Author: earthfirst

THE BATH BOMB

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #22
free/donation
May 09

“Is It Under Your Car?”

Week­end Of Rage

The last week­end of April saw BAN and friends pour out onto the streets of Bath for a (slight­ly tongue in cheek) week­end of rage – three days, three demos and a mod­est amount of anger! Pro­ceed­ings kicked off on the Fri­day with a demo out­side Allen Ford on Low­er Bris­tol Road. The demo was held in sol­i­dar­i­ty with UK Vis­teon work­ers sacked by Ford with no back pay, redun­dan­cy pack­age or pen­sions. Instead of accept­ing these offen­sive con­di­tions, the work­ers occu­pied their fac­to­ries and launched a cam­paign demand­ing the greedy boss­es pay up. The Bath demo was well received, with loads of horn honk­ing and raised fists from pass­ing motorists and pedes­tri­ans (see how you can sup­port the Vis­teon work­ers at http://www.visteonoccupation.org). Sat­ur­day saw a dozen BAN activists head down to Lon­don for the ‘World Day for Lab Ani­mals’ demo, focused against infa­mous vivi­sec­tors and ani­mal abusers Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. The 2,000 strong demo sent a strong mes­sage to HLS and all oth­er com­pa­nies who prof­it from vivi­sec­tion – “there’s no excuse for ani­mal abuse.” On Sun­day, local activists gath­ered out­side Bath police sta­tion to protest the mur­der of paper sell­er Ian Tom­lin­son at the hands of police at the recent G20 protests. The protest high­light­ed the fact that this was not a one-off, but a con­tin­u­a­tion of bru­tal and arro­gant police behav­iour that the pub­lic have been sub­ject­ed to for years. Pos­si­bly real­is­ing that repress­ing an anti-police repres­sion
demo would not go down too well, and that pub­lic opin­ion ain’t too police-friend­ly nowa­days, the local plod hid inside the sta­tion, not even com­ing out when activists began chalk­ing slo­gans around the front of the police sta­tion (the most promi­nent read­ing ‘ser­vants NOT mas­ters’). After a few hours, with hun­dreds of leaflets giv­en out and loads of pub­lic sup­port, activists left, eager to plot the next round of protests and action. BAN relies on ideas and ener­gy from the local com­mu­ni­ty, so to sug­gest a cam­paign or get involved, send an email to bathac­tivist­net [at] yahoo.co.uk. To see what they get up to and have planned for the future, check out www.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com

Jog On, Cop­per

This year’s May­day Anti-Mil­i­tarist Jog in Brighton was anoth­er roar­ing suc­cess, despite attempts to spoil the fun by a few foul-tem­pered indi­vid­u­als. Around 2,000 anti-mil­i­tarists and a large, per­haps sim­i­lar, num­ber of police took sev­er­al hours to com­plete the gru­elling course. In order to pre­vent the police from cheat­ing by start­ing
halfway along the track, the first part of the route – tak­ing in sev­er­al big sup­port­ers and investors in the local arms com­pa­ny, many hit by anony­mous sab­o­tage that night – was kept a secret by organ­is­ers until the very last minute. The sec­ond, longer part of the course, run­ning in decreas­ing cir­cles around the city cen­tre, was made up as
the ath­letes went along.

One big ben­e­fit of this secre­cy and con­fu­sion was that the police were unable to clear the area first, and were pow­er­less to pre­vent mem­bers of the pub­lic from wit­ness­ing the demo. Sad­ly, this oppor­tu­ni­ty was some­what wast­ed as over-excit­ed activists ran past glee­ful­ly cheer­ing their right to protest, leav­ing the pub­lic bemused as to what they were actu­al­ly protest­ing about. More plac­ards next time would be nice, as
would some bet­ter chants.

