Free Julio! No more dams!

Julio Vil­lanue­va, mem­ber of the group Solidari@s con Itoiz, was arrest­ed on August 17th in Iruñea-Pam­plona. He was arrest­ed by the local police ant impris­oned next morn­ing.

Julio Vil­lanue­va, mem­ber of the group Solidari@s con Itoiz, was arrest­ed on August 17th in Iruñea-Pam­plona. He was arrest­ed by the local police ant impris­oned next morn­ing.

Vil­lanue­va is one of the eight activists that in April 1996 stopped the con­struc­tion works of Itoiz dam by cut­ting the cables on the con­crete trans­porter. The eight sol­i­dar­ios were sen­tenced to 4 years and 10 months in prison for the sab­o­tage. Two of them have already served the jail sen­tences passed on them. So Vil­lanue­va is the third mem­ber of Solidar@s con Itoiz imrisoned for the direct action against Itoiz reser­voir. He’s been unti­il now in clan­des­tin­i­ty like the rest of the remain­ing six, some­thing which we can con­sid­er a huge pun­ish­ment too.

Sup­port actions

On August 18th about one hun­dred peo­ple gath­ered out­side the prison of Pam­plona-Iruñea to protest against the inpris­on­ment of Julio Vil­lanue­va. Two days lat­er anoth­er gath­er­ing of sup­port for Julio took place in front of the jail. Solidari@s con Itoiz urges cit­i­zens to join anoth­er protest to demand free­dom for Julio next Mon­day, August 27th, at 7 pm in the same place.

You can also sup­port Julio by send­ing him mes­sages:

Julio Vil­lanue­va

Prisión de Pam­plona-Iruñea

Calle San Roque s/n

Apdo. 250

31071 PAMPLONA-IRUÑEA

More earth­quakes caused by Itoiz reser­voir water stor­age

Earth­quakes caused by the Itoiz reser­voir water stor­age have not ceased in last months. In fact, they have increased in num­ber ( 1.200 earth­quakes since sum­mer 2004, when they start­ed fill­ing up the reser­voir) and in the same way they are increas­ing the dan­ger of an inmi­nent cat­a­stro­phe at Itoiz. As the earth­quake map shows, more and more seis­mic events are hav­ing epi­cen­tre in the very same Itoiz reser­voir, which increas­es seri­ous­ly the risk of land­slides into the reser­voir, endan­ger­ing thou­sands of people´s lives. More details avail­able at: www.itoizstop.org

Read and spread this mes­sage!

FREDOM FOR JULIO!!! STOP THE DAMS!!!

Solidari@s con Itoiz

Sindominio.net/sositoz

sositoiz@sindominio.net

Scotland’s first SOCRAP charges — 6 arrested inside Faslane high security area

Faslane Naval Base, Scot­land, Sep­tem­ber 4, 2007, 06.30 a.m.
Police say 3 women have been arrest­ed inside the high secu­ri­ty fences at the Tri­dent nuclear sub­ma­rine base after enter­ing the base to get fur­ther infor­ma­tion on the weapons of mass destruc­tion deployed by the UK gov­ern­ment in con­tra­ven­tion of Scot­tish and Inter­na­tion­al Law. Accord­ing to the police, the women, who were act­ing to uphold the law, are being charged under the Seri­ous Organ­ised Crime and Police Act, which is increas­ing­ly being used to pre­vent peace­ful protests at sen­si­tive sites, includ­ing Britain’s nuclear bases.

Faslane 365 logoFaslane Naval Base, Scot­land, Sep­tem­ber 4, 2007, 06.30 a.m.
Police say 3 women have been arrest­ed inside the high secu­ri­ty fences at the Tri­dent nuclear sub­ma­rine base after enter­ing the base to get fur­ther infor­ma­tion on the weapons of mass destruc­tion deployed by the UK gov­ern­ment in con­tra­ven­tion of Scot­tish and Inter­na­tion­al Law. Accord­ing to the police, the women, who were act­ing to uphold the law, are being charged under the Seri­ous Organ­ised Crime and Police Act, which is increas­ing­ly being used to pre­vent peace­ful protests at sen­si­tive sites, includ­ing Britain’s nuclear bases.

Lavinia Cross­ley, Tan­sy New­man Turn­er and Emma Bate­man, all part of a group call­ing them­selves the ‘Faslane 365 Seri­ous Organ­ised Crime Inves­ti­ga­tion and Pre­ven­tion Team’, went into the base to find evi­dence on the rules of engage­ment, poli­cies and pro­ce­dures for the deploy­ment, tar­get­ing and use of nuclear weapons and to dis­cov­er what infor­ma­tion is pro­vid­ed to per­son­nel about the legal, safe­ty and secu­ri­ty impli­ca­tions of their work on Tri­dent. Their action kicks off the last month of the Faslane 365 year-long block­ade, in which almost 1000 peo­ple from all over the world have been arrest­ed.

In car­ry­ing the non­vi­o­lent resis­tance to the ille­gal deploy­ment and renew­al of Tri­dent into the sub­ma­rine base itself, the women took this action because they con­sid­er that the deploy­ment of Tri­dent con­sti­tutes prepa­ra­tion for a war crime. This vio­la­tion of Scot­tish and inter­na­tion­al law is com­pound­ed by the UK Government’s poli­cies of deploy­ment, con­sti­tut­ing an ever-present threat to use Tri­dent. The women’s action was against both the cur­rent deploy­ment and the government’s stat­ed inten­tion to replace the cur­rent Tri­dent-car­ry­ing Van­guard-class sub­marines with new bal­lis­tic mis­sile sub­marines, in breach of the Nuclear Non-Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty (NPT), of which Britain is a Par­ty.

“Nuclear weapons are immoral and ille­gal,” said Lavinia Cross­ley (22) from Brad­ford. “I feel I have to act because if I do not, who will? The Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to cov­er up the ille­gal­i­ty of these weapons and instead pre­tend that we are the crim­i­nals.”

Emma Bate­man (40), from Leices­ter, said, “It is ridicu­lous to threat­en Iran with sanc­tions for pos­si­bly want­i­ng nuclear weapons when we have actu­al WMD here and ready to be used.”

Tan­sy New­man Turn­er (21), also from Leices­ter, said, “Nuclear weapons are not much use against ter­ror­ism and this leg­is­la­tion is an admis­sion that Faslane is a tar­get for ter­ror­ists, thus putting us in more dan­ger. Nuclear weapons pose a threat and dan­ger to us, not a pro­tec­tion or deter­rent.”

