October 29 — Vigil for Death of Democracy, Titnore Woods

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)

Breaking news — Rossport 5 freed today!!

Breakfast interrupted by arrest!

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

Roads and Airport gathering in Nottingham early October

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/

Burning effigy blocks road — Titnore, Sussex

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

Iceland parliament roof action

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

Earth First! summer gathering 17–21 August 2005

A nation­al gath­er­ing to inspire and train all those opposed to the destruc­tion of our plan­et

Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing 2005
Wednes­day 17th — Sun­day 21st August
Peak Dis­trict
Phone: 0845 355 0111
http://www.earthfirstgathering.org.uk/

Earth First! is not a cohe­sive group or cam­paign, but a con­ve­nient ban­ner to work under for peo­ple who share sim­i­lar ideas. The gen­er­al prin­ci­ples behind the name are non-hier­ar­chi­cal organ­i­sa­tion and the use of direct action to stop, and even­tu­al­ly reverse, the forces that are respon­si­ble for the destruc­tion of the earth and its inhab­i­tants.

Since 1992 many of the peo­ple under this ban­ner have come togeth­er at gath­er­ings to meet, socialise, dis­cuss and organ­ise direct action. This year’s gath­er­ing will take place in the Peak Dis­trict. Here, in our first nation­al park, is some of Britain’s most spec­tac­u­lar land­scape.

“In the future our gen­er­a­tion will be remem­bered for hav­ing the last oppor­tu­ni­ty to halt mass extinc­tion, unprece­dent­ed even by the dinosaurs. Now is the time to gath­er and form an eco­log­i­cal resis­tance before the last great forests and life-sup­port sys­tems of the earth dis­ap­pear for­ev­er. There is no turn­ing back it is lit­er­al­ly up to you.”

Ses­sions will cov­er a range of prac­ti­cal skills and strug­gles. Those already planned include self-defence, nan­otech­nol­o­gy, block­ade tac­tics, Gle­nea­gles G8, nav­i­ga­tion, Ice­land Dams, action First Aid, indige­nous resis­tance, climb­ing, ID cards, road and air­port expan­sion, prim­i­tive skills, organ­is­ing actions and cam­paigns, cli­mate change, and eco­log­i­cal restora­tion. We’ll put more details up on the web­site as and when ses­sions are con­firmed.

One day of the gath­er­ing will be an away-day out in the Peak Dis­trict. As well as a chance to explore the local biore­gion togeth­er, there’ll be prac­ti­cal ses­sions up in the hills and a vis­it to Nine Ladies, a direct action camp block­ing quar­ry expan­sion in the Peak Dis­trict Nation­al Park ( http://pages.zoom.co.uk/~nineladies ).

There will be a recep­tion tent, veg­an cater­ing by Anar­chist Teapot ( http://www.eco-action.org/teapot ), a café by Veg­gies ( http://www.veggies.org.uk/ ), a read­ing library, a wom­ens’ space, and a camp­ing area includ­ing a qui­et sleep­ing area. Re-pressed (http://www.re-pressed.org.uk/ ) will be run­ning a stall sell­ing books and pam­phlets. Com­mer­cial stalls are not wel­come, but remem­ber to bring any infor­ma­tion about your group, cam­paign or forth­com­ing action.

Get­ting there: The near­est main­line sta­tion is Der­by. The exact loca­tion of the site will be announced a week before the Gath­er­ing. For a map and trav­el details (includ­ing trains and bus­es close to the site), check the web­site or send a first-class stamped, addressed enve­lope marked GATHERING MAP to the address below. We will post it back to you so that it arrives on August 10th. Alter­na­tive­ly, check the web­site from that date. We’ll run pick­ups from the near­est train sta­tion a cou­ple of times a day: ring the phone num­ber for times. Details of any region­al trans­port con­tacts will be put on the web­site.

Arriv­ing and leav­ing: The first ses­sions start at 1pm on Wednes­day 17th August, so aim to arrive by the evening of Tues­day 16th if you want to come to the whole event; the gate will be open from 12 mid­day. The last ses­sion will end on Sun­day 21st at 6pm. After din­ner there’ll be films and a ceilidh.

What to bring: Come equipped: bring shel­ter, warm water­proof clothes (just in case), and boots. You’ll need mon­ey for the gate and for food from Anar­chist Teapot unless you’re cater­ing for your­self. Do pho­to­copy and bring any ‘how to’ guides you think might be use­ful.

