Category: Wilderness Defence

Wilder­ness defence

First Nations Protesters Shut Down Northern B.C. Drilling Site

10/9/14

After a sum­mer of protests aimed at min­ing com­pa­nies, mem­bers of the Tahltan Nation in north­ern B.C. say they have shut down an explorato­ry drilling oper­a­tion by tak­ing over the site.

“HAPPENING RIGHT NOW!!!!” states a Mon­day night post­ing on the Face­book page for Tahltan elders. “The Klabona Keep­er mem­bers are occu­py­ing a black hawk drill pad above Ealue Lake!!!”

The elders’ group, which is based in Iskut just south of Dease Lake, has staged sev­er­al protests in the area in recent years block­ing resource com­pa­nies from work­ing in a place known as the Sacred Head­wa­ters. The region is high­ly val­ued by the Tahltan because it holds the head­wa­ters of three impor­tant salmon rivers – the Stikine, Skeena and Nass.

Rho­da Quock, a spokes­woman for the Klabono Keep­ers, said Tues­day a group of pro­test­ers hiked to the remote drill site and took it over.

She said Black Hawk Drilling Ltd., a Smithers, B.C., com­pa­ny that works for Firesteel Resources Inc. of Van­cou­ver and OZ Min­er­als of Aus­tralia, flew its drilling crew out after the occu­pa­tion began.

Protests against the mine explo­ration work began in 2006-07, said Ms. Quock, when Firesteel Resources began exam­in­ing a cop­per-gold deposit in the Sacred Head­wa­ters region.

The Klabona Keep­ers set up road­blocks at that time and the com­pa­ny with­drew, before return­ing ear­li­er this sum­mer, she said.

“In July … we saw drilling equip­ment near the road,” she said. “We told them they had until noon to remove the drill or we’d take it over. And they did [remove the equip­ment].”

But Ms. Quock said heli­copters were lat­er seen fly­ing over­head.

Com­pa­ny offi­cials could not be reached for an inter­view, but on its web­site, Firesteel Resources states that in July it began work­ing with OZ Min­er­als on a drilling pro­gram in the area.

In a brief e‑mail, Michael Hep­worth, Pres­i­dent and chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of Firesteel Resources, said the drilling crew has approval to do explorato­ry drilling.

“We are work­ing in the area under [Tahltan Cen­tral Coun­cil] approval and are ful­ly per­mit­ted by the B.C. gov­ern­ment to work in the area,” said Mr. Hep­worth, who is trav­el­ling out­side Cana­da.

Although the Tahltan Cen­tral Coun­cil is the main gov­ern­ing body of the Tahltan Nation, the Klabona Keep­ers oper­ate inde­pen­dent­ly. The two groups are some­times at odds, but gen­er­al­ly sup­port one anoth­er.

Chad Day, recent­ly elect­ed Pres­i­dent of the Tahltan Cen­tral Coun­cil, could not be reached for com­ment.

David Haslam, a spokesman for the Min­istry of Mines, said in an e‑mail that Firesteel Resources “has all the nec­es­sary tenures and per­mits” it needs and the gov­ern­ment is work­ing with the Tahltan Cen­tral Coun­cil “to devel­op a shared vision for land and resource use.”

Mr. Haslam urged “every­one to remain respect­ful of one anoth­er on the ground while we seek a res­o­lu­tion to the sit­u­a­tion with the Klabona Keep­ers.”

Ms. Quock said mem­bers of the Klabona Keep­ers hiked through the moun­tains on the week­end look­ing for remote drill sites.

“They found the drill, the spill tray on it was over­flow­ing with oil and water,” she said. “We shut the drill down. They are stay­ing there and they are not allow­ing the drill to leave.”

Asked what mes­sage she want­ed to deliv­er, she said: “We want them out. Why are they con­tin­u­ing to put more mon­ey in to a project that will always be protest­ed? We will nev­er approve it.”

The Klabona Keep­ers block­ad­ed Impe­r­i­al Met­als’ Red Chris mine in August because of con­cerns about a tail­ings pond, but stopped the protest when talks began between the com­pa­ny and the Tahltan Cen­tral Coun­cil. Last year, the group blocked For­tune Min­er­als Ltd. from doing work on a coal deposit. On Mon­day, the B.C. gov­ern­ment announced a tem­po­rary hold on coal explo­ration per­mits in the area.

