Category: Capitalism / Globalisation

Forest and climate activists shut down Gunns’ Triabunna mill woodchip mill, Tasmania

2008-12-16
Sev­en activists were charged with tres­pass today after shut­ting down Gunns’ Tri­abun­na mill for over sev­en hours this morn­ing. Fif­teen peo­ple occu­pied the wood­chip mill at 4:45am, with sev­en activists attach­ing them­selves to a con­vey­or belt and oth­er machin­ery.

FIFTEEN FOREST AND CLIMATE ACTIVISTS SHUT DOWN TRIABUNNA WOODCHIP MILL, TASMANIA2008-12-16
Sev­en activists were charged with tres­pass today after shut­ting down Gunns’ Tri­abun­na mill for over sev­en hours this morn­ing. Fif­teen peo­ple occu­pied the wood­chip mill at 4:45am, with sev­en activists attach­ing them­selves to a con­vey­or belt and oth­er machin­ery.

“The Car­bon Pol­lu­tion Reduc­tion Scheme White Paper makes it plain that the Fed­er­al ALP is not com­mit­ted to ‘seri­ous and cred­i­ble’ emis­sions reduc­tions. There is a fail­ure by pol­i­cy mak­ers to grasp that we are fac­ing a cli­mate emer­gency – the poli­cies pro­posed by the White Paper will result in the dis­ap­pear­ance of Tas­ma­ni­a’s unique alpine ecosys­tems, the col­lapse of the Bar­ri­er Reef, and the sali­na­tion of Kakadu,” Huon Val­ley Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre spokesper­son said.

“Tar­gets of a 5% reduc­tion by 2020 are piti­ful and inter­na­tion­al­ly humil­i­at­ing. The Aus­tralian Gov­ern­men­t’s increased assis­tance to large emit­ters pro­vides a clear demon­stra­tion that their pri­or­i­ties lie with heav­i­ly pol­lut­ing big busi­ness, and not with Aus­trali­a’s peo­ple and nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment,” War­rick Jor­dan said.

“In Tas­ma­nia, the log­ging, burn­ing and wood­chip­ping of old growth for­est releas­es mas­sive quan­ti­ties of car­bon. Gunns Lim­it­ed is the dri­ver of this gross­ly irre­spon­si­ble and moral­ly rep­re­hen­si­ble sit­u­a­tion,” Still Wild Still Threat­ened spokesper­son said.

“Gunns hides this immense cli­mate crime behind offi­cial car­bon account­ing fig­ures which exclude the log­ging of native for­est. Tas­ma­ni­a’s old growth forests are glob­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant as unique ecosys­tems and car­bon stores, and their pro­tec­tion can play a sig­nif­i­cant role in Aus­tralia tak­ing real cli­mate action,” SWST

“The Tas­man­ian Gov­ern­ment has pub­licly expressed a will to address cli­mate change. If the Bartlett gov­ern­ment is seri­ous about address­ing cli­mate change then it will leg­is­late an end to old growth log­ging” con­clud­ed SWST.

Santas Against Excessive Consumption, London UK, Xmas 08

Five brave coun­ter­cul­ture war­riors don San­ta Suits, sing anti-con­sumerist and anti-cap­i­tal­ist Xmas car­ols, and leaflet for more mind­ful atten­tion to love, gifts, and cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change – in Oxford Street, in the heart of the shop­ping dis­trict of Old Lon­don Town, on the busiest shop­ping day of the year: Sat 13 De

London consumption climate santas 2008Five brave coun­ter­cul­ture war­riors don San­ta Suits, sing anti-con­sumerist and anti-cap­i­tal­ist Xmas car­ols, and leaflet for more mind­ful atten­tion to love, gifts, and cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change – in Oxford Street, in the heart of the shop­ping dis­trict of Old Lon­don Town, on the busiest shop­ping day of the year: Sat 13 Dec 08.

Turn­ing mate­r­i­al wealth into pos­ses­sions makes you hap­py; shop­ping till you drop and retail ther­a­py are good for every­body; prov­ing you love some­body means giv­ing them an expen­sive present. The bullplop pro­mot­ed by Capital’s adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing psy­che-manip­u­la­tors has nev­er need­ed chal­leng­ing more than it does today, in the worst of the mad­ness of Xmas shop­ping mass-psy­chosis dur­ing a cash-strapped cred­it crunch reces­sion.

Our yule­tide ‘tra­di­tion’ at Lon­don Ris­ing Tide [1] involves a ‘San­tas Against Exces­sive Con­sump­tion’ [2] choral street action – mass dress­ing as San­ta Claus, social singing of anti-con­sumerist Xmas car­ols, and let­ting folks know by leaflet that there is an alter­na­tive to the dom­i­nant the-one-who-dies-with-the-most-toys-wins idio­cy of hyper­con­sumerism. Since the rain was heavy and steady, we sought shel­ter and per­for­mance space in the West One indoor shop­ping mall on Oxford Street, by Bond Street tube sta­tion. But anti-cap­i­tal­ist cho­ris­ters only damp­ened what lit­tle Xmas spir­it the secu­ri­ty boss had left – and he threat­ened to call the cops if we didn’t leave forth­with.

Thank­ful­ly, his remit seemed to run out at the doors to Oxford Street, which still left us with a suit­ably sized cov­ered area in which we could sing to our hearts con­tent, and com­pete with the McDon­alds McFly­er to see who could give away the most leaflets per unit time. The applause of shop­pers hap­py to be spared, if only tem­porar­i­ly, from the soul-rot­ting rounds of shop­ping for tat was much appre­ci­at­ed.

The lyrics of the songs you can hear us singing in the video (so you can sing along, or even stage your own San­tas Against Con­spic­u­ous Con­sump­tion street action) are as fol­lows.

___________________________________________________________________
1 (& 3). Jin­gle All The Way – to the tune of Jin­gle Bells

Cho­rus:
Prof­its here, prof­its there,
prof­its every­where
Christ­mas time is fun­ny
we smell mon­ey in the air
Adver­tise, glam­or­ize,
fool you with a flair.
Let’s make sure that Christ­mas
is a busi­nesslike affair.

You’re eat­ing up our lies and dash­ing to the stores
Then all our prices rise and how the mon­ey pours
If we don’t keep you drugged and watch­ing your TV
You might see the hypocrisy
then where would busi­ness be?

Cho­rus

We’ll tell you how to think and tell you what to try
What to eat and drink and how to live and die
And if our plan suc­ceeds, when Christ­mas-time is nigh
Instead of seek­ing love and peace you’ll hunt for gifts to buy

Cho­rus

___________________________________________________________________
2. Con­sumer Won­der­land – to the tune of Win­ter Won­der­land, lyrics by Eri­ca Avery

The TV’s on / are you watch­ing?
Anoth­er prod­uct / that they’re hawk­ing
one more thing you need
to make life com­plete
Wel­come to Con­sumer Won­der­land

In the stores / you will hear it
“Pricey gifts / show hol­i­day spir­it”
That’s what they call it
to get to your wal­let
Wel­come to Con­sumer Won­der­land

At the mall we can go out shop­ping
and buy lots of stuff we can’t afford
we’ll have lots of fun with our new toys
until we real­ize that we’re still bored

When you shop / ain’t it thrilling
until / you get the billing
the mon­ey you still owe the stuff broke long ago
Wel­come to Con­sumer Won­der­land

___________________________________________________________________
4. Oh Come All Ye Shop­pers – to the tune of Oh Come All Ye Faith­ful

Oh come all ye shop­pers
Bur­dened and despon­dent
Come all ye fol­low­ers of ma-a-mon
Come and buy things
Spark­ly and redun­dant

Oh come let us ignore it
Oh come let us deplore it
Oh come let us abhore it
Mon­ey and greed.

Ring tills with prof­it
Ring in exploita­tion
Ring all ye reg­is­ters of cap­i­tal­ism
Glo­ry to prof­it
At it’s high­est

Oh come let us ignore it
Oh come let us deplore it
Oh come let us abhore it
Mon­ey and greed.

___________________________________________________________________

For cap­i­tal­ists, giv­ing means buy­ing tat from them first. For anti-cap­i­tal­ists, a gift econ­o­my can under­mine the mar­ket eco­nom­ics that poi­son our envi­ron­ment, our cul­ture and our minds – for exam­ple, see ‘Cre­at­ing Our Future World One Gift At A Time’ – http://tinyurl.com/gift-economy

Foot­notes

[1] Lon­don Ris­ing Tide – http://www.londonrisingtide.org.uk

[2] The Ris­ing Tide “tra­di­tion” of ‘San­tas Against Exces­sive Con­sump­tion’:
▪ ‘San­tas Against Exces­sive Con­sump­tion hit Lon­don, 16.12.06’ – http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/12/358481.html
▪ ‘San­tas Against Exces­sive Con­sump­tion invade Oxford Street’ – http://www.londonrisingtide.org.uk/node/33
▪ ‘Sub­ver­sive Singing San­tas Spread Sea­son­al San­i­ty in Lon­don and Nor­wich’ – http://risingtide.org.uk/node/247

[2] Car­ol resources:
▪ Christ­mas Car­ols – http://www.buynothingchristmas.org/resources/carols.html
▪ Our Entire 11-song Song­sheet – http://www.earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/17929

Christmas consumption causes climate chaos leaflet - frontChristmas consumption causes climate chaos leaflet - back

Direct Action in Iceland

Since ear­ly this win­ter, Ice­land has been fac­ing eco­nom­ic cri­sis. The three major busi­ness banks have been nation­al­ized, putting their dept on the people’s shoul­ders. Peo­ple have been los­ing their live­long sav­ings, loans have increased and are get­ting sky high (and for sure they already were high enough).

Since ear­ly this win­ter, Ice­land has been fac­ing eco­nom­ic cri­sis. The three major busi­ness banks have been nation­al­ized, putting their dept on the people’s shoul­ders. Peo­ple have been los­ing their live­long sav­ings, loans have increased and are get­ting sky high (and for sure they already were high enough). 200 peo­ple lost their job, every sin­gle day of Novem­ber and more and more peo­ple are fac­ing the threat of los­ing their hous­es.

Activists vs. the police

Peo­ple are get­ting angry, some of them want­i­ng back the “good old” pros­per­i­ty, while oth­ers and hope­ful­ly the major­i­ty, are real­iz­ing the real cost of cap­i­tal­ism. More and more peo­ple are stand­ing up against cor­rup­tion and demand­ing new form of soci­ety — soci­ety of jus­tice. But every day the cur­rent gov­ern­ment proves that it’s main aim is to save their own and their friend’s ass. A loan from the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) has been grant­ed, most like­ly lead­ing to the com­mon after­maths of an IMF loan: the pri­va­ti­za­tion of social sys­tems as the health care and the edu­ca­tion sys­tem, and more destruc­tion of the Ice­landic wilder­ness.

Week­ly demon­stra­tions

For more than 2 months peo­ple have gath­ered week­ly in a park in front of the par­lia­ment. The first protests demand­ed that the gov­ern­ment would “break it’s silence” about the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. Peo­ple were tired of not even being told about what was hap­pen­ing and what the gov­ern­ment was doing about it.

One of the week­ly domon­stra­tions

But soon peo­ple real­ized that it was not enough to ask the gov­ern­ment to speak, so the protests took up anoth­er and more rad­i­cal demand: the resign of the gov­ern­ment and new elec­tions as soon as pos­si­ble. The gov­ern­ment has com­plete­ly ignored this demand and peo­ple are get­ting more and more angry.

Anar­chists and oth­er rad­i­cal left­ists have come to most of the protests, but not to protest against the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion, not to ask the gov­ern­ment for solu­tions, not to ask for new elec­tions, not to ask any mem­ber of the gov­ern­ment or par­lia­ment or any oth­er offi­cial insti­tu­tion to do any­thing to “solve” the cri­sis we are fac­ing. But to spread anar­chis­tic and anti-cap­i­tal­is­tic infor­ma­tion among peo­ple, analyse the prob­lems of author­i­ty and cap­i­tal­ism and to encour­age Ice­landic peo­ple to take direct action against the forces of cor­rup­tion.

