Category: Wilderness Defence

Wilder­ness defence

Tree Sit Ends But Resistance Continues in Santa Cruz, U$A

Decem­ber 13th, 2008
San­ta Cruz, CA — Over four hun­dred days ago, a hand­ful of activists climbed up into the trees on Sci­ence Hill as a sym­bol of resis­tance to the uni­ver­si­ty’s plan to destroy 120 acres of cam­pus for­est. For the past 13 months, the tree sit has drawn atten­tion to UCSC’s reck­less plan to devel­op upper cam­pus with­out regard for the wel­fare of one of San­ta Cruz’s last wild ecosys­tems.

Squirrel up a redwood treeDecem­ber 13th, 2008
San­ta Cruz, CA — Over four hun­dred days ago, a hand­ful of activists climbed up into the trees on Sci­ence Hill as a sym­bol of resis­tance to the uni­ver­si­ty’s plan to destroy 120 acres of cam­pus for­est. For the past 13 months, the tree sit has drawn atten­tion to UCSC’s reck­less plan to devel­op upper cam­pus with­out regard for the wel­fare of one of San­ta Cruz’s last wild ecosys­tems.

At approx­i­mate­ly 8 AM this morn­ing, the tree sit drew to a close as police seized con­trol of Sci­ence Hill, arrest­ing one Tree Sit­ter. Lat­er, a tree cut­ting ser­vice hired by the uni­ver­si­ty cut down a grove of 100 year old red­wood trees to make way for con­struc­tion of a new Bio­science build­ing.

The three clus­ters of red­woods which have now been clearcut were inhab­it­ed since Novem­ber 7, 2007, when over 500 stu­dents, alum­ni, and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers ral­lied in oppo­si­tion to the Uni­ver­si­ty’s “Long Range Devel­op­ment Plan”. The Tree Sit and the Uni­ver­si­ty entered medi­a­tion to find a solu­tion to this con­flict, but the Uni­ver­si­ty was unwill­ing to mod­i­fy any of their plans, despite the dev­as­tat­ing effect that upper cam­pus devel­op­ment will have on the San­ta Cruz ecosys­tem. Pre­cious water­shed regions, unique man­zani­ta groves and hun­dred-year old red­wood forests will be destroyed by the Uni­ver­si­ty’s devel­op­ment of the wild lands just north of cam­pus. The homes of such rare native ani­mals as the bur­row­ing owl and the endan­gered red-legged frog will be irrepara­bly dam­aged.

The Tree Sit tac­tic was employed due to the Uni­ver­si­ty’s fail­ure to mean­ing­ful­ly address the con­cerns of San­ta Cruz city and coun­ty offi­cials, com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, envi­ron­men­tal­ists and UCSC fac­ul­ty and stu­dents. Instead of act­ing upon the con­cerns of the thou­sands of peo­ple who have voiced oppo­si­tion to increased Uni­ver­si­ty con­struc­tion, UCSC has spent tens of thou­sands of tax­pay­er dol­lars to hire riot police to intim­i­date com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers who oppose their plans.

The end of the Tree Sit is not the end of resis­tance to the Long Range Devel­op­ment Plan. The deter­mi­na­tion and integri­ty that sus­tained the 13 month occu­pa­tion will con­tin­ue to incite action against the Long Range Devel­op­ment Plan. The diverse com­mu­ni­ties that unit­ed to oppose the destruc­tion of upper cam­pus are renewed in their com­mit­ment to resis­tance.

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One Year Anniver­sary Cel­e­bra­tion at the UCSC Tree-Sit

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Police Offi­cers Pep­per Spray Peo­ple on Sci­ence Hill
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Strug­gle on Sci­ence Hill.
UCSC protest & treesit - cops fight back with teargas
Nov 7 Noon­time — a group of stu­dents protest­ing the UCSC’s Long Range Devel­op­ment Plan (LRPD) strug­gled with police while bring­ing food and water to a group of about five old-style activists who, using moun­tain climb­ing gear, had placed them­selves and sev­er­al wood­en plat­forms inside the upper reach­es of sev­er­al red­wood trees.

The march, and chaos.

The police had arrived on the scene ear­ly that day and had cor­doned off the area on sci­ence hill just out­side the Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing Library with tape, plas­tic fenc­ing, and portable met­al bar­ri­ers.

How­ev­er, the protest turned ugly when the march cir­cled the enclo­sure. One pro­tes­tor speak­ing with a police offi­cer took a step too close, was told to step back, and was pushed for­ward by the crowd.

One of the pro­tes­tors, Jane Oliv­era, retold what hap­pened next. She had been walk­ing around the enclo­sure at the front of the march when she saw her friend Robin Speak­ing with some­one who wasn’t part of the protest.

“I came around just to hang out with him and then he moved in a lit­tle bit and the cop said ‘ no, no you can‘t do that,’ and then there was a crown of peo­ple that fol­lowed him as he moved in a lit­tle bit, and then he moved in a lot more, and then before I knew it there was a cop on him. They had jumped on him, and tack­led him to the floor, and I don‘t like it when my friends get arrest­ed, and so I jumped in because he was using force. He was hold­ing his hands and he was hit­ting him so I ran in and said ‘no, you can‘t do that‘ and before I knew it one cop threw me to the floor. I flew,” she said. “I had just moved in a lit­tle bit. After I had moved in they just got on top of me and start­ed hit­ting me.”

Oliv­era sus­tained mul­ti­ple bruis­es and a scratch on her left arm, was arrest­ed, tick­et­ed, and then released on the scene along with the rest of the pro­tes­tors. No one was hos­pi­tal­ized.

Along with the arrests an inde­ter­mi­nate num­ber of stu­dents received blows from batons around the arms and head and were hit with pep­per spray. Stu­dents pulled down fences and climbed across, the police stepped back while spray­ing, club­bing, and push­ing.

Almost an equal num­ber of stu­dents ran towards the fences and away from them. One girl stood root­ed to the ground while the met­al grate was being lift­ed by police and pulled away by stu­dents.

Lat­er rein­force­ments arrived in about six to eight squad cars with what appeared to be tear gas and armor. When the offi­cers who were armed were asked about their weapons they did not respond. These offi­cers formed a line across the mid­dle of the grove where they remained for sev­er­al hours.

Stu­dents then read the entire­ty of ‘The Lorax’ using a mega­phone, shout­ed at the police, and helped bring sup­plies to the trees where the sit­ters hoist­ed up water, food, and blan­kets.

Oliv­era and oth­er pro­test­ers were released by police offi­cers only a lit­tle after the read­ing of the Lorax. She was scratched and shak­en.

“A lot of my friends are orga­niz­ers and I just don‘t think that devel­op­ment is real­ly a good idea because we can‘t sup­port the num­ber of stu­dents we have now and the devel­op­ment is going to stress the water table, the town — there are a lot of rea­sons out­side the trees that makes this not a good idea,” Oliv­era said. “I don‘t want to go to school inside a cement block.”

The devel­op­ment plan.

The LRDP was approved unan­i­mous­ly by the UC regents in on Sep­tem­ber 28 ‘06 who had orig­i­nal­ly draft­ed the plan three years ear­li­er in 2003. The plan makes way for the devel­op­ment of 120 acres of upper cam­pus, the pos­si­ble destruc­tion or relo­ca­tion of the UC trail­er park, the addi­tion of 4,500 new stu­dents, and the con­struc­tion of a bio­med­ical sci­ences facil­i­ty on what is now a grove of sec­ond growth red­wood trees.

The dis­trict super­vi­sor Mar­di Wormhoudt, and the mem­bers of the Coali­tion for Lim­it­ing Cam­pus Expan­sion (CLUE) have been fight­ing the LRDP. To do this Wormhoudt draft­ed mea­sures I and J, which made the Uni­ver­si­ty respon­si­ble for com­ply­ing with the Local Agency For­ma­tion Commission’s (LAF­co) guide­lines before the City extends water and sew­er ser­vice to the uni­ver­si­ty, which would, in effect inhib­it Uni­ver­si­ty growth by pre­vent­ing the toi­lets from flush­ing in what­ev­er build­ings the Uni­ver­si­ty makes if the guide­lines aren’t met. Cur­rent­ly CLUE is engaged in a legal bat­tle over the pro­posed con­struc­tion as well.

Jen­nifer Charles is a UCSC alum­na, and the media con­tact for the protest. She said that cam­pus expan­sion would decrease the qual­i­ty of the edu­ca­tion that stu­dents receive.

“This comes at a time when UCSC is increas­ing enroll­ment but real­ly decreas­ing the qual­i­ty of edu­ca­tion. They’re putting a lot of mon­ey towards expan­sion,” she said. “but not a lot of mon­ey for the pro­grams that stu­dents need.”

Charles said that the nonex­is­tent eth­nic stud­ies pro­gram and the now nonex­is­tent jour­nal­ism minor were two good exam­ples.

“Those are pro­grams that stu­dents real­ly want to see. Instead the Uni­ver­si­ty is expand­ing things like the facil­i­ty planned to be on this site. It‘s an 80 mil­lion dol­lar facil­i­ty for research that includes live ani­mal test­ing. It includes no class­room space. The entire build­ing will be used by grad­u­ate stu­dents and researchers which will prob­a­bly be fund­ed by out­side cor­po­ra­tions. And as we‘ve seen at oth­er uni­ver­si­ties when pri­vate cor­po­ra­tions are fund­ing research at pub­lic insi­ti­tu­tions they want con­trol over research.”

