Pipelines and Profits: People under Pressure

8/9/2019 Pipelines and Profits: People under Pressure

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Begins:

October 24th 8.30pm

with film screening inMcGraths, Pullathomas.

Conference sessions on

Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th

in Glenamoy

Community Centre,

Erris, Co. Mayo

Hedge School/Scoil Chois Cla 2008

A unique blend of conversation, debate, art, film, fun and food.

Pipelines and Profits:

People Under Pressure

hedge school 2008(1) 02/10/2008 17:06 Page 1


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IntroductionThe original hedge schools emerged from a time of colonial oppression and prohibi-tion and were places of learning and resistance. They are associated with the time,for example, when Cromwell was imposing his brutal rule and have been describedas, in their own way, a kind of guerrilla warfare. William Carleton, a hedge school-master of the nineteenth century, and Patrick Pearse, a schoolmaster of the twenti-eth century, drew an analogy between the great educator-philosopher Platos per-sonalized approach to education and the approach in the Irish hedge schools.

Hedge schools had the added advantage of being largely free from the influence ofchurch and state.

Maths, science, music and languages were among the subjects taught in the hedgeschool, often set up in a barn or on the sunny side of a thorn hedge. So success-ful were the hedge schools that a writer called McManus recounts: A knowledge ofLatin was a frequent enough accomplishment among poor Irish mountaineers in theseventeenth century and was spoken by many of them on special occasions. And itis authoritatively boasted that cows were bought and sold in Greek in mountain mar-

ket-places of Kerry."

Afri has adopted the concept of the hedge school to reflect on issues like colonial-ism and corporate exploitation - at home and abroad - and to encourage discussionand informed activism. The hedge school is part of our development education pro-gramme, a programme which is based on Paulo Freires vision of education for lib-eration. Unfortunately, much contemporary education is provided in a way that feedsthe worst aspects of consumerism, individualism and personal accumulation.

It is the thorny issue of resource extraction, inextricably linked to broader questionsof consumption and wealth accumulation, that will be at the centre of this years dis-cussions. Peak oil and climate change brought about in large part by our addictionto fossil fuels are now high on the global political agenda. If more of the remainingfossil fuel reserves are to be exploited, is it possible at least to develop them in amanner that is environmentally and socially sustainable?

During this hedge school week-end, we will see the film The Wind that Shakes theBarleyand hear from its screenwriter; we will also hear from pipeline experts, fromlocal farmers, from indigenous people, from human rights activists, from politicians,from actors, musicians and poets and from all those who come in solidarity.

We will have people from all over the world at this years event: from Ecuador,Nigeria, the United States and France. We probably wont have any Greek speakersbut it is possible that a cow or two will be bought or sold in French or Spanish in Erristhis hedge school weekend!

Joe Murray(Afri Coordinator)



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Friday evening

Opening session of the Hedge School in McGraths,

Pullathomas.Film screening:

8.30 pm The Wind That Shakes the Barley(Ken Loach) introduced by PaulLaverty (screenwriter)

Saturday 25th

9.15am Registration at GlenamoyCommunity Centre (also thevenue for all events, unlessotherwise stated)

9.40am Filte Joe Murray

9.45am Song by Astrid Ni Mhongain

9.50-11am Session 1: Pipelines: Myth versus

Realitywith Richard Kuprewicz andWillie Corduff (chair: Andy Storey)

Break + Music

11.15-1.20 Session 2: Oil and Gas, Dollars andDeath Mayo, Ecuador, America and

the Niger Delta

Part 1

11.15-12.15pm with Julio Prieto and Larson Bill

Part 2

12.20-1.20pm with Tari Ebimo Dadiowei and MauraHarrington (bothsessions chaired byMichael McCaughan)

input will be followed by small group discussionsand feedback to panels

1.20pm Lunch Soup with bread for all

4.15-5.15pm Session 4: Drama out of a CrisiswithPaul Laverty and MichaelMcCaughan,introduced by Donal

OKelly

5.20pm Teenage kicks with Pete Mullineaux

5.30pm Conclusion

6.30pm Dinner in Glenamoy CommunityCentre

8.00pm An evening of music, drama and more

hosted by actor and playwright DonalOKelly

Sunday Morning

in Glenamoy Community Centre

10am-12.00am Dialogue The Art of the Possiblewith Catriona Ruane, Denis Halliday, andCiarn O Murch (chair: Mark Garavan)*

Break + Music

12.15am-1.45pm Soil and Soulwith AlastairMcIntosh, and response by local resident(chair: Clare OGrady Walshe)

2.00pm Soup and Music on the beach!