Burn­ing flag and mon­ey

Burn­ing of bank flags and “hang­ing” of a cap­i­tal­ist

Dur­ing a protest in front of the prime minister’s office in late Octo­ber, the flags of two Ice­landic banks were burned. A group of anar­chists, prob­a­bly the biggest in Ice­landic his­to­ry at that time, shout­ed anar­chis­tic slo­gans, point­ing out cap­i­tal­ism as the real prob­lem. Until then, cap­i­tal­ism seemed to be a ban-word among the pro­test­ers. The flag burn­ing caught the inter­est of for­eign media, e.g. CNN which showed the burn­ing in their news show lat­er the same evening. An event like this had not hap­pened in Ice­land for a long time.

Burn­ing the flag of Lands­ban­ki bank

A week lat­er, a big demon­stra­tion parade went through the cen­ter of Reyk­javík, demand­ing the resign of the gov­ern­ment. Anar­chists, which grew big­ger and stronger every week, joined the march with ban­ners, black flags, leaflets about direct actions, and anar­chis­tic slo­gans. While oth­er pro­test­ers chant­ed “Away with the gov­ern­ment”, anar­chists shout­ed “Nev­er again gov­ern­ment!”

When the parade came down the the park were week­ly speech­es took place, a group of peo­ple climbed a big fence and hung a doll of a cap­i­tal­ist. Again for­eign media cap­tured the per­for­mance on tape and screened it around the world.

Cou­ple of meters away from the park were the protests take place, a Food Not Bombs groups has been giv­ing away food every Sat­ur­day for the last 8 or 9 months. Food Not Bombs has for sure had it’s effect of the walk­ing-by Ice­landers, who are get­ting more curi­ous and inter­est­ed in alter­na­tive solu­tions to the prob­lems of cap­i­tal­ism.

Dur­ing a protest, Sat­ur­day Novem­ber 8th, an anar­chist climbed on top of the par­lia­ment were he hung the flag of Bónus, Iceland’s cheap­est super­mar­ket. The mes­sage was clear since the flag is yel­low with a pink pig on it: “The gov­ern­ment is a cheap and dirty pig!” Unlike to the usu­al Ice­landic pro­test­ers, peo­ple cel­e­brat­ed this act and sang along “The gov­ern­ment is a cheap and dirty pig!”

Soon hun­dred pro­test­ers sur­rouned­ed the par­li­ment to help the anar­chist to get away from the police, which had already arrest­ed a mate of him. After a bit of a strug­gle with the police, peo­ple man­aged to help the flag-man (like he lat­er became known as) to get down of the roof and de-arrest­ed him more than once. One could feel some change in the air.

Ille­gal arrest

Less than a week lat­er, on a Fri­day night, the police arrest­ed the flag-man. He was in the mid­dle of a research trip to the par­lia­ment, orga­nized by his uni­ver­si­ty, when some par­lia­ment staff rec­og­nized him and called the pigs.

The man had been arrest­ed two years before, for an action with the envi­ron­men­tal direct action cam­paign Sav­ing Ice­land, protest­ing against the build­ing of a big dam, Kárah­n­júkavirkjun, in the east­ern higlands. For this action he had got sen­tenced and fined, but refused to pay the fine and instead insist­ed on sit­ting in jail for 18 days. But after only four days of his jail-sen­tence he was “thrown out” because of lack of space in the prison.

Now, the police stat­ed that the man would have to sit the oth­er 14 days of the sen­tence. The fact is though that the it is not allowed to split the sen­tence like this, and the man was sup­posed to get an announce­ment about fin­ish­ing his sen­tence with at leas 3 weeks notice. This had not been done in his case.

Peo­ple claimed this was espe­cial­ly done by the police, fun­de­men­taly to “take out” an activist who was like­ly to take more actions dur­ing the upcom­ing week­ly demon­stra­tion. So the next day, dur­ing the protest which 10.000 peo­ple had joined, anoth­er protest was announced, this time in front of the police sta­tion, a lit­tle bit lat­er that day.

Riots by the police sta­tion

500 peo­ple came to the police sta­tion and demand­ed that the man would be set free. After a while, no sign of the police was seen and noth­ing looked like the man would be set free. The protest got heat­ed and soon peo­ple had start­ed to break win­dows of the sta­tion and in the end the door of the sta­tion was bro­ken. A group of peo­ple went in were the police wel­comed them with a splash of pep­per spray, with­out even announc­ing it.

The protest got even hot­ter, red paint and eggs were thrown at the sta­tion and on the riot squad which now had formed a chain in front of the sta­tion. A lot of peo­ple were pep­per­sprayed, includ­ing the flag-man’s moth­er and young kids down to 16 years old. In the end, the flag-man was payed out of the prison by an unknown per­son. The flag-man came out were he was cel­e­brat­ed like a hero. He thanked peo­ple for the sup­port but encour­aged peo­ple to use their ener­gy for some­thing else: a rev­o­lu­tion!

The Inva­sion of the Cen­tral Bank

A week after the riots by the police sta­tion, the weeke­ly protest was a lit­tle more chilled. Instead peo­ple hoped for some­thing big tak­ing place the upcom­ing Mon­day, Decem­ber 1st, the day of Iceland’s sov­er­eign­ty.

1st of Decem­ber used to be a free day in Ice­land but cou­ple of years ago the pro­le­tari­at move­ment dis­claimed it´s right. This 1st of May peo­ple were encour­aged not to pay their bills, not show up in work and come to a big out­door meet­ing on a big hill close to the gov­ern­ment offices and the Cen­tral Bank. Few speech­es took place, most of the includ­ing some nation­al­is­tic pif­fle which the rad­i­cals answered with a slo­gan: “No nation­al­ism — Inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty!”

After the meet­ing was for­mal­ly over the word on the street was that more rad­i­cal action was going to take place. Sud­den­ly a big group of peo­ple marched to the Cen­tral Bank and entered the first entrance.

The entrance was com­plete­ly full of peo­ple shout­ing and demand­ing that Davíð Odd­s­son, the chair­man of the Cen­tral Bank board and a for­mer prime min­is­ter, would resign. Few police­men had closed the sec­ond entrance but peo­ple shout­ed at them, asked in “what team” they were in, telling them to join the pub­lic, leave the entrance and let the peo­ple in. Sud­den­ly the police left the entrance, the peo­ple cheered and opened the door to the sec­ond entrance.

Pep­per spray again?

The sec­ond entrance became com­plete­ly full as well as the first one, but behind big glass doors the riot squad had formed a chain of c.a. 30 pigs, armed with shields, clubs and pep­per spray. Again, instead of speak­ing to the peo­ple, the pigs start­ed shak­ing their spray cans, forc­ing to use it against the peo­ple it they would not leave.

The riot squad, ready to strike inside the Cen­tral Bank

Peo­ple start­ed bang­ing on the door, shout­ing slo­gans against the Cen­tral Bank and the police. After a while, when a police offi­cer had sev­er­al times threat­ened to use the pep­per spray, peo­ple decid­ed to sit down peace­ful­ly and not stand up until Davíð Odd­s­son would resign. The action stood over sev­er­al hours and had it’s peaks when peo­ple stood up, lift­ed up their hands to show they were unarmed and chal­lenged the police to leave, open the doors and let the peo­ple bring Odd­s­son out.

When it became clear that Odd­s­son had already left the build­ing the pro­test­ers gave the police an offer: the riot squad would leave and than the pro­test­ers would leave the build­ing. About 30 sec­onds lat­er, the pigs walked back and the peo­ple cheered some kind of a vic­to­ry of the peo­ple.

Into the par­lia­ment

A week lat­er, last Mon­day Decem­ber 8th, thir­ty peo­ple went in to the Ice­landic par­lia­ment, head­ing to the inside bal­cony were the pub­lic is legal­ly allowed to sit, watch and lis­ten to what takes place there. The group announced that the par­lia­ment no longer served it’s pur­pose and the gov­ern­ment should there­for resign right now, the oth­er MP’s should use their time for some­thing more con­struc­tive.

Pro­test­er thrown out by police after telling the MP’s and min­is­ters to leave the par­lia­ment

Only two per­sons got to the bal­cony and shout­ed at the MP’s and min­is­ters to leave the build­ing. Quick­ly they were bru­tal­ly removed by a police offi­cer, while the rest of the group was stuck in a stair­case inside the build­ing. The par­lia­men­tary ses­sion was delayed and all the MP’s left the room.

Mean­while the pro­test­ers were bru­tal­ly han­dled by secu­ri­ty guards and police, which end­ed up arrest­ing 7 peo­ple, most of them for house­break­ing. But like said before, the pub­lic is allowed to enter the par­lia­ment bal­cony.

Police car­ries a man out after hand­cuff­ing him and rope his legs — “Fas­cist, fas­cists!” the man shout­ed while being car­ried out

The next morn­ing, 30 peo­ple had gath­ered in front of the prime minister’s office were a gov­ern­ment meet­ing was sup­posed to take place. The peo­ple had formed a human chain blockad­ing the two entrances of the house. When min­is­ters start­ed to show up, the police had already arrived and start­ed to try to remove the chain. The peo­ple resist­ed heav­i­ly and read out a state­ment sent out by the group.

The state­ment said that the aim of the action was to “pre­vent the min­is­ters from enter­ing the house and there­fore stop fur­ther mis­use of pow­er. Mon­ey has con­trolled peo­ple on the cost of their rights and the author­i­ties and their cliques have manip­u­lat­ed finance for their own ben­e­fits. That manip­u­la­tion has not entailed in a just soci­ety, just world. Time of action has dawn, because a just soci­ety is not only pos­si­ble, but it is our duty to fight for it.”

With the help of the police, all the min­is­ters got in, but heard the state­ment and were under big pres­sure from the media. They were not pre­pared for ques­tions and came out bad­ly when asked. The gov­ern­ment meet­ing was delayed because of the actions.

Two were arrest­ed, one for enter­ing a police line and the oth­er one for sit­ting in front of the police car which was about to dri­ve the oth­er arrest­ed one to the police sta­tion. More peo­ple sat on the street and it took the police quite a long time to get out of the street. Only when a police offi­cer gave the dri­ver an order to “just dri­ve hard”, the dri­ver did so and near­ly drove over two per­sons.

One of the biggest news­pa­pers in Ice­land, DV, report­ed the bru­tal behavoiur of the police. The paper’s jour­nal­ist and pho­tog­ra­ph­er were both attacked by the police, as well as notic­ing when a police punced a pro­test­er in the face, while he lay on the street. Most oth­er media did not dare to report the bru­tal behav­iour.

A left wing web­site, Smu­gan, told about a police offi­cer who was asked by the pro­test­ers if he would have pro­tect­ed Hitler. His answer was sim­ple: “Yes, if it would have been my duty.”

More actions have been announced and it will be inter­est­ing to see what comes next.

http://aftaka.org/

ELF sabotage phone booths in Columbia & Mexico

“On the night of Decem­ber 5th activists from the Autonomous and Anar­chist Cell of the FLT (ELF) and FLA (ALF) took to the streets of Bogo­ta to sab­o­tage the tele­phone booths of ETB (Bogo­ta tele­phone com­pa­ny), well known as a major spon­sor of the spe

ELFELF“On the night of Decem­ber 5th activists from the Autonomous and Anar­chist Cell of the FLT (ELF) and FLA (ALF) took to the streets of Bogo­ta to sab­o­tage the tele­phone booths of ETB (Bogo­ta tele­phone com­pa­ny), well known as a major spon­sor of the speciesist slaugh­ter in the bull­ring. Armed with shears, spray paint and stick­ers with anti­civ­i­liza­tion and threat­en­ing mes­sages, we ripped out the mouth­pieces and left the phones unus­able.
This was only the begin­ning, the dis­gust­ing ‘bull­fight­ing sea­son’ is approach­ing and the actions will not stop.

