cess­ful­ly locate and pho­to­graph the Japan­ese fac­to­ry ship Nis­shin Maru on Decem­ber 24th. Once the pur­suit began, three Japan­ese harpoon/security ships moved in on the Steve Irwin to shield the Nis­shin Maru to allow it to escape.

This time how­ev­er the Japan­ese tac­tic of tail­ing the Steve Irwin and the Bob Bark­er will not work because the drones, one on the Steve Irwin and the oth­er on the Bob Bark­er, can track and fol­low the Nis­shin Maru and can relay the posi­tions back to the Sea Shep­herd ships.

“We can cov­er hun­dreds of miles with these drones and they have proven to be valu­able assets for this cam­paign,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son on board the Steve Irwin.

The drone named Nicole Mon­te­cal­vo was donat­ed to the Steve Irwin by Bayshore Recy­cling of New Jer­sey.

Cap­tain Wat­son hav­ing received reports from fish­er­men when the Japan­ese ship passed through the Lom­bok Strait wait­ed south of the strait at a dis­tance of 500 miles off the south­west coast of West­ern Aus­tralia. Sea Shep­herd caught the whalers at 37 degrees South, far above the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary

“The chase is on for the next 1000 miles,” said Deck­hand Eleanor Lis­ter of Jer­sey (U.K.).

With the Steve Irwin tak­ing up the resources of three of the Japan­ese ships the Bob Bark­er remains clear of a tail and the Brigitte Bar­dot is clear to scout out the fac­to­ry ship, hav­ing supe­ri­or speed to the har­poon ves­sels.

The Sea Shep­herd crew have found the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet before a sin­gle whale has been killed.

“This is going to be a long hard pur­suit from here to the coast of Antarc­ti­ca,” said Cap­tain Wat­son. “But thanks to these drones, we now have an advan­tage we have nev­er had before – eyes in the sky.”

Back­ground on the Steve Irwin Drone:
Bayshore Recy­cling striv­ing to pro­tect and con­serve nature

Drone Nicole Mon­te­cal­vo aids Sea Shep­herd in pre­serv­ing ocean wildlife world­wide.

Wood­bridge NJ- Bayshore Recy­cling Corp (BRC) not only strives to pro­tect the planet’s nat­ur­al resources through recy­cling but also encour­ages every­one to help endan­gered wildlife. To pro­mote and encour­age this effort, BRC’s own­ers recent­ly donat­ed a long-range drone fit­ted with cam­eras and detec­tion equip­ment to the Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety (SSCS). The SSCS is an inter­na­tion­al non-profit, direct action marine wildlife con­ser­va­tion orga­ni­za­tion. SSCS neces­si­tat­ed an addi­tion­al aer­i­al vehi­cle that could add to their fleet and expand their capa­bil­i­ties in order to scan hun­dreds of miles more with each flight in order to assist in find­ing and doc­u­ment­ing whal­ing ships and oth­er ille­gal poach­ing oper­a­tions. The drone will also assist in help­ing pro­tect the fleet, her crew and alert them to poten­tial dan­gers, when their heli­copter may not be avail­able for use.

A long-range drone is defined as an unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle that does not require human oper­a­tion and can fly inde­pen­dent­ly or be oper­at­ed remote­ly. The drone named Nicole Mon­te­cal­vo has assist­ed in locat­ing Japan­ese whal­ing fleet in the South­ern Ocean pre­vi­ous­ly has assist­ed in oper­a­tions against blue fin tuna poach­ing oper­a­tions off the coast of Libya. The drone Nicole Mon­te­cal­vo was deliv­ered on board the ves­sel Steve Irwin by the Ves­sel Secu­ri­ty Offi­cer dur­ing tran­sit to Antarc­ti­ca while in search of the Japan­ese flag­ship, Nis­shin Maru. BRC stress­es the impor­tance of con­serv­ing our planet’s nat­ur­al habi­tats. Whether it is sav­ing nat­ur­al resources, con­serv­ing ener­gy, pre­serv­ing endan­gered wildlife or recy­cling house­hold debris—Bayshore ris­es to the chal­lenge. Togeth­er, BRC and the SSCS will fight to save the ocean and its vul­ner­a­ble inhab­i­tants.

