Stop Heathrow Expansion: Terminal 5 flashmob

ON THE OPENING DAY OF HEATHROW TERMINAL 5

11am on the dot, Thurs­day 27 March
Inter­na­tion­al Arrivals (Ground Lev­el), Heathrow Ter­mi­nal 5

T5 flashmob flier front smallON THE OPENING DAY OF HEATHROW TERMINAL 5

11am on the dot, Thurs­day 27 March
Inter­na­tion­al Arrivals (Ground Lev­el), Heathrow Ter­mi­nal 5

www.stopairportexpansion.org

Be at T5 Inter­na­tion­al Arrivals at 11am to put on (or strip to reveal) your bright­ly coloured ‘STOP AIRPORT EXPANSION’ t‑shirt: a vis­i­ble pres­ence of pub­lic oppo­si­tion to the mad­ness of air­port expan­sion. Wan­der round for a bit, have a cof­fee, leave when you like.

ORDER YOUR FREE T‑SHIRT TODAY: stopairportexpansion@gmail.com or 0845 458 2564.

The Gov­ern­ment and BAA see the open­ing day of Ter­mi­nal Five – the biggest ter­mi­nal ever built in the UK, and the sub­ject of the longest Pub­lic Inquiry in British his­to­ry — as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to put the case for fur­ther air­port expan­sion. Join the flash mob* on 27 March to high­light the real prob­lems that air­port expan­sion caus­es: cli­mate change, noise, air pol­lu­tion and com­mu­ni­ty destruc­tion.

Down­load the fly­er

* Flash Mob: ‘A large group of peo­ple who assem­ble sud­den­ly in a pub­lic place, per­form an unusu­al action for a brief peri­od of time, then quick­ly dis­perse’ (Wikipedia).

www.t5flashmob.com

PLEASE NOTE: Almost every­thing is against the Heathrow byelaws, but wear­ing a t‑shirt is not a crime. So as long as you’re not demon­strat­ing, you’re not break­ing the law!

Parliament rooftop protest against Heathrow 3rd runway

27th Feb­ru­ary 2008

Paper planes on parliament 1Plane Stupid on parliament 227th Feb­ru­ary 2008
Cli­mate cam­paign­ers hang ‘NO 3rd RUNWAY’ ban­ner before PMQs

Cam­paign­ers opposed to Heathrow expan­sion have scaled the roof of the Hous­es of Par­lia­ment and hung protest ban­ners from the build­ing before Prime Min­is­ter’s Ques­tions is due to begin.

The three men and two women from cli­mate action group, Plane Stu­pid, opened an out­side door before walk­ing along the roof and drop­ping two ban­ners. The non-vio­lent direct action comes on the day a gov­ern­ment con­sul­ta­tion into Heathrow expan­sion ends. The pro­test­ers are mak­ing paper aero­planes out of con­fi­den­tial White­hall doc­u­ments that reveal the process is fixed, and glid­ing the planes into the MPs’ car park below.

The doc­u­ments – obtained under the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act — prove that air­port oper­a­tor BAA wrote parts of the con­sul­ta­tion doc­u­ment and that the gov­ern­ment has already decid­ed to build a 3rd run­way and 6th ter­mi­nal at the world’s biggest inter­na­tion­al air­port.

One of the ban­ners, fac­ing Par­lia­ment Square, brands the House of Com­mons ‘BAA HQ’ while the oth­er says ‘NO 3rd RUNWAY’. Richard George, 27, from Lon­don is on the roof. He said:

I’m stand­ing on the roof of Par­lia­ment because the demo­c­ra­t­ic process has been cor­rupt­ed. The avi­a­tion indus­try has tak­en full advan­tage of a weak Prime Min­is­ter to get the Heathrow con­sul­ta­tion fixed. It does­n’t even con­sid­er glob­al warm­ing, despite every­thing Brown has said about the envi­ron­ment and despite the mas­sive impact that avi­a­tion has on the cli­mate.

