48 hours of action against E.ON and new coal — pre-advertised events this Friday & Saturday

The 48 hours of action against E.ON and new coal are near­ly upon us, and final prepa­ra­tions are being made. Below is a selec­tion of pub­lic actions that have been organ­ised. You can also find infor­ma­tion and resources, includ­ing a media Q&A, on the E.ON F.OFF web­site at http://www.eon-foff.com

E.on F.off logoThe 48 hours of action against E.ON and new coal are near­ly upon us, and final prepa­ra­tions are being made. Below is a selec­tion of pub­lic actions that have been organ­ised. You can also find infor­ma­tion and resources, includ­ing a media Q&A, on the E.ON F.OFF web­site at http://www.eon-foff.com

Plus invite your friends to the Face­book event:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=32617789333

Plus post your reports from the day on www.indymedia.org.uk and here

Fri­day 28th Novem­ber

COVENTRY
Join War­wick Uni stu­dents at E.ON’s head­quar­ters in Coven­try.
Meet at 12pm on the piaz­za. We’ll march from there to the Head­quar­ters, arrive there about 12:30. Once there, there’ll be loads going on, includ­ing… .a ‘Catch the Car­bon’ com­pe­ti­tion, drum­ming work­shop, a mass die-in, visu­al­ly show­ing the effects cli­mate change are already hav­ing and more.
For more see: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=34220633837&ref=ts

LONDON
E.ON vs. Green­wash Gueril­las
8am-10am. Meet up in Trafal­gar Square at 8.00am to head down to E.ON’s Lon­don office at 100 Pall Mall and show E.ON their green­wash won’t wash. All inven­tive green­wash actions wel­come!

LONDON
World Devel­op­ment Move­ment kids demo at E.ON
Meet at 10am in Trafal­gar Square for the chil­dren to add their foot­prints to the ban­ner, then take our foot­prints to a ‘No new coal’ protest out­side E.ON’s Lon­don offices in Pall Mall. Come along with your chil­dren and par­tic­i­pate

Sat­ur­day 29th Novem­ber

LONDON
Stop Coal Stick­er Rush
Keep the pres­sure up on E.ON by spread­ing the word and putting up some E.ON F.OFF & Stop Coal stick­ers — you can get them from the Coal Hole (91–92 Strand, WC2R 0DW) from 1pm-3pm on Sat­ur­day.

NORWICH
Spoof E.on Recruit­ment Stall
Loca­tion — Out­side RBS, 5 Queen Street, Nor­wich.
Time — 12noon — 2pm, Sat­ur­day 29 Novem­ber.

Tar­get­ting Roy­al Bank of Scot­land the financier of New Coal and Eon

Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide is tar­get­ting the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land the financier or cli­mate chaos

Come and join in a day of shenani­gans tar­get­ted on RBS (now 60% owned by the British Tax­pay­er), the financier of new coal devel­op­ment in the UK. Be a bank rob­ber or help the cooks with their recipe for dis­as­ter!

Meet­ing at the ruined church at 12.00 on Cas­tle Green, then onto the RBS branch in Bald­win Street around 12.15, NatWest in Corn Street around 12.45 and then RBS insur­ance in Nel­son St around 1.15.

Par­ty and Protest in defi­ance of E‑on (own­ers of Kingsnorth) and coal expan­sion with solar pow­ered sound sys­tem and free cake 3.00 pm at the Hip­po­drome, St Augustines Parade

Shell to Sea / Rossport Solidarity Camp Update from Erris Co. Mayo. November 2009.

While Glen­gad and Shell issues have large­ly gone from the pub­lic eye, and indeed things have qui­etened down some what, that’s not to say that stuff hasn’t been going on, it just doesn’t always make the media.

The last few months have seen a few devel­op­ments since the Soli­taire left our shores.

While Glen­gad and Shell issues have large­ly gone from the pub­lic eye, and indeed things have qui­etened down some what, that’s not to say that stuff hasn’t been going on, it just doesn’t always make the media.

The last few months have seen a few devel­op­ments since the Soli­taire left our shores.

* Shell have com­plete­ly vacat­ed the Glen­gad com­pound in the last few week or so. Unfor­tu­nate­ly they haven’t done a won­der­ful job of clean­ing up after them­selves. Plen­ty of rub­ble was left behind on the beach from the cause­way that they extend­ed out to sea and then removed.

The “cliff” has been banked up with soft mate­ri­als which don’t look too sta­ble to me and will like­ly con­tin­ue to be washed out by the rain­wa­ter. In the old com­pound itself large heaps of mate­ri­als have been piled and net­ted over to pre­vent birds nest­ing? Strange­ly they have not attempt­ed to net the re-banked cliff area, as they had before. Some of the old net­ting can be seen on the cliff top, inter­meshed with the grass on top.

Their chan­nel buoy mark­ers have been wash­ing ashore recent­ly also, as they left these behind to. At the road entrance to the Glen­gad com­pound all the fenc­ing and gates have gone (as it has around the whole site), to be replaced with reg­u­lar cat­tle fenc­ing and gates, hav­ing pulled out at this time of year the whole place is a bit of a mud bath.

