Category: Rest of Europe

Rest of Europe

Rossport round-up

Shell Con­trac­tor Quar­ry Shut Down For Day
Barret’s Quar­ry in Ban­gor Erris shut down by pro­test­ers

Shell Con­trac­tor Quar­ry Shut Down For Day
Barret’s Quar­ry in Ban­gor Erris shut down by pro­test­ers

On Wednes­day 31st August at 8am 15 peo­ple entered Barrett’s quar­ry, just out­side Ban­gor Erris in Co. Mayo and stopped work for the whole day, leav­ing at 5:30pm. Barrett’s is a sub­con­trac­tor on the Cor­rib Gas Project, cur­rent­ly bring­ing truck­loads of grav­el and hard­core to Shell’s site in Augh­oose.

Enter­ing the quar­ry site Wednes­day morn­ing was easy, as there were only a cou­ple secu­ri­ty guards and there is no fenc­ing around the site aside from the front gate. Once peo­ple were on site work was halt­ed pret­ty quick­ly as peo­ple climbed up onto dig­gers and oth­er machin­ery.

No attempt to remove the pro­test­ers was made, and the day was pret­ty calm. Folks even got up to play­ing were­wolves and cha­rades while on the machin­ery in order to pass the time.

At 5:30 after all the work­ers had gone home and there was no chance of them resum­ing their deliv­er­ies to the Shell site, all the pro­test­ers left through the front gate.

Pro­test­ers have been tar­get­ing Barrett’s lor­ries on the pub­lic road over the last few weeks as they were try­ing to make their stone deliv­er­ies to the Shell com­pound, by stop­ping them and climb­ing on top of them. This occu­pa­tion of the quar­ry itself is a mes­sage to all con­trac­tors work­ing for Shell on this project.

Near­by Lennon’s Quar­ry also sup­ply mate­r­i­al to the site and have also had many of their vehi­cles occu­pied in recent weeks. Shell to Sea spokesper­son Ter­ence Con­way said today: “Both busi­ness­es will con­tin­ue to be a tar­get of the cam­paign until they end all work at Shell sites.”

—-

Cor­rib protests – if Tues­day was not mad enough try today
26.8.11
MEP assault­ed, work halt­ed for six hours, cam­paign­ers dri­ve into refin­ery and bounced back out again four hours lat­er

Local Shell to Sea cam­paign­ers and their sup­port­ers at Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp are rest­ing after anoth­er bizarre day of lows, highs and out­right idio­cy dur­ing their ongo­ing protest against Shell in co. Mayo.

The day start­ed unpromis­ing­ly with a 6am sor­tie against the com­pound at Aghoos seek­ing to exploit a cou­ple of weak points in the fence. Shel­l’s con­trac­tors Road­bridge and Shevlins are rac­ing to fin­ish the first bit of work in con­struct­ing the fenc­ing and new entrance way. Every moment is count­ing for them. This left a cou­ple of promis­ing gaps which peo­ple from the camp sought to exploit in their dawn raid.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it was not to be. Secu­ri­ty from IRMS were aggres­sive from the begin­ning and were drag­ging peo­ple across hard-core and the road. Though the main tar­get failed, a sec­ondary one saw two peo­ple get in. As oth­er weak points were probed, one pro­test­er who was on the road was delib­er­ate­ly charged from behind, trip­ping them face-first onto the road. This was all pho­tographed; a com­plaint to a Sergeant import­ed from Gal­way was nat­u­ral­ly treat­ed with dis­dain, the gar­daí hap­pi­ly tak­ing their place as part of Shel­l’s pri­vate secu­ri­ty. This has already been report­ed to the Amnesty/Frontline human rights observ­er in the area and will be pur­sued.

Peo­ple returned to camp to get a bit of rest and recu­per­ate. Just before mid­day, Dublin MEP Paul Mur­phy (of the Social­ist Par­ty) and a num­ber of sup­port­ers turned up. They were shown the camp and giv­en an update as to how the cam­paign has been going.

While this was hap­pen­ing a group of peo­ple wait­ed near the junc­tion near Gle­n­amoy, a key turn­ing point for the vehi­cles com­ing between the refin­ery at Bel­linaboy and the Aghoos com­pound. Most trucks and trac­tors along this route are escort­ed by gar­daí, who have placed offi­cers along this route, and whose vans reg­u­lar­ly fol­low peo­ple walk­ing it.

Despite all this atten­tion from gar­daí, quick think­ing meant that one per­son was able to jump on top of a Bar­retts Quar­ry truck – the firm pro­vid­ing much of the hard-core – at around 1pm. It was a beau­ti­ful moment. Campers, locals, Paul Mur­phy & co all con­verged on the site. A good natured protest ensued, with peo­ple laugh­ing, jok­ing, singing, chil­dren mak­ing water bal­loons and the per­son on top of the truck giv­ing us a ren­di­tion of “Which Side Are You On”, re-word­ed to take in Shell.

In the refin­ery a back­log of trucks and oth­er vehi­cles began to build up. The pub­lic order team turned up with their cher­ry pick­er to remove the per­son on top of the truck. Those in the road sat down and formed two lines wrap­ping arms and legs around each oth­er with the aim of stop­ping the cher­ry-pick­er com­ing in. The thugs from the pub­lic order team wad­ed in, as ever, drag­ging peo­ple out, rip­ping cloth­ing and using pres­sure points on the ear. Paul Mur­phy, who was involved in the line was among those assault­ed in this fash­ion. Nat­u­ral­ly he was livid. Word is that the sto­ry is going ‘viral’.

Not to be deterred, after the per­son on the truck was removed and arrest­ed, peo­ple decamped to the front of the refin­ery. Num­bers grew to over 50 as more locals came to sup­port. It was fan­tas­tic to see old faces again, some­thing that real­ly boost­ed the campers. It was clear there was a buzz despite the rain that came on. There was more play­ing in front of the gates, and a deter­mi­na­tion to resist in the air. For those who had been at the morn­ing protest, it was such a lift. Gar­daí and secu­ri­ty stayed clear; the line of trucks backed up inside the refin­ery grew longer. The per­son who had been arrest­ed was charged, released and came to join the protest.

Even­tu­al­ly Shell caved in. They parked up the trucks and shut up shop at Aghoos at 6.30pm. Though hav­ing pushed their work­ers to keep to the exist­ing timetable, the day was lost to the cam­paign­ers. Fear­ing that they might try and take some of the vehi­cles out the back gate, peo­ple drove around, dri­ving up close to the back gate. Two of these cars dri­ven by locals (well known to secu­ri­ty) and con­tain­ing just as recog­nis­able peo­ple were waved through the refin­ery gates by secu­ri­ty. So, we sus­pect, heads are going to roll. One car drove around and back out again with­out secu­ri­ty actu­al­ly being aware of this. The oth­er stayed in and drove around the refin­ery, two fin­gers up to all who think they can run rough-shod over the peo­ple of Erris. Nat­u­ral­ly, the gar­daí, late to the par­ty this time, then began stop­ping work­ers going in. It was a great turn around to a long day. Now, for anoth­er plan­ning meet­ing…

For Paul Mur­phy’s own account:
I was just about to fin­ish this report when we heard… two IRMS (Shel­l’s pri­vate secu­ri­ty) minibus­es were blocked for an hour. And the car was still in the refin­ery as of 8pm. So down we head again, bare­ly fin­ish­ing inner. Secu­ri­ty had sur­round­ed the car at the inner perime­ter fence as it was try­ing to leave. For some very bizarre rea­son they would not let the car leave by the gate direct­ly in front of it, but want­ed it to go all the way to the back gate.

The occu­pants refused that option as they were wor­ried they would be ambushed. A trac­tor was brought and attached to the back of the car by a rope. For the next hour and a half the car was bounced back­wards across the site. The idio­cy of the peo­ple doing this meant that the car was con­stant­ly bounc­ing and knock­ing against the back of the trac­tor. Once occu­pant phoned the gar­daí for help but the per­son answer­ing the 999 call laughed. It is not hard to see why the gar­daí in Erris are not trust­ed by the peo­ple who live there.

By 9pm a crowd of locals and peo­ple from the camp had assem­bled out­side the back gate in sup­port. Num­bers swelled to forty by 10pm when the trac­tor final­ly brought the car out — gar­daí and secu­ri­ty filled out into the road — the secu­ri­ty clear­ly act­ing like cops again – push­ing con­cerned friends and fam­i­ly away. It was a relief to see our friends safe again.

A long, exhaust­ing day, but amaz­ing in so many unex­pect­ed ways. Wel­come to Mayo.
http://www.rossportsolidaritycamp.org

—-

Mayo Road Block­ad­ed in Inter­na­tion­al Sol­i­dar­i­ty Protest
August 26 2011
From 6.00am to 9.30am this morn­ing, three cam­paign­ers occu­pied Aghoos Road, as part of the ongo­ing protests against the con­tro­ver­sial Shell refin­ery at Bel­linaboy. They formed a tri­an­gle in the mid­dle of the road using a set of espe­cial­ly made arm-tubes. This action fol­lows on from yes­ter­day, which saw the Gar­dai assault Dublin MEP Paul Mur­phy dur­ing a sit-down protest at the same part of the road. The protest stopped a num­ber of Shel­l’s con­struc­tion vehi­cles reach­ing their des­ti­na­tion at Aghoos. All three have been arrest­ed and tak­en to Bel­mul­let.
From 6.00am to 9.30am this morn­ing, three cam­paign­ers occu­pied Aghoos Road, as part of the ongo­ing protests against the con­tro­ver­sial Shell refin­ery at Bel­linaboy. They formed a tri­an­gle in the mid­dle of the road using a set of espe­cial­ly made arm-tubes. This action fol­lows on from yes­ter­day, which saw the Gar­dai assault Dublin MEP Paul Mur­phy dur­ing a sit-down protest at the same part of the road. The protest stopped a num­ber of Shel­l’s con­struc­tion vehi­cles reach­ing their des­ti­na­tion at Aghoos. All three have been arrest­ed and tak­en to Bel­mul­let.

One of those occu­py­ing the road said, “I’m doing this in sup­port of a sim­i­lar protest that took place in Broome Com­mu­ni­ty, Aus­tralia last night. This is a pow­er­ful way to show that strug­gles from Ogo­ni­land in Nige­ria, to the Tar Sands in Cana­da, Aus­tralia, to Erris, Mayo and now to Aus­tralia are linked in com­mon cause. Once we heard about the Broome Com­mu­ni­ty actions we had to show sol­i­dar­i­ty. It feels real­ly pow­er­ful to be part of this.”

