Five peo­ple locked togeth­er using lock-on tubes block­ing the only access road and deny­ing entry to vehi­cles sup­ply­ing equip­ment essen­tial in the infra­struc­ture and oper­a­tion of the smelter. The block­ade start­ed at the begin­ning of the morn­ing shift change and last­ed for almost five hours.

Alcan are a tar­get because of their involve­ment in the destruc­tion of the beau­ti­ful Ice­landic wilder­ness. They are specif­i­cal­ly sup­port­ing con­struc­tion of a huge new dam at Thjor­sarv­er which is to pow­er expan­sion of their exist­ing plant just out­side Reyk­javik and increase alu­mini­um pro­duc­tion. Great areas of wilder­ness will be destroyed and the sub­se­quent envi­ron­men­tal dam­age and eco­log­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty will be beyond mea­sure.

Five peo­ple were arrest­ed and have been charged with Breach of the Peace.

The cam­paign con­tin­ues against the indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion of Ice­land’s nat­ur­al wilder­ness and the expan­sion of heavy indus­try.

On ALCAN see http://www.savingiceland.org/node/278

and http://www.savingiceland.org/node/68

Alcan’t — The strug­gle against Alcan in India:
http://www.saanet.org/alcant/intro_en.html

Press state­ment:
“Our protest is designed to express our oppo­si­tion to the pro­posed expan­sion of the alu­mini­um smelters at Straumsvík (ALCAN) and Grun­dar­tan­gi (Cen­tu­ry), as well as the con­struc­tion of an anode fac­to­ry at Katanes (R&D Ltd.) and yet anoth­er Cen­tu­ry smelter at Hel­gu­vik. We find it whol­ly unac­cept­able that the Fax­aflóa­hafnir bay should become the most high­ly pol­lut­ed area in North­ern Europe, yet this is what will hap­pen if these plans go ahead.

The addi­tion­al sac­ri­fices of Ice­land’s most pre­cious nat­ur­al jew­els, the Ram­sar pro­tect­ed wet­lands of Thjor­sarv­er and one of Europe’s most beau­ti­ful lakes, Langisjor, to facil­i­tate the expan­sions of the ALCAN and Cen­tu­ry smelters are com­plete­ly unac­cept­able.

We also wish to show our sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple who have suf­fered from ALCAN’s immoral and inhu­man work­ing prac­tices around the world; from the work­ers at Straumsvík who have con­tact­ed us to describe their unac­cept­able work­ing con­di­tions and the abuse of employ­ees’ rights, to the inhab­i­tants of the Kashipur dis­trict of India who have been fight­ing for twelve years against a planned baux­ite mine and ALCAN alu­mini­um plant which will force at least 20,000 peo­ple to leave their farm lands and will pol­lute their water sup­ply (see www.saanet.org/alcant), not for­get­ting the res­i­dents of Haf­nar­fjörður in Ice­land who are demand­ing a local ref­er­en­dum on the expan­sion of the ALCAN plant.

We urge the Ice­landic press to bet­ter inform them­selves about the envi­ron­men­tal impact of the planned build-up of heavy indus­try around Fax­aflóa­hafnir bay, and equal­ly about the record and work­ing prac­tices of the for­eign com­pa­nies that the Ice­landic gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to eulo­gize and acclaim as the sav­iors of Ice­land.”

The Alcan Song:

ALCAN the Alu­mini­um Man
The Alu­mini­um Man with the Alu­mini­um Plan
For mak­ing lots of alu­mini­um
Out of oth­er peo­ples land!

Will this Man of Alu­mini­um
Real­ize what he’s done,
Once he’s done what he is about to start?
He’s got alu­mini­um, but he’s got no heart!

In Birm­ing­ham, 13 cam­paign­ers met up at mid­day, and staged demos out­side all 4 of McDis­eased city cen­tre stores.