Anti-Coal Plant Protesters Storm Buildings, Evict Officials, Block Roads in South China

21.12.11

21.12.11

CHINESE pro­test­ers against a coal-pow­ered pow­er sta­tion have blocked a main road and defied riot police.

Reuters reports that the sit­u­a­tion seems to have esca­lat­ed, with res­i­dents smash­ing cars and hurl­ing bricks even though offi­cials sought to calm tem­pers by sus­pend­ing the unpop­u­lar plan.

Angry crowds smashed and over­turned police cars and riot police fired tear­gas in Haimen town in Shan­tou city on Wednes­day, the sec­ond day of the unrest, Hong Kong news­pa­pers report­ed.

Res­i­dents of Haimen, furi­ous with plans to build a coal-fired pow­er plant, took to the streets , sur­round­ing a gov­ern­ment build­ing and block­ing an express­way.

Offi­cials agreed to sus­pend the project this week, but res­i­dents refused to back down, demand­ing the plan be scrapped.

Out­side a large and closed petrol sta­tion near a high­way into Haimen, about 100 men on motor­bikes watched a wall of riot police armed with batons and shields, block­ing the high­way.

“What place in the world builds two pow­er plants with­in one kilo­me­tre?” said one of the Haimen res­i­dents, who was sur­named Cai, as he watched the riot police.

“The fac­to­ries are haz­ardous to our health. Our fish are dying and there are so many peo­ple who’ve got can­cer , ” he added.

“We thought of protest­ing out­side the gov­ern­ment office but we know none of them has lis­tened to us. So we had no choice but to block the high­way. The police beat up so many of the pro­test­ers in the past two days.”

At one point, Haimen res­i­dents screamed and surged for­ward when a riot police­man, wav­ing his baton in the air, charged towards a man on a motor­cy­cle who had been rid­ing towards the police block­ade on the high­way.

State news agency Xin­hua said sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple had protest­ed on a high­way on Wednes­day. Accord­ing to Hong Kong’s Ming Pao news­pa­per, more than 1,000 res­i­dents gath­ered at a toll gate to con­front hun­dreds of riot police.

Wit­ness­es said police fired four rounds of tear­gas and beat up pro­test­ers, who do not want anoth­er pow­er plant when exist­ing pow­er facil­i­ties there were already pol­lut­ing air and sea­wa­ter and had great­ly reduced their catch at sea, the report added.

At least three pro­test­ers were hit and arrest­ed.

Adds Reuters: “Peo­ple in Chi­na are increas­ing­ly unwill­ing to accept the relent­less speed of urban­i­sa­tion and indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion and the impact on the envi­ron­ment and health.

“Protests are also often held over cor­rup­tion, wages and land seizures, that offi­cials jus­ti­fy in the name of devel­op­ment.

“Res­i­dents of Wukan vil­lage, also in Guang­dong, agreed to end a 10-day stand­off with author­i­ties over a land dis­pute on Wednes­day.”

Video

Sec­ond report here

New Tree Sit in Tasmania

[On Decem­ber 14 2011, the Tas­man­ian for­est defence group] Still Wild Still Threatened…set up a 60m-high tree sit-in at the TN044B log­ging coupe near May­de­na inside the 430,000ha being assessed for reserve sta­tus under the forestry peace deal.

[On Decem­ber 14 2011, the Tas­man­ian for­est defence group] Still Wild Still Threatened…set up a 60m-high tree sit-in at the TN044B log­ging coupe near May­de­na inside the 430,000ha being assessed for reserve sta­tus under the forestry peace deal.

The “Observ­er Tree” will be occu­pied by SWST’s Miran­da Gib­son, who was one of two activists assault­ed by work­ers dur­ing a protest in 2008.

Speak­ing to the media via mobile phone from the plat­form, Ms Gib­son said she would main­tain a blog and a web cam­era to broad­cast to the world.

“It’s a dif­fer­ent approach because one of our major con­cerns is that there is a mis­con­cep­tion out there that the for­est has been pro­tect­ed,” Ms Gib­son said. “We want peo­ple to see what is hap­pen­ing in the forests.”

She said she was com­mit­ted to stay­ing on the plat­form until log­ging in 13 coupes inside the area being assessed for pro­tec­tion stopped.

Tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties pre­vent­ed Ms Gib­son from speak­ing to jour­nal­ists via video-link, but SWST expect the web­cast to be up in the next few days.

Sen­a­tor Bob Brown yes­ter­day used his tax­pay­er-fund­ed char­ter allowance to hire a heli­copter to allow media out­lets to pho­to­graph and film the tree-sit from the air.

He said Pre­mier Lara Gid­dings and Prime Min­is­ter Julia Gillard were dis­hon­our­ing their own agree­ment by allow­ing Forestry Tas­ma­nia to log the coupes.

“Their word is being clear-felled by what I judge is ille­gal log­ging. If this agree­ment has any legal force then this log­ging is ille­gal,” Sen­a­tor Brown said.

“I didn’t write this agree­ment, I didn’t have any­thing to do with it, but the Prime Min­is­ter did and the Pre­mier did. The Prime Min­is­ter wrote to me and said these forests had been placed in infor­mal reserves.”

Forestry Tasmania’s gen­er­al man­ag­er of oper­a­tions Steve White­ly said the coupe was one of 13 being logged inside the assess­ment area that was iden­ti­fied by inde­pen­dent sched­ulers as nec­es­sary for sup­ply con­tracts.

He described the protest as frus­trat­ing and point­less giv­en that forestry oper­a­tions would shut down for about a month from tomor­row.

“Forestry Tas­ma­nia needs to keep oper­at­ing and we need to select some coupes that are suit­able to meet our cus­tomers’ needs and we’re doing that while there’s a ver­i­fi­ca­tion process going on,” Mr White­ly said.

Ms Kerr said that she would not be deterred by the Christ­mas shut­down. “I’ll stay up here and keep an eye on things and be here ready when they get back,” she said.

 

Check out the blog theOb­serverTree to get real time updates and offer sup­port.

Activists protest against Devada power plant in India

13.12.11

13.12.11

The 1,040 MW Hin­du­ja Ther­mal Pow­er Plant com­ing up at Deva­da vil­lage in the coastal dis­trict of Visakha­p­at­nam has run into trou­ble again, with locals and activists stag­ing mass protests against the mega project on grounds of envi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tion and large-scale dis­place­ment of farm­ers.

A large group of res­i­dents and anti-project activists, sup­port­ed by oppo­si­tion par­ties and envi­ron­men­tal groups, staged a demon­stra­tion near the plant site on Mon­day, demand­ing imme­di­ate halt to the works and effec­tive reha­bil­i­ta­tion pack­age for the dis­placed fam­i­lies. As the protests led to ten­sion in the area, police swung into action and dis­persed the demon­stra­tors.

The coal-based pow­er project, being devel­oped by the Hin­du­ja Group, has run into rough weath­er with local farm­ers, oppo­si­tion groups, ener­gy experts and envi­ron­men­tal activists putting up a stiff resis­tance.

Stop New Nuclear newsletter no 10, 3 December 2011

Dear all,

Dear all,

this is our first newslet­ter since the Stop New Nuclear gath­er­ing in Bris­tol on 5/6 Novem­ber, where we decid­ed on our next major action. We are all excit­ed about our new plan, and with this newslet­ter we send you some infor­ma­tion about the planned action to sur­round Hink­ley Point on 10 March 2011, fol­lowed by a 24 hour block­ade until 11 March 2011. All this to mark one year since the begin­ning of the cat­a­stro­phe of Fukushi­ma, which is far from over.

