Author: earthfirst

Sabotage at Broken Cross Open Cast Coal Mine (Mainshill Solidarity Action)

In the ear­ly hours of the 25th Decem­ber, a group of autonomous activists deliv­ered their Christ­mas present to Scot­tish Coal. Four machines were sab­o­taged at the Bro­ken Cross open cast site, the largest of its type in Europe, just 5 miles from Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp.

In the ear­ly hours of the 25th Decem­ber, a group of autonomous activists deliv­ered their Christ­mas present to Scot­tish Coal. Four machines were sab­o­taged at the Bro­ken Cross open cast site, the largest of its type in Europe, just 5 miles from Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp.
This is a mes­sage to Scot­tish Coal that regard­less of the time of year, we will resist. Not just at Main­shill, but at all of their sites across South Lanark­shire, which is one of the most heav­i­ly mined areas in Europe.
As the “fes­tive” sea­son comes to an end, the destruc­tive work will com­mence again at Main­shill. Evic­tion is loom­ing as their work pro­gress­es. Num­bers are need­ed as ever on site to help out and fill defences.

UK Coal ’ greenwash’ Durham planner’s! OPENCAST looks likely (near where Winter Moot will be in February)

Mon­ey grab­bing UK coal have over­come one of the largest bar­ri­ers in their plans to open­cast the PONT VALLEY,

OPPONENTS of a large open­cast mine in a pic­turesque val­ley fear the worst now that plan­ning per­mis­sion has been grant­ed to move a colony of Great Crest­ed Newts – a pro­tect­ed species.

Mon­ey grab­bing UK coal have over­come one of the largest bar­ri­ers in their plans to open­cast the PONT VALLEY,

OPPONENTS of a large open­cast mine in a pic­turesque val­ley fear the worst now that plan­ning per­mis­sion has been grant­ed to move a colony of Great Crest­ed Newts – a pro­tect­ed species.

Durham Coun­ty Coun­cil plan­ners agreed to an appli­ca­tion by UK Coal to cre­ate four habi­tat ponds for wildlife near Leadgate, Con­sett, Coun­ty Durham.

The com­pa­ny, which plans to extract 556,000 tonnes from the Bradley site, an area of 73,000 square meters in the Der­went Val­ley between the vil­lages of Leadgate and Dip­ton, was hin­dered by the pres­ence of the tiny ani­mals on a pond in the mid­dle of the area where it wants to mine. Now that coun­cil­lors have approved the plans to cre­ate new ponds UK Coal will pro­ceed with its appli­ca­tion to mine.

A spokesman for the com­pa­ny said: “The pro­pos­als are to cre­ate a site of nature con­ser­va­tion involv­ing addi­tion­al plant­i­ng and land­scap­ing and new ponds on part of the site to form an extend­ed wildlife habi­tat from the adja­cent Billing­side Wood Site of Nature Con­ser­va­tion Impor­tance.

“The appli­ca­tion for habi­tat ponds in con­struc­tion terms is rel­a­tive­ly minor in nature and has the poten­tial for sig­nif­i­cant con­ser­va­tion and habi­tat enhance­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for the local area.”

Eight let­ters of objec­tion includ­ing respons­es from the Dip­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Part­ner­ship and the Pont Val­ley Net­work were received.

Objec­tors argued that the appli­ca­tion is part of the inten­tion to open­cast the site, known as the Bradley site and should not be treat­ed sep­a­rate­ly.

But senior plan­ning offi­cer Mike Hemp­sall said the two appli­ca­tions had to be treat­ed indi­vid­u­al­ly.

He said: “The pro­pos­al pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty for addi­tion­al habi­tats that would be of eco­log­i­cal and land­scape ben­e­fit to the area and can be car­ried out in an envi­ron­men­tal­ly accept­able man­ner.

“The stat­ed grounds of objec­tion con­cern­ing deter­mi­na­tion of the appli­ca­tion sep­a­rate to the sur­face coal mine appli­ca­tion, archae­o­log­i­cal, land­scape char­ac­ter, effects on pub­lic rights of way and wildlife impact are not con­sid­ered suf­fi­cient to lead to rea­sons to refuse the appli­ca­tion.”

UK Coal says the open­cast pro­pos­al would cre­ate 38 jobs, pro­duce 556,000 tonnes of coal need­ed for the British steel or elec­tric­i­ty indus­try, and pro­vide a new con­ser­va­tion area after min­ing is com­plet­ed with­in three years. It intends to for­mal­ly sub­mit a plan­ning appli­ca­tion in the new year.

But Durham Coun­ty coun­cil­lor Watts Stelling said: “This area has been rav­aged by indus­try in the past and should now be allowed to recov­er.

“Every­body knows the two appli­ca­tions are linked. UK Coal is not build­ing new ponds due to any fond­ness for Great Crest­ed Newts. It wants to dig a great big hole in attrac­tive coun­try­side.”

It should be not­ed that Durham wildlife trust did­n’t even respond when asked for an opin­ion by Durham Coun­ty Coun­cil maybe this is because lots of fund­ing for wildlife trusts comes from the aggre­gate indus­try or maybe their just lazy!

GOOD NEWS!!!
FAMILIES in a rur­al ham­let are call­ing on a devel­op­ment com­pa­ny to aban­don its bid for an open­cast mine in the Northum­ber­land coun­try­side after plan­ners firm­ly reject­ed the con­tro­ver­sial scheme.

Cam­paign­ers in tiny Hal­ton Lea Gate near Halt­whis­tle say they are “over­joyed” after coun­ty coun­cil­lors vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly to refuse per­mis­sion to dig 140,000 tonnes of coal from a 75-acre site, with­in the North Pen­nines Area of Out­stand­ing Nat­ur­al Beau­ty.

They urged appli­cant HM Project Devel­op­ments to “get the mes­sage”, admit defeat and not launch an appeal against the deci­sion.

HM Project Devel­op­ments’ agent, New­cas­tle-based firm Black­ett, Hart and Pratt, did not com­ment.

Cowley Club Bookshop Talks 2010

The Cow­ley Book­shop Col­lec­tive are proud to present a series of author talks for 2010:

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All events run from 16.00 to 18.30 and are FREE
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Fri­day 8 Jan­u­ary
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Clive Bloom (Vio­lent Lon­don) talks about his research into Edwar­dian anar­chism.

The Cow­ley Book­shop Col­lec­tive are proud to present a series of author talks for 2010:

_______________________________________
All events run from 16.00 to 18.30 and are FREE
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Fri­day 8 Jan­u­ary
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Clive Bloom (Vio­lent Lon­don) talks about his research into Edwar­dian anar­chism.

Clive Bloom is Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of Eng­lish and Amer­i­can Stud­ies at Mid­dle­sex Uni­ver­si­ty. He has writ­ten many books on pop­u­lar cul­ture, cul­tur­al his­to­ry and lit­er­ary crit­i­cism, reg­u­lar­ly appears on radio and tele­vi­sion and con­tributes to a num­ber of nation­al news­pa­pers. His next book, enti­tled Goth­ic His­to­ries will be pub­lished in April 2010.
http://www.clivebloom.com/

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Wednes­day 13 Jan­u­ary
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Stevphen Shukaitis (Con­stituent Imag­i­na­tion) and Jack Z. Bratich (Con­spir­a­cy Pan­ics) have a dis­cus­sion enti­tled An Affec­tive Weath­er Report

Event fly­er (3.4 MB pdf) — http://mujinga.net/AffectiveWeatherReport.pdf

Stevphen Shukaitis is an edi­tor at Autono­me­dia and lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Essex. He is the author of Imag­i­nal Machines: Auton­o­my & Self-Orga­ni­za­tion in the Rev­o­lu­tions of Every­day Life (Autono­me­dia, 2009) and edi­tor with Eri­ka Bid­dle and David Grae­ber of Con­stituent Imag­i­na­tion: Mil­i­tant Inves­ti­ga­tions, Col­lec­tive The­o­riza­tion (AK Press, 2007). His research focus­es on the emer­gence of col­lec­tive imag­i­na­tion in social move­ments and the chang­ing com­po­si­tions of cul­tur­al and artis­tic labor.
http://stevphen.mahost.org/

Jack Z. Bratich is Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Jour­nal­ism and Media Stud­ies at Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty. He is also a zine librar­i­an at ABC No Rio in New York City. Jack uses crit­i­cal cul­tur­al stud­ies to ana­lyze the pol­i­tics of pop­u­lar cul­ture. He stud­ies media cul­ture as an inter­sec­tion of pow­er, knowl­edge, and sub­jec­tiv­i­ty. He is co-edi­tor, along with Jere­my Pack­er and Cameron McCarthy, of Fou­cault, Cul­tur­al Stud­ies and Gov­ern­men­tal­i­ty (SUNY 2003).
http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/directory/jbratich/index.html

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Sun­day 17 Jan­u­ary — SUBJECT TO CONFIRMATION (Check Cow­ley club web­site)
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John Zerzan (Ele­ments of Refusal) talks on The roots of the cri­sis and the need for a new par­a­digm.

Amer­i­can philoso­pher John Zerzan’s the­sis is sim­ple: civ­i­liza­tion is patho­log­i­cal, and needs to be dis­man­tled. Zerzan’s rad­i­cal cri­tique of civ­i­liza­tion, laid out in books such as Ele­ments Of Refusal (1988), Future Prim­i­tive (1994), and Run­ning On Empti­ness (2002) draws on anthro­po­log­i­cal research to argue that domes­ti­ca­tion of nature and domes­ti­ca­tion of humans go hand in hand. And this is accom­plished pri­mar­i­ly through tech­nol­o­gy.
This is the first appear­ance by John Z in the UK since 2003. A one-off event.
http://www.johnzerzan.net/

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Thurs­day 4 Feb­ru­ary
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John Bark­er (Bend­ing the Bars) talks about his expe­ri­ences of the Angry Brigade.

Between 1970 and 1972 the Angry Brigade, strong­ly influ­enced by anar­chism and the Sit­u­a­tion­ists, launched a bomb­ing cam­paign which tar­get­ed banks, embassies and the homes of Tory MPs. In total, 25 bomb­ings were attrib­uted to them by the police. The dam­age done by the bomb­ings was most­ly lim­it­ed to prop­er­ty dam­age although one per­son was slight­ly injured. A group of anar­chists from North East Lon­don, the ‘Stoke New­ing­ton Eight’, were pros­e­cut­ed for car­ry­ing out bomb­ings as the Angry Brigade in one of the longest crim­i­nal tri­als of Eng­lish his­to­ry (it last­ed from 30 May to 6 Decem­ber 1972).
John Bark­er was one of those impris­oned. John went to prison in 1971, and stayed there for sev­en long years. Bend­ing The Bars is a col­lec­tion of sto­ries writ­ten then, and pub­lished togeth­er for the first time in 2007. This evening John will be dis­cussing his expe­ri­ence of impris­on­ment, and answer­ing ques­tions on the Brigade’s out­look and actions.

Book review by Stew­art Home — http://www.metamute.org/en/node/6241

_______________________________________
All events run from 16.00 to 18.30 and are FREE
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More to come!

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INFO
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Face­book:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=app_2344061033&ref=ts&gid=59207379965

Cow­ley Books
12 Lon­don Road
Brighton
BN1 4JA

cowleybooks@gmail.com
http://www.cowleyclub.org.uk/

Tree felled despite protesters underneath & protection agreement

23 Decem­ber 2009
A MAJESTIC 350-year-old oak tree in Steep was chopped down just hours after a deal was struck to save it.

Shocked vil­lagers looked on in hor­ror as con­trac­tors reneged on an agree­ment to save the land­mark oak, which has stood in Ash­ford Chace since the time of Oliv­er Cromwell, by clam­ber­ing up into the high­est branch­es and hack­ing it down last Tues­day after­noon.

23 Decem­ber 2009
A MAJESTIC 350-year-old oak tree in Steep was chopped down just hours after a deal was struck to save it.

Shocked vil­lagers looked on in hor­ror as con­trac­tors reneged on an agree­ment to save the land­mark oak, which has stood in Ash­ford Chace since the time of Oliv­er Cromwell, by clam­ber­ing up into the high­est branch­es and hack­ing it down last Tues­day after­noon.

Pro­tes­tors stand­ing under­neath the canopy were forced to take cov­er when it became clear tree sur­geons had no regard for their safe­ty, as parts of the tree came crash­ing to the ground.

Police were called amid con­fronta­tion­al scenes between vil­lagers and con­trac­tors, before the res­i­dents were forced to watch help­less­ly as the oak was sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly dis­man­tled.

Ash­ford Hang­ers Preser­va­tion Soci­ety tree war­den Drake Hock­ing said: “They start­ed off care­ful­ly and slow­ly and then some­time in the mid­dle of the day they changed tack and start­ed butcher­ing it.
“They did not stop.
“It was trag­ic and the vil­lage is now in shock.”

The oak tree is sit­u­at­ed on the Hang­ers Way and forms part of the right of way for a new four-bed­room house, built by Rolls Royce’s head of human resources Avery Duff and wife Elfri­da of Emp­shott Green.

They intend to turn the site where the oak tree stood into a straight tar­mac dri­ve for their prop­er­ty.

The tree was con­sid­ered rot­ten by East Hamp­shire Dis­trict Coun­cil’s arbo­cul­tur­al team, so was not pro­tect­ed by a tree preser­va­tion order.

Mr Hock­ing explained an agree­ment had been thrashed out on Mon­day evening with the Duf­f’s con­trac­tors Pega­sus Builders, which stat­ed it would only remove about a third of the tree.

How­ev­er, the promise was bro­ken with­in 24 hours.

“It appears the Duf­f’s archi­tect went over the head of the con­trac­tor and insist­ed the tree should be cut,” he said.

Kate Burke, of Ash­ford Chace, said: “It is shock­ing, absolute­ly shock­ing.
“I am so upset about it and the way the sit­u­a­tion has been han­dled.
“I can­not under­stand how some peo­ple can have such dis­re­gard for the coun­try­side.
“If it had been a dif­fer­ent own­er or a dif­fer­ent arbi­cul­tur­al offi­cer at the coun­cil then I think the out­come would have been very dif­fer­ent.”

She added when she went to inspect the tree after it was felled, the rot inside was only the size of her cupped hands.

“As a pro­por­tion of the whole cir­cum­fer­ence of the tree, it was noth­ing,” Mrs Burke said.
“It is so, so sad.”

Anoth­er angered res­i­dent, Jes­si­ca Pocock, said: “I think I can speak for all those present when I say that we have all been tru­ly shak­en and appalled by the crass and dis­dain­ful atti­tude dis­played to to the peo­ple of Steep, many of whom tried to nego­ti­ate with the Duffs for over two years, and to the mag­nif­i­cent oak tree, which has been felled for no good rea­son.

“We did con­sid­er tak­ing up a stance again to try and pre­vent the work being done, but in truth, we have no chance of stop­ping such ruth­less behav­iour, and the strain of the last few days has been con­sid­er­able.”

On Mon­day a sign was placed beside the tree which quot­ed the famous war poet Edward Thomas, who lived in Steep 100 years ago.

It read: “In the sun and in the snow, there are no more sins to be sinned on the dead oak tree bough.”

Avery Duff was unavail­able for com­ment when The Post went to press.

New Zealand climate camp report-back

15 Decem­ber 2009

15 Decem­ber 2009
NZ climate camp welcome tentPrepa­ra­tions for New Zealand’s first Cli­mate Camp are going well with peo­ple mov­ing onto the site yes­ter­day. Campers spent the day set­ting up some of the infra­struc­ture required for the camp includ­ing the kitchen and stor­age tents. As the day pro­gressed water lines could be seen snaking across the field, solar pan­els popped up next to tents and by the end of the day hot food was being pre­pared in the kitchen. The site is per­fect, large trees dot the field, a riv­er with swim­ming holes runs beside the camp and there is easy vehic­u­lar access.

NZ climate camp platformCli­mate camp offi­cial­ly kicks off tomor­row (Wednes­day) and will be going until the 21st. The camp will be a work­ing demon­stra­tion of sus­tain­able liv­ing with com­post­ing toi­lets and elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed on site. It will also host work­shops on dozens of sub­jects as well as pro­vid­ing space for peo­ple to organ­ise to take action against the root caus­es of cli­mate change. The 21st will see campers tak­ing to the streets in protests which will be organ­ised at camp. As details of these protests are organ­ised they will be dis­trib­uted wide­ly.

Feel free to bring any­thing you think might be use­ful – tools, bikes, koha to help pay for food and tents etc. The camp is being organ­ised and run by par­tic­i­pants so feel free to make it your own. If you want to run a work­shop or spend a few hours in the kitchen that would be great! Weath­er has been a mixed bag over the past day so a good tent and heaps of warm clothes in case you get wet would be a real­ly good idea. Food will be pro­vid­ed through­out the camp.

So if you have any spare time over the next week be it an after­noon or the entire camp pop on down to Moon­shine park in Upper Hut from today.

For more infor­ma­tion and reg­u­lar updates on how the camp is going please vis­it climatecamp.org.nz

For the days pho­tos please vis­it: http://www.flickr.com/photos/45638777@N08/

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NZ Carbon Exchange conference disrupted
Activists dis­rupt pre­sen­ta­tion by head of the New Zealand Car­bon Exchange.
18 Decem­ber 2009

This action coin­cides with New Zealand’s first cli­mate camp in Upper Hut Welling­ton and pecedes mon­days day of direct action against false solu­tions planned for Welling­ton on mon­day.

Yes­ter­day mem­bers of Car­bon Progress Response (CPR) dis­rupt­ed a pre­sen­ta­tion by Stu­art Fraz­er mem­ber of the New Zealand Car­bon Exchange. The pro­test­ers dis­rupt­ed the meet­ing at three points hold­ing ban­ners say­ing “Our Cli­mate Not Your Busi­ness”, “Food Mar­kets Not Car­bon Mar­kets” as well as talk­ing about why car­bon trad­ing would not result in real action being tak­en to pre­vent cli­mate change. Dur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion Stu­art Fraz­er talked of how we need to sta­bilise atmos­pher­ic CO2 lev­els at 450ppm and glob­al tem­per­a­tures at a 2 degrees Cel­sius rise. The pro­test­ers point­ed out that at these lev­els hun­dreds of mil­lions of the worlds poor will be affect­ed by drought and famine.

The action was tak­en in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the 100,000 pro­test­ers in Copen­hagen as well as the 300 civ­il soci­ety del­e­gates which walked out of the con­fer­ence.

The CPR activists involved in the dis­rup­tion explained their actions in this way “Car­bon trad­ing, also known as Cap and Trade, allows wealthy, indus­tri­al­ized coun­tries and com­pa­nies to keep pol­lut­ing at the same rates by trad­ing car­bon cred­its amongst them­selves. This allows busi­ness to con­tin­ue as usu­al and encour­ages the dis­ad­van­taged and poor to sell their liveli­hoods for the gain of the rich.”

After the first two groups of pro­test­ers were removed around a dozen pro­test­ers held ban­ners out­side as well as using a siren to empha­sis that we are fac­ing a cli­mate emer­gency. After the pre­sen­ta­tion had fin­ished an activist slipped back into the meet­ing and dis­rupt­ed it for a third time.

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NZ climate camp march
21 Decem­ber 2009
About 150 peo­ple took to the streets ear­ly this morn­ing in Welling­ton as two ban­ners were hung overnight in promi­nent loca­tions. First stop was the Stock Exchange, to dis­rupt busi­ness as usu­al and tell the prof­i­teers of cli­mate change that our cli­mate is not their busi­ness. While peo­ple entered the build­ing a sam­ba band, rad­i­cal cheer­lead­ers and a kids block were out­side all main entrances. There was also a vocal bunch from a group claim­ing to be counter-protest­ing for the right to prof­it from exploit­ing the envi­ron­ment. Nine peo­ple were arrest­ed in a sit-in block­ade but lat­er released with no charge.

After 9 arrests the protest took over Lamp­ton Quay to go and sup­port two climbers occu­py­ing the out­side of the Min­istry for For­eign Affairs and Trade with a giant ban­ner denounc­ing Foter­ra for its part in New Zealand’s high emis­sions from agri­cul­ture. The action was tak­en to draw atten­tion to the fact that 51% of New Zealand’s cli­mate chang­ing emis­sions come from agri­cul­ture. The pro­test­ers who were ini­tial­ly at the stock exchange, marched down Lambton Quay to sup­port the two activists hang­ing off MFAT. The two climbers came down lat­er and were not arrest­ed. A Reclaim the Streets style protest con­tin­ued for over half and hour.

The nine from ear­li­er are com­ing out of the police sta­tion now, some or all with­out charge…

OUR CLIMATE IS NOT YOUR BUSINESS!!

http://climatecamp.org.nz/

Copenhagen failure sparks coal terminal blockade

Updates:

4:30pm:

The Koor­a­gang rail line has just reopened, 7.5 hours after the block­ade began

3:00pm:

Australian Copenhagen rail blockade banners 4Australian Copenhagen rail blockade banners 1Updates:

4:30pm:

The Koor­a­gang rail line has just reopened, 7.5 hours after the block­ade began

3:00pm:

Australian Copenhagen rail blockadePolice have removed the final pro­test­er blockad­ing a coal rail bridge in New­cas­tle, Aus­tralia, more than six hours after pro­test­ers shut down the coal deliv­ery line into the world’s biggest coal port.

There were twen­ty three arrests in total at the protest, includ­ing an 86 year old man, a Bud­dhist priest , and an elect­ed New­cas­tle city coun­cil­lor.

12:00pm:

Police have made their first arrests at a dra­mat­ic coal train block­ade on a bridge in New­cas­tle – the world’s biggest coal port.

Australian Copenhagen rail blockade tripodAustralian Copenhagen rail blockade climberThree hours into the block­ade, police have arrest­ed ten peo­ple who were sit­ting on the rail bridge and refus­ing to move. Pro­test­ers expect the block­ade to last for the remain­der of the day and per­haps into the night, with a fur­ther 15 peo­ple still block­ing the bridge in dif­fi­cult to remove posi­tions.

Australian Copenhagen rail lock-onsActivists shut down the rail line at 9am this morn­ing to protest the fail­ure of the UN cli­mate talks in Copen­hagen to pro­duce a just, effec­tive, and legal­ly bind­ing treaty.

9am, Sun­day 20th Decem­ber 2009, New­cas­tle Aus­tralia: Forty cli­mate activists have closed down the rail line into the world’s biggest coal port this morn­ing, protest­ing the fail­ure of the UN cli­mate talks in Copen­hagen to pro­duce a just, effec­tive, and legal­ly bind­ing treaty.

Twen­ty five of the diverse group – aged from 19 to 86 years and includ­ing a Bud­dhist priest, and an elect­ed local coun­cil­lor – are occu­py­ing a rail bridge in New­cas­tle, Aus­tralia, and refus­ing to leave. They have hung large ban­ners read­ing “Greed wrecked Copen­hagen: Now it’s up to us all”, and “You could have done some­thing great.”

“The US, Aus­tralia, and oth­er wealthy coun­tries wrecked the Copen­hagen cli­mate talks,” said Steve Phillips, spokesper­son for protest organ­is­ers Ris­ing Tide New­cas­tle.

“They refused to lift their pal­try green­house pol­lu­tion tar­gets to the lev­els required to avoid cat­a­stro­phe. They could have done some­thing great, but they failed. They let greed and self inter­est take prece­dence over the sur­vival of life on earth, and we are here today to con­demn them in the strongest pos­si­ble terms.”

Australian Copenhagen rail blockade banners 2“We put world lead­ers on notice that their con­tin­u­ing fail­ure to solve the cli­mate cri­sis will result in wide­spread direct action against the caus­es of cli­mate change, as we are see­ing here today. We’re tak­ing this action because we have had enough. We’ve seen too much grand­stand­ing, and pre­cious lit­tle action. We won’t con­tin­ue to watch as peo­ple die, as species go extinct because of cli­mate change, while emis­sions con­tin­ue to rise. Politi­cians are fail­ing to act against the caus­es of cli­mate change, so we have come here today to take action our­selves. New­cas­tle coal exports are Aus­trali­a’s sin­gle biggest con­tri­bu­tion to the cli­mate cri­sis.”

Australian Copenhagen rail blockade banners 3New­cas­tle City Coun­cil­lor Michael Osborne is among those occu­py­ing the rail bridge. He explained why: “The peo­ple of New­cas­tle and the Hunter expect­ed a fair, ambi­tious, and bind­ing treaty at Copen­hagen. They have been let down. Aus­tralia has failed to take lead­er­ship on this issue, so now peo­ple from the Hunter are tak­ing it them­selves. It is time we moved away from the fos­sil fuels that are caus­ing this cri­sis and embraced the renew­able indus­tries that can solve it.”

“Our elect­ed lead­ers are fail­ing to take action against the coal indus­try that is caus­ing the cli­mate cri­sis, so we are tak­ing that action our­selves,” con­clud­ed Steve Phillips.

Save Titnore Woods!

With the threat of devel­op­ment on Tit­nore Woods, one of the two remain­ing semi-ancient wood­lands left on the West Sus­sex coastal plain fast approach­ing, now is the time to rise up and resist the destruc­tion of our nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment by cor­po­rate greed.

With the threat of devel­op­ment on Tit­nore Woods, one of the two remain­ing semi-ancient wood­lands left on the West Sus­sex coastal plain fast approach­ing, now is the time to rise up and resist the destruc­tion of our nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment by cor­po­rate greed.

West Dur­ring­ton Con­sor­tium, which con­sists of Per­sim­mon Homes, Tay­lor Wimpy and Heron Homes could be giv­en the go ahead to build a 1250 home devel­op­ment and a road in the new year. Pre­vi­ous­ly 875 homes where to be built, so clear­ly their eyes are see­ing more pound signs as they envi­sion more clear­ance of the pre­cious land. The project is esti­mat­ed to cost over 3 bil­lion pounds to build and take 6 years to com­plete which is utter mad­ness when Wor­thing is report­ed to have over 1000 emp­ty build­ings! If plan­ning per­mis­sion is grant­ed West Dur­ring­ton will no longer home a semi- ancient wood­land with it’s rich diver­si­ty in rare species, flo­ra and fau­na or it’s sur­round­ing farm­land but a mas­sive hous­ing devel­op­ment, road, a giant Tesco and pos­si­bly 2 schools and a health cen­tre.

Already the destruc­tion is evi­dent when you vis­it Tit­nore. Just across the field from the protest site the eye sore that will be Tesco is well under way and is due to open in February/March 2010. West Sus­sex Coun­ty Coun­cil gave per­mis­sion on Decem­ber 9th 2009 to close the pub­lic foot­path reach­ing Tinore woods from Full­beck Avenue. No per­sons are allowed to use this right of way to vis­it the woods now as it is viewed as a pub­lic safe­ty haz­ard until the West Dur­ring­ton Con­sor­tium project is com­plet­ed. Also trees and bush­es have been cleared here, although none are of the semi ancient woods this is still a haunt­ing reminder that con­struc­tion is immi­nent.

On Thurs­day Jan­u­ary 28th 2010 at 6pm the West Dur­ring­ton Con­sor­tium will meet at Wor­thing Bor­ough Coun­cil’s Con­trol Com­mit­tee to push for per­mis­sion to begin devel­op­ment. If they win then it’s full steam ahead for the bull­doz­ers and a very sad day for the hard work­ing folk of Camp Tit­nore who have occu­pied the woods in resis­tance of the destruc­tion for the last 3 and a half years, and also for the local Wor­thing res­i­dents who strong­ly oppose the plans and wish to see their ancient wood­land left stand­ing.

To show that you oppose their plans to tear down an irre­place­able nat­ur­al space come and join the counter demo at 5.30pm out­side Assem­bly Hall, Stoke Abbott Road, Wor­thing on Jan­u­ary 28th 2010.
Please vis­it Camp Tit­nore. Enjoy its beau­ty, help to build new defences and walk­ways. Dona­tions of wood, nails, polyprop and cor­ru­gat­ed iron would be much appre­ci­at­ed.

Camp Tit­nore needs you!

See Tit­nore con­tact links for direc­tions and so on

Climate Camp Trafalgar- Ice Bear action & Copenhagen solidarity demo at Embassy & Copenhagen climate camp

As Copen­hagen refus­es entry to NGO’s and del­e­gates from around the world, Cli­mate Camp Trafal­gar enter anoth­er day of sol­i­dar­i­ty action. This time, the tar­get.…. The Lon­don Ice Bear.… He just did­n’t see it com­ing.

ice bear protestAs Copen­hagen refus­es entry to NGO’s and del­e­gates from around the world, Cli­mate Camp Trafal­gar enter anoth­er day of sol­i­dar­i­ty action. This time, the tar­get.…. The Lon­don Ice Bear.… He just did­n’t see it com­ing.

The team at Cli­mate Camp Trafal­gar square saw anoth­er day of actions this wednes­day 16th. This time tar­get­ing a (cor­po­rate, aka M&S, spon­sored http://plana.marksandspencer.com/we-are-doing/climate-change/stories/82/) ice sculp­ture.

The Lon­don Ice Bear ( http://www.wwf.org.uk/what_we_do/tackling_climate_change/the_london_ice_bear.cfm) has been attract­ing the atten­tion of passers by in Trafal­gar Square since fri­day the 11th of Decem­ber. WWF (who are back­ing the ice bear) state, on their web page, that “every­one is invit­ed to touch the ice sculp­ture. Artist Mark Coreth hopes that by touch­ing this sculp­ture audi­ences can become sculp­tors them­selves and make a direct con­nec­tion with the bear and its icy Arc­tic king­dom, now under threat from man-made cli­mate change.”

Here at Cli­mate Camp, we took this state­ment rather lit­er­al­ly. Though, obvi­ous­ly, we felt the need to direct the focus away from the rather sweep­ing state­ment of “man made” cli­mate change and give it a shove towards the more fit­ting state­ment of cor­po­rate fund­ed cli­mate chaos.

At around 4pm on Wednes­day the 15th of decem­ber, Cam­paign­ers took a ban­ner stat­ing “This isn’t just cli­mate change, this is RBS fund­ed cli­mate chaos” and a ket­tle full of hot water (also brand­ed with the RBS sym­bol) to the ice bear and pro­ceed­ed to melt the bear with the ‘hot water of cap­i­tal­ism’.

Artist and sculp­tor Mark Coreth was more than please to see his project “inter­act­ed” with in this way.

—-

On Thurs­day Decem­ber 17, approx­i­mate­ly 50 demon­stra­tors gath­ered out­side the Dan­ish Embassy in Sloane Street, Lon­don, to object to the Dan­ish police’s harsh treat­ment of demon­stra­tors at the COP Sum­mit in Copen­hagen.

After a spir­it­ed ral­ly, demon­stra­tors occu­pied the road in front of the embassy before lead­ing a roam­ing traf­fic block­ade up Sloane Street and onto Bromp­ton Road, before even­tu­al­ly halt­ing out­side Har­rods depart­ment store.

There were no arrests.

—-

A cli­mate camp to occu­py a vital loca­tion in Copen­hagen was announced. 100 peo­ple with 4 pop-up tents gath­ered in a cen­tral square and decid­ed to stay for two hours — full report and pho­tos

Mainshill Celebrates 6th Month of Resistance! Come celebrate with us over Christmas!

Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp will cel­e­brate its 6th month of resis­tance against Scot­tish Coal and fat cat inter­ests this Fri­day the 18th of Decem­ber!

Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp will cel­e­brate its 6th month of resis­tance against Scot­tish Coal and fat cat inter­ests this Fri­day the 18th of Decem­ber!

The win­ter is draw­ing in, but the tem­po­rary autonomous tree sit at Main­shill is warmer and cosier than ever! With a new log cab­in com­mu­nal and wood burn­ing stove there’s nowhere bet­ter to spend x‑mas than in the ice encrust­ed woods in the com­pa­ny of deer, robins, and oth­er wildlife whose habi­tat is slow­ly being defor­est­ed by Scot­tish Coal.

Join us this week­end to cel­e­brate 6 months of occu­pa­tion in resis­tance to a new open cast coal mine in an area already blight­ed by sev­er­al such devel­op­ments.

Direc­tions

Bus­es run to Dou­glas from Lanark and Hamil­ton. Both Lanark and Hamil­ton have train and bus sta­tions and are easy to get to from either Glas­gow Cen­tral Train Sta­tion or Buchan­non Street Bus Sta­tion. From South of the bor­der, going to Glas­gow is the eas­i­est way to get to Dou­glas. Bus­es from Lanark to Dou­glas are much more fre­quent!

Bus from Lanark:

The Ser­vice Num­ber 9 (William Stokes & Sons) runs from Lanark – Gle­spin, stop­ping in Dou­glas (ser­vice every 49mins past each hour). Ask to be dropped of out­side the camp – dri­vers are usu­al­ly hap­py to do this. Oth­er­wise, get off at the Egger­ton Bridge stop just before Dou­glas – you’ll see the camp on your left just after the M74 under­pass!

Bus from Hamil­ton:

The X50 (Hen­der­son Trav­el – http://www.henderson-travel.co.uk/) Hamil­ton-Gle­spin runs Hamil­ton, Inter­change – Les­ma­hagow, Church Hall – Rig­side – Dou­glas, leav­ing Hamil­ton at 17:05 (one ser­vice per day)

From Dou­glas:

The bus will stop before Dou­glas at Egger­ton Bridge and you will see the camp on your left after the M74 under­pass. If you miss this stop get off in Dou­glas and walk North East back up the A70 for 1km and the camp will be on your right just before the M74.

Hitch­ing:

If you hitch, the camp is right next to the M74 which runs from Glas­gow to Carlisle. Get dropped of at junc­tion 12 and walk South West down the A70 towards Dou­glas and the camp is a few hun­dred metres on your left. Hap­pen­don ser­vices are close to junc­tion 12 – if you end up there­walk South down the B7078, turn right onto the A70 towards Dou­glas, which takes you under the M74 and as above.

If you need a ride…

…from some­where close by call the site phone and we’ll try to sort you out.
Con­tact Us

Call the site phone on: 07806926040

Email us on: mainshill@riseup.net

Black Cat Occupied social centre evicted and Reoccupied!

Yes­ter­day saw the evic­tion of the Black Cat Cen­tre, a squat­ted social cen­tre that for 3 months became a gen­uine­ly well used and val­ued com­mu­ni­ty resource, involv­ing hun­dreds of local peo­ple in var­i­ous capac­i­ties. The evic­tion was met with a 17 strong sol­i­dar­i­ty demo, but no resis­tance from the inside as the evic­tion came slight­ly ear­li­er than expect­ed.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -

Yes­ter­day saw the evic­tion of the Black Cat Cen­tre, a squat­ted social cen­tre that for 3 months became a gen­uine­ly well used and val­ued com­mu­ni­ty resource, involv­ing hun­dreds of local peo­ple in var­i­ous capac­i­ties. The evic­tion was met with a 17 strong sol­i­dar­i­ty demo, but no resis­tance from the inside as the evic­tion came slight­ly ear­li­er than expect­ed.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -

Fol­low­ing the evic­tion of the Black cat Cen­tre yes­ter­day, the build­ing has been re-squat­ted. Local activists and res­i­dents, act­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the recent­ly evict­ed Black Cat squat­ters last night squat­ted the build­ing again, and intend to con­tin­ue oper­at­ing it as The Black Cat Social Cen­tre. Speak­ing to Bath Activist Net­work last night, one of the new squat­ters, a res­i­dent of Old­field Park, said ‘The work that the orig­i­nal Black cat squat­ters put into the social cen­tre was so inspir­ing, and such a ben­e­fit to the com­mu­ni­ty that we felt that we had to act, and re-open the social cen­tre to the com­mu­ni­ty for as long as pos­si­ble’.

This lat­est devel­op­ment means that own­ers Cabot will have to re-insti­gate court pro­ceed­ings to evict the new squat­ters. The occu­piers last night said that, as with the last occu­piers, they were keen to enter into a rent pay­ing agree­ment with Cabot in order to keep the space in com­mu­ni­ty use for as long as pos­si­ble.

The new squat­ters intend to have the Black Cat, with all of its pre­vi­ous uses and events run­ning by Fri­day morn­ing.

For more infor­ma­tion, or for an inter­view with the new squat­ters, call 07794774938
bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk