Category: Global

Glob­al

CLIMATE ACTION NEWS SHEET 77, MARCH 2008

CONTENTS:
———————————————-
UPCOMING ACTIONS AND EVENTS:
———————————————-
1) FOSSIL FOOLS DAY — INTERNATIONAL, 1.4.08
2) MAYDAY! MAYDAY! INVASION OF THE CLIMATE SNATCHERS – INT’L, 1.5.08

CONTENTS:
———————————————-
UPCOMING ACTIONS AND EVENTS:
———————————————-
1) FOSSIL FOOLS DAY — INTERNATIONAL, 1.4.08
2) MAYDAY! MAYDAY! INVASION OF THE CLIMATE SNATCHERS – INT’L, 1.5.08
3) CLIMATE ACTION WITH A BITE! — INTERNATIONAL, 3.6.08
4) “PEOPLE ARE STILL THE SAME” — BRECON, 8.3.08
5) PADDY’S DAY OF ACTION AGAINST SHELL — IRELAND AND BEYOND, 17.3.08
6) BIKES NOT BOMBS TOUR — LONDON TO ALDERMASTON, 22–24.3.08
7) TERMINAL 5 FLASHMOB — HEATHROW, 27.3.08
8) CLIMATE BILL PUBLIC MEETING — LONDON, 22.4.08
9) COIN WORKSHOPS — NATIONAL, MARCH-APRIL 2008
10) NATIONAL CLIMATE FORUM — LONDON, 14–15.6.08
11) EARTH ACTIVIST TRAINING — GLOUCESTERSHIRE, 12–26.7.08
12) ENVIRONMENT CAMPAIGNER AWARD – 2008
13) LILI COURSES IN APRIL — BUCKS/LONDON/SHEFFIELD

———————————————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
———————————————-
1) CLIMATE EMERGENCY AT HEATHROW, THEN WESTMINSTER — 25.2.08 / 27.2.08
2) RATCLIFFE ACTION VERDICT — NOTTINGHAM, 25.2.08
3) BP AMERICA, EXXON MOBIL AND CO. IN THE DOCK — ALASKA, 27.2.08
4) HANDS OFF IRAQI OIL! ACTIONS — UK AND NETHERLANDS, 23.2.08
5) EARTH FIRST! BLOCKADES POWER PLANT CONSTRUCTION — FLORIDA, 18.2.08
6) RTNA/EARTHFIRST! PIPELINE ACTION — PORTLAND, U.S. 23.1.08
7) SABOTAGE AT GLENSANDA — YORKSHIRE, FEBRUARY 2008
8) PLANKTOS DUMPING SCHEME DEFEATED BY ANTI-WHALERS — MADEIRA, 14.2.08
9) COMMUNITY HALTS SHELL — IRELAND, 12.2.08
10) CRITICAL MASS HERO CLEARED — BRISTOL, 7.2.08
11) KLIMAX SURGE ON! — SWEDEN, JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2008
12) TARA CAMPAIGN UPDATE — FEBRUARY 2008
13) 15 ACTIONS TO TOPPLE THE FOSSIL FUEL EMPIRE — FEBRUARY 2008
14) RISING TIDE POP-ED RESOURCE PACK — FEBRUARY 2008
15) “RISING TO THE CLIMATE CHALLENGE” BOOKLET — FEBRUARY 2008
16) “BURNING CAPITAL” — FEBRUARY 2008
17) SPIRIT OF FREEDOM — FEBRUARY 2008
18) CLIMATE CHANGE SOLUTIONS CENTRE — FEBRUARY UPDATE 2008
19) “THE AGE OF STUPID” — FEBRUARY 2008
20) AIRPORT WATCH BULLETIN — FEBRUARY 2008
21) CAUSE CLIMATE CHANGE — WEBSITE 2008

———————————————-
UPCOMING ACTIONS AND EVENTS:
———————————————-
1) FOSSIL FOOLS DAY — INTERNATIONAL, 1.4.08
Roll up, roll up…the cir­cus is com­ing to town, and it’s going to be big!
For over a cen­tu­ry the fos­sil fuel indus­try has been fool­ing with our lives. From extrac­tion to com­bus­tion they have poi­soned our air, pol­lut­ed
our water and ruined our cli­mate. On April 1st, we’re going to turn the
tables and show them who the real fools are. Ris­ing Tide’s call has been
backed by Net­work for Cli­mate Action, Glob­al Exchange and Rain­for­est
Action Net­work. There are actions planned across the coun­try and around
the world — let us know what you get up to! (Or tell us in advance if you
can and we’ll help spread the word, get media atten­tion, etc.) Con­tact
local groups or just do it your­self. Show the fos­sil fool clowns what you
think of their freak­show — It’s time to Pull a Prank that Packs a Punch!
Resources and ideas are avail­able from;
http://risingtide.org.uk/fossilfoolsday/resources
http://www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk/
Also see; http://www.fossilfoolsday.org/
and; http://risingtide.org.uk/node/241
Con­tact no: 07961 917 535

2) MAYDAY! MAYDAY! INVASION OF THE CLIMATE SNATCHERS — INTERNATIONAL, 1.5.08
From bio­fu­els to nuclear pow­er, car­bon-trad­ing to hydro­gen fuel cells,
dump­ing urine in the ocean to car­bon cap­ture — every­where cor­po­ra­tions are
seek­ing the elu­sive elixir which allows them to con­tin­ue with busi­ness as
usu­al. All these tech­nolo­gies are a dis­trac­tion from the real solu­tions -
a mas­sive reduc­tion in our con­sump­tion and far-reach­ing social change. On
May 1st, Inter­na­tion­al Work­ers Day, we will chal­lenge these false
solu­tions to cli­mate chaos.
http://networkforclimateaction.org.uk

3) CLIMATE ACTION WITH A BITE! — INTERNATIONAL, 3.6.08
Cli­mate action starts on your din­ner plate, in the super­mar­ket, at the
food pro­cess­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­tres, on the farm, in your allot­ment
or your back yard. The foods we eat are respon­si­ble for about a third of
our green­house emis­sions. It’s time for us to switch to plant-based,
organ­ic, sea­son­al and local­ly pro­duced food. Whether you’re into local
food, per­ma­cul­ture, ani­mal rights, allot­ments, human­i­tar­i­an issues, food
pol­i­tics or trans­port cam­paign­ing, make the links and take action to
high­light the role of the food indus­try in cli­mate chaos.
http://networkforclimateaction.org.uk

4) “PEOPLE ARE STILL THE SAME” — BRECON, 8.3.08
A one-day event show­cas­ing art­works cre­at­ed in response to inter­views,
dia­logues and doc­u­men­ta­tion of the con­struc­tion of the South Wales gas
pipeline.
From 3pm till dusk: Cur­rent State Dystopia — a video pro­jec­tion in the
tun­nel under­neath the A40 road and: Books — a sound and slide instal­la­tion
in Din­gle Wood. 6pm: Going Home — pro­jec­tion and music in Pen­pont Church.
RSVP morag@cooptel.net or tele­phone 01874 636269 www.penpont.com

5) PADDY’S DAY OF ACTION AGAINST SHELL — IRELAND AND BEYOND, 17.3.08
This year´s St Paddy´s day, 17th March, has been called as an
Inter­na­tion­al day of action against shell, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple
of Ross­port. Peo­ple from all over Ire­land are set to join forces and show
their unit­ed strength by going all the way to Lon­don to demon­strate on
Shell´s front door step.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20124
http://gluaiseacht.nologic.org/wordpress

6) BIKES NOT BOMBS TOUR — LONDON TO ALDERMASTON, 22–24.3.08
Bikes not bombs are plan­ning a bicy­col­o­gy bike tour from Lon­don to
Alder­mas­ton Atom­ic Weapons Estab­lish­ment to mark the 50th anniver­sary of
the Alder­mas­ton Peace March. The ride is expect­ed to take 3 days
(22nd-24th March). More than 5000 peo­ple are expect­ed to attend the
“Sur­round The Base” event at Alder­mas­ton on the 24th. If you are
inter­est­ed please email; info@bikesnotbombs.org.uk
Also see www.cnduk.org/aldermaston

7) TERMINAL 5 FLASHMOB — HEATHROW, 27.3.08
Be at T5 Inter­na­tion­al Arrivals at 11am to put on (or strip to reveal)
your bright­ly coloured “Stop Air­port Expan­sion” t‑shirt: a vis­i­ble
pres­ence of pub­lic oppo­si­tion to the mad­ness of air­port expan­sion. Wan­der
round for a bit, have a cof­fee, leave when you like. Wear­ing a t‑shirt is
not (yet) a crime!
Order your free T‑shirt today: stopairportexpansion@gmail.com or 0845 458
2564.
The Government/BAA see the open­ing day of Ter­mi­nal Five (the biggest
ter­mi­nal ever built in the UK, and the sub­ject of the longest Pub­lic
Inquiry in British his­to­ry) as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to put the case for fur­ther
air­port expan­sion. Join the flash mob to high­light the real prob­lems that
air­port expan­sion caus­es: cli­mate change, noise, air pol­lu­tion and
com­mu­ni­ty destruc­tion.
http://www.t5flashmob.com/