The Broome Com­mu­ni­ty are oppos­ing a gas project that par­al­lels the sit­u­a­tion in north-west Mayo. Like Mayo, Shell is one of the com­pa­nies being resist­ed by local com­mu­ni­ties. Links between the two com­mu­ni­ties are being estab­lished, and award win­ning film “The Pipe”, which doc­u­ments the Mayo sit­u­a­tion is being shown at events in Aus­tralia.

Yes­ter­day saw a series of events tar­get­ing the Shell refin­ery in Aghoos and Bel­linaboy. The Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp was vis­it­ed by Paul Mur­phy, MEP who came to learn more about local com­mu­ni­ty resis­tance to the project. While tak­ing part in a peace­ful sit-down protest in front of a truck he was assault­ed and had his clothes torn by gar­dai.

Con Cough­lan, from the Camp said, “The deter­mi­na­tion we are feel­ing is incred­i­ble; know­ing that peo­ple in Aus­tralia were doing their protests while we were doing ours was inspir­ing for us all. We send our best wish­es out to them.”

ENDS

*FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:*
Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp 085 1141170

Notes
1. For more infor­ma­tion on the Broome Com­mu­ni­ty protests see http://handsoffcountry.blogspot.com/

2. For reports of events on Thurs­day, 25th August, see
Relat­ed Link: http://www.rossportsolidaritycamp.org

—–

Dai­ly Protests in Mayo, Num­bers Build­ing
Actions are con­stant, some­times 3 or 4 in a day

Between lock-ons, mass tres­pass­es, lor­ry climb­ing and a breach of secu­ri­ty at Shel­l’s refin­ery, this week brought a lot of peo­ple out protest­ing. Locals who haven’t been out on the roads in years have come out this week, and momen­tum is build­ing.

Here are some pho­tos from Wednes­day 24th August that haven’t been post­ed. Tues­day and Thurs­day were so full of events that these pho­tos did­n’t make it up. But things are hap­pen­ing every day, keep look­ing at the shelltosea.com web­site, twit­ter, and indy­media to stay post­ed.

Wednes­day’s events began with a 6am tres­pass onto Shel­l’s com­pound in Augh­oose. Soon after a few peo­ple went to join the locals who are at the refin­ery gates every morn­ing, and 6 peo­ple sat down in the road wrap­ping arms and legs around each oth­er to stop a trac­tor. Gar­dai dragged peo­ple out of the road for the trac­tor to pass. After this one per­son man­aged to climb on top of a truck deliv­er­ing bog­mats out­side the refin­ery. The per­son stayed up for about 10 min­utes but when a gar­da climbed onto the lor­ry and wres­tled her D‑lock away, pre­vent­ing her from lock­ing on, she came down and was not arrest­ed.

Lat­er that day Shell ille­gal­ly extend­ed their Augh­oose com­pound into the pub­lic road, using har­ris fenc­ing to reduce the road to one lane. Shel­l’s pri­vate secu­ri­ty then stood in the pub­lic road, and work­ers yet again stopped traf­fic when­ev­er a deliv­ery was being made to the com­pound (which hap­pens 3–4 times an hour and can mean 5–30 min­utes of road clo­sure). When peo­ple from the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp saw them putting up fenc­ing in the road peo­ple went down to take advan­tage of the nar­row road for the next trac­tor deliv­ery. How­ev­er once again Gar­dai and IRMS worked togeth­er to push peo­ple into ditch­es, con­tain peo­ple, and clear the road.

Hon­est to god direct quote from MY 31 Sergeant Richard Maho­ny, explain­ing why peo­ple must clear the road, “For your own health and safe­ty, or we’ll throw you in the ditch.”

Apolo­gies for the belat­ed­ly post­ed pho­tos, it is not easy keep­ing up with media stuff when actions are hap­pen­ing con­stant­ly! There is plen­ty to do that does­n’t involve protest­ing as well, includ­ing tend­ing to the three gar­dens, cook­ing the com­mu­nal meals, main­tain­ing the wind tur­bines, and every­thing else it takes to main­tain the camp!

The camp is locat­ed in a field over­look­ing the Shell com­pound in Augh­oose, between Bel­lan­aboy and Pul­lath­omas. Come for a vis­it any­time! Con­tact the camp at rossportsolidaritycamp[at]gmail[dot]com or 085 114 1170

—-

Mayo Road Block­ad­ed in Inter­na­tion­al Sol­i­dar­i­ty Protest
From 6.00am to 9.30am Fri­day 26th August, three cam­paign­ers occu­pied Aghoos Road, as part of the ongo­ing protests against the con­tro­ver­sial Shell refin­ery at Bel­linaboy. They formed a tri­an­gle in the mid­dle of the road using a set of espe­cial­ly made arm-tubes.

This action fol­lows on from yes­ter­day, which saw the Gar­dai assault Dublin MEP Paul Mur­phy dur­ing a sit-down protest at the same part of the road. The protest stopped a num­ber of Shel­l’s con­struc­tion vehi­cles reach­ing their des­ti­na­tion at Aghoos. All three have been arrest­ed and tak­en to Bel­mul­let.

One of those occu­py­ing the road said, “I’m doing this in sup­port of a sim­i­lar protest that took place in Broome Com­mu­ni­ty, Aus­tralia last night. This is a pow­er­ful way to show that strug­gles from Ogo­ni­land in Nige­ria, to the Tar Sands in Cana­da, Aus­tralia, to Erris, Mayo and now to Aus­tralia are linked in com­mon cause. Once we heard about the Broome Com­mu­ni­ty actions we had to show sol­i­dar­i­ty. It feels real­ly pow­er­ful to be part of this.”

The Broome Com­mu­ni­ty are oppos­ing a gas project that par­al­lels the sit­u­a­tion in north-west Mayo. Like Mayo, Shell is one of the com­pa­nies being resist­ed by local com­mu­ni­ties. Links between the two com­mu­ni­ties are being estab­lished, and award win­ning film “The Pipe”, which doc­u­ments the Mayo sit­u­a­tion is being shown at events in Aus­tralia.

Yes­ter­day saw a series of events tar­get­ing the Shell refin­ery in Aghoos and Bel­linaboy. The Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp was vis­it­ed by Paul Mur­phy, MEP who came to learn more about local com­mu­ni­ty resis­tance to the project. While tak­ing part in a peace­ful sit-down protest in front of a truck he was assault­ed and had his clothes torn by gar­dai.

Con Cough­lan, from the Camp said, “The deter­mi­na­tion we are feel­ing is incred­i­ble; know­ing that peo­ple in Aus­tralia were doing their protests while we were doing ours was inspir­ing for us all. We send our best wish­es out to them.”

ENDS

Notes
1. For more infor­ma­tion on the Broome Com­mu­ni­ty protests see http://handsoffcountry.blogspot.com/

2. For reports of events on Thurs­day, 25th August, see
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/100407 and
This action fol­lows on from yes­ter­day, which saw the Gar­dai assault Dublin MEP Paul Mur­phy dur­ing a sit-down protest at the same part of the road. The protest stopped a num­ber of Shel­l’s con­struc­tion vehi­cles reach­ing their des­ti­na­tion at Aghoos. All three have been arrest­ed and tak­en to Bel­mul­let.

One of those occu­py­ing the road said, “I’m doing this in sup­port of a sim­i­lar protest that took place in Broome Com­mu­ni­ty, Aus­tralia last night. This is a pow­er­ful way to show that strug­gles from Ogo­ni­land in Nige­ria, to the Tar Sands in Cana­da, Aus­tralia, to Erris, Mayo and now to Aus­tralia are linked in com­mon cause. Once we heard about the Broome Com­mu­ni­ty actions we had to show sol­i­dar­i­ty. It feels real­ly pow­er­ful to be part of this.”

The Broome Com­mu­ni­ty are oppos­ing a gas project that par­al­lels the sit­u­a­tion in north-west Mayo. Like Mayo, Shell is one of the com­pa­nies being resist­ed by local com­mu­ni­ties. Links between the two com­mu­ni­ties are being estab­lished, and award win­ning film “The Pipe”, which doc­u­ments the Mayo sit­u­a­tion is being shown at events in Aus­tralia.

Yes­ter­day saw a series of events tar­get­ing the Shell refin­ery in Aghoos and Bel­linaboy. The Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp was vis­it­ed by Paul Mur­phy, MEP who came to learn more about local com­mu­ni­ty resis­tance to the project. While tak­ing part in a peace­ful sit-down protest in front of a truck he was assault­ed and had his clothes torn by gar­dai.

Con Cough­lan, from the Camp said, “The deter­mi­na­tion we are feel­ing is incred­i­ble; know­ing that peo­ple in Aus­tralia were doing their protests while we were doing ours was inspir­ing for us all. We send our best wish­es out to them.”

ENDS

Notes
1. For more infor­ma­tion on the Broome Com­mu­ni­ty protests see http://handsoffcountry.blogspot.com/

2. For reports of events on Thurs­day, 25th August, see above, or
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/100407 and
http://www.paulmurphymep.eu/breaking-news-how-the-gardai-assaulted-me-and-other-peaceful-protestors-in-rossport

The Black Fish is looking for crew members

The marine pro­tec­tion organ­i­sa­tion The Black Fish is look­ing for peo­ple to join its direct action team and future ship’s crew.

The marine pro­tec­tion organ­i­sa­tion The Black Fish is look­ing for peo­ple to join its direct action team and future ship’s crew. “In order to be effec­tive in our marine con­ser­va­tion cam­paigns, we need to be out at sea, oppos­ing the most destruc­tive fish­ing and hunt­ing activ­i­ties, where they hap­pen away from the pub­lic eye.” For this rea­son The Black Fish is work­ing towards the pur­chase of an ocean going ves­sel and is look­ing for crew mem­bers.

“There are pos­si­bil­i­ties open­ing up to us which might see us get­ting access to a ves­sel in the near future. We need a crew for the ini­tial over­haul of this ship and prepar­ing it for its first cam­paign.” accord­ing to Wietse van der Werf, spokesper­son for the organ­i­sa­tion.

The Black Fish has launched a crew appli­ca­tion page where peo­ple can apply for vol­un­tary crew posi­tions. “We are look­ing for peo­ple with sail­ing expe­ri­ence but this is not a neces­si­ty for the entire crew. Will­ing­ness and ded­i­ca­tion to com­mit time and hard work to make future cam­paigns of The Black Fish a suc­cess, that is a must.”