Gathering in the marquee on the beachwhere soup will be provided by the Solidarity Camp.

2.15pm From ideas to action - planting a hedge!

3pm Ends

Please bring footwear appropriate for wet country terrain in

October!

* Representatives of the Government and other political partieshave been invited and may participate in this session also.

Clr

Human Rights

with Eve Tessera of Sherpa, Andrew Anderson ofFrontline Defenders and Julie Cavanaugh-Bill of

Western Shoshone Defense Project (chair: Joe Murray)Community Centre

The Way Forward Aims and Strategies

open forum for discussion(chair: Andy Storey)

in the marquee on the beach

followed by a short break

Saturday 25th 2.20-3.50pmSession 3: parallel discussions: information and exchange of ideas



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Andrew Anderson has been the Deputy Director ofFront Line since March 2003. Previously he worked for

thirteen years at the International Secretariat of AmnestyInternational where he was Director of the CampaigningProgram and Director of the Africa Program. He has ledAmnesty and Front Line missions to the field, represent-ed the organizations at the UN and in other internationalfora, led training courses, managed projects, raisedfunds and conducted evaluations. He has led Front Linemissions to Bahrain, Democratic Republic of Congo,Guatemala, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Tunisia, Western Sahara

and Zimbabwe amongst others.

Larson Bill is Western Shoshone and is the CommunityPlanner for the Western Shoshone Defence Project. Inthat capacity, he serves as the lead organizer forcommunity meetings and dialogues with corporate andgovernment entities. Larson has been active in thedefense of Western Shoshone rights for many years andhas been a lead delegate on numerous National and

International Summits in the U.S., Canada and CentralAmerica, the United Nations in New York, and to the U.S.Congress. He recently returned from a five countryindigenous leadership strategy session in Bueos Aires,Argentina where representatives from Peru, Argentina,Ecuador, Chile and Bolivia extended a special invitationto Larson to share the ideas and thoughts of theindigenous movement in the South with the peoples inthe North. He helped coordinate the recent 15thProtecting Mother Earth Conference hosted by theShoshone at the South Fork community.

Julie Cavanaugh-Bill (formerly Julie Ann Fishel) is anattorney and the Director of the Land RecognitionProgram for the Western Shoshone Defence Project inNevada. She has worked with indigenous communitiesin Nigeria, Suriname, Central America, and the UnitedStates in various legal forums Her involvement hasresulted in groundbreaking decisions at both the Inter-

American Commission on Human Rights and the UnitedNations Committee on the Elimination of RacialDiscrimination. Ms. Cavanaugh-Bill teaches courses onIndigenous Peoples and Human Rights Lawyering in St.Thomas College of Law in Miami. She also serves as aseminar faculty member for the University of ArizonasIndigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program and hastaught seminar courses at the Colorado School of Mineson corporate responsibility. Ms. Cavanaugh-Bill is a

member of the Executive Board of Great Basin ResourceWatch and serves on the Committee for the Initiative forResponsible Mining Assurances in Vancouver.

Willie Corduff is a farmer living in Rossport. He was jailed for three months in 2005 for his opposition toShells inland gas refinery at Ballinaboy and high pres-sure pipeline through his farm. He was awarded the

Goldman Environmental Award in 2006, which is oftenreferred to as the Nobel Prize for the Environment.Regarding Shells project in Erris he says: the bottomline is we will not lie down. We can not. There is toomuch at stake. Wed have to leave our homes if we wereto accept this. We have to protect ourselves because no-one else will.

