French police arrest anarchists for train sabotage + web link for more info

11th Novem­ber 2008
French police raid­ed alleged anar­chist cells in three cities on Tues­day and arrest­ed at least 10 sus­pects fol­low­ing a series of sab­o­tage attacks on the coun­try’s high-speed rail net­work.

11th Novem­ber 2008
French police raid­ed alleged anar­chist cells in three cities on Tues­day and arrest­ed at least 10 sus­pects fol­low­ing a series of sab­o­tage attacks on the coun­try’s high-speed rail net­work.

Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Michele Alliot-Marie said police intel­li­gence offi­cers had been inves­ti­gat­ing an “ultra-left anar­chist move­ment” for sev­er­al months and had act­ed fol­low­ing the week­end’s dis­rup­tion of train ser­vices.

“We found that this ultra-left move­ment has links in five Euro­pean coun­tries and in oth­er non-Euro­pean coun­tries,” she said, alleg­ing that the French gang has con­tacts in Bel­gium, Ger­many, Italy and Greece.

None of those arrest­ed works for the SNCF state rail net­work, she added.

A source close to the inves­ti­ga­tion told AFP anti-ter­ror­ist offi­cers were exam­in­ing “pos­si­ble links between the sus­pects and the Ger­man hard-left, which has claimed respon­si­bil­i­ty for actions agains trains car­ry­ing nuclear waste”.

Pres­i­dent Nico­las Sarkozy con­grat­u­lat­ed police on the arrests and wel­comed “the rapid and promis­ing progress made in the con­text of the inquiry.”

Thou­sands of pas­sen­gers and more than 160 train ser­vices were delayed Sat­ur­day after a gang jammed steel rods across over­head pow­er cables on three high-speed lines between Paris and Lon­don, Brus­sels and the French regions.

The attack halt­ed trains and dam­aged sev­er­al sec­tions of 25,000-volt pow­er lines, but no one was hurt.

In a sep­a­rate inci­dent on Sun­day in the south­west of the coun­try, anoth­er high-speed train rammed a pair of con­crete blocks placed on a line. There were no injuries and it is not yet clear whether the inci­dent was relat­ed.

Alliot-Marie said 10 sus­pects were being held, but an inte­ri­or min­istry offi­cial said more than 20 had ini­tial­ly been detained in raids con­duct­ed in Paris, the cen­tral town of Tarnac and the north­ern city of Rouen.

Fol­low­ing Sat­ur­day’s inci­dent, which fol­lowed at least one sim­i­lar inci­dent involv­ing the use of rods designed to rein­force con­crete and a series of oth­er acts of van­dal­ism, offi­cials spoke of a “con­cert­ed cam­paign” of sab­o­tage.

Experts from the SNCF state rail com­pa­ny told reporters that the sophis­ti­ca­tion of the attacks showed the sabo­teurs were tech­ni­cal­ly very com­pe­tent, since neu­tral­is­ing the pow­er lines required expert knowl­edge.

The TGV high-speed rail net­work has been the tar­get of sev­er­al extrem­ist cam­paigns over recent years by crim­i­nals seek­ing to black­mail SNCF, Basque sep­a­ratist guer­ril­las and mil­i­tant trade union­ists.

Sat­ur­day’s attacks were among the best planned, tak­ing out trains on lines north, east and south of the cap­i­tal at almost the same moment and plung­ing the nation­al net­work into chaos.

In addi­tion to nation­al ser­vices, Eurostar trains to Brus­sels and Lon­don and Thalys jour­neys to the Nether­lands and north­ern Europe were halt­ed.

Despite the most intense protests by anti-nuclear cam­paign­ers for sev­er­al years, a French ship­ment of radioac­tive waste arrived in Ger­many ear­ly on Tues­day after a 20-hour delay.

Eleven lor­ries car­ry­ing 123 tonnes of nuclear waste arrived at the Gor­leben dump in north­ern Ger­many just after mid­night (2200 GMT), police said.

For most of the jour­ney from west­ern France the waste trav­elled by train and was halt­ed for half a day at the Ger­man bor­der by three activists who had jammed their arms into a con­crete block under the track.

Once in Ger­many, around 16,000 baton-wield­ing police were deployed as around 15,000 demon­stra­tors ral­lied along the route to try to hin­der progress using tac­tics such as set­ting bar­ri­cades on fire on the tracks.

The train even­tu­al­ly arrived at its final des­ti­na­tion on Mon­day, more than 14 and a half hours late and the car­go was then trans­ferred to lor­ries for the final 20 kilo­me­tres (12 miles) trip to Gor­leben.

Along the final leg some 1,000 activists had to be removed one-by-one by riot police before the lor­ries could pass. Trac­tors had been parked across the road and activists chained them­selves to tall cement pyra­mids.

For updat­ed info and back­ground arti­cles, see http://tarnac9.wordpress.com/about/

Anti-incinerator protest staged

The SCAI who are try­ing to stop an incin­er­a­tor being built in south Oxford­shire have held a protest out­side Coun­ty Hall. The site at Sut­ton Courte­nay near Did­cot is one of two being con­sid­ered by Oxford­shire Coun­ty Coun­cil.

Anti-incinerator protest stagedThe SCAI who are try­ing to stop an incin­er­a­tor being built in south Oxford­shire have held a protest out­side Coun­ty Hall. The site at Sut­ton Courte­nay near Did­cot is one of two being con­sid­ered by Oxford­shire Coun­ty Coun­cil.

One of the cam­paign­ers, Cal­lum MacKen­zie, said they did not want to see an incin­er­a­tor built any­where in the Oxford­shire area.

The pro­test­ers also hand­ed over a peti­tion against the plans. “We are opposed to incin­er­a­tion, not just in Sut­ton Courte­nay, but in Oxford­shire,” said Mr MacKen­zie.

“We are not talk­ing of what we can get out of this as a result of it com­ing here. We are talk­ing about it not com­ing here full stop.”

latest from Gorleben nuke transport protests (& they’ve not even really started!)

Novem­ber 08, 2008
CASTOR-BLOCKADE WITH CONCRETE BLOCK NEAR WÖRTH: A group of young peo­ple at about 12.45 pm Sat­ur­day made the rail­way line unpass­able for the Cas­tor train short­ly after it crossed into Ger­many, 500 metres north of Berg sta­tion. Three men and women fas­tened their arms in the mas­sive block placed under the track sleep­ers. The train has been stopped for now.

Castor Deutsche Bahn banner hangNovem­ber 08, 2008
CASTOR-BLOCKADE WITH CONCRETE BLOCK NEAR WÖRTH: A group of young peo­ple at about 12.45 pm Sat­ur­day made the rail­way line unpass­able for the Cas­tor train short­ly after it crossed into Ger­many, 500 metres north of Berg sta­tion. Three men and women fas­tened their arms in the mas­sive block placed under the track sleep­ers. The train has been stopped for now.

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Novem­ber 06, 2008
BLOCKADES HAVE BEGUN: The rail­way line used to take nuclear waste into the Wend­land was sym­bol­i­cal­ly block­ad­ed at three over­pass­es on Thurs­day by abseil­ers. Police seized and held a promi­nent French woman climber in “pre­ven­tive deten­tion”, a law that has been ruled invalid by the high­est court. The envi­ron­ment organ­i­sa­tion Robin Wood sus­pend­ed three abseil­ers from three bridges between Lüneb­urg and Wendisch Evern, say­ing they would stay there until the waste train came or police removed them. The French activist is used to being under per­ma­nent police sur­veil­lance because of her fre­quent spec­tac­u­lar climb­ing actions. On Thurs­day evening dozens of sup­port­ers demon­strat­ed for her release out­side the Lüneb­urg police direc­torate.

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Novem­ber 05, 2008
TRAIN STOPPED BY PROTEST: Three high school pupils stopped a train bring­ing the spe­cial trucks for the Cas­tor trans­port to Gor­leben for half an hour near Hitza­ck­er on Mon­day by sit­ting on the rails. They had to be car­ried away by police. About 100 demon­stra­tors were near the track. Police were report­ed to be con­fused at first until they asked for rein­force­ments, which took half an hour to arrive. The three were encir­cled by police and had their IDs tak­en down. Pic­tures at http://de.indymedia.org/2008/11/231196.shtml

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GREENPEACE ACTIVISTS OCCUPY DUMP TOWER: 40 Green­peace activists occu­pied a wind­ing tow­er of the Asse II nuclear dump near Wolfen­büt­tel on Wednes­day morn­ing (pic­tures at http://de.indymedia.org/2008/11/231338.shtml), attach­ing a ban­ner that said nuclear waste must be removed from the for­mer potash mine, which is heav­i­ly tak­ing water. The action is to last sev­er­al days. Police have not demand­ed that the pro­test­ers leave the tow­er and so far every­thing has been peace­ful. From Jan­u­ary the mine, which was con­sid­ered a mod­el for Gor­leben, is to be con­trolled by a dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ment author­i­ty, the Fed­er­al Agency for Radi­a­tion Pro­tec­tion. Back­ground on Asse II at http://sydney.indymedia.org.au/story/nuclear-worries-increase-german-waste-dump-mine-floods and http://sydney.indymedia.org.au/story/german-nuclear-dump-was-illegal-start.

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ATTACKS ON POWER COMPANY’S VEHICLES: The «Ham­burg­er Mor­gen­post» news­pa­per has pub­lished text pur­port­ing to claim respon­si­bil­i­ty for attacks on vehi­cles of the Vat­ten­fall pow­er com­pa­ny con­nect­ed with the Cas­tor trans­port. Win­dows of a car were dam­aged and both front tyres stabbed. Police say they have no claims of respon­si­bil­i­ty for two oth­er attacks. In one case a vehi­cle loaded with four gas bot­tles was set on fire, caus­ing an explo­sion that injured no one. But the pres­sure wave was said to have caused tens of thou­sands of euros worth of dam­age. Five vehi­cles were total­ly destroyed and a near­by build­ing dam­aged. Police were able to stop anoth­er arson attack on a Vat­ten­fall vehi­cle when a wit­ness called them after see­ing the attempt. Police assume all attacks were car­ried out by the same group of peo­ple.

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POLICE IN GÖTTINGEN ROUGHED UP TWO ANTI-NUCLEAR ACTIVISTS who had hung a ban­ner about the com­ing Cas­tor trans­port over the entrance to the local rail­way sta­tion. One had his wrists painful­ly twist­ed, the oth­er was clapped in hand­cuffs imme­di­ate­ly. Police went to the home of one of them search­ing for the ban­ner. The activists com­ment that it’s inter­est­ing to see how ner­vous police can get about a ban­ner and how they fear pub­lic scruti­ny. Pic­tures at http://de.indymedia.org/2008/11/231320.shtml.

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Lat­est action news & oth­er less direct action-focussed info at http://www.castor.de/ticker/index_en.html

Councillor John Lines’ Homeless Village in Birmingham + update

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Update:

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

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

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

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Career­ing Down­wards, cour­tesy of Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty!

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

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

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

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

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

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Stu­dents Dying to Ditch Dirty Devel­op­ment

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

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

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

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

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

Some of the exhibitors include…

Proc­tor & Gam­ble (vivi­sec­tion fun­ders)

Eon (Pro Nuclear and Coal pow­er)

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

Shell (arche­typ­al oil green­wash­ers)

…And many more besides.

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

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

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E.ON Recruiters Tar­get­ed AGAIN — in Oxford

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Gormley interrupted by Plane Mad

Novem­ber 5, 2008

Novem­ber 5, 2008
Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter John Gorm­ley was inter­rupt­ed dur­ing his speech to the Green Infra­struc­ture con­fer­ence this morn­ing in Malahide. The envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign group Plane Mad dis­rupt­ed the con­fer­ence to express their oppo­si­tion to anoth­er run­way at Dublin Air­port. The group oppose the run­way on the grounds that it will dou­ble the air­craft emis­sions at the air­port. These emis­sions play a dan­ger­ous part in caus­ing cli­mate change. Two activists dressed as car­toon crim­i­nals mimed build­ing a run­way around the podi­um that Gorm­ley was speak­ing from. Air­craft noise was simul­ta­ne­ous­ly played from the back of the room. One of the “crim­i­nals” moved among the audi­ence pass­ing out infor­ma­tion about the pro­posed new run­way form his bag of “swag”. The min­is­ter was also pre­sent­ed with a let­ter by the group which he accept­ed.

The activists were dressed as crim­i­nals to rep­re­sent the crime that it would be if Fin­gal Coun­ty Coun­cil and the Dublin Air­port Authority(DAA) were allowed to dou­ble capac­i­ty at Dublin Air­port. The activists had “DAA-CLIMATE CRIMINALS” writ­ten on their backs.

Min­is­ter Gorm­ley said that he agreed with them on this issue, indeed he had men­tioned the “seri­ous threat” of cli­mate change sev­er­al times in his speech. After the cam­paign­ers had made their point they were peace­ful­ly escort­ed out of the con­fer­ence suite and Mr Gorm­ley was allowed to con­tin­ue. Despite all he says Plane Mad con­tin­ue to be dis­ap­point­ed that nei­ther John Gorm­ley or his par­ty are clear or vocal enough in their oppo­si­tion to expan­sion at Dublin Air­port.

Ian Clot­wor­thy, one of car­toon crim­i­nals, said
“Fin­gal Coun­ty Coun­cil are not fit hosts for a green infra­struc­ture con­fer­ence when one of the least “green” pieces of infra­struc­ture in Ire­land is cur­rent­ly being built at Dublin Air­port.”
“We sup­port “UPROAR” in their cam­paign against this sec­ond run­way and we oppose it our­selves because of the con­tri­bu­tion of avi­a­tion emis­sions to cli­mate change”

UPROAR (Unit­ed Port­marnock res­i­dents oppos­ing anoth­er run­way) have been oppos­ing the con­struc­tion of a 2nd run­way for 8 years, since 2000. 850 peo­ple from the area object­ed to the run­way after the cam­paign was launched around Christ­mas 2000. UPROAR were ini­tial­ly extreme­ly suc­cess­ful in that the Inspec­tor review­ing the Envi­ron­men­tal Impact State­ment (EIS) and all the infor­ma­tion avail­able about the planned devel­op­ment found in favour of the objec­tors. The Inspec­tor rec­om­mend­ed that the plan­ning appli­ca­tion be refused on main­ly on the issue of noise pol­lu­tion and com­mu­ni­ty wel­fare. Her deci­sion how­ev­er, was over­turned by An Bord Pleanala.

Tara Shee­hy of Plane Mad who was also in the con­fer­ence suit in Malahide said,
“Dou­bling capac­i­ty at Dublin Air­port will also dou­ble the amount of emis­sions. Spend­ing mon­ey in an eco­nom­ic down­turn on such a project of pol­lu­tion is mad­ness.”

The Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency allo­cat­ed just over 20,000 tonnes CO2 equiv­a­lent for each of the years 2005, 2006 and 2007 to Dublin Air­port. This is only 1% of the 2 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 (at least), emit­ted by Dublin Air­port’s 21 mil­lion pas­sen­gers.

On a day when even Amer­i­ca can elect a pres­i­dent who claims to under­stand the impor­tance of cli­mate change, Plane Mad would like to see this “Green-tinged” gov­ern­ment halt their air­port expan­sion plans. Plane Mad will con­tin­ue to fight the sec­ond run­way until it is stopped.

http://www.planemad.org

Wee demo in Glasgow against Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant. He will be back in June 09. Will you also you here?

Mon­san­to Chief Exec Hugh Grant came to Glas­gow today. He and Scot­tish Enter­pris­es were not so hap­py to find out that a few con­cerned cit­i­zens were there and were leaflet­ing the staff call­ing for his dis­missal from his role on the inter­na­tion­al advi­so­ry board. see press release below for some details. He comes twice a year for these meet­ings.

Mon­san­to Chief Exec Hugh Grant came to Glas­gow today. He and Scot­tish Enter­pris­es were not so hap­py to find out that a few con­cerned cit­i­zens were there and were leaflet­ing the staff call­ing for his dis­missal from his role on the inter­na­tion­al advi­so­ry board. see press release below for some details. He comes twice a year for these meet­ings. Prob­a­bly the only time aside from Mon­san­to AGMs (in St Louis, US) that any­one who wants to have a word with him knows when and where he will be. The next mtg is in June 09. We will be there to greet the Mon­san­to CEO. Will you join us the next time? Con­tact details at end of the PR, Cheers!

Press release: Com­mon Action Scot­land: Tues­day 4 Novem­ber 2008, Glas­gow

Con­tro­ver­sial Mon­san­to Chief Exec Hugh Grant in Glas­gow this week

Con­tro­ver­sial Mon­san­to Chief Exec Hugh Grant is expect­ed to be in Glas­gow this week in his role as an advi­sor to the Scot­tish Enter­prise Agency. How­ev­er civ­il soci­ety group Com­mon Action Scot­land are demand­ing that Scot­tish Enter­prise boss­es dis­miss the Mon­san­to CEO from its advi­so­ry board and are chal­leng­ing Mr Grant to attend a pub­lic meet­ing to answer for the dam­age caused by his com­pa­ny and its busi­ness prac­tices.

Lind­say Keenan spokesper­son for Com­mon Action Scot­land said today:
“It is not appro­pri­ate to have the Chief Exec­u­tive of Mon­san­to as an advi­sor to Scot­tish Enter­prise. Hugh Grant rep­re­sents a com­pa­ny that has lied and cheat­ed and that has caused can­cers, birth-defects and deaths in order to save a dol­lar. Today Mon­san­to prod­ucts con­tribute direct­ly to inflat­ed prices of food on the glob­al mar­ket and to world hunger. Hugh Grant and Mon­san­to are an inter­na­tion­al dis­grace not a role mod­el for Scot­tish Enter­pris­es. We have asked Jack Per­ry the head of Scot­tish Enter­prise and Jim Math­er MSP, the Scot­tish Enter­prise Min­is­ter to imme­di­ate­ly dis­miss Hugh Grant from his advi­so­ry role”.

Mr Grant is due in Glas­gow this week for a meet­ing of the Scot­tish Enter­prise Inter­na­tion­al Advi­so­ry Board. Despite a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion request Scot­tish Enter­prise have refused to con­firm exact­ly which day the meet­ing will take place but did con­firm it is expect­ed to be in Glas­gow in the first week of Novem­ber. Mr Grants office con­firmed that he is expect­ed to attend. Hugh Grant was born in Larkhall Glas­gow and grad­u­at­ed from Glas­gow and Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ties. Since 2003 he has been the Chair­man, Pres­i­dent and CEO of the US based chem­i­cals and genet­ic engi­neer­ing com­pa­ny Mon­san­to. Based in St Louis, US he trav­els the world rep­re­sent­ing Mon­san­to and vis­its Glas­gow twice a year for these meet­ings.

Keenan cont’d, “Mr Grants com­pa­ny, Mon­san­to, has in the past been respon­si­ble for pro­duc­ing some of the worlds most tox­ic chem­i­cals includ­ing PCBs and Agent Orange. Amongst oth­er seri­ous crimes it has pre­vi­ous­ly been caught fal­si­fy­ing sci­en­tif­ic reports and brib­ing gov­ern­ment offi­cials. Today Mon­san­to is the worlds largest chem­i­cal com­pa­ny and is respon­si­ble for more than 90% of the genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied seeds sold in the world. Mon­san­to prod­ucts and Monsanto’s way of doing busi­ness destroy soil health, destroy food secu­ri­ty and con­tribute sub­stan­tial­ly to world hunger and envi­ron­men­tal dam­age”.

Hugh Grant uses his role with Scot­tish Enter­prise as part of his CV pre­sum­ably because it opens doors for him and helps to give Mon­san­to what it most craves, the pub­lic accep­tance that despite its great wealth and pow­er it is oth­er­wise denied. Mr Grants posi­tion with Scot­tish Enter­prise gives the impres­sion that Mon­san­to is sup­port­ed in Scot­land when in fact the evi­dence of pub­lic, farmer, food indus­try, polit­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic opin­ion over the last ten years makes it absolute­ly clear that there is no place for Mon­san­to or its prod­ucts in Scot­land (or indeed in Europe).

Keenan cont’d, “Hugh Grant is the smooth talk­ing face of a very ugly cor­po­ra­tion. His smooth talk­ing style and his Glasgow/Edinburgh/transatlantic brogue has charmed the US stock mar­kets and politi­cians on both sides of the Atlantic. Mr Grant has helped pushed up prof­its for Mon­san­to and for him­self but at what price to real peo­ples lives and to the envi­ron­ment?

Com­mon Action Scot­land has tried on a num­ber of occa­sions to get Mr Grant to agree to attend a pub­lic meet­ing in Glasgow/Scotland. How­ev­er he shows no signs of being will­ing to be held pub­licly account­able. We note that if he is not will­ing to attend a pub­lic dis­cus­sion despite the glob­al impor­tance of his com­pa­ny to the health and food secu­ri­ty of so many peo­ple then this should pro­vide fur­ther evi­dence of his unsuit­abil­i­ty to be an advi­sor to a Scot­tish tax pay­er fund­ed pub­lic body. “What does Hugh Grant/Monsanto have to hide?”

There is an over­whelm­ing body of evi­dence avail­able to sup­port the case that Mon­san­to and its CEO are not good role mod­els for Scot­tish busi­ness. Amongst a wealth of oth­er pub­licly avail­able fac­tu­al infor­ma­tion the recent­ly released doc­u­men­tary called the World Accord­ing To Mon­san­to by direc­tor Marie Monique Robin sums up the real­i­ty behind Mon­san­to.

The crimes Mon­san­to has com­mit­ted, the lives it has dam­aged, the lies its spokes­peo­ple and exec­u­tives have told and the mas­sive influ­ence that it has are laid out clear­ly. And it is per­haps the first doc­u­men­tary that real­ly gets behind the approval process for GM foods in the US and reveals the manip­u­lat­ing hand of Mon­san­to at all lev­els. A copy can be obtained from French film­mak­ers ARTE www.arteboutique.com
It can also be found in 10 parts on Utube at
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=CMleWZXhi6s

We would rec­om­mend that Jack Per­ry and Jim Math­er view this doc­u­men­tary to get some under­stand­ing of Mon­san­to. We fur­ther rec­om­mend that it be screened at the Scot­tish Par­lia­ment and on Scot­tish TV so that we all may judge. Mon­san­to refused to be inter­viewed for the doc­u­men­tary but the direc­tor Marie Monique Robin has indi­cat­ed to Com­mon Action Scot­land that she would be will­ing to attend a pub­lic meet­ing in Scot­land to dis­cuss her find­ings with Mr Grant, if he is will­ing.

For more infor­ma­tion please con­tact:

Lind­say Keenan (Direc­tor)
Com­mon Action Scot­land
1 Cun­ning­hame Road, Kil­barchan, Scot­land, PA10 2EE
Office: 0141 577 0057 Mobile: 0750 392 0125
Email: commonactionscotland@yahoo.co.uk

CLIMATE ACTION NEWS SHEET 84, OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2008

————————-
UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-
1) RBS, E.ON and Shell uni­ver­si­ty recruit­ment tours, Oct/Nov 08
2) Cli­mate Camp Nation­al Gath­er­ing, Brad­ford, 8/9.11.08
3) Remem­ber­ing Ken Saro-Wiwa, 10.11.08
4) Shared Plan­et Con­fer­ence, Birm­ing­ham, 21–23.11.08
5) 48 hours of action against E.On and new coal, 28/29.11.08
6) Buy Noth­ing Day, 29.11.08

————————-
UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-
1) RBS, E.ON and Shell uni­ver­si­ty recruit­ment tours, Oct/Nov 08
2) Cli­mate Camp Nation­al Gath­er­ing, Brad­ford, 8/9.11.08
3) Remem­ber­ing Ken Saro-Wiwa, 10.11.08
4) Shared Plan­et Con­fer­ence, Birm­ing­ham, 21–23.11.08
5) 48 hours of action against E.On and new coal, 28/29.11.08
6) Buy Noth­ing Day, 29.11.08
7) Nation­al Cli­mate March, 06.12.08
8) Earth First! Win­ter Moot, 6–8.02.09
9) Fos­sil Fools Day 2009, 01.04.09

—————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
—————-
1) Towards Copen­hagen 2009 – the first glob­al gath­er­ing, 13/14.09.08
2) Coal pow­er sta­tion block­ad­ed in Vir­ginia, USA, 15.09.08
3) Ross­port — Soli­taire leaves Irish waters with no pipeline laid! 20.09.08
4) Flash­mob against air­port expan­sion a suc­cess! 23.09.08
5) Cli­mate Camp polic­ing con­demned, 30.09.08 & 28.10.08
6) Boston (US) Ris­ing Tide pay Citibank a vis­it, 7/10/08
7) Day of Action Against Paci­fi­Corp dam, 10.10.08
8) Par­lia­ment rushed by cli­mate activists, 13.10.08
9) Oxford stu­dents just say no to BP jobs, 14.10.08
10) Art Not Oil vis­it the NT and hoax boss Hyt­ner, 15.10.08
11) Pro­test­ers dis­rupt Euro­pean bio­fu­els sum­mit, 16.10.08
12) Scot­tish cli­mate activists tar­get Scot­tish First Min­is­ter, 16.10.08
13) Green­wash Guer­ril­las EDF Action, 22.10.08
14) Man­ches­ter stu­dents flash­mob RBS and E.On recruit­ment stalls, 23.10.08
15) Bar­clays’ coal invest­ments tar­get­ed in Leam­ing­ton Spa, 25.10.08
16) Pro­tes­tors stop work at Ship­ley open-cast; Ship­ley Bodge court case
col­laps­es, 27.10.08
17) The Rain­bow War­rior goes to Kingsnorth, 29.10.08
18) Bris­tol Uni­ver­si­ty Death Fair
19) Con­vey­er belt lock-on stops Aus­tralian coal pow­er sta­tion, 1.11.08

————————-
UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-

1) RBS, E.ON and Shell uni­ver­si­ty recruit­ment tours, OCT/NOV 08
Cli­mate crim­i­nals are recruit­ing now, in a Uni­ver­si­ty near you. Find out when and where, as they have kind­ly post­ed their itin­er­aries online.
www.makeitrbs.com/events/

www.shell.com/home/content/gbr/aboutshell/careers/students_and_graduates/calendar_of_events/calendar_of_events_30052008.html

www.eon-uk.com/Careers/Graduates/807.aspx

Stuck for a direct action idea? Check out Ris­ing Tide’s “15 ways to top­ple
the Fos­sil Fuel Empire” on our web­site.

2) Cli­mate Camp Nation­al Gath­er­ing, Brad­ford, 8/9.11.08
The next Cli­mate Camp gath­er­ing will be in Brad­ford on the 8th and 9th Novem­ber. Come along and get involved.This month we will be in the fair city of Brad­ford, based up at the stu­dent union. Food will be pro­vid­ed by the deli­cious Tree­house Cafe and crash space will be near­by.

Large Group Facil­i­ta­tion Train­ing
Seeds for Change are run­ning a Large Group Facil­i­ta­tion Train­ing for Cli­mate Campers on Fri­day Novem­ber 7th in Leeds (just down the road from the gath­er­ing in Brad­ford), 11AM to 5.30 PM. Please email process at climatecamp.org.uk asap if you are inter­est­ed.

3) Remem­ber­ing Ken Saro-Wiwa, 10.11.08
Film screen­ing and fundrais­er at 7PM at LARC in Lon­don, 62 Fieldgate St, E1 1ES. On the 13th anniver­sary of the mur­der of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the rest of the Ogo­ni 9 by the Niger­ian state in 1995, with Shell in close cahoots, we will be remem­ber­ing what they fought for and what they died for. We’ll also be hear­ing about the inspi­ra­tional resis­tance of peo­ple around the world to Shel­l’s unfor­tu­nate­ly far from unique brand of destruc­tion, duplic­i­ty and over­all may­hem in the chase for ever-greater prof­its. There will be film screen­ings of ‘Those Who Dance’ and ‘Shad­ows and Light: Oil, Pow­er, and the Niger Delta’, inspi­ra­tional art on the walls and food and drink. Funds raised will go towards Art Not Oil’s new cam­paign against the Shell-spon­sored Oedi­pus pro­duc­tion cur­rent­ly run­ning at the Nation­al The­atre.

4) Shared Plan­et Con­fer­ence, Birm­ing­ham, 21–23.11.08
The Uni­ver­si­ty of Birm­ing­ham — Shared Plan­et is the UK’s largest stu­dent con­fer­ence on world pover­ty, human rights and the envi­ron­ment. It brings hun­dreds of stu­dents togeth­er for a week­end packed with big-name speak­ers, skills and issue based work­shops, debates, dis­cus­sions, film and a mas­sive par­ty! http://peopleandplanet.org/events/sharedplanet

5) 48 hours of action against E.On and new coal, 28/29.11.08

The UK Gov­ern­ment is call­ing for an 80% reduc­tion in car­bon emis­sions by 2050, we are call­ing for 48 hours of action against E.ON and new coal NOW. Join us in say­ing ‘No to New Coal’: get your friends togeth­er and plan an action for your area. Go stick­er­ing, blockad­ing, serv­ing direct action warn­ing notices at sup­ply chain premis­es, organ­ise an aware­ness rais­ing talk, hang a ban­ner, get cre­ative on the streets, the options are end­less. Get togeth­er, get cre­ative, and plan an action! For more infor­ma­tion vis­it — www.e‑onf-off.org — where a list of poten­tial tar­gets, action ideas and plen­ty of resources will fol­low short­ly.

6) Buy Noth­ing Day, 29.11.08
Sat­ur­day Novem­ber 29h 2008 is Buy Noth­ing Day. It’s a day where you chal­lenge your­self to switch off from shop­ping and tune into life. The rules are sim­ple, for 24 hours you will detox from con­sumerism and live with­out shop­ping. Any­one can take part pro­vid­ed they spend a day with­out spend­ing – bet­ter yet, get togeth­er with some friends and chal­lenge con­sumer cul­ture direct­ly!
www.buynothingday.co.uk

7) Nation­al Cli­mate March, 06.12.08
March on Par­lia­ment to demand that the gov­ern­ment acts on cli­mate now! The march this year goes to Par­lia­ment Square to demand that the gov­ern­ment act now on cli­mate. The march will start at Speak­ers Cor­ner, Hyde Park — assem­ble 12 noon. The march will be pre­ceed­ed by a cli­mate protest bike ride start­ing from Lin­col­n’s Inn Fields at 10.30 am: see more here. There will be an After-Par­ty in the Syn­er­gy Cen­tre from 5.00 pm till late.!
www.campaigncc.org/index.shtml

8) Earth First! Win­ter Moot, 6–8.02.09
The Earth First! Win­ter Moot is a week­end to reflect on where we are as a rad­i­cal ecol­o­gist move­ment and on where we are going. The moot will be about dis­cussing strat­e­gy, strength­en­ing the EF! net­work, secu­ri­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tions and action plan­ning. A ses­sion is also reserved for dis­cussing a UK mobil­i­sa­tion for the UN cli­mate con­fer­ence in Copen­hagen late 2009. The moot will be held in Brighton (t.b.c.). Please check this web­site near­er to the time for fur­ther details and email any items you would like to add an item to the agen­da to moot2009 at earthfirst.org.uk.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/21557

9) Fos­sil Fools Day 2009, 01.04.09
Just in case you missed the news last month – Fos­sil Fools Day is back! Whether you’ve been look­ing for a chance to dip a toe into the grow­ing cli­mate action move­ment, or have had your kick-ass action planned since last year, now is the time to do it – what­ev­er it is. On April 1st, join the glob­al day of resis­tance and pull a prank that packs a punch. Call-out now avail­able on the web­site, so get spread­ing the word. Info and resources will be post­ed on the web­site soon, and look out for leaflets to dis­trib­ute in Decem­ber.
www.risingtide.org.uk/fossilfoolsday2009

—————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
—————-

1) Towards Copen­hagen 2009 – the first glob­al gath­er­ing, 13/14.09.08
The first social move­ments’ meet­ing was from 13–14 Sep­tem­ber 2008, in a free school in Nor­rberg, host­ed by the Dan­ish move­ment Cli­maX (klimax2009.org). There were about 100 peo­ple present from 21 coun­tries around the world, and mobil­isa­ta­tions towards Decem­ber 2009 were well and tru­ly launched. For the call to action, trans­la­tions, and a per­son­al per­spec­tive on the meet­ing, see http://risingtide.org.uk/copenhagen. To get involved, send an email to cli­mate09-int-sub­scribe at list.riseup.net.

2) Coal pow­er sta­tion block­ad­ed in Vir­ginia, USA, 15.09.08
At 6:00am on Sep­tem­ber 15 around 40 peo­ple block­ad­ed the con­struc­tion site of Domin­ion Vir­gini­a’s Wise Coun­ty coal-fired pow­er sta­tion. Eleven pro­test­ers were arrest­ed after four hours. Pro­test­ers locked their bod­ies to eight large steel drums, two of which had oper­a­tional solar pan­els illu­mi­nat­ing a ban­ner that read “renew­able jobs to renew Appalachia.” In addi­tion, pro­test­ers held a 10’x30’ ban­ner, which said: “we demand a clean ener­gy future.”

3) Ross­port — Soli­taire leaves Irish waters with no pipeline laid! 20.09.08
On Fri­day the 20th Sep­tem­ber, the pipe lay­ing ship, the Soli­taire, final­ly left Irish waters. Dur­ing the ship’s time in Ire­land, Shell failed to lay any part of the off­shore pipe line. The depar­ture of the Soli­taire is a mas­sive vic­to­ry for the Shell to Sea cam­paign. Resis­tance in the past six weeks has tak­en many dif­fer­ent forms: fish­er­men pre­vent­ing the ship’s access to the bay by refus­ing to move from her path, site inva­sions by local peo­ple and the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp, numer­ous water­borne actions to pre­vent work by sup­port­ers from oth­er parts of Ire­land and fur­ther afield, nation­al and inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty actions and final­ly, an 11 day hunger strike by local cam­paign­er Mau­ra Har­ring­ton, that con­tin­ued until the ship left Irish waters. The events of the last 6 weeks have inspired not only those involved, but also many who wit­nessed them from afar, new links and friend­ships have been forged and many lessons learned. In the after­math, the Shell to Sea cam­paign can clear­ly be seen to have been revi­tal­ized, both local­ly and nation­al­ly. It is unclear when the ship will attempt to return to Broad­haven Bay. It is pos­si­ble it could still be this year if repairs are quick and a suit­able weath­er win­dow appears, or it may not be until next spring. How­ev­er, while it may be uncer­tain exact­ly when the ship will return, what is cer­tain, is that it will meet even greater oppo­si­tion upon its next arrival. Come and be part of it! The Ross­port com­mu­ni­ty is call­ing on peo­ple every­where to put pres­sure on Shell, Allseas (the com­pa­ny that owns the Soli­taire) and Irish embassies to demand that the Soli­taire leaves Irish waters imme­di­ate­ly.

4) Flash­mob against air­port expan­sion a suc­cess! 23.09.08
Over 100 cam­paign­ers staged a colour­ful flash­mob against air­port expan­sion at mid­day today out­side Man­ches­ter Town Hall. The group includ­ed Lon­don cam­paign­ers opposed to the expan­sion of Heathrow. The flash­mob was timed to coin­cide with the Labour Par­ty Con­fer­ence. At 12.45 pre­cise­ly the cam­paign­ers stripped off to reveal red t‑shirts with the words ‘Stop Air­port Expan­sion’ embla­zoned across them. They then lay down to form the words ‘TAKE TRAINS’ with their bod­ies. The protest marked the pub­lic launch of the recent­ly formed ‘Stop Expan­sion at Man­ches­ter Air­port’.

5) Cli­mate Camp polic­ing con­demned, 30.09.08 & 28.10.08
A spokesman for Med­way Trades Union Coun­cil said “We have decid­ed to hold an inquiry into the Polic­ing of the Cli­mate Camp because of our con­cern over the lev­el of polic­ing and var­i­ous inci­dents such as a police­man in riot gear assault­ing a pro­test­er with a riot shield, as shown on TV, and oth­er alle­ga­tions includ­ing local cam­paign­ers being sub­ject­ed to pep­per spray and a local coun­cil­lor being pushed to the ground”

Also, in the House of Com­mons, MPs accused police of unnec­es­sary aggres­sion towards cli­mate campers. Home Office min­is­ters were told that offi­cers “pro­voked vio­lence against peace­ful pro­test­ers” and even arrest­ed some­one for “aggres­sive­ly pick­ing up lit­ter”.
www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/09/409732.htm

6)Boston (US) Ris­ing Tide pay Citibank a vis­it, 7/10/08
Four activists chained them­selves to the front entrance of the Citibank branch in Har­vard Square, Cam­bridge. The action start­ed as a protest in front of the Bank of Amer­i­ca branch a block away before march­ing down the street to Citibank, where the four activists had already chained them­selves to the front door, clos­ing the bank for a peri­od of time. Over 150 peo­ple attend­ed the protest, while many more onlook­ers gath­ered in Har­vard Square. The action, using the tag-line “Not With Our Mon­ey”, was intend­ed to raise aware­ness of the con­nec­tions between the cur­rent finan­cial cri­sis and the impend­ing cli­mate cri­sis. Both Bank of Amer­i­ca and Citi Bank are respon­si­ble for fund­ing dirty coal pow­er that harms the envi­ron­ment, and engag­ing in preda­to­ry lend­ing prac­tices that are fuelling the fore­clo­sure cri­sis and have left fam­i­lies in Boston home­less. Sev­er­al groups were involved with the protest includ­ing Ris­ing Tide Boston and Rain­for­est Action Net­work, both envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice groups, and City Life/Vida Urbana, a ten­ants’ rights orga­ni­za­tion.

7) Day of Action Against Paci­fi­Corp dam, 10.10.08
A coali­tion of Kla­math Riv­er Indi­an tribes, fish­er­men, con­ser­va­tion­ists and local sup­port­ers (includ­ing Cas­ca­dia Ris­ing Tide) ramped up their cam­paign to remove four fish-killing dams on the riv­er today when they held a spir­it­ed protest in front of PacifiCorp’s head­quar­ters in Port­land. The “Day of Action Against Paci­fi­Corp” start­ed off at 8:30 a.m. on Sep­tem­ber 18th when local activists hung a ban­ner pro­claim­ing “War­ren Buf­fett Kills Salmon, Jobs and Com­mu­ni­ties” over Inter­state-84 in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Tribes. Around 200 peo­ple con­verged in front of Paci­fi­Corp for a press con­fer­ence. After the con­fer­ence, 70 peo­ple occu­pied the area in front of the head­quar­ters, effec­tive­ly shut­ting down the front entrance to Paci­fi­Corp as com­pa­ny staff locked the doors.

8) Par­lia­ment rushed by cli­mate activists, 13.10.08
Demand­ing deeds not words from the gov­ern­ment, 500 Cli­mate Rush­ers gath­ered in Par­lia­ment Square to cel­e­brate 100 years to the day since the Suf­fragettes rushed par­lia­ment demand­ing votes for women. After shar­ing tea and cake on the lawn of Par­lia­ment Square, men and women dressed in Edwar­dian garb became a lit­tle less civilised, and the doors of to Par­lia­ment were locked as cli­mate activists rushed the main entrance. Although no one got in, the sounds of pro­test­ers strik­ing the doors were clear­ly audi­ble from the inside.
www.climaterush.co.uk

9) Oxford stu­dents just say no to BP jobs, 14.10.08
Activists infil­trat­ed an attempt by BP to woo Oxford grad­u­ates at a top-notch hotel on Octo­ber 14th. One inter­rupt­ed the cheesy BP PR man’s pre­sen­ta­tion as he claimed that he ‘loved the coun­try­side’ — while putting the gloss on oil and gas explo­ration, extrac­tion and financ­ing — to ask, why then, has BP spent more on its green sun­flower rebrand­ing than on its annu­al renew­able ener­gy bud­get? Activists then gave their own pre­sen­ta­tion of BP’s activ­i­ties around the world, why major oil com­pa­nies are counter-pro­duc­tive to cli­mate change solu­tions, and why any tempt­ed grad­u­ates should recon­sid­er their career options. A mem­ber of Colom­bia Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cam­paign gave a first hand account of BP’s com­plic­i­ty in envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion, sub­vert­ing peace­ful social move­ments and fund­ing death squads. A moment of stunned silence was fol­lowed by applause as the re-edu­cat­ed audi­ence aban­doned the shindig.

10)Art Not Oil vis­it the NT and hoax boss Hyt­ner, 15.10.08
After a vis­it to the the­atre (Dar­ling!), arty cli­mate activists cooked up a let­ter claim­ing to be from NT boss Nicholas Hyt­ner ques­tion­ing the use of oil spon­sor­ship in the arts. The NT were none too pleased about this and the ensu­ing row reached the let­ters pages of luvvie-week­ly “The Stage”(a first for the direct action move­ment?). Art not Oil ask: “We’re ask­ing peo­ple if they’re up for mak­ing an art­work of some kind as a response This could be an image, song, film or poem to appear on our web­site, or to be print­ed on a post­card or some­thing sim­i­lar. We’re open to ideas. (Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we aren’t able to pay for your work, but we have no wish to pos­sess it!) If this is of inter­est, we’d love to see it as soon as pos­si­ble, as ‘Oedi­pus’ runs until Jan­u­ary 2009 only.”
www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/10/411200.html and
http://www.thestage.co.uk/features/feature.php/22157/chit-chat-hytner-miss-or-maybe-an-attack-

11) Pro­test­ers dis­rupt Euro­pean bio­fu­els sum­mit, 16.10.08
On World Food Day, 16th Octo­ber, activists from Action Against Agro­fu­els dis­rupt­ed the Bio­fu­els Expo in Newark, one of the largest bio­fu­el indus­try con­fer­ences in Europe. Four ban­ners were dropped, as pro­test­ers climbed on the roof out­side the main entrance and on a ledge inside the main exhi­bi­tion hall, where they remained for over three hours. Rape alarms were set off across the exhi­bi­tion cen­tre. Ban­ners read “Agro­fu­els for cars and pow­er plants wors­en cli­mate change”, “Land-grab­bing for agro­fu­els caus­es hunger”, “Agro­fu­els — a cli­mate crime” and “Green­wash­ing hunger and defor­esta­tion”. Sep­a­rate­ly, Leeds Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents held a ban­ner and leaflet­ting protest out­side the con­fer­ence.

12) Scot­tish cli­mate activists tar­get Scot­tish First Min­is­ter, 16.10.08
At 4am, res­i­dents from Clyde­bank, Pais­ley, Kirk­lis­ton and Cra­mond peace­ful­ly set up a stereo and blast­ed aero­plane noise through the entrance of the First Min­is­ter’s pri­vate res­i­den­cy in Edin­burgh. The action stands as a protest ‘dawn cho­rus’ to high­light the expe­ri­ence of liv­ing life in the shad­ow of a grow­ing air­port. Iron­i­cal­ly, the stereo caused 110 deci­bels of noise — the equiv­a­lent of a jum­bo jet tak­ing off. For half an hour about ten res­i­dents sur­round­ed the build­ing dressed in bright paja­mas, night caps, clutch­ing ted­dy­bears, with ear defend­ers to dis­play the dan­ger­ous lev­els of noise pol­lu­tion endured by their fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties. Their plac­ards stat­ed “It’s time to wake up to the impacts of avi­a­tion” and “have a taste of your own med­i­cine”. The res­i­dents took these steps to state loud and clear to the First Min­is­ter, who holds ulti­mate say over the fate of the expan­sion plans, that he can­not ignore any of the effects of air­port expan­sion. These impacts include dan­ger­ous noise lev­els, ris­ing air pol­lu­tion, cli­mate change and increas­ing eco­nom­ic uncer­tain­ty dur­ing the cur­rent cred­it crunch.

13) Green­wash Guer­ril­las EDF Action, 22.10.08
Lon­don Ris­ing Tide’s Green­wash Gueril­las Brigade, Detec­tion Pla­toon #1, moved into action on Mon­day morn­ing, 22 Octo­ber, at 08:00 hours – tar­get­ing ener­gy cor­po­ra­tion Élec­tric­ité de France (EDF) at the cen­tral Lon­don head­quar­ters of their UK sub­sidiary EDF Ener­gy. EDF has recent­ly bought out British Ener­gy and have announced that they plan to build 4 new nuclear pow­er sta­tions in the UK in the com­ing years. Inspired by our coun­ter­parts in France demon­strat­ing against new nuclear pow­er, we chose to tar­get EDF’s attempts to mus­cle in their FALSE nuclear solu­tion to the loom­ing dis­as­ter of cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate chaos. Our action (con­sist­ing of 12 Green­wash Gueril­las) high­light­ed the dan­gers of nuclear pow­er to the bios­phere, human­i­ty, and REAL renew­able ener­gy solu­tions.

14) Man­ches­ter stu­dents flash­mob RBS and E.On Recruit­ment Stalls, 23.10.08
A busy careers fair at Man­ches­ter’s GMex was inter­rupt­ed yes­ter­day by sev­er­al long whis­tle blasts. 30 or so pro­tes­tors sud­den­ly revealed their yel­low ‘Leave it in the Ground’ t‑shirts and sur­round­ed the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land stall, hold­ing ban­ners and chant­i­ng ‘leave it in the ground!’. A pro­tes­tor then read some extracts from the excel­lent report “Cash­ing in on Coal”, which shows that RBS is a cli­mate crim­i­nal, pour­ing mon­ey into new fos­sil fuel extrac­tion projects. The secu­ri­ty guards even­tu­al­ly began drag­ging pro­tes­tors out so they did­n’t get a chance to vis­it the E.ON stall. How­ev­er the protest con­tin­ued out­side where peo­ple hand­ed out leaflets explain­ing how E.ON (with a fat loan from RBS) plans to build the first new coal pow­er sta­tion in the UK in 30 years, while secu­ri­ty guards repeat­ed­ly threat­ened to have them arrest­ed for tres­pass­ing.

15) Bar­clays’ coal invest­ments tar­get­ed in Leam­ing­ton Spa, 25.10.08
Leam­ing­ton Ris­ing Tide took aim at a town cen­tre Bar­clays on Sat­ur­day 25 Octo­ber 2008 in protest at the bank’s heavy invest­ment in dirty coal. Ban­ners, leaflets and bal­loons let peo­ple know that ‘Bar­clays are fuelling glob­al warm­ing’. One of the ban­ners used an image of scales to demol­ish the myth that Bar­clays cares about cli­mate change: they invest a whop­ping 3,300 mil­lion invest­ed in coal against 15 mil­lion in renew­able tech on the oth­er. Over the last two years, Bar­clays has been involved in 17 sep­a­rate loans to the coal indus­try, and togeth­er with RBS and HSBC, has loaned $70 bil­lion to E.ON alone.

16) Pro­tes­tors stop work at Ship­ley open-cast; Ship­ley Bodge court case col­laps­es, 27.10.08
Pro­tes­tors from Earth First! stopped work at an open-cast coal site for over two hours – they ran onto the site and clam­bered on dig­gers & dumpers and held out ban­ners stop­ping the work safe­ly. Some of the dig­ger dri­vers were very friend­ly and were glad to have a break as they work very long shifts, from 7am‑6:30 with only lunch & half hour breaks at 10 & 3. Today work had not been able to start till 10 as nature was fight­ing its own cor­ner, with rain drown­ing the site, and it was stopped again at 1 for 3 hours due to the protest.

Mean­while, the first court case aris­ing from the evic­tion of Bodge House, Ship­ley, where pro­test­ers occu­pied the site of the pro­posed open cast coal mine from June until August, col­lapsed today after the pros­e­cu­tion admit­ted that it did­n’t have the evi­dence to sup­port its case. The crown pros­e­cu­tor asked for an adjourn­ment, the defence object­ed, the dis­trict
judge agreed with the defence and dis­missed the case. Let’s hope the oth­ers go the same way.

17) The Rain­bow War­rior goes to Kingsnorth, 29.10.08
The Green­peace flag­ship Rain­bow War­rior led a peace­ful arma­da of boats down the Med­way to Kingsnorth, and thir­ty cam­paign­ers, each car­ry­ing flags from 30 nations, dis­em­barked onto Kingsnorth’s jet­ty. E.on’s pro­posed new plant would emit as much car­bon diox­ide as the world’s 30 least pol­lut­ing coun­tries com­bined (hence the flags), dash­ing our chances of beat­ing cli­mate change and spelling dis­as­ter for mil­lions of fam­i­lies around the world. Mean­while, anoth­er group of vol­un­teers — includ­ing two of the Kingsnorth Six (recent­ly cleared of crim­i­nal dam­age to Kingsnorth’s smoke­stack using the defence of cli­mate change) – occu­pied a small, con­crete, E.ON-owned island just next to the jet­ty until they were forced to leave by a high court injunc­tion.
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/vigil-ends-20081030

18) Bris­tohl Uni Death Fair, 29.10.08
This time it was the 4 horse­man of the apoc­a­lypse (well, 2 of them) who high­light­ed the real­i­ty behind the shiny facades of com­pa­nies like E.On and BAE Sys­tems.
http://westsideclimateaction.wordpress.com

19) Con­vey­er belt lock-on stops Aus­tralian coal pow­er sta­tion, 1.11.08
29 peo­ple from Ris­ing Tide Aus­tralia have been arrest­ed after a cli­mate change protest at Bayswa­ter pow­er sta­tion today. Four peo­ple attached them­selves to machin­ery, stop­ping the con­vey­or belts that car­ry coal to Bayswater’s fur­naces for six hours while 25 oth­ers occu­pied the coal piles.
http://www.risingtide.org.au/node/802

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Com­piled and sent out by Ris­ing Tide UK.

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German anti-nuclear waste sabotage & actions this coming weekend

Anti-nuclear activists in Ger­many are gear­ing up for anoth­er trans­port of high­ly active nuclear waste to run through France and Ger­many from 7 to 9 Novem­ber for dump­ing at the north Ger­man vil­lage of Gor­leben. About 20,000 police will be deployed to guard the con­sign­ment against thou­sands of demon­stra­tors.

Anti-nuclear activists in Ger­many are gear­ing up for anoth­er trans­port of high­ly active nuclear waste to run through France and Ger­many from 7 to 9 Novem­ber for dump­ing at the north Ger­man vil­lage of Gor­leben. About 20,000 police will be deployed to guard the con­sign­ment against thou­sands of demon­stra­tors. At http://www.castor.de/ticker/index_en.html is a newswire run by the protest move­ment.

CASTOR TRACK SABOTAGED: In the night from 30 to 31 Octo­ber the CASTOR rail­way track between Karl­sruhe and Mannheim was sab­o­taged near Stutensee. Rail traf­fic was brought to a stand­still with a bar­ri­cade. To stop any train run­ning into it with­out brak­ing, the first goods train using the track was stopped by an emer­gency sig­nal before it got to the spot.

29 arrested after six hour Climate Protest at Australian power station

1st Novem­ber 2008
29 peo­ple have been arrest­ed after a cli­mate change protest at Bayswa­ter pow­er sta­tion today. Four peo­ple attached them­selves to machin­ery, stop­ping the con­vey­or belts that car­ry coal to Bayswater’s fur­naces while about 25 oth­ers occu­pied the coal piles in protest against the Fed­er­al Government’s fail­ure to stop Australia’s green­house pol­lu­tion ris­ing.

Bayswater 1Bayswater 21st Novem­ber 2008
29 peo­ple have been arrest­ed after a cli­mate change protest at Bayswa­ter pow­er sta­tion today. Four peo­ple attached them­selves to machin­ery, stop­ping the con­vey­or belts that car­ry coal to Bayswater’s fur­naces while about 25 oth­ers occu­pied the coal piles in protest against the Fed­er­al Government’s fail­ure to stop Australia’s green­house pol­lu­tion ris­ing.

Spokesper­son, Georgina Woods, said, “Australia’s green­house pol­lu­tion is still increas­ing and our addic­tion to coal-fired pow­er is the main cause. We are here because every day we hes­i­tate, we are killing the Great Bar­ri­er Reef.”

In 2006/07, Bayswa­ter Pow­er Sta­tion cre­at­ed approx­i­mate­ly 14 mil­lion tonnes of car­bon diox­ide pol­lu­tion, mak­ing it equal great­est sin­gle source of green­house pol­lu­tion in the coun­try and among the top 100 pol­lut­ing pow­er sta­tions in the world.

The Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment is expect­ed to announce medi­um term green­house emis­sion reduc­tion tar­gets at the end of the month, but pro­tes­tors say that 2020 is too late, and want a com­mit­ment that 2010 will be Australia’s “peak emis­sions” year.

The Bayswa­ter pow­er sta­tion near Muswell­brook in the Upper Hunter and the adja­cent Lid­dell pow­er sta­tion togeth­er sup­ply around 40% of NSW’s elec­tric­i­ty.

Details of Peo­ple’s Block­ade of the World’s Biggest Coal Port — 14 March 2009 Ma href=“http://www.risingtide.org.au/node/794”>here
The pro­tes­tors say pow­er sta­tions like Bayswa­ter will need to be shut down over the next few years: “Where is the plan to phase out facil­i­ties like these? Why are we twid­dling our thumbs?”

“The nation and the world are watch­ing and we will not get anoth­er chance. The peo­ple that are here today are par­ents and grand­par­ents, pro­fes­sion­als and trades­peo­ple. We are demand­ing a com­mit­ment from the Gov­ern­ment today: Australia’s green­house emis­sions must start drop­ping from 2010, we must do what­ev­er it takes to save the Bar­ri­er Reef from wipe-out and the world from dev­as­tat­ing run­away cli­mate change.”

The fight for the cli­mate is far from over; the need for peo­ple to protest our fail­ure to reverse green­house pol­lu­tion is greater than ever.