This morning at 7.30 Dublin Shell to Sea members brought a taste of Mayo to Corrib House. Over 50 people took part in an ongoing blockade of the three entrances of the Shell HQ. The protest was peaceful with protesters linking arms and standing in front of the cars of employees as they attempted to enter the underground car park.

The first few managers got in as the protesters were perhaps caught out by a high level of Gardai aggression. Despite the warm morning several Gardai were observed pulling on heavy padded gloves, one lost it completely and was threatening to 'smash your face in' or 'sort you out afterwards' but most just confined themselves to trying to push the protesters out of the way of incoming cars.

Related Links: A report on the first week of the EPA oral hearing on the IPPC licence for the Corrib Gas refinery | Six arrests in Ballinaboy As 30 Enter Shell Site | Legalised Robbery - Multinationals and Ireland's Natural Resources | Why Occupy Corrib House?

Mairead Corrigan Maguire taken away after being shot with rubber bullets by Israeli soldiers.
from a photo series
by the ISM's Martinez

In a Gandhi-like protest, a completely unarmed and peaceful gathering of peace activists who were walking to the Bil'in Wall were tear-gassed and then shot with rubber bullets. After being brought to ambulances for treatment they returned to the non-violent demonstration. Among them was Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire.

Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire writes from Palestine...

'...When the walkers got half way down the road, the Israeli soldiers started firing nerve gas, and plastic bullets directly at us. At another point they used water cannons. We were a completely unarmed peaceful gathering and this vicious attack from the Israeli soldiers was totally unprovoked attack upon civilians. The soldiers block the upper part of the road, thus preventing Dr. Barghouti and some of the Palestinians joining the main vigillers. We were then tear gassed and as I helped a French woman retreat I was shot in the leg with a rubber bullet. Two young women, one from USA and one from New Zealand, helped me towards an ambulance. I saw an elderly Palestinian mother carried on a stretcher into the ambulance, as she was shot in the back with a plastic bullet. I saw a man whose face was covered in blood and a Palestinian youth overcome with the gas. About 20 people were injured. Ann and myself went back to the protest where the people were being viciously attacked with nerve gas and plastic bullets. I was overcome with gas and took a nose bleed which resulted in being carried to ambulance for treatment....'

Related Links: Peace People / Nobel Prize - 1976 / NobelWomensInitiative.org
PalSolidarity.org: All we had for breakfast was tear gas / on December 2006 she was Arrested at Faslane, Scotland

Willie Corduff with his wife Mary on his release from prison in September 2005

Mayo farmer Willie Corduff, who was jailed for three months in 2005 over his opposition to Shell's inland gas refinery at Bellanaboy and high-pressure pipeline through his farm, has been awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. Awarded annually to six grassroots environmental heroes, the $125,000 no-strings-attached prize is the largest of its kind in the world and is often referred to as the Nobel Prize for the environment.

Related Links: Goldman Environmental Prize | Shell to Sea | Report on last Wednesday's High Court ruling

Whitehall - where Captain Jack White died in 1946

“The Burning” – PDF here– is a full length play written about the circumstances surrounding the destruction Captain Jack White’s papers following his death in Broughshane, Co. Antrim in 1946. White, as many people will know, was one of the more well known figures in Irish history that identified with anarchism. The only son of British Boer War hero, Sir George Stuart White (“The Hero Of Ladysmith”), he was assured a bright future in the upper echelons of the British military until his conscience intervened and he resigned his commission.

Breaking with family, he gravitated to political activism and the revolutionary left. His baptism of fire was the Great Lockout in Dublin in 1913, where he worked alongside Larkin and Connolly and proposed the idea of the Irish Citizen Army. Of Protestant “stock”, he was active in the fight against imperialism, reserving particular vitriol for the “Orange” state formed in the north of Ireland after partition in 1922.

Related Links: Launch Of 'Misfit': Autobiography of Captain Jack White | 1916 - Connolly, blood sacrifice and defeating British imperialism

Dramatic Scenes At Fridays Blockade

Six people were arrested this afternoon on the site of Shell’s controversial refinery in Ballinaboy, Co Mayo. The six were part of a group of more then thirty who entered the site at 11am this morning as part of a ‘people's site inspection’. A five hour game of ‘cat and mouse’ ensued as Gardai and Shell’s private security personnel attempted to remove the protesters from the site. The six arrested were taken to Belmullet Garda station before being released.

Today’s site incursion was the latest in a series of similar actions and follows closely on yesterday’s site incursion by a group of female activists from both the local area and Cork Shell to Sea. Those involved in today’s action were from both the local area and the Dublin Shell to Sea group.

Related Links: Women's trespass at Bellanaboy on Friday 13th | Work halted at Bellanaboy as protesters gain entry to Shell's site, six arrested. | Corrib Gas pipeline route selection begins. | We can stop them | Shell to Sea activists blockade lorries at Bellanaboy | 04.04.07 Sees Yet More Aggression by Shell Cops |