Category: Rest of Europe

Rest of Europe

Castor anti-nuclear blockade finally broken & other actions

Edit­ed direct action high­lights from http://www.castor.de/ticker/index_en.html —

Tues­day, Novem­ber 11, 2008
20 hours lat­er than planned, after many con­vinc­ing, cre­ative block­ades, the CASTOR road trans­port reached the Gor­leben inter­im stor­age depot at 00:39 am on Tues­day 11 Novem­ber

Castor blockadeCastor water cannon at nightStop Castor brazierCastor tractor blockade
Burning barricades confront water cannon at night, in Castor protests
Edit­ed direct action high­lights from http://www.castor.de/ticker/index_en.html —

Tues­day, Novem­ber 11, 2008
20 hours lat­er than planned, after many con­vinc­ing, cre­ative block­ades, the CASTOR road trans­port reached the Gor­leben inter­im stor­age depot at 00:39 am on Tues­day 11 Novem­ber

===

Mon­day, Novem­ber 10, 2008
10:33 pm The water can­nons in Laase are to pre­vent peo­ple mov­ing into the 50m no-go zone and onto the road.
10:16 pm Sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple are on the trans­port route in Laase. Police are using water can­nons.
10:13 pm In Grip­pel the last activist was removed from the pyra­mid.
10:02 pm Colour­ful activ­i­ty by 100 peo­ple in Laase to the left and right of the route.
10:01 pm Grip­pel: The last per­son is still chained to the pyra­mid and there are still 150 peo­ple present. The mood is good and there’s good music.
9:53 pm Only one trac­tor still stand­ing in the way in Quick­born. It’s lost a wheel. Police are using heavy equip­ment. It’s esti­mat­ed on loca­tion that it will take 30 min­utes until the north­ern route (via Quick­born) is com­plete­ly free.
9:40 pm In Grip­pel only one pyra­mid with one per­son chained on is left on the road. In Quick­born two trac­tors are left on the road that seem to be caus­ing the police some prob­lems.
7:44 pm Dear peo­ple, we’ve man­aged to make this the longest CASTOR trans­port ever. Super!!!!! Stay cool, we have plen­ty to cel­e­brate.
6:07 pm Press release by the Lüchow-Dan­nen­berg Farm­ers’ Emer­gency Asso­ci­a­tion Against Nuclear Pow­er. The chained-on demon­stra­tors in Grip­pel demand nego­ti­a­tions. After 8 peo­ple chained them­selves to two con­crete blocks in Grip­pel on the CASTOR truck­ing route, the detach­ment of the pro­test­ers from the blocks is prov­ing very dif­fi­cult and time-con­sum­ing for the police. It’s esti­mat­ed that the pro­ce­dure could take sev­er­al hours. The chained peo­ple, mem­bers of the Lüchow-Dan­nen­berg Farm­ers’ Emer­gency Asso­ci­a­tion Against Nuclear Pow­er, want to nego­ti­ate with a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Low­er Sax­ony state gov­ern­ment, say a state sec­re­tary.
5:45 pm In Grip­pel at the pyra­mid block­ade police have detached the first per­son from the pyra­mid. The top of this pyra­mid was not sawn off.
5:33 pm In Grip­pel the top has been sawn off the pyra­mid point­ing to Gar­tow. It didn’t pro­vide the police with any clues. Nor can the pyra­mids be moved because the chained-on arms would be bro­ken. A plan to lift them was giv­en up.
Around 5:11 pm all Robin Wood activists at the waste com­pound were tak­en out of the trees by police.
4:13 pm From the Robin Wood rope bridge 300 metres from the stor­age com­pound are sus­pend­ed not 2 but 6 activists.
4:08 pm Police have car­ried off all the sit­ters out­side the waste com­pound. But the trac­tor is still there with two peo­ple chained to it.
4:02 pm The work on the con­crete pyra­mids in Grip­pel is pro­gress­ing poor­ly. A sec­ond demo­li­tion team is brought in. The peo­ple are as good as pos­si­ble under the cir­cum­stances.
3:22 pm In the block­ade at the waste com­pound three peo­ple have chained them­selves to a trac­tor.
2:56 pm Grip­pel: The gen­er­a­tor is work­ing again and police are prepar­ing to illu­mi­nate the action. 350 peo­ple still there.
2:53 pm Quick­born: Still 25 trac­tors on the road, 100 peo­ple, increased police pres­ence. The climber is off the ele­vat­ing truck but it took the police a long time. Two new activists sus­pend­ed in trees.
2:50 pm Noth­ing mov­ing at the reload­ing crane. The car­ry­ing peo­ple out of the block­ade at the sor­age com­pound is pro­ceed­ing only slow­ly. The pyra­mids in Grip­pel with the peo­ple chained to them are still on the road.
2:41 pm The gen­er­a­tor of the police in Grip­pel has bro­ken down, leav­ing the drill stuck in the pyra­mid.
2:38 pm In Grip­pel police begin drilling open the con­crete pyra­mids.
2:06 pm In Grip­pel police built a roof for the farm­ers chained to the con­crete pyra­mid. Sit-down block­aders were not to stay there and were removed by police.
1:40 pm The climber on the ele­vat­ing truck has chained him­self on.
1:40 pm In Quick­born a climber has climbed from a trac­tor onto the ele­vat­ing truck of the police. The police have been busy with this activist for a con­sid­er­able time and now needs anoth­er crane to get him off the ele­vat­ing truck.
11:20 am Police have made the 3rd call to vacate the area at the stor­age com­pound.
11:17 am In Grip­pel stand two con­crete pyra­mids with four peo­ple chained to each. Cur­rent­ly there are 30 to 40 peo­ple there to sup­port them. Vis­i­tors should bring cof­fee and cake and per­haps an umbrel­la.
11:11 am In Grip­pel mem­bers of a farm­ers resis­tance group have chained them­selves to con­crete pyra­mids.
11:10 am In Laase 150 peo­ple are mov­ing in the direc­tion of the dike.
11:06 am At the block­ade of the stor­age com­pound police have made the sec­ond call to vacate the area.
7 am Now about 1,000 peo­ple sit­ting out­side the waste stor­age com­pound in Gor­leben.
Report in Eng­lish on block­ades on the tracks at Har­lin­gen http://de.indymedia.org/2008/11/231949.shtml.
Claims of extreme police bru­tal­i­ty in break­ing up block­ades under cov­er of dark­ness,
beat­ing peo­ple with trun­cheons with­out warn­ing and pur­su­ing them up to 150 metres into woods at http://de.indymedia.org/2008/11/231982.shtml.
00:03 am: The three CASTOR occu­piers were arrest­ed.

===

Sun­day, Novem­ber 09, 2008
11:52 pm Bru­tal dis­per­sal with gas at one of the Tol­len­dorf block­ades. First Aiders and lawyers are not being allowed through.
11:39 pm Three peo­ple are sit­ting on the first CASTOR cas­ket.
11:16 pm The peo­ple tak­en by police out of the demo in Tol­len­dorf were tak­en behind police bar­ri­cades into a cor­don. The mood is relaxed. In the cor­don the clowns are danc­ing. One can approach up to 50 metres out­side the cor­don.
10:21 pm In Dums­dorf 30 peo­ple are in a sit-down block­ade.
22:11 pm The Robin Wood activists were removed from the Old­en­dorf Bridge, they were not injured.
9:40 pm Robin Wood has two actions. The first is at Old­en­dorf Bridge. Police threat­en to cut down the two activists there. The oth­er is in Wendisch Evern , where par­al­lel to the track a large ban­ner was hung.
9:19 pm 500 peo­ple sit­ting down at rail km 188.
9:04 pm 50 clowns on the track in Grün­hagen.
8:57 pm Two activists are hang­ing from the Old­en­dorf Bridge, a third has just been led off by police.
8:52 pm Trac­tors are parked in Quick­born so that a car can still get through, but no CASTOR trucks.
8:12 pm Police have removed two peo­ple chained to the track near Eich­dorf and are tak­ing them to the pris­on­er col­lec­tion point.
6:54 pm Around 6:15 pm route B126 in Met­zin­gen at the snack stand was not pass­able. There was fire on the road.
6:18 pm The two activists in Lüneb­urg are still hang­ing in tra­vers­es next to the track. But police high res­cue spe­cial­ists are get­ting ready to remove them.
6:17 pm 60–70 peo­ple on the Old­en­dorf Bridge. In Met­zin­gen tires are burn­ing on the fed­er­al road. There is no more get­ting through there on fed­er­al route 216.
6:03 pm The block­ade in Gedelitz at the Free Repub­lic of Wend­land man­aged to force the Ham­burg police unit with its heavy gear such as water can­non to retreat all the way through the vil­lage.
5:33 pm At the dwarves par­ty of Wider­Set­zen are 400 peo­ple. The mood is good and no dis­per­sal is in sight.
5:27 pm Between Eich­dorf and Nahren­dorf 25 peo­ple are sit­ting on the rails. No police present. And at rail km 202 (i.e. fur­ther west) 70 peo­ple are on the tracks.
5:22 pm In Har­lin­gen between rail kms 187 and 188 a giant par­ty is going on with sev­er­al hun­dred dwarves.
5:15 pm “Wider­set­zen” is back on the rails in Har­lin­gen with about 150 peo­ple, this time at rail km 188.1.
4:53 pm 50 peo­ple at a chain-on action by two peo­ple at km 198.2 in Eich­dorf.
4:30 pm There is a sit-down block­ade between Old­en­dorf a.d. Göhrde and Eich­dorf with more than 100 peo­ple.
4:22 pm There are again two block­ades in Har­lin­gen. A new one is at rail km 188.5.
4:15 pm The block­ade at Har­lin­gen at km 187.8 has been com­plete­ly dis­persed.
4:13 pm Clar­i­fi­ca­tion: The dam­age to rails at Grün­hagen is in Coun­ty Lüchow-Dan­nen­berg, NOT in Grün­hagen on the ICE express route Uelzen – Lüneb­urg.
3:12 pm Near Tol­len­dorf at Km 188 about 100 peo­ple have made it on to the track.

