Category: Rest of Europe

Rest of Europe

Day 7 of the revolt in Greece

Fol­low­ing the police shoot­ing of a 15 year old anar­chist, riots, protests & vig­ils con­tin­ue through­out Greece, with world­wide sol­i­dar­i­ty protests tak­ing place. Lat­est report below (click Read more). For much more info and all the lat­est, see https://www.indymedia.org.uk

Greek cops run past burning barricadesFol­low­ing the police shoot­ing of a 15 year old anar­chist, riots, protests & vig­ils con­tin­ue through­out Greece, with world­wide sol­i­dar­i­ty protests tak­ing place. Lat­est report below (click Read more). For much more info and all the lat­est, see https://www.indymedia.org.uk

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The Greek Intifa­da con­tin­ues and the gov­ern­ment is unable to impose its con­trol in the coun­try, spread­ing fears among the rul­ing class­es all over the Euro­pean Union.

The Greek Intifa­da con­tin­ues and the gov­ern­ment is unable to impose its con­trol in the coun­try, spread­ing fears among the rul­ing class­es all over the Euro­pean Union. In the EU Sum­mit in Brus­sels, Sarkozy but also the oth­er bour­geois lead­ers demand­ed to the Greek right wing Prime Min­is­ter Kara­man­lis “to arrest imme­di­ate­ly those respon­si­ble for the chaos”. So in today’s demon­stra­tion in Athens of tens of thou­sands of school­child­ren, stu­dents, par­ents, teach­ers and pro­fes­sors, the riot police tried to make mass arrests of 12–15 years boys and girls. The teach­ers and par­ents inter­vened to save the kids, fought with Police and lib­er­at­ed most of them apart from 3(more or less kids of 12–13 years old) who are added to the 176 already offi­cial­ly arrest­ed.

Clash­es between school­child­ren and riot police took also place in front of the par­lia­ment in Syn­tag­ma Square. The repres­sive forces of the State attacked after­wards the Law Fac­ul­ty under occu­pa­tion where our Inde­pen­dent Action Cen­ter is func­tion­ing. The cen­ter of Athens has been suf­fo­cat­ed with the chem­i­cal gazes used by the riot police. But the police had to retreat as the stu­dents defend­ed them­selves with stones and a few Molo­tov cock­tails. Then the Stu­dents Assem­bly took place and a new pro­gram of actions was decid­ed for the next days.

The Kara­man­lis gov­ern­ment was unable to have the sup­port of oth­er bour­geois par­ties and the offi­cial Left to declare the stage of the siege. The gov­ern­ment itself is split on that cru­cial issue. Nev­er­the­less, the real State of Emer­gency was declared by the school­child­ren who have put under siege tens of Police Sta­tions in Athens and all over the coun­try.

The Stal­in­ist KKE con­tin­ues to esca­late not only its attacks against Synaspis­mos /Syriza accused to be “pro­tec­tors of the hooli­gans”, but the revolt itself. Offi­cial­ly the lead­ers of KKE insist that there is no… any revolt! Today, at the same time that the school­child­ren waged their bat­tles with the riot police in front of the Athens Uni­ver­si­ty and in the Syn­tag­ma Square, the Stal­in­ist bureau­crats kept their sup­port­ers away, in Omo­nia Square and rapid­ly dis­persed them in a few blocks dis­tance from that Square. Nev­er­the­less, KKE deputies and their news­pa­per Rizospastis repeat­ed their slan­ders against the revolt­ed — to be hooli­gans, Tal­ibans, drug deal­ers, pros­ti­tu­tion rack­e­teers( 12–13 years old boys?) , police agents- adding now a new slan­der: that those fight­ing the police are agents of impe­ri­al­ist agen­cies name­ly of CIA!!!

As the polit­i­cal cri­sis inten­si­fies, the eco­nom­ic cri­sis is exac­er­bat­ed. Today’s news show that over-indebt­ed Greece finds more and more dif­fi­cult to get new loans to pay both its past debts and its deficits. To give an idea: the spread( the dif­fer­ence between the inter­est rates) of the Greek State bonds in rela­tion to those of Ger­many has esca­lat­ed to 202, while in the begin­ning of 2008 was just 20. Until March 2009 it is expect­ed that the spread will grow to 500 or more. Greece is de fac­to bank­rupt. It is the weak­est eco­nom­ic link in the chain of the Euro-zone coun­tries, and now it is proved above any doubt that it is also the weak­est polit­i­cal link. The glob­al cap­i­tal­ist cri­sis not only desta­bi­lizes all social rela­tions but pro­duce now explo­sions and a ten­den­cy towards a pre-rev­o­lu­tion­ary and/or rev­o­lu­tion­ary sit­u­a­tion.

http://www.eek.gr/default.asp?pid=6&id=639

Direct Action in Iceland

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

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

Activists vs. the police

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

Week­ly demon­stra­tions

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

One of the week­ly domon­stra­tions

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

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

Burn­ing flag and mon­ey

Burn­ing of bank flags and “hang­ing” of a cap­i­tal­ist

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

Burn­ing the flag of Lands­ban­ki bank

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

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

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

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

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

Ille­gal arrest

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

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

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

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

Riots by the police sta­tion

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

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

The Inva­sion of the Cen­tral Bank

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

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

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

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

Pep­per spray again?

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

The riot squad, ready to strike inside the Cen­tral Bank

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

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

Into the par­lia­ment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://aftaka.org/

Tyres of luxury cars ventilated

Decem­ber 5th 2008
This night the action Air gone! start­ed to flat­ten the tyres of lux­u­ry cars as a con­tri­bu­tion to the cli­mate action day to paral­yse cli­mate killers.

