Category: Rest of Europe

Rest of Europe

Shell to Sea Two and half years later and still going strong! October 12th day of action

In 2005 small west of Ire­land com­mu­ni­ty became the focus of atten­tion of the peo­ple in Ire­land. Five small farm­ers in Ross­port Co Mayo (one the most remote and iso­lat­ed places in North­west Europe) had stood up to a multi­na­tion­al con­glom­er­a­tion of Shell, Sta­toil and Marathon in fear they would die if Shell built their unprece­dent­ed on shore refin­ery.

In 2005 small west of Ire­land com­mu­ni­ty became the focus of atten­tion of the peo­ple in Ire­land. Five small farm­ers in Ross­port Co Mayo (one the most remote and iso­lat­ed places in North­west Europe) had stood up to a multi­na­tion­al con­glom­er­a­tion of Shell, Sta­toil and Marathon in fear they would die if Shell built their unprece­dent­ed on shore refin­ery.

The Irish State’s reac­tion to this was to inde­fi­nate­ly imprison them. This tran­spired to be 94 days at which point Shell decid­ed it was doing more harm than good by impris­on­ing as there was a series of direct actions and mass demon­stra­tion in their defence http://www.indymedia.ie/article/71388. In the weeks run­ning up to this some activists made con­tact with com­mu­ni­ty activists and start­ed a nation­al Shell to sea cam­paign. The unbe­liev­able sto­ry of what was going on in the west of Ire­land was spread through Europe through the meet­ing of activists at the G8 in Ster­ling in July 2008.

The sto­ry is quite unbe­liev­able. Shell and their part­ners are attempt­ing to destroy an unspoilt part of the west Ire­land, by run­ning a dan­ger­ous pipeline through the vil­lage of Ross­port to an inland refin­ery that will spew hun­dreds of thou­sands of tonnes of methane each year in the local envi­ron­ment. On top of this they are effec­tive­ly rob­bing the peo­ple in Ire­land of €51 bil­lion of Irish gas through a dodgy deal cut with cor­rupt politi­cians that at the time was called “eco­nom­ic trea­son”.

But lots of things are wrong and why should peo­ple all across the world we focus on this? Well its sim­ple- we can win and if we do the effects will be immense as a prece­dent will have been set that will not only effect Ire­land but Europe and beyond.

So what hap­pened since 2005 and where are we now?

Tra­di­tion­al sec­tar­i­an­ism was put aside and activists of dif­fer­ent back­grounds worked togeth­er form­ing what the media would lat­er bill “the looney alliance of anar­chists and repub­li­cans”. Through­out the sum­mer of 2005 and until the late sum­mer of 2006 things worked very well as con­stant pick­ets shut down Shel­l’s oper­a­tion in Mayo and pres­sure mount­ed on Shell and the Irish State.

Then at the end of Sep­tem­ber 2006 the State and Shell made their move. Over 200 gar­dai (Irish police) were bil­let­ed to Mayo. The top cop said he would have the protests fin­ished in 48hours. The com­mu­ni­ty and nation­al cam­paigns response was immense. Pick­et­ing went on through the night incase the Gar­dai tried
to cor­don activists away from the site. On the night of the sec­ond of Octo­ber the cops even­tu­al­ly turned out in force. In an effort to main­tain the year and half long pick­et cars were parked block­ing the refin­ery and behind them the com­mu­ni­ty sat in front of the gates. In area with low­est crime rate in Ire­land 200 Gar­dai pulled and dragged com­mu­ni­ty res­i­dents from the gates hos­pi­tal­is­ing two.

This lead to a surge in activ­i­ty with much cam­paign activ­i­ty around the coun­try and inter­na­tion­al­ly, focused on days of action in Ross­port. The Gar­da reac­tion to these days of Action was vio­lent cul­mi­nat­ing in a baton charge on Novem­ber the tenth. The cam­paign then in the face of what seemed like more vio­lence can­celled a pro­posed day of action on the 24th of Novem­ber 2006. Many saw this as deci­sive moment for the cam­paign as momen­tum passed out of our hands. Every­one realised the fol­ly of
it, but as with a lot of things in Shell to Sea it is a learn­ing process. Now it seems it was not as deci­sive as it seemed as things build again.

This sum­mer the cam­paign burst back to life by vic­to­ri­ous­ly oppos­ing shel­l’s attempt to install cab­ins for works in the bay — read more. This was fol­lowed with a very intense week which saw three fish­er­men includ­ing Pat “the chief” O Don­nell and his son and a friend impris­oned, the site was shut down for a day. On the fish­er­men’s release
an inva­sion of the con­struc­tion site took place. Over Sep­tem­ber there have been three site inva­sions and two days with numer­ous peo­ple blockad­ing traf­fic attempt­ing to access the site — read more.

All this occurred in the run up to the day of action on Sep­tem­ber 14th unique in that it had a pre-announced plan. The plan was sim­ple — go there and sit on the road and no vehi­cles get on site. The run-up to the day was ner­vous. The big ques­tion was- could Shell to Sea with its nation­al sup­port in town (or coun­try­side rather) reassert the right of ordi­nary peo­ple over multi­na­tion­als in Erris and real­ly push for­ward the already build­ing momen­tum behind the cam­paign. The con­di­tions were cer­tain­ly right- Shell were and still are run­ning into enor­mous prob­lems as build­ing has vir­tu­al­ly come to a stand­still due to poor qual­i­ty con­crete, con­stant protest and the lack of a pipeline route. On Fri­day the 14th about 150 — 200 peo­ple turned from around the coun­try and this was matched by a size­able mayo turnout.

The total pro­tes­tor turnout was matched by a size­able Gar­da pres­ence. As the pro­tes­tors shut down the main entrance to the site with the sit down the Gar­dai thought they would be clever and direct traf­fic around the sit down and bore us to tears. After this long you would imag­ine the cops would realise Shell to Sea is a lit­tle more on the ball than this. In the lack of the any trucks to meet pro­tes­tors we decid­ed to go and take a look and shut the site down. So it was up, over, under and through the gate as the protest made lit­tle a sec­ondary gate as well (espe­cial­ly con­struct­ed for the day) — read more. The Gar­dai respond­ed with their usu­al heavy hand­ed tac­tics. Regard­less of Shel­l’s rub­bish spin, RTE’s (Ire­lands state broad­cast­er) des­per­ate attempts to pla­cate Shell and and the gar­dai’s offi­cial line it was plain to see who had won the day and that the train is firm­ly back on the tracks.

It’s undoubt­ed that Shell to Sea is not yet at the dizzy­ing heights it was at 12 or 24 months ago. How­ev­er things are mov­ing in a sim­i­lar direc­tion at the moment. We have learned the mis­takes of plac­ing too much faith in politi­cians to pull a deal out the hat. With this knowl­edge it could just be third time lucky for Shell to Sea.

Through­out this peri­od the impact on sol­i­dar­i­ty from the Eng­land Scot­land and Wales has had an enor­mous effect. It has been instru­men­tal in keep­ing the sol­i­dar­i­ty camp con­tin­u­ing through peo­ple com­ing stay­ing a week or a year, fundrais­ing and dona­tions have also allowed the camp to expand. Hos­pi­tal­i­ty to cam­paign speak­ers was always sec­ond to none. Above all the impact that peo­ple com­ing has had a pro­found impact on the moral of peo­ple in Ross­port. They launched their oppo­si­tion in 1999 and it took six years to get Nation­al atten­tion and then imme­di­ate­ly peo­ple in the UK, once they heard, took up the chal­lenge. There is still more peo­ple from the UK have to offer this strug­gle.

Anoth­er day of Action has been called for Octo­ber the 12th as the sit­u­a­tion is heat­ing up as the pres­sure mounts up on Shell and polit­i­cal pres­sure on the greens. These days of Action will not work
on there own — if you cant trav­el we all need to be active in our com­mu­ni­ties organ­is­ing meet­ings, pos­ter­ing and rais­ing the issue where pos­si­ble. These days are how­ev­er cru­cial to pile on the pres­sure -
show­ing in a vis­i­ble robust way the lev­el of oppo­si­tion to this project and high­light­ing the bru­tal­i­ty of what is an every­day occur­rence in Ross­port.

At this stage many of us are scratch­ing our heads as to why mayo peo­ple can’t do this at the height of sum­mer but then again what else would you be doing on windy Fri­day morn­ing in Octo­ber? Ok fair enough we all do but it will cer­tain­ly be worth it to force this to its log­i­cal con­clu­sion after 8 years. For us it’s a few days of a trip to Ross­port for oth­ers it’s the high­light and morale boost­er in a 8 year strug­gle that must and will end soon When peo­ple arrive its intense­ly appre­ci­at­ed as it shows they are not strug­gling on their won and peo­ple care. What are you doing on Octo­ber the 12th? Organ­ise a pick­et at the Irish embassy or a Shell fill­ing Sta­tion or their head­quar­ters. Or if pos­si­ble trav­el to Ross­port. Trav­el to Dublin for Thurs­day at six and book a tick­et on the Dublin bus­es. Book ear­ly though. Come you need a hol­i­day!
(for tick­ets phone or text 0851609850 in Dublin) Cork — corkshelltosea@gmail.com or call 0851141170 for gen­er­al info.

www.rossportsolidaritycamp.com, www.shelltosea.com www.indymedia.ie/mayo

Deportation Alert! Icelandic State Cracks Down on Saving Iceland Activists

The Ice­landic State has hound­ed and harassed Sav­ing Ice­land activists since the net­work was formed in 2004. In the lat­est episode of this sor­did saga; Miri­am Rose, an activist from the UK who lives in Ice­land is threat­ened with depor­ta­tion for being: “a threat to ‘pub­lic order and secu­ri­ty’ and ‘fun­da­men­tal soci­etal val­ues’. She has only ever been con­vict­ed of ‘Dis­obey­ing Police Orders’ con­trary to the dra­con­ian ‘Police Acts’ for which she has served a short prison sen­tence; in soli­tary con­fine­ment in a men’s prison.

The Ice­landic State has hound­ed and harassed Sav­ing Ice­land activists since the net­work was formed in 2004. In the lat­est episode of this sor­did saga; Miri­am Rose, an activist from the UK who lives in Ice­land is threat­ened with depor­ta­tion for being: “a threat to ‘pub­lic order and secu­ri­ty’ and ‘fun­da­men­tal soci­etal val­ues’. She has only ever been con­vict­ed of ‘Dis­obey­ing Police Orders’ con­trary to the dra­con­ian ‘Police Acts’ for which she has served a short prison sen­tence; in soli­tary con­fine­ment in a men’s prison.

On Fri­day 21st Sep­tem­ber, Sav­ing Ice­land activist Miri­am Rose was pre­sent­ed with a let­ter from the Ice­landic Direc­torate of Immi­gra­tion threat­en­ing her with pos­si­ble expul­sion from Ice­land. The let­ter claims that due to her par­tic­i­pa­tion in two actions at smelter sites she may be con­sid­ered a threat to ‘pub­lic order and secu­ri­ty’ and ‘fun­da­men­tal soci­etal val­ues’. The let­ter also claims that Sav­ing Ice­land pays activists for being arrest­ed, a claim repeat­ed­ly denied and proven to be false.

Sav­ing Ice­land is an inter­na­tion­al grass roots net­work that uses direct action to con­front the Ice­landic gov­ern­men­t’s Heavy Indus­try Pol­i­cy. The gov­ern­ment are intent on build­ing alu­mini­um smelters to exploit the coun­try’s geot­her­mal and hydro-elec­tric poten­tial, an eco­log­i­cal and envi­ron­men­tal cat­a­stro­phe sold as ‘green ener­gy’. Sav­ing Ice­land also pro­motes and prac­tices sol­i­dar­i­ty with strug­gles against the alu­mini­um indus­try world­wide, such as in Trinidad, South Africa and India.

Miri­am has already served 8 days in prison for protest­ing against the destruc­tion of Ice­landic wilder­ness, for which the UK Green Par­ty Prin­ci­pal Speak­er Dr Derek Wall accused the Ice­landic gov­ern­ment of polit­i­cal harass­ment and demand­ed her imme­di­ate release. In Radio 1 Ice­landic news pro­gram Spegillinn yes­ter­day, the police admit­ted that this was to be the first of many attempt­ed depor­ta­tions of activists.

Miri­am is now wait­ing for a deci­sion by the Direc­torate of Immi­gra­tion, hav­ing sub­mit­ted her objec­tion to depor­ta­tion. ‘I am very shocked that the Ice­landic gov­ern­ment con­tin­ue to pun­ish me, after already pay­ing so heav­i­ly for my actions and ideals. This seems to be an attempt to scare peo­ple from protest­ing here, and I find such treat­ment sur­pris­ing in a sup­pos­ed­ly devel­oped democ­ra­cy like Ice­land. I am a peace­ful and edu­cat­ed per­son and have nev­er posed a threat to the police or any oth­er per­son dur­ing my time here. I was intend­ing to set­tle in Ice­land, and have been mak­ing moves to learn Ice­landic and con­tribute to this soci­ety.’

In 2005 the Ice­landic Direc­torate of Immi­gra­tion attempt­ed to deport 21 Sav­ing Ice­land activists. Activists were snatched off the streets of Reyk­javik by plain clothes police, held overnight with no food, water or even pre­tense of a legal process. An elder­ly aca­d­e­m­ic with no con­nec­tion to Sav­ing Ice­land was hos­pi­talised with seri­ous head injuries after he wit­nessed activists being bun­dled into an unmarked car. Plain clothes police also broke into build­ings in an attempt to get to activists on the ‘black­list’. The Direc­torate of Immi­gra­tion, denied that there was such a list in an inter­view with tabloid paper DV, for­tu­nate­ly Sav­ing Ice­land was able to sup­ply them with a copy com­plete with the Direc­torate’s seal and Hildur Dun­gal’s (the Direc­tor’s) sig­na­ture. Even­tu­al­ly the Direc­torate of Immi­gra­tion admit­ted it had no legal right to deport any­one on the list.

In 2006 14 activists were tried and con­vict­ed for ‘Dis­obey­ing Police Orders’ and received prison sen­tences of up to 18 days a small group was also con­vict­ed of ‘Repres­sion of Lib­er­ty’ and sen­tenced to 2 months sus­pend­ed for 3 years on the false wit­ness of a man­ag­er at engi­neer­ing firm Hon­nen where they had attempt­ed to occu­py offices, the same man­ag­er punched and kicked pro­test­ers and slammed a door on some­one’s head.

Ear­li­er this year after Reyk­javik’s first Reclaim the Streets the Ice­landic police began to con­fis­cate pass­port of for­eign activists, some­thing they have no legal author­i­ty to do. The Ice­landic State have also had a long his­to­ry of harass­ing Ice­landic activists, in one case they have alleged­ly made false reports to Inter­pol accus­ing a Sav­ing Ice­land activist of trav­el­ing on a forged pass­port and attempt­ed to strip the activists Ice­landic Cit­i­zen­ship.