No more Fukushimas

Fukushi­ma is the biggest indus­tri­al dis­as­ter in his­to­ry, and has brought Japan to its knees. The reac­tors that went into melt­down in March have now melt­ed through the foun­da­tions and 40 years of accu­mu­lat­ed nuclear waste is emit­ting vast amounts of radi­a­tion, con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the land, sea and air. In des­per­a­tion, the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment is trans­port­ing and burn­ing radioac­tive rub­ble all over Japan and export­ing high­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed food as “aid” to devel­op­ing coun­tries. Men, women and chil­dren are liv­ing in high­ly radioac­tive areas but they are not being evac­u­at­ed as they should be. This intense radi­a­tion expo­sure has very seri­ous health con­se­quences for these peo­ple.

How has Japan end­ed up in this dread­ful sit­u­a­tion? Their gov­ern­ment always said “It can’t hap­pen here.” Sound famil­iar? Pow­er­ful polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic inter­est groups are gag­ging the world’s media on this unfold­ing tragedy. Ordi­nary peo­ple the world over will pay the price.
Since the first civil­ian reac­tor start­ed gen­er­at­ing in 1954, there has been, on aver­age, a major acci­dent every 14–18 years: Wind­scale 1957, Three Mile Island1979, Cher­nobyl 1986, Fukushi­ma 2011.

Stop New Nuclear’s answer to the cri­sis of Fukushi­ma is clear: now new nuclear in Britain and any­where else! There­fore, our action on “Fukushi­ma day” will be to

Surround and blockade Hinkley Point, Somerset

Hink­ley Point is the first of eight pro­posed sites for nuclear new build to go ahead. We stopped them here before in 1987, and we can do it again in 2012. If they fail at Hink­ley, it is unlike­ly the “nuclear renais­sance” will have the momen­tum to con­tin­ue.
On the 10th ‑11th March 2012, one year since the Fukushi­ma nuclear dis­as­ter began, we will return to Hink­ley to form a human chain around the sta­tion to show our deter­mined oppo­si­tion to new nuclear.
In 2010, dozens of us block­ad­ed the gates at Hink­ley. In 2011 hun­dreds of us block­ad­ed the entrance again. In 2012, thou­sands of us will sur­round the pow­er sta­tion to say No to new nuclear! Not here, not any­where!
In Octo­ber 2011, peo­ple pledged to block­ade. This time, pledge to bring 5 friends and tell them to do the same. Thou­sands are need­ed to sur­round the sta­tion!
Pledge to sur­round Hink­ley Point, to bring five friends, or to block­ade Hink­ley Point

Help us mobilise

To ‘Sur­round Hink­ley’ is to demand to have a voice in deci­sions about our ener­gy future. Help to make this a fes­ti­val of cre­ative resis­tance with music, art, the­atre, ban­ners, and what­ev­er takes your fan­cy! To mark the end of the ‘Sur­round’, there will be a gath­er­ing at the main gate of Hink­ley for a ral­ly and music. You may want to return on the coach­es after the action or stay to block­ade the gates for 24 hours. With tents and tubes we will remain at the gates to show our sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Japan.

The time to act is now! Join your local anti nuclear cam­paign, form affin­i­ty groups. The Stop New Nuclear Alliance can help by giv­ing train­ing in non-vio­lent direct action, con­sen­sus deci­sion- mak­ing, spokes coun­cils and advice on trans­port etc….

In our hun­dreds, in our thou­sands we will come togeth­er to stop nuclear pow­er at Hink­ley Point and dis­man­tle the whole new nuclear agen­da! This is the chance to be part of sme­thing mas­sive. JOIN US!

