Philippines anti-mining action

7.7.11 — 30 com­mu­nist rebels torch Philex Mining’s vehi­cles, bunk house

At least 30 com­mu­nist rebels raid­ed on Wednes­day after­noon the com­pound of Philex Min­ing Com­pa­ny in Barangay (vil­lage) Nab­u­lao, Sipalay City in Negros Occi­den­tal.

7.7.11 — 30 com­mu­nist rebels torch Philex Mining’s vehi­cles, bunk house

At least 30 com­mu­nist rebels raid­ed on Wednes­day after­noon the com­pound of Philex Min­ing Com­pa­ny in Barangay (vil­lage) Nab­u­lao, Sipalay City in Negros Occi­den­tal.

No shot was fired but the New People’s Army (NPA) rebels burned the firm’s three vehi­cles and bunk house and took six shot­guns of their secu­ri­ty guards, mil­i­tary and police offi­cials said.

This was the sec­ond time in three years that the NPA attacked Philex Min­ing. In 2008, com­mu­nist rebels torched mil­lions of pesos worth of mine drilling and heavy equip­ment as well as the bar­racks of the work­ers.

Lt. Col. Rodri­go Sos­me­na, 47th Infantry Bat­tal­ion com­man­der, said about 30 armed rebels swooped down on the min­ing com­pound, dis­armed guards of their ser­vice firearms and three hand held radios, at the their out­post locat­ed about three kilo­me­ters away from the com­pound.

The rebels, believed to be mem­bers of the Arman­do Sumayang Com­mand, also torched a car­go truck rent­ed by the min­ing firm, as well as a bunk house of the guards and work­ers.

The rebels also burned down a Kia Rio car and lat­er com­man­deered the company’s ser­vice pick­up vehi­cle, said Supt. Milko Lirazan, direc­tor of the 6th Region­al Pub­lic Safe­ty Bat­tal­ion.

The rebels lat­er with­drew towards the Philex air­port site and burned the pick-up before flee­ing in unknown direc­tions, he added.

The police had yet to deter­mine the extent of the dam­age, said Lizaran.

Sos­me­na said his troops were still track­ing down the per­pe­tra­tors as of Wednes­day night.

The rebels con­duct­ed the raid in line with the cam­paign of priest-turned-rebel leader Frank Fer­nan­dez to enforce a rev­o­lu­tion­ary pol­i­cy of com­plete­ly ban­ning “destruc­tive” min­ing oper­a­tions and explo­rations on Negros Island.

In late 2010, com­mu­nist rebels raid­ed the Mar­i­calum Min­ing Com­pa­ny com­pound in Barangay San Jose, Sipalay City, and took 20 firearms from secu­ri­ty guards and two police­men who respond­ed to the raid, police records showed.

But ILt. Rey Bal­ibagoso, 47th IB Civ­il Mil­i­tary Oper­a­tions offi­cer, said the NPA was just try­ing to project the raid as an anti-min­ing oper­a­tion to cov­er up for its motive to extort mon­ey from the min­ing firm.

He said the attack was aimed force the min­ing firm to pay rev­o­lu­tion­ary tax­es.

http://signalfire.org/?p=12134

The swoop cometh! Glos eco-village:meeting list.

Greet­ings all,

The begin­ning is nigh…

Hope­ful­ly this will be the last meet­ing list, so the next thing you’ll hear from us will be the swoop info.. any­one want­i­ng to help out with the swoop, on the day- please get in con­tact now… Oth­er­wise you’ll only be giv­en short notice as to the date/location etc…

Greet­ings all,

The begin­ning is nigh…

Hope­ful­ly this will be the last meet­ing list, so the next thing you’ll hear from us will be the swoop info.. any­one want­i­ng to help out with the swoop, on the day- please get in con­tact now… Oth­er­wise you’ll only be giv­en short notice as to the date/location etc…

We could do with a few more peo­ple on the ground, with a knowl­edge of the area to help out on the day- So get in touch if you would­n’t mind help­ing to guide peo­ple in, and with some of the organ­i­sa­tion­al aspects on the day and short­ly before the swoop.

I’ll need some help get­ting the mes­sage out a few days before- spread­ing the news through activist networks/list and via SM…

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Wednes­day 13th Glouces­ter @ 1:30pm, Meet in Glouces­ter City, pub or park!
Web 13th… For­est of Dean @ 3pm — Off to the For­est of Dean for a for­age-about and nature walk. We’ll try to spot some Deer, or Wild­boar, as we dis­cuss the project.
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Sat­ur­day 16th Glouces­ter City @ 1:30pm — A con­tin­u­a­tion of last months gueril­la gar­den­ing [see http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/06/480854.html ] weath­er per­mit­ting- if not, we’ll go to a park or pub for the meet­ing.
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Wednes­day 20th West Lon­don, var­i­ous sites @ times tba — Net­work­ing with oth­er eco-vil­lages, recruit­ing some extra hands for the day. Core groups mem­bers, want­i­ng to move over short­ly before the swoop of the main site- will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do so then. These peo­ple will then be able to help oth­er mem­bers of the core group, with any geographic/logistical ques­tions that arise on the day. (it is easy to get lost, round ‘ere)
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Get in touch for fur­ther details, and con­tact info…