Tari Ebimo Dadiowei was born in Obunagha town inBayelsa State. He attended County Grammar SchoolIkwerre-Etche. At University he obtained a Bachelor ofScience and Botany in 1988 and Bachelor of Science inAccounting in 1999. His interest is to work towards theevolution of an environmentally sustainable and sociallyjust society in which the needs of all people are met with-out threatening the health of the natural environment orwell being of future generations and to enhance thecapacity of communities to manage their naturalresources and environment. He has done research andpresented papers on environmental impact assessmentand crises in the Niger Delta.

Denis Halliday with the rank of United Nations AssistantSecretary General, and at that time U.N. humanitarianCoordinator in Baghdad, resigned after a 34 year careerin order to be free to speak publicly on the genocidalimpact of UN economic sanctions on the people of Iraq,imposed in 1990, and retained in full knowledge of the

human cost afterwards by the member states of the UNSecurity Council. He was nominated for the Nobel PeacePrize in 2003 and is also recipient of the GandhiInternational Peace Prize. He is currently visitingProfesor at Pennsylvania Swathmore University in theUS.

Maura Harrington is a native of Erris, Co. Mayo. Shehas been active in the campaign of opposition to Shell

from the beginning. She says her activism is driven by anawareness of the importance of the connection betweenplace and people people and place. She recentlyundertook a hunger strike, which ended after eleven dayswhen Shells pipelaying ship Solitaire left Irish territorialwaters.

Richard B. Kuprewicz is president of Accufacts Inc., apipeline consulting firm based in Washington. He brings30 plus years of experience in the industry offering

special focus on appropriate pipeline design andoperation in areas of unique population density or of an

Contributors



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environmentally sensitive nature. His background drawsfrom a wealth of operational and field experiencegarnered from gas and liquid pipelines operating acrosssome of the most sensitive areas of the world. These

unique qualifications allow him to serve as an expert onall aspects of pipeline operation including, but not limitedto, siting, design, maintenance, operation, leak detection,inspection and testing emergency response, regulatorycompliance, risk analysis, and management.

Paul Laverty obtained a law degree in Glasgow,Scotland. In the mid-80s he lived in Nicaragua, CentralAmerica, where he worked providing evidence of humanrights abuses during the war between the NicaraguanGovernment and the US-backed "Contras". After his timein Central America Paul made contact with Britishdirector Ken Loach. He wrote his first screenplay Carla'sSong, starring Bobby Carlyle, followed by My Name isJoe, and Bread and Roses, starring Adrien Brodie. Hisscript Sweet Sixteenwon Best Screenplay award in theCannes film festival of 2002. In 2003 he wrote Ae FondKiss, and in 2005 The Wind That Shakes The Barley, setin Ireland's War of Independence and Civil War. Most

recently, he wrote It's a Free World.

Alastair McIntosh lives in Glasgow, Scotland and is awriter, lecturer, social activist, broadcaster andcampaigning academic from the Isle of Lewis; a Fellow ofthe Centre for Human Ecology (CHE), a director of theGalGael Trust, a Visiting Fellow of the Academy for IrishCultural Heritages at the University of Ulster, and VisitingProfessor of Human Ecology at the University of

Strathclyde.His major books are Soil and Soul (2001),Love and Revolution (poetry, 2006) and Hell and HighWater(2008). Soil and Soul People Versus CorporatePower is his best know book, described by GeorgeMonbiot as "world changing", by the Bishop of Liverpoolas "life-changing", by Starhawk as "inspirational", and byThom Yorke of Radiohead as "truly mental".

Ciarn O Murch, spokesperson for Pobail Le Chile, is

a qualified Sailing Senior Instructor, a Windsurfing Level3 Instructor, a Level 2 Kayak instructor and a surfinginstructor. He also has qualifications in Mountaineeringand Confidence training. In 1996 he was awarded thePresidents Gold Award for achievements in a number ofareas including teaching adventure sports to physicallydisabled people. He has now devoted himself full time toproviding safe, satisfying courses at Coliste U.I.S.C.E.U.I.S.C.E is a major source of employment on the Mulletpeninsula and is particularly significant as it offersemployment opportunities to indigenous Gaeltachtspeakers.