* The road, left unfin­ished by Mayo Coun­ty Coun­cil now Shell have pulled out, is already show­ing signs of dete­ri­o­ra­tion, with pot­holes form­ing in the tar­mac beside where the entrance gates to this com­pound stood. The Co.Co. have left the road as it stands from what I can see, with­out fin­ish­ing the works, just loads of signs and bol­lards left around every­where.

* Nov 10th last saw a pro­ces­sion along the Bel­lan­aboy Road up to the main refin­ery gates, attend­ed by about 50 local peo­ple car­ry­ing cross­es with the names of the Ogo­ni 9, to mark the exe­cu­tion of Ken Sara Wiwa and 8 of his col­leagues in 1995, the Niger­ian activists who were exe­cut­ed by the Niger­ian Mil­i­tary Dic­ta­tor­ship at the time, at Shel­l’s behest.

* The Gar­da pres­ence is like­wise down, but still tan­gi­ble.

* After a meet­ing some time ago with a few min­is­ters, the silence has been loud from the pow­ers that be, despite their recent announce­ment of set­ting up some forum or dia­logue with peo­ple involved in the Cor­rib Gas issue. How­ev­er no one here has actu­al­ly heard any­thing or been con­tact­ed about as of yet. Min­is­ter Eamon Ryan has admit­ted in the media that ‘mis­takes were made’ but has refused to dis­cuss the mov­ing of the refin­ery or the appro­pri­a­cy of a pipeline land­fall at Glen­gad. “There will be no re-vis­it­ing of the con­sents / per­mis­sions already giv­en to Shell”, he said. As usu­al the terms of ref­er­ence are pre-set by the ‘author­i­ties’ in order to avoid a fair and prop­er address­ing of the issues.

* The AFRI hedge school a few weeks ago was real­ly fan­tas­tic with some great peo­ple com­ing to have an input/speak includ­ing Den­nis Hal­l­i­day and oth­er peo­ple who have been deal­ing with Shell in oth­er coun­tries.

The fight goes on.

Solid Energy Gets Coal for Christmas (New Zealand)

24 Novem­ber 2008
Long-time envi­ron­men­tal activists Mr and Mrs San­ta Claus, were very rough­ly removed from Sol­id Ener­gy’s Annu­al Meet­ing in Auck­land today for attempt­ing to bring atten­tion to Sol­id Ener­gy’s cli­mate chang­ing prac­tices. The meet­ing was a pub­lic­i­ty stunt. Sol­id Ener­gy even said at the meet­ing that it is not like­ly to con­tin­ue to have open meet­ings in the future.

Don Elder pieing24 Novem­ber 2008
Long-time envi­ron­men­tal activists Mr and Mrs San­ta Claus, were very rough­ly removed from Sol­id Ener­gy’s Annu­al Meet­ing in Auck­land today for attempt­ing to bring atten­tion to Sol­id Ener­gy’s cli­mate chang­ing prac­tices. The meet­ing was a pub­lic­i­ty stunt. Sol­id Ener­gy even said at the meet­ing that it is not like­ly to con­tin­ue to have open meet­ings in the future.

Mr Claus deliv­ered a sack of Coal to Sol­id Ener­gy CEO Don Elder for his naughty behav­iour this year and Mrs Claus aimed a home-cooked pie at his face. Don greed­i­ly accept­ed the coal, but unfor­tu­nate­ly man­aged to deflect the pie.
Sol­id Ener­gy is intent on stay­ing in the fan­ta­sy world that the coal indus­try has cre­at­ed, where the myth of “Clean Coal” is a sen­si­ble solu­tion to cli­mate change. So mem­bers of the Save Hap­py Val­ley Coali­tion (SHVC) thought that per­haps what was need­ed was anoth­er fan­ta­sy char­ac­ter to help bring Sol­id Ener­gy back to real­i­ty. How­ev­er, not even San­ta Claus him­self could per­suade CEO Don Elder of the obvi­ous fact that coal is dirty.

Mr and Mrs Claus want­ed to demon­strate their frus­tra­tion at Sol­id Ener­gy’s dis­re­gard for the future of the plan­et, their con­tin­ued min­ing and export of coal, and their plans to turn the pris­tine wilder­ness of Hap­py Val­ley on the South Island’s West Coast into an open cast coal mine, killing crit­i­cal­ly endan­gered species includ­ing kiwi in the process. Mr and Mrs Clause are being per­son­al­ly effect­ed by cli­mate change as their home­land in the North Pole melts away before their very eyes. They will soon be added to the grow­ing list of cli­mate change refugees.

“Don Elder has been a very naughty boy again this year,” says SHVC spokesper­son San­ta Clause.

“He’s not get­ting any presents from me this year, just dirty, car­bon-emit­ting coal, which unfor­tu­nate­ly he has far too much of already!”

In fact, Don Elder was quit eager to accept the gift of coal from San­ta, snatch­ing it greed­i­ly from San­ta’s hands.

After attempt­ing to deliv­er some of her home bak­ing to Sol­id Ener­gy CEO Don Elder, which he was­n’t so keen on, Mrs Clause had this to say,

“Every year Don is told he needs to stop pro­mot­ing fos­sil fuels that cook the cli­mate, but he just won’t lis­ten to rea­son. I thought maybe a nice, home-cooked pie to the face might be the kind of rea­son­ing he would under­stand.”

SHVC chose to take a very light-heart­ed approach today to what is a in fact a very seri­ous issue. The pub­lic knows the real­i­ty of cli­mate change, and that coal is a dirty, pol­lut­ing sub­stance which we should be leav­ing in the ground rather than min­ing. Sol­id Ener­gy would like to con­vince us that prof­it is more impor­tant than the future of the plan­et and that coal can some­how be clean. But sen­si­ble peo­ple know how ridicu­lous that sounds. Clean coal tech­nolo­gies are imprac­ti­cal and unproven. There is no such thing as clean coal.

http://www.savehappyvalley.org.nz

TopShop SwapShop (London), Buy Nothing Day action (+ Steal Something Day) + Leeds + Liverpool + Bristol

Ladies and Gen­tle­men we are proud to announce the restyling fash­ion mash-up event of the year!

TOPSHOP SWAPSHOP
2pm Sat 29th Novem­ber – Top­shop Oxford Street
Cred­it Crunch!

Ladies and Gen­tle­men we are proud to announce the restyling fash­ion mash-up event of the year!
Top Shop Swap Shop buy nothing day flier
TOPSHOP SWAPSHOP
2pm Sat 29th Novem­ber – Top­shop Oxford Street
Cred­it Crunch!

In the light of the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cri­sis and the out­rage over the sweat­shop con­di­tions that most high street brands make their clothes in, the swap­shop is your chance to re-vamp your wardrobe with a free con­science! Leap­ing away from the drudgery of big cor­po­rate fash­ion with it’s dodgy busi­ness prac­tices and spend spend spend atti­tude, the Top­shop swap­shop takes fash­ion back to it’s roots.

Sim­ply turn up at TOPSHOP on Oxford Street wear­ing an out­fit you wish to upgrade, then on the stroke of 2, mar­vel as hun­dreds of fash­ion moguls offer to trade your clothes with you.

Fan­cy that girls jumper? Why not offer to swap your belt for it?
That boy’s hat is to die for, how about a trade for your jeans?
Nice skirt, fan­cy trad­ing my t‑shirt for it?

After a hec­tic re-work­ing of your look you can then walk proud­ly back onto the streets of Lon­don town with a new wardrobe and not hav­ing spent a sin­gle pen­ny.

You can buy lots of clothes but you can’t buy style.

Please spread far and wide…

DISCLAIMER:

The above event is in no way sup­port­ed or con­doned by Top­Shop. Any sim­i­lar­i­ty to any brand liv­ing or dead is mere­ly coin­ci­den­tal.

http://www.spacehijackers.org

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Steal Something Day
Steal Some­thing Day, a shame­less 24-hour steal­ing spree! a cri­tique of BND and call to action, recy­cled from pre­vi­ous years for your enter­tain­ment

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Buy Noth­ing Day Leeds

In Brig­gate this Sat­ur­day (29th of Nov) there will be a Buy Noth­ing extrav­a­gan­za. We will have Christ­mas car­ols telling peo­ple of the woes of shop­ping, there will be hot tea and cof­fee to help ex-shop­pers read­just to there new found hap­pi­ness, and ideas of presents that do not involve con­sumerism. From
11am — till dark we will be ask­ing peo­ple to ques­tion con­sumerism and join us in buy­ing noth­ing!

Last year was a major suc­cess and BND strikes again. Please bake cakes, bring food and any­thing you would like to give away. There will be a free shop, music and tables. Bring any­thing down to join in the par­ty!
Leeds BND

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Liv­er­pool
Buy Nothing Day (Liverpool) flier
next to nowhere is proud to present an oppor­tu­ni­ty for all the liv­er­pool activists to join togeth­er in a spir­it of togeth­er­ness, open­ness & com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

i guess we can all agree that over-con­sump­tion is a very bad thing & i reck­on that most of us see cap­i­tal­ism as the root of the sick­ness that is infest­ing our soci­ety. yes?
any­one a racist? no? oh my, we seem to have some­thing in com­mon after all!

well, on sat­ur­day 29th novem­ber it’s time to put your mutu­al aid where your mouth is.

at 11am maybe meet & greet nick grif­fin (bnp) who could be plea­sur­ing our city with his pres­ence in his bid to become mep for the north west of eng­land. he’s called for the par­ty faith­ful to gath­er in protest at thear­rest of sev­er­al mem­bers last week. are we real­ly going to let this hap­pen?
meet at the top of church street at 10am.

after­wards, from 12pm, the social cen­tre shall be trans­formed into an oasis of anti-cap­i­tal­ism.

we’ll have:
a fab­u­lous free-shop full of qual­i­ty free good­ies,
free tea n’ cof­fee,
veg­an cafe (dona­tions only),
open mic, film, per­for­mance, spo­ken word…

now, i know that some peo­ple are a bit scared of actu­al­ly get­ting involved in next to nowhere, prefer­ing to dis­cuss the short­com­ings of the book­ing pol­i­cy from a safe dis­tance. just to be clear, and restate the bot­tom line of next to nowhere from its con­sti­tu­tion — every­one is wel­come to get involved at the social cen­tre pro­vid­ed that they are will­ing to work in a non-hier­ar­chi­cal way through con­sen­sus.

‘actions speak loud­er than words’ — please can peo­ple work togeth­er in mutu­al sup­port to help make this world a bet­ter place and take on the evils which are fuck­ing up our world or say noth­ing and stop this on-going crit­i­cism from the side­lines, whilst doing noth­ing at nowhere.

who knows, the open-mic forum could even pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple to express their feel­ings about the social cen­tre, in a non-hier­ar­chi­cal way of course!
or, we could just have a good old-fash­ioned knees up…

togeth­er, let’s start to dance on the graves of mul­ti-nation­al cor­po­ra­tions!

feistyfingers[at]yahoo.co.uk
http://www.liverpoolsocialcentre.org

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Buy Noth­ing Day 2008 — Freeshop in Broad­mead, Bris­tol

Free shop, live music, cir­cus skills and face paint­ing? UWE stu­dents from the Peo­ple and Plan­et soci­ety are going to be tak­ing part in a ‘buy noth­ing day’ and will be run­ning a free shop on Sat­ur­day, bright­en­ing up the cold, grey, win­try streets of Bris­tol city cen­tre.

To recap­ture some of that lost Christ­mas Spir­it (the giv­ing that is, not the spend­ing!) we’ll be giv­ing away clothes, bric-a-brac and plen­ty more lit­tle gems for you to get your mitts on as well as bring­ing a lit­tle sun­shine to the often not-so-hap­py shop­pers of Bris­tol. If you have any­thing you want to get rid of, bring it along!

We’re look­ing for vol­un­teers to help inform and enter­tain (musi­cians, cir­cus enter­tain­ers, etc) so if your game bring your uni­cy­cle down and get involved! It kicks off at 11am and will be run­ning till 4pm, so Pop down to our mar­quee in-between the Gal­leries and Cabot Cir­cus (Just down from Ann Sum­mers!).

For more info e‑mail Lisa at lisatozer@hotmail.com

I’ll see you there!

Chester Forest Rescue Camp Steps Up (Australia)

2008-11-23
Local and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers cam­paign­ing to save over 800 hectares of rare, pris­tine for­est in WA’s south­west have set up a tree plat­form and sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ty camp in the Chester for­est block after camp­ing on near­by pri­vate prop­er­ty for the last few months. The move comes as the For­est Prod­ucts Com­mis­sion (FPC) starts to mark out Dieback infect­ed areas and log­ging roads into the coupe. A call­out has been made to all to get down and sup­port the cam­paign.

Chester platform2008-11-23
Local and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers cam­paign­ing to save over 800 hectares of rare, pris­tine for­est in WA’s south­west have set up a tree plat­form and sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ty camp in the Chester for­est block after camp­ing on near­by pri­vate prop­er­ty for the last few months. The move comes as the For­est Prod­ucts Com­mis­sion (FPC) starts to mark out Dieback infect­ed areas and log­ging roads into the coupe. A call­out has been made to all to get down and sup­port the cam­paign.

After sev­er­al months on pri­vate prop­er­ty near Mar­garet Riv­er, the Chester For­est Res­cue Camp has moved into the for­est as the log­ging date draws clos­er and the FPC begins to mark out log­ging areas and roads with­in the coup. A tree plat­form has been erect­ed and a com­mu­ni­ty camp set up on the edge of the coupe for what is expect­ed to be an ongo­ing cam­paign to save over 800 hectares of a world reco­ginsed bio­di­ver­si­ty hotspot.

Chester For­est Block is sit­u­at­ed South of the Black­wood Riv­er in WA’s south­west, approx­i­mate­ly 40km’s south-east from the town of Mar­garet Riv­er. It is com­prised pre­dom­i­nate­ly of Jar­rah and Marri(Redgum) wood­land with sea­son­al­ly wet low­land and a patch of Kar­ri towards the mid­dle of the coupe. There is a high num­ber of threat­ened and pri­or­i­ty endem­ic plant species (species that only occur with­in the local plant com­mu­ni­ty) with Chester For­est hav­ing a very high degree of species rich­ness. A large patch of for­est with­in the coupe and sur­round­ing Nature Reserve remains unin­fect­ed from Phy­topthera dieback ( see http://www.dwg.org.au/index.cfm?objectid=2C607FE0-C09F-1F3C-C87C8B2114B042F3) which threat­ens to destroy and degrade much of the For­est. The FPC plans to log right in the mid­dle of the unin­fect­ed, healthy for­est. Log­ging the for­est and all the dis­tur­bance that comes with it (Machin­ery, altered water flow, roads etc.) will only accel­er­ate the spread of Dieback with­in Chester and sur­round­ing pris­tine for­est and wood­land. Log­ging is expect­ed to com­mence in ear­ly Jan­u­ary.

With the effects of log­ging on Cli­mate Change, increase salin­i­ty, and ecosys­tem col­lapse now well doc­u­ment­ed, and 85 per­cent of WA’s native forests already gone, it is unac­cept­able that native forests con­tin­ue to be logged for tiny (some­time neg­a­tive) prof­its for indus­try and gov­ern­ment depart­ments. It is now well known that our forests pro­vide much more than just wood. They pro­vide us with clean air, water, healthy soil and sta­ble ecosys­tems to sup­port life as we know it.

Come and join the cam­paign to save Chester For­est and build the com­mu­ni­ty voice that is need­ed to stop the log­ging of our pre­cious nat­ur­al resources.

Get in touch with the Mar­garet Riv­er Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre (Ph/fax. 9758 8078)
Or call 0422535328 for more info and direc­tions to camp.
(a map will be post­ed soon for direc­tions to camp)

West­ern Aus­tralian For­est Alliance
Glob­al Warm­ing For­est Group

A report from the No Borders network gathering

A report from No Bor­ders gath­er­ing in New­cas­tle

On 9 & 10 Novem­ber a gath­er­ing of No Bor­ders activists was held in New­cas­tle with groups and indi­vid­u­als from Brighton, Bris­tol, South Wales, Lon­don, Oxford, Man­ches­ter, Leeds, New­cas­tle, Edin­burgh and Glas­gow tak­ing part. Alto­geth­er, about 50–60 peo­ple attend­ed.

A report from No Bor­ders gath­er­ing in New­cas­tle

On 9 & 10 Novem­ber a gath­er­ing of No Bor­ders activists was held in New­cas­tle with groups and indi­vid­u­als from Brighton, Bris­tol, South Wales, Lon­don, Oxford, Man­ches­ter, Leeds, New­cas­tle, Edin­burgh and Glas­gow tak­ing part. Alto­geth­er, about 50–60 peo­ple attend­ed.

Sat­ur­day began with report backs from local groups, giv­ing us an impres­sion of the activ­i­ty of the No Bor­ders net­work. Oppo­si­tion against ID cards and the IOM, and actions against depor­ta­tion air­lines and immi­gra­tion snatch squads, are as much part of the No Bor­ders agen­da as is sol­i­dar­i­ty with detainees, depor­tees and migrant work­ers. It was obvi­ous that the vol­ume and vari­ety of actions is one of the strengths of the net­work which has helped it to con­tin­ue to devel­op and grow with­out los­ing momen­tum.

The inter­na­tion­al dimen­sion of the net­work was stressed when peo­ple told of large-scale block­ades of a deten­tion cen­tre in Bel­gium, of Ham­burg air­port to stop depor­ta­tions, and of the attempt to dis­man­tle a deten­tion cen­tre in Den­mark. Peo­ple felt it is increas­ing­ly impor­tant to con­tin­ue devel­op­ing info and action-shar­ing net­works with peo­ple across Europe and else­where. UK No Bor­ders activists are mak­ing con­nec­tions with cam­paign­ers in North­ern France to high­light the sit­u­a­tion of hun­dreds of refugees trapped in Calais.

Dis­cus­sions also devel­oped around the idea of orga­niz­ing a big­ger No Bor­ders event in the future that would include actions and info-shar­ing.

On Sun­day, the need to devel­op No Bor­ders pol­i­tics was stressed in a dis­cus­sion on ‘who are our allies’. At a local lev­el, whilst work­ing on some issues in coali­tion with groups and organ­i­sa­tions that dif­fer in char­ac­ter, No Bor­ders has a firm­ly anti-cap­i­tal­ist and anti-author­i­tar­i­an stance. Over all, the net­work reit­er­at­ed its explic­it anti-cap­i­tal­ist and anti-author­i­tar­i­an posi­tion, and a group formed to work on pub­lic­i­ty that offers an eas­i­ly acces­si­ble guide to No Bor­ders pol­i­tics. This could take the form of writ­ten pub­li­ca­tions and media projects such as the devel­op­ment of a film.

All in all, shar­ing infor­ma­tion and sto­ries was an inspir­ing expe­ri­ence and by strength­en­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions and net­work-wide tac­tics, peo­ple across the UK will con­tin­ue to devel­op their ideas and inspire each oth­er to take action against bor­ders and to pro­mote free­dom of move­ment for all.

The next gath­er­ing is pro­posed for February/March 2009 in Bris­tol
www.noborders.org.uk

Indigenous Resistance To Silly Dam Project In Brazil

18/11/2008
Peo­ple Pow­er Fucks Up Con­struc­tion

Juruena Dam construction site trashed 1Juruena Dam construction site trashed 218/11/2008
Peo­ple Pow­er Fucks Up Con­struc­tion

One hun­dred and twen­ty mem­bers of the Enawene Nawe tribe trashed a con­struc­tion site of a hydro elec­tric dam on the Juru­e­na riv­er in west­ern Brazil on 11th of last month. Trucks, offices, hous­ing for work­ers were all destroyed and or torched in a $1 mil­lion sur­vival spree.

“They came armed with axes and pieces of wood, ban­ished the employ­ees and lat­er set fire to every­thing” said Fred­eri­co Muller, a coor­di­na­tor work­ing at the site. At least 12 trucks were destroyed, along with a num­ber of offices and hous­ing units.

Sur­vival because the tribes all over the Ama­zon basin rely on the rivers for fish­ing, one of the eas­i­est, most reli­able ways to get food. There are 77 such dams planned for the area but the destruc­tion is very wide­ly spread: one Brazil­ian super dam project – the Belo Monte – will dis­place 16,000 peo­ple.

Some back­ground to this cri­sis: Brazil’s spi­ralling ener­gy needs are the result of the den­tal­ly inim­itable pro indus­try fuck­wit Lula de Sil­va’s (or should that be the IMF etc’s) poli­cies of growth at any cost. Demand has out­stripped sup­ply in recent years and a long drought in 2001 brought mat­ters to a head. With no water even the best dams can pro­duce no pow­er so rationing was com­menced – down to one fifth of nor­mal sup­ply. The deci­sion was made at this time to increase Brazil’s hydro capac­i­ty by 75% and thus we have the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion of mass forced dis­place­ment of indige­nous peo­ples.

But the dams are not even a sure thing either eco­nom­i­cal­ly or prac­ti­cal­ly (except­ing the con­struc­tion com­pa­nies, financiers, bribees etc.). Pre­dic­tions of low water for 3 – 5 months of the year make the projects look ridicu­lous. How­ev­er if you include geno­cide as a wel­come part of your busi­ness mod­el then the fig­ures are any­thing but. As one fucked up white ele­phant dam is com­plet­ed it requires more upstream stor­age capac­i­ty to be built and hence more dis­place­ment. This is the real­i­ty of ‘eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment’ in Brazil.

Mass Tribal Uprising in West Bengal

Novem­ber 18, 2008

What we are wit­ness­ing in the trib­al belt of West Ben­gal is [an] his­tor­i­cal moment. A long oppressed peo­ple have risen up and are dar­ing to con­front their oppres­sors and ques­tion the log­ic of “devel­op­ment” that destroys their lives and liveli­hoods.”

Novem­ber 18, 2008

What we are wit­ness­ing in the trib­al belt of West Ben­gal is [an] his­tor­i­cal moment. A long oppressed peo­ple have risen up and are dar­ing to con­front their oppres­sors and ques­tion the log­ic of “devel­op­ment” that destroys their lives and liveli­hoods.”

In what start­ed out as a protest against police bru­tal­i­ty, on Novem­ber 7 more than ten thou­sand San­thal men and women con­verged in the Indi­an state of West Ben­gal to demand the end to state oppres­sion and the con­stant dis­pos­ses­sion of their lands.

It is an his­toric moment for the trib­al peo­ples in the region — and one so unprece­dent­ed that author­i­ties are not even sure what to do about it.

“Even the polit­i­cal par­ties and civ­il soci­ety are at a loss try­ing to come to terms with what is hap­pen­ing,” says Partho Sarathi Ray, in Sanhati.com. “Noth­ing like this has been wit­nessed in West Ben­gal in liv­ing mem­o­ry.”

The upris­ing report­ed­ly began fol­low­ing a land mine explo­sion on Novem­ber 2, which tar­get­ed the state’s chief min­is­ter as well as the union steel and mines min­is­ter.

The two men were return­ing from the inau­gu­ra­tion of the Jin­dal Steel Works (JSW) spe­cial eco­nom­ic zone (SEZ) in West Mid­na­pore dis­trict. Approx­i­mate­ly 5000 acres of land had been acquired for JSW, the vast major­i­ty of which was sup­posed to be dis­trib­uted amongst the land­less Adi­va­sis (indige­nous peo­ple) in the region. The gov­ern­ment hand­ed it over to the com­pa­ny instead.

The explo­sion was prompt­ly blamed on the Maoist guer­ril­las — how­ev­er, in what has become a com­mon prac­tice in West Ben­gal, the police turned all of their atten­tion to the local indige­nous pop­u­la­tion for being “com­plic­it” in the attack.

Over the next few days, the police set out on a cam­paign to assault, harass and ran­dom­ly arrest any trib­al per­son they want­ed.

But it just wasn’t enough for the police, who hadn’t the slight­est clue who was behind the explo­sion. So, on Novem­ber 6 the police “… led by the offi­cer in charge of Lal­garh police sta­tion… unleashed a reign of ter­ror in 35 vil­lages encom­pass­ing the entire trib­al belt of Lal­garh,” explains Ray. “In raids through­out the night of Novem­ber 6th, women were bru­tal­ly kicked and beat­en up with lath­is and butts of guns. Among the injured, Chi­ta­mani Mur­mu, one of whose eyes was hit by a gun butt, and Pana­mani Hans­da, who was kicked on her chest and suf­fered mul­ti­ple frac­tures, had to [be] hos­pi­tal­ized. Chitamani’s lost her eye because of the injury. Eight oth­er women were bad­ly wound­ed. These police bru­tal­i­ties soon reached a point where the adi­va­sis had no oth­er option but to rise up in revolt,” Ray con­tin­ues.

The next day, “what began as rum­blings of protest took the shape of a spon­ta­neous mass upris­ing [of] ten thou­sand San­thal men and women, armed with tra­di­tion­al weapons, [who] came out and obstruct­ed the roads lead­ing to Lal­garh, dis­con­nect­ing it from Mid­na­pur and Banku­ra. Roads were dug up and tree trunks were placed on the road to obstruct the entry of police vehi­cles, in the same way as it had been done in Nandi­gram.”

Dur­ing the night, “peo­ple also dis­con­nect­ed tele­phone and elec­tric­i­ty lines, vir­tu­al­ly con­vert­ing a vast area into a lib­er­at­ed zone. The apex social orga­ni­za­tion of the San­thals, the Bharat Jakat Majhi Mad­wa Juan Gaon­ta took up the lead­er­ship of the strug­gle, although the leader of the orga­ni­za­tion, the “Disham Majhi” Nityanan­da Hem­bram has him­self admit­ted that the orga­ni­za­tion has no con­trol over the move­ment; rather the move­ment is con­trol­ling the orga­ni­za­tion.”

As for the gov­ern­ment, which has “not dared to respond with overt vio­lence yet”, is help­less in the face of this upsurge. They’ve been try­ing to nego­ti­ate, but the effort has so far been fruit­less due to the demo­c­ra­t­ic and decen­tral­ized nature of the upris­ing. They sim­ply can’t exert any influ­ence over the indige­nous peo­ple.

They way things look right now, the gov­ern­ment may have no choice but to con­cede.

Reports on Sanhati

Mainstream Reports

2 weeks of Rooftop Occupation. Public Meeting Called with P4P

ROOFTOP OCCUPIERS CALL FOR PUBLIC MEETING TO DISCUSS THE FUTURE OF 87 ASHLEY ROAD, ST PAUL’S, BRISTOL

10.00am today (Wednes­day) marked 2 weeks of the rooftop occu­pa­tion — WE’RE STILL HERE!

Ashley Road bannerROOFTOP OCCUPIERS CALL FOR PUBLIC MEETING TO DISCUSS THE FUTURE OF 87 ASHLEY ROAD, ST PAUL’S, BRISTOL

10.00am today (Wednes­day) marked 2 weeks of the rooftop occu­pa­tion — WE’RE STILL HERE!

On Thurs­day 27th of Novem­ber an open pub­lic meet­ing is being held in The St Pauls Learn­ing Cen­tre at 6.30pm to dis­cuss this sit­u­a­tion. Sup­port­ers of the rooftop pro­test­ers will be in atten­dance to answer ques­tions, respond to local con­cerns and open a dia­logue with PfP.

Places for Peo­ple are pub­licly invit­ed to state and open­ly dis­cuss what their inten­tions for 87 Ash­ley Road are. This will help assure every­one that they are in fact going to rehouse peo­ple on the hous­ing wait­ing list.

We hope you can attend.
For fur­ther infor­ma­tion con­tact:
Email: 87AshleyRoad@gmail.com
Phone:07722 786 379

Back­ground:

On Novem­ber 12th 2008 Places for Peo­ple (PfP) exe­cut­ed an evic­tion order on 87 Ash­ley Road, a squat­ted build­ing occu­pied by 20 peo­ple who have been made home­less by this action. This build­ing was unused by PfP for four years and left emp­ty until May 2008 when squat­ters work­ing to house as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble moved in.
PfP have refused all attempts to nego­ti­ate a mutu­al­ly benif­i­cal agree­ment, repeat­ed­ly sub­mit­ted incor­rect pos­ses­sion claims to Bris­tol Mag­is­trates courts and threat­ened ille­gal evic­tion. At one stage the sit­ting mag­is­trate called PfPs rep­re­sen­ta­tion “a right dog’s break­fast.”

As bailif­f’s and builders work­ing on behalf of Places for Peo­ple entered the prop­er­ty sev­er­al squat­ters moved onto the roof to resist evic­tion and have been there ever since.
As far as the courts are con­cerned the evic­tion has been served despite pro­test­ers being on the roof.

This press release is being writ­ten on the 14th day of con­tin­u­al rooftop occu­pa­tion and is being sent to com­mu­ni­ty groups and indi­vid­u­als in the St. Pauls area, and Places for Peo­ple.

Builders have board­ed up all nor­mal exit points from the roof, leav­ing the roof pro­test­ers no safe, imme­di­ate access. PfP have instruct­ed builders to ren­der the prop­er­ty unin­hab­it­able by remov­ing ALL fix­tures and fit­tings.

There are no plan­ning appli­ca­tions cur­rent­ly under con­sid­er­a­tion by Bris­tol City Coun­cil for 87 Ash­ley Road. PfP have been vague about their inten­tions for the prop­er­ty, how­ev­er they have men­tioned plans that would not ben­e­fit any­one on the hous­ing list.

The protest is part of a con­tin­u­ing con­cern over Places for Peo­ple’s treat­ment of emp­ty prop­er­ties and it’s sell­ing off of rental stock on the open mar­ket. PfP are sell­ing prop­er­ties via the “shared own­er­ship” scheme while not replac­ing rental prop­er­ties for those most in need. This will lead to an even­tu­al return to the unaf­ford­able rental mar­ket and a worse deal for low-income fam­i­lies seek­ing decent acco­mo­da­tion.

—

1 week: rooftop Occu­pa­tion of Ash­ley Road update

Update: Dai­ly sol­i­dar­i­ty demon­stra­tions will take place from 4–6pm out­side the house. All are wel­come —-
Sat­ur­day Novem­ber 15, 2008
The rooftop occu­pa­tion has now been going for 81 hours. Morale is high, sup­port has been con­stant and much appre­ci­at­ed. Thank you. There are health and safe­ty ques­tions about Places for Peo­ple bar­ri­cad­ing them up there. Any sup­port, noise or pro­vi­sions is very wel­come! Come and say hel­lo to the 87 crew, still going!

Res­i­dents and squat­ters togeth­er against cor­rupt land­lords!

Vedanta chased away by threatened Villagers in Orissa

14th Novem­ber 2008

Last week, a group of more than 500 vil­lagers set up road­blocks in Orissa’s Puri dis­trict to protest the con­struc­tion of “Dev San­skrati Vish­wavidyalaya” (Divine Cul­ture Uni­ver­si­ty) a project fund­ed by the rather-unen­light­ened com­pa­ny we know as Vedan­ta Resources.

14th Novem­ber 2008
Orissa villagers

Last week, a group of more than 500 vil­lagers set up road­blocks in Orissa’s Puri dis­trict to protest the con­struc­tion of “Dev San­skrati Vish­wavidyalaya” (Divine Cul­ture Uni­ver­si­ty) a project fund­ed by the rather-unen­light­ened com­pa­ny we know as Vedan­ta Resources.

The vil­lagers are angry that the insti­tu­tion, which will apparently”>http://intercontinentalcry.org/vedanta-chased-away-by-threatened-villagers/’);”>apparently estab­lish “a Cul­tur­al Renais­sance” in India, is sit­u­at­ed on agri­cul­tur­al land that the Oris­sa gov­ern­ment ‘acquired’ with­out the peo­ples con­sent. The gov­ern­ment then donat­ed the land to Vedan­ta for free (Wikipedia).

The com­pa­ny defends the gov­ern­ments actions by claim­ing the land isn’t fer­tile and of no real use to the vil­lagers. It’s a thor­ough­ly absurd claim, see­ing as how the vil­lagers are active in grow­ing rice, man­go, cashew, papaya, betel, pump­kin, and coconut, etc. through­out the region.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Vedan­ta claims that the land is only sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed and that only a hun­dred or so peo­ple will be dis­placed for the project. Activists say it’s more like 1,000 — on top of anoth­er 20,000 to 50,000 who will be indi­rect­ly effect­ed.

What­ev­er the actu­al num­ber is, no vil­lager has giv­en their con­sent to be dis­placed. That was made clear dur­ing last week’s protest, which took place at the ground-break­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the insti­tu­tion. The pro­test­ers rushed it, some of them car­ry­ing lath­is, and forced the offi­cials to with­draw by police escort. There were no injuries report­ed.

Fol­low­ing the protest a com­pa­ny offi­cial stat­ed that, “in view of the vio­lent sit­u­a­tion… we have stopped the work of the uni­ver­si­ty and intend to resume the con­struc­tion work soon.”

It would seem the offi­cial also tried to demean the vil­lagers’ strug­gle, by claim­ing it’s lit­tle more than a few peo­ple “cre­at­ing dis­tur­bances.”

An insult to say the least, the official’s state­ment is also a far stretch from what the pro­test­ers were told. Accord­ing to Uma­ballav Rath, leader of the Vedan­ta Vish­wavidyalaya Virod­hi Sami­ti, the orga­ni­za­tion head­ing the move­ment against the project, “offi­cials of the Vedan­ta Group have assured us in the pres­ence of the dis­trict admin­is­tra­tion that they are not going to start work on the project with­out our con­sent.”

In light of recent his­to­ry — name­ly, the strug­gle of the Don­gria Kondh, who are fac­ing sim­i­lar dis­place­ment (as well as the destruc­tion of their cul­ture) at the hands of Vedan­ta — the for­mer state­ment is prob­a­bly the most accu­rate.

The com­pa­ny doesn’t seem to care one way anoth­er how must destruc­tion it caus­es. Just as long as it main­tains the good face of enlight­en­ment for its share­hold­ers.

For­tu­nate­ly, the villagers—and of course the Don­gria Kondh—are not so will­ing to play make believe.

pho­to: http://nazaronline.net