Category: Other

Oth­er

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Manchester Students remember Ken Saro-Wiwa in University Shell protest

Stu­dents from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter held a memo­r­i­al protest in remem­brance of Niger­ian human rights activists who were killed by the Niger­ian mil­i­tary in 1995. The protest high­light­ed the new part­ner­ship to research bio­fu­els between the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter and Shell.

Shell logo burningStu­dents from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter held a memo­r­i­al protest in remem­brance of Niger­ian human rights activists who were killed by the Niger­ian mil­i­tary in 1995. The protest high­light­ed the new part­ner­ship to research bio­fu­els between the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter and Shell.

STUDENTS HANG MEMORIAL EFFIGY IN UNIVERSITY SHELL PROTEST

Mon­day 10th Novem­ber 2008

Stu­dents from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter held a memo­r­i­al protest in remem­brance of a Niger­ian human rights activist who were killed by the Niger­ian mil­i­tary in 1995. Novem­ber 10th marked the 13th anniver­sary of the exe­cu­tion of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight oth­er activists.[1]

Shell oil com­pa­ny will be tak­en to court this Feb­ru­ary 2009, charged with com­plic­i­ty in his mur­der. ( http://www.unpo.org/content/view/8792/236/)

The protest high­light­ed the new part­ner­ship between the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter and Shell. [2] (www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/business/s/1068530_shell_and_manchester_universitys_biofuels_project)

The group held ban­ners read­ing ‘Remem­ber Ken Saro-Wiwa mur­dered on behalf of Shell on 13th of Novem­ber 1995’ and ‘Shell oper­at­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter’ out­side the Man­ches­ter Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Bio­cen­tre. They also dis­played an effi­gy of Ken Saro-Wiwa as a pow­er­ful reminder of the exe­cu­tion of the envi­ron­men­tal and human rights activist.

Phi­los­o­phy stu­dent Gabriel Has­san said, “Until Shell sort out their human rights record and stop dev­as­tat­ing the envi­ron­ment with their oil projects they have no busi­ness being on cam­pus. Ken Saro-Wiwa was a man who stood up to the ruin brought upon his peo­ple in Nige­ria by Shell and for that Shell had him hung. This is the kind of the thing that the uni­ver­si­ty was always going to turn a blind eye to though.”

The group asked if some­one from the Insti­tu­tion could explain the eth­i­cal prob­lems con­cern­ing the University’s part­ner­ship with Shell but were told to speak to the University’s press office. The press office sug­gest­ed writ­ing a let­ter to Pres­i­dent and Vice-Chan­cel­lor Alan Gilbert. The group will deliv­er an open let­ter to the Vice-Chan­cel­lor ask­ing for an expla­na­tion.

Secu­ri­ty were called and removed the ban­ners from the Uni­ver­si­ty build­ing wall. Some stu­dents remained to fly­er out­side. Mean­while anoth­er group retrieved the ban­ner and dis­played them high up on a lamp­post on the oth­er side of the build­ing on Princess Street.

The stu­dent group held a dis­cus­sion on the role of Shell in the Niger Delta and Ross­port lat­er that evening attend­ed by around 100 peo­ple.

( http://www.corribsos.com/)

—————————————————————————
NOTES TO THE EDITOR

[1] Ken Saro-Wiwa was a leader in the protest against the dev­as­ta­tion of the Ogo­ni peo­ple’s home­land in Nige­ria caused by oil extrac­tion projects run by Shell and Chevron. For more infor­ma­tion about Ken Saro-Wiwa and the cir­cum­stances of his exe­cu­tion vis­it http://www.remembersarowiwa.com/

[2] Shell is one of 17 com­pa­nies work­ing with The Cen­tre of Excel­lence in Bio­catal­y­sis, Bio­trans­for­ma­tions and Bio­cat­alyt­ic Man­u­fac­ture (CoEBio3) based at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter. See http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/archive/list/item/?id=3983&year=2008&month=09 and http://www.student-direct.co.uk/2008/10/shelling-out/ for more infor­ma­tion.