He con­tin­ued:

This Prime Min­is­ter does­n’t even have the courage to ask Lon­don­ers the very sim­ple ques­tion, do you want a third run­way? Instead his gov­ern­ment pub­lished a con­sul­ta­tion doc­u­ment full of gob­bledy­gook and indus­try spin. Now the con­sul­ta­tion is over we can safe­ly ignore the fixed result and get on with the job of stop­ping this new run­way being built. A huge coali­tion of local res­i­dents, Lon­don­ers and envi­ron­men­tal­ists is com­ing togeth­er, sup­port­ed by all the major may­oral can­di­dates, to stand against Gor­don Brown and say ‘no more’.

BAA and Brown want to see a sixth ter­mi­nal and third run­way built over homes, schools and church­es in the vil­lages of Sip­son and Har­mondsworth. This would increase the num­ber of flights from 480,000 a year to at least 702,000. Two mil­lion Lon­don­ers face increased lev­els of noise, while CO2 emis­sions from the air­port would shoot up despite claims by Brown that he’s com­mit­ted to fight­ing cli­mate change.

The rooftop occu­pa­tion comes two days after Green­peace pro­test­ers scaled an Air­bus A320 which had just touched down at Heathrow from Man­ches­ter.

The pro­test­ers have brand­ed Par­lia­ment ‘BAA HQ’ because of the extra­or­di­nary lev­el of col­lu­sion between the avi­a­tion indus­try and gov­ern­ment. Secret doc­u­ments obtained under Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion leg­is­la­tion reveal the exis­tence of a pre­vi­ous­ly unknown body called the ‘Heathrow Deliv­ery Group’ – com­prised of gov­ern­ment and BAA offi­cials. The group is charged with get­ting the new run­way through the con­sul­ta­tion process and neu­tral­is­ing ‘risks’ to the project such as Lon­don­ers who oppose Brown’s avi­a­tion pol­i­cy.

BBC news video 1

BBC news video 2

http://video.publico.es/videos/0/4705/1/recent

15 Actions to Topple the Fossil Fuel Empire

Ris­ing Tide has just fin­ished pro­duc­ing two new resource book­lets …

1 — 15 Actions to Top­ple the Fos­sil Fuel Empire — per­fect to help plan your action for up and com­ing Fos­sil Fools Day — more on that at http://risingtide.org.uk/node/241

Topple Fossil Fuel Empire coverRis­ing Tide has just fin­ished pro­duc­ing two new resource book­lets …

1 — 15 Actions to Top­ple the Fos­sil Fuel Empire — per­fect to help plan your action for up and com­ing Fos­sil Fools Day — more on that at http://risingtide.org.uk/node/241

2 — Cli­mate Action Pop­u­lar Edu­ca­tion Pack — packed with tools to help you run engag­ing, inter­ac­tive work­shops on all aspects of cli­mate change for a wide range of peo­ple.

Both resources can be down­loaded from http://risingtide.org.uk/resources/other

On site reports from the trenches at Rath Lugh

Mon­day 25th Feb­ru­ary:
There are fences across the pro­posed route each side of the Rath Lugh woods. At around 8am this morn­ing a mem­ber of the Rath Lugh camp heard machin­ery pass­ing by the rath. 6 of us went out and saw 2 dump trucks and 2 dig­gers out­side the fence, com­ing from the Baron­stown direc­tion. Each dig­ger was 40 tonnes, and want­ed to dri­ve though at the same time! A large crowd of SIAC, Fer­rovial and Wills Bros work­ers were present, 2 mem­bers of the Gar­da Siochana were also present, both in incom­plete uni­forms; they did­n’t wear hats, one of them was­n’t dis­play­ing his ID num­ber on his shoul­der. We explained no machin­ery would be pass­ing by Rath Lugh, that the area is pre­served and it is a crim­i­nal offence to inter­fere with or dam­age a nation­al mon­u­ment. The weight and vibra­tions of the machin­ery will affect the mon­u­ment on the esker, and so endan­ger all of Rath Lugh. The work­ers took absolute­ly no heed of any­thing we told them.

