report from tonight’s ‘bikes alive’ protest

9.1.12: ‘bikes alive’ is a new direct action cam­paign­ing group to counter the lethar­gy of trans­port for lon­don, and its pri­ori­tis­ing of lon­don traf­fic flow over the safe­ty of pedes­tri­ans and cyclists.

9.1.12: ‘bikes alive’ is a new direct action cam­paign­ing group to counter the lethar­gy of trans­port for lon­don, and its pri­ori­tis­ing of lon­don traf­fic flow over the safe­ty of pedes­tri­ans and cyclists. tonight saw the first of a series of direct action traf­fic calm­ing gath­er­ings at king’s cross designed to pres­sure TfL into more urgent action over the dead­ly junc­tion.

at the 6pm start num­bers looked a lit­tle thin, with no more than a few dozen cyclists gath­ered on the cor­ner of euston road and york way in front of king’s cross sta­tion. they were observed by sev­er­al police cyclists and a few oth­ers on foot.

num­bers did grad­u­al­ly build up, and by about twen­ty past, the action began with prob­a­bly a lit­tle over a hun­dred cyclists mak­ing their way up york way at a snail’s pace, form­ing an effec­tive block­ade against the rush hour traf­fic.

they looped round and back via the scala before com­plete­ly block­ing the busy junc­tion between euston and pen­tonville roads with york way.

here — next to the white ghost bicy­cle left as a memo­r­i­al to ‘deep’ lee, the young cyclist who was the 16th cycle fatal­i­ty of 2011 — they chant­ed slo­gans against boris, and reclaimed the streets. police began re-direct­ing traf­fic up york way and round, and traf­fic tailed back along euston road a long way.

for the next half an hour, the cycle block­ade, accom­pa­nied by quite a few peo­ple on foot, made slow progress back and forth along both sides of euston road out­side the sta­tion. near the front of the pro­ces­sion were des kay, the bicy­cle activist who won land­mark court bat­tles against police attempts to restrict the month­ly crit­i­cal mass rides, and jen­ny jones, the green cam­paign­er on the lon­don assem­bly and the met­ro­pol­i­tan police author­i­ty.

police response remained (i sus­pect part­ly because of jen­ny jones’ pres­ence) rea­son­ably low key, although inspec­tor mcdon­ald kept ask­ing peo­ple to ‘keep mov­ing’ and he was accom­pa­nied by an over-eager com­mu­ni­ty sup­port offi­cer who liked shout­ing at and grab­bing peo­ple in an offen­sive man­ner.

final­ly at just after 7pm, after hold­ing the start of pen­tonville road for sev­er­al min­utes while traf­fic was once again direct­ed up york way, cyclists agreed to leave en masse rather than dwin­dle in num­bers, des kay recit­ed one of his infa­mous cycle activist poems, and the cyclists went off into the night.

the plan is to hold reg­u­lar, pos­si­bly week­ly, block­ades until TfL promise to act. check the www.bikesalive.wordpress.com site for details of next week’s ride at king’s cross.

Earth First! Winter Moot 2012 — 24–26th February 2012. Updated: location & what to expect

A week­end of dis­cus­sion and net­work­ing for those tak­ing direct action against eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion.

Please note date & loca­tion change (due to date clash & venue prob­lems):

24–26th Feb­ru­ary 2012, near Glas­gow

Near­est train sta­tion: Lanark.

See earthfirstgathering.org.uk for fur­ther infor­ma­tion about loca­tion,  pro­gramme and con­tact details

Update:

Where — this years Earth First Win­ter Moot will take place in Gle­spin Vil­lage Hall, South Lanark­shire. Gle­spin is a small vil­lage about 14 miles south of Lanark, and 35 miles south of Glas­gow. South Lanark­shire also has many beau­ti­ful areas with rivers, hills, forests and peat bogs.  Full direc­tions

What to expect — this years Earth First! Win­ter Moot takes place in South Lanark­shire, Scot­land. In a months time envi­ron­men­tal­ists from across the UK and beyond will con­verge to dis­cuss and debate. Below is an update from the organ­is­ing col­lec­tive who are work­ing on the pro­gram.