Oth­er news…
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Rad­i­cal Artists call-out… Any artists/ painters/ decorators/ spray-painter­s/ Art teach­ers want­i­ng to take the class out and do some­thing exciting/ any oth­er cre­ative­ly mind­ed peo­ple at all, want­i­ng to help turn an ugly, unloved space into a vibrant and beau­ti­ful free­space, WE NEED YOUR HELP. Email the address giv­en with “rad­i­cal artist here” (or some­thing sim­i­lar) in your emails title, and come down to help us bring some col­or to an oth­er­wise drea­ry area.
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A plan to join forces with some of the more active wood­land pro­tec­tion cam­paign­ers around Glouces­ter­shire is cur­rent­ly being worked on. Any­one net­worked with local or nation­al wildlife pro­tec­tion groups, for­est con­ser­va­tion activists ‑not of the arm­chair vari­ety- or any oth­er rad­i­cal tree-top-camper, please put me in touch with them regard­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­tect an area of mixed/native wood­land from fur­ther felling.
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I’ve start­ed set­ting up a social media type web­site to allow peo­ple already involved, or inter­est­ed in this project and oth­ers sim­i­lar in nature, to com­mu­ni­cate, share knowl­edge, net­work and col­lab­o­rate on projects ‑it’ll have a forum, media/file shar­ing, wiki, subgroups/ friends fea­tures. I’m look­ing for any­one inter­est­ed in help­ing out with this, I’ve got every­thing I need bar enough time to get a work­able beta up-and-run­ning any-time close to the swoop, so if you’d like to get involved ‑as much, or as lit­tle as you can- drop me an email.
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Peace and Love,

Apok
admin [AT]] apokaluptein [dot]] org [dot]] uk

Mobile Guerilla Garden

A con­voy of shop­ping trol­lies plant­ed up with veg­eta­bles and flow­ers sal­vaged from a demol­ished com­mu­ni­ty gar­den back in May took to the streets of Brighton on Sat­ur­day (July 9).

A con­voy of shop­ping trol­lies plant­ed up with veg­eta­bles and flow­ers sal­vaged from a demol­ished com­mu­ni­ty gar­den back in May took to the streets of Brighton on Sat­ur­day (July 9). Shop­pers were encour­aged to grow their own and sup­port local inde­pen­dent gro­cers and boy­cott Tesco and Sains­buries who are tak­ing over the city cen­tre in a super­mar­ket war.

The Mound com­mu­ni­ty gar­den — 15 veg beds — was destroyed by Lit­tle­hamp­ton-based devel­op­ers Har­g­reaves ltd on May 19. They cyn­i­cal­ly avoid­ed all con­tact with gar­den­ers, ignored clear­ly sign­post­ed wildlife con­ser­va­tion areas and actu­al­ly dug over a pond con­tain­ing newts and tad­poles.

Out of all this the Mound gar­den­ers col­lec­tive have stayed togeth­er and kept var­i­ous plants and flow­ers saved from the gar­den which are now being stored in the mobile trol­lies at a secret loca­tion.

Sat­ur­day’s action was in sup­port of the Wild­catz Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre — a recentl­ly occu­pied emp­ty mobile phone shop which is now a free caff & shop/debating & anti-cuts cham­ber — and the No More Super­mar­kets in Kemp­town cam­paign.

After a pit­stop out­side the Churchill Sq-based Wild­catz the trol­lies — sev­en in all — dodged their way through crowd­ed high streets to the new­ly opened Sains­buries in Kemp­town where a pro-local food and anti-super­mar­ket demo took place for the rest of the after­noon.

The gar­den­ers are call­ing for Brighton’s ‘green’ coun­cil to put their mon­ey where their mouth is and with­draw Har­g­reaves plan­ning per­mis­sion and in doing so pro­mote green spaces in city cen­tres

Peo­ple before Prof­its Gar­dens before Super­mar­kets!
http://brighton-mound.org.uk/

Stokes Croft Freeshop Eviction

7th July 2011

The pop­u­lar squat­ted Freeshop and attached Empo­ri­um Gallery on Stokes Croft were evict­ed this morn­ing. Bailiffs entered the build­ing with sledge­ham­mers at around 6am, sur­pris­ing the occu­pants, and had man­aged to secure the build­ing before sup­port arrived.

7th July 2011

The pop­u­lar squat­ted Freeshop and attached Empo­ri­um Gallery on Stokes Croft were evict­ed this morn­ing. Bailiffs entered the build­ing with sledge­ham­mers at around 6am, sur­pris­ing the occu­pants, and had man­aged to secure the build­ing before sup­port arrived.

One occu­pant was arrest­ed inside the build­ing. The rest were allowed to leave with a sin­gle per­son­al bag each. Bailiffs, with the full sup­port of the police, then refused to fetch a bag con­tain­ing vital doc­u­ments for an occu­pant who had been out at the time. One sup­port­er was arrest­ed for hold­ing up a ban­ner out­side, and the ban­ner was con­fis­cat­ed. The arrestee was man­han­dled by an unbadged stew­ard from Delta Secu­ri­ty, and peo­ple attempt­ing to help or advise were threat­ened with batons and pushed into the road. Police also pre­vent­ed a pass­ing traf­fic war­den from tick­et­ing the ille­gal­ly-parked Sitex vehi­cles near­by.

The build­ing has now been ful­ly evict­ed, but the project will con­tin­ue in a new space, and plans to buy the build­ing may still go ahead. Both arrestees have been tak­en to Trin­i­ty Sta­tion, and we’ve made sure they have access to solic­i­tors. Par­ties direct­ly involved in the evic­tion seem to be the local Coun­ty Court Bailiffs, Delta Secu­ri­ty (not sure exact­ly who as SIA badges hid­den), local police, and our old friends Sitex Orbis.

The Age of Evictions … and Resistance!

Two dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties. One liv­ing in Clifton Man­sions, an inner city block of long term squat­ted flats in Brix­ton, south Lon­don.

Two dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties. One liv­ing in Clifton Man­sions, an inner city block of long term squat­ted flats in Brix­ton, south Lon­don. The oth­er made of 90 fam­i­lies part of the UK’s largest Trav­eller com­mu­ni­ty in Dale Farm, a for­mer scrap-yard pur­chased by the Trav­ellers ten years ago near Basil­don, Essex.

They both now face one com­mon prob­lem: the threat of evic­tion. Dale Far­m’s long bat­tle has now reached a crit­i­cal point as Basil­don coun­cil yes­ter­day served a final notice of evic­tion giv­ing fam­i­lies until mid­night on August 31st to aban­don their homes. The com­mu­ni­ty of squat­ters of Clifton Man­sions have learnt that the police is plan­ning to block off Brix­ton’s Cold­har­bour Lane on Tues­day 12 July to enforce the evic­tion of all the peo­ple liv­ing in the 22 flats.

See calls from both com­mu­ni­ties for sol­i­dar­i­ty in resist­ing the planned evic­tions: Clifton Man­sions | Dale Farm

Clifton Man­sions:

Clifton Man­sions On Cold­har­bour Lane is a com­mu­ni­ty of squat­ters in the heart of Brix­ton. Squat­ted since the 1990’s the 22 flats are home to a large and diverse group of peo­ple. The res­i­dents have repaired and main­tained the prop­er­ties after Lam­beth Coun­cil left them emp­ty and neglect­ed. Clus­tered around a cen­tral court­yard Clifton Man­sions is a safe and vibrant com­mu­ni­ty where vio­lence and abuse are not tol­er­at­ed.

On Tues­day 12 July 2011 the police plan to block off Cold­har­bour Lane and enforce the evic­tion of all the peo­ple liv­ing in Clifton Man­sions. Mak­ing the aston­ish­ing claim that evict­ing Clifton Man­sions will some­how solve the prob­lem of drug crime in Brix­ton, the police failed to con­sult with local coun­cil­lors before push­ing ahead with this plan. Clifton Man­sions res­i­dents have received only two weeks notice that they are to be evict­ed from their homes.

Fol­low­ing the evic­tions, Lam­beth Coun­cil will pay Camelot, a pri­vate com­pa­ny, to pro­vide “live-in guardians” to occu­py Clifton Man­sions. The squat­ters have been pro­vid­ing a free guardian ser­vice for years. Why make peo­ple home­less and then pay a multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny to occu­py their homes?

Even­tu­al­ly Lam­beth wants to sell Clifton Man­sions to prop­er­ty devel­op­ers, fur­ther reduc­ing Lam­beth’s social hous­ing stock in cen­tral Brix­ton. Clifton Man­sions will be turned into lux­u­ry flats priced well beyond the means of the local com­mu­ni­ty.

Please con­tact the coun­cil and the police to let them know what you think.

Show your sup­port on evic­tion day:
12 July – 8am – Clifton Man­sions – 429 Cold­har­bour Lane

They’re clos­ing the street so lets have a par­ty!

Dale Farm:

Dale Farm, in Crays Hill, Essex, is the UK’s largest Trav­ellers’ com­mu­ni­ty, con­sist­ing of near­ly a hun­dred sep­a­rate prop­er­ties, lying well out­side the vil­lage and made up of extend­ed fam­i­ly plots or yards.

Most are owned by Trav­ellers of Irish her­itage, although some Romani fam­i­lies also own yards. The estate is divid­ed in two sec­tions, the front part (about 45 plots) has plan­ning per­mis­sion; while the back part (52 plots) despite numer­ous appli­ca­tions and appeals, has been refused plan­ning con­sent, even though the site was pre­vi­ous­ly a dis­used scrap yard! 90% of trav­eller plan­ning appli­ca­tions are ini­tial­ly reject­ed com­pared to 20% over­all.

Cav­ing in to racial prej­u­dice, Basil­don Dis­trict Coun­cil (BDC) has set aside 9.2 mil­lion pounds to demol­ish the homes in the back 52 plots and have asked the Home Office for 10 mil­lion more. This could hap­pen as ear­ly as June. We view the destruc­tion of half this com­mu­ni­ty as eth­nic cleans­ing.

The plan­ning his­to­ry of the area has shown that the site had been used with­out plan­ning per­mis­sion since ear­ly 1990’s for a vari­ety of indus­tri­al uses. In 1992 BDC issued Enforce­ment Notices against var­i­ous unau­tho­rised com­mer­cial activ­i­ties that were being pur­sued on the site. Part of the land at the east side of the site was pre­vi­ous­ly the sub­ject of two tem­po­rary con­sents for the break­ing of motor vehi­cles, sale of vehi­cle parts and deal­ing in scrap met­als. This use ceased fol­low­ing the vaca­tion of the?land by the busi­ness pro­pri­etors in 2001.

When the unau­tho­rised devel­op­ment of the appli­ca­tion site first came to the Council’s atten­tion in Sep­tem­ber 2003, the land to the east of the site had been used as a scrap yard from 1978 until 2001 under a per­mis­sion grant­ed by the Coun­cil to be used as such. If an excep­tion was allowed for the scrap met­al yard, sure­ly an excep­tion can be made for a vul­ner­a­ble minor­i­ty group to con­tin­ue to live there, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en that many of them have already been through trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ences of forced evic­tion.

