Pipeline company targetted by direct action

15.02.2007
The offices of Land and Marine in Bath were tar­get­ted last night with spray­paint­ed mes­sages and super glued locks as part of ongo­ing resis­tance to their South Wales gas pipeline scheme.

15.02.2007
The offices of Land and Marine in Bath were tar­get­ted last night with spray­paint­ed mes­sages and super glued locks as part of ongo­ing resis­tance to their South Wales gas pipeline scheme.

“Dis­as­ter in the pipeline”, “LNG pipeline — eco time bomb” and “Cli­mate Chaos Crim­i­nals” were a few of the words of warn­ing left on the walls.
The com­pa­ny is respon­si­ble for build­ing the mas­sive­ly destruc­tive and dan­ger­ous 150 mile long LNG pipeline which is set to trash land and com­mu­ni­ties across South Wales as well as pos­ing a huge threat to the safe­ty of local peo­ple. By pro­vid­ing the infra­struc­ture for con­tin­ued fos­sil fuel depen­dence, Land and Marine are part of an indus­tri­al sys­tem based on prof­it at any cost. And the by prod­ucts? Cli­mate chaos, eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ters and attacks on all our health and safe­ty. Con­front the cor­po­ra­tions which are killing the plan­et and steal­ing our lives, land and future.

Think Glob­al, Trash Local

Activists shut down construction of LNG gas terminal in Milford Haven

14th Feb 07

Pro­test­ers against the con­tin­ued and unre­strained pro­mo­tion of fos­sil fuel projects by the UK gov­ern­ment have block­ad­ed the main vehi­cle access route into the new LNG pipeline ter­mi­nal near Mil­ford Haven, South Wales. Their aim is to high­light the seri­ous envi­ron­men­tal and safe­ty issues sur­round­ing this project, and to call for a more sober approach to the impend­ing ener­gy cri­sis.

Construction traffic prevented from entering LNG terminal14th Feb 07

Pro­test­ers against the con­tin­ued and unre­strained pro­mo­tion of fos­sil fuel projects by the UK gov­ern­ment have block­ad­ed the main vehi­cle access route into the new LNG pipeline ter­mi­nal near Mil­ford Haven, South Wales. Their aim is to high­light the seri­ous envi­ron­men­tal and safe­ty issues sur­round­ing this project, and to call for a more sober approach to the impend­ing ener­gy cri­sis.

Eight peo­ple have phys­i­cal­ly blocked the site access road, south of the vil­lage of Her­branston, S. Wales, pre­vent­ing con­struc­tion vehi­cles from enter­ing the giant LNG ter­mi­nal.

These pro­tes­tors, inspired by the 2006 Camp for Cli­mate Action, are tar­get­ting the con­struc­tion of the Liq­uid Nat­ur­al Gas (LNG) ter­mi­nal and pipeline in South Wales. The actions aim to dis­rupt the work to the largest extent pos­si­ble. Cli­mate chaos is the great­est threat human­i­ty has ever faced yet the British gov­ern­ment and a con­glom­er­ate of Cor­po­ra­tions are reck­less­ly con­struct­ing this new car­bon inten­sive ener­gy project.

The devel­op­ment of LNG ter­mi­nals in the UK is lock­ing us into thir­ty years of yet more fos­sil fuels, in an era in which dra­mat­ic cuts in car­bon are cru­cial. The Depart­ment of Trade Indus­try last week, gave per­mis­sion for phase two of the LNG pipeline to be built. Yet, this project stark­ly reveals the incom­pat­i­bil­i­ty between the so-called need for ‘ener­gy secu­ri­ty’, and the far more press­ing need to sub­stan­tial­ly dimin­ish our use of fos­sil fuels.

Lim­it­ing glob­al warm­ing to a 2 degree increase with a rel­a­tive­ly high cer­tain­ty requires the equiv­a­lent con­cen­tra­tion of CO2 to stay below 400 ppm. Achiev­ing this means rich coun­tries, like the UK, cut­ting their aver­age emis­sions by around 90% by 2030.

A pro­tes­tor said “A 90% cut in 25 years is going to require not just new tech­nolo­gies, but dif­fer­ent cul­tures, dif­fer­ent economies, dif­fer­ent expec­ta­tions — in short, a dif­fer­ent way of life.”

The devel­op­ment of LNG ter­mi­nals in the UK opens up pre­vi­ous­ly unavail­able car­bon inten­sive nat­ur­al gas to our ener­gy mar­kets, to the severe detri­ment of sup­port for clean decen­tralised renew­ables. Fur­ther­more, bring­ing gas from the Mid­dle East is a much more ener­gy inten­sive process than retriev­ing gas from the North Sea.