The oth­er bonus was the inabil­i­ty of the police to imple­ment the bru­tal tac­tics that cul­mi­nat­ed in the mur­der of Ian Tom­lin­son at the G20 last month. Unable to pen the mobile and agile protest in or baton charge immo­bile groups, the police failed to pro­voke any seri­ous vio­lence. Apart from the odd point when police trapped pro­test­ers on a hill and wad­ed in mob-hand­ed with batons fly­ing, the march passed large­ly with­out inci­dent, though activist street medics had to treat 40 most­ly minor injuries (hav­ing to escort more seri­ous cas­es through to para­medics, despite police inter­fer­ence). Vis­it­ing cop­pers from London’s Met were so dis­ap­point­ed with the lack of blood­shed, that they took to stalk­ing and mock­ing known activists.

The Jog was part of an ongo­ing 4 and a half year cam­paign against local bomb-trig­ger man­u­fac­tur­ers EDO/ITT, with­out whom explo­sives recent­ly dropped on Pales­tine, Iraq and Afghanistan would have posed no threat what­so­ev­er. If EDO – who have lost mil­lions and cycled through var­i­ous over-stressed CEOs – suc­cumbs and col­laps­es, the entire ‘defence’
indus­try will trem­ble before the might of pop­u­lar opin­ion and direct democ­ra­cy.

http://www.smashedo.org.uk

Get­ting Off To A Wob­bly Start

Pos­si­bly spurred on by recent job loss­es and wors­en­ing con­di­tions at
work, a rad­i­cal union has start­ed mak­ing a huge come­back in the UK. The
IWW (indus­tri­al Work­ers of the World, or Wob­blies) are an inter­na­tion­al
union with a rep­u­ta­tion for nev­er back­ing down from a fight with the
boss­es, and using sol­i­dar­i­ty and direct action to get the goods. The
IWW believes that all work­ers should be unit­ed with­in a sin­gle union,
giv­ing us greater strength and bar­ter­ing pow­er. They believe that we
should be divid­ed not by pro­fes­sion, but by class, and that work­ers
should unite to con­front the greed of the employ­ing class. The IWW is a
fight­ing union that has already suc­ceed­ed in pre­vent­ing lay­offs and
get­ting sacked work­ers rein­stat­ed across the UK. With­out the
bureau­crat­ic struc­ture of the tra­di­tion­al unions or reliance on cor­rupt
union offi­cials, and an empha­sis on direct democ­ra­cy, the IWW is a
union that is grow­ing by the minute as the reces­sion bites. A Bath
branch of the IWW has just been formed, and has already tak­en part in
work­ers rights sol­i­dar­i­ty in the area. They are look­ing to grow, so if
you are inter­est­ed in join­ing, or have any ques­tions, email
rocsec@iww.org.uk and ask to be put in touch with local mem­bers. As
times get hard­er, it’s more and more impor­tant to keep in mind the
slo­gan of the IWW: ‘an injury to one is an injury to all!’

EVENTS

Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs meet­ings, 2nd and 4th Mon­day of the month, 8pm, The
Bell, Wal­cot Street

Lon­don Road Food Co-op, Wednes­days, 4–7pm, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre,
Lon­don Road

The Lost Plot work­day, Thurs­days, 10am-dusk, Bathamp­ton

Bath Stop The War Coali­tion vig­il, Sat­ur­days, 11.30am-12.30, Bath Abbey
Court­yard

Veg­gie Pride! In Birm­ing­ham, Sat­ur­day 16th May, coach­ing leav­ing
Bris­tol 11.30am, £11 waged/£8 unwaged, http://www.veggiepride.org.uk

Remem­ber Gaza march, Sat­ur­day 16th May, assem­ble 12 noon, Malet Street,
Lon­don, WC1E 7HY

Bub­bling Under, Sun­day 17th May, 1–4pm, Porter Cel­lar, George Street

Friends of Bird’s Marsh Welly Walk, Sun­day 17th May, meet 10am, car
park of the King Alfred pub, Malmes­bury Road, Chip­pen­ham SN15 1QA,
www.friendsofbirdsmarsh.com

