Author: earthfirst

West Midlands Climate Activists Weekend (9th/10th June: training, party…)

Activists organ­is­ing for this year’s Camp for Cli­mate Action in the West Mid­lands are putting on a two-day event of dis­cus­sion, work­shops and par­ty­ing this week­end in Birm­ing­ham this week­end — Sat 9th June and Sun­day 10th June.

Activists organ­is­ing for this year’s Camp for Cli­mate Action in the West Mid­lands are putting on a two-day event of dis­cus­sion, work­shops and par­ty­ing this week­end in Birm­ing­ham this week­end — Sat 9th June and Sun­day 10th June.

The event has come out of dis­cus­sions with­in the West Mid­lands Cli­mate Camp process, which high­light­ed a need for train­ing in non-vio­lent direct action. Since those ini­tial dis­cus­sions the event has expand­ed into a two-day explo­ration of NVDA, prac­ti­cal low-tech ener­gy, con­sen­sus, cli­mate change and the Cli­mate Camp process. This will be the first in a series of sim­i­lar events lead­ing up to the Camp, and beyond.

On Sat­ur­day 9th June at 10am par­tic­i­pants will be meet­ing at the cafe at the Mid­lands Arts Cen­tre, Edg­bas­ton (see- http://www.macarts.co.uk/?page=visiting/locationMap.html. Bus­es 45 or 47 from the City Cen­tre); from there they will go the main venue. We will have a cli­mate camp sign in the cafe so peo­ple know where to con­verge. Sat­ur­day’s main focus will be NVDA train­ing, with guest train­ers from Seeds For Change along for the ride. Seeds For Change pro­vide train­ing and sup­port to grass­roots campaigners,NGOs, Co-ops and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty groups and organ­i­sa­tions in the social sec­tor.
Vis­it http://www.seedsforchange.org.uk/

Sun­day will be devot­ed to all the oth­er work­shops we want to do, and it is hoped that some of the events will take place in the park if the weath­er is dry.

The timetable pro­vi­sion­al­ly agreed so far is as fol­lows:

Sat­ur­day 9th June
10am Meet at the MAC, fol­lowed by brunch ice­break­er.
11am Open­ing ses­sion: par­tic­i­pants will dis­cuss togeth­er their needs and wants from the weekend.Includes intro to Cli­mate Camp.
11.30 NVDA intro­du­tion.
1:30pm Lunch
2pm NVDA train­ing.
5pm Reclaim Pow­er — a film about Cli­mate Camp 2006, fol­lowed by dis­cus­sion.
7.30pm Par­ty.

Sun­day 10th June
10am Brunch
11am Work­shops all day, inc. rock­et stove mak­ing (learn to make a stove out of an old oil drum), con­sen­sus deci­sion mak­ing, cli­mate sci­ence, debunk­ing myths and counter argu­ments, grey water sys­tems, 12 volt elec­tric­i­ty, vis­it to the allot­ment

There is no fee but dona­tions of any kind will be wel­comed. Please bring food to share if you can. Feel free to come by at any point or for the whole week­end!
Please note that times may change, as the event devel­ops.
This is a non-heirar­chi­cal­ly organ­ised event: par­tic­i­pants will get out what they put in. You can offer work­shops at the event or before­hand.

For more infor­ma­tion as to times and venue, to offer a work­shop, or for any oth­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion, please call or text 07904 529362.
You can also email west-mids[at]climatecamp.org.uk

The West Mid­lands Cli­mate Camp Neigh­bour­hood organ­is­ing group meet every
Wednes­day 7.30 at the Spot­ted Dog pub in Alces­ter Street, Dig­beth. Come
and get involved!

Sheffield NVDA Training and Plane Stupid Benefit

Plane Stu­pid NVDA Train­ing and Ben­e­fit Gig
Join us for some Plane Stu­pid fun!
Plane Stu­pid Sheffield is host­ing two fab­u­lous events this Sun­day the 10th of June.

First, at 11am in the Octa­gon bar, we’re hav­ing a bit of morn­ing and an after­noon of insight into the intri­ca­cies and prac­ti­cal­i­ties of non-vio­lent direct action (NVDA) and quick con­sen­sus deci­sion-mak­ing. If you’ve ever won­dered what peo­ple do when they want to take mean­ing­ful action against things that they oppose, and the ins and outs of get­ting arrest­ed for doing so, or how it is pos­si­ble to quick­ly make groups deci­sions that every­body is in agree­ment on, then come along and be part of some col­lec­tive and inter­ac­tive edu­ca­tion!

