Category: Rest of Europe

Rest of Europe

ELF SOLIDARITY WITH LUCIANO / “TORTUGA”

anony­mous report, from BlackBlocg.info (vis­it the site for addi­tion­al reports of ELF actions in Rus­sia):

“ELF-Rus­sia claims respon­si­bil­i­ty for fire­bomb­ing of a Lexus/Toyota car deal­er­ship in West­ern Moscow on june the 21st.

anony­mous report, from BlackBlocg.info (vis­it the site for addi­tion­al reports of ELF actions in Rus­sia):

“ELF-Rus­sia claims respon­si­bil­i­ty for fire­bomb­ing of a Lexus/Toyota car deal­er­ship in West­ern Moscow on june the 21st.

Four lux­u­ry cars (of them — 3 Lexus SUVs) were lost to a fire­bomb explo­sion (butane gas can­is­ters, gaso­line and a fuse), accord­ing to cor­po­rate media repors.

Best wish­es to Luciano! The Strug­gle con­tin­ues!

ELF-Rus­sia, Inter­na­tion­al Net­work of Action and Sol­i­dar­i­ty / Inter­na­tion­al Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Front”

*Luciano “Tor­tu­ga” Pitronel­lo is a Chilean activist who was seri­ous­ly injured on June 1 when a device he was plac­ing out­side a bank in San­ti­a­go explod­ed pre­ma­ture­ly.

Rossport Direct Action Training Weekend — 25–26 June

Come up for a week­end of direct action train­ing, meet the com­mu­ni­ty and see this incred­i­ble place.

If you came up for the Par­ty Against the Pipe fes­ti­val, this is a great chance to get more involved in the cam­paign.

Come up for a week­end of direct action train­ing, meet the com­mu­ni­ty and see this incred­i­ble place.

If you came up for the Par­ty Against the Pipe fes­ti­val, this is a great chance to get more involved in the cam­paign.

If you have ever want­ed to take action and be part of the cam­paign, the time is now! All wel­come, open to com­plete begin­ners-no expe­ri­ence nec­es­sary. Please try to arrive by the evening of Fri­day 24th if pos­si­ble.

We are run­ning direct action train­ings here and around the coun­try for peo­ple who want to take part in safe and effec­tive protests. The train­ing is aimed at com­plete begin­ners, cov­er­ing your legal rights and dif­fer­ent meth­ods of protest­ing.

Get in touch if you would like us to give a direct action work­shop in your area.

Food will be cooked com­mu­nal­ly, dona­tions wel­come.

Accom­mo­da­tion is avail­able in the camp house or book in to the love­ly Kil­com­mon lodge hos­tel http://www.kilcommonlodge.ie

The Shell to Sea cam­paign has suc­cess­ful­ly used direct action for the last 11 years to frus­trate, delay and try to stop Shel­l’s destruc­tive project. We take direct action because the Gov­ern­ment has failed us and the author­i­ties that are sup­posed to pro­tect com­mu­ni­ties and the envi­ron­ment have refused to act. So we have no choice but to pro­tect it our­selves. We also take action to inspire oth­er com­mu­ni­ties to do the same. Whether it’s stop­ping Shell ille­gal­ly drilling in a Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion or block­ing the trucks car­ry­ing build­ing mate­ri­als for this exper­i­men­tal and dan­ger­ous project, using direct action works! So come along & get pre­pared…

Shel­l’s Cor­rib Gas Project is already decade late and 3 times over bud­get — impres­sive for a rur­al com­mu­ni­ty fight­ing one of the biggest multi­na­tion­als in the world!

There is a huge glob­al his­to­ry of direct action cam­paigns. Mar­tin Luther King and Gand­hi sym­bol­ise the most well known cam­paigns but there have been thou­sands of suc­cess­ful direct action cam­paigns in our his­to­ry. Direct action was used dur­ing the anti-war cam­paign at Shan­non air­port, in the civ­il rights march­es, dur­ing the amaz­ing anti-nuclear cam­paign at Can­sore Point and also to kick out dirty indus­tries such as Raytheon, Mer­rell Dow and Raybestos Man­hat­tan.

The Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp has guide­lines which state that all actions must be agreed by con­sen­sus at the camp. Direct action is used in par­al­lel with oth­er cam­paign­ing tools such as engag­ing in the plan­ning process, lob­by­ing, pub­lic meet­ings and tak­ing legal chal­lenges against Shell.

As Fred­er­ick Dou­glass, the US abo­li­tion­ist ora­tor said in 1857: “If there is no strug­gle there is no progress. Those who pro­fess to favor free­dom and yet depre­ci­ate agitation…want crops with­out plow­ing up the ground, they want rain with­out thun­der and light­en­ing. They want the ocean with­out the awful roar of its many waters…. Pow­er con­cedes noth­ing with­out a demand. It nev­er did and it nev­er will.”

http://www.rossportsolidaritycamp.org/content/direct-action-training-weekend-25–26th-june

Shell compound occupied for 9 hours – third action in two days

10th June 2011

10th June 2011
Wednes­day and Thurs­day saw a seri­ous of occu­pa­tions and actions against the drilling com­pound at Aghoos in Mayo as part of the ongo­ing cam­paign against Shell. The events cul­mi­nat­ed in an eight-hour lock-on and a nine hour occu­pa­tion of machin­ery which stopped all work for the day. Over thir­ty peo­ple were involved in the events. UK and oth­er inter­na­tion­al cam­paign­ers joined Irish activist as part of the days of action.

Shell com­pound occu­pied for 9 hours – third action in two days

Yes­ter­day, thir­ty activists, includ­ing an inter­na­tion­al pres­ence, took the Shell com­pound at Augh­oose where they are doing prepa­ra­tion work for the con­tro­ver­sial pipeline that will run high pres­sure gas through com­mu­ni­ties in North West­ern Ire­land. Three indi­vid­u­als man­aged to make it onto machin­ery while oth­ers closed the main gain with a lock-on. The result was no work done for the entire day. Five peo­ple were arrest­ed, all of whom are now released though some have been charged.

The action was done from the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp which cur­rent­ly occu­pies a field on the oth­er side of the road from where Shell are work­ing. Plan­ning start­ed the night before, peo­ple want­i­ng to build on the reg­u­lar actions that have been tak­ing place over the last few months since the camp has been in place.

On Wednes­day, there had been anoth­er, short­er occu­pa­tion of the site dur­ing the day. How­ev­er, in the won­der­ful way these things hap­pen, a sec­ond vis­it to the site to do recon­nais­sance for Thurs­day’s protest turned into an action in its own right…

So, Thurs­day, 7.30am – a large group of peo­ple move across the field to the road and begin breach­ing the com­pound at numer­ous places. They found a large, frankly scary look­ing lock-on dropped off in front of the main gates, despite the pres­ence of fif­teen secu­ri­ty guards from IRMS try­ing to secure the access. Two peo­ple, “Bread” & “Jam” prompt­ly made use of this gift to attach them­selves to it.

Peo­ple swarmed every­where, mak­ing good use of their access as secu­ri­ty locked them­selves down in their cen­tral com­pound behind lines of har­ris fenc­ing, though that was no obsta­cle. Indeed, the only work that Shell did today was build­ing a sor­ry pile of man­gled fences.

Numer­ous peo­ple made it through the lines of guards to occu­py var­i­ous machin­ery and struc­tures, includ­ing the roof of the por­tak­abins. Three clam­bered onto the drilling and dig­ging machin­ery that the days’ work would have depend­ed on. Of these, one was lied to about not being arrest­ed on com­ing down so oth­er two, who were on the sam­pling drill and the large dig­ger, remained there for the next nine hours. By that time vic­to­ry was clear­ly in the hand of the pro­test­ers and they came down of their own accord.

In all this exu­ber­ance, all bar one of the win­dows of the house Shell own down the road decid­ed to shat­ter in sol­i­dar­i­ty.