German CO2 exhaust imageDecem­ber 5th 2008
This night the action Air gone! start­ed to flat­ten the tyres of lux­u­ry cars as a con­tri­bu­tion to the cli­mate action day to paral­yse cli­mate killers.

While the cli­mate alliance calls for pro­mo­tion par­o­dies against the green­wash­ing of the com­pa­nies, rad­i­cal cli­mate activists went a bit fur­ther that night.

In dif­fer­ent cities the tyres of expen­sive jeeps and sports cars were ven­ti­lat­ed. Aim of the action is not only car­bon expul­sion, but also to put on the agen­da the social and glob­al injus­tices con­nect­ed to cli­mate change, the group call­ing for the action explained. The biggest amount of emis­sions are caused by the indus­tri­al states — and, as it is made more than

clear by the exam­ple of lux­u­ry cars, it is main­ly the rich here as well — while the coun­tries in the South are most affect­ed already by the effects of cli­mate change.

Fly­ers were left at the cars explain­ing the actiond and demand­ing from the own­ers to immidi­ate­ly shut them down per­ma­nent­ly.

Sim­i­lar actions hap­pened a year ago in Berlin and aroused a lot of pub­lic atten­tion. This year the news­pa­per taz report­ed about the call to the action.

Mean­while the world cli­mate sum­mit dis­cussed about a fol­low-up of the Kyoto Pro­to­col in Poz­nan (Con­fer­ence of the par­tied COP 14), pro­duc­ing noth­ing but hot air, as a lot of cli­mate activists think. Back­ground info and state­ments from a semi-crit­i­cal NGO per­spec­tive on wir-klimaretter.de. For the fol­low­ing sum­mit in Decem­ber 2009 an inter­na­tion­al mobi­liza­tion was already start­ed by the rad­i­cal leftb from Den­mark (Ung­domshuset-Scene) as well as b y sozial move­ments from the glob­al south like Via Campesina

http://luftraus.wordpress.com

Protests mark the start of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Posnan (Poland)

Den­mark: Kli­maX rocks the COP15 sum­mit site

Activists from the copen­hagen based cli­mate activist group Kli­maX climbed onto the front of the con­fer­ence site Bel­la Cen­tret and threw out ban­ners. The site is sym­bol­ic in the way that its the actu­al site of the COP15 sum­mit excact­ly one year from now.

Den­mark: Kli­maX rocks the COP15 sum­mit site
KlimaX Posnan protest
Activists from the copen­hagen based cli­mate activist group Kli­maX climbed onto the front of the con­fer­ence site Bel­la Cen­tret and threw out ban­ners. The site is sym­bol­ic in the way that its the actu­al site of the COP15 sum­mit excact­ly one year from now.

“We need a humane solu­tion to the cli­mate cri­sis.” Says Sini Øster­gaard from Kli­maX “We can­not stand by and watch while the rich coun­tries buy CO2 quo­tas from the poor coun­tries. We have take action now.”

The activists brought ban­ners, music, cook­ies and tea while the secu­ri­ty peo­ple and diplo­mats attend­ing a con­fer­ence watched the fun.

“The clock is tick­ing and time has run out. We have to face the con­se­quences of our over-con­sump­tion in the west now.” says Thor from Kli­maX.

The police arrived but did­n’t both­er any­one. The activists promis­es that they’ll con­tin­ue their actions in the run-up to and under the cli­mate sum­mit. Already oth­er actions are brew­ing for the ime­di­ate future.

The inter­na­tion­al mobi­liza­tion for action at the cli­mate sum­mit:
http://climateaction09.org/

Kli­maX — Copen­hagen:
http://klimax2009.org

Video from a coor­po­rate news­pa­per (ignore lame com­er­cials):
http://ekstrabladet.tv/nyheder/indland/article1091836.ece

Kli­maX — Copen­hagen
international@klimax2009.org
http://www.climateaction09.org

========
RTNA Posnan protest
USA: Mon­day Dec. 1

Cli­mate Activists Invade DC Offices of Envi­ron­men­tal Defense, Daugh­ter
of ED Founder Accus­es Group of Push­ing False Solu­tions to Cli­mate Change

Off-site Media Con­tact: Matt Wal­lace, Ris­ing Tide North Amer­i­ca,
828–280-3462
On-site Con­tact: Dr. Rachel Smolk­er, Glob­al Jus­tice Ecol­o­gy Project
802–735-7794

***high res­o­lu­tion pho­tos avail­able soon at:
www.risingtidenorthamerica.org***

Wash­ing­ton, DC-As the UN Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change opened today in Poz­nan, Poland, grass­roots cli­mate activists took over the Wash­ing­ton DC office of Envi­ron­men­tal Defense. The activists stat­ed that they had tar­get­ed ED, one of the largest envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions in the world, because of the orga­ni­za­tion’s key role in pro­mot­ing the dis­cred­it­ed approach of car­bon trad­ing as a solu­tion to cli­mate change.

Dr. Rachel Smolk­er of Glob­al Jus­tice Ecol­o­gy Project and Glob­al For­est Coali­tion read a state­ment, which said in part, “My father was one of the founders of this orga­ni­za­tion, which sad­ly I am now ashamed of. The Kyoto Pro­to­col, the Euro­pean Emis­sions Trad­ing Scheme and vir­tu­al­ly every oth­er ini­tia­tive for reduc­ing emis­sions have adopt­ed their mar­ket approach­es. So far they have utter­ly failed, serv­ing only to pro­vide huge prof­its to the world’s most pol­lut­ing indus­tries. Instead of pro­tect­ing the envi­ron­ment, ED now seems pri­mar­i­ly con­cerned with pro­tect­ing cor­po­rate bot­tom lines. I can hear my father rolling over in his grave.”

The activists rearranged fur­ni­ture in the office, illus­trat­ing how mar­ket­ing car­bon is “like rear­rang­ing the deck chairs on the Titan­ic.” Oth­ers held signs read­ing “Keep the cap, ditch the trade” and “Car­bon trad­ing is an envi­ron­men­tal offense.”

Leo Cer­da, an indige­nous activist with Ris­ing Tide Ecuador said, “ED wants to turn the atmos­phere and forests into pri­vate prop­er­ty, and then give it away to the most pol­lut­ing indus­tries in the form of pol­lu­tion allowances that can be bought and sold. Not only is this an inef­fec­tive way to con­trol emis­sions, it is also a dis­as­ter for the poor and indige­nous peo­ples who are not par­ty to these mar­kets and are most impact­ed by cli­mate change.”

ED has been key in estab­lish­ing the U.S. Cli­mate Action Part­ner­ship, a busi­ness con­sor­tium advo­cat­ing for a cap and trade sys­tem with extreme­ly weak emis­sions reduc­tions. US CAP allows pol­luters like Duke Ener­gy, Shell, BP, DuPont, and Dow Chem­i­cal to claim they are green while con­tin­u­ing with busi­ness as usu­al. In recog­ni­tion, activists award­ed ED the “Cor­po­rate Green­wash Award,” a three foot tall green paint­brush. “We think this award is appro­pri­ate since Envi­ron­men­tal Defense spends more time paint­ing pol­luters green than actu­al­ly defend­ing the envi­ron­ment,” said Matt Wal­lace of Ris­ing Tide North Amer­i­ca.

Oppo­si­tion to car­bon trad­ing is grow­ing as it becomes appar­ent that mar­ket based schemes do lit­tle to fight cli­mate change while help­ing cor­po­ra­tions rake in prof­its. Ear­li­er this year, over 50 groups came togeth­er in the US to denounce car­bon trad­ing in a Dec­la­ra­tion Against the Use of Car­bon Trad­ing Schemes to Address Cli­mate Change. Glob­al­ly, hun­dreds of envi­ron­men­tal, social jus­tice, and indige­nous groups have come togeth­er to oppose such mar­ket based ini­tia­tives as inher­ent­ly unsus­tain­able and inef­fec­tive in cre­at­ing a just tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fuels.

========

Aus­tralia: Coal-fired pow­er sta­tion block­ade on the eve of inter­na­tion­al cli­mate nego­ti­a­tions

Novem­ber 27, 2008: This morn­ing, four peo­ple entered the Mun­morah Coal-Fired Pow­er Sta­tion on the NSW Cen­tral Coast, attach­ing them­selves to con­vey­or belts car­ry­ing coal.

Spokesper­son Ann-Marie Rohlfs says “In two days, the Rudd Gov­ern­ment will go to the Unit­ed Nations cli­mate change meet­ing in Poland. Instead of show­ing lead­er­ship, they are set to announce weak and inef­fec­tive domes­tic emis­sions reduc­tion tar­gets…”
“With the upcom­ing release of the Cli­mate White Paper, the Rudd Gov­ern­ment will hand tens of bil­lions of dol­lars in com­pen­sa­tion and free per­mits to pol­lut­ing indus­tries. Pub­lic mon­ey would be bet­ter spent invest­ing in a green renew­able future for Aus­tralia.”

Spokesper­son Nicky Ison says, “This week we wit­nessed the clo­sure of the BP solar plant in Home­bush Bay. Aus­tralia is miss­ing out on tens of thou­sands of new jobs by con­tin­u­ing to prop up the coal indus­try and pre­vent­ing the tran­si­tion to a renew­able ener­gy econ­o­my.”

In Sep­tem­ber, Nobel Prize Win­ner Al Gore said “I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civ­il dis­obe­di­ence to pre­vent the con­struc­tion of new coal plants.”

We are tak­ing him at his word.

Today’s block­ade at the Mun­morah Pow­er Sta­tion is part of a huge com­mu­ni­ty effort to kick Australia’s coal habit.

“We are fac­ing a cli­mate emer­gency, but our emis­sions are still ris­ing. We call on the Rudd Gov­ern­ment to ensure 2010 is the year Australia’s green­house emis­sions peak and begin to rapid­ly decline.

“If half of the homes in NSW had solar hot water sys­tems, there would be no need for Mun­morah Pow­er Sta­tion. We would save 1.5 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 annu­al­ly. As the old­est pow­er sta­tion in NSW, Mun­morah Pow­er sta­tion must be the first to go in the new green econ­o­my.”

For fur­ther com­ment:
Hol­ly Creenaune- 0417 682 541
Ann-Marie Rohlfs – 0406 021 920
Nicky Ison – 0423 717 567
For high res­o­lu­tions pho­tos and video footage, con­tact Nicky Ison on 0423 717 567

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The fight goes on.

TopShop SwapShop (London), Buy Nothing Day action (+ Steal Something Day) + Leeds + Liverpool + Bristol

Ladies and Gen­tle­men we are proud to announce the restyling fash­ion mash-up event of the year!

TOPSHOP SWAPSHOP
2pm Sat 29th Novem­ber – Top­shop Oxford Street
Cred­it Crunch!

Ladies and Gen­tle­men we are proud to announce the restyling fash­ion mash-up event of the year!
Top Shop Swap Shop buy nothing day flier
TOPSHOP SWAPSHOP
2pm Sat 29th Novem­ber – Top­shop Oxford Street
Cred­it Crunch!

In the light of the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cri­sis and the out­rage over the sweat­shop con­di­tions that most high street brands make their clothes in, the swap­shop is your chance to re-vamp your wardrobe with a free con­science! Leap­ing away from the drudgery of big cor­po­rate fash­ion with it’s dodgy busi­ness prac­tices and spend spend spend atti­tude, the Top­shop swap­shop takes fash­ion back to it’s roots.

Sim­ply turn up at TOPSHOP on Oxford Street wear­ing an out­fit you wish to upgrade, then on the stroke of 2, mar­vel as hun­dreds of fash­ion moguls offer to trade your clothes with you.

Fan­cy that girls jumper? Why not offer to swap your belt for it?
That boy’s hat is to die for, how about a trade for your jeans?
Nice skirt, fan­cy trad­ing my t‑shirt for it?

After a hec­tic re-work­ing of your look you can then walk proud­ly back onto the streets of Lon­don town with a new wardrobe and not hav­ing spent a sin­gle pen­ny.

You can buy lots of clothes but you can’t buy style.

Please spread far and wide…

DISCLAIMER:

The above event is in no way sup­port­ed or con­doned by Top­Shop. Any sim­i­lar­i­ty to any brand liv­ing or dead is mere­ly coin­ci­den­tal.

http://www.spacehijackers.org

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Steal Something Day
Steal Some­thing Day, a shame­less 24-hour steal­ing spree! a cri­tique of BND and call to action, recy­cled from pre­vi­ous years for your enter­tain­ment

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Buy Noth­ing Day Leeds

In Brig­gate this Sat­ur­day (29th of Nov) there will be a Buy Noth­ing extrav­a­gan­za. We will have Christ­mas car­ols telling peo­ple of the woes of shop­ping, there will be hot tea and cof­fee to help ex-shop­pers read­just to there new found hap­pi­ness, and ideas of presents that do not involve con­sumerism. From
11am — till dark we will be ask­ing peo­ple to ques­tion con­sumerism and join us in buy­ing noth­ing!

Last year was a major suc­cess and BND strikes again. Please bake cakes, bring food and any­thing you would like to give away. There will be a free shop, music and tables. Bring any­thing down to join in the par­ty!
Leeds BND

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Liv­er­pool
Buy Nothing Day (Liverpool) flier
next to nowhere is proud to present an oppor­tu­ni­ty for all the liv­er­pool activists to join togeth­er in a spir­it of togeth­er­ness, open­ness & com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

i guess we can all agree that over-con­sump­tion is a very bad thing & i reck­on that most of us see cap­i­tal­ism as the root of the sick­ness that is infest­ing our soci­ety. yes?
any­one a racist? no? oh my, we seem to have some­thing in com­mon after all!

well, on sat­ur­day 29th novem­ber it’s time to put your mutu­al aid where your mouth is.

at 11am maybe meet & greet nick grif­fin (bnp) who could be plea­sur­ing our city with his pres­ence in his bid to become mep for the north west of eng­land. he’s called for the par­ty faith­ful to gath­er in protest at thear­rest of sev­er­al mem­bers last week. are we real­ly going to let this hap­pen?
meet at the top of church street at 10am.

after­wards, from 12pm, the social cen­tre shall be trans­formed into an oasis of anti-cap­i­tal­ism.

we’ll have:
a fab­u­lous free-shop full of qual­i­ty free good­ies,
free tea n’ cof­fee,
veg­an cafe (dona­tions only),
open mic, film, per­for­mance, spo­ken word…

now, i know that some peo­ple are a bit scared of actu­al­ly get­ting involved in next to nowhere, prefer­ing to dis­cuss the short­com­ings of the book­ing pol­i­cy from a safe dis­tance. just to be clear, and restate the bot­tom line of next to nowhere from its con­sti­tu­tion — every­one is wel­come to get involved at the social cen­tre pro­vid­ed that they are will­ing to work in a non-hier­ar­chi­cal way through con­sen­sus.

‘actions speak loud­er than words’ — please can peo­ple work togeth­er in mutu­al sup­port to help make this world a bet­ter place and take on the evils which are fuck­ing up our world or say noth­ing and stop this on-going crit­i­cism from the side­lines, whilst doing noth­ing at nowhere.

who knows, the open-mic forum could even pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple to express their feel­ings about the social cen­tre, in a non-hier­ar­chi­cal way of course!
or, we could just have a good old-fash­ioned knees up…

togeth­er, let’s start to dance on the graves of mul­ti-nation­al cor­po­ra­tions!

feistyfingers[at]yahoo.co.uk
http://www.liverpoolsocialcentre.org

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Buy Noth­ing Day 2008 — Freeshop in Broad­mead, Bris­tol

Free shop, live music, cir­cus skills and face paint­ing? UWE stu­dents from the Peo­ple and Plan­et soci­ety are going to be tak­ing part in a ‘buy noth­ing day’ and will be run­ning a free shop on Sat­ur­day, bright­en­ing up the cold, grey, win­try streets of Bris­tol city cen­tre.

To recap­ture some of that lost Christ­mas Spir­it (the giv­ing that is, not the spend­ing!) we’ll be giv­ing away clothes, bric-a-brac and plen­ty more lit­tle gems for you to get your mitts on as well as bring­ing a lit­tle sun­shine to the often not-so-hap­py shop­pers of Bris­tol. If you have any­thing you want to get rid of, bring it along!

We’re look­ing for vol­un­teers to help inform and enter­tain (musi­cians, cir­cus enter­tain­ers, etc) so if your game bring your uni­cy­cle down and get involved! It kicks off at 11am and will be run­ning till 4pm, so Pop down to our mar­quee in-between the Gal­leries and Cabot Cir­cus (Just down from Ann Sum­mers!).

For more info e‑mail Lisa at lisatozer@hotmail.com

I’ll see you there!

