Shell gas terminal blockaded, Bacton, Norfolk, UK 7am April 19th — updated

Sol­i­dar­i­ty with Pat O’Don­nell and against Shell on Earth!

Update:

Bacton Shell solidarity blockade 2010 #1Bacton Shell solidarity blockade 2010 #2Bacton Shell solidarity blockade 2010 #3Bacton 2010 Shell solidarity blockade 4Sol­i­dar­i­ty with Pat O’Don­nell and against Shell on Earth!

Update:

the road was closed off till 2pm, when peo­ple were removed and arrest­ed — sev­en peo­ple at the scene on sus­pi­cion of obstruct­ing the high­way, and three peo­ple have been sum­moned to appear in court at a lat­er date.

——-

Activists have today block­ad­ed the access to Bac­ton gas ter­mi­nal (1) on the North Nor­folk coast; the road is cur­rent­ly blocked by activists lying in the road attached to steel arm tubes and by a large steel tri­pod.

Bac­ton gas ter­mi­nal is the largest of its kind in Britain, pump­ing North Sea gas to Britain and main­land Europe; the ter­mi­nal is oper­at­ed by Shell and the pro­test­ers say they are tak­ing the action in sol­i­dar­i­ty with a com­mu­ni­ty in Repub­lic of Ire­land, who are oppos­ing the devel­op­ment of a sim­i­lar facil­i­ty near Ross­port in Coun­ty Mayo (2). Shell heads the con­sor­tium devel­op­ing the Irish ter­mi­nal, refin­ery and pipeline.

A par­tic­i­pate com­ment­ed: “Bac­ton has been block­ad­ed today in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Mayo who have been protest­ing against Shell vir­tu­al­ly dai­ly since 2005. Res­i­dents there have been sub­ject­ed to ongo­ing harass­ment from Shell and their con­trac­tors. Pat O’Don­nell, a local fish­er­man, is cur­rent­ly serv­ing a 7 month jail sen­tence for his part in the resis­tance to Shel­l’s devel­op­ment”.

Com­mu­ni­ty resis­tance in the Ross­port area has been fuelled by con­cerns that the new ter­mi­nal will ruin the the coastal envi­ron­ment, farm­land and wildlife habi­tats, as well as fish­ing grounds vital to the local econ­o­my. Fears for the local envi­ron­ment include poten­tial dis­tur­bance to coastal con­ser­va­tion areas, which sup­port wildlife such as dol­phins and por­pois­es, plus the pos­si­bil­i­ty that local drink­ing water could become con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed. Res­i­dents also claim that due plan­ning process has not tak­en place and that con­struc­tion work start­ed before plan­ning con­sent was ful­ly approved.

“ We want our action today to send two strong mes­sages; first­ly to Shell, that wher­ev­er they are in the world, there are those who will oppose their destruc­tion of both the envi­ron­ment and local com­mu­ni­ties. Sec­ond­ly, we want to send a mes­sage of sol­i­dar­i­ty to those oppos­ing the Irish ter­mi­nal, espe­cial­ly to Pat O’Don­nell. Their strug­gles will not be for­got­ten”.

Ends

Notes
1.Bacton gas ter­mi­nal is on the B1159, between the vil­lages of Bac­ton and Mundes­ley.

2.For fur­ther infor­ma­tion on the Irish based Shell to Sea cam­paign, oppos­ing the gas ter­mi­nal near Ross­port in Mayo, vis­it www.shelltosea.com

Bristol Eco Village Now Open!

17.4.10
After many months of plan­ning and prepa­ra­tion the eco vil­lage was opened today around 12noon. Come down and vis­it if you can. Bring sup­plies as well if you can such as bed­ding cut­lery and tools such as ham­mers, nail, axes and saws.

17.4.10
After many months of plan­ning and prepa­ra­tion the eco vil­lage was opened today around 12noon. Come down and vis­it if you can. Bring sup­plies as well if you can such as bed­ding cut­lery and tools such as ham­mers, nail, axes and saws.

The vil­lage is in St Wer­burghs, 5 min­utes’ walk from Sta­ple­ton Road sta­tion (2 stops from Tem­ple Meads) at Junc­tion 3 of the M32. There’s two entrances — one on Gat­ton Road if you duck the bar­ri­er, and the oth­er on Sax­on Road but for now you have to get through a hole in the fence.

—

Today a group of a few dozen young eco activists gath­ered at 11am at the city cen­tre out­side the Hip­po­drome under the watch­ful eye of the police and moved in two groups, a cycling group and a walk­ing group to a cho­sen site in Bris­tol to devel­op an eco vil­lage. They arrived at the waste ground between Sax­on Road and Sims scrap yard in St Wer­burghs and entered the site.

The idea was inspired by the Kew Bridge Eco Vil­lage The aim is no less than to build an eco-vil­lage com­mu­ni­ty based entire­ly on sus­tain­able tech­nol­o­gy and con­struc­tion tech­niques. Two of the orga­niz­ers, Tim Har­ris and Leah Richards start­ed plan­ning and net­work­ing at the start of the year lead­ing to todays action. Peo­ple have come from Bris­tol and the local area but also places such as Glas­ton­bury and Lon­don.

The group leaflet­ed local res­i­dences in Sax­on Road and neigh­bour­ing streets to let peo­ple know of their plans for an urban cen­tre for alter­na­tive tech­nol­o­gy. They stat­ed that they chose this site because it has been unused for years and is filled with haz­ardous rub­bish and fre­quent­ed by hard drug users. It is next to Sims Met­al Man­age­men­t’s Bris­tol scrap yard, which has been plagued with arson­ist fires of the scrap cars there.

They have already start­ed to clean up the rub­bish on the site and plan to have it removed by skip. They have set up tents and aim to estab­lish a kitchen ben­der, com­post loos and oth­er struc­tures. The claim they will use per­ma­cul­ture prin­ci­ples to devel­op some of the land for grow­ing, keep the exist­ing wild­space and con­struct on the hard stand­ing.

Their plan is to oper­ate an ambi­tious no drink no drugs pol­i­cy on the site, with vans and ampli­fied music also being exclud­ed. Their aim is to demon­strate sus­tain­able liv­ing. Their web­site is here and face­book site here. Local film mak­er Ben Edwards pro­duced a short film relat­ed to this here

They are invit­ing peo­ple to come down and get involved and hope to run work­shops in the future.

This derelict site already has been giv­en full plan­ning per­mis­sion by Chancery­gate (Gat­ton Rd Ltd) on 25th Feb­ru­ary 2009 to put up a devel­op­ment of 12 indus­tri­al units with car park­ing, land­scap­ing and access. See here . This per­mis­sion would expire on 25th Feb­ru­ary 2012 if not act­ed upon. There has been a cer­tain amount of oppo­si­tion from local res­i­dents regard­ing this plan with one of the con­cerns being the traf­fic gen­er­at­ed by the devel­op­ment of indus­tri­al units and con­cerns for the wildlife areas of the site.

BP + TAR SANDS = CLIMATE CRIME – Thu 15 Apr 10

Date­line: BP Share­hold­ers Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing, ExCel Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, Lon­don, Thu 15 Apr 10 – At the apex of the ‘BP Fort­night of Shame’, at the entrance to the BP AGM, cli­mate chaos and human rights activists per­suade BP share­hold­ers to vote for the Fair­Pen­sions anti-Tar-Sands motion.

Tar Sands Global Crime bannerDate­line: BP Share­hold­ers Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing, ExCel Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, Lon­don, Thu 15 Apr 10 – At the apex of the ‘BP Fort­night of Shame’, at the entrance to the BP AGM, cli­mate chaos and human rights activists per­suade BP share­hold­ers to vote for the Fair­Pen­sions anti-Tar-Sands motion. Mobilised by the UK Tar Sands Net­work, Ris­ing Tide and Cli­mate Camp, we let BP share­hold­ers know, in no uncer­tain terms, that BP + TAR SANDS = CLIMATE CRIME.

Vidz at YouTube
• ‘BP + TAR SANDS = CLIMATE CRIME’ – 1, 2, 3, etc.
» LINKs to fol­low short­ly, once edit­ing and upload­ing is com­plete

TWO WEEKS OF INTENSE COLLECTIVE BP BRAND-TRASHING
Organ­ised in sol­i­dar­i­ty with our indige­nous First Nations sis­ters and broth­ers at the sharp end of the Cana­di­an Tar Sands cli­mate crime atroc­i­ty, the ‘BP Fort­night of Shame’ began on Fos­sil Fools Day, Thu 01 Apr 10, with wide­spread direct action pranks, includ­ing Lon­don Ris­ing Tide deliv­er­ing a ‘Back to Black’ Cor­poate ID rebrand­ing pack­age to BP’s glob­al head­quar­ters in St. James Square – see, eg:
• ‘BP Goes Back to Black’
» video, 2:38 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNLzN3zld7o

Then on Sat 10 Apr 10, the Lon­don direct action com­po­nent of an Inter­na­tion­al Day of Action on Cana­di­an Tar Sands saw 200+ peo­ple mount an “ille­gal” occ­cu­pa­tion of the Shep­herd’s Bush BP petrol sta­tion for a samba-&-ceillidh-powered ‘Par­ty at the Pumps’ – see, eg:
• ‘BP hit by nation­wide protests over plans to Enter the Tar Sands’
» video, 5:14 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An6-tdxd12M
» pix-&-vidz-led action report – http://london.indymedia.org.uk/articles/4613

The fort­night’s cul­mi­nat­ing protest occured along­side the Colom­bia Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cam­paign, demand­ing “BP MUST RECOGNISE ITS RESPONSIBILITY TO CASANARE WORKERS, COMMUNITIES AND THE ENVIRONMENT”, on the west plaza entance to the ExCel Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, as vote-cast­ing investors arrived for the BP share­hold­ers Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing. First Nations Tar Sands cam­paign­ers Clay­ton Thomas-Muller and George Poitras from the Indi­gen­nous Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work of North Amer­i­ca were on hand, giv­ing inter­views to jour­nal­ists and video­g­ra­phers, before going into the BP AGM at for the 11:30 start.
For more on the inter­na­tion­al anti-Tar Sands actions, check out:
• ‘Anti-Tar Sands Protests Gath­er Momen­tum’
» IMC UK Fea­ture arti­cle – http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/04/449169.html

MAKING A KILLING IN COLOMBIA, AGAIN AND AGAIN
Bruno Fed­eri­co of COSPACC (Cor­po­ración Social para la Asesoría y la Capac­itación Comu­ni­taria) spoke in his native Ital­ian, ably trans­lat­ed by Claire Hall of Espa­cio Bris­tol-Colom­bia, of the mass mur­der of social move­ments opposed to BP’s exploits in Casanare, east­ern Colom­bia, where BP has been oper­at­ing for twen­ty years.

