Category: Rest of Europe

Rest of Europe

Hambach Forest: Excavator Stopped

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6xOFmvnfrom Ham­bach Forest(en)

Yes­ter­day (23rd Sep­tem­ber), around noon, an ex­ca­va­tor was stop­ped which was wor­king at the old rail­way of the li­gni­te in­dus­try close to Co­lo­gne, Ger­ma­ny. The rail­way as well as the open pits and the pow­er plants be­longs to the com­pa­ny RWE.

The rail­way was used for the trans­port of the li­gni­te di­rec­ty from the pits to the pow­er plants. But now, parts of the rail­way and the high­way A4 were build new some ki­lo­me­ters more south to make space for the grow­ing mine.

The com­pa­ny H.-B. Kai­ser, Ab­bruch und Erd­be­we­gun­gen, in 52388 Nör­ve­nich“ is in char­ge of re­mo­ving the old rail­way.

Fur­ther­mo­re, the se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny  KÖT­TER Se­cu­ri­ty  and the fo­res­ting com­pa­ny  Krob­bach“ from Mels­bach are ta­king part in the de­struc­tion of the na­tu­re that RWE is com­mi­t­ing.

These com­pa­nies are also to mark, to block and to sa­bo­ta­ge!

Every day is an ac­tion day! – Earth First!

Three Sea Shepherd Crewmembers Arrested in Faroe Islands for Protecting Hundreds of Dolphins

news-140917-1-20140915_BV_OP_STOP-280x186Sep­tem­ber 19th, 2014

news-140917-1-20140915_BV_OP_STOP-280x186Sep­tem­ber 19th, 2014

Three vol­un­teer mem­bers of Sea Shepherd’s pilot whale and small cetacean defense cam­paign Oper­a­tion Grind­Stop 2014 were arrest­ed today just out­side the Faroese cap­i­tal of Tor­shavn for pro­tect­ing a large pod of hun­dreds of Atlantic white-sided dol­phins, pre­vent­ing them from approach­ing the dan­ger­ous killing shores of the Faroe Islands.

The Dan­ish Navy chased, board­ed and seized Sea Shepherd’s UK-reg­is­tered boat, the Spit­fire, and arrest­ed its three crewmem­bers — Jessie Tre­ver­ton of the UK and Celine Le Diouron and Mar­i­on Seligh­i­ni, both from France.

Though it is against Faroese law to inter­fere with the mass cetacean slaugh­ter known as the “grindadrap” or “grind,” no grind had been called when Sea Shep­herd pre­vent­ed the dol­phins from reach­ing shore. More­over, white-sided dol­phins are a pro­tect­ed species and are not to be killed. The Dan­ish Police, how­ev­er, have charged the Sea Shep­herd vol­un­teers with fail­ure to report the dol­phin sight­ings to the grind mas­ter and police and, iron­i­cal­ly, with “harass­ing dol­phins.”

Sea Shep­herd Founder Cap­tain Paul Wat­son respond­ed, “Appar­ent­ly in the Faroe Islands it is per­fect­ly legal to kill a pro­tect­ed species, but it is ille­gal to push them back out to sea in order to keep them from harm’s way because that is con­sid­ered ‘harass­ment.’ So these three Sea Shep­herd women can proud­ly say that they suc­cess­ful­ly ‘harassed’ the dol­phins for the pur­pose of sav­ing their lives.”

“The good news is, how­ev­er, that a pod of hun­dreds of white-sided dol­phins were suc­cess­ful­ly ‘harassed’ away from the vicious knives of the whalers. Last year, in August 2013, 450 white-sided dol­phins fell to the cru­el knives of these cetacean-slaugh­ter­ing thugs. For­tu­nate­ly the hun­dreds spot­ted today remain safe at sea,” added Cap­tain Wat­son.

Sea Shep­herd cur­rent­ly has an attor­ney involved. The crew and the Spit­fire were released late this evening in the Faroes. They were escort­ed to the Spit­fire and per­mit­ted to leave. The crew is to appear in court tomor­row at 2 pm Faroes time. How­ev­er, the vol­un­teers face depor­ta­tion from the Faroe Islands by Den­mark, and if deport­ed, would not be allowed to return to the Faroes for at least one year.

Despite being an anti-whal­ing mem­ber nation of the Euro­pean Union, sub­ject to laws pro­hibit­ing the slaugh­ter of cetaceans, Den­mark con­tin­ues to show its sup­port and even col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Faroese whalers to kill small cetaceans.

The Spit­fire is the fourth ves­sel seized by the Dan­ish Navy in the Faroe Islands dur­ing Oper­a­tion Grind­Stop 2014, as Sea Shepherd’s three small boats — the Loki, the Mike Gale­si and the B.S. Sheen (spon­sored by actor Char­lie Sheen) were seized on August 30th. They are being held as evi­dence await­ing the tri­al of eight Sea Shep­herd crew from those boats. Along with the small boat crew, 6 mem­bers of Sea Shepherd’s onshore team were also arrest­ed for attempt­ing to pre­vent the bru­tal slaugh­ter of a pod of 33 pilot whales on August 30.

“Though three vol­un­teers have been arrest­ed and the Dan­ish Navy has once again act­ed in defense of the bru­tal grind by seiz­ing one of our boats, Sea Shep­herd con­sid­ers this a vic­to­ry. Hun­dreds of dol­phins are still swim­ming safe­ly as a fam­i­ly because of our brave vol­un­teers, and Sea Shep­herd will con­tin­ue to act in defense of its clients,” said Lamya Essem­lali, Pres­i­dent of Sea Shep­herd France and Grind­Stop 2014 Off­shore Leader.

There are two Sea Shep­herd ves­sels cur­rent­ly oper­at­ing in the Faroes — the Spit­fire, and the Clemen­tine, from France. Thor had to be removed from the water ear­li­er today, as for­eign ves­sels can only be in Faroese waters for a max­i­mum of three months.

Sea Shep­herd has led the oppo­si­tion to the mass slaugh­ter of cetaceans in the Faroe Islands since the 1980s. Oper­a­tion Grind­Stop 2014 is Sea Shepherd’s largest Faroese cam­paign to date, and a mul­ti-nation­al team of Sea Shep­herd vol­un­teers has been patrolling land and sea in the islands since mid-June. Sea Shep­herd will remain in the Faroes until the begin­ning of Octo­ber. The cam­paign spans the typ­i­cal­ly blood­i­est months of the grindadrap hunt sea­son, in an effort to save as many lives as pos­si­ble.

Update from Hambach: Action Day Ticker!

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15255415352_369032b876_z

The Ham­bach is a for­est in Ger­many pro­posed for lig­nite (brown coal) strip min­ing. There is cur­rent­ly a for­est occu­pa­tion under­way, as well as an action camp, and action days at the end of every month.

Sep­tem­ber 16th, 2014

from Ham­bach For­est

 

español

deutsch

Today, the new part of the Au­to­bahn, which they built to help fur­ther the ex­pan­si­on of the mine, will be opened with an of­fi­ci­al ce­le­bra­ti­on. Ap­pa­r­ent­ly, the po­li­ce chose the same day to dis­turb our re­sis­tan­ce in the fo­rest and on the mea­dow. They ap­peared as ear­ly as 8:00h this morn­ing and are gi­ving us trou­b­le since then. Fol­low us here today, we will re­gu­lar­ly pu­blish new up­dates, ti­ck­er-​style.