Charles said that the LRDP would change the uni­ver­si­ty from a small lib­er­al arts col­lege into a mas­sive sci­ence col­lege which would anni­hi­late the feel of UCSC.

“We don‘t want to be UCLI or UCLA or even UC Berke­ly,” said Charles. “We want to be UC San­ta Cruz. We cer­tain­ly don‘t want to be the UC of the Sil­i­con Val­ley.”

Tree peo­ple.

After the vio­lence, after the chant­i­ng, and after the read­ing of the Lorax the police left. Sup­plies were hoist­ed up into the trees. The sit­ters have climbed the trees and are now liv­ing in the branch­es around sci­ence hill.

One of the tree sit­ters wear­ing a sweat­shirt with a hood and a cam­ou­flaged mask came down and refused to give his name or reveal his face. He referred to him­self only as Malachi.

Malachi said that the sit­ters’ voic­es had not been heard. He said that he and the oth­er tree sit­ters were going to remain sus­pend­ed above the ground for as long as it took to change the LRDP “to accom­mo­date all of upper cam­pus and not just cor­po­rate inter­ests.”

“We just need sup­port,” said Malachi. “If peo­ple want to come up and sit for a few days then they can do that. If they want to come and bring food — day or night — just tell them you‘ve got some food and they‘ll low­er a line.”

Accord­ing to the orga­niz­ers the tree sit­ters need blan­kets, buck­ets (the ten gal­lon kind with lids,) portable stoves, and food.

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Orig­i­nal occu­pa­tion of the site:

Stand­off with Police as Activists occu­py red­woods to oppose UCSC Expan­sion

Ear­ly Wednes­day morn­ing, activists opposed to UCSC’s Long Range Devel­op­ment Plan (LRDP) launched a tree-sit in red­woods near Sci­ence Hill. UCSC plans to devel­op the occu­pied site into a new Bio­med­ical Sci­ences Facil­i­ty.

Con­tact: Jen­nifer Charles
(831) 430‑6791
LRDPaction.media [at] gmail.com

Press Release

Stand­off with Police as Activists occu­py red­woods to oppose UCSC Expan­sion

UCSC Stu­dents launch tree-sit at site of con­tro­ver­sial Bio­med­ical Sci­ences build­ing.

Nov. 7, 2007 San­ta Cruz, CA Ear­ly Wednes­day morn­ing, activists opposed to UCSC’s Long Range Devel­op­ment Plan (LRDP) launched a tree-sit in red­woods near Sci­ence Hill. UCSC plans to devel­op the occu­pied site into a new Bio­med­ical Sci­ences Facil­i­ty.

One per­son was arrest­ed by UC police ear­ly in the morn­ing. Police sur­round­ed the site, where at least 4 activists were 50 feet up red­wood trees. A sched­uled ral­ly and march that began at 11am drew hun­dreds of sup­port­ers to the site. A tense stand­off with police com­menced, as sup­port­ers attempt­ed to get close enough to the trees to send up sup­plies. Police pep­per sprayed the crowd and at least four peo­ple were arrest­ed.

The Bio­med­ical Sci­ences facil­i­ty would be the first project under the Uni­ver­si­ty’s plan to devel­op 120 acres of for­est in order to accom­mo­date 4,500 new stu­dents. The Bio­med­ical Sci­ences build­ing will have no allot­ted class­room space, despite stu­dent com­plaints about over­crowd­ed class sizes. But it will have room for live ani­mal exper­i­men­ta­tion, which includes such prac­tices as food/air depri­va­tion, infec­tion, and non-anes­thetized surgery, accord­ing to cam­pus guide­lines (http://carc.ucsc.edu).

This build­ing, which will house biotech­nol­o­gy and nan­otech­nol­o­gy research, is exem­plary of how the new LRDP marks a clear shift from UCSC’s com­mit­ment to under­grad­u­ate, lib­er­al arts edu­ca­tion to the more lucra­tive pro­grams fund­ed by large cor­po­ra­tions. Fol­low­ing the trend of pri­va­tiz­ing pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties, stu­dents are pay­ing more for edu­ca­tion and receiv­ing less. Stu­dents are call­ing for more fund­ing for human­i­ties and arts, includ­ing the cre­ation of an Eth­nic Stud­ies depart­ment. Mean­while, the UC is cut­ting fac­ul­ty, increas­ing enroll­ment and ignor­ing the con­cerns of stu­dents.

Crit­ics say the planned addi­tion of 4,500 full-time stu­dents is irre­spon­si­ble giv­en the exist­ing short­age of resources. They cite over­crowd­ed class­rooms, over­worked teach­ing assis­tants and dis­sat­is­fied fac­ul­ty as signs that the UCSC has already exceed­ed its capac­i­ty. In addi­tion, the Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Report (EIR) accom­pa­ny­ing the LRDP does not bind the UC to mit­i­gate the impacts of growth. The LRDP calls for the devel­op­ment of 120 acres of for­est. Envi­ron­men­tal­ists say that the cur­rent devel­op­ment plans will sig­nif­i­cant­ly dam­age unique ecosys­tems, includ­ing Moore Creek, the Jor­dan Gulch wildlife cor­ri­dor and the Cam­pus Nat­ur­al Reserve seep zone. Again, UCSC refus­es any bind­ing lan­guage requir­ing them mit­i­gate the effects of devel­op­ment on impact­ed habi­tats.

Stu­dents, fac­ul­ty, city coun­cil, com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, and envi­ron­men­tal­ists all expressed con­cerns about the impact of expan­sion dur­ing the plan­ning process and were dis­re­gard­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty. The group of indi­vid­u­als who are occu­py­ing the trees believe that action is need­ed to oppose UCSC’s destruc­tive plans before con­struc­tion begins on any of the LRDP build­ings.

http://lrdpresistance.org

Direct Action in Iceland

Since ear­ly this win­ter, Ice­land has been fac­ing eco­nom­ic cri­sis. The three major busi­ness banks have been nation­al­ized, putting their dept on the people’s shoul­ders. Peo­ple have been los­ing their live­long sav­ings, loans have increased and are get­ting sky high (and for sure they already were high enough).

Since ear­ly this win­ter, Ice­land has been fac­ing eco­nom­ic cri­sis. The three major busi­ness banks have been nation­al­ized, putting their dept on the people’s shoul­ders. Peo­ple have been los­ing their live­long sav­ings, loans have increased and are get­ting sky high (and for sure they already were high enough). 200 peo­ple lost their job, every sin­gle day of Novem­ber and more and more peo­ple are fac­ing the threat of los­ing their hous­es.

Activists vs. the police

Peo­ple are get­ting angry, some of them want­i­ng back the “good old” pros­per­i­ty, while oth­ers and hope­ful­ly the major­i­ty, are real­iz­ing the real cost of cap­i­tal­ism. More and more peo­ple are stand­ing up against cor­rup­tion and demand­ing new form of soci­ety — soci­ety of jus­tice. But every day the cur­rent gov­ern­ment proves that it’s main aim is to save their own and their friend’s ass. A loan from the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) has been grant­ed, most like­ly lead­ing to the com­mon after­maths of an IMF loan: the pri­va­ti­za­tion of social sys­tems as the health care and the edu­ca­tion sys­tem, and more destruc­tion of the Ice­landic wilder­ness.

Week­ly demon­stra­tions

For more than 2 months peo­ple have gath­ered week­ly in a park in front of the par­lia­ment. The first protests demand­ed that the gov­ern­ment would “break it’s silence” about the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. Peo­ple were tired of not even being told about what was hap­pen­ing and what the gov­ern­ment was doing about it.

One of the week­ly domon­stra­tions

But soon peo­ple real­ized that it was not enough to ask the gov­ern­ment to speak, so the protests took up anoth­er and more rad­i­cal demand: the resign of the gov­ern­ment and new elec­tions as soon as pos­si­ble. The gov­ern­ment has com­plete­ly ignored this demand and peo­ple are get­ting more and more angry.

Anar­chists and oth­er rad­i­cal left­ists have come to most of the protests, but not to protest against the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion, not to ask the gov­ern­ment for solu­tions, not to ask for new elec­tions, not to ask any mem­ber of the gov­ern­ment or par­lia­ment or any oth­er offi­cial insti­tu­tion to do any­thing to “solve” the cri­sis we are fac­ing. But to spread anar­chis­tic and anti-cap­i­tal­is­tic infor­ma­tion among peo­ple, analyse the prob­lems of author­i­ty and cap­i­tal­ism and to encour­age Ice­landic peo­ple to take direct action against the forces of cor­rup­tion.

Burn­ing flag and mon­ey

Burn­ing of bank flags and “hang­ing” of a cap­i­tal­ist

Dur­ing a protest in front of the prime minister’s office in late Octo­ber, the flags of two Ice­landic banks were burned. A group of anar­chists, prob­a­bly the biggest in Ice­landic his­to­ry at that time, shout­ed anar­chis­tic slo­gans, point­ing out cap­i­tal­ism as the real prob­lem. Until then, cap­i­tal­ism seemed to be a ban-word among the pro­test­ers. The flag burn­ing caught the inter­est of for­eign media, e.g. CNN which showed the burn­ing in their news show lat­er the same evening. An event like this had not hap­pened in Ice­land for a long time.

Burn­ing the flag of Lands­ban­ki bank

A week lat­er, a big demon­stra­tion parade went through the cen­ter of Reyk­javík, demand­ing the resign of the gov­ern­ment. Anar­chists, which grew big­ger and stronger every week, joined the march with ban­ners, black flags, leaflets about direct actions, and anar­chis­tic slo­gans. While oth­er pro­test­ers chant­ed “Away with the gov­ern­ment”, anar­chists shout­ed “Nev­er again gov­ern­ment!”

When the parade came down the the park were week­ly speech­es took place, a group of peo­ple climbed a big fence and hung a doll of a cap­i­tal­ist. Again for­eign media cap­tured the per­for­mance on tape and screened it around the world.

Cou­ple of meters away from the park were the protests take place, a Food Not Bombs groups has been giv­ing away food every Sat­ur­day for the last 8 or 9 months. Food Not Bombs has for sure had it’s effect of the walk­ing-by Ice­landers, who are get­ting more curi­ous and inter­est­ed in alter­na­tive solu­tions to the prob­lems of cap­i­tal­ism.

Dur­ing a protest, Sat­ur­day Novem­ber 8th, an anar­chist climbed on top of the par­lia­ment were he hung the flag of Bónus, Iceland’s cheap­est super­mar­ket. The mes­sage was clear since the flag is yel­low with a pink pig on it: “The gov­ern­ment is a cheap and dirty pig!” Unlike to the usu­al Ice­landic pro­test­ers, peo­ple cel­e­brat­ed this act and sang along “The gov­ern­ment is a cheap and dirty pig!”

Soon hun­dred pro­test­ers sur­rouned­ed the par­li­ment to help the anar­chist to get away from the police, which had already arrest­ed a mate of him. After a bit of a strug­gle with the police, peo­ple man­aged to help the flag-man (like he lat­er became known as) to get down of the roof and de-arrest­ed him more than once. One could feel some change in the air.

Ille­gal arrest

Less than a week lat­er, on a Fri­day night, the police arrest­ed the flag-man. He was in the mid­dle of a research trip to the par­lia­ment, orga­nized by his uni­ver­si­ty, when some par­lia­ment staff rec­og­nized him and called the pigs.

The man had been arrest­ed two years before, for an action with the envi­ron­men­tal direct action cam­paign Sav­ing Ice­land, protest­ing against the build­ing of a big dam, Kárah­n­júkavirkjun, in the east­ern higlands. For this action he had got sen­tenced and fined, but refused to pay the fine and instead insist­ed on sit­ting in jail for 18 days. But after only four days of his jail-sen­tence he was “thrown out” because of lack of space in the prison.

Now, the police stat­ed that the man would have to sit the oth­er 14 days of the sen­tence. The fact is though that the it is not allowed to split the sen­tence like this, and the man was sup­posed to get an announce­ment about fin­ish­ing his sen­tence with at leas 3 weeks notice. This had not been done in his case.

Peo­ple claimed this was espe­cial­ly done by the police, fun­de­men­taly to “take out” an activist who was like­ly to take more actions dur­ing the upcom­ing week­ly demon­stra­tion. So the next day, dur­ing the protest which 10.000 peo­ple had joined, anoth­er protest was announced, this time in front of the police sta­tion, a lit­tle bit lat­er that day.

Riots by the police sta­tion

500 peo­ple came to the police sta­tion and demand­ed that the man would be set free. After a while, no sign of the police was seen and noth­ing looked like the man would be set free. The protest got heat­ed and soon peo­ple had start­ed to break win­dows of the sta­tion and in the end the door of the sta­tion was bro­ken. A group of peo­ple went in were the police wel­comed them with a splash of pep­per spray, with­out even announc­ing it.

The protest got even hot­ter, red paint and eggs were thrown at the sta­tion and on the riot squad which now had formed a chain in front of the sta­tion. A lot of peo­ple were pep­per­sprayed, includ­ing the flag-man’s moth­er and young kids down to 16 years old. In the end, the flag-man was payed out of the prison by an unknown per­son. The flag-man came out were he was cel­e­brat­ed like a hero. He thanked peo­ple for the sup­port but encour­aged peo­ple to use their ener­gy for some­thing else: a rev­o­lu­tion!

The Inva­sion of the Cen­tral Bank

A week after the riots by the police sta­tion, the weeke­ly protest was a lit­tle more chilled. Instead peo­ple hoped for some­thing big tak­ing place the upcom­ing Mon­day, Decem­ber 1st, the day of Iceland’s sov­er­eign­ty.

1st of Decem­ber used to be a free day in Ice­land but cou­ple of years ago the pro­le­tari­at move­ment dis­claimed it´s right. This 1st of May peo­ple were encour­aged not to pay their bills, not show up in work and come to a big out­door meet­ing on a big hill close to the gov­ern­ment offices and the Cen­tral Bank. Few speech­es took place, most of the includ­ing some nation­al­is­tic pif­fle which the rad­i­cals answered with a slo­gan: “No nation­al­ism — Inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty!”

After the meet­ing was for­mal­ly over the word on the street was that more rad­i­cal action was going to take place. Sud­den­ly a big group of peo­ple marched to the Cen­tral Bank and entered the first entrance.

The entrance was com­plete­ly full of peo­ple shout­ing and demand­ing that Davíð Odd­s­son, the chair­man of the Cen­tral Bank board and a for­mer prime min­is­ter, would resign. Few police­men had closed the sec­ond entrance but peo­ple shout­ed at them, asked in “what team” they were in, telling them to join the pub­lic, leave the entrance and let the peo­ple in. Sud­den­ly the police left the entrance, the peo­ple cheered and opened the door to the sec­ond entrance.

Pep­per spray again?

The sec­ond entrance became com­plete­ly full as well as the first one, but behind big glass doors the riot squad had formed a chain of c.a. 30 pigs, armed with shields, clubs and pep­per spray. Again, instead of speak­ing to the peo­ple, the pigs start­ed shak­ing their spray cans, forc­ing to use it against the peo­ple it they would not leave.

The riot squad, ready to strike inside the Cen­tral Bank

Peo­ple start­ed bang­ing on the door, shout­ing slo­gans against the Cen­tral Bank and the police. After a while, when a police offi­cer had sev­er­al times threat­ened to use the pep­per spray, peo­ple decid­ed to sit down peace­ful­ly and not stand up until Davíð Odd­s­son would resign. The action stood over sev­er­al hours and had it’s peaks when peo­ple stood up, lift­ed up their hands to show they were unarmed and chal­lenged the police to leave, open the doors and let the peo­ple bring Odd­s­son out.

When it became clear that Odd­s­son had already left the build­ing the pro­test­ers gave the police an offer: the riot squad would leave and than the pro­test­ers would leave the build­ing. About 30 sec­onds lat­er, the pigs walked back and the peo­ple cheered some kind of a vic­to­ry of the peo­ple.

Into the par­lia­ment

A week lat­er, last Mon­day Decem­ber 8th, thir­ty peo­ple went in to the Ice­landic par­lia­ment, head­ing to the inside bal­cony were the pub­lic is legal­ly allowed to sit, watch and lis­ten to what takes place there. The group announced that the par­lia­ment no longer served it’s pur­pose and the gov­ern­ment should there­for resign right now, the oth­er MP’s should use their time for some­thing more con­struc­tive.

Pro­test­er thrown out by police after telling the MP’s and min­is­ters to leave the par­lia­ment

Only two per­sons got to the bal­cony and shout­ed at the MP’s and min­is­ters to leave the build­ing. Quick­ly they were bru­tal­ly removed by a police offi­cer, while the rest of the group was stuck in a stair­case inside the build­ing. The par­lia­men­tary ses­sion was delayed and all the MP’s left the room.

Mean­while the pro­test­ers were bru­tal­ly han­dled by secu­ri­ty guards and police, which end­ed up arrest­ing 7 peo­ple, most of them for house­break­ing. But like said before, the pub­lic is allowed to enter the par­lia­ment bal­cony.

Police car­ries a man out after hand­cuff­ing him and rope his legs — “Fas­cist, fas­cists!” the man shout­ed while being car­ried out

The next morn­ing, 30 peo­ple had gath­ered in front of the prime minister’s office were a gov­ern­ment meet­ing was sup­posed to take place. The peo­ple had formed a human chain blockad­ing the two entrances of the house. When min­is­ters start­ed to show up, the police had already arrived and start­ed to try to remove the chain. The peo­ple resist­ed heav­i­ly and read out a state­ment sent out by the group.

The state­ment said that the aim of the action was to “pre­vent the min­is­ters from enter­ing the house and there­fore stop fur­ther mis­use of pow­er. Mon­ey has con­trolled peo­ple on the cost of their rights and the author­i­ties and their cliques have manip­u­lat­ed finance for their own ben­e­fits. That manip­u­la­tion has not entailed in a just soci­ety, just world. Time of action has dawn, because a just soci­ety is not only pos­si­ble, but it is our duty to fight for it.”

With the help of the police, all the min­is­ters got in, but heard the state­ment and were under big pres­sure from the media. They were not pre­pared for ques­tions and came out bad­ly when asked. The gov­ern­ment meet­ing was delayed because of the actions.

Two were arrest­ed, one for enter­ing a police line and the oth­er one for sit­ting in front of the police car which was about to dri­ve the oth­er arrest­ed one to the police sta­tion. More peo­ple sat on the street and it took the police quite a long time to get out of the street. Only when a police offi­cer gave the dri­ver an order to “just dri­ve hard”, the dri­ver did so and near­ly drove over two per­sons.

One of the biggest news­pa­pers in Ice­land, DV, report­ed the bru­tal behavoiur of the police. The paper’s jour­nal­ist and pho­tog­ra­ph­er were both attacked by the police, as well as notic­ing when a police punced a pro­test­er in the face, while he lay on the street. Most oth­er media did not dare to report the bru­tal behav­iour.

A left wing web­site, Smu­gan, told about a police offi­cer who was asked by the pro­test­ers if he would have pro­tect­ed Hitler. His answer was sim­ple: “Yes, if it would have been my duty.”

More actions have been announced and it will be inter­est­ing to see what comes next.

http://aftaka.org/

URGENT Tree Protest Weymouth ‑Aroooga — updated

Update, Mon­day 15th:
anoth­er per­son has climbed up into the same tree; coun­cil want to fin­ish work before Christ­mas; local res­i­dents send­ing hot water bot­tles up tree. Get down there to help — con­tact num­bers below.

—–

Sun­day, 14.12.2008:

Update, Mon­day 15th:
anoth­er per­son has climbed up into the same tree; coun­cil want to fin­ish work before Christ­mas; local res­i­dents send­ing hot water bot­tles up tree. Get down there to help — con­tact num­bers below.

—–

Sun­day, 14.12.2008:
One pro­tes­tor still in trees, with the oth­ers com­ing down on Fri­day and Sat­ur­day — chop­ping down of trees clear­ance work con­tin­u­ing all week­end. “They’re already over half way through cut­ting them and they’re work­ing today and have been work­ing over the week­end.”
—–

11.12.2008
Action in the trees now get there.

Urgent many trees being cut down some over 400 years old. For anoth­er unneed­ed road. There was a camp at the site 12 years ago with some of the Fair­mile posse there. Which won and camp dis­man­tled ..now road­builders , the coun­cil and home­grown Tim­ber com­pa­ny are at it again.
The site is …Two Mile Cop­pice next to the rail­way line Wey­mouth..
3 activists cur­rent­ly in trees with secu­ri­ty around.… any old tree pro­test­ers dust off your har­ness­es and get there. Or any new recruits next gen­er­a­tion wel­come.
On site mobiles ( bat­ter­ies get­ting low) 07792717821 / 07807952822
Just get in da van and get there now.

—–

Ancient tree sit-in against road

12th Decem­ber 2008
Two pro­test­ers are sit­ting in trees in ancient Dorset wood­land to try to stop clear­ance work tak­ing place ahead of the build­ing of a new £84m relief road.

Work to clear part of Two Mile Cop­pice restart­ed on Thurs­day after a legal bid by the Wood­land Trust tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed work on Tues­day.

The Wey­mouth relief road aims to ease traf­fic around Wey­mouth and Port­land, which are host­ing the Olympic sail­ing.

Dorset Coun­ty Coun­cil said work would con­tin­ue despite the pro­test­ers.

A spokesman said trees would be cut down around the demon­stra­tors and that the coun­cil hoped to com­plete the work by Christ­mas.

“The coun­cil is now dis­cussing how the pro­test­ers can be safe­ly and legal­ly removed,” he added.

One pro­test­er, 35-year-old Nicky Baines, came down from the trees on Fri­day.

He told the BBC the two remain­ing men, Nick Pep­per, 41, and a man known as Nod­dy, had both lived in Wey­mouth in the past.

He said they did not rep­re­sent any par­tic­u­lar group but the idea was to “stick it out as long as pos­si­ble”.

“We’ve been hav­ing a bit of trou­ble with the amount of equip­ment — food, water and stay­ing warm.

“But at least one per­son has got a lot of stuff they can keep going with.”

Work restart­ed

Trees and oth­er veg­e­ta­tion were being removed from 1.5 acres of wood­land on the west­ern edge of Two Mile Cop­pice, when Tues­day’s legal chal­lenge halt­ed work.

The Wood­land Trust, which owns the land, said the coun­ty coun­cil had failed to pro­vide a Notice to Enter doc­u­ment.

The cop­pice is among land in an Area of Out­stand­ing Nat­ur­al Beau­ty (AONB) that Dorset Coun­ty Coun­cil was giv­en per­mis­sion to buy, using com­pul­so­ry pur­chase orders, in Sep­tem­ber.

But until the orders are processed, the land still belongs to the trust. The cor­rect doc­u­men­ta­tion was lat­er pro­vid­ed and work was allowed to restart.

Steve Marsh, of the Wood­land Trust, said the legal chal­lenge was start­ed to make sure the coun­cil was fol­low­ing the cor­rect pro­ce­dures.

“We did­n’t think we’d ever be able to stop the work in the long term,” he said, adding that the trust was against the road.

“This is the last remain­ing ancient wood­land in the Wey­mouth and Port­land area. It’s a very much-used wood and a much-loved wood.

“Once it’s gone, it’s gone for­ev­er, it can’t be recre­at­ed because the cli­mate was dif­fer­ent 400 years ago.

“Ancient wood­land is the rich­est habi­tat we’ve got in Britain — it’s our equiv­a­lent of the rain­for­est.

“We feel the road is a near act of van­dal­ism on the envi­ron­ment, all to help cut peo­ple’s jour­ney times by five min­utes.”

Envi­ron­men­tal groups, includ­ing the Cam­paign to Pro­tect Rur­al Eng­land (CPRE), lost a High Court legal bid to stop the road in 2007.

A pub­lic inquiry fol­lowed, which end­ed in March 2008, but many res­i­dents and busi­ness­es said they sup­port­ed the plan for the road.

Work is due to start in spring 2009, if the Depart­ment for Trans­port (DfT) gives the fund­ing.

—

Work”>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/7772693.stm”>Work restarts back­ground

Just to let those wish­ing to help know that there is a local cam­paign group — Bypass the Bypass and they have a web­site: http://www.bypassthebypass.org/

Also, the Wood­land Trust have been fight­ing this road for years (they own Two Mile Cop­pice) and have held it up for years through var­i­ous means. You can view info on the Wey­mouth Road on their web­site here

Pre­vi­ous protest camp back­ground

Shell to Sea / Rossport Solidarity Camp Update from Erris Co. Mayo. November 2009.

While Glen­gad and Shell issues have large­ly gone from the pub­lic eye, and indeed things have qui­etened down some what, that’s not to say that stuff hasn’t been going on, it just doesn’t always make the media.

The last few months have seen a few devel­op­ments since the Soli­taire left our shores.

While Glen­gad and Shell issues have large­ly gone from the pub­lic eye, and indeed things have qui­etened down some what, that’s not to say that stuff hasn’t been going on, it just doesn’t always make the media.

The last few months have seen a few devel­op­ments since the Soli­taire left our shores.

* Shell have com­plete­ly vacat­ed the Glen­gad com­pound in the last few week or so. Unfor­tu­nate­ly they haven’t done a won­der­ful job of clean­ing up after them­selves. Plen­ty of rub­ble was left behind on the beach from the cause­way that they extend­ed out to sea and then removed.

The “cliff” has been banked up with soft mate­ri­als which don’t look too sta­ble to me and will like­ly con­tin­ue to be washed out by the rain­wa­ter. In the old com­pound itself large heaps of mate­ri­als have been piled and net­ted over to pre­vent birds nest­ing? Strange­ly they have not attempt­ed to net the re-banked cliff area, as they had before. Some of the old net­ting can be seen on the cliff top, inter­meshed with the grass on top.

Their chan­nel buoy mark­ers have been wash­ing ashore recent­ly also, as they left these behind to. At the road entrance to the Glen­gad com­pound all the fenc­ing and gates have gone (as it has around the whole site), to be replaced with reg­u­lar cat­tle fenc­ing and gates, hav­ing pulled out at this time of year the whole place is a bit of a mud bath.

* The road, left unfin­ished by Mayo Coun­ty Coun­cil now Shell have pulled out, is already show­ing signs of dete­ri­o­ra­tion, with pot­holes form­ing in the tar­mac beside where the entrance gates to this com­pound stood. The Co.Co. have left the road as it stands from what I can see, with­out fin­ish­ing the works, just loads of signs and bol­lards left around every­where.

* Nov 10th last saw a pro­ces­sion along the Bel­lan­aboy Road up to the main refin­ery gates, attend­ed by about 50 local peo­ple car­ry­ing cross­es with the names of the Ogo­ni 9, to mark the exe­cu­tion of Ken Sara Wiwa and 8 of his col­leagues in 1995, the Niger­ian activists who were exe­cut­ed by the Niger­ian Mil­i­tary Dic­ta­tor­ship at the time, at Shel­l’s behest.

* The Gar­da pres­ence is like­wise down, but still tan­gi­ble.

* After a meet­ing some time ago with a few min­is­ters, the silence has been loud from the pow­ers that be, despite their recent announce­ment of set­ting up some forum or dia­logue with peo­ple involved in the Cor­rib Gas issue. How­ev­er no one here has actu­al­ly heard any­thing or been con­tact­ed about as of yet. Min­is­ter Eamon Ryan has admit­ted in the media that ‘mis­takes were made’ but has refused to dis­cuss the mov­ing of the refin­ery or the appro­pri­a­cy of a pipeline land­fall at Glen­gad. “There will be no re-vis­it­ing of the con­sents / per­mis­sions already giv­en to Shell”, he said. As usu­al the terms of ref­er­ence are pre-set by the ‘author­i­ties’ in order to avoid a fair and prop­er address­ing of the issues.

* The AFRI hedge school a few weeks ago was real­ly fan­tas­tic with some great peo­ple com­ing to have an input/speak includ­ing Den­nis Hal­l­i­day and oth­er peo­ple who have been deal­ing with Shell in oth­er coun­tries.

The fight goes on.

Chester Forest Rescue Camp Steps Up (Australia)

2008-11-23
Local and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers cam­paign­ing to save over 800 hectares of rare, pris­tine for­est in WA’s south­west have set up a tree plat­form and sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ty camp in the Chester for­est block after camp­ing on near­by pri­vate prop­er­ty for the last few months. The move comes as the For­est Prod­ucts Com­mis­sion (FPC) starts to mark out Dieback infect­ed areas and log­ging roads into the coupe. A call­out has been made to all to get down and sup­port the cam­paign.

Chester platform2008-11-23
Local and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers cam­paign­ing to save over 800 hectares of rare, pris­tine for­est in WA’s south­west have set up a tree plat­form and sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ty camp in the Chester for­est block after camp­ing on near­by pri­vate prop­er­ty for the last few months. The move comes as the For­est Prod­ucts Com­mis­sion (FPC) starts to mark out Dieback infect­ed areas and log­ging roads into the coupe. A call­out has been made to all to get down and sup­port the cam­paign.

After sev­er­al months on pri­vate prop­er­ty near Mar­garet Riv­er, the Chester For­est Res­cue Camp has moved into the for­est as the log­ging date draws clos­er and the FPC begins to mark out log­ging areas and roads with­in the coup. A tree plat­form has been erect­ed and a com­mu­ni­ty camp set up on the edge of the coupe for what is expect­ed to be an ongo­ing cam­paign to save over 800 hectares of a world reco­ginsed bio­di­ver­si­ty hotspot.

Chester For­est Block is sit­u­at­ed South of the Black­wood Riv­er in WA’s south­west, approx­i­mate­ly 40km’s south-east from the town of Mar­garet Riv­er. It is com­prised pre­dom­i­nate­ly of Jar­rah and Marri(Redgum) wood­land with sea­son­al­ly wet low­land and a patch of Kar­ri towards the mid­dle of the coupe. There is a high num­ber of threat­ened and pri­or­i­ty endem­ic plant species (species that only occur with­in the local plant com­mu­ni­ty) with Chester For­est hav­ing a very high degree of species rich­ness. A large patch of for­est with­in the coupe and sur­round­ing Nature Reserve remains unin­fect­ed from Phy­topthera dieback ( see http://www.dwg.org.au/index.cfm?objectid=2C607FE0-C09F-1F3C-C87C8B2114B042F3) which threat­ens to destroy and degrade much of the For­est. The FPC plans to log right in the mid­dle of the unin­fect­ed, healthy for­est. Log­ging the for­est and all the dis­tur­bance that comes with it (Machin­ery, altered water flow, roads etc.) will only accel­er­ate the spread of Dieback with­in Chester and sur­round­ing pris­tine for­est and wood­land. Log­ging is expect­ed to com­mence in ear­ly Jan­u­ary.

With the effects of log­ging on Cli­mate Change, increase salin­i­ty, and ecosys­tem col­lapse now well doc­u­ment­ed, and 85 per­cent of WA’s native forests already gone, it is unac­cept­able that native forests con­tin­ue to be logged for tiny (some­time neg­a­tive) prof­its for indus­try and gov­ern­ment depart­ments. It is now well known that our forests pro­vide much more than just wood. They pro­vide us with clean air, water, healthy soil and sta­ble ecosys­tems to sup­port life as we know it.

Come and join the cam­paign to save Chester For­est and build the com­mu­ni­ty voice that is need­ed to stop the log­ging of our pre­cious nat­ur­al resources.

Get in touch with the Mar­garet Riv­er Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre (Ph/fax. 9758 8078)
Or call 0422535328 for more info and direc­tions to camp.
(a map will be post­ed soon for direc­tions to camp)

West­ern Aus­tralian For­est Alliance
Glob­al Warm­ing For­est Group

Indigenous Resistance To Silly Dam Project In Brazil

18/11/2008
Peo­ple Pow­er Fucks Up Con­struc­tion

Juruena Dam construction site trashed 1Juruena Dam construction site trashed 218/11/2008
Peo­ple Pow­er Fucks Up Con­struc­tion

One hun­dred and twen­ty mem­bers of the Enawene Nawe tribe trashed a con­struc­tion site of a hydro elec­tric dam on the Juru­e­na riv­er in west­ern Brazil on 11th of last month. Trucks, offices, hous­ing for work­ers were all destroyed and or torched in a $1 mil­lion sur­vival spree.

“They came armed with axes and pieces of wood, ban­ished the employ­ees and lat­er set fire to every­thing” said Fred­eri­co Muller, a coor­di­na­tor work­ing at the site. At least 12 trucks were destroyed, along with a num­ber of offices and hous­ing units.

Sur­vival because the tribes all over the Ama­zon basin rely on the rivers for fish­ing, one of the eas­i­est, most reli­able ways to get food. There are 77 such dams planned for the area but the destruc­tion is very wide­ly spread: one Brazil­ian super dam project – the Belo Monte – will dis­place 16,000 peo­ple.

Some back­ground to this cri­sis: Brazil’s spi­ralling ener­gy needs are the result of the den­tal­ly inim­itable pro indus­try fuck­wit Lula de Sil­va’s (or should that be the IMF etc’s) poli­cies of growth at any cost. Demand has out­stripped sup­ply in recent years and a long drought in 2001 brought mat­ters to a head. With no water even the best dams can pro­duce no pow­er so rationing was com­menced – down to one fifth of nor­mal sup­ply. The deci­sion was made at this time to increase Brazil’s hydro capac­i­ty by 75% and thus we have the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion of mass forced dis­place­ment of indige­nous peo­ples.

But the dams are not even a sure thing either eco­nom­i­cal­ly or prac­ti­cal­ly (except­ing the con­struc­tion com­pa­nies, financiers, bribees etc.). Pre­dic­tions of low water for 3 – 5 months of the year make the projects look ridicu­lous. How­ev­er if you include geno­cide as a wel­come part of your busi­ness mod­el then the fig­ures are any­thing but. As one fucked up white ele­phant dam is com­plet­ed it requires more upstream stor­age capac­i­ty to be built and hence more dis­place­ment. This is the real­i­ty of ‘eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment’ in Brazil.

Mass Tribal Uprising in West Bengal

Novem­ber 18, 2008

What we are wit­ness­ing in the trib­al belt of West Ben­gal is [an] his­tor­i­cal moment. A long oppressed peo­ple have risen up and are dar­ing to con­front their oppres­sors and ques­tion the log­ic of “devel­op­ment” that destroys their lives and liveli­hoods.”

Novem­ber 18, 2008

What we are wit­ness­ing in the trib­al belt of West Ben­gal is [an] his­tor­i­cal moment. A long oppressed peo­ple have risen up and are dar­ing to con­front their oppres­sors and ques­tion the log­ic of “devel­op­ment” that destroys their lives and liveli­hoods.”

In what start­ed out as a protest against police bru­tal­i­ty, on Novem­ber 7 more than ten thou­sand San­thal men and women con­verged in the Indi­an state of West Ben­gal to demand the end to state oppres­sion and the con­stant dis­pos­ses­sion of their lands.

It is an his­toric moment for the trib­al peo­ples in the region — and one so unprece­dent­ed that author­i­ties are not even sure what to do about it.

“Even the polit­i­cal par­ties and civ­il soci­ety are at a loss try­ing to come to terms with what is hap­pen­ing,” says Partho Sarathi Ray, in Sanhati.com. “Noth­ing like this has been wit­nessed in West Ben­gal in liv­ing mem­o­ry.”

The upris­ing report­ed­ly began fol­low­ing a land mine explo­sion on Novem­ber 2, which tar­get­ed the state’s chief min­is­ter as well as the union steel and mines min­is­ter.

The two men were return­ing from the inau­gu­ra­tion of the Jin­dal Steel Works (JSW) spe­cial eco­nom­ic zone (SEZ) in West Mid­na­pore dis­trict. Approx­i­mate­ly 5000 acres of land had been acquired for JSW, the vast major­i­ty of which was sup­posed to be dis­trib­uted amongst the land­less Adi­va­sis (indige­nous peo­ple) in the region. The gov­ern­ment hand­ed it over to the com­pa­ny instead.

The explo­sion was prompt­ly blamed on the Maoist guer­ril­las — how­ev­er, in what has become a com­mon prac­tice in West Ben­gal, the police turned all of their atten­tion to the local indige­nous pop­u­la­tion for being “com­plic­it” in the attack.

Over the next few days, the police set out on a cam­paign to assault, harass and ran­dom­ly arrest any trib­al per­son they want­ed.