In May 2005, the BDC vot­ed to take direct action, set­ting aside some three mil­lion euro for an evic­tion and demo­li­tion oper­a­tion. Res­i­dents sought a Judi­cial Review of this deci­sion and won in the High Court. This judg­ment was over­turned by the Court of Appeal on 22 Jan­u­ary 2009. An appeal to the House of Lords was denied on 14 May 2009. After exten­sive research into the needs of Trav­ellers and Gyp­sies in the UK, on 20 July the Depart­ment for Com­mu­ni­ties and Local Gov­ern­ment informed BDC and the Gip­sy Coun­cil that the Dis­trict Coun­cil is required to pro­vide suf­fi­cient land for 62 (six­ty two) addi­tion­al pitch­es. This require­ment can be eas­i­ly met by BDC if it decides to grant plan­ning per­mis­sion for the 52 (fifty two) unau­tho­rised pitch­es already in exis­tence at Dale Farm.

As men­tioned before, the main desire of the fam­i­lies is to not move from Dale Farm; they wish to get plan­ning per­mis­sion for per­ma­nent res­i­dence to con­tin­ue liv­ing in the site they pri­vate­ly own.

We say no to home demo­li­tions, and no to eth­nic cleans­ing!

Countering the GM come back summer camp

Bring your stove and tent for an anti-GM week­end. Fri 22nd pm: Camp­ing avail­able. Sat 23rd: Deliv­er­ing a trail­er load of organ­ic spuds to the doors of the John Innes Cen­tre in protest at GM pota­to tri­als there. Sun 24th: a day-long plan­ning ses­sion: GM is com­ing back – we’ll be ready. See below for more infor­ma­tion.

Bring your stove and tent for an anti-GM week­end. Fri 22nd pm: Camp­ing avail­able. Sat 23rd: Deliv­er­ing a trail­er load of organ­ic spuds to the doors of the John Innes Cen­tre in protest at GM pota­to tri­als there. Sun 24th: a day-long plan­ning ses­sion: GM is com­ing back – we’ll be ready. See below for more infor­ma­tion.

The Spuds Don’t Work ral­ly, Sat­ur­day 23rd July

British tri­als of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied blight resis­tant spuds have been fail­ing for the last ten years. But a con­ven­tion­al­ly bred vari­ety of blight resis­tant pota­to has been avail­able for 3 years. So why are we still pay­ing for this dan­ger­ous exper­i­ment?

Come ride with us on the back of a trail­er load of safe effec­tive spuds as we go to deliv­er them to the Sains­bury Lab­o­ra­to­ry out­side Nor­wich. It’s one of only two pos­si­ble open air tri­als for GM crops in Britain this year. Yet despite being pub­licly fund­ed, it’s so secre­tive no one will even say if it’s been plant­ed. Join us for tunes, chips and good cheer as we go and show them that we have already got the answers they say they’re look­ing for.

Prac­ti­cal details

Meet at the Forum in Nor­wich City Cen­tre at 12 noon for free chips and fun. We will set off from there to the John Innes Research Cen­tre by bike, trac­tor and coach at 1pm. Bring water­proofs and umbrel­las! If you would like to trav­el from town to the John Innes Cen­tre by coach or if you want help find­ing accom­mo­da­tion (camp­ing or oth­er­wise) get in touch as soon as you can, and by Fri­day 15th July at the lat­est. Con­tact info@stopgm.org.uk

Camp­ing

Camp­ing is avail­able at the Nor­folk Show­ground on the 22nd and 23rd July. Camp­ing will be in the Red Car Park (note the Coun­try Music Fes­ti­val is tak­ing part in the main show­ground). There will be access to toi­lets and drink­ing water. Arrive after 4pm on Fri­day 22nd. Red car park is to the east of the Park and Ride.
Bus: you can catch the Costessey Park and Ride to the Park and Ride itself (Mon-Fri). This ser­vice takes 20 mins and runs approx. every 20 mins from the bus sta­tion run­ning via the uni­ver­si­ty. Alter­na­tive­ly catch Kon­nect bus 4 from the bus sta­tion and ask for the Show­ground. This ser­vice runs approx. every 25 min­utes. Bus­es run reg­u­lar­ly between the train and bus sta­tion in Nor­wich.

Coun­ter­ing the GM come back sum­mer camp
Sun­day 24th July, 2011

A day long camp to get pro­duc­tive and plan the next stages of the cam­paign. Camp­ing spaces avail­able from Fri­day after­noon. Come equipped with a stove and food for self-cater­ing. The site is five min­utes from a reg­u­lar bus route to the city cen­tre. Con­tact info@stopgm.org.uk as soon as pos­si­ble and by Fri­day 15th July at the lat­est to let us know you want camp­ing spaces reserved for you.

What we need…
…for both events…

You, and the peo­ple you know, and any­one you think might be inter­est­ed.

This project is being worked on by Stop GM in con­junc­tion with the Genet­ic Engi­neer­ing Net­work. Sev­er­al expe­ri­enced grass­roots cam­paign­ers will be work­ing on the project from now until the event, but we need help get­ting the word out. If you think you could help by dis­trib­ut­ing email infor­ma­tion about the event, drop­ping it about in any social media you may be involved in, let­ting your local grow­ing projects or social jus­tice groups know, dis­trib­ut­ing our ‘Lit­tle Red Trac­tor and the Quest of the GM-free Spuds’ leaflet or even orga­niz­ing a coach to attend from your area, we’d love to hear from you.

For more infor­ma­tion phone 07595 506673 or email info@stopgm.org.uk. Vis­it www.stopgm.org.uk for more back­ground infor­ma­tion on GM and cam­paign­ing against it in gen­er­al.

A tale of two spuds…
For the last 10 years, researchers at the Sains­bury lab­o­ra­to­ry at the John Innes Cen­tre in Nor­wich have spent 1.7 mil­lion pounds of pub­lic mon­ey fail­ing to devel­op a genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied pota­to resis­tant to the fun­gal dis­ease blight. This project is so secre­tive and unac­count­able that the lab­o­ra­to­ry has refused to even con­firm if a tri­al has been plant­ed this sea­son, or if they’ve been forced to aban­don any hopes of mak­ing the tech­nol­o­gy work. Pub­lic rejec­tion of the risks asso­ci­at­ed with eat­ing genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied food means that even if the engi­neer­ing involved was suc­cess­ful, there would be no mar­ket for the crop.

Mean­while, 3 years ago a small Welsh research char­i­ty ded­i­cat­ed to con­ven­tion­al breed­ing tech­niques devel­oped a spud that is spec­tac­u­lar­ly resis­tant to blight. Not only does the crop pose no threat to health, the envi­ron­ment, or neigh­bour­ing farm­ers; it works. Over 6 dif­fer­ent vari­eties are now avail­able, and being grown on a com­mer­cial scale.

The ratio­nale

The cam­paign against GM crops ten years ago was so suc­cess­ful that GM almost com­plete­ly van­ished from our fields and super­mar­kets, and many peo­ple have for­got­ten the issues asso­ci­at­ed with the tech­nol­o­gy. But in many oth­er parts of the world peas­ant farm­ers have been des­per­ate­ly fight­ing its spread, and laws are chang­ing in Europe that would make it much eas­i­er for GM to be grown in Britain. Despite pre-elec­tion promis­es to the con­trary the coali­tion claims it intends to be ‘the most pro GM this coun­try has ever seen’.

Let’s call time on an out­mod­ed tech­nol­o­gy that con­tin­ues to waste mon­ey in fail­ing projects, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly threat­en­ing the very sci­ence that’s actu­al­ly pro­duc­ing work­ing alter­na­tives quick­ly and cheap­ly. For too long the biotech com­pa­nies have gone unchal­lenged in their claims that GM can
cre­ate gen­uine­ly use­ful crops when in fact all the sig­nif­i­cant advance­ments in the last decade have come through con­ven­tion­al breed­ing.

With the renewed threat of GM on the hori­zon cam­paign­ers need to get togeth­er again to show the rest of the coun­try (and each oth­er) that we’re still here, and we’ve got an even bet­ter case than ever. This is a chance to take the ini­tia­tive with the media, to tell a sto­ry which explains clear­ly and prac­ti­cal­ly why the pro GM lob­by is wrong. That it’s us, and not the cor­po­ra­tions that have the answers to the food cri­sis.

For more infor­ma­tion please check this brief­ing writ­ten to help peo­ple object to the pro­posed field tri­al of GM http://www.gmfreeze.org/publications/briefings/99/ and how to get hold of the solu­tion www.sarvari-trust.org.

Stop GM
info@stopgm.org.uk
www.stopgm.org.uk

Activists temporarily halt work at Huntington Lane

On Tues­day 5th July activists from the Telford no new coal (aka Defend Hunt­ing­ton Lane) protest site halt­ed ear­ly morn­ing oper­a­tions by storm­ing the open cast mine. Two pro­test­ers dead locked on to heavy plant machin­ery, dis­rupt­ing the destruc­tion caused by them. Activists have been on the site for 15 months and are await­ing evic­tion papers.

On Tues­day 5th July activists from the Telford no new coal (aka Defend Hunt­ing­ton Lane) protest site halt­ed ear­ly morn­ing oper­a­tions by storm­ing the open cast mine. Two pro­test­ers dead locked on to heavy plant machin­ery, dis­rupt­ing the destruc­tion caused by them. Activists have been on the site for 15 months and are await­ing evic­tion papers. The camp is sit­u­at­ed in what would be the road between the cur­rent mine site to anoth­er, and in an area of nat­ur­al beau­ty

https://wmclimateaction.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/activists-temporarily-halt-work/

More environment protests in Inner Mongolia

Chi­nese Mon­go­lians protest again, herders beat­en-rights group

BEIJING, June 30 (Reuters) – Chi­nese police beat up and detained eth­nic Mon­go­lian herders who protest­ed over the week­end against pol­lu­tion caused by a lead mine, an over­seas rights group said on Thurs­day, in the lat­est unrest to strike China’s remote Inner Mon­go­lia.

Chi­nese Mon­go­lians protest again, herders beat­en-rights group

BEIJING, June 30 (Reuters) – Chi­nese police beat up and detained eth­nic Mon­go­lian herders who protest­ed over the week­end against pol­lu­tion caused by a lead mine, an over­seas rights group said on Thurs­day, in the lat­est unrest to strike China’s remote Inner Mon­go­lia.

The New York-based South­ern Mon­go­lian Human Rights Infor­ma­tion Cen­tre said the protest was sparked this month in Inner Mongolia’s Bayan­nu­ur after a lead mine expand­ed onto a piece of graz­ing land.

“After repeat­ed­ly peti­tion­ing the (local) gov­ern­ments express­ing their con­cerns regard­ing the dan­ger to their envi­ron­ment and health with no sat­is­fac­to­ry response, on June 24 … frus­trat­ed herders marched to the area of the mine and shut down the mine’s water pump,” the group said in an emailed state­ment.

