Dozens of Swampys desperately needed to save Rospuda Valley, Poland

Peo­ple who will defend the val­ley are need­ed. Do not leave Pol­ish eco-war­riors alone. Pol­ish ultra­catholic gov­ern­ment is build­ing a road through primeval for­est. An inquiry into the prepa­ra­tion of this invest­ment shows that the deci­son process was unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic, a vari­ant called Chodor­ki vari­ant of the pro­posed bypass that was avoid­ing the val­ley alto­geth­er was exclud­ed from the appraisal pro­ce­dure, as well as the East­ern vari­ant, which was the cheap­est.

Rospuda 1Rospuda 2Rospuda 3Peo­ple who will defend the val­ley are need­ed. Do not leave Pol­ish eco-war­riors alone. Pol­ish ultra­catholic gov­ern­ment is build­ing a road through primeval for­est. An inquiry into the prepa­ra­tion of this invest­ment shows that the deci­son process was unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic, a vari­ant called Chodor­ki vari­ant of the pro­posed bypass that was avoid­ing the val­ley alto­geth­er was exclud­ed from the appraisal pro­ce­dure, as well as the East­ern vari­ant, which was the cheap­est.

Swampys in all qual­i­ties and quan­ti­ties are need­ed in Poland to stop, or slow down the inwest­ment, and to cre­ate the much need­ed media cov­er­age of this prob­lem. As by now, no one of the nation­al media report­ing on the prob­lem have not arrived to the core of the prob­lem, that is the manip­u­la­tions of the author­i­ties with the choice of the vari­ants and manip­u­lat­ed trans­port invest­ment appraisal process. The gov­ern­ment-owned TVP (kind of Pol­ish BBC, alas ultra­catholic and neona­tion­al­is­tic) is so biased when report­ing on the issue, that it des­pereat­ed­ly tries to show ecol­o­gists as men­tal­ly ill peo­ple that pos­sess even no capa­bil­i­ty to speak in their own name.

Here are the direc­tions to Rospu­da Val­ley.

The Val­ley is here:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ie=UTF8&z=12&ll=53.896045,22.934303&spn=0.146468,0.3162&om=1

The camp is over the riv­er. Easy to find if arrived to Augustów no lat­er than in the mid-day as it might be 4 hours walk from the town.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rospuda

From Kau­nas to Augustów you might take a bus or a train. There is one train con­nec­tion dai­ly from Kau­nas to Augustów, the train departs at 13:01 with change in Ses­tokai and arrives at 15:56. The sched­ules (also con­nec­tions from oth­er Euro­pean cities to Augustów) are here:

http://rozklad.pkp.pl/bin/query.exe/en?

Nights are cold. Please check the weath­er fore­cast before depart­ing. Get ready for more than minus 10 degree in the night.

plea for inter­na­tion­al sup­port and pub­lic­i­ty, let every­one you know, know. peo­ple need­ed to sup­port camp with peo­ple pow­er. if you plan to go to rospu­da from u.k in mid march, con­tact piotr-dziedzice@gmail.com.

Rospu­da Protest Camp — Films for view­ing

Use the links below to watch the most recent films from the Rospu­da Protest Camp. This will give you an idea of the con­di­tions and tem­per­a­tures being endured by the activists. Dia­logue is in Pol­ish lan­guage, but the images speak for them­selves:

The camp:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaZiKfyRLdM&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ_fWfQ2mjo&NR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44IySFbtmGc&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW41XY4eofQ&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZS41nBvZcM&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSVlnNVb6jM&mode=related&search=

Olecko town feeds the pro­test­ers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mQJeoAdtJo&mode=related&search=

Police Critical of Mass (edinburgh)

23 Feb 2007
A crit­i­cal mass of over 40 cyclists con­verged this Fri­day on Edin­burgh city cen­tre. After meet­ing between the art gal­leries near the mound they under­took a live­ly cycle ride, last­ing near­ly two hours through the town.

23 Feb 2007
A crit­i­cal mass of over 40 cyclists con­verged this Fri­day on Edin­burgh city cen­tre. After meet­ing between the art gal­leries near the mound they under­took a live­ly cycle ride, last­ing near­ly two hours through the town.
Click on image for a larg­er ver­sion

The mass had a gen­er­al­ly uncom­pro­mis­ing atti­tude to traf­fic, cork­ing lanes at red lights to keep the mass togeth­er, ensur­ing the event was safe and fun for all involved.

Pound­ing tech­no music from the sound sys­tem set a real­ly good mood for the cycle. There was a 25Watt mega­phone-soundsys­tem with some uplift­ing tunes from Aphex twin, Square­push­er, a bit apoc­olyp­tic orches­tral. One of the par­tic­i­pants said “The music was quite amaz­ing, it brought a whole dif­fer­ent atmos­phere to the ride. By chang­ing the dai­ly real­i­ty of peo­ple, with cars blocked and silent bikes rid­ing to the music that fill­ing the whole street, there is a vision of what is pos­si­ble. I think crit­i­cal mass is a rev­o­lu­tion­ary moment.”

Four police motor­cy­cles arrived halfway through the ride, inter­cept­ing the pro­ces­sion out­side the mosque near Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty. Sev­er­al indi­vid­u­als were pulled to one side and warned that their lights were not legal. Despite forty cyclists being quite con­spic­u­ous and eas­i­ly observ­able by motorists, they com­plained that sev­er­al par­tic­i­pants in the crit­i­cal mass were break­ing the law. Appar­ent­ly flash­ing red lights are not ade­quate­ly safe and vis­i­ble, despite forty peo­ple with flash­ing red lights look­ing much like an xmas par­ty. The name and address of one Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent was tak­en, but no-one was arrest­ed or for­mal­ly cau­tioned, although they were warned that they may face an on the spot fine if caught again with­out legal lights. Despite this, the four police motor­cy­clists left the mass and no police were seen again after this unnec­es­sary con­fronta­tion.

An Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty anthro­pol­o­gy stu­dent who was accost­ed by the a police motor­cy­clists com­ment­ed: “the prob­lems they had with me were rea­son­able, i was cycling with­out any lights, they were just enforc­ing the law, I did­nt go home when warned and was going slow on the inside lane and par­tial­ly obstruct­ing the police motor­cy­cles”

One of the par­tic­i­pants, an unem­ployed man liv­ing in Lei­th said: “the police were being antag­o­nis­tic. So what if some of us had flash­ing red lights, and did not have the legal­ly nec­es­sary white lights on the front of our bikes, haven’t they got bet­ter things to do? I think they just hate it when a bunch of peo­ple get togeth­er in a group to do some­thing fun or rad­i­cal and they cant con­trol or dom­i­nate the sit­u­a­tion. Despite the police, it was the best crit­i­cal mass i have been on, good peo­ple and good atmos­phere.”

A com­put­er pro­gram­mer from near the mead­ows said “I thought it went just dandi­ly, it was good that we went slow­ly and blocked the whole road and there was noth­ing they [the police] could do about it because we were well with­in the law.”

“I’m going to dress up like a fuck­ing christ­mas tree for the next crit­i­cal mass, then they cant com­plain!” exclaimed one cyclist.

The vast major­i­ty of those in the mass were not intim­i­dat­ed by the police and con­tin­ued with the crit­i­cal mass demon­stra­tion, con­tin­u­ing along George St., and enjoyed cycling around the round­abouts and along the pic­turesque cob­bled streets.

Edin­burgh’s crit­i­cal mass meets at 5.30pm on the last Fri­day of every month, out­side the art gallery at the foot of the mound, It appears to be grow­ing in num­bers and enthu­si­asm as the warmer and lighter sea­sons approach.

Southend: Hundreds gather to oppose controversial F5 road widening

As promised by local cam­paign­ers, and expect­ed by the wider pub­lic, hun­dreds of local peo­ple con­verged upon Southend Civic Cen­tre this evening for the ‘Parkral­ly’, to oppose con­tro­ver­sial plans to widen the A127/A1159 Pri­o­ry Cres­cent, or ‘scheme F5’ as it has come to be known.
The event fol­lows the recent ‘storm­ing’ of the British Archae­o­log­i­cal Awards cel­e­bra­tion at Prit­tlewell Pri­o­ry in January(1), when dozens of local res­i­dents dis­rupt­ed an invite only ‘wine and cheese’ event held for local dig­ni­taries, in cel­e­bra­tion of the dis­cov­ery of the East Sax­on king’s bur­ial, which would be destroyed, should the £25m road scheme get the go ahead.

As promised by local cam­paign­ers, and expect­ed by the wider pub­lic, hun­dreds of local peo­ple con­verged upon Southend Civic Cen­tre this evening for the ‘Parkral­ly’, to oppose con­tro­ver­sial plans to widen the A127/A1159 Pri­o­ry Cres­cent, or ‘scheme F5’ as it has come to be known.
The event fol­lows the recent ‘storm­ing’ of the British Archae­o­log­i­cal Awards cel­e­bra­tion at Prit­tlewell Pri­o­ry in January(1), when dozens of local res­i­dents dis­rupt­ed an invite only ‘wine and cheese’ event held for local dig­ni­taries, in cel­e­bra­tion of the dis­cov­ery of the East Sax­on king’s bur­ial, which would be destroyed, should the £25m road scheme get the go ahead.

Feel­ings con­tin­ue to run high, with major­i­ty pub­lic oppo­si­tion to the scheme repeat­ed­ly being shown by local groups, and press, six years into the cam­paign to stop the road.
Speak­ing from the steps of the Civic Cen­tre, where a meet­ing of the full Coun­cil was tak­ing place inside, cam­paign­er and local res­i­dent Shaun Qureshi said, ‘Southend Bor­ough Coun­cil are either some­how still igno­rant of the fact that so many peo­ple con­tin­ue to demon­strate, or they are arro­gant enough to feel that they can sim­ply push us aside.
‘They have only time and silence on their side, and the com­mon­ly held mis­con­cep­tion that the scheme has already been canned by the Depart­ment for Trans­port, who would be required to pro­vide the fund­ing. The feel­ing that the scheme will not now go ahead is due to the delay in any­one in author­i­ty either tak­ing any respon­si­bil­i­ty, or com­ing to a deci­sion on the issue.
‘How­ev­er, recent events have proven that despite this, sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of the local pub­lic can still be mobilised to take action, that we do have major­i­ty sup­port, and should the go-ahead be giv­en, that there will be out­rage across the town if attempts are made to evict Camp Bling, con­crete over the bur­ial or to destroy yet anoth­er green space.’(2)
A deci­sion to fund the road widen­ing has been await­ed from the DfT since a local Pub­lic Inquiry took place in March 2004. Infor­ma­tion from the East of Eng­land Region­al Part­ner­ship Group shows that costs have now risen to an esti­mat­ed £25m for the 870 metre length of car­riage­way (3), mak­ing it poten­tial­ly, ‘The most expen­sive stretch of road in the world.’(4)
—————————————————————-
ENDS.

NOTES TO EDITORS:
1 British Archae­o­log­i­cal Awards 2006:
www.britarch.ac.uk/awards/winners2006.html
2 Camp Bling web­site: www.savepriorypark.org
3 East of Eng­land Region­al Part­ner­ship Group region­al fund­ing allo­ca­tions advice to Gov­ern­ment report Jan­u­ary 2006, page 25:
http://www.eera.gov.uk/Documents/About%20EERA/Policy/Regional%20Governance/Regional%20Funding%20Allocations/Final%20EoE%20RFA%20300106.pdf
4 Southend Evening Echo Mon­day 13th Feb­ru­ary 2006

Bradford Climate Criminals flyposted

22.1.07
On Wednes­day evening, a num­ber of con­cerned Leeds and Brad­ford res­i­dents decid­ed to draw atten­tion to the activ­i­ties of a num­ber of cli­mate crim­i­nals in Brad­ford city cen­tre. Adver­tise­ments for dam­ag­ing air flights were mod­i­fied to tell the truth; that fly­ing is the fastest grow­ing cause of cli­mate change, the “sin­gle great­est threat to human-kind” accord­ing to the government’s chief sci­en­tist.

Bradford climate camp aviation flyposters22.1.07
On Wednes­day evening, a num­ber of con­cerned Leeds and Brad­ford res­i­dents decid­ed to draw atten­tion to the activ­i­ties of a num­ber of cli­mate crim­i­nals in Brad­ford city cen­tre. Adver­tise­ments for dam­ag­ing air flights were mod­i­fied to tell the truth; that fly­ing is the fastest grow­ing cause of cli­mate change, the “sin­gle great­est threat to human-kind” accord­ing to the government’s chief sci­en­tist.

Despite assur­ances that cli­mate change is being tak­en seri­ous­ly by any num­ber of politi­cians or busi­ness peo­ple, the fact is that new run­ways are planned, motor­ways are being expand­ed, and pipelines being built to increase our depen­dence on fos­sil fuels. In the face of this hypocrisy, it was clear that the time had come to make a direct state­ment that irre­spon­si­ble crim­i­nal­i­ty of this kind will not be tol­er­at­ed by sane and mod­er­ate peo­ple.

Sev­er­al trav­el agents, shame­less­ly plug­ging mas­sive­ly destruc­tive air flights for prof­it, had their mis­lead­ing win­dow dis­plays obscured by handy stick­ers which made plain the true cost of fly­ing. Those peo­ple tak­ing part in this vital ser­vice did so as a way of encour­ag­ing oth­ers to stand up against the cli­mate crim­i­nals and car­ry out sim­i­lar pub­lic-spir­it­ed actions in their areas. The stick­ers used are avail­able at a cost of 50p each to any­one who wants them – just email trees@riseup.net with your order. The stick­ers are just £10 for 20, post free!

There is still time to pre­vent run­away cli­mate change but we must act now.

Part of that action must be to expose the ongo­ing activites of those who wish to destroy the plan­et for prof­it. Clear­ly, we can’t leave it to busi­ness and gov­ern­ment to sort out the mess – they are the ones mak­ing it because of their bizarre obses­sion with an eco­nom­ic sys­tem based on con­tin­u­al growth and unsus­tain­able con­sump­tion.

The rich are plun­der­ing the Earth, and as always the poor will suf­fer the worst. We can all act in our lives, and join togeth­er to cre­ate a rad­i­cal, and ulti­mate­ly rea­son­able and mod­er­ate, move­ment for social change and cli­mate jus­tice.

This action was inspired by the Camp For Cli­mate Action, which seems to have been a new begin­ning for the fight-back by rea­son­able and mod­er­ate peo­ple against the cli­mate crim­i­nals and prof­it-ter­ror­ists who seek to kill us all.

Carbon Trading Company’s Offices Occupied

Today, Wednes­day 21st Feb 2007, in a non-vio­lent protest, activists occu­pied the offices of a com­pa­ny deal­ing in Car­bon Off­sets, whilst oth­er cam­paign­ers car­ried out an action out­side the Com­pa­ny’s offices in Kings Cross Lon­don. The action was car­ried out to high­light what they claim is the green­wash of this com­pa­ny, and the dan­gers of sidelin­ing the huge­ly impor­tant issue of cli­mate change. This action, sweep­ing coal under a car­pet, was car­ried out to demon­strate their asser­tion that car­bon trad­ing is to attempt to sweep the issues asso­ci­at­ed with cli­mate change under the car­pet.

Carbon Neutral Company protest 2Carbon Neutral Company protest 1Today, Wednes­day 21st Feb 2007, in a non-vio­lent protest, activists occu­pied the offices of a com­pa­ny deal­ing in Car­bon Off­sets, whilst oth­er cam­paign­ers car­ried out an action out­side the Com­pa­ny’s offices in Kings Cross Lon­don. The action was car­ried out to high­light what they claim is the green­wash of this com­pa­ny, and the dan­gers of sidelin­ing the huge­ly impor­tant issue of cli­mate change. This action, sweep­ing coal under a car­pet, was car­ried out to demon­strate their asser­tion that car­bon trad­ing is to attempt to sweep the issues asso­ci­at­ed with cli­mate change under the car­pet.

Below is a copy of Lon­don Ris­ing Tides press release relat­ing to this action.

LONDON RISING TIDE OCCUPY HEAD OFFICE OF CARBON NEUTRAL COMPANY IN LONDON

Lon­don Ris­ing Tide has occu­pied the head office of the Car­bon Neu­tral Com­pa­ny (for­mer­ly Future Forests) on the day they had been invit­ed to appear before the All Par­ty Par­lia­men­tary Com­mit­tee on Cli­mate Change, that is chaired by the Car­bon Neu­tral Com­pa­ny.

This is what they have to say:

CARBON ‘OFFSET’ = CLIMATE UPSET

Today we have occu­pied and with any luck shut down the head office of the Car­bon Neu­tral Com­pa­ny (CNC) here in King’s Cross. CNC is one of many busi­ness­es which sell ‘car­bon off­sets’ to peo­ple and com­pa­nies that want to can­cel out their con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate chaos (also known as ‘glob­al warm­ing’). CNC claims that it will neu­tralise the car­bon diox­ide (CO2) giv­en off by, say, Sil­ver­jet (a pri­vate jet air­line), and that it will do this by pay­ing peo­ple in devel­op­ing coun­tries to cut their own emis­sions with schemes that involve renew­able ener­gy or tree plant­i­ng. So what’s the prob­lem?

Car­bon off­set­ting: an excuse for no action?

Cli­mate chaos is an issue of jus­tice: it is hurt­ing the world’s poor­est (and least-pol­lut­ing) peo­ple first and hard­est, caus­ing mas­sive dis­as­ters and threat­en­ing mil­lions of species world­wide. Many peo­ple are now ques­tion­ing whether off­set­ting allows some of us in the rich­er, devel­oped world to car­ry on with our mas­sive­ly pol­lut­ing lifestyles, instead of low­er­ing our own emis­sions. Those who are buy­ing off­sets are often doing so with the best of inten­tions, but the fact remains that it’s a smoke­screen that has to stop.

If we com­pare the plan­et to a run­ning bath, full almost to the brim with CO2, to off­set CO2 emis­sions is like say­ing “I won’t turn off my tap. I’ll pay some­one else £10 to pay some­one else £2 to turn off their own tap.” (Guess who pock­ets the change?) The real­i­ty is that we need to turn off both, if we’re to have a chance of cut­ting CO2 emis­sions by 50% before 2016 (which is the sin­gle most impor­tant task fac­ing you and me, right here, right now in 2007.)

Not only is tree plant­i­ng a dis­cred­it­ed fail­ure when it comes to soak­ing up car­bon, many oth­er off­set schemes are look­ing pret­ty shab­by when looked at in detail by inde­pen­dent third par­ties.

Yes­ter­day, Car­bon Trade Watch released a report called “The Car­bon Neu­tral Myth – Off­set Indul­gences for your Cli­mate Sins” that gave a lot of evi­dence and infor­ma­tion as to why off­set­ting is inef­fec­tive, injust and dam­ag­ing to the cli­mate change debate. ( http://www.carbontradewatch.org/pubs/carbon_neutral_myth.pdf)

Who are we?

Our group is called Lon­don Ris­ing Tide (LRT), and we are part of a wider nation­al and inter­na­tion­al move­ment that believes pas­sion­ate­ly in tak­ing direct action for ‘cli­mate jus­tice’. We reck­on it’s well past time for us to get cre­ative, to get move­ment-build­ing, to drown out the ris­ing tide of cor­po­rate ‘green­wash’ (ie. prof­it-dri­ven lies), to get food grow­ing with neigh­bours and friends, and to get seri­ous­ly dis­obe­di­ent, (but to do it with a good bit of humour).

A while ago, we were asked by the All Par­ty Par­lia­men­tary Com­mit­tee on Cli­mate Change to make a sub­mis­sion about planned Cli­mate Bill. The Com­mit­tee is admin­is­trat­ed by the Car­bon Neu­tral Com­pa­ny. After think­ing long and hard about it, this was our response:

‘We’re declin­ing the invi­ta­tion to address the meet­ing, since we believe in the cre­ation of mass move­ments striv­ing for sys­temic social and eco­log­i­cal change. Engag­ing with the com­mit­tee would be a dis­trac­tion from that, as it’s not in the inter­ests of either Par­lia­ment or pri­vate com­pa­nies to call for — or work for — such change. Also, we are deeply scep­ti­cal about the appar­ent pri­vati­sa­tion of the com­mit­tee process, espe­cial­ly when the com­pa­ny con­cerned is prof­it­ing hand­some­ly from the sale to the pub­lic of the pho­ny solu­tion that is the car­bon off­set.’

Manchester Critical Mass and benefit gig

Fri­day 23rd Feb­ru­ary. Meet at 6pm as usu­al by the cen­tral library for a bike ride round our city which will then go to the Ram­pant Lion, Anson Rd/ Upper Brook St, Vic­to­ria Park (para­lel to wilm­slow road) start­ing at 8pm

Fri­day 23rd Feb­ru­ary. Meet at 6pm as usu­al by the cen­tral library for a bike ride round our city which will then go to the Ram­pant Lion, Anson Rd/ Upper Brook St, Vic­to­ria Park (para­lel to wilm­slow road) start­ing at 8pm

Bands include Sweat­ing Cobs, Burnst, Run Like Hell, Cash for Your Sto­ries, Stray Dog Cafe and MC Flipflop. Plus DJs play­ing ska, reg­gae and d+b til 2am.

Djs play­ing reg­gae, punk and ska til 2am a £3 dona­tion to crit­i­cal mass would be love­ly

Crit­i­cal Mass is a bicy­cle ride that hap­pens every last Fri­day of the month at 6pm from Cen­tral Library

We cycle round the city to cel­e­brate the bicy­cle:

It’s for any­one that rides a bike;
Its a cel­e­bra­tion of get­ting round the city with­out pol­lut­ing it;
Its about every jour­ney being an adven­ture instead of just sit­ting
on a bor­ing bus or in a stress­ful car;
Its about cyclists rid­ing togeth­er to demand more respect from oth­er road users;
Its a way to meet oth­er cyclis­tas;

also at that time on fri­day hun­dreds of cities around the world do the same thing…all get togeth­er for crit­i­cal mass. its beau­ti­ful to know that as you ride with your mates through your own city that all around the world thou­sands of peo­ple are doing the same thing..

Beat the Chainsaw Pledge, Hereford

HEREFORD GREEN PARTY PRESS RELEASE:

Forty-nine locals vow to stand in front of chain­saws to pre­vent loss of Mead­ow trees.

HEREFORD GREEN PARTY PRESS RELEASE:

Forty-nine locals vow to stand in front of chain­saws to pre­vent loss of Mead­ow trees.

A capac­i­ty crowd of near­ly 300 peo­ple filled two floors of Here­ford’s Water­shed build­ing last night, to hear a coali­tion of groups talk about the Envi­ron­ment Agen­cy’s poor­ly-designed flood defence scheme for the City. Atten­dees expressed sup­port for the pro­vi­sion of effec­tive flood defences — but also con­cern over the Coun­cil’s lack of vision and lead­er­ship in pass­ing the cur­rent scheme by which estab­lished trees on Bish­op’s Mead­ow will be need­less­ly cut down. Green Par­ty prospec­tive Coun­cil can­di­date Mar­tin Wyness asked peo­ple if they would be will­ing to stand under the affect­ed trees, there­by mak­ing it impos­si­ble for work­ers to fell them. Forty-nine peo­ple expressed a com­mit­ment to stand in the way of the chain­saws in order to pro­tect Here­ford’s won­der­ful cul­tur­al and nat­ur­al her­itage.

Mem­bers of the pub­lic attend­ing the meet­ing expressed sur­prise that local ward Coun­cil­lors were not present to take ques­tions as to why they had not robust­ly chal­lenged the scheme dur­ing the plan­ning process. Dis­ap­point­ment was voiced as to why that process was not pub­li­cised suf­fi­cient­ly for res­i­dents to engage with it effec­tive­ly.

The Green Par­ty hopes that Coun­cil­lors who felt they could not chal­lenge the Envi­ron­ment Agency and DEFRA before, because of fears of los­ing fund­ing, will now find the courage to stand with the coali­tion as it demands that the scheme is rethought.

Green Par­ty prospec­tive Coun­cil can­di­date Mar­tin Wyness asked the Envi­ron­ment Agency rep­re­sen­ta­tive present at the meet­ing: “Can you give an assur­ance that the trees affect­ed will not be cut down in a rush in order to beat restric­tions caused by the immi­nent bird nest­ing sea­son?” The Envi­ron­ment Agency’s reply was that a sur­vey would be car­ried out.

Because it is still too ear­ly for nest­ing, this effec­tive­ly means that the chain­saws can come at any moment, even before the Envi­ron­ment Agency or Coun­cil looks at any alter­na­tive pro­pos­als.

The Green Par­ty is dis­ap­point­ed that Here­ford Lib­er­al Demo­c­rat MP Paul Keetch has until now, not seen fit to ques­tion the scheme prop­er­ly until he saw the scale of pub­lic con­cern. Here­ford needs a dynam­ic and pas­sion­ate Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment who will argue the case for keep­ing the mon­ey on the table while we amend the detail of these plans that would do so much dam­age to Here­ford’s his­toric envi­ron­ment. A some­what reluc­tant Mr. Keetch said on radio yes­ter­day “I am assured by the Envi­ron­ment Agency that if there is fine tun­ing that can be done, it will be done”. Let us hope he holds the agency to that promise.

ENDS

NOTES FOR EDITORS

It is quite pos­si­ble that Elgar walked beneath the trees that will be destroyed by this scheme. There is also a memo­r­i­al on the site that says that Elgar penned The Enig­ma Vari­a­tions after see­ing the Cathe­dral organist’s dog fall into the riv­er at this spot.

The coali­tion is ful­ly in favour of a flood defence scheme for the city, but not this one.

RRA Archi­tects showed their alter­na­tive and sym­pa­thet­ic pro­pos­al to the pub­lic meet­ing.

The coali­tion in favour of bet­ter flood defences includes: -

Cycle Here­ford
The Dis­abled Users Access Group
Friends of Cas­tle Green
Friends of the Earth
Fod­der
The Green Par­ty
The Here­ford Civic Soci­ety
RRA Archi­tects
St James and Bar­ton­sham Com­mu­ni­ty Asso­ci­a­tion
Water­shed

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion please con­tact:
Mar­tin Wyness
Media — Here­ford & South Here­ford­shire Green Par­ty
07809 150344
mediasouth@herefordshiregreens.org.uk
www.herefordshiregreens.org.uk

new squatcafe/social centre coming soon in Somerset

13th Feb

Hi,
the cider squir­rel syn­di­cate, occu­pants of the stu­dio­Qau­ton­a­mous vil­lage are embark­ing on a new project for which we are call­ing for sup­port. the inten­tion is to occu­py a space in cen­tral Bridg­wa­ter to use as a veg­an cafe cum social cen­tre. We Want to include a library, computer/publishing work­shops, jug­gling club, radikal cin­e­ma and a space for art and fundrais­ers and par­ties. We are call­ing out for any help indy­medi­ans can offer-from dona­tions of food, equip­ment, lit­er­a­ture, movies, labour, paint, elec­tri­cal equip­ment, plates cups teabags, allot­ment space, smiles, advice, tim­ber ANYTHING. We project is to be self sus­tain­ing through dona­tions, fundrais­ers and sheer barefaced deter­mi­na­tion. At present we have 0 pounds for the project so any­thing you can help pro­vide will enable us to cre­ate the space our dying town is cry­ing out for. Any­one who can help or would like more info get in touch on mookdetat@hotmail.com

13th Feb

Hi,
the cider squir­rel syn­di­cate, occu­pants of the stu­dio­Qau­ton­a­mous vil­lage are embark­ing on a new project for which we are call­ing for sup­port. the inten­tion is to occu­py a space in cen­tral Bridg­wa­ter to use as a veg­an cafe cum social cen­tre. We Want to include a library, computer/publishing work­shops, jug­gling club, radikal cin­e­ma and a space for art and fundrais­ers and par­ties. We are call­ing out for any help indy­medi­ans can offer-from dona­tions of food, equip­ment, lit­er­a­ture, movies, labour, paint, elec­tri­cal equip­ment, plates cups teabags, allot­ment space, smiles, advice, tim­ber ANYTHING. We project is to be self sus­tain­ing through dona­tions, fundrais­ers and sheer barefaced deter­mi­na­tion. At present we have 0 pounds for the project so any­thing you can help pro­vide will enable us to cre­ate the space our dying town is cry­ing out for. Any­one who can help or would like more info get in touch on mookdetat@hotmail.com

Thanks all

hap­py resist­ing x

Demo in Edinburgh in the defence of Rospuda

20 Feb 2007
On Fri­day at 2 pm, in front of Pol­ish con­sulate there will be a dome in sup­port of Pol­ish protest site
against the destruc­tion of the largest in Europe wild wet­lands in Rospu­da Val­ley (google the area to find more about the case)

20 Feb 2007
On Fri­day at 2 pm, in front of Pol­ish con­sulate there will be a dome in sup­port of Pol­ish protest site
against the destruc­tion of the largest in Europe wild wet­lands in Rospu­da Val­ley (google the area to find more about the case)

Take a look at the fuckin’ pic­tures:
www.greenpeace.org/poland/multimedia/slajdy/dolina-rospudy-z-lotu-ptaka‑2

—-
pl.indymedia.org/pl/2007/02/26397.shtml
www.szkocja.net/forum/messageview.aspx

On the Ground Ireland: Day four, the Monday picket, video and report

Fears on ear­ly Mon­day morn­ing. Rats. Big ones. Per­haps Bertie Ahern and his cor­po­rate bud­dies had stormed the camp, attempt­ed to make a prof­it nest under the com­mu­nal ben­der and, as usu­al, couldn’t agree on any­thing and began squab­bling, squawk­ing and squeak­ing, claw­ing out each oth­ers eye­balls.

Fears on ear­ly Mon­day morn­ing. Rats. Big ones. Per­haps Bertie Ahern and his cor­po­rate bud­dies had stormed the camp, attempt­ed to make a prof­it nest under the com­mu­nal ben­der and, as usu­al, couldn’t agree on any­thing and began squab­bling, squawk­ing and squeak­ing, claw­ing out each oth­ers eye­balls.

Video 190207_Corrib_picket — video/x‑ms-wmv 5.6M

The ear­ly morn­ing pick­et saw peo­ple gath­er­ing again out­side the main gates of the con­struc­tion site again, this time at 7.30am.

The Gar­da were out in ear­ly, two vans, sev­er­al patrol cars and an unmarked blue car full of grin­ning senior offi­cers, who drove up and down the road all morn­ing.

30 to 40 pro­tes­tors pick­et­ed the trucks, cars and bus­es bring­ing in the work­ers. But the Shell con­tract­ed work­force was now minus five, accord­ing to local peo­ple. Five more work­ers quit after the Fri­day morn­ing protest.

The pick­et last­ed sev­er­al hours, includ­ing a tea-break at the Shell-to-Sea infor­ma­tion hut. Then the “musi­cians” decid­ed to give the work­ers a lit­tle scare, and send the mes­sage the protest to this pipeline and gas ter­mi­nal was not going away. They ran to the front gate and fence and used sticks to ham­mer out as much noise as they could muster until the only remain­ing police van drove up out front. The musi­cal pro­tes­tors retreat­ed back to the infor­ma­tion cen­tre and then took up perch oppo­site the main entrance again and ham­mered out beats on drums and bar­rels.

For now, there seems no real retal­i­a­tion from the Gar­da. There was a lit­tle point­less shov­ing of sev­er­al of the known local mem­bers, but it amount­ed to noth­ing.