8) CLIMATE BILL PUBLIC MEETING — LONDON, 22.4.08
Friends Meet­ing House, Euston, Lon­don, 7.30pm. A chance to attend a pub­lic
meet­ing with Hilary Benn MP (Envi­ron­ment Sec­re­tary) and Peter Ainsworth
(Shad­ow Envi­ron­ment Sec­re­tary) and join the calls for a strong cli­mate
change law.
More info: howard.whitehead@foe.co.uk

9) COIN WORKSHOPS — NATIONAL, MARCH-APRIL 2008
(a) Cli­mate Change Con­densed will be hap­pen­ing in Chel­tenham on the 6th
March.
(b) Cli­mate Action Groups match­mak­er evening, Tue 11th March 4:30 -
7:30pm, The Envi­ron­ment Coun­cil, Lon­don. Any­one who has attend­ed any of
the COIN/TEC series of train­ings can attend this for free.
© Do you work for the NHS? COIN is offer­ing a tai­lored Cli­mate Change
Speak­er Train­ing in Lon­don on March 14th. See;
www.healthandsustainability.net
(d) Com­mu­ni­cat­ing Cli­mate Change, a one-day work­shop, in part­ner­ship with
Vale
Roy­al Bor­ough Coun­cil on Fri­day, April 11th.
Fur­ther train­ings com­ing soon in Birm­ing­ham, Man­ches­ter and Scot­land.
Would you like COIN to run train­ings in your local area? — give Mim a call
on 01865 727911 or email mim@coinet.org.uk
See the COIN web­site for details on all the above; www.coinet.org.uk

10) NATIONAL CLIMATE FORUM — LONDON, 14–15.6.08
This event offers a wide range of work­shops and sem­i­nars all deal­ing with
dif­fer­ent aspects of the cli­mate change cri­sis, prob­a­ble solu­tions and
future devel­op­ments in nation­al and inter­na­tion­al cli­mate poli­cies. Venue;
South Cam­den Com­mu­ni­ty School, Lon­don. Fol­low the link below to look at
the pro­gram and speak­ers from last year cli­mate con­fer­ence.
http://www.campaigncc.org/conference.shtml

11) EARTH ACTIVIST TRAINING — GLOUCESTERSHIRE, 12–26.7.08
A per­ma­cul­ture design course and more for activists! Learn the skills to
trans­form a piece of land, a com­mu­ni­ty, and our polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic
sys­tems.
COSTS: (Includ­ing tuition, two weeks accom­mo­da­tion and all meals) £150 -
£500 slid­ing scale accord­ing to income. If you are inter­est­ed in tak­ing
part in the course, down­load an appli­ca­tion form from:
http://www.earthactivisttraining.org/
Or write to: Earth Activist Train­ing, c/o 59 Chelsea Park, Bris­tol, BS5 6AH.

12) ENVIRONMENT CAMPAIGNER AWARD
The Envi­ron­ment Awards (organ­ised by the Sheila McK­ech­nie Foun­da­tion) are
an oppor­tu­ni­ty for grass­roots cam­paign­ers to receive a bespoke pro­gramme
of sup­port and skills devel­op­ment designed to help them take their
cam­paign to the next lev­el. See www.sheilamckechnie.org.uk for details of
how to apply.

13) LILI COURSES IN APRIL — BUCKS/LONDON/SHEFFIELD
Low-Impact Liv­ing Ini­tia­tive: (01296) 714184 www.lowimpact.org

———————————————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
———————————————-
1) CLIMATE EMERGENCY AT HEATHROW, AND THEN WESTMINSTER — 25.2.08 / 27.2.08
On the 27th, cam­paign­ers opposed to Heathrow expan­sion scaled the roof of
the Hous­es of Par­lia­ment and hung protest ban­ners from the build­ing. The
pro­test­ers also made paper aero­planes out of con­fi­den­tial White­hall
doc­u­ments and flew them into the MPs’ car park below! The doc­u­ments –
obtained under the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act — prove that air­port
oper­a­tor BAA wrote parts of the con­sul­ta­tion doc­u­ment and that the
gov­ern­ment has already decid­ed to build a 3rd run­way and 6th ter­mi­nal at
the world’s biggest inter­na­tion­al air­port.
http://www.planestupid.com/?q=content/plane-stupid-scales-parliament
Two days ear­li­er Green­peace cam­paign­ers had climbed on to one of
Heathrow’s short-haul flights and cov­ered the tail­fin of the plane with a
huge protest ban­ner that read “CLIMATE EMERGENCY – NO 3rd RUNWAY”.
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/climate-campaigners-bring-peaceful-protest-to-heathrow-20080225
Also on the 25th, the Heathrow end-of-con­sul­ta­tion ral­ly at West­min­ster
was a packed-out suc­cess, with thou­sands of res­i­dents, politi­cians and
envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­ers pledg­ing to resist plans to extend Heathrow -
http://www.airportwatch.org.uk/
The dis­tri­b­u­tion of 50,000 leaflets and the actions of anar­chist art troop
Weird Load helped make the ral­ly such a suc­cess:
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20050

2) RATCLIFFE ACTION VERDICT — NOTTINGHAM, 25.2.08
Fol­low­ing their attempts to halt oper­a­tions and thus dimin­ish CO2
emis­sions at the Rat­cliffe-on-Soar pow­er sta­tion last April, 10 activists
were recent­ly back in court. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the defen­dants’ defence of
envi­ron­men­tal neces­si­ty was reject­ed and they were found guilty. The judge
had ear­li­er said that he wished to com­pli­ment all the defen­dants on the
pre­sen­ta­tion of their case.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/392323.html

3) BP AMERICA, EXXON MOBIL AND CO. IN THE DOCK — ALASKA, 27.2.08
Mean­while, in Alas­ka, lawyers for the native coastal vil­lage of Kivali­na
have filed a suit argu­ing that 5 oil com­pa­nies, 14 elec­tric util­i­ties and
the coun­try’s largest coal com­pa­ny were respon­si­ble for the relo­ca­tion of
vil­lagers because of flood­ing caused by the chang­ing Arc­tic cli­mate.
“There has been a long cam­paign by pow­er, coal and oil com­pa­nies to
mis­lead the pub­lic about the sci­ence of glob­al warm­ing,” the suit says.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/us/27alaska.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Flooded+Village+Files+Suit%2C+Citing+Corporate+Link+to+Climate+Change+&st=nyt&oref=slogin

4) HANDS OFF IRAQI OIL! ACTIONS — UK AND NETHERLANDS, 23.2.08
In sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Iraqi peo­ples’ strug­gle against the plun­der of
their oil reserves, there were actions in Birm­ing­ham, Lon­don, Liv­er­pool,
Wrex­ham, Coven­try and Ams­ter­dam.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/392315.html

5) EARTH FIRST! BLOCKADES POWER PLANT CONSTRUCTION — FLORIDA, 18.2.08
Dozens of con­cerned com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers from Palm Beach Coun­ty and across
the States put their bod­ies on the line to halt con­struc­tion of a mas­sive
gas-fired pow­er plant. A dozen activists locked them­selves togeth­er
through met­al pipes as 200 sup­port­ers ral­lied around them. The block­ade
stopped work on the con­struc­tion site for six hours before a total of 27
peo­ple were arrest­ed.
http://www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/wordpress/2008/02/19/blockade-shuts-down-south-florida-power-plant-construction-27-arrested/
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20038

6) RTNA/EARTHFIRST! PIPELINE ACTION — PORTLAND, U.S. 23.1.08
The above block­ade fol­lowed anoth­er com­bined action where Cas­ca­dia Ris­ing
Tide joined forces with Stump­town Earth First! to hold an action and ral­ly
at the Port­land office of NW Nat­ur­al in protest at their involve­ment in
Liq­ue­fied Nat­ur­al Gas pipelines, which threat­en to clear-cut strips of
for­est through­out Ore­gon for new fos­sil fuel infra­struc­ture. Activists
piled trees around the office entrance and hung a large ban­ner which read
— “There’s noth­ing Green about Clear-cuts, No new pipelines”.
http://www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/wordpress/2008/01/23/cascadia-rt-organizes-anti-lng-action-at-nw-natural/

7) SABOTAGE AT GLENSANDA — YORKSHIRE, FEBRUARY 2008
An aggre­gates pro­cess­ing plant on the edge of the York­shire Dales Nation­al
Park has been sab­o­taged. 20% of the stone extract­ed will go to major road
net­work con­struc­tion across Europe. The plant in York­shire was entered and
vehi­cles, includ­ing all bull­doz­ers, had holes drilled in vital parts of
their engines and their tires. Both con­trol rooms were bro­ken into and all
com­put­ers and instru­ment pan­els were smashed. Keys to all build­ings and
machin­ery were removed from the site. The mes­sage “Stop Glen­san­da” was
left.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20043