Any ques­tions relat­ed to crew­ing with The Black Fish, please see the crew­ing page on our web­site or con­tact the crew­ing coor­di­na­tor at crew@theblackfish.org

We look for­ward to your appli­ca­tion!

http://www.theblackfish.org/

HIGHWAY PROJECT SABOTAGED

received anony­mous­ly:

“10 kms of inter­state high­way staked out for exten­sion were sab­o­taged last week in North­ern Ukraine.

received anony­mous­ly:

“10 kms of inter­state high­way staked out for exten­sion were sab­o­taged last week in North­ern Ukraine.

Although some could argue that activism like this is not even worth men­tion­ing (that’s our own atti­tude on the mat­ter, for exam­ple, like shoplift­ing or sten­sils), we do find it nec­es­sary to men­tion the act.

First rea­son is an impor­tant notice that usu­al­ly fails to make its way into minds of some of our com­rades. While it is impor­tant to respond to Sys­tem offen­sive actions (like reac­tive attacks that took place in Kharkov and Saint-Peters­burgh and Moscow and basi­cal­ly every­where, where eco-anar­chists RESPOND to rap­ing of Nature), we find it more impor­tant to con­tin­ue our attacks on tech­nol­o­gy and its means of destruc­tion of nature even when no con­crete offense is tak­ing place.
In our case we just hap­pened upon some old high­way exten­sion project, which, like many cost­ly projects in Ukraine, was sus­pend­ed because of awful econ­o­my of the coun­try. Moth­er-Nature has already start­ed reclaim­ing the area, with grass and dirt cov­er­ing plates of con­crete and some sur­vey stakes.

But its obvi­ous for every­one liv­ing in here that projects like this (inter­state high­way between Moscow and Kiev) will be put to life, for exam­ple as soon as next bil­lion of dol­lars gets send by IMF or some­thing.
So our small vagabond group of earth lib­er­a­tionists went to van­dal­ism as soon as sur­vey stakes were noticed. Just to help the Wild and has­ten the process. We do believe the task was worth it.

And the rea­son for this is the thing that’s often lost in com­mu­niques of our com­rades world-wide. Its the most won­der­ful and mag­i­cal feel­ing of com­mu­nion with nature. When one does not only feels invig­o­rat­ed and excit­ed because of his deeds, but some­thing extra­or­di­nary hap­pens, that gives hope and pro­vides the momen­tum nec­es­sary for con­tin­u­a­tion of our project.

Dur­ing the process of (tire­some and dan­ger­ous ’cause of police inter­ven­tion) joy­ful destruc­tion, our hun­gry and thirsty band (rea­sons for our thirst and hunger being banal trav­el from point A to point B) kept stum­bling upon boun­ti­ful bush­es of wild sweet­bri­ar, so that we man­aged to fill our­selves and eat/suck the juices to our delight.
It is in moments like this that one gets to real­ly appre­ci­ate the con­nec­tion that comes into being when one turns away from civ­i­liza­tion and towards untamed Wild.

- Inter­na­tion­al ELF/FAI”

Three Heavy Machines torched at Ukraine Construction Site

30.8.11

report­ed by activists in Ukraine (pho­to from 057.ua):

“In the night of August 28th, 3 wheeled load­ers were torched in Gorky Park (Kharkov, Ukraine).

30.8.11

report­ed by activists in Ukraine (pho­to from 057.ua):

“In the night of August 28th, 3 wheeled load­ers were torched in Gorky Park (Kharkov, Ukraine).

Accord­ing to the chief engi­neer of Gorky Park, Oleg Gri­nenko, the load­ers had just start­ed their work in the park. The equip­ment belonged to a sub­con­trac­tor whose task was to pro­vide for new road infra­struc­ture. One of the destroyed loader’s mar­ket price was esti­mat­ed as $60,000.

Since the begin­ning of con­struc­tion on May 2011 , the con­struc­tion site has seen numer­ous eco­tage actions, expro­pri­a­tions of con­struc­tion equip­ment and mass protests.”

Sea Shepherd Prevents Pilot Whale Bloodshed in the Faeroe Islands

26 August 2011

26 August 2011

Operation Ferocious Isles Pilot Whale Defense Campaign is a Success

“Sail forth — steer for the deep waters only,
Reck­less O soul, explor­ing, I with thee and thou with me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, our selves and all.”
- Walt Whit­man 

Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Society’s Oper­a­tion Fero­cious Isles pilot whale defense cam­paign is almost over and it looks like our objec­tive has been achieved. Not a sin­gle whale or dol­phin has been killed on the beach­es or in the waters of the Faeroe Islands under our watch this July and August.

Ear­li­er in the sum­mer, the Faeroese police ordered that no grinds (pilot whale dri­ves and slaugh­ter) would be allowed for as long as the Sea Shep­herd ships were in Faeroese waters. Thus, our mere watch­ful pres­ence pre­vent­ed any killings this sum­mer sav­ing hun­dreds of whales as a result. Not a dra­mat­ic cam­paign by far, but enor­mous­ly suc­cess­ful nonethe­less.

It remains pos­si­ble that whales may be killed after the Steve Irwin and the Brigitte Bar­dot leave patrol, but June, July, and August are the three most noto­ri­ous months for the slaugh­ter of the whales as they are peak migra­tion months. Our objec­tive was to pre­vent the killing of any whales dur­ing this peri­od and that objec­tive has been real­ized, there­fore, Oper­a­tion Fero­cious Isles has been extra­or­di­nar­i­ly suc­cess­ful.

Addi­tion­al­ly dur­ing the dura­tion of the cam­paign, the crews of our two Sea Shep­herd ships were able to meet and speak to hun­dreds of Faeroese youth. We were pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to find so many young peo­ple in oppo­si­tion to the grind.

Sea Shep­herd had hoped to make a pub­lic pre­sen­ta­tion but unfor­tu­nate­ly, our request was denied by the Faeroese gov­ern­ment, although our pres­ence gen­er­at­ed a great deal of pub­lic­i­ty both in the Faeroes and in Den­mark.

Sig­nif­i­cant cam­paign achieve­ments include increas­ing inter­na­tion­al aware­ness of the whal­ing that takes place in the Faeroes, pro­vok­ing con­tro­ver­sy and dis­cus­sion amongst the local peo­ple, increas­ing spend­ing for the Dan­ish Navy and police dur­ing the Sea Shepherd’s time in Faeroese waters, and most impor­tant­ly, pre­vent­ing a sin­gle grind from tak­ing place.

The two Sea Shep­herd ships will return to Great Britain to begin to make prepa­ra­tions for a return voy­age to the Antarc­tic waters to once again inter­vene against ille­gal Japan­ese whal­ing activ­i­ties in the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary.

The Steve Irwin will host a fundrais­ing event on the Thames (riv­er) in Lon­don on Sep­tem­ber 13th.

The crews of the Steve Irwin and the Brigitte Bar­dot are very hap­py with the results of this year’s cam­paign and are anx­ious to return and once again inter­cept the Japan­ese fleet to pre­vent them killing whales off the coast of Antarc­ti­ca.  

“Over the past few months we saw whales, we deterred whales from approach­ing the islands, we pre­vent­ed the killing of whales by just being here. We could not be any more pleased with the results of the cam­paign. Zero kills trans­lates into a per­fect cam­paign and we are extreme­ly hap­py with the results of our efforts this sum­mer,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son.

This has been a very busy year for Sea Shep­herd begin­ning with our vic­to­ry over the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet by dri­ving them out of the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary a month and a half before their sea­son end­ed and pre­vent­ing them from killing 83% of their intend­ed kill quo­ta. Since our vic­to­ry in the South­ern Ocean, we have cap­tured poach­ers in the Gala­pa­gos, con­front­ed tuna poach­ers off the coast of Libya, protest­ed at the 63rd Annu­al Inter­na­tion­al Whal­ing Com­mis­sion meet­ing in Jer­sey, exposed the atroc­i­ties of the seal slaugh­ter in Namib­ia, helped catch the crim­i­nals who vicious­ly clubbed seal pups in New Zealand, reduced the num­ber of dol­phins killed in Tai­ji, Japan by half, and now, we can rel­ish in this vic­to­ry for the pilot whales here in the Faeroes.

Nev­er before has Sea Shep­herd been so active and effec­tive on a tru­ly inter­na­tion­al lev­el.

And the rea­son for our suc­cess­es is your con­tin­ued sup­port. We do the best we can with the resources avail­able to us and increased sup­port trans­lates into increased activism.

Our sup­port base is steadi­ly grow­ing thanks to the momen­tum of recent doc­u­men­tary films fea­tur­ing Sea Shep­herd includ­ing Eco-Pirate: The Sto­ry of Paul Wat­son, Minds in the Water, and Con­fes­sions of an Eco-Ter­ror­ist. And of course, thanks to Ani­mal Planet’s hit tele­vi­sion series Whale Wars now in its fourth sea­son.   

“What gives me such sat­is­fac­tion is know­ing that because we have inter­vened, because our ships have been on the water around the world, that so many marine lives have been saved,” said Cap­tain Wat­son. “When I think of a moth­er whale and her calf swim­ming free in the sea because we silenced the har­poons this year, I feel deeply and warm­ly sat­is­fied, that all our efforts have been worth the rough seas, the long voy­ages, the dan­ger­ous con­fronta­tions, and the polit­i­cal harass­ment. And to be at sea sur­round­ed by hun­dreds of pilot whales that we were able to keep away from the killers onshore – that was the high­point of our sum­mer.”

Read more in Cap­tain Paul Watson’s An Open Let­ter to the Peo­ple of the Faeroe Islands.

Beneath The Fae’roes Sky  

The North­ern lights were danc­ing, 
On the waves across the sea.
The stars of heav­en hov­ered,
Across our shim­mer­ing galaxy.

A refrain from down the ages,
So in haunt­ing in its song.
These ancient isles shall tell us,
Our love must make us strong.

The wind it swirled around me,
As we stood there off the shore,
And lis­tened to their song,
Like we nev­er heard before.

The whalers they may find them,
No choice may ours to be.
Yet we defend life proud­ly,
For this truth will set us free. 

Mem­o­ries recalled across the years,
Of rages and of strife.
Of cetacean mis­ery,
And the hor­rif­ic waste of life.

We won­dered where love was,
In the face of so much pain.
I looked into the sea below,
To find it once again.

We trav­elled the wide oceans,
Heard many call us names.
With har­poon and gun and hatred,
The insan­i­ty of human games.  

Some used the whales for glo­ry,
Some use them for their gain.
But Sea Shep­herd inter­venes,
To cleanse the cru­el human stain.

Is it not our place to won­der,
As the sea does weep with tears,
And all the ocean’s crea­tures,
Look on with mor­tal fear.