“Dur­ing that time, 2600 peo­ple have been dis­ap­peared, 6500 peo­ple have been killed by para­mil­i­tary groups, right wing armed groups that have insti­tu­tion­al links to the Colom­bian gov­ern­ment.
More recent­ly there has been 100 doc­u­ment­ed cas­es of direct state assas­si­na­tions of civil­ians. Com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers were forced to flee and social organ­i­sa­tions that chal­lenged BP’s prac­tices were exter­mi­nat­ed.
There has also been severe envi­ron­men­tal dam­age caused by the extrac­tion; water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, water deple­tion, land­slides from seis­mic explo­ration. There has been very lit­tle chal­lenge to BP’s envi­ron­men­tal impact due to the com­mu­ni­ties being unable to organ­ise.
How­ev­er com­mu­ni­ties and work­ers are cur­rent­ly mobil­is­ing and have pre­sent­ed a list of demands to BP around five key themes:
— labour issues,
— social invest­ment,
— human rights,
— pub­lic good
— and envi­ron­ment.
More info – http://www.espacio.org.uk/bp/CasanareMission2007Report.pdf
[source: ‘Oil, Vio­lence and Social Move­ments in Colom­bia’ – http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/04/449208.html ]

HOLDING BP TO ACCOUNT FOR CLIMATE CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES
The UK-based Fair­Pen­sions eth­i­cal invest­ment cam­paign had tabled Spe­cial Res­o­lu­tion 25, a delib­er­ate­ly soft­ly word­ed pro­pos­al aimed at gar­ner­ing the widest pos­si­ble sup­port from share­hold­ers, to which Clay­ton, George and oth­er Tar Sands cam­paign­ers spoke:

“Spe­cial Res­o­lu­tion
That in order to address our con­cerns for the long term suc­cess of the Com­pa­ny aris­ing from the risks asso­ci­at­ed with the Sun­rise SAGD Project, we as share­hold­ers of the Com­pa­ny direct that the Audit Com­mit­tee or a Risk Com­mit­tee of the Board com­mis­sions and reviews a report set­ting out the assump­tions made by the Com­pa­ny in decid­ing to pro­ceed with the Sun­rise Project regard­ing future car­bon prices, oil price volatil­i­ty, demand for oil, antic­i­pat­ed reg­u­la­tion of green­house gas emis­sions and legal and rep­u­ta­tion­al risks aris­ing from local envi­ron­men­tal dam­age and impair­ment of tra­di­tion­al liveli­hoods. The find­ings of the report and review should be report­ed to investors in the Busi­ness Review sec­tion of the Company’s Annu­al Report pre­sent­ed to the Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing in 2011.”
[source: ‘Oil sands [sic] res­o­lu­tion and response’ – http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/set_branch/set_investors/STAGING/local_assets/downloads/pdf/IC_AGM_oil_sands_resolution.pdf ]

In an attempt to mar­gin­alise any crit­i­cism of the “right” of the BP Board of Direc­tors to com­mit what ever cli­mate crimes they deem to be a prof­itable “invest­ment”, Spe­cial Res­o­lu­tion 25 was shunt­ed to the arse-end of the agen­da, to be rushed past at the hur­ry-up so that the share­hold­ers could adjourn for their free lunch, cour­tesy of the BP boss­es.

By mir­a­cles of mod­ern com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy, we were able to lis­ten in on the pro­ceed­ings of the debate inside the BP AGM on the sound sys­tem (see pic B7 above). So in the debate around the Fair­Pen­sions Spe­cial Res­o­lu­tion, we got to hear the impas­sioned pleas from George, Clay­ton and oth­ers to BP to account for the finan­cial and eco­log­i­cal risks, the envi­ron­men­tal dam­age (local and glob­al), the health dam­age to down­stream First Nations com­mu­ni­ties, and the human rights vio­la­tions that BP’s Tar Sands encroach­ments would entail– and to the polite, bland, eva­sive, cor­po­rate green­wash reply sup­plied on behalf of the BP Board. But we did hear from a per­son sup­port­ing the Spe­cial Res­o­lu­tion of and arti­cle in Wednes­day’s Finan­cial Times:

“BP has until now not had a pres­ence in the vast resources of Canada’s oil sands, which are sec­ond only to Sau­di Ara­bia in terms of proven reserves. It is now work­ing on the pro­posed $2.4bn (£1.5bn) Sun­rise project, split equal­ly with Canada’s Husky Ener­gy, and expects to make the final invest­ment deci­sion by ear­ly next year.”
[source: ‘BP to press on with Cana­da oil sands plan’, by Ed Crooks and Fiona Har­vey, at FT.com (free reg­is­tra­tion required), on 14 April 2010 23:27 – http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6828b3de-4813–11df-b998-00144feab49a.html ]

So in fact, as the ques­tion­er put in, BP had already POSTPONED their final invest­ment deci­sion for a FOURTH time, until 2011 – I won­der if all the pres­sure piled on them by our ‘BP Fort­night of Shame’ might have influ­enced them so to do?

As I was prepar­ing to leave for home, we got word on an iPhone from Fair­Pen­sions of the vot­ing per­cent­ages on the their Spe­cial Res­o­lu­tion:
In favour: 06%
Absen­tions: 09%
Against: 85% (ie: vot­ing as direct­ed to do so by the BP Board of Direc­tors)

WE WILL SHUT THEM DOWN
This is, of course, mere­ly a sin­gle bat­tle in the long-run­ning war over the Tar Sands atroc­i­ty, in a strug­gle for the future life-bear­ing capac­i­ty of our small blue jew­el of a home world, which pits the cli­mate crim­i­nal oil cor­po­ra­tions against peo­ple and plan­et. BP boss­es thought they could get away with apply­ing their cor­po­rate “Silent Run­ning” tac­tic (adopt­ed by anal­o­gy from the mil­i­tary sub­ma­nin­er’s tac­tic of that name) to their desire to mire BP in Tar Sands shit, where­by exec­u­tives would gain big bonus­es if they suceed­ed in keep­ing their cor­po­ra­tion’s cli­mate crim­i­nal activ­i­ties OUT of the pub­lic domain, unscru­ti­nised by jounal­ists, and under every­body’s radar. Thanks to the ini­tia­tive shown by our First Nations sis­ters and broth­ers like Clay­ton and George, plus Susan and Ariel Deranger (see, eg: ‘From Athabas­ca to Copen­hagen’, video, 3:49 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2vfa6qwKgw ), our cam­paign­ing direct action depth charges have blown them to the sur­face for all to see.