8) PLANKTOS DUMPING SCHEME DEFEATED BY ANTI-WHALERS — MADEIRA, 14.2.08
Plank­tos, the Cal­i­for­nia com­pa­ny try­ing to turn a prof­it by fer­til­iz­ing
the ocean with iron dust, has pulled the plug on planned field tests. On
the com­pa­ny’s web-site, a sim­ple notice blamed the shut­down on a “high­ly
effec­tive dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign waged by anti-off­set cru­saders.” In
Novem­ber 2007, the anti-whal­ing ship Sea Shep­herd con­front­ed the Plank­tos
ves­sel and forced it to move onto Madeira. And there it stayed until its
recall last month.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/19989

9) COMMUNITY HALTS SHELL — IRELAND, 12.2.08
The Erris com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­ues to pro­tect the land — sur­vey work was
stopped and trucks were blocked. Local peo­ple pre­vent­ed Shell from ille­gal
work for 4 hours until Gar­dai forced through work­ers, injur­ing pro­test­ers.
http://www.corribsos.com/index.php?id=1686
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/19977

10) CRITICAL MASS HERO CLEARED — BRISTOL, 7.2.08
In May last year, some­one stood in the road and tried to stop a car that
had hit a Crit­i­cal Mass cyclist, from dri­ving away. For that he was
arrest­ed for obstruct­ing the high­way, thrown to the floor by his neck
whilst hand­cuffed, and then — sur­prise sur­prise — also arrest­ed for
assault­ing a police offi­cer.
After 9 months of ner­vous wait­ing, he was final­ly cleared of all charges,
as Bris­tol Mag­is­trates Court accept­ed a sub­mis­sion that the police
evi­dence was at best ‘severe­ly flawed’ and at worst, fab­ri­cat­ed, and the
tri­al was stopped.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/19971

11) KLIMAX SURGE ON! — SWEDEN, JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2008
Groups of activists con­nect­ed to Kli­max, Sweden’s direct action move­ment
against the root caus­es of cli­mate change, struck repeat­ed­ly last month.
At Malmö Air­port, sev­en activists were appre­hend­ed when try­ing to break
into the run­way, some of them dressed as polar bears. Some 30 activists
put up a block­ade in the mid­dle of the high­way run­ning through Umeå, the
largest city in north­ern Swe­den.
A sim­i­lar num­ber staged a protest out­side the office of Swedish Meat, a
major meat cor­po­ra­tion, to high­light the severe effects the indus­try is
hav­ing on our cli­mate. Anoth­er 50 activists marched into the traf­fic on
one of the major streets in inner city Stock­holm, seiz­ing it for 15
min­utes. The action was direct­ed against a planned mega-high­way, to be
built in the west­ern parts of the cap­i­tal.
http://klimatet.org/2008/02/17/action-report/
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20019
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20035

12) TARA CAMPAIGN UPDATE — FEBRUARY 2008
Lock-ons and dig­ger-div­ing, plus protest camp con­tact.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/19996
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20126

13) 15 ACTIONS TO TOPPLE THE FOSSIL FUEL EMPIRE — FEBRUARY 2008
Ris­ing Tide’s newest resource, on why and how to take direct action
against the fos­sil fuel indus­try… includ­ing plan­ning tips, tar­get
loca­tions, exam­ples of suc­cess­ful actions and more. Email us for a hard
copy or down­load it here:
http://risingtide.org.uk/resources/other

14) RISING TIDE POP-ED RESOURCE PACK — FEBRUARY 2008
A pop­u­lar edu­ca­tion resource packed with tools to help you run engag­ing,
inter­ac­tive work­shops on all aspects of cli­mate change for a wide range of
peo­ple. Down­load it here: http://risingtide.org.uk/resources/other

15) “RISING TO THE CLIMATE CHALLENGE” BOOKLET — FEBRUARY 2008
Cli­mate change myth-bust­ing book­let designed to help peo­ple cut through
the fog of con­fu­sion and mixed mes­sages about cli­mate change and to be a
use­ful resource for com­mu­ni­ty groups and indi­vid­u­als all over Scot­land.
Down­load from the web­site at www.sead.org.uk

16) “BURNING CAPITAL” — FEBRUARY 2008
This com­pelling series of short films explores the role of Britain’s
largest cor­po­ra­tion in the grow­ing cli­mate cri­sis. Burn­ing Cap­i­tal is a
video voy­age through the murky world of oil giant BP, who kind­ly deliv­ered
1.3 bil­lion tonnes of car­bon diox­ide to the atmos­phere last year.
Watch the films now at; http://www.platformlondon.org/burning

17) SPIRIT OF FREEDOM — FEBRUARY 2008
Earth Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers Sup­port Net­work newslet­ter. They’re in there
for us out here — Please write!
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/19960

18) CLIMATE CHANGE SOLUTIONS CENTRE — FEBRUARY UPDATE 2008
A group of envi­ron­men­tal and com­mu­ni­ty-based organ­i­sa­tions in the South
West have made a bid to found an inde­pen­dent, inter-dis­ci­pli­nary ‘Cli­mate
Change Solu­tions Cen­tre’, on the site of an ex-agri­cul­tur­al col­lege
cur­rent­ly owned by Ply­mouth Uni­ver­si­ty. For more details, and infor­ma­tion
on how to sup­port the plans, please see; www.climatechangecentre.co.uk

19) “THE AGE OF STUPID” — FEBRUARY 2008
A cli­mate change doc­u­men­tary for the big screen from Fran­ny Arm­strong
(McLi­bel) and John Battsek (One Day In Sep­tem­ber). Mix­ing doc­u­men­tary
footage, dra­ma and cut­ting-edge ani­ma­tion, and star­ring Pete Postleth­waite
as an old man liv­ing in the dev­as­tat­ed world of 2055. As he watch­es
‘archive’ footage from 2007, he asks him­self: Why did­n’t we stop cli­mate
change when we had the chance? http://www.ageofstupid.net

20) AIRPORT WATCH BULLETIN — FEBRUARY 2008
For infor­ma­tion about the cam­paigns against sui­ci­dal expan­sion at
Heathrow, Bris­tol, Lon­don City, Lydd, Carlisle, Newquay and oth­er air­ports
see; www.airportwatch.org.uk

21) ‘CAUSES CLIMATE CHANGE’ WEBSITE
Sub­ver­tis­ing ideas and resources.
http://www.causesclimatechange.blogspot.com/

———-

Please send any­thing you’d like includ­ed in this news sheet to:
newssheet@risingtide.org.uk

To view pre­vi­ous edi­tions of the Ris­ing Tide News Sheet, vis­it the News
Sheet Archive at http://risingtide.org.uk/newssheet

This News Sheet was brought to you by Ris­ing Tide, a grass­roots net­work
of groups and indi­vid­u­als com­mit­ted to tak­ing action and build­ing a
move­ment against cli­mate change.

For more infor­ma­tion…
email: info@risingtide.org.uk
Phone: +44 (0)845 458 8923 / +44 (0)7708 794665
Address: 62 Fieldgate St, Lon­don, E1 1ES
Web site: http://risingtide.org.uk

PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO A FRIEND AND INVITE THEM TO JOIN THE LIST

To sub­scribe or unsub­scribe vis­it:
http://risingtide.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/rt-news

ELF Burn Down Luxury Homes

3.03.2008
Ear­ly this morn­ing, at around 4am, three mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar mod­el homes in a Seat­tle sub­urb were burnt down with mes­sages left by the ELF, “Built Green? Nope black!”, mock­ing the claims that the homes were envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly.

3.03.2008
Ear­ly this morn­ing, at around 4am, three mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar mod­el homes in a Seat­tle sub­urb were burnt down with mes­sages left by the ELF, “Built Green? Nope black!”, mock­ing the claims that the homes were envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly.

The build­ings, orig­i­nal­ly esti­mat­ed at $2 mil­lion, then re-cal­cu­lat­ed to be worth $7 mil­lion dol­lars, and were com­plete­ly destroyed in the fires.

Oth­er mes­sages were spray­paint­ed on homes “Stop Urban Sprawl”; “If you build it we will burn it”; and “Burn the rich.”

A ban­ner was also left say­ing: “Built green? Nope black! McMan­sions in RCD’s r not green. ELF”

RCD=rural clus­ter devel­op­ments

»

ELF: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Liberation_Front

Video: http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/03/03/seattle.fire/#cnnSTCVideo

Sources: http://news.google.co.uk/news?hl=en&tab=wn&ie=UTF‑8&ncl=1138828157Seattle houses ELF 2

Japanese Whaling Fleet Confronted By Sea Shepherd + Interview With Nottingham Activist On Board

3.03.2008 — Aboard the M/Y Steve Irwin South­ern Oceans —The crew on the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin engaged in a con­fronta­tion with the Japan­ese fac­to­ry ship Nis­shin Maru this morn­ing between 0800 and 1000 Hours. The Nis­shin Maru can­not out­run the Steve Irwin. After a 12 hour chase the Sea Shep­herd ship closed the gap and passed along­side the Nis­shin Maru. The crew deployed over two dozen bot­tles of rot­ten but­ter send­ing a stench through­out the whale killing ship that will remain for days. The crew also threw pack­ets of a slip­pery chem­i­cal onto the deck of the Nis­shin Maru. This will make it very dif­fi­cult to cut up whales. The sub­stance becomes even more slip­pery with water so it will be dif­fi­cult to wash it off the decks.

rotten butter throwing Sea Shepherd style3.03.2008 — Aboard the M/Y Steve Irwin South­ern Oceans —The crew on the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin engaged in a con­fronta­tion with the Japan­ese fac­to­ry ship Nis­shin Maru this morn­ing between 0800 and 1000 Hours. The Nis­shin Maru can­not out­run the Steve Irwin. After a 12 hour chase the Sea Shep­herd ship closed the gap and passed along­side the Nis­shin Maru. The crew deployed over two dozen bot­tles of rot­ten but­ter send­ing a stench through­out the whale killing ship that will remain for days. The crew also threw pack­ets of a slip­pery chem­i­cal onto the deck of the Nis­shin Maru. This will make it very dif­fi­cult to cut up whales. The sub­stance becomes even more slip­pery with water so it will be dif­fi­cult to wash it off the decks.

“I guess we can call this non-vio­lent chem­i­cal war­fare,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “We only use organ­ic, non-tox­ic mate­ri­als designed to harass and obstruct ille­gal whal­ing oper­a­tions.” Four armed Japan­ese Coast Guard offi­cers clear­ly iden­ti­fied in their uni­forms video­taped the con­fronta­tion.

The Cap­tain of the Nis­shin Maru played a tape over and over again with a wom­an’s voice say­ing “Warn­ing, warn­ing, this is the Nis­shin Maru cap­tain. Stop your destruc­tive actions imme­di­ate­ly. If you dare to board this ves­sel you will be tak­en into cus­tody and restrained as ille­gal intrud­ers under Japan­ese law.”

Cap­tain Paul Wat­son radioed the Nis­shin Maru to inform them that they had no author­i­ty in the Aus­tralian Antarc­tic Ter­ri­to­ry. Cap­tain Wat­son ordered the Japan­ese cap­tain to cease all whal­ing oper­a­tions and to com­ply with the Aus­tralian Fed­er­al Court rul­ing that pro­hibits the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet from killing whales in the Aus­tralian Antarc­tic Ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters.

The con­fronta­tion took place at 63 Degrees 17 Min­utes South and 126 Degrees and 20 min­utes east. This is 175 miles off the Ban­zare Coast inside the Aus­tralian Eco­nom­ic Exclu­sion Zone. The Steve Irwin has fall­en half a mile off to the star­board side of the Nis­shin Maru. “It stinks too bad to remain any clos­er,” said Todd Emko 32, of New York City.

Not a sin­gle whale has been killed since the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin returned to harass the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet in the Aus­tralian Whale Sanc­tu­ary. “They will not be get­ting their quo­ta this year and that is a cer­tain­ty,” said Jeff Han­son 35, from Fre­man­tle, West­ern Aus­tralia. “In fact I don’t think they will be get­ting half their quo­ta.” In total the Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety has shut down ille­gal Japan­ese whal­ing oper­a­tions for over four and a half weeks.

=======

Inter­view With Not­ting­ham Activist In South­ern Ocean On Board Sea Shep­herd Ship

Dan is an activist from Not­ting­ham who has joined the crew on board the Sea Shep­herd ves­sel Steve Irwin in a bid to stop the ille­gal whal­ing activ­i­ties of the Japan­ese near Antar­ti­ca. The mis­sion, named Miga­loo, start­ed last Decem­ber and after refu­elling in Mel­bourne last month, the Sea Shep­herd crew is back in the oceans, have man­aged to track down the whal­ing fleet and have been in hot per­suit of its main ves­sel, the Yushin Maru No. 2 for the last week. Accor­ing to one of the crew onboard the ship “the weath­er is get­ting cold­er and we are get­ting many hours of dark­ness now. The Antarc­tic win­ter is creep­ing up on us. The seas are get­ting rougher and we are get­ting bliz­zards.” We joined Dan via sat­telite phone to ask him about his adven­tures..

Inter­view 28/02/08

Dan: Hel­lo?

Q: Hel­lo?

Dan: Eh up, how is it going?

Q: Yeah, I’m fine, how are you?

Dan: Good mate.

Q: And you thought you’d get away with not doing an inter­view with us? 🙂 (Dan left ear­li­er than antic­i­pat­ed)

Dan: I knew you’d catch up with me even­tu­al­ly..

Q: So how is it going?

Dan: Yeah, I’m alright. We’re in the mid­dle of the south­ern ocean right now. In a big storm at the moment with things fly­ing around every­where..

Q: I read some stuff about the seas being real­ly rough, var­ied at times it would be like sun­ny and then bliz­zards and things..

Dan: Yeah, I mean we’ve got about 4 meter waves and I’m not sure what the wind­speed is..

Q: But you’re all cop­ing with it?

Dan: Yeah, we did­n’t expect it to be this bad, from the weath­er reports we were get­ting. But its here now..

Q: Could you explain a lit­tle bit about what it is that you guys are doing there at the moment?

Dan: Right now we are chas­ing the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet around the coast of Antar­ti­ca. We’d like to catch up with them and stop them. By con­stant­ly chas­ing them we’re hop­ing to reduce their abil­i­ty to whale. […] They’re cer­tain­ly not whal­ing in this weath­er. The last cou­ple of days they haven’t killed any whales at all.

Q: You’ve been on the chase for a num­ber of days. Is there an end in sight? How long is this gonna go on for?

Dan: I mean depend­ing on the weath­er and stuff we will car­ry on until our fuel runs out. Thats still a good few weeks yet, which should bring us to the end of the whal­ing sea­son actu­al­ly. We should be leav­ing the same time as the [whal­ing] fleet.

Q: Whats your job on the ship?

Dan: Every­one has their set role on the ship. I’m in charge of the deck depart­ment. I am also in charge of all the ships clean­ing duties, mak­ing sure the toi­lets are clean. Also look­ing after all the equip­ment on deck, like the crane and the anchors. I’m also in charge of the inflat­able boats which we use on our actions. Mak­ing sure they are in good work­ing order and get­ting peo­ple trained up to use them. So thats my job. We’ve got nav­i­ga­tors, we’ve got peo­ple in the gal­ly cook­ing, we got peo­ple in the engine room mak­ing sure we have the pow­er and [there is] also a com­mu­ni­ca­tions offi­cer, who keeps us in touch with email etc, lots of dif­fer­ent jobs.

Q: Why did you decide to join the Sea Shep­herd more than any oth­er organ­i­sa­tion, for exam­ple Green­peace?

Dan: I’m inter­est­ed in the Sea Shep­herd because of its direct action angle. We don’t do any protest­ing. We actu­al­ly phys­i­cal­ly try­ing to stop [the whal­ing fleet]. Not real­ly inter­est­ed in just protest­ing, done that before.. I’m con­cerned with sav­ing [ani­mals] from the seas and end­ing whal­ing for­ev­er. Its the Sea Shep­herd direct angle I’m attract­ed to..

Q: Because at the moment there are a lot of laws pro­tect­ing whales.. A lot of laws have been passed, inter­na­tion­al treaties and all sorts which basi­cal­ly pro­hib­it the whal­ing, but no one to enforce them and that that is the task that the Sea Shep­herd has tak­en on.

Dan: In this sit­u­a­tion the Sea Shep­herd is actu­al­ly play­ing the role of the Aus­tralian navy or coast­guard. We’re in Aus­tralian waters and Aus­tralian ter­ri­to­ry. The Aus­tralian [Fed­er­al] Court ruled [recent­ly] that the Japan­ese whal­ing [oper­a­tions] inside their ter­ri­to­ry is ille­gal and that it should be restrained. There just isn’t the polit­i­cal will to do that. Japan and Aus­tralia are impor­tant trad­ing part­ners. There are numer­ous laws which are pro­tect­ing the whales down here, I’m not an expert on all of them, but there is the Con­ven­tion Inter­na­tion­al Trade In Endan­gered Species, the UN World Char­ter for Nature, which is actu­al­ly empow­eres [ordi­nary] peo­ple to enforce these laws, the Inter­na­tion­al Whal­ings Com­mis­sion Mora­to­ri­um on Com­mer­cial Whal­ing, and the Antarc­tic Treaty pro­tects whales. So they are real­ly bla­tent­ly break­ing a whole bunch of laws. So it is a case of law enforce­ment, more so that protest­ing.

Q: Yeah, because I guess there could be a whole load of laws, but if there is no one to enforce them..

Dan: Yeah, its only worth as much as the piece of paper its writ­ten on.. These treaties should either not be agreed on or be enforced.