Site crew is every­one who comes along. In order for us to have the gath­er­ing, veg­eta­bles need to be chopped, young peo­ple need to be enter­tained, wash­ing up needs to be done, the gate tent needs to be staffed and com­post toi­lets need to be main­tained. Some­times this is the best way to meet new peo­ple, have great con­ver­sa­tions, and learn how to do new things. Come pre­pared to vol­un­teer. You can sign up for shifts when you get there.

Cost: At the gate, we’ll be ask­ing for £10 for every adult (includ­ing every­one help­ing out in any way) to cov­er the cost of organ­is­ing the gath­er­ing.

Camp­ing: The accom­mo­da­tion is camp­ing only, so come equipped. A women-only camp­ing space will be pro­vid­ed. We aim to be as ful­ly-acces­si­ble to all as we can. If you have any spe­cial needs, con­tact us. A lim­it­ed num­ber of live-in vehi­cles are wel­come: check with us in advance to see if there’s space.

Kids: Chil­dren are wel­come. Please let us know how many kids are com­ing and how old they are. There’ll be a kids’ space, and some events for dif­fer­ent ages, but you’re still respon­si­ble for the chil­dren you bring.

Dogs: There is a strict lim­it on the num­ber of dogs we can have on this site, so please arrange before­hand for friends or rel­a­tives to look after your dog. If this is real­ly not pos­si­ble you must con­tact us before­hand, as any dogs not already booked will be turned away at the gate. Dogs must be kept on a lead at all times, and exer­cised off-site.

Food: The Anar­chist Teapot mobile action kitchen will be cook­ing GM-free veg­an food. You can buy their meal tick­ets for £3.50 a day, or bring your own food to cook and a camp­ing stove.

Cam­eras and press: This is an action-ori­en­tat­ed gath­er­ing, not a press event, so if you are com­ing as a jour­nal­ist then you are not wel­come. Please respect the wish­es of some peo­ple not to be pho­tographed and leave your cam­era at home.

NO COPS, NO JOURNALISTS, NO CAMERAS

Set-up and tat-down: We’ll need some peo­ple to help out on site for a few days before and after the gath­er­ing. If you can help, phone us on the num­ber below.

Earth First! has no cen­tral office, no mem­bers, no paid work­ers, and also no mon­ey. Any dona­tions will be appre­ci­at­ed. Make cheques and postal orders payable to “Earth First!”.

Earth First! Gath­er­ing 2005, 6 Tilbury Place, Brighton, East Sus­sex, BN2 2GY
Phone: 0845 355 0111
Email: sum­mer­gath­er­ing @ yahoo.co.uk
Web­site: http://www.earthfirstgathering.org.uk/

Saving Iceland electronic blockade TODAY!

Elec­tron­ic block­ade Wednes­day 17. August from 10 am.

Lets force Landsvirkjun to face up to what we think of their destruc­tion of Ice­land for their own per­son­al prof­it and that of multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

It’s high time to paral­yse the destruc­tion of Ice­landic nature.

Elec­tron­ic block­ade Wednes­day 17. August from 10 am.

Lets force Landsvirkjun to face up to what we think of their destruc­tion of Ice­land for their own per­son­al prof­it and that of multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

We can do this by tele­phon­ing them, send­ing fax­es to them or e‑mailing them.

There are plen­ty of ques­tions we would like to ask them.

For exam­ple: How comes Impregi­lo where at such an advan­tage dur­ing the bid­ding process for the con­tract­ing of the build­ing of the Kárahnjúar dams? Was there a leak of infor­ma­tion? Who hired Bech­tel to build the ALCOA fac­to­ry in Ice­land if it was not ALCOA them­selves? Could it have been Landsvirkjun employ­ee Sig­ur­dur St. Arnalds who hired them? What was dis­cussed at meet­ings between Mr. Arnalds and Bech­tel in Mon­tre­al “Long before even Alcoa got into the pic­ture”? If that is the case what did Mr. Arnalds get for arrang­ing the con­tract for Bech­tel to
build an ALCOA fac­to­ry in Ice­land? What are the names of the var­i­ous envi­ron­men­tal sci­en­tists that Landsvirkjun have threat­ened or per­se­cut­ed when they deliv­ered sci­en­tif­ic results that were con­sid­ered incon­ve­nient by Landsvirkjun. Whose envi­ron­men­tal ass­es­ments did Landsvirkjun fal­si­fy sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly?