There are also sub­stan­tial safe­ty issues attached to this project. Stud­ies show that an acci­dent or ter­ror­ist attack at the Mil­ford Haven ter­mi­nals would cause “major injuries and sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to struc­tures” with­in a radius of a third of a mile and could cause sec­ond-degree burns more than a mile away.

The ter­rain through which the pipeline will run has been exten­sive­ly mined and is prone to sub­si­dence in places. Need­less to say, the instal­la­tion of a mas­sive­ly pres­surised gas pipeline through unsta­ble land is high­ly dubi­ous. Locals, fear­ing for their safe­ty, have had their ques­tions ignored. Con­cerns about the mate­r­i­al used and qual­i­ty of weld­ing employed have not been prop­er­ly addressed. Many mem­bers of affect­ed com­mu­ni­ties con­tin­ue to vocal­ly protest, but with lit­tle recog­ni­tion.

Pro­tes­tors have cho­sen to take direct action today to show their sol­i­dar­i­ty with com­mu­ni­ties along the pipeline and to stop this moral­ly inde­fen­si­ble fos­sil fuel de-struc­tion project.

Con­tact: Sarah White 07901862522

Notes to Edi­tor

The project:
Gas, liq­ue­fied in Qatar by cool­ing to ‑162C, is going to be shipped to West Wales on super tankers. There, at Mil­ford Haven, it will be regasi­fied in one of the two onshore ter­mi­nals being built by:
· Drag­on LNG, a con­sor­tium whose main part­ner is the BG Group (for­mer­ly British Gas).
· South Hook LNG, part of a new busi­ness, Qatar­gas II,owned by Qatar Petro­le­um and Exxon. This £6 bil­lion project finances the work from well to ter­mi­nal. It is the sin­gle largest ener­gy-project financ­ing ever[1] and this ter­mi­nal alone will be the biggest LNG receiv­ing ter­mi­nal in the world[2].
The Pipeline: Nation­al Grid are con­nect­ing the gas to the nation­al net­work. They are doing so by build­ing a pipeline in two phas­es from Mil­ford Haven to Glouces­ter­shire. Phase 2 of the project was giv­en the green light on 7th Feb­ru­ary 2007. This huge pipeline, 4ft in diam­e­ter, will run at 94bar pres­sure – that is 96kg/cm2.
Nation­al Grid’s (for­mer­ly known as Transco) Safe­ty Record
In 1999, a fam­i­ly of four were killed in Scot­land when a high pres­sure gas pipe explod­ed by their home. Mas­sive cor­ro­sion in the pipeline, and a fail­ure on the part of Nation­al Grid/Transco (NG/T) to keep ade­quate records on what kind of pipes were being used, led to the explo­sion. Cor­ro­sion has already been seen on the welds in the South Wales pipeline
Since pri­vati­sa­tion, NG/T have shed thou­sands of engi­neer­ing jobs and cut main­te­nance work. In 2000 it was revealed that Transco had under­spent its agreed pipeline main­te­nance and replace­ment pro­gramme by £358m over the pre­vi­ous two years[3]. This same cor­po­ra­tion, account­able to only its share­hold­ers and board, is now respon­si­ble for the safe­ty of thou­sands of peo­ple along the route of this pipe, which is run at a pres­sure, unprece­dent­ed in Europe and US, of which Nation­al Grid have no expe­ri­ence of run­ning. Already, there is evi­dence of their cost sav­ing strat­e­gy: the Health and Safe­ty Exec­u­tive stip­u­lates the use of poly­ethe­lene in gas pip­ing, yet Nation­al Grid is using oth­er mate­ri­als.

[1] The agree­ment was the third-largest project financ­ing of any kind, after the Chan­nel Tun­nel and a Tai­wanese high-speed rail financ­ing. Banks with major roles in the project financ­ing include HSBC, Bar­clays, Roy­al Bank of Scot­land and Cit­i­group.
[2] http://education.independent.co.uk/careers_advice/engineering/article1946244.ece
[3] http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=662322003

===================================================================
ACTION REPORT

Since Novem­ber there has been lots of protests around the gas pipeline cur­rent­ly being con­struct­ed in Wales, and short­ly Englans. Today peo­ple paid a vis­it to sun­ny pem­bokeshire to take direct action on one of the root caus­es of cli­mate change; fos­sil fuel cor­po­ra­tions seek­ing more prof­its for their share­hold­ers.

Five peo­ple block­ad­ed the main access to the con­struc­tion site for six hours, result­ing in huge tail­backs and the typ­i­cal enor­mous police pres­ence. Peo­ple laid on the ground are appar­ent­ly a threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty. What real­ly is a threat to our secu­ri­ty is the con­tin­u­a­tion of yet more fos­sil fuel projects, more car­bon in the atmos­phere and more death, mis­ery and hunger. The peo­ple were even­tu­al­ly arrest­ed at mid­day and are now enjoy­ing a well deserved sleep in the lux­u­ri­ous sur­round­ings of Haver­ford­West Police sta­tion.

