Author: earthfirst

Greenpeace campaigners climb on top of Heathrow short-haul flight (& video clip)

As the ban­ner on top of this Lon­don — Man­ches­ter flight says, we’re in the mid­dle of a cli­mate emer­gency. The fastest grow­ing source of green­house gas emis­sions in the UK is just about to get anoth­er boost from Brown’s gov­ern­ment. On Wednes­day, the con­sul­ta­tion on whether to near­ly dou­ble the size of Heathrow by build­ing a new run­way will close, and the gov­ern­ment looks set to cave in to the avi­a­tion indus­try.

Greenpeace on top of planeAs the ban­ner on top of this Lon­don — Man­ches­ter flight says, we’re in the mid­dle of a cli­mate emer­gency. The fastest grow­ing source of green­house gas emis­sions in the UK is just about to get anoth­er boost from Brown’s gov­ern­ment. On Wednes­day, the con­sul­ta­tion on whether to near­ly dou­ble the size of Heathrow by build­ing a new run­way will close, and the gov­ern­ment looks set to cave in to the avi­a­tion indus­try.

This morn­ing, four of our vol­un­teers have climbed on top of a plane at Heathrow and are wrap­ping a ban­ner around the tail­fin. The plane — one of 32 flights every day between Lon­don and Man­ches­ter — had just arrived in Heathrow and the pas­sen­gers had dis­em­barked when four vol­un­teers walked through the dou­ble doors at Heathrow Ter­mi­nal One, cross­ing an area of tar­mac and climb­ing onto the fuse­lage of the British Air­ways flight.

100,000 flights a year go between Heathrow and des­ti­na­tions that are eas­i­ly reach­able by train (the most pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tion is Paris — eas­i­ly reach­able by the Eurostar). And, look­ing at the price of train trav­el in Britain, it’s under­stand­able that some peo­ple are still choos­ing to fly. If the £9 bil­lion tax sub­si­dies the avi­a­tion indus­try receives to make fly­ing cheap­er and air­ports big­ger were spent on mak­ing trains cheap­er and bet­ter, we could reduce the envi­ron­men­tal impact of Heathrow instead of vast­ly increas­ing it.

Secu­ri­ty threat? Yes, we’ve exposed a secu­ri­ty hole at Heathrow, but we’ve done it to expose the gap­ing hole on Brown’s cli­mate change pol­i­cy. Brown’s car­ry­ing on as though cli­mate change has nev­er hap­pened. The plan­et’s lead­ing sci­en­tists are warn­ing us we only have a few years left to get cli­mate change emis­sions down, yet, if the avi­a­tion indus­try is allowed to expand as pre­dict­ed, avi­a­tion alone would destroy any hope of hit­ting his emis­sions reduc­tions tar­gets.

The move came as pro­test­ers were gath­er­ing in West­min­ster on Mon­day to oppose plans to expand the air­port.

A gov­ern­ment con­sul­ta­tion on the plan clos­es on Wednes­day.

We are here to draw a line in the sand and tell Gor­don Brown his new run­way must not and will not be built

Anna Jones, Green­peace activist

Green­peace said pro­test­ers put a ban­ner read­ing “Cli­mate Emer­gency — No Third Run­way” over the plane’s tail­fin at about 0945 GMT.

It said two women and two men crossed the tar­mac at the air­port after the pas­sen­gers had dis­em­barked.

One pro­test­er, Anna Jones, said: “Our plan­et and the peo­ple who live on it are in dan­ger.

“Cli­mate change can be beat­en but not by almost dou­bling the size of the air­port.

“We are here to draw a line in the sand and tell Gor­don Brown his new run­way must not and will not be built.”

The four were arrest­ed and tak­en to Heathrow police sta­tion at about 1100 GMT, a BAA spokes­woman said.

Video

Sea Shepherd Finds Japanese Whaling Fleet: They Are On the Run Again

The Japan­ese whal­ing fleet is on the run again. The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety ship Steve Irwin re-locat­ed the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet at 0600 hours this morn­ing, Feb­ru­ary 23, 2008.

Sea Shepherd in pursuitThe Japan­ese whal­ing fleet is on the run again. The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety ship Steve Irwin re-locat­ed the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet at 0600 hours this morn­ing, Feb­ru­ary 23, 2008.

A few hours ear­li­er, the Steve Irwin had been side tracked when it chased a ves­sel that turned out to be a Namib­ian Tooth­fish ves­sel. The Antalles Reefer reg­is­tered in Walvis Bay was found at 0200 Hours. The ves­sel refused to give a fish­ing per­mit num­ber and threat­ened the Steve Irwin by report­ing that it was armed. The Cap­tain of the Antalles Reefer claimed to speak only Russ­ian. The Steve Irwin has a Russ­ian speak­ing crewmem­ber and dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion the Cap­tain said he would resist with force if there was any inter­fer­ence with his oper­a­tions.

Cap­tain Paul Wat­son relayed the infor­ma­tion to the Aus­tralian Cus­toms ves­sel Ocean­ic Viking and report­ed that a sus­pi­cious tooth­fish fish­ing ves­sel was oper­at­ing inside the Aus­tralian Eco­nom­ic Exclu­sion Zone. At 0600 Hours, the Steve Irwin encoun­tered the Fukuyoshi Maru No. 68 which imme­di­ate­ly head­ed east­ward to lead the Sea Shep­herd crew away from the whal­ing fleet. The Steve Irwin con­tin­ued west and the Fukuyoshi Maru No. 68 turned and began to pur­sue the Steve Irwin. It is believed that the Fukuyoshi Maru No 68 car­ries armed Japan­ese coast guard offi­cers.

The Steve Irwin is now pur­su­ing the Nis­shin Maru and two har­poon ves­sels with the Fukuyoshi Maru No. 68 in pur­suit of the Steve Irwin. “The great South­ern Ocean whal­ing ship chase is on again,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “I don’t think any whales are going to be dying today. Our goal is to keep the har­poons qui­et for the next three weeks.”

The weath­er is good, the seas are calm and the chase is thread­ing its way south­west through an obsta­cle course of ice­bergs, growlers, and bergy bits. The Steve Irwin has plen­ty of fuel, water and pro­vi­sions and a crew that is com­mit­ted to shut­ting down the ille­gal whal­ing oper­a­tions of the Japan­ese fleet. “I can’t think of a place I would rather be right now,” said Jeff Hansen from Fre­man­tle, West­ern Aus­tralia. “See­ing the Japan­ese whalers run­ning like cow­ards from the Steve Irwin is a very sat­is­fy­ing expe­ri­ence.”

The chase is tak­ing place some 80 miles north of the Shack­le­ton Glac­i­er off the coast of Queen Mary land, well inside Aus­tralian Antarc­tic Ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters.

On Jan­u­ary 15th, 2008, an Aus­tralian Fed­er­al Court ordered that Japan­ese whal­ing be “restrained” in Aus­tralian ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters. The Sea Shep­herd crew is act­ing to enforce that court order and to uphold numer­ous inter­na­tion­al reg­u­la­tions that the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet has and con­tin­ues to vio­late.

For pre­vi­ous cov­er­age on the Sea Shep­herd see the UK Indy­media fea­ture arti­cle.

http://www.seashepherd.org

Weird Load visits leafy Chiswick

23.02.2008
After Jan­u­ary’s thou­sand strong meet­ing against Heathrow expan­sion, protest con­tin­ues apace.

Chiswick heathrow protest 1
Chiswick heathrow protest 2Chiswick heathrow protest 3Chiswick heathrow protest 4
23.02.2008
After Jan­u­ary’s thou­sand strong meet­ing against Heathrow expan­sion, protest con­tin­ues apace.

This week saw a 50,000 leaflet door­drop, and today local cam­paign­ers were joined by Baroness von Reichardt, part­ner Mr Spunky and mem­bers of her World Famous Treat­ment Rooms.

WEIRD LOAD

Sat­ur­day morn­ing shop­pers — more accus­tomed to bump­ing into Richard Briers or Ant’n’Dec than an anar­chist art troop — were hand­ed leaflets head­lined “Last Chance to Stop This”, encour­age­ment to turn up and show their oppo­si­tion at West­min­ster’s Cen­tral Hall this Mon­day at 7pm

A straw poll out­side Marks and Spencer indi­cat­ed a like­ly show­ing of around 500 res­i­dents promis­ing to meet up at Turn­ham Green Sta­tion for a mass move on West­min­ster. Past expe­ri­ence of active oppo­si­tion in W4 how­ev­er means that might well be an under­es­ti­mate.

They join res­i­dents from all over Lon­don and the Heathrow vil­lages — 6 coach­es have been reserved from Sip­son already — trav­el­ing to hear speak­ers as diverse as Lib Dem top banana Nick Clegg, Green MEP Car­o­line Lucas, Cli­mate Change guru Mark Lynas and Plane Stu­pid­’s Leo Mur­ray.

This is a bat­tle that can and will be won by the peo­ple, but only if the peo­ple act togeth­er. Do every­thing you can to be there on Mon­day and show the gov­ern­ment and the cor­po­ra­tions what they’re tru­ly up against.

Sabotage against the Glensanda Quarry Expansion

An aggre­gates pro­cess­ing plant on the edge of the York­shire Dales Nation­al Park has been sab­o­taged. The Plant is owned by Bar­don Aggre­gates a mem­ber of Aggre­gate Indus­tries, part of the Hol­cim Group. Aggre­gate Indus­tries own the Glen­san­da Quar­ry on the north west coast of Scot­land. The quar­ry is europes biggest coastal quar­ry and has it’s own port. Aggre­gate Indus­tries plan to expand the quar­ry from 125 ha to 206 ha giv­ing reserves of 814 mil­lion tonnes of gran­ite. They cur­rent­ly extract 7–8 mil­lion tonnes a year and can increase this to 15 mil­lion tonnes. The expan­sion plan includes remov­ing the peaks “The Mam” and “Lag a ‘mhaim” from the sky­line. This would be vis­i­ble from the Scot­tish islands and will effect the ecol­o­gy of many species includ­ing otters, seals, and gold­en eagles. 20% of the stone extract­ed will go to major road net­work con­struc­tion across europe.

An aggre­gates pro­cess­ing plant on the edge of the York­shire Dales Nation­al Park has been sab­o­taged. The Plant is owned by Bar­don Aggre­gates a mem­ber of Aggre­gate Indus­tries, part of the Hol­cim Group. Aggre­gate Indus­tries own the Glen­san­da Quar­ry on the north west coast of Scot­land. The quar­ry is europes biggest coastal quar­ry and has it’s own port. Aggre­gate Indus­tries plan to expand the quar­ry from 125 ha to 206 ha giv­ing reserves of 814 mil­lion tonnes of gran­ite. They cur­rent­ly extract 7–8 mil­lion tonnes a year and can increase this to 15 mil­lion tonnes. The expan­sion plan includes remov­ing the peaks “The Mam” and “Lag a ‘mhaim” from the sky­line. This would be vis­i­ble from the Scot­tish islands and will effect the ecol­o­gy of many species includ­ing otters, seals, and gold­en eagles. 20% of the stone extract­ed will go to major road net­work con­struc­tion across europe.
The Plant in York­shire was entered and sab­o­taged. Vehi­cles includ­ing all bull­doz­ers had holes drilled in vital parts of their engines and their tires. Both con­trol rooms were bro­ken into and all com­put­ers and instru­ment pan­els were smashed. Keys to all build­ings and machin­ery were removed from the site. The mes­sage “Stop Glen­san­da” was left. Aggre­gate indus­tries have sites all over the UK and the World, you know what to do!

‘Not An Eviction Party’ at the secret social centre

21.02.2008

Today, the back­up venue for the ram­pART social cen­tre faced a court hear­ing as the own­ers sought an inter­im pos­ses­sion order which would have seen the occu­piers giv­en just 24 hours to back up and leave. How­ev­er, as luck would have it, only the squat­ters turned up to court so the case was adjourned. No evic­tion tomor­row and we guess not for at least anoth­er week…

21.02.2008

Today, the back­up venue for the ram­pART social cen­tre faced a court hear­ing as the own­ers sought an inter­im pos­ses­sion order which would have seen the occu­piers giv­en just 24 hours to back up and leave. How­ev­er, as luck would have it, only the squat­ters turned up to court so the case was adjourned. No evic­tion tomor­row and we guess not for at least anoth­er week…

It was intend­ed that we’d be hav­ing a day of resis­tance on Fri­day to see off the bailiffs, start­ing from 2pm with a veg­an cafe and trans­form­ing into an all night par­ty to get at least one big event out of the place we’ve put our blood, sweat and tears into since the new year. How­ev­er, now there is no evic­tion threat tomor­row we’ve decid­ed to par­ty any­way with the RAMpart2 ‘Not An Evic­tion Par­ty’

If you don’t already know the address, phone a friend. Any­one who reg­u­lar­ly attends the ram­pART should know the address by now but we’re not post­ing it here.

Wan­na per­form or DJ? give us a call (you’ll have to be very self suf­fi­cient in terms of equip­ment).

This won’t be the last event at RAMpart2, but almost.

Bikes against the bomb bikeride, London to Aldermaston, March 22–26

To mark the 50th anniver­sary of the Alder­mas­ton Peace March,a bike ride will be leav­ing Lon­don on 22 March arriv­ing at Alder­mas­ton on Mon­day 24 March to join ’ Sur­round the Base’ CND mass action planned for that day.

To mark the 50th anniver­sary of the Alder­mas­ton Peace March,a bike ride will be leav­ing Lon­don on 22 March arriv­ing at Alder­mas­ton on Mon­day 24 March to join ’ Sur­round the Base’ CND mass action planned for that day.

We intend to take an active stance against organ­i­sa­tions implic­it in the nuclear arms indus­tries.

Acco­mo­da­tion is organ­ised and we will be rid­ing about 30 miles per day.

Join us for part of the jour­ney or the whole ride.

More details at www.bikesnotbombs.org.uk

info@bikesnotbombs.org.uk

Earth First! Blockades Power Plant Construction Site, 27 Arrested

18th Feb­ru­ary 2008
Palm Beach Coun­ty — Ear­ly Mon­day morn­ing dozens of con­cerned com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers from Palm Beach Coun­ty and all over the nation put their bod­ies on the line to halt con­struc­tion of FPL’s West Coun­ty Ener­gy Cen­ter (WCEC), demand­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy, tru­ly clean, renew­able ener­gy and a mora­to­ri­um on devel­op­ment in south Flori­da. Ever­glades Earth First! blocked the main entrance to the WCEC site, a pro­posed mas­sive 3800 MW gas-fired pow­er plant that would emit 12 mil­lion tons of CO2, a lead­ing green­house gas, every year. The plant is cur­rent­ly under con­struc­tion despite ongo­ing legal chal­lenges to the plant’s need­ed per­mits and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, which have been spear­head­ed by the local Palm Beach Coun­ty Envi­ron­men­tal Coali­tion.

West County gas power plant blockade 218th Feb­ru­ary 2008
Palm Beach Coun­ty — Ear­ly Mon­day morn­ing dozens of con­cerned com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers from Palm Beach Coun­ty and all over the nation put their bod­ies on the line to halt con­struc­tion of FPL’s West Coun­ty Ener­gy Cen­ter (WCEC), demand­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy, tru­ly clean, renew­able ener­gy and a mora­to­ri­um on devel­op­ment in south Flori­da. Ever­glades Earth First! blocked the main entrance to the WCEC site, a pro­posed mas­sive 3800 MW gas-fired pow­er plant that would emit 12 mil­lion tons of CO2, a lead­ing green­house gas, every year. The plant is cur­rent­ly under con­struc­tion despite ongo­ing legal chal­lenges to the plant’s need­ed per­mits and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, which have been spear­head­ed by the local Palm Beach Coun­ty Envi­ron­men­tal Coali­tion.

A dozen activists locked them­selves togeth­er through met­al pipes as 200 sup­port­ers ral­lied around them. The block­ade stopped work on the con­struc­tion site for six hours before a total of 27 peo­ple were arrest­ed.

This con­fronta­tion­al action was tak­en to pro­tect the Lox­a­hatch­ee Nation­al Wildlife Refuge which sits 1000 ft from the pow­er plant site and to pro­tect the larg­er Ever­glades sys­tem. Restora­tion would be under­mined by new devel­op­ment that the pow­er plant is expect­ed to encour­age in the area. The civ­il dis­obe­di­ence action also aims to pro­tect the entire plan­et from the destruc­tive effects of cli­mate change caused by pow­er plant emis­sions.

“We just don’t need this plant,” said Lynne Purvis, an activist with Ever­glades Earth First! who was born and raised in the Lox­a­hatch­ee area. “I’m not will­ing to threat­en the integri­ty of the Lox­a­hatch­ee, one of the last large, intact pieces of north­ern Ever­glades, so that peo­ple can fuel their greedy ener­gy desires.”

Purvis says that the Ever­glades Earth First! group intends to con­tin­ue a sus­tained cam­paign of direct action against this pow­er plant and its adja­cent gas pipeline.
The protest was also attend­ed by grass­roots activists and group across the Unit­ed States who have been par­tic­i­pat­ing in the annu­al Earth First! Win­ter Ren­dezvous. One such group, Ris­ing Tide North Amer­i­ca, is part of an inter­na­tion­al move­ment for cli­mate jus­tice, which con­nects the social and envi­ron­men­tal issues relat­ed to the grow­ing
cli­mate cri­sis and calls for urgent and bold respons­es to the glob­al human-caused dilem­ma.

Bri­an Sloan, an orga­niz­er with Ris­ing Tide North Amer­i­ca and par­tic­i­pant in Mon­day morning’s protest, said “FPL is doing what we call ‘green-wash­ing’. Gas-fired pow­er is not a clean or sus­tain­able ener­gy. It is a dirty and dwin­dling fos­sil fuel.” Sloan also states that Ris­ing Tide does not trust ener­gy com­pa­nies to solve the cli­mate cri­sis. “The solu­tions to cli­mate change will nev­er come from the peo­ple who cre­at­ed the prob­lem.”

Earth First! and the Ris­ing Tide move­ments rec­og­nize that the fight against fos­sil fuel pow­er is being used by the ener­gy indus­try to push a new wave of nuclear ener­gy. These grass­roots groups are com­mit­ted to extend­ing their fight against the dan­gers of nuclear pow­er with an eye on oth­er FPL pro­pos­als, such as Turkey Point and St. Lucie.

For info on local Earth First! efforts, vis­it: www.earthfirst2008oc.info

Con­tact: Ever­glades Earth First! (561) 588 — 9666
Pho­tos avail­able at www.risingtidenorthamerica.org

Ever­glades Earth First! group intends to con­tin­ue a sus­tained cam­paign of direct action against this pow­er plant and its adja­cent gas pipeline.

WE NEED YOUR HELP with bond mon­ey & legal fees for the 27 who were arrest­ed. We need to raise $10,000 to cov­er the bond fees. Please vis­it the Palm Beach Coun­ty envi­ron­men­tal Coali­tion’s web­site to donate online or email us for how to send a check!

Swedish climate action update

Cli­mate activists in deten­tion after try­ing to break into air­port

On Fri­day, groups of activists con­nect­ed to Kli­max, Sweden’s direct action move­ment against the root caus­es of cli­mate change, struck against the country’s domes­tic avi­a­tion indus­try. At Malmö Air­port, sev­en activists were appre­hend­ed when try­ing to brake into the run­way, some of them dressed as polar bears. They were trans­ferred to a deten­tion cen­tre in anoth­er city in south­ern Swe­den and kept in soli­tary con­fine­ment for more than 60 hours. The sev­en activists were inter­ro­gat­ed through­out the days, charged with “intent to sab­o­tage air traf­fic” and threat­ened with four years in prison if con­vict­ed.

Cli­mate activists in deten­tion after try­ing to break into air­port

On Fri­day, groups of activists con­nect­ed to Kli­max, Sweden’s direct action move­ment against the root caus­es of cli­mate change, struck against the country’s domes­tic avi­a­tion indus­try. At Malmö Air­port, sev­en activists were appre­hend­ed when try­ing to brake into the run­way, some of them dressed as polar bears. They were trans­ferred to a deten­tion cen­tre in anoth­er city in south­ern Swe­den and kept in soli­tary con­fine­ment for more than 60 hours. The sev­en activists were inter­ro­gat­ed through­out the days, charged with “intent to sab­o­tage air traf­fic” and threat­ened with four years in prison if con­vict­ed.

– It’s total­ly absurd to place peo­ple in soli­tary con­fine­ment for more than two days when they’ve done noth­ing but attempt­ing to cross a fence, in a peace­ful, sym­bol­ic action. The activists did what every­one should do: they tried to stop cli­mate change from accel­er­at­ing. With their heavy-hand­ed repres­sion, the police are try­ing to deter us from fur­ther direct action, but we vow to step up our strug­gle. Since the police suc­ceed­ed in nab­bing the activists in Malmö this time, we will have to be more cre­ative when plan­ning our next actions, says Sho­ra Esmail­ian, media spokesper­son for Kli­max.

Also on Fri­day, scores of activists entered the ter­mi­nals at Brom­ma Air­port in Stock­holm and Land­vet­ter Air­port out­side of Gothen­burg. Many were dressed as polar bears and pen­guins. The demon­stra­tions were fol­lowed by die-ins in front of queu­ing pas­sen­gers. In Upp­sala, a city north of Stock­holm, yet anoth­er Kli­max group staged a protest against a planned local air­port. Pic­tures from the actions can be found at this web­site.

On Sat­ur­day, activists in Stock­holm broke into a police sta­tion to demand the imme­di­ate release of their com­rades in Malmö, and a sol­i­dar­i­ty man­i­fes­ta­tion was held in Gothen­burg. All in all, more than a hun­dred activists were involved in the coor­di­nat­ed activ­i­ties over the week­end.

On late Sun­day, the last remain­ing Malmö-activist was released from the deten­tion cen­tre. All sev­en activists will face tri­al, as will anoth­er group of activists who suc­cess­ful­ly seized the run­way at Brom­ma Air­port in April last year.

Kli­max is a rapid­ly grow­ing move­ment in Swe­den. In Stock­holm, the group has focused on an upcom­ing deci­sion to extend the premis­es of Brom­ma Air­port to the year 2038, allow­ing it to increase traf­fic with at least 20 per­cent. The con­tract, due for final approval in March, will be impos­si­ble to abro­gate if politi­cians elect­ed in Stock­holm in the com­ing decades wish to do so: it can only be annulled by the nation­al gov­ern­ment. This is con­sid­ered deeply unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic by Kli­max, but even worse, Brom­ma Air­port is now poised to con­tin­ue pro­pelling domes­tic flights to Gothen­burg, Malmö and oth­er des­ti­na­tions well cov­ered by rail­way con­nec­tions, thus increas­ing unnec­es­sary car­bon emis­sions at a time when they have to be slashed. Already at this date, the avi­a­tion indus­try accounts for at least 10 per­cent of Sweden’s car­bon emis­sions, accord­ing to esti­mates from the Roy­al Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, and the share is grow­ing. Kli­max is deter­mined to fight this whol­ly irra­tional devel­op­ment until Sweden’s domes­tic avi­a­tion is abol­ished in its entire­ty, as a first nec­es­sary step to a fos­sil-free soci­ety

Free Paper War — LONDON LITtEr

15.2.2008
Ten tonnes of waste per week is gen­er­at­ed by the free news­pa­pers in West­min­ster alone, which is not a prob­lem that can be solved just by recy­cling. The only solu­tion to the prob­lem is to remove it — stop print­ing the papers.

Recycling is not answer insert15.2.2008
Ten tonnes of waste per week is gen­er­at­ed by the free news­pa­pers in West­min­ster alone, which is not a prob­lem that can be solved just by recy­cling. The only solu­tion to the prob­lem is to remove it — stop print­ing the papers.

In an attempt to get this mes­sage out, a group of intre­pid paper boys and girls decid­ed to use the tac­tics of The Lon­don Paper and Lon­don Lite, putting their own pro-recy­cling anti-waste pro­pa­gan­da into copies of the papers then aggres­sive­ly and relent­less­ly forc­ing them on the pub­lic.

At approx­i­mate­ly 5pm sharp, paper dis­tri­b­u­tion began. The Lon­don Paper and Lon­don Lite teams com­pet­ed for the atten­tion of com­muters, point­ing out the numer­ous dif­fer­ences between the papers and the qual­i­ty of their con­tents. The teams, while obvi­ous­ly agree­ing that they were both giv­ing away high­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed and intel­lec­tu­al­ly stim­u­lat­ing pub­li­ca­tions, did­n’t agree on which one was in fact supe­ri­or. Sar­casm aside, this is anoth­er issue with the free news­pa­pers — that they are filled with sec­ond rate celebri­ty gos­sip, inane half-sto­ries, and above all, adver­tis­ing. Real­ly, do these news­pa­pers con­tain any actu­al news? Is what they have to say so impor­tant that it’s worth 10 tonnes of waste paper a week?

As the com­pe­ti­tion grew more intense, war paint was smeared and the bat­tle began. Papers were giv­en and replaced and giv­en again, with dis­trib­u­tors from each team com­pet­ing over indi­vid­ual mem­bers of the pub­lic, lead­ing to vio­lent con­fronta­tions with each oth­er. The offi­cial employ­ees of both free papers seemed baf­fled but amused, tak­ing pho­tographs of the event. How­ev­er, an employ­ee of The Evening Stan­dard, dri­ving up in his van, seemed to be less than impressed, attempt­ing to take away some of the papers and gen­er­al­ly behav­ing in a rather ungentle­man­ly fash­ion.

Then, as two oppos­ing team mem­bers were locked in com­bat, a police­man on a horse appeared and polite­ly and calm­ly request­ed that all the stu­dents just stop that and come and speak to him right now. As only a cou­ple of the group were stu­dents, the action most­ly con­tin­ued until he got a bit upset. When all the paper boys and girls were gath­ered around the horse, they were told “You just can’t do that!” “Stop it!” “I’ll arrest you!” “Just stop it!” and “Calm down!”.

After agree­ing that it was indeed rude to force news­pa­pers on unsus­pect­ing pedes­tri­ans, but that they would calm down, the paper dis­trib­ut­ing con­tin­ued a lit­tle less vio­lent­ly. Passers-by were offered ‘The Lon­don Lit­ter’, ‘free rub­bish’, and ‘news’ (though unfor­tu­nate­ly there was no news avail­able), and were assured that they could throw it away when­ev­er and wher­ev­er they liked. In fact, the more they threw away the bet­ter. Some peo­ple seemed quite keen to get their free rub­bish, some were irri­tat­ed and a few were gen­uine­ly inter­est­ed in what was being said.

Sad­ly, some more police­men (who did­n’t have hors­es) turned up and told the paper girls and boys that real­ly it was time to stop it now. Mod­er­ate­ly aggres­sive at first, they were won over by the charm of the paper­ers, report­ed­ly even tak­ing some (100% recy­cled!) leaflets for their col­leagues. By this point all the news­pa­pers had gone and it was at least half past beer o’clock, so after a lit­tle chat with the police (and pick­ing up any lit­ter that may have been left), it was declared a vic­to­ry and they head­ed off.

http://www.spacehijackers.org

Stop the Swedish “Triangle of Death” Seven polar bears held for attempted air travel

Cli­mate activist group Kli­max in Swe­den are tired of unnec­es­sary short haul and nation­al flights. Espe­cial­ly between the major cities of Gothen­burg, Stock­holm and Malmo/Copenhagen, all direct­ly cou­pled by the near­est thing Swe­den has to a high speed train. That’s why that on Fri­day the 15th of Feb­ru­ary strange things start­ed hap­pen­ing at air­ports around Swe­den.

Gothenburg airport action 1
Stockholm airport action 2
Cli­mate activist group Kli­max in Swe­den are tired of unnec­es­sary short haul and nation­al flights. Espe­cial­ly between the major cities of Gothen­burg, Stock­holm and Malmo/Copenhagen, all direct­ly cou­pled by the near­est thing Swe­den has to a high speed train. That’s why that on Fri­day the 15th of Feb­ru­ary strange things start­ed hap­pen­ing at air­ports around Swe­den.

Time might be mon­ey but how much cli­mate change is ten min­utes worth? If you don’t have any lug­gage and check in on-line that’s about how much time you can save by fly­ing between Swe­den’s major cities. Con­sid­er­ing that the Swedish trains run on renew­able elec­tric ener­gy, that’s a hell of a lot of cli­mate change for ten min­utes. Ok, it’s not that sim­ple. Why would any sane per­son with­out a cli­mate con­science or a fat wal­let take the train when it’s cheap­er to fly? A rail­way sys­tem that makes the UK’s look mod­ern could also help weigh the bal­ance when it comes to choos­ing how to get there.

Here’s a round up of the dif­fer­ent actions around the coun­try:

Mal­mo http://svt.se/svt/play/video.jsp?a=1057410
At the time of writ­ing sev­en activists are being held in cus­tody. It seems that the crime of run­ning about the coun­try­side dressed as a polar bear is frowned upon in the south of Swe­den. The sev­en were arrest­ed run­ning towards the perime­ter fence of Stu­rup air­port out­side of Mal­mo by the large police pres­ence. It seems that the boys in blue were out on a mass train­ing exer­cise at the time. The police should be hap­py to get a bit of real life train­ing. Attempt­ing to get onto run­ways whilst dressed as a polar bear is def­i­nite­ly one of the fastest going crimes of our time. An inter­est­ing high pub­lic­i­ty court case seems to be in the pipe line. At least one sol­i­dar­i­ty demon­stra­tion (Gothen­burg 2pm Gustaf Adolfs Torg) is planned on Sat­ur­day in Swe­den to demand the release of the Mal­mo sev­en.
Stockholm airport action
Stock­holm
The polar bears of Stock­holm were treat­ed to ice cream by the air­port author­i­ties at Brom­ma. A pleas­ant ges­ture but hard­ly mak­ing up for help­ing to destroy the bears norther­ly habi­tat. Sor­ry you fam­i­ly drowned but here’s a rasp­ber­ry rip­ple to make up for it,sort of thing. A die in was staged as oth­er peace­ful pro­test­ers with ban­ners and fly­ers roamed the ter­mi­nal rais­ing aware­ness of the envi­ron­men­tal harm caused by air trav­el. There are present­ly plans to enlarge Brom­ma air­port in Stock­holm. The ques­tion is what are the politi­cians and plan­ners think­ing. In a time and a coun­try where every nine year old knows about glob­al warm­ing and its caus­es, the author­i­ties get the idea of expand­ing air­ports. It might be time to let the kids take over the pow­er. They could hard­ly do a worse job than the cli­mate crim­i­nals doing the job now. But then the kids are self­ish­ly more wor­ried about their future than in the hon­est busi­ness of mak­ing short term finan­cial gains.

Gothen­burg
A die in was staged in front of the secu­ri­ty gate at Land­vet­ter air­port out­side of Gothen­burg. Twen­ty activists arrived at the air­port to stage the protest on Fri­day evening. The die in was for the ben­e­fit of pas­sen­gers on their way to emit the largest pos­si­ble amount of green­house gas­es whilst cov­er­ing the 300 or so miles to Stock­holm. After mirac­u­lous­ly reviv­ing them­selves the activists formed a ban­ner wall to wel­come three plane loads of arrivals from the cap­i­tal. The whole thing went down peace­ful­ly with the mas­sive police pres­ence (at least three cop­pers for every cli­mate cru­sad­er) stand­ing around look­ing bored.
Uppsala airport action
Upp­sala
The uni­ver­si­ty town of Upp­sala north of Stock­holm does­n’t have a nice warm pas­sen­ger air­port to stage an action in. The com­pa­ny Upp­sala Air is doing its best to change this. They want to pro­vide a pleas­ant pas­sen­ger ter­mi­nal so that local cli­mate activists would have some­where warm to stage protests. In the best “make do with what you’ve got spir­it“, the Upp­sala activist cre­at­ed their own run­way in the city cen­ter to illus­trate how pleas­ant­ly an air­port can con­vert a bor­ing piece of coun­try­side into noisy pol­lut­ing cli­mate chal­leng­ing strip of asfalt.

This is just the start of the Swedish resis­tance against cli­mate crim­i­nal­i­ty. Watch this space for the next move. We think cars are also plane stu­pid. Hon­est!

http://klimatet.org/