Spirit of Freedom (March 2008) — Earth Liberation Prisoners

Spir­it of Free­dom
(March 2008)
Pro­duced by
EARTH LIBERATION PRISONERS SUPPORT NETWORK

“The whole expe­ri­ence has been tough, but all the kind and strength­en­ing
words and wise thoughts from strangers made it much eas­i­er!”
(For­mer Swedish Ani­mal Rights Pris­on­er)

Spir­it of Free­dom
(March 2008)
Pro­duced by
EARTH LIBERATION PRISONERS SUPPORT NETWORK

“The whole expe­ri­ence has been tough, but all the kind and strength­en­ing
words and wise thoughts from strangers made it much eas­i­er!”
(For­mer Swedish Ani­mal Rights Pris­on­er)

Wel­come to the March 2008 edi­tion of Spir­it of Free­dom. First off in this
Edi­to­r­i­al ELP would like to apol­o­gise about an error we have made in our
pris­on­er list­ing. We wrote that the Amer­i­can Eco-Defence pris­on­er Grant
Barnes spray-paint­ed the let­ters ELF onto one of the vehi­cles he set fire
to. Grant has asked for a cor­rec­tion, point­ing out he spray-paint­ed the
let­ters ELF onto all of the vehi­cles he set fire to. Sec­ond­ly as peo­ple may
be aware, the Amer­i­can envi­ron­men­tal pris­on­er, Eric McDavid, is cur­rent­ly
held on remand await­ing his sen­tenc­ing hav­ing been found guilty of hav­ing
the inten­tion to destroy the prop­er­ty of the US Foresty Ser­vice, etc. (note:
he nev­er actu­al­ly destroyed or set fire to any­thing). Eric’s sen­tenc­ing is
con­stant­ly being put back and back and we urge every­one to sup­port him as we
recog­nise this con­stant delay in his sen­tenc­ing will be a very stress­ful
time for Eric. Remem­ber, no mat­ter where you are in the world, sup­port the
eco-pris­on­ers and no com­pro­mise in defence of Moth­er Earth!

ECO-DEFENCE PRISONERS

Tre Arrow, CS# 05850722, Van­cou­ver Island Region­al Cor­rec­tion Cen­ter, 4216
Wilkin­son Rd., Vic­to­ria, BC, V8Z 5B2, Cana­da. On remand accused of
involve­ment with an arson on log­ging trucks and an arson on vehi­cles owned
by a sand & grav­el com­pa­ny. Both arsons occurred in the USA. Tre is
fight­ing his extra­di­tion to the USA.

Grant Barnes #137563, San Car­los Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty, PO Box 3, Pueblo, CO
81002, USA. Serv­ing 12 years for set­ting fire to a num­ber of SUV vehi­cles.
The let­ters ELF were spray paint­ed onto all of the vehi­cles.

Nathan Block, #36359–086, FCI Lom­poc, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, 3600
Guard Road, Lom­poc, CA 93436, USA. Serv­ing 7 years & 8 months for an ELF
arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an SUV deal­er­ship.
Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy.

Vagge­lis Botzatzis, Komo­ti­ni Juridi­cal Prison (“Dikastikes Fylakes
Komo­ti­nis”), T.K. 69100, Greece. On remand accused of set­ting fire to two
com­pa­ny cars owned by a energy/power com­pa­ny. It is believed that the
per­son or per­sons unknown who car­ried out the arson did so in protest at the
destruc­tion of the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment and in sup­port of two work­ers who
died at the pow­er plant. Vagge­lis is also accused of set­ting fire to a bank
and start­ing a fire inside a car yard.

Mar­co Camenisch, Post­fach 3143, CH-8105 Regens­dorf, Switzer­land. Serv­ing 18
years. 1) Ten years for using explo­sives to destroy elec­tric­i­ty pylons
lead­ing from nuclear pow­er sta­tions. 2) Eight years for the mur­der of a
Swiss Board­er Guard whilst on the run. In ’02 Mar­co com­plet­ed a 12-year
sen­tence in Italy for destroy­ing elec­tric­i­ty pylons in Italy.

Daniele Casali­ni, Casa Cir­con­dar­i­ale, Via Burla 59, 43100 Par­ma, Italy. Il
Sil­vestre activist await­ing tri­al accused of using explo­sives to dam­age an
elec­tric­i­ty pylon in protest at nuclear ener­gy.

Rod Coro­n­a­do — See details in Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers List.

Ibai Eder­ra, Car­cel de Pam­plona, C/San Roque. Apdo. 250, 31080 — Iruñez -
Pam­plona, Navar­ra (España), Spain. Serv­ing just under 5 years for
sab­o­tag­ing machin­ery at the con­tro­ver­sial Itoiz dam con­struc­tion site.

Francesco Gioia, C.C. Sol­lic­ciano, Via Giro­lamo Min­ervi­ni 2/R, 50142 Firen­ze
Sol­lic­ciano (FI), Italy. Il Sil­vestre activist await­ing tri­al accused of
using explo­sives to dam­age an elec­tric­i­ty pylon in protest at nuclear
ener­gy.

Jef­frey Luers, #1306729, Lane Coun­ty Adult Cor­rec­tions, 101 West 5th Ave,
Eugene, OR 97401–2695, USA. Serv­ing 10 years for arson on a SUV deal­er­ship
& the attempt­ed arson of an oil truck. The orig­i­nal sen­tence was 22 years &
8 months, but was reduced on appeal.

Eric McDavid X‑2972521 4E 231A, Sacra­men­to Coun­ty Main Jail, 651 “I” Street,
Sacra­men­to, CA 95814, USA. Await­ing sen­tenc­ing hav­ing been found guilty of
plan­ning to destroy the prop­er­ty of the U.S. Forestry Ser­vice, mobile phone
masts and pow­er plants.

Daniel McGowan #63794–053, Unit I, FCI Sand­stone, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al
Insti­tu­tion, PO Box 1000, Sand­stone, MN 55072, USA. Serv­ing 7 years for an
ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an old growth
log­ging cor­po­ra­tion. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy.

Jonathan Paul — See details in Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers List.

Julio Vil­lanue­va, C.P. Pri­sion De Pam­plona, 31080, Iruna (Navar­ra), Spain.
Serv­ing just under 5 years for sab­o­tag­ing machin­ery at the con­tro­ver­sial
Itoiz dam con­struc­tion site.

Joy­an­na Zach­er, #36360–086, FCI Dublin, 5700 8th St.- Camp Parks- Unit F,
Dublin, CA 94568, USA. Serv­ing 7 years & 8 months for an ELF arson against
a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an SUV deal­er­ship. Also
admit­ted her role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy.

ANIMAL LIBERATION PRISONERS

Jon Able­white TB4885, HMP Lowd­ham Grange, Lowd­ham, Not­ting­ham, NG14 7DA,
Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied
guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion.

Gregg Avery TA7450, HMP Win­ches­ter, Rom­sey Road, Win­ches­ter, SO22 5DF,
Eng­land. On remand accused of con­spir­a­cy to black­mail, in rela­tion to his
involve­ment with the SHAC cam­paign.

Natasha Avery NR8987, HMP Bronze­field, Woodthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx. TW15
3JZ, Eng­land. Jailed for breach­ing her parole con­di­tions imposed on her for
telling a fox hunt­ing mur­der­ing scum what she thought of them. Also await­ing tri­al accused of con­spir­a­cy to black­mail, in rela­tion to her involve­ment with the SHAC cam­paign.

Nathan Block — See details in Eco Defence Pris­on­ers List.

Mel Broughton TN9138, HMP Wood­hill, Tat­ten­hoe Street, Mil­ton Keynes, Bucks
MK4 4DA, Eng­land. On remand accused of involve­ment with an arson and
black­mail cam­paign against an Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty vivi­sec­tion estab­lish­ment.

Jacob Con­roy #93501–011, FCI Vic­torville Medi­um I Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al
Insti­tu­tion, P.O. Box 5300, Ade­lan­to, CA 92301, USA. Serv­ing 48 months
impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign.

Rod Coro­n­a­do, Voice of the Earth, PO Box 732, Tuc­son, AZ 85702, USA. Due to
be sen­tenced to one-year impris­on­ment after Rod informed peo­ple how to make
an incen­di­ary device dur­ing a speech at an ani­mal rights gath­er­ing.

Don­ald Cur­rie A3660AA, HMP Parkhurst, New­port, Isle of Wight, PO30 5NX,
Eng­land. Serv­ing an Inde­ter­mi­nate Sen­tence, of not less than six actu­al
years, for car­ry­ing out arsons against tar­gets asso­ci­at­ed the vivi­sec­tion
indus­try includ­ing HLS.

Lau­ren Gaz­zo­la #93497–011, FCI Dan­bury, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion,
Route #37Danbury, CT 06811, USA. Serv­ing 54 months impris­on­ment for help­ing
organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign.

Sarah Gis­borne, LT5393, HMP Down­view, Sut­ton Lane, Sut­ton, Sur­rey, SM2 5PD,
Eng­land. Serv­ing 5½ years for con­spir­a­cy to cause crim­i­nal dam­age fol­low­ing
the dam­ag­ing of 8 vehi­cles owned by peo­ple linked to Hunt­ing­don Life
Sci­ence.

Joshua Harp­er #29429–086, FCI Sheri­dan Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion,
P.O. Box 5000, Sheri­dan, OR 97378 USA. Serv­ing 36 months impris­on­ment for
help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign.

Kevin Kjon­aas #93502–011, FCI Sand­stone, PO Box 1000, Sand­stone, MN 55072
USA. Serv­ing 72 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA
cam­paign.

Daniel McGowan — See details in Eco Defence Pris­on­ers List.

Heather Nichol­son VM4859, HMP Bronze­field, Woodthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx.
TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. On remand accused of con­spir­a­cy to black­mail, in
rela­tion to her involve­ment with the SHAC cam­paign.

Jonathan Paul, #07167–085, FCI Phoenix, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion,
37910 N 45th Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85086, USA. Sen­tenced to 51 months for an
ALF arson on a horse meat plant. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF
con­spir­a­cy.

John Smith TB4887, HMP Lowd­ham Grange, Lowd­ham, Not­ting­ham, NG14 7DA,
Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied
guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion.

Andrew Stepan­ian #26399–050, FCI But­ner Medi­um II Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al
Insti­tu­tion, PO Box 1500, But­ner, NC 27509 USA. Serv­ing 36 months for
help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign.

Ker­ry Whit­burn TB4886, HMP Lowd­ham Grange, Lowd­ham, Not­ting­ham, NG14 7DA,
Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied
guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion.