The “Faslane 365 Block­ade” start­ed on Octo­ber 1, 2006. Thou­sands have par­tic­i­pat­ed and more than 930 peo­ple have been arrest­ed. On Octo­ber 1st there will be a cel­e­bra­to­ry “Big Block­ade’ involv­ing all the blockad­ing groups that have par­tic­i­pat­ed through­out the year.

See www.faslane365.org for pho­tographs and fur­ther infor­ma­tion.

»»»»»»»»»»»»»>

At 11.00a.m. today, 3 more peace pro­test­ers breached secu­ri­ty at the North gate of the Faslane nuclear sub­ma­rine base, enter­ing on bicy­cles. This sec­ond team from the ‘Faslane 365 Seri­ous Organ­ised Crime Inves­ti­ga­tion and Pre­ven­tion Team’ fol­lows the ear­li­er arrest of 3 women inside the base. It is under­stood that they are being charged under the Seri­ous Organ­ised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA). The total num­ber of Scot­tish SOCRAP arrests is now 6.

Like the 3 ear­li­er Faslane 365 activists, arrest­ed at around 4.30 a.m. this morn­ing after climb­ing the high secu­ri­ty fences, Janet Fen­ton, Ang­ie Zel­ter and Wolf Konows­ki entered the Faslane base to find evi­dence on the rules of engage­ment, poli­cies and pro­ce­dures for the deploy­ment, tar­get­ing and use of nuclear weapons and to dis­cov­er what infor­ma­tion is pro­vid­ed to per­son­nel about the legal, safe­ty and secu­ri­ty impli­ca­tions of their work on Tri­dent.

Janet Fen­ton (60) from Edin­burgh said, “The Seri­ous Organ­ised Crime and Police Act does not have back­ing in Scot­land. It is there to stop peo­ple expos­ing the real law-break­ing of the UK Gov­ern­ment. The deploy­ment of Tri­dent is ille­gal accord­ing to the World Court.”

Ang­ie Zel­ter (56) from Nor­folk said, “The law must not be used to pro­tect ille­gal­i­ties. SOCAP is polit­i­cal leg­is­la­tion that makes it a crim­i­nal offence for pro­test­ers to go into Faslane when it is our legal, civ­il and moral duty to uphold the law by expos­ing and pre­vent­ing prepa­ra­tions for mass mur­der.”

Wolf Konows­ki (43) from Ger­many, added, “For evil to tri­umph it is only nec­es­sary for good peo­ple to do noth­ing.”

Note for edi­tors:
The “Faslane 365 Block­ade” start­ed on Octo­ber 1, 2006. Thou­sands have par­tic­i­pat­ed and more than 930 peo­ple have been arrest­ed. On Octo­ber 1st there will be a cel­e­bra­to­ry “Big Block­ade’ involv­ing all the blockad­ing groups that have par­tic­i­pat­ed through­out the year.

The Seri­ous Organ­ised Crime and Police Act (SOCAP) became law in 2005, and amend­ed by the Ter­ror­ism Act 2006. Under the rubric of defend­ing against ter­ror­ism, SOCAP makes it a crim­i­nal offence to “tres­pass” on cer­tain areas of land, includ­ing mil­i­tary facil­i­ties, such as the Tri­dent nuclear weapons base at Faslane

The Unit­ed King­dom cur­rent­ly deploys up to 200 nuclear war­heads on US Tri­dent mis­siles, car­ried on nuclear sub­marines based at the Faslane Naval Base in Scot­land. The major­i­ty of war­heads are 100 kilo­tonnes, which is more than 8 times big­ger than the bombs used on Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki in 1945. The UK is fac­ing a high­ly con­tro­ver­sial deci­sion on whether to get the next gen­er­a­tion of Tri­dent nuclear weapons or move towards gen­uine nuclear dis­ar­ma­ment, as required under the 1970 Nuclear Non-Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty and sub­se­quent inter­na­tion­al agree­ments, as spec­i­fied by the Inter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice in 1996. Recent opin­ion polls show that 80 per­cent of peo­ple liv­ing in Scot­land (and 55 per­cent in the UK as a whole) are opposed to nuclear weapons and want Tri­dent to be can­celled. On June 14, the Scot­tish Par­lia­ment vot­ed against Tri­dent by 71 votes to 16 (with 39 absten­tions).

See www.faslane365.org for pho­tographs and fur­ther infor­ma­tion.

CONTACT Rebec­ca John­son: 077333 60955
www.faslane365.org

2 coal actions in Australia

Aus­tralia: Coal Pow­er Sta­tion shut down in APEC cli­mate protest
3.09.2007

Activists have shut down pow­er gen­er­a­tion at the Loy Yang pow­er sta­tion in Gipp­s­land’s Latrobe Val­ley in Vic­to­ria on Mon­day morn­ing for five hours, as a protest against inac­tion on cli­mate change by the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment of John Howard, and poli­cies that main­tain the coal pow­er indus­try and its con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate change at the expense of devel­op­ing renew­able ener­gy pro­duc­tion. The action was under­tak­en to send a mes­sage to APEC lead­ers to take real action on Cli­mate Change and the Kyoto pro­to­col.


Aus­tralia: Coal Pow­er Sta­tion shut down in APEC cli­mate protest
3.09.2007

Activists have shut down pow­er gen­er­a­tion at the Loy Yang pow­er sta­tion in Gipp­s­land’s Latrobe Val­ley in Vic­to­ria on Mon­day morn­ing for five hours, as a protest against inac­tion on cli­mate change by the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment of John Howard, and poli­cies that main­tain the coal pow­er indus­try and its con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate change at the expense of devel­op­ing renew­able ener­gy pro­duc­tion. The action was under­tak­en to send a mes­sage to APEC lead­ers to take real action on Cli­mate Change and the Kyoto pro­to­col.

At least four activists from Real Action on Cli­mate Change entered the pow­er sta­tion at 5am and locked them­selves on to a coal con­vey­or and an over­bur­den con­vey­or belt, forc­ing the shut­down of the 600 megawatt gen­er­a­tor, halv­ing pro­duc­tion from Vic­to­ri­a’s biggest coal fired pow­er sta­tion that sup­plies 30% of the states pow­er, the dirt­i­est pow­er sup­ply in the devel­oped world.

Anoth­er pow­er unit at Loy Yang is out for main­te­nance and today’s forced shut­down has dropped pow­er out­put to half. The elec­tric­i­ty price in Vic­to­ria has risen to $63 because of the action and is expect­ed to cost the oper­a­tors thou­sands of dol­lars in lost pro­duc­tion.