“On June 25, the (local) gov­ern­ment mobi­lized more than 50 riot police and attacked the pro­test­ers. Many herders were beat­en severe­ly and tak­en away by police. Their health con­di­tion and sta­tus are unknown as of the date of this report,” it added.

An offi­cial reached by tele­phone at the Bayan­nu­ur gov­ern­ment said he had not heard of any protests, and declined fur­ther com­ment. Calls to the lead mine went unan­swered.

Bayan­nu­ur, more than 400 km (300 miles) north­east of Bei­jing, has been home to a lead mine since 1978, accord­ing to the Inner Mon­go­lia gov­ern­ment.

The vast north­ern region of Inner Mon­go­lia was rocked by protests last month sparked by the death of an eth­nic Mon­go­lian herder who was hit and killed by a truck after tak­ing part in protests against pol­lu­tion caused by a coal mine.

Angry eth­nic Mon­go­lians took to the streets across Inner Mon­go­lia demand­ing bet­ter pro­tec­tion of the envi­ron­ment as well as their rights and tra­di­tions.

This month, a court in Inner Mon­go­lia ordered the exe­cu­tion of a man for mur­der­ing the herder.

Bei­jing, ever wor­ried by threats to sta­bil­i­ty, is try­ing to address some of the pro­test­ers’ broad­er con­cerns about the dam­age done by coal min­ing to tra­di­tion­al graz­ing lands.

The author­i­ties have launched a month-long over­haul of the lucra­tive coal min­ing indus­try, vow­ing to clean up or close pol­luters.

Eth­nic Mon­go­lians, who make up less than 20 per­cent of the rough­ly 24 mil­lion pop­u­la­tion of Inner Mon­go­lia, have com­plained that their tra­di­tion­al graz­ing lands have been ruined by min­ing and deser­ti­fi­ca­tion, and that the gov­ern­ment has tried to force them to set­tle in per­ma­nent hous­es.

http://signalfire.org/?p=11963

ITALY : Repression against NO TAV movement & No TAV press conference

4 july 2011

4 july 2011
After a crowd­ed torch­light march on the night between June 26th and 27th, the Free Repub­lic of the Mad­dale­na in Pied­mont was bru­tal­ly assault­ed by a full-scale mil­i­tary oper­a­tion per­formed by around 2000 forces that turned the place into a bat­tle site : tear­gas thrown at eye lev­el, bull­doz­ers and heavy vehi­cles used to evict the camp, water jets against pro­test­ers, beat­ings, tents and equip­ment smashed up. In the near­by town of Venar­ia, a riot police vehi­cle on its way to the site ran over and killed “by mis­take” an elder­ly woman. Demon­stra­tions, pick­ets and sev­er­al oth­er ini­tia­tives were organ­ised all over Italy to show sol­i­dar­i­ty with the NO TAV move­ment that for years has been fight­ing against the con­struc­tion of a high speed train line between Turin and Lyon in France. A nation­al demo was called out for today 3rd July, and it’s still going on as I’m writ­ing this. It’s about 8.40pm and it’s dif­fi­cult to have a clear idea of what’s been hap­pen­ing at the Mad­dale­na today, but what is clear is that there have been hun­dreds of peo­ple injured on both sides (but it’s only one side that I care about). Police have been using rub­ber bul­lets and at least one young man is seri­ous­ly injured after being shot in the face. Pro­test­ers have com­pared the mil­i­tary oper­a­tion to the repres­sion in Palestine…check out some of the videos to make your mind up : video 1, video 2,video 3 (and more on the same web­site).

The Val di Susa (Susa Val­ley) has been one of the most impor­tant polit­i­cal cam­paigns of the last few years, organ­is­ing resis­tance and fight­ing to pro­tect the local ter­ri­to­ry and the locals’ health, that gov­ern­ments and com­pa­nies would like to sac­ri­fice once more in the name of prof­it. The TAV project (where TAV stands for High Speed Train) is basi­cal­ly a trans­fer of pub­lic mon­ey to a group of pri­vate com­pa­nies unit­ed under the name Impregi­lo – mul­ti­mil­lion­aire com­pa­nies such as FIAT, Benet­ton and oth­ers. After con­struc­tion, these com­pa­nies would be allowed to set up and run their own pri­vate rail ser­vice in com­pe­ti­tion with the State Rail­ways (just in case they didn’t make enough mon­ey already). Despite not being fin­ished yet, the busi­ness enter­prise has already earned its con­trac­tors (all of which are mil­lion­aire busi­ness­men) a very high income.

Sources for this arti­cle : Indy­media Pied­mont and the new Italy Indy­media site. Cool post­card images also found on Indy­media sites – thank you unknown artists !

https://madrid.indymedia.org/node/17884

http://italycalling.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/brief-history-of-the-no-tav-movement/

————–
NO TAV press con­fer­ence – “This is the people’s resis­tance”

In the midst of the riot porn that can be found on the inter­net about the NO TAV protests of Sun­day 3 July – and that I’m not going to post here because a) you can find it any­where and b) you can have too much of it – I’ve found a sto­ry that I think is much more impor­tant. On the Mon­day after the protests, the NO TAV net­work held a press con­fer­ence in Chiomonte. So what?, you might ask. Well, it could’ve been a dis­as­ter. In 2001, after the fero­cious state vio­lence of the G8 sum­mit in Genoa, the Genoa Social Forum made the big mis­take of retreat­ing: instead of stay­ing unit­ed, some groups left the alliance, oth­ers stayed but dis­tanced them­selves from the “bad pro­test­ers” (name­ly the Black Block) and blamed them for the vio­lent reac­tion of the police. The State, the police and the media had won their war: they had want­ed to tear the move­ment apart and they suc­ceed­ed. So, you can imag­ine what a joy it was for me to read the NO TAV net­work state­ments:

