Activists Shut Down Seneca Biomass Plant in Eugene, USA

Three earth defenders have been taken into custody for this morning’s action at the Seneca Biomass burner in Eugene, Oregon. We will need funds to assist with bail and legal defense.

Three earth defenders have been taken into custody for this morning’s action at the Seneca Biomass burner in Eugene, Oregon. We will need funds to assist with bail and legal defense. Click here for donation page.

View more pic­tures of the action here.

CFD17

July 7th, 2014 EUGENE—Scores of activists with Cas­ca­dia For­est Defend­ers and Earth First! con­verged on the Seneca Jones bio­mass plant this morn­ing to protest the company’s pri­va­ti­za­tion of pub­lic lands in the Elliott State For­est and ongo­ing pol­lu­tion in West Eugene.

Cur­rent­ly sev­er­al peo­ple have locked them­selves to equip­ment at the plant, effec­tive­ly block­ing the “truck dump” where bio­mass is loaded into the incin­er­a­tor. A ban­ner has been dropped off of a tow­er read­ing: “Seneca Jones: Pri­va­tiz­ing the coast range, pol­lut­ing West Eugene.”

The activists are bring­ing atten­tion to Seneca Jones Timber’s role in pri­va­tiz­ing the Elliott State For­est. This month Seneca closed on their pur­chase of 788 acres in the Elliott, called East Hak­ki Ridge. Co-own­er of Seneca Kathy Jones recent­ly expressed the company’s inten­tion to clearcut East Hak­ki and replace it with Dou­glas fir plan­ta­tion.

Cas­ca­dia For­est Defend­er Richard Haley com­ment­ed, “How­ev­er Kathy Jones paints it, her com­pa­ny is a bad neigh­bor every­where it oper­ates. Here in Eugene, Seneca pol­lutes. In the Elliott, Seneca clearcuts and puts up ‘no tres­pass­ing’ signs in pris­tine, nev­er before logged for­est. East Hak­ki is no longer a place where locals can go hunt, fish, hike, camp or watch birds. Now it is cor­po­rate prop­er­ty.”

Coos Bay cit­i­zen sci­ence group Coast Range For­est Watch doc­u­ment­ed Mar­bled Mur­relet nest­ing behav­ior in East Hak­ki Ridge in May. The bird is fed­er­al­ly pro­tect­ed under the Endan­gered Species Act, which pro­hibits actions that injure or kill threat­ened species–including destruc­tion of habi­tat. A month after Mar­bled Mur­relets were found in East Hak­ki, con­ser­va­tion law orga­ni­za­tions filed to sue Seneca Jones in the event of log­ging in the tim­ber sale. Mur­relets were also found in two tim­ber sales pur­chased by tim­ber com­pa­ny Rose­burg For­est Prod­ucts. Anoth­er par­cel is up for sale this fall, and the State Land Board is con­sid­er­ing pri­va­tiz­ing the entire for­est.

 

Conveyor BeltDespite Seneca’s claim of being sus­tain­able, the bio­mass plant failed its first EPA air pol­lu­tion test in 2011 but still request­ed more state funds to off­set its pro­duc­tion costs. In spite of its high impact on local air qual­i­ty, Seneca receives 10 mil­lion dol­lars in tax cred­its from the state of Ore­gon under the Busi­ness Ener­gy Tax Cred­it Pro­gram.

“The plant has had a bad rep­u­ta­tion in this com­mu­ni­ty since its open­ing,” said West Eugene res­i­dent Matthew Hawks. “It’s mar­ket­ing itself as a ‘green’ solu­tion in my neigh­bor­hood, but is actu­al­ly harm­ing the envi­ron­ment around us, espe­cial­ly the air we breathe.”

The plant, which only employs 11 peo­ple, releas­es an esti­mat­ed 17,900 pounds of air tox­ins into West Eugene Neigh­bor­hoods annu­al­ly, in addi­tion to the 73,000 pounds released each year from the mill itself. There are three schools with­in three miles of the Seneca bio­mass facil­i­ty.

“While clearcut­ting and pri­va­ti­za­tion in the Elliott State For­est is done in the name of pub­lic schools, this irre­spon­si­ble com­pa­ny is tak­ing mil­lions of pub­lic dol­lars and impact­ing the health and safe­ty of school chil­dren in their own neigh­bor­hood. It feels real­ly twist­ed,” said Cas­ca­dia For­est Defend­er Cordelia Fin­ley.