—

Sun­day, Novem­ber 09, 2008 at 15:02:08 (CET)

PEOPLE HURT NEAR TOLLENDORF: A block­ade- action near Tol­len­dorf faced strong repres­sion by the police. Hun­dreds of peo­ple met in Tol­len­dorf today at 7.30 to con­tin­ue to the tracks, where the Cas­tor-trans­port is sup­posed to go through lat­er in the after­noon. We walked in a huge queue along the for­est-path, leav­ing behind us minor tree-blokades for the police-vans. After walk­ing about a 1km,there was a road in front of us .There, a lot of police was stand­ing already, about 20 metres apart. There was no oth­er choice than try to get run­ning thourough the lines. Lots of peo­ple in front of us made it, but we saw some peo­ple get­ting caught or being pushed back by the cops. The more we wait­ed, the hard­er it was to get through, because more police-vans were arriv­ing all the time. So, the cat and mouse ‑game start­ed. I saw a police reach­ing to a per­son in front of me and I ran across. There was noth­ing to be done for the peo­ple who could­nt get across. Some of them tried oth­er routes. So, we con­tin­ued towards the tracks, that were real­ly close to us already. But, the police was there wait­ing for us wear­ing full riot-gear and hav­ing water­tanks in the back­round. We got set­tled to the tracks as fast as we could, block­aders spread the huge plas­tic-mate­r­i­al to cov­er them­selves, and we began dig­ging the stones off the side of the tracks to get bet­ter resis­tance posi­tions… And after announc­ing three times the ille­gal­i­ty of our action, the cops attacked. They used vio­lent force and start­ed hit­ting peo­ple with batons. Many got some severe pain from pep­per-sprays, which was being done straight into indi­vid­u­als’ faces. Water tanks were being used con­stant­ly. We got back to the tracks a few times until it was impos­si­ble to stay, due to the seri­ous police-vio­lence. So hun­dreds of peo­ple retreat­ed and got scat­tered in the for­est; some ready to look for oth­er ways to get to tracks, some head­ing back to their camps to gain more pow­er for the oth­er block­ades of today. We havent giv­en up. The resis­tance con­tin­ues! (Tak­en from http://de.indymedia.org/2008/11/231840.shtml.)

—

12:50 pm The rail between Lüneb­urg and Dan­nen­berg has been bent up at km 190.4 (ner­ar Grün­hagen). Track work­ers are at the loca­tion and esti­mate that the repair could take quite some time.
12:15 pm The stor­age com­pound is block­ad­ed. Sheet­ing was erect­ed as roofs. About 250 peo­ple there. Also trac­tors. Mood is good. A cul­ture pro­gramme is being organ­ised. It is still easy to get through.
INJURIES FROM POLICE HORSE, BATONS, PEPPER SPRAY:
10:51H: The horse pro­ces­sion has start­ed, 25 hors­es and 25 cyclists tak­ing part. Many police present. Mood is good.
10:49h: The news con­fer­ence of the block­aders of Berg will be at 1.30 pm in the Kul­turhaus Mika­do in Karl­sruhe. At the assem­bly and vig­il in Gov­elin one per­son was injured when kicked by a police horse. The injured man suf­fered a cra­nial bruise and a tor­so injury. He is being tak­en to hos­pi­tal. Sev­er­al peo­ple were injured by police batons or pep­per spray.

—

Sun­day, Novem­ber 09, 2008 at 08:43:20 (CET)

08:26 H: The Robin Wood peo­ple hang­ing in trees out­side the waste com­pound are well. The Red Cross is keep­ing them sup­plied with hot drinks. Every­thing is peace­ful. The Robin Wood activists sus­pend­ed them­selves yes­ter­day evening while peo­ple gath­ered to sit down out­side the com­pound to block it. 500 peo­ple have arrived in Tol­len­dorf. It report­ed that the two men and a woman who had chained them­selves to the rail­way track have been arrest­ed by fed­er­al police. Before that they were med­ical­ly exam­ined. Police had pro­tect­ed them against the cold with foil. The woman was the last to be cut from the con­crete block after almost 11 ½ hours chained to it. A police spokesman quot­ed a doc­tor as say­ing her con­di­tion is prob­lem-free. Four oth­er demon­stra­tors who were also at the block­ade point at mid­day were first car­ried away by police and lat­er let go.

—

REPAIRS NEEDED: 00:53 am Before the CASTOR train can move on, the rails and the track bed have to be restored. It’s not known at this point how long that will take.
ALL THREE CUT FREE: 00:25 am The last of the three pro­test­ers who had chained them­selves to a con­crete block under the rail tracks at Berg has been cut free.
00:06 am A video of the block­ade of the Gor­leben stor­age com­pound is view­able at http://www.graswurzel.tv/index.php?mov_id=43&PHPSESSID=b83e29fde90c2638c12cd3d9b382bf4f
00:04 am CASTOR train still stopped at Berg because one per­son remains chained to a con­crete block under the rails.
00:03 am Still 600 peo­ple squat­ting out­side the stor­age com­pound, sur­round­ed by many trac­tors.

===

Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 10, 2008

THE LAST FEW HOURS OF SATURDAY as report­ed on the Ger­man Day X newswire:
11:34 Four Robin Wood activists sus­pend­ed over the road between Gor­leben and the stor­age com­pound about 7 metres from the ground.
10:29 pm Block­ade of the inter­im stor­age com­pound con­tin­ues. 500 peo­ple and 12 trac­tors there. Good mood. Lots of police but hold­ing back.
9:57 pm After nine hours no end in sight to block­ade of the CASTOR train at Wörth near the French bor­der. Fed­er­al police at 9:30 pm, almost nine hours after the block­ade began, man­aged to release the sec­ond of the three chained-on peo­ple from the mas­sive con­crete block, said to be as big as one cubic metre. The train with 11 CASTOR cas­kets was due in Wörth at 1:40 pm. It’s been stuck in Lauter­bourg across the bor­der in France since 1.15 pm. The NDR broad­cast­er has a pic­ture of the block­aders at
9:44 pm Sig­nalling cables of the rail­ways were set on fire in the morn­ing at Hofgeis­mar, near Kas­sel. Police sus­pect a con­nec­tion with the CASTOR trans­port. In Wies­baden-Schier­stein tires were set on fire near cable cab­i­nets. Train ser­vices were can­celled until the after­noon.
8:51 pm Still 500 peo­ple and 12 trac­tors blockad­ing the stor­age com­pound.
6:43 pm Police have cut the first of three chained pro­test­ers from the con­crete block in Berg.
5:56 pm 500 peo­ple at the sit-down block­ade of the stor­age com­pound, more com­ing.
5:55 pm A female pro­test­er hand­cuffed to a tree by police in Karl­sruhe was released by court order. The court ruled there was no rea­son to hold her. She and two oth­er peo­ple had demon­strat­ed at mid­day in Karl­sruhe-Mühlburg on a track near the rail­way line against atom­ic pow­er. The CASTOR train was due to pass there in the evening. +++++++ 5:52 pm 60 activists, includ­ing clowns of the Clowns Army, are with the chained-on peo­ple in Berg for sup­port.
5:50 pm The two men and a woman chained to the rail­way track at Berg had face masks put on them at 4:47 pm

—

Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 08, 2008 at 16:39:55 (CET)

Ger­man Rail reports delays in train traf­fic in north Ger­many caused by arson attacks on rail­way instal­la­tions in Bran­den­burg and dam­age done to sig­nalling equip­ment. Repairs would take until the late after­noon.

—

Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 08, 2008 at 16:11:42 (CET)

TRAIN STILL STOPPED: The three activists locked to a con­crete block are still stop­ping the CASTOR train from con­tin­u­ing its jour­ney. Police have not yet suc­ceed­ed to cut the demon­stra­tors out. They’re work­ing with elec­tric ham­mer drills to try to break open the con­crete. The train is still stopped in the French bor­der sta­tion Lauter­bourg, about four kilo­me­tres from the con­crete block.

French police arrest anarchists for train sabotage + web link for more info

11th Novem­ber 2008
French police raid­ed alleged anar­chist cells in three cities on Tues­day and arrest­ed at least 10 sus­pects fol­low­ing a series of sab­o­tage attacks on the coun­try’s high-speed rail net­work.

11th Novem­ber 2008
French police raid­ed alleged anar­chist cells in three cities on Tues­day and arrest­ed at least 10 sus­pects fol­low­ing a series of sab­o­tage attacks on the coun­try’s high-speed rail net­work.

Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Michele Alliot-Marie said police intel­li­gence offi­cers had been inves­ti­gat­ing an “ultra-left anar­chist move­ment” for sev­er­al months and had act­ed fol­low­ing the week­end’s dis­rup­tion of train ser­vices.

“We found that this ultra-left move­ment has links in five Euro­pean coun­tries and in oth­er non-Euro­pean coun­tries,” she said, alleg­ing that the French gang has con­tacts in Bel­gium, Ger­many, Italy and Greece.

None of those arrest­ed works for the SNCF state rail net­work, she added.

A source close to the inves­ti­ga­tion told AFP anti-ter­ror­ist offi­cers were exam­in­ing “pos­si­ble links between the sus­pects and the Ger­man hard-left, which has claimed respon­si­bil­i­ty for actions agains trains car­ry­ing nuclear waste”.

Pres­i­dent Nico­las Sarkozy con­grat­u­lat­ed police on the arrests and wel­comed “the rapid and promis­ing progress made in the con­text of the inquiry.”

Thou­sands of pas­sen­gers and more than 160 train ser­vices were delayed Sat­ur­day after a gang jammed steel rods across over­head pow­er cables on three high-speed lines between Paris and Lon­don, Brus­sels and the French regions.

The attack halt­ed trains and dam­aged sev­er­al sec­tions of 25,000-volt pow­er lines, but no one was hurt.

In a sep­a­rate inci­dent on Sun­day in the south­west of the coun­try, anoth­er high-speed train rammed a pair of con­crete blocks placed on a line. There were no injuries and it is not yet clear whether the inci­dent was relat­ed.

Alliot-Marie said 10 sus­pects were being held, but an inte­ri­or min­istry offi­cial said more than 20 had ini­tial­ly been detained in raids con­duct­ed in Paris, the cen­tral town of Tarnac and the north­ern city of Rouen.