Lets have a looooooong good talk with them, send them huge attach­ments or end­less black fax doc­u­ments. Put their e‑mails on post lists and spread the word as wide as pos­si­ble.

Landsvirkjun, head offices
tele­phone: 00354–515-9000
fax: 00354–515-9007
e‑mail: landsvirkjun@lv.is

Friârik Sophus­son, direc­tor of Landsvirkjun
tele­phone: 00354–515-9011
e‑mail: fridrik@lv.is

JÃhannes Geir Sig­urgeirs­son, pres­i­dent of the board of Landsvirkjun
e‑mail: johannes@lv.is

157.157.138.213

hregg@lv.is
471 2951

hronn@lv.is
470 2602

 kristjank@lv.is
515 9241

more email address­es here-
http://www.lv.is/EN/employees.asp?catID=90
eg-
bjarnibj@lv.is
edvard@lv.is
bjarnimar@lv.is
einarmat@lv.is
eddaros@bi.is
stefanp@lv.is
kristjan@lv.is
thorbergur@lv.is
thrainn@lv.is
ofeigur@lv.is
agnar@lv.is
arni@lv.is
bjornst@lv.is
gunnlaugur@lv.is
olis@lv.is
thorsteinn@lv.is
orlygur@lv.is
ragnheidur@lv.is
gudmundurp@lv.is
bergur@lv.is
asgeirg@lv.is
bjornj@lv.is
gunnhildurm@lv.is
sigthrud@lv.is
stefan@lv.is
ragnvig@lv.is
adalsteinn@lv.is
agnar@lv.is
albert@lv.is

http://vefprofun.lv.is

Anti-Road protesters occupy Dept of Transport

Today, the Depart­ment of Trans­port was tar­get­ted for the first time in about a year by anti-roads pro­test­ers.

Tues­day 16th August was an incred­i­ble day for our lit­tle cam­paign group from Southend on Sea. As some of you may now be aware we staged the lat­est in our series of ‘Save Pri­o­ry Park!’ direct actions today, for the first time yet with the cho­sen venue being in the cen­tre of Lon­don.

At 10.40am Tues­day morn­ing, a small team of activists from the group, tailed by a Lon­don Tonight film crew and inde­pen­dent video­g­ra­phers, entered the Depart­ment for Trans­port (DfT) main office lob­by on Mar­sham Street, lock­ing down for an inside occu­pa­tion that ran into the ear­ly after­noon.

The DfT is due to make a deci­sion regard­ing fund­ing for the F5 road scheme immi­nent­ly, so we took action to draw media and pub­lic atten­tion to the deci­sion mak­ers, to try to influ­ence the process, and to show that the peo­ple of our town — plus our great friends from fur­ther afield — feel strong­ly enough to take direct action as need be to stop the road.

In con­junc­tion with the inside team, who deployed hand­cuffs and lock on equip­ment to stay in posi­tion, a larg­er group unfurled two 12′ ban­ners out­side the entrance, in addi­tion to posters depict­ing finds from the threat­ened East Sax­on king’s bur­ial site. This enabled us to main­tain pub­lic engage­ment through­out the event, as the access doors to the DfT were
prompt­ly locked after our arrival.

Nego­ti­a­tions ensued, with the office being unwill­ing to speak to the inside team, unless we first took the deci­sion to leave the build­ing. Our stance was agreed to be that we would only unlock if a senior rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the DfT spoke to us in per­son, oth­er­wise we would have to be forcibly removed by the author­i­ties.

Even­tu­al­ly after a polite stand off that last­ed for over two hours, the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police were called and we were giv­en one final oppor­tu­ni­ty to go at around 1.00pm. We were then eject­ed from the build­ing, whilst still being locked togeth­er as we had been for the dura­tion of the event.

Although being threat­ened with var­i­ous pos­si­ble charges includ­ing a breach of the peace — even after our forced relo­ca­tion out­side — we chose to stay and con­tin­ue the protest to max­imise our impact, with lunchtime office work­ers tak­ing much inter­est in the pro­ceed­ings. Sur­pris­ing­ly for us, and in light of all of the above, no arrests were made.