KELSTERBACH FOREST OCCUPATION CAMP AGAINST AIRPORT EXPANSION CALLS FOR SOLIDARITY & UNRÄUMBAR FESTIVAL 28–30TH NOVEMBER

Waldbe­set­zung Kel­ster­bach (Kel­ster­bach For­est Occu­pa­tion Camp)

Big parts of the beau­ti­ful for­est of Kel­ster­bach near the air­port of Frankfurt/Main (Ger­many) are in dan­ger of being destroyed.

Kelsterbach tripodsWaldbe­set­zung Kel­ster­bach (Kel­ster­bach For­est Occu­pa­tion Camp)

Big parts of the beau­ti­ful for­est of Kel­ster­bach near the air­port of Frankfurt/Main (Ger­many) are in dan­ger of being destroyed.

It has been well known for about 10 years that Fra­port (the cor­po­ra­tion run­ning Frank­furt Air­port) plan to build a new run­way on this place by the end of 2011, cut­ting down every tree on 300 hectares of land (about 100,000 trees), dou­bling the air­ports flight move­ments per year to a lev­el of at least one every 45 sec­onds. About 50 ini­tia­tives and near­ly all com­mu­ni­ties around the air­port are against the expan­sion because of the expect­ed rise of fly-over noise.

Fra­port plan to fin­ish the run­way by the end of 2011 and is already tak­ing so-called “prepar­ing mea­sures” in the for­est, cut­ting brush­woods to make way for their machines to cut the trees and cap­tur­ing sev­er­al ani­mal species includ­ing frogs and bats to relo­cate.

Almost all forms of protest have not suc­ceed­ed to stop the prepa­ra­tions of the build­ing of a new run­way. Activists have occu­pied a small area of the for­est since May 2008 to stop the exten­sion plans and a tent and hut vil­lage has emerged. About 30–50 peo­ple now reg­u­lar­ly live in the for­est vil­lage and wel­come every help, may it be dona­tions, new inhab­i­tants or just peo­ple pass­ing by and show­ing their sol­i­dar­i­ty.

The may­or of Kel­ster­bach has threat­ened to evict the camp as of 30th Novem­ber 2008, claim­ing he can­not accept the huts in the for­est for legal rea­sons, although it seems unlike­ly the evic­tion will actu­al­ly be attempt­ed then or any time soon.

Unräum­bar Fes­ti­val

The Waldbe­set­zung Kel­ster­bach (Kel­ster­bach For­est Occu­pa­tion Camp) invite you to the Unräum­bar Fes­ti­val, a week­end of live music, art, danc­ing, cin­e­ma, work­shops, playshops, info meet­ings, cre­ative actions, good food, and much more, on 28–30th Novem­ber. The whole fes­ti­val will be non com­mer­cial, every­thing runs on dona­tion basis. Bring a tent, sleep­ing bag and mat. Bring musi­cal instru­ments, toys, good ener­gy and food to share.

Oth­er Ways to Sup­port the Kel­ster­bach For­est Occu­pa­tion

Spread the news about what is hap­pen­ing in Kel­ster­bach For­est. Tell peo­ple, jour­nal­ists and politi­cians.

Dona­tions are very wel­come. Use­ful things include veg­an and veg­e­tar­i­an food, build­ing mate­ri­als (a lot of con­struc­tion wood, nails), old bed­sheets (for ban­ners), writ­ing mate­ri­als, polypropy­lene rope (10 or 14 mm), bicy­cles, tools (saws and ham­mers), wood stoves and oth­er stuff for the win­ter, a cheap way to make fly­ers.
Vis­it or join Kel­ster­bach For­est Occu­pa­tion. Bring a tent, sleep­ing bag and mat, warm clothes, a flash­light. Musi­cal instru­ments and toys are nice! Dish­es, fork, knives and spoons are already here.

Direc­tions

from Kel­ster­bach cen­tre:

By train (S‑Bahn) from Frank­furt or Wies­baden to sta­tion Kel­ster­bach.
Out­side the sta­tion to the left (in the direc­tion of Wies­baden (south-west) at the right side from the track). Then with the track left from you, you fol­low Rüs­selsheimer Straße for about 1,5 km. After you’ve seen an exit-way, you’ll see a traf­fic light. There you turn in the Okriftel­er Strasse (not indi­cat­ed) in the direc­tion of Wall­dorf. You under­pass a train track, ignore the first street (right) and take the sec­ond pos­si­bil­i­ty, a park­ing bay. Walk into the for­est.

by car:
From Köln to Frank­furt A3/E35, exit Raun­heim #48, then to the north, direc­tion of Kel­ster­bach (Rüs­sel­heimer Straße / 43). Right at the traf­fic lights (not indi­cat­ed: Okriftel­er Straße, K152), under by a viaduct. Ignore the first street at the right and take the sec­ond pos­si­bil­i­ty (150 meters fur­ther), a park­ing bay (see pic­ture) and park your car there.
Behind the bar­ri­er you walk straight on, fol­low­ing the way and peace-signs. You’ll come by a lake (on your right) and find the camp a lit­tle fur­ther (after a cross­road) on your left.

Hitch­hik­ing direc­tions:
A3, from Köln direc­tion Frank­furt, exit 48 — Raun­heim, ask the dri­ver to go north direc­tion Kel­ster­bach to let you out after sev­er­al 100 meters ‑where its pos­si­ble to turn… go on till you find the first hard way (ignore the 1. earthy path) to the right… fol­low the signs of lib­er­a­tion.
or go under the train, turn left, go right under the tube, over the street and straight… along a lake after it turn right.