Spokeper­son Michaela Stubbs said the action was intend­ed to send a mes­sage to APEC lead­ers meet­ing in Syd­ney this week.

“We’re already see­ing the effects of cli­mate change and it’s our gen­er­a­tion and future gen­er­a­tions that are going to be deal­ing with the long term con­se­quences of cli­mate change,” she said in an ABC news report. “We need to see real action now, through the Kyoto process.”

The Group say they are mak­ing a stand for all Aus­tralians to pro­tect our com­mu­ni­ty against the dan­gers of cli­mate change. The group says the APEC meet­ing is being used to fur­ther the lies and deci­et being spread by Prime Min­is­ter Howard in regards to the Cli­mate Change issue and his con­tin­u­ing efforts to under­mine the Kyoto Pro­to­col. A group spokesper­son said that Cli­mate Change ends with leav­ing coal in the ground.

“We need real action on cli­mate change to stop our reliance on pol­lut­ing forms of ener­gy such as coal and move towards a renew­able ener­gy future.” said spokesper­son Michaela Stubbs. “Real action on cli­mate change is about peo­ple pow­er not coal pow­er” said Michaela Stubbs.

Police Search and Res­cue squad were forced to cut the activists free from the con­vey­or belts, and they have been tak­en to Trar­al­gon police sta­tion in the La Trobe Val­ley.

Sources:

* Beyond Zero Emis­sions Media Release Sept 3, 207 — Pro­test­ers block coal sup­ply to Loy Yang Pow­er sta­tion
* Scoop Sept 3, 2007 — Real Action: Peo­ple Pow­er, Not Coal Pow­er
* ABC online, Sept 3, 2007 — Cli­mate protest shuts down pow­er sta­tion
* ABC online, Sept 3, 2007 — Michaela Stubbs on ABC Radio 774 (MP3)
* Blog, Sept 3, 2007 — Real Action on Cli­mate Change for account of action and pho­tos
* Cli­mate IMC, 3 Sept 2007 This is real action on cli­mate change

Repost of orig­i­nal sto­ry from Syd­ney Indy­media:
http://sydney.indymedia.org.au/story/apec-climate-change-protest-shuts-down-victorian-coal-power-station

Video: www.engagemedia.org/Members/raocc/videos/loyyang.ogg/view

APEC videos/vodcast: engagemedia.org/apec
=================================================

Aus­tralia: Green­peace activists stage APEC coal protest
2.09.2007

Twelve Green­peace activists have been arrest­ed at the world’s biggest coal port at New­cas­tle, 160km north of Syd­ney, after paint­ing the mes­sage “Aus­tralia Push­ing Export Coal” on the side of a coal ship, The Endeav­our, and unfurl­ing a large ban­ner in Chi­nese call­ing on Chi­na to be cau­tious of John Howard and George Bush’s attempts to sab­o­tage Kyoto. The protest comes at the start of the 2007 APEC (Asia Pacif­ic Eco­nom­ic Coop­er­a­tion) forum meet­ing being host­ed by Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter John Howard in Syd­ney 2–9 Sep­tem­ber 2007, and being attend­ed by USA Pres­i­dent George Bush, Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin, Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Hu Jin­tao and oth­er Pacif­ic rim lead­ers.

The protest was enact­ed at dawn on Sun­day Sep­tem­ber 2 to high­light the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­men­t’s real APEC agen­da: to pro­tect Aus­trali­a’s coal export indus­try by under­min­ing the Kyoto Pro­to­col. The mes­sage was paint­ed in two metre high let­ters to high­light to the world that Aus­trali­a’s addic­tion to coal is behind its spoil­er role in inter­na­tion­al nego­ti­a­tions on cli­mate change. Accord­ing to Green­peace, the mes­sage expos­es the Howard Government’s real APEC agen­da: to pro­tect Australia’s coal export indus­try by under­min­ing the Kyoto Pro­to­col.

“Australia’s cli­mate pol­i­cy is to ‘Push Export Coal’ and to hell with the con­se­quences for the plan­et,” said Ben Pear­son, Green­peace ener­gy cam­paign­er.

“Real action on cli­mate change means mov­ing away from coal and shift­ing to clean, renew­able ener­gy – and we don’t have the lux­u­ry of time for expen­sive talk­fests that have no con­crete out­comes. Like any deal­er pro­tect­ing its patch, Australia’s gov­ern­ment under John Howard is bla­tant­ly ignor­ing glob­al efforts to extend and strength­en Kyoto, the only inter­na­tion­al­ly bind­ing agree­ment to deal with cli­mate change – and push­ing instead a hope­less­ly vague dis­trac­tion through APEC.”

More than four mil­lion tonnes of coal will be export­ed from New­cas­tle dur­ing APEC, result­ing in over 11 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 emis­sions – equiv­a­lent to the annu­al emis­sions from 800,000 aver­age Aus­tralian house­holds, accord­ing to Green­peace. Fac­tor­ing in the costs of cli­mate change impacts, as detailed in the Stern Review, Australia’s coal exports will result in more than $1.2 bil­lion of dam­age dur­ing the APEC week alone, and $64 bil­lion annu­al­ly, Green­peace cal­cu­lat­ed.

New­cas­tle, already the world’s largest coal port, is set for a major expan­sion to dou­ble its capac­i­ty for export­ing coal.

“At a time when we need to see deep reduc­tions in green­house gas­es, Aus­tralia is not only refus­ing to act, but is also increas­ing the green­house pol­lu­tion it exports to the rest of the world. Australia’s cli­mate pol­i­cy is to pro­tect coal exports at the expense of the cli­mate rather than make the switch to renew­able ener­gy and improved ener­gy effi­cien­cy mea­sures we know we need to make.” explained Ben Pear­son, Green­peace Aus­tralia ener­gy cam­paign­er.

Under a new police pow­ers Act pro­test­ers arrest­ed durng the sum­mit week will have a pre­sump­tion against bail. Police from Syd­ney trav­elled to New­cas­tle to dis­cuss charges against the Green­peace activists, but no action was tak­en under the APEC Meet­ing (Police Pow­ers) Act 2007. Eleven activists were charged with mali­cious dam­age and a twelfth with dan­ger­ous nav­i­ga­tion: all were released on bail lat­er in the day.

The APEC Meet­ing (Police Pow­ers) Act 2007 came into force on August 30 and remain valid to Sep­tem­ber 12, 2007. It includes a list of peo­ple the police can exclude from the city cen­tre, plus expand­ed pow­ers of stop, search and deten­tion, and con­fis­ca­tion of items from peo­ple. APEC sig­nals the rise of mil­i­tary urban­ism in Aus­tralia.