Fol­low­ing Sat­ur­day’s inci­dent, which fol­lowed at least one sim­i­lar inci­dent involv­ing the use of rods designed to rein­force con­crete and a series of oth­er acts of van­dal­ism, offi­cials spoke of a “con­cert­ed cam­paign” of sab­o­tage.

Experts from the SNCF state rail com­pa­ny told reporters that the sophis­ti­ca­tion of the attacks showed the sabo­teurs were tech­ni­cal­ly very com­pe­tent, since neu­tral­is­ing the pow­er lines required expert knowl­edge.

The TGV high-speed rail net­work has been the tar­get of sev­er­al extrem­ist cam­paigns over recent years by crim­i­nals seek­ing to black­mail SNCF, Basque sep­a­ratist guer­ril­las and mil­i­tant trade union­ists.

Sat­ur­day’s attacks were among the best planned, tak­ing out trains on lines north, east and south of the cap­i­tal at almost the same moment and plung­ing the nation­al net­work into chaos.

In addi­tion to nation­al ser­vices, Eurostar trains to Brus­sels and Lon­don and Thalys jour­neys to the Nether­lands and north­ern Europe were halt­ed.

Despite the most intense protests by anti-nuclear cam­paign­ers for sev­er­al years, a French ship­ment of radioac­tive waste arrived in Ger­many ear­ly on Tues­day after a 20-hour delay.

Eleven lor­ries car­ry­ing 123 tonnes of nuclear waste arrived at the Gor­leben dump in north­ern Ger­many just after mid­night (2200 GMT), police said.

For most of the jour­ney from west­ern France the waste trav­elled by train and was halt­ed for half a day at the Ger­man bor­der by three activists who had jammed their arms into a con­crete block under the track.

Once in Ger­many, around 16,000 baton-wield­ing police were deployed as around 15,000 demon­stra­tors ral­lied along the route to try to hin­der progress using tac­tics such as set­ting bar­ri­cades on fire on the tracks.

The train even­tu­al­ly arrived at its final des­ti­na­tion on Mon­day, more than 14 and a half hours late and the car­go was then trans­ferred to lor­ries for the final 20 kilo­me­tres (12 miles) trip to Gor­leben.

Along the final leg some 1,000 activists had to be removed one-by-one by riot police before the lor­ries could pass. Trac­tors had been parked across the road and activists chained them­selves to tall cement pyra­mids.

For updat­ed info and back­ground arti­cles, see http://tarnac9.wordpress.com/about/

latest from Gorleben nuke transport protests (& they’ve not even really started!)

Novem­ber 08, 2008
CASTOR-BLOCKADE WITH CONCRETE BLOCK NEAR WÖRTH: A group of young peo­ple at about 12.45 pm Sat­ur­day made the rail­way line unpass­able for the Cas­tor train short­ly after it crossed into Ger­many, 500 metres north of Berg sta­tion. Three men and women fas­tened their arms in the mas­sive block placed under the track sleep­ers. The train has been stopped for now.

Castor Deutsche Bahn banner hangNovem­ber 08, 2008
CASTOR-BLOCKADE WITH CONCRETE BLOCK NEAR WÖRTH: A group of young peo­ple at about 12.45 pm Sat­ur­day made the rail­way line unpass­able for the Cas­tor train short­ly after it crossed into Ger­many, 500 metres north of Berg sta­tion. Three men and women fas­tened their arms in the mas­sive block placed under the track sleep­ers. The train has been stopped for now.

===

Novem­ber 06, 2008
BLOCKADES HAVE BEGUN: The rail­way line used to take nuclear waste into the Wend­land was sym­bol­i­cal­ly block­ad­ed at three over­pass­es on Thurs­day by abseil­ers. Police seized and held a promi­nent French woman climber in “pre­ven­tive deten­tion”, a law that has been ruled invalid by the high­est court. The envi­ron­ment organ­i­sa­tion Robin Wood sus­pend­ed three abseil­ers from three bridges between Lüneb­urg and Wendisch Evern, say­ing they would stay there until the waste train came or police removed them. The French activist is used to being under per­ma­nent police sur­veil­lance because of her fre­quent spec­tac­u­lar climb­ing actions. On Thurs­day evening dozens of sup­port­ers demon­strat­ed for her release out­side the Lüneb­urg police direc­torate.

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Novem­ber 05, 2008
TRAIN STOPPED BY PROTEST: Three high school pupils stopped a train bring­ing the spe­cial trucks for the Cas­tor trans­port to Gor­leben for half an hour near Hitza­ck­er on Mon­day by sit­ting on the rails. They had to be car­ried away by police. About 100 demon­stra­tors were near the track. Police were report­ed to be con­fused at first until they asked for rein­force­ments, which took half an hour to arrive. The three were encir­cled by police and had their IDs tak­en down. Pic­tures at http://de.indymedia.org/2008/11/231196.shtml

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GREENPEACE ACTIVISTS OCCUPY DUMP TOWER: 40 Green­peace activists occu­pied a wind­ing tow­er of the Asse II nuclear dump near Wolfen­büt­tel on Wednes­day morn­ing (pic­tures at http://de.indymedia.org/2008/11/231338.shtml), attach­ing a ban­ner that said nuclear waste must be removed from the for­mer potash mine, which is heav­i­ly tak­ing water. The action is to last sev­er­al days. Police have not demand­ed that the pro­test­ers leave the tow­er and so far every­thing has been peace­ful. From Jan­u­ary the mine, which was con­sid­ered a mod­el for Gor­leben, is to be con­trolled by a dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ment author­i­ty, the Fed­er­al Agency for Radi­a­tion Pro­tec­tion. Back­ground on Asse II at http://sydney.indymedia.org.au/story/nuclear-worries-increase-german-waste-dump-mine-floods and http://sydney.indymedia.org.au/story/german-nuclear-dump-was-illegal-start.

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ATTACKS ON POWER COMPANY’S VEHICLES: The «Ham­burg­er Mor­gen­post» news­pa­per has pub­lished text pur­port­ing to claim respon­si­bil­i­ty for attacks on vehi­cles of the Vat­ten­fall pow­er com­pa­ny con­nect­ed with the Cas­tor trans­port. Win­dows of a car were dam­aged and both front tyres stabbed. Police say they have no claims of respon­si­bil­i­ty for two oth­er attacks. In one case a vehi­cle loaded with four gas bot­tles was set on fire, caus­ing an explo­sion that injured no one. But the pres­sure wave was said to have caused tens of thou­sands of euros worth of dam­age. Five vehi­cles were total­ly destroyed and a near­by build­ing dam­aged. Police were able to stop anoth­er arson attack on a Vat­ten­fall vehi­cle when a wit­ness called them after see­ing the attempt. Police assume all attacks were car­ried out by the same group of peo­ple.

–

POLICE IN GÖTTINGEN ROUGHED UP TWO ANTI-NUCLEAR ACTIVISTS who had hung a ban­ner about the com­ing Cas­tor trans­port over the entrance to the local rail­way sta­tion. One had his wrists painful­ly twist­ed, the oth­er was clapped in hand­cuffs imme­di­ate­ly. Police went to the home of one of them search­ing for the ban­ner. The activists com­ment that it’s inter­est­ing to see how ner­vous police can get about a ban­ner and how they fear pub­lic scruti­ny. Pic­tures at http://de.indymedia.org/2008/11/231320.shtml.

====
Lat­est action news & oth­er less direct action-focussed info at http://www.castor.de/ticker/index_en.html

John Gormley interrupted by Plane Mad

Novem­ber 5, 2008

Novem­ber 5, 2008
Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter John Gorm­ley was inter­rupt­ed dur­ing his speech to the Green Infra­struc­ture con­fer­ence this morn­ing in Malahide. The envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign group Plane Mad dis­rupt­ed the con­fer­ence to express their oppo­si­tion to anoth­er run­way at Dublin Air­port. The group oppose the run­way on the grounds that it will dou­ble the air­craft emis­sions at the air­port. These emis­sions play a dan­ger­ous part in caus­ing cli­mate change. Two activists dressed as car­toon crim­i­nals mimed build­ing a run­way around the podi­um that Gorm­ley was speak­ing from. Air­craft noise was simul­ta­ne­ous­ly played from the back of the room. One of the “crim­i­nals” moved among the audi­ence pass­ing out infor­ma­tion about the pro­posed new run­way form his bag of “swag”. The min­is­ter was also pre­sent­ed with a let­ter by the group which he accept­ed.

The activists were dressed as crim­i­nals to rep­re­sent the crime that it would be if Fin­gal Coun­ty Coun­cil and the Dublin Air­port Authority(DAA) were allowed to dou­ble capac­i­ty at Dublin Air­port. The activists had “DAA-CLIMATE CRIMINALS” writ­ten on their backs.

Min­is­ter Gorm­ley said that he agreed with them on this issue, indeed he had men­tioned the “seri­ous threat” of cli­mate change sev­er­al times in his speech. After the cam­paign­ers had made their point they were peace­ful­ly escort­ed out of the con­fer­ence suite and Mr Gorm­ley was allowed to con­tin­ue. Despite all he says Plane Mad con­tin­ue to be dis­ap­point­ed that nei­ther John Gorm­ley or his par­ty are clear or vocal enough in their oppo­si­tion to expan­sion at Dublin Air­port.

Ian Clot­wor­thy, one of car­toon crim­i­nals, said
“Fin­gal Coun­ty Coun­cil are not fit hosts for a green infra­struc­ture con­fer­ence when one of the least “green” pieces of infra­struc­ture in Ire­land is cur­rent­ly being built at Dublin Air­port.”
“We sup­port “UPROAR” in their cam­paign against this sec­ond run­way and we oppose it our­selves because of the con­tri­bu­tion of avi­a­tion emis­sions to cli­mate change”

UPROAR (Unit­ed Port­marnock res­i­dents oppos­ing anoth­er run­way) have been oppos­ing the con­struc­tion of a 2nd run­way for 8 years, since 2000. 850 peo­ple from the area object­ed to the run­way after the cam­paign was launched around Christ­mas 2000. UPROAR were ini­tial­ly extreme­ly suc­cess­ful in that the Inspec­tor review­ing the Envi­ron­men­tal Impact State­ment (EIS) and all the infor­ma­tion avail­able about the planned devel­op­ment found in favour of the objec­tors. The Inspec­tor rec­om­mend­ed that the plan­ning appli­ca­tion be refused on main­ly on the issue of noise pol­lu­tion and com­mu­ni­ty wel­fare. Her deci­sion how­ev­er, was over­turned by An Bord Pleanala.