Man­ches­ter Cam­paigns Col­lec­tive
mcrcampaignscollective@gmail.com

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/

Councillor John Lines’ Homeless Village in Birmingham + update

5.11.2008
A protest camp named after Coun­cil­lor John Lines who’s respon­si­ble for the city’s hous­ing, was estab­lished last Thurs­day on derelict land owned by Birm­ing­ham City Coun­cil. Cllr. Lines has denied there is a home­less prob­lem in Birm­ing­ham and also denies there is mon­ey avail­able to build new ‘social hous­ing’. The occu­pied land has been unused for around sev­en years whilst there are over 30,000 peo­ple in the city wait­ing for hous­ing.

Birmingham homeless land squat 1Birmingham homeless land squat 25.11.2008
A protest camp named after Coun­cil­lor John Lines who’s respon­si­ble for the city’s hous­ing, was estab­lished last Thurs­day on derelict land owned by Birm­ing­ham City Coun­cil. Cllr. Lines has denied there is a home­less prob­lem in Birm­ing­ham and also denies there is mon­ey avail­able to build new ‘social hous­ing’. The occu­pied land has been unused for around sev­en years whilst there are over 30,000 peo­ple in the city wait­ing for hous­ing.

The protest is against the Coun­cil hold­ing on to land that could be sold at a ‘friend­ly’ price to Hous­ing asso­ci­a­tions there­by allow­ing Hous­ing Asso­ci­a­tions to draw up to £100m of grants to pro­vide ‘social hous­ing’. “At a cost of £50,000 per unit, the £100m could pro­vide around 2,000 homes” said one of the pro­test­ers. They claim the Council’s approach is spec­u­la­tive — by hold­ing onto unused land and build­ings with a view to sell­ing them off to the high­est com­mer­cial bid­der.

‘The John Lines’ Home­less Vil­lage’ con­sists of tents, a fire, cook­ing facil­i­ties and is locat­ed on the Per­shore Road in Bal­sall Heath. Orig­i­nal­ly the camp was intend­ed to last a week, but now pro­test­ers are try­ing to stay there as long as they can. Up until now the Coun­cil have made no plans to meet or talk with the pro­test­ers. They have been served with a notice to quit by Birm­ing­ham City Coun­cil and are due in court this Fri­day.

A group of around 30 peo­ple from dif­fer­ent parts of the city reg­u­lar­ly sleep over at the camp, some of whom are on wait­ing lists for social hous­ing and some home­less peo­ple have also joined the camp. The pro­test­ers have also attend­ed and dis­rupt­ed a coun­cil meet­ing yes­ter­day where accord­ing to the local press, they threat­ened to occu­py the roof of the home of Coun­cil­lor Lines, and Lines in return has ‘threat­ened to set his dogs on them’.

Pro­test­ers at the camp are keen on meet­ing vis­i­tors who want to express some sol­i­dar­i­ty. They are also in need of food, blan­kets and dona­tions.

——

Update:

The coun­cil was grant­ed the evic­tion order at Birm­ing­ham Coun­ty Court on Fri­day to evict the cam­paign­ers who are on land off Per­shore Road in Birm­ing­ham.

More careers fair antics — Cambridge, Birmingham, Oxford — update: RBS & e.on no-shows

Update: RBS did­n’t turn up to a Cam­bridge careers fair and e.on have giv­en a few a miss now — keep on going folks, there’ll be lots of oth­er mur­der­ous com­pa­nies com­ing your way…

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Career­ing Down­wards, cour­tesy of Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty!

Make a living not a killing bannersUpdate: RBS did­n’t turn up to a Cam­bridge careers fair and e.on have giv­en a few a miss now — keep on going folks, there’ll be lots of oth­er mur­der­ous com­pa­nies com­ing your way…

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Career­ing Down­wards, cour­tesy of Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty!
5th Novem­ber 2008
Today and tomor­row, Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty are host­ing a Careers Fair, which seems to com­prise a mot­ley col­lec­tion of arms man­u­fac­tur­ers, plan­et wreck­ers and Vivi­sec­tion­ists.

