Category: Rest of Europe

Rest of Europe

A week of Hell for Shell

28th August 2010

After Mon­days suc­cess­ful action stop­ping work for 3 hours the camp was inspired and many actions fol­lowed.

Tues­day marked the start of an oral hear­ing into whether Shell can lay the gas pipe line through the estu­ary. This gave locals and campers the chance to ques­tion Shell and Bord Pleanála about the legal­i­ty of gas pipe line and oth­er issues sur­round­ing the pipe.

28th August 2010

After Mon­days suc­cess­ful action stop­ping work for 3 hours the camp was inspired and many actions fol­lowed.

Tues­day marked the start of an oral hear­ing into whether Shell can lay the gas pipe line through the estu­ary. This gave locals and campers the chance to ques­tion Shell and Bord Pleanála about the legal­i­ty of gas pipe line and oth­er issues sur­round­ing the pipe.
The bore holes that Shell are drilling are to extract infor­ma­tion that will deter­mine whether a tun­nel can be made for the gas pipe line to run through, how­ev­er the fact that this infor­ma­tion hasn’t been col­lect­ed yet did not affect Shells appli­ca­tion or claim that the pipe line will be com­plete­ly safe.
This oral hear­ing com­bined with an action packed week put pres­sure on Shell from all direc­tions.

Wednes­day saw a group occu­py the Shell’s secu­ri­ty com­pound that turned into a pic­nic and rev­e­la­tions of IRMS read­ing mate­r­i­al (mer­ce­nary uk) and eat­ing habits (loads of bis­cuits).

As Thurs­day morn­ing broke a group set off towards the sun­rise (and the drilling rigs) occu­py­ing secu­ri­ty and stop­ping work­ers from get­ting onto the plat­form for over an hour. After the suc­cess of this action a com­mu­ni­ty walk out hap­pened lat­er in the day when low tide allowed peo­ple to walk out under the plat­form. Despite peo­ple gath­er­ing under the plat­form drilling con­tin­ued, which is a breach of health and safe­ty rules.

Attempts to stop the plat­forms being moved on Fri­day were foiled by over zeal­ous secu­ri­ty. Despite many coura­geous endeav­ours to climb the legs of the plat­form secu­ri­ty turned vio­lent and many were thrown to the ground.

Beat the Bore­holes Cam­paign con­tin­ues and we wel­come any­one want­i­ng to get involved.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0825/1.…html

The Sun rises over the 'kayak warriors'

Stopping workers getting on

Tens of thousands of mink released in Greece

“26.08.2010 — Helio­den­dro, Kas­to­ria (Greece)
One of the biggest greek mink farms has been hit in our first night of action. All the cages impris­on­ing ani­mals in 37 sheds of the farm were opened and machin­ery sab­o­taged.

“26.08.2010 — Helio­den­dro, Kas­to­ria (Greece)
One of the biggest greek mink farms has been hit in our first night of action. All the cages impris­on­ing ani­mals in 37 sheds of the farm were opened and machin­ery sab­o­taged.

To let the ani­mals out part of the fence was cut and both gates opened smash­ing the locks (using the farmer’s tools). Two hours and half of work and we could run away along with thou­sands of minks (accord­ing to media 50.000 were released).

27.08.2010 — Kaloneri, Siatista (Greece)
Anoth­er mink farm was our tar­get for a sec­ond night of action, this time near the town of Kaloneri, on a road where 10 farms can be eas­i­ly seen. 8 sheds full of ani­mals had their cages opened in just ten min­utes. Before leav­ing we opened a gate to let the ani­mals run towards free­dom (accord­ing to media 2.000 were released).

In both cas­es we had checked care­ful­ly the farms to know how to orga­nize a faster and more secure action.
With these actions we decid­ed to hit the fur indus­try and espe­cial­ly the dis­gust­ing ‘fur towns’ of Siatista and Kas­to­ria, plagued with hun­dreds of fur stores. Lib­er­at­ing ani­mals from cages is a way to put our ideas into prac­tice. We oppose the oppres­sion, exploita­tion and impris­on­ment that this civ­i­liza­tion has cre­at­ed for any liv­ing being, regard­less of species, race, gen­der or sex­u­al pref­er­ences.