Q: You’re obvi­ous­ly doing a great job down there, is there any­thing peo­ple can do on land to sup­port the stuff you’re doing down there?

Dan: When you go to the Sea Shep­herd web­site there are numer­ous peo­ple you can con­tact to [con­front] them about their inac­tion. There is Sea Shep­herd UK who are con­stant­ly rais­ing funds. This ship con­sumes huge amounts of diesel and then the main­te­nance and repair. Peo­ple can be sure that any mon­ey they donate will be used direct­ly to [con­front] the whalers.

Q: Is there any­thing you’d like to say to the peo­ple in Not­ting­ham, some who you know and will be read­ing this?

Dan: Hel­lo to every­one I know. Take care of your­selves back there. I’m a bit cold and wet, but yeah, safe so far and I’ll see you all in a few weeks.

Q: Well we wish you all the best, you’re doing a great job down there and there are tonnes of peo­ple who real­ly sup­port the stuff you’re doing and we all know its very impor­tant so keep up the good work!

Dan: Yeah, cheers mate, take care.

Operation Migaloo (Sea Shepherd)

Sea Shep­herd Aussie Crew Pre­pared to Be Tak­en as Pris­on­ers to Japan

Paddy´s Day of Action Against Shell

This year´s St Paddy´s day, 17th March, has been called as an Inter­na­tion­al day of action against shell, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Ross­port.

Peo­ple from all over Ire­land are set to join forces and show their unit­ed strength by going all the way to Lon­don to demon­strate on shell´s front door step.

This year´s St Paddy´s day, 17th March, has been called as an Inter­na­tion­al day of action against shell, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Ross­port.

Peo­ple from all over Ire­land are set to join forces and show their unit­ed strength by going all the way to Lon­don to demon­strate on shell´s front door step.

Glu­aiseacht, the Irish envi­ron­men­tal net­work organ­is­ing the trip, are call­ing for peo­ple to join them at the shell head office in Lon­don, or there is also a call out to take sol­i­dar­i­ty actions at shell garages and offices, St Paddy´s day parades and Irish embassies all over the world to coin­cide with the vis­it from 15th-17th March.

The shell cen­tre is locat­ed on the South Bank in front of Jubilee Gar­dens (SE1)
right next to Water­loo train sta­tion and across from the Lon­don Eye.

What´s Wrong With shell? — The Cor­rib Pipeline Project

Since 2000 the small rur­al com­mu­ni­ty of Ross­port, Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land have been engaged in an epic bat­tle try­ing to pre­vent Shell, Sta­toil, and Marathon from build­ing a poten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing tox­ic onshore gas refin­ery and high pres­sure pipeline in their remote and envi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive region.

Shell are the biggest stake­hold­er and ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the project, so have there­fore been the main tar­get of protest.

Com­mu­ni­ty Strength

From the sum­mer of 2005 mass pick­ets shut down the refin­ery con­struc­tion site after five Ross­port res­i­dents were impris­oned for refus­ing to allow Shell’s
sub-con­trac­tors access to their and their neigh­bours’ small farms which the pipeline is to go through. But in Octo­ber 2006 the Irish state came to the aid of shell by bring­ing in a mas­sive two hun­dred strong police unit to phys­i­cal­ly force a path for Shell to com­mence work. A large police pres­ence, con­sist­ing of Gar­dai (Irish police) from all over Ire­land, has stayed at the site to aid the work to con­tin­ue undis­rupt­ed.

The costs to the Envi­ron­ment, Com­mu­ni­ty & Health

Since shell start­ed build­ing the refin­ery, Car­row­more Lake, which is a Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion as well as the local water sup­ply to 10,000 peo­ple, has been pol­lut­ed with dan­ger­ous­ly high lev­els of alu­mini­um com­ing from the build­ing site.

The gas pipeline is to oper­ate at such high pres­sure that accord­ing to the
government’s safe­ty study if rup­tured could poten­tial­ly kill peo­ple and destroy build­ings for hun­dreds of metres around.

The waste from the refin­ery is to be dumped into Broad­haven bay, where 220 sight­ings of sev­en whale and dol­phin species, plus sight­ings of two seal species have been record­ed.

This is all not to men­tion the irrepara­ble dam­age fos­sil fuels, like gas, are hav­ing on desta­bil­is­ing the glob­al cli­mate.

Although the resis­tance to shell in Coun­ty Mayo is strong, the Irish state & shell´s tac­tics of bru­tal­i­ty, repres­sion and intim­i­da­tion has paid a price on the peo­ple fight­ing the pipeline project.

So mark St Paddy´s day by show­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with their fight!

For more info:

http://www.indymedia.ie/mayo — Reports of news and actions about the pipeline
http://www.struggle.ws/rsc — Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp set­up to aid the cam­paign against shell
http://www.corribsos.com — Cam­paign group Shell to Sea

http://gluaiseacht.nologic.org/wordpress — Glu­aiseacht web­site

Sea Shepherd Finds Japanese Whaling Fleet: They Are On the Run Again

The Japan­ese whal­ing fleet is on the run again. The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety ship Steve Irwin re-locat­ed the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet at 0600 hours this morn­ing, Feb­ru­ary 23, 2008.

Sea Shepherd in pursuitThe Japan­ese whal­ing fleet is on the run again. The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety ship Steve Irwin re-locat­ed the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet at 0600 hours this morn­ing, Feb­ru­ary 23, 2008.

A few hours ear­li­er, the Steve Irwin had been side tracked when it chased a ves­sel that turned out to be a Namib­ian Tooth­fish ves­sel. The Antalles Reefer reg­is­tered in Walvis Bay was found at 0200 Hours. The ves­sel refused to give a fish­ing per­mit num­ber and threat­ened the Steve Irwin by report­ing that it was armed. The Cap­tain of the Antalles Reefer claimed to speak only Russ­ian. The Steve Irwin has a Russ­ian speak­ing crewmem­ber and dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion the Cap­tain said he would resist with force if there was any inter­fer­ence with his oper­a­tions.

Cap­tain Paul Wat­son relayed the infor­ma­tion to the Aus­tralian Cus­toms ves­sel Ocean­ic Viking and report­ed that a sus­pi­cious tooth­fish fish­ing ves­sel was oper­at­ing inside the Aus­tralian Eco­nom­ic Exclu­sion Zone. At 0600 Hours, the Steve Irwin encoun­tered the Fukuyoshi Maru No. 68 which imme­di­ate­ly head­ed east­ward to lead the Sea Shep­herd crew away from the whal­ing fleet. The Steve Irwin con­tin­ued west and the Fukuyoshi Maru No. 68 turned and began to pur­sue the Steve Irwin. It is believed that the Fukuyoshi Maru No 68 car­ries armed Japan­ese coast guard offi­cers.

The Steve Irwin is now pur­su­ing the Nis­shin Maru and two har­poon ves­sels with the Fukuyoshi Maru No. 68 in pur­suit of the Steve Irwin. “The great South­ern Ocean whal­ing ship chase is on again,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “I don’t think any whales are going to be dying today. Our goal is to keep the har­poons qui­et for the next three weeks.”

The weath­er is good, the seas are calm and the chase is thread­ing its way south­west through an obsta­cle course of ice­bergs, growlers, and bergy bits. The Steve Irwin has plen­ty of fuel, water and pro­vi­sions and a crew that is com­mit­ted to shut­ting down the ille­gal whal­ing oper­a­tions of the Japan­ese fleet. “I can’t think of a place I would rather be right now,” said Jeff Hansen from Fre­man­tle, West­ern Aus­tralia. “See­ing the Japan­ese whalers run­ning like cow­ards from the Steve Irwin is a very sat­is­fy­ing expe­ri­ence.”

The chase is tak­ing place some 80 miles north of the Shack­le­ton Glac­i­er off the coast of Queen Mary land, well inside Aus­tralian Antarc­tic Ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters.

On Jan­u­ary 15th, 2008, an Aus­tralian Fed­er­al Court ordered that Japan­ese whal­ing be “restrained” in Aus­tralian ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters. The Sea Shep­herd crew is act­ing to enforce that court order and to uphold numer­ous inter­na­tion­al reg­u­la­tions that the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet has and con­tin­ues to vio­late.

For pre­vi­ous cov­er­age on the Sea Shep­herd see the UK Indy­media fea­ture arti­cle.

http://www.seashepherd.org

Earth First! Blockades Power Plant Construction Site, 27 Arrested

18th Feb­ru­ary 2008
Palm Beach Coun­ty — Ear­ly Mon­day morn­ing dozens of con­cerned com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers from Palm Beach Coun­ty and all over the nation put their bod­ies on the line to halt con­struc­tion of FPL’s West Coun­ty Ener­gy Cen­ter (WCEC), demand­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy, tru­ly clean, renew­able ener­gy and a mora­to­ri­um on devel­op­ment in south Flori­da. Ever­glades Earth First! blocked the main entrance to the WCEC site, a pro­posed mas­sive 3800 MW gas-fired pow­er plant that would emit 12 mil­lion tons of CO2, a lead­ing green­house gas, every year. The plant is cur­rent­ly under con­struc­tion despite ongo­ing legal chal­lenges to the plant’s need­ed per­mits and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, which have been spear­head­ed by the local Palm Beach Coun­ty Envi­ron­men­tal Coali­tion.

