Author: earthfirst

News from the battles for free space in Copenhagen

Strug­gles around free space and squats con­tin­ue abounds in Copen­hagen, Den­mark. Not only are there still week­ly demos still for the cam­paign to have a new Youth­house (Ung­domshuset) but a new exten­sion to the famous squat­ted Chris­tia­nia has been occu­pied with great suc­cess.

Strug­gles around free space and squats con­tin­ue abounds in Copen­hagen, Den­mark. Not only are there still week­ly demos still for the cam­paign to have a new Youth­house (Ung­domshuset) but a new exten­sion to the famous squat­ted Chris­tia­nia has been occu­pied with great suc­cess. It also looks like the coun­cil has giv­en in to pres­sure from the squat­ters move­ment and agreed a new Youth House for the kids!!

69 WEEKS for UNGDOMSHUSET:
69 weeks. At least 1 demo every week. Thurs­day demo num­ber 69 was obvi­ous­ly sym­bol­ic (It was the street num­ber of the Youth­house) and the demo crew had announced it was going to last 24 hours, going through most parts of Copen­hagen with dif­fer­ent sorts of activ­i­ties planned through­out — four meals dur­ing the 24 hours, open air cin­e­ma, pirate par­ty, block­ing traf­fic, speech­es, con­certs and hap­pen­ings.
Ini­tial­ly there was some scep­tis­cism from both activists and police, but it soon became appar­ent that peo­ple were going to stick it out all 24 hours. The demo moved around Copen­hagen, stop­ping in dif­fer­ent loca­tions to give speech­es or show polit­i­cal films. At many points there were dis­agree­ments with the police fol­low­ing the demo, but the demo always got its way in the end, often stop­ping for long stretch­es in main roads block­ing traf­fic. After 21 hours — on Fri­day around 2 pm — the police had final­ly had enough of the demo act­ing autonomous­ly and con­fined the demo to a square in Vester­bro. This result­ed in a big pub­lic man­i­fes­ta­tion on the square with both bands and DJs com­ing from oth­er parts of the city to play.
After 24 hrs the demo end­ed in a count down and a big greet­ing to the activists and the city which had both been upside down for 24 hrs through sun and rain, light and dark­ness.
PICTURES: http://english.indymedia.dk/publish/show/180

A NEW YOUTH HOUSE COMES SLOWLY INTO BEING:
On Wed June 11th, the last city coun­cil meet­ing before sum­mer, the politi­cians of the coun­cil vot­ed in favor of the agree­ment on a new Ung­domshus in the build­ings of Dortheavej 61. The votes were 38 pro and 13 against. The votes were giv­en after 2 hours of dis­cus­sion. Activists has promised mil­i­tant activ­i­ty in the streets again if this meet­ing was unable to come to a deci­sion on a YES vote for a new place and an address.
The new house will be in what is now a local cul­ture cen­tre under the coun­cil. It will be in two con­nect­ed build­ings, one of which will be split in half. The cul­ture cen­tre will remain in the oth­er half of the build­ing and the city coun­cil has agreed to build a new add on to com­pen­sate for the space lost to the new Ung­domshus.
The first part of the take over (the small­er build­ing com­pris­ing 600 m²) will hap­pen on July 1st. After that the main build­ing will be avail­able for take over on Jan­u­ary 1st next year.
There has been very pos­i­tive con­tact between the left rad­i­cal scene and the lead­ers of the cul­ture cen­tre, who are wel­com­ing the new house.
PICTURE: http://english.indymedia.dk/system/photo/file/111/616161.jpg

CHRISTIANIA EXPANDING!!
The area on Ref­shalevej right next to Chris­tia­nia that was squat­ted on the 31st of May is stil grow­ing and the dif­fer­ent hous­es and con­struc­tions are tak­en shape. Nei­ther the City coun­cil or the state approves of the sit­u­a­tion but can’t fig­ure out who has the author­i­ty to act on the squat since half the road is state prop­er­ty and the oth­er half belongs to the city.
Nei­ther the City coun­cil nor the state approves of the sit­u­a­tion but can’t fig­ure out who has the author­i­ty to act on the squat since half the road is state prop­er­ty and the oth­er half belongs to the city. Appar­ent­ly ‘the con­struc­tors’ on Ref­shalevej for once are ben­e­fit­ing from the bureau­cra­cy, since noth­ing will be done to clear the street until the two admin­is­tra­tions agrees on who’s doing what,
Mean­while small hous­es are being built both on water and on the ground as well as road­blocks to slow down car traf­fic has been estab­lished. Around 28 dif­fer­ent projects are cur­rent­ly under con­struc­tion and ‘the con­struc­tors’ invit­ed more peo­ple to join in!

PICTURES OF NEW SQUATTED REFSHALEEVEJ:
http://english.indymedia.dk/publish/show/175
http://english.indymedia.dk/publish/show/178

BUT EVICTION NOTICE NOW SERVED
The new area squat­ted near Chris­tia­nia — Ref­shalevej — has been giv­en notice. The evic­tion date is not finalised but will be up soon.
For some weeks activists have been build­ing in the new­ly squat­ted ground just out­side Chris­tia­nia called Ref­shalevej. Now the builders have been giv­en notice by the city coun­cil and the state who have joint own­er­ship over the area. An evic­tion is said to be pend­ing although no date has yet been offi­cial­ly giv­en.
The activists have stat­ed that they intend to resist the evic­tion non vio­lent­ly, and that they intend to resquat the area immideaite­ly fol­low­ing the evic­tion.

COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE STRUGGLE FOR UNGDOMSHUSET
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ungdomshuset

EVICTION AND RIOTS CHRONOLOGY + PICTURES/VIDEOS
http://www.emoware.org/ungdomshuset.asp
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/03/363973.html

COMPLETE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANIA:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania

Manchester & London Critical Masses this Friday + South London

OH MY!
It’s CRITICAL MASS this Friday.…how ace is that?

Fri­day 27th June 6pm
Cen­tral Library Man­ches­ter

After­wards we’ll have a BBQ and hang out a park, so bring BBQ’s, food, music, drinks etc. (veg­an BBQs pre­ferred as then it can be acces­si­ble to every­one!)

OH MY!
It’s CRITICAL MASS this Friday.…how ace is that?

Fri­day 27th June 6pm
Cen­tral Library Man­ches­ter

Manchester Critical MassAfter­wards we’ll have a BBQ and hang out a park, so bring BBQ’s, food, music, drinks etc. (veg­an BBQs pre­ferred as then it can be acces­si­ble to every­one!)

A total­ly ace bike ride around our city to meet oth­er cyclists and ride on our roads…For a few hours once a month we can show how beau­ti­ful our city can be when bicy­cles, instead of cars, dom­i­nate the roads.

it’s such a nice and socia­ble and fun way to spend a Fri­day evening on a bicycle..wow. so ace. and now we’re get­ting big­ger and bigger..someone said they count­ed at least 150 peo­ple on the one last month, how ace is that?!!. come and be part of our love­ly friend­ly cruise around..to col­lec­tive­ly enjoy the beau­ti­ful expe­ri­ence that is rid­ing a bike.

—-

Peo­ple’s com­ments about Man­ches­ter Crit­i­cal Mass

“…it’s bril­liant. Usu­al­ly I’m charg­ing around on my bike, get­ting where i need to go as fast as i can. Crit­i­cal mass is dif­fer­ent. It’s about enjoy­ing rid­ing. It’s the most relaxed ride around the city I’ve ever had. Where all my wor­ries and fears float away. And I’ve met some love­ly peo­ple too”

“I was scared it would be some angry bike mil­i­tants but every­one is so friend­ly and the ride is fun no aggro at all. See you next month!”

“it’s quite some­thing to have that many peeps rid­ing round at once.”

“Crit­i­cal Mass some­times has a rep­u­ta­tion for being an angry rab­ble of cyclists that want to string up any car dri­vers they see. This is not true of Man­ches­ter Crit­i­cal Mass, it is a fluffy mass of peo­ple that like to have fun on bikes, there are often have chil­dren with us and a bicy­cle sound sys­tem to add to the par­ty fun atmos­phere. As well as being fun and
a social event it is also to show how great a car free city will be. This is achieved every month by show­ing motorists an alter­na­tive, yet crit­i­cal mass Man­ches­ter does­n’t aim to annoy dri­vers we want them to join us..”

“I spend all month, every month, rid­ing around behind exhaust pipes and swerv­ing out of the way from angry, dis­re­spect­ful dri­vers, I live in a world that is dying from cli­mate change..only the oth­er day it was announced the white rhi­no is extinct, it tears me up inside. Rid­ing a bike isn’t going to change all of that instant­ly but I believe that not only does it mean less cars on the roads but rid­ing a bike also gives a feel­ing of con­nec­tion with one’s sur­round­ings and oth­er peo­ple and through this we can start to act in oth­er ways that can cre­ate social change”

“Crit­i­cal Mass isn’t a place to vent the anger that comes from hav­ing to deal with cars (I don’t think), because it’s nice to, instead, spend that time enjoy­ing rid­ing my bike. Some­times it can feel so alien­at­ing rid­ing a bike sur­round­ed by so many motorists. Crit­i­cal Mass shows that we are not alone and that we are grow­ing. It’s the most fan­tas­tic piece of direct action I’ve ever done- I want there to be less cars on the roads and by
being one less car there is!!!”

(tak­en from emails we’ve received)

============

Crit­i­cal Mass in Lon­don for Marie this Fri­day

Assem­ble under Water­loo Bridge 6pm on Fri­day

The Crit­i­cal Mass in Lon­don will attempt to go all the way to Brix­ton to cel­e­brate the life of Marie, who was killed by 2 cars on her way to the demon­stra­tion against the arms trade in Brighon, see:

https://indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/london/2008/06/400604.html

Assem­ble under Water­loo Bridge 6pm on Fri­day

============

South Lon­don crit­i­cal mass?!

The first ever south Lon­don Crit­i­cal Mass is hap­pen­ing on Fri­day 4th of July, and every first Fri­day of the month there after.

It will take place @ 6.30, start­ing from Peck­ham library.

Help cam­paign for safer roads for cyclists. All oth­er human pow­ered trans­port wel­come too!
Mas­sive rolling sound sys­tem pro­vid­ed by rawkus rick­shaws.

open cast plans for the north of england — meet in Newcastle to make plans, and for the Camp for Climate Action

The 2008 camp for cli­mate action is to be held near to the pro­posed site for a new coal fired pow­er sta­tion. E‑on the com­pa­ny that wants to build the pow­er sta­tion has stat­ed that it will use a sys­tem called Car­bon Cap­ture and stor­age. C.C.S is still in an ear­ly devel­op­ment stage and has not been used on such a large scale.

The 2008 camp for cli­mate action is to be held near to the pro­posed site for a new coal fired pow­er sta­tion. E‑on the com­pa­ny that wants to build the pow­er sta­tion has stat­ed that it will use a sys­tem called Car­bon Cap­ture and stor­age. C.C.S is still in an ear­ly devel­op­ment stage and has not been used on such a large scale. The pow­er sta­tion will have to begin life with­out any c.c.s mean­ing mega-tons of unfil­tered Co2 emis­sions’ head­ing into our atmos­phere .

The cli­mate camp(www.climatecamp.org.uk) at Kingsnorth in the Med­way val­ley will high­light and take direct action against the black hole in the gov­ern­ments cli­mate change pol­i­cy. COAL.

Pow­er sta­tions like Egg­brough, Drax and Kingsnorth pro­duce huge amounts of filthy emis­sions, drax alone pro­duces approx 21 mil­lions tones of Co2 per year.
All this coal has to come from some­where and it would ‘seam’ the mon­ey men have set their greedy eyes on the north of Eng­land again.
U:k coal and the banks group have sev­er­al plan­ning appli­ca­tion to sur­face mine/open cast across the North East.
*Bradley Co. Durham- 550 000 tonnes
*Park wall north Co. Durham- 1 275 000 tonnes
*pot­land burn Northum­ber­land- 2 000 000 tonnes
*Shot­ton Northum­ber­land- 3 000 000 tonnes
*An exten­sion to the exsist­ing site at wid­dring­ton

In addi­tion to these appli­ca­tions there is already one of the largest open cast sites in the U:K at Sto­b­swood near Mor­peth. Sur­face min­ing sites are also oper­at­ing in Wid­dring­ton, Blag­don estate in Northum­ber­land. Stead­burns and stoney heap near to Con­sett Co. Durham.

In the case of shotton/cramlington plan­ning appli­ca­tion, Shot­ton is in an open­cast con­straint area which means that there is a pre­sump­tion against Sur­face min­ing. Northum­ber­land coun­ty coun­cil up held the con­straint and re-ject­ed the appli­ca­tion. How­ev­er the com­mu­ni­ties and local gov­ern­ment sec­re­tary Hazel Blears M.P Stepped in and over­ruled the coun­ty coun­cil allow­ing the open­cast oper­a­tion to go ahead much to dis­may of the local com­mu­ni­ty
(www.journallive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays-news/2008/02/08/ministers-quizzed-on-opencast-policy-61634–20450633/ )
The pot­land burn site is also in a con­straint area yet U:K coal has still lodged an appli­ca­tion prob­a­bly because they feel the polit­i­cal cli­mate is in their favor.

As if the eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion, indus­tri­al injuries/deaths and dis­rup­tion to the com­mu­ni­ty that open­cast min­ing leaves behind Npow­er have stat­ed that they have an immi­nent plan­ning appli­ca­tion to build a new coal fired pow­er sta­tion in Blyth on the site of the exist­ing pow­er sta­tion. Con­struc­tion is due to begin 2014 on the same time­line as Kingsnorth.
Whilst the focus is on the cli­mate camp and Kingsnorth, the North of Eng­land and our resources are cen­tral to the U:K gov­ern­ment and their cap­i­tal­ist boss­es plans for a new gen­er­a­tion of dirty pow­er sta­tions .
This new gen­er­a­tion of coal fired pow­er sta­tions and the unac­cept­able min­ing prac­tices that accom­pa­ny them must be stopped.
One of the key fea­tures of the cli­mate camp is direct action.
The Banks group have offices in West Corn­forth near Fer­ry­hill, U:K coal head offices are in Don­cast­er’ leave it in the ground’ have began reg­u­lar noise demos out­side the next is 14th July. All the open­cast sites are eas­i­ly acces­si­ble.

Peo­ple are meet­ing to dis­cuss and plan for the upcom­ing cli­mate camp at the star and shad­ow cin­e­ma, New­cas­tle upon tyne. Next meet­ing is Thurs­day July 3rd at 6pm why not come along and join the move against cli­mate change.

Links and info:

www.climatecamp.org.uk
www.earthfirst.org.uk/leaveitintheground
www.greenpeace.com
www.thecoalhole.org
www.indymedia.org.uk
www.pontvalley.net
www.banksdevlopments.com
www.ukcoal.com

A visit to the Opencast Squat

21.06.2008
I decid­ed to take a trip to Ship­ley today to see how the new res­i­dents of Prospect farm were set­tling in.

Bodge House with roof-tripodBodge fencing21.06.2008
I decid­ed to take a trip to Ship­ley today to see how the new res­i­dents of Prospect farm were set­tling in.

Just to recap the sto­ry so far. In the ear­ly hours of last Wednes­day morn­ing a group of car­ing indi­vid­u­als took pos­ses­sion of a build­ing on the site of UK Coals planned new open cast site in Der­byshire. There aim is to protest/prevent the coun­try­side and wider envi­ron­ment being dev­as­tat­ed by the extrac­tion and burn­ing of the dirt­i­est fos­sil fuel.

As if we need­ed any remind­ing of the cli­mate chaos coal burn­ing con­tributes to, when I arrived on Sat­ur­day (21st June!) it was wet and driz­zly and the fore­cast was for storms.

But the rain had not damp­ened the spir­its of the crew now liv­ing at Prospect Farm (now re-chris­tened Bodge farm). While they were still busy with all those jobs that need doing when you move into a new home they had already achieved a great deal and the place was very home­ly. A well-stocked kitchen was set up and a wel­com­ing open fire means there is always a ket­tle on the go.

To the sounds of acoustic gui­tar from one of the tree-hous­es I watched a cou­ple of peo­ple fix­ing fenc­ing and looked up to admire the sus­pend­ed car­go net­ting between the trees.

There have been oth­er vis­i­tors com­ing to show their sup­port includ­ing three gen­er­a­tions of the fam­i­ly who used to live in the house before UK Coal kicked them out.

I was delayed on leav­ing as a large van full of pro­vi­sions had just arrived and need­ed unload­ing. This had been spon­ta­neous­ly arranged and paid for by locals and includ­ed just about every­thing you could think of from tinned beans to cot­ton buds, fresh veg to bot­tled water.

Please get along there and sup­port them, it’s a love­ly loca­tion and the squat/camp has a great feel.

But get along there because at some point we have just got to draw a line. For all our futures and for gen­er­a­tions to come, leave it in the ground.

http://www.leaveitintheground.org.uk

Solidarity actions for imprisoned liberationists

Italy, Mex­i­co, Spain & UK
Sol­i­dar­i­ty actions for; Pao­la Gori, Jeff Luers & Sean Kirt­ley

Com­mu­niques report­ed to Bite Back Mag­a­zine: 15th — 19th June:

Italy, Mex­i­co, Spain & UK
Sol­i­dar­i­ty actions for; Pao­la Gori, Jeff Luers & Sean Kirt­ley

Com­mu­niques report­ed to Bite Back Mag­a­zine: 15th — 19th June:

anony­mous reports:

30th May — h 21.00 — Moun­tains of Emil­ia Region, Italy.
We set on fire a hunt­ing tow­er placed in a wood pop­u­lat­ed by boars.
We have destroyed it with two liters of gaso­line ignit­ed by a retar­dant primer.
— A.L.F. -

Night of 5th June — Emil­ia Region, Italy.
A small chick­en farm was vis­it­ed again (see the com­mu­nique of last month).
We have lib­er­at­ed one cock (the only male present) and slashed the tires of the car of the farmer.
— A.L.F. -

These actions are ded­i­cat­ed to Pao­la. She is a veg­an, ani­mal rights activist, pris­on­er in ‘Le Sug­here’ Ital­ian jail.
Please write* and sup­port her.
Also, please sup­port the vic­tims of state repres­sion in Italy and Aus­tria.
Free­dom for all!
Lib­er­ta ‘per tut­ti!”

received anony­mous­ly (trans­la­tion):

“On the night of June 14 (Inter­na­tion­al day in sup­port of the earth lib­er­a­tion war­rior Jef­frey Luers and all rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal pris­on­ers), the Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front and Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Front got togeth­er and went to the doors of one of the many com­pa­nies guilty in the dom­i­na­tion, destruc­tion and exter­mi­na­tion of the earth and its liv­ing beings.

Var­i­ous slo­gans were paint­ed such as ‘No More Vivi­sec­tion,’ ‘ALF,’ ‘No HLS,’ ‘Sup­port Jef­frey,’ ‘Mur­der­ers’ and oth­ers which attacked the com­pa­ny Unilever which shares prop­er­ty with DHL (an HLS sup­port­er). Now as one passed through these mod­ern-day exter­mi­na­tion camps, one can read the slo­gans of the FLA and FLT on most of its walls.

Com­pañero Jef­frey we know about your sit­u­a­tion and it gives us great plea­sure to know that soon you’ll be out here on the front line fight­ing again like you’ve done before. We hope that those bars and life in prison leave you with even more strength to con­tin­ue.

To all those rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal­ist pris­on­ers, an embrace from Mex­i­co.

For Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion!
For Earth Lib­er­a­tion!
For Human Lib­er­a­tion!
Direct Action!

FLA & FLT”

excerpt from anony­mous report:

“In sup­port of Jef­frey Luers and the strug­gle for ani­mal lib­er­a­tion
Dur­ing the ear­ly hours of June 14, the locks of every fur shop in the Bil­bao city cen­ter were glued, in sup­port of this pris­on­er and many oth­ers, and in gen­er­al of the strug­gle for ani­mal lib­er­a­tion.”

report­ed anony­mous­ly:

“Activists in the North West decid­ed to ‘pimp’ a hunt scums ride.

The car was easy to find as it had both the pro-hunt ‘Felix Says’ stick­er and a BASC (Shoot­ing) stick­er in the rear win­dow. The BASC stick­er sealed the car’s fate, the Judge in the Sean Kirt­ley case was into shoot­ing and a mem­ber of BASC. The car had paint strip­per applied, spray paint over the win­dows, wind­screen wipers wrecked and one wing mir­ror smashed. Looked real­ly pret­ty once we’d fin­si­hed.

If the own­er wants com­pen­sa­tion then they should write to Judge Ross and NETCU. It’s the crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of legal protest that has caused this.

ALF”

ARRESTED & CHARGED McLibel Protester!

On the 21st June 08, as part of the anniver­sary of the now famous 1997 McLi­bel court case in which two cam­paign­ers were sued by the McDon­alds Cor­po­ra­tion for dis­trib­ut­ing a leaflet crit­i­cal of the com­pa­ny, camp

Cambridge McDonaldsEarth hamburgurizedOn the 21st June 08, as part of the anniver­sary of the now famous 1997 McLi­bel court case in which two cam­paign­ers were sued by the McDon­alds Cor­po­ra­tion for dis­trib­ut­ing a leaflet crit­i­cal of the com­pa­ny, cam­paign­ers entered the McDon­alds in Rose Cres­cent, Cam­bridge.

After being removed from the restau­rant by police a cam­paign­er was approached and his details request­ed. He gave his name and address but was told if he did not give his date of birth he would be arrest­ed under Sec­tion 5 of the Pub­lic Order Act. He refused, as he believes that a per­son is only required to give their name and address for the pur­pose of a sum­mons and no addi­tion­al details. He was sub­se­quent­ly arrest­ed under Sec­tion 5 of the Pub­lic Order Act. The arrest got pub­lic atten­tion with peo­ple mak­ing use of their cam­eras and com­ing up to take leaflets.

He has been charged and bailed to attend Cam­bridge Mag­is­trates – Narey – Court 613 – Mag­is­trates Court at 43 Haux­ton Road, Cam­bridge on the 3rd July at 9.30 a.m. – ANY SUPPORT APPRECIATED.

The pro­test­ers hoped to high­light the issues that orig­i­nal­ly com­prised the leaflet that led to the court case rang­ing from ani­mal farm­ing to envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion. Accord­ing to a cam­paign­er, “McDon­alds hasn’t real­ly changed. Whether it be the envi­ron­men­tal impact of ani­mal agri­cul­ture or the fact they con­tin­ue to mar­ket junk food to chil­dren in the mid­dle of an obe­si­ty prob­lem, McDon­alds still makes a lot of peo­ple very Mcan­gry.”

Many of the orig­i­nal leaflet’s crit­i­cisms of McDon­alds were vin­di­cat­ed in court. Accord­ing to the rul­ing of the High Court, Mcdon­alds had ‘exploit­ed chil­dren’, was ‘cul­pa­bly respon­si­ble for ani­mal cru­el­ty’ and used mar­ket­ing that had ‘pre­tend­ed to a pos­i­tive nutri­tion­al ben­e­fit which their food did not match’.

The cam­paign­ers are call­ing on the peo­ple of Cam­bridge to boy­cott the restau­rant chain. We can all make a state­ment about our val­ues by the way we spend our cash. We call on every­one to say no to this busi­ness in our city.

- You can learn more about the McLi­bel case at http://www.mcspotlight.org/

- An addi­tion­al video of the protest was tak­en by an inde­pen­dent cam­era man see http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/06/401610.html (thanks!)

- Protester’s video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ld3I4zVxc2A

COURT DATE:

Cam­bridge Mag­is­trates – Narey – Court 613 – Mag­is­trates Court at 43 Haux­ton Road, Cam­bridge on the 3rd July at 9.30 a.m.

arrest charges dropped — round-up: Fossil Fools Day & M1 Conspiracy

As with the major­i­ty of protest arrests (if you do a NO COMMENT inter­view), though there’s been a load of peo­ple arrest­ed recent­ly, they’ve released with­out charge, on bail to return to a police sta­tion.

This gives the CPS time to decide what to do, but also hin­ders protest because the police can dic­tate puna­tive bail restric­tions.

—-
M1 Con­spir­a­cy Case Thrown Out

1st May 2008

As with the major­i­ty of protest arrests (if you do a NO COMMENT inter­view), though there’s been a load of peo­ple arrest­ed recent­ly, they’ve released with­out charge, on bail to return to a police sta­tion.

This gives the CPS time to decide what to do, but also hin­ders protest because the police can dic­tate puna­tive bail restric­tions.

—-
M1 Con­spir­a­cy Case Thrown Out

1st May 2008
Sev­en cli­mate camp activists against the widen­ing of the M1(1*) had the case against them dis­missed from Sheffield Crown Court yes­ter­day. Charged with con­spir­a­cy to cause a pub­lic nui­sance Judge Robin­son said that: “there was not a jot of evi­dence” for a jury to infer an endan­ger­ment of any mem­ber of the pub­lic.

Sev­en cli­mate camp activists against the widen­ing of the M1(1*) had the case against them dis­missed from Sheffield Crown Court today. Charged with con­spir­a­cy to cause a pub­lic nui­sance Judge Robin­son said that: “there was not a jot of evi­dence” for a jury to infer an endan­ger­ment of any mem­ber of the pub­lic.

Arrest­ed over a year ago the pro­test­ers had their hous­es raid­ed with prop­er­ty such as com­put­ers and phones tak­en and held for the dura­tion of the inves­ti­ga­tion.

This rul­ing in the midst of a crack down (2*) on green protest sets a prece­dent for polic­ing of envi­ron­men­tal demon­stra­tions. The Judge resound­ing­ly reject­ed the pros­e­cu­tion’s argu­ment that the hang­ing of ban­ners over the motor­way would con­sti­tute a pub­lic nui­sance. He went on to say: “that all of the avail­able mate­r­i­al (pre­sent­ed to
the court) is con­sis­tent only with peace­ful protest.”

Cam­paign spokesper­son Dr Julie White, a GP from Sheffield, said: “this is vic­to­ry for the right to protest in the face of gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy of expand­ing roads, run­ways and coal-fired pow­er sta­tions in a time of cli­mate cri­sis.”

The activists say that the expe­ri­ence has not deterred them from tak­ing action against the root caus­es of cli­mate change and will be attend­ing the Camp for Cli­mate Action(3*) at Kingsnorth coal-fired pow­er sta­tion in Kent this August.

Con­tact Julie White on 0779851073.

NOTES FOR EDITORS
1*) The Depart­ment of Trans­port have decid­ed against widen­ing the M1 any fur­ther: http://www.nowideningm1.org.uk/

2*) this month the Sun­day Her­ald report­ed that pro­tes­tors in Scot­land had been harassed by police after peace­ful demon­stra­tions: http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.2210574.0.protesters_police_treated_us_like_terrorists.php

3*)The Camp for Cli­mate Action went to Heathrow last sum­mer over the build­ing of a third run­way this year it will pitch up at Kingsnorth over the poten­tial build­ing of the UK’s first new coal-fired pow­er sta­tion for 30 years:
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/

—-

Bac­ton gas ter­mi­nal 19

On 1st April, EF!ers block­ad­ed the gas ter­mi­nal at Bac­ton to cel­e­brate Fos­sil Fools Day. The police tried to arrest every­one, and got 19 peo­ple. For a full report, see http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20420

Due to return to a rur­al Nor­folk police sta­tion, peo­ple were keen to phone up the police sta­tion to find out what was hap­pen­ing. The police had not tak­en any deci­sion, and a few days before decid­ed to drop charges against all but 3 peo­ple locked-on who got off with cau­tions.

—-

Police drop charges against Wun­der­man pro­tes­tors

The three activists arrest­ed fol­low­ing the inva­sion of Wunderman’s offices have had all charges against them dropped.

The envi­ron­men­tal­ists, from direct action group Lon­don Ris­ing Tide, had been charged with “bur­glary of pens, paper and phone calls”.

They were held after stag­ing a four-hour sit-in over two of par­ent agency Y&R’s key clients – Land Rover and BAE Sys­tems.

The action was part of a world­wide cam­paign against cli­mate change, dubbed Fos­sil Fools Day. In the UK, the group also staged demon­stra­tions out­side Porsche deal­er­ships, the head office of E‑on, and a coal mine in Wales.

The three activists man­aged to get into the Y&R build­ing –Greater Lon­don House on Hamp­stead Road, NW1 – by pos­ing as exec­u­tives from a new­ly-pri­va­tised wing of the MoD called Har­rion­Pro­jects, a spoof com­pa­ny whose cen­tre­piece is the Har­rion, a civil­ian ver­sion of the Har­ri­er Jump-Jet.

Once inside, they bar­ri­cad­ed them­selves into the con­fer­ence room, oppo­site Wun­der­man EMEA chief exec­u­tive Mar­cus Starke’s office.

Blockade of Faslane — One year since Scotland said NO

19/06/2008
Today a group of 5 Tri­dent Ploughshares activists block­ad­ed the main gate of Faslane nuclear sub­ma­rine base for one and a half hours. The road­way was closed from 6.40am until 7.45am, and unable to ful­ly reopen until 8.15am. Traf­fic was turned away and had to find an alter­na­tive entrance.

19/06/2008
Today a group of 5 Tri­dent Ploughshares activists block­ad­ed the main gate of Faslane nuclear sub­ma­rine base for one and a half hours. The road­way was closed from 6.40am until 7.45am, and unable to ful­ly reopen until 8.15am. Traf­fic was turned away and had to find an alter­na­tive entrance.

One of the activists, Janet Fen­ton, said “We chose today because it is one year since the Scot­tish gov­ern­ment vot­ed NOT to sup­port Gor­don Brown’s plan to foist ille­gal, immoral and unaf­ford­able nuclear weapons on Scot­land for anoth­er 50 years. Along with the major­i­ty of peo­ple in Scot­land, we don’t want them here or any­where else.”

The five were cau­tioned by MDP police at 7am as they lay across the road­way to the North gate, locked-on using tubes and clips. A spe­cial­ist cut­ting team had to be called out to remove the activists indi­vid­u­al­ly who had their arms in tubes of steel, plas­tic and con­crete. They were arrest­ed for Breach of the Peace and tak­en for pro­cess­ing inside the base.

See video footage at http://youtube.com/watch?v=tGAHAUHMwjo

The pro­test­ers said that they were at the North Gate peace­ful­ly act­ing to block the entrance to the nuclear sub­ma­rine base to play their part as cit­i­zens of the world in stop­ping the deploy­ment of nuclear weapons:

* to remind the UK Gov­ern­ment of their oblig­a­tions;
* to sup­port the politi­cians and oth­ers who are will­ing to work to get rid of nuclear weapons;
* and to make it clear that mat­ters of con­science are the respon­si­bil­i­ty of all con­cerned peo­ple, and can nev­er be reserved.

Anoth­er activist said, “By using our hands and our bod­ies in this way, with­out caus­ing harm to oth­ers, we hope that we can make it easy to see how it is the sim­ple actions of ordi­nary peo­ple that are need­ed to rid the world of weapons of mass destruc­tion.”

Nigerian attacks closes oilfields

19 June 2008
Oil com­pa­ny Roy­al Dutch Shell says it has tem­porar­i­ly stopped pro­duc­tion at its main off­shore oil­field in Nige­ria, fol­low­ing a mil­i­tant attack.

Nigerian pipeline burns after attack19 June 2008
Oil com­pa­ny Roy­al Dutch Shell says it has tem­porar­i­ly stopped pro­duc­tion at its main off­shore oil­field in Nige­ria, fol­low­ing a mil­i­tant attack.

The raid took place overnight on the Bon­ga oil plat­form about 120km (75 miles) off the coast of the Niger Delta, the com­pa­ny said.

It is the first attack on the oil­field, which nor­mal­ly pro­duces about 200,000 bar­rels a day.

Attacks on the inshore Niger Delta have helped dri­ve up world oil prices.

Nige­ri­a’s valu­able off­shore oil­fields had always been con­sid­ered dif­fi­cult for most mil­i­tants to tar­get, the BBC’s Alex Last reports from Lagos.

But ear­ly on Thurs­day gun­men in boats reached the Bon­ga instal­la­tion, Shel­l’s flag­ship project, for the first time.

A Niger­ian navy spokesman con­firmed reports that mil­i­tants had kid­napped a US oil work­er from a sep­a­rate ves­sel on their way back from the raid.

The Move­ment for the Eman­ci­pa­tion of the Niger Delta (Mend) claimed it car­ried out the attack in an email sent to jour­nal­ists, and named the Amer­i­can as Cap­tain Jack Stone.

They said he would be released “in the com­ing hours”.

Sophis­ti­cat­ed

The gun­men failed to get inside the plat­form, but attacked a key ves­sel used for pro­duc­tion stor­age and offload­ing, a Shell spokesman said.

Sev­er­al peo­ple were report­ed to have been injured.

Mend says it is cam­paign­ing for a greater share of the region’s oil wealth to be kept by local peo­ple, but the gov­ern­ment says they are crim­i­nals moti­vat­ed by the ran­soms they receive from oil com­pa­nies.

The shut­down has cut a tenth of Nige­ri­a’s total out­put in one go.

This comes on top of a reduc­tion of at least 20% in recent years fol­low­ing inland attacks.

Our cor­re­spon­dent says Bon­ga was new, expen­sive and work­ing well despite the dif­fi­cul­ties and repeat­ed attacks affect­ing the com­pa­ny’s inshore oper­a­tions in the Delta.

The mil­i­tants in the Delta are get­ting more sophis­ti­cat­ed and bet­ter equipped and armed, he says.

Now they have proven that in terms of dis­tance at least, all of Nige­ri­a’s facil­i­ties are with­in their reach.

Amnesties promised

Next month, a peace sum­mit organ­ised by the gov­ern­ment on the Niger Delta unrest is due to begin in the cap­i­tal, Abu­ja.

The gov­ern­ment has promised amnesties to any mil­i­tants who take part.

Mend has refused to attend unless Hen­ry Okah, one of their lead­ers cur­rent­ly on tri­al for trea­son and gun-run­ning, is also grant­ed amnesty.

But the gov­ern­ment has refused.

“We want every­one to be there to air their griev­ances,” vice-pres­i­den­tial aide Akilu Ind­abawa told the BBC’s Hausa Ser­vice.

“But in Hen­ry Okah’s case the issue is in front of a court and the gov­ern­ment can’t inter­vene because it respects the rule of law.”

Oth­er reports to bal­ance this -
Niger­ian mil­i­tants demand gov­ern­ment accept medi­a­tion by ex-US pres­i­dent Carter
Move­ment for the Eman­ci­pa­tion of the Niger Delta Declares War
Niger­ian mil­i­tants: We killed drunk­en sol­diers

—–

21st June 2008
Nige­ria oil pipeline ‘attacked’

US oil giant Chevron has halt­ed onshore oil pro­duc­tion at its Escravos oil­field after an attack on a pipeline.

The loss could equate to about 120,000 bar­rels per day, about 6.6% of Nige­ri­a’s total dai­ly crude pro­duc­tion.

The Niger­ian mil­i­tary said mil­i­tants blew up the Niger Delta pipeline, but the region’s main armed group blamed angry youths for the attack.

Ear­li­er this week, Nige­ri­a’s pres­i­dent ordered tighter secu­ri­ty in the Delta after an attack at a Shell facil­i­ty.

Accord­ing to the BBC’s Alex Last, in Lagos, sources in the west­ern Niger Delta believe the lat­est attack is the work of ille­gal oil “bunker­ers” — involved in the lucra­tive trade in stolen oil.

Sig­nif­i­cant loss

The ear­li­er attack on Shel­l’s float­ing oil plat­form at Bon­ga, which cut a tenth of Niger­ian oil pro­duc­tion in one go, was car­ried out by mil­i­tant group the Move­ment for the Eman­ci­pa­tion of the Niger Delta (Mend).

News agen­cies quot­ed Mend as say­ing that it was not respon­si­ble for the Escravos inci­dent, which occurred on Thurs­day night.

Mend said it had been con­tact­ed by angry youths who report­ed hav­ing blown up the pipeline, the Asso­ci­at­ed Press said.

The Escravos inci­dent high­lights the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of the oil infra­struc­ture in Nige­ria, our cor­re­spon­dent says.

With the gov­ern­ment plan­ning to hold a big sum­mit of Niger Delta lead­ers and more mon­ey expect­ed to flow to the Niger Delta, per­haps the armed groups there feel it is a good time to show how rel­e­vant they are to any chance of peace, our cor­re­spon­dent adds.

While the loss to Niger­ian crude out­put is sig­nif­i­cant, it is a small frac­tion of the dai­ly glob­al oil out­put, of about 85 mil­lion bar­rels per day.

News of the Escravos attack comes ahead of a meet­ing in Jed­dah, Sau­di Ara­bia, of major ener­gy pro­duc­ers and users — where the ris­ing price of oil will be the key top­ic for dis­cus­sion.

On Fri­day the Niger­ian gov­ern­ment announced how it would spend a $10bn (£5bn) wind­fall from the ris­ing oil price.

It will spend just over $5bn fix­ing the coun­try’s pow­er sup­ply and the rest will be shared among the 36 state gov­ern­ments.

FIGHT SPECIESISM! #2 — Out Now

The sec­ond issue has expand­ed from 6 to 10 pages because of the quan­ti­ty of news and analy­sis that has been pub­lished since the first edi­tion.

FIGHT SPECIESISM! #2 The sec­ond issue has expand­ed from 6 to 10 pages because of the quan­ti­ty of news and analy­sis that has been pub­lished since the first edi­tion.

Click HERE to read or HERE to print.

ISSUE 2, July 2008
Arti­cles:

- Sol­i­dar­i­ty actions for Sean Kirt­ley
— ALF tar­get NFU — “no bad­ger cull”
— Fur Indus­try — Oslo under attack
— Falling tow­ers — 43 in 92 days, Swe­den
— Judge Ross & NETCU — cru­ci­fy civ­il lib­er­ties
— NETCU and SOCPA — a nasty dic­ta­tor­ship?
— Earth news — Leave it in the ground & burn­ing man­sions*
— Anar­chy in Brighton — Smash EDO Car­ni­val*

Please dis­trib­ute far and wide!

NOTES

Fight Speciesism! is the newslet­ter from Anti­spe Britain. Issues are pub­lished spo­rad­i­cal­ly, depen­dent on when there is enough to news to fill the pages.

**Due to pop­u­lar demand, FS! now fea­tures a small por­tion of Earth news and a col­umn for the lat­est anar­chist action.

We would also like to apol­o­gise for not includ­ing the recent repres­sion in Aus­tria against anti-fur activists. It was decid­ed that because the issue is devel­op­ing swift­ly, the news print­ed would unfor­tu­nate­ly be out of date when pub­lished.

How­ev­er, please see the Indy­media UK fea­ture that has been cre­at­ed to keep you up to date with the lat­est.