Con­tact

Address:
Baumbe­set­zung neben dem Pflanz­garten
Gelbe Grund­schneise
65451 Kel­ster­bach
GERMANY
Phone: (+49)0175 833 59 58 (German/English)
e‑mail: waldbesetzung@riseup.net
Web­site: http://www.waldbesetzung.blogsport.de
Coor­di­nates: 50.038999, 8.504019

Climate suffragettes storm municipal city council! Stop the motorway!

On Novem­ber 12th, 2008 at 5.15 pm. six cli­mate activists dressed in peri­od cos­tumes as suf­fragettes com­plete with big hats, marched into a munic­i­pal city coun­cil meet­ing in Gothen­burg, the sec­ond largest city of Swe­den.

Swedish suffragettes 1Swedish suffragettes 2On Novem­ber 12th, 2008 at 5.15 pm. six cli­mate activists dressed in peri­od cos­tumes as suf­fragettes com­plete with big hats, marched into a munic­i­pal city coun­cil meet­ing in Gothen­burg, the sec­ond largest city of Swe­den.

The politi­cians were debat­ing a new six-lane motor­way, called the Marieholm tun­nel, planned to be built under the riv­er that runs through the city. The six women, activists from the cli­mate net­work Kli­max, stormed in to the meet­ing blow­ing whis­tles. A ban­ner was unfold­ed with the text: “No more tun­nel vision – cli­mate smart pol­i­tics now!” The activists voiced two demands:

Stop Marieholm tun­nel, no more motor­ways.
Local pol­i­tics in accor­dance with the lat­est cli­mate sci­ence.

From the stand oth­er activists and mem­bers of the pub­lic cheered. Leaflets explain­ing the action were hand­ed out. The action com­mem­o­rat­ed the 100 years anniver­sary of the Suf­fragettes burst­ing into the British Par­lia­ment to demand women’s suf­frage.
The offi­cial cli­mate goal of Gothen­burg is to sta­bi­lize the emis­sions caused by the city to a glob­al­ly sus­tain­able and fair lev­el by 2050. Still the politi­cians (con­ser­v­a­tives, lib­er­als and social democ­rats) are cook­ing up plans for a new six-lane motor­way under the riv­er, even though they know that new roads lead to more traf­fic. To build a new motor­way is insan­i­ty. Its the abso­lut last thing we need in these times of cli­mate change!
As did the Suf­fragettes 100 years ago, we are fac­ing an urgent prob­lem of huge injus­tice. It is women all over the world who will suf­fer the worst con­se­quences of cli­mate change, even though it isn’t women who are respon­si­ble for the largest sources of emis­sions. With this action we cel­e­brate the strong women before us who fought for a bet­ter world. We have picked up the torch the suf­fragettes car­ried and we will pass it on!

green­gote­borg at yahoo.se
http://www.klimatet.org

Remember remember, action security in November… [update: Observer article withdrawn]

Remem­ber to think about secu­ri­ty when plan­ning actions & cam­paigns, every month — there’s been a help­ful reminder in a Sun­day news­pa­per that our aims and the aims of the state are some­what dif­fer­ent!

Though the arti­cle can be tak­en to be a police unit safe­guard­ing their ongo­ing bud­gets and employ­ment — as has hap­pened in the past with sim­i­lar scare arti­cles (from the police & the secu­ri­ty ser­vices) — it’s also a handy reminder of the secu­ri­ty issues we should think about to ensure that our cam­paign­ing remains effec­tive. Check out the back­ground dirt on the journos below…

It Came From the Black Swampy - Eco-Terror!!CCTV camera 1Remem­ber to think about secu­ri­ty when plan­ning actions & cam­paigns, every month — there’s been a help­ful reminder in a Sun­day news­pa­per that our aims and the aims of the state are some­what dif­fer­ent!

Though the arti­cle can be tak­en to be a police unit safe­guard­ing their ongo­ing bud­gets and employ­ment — as has hap­pened in the past with sim­i­lar scare arti­cles (from the police & the secu­ri­ty ser­vices) — it’s also a handy reminder of the secu­ri­ty issues we should think about to ensure that our cam­paign­ing remains effec­tive. Check out the back­ground dirt on the journos below…

See the Activist Secu­ri­ty web­site for a full down­load­able book­let.

Also, try out this selec­tion of links:

Secu­ri­ty, Pri­va­cy, & Anonymi­ty for Auton­o­my…
ELF Press Office’s secu­ri­ty page
Top 100 Net­work Secu­ri­ty Tools

The orig­i­nal news­pa­per arti­cle:

Police warn of grow­ing threat from eco-ter­ror­ists

Fear of dead­ly attack by lone mav­er­ick as offi­cers alert major firms to dan­ger of green extrem­ism

Mark Townsend and Nick Den­ning,
The Observ­er, Sun­day Novem­ber 9 2008

Police have warned of the grow­ing threat of eco-ter­ror­ism after reveal­ing they are inves­ti­gat­ing a group which has sup­port­ers who believe that reduc­ing the Earth­’s pop­u­la­tion by four-fifths will help to pro­tect the plan­et.

Offi­cers from a spe­cial­ist unit ded­i­cat­ed to tack­ling domes­tic ter­ror­ism are mon­i­tor­ing an eco-move­ment called Earth First! which has advo­cates who state that cut­ting the Earth­’s pop­u­la­tion by 80 per cent will ease pres­sure on oth­er species. Offi­cers are con­cerned a ‘lone mav­er­ick’ eco-extrem­ist may attempt a ter­ror­ist attack aimed at killing large num­bers of Britons.

The Nation­al Extrem­ism Tac­ti­cal Co-ordi­na­tion Unit, which col­lates intel­li­gence and advice to police forces, has revealed that eco-activists are research­ing a list of tar­get com­pa­nies which they believe are major pol­luters or are exac­er­bat­ing the threat of cli­mate change.

