Author: earthfirst

ESCALATING DEFLATION CAMPAIGN AGAINST 4x4s IN SWEDEN

- One thou­sand 4x4s dis­armed by The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle

In recent months, a cli­mate action group call­ing itself The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle has struck against SUVs across Swe­den. Tyres on one thou­sand cars have been deflat­ed. The cam­paign is spread­ing like wild­fire, prompt­ing nation­al debate and furi­ous aggres­sion among SUV-own­ers.

Stockholm Indians of the Concrete Jungle hit 4x4- One thou­sand 4x4s dis­armed by The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle

In recent months, a cli­mate action group call­ing itself The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle has struck against SUVs across Swe­den. Tyres on one thou­sand cars have been deflat­ed. The cam­paign is spread­ing like wild­fire, prompt­ing nation­al debate and furi­ous aggres­sion among SUV-own­ers.

—-
19th Octo­ber 2007
It has hap­pened again. Once more, we have drawn the atten­tion of Malmö to what’s hap­pen­ing to our cli­mate. Bus, bicy­cle and train are always bet­ter then dri­ving SUVs. That’s why we deflat­ed 32 fuel-guz­zling SUVs on the night of Octo­ber 18. As dur­ing ear­li­er actions, SUVs were tar­get­ed in (the afflu­ent areas of) Väs­tra Ham­nen and Väs­tra Inner­stan. The let­ter below was left on the widescreen on all the cars, to explain why they were deflat­ed.
—-
26th Octo­ber
In the worst wild­fires in the his­to­ry of Cal­i­for­nia, even the stars of Hol­ly­wood have been threat­ened by the burn­ing flames of glob­al warm­ing. The lev­el of causal­i­ty between glob­al warm­ing and fires in Cal­i­for­nia may not be 100 per­cent, but sure­ly large enough to make it iron­ic that the upper class of Öster­malm in Stock­holm forces the upper class of Hol­ly­wood to evac­u­ate their homes. There­fore, yesterday’s defla­tion of 50 SUVs on Öster­malm is ded­i­cat­ed to the hun­dreds of thou­sands who had to fled the fire — includ­ing the stars of Hol­ly­wood.
—-
The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle have received a mes­sage from a new tribe in Umeå, Sweden’s fifth or sixth biggest city, and now the eleventh to be endowed with direct action against the insane cli­mate destruc­tion of SUVs. The mes­sage reads:

On the night of Fri­day, Octo­ber 19, tyres were deflat­ed on some 90 SUVs in Umeå.

Keep well!
—-
In the night between Octo­ber 6 and 7, the Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle of Falun deflat­ed 45 suv:s in the neigh­bour­hoods of Vil­las­taden, Lustig Knopp, Brit­sarvet, Bojsen­burg, Östan­fors, Gam­la Her­rgår­den, Sten­näset, Els­borg and Cen­trum. The night end­ed with a com­plete dis­ar­ma­ment of one of the infa­mous Hum­mer-vehi­cles. We took a pic­ture of it with a sign read­ing: “Have you got a Hum­mer, stu­pid?” (a rhyme in Swedish). Of couse, we took down the sign after­wards, since it might be inter­pret­ed as humil­i­at­ing.

Peace!

The tribe of Falun

(Falun is Sweden’s 26th biggest town, with some 40 000 res­i­dents.)
—-
Many more reports in Swedish at http://asfaltsdjungelnsindianer.wordpress.com
=================
(This is a mes­sage from The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle to the world.)

Every­one knows it: action on cli­mate change is a mat­ter of utter urgency. Nonethe­less, car­bon emis­sions con­tin­ue to accel­er­ate, pow­ered by the uncon­trol­lable machines of the world econ­o­my. One emi­nent sign of this rush to dis­as­ter is the trend of SUVs, clog­ging the streets in our West­ern cities, emit­ting up to three times more car­bon than cars of aver­age size on the mar­ket. SUVs have become a sym­bol of the irra­tional destruc­tion of the most basic con­di­tions of life. Attached to no human need what­so­ev­er — only to the con­spic­u­ous con­sump­tion of an afflu­ent class, feel­ing the ”need” to flaunt mon­ster vehi­cles — they con­sti­tute per­haps the most insane source of unnec­es­sary car­bon emis­sions. Every­one should know it: if we can’t deal with SUVs swift­ly, we can’t deal with any oth­er emis­sions either. And noth­ing less than our sur­vival is at stake.

Armed with this analy­sis, and with mung beans or grains of grav­el, a group called The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle has struck against hun­dreds of SUV:s in Swe­den in recent months. The first action occured in the posh­est part of innerci­ty Stock­holm in June. Tyres on 60 SUV:s in Öster­malm were
deflat­ed. A weblog was post­ed on the inter­net, and since then, the cam­paign for dis­ar­ma­ment of SUV:s in Swe­den has spread like wild­fire. To this date, approx­i­mate­ly 1000 SUVs have been tem­porar­i­ly dis­armed in at least nine Swedish cities, includ­ing the three largest (Stock­holm, Gothen­burg and Malmö) as well as sev­er­al small­er cities; new tribes are pop­ping up by the week. The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle have appeared in vir­tu­al­ly every major media out­let in the coun­try — from a prime time debate on nation­al tele­vi­sion, to a very sym­pa­thet­ic report in the com­pa­ny of Indi­ans in action pub­lished in the biggest morn­ing news­pa­per, to an op-ed piece in the biggest evening paper and count­less news reports in
local media. Thus, in a mat­ter of months, the issue of unnec­es­sary car­bon emis­sions in gen­er­al and SUV:s in par­tic­u­lar have risen to the top of the agen­da in Swe­den – some­thing that nev­er hap­pened before – and own­er­ship of the vehi­cle has become all the less con­ve­nient.

Swe­den is unique in Europe in its addic­tion to SUVs. Car­bon emis­sions from new cars on Swedish roads are some 20 per­cent above the Euro­pean aver­age; no males in the EU emit as much by dri­ving cars as Swedish males do. This is large­ly due to the suc­cess of Volvo’s SUV mod­el XC90, as well as oth­er cars from the con­sis­tent­ly cli­mate destruc­tive com­pa­ny. The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle have decid­ed to change this sit­u­a­tion.

The action per­formed by the Indi­ans is sim­ple. The cap of the tyre’s valve is unscrewed, a bean or a grain of grav­el is insert­ed, and the valve is screwed back on the tyre. The lit­tle thing will push down the peg in the mid­dle of the valve, mak­ing sure the air is gen­tly released. The whole manoeu­vre takes about 10 sec­onds, after which fol­lows the long sound of the air peter­ing out. A let­ter to the own­er is left on the widescreen, where­in the action is explained (see trans­la­tion attached below). Instruc­tions and the let­ter are avail­able on the weblog, for all like-mind­ed activists to use and spread lav­ish­ly. The Indi­ans refrain from tar­get­ing SUVs used by hand­i­capped dri­vers, health care insti­tu­tions and
com­pa­ny work­ers.

Though the response has, in gen­er­al, been pos­i­tive among the pub­lic, con­sid­er­able fury and aggres­sion have arisen among SUV-own­ers. A coun­ter­force call­ing itself ”The Cow­boys of the Con­crete Jun­gle” has
appeared, threat­en­ing to deflate the lungs of the Indi­ans, pre­sum­ably with knifes. On var­i­ous inter­net com­mu­ni­ties run by motorists and sol­diers, plans are made to guard SUVs and beat or even kill Indi­ans; pub­lic sup­port­ers of the cause have been sub­ject to threats of attacks on their homes. Undaunt­ed, the Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle have con­tin­ued and esca­lat­ed the cam­paign, and so far, no one has been hurt. Only one Indi­an has been nabbed by Swedish police, though it has not even decid­ed what kind of crim­i­nal offence deflat­ing tyres actu­al­ly con­sti­tutes – if indeed it is a crime at all.

The con­flict sur­round­ing the actions is con­sid­ered a suc­cess in itself. There are real, social con­tra­dic­tions in the field of cli­mate change between those who emit car­bon relent­less­ly and those who suf­fer the heav­i­est loss­es, and bring­ing these to light is cru­cial for any progress. Not every­one will fight cli­mate change. Not every­one will give up their lethal priv­i­leges vol­un­tar­i­ly.

The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle are deter­mined to con­tin­ue their cam­paign of dis­ar­ma­ment. If it is done repeat­ed­ly and on a mas­sive scale, deflat­ing tyres will devel­op from a slight annoy­ance in the eyes of the own­ers into a real obsta­cle for dri­ving SUV:s. Imag­ine wak­ing up to a car with­out air in the tyres every morn­ing, or even once a week! The cam­paign is poised to spread fur­ther in Swe­den, and now the Indi­ans are look­ing for­ward to tribes tak­ing up the cause in oth­er coun­tries as well. In the pur­suit of spread­ing the word, all dec­la­ra­tions of recent actions will here­after be post­ed in Eng­lish as well as Swedish.

The weblog is: http://asfaltsdjungelnsindianer.wordpress.com/

The Indi­ans are hap­py to answer any ques­tions. Just write to this email adress.

Let­ter to SUV own­ers:

Your SUV kills!

We have deflat­ed one or sev­er­al tyres of your SUV. Don’t take it per­son­al. It’s your car we don’t like. You are cer­tain­ly aware of the large amount of fuel it con­sumes, so we don’t have to enlight­en you about that. But either you are igno­rant of, or you don’t care about the fact that all the gas you con­sume by dri­ving around in your SUV in the streets of the city has dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for oth­ers. Sci­en­tists are entire­ly sure that we are very close to push­ing cli­mate change across a thresh­old, into a
phase where it will be total­ly out of con­trol.

When the glac­i­ers melt, people’s source of water dis­ap­pear. When the deserts spread, agri­cul­tur­al fields become uncul­tivable. When the sea lev­el ris­es, homes are inun­dat­ed. Result: bil­lions of refugees, count­less deaths. It’s already esti­mat­ed that 160 000 humans die every year due to the effects of cli­mate change, accord­ing to the WHO. As an afflu­ent Swede you will sur­vive longer then most. Those most vul­ner­a­ble, and already worst afflict­ed by the glob­al warm­ing caused by North­ern afflu­ence, are the peo­ple of poor coun­tries. In the end, how­ev­er, cli­mate chaos will affect us all, poor peo­ple as well as rich.

This does not have to hap­pen if we impose a rad­i­cal cut on car­bon emis­sions. Now. Not tomor­row. That’s why we have dis­armed your SUV by deflat­ing the tyres. Since you live in a city with a func­tion­ing and acces­si­ble pub­lic trans­porta­tion sys­tem you will have no prob­lem get­ting where you want with­out your SUV.

/ The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle

CLIMATE ACTION NEWS SHEET 72, OCTOBER 2007

Com­piled and sent out by Ris­ing Tide UK: info at risingtide.org.uk
To receive this News Sheet month­ly, email news-sub­scribe at risingtide.org.uk
with the sub­ject line ‘sub­scribe’ (with­out the quotes).