The Eugene-based Cas­ca­dia For­est Defend­ers car­ried out this action with activists from across the con­ti­nent fol­low­ing an annu­al Earth First! camp-out in the woods of South­ern Ore­gon, called the Earth First! Round Riv­er Ren­dezvous.

Banner reading: "Seneca Jones: Privatizing the Coast Lands, Polluting West Eugene" dropped at Seneca biomass facility in Eugene, OR.

Akwa Ibom Youths Barricade Exxon Oil Terminal

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July 7th, 2014

Oper­a­tions of Exxon Mobil, a multi­na­tion­al firm has been shut down by protest­ing youths from the host com­mu­ni­ties in Ibeno, Akwa Ibom State, Nige­ria fol­low­ing what they described as recur­rent oil spills and strings of unful­filled promis­es made to the com­mu­ni­ties.

LEADERSHIP gath­ered that the angry youths who bar­ri­cad­ed the main entrances to ExxonMobil’s Quo Iboe Ter­mi­nal (QIT) said they will nev­er leave the area until the com­pa­ny com­mences prop­er reme­di­a­tion on the envi­ron­ment and ful­fil promis­es it made after past oil spills.

The Sec­re­tary of Youth Pres­i­dents Forum and Pres­i­dent of Iwuokpom com­mu­ni­ty youth where Exxon­Mo­bil jet­ty is locat­ed, Mr. David Okon not­ed that the protest was sparked off fol­low­ing the most recent spill which occurred on Thurs­day when thun­der struck the QIT tank farm and one of the crude oil-laden tanks went up in flames.

Accord­ing to, Okon sev­er­al hun­dred bar­rels of crude spilled over Mkpanak com­mu­ni­ty and into 26 oth­er com­mu­ni­ties in the area, span­ning over 35 kilo­me­ters.

He said, “Our griev­ance is that since last year, there was an oil spill at the QIT that flowed from Inu­aeyet Ikot vil­lage to Okposo, about 35 kilo­me­ters along the coast­line towards Mbo local gov­ern­ment area. Since then, Mobil has refused to clean up our envi­ron­ment. They issued and acknowl­edge­ment let­ter to indi­cate that their tank bust­ed.

“Mobil knows the impact of oil spill and the dam­age it has done to aquat­ic life and the water table and the entire envi­ron­ment. When a major spill occurred last Decem­ber, they promised to pro­vide relief mate­ri­als to our peo­ple and also pay com­pen­sa­tion. Up till now, they have not done any­thing in that regard. Last week, two of the tanks got burnt and crude flowed into our com­mu­ni­ties.”

Okon lament­ed that, while a walk along the shore­line would show dead fish­es scat­tered all over the area, it was becom­ing so dif­fi­cult a task for the peo­ple to fish.

“Peo­ple are hun­gry and angry and that is why we have come here to draw the atten­tion of the world to what Exxon Mobil has been doing to our com­mu­ni­ties”, he added.

Cor­rob­o­rat­ing Okon’s posi­tion on the mat­ter, a com­mu­ni­ty leader in Iben­no, Chief Williams Mkpa who admit­ted that the peo­ple of the area have scores to set­tle with Exxon­Mo­bil over cas­es of oil spillage lament­ed that the eco­nom­ic main­stay of peo­ple of the area has been great­ly affect­ed by the spill.

He said, “When sim­i­lar inci­dents hap­pen, the com­mu­ni­ty usu­al­ly agi­tates for cleanup and ade­quate com­pen­sa­tion.

But in its usu­al way, Exxon­Mo­bil has refused to respond to those requests because they don’t have the inter­est of the peo­ple at heart. In the past 44 years of their oper­a­tions, the com­pa­ny only com­pen­sat­ed us in 1998 when they declared 55 bar­rel spill and paid N350 mil­lion to our com­mu­ni­ties”.

He not­ed that because they were aware of the effects of gas flar­ing to the imme­di­ate envi­ron­ment, staff of Exxon­Mo­bil do not live in Ibeno com­mu­ni­ties, as the oil firm chose to locate its hous­ing estate in Eket, about 20 kilo­me­ters away.