Tara Shee­hy of Plane Mad who was also in the con­fer­ence suit in Malahide said,
“Dou­bling capac­i­ty at Dublin Air­port will also dou­ble the amount of emis­sions. Spend­ing mon­ey in an eco­nom­ic down­turn on such a project of pol­lu­tion is mad­ness.”

The Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency allo­cat­ed just over 20,000 tonnes CO2 equiv­a­lent for each of the years 2005, 2006 and 2007 to Dublin Air­port. This is only 1% of the 2 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 (at least), emit­ted by Dublin Air­port’s 21 mil­lion pas­sen­gers.

On a day when even Amer­i­ca can elect a pres­i­dent who claims to under­stand the impor­tance of cli­mate change, Plane Mad would like to see this “Green-tinged” gov­ern­ment halt their air­port expan­sion plans. Plane Mad will con­tin­ue to fight the sec­ond run­way until it is stopped.

http://www.planemad.org

CLIMATE ACTION NEWS SHEET 84, OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2008

————————-
UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-
1) RBS, E.ON and Shell uni­ver­si­ty recruit­ment tours, Oct/Nov 08
2) Cli­mate Camp Nation­al Gath­er­ing, Brad­ford, 8/9.11.08
3) Remem­ber­ing Ken Saro-Wiwa, 10.11.08
4) Shared Plan­et Con­fer­ence, Birm­ing­ham, 21–23.11.08
5) 48 hours of action against E.On and new coal, 28/29.11.08
6) Buy Noth­ing Day, 29.11.08

————————-
UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-
1) RBS, E.ON and Shell uni­ver­si­ty recruit­ment tours, Oct/Nov 08
2) Cli­mate Camp Nation­al Gath­er­ing, Brad­ford, 8/9.11.08
3) Remem­ber­ing Ken Saro-Wiwa, 10.11.08
4) Shared Plan­et Con­fer­ence, Birm­ing­ham, 21–23.11.08
5) 48 hours of action against E.On and new coal, 28/29.11.08
6) Buy Noth­ing Day, 29.11.08
7) Nation­al Cli­mate March, 06.12.08
8) Earth First! Win­ter Moot, 6–8.02.09
9) Fos­sil Fools Day 2009, 01.04.09

—————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
—————-
1) Towards Copen­hagen 2009 – the first glob­al gath­er­ing, 13/14.09.08
2) Coal pow­er sta­tion block­ad­ed in Vir­ginia, USA, 15.09.08
3) Ross­port — Soli­taire leaves Irish waters with no pipeline laid! 20.09.08
4) Flash­mob against air­port expan­sion a suc­cess! 23.09.08
5) Cli­mate Camp polic­ing con­demned, 30.09.08 & 28.10.08
6) Boston (US) Ris­ing Tide pay Citibank a vis­it, 7/10/08
7) Day of Action Against Paci­fi­Corp dam, 10.10.08
8) Par­lia­ment rushed by cli­mate activists, 13.10.08
9) Oxford stu­dents just say no to BP jobs, 14.10.08
10) Art Not Oil vis­it the NT and hoax boss Hyt­ner, 15.10.08
11) Pro­test­ers dis­rupt Euro­pean bio­fu­els sum­mit, 16.10.08
12) Scot­tish cli­mate activists tar­get Scot­tish First Min­is­ter, 16.10.08
13) Green­wash Guer­ril­las EDF Action, 22.10.08
14) Man­ches­ter stu­dents flash­mob RBS and E.On recruit­ment stalls, 23.10.08
15) Bar­clays’ coal invest­ments tar­get­ed in Leam­ing­ton Spa, 25.10.08
16) Pro­tes­tors stop work at Ship­ley open-cast; Ship­ley Bodge court case
col­laps­es, 27.10.08
17) The Rain­bow War­rior goes to Kingsnorth, 29.10.08
18) Bris­tol Uni­ver­si­ty Death Fair
19) Con­vey­er belt lock-on stops Aus­tralian coal pow­er sta­tion, 1.11.08

————————-
UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-

1) RBS, E.ON and Shell uni­ver­si­ty recruit­ment tours, OCT/NOV 08
Cli­mate crim­i­nals are recruit­ing now, in a Uni­ver­si­ty near you. Find out when and where, as they have kind­ly post­ed their itin­er­aries online.
www.makeitrbs.com/events/

www.shell.com/home/content/gbr/aboutshell/careers/students_and_graduates/calendar_of_events/calendar_of_events_30052008.html

www.eon-uk.com/Careers/Graduates/807.aspx

Stuck for a direct action idea? Check out Ris­ing Tide’s “15 ways to top­ple
the Fos­sil Fuel Empire” on our web­site.

2) Cli­mate Camp Nation­al Gath­er­ing, Brad­ford, 8/9.11.08
The next Cli­mate Camp gath­er­ing will be in Brad­ford on the 8th and 9th Novem­ber. Come along and get involved.This month we will be in the fair city of Brad­ford, based up at the stu­dent union. Food will be pro­vid­ed by the deli­cious Tree­house Cafe and crash space will be near­by.

Large Group Facil­i­ta­tion Train­ing
Seeds for Change are run­ning a Large Group Facil­i­ta­tion Train­ing for Cli­mate Campers on Fri­day Novem­ber 7th in Leeds (just down the road from the gath­er­ing in Brad­ford), 11AM to 5.30 PM. Please email process at climatecamp.org.uk asap if you are inter­est­ed.

3) Remem­ber­ing Ken Saro-Wiwa, 10.11.08
Film screen­ing and fundrais­er at 7PM at LARC in Lon­don, 62 Fieldgate St, E1 1ES. On the 13th anniver­sary of the mur­der of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the rest of the Ogo­ni 9 by the Niger­ian state in 1995, with Shell in close cahoots, we will be remem­ber­ing what they fought for and what they died for. We’ll also be hear­ing about the inspi­ra­tional resis­tance of peo­ple around the world to Shel­l’s unfor­tu­nate­ly far from unique brand of destruc­tion, duplic­i­ty and over­all may­hem in the chase for ever-greater prof­its. There will be film screen­ings of ‘Those Who Dance’ and ‘Shad­ows and Light: Oil, Pow­er, and the Niger Delta’, inspi­ra­tional art on the walls and food and drink. Funds raised will go towards Art Not Oil’s new cam­paign against the Shell-spon­sored Oedi­pus pro­duc­tion cur­rent­ly run­ning at the Nation­al The­atre.

4) Shared Plan­et Con­fer­ence, Birm­ing­ham, 21–23.11.08
The Uni­ver­si­ty of Birm­ing­ham — Shared Plan­et is the UK’s largest stu­dent con­fer­ence on world pover­ty, human rights and the envi­ron­ment. It brings hun­dreds of stu­dents togeth­er for a week­end packed with big-name speak­ers, skills and issue based work­shops, debates, dis­cus­sions, film and a mas­sive par­ty! http://peopleandplanet.org/events/sharedplanet

5) 48 hours of action against E.On and new coal, 28/29.11.08

The UK Gov­ern­ment is call­ing for an 80% reduc­tion in car­bon emis­sions by 2050, we are call­ing for 48 hours of action against E.ON and new coal NOW. Join us in say­ing ‘No to New Coal’: get your friends togeth­er and plan an action for your area. Go stick­er­ing, blockad­ing, serv­ing direct action warn­ing notices at sup­ply chain premis­es, organ­ise an aware­ness rais­ing talk, hang a ban­ner, get cre­ative on the streets, the options are end­less. Get togeth­er, get cre­ative, and plan an action! For more infor­ma­tion vis­it — www.e‑onf-off.org — where a list of poten­tial tar­gets, action ideas and plen­ty of resources will fol­low short­ly.

6) Buy Noth­ing Day, 29.11.08
Sat­ur­day Novem­ber 29h 2008 is Buy Noth­ing Day. It’s a day where you chal­lenge your­self to switch off from shop­ping and tune into life. The rules are sim­ple, for 24 hours you will detox from con­sumerism and live with­out shop­ping. Any­one can take part pro­vid­ed they spend a day with­out spend­ing – bet­ter yet, get togeth­er with some friends and chal­lenge con­sumer cul­ture direct­ly!
www.buynothingday.co.uk

7) Nation­al Cli­mate March, 06.12.08
March on Par­lia­ment to demand that the gov­ern­ment acts on cli­mate now! The march this year goes to Par­lia­ment Square to demand that the gov­ern­ment act now on cli­mate. The march will start at Speak­ers Cor­ner, Hyde Park — assem­ble 12 noon. The march will be pre­ceed­ed by a cli­mate protest bike ride start­ing from Lin­col­n’s Inn Fields at 10.30 am: see more here. There will be an After-Par­ty in the Syn­er­gy Cen­tre from 5.00 pm till late.!
www.campaigncc.org/index.shtml

8) Earth First! Win­ter Moot, 6–8.02.09
The Earth First! Win­ter Moot is a week­end to reflect on where we are as a rad­i­cal ecol­o­gist move­ment and on where we are going. The moot will be about dis­cussing strat­e­gy, strength­en­ing the EF! net­work, secu­ri­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tions and action plan­ning. A ses­sion is also reserved for dis­cussing a UK mobil­i­sa­tion for the UN cli­mate con­fer­ence in Copen­hagen late 2009. The moot will be held in Brighton (t.b.c.). Please check this web­site near­er to the time for fur­ther details and email any items you would like to add an item to the agen­da to moot2009 at earthfirst.org.uk.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/21557

9) Fos­sil Fools Day 2009, 01.04.09
Just in case you missed the news last month – Fos­sil Fools Day is back! Whether you’ve been look­ing for a chance to dip a toe into the grow­ing cli­mate action move­ment, or have had your kick-ass action planned since last year, now is the time to do it – what­ev­er it is. On April 1st, join the glob­al day of resis­tance and pull a prank that packs a punch. Call-out now avail­able on the web­site, so get spread­ing the word. Info and resources will be post­ed on the web­site soon, and look out for leaflets to dis­trib­ute in Decem­ber.
www.risingtide.org.uk/fossilfoolsday2009

—————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
—————-

1) Towards Copen­hagen 2009 – the first glob­al gath­er­ing, 13/14.09.08
The first social move­ments’ meet­ing was from 13–14 Sep­tem­ber 2008, in a free school in Nor­rberg, host­ed by the Dan­ish move­ment Cli­maX (klimax2009.org). There were about 100 peo­ple present from 21 coun­tries around the world, and mobil­isa­ta­tions towards Decem­ber 2009 were well and tru­ly launched. For the call to action, trans­la­tions, and a per­son­al per­spec­tive on the meet­ing, see http://risingtide.org.uk/copenhagen. To get involved, send an email to cli­mate09-int-sub­scribe at list.riseup.net.