“I don’t want peo­ple to get the impres­sion we’re against all devel­op­ment. We’re not. But these places are sacred and we want to keep it [untouched],” said Ms. Quock.

Klabona Keep­er web­site

Video

Wetlands destruction and resistance

#TESTET #ZAD

#TESTET #ZAD

About an hour’s dri­ve north of Toulouse (sw France)  there is an area of wet­lands called the Testet, in the for­est of #Sivens . This is the last area of wet­lands (“Zone Humide” in French) in the depart­ment of the Tarn. It is home to rare and endan­gered species.

This area (13hectares) will be drowned by a dam. The pur­pose of the dam is prin­ci­pal­ly to irri­gate large-scale maize pro­duc­tion.

It will also be used to reg­u­late the lev­els of water in the riv­er Tescou, so that pol­lu­tion will be dilut­ed and the local author­i­ties can claim to respect Euro­pean envi­ron­ment leg­is­la­tion. The water can also be used if dif­fi­cul­ties arrive at the Golfech nuclear reac­tor.

Maize pro­duc­tion is not appro­pri­ate to this region, it is a high­ly pol­lut­ing form of agri­cul­ture. Euro­pean and French rules say that it should no longer receive sub­si­dies. (Dam financed by local, region­al and Euro­pean bud­gets)

The pro­ject­ed dam is not nec­es­sary, small­er, high­er dams exist upstream, and are not used.

The stud­ies of water avail­abil­i­ty and use, of the cost, impact and of the need for the dam are flawed and par­tial. (Local politi­cians who favour the project have inter­ests in the com­pa­ny which pro­duced the stud­ies — which just hap­pens to be the com­pa­ny which will pock­et the mon­ey for build­ing the dam.…)

Claims about the need to dilute indus­tri­al pol­lu­tion down­stream are non­sense: the milk coop­er­a­tive which used to pump efflu­ent into the Tescou has had fil­ters since 2006.

Envi­ron­men­tal­ists have been defend­ing the wet­lands for almost a year. Log­ging start­ed on the 1st of sep­tem­ber, the army and mil­i­tary police corps have com­mit­ed acts of vio­lence against non-vio­lent pro­tes­tors.

A hunger strike is in progress.

Hun­dreds of dam oppo­nents are active on the site ( block­ing roads, slow­ing the chain­saws, nego­ci­at­ing and demon­strat­ing). Oth­er activists are demon­strat­ing in front of local gov­erne­ment offices (and being sav­age­ly beat­en for their efforts)

Calls for the pub­lic to show oppo­si­tion to this unnec­es­sary and destruc­tive project are online.

Wel­come groups exist for par­tic­i­pants in direct action. The strug­gle is grad­u­al­ly grow­ing, all and any help is need­ed. Sad­ly, at the time of writ­ing the GIGN (spe­cial forces) are clear­ing resis­tance from the Zone.

Futher info:

http://collectif-testet.org/

http://tantquilyauradesbouilles.wordpress.com/

https://www.facebook.com/SoutienTestet

Verdict Handed Down for Six Sea Shepherd Volunteers on Faroe Islands

9.9.14

9.9.14

Vol­un­teers from Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Society’s pilot whale defense cam­paign Oper­a­tion Grind­Stop 2014 appeared before a court in the Faroe Islands on Mon­day fol­low­ing their recent arrest in con­junc­tion with try­ing to pre­vent the mur­der of pilot whales. These vol­un­teer crewmem­bers – many of whom are Euro­pean cit­i­zens – have been found guilty of defend­ing the whales, while Den­mark has act­ed in bla­tant defi­ance of Euro­pean Union reg­u­la­tions by defend­ing the slaugh­ter of whales. Sea Shep­herd has issued a state­ment per­tain­ing to the ver­dicts and sup­port­er and actor Mar­tin Sheen is speak­ing out.