Please help to spread the mes­sage by either down­load­ing the fli­er, or ask us to send you a pack. We wel­come some dona­tion to cov­er postage, but even if you can’t — we need to get the mes­sage out!

Get in touch with us if you want to organ­ise a minibus or put on a coach.

News from nuclear new build

Hinkley Point

There was some news at the end of Octo­ber that EDF is delay­ing its final invest­ment deci­sion about Hink­ley C (and its oth­er planned new nuclear pow­er sta­tions in the UK: Sizewell, Heysham, etc) until the end of 2012. How­ev­er, EDF still insists that it will sub­mit its appli­ca­tion to the Infra­struc­ture Plan­ning Com­mis­sion soon, and also declared that it wants to start prepar­ing the site for Hink­ley C from spring 2012 on. For us, this means two things:

  • The next year will be cru­cial to push EDF to aban­don its plans for Hink­ley C. We need to step our cam­paign­ing to show EDF that it is not a good idea to invest in Hink­ley C, and that they should invest in renew­able ener­gy instead.
  • EDF still wants to pre­pare the site, which means it wants to destroy the land from spring 2012 on, even though there is not even a final deci­sion whether they will real­ly go ahead with Hink­ley C. This shows that a legal chal­lenge to the pre­lim­i­nary works per­mis­sion is even more impor­tant. Stop Hink­ley is rais­ing funds for a legal chal­lenge to West Som­er­set Coun­cil’s deci­sion to grant EDF per­mis­sion to car­ry out prepara­to­ry work on the site, even though EDF is still far from a per­mis­sion to con­struct the pow­er sta­tion itself (and has­n’t even made a final deci­sion). Stop Hink­ley needs to raise about £15,000 for this legal chal­lenge, to please sup­port Stop Hink­ley. More infor­ma­tion at http://stophinkley.org/LegChallAppeal.htm.

Nev­er­the­less, EDF went ahead with its appli­ca­tion to the Infra­struc­ture Plan­ning Com­mis­sion (IPC). The IPC has accept­ed the appli­ca­tion, and from Fri­day, 2 Decem­ber, there are 28 days for every­one to reg­is­ter that they want to com­ment on the appli­ca­tion. This is only a first reg­is­tra­tion, and does not need to be accom­pa­nied by the detailed objec­tions, but with­out this reg­is­tra­tion, you will not be able to object lat­er.

The Infra­struc­ture Plan­ning Com­mis­sion is also organ­is­ing events local­ly near Hink­ley Point to explain the process, when to reg­is­ter and how to make a rep­re­sen­ta­tion to the IPC. They will be held between 10am – 9pm at the fol­low­ing loca­tions:
- Stogursey — Mon­day 5 Decem­ber, The Vic­to­ry Hall, Tow­er Hill, Stogursey, TA5 1PR
- Can­ning­ton — Thurs­day 8 Decem­ber, Can­ning­ton Vil­lage Hall, 2 Brook Street, Can­ning­ton, TA5 2HP
- Willi­ton — Fri­day 9 Decem­ber, West Som­er­set House, Kil­lick Way, Willi­ton, TA4 4QA
- North Pether­ton — Mon­day 12 Decem­ber, The Wal­nut Tree Hotel, North Pether­ton, TA6 6QA
- Comb­wich — Tues­day 13 Decem­ber, Otter­hamp­ton Vil­lage Hall, River­side, Comb­wich, TA5 2QZ
- Bridg­wa­ter — Wednes­day 14 Decem­ber, Town Hall, High Street, Bridg­wa­ter, TA6 3BL.
More infor­ma­tion on the plan­ning process is avail­able on the web­site of the IPC at http://infrastructure.independent.gov.uk/projects/south-west/hinkley-point-c-new-nuclear-power-station/.