Rath Lugh destructionMon­day 25th Feb­ru­ary:
There are fences across the pro­posed route each side of the Rath Lugh woods. At around 8am this morn­ing a mem­ber of the Rath Lugh camp heard machin­ery pass­ing by the rath. 6 of us went out and saw 2 dump trucks and 2 dig­gers out­side the fence, com­ing from the Baron­stown direc­tion. Each dig­ger was 40 tonnes, and want­ed to dri­ve though at the same time! A large crowd of SIAC, Fer­rovial and Wills Bros work­ers were present, 2 mem­bers of the Gar­da Siochana were also present, both in incom­plete uni­forms; they did­n’t wear hats, one of them was­n’t dis­play­ing his ID num­ber on his shoul­der. We explained no machin­ery would be pass­ing by Rath Lugh, that the area is pre­served and it is a crim­i­nal offence to inter­fere with or dam­age a nation­al mon­u­ment. The weight and vibra­tions of the machin­ery will affect the mon­u­ment on the esker, and so endan­ger all of Rath Lugh. The work­ers took absolute­ly no heed of any­thing we told them.

Pro­test­ers climbed onto the machin­ery to peace­ful­ly block­ade their path. The rest of us stood in front of the machines. The Gar­dai took our names and address­es. acThe pro­test­ers on the machin­ery climbed off the machines, because one con­struc­tion work­er tried to for­ca­bly pull a male pro­test­er off the dig­ger. The female pro­test­er was walk­ing towards the Rath, when she was man­han­dled by the Gar­da with no hat, car or ID num­ber on his shoul­der. The Gar­dai did­n’t give her a cau­tion but arrest­ed her straight away. He hand­cuffed her and when we ques­tioned him, he men­tioned OPERATION BEDROCK. He then attempt­ed to drag her to Mark Cleary’s jeep, as there was no squad car to be seen. We imme­di­ate­ly object­ed to this ille­gal arrest, but the Gar­dai kept pulling her, even through she was vis­i­bly upset. There were no female Gar­dai present, we expressed our con­cerns about a young female being tak­en off site by 2 extreme­ly unpro­fes­sion­al Gar­dai and dri­ven off in a vio­lent man’s jeep (Mark Cleary’s. Pho­tos of this man can be seen on this site, or Indymedia.ie, his dri­ves a white jeep and his reg­is­tra­tion plate is 07 D 60531).

The Gar­dai final­ly seemed to under­stand our wor­ries about this ille­gal arrest, and decid­ed to walk her off the site and take her to Navan Gar­da Sta­tion in their squad car, which for some unknown rea­son was parked down the route near Baron­stown. I walked with the female pro­test­er and the 2 Gar­dai towards Baron­stown. She was hand­cuffed behind her back, and when the wind was blow­ing dust in her eyes, they would­n’t free her so she could wipe the dust out. It’s worth not­ing that this site has had its top­soil removed and is com­pact­ed earth with lime to dry out the ground. They joked rather insen­si­tive­ly I should wipe her eyes instead! When I asked the Gar­da with no ID why he men­tioned OPERATION BEDROCK, he refused to com­ment. Final­ly we arrived at their squad car, but a Pad­dy Wag­on was there, and around 8 men in plain clothes wear­ing Gar­da Siochana wind cheater jack­ets. When I asked them why they weren’t in full uni­form they explained they were plain clothes Gar­dai. I again expressed my con­cerns about this dodgy crowd tak­ing one of our young female pro­test­ers away, and request­ed I come with her, for her own health and safe­ty. They refused imme­di­ate­ly, one Bean Gar­da was extreme­ly snap­py, explain­ing the female pro­test­er would be safe with her. I said this was exact­ly what I was wor­ried about and asked would they hand­cuff me so I could accom­pa­ny my col­leage. The same Bean Gar­da said I have often made my own way to Navan in the past when need­ed be. The Gar­da did­n’t uncuff my col­leage in the back of the car, so when they braked sud­den­ly she hurt her back and now needs med­ical atten­tion.

We made our way back to the front line at Rath Lugh and were about to head into the Gar­da Sta­tion in Navan when we got an urgent phone call from the front line. A doz­er was at the left fence, com­ing from Baron­stown direc­tion. A small­er dig­ger was work­ing on a spoil heap a few feet away from the esker. We imme­di­ate­ly block­ad­ed the machin­ery peace­ful­ly to pre­vent them work­ing. All of the SIAC, Fer­rovial and Wills Bros were sit­ting in their jeeps as it was hail­ston­ing and extreme­ly windy. A Gar­da jeep approached from Lis­mullen, with the same 2 Gar­dai who arrest­ed my col­leage an hour ear­li­er. The bald Gar­da with­out his ID num­ber ear­li­er now had his ID dis­played, obvi­ous­ly he realised he made an ille­gal arrest ear­li­er. We hand­ed them the Rath Lugh Preser­va­tion Order, which they accept­ed. The Gar­da who dis­played his ID num­ber explained the doz­er would be pass­ing throught to Lis­mullen, but he was stop­ping the dig­ger from work­ing until the mat­ter of the Preser­va­tion Order is clear­er. We blocked the esker from being harmed as the doz­er passed by s to the Lis­mullen site. When asked about the plain clothes Gar­dai, the Gar­da denied their exis­tence. When I remind­ed hiym I spoke to the plain clothes Gar­dai myself, he cor­rect­ed him­self. He said they were on stand­by. On stand­by for what we asked, explain­ing our own health and safe­ty is of para­mount impor­tance. He refused to com­ment fur­ther.

6 con­struc­tion work­ers approached the front line ben­der, took mea­sure­ments around the perime­ter fence of the ben­der, using sur­vey­ing equip­ment. Con­struc­tion work­ers in jeeps attempt­ed to dri­ve past Rath Lugh again from Baron­stown to Lis­mullen, but the Gar­dai refused them per­mis­sion, until the Preser­va­tion Order mat­ter is clear­er.

I am now on going to bring the female pro­test­er who got released to hos­pi­tal for med­ical atten­tion.

————-

Update lunchtime:

Sit­u­a­tion Crit­i­cal as more machin­ery is arriv­ing. 4 machines were allowed pass Rath Lugh in sin­gle file ear­li­er en route to Lis­mullin. They have cho­sen this route to enter onto the Henge. Now 3 machines are sta­tioned at Rath Lugh threat­en­ing to begin work in that area. There has been no reply from Gorm­ley’s office despite sev­er­al requests this morn­ing in regard to the Tem­po­rary Preser­va­tion Order and for con­fir­ma­tion of the bound­aries of same ‚which seem now to be unclear.

Please sup­port , BE PRESENT, con­tact all inter­est­ed bod­ies, make com­plaints, spread the word, do what you can but do it Now!

The female Pro­tec­tor has been released. No details of charges yet.

Rath Lugh Camp Phone : 0861537146

Vig­il Camp Phone: 0861758557

————-

Video of Stand­off at Rath­lugh today and the arrest of a pro­tes­tor.

Paddy´s Day of Action Against Shell

This year´s St Paddy´s day, 17th March, has been called as an Inter­na­tion­al day of action against shell, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Ross­port.

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.

This year´s St Paddy´s day, 17th March, has been called as an Inter­na­tion­al day of action against shell, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Ross­port.

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 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

Since 2000 the small rur­al com­mu­ni­ty of Ross­port, Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land 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.

Shell are the biggest stake­hold­er and ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the project, 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.

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

http://gluaiseacht.nologic.org/wordpress — Glu­aiseacht web­site

Manchester Critical Mass and after party!!!

Crit­i­cal Mass Bicy­cle Ride
Fri­day 29th Feb­ru­ary
6pm Cen­tral Library M1
Bike ride around the city to cel­e­brate the bicy­cle

7.30pm-Midnight Cafe Saki (opp EBC)
with…
GO LEBANON!
BLACK VELVET BAND

Crit­i­cal Mass Bicy­cle Ride
Fri­day 29th Feb­ru­ary
6pm Cen­tral Library M1
Bike ride around the city to cel­e­brate the bicy­cle

7.30pm-Midnight Cafe Saki (opp EBC)
with…
GO LEBANON!
BLACK VELVET BAND
CLEG
and DJ’s play­ing a
mix­ture of ska, reg­gae, punk, dis­co.

FREE
(Dona­tions to I Bike MCR
Fes­ti­val appre­ci­at­ed)

www.ibikemcr.org.uk

Greenpeace campaigners climb on top of Heathrow short-haul flight (& video clip)

As the ban­ner on top of this Lon­don — Man­ches­ter flight says, we’re in the mid­dle of a cli­mate emer­gency. The fastest grow­ing source of green­house gas emis­sions in the UK is just about to get anoth­er boost from Brown’s gov­ern­ment. On Wednes­day, the con­sul­ta­tion on whether to near­ly dou­ble the size of Heathrow by build­ing a new run­way will close, and the gov­ern­ment looks set to cave in to the avi­a­tion indus­try.

Greenpeace on top of planeAs the ban­ner on top of this Lon­don — Man­ches­ter flight says, we’re in the mid­dle of a cli­mate emer­gency. The fastest grow­ing source of green­house gas emis­sions in the UK is just about to get anoth­er boost from Brown’s gov­ern­ment. On Wednes­day, the con­sul­ta­tion on whether to near­ly dou­ble the size of Heathrow by build­ing a new run­way will close, and the gov­ern­ment looks set to cave in to the avi­a­tion indus­try.

This morn­ing, four of our vol­un­teers have climbed on top of a plane at Heathrow and are wrap­ping a ban­ner around the tail­fin. The plane — one of 32 flights every day between Lon­don and Man­ches­ter — had just arrived in Heathrow and the pas­sen­gers had dis­em­barked when four vol­un­teers walked through the dou­ble doors at Heathrow Ter­mi­nal One, cross­ing an area of tar­mac and climb­ing onto the fuse­lage of the British Air­ways flight.

100,000 flights a year go between Heathrow and des­ti­na­tions that are eas­i­ly reach­able by train (the most pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tion is Paris — eas­i­ly reach­able by the Eurostar). And, look­ing at the price of train trav­el in Britain, it’s under­stand­able that some peo­ple are still choos­ing to fly. If the £9 bil­lion tax sub­si­dies the avi­a­tion indus­try receives to make fly­ing cheap­er and air­ports big­ger were spent on mak­ing trains cheap­er and bet­ter, we could reduce the envi­ron­men­tal impact of Heathrow instead of vast­ly increas­ing it.

Secu­ri­ty threat? Yes, we’ve exposed a secu­ri­ty hole at Heathrow, but we’ve done it to expose the gap­ing hole on Brown’s cli­mate change pol­i­cy. Brown’s car­ry­ing on as though cli­mate change has nev­er hap­pened. The plan­et’s lead­ing sci­en­tists are warn­ing us we only have a few years left to get cli­mate change emis­sions down, yet, if the avi­a­tion indus­try is allowed to expand as pre­dict­ed, avi­a­tion alone would destroy any hope of hit­ting his emis­sions reduc­tions tar­gets.

The move came as pro­test­ers were gath­er­ing in West­min­ster on Mon­day to oppose plans to expand the air­port.

A gov­ern­ment con­sul­ta­tion on the plan clos­es on Wednes­day.

We are here to draw a line in the sand and tell Gor­don Brown his new run­way must not and will not be built

Anna Jones, Green­peace activist

Green­peace said pro­test­ers put a ban­ner read­ing “Cli­mate Emer­gency — No Third Run­way” over the plane’s tail­fin at about 0945 GMT.

It said two women and two men crossed the tar­mac at the air­port after the pas­sen­gers had dis­em­barked.

One pro­test­er, Anna Jones, said: “Our plan­et and the peo­ple who live on it are in dan­ger.

“Cli­mate change can be beat­en but not by almost dou­bling the size of the air­port.

“We are here to draw a line in the sand and tell Gor­don Brown his new run­way must not and will not be built.”

The four were arrest­ed and tak­en to Heathrow police sta­tion at about 1100 GMT, a BAA spokes­woman said.

Video

Sea Shepherd Finds Japanese Whaling Fleet: They Are On the Run Again

The Japan­ese whal­ing fleet is on the run again. The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety ship Steve Irwin re-locat­ed the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet at 0600 hours this morn­ing, Feb­ru­ary 23, 2008.

Sea Shepherd in pursuitThe Japan­ese whal­ing fleet is on the run again. The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety ship Steve Irwin re-locat­ed the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet at 0600 hours this morn­ing, Feb­ru­ary 23, 2008.

A few hours ear­li­er, the Steve Irwin had been side tracked when it chased a ves­sel that turned out to be a Namib­ian Tooth­fish ves­sel. The Antalles Reefer reg­is­tered in Walvis Bay was found at 0200 Hours. The ves­sel refused to give a fish­ing per­mit num­ber and threat­ened the Steve Irwin by report­ing that it was armed. The Cap­tain of the Antalles Reefer claimed to speak only Russ­ian. The Steve Irwin has a Russ­ian speak­ing crewmem­ber and dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion the Cap­tain said he would resist with force if there was any inter­fer­ence with his oper­a­tions.

Cap­tain Paul Wat­son relayed the infor­ma­tion to the Aus­tralian Cus­toms ves­sel Ocean­ic Viking and report­ed that a sus­pi­cious tooth­fish fish­ing ves­sel was oper­at­ing inside the Aus­tralian Eco­nom­ic Exclu­sion Zone. At 0600 Hours, the Steve Irwin encoun­tered the Fukuyoshi Maru No. 68 which imme­di­ate­ly head­ed east­ward to lead the Sea Shep­herd crew away from the whal­ing fleet. The Steve Irwin con­tin­ued west and the Fukuyoshi Maru No. 68 turned and began to pur­sue the Steve Irwin. It is believed that the Fukuyoshi Maru No 68 car­ries armed Japan­ese coast guard offi­cers.

The Steve Irwin is now pur­su­ing the Nis­shin Maru and two har­poon ves­sels with the Fukuyoshi Maru No. 68 in pur­suit of the Steve Irwin. “The great South­ern Ocean whal­ing ship chase is on again,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “I don’t think any whales are going to be dying today. Our goal is to keep the har­poons qui­et for the next three weeks.”

The weath­er is good, the seas are calm and the chase is thread­ing its way south­west through an obsta­cle course of ice­bergs, growlers, and bergy bits. The Steve Irwin has plen­ty of fuel, water and pro­vi­sions and a crew that is com­mit­ted to shut­ting down the ille­gal whal­ing oper­a­tions of the Japan­ese fleet. “I can’t think of a place I would rather be right now,” said Jeff Hansen from Fre­man­tle, West­ern Aus­tralia. “See­ing the Japan­ese whalers run­ning like cow­ards from the Steve Irwin is a very sat­is­fy­ing expe­ri­ence.”

The chase is tak­ing place some 80 miles north of the Shack­le­ton Glac­i­er off the coast of Queen Mary land, well inside Aus­tralian Antarc­tic Ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters.

On Jan­u­ary 15th, 2008, an Aus­tralian Fed­er­al Court ordered that Japan­ese whal­ing be “restrained” in Aus­tralian ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters. The Sea Shep­herd crew is act­ing to enforce that court order and to uphold numer­ous inter­na­tion­al reg­u­la­tions that the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet has and con­tin­ues to vio­late.

For pre­vi­ous cov­er­age on the Sea Shep­herd see the UK Indy­media fea­ture arti­cle.

http://www.seashepherd.org

Weird Load visits leafy Chiswick

23.02.2008
After Jan­u­ary’s thou­sand strong meet­ing against Heathrow expan­sion, protest con­tin­ues apace.

Chiswick heathrow protest 1
Chiswick heathrow protest 2Chiswick heathrow protest 3Chiswick heathrow protest 4
23.02.2008
After Jan­u­ary’s thou­sand strong meet­ing against Heathrow expan­sion, protest con­tin­ues apace.

This week saw a 50,000 leaflet door­drop, and today local cam­paign­ers were joined by Baroness von Reichardt, part­ner Mr Spunky and mem­bers of her World Famous Treat­ment Rooms.

WEIRD LOAD

Sat­ur­day morn­ing shop­pers — more accus­tomed to bump­ing into Richard Briers or Ant’n’Dec than an anar­chist art troop — were hand­ed leaflets head­lined “Last Chance to Stop This”, encour­age­ment to turn up and show their oppo­si­tion at West­min­ster’s Cen­tral Hall this Mon­day at 7pm

A straw poll out­side Marks and Spencer indi­cat­ed a like­ly show­ing of around 500 res­i­dents promis­ing to meet up at Turn­ham Green Sta­tion for a mass move on West­min­ster. Past expe­ri­ence of active oppo­si­tion in W4 how­ev­er means that might well be an under­es­ti­mate.

They join res­i­dents from all over Lon­don and the Heathrow vil­lages — 6 coach­es have been reserved from Sip­son already — trav­el­ing to hear speak­ers as diverse as Lib Dem top banana Nick Clegg, Green MEP Car­o­line Lucas, Cli­mate Change guru Mark Lynas and Plane Stu­pid­’s Leo Mur­ray.

This is a bat­tle that can and will be won by the peo­ple, but only if the peo­ple act togeth­er. Do every­thing you can to be there on Mon­day and show the gov­ern­ment and the cor­po­ra­tions what they’re tru­ly up against.

Sabotage against the Glensanda Quarry Expansion

An aggre­gates pro­cess­ing plant on the edge of the York­shire Dales Nation­al Park has been sab­o­taged. The Plant is owned by Bar­don Aggre­gates a mem­ber of Aggre­gate Indus­tries, part of the Hol­cim Group. Aggre­gate Indus­tries own the Glen­san­da Quar­ry on the north west coast of Scot­land. The quar­ry is europes biggest coastal quar­ry and has it’s own port. Aggre­gate Indus­tries plan to expand the quar­ry from 125 ha to 206 ha giv­ing reserves of 814 mil­lion tonnes of gran­ite. They cur­rent­ly extract 7–8 mil­lion tonnes a year and can increase this to 15 mil­lion tonnes. The expan­sion plan includes remov­ing the peaks “The Mam” and “Lag a ‘mhaim” from the sky­line. This would be vis­i­ble from the Scot­tish islands and will effect the ecol­o­gy of many species includ­ing otters, seals, and gold­en eagles. 20% of the stone extract­ed will go to major road net­work con­struc­tion across europe.

An aggre­gates pro­cess­ing plant on the edge of the York­shire Dales Nation­al Park has been sab­o­taged. The Plant is owned by Bar­don Aggre­gates a mem­ber of Aggre­gate Indus­tries, part of the Hol­cim Group. Aggre­gate Indus­tries own the Glen­san­da Quar­ry on the north west coast of Scot­land. The quar­ry is europes biggest coastal quar­ry and has it’s own port. Aggre­gate Indus­tries plan to expand the quar­ry from 125 ha to 206 ha giv­ing reserves of 814 mil­lion tonnes of gran­ite. They cur­rent­ly extract 7–8 mil­lion tonnes a year and can increase this to 15 mil­lion tonnes. The expan­sion plan includes remov­ing the peaks “The Mam” and “Lag a ‘mhaim” from the sky­line. This would be vis­i­ble from the Scot­tish islands and will effect the ecol­o­gy of many species includ­ing otters, seals, and gold­en eagles. 20% of the stone extract­ed will go to major road net­work con­struc­tion across europe.
The Plant in York­shire was entered and sab­o­taged. Vehi­cles includ­ing all bull­doz­ers had holes drilled in vital parts of their engines and their tires. Both con­trol rooms were bro­ken into and all com­put­ers and instru­ment pan­els were smashed. Keys to all build­ings and machin­ery were removed from the site. The mes­sage “Stop Glen­san­da” was left. Aggre­gate indus­tries have sites all over the UK and the World, you know what to do!