But it just wasn’t enough for the police, who hadn’t the slight­est clue who was behind the explo­sion. So, on Novem­ber 6 the police “… led by the offi­cer in charge of Lal­garh police sta­tion… unleashed a reign of ter­ror in 35 vil­lages encom­pass­ing the entire trib­al belt of Lal­garh,” explains Ray. “In raids through­out the night of Novem­ber 6th, women were bru­tal­ly kicked and beat­en up with lath­is and butts of guns. Among the injured, Chi­ta­mani Mur­mu, one of whose eyes was hit by a gun butt, and Pana­mani Hans­da, who was kicked on her chest and suf­fered mul­ti­ple frac­tures, had to [be] hos­pi­tal­ized. Chitamani’s lost her eye because of the injury. Eight oth­er women were bad­ly wound­ed. These police bru­tal­i­ties soon reached a point where the adi­va­sis had no oth­er option but to rise up in revolt,” Ray con­tin­ues.

The next day, “what began as rum­blings of protest took the shape of a spon­ta­neous mass upris­ing [of] ten thou­sand San­thal men and women, armed with tra­di­tion­al weapons, [who] came out and obstruct­ed the roads lead­ing to Lal­garh, dis­con­nect­ing it from Mid­na­pur and Banku­ra. Roads were dug up and tree trunks were placed on the road to obstruct the entry of police vehi­cles, in the same way as it had been done in Nandi­gram.”

Dur­ing the night, “peo­ple also dis­con­nect­ed tele­phone and elec­tric­i­ty lines, vir­tu­al­ly con­vert­ing a vast area into a lib­er­at­ed zone. The apex social orga­ni­za­tion of the San­thals, the Bharat Jakat Majhi Mad­wa Juan Gaon­ta took up the lead­er­ship of the strug­gle, although the leader of the orga­ni­za­tion, the “Disham Majhi” Nityanan­da Hem­bram has him­self admit­ted that the orga­ni­za­tion has no con­trol over the move­ment; rather the move­ment is con­trol­ling the orga­ni­za­tion.”

As for the gov­ern­ment, which has “not dared to respond with overt vio­lence yet”, is help­less in the face of this upsurge. They’ve been try­ing to nego­ti­ate, but the effort has so far been fruit­less due to the demo­c­ra­t­ic and decen­tral­ized nature of the upris­ing. They sim­ply can’t exert any influ­ence over the indige­nous peo­ple.

They way things look right now, the gov­ern­ment may have no choice but to con­cede.

Reports on Sanhati

Mainstream Reports

Vedanta chased away by threatened Villagers in Orissa

14th Novem­ber 2008

Last week, a group of more than 500 vil­lagers set up road­blocks in Orissa’s Puri dis­trict to protest the con­struc­tion of “Dev San­skrati Vish­wavidyalaya” (Divine Cul­ture Uni­ver­si­ty) a project fund­ed by the rather-unen­light­ened com­pa­ny we know as Vedan­ta Resources.

14th Novem­ber 2008
Orissa villagers

Last week, a group of more than 500 vil­lagers set up road­blocks in Orissa’s Puri dis­trict to protest the con­struc­tion of “Dev San­skrati Vish­wavidyalaya” (Divine Cul­ture Uni­ver­si­ty) a project fund­ed by the rather-unen­light­ened com­pa­ny we know as Vedan­ta Resources.

The vil­lagers are angry that the insti­tu­tion, which will apparently”>http://intercontinentalcry.org/vedanta-chased-away-by-threatened-villagers/’);”>apparently estab­lish “a Cul­tur­al Renais­sance” in India, is sit­u­at­ed on agri­cul­tur­al land that the Oris­sa gov­ern­ment ‘acquired’ with­out the peo­ples con­sent. The gov­ern­ment then donat­ed the land to Vedan­ta for free (Wikipedia).

The com­pa­ny defends the gov­ern­ments actions by claim­ing the land isn’t fer­tile and of no real use to the vil­lagers. It’s a thor­ough­ly absurd claim, see­ing as how the vil­lagers are active in grow­ing rice, man­go, cashew, papaya, betel, pump­kin, and coconut, etc. through­out the region.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Vedan­ta claims that the land is only sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed and that only a hun­dred or so peo­ple will be dis­placed for the project. Activists say it’s more like 1,000 — on top of anoth­er 20,000 to 50,000 who will be indi­rect­ly effect­ed.

What­ev­er the actu­al num­ber is, no vil­lager has giv­en their con­sent to be dis­placed. That was made clear dur­ing last week’s protest, which took place at the ground-break­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the insti­tu­tion. The pro­test­ers rushed it, some of them car­ry­ing lath­is, and forced the offi­cials to with­draw by police escort. There were no injuries report­ed.

Fol­low­ing the protest a com­pa­ny offi­cial stat­ed that, “in view of the vio­lent sit­u­a­tion… we have stopped the work of the uni­ver­si­ty and intend to resume the con­struc­tion work soon.”

It would seem the offi­cial also tried to demean the vil­lagers’ strug­gle, by claim­ing it’s lit­tle more than a few peo­ple “cre­at­ing dis­tur­bances.”

An insult to say the least, the official’s state­ment is also a far stretch from what the pro­test­ers were told. Accord­ing to Uma­ballav Rath, leader of the Vedan­ta Vish­wavidyalaya Virod­hi Sami­ti, the orga­ni­za­tion head­ing the move­ment against the project, “offi­cials of the Vedan­ta Group have assured us in the pres­ence of the dis­trict admin­is­tra­tion that they are not going to start work on the project with­out our con­sent.”

In light of recent his­to­ry — name­ly, the strug­gle of the Don­gria Kondh, who are fac­ing sim­i­lar dis­place­ment (as well as the destruc­tion of their cul­ture) at the hands of Vedan­ta — the for­mer state­ment is prob­a­bly the most accu­rate.

The com­pa­ny doesn’t seem to care one way anoth­er how must destruc­tion it caus­es. Just as long as it main­tains the good face of enlight­en­ment for its share­hold­ers.

For­tu­nate­ly, the villagers—and of course the Don­gria Kondh—are not so will­ing to play make believe.

pho­to: http://nazaronline.net

Bath Bomb #16 out now

The Bath Bomb
@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #16
free/donation
Nov 08

Because now it’s okay to love Amer­i­ca

We Won’t Pay For Their Cri­sis

The Bath Bomb
@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #16
free/donation
Nov 08

Because now it’s okay to love Amer­i­ca

We Won’t Pay For Their Cri­sis

Sat­ur­day the 22nd of Novem­ber sees a new cam­paign tak­ing to the streets of Bath. Going under the slo­gans ‘Can’t pay, Won’t pay’ and ‘We won’t pay for their cri­sis!’, the cam­paign will be tak­ing the fight to the greedy politi­cians, bankers and boss­es who are behind this finan­cial cri­sis. The cam­paign will also focus on pro­tect­ing the rights of aver­age peo­ple and will cen­tre around five key demands – 1) decent coun­cil sub­si­dies on gas and elec­tric bills, 2) afford­able food and hous­ing, 3) bailiffs and repos­ses­sion men out of our com­mu­ni­ties, 4) pro­tec­tion of jobs and ben­e­fits, and 5) full con­trol over the banks that our mon­ey has bailed out. These demands, and the cam­paign itself, are time­ly. Already, in the ear­ly stages of the cri­sis, unem­ploy­ment is up 20%, gas and elec­tric bill prices are up over 40% and home repos­ses­sions are up 70% on last year’s fig­ures. Now more than ever, we need to group togeth­er to pro­tect our­selves against the cal­lous greed of the wealthy. We need to be ready to fight against bailiffs who for too many years have strode unop­posed into our homes. We need to be ready to fight against the ener­gy com­pa­nies who increase our bills, leav­ing thou­sands to freeze while con­tin­u­ing to rake in prof­its. We need to be ready to fight against the gov­ern­ment who cut our ben­e­fits and use our mon­ey to bail out their big busi­ness bud­dies and we need to be ready to fight against the boss­es, who think noth­ing of mak­ing ded­i­cat­ed work­ers redun­dant to keep their own wal­lets fat. We have not caused this cri­sis, nei­ther have we asked for it. It has been caused by greedy politi­cians, bankers and boss­es, chas­ing after the big bucks, not wor­ry­ing about who they crush to get there. Yet who is expect­ed to pay when their shit hits the fan? Us. We are expect­ed to pay with our tax­es, with our jobs and with soar­ing food, rent and gas and elec­tric­i­ty costs. Well no more! This cam­paign is not just about wav­ing plac­ards or ‘mak­ing a point’, it is about win­ning. It is about tak­ing back what is ours from the greedy and wealthy who work so hard to take it from us, and it is a cam­paign that we can win togeth­er. If we are unit­ed in a belief that ‘enough is enough’, and a deter­mi­na­tion not to let them get rich from our labour while we strug­gle to make ends meet, we can and will win this cam­paign. So, to get involved, and wrench con­trol of our lives back from the greedy bas­tards at the top, meet at 12.30pm in the Abbey court­yard on Sat­ur­day the 22nd of Novem­ber.