8:00 First ap­pearan­ce of cops in the fo­rest and on the mea­dow, buil­ding up to around 100 cops at 8:30
8:20 Per­son at­ta­cked by po­li­ce for now re­a­son, ex­cept as­king what they want
8:30 Re­mo­val of bar­ri­ca­des on the fo­rest paths, takes them about 2 hours
10:20 Po­li­ce are try­ing to evict beech town (tree oc­cupa­ti­on) de­s­troy­ing ever­y­thing on the ground – clim­bing units are pre­sent
10:30 Po­li­ce are amas­sing at plane han­gar close to mea­dow – we‘re no lon­ger re­acha­ble by car
11.​20 Po­li­ce van by the mea­dow oc­cupa­ti­on
11.​40 Po­li­ce and RWE on way to de­s­troy kit­chen near mea­dow
11.​50 Food packs for the po­li­ce (it locks that they want to work lon­ger)
12.​00 The ope­ning of the high­way A4 starts – 400 peop­le on of­fi­ci­al ope­ning (ho­no­red guests) The de­mons­tra­ti­on against it with 50 peop­le works, but not di­rect­ly by the ope­ning par­ty, 50 po­li­ce are there – traf­fic mi­nis­ter tal­king shit
12.​10 the bar­ri­ca­des to düren are evic­ted and the po­li­ce are blo­cka­ding the way to beech town
12.​28 the po­li­ce start to come on the mea­dow oc­cupa­ti­on, hid­ing duty num­bers. Po­li­ce­block from Aa­chen: (Li­cen­se Plate NRW-​4-​4623, pic­tu­re of po­li­ce stan­ding on the mea­dow )
12.​50 the of­fi­ci­al ope­ning at the high­way is over.
13.​10 po­li­ce „re­tre­ats“ a bit, lea­ving oa­k­town, a tre­e­hou­se oc­cupa­ti­on, for now.
13:20 Po­li­ce no lon­ger vi­si­ble on the mea­dow
13:25 News from the fo­rest – one har­vester (ma­chi­ne for cut­ting trees) is da­ma­ged (flu­ids lea­king out)
13:30 Peop­le are doing a sit­ting blo­cka­de in the Fo­rest, on the way to beech town oc­cupa­ti­on
13:40 A small group of peop­le got con­trol­led by Po­li­ce, one per­son ar­rested for lack of I.D.
13:40 Har­vester is dri­ve­able again, but is lea­ving the Fo­rest, pro­tec­ted by RWE and Po­li­ce
15:00 No more po­li­ce or oth­er en­emies in the Fo­rest – one se­cu­ri­ty car was pas­sing through the re­mo­ved bar­ri­ca­des, but left again quite quick­ly. The ti­cker will go on break for now, if there’s any more ac­tion we‘ll be up­dating again.

some pic­tu­res of today: 16.​09.​14

Eviction Underway at La ZAD du Testet

Last week, occu­piers buried them­selves in the ground to defend La ZAD du Testet. Pho­to from @seamymsg

Sep­tem­ber 16th, 2014

Occu­pied since Octo­ber 2013, the ZAD du Testet is one of the many “zones a defendre” which were cre­at­ed after the medi­a­ti­za­tion of the ZAD at Notre-Dame-des Lan­des in Octo­ber 2012. The col­lec­tive in Testet, a val­ley in the Tarn region of south­east France, is a mix of “zadistes, farm­ers, clowns and peo­ple in revolt”, resist­ing a dam project which would destroy a wood­ed, wet­land area with over 100 threat­ened species, to sup­ply 24 agro-indus­tri­al farms with water.

The squat­ted for­est was vio­lent­ly evict­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2014, the 10–20 oppo­nents chose to use non­vi­o­lent tac­tics, and then reoc­cu­pied. They were evict­ed again in May of 2014.

August 15, a larg­er re-occu­pa­tion was orga­nized, under heavy police and mil­i­tary atten­tion, with arbi­trary arrests and road block­ades pre­vent­ing build­ing mate­r­i­al from arriv­ing on site. August 25th, biol­o­gists came to give their exper­tise and fill out paper­work to approve the project, and evic­tions began. Peo­ple resist­ed with burn­ing bar­ri­cades and molo­tovs, and there has been almost dai­ly con­fronta­tion ever since. The region went under mar­tial law on August 31st, with the police chief declar­ing- “the law must remain strong”, and work­ers began cut­ting the for­est on Sep­tem­ber 1. A press release from the col­lec­tive against the dam- “Tant qu’il y aura des Bouilles” said- “…these new events show the dis­dain that the Tarn Region­al Coun­cil shows for dia­logue and for the oppo­nents of this project. We con­demn this show of force. This kind of behav­ior breeds rage, even in the most paci­fist of oppo­nents, and so one can under­stand that actions will become more and more rad­i­cal.”

Peo­ple have resist­ed in a vari­ety of ways- a hunger strike by locals in their 50s and 60s, numer­ous block­ades using trac­tors, fire, buried peo­ple, tripods, bulls, human chains etc, a 24/7 occu­pa­tion of the square in front of the city coun­cil, climb­ing on machines and in trees, and fight­ing on the ground. There are about 800 peo­ple against the project cur­rent­ly in and around the for­est, and they fre­quent­ly encounter tear gas, con­cus­sion grenades and rub­ber bul­lets. Today (Sep­tem­ber 15th) action cen­tered around the Gaza(d) tree­house, which still hasn’t been evict­ed, although 5 peo­ple were hos­pi­tal­ized (no thanks to the police, who blocked the ambu­lances). There are still quite a lot of peo­ple in the trees, and the actions are slow­ing or block­ing work every day.

