Category: Animal Rights/Liberation

Latest Action Update

Climb­ing, block­ing, stink­ing, sab­bing earth defend­ers rock!
Roll on down to the EF! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing in mid-August.

Paint-throw­ing, blockad­ing, riot­ing, board­ing up offices and gath­er­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands togeth­er — all ways to try and defeat the Nuclear Behe­moth.

Climb­ing, block­ing, stink­ing, sab­bing earth defend­ers rock!
Roll on down to the EF! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing in mid-August.

Paint-throw­ing, blockad­ing, riot­ing, board­ing up offices and gath­er­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands togeth­er — all ways to try and defeat the Nuclear Behe­moth.

Blockad­ing coal in Bangladesh, cop­per min­ing in Peru, Ital­ian eco­tage against incin­er­a­tion, Greek fire­bombs oppos­ing land­fill, pro-rick­shaw car-smash­ing in India, actions and camp­ing to pro­tect the Tas­man­ian forests, and anti-min­ing trash­ing of many things in Indonesia…just a taste from around the world of how peo­ple cam­paign to stop the destruc­tion of the earth and it’s inhab­i­tants.

More news from the front lines: trav­ellers dig­ging in, mobile phone mast torch­ing, a first time hunt sabber’s diary, the lat­est from the GM ‘anti-lob­by’, and track­ing new devel­op­ments — UK frack­ing, FFS!

Plus with the lat­est advice from AUn­tie Miffy, con­tacts and dates to get you in the mood for Cap­tain Swing, down­load, dis­trib­ute, sub­scribe and get out there, and stuck in.

earthfirst.org.uk/efau
[- to sub­scribe & get the EF!AU as soon as it’s pro­duced, rather than when we put it up here!]

Call out for workshops for EF! Summer Gathering 2011

This year’s Earth First Sum­mer Gath­er­ing takes place in East Anglia this year, start­ing on the 10th of August and run­ning for five days. With six work­shops tents we have space for over 100 dis­cus­sions, pre­sen­ta­tions and work­shops. The spaces are fill­ing up fast, but there is still time to book a spot.

This year’s Earth First Sum­mer Gath­er­ing takes place in East Anglia this year, start­ing on the 10th of August and run­ning for five days. With six work­shops tents we have space for over 100 dis­cus­sions, pre­sen­ta­tions and work­shops. The spaces are fill­ing up fast, but there is still time to book a spot. So if you’ve got an idea you wish to high­light, whether it’s relat­ed to eco­log­i­cal defence or social resis­tance here is your chance. The gath­er­ing is attend­ed by hun­dreds of indi­vid­u­als inter­est­ed and par­tic­i­pat­ing in strug­gles around the UK and Europe.

To get in touch just email efsummergathering2011announce@riseup.net with a blurb of for you work­shop or dis­cus­sion and we’ll do our best to fit you in.

For month­ly email updates for the gath­er­ing sub­scribe to efsummergathering@lists.riseup.net

Tension mounts as Brazilian Indians retake land

27 May 2011
A com­mu­ni­ty of Guarani Indi­ans in Brazil has retak­en part of its ances­tral land in an act of des­per­a­tion, hav­ing lived by the side of a high­way for a year and a half.

The Guarani marched back to their land last week, unwill­ing fur­ther to endure the appalling liv­ing con­di­tions they have been sub­ject to on the road­side.

27 May 2011
A com­mu­ni­ty of Guarani Indi­ans in Brazil has retak­en part of its ances­tral land in an act of des­per­a­tion, hav­ing lived by the side of a high­way for a year and a half.

The Guarani marched back to their land last week, unwill­ing fur­ther to endure the appalling liv­ing con­di­tions they have been sub­ject to on the road­side.

The Indi­ans of Laran­jeira Nan­deru com­mu­ni­ty had their lands stolen from them in the 1960s, to make way for cat­tle ranch­es. They returned to their land in 2008, but were evict­ed again in Sep­tem­ber 2009 – soon after, their vil­lage was bru­tal­ly attacked and burned down.

Since then, the Guarani have been liv­ing under tar­pau­lin sheet­ing, with lit­tle access to clean water, food, or med­ical care, and sub­ject to intense heat and flood­ing, by the side of a high­way. Large trucks and cars thun­dered past day and night, and one Guarani was run over and killed.

Faride, spokesman of the com­mu­ni­ty, told Sur­vival researchers before the reoc­cu­pa­tion, ‘Laran­jeira Nan­deru was my father’s land, my grandfather’s land, my great grandfather’s land… We need to go back there so we can work and live in peace… that is our dream.’

Watch a film clip of Faride talk­ing about his community’s land — http://assets.survivalinternational.org/flash/syndicated-player.swf' width='480' height='270' allowFullScreen='true' wmode='opaque' bgcolor='111111' allowScriptAccess='always' flashvars='config=http://assets-production.survivalinternational.org/films/412/config.xml' />”>
Some Guarani lead­ers who have led their com­mu­ni­ties’ reoc­cu­pa­tions of their land, such as the inter­na­tion­al­ly-renowned Mar­cos Veron, have been assas­si­nat­ed.

The com­mu­ni­ty is now urg­ing the gov­ern­ment offi­cial­ly to pro­tect their land so they are not evict­ed again.

The Guarani have a deep spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion to their land, upon which they rely for their men­tal and phys­i­cal well-being.

Fol­low­ing the loss of almost all their land to ranch­es and soya and sug­ar­cane plan­ta­tions, thou­sands of Guarani are liv­ing in over­crowd­ed reserves, and some are camped by the side of high­ways.

Survival’s Direc­tor, Stephen Cor­ry, said today, ‘It is no sur­prise that hav­ing been forced to endure such pre­car­i­ous con­di­tions for so long, the Guarani have tak­en mat­ters into their own hands and returned home. This should sure­ly act as a wake-up call for the author­i­ties to pro­tect the land and remove the lurk­ing threat of anoth­er evic­tion. That is the least the Guarani deserve’.
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Down­load Survival’s report on the sit­u­a­tion of the Guarani, sent to the Unit­ed Nations last year. ( in Eng­lish and Por­tuguese pdf, 2.4 MB).

Bath Bomb #33 Out Now!

THE BATH BOMB

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #33
free/donation
Sep­tem­ber 2010

“More rusty barbed wire than cut­ting edge”

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The First Cut Is The Deep­est

Whilst we’ve nev­er claimed to be the cut­ting edge of jour­nal­ism, the Bath Bomb has become privy to a series of unpleas­ant plans from coun­cils in the south­west:

THE BATH BOMB

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #33
free/donation
Sep­tem­ber 2010

“More rusty barbed wire than cut­ting edge”

*

The First Cut Is The Deep­est

Whilst we’ve nev­er claimed to be the cut­ting edge of jour­nal­ism, the Bath Bomb has become privy to a series of unpleas­ant plans from coun­cils in the south­west:

Somerset’s most ded­i­cat­ed N.H.S. pro­fes­sion­als are being “strong-armed and rail­road­ed” into defect­ing from the Pri­ma­ry Care Trust to join social enter­prise ven­tures, with­out the chance of a prop­er con­sul­ta­tion. But at a meet­ing filled with angry health vis­i­tors, school nurs­es, local hos­pi­tal and oth­er work­ers in Bridg­wa­ter on Wednes­day 1st Sep­tem­ber, they vot­ed “No!” to pri­vati­sa­tion. Their cam­paign is now seek­ing pub­lic sup­port for the P.C.T. meet­ing at Wyn­ford House, Lufton Way, in Yeovil on Wednes­day 15th Sep­tem­ber from 10am, where the deci­sion is expect­ed to be made.

Employ­ment Min­is­ter Chris Grayling has start­ed a cru­sade to force the 260 young Inca­pac­i­ty Ben­e­fit claimants in B.&N.E.S. (and a fur­ther 530 in Wilt­shire) into work – regard­less of whether they’re fit to or not. There are already wider moves to slash the Wel­fare Bill, and expand the con­tro­ver­sial Work Capa­bil­i­ty Assess­ment health test, but Grayling some­how seeks to frame this witch-hunt as a form of phil­an­thropy: “Thou­sands of young peo­ple with their lives ahead of them just parked on sick­ness ben­e­fits with no way out.” A big man with a big heart.

Three out of sev­en youth key work­ers in the Bath area are to be cut, along­side their youth cen­tres. Youth work­ers who have been col­leagues for years are now being turned against each oth­er, anx­ious­ly com­pet­ing to not put a foot wrong and lose their jobs, or be ‘matrix’ed. Whether crime rates will go up as deprived kids are alien­at­ed even fur­ther, is hard to say.

Waste man­age­ment ser­vices in the vil­lage of Old Wel­ton are to be cut and shipped out to Bath. As they share the Trans­fer Sta­tion site with oth­er pub­lic ser­vices, there is expect­ed to be a knock-on ‘tip­ping point’ effect where more ser­vices are sent off to the big city, even­tu­al­ly drain­ing the area of a large por­tion of its employ­ment, and its econ­o­my.

Mean­while G.M.B. union work­ers in Bris­tol are being ille­gal­ly threat­ened with dis­ci­pli­nary action for shar­ing news of intend­ed cuts with their unions.

But peo­ple aren’t just gonna sit and take it: a noisy 40-strong demo out­side Bris­tol City Coun­cil took place on Tues­day 7th Sep­tem­ber, with many a union ban­ner and speak­er. Sat­ur­day the 4th saw the Bath Stop The War Coali­tion find unan­i­mous con­sen­sus from the 90 bal­lot­ed on their reg­u­lar vig­il, who would rather cut Tri­dent than ser­vices. On Wednes­day 22nd Sep­tem­ber, from 7.30pm, a ‘Fight the Cuts’ pub­lic meet­ing will take place, down­stairs at Friends Meet­ing House on York Street. Though speak­ers will be present from the tra­di­tion­al unions – such as the N.U.T., G.M.B., Uni­son, U.C.U. and Bath Trades Coun­cil – we need a wider pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion from oth­er affect­ed peo­ple, so we can sort this crap out! You owe it to your­self to come along!

Who knows? Per­haps we might take a livre out of France’s book, where 2.5 mil­lion took to the streets on Tues­day the 7th, against Sarkozy’s aus­ter­i­ty plans. No to Job Cuts! No to Pen­sion Cuts! No to Ser­vice Cuts! Cut Tax Eva­sion! Cut I.D. Cards! Cut Tri­dent! Cut the Pay Gap! Cut a Tory! Vive La Strike!

http://bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com
http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/news/260–25s-sickness-benefit-B-NES/article-2602689-detail/article.html
http://bristol.indymedia.org.uk/article/693333

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Tory Scum, Out Of Brum!

ACTION STATIONS! ACTION STATIONS! EVERYONE TO THE STREETS! Sun­day 3rd Octo­ber will be our first chance to show our anger at the Con-Dem cuts. As the Tories kick off their par­ty con­fer­ence in Birm­ing­ham, they will be met by thou­sands of angry pro­test­ers from the diverse sec­tions of soci­ety that are being forced to bear the brunt of the cuts onslaught. The mes­sage will be clear: this cri­sis was caused by the rich, and we refuse to pay for it with job loss­es, pay reduc­tions, ser­vice cuts and hiked V.A.T., while the toffs at the top con­tin­ue to line their pock­ets. Plans for the protest are shap­ing up nice­ly, with many unions, com­mu­ni­ty groups and oth­ers gear­ing up to make some noise. Those angry pranksters over at Class War have booked them­selves a team at the Tory Par­ty pub quiz, and are call­ing for as much help (with the ques­tions of course!) as pos­si­ble. There is also a ‘direct action’ bloc shap­ing up, which promis­es to dis­rupt pro­ceed­ings nice­ly. So, whether you want to peace­ful­ly protest, or have some­thing a bit more live­ly in mind, there will be some­thing for you on the day. This will be the start of a mas­sive cam­paign against the cuts and there will even be trans­port run­ning to the demo from Bath — leav­ing at 9am from Lau­ra Place foun­tain (though details may change), tick­ets are £10 waged or £5 unwaged, and to get yours, e‑mail either bathagainstcuts[at]yahoo.co.uk or tel 07908 355456.

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Get Shorty

Kil­ter, Bath’s unique out­door the­atre com­pa­ny, plants the seeds of change with their play­ful, engag­ing ‘Roots Replant­ed’ show, inves­ti­gat­ing food-secu­ri­ty in the fast approach­ing post-oil world. Elope to the Hamp­ton Row Allot­ments from Fri­day 10th to Sun­day 12th of this month, down the bean-rows, for an inti­mate tale of love and veg­eta­bles. Times are 6.30pm Thurs­day to Sat­ur­day, and addi­tion­al show­ings at 2.30pm on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day. Or catch them lat­er at Pease­down St John Com­mu­ni­ty Farm or Bloom­field Allot­ments at Bear Flat. Book­ings can be made by ring­ing 01225 386777.