The tour start­ed with the McDev­as­ta­tion store on The Pal­lasades ramp, just off New Street. A large ban­ner was unfold­ed and plac­ards held aloft. Sev­er­al McD‘s staff were insis­tent that we couldn‘t protest out­side their store, but after 10 min­utes, they came back inform­ing us that we could protest after­all, so long as we didn‘t block the door­way! Well, how kind of them to let us protest!! Did they real­ly think we were going to move on just because they didn‘t want us there?!!

After half an hour, the protest turned mobile as we marched down New Street, to the store on High Street. They seemed equal­ly keen to see us! Whilst some pro­test­ers held up posters, oth­ers dis­trib­uted ‘What‘s wrong with McDon­alds‘ and ‘go veg­gie‘ leaflets to the mass­es. Our next stop was the McDeath store inside Par­adise Forum, where we exposed McDom­i­neer­ing for anoth­er half an hour.

The tour end­ed up at the McDeath store on Cher­ry Street, where we were soon joined by anoth­er 6 cam­paign­ers from Food Not Bombs, who set up a free food stall, right out­side!! Free food on offer includ­ed veg­gie burg­ers, fruit and lots more. The protest con­tin­ued along­side the food stall until 4pm. Well over 1,000 leaflets were hand­ed out in total dur­ing anoth­er great day of action which will be repeat­ed again soon!

For more infor­ma­tion about the cam­paign against McDeath, includ­ing how cam­paign­ers won a mam­moth court vic­to­ry against them ear­li­er this year, check out the McSpot­light web­site http://www.mcspotlight.org/
See also http://www.foodnotbombs.net/

West Mid­lands Ani­mal Action
e‑mail: wmids_animalaction@yahoo.co.uk
Home­page:http://www.geocities.com/wmids_animalaction/

—–

On Octo­ber 16th 2005 Food Not Bombs par­tic­i­pat­ed with oth­er groups in an action out­side McDon­alds near Pigeon Park (St. Phillip’s Cathe­dral) in Birm­ing­ham City Cen­tre. Birm­ing­ham Food Not Bombs believes that food should be a right not a priv­i­lege and reg­u­lar­ly serves free food in the city cen­tre to any­one who wants it, home­less or oth­er­wise. Food Not Bombs is an inter­na­tion­al move­ment and also cam­paigns on issues such as pover­ty, home­less­ness, war & mil­i­tary spend­ing, the envi­ron­ment, and glob­al­i­sa­tion.

The day of action was to high­light a vari­ety of issues con­cern­ing the McDon­alds cor­po­ra­tion. Free veg­gie-burg­ers and fruit were served right out­side McDon­alds to lure peo­ple away from buy­ing McDon­alds food, and to engage them in con­ver­sa­tion about the hot McDon­alds issues. The place looked quite emp­ty and we had a lot of sup­port from passers by and some McDon­alds employ­ees! To alle­vi­ate their poor cus­tomer turnout, we thought it would only be fair to lend them sup­port by ask­ing peo­ple to enjoy their veg­gie-burg­ers in the com­fort of their restau­rant..

http://www.mcspotlight.org/

“I feel bad­ly about what I’ve done with young peo­ple. I was the hap­py face on some­thing that was hor­ren­dous.”
‑Geof­frey Gul­liano, for­mer Ronald McDon­ald who lat­er embraced veg­e­tar­i­an­ism.

 

“For the last eight years I have doc­u­ment­ed coer­cion, threats, intim­i­da­tion and manip­u­la­tion by McDon­ald’s and Leo Bur­nett Adver­tis­ing against me due direct­ly to my work as Ronald McDon­ald.” Joe Mag­gard, for­mer Ronald actor, 2003.

Although McDon­alds are not the only cul­prit when it comes to the fol­low­ing issues, their prof­li­gate atti­tude and shame­less adver­tis­ing to young peo­ple has made them stand out from the crowd in the world of cor­po­rate mis­con­duct..