To high­light just how dubi­ous many of the exhibitors at this event are, some activists decid­ed to go along today.

Despite the extreme­ly fluffy actions under­tak­en by activists, which were hand­ing out fly­ers to vis­i­tors (for a while inside the venue as well as on the road out­side), and dis­play­ing ban­ners, there was a high pres­ence not only of the expect­ed Proc­tors, but also many police, includ­ing a FIT team who made a point of pho­tograph­ing every­one while they were there, but seemed to be strange­ly cam­era shy them­selves.

Appar­ent­ly ear­li­er in the day there were at least two van loads of police in atten­dance, although by the time activists arrived in num­bers they had gone, with ‘just’ sev­er­al cars hav­ing a vis­i­ble pres­ence there all of the after­noon, includ­ing (I wit­nessed) the search­ing of some­one’s Gui­tar case at the door!

——-

Stu­dents Dying to Ditch Dirty Devel­op­ment

Last Fri­day (31st Octo­ber) stu­dents from Keele, BCU, Birm­ing­ham, War­wick and Aston Peo­ple and Plan­et groups staged a die-in at Roy­al Bank of Scot­land’s stall in the Grad­u­ate Recruit­ment Fair at the NEC in Birm­ing­ham. It was the lat­est in a series of actions as part of Peo­ple and Plan­et’s Ditch Dirty Devel­op­ment Cam­paign tar­get­ing RBS at careers’ fairs and pre­sen­ta­tions at uni­ver­si­ties around the coun­try.

Stu­dents grit­ted their teeth through the secu­ri­ty checks into the careers’ fair are­na, as well as resist­ing the temp­ta­tion to tar­get oth­er com­pa­nies in a who’s who of uneth­i­cal com­pa­nies (includ­ing defence con­trac­tors such as BAE Sys­tems, and the Arca­dia Group own­ers of noto­ri­ous sweat­shop high street brand Top­shop) before con­gre­gat­ing at the RBS stall. At an agreed time the stu­dents per­formed a mass die-in in and around the stall, dying on oil slicks to make the point about oil extrac­tion and cli­mate change already killing those in devel­op­ing coun­tries.

Secu­ri­ty arrived prompt­ly to remove pro­test­ers from the scene, pro­test­ers singing “Oil and Gas RBS” as they were removed from the fair. Some stu­dents were then ques­tioned by secu­ri­ty and the police, while oth­ers were tak­en out­side and told to protest in a spe­cial­ly pre­pared pen out­side the main entrance. Those being ques­tioned were then removed from the premise, one was even threat­ened with arrest by police offi­cers in order for them to obtain their name and address, and were informed that should they return they would be arrest­ed, on rather legal­ly dubi­ous grounds.

Those in the “protest pen” out­side were sub­ject­ed to snif­fer dog checks of bags for explo­sives, and also of per­sons for drugs in an attempt to try and pin more on the protest­ing stu­dents. Once this ordeal had been endured, with no short­age of cyn­i­cal humour and grit­ted teeth, the remain­ing stu­dents con­tin­ued to protest out­side, and, despite a secu­ri­ty pres­ence, attempts to stop stu­dents using a mega­phone, not being allowed to leave the pen with­out an escort, man­aged to engage mem­bers of the pass­ing pub­lic in the cam­paign. Spir­its were kept high with chants and songs before stu­dents decid­ed to end the protest and were escort­ed out of the area by secu­ri­ty.