Recy­cle Your Sun­days, Sun­day 17th May, the reg­u­lar series of socia­ble,
easy-paced cycle rides. www.rysbath.org.uk/Hazel 01225 469199

Bath Cycling Cam­paign meet­ing, Mon­day 18th May, venue TBC, 7.30pm,
http://www.bathcyclingcampaign.org.uk

Film: Mes­sage in the Waves, Thurs­day 21st May, 7.30pm, upstairs at The
Cork, West­gate Street

Anti-foie gras demo, Fri­day 22nd May, meet Queen Square 7pm

Cardiff Anar­chist Book­fair, Sat­ur­day 23rd May, 10am-6pm, Cathays
Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, 36 Cathays Ter­race, Cardiff, free entry,
http://southwalesanarchists.org/2009/01/08/cardiff-anar…-2009

Cli­mate Camp gath­er­ing, Sat­ur­day 23rd May — Sun­day 24th May, starts
11am-7pm, Heb­den Hey Hos­tel, Hard­cas­tle Crags, Heb­den Bridge, West
York­shire, HX7 7AW

Tran­si­tion Bath Pic­nic in the Park, Mon­day 25th May, by the pond in
Vic­to­ria park, 12–4pm, look for the flag!

Tran­si­tion Bath Trans­port & Built Envi­ron­ment Group meet­ing, Wednes­day

27th May, 7pm, 55 New King Street, Bath, www.transitionbath.org.uk

Tran­si­tion Drinks, Wednes­day 27th May, 8pm, upstairs at The Raven

Per­for­mance: ‘Roots – A Tale Of Love And Veg­eta­bles’, Thurs­day 28th May
– Sun­day 7th June, BOG Low­er Com­mon Allot­ments

Bris­tol Veg­an Fayre, Sat­ur­day 30th May – Sun­day 31st May, 11am, the
Amphithe­atre and Water­front Square, Har­bour­side, Bris­tol,
http://www.bristolveganfayre.co.uk

Recy­cle Your Sun­days, Sun­day 31st May, the reg­u­lar series of socia­ble,
easy-paced cycle rides, www.rysbath.org.uk/Hazel 01225 469199

Bath Friends of the Earth meet­ing, Mon­day 1st June, 8pm, Still­point,
Broad Street Place, Broad Street

Talk: Eco Refur­bish­ment of Hous­es, Mon­day 1st June, 7.30pm, Grove
Street Church Hall, £2 entry

Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, Wednes­day 3rd June, 7.30–8.30pm, back­room
of The Bell, Wal­cot Street

Green­light lec­ture: A Sus­tain­able Food Plan for Britain, Wednes­day 3rd
June, doors open 7pm, British Roy­al Lit­er­ary & Sci­en­tif­ic Insti­tu­tion
16–18 Queen Square, £3 waged/£1.5 unwaged

Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, Thurs­day 4th June, 7.30–9pm, down­stairs
at The Hob­gob­lin, St James Parade

Cym­ru Cli­mate Camp gath­er­ing, Sat­ur­day 6th June, South Wales

Anar­chist Move­ment Con­fer­ence, Sat­ur­day 6th June – Sun­day 7th June,
Queen Mary & West­field Col­lege, Lon­don, E1 4NS,
http://www.conference09.org.uk

Bath Green­peace meet­ing, Mon­day 8th June, 7.30–9pm, Still­point, Broad
Street Place

Tran­si­tion Open Forum, Tues­day 9th June, 7pm, Wid­combe Social Club

Bath Green Drinks, Wednes­day 10th June, 8.30pm, the Porter, George
Street

Bath FreeShop, Sat­ur­day 13th June, 12–3pm, out­side Pump Rooms, Stall
Street

Broad­lands Orchard­share Vol­un­teer­ing Day, Sat­ur­day 13th June, 12–4pm,

Broad­lands Orchard, Box Road, Bath­ford, email broad­land­sor­chard­share
[at] googlemail.com or phone 07532 472 256

CoMutiny meet­ing, Sat­ur­day 13th June, 2–7pm, Bris­tol

Calais No Bor­der Camp, 23rd-29th June, France

Dan­ish Cli­mate Camp, Den­mark, Sat­ur­day 11th July – Sun­day 19th July,
http://camp09.dk

French Cli­mate Camp Mon­day, Mon­day 3rd August – Sun­day 9th August,
France, http://www.campclimat.org

Belgian/Dutch Cli­mate Action Camp, Mon­day 3rd August — Sun­day 9th
August, near Antwerp, http://www.klimaatactiekamp.org

The Camp for Cli­mate Action in Scot­land, Mon­day 3rd – Tues­day 11th
August, Scot­land, http://climatecampscotland.org.uk

Cym­ru Cli­mate Camp, Thurs­day 13th – Sun­day 16th August 2009, Merthyr
Tyd­fil, South Wales, http://climatecampcymru.org

Greek No Bor­ders Camp, Tues­day 25th August – Mon­day 31st August,
Lesvos, Greece, http://lesvos09.antira.info

The Camp for Cli­mate Action 2009, Thurs­day 27th August and Wednes­day
2nd Sep­tem­ber, Lon­don, http://www.climatecamp.org.uk

Bris­tol Co-Mutiny: Social Change Not Cli­mate Change gath­er­ing, Sun­day
13th Sep­tem­ber – Sat­ur­day 19th Sep­tem­ber,
www.westsideclimateaction.wordpress.com

Inter­na­tion­al Day of Cli­mate Action, Sat­ur­day 24th Octo­ber,
http://www.350.org/ oct24

Giv­ing It A Load Of Agro

Back on the after­noon of the17th of April, 13 activists from Action
Against Agro­fu­els occu­pied the offices of Blue-NG, a joint ven­ture
between Nation­al Grid sub­sidiary NG Blue Pow­er and 20C. The com­pa­ny,
based at Ralph Allen House on Rail­way Place, was tar­get­ed due to its
build­ing of the UK’s first veg­etable oil pow­er plants. The Biased
Chron­i­cle hys­ter­i­cal­ly decried the activists’ sup­posed own goal at
tar­get­ing the brain child of the ‘green­est man in the city’ Andrew
Mer­cer, for­mer sil­i­con val­ley exec and founder of Foot­down, an
entre­pre­neur who throws his mon­ey at any­thing he thinks will sell. But
in real­i­ty the com­pa­ny, now aim­ing to build their sec­ond plant at a
site in Southall in Lon­don, as well at least anoth­er 43 plants, are in
the process of exac­er­bat­ing cli­mate change. They claim to source
indige­nous rape­seed oil (even though there’s not enough land or
pro­duc­tion to feed cur­rent needs), which pro­duces 59–70% more
green­house gas emis­sions than stan­dard diesel due to the nitrous oxide
fumes from fer­til­iz­er alone, a gas 300 times more potent than CO2. And
then there is soil ero­sion from mono­cul­ture farm­ing, the loss of
habi­tat for wild­flow­ers, birds and bees already threat­ened (maybe
Andrew will rehome them all, too?), air and noise pol­lu­tion in the
pissed off local com­mu­ni­ty, who also risk lung and heart dis­ease from
fine par­ti­cle emis­sions in an area with already one of the high­est
asth­ma rates in the coun­try.

But it’s also worth con­sid­er­ing that increased use of rape­seed oil will
push up reliance on oth­er veg oils (which Blue NG won’t rule out the
import of), such as soy­bean, jat­ropha (an inva­sive weed from India) or
the cost-effec­tive palm oil: pro­duc­tion of these, par­tic­u­lar­ly the
last, is well known for peat­land destruc­tion, rain­for­est defor­esta­tion,
bio­di­ver­si­ty loss (slaugh­ter­ing orang utans), and land theft from
indige­nous peo­ples. But pos­si­bly worse, con­sid­er­ing a glob­al
agri­cul­tur­al slump of 20–40%, with his­toric droughts in India, South
Amer­i­ca, Chi­na and the south­ern US states, Aus­tralia and, to a less­er
extent, Europe (and glob­al food reserves at their low­est in 25 years)
is the threat to food secu­ri­ty. Nev­er mind chip-fat cars and car­bon
neu­tral sec­ond homes – are we real­ly gonna feed green­wash­ing com­pa­nies
whilst peo­ple the world over are starv­ing?

http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/files/blue_ng_factsheet1…9.pdf
http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/files/Blue_NG_Open_Lette…r.pdf
http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/news/BREAKING-NEWS-Activist.…html

Thanks Allot(ment)

In the last few years, demand for allot­ments has gone through the roof
with more and more peo­ple tak­ing an inter­est in grow­ing their own veg.
But with a wait­ing list of up to eight years in some parts of B&NES,
who can blame peo­ple for putting the idea on the back burn­er? But now,
envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­ers have launched a scheme which will see peo­ple
who can’t man­age their gar­dens shar­ing them with would-be gar­den­ers
(check out http://www.bathorganicgroup.org for more info). The scheme
is great, and should intro­duce loads of peo­ple to the green,
mon­ey-sav­ing and ful­fill­ing world of gar­den­ing. How­ev­er, we shouldn’t
ignore the cause of the allot­ment short­age – B&NES! The coun­cil are
con­ve­nient­ly for­get­ting their legal oblig­a­tion to pro­vide every­one who
wants one with a shiny new allot­ment. To under­stand why, we need to
trav­el back to 1908, and plunge into the text of the Small­hold­ings and
Allot­ments Act. This leg­is­la­tion, still in force, oblig­es local
author­i­ties to pro­vide suf­fi­cient allot­ments to meet local demand. This
means, in the words of Geoff Stokes of the Nation­al Soci­ety of
Allot­ment and Leisure Gar­den­ers, “exact­ly what it says, coun­cils have a
legal duty to pro­vide a suf­fi­cient num­ber of plots to meet local
demand, and you should not have to wait more than a rea­son­able amount
of time for one.” The act was intro­duced as a response to the
increas­ing urban­iza­tion of the rur­al work­ing class, and as the threat
to green space has con­tin­ued to rise, so has our need for, and right
to, allot­ment space.

If you are wait­ing, or if you sim­ply can’t find a plot, you can use the
law to your advan­tage. All you need is for six peo­ple who are
reg­is­tered on the elec­toral roll to get togeth­er and put a well-argued
case to the coun­cil: explain that the demand for allot­ments is not
being met and that it’s their legal duty to meet it. Legal­ly, they will
have to respond, prefer­ably by pro­vid­ing more allot­ments. If this
fails, accord­ing to Geoff Stokes, you would be with­in your rights to
take your coun­cil to a judi­cial review. So there you have it – why not
con­tact Bath Organ­ic Group to try and share a gar­den, but if that
fails, don’t let the coun­cil off the hook – get togeth­er with some
mates and demand a slice of the green pie!

Bath Activist Net­work 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, email
bathac­tivist­net [at] yahoo.co.uk, or see our web­site:
http://www.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com

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

Nature Doesn’t Do Bailouts

As report­ed last month, the Camp for Cli­mate Action shut down the
Euro­pean Car­bon Exchange in Lon­don for a day. So what is car­bon trad­ing
and why did they do it?

It is claimed that car­bon trad­ing cuts emis­sions by lim­it­ing the amount
of car­bon that is allowed to be emit­ted, and divid­ing this amount up
among coun­tries and cor­po­ra­tions. They are giv­en ‘car­bon cred­its’ that
basi­cal­ly give them a license to pol­lute. Cred­its can be sold by
pol­luters who have emit­ted less than their quo­ta, or earned through
projects that claim to save car­bon. But there are sev­er­al major
prob­lems with this. Car­bon trad­ing is based on the free mar­ket ide­ol­o­gy
of con­tin­u­al eco­nom­ic growth, intend­ed to make sus­tain­abil­i­ty
prof­itable. Yet it’s doomed to fail, because it trusts the exact same
mar­ket forces that have caused envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion in the first
place. Because car­bon is so cheap, it’s cheap­er to buy these abstract
cred­its than actu­al­ly invest­ing in renew­ables or effi­cient tech­nol­o­gy.

The most pol­lut­ing com­pa­nies have a huge influ­ence over gov­ern­ment and
are giv­en allowances free of charge. BP and Shell have made huge
prof­its by sell­ing these car­bon cred­its, while the NHS had to pay tens
of thou­sands for theirs. In 2005, the total num­ber of cred­its giv­en out
by the EU insane­ly went beyond the over­all emis­sions lim­it by 10%. It
is almost impos­si­ble to prop­er­ly cal­cu­late or mon­i­tor these emis­sions;
some com­pa­nies apply for cred­its for emis­sions-reduc­ing projects that
would have gone ahead any­way, while oth­ers exag­ger­ate their sav­ings.
Cred­its are also often earned through projects that aren’t real­ly green
– such as agro­fu­el plan­ta­tions or tree-plant­i­ng “emis­sions off­set”
projects. And some gov­ern­ments in the glob­al south delib­er­ate­ly impose
poor envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions so that the stan­dard for projects to be
judged against is very low, so that more mon­ey can be earned. South
Africa’s Depart­ment of Mines and Ener­gy has admit­ted that com­pa­nies
lob­bied them to low­er renew­able ener­gy tar­gets, for exam­ple. Oth­er
projects, such as agro­fu­els, have been asso­ci­at­ed with human rights
abus­es, often tak­ing place on stolen com­mu­nal land. By con­trast,
small-scale local projects cre­at­ed by peo­ple who real­ly need the mon­ey
gen­er­al­ly don’t attract cred­its as they’re con­sid­ered not to be worth
the paper­work.

Car­bon trad­ing is a farce allow­ing com­pa­nies to car­ry on pol­lut­ing as
usu­al, while mak­ing a tidy prof­it. The IPCC pre­dicts that, in order to
stop the most dev­as­tat­ing effects of cli­mate change, car­bon emis­sions
must reach their peak by 2015 – that’s only 6 years! We don’t have time
for dis­trac­tion tech­niques that main­tain our reliance on fos­sil fuels
and divert resources away from real solu­tions.

http://www.corporatewatch.org
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk
http://climatecampcymru.org

Liv­ing With Ill Eagles

After last month’s hol­i­day, the Porter Cellar’s ‘Bub­bling Under’ film
series is back on this month on Sun­day the 17th May, from 1pm-4pm. The
lat­est offer­ing will be a film about undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants and the
prob­lems they face. Rais­ing impor­tant ques­tions about the rights of
indi­vid­u­als to seek a bet­ter life free of pover­ty, uncer­tain­ty and war,
this film will be pre­sent­ed by Bris­tol No Bor­ders: now with added guest
speak­er! Be there, or be a tool (of the state).

http://www.noborders.org.uk

Lost The Plot?

A new vol­un­teer-run land project has been set up in Bathamp­ton, and is
open­ing its gates to all-com­ers every Thurs­day, from 10am til dusk, for
their week­ly work­day. Things are still in their infan­cy at the moment,
but veg is already in the ground, and orchard restora­tion and for­est
gar­den­ing is planned, per­ma­cul­ture stylee. If you want to get your
hands dirty with the Lost Plot crew, then text Rory on 07506 214172 for
more info and direc­tions.

Calais On Camp­ing

The Calais No Bor­der camp, run­ning from the 23rd to the 29th June, is
an excit­ing joint ven­ture between French activists and the UK No
Bor­ders Net­work. It aims to high­light the real­i­ties of the sit­u­a­tion in
Calais and North­ern France; to build links with the migrant
com­mu­ni­ties, and also between migrants sup­port groups; and last­ly, but
not least, to chal­lenge the author­i­ties on the ground, to protest
against the increased repres­sion of migrants. For cen­turies, Euro­pean
impe­r­i­al pow­ers have exploit­ed the land, resources and peo­ple of the
major­i­ty world to become wealthy and pow­er­ful, leav­ing war,
envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion and mas­sive inequal­i­ty in their wake. Those
who attempt the jour­ney to the UK are chal­leng­ing this injus­tice by
their move­ment.

But at the end of this jour­ney they face anoth­er human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis –
increas­ing­ly repres­sive immi­gra­tion poli­cies. This makes the Calais
bor­der an impor­tant focal point in the strug­gle for free move­ment. But
this camp is not just about Calais: we are call­ing for the free­dom of
move­ment for all, not just the priv­i­leged few, and an end to bor­ders
and all migra­tion con­trols. We need to build a rad­i­cal transna­tion­al
move­ment to chal­lenge these racist poli­cies that divide us into
cit­i­zens and non-cit­i­zens, into the doc­u­ment­ed and the undoc­u­ment­ed.
This will be a place to strength­en this move­ment, and we need your help
to make it hap­pen. We call on all who want to show sol­i­dar­i­ty to join
us in Calais. If you want to get involved in help­ing to organ­ise the
camp, sup­port us with fundrais­ing and pub­lic­i­ty, host an event on
Calais and No Bor­ders or offer prac­ti­cal sup­port, please get in touch:
calais@riseup.net. No one is ille­gal! Free­dom of Move­ment for all!

http://www.london.noborders.org.uk/calais2009
http://www.noborders.org.uk
http://www.calaisnoborder.eu.org

FIT­ted Up

One of the less pleas­ant devel­op­ments in polit­i­cal polic­ing in recent years has been the cre­ation and wide­spread deploy­ment of For­ward Intel­li­gence Teams, known gen­er­al­ly as FIT. Recruit­ed as civil­ians in order to avoid hav­ing to give them ID num­bers, the FIT can be seen at every major protest in the coun­try, heft­ing sev­er­al grand’s worth of high-end cam­eras and flanked by a pair of angry-look­ing bruis­ers. Their alleged pur­pose is sur­veil­lance and evi­dence-gath­er­ing; they are there to pho­to and film any law­break­ing for lat­er sub­mis­sion in court, or to track down the per­pe­tra­tors. But their activ­i­ties are far more sin­is­ter. They try to gath­er facial images of as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble, and store these on a data­base indef­i­nite­ly; they also take note who speaks to who. Poten­tial­ly, this would cre­ate a vast data­base allow­ing the cops to track every­one involved in pol­i­tics in the UK. In real­i­ty, the vast amount of data col­lect­ed – the pho­tog­ra­phers claim to be paid per pic­ture – makes this data­base unlike­ly to be of use, and in any case, FIT tend to be far away when things do kick off. The sur­veil­lance is aimed pri­mar­i­ly at intim­i­dat­ing the aver­age demon­stra­tor, in clear vio­la­tion of the right of assem­bly and protest.

Occa­sion­al­ly, the FIT are used against pro­test­ers iden­ti­fied by oth­er police. How­ev­er, it is unknown how use­ful sev­er­al dozen facial shots are for the sub­se­quent actions of the police, which include fol­low­ing alleged organ­is­ers around demos mak­ing threat­en­ing com­ments about their moth­ers, and forc­ing their way into activists’ homes in the mid­dle of the night to con­duct ran­dom search­es.

And now, to the dis­claimer: As any­one is free to con­tribute, 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…

For fur­ther info on any of our sto­ries see www.thebathbomb.blogspot.com