“It wasn’t the Black Block, it was just peo­ple, and the major­i­ty of them locals. We came pre­pared with hel­mets and masks after what hap­pened on the 27th June (see my pre­vi­ous arti­cle), but we came with bare hands. After the police start­ed attack­ing us with tear­gas, stones and water jets, we defend­ed our­selves in any way we could. We couldn’t do any­thing else”, declared Mau­r­izio Pic­cione, who opened the con­fer­ence. Anoth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tive said “Pop­u­lar resis­tance is our way of doing things. The only accu­sa­tion we will agree with is that we resist­ed against a sit­u­a­tion that wasn’t cre­at­ed by us. The Black Block is being used as a scape­goat, because peo­ple can’t accept the fact that a whole val­ley wants to resist. We must thank the Val­susa res­i­dents for resist­ing, and we’re proud of this”.

The peo­ple’s Resis­tance in the Susa Val­ley

Despite it being a press con­fer­ence, the mar­quee was crowd­ed with about 50 peo­ple, not just rep­re­sen­ta­tives and del­e­gates of the dif­fer­ent groups, but also peo­ple who want­ed to tell their ver­sion of the sto­ry. When a jour­nal­ist of the right wing paper Sec­o­lo XIX asked about the Black Block, a per­son just replied “I was there and I’m not the Black Block”. The jour­nal­ist was chal­lenged and final­ly left the con­fer­ence. Oth­er jour­nal­ists left “in sol­i­dar­i­ty” with their col­league. Gone for­ev­er are those times when jour­nal­ists in Italy (or any oth­er coun­try) would lit­er­al­ly risk their lives to speak The Truth. Now they just mouth the words of those who stuff their mouths with gold.

The Catholic groups in the No TAV alliance crit­i­cised Susa’s local bish­op for clos­ing down the cathe­dral and obey­ing the prefect’s order of keep­ing the priests under him qui­et. A local wine farmer described his by-now dai­ly expe­ri­ence of hav­ing to trav­el into the mil­i­tarised ter­ri­to­ry to get to his vines. Every­one was unit­ed in their rage and out­rage at the lies per­pe­trat­ed by the media, and expressed sol­i­dar­i­ty and sym­pa­thy with the pro­test­ers injured and arrest­ed. At the moment there are 4 peo­ple still in prison – they were going to know today if their arrests would be con­firmed or not, but the meet­ing has been post­poned, so they’re still in. To send them cards and let­ters:

Mar­ta Bifani / Rober­to Nadali­ni / Sal­va­tore Soru / Gian­car­lo Fer­rari
Casa Cir­con­dar­i­ale Lorus­so Cutug­no
Via Pianez­za 300
10151 Tori­no
Italy

Looks like there’ll be a protest camp at the end of July and an inter­na­tion­al one in August, so…stay tuned!

Arti­cle based on this text - if you under­stand Ital­ian you can watch some videos of the press con­fer­ence. This is a good web­site in gen­er­al, and it’s got a page with Eng­lish trans­la­tions, so take a look!

Translated by Italy Calling

Stop New Nuclear newsletter no 1, July 2011

Wel­come to Stop New Nuclear’s first newslet­ter. You receive this newslet­ter because you have signed one of the pledges, or you signed up to the newslet­ter. Thank you for this.

We plan to send a newslet­ter to all pledgers and newslet­ter sub­scribers about once a month, and pos­si­bly more fre­quent­ly in the weeks before the block­ade. Feel free to share and dis­trib­ute this newslet­ter.

Wel­come to Stop New Nuclear’s first newslet­ter. You receive this newslet­ter because you have signed one of the pledges, or you signed up to the newslet­ter. Thank you for this.

We plan to send a newslet­ter to all pledgers and newslet­ter sub­scribers about once a month, and pos­si­bly more fre­quent­ly in the weeks before the block­ade. Feel free to share and dis­trib­ute this newslet­ter.

Stop New Nuclear, an alliance of eight anti-nuclear groups com­mit­ted to pre­vent­ing the fur­ther expan­sion of the nuclear pow­er indus­try in the UK was formed in May 2011. The plan for our first action, the blockad­ing of Hink­ley Point nuclear pow­er sta­tion on 3 Octo­ber is pro­gress­ing well, and we already have a site for a camp (not far from Hink­ley Point), and peo­ple work­ing on trans­port and local accom­mo­da­tion for peo­ple who are unable or unwill­ing to camp. There is still a lot to do, but there is also a com­mit­ted team in place around Hink­ley Point work­ing on it.

Since the pub­li­ca­tion of our call-out in late May, we have received about 100 pledges in total, of which more than 30 are blockad­ing pledges. This is a good start, but we need many more. We need to grow. Our vision is to block­ade Hink­ley Point nuclear pow­er sta­tions with hun­dreds of peo­ple, and we think we can achieve this, if we all work togeth­er. We still have three months.

Please con­tact as many of your friends and rel­a­tives as pos­si­ble and invite them to take part.