Mean­while, back at the main road, the campers pro­vid­ed sup­port to those locked-on. Police blocked off the road. The cut­ting team turned up at 10.15am and after a lot of head-scratch­ing start­ed cut­ting at 11am. The god of lock-on’s had pro­vid­ed them a fair headache and it took anoth­er four hours before they man­aged to extract Jam. By the time that Bread was cut-out the lock-on had been in place for eight hours.

All five peo­ple arrest­ed were tak­en to Bel­mul­let Gar­dai sta­tion. The two who were locked on were charged with not fol­low­ing police instruc­tions and for obstruc­tion. The oth­er three who were on the machin­ery were let go with­out charge for that, though one was sub­se­quent­ly re-arrest­ed for a pre­vi­ous action. Sup­port will con­tin­ue.

In all, a fan­tas­tic day out, espe­cial­ly with the rain hold­ing off until the action was over.

For more infor­ma­tion on the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp and the cam­paign against Shell see
www.rossportsolidaritycamp.org

Trash to the beet, Germany

Dur­ing the night of 31 May 2011, despite the fence and 24-hour secu­ri­ty, a KWS field was destroyed in Wet­ze, Ger­many. KWS is a Ger­man genet­ic engi­neer­ing com­pa­ny; the field tri­al was genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied beet H7‑1, resis­tant to the her­bi­cide Round-Up.

Dur­ing the night of 31 May 2011, despite the fence and 24-hour secu­ri­ty, a KWS field was destroyed in Wet­ze, Ger­many. KWS is a Ger­man genet­ic engi­neer­ing com­pa­ny; the field tri­al was genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied beet H7‑1, resis­tant to the her­bi­cide Round-Up.

We have destroyed this field to direct­ly attack an indus­try that makes us depen­dent on plant and ani­mal patents. This is only pos­si­ble in a cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem, in which new tech­nolo­gies are not cre­at­ed for need, but to max­i­mize prof­it and to obtain pow­er.

We see this action not only as an action against genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered crops, but against the entire cap­i­tal­ist order.

This sys­tem — with its var­i­ous impli­ca­tions and man­i­fes­ta­tions — is vul­ner­a­ble on many lev­els with many resources …

ELF SABOTAGE, ARSON ATTACK TARGETS OIL COMPANY, ITALY

1 June 2011
MARINO LAZIALE (ROME)

- Six noz­zles cut and tak­en away from the pumps
— Self-ser­vice booth sealed with liq­uid met­al
— Retail shop set on fire using two five-litre jer­rycans of napalm
— Ban­ner left, ‘ENI — by wars and envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ters, they prof­it (A)’

1 June 2011
MARINO LAZIALE (ROME)

- Six noz­zles cut and tak­en away from the pumps
— Self-ser­vice booth sealed with liq­uid met­al
— Retail shop set on fire using two five-litre jer­rycans of napalm
— Ban­ner left, ‘ENI — by wars and envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ters, they prof­it (A)’

Sol­i­dar­i­ty with anar­chists affect­ed by the recent wave of state repres­sion.
Sil­via, Cos­ta, Bil­ly and Mar­co.

Long live the Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front!”

400 peasants, clowns, and reapers liberate Belgian GM potato field

The “bat­tle of the pota­to” field in Wet­terem, near Ghent, Bel­gium, was a resound­ing vic­to­ry for anti-GM activists on Sun­day (29 May) as mem­bers of a crowd of around 400 peo­ple broke through police lines and barbed wire fences to destroy an exper­i­men­tal Genet­i­cal­ly Mod­i­fied pota­to crop.

The “bat­tle of the pota­to” field in Wet­terem, near Ghent, Bel­gium, was a resound­ing vic­to­ry for anti-GM activists on Sun­day (29 May) as mem­bers of a crowd of around 400 peo­ple broke through police lines and barbed wire fences to destroy an exper­i­men­tal Genet­i­cal­ly Mod­i­fied pota­to crop.

Genet­ic mod­i­fi­ca­tion of food crops is cur­rent­ly banned in the French-speak­ing Wal­lo­nia region of Bel­gium, and in the Brus­sels area, but the region­al gov­ern­ment of Flan­ders had giv­en the go-ahead for this tri­al plant­i­ng. Peo­ple from across Bel­gium and fur­ther afield, includ­ing many “faucheurs volon­taires” (vol­un­teer reapers) from the estab­lished French anti-GM farm­ing move­ment, came togeth­er under the ban­ner of the “Field Lib­er­a­tion Move­ment” to put the exper­i­ment to an end.

The day start­ed with set­ting up of a farmer’s mar­ket and com­mu­nal kitchen in a sym­pa­thet­ic field across the motor­way from the tar­get site. There were brief­in­gs, dis­cus­sions, infos­talls, and some inter­ac­tion with mem­bers of a “Save Our Sci­ence” counter demo by GM sup­port­ers, who came to argue their case that only more agribusi­ness super­crops can save the hun­gry of the world from crises of pover­ty and mal­nu­tri­tion. At 2pm the crowd start­ed mov­ing, led by a big inter­na­tion­al sam­ba band, across the motor­way foot­bridge to the field of des­tiny on the oth­er side. The organ­is­ers had called for “non-vio­lence” and not to pro­voke the cops, and the crowd was colour­ful, noisy, with small chil­dren and grown-up clowns in abun­dance. Tru­ly Lud­dite in spir­it (in all pos­i­tive sense of that maligned term) it had the flavour of a peas­ants’ revolt con­fronting the high-tech forces of empire. Around 50 Flem­ish robo­cops wait­ed, batons in hand, sur­round­ing the field (only about the size of a bas­ket­ball court), which was also ringed by stur­dy fences topped with barbed wire, cam­eras and motion sen­sors.

As the sun broke through the clouds at 3pm a siren sound­ed and the action was under­way. About half the crowd hopped the first low fence into the inter­ven­ing mead­ow and ran towards the exper­i­men­tal enclo­sure. It was soon clear that the police were out­num­bered, with many gaps in their lines through which pro­test­ers swarmed. (A major local foot­ball match may cer­tain­ly have helped the pro­tes­tors here.) The fenc­ing was tough and attempts to pull it down with ropes proved unsuc­cess­ful. But it was­n’t high enough to keep out climbers who car­ried strips of car­pet to get over the barbed wire. Once inside the com­pound the secu­ri­ty mea­sures then worked to the reapers’ advan­tage as the cops could only clam­ber after them, too late to stop pota­toes fly­ing every­where. Organ­ic seed­ing pota­toes were hurled by oth­ers from out­side the fence to replace the mod­i­fied strain.

There were around 15 arrests, all those who had made it inside the com­pound were stuck and worthi­ly sac­ri­ficed them­selves to the law in the best paci­fistic tra­di­tion. The police then had to dig a tun­nel under the fence to get them out again, and they were imme­di­ate­ly released after giv­ing ID details. It is not clear yet what charges will be brought, but the con­sor­tium behind the field, which includes the uni­ver­si­ty of Ghent, threat­ens to sue for dam­ages. There were quite a few injuries includ­ing hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tions from barbed wire cuts and trun­cheon blows.

To quote from the Field Lib­er­a­tion Move­men­t’s press release: “To sum up, the day of action was very suc­cess­ful. This action points out three paths to fol­low: the “peas­ant mar­ket” offered a plat­form for farm­ers with a real alter­na­tive, the demon­stra­tion gave the pub­lic the occa­sion to show sol­i­dar­i­ty with this cam­paign, and the action of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence effec­tive­ly lib­er­at­ed a pub­lic space. The debate is now open. From today, biotech­nol­o­gy has to demon­strate that its research is in the ser­vice of an agri­cul­tur­al mod­el which is sus­tain­able, eco­log­i­cal, and just.”

http://fieldliberation.wordpress.com

Belgian Climate Action Camp, 6–11 July 2011

Cap­i­tal­ism is a sys­tem in cri­sis. Social injus­tice is increas­ing, the
banks and multi­na­tion­als keep invest­ing in fos­sil fuels. But there is also rea­son to be opti­mistic: the glob­al cli­mate move­ment is grow­ing and get­ting more active. “Sys­tem change, not cli­mate change” is a mes­sage sound­ing loud­er and loud­er!