NSW Police Min­is­ter David Camp­bell has said that anti­war demon­stra­tors and any­one else con­sid­ered “sus­pi­cious” will be arrest­ed and detained with­out bail for the dura­tion of the Sep­tem­ber 6–9 sum­mit. Peo­ple on the ‘exclud­ed list’ will be denied access to restrict­ed zones, with­out any recourse or avenue of appeal. The Dai­ly Tele­graph has already pub­lished a list of 29 peo­ple with their pho­tos alleged­ly on this list. The mea­sures in this Act amount to a new form of deten­tion with­out tri­al, and con­sti­tute a direct attack on free­dom of polit­i­cal expres­sion and move­ment, aimed at out­law­ing dis­sent and sti­fling oppo­si­tion to the APEC meet­ing.

Much of the north­ern CBD of Syd­ney will be con­tained by a nine foot high con­crete and wire secu­ri­ty fence, dubbed unof­fi­cial­ly the Great Wall of APEC.

The coal ship, The Endeav­our, sailed out of New­cas­tle at 11.30am Sun­day local time, with the paint­ed mes­sage already removed.

Sources:

* Green­peace Aus­tralia Media Release Sept 2, 2007 — Howard’s real APEC agen­da spelled out in coal protest
* Dai­ly Tele­graph Sept 2, 2007 — APEC arrests begin with Green­peace protest
* Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald August 30, 2007 — Police get spe­cial APEC pow­ers
* WSWS.org May 21, 2007 — Aus­tralia: Police-state mea­sures for APEC sum­mit in Syd­ney

Orig­i­nal sto­ry at Syd­ney Indy­media:
http://sydney.indymedia.org.au/story/newcastle%3A-greenpeace-activists-arrested-apec-coal-protest

Grand Opening Week At Liverpool’s Next To Nowhere — 15th-23rd

We open with a week of events from 15th Sep­tem­ber to 23rd Sep­tem­ber (fly­er), and from then on will be avail­able to book for meet­ings and events. If you have a meet­ing or event that you would like to put on why not book the cen­tre?

Next to Nowhere social centre openingNext to Nowhere social centre logoWe open with a week of events from 15th Sep­tem­ber to 23rd Sep­tem­ber (fly­er), and from then on will be avail­able to book for meet­ings and events. If you have a meet­ing or event that you would like to put on why not book the cen­tre?

Gener­ic media Gen­er­al Fly­er — application/pdf 1.3M

Cal­en­dar of Com­ing Events and Meet­ings (click head­er to return to home­page)

Past Events
Grand Open­ing Week

(fly­er)

Sat­ur­day 15th Sep­tem­ber — 7pm till late
Open­ing night gig and par­ty
Come cel­e­brate in grand style with a night of live music and great DJs. Dona­tion on the door with all pro­ceeds going to the run­ning costs of the cen­tre.

Sun­day 16th Sep­tem­ber — 7pm — 10pm
Oax­a­ca Info Night
Mex­i­can speak­er from Indy­media Oax­a­ca. Update on the upris­ing, police repres­sion & protests in Oax­a­ca, Mex­i­co. (fly­er)

Tues­day 18th Sep­tem­ber — 7.30pm — 10pm
Con­spir­a­cy Evening
From 9–11 and JFK to the Masons and the New World Order — why are there so many con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and what should we do with them?

Wednes­day 19th Sep­tem­ber — 7.30pm — 9pm
Indy­media Info Night
The Liv­er­pool Indy­media team present films and dis­cus­sion intro­duc­ing Indy­media and let­ting you know how to get the best out of the site.

Thurs­day 20th Sep­tem­ber — 7.30pm — 10pm
Intro­duc­tion to Anar­chism
Mersey­side Anar­chist Group presents speak­ers and dis­cus­sion on the pol­i­tics and his­to­ry of anar­chism. With speak­ers from the Anar­chist Fed­er­a­tion. (fly­er)

Fri­day 21st Sep­tem­ber — 7.30pm — 10pm
The Boy Who Dropped an Egg on the World — A Play
Jack­’s Hard Rub the­atre com­pa­ny present writer/director Julian Bond’s pow­er­ful anti-war pro­duc­tion.

Sat­ur­day 22nd Sep­tem­ber — 7.30pm till late
School Stu­dents Against War — Ben­e­fit Night
Live music and DJs, good com­pa­ny and danc­ing to ben­e­fit School Stu­dents Against War.

Sun­day 23rd Sep­tem­ber — 7pm — 11pm
Free Screen — Film Night
The first of our reg­u­lar film nights. Show­ing Osama — an Afghan film about life under the Tal­iban and Walk­out — a dra­ma based on anti racist school strug­gles in 60s LA.

Next To Nowhere
http://www.liverpoolsocialcentre.org/

Yorkshire Forward taught something about flooding by local people

3rd Sep­tem­ber — York­shire For­ward, the Region­al Devel­op­ment Agency which has become famous for starv­ing grass-roots com­mu­ni­ty intia­tives of funds whilst giv­ing mil­lions to big busi­ness, held an out­ra­geous “Flood Sum­mit” at Finnin­ley air­port today. Local peo­ple vis­it­ed with pop-up tents and ban­ners, includ­ing one which read “fly­ing costs the earth”. The inten­tion was to leaflet the con­fer­ence’s par­tic­i­pants and hold alter­na­tive work­shops high­light­ing the link between avi­a­tion growth and wors­en­ing cli­mate change.

Yorkshire Forward climate protest3rd Sep­tem­ber — York­shire For­ward, the Region­al Devel­op­ment Agency which has become famous for starv­ing grass-roots com­mu­ni­ty intia­tives of funds whilst giv­ing mil­lions to big busi­ness, held an out­ra­geous “Flood Sum­mit” at Finnin­ley air­port today. Local peo­ple vis­it­ed with pop-up tents and ban­ners, includ­ing one which read “fly­ing costs the earth”. The inten­tion was to leaflet the con­fer­ence’s par­tic­i­pants and hold alter­na­tive work­shops high­light­ing the link between avi­a­tion growth and wors­en­ing cli­mate change.

The con­fer­ence was intend­ed as a bla­tant pat on the back for York­shire For­ward’s response to the recent floods. The choice of venue, Finning­ley “Robin Hood” air­port near Don­cast­er, show just how out of touch with real­i­ty these half-wits are. Finning­ley is already a major con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change, and also the recip­i­ent of over £5 mil­lion of York­shire For­ward mon­ey for a new “Air Acad­e­my”. Their sup­port for this crim­i­nal organ­i­sa­tion is like­ly to get much big­ger — they want to put around £20 mil­lion into a new access road!

The stat­ed aim of the sum­mit was billed as a chance “for York­shire For­ward to learn lessons from the floods” and it was attend­ed by promi­nent cli­mate crim­i­nals includ­ing John Hut­ton, Sec­re­tary of State for Busi­ness and Steven Timms, Min­is­ter for Com­pet­i­tive­ness. The campers mes­sage was clear; these blink­ered morons are bad­ly miss­ing the point — con­cen­trat­ing sole­ly on emer­gency respons­es, rather than on the pol­i­cy changes need­ed to pre­vent cli­mate change, is already hav­ing dev­as­tat­ing effects on York­shire!

The lessons from the York­shire flood­ing are clear – emis­sions from avi­a­tion must be includ­ed in the cli­mate bill and tax breaks and pub­lic sub­si­dies giv­en to the crim­i­nal air­port indus­try must cease.

The police, as usu­al, showed that they are enthu­si­as­tic sup­port­ers of cli­mate crime, and there were three arrests — two for leaflet­ing and one for break­ing bail con­di­tions that only apply to Heathrow! Maybe to a con­sta­ble, all air­ports look the same?

legal update — The two peo­ple arrest­ed for leaflet­ing have yet to be charged, but have been released on bail. The police’s deci­sion to arrest peo­ple for aggra­vat­ed tres­pass when their only “crime” was qui­et­ly leaflet­ing the par­tic­i­pants of a meet­ing is clear evi­dence that they are hap­py to act as the polit­i­cal enforcers for the rich and pow­er­ful as they fly us all to obliv­ion in the name of prof­it. The per­son arrest­ed for breach­ing bail con­di­tions was released with­out charge when a plod with a brain was final­ly found and the actu­al con­di­tions looked at rather than guessed at.

Despite loss of lib­er­ty, the action was well worth it, tak­ing up much of the pub­lic­i­ty for the event with the truth about cli­mate change, rather than the planned estab­lish­ment lies.

As the final act of polit­i­cal repres­sion, the par­tic­i­pants were told, on cam­era, by a police inspec­tor, that if they ever crossed a par­tic­u­lar round­about again they would be arrest­ed for aggra­vat­ed tres­pass!

The police state is here.

2007: indigenous resistance to Shell in BC, Anti-Canada Day, & ‘In Support of Sabotage’

Methane dis­pute reignites in B.C.
August 22, 2007

British Columbia shell blockadeMethane dis­pute reignites in B.C.
August 22, 2007

A group of pro­test­ers, includ­ing mem­bers of the Tahltan and Iskut Indi­an bands, blocked a road in north­west­ern British Colum­bia yes­ter­day, pre­vent­ing Roy­al Dutch Shell PLC crews from head­ing into a con­test­ed region to do road repair work and reignit­ing a debate over coal bed methane explo­ration in the area.
…
Oppo­nents says coal bed methane projects could pol­lute sur­face and ground water, threat­en fish and wildlife habi­tat, and dis­rupt a remote wilder­ness land­scape. Coal bed methane is nat­ur­al gas found in coal seams. B.C. cur­rent­ly does not have any coal bed methane pro­duc­tion, but the province has voiced sup­port for coal bed gas devel­op­ment.
…
In 2005, 13 peo­ple were arrest­ed at a block­ade at the same site that tar­get­ed For­tune Min­er­als Ltd., an Ontario-based com­pa­ny that has a coal project in the region.

—-

Natives Resist bannerAnti-Cana­da Day in Van­cou­ver
INDIGENOUS DAY OF ACTION AND RESISTANCE

On July 1st 2007, over 200 Indige­nous women, chil­dren, Elders and men (and non-native sup­port­ers) took the streets and the train tracks on a march and block­ade to mark their resis­tance to Cana­da as an oppres­sive force against their peo­ple. The march began at Grand­view Park and pro­ceed­ed down Com­mer­cial Dri­ve to Ven­ables Street where the CN rail lines were occu­pied and blocked for over an hour.

—-

Guelph, Ontario: In sup­port of sab­o­tage, not the AFN

[Con­tributed anony­mous­ly to news.infoshop.org]

June 29th: Today a rail block­ade was set up in Guelph Ontario, but it failed. This was due to a num­ber of com­pli­ca­tions, either way no trains were stopped.

Nev­er­the­less, this is the kind of dis­rup­tion that we strive to cre­ate every day, regard­less of whether it has been called for by sell­out col­lab­o­ra­tors, indi­vid­u­als or sim­ply for our own joy.

We want to make it clear that we do not sup­port the AFN; the ends that they seek through bar­gain­ing with the gov­ern­ment, that is respon­si­ble for the sys­tem­at­ic oppres­sion and exploita­tion of Native peo­ple, our land base, and pret­ty much every liv­ing thing exist­ing on the remain­der of this plan­et.

It is impor­tant to act at every oppor­tu­ni­ty we get to build momen­tum and com­mu­ni­ty, in order to chal­lenge the pow­ers of the State and Cap­i­tal­ism that are inces­sant­ly assault­ing our lives.

We do not act on sim­plis­tic calls to action (for action’s sake), but use these chances to coor­di­nate our efforts and add to the momen­tum we are build­ing with oth­ers, act­ing togeth­er on our desires to rede­fine the con­di­tions under which we live. We do this for our­selves and our allies, not for the dis­em­pow­er­ing polit­i­cal aims of the AFN.

It inspires us to see com­mu­ni­ties and indi­vid­u­als com­ming togeth­er, employ­ing direct action tac­tics in a coor­di­nat­ed day of dis­rup­tion, and acknowl­edge that inac­tion is to aban­don our allies in today’s actions. Unlike the AFN, we sup­port all acts of sab­o­tage that were cre­at­ed today and con­tin­ue to inspire us in our own bat­tles.
To the bar­ri­cades and into the night friends!