So now you know of the sigle most destruc­tive indus­tri­al cli­mate crim­i­nal atoc­i­ty on Earth, we invite you to find out more via the links below, then to make the most impor­tant tran­si­tion of all: from con­cerned cit­i­zen to active cli­mate chaos cam­paign­er. Because the greater our num­ber, the stronger our forces, and the more quick­ly we can score the telling vic­to­ry required for the future of our human civil­i­sa­tion and our pre­cious ecos­phere: SHUT DOWN THE TAR SANDS!

LINKS
» Cli­mate Camp UK – http://www.climatecamp.org.uk
» Colum­bia Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cam­paign – http://www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk
» COSPACC: Cor­po­ración Social para la Asesoría y la Capac­itación Comu­ni­taria – no web­site found
» Espa­cio Bris­tol-Colom­bia – http://www.espacio.org.uk
» Fair­Pen­sions – http://www.fairpensions.org.uk/tarsands/action
» Indige­nous Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work – http://www.ienearth.org/tarsands.html
» Ris­ing Tide UK – http://www.risingtide.org.uk
» Sup­port the Beaver Lake Cree – http://www.co-operativecampaigns.co.uk/toxicfuels/beavercreenation.php
• UK Tar Sands Net­work:
» web­site – http://www.no-tar-sands.org
» blog – http://www.tarsandsinfocus.wordpress.com

Foot­notes

More pho­tos at https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/04/449231.html?c=on#comments

All these pho­tos and video clips are ‘Copy­Left’
This means you are free to copy and dis­trib­ute any of my pho­tos and videos you find here, under the fol­low­ing license:
• Cre­ative Com­mons Attri­bu­tion-Non­com­mer­cial-Share Alike 3.0 Unport­ed License
» http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
» Accred­i­ta­tion: tim.dalinian.jones@gmail.com

NB: These pix are edit­ed and down­sized ver­sions (up to 800x800px, 0.64Mpx, typ­i­cal­ly 100–900 KB) for onscreen dis­play. If you would like the free, edit­ed, full-sized ver­sions (up to 3072x2304px, 7.1Mpx, typ­i­cal­ly 1–2 MB) for print, poster, plac­ard, ban­ner, etc, please email your request to tim.dalinian.jones [at] gmail.com quot­ing the pic­ture title(s) you’d like.

Eyjafjallajoekull — climate activist extraordinaire

Here’s to an incred­i­ble first action ..

EyjafjallajökullVolcano vs planesHere’s to an incred­i­ble first action ..

In 24 hours the Eyjaf­jal­la­joekull Vol­cano made a small esti­mat­ed release of 7,412 tons of CO2, in doing so ground­ing 60% of Euro­pean flights for the day and pre­vent­ing the release of 206,465 tons of CO2. I make that the most suc­cess­ful direct action of all time — hats off to the world’s lat­est domes­tic extrem­ist.

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/planes-or-volcano

Upcoming action dates & activist gatherings, 2010 — updated

scroll down for lat­est dates…

8–10 Octo­ber 2010
Earth First! tree plant­i­ng week­end — Treespon­si­bil­i­ty

10 Octo­ber 2010
Glas­gow air­port shut-down action

12 Octo­ber 2010

scroll down for lat­est dates…

8–10 Octo­ber 2010
Earth First! tree plant­i­ng week­end — Treespon­si­bil­i­ty

10 Octo­ber 2010
Glas­gow air­port shut-down action

12 Octo­ber 2010
Glob­al Min­ga for Moth­er Earth

12–16 Octo­ber 2010
Direct Action for Cli­mate Jus­tice, CJA call-out

13 Octo­ber 2010
It’s Ham­mer­time! — Smash EDO

16 Octo­ber 2010
Crude Awak­en­ing — big oil day of action in Lon­don City

23–24 Octo­ber 2010
Stop Nuclear Pow­er Net­work UK Gath­er­ing, Bris­tol

10–12 Decem­ber 2010
Earth First! tree plant­i­ng week­end — Treespon­si­bil­i­ty

=========

Old dates from this cal­en­dar:

2010

15–17 Jan­u­ary 2010
Peace News Win­ter Gath­er­ing, Not­ting­ham

23–26 Jan­u­ary 2010
Main­shill Pre-Evic­tion Gath­er­ing

5–7 Feb­ru­ary 2010
EF! Win­ter Moot, North East Eng­land

12–14 Feb­ru­ary 2010
UK Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Gath­er­ing, Not­ting­ham

19–21 Feb­ru­ary 2010
Camp for Cli­mate Action nation­al ‘where next?’ gath­er­ing, Bris­tol — region­al ones hap­pen­ing over Jan­u­ary & Feb­ru­ary (details here)

26–28 Feb­ru­ary 2010
No Bor­ders Win­ter Gath­er­ing, Not­ting­ham

14 March 2010
UK Tar Sands Cam­paign Gath­er­ing, York

11am till 6pm (Veg­an lunch by dona­tion)
With BP’s AGM just 1 month away, and 2 weeks of actions planned for 1st to 15th April, come and con­nect with oth­er UK-based Tar Sands cam­paign­ers, share ideas and cre­ate actions. We’ll be look­ing at strate­gies and actions for tar­get­ing Shell, BP and the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land — Britain’s Dirty Three­some on Tar Sands invest­ment.