While those who took part were sat­is­fied with the day’s protest­ing, police offi­cers ques­tion­ing and threat­en­ing par­tic­i­pants with arrest as well as the use of snif­fer dogs rep­re­sents was a wor­ry­ing devel­op­ment, espe­cial­ly in response to what was essen­tial­ly a very fluffy direct action protest. How­ev­er, protests against RBS at careers events will con­tin­ue no mat­ter how much they hide behind secu­ri­ty and police. The cam­paign con­tin­ues.…

Some of the exhibitors include…

Proc­tor & Gam­ble (vivi­sec­tion fun­ders)

Eon (Pro Nuclear and Coal pow­er)

Rolls Royce (Arms Man­u­fac­tur­ers, spon­sors of Uni­ver­si­ty Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment)

Shell (arche­typ­al oil green­wash­ers)

…And many more besides.

It would seem that despite pre­vi­ous years’ Careers Fairs also hav­ing activists in atten­dance, due to the moral bank­rupt­cy of the com­pa­nies being booked for said event, the Uni­ver­si­ty still has­n’t fig­ured out that it’s actu­al­ly bet­ter for their wider rep­u­ta­tion to dis­play some ethics in their book­ing choic­es for such an event.

You could always come along and see it for your­self, as it’s open again Thurs­day after­noon (Novem­ber 6th), by The Mill Pond at The Grad­u­ate Cen­tre, although if you’re not a Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Stu­dent, you may get ID’ed.

——-

E.ON Recruiters Tar­get­ed AGAIN — in Oxford

6.11.2008
Cli­mate-trash­ing ener­gy mon­sters E.ON con­tin­ued their nation­al recruit­ment tour with a stall at the Oxford Careers Fair today. They seemed mis­er­able but not sur­prised when a group of local activists turned up too…

This after­noon, Oxford Town Hall played host to a thrilling smor­gas­bord of uneth­i­cal cor­po­rate recruiters, at the “Sci­ence, Engi­neer­ing and IT Careers Fair”. BAe, AWE, npow­er, BP, Proc­tor & Gam­ble, and the Army were all in atten­dance, but it was coal-burn­ing cli­mate rene­gades E.ON who were in the spot­light today.

Over the last few weeks they’ve been tar­get­ed by activists at careers fairs across the land, and today was no excep­tion. A group of cam­paign­ers from Thames Val­ley Cli­mate Action were in atten­dance, mak­ing sure that every­one at the fair had an anti-brain­wash­ing leaflet detail­ing what E.ON were real­ly up to (with more gen­er­al infor­ma­tion on the oth­er side about evil cor­po­rate recruiters, so the rest of them did­n’t feel neglect­ed). The recruiters wast­ed plen­ty of time talk­ing to under­cov­er activists, and every gen­uine stu­dent who vis­it­ed the stall got a friend­ly chat from a cam­paign­er as well.

Even­tu­al­ly, though, the shiny cor­po­rate dis­plays all got too much to bear, and some more action was required. E.ON were (loud­ly) pre­sent­ed with a fan­tas­tic prize for the most egre­gious piece of green­wash on dis­play (despite some stiff com­pe­ti­tion): their dis­play read “Tack­ling cli­mate change isn’t some­thing that’s tacked onto our agen­da. It’s at the heart of our busi­ness” (oh, for a bit of paint to remove the word “tack­ling”). Their prize? A fan­tas­tic bag of (char)coal, scat­tered all over their stall, and the sight of the pro­test­ers being firm­ly escort­ed from the build­ing, still loud­ly detail­ing E.ON’s activ­i­ties, much to the enter­tain­ment of the watch­ing crowd.

The activists then spent some time dish­ing out the rest of their leaflets out­side the fair — we’ll post the leaflet here in case any­one else wants to use it (we cribbed bits of it from the Not­ting­ham careers fair leaflet, so let’s keep shar­ing it all around!).

Thames Val­ley Cli­mate Action
oxford@climatecamp.org.uk
http://tvca.atspace.com

Local residents protest at Lodge Farm open cast site

At noon on Sat­ur­day 1st Novem­ber, around 40 peo­ple braved rain and cold winds to protest out­side the new open cast min­ing site at Lodge Farm, in Smal­l­ey Der­byshire.

Lodge House residents' demo 1Lodge House residents' demo 4

At noon on Sat­ur­day 1st Novem­ber, around 40 peo­ple braved rain and cold winds to protest out­side the new open cast min­ing site at Lodge Farm, in Smal­l­ey Der­byshire.