Around the same time this morn­ing peo­ple also approached the kilo­me­ter long jet­ty, which will car­ry the liq­uid from the super­tankers to the ter­mi­nal. They were pre­vent­ed from get­ting on to the jet­ty; appar­ent­ly it’s dan­ger­ous unless you have been giv­en health and safe­ty train­ing. Lets hope the peo­ple of Mil­ford Haven have been giv­en some train­ing for what to do if there is acci­dent. Mil­ford Haven’s most expe­ri­enced ship­ping pilots have described the risk of a fatal col­li­sion at one of the ter­mi­nals as a ‘real every­day real­i­ty’ which would put 20000 peo­ple lives at risk.

Just twen­ty peo­ple have man­aged to cause a splen­did com­mo­tion at the build­ing site of the South Hook Liq­uid Nat­ur­al Gas (LNG) ter­mi­nal in West Wales. It is an inspir­ing exam­ple of how a few peo­ple can take respon­si­bil­i­ty for theirs and our future.

While work may con­tin­ue tomor­row on the ter­mi­nal, yet anoth­er span­ner has been thrown in their LNG pipedream (I had to have one pipe pun).

See
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/02/362275.html
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/02/362322.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/6360281.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/6365223.stm
http://www.pembrokeshiretv.com/content/templates/v6-article.asp?articleid=3163&zoneid=33

Back­ground
http://bristol.indymedia.org/newswire.php?story_id=25798

Anti-nuclear campaigners block UK WMD factory

13.02.2007

Yes­ter­day six peo­ple were arrest­ed out­side AWE mAl­der­mas­ton dur­ing an hour+long block­ade of the nuclear weapons fac­to­ry. Next BtB block­ade 19 March — check the web­site for more info. What fol­lows is a BtB press release, issued yes­ter­day

Aldermaston Feb 07 blockade13.02.2007

Yes­ter­day six peo­ple were arrest­ed out­side AWE mAl­der­mas­ton dur­ing an hour+long block­ade of the nuclear weapons fac­to­ry. Next BtB block­ade 19 March — check the web­site for more info. What fol­lows is a BtB press release, issued yes­ter­day

BLOCK THE BUILDERS
——————————————-
12 Feb­ru­ary 2007 — for imme­di­ate release
——————————————-

ANTI-NUCLEAR CAMPAIGNERS BLOCK UK WMD FACTORY

From 7am today [12/02/07], a group of around 50 anti-nuclear cam­paign­ers par­tic­i­pat­ed in block­ades and protests out­side Britain’s nuclear war­head fac­to­ry — AWE Alder­mas­ton in Berk­shire.

Using a con­crete-filled dust­bin, met­al lock-on tubes and D‑locks, two groups block­ad­ed the A340 on two sides of the base, close to entrances used by con­struc­tion traf­fic. Roads were closed for one hour and ten min­utes while spe­cial­ist police teams cut out pro­test­ers. Cranes and oth­er con­struc­tion traf­fic was pre­vent­ed from enter­ing the site while the block­ade was in progress. Oth­er cam­paign­ers used large ban­ners and flags to com­mu­ni­cate their anti-nuclear mes­sage.

AWE is the site of ongo­ing con­struc­tion work on new nuclear weapons facil­i­ties — on a sim­i­lar scale to Heathrow’s Ter­mi­nal 5. Work on the new Ori­on laser has start­ed, despite the fact that a vote on the future of the UK’s nuclear weapons sys­tem is not due until March.

Six peo­ple were arrest­ed dur­ing the protest, for obstruc­tion of the high­way. Two were sub­se­quent­ly charged and will appear at New­bury Mag­is­trates’ Court on 22 Feb­ru­ary. Between eight and ten hours after arrest, four were giv­en cau­tions.

All six had been hand­cuffed on arrest by Thames Val­ley and Hamp­shire police, though none had resist­ed arrest or attempt­ed to abscond. Organ­is­ing group Block the Builders — an explic­it­ly non­vi­o­lent direct action group — are con­sid­er­ing writ­ing to Thames Val­ley police to query this inter­pre­ta­tion of police guide­lines on the use of hand­cuffs.

With the gov­ern­ment poised to force a par­lia­men­tary vote on whether to replace the Tri­dent nuclear sub­ma­rine fleet, cam­paign­ers are con­cerned that the deci­sion to recom­mit Britain to a fur­ther 50 years as a nuclear weapons state is being made with­out pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion. Polls have con­sis­tent­ly sug­gest­ed that a sub­stan­tial major­i­ty of the British pub­lic do not want to spend tax­es on a new nuclear weapons sys­tem.