It is ours to hold the tri­dent,
It is ours to hold it long,
It is ours to voy­age for­ward,
Our love must make us strong.  

With the tri­dent in one hand,
In the oth­er, the shepherd’s crook,
We try to regain the bal­ance,
To return what man has took.

And as the cold wind car­ried,
The whale’s  song into the night.
We closed our eyes and dreamt,
Until the morn­ing light.

We saw the pilots swim­ming,
They did swim into our lee,
It was in this mag­ic moment,
Came this song from moth­er sea.  

Our hearts were all a danc­ing,
On the waves, out on the sea.
The whales turned from the shore,
And from the islands they did flee.

A host of ghosts on the beach­es,
So haunt­ing in their song,
These ancient isles have shown us,
That our love has made us strong.  

-By Cap­tain Paul Wat­son, inspired by and with lines bor­rowed from “Beneath a Phry­gian Sky” by Loreena McKen­nitt

Rossport round-up: come fight Shell with us

Day of Chaos against Shell at Aghoos Com­pound
23.08.2011
A mass tres­pass stops work, one per­son on top of a dig­ger for 4 hours

Day of Chaos against Shell at Aghoos Com­pound
23.08.2011
A mass tres­pass stops work, one per­son on top of a dig­ger for 4 hours

Today 25 peo­ple from Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp sus­tained a bar­rage of actions against the site Shell is prepar­ing for its tun­nel bor­ing machine. Despite 80 secu­ri­ty and three vans of gar­daí they were unable to keeps the pro­test­ers out. In the chaos that ensued one per­son got through the lines to d‑lock them­selves to one of the dig­gers and remained up there stop­ping work for 4 hours. Else­where oth­er dig­gers had to stop work­ing as pro­tes­tors approached.

Con Cough­lan, one of those who one of those who breached secu­ri­ty said, “It was an incred­i­ble day. We pushed and pushed. No mat­ter how many times they dragged us out we kept going back. Peo­ple were com­ing from the back, oth­ers were launch­ing them­selves over the fences at the front.”

The day start­ed at 2pm with three sep­a­rate groups com­ing from dif­fer­ent direc­tions. From ear­ly on they began being car­ried out of the com­pound by pri­vate secu­ri­ty, but this was no deter­rent with peo­ple sim­ply dust­ing them­selves off and going back around. Despite their much greater num­bers, secu­ri­ty strug­gled to keep up with the con­stant pres­sure. Numer­ous weak­ness­es in the site perime­ter were found and used to keep peo­ple com­ing in.

It was in a moment of chaos that one per­son found the oppor­tu­ni­ty to slip under a fence and made the dash for the near­est dig­ger. Secu­ri­ty, caught on the hop, despite hold­ing off a num­ber of oth­er pro­test­ers, failed to stop her get­ting on top and using a d‑lock she had brought with her to attach her neck to the roof sec­tion. She then set­tled down for a nap while the rest got on with the day. She was there for four hours and was not arrest­ed.

Most of the work going on was to build the pal­isade fenc­ing for the inner com­pound of the site. This is being sup­plied and installed by Shevlins Engi­neer­ing.

Grainne Bradaigh , anoth­er of those who found a way in said, “We had fun. It was real­ly very empow­er­ing. You could see how effec­tive we were being from the way the work­ers were so frus­trat­ed. It was the first time I’ve done some­thing like this, but I’m def­i­nite­ly up for it again. The gar­daí were out­side act­ing as pri­vate secu­ri­ty for the trac­tors com­ing in, but there was noth­ing they could to do to stop us inside Shel­l’s com­pound.”

Actions have been tak­ing place against Shell in co. Mayo all sum­mer, oppos­ing the con­struc­tion of a pipeline that will pump high pres­sure gas through the beau­ti­ful Broad­haven Bay. It is part of a broad­er cam­paign by locals and those who sup­port their efforts, that has been going on for ten years. Since May a camp has been estab­lished above the impor­tant site at Augh­oose. It is open to all – if you are inter­est­ed in com­ing along, please vis­it the web­site at www.rossportsolidaritycamp.org

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Dou­ble Bar­rel Con­crete Lock-on Stops Shell

Mon­day 22nd August at 6am, two peo­ple locked their arms into con­crete bar­rels in the road between Shel­l’s Bal­linaboy refin­ery and the tun­nel­ing com­pound in Augh­oose. The lock-on last­ed for 7 hours, stop­ping all deliv­er­ies to the com­pound dur­ing that time.

Cur­rent­ly Shell are try­ing to set up a com­pound in Augh­oose, 3km from the refin­ery at Bal­linaboy. They are bring­ing in fenc­ing, bog­mats, steel gird­ers and oth­er equip­ment in order to secure the com­pound. Once it is secure Shell intends to remove 75,000 tonnes of peat from the bog. This bog is an impor­tant wet­land habi­tat, home to frogs and newts and loads of diverse flo­ra and fau­na. After remov­ing the peat they plan on bring­ing in the tun­nel bor­ing machine and begin the tun­nel under the estu­ary for the onshore pipeline.

The con­crete lock-ons were set up at 6am on Mon­day. As Shell nor­mal­ly begins deliv­er­ies to the com­pound from 7am, this 7 hour lock-on effec­tive­ly stopped all deliv­er­ies for 6 hours.

The Gar­da cut­ting team which spe­cialis­es in cut­ting pro­test­ers out of lock-ons and get­ting peo­ple down from high places, did not arrive until 9am. The first per­son was cut out of the first con­crete bar­rel just before 11am. With­in 15 min­utes they began cut­ting the sec­ond con­crete bar­rel to remove the sec­ond per­son. The sec­ond per­son was cut out just before 1pm, at which point the guards called Mayo Coun­ty Coun­cil to clean up the mess of the cut up lock-on.

Local res­i­dents and the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp are doing con­tin­u­ous actions against Shell. If you’ve been mean­ing to come but just haven’t got­ten around to it yet, come for a vis­it. There is plen­ty to do here includ­ing gar­den­ing, cook­ing, site main­te­nance, talk­ing to locals or writ­ing indy­media arti­cles, as well as sit­ting in a lock-on if you like that kin­da thing. The only way to real­ly under­stand what is hap­pen­ing here is to come and see for your­self. The camp is locat­ed in a field in Augh­oose over­look­ing the Shell com­pound, between Pul­lath­omas and Bal­linaboy.

To con­tact the camp, ring 085 114 1170 or email rossportsolidaritycamp[at]gmail[dot]com
http://shelltosea.com

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Gar­daí and Shell Secu­ri­ty Work Hand in Hand Block­ing Pub­lic Roads

An Gar­da Siochana and Inte­grat­ed Risk Man­age­ment Ser­vices (IRMS) polic­ing the roads togeth­er

Mon­day 15th August at 9am a group of 12 peo­ple went down to Shel­l’s com­pound in Augh­oose to stop work. Even­tu­al­ly Shel­l’s pri­vate secu­ri­ty (IRMS) and the Gar­daí began work­ing togeth­er to police the roads and pro­tect deliv­er­ies of equip­ment to the com­pound.

After about an hour of pro­test­ers main­tain­ing a pres­ence on the road and slow­ing the work of the dig­gers, Gar­daí and IRMS formed a line con­tain­ing pro­test­ers on the oppo­site side of the road from Shel­l’s com­pound. The pri­vate secu­ri­ty have absolute­ly no juris­dic­tion on a pub­lic road, so they have no right to be con­tain­ing and han­dling peo­ple.

At one point an IRMS man­ag­er gave orders to the Gar­daí, telling them to back off and allow traf­fic to pass. Sev­er­al cars were held up for at least 15 min­utes while Shell deliv­ered a new dig­ger to the com­pound. In Shel­l’s traf­fic man­age­ment plan it states that the pub­lic road will remain open at all times, how­ev­er in the past few weeks we have seen IRMS clos­ing the pub­lic road for up to 30 min­utes at a time.

On Tues­day 16th August a group of peo­ple went down to the com­pound again to stop the work, this time enter­ing the com­pound from around the side. Some peo­ple were car­ried or escort­ed by IRMS up to the pub­lic road, no arrests were made.

The protests are con­tin­u­ous, and peo­ple are need­ed to sus­tain actions. If you are think­ing of vis­it­ing the camp, any time is a good time. The camp is locat­ed in a field oppo­site the Shell com­pound in Augh­oose, between Bal­linaboy and Pul­lath­omas.

To con­tact the camp, ring 085 114 1170 or email rossportsolidaritycamp[at]gmail[dot]com

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Some Expert Lor­ry Climb­ing Stops Shell

Between a mass tres­pass in the morn­ing, some­one block­ing the road for 2 and ½ hours by climb­ing on top of a lor­ry, and a protest out­side Shel­l’s Bal­linaboy refin­ery, Thurs­day 11th August was a day full of block­ing Shell.

Thurs­day 11th August at 10:30am about 20 peo­ple entered the com­pound in Augh­oose which Shell is expand­ing in order to build the tun­nel for the onshore pipeline. The dig­gers which are lay­ing bog­mats and erect­ing fenc­ing retreat­ed into the cen­tre of the com­pound which is heav­i­ly guard­ed by IRMS, Shel­l’s pri­vate secu­ri­ty force. Work was slowed for an hour and a half while peo­ple were on the site.

At 11:30am some­one man­aged to climb on top of a lor­ry which was about to deliv­er fenc­ing and gird­ers to the com­pound. The halt­ed lor­ry blocked the road so they were not able to bring any­thing else into the com­pound. Shell esti­mat­ed they would be mak­ing 75 deliv­er­ies per day, today they man­aged about 10.

Just before 2pm the Gar­da pub­lic order unit showed up with their new toy, a cher­ryp­ick­er. Sergeant But­ler was dri­ving it, and three pub­lic order Gar­daí went up in the cage and pulled the per­son off of the steel gird­er he was sat on.

Once the road was cleared a few peo­ple went back down onto the com­pound and once again the dig­gers retreat­ed and stopped work­ing for about an hour.

To fin­ish up the day, a group of peo­ple cycled to Shel­l’s Bal­linaboy refin­ery for 6pm and stopped the last few trac­tors of the day from com­ing out, sim­ply by sit­ting out­side the gates and mak­ing tea. Then on the way home the cyclists delayed the IRMS shift change for almost an hour, until the Gar­daí arrived and the cyclists went home for din­ner.