UK Coal, which owns the site, plans to extract one mil­lion tonnes of coal from the 300 acre site over the next four years.

From the out­set, UK Coal’s plans were opposed by local res­i­dents, sev­er­al MPs and Amber Val­ley dis­trict coun­cil, and Der­byshire Coun­ty Coun­cil refused plan­ning per­mis­sion for the open cast site. How­ev­er UK Coal appealed the deci­sion and fol­low­ing an appeal hear­ing, com­mu­ni­ties sec­re­tary Ruth Kel­ly over­rode ordi­nary people’s con­cerns in favour of UK Coal’s inter­ests and agreed that the scheme could go ahead.

Saturday’s protest was organ­ised by Ere­wash and Amber Val­ley Envi­ron­ment Net­work, EAVON, and was just the lat­est in a long series of protests and direct actions by peo­ple con­cerned at the local and glob­al effects of coal.

Speak­ing to the Ilke­ston Adver­tis­er, pri­or to the protest, Neil Pad­get, from The Smal­l­ey Action Group, said: “Open­cast min­ing at Lodge House is bad enough, and the nation­al prece­dent that has been set by the gov­ern­ment, in allow­ing this, is appalling.

Many locals also fear, and with good rea­son, that UK Coal will be giv­en per­mis­sion to extend the site, and that min­ing in the local area may go on for decades.”

While there are jus­ti­fi­able fears for the impact on the local com­mu­ni­ty, many of Saturday’s plac­ards demon­strat­ed that pro­test­ers were equal­ly con­cerned with the wider effects on cli­mate chaos of coal burn­ing.

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.

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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

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

NPA rebels to continue anti-biofuels campaign

The com­mu­nist New Peo­ple’s Army (NPA) in Negros vowed Sat­ur­day to sus­tain its cam­paign against bio­fu­els and to raid plan­ta­tions ded­i­cat­ed to jathropa, a source of bio­fu­el.

NPA South­east­ern Negros spokesman Dom Pan­ta­le­on said the NPA will imple­ment more “pre­ven­tive mea­sures” against pri­vate agri-busi­ness cor­po­ra­tions for aggra­vat­ing food sup­ply prob­lem by plant­i­ng non-food crops.

The com­mu­nist New Peo­ple’s Army (NPA) in Negros vowed Sat­ur­day to sus­tain its cam­paign against bio­fu­els and to raid plan­ta­tions ded­i­cat­ed to jathropa, a source of bio­fu­el.

NPA South­east­ern Negros spokesman Dom Pan­ta­le­on said the NPA will imple­ment more “pre­ven­tive mea­sures” against pri­vate agri-busi­ness cor­po­ra­tions for aggra­vat­ing food sup­ply prob­lem by plant­i­ng non-food crops.

In an arti­cle on the Com­mu­nist Par­ty of the Philip­pines web­site, he cit­ed the Tam­lang Val­ley Agri­cul­tur­al Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (TVADC) as caus­ing wors­en­ing food sup­ply prob­lem and height­en­ing mil­i­tary abus­es in south­east Negros.

He said the NPA recent­ly con­duct­ed anoth­er “puni­tive action” against the TVADC bio­fu­els com­pa­ny main­ly based in the vil­lage of Casalaan, Sia­ton, Ori­en­tal Negros.

Pan­ta­le­on said an NPA team last Oct. 3 was ordered to con­fis­cate and burn two TVADC-owned trac­tors in Sitio Tam­lang, Talalak vil­lage in Sta. Catali­na town.

No one was harmed in the inci­dent, he added.

“It was the sec­ond such oper­a­tion in as many months by the Red army to pro­tect upland peas­ants from the intru­sive and harm­ful bio­fu­els com­pa­ny co-owned by the fam­i­ly of ex-Con­gress­man Her­minio Teves and their Kore­an busi­ness part­ners. Last Sep­tem­ber 9, a sep­a­rate NPA team seized and burned three trac­tors owned by the same com­pa­ny in sityo Cuadra, barangay Man­tik­il, in Sta. Catali­na town,” the NPA said.