Nude Girls Do It Togeth­er…

…Union­iz­ing to improve their work­ing con­di­tions, that is. Screen­ing on Sun­day Novem­ber the 30th as part of the month­ly Bub­bling Under rad­i­cal cin­e­ma, from 1 til 4pm, get an eye­ful of ‘Live Nude Girls Unite’, a doc­u­men­tary about the for­ma­tion of the first union of strip­pers in the US. This rau­cous film is to be pre­sent­ed by Bris­tol Indy­media, who are sure to come back with future offer­ings. Entry is free, and the Porter veg­gie lunch is high­ly rec­om­mend­ed. Get your plac­ards out for the lads!

Mini­bar — 0 Mega­BAN — 1

In the lat­est of a long line of foie gras vic­to­ries, Mini­bar have pulled the del­i­ca­cy from their menu after just two demos. At the end of the sec­ond 14 strong-protest, mem­bers of Bath Ani­mal Action and Bath Activist Net­work reached an ami­ca­ble agree­ment with the own­er that foie gras would be removed from the restau­rant with imme­di­ate effect. After this demo, activists paid a short and sharp vis­it to an emi­nent­ly less sen­si­ble foie gras pur­vey­or, Christophe LeCroix, own­er of The Pinch in St Margaret’s build­ings. Start­ing at 9pm, the demo last­ed only 10 min­utes, dur­ing which time the let­ter­box was flood­ed with leaflets, din­ers’ con­ver­sa­tions were drowned out with a bar­rage of noise, leaflets lit­tered the out­side of the build­ing and Christophe, seen cow­er­ing at the back of the restau­rant, brave­ly sent a wait­ress to lock the doors and draw the blinds. Christophe has twice removed and replaced foie gras from his menu, and is now sell­ing again, and despite his macho image, and a his­to­ry of punch­ing and sex­u­al­ly assault­ing both male and female activists, has twice been seen beg­ging pro­test­ers to leave him alone. Well, not any­more. BAA and BAN are back out­side The Pinch until foie gras comes off the menu for good. The protests could come at any time, but for now, we will leave Christophe to pon­der the fact that Hallowe’en is not the only time of year when things go ‘smash’ in the night! All foie gras-relat­ed com­plaints to:

Christophe LeCroix

The Pinch
11 St Margaret’s Build­ings
Bath, BA1 2LP
01225 421251
info@thepinch.biz

Tofu Sal­ad­fest Ahoy!

Sat­ur­day the 22nd Novem­ber is promis­ing to be a busy day for Batho­ni­ans, as we also have the Bath Veg­an Fayre! Run­ning at the Per­cy Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on New King Street from 12 til 3.30pm, all are wel­come to come along and sam­ple the deli­cious food, and find out how those pale and sick­ly lentil-eaters can still scrape up pro­tein enough to draw breath with­out a nice slab of steak or ched­dar. As well as infor­ma­tion on veg­gie health, nutri­tion, envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits, com­pas­sion­ate liv­ing, and veg­an-cater­ing eater­ies in the city, GeneWatch will also be there to talk about genet­ic mod­i­fi­ca­tion of ani­mals in sci­en­tif­ic research, just like the franken-doc­tors do up at Bath Uni­ver­si­ty – such as poten­tial­ly high-risk tam­per­ing with the genes of insects to con­trol food sup­plies. Con­tro­ver­sial? Con­tact eatoutveganbath@yahoo.co.uk for more infor­ma­tion.

www.vegansociety.com/
www.genewatch.org/

EVENTS

Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs meet­ings, 2nd and 4th Mon­day of the month, 8pm, The Bell, Wal­cot Street

Lon­don Road Food Co-op, Wednes­days, 4–7pm, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Lon­don Road

Bath Stop The War Coali­tion vig­il, Sat­ur­days, 11.30am-12.30, Bath Abbey Court­yard

‘Baked Alas­ka’ film screen­ing, Mon­day 17th Novem­ber, 7.30pm, upstairs at the Rum­mer, Grand Parade

‘We Won’t Pay For Their Cri­sis’ march, Sat­ur­day 22nd Novem­ber, meet­ing 12.30, Bath Abbey Court­yard

Bath Veg­an Fayre, Sat­ur­day 22nd Novem­ber, 12–3.30pm, Per­cy Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, New King Street

Green Light lec­ture: the Sev­ern Bar­rage, Tues­day 25th Novem­ber, 7.30pm, BRLSI, Queen Square

Anti-foie gras demo, Fri­day 28th Novem­ber, meet­ing 7pm, the Cir­cus

‘Open­ing the doors to auton­o­my’: a day of work­shops, activ­i­ties and art­work on urban sur­vival – cred­it crunch­ing strate­gies for get­ting through hard times; from the legal­i­ties and prac­ti­cal­i­ties of squat­ting and resist­ing repossession/eviction & gen­tri­fi­ca­tion to urban for­ag­ing, a bike work­shop, tai chi & self-defence, screen­print­ing and DIY wire­less inter­net – this will be a day of shar­ing skills and build­ing the net­works to not only sur­vive the eco­nom­ic cri­sis but to begin to col­lec­tive­ly shape what may replace it; Sat­ur­day 29th Novem­ber, 11–6pm, the Red Fac­to­ry, Cave Street, St Pauls, Bris­tol

Bub­bling Under, Sun­day 30th Novem­ber, 1–4pm, Porter Cel­lar bar, George Street

Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, Wednes­day 3rd Decem­ber, 7.30–8.30pm, back room of The Bell

Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, Thurs­day 4th Decem­ber, 7.30–9pm, down­stairs Hob­gob­lin

Bath Green­peace meet­ing, Mon­day 8th Decem­ber, 7.30–9pm, Still­point, Broad Street Place

Tran­si­tion Bath Forum, Tues­day 9th Decem­ber, 7pm, Wid­combe Social Club

Bath Green Drinks, Wednes­day 10th Decem­ber, 8.30pm, the Rum­mer, Grand Parade

Bath FreeShop, Sat­ur­day 13th Decem­ber, 12–3pm, out­side Pump Rooms, Stall Street

Tal­ly Ho-peless

Well, it’s Novem­ber again, so that means hunt­ing season’s back on, and anoth­er 3 or 4 months of pompous red-coat­ed throw­backs and legal grey areas. Although hunt­ing was offi­cial­ly banned in Feb­ru­ary 2005, it turned out to be the one law police chose not to enforce, and a law fraught with so many loop­holes that most hunts could car­ry on just like as they like – pre­tend­ing to fol­low a trail set by a scent­ed rag rather than a fox, when they’re being watched. And so the fine tra­di­tion of hunt sab­o­tage can’t hang up its mud-crust­ed wellies, just yet. On Sat­ur­day the 1st Novem­ber, a small group from Bath, Bris­tol, Pewsey and New­port kept an eye on the Mon­mouthshire Hunt, fol­low­ing leaked info about their meet­ing point. Using cit­ronel­la spray to mask fox scent, cam­eras to mon­i­tor activ­i­ty, and a com­bi­na­tion of hunt­ing horns, voice calls and whips (crack­ing the air, not phys­i­cal­ly strik­ing) to call off or con­fuse the hounds, a crisp autumn day out in the Welsh coun­try­side was enjoyed by all, espe­cial­ly the two pur­sued fox­es that we helped escape. If you want to help save inno­cent lives and reclaim rur­al space from arro­gant thugs, then become an Anti: ring Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs on 07854 062336.

http://hsa.enviroweb.org/hsa.shtml

Green Space: Going, Going, Gone?

Res­i­dents and greens held a protest in Bath on Sat­ur­day the 8th Novem­ber out­side the Guild­hall, hop­ing to save Bathamp­ton Mead­ows from unnec­es­sary devel­op­ment. Poten­tial­ly a vic­tim of yet anoth­er B&NES Coun­cil jobsworth’s twist­ed log­ic, the idea is we can save nature by killing it; in this case, the ancient mead­ow will make way for a 1,400 space Park and Ride con­crete job to abate traf­fic con­ges­tion and pol­lu­tion in the city cen­tre. The prob­lem here is that the main cause of con­ges­tion in Bath is the flow of east to west and west to east through traf­fic, rather than that of dri­vers com­ing into the city, so the Park & Ride will be bare­ly used and what­ev­er slack is saved will just be tak­en up by sup­pressed demand. The con­sul­ta­tion ends after the 14th Novem­ber and the con­sul­ta­tion form can be down­loaded from the Save Bathamp­ton Mead­ows’ site: http://www.savebathamptonmeadows.org.uk. Why not sign up today? It can’t hurt.

Alder-Nasty Antics

One activist from BAN joined 300 oth­ers from around the UK to block­ade the Alder­mas­ton Atom­ic Weapons Estab­lish­ment on Mon­day the 27th Octo­ber, part of the ongo­ing cam­paign to kick weapons of mass destruc­tion out of the UK. AWE Alder­mas­ton is the site where exper­i­ments for the next gen­er­a­tion of unpop­u­lar ‘Tri­dent’ nuclear sub­ma­rine arma­ments will be designed. A major part in this cost­ly scheme is expect­ed to be the ‘Ori­on’ laser facil­i­ty, cur­rent­ly being built. The MoD has also recent­ly applied for plan­ning per­mis­sion to car­ry out ura­ni­um enrich­ment there, too. Pro­test­ers from as far afield as Scot­land, Lon­don, Nor­folk, Ply­mouth and Yeovil took part, meet­ing to plan actions the day before. At 5.30am, activists locked on to bar­rels of con­crete and blocked the first gate, caus­ing police to prompt­ly close the road. Anoth­er group of Green­ham women (Green­ham Com­mon being a famous and long-lived peace camp, run­ning 1981–2000) took a sec­ond, while sev­er­al oth­er groups locked and super­glued them­selves to Tadley gate, the main entrance for fac­tor work­ers. The main gate itself was also held for a short time. Both the Rinky Dink ped­al-pow­ered sound sys­tem and band Seize The Day also showed up. Work at the fac­to­ry was shut down most of the morn­ing, and 33 were charged with Obstruc­tion of the High­way. As usu­al, the state refus­es to heed pub­lic oppo­si­tion to Tri­dent: the cam­paign to shut them down con­tin­ues!

www.tridentploughshares.org

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When You Threat­en One, You Threat­en All!