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Cor­rib Gas protest at Augh­oose com­pound

At approx 6.40 am this morn­ing, Wednes­day 9th August, mem­bers of Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp entered Shel­l’s pipe lay­ing com­pound at Augh­oose. Shell is attempt­ing to extend its exist­ing com­pound to facil­i­tate the arrival of its tun­nel bor­ing machine. A total of about 70 I‑RMS secu­ri­ty guards removed 10+ pro­test­ers from the com­pound with force. Gar­dai were stand­ing by to assist the I‑RMS, how­ev­er, they were faced with a dif­fi­cult legal predica­ment: which law could they use to restrain or arrest a pro­test­er? With­out the free reign of “pub­lic order” leg­is­la­tion, the Gar­dai could only reproach pro­test­ers if the pri­vate land own­er, Shell, request­ed it.

One pro­test­er was arrest­ed for refus­ing to give a name and address. Gar­dai are enti­tled to request a name and address only if the per­son in ques­tion is, with­in rea­son, sus­pect­ed of break­ing a law. In short, a gar­da must tell a per­son why he/she is request­ing a name and address. The gar­dai were hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty locat­ing such a rea­son. It is unclear whether or not Shell asked the Gar­dai to inter­vene. With the neg­a­tive pub­lic rela­tions image Shell has acquired for itself in Ire­land due to the Cor­rib project, it is thought that Shell are reluc­tant take any court pro­ceed­ings against pro­test­ers.

The IRMS was polic­ing the entire road out­side the Augh­oose com­pound at var­i­ous points. This writer has per­son­al­ly seen I‑RMS secu­ri­ty guards unlaw­ful­ly act in a man­ner only war­rant­ed to police offi­cers of the state. Despite assur­ances by Super­in­ten­dent Pat Diskin who in an arti­cle writ­ten by Irish Times reporter, Lor­na Sig­gins, denied claims by Shell to Sea that the pri­vate secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny, I‑RMS, was clos­ing roads at Augh­oose. This morn­ing the I‑RMS did block the road unlaw­ful­ly. Ross­port sol­i­dar­i­ty camp mem­bers, as well as mem­bers of the Gar­dai, wit­nessed these actions. Gar­dai are legal­ly oblig­at­ed to main­tain the pub­lic order on all pub­lic high­ways at all times when­ev­er pos­si­ble. This morn­ing I‑RMS were exempt from the laws of the state.

Two pro­test­ers were assault­ed by I‑RMS secu­ri­ty guards, with one of the pro­test­ers being punched in the face. Com­plaints have been made to the Gar­dai and state­ments have been giv­en on the mat­ter. Mean­while, Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp mem­bers stopped work this after­noon at Shrah­more peat depo­si­tion site from 4pm until 7pm. This is the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive day that work in Shrah­more has been halt­ed by pro­test­ers.

If you want to vis­it the camp there is plen­ty for every­one; join in the protests, or help in the gar­den, or help with site main­te­nance. The camp is locat­ed in a field in Augh­oose, between Bal­linaboy and Pul­lath­omas. Ring the camp at 0851141170 or email at rossportsolidaritycamp[at]gmail[dot]com

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Shel­l’s work at peat depot halt­ed

Work was halt­ed at Bord na Mon­a’s Shrah­more peat depo­si­tion site on Mon­day August 8th by pro­test­ers from Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp. From 11am up until 6pm four pro­test­ers pre­vent­ed Bar­ret­t’s and Lennon’s quar­ry trucks from enter­ing the site with road build­ing grav­el. Inside the com­pound, two of the pro­test­ers climbed up onto a dig­ger in order to stop it pro­ceed­ing with the road con­struc­tion on the site.

Shell oil com­pa­ny is plan­ning to dig up 125,000 tonnes of peat from Shruwad­da­con estu­ary and lay down a high pres­sure raw gas pipeline. The local com­mu­ni­ty have not con­sent­ed to Shel­l’s oper­a­tions. The peat which Shell plans to dig up is sched­uled to be dumped at Shrah­more. How­ev­er, with­out the pres­ence of ade­quate road net­works with­in Shrah­more, the heavy peat dump­ing machin­ery can­not oper­ate. By halt­ing road build­ing works at Shrah­more from pro­ceed­ing, pro­test­ers are chal­leng­ing the social, envi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic valid­i­ty of Shel­l’s activ­i­ties.

Mean­while, it has also been announced today that Shell, Sta­toil & Ver­mil­ion have now extend­ed their expect­ed date for when Cor­rib Gas will flow to 2014. Every year it seems that they push their expect­ed fin­ish date out fur­ther and fur­ther. Orig­i­nal­ly the fin­ish date was due to be 2003, so now the project would be 11 years delayed by Shel­l’s cur­rent guess: http://www.irishexaminer.com/business/corrib-pipeline‑w.…html

Polish nuclear programme and the protests against it

August 2011
Short­ly after the end of 1990 mora­to­ri­um the Pol­ish pro–nuclear lob­by, based around Nation­al Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency (state insti­tu­tion of nuclear safe­ty) and aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions involved in devel­op­ment of nuclear tech­nolo­gies, sup­port­ed by inter­na­tion­al nuclear lob­by has start­ed to work on the new plans of build­ing the nuclear pow­er plants in Poland.

August 2011
Short­ly after the end of 1990 mora­to­ri­um the Pol­ish pro–nuclear lob­by, based around Nation­al Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency (state insti­tu­tion of nuclear safe­ty) and aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions involved in devel­op­ment of nuclear tech­nolo­gies, sup­port­ed by inter­na­tion­al nuclear lob­by has start­ed to work on the new plans of build­ing the nuclear pow­er plants in Poland.

1984 – 1990: Autonomous move­ment stops the con­struc­tion of Zarnowiec NPP

In the ear­ly Sev­en­ties the Pol­ish gov­ern­ment decid­ed to build two nuclear pow­er plants, based on Sovi­et tech­nol­o­gy ( with four pres­sur­ized water reac­tors VVER 440 each – sim­i­lar to ones in Temelin NPP in Czech Repub­lic and Kozlo­duj in Bul­gar­ia, build by a Sko­da plants in Czech Rep.) in Zarnowiec and Klem­picz. The con­struc­tion of Zarnowiec plant start­ed in 1982 in the midst of the eco­nom­ic break­down and polit­i­cal repres­sions of the Mar­tial Law.

The first protests against Zarnowiec NPP, orga­nized by aca­d­e­m­ic eco­log­i­cal groups, start­ed in 1984, but to no avail. It was only after the 1986 Cher­nobyl dis­as­ter when the oppo­si­tion against the plant gained momen­tum and pub­lic sup­port.

Soon after the loose coali­tion of anar­chist and green activist with a group of young mem­bers of var­i­ous anti–government polit­i­cal groups (includ­ing then ille­gal Sol­i­dar­i­ty), and Catholic Youth activists has emerged and start­ed to orga­nize own street protests and pro­pa­gan­da in var­i­ous cities across the coun­try.

In ear­ly 1989 the protest move­ment, still infor­mal and based on a non–hierarchical agen­da, start­ed to orga­nize week­ly street march­es in Gdan­sk, a city 50 kilo­me­tres from the site of Zarnowiec NPP, as well as sim­i­lar actions in War­saw, dur­ing the gov­ern­ment ses­sion on the nuclear pro­gramme.

The anti–nuclear move­ment grew stronger and stronger, with new groups and orga­ni­za­tions join­ing the protests. In the polit­i­cal tur­moil of 1989 the protest against the Zarnowiec NPP was seen as protest against the crum­bling dic­tature of the com­mu­nist par­ty, so many par­tic­i­pants have joined the street demos for pure polit­i­cal rea­sons – but the move­ment itself kept its apo­lit­i­cal char­ac­ter. Soon, even for the major­i­ty of nuclear sci­en­tists involved in the project it became appar­ent that the sovi­et tech­nol­o­gy used in the plant is unre­li­able and obso­lete, and the safe­ty and tech­no­log­i­cal stan­dards at the con­struc­tion site are appalling (accord­ing to Jany Waluszko, one of the anar­chist activists involved in protests, dur­ing the con­struc­tion of Zarnowiec NPP around 300 000 tons of cement was stolen from the site – deficit at a time con­struc­tion mate­ri­als stolen from the site soon become major source of income both for the work­ers and the local dwellers. As a result, dur­ing harsh win­ter made of rein­forced con­crete foun­da­tion of one of the reac­tors has cracked, due to the very low con­tent of cement in the con­crete – replac­ing stolen cement with a sand in the mix­ers was a com­mon way of con­ceal­ing the theft…).

Dur­ing the Round Table nego­ti­a­tions between Sol­i­dar­i­ty and the com­mu­nist par­ty in spring 1989 the Sol­i­dar­i­ty demand­ed the con­struc­tion of Zarnowiec to be aban­doned – as the result the ques­tion of nuclear pro­gramme was the only one not agreed in the process but, when Sol­i­dar­i­ty took over the pow­er in August 1989 the Mazowiec­ki gov­ern­ment refuse to autho­rize such a deci­sion. It led to the fur­ther esca­la­tion of protests – with a hunger strike, occu­pa­tion of local gov­ern­ment build­ings in Gdan­sk and a three months block­ade of the Gdy­nia har­bour, where the parts of the nuclear reac­tor were deliv­ered (against the own gov­ern­ment posi­tion, rank and file orga­ni­za­tion of Sol­i­dar­i­ty in the har­bour refused to unload the reac­tor from the ship and call for a ref­er­en­dum on the nuclear pro­gramme).

After three months stand-off, the reac­tor was unloaded by the Zarnowiec NPP work­ers and the block­ade of the har­bour was bro­ken, but faced with the ever grow­ing oppo­si­tion from protest move­ment and rank and file mem­bers of Sol­i­dar­i­ty (a call for ref­er­en­dum was soon sup­port­ed by 110 fac­to­ry comi­ties of S. in Gdan­sk region and large group of MPs rep­re­sent­ing the Cit­i­zens Comi­ties – polit­i­cal arm of Sol­i­dar­i­ty) the gov­ern­ment was forced to sus­pend con­struc­tion of Zarnowiec NPP for one year, at the begin­ning of 1990.

Such a deci­sion didn’t calm down the protests: the group of activists con­tin­ued an indef­i­nite hunger strike in Gdan­sk, start­ed on 8 of Dec, 1989, and grow­ing num­bers of local orga­ni­za­tions call­ing for a ref­er­en­dum. Such a social ref­er­en­dum, orga­nized sole­ly by local struc­tures of Cit­i­zens Comi­ties and the protest move­ment activists was announced on 25 of Jan. 1990 and held in Gdan­sk region, against the will of the War­saw gov­ern­ment, on 27 of May (prime min­is­ter Mazowiec­ki called the ref­er­en­dum “unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic” and refused any mate­r­i­al sup­port to it!). In major orga­ni­za­tion­al effort the protest move­ment print­ed and dis­trib­uted almost two mil­lions of bal­lot papers, and orga­nized polling sta­tions across the region. As a result, it achieved the turnout of 44%, with 87% of votes against the NPP and 13% in sup­port of it.