We’re meet­ing in Der­went Col­lege, York Uni­ver­si­ty, room D/056 — from the sta­tion or city cen­tre, take bus num­ber 4 to the very last stop, walk back about 50 meters, and the road entrance to the col­lege is signed on the left. D/056 is accessed from the out­side, beyond the din­ing hall and ponds.

1 April 2010
Fos­sil Fools Day

1–4 April 2010
The Hunt­ing­ton Lane Fos­sil Fools week­end con­ver­gence

1–15 April 2010
BP Fort­night of Shame
includ­ing Lon­don Mass Action

17–18 April 2010
Social Cen­tres in a Time of Cri­sis, Leeds
A week­end of work­shops, dis­cus­sions and social­is­ing for every­one with an inter­est in rad­i­cal autonomous social cen­tres

22–23 April 2010
anti-avi­a­tion 48 hours of stick­er-whack­ing, sub­ver­tis­ing, adbust­ing pan­de­mo­ni­um

23–26 April 2010
Anti-nuclear Camp, Suf­folk — see lat­est EF!AU for details

6–10 May 2010
Activist Tat train­ing week: putting up mar­quees, erect­ing and mend­ing flat pack toi­lets, as well as tech­ni­cal and the­o­ret­i­cal (pow­er, plumb­ing etc) skill­shar­ing

15 May 2010
Par­ty at the Pumps 2

21 May‑5 June 2010
Merthyr to Ross­port sol­i­dar­i­ty bike ride — Cli­mate Chains

5–8 June 2010
Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp Gath­er­ing, Ire­land

11–19 June 2010
World Naked Bike Ride — 11 June: Man­ches­ter, Southamp­ton; 12 June, Cardiff, Edin­burgh, Lon­don; 13 June: Brighton, Bris­tol; 19 June, Sheffield, York

18–21 June 2010
Out­door Skill­share, Scot­land

19 June 2010
Nation­al Gath­er­ing of the Stop Nuclear Pow­er Net­work, Lon­don

25 June-31 August 2010
Eco­topia Bike­tour, from Crit­i­cal Mass, Towards Car Free Cities Con­fer­ence, to the French & Ger­man cli­mate camps and much in between.

6–12 July 2010
Anti-Indus­tri­al Land Defence Action Camp, Cat­alo­nia
Go only if you can speak Cata­lan or Span­ish — http://acampadaderesistencies.blogspot.com

14–22 July 2010
Nordic cli­mate action camp, South­ern Swe­den

22 July‑1 August 2010
French Camp Action Cli­mat, near Le Havre

22 July‑2 August 2010
Swiss cli­mate camp Fr / De

23–27 July 2010
Peace News Sum­mer Camp, Oxford­shire

29 July‑4 August 2010
Bel­gian Cli­mate Camp, near Liege

4–9 August 2010
EF! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing, Der­byshire

12–16 August 2010
Irish Cli­mate Camp, Coun­ty Tyrone

13–17 August 2010
Cli­mate Camp Cym­ru

21–24 August 2010
Cli­mate Camp tar­gets RBS in Edin­burgh: Action Days

21–29 August 2010
Ger­man Kli­macamp, near Erke­lenz

27–30 August 2010
Nation­al Ani­mal Rights Gath­er­ing, near Northamp­ton

27–29 August 2010
Dutch Earth First! Gath­er­ing and CJA meet­ing — Groen Front!

Peat Bog Extraction halted in Greater Manchester

15.04.2010
Update:

Chat Moss peat protest 1Chat Moss peat protest 215.04.2010
Update:

As you know, we locked on around 10:30. Some of the work­ers ini­tial­ly react­ed aggres­sive­ly, try­ing to move the dig­ger while peo­ple were on it, using abu­sive lan­guage and assault­ing one of our group — though we were empha­sis­ing that we were peace­ful and that they were break­ing the law by act­ing dan­ger­ous­ly towards us. After about 20 mins of sev­er­al mem­bers of our group talk­ing calm­ly to them, they stood down and wait­ed for the police to arrive. The police turned up short­ly after, try­ing to talk us down, but we stayed locked on until the Tac­ti­cal Aid Unit arrived with Bolt cut­ters to extract us.
Inter­est­ing­ly, it seemed they want­ed every­one else out of the way, so they could ‘deal’ with us and get the job done as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. We’ve found out that lots of local peo­ple tried to join us, but were being stopped by the police well out of vis­i­ble dis­tance. The police tac­ti­cal aid unit also showed lit­tle regard for our safe­ty — their inten­tion was to sim­ply remove me from the dig­ger by any means nec­es­sary — which was effec­tive­ly to try to throw me off it.

An ambu­lance also turned up pre­emp­tive­ly, which sug­gests they were antic­i­pat­ing that our extrac­tion would neces­si­tate the use of force, and unnec­es­sary harm to our per­sons.

I think we man­aged to stay there for a good while to halt the destruc­tion of the bog and to get the mes­sage out.

After the police released us, we met up with some of the local cam­paign­ers (Save Our North­west Green­belt), who’d had a meet­ing in the evening, which was real­ly empow­er­ing.

At first I was arrest­ed for aggra­vat­ed tres­pass, but then de-arrest­ed and re-arrest­ed after being cut free under new charges.

