Author: earthfirst

Plane Stupid turns Southampton Airport into climate refugee camp

17th Jan­u­ary: A group of activists from local anti-avi­a­tion group Plane Stu­pid Southamp­ton have just chained them­selves to the entrance of Southamp­ton air­port and erect­ed tents at the main entrance in a bid turn the region­al air­port into a cli­mate refugee camp.

Southampton airport climate refugee camp17th Jan­u­ary: A group of activists from local anti-avi­a­tion group Plane Stu­pid Southamp­ton have just chained them­selves to the entrance of Southamp­ton air­port and erect­ed tents at the main entrance in a bid turn the region­al air­port into a cli­mate refugee camp. In addi­tion to set­ting up camp today, activists have for­mal­ly sub­mit­ted a plan­ning appli­ca­tion with East­leigh Bor­ough Coun­cil to turn the air­port into refugee hous­ing.

The planned expan­sion of Southamp­ton air­port, along with 34 oth­er region­al air­ports in the UK, will do enough dam­age to the cli­mate to force an esti­mat­ed 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple in impov­er­ished parts of the world to flee rais­ing sea lev­els, flood­ing, drought and famine.

Increased fly­ing is one of the main cul­prits of cli­mate change. While the gov­ern­ment has com­mit­ted the UK to reduc­ing CO2 emis­sions by 80% by 2050, the expand­ing avi­a­tion indus­try alone would destroy any hope of hit­ting this tar­get. BAA hopes to increase pas­sen­ger traf­fic for Southamp­ton Air­port form 1.5 mil­lion pas­sen­gers a year to 3 mil­lion by 2015.

In order to get fly­ing under con­trol, the gov­ern­ment needs to halt all air­port expan­sion, and encour­age peo­ple to take the train. Train jour­neys are ten times less dam­ag­ing to the cli­mate, and Southamp­ton has excel­lent rail links to the rest of the UK, mak­ing fly­ing unnec­es­sary.

“Peo­ple in the UK fly more per capi­ta than any­one else, so the UK avi­a­tion indus­try has the great­est respon­si­bil­i­ty for the con­se­quences of cli­mate change. It makes per­fect sense for Southamp­ton to take on the bur­den of hous­ing some of the world’s cli­mate refugees”, said Pete Bark­er of Plane Stu­pid. “It’s crazy to imag­ine that we can tack­le the seri­ous threat posed by run­away cli­mate change whilst still allow­ing air­ports to expand.”

info@planestupid.com
http://www.planestupid.com

Photographers turn out in solidarity against new “terror law”.

Repost­ed: 16.02.2009: every­one knows Indy­medi­a’s a cop­per’s favourite read, but after a cou­ple of hun­dred snap­pers turned up out­side the yard this morn­ing they’ll be queu­ing up today to see whose mug’s on the wire.

Photographing gun copsRepost­ed: 16.02.2009: every­one knows Indy­medi­a’s a cop­per’s favourite read, but after a cou­ple of hun­dred snap­pers turned up out­side the yard this morn­ing they’ll be queu­ing up today to see whose mug’s on the wire.

Because snuck in today under the usu­al cov­er of the war against ter­ror came Sec­tion 76 of the Counter-Ter­ror­ism Act 2008.

This crim­i­nalis­es any­one ‘elic­it­ing, pub­lish­ing or com­mu­ni­cat­ing infor­ma­tion on mem­bers of the armed forces, intel­li­gence ser­vices and police offi­cers which is “like­ly to be use­ful to a per­son com­mit­ting or prepar­ing an act of ter­ror­ism”.

But giv­en the police’s reg­u­lar and bla­tant mis­use of oth­er laws such as Sec­tion 44 of the exist­ing Ter­ror­ism Act and Sec­tion 1 of PACE, pho­tog­ra­phers feel it’s a rac­ing cer­tain­ty that it’ll get used to sup­press evi­dence the police don’t want used against them.