2) Coal pow­er sta­tion block­ad­ed in Vir­ginia, USA, 15.09.08
At 6:00am on Sep­tem­ber 15 around 40 peo­ple block­ad­ed the con­struc­tion site of Domin­ion Vir­gini­a’s Wise Coun­ty coal-fired pow­er sta­tion. Eleven pro­test­ers were arrest­ed after four hours. Pro­test­ers locked their bod­ies to eight large steel drums, two of which had oper­a­tional solar pan­els illu­mi­nat­ing a ban­ner that read “renew­able jobs to renew Appalachia.” In addi­tion, pro­test­ers held a 10’x30’ ban­ner, which said: “we demand a clean ener­gy future.”

3) Ross­port — Soli­taire leaves Irish waters with no pipeline laid! 20.09.08
On Fri­day the 20th Sep­tem­ber, the pipe lay­ing ship, the Soli­taire, final­ly left Irish waters. Dur­ing the ship’s time in Ire­land, Shell failed to lay any part of the off­shore pipe line. The depar­ture of the Soli­taire is a mas­sive vic­to­ry for the Shell to Sea cam­paign. Resis­tance in the past six weeks has tak­en many dif­fer­ent forms: fish­er­men pre­vent­ing the ship’s access to the bay by refus­ing to move from her path, site inva­sions by local peo­ple and the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp, numer­ous water­borne actions to pre­vent work by sup­port­ers from oth­er parts of Ire­land and fur­ther afield, nation­al and inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty actions and final­ly, an 11 day hunger strike by local cam­paign­er Mau­ra Har­ring­ton, that con­tin­ued until the ship left Irish waters. The events of the last 6 weeks have inspired not only those involved, but also many who wit­nessed them from afar, new links and friend­ships have been forged and many lessons learned. In the after­math, the Shell to Sea cam­paign can clear­ly be seen to have been revi­tal­ized, both local­ly and nation­al­ly. It is unclear when the ship will attempt to return to Broad­haven Bay. It is pos­si­ble it could still be this year if repairs are quick and a suit­able weath­er win­dow appears, or it may not be until next spring. How­ev­er, while it may be uncer­tain exact­ly when the ship will return, what is cer­tain, is that it will meet even greater oppo­si­tion upon its next arrival. Come and be part of it! The Ross­port com­mu­ni­ty is call­ing on peo­ple every­where to put pres­sure on Shell, Allseas (the com­pa­ny that owns the Soli­taire) and Irish embassies to demand that the Soli­taire leaves Irish waters imme­di­ate­ly.

4) Flash­mob against air­port expan­sion a suc­cess! 23.09.08
Over 100 cam­paign­ers staged a colour­ful flash­mob against air­port expan­sion at mid­day today out­side Man­ches­ter Town Hall. The group includ­ed Lon­don cam­paign­ers opposed to the expan­sion of Heathrow. The flash­mob was timed to coin­cide with the Labour Par­ty Con­fer­ence. At 12.45 pre­cise­ly the cam­paign­ers stripped off to reveal red t‑shirts with the words ‘Stop Air­port Expan­sion’ embla­zoned across them. They then lay down to form the words ‘TAKE TRAINS’ with their bod­ies. The protest marked the pub­lic launch of the recent­ly formed ‘Stop Expan­sion at Man­ches­ter Air­port’.

5) Cli­mate Camp polic­ing con­demned, 30.09.08 & 28.10.08
A spokesman for Med­way Trades Union Coun­cil said “We have decid­ed to hold an inquiry into the Polic­ing of the Cli­mate Camp because of our con­cern over the lev­el of polic­ing and var­i­ous inci­dents such as a police­man in riot gear assault­ing a pro­test­er with a riot shield, as shown on TV, and oth­er alle­ga­tions includ­ing local cam­paign­ers being sub­ject­ed to pep­per spray and a local coun­cil­lor being pushed to the ground”

Also, in the House of Com­mons, MPs accused police of unnec­es­sary aggres­sion towards cli­mate campers. Home Office min­is­ters were told that offi­cers “pro­voked vio­lence against peace­ful pro­test­ers” and even arrest­ed some­one for “aggres­sive­ly pick­ing up lit­ter”.
www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/09/409732.htm

6)Boston (US) Ris­ing Tide pay Citibank a vis­it, 7/10/08
Four activists chained them­selves to the front entrance of the Citibank branch in Har­vard Square, Cam­bridge. The action start­ed as a protest in front of the Bank of Amer­i­ca branch a block away before march­ing down the street to Citibank, where the four activists had already chained them­selves to the front door, clos­ing the bank for a peri­od of time. Over 150 peo­ple attend­ed the protest, while many more onlook­ers gath­ered in Har­vard Square. The action, using the tag-line “Not With Our Mon­ey”, was intend­ed to raise aware­ness of the con­nec­tions between the cur­rent finan­cial cri­sis and the impend­ing cli­mate cri­sis. Both Bank of Amer­i­ca and Citi Bank are respon­si­ble for fund­ing dirty coal pow­er that harms the envi­ron­ment, and engag­ing in preda­to­ry lend­ing prac­tices that are fuelling the fore­clo­sure cri­sis and have left fam­i­lies in Boston home­less. Sev­er­al groups were involved with the protest includ­ing Ris­ing Tide Boston and Rain­for­est Action Net­work, both envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice groups, and City Life/Vida Urbana, a ten­ants’ rights orga­ni­za­tion.

7) Day of Action Against Paci­fi­Corp dam, 10.10.08
A coali­tion of Kla­math Riv­er Indi­an tribes, fish­er­men, con­ser­va­tion­ists and local sup­port­ers (includ­ing Cas­ca­dia Ris­ing Tide) ramped up their cam­paign to remove four fish-killing dams on the riv­er today when they held a spir­it­ed protest in front of PacifiCorp’s head­quar­ters in Port­land. The “Day of Action Against Paci­fi­Corp” start­ed off at 8:30 a.m. on Sep­tem­ber 18th when local activists hung a ban­ner pro­claim­ing “War­ren Buf­fett Kills Salmon, Jobs and Com­mu­ni­ties” over Inter­state-84 in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Tribes. Around 200 peo­ple con­verged in front of Paci­fi­Corp for a press con­fer­ence. After the con­fer­ence, 70 peo­ple occu­pied the area in front of the head­quar­ters, effec­tive­ly shut­ting down the front entrance to Paci­fi­Corp as com­pa­ny staff locked the doors.

8) Par­lia­ment rushed by cli­mate activists, 13.10.08
Demand­ing deeds not words from the gov­ern­ment, 500 Cli­mate Rush­ers gath­ered in Par­lia­ment Square to cel­e­brate 100 years to the day since the Suf­fragettes rushed par­lia­ment demand­ing votes for women. After shar­ing tea and cake on the lawn of Par­lia­ment Square, men and women dressed in Edwar­dian garb became a lit­tle less civilised, and the doors of to Par­lia­ment were locked as cli­mate activists rushed the main entrance. Although no one got in, the sounds of pro­test­ers strik­ing the doors were clear­ly audi­ble from the inside.
www.climaterush.co.uk

9) Oxford stu­dents just say no to BP jobs, 14.10.08
Activists infil­trat­ed an attempt by BP to woo Oxford grad­u­ates at a top-notch hotel on Octo­ber 14th. One inter­rupt­ed the cheesy BP PR man’s pre­sen­ta­tion as he claimed that he ‘loved the coun­try­side’ — while putting the gloss on oil and gas explo­ration, extrac­tion and financ­ing — to ask, why then, has BP spent more on its green sun­flower rebrand­ing than on its annu­al renew­able ener­gy bud­get? Activists then gave their own pre­sen­ta­tion of BP’s activ­i­ties around the world, why major oil com­pa­nies are counter-pro­duc­tive to cli­mate change solu­tions, and why any tempt­ed grad­u­ates should recon­sid­er their career options. A mem­ber of Colom­bia Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cam­paign gave a first hand account of BP’s com­plic­i­ty in envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion, sub­vert­ing peace­ful social move­ments and fund­ing death squads. A moment of stunned silence was fol­lowed by applause as the re-edu­cat­ed audi­ence aban­doned the shindig.