A spokesper­son for Block the Builders said, “In a fort­night there will be tens of thou­sands on the streets of Lon­don, demon­strat­ing their oppo­si­tion to Tri­dent replace­ment. When asked, most peo­ple don’t want UK WMD: today in this qui­et cor­ner of Berk­shire, we are trans­lat­ing the will of this — fre­quent­ly silent — major­i­ty, into prac­ti­cal resis­tance. If the par­lia­men­tary vote goes in the gov­ern­men­t’s favour, then AWE and the MoD had bet­ter get used to the idea of a long and active cam­paign of oppo­si­tion.”

This morn­ing’s actions are part of an ongo­ing cam­paign of non­vi­o­lent resis­tance to new facil­i­ties being devel­oped at the Alder­mastn site — which cam­paign­ers believe will facil­i­tate the next gen­er­a­tion of nuclear weapons.

ENDS

btb@aldermaston.net
http://www.blockthebuilders.org.uk

Antarctica: Sea Shepherd Ship Holed during Collision with Whaling Ship

12.02.2007

The Sea Shep­herd ship, Robert Hunter, has been holed in its star­board bow, and its port stern sec­tion above the water­line, dur­ing a col­li­sion with the whale spot­ter ship Kaiko Maru , accord­ing to Sea Shep­herd’s pres­i­dent Paul Wat­son. No injuries have been incurred by crew on both ships, and nei­ther ship is in dan­ger of sink­ing. A pod of whales being chased by the Japan­ese ship escaped.

Farley Mowat holed12.02.2007

The Sea Shep­herd ship, Robert Hunter, has been holed in its star­board bow, and its port stern sec­tion above the water­line, dur­ing a col­li­sion with the whale spot­ter ship Kaiko Maru , accord­ing to Sea Shep­herd’s pres­i­dent Paul Wat­son. No injuries have been incurred by crew on both ships, and nei­ther ship is in dan­ger of sink­ing. A pod of whales being chased by the Japan­ese ship escaped.

Exact details of the col­li­sion are still con­fus­ing. It appears the two Sea Shep­herd ships caught the Kaiko Maru chas­ing a pod of whales near the Bal­leny Islands in Antarc­ti­ca, south of New Zealand. Attempts were made by Sea Shep­herd activists to dis­able the pro­pel­lor of the Kaiko Maru, it appears with some suc­cess. Sea Shep­herd say on their web­site “At one point dur­ing the con­fronta­tion, the Kaiko Maru turned to star­board and struck the Robert Hunter.” Accord­ing to Dr Hiroshi Hatana­ka from the ICR on their web­site “The Robert Hunter rammed the Kaiko Maru.”

“Sea Shep­herd threw smoke pots onto the Kaiko Maru and released ropes and nets to entan­gle her screw. Its pro­peller has been dam­aged by them. The ves­sel is strand­ed at the moment and has already put out sev­er­al dis­tress calls.” said Dr Hiroshi Hatana­ka, the Direc­tor Gen­er­al of the Insti­tute of Cetacean Research on the ICR web­site.

After the col­li­sion between the Robert Hunter and Kaiko Maru, the Japan­ese ves­sel was effec­tive­ly block­ad­ed against sea ice.

The Japan­ese ves­sel issued a mar­itime dis­tress call say­ing that it was under attack and in imme­di­ate dan­ger. Accord­ing to the Sea Shep­herd web­site “Sea Shep­herd acknowl­edged this dis­tress sig­nal, but they Japan­ese ves­sel refused to say what dis­tress they were in.”

The Green­peace ship also respond­ed to the dis­tress call, offer­ing imme­di­ate assis­tance, head­ing at full speed to their posi­tion. Accord­ing to Dave on the Green­peace weblog “Accord­ing to the Res­cue Coor­di­na­tion Cen­tre of New Zealand, first reports stat­ed the Kaiko Maru was ‘under attack.’ Lat­er reports claimed a col­li­sion between the Sea Shep­herd ves­sel Robert Hunter and the Kaiko Maru, with the Robert Hunter receiv­ing a hole in the hull above the water line and the Kaiko Maru suf­fer­ing unspec­i­fied dam­age to its pro­peller.”

“At approx­i­mate­ly 18.15, the Res­cue Coor­di­na­tion Cen­tre of New Zealand request­ed that the Esper­an­za ‘stand down’. We informed the Res­cue Cen­tre that we would remain with­in VHF range in case assis­tance was need­ed. At 20:15 we received what’s known as a ‘Seelonce Fee­nee’, which means that the dis­tress call is now over.” con­clud­ed Dave from Green­peace.