For the lib­er­a­tion of all, wild and green vio­lence!

CAAELF ¿bogo­ta?”

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

“The born-evil own­er of the com­pa­ny Telmex, Calos Slim, knows more than any­one else that he and his great indus­tri­al pow­er in this coun­try are the ones respon­si­ble for the exploita­tion of ani­mals, of the water, of the land, of the mines and oth­er nat­ur­al resources, for that rea­son and because we con­sid­er it one of this plan­et’s exe­cu­tion­ers, we sab­o­taged 12 Telmex phones and popped 4 tires of one of his trucks.

These attacks will not stop, because our rage is infi­nite!

Frente de Lib­eración de la Tier­ra (FLT) — Méx­i­co”

report­ed by http://directaction.info

Bath Bomb 17 Cordially Yours

THE BATH BOMB
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Issue #17
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Dec 08 ‘No, he doesn’t exist you whiny lit­tle brat’

Batho­ni­ans Stand Up As The Econ­o­my Falls Down!

Bath Bomb logoTHE BATH BOMB
@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #17
free/donation

Dec 08 ‘No, he doesn’t exist you whiny lit­tle brat’

Batho­ni­ans Stand Up As The Econ­o­my Falls Down!

Sat­ur­day the 22nd of Novem­ber saw the start of BAN’s lat­est cam­paign, aimed at com­mu­ni­ty self-defence against the effects of the reces­sion. The ‘We Won’t Pay For Their Cri­sis!’ cam­paign has these key demands: fair heat­ing sub­si­dies, bailiffs out of our com­mu­ni­ties, no more house repos­ses­sions, no job or ben­e­fit freezes, con­trol of the banks and no to lay-offs. The demo start­ed off with around 20 activists (although the num­ber lat­er grew to around 35) con­gre­gat­ing at Bath Abbey before tak­ing to the roads and mak­ing a bee­line for Mil­som Street. Out­side the strip of banks, the crowd start­ed a spon­ta­neous road­block, snarling up traf­fic and tak­ing advan­tage of the huge amount of atten­tion to inform the pub­lic what the action was about and shame the banks through BAN’s shiny new mega­phone! Dur­ing the road­block, sev­er­al Xmas shop­pers decid­ed to join the action, and stayed with the march until the end. From there, the demo moved towards Guild­hall, where a brief block­ade was staged (this was only lift­ed to allow a wed­ding par­ty into Guild­hall; the sup­port­ive bride-to-be even posed for pic­cies with pro­test­ers!). After this, march­ing in the oppo­site direc­tion that the (by now slight­ly despair­ing) police pushed the crowd in, the protest moved back up to Nat West, where anoth­er block­ade took place, and dur­ing which the bank was adorned with ‘Where’s our bailout?’ stick­ers. In many ways, the day was a huge suc­cess. Many on the march were first time pro­test­ers, who refused to be intim­i­dat­ed by pushy and threat­en­ing police. The pub­lic were over­whelm­ing­ly in sup­port of the march — with hun­dreds of leaflets being giv­en out, and fre­quent cheers and applause com­ing from the pave­ments. Above all, the march marked the begin­ning of what promis­es to be a strong and effec­tive to defend our com­mu­ni­ties against greedy boss­es, politi­cians and land­lords, who would rather see us freez­ing, job­less and home­less than sac­ri­fice their own moun­tains of wealth.

How To Sur­vive A Reces­sion

With the reces­sion now deep­en­ing, all of us are feel­ing the pinch. Some already can­not afford to turn on their heat­ing, while oth­ers are get­ting laid-off and hav­ing prop­er­ty stolen by bailiffs. We have talked a lot about tak­ing the fight to the greedy sys­tem that caused the reces­sion, and we have giv­en a lot of col­umn inch­es to pro­mot­ing the idea of fight­ing against the sys­tem to pro­tect and improve our stan­dard of life. While this is def­i­nite­ly vital if we are to roll back the effects of this reces­sion, we at the Bath Bomb have not giv­en much time to talk­ing about what we can do in the here and now to make things a bit eas­i­er. All of the ideas we will look at involve the reclaim­ing of your own life — break­ing the umbil­i­cal cord of depen­den­cy on super mar­kets, banks and politi­cians, and it is this dis­as­so­ci­a­tion from the rich’s sys­tem of cap­i­tal­ist greed com­bined with direct attacks upon it that will allow us to live our lives free of their finan­cial cri­sis and social oppres­sion. With the rant behind us, let’s have a look at some bud­get-bust­ing reces­sion sur­vival mea­sures:

1. Grow some veg!: now is the time to be plant­i­ng gar­lic and win­ter peas, and from Jan­u­ary to March, every­thing from run­ner beans, toma­toes, car­rots and pota­toes go in the ground. If you have an unused fence, you can grow run­ners, and even the tini­est bit of gar­den can be turned into a good source of food. If you don’t have any space, start gar­den­ing with friends, or pop down to the Bath Organ­ic Allot­ments on Upper Bris­tol Road, who exchange huge bags of veg in return for vol­un­teer­ing.

2. Start a food co-op: this is a real­ly sim­ple idea. It involves you and your mates chip­ping in, order­ing from a whole­saler and get­ting the goods at cost price, side­step­ping the huge prof­its slapped on by super­mar­kets. You will each have to stick in a bit of mon­ey to get start­ed, then ‘buy’ the food from your­selves to gen­er­ate mon­ey to order in next month’s stock. Trust us — it’s cheap, and more info can be found at http://www.cooperativegrocer.coop/cg_special.html.

3. Five fin­ger dis­counts: a bit con­tro­ver­sial, but hey, super­mar­kets have been steal­ing from us for years. They steal land and resources from impov­er­ished farm­ers here and abroad, then steal our cash by charg­ing tens of times above the cost of trans­port and pro­duc­tion. So go on, rob — don’t feel guilty, you are poor and they are gross­ly rich, and most of their wealth comes from our pock­ets.

4. Jack­ing elec­tric­i­ty: there are loads of good ways to jack elec­tric­i­ty to help beat those win­ter bill blues. One involves locat­ing the cog that turns the meter on your elec­tric­i­ty box, heat­ing up a pin and push­ing it through the cas­ing to stop the tick­er turn­ing. Hey presto, free elec­tric­i­ty! But make sure to take the pin out for a few hours a day so the elec­tric com­pa­ny does­n’t start ask­ing ques­tions.

So there we go, just a few hints and tips to get you start­ed. We will try and bring you month­ly advice on beat­ing those reces­sion dol­drums (by any means nec­es­sary) from now on, and we’d love to hear your ideas. All mes­sages to bathbombpress@yahoo.co.uk

The Lit­tle Big Screen

Sun­day the 30th Novem­ber saw yet anoth­er fine Bub­bling Under offer­ing at the Porter Cel­lar, show­ing ‘Live Nude Girls Unite’ – a doc­u­men­tary chron­i­cling the for­ma­tion of the first exot­ic dancers’ union in the US in the late 90’s. This proved to be both enter­tain­ing and inspir­ing, as it tack­led racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, exploita­tive boss­es, fam­i­ly strug­gles and com­mon stereo­types of the sex indus­try. After all that excite­ment, though, Bub­bling Under is tak­ing a well-earned break this month. How­ev­er, it’s com­ing back thick and fast on Sun­day the 18th of Jan­u­ary from 1–4pm, with both a doc­u­men­tary about the British Poll Tax riots, and GI resis­tance to Viet­nam with ‘Sir No Sir’. More frag­gings and lobbed bricks than you can shake an iron lady at! Get there ear­ly to get a good seat, or bring your own.

Bath Bomb Word­watch: frag­ging (v); the act of killing a supe­ri­or offi­cer with the use of a grenade

http://www.sirnosir.com/

Christ­mas Chrompe­ti­tion

Here at the Bath Bomb we’re often accused of hat­ing the upper class. So we thought to our­selves, what bet­ter time to prove it! So, to win a free exclu­sive one-year sub­scrip­tion to the Bath Bomb, sim­ply send in your sto­ries about how you’ve man­aged to get up a toff’s nose this fes­tive sea­son.

EVENTS
2nd and 4th Mon­days of the month, Bath Hunt Sabs meet­ing, 8pm, the Bell, Wal­cot Street
Wednes­days, Lon­don Road Food Co-op, 4–7pm, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Lon­don Road
Sat­ur­days, Bath Stop The War vig­il, 11.30am-12.30, out­side Bath Abbey
Fri­day 12th Decem­ber, anti-foie gras demo, 7–9pm, meet­ing at the Cir­cus
Fri­day 19th Decem­ber, anti-foie gras demo, 7–9pm, meet­ing at the Cir­cus
Wednes­day 7th Jan­u­ary, Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing 7.30–8.30pm, back room of the Bell pub, Wal­cot Street
Thurs­day 8th Jan­u­ary, Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, 7.30–9pm, down­stairs at the Hob­gob­lin
pub, St James Parade
Sat­ur­day the 10th Jan­u­ary, Bath FreeShop, 12–3pm, oppo­site Hol­land & Bar­rett, Stall Street
Tues­day 13th Jan­u­ary, Tran­si­tion Bath Forum, 7.15pm, Wid­combe Social Club
Wednes­day 14th Jan­u­ary, Bath Green Drinks, 8.30pm, upstairs at the Rum­mer pub, Grand Parade
Thurs­day 15th Jan­u­ary, The Pow­er of Com­mu­ni­ty film screen­ing, 7.30pm, the Cork pub, West­gate Street
Sun­day 18th Jan­u­ary, Bub­bling Under film screen­ing, 1–4pm, Porter Cel­lar, George Street
Mon­day 5th Feb­ru­ary, Bath Friends of the Earth AGM, Still­point, Broad Street Place, 8pm

My Big Fas­cist Greek Shoot­ing

Many of us in Eng­land have wit­nessed police bru­tal­i­ty, either first hand or on the news. To those of us who have been on the receiv­ing end of the raised trun­cheon of the law, it will come as no sur­prise that in Greece, the bru­tal­i­ty has reached a peak. On Sat­ur­day the 6th of Novem­ber, a detach­ment of blue-shirt­ed police (hat­ed in Greece, and usu­al­ly reserved for sit­u­a­tions of polit­i­cal tur­moil) provoca­tive­ly cruised through, and parked in a tra­di­tion­al­ly left-wing estate in Athens. Exert­ing their right to be free from unnec­es­sary sur­veil­lance, local anar­chist youths inter­vened to remove the police from their com­mu­ni­ty. The police respond­ed with stun grenades and live ammu­ni­tion, leav­ing 15-year-old anti-cap­i­tal­ist Alexan­dros-Andreas Grig­oropou­los dead on the street. Greece has since erupt­ed into spon­ta­neous riot­ing, described by Greek police as the worst in a gen­er­a­tion with dozens of banks and police sta­tions get­ting burned to the ground. Tens of thou­sands of peo­ple have been demon­strat­ing since Sat­ur­day night, and are already plan­ning for fur­ther unrest. The cities of Thes­sa­loni­ki, Athens, Patras and oth­ers have become bat­tle­grounds in which an angry civil­ian pop­u­la­tion is fight­ing the police and demand­ing an end to indis­crim­i­nate and bru­tal repres­sion. While the sense­less mur­der of a child by arro­gant and vio­lent police is news enough, this sto­ry fits into a big­ger pic­ture. This is not just the sto­ry of a Greek tragedy, but one that res­onates across the world. In coun­tries where police are allowed to kill indis­crim­i­nate­ly (e.g Bur­ma and Indone­sia), they do so. In coun­tries where police are giv­en access to tear gas, pep­per spray and stun grenades (Ger­many, Spain and Italy etc.), they use them with aban­don. As any­one who remem­bers the min­ers’ strike, the Poll Tax riots in Trafal­gar square, the Bean­field, the mur­der of Jean Charles de Menezes, or any oth­er exam­ple of police bru­tal­i­ty in the UK knows, the dif­fer­ence between a cop in this coun­try and the mur­der­ers in Greece has noth­ing to do with com­pas­sion or decen­cy of the British bob­by, but more to do with the fact that the aver­age cop in this coun­try does not have access to lethal weapon­ry… yet.