On invi­ta­tion from Frome Friends of Pales­tine, “Israel’s bravest, most prin­ci­pled” his­to­ri­an Ilan Pappe will be speak­ing at the Mason­ic Hall on North Parade on Fri­day 17th Sep­tem­ber at 8pm. His talk will exam­ine the ongo­ing his­to­ry of Zion­ism, from its roots in the racist soils of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry to the sit­u­a­tion today. His book The Eth­nic Cleans­ing of Pales­tine, effec­tive­ly cost him his job at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Haifa four years ago. Admis­sion is £5.

B.&N.E.S. Coun­cil seem to final­ly be doing some­thing right, as, from 4th Octo­ber, week­ly col­lec­tions of food waste will reach 72,000 house­holds, con­vert­ing the £48+ per tonne tax­pay­er bur­den to agri­cul­tur­al com­post in Glouces­ter­shire. With any luck, the £400,000 imple­men­ta­tion cost will come straight from John Everit­t’s pock­et? And maybe sort­ing out a por­tion of the annu­al 20 mil­lion tonnes of super­mar­ket and indus­try U.K. waste will be next, right?

A gang of racists attacked the Indi­an Cur­ry Nights restau­rant in Augus­ta Place, off Upper Bris­tol Road, on Tues­day 24th August. Two wait­ers were minor­ly hurt, and a win­dow was tar­get­ed by thrown rocks. Con­sid­er­ing attacks on take­aways and mosques in the city over the last cou­ple of years, per­haps it’s way past time that local anti-fas­cists stepped it up?

Police Sergeant Mark Andrews showed his true colours back in July ’08, when he smashed 59-year-old Pamela Somerville’s face against the cell floor at Col­erne cop­shop. Recent­ly sent down this week for six months for Actu­al Bod­i­ly Harm, for once a cop­per has paid a price for his actions. But can we all rest easy now that the friend­ly bob­bies have cleaned them­selves up once more? Or are cas­es like Andrews and (Ian Tom­lin­son’s killer) Simon Har­wood per­haps not just a cou­ple of bad eggs, but instead symp­to­matic of a wider insti­tu­tion­al vio­lence, and near-com­plete free­dom from con­se­quence, infect­ing the whole of the force?

Rad­i­cal cam­paign­ing groups such as Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide have called for an inter­na­tion­al day of action against the coal indus­try on Tues­day 12th Octo­ber; more details to fol­low

http://www.kiltertheatre.org
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb5245/is_7840_231/ai_n29412429/
http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/news/Council-gears-food-waste-scheme/article-2604136-detail/article.html
http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/news/Police-appeal-waiters-attacked-Bath-park/article-2603995-detail/article.html
http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/news/Police-officer-faces-sack-cell-brutality-woman-59/article-2607007-detail/article.html

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GOT A STORY? WANT TO RECEIVE THE BATH BOMB BY EMAIL? HOPING TO SUE? Con­tact us by e‑mailing bathbombpress[at]yahoo.co.uk. Large print e‑versions avail­able on request. And for more info on any of our sto­ries, check out http://www.thebathbomb.blogspot.com

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Fash In The Pan

The August bank hol­i­day week­end was due to be a big day for the British far-right, with two high-pro­file demos designed to put racist thug­gery firm­ly back on the map; but unfor­tu­nate­ly for them, it was­n’t to be.

The week­end start­ed off with media rev­e­la­tions that, far from being a grow­ing dynam­ic par­ty, as fuhrer Grif­fin would have us believe, the fas­cist B.N.P. is in fact falling apart. On the verge of bank­rupt­cy due to finan­cial mis­man­age­ment, lack of sup­port and a cost­ly law­suit (filed by Unilever when Grif­fin used the Mar­mite logo in a par­ty broad­cast), the rats are well and tru­ly flee­ing the ship. First to go was Richard Barn­brook, ama­teur gay porn direc­tor and the B.N.P.‘s sole mem­ber on the Greater Lon­don Assem­bly, who quit after call­ing for a “full inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion” into cor­rup­tion in the par­ty. He was fol­lowed short­ly by Lee Barnes, the par­ty legal offi­cer and ‘unsteady’ Eddy But­ler, for­mer Nation­al Front full-timer and B.N.P. press offi­cer, both of whom assert­ed that Grif­fin was exer­cis­ing a dic­ta­to­r­i­al stran­gle­hold over the par­ty. Just to prove them wrong, Grif­fin expelled a fur­ther 30 high-rank­ing par­ty mem­bers for chal­leng­ing his abil­i­ty to lead the par­ty. So, with the B.N.P. slid­ing off the scene, the stage was set for the thick-as-shit boot boys of the Eng­lish Defence League to take the far-right lime­light.

They intend­ed to do this with a mass march through Brad­ford on Sat­ur­day 28th, in the hope of ignit­ing fur­ther Asian riots to jus­ti­fy their anti-immi­grant agen­da. Deter­mined to cause a ruckus, the E.D.L. banned women from the demo, pre­dict­ed a turnout of 5,000, and dubbed the demo “the big one”. In the event, the ‘Bat­tle of Lit­tle Big One’ was a dis­ap­point­ing washout, with only 700 fas­cists being dwarfed by sev­er­al thou­sands of com­mu­ni­ty and anti-fas­cist activists, who told the E.D.L. in no uncer­tain terms that they would not be goad­ed into full-scale riot­ing. How­ev­er, that did­n’t stop a few naughty lads and ladies smash­ing up the E.D.L. coach­es as they fled the scene. The high point of the day came when a sym­pa­thet­ic cop­per forced a lone E.D.L. skin­head into a crowd of locals, despite his tear­ful protes­ta­tions. Appar­ent­ly no-one saw exact­ly what hap­pened, but an ambu­lance was observed speed­ing away from the scene short­ly after­wards!

So, on to bank hol­i­day Mon­day, and sun­ny Brighton, where fringe fas­cist group the ‘Eng­lish Nation­al Alliance’ had called a ‘March for Eng­land’ (their stat­ed tar­gets were mus­lims, immi­grants, stu­dents and paci­fists — nice!). They pre­dict­ed a turnout of over 300 patri­ot­ic war­riors, which turned out on the day to be around 50 jug-eared Burber­ry mod­els scream­ing racist slo­gans at any­one unfor­tu­nate enough to be in earshot. The turnout then pro­ceed­ed to get turned over by 300 assem­bled anti-fas­cists who dis­rupt­ed the march con­tin­u­ous­ly until the police called full-time and escort­ed the fas­cists home for their own safe­ty!

What was billed as being a week­end that would put racist pol­i­tics back on the map, end­ed in two woe­ful­ly under-attend­ed demos, vast­ly larg­er anti-fas­cist counter-events, unan­i­mous rejec­tion of the fas­cists by local com­mu­ni­ties and the vir­tu­al dis­in­te­gra­tion of the far-right’s bright­est star, the B.N.P. It may be too ear­ly to cheer, as a dying beast still has fangs, but the news is encour­ag­ing and sug­gests that a few hard shoves could boot these groups to where they belong — the dust­bin of his­to­ry.

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Bath Activist Net­work 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 and greens, and peo­ple who just want to change Bath for the bet­ter. For details on meet­ings, demos, or just to get in touch, e‑mail bathactivistnet[at]yahoo.co.uk, or see our web­site: http://www.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com

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UPCOMING EVENTS

 

draw­ing class­es: ‘Remem­ber­ing the Present’, Mon­days & Tues­days, Stokes Croft Muse­um, 81–83 Stokes Croft, Bris­tol, http://www.stokescroftmuseum.info

 

Lon­don Road Food Co-op, Wednes­days, 4–7pm, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Lon­don Road, http://www.londonroadfoodcoop.blogspot.com

 

exhi­bi­tion: ‘Remem­ber­ing the Present’, Wednes­days, Thurs­days & Fri­days, 11am-3pm, Stokes Croft Muse­um, 81–83 Stokes Croft, Bris­tol, http://www.stokescroftmuseum.info

 

Bathamp­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Grow­ers work­day, Thurs­days, 10am-dusk, Mill Lane, Bathamp­ton, e‑mail thelostplot[at]googlemail.com/ tel Chris 07792 444628

 

Bathamp­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Sup­port­ed Agri­cul­ture project: fruit pick­ing, Thurs­days and Sun­days, http://www.transitionbath.org/bathampton-csa-news

 

Bath Stop The War Coali­tion vig­il, Sat­ur­days, 11.30am-12.30, Bath Abbey Court­yard

 

Brad­ford-On-Avon peace vig­il, Sat­ur­days, 11.30am-12.30, by the peace stat­ue oppo­site West­bury Gar­dens by the Town Bridge, Brad­ford-On-Avon

 

exhi­bi­tion: ‘Remem­ber­ing the Present’, Sat­ur­days, 12–4pm, Stokes Croft Muse­um, 81–83 Stokes Croft, Bris­tol, http://www.stokescroftmuseum.info

 

Recy­cle Your Sun­days, Sun­days, 10.30am, starts Abbey Church­yard, the reg­u­lar series of socia­ble, easy-paced cycle rides, http://www.bathrys.org.uk/ tel Hazel 01225 469199

 

one year part-time ‘Prac­ti­cal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty’ course, starts Sep­tem­ber 2010, Bris­tol; explor­ing per­ma­cul­ture design, organ­ic hor­ti­cul­ture, wood­land man­age­ment, green build­ing, eco­log­i­cal inter­ac­tions, ener­gy, group dynam­ics, re-local­i­sa­tion, cre­at­ing change, com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment and more; http://www.shiftbristol.org.uk

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Fri­day 10th Sep­tem­ber, Hamp­ton Row Allot­ments, Bath­wick, 6.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

‘Bris­tol Green Doors’: 52 peo­ple will open their homes show­cas­ing ener­gy waste reduc­tion, Sat­ur­day 11th to Sun­day 12th Sep­tem­ber, http://www.bristolgreendoors.org

 

Bris­tol Anar­chist Book­fair, Sat­ur­day 11th Sep­tem­ber, 10.30–6pm, Hamil­ton House, 80 Stokes Croft, Bris­tol; e‑mail bristolanarchistbookfair[at]riseup.net; http://www.bristolanarchistbookfair.org

 

Stop Hink­ley ‘C’ talks and work­shops, Sat­ur­day 11th, 11–5pm, Trin­i­ty Hall, St Sav­iours Avenue, Bridg­wa­ter, http://www.stophinkley.org

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sat­ur­day 11th Sep­tem­ber, Hamp­ton Row Allot­ments, Bath­wick, 2.30pm & 6.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

Stop Hink­ley ‘C’ protest/guided tour, Sun­day 12th Sep­tem­ber, 12 mid­day, Hink­ley Point pow­er sta­tion, near Bridg­wa­ter, http://www.stophinkley.org

 

‘The Atmos­phere Of Heav­en’:  his­to­ry walk, Sun­day 12th Sep­tem­ber, 12 mid­day, walk begins 3 Rod­ney Place, off Cliftin Down Road, Bris­tol, http://www.brh.org.uk/misc/gas.html

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sun­day 12th Sep­tem­ber, Hamp­ton Row Allot­ments, Bath­wick, 2.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

film: ‘Grass’, Sun­day 12th Sep­tem­ber, 7.30pm, Pier­ian Cen­tre, 27 Port­land Square, St Pauls, Bris­tol, £5 entry, http://www.pieriancentre.com

 

Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, Mon­day 13th Sep­tem­ber, 8–9pm, The Bell, Wal­cot Street, e‑mail bathanimalaction[at]yahoo.co.uk; http://www.bathanimalaction.blogspot.com

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Thurs­day 16th to Fri­day 17th Sep­tem­ber, Pease­down St John Com­mu­ni­ty Farm, Dunker­ton Hill, BA2 8PJ, 6.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

Taunton Wom­ens Refuge punk ben­e­fit gig, Thurs­day 16th Sep­tem­ber, 7pm, Road­house, taunton, free entry, feat. Rat Attack, As We Sink!, Fights & Fires, Sub­gen­er­ates & Bats About Bats; http://www.tauntonwomensrefuge.org.uk

 

‘Wild Food in Autumn’ walk & for­ag­ing course, Fri­day 17th to Sun­day 19th Sep­tem­ber, Monk­ton Wyld Court, near Char­mouth, Brid­port, Dorset, £215 residential/£145 non-res­i­den­tial, http://www.monktonwyldcourt.co.uk/