Mkpa said the inter­ven­tion of the state Gov­er­nor, Godswill Akpabio did not yield any pos­i­tive result in the mat­ter, as the com­pa­ny has delib­er­ate­ly refused to respect the agree­ment bro­kered by the gov­ern­ment since 2012.

Mkpa fur­ther chid­ed those opposed to resource con­trol, say­ing that if Ibeno peo­ple had a say in how Exxon­Mo­bil is being oper­at­ed, some of the dam­ag­ing impacts of their oper­a­tions could have been mit­i­gat­ed.

He, there­fore, appealed to the Nation­al Con­fer­ence and the Nation­al Assem­bly to take urgent steps to ensure that oil pro­duc­ing areas in the coun­try were giv­en a stake in oil explo­ration and pro­duc­tion.

Mr. Mkpa also lament­ed that over 95 per­cent of staff in Exxon­Mo­bil are from oth­er parts of the coun­try and chal­lenged the com­pa­ny to pub­lish the list of its top man­age­ment staff toshow how many peo­ple from the host com­mu­ni­ties it has engaged.

On its part, Exxon­Mo­bil explained that Mobil Pro­duc­ing Nige­ria unlimt­ed, oper­a­tor of the NNPC/MPN joint ven­ture said it has acti­vat­ed our emer­gency response sys­tems and con­tained the release, with all rel­e­vant reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ties and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers noti­fied.

The company’s spokesper­son, Akaninyene Esiere in an email stat­ed: “MPN remains com­mit­ted to envi­ron­men­tal­ly safe oper­a­tions. Sub­ject to a detailed site inspec­tion, our cur­rent esti­mate is that approx­i­mate­ly 12 bar­rels of oil was released dur­ing the inci­dent. All rel­e­vant reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ties and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers have been noti­fied.

“We are work­ing with com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers to gain access to the impact­ed area and con­tin­ue to work to ensure the impact­ed area is reme­di­at­ed. Off­shore pro­duc­tion and load­ing oper­a­tions are con­tin­u­ing.”

 

Massive convoys of test frack equipment arrive at West Newton

3rd July

3rd July

Rath­lin Ener­gy yes­ter­day, Wed 2nd July, brought mas­sive con­voys of equip­ment on to the West New­ton test frack site near With­ern­wick.

 
This is in fla­grant breach of 2 key Plan­ning Con­di­tions- they need to give 2 week’s writ­ten notice before activ­i­ties on site (Con­di­tion 2) and there must be no con­voys of vehi­cles, with at least 10 min­utes between vehi­cles. (In the Traf­fic Plan referred to in Con­di­tion 7)

There were mul­ti­ple large con­voys, totalling 64 vehi­cles. The well pad was extreme­ly crowd­ed with vehi­cles and equip­ment.

There was a very heavy police pres­ence with numer­ous vans and riot vans, around a hun­dred police through the vil­lages of New Eller­by, Mar­ton and West New­ton.
High Fos­ham road was closed to pedes­tri­ans and traf­fic.

West New­ton has had anti frack­ing Pro­tec­tors camp­ing at the site since May 9th. There is anoth­er camp at Rath­lin’s oth­er well site in East York­shire, Craw­ber­ry Hill.

Louise Cas­tro, a pro­tec­tor camp­ing at the site said, “It’s chaos and may­hem here- local vil­lagers were forced to trail across the fields just to see what was going on, and were dev­as­tat­ed- some burst in to tears when the scale of it hit home. Rath­lin have rid­den roughshod over the traf­fic plan worked worked out with the vil­lagers.”

Ian Crane, a for­mer oil exec­u­tive also liv­ing at the anti frack­ing camps said, “Today the locals got a taste of what is to come on a dai­ly basis if the uncon­ven­tion­al oil and gas indus­try is allowed to go ahead with frack­ing in this area”.

Pauline Hak­e­ny, a res­i­dent of near­by Skir­laugh said, “I’m real­ly shocked at the amount of vehi­cles- they promised us this would nev­er hap­pen- and also the amount of police- there were loads of vans and offi­cers in all the sur­round­ing vil­lages.”