GOT A STORY? WANT TO RECEIVE THE BATH BOMB BY EMAIL? HOPING TO SUE? Con­tact us by e‑mailing bathbombpress@yahoo.co.uk. Large print e‑versions avail­able on request. For more infor­ma­tion on any of our sto­ries, check out http://www.mypace.com/bathbomb

Mon­sieur, With Zees Protests You’re Real­ly Spoil­ing Us

Fri­day the 28th of Novem­ber saw a fol­low-up demo in the third ren­di­tion of the cam­paign against foie gras sell­er The Pinch of Margaret’s Build­ings. Long-time read­ers should be well versed in the ins and outs of this excit­ing saga, or maybe sick to death of hear­ing about it – well, so are we! Come on, Christophe, haven’t you had enough yet? After two hours of mega­phones, noisy chant­i­ng, leaflet­ing, spon­ta­neous song and dance rou­tines, heat­ed debates and even the odd fisticuffs (some well-to-do jol­ly old bean’s birth­day meal got ruined), the demo and atten­dant PCSOs moved off. Local opin­ion seems mixed, with some res­i­dents in great sup­port of the cam­paign, whilst oth­er big spenders couldn’t yank the wads of cash out of their wal­lets quick enough as they splut­tered their red-faced way inside the restau­rant – that’ll teach them bloody pro­test­ers!

So now the cam­paign is upping the ante: the demos will now be every Fri­day night, from 7pm. So, if you like your fine din­ing to be sans ear-split­ting dis­rup­tion, it’s best to eat else­where. And if you live local, and you want a bit of peace and qui­et, tell own­er Christophe LeCroix to do the right thing: stop sell­ing foie gras!

The Pinch
11 Margaret’s Build­ings, Bath, BA1 2LP
tel: 01225 421251
e‑mail: info@thepinch.biz

All The Food Of The Fayre

Sat­ur­day the 22nd was also the date of the first Bath Veg­an Fayre, show­ing near­ly 200 pun­ters just how sim­ple eat­ing veg­an can be. Info on nutri­tion and ani­mal rights issues was avail­able, as well as recipe books, but the food proved more appetis­ing: piz­za, soft drinks, pies, cheese­cake, bis­cuits, burg­ers, veg­gie bacon and sausage, soups… This jour­nal­ist is get­ting hun­gry just think­ing about it! Though the sched­uled talk on genet­ic engi­neer­ing was replaced short notice with one on food secu­ri­ty, the event was very much a suc­cess, and hap­py bel­lies were made full. Look out for their next big­ger, bet­ter (don’t quote us on that) instal­ment in ear­ly sum­mer, when the next is planned.

http://www.vegansociety.com

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 to greens, and peo­ple who just want to change Bath for the bet­ter. For details on meet­ings, demos, or just to get in touch, ring us on 07949 611912, email bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk, or see our web­site: http://www.myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork

Steal Some­thing Day

Sat­ur­day the 29th of Novem­ber has been cel­e­brat­ed as Buy Noth­ing Day for some years now — a day aimed at high­light­ing the human rights and envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns gen­er­at­ed by exces­sive con­sumerism in the run up to Xmas (the sea­son of shod­di­ly made sweat­shop goods, and over­flow­ing rub­bish bins). But this year, anony­mous Batho­ni­ans decid­ed to make a slight­ly dif­fer­ent point. While we can make respon­si­ble deci­sions when buy­ing — it is not our fault that the prod­ucts we buy are made using slave labour in far off sweat­shops, not our fault that most large com­pa­nies show scant regard for the envi­ron­ment and cer­tain­ly not our fault that the com­pa­ny puts a mark-up of sev­er­al hun­dred % on the prod­uct before pass­ing it on to us. While the sweat­shop work­ers who pro­duce the prod­ucts are the biggest vic­tims, we are also vic­tims of cor­po­rate greed emp­ty­ing our pock­ets at every oppor­tu­ni­ty. With this in mind, activists set off on a marathon ‘steal some­thing’ spree. While declin­ing to com­ment whether they them­selves indulged in an orgy of shoplift­ing, the activists did reveal that, over the course of sev­er­al hours, they vis­it­ed some of the biggest, bad­dest chain stores and human rights abusers in town and improved hun­dreds of prod­ucts with invi­ta­tions encour­ag­ing con­sumers to lib­er­ate the prod­uct rather than part with hard-earned cash. The let­ter out­lined the eth­i­cal argu­ment for shoplift­ing, and the uneth­i­cal argu­ment for ram­pant free-mar­ket cap­i­tal­ism. The mes­sage was well and tru­ly spread that ‘buy noth­ing’ can also mean ‘take some­thing back’. If you want to join the cam­paign against sweat­shop con­di­tions, why not con­tact either No Sweat or Labour Behind The Label? After what these com­pa­nies have done to our envi­ron­ment, our high street and our fel­low human beings, the ques­tion begs to be asked — who are the real thieves?

http://www.nosweat.org.uk/
http://www.labourbehindthelabel.org/

Mak­ing A Song And Dance About It

Wel­come to Tesco Town: the hot­ly con­test­ed Tesco Express on Bath­wick Hill final­ly opened on Mon­day the 24th of Novem­ber, though not with­out inci­dent. They’d been drag­ging their heels ever since their pro­ject­ed open­ing in Feb­ru­ary, after being vocal­ly opposed by res­i­dents every step of the way for two years; the tale of toad­y­ing, bribery and trick­ery that final­ly got them their desired store is a leg­end unto itself. They also got away with not installing the traf­fic-calm­ing mea­sures they promised… but what’s a bro­ken promise among neigh­bours? For their so-called ‘grand’ open­ing, singers from local char­i­ty Gold­en Oldies pro­vid­ed the music, and man­ag­er Bren­dan Tuck­er wore his fixed grin. How­ev­er, pro­ceed­ings were dis­rupt­ed by two mod­est-sized protests that day, with four cheeky pirates wav­ing a jol­ly roger dur­ing the open­ing cred­its, and then anoth­er five lat­er on, from 6pm, freez­ing their bits off long into the night.

The char­i­ty above was set up to com­bat alien­ation, com­mu­ni­ty break­down and lone­li­ness amongst the elder­ly. The great irony is, though, that when local inde­pen­dents like Bath­wick Stores are worn away, then that is itself yet anoth­er exam­ple of com­mu­ni­ty ero­sion: what sort of famil­iar­i­ty or com­mu­nal bonds can you con­struct with a revolv­ing door pol­i­cy of bored check­out staff? The cash that Tesco injects into these groups is a drop in the ocean com­pared to the PR pay­back they reap through such asso­ci­a­tions. Not that you should be tak­en in by their friend­ly face, any­way – not when they’re spon­sor­ing sweat­shop con­di­tions in ‘fair-trade’ banana pack­ing hous­es in Luton, respon­si­ble for the deaths of cock­le-pick­ers in More­cambe Bay, or engag­ing in such oth­er human­i­tar­i­an ven­tures as help­ing kill off local food vari­eties, indus­tri­al farm­ing health scares, pol­lu­tion and ani­mal abuse, or build­ing up retail monop­o­lies. And they’ll prob­a­bly lock up their skips, too. In terms of pos­i­tive solu­tions, iron­ic leaflets and sub­ver­tis­ing notwith­stand­ing, local food co-oper­a­tives are a much bet­ter way to go – such as the Lon­don Road Food Co-op, the South­side Food Co-op or, if you can afford it, Har­vest on Wal­cot Street. But the ques­tion still stands with these food giants (and Tesco aren’t the only cul­prit) – what to do about them?

http://www.impacttlimited.com/2007/05/23/abuse-of-workers-packing-fair-trade-bananas-in-the-uk-on-today-programme-this-morning‑2/
http://www.tescopoly.org/
http://www.golden-oldies.org.uk
South­side Food Co-op: http://www.twerton.con/twerton-articles/southside-food-co-op-a22.html
Lon­don Road Food Co-op, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, York Place, Lon­don Road, Bath, BA1 6AE, tel: 07837 784715

Your Name’s Down, You’re Not Com­ing In

Antifas­cists across the land last month were cel­e­brat­ing Christ­mas ear­ly, as the entire BNP mem­ber­ship list was leaked on Novem­ber 18th. Whilst threats of legal action, arrests and the hyp­o­crit­i­cal invo­ca­tion of the Human Rights Act (which the BNP active­ly oppose) has been bandied about the net, it’s all a bit futile as the list has beamed far and wide. In Bath we alleged­ly have a measly nine proud bull­dogs to dis­own, and Frome has four, whilst Bris­tol seems to have a 100-strong infes­ta­tion to clean up. For a par­ty that is all about appar­ent­ly res­cu­ing the endan­gered great white work­ing class, it’s curi­ous that the major­i­ty in Bath are from mid­dle class areas; how dis­ap­point­ing. If any­one has any more infor­ma­tion on the fas­cist scene to impart, such as shoe size, IQ, favourite chat-up lines or places of work, send in to the usu­al address.

http://blogs.journalism.co.uk/editors/2008/11/19/bnp-members-list-leak-gathers-pace-online-to-link-or-not-to-link/

I Think We’re Alone Now…

You know you’re in trou­ble when the band you book for the end of your protest stand around mak­ing snide remarks at your expense. “Of course, we could all go and occu­py par­lia­ment,” sug­gest­ed that nice chap from Seize the Day, to sheep­ish laugh­ter and ner­vous foot-shuf­fling from the crowd of hip­pies in Par­lia­ment Square. We were in Lon­don for the annu­al Cli­mate March, expect­ing to join 15,000 marchers and a healthy anti-cap­i­tal­ist bloc, using our sheer force of num­bers to make the gov­ern­ment lis­ten.

Sad­ly, on the day only around 5,000 turned up, and our antic­i­pat­ed bloc did­n’t quite break dou­ble fig­ures. We marched a wind­ing route from the emp­ty-look­ing US embassy to the def­i­nite­ly emp­ty Par­lia­ment, demand­ing CO2 cuts, no to air­port expan­sions, and green jobs. Feel­ing increas­ing­ly mar­gin­al­ized, sur­round­ed by a sea of ‘Car­bon Cap, Not Hip­py Crap’ plac­ards, and in con­stant dan­ger of being run down by an encroach­ing sam­ba band, our mer­ry group clung togeth­er behind our ‘Cap­i­tal­ism Isn’t Work­ing’ ban­ner for half the march, then prompt­ly dis­in­te­grat­ed.

Two of us, red and black flags in hands, end­ed up at the very head of the march for almost a minute before being quick­ly removed by the stew­ards. Walk behind the green­house, they told us. It’s the sym­bol of the cam­paign. Go on; get back in your box. Every­one else is doing it.

And that’s the issue. The cam­paign­ers turn up once a year to demand some­body else fix their prob­lems, then they go home. The only way this march will help at this point is if it becomes an annu­al get-togeth­er to unite the move­ment and give us a chance to brag about all the suc­cess­ful direct actions of the past year. Oth­er­wise, the reduc­tion in marchers from 30,000 to 5,000 in a hand­ful of years will be reflect­ed in the move­ment as a whole. With­out sol­id actions and sol­id accom­plish­ments, we’re all fucked.

Now hand over those bolt­crop­pers – I’ve got stuff to do tonight.

Spe­cial Yule­tide Dis­claimer: Like you, we prob­a­bly dis­agree with every­thing every con­trib­u­tor has writ­ten. We’re just in it for the scene points. We espe­cial­ly wouldn’t encour­age any­one to do any­thing that might get them­selves in trou­ble with the law… Play safe kids!

Buy Nothing Day reports — London x2, Norwich, Wrexham, Liverpool & Manchester

“Take your clothes off!