Look­ing back for once, we have come a long way since we formed Park­life in June 2001. We have shown yet again that local peo­ple can empow­er them­selves, by tak­ing action to stand up for what they believe in. We remain a sin­gle issue and high­ly focused campaign/action group, but at the same time we hope that peo­ple will say, ‘If they can do it then we can!’

Park­life video 6mins (6.6mb mpeg4 ver­sion) -
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2005/09/323692.mp4
A short sequence of clips from tues­days action at the depart­ment of trans­port. 2 mins 4 mb -
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2005/08/321318.mov

e‑mail: priory_parklife@yahoo.co.uk
Home­page: http://www.savepriorypark.org

Illegal Roadstone Quarry in Peak District National Park Sabotaged

Ear­li­er this sum­mer an ille­gal road­stone quar­ry at Back Dale Quar­ry, on Long­stone Edge Nr Bakewell was tar­get­ed by sabo­teurs.

The quar­ry owned by Bleak­low Indus­tries, was being mined by Mer­ri­mans (Mer­ri­mans, Gleabe, and Stan­cliffe — 9 Ladies — are the main com­pa­nies rip­ping up the Peak Park).

The Quar­ry was grant­ed per­mis­sion for min­er­al extrac­tion (Flurspar) in the 1950’s. Due to protest about the quar­ry which eats into Long­stone Edge and the Combe Dale SSSI,(Sites of Spe­cial Sci­en­tif­ic Inter­est) includ­ing men­tion in Par­li­ment, quar­ry­ing by RMC stopped. Mer­ri­mans took over and to max­imise their prof­its start­ed to ille­gal­ly extract road­stone.

The pres­sures on our Nation­al Parks will increase as the new road build­ing pro­gram gets under­way. At the start of this year the Peak Park Author­i­ty took out an injunc­tion to stop Mer­ri­mans from extract­ing road­stone at Back Dale, as the quar­ry is eat­ing into the Edge and the woods there at a rapid pace. Mer­ri­mans have refused to stop extract­ing the stone, even step­ping up their extrac­tion.

Due to these facts per­sons unknown took it upon them­selves to take direct action againts machin­ery used there and 2 exca­va­tors and 2 crush­ing and sort­ing con­vey­ers had their engines destroyed, 2 crush­ing and sort­ing con­very­ers and a drilling rig had their engines sab­o­taged, 2 lor­ries and a bull­doz­er had locks glued, and a dust lor­ry was sab­o­taged.

Stopping Climate Change in its Tracks, New Zealand/Aotearoa

The Save Hap­py Val­ley Cam­paign has tak­en the fight against Sol­id Ener­gy to a new lev­el. In a care­ful­ly planned protest, three activists ‘locked on’ to train tracks at about 11.50am today pre­vent­ing Sol­id Energy’s coal trains reach­ing Lyt­tel­ton port [first press release]. Two were locked onto the track direct­ly and a third was hang­ing from a tree 30m up with his sup­port rope con­nect­ed to the track.

Three trains were forced to stop and police quick­ly turned up [sec­ond press release]. Those locked-on refused to move and police were forced to dig up the con­crete that been laid to remove the two direct­ly con­nect­ed. The third in the tree took longer for the police to get down. In all, the pro­test­ers held up the coal trains for just under 4 hours.

All three have been arrest­ed and charges of tres­pass, wil­ful dam­age and tres­pass under the Rail­ways Act. They have vowed to fight the charges and as well as Sol­id Ener­gy’s intim­i­da­tion tac­tics, who plan to sue them for two hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars [third press release].They will be stag­ing a protest at their first court appear­ance this Thurs­day, 9.00am at the Dis­trict Court in Christchurch.

Sol­id Ener­gy has been push­ing very aggres­sive­ly to destroy Hap­py Val­ley, a beau­ti­ful area of native bush, frag­ile wet­lands and a thriv­ing ecosys­tem of native birds and ani­mals locat­ed on the West Coast of New Zealand, with an open-cast coal mine and have just recent­ly cleared the nec­es­sary legal hur­dles. The mine will not only destroy the val­ley and the sur­round­ing area, but fur­ther add to cli­mate change which is expect­ed to have dev­as­tat­ing glob­al con­se­quences if left to con­tin­ue unabat­ed.

Check out www.savehappyvalley.org.nz for more infor­ma­tion about Sol­id Ener­gy’s plans and the cam­paign against them.