Cap­i­tal­ism is a sys­tem in cri­sis. Social injus­tice is increas­ing, the
banks and multi­na­tion­als keep invest­ing in fos­sil fuels. But there is also rea­son to be opti­mistic: the glob­al cli­mate move­ment is grow­ing and get­ting more active. “Sys­tem change, not cli­mate change” is a mes­sage sound­ing loud­er and loud­er!

In the past, Cli­mate Jus­tice Action (Bel­gium) orga­nized of a series of direct actions and two cli­mate action camps. At the open­ing day of the UN Con­fer­ence in Can­cún, we occu­pied the offices of IETA, a lob­by­group for emis­sion trad­ing.

This year we chose to link the cli­mate action camp to the local strug­gle in Antwerp against the ‘Oost­er­weel’ bridge/tunnel plans. In coop­er­a­tion with GroeNo­ord and oth­er part­ners (Adem­loos, Cli­maxi, Cli­mat et Jus­tice sociale, Masereel­fonds and oth­ers), there will be a new cli­mate action camp in Antwerp. Our main focus will be on the the con­se­quenses of road infra­struc­ture for the qual­i­ty of life in Antwerp.

We’ll also work around oth­er cli­mate-relat­ed themes: from nuclear ener­gy, to veg­an cook­ing, from ‘cap and trade’ to ‘how fem­i­nism can save the plan­et?’

The cli­mate action camp will be a week full of inter­est­ing work­shops, encoun­ters, direct action, and an eco­log­i­cal way of liv­ing. But most of all, it’ll be fun! Make sure to write down the dates in your agen­da. We are also still look­ing for peo­ple who want to help with the prepa­ra­tion of the camp. You can reach us at info@klimaatactiekamp.org.

Pro­gram and more infor­ma­tion:

* The pro­vi­sion­al pro­gram
* The sub­ject of the camp
* Prac­ti­cal infor­ma­tion (what to bring and what to leave at home, ?)

Vis­it http://www.climate-justice-action.be/

Reg­is­ter and help us:
Do you want to join us at the camp? Let us know at info@klimaatactiekamp.be!
Do you want to help mak­ing the camp pos­si­ble? We still need help for the fol­low­ing:

* med­ical team
* garbage and recy­cling experts
* plumbers
* dri­vers
* peo­ple who know some­thing about elec­tric­i­ty
* handy­men who can help build­ing the camp (san­i­tary, com­post­toi­lets, show­ers, putting up tents etc.)
* peo­ple who can help facil­i­tate meet­ings
* peo­ple to help break­ing down the camp and clean­ing the loca­tion
* trans­la­tors (Dutch-French-Eng­lish)
* mobil­i­sa­tion: spread­ing the fly­ers, send­ing mails etc.!
* child care

Send us a mail at info@klimaatactiekamp.org

Climate and Energy Camp 2011, Germany

Stop CCS, fight for cli­mate jus­tice and ener­gy sov­er­eign­ty!

When and where?
The Cli­mate and Ener­gy Camp 2011 is tak­ing place from Aug. 7th – 14th in Janschwalde/Brandenburg (close to Cot­tbus).

What’s a cli­mate camp any­way?

Stop CCS, fight for cli­mate jus­tice and ener­gy sov­er­eign­ty!

When and where?
The Cli­mate and Ener­gy Camp 2011 is tak­ing place from Aug. 7th – 14th in Janschwalde/Brandenburg (close to Cot­tbus).

What’s a cli­mate camp any­way?
A cli­mate camp is a space for net­work­ing, knowl­edge exchange and debate on the one hand, but also a space to show prac­ti­cal resis­tance and imple­ment direct action. As a result, the camp rep­re­sents a field of exper­i­men­ta­tion for a dif­fer­ent kind of life: the fun­da­men­tal fea­tures are a resource-effi­cient lifestyle and a grass-roots way of self-orga­niz­ing the camp. The first camp called “Camp for Cli­mate Action” took place close to the eng­lish town of Drax. The cli­mate camp move­ment spread to the Euro­pean main­land. Fur­ther camps were orga­nized in Bel­gium, France and Ukraine, but also in Cana­da and Aus­tralia.

Why Bran­den­burg?
This year the deci­sion for or against the new CCS tech­nol­o­gy will be made. Ener­gy com­pa­nies are using the spu­ri­ous argu­ment to achieve “clean coal” with CCS to be able to stick with their estab­lished struc­tures of ener­gy pro­duc­tion through lig­nite, which is extreme­ly harm­ful to the cli­mate. In the last decades sole­ly in the Lausitz region more than 30,000 peo­ple had to leave 136 vil­lages to the exca­va­tors that dug up new min­ing pits. The intend­ed expan­sion of the lig­nite strip min­ing site Jan­schwalde-Nord would make the next three vil­lages –
Kerk­witz, Grabko and Atter­wasch – dis­ap­pear. Fur­ther, cling­ing to
lig­nite as an ener­gy source makes it hard to push through the tran­si­tion to a decen­tral­ized demo­c­ra­t­ic ener­gy sup­ply from renew­ables. Read more in our call…

How can I con­tact you?
Please write us an email to info@lausitzcamp.info.

http://www.lausitzcamp.info/international-information/english/

anti-GM action at Tesco Belfast

Gath­er­ing Momen­tum for the fight against biotech in our food chain

Tesco Metro, on Belfast?s Roy­al Avenue, had its labelling improved by anti-GM pro­tes­tors on Sat­ur­day morn­ing (23rd April). The addi­tion­al labels warned con­sumers about the poten­tial Genet­i­cal­ly Mod­i­fied con­tent of meat and dairy prod­ucts in store.

Gath­er­ing Momen­tum for the fight against biotech in our food chain

Tesco Metro, on Belfast?s Roy­al Avenue, had its labelling improved by anti-GM pro­tes­tors on Sat­ur­day morn­ing (23rd April). The addi­tion­al labels warned con­sumers about the poten­tial Genet­i­cal­ly Mod­i­fied con­tent of meat and dairy prod­ucts in store.

GM pro­duce has been thor­ough­ly reject­ed by the gen­er­al pub­lic — how­ev­er, it is still enter­ing our food chain and being sold in shops across the UK. Dairy and meat prod­ucts on our shelves today have been pro­duced using GM ani­mal feeds. There are no mea­sures in place to trace these prod­ucts, there is no labelling to warn con­sumers — none!

The pro­tes­tors sur­rep­ti­tious­ly stick­ered dozens of meat and dairy
prod­ucts, then (less sur­rep­ti­tious­ly) donned white bio-haz­ard suits, hand­ed out leaflets and talked to shop­pers in the aisles. This riled the some­what irk­some secu­ri­ty guard, who helped the pro­tes­tors safe­ly find their way to the exits. (Per­haps he was a lit­tle tetchy fol­low­ing the suc­cess­ful fire-bomb­ing of a Tesco Metro in Bris­tol on Thurs­day night??).

This sim­ple and easy protest action reminds us that the GM issue has not gone away. Mon­san­to and oth­er agri-busi­ness cor­po­ra­tions want to own our stom­achs. We need to be aware of which food prod­ucts are made using Genet­ic Mod­i­fi­ca­tion so that we can avoid them ? with no leg­is­la­tion to warn of GM ani­mal feeds, we are vul­ner­a­ble to con­sum­ing food that is poten­tial­ly (seri­ous­ly) harm­ful.

See also http://www.stopgm.org.uk