Swap Shop 1Swap Shop 2“Take your clothes off! Swap them with your friends for FREE!” was the mes­sage from the Space Hijack­ers http://www.spacehijackers.co.uk/html/welcome.html, who decid­ed to set up their clothes swap — “the restyling fash­ion mash-up event of the year” — on the low­er ground floor of TOPSHOP at Oxford Cir­cus (Lon­don). The idea was to demon­strate that “we don’t need to spend mon­ey we don’t have on things we don’t need.”

The action, designed as it was to sub­vert one of the icon­ic tem­ples of con­sumerism seemed to baf­fle police and did­n’t amuse the secu­ri­ty staff, who stopped me tak­ing pic­tures there. One oth­er pho­tog­ra­ph­er was man­han­dled out of the store, but I was treat­ed very polite­ly, with sev­er­al secu­ri­ty men stand­ing between me and the action and telling me that pho­to­graph was not allowed. On of the store man­agers even offered to per­son­al­ly help me find any clothes I might wish to buy else­where in the store, a pos­si­bil­i­ty I found most unlike­ly.

I left the store (with a rather large escort until I left the premis­es) and walked around to the side exit where I expect­ed the clothes swap­pers to be eject­ed, arriv­ing just before they emerged, and was able to pho­to­graph them con­tin­u­ing to swap clothes on the pave­ment in Regent Street. Here one police­man did attempt to pre­vent me from tak­ing pic­tures, claim­ing I was caus­ing an obstruc­tion (which clear­ly I was­n’t) and as usu­al I moved back a cou­ple of feet before return­ing to take pic­tures when he moved away.

Things did threat­en to get out of hand when a rather elder­ly police offi­cer (at my age all police­men are sup­posed to look young), helped by a ‘Red Cap’ (rather sin­is­ter pri­vate secu­ri­ty war­dens employed by the ‘New West End Com­pa­ny’ to ensure shop­pers don’t step out of line) start­ed to push peo­ple around, but most­ly oth­er offi­cers took a more sen­si­ble approach, some even talk­ing and jok­ing with the swap­pers as they con­tin­ued to exchange items of cloth­ing on the pave­ment.

Some shop­pers pass­ing by stopped to watch, and a few took a leaflet, but there was no evi­dence of any Dam­a­scene con­ver­sions, most hur­ry­ing on clutch­ing their loaded shop­ping bags, des­per­ate to spend more mon­ey.

One of those tak­ing part was held by the police for a while as they had decid­ed he was the ring­leader. He got a big cheer when he was released, wav­ing his pink ‘Get out of TOPSHOP Jail Free’ Chance Card and the Anti-social Behav­iour Act Notice for the Dis­per­sal of Groups (see http://www.opsi.gov.uk/ACTS/acts2003/ukpga_20030038_en_5 ) which the Met had issued. This required him to leave the Oxford St/Regent St area for the next 24 hours. For­tu­nate­ly the map pro­vid­ed did­n’t include the Red Lion, where he announced his inten­tion of going — and at this point I also left as I was already late for a meet­ing with friends in Streatham. Some of the oth­ers looked as if they were going to con­tin­ue their fun along Oxford Street.

========

All in all, I think it was a good action.

around 30–40 peo­ple turned up and swapped clothes, hun­dreds of leaflets were hand­ed out on oxford street before the action, and when it did hap­pen, Top­Shop had a shop full of Police, PCSO’s and secu­ri­ty, they closed the entrance to the shop and removed the ‘red phone box’ meet­ing point dis­play.

Lots of lit­er­a­ture was hand­ed out, and plen­ty of pret­ty activist flesh, (oh my).

two arrests hap­pened, one for refus­ing to give a name and address (sec­tion 50 of the Police Reform Act) appar­ent­ly it was anti-social behav­iour. On the con­trary I thought it was incred­i­bly social behav­iour show by the hijack­ers. Both arrests were released with­out charge fair­ly swift­ly. Although one was dri­ven to Trafal­gar square and dropped off there for no appar­ent rea­son?

Lat­er on the actions con­tin­ued with a street par­ty in King­ly Court shop­ping cen­tre, and then a road blo­cade at Sev­en Dials with plen­ty of danc­ing.

thanks to all of the non-shop swap­pers and to the love­ly peo­ple who swapped their clothes with mine for the great new out­fit I have.

========

Buy noth­ing day — brix­ton report

“Buy noth­ing day” is an inter­na­tion­al anti-con­sumerist day. Put sim­ply : peo­ple are encour­aged to stop shop­ing for one day. In Brix­ton, activist set up a stall to give away free food and oth­er free items.

Activists met at 11am at Library House to pick up veg­eta­bles and part of the con­tent of the Library House­’s freeshop. The items were brought to Brix­ton, and were giv­en out for free in front of the super­mar­ket next to the tube sta­tion.

——
Norwich rat race
To mark Buy Noth­ing Day, activists from Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide held a Rat Race in the Nor­wich city cen­tre.

The busiest high street in Nor­wich was today full of rats. The rats were equipped with plac­ards read­ing Work Hard­er, Earn More Mon­ey, Buy More Things, Keep Going, and leaflets telling peo­ple to join the con­sump­tion Rat Race. The reverse of the leaflet, revealed the spoof and informed peo­ple that today was buy noth­ing day and per­haps they should con­sid­er the envi­ron­men­tal and social con­se­quences of exces­sive con­sump­tion.

600 leaflets were hand­ed out in total (see below), and many passers-by expressed their sup­port, although one by pass­er was heard to call “Get a job” to which one of the rat (a teacher) shout­ed back, “It’s a Sat­ur­day you toss­er!” – the crowd of shop­pers that had gath­ered around the rats all laughed.BND Norwich flier front
BND Norwich flier back

——–
Wrexham BND freeconomy leaflet
“Free Socks!” “Why? Who’s hold­ing him?”
29.11.2008
In Wrex­ham town cen­tre this morn­ing, the local Freecon­o­my group held a Sock (FREE) Shop — that’s socks for free, not a shop free of socks or even free­ing Sock. Hun­dreds of pairs of warm socks were dis­trib­uted in sub­ze­ro tem­per­a­tures to peo­ple with cold feet — and hands — along with leaflets explain­ing what Freecon­o­my Wrex­ham does and invit­ing peo­ple to get involved in the hap­py world of giv­ing and shar­ing.

There was a great deal of puz­zle­ment about a stall offer­ing free socks in the town cen­tre on a busy Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

One pass­ing shop­per came over to find out more about our cam­paign to free the mys­te­ri­ous ‘Socks’ from his cap­tor. More com­mon­ly, peo­ple just could­n’t seem to believe that the socks were for free:

Free? What’s the catch? You don’t get any­thing for free… do you?

But of course you do. Or, at least, some­one does.…

Loads of stuff hap­pens for free all the time. Cap­i­tal­ism has only sur­vived this long because of the free labour which is pro­vid­ed by any­one whose work helps some­one else to get rich­er. Marx had some­thing to say about this. Land and resources stolen from the peo­ple — our own Eagles Mead­ow includ­ed — are used by busi­ness­es to gen­er­ate prof­it, and trashed in the process. We nur­ture our chil­dren for free because we love them, but all that free care and atten­tion is what brings the next gen­er­a­tion of work­ers into being — a free gift to cap­i­tal­ism. Much of the free stuff we do as par­ents, car­ers, part­ners, friends, ‘good neigh­bours’ and so on is large­ly invis­i­ble to the econ­o­my, although with­out it the econ­o­my as it is could­n’t func­tion at all.

Freecon­o­my Wrex­ham is just doing a bit to raise the pro­file of free giv­ing and encour­age peo­ple to spread their free gifts around rather than trash­ing them, which is what hap­pens when good stuff ends up at the tip, for exam­ple. We hand­ed out socks and leaflets for about 3 hours, by which time even mul­ti­ple lay­ers of our free socks could­n’t keep our feet and hands from freez­ing, so we called it a day.

LEAFLET TEXT

FREECONOMY WREXHAM… Bring and Take… Free for All…

What’s it all about?

Freecon­o­my Wrex­ham is:
for every­one; envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly; shar­ing; giv­ing; fun!; re-using stuff; com­plete­ly free; sus­tain­able.

Turn over to find out more…

Freecon­o­my Wrex­ham is about gift and shar­ing, show­ing that it is pos­si­ble to make things work with­out pay­ment or finan­cial prof­it. In a world where every­thing seems to have a price — often more than we can afford — it can be dif­fi­cult to imag­ine a com­plete­ly free event. But all the goods on our stalls and at our events are there for the tak­ing. Every­one is invit­ed to come and help them­selves.

Bring and Take is made pos­si­ble by every­one who gives their time and ener­gy to help out, who donates goods to be giv­en away, who loans a venue for free or lets us use a van or bakes a cake, and — most impor­tant­ly — every­one who takes away all the things that are donat­ed!

Re-use for the plan­et. Before you throw any­thing away, think about whether some­one else could use it. Nat­ur­al resources, time and skills were need­ed to make that item. If it’s binned, all those things are lost. By shar­ing and re-using, we can keep wealth in our com­mu­ni­ties, help each oth­er, cre­ate good­will and hap­pi­ness, and do a lit­tle bit to save the plan­et.

freeconomywrexham[at]yahoo.co.uk

——–
What, No Prices?
Liverpool Buy Nothing Day 08
More than 150 peo­ple came to Next To Nowhere’s Free Shop on Sat­ur­day in Liv­er­pool. This was a one-off event to mark Buy Noth­ing Day. The organ­is­ers encour­aged peo­ple to come in by offer­ing free tea and toast and free mistle­toe on the street out­side.

Real­ly, it’s free

Buy Noth­ing Day orig­i­nat­ed in the USA in 1992. It was intend­ed to make a state­ment about over-con­sump­tion and the amount of waste this gen­er­ates, and encour­age peo­ple to re-think their lifestyles. It gen­er­at­ed some con­tro­ver­sy, and still does, if the com­ments to the pre­vi­ous post­ing about Buy Noth­ing Day are any­thing to go by! Some peo­ple think con­sump­tion by itself is not the issue, oth­ers think the event is patro­n­is­ing to peo­ple who can’t afford to buy much any­way.
But none of the peo­ple who wan­dered into the free shop last Sat­ur­day seemed to feel patro­n­ised. Some, who had come to town to do Christ­mas shop­ping, looked in out of curi­ousi­ty, and found they pre­ferred doing some “non-shop­ping”, and get­ting some refresh­ments at the free cafe. Peo­ple with lit­tle mon­ey were hap­py to take away free items they need­ed, and for the peo­ple who had donat­ed things, it was sat­is­fy­ing to see goods they don’t need any more being tak­en for re-use. Not every­body who came had heard of Buy Noth­ing Day, and had to be reas­sured that every­thing real­ly was free!
What­ev­er the gen­er­al crit­i­cisms, this par­tic­u­lar free shop worked as a co-oper­a­tive event, it intro­duced peo­ple to the social cen­tre who had nev­er been there before, and it gave peo­ple a taste of how lib­er­at­ing it is to do with­out cur­ren­cy for once.

——–

Buy Noth­ing Day Man­ches­ter: Pri­mark Feels the Wrath of Santa’s Lit­tle Work­ers!

On Sat­ur­day 29th Novem­ber sev­en stu­dents braved Manchester’s heav­ing Mar­ket Street in sup­port of Buy Noth­ing Day 2008. In fes­tive dress and armed with some thought-pro­vok­ing cloth­ing labels of their own, the aim was to raise aware­ness about unnec­es­sary con­sumerism over Christ­mas, and to reveal the true cost of high street fash­ion to Sat­ur­day shop­pers.

The action began incog­ni­to, as the pro­tes­tors secret­ly deliv­ered mes­sages ques­tion­ing con­sumer greed and the uneth­i­cal sourc­ing of cheap fash­ion into the pock­ets, zips, and cuffs of cloth­ing in Pri­mark. Mes­sages such as “I won­der if the per­son who made this gar­ment is hap­py?”, and “Do you real­ly need anoth­er one of these?” were soon dot­ted around the bustling store and secu­ri­ty quick­ly react­ed, call­ing all clean­ers to the ground floor to remove the labels. The pro­test­ers escaped unscathed, mer­ry in the knowl­edge that the chances of hunt­ing out all the labels would be pret­ty slim.