We’ve been charged, odd­ly, under sec­tion 4A of the Pub­lic order act, which cov­ers using words/behaviour to cause harassment/distress, even though our protest was com­plete­ly non-vio­lent and good humoured.

Our court date is May 10th, 9:30am at Sal­ford Mag­is­trate’s court — a sol­i­dar­i­ty demon­stra­tion is being planned for this date, and any sup­port would be grate­ful­ly wel­comed!

——-
Activists shut down extrac­tion on a Peat Bog extrac­tion site by lock­ing onto a lor­ry and a dig­ger. Work was still halt­ed at the time of writ­ing.

Earth First activists shut down Peat Bog extrac­tion at Chat Moss in Greater Man­ches­ter. They entered the site at 10.30 am, locked onto a lor­ry and dig­ger which was being used to remove peat from the site. As of 2pm two activists were still locked onto the vehi­cles, with around 5 cops in atten­dance.

Peat bogs have recent­ly become the focus of inter­na­tion­al atten­tion because they act as huge ‘car­bon sponges’: as peat is formed it locks away car­bon that has been absorbed by plants as they grow, there­by help­ing to reduce the car­bon in the atmos­phere and slow glob­al warm­ing. The drain­ing and extrac­tion of this unique habi­tat caus­es the release of thou­sands of years worth of stored car­bon. Glob­al­ly, peat bogs cov­er just 3% of the world’s sur­face but store twice as much car­bon as all the world’s forests com­bined.

The great­est threat to peat bogs is from peat extrac­tion for use in hor­ti­cul­ture. An area the size of 250 Trafal­gar Squares is dug up every year for the UK hor­ti­cul­tur­al indus­try, with 70% of this demand com­ing from ama­teur gar­den­ers. This is despite the fact that there are a wide vari­ety of good qual­i­ty peat-free com­mer­cial com­posts, mean­ing that there is no need for the UK to con­sume any peat at all. The Roy­al Botan­ic Gar­dens at Kew, for instance, has been peat free since 1992.

Local cam­paign­er Mary Chapel, said:

“We are stop­ping the destruc­tion of Chat Moss bog and to pro­tect this site for the ben­e­fit of present and future gen­er­a­tions. They har­bour a wide vari­ety of birds, plants and ani­mals that can be found nowhere else. Instead of pro­tect­ing this valu­able habi­tat Sinclair’s / Joseph Met­calfe are van­dal­is­ing it in order to make a prof­it when there are count­less alter­na­tives to peat for use in com­post, as well as more sus­tain­able jobs in those indus­tries.”

Anoth­er cam­paign­er Justin Hocks con­tin­ued:

“Peat bogs like Chat Moss store vast amounts of car­bon and are poten­tial­ly one of our best assets in fight­ing cli­mate change. The Coun­cil tell us they are seri­ous about cli­mate change and the envi­ron­ment yet allow valu­able sites like Chat Moss to be bull­dozed. They say they will pro­tect the Green Belt but it’s all just hot air. We have come here today in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the local Save Our Green­belt cam­paign, and to pro­tect this valu­able habi­tat and to say enough is enough – leave our bog alone!”

Notes for Edi­tors
[1] Earth First! is a Direct Action protest move­ment first formed in the UK in the ear­ly 1990s against the road build­ing pro­gramme and pro­tect­ing wilder­ness. Lat­er Earth First! groups took Direct Action against the intro­duc­tion of GM crops into Britain, and helped mount the cam­paign to save Thorne and Hat­field Moors, Yorkshire’s most impor­tant peat-bogs.

Over 94% of the UK’s low­land peat bogs have been dam­aged or destroyed, most­ly in the last 50 years, and Nat­ur­al Eng­land esti­mate that 3 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 is emit­ted every year in the UK from our dam­aged peat bogs – the equiv­a­lent to the aver­age emis­sions of 350,000 house­holds.

Pro­tect­ing exist­ing peat bogs and restor­ing dam­aged or degrad­ed ones could lock car­bon in the soil and help to active­ly reduce the UK car­bon foot­print, as well as help­ing to pro­tect many rare species of plants and ani­mals, improve bio­di­ver­si­ty and pro­tect a wild and rare habi­tat.
For copies of Nat­ur­al England’s report: England’s Peat­lands – Car­bon Stor­age & Green­house Gas­es by Nat­ur­al Eng­land. http://naturalengland.etraderstores.com/NaturalEnglandShop/product.aspx?ProductID=335ef60d-241e-4495–9625-094fc3cf9689

Link to high­er qual­i­ty pho­tos — http://www.mediafire.com/?zloylojzlgq

BlueNG Superglued in Protest Against Agrofuels

14.4.10
Last night, Agro­fu­el com­pa­ny Blue NG had their head offices vis­it­ed by activists and all of the doors super­glued shut. This action was in protest at Blue NG’s involve­ment in plans to build an agro­fu­el pow­er plant.

14.4.10
Last night, Agro­fu­el com­pa­ny Blue NG had their head offices vis­it­ed by activists and all of the doors super­glued shut. This action was in protest at Blue NG’s involve­ment in plans to build an agro­fu­el pow­er plant.

Blue NG are up to their necks in recent plans to build bio­fu­el-pow­ered plants in lon­don. Despite their green­wash, it is well doc­u­ment­ed that this plant will con­tribute to glob­al warm­ing, food short­ages, and res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases in the area around it.

With an impor­tant plan­ning meet­ing regard­ing the plant hap­pen­ing today, anti-agro­fu­el activists decid­ed to get their point across by vis­it­ing the com­pa­ny’s head office dur­ing the night, jam­ming all the locks with super­glue, and leav­ing a brief com­mu­nique explain­ing their motives.