10)Art Not Oil vis­it the NT and hoax boss Hyt­ner, 15.10.08
After a vis­it to the the­atre (Dar­ling!), arty cli­mate activists cooked up a let­ter claim­ing to be from NT boss Nicholas Hyt­ner ques­tion­ing the use of oil spon­sor­ship in the arts. The NT were none too pleased about this and the ensu­ing row reached the let­ters pages of luvvie-week­ly “The Stage”(a first for the direct action move­ment?). Art not Oil ask: “We’re ask­ing peo­ple if they’re up for mak­ing an art­work of some kind as a response This could be an image, song, film or poem to appear on our web­site, or to be print­ed on a post­card or some­thing sim­i­lar. We’re open to ideas. (Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we aren’t able to pay for your work, but we have no wish to pos­sess it!) If this is of inter­est, we’d love to see it as soon as pos­si­ble, as ‘Oedi­pus’ runs until Jan­u­ary 2009 only.”
www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/10/411200.html and
http://www.thestage.co.uk/features/feature.php/22157/chit-chat-hytner-miss-or-maybe-an-attack-

11) Pro­test­ers dis­rupt Euro­pean bio­fu­els sum­mit, 16.10.08
On World Food Day, 16th Octo­ber, activists from Action Against Agro­fu­els dis­rupt­ed the Bio­fu­els Expo in Newark, one of the largest bio­fu­el indus­try con­fer­ences in Europe. Four ban­ners were dropped, as pro­test­ers climbed on the roof out­side the main entrance and on a ledge inside the main exhi­bi­tion hall, where they remained for over three hours. Rape alarms were set off across the exhi­bi­tion cen­tre. Ban­ners read “Agro­fu­els for cars and pow­er plants wors­en cli­mate change”, “Land-grab­bing for agro­fu­els caus­es hunger”, “Agro­fu­els — a cli­mate crime” and “Green­wash­ing hunger and defor­esta­tion”. Sep­a­rate­ly, Leeds Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents held a ban­ner and leaflet­ting protest out­side the con­fer­ence.

12) Scot­tish cli­mate activists tar­get Scot­tish First Min­is­ter, 16.10.08
At 4am, res­i­dents from Clyde­bank, Pais­ley, Kirk­lis­ton and Cra­mond peace­ful­ly set up a stereo and blast­ed aero­plane noise through the entrance of the First Min­is­ter’s pri­vate res­i­den­cy in Edin­burgh. The action stands as a protest ‘dawn cho­rus’ to high­light the expe­ri­ence of liv­ing life in the shad­ow of a grow­ing air­port. Iron­i­cal­ly, the stereo caused 110 deci­bels of noise — the equiv­a­lent of a jum­bo jet tak­ing off. For half an hour about ten res­i­dents sur­round­ed the build­ing dressed in bright paja­mas, night caps, clutch­ing ted­dy­bears, with ear defend­ers to dis­play the dan­ger­ous lev­els of noise pol­lu­tion endured by their fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties. Their plac­ards stat­ed “It’s time to wake up to the impacts of avi­a­tion” and “have a taste of your own med­i­cine”. The res­i­dents took these steps to state loud and clear to the First Min­is­ter, who holds ulti­mate say over the fate of the expan­sion plans, that he can­not ignore any of the effects of air­port expan­sion. These impacts include dan­ger­ous noise lev­els, ris­ing air pol­lu­tion, cli­mate change and increas­ing eco­nom­ic uncer­tain­ty dur­ing the cur­rent cred­it crunch.

13) Green­wash Guer­ril­las EDF Action, 22.10.08
Lon­don Ris­ing Tide’s Green­wash Gueril­las Brigade, Detec­tion Pla­toon #1, moved into action on Mon­day morn­ing, 22 Octo­ber, at 08:00 hours – tar­get­ing ener­gy cor­po­ra­tion Élec­tric­ité de France (EDF) at the cen­tral Lon­don head­quar­ters of their UK sub­sidiary EDF Ener­gy. EDF has recent­ly bought out British Ener­gy and have announced that they plan to build 4 new nuclear pow­er sta­tions in the UK in the com­ing years. Inspired by our coun­ter­parts in France demon­strat­ing against new nuclear pow­er, we chose to tar­get EDF’s attempts to mus­cle in their FALSE nuclear solu­tion to the loom­ing dis­as­ter of cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate chaos. Our action (con­sist­ing of 12 Green­wash Gueril­las) high­light­ed the dan­gers of nuclear pow­er to the bios­phere, human­i­ty, and REAL renew­able ener­gy solu­tions.

14) Man­ches­ter stu­dents flash­mob RBS and E.On Recruit­ment Stalls, 23.10.08
A busy careers fair at Man­ches­ter’s GMex was inter­rupt­ed yes­ter­day by sev­er­al long whis­tle blasts. 30 or so pro­tes­tors sud­den­ly revealed their yel­low ‘Leave it in the Ground’ t‑shirts and sur­round­ed the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land stall, hold­ing ban­ners and chant­i­ng ‘leave it in the ground!’. A pro­tes­tor then read some extracts from the excel­lent report “Cash­ing in on Coal”, which shows that RBS is a cli­mate crim­i­nal, pour­ing mon­ey into new fos­sil fuel extrac­tion projects. The secu­ri­ty guards even­tu­al­ly began drag­ging pro­tes­tors out so they did­n’t get a chance to vis­it the E.ON stall. How­ev­er the protest con­tin­ued out­side where peo­ple hand­ed out leaflets explain­ing how E.ON (with a fat loan from RBS) plans to build the first new coal pow­er sta­tion in the UK in 30 years, while secu­ri­ty guards repeat­ed­ly threat­ened to have them arrest­ed for tres­pass­ing.

15) Bar­clays’ coal invest­ments tar­get­ed in Leam­ing­ton Spa, 25.10.08
Leam­ing­ton Ris­ing Tide took aim at a town cen­tre Bar­clays on Sat­ur­day 25 Octo­ber 2008 in protest at the bank’s heavy invest­ment in dirty coal. Ban­ners, leaflets and bal­loons let peo­ple know that ‘Bar­clays are fuelling glob­al warm­ing’. One of the ban­ners used an image of scales to demol­ish the myth that Bar­clays cares about cli­mate change: they invest a whop­ping 3,300 mil­lion invest­ed in coal against 15 mil­lion in renew­able tech on the oth­er. Over the last two years, Bar­clays has been involved in 17 sep­a­rate loans to the coal indus­try, and togeth­er with RBS and HSBC, has loaned $70 bil­lion to E.ON alone.

16) Pro­tes­tors stop work at Ship­ley open-cast; Ship­ley Bodge court case col­laps­es, 27.10.08
Pro­tes­tors from Earth First! stopped work at an open-cast coal site for over two hours – they ran onto the site and clam­bered on dig­gers & dumpers and held out ban­ners stop­ping the work safe­ly. Some of the dig­ger dri­vers were very friend­ly and were glad to have a break as they work very long shifts, from 7am‑6:30 with only lunch & half hour breaks at 10 & 3. Today work had not been able to start till 10 as nature was fight­ing its own cor­ner, with rain drown­ing the site, and it was stopped again at 1 for 3 hours due to the protest.

Mean­while, the first court case aris­ing from the evic­tion of Bodge House, Ship­ley, where pro­test­ers occu­pied the site of the pro­posed open cast coal mine from June until August, col­lapsed today after the pros­e­cu­tion admit­ted that it did­n’t have the evi­dence to sup­port its case. The crown pros­e­cu­tor asked for an adjourn­ment, the defence object­ed, the dis­trict
judge agreed with the defence and dis­missed the case. Let’s hope the oth­ers go the same way.

17) The Rain­bow War­rior goes to Kingsnorth, 29.10.08
The Green­peace flag­ship Rain­bow War­rior led a peace­ful arma­da of boats down the Med­way to Kingsnorth, and thir­ty cam­paign­ers, each car­ry­ing flags from 30 nations, dis­em­barked onto Kingsnorth’s jet­ty. E.on’s pro­posed new plant would emit as much car­bon diox­ide as the world’s 30 least pol­lut­ing coun­tries com­bined (hence the flags), dash­ing our chances of beat­ing cli­mate change and spelling dis­as­ter for mil­lions of fam­i­lies around the world. Mean­while, anoth­er group of vol­un­teers — includ­ing two of the Kingsnorth Six (recent­ly cleared of crim­i­nal dam­age to Kingsnorth’s smoke­stack using the defence of cli­mate change) – occu­pied a small, con­crete, E.ON-owned island just next to the jet­ty until they were forced to leave by a high court injunc­tion.
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/vigil-ends-20081030

18) Bris­tohl Uni Death Fair, 29.10.08
This time it was the 4 horse­man of the apoc­a­lypse (well, 2 of them) who high­light­ed the real­i­ty behind the shiny facades of com­pa­nies like E.On and BAE Sys­tems.
http://westsideclimateaction.wordpress.com

19) Con­vey­er belt lock-on stops Aus­tralian coal pow­er sta­tion, 1.11.08
29 peo­ple from Ris­ing Tide Aus­tralia have been arrest­ed after a cli­mate change protest at Bayswa­ter pow­er sta­tion today. Four peo­ple attached them­selves to machin­ery, stop­ping the con­vey­or belts that car­ry coal to Bayswater’s fur­naces for six hours while 25 oth­ers occu­pied the coal piles.
http://www.risingtide.org.au/node/802

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Com­piled and sent out by Ris­ing Tide UK.

To receive this News Sheet month­ly, send an email to news-sub­scribe at risingtide.org.uk with the sub­ject line ‘sub­scribe’ (with­out the quotes and replace at with @).

German anti-nuclear waste sabotage & actions this coming weekend

Anti-nuclear activists in Ger­many are gear­ing up for anoth­er trans­port of high­ly active nuclear waste to run through France and Ger­many from 7 to 9 Novem­ber for dump­ing at the north Ger­man vil­lage of Gor­leben. About 20,000 police will be deployed to guard the con­sign­ment against thou­sands of demon­stra­tors.

Anti-nuclear activists in Ger­many are gear­ing up for anoth­er trans­port of high­ly active nuclear waste to run through France and Ger­many from 7 to 9 Novem­ber for dump­ing at the north Ger­man vil­lage of Gor­leben. About 20,000 police will be deployed to guard the con­sign­ment against thou­sands of demon­stra­tors. At http://www.castor.de/ticker/index_en.html is a newswire run by the protest move­ment.

CASTOR TRACK SABOTAGED: In the night from 30 to 31 Octo­ber the CASTOR rail­way track between Karl­sruhe and Mannheim was sab­o­taged near Stutensee. Rail traf­fic was brought to a stand­still with a bar­ri­cade. To stop any train run­ning into it with­out brak­ing, the first goods train using the track was stopped by an emer­gency sig­nal before it got to the spot.

Grass Roots Gathering in Cork in November

The next Grass Roots Gath­er­ing will take place in Cork on the week­end of the 14th, 15th and 16th of Novem­ber.

Grassroots Gathering Cork posterThe next Grass Roots Gath­er­ing will take place in Cork on the week­end of the 14th, 15th and 16th of Novem­ber.