After a quick change of clothes the pro­tes­tors took to the street, antlers and all. With a splen­did ban­ner and leaflets a‑plenty they approached the swarms of passers-by and announced that they need not spend mon­ey this Christ­mas to be hap­py. Some engag­ing debates ensued con­cern­ing con­sumerism and sweat­shops. It was felt by some that only the finan­cial­ly priv­i­leged could afford to have a con­science, and that out­lets such as Pri­mark offered those with a low­er income the chance to look (and there­fore feel) good. Oth­ers had been so far unaware of shops like Primark’s asso­ci­a­tion with fac­to­ries in India, and were gen­uine­ly shocked at some of the sto­ries the pro­tes­tors relayed about under­paid and mis­treat­ed work­ers. Whilst not every­body agreed, the val­ue of live­ly pub­lic debate can­not be under­es­ti­mat­ed. Talk­ing about some­thing is the first step to chang­ing it and per­haps now a few peo­ple will think twice before buy­ing some­thing just because it is cheap. It’s real cost is inhu­mane­ly high.

TopShop SwapShop (London), Buy Nothing Day action (+ Steal Something Day) + Leeds + Liverpool + Bristol

Ladies and Gen­tle­men we are proud to announce the restyling fash­ion mash-up event of the year!

TOPSHOP SWAPSHOP
2pm Sat 29th Novem­ber – Top­shop Oxford Street
Cred­it Crunch!

Ladies and Gen­tle­men we are proud to announce the restyling fash­ion mash-up event of the year!
Top Shop Swap Shop buy nothing day flier
TOPSHOP SWAPSHOP
2pm Sat 29th Novem­ber – Top­shop Oxford Street
Cred­it Crunch!

In the light of the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cri­sis and the out­rage over the sweat­shop con­di­tions that most high street brands make their clothes in, the swap­shop is your chance to re-vamp your wardrobe with a free con­science! Leap­ing away from the drudgery of big cor­po­rate fash­ion with it’s dodgy busi­ness prac­tices and spend spend spend atti­tude, the Top­shop swap­shop takes fash­ion back to it’s roots.

Sim­ply turn up at TOPSHOP on Oxford Street wear­ing an out­fit you wish to upgrade, then on the stroke of 2, mar­vel as hun­dreds of fash­ion moguls offer to trade your clothes with you.

Fan­cy that girls jumper? Why not offer to swap your belt for it?
That boy’s hat is to die for, how about a trade for your jeans?
Nice skirt, fan­cy trad­ing my t‑shirt for it?

After a hec­tic re-work­ing of your look you can then walk proud­ly back onto the streets of Lon­don town with a new wardrobe and not hav­ing spent a sin­gle pen­ny.

You can buy lots of clothes but you can’t buy style.

Please spread far and wide…

DISCLAIMER:

The above event is in no way sup­port­ed or con­doned by Top­Shop. Any sim­i­lar­i­ty to any brand liv­ing or dead is mere­ly coin­ci­den­tal.

http://www.spacehijackers.org

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

Steal Something Day
Steal Some­thing Day, a shame­less 24-hour steal­ing spree! a cri­tique of BND and call to action, recy­cled from pre­vi­ous years for your enter­tain­ment

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

Buy Noth­ing Day Leeds

In Brig­gate this Sat­ur­day (29th of Nov) there will be a Buy Noth­ing extrav­a­gan­za. We will have Christ­mas car­ols telling peo­ple of the woes of shop­ping, there will be hot tea and cof­fee to help ex-shop­pers read­just to there new found hap­pi­ness, and ideas of presents that do not involve con­sumerism. From
11am — till dark we will be ask­ing peo­ple to ques­tion con­sumerism and join us in buy­ing noth­ing!

Last year was a major suc­cess and BND strikes again. Please bake cakes, bring food and any­thing you would like to give away. There will be a free shop, music and tables. Bring any­thing down to join in the par­ty!
Leeds BND

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

Liv­er­pool
Buy Nothing Day (Liverpool) flier
next to nowhere is proud to present an oppor­tu­ni­ty for all the liv­er­pool activists to join togeth­er in a spir­it of togeth­er­ness, open­ness & com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

i guess we can all agree that over-con­sump­tion is a very bad thing & i reck­on that most of us see cap­i­tal­ism as the root of the sick­ness that is infest­ing our soci­ety. yes?
any­one a racist? no? oh my, we seem to have some­thing in com­mon after all!

well, on sat­ur­day 29th novem­ber it’s time to put your mutu­al aid where your mouth is.

at 11am maybe meet & greet nick grif­fin (bnp) who could be plea­sur­ing our city with his pres­ence in his bid to become mep for the north west of eng­land. he’s called for the par­ty faith­ful to gath­er in protest at thear­rest of sev­er­al mem­bers last week. are we real­ly going to let this hap­pen?
meet at the top of church street at 10am.

after­wards, from 12pm, the social cen­tre shall be trans­formed into an oasis of anti-cap­i­tal­ism.

we’ll have:
a fab­u­lous free-shop full of qual­i­ty free good­ies,
free tea n’ cof­fee,
veg­an cafe (dona­tions only),
open mic, film, per­for­mance, spo­ken word…

now, i know that some peo­ple are a bit scared of actu­al­ly get­ting involved in next to nowhere, prefer­ing to dis­cuss the short­com­ings of the book­ing pol­i­cy from a safe dis­tance. just to be clear, and restate the bot­tom line of next to nowhere from its con­sti­tu­tion — every­one is wel­come to get involved at the social cen­tre pro­vid­ed that they are will­ing to work in a non-hier­ar­chi­cal way through con­sen­sus.

‘actions speak loud­er than words’ — please can peo­ple work togeth­er in mutu­al sup­port to help make this world a bet­ter place and take on the evils which are fuck­ing up our world or say noth­ing and stop this on-going crit­i­cism from the side­lines, whilst doing noth­ing at nowhere.

who knows, the open-mic forum could even pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple to express their feel­ings about the social cen­tre, in a non-hier­ar­chi­cal way of course!
or, we could just have a good old-fash­ioned knees up…

togeth­er, let’s start to dance on the graves of mul­ti-nation­al cor­po­ra­tions!

feistyfingers[at]yahoo.co.uk
http://www.liverpoolsocialcentre.org

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

Buy Noth­ing Day 2008 — Freeshop in Broad­mead, Bris­tol

Free shop, live music, cir­cus skills and face paint­ing? UWE stu­dents from the Peo­ple and Plan­et soci­ety are going to be tak­ing part in a ‘buy noth­ing day’ and will be run­ning a free shop on Sat­ur­day, bright­en­ing up the cold, grey, win­try streets of Bris­tol city cen­tre.

To recap­ture some of that lost Christ­mas Spir­it (the giv­ing that is, not the spend­ing!) we’ll be giv­ing away clothes, bric-a-brac and plen­ty more lit­tle gems for you to get your mitts on as well as bring­ing a lit­tle sun­shine to the often not-so-hap­py shop­pers of Bris­tol. If you have any­thing you want to get rid of, bring it along!

We’re look­ing for vol­un­teers to help inform and enter­tain (musi­cians, cir­cus enter­tain­ers, etc) so if your game bring your uni­cy­cle down and get involved! It kicks off at 11am and will be run­ning till 4pm, so Pop down to our mar­quee in-between the Gal­leries and Cabot Cir­cus (Just down from Ann Sum­mers!).

For more info e‑mail Lisa at lisatozer@hotmail.com

I’ll see you there!

Bath Bomb #16 out now

The Bath Bomb
@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #16
free/donation
Nov 08

Because now it’s okay to love Amer­i­ca

We Won’t Pay For Their Cri­sis

The Bath Bomb
@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #16
free/donation
Nov 08

Because now it’s okay to love Amer­i­ca

We Won’t Pay For Their Cri­sis

Sat­ur­day the 22nd of Novem­ber sees a new cam­paign tak­ing to the streets of Bath. Going under the slo­gans ‘Can’t pay, Won’t pay’ and ‘We won’t pay for their cri­sis!’, the cam­paign will be tak­ing the fight to the greedy politi­cians, bankers and boss­es who are behind this finan­cial cri­sis. The cam­paign will also focus on pro­tect­ing the rights of aver­age peo­ple and will cen­tre around five key demands – 1) decent coun­cil sub­si­dies on gas and elec­tric bills, 2) afford­able food and hous­ing, 3) bailiffs and repos­ses­sion men out of our com­mu­ni­ties, 4) pro­tec­tion of jobs and ben­e­fits, and 5) full con­trol over the banks that our mon­ey has bailed out. These demands, and the cam­paign itself, are time­ly. Already, in the ear­ly stages of the cri­sis, unem­ploy­ment is up 20%, gas and elec­tric bill prices are up over 40% and home repos­ses­sions are up 70% on last year’s fig­ures. Now more than ever, we need to group togeth­er to pro­tect our­selves against the cal­lous greed of the wealthy. We need to be ready to fight against bailiffs who for too many years have strode unop­posed into our homes. We need to be ready to fight against the ener­gy com­pa­nies who increase our bills, leav­ing thou­sands to freeze while con­tin­u­ing to rake in prof­its. We need to be ready to fight against the gov­ern­ment who cut our ben­e­fits and use our mon­ey to bail out their big busi­ness bud­dies and we need to be ready to fight against the boss­es, who think noth­ing of mak­ing ded­i­cat­ed work­ers redun­dant to keep their own wal­lets fat. We have not caused this cri­sis, nei­ther have we asked for it. It has been caused by greedy politi­cians, bankers and boss­es, chas­ing after the big bucks, not wor­ry­ing about who they crush to get there. Yet who is expect­ed to pay when their shit hits the fan? Us. We are expect­ed to pay with our tax­es, with our jobs and with soar­ing food, rent and gas and elec­tric­i­ty costs. Well no more! This cam­paign is not just about wav­ing plac­ards or ‘mak­ing a point’, it is about win­ning. It is about tak­ing back what is ours from the greedy and wealthy who work so hard to take it from us, and it is a cam­paign that we can win togeth­er. If we are unit­ed in a belief that ‘enough is enough’, and a deter­mi­na­tion not to let them get rich from our labour while we strug­gle to make ends meet, we can and will win this cam­paign. So, to get involved, and wrench con­trol of our lives back from the greedy bas­tards at the top, meet at 12.30pm in the Abbey court­yard on Sat­ur­day the 22nd of Novem­ber.

Nude Girls Do It Togeth­er…

…Union­iz­ing to improve their work­ing con­di­tions, that is. Screen­ing on Sun­day Novem­ber the 30th as part of the month­ly Bub­bling Under rad­i­cal cin­e­ma, from 1 til 4pm, get an eye­ful of ‘Live Nude Girls Unite’, a doc­u­men­tary about the for­ma­tion of the first union of strip­pers in the US. This rau­cous film is to be pre­sent­ed by Bris­tol Indy­media, who are sure to come back with future offer­ings. Entry is free, and the Porter veg­gie lunch is high­ly rec­om­mend­ed. Get your plac­ards out for the lads!