The unit is cur­rent­ly mon­i­tor­ing blogs and inter­net traf­fic con­nect­ed to a net­work of UK cli­mate camps and rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal move­ments under the umbrel­la of Earth First!, which has claimed respon­si­bil­i­ty for a series of crim­i­nal acts in recent months.

A senior source at the unit said it had grow­ing evi­dence of a threat from eco-activists. ‘We have found state­ments that four-fifths of the human pop­u­la­tion has to die for oth­er species in the world to sur­vive.

‘There are a num­ber of very ded­i­cat­ed indi­vid­u­als out there and they could be dan­ger­ous to oth­er peo­ple.’

Earth First! says its mis­sion is ‘about direct action to halt the destruc­tion of the Earth’ and advo­cates ‘civ­il dis­obe­di­ence and mon­key­wrench­ing’, tac­tics that include sab­o­tage and dis­rup­tive behav­iour. The move­ment has links to US envi­ron­men­tal extrem­ists which have waged a cam­paign of vio­lence in Amer­i­ca, includ­ing the fire­bomb­ing of a string of 4x4 car deal­er­ships in Cal­i­for­nia in 2003 and alleged arson attacks on oth­er prop­er­ty.

The anti-extrem­ist unit has already alert­ed a num­ber of major com­pa­nies which have been accused of being car­bon pol­luters with advice on how they can with­stand being tar­get­ed by eco-ter­ror­ists. Com­pa­nies are thought to include air­port oper­a­tor BAA, an inter­na­tion­al min­ing con­glom­er­ate BHP Bil­li­ton and firms con­nect­ed to UK coal-fired pow­er sta­tions.

‘They are doing research of pos­si­ble tar­gets, look­ing at share­hold­ers and financiers. For exam­ple, they could research an air­line and see how many of its air­craft are not envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly,’ said the NETCU source.

Although green extrem­ists have yet to embark on an orches­trat­ed cam­paign of vio­lence in the UK, offi­cers warn that they may be about to launch a cam­paign of intim­i­da­tion and fear aimed at dis­rupt­ing busi­ness­es. ‘For some peo­ple, if they can jus­ti­fy it in their minds, then it’s a noble cause even if it’s a crim­i­nal action. They haven’t start­ed yet, but we believe they will come up with a strat­e­gy and tac­tics,’ said the source at the unit, who described the move­ment as well-fund­ed and organ­ised.

A spate of recent attacks, for which Earth First! sup­port­ers have claimed respon­si­bil­i­ty, has includ­ed van­dal­ism of branch­es of sev­en Ger­man banks such as Deutsche Bank and Allianz AG. The actions were appar­ent­ly because the banks hold shares in UK Coal, which plans to build new coal-fired pow­er sta­tions.

A state­ment on the Earth First! web­site explains the attacks by say­ing: ‘Exploita­tion of the envi­ron­ment and peo­ple by the state and indus­try go hand in hand. They can­not be sep­a­rat­ed and both must be attacked. Social war, not cli­mate chaos.’

Anoth­er attack hit a quar­ry in Stafford­shire which belongs to Bar­don Aggre­gates, a com­pa­ny hat also owns a con­tro­ver­sial quar­ry at Glen­san­da on the north-west coast of Scot­land. The Scot­tish quar­ry is accused of spoil­ing the High­lands envi­ron­ment. The Earth First! web­site states: ‘We slashed tyres, stripped paint jobs, glued locks and trashed con­vey­or belts. All the earth movers were hit and many of the cement and aggre­gate trucks. This action cost us very lit­tle but should cost Bar­don thou­sands.’

Among the net­work of groups under the Earth First! umbrel­la are var­i­ous cli­mate camps. Last August police found a stash of knives and weapons beside one such camp in Kent. Pro­test­ers, how­ev­er, said they had noth­ing to do with the weapons and accused police of launch­ing a ‘smear cam­paign’.

A spokesman for Der­by Earth First! said the move­ment was strict­ly non-vio­lent, if not always law-abid­ing. He said: ‘If some­one does eco­log­i­cal dam­age we would per­haps break the law and pro­tect the ecol­o­gy, but the ecol­o­gy also includes humans.

‘We’re all about com­mu­ni­ties. Cap­i­tal­ism is the prob­lem and we want to return to a more sus­tain­able time. But we are not about reduc­ing the pop­u­la­tion, that is just scare­mon­ger­ing by the police.’

The rise of eco-extrem­ism coin­cides with the fall of the ani­mal rights activist move­ment. Police said the ani­mal rights move­ment was in ‘dis­ar­ray’ and that its ring­lead­ers had either been pros­e­cut­ed or were await­ing pros­e­cu­tion, adding that its ‘crit­i­cal mass’ of hard­core extrem­ists was suf­fi­cient­ly deplet­ed to have halt­ed its effec­tive­ness. Last Thurs­day a promi­nent ani­mal rights activist accused of plant­i­ng petrol bombs at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty was cleared of pos­sess­ing an explo­sive sub­stance with intent.

Reports on the Earth First! Jour­nal web­site, which tells users how to send encrypt­ed emails, reveals con­nec­tions to the Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front (ELF) which has been linked to a series of vio­lent attacks in the US. ELF was clas­si­fied as the top domes­tic ter­ror­ism threat in the US by the FBI in March 2001.

The ELF was found­ed in 1992 in Brighton by mem­bers of the Earth First! move­ment who want­ed to form a break­away group that would use more extreme tac­tics.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/09/eco-terrorism-earth-first-elf

Dirt dug on arti­cle writ­ers:

From: http://ianbone.wordpress.com/2008/11/10/the-guardian-eco-terrorism-and-the-armyexclusive/

THE GUARDIAN ECO-TERRORIST JOURNO IS ARMY INTELLIGENCE OFFICER……..EXCLUSIVE!