The gov­ern­ment ini­tial­ly refused to accept the results, but faced with grow­ing oppo­si­tion from local com­mu­ni­ties (vir­tu­al­ly block­ing the con­struc­tion site with farm­ing equip­ment and trac­tors), the gov­ern­ments of oth­er Baltic coun­tries (afraid of the plant, based on sovi­et safe­ty stan­dards) and seri­ous eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ties was forced to aban­don the con­struc­tion of Zarnowiec NPP on 4 of Sept. 1990. This deci­sion was lat­er (9 of Nov.) con­firmed by a bill passed through the par­lia­ment: it also imposed the 15 years mora­to­ri­um on new nuclear pro­grammes and demand­ed a nation­al ref­er­en­dum to autho­rize it. (the ref­er­en­dum has nev­er been held and the work on new nuclear pro­gramme start­ed in 2005).

2005 – 2011: Sec­ond nuclear pro­gramme

Short­ly after the end of 1990 mora­to­ri­um the Pol­ish pro–nuclear lob­by, based around Nation­al Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency (state insti­tu­tion of nuclear safe­ty) and aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions involved in devel­op­ment of nuclear tech­nolo­gies, sup­port­ed by the inter­na­tion­al nuclear lob­by has start­ed to work on the new plans of build­ing the nuclear pow­er plants in Poland.

After the 2007 elec­tions, won by the neolib­er­al Civic Plat­form, this plans got sup­port from the Min­istry of Econ­o­my, and on 10 of Novem­ber 2009 became a part of Nation­al Ener­gy Pol­i­cy 2030. Half a year ear­li­er, on 15 of May 2009 Han­na Tro­janows­ka was appoint­ed as a Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sion­er for Nuclear Ener­gy (in 1982 – 1991 Tro­janows­ka worked as a design­er of first Zarnowiec NPP, and lat­er held senior man­age­r­i­al posi­tions in state – owned PGE ener­gy cor­po­ra­tion – soon cho­sen as an oper­a­tor of future Pol­ish NPPs…).

Since her appoint­ment the gov­ern­ment and the nuclear lob­by, linked now on per­son­al lev­el, have worked hand in hand towards the devel­op­ment of nuclear pro­gramme: on 16 of August 2010 offi­cial Pro­gram of Devel­op­ment of Nuclear Ener­gy was adopt­ed by the gov­ern­ment, and by the end of March 2011 gov­ern­men­tal projects of thirst two bills on nuclear ener­gy: the amend­ment of Nuclear Ener­gy bill (dat­ed back to mid–80s) and the Bill on Invest­ment in Nuclear Ener­gy where sub­mit­ted to the par­lia­ment. At the same time the Min­istry of Econ­o­my pub­lished the assess­ment of 27 sites around the coun­try, con­sid­ered as a poten­tial loca­tion of the NPP, with Zarnowiec as a win­ner an Klem­picz (a vil­lage in North West of Poland, around 60 kilo­me­ters north of the city of Poz­nan) as a run­ner up.

In May 2011 the gov­ern­men­tal plan of the pro-nuclear pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign (includ­ing nuclear ‘prod­uct place­ment’ in pop­u­lar TV series) has leaked to inde­pen­dent media, but was com­plete­ly ignored by the main­stream ones. The cost of the cam­paign was esti­mat­ed by its authors at around 20 mil­ion euros, paid with tax­pay­ers mon­ey.

By the end of June both cham­bers of the par­lia­ment has passed the ‘nuclear’ bills, sub­mit­ted by the gov­ern­ment, and from 1 of July both acts has come into force – with­out any pub­lic dis­cus­sion or atten­tion and any major amend­ments.

Accord­ing to the gov­ern­men­tal plan, by the year 2030 demand for elec­tric pow­er in Poland will increase by 30% com­par­ing to 2010, and by 2020, due to the lim­its on emis­sion of car­bon diox­ide imposed by EU, high­er costs of emis­sion rights and a neces­si­ty of intro­duc­tion cost­ly tech­nolo­gies lim­it­ing the emis­sion of green­house gasses (like CCS) in ther­mal pow­er plants the cost of pro­duc­tion of ener­gy in NPP’s will be com­pa­ra­ble to the pow­er plants using lig­nite as a fuel. In response to this chal­lenges by 2030 more than 15% of elec­tric ener­gy should by pro­duced by NPP’s.

To meet this demand, the gov­ern­ment is plan­ning to build two nuclear pow­er plants, first one by 2020 and sec­ond by 2030. The gov­ern­men­tal sources varies, when it comes to the pow­er rat­ing of the planned plants, with ini­tial plans sug­gest­ing that each plant will pro­duce around 4400 MW (in four 1100MW class reac­tors). This was lat­er (in 2010) down­grad­ed by com­mis­sion­er Tro­janows­ka to around 3000MW each (yet again, oth­er offi­cials of Min­istry of Econ­o­my opt for 3600MW, pro­duced by two 1800MW class reac­tors). Con­sid­er­ing the pow­er out­put of mod­ern reac­tors, it’s like­ly that the final rat­ing will be 3200MW a plant. The total cost of build­ing this capac­i­ty is esti­mat­ed by Tro­janows­ka at 20 bil­ion Euros (this esti­ma­tion is based on 4400MW vari­ant – the Min­istry of Econ­o­my is esti­mat­ing the cost of build­ing the nuclear plant at 4500 Euros for 1kW, which makes 16 bil­ion for a 3600MW plant and 32 bil­ion for a whole pro­gram). The cost of build­ing the plants will be beared by the investor and oper­a­tor of the plants – state-owned PGE (Pol­s­ka Gru­pa Ener­gety­cz­na – Pol­ish Ener­gy Group) pow­er cor­po­ra­tion. The direct pub­lic involve­ment in nuclear pro­gramme is to be lim­it­ed to around 18 mil­ion Euros over next ten years, that include estab­lish­ing the mod­ern nuclear safe­ty ser­vice and con­struc­tion of large scale nuclear waste stor­age.

The gov­ern­ment plan doesn’t men­tion the loca­tion of the stor­age facil­i­ty, as well as the pre­ferred tech­nol­o­gy of stor­age (with clas­sic nuclear waste damp site and more sophis­ti­cat­ed nuclear recy­cling plants con­sid­ered). Asked about it by the jour­nal­ists, Tro­janows­ka has avoid­ed direct answer and promised, that by the 2011 (half a year after the nuclear pro­gramme itself!!!) the plan for deal­ing with nuclear waste pro­duced by the plants will be adopt­ed. As for August 2011, no such plan was ever pub­lished.

Regard­less of it, the Min­istry of Econ­o­my has pub­lished the short­list of three Gen­er­a­tion III+ reac­tors, con­sid­ered for Pol­ish NPP’s. This include:

West­ing­house AP1000 – for a 4400MW a plant vari­ant, and prob­a­bly it’s upgrad­ed ver­sion, CAP1700, for a 3200MW vari­ant. The design was nev­er test­ed in prac­tice, with the first reac­tor to become oper­a­tional in Chi­na in 2014, yet it has already risen the safe­ty con­cerns, both from the nuclear safe­ty author­i­ties in USA (exter­nal shield sus­pect­ed to be vuner­a­ble to ter­ror­ist attack and earth­quakes) and UK (orig­i­nal design reject­ed due to a faulty design of valves in cool­ing sys­tem and, once again – design of the exter­nal shield) and envi­ron­men­tal groups (design of con­tain­ment ves­sel prone to cor­ro­sion and leaks).

Areva/EDF/Siemens EPR — rat­ed at 1650MW for a 3200MW vari­ant. None of EPR reac­tors oper­a­tional as for 2011, four in con­struc­tion in Europe (2 in Fin­land and 2 in France) – due to seri­ous design faults the orig­i­nal EPR projects were to be altered dur­ing the con­struc­tion caus­ing over two years delay and rise in cost. Safe­ty con­cerns by Finnish and French nuclear safe­ty author­i­ties, UK one reject­ed a design after find­ing seri­ous faults in safe­ty sys­tems design (the main and emer­gency con­trol sys­tems are inter­con­nect­ed so the fault in main one might dis­able the emer­gency con­trols as well).

Hitachi/GE ESBWR – boil­ing water reac­tor with inno­v­a­tive, but nev­er test­ed in prac­tice, pas­sive cool­ing sys­tems. Rat­ed at 1600MW, nev­er build, is expect­ed to be grant­ed US nuclear safe­ty author­i­ty approval by the end of 2011. Con­sid­ered for new NPP in Lithua­nia.

As the gov­ern­men­tal nuclear pro­gramme was made pub­lic, it was crit­i­cized both by envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion and by some lead­ing sci­en­tists in the field of ener­gy pro­duc­tion. Pro­fes­sor Wla­dys­law Miel­czars­ki from the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty in Lodz, Poland, one of most senior experts in this field in the coun­try and EU, denounces the basic the­sis of the nuclear pro­gram as unre­al­is­tic, he’s also ques­tion­ing the gov­ern­men­tal esti­ma­tions on con­sump­tion of elec­tric pow­er, costs of build­ing of NPP and pro­duc­ing ener­gy in such a plants. Accord­ing to Miel­czars­ki, in con­trary to nuclear pro­gram fig­ures, the demand for elec­tric pow­er in Poland might increase by no more than 10% by 2030, but just as well it might remain on the 2010 lev­el or drop, due to the high­er costs of ener­gy and intro­duc­tion of less pow­er – con­sum­ing tech­nolo­gies. This put the need for build­ing of NPP in ques­tion. Pro­fes­sor also stress­es the need of build­ing a new gas or coal pow­er sta­tion togeth­er with NPP, to cre­ate a nec­es­sary back­up pow­er sup­ply in case of reac­tor shut­down and sud­den drop in pow­er pro­duc­tion.