Grapes of Rathlin

3rd July from Scc­NEWS Con­voys of trucks car­ry­ing equip­ment descend­ed on West New­ton yes­ter­day, where Rath­lin Ener­gy are com­menc­ing their explorato­ry

3rd July from Scc­NEWS Con­voys of trucks car­ry­ing equip­ment descend­ed on West New­ton yes­ter­day, where Rath­lin Ener­gy are com­menc­ing their explorato­ry frack­ing drilling. As the first major activ­i­ty at the East York­shire site kicked off, a hand­ful of pro­test­ers and many more anx­ious locals could only watch in hor­ror as the frack­ing trucks made their way along the long sin­gle track lane towards the well.

The con­voys were pro­tect­ed by hun­dreds of police and riot vans, while local res­i­dents were blocked from access­ing their own homes and one elder­ly res­i­dent burst into tears at the scale of what was hap­pen­ing.

West New­ton is one of two loca­tions in East York­shire that Rath­lin are attempt­ing to frack. At both West New­ton and Craw­ber­ry Hill, Rath­lin have had plan­ning per­mis­sion for explorato­ry drilling since 2012. Ear­li­er this year they also got Envi­ron­ment Agency per­mits that last until Sep­tem­ber, in the case of Craw­ber­ry Hill, and longer in the case of West New­ton. “We knew they were due to do the tests at either site at any time”, says our source from cam­paign group HEY Frack Off.

Small protests camps were set up at both loca­tions in May. Craw­ber­ry was the larg­er, with num­ber aver­ag­ing at 20: Not only was it look­ing like­li­er that Rath­lin would hit there first as the per­mits ran out soon­er, but it’s near­er urban cen­tres like Bev­er­ley and Hull. Cru­cial­ly, it is in the area of the mas­sive under­ground aquifer that is relied on for drink­ing water for much of the pop­u­la­tion of Hull and East York­shire: “If that were to be con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed it would be an absolute cat­a­stro­phe”. So far, Craw­ber­ry Hill has yet to see any sig­nif­i­cant activ­i­ty.

Over at West New­ton, the pro­tec­tion camp has been tiny but dogged­ly per­sis­tent. The vil­lagers in the very rur­al area have been slow on the uptake but now seem to be wak­ing up to what’s about to hap­pen on their doorsteps. At first, they’d been bizarrely anx­ious about the camp and upset about the pro­test­ers’ pres­ence, rather than their vil­lages sur­round­ing a hell­mouth of the envi­ron­men­tal armaged­don.

“It’s an unbe­liev­ably con­ser­v­a­tive area. Some peo­ple did­n’t even want to con­tact HEY Frack Off because of our ‘con­tro­ver­sial’ name!”, says our con­tact. “Most of the local res­i­dents have swal­lowed Rath­lin’s line and their PR hook, line and sinker.”

But recent well-attend­ed pub­lic meet­ings, and indi­vid­ual con­ver­sa­tions, have shown aware­ness is slow­ly start­ing to sink in. Maybe the locals are slow­ly start­ing to organ­ise?

Just to show how much they respect the local res­i­dents, when the con­voys came onto site at West New­ton yes­ter­day, they “ran roughshod” over the plan­ning con­di­tions that had been agreed between the local coun­cil (East Rid­ing of York­shire) and Rath­lin Ener­gy to sweet­en the frack­ing pill for local res­i­dents.

First­ly, they failed to give the stip­u­lat­ed 14 days notice before any activ­i­ty com­menced. Sneaky, but not sur­pris­ing giv­en the momen­tum the anti-frack­ing move­men­t’s been gain­ing. Sec­ond­ly, they spec­tac­u­lar­ly flout­ed the traf­fic man­age­ment plan which promised local res­i­dents no more than one truck every ten min­utes. Yes­ter­day saw two mas­sive con­voys of lor­ries – around 65 vehi­cles enter­ing the site. Need­less to say, the well pad was crowd­ed.

In terms of polic­ing, our con­tact reports: “Police have said they have learned from the mis­takes of Bar­ton Moss and Bal­combe where they allowed peace­ful protest in the form of slow walk­ing in front of vehi­cles down pub­lic high­ways. It’s been made quite clear in East York­shire that any­one who gets in the way of a vehi­cle on the pub­lic high­way will be arrest­ed imme­di­ate­ly.”

Police have even admit­ted to cam­paign­ers that it’s a “game of num­bers”, and that if there were as many pro­test­ers as police they’d have to review their tac­tics.

