Industrial Workers of the World

Old King Coal was a merry old soul and a merry old soul was he... Quarry Vision Part 457. OhMyGawd Plutocrats are back or maybe they never went away ?

"What ? State Police repression ordered by Politicians who serve Coal & Corporates Lobby ...(unbelieveable ?) never happen in Oz, okay except maybe the Loy Yang coal fired power plant before November 2007 Federal Election, the Newcastle Port Coal export site, logging of old growth Forests, North-South Pipe-Line, DeSal Plant, well apart from them we are with the grassroots....I'm telling you my dear that it can't happen here. etc" - Kelvin "astroturf" Thompson Wills MP (thinking aloud at last night's Climate Change meeting at Coburg Town Hall Monday April 20th)

Police officers scuffle with climate change protesters near Kingsnorth power station in Kent. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA Government officials handed confidential police intelligence about environmental activists to the energy giant E.ON before a planned peaceful demonstration, according to private emails seen by the Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/20/police-intelligence-e-on-berr

related: Allies against democracy - George Mombiot Both the police and the government appear to be taking their instructions from a multinational energy company, This isn't the first time that the Department for Business and the energy company E.ON have been caught conspiring against the public interest. In 2008, Greenpeace obtained an exchange of emails between the power company and Gary Mohammed, a civil servant at the Department for Business, concerning the department's policy on carbon capture and storage (CCS). http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/20/energy-police

FROM COMMENT IS FREE: Same story in Ireland, George. Shell do a lucrative one-sided deal on the corrib gas field ( behind closed doors with subsequently discredited politicians) and then then we see the building of a dangerous pipeline courtesy of police violence against the local community. Local farmers and a teacher have been jailed for their opposition to the collusion. See corribsos.com

Direct action groups have a reasonably tidy record- the abolition of slavery, votes for women, the right to trade union representation, the dismantling of apartheid, the establishment of the right to roam and national parks, the abolition of whaling, Indian independence, the civil rights movement....