Mini­bar — 0 Mega­BAN — 1

In the lat­est of a long line of foie gras vic­to­ries, Mini­bar have pulled the del­i­ca­cy from their menu after just two demos. At the end of the sec­ond 14 strong-protest, mem­bers of Bath Ani­mal Action and Bath Activist Net­work reached an ami­ca­ble agree­ment with the own­er that foie gras would be removed from the restau­rant with imme­di­ate effect. After this demo, activists paid a short and sharp vis­it to an emi­nent­ly less sen­si­ble foie gras pur­vey­or, Christophe LeCroix, own­er of The Pinch in St Margaret’s build­ings. Start­ing at 9pm, the demo last­ed only 10 min­utes, dur­ing which time the let­ter­box was flood­ed with leaflets, din­ers’ con­ver­sa­tions were drowned out with a bar­rage of noise, leaflets lit­tered the out­side of the build­ing and Christophe, seen cow­er­ing at the back of the restau­rant, brave­ly sent a wait­ress to lock the doors and draw the blinds. Christophe has twice removed and replaced foie gras from his menu, and is now sell­ing again, and despite his macho image, and a his­to­ry of punch­ing and sex­u­al­ly assault­ing both male and female activists, has twice been seen beg­ging pro­test­ers to leave him alone. Well, not any­more. BAA and BAN are back out­side The Pinch until foie gras comes off the menu for good. The protests could come at any time, but for now, we will leave Christophe to pon­der the fact that Hallowe’en is not the only time of year when things go ‘smash’ in the night! All foie gras-relat­ed com­plaints to:

Christophe LeCroix

The Pinch
11 St Margaret’s Build­ings
Bath, BA1 2LP
01225 421251
info@thepinch.biz

Tofu Sal­ad­fest Ahoy!

Sat­ur­day the 22nd Novem­ber is promis­ing to be a busy day for Batho­ni­ans, as we also have the Bath Veg­an Fayre! Run­ning at the Per­cy Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on New King Street from 12 til 3.30pm, all are wel­come to come along and sam­ple the deli­cious food, and find out how those pale and sick­ly lentil-eaters can still scrape up pro­tein enough to draw breath with­out a nice slab of steak or ched­dar. As well as infor­ma­tion on veg­gie health, nutri­tion, envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits, com­pas­sion­ate liv­ing, and veg­an-cater­ing eater­ies in the city, GeneWatch will also be there to talk about genet­ic mod­i­fi­ca­tion of ani­mals in sci­en­tif­ic research, just like the franken-doc­tors do up at Bath Uni­ver­si­ty – such as poten­tial­ly high-risk tam­per­ing with the genes of insects to con­trol food sup­plies. Con­tro­ver­sial? Con­tact eatoutveganbath@yahoo.co.uk for more infor­ma­tion.

www.vegansociety.com/
www.genewatch.org/

EVENTS

Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs meet­ings, 2nd and 4th Mon­day of the month, 8pm, The Bell, Wal­cot Street

Lon­don Road Food Co-op, Wednes­days, 4–7pm, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Lon­don Road

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

‘Baked Alas­ka’ film screen­ing, Mon­day 17th Novem­ber, 7.30pm, upstairs at the Rum­mer, Grand Parade

‘We Won’t Pay For Their Cri­sis’ march, Sat­ur­day 22nd Novem­ber, meet­ing 12.30, Bath Abbey Court­yard

Bath Veg­an Fayre, Sat­ur­day 22nd Novem­ber, 12–3.30pm, Per­cy Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, New King Street

Green Light lec­ture: the Sev­ern Bar­rage, Tues­day 25th Novem­ber, 7.30pm, BRLSI, Queen Square

Anti-foie gras demo, Fri­day 28th Novem­ber, meet­ing 7pm, the Cir­cus

‘Open­ing the doors to auton­o­my’: a day of work­shops, activ­i­ties and art­work on urban sur­vival – cred­it crunch­ing strate­gies for get­ting through hard times; from the legal­i­ties and prac­ti­cal­i­ties of squat­ting and resist­ing repossession/eviction & gen­tri­fi­ca­tion to urban for­ag­ing, a bike work­shop, tai chi & self-defence, screen­print­ing and DIY wire­less inter­net – this will be a day of shar­ing skills and build­ing the net­works to not only sur­vive the eco­nom­ic cri­sis but to begin to col­lec­tive­ly shape what may replace it; Sat­ur­day 29th Novem­ber, 11–6pm, the Red Fac­to­ry, Cave Street, St Pauls, Bris­tol

Bub­bling Under, Sun­day 30th Novem­ber, 1–4pm, Porter Cel­lar bar, George Street

Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, Wednes­day 3rd Decem­ber, 7.30–8.30pm, back room of The Bell

Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, Thurs­day 4th Decem­ber, 7.30–9pm, down­stairs Hob­gob­lin

Bath Green­peace meet­ing, Mon­day 8th Decem­ber, 7.30–9pm, Still­point, Broad Street Place

Tran­si­tion Bath Forum, Tues­day 9th Decem­ber, 7pm, Wid­combe Social Club

Bath Green Drinks, Wednes­day 10th Decem­ber, 8.30pm, the Rum­mer, Grand Parade

Bath FreeShop, Sat­ur­day 13th Decem­ber, 12–3pm, out­side Pump Rooms, Stall Street

Tal­ly Ho-peless

Well, it’s Novem­ber again, so that means hunt­ing season’s back on, and anoth­er 3 or 4 months of pompous red-coat­ed throw­backs and legal grey areas. Although hunt­ing was offi­cial­ly banned in Feb­ru­ary 2005, it turned out to be the one law police chose not to enforce, and a law fraught with so many loop­holes that most hunts could car­ry on just like as they like – pre­tend­ing to fol­low a trail set by a scent­ed rag rather than a fox, when they’re being watched. And so the fine tra­di­tion of hunt sab­o­tage can’t hang up its mud-crust­ed wellies, just yet. On Sat­ur­day the 1st Novem­ber, a small group from Bath, Bris­tol, Pewsey and New­port kept an eye on the Mon­mouthshire Hunt, fol­low­ing leaked info about their meet­ing point. Using cit­ronel­la spray to mask fox scent, cam­eras to mon­i­tor activ­i­ty, and a com­bi­na­tion of hunt­ing horns, voice calls and whips (crack­ing the air, not phys­i­cal­ly strik­ing) to call off or con­fuse the hounds, a crisp autumn day out in the Welsh coun­try­side was enjoyed by all, espe­cial­ly the two pur­sued fox­es that we helped escape. If you want to help save inno­cent lives and reclaim rur­al space from arro­gant thugs, then become an Anti: ring Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs on 07854 062336.

http://hsa.enviroweb.org/hsa.shtml

Green Space: Going, Going, Gone?

Res­i­dents and greens held a protest in Bath on Sat­ur­day the 8th Novem­ber out­side the Guild­hall, hop­ing to save Bathamp­ton Mead­ows from unnec­es­sary devel­op­ment. Poten­tial­ly a vic­tim of yet anoth­er B&NES Coun­cil jobsworth’s twist­ed log­ic, the idea is we can save nature by killing it; in this case, the ancient mead­ow will make way for a 1,400 space Park and Ride con­crete job to abate traf­fic con­ges­tion and pol­lu­tion in the city cen­tre. The prob­lem here is that the main cause of con­ges­tion in Bath is the flow of east to west and west to east through traf­fic, rather than that of dri­vers com­ing into the city, so the Park & Ride will be bare­ly used and what­ev­er slack is saved will just be tak­en up by sup­pressed demand. The con­sul­ta­tion ends after the 14th Novem­ber and the con­sul­ta­tion form can be down­loaded from the Save Bathamp­ton Mead­ows’ site: http://www.savebathamptonmeadows.org.uk. Why not sign up today? It can’t hurt.

Alder-Nasty Antics

One activist from BAN joined 300 oth­ers from around the UK to block­ade the Alder­mas­ton Atom­ic Weapons Estab­lish­ment on Mon­day the 27th Octo­ber, part of the ongo­ing cam­paign to kick weapons of mass destruc­tion out of the UK. AWE Alder­mas­ton is the site where exper­i­ments for the next gen­er­a­tion of unpop­u­lar ‘Tri­dent’ nuclear sub­ma­rine arma­ments will be designed. A major part in this cost­ly scheme is expect­ed to be the ‘Ori­on’ laser facil­i­ty, cur­rent­ly being built. The MoD has also recent­ly applied for plan­ning per­mis­sion to car­ry out ura­ni­um enrich­ment there, too. Pro­test­ers from as far afield as Scot­land, Lon­don, Nor­folk, Ply­mouth and Yeovil took part, meet­ing to plan actions the day before. At 5.30am, activists locked on to bar­rels of con­crete and blocked the first gate, caus­ing police to prompt­ly close the road. Anoth­er group of Green­ham women (Green­ham Com­mon being a famous and long-lived peace camp, run­ning 1981–2000) took a sec­ond, while sev­er­al oth­er groups locked and super­glued them­selves to Tadley gate, the main entrance for fac­tor work­ers. The main gate itself was also held for a short time. Both the Rinky Dink ped­al-pow­ered sound sys­tem and band Seize The Day also showed up. Work at the fac­to­ry was shut down most of the morn­ing, and 33 were charged with Obstruc­tion of the High­way. As usu­al, the state refus­es to heed pub­lic oppo­si­tion to Tri­dent: the cam­paign to shut them down con­tin­ues!

www.tridentploughshares.org

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When You Threat­en One, You Threat­en All!

So read the ban­ner flut­ter­ing from the win­dow of the 89 Ash­ley Road squat in Bris­tol as bailiffs last week clam­oured at the door to evict the 20 res­i­dents who call the long dis­used build­ing ‘home’. This came as a sur­prise to res­i­dents who had not been served the manda­to­ry 7‑day notice of evic­tion a land­lord is required to pro­vide. What hap­pened next, and what of the sen­ti­men­tal mes­sage adorn­ing the front of the build­ing? Before we find out, a lit­tle look into the his­to­ry, and intend­ed future of the build­ing, those inside, and those who hope to get rich off it. Owned by prop­er­ty devel­op­ers ‘Places for Peo­ple’, the build­ing has been ear­marked for ‘regen­er­a­tion’ (read — gen­tri­fi­ca­tion) along with the sur­round­ing area. Despite the group’s claims that they are pri­mar­i­ly con­vert­ing homes into assist­ed accom­mo­da­tion for the home­less and elder­ly, Ash­ley Road is ear­marked to be turned into lucra­tive pri­vate flats, while the ‘char­i­ta­ble’ group is hap­py to allow oth­er­wise home­less peo­ple to be turfed out into the street at the begin­ning of win­ter. After res­i­dents saw the bailiffs, a call for sup­port was put out, and with­in an hour, around 50 activists, some from Bath, had descend­ed on Ash­ley Road, mak­ing the ille­gal evic­tion a logis­ti­cal impos­si­bil­i­ty. After a tense stand­off, the bailiffs and their police mates left, deject­ed. A vic­to­ry for sol­i­dar­i­ty, and a reprieve for the inhab­i­tants of Ash­ley Road. While the bailiffs will cer­tain­ly return soon, and may in the future be suc­cess­ful in their evic­tion attempts, the response of peo­ple to the fate of the squat demon­strates the pow­er of sol­i­dar­i­ty and col­lec­tive action over the often over­whelm­ing seem­ing forces of author­i­ty and pow­er.

Uncle Bul­gar­ia Weeps

Regret­tably, the Bath Bomb has just learnt about the demise of yet anoth­er of Bath’s great­est insti­tu­tions: Envolve. Who? Under the mot­to ‘Part­ner­ships in Sus­tain­abil­i­ty’, the for­mer envi­ron­men­tal char­i­ty start­ed out 14 years ago as the Bath Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre on Mil­som Street, and did exact­ly what it said on the recy­cled and biodegrad­able tin. Orig­i­nal­ly a resource for green activists and curi­ous passers­by, the cen­tre got too big for its boots, and moved to larg­er premis­es in the sub­ter­ranean tun­nel com­plex beneath Green Park Sta­tion – now depen­dent not just on its bene­fac­tors but also on state fund­ing. But such pay­outs rarely come with­out strings, and that proved the centre’s down­fall. Becom­ing more and more cor­po­rate, Envolve began a cam­paign of ostracism towards its more prag­mat­ic sup­port­ers, who recog­nise that ‘green cap­i­tal­ism’ is a con­tra­dic­tion in terms – they let go of staff and vol­un­teers deemed too rad­i­cal; arbi­trar­i­ly chose between which local cam­paigns have a right to be adver­tised or not; and then, one-by-one, kicked out use­ful but unprof­itable ini­tia­tives, like the green library, farm­ers’ mar­ket offices, meet­ing spaces for local greens, alter­na­tive trans­port offices, car-free schemes and food co-ops – after all, it doesn’t pay to be green. All that remained in the end was busi­ness con­sul­tants, edu­ca­tion offi­cers and a string of com­mu­ni­ty schemes they didn’t quite have the heart to grind out: a text­book exam­ple of state co-option. Hav­ing com­man­deered and neutered yet anoth­er group of poten­tial world-chang­ers, they then cut the fund­ing alto­geth­er – and that was that. The irony is that Envolve was held up entire­ly by com­pas­sion­ate peo­ple ham­strung by the restric­tive con­di­tions of their fund­ing, danc­ing to the master’s tune… but the road to hell is paved with good inten­tions. We here at the Bath Bomb hate to say I told you so, but… Let’s hope their suc­ces­sors, the Eth­i­cal Prop­er­ty Com­pa­ny, don’t go the same way.