West County gas power plant blockade 218th Feb­ru­ary 2008
Palm Beach Coun­ty — Ear­ly Mon­day morn­ing dozens of con­cerned com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers from Palm Beach Coun­ty and all over the nation put their bod­ies on the line to halt con­struc­tion of FPL’s West Coun­ty Ener­gy Cen­ter (WCEC), demand­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy, tru­ly clean, renew­able ener­gy and a mora­to­ri­um on devel­op­ment in south Flori­da. Ever­glades Earth First! blocked the main entrance to the WCEC site, a pro­posed mas­sive 3800 MW gas-fired pow­er plant that would emit 12 mil­lion tons of CO2, a lead­ing green­house gas, every year. The plant is cur­rent­ly under con­struc­tion despite ongo­ing legal chal­lenges to the plant’s need­ed per­mits and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, which have been spear­head­ed by the local Palm Beach Coun­ty Envi­ron­men­tal Coali­tion.

A dozen activists locked them­selves togeth­er through met­al pipes as 200 sup­port­ers ral­lied around them. The block­ade stopped work on the con­struc­tion site for six hours before a total of 27 peo­ple were arrest­ed.

This con­fronta­tion­al action was tak­en to pro­tect the Lox­a­hatch­ee Nation­al Wildlife Refuge which sits 1000 ft from the pow­er plant site and to pro­tect the larg­er Ever­glades sys­tem. Restora­tion would be under­mined by new devel­op­ment that the pow­er plant is expect­ed to encour­age in the area. The civ­il dis­obe­di­ence action also aims to pro­tect the entire plan­et from the destruc­tive effects of cli­mate change caused by pow­er plant emis­sions.

“We just don’t need this plant,” said Lynne Purvis, an activist with Ever­glades Earth First! who was born and raised in the Lox­a­hatch­ee area. “I’m not will­ing to threat­en the integri­ty of the Lox­a­hatch­ee, one of the last large, intact pieces of north­ern Ever­glades, so that peo­ple can fuel their greedy ener­gy desires.”

Purvis says that the Ever­glades Earth First! group intends to con­tin­ue a sus­tained cam­paign of direct action against this pow­er plant and its adja­cent gas pipeline.
The protest was also attend­ed by grass­roots activists and group across the Unit­ed States who have been par­tic­i­pat­ing in the annu­al Earth First! Win­ter Ren­dezvous. One such group, Ris­ing Tide North Amer­i­ca, is part of an inter­na­tion­al move­ment for cli­mate jus­tice, which con­nects the social and envi­ron­men­tal issues relat­ed to the grow­ing
cli­mate cri­sis and calls for urgent and bold respons­es to the glob­al human-caused dilem­ma.

Bri­an Sloan, an orga­niz­er with Ris­ing Tide North Amer­i­ca and par­tic­i­pant in Mon­day morning’s protest, said “FPL is doing what we call ‘green-wash­ing’. Gas-fired pow­er is not a clean or sus­tain­able ener­gy. It is a dirty and dwin­dling fos­sil fuel.” Sloan also states that Ris­ing Tide does not trust ener­gy com­pa­nies to solve the cli­mate cri­sis. “The solu­tions to cli­mate change will nev­er come from the peo­ple who cre­at­ed the prob­lem.”

Earth First! and the Ris­ing Tide move­ments rec­og­nize that the fight against fos­sil fuel pow­er is being used by the ener­gy indus­try to push a new wave of nuclear ener­gy. These grass­roots groups are com­mit­ted to extend­ing their fight against the dan­gers of nuclear pow­er with an eye on oth­er FPL pro­pos­als, such as Turkey Point and St. Lucie.

For info on local Earth First! efforts, vis­it: www.earthfirst2008oc.info

Con­tact: Ever­glades Earth First! (561) 588 — 9666
Pho­tos avail­able at www.risingtidenorthamerica.org

Ever­glades Earth First! group intends to con­tin­ue a sus­tained cam­paign of direct action against this pow­er plant and its adja­cent gas pipeline.

WE NEED YOUR HELP with bond mon­ey & legal fees for the 27 who were arrest­ed. We need to raise $10,000 to cov­er the bond fees. Please vis­it the Palm Beach Coun­ty envi­ron­men­tal Coali­tion’s web­site to donate online or email us for how to send a check!

Charges dropped against 14-year old & dad who tied themselves to Japanese Embassy

A 14-year-old anti-whal­ing cam­paign­er arrest­ed at the Japan­ese embassy has con­demned a deci­sion to drop charges.

A 14-year-old anti-whal­ing cam­paign­er arrest­ed at the Japan­ese embassy has con­demned a deci­sion to drop charges.

Sophie Wyness was arrest­ed with her father Mar­tin, 50, after tying them­selves to a stair­case inside the Lon­don build­ing on 24 Jan­u­ary.

Crim­i­nal tres­pass charges against the pair, from Here­ford, were dropped for “evi­den­tial rea­sons”.

How­ev­er, the school­girl claimed the case was dropped to avoid dam­ag­ing com­mer­cial ties with Japan.

Sophie said: “If they have resources to spend on triv­ial pros­e­cu­tions like this, they should real­ly be putting them into the fight against Japan’s bar­bar­ic whal­ing indus­try, which is ille­gal under inter­na­tion­al law.”

A spokesman for the CPS said it had dropped the charges for “evi­den­tial rea­sons”.

He said: “After fur­ther review it was decid­ed there was no longer a real­is­tic prospect of con­vic­tion.”

But Mr Wyness, a shop work­er, said he and his daugh­ter were guilty and had gone to court expect­ing to be sen­tenced.

“This is clear­ly a trav­es­ty and is bring­ing British law into dis­re­pute.

“They’re say­ing lack of evi­dence and yet we were guilty. They have all the evi­dence they want for a con­vic­tion.”

Dis­trict Judge Quentin Pur­dy lift­ed an order at the City of West­min­ster Mag­is­trates Court ban­ning the pub­li­ca­tion of Sophie’s name, after legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion from the BBC.

After the court hear­ing Sophie and her father deliv­ered a let­ter to the Japan­ese embassy ask­ing the ambas­sador to put pres­sure on his gov­ern­ment to end whal­ing.

Secu­ri­ty staff at the embassy stopped the pair enter­ing the build­ing, but agreed to pass the let­ter on.

Sea Shepherd Launches Operation Migaloo II / Sharkwater Film released on Feb. 22 / Planktos Ocean Dumping Scheme Defeated

The Hunt for the Japan­ese Whale Poach­ers Resumes…

Press Release: 02/13/2008

After twelve days of repairs, refu­el­ing, re-crew­ing, re-sup­ply­ing and re-pro­vi­sion­ing, the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin is return­ing to the South­ern Ocean. The esti­mat­ed time for depar­ture is 2000 hours Mel­bourne time on Thurs­day Feb­ru­ary 14.

Sea Shepherd's Steve IrwinThe Hunt for the Japan­ese Whale Poach­ers Resumes…

Press Release: 02/13/2008

After twelve days of repairs, refu­el­ing, re-crew­ing, re-sup­ply­ing and re-pro­vi­sion­ing, the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin is return­ing to the South­ern Ocean. The esti­mat­ed time for depar­ture is 2000 hours Mel­bourne time on Thurs­day Feb­ru­ary 14.

“A spe­cial thank-you to Aus­tralia,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “You helped to send the Steve Irwin back to sea as a Valentine’s Day gift to the whales.”

Dona­tions of mon­ey for fuel, dona­tions of food and sup­plies flood­ed onto the decks of the whale con­ser­va­tion ship dur­ing the brief stay in Vic­to­ria dock­lands.

“We are anx­ious to return to the coast of Antarc­ti­ca,” said Sea Shep­herd cook Amber Paar­man from South Africa. “Every moment that we are not on the tail of the Japan­ese fleet means that the lives of the whales are in per­il.”

The Steve Irwin intends to harass and inter­vene against ille­gal Japan­ese whal­ing for the next four to five weeks. This should stop them to the end of the whal­ing sea­son. The fleet’s oper­a­tions were shut down for more than three weeks in Jan­u­ary. Sea Shep­herd intends to shut them down again.

“In Jan­u­ary we pre­vent­ed them from slaugh­ter­ing whales for three weeks, we cost the Japan­ese over two mil­lion dol­lars in fuel dur­ing the pur­suit and we exposed their ille­gal whal­ing activ­i­ties world­wide and most impor­tant­ly we got the sto­ry into the Japan­ese media. This pro­voked a real debate in Japan on the cost of whal­ing to Japan’s rep­u­ta­tion,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son.