Pan­ta­le­on added the NPA will con­tin­ue imple­ment­ing sim­i­lar orders for puni­tive actions to block the wide­spread grow­ing of jathropa and cas­sa­va in and around the vast Sta. Catali­na-Sia­ton-Valen­cia-Pam­plona bor­der vil­lages of Ori­en­tal Negros.

He said the NPA will also impose armed puni­tive actions against the Army’s 302nd Brigade for “pro­vid­ing pro­tec­tion and even col­lud­ing with TVADC in forc­ing ordi­nary farm­ers to plant jatrhopa and cas­sa­va, instead of their tra­di­tion­al food crops like upland rice and corn.”

Pan­ta­le­on said the mer­ce­nary AFP has become the bio­fu­els cam­paign’s most vis­i­ble “errand boys” for the agri-busi­ness com­pa­ny and the Teves fam­i­ly in south­east Negros.

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For pre­vi­ous NPA protest against bio­fu­els in the Philip­pines, see http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/21752

Fighting Climate Crime — Activists Lock Down Logging for Dairy Operation in New Zealand

29 Octo­ber 2008
Ear­ly this morn­ing Green­peace activists took action to stop cor­po­rate dairy’s assault on New Zealand forests and the cli­mate.

In the cen­tral North Island huge swathes of for­est are being cleared to make way for indus­tri­al dairy mega farms.

Dairy logging NZ lock-on29 Octo­ber 2008
Ear­ly this morn­ing Green­peace activists took action to stop cor­po­rate dairy’s assault on New Zealand forests and the cli­mate.

In the cen­tral North Island huge swathes of for­est are being cleared to make way for indus­tri­al dairy mega farms.

Well before dawn this morn­ing, in the for­est near Toko­roa, sev­er­al activists halt­ed the sharp end of the log­ging oper­a­tion by lock­ing them­selves to heavy equip­ment.

Mean­while, on near­by land recent­ly con­vert­ed from for­est to dairy pas­ture, anoth­er team have used rotary hoes to write CLIMATE CRIME in 5m-high let­ters into the fresh pas­ture.

We are call­ing for the main polit­i­cal par­ties to com­mit to an imme­di­ate halt to for­est con­ver­sion for inten­sive dairy in the face of the wors­en­ing glob­al cli­mate cri­sis.

New Zealand’s agri­cul­ture sec­tor already emits 50 per cent of our green­house gas emis­sions — more than dou­ble the emis­sions of all trans­port com­bined. Defor­esta­tion releas­es huge amounts of green­house gas. We esti­mate that annu­al emis­sions from the two largest cor­po­rate con­ver­sion projects in the Cen­tral North Island alone equate to the annu­al emis­sions from the Hunt­ly coal fired pow­er sta­tion.

Forests trap car­bon beneath the soil and in trees. Like a sponge, they soak up car­bon diox­ide gas from the atmos­phere — the main green­house gas con­tribut­ing to cli­mate change.

Dairy con­ver­sion of forestry land func­tions as a ‘dou­ble wham­my’ on the cli­mate destroy­ing forests and replac­ing them with one of the most green­house gas inten­sive forms of land use.

This chain­saw mas­sacre and the ongo­ing expan­sion of cor­po­rate, inten­sive dairy farm­ing in New Zealand has got to stop.

The press release and relat­ed doc­u­ments are here
NZ MP dairy conversion
UPDATE: The, the fol­low­ing day as the sun rose over sleepy Helensville, we unfurled a truck­load of Ready-Lawn around the out­side of Nation­al Par­ty leader John Key’s elec­torate office. Then came some pine trees, some two-dimen­sion­al cows and a smat­ter­ing of stumps. Final­ly a bill­board went up say­ing: “Would John solve this cli­mate crime?” See the video and blog.

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