There have also been numer­ous sol­i­dar­i­ty actions, from a high school walk­out in Gail­lac to occu­py­ing the offices of the dam con­struc­tion com­pa­ny in Nantes. The bour­geois media, per­haps afraid of anoth­er snow­ball effect like in Octo­ber 2012, has kept almost total silence about Testet, despite count­less reports of police bru­tal­i­ty. In addi­tion to the theft or destruc­tion by the police of med­ical sup­plies, food, vehi­cles, tents, sleep­ing bags, any­thing they can get their hands on, the farm­ers who stand to ben­e­fit from the dam and local sus­pect­ed facists have formed a gang with iron bars, rocks, dogs, molo­tovs and hunt­ing rifles- with as of yes­ter­day about 80 peo­ple, and they are patrolling the roads.

A last word from those on the ground: “Thank you to all who are mobi­liz­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the strug­gle in Testet, every­where it’s the same thing, every­where the same sys­tem of rot­ten politi­cians who decide amoungst them­selves what they’re going to do and call it “democ­ra­cy”, and who have only one goal: devel­op their busi­ness­es to strength­en the choke­hold of this sys­tem of machines and tech­nol­o­gy on the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment and peo­ple. Those who think they are pro­tect­ed are already dead. We refuse to be iso­lat­ed and so we strug­gle, we humbly resist.”

a film in french

web­site of the occu­pa­tion

 

Wetlands destruction and resistance

#TESTET #ZAD

#TESTET #ZAD

About an hour’s dri­ve north of Toulouse (sw France)  there is an area of wet­lands called the Testet, in the for­est of #Sivens . This is the last area of wet­lands (“Zone Humide” in French) in the depart­ment of the Tarn. It is home to rare and endan­gered species.

This area (13hectares) will be drowned by a dam. The pur­pose of the dam is prin­ci­pal­ly to irri­gate large-scale maize pro­duc­tion.

It will also be used to reg­u­late the lev­els of water in the riv­er Tescou, so that pol­lu­tion will be dilut­ed and the local author­i­ties can claim to respect Euro­pean envi­ron­ment leg­is­la­tion. The water can also be used if dif­fi­cul­ties arrive at the Golfech nuclear reac­tor.

Maize pro­duc­tion is not appro­pri­ate to this region, it is a high­ly pol­lut­ing form of agri­cul­ture. Euro­pean and French rules say that it should no longer receive sub­si­dies. (Dam financed by local, region­al and Euro­pean bud­gets)

The pro­ject­ed dam is not nec­es­sary, small­er, high­er dams exist upstream, and are not used.

The stud­ies of water avail­abil­i­ty and use, of the cost, impact and of the need for the dam are flawed and par­tial. (Local politi­cians who favour the project have inter­ests in the com­pa­ny which pro­duced the stud­ies — which just hap­pens to be the com­pa­ny which will pock­et the mon­ey for build­ing the dam.…)

Claims about the need to dilute indus­tri­al pol­lu­tion down­stream are non­sense: the milk coop­er­a­tive which used to pump efflu­ent into the Tescou has had fil­ters since 2006.

Envi­ron­men­tal­ists have been defend­ing the wet­lands for almost a year. Log­ging start­ed on the 1st of sep­tem­ber, the army and mil­i­tary police corps have com­mit­ed acts of vio­lence against non-vio­lent pro­tes­tors.

A hunger strike is in progress.

Hun­dreds of dam oppo­nents are active on the site ( block­ing roads, slow­ing the chain­saws, nego­ci­at­ing and demon­strat­ing). Oth­er activists are demon­strat­ing in front of local gov­erne­ment offices (and being sav­age­ly beat­en for their efforts)

Calls for the pub­lic to show oppo­si­tion to this unnec­es­sary and destruc­tive project are online.

Wel­come groups exist for par­tic­i­pants in direct action. The strug­gle is grad­u­al­ly grow­ing, all and any help is need­ed. Sad­ly, at the time of writ­ing the GIGN (spe­cial forces) are clear­ing resis­tance from the Zone.