The six mem­bers of Sea Shepherd’s onshore team were among a total of 14 vol­un­teers arrest­ed on August 30 on the Faroese island of San­doy for attempt­ing to pro­tect 33 pilot whales from the bru­tal mass slaugh­ter known as “grindadrap” or the “grind.” The onshore crewmem­bers entered the water, bang­ing poles, in an attempt to lead the pilot whales back out to sea and out of dan­ger, but as the pod was dri­ven in quick­ly from close to shore, there was lit­tle time to pre­vent the slaugh­ter. The Roy­al Dan­ish Navy arrest­ed Sea Shepherd’s off­shore crew and seized three of their small boats – the Loki, the Mike Gale­si, and the B.S. Sheen (spon­sored by actor Char­lie Sheen). Despite being an anti-whal­ing EU mem­ber nation, Den­mark act­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the whalers, enabling 33 whales to be killed.

The onshore crewmem­bers face small fines as well as pos­si­ble depor­ta­tion from the Faroes by Den­mark. The court date for the eight mem­bers of the off­shore crew has been sched­uled for Sep­tem­ber 25, and Sea Shepherd’s three small boats will be held “as evi­dence” until that time.

Read more at SeaShepherd.org

Twelve Hour Blockade Against Rare Earth Metal Exploration, Canada

frDSC_0996

frDSC_0996

The 23rd July we stopped the Cana­di­an cor­po­ra­tion Tas­man Met­als’ test drillings for rare earth ele­ments (REE) in Nor­ra Kärr, Swe­den. We heard they prob­a­bly had been secur­ing the place with CCTV-cam­eras so we decid­ed to dri­ve as fast as pos­si­ble right into the ene­my claimed for­est, straight through any alarm sys­tem. Then we ran a few kilo­me­ters until we found the drilling rig. Using bike-locks we chained our bod­ies to the nasty machine. We alert­ed some media with a press release. Then some cops came with peo­ple from the cor­po­ra­tion in a few hours. They gath­ered 20 some­thing cops but Tas­man decid­ed not to inter­vene even though we were break­ing the law. They didn’t want the extra fuzz from bru­tal cop-vio­lence. So we could stay at the beau­ti­ful site with the ugly machine the whole day talk­ing to jour­nal­ists and drink­ing cof­fee with excit­ed sup­port­ers.

We know rare earth min­ing has been apoc­a­lyp­tic in desert bio­mes due to all the tox­ic waste. This mine would be right next to Swe­dens biggest drink­ing water reserve, the beau­ti­ful lake Vät­tern. It’s got bright clear water and sup­ports 260 000 peo­ple with clean water at the moment, more cities want to plug in! Tas­man Met­als is hid­ing its ugly plans to make investors gam­ble with human and non-human health and we will not allow that!

In sol­i­dar­i­ty with all peo­ple fight­ing patri­archy and the white mans colo­nial world­view!

More pic­tures on the cam­paign web­site.

Arizona Forest Service Roads Spiked

sharp rebar in road_1405470850242_6845830_ver1.0_640_480

sharp rebar in road_1405470850242_6845830_ver1.0_640_480

July 23rd, 2014  Flagstaff author­i­ties are seek­ing the public’s help to gath­er any infor­ma­tion relat­ed to sharp­ened rebar that was placed in the Hap­py Jack area.

For­est Ser­vice law enforce­ment say that at least five pieces of the rebar was placed on for­est roads that are fre­quent­ed by off-high­way vehi­cles.

The sharp pieces are respon­si­ble for slash­ing at least eight tires last week­end, accord­ing to author­i­ties.

“The end of the rebar has been flat­tened and sharp­ened to a point and the exposed point has been paint­ed to blend in with the road sur­face,” Lin­da Wadleigh, Mogol­lon Rim Dis­trict Ranger, said. She added that the objects pose a threat to peo­ple hik­ing and walk­ing and to wildlife in the area.

[EF! Jour­nal edi­tor’s note: For more infor­ma­tion on road spik­ing — Ecode­fense: A Field Guide]

GOYdz5r

rebar in roads_1405470847636_6845828_ver1.0_640_480

 

Catalonia: Wave of Sabotage Against High Tension Lines

images.duckduckgo.com

images.duckduckgo.com

July 18th, 2014 — In light of the news of the mov­ing for­ward of the Very High Ten­sion Line (la línea de muy alta ten­sión or MAT), we want to make pub­lic:

On Tues­day, July 1st, an all-ter­rain vehi­cle in the ser­vice of Ten­salm, a com­pa­ny sub­con­tract­ed by the Spain Elec­tri­cal Net­work (REE), was burned, destroyed by the flames in the night with­in a  Sar­rià de Ter hotel in the Girona province.