“I can see it now”, wrote pho­tog­ra­ph­er Marc Vallee in Thurs­day’s Guardian ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/11/police-terrorism-photography-liberty-central) “If you don’t stop tak­ing pic­tures of me hit­ting this pro­test­er on the head, I’m going to nick you under sec­tion 76 of the Counter-Ter­ror­ism Act 2008.”

At least three legal cas­es are cur­rent­ly pend­ing relat­ing to such police over-exu­ber­ance at last year’s Cli­mate Camp in Kingsnorth, Kent. Almost two thou­sand cops from 26 forces assem­bled at a cost of over 6 mil­lion quid and — hav­ing first harassed and delayed the press — chose to lay in on a reg­u­lar basis on campers with steel batons.

Sad­ly for them these attacks were nev­er­the­less filmed and pho­tographed and this evi­dence stands ready to dis­prove the lies they make in jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for that behav­iour. Imag­ine how much eas­i­er life will be for them in future if those news­gath­er­ers can be tak­en away from the scene under threat of a ten year stretch.

High up behind the mir­rored win­dows of New Scot­land Yard the For­ward Intel­li­gence Team will have been at work pho­tograph­ing the pho­tog­ra­phers for their records.

And they’ll have noticed some­thing new — as well as the usu­al twen­ty or so pho­tog­ra­phers they always tar­get for “report­ing the news the wrong way” there were a cou­ple of hun­dred new faces: work­ing news pho­tog­ra­phers who’ve had it up to the back teeth with being pushed around ille­gal­ly on threat (and some­times the real­i­ty) of arrest.

It’s no longer just an activist minor­i­ty that sees through this sham of repres­sion pre­sent­ed almost as a health and safe­ty issue (keep­ing us safe from the bad men). Polit­i­cal police intru­sion is becom­ing ever more inva­sive, is affect­ing all our lives and fuck­ing up the free­doms we’re sup­posed to believe are (were?) our right.

This new law is just one more sub­tle tool in the armoury of pub­lic repres­sion and this extra­or­di­nary turnout by what is nor­mal­ly an apa­thet­ic and polit­i­cal­ly care­less bunch of pho­tog­ra­phers sends a clear sig­nal that the worm is final­ly turn­ing.

Thousands of mink freed from cages in Italy

Local news­pa­pers report that late on Feb­ru­ary 9 as many as 3000 mink were freed from cages at the Ita­lo Rossi fur farm in Fos­soli (Mod­e­na). Light­ing and alarm sys­tems were dis­abled dur­ing the raid, and “ALF” and “Close down this con­cen­tra­tion camp” was paint­ed at the prop­er­ty.

http://www.directaction.info/news_feb15_09.htm

Local news­pa­pers report that late on Feb­ru­ary 9 as many as 3000 mink were freed from cages at the Ita­lo Rossi fur farm in Fos­soli (Mod­e­na). Light­ing and alarm sys­tems were dis­abled dur­ing the raid, and “ALF” and “Close down this con­cen­tra­tion camp” was paint­ed at the prop­er­ty.

http://www.directaction.info/news_feb15_09.htm

Insurgents blockade highway with flaming barricade in Mexico

“We have blocked a major high­way in Mex­i­co State with a bar­ri­cade made by the Lud­dites Against Domes­ti­ca­tion of Wild Nature. The fire lit up the dark night of peace and tran­quil­i­ty for those peo­ple who car­ry in large trucks ‘raw mate­ri­als’ extract­ed direct­ly from the earth. The chaos was again before the eyes of the police who arrived on the scene to put out the incen­di­ary fies­ta.

“We have blocked a major high­way in Mex­i­co State with a bar­ri­cade made by the Lud­dites Against Domes­ti­ca­tion of Wild Nature. The fire lit up the dark night of peace and tran­quil­i­ty for those peo­ple who car­ry in large trucks ‘raw mate­ri­als’ extract­ed direct­ly from the earth. The chaos was again before the eyes of the police who arrived on the scene to put out the incen­di­ary fies­ta.

We break their pre­cious social order with our wild, insur­gent and rad­i­cal meth­ods of strug­gle.”

anony­mous report — http://directaction.info

Demonstrators target Graff Diamonds in Solidarity with Kahlahari Bushmen (11.2.09)

Survival’s cam­paign tar­get­ing Graff Dia­monds over its involve­ment in a dia­mond mine planned on the land of Kala­hari Bush­men in Botswana has stepped up a gear.

Bushmen Demo- London 11.2.09Survival’s cam­paign tar­get­ing Graff Dia­monds over its involve­ment in a dia­mond mine planned on the land of Kala­hari Bush­men in Botswana has stepped up a gear. Thir­ty pro­test­ers gath­ered on the 11.2.09 out­side Graff’s flag­ship Lon­don store hold­ing plac­ards say­ing ‘Boy­cott Graff’ and ‘Botswana dia­monds: Bush­men despair’.

The store is based in the fash­ion epi­cen­tre of Lon­don sur­round­ed by shops from Yves San Lau­ren, Chanel etc. The dia­mond indus­tries main prod­uct is high image and thus has shown itself to be some­times more sus­cep­ti­ble to pres­sure than oth­er resource sec­tors such as min­ing and oil. Pre­vi­ous pick­ets by Sur­vival Inter­na­tion­al and pub­lic sham­ing of fash­ion hous­es and top mod­els result­ed in De Beers pulling out of the planned dia­mond min­ing in the Kala­hari.

There are 100,000 Bush­men in Botswana, Namib­ia, South Africa and Ango­la. They are the indige­nous peo­ple of south­ern Africa, and have lived there for tens of thou­sands of years.

In the mid­dle of Botswana lies the Cen­tral Kala­hari Game Reserve, a reserve cre­at­ed both to pro­tect the tra­di­tion­al ter­ri­to­ry of the 5,000 Gana, Gwi and Tsi­la Bush­men (and their neigh­bours the Bak­gala­ga­di), and the wildlife and ecosys­tem of which are a part.

In the ear­ly 1980s, dia­monds were dis­cov­ered in the reserve. Soon after, gov­ern­ment min­is­ters went into the reserve to tell the Bush­men liv­ing there that they would have to leave because of the dia­mond finds.

In three big clear­ances, in 1997, 2002 and 2005, vir­tu­al­ly all the Bush­men were forced out. Their homes were dis­man­tled, their school and health post were closed, their water sup­ply was destroyed and the peo­ple were threat­ened and trucked away.

They now live in reset­tle­ment camps out­side the reserve. Rarely able to hunt, and arrest­ed and beat­en when they do, they are depen­dent on gov­ern­ment hand­outs. They are now gripped by alco­holism, bore­dom, depres­sion, and ill­ness­es such as TB and HIV/AIDS.

Unless they can return to their ances­tral lands, their unique soci­eties and way of life will be destroyed, and many of them will die.

Although the Bush­men won the right in court to go back to their lands in 2006, the gov­ern­ment has done every­thing it can to make their return impos­si­ble. It has:

Banned them from using their water bore­hole,
Refused to issue a sin­gle per­mit to hunt on their land (despite Botswana’s High Court rul­ing in Decem­ber that its refusal to issue per­mits was unlaw­ful),
Arrest­ed more than 50 Bush­men for hunt­ing to feed their fam­i­lies,
Banned them from tak­ing their small herds of goats back to the reserve.

Its pol­i­cy is clear­ly to intim­i­date and fright­en the Bush­men into stay­ing in the reset­tle­ment camps, and mak­ing the lives of those who have gone back to their ances­tral land impos­si­ble.

More infor­ma­tion on the Kala­hari Bush­men can be found on their own web­site : www.iwant2gohome.org or the web­site of Sur­vival Inter­na­tion­al (which is updat­ed more often): www.survival-international.org/tribes/bushmen

Plane Stupid activists accuse Ed Milliband of plane hypocracy

12th Febu­rary 2008

Miliband interrupted12th Febu­rary 2008
Plane Stu­pid Brighton Activists have inter­rupt­ed a pub­lic meet­ing dur­ing a speech by Ed Miliband MP, Sec­re­tary of State for Ener­gy and Cli­mate Change, unveil­ing a ban­ner high­light­ing the hyp­o­crit­i­cal actions of the gov­ern­ment in rela­tion to avi­a­tion and cli­mate change. The action expos­es the con­tra­dic­tion between the gov­ern­men­t’s stat­ed aim to cut 80% of CO2 emis­sions by 2050 and their plans to mas­sive­ly expand the avi­a­tion sec­tor in the UK. The ban­ner accus­es the gov­ern­ment of becom­ing a “Hypoc­ra­cy” — a democ­ra­cy gov­erned by hyp­ocrites.

The Plane Stu­pid activists dressed in t‑shirts read­ing ‘Ed’s Pop­u­lar Mobi­liza­tion Team’ refer­ring to Miliband’s call late last year for ‘Pop­u­lar Mobi­liza­tion’ on the issue of Cli­mate Change[2]. Fly­ers list­ing the 34 air­ports planned for expan­sion with­in the UK[1] were hand­ed out to the audi­ence, demon­strat­ing the appar­ent lack of gov­ern­ment resolve for tack­ling the envi­ron­men­tal issues that are cru­cial for safe-guard­ing our future. Demon­strat­ing their dis­ap­proval of the gov­ern­ments un-demo­c­ra­t­ic pan­der­ing to cor­po­rate inter­ests, the audi­ence made paper aero­planes, which took flight in the direc­tion of Ed Miliband.

“It is all very well for Ed Miliband to request the pub­lic to take action but it is time for the gov­ern­ment to pro­vide real lead­er­ship in tack­ling cli­mate change.” Said Lar­ry from Plane Stu­pid, “pass­ing the buck is not an option if we are to avoid the chaos and loss of life Cli­mate Change is pre­dict­ed to bring.” The activists feel that their actions demon­strate their will­ing­ness to take respon­si­bil­i­ty in mobil­is­ing around the issue of Cli­mate Change, and expect the gov­ern­ment to sim­i­lar­ly accom­pa­ny their rhetoric with strong action.

“The gov­ern­men­t’s far­ci­cal plans for air­port expan­sion are incom­pat­i­ble with meet­ing the required tar­gets for pre­vent­ing run­away cli­mate change. We are engag­ing with the demo­c­ra­t­ic process in every way we know how, but at the same time the gov­ern­ment has hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly sup­port­ed con­tin­ued air­port expan­sion.” Said Clare, one of the activists Brighton Plane Stu­pid.

Last year Ed Miliband cham­pi­oned the Cli­mate Change Bill, yet in Jan­u­ary he under­mined this by sup­port­ing a Third Run­way at Heathrow. The actions of Plane Stu­pid at this meet­ing high­light the incom­pat­i­bil­i­ty of these two posi­tions, and chal­lenge not only Ed Miliband but the Labour gov­ern­ment in gen­er­al to be held account­able for their com­mit­ments. Their actions sim­i­lar­ly chal­lenge Nan­cy Platt, Labour Par­ty can­di­date, who will poten­tial­ly per­pet­u­ate this style of gov­ern­ment which is so full of promis­es, and yet so devoid of con­vic­tion. The demo­c­ra­t­ic struc­tures in place have been wor­ry­ing­ly bypassed not only dur­ing the gov­ern­men­t’s deci­sion on Heathrow, but also on Stanst­ed’s sec­ond run­way; where BAA has had more say than both local coun­cils and respect­ed sci­en­tif­ic orga­ni­za­tions, who oppose the planned expan­sions. There is a con­cern that these rigged con­sul­ta­tion pro­ce­dures may become com­mon­place, and this is what the activists do not want.

Brighton Plane Stu­pid activist Lucy stat­ed “Any­one with as much access to sci­ence as Ed Miliband knows that the avi­a­tion indus­try can­not con­tin­ue to expand. Miliband and a host of oth­er MP’s have failed us on Heathrow, prov­ing their words to be as reli­able as quick­sand, the glob­al envi­ron­men­tal sit­u­a­tion does not allow us enough time to see this track record of deceit and hypocrisy grow”.

Mr Mil­liband was inter­rupt­ed but not obstruct­ed from mak­ing his speech in sup­port of the Labour Par­ty can­di­date Nan­cy Platt at the Brighthelm Cen­tre in Brighton.

Ends

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[1] Tak­en from the Gov­ern­men­t’s White Paper ‘The Future of Air Trans­port’ Decen­m­ber 2003
http://www.dft.gov.uk/about/strategy/whitepapers/air/utureofairtransportwhite5694.pdf
Accessed Feb 1 2009

[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/labour/3681149/Ed-Miliband-urges-popular-mobilisation-to-tackle-climate-change.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/08/ed-miliband-climate-politics-environment
Accessed Feb 1 2009

Philippines: with 5 Members Missing, the Mamanwa Hold Strong

Feb­ru­ary 12, 2009
At least 400 mem­bers of the Maman­wa tribe in Suri­gao del Sur, north­west­ern Min­danao, are in their sec­ond week of a block­ade against four min­ing com­pa­nies: Tagan­i­to Min­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (TMC), Ori­en­tal Syn­er­gy Min­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (OSMC), Case Min­ing Com­pa­ny (CMC) and Plat­inum Group Min­ing Com­pa­ny (PGMC).

Feb­ru­ary 12, 2009
At least 400 mem­bers of the Maman­wa tribe in Suri­gao del Sur, north­west­ern Min­danao, are in their sec­ond week of a block­ade against four min­ing com­pa­nies: Tagan­i­to Min­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (TMC), Ori­en­tal Syn­er­gy Min­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (OSMC), Case Min­ing Com­pa­ny (CMC) and Plat­inum Group Min­ing Com­pa­ny (PGMC).

The Maman­wa pre­vi­ous­ly sent notices of ter­mi­na­tion to the com­pa­nies, inform­ing them that they will longer be per­mit­ted to mine their ances­tral ter­ri­to­ries because the com­pa­nies have nev­er paid them any roy­al­ty fees.

Under the Indige­nous Peo­ples Rights Act (IPRA), Indige­nous Peo­ple in the Philip­pines are enti­tled to “a roy­al­ty pay­ment… which shall not be less than 1% of the Gross Out­put of the min­ing oper­a­tions in the area.”

Only recent­ly has the Maman­wa learned of this.

In a state­ment dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 4, day sev­en of the bar­ri­cade, Datu Joel Buk­las from the Tagan­i­to Maman­wa Asso­ci­a­tion, notes that TMC has been oper­at­ing in the region since the 1960s, and recent­ly “got a new con­tract to oper­ate for anoth­er 25 years in the red moun­tain of Suri­gao del Sur.”

“The mov­ing truck loads of nick­el ore is a reg­u­lar scene for motorist pass­ing along the Claver high­way.”

“Lit­er­al­ly, the red moun­tain of Claver is mov­ing inch by inch every day. Sum­it­o­mo Met­al Min­ing Com­pa­ny togeth­er with TMC planned to start this year the con­struc­tion of a 30,000 ton-a-year smelt­ing plant which would start its oper­a­tion by 2012.” Mean­while, Sum­it­o­mo is “deter­mined to start the con­struc­tion this year of the one-bil­lion dol­lar project.”

“This is our land even before these min­ing com­pa­nies came, we were already here, we were forcibly oust­ed from these lands against our will and we hope con­cerned gov­ern­ment agen­cies whom we have been ask­ing for years will wake up.”

“Today, 4 Feb­ru­ary 2009, is our sev­enth day of human bar­ri­cade along the high­way of Tagan­i­to, Claver, Suri­gao del Norte to demand before the Nation­al Com­mis­sion on Indige­nous Peo­ples (NCIP) on our share agreed for allow­ing the min­ing com­pa­nies to ruin our lives and our ances­tral domain.”
SURFACE THE MAMANWA FIVE

With the block­ade still stand­ing, the Maman­wa report that five of their car­pen­ters, who helped put the block­ade togeth­er, have been miss­ing since they left the site to har­vest food for the pro­test­ers on Jan­u­ary 29.

Nobody knows what hap­pened to them, how­ev­er the Maman­wa point out that in Decem­ber they informed the Philip­pine Nation­al Police, the local gov­ern­ment and the NCIP that a block­ade was in the works – “after repeat­ed attempts of send­ing out notices of ter­mi­na­tion of min­ing oper­a­tions as well as demands for just com­pen­sa­tion proved futile,” says a Feb­ru­ary 12 state­ment from the Legal Rights and Nat­ur­al Resources Cen­ter – Kasama sa Kalikasan/­FOE- Philip­pines (LRC-KsK).

The LRC-KsK is call­ing upon the Arroyo gov­ern­ment “to exert all its efforts in locat­ing the five IP pro­test­ers and put to jus­tice who­ev­er caused their dis­ap­pear­ance,” and that “the Arroyo gov­ern­ment do away with its obses­sion for min­ing gen­er­at­ed rev­enues in the face of over­whelm­ing rejec­tion of IP com­mu­ni­ties who have long borne the brunt of the destruc­tion, dis­place­ment, dis­crim­i­na­tion and dis­em­pow­er­ment that min­ing oper­a­tions bring with it.”

They also request that peo­ple take a moment to Call on the gov­ern­ment:

* To sur­face the five miss­ing Maman­was;
* To respect and pro­tect the bar­ri­cade of the Mamanwt;
* To scrap the Philip­pine Min­ing Act of 1995; and
* To make sure that min­ing com­pa­nies in Maman­wa ances­tral domain respect indige­nous peo­ples rights, give just com­pen­sa­tion to the Maman­wa com­mu­ni­ty and stop all min­ing oper­a­tion.

You can send your appeals to:

The Chief of Police
Chief Direc­tor Gen­er­al Jesus Ver­zosa
Philip­pine Nation­al Police
Email: pio@pnp.gov

The Chief of Staff (Armed Forces)
Gen. Alexan­der B. Yano
Chief of Staff, Armed Forces of the Philip­pines
Email: via web­site: http://www.afp.mil.ph/ghq/csafp/index.htm (fol­low link on left-hand side to guest­book)

The Sec­re­tary of the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­ment and Nat­ur­al Resources
Jose “Lito” L. Atien­za, Jr
Email: web@denr.gov
Email add: osec@denr.gov

The Mines and Gosciences Bureau Region­al Direc­tor – Region 13
ALILO C. ENSOMO, JR.
e‑mail: mgbrxiii@philcom. ph

With copies to:

The Chair­per­son of the Philip­pines Com­mis­sion on Human Rights
Email: drpvq@chr.gov, atty_delima@yahoo.com

The Chair­per­son of the Nation­al Com­mis­sion on Indige­nous Peo­ples
Atty. Euge­nio A. Insigne
Email: resource@ncip. gov.ph

“Car-lofts” attacked, porsche, bmw & upperclass cars torched, Germany

07/02/09: Attempt­ed arson on cars
01/02/09: „Car-Lofts“ attacked with stones and col­or
31/01/09: Again two arsons against upper­class cars
30/01/09: Porsche torched
28/01/09: BMW burned

Direct Action: 27th Jan-7th FebDirect Action: 27th Jan-7th Feb07/02/09: Attempt­ed arson on cars
01/02/09: „Car-Lofts“ attacked with stones and col­or
31/01/09: Again two arsons against upper­class cars
30/01/09: Porsche torched
28/01/09: BMW burned
27/01/09: Again a car burned in Berlin: state secu­ri­ty inves­ti­gates

Attempt­ed arson on cars

Berlin, 7 of Feb­ru­ary 2009
Unknown per­sons tried again to burn sev­er­al cars in Kreuzberg.
The fire device, placed under a car in the Sebas­tianstraße, could be stopped by pass­er-byers, declared the police.
One found three device more under three oth­er cars which did not burn.

Source: Mor­gen­post

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„Car-Lofts“ attacked with stones and col­or

Berlin, 1 of Feb­ru­ary 2009
Unknown authors demol­ished the win­dows of a build­ing in Kreuzberg.
After the first inves­ti­ga­tions, one attack must have hap­pened already in the night to Sat­ur­day, with bot­tles full of col­or.
Since a polit­i­cal moti­va­tion can not be exclud­ed, state secu­ri­ty inves­ti­gates.

Source: Polizei Tick­er

note for eng­lish-speak­ing read­er: the build­ing is the noto­ri­ous „car-lofts“, a yup­pie project build­ed in Kreuzberg, vic­tim of sev­er­al mil­i­tant attacks since its begin­ning.

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Again two arsons against upper­class cars

Berlin, 31 of Jan­u­ary 2009

Arson­ists under­took again two arsons on upper­class cars in Friedrichshain and Pren­zlauer­berg.
Police­men could pre­vent high­er dam­ages on a BMW, by extin­guish­ing the fire with antifire pow­der they had with them.
A Mer­cedes CLK got instead com­plete­ly dam­aged.
Already 26 cars have been burned fol­low­ing 18 arsons attacks under­tak­en by unknown per­sons.

Source: Mor­gen­post

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Porsche torched

Berlin, 30 of Jan­u­ary 2009

On fri­day morn­ing peo­ple torched anoth­er cars, prob­a­bly out of polit­i­cal rea­sons.
This was a Porsche Cayenne parked in the Choriner­straße cor­ner Zehdenick­er­straße, Mitte.
Pass­er-byers noticed the flames and alarmed the fire brigade.
The car got com­plet­ly dam­aged, state secu­ri­ty inves­ti­gates.

Source: Mor­gen­post

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BMW burned

Berlin, 28 of Jan­u­ary 2009

A car got burned today ear­ly in the morn­ing in Mitte.
Inhab­i­tants noticed a „BMW“ going on fire in the Fehrber­lin­er­straße around 3.30am and called the fire brigade.
A car parked next to it got also dam­aged.
Since a polit­i­cal moti­va­tion is not exclud­ed, state secu­ri­ty inves­ti­gates.

Source: Polizei Pressemel­dung

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Again a car burned in Berlin: state secu­ri­ty inves­ti­gates

Berlin, 27 of Jan­u­ary 2009

In Berlin anoth­er car got set on fire, prob­a­bly out of polit­i­cal rea­sons.
An inhab­i­tant dis­cov­ered the fire in the Net­zes­traße, Neukölln, in the ear­ly hours of tues­day and called the fire brigade, as the police reports.
It is already the num­ber 22 car burned in Berlin this year.

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direct action news from greece
http://directactionde.blogspot.com

spike social centre eviction in progress — London

12.2.2009 9am
the spike sur­plus scheme of 39b con­sort road, peck­ham, Lon­don is being eve­ict­ed as we speak. bailiffs, cops, pcsos and “com­mu­ni­ty war­dens” are on site.

12.2.2009 9am
the spike sur­plus scheme of 39b con­sort road, peck­ham, Lon­don is being eve­ict­ed as we speak. bailiffs, cops, pcsos and “com­mu­ni­ty war­dens” are on site.

after a ten year project in the build­ing which has been in com­mu­ni­ty use for 150 years, the prop­er­ty divi­sion of sout­wark coun­cil have decid­ed to end the project. though they promised to give notice to clear the projects equip­ment before evic­tion, south­wark coun­cil gave instruc­tions to get a spe­cial court order so as not to give any notice at all.

Jere­my pil­grim of the south­wark coun­cil lead the police oper­a­tion, vis­it­ing the project for the first time this morn­ing after many pre­vi­ous invites to vis­it the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre.

peo­ple have been told to liase with bailiffs in order to col­lect the thou­sands of pounds worth of equip­ment still there.

www.spikesurplus.org

www.myspace.com/spikesurplus

Manchester students occupy roof of Royal Bank of Scotland

Around 35 stu­dents held a cli­mate change ‘Evic­tion Demon­stra­tion’ out­side (and on top of) a Roy­al Bank of Scot­land branch at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter Stu­dents Union on Wednes­day 11th Feb­ru­ary 2009.

Evict RBS flyerEvict RBS rooftop demoAround 35 stu­dents held a cli­mate change ‘Evic­tion Demon­stra­tion’ out­side (and on top of) a Roy­al Bank of Scot­land branch at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter Stu­dents Union on Wednes­day 11th Feb­ru­ary 2009. The group from Peo­ple and Plan­et have sub­mit­ted a motion to the Union Gen­er­al Meet­ing propos­ing that the Union does not renew the lease for RBS’ branch when it expires in Jan­u­ary 2010.

The demo began on the steps of the Stu­dent Union at noon. RBS had hired in extra secu­ri­ty, and the cam­pus cops were sniff­ing around. So a group went to the front of the RBS and talked loud­ly of their plans for ‘rapid infor­ma­tion dessim­i­na­tion’.

Whilst this dis­trac­tion ensued, tieing up secu­ri­ty, a sec­ond group snuck round the back and climbed aboard the roof. From here they dropped ban­ners adver­tis­ing RBS’ fos­sil fuel invest­ments and adver­tis­ing the Union gen­er­al meet­ing the fol­low­ing week.

Mean­while the rapid infor­ma­tion dessim­i­na­tion went ahead with every­one rac­ing off to speak to as many peo­ple as they could in 20 min­utes before return­ing back to the RBS branch to com­pare scores.

The Roy­al Bank of Scot­land pro­vid­ed $16 bil­lion for coal com­pa­nies and explo­ration projects from May 2006 to April 2008. This has includ­ed some of the dirt­i­est and most dan­ger­ous oil and gas projects includ­ing the Baku-Cey­han pipeline in Tib­lisi, Geor­gia which has been crit­i­cised by Amnesty, WWF, and Friends of the Earth for its human rights and pol­lu­tion impacts. The embed­ded emis­sions from RBS loans total more than those of the whole of Scot­land.

Toby Brett, 19, Physics Stu­dent at Man­ches­ter Uni­ver­si­ty says; “We hope to send a clear mes­sage to RBS that if they con­tin­ue with their irre­spon­si­ble invest­ments then they will not be wel­come to rent branch space from our stu­dent union.”

This action was part of a wider nation­al cam­paign call­ing for a boy­cott on RBS in Sep­tem­ber 2009.

Man­ches­ter Peo­ple and Plan­et have pre­vi­ous­ly staged a flash­mob protest against RBS at a Uni­ver­si­ty recruit­ment event
(http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/21650)

And award­ed RBS a spoof green­wash award at their region­al head­quar­ters in Deans­gate.
(http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/21907)

For more detail on RBS’ cli­mate crimes please vis­it:
www.peopleandplanet.org/ditchdirtydevelopment
www.oyalbankofscotland.com