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 to greens, and peo­ple who just want to change Bath for the bet­ter. For details on meet­ings, demos, or just to get in touch, ring us on 07949 611912, email bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk, or see our web­site: www.myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork

Danc­ing On The Grave Of Cap­i­tal­ism

It is not just in Bath that peo­ple are get­ting angry about hav­ing to pay for a cri­sis caused by politi­cians and big busi­ness. Cardiff, Bris­tol, Edin­burgh and Lon­don have also already seen mass action against the finan­cial cri­sis. In Lon­don, the finan­cial dis­trict has twice been invad­ed by hun­dreds of angry peo­ple demand­ing that the gov­ern­ment stops using our mon­ey to bail out fail­ing big busi­ness. The first Lon­don demo saw the police tak­en by sur­prise as hun­dreds showed their anger in the finan­cial dis­trict, attempt­ing, and only nar­row­ly fail­ing, to occu­py the Bank of Eng­land. The sec­ond demo, called on Hallowe’en and billed as a chance to ‘dance on the grave of cap­i­tal­ism’ saw a larg­er turnout of both police and pro­test­ers and end­ed in clash­es as peo­ple tried to make their way to the offices of recent­ly bank­rupt­ed firm Lehman Broth­ers. Up and down the coun­try, peo­ple are show­ing their dis­gust about a sys­tem that has failed us, and leaves us poor­er and poor­er while the rich con­tin­ue to get rich­er. At both Lon­don demos, stock­bro­kers promised to vio­lent­ly con­front pro­test­ers who dared to speak out about the sys­tem that keeps them rich and us poor, but, on both occa­sions, failed to mate­ri­alise. We can only imag­ine they are flick­ing the last of the white pow­der from their nos­trils, wip­ing a tear from their eyes, push­ing the ‘top floor’ but­ton on the lift and won­der­ing how their lit­tle game has gone so bad­ly wrong.

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 does not nec­es­sar­i­ly rep­re­sent the views of any oth­er con­trib­u­tor…

For fur­ther info on any of our sto­ries see www.myspace.com/bathbomb

Greece and the growing re-appropriation attacks against Super Markets

Attacks in Cap­i­tal cir­cu­la­tion and rev­enue
Greece and the grow­ing re-appro­pri­a­tion attacks against Super Mar­kets

Greek supermarket re-distributionAttacks in Cap­i­tal cir­cu­la­tion and rev­enue
Greece and the grow­ing re-appro­pri­a­tion attacks against Super Mar­kets

Τhe sat­ur­day of May 31st 2008 was a beau­ti­ful day for the greek move­ment of insur­rec­tion. One action organ­ised by a small group of com­rades caused a frac­ture in the greek social process. On the last days a big debate was goin’ on in the streets, in the work­ing places, cafes, hous­es and ‑in appear­ance only- on the tv screen. Basic prod­ucts (milk,rice etc.) were becom­ing more and more expen­sive, a process which start­ed since the intro­duc­tion of the Euro cur­ren­cy, Jan­u­ary 2002 and by the last months prices kept rais­ing steeply. Peo­ples’ resent­ment con­ce­trat­ed dur­ing all these years of price stag­na­tion, was so big that although gross­ly medi­at­ed by the TV news, forced final­ly the gov­ern­ment to intro­duce mea­sures that were , sup­posed , to con­trol the ris­ing of the prices, but whose actu­al tar­get was to calm peo­ples anger down. (It is inter­est­ing to add that infla­tion rate was steady and did not rise, prob­a­bly because of “cre­ative” tricks due to Eu rules that oblige mem­ber-states to keep a low infla­tion rate)

Super Mar­ket brand own­ers were prof­i­teer­ing in a real­ly high grade in expense of the peo­ples pock­ets and the actu­al resis­tance and pres­sure was rather low. Con­sumer unions, some news­pa­per arti­cles, calls for low­er­ing the prices, one day boy­cotts. But what to do?People are depen­dent from big Super Mar­kets that con­trol most of the food mar­ket and wages in Greece are rather low for eu stan­dards (Pen­sions are worse) and prices were among the high­er in EU. Old peo­ple, low income and the unem­ployed were affect­ed most but we can say that almost all work­ing class peo­ple and even low­er mid­dle class (petit bour­geois) were hav­ing a hard time to get around . So the gov­ern­ment announces on the 28 of May “41 mea­sures against price stag­na­tion”.

True is the politi­cians did not real­ly cared. “So what are they going to do,anyway?”. Oppo­si­tion par­ties do noth­ing but talk, and peo­ple rely on the media “appar­ent” oppo­si­tion. But it is in these times were noth­ing seem to hap­pen, when the forces of insur­rec­tion that are exor­cised to stay away from the fight, make their sud­den and unex­pect­ed appear­ance in the scene. And noth­ing is the same as before..

On Sat­ur­day May 31st 2008 a group of com­rades, wear­ing their masks entered a big Super Mar­ket in the city cen­ter of Athens, re-appro­pri­at­ed prod­ucts, car­ried them to a street fruit-mar­ket near­by (most­ly old and low­er-income peo­ple go there) and dis­trib­uted the prod­ucts to them. Oil, cheese, milk, detergents,shampoos … The action met great cor­re­spon­dence from the peo­ple. Clap­ping applaus­es, excla­ma­tions, whis­tles. The prod­ucts dis­ap­peared with­in sec­onds. The man­i­festo of the action said : “The game is set. We don’t want to be a part of this fake game, with the gov­ern­ments’ com­mu­ni­ca­tion tricks, the oppo­si­tions’ abstract talk­ing about some “bad” peo­ple mak­ing prof­it and the shit of the media. We put into prac­tice our own mea­sures against price stag­na­tion. Re-appro­pri­a­tion now. Every­thing is stolen from us, Every­thing belongs to us… That was it…

The attacks start to spread wide­ly. In June three more actions against Super Mar­kets took place in Athens. One more in July. Then came the sum­mer (move­ments have hol­i­days?) and on Sep­tem­ber actions start­ed again. Two hap­pened in Thes­sa­loni­ki , the sec­ond biggest city in Greece. One attack was planned on the day when the Prime Min­is­ter tra­di­tion­al­ly address­es the nation , from the Inter­na­tion­al Expo of Thes­sa­loni­ki and speaks about the gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy of the year to come. Last week three such actions took place (15,16,18 Octo­ber). In most of the attacks prod­ucts are dis­trib­uted among peo­ple in street mar­kets, to peo­ple pass­ing-by and on one action the loot was left on a cen­tral Athens square where many immi­grants live and at the exits of the metro sta­tion there.
These actions are real­ly pop­u­lar among peo­ple. It would not be an exag­ger­a­tion to say that peo­ple wish every time they go to a street mar­ket for an action like that to take place. Media can’t hide the facts , but try to dis­tort them. They like to call us “Robin Hoods”. We are not at all “Robin Hoods”, it is not about char­i­ty. The issue at stake here is the dif­fu­sion of such “ille­gal” prac­tices among the soci­ety, so that oth­er social groups adopt such prac­tices to defend social auton­o­my and inter­ests. To debunk the nor­mal­i­ty that orders “Work-Buy-Pay-Sleep-Shut Up”. To make peo­ple col­lab­o­ra­tors in “ille­gal” attacks against cap­i­tal­ist order. To pro­mote Mutu­al Aid.

The Police is real­ly con­fused. Cashiers have a short work-break. Super Mar­ket own­ers feel anx­ious about the sit­u­a­tion. Peo­ple have fun.

So what about us Com­rades. In Balka­ns, East and West Europe, States, Latin Amer­i­ca, Ocea­nia, every­where? Can we plan some­thing? What are we wait­ing for? Cap­i­tal­ist cri­sis is already here and we are the ones to pay again for the fuck­ing banks and their tricks. The plan is sim­ple, believe us. Two douzins of com­rades, masks , sun­glass­es, an appoint­ment. You con­verge sud­den­ly and you attack. Some peo­ple watch­ing, some oth­ers fill­ing the trol­leys, every­body dis­trib­ut­ing them. It is sim­ple, it is direct, dan­ger­ous for the ene­my and real­ly amuz­ing. We wish you nice actions and lot of suc­cess.

Make Plans
Be Ready

Dongria Kohnd mass protest — Middlesbrough and Wolverhampton Councils Revealed as Vedanta Investors

Tribe dances in mass protest against British min­ing com­pa­ny
21 Octo­ber 2008

Hun­dreds of mem­bers of the Don­gria Kondh tribe danced and sang through the cap­i­tal of the Indi­an state of Oris­sa on Mon­day, armed with tra­di­tion­al weapons, to mark their oppo­si­tion to British com­pa­ny Vedanta’s plans to mine their sacred moun­tain.

Tribe dances in mass protest against British min­ing com­pa­ny
21 Octo­ber 2008

Hun­dreds of mem­bers of the Don­gria Kondh tribe danced and sang through the cap­i­tal of the Indi­an state of Oris­sa on Mon­day, armed with tra­di­tion­al weapons, to mark their oppo­si­tion to British com­pa­ny Vedanta’s plans to mine their sacred moun­tain.

A huge pro­ces­sion of the tribe and their sup­port­ers snaked through the Oris­san cap­i­tal, Bhubaneswar.

The FTSE 100 British com­pa­ny Vedan­ta, major­i­ty owned by Lon­don-based bil­lion­aire Anil Agar­w­al, has received the go-ahead from India’s Supreme Court to mine alu­mini­um ore on the Dongria’s land. The mine would destroy the forests and streams the Don­gria depend on, and would turn their sacred moun­tain into an indus­tri­al waste­land.

Don­gria man Jitu Jake­si­ka said at the demon­stra­tion, ‘We will car­ry on our strug­gle to save Niyam­giri at any cost.’

Survival’s direc­tor Stephen Cor­ry said today, ‘If fur­ther proof were need­ed that the Don­gria Kondh are deter­mined to stop Vedan­ta, this would be it. The Don­gria know that the mine would destroy them. Vedan­ta must heed their voic­es and pull out of this project.’

Last week Sur­vival sub­mit­ted a report to the Unit­ed Nations Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on Indige­nous Issues, say­ing, ‘Min­ing will dev­as­tate what the Don­gria Kondh hold sacred and the nat­ur­al resources from which they draw their spe­cif­ic iden­ti­ty as a peo­ple.’

Many British banks and pen­sion funds invest in Vedan­ta, includ­ing the Uni­ver­si­ties pen­sion fund (USS), F&C, Stan­dard Life, Bar­clays Bank, Abbey Nation­al and HSBC, as well as Mid­dles­brough and Wolver­hamp­ton Coun­cils. Sur­vival is cam­paign­ing for investors to pull out of Vedan­ta.

For more infor­ma­tion please con­tact Miri­am Ross at Sur­vival Inter­na­tion­al (+44) (0)20 7687 8734 or (+44) (0)7504 543 367 or email mr@survival-international.org