The Moot 2012 col­lec­tive has felt that at pre­vi­ous EF! Gath­er­ings groups have pri­mar­i­ly attend­ed to recruit for their respec­tive cam­paigns. Yet those who attend EF! Gath­er­ings are pre­dom­i­nant­ly already active, mak­ing them good places for net­work­ing, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly for out­right recruit­ment. We recog­nise the effort gath­er­ing organ­is­ers put into plan­ning agen­das but often the more dis­cur­sive aspects of the gath­er­ings focus on larg­er,  abstract ques­tions and debates have often been framed by self-appoint­ed experts. We feel that these dis­cus­sions inef­fec­tive­ly attempt to find answers or reach con­sen­sus where this is inap­pro­pri­ate.

For exam­ple at the first EF! Gath­er­ing 20 years ago the ques­tion was asked: ‘What is EF!?’ 20 years lat­er in 2011 at the last Moot the same ques­tion was still being asked …

The answer is EF! is what we make it, and this year we are going to make it a space in which we can approach our cam­paigns both crit­i­cal­ly and ana­lyt­i­cal­ly by ask­ing more spe­cif­ic and prac­ti­cal ques­tions. Our activism should be con­stant­ly evolv­ing not stuck in a rut ask­ing the same ques­tions again and again.

The agen­da will be designed to ask ques­tions around four key issues: the tac­tics we use; the strate­gies that we employ in our cam­paigns; com­mu­ni­ty sol­i­dar­i­ty; and sus­tain­able activism. There will be no attempt to reach con­clu­sions or con­sen­sus espe­cial­ly about what EF! is. Instead we want to have dis­cus­sions that lead to new ideas that could evolve ongo­ing cam­paigns or give cre­ative inspi­ra­tion to ones that are just get­ting start­ed.

A free space will be pro­vid­ed in which cam­paigns will be able to hold meet­ings and have fur­ther dis­cus­sions if they wish, and there will also be some space giv­en for cam­paign updates with an empha­sis on hon­est analy­sis rather than pro­mo­tion.

For updates and more info check the web­site or email us.

efwintermoot@noflag.org.uk

‘bikes alive’ action at kings x tomorrow

8th Jan­u­ary 2012

8th Jan­u­ary 2012

In the absence of any timetable or gen­uine will­ing­ness from either the may­or or trans­port for lon­don (tfl), bicy­cle activists will stage the first of sev­er­al direct actions tomor­row evening at king’s cross road junc­tions.

cyclists and sup­port­ers are expect­ed to arrive in large num­bers for tomor­row evening’s ‘crit­i­cal mass’ style block­ade at king’s cross in protest at the large num­bers of cyclist fatal­i­ties at the junc­tion and at tfl and the may­or’s ret­i­cence to do any­thing about it.

tomor­row’s action, which will last an hour from 6pm, fol­lows on from a recent vig­il, pic­tured above, which attract­ed around 100 cyclists and fea­tured speak­ers from the lon­don cycling cam­paign, road peace, lon­don liv­ing streets, and the green par­ty, as well as friends and rel­a­tives of some of those killed.

six­teen cyclists were killed on lon­don roads last year, up from 10 in 2010.

cam­paign­ers are call­ing on tfl to intro­duce dutch-style cycling sys­tems. in dutch cities, cyclists face sta­tis­ti­cal­ly less than half the dan­gers of their lon­don coun­ter­parts, and yet tfl have reject­ed pro­pos­als put for­ward as long ago as 2008, and instead is reduc­ing the num­ber of pedes­tri­an cross­ings to ‘improve traf­fic flow’.

tfl’s grounds for reject­ing junc­tion changes at king’s cross is that they may cause ‘traf­fic delay’.

last year, 24 yr old fash­ion stu­dent ‘deep’ lee was killed by a lor­ry at king’s cross. in decem­ber, after reject­ing safe­ty pro­pos­als at a meet­ing at cam­den town hall, tfl offi­cials asked her boyfriend if they could now remove the flower-cov­ered memo­r­i­al ghost bike. he respond­ed that they should ‘sort out the junc­tion first’.

in response to tfl’s lethar­gy and fail­ures, and in a direct chal­lenge to their con­cerns about ‘traf­fic delays’, bicy­cle activists have called for cyclists and their sup­port­ers to join them at king’s cross at 6pm tomor­row evening and to cycle around the junc­tion en masse at a safe slow speed, per­haps stop­ping every now and then as sheer mass of cycle traf­fic some­times caus­es delays.

this will be the first of sev­er­al reg­u­lar such actions to show tfl that cyclists are fed up of being treat­ed as dis­pos­able cit­i­zens and are enti­tled to pro­tec­tion, safe­ty, and con­sid­er­a­tion in road plan­ning.

for more info and con­tacts for tomor­row’s and future actions, see www.bikesalive.wordpress.com

and for some excel­lent opin­ion pieces and well-researched links, see www.cyclelondoncity.blogspot.com

Call-out! Eco-education centre reopened, Forest of dean, help needed!

This is a call out for sup­port.

Last night the For­est of Dean Eco-vil­lage swooped and reclaimed an envi­ron­men­tal edu­ca­tion cen­tre closed by the cuts, we intend to reopen it and run it as a free edu­ca­tion space for the local com­mu­ni­ty and beyond.

We invite you to come join us on our jour­ney towards cre­at­ing a sus­tain­able future.

This is a call out for sup­port.

Last night the For­est of Dean Eco-vil­lage swooped and reclaimed an envi­ron­men­tal edu­ca­tion cen­tre closed by the cuts, we intend to reopen it and run it as a free edu­ca­tion space for the local com­mu­ni­ty and beyond.

We invite you to come join us on our jour­ney towards cre­at­ing a sus­tain­able future.

We need peo­ple to come help hold down the space, work on the build­ings, gar­dens, wood­lands, run work­shops, skill shares and help use this rare resource to its max­i­mum poten­tial.

If you have some­thing to con­tribute in terms of time, ener­gy, ideas, skills and resources you are wel­come to join us.

If you are inter­est­ed please con­tact us at…

admin [at] apokaluptein [dot] org [dot] uk

tel:0781 172 6372

See you in the woods!

Sea Shepherd Intercepts the Japanese Whaling Fleet with Drones

24.12.11

Japanese Security Ships Move In On the Steve Irwin

The Sea Shep­herd crew has inter­cept­ed the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet on Christ­mas Day, a thou­sand miles north of the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary.

24.12.11

Japanese Security Ships Move In On the Steve Irwin

The Sea Shep­herd crew has inter­cept­ed the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet on Christ­mas Day, a thou­sand miles north of the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary.

The Sea Shep­herd ship, Steve Irwin, deployed a drone to suc­cess­ful­ly locate and pho­to­graph the Japan­ese fac­to­ry ship Nis­shin Maru on Decem­ber 24th. Once the pur­suit began, three Japan­ese harpoon/security ships moved in on the Steve Irwin to shield the Nis­shin Maru to allow it to escape.

This time how­ev­er the Japan­ese tac­tic of tail­ing the Steve Irwin and the Bob Bark­er will not work because the drones, one on the Steve Irwin and the oth­er on the Bob Bark­er, can track and fol­low the Nis­shin Maru and can relay the posi­tions back to the Sea Shep­herd ships.

“We can cov­er hun­dreds of miles with these drones and they have proven to be valu­able assets for this cam­paign,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son on board the Steve Irwin.

The drone named Nicole Mon­te­cal­vo was donat­ed to the Steve Irwin by Bayshore Recy­cling of New Jer­sey.

Cap­tain Wat­son hav­ing received reports from fish­er­men when the Japan­ese ship passed through the Lom­bok Strait wait­ed south of the strait at a dis­tance of 500 miles off the south­west coast of West­ern Aus­tralia. Sea Shep­herd caught the whalers at 37 degrees South, far above the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary

“The chase is on for the next 1000 miles,” said Deck­hand Eleanor Lis­ter of Jer­sey (U.K.).

With the Steve Irwin tak­ing up the resources of three of the Japan­ese ships the Bob Bark­er remains clear of a tail and the Brigitte Bar­dot is clear to scout out the fac­to­ry ship, hav­ing supe­ri­or speed to the har­poon ves­sels.

The Sea Shep­herd crew have found the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet before a sin­gle whale has been killed.

“This is going to be a long hard pur­suit from here to the coast of Antarc­ti­ca,” said Cap­tain Wat­son. “But thanks to these drones, we now have an advan­tage we have nev­er had before – eyes in the sky.”

Back­ground on the Steve Irwin Drone:
Bayshore Recy­cling striv­ing to pro­tect and con­serve nature

Drone Nicole Mon­te­cal­vo aids Sea Shep­herd in pre­serv­ing ocean wildlife world­wide.