News about Hink­ley Point
EDF (Elec­tric­i­ty de France), the own­ers of Hink­ley Point, did put in an appli­ca­tion for pre­lim­i­nary works for its new nuclear pow­er sta­tion in late Novem­ber 2010,involving pre-con­struc­tion activ­i­ty across an area of more than 420 acres stretch­ing from the Sev­ern Estu­ary to the vil­lage of Shur­ton, fill­ing in a beau­ti­ful val­ley and even start­ing exca­va­tion of the pow­er sta­tion foun­da­tions down to a depth of up to 11 metres. It is still pos­si­ble to object to this plan­ning appli­ca­tion. The dead­line for objec­tions has been extend­ed to 28 July 2011. For more infor­ma­tion, go to Stop Hink­ley’s web­site at http://stophinkley.org/Temporary/31Jan2011.htm.

After the gov­ern­ment pub­lished the set of Nation­al Pol­i­cy State­ments on Ener­gy, includ­ing the one on nuclear pow­er gen­er­a­tion (see http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/meeting_energy/consents_planning/nps_en_infra/nps_en_infra.aspx), it is now up to par­lia­ment to approve them. It did not come as a sur­prise that the gov­ern­ment approved eight exist­ing nuclear sites for nuclear new build: Bradwell,Essex; Hartle­pool; Heysham, Lan­cashire; Hink­ley Point, Som­er­set; Old­bury, South Glouces­ter­shire; Sel­l­afield, Cum­bria; Sizewell, Suf­folk; and Wyl­fa in Angle­sey.

EDF announced that it aims to put in an appli­ca­tion for the nuclear pow­er sta­tion at Hink­ley Point to the Infra­struc­ture Plan­ning Com­mis­sion in Octo­ber. This shows how impor­tant it is that our block­ade on 3 Octo­ber is big enough to pro­vide a strong sig­nal to gov­ern­ment and EDF that we will not rest until they give up their plans for nuclear new build in this coun­try (and else­where).

Mobil­i­sa­tion
We need your help with the mobil­i­sa­tion for the block­ade. We have already dis­trib­uted near­ly 5,000 copies of the call-out (see http://stopnewnuclear.org.uk/node/10). We have just ordered a sec­ond print-run of 10,000 copies, and we need your help to get them out. Please let us know if you can help dis­trib­ute some, or go to a fes­ti­val this sum­mer where this might be appro­pri­ate, and we will send you as many as you need. If you can con­tribute to the expens­es for postage, that would be great, but more impor­tant is your help in get­ting the mes­sage out.

You can also help us by talk­ing to your local Friends of the Earth, Green­peace, Tran­si­tion Town, Peo­ple & Plan­et or any oth­er group that you think might be open to sup­port the block­ade. Asks them to sign the organ­i­sa­tion­al pledge (see http://stopnewnuclear.org.uk/pledges), or maybe even to organ­ise a group or minibus to go to par­tic­i­pate in the block­ade.

Train­ing
We have teamed up with Seeds for Change and Turn­ing the Tide to pro­vide train­ing for the block­ade. We are in the process of organ­is­ing train­ing days/afternoons/evenings in Bris­tol, York­shire, Wales, Lon­don, and Som­er­set, but this list is open-end­ed. You can help us by organ­is­ing a group and a venue for a train­ing in your area. If you have any ques­tions regard­ing train­ing, please get in touch.

Train­ing dates will be announced on the web­site. So please check back reg­u­lar­ly for updates.

What you can do
The cam­paign and the block­ade become pow­er­ful through your par­tic­i­pa­tion. You can help us by organ­is­ing an affin­i­ty group to take part in the block­ade (or to give sup­port), by mobil­is­ing in your com­mu­ni­ty, by organ­is­ing a train­ing, but also by reach­ing out to your local media about the dan­gers of nuclear pow­er and our cam­paign to stop new nuclear pow­er sta­tions in Britain.

On the week­end before and the day of the block­ade, we will need a lot of prac­ti­cal sup­port. Some of you have already kind­ly indi­cat­ed when you signed the pledge that you can help in var­i­ous ways. Thank you. When you arrive at the week­end camp or at the block­ade your sup­port will be invalu­able. If any­one else wants to help by wav­ing a plac­ard, help­ing with legal sup­port, help­ing out at the tea stall or by pro­vid­ing prac­ti­cal help with camp logis­tics, then just let us know.

Stop New Nuclear in the news
On 15 June, we sent out our first press release (see http://stopnewnuclear.org.uk/node/24). Since then, we have received more news cov­er­age than expect­ed, thanks part­ly to the gov­ern­men­t’s pub­li­ca­tion of the Nation­al Pol­i­cy State­ments on Ener­gy, and eight sites for nuclear new build. Stop New Nuclear was men­tioned on the BBC News web­site (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13887579), and in local media around Hink­ley Point
(see http://www.burnham-on-sea.com/news/2011/hinkley-selected-22–06-11.php, http://www.thisisthewestcountry.co.uk/news/somerset_news/9105147.Protesters_plan_Hinkley_Point_blockade/, http://www.thisissomerset.co.uk/Nuclear-plants-ahead-day-West-changed-forever/story-12826052-detail/story.html).
We also did a few inter­views for local radio. This is an encour­ag­ing start, more than three months before the action. You can check news cov­er­age about Stop New Nuclear at http://stopnewnuclear.org.uk/inthepress. Let us know if we missed any­thing.

Dona­tions!
We need them. We expect the cam­paign to cost about £10,000, of which we have been able to raise £2,000 until now. This means we need your help to raise the funds need­ed for this cam­paign — to cov­er for the fli­er, the camp logis­tics, trans­port, etc… Every dona­tion is wel­come — no mat­ter how small. Please send your dona­tion to:

Stop New Nuclear
c/o 5 Cale­don­ian Road
Lon­don N1 9DX

Or donate online at http://stopnewnuclear.org.uk/donate