We claim all the actions detailed below, a year after we began our work. All the actions have been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly silenced by the com­mu­ni­ca­tion media and for this rea­son we want to make pub­lic that, in denial of the lastest news from the dai­ly El Punt, we have caused months of delay to the work and thou­sands of euros of dam­ages and loss­es to REE.

At the mar­gin of the assem­blies and col­lec­tives that have car­ried out a strug­gle against the con­struc­tion of the MAT, a mul­ti­tude of activists from the region and for­eign­ers, we have car­ried out a fight based on direct action.

We vin­di­cate sab­o­tage as a fun­da­men­tal part of the fight against the impo­si­tion, the infra­struc­ture that sus­tains the sys­tem, and all the social, lab­o­ral and eco­nom­ic mech­a­nisms of cap­i­tal­ism.

The whole world is capa­ble of car­ry­ing out sab­o­tage, a tool that has belonged to the oppressed class for a long time. It can be as sim­ple as unscrew­ing the bolts of any tow­er, and we encour­age every­one who is against to act in the way they see as most fit­ting.

We pub­lish this list of actions in order to incite sab­o­tage, to give ideas, and to bring to light what they didn’t want to be known.

June 2013:
- 2 exca­va­tors sab­o­taged
-All-ter­rain vehi­cle of the ROTELLA com­pa­ny has tires slashed and radi­a­tors bro­ken.
- Removal of stakes mark­ing the tow­ers.

August 2013:
- 2 exca­va­tors sab­o­taged
- 1 exca­va­tor destroyed
- Block­ing of the trails with bar­ri­cades

Sep­tem­ber – Novem­ber 2013:
- 5 exca­va­tors and machines sab­o­taged
- 12 all-ter­rain vehi­cles of GAROC and ROTELLA com­pa­nies sab­o­taged
- Block­ing of trails with bar­ri­cades and spikes

Decem­ber 2013:
- Attack on the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of REE and their cars

Jan­u­ary 2014:
- Attacks on GAROC exca­va­tors

Feb­ru­ary – April 2014:
- Guide cords for run­ning cables repeat­ed­ly cut
- Mul­ti­ple unbolt­ings of the bases of the MAT tow­ers
- Attack on the secu­ri­ty guards of EULEN com­pa­ny, and bro­ken win­dows.

May 2014:
- Cords cut
- Destruc­tion of 2 gen­er­a­tors
- 2 all-ter­rain vehi­cles of REE sab­o­taged
- Sab­o­tage of sup­port struc­tures
- Sev­er­al unbolt­ings of the tow­ers

June – July 2014:
- All-ter­rain vehi­cles sab­o­taged and burned!

This is an incom­plete list since it is impos­si­ble to know all the actions that have been car­ried out, or who has done them. The bolts will be sent to the press, in order to put pres­sure for the pub­li­ca­tion of this man­i­festo.

No MAT, no TAV, no nuclear and no to the sys­tem that sus­tains them!

More infor­ma­tion about resis­tance to the MAT can be found at

http://torresmasaltashancaido.espivblogs.net/ingles/

 

from con­train­fo, trans­lat­ed by waronso­ci­ety

Italy—More Arrests in the Struggle Against the TAV

NO_TAV_logo

NO_TAV_logo

This morn­ing (11th July) three anar­chist com­rades were arrest­ed between Milan and Lec­ce, and anoth­er one was raid­ed.

The three are accused of tak­ing part in the attack on the yard in Chiomonte in the night between 13th and 14th May 2013, the same episode fol­low­ing which Chiara, Mat­tia, Clau­dio and Nic­colò were jailed in Decem­ber 2013.

We don’t know much about the charges yet. In the press we read: dam­age, arson, vio­lence on pub­lic offi­cial, pos­ses­sion and fab­ri­ca­tion of explo­sive devices. There­fore it seems that pros­e­cu­tors from Turin have been forced to rule out the charge of ter­ror­ism, fol­low­ing a pre­vi­ous sen­tence from the court of cas­sa­tion that can­celled this charge in Chiara, Mat­tia, Clau­dio and Niccolò’s case.

from informa-azione.info / trans­lat­ed by Act for Free­dom Now

Germany’s Hambach Forest Occupation Calls for Solidarity and Support

Campaign_Poster_(CURRENT_NEW)+Greet­ings and Salu­ta­tions from the Ham­bach­er For­est Occu­pa­tio

Campaign_Poster_(CURRENT_NEW)+Greet­ings and Salu­ta­tions from the Ham­bach­er For­est Occu­pa­tion!