Futher info:

http://collectif-testet.org/

http://tantquilyauradesbouilles.wordpress.com/

https://www.facebook.com/SoutienTestet

Verdict Handed Down for Six Sea Shepherd Volunteers on Faroe Islands

9.9.14

9.9.14

Vol­un­teers from Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Society’s pilot whale defense cam­paign Oper­a­tion Grind­Stop 2014 appeared before a court in the Faroe Islands on Mon­day fol­low­ing their recent arrest in con­junc­tion with try­ing to pre­vent the mur­der of pilot whales. These vol­un­teer crewmem­bers – many of whom are Euro­pean cit­i­zens – have been found guilty of defend­ing the whales, while Den­mark has act­ed in bla­tant defi­ance of Euro­pean Union reg­u­la­tions by defend­ing the slaugh­ter of whales. Sea Shep­herd has issued a state­ment per­tain­ing to the ver­dicts and sup­port­er and actor Mar­tin Sheen is speak­ing out.

The six mem­bers of Sea Shepherd’s onshore team were among a total of 14 vol­un­teers arrest­ed on August 30 on the Faroese island of San­doy for attempt­ing to pro­tect 33 pilot whales from the bru­tal mass slaugh­ter known as “grindadrap” or the “grind.” The onshore crewmem­bers entered the water, bang­ing poles, in an attempt to lead the pilot whales back out to sea and out of dan­ger, but as the pod was dri­ven in quick­ly from close to shore, there was lit­tle time to pre­vent the slaugh­ter. The Roy­al Dan­ish Navy arrest­ed Sea Shepherd’s off­shore crew and seized three of their small boats – the Loki, the Mike Gale­si, and the B.S. Sheen (spon­sored by actor Char­lie Sheen). Despite being an anti-whal­ing EU mem­ber nation, Den­mark act­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the whalers, enabling 33 whales to be killed.

The onshore crewmem­bers face small fines as well as pos­si­ble depor­ta­tion from the Faroes by Den­mark. The court date for the eight mem­bers of the off­shore crew has been sched­uled for Sep­tem­ber 25, and Sea Shepherd’s three small boats will be held “as evi­dence” until that time.

Read more at SeaShepherd.org

Direct actions against open cast mines in germany 2014 – mobilisation for a big blockade/action simultaneous to the COPs in Paris in 2015

On the 1st of August this year sev­er­al actions took place against brown coal min­ing in the rhineland in ger­many.

On the 1st of August this year sev­er­al actions took place against brown coal min­ing in the rhineland in ger­many.

One of the biggest open cast mines of europe are locat­ed in the mid­west of ger­many. Near to Cologne RWE, the biggest ener­gy provider of ger­many runs three open cast mines with an area of 160 km². With an emis­sion of ca. 100 mil­lion CO2 per year RWE is the biggest emit­tent of CO2 in whole Europe. Enough Prof­it for the high­ly indept­ed enter­prise, the loss of nat­ur­al resources for mil­lions of peo­ple of the glob­al south

The local con­se­quences of the brown-coal-minig are desas­trous. High­ly fer­tile soil gets digged away. Tens of thou­sands of peo­ple get reset­tled. Impor­tant ecosys­tems like the ham­bach for­est get cut down. To pre­vent the mines from flood­ing the ground­wa­ter gets pumped down. The neg­a­tive effects for the agri­cul­ture and wet­lands can be locat­ed even in the nether­lands which are ca. 60 km away. The grit and fine dust which are pro­duced by the biggest dig­gers of the world, which work 24/7 includes even radioac­tive par­ti­cles.

There was Resis­tance against the gigan­tic project for the whole time of RWEs eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty since the begin­ning of 1900. Some­times big­ger some­times small­er the resis­tance more­over col­laps­es because of the pow­er RWE devel­ops with lob­by­ism, cor­rup­tion and the under­cut­ting of admin­is­tra­tions, courts and local social com­mu­ni­ties.

For about 4 years a con­stant­ly grow­ing grass­rootsmove­ment tries to pow­er up the resis­tance against the pow­er gen­er­a­tion of coal on a local and nation­wide scale. With con­stant crys­talli­sa­tion points like the ham­bach for­est occu­pa­tion and a house project in the area, with cli­mate camps and help­ing to empow­er the local resis­tance move­ment with sup­port­ing cit­i­zen ini­tia­tives.

 

Embed­ded in the cli­mate camp this year a pow­er­ful action day took place.

