Bath Bomb issue 5 now! & Bristle statement

Just your Christ­mas edi­tion of the month­ly Bathon­ian rab­ble rousi­ness, from deep with­in gen­tri­fy cen­tral

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Nev­er mind the Chron­i­cle… here’s the ever-fes­tive
The Bath Bomb
Issue #5
free/donation
Dec ‘07

Bath Activists — 2 BNP – 0

Nazi Nick Grif­fin must’ve been hav­ing flash­backs on the 26th Novem­ber as yet anoth­er BNP meet­ing got shaft­ed by anti-fas­cists. This time the venue was Oxford Union, an upper class debat­ing soci­ety who booked Grif­fin and holo­caust deny­ing bas­tard David Irv­ing to speak to try and raise falling tick­et sales. Bath Activist Net­work sent 9 activists to the 1,000 strong demo. After get­ting bored of speech­es and plac­ards, we put our­selves to good use blockad­ing a side entrance to the meet­ing, our pres­ence being enough to deter the cops from let­ting the doors open. All oth­er entrances were block­ad­ed and BNP sup­port­ers were turfed out of a pub they were hid­ing in! The demo most­ly stayed peace­ful, save a brief instance dur­ing which the cops tried to stop activists get­ting into the build­ing. The cops – as they often do – failed, and the build­ing was breached many times through­out the night. The meet­ing was delayed by near­ly two hours, and the meet­ing end­ed up last­ing just 8 min­utes, with Grif­fin and Irv­ing being held in sep­a­rate loca­tions for their own safe­ty!

Annoy­ing though the BNP were, they were near­ly topped by the spoilt tweed-wear­ing lit­tle Har­ry and Wills wannabe daddy’s boys that con­sti­tute the major­i­ty of stu­dents at Oxford. Judg­ing by the way they were whing­ing and cry­ing in favour of the BNP, you could almost get the impres­sion that they were fas­cists them­selves. The rich sup­port­ing the nazis? Hmm­mm. Added to this, they didn’t even try to con­ceal their supe­ri­or­i­ty com­plex­es derived from the over-priced crash course in sodomy and brandy quaf­fling that counts for an edu­ca­tion at Oxford.

The same hap­pened to Nazi Nick in Oxford as in Bath when the greasy hunch-backed lit­tle bas­tard came here, with a well-placed protest shut­ting his meet­ing down. The night was a huge suc­cess – block­ades, nazis get­ting pelt­ed with eggs, occu­pa­tions, out­wit­ting dozy cops – chaos! When will you get the mes­sage, Nick? Soci­ety hates you and your nazi views! Lis­ten­ing to sick bas­tards like Grif­fin is a good reminder that regard­less of colour or nation­al­i­ty, the only sig­nif­i­cant divide in soci­ety is rich and poor, the many and the few. As one chant went on the night, ‘They say race war — we say CLASS WAR!’

Bris­tle Mag: R.I.P.

We here at the Bath Bomb would like to tip our hats in fond farewell to our lit­er­ary fore­fa­thers at Bris­tle mag­a­zine. For many years, this rag pro­vid­ed Bris­tol and the south west With inspir­ing rad­i­cal news and rants. It was a great read, and well worth the odd £1.20 of dole!

http://www.bristle.org.uk

Kebab Shop Car­nage

Sta­tion Kebab Shop in Brad­ford-on-Avon has been forced to close after a vicious race attack left staff mem­bers with bro­ken bones. The attack comes short­ly after anti-racists were brand­ed fas­cists for shut­ting down a BNP meet­ing in Oxford. This attack is evi­dence enough to demon­strate what hap­pens when we let these bas­tards spread their poi­son. They whine about free­dom of speech, but they only use it to spread fear, vio­lence and hatred because of the colour of people’s skin – they’re racist thugs who need a fuckin hard boot to the face. The only debate worth hav­ing with a fas­cist is one where they end up inhal­ing their own teeth.

In a state­ment received by Bath Bomb today, local Antifa group have promised ret­ri­bu­tion against fas­cists oper­at­ing local­ly, and frankly, good luck to them! As Adolph Hitler once said ‘The only way the rise of the Ger­man Nazi par­ty could have been pre­vent­ed was if its ene­mies had have recog­nised it for what it was and smashed it in its infan­cy with the utmost force’. The only true words he ever said, and as true to the BNP and NF today as it was to him back in the 1930s’.

http://www.thisisbath.com/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=180730&command=displayContent&sourceNode=232315&home=yes&more_nodeId1=163047&contentPK=19121961

Hunt­ing As Usu­al, Sab­bing As Usu­al

It was a sun­ny autumn day when a group of us went for a trip to the coun­try. We ren­dezvoused with a group of peace­ful veg­gie com­man­does and went about our task. We were there to mon­i­tor and stop a group of sadis­tic inbreds who prance about on hors­es to sat­is­fy their blood­lust and infe­ri­or­i­ty com­plex­es (I am of course talk­ing about fox hunters, of the Ted­worth Hunt). Despite the ban, they are still hunt­ing, this was fur­ther clar­i­fied on a pre­vi­ous week when a group of sabs stopped a dig out (which involves the hunt send­ing a ter­ri­er down a fox hole to fight the trapped ani­mal, before yank­ing it out). They put on the pre­tences of drag hunt­ing (fol­low­ing a fake scent) but this is nor­mal­ly only for show or insur­ance should they “acci­den­tal­ly” kill any­thing.