Stop Hink­ley will be pre­sent­ing more than 12,000 peti­tions against Hink­ley Point C at Down­ing Street on Tues­day, 6 Decem­ber, at at 1.30pm and at the Depart­ment of Ener­gy and Cli­mate Change in Lon­don on 6th Decem­ber at 2.00 pm. Mem­bers of Stop Hink­ley will be accom­pa­nied by Wells MP Tes­sa Munt and Green Par­ty leader and MP Car­o­line Lucas. The Depart­ment of Ener­gy is at 3 White­hall Place, Lon­don SW1A 2AW. More infor­ma­tion in the Stop Hink­ley press release at http://stopnuclearpoweruk.net/content/stop-hinkley-campaign-presents-petition-government-against-edf%E2%80%99s-nuclear-plans.

Wylfa

Things are also hot­ting up at Wyl­fa, where Hori­zon, a joint ven­ture of Ger­man util­i­ty com­pa­nies RWE and E.on, is plan­ning to build two to three new nuclear reac­tors. Hori­zon con­tin­ue to bul­ly the Jones fam­i­ly of Caerde­gog and have applied for com­pul­so­ry pow­ers to ascer­tain the suit­abil­i­ty of their land for con­struc­tion. Hori­zon Nuclear Pow­er (HNP) recent­ly applied to Ofgem for Sec­tion D of their Elec­tric­i­ty Gen­er­a­tion Licence to be “switched on”. Imme­di­ate­ly upon approval, HNP applied to Ofgem for con­sent to exer­cise their new explorato­ry rights under the Elec­tric­i­ty Act 1989. This would allow a gen­er­a­tion licence hold­er to enter and sur­vey any land to estab­lish whether it would be suit­able for the con­struc­tion of an elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion sta­tion. It would also give them the pow­er to exe­cute their author­i­ty to make com­pul­so­ry land pur­chase. On Thurs­day after­noon 17th Novem­ber, Richard Jones and his fam­i­ly received a let­ter in Eng­lish only from Ofgem inform­ing them of the rights recent­ly grant­ed to HNP to gain access to their land at Caerde­gog. Ofgem have failed in their duty under the Welsh Lan­guage Act to pro­vide the Jones fam­i­ly with the doc­u­ments in their own lan­guage. Fur­ther­more it is con­sid­ered unrea­son­able for any objec­tions to be lodged with­in a time lim­it of five work­ing days espe­cial­ly in view of the legal con­tent of the cor­re­spon­dence (see the offi­cial con­sul­ta­tion at http://www.ofgem.gov.uk/Pages/MoreInformation.aspx?file=Consultation%20on%20Horizon%20Application%20for%20Consent%20to%20use%20Exploratory%20Rights.pdf&refer=Licensing/Work).
Hori­zon have con­tin­ued to say that they would only use com­pul­so­ry pow­ers as a last resort yet they exe­cut­ed their new­ly acquired author­i­ty with­in days of it being grant­ed.
On behalf of the fam­i­ly, Richard Jones said: “We as a fam­i­ly will resist Horizon’s bul­ly­ing tac­tics in the attempt­ed destruc­tion of our her­itage, our liveli­hood and our future.”
See the press release of Peo­ple Against Wyl­fa B at http://stopnuclearpoweruk.net/content/nuclear-monster-continues-torment-local-family.

Donate

The new action to sur­round Hink­ley, and the 24 hour block­ade, will need a lot of mon­ey to make them hap­pen. While we don’t start with noth­ing, we are nowhere near what we will need. We are present­ly work­ing on a bud­get, but one thing is clear: Please give gen­er­ous­ly. You can donate online at http://stopnewnuclear.org.uk/donate, or you can send a cheque made payable to Stop New Nuclear to:
Stop New Nuclear
c/o 5 Cale­don­ian Road
Lon­don N1 9DX
Thank you!