The loca­tion of the West New­ton site is so rur­al that keep­ing up com­mu­ni­ca­tions – from sim­ple phone calls to live stream­ing – is dif­fi­cult. The cam­paign is encour­ag­ing any poten­tial pro­tec­tors to get in touch. The camp phone num­ber is 07773739937.

South American tribe sues over historic genocide

1st July The sur­vivors of a South Amer­i­can tribe which was dec­i­mat­ed dur­ing the 1950s and 60s are tak­ing Paraguay’s gov­ern­ment to court over the geno­cide they suf­fered.

1st July The sur­vivors of a South Amer­i­can tribe which was dec­i­mat­ed dur­ing the 1950s and 60s are tak­ing Paraguay’s gov­ern­ment to court over the geno­cide they suf­fered.

The case of the hunter-gath­er­er Aché tribe, who roamed the hilly forests of east­ern Paraguay until being bru­tal­ly forced out, became noto­ri­ous in the 1970s.

As the agri­cul­tur­al expan­sion into east­ern Paraguay gath­ered pace from the 1950s, the Aché found them­selves forced to defend their land from an ever-increas­ing colonist pop­u­la­tion. These colonists soon start­ed to mount raid­ing par­ties to kill the male Aché: women and chil­dren were usu­al­ly cap­tured and sold as slaves.

One of the most noto­ri­ous hunters of the Aché was Manuel Jesús Pereira, a local landown­er. He was an employ­ee of Paraguay’s Native Affairs Depart­ment, and his farm was turned into an Aché “reser­va­tion”, to which cap­tured Aché were trans­port­ed. Beat­ings and rape were com­mon. Count­less oth­ers died of res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases. The Direc­tor of the Native Affairs Depart­ment was a fre­quent vis­i­tor, and also sold Aché slaves him­self.

This sit­u­a­tion was denounced by sev­er­al anthro­pol­o­gists in Paraguay, many of whom were deport­ed, or lost their jobs, as a result. It was brought to inter­na­tion­al atten­tion by Ger­man anthro­pol­o­gist Mark Münzel. His 1973 report Geno­cide in Paraguay, pub­lished by the Dan­ish orga­ni­za­tion IWGIA, doc­u­ment­ed many of the atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted against the Aché.

Sur­vival Inter­na­tion­al pub­li­cized Münzel’s account, and spon­sored an inves­ti­ga­tion by lead­ing inter­na­tion­al lawyer Pro­fes­sor Richard Arens, who found the sit­u­a­tion as bad as oth­ers had report­ed. Many oth­er inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions, aca­d­e­mics and activists denounced the atroc­i­ties and called for Paraguay’s gov­ern­ment to be held to account, which curbed some of the worst excess­es.

How­ev­er, Paraguay’s then-Pres­i­dent, Gen­er­al Alfre­do Stroess­ner, was viewed as a key West­ern ally in the region. The British, US and West Ger­man gov­ern­ments denied that geno­cide was tak­ing place, and the US author­i­ties spon­sored the Har­vard-based orga­ni­za­tion Cul­tur­al Sur­vival (CS) to “review the sta­tus of indige­nous peo­ples in Paraguay”. Their report to the gov­ern­ment was con­fi­den­tial, but a copy was obtained under the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act. CS then pub­lished an amend­ed ver­sion.

Rely­ing part­ly on the tes­ti­mo­ny of Peace Corps vol­un­teer, Kim Hill, it denied that geno­cide had tak­en place, and crit­i­cized many of those, such as Münzel and Arens, who had brought the Aché’s plight to glob­al atten­tion. US aid to Stroessner’s bru­tal regime con­tin­ued.

Now, the sur­vivors of the geno­cide and their descen­dants are seek­ing redress. An Aché orga­ni­za­tion, the Nation­al Aché Fed­er­a­tion, has launched a court case in Argenti­na, with advice from lead­ing human rights lawyer Bal­tasar Garzón. The Aché are using the legal prin­ci­ple of “uni­ver­sal juris­dic­tion”, under which the most seri­ous crimes such as geno­cide and crimes against human­i­ty can be tried and pun­ished in a dif­fer­ent coun­try to that in which they occurred, if the vic­tims can­not secure jus­tice in their own coun­try.

Ceferi­no Krei­gi, an Aché rep­re­sen­ta­tive, said, “We’re ask­ing for jus­tice – there was tor­ture, rape, beat­ings. We can no longer bear the pain we have suf­fered.”

The Aché’s lawyer, Juan Maira, said, “[The Aché] were hunt­ed as though they were ani­mals, because they want­ed to con­fine them to a ghet­to. Once in the reserve, they weren’t allowed to leave. They sold not only the chil­dren, but some­times the women too, as slaves. Per­haps 60% of the pop­u­la­tion could have been wiped out.”

The Aché’s pop­u­la­tion is now increas­ing once more, though their forests have been stolen for cat­tle ranch­ing and farm­ing, and almost total­ly destroyed.

Protests in Nigeria After Mobil Spills 600,000 Barrels of Oil

oil_theft_7-300x1991st July Youths in Eket and Esit Eket in Akwa Ibom on Mon­day staged peace­ful protests against fresh oil spills in Nkpana com­mu­ni­ty from a Mobil facil­i­ty i

oil_theft_7-300x1991st July Youths in Eket and Esit Eket in Akwa Ibom on Mon­day staged peace­ful protests against fresh oil spills in Nkpana com­mu­ni­ty from a Mobil facil­i­ty in Ibeno.

The youths num­ber­ing more than 500 protest­ed on major streets in Eket, includ­ing the Mari­na and Ter­mi­nal roads.

The pro­test­ers, under the ages of Core Youth Forum, car­ried plac­ards with inscrip­tions: “Oil spill is killing our aquat­ic life’’, “No com­pen­sa­tion for oil spill” and “Enough of this oil spillage,’’ among oth­ers.

Mr God­win Peter, the spokesman of the pro­test­ers, said the spill occurred on Sat­ur­day and occu­pied com­mu­ni­ties along the spill line on Sun­day.

He said the spill had dev­as­tat­ed aquat­ic life and destroyed fish­ing equip­ment, among oth­ers.
Peter appealed to Mobil to urgent­ly clean up the envi­ron­ment.

The youths threat­ened to dis­rupt Mobil activ­i­ties if their demands, which includ­ed imme­di­ate clean up and com­pen­sa­tion, were not met.

Also react­ing, Mr Inyang Ekong, the Sec­re­tary of the Arti­sanal Fish­er­men Asso­ci­a­tion of Nige­ria, Akwa Ibom Branch, not­ed that fish­ing had been sus­pend­ed in the area as a result of the spill.

He said that fish would be scarce in the state and appealed to Mobil to replace its old pipes to fore­stall fur­ther occur­rence.

Ekong said the spill would cause untold hard­ships to the peo­ple of Ibeno.

When con­tact­ed, Mr Akaninyene Esiere, the Man­ag­er of Pub­lic and Gov­ern­ment Affairs at the Qua Iboe Ter­mi­nal of Mobil, con­firmed the inci­dent.

“We have con­firmed a liq­uid release from our Qua Iboe ter­mi­nal on Sun­day, June 29, fol­low­ing seri­ous weath­er con­di­tions and light­ning strikes over the area at the week­end. We have acti­vat­ed our emer­gency response sys­tems to con­tain the release. All rel­e­vant reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ties and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers have been notified.We will con­tin­ue to work with the com­mu­ni­ty to allow progress in the effort by Mobil to con­tain the spill,’’ he said.

Esiere said that Mobil was com­mit­ted to safe envi­ron­ment dur­ing its oper­a­tions.

Minks released from cages, vehicles demaged at two fur farms in Czech Republic

Anony­mous report from GreenAction.cz

Anony­mous report from GreenAction.cz

„We vis­it­ed two fur farms in the last two weeks. At first were released approx­i­mate­ly 50 minks from cages on the farm in Dol­ní Cerekev (farm is cur­rent­ly almost emp­ty). Dur­ing the sec­ond vis­it were dam­aged two cars and trac­tor, also with using pyrotech­nic mix­ture – ther­mite. On the oth­er farm in Velký Rat­mírov were dam­aged truck, exca­va­tor and next things for man­ag­ing the farm.

ARM, 20.6.2014″

Earth First! Summer Gathering 2014 — exact location & other practicalities added

Updates: Exact loca­tion has been releas­es — see here. 