CONTENTS:
———————————————-
UPCOMING ACTIONS AND EVENTS:
———————————————-
1) NATIONAL DAY OF LOCAL ACTION VS. ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND — 15.10.07
2) SAVE SWALLOWS WOOD — OCTOBER 2007 UPDATE
3) NATIONAL CLIMATE CAMP ACTION PLANNING MEETING — 3–4.11.07 OXFORD
4) CLIMATE CAMPS — 2008 GERMANY AND WORLDWIDE!
5) TARA UPDATE — 22.9.07 IRELAND
6) CRITICAL MASS UPDATES — NATIONWIDE
7) PLYMOUTH ENVIRONMENT CENTRE FILM NIGHTS — AUTUMN 2007
8) TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ART — OCT ’07, EDINBURGH & MANCHESTER
9) WRITE IN DEFENCE OF ISOLATED PERUVIAN TRIBES — 17.9.07
10) STUDENT CLIMATE PROJECT LAUNCH GATHERING – OXFORD, 30.11–2.12.07

———————————————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
———————————————-
1) ROSSPORT SOLIDARITY DEMOS — 14.9.07 LEEDS, LONDON, BRISTOL, READING,
MADRID & IRELAND
2) DIRECT ACTION IN BRISTOL — AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2007
3) WHY CARBON TRADING ISN’T WORKING — ARTICLES 2006/7
4) GAGGED! SOUTH WALES ANARCHIST NEWSLETTER — SEPTEMBER 2007
5) FEDERAL COURT BLOCKS SHELLS ARCTIC DRILLING — 14.9.07
6) BANK PULLS SAKHALIN‑2 FUNDING — 15.8.07
7) “FLOOD SUMMIT” AT AIRPORT — 3.9.07 DONCASTER, YORKS.
8) COAL ACTIONS IN AUSTRALIA — 2/3.9.07
9) GLOBAL ACTIONS AGAINST HEAVY INDUSTRY — 12.9.07
10) GREEK DIRECT ACTION — SEPTEMBER 2007
11) CRITICAL MASS AND CARFREE DAY IN BRUSSELS — 24.9.07
12) ART NOT OIL 2007 GALLERY HITS 50

———————————————-
UPCOMING ACTIONS AND EVENTS:
———————————————-
1) NATIONAL DAY OF LOCAL ACTION AGAINST ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND — 15.10.07
RBS, the self-described ‘Oil and Gas Bank’ and sec­ond-largest bank in
Europe is the lead­ing financier of cli­mate change. From West Africa to the
Ecuado­ri­an rain­for­est, from the North Sea to the Mid­dle East, RBS loans
play a key role in forc­ing open the new car­bon fron­tier. The thir­ty oil
and gas finance deals RBS signed between 2001 and 2006 locked us all into
655 mil­lion tonnes of emis­sions over the next 15 years — more than the
UK’s cur­rent annu­al emis­sions total!
On 15th Octo­ber, get togeth­er with your local group, build on con­nec­tions
made at the Camp, reach out to oth­ers in your area and con­front RBS with
your own cho­sen style of cre­ative direct action.

To find your near­est RBS branch or office:
www.rbs.co.uk/microsites/general/branch_locator/step1.asp
Down­load Plat­for­m’s report ‘The Oil and Gas Bank’:
www.carbonweb.org/documents/Oil_&_Gas_Bank.pdf
For help with plan­ning effec­tive actions: www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk

One such action is being planned in con­junc­tion with West Corn­wall Friends
of the Earth; Out­side Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, Green St (off Lemon Quay),
Truro,
12 noon, Mon 15th Oct. Con­tact RTUK for oth­ers.

2) SAVE SWALLOWS WOOD — OCTOBER 2007 UPDATE
A lot has been hap­pen­ing in the last few weeks, includ­ing the inau­gur­al
Glos­sop Crit­i­cal Mass. Also, there are two URGENT let­ter actions that they
need your help with. They should only take a few min­utes of your time.
www.saveswallowswood.org.uk

3) NATIONAL CLIMATE CAMP ACTION PLANNING MEETING — 3–4.11.07 OXFORD
The Cli­mate Camp did­n’t stop cli­mate change — but it’s part of a grow­ing
social move­ment that can! Come and take the next steps for­ward at the
upcom­ing UK-wide meet­ing on Nov 3–4 in Oxford. Every­one is wel­come,
whether you came to the camp, or were sim­ply inspired by it.
www.climatecamp.org.uk

4) CLIMATE CAMPS — 2008 GERMANY AND WORLDWIDE!
Fol­low­ing the mod­el estab­lished by the Camp for Cli­mate Action in the UK,
plans are afoot for a Cli­mate-Action Camp in Ger­many in 2008. This will
include knowl­edge exchange (in work­shops), self-organ­ised liv­ing that
min­imis­es the eco­log­i­cal foot­print, net­work­ing and direct action. There
are plans for sim­i­lar camps to be set up next year in sev­er­al coun­tries.
watch this space…
www.climatecamp.org.uk

http://www.klimacamp.org/

5) TARA UPDATE — 22.9.07 IRELAND
They are des­per­ate for more peo­ple and sup­plies on site. There are
cur­rent­ly just 20 peo­ple try­ing to stop work all over the Tara Skryne
val­ley.
www.tarapixie.net
www.savetara.com
www.circlecommunity.org
For recent videos & pho­tos of protests see;
http://livevideo.com/tarapixie

6) CRITICAL MASS UPDATES — NATIONWIDE
For info. and updates check;
http://www.urban75.com/Action/critical.html

7) PLYMOUTH ENVIRONMENT CENTRE FILM NIGHTS — AUTUMN 2007
Includ­ing “Reclaim Pow­er” 19.10.07 at 7pm fol­lowed by dis­cus­sion with
Ris­ing Tide rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

http://plymouthenvironmentcentre.org.uk/events.php#film-nights

8) TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ART SHOWS — OCTOBER 2007 EDINBURGH & MANCHESTER
Edin­burgh 10th-14th Octo­ber
Man­ches­ter 24th-28th Octo­ber
For fur­ther info. check;
http://www.randomartists.org/

9) WRITE IN DEFENCE OF ISOLATED PERUVIAN TRIBES — 17.9.07
Two com­pa­nies plan­ning to explore for oil in Peru­vian rain­for­est have
revealed their sen­si­tive plans to ‘com­mu­ni­cate’ with the pre­vi­ous­ly
uncon­tact­ed inhab­i­tants using mega­phones! In the past, oil com­pa­ny work­ers
in the Ama­zon region have been killed by iso­lat­ed Indi­ans. Despite this
risk to their own work­ers, and the equal dan­ger of spread­ing fatal
dis­eases to the Indi­ans, the com­pa­nies — Bar­rett Resources of the US and
Rep­sol YPF of Spain — have refused to sus­pend their plans.
http://www.survival-international.org/news/2502
You can help by writ­ing a let­ter;
http://www.survival-international.org/actnow/letters/isolatedindians

10) STUDENT CLIMATE PROJECT LAUNCH GATHERING – OXFORD, 30.11–2.12.07

‘The Stu­dent Cli­mate Project came out of dis­cus­sions at the 2007 Cli­mate
Camp, and
seeks bring togeth­er stu­dents to take col­lec­tive action against the root
caus­es of
Cli­mate Change. It will also devel­op ways to build the stu­dent move­ment
and deal
with Cli­mate Change issues in the edu­ca­tion sys­tem. The project is
non-hier­ar­chi­cal
and based on con­sen­sus deci­sion mak­ing, and the Launch Gath­er­ing is the
per­fect
oppor­tu­ni­ty to get involved, share your ideas and plan for action. See
www.studentclimateproject.org.uk’

———————————————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
———————————————-

1) ROSSPORT SOLIDARITY DEMOS — 14.9.07 LEEDS, LONDON, BRISTOL, READING,
MADRID & IRELAND
There were a series of demon­stra­tions held in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the day of
action against Shel­l’s plans for a gas pipeline & refin­ery in Mayo,
Ire­land.
In Ross­port itself over 150 peo­ple occu­pied the refin­ery site.
Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide held a sol­i­dar­i­ty demo at a Shell Garage in East­ville,
Bris­tol with leaflets and ban­ners.
For more details about the var­i­ous actions check;
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/5090
http://www.corribsos.com/index.php?id=1&type=page

2) DIRECT ACTION IN BRISTOL — AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2007
Activists in Bris­tol have been busy. Parts of three golf cours­es have been
dug up and the mes­sage “deca­dent waste of water” sprayed near a club
house. A mobile phone mast has been sab­o­taged. A non-pas­sen­ger line which
trans­ports cars and fos­sil fuel to the Mid­lands was cut three quar­ters of
the way through in two places and marked with high vis­i­bil­i­ty paint. A
warn­ing ban­ner read­ing: “Stop: Trees on line” was fixed across the line
sev­er­al hun­dred yards in front of this.
Also, with­in the last 6 months, the front tyres of forty 4x4s have been
punc­tured in and around Bris­tol.
Final­ly, a “cor­po­rate enter­tain­ment” com­pa­ny called 4‑Play, which pro­vides
off road dri­ving for 4x4s in the south west, has had vehi­cles spray
paint­ed with

“4‑play — blow-job the plan­et”.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/5050

3) WHY CARBON TRADING ISN’T WORKING — ARTICLES 2006/7
An excel­lent series of arti­cles on why the neolib­er­al approach to cli­mate
change isn’t work­ing can be found at;
http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/subject/climate/

4) GAGGED! ANARCHIST NEWSLETTER – SOUTH WALES, SEPT 2007
Down­load the PDF here;
https://lists.riseup.net/www/d_read/gagged/gagged19.pdf
Alter­na­tive­ly you can read it here;
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/5052

5) FEDERAL COURT BLOCKS SHELLS ARCTIC DRILLING — 14.9.07
A fed­er­al court has denied Shel­l’s lat­est request to lift an order
block­ing the com­pa­ny’s Arc­tic Ocean drilling. This rul­ing like­ly dooms the
Dutch oil giant’s drilling plans, at least for this year.
http://www.pacificenvironment.org/

6) BANK PULLS SAKHALIN‑2 FUNDING — 15.8.07
The Euro­pean Bank of Recon­struc­tion and Devel­op­ment has decid­ed to pull
its fund­ing for the $20-plus bil­lion Sakhalin‑2 liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas
project, locat­ed in Rus­si­a’s Far East.
Since Jan­u­ary, EBRD and the Sakhalin Ener­gy share­hold­ers (Gazprom, Roy­al
Dutch Shell, Mit­sui and Mit­subishi) have held talks over the pro­jec­t’s
finance. EBRD cut off dis­cus­sions in favour of financ­ing oth­er projects,
such as those that pro­mote sus­tain­able ener­gy.
http://www.pacificenvironment.org/

7) PROTEST AS RDA HOLDS “FLOOD SUMMIT” AT AIRPORT — 3.9.07 DONCASTER, YORKS.
York­shire For­ward (Region­al Devel­op­ment Agency) held an out­ra­geous “Flood
Sum­mit” at Finning­ley air­port. Local peo­ple vis­it­ed with pop-up tents and
ban­ners to leaflet the con­fer­ence’s par­tic­i­pants and hold alter­na­tive
work­shops high­light­ing the link between avi­a­tion growth and wors­en­ing
cli­mate change.
The con­fer­ence was intend­ed to con­grat­u­late the RDA on their response to
the recent floods. The choice of venue shows just how out of touch with
real­i­ty these half-wits are.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/5021

8) COAL ACTIONS IN AUSTRALIA — 2/3.9.07
On the 2nd Sep­tem­ber, twelve Green­peace activists were arrest­ed at the
world’s biggest coal port at New­cas­tle, 160km north of Syd­ney, after
paint­ing the mes­sage “Aus­tralia Push­ing Export Coal” on the side of a coal
ship and unfurl­ing a large ban­ner in Chi­nese call­ing on Chi­na to be
cau­tious of John Howard and George Bush’s attempts to sab­o­tage Kyoto. The
protest comes at the start of the 2007 APEC (Asia Pacif­ic Eco­nom­ic
Coop­er­a­tion) forum meet­ing being host­ed by Aus­tralia.
http://www.greenpeace.org/australia/news-and-events/media/releases/climate-change/apec-coal-protest
The fol­low­ing day activists locked them­selves on to a coal con­vey­or belt,
forc­ing the shut-down of a gen­er­a­tor and halv­ing pro­duc­tion from
Vic­to­ri­a’s biggest coal fired pow­er sta­tion.
http://www.realactiononclimatechange.blogspot.com/

9) GLOBAL ACTIONS AGAINST HEAVY INDUSTRY — 12.9.07
Peo­ple in South Africa, Ice­land, Trinidad, Den­mark and Amer­i­ca held a
series of coor­di­nat­ed protests against heavy indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion. This is
the first event of a new and grow­ing glob­al move­ment that began at the
2007 Sav­ing Ice­land protest camp in Ölfus, Ice­land.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/5067

10) GREEK DIRECT ACTION — SEPTEMBER 2007
For direct action news from Greece, check;
http://directactiongr.blogspot.com/

11) CRITICAL MASS AND CARFREE DAY IN BRUSSELS — 24.9.07
For details and some great pics see;
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/09/381930.html

12) ART NOT OIL 2007 GALLERY HITS 50

and over 1500 hits. Take a look and send in your own work:
www.artnotoil.org.uk

*The Bath Bomb * Issue #3 October ‘07 * @nti-copyright: copy and distribute! *

“Soapy suds of truth in a bath­tub of b*llshit!””