Occupation of Shell’s proposed refinery site at Bellanaboy & 14 Sept day of action

On Mon­day 27th August 20 peo­ple occu­pied Shel­l’s pro­posed refin­ery site at Bel­lan­aboy, Coun­ty Mayo

After sev­er­al weeks of hol­i­day, work has recom­menced at the pro­posed refin­ery site at Bel­lan­aboy. Main­tain­ing the increased pres­sure that had been applied to Shell in the weeks before the hol­i­day peri­od, at around 8.30am this morn­ing around 20 peo­ple occu­pied the site. The pro­tes­tors bypassed secu­ri­ty and walked in through the main gate onto the site beside a lor­ry that was enter­ing. The group made their way to the main area where work was tak­ing place. Short­ly after their arrival all work on the site stopped. The pro­tes­tors took the site occu­pa­tion as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to inves­ti­gate claims that con­crete and steel that had been used in the ear­ly stages of con­struc­tion was sub­stan­dard. Upon ques­tion­ing (on cam­era) a senior work­er admit­ted that there were prob­lems with the qual­i­ty of mate­ri­als used in the foun­da­tions. Aside from prob­lems with a few over offi­cious secu­ri­ty and more senior work­ers, inter­ac­tion with peo­ple work­ing on site was ami­able and pro­vid­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty for infor­ma­tion shar­ing. After about half an hour three Gar­dai arrived. Their pres­ence was of lit­tle con­se­quence until work on site recom­menced at around 11.30. At this point, when some peo­ple attempt­ed to block trucks from mov­ing, the Gar­dai assault­ed a female pro­tes­tor, result­ing in cuts on her hands. They also attempt­ed to bun­dle anoth­er pro­tes­tor into a Gar­da car even though he had not been arrest­ed. At around 11.45 the pro­tes­tors made a tac­ti­cal deci­sion to leave the site en masse. They joined 20 oth­ers who were wait­ing out­side. A short while lat­er, when a new truck attempt­ed to enter site, the pro­tes­tors stopped its entry. The site was block­ad­ed until the Gar­daí returned half an hour lat­er. The day was wide­ly viewed as a suc­cess.

On Mon­day 27th August 20 peo­ple occu­pied Shel­l’s pro­posed refin­ery site at Bel­lan­aboy, Coun­ty Mayo

After sev­er­al weeks of hol­i­day, work has recom­menced at the pro­posed refin­ery site at Bel­lan­aboy. Main­tain­ing the increased pres­sure that had been applied to Shell in the weeks before the hol­i­day peri­od, at around 8.30am this morn­ing around 20 peo­ple occu­pied the site. The pro­tes­tors bypassed secu­ri­ty and walked in through the main gate onto the site beside a lor­ry that was enter­ing. The group made their way to the main area where work was tak­ing place. Short­ly after their arrival all work on the site stopped. The pro­tes­tors took the site occu­pa­tion as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to inves­ti­gate claims that con­crete and steel that had been used in the ear­ly stages of con­struc­tion was sub­stan­dard. Upon ques­tion­ing (on cam­era) a senior work­er admit­ted that there were prob­lems with the qual­i­ty of mate­ri­als used in the foun­da­tions. Aside from prob­lems with a few over offi­cious secu­ri­ty and more senior work­ers, inter­ac­tion with peo­ple work­ing on site was ami­able and pro­vid­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty for infor­ma­tion shar­ing. After about half an hour three Gar­dai arrived. Their pres­ence was of lit­tle con­se­quence until work on site recom­menced at around 11.30. At this point, when some peo­ple attempt­ed to block trucks from mov­ing, the Gar­dai assault­ed a female pro­tes­tor, result­ing in cuts on her hands. They also attempt­ed to bun­dle anoth­er pro­tes­tor into a Gar­da car even though he had not been arrest­ed. At around 11.45 the pro­tes­tors made a tac­ti­cal deci­sion to leave the site en masse. They joined 20 oth­ers who were wait­ing out­side. A short while lat­er, when a new truck attempt­ed to enter site, the pro­tes­tors stopped its entry. The site was block­ad­ed until the Gar­daí returned half an hour lat­er. The day was wide­ly viewed as a suc­cess.
Resis­tance con­tin­ues at Bel­lan­aboy!

Join the nation­al day of action on the 14th Sep­tem­ber

A nation­al mobil­i­sa­tion for a mass sit­down protest at the refin­ery at Bel­lan­aboy on the morn­ing of Fri­day 14 Sep­tem­ber.

Mass action, sit down block­ade: Sep­tem­ber 14th. Acco­mo­da­tion can be pro­vid­ed. Call 0851141170. If you can’t make it to Mayo, sol­i­dar­i­ty actions are also being called for…

Camberwell Squatted Centre Evicted 30–08-07

Just to let you know that the Cam­ber­well Squat­ted Cen­tre was evict­ed unex­pect­ed­ly this morn­ing by a van load of High Court bailiffs and 2 van loads of police, who climbed in to the build­ing at 4.30am and sur­prised the occu­pants. Helped by the South­wark Coun­cil scaf­fold­ing which gave them a leg up into the place.

Camberwell squat signJust to let you know that the Cam­ber­well Squat­ted Cen­tre was evict­ed unex­pect­ed­ly this morn­ing by a van load of High Court bailiffs and 2 van loads of police, who climbed in to the build­ing at 4.30am and sur­prised the occu­pants. Helped by the South­wark Coun­cil scaf­fold­ing which gave them a leg up into the place.

They gave us a few hours to move our stuff out, which we did, calm­ly. Refus­ing to be has­sled, sit­ting down now and again to have a rest and a cof­fee under the itchy eyes of the bailiffs. We took out all the res­i­dents stuff plus most of the gear we had put into the place to make it work­able and live­able — the plumb­ing, the locks, cook­ers, plates, pans, stereo etc. Some stuff we had to leave but very lit­tle.

Although we were caught on the hop, we manged to respond prac­ti­cal­ly and calm­ly, not break­ing down or los­ing it… Despite our attach­ment to the build­ing, our invest­ment of hard work and emo­tion, the feel­ings that have grown up through the events we have put on and the col­lec­tive expe­ri­ence we have had keep­ing the Squat Cen­tre going.

SO WHAT NOW?

Imme­di­ate­ly we are call­ing a meet­ing for Fri­day 31st August at 8pm, at 56a Info Shop, 56 Cramp­ton St, Lon­don SE17, to dis­cuss our next move: how we respond to the evic­tion, rehous­ing of res­i­dents, and the pos­si­bil­i­ties for our next move, as a group, a new build­ing?.… We would wel­come any­one who has been involved or attend­ed events to come down and help us plan what hap­pens now. It was your space as well!

Some of the events that have been planned for the next few weeks at the Squat may well hap­pen else­where, but this will be decid­ed at the meet­ing.

The most impor­tant thing to keep in mind here is — this is not the end. One build­ing may have been tak­en back by the prof­i­teer­ing scum who live off our backs… But the ideas, projects, plans, col­lec­tive ways of work­ing togeth­er for our­selves, con­tin­ue, whether it is in a new build­ing, or in oth­er ways… The inspi­ra­tion we have had from meet­ing so many peo­ple, from Cam­ber­well and beyond, will car­ry on and bear fruit in unex­pect­ed places.