If the Ice­landic Police and Immi­gra­tion Direc­torate can get away with deport­ing Miri­am, then they will use depor­ta­tions more fre­quent­ly to silence dis­sent and under­mine sol­i­dar­i­ty with Ice­landic envi­ron­men­tal­ists. They must be stopped!

The web­site of the Direc­torate of Immi­gra­tion is http://www.utl.is/english

The direc­tor’s name is Hildur Dun­gal: hildur@utl.is

See also:
Report on Miri­am’s depor­ta­tion and state­ment from Sav­ing Ice­land:
http://www.savingiceland.org/node/983

Report on Miri­am’s Incar­cer­a­tion in Soli­tary Con­fine­ment in a Men’s Prison:
http://www.savingiceland.org/node/892

State­ment of Sup­port from UK Green Par­ty:
http://www.savingiceland.org/node/985 and @ http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/3171

Report on Sav­ing Ice­land’s fund­ing:
http://www.savingiceland.org/node/846

Report of Pre­vi­ous attempts to Deport Sav­ing Ice­land activists:
http://www.savingiceland.org/node/144

Report on how the Ice­landic Immi­gra­tion Direc­torate can behave quite dif­fer­ent­ly if you are pals with a Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter:
http://www.savingiceland.org/node/759Police Brutakity at Reykjavik's first RTS this summerPolice Brutakity at Reykjavik's first RTS this summer

Tara frontline Action ‑avin it

On Mon­day Sep­tem­ber 24th, thir­ty brave cul­tur­al con­ser­va­tion­ists donned face paints and head­ed off on a route walk from the Rath Lugh direct action camp. Film direc­tor and actor Stu­art Townsend, fresh from the high­ly suc­cess­ful aer­i­al pho­to­graph on the hill attend­ed by an esti­mat­ed 3,000 peo­ple on Sun­day, arrived with four mas­sive bags of shop­ping for Tara’s sol­diers before every­one set off. Stuart’s con­tin­u­ing sup­port is mas­sive­ly appre­ci­at­ed!

On Mon­day Sep­tem­ber 24th, thir­ty brave cul­tur­al con­ser­va­tion­ists donned face paints and head­ed off on a route walk from the Rath Lugh direct action camp. Film direc­tor and actor Stu­art Townsend, fresh from the high­ly suc­cess­ful aer­i­al pho­to­graph on the hill attend­ed by an esti­mat­ed 3,000 peo­ple on Sun­day, arrived with four mas­sive bags of shop­ping for Tara’s sol­diers before every­one set off. Stuart’s con­tin­u­ing sup­port is mas­sive­ly appre­ci­at­ed!

Once on route activists erect­ed bar­ri­cades along the paths of the dig­gers and bull­doz­ers to slow destruc­tion work. Activists pro­ceed­ed to Baron­stown where sev­en to eight dig­gers were occu­pied, climbed and danced upon. The walk con­tin­ued as our mer­ry band arrived at Col­lier­stown, an ancient Fian­na grave­yard. The two dig­gers work­ing when we arrived were quick­ly halt­ed with peo­ple climb­ing into buck­ets of dig­gers, onto roofs and onto their tracks. Songs were sung and peo­ple danced. Work was halt­ed for half an hour before scouts indi­cat­ed that machin­ery was work­ing up ahead at Trevet. We head­ed there and on the way occu­pied anoth­er dig­ger. The dri­ver of this dig­ger refused to turn off his engine despite the fact that activists occu­pied his machine, a clear vio­la­tion of health and safe­ty laws and a sack­able offense.

Our next stop was Trevet, where one bull­doz­er was pre­vent­ed from work­ing by activists. It was then that the Gar­dai made their appear­ance. Tak­ing some of our group aside, names were tak­en and no fur­ther action occurred. As our walk was slight­ly behind sched­ule, when Gar­da offi­cers approached we decid­ed to pick up the pace, keep­ing twen­ty to forty feet between our­selves and the law. Offi­cers con­tin­ued to fol­low us for anoth­er 100 metres before head­ing back the way they came. Hav­ing stopped work for hours it was near din­ner time so we head­ed back to base camp. Through­out the day as we passed the sacred sites in the path of the pro­posed motor­way short talks were giv­en about the his­tor­i­cal and archae­o­log­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of each site. No one was arrest­ed and a great day was had by all. The cam­paign to pro­tect Tara from the mon­ey mad mile con­tin­ues pick­ing up pace after the phe­nom­e­nal suc­cess of the inter­na­tion­al Harpists for Tara event and John Quigley’s stun­ning aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy. Every Mon­day route walks will con­tin­ue.

Com­ple­tion of the M3 through the Tara Val­ley is years away and there is every­thing to play for! Be at the Tara Sol­i­dar­i­ty Vig­il camp on the hill by 9.30 am or at Rath Lugh by 10.00am. Please come, please sup­port and net­work!

www.tarapixie.net
www.savetara.com
www.tarawatch.org
www.indymedia.ie

Critical Mass and Carfree day in Brussels

What a week­end for cyclists. Fri­day evening and the reg­u­lar Brus­sels Crit­i­cal mass was held one week ear­ly to coin­cide with mobil­i­ty week. Around 80 cyclists sprout­ed up at the Porte de Namur and reclaimed the streets of Brus­sels for an hour or two. This month there was a prac­ti­cal theme to cre­ate a DIY cycle lane. Recent­ly the Major of the city decid­ed that the cycle lane along the main boule­vard through cen­tral Brus­sels was a men­ace to traf­fic and even encour­aged cyclist to get in the way of hon­est car dri­ving cit­i­zens. What to do when that Major takes away the cycle path. A sim­ple ques­tion, you get togeth­er with your friends and paint it back again. Get­ting rid of the cycle hat­ing Major will prob­a­bly be the next step but that’s anoth­er action.

Brussels Critical Mass 1
Brussels Critical Mass 2
Brussels Critical Mass 3
Brussels Critical Mass 4
What a week­end for cyclists. Fri­day evening and the reg­u­lar Brus­sels Crit­i­cal mass was held one week ear­ly to coin­cide with mobil­i­ty week. Around 80 cyclists sprout­ed up at the Porte de Namur and reclaimed the streets of Brus­sels for an hour or two. This month there was a prac­ti­cal theme to cre­ate a DIY cycle lane. Recent­ly the Major of the city decid­ed that the cycle lane along the main boule­vard through cen­tral Brus­sels was a men­ace to traf­fic and even encour­aged cyclist to get in the way of hon­est car dri­ving cit­i­zens. What to do when that Major takes away the cycle path. A sim­ple ques­tion, you get togeth­er with your friends and paint it back again. Get­ting rid of the cycle hat­ing Major will prob­a­bly be the next step but that’s anoth­er action.

Brus­sels is a city of con­tra­dic­tions and for Sat­ur­day lunch time the city invit­ed cyclists for a sump­tu­ous nosh up. Any­one who was a cyclist was wel­come to help them­selves. A won­der­ful feast for non veg­e­tar­i­an wine lovers and the deserts were out of this world. Not so good on the cycle lanes but the free food almost makes up for it.