On arriv­ing at the hunt there were the usu­al assort­ment of big-eared boys and oth­er odd­i­ties of the human species. We did our best to fol­low the hunt; jump­ing fences, blow­ing horns and chas­ing them around the coun­try­side. At one point after los­ing the hunt and then re-find­ing them again, some­thing must have flipped in the psy­chot­ic mind of the hunts­man and his fol­low­ers and they tried to ride us down (No sabs were seri­ous­ly injured). Short­ly after this inci­dent, their day thor­ough­ly ruined by the sabs, the hunt packed up ear­ly. We then went round a mate’s house for veg­an cake and tea. If you feel like get­ting involved give us a call on 07854 062336.

http://hsa.enviroweb.org/hsa.shtml

Events

every Mon­day Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs meet­ing — back room of the Bell, 8pm
every Wednes­day Lon­don Road Food Co-op; 4pm—7pm, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Lon­don Road
8th Dec Bath FreeShop — Stall Street 12–3pm
10th-24th Dec Anti-fur fort­night http://www.caft.org.uk
15th Dec Day of action against foie gras; con­tact bathanimalaction@yahoo.co.uk
16th Dec ‘Bub­bling Under’ — Porter Cel­lar Bar, 1–4pm; show­ing The Yes Men
21stDec ‘Left­ism’ at the Crown on Bath­wick Street — 9–1am; funds towards RAINBOW
2nd Jan Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing — back room of the Bell, 7.30–8.30pm
3rd Jan Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing — down­stairs Hob­gob­lin, 7.30–9pm
7th Jan Pub­lic meet­ing against Tesco’s; St Mary’s Church, Bath­wick Hill; con­tact bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk for mnore details

Reclaim The High Street

Mem­bers of Bath Activist Net­work descend­ed on town last Sat­ur­day for the mam­moth day of demo­ing that was ‘Reclaim the Plan­et’. Mov­ing away from the orig­i­nal ‘eco’ theme, activists adopt­ed a more gen­er­ous­ly anti-cap­i­tal­ist approach to ques­tion the con­sumer night­mare that is Xmas shop­ping. Now, we’re not anti Xmas, but we did want to high­light why this time of year sees the sweat­shop, ani­mal abuse and cli­mate change indus­tries prof­its soar, in this, the sea­son of good will. We start­ed off help­ing out Bath Stop the War Coali­tion on their anti-war vig­il which has been tak­ing place every Sat­ur­day, between 11.30 and 12.30 out­side the Abbey for the past sev­er­al years. An unjust war for oil, so we can keep dri­ving our 4x4s, import­ing our apples and buy­ing our plas­tic crap.
From there, we moved on to Bistro No.5, an iso­lat­ed bas­tion of ani­mal abuse that con­tin­ues to sell the bloat­ed liv­er of force-fed geese, oth­er­wise known as foie gras. Hav­ing already promised to take this sick ‘del­i­ca­cy’ off the menu, but put it back on, they weren’t best pleased to see us again. The man­ager­ess called the cops, who threat­ened some arrests, exchanged some stern words, then left after the day’s first police-pro­test­er round of ban­ter. This left a very unhap­py man­ager­ess and dur­ing a short and sharp phone call, the own­er promised to take it back off the menu!

We then moved on to Dis­ney, who use their ‘cute and cud­dly’ image to hide the fact that they employ third world chil­dren in sweat­shops to pro­duce their toys for slave labour wages. A ban­ner was unfurled, leaflets dis­trib­uted, and many cus­tomers left to shop in a more cru­el­ty-free envi­ron­ment. The demo was effec­tive and well received – we even received a vis­it from our flu­o­ro-jack­et­ed friends from the Bath Con­stab­u­lary, who were hap­py to let us con­tin­ue our peace­ful protest, and moved off after a anoth­er spot of jovial ban­ter!

From there we moved to the ever unpop­u­lar McDon­alds, who were pleased as ever to see us. More ban­ners, free cake and hun­dreds of leaflets were deployed as dozens of poten­tial cus­tomers pledged to boy­cott the place on the grounds of their dis­re­gard for ani­mal wel­fare, employ­ee rights, the envi­ron­ment and the seri­ous health impli­ca­tions of eat­ing there! All in all a long but suc­cess­ful day despite the ter­ri­ble weath­er. A fol­low-up event is being planned for next sum­mer, and loads is gonna be going on in-between, so keep yer eyes peeled!

http://www.mcspotlight.org/
http://www.nosweat.org.uk/node/183
http://www.banfoiegras.org.uk/
http://www.stopwar.org.uk/

Pup­py Punch­ers Pay The Price

On Sat­ur­day the 10th Novem­ber, activists descend­ed on Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences in Cam­bridgeshire, furi­ous at the company’s con­tin­ued ani­mal abuse. A research con­trac­tor for the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try, HLS kill 500 ani­mals dai­ly in the name of prof­it, with­out ever pro­duc­ing a sin­gle paper. But not just the cute and fluffy ani­mals suf­fer: 10,000 humans die every year in the UK alone as a result of dodgy drug side effects. But then what can you expect, when the gov­ern­ment refus­es to exam­ine whether ani­mal test­ing works or not? TGN 1412 hor­ri­bly injured 6 vol­un­teers in March of last year; like Vioxx, Con­ter­gan, and Thalido­mide did before, to name a few. But the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals have lob­bied hard for their priv­i­leges, and who cares about lives when there’s a quick buck to be made? Far eas­i­er to just lock up any­one who com­plains and call them ‘ter­ror­ists’ – just like the three SHAC activists in prison right now.

From 1 till 2, cam­paign­ers marched through Hunt­ing­don cen­tre, leaflet­ing and chant­i­ng, before mov­ing on to the labs itself. And what a place – ringed by razor­wire, fences and grim-look­ing cops, HLS is noth­ing short of a mod­ern day Auschwitz. For two hours we vent­ed our rage, with mega­phone, voice and siren, and heard how these bank­rupt mon­sters have been bailed out again and again by tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey, and also of the caught-on-cam­era HLS work­ers, laugh­ing as they hit cap­tive bea­gles in the face.

Recent­ly, anoth­er share­hold­er, Axa, pulled out; but when will sci­ence final­ly learn to move to non-ani­mal test­ing, so then we can all just get on with our lives, rather than wav­ing plac­ards, or bed-bound in cash-strapped hos­pi­tals?

http://www.shac.net/HLS/exposed.html

Who Are Bath Activist Net­work?

We are a local umbrel­la group cam­paign­ing on issues as diverse as devel­op­ment, envi­ron­men­tal­ism, anti-war, ani­mal rights, work­ers’ rights and more. Help­ing to pro­duce The Bath Bomb, we are open to any­one, and our mem­bers range from trade union­ists to anar­chists, lib­er­als to greens, and peo­ple who just want to change Bath for the bet­ter. For details on meet­ings, demos, or just to get in touch, ring us on 07949 611912, email bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk, or see our web­site: www.myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork

The Wheels Of Green Bull Go Round And Round

Ever strain­ing to prove its green cre­den­tials, B&NES have recent­ly invest­ed in a pilot scheme of school­bus­es being run on rape­seed oil/biodiesel , as a mea­sure to cut CO2 emis­sions– with one at Three Ways in Bath and anoth­er at Nor­ton Hill, in Mid­somer Nor­ton. While my tree­hug­ger side wel­comes this, my inner cyn­ic gets scep­ti­cal: nitrous oxide emis­sion from fer­tilis­ers are around 3oo times worse than fos­sil fuel emis­sions, so, unless organ­ic, bio­fu­els are no friend to the plan­et. Sec­ond­ly, there is bare­ly enough farm­land around for food crops nev­er mind fuel, which will jump food prices, when the world’s already got more than enough star­va­tion prob­lems. In the South, bio­fu­el plan­ta­tions will also ruin indige­nous cul­ture by forc­ing peo­ple from their land into the cities, and will also eat into nature reserves. Small scale pro­duc­tion and recy­cling cook­ing oils may not be a bad thing, but means lit­tle prof­it for the agro­fu­els indus­try: yet again, the smell of ‘green­wash’ is in the air, and it’s start­ing to stink.

http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/

Suits, Gold Lamé And Video­tapes

Car­ry­ing on from last month’s ‘Fourth World War’, the Porter Cellar’s keep­ing it up with anoth­er ‘Bub­bling Under’ screen­ing: Sun­day 16th Decem­ber, from 1pm till 4pm, free entry, show­ing ‘The Yes Men’. A dark­ly com­i­cal doc­u­men­tary, it fol­lows the sto­ry of how two anti-cor­po­rate activists who set them­selves up as bogus big busi­ness reps, mak­ing ever-more ridicu­lous pre­sen­ta­tions at swanky indus­try con­fer­ences. Fol­low­ing com­mer­cial log­ic to its nasty extreme, they hoped to shake the audi­ence from their stu­por by straight-faced­ly offer­ing up busi­ness plans so bru­tal and down­right dis­gust­ing, that even the most greedy and self-serv­ing of fat cats would be incensed. But, whether propos­ing elec­tro-shock­ing sweat­shop work­ers into line with inflat­ed gold­en dil­dos, or recy­cled human fae­ces into a new range of burg­ers, the only reac­tion they ever get is enthu­si­as­tic applause… Prov­ing that once again, fact is stranger than fic­tion! Must be seen to be believed.

http://www.moles.co.uk/porter/view_porter_listing.ihtml?per=future
http://www.theyesmen.org/

GOT A STORY? WANT TO RECEIVE THE BATH BOMB BY EMAIL? HOPING TO SUE?
Con­tact us by e‑mailing bathbombpress@yahoo.co.uk Large print e‑versions are avail­able on request.

And now, to the dis­claimer: As any­one is free to con­tribute to this newslet­ter, the opin­ions expressed in each arti­cle are not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflec­tive of each con­trib­u­tor. Nat­u­ral­ly, any right-wing or cor­po­rate bull­shit will be binned and spat on. Need­less to say, the opin­ions of
the author of this dis­claimer does not nec­es­sar­i­ly rep­re­sent the views of any oth­er con­trib­u­tor…

http://www.myspace.com/bathbomb

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bris­tle mag­a­zine (Bris­tol) — state­ment from the col­lec­tive

Whilst the com­rades at Bath Bomb are jump­ing the gun a bit by declar­ing ‘Bris­tle R.I.P’, the bris­tle Col­lec­tive, pub­lish­ers of bris­tle mag­a­zine, would like to advise activists, read­ers and Indy­media users of the fol­low­ing:

A state­ment from the bris­tle Col­lec­tive

Before the Bris­to­lian news-sheet came and went, before Bris­tol Indy­media was con­ceived, before the inter­net was a dai­ly (hourly) part of your lives, and before any­body & nobody had their per­son­al blog, there was bris­tle mag­a­zine.

What start­ed as a cut’n’paste A4 pho­to­copied & fold­ed freesheet (see image), in times of hope and high activ­i­ty when the Tories were beat­en and we were reclaim­ing those streets, devel­oped into a 2 or more colour mag­a­zine of between 24 and 40 pages. From a copied run of 50 to a pro­fes­sion­al print-run and sales of 1200, although nor­mal­ly half that, bris­tle evolved through the years. But its aim always remained the same: to give a space and a voice in Bris­tol & the south west to those shut out from the cor­po­rate media-main­stream of ads and bull­shit. To be a pub­li­ca­tion writ­ten by activists that would try to reach out beyond the activist scenes to com­bat the mis­in­for­ma­tion of gov­ern­ments and cap­i­tal.

Some 10 years and 24 issues (plus a book, var­i­ous free-sheets, t‑shirts, stick­ers etc) lat­er that task remains as valid and vital as ever, in fact more so! But for now bris­tle mag­a­zine is dor­mant. The con­tin­ued depar­ture over the last 2 years of long-term col­lec­tive mem­bers, and con­trib­u­tors, has not been coun­tered by suf­fi­cient new peo­ple. We have had some inter­est­ed new peo­ple, but their involve­ment, and usu­al­ly their stay in Bris­tol, has not been per­ma­nent.

Sad­ly there­fore, the remain­ing few col­lec­tive mem­bers, who are all deeply involved in oth­er projects too, have decid­ed to take a long term break and sus­pend pub­li­ca­tion of the mag­a­zine. We would like to thank all those who have con­tributed in any way to the mag­a­zine over the years, and send our love and sol­i­dar­i­ty to all those con­tin­u­ing to strug­gle for a free and bet­ter world. We look for­wards to see­ing you behind the bar­ri­cade of your choos­ing, be it wield­ing a pen, a spray can, or some­thing a lit­tle heav­ier.

For now we are look­ing into oth­er pos­si­ble ini­tia­tives involv­ing print media and the machin­ery need­ed. We would be inter­est­ed to hear from any­body con­sid­er­ing pub­lish­ing alter­na­tive print media. Indeed if you have the time, ener­gy, skills (research, writ­ing, dtp, dis­tro, art & car­toons, edit­ing etc) and longish-term com­mit­ment we could be per­suad­ed to relaunch bris­tle! Whilst we have closed the old bris­tle web­site & email, we can still be con­tact­ed c/o 14 Robert­son Rd, Bris­tol BS5 6JY, or email bristle@riseup.net

Salud!