Trav­el - book your trav­el to Cas­tle Cary or Bru­ton train sta­tion, then it’s a bus jour­ney and 20 minute walk.

Updates: Exact loca­tion has been releas­es — see here. 

Trav­el - book your trav­el to Cas­tle Cary or Bru­ton train sta­tion, then it’s a bus jour­ney and 20 minute walk.

Bus times are : 8.14am — 9.44am — 11.44am — 12.33pm — 2.14pm — 4.33pm (last bus).  There’s no Sun­day ser­vice so we will timetable a shut­tle bus to return.

Cycling: Bru­ton is bet­ter if you are cycling as it is a mile short­er, and there is also a bus from there too. The last bus from here leaves lat­er.  (Bus times from Bru­ton are: 9:09am — 10:39am — 12:12pm — 1:39pm — 3:54pm — 5:39pm)

We will post the exact address three weeks before the gath­er­ing.

Refresh­ments — ‘This year there is no bar on site. Peo­ple are wel­come to bring their own but we ask that there’s no drink­ing before dinner/7pm. Any­one caus­ing a nui­sance or break­ing our Safer Spaces pol­i­cy will be asked to stop and/or leave. There will be a cafe & snack bar on site.’

Dogs — ‘This year dogs are wel­come, but please get in touch in advance, and keep them on a lead at all times on the site.’  Fur­ther info

—————-

28th-31st August 2014, in the South West.…

A place for peo­ple involved in rad­i­cal green direct action to come togeth­er.…
to talk.…share skills.…learn.…listen.…play.…rant.… find out whats going on.…
scheme.…live outdoors.…hang out.…laugh.…
expe­ri­ence non hier­ar­chi­cal, low impact, fam­i­ly friend­ly liv­ing.

An activist camp that spans 5 days and con­sists of a pro­gramme of work­shops through­out each day facil­i­tat­ed by peo­ple like you and me who think they have a skill or a lev­el of knowl­edge in a sub­ject that is valu­able to share with oth­ers to improve their activism.

Is this camp for you?  Whether you’re just start­ing out in the world of direct action or you’re an old (glued and paint-stained) hand at it, you’re wel­come here.

More info here

Action dates & gatherings now working again!

The action dates and protest gath­er­ings page is once again work­ing!  Apolo­gies, we acci­den­tal­ly delet­ed it!

If there’s any eco­log­i­cal actions that are open­ly adver­tised, protest camps or cam­paign gath­er­ings, that you want to add to it, do it through the sub­mit report link and in the sub­ject, make it clear it’s to add to the cal­en­dar.  Thanks.

The action dates and protest gath­er­ings page is once again work­ing!  Apolo­gies, we acci­den­tal­ly delet­ed it!

If there’s any eco­log­i­cal actions that are open­ly adver­tised, protest camps or cam­paign gath­er­ings, that you want to add to it, do it through the sub­mit report link and in the sub­ject, make it clear it’s to add to the cal­en­dar.  Thanks.

anarchists claim string of fires in east bristol

Just before sun­rise this morn­ing we launched a tar­get­ed arson spree along Glebe Road — which meets the main east Bris­tol thor­ough­fare of Church Road — and burned out cor­po­rate, lux­u­ry, pri­vate secu­ri­ty and hunt-scum vehi­cles.

Just before sun­rise this morn­ing we launched a tar­get­ed arson spree along Glebe Road — which meets the main east Bris­tol thor­ough­fare of Church Road — and burned out cor­po­rate, lux­u­ry, pri­vate secu­ri­ty and hunt-scum vehi­cles. Wild­fire in the arter­ies of the city-prison! To break the lie of social peace and inten­si­fy the hos­til­i­ties!

Emer­gency ser­vices were too slow to catch the respon­si­ble as the emp­ty street was bright­ened from end to end as by torch­es. In a few words, the select­ed vans and cars were active com­po­nents of the life they rep­re­sent and also enforce.

Vir­gin Media sup­ply tele­vi­sion and also inter­net, and a nation­al fibre optic cable net­work. To keep us enmeshed in the mod­ern infor­ma­tion econ­o­my and the spec­ta­cle of celebri­ties, video games and adver­tis­ing is their busi­ness. Destroy what domes­ti­cates and stu­pe­fies us!