Sun­day was the car­free day and it real­ly was car­free in the whole city, not just one or two streets. It’s hard to describe the dif­fer­ence ban­ish­ing the cars can make to a city. Brus­sels, if only for one day became a place for peo­ple. Swarms of cyclists filled the streets peo­ple on foot could and did move about with­out risk of being run over by impa­tient dri­vers. The sun was shin­ing the air was clean for once and the angry honk­ing of car horns beau­ti­ful­ly absent. If only every day could be like this. The street is a place for peo­ple, city chil­dren need to play and a cup of cof­fee on a pave­ment café some­how tastes bet­ter when there isn’t traf­fic roar­ing by a few feet away. This might just be my opin­ion but the peo­ple of Brus­sels did seem to agree with me, well at least the ones who still remem­ber how to move about with­out a car.

Also for mobil­i­ty week the Brus­sels based envi­ron­men­tal group, Auto-nomie pre­sent­ed an envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly car, tru­ly an envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly car. Zero emis­sions is a thing of the past, this car has neg­a­tive emis­sions. If you care about the plan­et but still want a car that turns heads this is the mod­el for you and the con­ver­sion is cheap and easy. Take out the engine replace is with a few wheel­bar­rows full of good qual­i­ty soil and plant your favorite fruits and veg­eta­bles. Cruis­ing through the streets of Brus­sels in a cus­tomized car like no oth­er is the way to go. When your friends get tired of push­ing what bet­ter way of revi­tal­iz­ing them than a tasty car grown straw­ber­ry. The car was on dis­play in cen­tral Brus­sels all last week.

Rossport solidarity — Leeds, London, Bristol, Reading, Madrid, Ireland (Clare, Belfast) & at Bellanboy

15.09.2007
Yes­ter­day morn­ing at 8am, a ban­ner was hung over the A58 /Leeds Inner Ring Road in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the day of action against Shel­l’s plans for a gas pipeline & refin­ery in Mayo, Ire­land.

15.09.2007
Yes­ter­day morn­ing at 8am, a ban­ner was hung over the A58 /Leeds Inner Ring Road in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the day of action against Shel­l’s plans for a gas pipeline & refin­ery in Mayo, Ire­land.

The ban­ner read:
Stop Shell Hell in Ire­land
www.shelltosea.com

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Activists con­struct ‘high pres­sure pipeline’ at Irish Embassy in Lon­don

Fri­day morn­ing at 9.30 am, diplo­mats and passers-by were sur­prised to wit­ness a “dodgy agree­ment” between a ‘Shell rep­re­sen­ta­tive’ and ‘the Taoiseach’, and find a ‘pipeline under con­struc­tion’ at the Irish Embassy in Lon­don. A group of activists had gath­ered at the Embassy to high­light and shame the Irish Gov­ern­men­t’s involve­ment with Shell in the con­struc­tion of a high pres­sure raw gas pipeline at Ross­port in Coun­ty Mayo.

The demon­stra­tors unveiled their ban­ner: “Bertie Ahern: Shelling Ire­land out!” In the style of Char­lie Chap­lin, activists dressed as Bertie Ahern and a Shell rep­re­sen­ta­tive per­formed a series of ‘dodgy deals’. The Irish Taoiseach “begged” Shell to “Take own­er­ship of our nat­ur­al resources – for noth­ing!”, and offered Shell and oth­er oil com­pa­nies “100% of the prof­it” with “low tax­a­tion”, “gar­da oppres­sion”, “false pros­e­cu­tions of pro­tes­tors” and “the oppor­tu­ni­ty to destroy EU-pro­tect­ed envi­ron­ments” as sweet­en­ers. The aim of the per­for­mance was to draw to atten­tion the irra­tional­i­ty of the gov­ern­men­t’s sup­port of Shel­l’s con­struc­tion of the dan­ger­ous and exper­i­men­tal pipeline in Mayo.

Anne-Marie O’Reil­ly, an activist at the embassy this morn­ing, explained:

“I can under­stand why Shell would be in favour of these terms and would­n’t have any objec­tion to the gar­da baton charg­ing peace­ful pro­tes­tors. But I can­not com­pre­hend why the gov­ern­ment would give away Ire­land’s resources and allow the destruc­tion of envi­ron­ment and com­mu­ni­ty when there is no ben­e­fit to Irish peo­ple. Per­haps anoth­er sto­ry of cor­rup­tion will emerge when it’s too late to stop the pipeline?”

The action coin­cid­ed with the sit-down protest at the refin­ery in Bel­linaboy and with ‘Shell to Sea’ sol­i­dar­i­ty actions in Brighton, Berlin and across Europe.

——–

Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide did a sol­i­dar­i­ty demo at the Shell Garage on Muller Road, East­ville, Bris­tol from 5:30 till 7:30. It was small but per­fect­ly formed, with good leaflets (thanks to Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty posse) and ban­ners (thanks to clever trevor).

Sev­er­al dri­vers changed their minds and went else­where for their petrol when they saw us or spoke to us about what is going on in Ross­port at Shel­l’s behest. We hand­ed out leaflets at the zebra cross­ing, where bored and exas­per­at­ed dri­vers were trapped in their lit­tle met­al box­es carp­ing, honk­ing and scratch­ing at each oth­er like bat­tery chick­ens. It gave them some­thing to read in the exten­sive traf­fic jam that sat next to the garage.
Sev­er­al Irish passers-by showed par­tic­u­lar inter­est.

The fore­court was almost com­plete­ly emp­ty most of the time we were there, so we effec­tive­ly shut it down with­out any police action or oth­er such quo­tid­i­an aggro.

Pho­tos were tak­en and will appear short­ly if for­tune and our sil­i­con mas­ters smile upon us.

Our press release is below.

STARTS

We are at the Shell petrol sta­tion on Muller Road in Bris­tol today (Sep 14th) occu­py­ing the fore­court in protest against Shell’s treat­ment of the peo­ple of Ross­port, in Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land.

From 6pm we will be there, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the com­mu­ni­ty of Ross­port, who have been impris­oned, beat­en and intim­i­dat­ed by the Irish police at Shell’s request.

We are activists from Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide, a group who cam­paigns about cli­mate change and human rights.

Shell want to build a dan­ger­ous and envi­ron­men­tal­ly destruc­tive gas pipeline and refin­ery right next to people’s hous­es on unsta­ble marsh land. There is mas­sive oppo­si­tion in the local com­mu­ni­ty and there has been sup­port for their strug­gle across Ire­land and inter­na­tion­al­ly, with many Shell garages being tar­get­ed for demos.

In 2005, 5 men were jailed for 3 months for refus­ing to allow Shell access to their land. Fol­low­ing their impris­on­ment the com­mu­ni­ty set up a pick­et at the pro­posed refin­ery site, stop­ping work for over a year. Last autumn, large num­bers of police moved into the area and beat the com­mu­ni­ty off the streets. Numer­ous peo­ple were hos­pi­tal­ized and the police bru­tal­i­ty has been inter­na­tion­al­ly con­demned. More recent­ly state repres­sion has involved the ini­ti­a­tion of mali­cious pros­e­cu­tions against promi­nent local cam­paign­ers. Despite the strong forces work­ing against them, the com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­ues to resist. We are here in sup­port of their strug­gle.