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sat­ur­day 18th Sep­tem­ber, Pease­down St John Com­mu­ni­ty Farm, Dunker­ton Hill, BA2 8PJ, 2.30pm & 6.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

Bris­tol Free Veg­an Food Fair ben­e­fit gig, Sat­ur­day 18th Sep­tem­ber, 7.30pm, the Black Swan pub, 438 Sta­ple­ton Road, Bris­tol, feat Dad­dy Long Bones, Budd, Mol­ly Sam­son, Ren, D.J. Dub Simi­an & The Long Dead Beat, £3/£4 entry

 

Region­al South West Ani­mal Rights Coali­tion meet­ing, Sun­day 19th Sep­tem­ber, 12–5pm, Kebele Com­mu­ni­ty Co-op, 14 Robert­son Road, Eas­t­on, Bris­tol, e‑mail regionalarc[at]googlemail.com

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sun­day 19th Sep­tem­ber, Pease­down St John Com­mu­ni­ty Farm, Dunker­ton Hill, BA2 8PJ, 2.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

Seed Sav­ing work­shop, Sun­day 19th Sep­tem­ber, 2.30–5pm, put on by Bath Organ­ic Group, places are lim­it­ed, tel 01225 319117, £2.50 entry

 

‘The Glob­al Cir­cle of Peace’: mul­ti­me­dia work of art to cel­e­brate U.N. World Peace Day, Tues­day 21st Sep­tem­ber, 6.30–8.00pm, Kingston Parade Gar­dens, http://www.theglobalcircleofpeace.com

 

two-day work­shop: ‘Hold­ing the Vision’, Wednes­day 22nd to Thurs­day 23rd Sep­tem­ber, 10–4.30pm, Bris­tol, £45–75 entry, with Starhawk; e‑mail shiftbristol[at]yahoo.co.uk; http://www.starhawk.org

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Thurs­day 23rd to Fri­day 24th Sep­tem­ber, Bloom­field Allot­ments, Bear Flat, 6.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

‘An Old Home Fit for the Future’: vis­it to vic­to­ri­an eco-effi­cient house, Fri­day 24th Sep­tem­ber, 3–7pm, 16 Pul­teney Gar­dens, Wid­combe, Bath, BA2 4HG,  http://www.transitionbath.org/old-home-fit-for-the-future

 

Crit­i­cal Mass Bike Ride, Sat­ur­day 25th Sep­tem­ber, meet 1pm, Kingsmead Square, http://www.bathcyclingcampaign.org.uk

 

‘An Old Home Fit for the Future’: vis­it to vic­to­ri­an eco-effi­cient house, Fri­day 25th to Sun­day 26th Sep­tem­ber, 11–6pm, 16 Pul­teney Gar­dens, Wid­combe, Bath, BA2 4HG,  http://www.transitionbath.org/old-home-fit-for-the-future

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sat­ur­day 25th Sep­tem­ber, Bloom­field Allot­ments, Bear Flat, 2.30pm & 6.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

Bath Ani­mal Action info stall, Sun­day 26th Sep­tem­ber, 2–4pm, Stall Street, e‑mail bathanimalaction[at]yahoo.co.uk; http:///www.bathanimalaction.blogsppot.com

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sun­day 26th Sep­tem­ber, Bloom­field Allot­ments, Bear Flat, 2.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

Tran­si­tion Bath Social, Mon­day 27th Sep­tem­ber, 7.15pm, the Love Lounge/ back room of the Bell, Wal­cot Street; bring food to share; http://www.transitionbath.org

 

Bath Cycling Cam­paign meet­ing, Mon­day 27th Sep­tem­ber, 7.30pm, the Ris­ing Sun, Grove Street, http://www.bathcyclingcampaign.org.uk

 

Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs meet­ing, Mon­day 27th Sep­tem­ber, 8–9pm, The Bell, tel Justin 07854 062336

 

Bath Social­ist Forum meet­ing, Mon­day 27th Sep­tem­ber, 8pm, upstairs St James Wine Vaults, pre­sent­ed by Ken Loach

 

speak­ers & dis­cus­sion: ‘Cli­mate Jus­tice: Think Glob­al, Act Local’, Tues­day 28th Sep­tem­ber, 7–9pm, Uni­tar­i­an Meet­ing House, Brunswick Square, Bris­tol; F.F.I. e‑mail Katharine[at]wdm.org.uk / tel Katharine 020 7820 4900; http://groups.wdm.org.uk/bristol

 

No Bor­ders Camp Bel­gium, Wednes­day 29th Sep­tem­ber to Sun­day 3rd Octo­ber, Brus­sels, http://www.noborderbxl.eu.org/?lang=en

 

‘Low Car­bon Bath Con­sul­ta­tion’: Thurs­day 30th Sep­tem­ber, 6.30–8.30pm, Build­ing of Bath Col­lec­tion, The Count­ess of Huntington’s Chapel, The Vine­yards, Paragon, Bath, for a book­ing, e‑mail gkillick[at]bptrust.org.uk, or ring 01225 338727

 

Nation­al March for Farmed Ani­mals, Sat­ur­day 2nd Octo­ber, 12pm start, Cavendish Square, Lon­don

 

anti-Tory demon­stra­tion, Sun­day 3rd Octo­ber,  Tory Par­ty Con­fer­ence, Birm­ing­ham more details tbc

 

Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, Thurs­day 7th Octo­ber, 7.30–9pm, down­stairs at the Hob­gob­lin, St James Parade, http://ww.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com

 

Legal fees ben­e­fit punk gig: ‘SUBVERT 2010 — A Fes­ti­val Of Resis­tance’, Fri­day 8th to Sun­day 10th Octo­ber, Bris­tol, feat Hel­lkrush­er, Rui­dosa Immu­ni­di­cia, War All The Time, Ignosy, The Wankys, The Extin­guish­ers & Bul­letrid­den, as well as veg­an cafés/ stalls/ films/ work­shops & pic­nic; more details tbc

 

Bath Green Drinks, Wednes­day 13th Octo­ber, 8pm, the Ris­ing Sun, Grove Street

 

Region­al day of action against the cuts, Sat­ur­day 23rd Octo­ber

 

Lon­don Anar­chist Book­fair, Sat­ur­day 23rd Octo­ber, 10am-7pm, Queen Mary’s, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don, Mile End Road, Lon­don, http://www.anarchistbookfair.org.uk

 

Bris­tol Free Veg­an Food Fair, Sat­ur­day 30th Octo­ber, 12–5pm, Broad­mead Bap­tist Church, Union Street, Bris­tol, BS1 3HY, http://www.bristolanimalrights.org.uk/veganfoodfair

 

Coali­tion of the Resis­tance Con­fer­ence, Sat­ur­day 27th Novem­ber, Lon­don, more details tbc

 

Camp for Cli­mate Action Aus­tralia, Wednes­day 1st to Sun­day 5th Decem­ber, Bayswa­ter Pow­er Sta­tion, http://www.climatecamp.org.au

 

Cli­mate Camp Aotearoa, Thurs­day 16th to Tues­day 21st Decem­ber,  Welling­ton New Zealand, http://www.climatecamp.org.nz/node/51

 

*

‘Fat­cat Boss­es Get The Cream’ Shock­er!

Insult has been added to injury once again, as a G.M.B. union sur­vey scru­ti­nised 151 coun­cil and met­ro­pol­i­tan accounts and dis­cov­ered how 129 chief execs are paid more than £150,000 a year. It went on to note how two earned more than £300,000, and 76 earned between £200,000 and £300,000. In the south­west, B.&N.E.S. Coun­cil head hon­cho John Everitt net­ted a com­fy £211,859 this year, includ­ing pen­sion con­tri­bu­tions and expens­es; though his rivals at Corn­wall Coun­ty and Bris­tol City did bet­ter. Life’s hard, eh?

And this is at a time when coun­cils claim to be hard up, slash­ing jobs, ser­vices, and hand­ing out pay freezes like they were sweets to kids. Stand­ing there shiv­er­ing in the play­ground, in their plas­tic mac. Local gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Bob Neill makes an inter­est­ing point: “We need to stamp out a cul­ture of dupli­ca­tion, which is why, in many cas­es, coun­cils should be look­ing towards shar­ing chief exec­u­tives.” But actu­al­ly stamp­ing on the guy seems a bit harsh; instead of cut­ting the 300 out of 7,000 coun­cil jobs, sure­ly it would make more sense to cut just one… After all, the dole queue is nice this time of year, John.

*

Grub Street Mee­ja

Pity the shit-upon peo­ple of Bath, whose local lose-papers, the Bath Com­ic and the West­ern Dai­ly Piss, are two of the apolo­gies for jour­nal­ism in the city.

Time was when the Com­ic would give reg­u­lar and gen­er­ous cov­er­age to anti-war, anti-coun­cil and anti-devel­op­er stunts, but since the lat­est edi­tor took over, it looks as if any­thing like­ly to rock the boat gets packed off on an extend­ed Hol­l­i­day. The big trou­ble with the Com­ic is that it has its head well and tru­ly up the rec­tums of cor­po­rate crooks and shys­ters like B.&N.E.S., Bath Rug­by, First­Bus, Crest Nichol­son (West­ern River­side), Mor­ley Fund Man­age­ment (South­gate), and oth­ers. Proof that the Com­ic had aban­doned any pre­tence of seri­ous news report­ing and had achieved full Beano sta­tus, came with its hilar­i­ous but read­er­ship-insult­ing ‘Attack of the giant seag­ulls’ front-page last month.

The Piss, part of the same bar­rel-scrap­ing North­cliffe out­fit should, after the appoint­ment of ITS lat­est, yes-man edi­tor, be renamed the West­ern Mil­i­tary Gazette or West­ern Dai­ly War, as all this cur­rent bunch of r‑slickers do is pump out the same tired Cameron-lov­ing war­mon­ger­ing pro­pa­gan­da dri­v­el as their sta­ble­mate the Dai­ly Fail.

All the Com­ic and Piss are good for is wip­ing your arse on; the only fault there is that the print comes off on your bum.

The glossies are no bet­ter. Bath Life, a crim­i­nal waste of newsprint, is stuffed full of estate agent waf­fle and oth­er adver­tis­ing, and page after page of ‘Invi­ta­tion Only’ bash­es fea­tur­ing dozens of Bath Z‑z-z lis­ters grin­ning gorm­less­ly for the cam­eras in a pre­ten­tious par­o­dy of Coun­try Life’s soci­ety columns. Pub­lish­ers guilty of this rub­bish are Media Clash, the same bunch of brown-nosers who churn out the coun­cil’s spin-rag ‘Con­nect’. Some­one should tell them that con­nect­ing is not enough; they should try switch­ing on as well.

As for what lit­tle of inter­est the free­bies Bath Mag­a­zine and Folio con­tain, you’d be bet­ter off buy­ing Venue, which does arts and alter­na­tive far bet­ter. It is pub­lished by the Piss/Comic group, but, hey, nobody’s per­fect!

*

If I Had A Ham­mer…

Fol­low­ing the suc­cess­ful acquit­tal of the nine ‘Decom­mis­sion­er’ activists who smashed up Brighton-based bomb fac­to­ry E.D.O./I.T.T. (see B.B. #31), the Smash E.D.O. cam­paign is call­ing for one last shove to close the fac­to­ry all togeth­er. For six years, the com­pa­ny, which sup­plies bomb com­po­nents to Israel, Afghanistan, the U.S.A. and any­one else who has enough cash, has been under relent­less assault from activists, who have block­ad­ed, protest­ed, smashed and exposed the com­pa­ny’s dodgy deal­ings time and time again. The demo has been called for Wednes­day 13th Octo­ber, and promis­es to be a lit­tle on the tasty side, and as the name ‘I.T.T.‘s Ham­mer­time’ sug­gests, peo­ple may have more than wav­ing plac­ards in mind! Peo­ple have been request­ed to get down and stay at the con­ver­gence space from the night before, but also to help fli­er for the event in their home towns before­hand. For more infor­ma­tion on the cam­paign, check out http://www.smashedo.org.uk, or drop them an e‑mail at smashedo[at]riseup.net.

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Cru­el­ty-Free: You Can’t Say Fayr­er Than That

The sec­ond annu­al Bath Veg­an Fayre 2010 filled a hole on Sat­ur­day 4th Sep­tem­ber, with over 150 pass­ing through the doors. Held at Man­vers Street Bap­tist Church in the cen­tre, free of entry fee and cru­el­ty, the event last­ed from 12 til 4pm. Oth­er­wise, the day stuck to much the same recipe as the pre­vi­ous year: with a tan­ta­liz­ing spread of steam­ing soups, nib­bles, cakes, sweets and savouries – some nut-free, some wheat-free, all meat and dairy-free – fill­ing the bowls and bel­lies of queues of hun­gry fayre-goers. The tea and fruit juices flowed like nev­er before, whilst the tables were filled with relaxed con­ver­sa­tion and ingest­ed edu­ca­tion. As well as the over-bur­dened info tables (with every­thing from nutri­tion, envi­ron­men­tal ethics, recipes, ani­mal rights, med­ical sci­ence and updates for cam­paigns against Noah’s Ark Zoo, hunts, foie gras out­lets and ani­mal labs), free sam­ples table, read­ing cor­ner and chil­dren’s area, there was also a prize raf­fle. Pun­ters includ­ed the usu­al sus­pects of dread­ied and alter­na­tive veg­gie types on the make for free pick­ings, for starters, but also a healthy flow of the unini­ti­at­ed from the street.

By the end of the day, many a hap­py scav­enger got their just desserts, and were heard utter­ing the immor­tal words: “I had no idea veg­an food could taste this good!” Hey, even veg­gies need more than a diet of inde­scrib­able slop every now and again. Next up is the Bris­tol Free Veg­an Fair at Broad­mead Bap­tist Church on Sat­ur­day 30th Octo­ber, from 12 til 5pm, and their ben­e­fit gig at the Black Swan on Sta­ple­ton Road, on the 18th of this month.

http://bathanimalaction.blogspot.com/p/today-uk-is-home-to-around-300000.html
http://www.vegansociety.com/home.php
http://www.bristolanimalrights.org.uk/

*

Cycle-logy 101

Ped­al­phile activists group Bicy­col­o­gy will be crank­ing things up a gear in Bris­tol next week­end, with a trio of car-free fun days for all the fam­i­ly. On Sat­ur­day 18th Sep­tem­ber, they’ll be ‘Doing it with­out a car’ at Mina Park in St Werburgh’s; go sam­ple their col­lec­tion of bike acces­sories, book your ride in with the women bike mechan­ics for free advice and safe­ty checks, or get down to some D.I.Y. cre­ative ses­sions — turn tyres into bike belts, bike chains into bracelets or cob­ble your­self togeth­er a last minute carnie cos­tume. All this just in time for the next day’s ‘Bris­tol Bike Car­ni­val’ — start­ing in the city cen­tre at 12 mid­day, expect day­g­lo, dinosaur skele­ton pup­pets and two-wheeled gonzo weird­ness. Then, after a day’s rest, Tues­day will be ‘Food is our Fuel — Cycle for your Sup­per!’ An explo­ration of mod­ern agri­cul­ture, its prob­lems and its solu­tions, this three-hour long gen­tle cycle starts at 6pm out­side Tesco Metro in Broad­mead, and heads out of the city for black­ber­ry and wild food pick­ing – hot food and drinks will be pro­vid­ed on dona­tion. Bring your bike, lights, ruck­sack or pan­nier, and accom­pa­nied chil­dren.

And in relat­ed Bath news, a bike refurbishment/homelessness fund-rais­ing project has recent­ly re-opened, called ‘ReCY­CLEd’, at 35 Corn Street. E‑mail bikes[at]julianhouse.org.uk, for details.

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Toys Tory

While the resis­tance against the Con-Dem cuts is shap­ing up nice­ly, the same can­not be said for the cut-crazy coali­tion who have been hit in recent weeks by a string of embar­rass­ing fallings-out. Tories attack­ing Tories, Tories attack­ing Lib-Dems and Lib-Dems attack­ing both each oth­er and the Tories (although we don’t think any­one has noticed or cared). The first of the cracks began to show when odi­ous Osborne informed the press that nuke pro­gramme Tri­dent would have to be fund­ed by the defence bud­get, rather than the tra­di­tion­al fun­ders, the Trea­sury. It turns out Osborne had let every one know his plans – except the Min­is­ter for Defence, Liam Fox. This news came to the delight of T.V. jour­nal­ists as Fox brand­ed the propo­si­tion “ridicu­lous”, assert­ing that after a 20% bud­get cut, there was no way the M.o.D. could pay for Tri­dent. Osborne shot him down on live T.V. as a lit­tle bick­er­ing match erupt­ed before the very eyes of bor­der­line orgas­mic tel­ly journos. The spat has yet to be resolved.

This was quick­ly fol­lowed by bout #2, fea­tur­ing High­er Edu­ca­tion Min­is­ter David Wil­letts in the blue cor­ner vs. Devey boy him­self in the, umm­mm, oth­er blue cor­ner. This time the argu­ment was over milk. Now, some of you may remem­ber that one of Thatch­er’s less pop­u­lar deci­sions was the removal of free milk from schools; so what has Wil­letts done? In the image of the Tory God­moth­er, Wil­letts proud­ly told the assem­bled press pack that under-fives no longer deserved their free milk, and that it was to be cut. After a rapid apol­o­gy at the foot of this Thatch­er shrine, Cameron popped his head out of the door of Down­ing Street to con­tra­dict his edu­ca­tion min­is­ter, prompt­ing oppo­si­tion M.P.s to notice that “This is a coali­tion in chaos, mak­ing pol­i­cy on the hoof. The Gov­ern­ment does­n’t seem to have a clue.” As if Cameron did­n’t have enough trou­ble keep­ing his own house in order, the Lib-Dems have also start­ed hav­ing a pop, with many Lib-Dem M.P.s (in fact almost all of them that don’t have a cab­i­net seat) promis­ing a rebel­lion over Con-Dem V.A.T. increase plans, with promi­nent Lib-Dem­mers such as Charles ‘5 years on the wag­on’ Kennedy and Simon Hugh­es pub­licly crit­i­cis­ing Con-Dem pol­i­cy. To add anoth­er dol­lop of the stinky stuff on the smoul­der­ing feck pile that is the coali­tion, Clegg has crawled out of David’s cosy ori­fice to take the reigns while the Camerons sun them­selves. Like a naughty school­boy, Clegg took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­tra­dict key Con-Dem poli­cies relat­ing to immi­gra­tion, Tri­dent and hous­ing ben­e­fits, some­thing that he has been warned about in the past. Looks like some young upstart will be get­ting an Eton-style bot­ty-thrash­ing when dad­dy Cameron rolls back into town!

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The Filth And The Fur­ry

As men­tioned back in B.B. #30, the U.K. Gov­ern­ment has per­formed a spec­tac­u­lar U‑turn on its pol­i­cy regard­ing bovine tuber­cu­lo­sis, and has cho­sen to go ahead with a nation-wide bad­ger cull. Last week, Envi­ron­ment Sec­re­tary Car­o­line Spel­man approved the cull for T.B. hotspots, hand­ing the license to kill over to indi­vid­ual farm­ers’ dis­cre­tions.  These wannabe 007’s of the Nation­al Farm­ers Union lob­by will need to prove that a cull is nec­es­sary before being allowed to kill and/or vac­ci­nate (shoot and gas first, a spoon­ful of med­i­cine lat­er?) any­thing black and white in a 50 square mile zone; what sort of proof required is yet to be dis­closed, but a sham of a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion is expect­ed lat­er this month. At least this might stop farm­ers from rolling gunned down bad­gers onto high­ways in the mid­dle of the night, as imi­ta­tion road­kill.

The Welsh Assem­bly were pushed into a U‑turn of their own, of sorts, back in July, when the Bad­ger Trust and oth­er ani­mal ‘wel­fare’ activists won their legal chal­lenge on a tech­ni­cal­i­ty, push­ing kill-crazy plans back for months. These pro-culling deci­sions fly in the face of the ten-year Inde­pen­dent Sci­en­tif­ic Study Group on Cat­tle T.B., who con­clud­ed in 2007 that culling could­n’t mean­ing­ful­ly con­trol the dis­ease, and that car­ri­er bad­gers would dis­perse the dis­ease over a wider area. This posi­tion has been loose­ly cor­rob­o­rat­ed by Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don and the Zoo­log­i­cal Soci­ety of Lon­don. But screw all that, the Con-Dems say – let’s shoot us some varmints! Yee­haw! In a “care­ful­ly man­aged” and “sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-led” man­ner, of course.

As ever, ani­mal right­sies are much-need­ed to save our fur­ry friends – check out http://www.badger-killers.co.uk, or con­tact bathanimalaction[at]yahoo.co.uk for ideas.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/7982848/Farmers-to-be-handed-powe
rs-to-cull-badgers.html
http://www.bathanimalaction.blogspot.com

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First Class News!

In a heart­en­ing bit of news just in, a pub­lic sur­vey has found that sev­en out of every eight peo­ple oppose the pri­vati­sa­tion of the postal ser­vice (one of the Tories’ key poli­cies) and would pre­fer it to be kept pub­lic. Bil­ly Hayes, head of the posties’ union said “This poll reaf­firms what we already knew — the British pub­lic do not want their postal ser­vices sold off. The union and the com­pa­ny have worked hard to agree a ful­ly fund­ed mod­erni­sa­tion plan and that work needs sup­port from the Gov­ern­ment.” How­ev­er, the will of the pub­lic con­tra­dicts Tory plans to put a bill before Par­lia­ment demand­ing the pri­vati­sa­tion of the ser­vice. Will this be anoth­er case of the Tories ignor­ing the opin­ions of the aver­age per­son and try­ing to plough ahead with their agen­da of cuts and pri­va­ti­za­tion? We sus­pect so, so if you like your postal ser­vice pub­lic, lets get ready to fight for it!

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And now, to the dis­claimer: as any­one is free to con­tribute, the opin­ions expressed in each arti­cle are not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflec­tive of all con­trib­u­tors. Nat­u­ral­ly, any right-wing or cor­po­rate bull­shit will be binned and spat upon. Need­less to say, the opin­ions of the author of this dis­claimer do not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect the opin­ions of any oth­er con­trib­u­tor.

Tens of thousands of mink released in Greece

“26.08.2010 — Helio­den­dro, Kas­to­ria (Greece)
One of the biggest greek mink farms has been hit in our first night of action. All the cages impris­on­ing ani­mals in 37 sheds of the farm were opened and machin­ery sab­o­taged.

“26.08.2010 — Helio­den­dro, Kas­to­ria (Greece)
One of the biggest greek mink farms has been hit in our first night of action. All the cages impris­on­ing ani­mals in 37 sheds of the farm were opened and machin­ery sab­o­taged.

To let the ani­mals out part of the fence was cut and both gates opened smash­ing the locks (using the farmer’s tools). Two hours and half of work and we could run away along with thou­sands of minks (accord­ing to media 50.000 were released).

27.08.2010 — Kaloneri, Siatista (Greece)
Anoth­er mink farm was our tar­get for a sec­ond night of action, this time near the town of Kaloneri, on a road where 10 farms can be eas­i­ly seen. 8 sheds full of ani­mals had their cages opened in just ten min­utes. Before leav­ing we opened a gate to let the ani­mals run towards free­dom (accord­ing to media 2.000 were released).

In both cas­es we had checked care­ful­ly the farms to know how to orga­nize a faster and more secure action.
With these actions we decid­ed to hit the fur indus­try and espe­cial­ly the dis­gust­ing ‘fur towns’ of Siatista and Kas­to­ria, plagued with hun­dreds of fur stores. Lib­er­at­ing ani­mals from cages is a way to put our ideas into prac­tice. We oppose the oppres­sion, exploita­tion and impris­on­ment that this civ­i­liza­tion has cre­at­ed for any liv­ing being, regard­less of species, race, gen­der or sex­u­al pref­er­ences.

In these des­per­ate days we still strive for free­dom. Eat veg­an on the bar­ri­cades!

A.L.F.”

Greek media has report­ed that as many as 50,000 mink were released from cages. In an arti­cle in the Make­do­nia news­pa­per, the pres­i­dent of a Greek fur breed­ers asso­ci­a­tion said that it was a “black day” for the indus­try. The own­er of one of the tar­get­ed farms esti­mat­ed his loss­es at 1 mil­lion Euros and said that his farm had been ruined.

Trashing, dashing, bashing, mashing: the new EF! Action Update

So what have you been up to the last few months? Just hang­ing around?
Maybe you’ve been part of human wheel-clamp­ing aero­planes, climb­ing up scaf­fold­ing tripods incon­ve­nient­ly placed in the road, smash­ing machines at open-cast mines, play­ing nuked-dead in the street, kayak­ing against bore­hole drill rigs in Ire­land, burn­ing mobile phone masts, resist­ing Tesco, camp­ing against trash­ing of wood­land, with some suc­cess at Tit­nore (& oth­er protest camp updates), or get­ting in on BP’s act, spilling oil in pub­lic places.

Or have you been on hol­i­day, tak­ing part in indige­nous block­ades against log­ging, dams and min­ing, spilunk­ing against high speed trains, slash­ing tuna cages, blockad­ing Mon­san­to HQ, trash­ing GM fields, and more?

So what have you been up to the last few months? Just hang­ing around?
Maybe you’ve been part of human wheel-clamp­ing aero­planes, climb­ing up scaf­fold­ing tripods incon­ve­nient­ly placed in the road, smash­ing machines at open-cast mines, play­ing nuked-dead in the street, kayak­ing against bore­hole drill rigs in Ire­land, burn­ing mobile phone masts, resist­ing Tesco, camp­ing against trash­ing of wood­land, with some suc­cess at Tit­nore (& oth­er protest camp updates), or get­ting in on BP’s act, spilling oil in pub­lic places.

Or have you been on hol­i­day, tak­ing part in indige­nous block­ades against log­ging, dams and min­ing, spilunk­ing against high speed trains, slash­ing tuna cages, blockad­ing Mon­san­to HQ, trash­ing GM fields, and more?

Maybe you’re in need of a break. But if you’re not, and are just champ­ing at the bit, the return of AUn­tie MIffy’s prob­lem page might help, address­ing what to do if there’s no local group near you. There’s an arti­cle about the begin­nings of EF! in this coun­try, look­ing for­wards to the next 20 years, to help inspire. If you need sup­port to get things going where you live, do get in touch. And if all that’s not enough, here’s a quo­ta­tion, from Paul Wat­son, the Sea Shep­herd cap­tain:

“Future gen­er­a­tions will not have the chance and those that came before us did not have the vision nor the knowl­edge. It is up to us — you and I.”

Print ver­sion
Oth­er issues and extra info

Earth First! Summer Gathering set-up plans announced

We can now announce that set-up will begin from around 2pm on Sat­ur­day, 31 July. Mar­quees, tools and con­struc­tion mate­ri­als will be arriv­ing on site from Sat­ur­day morn­ing so there will be plen­ty to do. You will be able to camp on the site from Sat­ur­day and there will be skele­ton facil­i­ties (water, basic kitchen) from that time.

We can now announce that set-up will begin from around 2pm on Sat­ur­day, 31 July. Mar­quees, tools and con­struc­tion mate­ri­als will be arriv­ing on site from Sat­ur­day morn­ing so there will be plen­ty to do. You will be able to camp on the site from Sat­ur­day and there will be skele­ton facil­i­ties (water, basic kitchen) from that time.

We also have a mobile num­ber for set­up which is 07766 947852. This will be on-site from Sat­ur­day lunchtime, and may well get answered in the few days before­hand but please don’t try ring­ing until then — e‑mail will remain the main con­tact point until near­er the time — sum­mer­gath­er­ing -{at}- earthfirst.org.uk

What we need to know:

*Please can you let us know when you are com­ing? — this helps us plan foods, facil­i­ties and what jobs to do when.

*It is also help­ful if you can let us know if you have any par­tic­u­lar skills or inter­ests with respect to set-up — we might need dri­vers, so if you are over 25, hold a clean licence, are con­fi­dent dri­ving a 3.5 tonne Luton AND can bring along both parts of your dri­ving licence please let us know.

*Sim­i­lar­ly if you are arriv­ing in a vehi­cle and could poten­tial­ly pro­vide lifts, trans­port equip­ment en route or run errands from site once you arrive please let us know. In this case it is very help­ful if you are able/willing to sup­ply us with a con­tact phone num­ber.

How to get there

As you maybe aware that we do not announce the exact site of the gath­er­ing until one week before the main event, this means direc­tions will be avail­able on the web­site http://www.earthfirstgathering.org.uk/ from Wednes­day, 27 July. We realise this will be short notice for peo­ple arriv­ing on the Sat­ur­day, how­ev­er to make things eas­i­er we will e‑mail direc­tions to set-up crew on that day (that still 4 days to check a map!).

The near­est train sta­tion is Der­by if you want to pre-book train tick­ets, you will also need to take a local bus ser­vice from Der­by (these are fre­quent). We are aim­ing to have a vehi­cle on site that can assist if peo­ple have dif­fi­cul­ties between Der­by and the site, so hope­ful­ly every­one will be able to get there okay.

There may be a very small num­ber of lifts avail­able from the Not­ting­ham area across the week­end of Sat­ur­day 31st July/Sunday first of August. There may also be lifts from the Leeds area first thing on 31 July. Let us know if this may be of inter­est to you.

What to bring

*Every­thing you need to the gath­er­ing, tent sleep­ing bags etc. and espe­cial­ly a torch

*It may be wise to come a bit more self-suf­fi­cient in food and snacks than you would need to for the main gath­er­ing — we will have a basic kitchen but Veg­gies and the tuck shop are not arriv­ing until Wednes­day

*If you are able to bring any tools, espe­cial­ly for basic car­pen­try, these are often use­ful

Big thanks for offer­ing to help out

Do get in touch if you have any ques­tions

Love & rage

The EF! Gath­er­ing crew

Bath Bomb #31 Out Now

THE BATH BOMB
@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #31
free/donation
July 2010
‘Where news goes to die’

George’s Mar­vel­lous Med­i­cine!

Bath Bomb small logoTHE BATH BOMB
@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #31
free/donation
July 2010
‘Where news goes to die’

George’s Mar­vel­lous Med­i­cine!

Won­drous news this month as we dis­cov­er that the chan­cel­lor has heal­ing hands rivalling those of the good Lord Jesus. Osborne claims he has the abil­i­ty to cure the dis­abled and reduce the bankers’ debt in the process. Praise be.

It would seem irre­spon­si­ble, uncar­ing and cru­el to ignore the wel­fare for those most vul­ner­a­ble in our soci­ety, espe­cial­ly in the cur­rent cli­mate. Thank­ful­ly, the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty think, with a dose of George’s mar­vel­lous med­i­cine, one in five peo­ple pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered inca­pable of work will be able to mirac­u­lous­ly attain and keep gain­ful employ­ment. This will cut the deficit and bring noth­ing but hope and hap­pi­ness to those unfor­tu­nate enough to be hand­i­capped.

Despite the lev­el of unem­ploy­ment being so trou­bling, the Tories assure us that those com­ing off sick­ness ben­e­fits will have an easy time find­ing work. It does­n’t mat­ter if they’ve spent long peri­ods out of work; that sure­ly won’t affect employ­ers’ deci­sions. Cer­tain­ly, it won’t influ­ence those already on the dole. That’d be ridicu­lous.

Enough irony.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Con-Dem don’t appear to under­stand the def­i­n­i­tion of inca­pac­i­ty, seem­ing to believe that there are those who are unable and yet, at the same time, able.

Fur­ther issues are seen with the pen­sion age due to rise to 66 and lat­er to 70 and so on. Sim­ply the increase by one year will mean 200,000 extra peo­ple will die with­out reach­ing retire­ment age. It’s cer­tain­ly worth not­ing that those with big salaries and big bonus­es can and do retire ear­li­er with the free­dom their dirty mon­ey brings them. Even more so, high­er wages mean high­er life expectan­cy. The Con­ser­v­a­tives promised no cuts to pen­sions and yet sure­ly these sub­stan­tial­ly are.

In France, there is cur­rent­ly large scale indus­tri­al action over their increase to 62, sure­ly 66 is just tak­ing the piss.

This mon­th’s bud­get deliv­ers freezes on child ben­e­fit and pub­lic sec­tor pay (con­sid­er­ing infla­tion, essen­tial­ly a cut in both). It brings annu­al­ly decreas­ing state ben­e­fits in line with the cost of liv­ing and fur­ther hits on the poor by rais­ing V.A.T. to 20 per­cent. Mean­while, cor­po­rate tax is reduced to leave more mon­ey with the C.E.O.s and share­hold­ers. Clear­ly, Con-Dem could have raised tax­es in order to tack­le the deficit, espe­cial­ly of those with could have raised tax­es in order to tack­le the deficit, espe­cial­ly of those with more mon­ey than they know what to do with, yet they’ve ignored this avenue. Instead the Tories are seek­ing out ways to direct­ly attack the poor­est and most vul­ner­a­ble to keep their bank­ing friends’ pock­ets lined. Cunts!

It’s A SHSEI-ing Shame

Whilst we have giv­en a fair chunk of cov­er­age to the woes of one com­mu­ni­ty activist ini­tia­tive get­ting repeat­ed­ly bounced off the pave­ment by Bath’s pow­ers-that-be, anoth­er local scheme has also been tak­ing it in the chops, but on the qui­et. The brain­child of one Mr Lawrence Buabeng, Snow Hill Skills and Enter­prise Ini­tia­tive, has been slog­ging through coun­cil nego­ti­a­tions for the last four years. Whilst gov­ern­ment direc­tives and strate­gies have been blath­er­ing on about emo­tive touchy-feely terms like ‘com­mu­ni­ty empow­er­ment’, ‘help­ing peo­ple to help them­selves’ and ‘stronger, safer com­mu­ni­ties’, on the ground they offer the exact oppo­site. S.H.S.E.I. is a case in point.

Whilst the scheme has put togeth­er a com­pre­hen­sive, step-by-step and ambi­tious plan (a term its detrac­tors often use against it) to com­bat workless­ness, ill health, and lack of com­mu­ni­ty cohe­sion, it also seeks to regen­er­ate a visu­al­ly-neglect­ed area and recon­nect its peo­ple to their own his­to­ry. Specif­i­cal­ly, it is made up of those peo­ple itself, and aims for ful­fill­ing work, offer­ing the skills and prac­ti­cal train­ing to get it. It also imple­ments local­ly account­able, cost-effec­tive pub­lic ser­vices. Though Lon­don Road is one of the main arter­ies into this World Her­itage city, it is the UK’s third worst pol­lut­ed road and absolute­ly lit­tered with board­ed-up shop fronts. The fact is that the home­less, unem­ployed, ex-offend­ers, and drug-depen­dent who make up a size­able pro­por­tion of the com­mu­ni­ty often have a poor work­ing rela­tion­ship with insti­tu­tion­al bod­ies. When an afflu­ent, phil­an­thropist out­sider rolls in to tell you how to improve your lot, the dis­em­pow­er­ment, the patro­n­is­ing arro­gance, the dis­trust and inequal­i­ty leave a sour taste.

Start­ing off with a film-mak­ing work­shop for youth (four films are already avail­able at http://www.ilovesnowhill.com), the scheme also aims at re-open­ing the gar­den behind Car­o­line House, tak­ing back three build­ings for the com­mu­ni­ty (main­tain­ing them to exact­ing envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards, and put them to use as Her­itage, Skills & Enter­prise Cen­tres), pro­mot­ing child- and elder­ly-care schemes, and explor­ing alter­na­tive eco­nom­ics. The first stage sur­vey of local needs was done for free this spring, whilst the coun­cil’s sur­vey of 170 peo­ple in 2002 gob­bled up around £30,000. The results of the first 100 have been damn­ing, dis­play­ing a 45% rate of localised unem­ploy­ment. The scheme has seen sup­port from a dizzy­ing array of insti­tu­tions: B&NES Her­itage and Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment offi­cer, the local MP, the Local Improve­ment Advi­sor, British Trust for Con­ser­va­tion Vol­un­teers, Somer Hous­ing, Bet­ter Bath Forum, Job Cen­tre Plus, Gen­e­sis Trust, Bath Abbey Home­less Ini­tia­tive, North East Som­er­set Arts and Bath Spa Uni, as well as those local denizens at the bot­tom of the lad­der.

But no, it seems the coun­cil would rather sweep any prob­lems under the car­pet: though Snow Hill has four times as many Job-seek­ers as the nor­mal rate, it is divid­ed neat­ly between the afflu­ent wards of Lam­bridge and Wal­cot, so no one has to get upset by damn­ing sta­tis­tics. For its part, the Lon­don Road Part­ner­ship seeds its mem­bers into com­mu­ni­ty meet­ings to witch-hunt local youth. The Coun­cil seems to be wait­ing for the uppi­ty poor folk to either die off (as two of the S.H.S.E.I. sub-com­mit­tee already have) or do what they’re sup­posed to do, like get a habit or a jail sen­tence. This jus­ti­fies an ever-increas­ing gold-rush of police resources as the upper ech­e­lons mat­ter-of-fact­ly step up the class war. At the same time, they scav­enge the choic­est morsels of the scheme, rather than give cred­it to the dis­ad­van­taged who have put in years of sol­id, unpaid work.

The first hint of back-stab­bing was when B&NES’s Paul Pen­ny­cook all but promised a sum of £45,000 for a workless­ness ini­tia­tive in the area at the turn of the year; but when the cash did arrive, instead of it going to the exist­ing, local­ly-based scheme, it instead fell in the hands of Re:Generate — a team of well-mean­ing young and pol­ished com­mu­ni­ty con­sul­tants from Shrews­bury, cyn­i­cal­ly being used by their high­er ups to under­mine and mar­gin­alise the active com­mu­ni­ty, (who already do work in more need­ed areas like White­way, Twer­ton and Keyn­sham) and instead sink fund­ing into a spate of jum­ble sales.

Things start­ed get­ting ugly from there on in. Although the offi­cial route has­n’t led to many results so far, a com­plaint was lodged with the local author­i­ty ombuds­man, and law suits were ini­ti­at­ed. Alex Schlesinger, chair of the Lon­don Road Part­ner­ship and antiques empo­ri­um emper­or, threat­ened to return fund­ing to sender or waste it on court fees, rather than use it for the scheme — paint­ing him as a self-serv­ing, self-sat­is­fied do-good­er refus­ing to actu­al­ly do any good for those who count. 3 and 4 Long Acre got squat­ted to push the coun­cil in the right direc­tion, but things got even ugli­er when Joanne Long, from B&NES Prop­er­ty Ser­vices, reared her.…face? and start­ed court pro­ceed­ings. The evic­tion took place on Thurs­day the 8th of this month. Prop­er­ty Ser­vices man­age­ment of the build­ing, or mis-man­age­ment, inci­den­tal­ly, bor­ders on crim­i­nal neglect: back in April, they erect­ed scaf­fold­ing round the out­side of the build­ing to car­ry out a sur­veyance, and ‘deal’ with the rain dam­age; how­ev­er, when we say ‘deal’, we mean they did­n’t both­er to patch up the holes in the roof which admits reg­u­lar streams of rain (and the floor­boards are par­tial­ly rot­ten inside, which the squat­ters took pains to reverse), but just put up board­ing to con­ceal the moss grow­ing on the out­side of the brick­work. Rather than return the build­ings over to the needs of the com­mu­ni­ty, they’d rather flog them off to the high­est bid­der, in a des­per­ate bid to pay off coun­cil debts from oth­er mis­takes.

We could go on — we often do, but the sor­ry saga involves a lot more dou­ble-stan­dards, co-option, per­jury and lies. S.H.S.E.I. still has­n’t giv­en up, and if peo­ple of integri­ty want to sup­port it in any way — be it prac­ti­cal, finan­cial or polit­i­cal — drop them an e‑mail at lawrencebuabeng[at]googlemail.com .

Nice Work If You Can Skel­lett

Although the times are hard, it’s nice to know that some folks are get­ting by. Col­in Skel­lett, for exam­ple, own­er of Great West­ern Enter­pris­es, is doing quite nice­ly. G.W.E. spe­cialise in pro­vid­ing busi­ness ser­vices (invent­ing this sea­son’s hottest buzz­words, and oth­er impor­tant stuff) for local coun­cils like B&NES. He was bust­ed by the Lon­don Police Fraud Squad back in 2002 for accept­ing a sup­posed £1 mil­lion bribe for sell­ing off his com­pa­ny Wes­sex Water to Malaysian-owned YTL Pow­er (appar­ent­ly, the mon­ey was pay­ment for the con­sul­tan­cy role he played in the buy-out). It turns out this chair­man of the Ini­tia­tive for Bath and North East Som­er­set just can’t get enough (monop­o­lies, that is). Still on Wes­sex’s board of direc­tors, he also helped out Busi­ness West after their finan­cial trou­ble two years back, by acquir­ing them. Busi­ness West pro­vide busi­ness ser­vices too, for com­pa­nies in the west-coun­try. How­ev­er, G.W.E. also owns the freema­son-like Bath and Bris­tol Cham­ber of Com­merces, who rep­re­sent the inter­ests of large busi­ness­es like banks, super­mar­kets, lawyers and pub­lic trans­port groups.

Then con­sid­er the shin­ing exam­ple of Orwellian dou­ble­s­peak that is ‘Future Bath Plus’. Half-owned by B&NES Coun­cil, they pro­mote Bath’s tourism and World Her­itage rep­u­ta­tion, and have let loose a city cen­tre man­ag­er intent on threat­en­ing pos­i­tive com­mu­ni­ty schemes like the Bath FreeShop. They are also the vehi­cle through which Bath’s Busi­ness Improve­ment Dis­trict scheme is brought in. B.I.D.s, which, if vot­ed in, pop an extra tax levy onto all local busi­ness­es, with the stat­ed aim of pro­mot­ing ‘all’ busi­ness­es in the area, osten­si­bly. The B.I.D. is like­ly to boost CCTV sur­veil­lance and pseu­do-cop pres­ence in the city cen­tre, pri­vatis­ing pub­lic space, and sweep­ing away the home­less, the eth­nic minori­ties and the polit­i­cal­ly active who might just ren­der the high street too unseem­ly for our beloved tourists’ del­i­cate sen­si­bil­i­ties. First seen in this coun­try in Lon­don in 2006, 22 of them have spread now, with par­tic­u­lar out­cry in Ply­mouth, where vast amounts of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey has been chan­nelled into the pro­mo­tion of the B.I.D. com­pa­nies’ direc­tors, inter­ests whilst com­peti­tors have been high and dry. It’s the same sto­ry of cor­rup­tion through­out the so-called North East Tri­an­gle of Bris­tol, Swin­don and Glouces­ter. Oh, and did we men­tion that our Col­in is the chair of Future Bath Plus?

So, Skel­lett, a close friend of B&NES Coun­cil’s CEO John Everett, is send­ing G.W.E. all over the south-west, accu­mu­lat­ing heaps of tax­pay­er cash through a mul­ti­tude of dis­guis­es, whilst vul­ner­a­ble pub­lic ser­vices face wave after wave of ‘inevitable’ cuts. B&NES claim that last year G.W.E. earned £40,000, but if you include the funds tossed Future Bath Plus and Busi­ness West­’s way, it’s look­ing clos­er to £1.5 mil­lion. Any­one else smell a rat?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_improvement_district”
http://www.bbc.co.uk

A Class (War) Act!

So, the bud­get has been announced and, as expect­ed, it hits the poor­est hard­est, while leav­ing the rich — the same peo­ple who caused the cri­sis — laugh­ing at the rest of us. There is expect­ed to be a min­i­mum of 600,000 redun­dan­cies sole­ly from the pub­lic sec­tor. In Bath alone, the largest employ­ers, B&NES, the MoD, and the Uni­ver­si­ties, are all fac­ing heavy loss­es, with at least three hun­dred coun­cil jobs on the chop­ping block in the next three years. Along with the all-out assault on aver­age peo­ple, Cameron and his Eton chums have decid­ed to reduce the amount of tax paid by cor­po­ra­tions and the ultra rich. But while the old school tie brigade get ready to dish us out a kick­ing, many ordi­nary peo­ple are get­ting pre­pared to bash back. Bob Crow, leader of the 85,000 strong RMT union summed it up best by say­ing “The trade unions must form alliances with com­mu­ni­ty groups, cam­paigns and pen­sion­ers’ organ­i­sa­tions in the biggest show of unit­ed resis­tance since the suc­cess of the anti-poll tax move­ment. Wav­ing ban­ners and plac­ards will not be enough — it will take direct action”. He has also called for ‘gen­er­al and coor­di­nat­ed strike action’ — a call which is being tak­en up by thou­sands around the coun­try prepar­ing to fight back against the dev­as­tat­ing Tory cuts. Already, there have been a spate of protests and actions up and down the coun­try. Where bet­ter to ignite the fight­back in earnest than the Tory Par­ty Con­fer­ence in Birm­ing­ham on Octo­ber the 3rd? Protests are being organ­ised that look set to involve thou­sands of angry peo­ple, and it looks like a coach will be going from Bath. So, if you fan­cy let­ting lord Snooty and the rest of the Thatch­er clones know what you think of their cuts, why not drop B.A.N. an email at bathactivistnet[at]yahoo.co.uk. In the mean­time, anti-cuts cam­paigns are spring­ing up left, left and cen­tre, so keep your ear to the ground and take a bit of inspi­ra­tion from our mate Bob Crow, who end­ed his recent speech with a clear mes­sage to all of us — “Don’t fear them — fight them!”

Cli­mate Camp Coun­ters Cym­ru Coal

There will be a Camp For Cli­mate Action tar­get­ing coal in South Wales this August, from the 13th to the 17th.

The direct action net­work will con­verge at a venue in Cardiff on Fri­day the 13th August, from which peo­ple will be tak­en to the camp itself. “Coal is one of the dirt­i­est fos­sil fuels in terms of car­bon. We will take action against open­cast coal min­ing because it trash­es the land, destroys our plan­et and wrecks the health of local peo­ple. Clean coal is a dirty joke”, said spokesper­son Cerys Jones.

Last year’s camp was held next to Ffos-y-fran in Merthyr Tyd­fil, the largest open­cast coal mine in the UK. The camp involved work­shops on cli­mate sci­ence, direct action train­ing, a solar-pow­ered cin­e­ma, com­post toi­lets, solar-heat­ed show­ers, grey­wa­ter sys­tems and wind pow­er.

As part of the con­tin­u­ing cam­paign res­i­dents are now tak­ing Miller Argent to court on the issue of ‘pri­vate nui­sance’. Due to the con­stant clouds of coal dust res­i­dents are unable to open win­dows, or hang wash­ing out. Also, of the 18 coal train block­aders, as men­tioned last month, five have now had their cas­es with­drawn.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion about the camp, e‑mail: media[at]climatecampcymru.org, or give them a call at 07077 076147.

http://www.risingtide.org.uk
http://www.stopffosyfran.co.uk
http://coalaction.org.uk
http://www.climatecampcymru.org
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/aug/12/climate-camp-cymru-blog
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8270681.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/26/coal-protest-ffos-y-fran

GOT A STORY? WANT TO RECEIVE THE BATH BOMB BY EMAIL? HOPING TO SUE? Con­tact us by e‑mailing bathbombpress[at]yahoo.co.uk. Large print e‑versions avail­able on request. And for more info on any of our sto­ries, check out http://www.thebathbomb.blogspot.com

UPCOMING EVENTS

Lon­don Road Food Co-op, Wednes­days, 4–7pm, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Lon­don Road
Bathamp­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Grow­ers work­day, Thurs­days, 10am-dusk, Mill Lane, Bathamp­ton, e‑mail thelostplot[at]googlemail.com/ tel Chris 07792 444628
Bath Stop The War Coali­tion vig­il, Sat­ur­days, 11.30am-12.30, Bath Abbey Court­yard
Recy­cle Your Sun­days, Sun­days, 10.30am, starts Abbey Church­yard, the reg­u­lar series of socia­ble, easy-paced cycle rides, http://www.bathrys.org.uk/ tel Hazel 01225 469199
Bris­tol & South Wales Hunt Sabo­teurs punk & thrash ben­e­fit gig, Fri­day 9th July, 7.30pm, The White Hart, White­hall Road, Bris­tol, feat. Kismet H.C., Death Job, Mutiny Plot and This Ends Here, £5
Intro­duc­to­ry Per­ma­cul­ture Week­end, Sat­ur­day 10th to Sun­day 11th July, Bath City Farm, £50, http://www.transitionbath.org
Bath FreeShop, Sat­ur­day 10th July, 12–3pm, out­side Pump Rooms, Stall Street
Broad­lands Orchard­share Vol­un­teer­ing Day, Sat­ur­day 10th July, 12–4pm, Broad­lands Orchard, Box Road, Bath­ford, http://www.bathford.net/broadlands.php
work­shop: Activist Comms/Radio Train­ing, Sat­ur­day 10th July, 12–4.30pm, Bris­tol Cas­tle Park, sug­gest­ed dona­tion £2; please let us know if you’re plan­ning on com­ing — either e‑mail nickkassam[at]hotmail.com, or text 07796 864 649; bring food for a pic­nic and some­thing water­proof
film & dis­cus­sion: ‘Stop that train!’: direct actions on the rail­ways against cli­mate chaos and nuclear pow­er, Thurs­day 8th July, 6.30pm, Kebele Social Cen­tre, 14 Robert­son Road, Eas­t­on, Bris­tol; host­ed by Bris­tol and Bath Ris­ing Tide
Cli­mate Camp Cym­ru plan­ning gath­er­ing, Sat­ur­day 10th July, the Wyn­d­ham Street Cen­tre, 3–5, Wyn­d­ham Street, Cardiff, South Glam­or­gan CF11 6DQ; e‑mail info[at]climatecampcymru.org
Cli­mate Camp Cym­ru comms train­ing, Sun­day 11th July, Cardiff, e‑mail l3wis85[at]gmail.com
Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, Mon­day 12th July, 8–9pm, The Bell, Wal­cot Street, e‑mail bathanimalaction[at]yahoo.co.uk
cul­ture fes­ti­val: ‘A Taste of Pales­tine’, Tues­day 13th July, 7.30pm, Mason­ic Hall, Frome, £7.50/£4 con­ces­sions, includ­ing food
Bath Mad Pride, Wednes­day 14th July, 2–4pm, Abbey Court­yard; danc­ing, games & enter­tain­ment
work­shop: ‘Organ­i­sa­tion­al Resilience’, Wednes­day 14th July, 9.30am‑5.30pm, the Cre­ater Cen­tre, Smeaton Road, Bris­tol, slid­ing scale pay­ment from £50; http://www.response-ability.org.uk
com­e­dy: Ivor Dem­bi­na’s ‘This Is Not A Sub­ject For Com­e­dy’, Wednes­day 14th July, The Gra­nary, Frome, £5
Raw food work­shop, Wednes­day 14th July, 7pm, the Abun­dant Life Well­ness Cen­tre, 36 New King Street, £10; pre-book­ing essen­tial as num­bers lim­it­ed to 12, tel 01225 318060
Bath Stop the War meet­ing, Wednes­day 14th July, 7.30pm, Friends Meet­ing House, York Street, Bath, BA1 1NG; http://www.bathstopwar.org.uk
Bath Green Drinks, Wednes­day 14th July, 8.30pm, the Ris­ing Sun, Grove Street
read­ings & food: ‘Arab Writ­ing Today’, Thurs­day 15th July, 7.30pm, Trin­i­ty Hall, Frome, £8
Tolpud­dle Mar­tyr’s Fes­ti­val, Fri­day 16th July to Sun­day 18th, Tolpud­dle, Devon; http://www.tolpuddlemartyrs.org.uk/index.php?page=martyr-s-festival
Two Tun­nels group open day, Sat­ur­day 17th July; walks will start every half hour between 10am and 4pm at the Tuck­ing Mill (south­ern) end of the tun­nel; http://www.twotunnels.org.uk
work­shop: ‘Per­ma­cul­ture Allot­ment Gar­den­ing Tech­niques’, Sat­ur­day 17th July, 1–7pm, Roy­ate Hill Allot­ments, Bris­tol, slid­ing scale pay­ment from £20; http://www.shiftbristol.org.uk
‘Wild Walk’ for­ag­ing day, Sun­day 18th July, 2pm, meet point tba, £10; tel Jonathan to book: 07740 706232
Bath Cycling Cam­paign meet­ing, Mon­day 19th July, 7.30pm, Ris­ing Sun, Grove Street
gig & work­shop: ‘Sur­vival Tales’, Wednes­day 21st July, 7pm, Eas­t­on Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Kil­burn Street, Eas­t­on, Bris­tol, BS5, £5/suggested dona­tion entry — please book in advance: contact[at]survivaltales.uk; http://www.survivaltales.org.uk; with Eirlys Rhi­an­non
gig & work­shop: ‘Sur­vival Tales’, Thurs­day 21st July, 7pm, Kebele Com­mu­ni­ty Co-op, 14 Rober­ston Road, Eas­t­on, Bris­tol, £5/suggested dona­tion entry — please book in advance: contact[at]survivaltales.uk; http://www.survivaltales.org.uk; with Eirlys Rhi­an­non
con­fer­ence: ‘A Sec­ond City Remem­bered: Rethink­ing Bristol’s His­to­ry, 1400–2000’, Fri­day 23rd July to Sat­ur­day 24th July, Muse­um of Bris­tol, The Old Coun­cil House, Corn Street, Bris­tol; orga­nized by the Region­al His­to­ry Cen­tre, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West of Eng­land
Peace News Sum­mer Camp, Fri­day 23rd July to Tues­day 27th, Oxford­shire; http://www.peacenewscamp.info
Bath Ani­mal Action info stall, Sun­day 25th July, 2–4pm, Stall Street, e‑mail bathanimalaction[at]yahoo.co.uk
Tran­si­tion Bath Social, Mon­day 26th July, 7.15pm, the Love Lounge/ back room of the Bell, Wal­cot Street; bring food to share; http://www.transitionbath.org
Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs meet­ing, Mon­day 26th July, 8–9pm, The Bell, tel Justin 07854 062336
Crit­i­cal Mass Bike Ride, Sat­ur­day 31st July, 1pm, Kingsmead Square, http://www.bathcyclingcampaign.org.uk
Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing, Wednes­day 4th to Mon­day 9th August, Der­byshire, £20–30; five days of work­shops, skill shar­ing and plan­ning action, plus low-impact liv­ing with­out lead­ers; e‑mail summergathering[at]earthfirst.org.uk FFI
Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, Thurs­day 5th August, 7.30–9pm, down­stairs at The Hob­gob­lin, St James Parade, http://www.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com
film: ‘A Grin With­out a Cat: Scenes of the Third World War 1967–1977’, Sat­ur­day 7th August, 7.30pm, the Arnolfi­ni, Bris­tol, http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/films/details/710
film: ‘Novem­ber’, Thurs­day 12th August, 6.30pm, the Arnolfi­ni, Bris­tol, £3.00/£2.00; http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/films/details/711
film: ‘Lit­tle Dieter Needs to Fly’, Fri­day 13th August, 6.30pm, the Arnolfi­ni, Bris­tol; http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/films/details/712
Cli­mate Camp Cym­ru, Fri­day 13th August to Tues­day 17th, http://www.climatecampcymru.org
talk: ‘The Venus Project’, Sat­ur­day 21st August, 1–5pm, Vic­to­ria Rooms — The Audi­to­ri­um Uni­ver­si­ty of Bris­tol, Queens Road, Clifton, Bris­tol, BS8 1SA, £16.02 entry; http://thevpinbristol.eventbrite.com
Camp for Cli­mate Action, Sat­ur­day 21st to Tues­day 24th August, Edin­burgh, http://www.climatecamp.org.uk
film: ‘The War Game’, Sun­day 22nd August, 2.30pm, the Arnolfi­ni, Bris­tol; http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/films/details/716
Bath Veg­an Fayre ben­e­fit gig, Fri­day 27th August, Hob­gob­lin, St James Parade; more details tbc
one year part-time ‘Prac­ti­cal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty’ course, starts Sep­tem­ber 2010, Bris­tol; explor­ing per­ma­cul­ture design, organ­ic hor­ti­cul­ture, wood­land man­age­ment, green build­ing, eco­log­i­cal inter­ac­tions, ener­gy, group dynam­ics, re-local­i­sa­tion, cre­at­ing change, com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment and more; http://www.shiftbristol.org.uk
Bath Veg­an Fayre, Sat­ur­day 4th Sep­tem­ber, Man­vers Street Bap­tist Church, 12–4pm, free entry
Bris­tol Anar­chist Book­fair, Sat­ur­day 11th Sep­tem­ber, 10.30–5.30pm, Hamil­ton House, 80 Stokes Croft, Bris­tol; e‑mail bristolanarchistbookfair[at]riseup.net; http://www.bristolanarchistbookfair.org
Region­al South West Ani­mal Rights Coali­tion meet­ing, Sun­day 19th Sep­tem­ber, 12–5pm, The Fac­to­ry, Cave Street, cen­tral Bris­tol
anti-Tory demon­stra­tion, Sun­day 3rd Octo­ber, Tory Par­ty Con­fer­ence, Birm­ing­ham more details tbc

Paint­ed Lions As White Ele­phants

Bath’s ele­gant and impos­ing 30s-era Churchill House in South­gate was smashed up, and a giant trash-can stuck in its place. The back of the old Tech col­lege build­ing in Low­er Bor­ough Walls was ripped off by a cow­boy ‘devel­op­er’, leav­ing the rest of it jacked up with a met­al gird­er after he did a run­ner. Only some ugly scaf­fold­ing stops the aban­doned Corn­mar­ket in Wal­cot St. from falling down. The last remain­ing Geor­gian-peri­od lido in the coun­try, the Grade II list­ed Cleve­land Pools, just off Lon­don Road, is falling to bits as a result of years of delib­er­ate coun­cil neglect.

B&NES’s ludi­crous response to this dere­lic­tion is to dump 100 iden­tik­it plas­tic lions on the streets of the city in some lame excuse for ‘street art’, and try to flog the idea to the pub­lic under the ban­ner of ‘Pride in our City’. The spin-doc­tors from B.U.M. (Bath Urban Mafia) must have laboured for min­utes to come up with this oh-so-clever dou­ble mean­ing.

These same coun­cil P.R. hacks describe the dum­mies as ‘pub­lic art’, yet, in the tra­di­tion of Bladud’s Pigs, Sophie Ryder’s hideous giant bril­lo pads, and the decade-old Earth from the Air exhi­bi­tion, they don’t both­er ask­ing the Bath pub­lic what THEY want.

By snub­bing local res­i­dents yet again, they were ask­ing for trou­ble, and they got it. Some of the beasts were smashed up not long after being unloaded, which would seem to show that extreme cen­sor­ship rules, K.O.

Not every­one is tak­en in by the B&NES moral spiel either; the three char­i­ties which are appar­ent­ly to ben­e­fit when the beasts are auc­tioned lat­er in the year, are Off the Record, the Quar­tet Com­mu­ni­ty Foun­da­tion, and the May­or’s relief fund for Bath. Yet the self-same fund­ing areas for young peo­ple, the home­less and the needy are the first to be sav­aged when cuts are made. A £3.4 mil­lion butcher­ing of chil­drens’ ser­vices, to be spread over a three-year peri­od, was announced by B&NES in 2009. So maybe this is why B.U.M. uses smoke and mir­rors to flaunt the lions as some kind of tes­ti­mo­ni­al to their alleged con­cern for the wel­fare of the vul­ner­a­ble in Bath, by using them as giant char­i­ty beg­ging bowls in this pathet­ic pub­lic­i­ty stunt.

Smash­ing News!

After well over a year of wait­ing, the E.D.O. Decom­mis­sion­ers’ tri­al has come to an end, with the result being a unan­i­mous NOT GUILTY ver­dict for all sev­en defen­dants. The Decom­mis­sion­ers are activists who, at the height of Israel’s 2009 geno­cide jol­ly (aka oper­a­tion ‘Cast Lead’) took things into their own hands and smashed up the Brighton fac­to­ry of arms man­u­fac­tur­ers E.D.O./I.T.T., caus­ing upwards of £200,000 of dam­age and destroy­ing heaps of records and research doc­u­ments. The com­pa­ny have long sup­plied Israel with bomb release mech­a­nisms and oth­er nas­ties that they need to main­tain their bru­tal stran­gle­hold over the peo­ple of Gaza. The E.D.O. Sev­en used the defence that by crip­pling the weapons fac­to­ry, they were pre­vent­ing ille­gal war crimes from tak­ing place in Pales­tine, thus mak­ing their actions legal by virtue of pre­vent­ing a big­ger crime from occur­ring. After hear­ing evi­dence direct from Pales­tine and reams of human rights reports, the judge decid­ed that the E.D.O. Sev­en had a point, acquit­ting all. This effec­tive­ly deems the Israeli occu­pa­tion of Gaza ille­gal, E.D.O./I.T.T. immoral and com­plic­it in war crimes, and sets a prece­dent for sim­i­lar action in the future. Whichev­er way the court case had gone, the E.D.O. Sev­en have set an exam­ple for us all — when the pow­er­ful active­ly aid war crimes, it is the job of ordi­nary peo­ple to step in and jam a span­ner in the works and a brick through the win­dow of the war machine.

http://www.smashedo.org.uk

Pre-emp­tive Incar­cer­a­tion For Bath’s ASBO Bas­tards

We here at the Bath Bomb were inter­est­ed to hear about Avon & Som­er­set Con­stab­u­lary’s pre­dic­tions for the future of the city’s youth, with their open day last month. As well as teach­ing up to 2,000 would-be crims how to com­mit unarmed rob­bery with repli­ca firearms, Dis­trict Super­in­ten­dant Gary Davies explained how “This police sta­tion belongs to the peo­ple.” They then pro­ceed­ed to baton charge infants and throw them in the cells, demand­ing char­i­ty bribes from the fam­i­lies to secure their release. Giv­en a stark taste of things to come should she put a foot wrong in the ever-increas­ing­ly dystopi­an police-state of her next sev­en­ty years, nine year-old Abby weep­ing­ly begged her sneer­ing goalers for free­dom. The ter­ri­fied tyke lat­er con­fessed about her cell: “I did­n’t like it. It was quite scary and not very big. I am not going to com­mit a crime as I don’t want to be locked up.”

There Is Such Thing As A Free Lunch

Plans are cur­rent­ly sim­mer­ing away for anoth­er free Bath Veg­an Fayre in the city, to take place on Sat­ur­day the 4th of Sep­tem­ber. The one last year was a great hit, with around 150 folks com­ing through the doors, much chuffed at the qual­i­ty of cru­el­ty-free fare fill­ing their bel­lies. The event was very much a local­ly-focused and a non-cor­po­rate affair, empha­sis­ing that even with the health, ethics and envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits of a plant-based diet, exploita­tion of humans is also on the ‘bad’ list. Many were dis­ap­point­ed by the angle that the Bris­tol Veg­an (sor­ry, ‘Eco Veg­gie’) Fayre took this year, jack­ing up the prices and the pol­ish, and mar­gin­al­is­ing cam­paign­ing groups away to a quar­an­tined-off sep­a­rate enclo­sure, so that peo­ple won’t be dis­tract­ed away from all the con­sumerism to be done. This year, the Bath Veg­an Fayre will take place at the Bap­tist Church Hall on Man­vers Street, but oth­er plans are still pret­ty much open. If you can help organ­ise or improve the event in any way, please get in touch with Bath Ani­mal Action — e‑mail bathanimalaction[at]yahoo.co.uk, or ring them on 07717 130954.

The fol­low­ing month, on the 30th of Octo­ber, Bris­tol Ani­mal Rights Col­lec­tive will put on a sim­i­lar event. A ben­e­fit gig to raise funds is also expect­ed to take place at the Hob­gob­lin pub on the 27th of August — more details to be con­firmed.

Rich Jus­tice

Five employ­ees work­ing at the South African Roy­al Marang Hotel have been caught steal­ing var­i­ous items, and a small sum of mon­ey from some of Eng­land’s mil­lion­aire foot­ball play­ers. It is report­ed the items includ­ed under­wear. The employ­ees were sen­tenced to pay­ing a fine of £524, fol­lowed by three years of prison. This from a ‘World Cup Court’, a very spe­cial kind of court indeed, where the rich get all their stuff returned in one day, and the poor despair for three years after an after­noon’s hijinks.

Jail sel­dom is called for. What resti­tu­tion or repa­ra­tion could the fact of a per­son being jailed accom­plish? Do we have some kind of nat­ur­al duty to spend time behind bars once in a while? No. The ori­gin of the prison sys­tem lies in a medieval con­cep­tion of jus­tice. That is, jus­tice as pun­ish­ment. Jus­tice as an attempt to con­trol the pop­u­la­tion’s behav­iour, and make it fit in the ‘cor­rect’ mould.

Of course, the ‘cor­rect’ mould is arbi­trar­i­ly defined by the author­i­ties, so that we are today incar­cer­at­ing not only actu­al crim­i­nals, who may pose a threat to the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion were they roam­ing free. But also, and most­ly, peo­ple who either did not do any­thing wrong, or peo­ple whose vic­tims will clear­ly not gain any­thing from them being in jail. How­ev­er, those un-unionised prison labour­ers do make a lot of cheap con­sumerist tat, so it’s not all bad.

Bath Activist Net­work 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 and greens, and peo­ple who just want to change Bath for the bet­ter. For details on meet­ings, demos, or just to get in touch, e‑mail bathactivistnet[at]yahoo.co.uk or see our web­site: http://www.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com

And now, to the dis­claimer: as any­one is free to con­tribute, 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 do not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect the opin­ions of any oth­er con­trib­u­tor.

Steve Irwin Attacked in Libyan Waters

Steve Irwin Rammed by Bluefin Fish­ery Ves­sel;
Sea Shep­herd Crew Repel Vio­lent Assault by Fish­er­men;
Libyan Navy in Pur­suit of the Steve Irwin

Bluefin tuna nets - Blue Rage campaignCutting tuna netsBluefin tuna swim to freedomSteve Irwin Rammed by Bluefin Fish­ery Ves­sel;
Sea Shep­herd Crew Repel Vio­lent Assault by Fish­er­men;
Libyan Navy in Pur­suit of the Steve Irwin
Oper­a­tion Blue Rage: Day Ten of the Mediter­ranean Patrol

Thurs­day, June 17th, 2010
Loca­tion: Off the Coast of Libya

Report by Cap­tain Paul Wat­son, Steve Irwin

Sea Shepherd’s heli­copter recon­nais­sance flight this morn­ing found two fish­ing ves­sels. One was engaged in trans­fer­ring bluefin tuna into one of the two nets being towed by the oth­er ves­sel.

The bluefin fish­ery ves­sels were inside waters claimed by Libya and about 42 miles off the coast of North Africa.

At 1300 hours, the Steve Irwin came upon the Ital­ian ves­sel Cesare Rus­ti­co tow­ing two cages; one con­tained about 800 fish (the oth­er was emp­ty).

The Cap­tain of the Cesare Rus­ti­co said when ques­tioned that the tuna were caught on the morn­ing of the 14th by the Libyan ves­sel Tagreft. When we replied that the num­ber of tuna in the cage exceed­ed the quo­ta for the Tagreft, the Cap­tain said the cage also includ­ed tuna from sev­en oth­er Libyan sein­ers. All the catch­es were caught on the 14th, the last legal day, accord­ing to the Cap­tain. The oth­er sev­en sein­ers named were the Khand­heel 2, Hani­bal, Ozul 2, Almad­i­na, Mori­na, and Khaleej Elta­ha­di and one oth­er that he had no name for. The prob­lem with this expla­na­tion was that we had observed the Khand­heel 2 on the 13th and 14th of June, and it was not fish­ing. In addi­tion, weath­er con­di­tions for those two days made fish­ing vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble. The extreme­ly dif­fi­cult con­di­tions, cou­pled with the posi­tion of the cages only 40 miles off the Libyan coast, when they should have been mov­ing 25 miles a day, sug­gest­ed to us that the fish were fresh­ly caught with­in the last three days at the most.

Their state­ment that all the catch­es were caught on the 14th sound­ed much too con­ve­nient, so we asked to exam­ine the fish for juve­niles. We were refused. I then put the bow of the Steve Irwin onto the cage so we could look into the cage from the bow to exam­ine it fur­ther.

Sud­den­ly, the Mal­tese ves­sel Rosaria Tuna rammed the Steve Irwin on the aft port side and slid along­side the port rail, as a fish­er­man tried to vio­lent­ly gaff Sea Shep­herd crewmem­bers with a long, sharp-hooked pole.

The Steve Irwin crew retal­i­at­ed with 8 liters of rot­ten but­ter forc­ing the fish­ing ves­sel to retreat and to stand off.

At 1530 hours, the two fish­ing ves­sels cir­cled their cages defen­sive­ly and the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin stood off to noti­fy ICCAT (Inter­na­tion­al Com­mis­sion for the Con­ser­va­tion of Atlantic Tuna) of pos­si­ble vio­la­tions. They did not respond.

The Jean Char­cot, the ICCAT inspec­tion ves­sel will not ven­ture south of 33 Degrees 40 Min­utes North.

With two fish­ing ves­sels con­tain­ing angry Ital­ian crews, there were risks involved with get­ting into the water to assess the bluefin catch. But if the catch was ille­gal, Sea Shep­herd divers knew they must cut the nets and free the bluefin tuna.

Some­times it is nec­es­sary to do what needs to be done despite the risks. The risk of los­ing the bluefin tuna as a species is far more impor­tant than the risks to our own lives and free­dom.

And so we decid­ed to free the tuna.

At 1600 hours, a five-per­son dive crew entered one of two cages being towed by the Ital­ian fish­ing ves­sel Cesare Rus­ti­co.

As the Steve Irwin held off the Cesare Rus­ti­co and the sup­port ship Rosaria Tuna, the Sea Shep­herd crew dove into the net to iden­ti­fy the size, age, and quan­ti­ty of the bluefin tuna with­in. Once it was clear­ly estab­lished that the cage was over­stocked and that a high per­cent­age were juve­niles, Sea Shep­herd divers freed the 700–800 tuna.

It is our posi­tion that the bluefin tuna we freed from that cage held a large num­ber of juve­niles and that the fish were caught after the offi­cial clo­sure of the sea­son. It is also our posi­tion that the fish that we freed exceed­ed the quo­ta.

A large per­cent­age of the tuna were juve­niles and from the posi­tion of the cages and the fact that the entire Mediter­ranean bluefin tuna fish­ery closed at mid­night on June 14th, Sea Shep­herd is con­vinced that this catch was caught after June 14 and there­fore Sea Shep­herd holds the posi­tion that this oper­a­tion by these two ves­sels was ille­gal.*

The Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety is not a protest orga­ni­za­tion. Sea Shep­herd is an anti-poach­ing orga­ni­za­tion and these two sein­ers are poach­ers.

A Sea Shep­herd cam­era­man filmed the release of the fish from the cen­tre of the cage and swim­mers con­firmed that all 700–800 tuna inside the enclo­sure were freed.

“They shot out of that net like race­hors­es,” said Cana­di­an cam­era­man Simon Ager.

After free­ing the bluefin tuna, the Steve Irwin head­ed north and out of the waters claimed by Libya. The Mal­tese media report­ed that Libya had dis­patched war­ships to pur­sue the Steve Irwin.

There are claims in the Mal­tese press that a bluefin tuna fish­er­man was injured by our actions. No one on the Steve Irwin, in the heli­copter, or in the Delta saw any inci­dent where a fish­er­man was injured. We saw one man dive into the water from the side of the cage. Then, we saw him get up and give us the rude Ital­ian arm sig­nal. Anoth­er fish­er­man slashed at the crew with a hook on the end of a long pole, and one of the ves­sels rammed us in the port stern area.

* Notes

Giv­en the very bad weath­er con­di­tions in the zone north of Tripoli until the clo­sure of the legal fish­ing sea­son on June 14th, it is impos­si­ble that this catch was tak­en dur­ing the legal sea­son. The tuna were caught post-clo­sure, dur­ing a peri­od of very calm weath­er that has pre­dom­i­nat­ed over the area since the 15th.

Legal Sea­son:
Wind speed 12th June: 20–35 knots / Seas 1–2 meters
Wind speed 13th June: 20–25 knots / Seas 1–2 meters
Wind speed 14th June: 10–20 knots / Seas 1–2 meters

Post clo­sure:
Wind speed 15th June: 10–15 knots / Seas 1 meter
Wind speed 16th June: 15 knots / Seas 1 meter Wind speed 17th June: 10 knots / Seas 1 meter

The Steve Irwin passed the Khan­deel 2 (one of the ves­sels on the BCD doc­u­ment read over the VHF radio) on the 13th at 1230 at 33*36 / 13*55, less than 20 miles from where we encoun­tered the cages towed by Cesare Rus­ti­co and Rosario Tuna on the 17th, and it was not fish­ing. The weath­er was rough.

Giv­en the loca­tion of the cap­ture, and the loca­tion of the tow ves­sel, it is impos­si­ble the catch was made 3 days ago. Head­ing towards Mal­ta with an aver­age 25 miles per day, the ves­sel and cage would have been much fur­ther north (the ves­sel was in very calm weath­er sit­ting still wait­ing a sec­ond ves­sel).

Vis­it our Oper­a­tion Blue Rage Cam­paign site — http://www.seashepherd.org/blue-rage/

Area for Slaughterhouse squatted

In the ear­ly morn­ing of May 24th, around 30 inde­pen­dent activists have
sqat­ted a field in Wiet­ze near Celle / Han­nover where europe’s biggest
chick­en-slaugh­ter­house (2,5 Mil­lion / week) shall be built.

They’ve put up a tri­pod and a con­crete-bar­rel with chains to avoid an easy
evic­tion. The sit­u­a­tion is great, the own­er’s don’t have a con­sen­sus, the

In the ear­ly morn­ing of May 24th, around 30 inde­pen­dent activists have
sqat­ted a field in Wiet­ze near Celle / Han­nover where europe’s biggest
chick­en-slaugh­ter­house (2,5 Mil­lion / week) shall be built.

They’ve put up a tri­pod and a con­crete-bar­rel with chains to avoid an easy
evic­tion. The sit­u­a­tion is great, the own­er’s don’t have a con­sen­sus, the
police has no legal back­ground for an evic­tion and locals bring loads of
veg­an food and stuff.

Dur­ing the squat­ting there will be work­shops and lec­tures like veg­an
cook­ing, ani­mal exploita­tion, ecol­o­gy and cap­i­tal­ism, oth­er the­o­ry, veg­an
drum-build­ing or tri­pod-build­ing and con­certs with (prob­a­bly) the Kafkas,
Fidl Kun­ter­bunt…

There’s enough place, feel wel­come!!!

antiindustryfarm.blogsport.de