Julio Marcelo Prieto Mndez is an Ecuadorian lawyer.He studied at the University of Salamanca (Spain) until2002 when he returned to Ecuador where he coordinat-ed para-legal training projects for communities and also

organised a seminar Environmental Rights and Lawsuitsin Ecuador (2003). His legal essay was entitled: Aboutthe Ownership and Use of Forest Resources (2004) andhis thesis: Legal Schemes for Clean DevelopmentMechanisms (2004-2005). He has been lawyer for theJurisprudence College of the University of SanFrancisco de Quito (2005), and litigate lawyer in theenvironmental trial for the indigenous community againstChevronTexaco (before the Amozonia Defence, from

2005 until now). He is also Attorney for the Cofnpeople, who have begun suing for moral damage againstChevron (2007 until now). He is a specialist onenvironmental lawsuits, impact of hydrocarbon opera-tions, environmental damages and their reparations.

Caitriona Ruane was born in Swinford, Co Mayo. Sheworked as a Human Rights and Development worker inEl Salvador and Nicaragua for four years, returning toIreland to become Latin American Project Officer with

Trcaire in 1987. Subsequently, she was Coordinator forHuman Rights with the Centre for Research andDocumentation in Belfast. She later held the position ofDirector of Feile an Phobail in West Belfast. In 2003 shewas elected as an MLA for South Down and becameEquality and Human Rights Spokesperson. She becameMinister for Education in the Northern Assembly in 2007.

Eve Tessera was born in Paris in 1982. She completed

an International Public Law Degree in the Sorbonne inParis in 2003. Subsequently, she completed a Masters inInternational Public Law and Business Law in theUniversidad la Complutense de Madrid in 2004, followedby an Advanced Post-Masters Diploma in InternationalPublic Law and International Organisations in theSorbonne. She came to Ireland in 2006 where sheundertook internships with Afri and Oxfam Ireland andsubsequently completed a 9-month internship with

CALDH in Guatemala. She now works as head of theextractive industries department with the Paris-basedhuman rights organization, Sherpa. She is the author ofthe formal OECD complaint which was lodged withNational Contact Points in Dublin and Amsterdamrecently.



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gratefully acknowledges the support of Irish Aid, Trcaire and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.

is a member organisation of the International Peace Bureau

Afri, 134 Phibsborough Road, Phibsborough, Dublin 7.Telephone 01 8827563 or 01 8827581 email: [email protected] www.afri.ie

Mark Garavan is lecturer in Sociology at theGalway/Mayo Institute of Technology and author of thebook The Rossport 5 published in 2007. Afri alsopublished The Politics of Moral Force, which was a

paper given by Dr. Garavan at the 11th Ken Saro-Wiwaseminar in Cork.

Michael McCaughan is an Irish writer who has spent thelast twenty years living and working in Latin America,writing for a number of publications, notably the IrishTimes. Afri published his book at the beginning of theyear: The Price of Our Souls Gas, Shell and Ireland,which is the result of six months research on the Corribgas dispute.

Joe Murray was born in County Longford and has beeninvolved with Afri since 1980. He worked in Sudan in1989 and was a member of a human rights delegationthat visited East Timor in 1999 just before the elections inwhich the Timorese people voted for independence. Hehas visited Central America in recent years where Afrihas supported a project entitled: water as a human right

Clare OGrady Walshe is a graduate of UCC where shereceived a masters degree in sociology. She isCoordinator of Afri's Development EducationProgramme. She is a former director of Greenpeace in

Ireland and has served on the Irish Aid AdvisoryCommittee and the Heritage Council. She is also a Boardmember of the Irish Seed Savers Association andChildren in Crossfire.

Andy Storey is a lecturer in the Centre for DevelopmentStudies in UCD and chairperson of Afri. He worked inRwanda in 1994 and 1995, following the genocide there.He has a doctorate in sociology from Queens University,Belfast.

TEENAGERS WELCOME!If enough teenagers turn up atthe hedge school on Saturday, the uniquely talentedPete Mullineaux will provide a drama skills workshopdealing with local issues. Teenagers will work from 11pmto 1am and from 2pm to 4.30pm in Kilcommon Lodgeand then give a short dramatic presentation at 5.00pm inGlenamoy Community Hall. Please let us know inadvance if you are a teenager, intend coming along forthe event and want to be involved in this workshop.


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Pipelines and Profits: People under Pressure