ENDS
Con­tact: Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide 07988 460373 or 07983 350021

Notes for jour­nal­ists

Major Crit­i­cisms of the Project

Unprocessed gas will be piped at unique­ly high pres­sure lev­els, dan­ger­ous­ly close to dwellings and through sev­er­al SACs’ (spe­cial areas of con­ser­va­tion), sup­pos­ed­ly under the pro­tec­tion of EU law.
The gas will be processed at a refin­ery with­in the catch­ment area of the local reser­voir, Car­row­more lake, which pro­vides the drink­ing water for 10,000 peo­ple.
An Taisce (The Irish Nation­al Trust) has stat­ed that if the project goes ahead, Car­row­more Lake will even­tu­al­ly have to be closed as a source of drink­ing water.
The refin­ery will be a huge source of air and water pol­lu­tion. Between 200,000 and 300,000 kg of methane (a major green­house gas) will be emit­ted annu­al­ly, with the risk of vapor cloud explo­sions and acid rain.
The site will hold over 5000 tonnes of dan­ger­ous chem­i­cals. Over 1500 tonnes of methanol (a highy tox­ic chem­i­cal) are expect­ed to be ‘lost’ each year. This will be emit­ted, with the waste water, into
Broad­haven bay, “an impor­tant area for a num­ber of marine mam­mal species and for oth­er marine life” accord­ing to a report com­mis­sioned by Shell. The waste water would also con­tain heavy met­als such as arsenic, mer­cury and cad­mi­um. Any waste not pumped into the bay will drain instead into Car­row­more Lake.
The project will adverse­ly impact on the liveli­hoods of the region’s farm­ers and fish­er­men due to the mas­sive land, air and water pol­lu­tion.
All the prof­its from the gas extrac­tion will go direct­ly to the oil com­pa­nies, the Irish peo­ple will gain noth­ing.

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion is avail­able from:
www.gcmonitor.org/article.php?id=576
www.indymedia.ie
www.corribsos.com

http://risingtide.org.uk/bristol

——–

On Fri­day 14th Sep­tem­ber, Read­ing Grass­roots Action and oth­ers from around Read­ing took part in a pick­et of a lcoal Shell garage. This pick­et was made in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the anti-pipeline/re­fin­ery com­mu­ni­ty strug­gle tak­ing place in Ross­port, Ire­land.

We protest­ed for about an hour on the fore­court, giv­ing out many leaflets to dri­vers. The Police arrived just as we left.

The fol­low­ing leaflet was giv­en out:

NO SHELL HELL IN IRELAND!

In Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land, a busi­ness coali­tion led by Shell Oil — with the approval of the Irish gov­ern­ment and full pro­tec­tion by the police — are plan­ning to:

- Forcibly take land from local res­i­dents and build an exper­i­men­tal high pres­sure gas pipeline (at four times the usu­al pres­sure) run­ning next to homes and destroy­ing rare eco-sys­tems. The pipe will run through bog­gy land with a his­to­ry of land­slides. In Mex­i­co, a pipeline of low­er pres­sure explod­ed, killing twelve peo­ple.

- Con­struct a gas refin­ery on unsta­ble bog, using pre­vi­ous­ly untried meth­ods to sta­bilise the bog sur­face. Emis­sions from the refin­ery will bad­ly pol­lute the near­by Car­row­more Lake, source of the region­al water sup­ply. Con­crete being used in the con­struc­tion has already been found to be faulty.

- Pump tox­ic waste into Broad­haven Bay, the source of local fish­er­men’s liveli­hoods. A research team found that Broad­haven Bay was an impor­tant breed­ing and rear­ing area for dol­phins and whales.
Nor­mal and best prac­tice is to refine the gas off­shore, bring­ing it ashore at much low­er pres­sure. Yet, the gov­ern­ment is hap­py with the dan­ger to local peo­ple and is giv­ing Irish gas away for prac­ti­cal­ly noth­ing, forc­ing the Irish peo­ple to pay the costs. But things are not going to plan…

Shell hoped to have the whole thing up and run­ning by 2003. Yet, with extra­or­di­nary courage, local peo­ple have protest­ed, block­ad­ed and refused to com­ply. To date, no work has been able to start on the pipeline, and hard­ly any work has hap­pened on the refin­ery.

In 2005, five local farm­ers were jailed for not allow­ing Shell on their land, one farmer has suf­fered a stroke after intim­i­da­tion by Shell con­trac­tors and in late 2006 extreme police vio­lence was used against pro­tes­tors. How­ev­er, block­ades by local peo­ple conit­nue tak­ing place every morn­ing and last month, activists from UK took part in an occu­pa­tion of the site, along with local peo­ple and oth­ers, stop­ping work for two hours. This is cost­ing Shell mil­lions!

Today is a day of action against Shell. About 200 peo­ple block­ad­ed the refin­ery this morn­ing by sit­ting in the entrance way. Rough­ly 170 then entered the site and stood on machin­ery to stop work. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, riot police are once again pro­tect­ing the cor­po­ra­tion instead of cit­i­zens, and there has been heavy vio­lence against peace­ful pro­tes­tors, and sev­er­al bru­tal arrests. In spite of this, the sit-down block­ade con­tin­ued, stop­ping all deliv­er­ies to the site.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it: www.corribsos.com and www.indymedia.ie

——–


There was a sol­i­dar­i­ty pick­et of the Irish Embassy in Madrid, organ­ised by the Fed­eración Anar­quista Ibéri­ca, the Iber­ian sec­tion of the Inter­na­tion­al of Anar­chist Fed­er­a­tions (http://www.iaf-ifa.org/) They have also made up posters about Ross­port, and car­ried arti­cles in their month­ly mag­a­zine, Tier­ra y Lib­er­tad.

I think the ban­ner reads ‘Shell Destroys the State Com­plies’

——–

Clare Rossport demo
Clare Shell to Sea Pick­et — 14th Sept ’07.

In Sol­i­dar­i­ty with Mayo and today’s Sit-Down Protest at Bel­lan­aboy.

It’s been clear for the last 2 years that the argu­ment against the Shell Cor­rib Gas Project is won.

And the amount of cars beep­ing their horns in Ennis this evening is tes­ta­ment to the sup­port for Shell to Sea, gen­uine­ly.

The Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ue in their refusal to debate the argu­ments and nego­ti­ate a set­tle­ment, and they per­sist in using force against the protests at Bel­lan­aboy, a protest that has gained nation­al and inter­na­tion­al sup­port and recog­ni­tion as … LEGITIMATE & JUST.

Greens — You have buried your heads in the Fian­na Fáil mire. Yoy are com­plic­it now. You are prov­ing your­selves to be unre­li­able and unwor­thy of trust. The Green Par­ty pumps for Shell.

email clareshell­tosea at gmail dot com
phone 085 1607287
——–
Belfast Rossport demo
Sol­i­dar­i­ty Shell pick­et in Belfast
Fri­day Sep­tem­ber 14, 2007

Belfast Shell to Sea organ­ised a pick­et of the Shell sta­tion in Ander­son­stown today in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the nation­al mobil­i­sa­tion in Bel­lan­aboy in Mayo.

Over a dozen activists took part in the pick­et and dis­trib­uted leaflets to pass­ing motorists and pedes­tri­ans, and received a lot of honk­ing from cars show­ing their sup­port. Despite it tak­ing place dur­ing rush hour and the road being extreme­ly busy, the fore­court of the sta­tion was left desert­ed for most of the time the pick­et was on.

email shell­toseabelfast at gmail dot com

——–
Bellanboy September 07 blockade
News from protest at Ross­port

Text mes­sage from the site of pro­posed refin­ery reports at 7.30 ” good turn out, over 200 so far, no trucks through the main gates and low police pres­ence”.

Updates

- 8:28
Between 50–120 have just stormed the main gate of the refin­ery and are head­ing up the cen­tral road to where the machin­ery is work­ing.

- 8:40
Pro­test­ers have gone through the sec­ond gate and are on the main site.