So read the ban­ner flut­ter­ing from the win­dow of the 89 Ash­ley Road squat in Bris­tol as bailiffs last week clam­oured at the door to evict the 20 res­i­dents who call the long dis­used build­ing ‘home’. This came as a sur­prise to res­i­dents who had not been served the manda­to­ry 7‑day notice of evic­tion a land­lord is required to pro­vide. What hap­pened next, and what of the sen­ti­men­tal mes­sage adorn­ing the front of the build­ing? Before we find out, a lit­tle look into the his­to­ry, and intend­ed future of the build­ing, those inside, and those who hope to get rich off it. Owned by prop­er­ty devel­op­ers ‘Places for Peo­ple’, the build­ing has been ear­marked for ‘regen­er­a­tion’ (read — gen­tri­fi­ca­tion) along with the sur­round­ing area. Despite the group’s claims that they are pri­mar­i­ly con­vert­ing homes into assist­ed accom­mo­da­tion for the home­less and elder­ly, Ash­ley Road is ear­marked to be turned into lucra­tive pri­vate flats, while the ‘char­i­ta­ble’ group is hap­py to allow oth­er­wise home­less peo­ple to be turfed out into the street at the begin­ning of win­ter. After res­i­dents saw the bailiffs, a call for sup­port was put out, and with­in an hour, around 50 activists, some from Bath, had descend­ed on Ash­ley Road, mak­ing the ille­gal evic­tion a logis­ti­cal impos­si­bil­i­ty. After a tense stand­off, the bailiffs and their police mates left, deject­ed. A vic­to­ry for sol­i­dar­i­ty, and a reprieve for the inhab­i­tants of Ash­ley Road. While the bailiffs will cer­tain­ly return soon, and may in the future be suc­cess­ful in their evic­tion attempts, the response of peo­ple to the fate of the squat demon­strates the pow­er of sol­i­dar­i­ty and col­lec­tive action over the often over­whelm­ing seem­ing forces of author­i­ty and pow­er.

Uncle Bul­gar­ia Weeps

Regret­tably, the Bath Bomb has just learnt about the demise of yet anoth­er of Bath’s great­est insti­tu­tions: Envolve. Who? Under the mot­to ‘Part­ner­ships in Sus­tain­abil­i­ty’, the for­mer envi­ron­men­tal char­i­ty start­ed out 14 years ago as the Bath Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre on Mil­som Street, and did exact­ly what it said on the recy­cled and biodegrad­able tin. Orig­i­nal­ly a resource for green activists and curi­ous passers­by, the cen­tre got too big for its boots, and moved to larg­er premis­es in the sub­ter­ranean tun­nel com­plex beneath Green Park Sta­tion – now depen­dent not just on its bene­fac­tors but also on state fund­ing. But such pay­outs rarely come with­out strings, and that proved the centre’s down­fall. Becom­ing more and more cor­po­rate, Envolve began a cam­paign of ostracism towards its more prag­mat­ic sup­port­ers, who recog­nise that ‘green cap­i­tal­ism’ is a con­tra­dic­tion in terms – they let go of staff and vol­un­teers deemed too rad­i­cal; arbi­trar­i­ly chose between which local cam­paigns have a right to be adver­tised or not; and then, one-by-one, kicked out use­ful but unprof­itable ini­tia­tives, like the green library, farm­ers’ mar­ket offices, meet­ing spaces for local greens, alter­na­tive trans­port offices, car-free schemes and food co-ops – after all, it doesn’t pay to be green. All that remained in the end was busi­ness con­sul­tants, edu­ca­tion offi­cers and a string of com­mu­ni­ty schemes they didn’t quite have the heart to grind out: a text­book exam­ple of state co-option. Hav­ing com­man­deered and neutered yet anoth­er group of poten­tial world-chang­ers, they then cut the fund­ing alto­geth­er – and that was that. The irony is that Envolve was held up entire­ly by com­pas­sion­ate peo­ple ham­strung by the restric­tive con­di­tions of their fund­ing, danc­ing to the master’s tune… but the road to hell is paved with good inten­tions. We here at the Bath Bomb hate to say I told you so, but… Let’s hope their suc­ces­sors, the Eth­i­cal Prop­er­ty Com­pa­ny, don’t go the same way.

Bath Activist Net­work are a local umbrel­la group cam­paign­ing on issues as diverse as devel­op­ment, envi­ron­men­tal­ism, anti-war, ani­mal rights, work­ers’ rights and more. Help­ing to pro­duce The Bath Bomb, we are open to any­one, and our mem­bers range from trade union­ists to anar­chists, lib­er­als to greens, and peo­ple who just want to change Bath for the bet­ter. For details on meet­ings, demos, or just to get in touch, ring us on 07949 611912, email bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk, or see our web­site: www.myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork

Danc­ing On The Grave Of Cap­i­tal­ism

It is not just in Bath that peo­ple are get­ting angry about hav­ing to pay for a cri­sis caused by politi­cians and big busi­ness. Cardiff, Bris­tol, Edin­burgh and Lon­don have also already seen mass action against the finan­cial cri­sis. In Lon­don, the finan­cial dis­trict has twice been invad­ed by hun­dreds of angry peo­ple demand­ing that the gov­ern­ment stops using our mon­ey to bail out fail­ing big busi­ness. The first Lon­don demo saw the police tak­en by sur­prise as hun­dreds showed their anger in the finan­cial dis­trict, attempt­ing, and only nar­row­ly fail­ing, to occu­py the Bank of Eng­land. The sec­ond demo, called on Hallowe’en and billed as a chance to ‘dance on the grave of cap­i­tal­ism’ saw a larg­er turnout of both police and pro­test­ers and end­ed in clash­es as peo­ple tried to make their way to the offices of recent­ly bank­rupt­ed firm Lehman Broth­ers. Up and down the coun­try, peo­ple are show­ing their dis­gust about a sys­tem that has failed us, and leaves us poor­er and poor­er while the rich con­tin­ue to get rich­er. At both Lon­don demos, stock­bro­kers promised to vio­lent­ly con­front pro­test­ers who dared to speak out about the sys­tem that keeps them rich and us poor, but, on both occa­sions, failed to mate­ri­alise. We can only imag­ine they are flick­ing the last of the white pow­der from their nos­trils, wip­ing a tear from their eyes, push­ing the ‘top floor’ but­ton on the lift and won­der­ing how their lit­tle game has gone so bad­ly wrong.

And now, to the dis­claimer: As any­one is free to con­tribute, the opin­ions expressed in each arti­cle are not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflec­tive of each con­trib­u­tor. Nat­u­ral­ly, any right-wing or cor­po­rate bull­shit will be binned and spat on. Need­less to say, the opin­ions of the author of this dis­claimer does not nec­es­sar­i­ly rep­re­sent the views of any oth­er con­trib­u­tor…

For fur­ther info on any of our sto­ries see www.myspace.com/bathbomb

Activists in Dublin renamed the street where the Shell office is after Ken Saro Wiwa

Sur­pris­ing­ly, many streets in Dublin, cap­i­tal of the Repub­lic of Ire­land, are still named after heroes of monar­chy and colo­nial­ism.

Ken Saro-Wiwa Street sign replacement, DublinSur­pris­ing­ly, many streets in Dublin, cap­i­tal of the Repub­lic of Ire­land, are still named after heroes of monar­chy and colo­nial­ism.

Ade­laide Road, which is home to the main entrance of Shel­l’s Irish head office as well as the gov­ern­ment depart­ment which hands out licences for the exploita­tion of Irish gas and oil reserves, is named after Queen Ade­laide, the unfor­tu­nate Ger­man princess who mar­ried the Eng­lish King William IV (he already had a mis­tress and ten chil­dren).

At the week­end, oppo­nents of Shel­l’s activ­i­ties in Ire­land and around the world took the deci­sion to rename the street after Ken Saro-Wiwa. He was the leader, until his death, of the Move­ment for the Sur­vival of the Ogo­ni Peo­ple and a fierce crit­ic of Shel­l’s destruc­tion of the Niger Delta and its peo­ple.

Ken Saro Wiwa and eight oth­ers were exe­cut­ed by hang­ing in Port Har­court prison on Novem­ber 10th 1995. The Niger­ian gov­ern­ment claimed he was guilty of con­spir­a­cy to mur­der, but exec­u­tives from Shell pri­vate­ly admit­ted that they were behind the pros­e­cu­tion, tri­al and exe­cu­tion of Saro-Wiwa and the oth­ers.

You can see a short video of the chang­ing of the signs here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBHp–u4QVk

and a few more pic­tures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/24935400@N06/sets/72157608792269359/

rememberkensarowiwa@gmail.com
http://www.remembersarowiwa.com