Plane Stu­pid NVDA Train­ing and Ben­e­fit Gig
Join us for some Plane Stu­pid fun!
Plane Stu­pid Sheffield is host­ing two fab­u­lous events this Sun­day the 10th of June.

First, at 11am in the Octa­gon bar, we’re hav­ing a bit of morn­ing and an after­noon of insight into the intri­ca­cies and prac­ti­cal­i­ties of non-vio­lent direct action (NVDA) and quick con­sen­sus deci­sion-mak­ing. If you’ve ever won­dered what peo­ple do when they want to take mean­ing­ful action against things that they oppose, and the ins and outs of get­ting arrest­ed for doing so, or how it is pos­si­ble to quick­ly make groups deci­sions that every­body is in agree­ment on, then come along and be part of some col­lec­tive and inter­ac­tive edu­ca­tion!

Then, from 8pm that evening is a Plane Stu­pid ben­e­fit gig at the love­ly Red House ( http://www.multimap.com/maps/#t=l&map=53.38447,-1.47792|17|4&loc=GB:53.38447:-1.47792:17|168%20Solly%20Street|168%20Solly%20Street,%20FULWOOD%20(SHEFFIELD),%20S3).
Music will be brought to your ears by Just Pota­toes, Aclous­tic Dom­i­na­tion, Sarah Bark­er with fur­ther com­ple­men­tary Djs.

Admis­sion to the work­shop is free/donation. Food will be pro­vid­ed col­lec­tive­ly, so if you want to come then bring some food to share and we can all enjoy a plen­ti­ful and var­ied lunch. To get into the gig in the evening will cost you just £1.50 sug­gest­ed dona­tion!

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

Support pipeline protesters, stop G8 climate criminals!

6.06.2007
Pipeline and G8 sol­i­dar­i­ty protest out­side court in Cardiff tomor­row as author­i­ties attempt to evict Bre­con anti-pipe tree camp.

Pro­test­ers against the mon­strous pipeline plow­ing its way through Wales are in court tomor­row as author­i­ties attempt to evict the 5 month old tree camp in Bre­con Nation­al Park. This is just one exam­ple of how the state is fuel­ing cli­mate change and pre­vent­ing us from protest­ing about it. Gov­ern­ments all over the world behave sim­i­lar­ly and this week the 8 biggest lead­ers (G8) are meet­ing in Ger­many to make more deci­sions that will impose on our lives. Whilst many of our friends are in Ger­many protest­ing against this unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic, cen­tralised source of pow­er we will be protest­ing out­side the court against all gov­ern­ments intrud­ing in our lives and the envi­ron­ment, both local­ly and glob­al­ly.

6.06.2007
Pipeline and G8 sol­i­dar­i­ty protest out­side court in Cardiff tomor­row as author­i­ties attempt to evict Bre­con anti-pipe tree camp.

Pro­test­ers against the mon­strous pipeline plow­ing its way through Wales are in court tomor­row as author­i­ties attempt to evict the 5 month old tree camp in Bre­con Nation­al Park. This is just one exam­ple of how the state is fuel­ing cli­mate change and pre­vent­ing us from protest­ing about it. Gov­ern­ments all over the world behave sim­i­lar­ly and this week the 8 biggest lead­ers (G8) are meet­ing in Ger­many to make more deci­sions that will impose on our lives. Whilst many of our friends are in Ger­many protest­ing against this unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic, cen­tralised source of pow­er we will be protest­ing out­side the court against all gov­ern­ments intrud­ing in our lives and the envi­ron­ment, both local­ly and glob­al­ly.

Be at Cardiff Civ­il Jus­tice Cen­tre, 2 Park Street at 10.30am

In sol­i­dar­i­ty with our friends in trees and on the block­ades.

Cardiff Ris­ing Tide

Shramore Five Lock Out Shell in Ireland

“Peace­ful my arse you cunt”, Supt. Joe Gan­non speaks to protest spokes­woman.

On Tues­day morn­ing, June 5th, a team of five pro­test­ers and their sup­port crew suc­cess­ful­ly halt­ed Shells oper­a­tion in Erris for five hours through the use of “lock-On” arm tubes. The block­ade end­ed with the five being cut loose from each oth­er by the fire brigade and arrest­ed whilst a crowd of around thir­ty peo­ple cheered them on. Shramore is the final stop on the peat haulage route from the site of the pro­posed gas refin­ery at Bel­lan­aboy.

Shramore blockade 1“Peace­ful my arse you cunt”, Supt. Joe Gan­non speaks to protest spokes­woman.