The coal train which trans­ports the coal from the ham­bach open cast mine to the pow­er plant was blocked two times. On the the first block­ade chained them­selves to the rails of the coal train which trans­ports the coal of the mine called ham­bach to the pow­er plant and the sec­ond time two peo­ple roped down from a bridge above the rails.

Near­ly at the same time about 80 peo­ple moved the oth­er big mine Garzweil­er to block the infra­struc­ture. 2 Dig­gers were blocked 3 times with lock-on-actions and squattings.From 8 o’clock in the morn­ing to 10 in the evening the dri­vers of the dig­gers and the oth­er per­son­al in the mine had no calm minute.

It seems that more and more peo­ple want to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for them­selves to pro­tect ecosys­tems and nat­ur­al resources and begin to stop the worst effects of cli­mate change with direct actions against fos­sil infra­struc­ture.

 

Pho­tos of the action day:

Lock-on-action and climb­ing action (with oth­er pho­tos of the ham­bach for­est occu­pa­tion)

https://secure.flickr.com/photos/hambacherforst/with/14797606761/

Block­ade of dig­gers:

https://secure.flickr.com/photos/100963658@N02/sets/72157645681194248/

 

Mobil­i­sa­tion for a big infra­struc­ture block­ade simul­ta­ne­ous­ly to the COP21

Accord­ing to the next COP-meet­ing in Paris 2015 we want to invite peo­ple from all over europe to think about what to do. As we don’t want to have such a big depres­sion after the COPs 2009 in Copen­hagen again there is a ten­den­cy to organ­ise a big block­ade of infra­struc­ture of fos­sil fuel ener­gy pro­duc­tion simul­ta­ne­ous­ly some­where cen­tral­ly locat­ed in Europe. If you have ideas and want to dis­trib­ute them you can come to Cologne/Germany from the 3rd to the 5th of octo­bre. There will be acco­mo­da­tion and board.

Eng­lish call­out for the action ple­nary:

http://ekib.blogsport.eu/2014/08/23/invitation-action-plenary-meeting‑3–5‑oct-2014-in-cologne/

 

 

Earth First!

An activist from ausgeco2hlt

 

Unfor­tu­nate­ly the web­sites are not in eng­lish or the eng­lish blogs are not well oper­at­ed

www.ausgeco2hlt.de

www.hambacherforst.blogsport.de / http://hambachforest.blogsport.de/

http://ekib.blogsport.eu/

www.klimacamp-im-rheinland.de

 

 

Week of Action against the NATO Summit in Newport

The world’s lead­ing war­mon­gers will meet this sum­mer in Wales.  A week of action is planned to oppose and stop them, from August 30th to Sep­tem­ber the 5th.

The world’s lead­ing war­mon­gers will meet this sum­mer in Wales.  A week of action is planned to oppose and stop them, from August 30th to Sep­tem­ber the 5th.

Two organ­i­sa­tions are plan­ning actions against the sum­mit, inclus­ing mass demon­stra­tions and days of action on dif­fer­ent aspects of mil­i­tarism.  This promis­es to be a mas­sive focal point for the move­ment against mil­iarism this sum­mer. Details of can be found here:

https://network23.org/stopnatocymru/

http://www.nonatonewport.org/

Please get involved and spread the word!  Help raise our pro­file by link­ing to stop­NA­TO­Cym­ru on blogs etc., and more impor­tant­ly, come along to the events and show your sup­port.

Action Days in the Rhineland Coalfield

Action Days in the Rhineland Coal­field

Action Days in the Rhineland Coal­field

Lots of things were hap­pen­ing in the Rhineland Coal­field today: Ear­ly in the morn­ing, four activists locked them­selves to coal train tracks. Two more activists abseiled them­selves from a bridge. These two block­ades stopped the coal trans­porta­tion between the open-cast mine Ham­bach and the pow­er plants. Fur­ther north, at the edge of the Garzweil­er mine, a group of 80 peo­ple took a seat in front of the buck­ets of the dig­ging machine, some of them locked them­selves togeth­er. Anoth­er group ven­tured fur­ther down into the mine and climbed on the wheels the dig­ging machine, accom­pa­nied by a Sam­ba band and rebel clowns. And last but not least, about 20 activists were blockad­ing the gate to the mininig area for six hours. It seems that more and more peo­ple are will­ing to take direct action against the pol­lut­ing indus­try to stop cli­mate change!