Miel­czars­ki strong­ly crit­i­cizes the finan­cial esti­ma­tions of the gov­ern­ment, accord­ing to pro­fes­sor:

- the cost of build­ing the NPP esti­mat­ed in gov­ern­ment pro­gram is far too low, espe­cial­ly after nec­es­sary alter­na­tions to reac­tor design after Fukushi­ma dis­as­ter

- as a con­se­quence, the cost of pro­duc­tion of pow­er in NPP in year 2020 will be around 60% high­er than in ther­mal plants, even if the CO2 emis­sion fees goes up as planned

- gov­ern­men­tal claims that the con­struc­tion of the NPP will be financed by a pri­vate sources are com­plete­ly unre­al­is­tic, as the cho­sen investor, PGE cor­po­ra­tion, can only bor­row around 4 bil­lion Euros of cap­i­tal, and the esti­mat­ed cost of nuclear pro­gram is 8 times high­er

From the envi­ron­men­tal and social point of view, it’s worth to cite the report of Jan Haverkamp, the ener­gy expert from the Nether­lands who pre­pared the assess­ment of gov­ern­men­tal Strate­gic Envi­ron­men­tal Assess­ment of the nuclear pro­gram. Accord­ing to Haverkamp, the whole doc­u­ment, con­sist­ing of more than 785 pages was pre­pared in less than one month, and doesn’t meet the inter­na­tion­al stan­dards of pro­fes­sion­al­ism for such a doc­u­ments. Many of it’s con­tent was sim­ply copy-past­ed from out­dat­ed brochures, issued by nuclear cor­po­ra­tion, with­out cit­ing the source(!!!). Assess­ment of the spread of nuclear con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in case of acci­dent was tak­en from a sim­i­lar doc­u­ment, pre­pared for one of the NPP in UK (!!!), with­out any research actu­al­ly being done in Poland. The doc­u­ment doesn’t deal at all with poten­tial con­se­quences of major nuclear acci­dent or radi­a­tion leak, on the scale of Fukushi­ma or Cher­nobyl, basi­cal­ly treat­ing such an event as impos­si­ble. Haver­camp also points out that the whole doc­u­ment and a pro­ce­dure of its pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion breach the rules set by Aarchus Con­ven­tion on pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion in deci­sion – mak­ing, signed by Poland: it doesn’t include any alter­na­tives to the pro­posed con­struc­tion of NPP and a time, set by the gov­ern­ment for its pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion is insuf­fi­cient (21 days!).

The pub­lic per­cep­tion of the nuclear pro­gramme and the sup­port for nuclear ener­gy changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly after Fukushi­ma. Accord­ing to the polls., the sup­port for the pro­gramme has dropped from 50% in Sep­tem­ber 2009 to 40% in April 2011 (when the scale of Fukushi­ma dis­as­ter was yet unknown).

Togeth­er with a pub­lic pref­er­ences, the pol­i­cy of the gov­ern­ment and nuclear lob­by has changed as well. At the begin­ning of 2011, when the offi­cial intro­duc­tion of the nuclear pro­gramme to the pub­lic opin­ion was being made, there was a strong pres­ence both of pro-nuclear politi­cians and sci­en­tist from the nuclear lob­by in the media, even by the time of Fukushi­ma dis­as­ter they were still try­ing to defend both the pro­gramme and nuclear ener­gy.

After Fukushi­ma, and the ini­tial wave of protests after it, the nuclear pro­pa­gan­da and the whole issue of nuclear ener­gy dis­ap­peared from the media – pressed by the jour­nal­ists or activists the politi­cians claim, that the whole issue is not decid­ed yet and the fur­ther research­es and dis­cus­sions are need­ed.

Con­trary to this offi­cial line, the gov­ern­ment car­ries on with a pro­gramme – away from pub­lic atten­tion two nuclear bills were hur­ried through par­lia­ment in one month, with no seri­ous dis­cus­sions or oppo­si­tion, two months before par­lia­men­tary elec­tions.

As far as main­stream pol­i­tics is con­cerned, there is no seri­ous oppo­si­tion to nuclear pro­gramme, with rul­ing neolib­er­als (Civic Plat­form) strong­ly in favour of it, its allies from Pop­u­lar Par­ty offi­cial­ly talk­ing about a ‘need for dis­cus­sion’ and in pri­vate sup­port­ing the pro­gram, and Social Democ­rats call­ing for nation­al ref­er­en­dum on nuclear ener­gy. The right wing oppo­si­tion, the Law and Order par­ty, doesn’t present a clear stance regard­ing the nuclear pro­gramme. It was to be added, that as well as in many impor­tant issues in pol­ish pol­i­tics, all the may­or par­ties are try­ing to avoid a pub­lic dis­cus­sion and pub­lic involve­ment in deci­sion mak­ing, focus­ing the pub­lic atten­tion on ide­o­log­i­cal, per­son­al or his­tor­i­cal con­flicts instead. Because of it the nuclear pro­gramme and build­ing the NPP is not like­ly to became a major point of dis­cus­sion dur­ing the com­ing elec­tion cam­paign.

As for the non-par­lia­men­tary orga­ni­za­tions, the whole envi­ron­men­tal move­ment (with pol­ish Green par­ty – mar­gin­al in the main­stream pol­i­tics), the anar­chists, and a inde­pen­dent trade union Sierpien’80 (con­sist­ing of 10000 mem­bers – main­ly coal min­ers…) are strong­ly against the nuclear pro­gramme.

On a street protest lev­el, until 2011 the major protest group was Inic­jaty­wa Antynuk­lear­na (Anti–Nuclear Ini­tia­tive), the coali­tion of grass­roots envi­ron­men­tal activists, con­cerned sci­en­tist and anar­chists. The IAN split in ear­ly 2011 over the issue of tac­tics and coop­er­a­tion with polit­i­cal par­ties and main­stream NGOs, and since then the Anar­chist Fed­er­a­tion start­ed it’s own, anti–nuclear cam­paign.

Anar­chist Fed­er­a­tion against nuclear pow­er

The begin­ning of 2011 marks the start of anti-nuclear cam­paign of AF – PL. The state­ment on that issue, adopt­ed by the sec­tions of FA ( http://www.federacja-anarchistyczna.pl/dokumenty/item/5‑oświadczenie-fa-w-sprawie-rozwoju-w-polsce-energetyki-nuklearnej) focus­es on eco­nom­i­cal and social costs of nuclear pro­gram, it also denounces the con­struc­tion of NPP as a trans­fer of pub­lic resources to transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion pro­vid­ing the nuclear tech­nol­o­gy. The fur­ther devel­op­ments in nuclear issue unveiled the deeply unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic char­ac­ter of deci­sion – mak­ing, with the gov­ern­ment open­ly ignor­ing own oblig­a­tions regard­ing pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion of the pro­gram and avoid­ing and dis­cus­sion on the nuclear pow­er ques­tion. This was reflect­ed and con­demned in fur­ther state­ments and leaflets, issued by var­i­ous local sec­tions of AF and dur­ing the street protests orga­nized by them – in future, this will also be the focal point of our cam­paign.

So far on the street lev­el there were two major AF mobi­liza­tions against nuclear pro­gramme and a cou­ple of local events:

- short­ly after the Fukushi­ma dis­as­ter, on 19 of March there was a demon­stra­tion against build­ing NPP in Lodz, and sim­i­lar one, two days lat­er in Gdan­sk (sec­ond one was orga­nized by broad­er coali­tion, called Pomors­ka Inic­jaty­wa Antynuk­lear­na – Pomeran­ian Anti­Nu­clear Ini­tia­tive)

- the 25 anniver­sary of Cher­nobyl dis­as­ter was marked with a demon­stra­tions and pub­lic meet­ings in Lodz, Poz­nan, Gdan­sk, Krakow, and Czesto­chowa, all orga­nized or co-orga­nized by local AF struc­tures

- on 8 of May in Lodz a group of anar­chists dis­rupt­ed a meet­ing with deputy prime min­is­ter W. Pawlak at the tech­ni­cal uni­ver­si­ty unfurl­ing the ban­ner against nuclear ener­gy

- on 18 of May, dur­ing the con­fer­ence on nuclear pow­er held as a part of Euro­pean Eco­nom­ic Forum in Katow­ice there was a demon­stra­tion against the nuclear pow­er orga­nized by Sile­sian activists of AF

As a part of a cam­paign, a brochure on the nuclear ener­gy issues will be print­ed, there will be also a lec­ture and work­shops on that top­ic dur­ing this year sum­mer AF-PL camp in Beskid Makows­ki, start­ing 14 of August.

Web site of Anar­chist Fed­er­a­tion of Poland:
www.federacja-anarchistyczna.pl
con­tact: biurofa@gmail.com

Fantastic week of blocking Shell

3rd August 2011

3rd August 2011
This week saw Shell begin the next stage of their gas project by attempt­ing to extend and secure their com­pound in Augh­oose in prepa­ra­tion to lay the onshore sec­tion of the pipeline. This entailed trac­tors deliv­er­ing fenc­ing, machin­ery and oth­er things for them to car­ry out the work. If all had gone to plan would have had the com­pound near com­ple­tion now. How­ev­er, there was five days of 12 hour block­ades which has slowed them down tremen­dous­ly. Here’s a quick round up of the events of last week…

The week start­ed Mon­day 25th July at 7am with a tri­pod which last­ed over five hours. The pro­test­er was removed using scaf­fold­ing. The after­noon was spent caus­ing chaos on bikes and on foot with the cops even­tu­al­ly need­ing to seize bikes in order to stop the pro­test­ers. At most ten trac­tors made the jour­ney to the com­pound, all hav­ing been delayed. Shell made a state­ment on the radio that their work had been “severe­ly imped­ed”. Not bad for the first day.

At 7am on Tues­day there was an arm tube lock-on which last­ed well over an hour. No arrests were made. Only 2 trac­tors made it into the com­pound before mid­day. The rest of the day was spent hid­ing in ditch­es and jump­ing out in front of and onto trac­tors with one per­son spend­ing over an hour and a half on top of a trac­tor before being forcibly removed and arrest­ed. Shell had still had less than 20 deliv­er­ies to the com­pound so far in the week.

Wednes­day saw an 8 hour lock-on from 7am. Two indi­vid­u­als were arrest­ed under pub­lic order charges. The Gar­dai (police) had stepped up their ‘pro­tec­tion’ of the trac­tors and were pro­vid­ing a tight con­voy for each trac­tor. At some points there was two pad­dy wag­ons, two squad cars, a cut­ting team, an IRMS jeep and detec­tive Brett Nolan’s under­cov­er vehi­cle escort­ing each trac­tor. The Gar­dai were being ordered to get out of their vehi­cles and run along­side the trac­tor in order to try and stop the peo­ple hop­ping aboard. Despite this peo­ple were able to mount most trac­tors that went by and less than ten trac­tors made their deliv­er­ies by 7pm.

On Thurs­day the first trac­tor was stopped by some­one climb­ing onto the cab. Pleas­ing­ly this last­ed for two and a half hours, with the indi­vid­ual man­ag­ing to jump the fence and get away with­out being arrest­ed. With some fine com­mu­ni­ca­tion and coor­di­na­tion, as the next trac­tor made its jour­ney from the refin­ery to the new com­pound a group cre­at­ed a decoy by appear­ing to attempt to get on the trac­tor. How­ev­er unbe­known to the cops this was mere­ly a dis­trac­tion as the tri­pod was being set up just a cou­ple of hun­dred metres up the road. After the sounds of a bat­tle cry in the dis­tance the group of pro­test­ers caus­ing chaos respond­ed and ran up the road with the Gar­dai look­ing some­what baf­fled. As the tri­pod was estab­lished a call went out to anoth­er group who were sit­u­at­ed over in Cross­moli­na (a town 45 min­utes from the camp)where the scaf­fold­ing firm are based. They block­ad­ed the scaf­fold­ing firms gates for a cou­ple of hours. No arrests were made. The tri­pod was even­tu­al­ly dis­man­tled at around 3pm so peo­ple gath­ered at the refin­ery gates. Num­bers grew and morale was high. When the next trac­tor was brought out chaos ensued. One pro­test­er climbed on the cab and after 20 min­utes was forcibly removed and arrest­ed. This was fol­lowed by anoth­er pro­test­er climb­ing under­neath the same trac­tor. They were removed after about 15 min­utes but man­aged to avoid arrest. This was fol­lowed by a rolling block­ade on the road with peo­ple sit­ting down, being removed then sit­ting straight back down. After about 40 min­utes the trac­tor reversed back into the refin­ery. The ela­tion among folk was amaz­ing. The cops look­ing defeat­ed got in their vehi­cles and left. There was real cel­e­bra­tion with a feel­ing that this had been one of the strongest days of the cam­paign. It was 5.15pm and work was­n’t due to fin­ish until 7pm. A group stayed at the refin­ery to ensure noth­ing came out…it did­n’t. Two trucks made deliv­er­ies on Thurs­day.

Fri­day was the mass day of action. Due to this Shell had already can­celled work for the day. Pro­test­ers made their way down to the com­pound at around 9.30. Some pro­test­ers made it into the com­pound whilst oth­ers tore down fences. There was a huge Gar­dai pres­ence and approx­i­mate­ly 80 IRMS (Shel­l’s pri­vate secu­ri­ty). A sec­ond attempt was made lat­er in the day to pull down more fences which end­ed in sev­er­al peo­ple being hurt and requir­ing hos­pi­tal treat­ment. Despite this peo­ple remained at the com­pound , many spend­ing the after­noon play­ing music and relax­ing on the road. Despite the injuries it was felt it was a great day and that by hav­ing the day of action our work was already done as Shell did­n’t work.

Shel­l’s first week of work did not go to plan. After study­ing their traf­fic man­age­ment plan , which out­lines their pre­dict­ed truck move­ments over the 26 month peri­od that they intend to com­plete the project, it appears that at this stage their aim was to be mak­ing 159 truck move­ments per day! Last week in total they had approx­i­mate­ly 40.

There feels like a real buzz in the cam­paign at the moment! The Gar­daí are appear­ing stretched and are using up a lot of their resources. They are hav­ing to change their tac­tics dai­ly and despite their efforts and ludi­crous pro­tec­tion of Shel­l’s vehi­cles pro­test­ers are still man­ag­ing to cause huge dis­rup­tion.

If peo­ple can come up,now real­ly feels like the time! To main­tain this strong resis­tance we need peo­ple and ideas. There is so much to do on camp at the moment. Not only is there protests but camp life is always busy and full of things to do.

For more infor­ma­tion call us on 0851141170 and email rossportsolidaritycamp@gmail.com
www.rossportsolidaritycamp.org

Eviction callout from ZAD (occupied area against airport construction, France)

Call-out for sup­port, to come, to the occu­pied area of Notre Dame des Lan­des (france) to organ­ise against the com­ing evic­tions.…

about the occu­pied area of Notre Dame des Lan­des (NDDL)
‑call-out-

Call-out for sup­port, to come, to the occu­pied area of Notre Dame des Lan­des (france) to organ­ise against the com­ing evic­tions.…

about the occu­pied area of Notre Dame des Lan­des (NDDL)
‑call-out-

two years ago, in the area set aside for the con­struc­tion of a new air­port, we reclaimed the land and the hous­es left aban­doned. Two years, to occu­py, live, organ­ise our­selves, think, chase off con­trac­tors, sur­vey­ors, soil-sam­ple drillers and oth­er ‘experts’. Two years to meet, make links, plot against the world, and see the mil­i­tary and heli­copters pass.

Today, many of the occu­pied areas have been con­vened to appear in court in prepa­ra­tion of a mas­sive evic­tion. If we are here, its to not leave this place free for them to destroy, con­trol, and con­crete over. To make them under­stand that they are not on con­quered land. Where­as the evic­tions which are being pre­pared will be a mar­tyr­dom or ‘vic­to­ry’ for them, for us it will be a fies­ta: a fies­ta because we know that they won’t chase us away with a bull­doz­er; that they can destroy our hous­es, burn our cab­ins, we will stay. We will stay and this strug­gle will con­tin­ue.

about the tri­al.…
the 11th august, many areas have been con­vened to appear in court in Nantes. We hope to get a delay. The 17th august, the oth­er occu­pied areas will be judge in the court of Saint Nazaire. We are call­ing for a mass gath­er­ing / demo in front of the court house of Saint Nazaire from 8am the 17th august. Also, from the 16th to 19th august, we invite every­one to the squat ‘les planchettes’ (direc­tions giv­en lat­er in text) to meet, dis­cuss and organ­ise.

.….and then we will be evictable.…

as soon as we know the date giv­en by the judge, we call every­one to come on mass to sup­port the evictable areas. From the 17th, keep an eye on our web­site zad.nadir.org (most­ly in french, we will try to keep news updat­ed in eng­lish also, oth­er­wise use inter­net trans­la­tor, sor­ry…) to know the com­ing dates. we will need as many humans, ener­gy, mate­r­i­al, good ideas etc. as pos­si­ble to defend the area and resist the evic­tions.

we are already organ­is­ing to wel­come as many peo­ple, and to cre­ate a strat­e­gy where all kinds of defence tac­tics can find their place.

and from now.…
from now, if you are avail­able and moti­vat­ed, you can come and have a look at the area, imag­ine and brain­storm with your group what is pos­si­ble to do, to help us skip/find as much mate­r­i­al as pos­si­ble, and to stay as long as you like. As there is a lot to think about, to dis­cuss and organ­ise, we will not always be as avail­able as we’d like, but every­body is wel­come, and for info there will be some­one every­day to do a ‘welcome/info’, at the planchettes, from 12 — 14:00.

For all those who’d like to come see the area and what’s going on, for all those who have already been here and are linked with this strug­gle, its now or nev­er. we need you.

faced with those who would destroy spaces of liv­ing and organ­is­ing; faced with builders of air­port and oth­er such bol­locks: organ­ise the resis­tance!!

direc­tions to squat ‘les planchettes’: hitch-hik­ing from Nantes: from the city cen­tre, take the tram line 2 to the last stop, which is called Orvault Grand Val. From the tram stop, walk straight on down the hill, under the high­way bridge, and you can start hitch-hik­ing at the round­about direct­ly in front of you. the first vil­lage you want is ‘Orvault Bourg’, from there take the road towards ‘La Paque­lais’, once in La Paque­lais, at the north end of the vil­lage you will pass through a round­about, go straight ahead, after about 300metres is a fork in the road, take the road on your left going towards ‘Fay de Bre­tagne’ (D281). After about 3–4km, you will see a very obvi­ous­ly squat­ted old house on your right.…for road direc­tions, you can search ‘les planchettes, notre dame des lan­des, france’ on google maps. The D281 runs between the vil­lages La Paque­lais and Fay de Bre­tagne.…

We are look­ing for all kinds of mate­r­i­al to bar­ri­cade and to hold out in case of long evic­tions.… here is a list of things which can be brought to ‘les planchettes’, between the 16th to 19th of August or any time before (and after, if we are still there, keep an eye on Nantes Indy­media or zad.nadir.org, we’ll try to keep updat­ed in eng­lish too, oth­er­wise in french):

*scaf­fold­ing
*con­crete rein­forc­ing steel (re-bar)
* sol­id met­als
* steel cables
* beams * barbed wire
* met­al plates
* nets
* met­al grills / fenc­ing
* met­al cut­ters / pli­ers
* all kinds of rope
*ban­ner mate­r­i­al
* fire extin­guish­ers
* large mir­rors
* mat­tress­es
* all kinds of saws and blades
* ham­mers * nails of all sizes
* gas masks
* div­ing gog­gles
* hel­mets
* mal­ox, bio-lemons or lemon juice
* phys­i­o­log­i­cal salt solu­tion
* pal­lets
* screws and nuts (any size)
* weld­ing mate­ri­als (rods, hel­mets…)
* mega­phones
* glue
* paint
* blan­kets
* sleep­ing bags
* bicy­cles (whole or parts)
* vehi­cles which are not use­ful any more
* car­a­vans
* pick­ax­es
* mon­sters
* wood plates * crow­bars
* walkie talkies, cb, radios
* con­serves, jam, evic­tion stash food.….

PLEASE SEND ON THIS TEXT.…

zad@riseup.net
zad.nadir.org

Val de Susa TAV protests — resisting the destruction, Piedmont, Italy

July 29th 2011

July 29th 2011
Clash­es con­tin­ue between cops and pro­test­ers. At about mid­night, over 300 peo­ple tried to pull down fences, and threw smoke bombs and stones at the police on two dif­fer­ent fronts — the Mad­dale­na Chiomonte archae­o­log­i­cal dig and beneath the A32 Turin-Bar­donec­chia Ramat motor­way viaduct. The police attacked with tear gas and water-can­nons. It fol­lowed a march in Chiomonte. The motor­way was closed for about 3 hours.

At least one per­son was tak­en to hos­pi­tal after hav­ing a tear-gas can­nis­ter fired in his face. Many pro­test­ers wore hel­mets, gas masks, and were masked up. The protest camp was due to close the next day.

Vehi­cle checks have increased, and one polit­i­cal­ly active per­son was stopped and arrest­ed with a car full of gas masks, cat­a­pults and more. Oth­er peo­ple have been picked up and arrest­ed in near­by towns, and a few peo­ple were arrest­ed after they took camp­ing equip­ment and clothes from shops a few days before.