Nottingham, Sheffield & Leeds Sabs January – March

Anoth­er busy few months of sab­bing

Fox­es, hares, and our group alike had a few days off from the sick­en­ing dis­play of vio­lence and stu­pid­i­ty that is hunt­ing this Decem­ber and Jan­u­ary. Divine inter­ven­tion, in the form of snow, ice and frost meant that many hunts can­celled sev­er­al meets.

Fox in snowAnoth­er busy few months of sab­bing

Fox­es, hares, and our group alike had a few days off from the sick­en­ing dis­play of vio­lence and stu­pid­i­ty that is hunt­ing this Decem­ber and Jan­u­ary. Divine inter­ven­tion, in the form of snow, ice and frost meant that many hunts can­celled sev­er­al meets.

We were out again on Jan­u­ary 16th and had a go at find­ing some much over­looked bea­gles, with­out suc­cess. So we decid­ed to call in late on the Badsworth & Bramham Moor hunt. The hunt, who on this occa­sion totaled only 10 or so rid­ers and about 10 sup­port­ers, took one look at us, changed course and head­ed straight back to their meet!

We helped Cum­bria Sabs with a Mon­day vis­it to the Ull­swa­ter hunt on Jan 25th. This hunt had not been sabbed for 20 years due to their vio­lent rep­u­ta­tion, but on sight of around 15 sabs, they decid­ed to run, and hide in the car park of an agri­cul­tur­al col­lege — all day. Result!

We vis­it­ed the Quorn hunt for the first time in 5 or more years, with Mersey­side Sabs at the end of Jan. They too took one look at us and packed up imme­di­ate­ly, claim­ing the weath­er was­n’t suit­able for hunt­ing! With some sabs escort­ing the Quorn back to their ken­nels, oth­ers went on to the near­by Meynell & South Staffs hunt. At the Meynell a fox was seen by sabs and hunt staff in the same field as the hounds, but due to our pres­ence, the hunts­man hunt­ed the hounds along the fox­es’ scent, in the oppo­site direc­tion, leav­ing the fox to run free. Lat­er in the day we saw hunt staff again tak­ing action to ensure the hounds did­n’t hunt in front of our cam­eras. We know that this hunt (like all the oth­ers), kills fox­es when left to their own devices.

On Feb 6th we paid a vis­it to the South Wold hunt, who had not been sabbed for a long time. The hunt spent a good while lin­ger­ing round the back of a farm pon­der­ing what to do about us. Although they even­tu­al­ly shot off, los­ing us for a while, we caught up with them, took con­trol of their hounds, and packed them up ear­ly — a time­ly reminder to all hunts that though per­haps rarely vis­it­ed, none are for­got­ten. On the way home, keen-eyed sabs spot­ted a lurcher rac­ing through a near­by field. Jump­ing out of the van again, we found a guy out hare cours­ing, and swift­ly saw him off.

The next day we sabbed a group of about 8 fer­reters near Leeds. They had sad­ly killed at least 3 rab­bits before we arrived — a strong reminder of why sab­bing is need­ed. The group were clear­ly intim­i­dat­ed by our pres­ence and packed up as soon as they could retrieve their fer­ret from below ground. Fer­ret­ing is ful­ly legal.

In 2009, our vis­its to the South Notts hunt caused them to give up on attempts to begin hunt­ing Sat­ur­days. So when we turned up on a Mon­day this Feb, they weren’t best pleased! Unfor­tu­nate­ly though, they won this round by turn­ing vio­lent and forc­ing us to leave — more on that next sea­son (and below).

On the 17th, Not­ting­ham and Birm­ing­ham sabs made a week-day trip to the DNS Bea­gles hunt in Der­byshire. This caused them to can­cel their day of killing with­out even start­ing. All we had to do was wait out­side their ken­nels for a few hours, and endure some stern words from some not-so-brave offi­cers of the law!

We sabbed the Quorn hunt again on the 20th, with Man­ches­ter Sabs. We weren’t close enough to see it, but, after a few failed attempts at find­ing fox­es — to kill them with a “quick nip to the back of the neck” — the hunts­man fell from his horse, injured his neck and had to be air lift­ed to hos­pi­tal! The hunt con­tin­ued any­way, led and fol­lowed by mem­bers of the South Notts hunt, who were out with the Quorn (due to can­celling their own Sat meets). The South Notts hunt mem­bers were the very same peo­ple who had got nasty with us just 5 days pre­vi­ous­ly. So, we gave them what they deserved — a good sab­bing. We put our­selves in the fields to dis­tract the hounds sev­er­al times, and caused them to loose the scent of a fox that they attempt­ed to hunt.

On the 24th we made anoth­er trip to Cum­bria, join­ing the local sabs, with oth­ers from Mersey­side and Birmin­ham. We found the Blencathra hunt after a bit of scout­ing about, even though they had changed their meet in a des­per­ate attempt at avoid­ing sabs. Upon our arrival, the hunts­man walked past all his sup­port­ers and drove off with the hounds, with­out say­ing a word to any­one! But, rather than dri­ving straight to the ken­nels, he drove way out of the way, with us fol­low­ing behind, and led us to the Cum­bria Bea­gles hunt! As soon as we got out of the car, the bea­gles were seen hunt­ing two hares, so we inter­vened and man­aged to call them off using whip cracks and voice calls, they packed up straight away after that! Some of the group had also stuck with the Blencathra, who were fol­lowed back to their ken­nels. This day demon­strat­ed just what an impact Cum­bria Sabs are hav­ing on the Ble­cathra hunt!