Poverty

Water, ener­gy, and land for crops are resources which can be used to alle­vi­ate pover­ty. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the pro­duc­tion of meat uses up to ten times the amount of these resources as the pro­duc­tion of crops for human con­sump­tion. McDon­alds are now exploit­ing mar­kets in poor­er coun­tries which cul­tur­al­ly do not con­sume large quan­ti­ties of meat. This expan­sion is like­ly to exac­er­bate glob­al pover­ty by increas­ing demand for these already scarce and con­trolled resources. There is often enough land and resources to feed the pop­u­la­tion of a poor coun­try but nation­al debt repay­ment oblig­a­tions force these coun­tries to grow cash crops (for export to wealthy coun­tries) rather than food for the local peo­ple. Eth­i­cal­ly, land should be used to feed peo­ple in pover­ty, not ani­mals for peo­ple in rich coun­tries.

Employment

World­wide, McDon­alds pay many of their work­ers a poor wage and are known for their hos­til­i­ty to trade unions. Even in the UK, the phrase “McJob” has recent­ly been coined to describe any bor­ing, repet­i­tive, soul-destroy­ing, and poor­ly paid job. McDon­alds could do much to alle­vi­ate pover­ty world­wide by pay­ing their work­ers a decent wage.

The environment

The mas­sive and unnec­es­sary amount of (un-biodegrad­able) pack­ag­ing used for McDon­alds meals is pre-req­ui­site for them to oper­ate serv­ing a high turn­around of cus­tomers. Not only is this bad for the envi­ron­ment but it fos­ters waste­ful habits in chil­dren, who McDon­alds relent­less­ly tar­get with their adver­tis­ing cam­paigns.

http://www.ronald.com/

Globalisation

The vora­cious spread of chain stores across the west­ern world (in recent years this activ­i­ty has been coined ‘glob­al­i­sa­tion’) has oust­ed many small­er busi­ness­es who can­not com­pete with mass adver­tis­ing and the economies of scale which such large mul­ti-nation­al com­pa­nies can ben­e­fit from. Although this is the result of free trade and com­pe­ti­tion, increas­ing­ly peo­ple are feel­ing that they have less con­sumer choice, and that their local com­mu­ni­ty or city cen­tre lacks char­ac­ter and indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. We are see­ing the bleach­ing of the human rain­bow in our pub­lic spaces.

Healthy Eating

McDon­alds adver­tis­ing tries to pur­vey their food as healthy and ‘nutri­tious’ (all food is nutri­tious) and have recent­ly start­ed serv­ing sal­ads which iron­i­cal­ly are almost as unhealthy as their burg­ers. A high fat diet is direct­ly linked with can­cer and heart dis­ease. The con­cern is that con­sumers are lead to believe that eat­ing McDon­alds meals fre­quent­ly can be ‘healthy’.

---

Manchester:

updates from Man­ches­ter’s anti-McDon­alds week­end: crit­i­cal mass and stink-bombs

On Fri­day evening, a crit­i­cal mass of about 20–25 cyclists stopped at 2 McDon­ald’s out­lets for a lit­tle street dance to a mobile sound sys­tem. When they even­tu­al­ly drew the atten­tion of the police to them, the cylists end­ed their tour with a din­ner of deli­cious veg­an burg­ers.

On Sat­ur­day lunch time, at least 3 (pos­si­bly more) McDon­ald’s out­lets in the city cen­tre were stink-bombed. But McDon­ald’s cus­tomers seemed to be sur­pris­ing­ly immune to the stench.

---

 

McDonalds, Nottingham.

After the Crit­i­cal Mass Bike Ride around Not­ting­ham, a few folks went down to the local McDon­alds, to hand out leaflets and the tell passers by, about the court suc­cess of the McLi­bel Two.

—-

Day of Action against McDonald’s

A bunch of peo­ple and Ronald McD him­self, turned out to protest against McDon­alds at the bot­tom of Exchange Walk in Not­ting­ham. They bought ban­ners, hand­ed out leaflets, and informed the passin’ pub­lic about the issues: nutri­tion [lack of it], envi­ron­men­tal issues, fast food lit­ter, their busi­ness prac­tices and not least, work­ers rights .…..