Stop New Nuclear newslet­ter

 

Three days of action against Shell

Decem­ber 13, 2011

Pro­test­ers give Shell an ear­ly Christ­mas present

Decem­ber 13, 2011

Pro­test­ers give Shell an ear­ly Christ­mas present

The Shell to Sea cam­paign is still run­ning strong 11 years after the incep­tion of the Cor­rib gas project. Every­day peo­ple are becom­ing aware of the peo­ple’s strug­gle against Shell, but still more are need­ed to come and see for them­selves and save our coun­try from the glob­al cor­po­rate takeover.

On Fri­day 9th of Decem­ber, Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cam­paign [http://www.rossportsolidaritycamp.org/] con­tin­ued with the locals’ protest slow­ing down Shel­l’s work, spir­its were high and peo­ple were pleased with the action despite the Chief’s legal judge­ment [http://www.indymedia.ie/article/101060] peo­ple still braced the cold con­di­tions to con­tin­ue the protest.

On Sat­ur­day the 10th a Day Of Action com­menced with groups of peo­ple from all over the coun­try com­ing out to sup­port the Shell to Sea cam­paign. Peo­ple from the Occu­py camps [http://www.indymedia.ie/article/100863] in Gal­way, Dublin and Cork came to protest Shel­l’s occu­pa­tion of Erris. Pro­test­ers stood out­side the com­pound at Aghoos for 2 hours pre­vent­ing any work from start­ing. The action was a suc­cess and no Gar­da pres­ence was noticed.

On Mon­day 12th a spon­ta­neous action hap­pened at the refin­ery site at Bal­linaboy with 15 pro­test­ers from var­i­ous parts of the coun­try man­ag­ing to stop up to 12 trucks simul­ta­ne­ous­ly for an hour, no arrests were made, the small Gar­da pres­ence were no match for the swift­ness and brav­ery of the pro­test­ers. The only casu­al­ty was a bike unlaw­ful­ly con­fis­cat­ed by the Gar­da.

On Tues­day 13th the reg­u­lar protest took place at the Bal­linaboy com­pound. Around 15 pro­test­ers were met with an equal num­ber of Gar­dai who pre­vent­ed peo­ple walk­ing on the road. The right to peace­ful protest was met with the threat of arrest. Peo­ple still man­aged to stop 7 trucks for 40 min­utes. Strong cold winds and hail, com­bined with the pro­test­ers, stopped Shell doing any work on the Tues­day.

Through the inter­net and Occu­py groups in var­i­ous Irish cities there is an out­let for infor­ma­tion of upcom­ing actions and events. Jan­u­ary 13th is the next Day Of Action; all are wel­come to come and change our nation’s his­to­ry.

No TAV Resistance in the Susa Valley goes on, Italy

10.12.11

10.12.11

As I wrote a few days ago, the NO TAV move­ment was plan­ning a huge day of mobil­i­sa­tion on Decem­ber 8, for the anniver­sary of what has become known as “The Bat­tle of Venaus” in 2005, where activists man­aged to defeat police and secu­ri­ty forces and take back parts of the val­ley that had been evict­ed and cleared up in the pre­vi­ous days.

How the local author­i­ties per­ceived this call out is clear from their reac­tion: on Decem­ber 7 a tem­po­rary decree was issued, pro­hibit­ing the access and tran­sit of peo­ple and vehi­cles around the fenced areas of the val­ley for the fol­low­ing two days. New check points were estab­lished or rein­forced dur­ing the day. As on pre­vi­ous occa­sions, the only response was to try to com­plete­ly block  protests around the fenced areas by increas­ing mil­i­tary pres­ence local­ly and ban­ning all activ­i­ties in the sur­round­ings.

Sin­is­ter char­ac­ters already known to the NO TAV move­ment were invit­ed to take part in the “order main­te­nance”, such as one of the chief inspec­tors who autho­rised the vio­lent evic­tions in Venaus in 2005, and oth­er inspec­tors and Digos chiefs who organ­ised and man­aged the repres­sion of the protests last sum­mer.

The NO TAV had two main actions planned for the day: a “siege” of the fenced areas of the val­ley on one side, and a huge block of a local motor­way on the oth­er (which went on for more than 14 hours).

Once again, the police react­ed with extra­or­di­nary vio­lence, in par­tic­u­lar around the fenced areas. Dozens of peo­ple were injured, includ­ing a 16 year old young man who was hit in the head by a tear gas cylin­der while he was try­ing to put down a fire caused by the same tear gas car­tridges, and a 50 year old man, also hit in the face, who might loose his sight com­plete­ly. Many oth­ers were injured by rocks and stones thrown by the police;unlike last sumer, this time some RAI3 cam­era­men man­aged to film these events and broad­cast them.

After evict­ing the look­out post (which was suc­cess­ful­ly tak­en back the fol­low­ing day!), police forces entered the build­ing, dam­aged any­thing that was in it, and final­ly con­fis­cat­ed all the remain­ing equip­ment. Dur­ing the day at least 6 peo­ple were giv­en ban­ning orders that pro­hib­it them to vis­it the area for the next 3 years. Some of the “dan­ger­ous” equip­ment found in their vehi­cles includ­ed water­proof jack­ets. The fol­low­ing day, a work­er of a local gar­den­ing co-oper­a­tive was also stopped and searched, and his gar­den­ing tools con­fis­cat­ed while he was on his way to open up a local eco-cen­tre.

As usu­al, the media and the polit­i­cal clowns unit­ed in a joint crit­i­cism of the vio­lent pro­test­ers. Fassi­no, cur­rent May­or of Turin, stat­ed “There were only extrem­ists in the Susa Val­ley “. Oth­er com­ments were made about the neces­si­ty of defend­ing the val­ley from the NO TAV activists!, and about the use­less­ness of these protests in view of the fact that the high speed line project is going to go ahead any­way.

The “left-wing” news­pa­per La Rebub­bli­ca even tried to dimin­ish the grav­i­ty of the inci­dent involv­ing the 16 year old boy, say­ing that he is Dan­ish and was there by chance…he is actu­al­ly Dan­ish but grew up in the Susa Val­ley, but his nation­al­i­ty doesn’t change the fact that he’s in a hos­pi­tal with trau­mat­ic brain injury…

The NO TAV held a press con­fer­ence the day after, and their main points were:

1) The NO TAV move­ment is one and unit­ed. There are no bad nor good pro­test­ers, nor were chil­dren in the demo used as human shields (one of the accu­sa­tions made by some politi­cians). The NO TAV strug­gle belongs to every­one.

2) The pro­test­ers didn’t attack the police forces, but only tried, as they’ve done in the past, to cut down the fences, which in their eyes are ille­gal and ille­git­ti­mate. The police imme­di­ate­ly react­ed with tear gas and water jets.

3) All the injured are among the pro­test­ers; there were no injured among the police forces (as was stat­ed by the media).

4) The look­out post in La Mad­dale­na was sub­ject­ed to dam­age, loot­ing and dev­as­ta­tion per­pe­trat­ed by the police forces. The tools con­fis­cat­ed by the police (e.g. axes) are not weapons, but nec­es­sary tools to cut down wood.

5) The move­ment will go back to the post and clean it up, and will vis­it the fenced area again. The police bru­tal­i­ty and the accu­sa­tions made by politi­cians will not stop the move­ment.

Faith­ful to their words, hun­dreds of NO TAV activist have gone back to the fenced area this morn­ing. They had lunch togeth­er, with hun­dreds of police look­ing at them from the oth­er side of the fences. Then they start­ed walk­ing along the fences and cut­ting them down. The police act­ed imme­di­ate­ly and fired the water jet, but mirac­u­lous­ly mis­aimed, hit­ting instead a group of Digos offi­cers. Well done, for once! Watch the video here:

Thanks to notav.info for the orig­i­nal arti­cles, pics and videos.

Translated by Italy Calling