- 8:50
Text received from the protest:
“They kept the machines going until the last minute, peo­ple are stand­ing on a drilling machine, most work stopped, pro­test­ers and cops wan­der­ing around enor­mous site”.

- 8.59
” Two arrests, one bad­ly beat­en, get­ting pushed out pret­ty aggres­sive­ly’

- 9:34

The are now over 150 peo­ple occu­py­ing refin­ery site. There have been 7 deten­tions with peace­ful pro­tes­tors being assault­ed by sev­er­al Gar­daí who were not in the usu­al uni­form…

At least two pro­tes­tors were seri­ous­ly assault­ed and tak­en away.

- 9.47: “Riot police out in force. Protest cor­doned off. batons out and lots injured. Three arrest­ed so far”.

- 10:00
Site has been cleared by Pub­lic Order Unit with some bru­tal­i­ty. Arrestees appear to have been released in Bel­mul­let or along the road.

There’s a sit down protest out­side the gate with approx­i­mate­ly 170 pro­tes­tors being ringed by a large force of the coun­try’s finest.

Reports com­ing in of cops scream­ing to each oth­er to’break their fuck­ing arms’ with a lot of kick­ing and punch­ing going on (obvi­ous­ly direct­ed at the peace­ful pro­tes­tors). sev­er­al cops real­ly went for it but we’ve record­ed good video evi­dence. Cam­eras and tape are being hid­den to avoid a repeat of the inci­dent last year at Lennon’s quar­ry where a video cam­era was tak­en and smashed by the cops.

One fair­ly seri­ous assault to report and pos­si­bly 2 or 3 pro­tes­tors unac­count­ed for…

- 10:42
A num­ber of those arrest­ed were released either out­side the gates of the main site or once they reached Bel­mul­let. It is unclear as to whether peo­ple have been charged or not.

There is a sit down protest out­side the gate once more with 170 — 200 pro­tes­tors being ringed by a large force of the coun­try’s finest.

Tara SOS — WARRIORS and SUPPLIES URGENTLY NEEDED!!! & recent videos & photos of protests

Friends Of Tara,

Urgent call for sup­port at Lis­mullin Henge. Con­trac­tors have moved in heavy machin­ery onto Archae­ol­o­gy site to divert the Sacred Gabhra Riv­er. SOS. Your help need­ed now.

Tara Roestown sit-downFriends Of Tara,

Urgent call for sup­port at Lis­mullin Henge. Con­trac­tors have moved in heavy machin­ery onto Archae­ol­o­gy site to divert the Sacred Gabhra Riv­er. SOS. Your help need­ed now.

Thanky­ou.

Vig­il Ph : 0861758557

This is an emer­gency call­out from the tara front line at Rath Lugh. We are des­per­ate for more peo­ple onsite. There are cur­rent­ly ONLY 20 PEOPLE try­ing to stop work all over the Tara Skryne val­ley plus the con­trac­tors are now try­ing to divert the Sacred Gabhra Riv­er. There is machin­ery either side of the Lis­mullen Henge. If you are unable to make it up in per­son then please con­tribute by send­ing up some of the fol­low­ing sup­plies that are bad­ly need­ed.

-6mm and 12mm polyprop rope
‑Appro­pri­ate wood for tree hous­es and signs
‑Tarp and Can­vis Mate­r­i­al
‑Cement
‑Sand
‑Sleep­ing bags and blan­kets
‑Climb­ing equip­ment / har­ness etc
‑Chains and clips
‑Head Torch­es
‑Sec­ond hand Bikes
‑Seal­able con­tain­ers

You can call the vig­il phone for direc­tions to Rath­lugh or to arrange for a drop off of sup­plies to site.
Please net­work this call­out.

For recent videos & pho­tos of protests, check out http://livevideo.com/tarapixie

Global Actions Against Heavy Industry

12.09.2007 — Today, peo­ple in South Africa, Ice­land, Trinidad, Den­mark and Amer­i­ca are protest­ing against heavy indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion. This is the first coor­di­nat­ed event of a new and grow­ing glob­al move­ment that began at the 2007 Sav­ing Ice­land protest camp in Ölfus, Ice­land. The com­mon tar­get of these protests against heavy indus­try is the alu­mini­um indus­try, in par­tic­u­lar the cor­po­ra­tions Alcan/Rio-Tin­to and Alcoa.

12.09.2007 — Today, peo­ple in South Africa, Ice­land, Trinidad, Den­mark and Amer­i­ca are protest­ing against heavy indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion. This is the first coor­di­nat­ed event of a new and grow­ing glob­al move­ment that began at the 2007 Sav­ing Ice­land protest camp in Ölfus, Ice­land. The com­mon tar­get of these protests against heavy indus­try is the alu­mini­um indus­try, in par­tic­u­lar the cor­po­ra­tions Alcan/Rio-Tin­to and Alcoa.

South Africa, around 250 peo­ple have marched on Alcan’s head­quaters in Johanas­burg to protest against Alcan’s pref­er­en­tial ener­gy treat­ment, ahead of a pop­u­la­tion of which 30% have no access to elec­tric­i­ty. Alcan is to be pro­vid­ed with coal and nuclear pow­ered ener­gy for a new smelter in the East­ern Cape that will con­sume as much elec­tric­i­ty as half of Cape Town, at some of the low­est tar­riffs in the world. Today the entrance to the Alcan HQ was blocked for one and a half hours with no one com­ming in or out.

The organ­i­sa­tion Earth­life Africa Jhb, whose mem­ber Ler­a­to Maregele attend­ed the Sav­ing Ice­land 2007 Con­fer­ence and protest camp, are tak­ing part in the demon­stra­tion and have the fol­low­ing demands: First, Alcan and Eskom, the nation­al pow­er com­pa­ny, ful­ly dis­close all the details of their deal, includ­ing the actu­al price of elec­tric­i­ty sold. Sec­ond, that Eskom allo­cate a basic life­line of 100kwh per month to every South African.

Ice­land, despite ter­ri­ble winds and rain today, there have been protests out­side the gov­ern­ment offices in Reyk­javik and a gath­er­ing along the islands next pro­posed dam route, along the riv­er Thjor­sa (Þjórsá) at 3pm GMT. Also, the Ice­landic Min­is­ter for the Envi­ron­ment, Thórunn Svein­b­jarnardót­tir, was vis­it­ed at her home this morn­ing to have a friend­ly chat with activists and receive a let­ter ask­ing her to clear up her seem­ing­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry green opin­ions.

The Ice­landic gov­ern­ment is try­ing to rush through the con­struc­tion of numer­ous new and expand­ed alu­mini­um smelters to bring the islands total alu­mini­um out­put up to three mil­lion tonnes per year. These hydro and geot­her­mal pow­ered heavy indus­try projects have been con­demned by envi­ron­men­tal sci­en­tists and lob­by­ing groups. Three dam reser­voirs are to be cre­at­ed along the Thjor­sa riv­er, where pro­test­ers have gath­ered, to pow­er a new Alcoa smelter near the north­ern town of Husavik, or an expan­sion of the Alcan plant in Haf­nar­fjor­dur which was vetoed in a local ref­er­en­dum.

“Unem­ploy­ment in Ice­land is 0.9%. So this destruc­tion is only based on the greed of Landsvirkjun [the nation­al pow­er com­pa­ny] and has no eco­nom­i­cal log­ic. We are here to show sup­port with the local farm­ers who are fight­ing against Landsvirkjun to defend their land and our land.”
— Sav­ing Ice­land activist Sig­gi Hardar­son.

Trinidad, activists are remem­ber­ing the first anniver­sary of an action in which peo­ple con­front­ed plans for an Alcoa smelter in the rur­al town of Chatam; whilst lawyers are regroup­ing ahead of a legal bat­tle against the Envi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Author­i­ty, rep­re­sent­ing heavy indus­try, that will be piv­otal in the islands devel­op­ment.

“Sep­tem­ber 12 2006 was the day that activists con­front­ed trac­tors and police on Food­crop Road and this day will for­ev­er live in the hearts and minds of activists in
Trinidad and Toba­go as a cru­cial moment of our fight for envi­ron­men­tal and
social jus­tice.”
— Attil­lah Springer, Rights Action Group

Pres­sure from grass­roots actions such as this per­suad­ed Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning to drop plans to build the Alcoa smelter in Chatam. Con­front­ed by four cas­es against them­selves, the EMA, whose two main stake­hold­ers are NEC and the alu­mini­um cor­po­ra­tion Alutrint, were sig­nif­i­cant­ly turned down by the Judge in their plea that three NGO’s — RAG, PURE and Smelta Kar­a­van should not be able to bring action against them. This impor­tant rul­ing recog­nis­es that the issue of heavy indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion is to Trinidad nation­al, not mere­ly local. The peo­ple Vs EMA con­tin­ues on Thurs­day 13th Sep­tem­ber.

Den­mark, at 6pm CEST (4pm GMT) this evening a crowd will march to the Ice­landic embassy and the Green­land’s Rep­re­sen­ta­tion Office with a ban­ner that reads “Glob­al Strug­gle Against Heavy Indus­try”. Talks will be giv­en on the glob­al fight against heavy indus­try and the move­ment of resis­tance. Alcoa is in the plan­ning stage of a smelter project in Green­land whilst the prime min­is­ter Hans Enok­sen is present­ly in New York to seek loans to finance the hydropow­er project.

In Aus­tralia, res­i­dents in the West have acquired the sup­port of US Attor­ney Erin Brock­ovitch in a legal bat­tle against Alcoa. The cor­po­ra­tion intends to dou­ble the out­put of its oper­a­tions in the region whilst res­i­dents of the near­by town Yarloop are demand­ing that Alcoa relo­cate them. They claim that they are “liv­ing in a tox­ic bub­ble” and that their health has dra­mat­i­cal­ly suf­fered due to Alcoa’s work.

Fur­ther actions may be tak­ing place, we shall send updates out as soon as we get them.

saving­ice­land [at] riseup.net
http://www.savingiceland.org

Direct Action News From Greece

news from nowhere — http://directactiongr.blogspot.com/

DIRECT ACTION NEWS FROM GREECE

-Eng­lish: Pro­vid­ing an open data­base on sab­o­tage-van­dal­ism-riot­ing and oth­er fine pop­u­lar arts that blos­som through­out the ruins of our post-indus­tri­al soci­ety. Send your own reports at directactiongr@yahoo.gr

Greek DA news logonews from nowhere — http://directactiongr.blogspot.com/

DIRECT ACTION NEWS FROM GREECE

-Eng­lish: Pro­vid­ing an open data­base on sab­o­tage-van­dal­ism-riot­ing and oth­er fine pop­u­lar arts that blos­som through­out the ruins of our post-indus­tri­al soci­ety. Send your own reports at directactiongr@yahoo.gr

An attemp to cov­er-pub­li­cise-trans­late all direct action news, away from the mass media medi­a­tion.

http://directactiongr.blogspot.com/

GM Actions in France (13/9/2007)

EXTRACT: many actions… were organ­ised in France this Spring and Sum­mer:

Field clear­ings, sym­bol­ic clear­ings that deposit­ed GMO plants in front of police sta­tions or Mon­san­to offices, pol­li­na­tion of GM fields with non-GM pollen, occu­pa­tion of offi­cial plant pro­tec­tion offices, exper­i­ments show­ing the real­i­ty of con­t­a­m­i­na­tions …

EXTRACT: many actions… were organ­ised in France this Spring and Sum­mer:

Field clear­ings, sym­bol­ic clear­ings that deposit­ed GMO plants in front of police sta­tions or Mon­san­to offices, pol­li­na­tion of GM fields with non-GM pollen, occu­pa­tion of offi­cial plant pro­tec­tion offices, exper­i­ments show­ing the real­i­ty of con­t­a­m­i­na­tions …

—

Mes­sage from Guy Kastler, Reseau Semences Paysannes (Peas­ant Seeds Net­work)
11 Sep­tem­ber 2007
http://www.gmfreeireland.org/news/index.php

The offi­cial reg­istry of the French Min­istry for Agri­cul­ture only indi­cates the total sur­face of GMO cul­ti­va­tions in each region.

Green­peace has shed light on the exis­tence of a GMO par­cel of land that the Min­istry’s reg­istry failed to pub­lish. There­by Green­peace has demon­strat­ed the gov­ern­men­t’s inca­pa­bil­i­ty in ensur­ing pub­lic infor­ma­tion, sur­veil­lance on GMOs and coex­is­tence.

This action made a lot of noise as Green­peace has good com­mu­ni­ca­tion ser­vices. But this is only one among the many actions that were organ­ised in France this Spring and Sum­mer:

Field clear­ings, sym­bol­ic clear­ings that deposit­ed GMO plants in front of police sta­tions or Mon­san­to offices, pol­li­na­tion of GM fields with non-GM pollen, occu­pa­tion of offi­cial plant pro­tec­tion offices, exper­i­ments show­ing the real­i­ty of con­t­a­m­i­na­tions …

We (REseau Semences Paysannes) are cur­rent­ly prepar­ing the sec­ond stage (mid-Octo­ber) of the mora­to­ri­um — I (Guy) will keep you updat­ed and soon send you infos about it.

Green­peace dis­cov­ers an ille­gal GM field, files a suit and calls for an imme­di­ate mora­to­ri­um on open-field cul­ti­va­tion

Press release — source not indi­cat­ed), Sep­tem­ber 5th, 2007

Bez­er­il (Gers), France

Start­ing this morn­ing at 9h30, Green­peace activists mark an ille­gal GM corn field with red food col­orant: this field is not pub­lished on the pub­lic reg­istry of the Agri­cul­ture Min­istry, as cur­rent rules in force would require.

Accord­ing to the offi­cial reg­istry, the Samatan region is sup­posed to be total­ly GM free. Through this action, Green­peace demon­strates that GM corn cul­ti­va­tions are uncon­trol­lable — in terms of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, tox­i­c­i­ty and legal­i­ty. The Gov­ern­ment must imme­di­ate­ly impose a mora­to­ri­um on open-field cul­ti­va­tions.

“We have come to denounce a crime and to file a suit with the State Attor­ney of Auch,” declares Mag­a­li Rin­goot, Green­peace GMO cam­paign­er. “We are ask­ing Gov­ern­ment Author­i­ties to ascer­tain the infrac­tion, to open an inquiry and to pro­ceed with an imme­di­ate pre­ven­tive har­vest.”

Since last March, GM cul­ti­va­tions — that is of MON810 maize, the only GM crop autho­rised in France — must com­pul­so­ri­ly be declared at the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture in order for them to be inven­to­ried by region on a pub­lic reg­istry (acces­si­ble at: http://ogm.gouv.fr).

The dead­line for dec­la­ra­tions was May 15th, 2007.