Jon­ny Vasic, Inter­na­tion­al direc­tor of Sea Shep­herd, on board the Robert Hunter described the col­li­sion in a Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald report “It was a loud noise — a big bang. I actu­al­ly shud­dered a bit. The ships col­lid­ed two times, once side by side, and once when they rammed into us. I haven’t inspect­ed it yet, but they did some dam­age to our hull. … We are here to keep those guys out of the whale sanc­tu­ary. We are not dam­aged beyond repair. We are still sea­wor­thy,” Vasic said.

Both Sea Shep­herd ships have been away from port for sev­er­al weeks and are run­ning low on fuel. Cap­tain Wat­son said “We’re only prob­a­bly good for the next few days,”

Accord­ing to a report in The Age news­pa­per Cap­tain Wat­son warned that unless anti-whal­ing gov­ern­ments such as Aus­tralia took stronger action, he might try to ram the stern of the Nis­shin Maru.

“Do whale defend­ers have to die down here for the world to notice and take action against the crim­i­nal activ­i­ties of the Japan­ese whalers?” he said. “For this rea­son it has been decid­ed to stop the oper­a­tions of the Japan­ese float­ing slaugh­ter­house, the Nis­shin Maru, by ram­ming one of the ships up the slip­way of that foul, sadis­tic piece of killing machin­ery.” he told a reporter for the Age.

Cap­tain Wat­son has appealed to the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment to enforce its ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters in the Antarc­tic against whal­ing, just as it has enforced laws against fish poach­ing in its ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters.

Both Sea Shep­herd ves­sels do not have any cur­rent reg­is­tra­tion from a State, and have been labelled as ‘pirate ships’. Japan has pres­sured both the UK and Belize to can­cel mar­itime reg­is­tra­tion of the two Sea Shep­herd ves­sels.

Back­ground:
* SF Indy­bay IMC — Antarc­tic Direct Action: Japan­ese Claims of Injuries are Bogus says Sea Shep­herd
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/02/09/18360001.php
* SF Indy­bay IMC — US Gov­ern­ment Refus­es to Act against Japan on Whal­ing
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/02/09/18360043.php
* SF Indy­bay IMC — Sea Shep­herd crew miss­ing in Antarc­tic waters
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/02/08/18359650.php

Sources:
1. The Age — Whal­ing pro­test­ers threat­en Japan­ese ship
http://tinyurl.com/2tnceo
2. Sea Shep­herd — Sea Shep­herd Saves Whale Pod from Whalers
http://www.seashepherd.org/news/media_070211_2.html
3. ICR — RESEARCH VESSEL DAMAGED IN SEA SHEPHERD ATTACK
http://www.icrwhale.org/070212Release.htm
4. Green­peace — We con­demn vio­lence in the South­ern Ocean
http://weblog.greenpeace.org/oceandefenders/archive/2007/02/we_condemn_violence_in_th.html
5. Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald — ‘Pirate’ ship col­lides with whaler
http://tinyurl.com/34uhf3

30 shut down Manchester petrol station

10.02.2007

Yes­ter­day, 30 cli­mate activists shut down an ESSO petrol sta­tion on Upper Brook Street in Man­ches­ter for 2 hours. The action aimed to high­light the link between the oil indus­try and glob­al warm­ing.

Esso flyer (Mcr)
Mcr Esso blockade banner
10.02.2007

Yes­ter­day, 30 cli­mate activists shut down an ESSO petrol sta­tion on Upper Brook Street in Man­ches­ter for 2 hours. The action aimed to high­light the link between the oil indus­try and glob­al warm­ing.

ESSO is a direct con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change by burn­ing fos­sil fuels. It still active­ly looks for more oil. At the same time, ESSO is the last oil com­pa­ny to deny the link between burn­ing fos­sil fuels and cli­mate change. It has con­sis­tent­ly sab­o­taged inter­na­tion­al agree­ments on the issue. Although it announced a £20bn annu­al prof­it last week (the largest one in US cor­po­rate his­to­ry), ESSO does not spend a pen­ny on renew­able ener­gy.
Mcr Esso blockade 1
Mcr Esso blockade 2
30 peo­ple block­ad­ed the two entrances to the petrol sta­tion, using bits of fenc­ing and traf­fic cones. As a sym­bol against car cul­ture, three peo­ple locked them­selves with D‑locks to bicy­cles. Two oth­ers were locked to con­crete based signs. Two large ban­ners were dis­played read­ing “no.1 sup­pli­er, no.1 denier, no.1 prof­i­teer” and “closed for deny­ing cli­mate change”.
Police attend­ed the scene, but were gen­er­al­ly sup­port­ive. Passers-by and car dri­vers gave an over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive response, many honk­ing in sup­port.