The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety does not intend to sur­ren­der the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary to the poach­ers. After this sea­son, Cap­tain Paul Wat­son is work­ing to secure a 2nd ship with the objec­tive of mount­ing a non-stop pur­suit for the 2008/2009 whal­ing sea­son.

The Steve Irwin dropped off 16 vol­un­teer crewmem­bers in Mel­bourne on Feb­ru­ary 2nd and 19 vol­un­teers have joined the crew. Eleven crewmem­bers have been with the cam­paign from the begin­ning.

The 32 crew, 8 women and 24 men return­ing to the South­ern Oceans rep­re­sent 10 dif­fer­ent nation­al­i­ties. In addi­tion to 15 Aus­tralians, crewmem­bers have joined from New Zealand, Cana­da, the U.S.A., Swe­den, South Africa, the Nether­lands, the U.K. Spain, and Japan.

http://www.seashepherd.org
================================

Award win­ning doc­u­men­tary Shark­wa­ter will have its the­atri­cal release in the Unit­ed King­dom on Feb­ru­ary 22. In the film, shark con­ser­va­tion­ist Rob Stew­art teams up with Cap­tain Wat­son and Sea Shep­herd to com­bat the shark fin mafia in Cos­ta Rica and the Gala­pa­gos.

“This is a film that will for­ev­er shat­ter the stereo­typ­i­cal myths that sur­round sharks. Where Jaws taught peo­ple to hate and fear sharks, Rob Stew­art’s pas­sion­ate mas­ter­piece will have peo­ple lov­ing and car­ing for these impor­tant ani­mals,” prais­es Cap­tain Wat­son.

Full details: www.sharkwater.com www.seashepherd.org

UK THEATRICAL RELEASE SCHEDULE
ALL VENUES PREMIERING 22nd FEBRUARY
Lon­don
Apol­lo Cin­e­ma
19 Regent Street Lon­don, SW1Y 4LR

Regions
Birm­ing­ham Show­case
Kings­bury Road (A38) Erd­ing­ton, Birm­ing­ham, B24 9QE

Bris­tol Show­case
Avon Meads, St. Phillips Cause­way, Bris­tol, BS2 0SP

Cardiff Show­case
Heol-Yr-Odyn, Park Nant­garw, Tre­f­for­est Indus­tri­al Estate, Nr Pon­typridd, CF15 7QX

Hull Odeon
Kingston Park, Kingston Street, Hull, HU1 2TX

Glas­gow East Show­case
Bar­rbridge Leisure Cen­tre, Coat­bridge, Glas­gow, G69 7TZ

Nor­wich Odeon
River­side Leisure Park, Wher­ry Road, Nor­wich, NR1 1XA

Not­ting­ham Show­case
Red­field Way, Lenton, Not­ting­ham, NG7 2UW

Leeds/Bradford Odeon
Gal­lagher Leisure Park, Thorn­bury, Brad­ford, BD3 7AT

Man­ches­ter Show­case
Hyde Road (A57), Bel­lVue, Man­ches­ter, M12 5AL

================================

Plank­tos Ocean Dump­ing Scheme Defeat­ed by Anti-Whalers

News release: Sea Shep­herd
02/14/2008

Our cam­paign against Plank­tos Inc. is over. The con­tro­ver­sial plan to dump hun­dreds of tons of iron ore dust into the ocean in a bizarre scheme to seed plank­ton blooms has been aban­doned by the Plank­tos cor­po­ra­tion of Cal­i­for­nia.

This is a vic­to­ry against a cor­po­rate car­bon trad­ing scheme that had no sci­en­tif­ic cred­i­bil­i­ty.

This is from the Feb­ru­ary 13th, 2008 edi­tion of the New York Times” ( http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/commercial-ocean-fertilization-project-
halted/index.html?ref=technology):

“Plank­tos, the Cal­i­for­nia com­pa­ny try­ing to turn a prof­it by fer­til­iz­ing the ocean with iron dust, pulled the plug on planned field tests on Wednes­day, cit­ing a lack of funds. At the com­pa­ny’s Web site, planktos.com, a sim­ple notice blamed the shut­down on a “high­ly effec­tive dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign waged by anti-off­set cru­saders.”

The busi­ness plan had been to sell “car­bon off­set” cred­its earned by trig­ger­ing blooms of phy­to­plank­ton that, in the­o­ry, would absorb a pre­dictable amount of the cli­mate-warm­ing gas car­bon diox­ide through pho­to­syn­the­sis and then sink to the seabed. The cred­its would be sold to com­pa­nies or indi­vid­u­als try­ing to com­pen­sate for unavoid­able emis­sions of car­bon diox­ide (from dri­ving, fly­ing, and the like).

Plank­ton blooms hap­pen nat­u­ral­ly when dust con­tain­ing iron set­tles on ocean waters where a lack of iron oth­er­wise pre­vents plank­ton from thriv­ing. Huge blooms have result­ed after dust from the Sahara Desert blows over the Atlantic, for exam­ple. But efforts to repli­cate the process arti­fi­cial­ly have met with strong oppo­si­tion from envi­ron­men­tal groups. The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety, which for years has con­front­ed, and some­times rammed, whal­ing and fish­ing ves­sels had threat­ened to block a fer­til­iza­tion effort by Plank­tos last sum­mer near the Gala­pa­gos Islands, forc­ing it to change plans.

A num­ber of marine and cli­mate sci­en­tists have also opposed com­mer­cial fer­til­iza­tion efforts, for var­i­ous rea­sons. In a “joint pol­i­cy state­ment” pub­lished in the jour­nal Sci­ence last month, a group of researchers from around the world said trade in car­bon cred­its earned this way was pre­ma­ture “unless research pro­vides the sci­en­tif­ic foun­da­tion to eval­u­ate risks and ben­e­fits.”

The Plank­tos ves­sel Weath­er­bird II has been stuck in port on the Por­tuguese island of Madeira after months of revised plans and failed efforts to attract more investors. Finan­cial trou­bles had been mount­ing for months. On Wednes­day, the com­pa­ny said it had called back the ves­sel and its crew.

The Plank­tos state­ment said:
“Man­age­ment has also rad­i­cal­ly down­sized the com­pa­ny’s staffing while the board of direc­tors has formed a new com­mit­tee to explore all options cur­rent­ly avail­able. Options include a pos­si­ble re-launch of planned marine oper­a­tions, pend­ing addi­tion­al financ­ing or new part­ner­ships, as well as the pos­si­ble pur­suit of oth­er promis­ing busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties in the envi­ron­men­tal sphere.
The board of direc­tors con­tin­ues to believe in the urgent eco­log­i­cal neces­si­ty of its ocean restora­tion plans and the sci­en­tif­ic spe­cious­ness of objec­tions voiced to date. How­ev­er, ide­o­log­i­cal hos­til­i­ty to and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions of this work will con­tin­ue to stymie progress until the true grav­i­ty of our cli­mat­ic and ocean crises is more wide­ly under­stood.”

The Sea Shep­herd Posi­tion:
The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety opposed the iron ore dust dump­ing scheme because it was con­demned by the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency of the Unit­ed States and was in fact a vio­la­tion of Unit­ed States and Inter­na­tion­al reg­u­la­tions on the dump­ing of mate­ri­als at sea. The scheme was also opposed by the Gala­pa­gos Nation­al Park, the Charles Dar­win Foun­da­tion and the Min­istry of the Envi­ron­ment of Ecuador.

Sea Shep­herd did not make any judg­ment on the sci­en­tif­ic mer­its, if any, of the scheme. We act­ed because the dump­ing was a vio­la­tion of Ecuado­ri­an, Amer­i­can and Inter­na­tion­al law.

In August of 2007, Sea Shep­herd blocked the plan in the Gala­pa­gos. In Novem­ber 2007, Sea Shep­herd con­front­ed the Plank­tos ves­sel in Bermu­da forc­ing it to move onto Madeira.
The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety would like to thank Plank­tos for acknowl­edg­ing our oppo­si­tion as the rea­son for the aban­don­ment of this scheme.

Will dump­ing iron ore dust into the sea stim­u­late plank­ton blooms? Will increased plank­ton blooms sequester more car­bon diox­ide? We don’t know but the answers need to be found in the lab before using the liv­ing ocean as a test­ing facil­i­ty. The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety is not in a posi­tion to deter­mine sci­en­tif­ic mer­it. We can only act upon the rec­om­men­da­tions of sci­en­tif­ic bod­ies and law enforce­ment agen­cies. As a part­ner with the Gala­pa­gos Nation­al Park and the Ecuado­ri­an Nation­al Envi­ron­men­tal Police we act­ed in accor­dance to their oppo­si­tion to this scheme and we agreed with the EPA in the USA, and the Dar­win Research Cen­tre in the Gala­pa­gos, that the Plank­tos scheme lacked suf­fi­cient sci­en­tif­ic cred­i­bil­i­ty.