Wood­bridge NJ- Bayshore Recy­cling Corp (BRC) not only strives to pro­tect the planet’s nat­ur­al resources through recy­cling but also encour­ages every­one to help endan­gered wildlife. To pro­mote and encour­age this effort, BRC’s own­ers recent­ly donat­ed a long-range drone fit­ted with cam­eras and detec­tion equip­ment to the Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety (SSCS). The SSCS is an inter­na­tion­al non-profit, direct action marine wildlife con­ser­va­tion orga­ni­za­tion. SSCS neces­si­tat­ed an addi­tion­al aer­i­al vehi­cle that could add to their fleet and expand their capa­bil­i­ties in order to scan hun­dreds of miles more with each flight in order to assist in find­ing and doc­u­ment­ing whal­ing ships and oth­er ille­gal poach­ing oper­a­tions. The drone will also assist in help­ing pro­tect the fleet, her crew and alert them to poten­tial dan­gers, when their heli­copter may not be avail­able for use.

A long-range drone is defined as an unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle that does not require human oper­a­tion and can fly inde­pen­dent­ly or be oper­at­ed remote­ly. The drone named Nicole Mon­te­cal­vo has assist­ed in locat­ing Japan­ese whal­ing fleet in the South­ern Ocean pre­vi­ous­ly has assist­ed in oper­a­tions against blue fin tuna poach­ing oper­a­tions off the coast of Libya. The drone Nicole Mon­te­cal­vo was deliv­ered on board the ves­sel Steve Irwin by the Ves­sel Secu­ri­ty Offi­cer dur­ing tran­sit to Antarc­ti­ca while in search of the Japan­ese flag­ship, Nis­shin Maru. BRC stress­es the impor­tance of con­serv­ing our planet’s nat­ur­al habi­tats. Whether it is sav­ing nat­ur­al resources, con­serv­ing ener­gy, pre­serv­ing endan­gered wildlife or recy­cling house­hold debris—Bayshore ris­es to the chal­lenge. Togeth­er, BRC and the SSCS will fight to save the ocean and its vul­ner­a­ble inhab­i­tants.

Indian Maoists set fire to a tipper and earthdigger

BHADRACHALAM: Maoists have alleged­ly set ablaze a tip­per and a pro­clain­er (earth­mover) near Aluba­ka in the Bhadracha­lam Agency area of Kam­mam dis­trict on Fri­day night.

BHADRACHALAM: Maoists have alleged­ly set ablaze a tip­per and a pro­clain­er (earth­mover) near Aluba­ka in the Bhadracha­lam Agency area of Kam­mam dis­trict on Fri­day night.

It is said that the Maoists torched the vehi­cles to obstruct the road works tak­en up under the Left Wing Extrem­ism Affect­ed Dis­tricts Devel­op­ment Scheme. The Maoist had warned the con­trac­tor ear­li­er not to take up work on the road that con­nects Bhadracha­lam with Venkat­a­pur and Bhoopala­p­at­nam in Chhat­tis­garh. Accord­ing to sources, around 60 Maoists, 20 of them armed, from the neigh­bour­ing state entered the dis­trict, poured kerosene over the vehi­cles, and set them ablaze. The con­trac­tor suf­fered a loss of Rs 50 lakh.

A case has been reg­is­tered at Venkat­a­pur police sta­tion against those involved in the offence and inves­ti­ga­tion is in progress, Venkat­a­pur cir­cle inspec­tor of police KRK Prasa­da Rao has said.

 

from .… http://signalfire.org/?p=16492

orig­i­nal arti­cle …

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/maoists-set-afire-tipper-earthdigger/212951–60-114.html

 

Anti-Coal Plant Protesters Storm Buildings, Evict Officials, Block Roads in South China

21.12.11

21.12.11

CHINESE pro­test­ers against a coal-pow­ered pow­er sta­tion have blocked a main road and defied riot police.

Reuters reports that the sit­u­a­tion seems to have esca­lat­ed, with res­i­dents smash­ing cars and hurl­ing bricks even though offi­cials sought to calm tem­pers by sus­pend­ing the unpop­u­lar plan.

Angry crowds smashed and over­turned police cars and riot police fired tear­gas in Haimen town in Shan­tou city on Wednes­day, the sec­ond day of the unrest, Hong Kong news­pa­pers report­ed.

Res­i­dents of Haimen, furi­ous with plans to build a coal-fired pow­er plant, took to the streets , sur­round­ing a gov­ern­ment build­ing and block­ing an express­way.

Offi­cials agreed to sus­pend the project this week, but res­i­dents refused to back down, demand­ing the plan be scrapped.

Out­side a large and closed petrol sta­tion near a high­way into Haimen, about 100 men on motor­bikes watched a wall of riot police armed with batons and shields, block­ing the high­way.