In these des­per­ate days we still strive for free­dom. Eat veg­an on the bar­ri­cades!

A.L.F.”

Greek media has report­ed that as many as 50,000 mink were released from cages. In an arti­cle in the Make­do­nia news­pa­per, the pres­i­dent of a Greek fur breed­ers asso­ci­a­tion said that it was a “black day” for the indus­try. The own­er of one of the tar­get­ed farms esti­mat­ed his loss­es at 1 mil­lion Euros and said that his farm had been ruined.

40 years since Laxá Dam was sabotaged, Iceland

Yes­ter­day, August 25th, 300 peo­ple cel­e­brat­ed that 40 years ago, peo­ple opposed to the build­ing of dams in Laxá in Mývatnssveit, sab­o­taged a
small­er dam that had already been built.

Yes­ter­day, August 25th, 300 peo­ple cel­e­brat­ed that 40 years ago, peo­ple opposed to the build­ing of dams in Laxá in Mývatnssveit, sab­o­taged a
small­er dam that had already been built.

The local peo­ple had opposed this project through legal means but it did not seem to be work­ing. August 25th 1970, most of them were in a funer­al, where the rumour was spread amongst peo­ple – the dam was going to be sab­o­taged. The orig­i­nal plan was to destroy it with tools but short­ly after the work start­ed, peo­ple real­ized they would need some­thing stronger. They knew of dyna­mite, owned by the ener­gy com­pa­ny
Laxávirkjun… so, what a bet­ter way to use that dyna­mite!? “We bor­rowed it” was the answer of one of the bombers, in the evening news yes­ter­day.

More then 120 peo­ple claimed their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the sab­o­tage – 65 of them were lat­er sen­tenced to prison on pro­ba­tion.

Yes­ter­day, a memo­r­i­al stat­ue was put up by the riv­er, where the dam used to stand. The local church choir sang some songs and speech­es were held. The sab­o­tage is remem­bered as a very impor­tant event in Ice­land’s his­to­ry
of nature con­ser­va­tion.

Not every­body agrees with this; Jakob Björns­son, ex-ener­gy direc­tor of Ice­land, said that the cel­e­bra­tion is shame­ful. Well, fuck him!

Here is a video from the evening news, show­ing pho­tos from the day of the sab­o­tage: http://dagskra.ruv.is/sjonvarpid/4498095/2010/08/25/14

Shell’s Drilling Work Stopped by Shell to Sea Campaigners in Ireland

Shel­l’s Sur­vey work was stopped for about three hours on Mon­day after­noon when peo­ple walked out at low tide and got under Shel­l’s drilling plat­form. This is a con­tin­u­a­tion of the ‘Beat the Bore­holes’ effort by Shell to Sea and the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp to get in the way of Shell drilling bore­holes in the Sruwad­da­con estu­ary which is a Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion.

Shel­l’s Sur­vey work was stopped for about three hours on Mon­day after­noon when peo­ple walked out at low tide and got under Shel­l’s drilling plat­form. This is a con­tin­u­a­tion of the ‘Beat the Bore­holes’ effort by Shell to Sea and the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp to get in the way of Shell drilling bore­holes in the Sruwad­da­con estu­ary which is a Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion.

At 12:30pm a group of about 15 peo­ple man­aged to get past the 20 or so IRMS Secu­ri­ty guard­ing the plat­form. The group formed a cir­cle around the drill and stayed until the gar­dai arrived on scene and used Sec­tion 8 and a lit­tle bit of force to get peo­ple out from under the drill. One per­son had locked them­self onto the drill with a chain, but even­tu­al­ly they were removed by the gar­dai as well. How­ev­er work still did not resume because peo­ple con­tin­ued to dash back under the plat­form for the next cou­ple of hours, often with­out much resis­tance from IRMS or the gar­dai. The gar­dai did use pres­sure points and some arm twist­ing to get two cam­paign­ers off of one of the drills at one stage, but no one had any last­ing pain or injury.

Over­all spir­its were high, and about forty cam­paign­ers remained either under or around the out­side of the plat­form for the dura­tion of the action. Once the tide came in peo­ple were sat­is­fied at hav­ing stopped work for three hours, and the cam­paign­ers left Shell to con­tin­ue their dirty work in the beau­ti­ful Sruwad­da­con estu­ary.

Beat The Boreholes Continues to Disrupt Shell’s Plans

18th August 2010
Yes­ter­day lunchtime, nine kayak­ers from Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp, with their team of vol­un­teers and local cam­paign­ers in sup­port roles on dry land, suc­cess­ful­ly inter­rupt­ed Shel­l’s bore­hole sur­vey drilling pro­gramme in Sruth Fha­da Conn for sev­er­al hours yes­ter­day.

18th August 2010
Yes­ter­day lunchtime, nine kayak­ers from Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp, with their team of vol­un­teers and local cam­paign­ers in sup­port roles on dry land, suc­cess­ful­ly inter­rupt­ed Shel­l’s bore­hole sur­vey drilling pro­gramme in Sruth Fha­da Conn for sev­er­al hours yes­ter­day.
Beat the Boreholes banner
Opposed by twelve assort­ed Gar­da and Shell secu­ri­ty boats car­ry­ing upwards of six­ty per­son­nel, the Shell to Sea kayak­ers sal­lied forth deter­mined to stop the progress of drilling in the estu­ary. In spite of the vast dis­par­i­ty of num­bers and dis­ad­van­tage in ves­sels, drilling was indeed stopped for some time, at no cost in arrests and with­out undue risk to the action team. After one of the kayak­ers had his ves­sel delib­er­ate­ly cap­sized by Shel­l’s IRMS secu­ri­ty oper­a­tives, he clev­er­ly turned the tables on them by swim­ming under the drilling plat­form and cling­ing on to the bore shaft. It took a com­bined Gar­da and Shell/IRMS effort quite a while to remove the intre­pid camper from the shaft, and all the time he was there halt­ed drilling in its tracks. The camper was removed from his posi­tion only when an IRMS secu­ri­ty man dived in to the water to seize him and restrain him in water out of his depth for sev­er­al min­utes before being hand­ed over to Gar­daí.

The water-based action con­tin­ued for over an hour after that, with the kayak­ers play­ing a game of ‘cat and mouse’ with the Gar­da and IRMS ribs, which con­tin­ued to dis­rupt the sched­ule of works on the drilling plat­forms. For all the time of the action was in progress, the kayak­ers were watched over from land by Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp vol­un­teers and local cam­paign­ers with cam­eras, video equip­ment and ban­ners. Also on land there was a cast of sup­port­ing vil­lains (alas!), with three Gar­da minibus­es, about ten uni­formed cops, Det. Hugh Egan (plus side­kick), and Jim Far­rell, oper­a­tions head of Inte­grat­ed Risk Man­age­ment Sys­tems (IRMS).

Sev­er­al par­ties of tourists both Irish and inter­na­tion­al, stopped to watch the action on the estu­ary waters, and after hav­ing the local strug­gle against Shell explained to them, cheered on the kayak­ers along­side the gath­ered local sup­port­ers and Sol­i­dar­i­ty Campers.

All kayak­ers returned to camp safe and well, with the only equip­ment loss that of a head-mount­ed cam­era stolen by an IRMS secu­ri­ty man from one of the kayak­ers. No arrests hap­pened, and the camper that was tak­en by the Gar­daí was released un-arrest­ed to the camp halfway dur­ing the action. All in all, anoth­er suc­cess for the Beat The Bore­holes cam­paign and a fit­ting way to mark Niall Har­net­t’s release from Shell-man­dat­ed cap­tiv­i­ty on Mon­day.

Neutralisation of GM vines by the Faucheurs Volontaires

15th August 2010
False solu­tions for false prob­lems — GM vines scythed at INRA (Nation­al Insti­tute of the Agri­cul­tur­al Research), Col­mar, France by the Faucheurs Volon­taires (vol­un­teer GM scythers).

15th August 2010
False solu­tions for false prob­lems — GM vines scythed at INRA (Nation­al Insti­tute of the Agri­cul­tur­al Research), Col­mar, France by the Faucheurs Volon­taires (vol­un­teer GM scythers).

The neu­tral­i­sa­tion of this crop re-plant­ed in June of this year fol­lows last year’s decon­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the same tri­al in Sep­tem­ber. GM field tri­als are the first step towards com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion, and are use­less and unneed­ed. In 2009 the Stras­bourg admin­is­tra­tive court banned it.

64 Faucheurs dug up the 70 vines, after cut­ting their way through the 2m high barbed wire-topped fence, ignor­ing the motion detec­tors and CCTV. They then cut the GM plants into pieces with tools, at 5am on Sun­day morn­ing. They then held a press con­fer­ence and wait­ed for the police to arrive. 70 police and gen­darmes turned up and encir­cled them. Once bussed to the cop-shop, oth­er Alsa­t­ian farm­ers held a pic­nic by the police sta­tion in sup­port of those inside, who were released by noon. The police are talk­ing about 1 mil­lion Euros worth of dam­age.

80% of the French pub­lic are still opposed to GM, in the fields or on their plates.

http://www.monde-solidaire.org/spip/spip.php?article5389

Drill huggers stop Shell’s drilling work in Rossport, Ireland

13.8.10

13.8.10
Yes­ter­day peo­ple from the local com­mu­ni­ty of Pul­lath­omas and Ross­port and Sol­i­dar­i­ty campers lead by the rous­ing sound of a vis­it­ing bag­piper and drum­mer, returned to one of Shel­l’s drilling rigs, gain­ing access at low tide across the exposed sand bars of Sruwad­da­con bay. On arriv­ing at the rig a num­ber of peo­ple sur­round­ed the drill cas­ing and danced around it before form­ing a tight hud­dle to pre­vent any fur­ther work occur­ring. Mean­while oth­ers held a large ban­ner and occu­pied the area while chil­dren played in the sand.

I‑RMS secu­ri­ty guards asked the drill hug­gers to leave the area “for their own safe­ty”, an offer that was polite­ly refused. Around an hour lat­er Gar­di arrived and observed while super inten­dant Diskin had a pri­vate chat with I‑RMS chief Jim Far­rell.

Bizarrely after 30 min­utes or so all the Gards left leav­ing I‑RMS in charge of polic­ing the pro­test­ers, despite their shock­ing record of vio­lence towards the local com­mu­ni­ty.

Peo­ple spent the after­noon occu­py­ing the area while chat­ting, singing, play­ing music and foot­ball.

Around 5 o’clock in the evening when most peo­ple had left, with no warn­ing I‑RMS men jumped on pro­test­ers and force­ful­ly remov­ing them, them­selves sur­round­ing the drill. The pro­test­ers attempt­ed to reach the drill again but were repeat­ed­ly “repelled” by secu­ri­ty, at this point the drill start­ed to oper­ate again while pro­test­ers and secu­ri­ty were close to it. For the next 30 min­utes this bat­tle con­tin­ued in obvi­ous breach of safe­ty reg­u­la­tions putting both work­ers and pro­test­ers at risk.

The day demon­strat­ed yet again that Shell have total dis­re­gard not only for envi­ron­ment and local com­mu­ni­ty but also for their own employ­ees.

for more info

www.shelltosea.com, www.rossportsolidaritycamp.org

German anti coal activist goes to jail

A ger­man activist went to jail today for an action against the con­struc­tion of a coal fired pow­er plant. Two years ago, she took part on a block­ade at the con­struc­tion site of the Vat­ten­fall-coal plant in Ham­burg-Moor­burg. She refused to pay her penal­ty. On 13th August, she start­ed her penal­ty in the Jus­tizvol­lzugsanstalt Brühl near Karl­sruhe.

A ger­man activist went to jail today for an action against the con­struc­tion of a coal fired pow­er plant. Two years ago, she took part on a block­ade at the con­struc­tion site of the Vat­ten­fall-coal plant in Ham­burg-Moor­burg. She refused to pay her penal­ty. On 13th August, she start­ed her penal­ty in the Jus­tizvol­lzugsanstalt Brühl near Karl­sruhe.

The action was part of the first ger­man cli­mate camp 2008 in Ham­burg. The local gov­ern­ment in Ham­burg is a coali­tion between the green and the con­ser­v­a­tive par­ty. Before the elec­tion in 2008, the green par­ty promised to stop the con­struc­tion of the plant if they join the gov­er­ment. After their elec­tion into the gov­ern­ment, they accept­ed the coal plant.

http://knast.blogsport.de/

No GMO — Destroyed a transgenic maize field in Italy

From Italy to Can­cun — Jus­tice, Dig­ni­ty, Inde­pen­dence
10 / 8 / 2010

Italian GM action 1Italian GM action 2Italian GM action 3Italian GM action 4From Italy to Can­cun — Jus­tice, Dig­ni­ty, Inde­pen­dence
10 / 8 / 2010

This morn­ing one hun­dred activists of the Asso­ci­a­tion Ya Bas­ta Italy entered in a ille­gal field of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied maize in Vivaro (Por­de­none province, north­east­ern Italy). The action start­ed at noon. Activists destroyed two meters tall plants.

Back in April, the farm­ers and activists of Ya Bas­ta Italy denounced the ille­gal plant­i­ng of maize in Vivaro.

The field was placed under seizure, but the rul­ing still is tak­ing too long for polit­i­cal debates with­in the gov­ern­ment. From below, then came the imme­di­ate response con­cern­ing the life and the defense of bio­di­ver­si­ty, which can not be cow­ard­ly dom­i­nat­ed by cap­i­tal and spec­u­la­tion.

In the pub­lic state­ment of Ya Bas­ta activists declared them­selves “indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties” and join the fight for jus­tice and dig­ni­ty for all com­mu­ni­ties found in Cochabam­ba dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Assem­bly in April.

Also, defend­ing the right and desire to leave the hell of trans­genic cul­tures which destroy the plan­et and poi­son the Moth­er Earth and the waters.

The cli­mate changes, the soil dries, water is pri­va­tized: enough … to Can­cun!

Video and pho­tos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdGLyGveaCo
http://www.globalproject.info/it/in_movimento/No-Ogm-Distrutto-campo-di-mais-transgenico/5543

3 days of action for Beat the Boreholes in Rossport

Shell drilling stopped for an hour and a half

6.08.2010
Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Campers go out before 7am and suc­cess­ful­ly pre­vent work­ers from access­ing the drilling plat­forms.

rossport-wadersShell drilling stopped for an hour and a half

6.08.2010
Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Campers go out before 7am and suc­cess­ful­ly pre­vent work­ers from access­ing the drilling plat­forms.

9 Campers wadded and kayaked out to the plat­forms this morn­ing and halt­ed work for 1 and half hours. IRMS work­ers even­tu­al­ly secured the area by push­ing peo­ple away and drag­ging their kayaks down the estu­ary. Kayaks were deflat­ed by secu­ri­ty and some peo­ple were dan­ger­ous­ly forced to swim in high cur­rents. There were no arrests.

We real­ly need more peo­ple to come and take part in actions over the next two months. Please get in touch if you think you would be able to come down and help stop Shell.

http://www.rossportsolidaritycamp.org

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Shell drilling stopped for 5 hours – as Beat the Bore­holes con­tin­ues

05.08.2010
Yes­ter­day morn­ing 11 peo­ple from Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp wad­ed and kayaked out from the camp to again delay Shell’s sur­vey work in Sruwad­da­con Estu­ary. Over­all drilling work was stopped for over 5 hours, with one per­son climb­ing up one of the legs of the drilling plat­forms. Sev­er­al peo­ple also attached them­selves to the 2 out­er drilling poles which are under the plat­forms.

The campers went out before 7am to pre­vent work­ers get­ting access to the plat­form and held the plat­form for about 4 hours before being removed by IRMS secu­ri­ty. Despite only 11 pro­test­ers being present, it took 50 IRMS to come before they could secure the area. After about 5 hours the drilling work­ers got on board and start­ed prepar­ing the drilling oper­a­tion. Even­tu­al­ly they start­ed drilling at around 1pm, despite the climber still being perched at the side of the plat­form. They drilled for approx­i­mate­ly an hour before the climber came down and swam back to shore.

The drilling plat­forms are cur­rent­ly in a vital part of the SAC; close to bird feed­ing and nest­ing sites. At this time the estu­ary is also used as a migra­tion route for Atlantic Salmon which are an Annex 1 species (the most pro­tect­ed EU cat­e­go­ry). They are very vul­ner­a­ble to suf­fo­ca­tion by sus­pend­ed solids in the water clog­ging their gills and today we saw evi­dence of sed­i­ment spew­ing into the estu­ary from the bore­holes. Move­ment of the plat­forms will also release sus­pend­ed solids; endan­ger­ing the sup­pos­ed­ly pro­tect­ed salmon. This direct­ly con­tra­venes the pur­pose of the SAC which Min­is­ter Gorm­ley seems to con­ve­nient­ly for­get when it comes to facil­i­tat­ing big busi­ness here in Mayo but likes to remind us at oth­er times such as on 2nd August in rela­tion to restrict­ing leisure activ­i­ties to pro­tect SAC’s, the Min­is­ter said;
“Along with oth­er EU States, Ire­land has des­ig­nat­ed cer­tain areas for nature pro­tec­tion and, in those areas, that must be our pri­or­i­ty. Many peo­ple, indeed, find recre­ation in the enjoy­ment of undis­turbed nature,” he con­clud­ed .
Indeed Gorm­ley, that is what the peo­ple of Erris have been say­ing for 10 years; its time to pro­tect this SAC from Shell!

John Gorm­ley’s recent press release:
http://www.environ.ie/en/Heritage/NationalParksandWildl…n.htm

rossportsolidaritycamp@gmail.com
http://www.rossportsolidaritycamp.org, www.shelltosea.com

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Shell dis­rupt­ed — Beat the Bore­holes con­tin­ues

9.8.2010
Yes­ter­day at about 2.30pm Shell began to low­er “Jack — 1” — one of two sur­vey barges cur­rent­ly in Sruth Fha­da Chonn estu­ary SAC (Spe­cial Area of Pro­tec­tion) — in order to tug it to anoth­er part of the estu­ary.

The Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp was ready and will­ing to claim free pas­sage of the pub­lic estu­ary and in the process upset the oper­a­tion. Over a dozen Shell secu­ri­ty boats and two Gar­da RIBS could­n’t keep the 6 kayk­ers out, with two of them reach­ing the mov­ing barge after an hour and a half of chase.

Shel­l’s jack-up barges are dam­ag­ing Sruth Fha­da Chonn estu­ary SAC (Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion) by drilling sur­vey bore­holes for the pro­posed Onshore Cor­rib Gas Pipeline tun­nel — the lat­est route offered by Shell as a means to hook up the refin­ery to the well. At each new loca­tion the barges mas­sive legs are low­ered into the estu­ary crush­ing life beneath the sand. Estu­ary water is being used to lubri­cate the work, and and out­fall pipe is dis­charg­ing it back in to the sup­pos­ed­ly pro­tect­ed waters.

The Gar­daí seemed hap­py to let IRMS do as they pleased on the water, with kayak­ers being unlaw­ful­ly rammed, grabbed, towed against their will — all on a pub­lic water­way. At one stage an IRMS boat stole one kayak from under its own­er, cap­siz­ing him into the water. The Gar­daí issued many Sec­tion 8 warn­ing under the pub­lic order act (to the kayk­ers) but no arrests were made, despite one kayak­er mak­ing it onto the mov­ing rig.

Beat the bore­holes con­tin­ues, now both rigs are in the upper estu­ary — on the sand at low tide and acces­si­ble by walk­ing.

rossportsolidaritycamp@gmail.com
www.rossportsolidaritycamp.org, www.shelltosea.com