McDs leaflet:http://www.mcspotlight.org/campaigns/current/wwwmd-uk.pdf

---

 

AntiMcDonald’s Daze in Israel

16th Octo­ber 2005

Some recent his­to­ry, and a report of a high­ly suc­cess­ful day’s protests

(for more pic­tures, see URL at the end)

McDonald­s has been met in Israel with a cer­tain degree of resis­tance ever since it opened its first restau­rant in Ramat-Gan (a Tel-Aviv sub­urb) in 1993, when a group of Anar­chists chained them­selves to the doors and blocked the entrance.

For some rea­son, anti McDonald­s sen­ti­ments here have revolved almost exclu­sive­ly around the issue of ani­mal rights, and only in the last two years or so are we see­ing eco­log­i­cal, con­sumerist & health-ori­ent­ed groups join­ing the cam­paigns (the work­ers’ angle is still miss­ing, sad­ly).

In the ear­ly nineties, the “What’s Wrong with McDon­alds ?” leaflet was trans­lat­ed into Hebrew in a joint effort by the ani­mal rights orga­ni­za­tion “Anony­mous” (nowa­days a derad­i­cal­ized, main­stream, some­what wel­fare-ori­ent­ed orga­ni­za­tion) and an Anar­chist group call­ing them­selves sim­ply “Anar­chist Move­ment”.

How­ev­er, the Inter­na­tion­al Anti McDonald­s Day has been decent­ly observed only in the last 4 years, main­ly through the ini­tia­tives of the Tel-Aviv based group “One Strug­gle”, a Human/Animal Rights Anar­chist group quite sim­i­lar in char­ac­ter to “Green­peace Lon­don”. This group used to hold a reg­u­lar, week­ly vig­il in front of McDonald­s for over a year (quite an achieve­ment in a place like this), and pro­duced a bet­ter, more didac­tic ver­sion of the Hebrew Anti McDon­alds fly­er.

In 2003, One Strug­gle — with the help of oth­er groups orga­nized a crit­i­cal mass bike ride through cen­tral Tel-Aviv, car­ry­ing signs and stop­ping at var­i­ous McDonald­s restau­rants to leaflet passers-by. The bike ride, about 30 peo­ple strong, end­ed in a big­ger demo out­side a cen­tral McDon­alds restau­rant, with 60–70 peo­ple car­ry­ing ban­ners, signs, set­ting up lit­er­a­ture tables and serv­ing free veg­an food.

The 2004 event, although bet­ter orga­nized and includ­ing vig­ils in Israel’­s three main cities (Tel-Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem), saw a more or less equal amount of peo­ple take to the streets, but was almost unan­i­mous­ly ignored by all media (gen­er­al­ly, it is worth not­ing that Israel is a very polit­i­cal place as far as con­ven­tion­al Left/Right or Nation­al­ist pol­i­tics are con­cerned, but it has a strong ten­den­cy to down­play and brush aside more glob­al issues, like McDon­alds, which do not fit neat­ly into Israeli Left/Right cat­e­gories).

In 2005, dur­ing the week­end of the 14th-16th of Octo­ber, we orga­nized the most suc­cess­ful Israeli anti McDon­alds Day yet.

In Tel-Aviv, where the main event took place, we gath­ered at noon in the small gar­den on Shenkin st. — one of Tel Aviv’s cen­tral streets, packed with peo­ple on Fri­day after­noons for a gen­er­al anti McDonald­s ‘hap­pen­ing’. It includ­ed activ­i­ties for kids (cre­ative games, street the­ater), free screen print­ing shirts with antiM­c­Don­alds slo­gans, free veg­an food, infor­ma­tion stalls, a big pic­ture gallery dis­play­ing the hor­rors of McDon­alds con­nec­tion to fac­to­ry farm­ing, pol­lu­tion etc, and more. After a cou­ple of hours we marched around 50–60 peo­ple — to the near­by McDonald­s restau­rant on Shenkin st., with signs, bull­horns, drums, ban­ners and fes­tive cos­tumes, and from there to a sec­ond McDonald­s at Dizen­goff Square. The num­ber of passers-by who asked ques­tions and showed inter­est in our mes­sage was encour­ag­ing, and only a hand­ful of peo­ple actu­al­ly entered the restau­rants while we demon­strat­ed and hand­ed out fly­ers out­side.

After the Sab­bath, on Sun­day the 16th, there were anti McDon­alds vig­ils in four dif­fer­ent cities (Haifa, Jerusalem, Kfar Saba and Hert­zliya, where local Green Par­ty activists joined the AR activists). All vig­ils were well-attend­ed, and coor­di­nat­ed by a new ani­mal rights group called She­vi (acronym of Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Israel). In the evening, there was free veg­an food plus a screen­ing of the doc­u­men­tary McLi­bel 2005 with Hebrew sub­ti­tles at the Salon Mazal Rad­i­cal Infos­hop in cen­tral Tel Aviv, with a big turnout as well.

The most sur­pris­ing aspect of the 2005 events, in com­plete con­trast to pre­vi­ous years, was a lot of nation­al media atten­tion regard­ing these protests. The two major Israeli dai­ly news­pa­pers, Yediot Aharonot and Ma­ariv, both ran arti­cles about the events and the gen­er­al world­wide protests against McDonald­s, in their print­ed as well as online edi­tions. Ma­ariv, the sec­ond largest news­pa­per in Israel, with hun­dreds of thou­sands of read­ers, even devot­ed the main arti­cle of its Busi­ness sec­tion, cov­er and all, to the protests. There were inter­views with activists on tele­vi­sion pro­grams — includ­ing one on chan­nel 2, Israel’­s lead­ing chan­nel — and also on sev­er­al radio sta­tions, includ­ing Galei Tza­al­s eco­nom­ic report (that’­s the IDFs radio sta­tion and the most pop­u­lar one in Israel).

We do not know what caused this minor media fren­zy, but we tried our hard­est to take advan­tage of it, and are sat­is­fied that a record num­ber of Israelies have now heard that there is indeed some­thing very wrong with McDonald­s. The cor­po­ra­tion, by the way, main­tained a ‘no com­ment’ pol­i­cy to all reporters regard­ing our actions and our claims.

All in all, we feel these events were fruit­ful, pos­i­tive & enjoy­able, and that a crys­tal-clear mes­sage of resis­tance to the McDonaldiza­tion of the plan­et was con­veyed.

For pic­tures of the var­i­ous Israeli 2005 vig­ils, fly­ers, posters, press cut­tings etc.:
http://photobucket.com/albums/a100/xzoidbergx/Israel%20AntiMcDonalds%20D…

For a sam­ple of Israeli main­stream mediaís report of the events:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L‑3155577,00.html
(from the Yediot Aharonot site)

For more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact One Strug­gle at:
vegan_politics@yahoo.com /http://www.onestruggle.org
or She­vi at:shevi_liberation@yahoo.com /http://www.free.org.il

The Save Swal­low’s Wood Cam­paign held a protest on Fri­day 14th Octo­ber out­side the nation­al park author­i­ty head­quar­ters in (Aldern House, Bakewell).

Peak Dis­trict Nation­al Park Author­i­ty mem­bers were greet­ed by local cam­paign­ers who are urg­ing them to recon­sid­er their sup­port for the A628 bypass and sup­port instead an HGV ban.
A pre­lim­i­nary study into the poten­tial for an HGV ban has been com­mis­sioned by the Cam­paign to Pro­tect Rur­al Eng­land. The study, com­piled by inde­pen­dent trans­port pro­fes­sions MRTU (the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Trans­port Research Unit, con­clud­ed that the HGV ban would bring sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits to jus­ti­fy the costs, even with­out tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion the spe­cial char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Nation­al Park Land­scape.

Mon­ster hous­es being built on rare mead­ow flood­plain by not­ting­hams rich­est man whilst 600,000 res­i­den­tial homes lay emp­ty in not­ting­hamshire alone.

South of Not­ting­ham near Clifton Bridge in Wil­ford, the com­pa­ny vot­ed the UK worst house­builder is cur­rent­ly destroy­ing a mead­ow & cut­ting down trees for mon­ster 4 storey hous­es on a flood­plain. Locals have voiced dis­sent, but to no avail. Trees, hedges & rare Not­ting­ham cro­cus­es have been main­tained by locals includ­ing yours tru­ely for many years, roman remains have been found, this has helped save some of the trees & cro­cus­es, but flood­plain & mead­ow which are being destroyed are very rare.
Vehi­cles on site have been reg­u­lary made safe & trees pro­tect­ed in var­i­ous by clever mon­ster fox­es & bad­gers using var­i­ous hand tools.
Recy­cle the emp­ties & build eco­homes in the right area for the peo­ple made envi­ron­men­tal­ly out of straw­bale etc, maybe even bricks mould­ed with resin from the waste cur­rent­ly burnt at East­croft. If we don’t then it maybe Not­ting­ham fac­ing a cri­sis like New Orleans, mean­while the wildlife of Sher­wood & Charn­wood are already express­ing their opin­ion with action.

A VIGIL for the “death of dem­co­ra­cy” is to be held on Sat­ur­day Octo­ber 29 by cam­paign­ers fight­ing to save ancient wood­land in Sus­sex.

The protest is to be staged from 2pm at the junc­tion of Tit­nore Lane, Dur­ring­ton, Wor­thing, and the A259 Lit­tle­hamp­ton Road.
The round­about, near North­brook Col­lege, is just five min­utes’ walk from Gor­ing rail­way sta­tion, served by direct trains from Brighton, Lon­don and Portsmouth.
In June Tory-run Wor­thing Bor­ough Coun­cil gave out­line per­mis­sion for a 875 home devel­op­ment plus road widen­ing, which will see more than 200 trees felled in one of the last patch­es of ancient wood­land on the coastal plain.
This was despite mas­sive pub­lic oppo­si­tion and years of peti­tion rais­ing, march­ing and meet­ings.
On Sep­tem­ber 4 pro­test­ers blocked busy Tit­nore Lane with a burn­ing effi­gy of John Prescott, whose depart­ment had just refused to call a pub­lic inquiry into the high­ly unpop­u­lar scheme, claim­ing it was not of region­al or nation­al sig­nif­i­cance.
The protest, togeth­er with a live­ly stage occu­pa­tion at the coun­cil meet­ing where the plans were passed, fea­tured on a recent edi­tion of ITV’s “Tonight With Trevor McDon­ald”.
Coun­cil offi­cers claim work on the site may now start in “ear­ly spring” but the cam­paign­ers have pledged to fight the bull­doz­ers every inch of the way and are appeal­ing for help from out­side Wor­thing.

POW (Pro­tect Our Wood­land)

SCAR (South Coast Against Road­build­ing)

On the 16th of June 2005, “Blooms­day” the 5 were still free, and protest­ing. That was the morn­ing the Cor­duf­f’s aban­doned break­fast was pho­tographed and we read of how Shell had ille­gal­ly entered the lands in Ross­port to begin ille­gal work on an ille­gal pipeline.

The Ross­port five have been released FOR NOW from Clover­hill prison. The court­room was packed with sup­port­ers as the deci­sion became clear.There was a group of up to 100 out­side dur­ing the dura­tion of the hear­ing which last­ed about an hour.

The men could still face jail how­ev­er as there will be a hear­ing regard­ing theis­sue of civ­il ver­sus crim­i­nal con­tempt and the puni­tive nature or not of each on the 25th of October.More details are to emerge on this issue…

The nation­al demo in ire­land is to go ahead as planned tomor­row and the hope is with all the media atten­tion todays announcem­net will attract that the num­bers could be very big indeed!

The men vowed to fight on as they were sur­round­ed by rav­en­ous jour­nal­ists at the gates of the Court(and flanked by politicians,many of whom have been absent on the entire issue).The rain could not damp­en the spir­its of the men and their sup­port­ers though as they defend­ed their actions and pledged to con­tin­ue in the same vein.

more info on www.indymedia.ie

a bat­tle won today but the war far from over

The lat­est in a series of one-day gath­er­ings to plan actions against road and run­way expan­sion will take place in Not­ting­ham on Sat­ur­day 8th Octo­ber, meet­ing at the sumac cen­tre, 245 Glad­stone Street, Not­ting­ham, NG7 6HX — We’re look­ing at a 10am start.

It will have a prac­ti­cal what-we-can-do-about-it empha­sis as opposed to being pre­dom­i­nant­ly infor­ma­tion or dis­cus­sion based.

More infor­ma­tion re. food, acco­mo­da­tion etc. will fol­low once we’ve got all that sort­ed out, but we can say now that we have no fund­ing for this, so please expect to make a small dona­tion towards costs, and cer­tain­ly your food, so no-one ends up skint and dis­grun­tled. For sim­i­lar rea­sons, it is vital that you let us know with as much notice as pos­si­ble if you are intend­ing to come along, and par­tic­u­lar­ly if you have any spe­cif­ic needs. Phone 0845 355 0111.

Organ­ised by Road­block: http://www.roadblock.org.uk/

PROTESTERS in Sus­sex blocked a road with a burn­ing effi­gy of John Prescott on Sun­day after­noon, Sep­tem­ber 4.

The dra­ma fol­lowed a ral­ly held by cam­paign group Pro­tect Our Wood­land! (POW!) against plans to build 875 new homes on fields and ancient wood­land off Tit­nore Lane, West Dur­ring­ton, Wor­thing.

Out­line plan­ning per­mis­sion has already been grant­ed by Wor­thing Bor­ough Coun­cil for the scheme, which would see more than 200 trees being felled in the last remain­ing ancient wood­land in the area.

A plea for the deci­sion to be called in for a pub­lic enquiry was reject­ed by the office of deputy prime min­is­ter Prescott.
Angry locals gath­ered in num­bers in North­brook Park in Dur­ring­ton to hear speech­es by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of POW!, local ameni­ty groups such as the Wor­thing Soci­ety, Sus­sex Wildlife Trust and a for­mer coun­ty coun­cil­lor.

Most of them then joined a pro­ces­sion down Tit­nore Lane itself, to show “John Prescott” the woods whose death war­rant he appears to have signed.

In the heart of the woods the crowd came to a halt and gath­ered around the effi­gy, which was set on fire to cheers and chant­i­ng and the annoy­ance of queues of motorists.

Said a POW! spokesman: “We hope this sends a mes­sage to Wor­thing coun­cil and the gov­ern­ment that local peo­ple are not going to sit back and watch prop­er­ty devel­op­ers tram­ple all over their coun­try­side and their her­itage.

“They have thwart­ed the demo­c­ra­t­ic will by push­ing ahead with this scheme and they are going to meet with spir­it­ed resis­tance every inch of the way.”

Home­page: http://www.protectourwoodland.fsnet.co.uk

Final­ly the seeds that have been plant­ed by peo­ple from all over Europe and the States that came over this sum­mer to protest against the con­struc­tion of a mas­sive Dam in the high­lands Ice­land and an Alu­mini­um Smelter are start­ing to grow.
Three Ice­landers entered the seat of the Ice­landic gov­ern­ment (the offices of the Prime min­is­ter) and climbed onto the roof where they took down the Ice­landic nation­al flag and replaced it with a flag that said “no Fuck­ing Alu­mini­um Smelter!â€?

This action hap­pened on the ear­ly after­noon of the 26th of august.

Two of the pro­test­ers got arrest­ed and the Police are talk­ing big about con­se­quences, as this peo­ple entered the house ille­gal­ly and climbed the roof.

In Ice­land the nation­al flag is a great sym­bol and so there­fore this was a strong mes­sage as it is con­sid­ered “dis­re­spect­ful”.

The three pro­test­ers did­n’t have any con­tact with the peo­ple that had the protest camp at the high­lands these past few months.

This action got planned by them on their own accord that for the few of us that are left here, from the camp was an amaz­ing sur­prise and made the entire strug­gle worth­while.

It is shown that the camp has giv­en inspi­ra­tion and courage to Ice­landers to stand up for their believes and not let their opres­sive gov­ern­ment get away with mur­der.

e‑mail: savingiceland@riseup.net
Home­page: http://www.savingiceland.org