Curios­er and Curiouser……I’m check­ing for Nick Den­ning — co-author with Mark Townsend of yesterday’s hilarous Observ­er piece on eco ‑ter­ror­ism. He doesn’t appear to have any pre­vi­ous as a jour­nal­ist. But what’s this?? A piece writ­ten by Townsend in Afghanistan in August 2007 where he’s embed­ded with the Roy­al Anglian Reg­i­ment in Sangin………and shar­ing a heli­copter ride with NICK DENNING — COMMANDER OF 1 PLATOON A COMPANY in the Roy­al Anglian reg­i­ment!!! And less than a year lat­er this Den­ning is pro­vid­ing intel­li­gence to his mate on The Guardian on eco — teror­ism!!! Some expla­na­tions from The Guardian reqired on this one methinks! Watch this space…………

Also see http://ianbone.wordpress.com/2008/11/09/guardian-journalists-police-patsies-yet-again/
And http://ianbone.wordpress.com/2008/11/11/god-bone-youre-a-cunt-the-observer-replies/

Fun­ny & infor­ma­tive.

—OR—

This ‘Nick Den­ning’ is clear­ly not the crick­eter and Ian Bone’s sug­ges­tion that he is an army offi­cer is unlike­ly. It is more like­ly to be the ND who worked at the BBC as a researcher and a bit of work on Google pulls up a num­ber of requests that he has made for infor­ma­tion.

For instance:

http://www.stewartbyfc.co.uk/fusionnews/archive.php?show=month&month=July&year=2004

The most like­ly expla­na­tion is that this is the per­son – that he is a researcher who wants to break into nation­al jour­nal­ism.

——

Schnews arti­cle & quotes from the journo

——

The Observer/Guardian blog on the sub­ject if you want to post some­thing there is http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2008/nov/10/activists-kingsnorth

——
Update:
The read­ers’ edi­tor on … anony­mous sources and claims of eco-ter­ror­ism

The Observ­er, Sun­day Novem­ber 23 2008

You might think The Observer’s con­cern for the envi­ron­ment arose only in the past 20 years as glob­al warm­ing became appar­ent, but it has actu­al­ly been read­ing the signs since 1925. Wal­dorf Astor, then the paper’s for­ward-think­ing own­er, took a keen inter­est in all things envi­ron­men­tal and urged his edi­tor, JL Garvin, to appoint a cor­re­spon­dent to cov­er ecol­o­gy and agri­cul­ture. Step for­ward Sir William Beach Thomas, who became, in effect, the first envi­ron­ment cor­re­spon­dent.

Much lat­er, The Observ­er was to inves­ti­gate and reveal the ‘green­house effect’ and to warn of its pos­si­ble con­se­quences. Thou­sands of words have been devot­ed to the sub­ject ever since, win­ning a loy­al audi­ence, par­tic­u­lar­ly among those who are active in the envi­ron­ment move­ment. So there was under­stand­able dis­may at a recent sto­ry which told of a ‘grow­ing threat from eco-ter­ror­ists’.

Police were said to be inves­ti­gat­ing the eco-move­ment Earth First! which, they claimed, had sup­port­ers who believed that reduc­ing the Earth­’s pop­u­la­tion by four-fifths would help pro­tect the plan­et. The Nation­al Extrem­ism Tac­ti­cal Co-ordi­na­tion Unit was con­cerned that a lone mav­er­ick might attempt a ter­ror­ist attack. It had also warned sev­er­al com­pa­nies they were being tar­get­ed as major pol­luters by the group and had offered them advice on how to with­stand attack.

It’s per­fect­ly legit­i­mate to report police secu­ri­ty con­cerns, but none of the state­ments were sub­stan­ti­at­ed. No web­site links were offered, no names were men­tioned, no com­pa­nies iden­ti­fied and no police source would go on the record.

The arti­cle linked Earth First! to cli­mate camps estab­lished last sum­mer, includ­ing one at Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion, Kent, and at Heathrow.

While the paper had no inten­tion of sug­gest­ing that every activist was a poten­tial ter­ror­ist, sev­er­al cli­mate campers wrote to protest. ‘If a jour­nal­ist is told by a sin­gle anony­mous source that a move­ment of peo­ple has among it indi­vid­u­als who would take the lives of men, women and chil­dren in a ter­ror attack, what stan­dard of evi­dence does that jour­nal­ist require? In this case: no evi­dence what­so­ev­er. The claim itself was the sto­ry.’

We’ve been here before. Oth­er news­pa­pers report­ed on a pre­dict­ed ‘sum­mer of hate’ at cli­mate camps that nev­er mate­ri­alised and the Press Com­plaints Com­mis­sion found against the Evening Stan­dard at cli­mate campers were plan­ning attacks at Heathrow.

Envi­ron­men­tal­ist Kei­th Met­calf explained that Earth First! sup­port­ed direct action against prop­er­ty, but not against peo­ple. He believed that the debate around sus­tain­able pop­u­la­tion size had been twist­ed to imply that envi­ron­men­tal­ists wished to kill peo­ple.

He also repeat­ed the belief of sev­er­al oth­ers that Nec­tu was brief­ing in this man­ner in order to make pros­e­cu­tions eas­i­er and to boost its fund­ing, which is at risk owing to the decline in ani­mal rights cam­paigns. I can’t ver­i­fy that or the fears about mass mur­der because, despite repeat­ed requests, Nec­tu won’t respond. Accord­ing­ly, The Observ­er has decid­ed to with­draw the sto­ry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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