Media atten­tion was high. Cam­era teams from both Chan­nel M and ITV Grana­da inter­viewed activists. A pho­to jour­nal­ist from Man­ches­ter Evening News was present. The BBC asked for footage to be sent in.

After two hours, hun­dreds of leaflets had been giv­en out and the block­aders vol­un­tar­i­ly re-opened the sta­tion. No arrests were made.

manchester@climatecamp.org.uk

Npower uses Thugs to Evict Radley Lakes Environmental Activists

At approx 5am Tues­day 6th Feb­ru­ary 12 bailiffs dressed from head to foot in black and wear­ing bal­a­clavas with­out warn­ing smashed through the win­dow of the occu­pied npow­er prop­er­ty show­er­ing sleep­ing activist in glass. They then pro­ceed­ed to cut the air sup­ply to a for­ti­fied bunker with­out check­ing if it was occu­pied, smash there way into a for­ti­fied loft with­out check­ing that the occu­pant Dave was safe. Not long after this they climbed onto the scaf­fold tow­er posi­tioned on the garage roof and topped with a wood­en box con­tain­ing a 45 gal­lon con­crete lock. Chris who was in the box at the time said they climbed on top of the box and start­ed to rock the tow­er before break­ing in with sledge ham­mers. Vet­er­an road pro­test­er Mup­pet Dave said ‘it was one of the most dan­ger­ous evic­tion he had expe­ri­enced and that it was only luck that nobody was seri­ous­ly hurt’.

Radley baliffs tip lock-on barrelAt approx 5am Tues­day 6th Feb­ru­ary 12 bailiffs dressed from head to foot in black and wear­ing bal­a­clavas with­out warn­ing smashed through the win­dow of the occu­pied npow­er prop­er­ty show­er­ing sleep­ing activist in glass. They then pro­ceed­ed to cut the air sup­ply to a for­ti­fied bunker with­out check­ing if it was occu­pied, smash there way into a for­ti­fied loft with­out check­ing that the occu­pant Dave was safe. Not long after this they climbed onto the scaf­fold tow­er posi­tioned on the garage roof and topped with a wood­en box con­tain­ing a 45 gal­lon con­crete lock. Chris who was in the box at the time said they climbed on top of the box and start­ed to rock the tow­er before break­ing in with sledge ham­mers. Vet­er­an road pro­test­er Mup­pet Dave said ‘it was one of the most dan­ger­ous evic­tion he had expe­ri­enced and that it was only luck that nobody was seri­ous­ly hurt’.

Two activists were arrest­ed and one sub­se­quent­ly de-arrest­ed and Chris is due in Did­cot Mag­is­trates Court on Thurs­day 15th charged with obstruc­tion of the Bailiffs. Short­ly after­wards npow­er swift­ly cor­doned of the lakes despite a ongo­ing legal chal­lenge by the local “Save Radley Lakes” group for it to be recog­nised as com­mon land.

The prop­er­ty was occu­pied with the inten­tion of cre­at­ing a field cen­tre to raise aware­ness and pre­vent these beau­ti­ful lakes being in filled with tox­ic ash from the burn­ing of coal at the Ger­man owned RWE npow­er Did­cot pow­er sta­tion. How­ev­er, despite mas­sive sup­port from the local com­mu­ni­ty, where there is over­whelm­ing oppo­si­tion to npower’s plans, and near­by envi­ron­men­tal groups it soon became clear that npow­er were hav­ing non of it, so we decide to oppose the repos­ses­sion and dig in. This deci­sion instant­ly cre­at­ed more media inter­est embar­rass­ing npow­er and under­min­ing their green­wash and it was prob­a­bly for this rea­son that they decide to dis­re­gard the safe­ty of indi­vid­u­als and send in the heav­ies. We are no seek­ing to take legal action against Sher­cu­ri­ty Ltd for the lack of health and safe­ty pro­ce­dure and endan­ger­ment of life. How­ev­er, we ful­ly intend to con­tin­ue our cam­paign to save the lakes and against RWE npow­er for both local and glob­al pol­lu­tion of the plan­et.

Sher­cu­ri­ty Ltd — have dealt with protest evic­tions (& squat­ters) before:
Main Tele­phone num­ber: +44 (0)845 890 9220
Fax: +44 (0)0845 890 9221

Com­pa­ny Offices
Sher­group House, Brain­tree Freeport, No 3 Freeport Office Vil­lage, Cen­tu­ry Dri­ve, Brain­tree, Essex CM77 8YG

Lon­don: 20–21 Tooks Court, Lon­don EC4A 1LB

http://www.shercurity.net/

Climate Action Gathering 17 March Edinburgh

Our plan­et is in cri­sis. The time to act is now…

The Cli­mate Action Gath­er­ing will see peo­ple from across scot­land that are at the fore­front of action against cli­mate change share their knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence with con­cerned peo­ple from all walks of life.

Scottish climate action gathering posterOur plan­et is in cri­sis. The time to act is now…

The Cli­mate Action Gath­er­ing will see peo­ple from across scot­land that are at the fore­front of action against cli­mate change share their knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence with con­cerned peo­ple from all walks of life.

There will be opper­tu­ni­ties to dis­cuss the poli­cies of gov­ern­ment, issues of social jus­tice and how the mod­ern world has cre­at­ed this prob­lem. A ded­i­cat­ed cin­e­ma will show doc­u­men­taries and short films relat­ing to cli­mate change and the fos­sil fuel indus­try. This will be a great opper­tu­ni­ty to meet oth­ers who are active in Scot­land, explore alter­na­tives togeth­er and build the move­ment to tack­le the root caus­es of cli­mate change.

Work­shops
Cli­mate change- the facts
Discussion;Causes & Respons­es
Future ener­gy paths
The oil indus­try
Transport/ Avi­a­tion
Permaculture/ Sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ties
Direct Action
What next for our move­ment?

March 17th 9am-6pm
@
3 Bris­to Place
Edin­burgh

Sea Shepherd Engages Japanese Whalers

Feb­ru­ary 9th, 2007 0830 Hours. (Auck­land N.Z. time)

The Sea Shep­herd ships Far­ley Mowat and the Robert Hunter have been engaged in a con­fronta­tion with the Japan­ese Whal­ing fac­to­ry ship Nis­shin Maru since 0530 Hours this morn­ing.

Feb­ru­ary 9th, 2007 0830 Hours. (Auck­land N.Z. time)

The Sea Shep­herd ships Far­ley Mowat and the Robert Hunter have been engaged in a con­fronta­tion with the Japan­ese Whal­ing fac­to­ry ship Nis­shin Maru since 0530 Hours this morn­ing.

When the Robert Hunter first approached the Nis­shin Maru there were three hunter killer ves­sels with the moth­er ship. These ves­sels quick­ly fled north­ward. The Nis­shin Maru fled East straight towards the Far­ley Mowat. At two miles from the Far­ley Mowat, the Nis­shin Maru turned and fled back west again.

There was a pod of whales in the area near the whalers. The Sea Shep­herd crew are hap­py to report that these whales fled and are now safe from the Japan­ese har­poons.

The Sea Shep­herd crew have suc­cess­ful­ly deliv­ered six litres of Butyric Acid onto the flens­ing deck of the Nis­shin Maru. This “but­ter acid” is a non­tox­ic obnox­ious smelling sub­stance. The foul smell has cleared the flens­ing deck and stopped all work of cut­ting up whales.

Sea Shep­herd crew in Zodi­acs have nailed plates to the drain out­lets on the Nis­shin Maru that spill the blood of the whales from the flens­ing deck into the sea. This is back­ing up the blood onto the flens­ing decks. The plates are secured by Hilt nail guns that dri­ve steel nails through sol­id steel.

Sea Shep­herd has relayed the coor­di­nates to the Green­peace ves­sel Esper­an­za. Despite Green­peace’s refusal to coop­er­ate with the Sea Shep­herd ships, the whales need every anti-whal­ing ship in the area. Green­peace refus­es to give Sea Shep­herd their posi­tion so it is unknown how long it will take them to reach the area where the whal­ing fleet is oper­at­ing.

Sea Shep­herd was able to out­ma­neu­ver the Japan­ese Satel­lite track­ing sys­tem by tak­ing the ships south of the Bal­leny Islands through heavy ice. Thir­ty years of ice nav­i­ga­tion oppos­ing the Cana­di­an seal slaugh­ter has proven quite help­ful. The Satel­lite sur­veil­lance pro­gram can­not track a ship’s wake through the ice. “We came in the back door out of the freez­er so to speak,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son.

The Sea Shep­herd ships have been search­ing for the Japan­ese fleet for five weeks and have cov­ered thou­sands of square miles of ocean.

The crew of both Sea Shep­herd ships are relieved that the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet has been found and is now under pur­suit and engaged in con­fronta­tion with the Robert Hunter and the Far­ley Mowat.

You can sup­port Sea Shep­herd’s Oper­a­tion Leviathan by vis­it­ing their web­page and mak­ing an on-line dona­tion here:  http://www.seashepherd.org/donate.html

12th February Aldermaston Blockade: Join us

THURSDAY 8 FEBRUARY — for imme­di­ate release
—————————————————–
With the par­lia­men­tary vote on replac­ing the Tri­dent nuclear sub­ma­rine fleet expect­ed in mid-March, and a nation­al demon­stra­tion of mass oppo­si­tion called for 24 Feb­ru­ary in Lon­don, anti-nuclear cam­paign­ers will return to AWE Alder­mas­ton on 12 Feb­ru­ary.