“Regard­ing open-field GM cul­ti­va­tions, France is cur­rent­ly in a total legal vac­u­um: the decrees issued last March make no men­tion in terms of lia­bil­i­ty, infor­ma­tion trans­paren­cy or the oblig­a­tion to inform one’s neigh­bours — not even on the dis­tances to keep between GM and non-GM fields,” an indig­nant Arnaud Apotek­er reports, Green­peace GMO cam­paign­er. “The Gov­ern­ment is total­ly inca­pable of mak­ing sure the rules it has estab­lished are kept, that is the oblig­a­tion to declare one’s GMO par­cel of land.”

It was pos­si­ble to detect this ille­gal field thanks to the mark­ing work car­ried out on the ter­rain by Green­peace’s “field detec­tives”. “By mark­ing this ille­gal field with red colour, our goal is not to attack the field own­er, but to put an end to this enor­mous hypocrisy that keeps repeat­ing that GMO are con­trol­lable in open fields,” con­tin­ues Mag­a­li Rin­goot. “GMOs are not con­trol­lable: on the one hand, because GMOs con­t­a­m­i­nate the envi­ron­ment, and on the oth­er, because one would need to place a police per­son in each field to know where GMOs are plant­ed exact­ly.”

“This sum­mer, under the pre­text of not want­i­ng to recon­sid­er the deci­sions tak­en before the elec­tions, the gov­ern­ment allowed the cul­ti­va­tion of over 20’000 hectares of GM maize. Result: the ill-ease in the coun­try­side grew and the cli­mate of trust nec­es­sary to pre­pare the tra­di­tion­al gov­ern­ment-CSOs meet­ing on envi­ron­men­tal issues (Grenelle de l’en­vi­ron­nement) was spoiled too,” notes Arnaud Apotek­er. “Giv­en the mas­sive pub­lic oppo­si­tion, new emerg­ing sci­en­tif­ic analy­ses show­ing tox­i­c­i­ty risks and this lat­est evi­dence that GMOs are not con­trol­lable, it would be absurd if the Gov­ern­ment did not imme­di­ate­ly decree a mora­to­ri­um on open-field cul­ti­va­tions, even before the tra­di­tion­al Grenelle meet­ing.”

Fur­ther­more, at the Euro­pean Union lev­el, France is increas­ing­ly iso­lat­ed. Italy, Greece, Poland, Aus­tria and Hun­gary have already banned open-field GM cul­ti­va­tion on their ter­ri­to­ries. Apart from Spain, France is the only Euro­pean coun­try today with large scale GM cul­ti­va­tions. In Roma­nia, Green­peace activists are today block­ing access to an ille­gal GM soy field. Roma­nia banned open-field GM soy cul­ti­va­tion in Feb­ru­ary 2006, after grant­i­ng autho­ri­sa­tion for eight years.

Rossport Day of Action: September 14th & daily blockades

There is a nation­al day of action at the Shell site at Bel­lan­aboy, Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land. For those who cant make the demo- sol­i­dar­i­ty actions are also being called for…

Gener­ic media action leaflet — application/pdf 384K

There is a nation­al day of action at the Shell site at Bel­lan­aboy, Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land. For those who cant make the demo- sol­i­dar­i­ty actions are also being called for…

Gener­ic media action leaflet — application/pdf 384K

Fri­day 14th Sep­tem­ber : Day of action in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Ross­port com­mu­ni­ty resist­ing Shell.

On the 14th of Sep­tem­ber a mass blockad­ing action has been called for at Shell’s pro­posed refin­ery site at Bel­lan­aboy in Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land. Sol­i­dar­i­ty actions are also called for. (To make life super easy a leaflet that can be adapt­ed and used is attached)

Over the past five years the rur­al com­mu­ni­ty around Ross­port have been resist­ing Shell’s attempts to build a gas refin­ery and high pres­sure pipeline. If the devel­op­ment goes ahead it will have dev­as­tat­ing social and envi­ron­men­tal con­se­quences for the region (for detailed info see www.corribs2s.org). Recent­ly, state repres­sion against the com­mu­ni­ty has been stepped up. The lat­est tac­tic to try and silence oppo­si­tion is an attempt to cre­ate a cul­ture of fear through the use of mali­cious pros­e­cu­tions. Key cam­paign­ers, includ­ing the head of the Fish­er­men (a strong lob­by group against the devel­op­ment) and the local cam­paign spokesper­son, have been tar­get­ed and false­ly charged with assaults on Gar­dai (see http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/world/actions/2006/mayo/). There are sev­er­al cas­es com­ing up over the next few months and the defen­dants are almost cer­tain­ly look­ing at serv­ing time. In 2005, when the ‘Ross­port 5’ were jailed for refus­ing to allow Shell access to their land, the strug­gle here became a nation­al issue and sup­port was wide­spread nation­al­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly. Across Ire­land there were dai­ly pick­ets of Shell garages and oth­er sol­i­dar­i­ty actions, the boost this gave to the com­mu­ni­ty was huge. Over the past year, although resis­tance here con­tin­ues as before, out­side sup­port has become less obvi­ous. The region is remote, with­out overt exter­nal sup­port its easy for peo­ple to feel iso­lat­ed and that their strug­gle has been for­got­ten. The strength of resis­tance here is a mas­sive inspi­ra­tion and the com­mu­ni­ty deserve sup­port, espe­cial­ly at time when a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of cam­paign­ers are fac­ing los­ing their lib­er­ty.

Sol­i­dar­i­ty actions could involve going to the Irish Embassy, vis­it­ing a Shell office or sim­ply blockad­ing or leaflet­ing a Shell garage. The major pur­pose for tak­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty action is to boost the cam­paign here by mak­ing the com­mu­ni­ty aware that they haven’t been for­got­ten. So, while it’d be great if peo­ple got togeth­er a huge spec­tac­u­lar action, if you’ve not much time, spend­ing an hour with a ban­ner and leaflets at a Shell garage is super easy and total­ly valu­able. For exam­ple, last Autumn, peo­ple orga­nized a Ross­port sol­i­dar­i­ty action in Brighton that took fuck-all organ­i­sa­tion and went real­ly well. Peo­ple were rung the night before, there was a meet­ing at lunchtime, a ban­ner quick­ly paint­ed, some leaflets made and then about 20 peo­ple shut down the garage for the after­noon. The fuel was turned off and peo­ple got on the roof with the ban­ner. It was prop­er old-skool fun, no one got nicked, and it was real­ly cool to get a bunch of peo­ple togeth­er so quick­ly and take action togeth­er.

So, if you can find a spare hour or two next Fri­day, it‘d be great if u could do a quick (or long!) anti-shell action, and post it on Indy­media after… It’d prob­a­bly even be fun. Also, if any­one fan­cies a vis­it to Ire­land, there’s stuff hap­pen­ing reg­u­lar­ly over here and places to stay and its beau­ti­ful…

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Dai­ly block­ades again at Bel­lan­aboy

Direct action stepped up in resis­tance to Shel­l’s project in Bel­lan­aboy

Gar­dai pres­ence has mas­sive­ly reduced at Bel­lan­aboy and the dai­ly pick­ets are once again stop­ping vehi­cles enter­ing the site. Block­ades are gen­er­al­ly held for between 10 and 40 min­utes before the cops arrive and are repeat­ed at reg­u­lar inter­vals throught the day. For footage of one of the block­ades check out…

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=YfSFrtv9XcA

Mass action on Fri­day 14th Setem­ber at Bel­lan­aboy. Sol­i­dar­i­ty actions also called for..