This Gath­er­ing will have the twin themes of Inclu­sion and Com­mu­ni­ty Build­ing — Sur­viv­ing the ’ Reces­sion’ . Dur­ing the ear­ly plan­ning stages we spent some time think­ing about who comes to these gath­er­ings and how we could encour­age and enable more diverse par­tic­i­pa­tion, espe­cial­ly for peo­ple who have found it dif­fi­cult to attend pre­vi­ous gath­er­ings. To facil­i­tate this we are hold­ing the event in city cen­tre venues with full acces­si­bil­i­ty, mak­ing it child, par­ent, teenag­er and elder friend­ly and ask­ing as many groups and com­mu­ni­ties as pos­si­ble what we need to do to make them feel wel­come ( Basi­cal­ly try­ing to let go of think­ing that we have all the answers and doing a bit more lis­ten­ing ! ) If you are plan­ning on attend­ing we hope you will try step­ping out­side your com­fort zone and invite or enable a friend you may not have approached due to shy­ness or stereo­typ­ing to join you.

Work­shops, activ­i­ties and events being planned so far include : The present legal sit­u­a­tion for les­bian, gay, bisex­u­al and trans-gen­der peo­ple, Trav­ellers and set­tled peo­ple work­ing togeth­er, Telling sto­ries, shar­ing expe­ri­ence look­ing at exclu­sion. Hous­ing coops, food secu­ri­ty, tack­ling racism in times of unem­ploy­ment, repro­duc­tive rights, wom­en’s right to choose, con­flict res­o­lu­tion, social cen­tres, recent expe­ri­ence, L.E.T.S. , reclaim­ing our nat­ur­al resources, ener­gy secu­ri­ty,

+ Film show­ings, crimes of the built envi­ron­ment, swap shop, cre­ative cor­ner, activist well being, art activism, wel­com­ing area for peo­ple drop­ping by and the shy among us, and dis­plays by var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ty groups and cam­paigns. Also expect some sur­pris­es we want to keep peo­ple awake at this gath­er­ing !

On Sat­ur­day night there will be a tra­di­tion­al Cork cabaret. We are invit­ing some clas­sic local acts but leav­ing plen­ty of time free to show case your tal­ents so come pre­pared ! music , dance , poet­ry , inter­ven­tions , com­e­dy ‚read­ings , cir­cus or what­ev­er you fan­cy all wel­come.

–

I’m organ­is­ing accom­mo­da­tion for peo­ple who are com­ing to the Grass­roots Gath­er­ing 14th 15th and 16th Novem­ber, Cork City, so if any­one in Cork can put peo­ple up for the week­end, or any­one trav­el­ling to Cork needs accom­mo­da­tion please email me at:
tracywall@email.com
or text me on:
085 7560078

–

Email address for get­ting in touch with gg organ­is­ing group as fol­lows:
ggcork08@gmail.com

Greece and the growing re-appropriation attacks against Super Markets

Attacks in Cap­i­tal cir­cu­la­tion and rev­enue
Greece and the grow­ing re-appro­pri­a­tion attacks against Super Mar­kets

Greek supermarket re-distributionAttacks in Cap­i­tal cir­cu­la­tion and rev­enue
Greece and the grow­ing re-appro­pri­a­tion attacks against Super Mar­kets

Τhe sat­ur­day of May 31st 2008 was a beau­ti­ful day for the greek move­ment of insur­rec­tion. One action organ­ised by a small group of com­rades caused a frac­ture in the greek social process. On the last days a big debate was goin’ on in the streets, in the work­ing places, cafes, hous­es and ‑in appear­ance only- on the tv screen. Basic prod­ucts (milk,rice etc.) were becom­ing more and more expen­sive, a process which start­ed since the intro­duc­tion of the Euro cur­ren­cy, Jan­u­ary 2002 and by the last months prices kept rais­ing steeply. Peo­ples’ resent­ment con­ce­trat­ed dur­ing all these years of price stag­na­tion, was so big that although gross­ly medi­at­ed by the TV news, forced final­ly the gov­ern­ment to intro­duce mea­sures that were , sup­posed , to con­trol the ris­ing of the prices, but whose actu­al tar­get was to calm peo­ples anger down. (It is inter­est­ing to add that infla­tion rate was steady and did not rise, prob­a­bly because of “cre­ative” tricks due to Eu rules that oblige mem­ber-states to keep a low infla­tion rate)

Super Mar­ket brand own­ers were prof­i­teer­ing in a real­ly high grade in expense of the peo­ples pock­ets and the actu­al resis­tance and pres­sure was rather low. Con­sumer unions, some news­pa­per arti­cles, calls for low­er­ing the prices, one day boy­cotts. But what to do?People are depen­dent from big Super Mar­kets that con­trol most of the food mar­ket and wages in Greece are rather low for eu stan­dards (Pen­sions are worse) and prices were among the high­er in EU. Old peo­ple, low income and the unem­ployed were affect­ed most but we can say that almost all work­ing class peo­ple and even low­er mid­dle class (petit bour­geois) were hav­ing a hard time to get around . So the gov­ern­ment announces on the 28 of May “41 mea­sures against price stag­na­tion”.

True is the politi­cians did not real­ly cared. “So what are they going to do,anyway?”. Oppo­si­tion par­ties do noth­ing but talk, and peo­ple rely on the media “appar­ent” oppo­si­tion. But it is in these times were noth­ing seem to hap­pen, when the forces of insur­rec­tion that are exor­cised to stay away from the fight, make their sud­den and unex­pect­ed appear­ance in the scene. And noth­ing is the same as before..

On Sat­ur­day May 31st 2008 a group of com­rades, wear­ing their masks entered a big Super Mar­ket in the city cen­ter of Athens, re-appro­pri­at­ed prod­ucts, car­ried them to a street fruit-mar­ket near­by (most­ly old and low­er-income peo­ple go there) and dis­trib­uted the prod­ucts to them. Oil, cheese, milk, detergents,shampoos … The action met great cor­re­spon­dence from the peo­ple. Clap­ping applaus­es, excla­ma­tions, whis­tles. The prod­ucts dis­ap­peared with­in sec­onds. The man­i­festo of the action said : “The game is set. We don’t want to be a part of this fake game, with the gov­ern­ments’ com­mu­ni­ca­tion tricks, the oppo­si­tions’ abstract talk­ing about some “bad” peo­ple mak­ing prof­it and the shit of the media. We put into prac­tice our own mea­sures against price stag­na­tion. Re-appro­pri­a­tion now. Every­thing is stolen from us, Every­thing belongs to us… That was it…

The attacks start to spread wide­ly. In June three more actions against Super Mar­kets took place in Athens. One more in July. Then came the sum­mer (move­ments have hol­i­days?) and on Sep­tem­ber actions start­ed again. Two hap­pened in Thes­sa­loni­ki , the sec­ond biggest city in Greece. One attack was planned on the day when the Prime Min­is­ter tra­di­tion­al­ly address­es the nation , from the Inter­na­tion­al Expo of Thes­sa­loni­ki and speaks about the gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy of the year to come. Last week three such actions took place (15,16,18 Octo­ber). In most of the attacks prod­ucts are dis­trib­uted among peo­ple in street mar­kets, to peo­ple pass­ing-by and on one action the loot was left on a cen­tral Athens square where many immi­grants live and at the exits of the metro sta­tion there.
These actions are real­ly pop­u­lar among peo­ple. It would not be an exag­ger­a­tion to say that peo­ple wish every time they go to a street mar­ket for an action like that to take place. Media can’t hide the facts , but try to dis­tort them. They like to call us “Robin Hoods”. We are not at all “Robin Hoods”, it is not about char­i­ty. The issue at stake here is the dif­fu­sion of such “ille­gal” prac­tices among the soci­ety, so that oth­er social groups adopt such prac­tices to defend social auton­o­my and inter­ests. To debunk the nor­mal­i­ty that orders “Work-Buy-Pay-Sleep-Shut Up”. To make peo­ple col­lab­o­ra­tors in “ille­gal” attacks against cap­i­tal­ist order. To pro­mote Mutu­al Aid.

The Police is real­ly con­fused. Cashiers have a short work-break. Super Mar­ket own­ers feel anx­ious about the sit­u­a­tion. Peo­ple have fun.

So what about us Com­rades. In Balka­ns, East and West Europe, States, Latin Amer­i­ca, Ocea­nia, every­where? Can we plan some­thing? What are we wait­ing for? Cap­i­tal­ist cri­sis is already here and we are the ones to pay again for the fuck­ing banks and their tricks. The plan is sim­ple, believe us. Two douzins of com­rades, masks , sun­glass­es, an appoint­ment. You con­verge sud­den­ly and you attack. Some peo­ple watch­ing, some oth­ers fill­ing the trol­leys, every­body dis­trib­ut­ing them. It is sim­ple, it is direct, dan­ger­ous for the ene­my and real­ly amuz­ing. We wish you nice actions and lot of suc­cess.

Make Plans
Be Ready

Swedish Peace Activists Repeatedly Break Into Weapon Factories

23.10.2008

23.10.2008
Using ham­mers and bolt cut­ters, peace activists repeat­ed­ly broke into weapon plants and dam­aged weapons in Swe­den. Activists from the Swedish group OFOG/Avrusta admit­ted dam­ag­ing twen­ty high explo­sive grenade launch­ers as well as inter­nal parts to a How­itzer 77. Five peo­ple were arrest­ed. Two remain in jail. Two activists who were arrest­ed and released were re-arrest­ed after they returned to the weapons plant to do more dam­age. A fifth per­son was arrest­ed Sat­ur­day in anoth­er break in. All are fac­ing tri­al on charges from crim­i­nal dam­age to tres­pass at places of nation­al secu­ri­ty.

Mem­bers of the Swedish peace and dis­ar­ma­ment group OFOG/Avrusta say they have been prepar­ing for more than a year to car­ry out the actions. OFOG, which loose­ly trans­lates as the word mis­chief, is a net­work of activists work­ing for a nuclear free and demil­i­ta­rized world. Avrus­ta is Dis­arm in Eng­lish. The group released infor­ma­tion to the press announc­ing their actions and post­ed videos of their entry and dam­age on You Tube. See: http://www.ofog.org/avrusta_aktionsvideo

At about 2:30 a.m. Thurs­day morn­ing, activists approached the BAE Sys­tems weapons facil­i­ty in Karl­sko­ga, Swe­den, about 240 kilo­me­ters away from Stock­holm. Accord­ing to state­ments to the press, they used bolt cut­ters cut open a hole in the secu­ri­ty fence and entered. They left behind a ban­ner wel­com­ing oth­ers, which said “The door is open — you are free to start dis­arm­ing.” The activists used ham­mers to dam­age inter­nal parts like cool­ing aggre­gates and hydraulic cylin­ders for the How­itzer 77. A ful­ly oper­a­tional How­itzer 77 can fire 6 rounds every sec­ond for 20 min­utes and has a fir­ing range of 30 kilo­me­ters. Inside, media reports note that the duo man­aged to affix a poster to the door that said, “In this fac­to­ry are man­u­fac­tured weapons that are used to wage wars — Dis­ar­ma­ment is under­way.” Dis­ar­ma­ment activists, Cat­tis Las­ka, 24, and Pelle Strin­lund, 37, were arrest­ed and charged with tres­pass­ing and crim­i­nal dam­age. Las­ka is a youth leader and Strin­lund is a writer. Both remain in jail pend­ing a hear­ing.

Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, oth­er activists entered a weapons facil­i­ty run by Saab in Eskil­stu­na, Swe­den, about 135 kilo­me­ters away. Accord­ing to OFOG/Avrusta, they dam­aged twen­ty grenade launch­ers with ham­mers and then alert­ed guards to their pres­ence. Anna Ander­s­son, 26, and Mar­tin Smed­je­back, 35, were arrest­ed and charged with tres­pass, severe crim­i­nal dam­age, and enter­ing a pro­tect­ed nation­al secu­ri­ty area. Ander­s­son is a web devel­op­er. Smed­je­back is a train­er in non-vio­lence. Both were released from jail on Fri­day.

The weapons dam­aged in the Saab plant were described as Carl Gus­tav type grenade launch­ers. These are shoul­der mount­ed anti-tank weapons that can fire high explo­sive rounds. The weapons were report­ed­ly found in box­es labeled for deliv­ery to “US” and “New Del­hi.” BAE has a long term con­tract with the Indi­an gov­ern­ment for how­itzers and grenade launch­ers, accord­ing to reports in the Hin­du Times.

After being released from jail Fri­day, Ander­s­son indi­cat­ed she was glad to be going to tri­al. “I look for­ward to a chance to eth­i­cal­ly and legal­ly argue for our actions in court. I hope one day the arms man­u­fac­tur­ers will be charged for the crim­i­nal dam­age that Swedish arma­ments cause in wars and con­flicts around the world.”

In a sur­prise move ear­ly Sat­ur­day, Ander­s­son and Smed­je­back returned to the weapons plant where they were arrest­ed again. They now remain in jail.

Also ear­ly Sat­ur­day morn­ing, a fifth mem­ber of the group, Anni­ka Spalde, 39, cut her way through the fence around a weapons plant in Karl­sko­ga and hung a ban­ner encour­ag­ing more dis­ar­ma­ment actions. She was lat­er arrest­ed. She is charged with severe crim­i­nal dam­age and tres­pass in a place of nation­al secu­ri­ty. Spalde, who was lat­er released, is a dea­con in the Swedish church, an author and peace activist.

BAE Sys­tems, own­er of the Karl­sko­ga plant, describes itself on its web­site as “the pre­mier glob­al defense and aero­space com­pa­ny” with 100,000 employ­ees world­wide and annu­al sales of $31.4 bil­lion. BAE author­i­ties con­firmed the break in. Curi­ous­ly, BAE press peo­ple in the US report­ed “very minor” dam­age while the BAE secu­ri­ty man­ag­er in Swe­den told the press there that he esti­mat­ed dam­age at 50,000 euros and was not cer­tain whether the dam­age would cre­ate delays in sched­uled deliv­er­ies of the weapons or not.

Saab, own­er of the Eskil­stu­na plant, pro­claims it serves the glob­al mar­ket with prod­ucts, ser­vices and solu­tions rang­ing from mil­i­tary defense to civ­il secu­ri­ty. It says it has 13,700 employ­ees and world­wide sales of $2.5 bil­lion. Lasse Jon­s­son, spokesper­son for Saab, told the media, “They have scrapped a quan­ti­ty of weapons’ spare parts that await­ed export. Only after the police inves­ti­ga­tion has been com­plet­ed will we be able to cal­cu­late the exact extent of the dam­age caused.”

Maja Back­lund, spokesper­son for OFOG, was quot­ed in the Hin­du Times: “Civ­il dis­obe­di­ence and action are most vital parts of demo­c­ra­t­ic devel­op­ment. Our col­leagues who breached the Saab fac­to­ry man­aged to dam­age 25 grenade launch­ers of the Carl Gus­tav brand that are in exten­sive use in Kash­mir and oth­er war zones in India.” OFOG also claims that some of the weapons dam­aged were of the same type as used by the U.S. mil­i­tary in Iraq.

Mem­bers of OFOG claim Swedish weapons exports have risen 88 per­cent since the US inva­sion of Iraq. They fur­ther claim that the Swedish gov­ern­ment is vio­lat­ing its pol­i­cy of peace and neu­tral­i­ty by sup­ply­ing war­ring coun­tries with arms.

Dea­con Spalde insist­ed these actions were nec­es­sary. “When your gov­ern­ment sup­ports an ille­gal war and sells arms to dic­ta­tor­ships, it’s time for ordi­nary cit­i­zens like us to take action.”

OFOG/Avrusta said “This action is the first dis­ar­ma­ment cam­paign in the 21st cen­tu­ry in Swe­den.” At this point, the cam­paign says it con­sists of activists will­ing to risk arrest and anoth­er fifty sup­port peo­ple.

“Our activists have pre­pared them­selves for more than a year for this cam­paign,” said a group mem­ber who asked to remain anony­mous. “They are ready to serve time in prison if Swedish soci­ety should fail to see that non­vi­o­lent civ­il dis­obe­di­ence to sus­pend the dis­as­trous Swedish arms exports to wars and dic­ta­tor­ships is less of a breach of law than these amoral arms exports.”

More dis­ar­ma­ment actions, OFOG/Avrusta promis­es, will be forth­com­ing.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/10/swedish-peace-activists-repeatedly-break-into-weapon-factories/

http://ofog.org/about-campaign-avrusta

E.ON gets fingered : NEIN KINGSNORTH!

British Cli­mate Camp activists have tak­en their cam­paign to the Munich offices of E.ON.
For Imme­di­ate release. 14.30 — 22/10/08
E.ON gets fin­gered : NEIN KINGSNORTH!

E.on Munich fingeredBritish Cli­mate Camp activists have tak­en their cam­paign to the Munich offices of E.ON.
For Imme­di­ate release. 14.30 — 22/10/08
E.ON gets fin­gered : NEIN KINGSNORTH!

British Cli­mate Camp (1) activists have tak­en their cam­paign to stop the build­ing of a coal-fired pow­er sta­tion in Kent, UK, to the Ener­gy head­quar­ters of E.ON in Munich, Ger­many (2).

This morn­ing activists involved in the UK Cli­mate Camp coor­di­nat­ed a ‘flash mob’ style action at the office of E.ON Energie. Dressed in splash­es of E.ON red, around thir­ty peo­ple swamped the main entrance of the office to give E.ON the fin­ger. Play­ing on the ‘E.ON F.OFF’ logo (3) from this summer’s Cli­mate Camp the group held their mid­dle fin­gers in the air, send­ing a clear mes­sage that the mul­ti-nation­al is a tar­get across Europe.

“This sum­mer saw a pletho­ra of high­ly effec­tive actions against the ener­gy major in the UK” explained Jim­my Hoover, one of the UK Cli­mate Campers who trav­elled to Munich to coor­di­nate the action. “We want­ed to make it very clear to E.ON that its not just about one week in a field in Kent. We have the means and the moti­va­tion to take this cam­paign to stop Kingsnorth and new coal con­tin­ue all the way home to E.On’s head­quar­ters in Ger­many. Until the plans for this new coal-fired plant are dropped, we will drag E.On’s name through the mud and expose them for being the cli­mate crim­i­nals they are.”

Since this summer’s third and largest Cli­mate Camp, the group have open­ly stat­ed their inten­tion to return to the Hoo penin­su­la in Kent to pre­vent the build­ing of a new coal fired pow­er sta­tion, should it be giv­en plan­ning per­mis­sion by the British gov­ern­ment.

“When you’ve got the world’s top cli­mate sci­en­tist Jim Hansen explain­ing that this one pow­er sta­tion will make extinct up to 400 species (4), you’ve got to ask why E.On would still be push­ing ahead with this act of cli­mate van­dal­ism,” added Mel Evans. “Its clear that E.ON has their prof­its in mind, rather than the pub­lic inter­est and cli­mate secu­ri­ty. With the British tax-pay­er look­ing like­ly to own a 60% stake in the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land – who have pro­vid­ed loans to E.On to build Kingsnorth (5) — I for one don’t want my tax­es being used to trash the cli­mate. That’s why we’ve come here today to make sure they get the mes­sage loud and clear – E.On, F.OFF!”

For high res images go to http://thevacuumcleaner.co.uk/eonmunich/

Notes to the Edi­tor:

(1) www.climatecamp.org.uk

(2) Bri­en­ner Straße 40 80333 München Ger­many +49 (0) 89 — 12 54 – 01 http://www.eon-energie.com/pages/eea_en/index.htm

(3) http://www.flickr.com/photos/monaxle/2739086776/

(4) James Hansen, NASA cli­mate sci­en­tist, esti­mates that if the new coal pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth in Kent goes ahead, it will result in 400 extinct species due to its con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate change. www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/04/climatechange.fossilfuels

(5) In 2007, RBS-NatWest took part in loans to E.ON, the com­pa­ny plan­ning to build Kingsnorth, total­ing $70 bil­lion.

nein.kingsnorth@googlemail.com
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk