Squatters Needed!

A new Social Cen­tre in Wilt­shire requires voloun­teers. Accom­mo­da­tion is of course free.

Hap­py Januyear!

So we’re look­ing at set­ting up a social cen­tre in wilt­shire, busy town so we should be good but i think some added sup­port for the first few days would be great­ly appre­ci­at­ed. Do you know any­one who might be inter­est­ed? We’ll be dec­o­rat­ing, cel­e­brat­ing, gar­den­ing, hav­ing a film night, for­ag­ing and cook­ing etc! fun times for all. If you can help please email yarrow@mail.com.

A new Social Cen­tre in Wilt­shire requires voloun­teers. Accom­mo­da­tion is of course free.

Hap­py Januyear!

So we’re look­ing at set­ting up a social cen­tre in wilt­shire, busy town so we should be good but i think some added sup­port for the first few days would be great­ly appre­ci­at­ed. Do you know any­one who might be inter­est­ed? We’ll be dec­o­rat­ing, cel­e­brat­ing, gar­den­ing, hav­ing a film night, for­ag­ing and cook­ing etc! fun times for all. If you can help please email yarrow@mail.com.

Thanks!

Surrey Union Foxhunt — Caught Bloody Red Handed

Not 30 miles from the politi­cians in West­min­ster; the Sur­rey Union hunt chased a ter­ri­fied fox along the A29 and around Ock­ley vil­lage green before rip­ping it apart on the crick­et pitch. This was the real­i­ty in Eng­land on Sat­ur­day Jan­u­ary 5th 2008 (3 years after hunt­ing was banned)

Surrey Union hunt sabbedNot 30 miles from the politi­cians in West­min­ster; the Sur­rey Union hunt chased a ter­ri­fied fox along the A29 and around Ock­ley vil­lage green before rip­ping it apart on the crick­et pitch. This was the real­i­ty in Eng­land on Sat­ur­day Jan­u­ary 5th 2008 (3 years after hunt­ing was banned)

What does it say about the law when the most piss-poor hunt in the coun­try can hunt with impuni­ty under the noses of the police and man­age to kill a fox in full view of hor­ri­fied vil­lagers and motorists. Using the same hounds, con­tin­u­ing to hunt where they know they’ll find fox­es, chas­ing them or putting them to ground, con­tin­u­ing to dig with ter­ri­ers, they then expect you to believe this was an acci­dent.

Any­one with any sense knows what is going on; it just needs you to do some­thing about it. It’s not trendy or easy, but you can make a real dif­fer­ence — Join us and stop the killing NOW! http://hsa.enviroweb.org/features/joinleaf.html

HSA News Release 14th Jan­u­ary 2008

Remem­ber that hunt­ing ban?

The Sur­rey Union fox­hunt man­aged to kill yet again in pub­lic last Sat­ur­day 5th Jan­u­ary. For the sec­ond year run­ning they allowed their hounds to pur­sue and kill a fox in open view.

Last year it was after tres­pass­ing on a golf course at Newdi­gate.. This time it was in Ock­ley, Sur­rey. The hounds chased a fox into the mid­dle of the vil­lage and caught and dis­em­bow­elled it in the cen­tre of the crick­et pitch. The police even­tu­al­ly turned up after a 999 call and took a state­ment from a bystander who wit­nessed the hor­rif­ic scenes as the ani­mal was ripped apart by a full pack of hounds.

This hap­pens almost every day the length and breadth of the coun­try, but usu­al­ly safe­ly away from pub­lic scruti­ny.

Hunt Sabo­teurs have to wit­ness such scenes week in and week out, near­ly three years after the Hunt­ing Act came into force. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, fox­hunts in Eng­land feel they are above the law. The Sur­rey police present in three vehi­cles on Sat­ur­day were miles away from the hounds when the fox was killed. The hunt packed up straight away, leav­ing the car­cass in the vil­lage.

Based on the pre­vi­ous treat­ment of numer­ous sub­mis­sions of video evi­dence, the police inves­ti­ga­tion will lack the grav­i­tas and scruti­ny it deserves.

Lee Moon, spokesman for the Hunt Sabo­teurs Asso­ci­a­tion said: “Fox­es are hunt­ed and killed as if the ban nev­er came into effect. By lay­ing a trail through fox habi­tat, or hav­ing an owl in a box, the hunts can kill with impuni­ty.

We have tried to let the law work, but with the police not inter­est­ed, and a pal­try num­ber of cas­es brought to court, it has to be the time for a return to direct inter­ven­tion; to no longer put up with the cosy rela­tion­ship the hunts seem to have with the local con­stab­u­lar­ies; to make sure the wildlife of this coun­try is safe from the bar­barous prac­tices of the past.

Ani­mals are pro­tect­ed from hunts by law, but if the law won’t help them then hunt sabs will have to.”

All press enquiries 07779 580 544

http://hsa.enviroweb.org/hsa.shtml

Actions against the motorway through Tara, Ireland — reports and upcoming

This morn­ing, mon­day 6th jan ’08 at 7 am, 11 of us split up into two groups. We went to the Ard­sal­lagh Com­pound (site entrance 2.10) and Roestown (site entrance 2.1 ) . All the machin­ery was parked at these two sites for the past two weeks over Christ­mas.

Ardsallagh compound diggerThis morn­ing, mon­day 6th jan ’08 at 7 am, 11 of us split up into two groups. We went to the Ard­sal­lagh Com­pound (site entrance 2.10) and Roestown (site entrance 2.1 ) . All the machin­ery was parked at these two sites for the past two weeks over Christ­mas.

Ard­sal­lagh ; four of us went on site into the com­pund and blocked a lowloader in the gate, pre­vent­ing any more machin­ery being brought off to oth­er sites. They then head­ed across coun­try towards the Riv­er Boyne at site no. 2.9 . While two held the gate, two fol­lowed them across the field ‚stop­ping them before they reached the next stretch.Construction work­ers at the gate , try­ing to intim­i­date the pro­test­ers assault­ed one man , drag­ging him to the ground and pulling out of the way allow­ing the lowloader past. In the mean time, off route down the road two of us were wait­ing to be picked up (help with trans­port need­ed), when we saw a dig­ger com­ing towards us along the hedge line. The dri­ver pro­ceed­ed to dri­ve up to us near­ly kock­ing us over. when we stood our ground in front of the machine, he got out and ver­bal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly asault­ed us. The gau­rds then arrived treat­en­ing arrest on any­one who stayed under the Mis­cel­la­neous Act2004 sec­tion 19c but were help­ful and co oper­a­tive when told about the assaults , tak­ing the dig­ger dri­vers name.

Roestown: As today was the first day of con­struc­tion since before Christ­mas, we need­ed to block­ade the machin­ery from enter­ing the val­ley again. From the N3 we could see the machin­ery mov­ing towards Trevet from the Roestown com­pound. We arrived there just as the first dig­ger was approach­ing. There were 5 of us. We all went into the site and approached the dig­ger. The dri­ver com­plied with health and safe­ty reg­u­la­tions and stopped his machine imme­di­ate­ly. We made a block­ade in front of the machine with traf­fic cones, poles and safe­ty notices. Mark Cleary and his com­rades entered the site, along with secu­ri­ty. They filmed us and removed the block­ade. One pro­tes­tor was stand­ing on the block­ade, Mark Cleary pushed him off. A jeep com­ing from the Roestown direc­tion passed us by, the dig­ger dri­ver had switched back on his machine. Anoth­er pro­tes­tor on bail con­di­tions stayed at the site entrance with ban­ners on the pub­lic road, play­ing his tin whis­tle. Mark Cleary and this pro­tes­tor had a cam­er­al duel! The Gar­dai arrived and asked us to leave the site, quot­ing the Hous­ing and Misc Act 2004, sec­tion C. We were told we would be arrest­ed if we were seen again today on a M3 site. The Gar­dai fol­lowed us to the Ard­sal­lagh com­pound. We held a ban­ner protest there on the side of the road. The same Gar­dai were very inter­est­ed in the Tara issue, and asked us ques­tions about archae­ol­o­gy and Lis­mullen. Nobody was arrest­ed.

Relat­ed Link: http://www.tarapixie.net

»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

Call­ing all War­riors!!!

Action called for tom­mor­row morn­ing 6am and all this week.

Sup­port and sup­plies need­ed. Num­bers are low on the ground and resources spread thin. Help need­ed in the camps , trans­port, media ,

cyber-world and dig­ger divin’.

Spe­cial Call-Out to any­one who has vis­it­ed the camps before. Your expe­ri­ence on the issue is need­ed now more than ever.

A new year and a new begin­ing, its time to show these ”short sight­ed, nar­row mind­ed, moth­er fuckin hyp­ocrits!” that this

cul­tur­al apartheid will end here!
Tara Call­ing !!!

As you may know on St. Stevens Day 2007, the NRA hand­ed over the archae­o­log­i­cal site at lismullen,with its wood henge

(which was des­ig­nat­ed a nationa lmon­u­ment in may 2007)

and an amaz­ing sub­ter­rain com­plex

(destroyed in ear­ly decem­ber 2007 with out any inde­pen­dent archae­ol­o­gy car­ried out)

con­tain­ing mega­lith­ic art from much ear­li­er mon­u­ments, to SIAC/FERROVIAL the con­struc­tion con­sor­tium

to face its faith as yet anoth­er mon­u­men­tal diaster in the gabhra val­ley,

at the hands of gov­ern­ment appoint­ed van­dals!

This is because the twelve weeks giv­en to the NRA archae­ol­o­gists to exca­vate and destroy the two thirds of the henge

lieing in the path of the pro­posed motor­way is up and under the Nation­al Mon­u­ments Act 2004

it now belongs to SIAC/FERROVIAL.

Con­struc­tion Work­ers return to work tom­mor­row morn­ing Mon­day 7th of Jan at 7am after two weeks of bliss­ful

silence in the Val­ley.

Call­ing all War­riors!!!

Action called for tom­mor­row morn­ing 6am and all this week.

Sup­port and sup­plies need­ed. Num­bers are low on the ground and resources spread thin. Help need­ed in the camps , trans­port, media ,

cyber-world and dig­ger divin’.

Spe­cial Call-Out to any­one who has vis­it­ed the camps before. Your expe­ri­ence on the issue is need­ed now more than ever.

A new year and a new begin­ing, its time to show these ”short sight­ed, nar­row mind­ed, moth­er fuckin hyp­ocrits!” that this

cul­tur­al apartheid will end here!

!!!!END TRANSMISSION!!!!

Ogoni Day remembered as Shell fail to honour promise to halt gas flaring

Today is Jan­u­ary 4th 2008.

On this day in 1993, 300,000 peo­ple in Nige­ria marked the Unit­ed Nations Year of Indige­nous Peo­ples by protest­ing against Shel­l’s activ­i­ties and the envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion of Ogo­ni­land in the Niger Delta.

2008 was sup­posed to be the dead­line for the end­ing of gas flar­ing by Shell in Nige­ria, but the com­pa­ny now says that this dead­line will not be met.

Let­ting the com­pa­ny have a taste of its own med­i­cine

Shell Dublin HQ Ogoni Day flaringToday is Jan­u­ary 4th 2008.

On this day in 1993, 300,000 peo­ple in Nige­ria marked the Unit­ed Nations Year of Indige­nous Peo­ples by protest­ing against Shel­l’s activ­i­ties and the envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion of Ogo­ni­land in the Niger Delta.

2008 was sup­posed to be the dead­line for the end­ing of gas flar­ing by Shell in Nige­ria, but the com­pa­ny now says that this dead­line will not be met.

Let­ting the com­pa­ny have a taste of its own med­i­cine

At just before 8.30 this morn­ing, as staff were arriv­ing for work at Roy­al Dutch Shel­l’s Irish head­quar­ters in Dublin, they were treat­ed to a taste of what life is like for those who have to live and work near Shell instal­la­tions in oth­er parts of the world.

Short ver­sion of video (45 sec­onds) here: http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=u4uZDvA5WY4

Long ver­sion (2 minute) here: http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=597hkm9MuTo

More infor­ma­tion on Shell in Nige­ria here: http://www.foeeurope.org/press/2007/May3_DU_Flaring.htm

Gas Flar­ing is sim­ply the releas­ing of excess gas and liq­uids asso­ci­at­ed with oil and gas pro­duc­tion pipelines and refiner­ies into the atmos­phere. The main pur­pose of gas flar­ing is to pro­tect pipelines and infra­struc­ture from over-pres­sur­ing

The released gas­es are burned off, releas­ing any by-prod­ucts into the air. These include nitro­gen diox­ide, sul­phur diox­ide, and volatile organ­ic com­pounds like xylene and hydro­gen sul­fide. Car­cino­gens such as ben­za­pyrene are also released. Peo­ple exposed to these sub­stances can suf­fer from a vari­ety of res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems, which have been report­ed amongst many chil­dren in the Niger Delta but have but have nev­er been sys­tem­i­cal­ly inves­ti­gat­ed. These chem­i­cals can also aggra­vate asth­ma, cause breath­ing dif­fi­cul­ties and pain, as well as chron­ic bron­chi­tis.

Ben­zene, which is known to be emit­ted from gas flares in undoc­u­ment­ed quan­ti­ties, is acknowl­edged as being a causative agent for leukemia.

Gas flar­ing of course, also con­tributes to glob­al warm­ing and cli­mate change.

Togeth­er with oil spills, gas flar­ing is seen as a major cause of envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion. In Nige­ria, the prac­tice is sup­posed to be ille­gal, but there is no sign of the Niger­ian gov­ern­ment being able to enforce this law. Here in Ire­land we know all about how Shell can manip­u­late the world of pol­i­tics and the legal process to suit the needs of the com­pa­ny’s share­hold­ers.

In Nige­ria in 1995 how­ev­er, it appears that Shel­l’s PR peo­ple slow­ly realised that their part in the hang­ing of Ken Saro Wiwa and eight oth­er activists was a pub­lic rela­tions dis­as­ter, and in the after­math the com­pa­ny made var­i­ous con­ces­sions to its crit­ics, in a vain attempt to undue some of the dam­age it felt had been done to its brand. One of the promis­es made was the announce­ment of an end to gas flar­ing.

Shell of course, is not well known for liv­ing up to its promis­es, and so flar­ing is still going on today. In the year 2000, Shell for­mal­ly announced that it would stop gas flar­ing by 2008. Inter­est­ing­ly, since 2000, gas flar­ing in the Niger Delta has actu­al­ly increased (accord­ing to the 2005 Shell Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Report).

In Novem­ber 2005, the Fed­er­al High Court of Nige­ria stat­ed that Shell and oth­er oil com­pa­nies
should end gas flar­ing in the Niger Delta. In a case brought against Shell, the court ruled that the dam­ag­ing and waste­ful prac­tice of flar­ing could not law­ful­ly con­tin­ue and must stop. Shell appealed against the deci­sion.

At the demon­stra­tion on Jan­u­ary 4th 1993, an Ogo­ni elder said:
“We have wok­en up to find our lands dev­as­tat­ed by agents of death called oil com­pa­nies. Our atmos­phere has been total­ly pol­lut­ed, our lands degrad­ed, our waters con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed, our trees poi­soned, so much so that our flo­ra and fau­na have vir­tu­al­ly dis­ap­peared”.

Jan­u­ary 4th became known as Ogo­ni Day.

For more infor­ma­tion see:

www.remembersarowiwa.com

greenwash guerillas hit shell hq

4.01.2008
at lunchtime yes­ter­day, a small band of green­wash gueril­las entered the lob­by of the lon­don shell hq to high­light the mas­sive amount of tox­ic green­wash ema­nat­ing from the build­ing. once eject­ed they con­tin­ued their work out­side, warn­ing the pub­lic of the dan­gers of green­wash

Shell HQ greenwashGreenwash leaflet4.01.2008
at lunchtime yes­ter­day, a small band of green­wash gueril­las entered the lob­by of the lon­don shell hq to high­light the mas­sive amount of tox­ic green­wash ema­nat­ing from the build­ing. once eject­ed they con­tin­ued their work out­side, warn­ing the pub­lic of the dan­gers of green­wash

full green­wash film in mp4 for­mat — video/mp4 8.2M
full green­wash film in wmv for­mat — video/x‑ms-wmv 8.8M

shell secu­ri­ty got into quite a tizz over the four pro­tes­tors and rather too many police arrived. the police (once the gov­ern­ment secu­ri­ty zone map was shown to them) “facil­i­tat­ed law­ful protest” as long as it did­n’t go too near the poi­so­nous shell build­ing. this may have been for the safe­ty of the pub­lic or for oth­er rea­sons.

the gueril­las’ the­atrics attract­ed quite a lot of pub­lic inter­est and loads of leaflets were hand­ed out

green­wash gueril­las are asso­ci­at­ed with ris­ing tide and you can find out more about what they do and when, by get­ting in touch via their web­site at www.risingtide.org.uk

the vid is post­ed in quick­time mp4 and wmv for­mats and is 6′30″
quick­time can be viewed on any com­put­er (any plat­form) with vlc play­er avail­able for free down­load from vide­olan

London Rising Tide activists ‘die’ in the Tate Britain (4 January 2008)

Activists ‘die’ in the Tate Britain

Activists from Lon­don Ris­ing Tide staged a ‘die-in’ in the BP spon­sored Tate Britain this after­noon. Bob Jones from LRT said “we’re here to demand that the Tate cut it’s ties with BP, an art gallery is no place for an envi­ron­men­tal haz­ard such as an oil com­pa­ny”. “BP are here to Green­wash their image and dis­tract from the eco­log­i­cal dev­as­ta­tion they’re caus­ing around the world”. The pro­test­ers hand­ed out lots of leaflets and urged patrons to demand the end of Oil Com­pa­nies spon­sor­ship of Art Gal­leries.

Activists ‘die’ in the Tate Britain

Activists from Lon­don Ris­ing Tide staged a ‘die-in’ in the BP spon­sored Tate Britain this after­noon. Bob Jones from LRT said “we’re here to demand that the Tate cut it’s ties with BP, an art gallery is no place for an envi­ron­men­tal haz­ard such as an oil com­pa­ny”. “BP are here to Green­wash their image and dis­tract from the eco­log­i­cal dev­as­ta­tion they’re caus­ing around the world”. The pro­test­ers hand­ed out lots of leaflets and urged patrons to demand the end of Oil Com­pa­nies spon­sor­ship of Art Gal­leries.

The ‘corpses’ were dressed in t‑shirts dis­pa­ly­ing the logos such as ‘art not oil’, ‘bp — fos­sil fools’ and ‘bp out of the tate’. Their epi­taphs was fit­ting for the loca­tion. Once dead the staff on site took the pre­cau­tion of shout­ing to every­body to leave which only attract­ed more peo­ple, and over 200 fly­ers were giv­en out inside the build­ing.

Sev­er­al mem­bers of the pub­lic were very sup­port­ive and even told the staff to stop try­ing to move us ; “these peo­ple are mak­ing more of a state­ment than most of the art in this room” was some­thing i heard being said.

After ask­ing the TATE for a rep­re­sen­ta­tive to dis­cuss the pol­i­cy of accept­ing mon­ey from social crim­i­nals, but they refused as all direc­tors were ‘still on hol­i­day’. A shame.…and i bet they flew too!

All in all, a good day with excel­lent pub­lic response.
we will be back.

20080104_RT_GG_Tate_Invasion — video/x‑ms-wmv 15M
20080104_RT_Tate_QT — video/quicktime 14M

Success for City Indians: 4WD targetted in Denmark

4th Jan­u­ary 2008

Orig­i­nal­ly from Swe­den a move­ment of “city indi­ans” tar­get­ting large 4WD cars has spread wide­ly in Den­mark, while in Swe­den a truce has been declared.

The num­ber of attacks on high pol­lu­tion 4WD city cars have been increas­ing steadi­ly in Den­mark since the city indi­ans first began in Swe­den some months ago. New year’s eve saw anoth­er wave of actions in Copen­hagen.

4th Jan­u­ary 2008

Orig­i­nal­ly from Swe­den a move­ment of “city indi­ans” tar­get­ting large 4WD cars has spread wide­ly in Den­mark, while in Swe­den a truce has been declared.

The num­ber of attacks on high pol­lu­tion 4WD city cars have been increas­ing steadi­ly in Den­mark since the city indi­ans first began in Swe­den some months ago. New year’s eve saw anoth­er wave of actions in Copen­hagen.

Mean­while in Swe­den where the actions start­ed a truce has been declared by the CI. “It seems our actions have had effect, the mes­sage that city jeeps have no place in our cities has got­ten through. But if we don’t con­tin­ue to see decreas­ing sales of the cars the hatch­et is eas­i­ly unburied”, the CI in Swe­den said in a state­ment on their web­site.

The CI in both Swe­den and Den­mark have received count­less death threats on their web­sites.

Rainforest chief killed in Borneo for his opposition to logging

Jan­u­ary 3, 2008
Kelea­su Naan, a Penan chief­tain and long­time activist against log­ging, dis­ap­peared in Octo­ber while check­ing ani­mal traps. His
tribes’ worst fears were con­firmed when they found what they believed to be Naan’s remains last month. Accord­ing to the Asso­ci­at­ed Press, the chieftain’s nephew, Michael Ipa, has stat­ed that the body had sev­er­al bro­ken bones, lead­ing Ipa to believe that “he has been killed by peo­ple involved in log­ging”.

Jan­u­ary 3, 2008
Kelea­su Naan, a Penan chief­tain and long­time activist against log­ging, dis­ap­peared in Octo­ber while check­ing ani­mal traps. His
tribes’ worst fears were con­firmed when they found what they believed to be Naan’s remains last month. Accord­ing to the Asso­ci­at­ed Press, the chieftain’s nephew, Michael Ipa, has stat­ed that the body had sev­er­al bro­ken bones, lead­ing Ipa to believe that “he has been killed by peo­ple involved in log­ging”.

Kelea­su Naan had been one of the key fig­ures in the Penan community’s fight against log­ging. He was also a plain­tiff and wit­ness in a land rights claim that has been await­ing tri­al since 1998.

One-hun­dred Penan vil­lagers walked six­ty miles this week to lodge a report at the clos­est police sta­tion and demand an inves­ti­ga­tion into Naan’s death. This is not the first time that Penans involved in anti-log­ging activ­i­ty have dis­ap­peared under mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances. Two activist Penans dis­ap­peared in the 1990s. In 2000, Bruno Manser, a Swiss envi­ron­men­tal­ist and cham­pi­on of Penan rights, also dis­ap­peared in the jun­gle. No sign of him has been found, and some believe he was assas­si­nat­ed.

Log­ging in Bor­neo has been ram­pant since the 1980’s. In 2005 just over 50% of Borneo’s for­est remained. More recent­ly palm oil
plan­ta­tions have increased pres­sure on the forests. Naan’s Penan com­mu­ni­ty had man­aged to keep log­ging out of what the vil­lagers claim is their ances­tral land, but they now believe that sev­er­al tim­ber com­pa­nies plan to resume log­ging. Abo­rig­i­nal peo­ples of the Malaysia’s Sarawak region, the Penans num­ber around 10,000. They cur­rent­ly live in set­tle­ments, but have not com­plete­ly aban­doned their tra­di­tion­al nomadic ways. They sub­sist off small gar­dens, hunt­ing, and gath­er­ing. Since so much of the Penan’s resources come from the for­est, its dis­ap­pear­ance may mark their own.

http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0103-borneo_hance.html

Celebrating the end of the carbon economy

This after­noon, at 5pm. mem­bers of Groen­front will join togeth­er in the cen­tre of cap­i­tal­ism in the Nether­lands: the Beur­splein in Ams­ter­dam. Here they will bring out a toast to the record-high price of oil of $100 per bar­rel. Since 2003 the price of oil has sky-rock­et­ed, with the rate some­times climb­ing sev­er­al dol­lars a day. Groen­Front-activist Rogi­er: “What the earth needs is eco­nom­ic ‘shrink­age’. The cli­mate cri­sis and the peak­ing oil pro­duc­tion show us that we need to adjust to the lim­its of our ecosys­tem”.

This after­noon, at 5pm. mem­bers of Groen­front will join togeth­er in the cen­tre of cap­i­tal­ism in the Nether­lands: the Beur­splein in Ams­ter­dam. Here they will bring out a toast to the record-high price of oil of $100 per bar­rel. Since 2003 the price of oil has sky-rock­et­ed, with the rate some­times climb­ing sev­er­al dol­lars a day. Groen­Front-activist Rogi­er: “What the earth needs is eco­nom­ic ‘shrink­age’. The cli­mate cri­sis and the peak­ing oil pro­duc­tion show us that we need to adjust to the lim­its of our ecosys­tem”.

Peakoil is the geo­log­i­cal­ly deter­mined peak­ing and — after that — shrink­ing of oil pro­duc­tion. The remain­der of oil becomes hard­er and hard­er to retrieve, demand­ing a still greater tech­no­log­i­cal and finan­cial effort.
It looks as if the world­wide pro­duc­tion of oil has reached that peak. Every fol­low­ing year, the pro­duc­tion will decrease. The decreased sup­ply in com­bi­na­tion with an ever increas­ing demand will push up the price of oil. Exec­u­tives of, among oth­ers, Total, Cono­co, Philps, Sau­di Aram­co and the Libyan Nation­al Oil Cor­po­ra­tion have already stat­ed that they are not able to meet the cur­rent demand for oil. The last few years have seen low­er yields from oil fields in the US, Mex­i­co and the North Sea. The Inter­na­tion­al Ener­gy Agency expressed its con­cerns over the ever grow­ing gap between sup­ply and demand in the glob­al oil mar­ket.

Whether the record-high price of $100 is ben­e­fi­cial to the envi­ron­ment depends on the way the oil-addict­ed soci­eties react. If the short­age in oil will be com­pen­sat­ed for with pol­lu­tive replace­ments, like agro­fu­els, uncon­ven­tion­al oil and syn­thet­ic diesel from coal and nat­ur­al gas, the world still has not learned its les­son. This record-high price should be used as a wake-up call: fos­sil fuels are lim­it­ed and already we are faced with the con­se­quences.

Fam­i­lies in the Unit­ed States are seri­ous­ly con­cerned with the oncom­ing win­ter because of the great­ly increased cost of petrol. Trans­port and fish­ing sec­tor in Europe are antic­i­pat­ing protests against the risen price of diesel fuel. In Third World coun­tries — where fuels are usu­al­ly sub­sidised — gov­ern­ments are faced with a choice: an emp­ty trea­sury or upris­ing. In Africa and Asia a grow­ing amount of fish­er­men are forced to stay ashore because of the high costs of fuel. Farm­ers are not able to bring their prod­ucts to the mar­ket place. Peakoil starts to rear its ugly head every­where.

“The cli­mate cri­sis and the deple­tion of fos­sile fuels show us that a rad­i­cal change in our eco­nom­ic sys­tem is an absolute neces­si­ty,” says Groen­Front activist Rogi­er. “Fail­ing to do so means wait­ing for an eco­nom­ic reces­sion which will hit the peo­ple who are already hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties to cope. A redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth is nec­es­sary, but most of all a choice has to be made for a lit­tle less wealth. We can do that now, vol­un­tar­i­ly and peace­ful­ly, or wait until both econ­o­my and ecol­o­gy force us to do so.” In con­clu­sion, Rogi­er states: “Eco­nom­ic shrink­age is the only real solu­tion to the approach­ing eco­nom­ic and eco­log­ic cri­sis.”

Hunger strike in France to protest gene-altered crops

PARIS: The mil­i­tant French sheep farmer Jose Bove and as many as 15 of his sup­port­ers were expect­ed to begin a hunger strike Thurs­day aimed at rais­ing pres­sure on the French gov­ern­ment to impose a long-term ban on grow­ing genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops.

PARIS: The mil­i­tant French sheep farmer Jose Bove and as many as 15 of his sup­port­ers were expect­ed to begin a hunger strike Thurs­day aimed at rais­ing pres­sure on the French gov­ern­ment to impose a long-term ban on grow­ing genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops.

In a news­pa­per inter­view pub­lished Wednes­day, the anti-glob­al­iza­tion activist vowed not to eat again until a ban was in place.

Bove cap­tured world­wide atten­tion for help­ing to orga­nize the ran­sack­ing of a McDon­ald’s restau­rant nine years ago to protest the influ­ence of multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions. Since then he has served time in a French prison for dam­ag­ing gene-altered crops.

While his cam­paigns have struck a sym­pa­thet­ic chord in many parts of France and Europe where gene-altered foods are wide­ly mis­trust­ed — and where Bove is some­thing of a folk hero — the lat­est protest against altered crops comes as divi­sions over the poten­tial ben­e­fits of the tech­nol­o­gy appear to be deep­en­ing across the region.

Some Euro­pean Union offi­cials remain wary of using prod­ucts that could endan­ger insects and fish and dis­turb ecosys­tems, but oth­ers have redou­bled calls to ease restric­tions on altered seeds as a way of keep­ing farm­ing glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive at a time of sky­rock­et­ing food prices.

The Euro­pean agri­cul­ture com­mis­sion­er, Mar­i­ann Fis­ch­er Boel, warned farm min­is­ters in Novem­ber that Europe’s resis­tance to import­ing genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied prod­ucts like live­stock feed was con­tribut­ing to the ris­ing cost of rais­ing pigs and chick­ens and could pose a threat to the meat indus­try.

In Octo­ber, the French pres­i­dent, Nico­las Sarkozy, dis­ap­point­ed sup­port­ers of a long-term ban by announc­ing a tem­po­rary freeze on genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied seeds pend­ing the out­come of a review of the tech­nol­o­gy that is expect­ed ear­ly this year.

Bove has said he is under­tak­ing his hunger strike to push the French gov­ern­ment into mak­ing a much longer-term com­mit­ment to end seed cul­ti­va­tion.

Genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied corn is already import­ed into sev­er­al EU coun­tries, includ­ing France and Ger­many, where it is used to feed ani­mals like cows and chick­ens. But only one genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crop is cur­rent­ly grown in Europe, a form of corn pro­duced by Mon­san­to and nine oth­er com­pa­nies called Mon 810 that is the main tar­get of Bové’s protest.

Aus­tria, Hun­gary and Poland are among coun­tries that already have banned the Mon­san­to corn.

A long-term ban ‘is the only thing that will put an end to this hunger strike,’ Bove told the French dai­ly Sud Ouest in an inter­view pub­lished Wednes­day. ‘Promis­es won’t be sat­is­fac­to­ry.’

Bove told Sud Ouest that he would con­duct the hunger strike in a well-known pub­lic loca­tion in Paris where he would not cause any secu­ri­ty prob­lems. He declined to reveal the where­abouts of the loca­tion before Thurs­day.

Bove began reduc­ing his intake of alco­hol, meat, eggs and cheese at the end of Decem­ber to start accus­tom­ing his body to the fast, dur­ing which he said he expect­ed to lose half-a-kilo­gram, or about one pound, of weight each day, he told anoth­er French news­pa­per, Midi Libre.

‘This hunger-strike is a well-con­sid­ered com­mit­ment, not a sui­ci­dal act,’ Bove told Midi Libre.

By James Kan­ter Inter­na­tion­al Her­ald Tri­bune, Jan­u­ary 2 2008 http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/02/europe/gmo.php