Author: earthfirst

Totally Immoral — A Day of Action against Total Oil

The Total out of Bur­ma Day of Action took place on Sat­ur­day 24 Novem­ber. Protests were held at 36 Total petrol sta­tions across the UK. Some sta­tions were block­ad­ed and all the protests received great sup­port from the motor­ing and pedes­tri­an pub­lic.

The Total out of Bur­ma Day of Action took place on Sat­ur­day 24 Novem­ber. Protests were held at 36 Total petrol sta­tions across the UK. Some sta­tions were block­ad­ed and all the protests received great sup­port from the motor­ing and pedes­tri­an pub­lic.

On Sat­ur­day 24 Novem­ber, protests were held at 36 Total petrol sta­tions across the UK. The protests called upon Total Oil to pull out of Bur­ma and stop financ­ing the Burmese mil­i­tary regime. Protest loca­tions includ­ed Brad­ford, Brighton, Chatham (Kent), Cardiff, Guernsey, Lon­don, Man­ches­ter, Oxford and Vir­gina Water (Sur­rey).

Block­ades occurred at some sta­tions, with sev­er­al last­ing for an hour or more. In Cam­den, Lon­don 10 pro­tes­tors blocked the York Way Total sta­tion for an hour, while 15 stu­dents in Sur­rey block­ad­ed the Vir­ginia Water petrol sta­tion for more than 2 hours. Through­out the UK the protests received sup­port from motorists and pedes­tri­ans alike. Many dri­vers turned away from the petrol sta­tions upon see­ing the protests, some inform­ing pro­tes­tors that they would not to buy from Total again. At all the tar­get­ted petrol sta­tions busi­ness was notice­ably slow, and in some cas­es vir­tu­al­ly non-exis­tent, dur­ing the protests.

Paul Gold­ing, one of the pro­tes­tors, said, “Total’s invest­ment in Bur­ma is the largest in Europe. By pay­ing mil­lions of dol­lars to the Burmese dic­ta­tor­ship every year they are help­ing keep it in pow­er. If the West wants to help end the oppres­sion and ongo­ing human rights abus­es in Bur­ma, then quite sim­ply, we must stop our com­pa­nies from fund­ing the oppres­sors.”

In Lon­don, protests took place at 14 Total petrol sta­tions dur­ing the course of the day. The final protest in Lon­don attract­ed over 30 sup­port­ers and took place at the Bak­er Street petrol sta­tion on Maryle­bone Rd, NW1, from 4pm to 6pm. In Guernsey, cam­paign­ers protest­ed at all 14 Total sta­tions on the island, and pick­et­ed the main sta­tion on the island for 3 hours. [2]

The day of action was part of a grow­ing glob­al cam­paign call­ing on French oil com­pa­ny Total to stop fund­ing the Burmese jun­ta:

- Boy­cott: Last week, the glob­al inter­net advo­ca­cy web­site Avaaz.org launched a glob­al boy­cott of Total, as well as US oil com­pa­ny Chevron, for their pres­ence in Bur­ma – with near­ly 50,000 sign­ing up in ten days [3].
— Divest­ment: Euro­pean pen­sion funds with­drew almost £110m in invest­ments from Total in a mat­ter of days in protest at the com­pa­ny’s involve­ment in Bur­ma. [4]
— Pop­u­lar protests: Since Octo­ber week­ly protests have tak­en place in Lon­don out­side Total Oil’s offices. Oth­er spon­ta­neous protests have occurred out­side Total garages around the UK. [5]

Pho­tos are avail­able from http://www.flickr.com/photos/toastyoneuk

For more infor­ma­tion & pho­tos con­tact:
— Jonathan Steven­son on 07818 651124, jjjstevenson@fastmail.fm
— Paul Gold­ing on 07984 799 958 or paul@pellarin.demon.co.uk

NOTES FOR EDITORS:

[1] Total Oil has had a joint busi­ness ven­ture with the Burmese gov­ern­ment since 1992. Its major project is the Yadana gas project in south­ern Bur­ma, which earns the mil­i­tary regime hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars every year. Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s democ­ra­cy leader, has said that “Total is the biggest sup­port­er of the mil­i­tary regime in Bur­ma.” For more infor­ma­tion about Total Oil’s invest­ment in Bur­ma see the Bur­ma Cam­paign UK web­site: http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/total.php.

[2] A full list of protests on 24 Novem­ber, plus fur­ther infor­ma­tion about the cam­paign, can be found at: http://totaloutofburma.blogspot.com.

[3] See http://www.avaaz.org/en/burma_corporate/. Total’s prod­ucts in the UK include its net­work of petrol sta­tions, as well as such brands as Bostik (mak­ers of Blu-tack) and Spon­tex clean­ing prod­ucts.

[4] See http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0„2204744,00.html

[5] For reports, see http://totaloutofburma.blogspot.com

Buy Nothing Day reports — Leeds, Norwich, London, Edinburgh, Manchester x2…

The truth is out — buy­ing stuff does­n’t make you hap­py! Cen­tral Leeds today saw a free shop sprout from the pave­ment to dri­ve the mes­sage home.


The truth is out — buy­ing stuff does­n’t make you hap­py! Cen­tral Leeds today saw a free shop sprout from the pave­ment to dri­ve the mes­sage home.

Despite the cold and rain, a hardy group set up a free shop in Cen­tral Leeds this morn­ing, offer­ing burg­ers, books, records and clothes. The man­i­fes­ta­tion of peo­ple giv­ing stuff away in the mid­dle of con­sumer-land raised a few eye­brows, enter­tained the tired mass­es and got the idea across that buy­ing loads of use­less stuff is a futile activ­i­ty. The assem­bled free-shop­pers sang a vari­ety of sub­ver­tised car­ols and hand­ed out gift vouch­ers which were “redeemable for what­ev­er takes your fan­cy” includ­ing a pic­nic in the park or play­ing your own music. All in all, a grand day out in town.

—–

BNDNorwich
To mark Buy Noth­ing Day, 12 peo­ple from Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide held a Rat Race in the city cen­tre.

Activists cre­at­ed a mobile rat race that stopped off at the city’s busiest malls and high streets.

Peo­ple in rat cos­tumes hur­ried hith­er and thith­er between the edges of the rat race maze, built out of plac­ards read­ing Work Hard­er, Earn More Mon­ey, Buy More Things, Keep Going, while Fat Cats advised that hap­pi­ness was just around the cor­ner if the rats would only keep shop­ping!

At Cas­tle Mall the rats were flum­moxed by secu­ri­ty guards who forced them to move on; after all, the rats were only telling peo­ple to buy more stuff!

A thou­sand leaflets were hand­ed out (see below), and many passers-by expressed their sup­port.
BND Norwich flier front
BND Norwich flier back

—–

It seems that Trans­port For Lon­don have bowed to activist pres­sure and decid­ed to remove all the adverts from the dis­trict line.

I nev­er would have thought that TFL would have tak­en part in buy noth­ing day, but it seems even Red Ken want­ed to join in the fun.

A group of Space Hijack­er agents were trav­el­ling across Lon­don when we spot­ted a TFL dec­o­ra­tion team, swift­ly turn­ing all of the adverts on the Dis­trict Line around so that their blank sides were fac­ing out.
Ad-free Tube action
They then post­ed up offi­cial Lon­dON stick­ers pro­claim­ing:

“As part of TFL’s £10 Bil­lion invest­ment pro­gram, Lon­don Under­ground are remov­ing all adverts from trains to improve the ambi­ence of car­riages and the over­all trav­el­ling expe­ri­ence of pas­sen­gers.”
Ad-free Tube poster
We can only applaud this bold move against the con­stant cor­po­rate assault on our sens­es.

The team we saw doing it were very quick, man­ag­ing to swap around entire car­riages of adverts in less than the time it took the train to trav­el one stop. Infact so impressed were our agents that we kept an eye on the trains and spot­ted the advert free car­riages sev­er­al days after.

On the trains we over­heard one of the pas­sen­gers ask­ing “but what are we going to read?”, the TFL spokesper­son replied “You could try talk­ing to each oth­er?”

Three cheers for TFL 😉

–

Half-price agents80’s slo­gan t‑shirts are back in fash­ion! A group of Space Hijack­er agents decid­ed to wear the very lat­ests trend set­ting t‑shirts on a ‘Buy Noth­ing Day’ jaunt around Lon­don.

A team of Space Hijack­ers secret agents head­ed into Knights­bridge in Lon­don on Sat­ur­day to cel­e­brate Buy Noth­ing Day, a day of cor­po­rate chain­store chaos.

Wear­ing the very lat­est ‘Nu Rave’ slo­gan t‑shirts our intre­pid agents decid­ed to go and have a look around some of Lon­don’s most exclu­sive stores. Our first stop was Har­rords, and after avoid­ing the piles of fer­rar­i’s, porsches and mer­cedes, we man­aged to get instore and up to the top floor.

Our trendy “EVERYTHING IN STORE HALF PRICE TODAY” t‑shirts cer­tain­ly raised some eye­brows from the fash­ion con­scious cus­tomers, sev­er­al even came up and start­ed ask­ing us for direc­tions etc. Help­ful and polite as always we direct­ed cus­tomers, tidied up messy rails of clothes and gen­er­al­ly played the part of good mem­bers of soci­ety as we walked around the store.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly the secu­ri­ty teams seemed to have oth­er ideas, and promt­ly attempt­ed to round us up and eject us from the store! Cries of the fact that our shirts were the very lat­est kather­ine ham­nett design­er shirts, seemed to fall on deaf ears, and we were told that we may be arrest­ed if we entered the store again!

Oh well, nev­er mind, onto Guc­ci and Louis Vuit­ton for some design­er win­dow shop­ping. Enter­ing the Guc­ci bou­tique in Knights­brige we quick­ly found out that there were more of us than actu­al staff present, which was an enter­tain­ing prospect. How­ev­er, in a move which was obvi­ous­ly down to brand envy, we were once again eject­ed. The secu­ri­ty even fol­lowed us across the road and into Louis Vuit­ton call­ing out “Don’t let them in, it’s a prank!” as we entered the store. Why the cheek of it!

After look­ing around and help­ing cus­tomers choose their lug­gage we decid­ed to leave the store and wel­come peo­ple inside from the streets. How­ev­er the weath­er was get­ting rather nip­py by this point, so after a swift drink we decid­ed to head into Oxford Street and onto Nike Town and Top Shop.

The secu­ri­ty here was rather oafish to say the least, with three of our agents being dragged down to a spe­cial Top Shop instore prison which they have behind the coun­ters. Thank­ful­ly after threats of sue­ing for wrong­ful impris­on­ment, and the fact we had a lawyer and crim­i­nal bar­ris­ter amongst our ranks things were soon put right.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly after all of the excite­ment of deal­ing with the grumpy secu­ri­ty, we for­got to actu­al­ly buy any con­sumer goods. Oh well, best go back next year 😉

http://www.spacehijackers.org

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Buy Noth­ing Day — Edin­burgh Action

Today was Inter­na­tion­al Buy Noth­ing day. Activists took to the streets all across the globe to try and per­suade those who can afford to live con­sumerist lifestyles to think about how much they need all the things they buy.

In the run up to the Christ­mas shop-a-thon it is easy for many peo­ple to for­get that the best things in life are free. Do we real­ly need those things we buy? Is spend­ing mon­ey on use­less crap the only way to show loved ones how much we care for them? Of course not!
Edinburgh Buy Nothing Day 3

Clowns from Ram­pant Reekies, the Edin­burgh gag­gle of C.I.R.C.A, played games, danced and were gen­er­al­ly sil­ly on the streets, enter­tain­ing peo­ple with­out sell­ing prod­ucts. They also joy­ful­ly invad­ed shops, includ­ing HNM, GAP, BHS and Schu, and “brought mirth and mer­ri­ment to the dazed monot­o­ny of Christ­mas con­sump­tion.”
Edinburgh Buy Nothing Day 1

A Food Not Bombs stall gave out free food in the form of pea soup, banana smooth­ies, bread and apple pie. Many shop­pers walked straight past the hot-dog stall and had some love­ly veg­an soup for lunch instead. A chalk mes­sage on the pave­ment read “there is such a thing as a free lunch!”
Edinburgh Buy Nothing Day 2

A mobile Free Shop set up on the street to give things away for free. Many peo­ple came and found use­ful items to take away, or gifts for peo­ple which they were oth­er­wise going to buy. One man said sim­ple “this is the best thing I’ve ever seen” and a pass­ing woman exclaimed “I’ve seen jum­ble sales, but nev­er this!” A pass­ing Police Offi­cer even inquired if there was any mobile phones, as he was going to buy one that day but could­n’t now he knew it was Buy Noth­ing Day.

A per­son claim­ing to be from Soci­ety for a Trans­for­ma­tion to Imag­i­na­tion Not Cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion (S.T.I.N.C) approached the stalls and informed the BNDers that they had released non-harm­ful stink bombs in a fast-food stores on Princes Street to “make it clear — Cap­i­tal­ism stinks”, although this remains unver­i­fied.

The recep­tion from passers by was gen­er­al­ly quite good. While some did­n’t under­stand the point of it, many skep­tics came and had a chat a left with an under­stand­ing of what Buy Noth­ing Day is about, along with some free stuff. Hope­ful­ly some shop­pers will decide to make gifts for Christ­mas instead of pay­ing some­one else to.

Many involved real­ly enjoyed the day and felt that it was effec­tive, so look out for more Food Not Bombs activ­i­ty in Edin­burgh.

The For­est Cafe (www.theforest.org.uk) is hav­ing a week long Free Shop upstairs begin­ning on the 14th of Decem­ber.

—

On Sat­ur­day the 24th Novem­ber Rhythms of Resis­tance Man­ches­ter and Man­ches­ter Cli­mate Action (MCA) held a free stall where a wide range of things from plants, to clothes were well received. Even a cou­ple of police offi­cers joined in.

The two groups joined in the ‘Rein­state Karen’ demo which began in the Peace Gar­dens and marched through Man­ches­ter in sup­port of free speech and free health care.

Sev­er­al folks then went to the Arn­dale Cen­tre and released a ban­ner attached to pink heli­um bal­loons, which read: “Shop­ping Costs the Earth.” It float­ed up to the roof, right next to the giant Christ­mas Tree, to remind peo­ple of the social and envi­ron­men­tal expense of pur­chas­ing.

In the Traf­ford Cen­tre anoth­er activist from MCA dis­rupt­ed shop­ping, in protest at the mas­sive amount of car jour­neys it encour­ages in the name of prof­it.

For more info about free stuff and links check out www.freemanchester.orgShopping Costs the Earth

==

Activists from Man­ches­ter Cli­mate Action evac­u­at­ed var­i­ous parts of The Traf­ford Cen­tre dur­ing this years buy noth­ing day, Sat­ur­day 24th of Novem­ber. The sprawl­ing palace to point­less con­sumerism owned by the £2bn Empire of Peel Hold­ings, the cli­mate crim­i­nals who bought you such delights as Liv­er­pool, Durham Tees Val­ley, Robin Hood Don­cast­er Sheffield and Sheffield City Air­ports also pub­licly opposed the Man­ches­ter con­ges­tion charge. Cam­ou­flaged cova­lent cam­paign­ers in their finest design­er labels moved stealth­ily amongst the madding crowds whilst acti­vat­ing fire alarms and inter­rupt­ing the dai­ly toil of tedious trans­ac­tions.

Alarms in the main malls cov­er cer­tain zones and not the whole com­plex. They are silent for 30 sec­onds, sound­ing only in the secu­ri­ty office. This leads to lots of peo­ple in red jack­ets run­ning around look­ing con­cerned. When the alarms did sound it was accom­pa­nied by a mes­sage over the P.A telling peo­ple to ignore it and approach a mem­ber of staff if con­cerned. How­ev­er, sound­ing the Alarms by the exits of the large depart­ment stores such as Sel­f­ridges and John Lewis leads to the entire shop being evacuated……Oh dear!

Bristol Cycle Circus 8th December

Join a colour­ful crit­i­cal mass of peo­ple and ped­dlers of all shapes and sizes and let our cycling cir­cus upstage and reveal Bris­tol’s cli­mate crim­i­nals.

Roll up Roll Up:

Call­ing all : bicy­cle trick­sters, bike pow­ered giz­mos, jug­glers, ban­ner mak­ers, poets, sto­ry­tellers, mobile musi­cians, per­form­ers.

Join a colour­ful crit­i­cal mass of peo­ple and ped­dlers of all shapes and sizes and let our cycling cir­cus upstage and reveal Bris­tol’s cli­mate crim­i­nals.

Roll up Roll Up:

Call­ing all : bicy­cle trick­sters, bike pow­ered giz­mos, jug­glers, ban­ner mak­ers, poets, sto­ry­tellers, mobile musi­cians, per­form­ers.

Lets bring the real­i­ty and caus­es of cli­mate change to our streets..

Meet: Col­lege Green, 1pm
8th Decem­ber

Inter­na­tion­al day of action on cli­mate change

We want to take cre­ative action on cli­mate chaos! We invite you to join us on our Cycle Cir­cus where togeth­er we will reveal the cli­mate crim­i­nals with their con­fi­dence tricks and green wash.

Our first stage will be The Roy­al Bank of Scot­land where last month saw 30 actions in the UK on this biggest investor of oil and gas projects, they haven’t gone away and nor have we.

The next stage is up to us all. Talk, share ideas, plan ‚pre­pare, turn up, trans­form!

Cli­mate change is the biggest issue of our time effect­ing every­one and most of all the poor. We can take back con­trol togeth­er, cre­ate the world we want to live in and have fun along the way! Lets take the stage of those who green wash our streets and our minds to make us think its all bet­ter. Pic­ture this, peo­ple tak­ing to the streets because enough is enough, no more exploita­tion! Our plan­et’s on the brink of eco­log­i­cal cri­sis and we won’t let cor­po­ra­tions get away with our world.

Lets halt the infra­struc­ture of more fos­sil fuel projects lock­ing us into a future of cli­mate chaos and that offer big buck high tech non-solu­tions.

Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide is an open group mak­ing col­lec­tive action ded­i­cat­ed to tack­ling the root caus­es of cli­mate chaos and cre­at­ing cli­mate jus­tice. We want to invite peo­ple to join this inter­na­tion­al day of action on cli­mate change.

Buy Nothing Day – 24th November 2007 — Steal Something Day

The last Sat­ur­day of Novem­ber sees Inter­na­tion­al Buy Noth­ing Day tak­ing place in many cor­ners of the globe; par­tic­u­lar­ly the afflu­ent cor­ners!

Steal Something Day
The last Sat­ur­day of Novem­ber sees Inter­na­tion­al Buy Noth­ing Day tak­ing place in many cor­ners of the globe; par­tic­u­lar­ly the afflu­ent cor­ners!

This year Buy Noth­ing Day will be marked in Birm­ing­ham city cen­tre by a num­ber of activ­i­ties aimed at rais­ing the pro­file of a range of aspects asso­ci­at­ed with mass con­sumerism.

Sev­er­al groups will be putting togeth­er Buy Noth­ing Day themed stalls, dis­plays and events, includ­ing a San­ta Claus parade, Free Shops, Free Food, Bicy­cle-pow­ered Free Drinks and (free) Music.

If you have any­thing to give away for free, be it pos­ses­sions, ideas or skills then leave your mon­ey at home and get out­side to enjoy a con­sump­tion free day.
Buy Noth­ing Day aims to chal­lenge con­sumer lifestyles on envi­ron­men­tal, human rights and polit­i­cal grounds, but if you have oth­er rea­sons to “Stop Shop­ping” then Sat­ur­day 24th would be an ide­al time to tell the world about them.

—

Come down to the peace gar­dens in man­ches­ter at 11 am. There will be a free stall and loads of info and music etc. Rhythms of Resis­tance band have organ­ised this plus a cou­ple of small tables and a web­site for free things — all addi­tions wel­come.
www.freemanchester.org .In the after­noon oth­er things are planned for after the Karen Reiss­man demo so it would be great to see you all any­time from eleven.

Any free stuff or info about free events or peo­ple want­i­ng to do mini work­shops would be very wel­come.

—

Sat­ur­day 24th Novem­ber. Get stuff you want for free! Give your old stuff away!
Don’t throw away things that could be use­ful to others…freecycle them! Bring things to give away, and pick up some­thing for your­self or for Christ­mas gifts…for free!
10.30am to 12.30pm The Southville Cen­tre, Beauley Road, Bris­tol BS3 1QG.
Event organ­ised by Tran­si­tion Bris­tol www.transitionbristol.org & Freecy­cle Ash­ton Bed­min­ster & Southville
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/freecycleashtonbedminstersouthville
This event coin­cides with Nation­al Buy Noth­ing Day
www.buynothingday.co.uk

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Bristol Buy Nothing Day undead posterBristol Buy Nothing Day undead 1
Buy Noth­ing Day: Con­sumer Zom­bie Flash­mob

Broad­mead (junc­tion of Mer­chant St and Broad­mead), Bris­tol, 2pm, Sat­ur­day 24th Novem­ber

This Novem­ber, envi­ron­men­tal­ists, social activists and con­cerned cit­i­zens in as many as 65 coun­tries will hit the streets for a 24-hour con­sumer fast in cel­e­bra­tion of the 15th annu­al Buy Noth­ing Day.

Fea­tured in recent years by the likes of CNN, MSNBC, Wired, the BBC, USA Today, The Age and the CBC, the inter­na­tion­al event has been gain­ing main­stream momen­tum as the cli­mate cri­sis dri­ves aver­age peo­ple to seek out green­er alter­na­tives to unre­strained con­sump­tion.

Timed to coin­cide with one of the busiest shop­ping days on the retail cal­en­dar, as well as the unof­fi­cial start of the inter­na­tion­al hol­i­day-shop­ping sea­son, Buy Noth­ing Day has tak­en many shapes, from relaxed fam­i­ly out­ings, to free, non-com­mer­cial street par­ties, to polit­i­cal­ly charged pub­lic protests. Any­one can take part pro­vid­ed they spend a day with­out spend­ing.

In past years, street activists have proven par­tic­u­lar­ly imag­i­na­tive in their cel­e­bra­tions, bring­ing zom­bie march­es, cred­it-card cut-ups, and shopa­holic clin­ics to malls and pub­lic squares in an effort to expose the envi­ron­men­tal and social con­se­quences of First World over-con­sump­tion.

Kalle Lasn is the co-founder of the Adbusters Media Foun­da­tion, the orga­ni­za­tion respon­si­ble for launch­ing Buy Noth­ing Day as a year­ly, glob­al event. He explains that while most par­tic­i­pants used to see the day sim­ply as an escape from the mar­ket­ing mind games and fran­tic con­sumerism that have come to char­ac­ter­ize mod­ern life, the focus has since shift­ed in light of the new polit­i­cal mood sur­round­ing cli­mate change.

“So much empha­sis,” he notes, “has been placed on buy­ing car­bon off­sets and com­pact flu­o­res­cent light­bulbs and hybrid cars that we are los­ing sight of the core cause of our envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems: we con­sume far too much.”

“Buy Noth­ing Day isn’t just about chang­ing your rou­tine for one day. It’s about start­ing a last­ing lifestyle com­mit­ment. With over six bil­lion peo­ple on the plan­et, it is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the most afflu­ent – the upper 20% that con­sumes 80% of the world’s resources – to set out on a new path.”

Last year, Bris­tol Uni­ver­si­ty and UWE Peo­ple and Plan­et activists worked togeth­er to cre­ate a per­for­ma­tive and cre­ative way to cel­e­brate Buy Noth­ing Day, bring­ing the undead to the streets of broad­mead to par­o­dy the way in which first world over con­sump­tion is unques­tion­ing­ly march­ing towards eco­log­i­cal and social dis­as­ter.

This year on Novem­ber 24th join the zom­bie con­sumers as they stag­ger and stum­ble around Bris­tol’s soul­less retail dis­trict in an attempt to make peo­ple think about their con­sumer habits in an enter­tain­ing and enjoy­able way.

Rumours abound of pos­si­ble undead orches­tras and ghoul­ish cir­cus per­form­ers…

But as is the case with any flash­mob… no one quite knows what will hap­pen until it emerges and self-organ­is­es itself into exis­tence.

For videos doc­u­ment­ing last year’s BND actions check out

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wlMMaLqxXng

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wlMMaLqxXng
—

Steal Some­thing Day for the orig­i­nal call-out and cri­tique of Buy Noth­ing Day

Protesters invade the Aviation Emissions Trading Summit 2007

22.11.2007
For imme­di­ate release:
Pro­test­ers invade the Avi­a­tion Emis­sions Trad­ing Sum­mit 2007.

Aviation Emissions Trading Summit
22.11.2007
For imme­di­ate release:
Pro­test­ers invade the Avi­a­tion Emis­sions Trad­ing Sum­mit 2007.

— video and pho­tos to fol­low lat­er today.

Lon­don Ris­ing Tide today inter­rupt­ed del­e­gates at the , held at Sel­f­ridges Hotel, cen­tral Lon­don. They inter­rupt­ed pro­ceed­ings with an impromp­tu speech and pre­sen­ta­tion, of a box of atmos­phere. Free shares for pre Emis­sions Trad­ing Scheme atmos­phere were also giv­en out to each del­e­gate at the con­fer­ence.

Pro­test­ers from Lon­don Ris­ing Tide were at the con­fer­ence today to high­light the huge risk of accel­er­at­ed cli­mate change through flights.

This scheme will allow the indus­try to claim envi­ron­men­tal cre­den­tials when in fact stop­ping air­port expan­sion and reduc­ing flights is what is required. The fact that these per­mits will be auc­tioned at a bar­gain price will fur­ther add to the lack of impact that this scheme will have on the avi­a­tion indus­try.

ETS is an easy way for the super pol­lut­ing avi­a­tion indus­try to cov­er them­selves with green­wash.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion con­tact
http://www.londonrisingtide.org.uk/
07708 794665

The back of the shares to the atmos­phere read:
We here­by grant you the right to make great per­son­al prof­it from the destruc­tion of the human race of which you are a part and from who’s exis­tence and mis­for­tune you have ben­e­fit­ed great­ly.

We grant you the right to own the air that we breath and to fill it with car­cino­gens and green house gasses.

If our gov­ern­ment does not sub­sidise you with a suf­fi­cient vol­ume of the air in which to store your pol­lu­tants, we grant you the right to buy farm­ing land and nat­ur­al for­est habi­tats from less for­tu­nate peo­ples, to evict them from their homes and to replace them with mono­cul­ture plan­ta­tions of euca­lyp­tus and man­go. We grant you the good for­tune to be too busy mak­ing mon­ey to find out about the con­se­quences of your actions for your fel­low human beings.

We grant you the right to avoid at all costs the invest­ment of your hard earned mon­ey into tech­nolo­gies free from fos­sil fuels. We rec­om­mend you spend lav­ish­ly to lob­by gov­ern­ment and do not get ahead of the game and out­smart your peers instead by devel­op­ing safe, car­bon-free meth­ods of trans­port.

May you for­ev­er con­tin­ue to blame your peers, your share­hold­ers, the pas­sen­gers, for the deci­sions you play your part in enact­ing. May you nev­er think to reduce your flights, to take a pos­i­tive action, to play your part in avert­ing dis­as­ter for your fel­low beings.

Car­bon Trad­ing. Not a way to tack­le cli­mate change.

www.risingtide.org.uk

Bilston Glen Sunday Free Cafe and Outdoor Cinema

You are invit­ed to the Sun­day Free Cafe, Last Sun­day of EVERY month

Next café — Sun­day 25th Novem­ber
Our usu­al free food, acousitc music, and spe­cial­ly this sun­day…
Bil­ston Glen OUTDOOR cin­e­ma!

You are invit­ed to the Sun­day Free Cafe, Last Sun­day of EVERY month

Next café — Sun­day 25th Novem­ber
Our usu­al free food, acousitc music, and spe­cial­ly this sun­day…
Bil­ston Glen OUTDOOR cin­e­ma!
We’ll be show­ing some films about the Span­ish Civ­il War and the Ura­ni­um min­ing in lap­land. Maybe more films too… if you want to watch some­thing then please bring it along!
See you in the woods!

see our

TOTALitarian Oil Out of Burma — demos this week

This Sat­ur­day (24 Novem­ber) is the UK-wide “TOTAL Out of Bur­ma” Day of Action, sup­port­ed by Bur­ma Cam­paign UK.

Total 24 NovemberThis Sat­ur­day (24 Novem­ber) is the UK-wide “TOTAL Out of Bur­ma” Day of Action, sup­port­ed by Bur­ma Cam­paign UK.

There are 16 con­firmed protests, with sev­er­al more await­ing con­fir­ma­tion. It’s not too late to organ­ise your own protest. Or you can join one or more of the protests list­ed below. And in Lon­don there will be a protest finale at the Total sta­tion on Maryle­bone Road (near Bak­er Street tube) from 4pm til 6pm, after which there will be a par­ty. All are wel­come.

And don’t for­get our week­ly protests on Wednes­day and Thurs­day.

**This week only there will be an addi­tion­al protest on WEDNESDAY EVENING at WEMBLEY PARK TOTAL GARAGE, to coin­cide with the Eng­land v Croa­t­ia foot­ball match at Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um**.

————————–
UPCOMING PROTESTS

Wednes­day 21 Novem­ber
8.30am — 10.30am
Protest at Total Oil HQ, 33 Cavendish Square, Lon­don W1G 0PW
near­est tube: Oxford Cir­cus
map: http://tinyurl.com/2oardl

Wednes­day 21 Novem­ber
5.30pm — 7.30pm
Protest at Wem­b­ley Park Total petrol sta­tion, Bridge Road, Wem­b­ley, Lon­don
near­est tube: Wem­b­ley Park

Direc­tions: Turn right at the bot­tom of the steps out of Wem­b­ley Park tube (Met­ro­pol­i­tan line, 20 min­utes from Bak­er St) onto the main road (Bridge Road). The Total garage is high­ly vis­i­ble straight ahead, on the big traf­fic island oppo­site the retail park — 3 min­utes walk.

Thurs­day 22 Novem­ber
5.00pm — 7.00pm
Protest at Total petrol sta­tion, Dorset House, 170–172 Maryle­bone Rd, Lon­don NW1 5AR
near­est tube: Bak­er Street
map: http://tinyurl.com/2zg4qf

Sat­ur­day 24 Novem­ber
TOTAL OUT OF BURMA NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION

A day of action around the UK call­ing for Total Oil to stop fund­ing the Burmese mil­i­tary regime and pull out of Bur­ma. Protests are being organ­ised at petrol sta­tions around the UK. For an up-to-date list of protest loca­tions, con­tact details and details of how to organ­ise your own protest, go to
http://totaloutofburma.blogspot.com.

——————————————————–
1. Con­firmed protests on Sat 24 Nov
——————————————————–

BRADFORD
Vig­il against Total
5pm-7pm
meet at Cen­te­nary Square, Brad­ford

BRIGHTON
Kemp Town Total sta­tion
Meet at the Pavil­lion Bus Stop at 11.30am

GUERNSEY
Protests will be hap­pen­ing at Total sta­tions across the island.
con­tact: Kev on burma@landofkev.com or 07911 770 017

LONDON — Bak­er Street
4pm-6pm
Dorset House Total sta­tion, 170–172 Maryle­bone Rd, West­min­ster NW1 5AR
near­est tube: Bak­er Street
con­tact: totaloutofburma@gmail.com
(note: this is the final Lon­don protest of the day — all wel­come, with a par­ty to fol­low)

LONDON — Cam­den
from 11.30am
Cam­den Town Total sta­tion, 109–113 York Way, Isling­ton N7 9QE
near­est tube: Cale­don­ian Rd or Ken­tish Town
con­tact: Jonathan on jjjstevenson@fastmail.fm or 07818 651 124

LONDON — Chiswick
2pm-4pm
West Four Total station,137 Chiswick High Road, Chiswick W4 2ED
near­est tube: Turn­ham Green
con­tact: totaloutofburma@gmail.com

LONDON — Ham­mer­smith
11am-2pm
Raven Total sta­tion, 372 Gold­hawk Road, Ham­mer­smith W6 0XF
near­est tube: Stam­ford Brook
con­tact: totaloutofburma@gmail.com

LONDON — Ken­sal Green
1pm-3pm
Ken­sal Total sta­tion, 904 Har­row Rd, Ken­sal Green NW10 5JU
con­tact: Steph at fifth_state@yahoo.co.uk

LONDON — Kil­burn
12.30pm‑1.45pm
Kil­burn Total sta­tion, 409 Kil­burn High Rd, Kil­burn NW6 7QG
near­est tube: Kil­burn
con­tact: Dan at dvies­nik [at] yahoo.co.uk

LONDON — Manor Park
1pm- 3pm
Manor Park Total sta­tion, 893 Rom­ford Rd, East Ham E12 5JT
near­est tube: East Ham or (rail) Manor Park
con­tact: Paul on paul@riseup.net or 07939 975 085

LONDON — Newham
10.30am-12.30pm
High St North Total sta­tion, 409–419 High St North, Newham E12 6TL
near­est tube: East Ham
con­tact: Paul on paul@riseup.net or 07939 975 085

LONDON — South­wark
2pm-4pm
Thomas Beck­ett Total sta­tion, 233–247 Old Kent Road, South­wark SE1 5LU
near­est tube: Ele­phant & Cas­tle or Bor­ough
con­tact: Danae on papakura2000@hotmail.com or 07731 956 415

LONDON — Whitechapel
10am-12noon
Val­lance Total sta­tion, 112 Val­lance Rd, Tow­er Ham­lets E1 5BW
near­est tube: Whitechapel
con­tact: Danae on papakura2000@hotmail.com or 07731 956 415

LONDON — Willes­den
11am-12.15pm
Willes­den Lane Total sta­tion, 290 Willes­den Lane, Willes­den NW2 5HS
near­est tube: Willes­den Green
con­tact: Dan at dvies­nik [at] yahoo.co.uk

OXFORD
from 9.30am
Cow­ley Total sta­tion, 44 Gars­ing­ton Road, Cow­ley, Oxford OX4 2LG
con­tact: Den­nis at dhambridge@btinternet.com or 07804 433 602

ST ALBANS
meets out­side Bar­clays Bank, St Peters Street at 11am
mov­ing on to Total garage tbc at 12noon.
con­tact: totaloutofburma@gmail.com

——————————————————–
2. Protests to be con­firmed
——————————————————–

LONDON — Bermond­sey
LONDON — Haringey
LONDON — Peck­ham
LONDON — Waltham For­est
MANCHESTER
WREXHAM

If you inter­est­ed in attend­ing any of these protests please email totaloutofburma@gmail.com

——————————————————–
3. Details of how to get involved
——————————————————–

There are two ways to take part in the day of action:

1. Join a garage protest (see list above). You can get in touch with the con­tact list­ed or you can just turn up on the day and offer your sup­port. As protests are con­firmed we’ll add them to the blog: http://www.totaloutofburma.blogspot.com.

2. Organ­ise your own action — there are sev­er­al hun­dred TOTAL petrol sta­tions in the UK to choose from. Fol­low these three easy steps:

a. Find out where your local TOTAL garage is by using the handy Ser­vice Sta­tion Find­er at http://www.total.co.uk or check the google map of UK TOTAL garages being cre­at­ed at http://tinyurl.com/2ftvdf.

b. Get some sim­ple visu­al mate­ri­als togeth­er, plus some leaflets or peti­tions, and pub­li­cise it to your friends, con­tacts and local press. If you want the details list­ed pub­licly (e.g. by email and on the blog) email them to totaloutofburma@gmail.com or call Paul on 07939 975 085.

c. Hold the protest! Take some pic­tures, post a report on Indymedia.org.uk and send the link to totaloutofburma@gmail.com. Plus write to TOTAL’s head office telling them what you’ve been up to.

Basic plac­ard designs, peti­tions, leaflets and a mod­el press release are down­load­able from: http://www.totaloutofburma.blogspot.com.

————————–
For more infor­ma­tion go to:
http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/total.html
http://totaloutofburma.blogspot.com
Join the face­book group: “Get Total Oil out of Bur­ma”

Fur­ther Infor­ma­tion
————————————-
Total out of Bur­ma blog
http://totaloutofburma.blogspot.com

Face­book group — Get Total Oil out of Bur­ma
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6833508763

Bur­ma Cam­paign UK’s info on Total Oil
http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/total.html

Thanks again for sup­port­ing the call to get Total Oil out of Bur­ma.

Climate Change crew shut down Simcoa plant near Bunbury

Novem­ber 20, 2007 — A group of activists con­cerned about Cli­mate Change occu­pied the Sim­coa sil­i­con plant at Kemer­ton, 160kms south of Perth, for sev­en hours on Mon­day…

Simcoa action 1Simcoa action 2Novem­ber 20, 2007 — A group of activists con­cerned about Cli­mate Change occu­pied the Sim­coa sil­i­con plant at Kemer­ton, 160kms south of Perth, for sev­en hours on Mon­day…

SIMCOA ACTION — Two peo­ple locked them­selves onto a con­vey­or belt of the plant, with two oth­ers on the gate — forc­ing the clo­sure of oper­a­tions.

Details are sketchy at this stage, but it seems two of the group were charged with Tres­pass and will appear in the Bun­bury Cour­t­house this Fri­day at 9.30. They say they will both plead guilty and ask that sup­port­ers gath­er at the Cour­t­house for poten­tial fur­ther non-vio­lent direct actions against Sim­coa.

A spokesper­son for the activists said the group forced the sil­i­con plant to shut down for sev­en hours forc­ing 160 work­ers to stop work. The group say Sim­coa’s for­est destruc­tion equals cli­mate chaos.

The Japan­ese-owned com­pa­ny Sim­coa has an annu­al allo­ca­tion of 150,000 tonnes of “3rd grade” jar­rah logs for mak­ing into char­coal which is used in the process of mak­ing sil­i­con. The Labor gov­ern­ment intends to con­tin­ue sup­ply­ing Sim­coa with jar­rah. At present the gov­ern­ment lets Sim­coa have this jar­rah at around $4/tonne.

Sub­sti­tutes that Sim­coa could use, like plan­ta­tion tim­ber can­not com­pete with this price and as a result jar­rah is still being plun­dered from our forests at alarm­ing rates. Sim­coa also con­sumes 8% of W.A.‘s elec­tric­i­ty, at very reduced rates!

The jar­rah logs, which could be used by saw mills to val­ue-added the tim­ber, are turned into wood­chips. Then the whole lot is turned into char­coal to make sil­i­con.

Woman’s protest halts phone mast

19th Novem­ber 2007
A woman has spent the day in a mud­dy hole out­side her house to pre­vent work­men build­ing a mobile phone mast.

Ruth Tay­lor beat the work­men to the site in Charl­ton Road, Keyn­sham, just before 0800 GMT and stood in the way.

19th Novem­ber 2007
A woman has spent the day in a mud­dy hole out­side her house to pre­vent work­men build­ing a mobile phone mast.

Ruth Tay­lor beat the work­men to the site in Charl­ton Road, Keyn­sham, just before 0800 GMT and stood in the way.

Bath and North East Som­er­set Coun­cil (B&NES) refused plan­ning per­mis­sion for the mast, but failed to tell O2 in the reg­u­lat­ed time.

The coun­cil has apol­o­gised and O2 has said it would meet with res­i­dents on Tues­day to dis­cuss their con­cerns.

I’m not con­fi­dent we’ll stop it alto­geth­er but delight­ed that we have stalled them
Ruth Tay­lor

Work had begun to pre­pare the site for the 13m (42.6 ft) mast but Ruth Tay­lor decid­ed to take on the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions firm.

“The work­men turned up at about five to eight so I threw on my wellies which I’ve had ready by the door, dashed out here and got here first,” she said.

When they saw Mrs Tay­lor the work­men went away.

B&NES had 56 days to tell O2 the firm had been refused plan­ning approval but it took them 57 days.

Ongo­ing nego­ti­a­tions

In a state­ment the coun­cil said: “The coun­cil is aware of the con­cern that fail­ure to noti­fy O2 with­in the allot­ted time has caused to local res­i­dents and apol­o­gis­es for this.

“The coun­cil will as a mat­ter of urgency con­tin­ue to liaise with the oper­a­tors and oth­er par­ties to seek to resolve this sit­u­a­tion.

“Nego­ti­a­tions about a pos­si­ble re-sit­ing of the mast to River­side at some point in the future are ongo­ing.

“How­ev­er the site is not owned by the coun­cil or O2, and any deci­sion about this will need to be made by the site own­er.”

“There are bet­ter places that the coun­cil should have looked at and O2 should be look­ing at and it just is not right,” said Mrs Tay­lor.

“I’m not con­fi­dent we’ll stop it alto­geth­er but delight­ed that we have stalled them,” she said.

O2 said they must build the mast due to pres­sure from the gov­ern­ment and the pub­lic to boost cov­er­age.

Video of group of res­i­dents meet­ing O2 at site

Coal blockades Down Under — train & power plant

19th Novem­ber, 2007
Grass­roots cli­mate change action group Ris­ing Tide has block­ad­ed a coal train on its way into the world’s biggest coal export port, at Koor­a­gang Island in New­cas­tle Har­bour. No trains are able to enter Koor­a­gang Coal Ter­mi­nal because of the block­ade.

Australia coal train banner
Australia coal train lock-on19th Novem­ber, 2007
Grass­roots cli­mate change action group Ris­ing Tide has block­ad­ed a coal train on its way into the world’s biggest coal export port, at Koor­a­gang Island in New­cas­tle Har­bour. No trains are able to enter Koor­a­gang Coal Ter­mi­nal because of the block­ade.

The block­ade comes just two days after the Unit­ed Nations’ Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change (IPCC) released a report warn­ing that the effects of cli­mate change will be worse than pre­vi­ous­ly antic­i­pat­ed, and five days before the Fed­er­al Elec­tion.

Spokesper­son for Ris­ing Tide, Georgina Woods, said, “Our Gov­ern­ments have failed us: both major par­ties are ter­mi­nal­ly addict­ed to coal. The sit­u­a­tion is dread­ful and we have been forced to take this action because the lead­er­ship of this coun­try is moral­ly bank­rupt.”

The IPCC reports that two degree Cel­sius warm­ing of the globe will put about one third of species at risk of extinc­tion. Bil­lions of peo­ple are pre­dict­ed to be at risk of water scarci­ty.

“There is no longer any room for vac­il­la­tion: we must act, and that is what we are doing today.”

“When faced with an over­whelm­ing prob­lem and a Gov­ern­ment unwill­ing or unable to take action to solve the prob­lem, it is the duty of all cit­i­zens to take action on the community’s behalf.

“There is no way Aus­tralia can con­tin­ue pass­ing the buck on cli­mate change. We are the biggest per capi­ta emit­ter of green­house gas­es and the biggest coal exporter in the world.

“Hun­dreds of com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers have pledged to take direct-action to pre­vent the expan­sion of the coal indus­try.

“We are tak­ing action today on behalf of our chil­dren, and for all those species that will be pushed to the extinc­tion by cli­mate change. It is uncon­scionable for the Gov­ern­ment and the coal indus­try to con­tin­ue prof­it­ing from accel­er­at­ing green­house gas emis­sions in this way.”

Con­tact: (02) 4926 1641
http://www.risingtide.org.au/

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

Australia coal power plant painting
Activists shut down NSW coal pow­er plant

Novem­ber 15, 2007 — Ear­ly this morn­ing Green­peace activists occu­pied the Mun­morah coal-fired pow­er sta­tion. A Green­peace activist push­es a but­ton to stop the con­vey­or belt. It’s time to push the emer­gency switch on coal…
Aus­tralia — Ear­ly this morn­ing 15 Green­peace activists occu­pied and took peace­ful direct action to shut down a coal-fired pow­er plant on the NSW Cen­tral Coast. The occu­pa­tion was to protest against John Howard and Kevin Rud­d’s dis­mal cli­mate change poli­cies, which will not stop increas­ing green­house emis­sions.

Green­peace is demand­ing that both major par­ties com­mit to deep cuts to Australia’s green­house gas pol­lu­tion in the next decade, which means switch­ing from coal fired pow­er to clean­er and smarter ener­gy use.

9.45AM — The pow­er sta­tion has been evac­u­at­ed and is shut­ting down due to our occu­pa­tion. Sev­en activists have been arrest­ed and eight are still inside the plant. The activists have shut down the coal-feed con­vey­or belt and paint­ed the mes­sage “Coal Kills” on the roof of the sta­tion. They have also deployed a ban­ner say­ing “Cli­mate change starts here.” Two activists are also hang­ing off the roof dis­play­ing cli­mate change mes­sages.

The Mun­morah coal-fired pow­er sta­tion, 110km north-east of Syd­ney, is the old­est in NSW and one of the most inef­fi­cient in the coun­try.

Cli­mate activists took non-vio­lent direct action to shut down the pow­er sta­tion by lock­ing onto the con­vey­or sys­tem to pre­vent coal from feed­ing the plant. The activists hung a huge ban­ner read­ing ‘Cli­mate change starts here’.

Anoth­er team climbed on the roof of the main build­ing to paint the mes­sage “Coal Kills”. All staff were evac­u­at­ed from the plant around 7am.

Ener­gy cam­paign­er John Hep­burn, who was one of the climb team, said that we could­n’t just sit back and watch while sci­en­tists mea­sure how quick­ly humans are killing the plan­et.

“We need to cut car­bon emis­sions right now. It’s not com­pli­cat­ed. If we installed solar hot water heaters in half of NSW’s house­holds we could switch off Mun­morah and cut 1.5 mil­lion tonnes of CO2,” he said.

“The activists are protest­ing because just one week away from the fed­er­al elec­tion, both major par­ties are back­ing cli­mate poli­cies that will see green­house emis­sions increase. This at a time when the world’s top sci­en­tists are telling us we have no time to lose and must make deep cuts to emis­sions if we are to avoid dan­ger­ous cli­mate change.”

GRRENPEACE:
http://www.greenpeace.org/australia/