The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor this kind of activ­i­ty and will inter­vene if the plans do not demon­strate test­ed sci­en­tif­ic exper­i­ments that show such plans are safe for marine life.

http://seashepherd.org

3 climate days of action: 1st April (Fossil Fools), 1st May (false solutions) & 3rd June (food)

For Fos­sil Fools Day on 1st April, see pre­vi­ous post
____________________________________________

1 MAY

May­day May­day: Inva­sion of the Cli­mate Snatch­ers.…

Network for Climate Action logoFor Fos­sil Fools Day on 1st April, see pre­vi­ous post
____________________________________________

1 MAY

May­day May­day: Inva­sion of the Cli­mate Snatch­ers.…

As cli­mate change ris­es up the polit­i­cal agen­da, the same cor­po­ra­tions that are large­ly respon­si­ble for the prob­lem are attempt­ing to dom­i­nate the main­stream debate about the solu­tions, in the hope to main­tain the eco­nom­ic sta­tus quo.

A huge num­ber of tech­no-fix­es are form­ing a new eco­nom­ic sec­tor: from bio­fu­els to nuclear pow­er, car­bon-trad­ing to hydro­gen fuel cells, dump­ing urine in the ocean to car­bon cap­ture and stor­age. Every­where cor­po­ra­tions are seek­ing the elu­sive elixir which allows to con­tin­ue busi­ness as usu­al.

All of these tech­nolo­gies are a dis­trac­tion from the real solu­tion to the prob­lems we face: a mas­sive reduc­tion in our con­sump­tion and the end to eco­nom­ic growth.

What’s wrong with these tech­nolo­gies?

* A lot of these tech­nolo­gies won’t be ready in time to save the cli­mate
* Many actu­al­ly increase car­bon emis­sions
* Some rely on a dif­fer­ent non-renew­able resource
* Many have mas­sive envi­ron­men­tal impacts
* None of them can pro­vide us with the amount of ener­gy we cur­rent­ly use
* Many will per­pet­u­ate prob­lems of social injus­tice

On May 1st, inter­na­tion­al work­ers day, lets chal­lenge these false solu­tions to cli­mate chaos and show the real solu­tion: far-reach­ing social change, and reduc­tion in con­sump­tion.

____________________________________________
3 JUNE

Day of Action on Food and Cli­mate Change

The Cli­mate Action day that bites.…

The kind of food we eat con­tributes up to a third of our green­house emis­sions. It’s about time for us to switch to plant based, organ­ic, sea­son­al and local­ly pro­duced food.

Cli­mate action starts on your din­ner plate, in the super­mar­ket, on your allot­ment and in your back yard, in the food pro­cess­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­tres, down on the farm, in your high street, at the air­port and in the lor­ry park.

Take action on 3rd June and help high­light the role of food and the food indus­try in cli­mate chaos.

Get involved — whether you’re into local food, per­ma­cul­ture, ani­mal rights, allot­ment­ing, human­i­tar­i­an issues, food pol­i­tics, trans­port cam­paign­ing. Join the dots on cli­mate change.

____________________________________________

Please dis­trib­ute this info wide­ly, stick it in your diaries and get
plan­ning. More info includ­ing a web­site to fol­low soon! In the mean­time
you can con­tact us at manchester@climatecamp.org.uk

For lots of resources and on tak­ing cli­mate action and con­tact details for
your near­est cli­mate action group see
http://www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk

Support the Eco-Prisoners — Imbolc 2008 — they’re in there for us out here, please write

Spir­it of Free­dom
(Feb­ru­ary 2008)
Pro­duced by
EARTH LIBERATION PRISONERS SUPPORT NETWORK

Earth Liberation Prisoners logoSpir­it of Free­dom
(Feb­ru­ary 2008)
Pro­duced by
EARTH LIBERATION PRISONERS SUPPORT NETWORK

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

Wel­come to the Feb­ru­ary 2008 edi­tion of Spir­it of Free­dom. As we enter Feb­ru­ary so we await three major events. First off, Jeff ‘Free’ Luers is due to be re-sen­tenced. We hope its good news. Sec­ond­ly, Eric McDavid is also due to be sen­tenced. As soon as Eric has been sen­tenced we urge every­one to send him let­ters of sup­port. And third­ly, the police infor­mant Jacob Fer­gu­son is also due to be sen­tenced. His cow­ard­ly deals and treach­ery means he won’t be sent to prison. But we await with inter­est to see what sen­tence this piece of scum does receive. If any­one hears, please do let ELP know. But whilst we await those three sen­tenc­ings, please don’t for­get all the oth­er eco-pris­on­ers. Remem­ber, no mat­ter where you are in the world, sup­port the eco-pris­on­ers and no com­pro­mise in defence of Moth­er Earth!

ECO-DEFENCE PRISONERS

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

Grant Barnes #137563, San Car­los Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty, PO Box 3, Pueblo, CO 81002, USA. Serv­ing 12 years for set­ting fire to a num­ber of SUV vehi­cles. On one of the vehi­cles the let­ters ELF was spray-paint­ed.

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

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

Rod Coro­n­a­do — See details in Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers List.

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

Jef­frey Luers, #1306729, Lane Coun­ty Adult Cor­rec­tions, 101 West 5th Ave, Eugene, OR 97401–2695, USA. Await­ing resen­tenc­ing. Orig­i­nal­ly sen­tenced to 22 years & 8 months for arson on a SUV deal­er­ship & the attempt­ed arson of an oil truck.

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

Daniel McGowan #63794–053, Unit I, FCI Sand­stone, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, PO Box 1000, Sand­stone, MN 55072, USA. Serv­ing 7 years for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an old growth log­ging cor­po­ra­tion. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy.

Christo­pher McIn­tosh #30512–013, FCI Fair­ton, PO Box 420, Fair­ton, NJ 08320, USA. Serv­ing 8 years for set­ting fire to a McDon­ald’s restau­rant.

Jonathan Paul — See details in Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers List.

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

Julio Vil­lanue­va, C.P. Pri­sion De Pam­plona, 31080, Iruna (Navar­ra), Spain.
Serv­ing just under 5 years for sab­o­tag­ing machin­ery at the con­tro­ver­sial Itoiz dam con­struc­tion site.

Joy­an­na Zach­er, #36360–086, FCI Dublin, 5700 8th St.- Camp Parks- Unit F, Dublin, CA 94568, USA. Serv­ing 7 years & 8 months for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an SUV deal­er­ship. Also admit­ted her role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy.

ANIMAL LIBERATION PRISONERS

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

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

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

Nathan Block — See details in Eco Defence Pris­on­ers List.

Mel Broughton TN9138, HMP Wood­hill, Tat­ten­hoe Street, Mil­ton Keynes, Bucks MK4 4DA, Eng­land. On remand accused of involve­ment with an arson and black­mail cam­paign against an Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty vivi­sec­tion estab­lish­ment.

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

Rod Coro­n­a­do, Voice of the Earth, PO Box 732, Tuc­son, AZ 85702, USA. Due to be sen­tenced to one-year impris­on­ment after Rod informed peo­ple how to make an incen­di­ary device dur­ing a speech at an ani­mal rights gath­er­ing.

Don­ald Cur­rie A3660AA, HMP Parkhurst, New­port, Isle of Wight, PO30 5NX, Eng­land. Serv­ing an Inde­ter­mi­nate Sen­tence, of not less than six actu­al years, for car­ry­ing out arsons against tar­gets asso­ci­at­ed the vivi­sec­tion indus­try includ­ing HLS.

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

Sarah Gis­borne, LT5393, HMP Down­view, Sut­ton Lane, Sut­ton, Sur­rey, SM2 5PD, Eng­land. Serv­ing 5½ years for con­spir­a­cy to cause crim­i­nal dam­age fol­low­ing the dam­ag­ing of 8 vehi­cles owned by peo­ple linked to Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ence.

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

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

Daniel McGowan — See details in Eco Defence Pris­on­ers List.

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

Jonathan Paul, #07167–085, FCI Phoenix, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, 37910 N 45th Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85086, USA. Sen­tenced to 51 months for an ALF arson on a horse meat plant. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy.

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

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

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

Joy­an­na Zach­er — See details in Eco Defence Pris­on­ers List.

PLOUGHSHARES PRISONERS

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

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

ANTIFA PRISONERS

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

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

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

Gub­s­ki Max­im, VK‑2 — 21, Batowa str. 4, Bobruisk, 213800 Belarus. Serv­ing 3 years for fight­ing with neo-nazis.

Vladislav Vladimirovich Plyashke­vich, IK-10 otryad 4, Novopoltsk‑5 Viteb­skaya oblast, 211440 Belarus. Serv­ing 3 years for fight­ing with neo-nazis.

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

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

OTHER PRISONERS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edward Good­man Africa (AM4974), SCI Mahanoy, 301 Morea Rd, Frackville, PA 17932, USA.

William Philips Africa (AM4984) and Del­bert Orr Africa (AM4985) both at SCI Dal­las Draw­er K, Dal­las, PA 18612, USA.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eng­lish lan­guage ELP Web­site
www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk

North Amer­i­can ELP Web­site
www.ecoprisoners.org

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

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

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

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

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

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