On Tues­day morn­ing, June 5th, a team of five pro­test­ers and their sup­port crew suc­cess­ful­ly halt­ed Shells oper­a­tion in Erris for five hours through the use of “lock-On” arm tubes. The block­ade end­ed with the five being cut loose from each oth­er by the fire brigade and arrest­ed whilst a crowd of around thir­ty peo­ple cheered them on. Shramore is the final stop on the peat haulage route from the site of the pro­posed gas refin­ery at Bel­lan­aboy.

Ter­ence Con­way of Shell to Sea in Mayo who was present at the protest said “this is an out­ra­geous deal, the gov­ern­ment has con­sis­tent­ly put out myths about the ben­e­fits of this project for the peo­ple of Ire­land. There are no ben­e­fits of this project for the peo­ple of Ire­land, there are no roy­al­ties and all tax is cost deductible which means that Shell, Sta­toil and Marathon ben­e­fit from the deal while the peo­ple of Ire­land don’t ben­e­fit at all. This deal needs to be rene­go­ti­at­ed imme­di­ate­ly”.

The stop­page com­menced at 7.00 a.m. at the peat depo­si­tion site when the pro­test­ers emerged with their sup­port crew. Three unsus­pect­ing secu­ri­ty per­son­nel shut the gates (pre­sum­ably expect­ing some kind of tres­pass or site occu­pa­tion). This gave the team suf­fi­cient time to lock them­selves togeth­er on the ground in front of the gates. They did this through link­ing their arms togeth­er inside a dual tube sys­tem laced with con­crete and steel rods. The police did not arrive on the scene until ten min­utes lat­er when ban­ners read­ing “stop before it’s too late!” had been hung from the gates.

Ini­tial­ly the police response was bemused – they were informed that if they attempt­ed to move the peo­ple on the ground it would be very like­ly that they would break their arms. This was filmed and all the police num­bers were relayed to a sup­port­er in Dublin. The mood changed when Super­in­ten­dent Joe Gan­non arrived on the scene and a spokesper­son informed him that it was a peace­ful protest. “Peace­ful my arse you cunt” was the response he made to this woman after which he tore down the ban­ners. About an hour lat­er a more sup­port­ers arrived on the scene and the police vio­lent­ly removed all sup­port crew from the gates, drag­ging a cou­ple of peo­ple by the hair includ­ing a trained medic. The spokesper­son once again read out a state­ment inform­ing the police that they would break the arms of the pro­test­ers if they attempt­ed to move them them­selves and that they should instead call the fire brigade to deal with the sit­u­a­tion. This was ignored and a medic made a run across the road to the pro­test­ers after one of the girls screamed when they tried to move her. The medic was grabbed by five offi­cers and hit a num­ber of times before being thrown to the ground.

Over two hours after the protest began the fire brigade final­ly arrived. By this point the peo­ple had been with­out water for over an hour and the police had refused them access to a doc­tor despite them vis­i­bly burn­ing in the sun and a num­ber of con­cerned local res­i­dents demand­ing that the five should be giv­en access to med­ical atten­tion. The fire­men gave them water and began to fig­ure out how to cut the group loose – it took them three hours by which time a larg­er group of sup­port­ers had assem­bled across the road from them.

This tac­tic was adopt­ed due to the Gar­da strat­e­gy of vio­lence and intim­i­da­tion. It is dif­fi­cult to argue that pro­test­ers are being vio­lent when they are lying on the ground and unable to move. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the mis­in­for­ma­tion strat­e­gy con­tin­ues. In one instance whilst the fire brigade were cut­ting the pro­test­ers free, a Gar­da informed a col­league that one of the girls would need stitch­es in front of the moth­er of one of the peo­ple locked on. Lat­er the police informed a radio jour­nal­ist that the arrestees had been charged with firearms offences- in fact they were all charged with minor pub­lic order offences. The jour­nal­ist in ques­tion has since stat­ed that they will be mak­ing a com­plaint to the Gar­da ombuds­man.

The protest aimed to demon­strate that the issue of the Cor­rib con­tro­ver­sy will not go away. The pro­test­ers hope that mem­bers of any prospec­tive gov­ern­ment recog­nise the urgent need for a rene­go­ti­a­tion of the deal that will not be at the expense of the peo­ple of Ire­land or their envi­ron­ment. The great Cor­rib gas swin­dle can­not be per­mit­ted to hap­pen nor will it be allowed.

