amelimelo's blog

When we arrived at 8 am this morning we heard that the whole of the Friends of the Earth International delegation were forbidden entrance to the conference centre. There's dismay and it's a very bad sign for the rest of the day.

Once the Reclaim Power Action put in place, it starts and the tension rises rapidly.

José Bové, wanting to plead Friends of the Earth's cause beside their President Nimmo Bassey, is taken away by the conference Centre security and stays locked up for a while. Many NGOs observers stay stuck outside, even though they have the “must-have” 1 and 2 level badges.

We had to wait for two hours in the morning cold to get our accreditation for COP15, the other name of the Copenhagen Climate Summit, for which Attac France has been preparing for two months.

An impressive number of representatives from an equally impressive number of countries has arrived in the Danish capital over the last few days either to attend COP15, or to take part in the Klima Forum (the alternative forum held by social movements and citizens) or to participate in the many rallies, actions and events that are going to take place over the next ten days.

A small Attac team is already operational: Geneviève (Azam), Fanny (Simon), Nico (Haeringer) and Ronack (Monabay, the Attac/Aitec volunteer who has been in Copenhagen for two months supporting the local preparation teams). Some are here listen and write, others to film, others to speak or organise.

Yesterday afternoon in Geneva, various special workshops were organised on the general question of ‘free trade and crises’. With the help of Maxime, I lead the workshop ‘climate crisis’.

Representatives of various social movements in Latin America and a spokeswoman from a movement for the rights of the Maori people shared their experiences with us − an avalanche of experiences of ecological and social disasters caused by multinational companies invading the local markets, by the overexploitation of fossil resources, deforestation, and the destructive effect of green capitalism on local communities.

- A representative of Accion Ecologica presented the ITT project which is promoted by the Ecuadorian government and encouraged all social movements across the world to support what seems today to be a real alternative at the negotiation table on climate change

As no doubt reported by the French media, yesterday’s demonstration, called by two Swiss coalitions and supported by various international organisations, amongst which Attac France and its European counterparts, did not reach its destination − the headquarters of the WTO. Geneva police preferred to put an end to it prematurely due to (material) acts of violence carried out by two groups at the head of the cortège.