THURSDAY 8 FEBRUARY — for imme­di­ate release
—————————————————–
With the par­lia­men­tary vote on replac­ing the Tri­dent nuclear sub­ma­rine fleet expect­ed in mid-March, and a nation­al demon­stra­tion of mass oppo­si­tion called for 24 Feb­ru­ary in Lon­don, anti-nuclear cam­paign­ers will return to AWE Alder­mas­ton on 12 Feb­ru­ary.

Non­vi­o­lent direct action cam­paign­ers Block the Builders have called for a block­ade of Britain’s nuclear bomb fac­to­ry on the Mon­day morn­ing in an attempt to obstruct con­struc­tion work on new nuclear war­head facil­i­ties. For the past four years a mas­sive invest­ment pro­gramme has been in place at Alder­mas­ton, in advance of any par­lia­men­tary deci­sion on the future of Britain’s WMD.

In pre­vi­ous block­ades, Block the Builders and their friends have closed roads around the nuclear weapons fac­to­ry for between two and four hours. The group, which is opposed to the replace­ment of the UK’s nuclear weapons sys­tem, aims to stop vehi­cles enter­ing the site to work on the Ori­on laser facil­i­ty — which is being built in advance of any par­lia­men­tary deci­sion on Tri­den­t’s future.

A spokesper­son for Block the Builders said “In a week in which the defence sec­re­tary con­firmed that the nuclear ‘deter­rent’ is a polit­i­cal rather than mil­i­tary weapon, has he both­ered to ask the British pub­lic how many peo­ple real­ly want a new nuclear weapon? Peo­ple have to let the gov­ern­ment know what they think. This is a crit­i­cal time to engage in prac­ti­cal and effec­tive action, which is why we’ve called this block­ade. We’d also urge any­one who can’t come to AWE, to express their oppo­si­tion to their local MPs in advance of March’s par­lia­men­tary debate”.

ENDS

———————-
PRACTICAL ARRANGEMENTS
———————-
Media rep­re­sen­ta­tives are invit­ed to attend from 7am on 12/02
Sug­gest­ed loca­tion for park­ing and locat­ing spokesper­son
http://tinyurl.com/qpm9f
Media con­tact tel no for the day is 07969 739 812

———————-
NUMBERS AND PURPOSE
———————-
With the build-up to the nation­al demon­stra­tion on 24 Feb­ru­ary and the forth­com­ing par­lia­men­tary debate, organ­is­ers are obvi­ous­ly expect­ing good par­tic­i­pa­tion in the this event.

The pur­pose of the block­ade is

- to obstruct con­struc­tion traf­fic enter­ing the site
— to hin­der oper­a­tions at the site
— to sig­nal out­rage at the gov­ern­men­t’s posi­tion

———————-
ABOUT BLOCK THE BUILDERS
———————-
Formed in 2004, Block the Builders is a non­vi­o­lent direct action group which has
been tak­ing prac­ti­cal action to slow con­struc­tion work AWE Alder­mas­ton and at
the sites of com­pa­nies with con­struc­tion con­tracts with AWE.
This has tak­en the form of a month­ly, pub­licly-announced block­ade of AWE
Alder­mas­ton, com­bined with unan­nounced actions at AWE and con­trac­tor sites, and
events in con­junc­tion with oth­er groups such as the recent Greenpeace/BtB mass
weapons inspec­tion (27/11/06).

For reports of pre­vi­ous block­ades, see http://www.aldermaston.net/news

–
*****************************************
BLOCK THE BUILDERS!
non­vi­o­lent direct action against new nuclear weapons
*****************************************
Pledge *your* sup­port at http://www.blockthebuilders.org.uk/pledge
*****************************************

photos of Manchester carbon footprint stencils

7.02.2007

Last Thurs­day, to coin­cide with the IPCC report, a group of Man­ches­ter cli­mate activists dec­o­rat­ed the pave­ments out­side flight cen­tres, petrol sta­tions, super­mar­kets and a humvee garage with car­bon foot­prints.


7.02.2007

Last Thurs­day, to coin­cide with the IPCC report, a group of Man­ches­ter cli­mate activists dec­o­rat­ed the pave­ments out­side flight cen­tres, petrol sta­tions, super­mar­kets and a humvee garage with car­bon foot­prints.

Rough­ly a dozen sten­cils appeared Fri­day morn­ing in var­i­ous city cen­tre loca­tions. The stunt fol­lowed a num­ber of oth­er aware­ness rais­ing actions in Man­ches­ter, such as the block­ade of the humvee garage a few weeks ear­li­er.