BLACK FROG — YOU CAN’T TOUCH US!

Attempted Edinburgh Squat

Artists and activists squat­ted the old art col­lege on the grass­mar­ket at the week­end to open it up as a free arts space for the fes­ti­val and a com­mu­ni­ty resource cen­tre, and to con­test the squat­ting laws in Scot­land.

Artists and activists squat­ted the old art col­lege on the grass­mar­ket at the week­end to open it up as a free arts space for the fes­ti­val and a com­mu­ni­ty resource cen­tre, and to con­test the squat­ting laws in Scot­land.

The fol­low­ing is from an inter­view with one of the squat­ters who wish­es to remain anony­mous.

A few days before the evic­tion 18 peo­ple entered the build­ing and began work mak­ing it safe and clean, and start­ing paint­ing.

The squat­ters gained the atten­tion of the police due to clean­ers that still used the build­ing, who dis­cov­ered them and called the police.

Police, num­ber­ing approx­i­mate­ly 20, failed to gain entry to the well bar­ri­cad­ed main entrance, how­ev­er they broke through the side door that had yet to be rein­forced. One man had chained him­self to the door to pre­vent the police enter­ing, he removed him­self sec­onds before the door was bro­ken down. He was thrown to the floor and hand­cuffed behind his back.

The police shout­ed “lay your brush­es down” to those who were paint­ing at the time of the raid, as they began aggres­sive­ly push­ing peo­ple into a line against the wall. The details (names, address­es) of the squat­ters were tak­en sev­er­al times, some of them were hand­cuffed and oth­ers not, and they were allowed ton drink alco­hol by some offi­cers but at oth­er times this was pro­hib­it­ed. The police were appar­ent­ly very dis­or­gan­ised. The artists and activists were held in the build­ing for approx­i­mate­ly 3 hours.

They were all tak­en to St Leonards police sta­tion for ques­tion­ing and to have their DNA, fin­ger­prints and pho­tographs tak­en for the per­ma­nent bio­met­ric data­base. They were inter­viewed and ques­tioned specif­i­cal­ly about who their leader was, what group they belonged to and if they were part of or had knowl­edge of ‘the Black Bloc’.

All of the indi­vid­u­als were charged with aggra­vat­ed tres­pass and those who had obvi­ous­ly been paint­ing were charged with mali­cious mis­chief, and have all been bailed except one man who had out­stand­ing war­rants for oth­er protests. They are all due in court on the 20th of Sep­tem­ber.

Movimento Verde Eufémia mows first GM Field in South Portugal

On the 17th of August the “Movi­men­to Verde Eufémia” went into action of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, tar­get­ing the first trans­genic field in the Algarve GMO Free Zone in South Por­tu­gal. 65 mow­ers entered the field and were able to mow a hectare of GM corn in less than 20 min­utes. The action received sup­port from a parade of an extra 60 peo­ple.

Portugal GM decontamination 1Portugal GM decontamination 2On the 17th of August the “Movi­men­to Verde Eufémia” went into action of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, tar­get­ing the first trans­genic field in the Algarve GMO Free Zone in South Por­tu­gal. 65 mow­ers entered the field and were able to mow a hectare of GM corn in less than 20 min­utes. The action received sup­port from a parade of an extra 60 peo­ple.

POLITICAL BACKGROUND
This year the first GMO field ever has been plant­ed in the Algarve Region in Por­tu­gal. Already years before the plant­i­ng of his GM corn there has been strong oppo­si­tion from civ­il soci­ety against the cul­ti­va­tion of GMOs in the Algarve. This includes social and envi­ron­men­tal organ­i­sa­tions, farm­ers and a pub­lic opin­ion who is in gen­er­al against the cul­ti­va­tion and con­sump­tion of GM crops. Also from the polit­i­cal field oppo­si­tion was made. As a result the Algarve was the first GMO free zone in Por­tu­gal declared by the Jun­ta Met­ro­pol­i­tana do Algarve already in 2004. On the lev­el of the munic­i­pal­i­ties over time motions have been passed reject­ing the cul­ti­va­tion of GM crops on their ter­ri­to­ry.

Despite the strong oppo­si­tion with­in lay­ers of civ­il soci­ety and from local author­i­ties against GMOs the poli­cies of the Por­tuguese Gov­ern­ment and the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion con­stant­ly dis­re­spect the moral and demo­c­ra­t­ic right of those oppos­ing actors to ban GMOs from their fields and their plates.

MOVIMENTO VERDE EUFEMIA
For rea­sons described in the pre­vi­ous para­graph, an infor­mal group of peas­ants, ecol­o­gists and
con­cerned cit­i­zens have gath­ered to take direct action with the aim to re-estab­lish the demo­c­ra­t­ic, moral and eco­log­i­cal order. The move­ment that we are now start­ing will go under the name “Movi­men­to Verde Eufémia”, in homage to the peas­ant strug­gle against the for­mer por­tuguese fas­cist regime.

The strug­gle of Cate­ri­na Eufémia and the peas­ant move­ment of which she was part aimed at defend­ing the rights and the well-being of peas­ant com­mu­ni­ties. Our move­ment will con­tin­ue this strug­gle in the con­text of new appear­ing threats, name­ly the agro-biotech­nol­o­gy sec­tor and their pow­er­ful lob­by.

THE ACTION
The direct action involved 65 mow­ers, destroy­ing 1 hectare of the 50 hectare GM corn field in less than 20 min­utes around mid­day. The activists took the well con­sid­ered risk to announce the action before­hand in the media. This was done for rea­sons of receiv­ing the high­est media cov­er­age for the largest direct action since the post rev­o­lu­tion­ary peri­od in Por­tu­gal. How­ev­er, the activists were aware of risks of com­pro­mise that this deci­sion would bring along.

After 10 min­utes, the own­er and his col­leagues noticed the action. About 8 farm­ers attacked the group of mow­ers using phys­i­cal vio­lence. The mow­ers took a defen­sive stand by using their high­er num­ber but did not use vio­lence in return. One farmer fired shots from an alarm pis­tol and the activists were threat­ened with poi­son sprayers. One police patrol arrived short­ly after. All mow­ers abort­ed the action after 20 min­utes and moved on the pub­lic road to mix up in the parade. The 10 police offi­cers that were in the area could not do any­thing else but reg­u­lat­ing the traf­fic for the parade then count­ing more than 120 peo­ple, mov­ing towards the near­est vil­lage of Poço Bar­reto. 3 iden­ti­fi­ca­tions were made by the police, this involved the police speak­ers and the media spokesper­son. The whole group was picked up by busses and the action end­ed in all order.

Know­ing that the activist were hit­ting the prop­er­ty of a farmer, even though it was a big one they announced that they would pro­vide com­pen­sa­tion for the dam­age inflict­ed. In the end the activists intend­ed no harm towards the farmer him­self who for one or anoth­er rea­son choose to cul­ti­vate GM crops. The activists pro­posed that they would pro­vide the farmer with organ­ic seeds for the sur­face (50 hectares) which is cur­rent­ly being plant­ed with GM corn.

THE AFTERMATH
Now, five days after the action, the name Movi­men­to Verde Eufemia is still front­page news. All tele­vi­sion sta­tions and radio sta­tions give con­tin­u­ous updates on the case. Major polit­i­cal par­ty lead­ers are now involved in the debate. The Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture and the Min­is­ter of Inter­nal Admin­is­tra­tion are main actors in the debate while the Pres­i­dent has com­ment­ed on the issue as well on tele­vi­sion.

The dis­course from the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture is one that main­ly evolves around state­ments con­firm­ing sup­port towards the farmer in the legal pros­e­cu­tion of the activists and point­ing out that the activists hit a ‘poor farmer’ and they should be pun­ished for tres­pass­ing and destruc­tion of pri­vate prop­er­ty. An esti­ma­tion from the Min­istry after the min­is­ter vis­it­ed the field under huge media atten­tion, he came to the con­clu­sion that the dam­age counts up to around 4000 euros. How­ev­er the Order of Lawyers issued a press release yes­ter­day stat­ing that that deliv­ery of legal finan­cial sup­port to from the min­istry would be an ille­gal act as it would mean gov­ern­men­tal inter­fer­ence in a civ­il court case. As a reply to that the min­istry back off stat­ing that ‘obvi­ous­ly’ they meant to sup­port the farmer win the paper work and in the devel­op­ment of his legal dis­course in the court. Next to that, the min­is­ter of agri­cul­ture takes a com­plete­ly out­bal­anced pro-GMO posi­tion, say­ing that: “There is no prob­lem, this is sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly proven”. This can be con­sid­ered as a com­plete invalid state­ment since the sci­en­tif­ic world is at least very divid­ed on the mat­ter of GMOs.

The dis­course of the Min­istry of Inter­nal Admin­stra­tion, being the head of police, devel­ops main­ly around the goal to crim­i­nal­ize Movi­men­to Verde Eufemia and its last action. On one of the main tele­vi­sion sta­tions in a news stu­dio inter­view he labelled the action as ‘soft’ eco ter­ror­ism. The dis­course of the min­is­ter receives addi­tion­al­ly a lot of sup­port from the Pres­i­dent.

How­ev­er it is not all bad news. Now that the media have almost exhaust­ed all vari­a­tions on head titles stretch­ing over two pages, they also start to go more in debt, cov­er­ing the dif­fer­ent opin­ions and posi­tion on GMOs and explain for exam­ple the sta­tus of GMO Free Zones. Through their press releas­es, MVE has invit­ed all asso­ci­a­tions in Por­tu­gal to use the media space cre­at­ed to voice their argu­ments against GMOs. In a reac­tion to that, some main actors in the GMO debate, who ini­tial­ly dis­tanced them­selves from the action, and still do, they have now tak­en up the oppor­tu­ni­ty to voice their con­cerns on GMOs. For that rea­son and oth­er reac­tions that the action has pro­voked from the polit­i­cal field the MVE has expressed their con­tent see­ing that their action has result­ed in an open­ing of the debate on GMOs

INVESTIGATION
Now, for the activists involved in the action it is clear that they should be very care­ful in their cur­rent steps. The min­is­ter of Inter­nal Admin­is­tra­tion him­self is, as announced in the media, involved in the coor­di­na­tion of the inves­ti­ga­tion car­ried out by the Infor­ma­tion and Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice (SIS) and the Police Jus­tice Depart­ment (PJ). Their aim is to uncov­er the net­works of activists that were involved in the action in order to run legal pros­e­cu­tion.

KNOW MORE
MVE has cur­rent­ly a blow where you can fol­low up on the devel­op­ment of the case. The link is http://eufemia.ecobytes.net/

ARGUMENTS AGAINST GMOs
The argu­ments against GMOs are sit­u­at­ed on dif­fer­ent lev­els. For the con­sumer, the few inde­pen­dent stud­ies that were car­ried out, indi­cate that they can induce aller­gic reac­tions, can­cer and oth­er long term neg­a­tive effects, which have not been stud­ied pro­found­ly yet. Intro­duc­ing GM crops in agri­cul­ture pro­duces effects that are irre­versible. The mod­i­fied genes quick­ly start appear­ing in oth­er crops, on oth­er field and in oth­er species, a process which is impos­si­ble to pre­vent. Besides that the cul­ti­va­tion of trans­genic may induce cumu­la­tive effects, rang­ing from the appear­ance of weed resis­tant to her­bi­cides and insects resis­tant to insec­ti­cides until the death of organ­isms that do not form any dan­ger to the agri­cul­tur­al crops. These effects go along with the appear­ance of mul­ti­ple forms of eco­log­i­cal insta­bil­i­ties. The major study about the effects of trans­genic in the envi­ron­ment was pub­lished by the British gov­ern­ment in 2003. It came to the con­clu­sion that cul­ti­vat­ing GMOs is a lot worse to wild life than con­ven­tion­al agri­cul­ture. North-Amer­i­can farm­ers that chose to cul­ti­vate GMOs already under­stood the dis­ad­van­tages: high­er expens­es on seeds, more con­sump­tion of pes­ti­cides, clos­ing inter­na­tion­al (and even local) mar­kets, prod­ucts that are less prof­itable because they are GMOs. Because of genet­ic con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, bio­log­i­cal farm­ers are forced the emi­grate or change pro­fes­sion. Insur­ance com­pa­nies are not will­ing to secure trans­genic cul­tures because of the high risks involved. Lloyds, one of the major insur­ance com­pa­nies allo­cat­ed GMOs in the same finan­cial risk lev­el as acts of ter­ror­ism. The use of GMOs implies that farm­ers are for­bid­den to use sec­ond gen­er­a­tion seeds pro­duced by their own crop. This is an asser­tion for the seed sell­ing com­pa­nies to con­tin­ue their busi­ness the next year.
Already tens of farm­ers in the US and Cana­da have already been con­vict­ed in tri­bunal, hav­ing used sec­ond gen­er­a­tion seeds with­out autho­riza­tion.

Movi­men­to Verde Eufemia
http://eufemia.ecobytes.net/