Gabriel Vil­leneuve #HUL03299801, 500, de la Faune, Case Postale 87130,
Québec, Québec, G1G 5E4, Can­da. Held on remand accused of breach­ing pro­ba­tion con­di­tions by alleged­ly attend­ing an ani­mal rights protest, even though he nev­er actu­al­ly went to the protest!

Joy­an­na Zach­er — See details in Eco Defence Pris­on­ers List.

PLOUGHSHARES PRISONERS

Helen Wood­son, 03231–045, FMC Car­swell — Admin. Max. Unit, POB 27137, Ft.
Worth, TX 76127, USA. Serv­ing 8 years 10 months for actions that focused on the inter­re­la­tion­ship of war & the destruc­tion of the nat­ur­al world. The actions includ­ed pour­ing red paint over the secu­ri­ty desk of a fed­er­al court and mak­ing threat­en­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Pre­vi­ous­ly Helen had served 20½ years for: 1) Using a ham­mer to dis­arm a nuclear mis­sile silo. 2) Burn­ing $25,000 on the floor of a bank whilst denounc­ing war, envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion & eco­nom­ic injus­tice. 3) Mail­ing warn­ing let­ters with bul­lets attached to Gov­ern­ment & cor­po­rate offi­cials.

THE LECCE FIVE
The Lec­ce Five have been charged with “sub­ver­sive asso­ci­a­tion” accused of dam­ag­ing Esso petrol pumps to oppose the War on Iraq; sab­o­tag­ing the cash
machines of a bank which funds an immi­gra­tion cen­tre; and tar­get­ing the multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny Benet­ton in sup­port of Mapuche land rights activists in Chile. All of the defen­dants are cur­rent­ly either under house arrest or released on bail.

ANTIFA PRISONERS

Lasan­dra Bur­well W063658, Ohio Refor­ma­to­ry for Women, 1479 Collins Ave.
Marysville, OH 43040, USA. Serv­ing 5 years for tak­ing part in an anti-fas­cist demon­stra­tion that turned into a riot.

Vah­tang Devitlidze, ul. Libbedo­va 42, UO 68/2, otryad 14, briga­da 142, g. Hagyshen­sk, Krasnodarskiy Kray, 352680 Rus­sia. Serv­ing 2½ years for stab­bing a neo-nazi in the leg whilst defend­ing him­self from attack.

Augustin Kraus, Vazeb­ni veznice, PP‑1, Lit­o­merice, 41 201, Czech Repub­lic.
Serv­ing 14 months for his par­tic­i­pa­tion in attacks against local neo-nazis. His charge was “bod­i­ly harm”. He speaks Czech, Slo­vak and Pol­ish. You can also write him short post­cards in Eng­lish.

Fabio Milan, C.C. via Pianez­za 300, 10151 Tori­no, Italy. On remand accused of fight­ing with the police after an anti-fas­cist protest.

Andrea Neff, Bnr: 746/07/2, Jus­tizvol­lzugsanstalt fur Frauen in Berlin, Arkonas­trasse 56, 13189 Berlin, Ger­many. Serv­ing 14 months for anti-fas­cist activ­i­ty.

Chris­t­ian Süm­mer­mann, Bnr: 441/08/5, JVA Plötzensee, Lehrter­str. 61, 10557 Berlin, Ger­many. Serv­ing 40 months for breach­ing the peace whilst serv­ing a sus­pend­ed sen­tence issued for anti-fas­cist activ­i­ties.

Tomasz Wiloszews­ki, Zak­lad Karny, Orze­chowa 5, 98–200 Sier­adz, Poland.
Serv­ing 15 years for acci­den­tal­ly killing a neo-nazi whilst defend­ing him­self.

OTHER PRISONERS

Olga Alek­san­drov­na Nevskaya, UU163/5, 7 Otryad, pos. Dzerzhin­skiy, Mozhaysk 140090 Moskovskaya oblast, Rus­sia. Eco-activist serv­ing 6 years for arson, crim­i­nal dam­age and caus­ing explo­sions in protest at the war in Chech­nya. Due for release in 2009.

Mau­ra Mich­lle Lun­gar­l­li, book­ing # 1167062, Cen­tu­ry Region­al Deten­tion Facil­i­ty (CRDF), 11705 South Alame­da Street, Lyn­wood, CA 90262, USA. Well known ani­mal rights Lau­ra Lun­gar­l­li held on remand accused of activ­i­ty uncon­nect­ed to ani­mal rights. (Please note the prison offi­cials have made a spelling mis­take with her name which must be repli­cat­ed on her let­ters of sup­port).

Kevin Olliff, book­ing #1167029, Ter­mi­nal Annex, P.O. Box #86164, Los Ange­les, CA 90086–0164, USA. Ani­mal rights activist held on remand accused of activ­i­ty uncon­nect­ed to ani­mal rights. Co-defen­dant of Lau­ra Lun­gar­l­li.

Fran Thomp­son, #1090915 HU 1C, WERDCC, PO Box 300, Van­dalia, MO 63382, USA.
Serv­ing Life for killing, in self-defence, a stalk­er who had bro­ken into her home. Before her impris­on­ment Fran was an eco, ani­mal & anti-nuke cam­paign­er.

MOVE
MOVE is an eco-rev­o­lu­tion­ary group who car­ried out protests in defence of all life. There are cur­rent­ly eight MOVE activists in prison each serv­ing 100 years after been framed for the mur­der of a cop in 1979. 9th defen­dant, Mer­le Africa, died in prison in 1998.

Deb­bie Simms Africa (006307), Janet Hol­loway Africa (006308) and Janine Philips Africa (006309) all at: SCI Cam­bridge Springs, 451 Fuller­ton Ave, Cam­bridge Springs, PA 16403–1238, USA.

Michael Davis Africa (AM4973) and Charles Simms Africa (AM4975) both at SCI Grater­ford, PO Box 244, Grater­ford, PA 19426–0244, USA.

Edward Good­man Africa (AM4974), SCI Mahanoy, 301 Morea Rd, Frackville, PA 17932, USA.

William Philips Africa (AM4984) and Del­bert Orr Africa (AM4985) both at SCI Dal­las Draw­er K, Dal­las, PA 18612, USA.

Mumia Abu Jamal, (AM8335), SCI Greene, 175 Progress Dri­ve, Way­nes­burg PA 15370, USA. In 1981 Mumia, for­mer Black Pan­ther and vocal sup­port­er of MOVE, was framed for the mur­der of a cop. He was orig­i­nal­ly sen­tenced to death but is cur­rent­ly await­ing re-sen­tenc­ing fol­low­ing a court hear­ing in 2001.

STATEMENT ON VIOLENCE
Some peo­ple list­ed in this newslet­ter have car­ried out vio­lent actions. ‘Spir­it of Free­dom’ does not con­done vio­lence. But we are also against cen­sor­ship & believe peo­ple can decide for them­selves who they wish to sup­port.

ABOUT E.L.P. SUPPORT NETWORK
ELP is an inter­na­tion­al eco-pris­on­er sup­port net­work found­ed, in Britain, in 1993 to sup­port jailed eco-activists. We sup­port the pris­on­ers by pro­duc­ing var­i­ous reg­u­lar pris­on­er lists:

Spir­it of Free­dom is ELP’s inter­na­tion­al month­ly pris­on­er list­ing which is cir­cu­lat­ed by e‑mail.

Urgent ELP! Bul­letin is an e‑mail ser­vice that dis­trib­utes the names of any new eco-pris­on­er as soon as ELP gets their details. For more info e‑mail ELP4321@hotmail.com

On-Line Newslet­ters — ELP has a num­ber of web­sites that pro­vide news, pris­on­er lists and addi­tion­al info about ELP & the pris­on­ers.

Eng­lish lan­guage ELP Web­site
www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk

Greek lan­guage ELP Web­site
http://greekelp.blogspot.com

North Amer­i­can ELP Web­site
www.ecoprisoners.org

Turk­ish lan­guage ELP Web­site
www.geocities.com/yesilanarsi/elp.htm

ELP Extra is an e‑mail group that cir­cu­lates the details of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, ELP learns about, who do not fall with­in the remit for sup­port by ELP. To sub­scribe to the list e‑mail ELP4321@Hotmail.com

Aus­tralian ELP.SN is our Aus­tralian con­tact. For more info e‑mail elp4321@hotmail.com

Bel­gium ELP.SN is our Bel­gium con­tact. For more info e‑mail elp_bel@hotmail.com

Ger­man ELP.SN is a pris­on­er led ini­tia­tive run by eco-pris­on­er Mar­co Camenisch. For more info con­tact Mar­co Camenisch, Post­fach 3143, CH-8105 Regens­dorf, Switzer­land.

Greek ELP.SN is our Greek con­tact. For more info e‑mail greekelp@yahoo.gr

North Amer­i­can ELP is our North Amer­i­can con­tact. For more infor­ma­tion e‑mail naelpsn@mutualaid.org

Turkey ELP.SN is our Turk­ish con­tact. For more info e‑mail yesilanarsi@yahoo.com

Action at World Biofuels Market, Brussels (& video)

14.3.08
Thurs­day morn­ing, 08.00. Activists make an attempt to block all 7 sets of entrance doors and 2 gates to the World Bio­fu­els Mar­ket held in Brus­sels this week. All but one set of doors suc­ceed­ed. The action end­ed after 3 hrs with three peo­ple arrest­ed, who were released after a few hours.

Biofuels Market action 1Biofuels market action 214.3.08
Thurs­day morn­ing, 08.00. Activists make an attempt to block all 7 sets of entrance doors and 2 gates to the World Bio­fu­els Mar­ket held in Brus­sels this week. All but one set of doors suc­ceed­ed. The action end­ed after 3 hrs with three peo­ple arrest­ed, who were released after a few hours.

Action at World Bio­fu­els Mar­ket end­ed by police — 3 arrests

This morn­ing, activist group ‘Agro­fools’ closed down the World Bio­fu­els Mar­ket by lock­ing closed with pad­locks and chains four sets of dou­ble doors and sand­wich­ing them­selves in between just before the offi­cial open­ing soon after 08:00. A bat­tle ensued between pro­test­ers and secu­ri­ty to lock the fifth set of doors.

Out­side the con­fer­ence cen­tre the gates were also locked by a chain and blocked by activist group of Rhythms of Resis­tance who then made their pres­ence felt with upbeat Sam­ba for near­ly two hours before being giv­en an ulti­ma­tum by police. The Sam­ba was played to a back­drop of three ban­ners with slo­gans like ‘Agro­fu­els are a Scam’ and ‘No Solu­tion to Oil Addic­tion’.

Mean­while secu­ri­ty forces inside the con­fer­ence cen­tre man­aged to re-open one door as guards and staff over­whelmed pro­test­ers in a com­ic ‘tug-o-war’. Del­e­gates were then allowed to enter while the oth­er doors remained blocked for a fur­ther hour. Between each set of dou­ble doors, a cou­ple of activists, dressed up as con­fer­ence del­e­gates, had locked them­selves in.

When the entrance was not effec­tive­ly blocked any­more, both groups were still in direct sight of par­tic­i­pants, out­side at the entrance or through the glass of the locked doors.

Activists tar­get­ed the World Bio­fu­el Mar­ket as a “bla­tent attempt to green­wash the oil indus­try”. The long list of cor­po­rate del­e­gates, and the texts issued by the World Bio­fu­el Mar­ket itself, clear­ly show that they enter the emerg­ing mar­ket of agro­fu­els not because they’ re wor­ried about cli­mate change or envi­ron­men­tal dam­age: agro­fu­els are just anoth­er cor­po­rate mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy to squeeze the last bits of mon­ey out of our oil depen­dan­cy and to win con­trol. The run for agro­fu­els is already caus­ing severe social and envi­ron­men­tal dam­age, espe­cial­ly in the South. The so-called 2d gen­er­a­tion agro­fu­els are often put for­ward as an alter­na­tive, a claims that lacks seri­ous sci­en­tif­ic back­ground.

The activists were soon either arrest­ed or sent away by Police after a thor­ough ID check. The 3 arrest­ed peo­ple were released at 12am.

PRESS RELEASE

ACTIVISTS PROTEST AT WORLD BIOFUELS MARKET
Brus­sels, 13 March 2008
EMBARGOED UNTIL March 13, 8:30
Today at 08.30 am, the action group ‘Agro­fools’ staged a protest the entrance to the World Bio­fu­els Mar­ket. Vis­i­tors to the World Bio­fu­els Mar­ket were met by activists, a group of inter­na­tion­al drum­mers, ban­ners, and fly­ers enti­tled “Agro­fu­els ? No Solu­tion for Oil Addic­tion”.
The human block­ade is a protest against the bla­tant pro­mo­tion of agro­fu­els by the World Bio­fu­els Mar­ket and the cor­po­ra­tions tak­ing part in it. “Mas­sive expan­sion, reach­ing into many mil­lions of hectares, of mono­cul­ture plan­ta­tions will cause fur­ther dam­age to bio­di­ver­si­ty, human rights and liveli­hoods”, says activist Remy de Boer. “Agro­fu­els will exac­er­bate cli­mate change and will cer­tain­ly not help to com­bat it. It is immoral to keep pro­mot­ing the use of
agro­fu­els like the World Bio­fu­els Mar­ket does”, he added.
The World Bio­fu­els Mar­ket describes itself on its web­site as a great place for busi­ness to ‘net­work’ with deci­sion mak­ers and “struc­tured to max­imise busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties”. Mean­while, agro­fu­els are being legit­imised by claims of envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits. That, how­ev­er, is a pure green­wash exer­cise. “The cor­po­ra­tions push for agro­fu­el pro­duc­tion, pre­tend­ing they care about the cli­mate. While in real­i­ty agro­fu­els will help them to ensure that our oil addic­tion con­tin­ues, that the car indus­try can keep sell­ing more and heav­ier cars, and that the unequal access to resources in the world remains unchanged”, says De Boer.
There have already been many dec­la­ra­tions and mora­to­ri­um calls from move­ments and organ­i­sa­tions from North and South denounc­ing new tar­gets for agro­fu­el use, such as the 10% tar­get by 2020 pro­posed by the EU. One such call by African organ­i­sa­tions states that “.. the real­i­ty is that the gold rush is firm­ly con­trolled by giant transna­tion­al com­pa­nies which are tak­ing over Africa’s land at an incred­i­ble pace, and are bring­ing about dis­as­trous socio-eco­nom­ic and envi­ron­men­tal impacts on our com­mu­ni­ties, food secu­ri­ty, forests and water resources”.
‘Sec­ond gen­er­a­tion’ agro­fu­els, like cel­lu­lose ethanol, are often said to deal with prob­lems such as com­pe­ti­tion for land for food pro­duc­tion and tar­gets are set, based on expec­ta­tions that these will become avail­able soon. But the large amounts of cel­lu­lose need­ed to pro­duce them can lead to the expan­sion of large scale mono­cul­ture (GM) tree plan­ta­tions, with all prob­lems involved. These plan­ta­tions have already invoked strong resis­tance from local com­mu­ni­ties. On March 4th this year, near­ly 900 women of La Via Campesina occu­pied Sto­ra Enso’s Taru­ma estate in Rosario do Sul munic­i­pal­i­ty, near the bor­der with Uruguay. They entered the land ‑of near­ly 2,100 hectares- and cut
euca­lyp­tus trees and plant­ed native trees instead. This action was respond­ed to by police forces with repres­sion and vio­lence. Over­all, the North must stop export­ing its over-con­sump­tion prob­lems to the South and begin to solve its own prob­lems. We need a strong reduc­tion of con­sump­tion of ener­gy use espe­cial­ly in indus­tri­alised coun­tries. We say no more roads, no more pro­mo­tion of indi­vid­ual motorised trans­port; but a cheap, sus­tain­able col­lec­tive trans­port sys­tem. The pro­duc­tion and use of food, feed and ener­gy should take place as local­ly or region­al­ly as pos­si­ble. Indus­tri­al agri­cul­ture
must be replaced by more small scale, diverse com­mu­ni­ty sup­port­ed agri­cul­ture.

For more infor­ma­tion:
Press con­tact: 0471/ 37.35.01 and 0495/ 31.76.46 [eng­lish and dutch] High res­o­lu­tion pic­tures can be sent to you on request. Send an email to
———————————-END PRESS
RELEASE———————————————————————
Facts for the edi­tor:
* Defor­esta­tion and oth­er types of land use change is esti­mat­ed by the Stern Review (2006) to be respon­si­ble for 18% of all green­house gas emis­sions glob­al­ly. Peat drainage accounts for even more car­bon emis­sions than defor­esta­tion world­wide. Mono­cul­ture expan­sion is a lead­ing cause for both land use change and peat destruc­tion world­wide. Large amounts of fos­sil fuels are need­ed to pro­duce the fer­til­iz­ers, run­ning agri­cul­tur­al machin­ery, trans­port­ing feed­stocks and fuels, and refin­ing agro­fu­els. NOx emis­sions from fer­til­iz­er use are also a major green­house gas.
* The Euro­pean Union is already the largest importer of palm oil prod­ucts in the world and the Nether­lands is the main importer with­in the EU. Crude Palm Oil imports grew from 1.7 mil­lion tons (Mt) in 1995 to 5 Mt in 2007. The EU imports of soy meal from Argenti­na and Brazil com­bined added up to 24 Mt in 2007, in addi­tion to 14 Mt of soy from which oil is pro­duced in the EU. Use of soy oil as agro­fu­el will be anoth­er added val­ue to the prod­uct, which is like­ly to increase its pro­duc­tion.
* A col­lec­tion of calls for a mora­to­ri­um on tar­gets and incen­tives for agro­fu­el use and trade can be found on www.biofuelwatch.org.uk

Axion video of the suc­ces­ful block­ade of the world bio­fu­els mar­ket

EVICTION AT TARA!!! TRIP FROM UK. SOLIDARITY WEEK OF ACTIONS 17TH MARCH ON — updated (& video)

13.03.2008
The M3 Motor­way is cut­ting through one of the most beau­ti­ful ancient places in Europe.

Rath Lugh eviction attempt 1
13.03.2008
The M3 Motor­way is cut­ting through one of the most beau­ti­ful ancient places in Europe.
Help is need­ed to sup­port the pro­test­ers in Coun­ty Meath, Ire­land who are cur­rent­ly sit­ting in tun­nels, after an ille­gal dawn raid on the direct action camp this morn­ing!!
UK activists going to Tara this Sat­ur­day, for more info con­tact schnews@brighton.co.uk,
Week of sol­i­dar­i­ty action starts Pad­dys Day 17th March, read more.…

The intense bat­tle between pro­test­ers and the M3 Motor­way, carv­ing through the archae­o­log­i­cal land­scape, sur­round­ing the ancient hill of Tara in Coun­ty Meath in Ire­land con­tin­ues…….
This morn­ing at 6.30am there was a dawn raid on the direct action camp on top of the Rath Lugh Nation­al Mon­u­ment, only four hours before an injunc­tion was due to be placed at 10.30am.
Dur­ing the raid clue­less con­struc­tion work­ers were act­ing like the police, throw­ing their weight around, whilst dis­man­tling the camp.
Pro­test­ers inside the tun­nel net­work are vul­ner­a­ble and need legal observers to pro­tect them, the bull­doz­ers are con­tin­u­ing to work on top of them, know­ing full well that the ground is main­ly sand and silt.
“The evic­tion is bla­tant­ly not being done with any care or prop­er train­ing to remove the tun­nel inhab­i­tants” All tun­nel vet­er­ans from the 90’s please get over to Tara to help with skills and advice ASAP!
This part of the M3 route is where Hal­libur­ton (owned by Dick Cheyney) are plan­ning to build the tolls for the motor­way, the con­struc­tion work­ers are using C.P.O’s, com­pul­so­ry pur­chase order’s to access the area, where they’ve start­ed to cut into the esker / foun­da­tion.
This will result in low­er­ing the water table, pre­vent­ing water reach­ing the roots of the for­est sit­u­at­ed on top of the mon­u­ment, grad­u­al­ly destroy­ing hun­dreds of ancient oak’s and beech trees.
The Nation­al Roads Author­i­ty and the Irish Gov’t are choos­ing to ignore the fact that Rath Lugh is pro­tect­ed under the Nation­al Mon­u­ments act 2004 and are con­tin­u­ing to break EU Laws left, right and cen­tre.

Fur­ther along the route tar­mac is being laid at Sol­diers Hill for the mas­sive three acre inter­change, as the con­crete fly­overs are going up.
Devel­op­ers have plans for the sur­round­ing area which will include shop­ping cen­tres, hotel com­plex­es and the usu­al Star Bucks and Mc Shite every­where!!

Peo­ple are des­per­ate­ly need­ed to go to Tara now, to build a new direct action camp, activists are meet­ing at Holy­head fer­ry port between 12noon ‑1pm Sat­ur­day 15th March, we have some mon­ey to con­tribute towards tick­ets, if folk want to come, get in touch with schNEWS.
If you can’t come to Ire­land but want to take action here in the UK see below SIAC com­pa­nies:

SIAC are an Irish com­pa­ny (South Ire­land Asphalt Com­pa­ny) who have a 5% stake in the con­struc­tion of the Irish M3 on it’s con­test­ed route in co Meath Ire­land, and are also involved in the con­struc­tion of an onshore gas refin­ery ter­mi­nal at Ross­port co Mayo.
along with their croneys FERROVIAL (Own­ers of Cli­mate crim­i­nal com­pa­ny BAA and. 7 U. K air­ports) They are instru­men­tal in the des­e­cra­tion and destruc­tion of the sacred Tara val­ley in Ire­land, Activists have called for sol­i­dar­i­ty against SIAC, and there will be ongo­ing actions against them and fer­rovial inter­na­tion­al­ly, with the for­mu­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al affin­i­ty groups.
Activists say there will be Actions against SIAC on and around March 17th 08, with dates for an inter­na­tion­al day of action against FERROVIAL to be announced short­ly, SIAC have oper­a­tions through­out the UK and Ire­land in many fields rang­ing from con­struc­tion to phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal research so there are plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ty to make you objec­tions to them felt, so please pub­li­cise and orga­nize in your local com­mu­ni­ty, (see link’s bel­low) TOGETHER WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERANCE!

How­ell James, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, SIAC Con­struc­tion (UK) Ltd
Bond’s Mill
The Count­ing House
Stone­house
Glouces­ter­shire
GL10 3RF
Tel: 00 44 145 382 8888
Fax: 00 44 145 382 4188
Sales enquiries E‑mail: bob.abraham@siac.co.uk

Struc­tur­al Steel
Richard Coop­er, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, SIAC Tet­bury Steel Ltd
Lon­don Road
Tet­bury
Glouces­ter­shire
GL8 8HH
Tel: 00 44 1666 502792
Fax: 00 44 1666 504246
E‑mail: richard.cooper@siac.co.uk

Rus­sell Thom­son, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, Gra­ham Wood Struc­tur­al Lim­it­ed
Chartwell Road
Lanc­ing Busi­ness Park
Lanc­ing
West Sus­sex
BN15 8TY
Tel: 00 44 (0) 1903 755991
Fax: 00 44 (0)1903 755384
E‑mail: r.thomson@grahamwoodstructural.co.uk
Web­site : www.grahamwoodstructural.co.uk

FOR UP-DATES AND INFO HOW TO GET TO TARA CHK OUT :

www.tarapixie.net
www.savetara.com
www.tarataratara.net

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Approx 80 per­son­nel includ­ing sev­er­al Gar­dai not dis­play­ing their num­bers have descend­ed on Rath Lugh.

There are 3 vehi­cles on the esker and a trac­tor half way up. This is seri­ous­ly jeop­ar­dis­ing the life of the girl pic­tured above who is locked into the tun­nel by the neck. The Gar­dai are aware of this and are pay­ing no heed!!!!

There is also a trac­tor heavy laden with steel works approach­ing from the Baron­stown side and 22 jeeps have been count­ed.

The sit­u­a­tu­ion is extreme­ly del­i­cate and extreme­ly tense.

Please go there if you can. Bring video equip­ment and phone cred­it. Go Now!!!

Please spread the word, con­tact all media, ring the Dept of the Envi­ron­ment, Tans­port , Muse­um all.….

No coin­ci­dence that this is hap­pen­ing before a Court Order was made to stop them.

=======================================

3pm
A pro­test­er has been arrest­ed — she has been released. She is not the same woman as that in the tun­nel.
Straight from the protest site: things have calmed down. The Fire Brigade are well gone, will not make any attempt to remove the girl from the tun­nel.
A tent will be erect­ed at the entrance so that one oth­er pro­test­er can com­mu­ni­cate with her.
No effort was or will be made to remove her.
There are still 5 oth­er peo­ple locked on with cement.
There is a small dig­ger and steam roller as well as 18 jeeps at the site.
Noth­ing is dri­ving on the esker.
They are trip­ping over media and cam­eras!
There are flood lights being brought in.
Court case being heard again at 2pm.

=======================================

4pm
Two more pro­test­ers arrest­ed, dragged down the esker. A dump truck, a bull­doz­er in the area. Search and Res­cue have arrived, — Civ­il Defence.
They need the gar­da ombuds­man there -
They are ham­mer­ing into the esker to erect the fence .….….….….……

=======================================

4:30
The con­struc­tion work­ers with the aid of the Gar­dai have fenced off the sen­si­tive area sur­round­ing the tun­nel entrance, sep­a­rat­ing it from the rest of the camp and the pro­test­ers. They are in the process of dri­ving posts into the ground, endan­ger­ing the sta­bil­i­ty of the area. The pro­test­ers onsite have backed away as the pres­ence of Gar­dai, secu­ri­ty, work­ers and activ­i­ty around the area is also pos­ing a threat and they do not wish to add fur­ther to the human ele­ment of pos­si­ble dam­age due to an excess of bod­ies on the mound. Con­tact with the pro­test­er under­ground is being main­tained by one oth­er sup­port­er inside the fence. An agree­ment has been reached which keeps the Machines at a safe dis­tance.

=======================================

The injunc­tion was refused by the court. Watch a video of today here

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Break­ing news at www.indymedia.ie

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Back­ground & new camp wish-list:

Here’s some back­ground his­to­ry and up-dates on what’s hap­pen­ing at Tara, Ire­land.

What­ev­er you dream you can do begin it.
Bold­ness has genius,power & mag­ic in it.
Begin it now.
Goethe

The idea that the land can be owned by a few at the expense of the many, is com­par­a­tive­ly new in Ire­land, when com­pared to the lov­ing­ly sculpt­ed per­fect­ly astro­nom­i­cal­ly aligned hills of theTara/Skryne val­ley.
These are mon­u­ments from a time when the land was loved and hon­oured by the tribes that lived upon it, these days how­ev­er a few moral­ly bank­rupt indi­vid­u­als feel it more advan­ta­geous to impose a tar­mac coat­ed night­mare on the once sacro­sanct fields and hills of Tara/ Skryne.

A hand­ful of Fian­na Fail (the Irish rul­ing par­ty) sup­port­ers and local prop­er­ty devel­op­ers have brought land along an area that has SINCE become the route of the planned four lane M3 motor­way, which would dis­sect 44 ancient sites, com­pris­ing a com­plex of pre-his­toric mon­u­ments, hill­forts, and henges which make up one of the rich­est
archae­o­log­i­cal sites any­where in the world.

The high­ly respect­ed world mon­u­ments fund have placed the entire val­ley on its list of one hun­dred most endan­gered world her­itage sites, all this is bad for busi­ness you might think?

Espe­cial­ly if you’re one of the cor­rupt politi­cians or builders who want to destroy this val­ley with their devel­op­ments so these peo­ple have become stub­born in there refusal to lis­ten to a few aca­d­e­mics, much less 70% of the Irish peo­ple who wished to see the road re-rout­ed, the mil­lions of euros the devel­op­ers are going to make on the back of their dodgy deal­ing must have blocked their ears to the calm voice of rea­son. And so the dig­gers moved in attempt­ing to build a mas­sive 52 acre inter­change at the foot of Tara hill itself.

On the 16th Octo­ber 07 the last of the sites that exist on the pro­posed route of the M3 was report­ed to cam­paign­ers by a wor­ried anony­mous local, so con­cerned cit­i­zens on the ground went to see if there was any sub­stance to reports that poor­ly trained pol­ish archae­ol­o­gists had been work­ing in secret over pre­vi­ous weeks to exca­vate some­thing at a site near sol­diers hill (itself a site of major his­tor­i­cal impor­tance) relat­ing to a deci­sive bat­tle from the Irish 1798 up-ris­ing which was recent­ly bull­dozed.

It would be nigh on impos­si­ble to express the his­to­ry and sig­nif­i­cance of every site men­tioned as the area Sur­round­ing Tara/Skryne is so steeped in His­to­ry so rich in archae­ol­o­gy that it would take page upon page to give an out­line of each one and their rela­tion­ship to one anoth­er.

There are ten sites of impor­tance at the pro­posed inter­change alone, only one oth­er inter­change of this size and type exists in Europe (it’s in Lithua­nia) the sheer size of it has prompt­ed great fear amongst locals that more and more motor­ways are planned to criss-cross the area around Tara. (Tara hill it’s self is a site equiv­a­lent to Stone­henge in UK as a focus for the neo-pagan com­mu­ni­ty).

Of course there’s been an out­cry nat­u­ral­ly there would be, after all through suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions of Irish his­to­ry Tara hill has stood as one of the most emblem­at­ic geo­graph­ic sym­bols of the strug­gle that every­day peo­ple have had to over­come in order to secure a life not dom­i­nat­ed by the greed of the few oppress­ing the hap­pi­ness of the many.

Time and time again through the pages of Ire­lands his­to­ry Tara and her envi­rons emerge as the stage for an epic play that has mir­rored the strug­gle of all the peo­ples of the Earth to live a life of worth and mean­ing.

In ancient times the high king or Ard Ri’ was cho­sen from amongst the Irish tribes, the Ard Ri’ lived at Tara and although their imme­di­ate lands were com­par­a­tive­ly small it fell to the Ard Ri to have the final say in mat­ters of judge­ment between the var­i­ous trib­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives of ancient Ire­land.

Some may dis­agree with the notion of Kings and rulers impos­ing their will on the land and peo­ple from some dis­tant hill,but notions of King­ship landown­er­ship and chief­tain­ship where in entire­ly dif­fer­ent under bre­hon law, than those that we in the UK have inher­it­ed as a result of near­ly a thou­sand years of sub­ju­ga­tion by a small elite of Nor­man rob­ber Barons and their decen­dents.

St Patrick first preached his Gospel at Tara to the then Ard Ri’ (leoghi­aire son of Na’ial) in mid 400 AD and Bri­an Mac Ken­nady (Bri­an Buru) was the last Ard Ri’ at Tara until 1041

In 1798 three hun­dred poor­ly armed “unit­ed Irish men” were mas­sa­cred there, at site now called sol­diers hill (the pro­posed loca­tion of the Blun­dell­stown inter­change) It’s also where O’con­nell addressed a crowd believed to be up to a mil­lion sup­port­ers from the top of tara hill when he led the move­ment for catholic eman­ci­pa­tion in the 1830s from the laws penal­is­ing Catholics that had been passed by Cromwell in the 1650’s.

The Spainish com­pa­ny Fer­rovial along with small­er oper­a­tors, Wills Broth­ers and SIAC have tak­en on the Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ship along­side the nation­al roads author­i­ty to build this road along it’s ridicu­lous crooked route through this com­plex of world her­itage sites , and although they have been repeat­ed­ly ordered by the E U com­mis­sion to stop all work on the site, all three com­pa­nies and the Irish Gov­’t have stub­born­ly refused to cease the work they have been com­pared by local MEP Kathy Sin­not to a small child who when asked to share a desert with a sib­bling, stub­born­ly stuffs the whole thing in their mouths and petu­lant­ly replies ” I can’t it’s all gone” except this is noth­ing so triv­ial as that of course, because the land in ques­tion is one of the most archae­o­log­i­cal­ly rich land­scapes any­where on earth , with an unbro­ken record of 6000 years of human habi­ta­tion, the mind bog­gles at the poten­tial sig­nif­i­cance of the archae­ol­o­gy in the area.

Inci­dent­ly multi­na­tion­al giant Fer­rovial help­ing to car­ry out this attack was found­ed (cir­ca 1953) to poro­vide hard­ware for the Spainish rail sys­tem but was soon in finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ty and was even­tu­al­ly bailed out by Spain’s fas­cist dic­ta­tor Fran­co, these links and oth­ers with­in Fer­rovials board of direc­tors have led many peo­ple to believe that its vin­dic­tive actions have been prompt­ed by the right wing Span­ish Catholic cult “Opus Dei” who inci­dent­ly have their head­quar­ters in Ire­land, right in the cen­tre of the ancient tem­ple com­plex of the Tara/ Skryne val­ley.

Some things how­ev­er, we can be absolute­ly cer­tain of, Fer­rovial were involved in a project (suc­cess­ful­ly resist­ed by locals) that had been intend­ed to bull­doze a moun­tain, ances­toral grave­yard, and sacred precinct,in Mex­i­co, not to men­tion sim­i­lar attroc­i­ties in Chile.
They also own 7 U.K air­ports, and are involved with with the forth­com­ing planned expan­sion of Dublin air­port, plus the on going attempt to expand Heathrow etc, hav­ing pur­chased the British avi­a­tion author­i­ty for £10.31billion ster­ling last year.

At present they are try­ing anoth­er route to get there grub­by lit­tle ten­ti­cles in the till by obtain­ing a slice of Lon­don’s under­ground sys­tem.

Of course there was out­cry in Ire­land when the idea of putting a motor­way through Tara was first vaunt­ed, but as Aldous Hux­ley once said “in the future it will be pos­si­ble for the pow­ers that be to con­troll the mass­es by pro­vid­ing end­less amounts of dis­trac­tion and pro­pa­gan­da” the Irish spin machine has shown it’s self to be as manip­u­la­tive as any oth­er in the devel­oped world.

First word went out that a motor­way was pro­posed at Tara, then as you would expect there was an uproar, so the Irish nation­al roads author­i­ty put mass­es of fund­ing into an aware­ness cam­paign “explain­ing” that they were not after all propos­ing a road through Tara, in fact they had mere­ly sug­gest­ed putting a road “around” Tara, an obvi­ous ploy one might think, but one the Irish peo­ple have been expect­ed to swal­low hook line and sinker.

As the peo­ple of Ire­land breathed their ini­tial col­lec­tive sigh of relief it was expect­ed by the NRA that the pub­lic would over­look all the things that were not men­tioned, issues like the 52 acre inter­change at the foot of tara hill, the bull­doz­ing of 44 (yes 44) archae­o­log­i­cal sites, the demo­li­tion of a wood­en henge with can­nine and human intern­ments in its orig­i­nal con­text (believed to be unique) the human buri­als include a high sta­tus female intern­ment (which with prop­er analy­sis may well have pro­vid­ed use­ful com­men­tary on the pos­si­ble bias of the ear­ly chris­t­ian scribes toward male king­ship etc) the par­tial demo­li­tion of a unique hill­fort, the bull­doz­ing of a grave­yard full of 60 french “celtic” style intern­ments, the list goes on and on and on graves and sites and tem­ples all sacred to the liv­ing soul of the land and her peo­ple, torn out so a hand­ful of greedy self­ish philistines can make a quick buck.

Mean­while with the ongo­ing and whole­sale destruc­tion under­way the Irish pow­ers that be repeat their mantra, it’s not going through Tara hill they say, the liv­ing are more impor­tant than the dead and the liv­ing need that motor­way, and on and on they repeat their patron­s­ing over­sights as if the peo­ple are so stu­pid as to not know that there is a bet­ter route to the west of Tara hill, that route would fol­low the flat lev­el gra­di­ent of a dis­used rail­way track, or that all the best devel­op­ment land of the linked towns lays to the west, or that the short­est and best cross­ing of the Boyne riv­er is to the west, in fact the only log­i­cal rea­son why any­one would build a road on the present pro­posed route is because a few crony’s of the Irish rul­ing par­ty have brought up mass­es of land in the Tara/skryne val­ley and they alone stand to prof­it from this route.

So the politi­cians and road builders keep their heads in the sand, vain­ly repeat­ing their mantra against real­i­ty, my hands are tied, we need a road, it’s not going through Tara, etc etc.
The Rath Lugh direct action camp was evict­ed yesterday,and peo­ple are still locked on in the tun­nels we need peo­ple to come and help build a new camp along the M3.
Every vis­i­tor makes a dif­fer­ence to the protest.

Activ­i­ties so far have includ­ed lim­it­ed use of tripods, most recent­ly at an iron age fort com­plex dis­cov­ered in octo­ber near sol­diers hill where pro­test­ers locked on to to obstruct the shod­dy prac­tices of bad­ly trained and unpro­fes­sion­al pol­ish archae­ol­o­gists draft­ed in, to rush the dig through in secret, also tree hous­es have been placed on route, but work has been main­ly stopped spo­radicly by con­cerned E.U cit­i­zens uphold­ing the law by phys­i­cal­ly stand­ing in front of bull­doz­ers,.

“The tac­tics and actions vary as we con­tin­ue to shut down all work on this road once and for all” said one pro­tes­tor ” the one thing that will nev­er change is that we will defy this road to the last sod, and con­tin­ue to protest as long as those respon­si­ble try to destroy our sacred land”

But greater num­bers are urgent­ly need­ed, any­one who cares is urged to vis­it and lend phys­i­cal, moral or oth­er sup­port, every­one has some­thing they can offer, the main thing is just to go to Tara hill and meet oth­er peo­ple who care, it’s not about “pro­test­ers” or “activists” doing their demo , it’s about YOU car­ing enough to do some­thing before it’s too late, don’t leave it to some­one else.

HOW TO GET THERE.
Nation­al express fun­fares from £15 one way from the U.K (inc fer­ry) or £52 for a months open return on the train from most U.K rail sta­tions.
Once you get to Dublin city cen­ter, get a 109 bus from Busaurus (cen­tral bus sta­tion) going north to Navan, and ask to be let off at Tara. It’s a short well sign­post­ed walk from the bus stop to Tara hill and the vig­il site, this should cost about 11 euros return.

WISH LIST FOR THE NEW CAMP BEING SET UP!!!
Tarps, car­pets, dig­i­tal cam­eras and mem­o­ry cards, old C.B. Rigs aeri­als etc, Mobile phones and cred­it, Large tents and tar­pau­lins, rope, climb­ing equip­ment and har­ness, Locks, chains, water­proof warm dry and durable cloth­ing, ser­vice­able welly boots and wax jack­et, and all oth­er types and sizes of ser­vice­able boots, clean and warm blan­kets and bed­ding, Light­ing equip­ment, secu­ri­ty lights, and 12volt spot­lights, scaf­fold­ing bars and clamps, weld­ing equip­ment, pic’s shov­els, mic’s and record­ing equip­ment, pic’s shov­el’s etc, etc, but espe­cial­ly we need indi­vid­u­als with their own inni­tia­tive, the protest belongs to no one„ it’s up to you, if not you then who? If not now then when?

There are big events planned for may 1st, june 21st, aug 1st, sept 21st, oct 31st dec 21st feb 1st and march 31st,
The resis­tance will be ongo­ing against fer­rovial regard­less, and against the road until it is re rout­ed, and let’s face it there’s noth­ing like a sur­prise vis­it to cheer folks up, so come on down to Tara and cel­e­brate our love of the land and the strength of our uni­ty and defi­ance.

Dona­tions toward direct action grate­ful­ly received at www.tarapixie.net (direct action web­site, excel­lent films and up to the minute info from the ground)

And legal costs direct action and cam­paign­ing at www.savetara.com
Ongo­ing cam­paign­ing and cor­rup­tion info and refs can be found at www.tarawatch.org

WEEK OF ACTION AGAINST SIAC STARTS MON 17th MARCH 2008

CONTACT: HEADMEN AT SIAC

Coun­try code (0035)
Mark Cleary 08681 90323
Liam Short­hall 0868274419
Wills Head­man 0879101759

Cia­ran Feiegh­ery Chair­man of SIAC
Hank Fugar­ty is the direc­tor of SIAC Oper­a­tions

GRUPO FERROVIAL S.A.
Principe de Ver­gara 135
28002 Madrid Spain
Tel no.+34–91 586- 2500
Fax no. +34–91-586‑2677

Road blockades in Argentina against gold mine exploitation

Bar­rick Gold Secret­ly Build­ing Roads to Attack Mt. Famati­na in La Rio­ja

12th March 2008

Bar­rick Gold Secret­ly Build­ing Roads to Attack Mt. Famati­na in La Rio­ja

12th March 2008

On the one-year anniver­sary of the road block­ade in Peña Negra and “ouster” of Bar­rick Gold from the Famati­na moun­tain range, it has been con­firmed that Bar­rick Gold, with the com­plic­i­ty of the nation­al and provin­cial gov­ern­ment, has been secret­ly con­struct­ing a new entry road into the back­side of the moun­tain. This new road enters through Potrero Grande near Vinchi­na, avoid­ing the wide­spread pub­lic resis­tance on the east side of the range, and links Bar­rick Gold’s Famati­na project with the ura­ni­um projects under explo­ration along the south­ern bor­der of the neigh­bor­ing province of Cata­mar­ca.

Bar­rick­’s Famati­na project was an open-pit gold mine to be locat­ed upon the high­er flanks of the Famati­na Range. Bar­rick­’s inser­tion into the beloved moun­tain was car­ried out silent­ly and secret­ly dur­ing the past few years until 2006, when res­i­dents found out and began a grass­roots cam­paign of edu­ca­tion, out­reach and resis­tance. In March 2007, res­i­dents began a round the clock peace­ful block­ade of the only road enter­ing into the moun­tain and Bar­rick­’s min­ing camp. In an aston­ish­ing turn of events, wide­spread anti-min­ing pub­lic opin­ion led to the ouster of cor­rupt provin­cial Gov­er­nor Angel Maza, a province-wide “pro­hi­bi­tion” of open-pit min­ing, and the sched­ul­ing of a pub­lic ref­er­en­dum. Con­front­ed with tur­moil and resis­tance, Bar­rick Gold announced their “with­draw­al” from the Famati­na project in April 2007.

Owing to Bar­rick Gold’s his­to­ry of lies and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions, nobody believed them. Sure enough, in the past year, new gov­er­nor Luis Bed­er-Her­rera reneged on his promis­es to stop the min­ing exploita­tion: First he blocked the sched­uled pub­lic ref­er­en­dum, claim­ing that it was unnec­es­sary because there were already laws in place to pro­hib­it open-pit min­ing — months lat­er he claimed that these very laws he had signed were non-bind­ing because they had nev­er been sub­ject to a pub­lic ref­er­en­dum! The Gov­er­nor has been nego­ti­at­ing secret­ly with min­ing com­pa­nies, includ­ing Bar­rick Gold, to pave the way for their return.

The access road to Famati­na has remained stead­fast­ly block­ad­ed by neigh­bors through­out the year. And now, Bar­rick Gold and the province of La Rio­ja are con­firmed to be con­struct­ing a new road to try and insert out the view of the firm­ly anti-min­ing res­i­dents. The truth came out in Feb­ru­ary when a truck car­ry­ing unknown chem­i­cals plunged off a cliff near Potrero Grande, killing the dri­ver con­tract­ed by a sub­sidiary Bar­rick Gold. It still remains unan­nounced what chem­i­cals were spilled in the trag­ic acci­dent.

One thing remains cer­tain: The Famati­na moun­tain range pro­vides the water which sup­ports the lives of all the peo­ple and ecosys­tems in the region. La Rio­ja is an arid province which depends upon the runoff from the moun­tain peaks, their only source of water and life. And the peo­ple of this region remain stead­fast in their oppo­si­tion to large-scale min­ing projects, be they gold or ura­ni­um.

The “self-orga­nized neigh­bors” (veci­nos auto­con­vo­ca­dos) of Famati­na, Chilecito, and La Rio­ja have called upon their neigh­bors on the oth­er side of the moun­tain range (in the towns of Vinchi­na, Jague, and Potrero Grande) to come forth and pre­vent fur­ther con­struc­tion of Bar­rick Gold’s cow­ard­ly rear access road. Sure enough, on March 12, 2008, neigh­bors have fol­lowed their exam­ple, car­ry­ing out a first block­ade of the high­way in the town of Patquía.

Self-Orga­nized Neigh­bors of Famati­na In Defense of Life
Coor­di­na­tion of Cit­i­zen Assem­blies of Chilecito
Self-Orga­nized Neigh­bors of Pitu­il,
Self-Orga­nized Neigh­bors of Chañar­muyo
Self-Orga­nized Neigh­bors of North Famati­na
Self-Orga­nized Neigh­bors of La Rio­ja cap­i­tal

For More Infor­ma­tion:
www.ciudadanosporlavida.com.ar

Good news at last for Packers Field users!!!

Free, infor­mal access to con­tin­ue

The last 10 months may have seemed the qui­etest since 2002, when the City Academy’s plans to devel­op Pack­ers Field first became pub­lic knowl­edge.

Free, infor­mal access to con­tin­ue

The last 10 months may have seemed the qui­etest since 2002, when the City Academy’s plans to devel­op Pack­ers Field first became pub­lic knowl­edge.

In fact, the work of local cam­paign­ers try­ing to main­tain free pub­lic access to Pack­ers has con­tin­ued through­out this peri­od, and is to be reward­ed with the imple­men­ta­tion of a Com­mu­ni­ty Use Agree­ment, or CUA. This CUA should uphold the right of local peo­ple to con­tin­ue to use the site for infor­mal sport and leisure, as they have done for gen­er­a­tions. This is good news for local res­i­dents of all ages and back­grounds, in advance of the field re-open­ing in April or May.

What is a CUA?
A CUA is a doc­u­ment that is required when coun­cils and gov­ern­ment give fund­ing to devel­op sports facil­i­ties. It is a signed legal doc­u­ment that makes it clear who can use the facil­i­ties and who is respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing them. In the case of Pack­ers, the CUA will be signed by the City Acad­e­my and Bris­tol City Coun­cil.

His­to­ry of the Pack­ers Field CUA
The imple­men­ta­tion of a CUA was one of the con­di­tions attached to plan­ning per­mis­sion grant­ed to the Acad­e­my. How­ev­er, this does not tell the whole sto­ry. ‘Com­mu­ni­ty use’ refers pri­mar­i­ly to offi­cial, organ­ised groups of peo­ple who book the facil­i­ties (sports clubs, schools, etc). The rights of infor­mal users (e.g. walk­ers, kite-fly­ers, chil­dren hav­ing a ‘kick­about’) are not auto­mat­i­cal­ly cov­ered by a CUA. Indeed, the Acad­e­my stat­ed from the begin­ning that its com­mit­ment was only to organ­ised sport. The orig­i­nal CUA pro­posed by the Acad­e­my in 2005 con­sist­ed of just a few para­graphs, with no mean­ing­ful con­tent regard­ing pub­lic use or the Academy’s respon­si­bil­i­ties. It was under­stand­ably reject­ed by local peo­ple. The new agree­ment that has been agreed and signed is a robust, mean­ing­ful doc­u­ment, WRITTEN AND PROPOSED BY MEMBERS OF THE LOCAL COMMUNITY. Both of these doc­u­ments are avail­able to view at www.packersfield.org.uk.

The CUA now allows the local com­mu­ni­ty and the school to enjoy the ben­e­fits of this green space, as has always been the inten­tion of cam­paign­ers. How­ev­er, the man­age­ment of the CUA by the Acad­e­my will need to be mon­i­tored close­ly by all par­ties, as some ques­tions remain over how the Acad­e­my can be held to account to do what it says it will do.

What does the Pack­ers CUA mean for local peo­ple?

The CUA sets out a num­ber of impor­tant guar­an­tees for infor­mal users of the field. These include:
— Free pub­lic access to the site at all times between 7.30am and dusk.
— The City Acad­e­my to be respon­si­ble for main­te­nance and safe­ty of site.
— Annu­al con­sul­ta­tion meet­ings with the Acad­e­my to dis­cuss progress of infor­mal use of the site, includ­ing griev­ances /
con­cerns. Local res­i­dents are strong­ly encour­aged to attend these pub­lic meet­ings.

Infor­mal users of Pack­ers also have respon­si­bil­i­ties under the terms of the CUA. These include:
— Not inter­fer­ing with for­mal sports activ­i­ties on the field or pos­ing a health and safe­ty risk to oth­er users.
— Mov­ing to oth­er parts of the site if rea­son­ably request­ed to do so by ground staff.
— Not walk­ing dogs on the site.

This is only a brief sum­ma­ry of the agreed CUA. For a more detailed under­stand­ing of its con­tent, please con­sult the orig­i­nal doc­u­ment at

www.packersfield.org.uk/news/cua2.htm or by con­tact­ing the City Acad­e­my.

Future devel­op­ment of Pack­ers Field?
It has long been pub­lic knowl­edge that the Acad­e­my and Bris­tol City Coun­cil are keen to devel­op an ath­let­ics facil­i­ty on Pack­ers Field. A pre­vi­ous plan for a sta­di­um and arti­fi­cial run­ning track was quick­ly retract­ed fol­low­ing pub­lic oppo­si­tion, but both par­ties have since made clear their desire to see an ath­let­ics facil­i­ty on the site. This pos­es some very seri­ous chal­lenges for the future, not least to the valid­i­ty of the CUA itself. If an ath­let­ics facil­i­ty were to be locat­ed on the site, any free space for infor­mal use would undoubt­ed­ly be lost. It is also a very real pos­si­bil­i­ty that flood­lights will be part of the plan, which would affect many peo­ple in White­hall and Green­bank. This may well become the next part of the cam­paign and will again need pop­u­lar local sup­port to stop it form hap­pen­ing.

Let’s end on a pos­i­tive note! The Acad­e­my has made con­sid­er­able con­ces­sions on its orig­i­nal vision for Pack­ers Field, due to the strength and ini­tia­tive of the local com­mu­ni­ty. These con­ces­sions are a trib­ute to every per­son who has signed a peti­tion, writ­ten a let­ter, attend­ed a meet­ing or just sup­port­ed the cam­paign with words of encour­age­ment. The future of the field is still a long way from cer­tain, but what we have achieved so far should give us the belief that we can fur­ther influ­ence events and deci­sions.

To cel­e­brate this pos­i­tive devel­op­ment in the cam­paign, there will be a social evening at the White Hart pub on White­hall Road on Sun­day 30th March from 8 till late. There will be live bands, DJs and the chance to catch up with peo­ple who have sup­port­ed the cam­paign over the last few years. Entry is free, although dona­tions towards the ongo­ing costs of the cam­paign are appre­ci­at­ed. All wel­come, please come along.

http://www.packersfield.org.uk

Word Doc­u­ment Leaflet deliv­ered to White­hall res­i­dents

Bristol Activists to join international day of action against Shell on St Patrick’s Day

Pro­test­ers will be pick­et­ing Shell garages in Bris­tol on St Patrick­’s Day. The actions are part of an inter­na­tion­al day of action in sol­i­dar­i­ty with res­i­dents of Ross­port, Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land who are fight­ing the oil com­pa­ny’s plan to build a poten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing onshore oil refin­ery and high pres­sure pipeline in their remote and envi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive region.

Pro­test­ers will be pick­et­ing Shell garages in Bris­tol on St Patrick­’s Day. The actions are part of an inter­na­tion­al day of action in sol­i­dar­i­ty with res­i­dents of Ross­port, Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land who are fight­ing the oil com­pa­ny’s plan to build a poten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing onshore oil refin­ery and high pres­sure pipeline in their remote and envi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive region.

The pick­ets are tak­ing place on Mon­day 17th March, at the York Road Shell garage in Bed­min­is­ter, from 7.30am until 9.30am and the Muller Road Shell garage, junc­tion 2, of the M32, from 5pm until 7pm to coin­cide with rush hour. Please do come along. Musi­cians who play Irish music and Irish dancers will be par­tic­u­lar­ly wel­come. If you can­not dance brief lessons will be avail­able at the Muller Road Shell on the day.

For more infor­ma­tion text Ris­ing Tide on 07917383517

BACKGROUND INFORMATION
This year´s St Paddy´s day (Ireland’s nation­al day), the 17th March, has been called as an Inter­na­tion­al day of action against shell, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Ross­port, Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land.

Since 2000 the small rur­al com­mu­ni­ty of Ross­port, have been engaged in an epic bat­tle try­ing to pre­vent Shell, Sta­toil, and Marathon from build­ing a poten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing tox­ic onshore gas refin­ery and high pres­sure pipeline in their remote and envi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive region.

Peo­ple from all over Ire­land are set to join forces and show their unit­ed strength by going all the way to Lon­don to demon­strate on shell´s front door step. Glu­aiseacht, the Irish envi­ron­men­tal net­work organ­is­ing the trip, are call­ing for peo­ple to join them at the shell head office in Lon­don, or there is also a call out to take sol­i­dar­i­ty actions at shell garages and offices, St Paddy´s day parades and Irish embassies all over the world to coin­cide with the vis­it from 15th-17th March.

The Lon­don shell cen­tre is locat­ed on the South Bank in front of Jubilee Gar­dens (SE1) right next to Water­loo train sta­tion and across from the Lon­don Eye.

What´s Wrong With shell? — The Cor­rib Pipeline Project

Shell are the biggest stake­hold­er and ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the project to build this poten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing tox­ic onshore gas refin­ery and high pres­sure pipeline, so have there­fore been the main tar­get of protest.

Com­mu­ni­ty Strength

From the sum­mer of 2005 mass pick­ets shut down the refin­ery con­struc­tion site after five Ross­port res­i­dents were impris­oned for refus­ing to allow Shell’s sub-con­trac­tors access to their and their neigh­bours’ small farms which the pipeline is to go through. But in Octo­ber 2006 the Irish state came to the aid of shell by bring­ing in a mas­sive two hun­dred strong police unit to phys­i­cal­ly force a path for Shell to com­mence work. A large police pres­ence, con­sist­ing of Gar­dai (Irish police) from all over Ire­land, has stayed at the site to aid the work to con­tin­ue undis­rupt­ed.

The costs to the Envi­ron­ment, Com­mu­ni­ty & Health

Since shell start­ed build­ing the refin­ery, Car­row­more Lake, which is a Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion as well as the local water sup­ply to 10,000 peo­ple, has been pol­lut­ed with dan­ger­ous­ly high lev­els of alu­mini­um com­ing from the build­ing site.

The gas pipeline is to oper­ate at such high pres­sure that accord­ing to the government’s safe­ty study if rup­tured could poten­tial­ly kill peo­ple and destroy build­ings for hun­dreds of metres around.

The waste from the refin­ery is to be dumped into Broad­haven bay, where 220 sight­ings of sev­en whale and dol­phin species, plus sight­ings of two seal species have been record­ed.

This is all not to men­tion the irrepara­ble dam­age fos­sil fuels, like gas, are hav­ing on desta­bil­is­ing the glob­al cli­mate and the dev­as­ta­tion shell projects have caused around the world.

Although the resis­tance to shell in Coun­ty Mayo is strong, the Irish state & shell´s tac­tics of bru­tal­i­ty, repres­sion and intim­i­da­tion has paid a price on the peo­ple fight­ing the pipeline project.

So mark St Paddy´s day by show­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with their fight!

For more info:

http://www.indymedia.ie/mayo — Reports of news and actions about the pipeline
http://www.struggle.ws/rsc — Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp set­up to aid the cam­paign against shell
http://www.corribsos.com — Cam­paign group Shell to Sea

Earth First! summer gathering date change & contact details

The dates of the EF! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing have been changed, to work bet­ter with oth­er events hap­pen­ing over the sum­mer such as the Sav­ing Ice­land protest camp and the Camp for Cli­mate Action.

The new dates are Wednes­day 27th August to Mon­day 1st Sep­tem­ber 2008.

This should give us all the space to recov­er & reflect, and to plot & plan onwards and upwards.

Rabbit with spanner & Earth First!The dates of the EF! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing have been changed, to work bet­ter with oth­er events hap­pen­ing over the sum­mer such as the Sav­ing Ice­land protest camp and the Camp for Cli­mate Action.

The new dates are Wednes­day 27th August to Mon­day 1st Sep­tem­ber 2008.

This should give us all the space to recov­er & reflect, and to plot & plan onwards and upwards.

The new con­tact details for the EF!SG col­lec­tive is summergathering@earthfirst.org.uk

You can down­load pub­lic­i­ty — 2 posters & leaflet all in one: (front & back)

Watch this space for more info near­er the time.

Building Works near Tara Threaten Irish National Monument — protest tunneling

These are two state­ments released by the Save Tara Cam­paign on behalf of the Rath Lugh Direct Action Camp out­lin­ing the emer­gency sit­u­a­tion at the Rath Lugh Nation­al Mon­u­ment near the Hill of Tara:

State­ment on behalf of the Rath Lugh Direct Action Camp: 7th March 2008

Tara campaign - give a damnThese are two state­ments released by the Save Tara Cam­paign on behalf of the Rath Lugh Direct Action Camp out­lin­ing the emer­gency sit­u­a­tion at the Rath Lugh Nation­al Mon­u­ment near the Hill of Tara:

State­ment on behalf of the Rath Lugh Direct Action Camp: 7th March 2008
(For direct con­tacts see phone num­bers below)

Rath Lugh Mon­u­ment near the Hill of Tara under direct threat from M3 Motor­way build­ing works.

“The Pro­tec­tors at Rath Lugh have planned a Direct Action method used for the first time on protest sites in Ire­land. They have dug a tun­nel under the route of the M3 direct­ly in front of the Rath Lugh promon­to­ry fort in the Gabhra Val­ley, Co Meath in Ire­land.

The Pro­tec­tors intend to occu­py this tun­nel and seal them­selves inside indef­i­nite­ly to pre­vent con­struc­tion traf­fic from pass­ing over­head.

They are lay­ing their very lives on the line to pro­tect and pre­serve Tara’s land­scape from the destruc­tion wrought by their own Gov­ern­ment.

The Pro­tec­tors said: “We want to draw atten­tion to the con­tin­ued ero­sion of the esker by pass­ing con­struc­tion traf­fic, hence dam­ag­ing the base and foun­da­tion of the Rath.”

This is a con­tin­u­a­tion of their non-vio­lent direct action. The tun­nel acts like a souter­rain giv­ing the occu­pant pro­tec­tion and mak­ing it very dif­fi­cult for the ene­my to enter.”

Rath Lugh Direct Action Camp
For fur­ther infor­ma­tion ring Derek on +353 86–845 9279 or Lou on 086-
3600478

http://www.tarapixie.net

Link to the video of events 5–6 March at Rath Lugh, Lis­mullin, Co
Meath

http://www.livevideo.com/video/4819A5371FDA46BAB4A42CA1D60B2A1F/rathlugh-down-under. aspx?m_tkc=11224420

Update: Press Release — Save Tara cam­paign: 09 Mar 2008

M3 Pro­test­ers warn Gar­dai tun­nel ‘Will Col­lapse’

“A young woman has vowed to seal her­self into the tun­nel under the pro­posed route of the M3 near the Hill of Tara in Co. Meath.

Pro­test­ers were today fran­ti­cal­ly try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate to the Gar­dai, the frag­ile nature of the soil in the Rath Lugh area, and that any move­ment of heavy machin­ery in the vicin­i­ty of the Rath will col­lapse the tun­nel, with pos­si­ble fatal con­se­quences.

Min­is­ter Gorm­ley issued a per­ma­nent pro­tec­tion order on the Mon­u­ment last week. How­ev­er, nei­ther the Depart­ment of the Envi­ron­ment nor the Land Reg­istry have been able to sup­ply detailed maps of the pro­tect­ed zone. Pro­test­ers claim that the ongo­ing site works asso­ci­at­ed with con­struc­tion of the M3 Motor­way are endan­ger­ing the sta­bil­i­ty of the esker upon which Rath Lugh is built.

The Gar­dai were today asked by senior fig­ures in the Save Tara cam­paign, to do all they could to pro­tect the wel­fare of the young female pro­test­er, and in no cir­cum­stances allow the NRA or any of their con­trac­tors move heavy machin­ery in the vicin­i­ty.

‘Any evic­tion attempt by unqual­i­fied and inex­pe­ri­enced per­son­nel is like­ly to end in fail­ure, with pos­si­ble cat­a­stroph­ic con­se­quences. There are spe­cial­ist tun­nel res­cue crews that need to be con­sult­ed before any attempt is made to end this protest.’ Claimed Michael Can­ney today.”

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion please con­tact; Dr. Muire­ann Ni Bhrol­chain of the Save Tara Cam­paign: +353 87–9249510

From the Rath Lugh Camp Web­site: http://www.tarapixie.net/

“The Rath Lugh Direct Action Camp is sit­u­at­ed two and a half kilo­me­tres from the Hill of Tara, on the Front Line of the pro­posed M3 between Lis­mullen and Baron­stown. We are a diverse and inter­na­tion­al group of activists work­ing togeth­er in a non-hier­ar­chal way with the aim of putting a stop to the pro­posed M3. Cur­rent­ly we are hop­ing to obtain Gaeltacht Sta­tus, as Irish is spo­ken and taught in the camp on a dai­ly basis.…..

…We par­tic­i­pate in Non Vio­lent Direct Action tac­tics in order to halt the ongo­ing destruc­tion of the Tara com­plex. The camp works with an empha­sis on the preser­va­tion of our her­itage and our cul­ture pre­dat­ing Chris­tian­i­ty for future gen­er­a­tions to appre­ci­ate and learn from. This involves blockad­ing the key routes, hence stop­ping as much machin­ery and con­struc­tion as pos­si­ble on the sites…

…Rath Lugh Direct Action Camp wel­comes all friends of Tara. We need peo­ple urgent­ly to halt the Val­ley’s destruc­tion. Every­one has a skill or tal­ent they can lend to this protest. Bring wellies, raingear, sleep­ing bags, torch, lighter, plen­ty of warm cloth­ing, and good spir­its. The protest is only going to get stronger, we will con­tin­ue to oppose the motor­way until it is moved, so come to Rath Lugh as quick­ly as you can. WE NEED YOU ALL NOW BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. Tara is call­ing, don’t ignore the call.”

On March 1st, Dr Jonathan Foyle, British chief exec­u­tive of the World Mon­u­ments Fund, which placed Tara on its endan­gered sites list last year, likened the M3 motor­way near the Hill of Tara to the destruc­tion by Afghanistan’s Tal­iban regime in 2001 of the Bamiyan Bud­dhas.

Sources: Rath Lugh Direct Action Camp Web­site:
http://www.tarapixie.net/

Save Tara: http://www.savetara.com/
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/frontpage/2008/0301/1204240357176.html

With Thanks to the Rath Lugh Direct Action Camp and the Save Tara Cam­paign.

The Tara Foun­da­tion:
http://www.tara-foundation.org
mail@tara-foundation.org

New groups & contacts/support setting up a group

At the recent EF! Win­ter Moot, eight new EF! groups & con­tacts for rock-on eco­log­i­cal direct action were formed, with oth­ers just final­ly get­ting an email address. Some have address­es already — click on their name if linked for those details & per­haps more info…

At the recent EF! Win­ter Moot, eight new EF! groups & con­tacts for rock-on eco­log­i­cal direct action were formed, with oth­ers just final­ly get­ting an email address. Some have address­es already — click on their name if linked for those details & per­haps more info…

Der­by EF! | derby@earthfirst.org.uk
Lan­cast­er EF! | lancasterbasement@aktivix.org
Leeds EF! | leeds@earthfirst.org.uk
Nor­folk & Waveney EF! | norfolk@earthfirst.org.uk
Notts EF! | notts@earthfirst.org.uk
Ply­mouth EF! | plymouth@earthfirst.org.uk
Scot­land Cen­tral Belt EF! | scotland@earthfirst.org.uk
West Wales EF! | westwales@earthfirst.org.uk

If you want to set-up an EF! group, check out the ‘set­ting up a group’ at What is Earth First!? and let us knowwhat you get up to, or if you need a hand.

The Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing col­lec­tive also now have an email address (note the date change in this sep­a­rate news sto­ry): summergathering@earthfirst.org.uk

—–

2009 updates:

Bath Activist Net­work | bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk
Ker­now Action Now! | kernowaction@gmail.com
Man­ches­ter Cli­mate Action | manchester@climatecamp.org.uk
Pre­ston Earth First! | preston@earthfirst.org.uk
Wor­thing Eco-action | worthing@eco-action.org

Flash mob reclaim space in Birmingham’s Bull Ring (article & video)

At 1.30pm on Sat­ur­day 8th March, upwards of 80 peo­ple took part in a flash mob in the Bull Ring ™ in Birm­ing­ham city cen­tre, where peo­ple froze in ‘sus­pend­ed ani­ma­tion’ for 5 min­utes.

At 1.30pm on Sat­ur­day 8th March, upwards of 80 peo­ple took part in a flash mob in the Bull Ring ™ in Birm­ing­ham city cen­tre, where peo­ple froze in ‘sus­pend­ed ani­ma­tion’ for 5 min­utes.

I arrived at the meet­ing place short­ly after 1pm, around 60 peo­ple had gath­ered near to St Mar­t­in’s church, I looked around to make sure I was in the right place and many know­ing looks and smiles were exchanged. Short­ly, the group were approached by three unfriend­ly and offi­cious Bull Ring ™ secu­ri­ty guards who demand­ed to know who the ‘organ­is­ers’ were. There were a few shouts of “there are no organ­is­ers!” and “nope, none here”, before they approached a mem­ber of the group who car­ried a mega­phone. The three of them stood around him as close­ly as they could and did their best to look intim­i­dat­ing. One of secu­ri­ty team looked as if he was in his ele­ment, an impor­tant look dawned his face as he mut­tered into his FBI-style curly ear-piece. The mega­phone car­ri­er was told that they would have to “shut us down” if the group did not move on, how­ev­er no elab­o­ra­tion of the con­se­quences of this threat were pro­vid­ed. It seems that they some­how caught wind of this stunt, prob­a­bly noti­fied by the police who are rumoured to keep a close eye on the social net­work web­site face­book, which was used to arrange the action.

After regroup­ing near the infa­mous shit­ting bull (sev­er­al years back there were reports of cow shit appear­ing at ran­dom times under­neath it’s rear) the group pre­pared for the action and quick­ly dis­persed in dif­fer­ent direc­tions. I stayed behind for a few min­utes to watch secu­ri­ty guards hope­less­ly look for poten­tial ‘sus­pects’, but only suc­ceed­ing in giv­ing men­ac­ing looks to con­fused shop­pers. By now it was 1.15pm and there was a good fif­teen min­utes before the begin­ning of the action so I car­ried out a quick recon­nais­sance mis­sion to find a good loca­tion, final­ly set­tling on the low­er floor at the cen­tre of the pavil­lion. At pre­cise­ly 1.30pm, a sur­re­al vision mate­ri­alised as peo­ple sud­den­ly froze on the spot every­where, some halfway through a foot­step, some point­ing, and the odd young cou­ple embraced in a kiss. As the min­utes passed, the amuse­ment of onlook­ers was appar­ent; quite a crowd had gath­ered, and strangers were exchang­ing smirks and dis­cussing what the mean­ing of this could be. Tem­porar­i­ly, the monot­o­ny of shop­ping had been bro­ken, and a new use for the space had been found; amuse­ment which did­n’t require spend­ing. I looked down the pavil­lion and saw three secu­ri­ty guards run­ning in full flight down the pavil­lion, nar­row­ly miss­ing shop­pers as they sped past. Sud­den­ly the secu­ri­ty were shout­ing and shov­ing peo­ple out the way, even peo­ple who had noth­ing to do with the stunt. “YO YO every­one MOVE! Noth­ing to see here! MOVE ON!” they bel­lowed. Of course, no one did, and onlook­ers looked more irate than threat­ened. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the act of peo­ple not even bat­ting an eye-lid enraged them fur­ther and the three of them explod­ed in anger, wild­ly shout­ing at every­one in the vicin­i­ty, much to the shock of every­one present. “Put your phone away!” one shout­ed as he grabbed my arm, to which I shout­ed back at him to stop assault­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic, and said I was tak­ing pho­tos of him and his accom­plices for evi­dence. He looked ner­vous and stepped back. Short­ly, the five min­utes was up, and every­one car­ried on walk­ing. As if noth­ing had hap­pened. The secu­ri­ty guards fol­lowed some of the group out­side, quite brash­ly con­grat­u­lat­ing each oth­er on their ‘brav­ery’.

After recon­ven­ing at the infa­mous shit­ting bull, every­one in the group was in high spir­its, the action had been a suc­cess, and it was agreed that a cel­e­bra­to­ry drink was in order. I saw a man in a suit talk­ing to an old­er lady, who I recog­nised as being a mem­ber of the group. I approached them and lis­tened in to their con­ver­sa­tion. It became appar­ent that the suit­ed man was the Bull Ring ™ secu­ri­ty man­ag­er and was com­plain­ing to the lady of the inher­ent dan­gers of “caus­ing block­ages” in the shop­ping cen­tre (or per­haps the hor­ri­fy­ing thought that cor­po­rate prof­it mak­ing was inter­rupt­ed on his watch). After inform­ing him of his exag­ger­a­tions and putting it to him that the assaults car­ried out by his aggres­sive secu­ri­ty staff were the only safe­ty threat to patrons of the shop­ping cen­tre, he declared that he “did not want to speak to me”. I noticed that a rather rotund secu­ri­ty guard had been sum­moned while my back was turned, and he exclaimed that I was on pri­vate prop­er­ty, that I had to leave imme­di­ate­ly, and that the police had been called. I told him that tres­pass is not a crim­i­nal offence but a civ­il mat­ter so the police could not inter­vene, and fur­ther­more I was in fact leav­ing the premis­es as he had request­ed but there was no law say­ing how fast I had to walk. He pro­ceed­ed to press his bel­ly against me which made me feel a lit­tle ill, so I decid­ed it was time to pay a vis­it to the pub.

On the way, I con­sid­ered the suc­cess of the action. I had attend­ed sim­ply for a bit of a laugh, It was an apo­lit­i­cal stunt, some­one told me how the event could speak for itself if every­one brought their own inter­pre­ta­tion and mean­ing to it. I thought how inspir­ing it was that so many peo­ple, most who had not met pre­vi­ous­ly had come togeth­er to make this small piece of his­to­ry. I think most peo­ple came for fun, to feel part of some­thing spe­cial, and to show the pub­lic that some­thing dif­fer­ent and inter­est­ing can hap­pen. Then I thought how intol­er­ant cer­tain peo­ple were of the event and why. Those who were intol­er­ant resp­re­sent­ed the inter­ests of big busi­ness, and in my expe­ri­ence they are intol­er­ant of all events like this. Any ‘deviant’ behav­iour which does not fit the nar­row con­fines of serv­ing prof­it-mak­ing is stamped down upon. Their mes­sage is clear, how­ev­er small the inter­rup­tion is to their prof­its, it will not be tol­er­at­ed. There is a creep­ing ide­ol­o­gy which pos­es a threat to our pub­lic spaces, they are “zoned” for com­mer­i­cal pur­pos­es, their sole pur­pose for spend­ing mon­ey and any oth­er activ­i­ties are unwel­come. Before the Bull Ring ™ the thro­r­ough­fare was pub­lic land, now it has been sold off to com­mer­i­cal inter­ests with­out our con­sent or knowl­edge. That land was ours and now we could poten­tial­ly be exclud­ed from it. Recent­ly, rad­i­cal groups like Food Not Bombs who pro­vide free food to the pub­lic (par­tic­u­lar­ly home­less peo­ple), have been tar­get­ed by coun­cil offi­cials as they do not fit in to their nar­row­ly defined social norms.

This ide­ol­o­gy should be chal­lenged because this is *our* land, and we should be able to use it as we see fit with­out being sub­ju­gat­ed by what is effec­tive­ly an elit­ist spe­cial inter­est group claim­ing to rep­re­sent the inter­ests of every­one. In Spain peo­ple share a beer and play cards on the cathder­al steps as the sun sets, in France peo­ple play boules on the grass, and in a US city this Fri­day a mass of peo­ple will play a night time urban game of “cap­ture the flag” on their streets amongst drunk­en rev­ellers. Is it any won­der we live in a more iso­lat­ed and anony­mous soci­ety? Pub­lic space is the glue which con­nects peo­ple and builds com­mu­ni­ties yet it has been com­pro­mised, unless of course it is medi­at­ed by a prof­it mak­ing enti­ty such as $tar­bucks or McDon­alds. There has been no real dis­cus­sion about this, it is just a sta­tus quo which has been insid­i­ous­ly forced upon us. How­ev­er, this sta­tus quo can be chal­lenged, we can reclaim our pub­lic spaces for fun, or what­ev­er oth­er pur­pose we see fit. Such stunts and actions show peo­ple that there is a dif­fer­ent way of doing things and they are invit­ed too. If any­thing, that was cer­tain­ly proven on this day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHaPhrieGfQ
and
http://www.vimeo.com/764912