“What place in the world builds two pow­er plants with­in one kilo­me­tre?” said one of the Haimen res­i­dents, who was sur­named Cai, as he watched the riot police.

“The fac­to­ries are haz­ardous to our health. Our fish are dying and there are so many peo­ple who’ve got can­cer , ” he added.

“We thought of protest­ing out­side the gov­ern­ment office but we know none of them has lis­tened to us. So we had no choice but to block the high­way. The police beat up so many of the pro­test­ers in the past two days.”

At one point, Haimen res­i­dents screamed and surged for­ward when a riot police­man, wav­ing his baton in the air, charged towards a man on a motor­cy­cle who had been rid­ing towards the police block­ade on the high­way.

State news agency Xin­hua said sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple had protest­ed on a high­way on Wednes­day. Accord­ing to Hong Kong’s Ming Pao news­pa­per, more than 1,000 res­i­dents gath­ered at a toll gate to con­front hun­dreds of riot police.

Wit­ness­es said police fired four rounds of tear­gas and beat up pro­test­ers, who do not want anoth­er pow­er plant when exist­ing pow­er facil­i­ties there were already pol­lut­ing air and sea­wa­ter and had great­ly reduced their catch at sea, the report added.

At least three pro­test­ers were hit and arrest­ed.

Adds Reuters: “Peo­ple in Chi­na are increas­ing­ly unwill­ing to accept the relent­less speed of urban­i­sa­tion and indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion and the impact on the envi­ron­ment and health.

“Protests are also often held over cor­rup­tion, wages and land seizures, that offi­cials jus­ti­fy in the name of devel­op­ment.

“Res­i­dents of Wukan vil­lage, also in Guang­dong, agreed to end a 10-day stand­off with author­i­ties over a land dis­pute on Wednes­day.”

Video

Sec­ond report here

New Tree Sit in Tasmania

[On Decem­ber 14 2011, the Tas­man­ian for­est defence group] Still Wild Still Threatened…set up a 60m-high tree sit-in at the TN044B log­ging coupe near May­de­na inside the 430,000ha being assessed for reserve sta­tus under the forestry peace deal.

[On Decem­ber 14 2011, the Tas­man­ian for­est defence group] Still Wild Still Threatened…set up a 60m-high tree sit-in at the TN044B log­ging coupe near May­de­na inside the 430,000ha being assessed for reserve sta­tus under the forestry peace deal.

The “Observ­er Tree” will be occu­pied by SWST’s Miran­da Gib­son, who was one of two activists assault­ed by work­ers dur­ing a protest in 2008.

Speak­ing to the media via mobile phone from the plat­form, Ms Gib­son said she would main­tain a blog and a web cam­era to broad­cast to the world.

“It’s a dif­fer­ent approach because one of our major con­cerns is that there is a mis­con­cep­tion out there that the for­est has been pro­tect­ed,” Ms Gib­son said. “We want peo­ple to see what is hap­pen­ing in the forests.”

She said she was com­mit­ted to stay­ing on the plat­form until log­ging in 13 coupes inside the area being assessed for pro­tec­tion stopped.

Tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties pre­vent­ed Ms Gib­son from speak­ing to jour­nal­ists via video-link, but SWST expect the web­cast to be up in the next few days.

Sen­a­tor Bob Brown yes­ter­day used his tax­pay­er-fund­ed char­ter allowance to hire a heli­copter to allow media out­lets to pho­to­graph and film the tree-sit from the air.

He said Pre­mier Lara Gid­dings and Prime Min­is­ter Julia Gillard were dis­hon­our­ing their own agree­ment by allow­ing Forestry Tas­ma­nia to log the coupes.

“Their word is being clear-felled by what I judge is ille­gal log­ging. If this agree­ment has any legal force then this log­ging is ille­gal,” Sen­a­tor Brown said.

“I didn’t write this agree­ment, I didn’t have any­thing to do with it, but the Prime Min­is­ter did and the Pre­mier did. The Prime Min­is­ter wrote to me and said these forests had been placed in infor­mal reserves.”

Forestry Tasmania’s gen­er­al man­ag­er of oper­a­tions Steve White­ly said the coupe was one of 13 being logged inside the assess­ment area that was iden­ti­fied by inde­pen­dent sched­ulers as nec­es­sary for sup­ply con­tracts.

He described the protest as frus­trat­ing and point­less giv­en that forestry oper­a­tions would shut down for about a month from tomor­row.