The Rhineland Coal­fied is sit­u­at­ed in the West­ern part of Ger­many, close to the Dutch bor­dier. There are three huge open-cast lig­nite mines, and right next to it, some of Europe’s dirt­i­est coal-fired pow­er plants, which emit about 100 mil­lion tons of CO2 per year.

Lots of the activists had their base on the cli­mate action camp, that is tak­ing this week on a piece of land that is sched­uled to be digged away soon for the lig­nite mine.  

View images of the action days on www.klimacamp-im-rheinland.de

Catalonia: Wave of Sabotage Against High Tension Lines

images.duckduckgo.com

images.duckduckgo.com

July 18th, 2014 — In light of the news of the mov­ing for­ward of the Very High Ten­sion Line (la línea de muy alta ten­sión or MAT), we want to make pub­lic:

On Tues­day, July 1st, an all-ter­rain vehi­cle in the ser­vice of Ten­salm, a com­pa­ny sub­con­tract­ed by the Spain Elec­tri­cal Net­work (REE), was burned, destroyed by the flames in the night with­in a  Sar­rià de Ter hotel in the Girona province.

We claim all the actions detailed below, a year after we began our work. All the actions have been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly silenced by the com­mu­ni­ca­tion media and for this rea­son we want to make pub­lic that, in denial of the lastest news from the dai­ly El Punt, we have caused months of delay to the work and thou­sands of euros of dam­ages and loss­es to REE.

At the mar­gin of the assem­blies and col­lec­tives that have car­ried out a strug­gle against the con­struc­tion of the MAT, a mul­ti­tude of activists from the region and for­eign­ers, we have car­ried out a fight based on direct action.

We vin­di­cate sab­o­tage as a fun­da­men­tal part of the fight against the impo­si­tion, the infra­struc­ture that sus­tains the sys­tem, and all the social, lab­o­ral and eco­nom­ic mech­a­nisms of cap­i­tal­ism.

The whole world is capa­ble of car­ry­ing out sab­o­tage, a tool that has belonged to the oppressed class for a long time. It can be as sim­ple as unscrew­ing the bolts of any tow­er, and we encour­age every­one who is against to act in the way they see as most fit­ting.

We pub­lish this list of actions in order to incite sab­o­tage, to give ideas, and to bring to light what they didn’t want to be known.

June 2013:
- 2 exca­va­tors sab­o­taged
-All-ter­rain vehi­cle of the ROTELLA com­pa­ny has tires slashed and radi­a­tors bro­ken.
- Removal of stakes mark­ing the tow­ers.

August 2013:
- 2 exca­va­tors sab­o­taged
- 1 exca­va­tor destroyed
- Block­ing of the trails with bar­ri­cades

Sep­tem­ber – Novem­ber 2013:
- 5 exca­va­tors and machines sab­o­taged
- 12 all-ter­rain vehi­cles of GAROC and ROTELLA com­pa­nies sab­o­taged
- Block­ing of trails with bar­ri­cades and spikes

Decem­ber 2013:
- Attack on the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of REE and their cars

Jan­u­ary 2014:
- Attacks on GAROC exca­va­tors

Feb­ru­ary – April 2014:
- Guide cords for run­ning cables repeat­ed­ly cut
- Mul­ti­ple unbolt­ings of the bases of the MAT tow­ers
- Attack on the secu­ri­ty guards of EULEN com­pa­ny, and bro­ken win­dows.

May 2014:
- Cords cut
- Destruc­tion of 2 gen­er­a­tors
- 2 all-ter­rain vehi­cles of REE sab­o­taged
- Sab­o­tage of sup­port struc­tures
- Sev­er­al unbolt­ings of the tow­ers

June – July 2014:
- All-ter­rain vehi­cles sab­o­taged and burned!

This is an incom­plete list since it is impos­si­ble to know all the actions that have been car­ried out, or who has done them. The bolts will be sent to the press, in order to put pres­sure for the pub­li­ca­tion of this man­i­festo.

No MAT, no TAV, no nuclear and no to the sys­tem that sus­tains them!

More infor­ma­tion about resis­tance to the MAT can be found at

http://torresmasaltashancaido.espivblogs.net/ingles/

 

from con­train­fo, trans­lat­ed by waronso­ci­ety