The ‘Five’ will appear at Bel­mul­let Dis­trict Court next Wednes­day 13th June, to answer some minor pub­lic order offences. Sup­port wel­come.

http://www.shelltosea.com
Lots more pho­tos at http://www.indymedia.ie/article/82900

Bristol Protest against G8 and Climate Catastrophe, 8th June

Stop them dri­ving the plan­et to destruc­tion

CRITICAL MASS, Fri­day 8th June — 8am in the MORNING!
Assem­ble on St. Augustines Parade at 8am sharp to move off when crit­i­cal mass forms.

G8 Bristol CM '07Stop them dri­ving the plan­et to destruc­tion

CRITICAL MASS, Fri­day 8th June — 8am in the MORNING!
Assem­ble on St. Augustines Parade at 8am sharp to move off when crit­i­cal mass forms.

What are we doing?
As a start we are call­ing for a crit­i­cal mass on the morn­ing of Fri­day June 8th as the wake up call to a day of action in sol­i­dar­i­ty with those protest­ing against the G8 meet­ing in Ger­many. We hope that this will act as a cat­a­lyst for oth­er groups and indi­vid­u­als in Bris­tol to mark the occa­sion how­ev­er they see fit.

Whether it be a pen­sion­ers mass march, a play­ground protest, or you and yer mates throw­ing a lit­er­al or sym­bol­ic wrench in the works, get off your arse and show ‘em you’re mad as hell and aren’t going to take it no more!

Why should you be angry?
CLIMATE CHAOS
We all know the ter­ri­fy­ing sta­tis­tics: a mil­lion species extinct by 2050, 19 of the 20 hottest years on record since 1980, Green­land and Antarc­ti­ca melt­ing, droughts, floods, famines. The G8 have had over 30 years to address cli­mate change and only suc­ceed­ed in pro­vid­ing tril­lions in sub­si­dies to the very indus­tries that are destroy­ing our plan­et and our future.

And while the G8 con­tin­ues to line their pock­ets, island states dis­ap­pear and hun­dreds of thou­sands die as a result of the freak weath­er con­di­tions caused by their irra­tional and uncon­trol­lable obses­sion with nev­er end­ing eco­nom­ic growth. We have a ten-year win­dow to act. As the mega­lo­ma­ni­ac G8 lead­ers meet in Ger­many, masked behind a bar­ri­er of fences and sol­diers, intent on lead­ing us fur­ther towards cat­a­stroph­ic and irre­versible cli­mate chaos, we must shout, scream and roar ˜no more”. Now is the time to take direct action and shut them down, them and their cli­mate crim­i­nal indus­try friends!

THE USUAL SUSPECTS
While cli­mate chaos effects us all, those on the front line are those already dev­as­tat­ed by the cru­el­ty of glob­al cap­i­tal­ism — the poor and dis­ad­van­taged. While the G8 looks to the mar­kets to solve the prob­lem by turn­ing emis­sions into a prod­uct that can be bought and sold, they pur­pose­ly ignore the only effec­tive solu­tion — an end to the con­sumerist mass-mar­ket soci­ety.

Iron­i­cal­ly con­sumerism is the way of life that the G8 is forc­ing poor­er coun­tries to adopt in order to have their pover­ty, debt and trade prob­lems alle­vi­at­ed. Soci­eties are manip­u­lat­ed into becom­ing pre­car­i­ous McCoun­tries: from export­ing cheap mass pro­duced goods from sweat­shops to feed west­ern appetites, to pro­vid­ing play­ground par­adis­es for the rich.

All this does is feed cli­mate chaos and cre­ate fur­ther car­bon emis­sions to be trad­ed as ‘cred­its’ between the rich­est coun­tries.

ANGRY YET?
So what are you going to do about it? Buy a wrist­band, go to a con­cert, sign a peti­tion, go on an organ­ised mass march?

Remem­ber Jubilee 2000? Third world debt is worse than ever.
Remem­ber Make Pover­ty His­to­ry? It didn’t.
Remem­ber Stop the War? We haven’t

The G8 lead­ers have car­ried on with their own agen­da and fan­cy foot­work. The only way that gov­ern­ments will lis­ten to us is if we force them to — this is the only effec­tive form of protest, which is why free­dom to protest effec­tive­ly is being erod­ed and out­lawed. We are sleep­walk­ing into a soci­ety where dis­sent will not be tol­er­at­ed, and it’s time to wake up!

Why June 8th?
The 8th of June Inter­na­tion­al Day of Action Against Cli­mate Change and the G8 has been called by the Inter­na­tion­al Ris­ing Tide Net­work. This is a call for autonomous, decen­tral­ized actions appro­pri­ate for your town, city, or local area.

We want to send a mes­sage to the pro­tes­tors on the streets and in the jails of Ger­many that we stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with them and their actions.

Why a Crit­i­cal Mass?
Crit­i­cal Mass demon­stra­tions are not just about high­light­ing the prob­lems fac­ing cyclists, they are used effec­tive­ly across the world as an effec­tive way of protest­ing. The first one hap­pened in San Fran­cis­co in1992 and since then enthu­si­asts in many towns and cities world­wide have fol­lowed suit. It is dif­fi­cult to describe CM as opin­ions dif­fer wide­ly but they seem to range from a sim­ple cel­e­bra­tion of cycling to an anti-author­i­tar­i­an block­ade of traf­fic, par­tic­u­lar­ly cars, with many facets in between.

Cycling protests have already been hap­pen­ing as a part of the actions against the G8 sum­mit, and the heavy hand­ed response to them shows that the author­i­ties feel they are effec­tive and fear them.

On the 7th May in Utrecht (Hol­land), mount­ed police attacked, beat, arrest­ed and did sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to a peace­ful bicy­cle car­a­van on its way to Ger­many — http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/369998.html for details.

On 25th May in Ham­burg (Ger­many), Over 250 peo­ple involved in the G8 mobi­liza­tion took to the streets of Ham­burg in a Crit­i­cal Mass. The police broke up the group of cyclists by dri­ving between them with vehi­cles and by run­ning and stand­ing in front of them. The cops fol­lowed the small­er groups of cyclists to get them to dis­perse. 12 peo­ple were arrest­ed and held for sev­er­al hours — http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/371656.html for details.

Also on the 25th, Bristol’s own Crit­i­cal Mass was sub­ject to a heavy-hand­ed police response. Although obvi­ous­ly not on the same scale, the rea­son behind it was the same — to smash the Crit­i­cal Mass as a form of protest because it is effec­tive. This forms part of a con­cert­ed effort by police across the UK to stop the protests, includ­ing attempts to crim­i­nalise the action and its par­tic­i­pants (that failed). See http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/371358.html for details. And see http://bristol.indymedia.org/newswire.php?story_id=24359&search_text=Critical%20mass&results_offset=15 for details of 200 plus rid­ers on Bris­tol CM on 28/11/05 held in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Lon­don CM after the cops threat­ened them. Who says CM isn’t polit­i­cal?

Why in the morn­ing?
The usu­al month­ly Crit­i­cal Mass in Bris­tol is a sep­a­rate enti­ty that focus­es on the rights of cyclists, while the inten­tion of the June 8th is to have a wider focus and so the change of time will dif­fer­en­ti­ate the two. Also there has been crit­i­cism that the month­ly Mass stops Bris­to­lians from get­ting home for the week­end, which can lead to a lack of wider sup­port.

This Crit­i­cal Mass is a present to the work­ing peo­ple of Bris­tol! If well attend­ed, the demon­stra­tion could mean big delays in get­ting to work on a Fri­day morn­ing, and a per­fect excuse for phon­ing in late — and who but the boss­es wouldn’t sup­port that! Spread the word to those you work with, but remem­ber we need the num­bers on the ride to make it hap­pen!

Remem­ber, the streets are ours, Crit­i­cal Mass is NOT ille­gal (yet!), and you have to get out of bed ear­ly in the morn­ing if you’re going to out­wit those who want to take away your free­dom to protest!

Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide Web­site — http://risingtide.org.uk/bristol

More info on the G8 protests in Ger­many -http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/371754.html

For posters and fly­ers see http://bristol.indymedia.org/newswire.php?story_id=26367

Brecon Tree Camp & Reading Community Garden court hearings — evictions possible

Nation­al Grid are get­ting ready to evict Bre­con, Bre­con are get­ting ready to fight, please join us.

Nation­al Grid have set the court date to begin the evic­tion of the Bre­con Tree Camp. There will be two peo­ple rep­re­sent­ing us, if you wish to be there ring the site phone on 07903152822. The hear­ing is in Cardiff on Thurs­day 7th June.

Nation­al Grid are get­ting ready to evict Bre­con, Bre­con are get­ting ready to fight, please join us.

Nation­al Grid have set the court date to begin the evic­tion of the Bre­con Tree Camp. There will be two peo­ple rep­re­sent­ing us, if you wish to be there ring the site phone on 07903152822. The hear­ing is in Cardiff on Thurs­day 7th June.

Peo­ple are need­ed on site, machin­ery has been moved almost onto the site and evic­tion is expect­ed from maybe Fri­day or Mon­day, if you are avail­able to come please, please do. Ring the site phone for infor­ma­tion or for advise on what needs doing, i.e legal sup­port.

This is it folks…

fightthepipe@hotmail.co.uk
http://www.fightthepipe.co.uk

»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»>

Evic­tion of squat­ted com­mu­ni­ty gar­den

A com­mu­ni­ty gar­den built on dis­used coun­cil land was opened to the pub­lic on may 19th. The land had been was pre­vi­ous­ly used as a shoot­ing gallery by junkies, but was turned into a beau­ti­ful gar­den, out­side offi­cial juris­dic­tion, by local activists.
The coun­cil, how­ev­er, put the wheels in motion for the evic­tion, before it even opened.
But the open­ing was a great suc­cess and the gar­den has opened every day since (ignor­ing the coun­cil’s injunc­tion).
At 10am on mon­day 4th June the evic­tion hear­ing will go ahead. There will be a demon­stra­tion out­side, com­plete with press cov­er­age.
There will be anoth­er demonstration/resistance on wednes­day or thurs­day (a more exact time when we have it) when the bailiffs come round to evict and close down the gar­den.

Please show your sup­port for this com­mu­ni­ty project by protest­ing out­side the court (Fri­ar street, read­ing) or help­ing resist the evic­tion lat­er in the week.

Many thanks, Kates­grove com­mu­ni­ty gar­den col­lec­tive

Brecon Tree Camp Open Day 9th June

Pro­tes­tors against Nation­al Grid’s mon­ster pipeline, need your sup­port, come and vis­it us in Bre­con.

To oppose Nation­al Grid’s 197 Mile long, 48 inch­es wide, 94 bar pres­sure gas pipe that is run­ning through the Bre­con Bea­con Nation­al Park there has been a protest site set up along the route, this is cur­rent­ly pre­vent­ing Nation­al Grid caus­ing more destruc­tion in this area. Hav­ing the camp is delay­ing work which will cost them mil­lions of pounds and gives us time to work on stop­ping them indef­i­nite­ly. It’s also fun, edu­ca­tion­al and free. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the time has come and evic­tion is due any day now, so…

Pro­tes­tors against Nation­al Grid’s mon­ster pipeline, need your sup­port, come and vis­it us in Bre­con.

To oppose Nation­al Grid’s 197 Mile long, 48 inch­es wide, 94 bar pres­sure gas pipe that is run­ning through the Bre­con Bea­con Nation­al Park there has been a protest site set up along the route, this is cur­rent­ly pre­vent­ing Nation­al Grid caus­ing more destruc­tion in this area. Hav­ing the camp is delay­ing work which will cost them mil­lions of pounds and gives us time to work on stop­ping them indef­i­nite­ly. It’s also fun, edu­ca­tion­al and free. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the time has come and evic­tion is due any day now, so…

We invite you to join us on site for our open day on Sat­ur­day 9th June:

There will be:
Free Work­shops (includ­ing Climb­ing Instruc­tion by our qual­i­fied instruc­tor)
Free Food (suit­able for Veg­ans)
Infor­ma­tion and dis­play board about this pipeline
Free Accom­mo­da­tion (if you want to stay)
Advise and guid­ance in protest­ing
Fun, frol­ics and friend­ship!

This is the per­fect way to learn more about why we are protest­ing this pipeline, what can be done about it and to expe­ri­ence life on a protest site.

The Bre­con Camp is locat­ed about 5 miles from Bre­con Town Cen­tre, in the Nation­al Park on the A40 (West of Bre­con). It is oppo­site Pen­point Church and is obvi­ous­ly marked with ban­ners. Park­ing is avail­able in front of the camp, or a bus goes along the road every two hours and will stop out­side, or hitch­ing is usu­al­ly pos­si­ble. If you want to come down but have dif­fi­cult­ly with trans­port, email us, we might be able to help you.

For more infor­ma­tion check: www.fightthepipe.co.uk or email us at fightthepipe@hotmail.co.uk
Bre­con Tree Camp Site phone num­ber is 07903152822

Rostock, Global Agricultural day of action

Video Rush of the anti GM March, 03/06/2007; part of the G8 protests — for full cov­er­age, see indymedia.org.uk

Video 20070603_Anti_GM_March — video/x‑ms-wmv 11M

Rostock agriculture demo 2Rostock agriculture demo 1Rostock agriculture demo 3Video Rush of the anti GM March, 03/06/2007; part of the G8 protests — for full cov­er­age, see indymedia.org.uk

Video 20070603_Anti_GM_March — video/x‑ms-wmv 11M

Mac Users, down­load Flip4Mac to view.
Watch video.
Be hap­py.

Can I be nom­i­nat­ed for the best shots of the cutest kid award?

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Ros­tock Sun­day. Glob­al Agri­cul­tur­al day of action.

Despite its claims to the con­trary the G8 has done bug­ger all to alle­vi­ate star­va­tion in the world. In fact the num­ber of peo­ple starv­ing in the world is now at an all time high. Sun­day was the day nom­i­nat­ed to draw atten­tion to all things unfair in the world of agri­cul­ture so a rov­ing demo toured the town to tack­le the issues

It has to be said that fol­low­ing Sat­ur­days car­nage this decid­ed­ly fluffy affair was a wel­come assign­ment. There was a band on a float which sound­ed like a cross between Orbital and the Lev­ellers, also a Sam­ba band and oth­er assort­ed drum­mers and musi­cians. As well as the usu­al activists sev­er­al farm­ers from Ger­many and around the world were in atten­dance rais­ing aware­ness about every­thing from GM crops and live­stock to exploita­tion, pol­lu­tion and cor­rupt sub­si­dies.

One port of call was Lidl whose crimes include low pay, non recog­ni­tion of unions, pro­mot­ing GM and sell­ing shit food. Speech­es were made here and at sev­er­al oth­er loca­tions.

Despite the obvi­ous fact that this demo was going to be less con­fronta­tion­al than a sit-in by the Hare Krish­nas, two hun­dred cops in full riot gear were in atten­dance. This gives the impres­sion that their Polic­ing is not what you would describe as ‘intel­li­gence led’. With noth­ing else to do they kept them­selves occu­pied by search­ing any­one under the age of 30 who was wear­ing an item of black cloth­ing. No arrests were made.

The demo fin­ished with more speech­es in the square with plen­ty of inter­est­ing facts and fig­ures. One exam­ple is that milk pro­duc­ing EU cows are sub­sidised for two dol­lars a day. Mean­while starv­ing Africans? One dol­lar a day!

Investigation leads to chicken rescue by Gloucestershire animal activists.

Glouces­ter­shire Ani­mal Action press release — For imme­di­ate release
Sun­day, June 03, 2007

Five month inves­ti­ga­tion leads to chick­en res­cue by Glouces­ter­shire ani­mal activists.

Five months ago activists from Glouces­ter­shire Ani­mal Action learned of a farm in Glouces­ter which had been vis­it­ed by DEFRA after the rot­ting car­cass­es of chick­ens and pigs were left caus­ing a stench which had affect­ed the local com­mu­ni­ty.

Glouces­ter­shire Ani­mal Action press release — For imme­di­ate release
Sun­day, June 03, 2007

Five month inves­ti­ga­tion leads to chick­en res­cue by Glouces­ter­shire ani­mal activists.

Five months ago activists from Glouces­ter­shire Ani­mal Action learned of a farm in Glouces­ter which had been vis­it­ed by DEFRA after the rot­ting car­cass­es of chick­ens and pigs were left caus­ing a stench which had affect­ed the local com­mu­ni­ty.

Local press cov­ered the inci­dent in which the farm own­er had claimed that around one hun­dred ani­mals die per week at the facil­i­ty. Activists vis­it­ed the farm at Lit­tle Wit­combe in Glouces­ter with the inten­tion of doc­u­ment­ing the con­di­tion in which the ani­mals were housed which have result­ed in the deaths of so many ani­mals.

With our inves­ti­ga­tion footage we hope to high­light the real­i­ty of mod­ern non caged “barn” egg busi­ness­es to show that free-range and barn eggs are in no way a guar­an­tee that your food is eth­i­cal­ly pro­duced in many cas­es barn egg sys­tems are worse than bat­tery cage sys­tems and if you wish to be a tru­ly eth­i­cal per­son you real­ly need to go veg­an. The gov­ern­ment has main­tained that veg­an­ism is a very healthy way to live, you can almost half your car­bon foot­print in most cas­es and you can live a cru­el­ty free lifestyle know­ing that no ani­mals or humans are being exploit­ed for your diet!

The fol­low­ing is the account from one activist involved in the inves­ti­ga­tion:

“We entered one of the long sheds which hadn’t been secured prop­er­ly late one evening, mak­ing sure to pro­tect the ani­mals inside we dis­in­fect­ed our feet and cloth­ing before enter­ing. To be hon­est I was expect­ing to have to search for ani­mals in a bad con­di­tion but the real­i­ty was it was more dif­fi­cult to find ani­mals that looked healthy, maybe one in fif­teen chick­ens weren’t in a bad con­di­tion. The air was acrid and filled with ammo­nia and dust par­ti­cles and the fans didn’t seem to be work­ing prop­er­ly. The work­er chart on the wall had said that 6 deaths had occurred in one day in a sin­gle shed and there are four­teen sheds on the farm. It would seem that this is the norm for a facil­i­ty that holds more than 70,000 chick­ens.”

Dur­ing the fol­low­ing months the activists returned to check the con­di­tions which didn’t seem to be improv­ing. After suf­fi­cient evi­dence had been gath­ered in order to high­light the plight of the hens inside a col­lec­tive deci­sion was made by those involved that we would attempt to res­cue and give vet­eri­nary care to a small amount of the chick­ens (Thir­teen in total).

The res­cue took place dur­ing the ear­ly hours of a warm night in May, three activists entered a barn with ani­mal car­ri­ers and record­ing equip­ment, footage was record­ed and pho­tos tak­en, the ani­mals were then care­ful­ly loaded into ani­mal car­ri­ers and into a con­vert­ed laun­dry bag, they were then trans­port­ed to a house for the night for food and water. The next morn­ing they were tak­en to live out their lives at a sanc­tu­ary. It should be remem­bered that these ani­mals have nev­er expe­ri­enced sun­light or fresh air and to see these intel­li­gent crea­tures being giv­en a chance to live with real food and fresh water in fan­tas­tic con­di­tions brought those involved to tears. We can only hope that the remain­ing thou­sands of ani­mals and bil­lions of ani­mals breed each year for our ani­mal diet expe­ri­ence the same lux­u­ry one day.

Glouces­ter­shire Ani­mal Action are a peace­ful group of indi­vid­u­als, we con­sid­er our actions to be total­ly jus­ti­fied and are will­ing to accept any reper­cus­sions as a result of our actions. Dur­ing our vis­its we saw no signs which indi­cat­ed that the prop­er­ty was pri­vate. We are aware that we have caused dam­age to a lock on the farm dur­ing our last vis­it and we will be send­ing a pay­ment to cov­er the cost of replac­ing the lock how­ev­er we will not be pay­ing for the chick­ens tak­en. We how­ev­er wel­come dona­tions via our web­site towards trans­porta­tion costs and vet bills.

Note: The activists wear face cov­er­ings dur­ing the res­cue to pre­vent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion this is for per­son­al safe­ty and to pro­tect their free­dom, ani­mal activists have been impris­oned for years after res­cu­ing ani­mals from facil­i­ties such as this one.

For infor­ma­tion about Glouces­ter­shire Ani­mal Action you can vis­it their web­site at www.stopanimalcruelty.co.uk or you can watch the full video of the res­cue online via YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=JllgcO0f_Gg

Enawene Nawe block highway to stop dam

4th June 2007
A few days ago the Enawene Nawe set up a road block­ade in protest to a series of hydro­elec­tric dams which will destroy their fish­ing grounds, which they depend on.

Today they dis­man­tled the block­ade and have begun trav­el­ling to the cap­i­tal of Brazil to meet gov­ern­ment offi­cials.

4th June 2007
A few days ago the Enawene Nawe set up a road block­ade in protest to a series of hydro­elec­tric dams which will destroy their fish­ing grounds, which they depend on.

Today they dis­man­tled the block­ade and have begun trav­el­ling to the cap­i­tal of Brazil to meet gov­ern­ment offi­cials.

From Sur­vival Inter­na­tion­al — The Indi­ans mount­ed the block­ade on 31 May to protest against plans to build a series of hydro­elec­tric dams along the Juru­e­na riv­er, which they say will destroy their vital fish­ing grounds.

Accord­ing to local press reports, sev­er­al neigh­bour­ing tribes joined the protest and about 100 Indi­ans armed with bows and arrows effec­tive­ly iso­lat­ed the north­west­ern part of the state.

A com­mis­sion com­posed of gov­ern­ment offi­cials and the police nego­ti­at­ed with the Enawene Nawe who agreed to halt their block­ade if they could meet with the pres­i­dent of FUNAI (the Brazil­ian government’s Indi­an affairs depart­ment) to raise their con­cerns.

A del­e­ga­tion of Enawene Nawe set out today on the long jour­ney to Brasília. (source. Also see this arti­cle about the block­ade)