“Forestry Tas­ma­nia needs to keep oper­at­ing and we need to select some coupes that are suit­able to meet our cus­tomers’ needs and we’re doing that while there’s a ver­i­fi­ca­tion process going on,” Mr White­ly said.

Ms Kerr said that she would not be deterred by the Christ­mas shut­down. “I’ll stay up here and keep an eye on things and be here ready when they get back,” she said.

 

Check out the blog theOb­serverTree to get real time updates and offer sup­port.

Activists protest against Devada power plant in India

13.12.11

13.12.11

The 1,040 MW Hin­du­ja Ther­mal Pow­er Plant com­ing up at Deva­da vil­lage in the coastal dis­trict of Visakha­p­at­nam has run into trou­ble again, with locals and activists stag­ing mass protests against the mega project on grounds of envi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tion and large-scale dis­place­ment of farm­ers.

A large group of res­i­dents and anti-project activists, sup­port­ed by oppo­si­tion par­ties and envi­ron­men­tal groups, staged a demon­stra­tion near the plant site on Mon­day, demand­ing imme­di­ate halt to the works and effec­tive reha­bil­i­ta­tion pack­age for the dis­placed fam­i­lies. As the protests led to ten­sion in the area, police swung into action and dis­persed the demon­stra­tors.

The coal-based pow­er project, being devel­oped by the Hin­du­ja Group, has run into rough weath­er with local farm­ers, oppo­si­tion groups, ener­gy experts and envi­ron­men­tal activists putting up a stiff resis­tance.

Stop New Nuclear newsletter no 10, 3 December 2011

Dear all,

Dear all,

this is our first newslet­ter since the Stop New Nuclear gath­er­ing in Bris­tol on 5/6 Novem­ber, where we decid­ed on our next major action. We are all excit­ed about our new plan, and with this newslet­ter we send you some infor­ma­tion about the planned action to sur­round Hink­ley Point on 10 March 2011, fol­lowed by a 24 hour block­ade until 11 March 2011. All this to mark one year since the begin­ning of the cat­a­stro­phe of Fukushi­ma, which is far from over.

No more Fukushimas

Fukushi­ma is the biggest indus­tri­al dis­as­ter in his­to­ry, and has brought Japan to its knees. The reac­tors that went into melt­down in March have now melt­ed through the foun­da­tions and 40 years of accu­mu­lat­ed nuclear waste is emit­ting vast amounts of radi­a­tion, con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the land, sea and air. In des­per­a­tion, the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment is trans­port­ing and burn­ing radioac­tive rub­ble all over Japan and export­ing high­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed food as “aid” to devel­op­ing coun­tries. Men, women and chil­dren are liv­ing in high­ly radioac­tive areas but they are not being evac­u­at­ed as they should be. This intense radi­a­tion expo­sure has very seri­ous health con­se­quences for these peo­ple.

How has Japan end­ed up in this dread­ful sit­u­a­tion? Their gov­ern­ment always said “It can’t hap­pen here.” Sound famil­iar? Pow­er­ful polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic inter­est groups are gag­ging the world’s media on this unfold­ing tragedy. Ordi­nary peo­ple the world over will pay the price.
Since the first civil­ian reac­tor start­ed gen­er­at­ing in 1954, there has been, on aver­age, a major acci­dent every 14–18 years: Wind­scale 1957, Three Mile Island1979, Cher­nobyl 1986, Fukushi­ma 2011.

Stop New Nuclear’s answer to the cri­sis of Fukushi­ma is clear: now new nuclear in Britain and any­where else! There­fore, our action on “Fukushi­ma day” will be to

Surround and blockade Hinkley Point, Somerset

Hink­ley Point is the first of eight pro­posed sites for nuclear new build to go ahead. We stopped them here before in 1987, and we can do it again in 2012. If they fail at Hink­ley, it is unlike­ly the “nuclear renais­sance” will have the momen­tum to con­tin­ue.
On the 10th ‑11th March 2012, one year since the Fukushi­ma nuclear dis­as­ter began, we will return to Hink­ley to form a human chain around the sta­tion to show our deter­mined oppo­si­tion to new nuclear.
In 2010, dozens of us block­ad­ed the gates at Hink­ley. In 2011 hun­dreds of us block­ad­ed the entrance again. In 2012, thou­sands of us will sur­round the pow­er sta­tion to say No to new nuclear! Not here, not any­where!
In Octo­ber 2011, peo­ple pledged to block­ade. This time, pledge to bring 5 friends and tell them to do the same. Thou­sands are need­ed to sur­round the sta­tion!
Pledge to sur­round Hink­ley Point, to bring five friends, or to block­ade Hink­ley Point

Help us mobilise

To ‘Sur­round Hink­ley’ is to demand to have a voice in deci­sions about our ener­gy future. Help to make this a fes­ti­val of cre­ative resis­tance with music, art, the­atre, ban­ners, and what­ev­er takes your fan­cy! To mark the end of the ‘Sur­round’, there will be a gath­er­ing at the main gate of Hink­ley for a ral­ly and music. You may want to return on the coach­es after the action or stay to block­ade the gates for 24 hours. With tents and tubes we will remain at the gates to show our sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Japan.

The time to act is now! Join your local anti nuclear cam­paign, form affin­i­ty groups. The Stop New Nuclear Alliance can help by giv­ing train­ing in non-vio­lent direct action, con­sen­sus deci­sion- mak­ing, spokes coun­cils and advice on trans­port etc….

In our hun­dreds, in our thou­sands we will come togeth­er to stop nuclear pow­er at Hink­ley Point and dis­man­tle the whole new nuclear agen­da! This is the chance to be part of sme­thing mas­sive. JOIN US!

Please help to spread the mes­sage by either down­load­ing the fli­er, or ask us to send you a pack. We wel­come some dona­tion to cov­er postage, but even if you can’t — we need to get the mes­sage out!

Get in touch with us if you want to organ­ise a minibus or put on a coach.

News from nuclear new build

Hinkley Point

There was some news at the end of Octo­ber that EDF is delay­ing its final invest­ment deci­sion about Hink­ley C (and its oth­er planned new nuclear pow­er sta­tions in the UK: Sizewell, Heysham, etc) until the end of 2012. How­ev­er, EDF still insists that it will sub­mit its appli­ca­tion to the Infra­struc­ture Plan­ning Com­mis­sion soon, and also declared that it wants to start prepar­ing the site for Hink­ley C from spring 2012 on. For us, this means two things:

  • The next year will be cru­cial to push EDF to aban­don its plans for Hink­ley C. We need to step our cam­paign­ing to show EDF that it is not a good idea to invest in Hink­ley C, and that they should invest in renew­able ener­gy instead.
  • EDF still wants to pre­pare the site, which means it wants to destroy the land from spring 2012 on, even though there is not even a final deci­sion whether they will real­ly go ahead with Hink­ley C. This shows that a legal chal­lenge to the pre­lim­i­nary works per­mis­sion is even more impor­tant. Stop Hink­ley is rais­ing funds for a legal chal­lenge to West Som­er­set Coun­cil’s deci­sion to grant EDF per­mis­sion to car­ry out prepara­to­ry work on the site, even though EDF is still far from a per­mis­sion to con­struct the pow­er sta­tion itself (and has­n’t even made a final deci­sion). Stop Hink­ley needs to raise about £15,000 for this legal chal­lenge, to please sup­port Stop Hink­ley. More infor­ma­tion at http://stophinkley.org/LegChallAppeal.htm.

Nev­er­the­less, EDF went ahead with its appli­ca­tion to the Infra­struc­ture Plan­ning Com­mis­sion (IPC). The IPC has accept­ed the appli­ca­tion, and from Fri­day, 2 Decem­ber, there are 28 days for every­one to reg­is­ter that they want to com­ment on the appli­ca­tion. This is only a first reg­is­tra­tion, and does not need to be accom­pa­nied by the detailed objec­tions, but with­out this reg­is­tra­tion, you will not be able to object lat­er.

The Infra­struc­ture Plan­ning Com­mis­sion is also organ­is­ing events local­ly near Hink­ley Point to explain the process, when to reg­is­ter and how to make a rep­re­sen­ta­tion to the IPC. They will be held between 10am – 9pm at the fol­low­ing loca­tions:
- Stogursey — Mon­day 5 Decem­ber, The Vic­to­ry Hall, Tow­er Hill, Stogursey, TA5 1PR
- Can­ning­ton — Thurs­day 8 Decem­ber, Can­ning­ton Vil­lage Hall, 2 Brook Street, Can­ning­ton, TA5 2HP
- Willi­ton — Fri­day 9 Decem­ber, West Som­er­set House, Kil­lick Way, Willi­ton, TA4 4QA
- North Pether­ton — Mon­day 12 Decem­ber, The Wal­nut Tree Hotel, North Pether­ton, TA6 6QA
- Comb­wich — Tues­day 13 Decem­ber, Otter­hamp­ton Vil­lage Hall, River­side, Comb­wich, TA5 2QZ
- Bridg­wa­ter — Wednes­day 14 Decem­ber, Town Hall, High Street, Bridg­wa­ter, TA6 3BL.
More infor­ma­tion on the plan­ning process is avail­able on the web­site of the IPC at http://infrastructure.independent.gov.uk/projects/south-west/hinkley-point-c-new-nuclear-power-station/.