We are present­ly block­ing the expan­sion of the largest open­cast lig­nite mine in West­ern Europe with tree sits and bar­ri­cades through out the Ham­bach­er For­est. After the last evic­tion on March 27th 2014 we re-occu­pied the for­est, this time, build­ing up two tree sits with mul­ti­ple plat­forms, tree-hous­es, walk ways in between and bar­ri­cades .

At present we are fac­ing reg­u­lar intru­sion of repres­sive law enforce­ment destroy­ing our struc­tures on the ground and have already faced two largescale evic­tions using tac­ti­cal teams cost­ing mil­lions of euros while at the same time, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment, is cut­ting sus­tain­able ener­gy sub­si­dies. Instead choos­ing to com­pen­sate for the shut down of nuclear pow­er plants with sup­port to the extreme­ly pol­lut­ing and eco­log­i­cal­ly cat­a­stroph­ic coal indus­try (in our case RWE pow­er com­pa­ny which is engag­ing in mas­sive green wash­ing PR cam­paigns).

We would like to send you updates and inform you of the upcom­ing Cli­mate Camp and Skill-shares Gath­er­ing (July 26th to August 3rd 2014) hap­pen­ing in our vicin­i­ty which we are also help­ing to orga­nize. We also have a sup­port camp with legal sta­tus at the edge of the for­est func­tion­ing as a de fac­to activist eco vil­lage with a veg­an kitchen, guest
car­a­vans, straw bail struc­tures, gar­dens and many oth­er on-going sus­tain­able projects, to which we would like to invite all of you who may find your­selves in our neck of the woods.

As of recent­ly, we have also built an info-shop/li­brary for which we would like to appeal for any extra lit­er­a­ture that you would be will­ing to share with us. We could cov­er the costs of ship­ment and if pos­si­ble dis­count rates of lit­er­a­ture itself not to men­tion we would be extreme­ly inter­est­ed and grate­full if you would be will­ing to share any back issues or extra lit­er­a­ture. If this is a pos­si­bil­i­ty please also respond with your prefer­able snail-mail address, as we would like to share some of our mate­r­i­al with you as well.

We have a sup­port cen­tre in Duren, which is unfor­tu­nate­ly under­go­ing a bit of tran­si­tion at the moment. For the time being the lit­er­a­ture for our Mead­ow Base Camp info-shop and the Cli­mate Camp could be sent, care of one of our sup­port­ers:

Frau Anni­ka Lind­berg
Rohrbach­str. 37
60389 Frank­furt am Main
Ger­many

If you would be inter­est­ed in updates from the for­est please include your PGP key in the cor­re­spon­dence.

There is a sense of urgency as even though the for­est has been occu­pied for two years now there is a new auto­bahn ready for open­ing in Sep­tem­ber bypass­ing the one sep­a­rat­ing the last rem­nant of the for­est from the mine allow­ing the mine to expand and log­ging and strip min­ing to com­mence on the last rem­nant of the for­est. We expect that to be the time of mass police actions. For that rea­son it is mega impor­tant to both get the word out and keep peo­ple involved, inspired and on track of the impor­tance and the con­text of the strug­gle.

Blockade Halts Logging in Mattole Forest, US

20140708_172403_Pano

20140708_172403_Pano

The tri­pod is vis­i­ble on the log­ging road to the left of the pho­to

July 9th, 2014  A block­ade was deployed on a log­ging road in the Mat­tole for­est yes­ter­day morn­ing, pre­vent­ing the extrac­tion of over 1,000 acres.of old-growth for­est

There has been com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the com­pa­ny and the block­aders, but efforts to remove the tech­ni­cal­ly com­pli­cat­ed mono­pod-tri­pod com­plex had not been made as of last con­tact with the for­est defense team.