Oh, Just More Shops…

Walk­ing past the rub­ble of the South­gate Cen­tre, could my ears be deceiv­ing me? I have now heard sev­er­al peo­ple remark­ing how nice the view looks with­out the build­ings. The lat­est one of these came when I was walk­ing behind three very fash­ion­able look­ing girls who looked like they were ‘born to shop’:

Bath Bomb small logo“Soapy suds of truth in a bath­tub of b*llshit!””

Oh, Just More Shops…

Walk­ing past the rub­ble of the South­gate Cen­tre, could my ears be deceiv­ing me? I have now heard sev­er­al peo­ple remark­ing how nice the view looks with­out the build­ings. The lat­est one of these came when I was walk­ing behind three very fash­ion­able look­ing girls who looked like they were ‘born to shop’:
“What are they putting there?”
“Oh, just more shops.”
Could it be that more peo­ple than we real­ize would like more from life? Could it be time for some­thing new? Could it be that con­sumer cul­ture is real­ly on the wane? Coz it’s gonna take more than a Deben­hams to impress me.
What would the peo­ple of Bath like to see in a new shop­ping centre’s place? What could hap­pen if we let our imag­i­na­tions run wild? Why not get in touch with your ideas?

Reduce Car­bon, Cut Cap­i­tal­ism!

Sun­day the 16th Sep­tem­ber saw the arrival of the ‘Cut the Car­bon’ march in Bath. The group, includ­ing a mem­ber of MST, a Brazil­lian peas­ants move­ment who take land back from the rich to cul­ti­vate and feed their fam­i­lies, has been march­ing all over the UK, start­ing in Dublin, and end­ing the fol­low­ing week in Lon­don, to pub­li­cise the effects of cli­mate change on the plan­et. The group was met in Abbey Court­yard by 50 sup­port­ers, includ­ing a con­tin­gent from Bath Activist Net­work, wav­ing red and black flags and a ban­ner read­ing ‘social change not cli­mate change!’.
Their mes­sage was sim­ple, we can all do our bit to help stop cli­mate change, but it is the rich and the big busi­ness­es, from oil com­pa­nies to coal min­ing cor­po­ra­tions to the road build­ing indus­try, that are real­ly rap­ing the plan­et. We reck­on that the solu­tions to cli­mate change, pover­ty, wage slav­ery and greed can all be solved when we get togeth­er and take the pow­er away from those caus­ing the prob­lems — politi­cians, the idle rich and the cor­po­ra­tions. Bath Bomb would like to wish the ‘Cut the Car­bon’ marchers well on the last leg of their jour­ney and good luck in spread­ing their impor­tant mes­sage.

Work Kills

A new cam­paign has start­ed in Bath to high­light the dan­gers of casu­al and tem­po­rary work. This cam­paign is aimed at stu­dents and young peo­ple, many of whom are killed and injured doing this type of work each year. The cam­paign is being run by the Trades Coun­cil, a grass-roots trades union group, and the Simon Jones cam­paign (an action group set up to demand jus­tice for a stu­dent killed at work due to the neglect of com­pa­ny man­age­ment)
The cam­paign will be talk­ing at schools and uni­ver­si­ties, offer­ing advice and help. In ear­ly 2008, there will be a pub­lic meet­ing and an exhi­bi­tion (keep an eye on the Bath Bomb for fur­ther details!)
This cam­paign is need­ed because the state jus­tice sys­tem and boss­es care more for con­trol and prof­its at work than safe­ty.

www.simonjones.org.uk

Events List­ing

Mon­day nights Bath Hunt Sabo­teur meet­ings back room of Bell, Wal­cot Street, 8pm
6th Oct Fight the Pipe ben­e­fit gig, 8pm, The Plough in Eas­t­on, Bris­tol, with Crow­zone, Drug Snif­fin’ Dogs and Burnt Pork­chops
13th Oct Bath FreeShop out­side Hol­land & Bar­retts, Stall Street, 12–3pm
14th Oct Per­ma­cul­ture Col­lec­tiec Cafe food, film & work­shop, Kebele Kul­ture Pro­jekt 14 Robert­son Road, Bris­tol, from 5.30pm
15th Oct Day of action against Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, details tbc
19th Oct ‘Left­ism’ Ben­e­fit club night in aid of B.A.N., down­stairs at The Crown, Bath­wick Street, 9pm-1am
19th Oct Anar­chist Black Cross ben­e­fit gig, 8pm, The Junc­tion, 51 Stokes croft, with Born Dead, Jesus Bruis­er, 7 Crowns and War/System
21st Oct ‘Bub­bling Under: Behind The Mask’ Porter Cel­lar Bar, George Street, 1–4pm
23rd Oct cheap house clear­ance, ben­e­fit­ing ani­mal shel­ter in Kent! Ring 07990 847700 for details
27th Oct Anar­chist Book­fair in Lon­don www.anarchistbookfair.org.uk
1st Nov Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing down­stairs Hob­gob­lin, St James Parade, 7.30–9pm
1st-11th Nov Bath Film Fes­ti­val www.bathfilmfestival.org
3rd Nov Bash The Rich, Not­ting Hill, Por­to­bel­lo road, Lon­don, 2pm www.bashtherich.org.uk [come along if you’re Class War or cop]
3rd Nov Gagged! ben­e­fit gig, Le Pub, Cax­ton Place, New­port, 9pm, with No Choice, Kilnaboy & Gun­rack?
7th Nov Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing back room of the Bell, Wal­cot Street, 7.30–8.30pm
10th Nov SHAC demo Hunt­ing­don town cen­tre, nation­al day of action against ani­mal abuse in Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences, www.veggieromance.com/f/61290
13th Nov Green Light Lec­ture — ‘Peak Oil: how to face the chal­lenge of glob­al oil decline’ — BRLSI, Queen Square, 7.30pm
24th Nov Punk all-day­er gig, ben­fit­ting legal costs from the Nation­al Camp for Cli­mate Action, from 1pm at back­room [Wal­cot Palais!] of the Porter Butt on Lon­don Road — Tofu Love Frogs, Kilnaboy, Span­ner, Jesus Bruis­er, and more!

Fur Patrols

Here in the Bath Bomb office it’s start­ing to get a bit nip­py, now that win­ter’s on its way. But don’t wor­ry, this isn’t a call for heat­ing dona­tions — we’ve still got plen­ty of Chrons to feed the fire! What this does mean though, is that fur will soon start return­ing to our high streets, and we can’t have that. Around 40 mil­lion inno­cent ani­mals die every year to feed the fash­ion mar­ket, often spend­ing their entire lives in tiny cages, going mad with hunger and fear. ‘Pelt­ing’, or slaugh­ter, often takes the form of bru­tal hang­ings, elec­tro­cu­tion, car exhaust gassing — that is, if they’re not skinned alive.
For the last cou­ple of years, Bath Ani­mal Action and friends have been cam­paign­ing against fur out­lets in the city, with a string of suc­cess­es: Square signed the fur-free pledge last year, and John Antho­ny the year before. After weeks of reg­u­lar demos, it now remains to be seen as to whether Eleano­ra Brown at AH Moda will bring in rab­bit fur, again. Cry­ing wolf like any of today’s best actress­es, she col­lab­o­rat­ed with police last year to try and fit up a cou­ple of activists on false Pub­lic Order charges back in Jan­u­ary, both of whom were found not guilty.
BAA sleuths are now inves­ti­gat­ing the shop­ping cen­tres of the city to see if any stores are intent on prof­it­ing from this ani­mal abuse. Real fur is soft­er than syn­thet­ic fur, and if you do sus­pect any stores of sell­ing, please drop them a line: bathanimalaction@yahoo.co.uk.

http://www.caft.org.uk/

How Many MPs Does It Take To Veto Nuclear Pow­er…

We are hear­ing more and more that nuclear is the solu­tion to our pow­er needs, how plants are so much safer these days, blah blah blah. STOP. This is a dan­ger­ous thing to be con­sid­er­ing and will not even achieve what we need it to (nuclear pow­er, which only sup­plies elec­tric­i­ty, would only cut UK emis­sions by 4% by 2025–2030, by the government’s own fig­ures). Renew­able ener­gy will get for­got­ten about in the process, with hard­ly any fund­ing allo­cat­ed to research.
Nuclear pow­er is waste­ful, caus­es a lot of pol­lu­tion, is dan­ger­ous in many ways and isn’t even more reli­able see­ing as it still needs a fuel source which we must get from oth­er coun­tries. Renew­able ener­gy offers a sup­ply of clean fuel that is right on our doorsteps (such as wind, solar and geot­her­mal), it will achieve much more and soon­er. The government’s stub­born insis­tence on nuclear pow­er is anoth­er exam­ple of a quick fix that seems like it’s solv­ing a prob­lem when real­ly it’s only a tem­po­rary mea­sure that will come back to bite us in the ass in the future. Hard. We’ve got to stop cut­ting cor­ners and take the route that might take a bit more effort, may be a bit less famil­iar, but that is ulti­mate­ly the only way to begin to get us out of this mess we’ve got our­selves into.
Have your say here www.greenlightonbath.org/ with a ques­tion­naire or send out the mod­el let­ter to add your views to the Government’s review of the future of nuclear ener­gy. Also on this site, under the resources link is an inter­est­ing DVD you can view amongst oth­er things. The dead­line for this is the 10th Octo­ber, but if you miss that, as it’s short notice, there’s bound to be more oppor­tu­ni­ties to have your say. We must all shout loud and be deter­mined in our refusal of nuclear. The def­i­n­i­tion of stu­pid is doing the same thing (over and over) and expect­ing dif­fer­ent results. Also remem­ber two easy things you can do to reduce your ener­gy use — low ener­gy light bulbs (they cost more but last much longer) and turn off your stand­bys!

www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/index.php
http://nuclearpower2007.direct.gov.uk/reg/reg.asp

Direc­tor’s [Bolt] Cut

The sec­ond film in the ‘Bub­bling Under’ alter­na­tive cin­e­ma series screens on Sun­day the 21st of this month, down­stairs at Porter Cel­lar on George Street, at 1pm. Kei­th Mann, for­mer ani­mal lib­er­a­tionist jail­bird, intro­duces ‘Behind The Mask’, a doc­u­men­tary about peo­ple who risk their lib­er­ty to save ani­mals. He’ll also be dis­cussing his book ‘From Dusk Til Dawn’. Great veg­gie food also avail­able.

www.fromdusktildawn.org.uk

Who Are Bath Activist Net­work?

We are a local umbrel­la group cam­paign­ing on issues as diverse as devel­op­ment,
envi­ron­men­tal­ism, anti-war, ani­mal rights, work­ers’ rights and more. Help­ing to pro­duce
The Bath Bomb, we are open to any­one, and our mem­bers range from trade union­ists to
anar­chists, lib­er­als to greens, and peo­ple who just want to change Bath for the bet­ter.
For details on meet­ings, demos, or just to get in touch, ring us on 07949 611912, email
bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk, or see our web­site: www.myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork

Dirty Mon­ey

Not a week goes by now with­out anoth­er cli­mate change and severe weath­er hor­ror sto­ries hit­ting the press, caus­ing around annu­al 160,000 deaths world­wide. And we know some of the cul­prits, too: while com­pa­nies like Esso, Shell and Nation­al Grid plun­der the earth and endan­ger our lives, the finance to do this has to come from some­where. This is where the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land come in. The self-pro­claimed ‘Oil & Gas Bank’, whilst oth­er investors are jump­ing to fund renew­ables projects round the world, RBS is busy under­cut­ting com­peti­tors, and fund­ing the dead­liest and dirt­i­est projects around: liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas in Qatar, oil pipelines in Azerbaijan/Georgia, tar sand extrac­tion in Cana­da, North Sea Oil, and anoth­er drilling project off the coast of Rus­sia, the sum­mer feed­ing ground of the threat­ened west­ern grey whale. And then they fund air­port expan­sion, too!
In 2005, their var­i­ous fund­ed projects pro­duced near­ly 4 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 emis­sions, as well as dis­plac­ing indige­nous peo­ples and encour­ag­ing oil wars the world over.
Also, remem­ber Bath Cli­mate Camp? That was set up to oppose Land & Marine’s LNG pipeline in south Wales, also fund­ed by RBS, putting the lives of thou­sands in jeop­ardy from poten­tial gas explo­sions. Eco-cam­paign­ers are call­ing for a nation­al day of action against the bank [who also own NatWest, Direct Line and Churchill Insur­ance] on the 15th of this month, so keep a look out!

www.theoilandgasbank.com
www.risingtide.org.uk
www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk
www.carbonweb.org/documents/Oil_&_Gas_Bank.pd
To find your near­est RBS branch or office:www.rbs.co.uk/microsites/general/branch_locator/step1.asp

HOT OFF THE PRESS!:
Cad­bury’s prove yet again that they could­n’t give a Fudge about their staff, with the announced clo­sure of their suc­cess­ful fac­to­ry in Keyn­sham, Wink-ing out 500 jobs. And whilst it’s Time Out for the work­ers who have helped make the Mr Big execs rich, the relo­ca­tion to Poland will no doubt prove a tidy Boost to the confectioner’s prof­its; as well as stir­ring up Moro racism and anti-Pole resent­ment over here. Greedy bas­tards.

http://www.thisisbath.com/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=180730&command=displayContent&sourceNode=232315&home=yes&more_nodeId1=163047&contentPK=18568762

Well Fed Not An Ani­mal Dead!

Sat­ur­day morn­ing of the 22nd Sep­tem­ber saw Bath Ani­mal Action and sup­port­ers hold­ing a stall of veg­an food, gratis, prov­ing that there is such thing as a free lunch! Held as part of ‘Go Veg­gie Month’, it all went like hot cakes, and the pub­lic enjoyed it, too! Recipes were swapped and debates were had, and a real feel­ing of com­mu­ni­ty was [not Don!] fos­tered.

Fox Hunt­ing’s Fishy His­to­ry

Did you know that the expres­sion ‘red her­ring’ orig­i­nates from peas­antry in cen­turies past try­ing to sab­o­tage fox hunts? Pissed off with low pay, long hours and crap work­ing con­di­tions, it was a week­end pas­time for many of the 18th and 19th Cen­tu­ry rur­al poor to ruin their rich mas­ters’ hob­by. Amongst oth­er tac­tics, they did this by lay­ing her­rings and oth­er fish in the under­growth, dis­tract­ing the hounds from the scent of the fox, allow­ing it to escape. Our meth­ods may have changed since then, but hunt sabo­teurs are still out in the fields every week­end pro­tect­ing hunt­ed wildlife from the over-rich, under-IQ’d inbreds that con­sti­tute Britain’s rul­ing class. If you are inter­est­ed in pub­li­cis­ing Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs, help­ing us raise mon­ey, or bet­ter yet, com­ing out and help­ing us active­ly sab­o­tage local hunts, email bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk or give us a bell on 07854 062336

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring
http://hsa.enviroweb.org/hsa.shtml

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

And now, to the dis­claimer: As any­one is free to con­tribute to this newslet­ter, the opin­ions expressed in each arti­cle are not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflec­tive of each con­trib­u­tor. Nat­u­ral­ly, any right-wing or cor­po­rate bull­shit will be binned and spat on. Need­less to say, the opin­ions of the author of this dis­claimer does not nec­es­sar­i­ly rep­re­sent the views of any oth­er con­trib­u­tor…

http://www.myspace.com/bathbomb

2nd wave of Burma solidarity — target Total (London, Cardiff, Oxford)

Lon­don Total Oil’s offices tar­get­ed again this morn­ing
5.10.2007

Total Oil’s Lon­don HQ was tar­get­ed again this morn­ing as work­ers made their way into the build­ing in order to high­light the com­pa­ny’s involve­ment in finan­cial­ly sup­port­ing the Burmese mil­i­tary jun­ta.

London Total HQ
Lon­don Total Oil’s offices tar­get­ed again this morn­ing
5.10.2007

Total Oil’s Lon­don HQ was tar­get­ed again this morn­ing as work­ers made their way into the build­ing in order to high­light the com­pa­ny’s involve­ment in finan­cial­ly sup­port­ing the Burmese mil­i­tary jun­ta.

After a mass call out, activists showed up again this morn­ing to speak to office work­ers at Total Oil’s Lon­don HQ about the com­pa­ny’s involve­ment in Bur­ma. Police forces were already present at the site, actu­al­ly out­num­ber­ing pro­test­ers at 8:30, guard­ing the entrance and check­ing every­one enter­ing the build­ing, which caused sig­nif­i­cant nui­sance and slowed things down a bit. A FIT team was also present, hap­pi­ly snap­ping pic­tures of peo­ple. After stag­ing a die-in out­side the entrance and hand­ing out leaflets, it was decid­ed to end the action and re-group for break­fast.

We shall be back.

//////////////////////////////

Cardiff Total demoCardiff Total closed in Bur­ma protest

7.10.2007
A Total garage in Cardiff was closed for three hours in a sol­i­dar­i­ty action for the peo­ple of Bur­ma

Around 30 peo­ple marched from the cen­tre of Cardiff to the Total garage, where more pro­test­ers had already gath­ered.

Despite the nor­mal threats of arrest from the police, activists blocked the entrance and exit routes to the garage, shut­ting it down. The garage remained closed by the action for three hours. There were no arrests.

The lev­el of pub­lic sup­port for the action was amaz­ing, and car horns were beep­ing their sup­port almost con­stant­ly. Even the motorists that turned up to use the garage were (on the whole) sup­port­ive, and hap­pi­ly drove off to find some­where else to fill up.

This was an effec­tive and suc­cess­ful action — it would be nice to see more of these in the weeks and months to come.

——–

Text of leaflet that was giv­en out:

Total Oil — the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in Bur­ma

French Oil Com­pa­ny Total is the biggest cor­po­rate investor for the unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic, mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship of Bur­ma. For the last 45 years a mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship has ruled Bur­ma with an iron fist. Total oil has pro­vides the dic­ta­tor­ship with 30% of there export rev­enue, which is esti­mat­ed at $450 mil­lion.

This is the largest for­eign invest­ment sup­port­ing the bru­tal regime, and Total is ful­ly aware of this. It has been fund­ing the regime since 1992, which has per­mit­ted them to exe­cute some atro­cious human right vio­la­tions includ­ing:

70,000 child sol­diers.
One of the largest armies in South East Asia, despite no exter­nal ene­mies.
Rape of women and chil­dren as a weapon of war.
Mass oppres­sion of free­dom of speech and opin­ion, which has lead to 1,350 polit­i­cal pris­on­ers.
Almost half of the bud­get is spent on the mil­i­tary while only 19p is spent on health care per per­son, per year.
Total fund­ed the cre­ation of a 63-kilo­me­ter pipeline, secured by the army, which has lead to:

Between 600,000 and 1 mil­lion peo­ple forced from their homes and inter­nal­ly dis­placed.

Some of the worse forced labour abus­es on thou­sands of Burmese peo­ple.

Forced trans­port­ing of weapons, beat­ings and tor­ture.

And the use of civil­ians as human minesweep­ers.

Total Oil is fund­ing and pro­tect­ing this vio­lent regime, to defend its assets and prof­its made form Burmese oil and gas.

In 1988 mass demon­stra­tions occurred across Bur­ma due to the bru­tal­i­ty of the Mil­i­tary regime, and a 500% increase in oil and nat­ur­al gas prices. This result­ed in over 5000 peo­ple indis­crim­i­nate­ly being slaugh­ter by the army, and thou­sands more impris­oned, 1, 350 of which are still there.

2007 UPRISE — A REPEAT OF HISTORY – On the 15th of August, petrol prices rose by 500%, spark­ing mass protests for the next 2 months. The protests were lead by tens of thou­sands of social activist, monks and civil­ians. The mil­i­tary fought back with tear gas, beat­ings, arrests, shoot­ings and pre dawn raids on monas­ter­ies.

It’s esti­mat­ed that up to 3000 peo­ple, includ­ing elder­ly monks, chil­dren between 5 and 10 years old, nuns and women have been arrest­ed, endur­ing atro­cious con­di­tions in prison. It has been inter­nal­ly esti­mat­ed that 130 peo­ple have been killed.

Even though the media cov­er­age is dis­ap­pear­ing today, the oppres­sion and vio­lence direct­ed towards the Burmese’s peo­ple con­tin­ues to esca­late.

Stop the mil­i­tary regime. Act now before anoth­er 5000 die.

Action

www.burmacampaign.org.uk To sign peti­tions pres­sur­ing Total and oth­er cor­po­ra­tions to with­draw invest­ment in Bur­ma.
www.burmanet.org/news/ For up to date reli­able news in Bur­ma.
www.southwalesanarchists.org A group of like-mind­ed indi­vid­u­als into civ­il dis­obe­di­ence.
www.avaaz.org To sign a peti­tion tar­get­ing and pres­sur­ing Chi­na, the main sup­port­er of the regime.

//////////////////////////////

Oxford 2nd Total demoTotal Total­ly Block­ad­ed in Oxford

6.10.2007
Pro­test­ers peace­ful­ly block­ad­ed a Total petrol sta­tion in Oxford today, in sup­port of the democ­ra­cy move­ment in Bur­ma (Myan­mar); activists were there for two hours and seri­ous­ly dis­rupt­ed Total’s busi­ness for the day.

This protest took place in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the pro-democ­ra­cy move­ment in Bur­ma, who have asked for inter­na­tion­al sup­port now that the regime is crack­ing down on them. Total Oil is the fourth largest oil com­pa­ny in the world and one of the biggest for­eign investors in Bur­ma. Its joint ven­ture with Bur­ma’s dic­ta­tor­ship earns the mil­i­tary regime hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars every year.

Peo­ple began to gath­er out­side the petrol sta­tion in East Oxford at 2.30 pm, and at 2.45 moved into the entrance­way, hold­ing a ban­ner which read ” Fuelling Oppres­sion In Bur­ma”. We blocked the entrance for a while until the police arrived and threat­ened to arrest peo­ple. How­ev­er, even after we shuf­fled to either side of the main dri­ve­way, just the pres­ence of the pro­test­ers, the ban­ner and the police was enough to put most cus­tomers off — we saw numer­ous peo­ple eye­ing up the entrance and then choos­ing to dri­ve by.

Those few who did plunge past the crowd of pro­test­ers onto the fore­court were quick­ly pounced upon by friend­ly leaflet-wield­ing activists who man­aged to per­suade the major­i­ty to take their busi­ness else­where.

The Total staff were less than over­joyed, but we gave them all leaflets too and explained why we were there. The police, too, were less than delight­ed by our pres­ence but seemed will­ing to tol­er­ate us, even though we’d pret­ty much closed the petrol sta­tion down for the after­noon. We got lots of waves and horn-toots of sup­port from passers-by.

Total has been a long­stand­ing sup­port­er of Bur­ma’s bru­tal regime. Wide­spread human rights abus­es have been asso­ci­at­ed with the Total pipeline in Bur­ma, includ­ing forced labour, tor­ture and rape. In addi­tion, tougher Euro­pean sanc­tions against Bur­ma have been blocked by the French gov­ern­ment in its effort to pro­tect Total’s inter­ests in the coun­try.

Today’s action was part of a grow­ing inter­na­tion­al move­ment against Total. Forc­ing the com­pa­ny to pull out of Bur­ma would be a major blow to the legit­i­ma­cy of the regime, jeop­ar­dise a vital source of income for the jun­ta and would make it even more dif­fi­cult for oth­er com­pa­nies to do busi­ness in the region.

For more infor­ma­tion see www.burmacampaign.org.uk/total_briefing.html. To get involved in action in Oxford email oarc@riseup.net.

—-

2nd Report from the Oxford Total demo

A brief expla­na­tion of some of the sit­u­a­tion in Bur­ma and a report on the demon­stra­tion in Oxford which took place on the 6th of Octo­ber, 2007.

Glob­al Day of Action for Bur­ma

The 6th of Octo­ber was the glob­al day of action for Bur­ma (also known as Myan­mar), and activists and sup­port­ers demon­strat­ed around the world for an end to the appalling actions of the repres­sive and vicious mil­i­tary jun­ta (group of army gen­er­als) that rules the coun­try. If you watched the news recent­ly you might remem­ber images of thou­sands of monks march­ing on the streets, before the bru­tal mil­i­tary crack­down. There is lit­tle or no news get­ting out of Bur­ma now because the gov­ern­ment shut off the inter­net and has start­ed to seize mobile phones and cam­eras so that images of vio­lent repres­sion can­not escape. The jun­ta has banned protest­ing and the expres­sion of any oth­er view apart from their own, which is that they are cre­at­ing a “dis­ci­pline-flour­ish­ing democ­ra­cy” and unusu­al­ly for a democ­ra­cy, all oppo­si­tion must be crushed. Con­tra­dic­to­ry? It sure is, but it is no laugh­ing mat­ter for fifty mil­lion Burmese.

Demon­stra­tors marched in coun­tries as var­ied as Thai­land, France, Aus­tralia, Cana­da and the Unit­ed King­dom, as well as many more. One of the biggest protests in this coun­try was in Lon­don, but they took place in every major city in the coun­try. One of the less pub­li­cised, but nonethe­less very well attend­ed protests was in Oxford, where pro­test­ers man­aged to suc­cess­ful­ly stop almost every­one fill­ing up at a Total garage from doing so for over two and a half hours.

On the face of it this action might seem to have lit­tle to do with Bur­ma, since Total is a joint­ly owned French and Amer­i­can com­pa­ny. How­ev­er, Total has a con­tract with the Burmese gov­ern­ment, signed in 1992, and is the sole com­pa­ny oper­at­ing in the coun­try. Two oil pipelines have already been built, one to Thai­land and one across Bur­ma, and a third one is on its way, despite the fact that new invest­ments from French com­pa­nies in Bur­ma were banned in 2004. The pipelines have been asso­ci­at­ed with seri­ous human rights abus­es for those work­ing on them, such as forced labour, the use of civil­ians as human minesweep­ers, the use of chil­dren, and sys­tem­at­ic rape of women. Total has been said to be the sin­gle biggest com­pa­ny prop­ping up the junta’s regime.

Total is one of the five biggest oil com­pa­nies in the UK and there­fore wields an enor­mous influ­ence both here and abroad. The French gov­ern­ment has blocked mea­sures such as sanc­tions against the jun­ta due to the fact that Total has such heavy involve­ment there.

With all this in mind I went to a demon­stra­tion close by to Read­ing, by a Total garage in Oxford. A huge ban­ner read­ing “Fuelling Oppres­sion in Bur­ma” left peo­ple in no doubt as to what the protest was about. Vol­un­teers hand­ed out leaflets show­ing a brief sum­ma­ry of the injus­tice of the military’s rule, and Total’s role in it, as well as peti­tions that con­cerned cit­i­zens could sign. The turnout was excel­lent, con­sid­er­ing that the demon­stra­tion had not been as well pub­li­cised as oth­er, larg­er ones in cities such as Birm­ing­ham and Man­ches­ter. In two hours we man­aged to stop the major­i­ty of peo­ple fill­ing up at Total. The work­ers at the garage were under­stand­ably not very pleased but we gave them leaflets too and let them know that we have noth­ing against them since they are only doing their job. Many peo­ple did not have any idea of the things which this com­pa­ny is involved in and once they were informed most of them chose to fill up at one of two near­by petrol sta­tions fur­ther along the road.

The atmos­phere was very jol­ly and every­one was eager to meet new peo­ple and help each oth­er out. The good weath­er helped with this as did the fact that most peo­ple were very friend­ly. We had sup­port both from the local police who were assigned to watch the demon­stra­tion, and from passers-by, many of whom honked their horns at us as they drove past. Many peo­ple who had filled up promised not to do so again. The protest began at 2:30, and although most peo­ple had gone by half past four, three of us chose to stay until five, hand­ing out leaflets to dri­vers.

We do accept that some peo­ple have no choice but to fill up there and we have noth­ing against peo­ple who do so, but I feel it is impor­tant that peo­ple have an informed choice about what it is that they are sup­port­ing when they fill up at a Total garage. At a time when many oil com­pa­nies are regard­ed as uneth­i­cal the idea that a com­pa­ny would open­ly fund one of the world’s most despi­ca­ble regimes pro­duces bad pub­lic­i­ty and a lack of trust, so it is in Total’s best inter­est to pull out of Bur­ma and in so doing, increase their prof­its due to win­ning back respect from peo­ple who have lost it for them. They should see that in the long term, due to the sit­u­a­tion in Bur­ma (with some states hav­ing had a civ­il war for over 20 years) stay­ing in the coun­try is unsus­tain­able and bad for their busi­ness as well as for human rights.

Should you wish to find out more about Total and their involve­ment in Bur­ma, please vis­it www.burmacampaign.org.uk/total_report.html. Please also sign the peti­tion to help the Burmese pro­test­ers, which will be pre­sent­ed to the pres­i­dent of Chi­na after it receives a mil­lion sig­na­tures, at www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_burma .

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London Burma demoAside from these direct actions, var­i­ous demon­stra­tions have hap­pened around the coun­try over the last few weeks — for full details, search at indymedia.org.uk

Shell to Sea Two and half years later and still going strong! October 12th day of action

In 2005 small west of Ire­land com­mu­ni­ty became the focus of atten­tion of the peo­ple in Ire­land. Five small farm­ers in Ross­port Co Mayo (one the most remote and iso­lat­ed places in North­west Europe) had stood up to a multi­na­tion­al con­glom­er­a­tion of Shell, Sta­toil and Marathon in fear they would die if Shell built their unprece­dent­ed on shore refin­ery.

In 2005 small west of Ire­land com­mu­ni­ty became the focus of atten­tion of the peo­ple in Ire­land. Five small farm­ers in Ross­port Co Mayo (one the most remote and iso­lat­ed places in North­west Europe) had stood up to a multi­na­tion­al con­glom­er­a­tion of Shell, Sta­toil and Marathon in fear they would die if Shell built their unprece­dent­ed on shore refin­ery.

The Irish State’s reac­tion to this was to inde­fi­nate­ly imprison them. This tran­spired to be 94 days at which point Shell decid­ed it was doing more harm than good by impris­on­ing as there was a series of direct actions and mass demon­stra­tion in their defence http://www.indymedia.ie/article/71388. In the weeks run­ning up to this some activists made con­tact with com­mu­ni­ty activists and start­ed a nation­al Shell to sea cam­paign. The unbe­liev­able sto­ry of what was going on in the west of Ire­land was spread through Europe through the meet­ing of activists at the G8 in Ster­ling in July 2008.

The sto­ry is quite unbe­liev­able. Shell and their part­ners are attempt­ing to destroy an unspoilt part of the west Ire­land, by run­ning a dan­ger­ous pipeline through the vil­lage of Ross­port to an inland refin­ery that will spew hun­dreds of thou­sands of tonnes of methane each year in the local envi­ron­ment. On top of this they are effec­tive­ly rob­bing the peo­ple in Ire­land of €51 bil­lion of Irish gas through a dodgy deal cut with cor­rupt politi­cians that at the time was called “eco­nom­ic trea­son”.

But lots of things are wrong and why should peo­ple all across the world we focus on this? Well its sim­ple- we can win and if we do the effects will be immense as a prece­dent will have been set that will not only effect Ire­land but Europe and beyond.

So what hap­pened since 2005 and where are we now?

Tra­di­tion­al sec­tar­i­an­ism was put aside and activists of dif­fer­ent back­grounds worked togeth­er form­ing what the media would lat­er bill “the looney alliance of anar­chists and repub­li­cans”. Through­out the sum­mer of 2005 and until the late sum­mer of 2006 things worked very well as con­stant pick­ets shut down Shel­l’s oper­a­tion in Mayo and pres­sure mount­ed on Shell and the Irish State.

Then at the end of Sep­tem­ber 2006 the State and Shell made their move. Over 200 gar­dai (Irish police) were bil­let­ed to Mayo. The top cop said he would have the protests fin­ished in 48hours. The com­mu­ni­ty and nation­al cam­paigns response was immense. Pick­et­ing went on through the night incase the Gar­dai tried
to cor­don activists away from the site. On the night of the sec­ond of Octo­ber the cops even­tu­al­ly turned out in force. In an effort to main­tain the year and half long pick­et cars were parked block­ing the refin­ery and behind them the com­mu­ni­ty sat in front of the gates. In area with low­est crime rate in Ire­land 200 Gar­dai pulled and dragged com­mu­ni­ty res­i­dents from the gates hos­pi­tal­is­ing two.

This lead to a surge in activ­i­ty with much cam­paign activ­i­ty around the coun­try and inter­na­tion­al­ly, focused on days of action in Ross­port. The Gar­da reac­tion to these days of Action was vio­lent cul­mi­nat­ing in a baton charge on Novem­ber the tenth. The cam­paign then in the face of what seemed like more vio­lence can­celled a pro­posed day of action on the 24th of Novem­ber 2006. Many saw this as deci­sive moment for the cam­paign as momen­tum passed out of our hands. Every­one realised the fol­ly of
it, but as with a lot of things in Shell to Sea it is a learn­ing process. Now it seems it was not as deci­sive as it seemed as things build again.

This sum­mer the cam­paign burst back to life by vic­to­ri­ous­ly oppos­ing shel­l’s attempt to install cab­ins for works in the bay — read more. This was fol­lowed with a very intense week which saw three fish­er­men includ­ing Pat “the chief” O Don­nell and his son and a friend impris­oned, the site was shut down for a day. On the fish­er­men’s release
an inva­sion of the con­struc­tion site took place. Over Sep­tem­ber there have been three site inva­sions and two days with numer­ous peo­ple blockad­ing traf­fic attempt­ing to access the site — read more.

All this occurred in the run up to the day of action on Sep­tem­ber 14th unique in that it had a pre-announced plan. The plan was sim­ple — go there and sit on the road and no vehi­cles get on site. The run-up to the day was ner­vous. The big ques­tion was- could Shell to Sea with its nation­al sup­port in town (or coun­try­side rather) reassert the right of ordi­nary peo­ple over multi­na­tion­als in Erris and real­ly push for­ward the already build­ing momen­tum behind the cam­paign. The con­di­tions were cer­tain­ly right- Shell were and still are run­ning into enor­mous prob­lems as build­ing has vir­tu­al­ly come to a stand­still due to poor qual­i­ty con­crete, con­stant protest and the lack of a pipeline route. On Fri­day the 14th about 150 — 200 peo­ple turned from around the coun­try and this was matched by a size­able mayo turnout.

The total pro­tes­tor turnout was matched by a size­able Gar­da pres­ence. As the pro­tes­tors shut down the main entrance to the site with the sit down the Gar­dai thought they would be clever and direct traf­fic around the sit down and bore us to tears. After this long you would imag­ine the cops would realise Shell to Sea is a lit­tle more on the ball than this. In the lack of the any trucks to meet pro­tes­tors we decid­ed to go and take a look and shut the site down. So it was up, over, under and through the gate as the protest made lit­tle a sec­ondary gate as well (espe­cial­ly con­struct­ed for the day) — read more. The Gar­dai respond­ed with their usu­al heavy hand­ed tac­tics. Regard­less of Shel­l’s rub­bish spin, RTE’s (Ire­lands state broad­cast­er) des­per­ate attempts to pla­cate Shell and and the gar­dai’s offi­cial line it was plain to see who had won the day and that the train is firm­ly back on the tracks.

It’s undoubt­ed that Shell to Sea is not yet at the dizzy­ing heights it was at 12 or 24 months ago. How­ev­er things are mov­ing in a sim­i­lar direc­tion at the moment. We have learned the mis­takes of plac­ing too much faith in politi­cians to pull a deal out the hat. With this knowl­edge it could just be third time lucky for Shell to Sea.

Through­out this peri­od the impact on sol­i­dar­i­ty from the Eng­land Scot­land and Wales has had an enor­mous effect. It has been instru­men­tal in keep­ing the sol­i­dar­i­ty camp con­tin­u­ing through peo­ple com­ing stay­ing a week or a year, fundrais­ing and dona­tions have also allowed the camp to expand. Hos­pi­tal­i­ty to cam­paign speak­ers was always sec­ond to none. Above all the impact that peo­ple com­ing has had a pro­found impact on the moral of peo­ple in Ross­port. They launched their oppo­si­tion in 1999 and it took six years to get Nation­al atten­tion and then imme­di­ate­ly peo­ple in the UK, once they heard, took up the chal­lenge. There is still more peo­ple from the UK have to offer this strug­gle.

Anoth­er day of Action has been called for Octo­ber the 12th as the sit­u­a­tion is heat­ing up as the pres­sure mounts up on Shell and polit­i­cal pres­sure on the greens. These days of Action will not work
on there own — if you cant trav­el we all need to be active in our com­mu­ni­ties organ­is­ing meet­ings, pos­ter­ing and rais­ing the issue where pos­si­ble. These days are how­ev­er cru­cial to pile on the pres­sure -
show­ing in a vis­i­ble robust way the lev­el of oppo­si­tion to this project and high­light­ing the bru­tal­i­ty of what is an every­day occur­rence in Ross­port.

At this stage many of us are scratch­ing our heads as to why mayo peo­ple can’t do this at the height of sum­mer but then again what else would you be doing on windy Fri­day morn­ing in Octo­ber? Ok fair enough we all do but it will cer­tain­ly be worth it to force this to its log­i­cal con­clu­sion after 8 years. For us it’s a few days of a trip to Ross­port for oth­ers it’s the high­light and morale boost­er in a 8 year strug­gle that must and will end soon When peo­ple arrive its intense­ly appre­ci­at­ed as it shows they are not strug­gling on their won and peo­ple care. What are you doing on Octo­ber the 12th? Organ­ise a pick­et at the Irish embassy or a Shell fill­ing Sta­tion or their head­quar­ters. Or if pos­si­ble trav­el to Ross­port. Trav­el to Dublin for Thurs­day at six and book a tick­et on the Dublin bus­es. Book ear­ly though. Come you need a hol­i­day!
(for tick­ets phone or text 0851609850 in Dublin) Cork — corkshelltosea@gmail.com or call 0851141170 for gen­er­al info.

www.rossportsolidaritycamp.com, www.shelltosea.com www.indymedia.ie/mayo

I Bike MCR October Bike Events

Update about some bike stuff hap­pen­ing soon in man­ches­ter.

The Spokes Bicy­cle Dance Troupe
Per­for­mances: Fri­day 19th Octo­ber 1pm-5pm Whit­worth Park, Man­ches­ter (opp MRI) Sun­day 21st Octo­ber Lon­don Bicy­cle Film Fes­ti­val, Bicy­cle Polo tour­na­ment

Update about some bike stuff hap­pen­ing soon in man­ches­ter.

The Spokes Bicy­cle Dance Troupe
Per­for­mances: Fri­day 19th Octo­ber 1pm-5pm Whit­worth Park, Man­ches­ter (opp MRI) Sun­day 21st Octo­ber Lon­don Bicy­cle Film Fes­ti­val, Bicy­cle Polo tour­na­ment

Hey ladies! Join the Spokes: come to a rehearsal- next one this Sun­day 7th
octo­ber at 10am at long­ford park, chorl­ton. email info@ibikemcr.org.uk if you have any ques­tions or want to know the next prac­tice time

The MCR Dropouts Bike Polo Prac­tice:
Every Thurs­day at 7pm and Sat­ur­day at 2pm at Platt Fields Park
Open prac­tice and demo: Fri­day 19th Octo­ber 1pm-5pm Whit­worth Park, Man­ches­ter (opp MRI)

Mcr Bicy­cle Art Parade and crit­i­cal mass
Fri­day 26th Octo­ber, 6pm, Cen­tral Library

woooo it will not only be an amaz­ing bike ride to cel­e­brate the bicy­cle, to
meet oth­er cyclists, to have an excuse to ride around, to feel part of a bike gang, to have a fun evening etc etc

but!

this month it will also be Man­ches­ter’s FIRST EVER Bicy­cle Art Parade! So
dress up your bike in tin­sel or glit­ter or make it look like a drag­on or a
fly…whatever..lets get cre­ative!!!!

Thurs­day 25th Octo­ber 4pm Tem­po­rary Autonomous Arts Exhi­bi­tion
(see forbiddenartsmanchester.org.uk for venue infor­ma­tion)
Pre-Parade crazy bike weld­ing and bike dec­o­rat­ing work­shop

If you can, bring old bikes, bits of bikes, spray paint, glit­ter, tin­sel, news­pa­per, chick­en wire, pva glue, paints, plas­tic bags, weld­ing equip­ment and skills to the work­shop

the last few months have seen around 120 cyclists on crit­i­cal mass, lets make this one even big­ger

see http://ibikemcr.org.uk/criticalmass.htm for info
join the i bike mcr bul­letin list:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/ibikemcr

Ride Safe

x x xmanchester bike art parade

Animal Rights Gathering 2007

Last week­end saw a real­ly suc­cess­ful gath­er­ing by the Ani­mal Rights com­mu­ni­ty of this Island. Although this year’s inter­na­tion­al Gath­er­ing was held in Hol­land, peo­ple also came from Poland, Ger­many, Aus­tria and South Africa amongst oth­er places. Many excel­lent work­shops were held, and there was much dis­cus­sion about the need to devel­op links between Ani­mal Rights and the grow­ing Eco Action move­ment con­cerned with human induced Cli­mate Change. We in the Ani­mal Rights com­mu­ni­ty are ful­ly aware that no mat­ter how suc­cess­ful we might be, with­out seri­ous action on Cli­mate Change it mat­ters lit­tle. We are keen, there­fore, to show sol­i­dar­i­ty with all those who are com­mit­ted to Direct Action in sup­port of the Earth and all Life, and will be offer­ing our full sup­port to next year’s Cli­mate Camp.

Last week­end saw a real­ly suc­cess­ful gath­er­ing by the Ani­mal Rights com­mu­ni­ty of this Island. Although this year’s inter­na­tion­al Gath­er­ing was held in Hol­land, peo­ple also came from Poland, Ger­many, Aus­tria and South Africa amongst oth­er places. Many excel­lent work­shops were held, and there was much dis­cus­sion about the need to devel­op links between Ani­mal Rights and the grow­ing Eco Action move­ment con­cerned with human induced Cli­mate Change. We in the Ani­mal Rights com­mu­ni­ty are ful­ly aware that no mat­ter how suc­cess­ful we might be, with­out seri­ous action on Cli­mate Change it mat­ters lit­tle. We are keen, there­fore, to show sol­i­dar­i­ty with all those who are com­mit­ted to Direct Action in sup­port of the Earth and all Life, and will be offer­ing our full sup­port to next year’s Cli­mate Camp.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the Gath­er­ing was policed in an extreme­ly provoca­tive and oppres­sive man­ner, cul­mi­nat­ing with a war­rant enforced raid on the Sun­day. Rather than low­er our­selves to their lev­el, we remained calm and applaud­ed them on and off the site. For once they almost seemed embar­rassed by their own behav­iour. Any­way it did­n’t stop us from hav­ing a pur­pose­ful and plea­sur­able time, and we all return to our cam­paigns renewed and rein­vig­o­rat­ed.

A spe­cial men­tion to sup­port the SHAC march in Hunt­ing­don on 10th Novem­ber, the first time we have been able to protest in Hunt­ing­don for some years. The bar­bar­ic prac­tice of vivi­sec­tion, sure­ly the most obvi­ous exam­ple of human­i­ty’s cal­lous dis­re­gard for all oth­er life, must be brought to an end. It is a chance to show sup­port for the SHAC three, Gregg and Natasha Avery and Heather Nichol­son, in prison now for six months, with no tri­al due till next June at the ear­li­est, and polit­i­cal pris­on­ers of this gov­ern­men­t’s deter­mi­na­tion to show that mon­ey mat­ters more than lives. The police are threat­en­ing to try to lim­it the num­bers to five hun­dred, let’s show them what protest means. Please sup­port it if you can, details from www.shac.net

Bradford Total Garage Blockade/London HQ in solidarity with Burmese protesters/Oxford demo/callout: London 5th & Cardiff 6th Oct

27th Octo­ber 2007
Around 30 activists block­ad­ed a Total petrol sta­tion in Brad­ford to protest against the com­pa­ny’s heavy involve­ment with the mil­i­tary jun­ta in Bur­ma which is respon­si­ble for the deaths of sev­er­al pro­test­ers in just the last few days.

Bradford Total Burma 1
Bradford Total Burma 2
Bradford Total Burma 3
27th Octo­ber 2007
Around 30 activists block­ad­ed a Total petrol sta­tion in Brad­ford to protest against the com­pa­ny’s heavy involve­ment with the mil­i­tary jun­ta in Bur­ma which is respon­si­ble for the deaths of sev­er­al pro­test­ers in just the last few days.

Total is in a joint ven­ture with the Burmese dic­ta­tor­ship in the Yadana gas project, which earns the regime hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars every year. Aung Sun Suu Kyi, the demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed leader of the Burmese gov­ern­ment under house arrest, says: “Total has become the main sup­port­er of the mil­i­tary regime”.

A mix of stu­dents and locals stood, sat or drummed across both entrances to the fore­court for an hour and a half. Hold­ing a ban­ner read­ing “Total­i­tar­i­an Oil-Fuelling Oppres­sion in Bur­ma” they leaflet­ed and spoke to passers-by and motorists.

Staff at the petrol sta­tion threat­ened pro­test­ers with sticks, car and lor­ry dri­vers attempt­ed to run over pro­test­ers, but despite this things remained peace­ful. The sta­tion was closed almost com­plete­ly for over an hour whilst pro­test­ers played drums, gave out fliers, held plac­ards and ban­ners, and sat in the entrances to the fore­court.

A few dri­vers were not so sup­port­ive, includ­ing one truck dri­ver who car­ried on dri­ving into the pro­test­ers in the entrance way even as they banged fran­ti­cal­ly on the wind­screen. Even a local cop (who had pre­vi­ous­ly tried to shove pro­test­ers off the road) decid­ed to tell the dri­ver to back off. Most dri­vers how­ev­er were sup­port­ive and chose not to try and cross the block­ade. Although many peo­ple were aware of the sit­u­a­tion on Bur­ma they had not heard of Total’s involve­ment.

Video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSrPVltBMkA

http://www.bradfordcampaigners.co.nr

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Also sol­i­dar­i­ty demo at embassies in Lon­don

———————————————
Total HQ Burma protest 1Total HQ Burma protest 2Total Oil’s Lon­don offices tar­get­ed this morn­ing, 2nd Octo­ber

Total Oil’s Lon­don offices were tar­get­ed this morn­ing in order to high­light the com­pa­ny’s involve­ment with Bur­ma’s regime. Total’s invest­ments have been earn­ing the regime mil­lions of dol­lars and have been marked by human rights abus­es such as the use of forced labour. Activists staged a die-in and hand­ed out leaflets from the Bur­ma Cam­paign UK to inform office work­ers going into the build­ing on what Total, Europe’s great­est finan­cial backer of the Burmese jun­ta, is real­ly up to.

As the streets of Burmese cities are patrolled by sol­diers and thou­sands of monks and pro­test­ers are still miss­ing after hav­ing been killed, beat­en up or arrest­ed dur­ing last week’s demon­stra­tions, sup­port for the Burmese people’s strug­gle is vital. With thou­sands tak­ing to the streets on Sun­day, it is also impor­tant to expose those who make the mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship pos­si­ble – cor­po­ra­tions such as Total Oil. Aung San Suu Kyi, the most respect­ed fig­ure of Burma’s democ­ra­cy move­ment, has iden­ti­fied Total as “the biggest sup­port­er of the mil­i­tary regime in Bur­ma”, earn­ing the jun­ta hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars each year. Total’s joint ven­ture with Burma’s rulers in the Yadan gas project in the south of the coun­try pro­vides cru­cial rev­enues to the regime and has had its own hor­rif­ic record of human rights abus­es such as the use of forced labour and wide­spread tor­ture and rape against those who oppose the project.

On top of all this, Total Oil has been suc­cess­ful­ly lob­by­ing the French gov­ern­ment to veto Euro­pean Union sanc­tions against Bur­ma in order to pro­tect its invest­ments, yet anoth­er exam­ple of cor­po­ra­tions show­ing where the real pow­er real­ly lies in world affairs.

Activists decid­ed to take this mat­ter to Total’s Lon­don offices, show­ing up ear­ly this morn­ing to talk to office work­ers as they made their way into work, and to inform oth­ers work­ing in the build­ing what their neigh­bours are real­ly up to. A ban­ner read­ing ‘TOTAL­i­tar­i­anOil Out of Bur­ma Now’ was unfurled, leaflets from the Bur­ma Cam­paign hand­ed out, while three activists staged a die-in in the lob­by of the build­ing. Police forces showed up with­in 20 min­utes, demand­ing to speak to the ‘lead­ers of the demon­stra­tion’, and even­tu­al­ly force­ful­ly remov­ing those inside the build­ing. The pro­test­ers were not deterred, con­tin­u­ing the die-in out­side the doors. It was decid­ed by all to end the demon­stra­tion at 11am, after all leaflets were hand­ed out and traf­fic into the build­ing slowed down.

As the Burmese mil­i­tary con­tin­ues its repres­sion of dis­sent, we must keep up the strug­gle and con­tin­ue to tar­get those who finan­cial­ly back the regime, expos­ing them for what they real­ly are: cap­i­tal­ists who care about noth­ing but prof­it.

Press release:

Hold­ing a ban­ner read­ing ‘TOTALITARIAN OIL: OUT OF BURMA NOW’, they are demand­ing that the com­pa­ny imme­di­ate­ly halts its oper­a­tions in Bur­ma, includ­ing the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar Yadana gas project [1], and announces a full divest­ment from the coun­try until human rights abus­es end and a demo­c­ra­t­ic regime is in place.

Tom Shapiro, one of those at the protest, said:

“As reports fil­ter out that thou­sands of peo­ple may have lost their lives in Bur­ma this week stand­ing up for their demo­c­ra­t­ic rights, we are here to say that TOTAL, which funds the regime, has blood on its hands — and these work­ers have blood on their desks. TOTAL’s finan­cial part­ner­ship with the Burmese jun­ta enables the oppres­sion of 48 mil­lion peo­ple. They claim this is an ‘eth­i­cal’ approach that oth­er investors would not repli­cate — rather, it’s an affront to human­i­ty. We urge every­one who sup­ports the monks in their protest to tar­get TOTAL in every way pos­si­ble until they leave Bur­ma.”

The demon­stra­tion lends strength to the grow­ing calls for con­sumer action against TOTAL over its role in Bur­ma, after calls by Dutch polit­i­cal par­ties, Angli­can church groups and French trade unions this week for the com­pa­ny to be tar­get­ed [2]. It is also indi­cates the increas­ing­ly grass­roots nature of the sol­i­dar­i­ty protests that have spread across the world, with ordi­nary peo­ple tar­get­ing the com­pa­nies and embassies with most lever­age dur­ing the cur­rent cri­sis, rather than rely­ing on more con­ven­tion­al chan­nels.

Michelle Doyle, anoth­er of those at the protest, said:

“The For­eign Sec­re­tary, David Mil­liband, has been on tele­vi­sion promis­ing tough EU sanc­tions, but while bureau­crats talk, peo­ple are being killed in the streets. We could­n’t bear just to watch it hap­pen­ing on TV and trust the gov­ern­ment to make a dif­fer­ence. We are here to use peo­ple pow­er to tar­get the cor­po­ra­tions which are keep­ing the Burmese jun­ta in busi­ness — British tim­ber com­pa­nies, tourism providers, and above all TOTAL, the fourth biggest oil com­pa­ny in the world. It is these com­pa­nies that are pay­ing the wages of the sol­diers who are shoot­ing monks. We must make sure that not one more dol­lar of our mon­ey goes towards keep­ing the regime in pow­er.”

The demon­stra­tors describe them­selves as sup­port­ers of but not act­ing for Bur­ma Cam­paign UK. They met on Sun­day’s demon­stra­tion in cen­tral Lon­don and via social net­work­ing site Face­book, and intend to take part in the Inter­na­tion­al Day of Action on Sat­ur­day [3].

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. See http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/total.html

2. Four Dutch polit­i­cal par­ties, includ­ing the Dutch Labour Par­ty, part of the gov­ern­ing coali­tion, last week called for a boy­cott of Total: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/09/28/europe/EU-GEN-Netherlands-Myanmar.php.

The French CGT union called for Total to halt all gas extrac­tion and freeze all trans­fers: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article3010197.ece

Mean­while, there have been demon­stra­tions and calls to boy­cott in Brad­ford, Bris­tol, and Not­ting­ham in the UK in the last week:
Brad­ford: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/09/382211.html
Angli­cans call for boy­cott:
http://www.energypublisher.com/article.asp?id=11254
Not­ting­ham: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/09/382268.html
Bris­tol: http://www.bristol.indymedia.org/newswire.php?story_id=26882

3. This Sat­ur­day, 6 Octo­ber, will be A Day of Inter­na­tion­al Action for a Free Bur­ma — Free Aung San Suu Kyi & Sup­port the Monks in Bur­ma. Over 1,000 peo­ple have already con­firmed via Face­book that they will be attend­ing. See: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=4973307490

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

Activists staged a protest at Total petrol sta­tion on Oxford Road in Oxford on Sat­ur­day 29th. They tried to block the access to the sta­tion but were low on num­bers and unfor­tu­nate­ly the imme­di­ate police pres­ence meant that they were moved to one side. Still, the large ban­ner sent out a clear mes­sage about Total Oil’s sup­port of the Burmese jun­ta to lots of motorists on the busy Sat­ur­day after­noon. Many indi­cat­ed to turn in before chang­ing their minds. Those who chose to refill their tanks were hand­ed leaflets and giv­en a lec­ture on the sit­u­a­tion in Bur­ma and Total’s deci­sion to exploit it.

I’ve also noticed some anti-Total graf­fi­ti about.

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

Protest Total Oil this Fri­day in Lon­don

CALL TO ACTION: ‘Die-in’ and demo at Lon­don TOTAL Oil HQ over Bur­ma links
FRIDAY 5 OCTOBER
8:30 — 10:30 am
33 Cavendish Square, Lon­don, WC1

Show your sol­i­dar­i­ty with the pro­tes­tors in Bur­ma — join the action!

A mass action has been called to take place at the head­quar­ters of TOTAL OIL in Lon­don on Fri­day Octo­ber 5th from 8:30 — 10:30 am. A demon­stra­tion and a mass die-in will take place out­side of the cen­tral Lon­don office to express our out­rage at Total’s involve­ment with the mil­i­tary jun­ta in Bur­ma.

All are wel­come to attend — bring plac­ards, instru­ments, noise and props if you can. A sym­bol­ic ‘die-in’ will be hap­pen­ing. A sim­i­lar action hap­pened on Tues­day, Octo­ber 2nd at the same loca­tion with 20 activists (see above).

Across France and in oth­er parts of the UK pres­sure has been mount­ing against Total in a num­ber of sol­i­dar­i­ty actions.
It is impor­tant to con­tin­ue pres­sure on this com­pa­ny to demand Total’s with­draw­al from Bur­ma.

TOTAL Oil’s busi­ness part­ner­ship with the Burmese gov­ern­ment is pro­vid­ing vital fund­ing that enables the bru­tal mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship in to oppress 48 mil­lion peo­ple.

An upris­ing against the jun­ta in Bur­ma, led by monks, has been met with vio­lent repres­sion. Secu­ri­ty forces and armed mil­i­tary troops have launched a vio­lent crack­down on demon­stra­tors, most of which is not being report­ed due to a state-imposed media freeze. Some esti­mates sug­gest that thou­sands could be dead and many more impris­oned.

We demand that the com­pa­ny imme­di­ate­ly halts its oper­a­tions in Bur­ma and announces a full divest­ment from the coun­try until human rights abus­es end and a demo­c­ra­t­ic regime is in place.

This action is called by peo­ple who met at a Bur­ma sol­i­dar­i­ty march and decid­ed that we need­ed to do more by tar­get­ting the com­pa­nies that have blood on their hands.

Near­est tube: Oxford Cir­cus
Map:
http://tinyurl.com/2oardl
For more infor­ma­tion see:
http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/total.html

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion on actions against Total Oil:

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.

Four Dutch polit­i­cal par­ties, includ­ing the Dutch Labour Par­ty, part of the gov­ern­ing coali­tion, last week called for a boy­cott of Total:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/09/28/europe/EU-GEN-Netherlands-Myanmar.php.

The French CGT union called for Total to halt all gas extrac­tion and
freeze all trans­fers:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article3010197.ece

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

Cardiff Burma/Total Protest Sat­ur­day 6th Octo­ber

DO SOMETHING ABOUT BURMA IN CARDIFF — SPREAD THE WORD!

French oil com­pa­ny Total is one of the biggest for­eign investors in Bur­ma. It has been prop­ping up the vio­lent and oppres­sive regime there for years. It has even used army-imposed forced labour to con­struct a gas pipeline accross the coun­try.

Peo­ple in Britain have been protest­ing out­side Total garages and offices all week with demos in places like Brad­ford, Oxford, and Lon­don — now it’s our turn!

Protest at the Total Garage, Cathe­dral Road, Cardiff, 11am Sat­ur­day 6th Octo­ber.
Assem­ble: 10.30am out­side Glam­or­gan Staff Club, West­gate Street to march on the garage.

As the medi­a’s atten­tion span wanes, and a spec­ta­cle-weary pub­lic grows tired of see­ing South East Asians get­ting bat­tered and shot on prime­time TV, a full-scale state and mil­i­tary back­lash against Bur­ma’s peo­ple is under­way. Demon­stra­tors are being rou­tine­ly round­ed up, put in prison, and quite prob­a­bly tor­tured, and more monks are being mur­dered and beat­en every day.

Let’s tar­get the com­pa­nies that prop up Bur­ma’s mur­der­ous mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship and let them know that they can’t get away with sup­port­ing despots with impuni­ty.

Bring ban­ners, plac­ards, and what­ev­er else you expect to find — wear saf­fron or dark red if you want to.

This demon­stra­tion is called by the South Wales Anar­chists — all are wel­come, and please spread the word to your net­works!

Get good and reli­able news about Bur­ma at:
http://www.burmanet.org/news/

hundreds descend on faslane for the big blockade

100 arrests so far as 600 actvists block entrances to faslane nuclear weapons base.

big Blockade 1Big Blockade 2100 arrests so far as 600 actvists block entrances to faslane nuclear weapons base.
600 Shut Down Faslane Nuclear Weapons Base to Mark Year of Protest
Alex Salmond sends pro­tes­tors mes­sage of sup­port
Octo­ber 1, 2007

600 pro­tes­tors from across the UK and Europe shut down road access to the Faslane nuclear weapons base on the Clyde this morn­ing.

At 7am pro­tes­tors non vio­lent­ly block­ad­ed the North­ern gate to the base with their bod­ies. Some have locked and super­glued them­selves togeth­er to make it more dif­fi­cult for them to be removed. At around 8.30am oth­er pro­tes­tors suc­cess­ful­ly block­ad­ed the South Gate. With both gates block­ad­ed there is now no road access to the weapons base, which is home to the UK ’s nuclear weapons-car­ry­ing Tri­dent sub­marines.

By 10.30 am Strath­clyde police had arrest­ed an esti­mat­ed 100 pro­test­ers, but as fast as they are removed more are tak­ing their place.

More pro­tes­tors are expect­ed and block­ades are planned to con­tin­ue through­out the day. Drum­mers, clowns and singers, includ­ing acclaimed folk singer Roy Bai­ley, are enter­tain­ing the pro­test­ers, cre­at­ing a car­ni­val spir­it to the protest.

Politi­cians from across the coun­try will join the demon­stra­tors lat­er this morn­ing, includ­ing six SNP MSP’s (Mem­bers of the Scot­tish Par­lia­ment), an MEP, two Green Par­ty MSPs and at least one Labour MSP (1).

Scot­land’s First Min­is­ter Alex Salmond has issued a state­ment back­ing to the event. He sent his “best wish­es” to the pro­tes­tors and said he “shares” Faslane 365’s “objec­tive of remov­ing nuclear weapons from Scotland’s soil” (2).

Oth­er mes­sages of sup­port have come in from cler­ics includ­ing the Head of the Scot­tish Catholic Church and Bish­op of Read­ing Stephen Cot­terell who said, ‘Our nation is demeaned and com­pro­mised by the pres­ence of these weapons of mass destruc­tion on our shores. The Church of Eng­land and most of the Chris­t­ian church­es in these islands stand unit­ed in call­ing upon our gov­ern­ment to re-think its reliance on nuclear weapons for our secu­ri­ty’. (3)

Today’s Big Block­ade cel­e­brates the last day of the Faslane 365 year of peace­ful blockad­ing. Since Faslane 365’s cam­paign start­ed on Octo­ber 1, 2006, thou­sands of peo­ple have block­ad­ed the base and more than 950 have been arrest­ed. High pro­file par­tic­i­pants have includ­ed for­mer UN Assis­tant Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Prof. Sir Richard Jol­ly, Nobel Peace Lau­re­ate Mairead Maguire, Adri­an Mitchell, A.L.Kennedy, actor Roger Lloyd Pack and singer-song­writer Bil­ly Bragg.

Over the year of the block­ade the nuclear issue has been high on the polit­i­cal agen­da. In Feb­ru­ary 2007 the West­min­ster Par­lia­ment vot­ed for pro­duc­ing anoth­er nuclear weapons sys­tem to replace Tri­dent and tie the UK into hold­ing nuclear weapons for the next fifty years. The vote inspired the largest back­bench revolt since that over the deci­sion to invade Iraq. How­ev­er in a twist to the sto­ry in May 2007 the Scot­tish Nation­al Par­ty was elect­ed on a plat­form that includ­ed ‘kick­ing Tri­dent out of Scot­land ’. Lat­er this month the SNP are hold­ing a sum­mit with civ­il soci­ety groups to dis­cuss how to get rid of the UK ’s nuclear weapons. West­min­ster is vul­ner­a­ble to the strong Scot­tish oppo­si­tion to nuclear weapons (4) as Faslane is the only UK base suit­able for the mas­sive nuclear weapons car­ry­ing Tri­dent sub­marines.

NOTES:

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion on Faslane 365, the Tri­dent deploy­ments and the Big Block­ade, includ­ing back­ground and polit­i­cal con­text on the year long block­ade, see the full Press Brief­ing Pack on the web­site. www.faslane365.org/1oct/press

(1) Politi­cians attend­ing the Big Block­ade will include: Bill Kidd MSP (SNP), Gil Pater­son MSP (SNP), Bob Doris MSP (SNP), Bashir Ahmad MSP (SNP), Jamie Hep­burn MSP (SNP) and San­dra White MSP (SNP), Marlyn Glen MSP (Labour), Robin Harp­er MSP (Green) and Patrick Harvie (Green), as well as Jill Evans MEP (Plaid Cym­ru). For sup­port­ive quotes by these politi­cians vis­it the web­site www.faslane365.org/1oct/press

(2) Full Alex Salmond state­ment: Alex Salmond’s office sent a let­ter on behalf of the First Min­is­ter to the Faslane 365 orga­niz­ers con­vey­ing “his best wish­es for a suc­cess­ful event” and affirm­ing his full sup­port for “respon­si­ble and peace­ful protest against the replace­ment of Tri­dent”. The let­ter fur­ther stat­ed that Mr. Salmond “shares” Faslane 365’s “objec­tive of remov­ing nuclear weapons from Scotland’s soil” and affirmed that “He is com­mit­ted to doing what­ev­er he can to per­suade the UK gov­ern­ment to alter its posi­tion on nuclear weapons.”

(3) State­ments by church lead­ers:
Stephen Cot­trell, Bish­op of Read­ing (Angli­can): ‘I send greet­ings in the name of Jesus Christ, the friend of the poor and the lover of peace. On the night before he died he said these words to his friends: Peace I give you, my own peace I leave with you, not as the world gives peace do I give to you. These words con­tin­ue to chal­lenge the pow­ers and author­i­ties of the world where there is still such mis­placed con­fi­dence in a so called peace that can be secured by a so called deter­rence. But these expen­sive and dev­as­tat­ing­ly destruc­tive weapons can­not bring peace. They only encour­age oth­ers to depend on force. They add to the insta­bil­i­ty of the world. They leech finances away from so many oth­er things that could do so much good. Our nation is demeaned and com­pro­mised by the pres­ence of these weapons of mass destruc­tion on our shores. The Church of Eng­land and most of the Chris­t­ian church­es in these islands stand unit­ed in call­ing upon our gov­ern­ment to re-think its reliance on nuclear weapons for our secu­ri­ty. This is the peace the world gives and it is not work­ing. Let us turn instead to the peace of Christ who bids us turn our swords into ploughshares and our tri­dent sub­marines into hos­pi­tals and schools. And it is my plea­sure to send greet­ings and prayers to those of you who are gath­er­ing at Faslane today as you lament the mad­ness of the world and brave­ly bear wit­ness to the way of last­ing peace’.

Kei­th Patrick Car­di­nal O’Brien, Pres­i­dent, the Bish­ops Con­fer­ence of Scot­land (Catholic): ‘My dear friends gath­ered at Faslane, I wish to assure you that the posi­tion of the Roman Catholic Church with regard to weapons of mass destruc­tion is per­fect­ly clear and has been empha­sised by myself in recent years. The Roman Catholic Church is opposed to weapons of mass destruc­tion and has reg­u­lar­ly spo­ken out against the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the renew­al of the Tri­dent Nuclear Weapons sys­tem. I per­son­al­ly am hap­py to think that in the new polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in the new Scot­tish Par­lia­ment, where a major­i­ty is opposed to Tri­dent, fur­ther pos­i­tive steps may be tak­en in Scot­land to ensure that the Tri­dent Nuclear Weapons Sys­tem is not renewed. With my kind­est regards and union of prayer

(4) An opin­ion poll car­ried out by ICM for Scot­tish CND on 26–29 Jan­u­ary 2007 found that 73 % of those polled were opposed to the gov­ern­ment spend­ing £50 bil­lion on a replace­ment for Tri­dent. http://www.banthebomb.org/newbombs/poll.htm.

——————————————–

arrests mount at faslane…coulport also block­ad­ed

at 11.30 anoth­er 43 peo­ple were arrest­ed at the faslane base for non­vi­o­lent­ly blockad­ing the gates — brig­ing the total arrests to around 150. about 450 pro­tes­tors remain blockad­ing the base.

Pro­tes­tors have also suc­cess­ful­ly bloack­ad­ed the roads into The Roy­al Naval Arma­ment Depot (RNAD) at Coul­port, Loch Long — where Tri­dent nuclear mis­siles are stored

Camp Hope — 20/21st October vs Gloucestershire Airport expansion

Camp For Hope At Staver­ton Air­port, Glouces­ter­shire 20/21st Octo­ber. Inspired by the Camp for Cli­mate Action 2007 activists and local res­i­dents are organ­is­ing a camp to protest the expan­sion of Glouces­ter­shire Air­port at Staver­ton. “Camp Hope” will take place at a secret loca­tion near the air­port on the 20/21 Octo­ber.

Gloucestershire Airport sandwich boardCamp For Hope At Staver­ton Air­port, Glouces­ter­shire 20/21st Octo­ber. Inspired by the Camp for Cli­mate Action 2007 activists and local res­i­dents are organ­is­ing a camp to protest the expan­sion of Glouces­ter­shire Air­port at Staver­ton. “Camp Hope” will take place at a secret loca­tion near the air­port on the 20/21 Octo­ber.

Loca­tion is near the air­port and to be announced on our web­site on the evening of 19th Octo­ber.

Staver­ton Air­port want to extend their run­way and increase ser­vices. The extra noise and fumes will dam­age the local envi­ron­ment and the huge amounts of CO2 will add to glob­al warm­ing.

We need to put our chil­dren’s future and the envi­ron­ment before the prof­its of an air­port.

Sat­ur­day 20th Oct:

Learn about glob­al warm­ing, what it means to you and your chil­dren. Learn what you can do about it.

Work­shops and dis­cus­sions start at 13:00pm

Lead speak­er David Drew MP

Sun­day 21st Oct:

Peace­ful protest against the air­port’s impacts on noise, the envi­ron­ment, and the area’s image

The air­port claims “only a small minor­i­ty are opposed to the devel­op­ment,” Come and show them that you are not part of a small minor­i­ty by mak­ing your voice heard

You can come and camp for the week­end, or just come for the Sat­ur­day or Sun­day.

For pub­lic trans­port to the air­port, take the 94 bus to Staver­ton Bridge. Also, park­ing is avail­able. Stew­ards will direct you from the air­port entrance

Take a look at http://campforhopeatstaverton.blogspot.com or www.myspace.com/campofhope and http://kevsclimatecolumn.blogspot.com For more infor­ma­tion email CampForTheFuture@btinternet.com

If any­one has access to any of the fol­low­ing it could be very use­ful :

* Mar­quees, yurts, car­a­vans, tem­po­rary struc­tures, tents
* Wood for build­ing (espe­cial­ly 2x2, 3x2, 18mm ply)
* Nails, wood­screws etc.
* Wood for burn­ing
* Food (veg­an, local­ly pro­duced, organ­ic)
* Water con­tain­ers
* Water pip­ing
* Water
* Hay/Straw
* Vans and trail­ers
* Beer
* Scraps of mate­r­i­al (the big­ger the bet­ter)
* Banners/Banner mak­ing equip­ment
* Peo­ple to give workshops/speeches
* Enter­tain­ment
* Cable ties
* Tarpaulains
* Cara­bi­nas
* Solar elec­tric­i­ty (PV) pan­els
* 12v Bat­ter­ies
* Wheel­ie bins
* Buck­ets
* Rope
* Gaffa tape (what every site is built on)

We also need peo­ple to help to organ­ise and pub­li­cise the event. If you have any time which you can use to help out it would be great­ly appre­ci­at­ed.