At the end of Feb, just a week after our first vis­it, we returned to the DNS Bea­gles, this time on a Sat­ur­day. As before, after a bit of a run around (in vehi­cles), they can­celled their plans alto­geth­er. Anoth­er day of relax­ation for hares in Der­byshire!

We sabbed the Bur­ton at their last meet of the sea­son on March 6th. We had to run/briskly walk all day to keep near the hunt, who were deter­mined to hunt and hide in a mas­sive wood. We took action to dis­rupt them when­ev­er we could, took con­trol of a good per­cent­age of the hounds sev­er­al times dur­ing the day and stuck at it till they fin­ished.

We vis­it­ed the Lunes­dale hunt on the Cumbria/North York­shire bor­der with sabs from sev­er­al oth­er groups on the 11th. This hunt had­n’t seen sabs for 20+ years, so they were prob­a­bly a lit­tle sur­prised to see us pop up in the mid­dle of the fells. We did­n’t waste any time, and upon sight of the hunts­man on a dis­tant fell ahead, took the whole pack of hounds from him just as they start­ed to pick up a fox’s scent. When the hunt man­aged to reclaim the hounds they went back to their meet and packed up! Watch video footage here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1HzzUzerwA&feature=channel

We fin­ished off the sea­son with around 30 sabs from our usu­al groups, Mersey­side, and oth­er areas, and sabbed the Grove & Ruf­ford hunt in Not­ting­hamshire, on March 13th. Dozens of police turned up — with motor­bikes, a heli­copter, vans, cars, hors­es, dogs and under­cov­er offi­cers at their dis­pos­al. They had come to pre­vent us from sab­bing the hunt, but inad­ver­tent­ly did it for us, leav­ing us to watch in dis­be­lief — as even the Grove & Ruf­ford hunts­man isn’t stu­pid enough to hunt in front of that many city folk!

So now we have a short break from such activ­i­ties, but, if any­one is up for help­ing out, we will pos­si­bly sab some mink hunters in the sum­mer; we’ll be work­ing to pro­tect bad­gers from bait­ing in South York­shire, and from culling fur­ther afield, from May; and we’ll begin the next sab­bing sea­son in August/September at fox cub hunts. Also if any­one can donate any funds or equip­ment, or help with fundrais­ing then please get in touch!

Sab group con­tacts:
Sheffield: sheffieldsaboteurs@live.co.uk
Not­ting­ham: huntsabs@hotmail.com www.nottinghamhuntsabs.weebly.com
Leeds: westyorkshuntsabs@yahoo.co.uk www.westyorkshirehuntsabs.wordpress.com
Mersey­side: (con­tact via) sheffieldsaboteurs@live.co.uk
Cum­bria: vulpuscarlisle@yahoo.co.uk
Birm­ing­ham: birminghamhuntsabs@hotmail.co.uk
Man­ches­ter: mcr-sabs@hotmail.co.uk
For oth­er areas:
Hunt Sabo­teurs Asso­ci­a­tion: info@huntsabs.org.uk www.hsa.enviroweb.org

Bad­ger pro­tec­tion con­tacts:
South York­shire Bad­ger Group: www.sybadgergroup.f9.co.uk
Coali­tion Of Bad­ger Action Groups: get-active@badger-killers.co.uk www.badger-killers.co.uk

Colombia solidarity action closes BP petrol station, Barcelona

13.4.10
A dozen peo­ple closed a BP petrol sta­tion on Avenue Bonano­va de Sar­rià. Dressed in white suits, the Rep­sol­ma­ta col­lec­tive and friends laid out the chal­lenge: The BP dilem­ma: Bye bye Plan­et or Boy­cott Petrol?

http://repsolmata.ourproject.org

Video

Barcelona BP action13.4.10
A dozen peo­ple closed a BP petrol sta­tion on Avenue Bonano­va de Sar­rià. Dressed in white suits, the Rep­sol­ma­ta col­lec­tive and friends laid out the chal­lenge: The BP dilem­ma: Bye bye Plan­et or Boy­cott Petrol?

http://repsolmata.ourproject.org

Video

Mainshill Coal Site sabotaged!

12.04.2010
In the ear­ly hours of this morn­ing machin­ery at Main­shill open cast site was sab­o­taged. Two Cater­pil­lar D9T’s and a 170 tonne face scrap­ping earth mover, an O&K RH90, were tar­get­ed, both will be inop­er­a­ble today, and will cost Scot­tish Coal great­ly.

12.04.2010
In the ear­ly hours of this morn­ing machin­ery at Main­shill open cast site was sab­o­taged. Two Cater­pil­lar D9T’s and a 170 tonne face scrap­ping earth mover, an O&K RH90, were tar­get­ed, both will be inop­er­a­ble today, and will cost Scot­tish Coal great­ly.

A sus­tained cam­paign of sab­o­tage has been waged at Main­shill and it was vowed to con­tin­ue even when work on the mine start­ed. The only thing that has changed since the evic­tion of the Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp is that the machines on the site are big­ger and more expen­sive. The machin­ery at the Main­shill site, and any oth­er coal site in Scot­land, are extreme­ly vul­ner­a­ble. Sab­o­tage against the coal indus­try will con­tin­ue until its expan­sion is halt­ed.

This action was done by autonomous envi­ron­men­tal­ists in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of South Lanark­shire who are fight­ing to save their com­mu­ni­ty and their health from the coal indus­try. This is also in sol­i­dar­i­ty with peo­ple around the world, includ­ing Colum­bia and India, who are fight­ing for their lives against the coal indus­try.

Main­shill vive — la lucha sigue!