This marks the sec­ond action in as many weeks. Last week a tree sit­ter going by the name Skunk climbed into the canopy, insist­ing, “Our main demands to Hum­boldt Red­wood Com­pa­ny are very simple—don’t cut unlogged for­est, and don’t cut old-growth. This road threat­ens to destroy for­est that has nev­er been logged before, and will pave the way for log­ging even more impor­tant habi­tat if the com­mu­ni­ty does not rise up to stop it.”

The Mat­tole for­est is host to sev­er­al species of old growth trees, and endan­gered species like the Spot­ted Owl and Gold­en Eagle.

The Mat­tole riv­er sys­tem has also been the site of hero­ic salmon restora­tion efforts in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, as doc­u­ment­ed by the book Totem Salmon by Free­man House.

This area has been the site of suc­cess­ful for­est defense cam­paigns since the Tim­ber Wars in the ear­ly 1990s, and Earth First! con­tin­ues to main­tain a vig­i­lant pres­ence.

 

Update: Help Need­ed!

The block­ade in the Mat­tole con­tin­ues amidst pres­sure from local law enforce­ment and log­ging com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tives. The block­ade was deployed on a log­ging road in the Mat­tole for­est yes­ter­day morn­ing, pre­vent­ing the extrac­tion of over 1,000 acres of old-growth for­est in South­ern Hum­boldt.

This morn­ing, 4 Sher­iffs and HRC com­pa­ny execs showed up to the road block­ade. They threat­ened to rean­chor the lines of the tri­pod block­ade, putting the sit­ter at risk. We have con­firmed they have arrest­ed and released one per­son, but that the block­ade of old growth log­ging remains. The cops have said that they will return tonight with dogs.

This block­ade marks the sec­ond action this month. Last week a tree sit­ter going by the name Skunk climbed into the canopy, insist­ing, “Our main demands to Hum­boldt Red­wood Com­pa­ny are very simple—don’t cut unlogged for­est, and don’t cut old-growth. This road threat­ens to destroy for­est that has nev­er been logged before, and will pave the way for log­ging even more impor­tant habi­tat if the com­mu­ni­ty does not rise up to stop it.”

The block­ade could use more sup­port! Please con­tact savemattolesancientforest@gmail.com if you want to vol­un­teer with the cam­paign or donate mon­ey and mate­ri­als. More updates to come on saveancientforest.org.

Massive convoys of test frack equipment arrive at West Newton

3rd July

3rd July

Rath­lin Ener­gy yes­ter­day, Wed 2nd July, brought mas­sive con­voys of equip­ment on to the West New­ton test frack site near With­ern­wick.

 
This is in fla­grant breach of 2 key Plan­ning Con­di­tions- they need to give 2 week’s writ­ten notice before activ­i­ties on site (Con­di­tion 2) and there must be no con­voys of vehi­cles, with at least 10 min­utes between vehi­cles. (In the Traf­fic Plan referred to in Con­di­tion 7)

There were mul­ti­ple large con­voys, totalling 64 vehi­cles. The well pad was extreme­ly crowd­ed with vehi­cles and equip­ment.

There was a very heavy police pres­ence with numer­ous vans and riot vans, around a hun­dred police through the vil­lages of New Eller­by, Mar­ton and West New­ton.
High Fos­ham road was closed to pedes­tri­ans and traf­fic.

West New­ton has had anti frack­ing Pro­tec­tors camp­ing at the site since May 9th. There is anoth­er camp at Rath­lin’s oth­er well site in East York­shire, Craw­ber­ry Hill.

Louise Cas­tro, a pro­tec­tor camp­ing at the site said, “It’s chaos and may­hem here- local vil­lagers were forced to trail across the fields just to see what was going on, and were dev­as­tat­ed- some burst in to tears when the scale of it hit home. Rath­lin have rid­den roughshod over the traf­fic plan worked worked out with the vil­lagers.”

Ian Crane, a for­mer oil exec­u­tive also liv­ing at the anti frack­ing camps said, “Today the locals got a taste of what is to come on a dai­ly basis if the uncon­ven­tion­al oil and gas indus­try is allowed to go ahead with frack­ing in this area”.

Pauline Hak­e­ny, a res­i­dent of near­by Skir­laugh said, “I’m real­ly shocked at the amount of vehi­cles- they promised us this would nev­er hap­pen- and also the amount of police- there were loads of vans and offi­cers in all the sur­round­ing vil­lages.”