Stop Hink­ley will be pre­sent­ing more than 12,000 peti­tions against Hink­ley Point C at Down­ing Street on Tues­day, 6 Decem­ber, at at 1.30pm and at the Depart­ment of Ener­gy and Cli­mate Change in Lon­don on 6th Decem­ber at 2.00 pm. Mem­bers of Stop Hink­ley will be accom­pa­nied by Wells MP Tes­sa Munt and Green Par­ty leader and MP Car­o­line Lucas. The Depart­ment of Ener­gy is at 3 White­hall Place, Lon­don SW1A 2AW. More infor­ma­tion in the Stop Hink­ley press release at http://stopnuclearpoweruk.net/content/stop-hinkley-campaign-presents-petition-government-against-edf%E2%80%99s-nuclear-plans.

Wylfa

Things are also hot­ting up at Wyl­fa, where Hori­zon, a joint ven­ture of Ger­man util­i­ty com­pa­nies RWE and E.on, is plan­ning to build two to three new nuclear reac­tors. Hori­zon con­tin­ue to bul­ly the Jones fam­i­ly of Caerde­gog and have applied for com­pul­so­ry pow­ers to ascer­tain the suit­abil­i­ty of their land for con­struc­tion. Hori­zon Nuclear Pow­er (HNP) recent­ly applied to Ofgem for Sec­tion D of their Elec­tric­i­ty Gen­er­a­tion Licence to be “switched on”. Imme­di­ate­ly upon approval, HNP applied to Ofgem for con­sent to exer­cise their new explorato­ry rights under the Elec­tric­i­ty Act 1989. This would allow a gen­er­a­tion licence hold­er to enter and sur­vey any land to estab­lish whether it would be suit­able for the con­struc­tion of an elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion sta­tion. It would also give them the pow­er to exe­cute their author­i­ty to make com­pul­so­ry land pur­chase. On Thurs­day after­noon 17th Novem­ber, Richard Jones and his fam­i­ly received a let­ter in Eng­lish only from Ofgem inform­ing them of the rights recent­ly grant­ed to HNP to gain access to their land at Caerde­gog. Ofgem have failed in their duty under the Welsh Lan­guage Act to pro­vide the Jones fam­i­ly with the doc­u­ments in their own lan­guage. Fur­ther­more it is con­sid­ered unrea­son­able for any objec­tions to be lodged with­in a time lim­it of five work­ing days espe­cial­ly in view of the legal con­tent of the cor­re­spon­dence (see the offi­cial con­sul­ta­tion at http://www.ofgem.gov.uk/Pages/MoreInformation.aspx?file=Consultation%20on%20Horizon%20Application%20for%20Consent%20to%20use%20Exploratory%20Rights.pdf&refer=Licensing/Work).
Hori­zon have con­tin­ued to say that they would only use com­pul­so­ry pow­ers as a last resort yet they exe­cut­ed their new­ly acquired author­i­ty with­in days of it being grant­ed.
On behalf of the fam­i­ly, Richard Jones said: “We as a fam­i­ly will resist Horizon’s bul­ly­ing tac­tics in the attempt­ed destruc­tion of our her­itage, our liveli­hood and our future.”
See the press release of Peo­ple Against Wyl­fa B at http://stopnuclearpoweruk.net/content/nuclear-monster-continues-torment-local-family.

Donate

The new action to sur­round Hink­ley, and the 24 hour block­ade, will need a lot of mon­ey to make them hap­pen. While we don’t start with noth­ing, we are nowhere near what we will need. We are present­ly work­ing on a bud­get, but one thing is clear: Please give gen­er­ous­ly. You can donate online at http://stopnewnuclear.org.uk/donate, or you can send a cheque made payable to Stop New Nuclear to:
Stop New Nuclear
c/o 5 Cale­don­ian Road
Lon­don N1 9DX
Thank you!

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