A car as fan­cy as a Quat­tro is an extra spit in the face for the prop­er­ty-less as well as the earth. In wealthy areas or parts under­go­ing gen­tri­fi­ca­tion they’re com­mon­place, in Eng­land as in Argenti­na, Syd­ney as in Berlin, and there to be picked off at our leisure.

BWS’s secu­ri­ty vehi­cle in ash­es is one less to aid their task across the UK of keep­ing the haves from the have-nots by threat or force and of expand­ing the matrix of sur­veil­lance cam­eras we pass under hun­dreds of times in a day. Min­ions of the estab­lished order have cho­sen their side! Insur­rec­tion­al action against the con­structs of author­i­ty above us, around us, with­in us.

Either an active fox hunter or a sup­port­er and pro­mot­er of killing wild ani­mals sole­ly for enter­tain­ment — either way, own­er of a heavy-duty 4x4 bear­ing pro-hunt stick­ers — got their incen­di­ary gift too. Some call blood­sport uncivilised, but it’s real­ly per­fect­ly reflec­tive of the dis­dain for the non­hu­man, upper class enti­tle­ment and also cross-class col­lab­o­ra­tion which is the basis and con­tent of civil­i­sa­tion. Let’s make the rich and their ter­ri­er-boys the hunt­ed, let’s harass them in city or coun­try­side.

This deed coin­cid­ed with the call for col­lec­tive action in sup­port of our caged broth­er G. Pom­bo da Sil­va (Spain), who’s resist­ing his forced trans­fer to a max­i­mum secu­ri­ty mod­ule. Hope­ful­ly our flam­ing regards will also make it through the prison bars to the wan­der­ing she-wolves A. Trudeau and F. Rouiller along with com­pa C. ‘Chi­vo’ López (Mex­i­co) — they all face charges over Molo­tov attacks against State and Cap­i­tal­ism. We’re also think­ing of the unnamed ani­mal lib­er­a­tion fight­er who pros­e­cu­tors have tried to link to the anar­chist paper Upprors­Bladet (Swe­den) and the co-con­vict­ed who also had the sense to stay silent before the cops. While A. Cospi­to and N. Gai, G. Iaco­v­ac­ci and A. Antonac­ci will all be tried next on July 4th, we take aim to light up their jail cells with the warmth of our sol­i­dar­i­ty. Pris­on­ers to the streets, run­ning wild and free!

ABOUT THE ACCUSED IN BRISTOL
We learned from the scum-press news­pa­pers that ear­ly on June 12th an indi­vid­ual was stopped in their vehi­cle by police in the Bradley Stoke area and sus­pect­ed of going equipped to com­mit a crime, then arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of four counts of arson. This was in the con­text of four coor­di­nat­ed sab­o­tages in the days before which took down many phone sig­nals and also radio ser­vices — all of which had already been claimed by Live Wires, FAI/ELF, as report­ed in the scum-press and car­ried by anar­chist counter-infor­ma­tion pages (although hid­den once again by the mod­er­a­tors of Bris­tol Indy­media).

After the resound­ing silence so far from the local anar­chist move­ment, the first thing we want to state is that — although none of our­selves, our wider net­work or fleet­ing affini­ties know who this per­son is or any­thing about their sym­pa­thies or com­plic­i­ties — the repres­sive move by the State aims to dis­cour­age sim­i­lar actions and we will not stand com­pla­cent. Either police made an uncon­nect­ed arrest in efforts to shed some of the crit­i­cism they’ve come under in the region­al and nation­al media for fail­ing to stem the flow of anar­chist attacks in their area, in which case it was a fruit­less provo­ca­tion as action con­tin­ues, or that indi­vid­ual real­ly did set out to some­how fight the sys­tem that night — sin­gu­lar­ly, in the con­text of decen­tralised infor­mal groups open to any­one such as FAI or ELF, or anony­mous — in which case they’re a poten­tial com­rade and we would defend them as such.

It seems for now that police have lit­tle inter­est in the arrest­ed indi­vid­ual as accord­ing to the scum-press they’re out on bail after ques­tion­ing, but we call on any­one with more infor­ma­tion to release it if they see fit. Mean­while, sol­i­dar­i­ty with the live wires and who­ev­er shares their moti­va­tions to do the same!

Infor­mal anar­chist federation/Earth lib­er­a­tion front
Rogue fire brigade.