Category: Capitalism / Globalisation

The latest EF! Action Update is out, bringing you reports of eco-resistance for the darkening days…

Bring­ing light & inspi­ra­tion to the dark­er evenings are the action sto­ries in the lat­est Earth First! Action Update.

Block­ades of nuclear pow­er, roads & rivers around the world were joined “with this Shell-blockad­ing D‑lock I thee wed”.

Adjustable spanner photoBring­ing light & inspi­ra­tion to the dark­er evenings are the action sto­ries in the lat­est Earth First! Action Update.

Block­ades of nuclear pow­er, roads & rivers around the world were joined “with this Shell-blockad­ing D‑lock I thee wed”.

And if anti-fas­cist action, quar­ry sab­o­tage, squats, tree plat­forms, wrekin’ open­casts, scal­ing lux­u­ry hotels & the lat­est protest camp news was­n’t enough for you, chuck in some glue, arm tubes, a pool of oil, stink bombs, air­borne rape alarms and a Lego-sized occu­pa­tion, then there’s full reports from this sum­mer’s antics at the Camp for Cli­mate Action, Ross­port sol­i­dar­i­ty camp, EF! sum­mer gath­er­ing and Sav­ing Ice­land camp, plus a crop of glob­al cli­mate camps & news of protest & resis­tance from all 5 con­ti­nents.

“No nukes, no coal, no kid­ding” — with peo­ple dying (both lit­er­al­ly & sym­bol­i­cal­ly) from the activ­i­ties of the Earth-destroy­ers, peo­ple have been shout­ing to just “Leave it in the Ground”, drag­on boats have clashed with navy gun­boats in Ire­land, an oil war was declared in Nige­ria, and ‘moles’ spent a week under­ground dig­ging fur­ther and fur­ther away from the forces of dark­ness at an open-cast coal site.

Details of the new Coal Action Net­work, upcom­ing dates & a full con­tact list should help launch (or boost) you into the orbit of eco-resis­tance.

Sub­scribe and get it sent direct to a let­ter­box near you — you’d also be sup­port­ing the EF!AU to get print­ed and sent out to pris­on­ers & protest camps. If you want some to dis­trib­ute, con­tact us at: actionup­date (AT) earthfirst.org.uk

Down­load the lat­est issue or past issues here.

The EF!AU is there to inspire peo­ple to take eco­log­i­cal direct action, to pro­vide info to help you just get out and do it. Don’t feel shy, put your best foot for­ward.

The EF!AU is the quar­ter­ly newslet­ter of peo­ple tak­ing eco­log­i­cal direct action — send us news of your action or cam­paigns, and come along to the Win­ter Moot if you want to get involved in any of the cam­paigns you’ve read about.

What is Earth First!?

Dongria Kondh Road Block — Tribe vows to fight mine with axes and arrows

Tribe vows to fight mine with axes and arrows

One of India’s most iso­lat­ed tribes, the Don­gria Kondh, is prepar­ing to stop British FTSE 100 com­pa­ny Vedan­ta from min­ing alu­mini­um ore on their sacred moun­tain, after police and hired thugs forced pro­tes­tors to dis­man­tle a bar­ri­cade over the week­end.

Tribe vows to fight mine with axes and arrows

One of India’s most iso­lat­ed tribes, the Don­gria Kondh, is prepar­ing to stop British FTSE 100 com­pa­ny Vedan­ta from min­ing alu­mini­um ore on their sacred moun­tain, after police and hired thugs forced pro­tes­tors to dis­man­tle a bar­ri­cade over the week­end.

About 150 peo­ple had blocked the road in Oris­sa state on Wednes­day after hear­ing that Vedan­ta intend­ed to start sur­vey work for a planned alu­mini­um mine which would destroy an eco­log­i­cal­ly vital hill, and the Don­gria Kondh’s most sacred site. Vedan­ta employ­ees vis­it­ed the block­ade repeat­ed­ly, threat­en­ing the pro­tes­tors. On Fri­day the vil­lagers gave in and took down the bar­ri­cade, but about 100 are still at the side of the road, block­ing traf­fic when Vedan­ta vehi­cles approach.

Vedan­ta is major­i­ty owned by Lon­don-based Indi­an bil­lion­aire Anil Agar­w­al.

Today, Don­gria Kondh from all over Niyam­giri, the hill range that would be dec­i­mat­ed by Vedanta’s mine, are mak­ing arrows and prepar­ing their axes to stop Vedan­ta reach­ing their sacred moun­tain. One Don­gria man said today ‘Now our peo­ple are very angry. We have to show the Don­gria Kondh pow­er to Vedan­ta.’

When India’s Supreme Court gave Vedan­ta the green light in August to mine on Don­gria land, around 40 Don­grias used tree trunks to block a road lead­ing into their hills, and held ban­ners read­ing, ‘We are Don­gria Kondh. Vedan­ta can not take our moun­tain.’ [pho­tos avail­able]

The moun­tain that Vedan­ta wants to mine is not only the Don­gria Kondh’s most sacred site, it is also inte­gral to the entire ecosys­tem of the hills, enabling the numer­ous streams and lush forests which sus­tain the Don­grias to con­tin­ue to thrive.

Survival’s direc­tor, Stephen Cor­ry, said today ‘The Don­gria Kondh are pro­tect­ing their land from invaders, who are only inter­est­ed in plun­der­ing the moun­tain for their own gain. The Don­grias will get noth­ing from the mine, except des­ti­tu­tion and ruin, and Sur­vival will con­tin­ue to sup­port their resis­tance to 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

Bath Bomb #15 out now

The Bath Bomb
@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #15
free/donation
Oct 08

Knowl­edge is Pow­er, So Arm Your­self

The Bath Bomb
@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #15
free/donation
Oct 08

Knowl­edge is Pow­er, So Arm Your­self

Of late, you’d be mis­tak­en for think­ing the end is indeed nigh. With the implo­sion of large chunks of the glob­al econ­o­my, and the fall of banks like Brad­ford and Bin­g­ley and North­ern Rock over here, Lehman Broth­ers, Fan­ny Mae and Fred­die Mac in the States, cap­i­tal­is­m’s days are look­ing num­bered. Far from being an inevitable and effi­cient sys­tem, it seems like the con­stant finan­cial fid­dling and cre­ative math required to meet tar­gets and pro­vide the illu­sion of con­tin­u­al growth, are caus­ing a glob­al cred­it crunch whose sting we’re all feel­ing. But whilst Brown & co donat­ed £25 bil­lion worth of cor­po­rate wel­fare to bail out blun­der­ing North­ern Rock in one day, mon­ey sore­ly need­ed for our pub­lic ser­vices is nowhere to be seen. But are there any oth­er answers? Well, last month saw the Bris­tol Anar­chist Book­fair at St Wer­burghs Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on Sat­ur­day the 13th Sep­tem­ber pulling in over 400 pun­ters, and on Sat­ur­day the 18th of this month will be the Anar­chist Book­fair in Lon­don. Expect reams of info on social­ly-just eco­nom­ics, alter­na­tive ener­gy and lifestyles, child­care, music, food, talks and work­shops, rad­i­cal the­o­ry and lessons learnt from the past. Cap­i­tal­ism has been fail­ing us now for decades with poor health, over-exploita­tion, over-work, increas­ing author­i­tar­i­an­ism, and a widen­ing pover­ty gap, and it’s high time we tried some­thing new. And if you can’t make it to Lon­don, we now have a new online rad­i­cal lend­ing library in Bath — so, if you fan­cy an inter­est­ing read on the real­ly cheap, check out the blog sec­tion of http://www.myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork.

http://www.anarchistbookfair.org/
www.bristolanarchistbookfair.org/

Labour of Hate

For the first time in decades, the annu­al Labour par­ty con­fer­ence was held out­side of Brighton, the politi­cians instead opt­ing for Man­ches­ter. The change in loca­tion did not bring a change in atti­tude though, and the con­fer­ence saw more of the now famil­iar cosy­ing up to big busi­ness, tired taglines and pro-war, pro-pri­vati­sa­tion rhetoric. Out­side the con­fer­ence how­ev­er, 4,000 cit­i­zens gath­ered to rip the agen­da away from Neo-Labour and their cor­po­rate bud­dies and high­light the grow­ing dis­gust the pop­u­la­tion feels at the con­tempt politi­cians show for the needs and desires of the aver­age per­son. A large part of the demo con­sist­ed of the anar­chist ‘free­dom of move­ment bloc’.

Made up of up to 500 peo­ple, the bloc gath­ered to demand free­dom of move­ment for migrants and an end to nation­al bor­ders, states and war. Before long, our flu­o­ro-jack­et­ed bud­dies from the deeply unpop­u­lar (and taser-hap­py) Man­ches­ter Met­ro­pol­i­tan showed an inter­est in the bloc, div­ing in to arrest activists trea­so­nous enough to don Gor­don Brown masks. After a short, sharp fight how­ev­er, the cops were sent pack­ing with no arrests made. From then on, police tried to make fre­quent incur­sions into the bloc, all of which were repelled, and the least suc­cess­ful end­ing with 15 cops get­ting tak­en pris­on­er and cut off from their bud­dies for a peri­od of 10 min­utes! The most notice­able aspect of the demo was the increased size and promi­nence of anar­chist pol­i­tics on the march, a phe­nom­e­non that has been grow­ing in recent years. While the demo was a most­ly non con­fronta­tion­al affair, it was suc­cess­ful in remind­ing Neo-Labour that while they pri­va­tise our resources, imprison and tor­ture our asy­lum seek­ing broth­ers and sis­ters, enclose us with CCTV and kill us with fuel prices — we are still watch­ing, and we will not be silent.

Lib­er­ate Your Mind at Bub­bling Under

Sun­day 28th Sep­tem­ber saw a return to the month­ly rad­i­cal film show­ings at the Porter Cel­lar Bar in Bath. This month, the line up includ­ed ‘Bombs and Batons’, a short film cov­er­ing Brighton’s Car­ni­val Against the Arms Trade on June 4th. The film gen­er­al­ly showed police offi­cers look­ing total­ly fazed and out of their depth amongst hun­dreds of demon­stra­tors tak­ing a stand against the lucra­tive arms trade (see below for more info). The sec­ond film, ‘Can’t Com­plain’, was made up of footage from a demon­stra­tion in Jan­u­ary out­side Brighton police sta­tion against the oppres­sion faced by those active in oppos­ing EDO/ITT. The third film took view­ers back in time to the tree camps of the 1990s. The film includ­ed dar­ing stunts by activists to halt the build­ing of the infa­mous New­bury Bypass. Whilst view­ers enjoyed the films, they tucked into the Porter’s famous veg­gie roast. Aside from the fab­u­lous food, pre­vi­ous show­ings have been accom­pa­nied by talks from polit­i­cal activists, live debates and work­shops on events such as this year’s Cli­mate Camp. Forth­com­ing events at Bub­bling Under will include films about Cli­mate Camp and cov­er­age of the 1990 poll tax demon­stra­tions. Organ­is­ers always wel­come sug­ges­tions to bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk for films, work­shops and debates.

Pigs Might Fly: Or Was He Pushed?

Matisse once said ‘flow­ers are every­where for those who are will­ing to look’. Well, this month, our flow­ers come in the form of the forced res­ig­na­tion of Sir Ian Blair — ex-head hon­cho of the Lon­don Met­ro­pol­i­tan police. Acts dur­ing his time at the top include the cold-blood­ed mur­der of Brazil­ian plumber Jean Charles ‘it’s one of them dark­’uns, sarge’ de Menezes, the res­ig­na­tion of almost every black and asian high rank­ing offi­cer he worked with amid claims of racism and the glee­ful pass­ing of laws to crim­i­nal­ize, beat and arrest legit­i­mate pro­tes­tors. The final turd on the moun­tain­ous steam­er that was Blair’s career came when it emerged that he chan­nelled tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey away from the police and into his mates’ pock­ets. So, good­bye to true scum in its purest form (and hop­ing that more of his bas­tard bud­dies go the same way), and a fond hope that his forced retire­ment ends soon and blood­i­ly with jour­nal­ists report­ing that the shoot­ing was noth­ing more than a trag­ic case of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty.

Shut ITT, You Slag

Fol­low­ing on from June’s smash­ing Car­ni­val Against the Arms Trade, on Wednes­day the 15th of Octo­ber, activists will con­verge from all round the nation on the EDO/ITT arms fac­to­ry in Brighton, for around 2. Rather than tooth­less­ly appeal­ing to the state’s fic­ti­tious benev­o­lent side to NOT spon­sor cor­po­rate mas­sacres half way across the world and at home, in the case of the ‘Smash EDO’ cam­paign, ordi­nary peo­ple are con­fronting the roots of war — the very man­u­fac­tur­ers of instru­ments of death (Nazi Ger­many-affil­i­at­ed ITT make the Pave­way mis­sile guid­ance sys­tem, used in Iraq and Pales­tine). Not peti­tion­ing them, but forc­ing them to stop, share by share, day by day, with the cam­paign bit­ing down and hold­ing tena­cious­ly on, until these prof­it-obsessed bas­tards are brought down. It’s his­to­ry in the mak­ing, an exam­ple of a focused cam­paign suc­ceed­ing at its aims, even in the face of state, police and media cen­sor­ship and harass­ment. And once ITT has been bank­rupt­ed, which com­pa­ny is next? Fol­low­ing this course, we will even­tu­al­ly have human­i­ty, mutu­al aid, and dare we say it, world peace… even if we have to smash, d‑lock, shout our­selves hoarse, and super­glue our way through every dodgy indus­try and evil mega­lo­ma­ni­ac to get it: be there on the day! The demo starts at 12 noon, meet­ing oppo­site Falmer train sta­tion. For trans­port down, drop us an email at bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk.

http://www.smashedo.org.uk/shut-itt.htm

Pos­i­tive’s Not News

It’s come to our atten­tion here at the Bath Bomb of a wor­ry­ing ten­den­cy in the local press. Whilst the same is true of nation­al and region­al papers the UK over, the Bath Chron­ic has tak­en upon itself to ignore pos­i­tive local events and ini­tia­tives which show com­mu­ni­ties organ­is­ing their own needs and doing good for them­selves and their neigh­bours; take for exam­ple, the case of the River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Youth Cen­tre’s open evening on the 26th Sep­tem­ber, where local youth showed off their music tal­ents and staff put on food and high­light­ed to res­i­dents the impor­tant work the cen­tre is doing. Staff were told by the Chron that such pos­i­tive sto­ries, which you might mis­tak­en­ly believe are the fare of local rags all over the land, were not high enough pri­or­i­ty to war­rant a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, nor any more than reluc­tant cov­er­age; per­haps the kids should have been out mug­ging peo­ple like a prop­er hood­ie? Like­wise, worth­while activist events through­out the last six months have been equal­ly cen­sored: ‘Roots of Change’, ‘There is such thing as a free lunch!’, the Bath FreeShop… the list goes on. If these pro­test­ers had lived up to the stereo­type and been busy break­ing stuff, then per­haps that would have shift­ed a cou­ple more papers? So whilst the Chron puts a cyn­i­cal spot­light on the neg­a­tive, the triv­ial, the celeb-obsessed, or fear-mon­ger­ing, is it real­ly the job of the media to decide what its read­ers are per­mit­ted to know or think?

Bath — 2, BNP — 0

Remem­ber last year when Nick Grif­fin, head Nazi of the BNP, tried to come to speak at Bath Uni? Local anti-fas­cists mobilised to first kick him off cam­pus, then out of sev­er­al pubs, then into a field where the cops made him and his bone­head mates go home after a 5‑minute speech on pub­lic safe­ty grounds! Well, it looks like the Nazis may be back. Reports sug­gest that sev­er­al BNP activists were hand­ing out fly­ers at Bath Uni ear­li­er this month. This month also saw a few hun­dred Nazis from across Europe con­verge at the Bun­ga­low Inn in Som­er­set (against the scared own­er’s wish­es) to drunk­en­ly sieg heil their depart­ed fuhrer Ian Stew­art Don­ald­son, singer of fas­cist band Skrew­driv­er, who brave­ly mar­tyred him­self over a decade ago after drunk­en­ly falling in front of a car! While this was a one-off event, the BNP at Bath Uni may not be so, and Bath anti-fas­cists would appre­ci­ate any infor­ma­tion on the sit­u­a­tion there. The BNP are vicious racists who oppose immi­gra­tion and trade unions and have a long his­to­ry of racial vio­lence, Hitler-wor­ship and Holo­caust denial (their leader still denies the Holo­caust, call­ing it the ‘Holo­hoax’, and recent­ly claimed in a speech to Amer­i­can Nazis that he would be hap­py to kill for the white race). We have kicked them out of Bath once, and we can do it again. Any infor­ma­tion will be treat­ed as con­fi­den­tial and can be sent to bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk.

Com­put­er Says ‘No… 2ID’

Despite long resis­tance, the racist state will be push­ing in ID cards, this year, start­ing on the 25th Novem­ber with easy tar­gets the immi­grants. Incensed at this, 35 activists from No Bor­ders across South Wales, Bath, Bris­tol and beyond con­verged on the Home Office Iden­ti­ty and Pass­port Office in New­port, on Sat­ur­day the 5th Octo­ber. Despite the driz­zle and minor police intim­i­da­tion, they stayed on for two hours, leaflet­ing the pass­ing pub­lic about this insid­i­ous new (old) scheme. Whilst the cards will reach immi­grants next month, if the scheme does­n’t meet too much oppo­si­tion, it will then be rolled out to work­ers in ‘sen­si­tive’ loca­tions in 2009, and then stu­dents in 2010. Act­ing on flawed ‘intel­li­gence’, bungling cop­pers turned up an hour before­hand to police the demo, and the office itself shut its bar­ri­er after one hour. But what’s all the big deal? Sure­ly if you have noth­ing to hide, you have noth­ing to fear? Man­age­ment of this data­base (the most com­plex in Europe) will be doled out to pri­vate com­pa­nies like PA Con­sult­ing, who already lost 30,000 peo­ple’s records back in August. Will their strug­gling soft­ware be able to han­dle this larg­er strain? We hope so, because with an increas­ing reliance on tech­nol­o­gy, and numer­ous such com­put­er cock-ups, what’s to say that sim­i­lar inci­dents won’t result in oth­er hor­ror sto­ries, with data-loss vic­tims unable to work, unable to pay bills, unable to shop, and unable to access basic ser­vices. But what about ID cards stop­ping crime? Unless the cards or RFID chips (radio fre­quen­cy iden­ti­fi­ca­tion implants) mirac­u­lous­ly address mal­nour­ish­ment, domes­tic abuse or pover­ty cycles, then these cards won’t pre­vent crime. So giv­en that, why is Big Broth­er so intent on build­ing up all this info? As the proverb goes, “First they came for the com­mu­nists, and I did noth­ing because I was not a com­mu­nist. Then they came for the trade union­ists, and I did noth­ing because I was not a trade union­ist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did noth­ing because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to help me.”

http://current.com/topics/88831947_data_loss
http://www.no2id.net/
http://noborderswales.wordpress.com

Your Gov­ern­ment Wants You Dead!

A dra­mat­ic head­line? We at Bath Bomb are known for our occa­sion­al sen­sa­tion­al­ism, but on this occa­sion, we are being ‘dead­ly’ seri­ous. Recent fig­ures sug­gest that 1/3 of the pop­u­la­tion is going to be forced into a choice between suf­fi­cient fuel or suf­fi­cient food this win­ter. By encour­ag­ing price hikes in the pri­vate fuel sec­tor and choos­ing to sup­port fail­ing busi­ness rather than aver­age peo­ple, the gov­ern­ment of this coun­try will lit­er­al­ly be respon­si­ble for thou­sands of deaths this win­ter. Let’s put this in per­spec­tive — the gov­ern­ment is per­fect­ly will­ing to shell out hun­dreds of mil­lions of OUR mon­ey to slow the inevitable col­lapse of cap­i­tal­ism, while just down the road in Swin­don, 69% of coun­cil house res­i­dents were recent­ly dis­cov­ered to be liv­ing well below the pover­ty line. There is plen­ty to be angry at the gov­ern­ment over that we spend much time focus­ing on — the war on the Iraqi peo­ple and sur­veil­lance soci­ety being a cou­ple of exam­ples, but it is about time we start to resist the bru­tal­i­ty that the state dish­es out to us all on a dai­ly basis; the fuel pover­ty, the cuts to NHS, edu­ca­tion and job­seek­ers, the mea­gre sup­port for low income fam­i­lies. The gov­ern­ment has shown that it stands on the side of busi­ness above the needs of the peo­ple. The class war, this epic social bat­tle between the haves and the have-nots was not start­ed by us, it was start­ed by a rul­ing class who care more for prof­it and preser­va­tion of the sta­tus quo than the lives of its cit­i­zens. We have had war declared on us by the polit­i­cal class and we need to begin ask­ing ‘how will we respond to the assault of busi­ness and gov­ern­ment on our lives’ and how can we organ­ise to take back what is ours, our basic rights to warmth, food, afford­able hous­ing, enjoy­ment and an end to wage slav­ery? How will we organ­ise to win the class war?

Mini Bar-stards

Just a quick­ie: on Fri­day 26th Sep­tem­ber, activists from Bath Ani­mal Action and BAN did a short, sharp demo against foie gras sell­er Mini Bar on John Street, who have tak­en it upon them­selves to sell the stuff. See every oth­er issue of Bath Bomb for more on foie gras and the cam­paign. As per usu­al, BAA will be back again and again, until Mini Bar sees sense.

EVENTS

Mon­days — Bath Hunt Sabs Meet­ing, 8pm, Bell
Wednes­days — Lon­don Rd Food Co-op, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, 4–7pm
Sat­ur­days — Bath Stop The War Vig­il, Abbey Court­yard, 11.30–12.30
Weds 15th Oct — Smash ITT, Falmer Sta­tion, Brighton, 12noon
Fri 17th Oct — Chris Baines’ green spaces in cities talk, Guild­hall, 7pm £6
Sat 18th Oct — Lon­don Anar­chist Book­fair www.anarchistbookfair.org
Fri 24th Oct — Bath Mad­hat­ters Birth­day Par­ty, Man­vers St Bap­tist Church, 3–6pm
Fri 24th Oct — anti-foie gras demo, against Mini­bar, John St, 7–9
Sat 25th Oct — ben­e­fit gig, the White Hart, Eas­t­on, 6pm, £7 entry
Sun 26th Oct — Bub­bling Under, Porter Cel­lar Bar, 1–4pm
Mon 27th Oct — Block the Builders, Alder­mas­ton AWE block­ade
Weds 29th Oct — Bath Bomb ben­e­fit gig, the Junc­tion, Stokes Croft, Bris­tol, 8‑late
Sat 1st Nov — Bath FreeShop, Stall Street, 12–3pm
Weds 5th Nov — Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, back­room of Bell, 7.30–8.30
Thurs 6th Nov — BAN meet­ing, down­stairs Hob­gob­lin, 7.30–9
Sat 22 Nov — Bath Veg­an Fayre, Per­cy Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre 12–4pm

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

Q: Who Are Bath Activist Net­work? A: 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

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.

Anti-RBS Action, London — Fri 10 Oct 08

What do a Dis­traught Ben­gal Tiger, a Sacked Finan­cial Ana­lyst, a Home­less Polar Bear, and a Job­less Banker all have in com­mon?

RBS recruitment demo 1What do a Dis­traught Ben­gal Tiger, a Sacked Finan­cial Ana­lyst, a Home­less Polar Bear, and a Job­less Banker all have in com­mon? Why they’re all vic­tims of the Car­bon Crunch — the con­fla­tion of Cap­i­tal’s tox­ic Car­bon Addic­tion and it’s self-made Cred­it Crunch. Oh, and they’re also all char­ac­ters in a protest dra­ma played out at the Olympia Exhi­bi­tion Cen­tre between some rad­i­cal smart cook­ies from…
• Peo­ple & Plan­et — http://peopleandplanet.org
• PLATFORM — http://www.platformlondon.org
• Ris­ing Tide — http://risingtide.org.uk & http://londonrisingtide.org.uk
…and some shit­ty-brown suit­ed secu­ri­ty drones.

You know how Finance Cap­i­tal oils the wheels of indus­try? [1] Well one UK bank excels above all oth­ers at oil­ing the wheels and greas­ing the axles of the Cli­mate Crim­i­nal’s Jug­ger­naut — and my, how proud they used to be about doing so. Once upon a time, there was a web­site called www.theoilandgasbank.com — a prod­uct of the Oil Bank of Scot­land (who pre­fer “Roy­al Bank of Scot­land”) — but in Jun 06, RBS took it down and stopped using this title pub­li­cal­ly. But why? This was the first major vic­to­ry in a cam­paign waged since ear­ly 06 by a coali­tion of envi­ron­men­tal NGOs (includ­ing Friends of the Earth Scot­land, Peo­ple & Plan­et and PLATFORM) to wean RBS of its tox­ic addic­tion to financ­ing the cli­mate crim­i­nals of the fos­sil fuel indus­tries, and set it on a healthy diet of financ­ing renew­able ener­gy ini­tia­tives: The Oyal Bank of Scot­land Cam­pain. [2]

THE OIL BANK OF SCOTLAND

“In 2007 RBS sup­port­ed the fos­sil fuel indus­try with over $7 bil­lion, while the bank’s embed­ded emis­sions passed 50 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 – more than Scot­land.”
PLATFORM, in ‘NGOs slam RBS for fos­sil fuel financ­ing on the eve of delayed Cor­po­rate Respon­si­bil­i­ty Report launch’, 10 Jul 08 -
http://www.carbonweb.org/showitem.asp?article=330

Yes, you did read that right — one bank in Edin­burgh is com­plict in MORE cli­mate pol­lu­tion than the ENTIRE NATION of Scot­land!

“RBS-NatWest is dri­ving cli­mate change and feed­ing car­bon addic­tion faster than any oth­er British bank. Pour­ing bil­lions into fos­sil fuels and work­ing inti­mate­ly with oil cor­po­ra­tions, the bank is lock­ing huge emis­sions into our future. Peo­ple & Plan­et and PLATFORM are cam­paign­ing for RBS to recog­nise its cli­mate respon­si­bil­i­ties and move its mon­ey from the dirt­i­est fos­sil fuels into sus­tain­able ener­gy.

OUR DEMANDS
We are call­ing on RBS-NatWest to:
• Accept respon­si­bil­i­ty for the cli­mate impacts of its lend­ing. Cal­cu­late and pub­lish the embed­ded emis­sions result­ing from loans to oil and gas projects.
• Adopt a com­pre­hen­sive cli­mate change pol­i­cy, includ­ing a tar­get for annu­al reduc­tions and the strat­e­gy to achieve this.
• Rebal­ance its lend­ing port­fo­lio away from fos­sil fuels and towards renew­able ener­gy. Imme­di­ate halt on all loans to coal and tar sands.”
Oyal Bank of Scot­land Cam­paign — http://oyalbankofscotland.com

WANNA WORK FOR CLIMATE CRIMINALS?

The Oil Bank of Scot­land is proud of it’s score of grad­u­ate recruit­ment pro­grammes and sports a flashy ani­mat­ed Flash microsite to snap up the bright young things fresh from uni­ver­si­ty — http://www.makeitrbs.com (although it’s foun­da­tions are as dodgy as its fos­sil fuel addic­tion — click­ing any ‘pro­grammes’ link on the ‘Pro­gramme Selec­tor’ pro­duces: “Page not found!”)

We thought we’d bet­ter alert atten­dees at the Nation­al Grad­u­ate Recruit­ment Exhi­bi­tion at Olympia 2 that the recruiters on the RBS stand were con­seal­ing the fact that their hands were cov­ered in oil. But with one recon­nais­sance pho­to tak­en and a few leaflets hand­ed out, we were escort­ed from the Exhi­bi­tion Hall by shit­ty-brown suit­ed secu­ri­ty drones. Unveil­ing our ban­ner out­side led to some very sil­ly cat-&-mouse antics, with one of said drones try­ing to stop two snap­pers shoot­ing his fel­low drones attempts to cen­sor a peace­ful pave­ment protest!

Seems the cops had tipped of their Secu­ri­ty Head Hon­cho (one v v unhhap­py bun­ny) to our arrival, so he’d had con­struct­ed a three-crash-bar­ri­er cage to try (in vain) to con­tain us. Per­haps by stu­pid­i­ty (or maybe as a secret expres­sion of sym­pa­thy? tee­hee 😉 our cage pro­vid­ed per­fect ban­ner mount­ing facil­i­ties, and was per­fect­ly posi­tioned to engage the cap­tive audi­ence of career seek­ers queue­ing up to get in.

While recon­noi­ter­ing the RBS stand, I picked up two toys for my nephews, arche­types of cor­po­rate brad­ing arro­gance — wind-up squishy walk­ing globes of plan­et Earth embla­zoned with the RBS logo. This was on Black Fri­day, the last work­ing day of a week that saw RBS shares have 40% of their val­ue wiped out in Cred­it Crunch recrim­i­na­tions. Here’s hop­ing the sham­bol­ic rout of Finance Cap­tal will refo­cus the minds of the RBS Fat Cats on bequeath­ing to their own young rel­a­tives a bioshere still rich in bio­di­ver­si­ty, and stll fit enough to sus­tain human­i­ty’s urgent­ly required low car­bon econ­o­my.

ALSO AVAILABLE: PIX, REPORT, & CALL TO TAKE ACTION

You can also read about our action in an illus­trat­ed report by Peo­ple & Plan­et media and com­mu­ni­ca­tions vol­un­teer, and mem­ber of West­min­ster Uni P&P, Amani Ashraf — http://peopleandplanet.org/navid6525

Mean­while, YOU TOO can help to shape our ener­gy future — by telling RBS to stop fuelling car­bon addic­tion:
• Take Action on RBS: The Oil Bank of Scot­land — http://www.oyalbankofscotland.com/action.htm
• Take Action to Ditch Dirty Devel­op­ment, Tar­get #1: RBS-NatWest — http://peopleandplanet.org/ditchdirtydevelopment/action

Nei­ther the Inter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice nor any oth­er bour­geois court will put huge dirty cor­po­rate Finace Cap­i­tal bod­ies like RBS in the dock for aid­ing and abet­ting the Cli­mate Crim­i­nals in the fos­sil fuel indus­tries. So its down to us to band togeth­er and force RBS OUT of fos­sil fuel financ­ing and IN to sus­tain­able renew­able ener­gy devel­op­ment — join us, and take pos­i­tive actions to safe­guard our plan­e­tary future.

Tim Dalin­ian Jones

[1] Finance Cap­i­tal oils the wheels of indus­try — at least it did until Cap­i­tal’s his­tor­i­cal Cri­sis of Over­pro­duc­tion [3] found expres­sion in the Cred­it Crunch, top­pling the huge Wall Street domi­no Lehman Broth­ers on 15 Sep 08, since when Finance Cap­i­tal’s lubri­ca­tion ser­vices have all but ceased in a parox­ysms of fear and recrim­i­na­tions.

[2] The Oyal Bank of Scot­land Cam­paign — http://www.oyalbankofscotland.com is the suc­cess­ful cam­paign­ing web­site of the anti-RBS coali­tion of envi­ron­men­tal NGOs, includ­ing:
• Peo­ple & Plan­et — http://peopleandplanet.org
• PLATFORM — http://www.platformlondon.org
• Friends of the Earth Scot­land — http://www.foe-scotland.org.uk/

[3] Cap­i­tal’s his­tor­i­cal Cri­sis of Over­pro­duc­tion: “what char­ac­teris­es the 20th and 21st cen­turies is that the ten­den­cy towards over­pro­duc­tion — which in the 19th cen­tu­ry was tem­po­rary and could eas­i­ly be over­come — has become chron­ic, sub­ject­ing the world econ­o­my to a semi-per­ma­nent risk of insta­bil­i­ty and destruc­tion. Mean­while com­pe­ti­tion — a con­gen­i­tal trait of cap­i­tal­ism — became extreme and, crash­ing up against the lim­its of a world mar­ket which con­stant­ly verged on sat­u­ra­tion, lost its role as a stim­u­lant for the expan­sion of the sys­tem, so that its neg­a­tive side as a fac­tor of chaos and con­flict came to the fore.” ~ ICC, in ‘Cap­i­tal­ist Econ­o­my: Is there a way out of the cri­sis?’, trans­lat­ed from Accion Pro­le­taria 199, the ICC’s pub­li­ca­tion in Spain, Jan-Mar 08 — http://en.internationalism.org/wr/315/crisis-01

Spirit of Freedom (October 2008) — support the eco-prisoners

Pro­duced by EARTH LIBERATION PRISONERS SUPPORT NETWORK

“The whole expe­ri­ence has been tough, but all the kind and strength­en­ing words and wise thoughts from strangers made it much eas­i­er!” (For­mer Swedish Ani­mal Rights Pris­on­er)

Pro­duced by EARTH LIBERATION PRISONERS SUPPORT NETWORK

“The whole expe­ri­ence has been tough, but all the kind and strength­en­ing words and wise thoughts from strangers made it much eas­i­er!” (For­mer Swedish Ani­mal Rights Pris­on­er)

Wel­come to the Octo­ber 2008 edi­tion of Spir­it of Free­dom. The last month has been a month of mixed emo­tions for ELP. On the one hand we heard the bril­liant news that the Dutch ani­mal rights activist, Ger­ben Jan, was found not guilty of assault­ing a police offi­cer, caus­ing the offi­cer to break his leg, dur­ing an ani­mal rights demo in Swe­den. Instead Ger­ban was found guilty of resist­ing arrest for which he was fined and deport­ed. Also in an unex­pect­ed move, all the Aus­tri­an Ani­mal Rights pris­on­ers were released from prison pend­ing their tri­al! Plus, the Amer­i­can veg­an, Nathan Kno­erl, was grant­ed bail in his case where he is accused of involve­ment in an anti-vivi­sec­tion protest. Fol­low­ing Nathans release a sup­port cam­paign has been set up to try and help raise mon­ey for Nathan’s forth­com­ing legal case. For more info please e‑mail supportnathan@gmail.com. How­ev­er, just as ELP start­ed to think our pris­on­er lists might start to go down, we received news of fur­ther police raids in Aus­tria. ELP also learnt that, due to Frank Ambrose, grass­ing every­one up, the Amer­i­can’s Marie Mason, Stephanie Lynne Fultz, and Aren Burth­wick, have all had to enter Plea Bar­gains and admit some of the charges set against them. In Marie’s case she has admit­ted her direct role in an ELF arson on a Uni­ver­si­ty build­ing involved with GM crop tests, whilst Stephanie and Aren have admit­ted not report­ing a fire (Stephanie has admit­ted cut­ting Marie’s hair which was burnt fol­low­ing the arson). We don’t know what sen­tences Stephanie and Aren are like­ly to receive, but Marie is look­ing at 15 to 20 years and has been remand­ed into cus­tody. This is real­ly bad news, espe­cial­ly as it was hoped Marie might remain free until her sen­tenc­ing ear­ly next year. Around the world, peo­ple are being impris­oned for stand­ing up for what they believe in and try­ing to
help the ani­mals and the earth. So please, no mat­ter where you are in the world, sup­port the eco-pris­on­ers. And no com­pro­mise in defence of Moth­er Earth.

ECO-DEFENCE PRISONERS

Tre Arrow, #70936–065, (in tran­sit), USA. Serv­ing 78 months for his involve­ment in two ELF arsons. 1) an arson on log­ging trucks 2) an arson on vehi­cles owned by a sand & grav­el com­pa­ny. (Tre is a raw ener­gy veg­an — He has asked that his let­ters of sup­port are writ­ten on scrap paper or tree-free paper).

Grant Barnes #137563, San Car­los Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty, PO Box 3, Pueblo, CO 81002, USA. Serv­ing 12 years for set­ting fire to a num­ber of SUV vehi­cles. The let­ters ELF were spray paint­ed onto all of the vehi­cles. (Grant is a veg­an).

Nathan Block, #36359–086, FCI Lom­poc, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, 3600 Guard Road, Lom­poc, CA 93436, USA. Serv­ing 7 years & 8 months for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an SUV deal­er­ship. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Diet unknown).

Mar­co Camenisch, Post­fach 3143, CH-8105 Regens­dorf, Switzer­land. Serv­ing 18 years. 1) Ten years for using explo­sives to destroy elec­tric­i­ty pylons lead­ing from nuclear pow­er sta­tions. 2) Eight years for the mur­der of a Swiss Bor­der Guard whilst on the run. In ’02 Mar­co com­plet­ed a 12-year sen­tence in Italy for destroy­ing elec­tric­i­ty pylons in Italy. (Mar­co is a meat eater who encour­ages organ­ic liv­ing).

Daniele Casali­ni, Casa Cir­con­dar­i­ale, Via Burla 59, 43100 Par­ma, Italy. Il Sil­vestre activist await­ing tri­al accused of using explo­sives to dam­age an elec­tric­i­ty pylon in protest at nuclear ener­gy. (Daniele is a veg­an).

Rod­ney Coro­n­a­do #03895–000, FCI El Reno, PO Box 1500, El Reno, OK 73036, USA. Serv­ing one-year impris­on­ment after he informed peo­ple how to make an incen­di­ary device dur­ing a speech at an ani­mal rights gath­er­ing. (Meat eater).

Francesco Gioia, C.C. Sol­lic­ciano, Via Giro­lamo Min­ervi­ni 2/R, 50142 Firen­ze Sol­lic­ciano (FI), Italy. Il Sil­vestre activist await­ing tri­al accused of using explo­sives to dam­age an elec­tric­i­ty pylon in protest at nuclear ener­gy. (Francesco is a veg­e­tar­i­an and Straight Edge).

Pao­la Gori, Via delle Mac­chie 9, 57124 Livorno, Italy. Il Sil­vestre activist await­ing tri­al accused of allow­ing her house to be used to plan ille­gal activ­i­ty. (Pao­la is a veg­an).

Bryan Lefey #38664–086, FDC SeaT­ac, Fed­er­al Deten­tion Cen­ter, P.O. Box 13900, Seat­tle, WA 98198, USA. On remand accused of an ELF action that saw the dam­ag­ing of GM trees and the dam­ag­ing of US Forestry Ser­vice vehi­cles. (Diet unknown).

Jef­frey Luers, # 13797671, CRCI, 9111 NE Sun­der­land Ave, Port­land, OR 97211–1708, USA. Serv­ing 10 years for arson on a SUV deal­er­ship & the attempt­ed arson of an oil truck. The orig­i­nal sen­tence was 22 years & 8 months, but was reduced on appeal. (Diet unknown).

Marie Jeanette Mason, Neway­go Coun­ty Jail, PO Box 845, White Cloud, MI 49349, USA. Await­ing sen­tenc­ing hav­ing plead­ed guilty to involve­ment in ELF arson against a Uni­ver­si­ty build­ing car­ry­ing out Genet­i­cal­ly Mod­i­fied crop tests. Marie also plead­ed guilty to con­spir­ing to car­ry out ELF actions and also admit­ted involve­ment in 12 oth­er ELF actions. Marie is expect­ed to receive a sen­tence of between 15–20 years. (Marie is a veg­an).

Eric McDavid, 16209–097. FCI Vic­torville Medi­um II, PO BOX 5700, Ade­lan­to, CA 92301, USA. Serv­ing 19 years & 7 months for plan­ning to destroy the prop­er­ty of the U.S. Forestry Ser­vice, mobile phone masts and pow­er plants. At the point of his arrest no crim­i­nal dam­age has actu­al­ly occurred. (Eric is a veg­an).

Daniel McGowan, #63794–053, USP Mar­i­on, US Pen­i­ten­tiary, PO Box 1000, Mar­i­on, IL 62959, USA. Serv­ing 7 years for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an old growth log­ging cor­po­ra­tion. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Daniel is a veg­e­tar­i­an).

Jonathan Paul — See details in Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers List.

Bri­ana Waters 36432–086, FCI Dan­bury, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, Route 37, Dan­bury, CT 06811, USA. Serv­ing six years for involve­ment in an ELF arson on a Uni­ver­si­ty. (Diet unknown).

Joy­an­na Zach­er, #36360–086, FCI Dublin, 5700 8th St.- Camp Parks- Unit F, Dublin, CA 94568, USA. Serv­ing 7 years & 8 months for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an SUV deal­er­ship. Also admit­ted her role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Diet unknown).

ANIMAL LIBERATION PRISONERS
(All Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers fol­low a min­i­mum veg­e­tar­i­an diet and most are veg­an).

Jon Able­white TB4885, HMP Lowd­ham Grange, Lowd­ham, Not­ting­ham, NG14 7DA, Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion. (Jon is a veg­an).

Dan Amos VN7818, HMP Win­ches­ter, Rom­sey Road, Win­ches­ter SO22 5DF, Eng­land.
On remand hav­ing plead­ed guilty to con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Dan is a veg­an)

Gregg Avery TA7450, HMP Win­ches­ter, Rom­sey Road, Win­ches­ter, SO22 5DF, Eng­land. On remand hav­ing plead­ed guilty to con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Gregg is a veg­an).

Natasha Avery NR8987, HMP Bronze­field, Woodthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx. TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. On remand hav­ing plead­ed guilty to con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Nat is a veg­an).

Mel Broughton TN9138, HMP Wood­hill, Tat­ten­hoe Street, Mil­ton Keynes, Bucks MK4 4DA, Eng­land. On remand accused of involve­ment with an arson and black­mail cam­paign against an Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty vivi­sec­tion estab­lish­ment.
(Mel is a veg­an).

Jacob Con­roy #93501–011, FCI Vic­torville Medi­um I Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, P.O. Box 5300, Ade­lan­to, CA 92301, USA. Serv­ing 48 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Jake is a veg­an).

Don­ald Cur­rie A3660AA, HMP Parkhurst, New­port, Isle of Wight, PO30 5NX, Eng­land. Serv­ing an Inde­ter­mi­nate Sen­tence, of not less than six actu­al years, for car­ry­ing out arsons against tar­gets asso­ci­at­ed the vivi­sec­tion indus­try includ­ing HLS. (Don is a veg­an).

Lau­ren Gaz­zo­la #93497–011, FCI Dan­bury, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, Route #37Danbury, CT 06811, USA. Serv­ing 54 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Lau­ren is a veg­an).

Joshua Harp­er #29429–086, FCI Sheri­dan Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, P.O. Box 5000, Sheri­dan, OR 97378 USA. Serv­ing 36 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Josh is a veg­an).

Sean Kirt­ley WC 6977, HMP Stafford, 54 Gaol Road, Stafford, ST16 3AW, Eng­land. Serv­ing four and a half years for run­ning an anti-vivi­sec­tion cam­paign web­site. (Sean is a veg­an).

Kevin Kjon­aas #93502–011, FCI Sand­stone, PO Box 1000, Sand­stone, MN 55072 USA. Serv­ing 72 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Kevin is a veg­an).

Daniel McGowan — See details in Eco Defence Pris­on­ers List.

Heather Nichol­son VM4859, HMP Bronze­field, Woodthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx. TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. On remand accused of con­spir­a­cy to black­mail, in rela­tion to her involve­ment with the SHAC cam­paign. (Heather is a veg­an).

Jonathan Paul, #07167–085, FCI Phoenix, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, 37910 N 45th Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85086, USA. Sen­tenced to 51 months for an ALF arson on a horse meat plant. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Jonathan is a veg­an).

John Smith, TB4887, HMP Lind­holme, Bawtry Road, Hat­field Wood­house, Don­cast­er, DN7 6EE, Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion. (John is a veg­an).

Andrew Stepan­ian #26399–050, USP Mar­i­on, P.O. Box 1000 Mar­i­on, IL 62959, USA. Serv­ing 36 months for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Andrew is a veg­an).

Ker­ry Whit­burn TB4886, HMP Lowd­ham Grange, Lowd­ham, Not­ting­ham, NG14 7DA, Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion. (Ker­ry is a veg­an).

Sarah White­head, VM7684, HMP Bronze­field, Woodthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx, TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. Serv­ing two years for: 1) res­cu­ing a pup­py from hor­rif­ic con­di­tions. 2) res­cu­ing over 100 ani­mals from a pet breed­er who was lat­er pros­e­cut­ed for ani­mal abuse. Also await­ing tri­al for SHAC activ­i­ty. (Sarah is a veg­an)

PLOUGHSHARES PRISONERS

Helen Wood­son, 03231–045, FMC Car­swell — Admin. Max. Unit, POB 27137, Ft. Worth, TX 76127, USA. Serv­ing 8 years 10 months for actions that focused on the inter­re­la­tion­ship of war & the destruc­tion of the nat­ur­al world. The actions includ­ed pour­ing red paint over the secu­ri­ty desk of a fed­er­al court and mak­ing threat­en­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Pre­vi­ous­ly Helen had served 20½ years for: 1) Using a ham­mer to dis­arm a nuclear mis­sile silo. 2) Burn­ing $25,000 on the floor of a bank whilst denounc­ing war, envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion & eco­nom­ic injus­tice. 3) Mail­ing warn­ing let­ters with bul­lets attached to Gov­ern­ment & cor­po­rate offi­cials. (Diet unknown).

THE LECCE DEFENDANTS
The Lec­ce Defen­dants have been charged with “sub­ver­sive asso­ci­a­tion” accused of dam­ag­ing Esso petrol pumps to oppose the War on Iraq; sab­o­tag­ing the cash machines of a bank which funds an immi­gra­tion cen­tre; and tar­get­ing the multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny Benet­ton in sup­port of Mapuche land rights activists in Chile. All of the defen­dants are cur­rent­ly either under house arrest or released on bail.

ANTIFA PRISONERS

Vah­tang Devitlidze, ul. Libbedo­va 42, UO 68/2, otryad 14, briga­da 142, g. Hagyshen­sk, Krasnodarskiy Kray, 352680 Rus­sia. Serv­ing 2½ years for stab­bing a neo-nazi in the leg whilst defend­ing him­self from attack. (Diet unknown).

Fabio Milan, C.C. via Pianez­za 300, 10151 Tori­no, Italy. On remand accused of fight­ing with the police after an anti-fas­cist protest. (Diet unknown).

Andrea Neff, Bnr: 746/07/2, Jus­tizvol­lzugsanstalt fur Frauen in Berlin, Arkonas­trasse 56, 13189 Berlin, Ger­many. Serv­ing 14 months for anti-fas­cist activ­i­ty. (Diet unknown).

Chris­t­ian Süm­mer­mann, Bnr: 441/08/5, JVA Plötzensee, Lehrter­str. 61, 10557
Berlin, Ger­many. Serv­ing 40 months for breach­ing the peace whilst serv­ing a sus­pend­ed sen­tence issued for anti-fas­cist activ­i­ties. (Diet unknown).

Tomasz Wiloszews­ki, Zak­lad Karny, Orze­chowa 5, 98–200 Sier­adz, Poland.
Serv­ing 15 years for acci­den­tal­ly killing a neo-nazi whilst defend­ing him­self. (Tomasz is a veg­e­tar­i­an).

Yuri Yure­vich Milevskiy, SIZO #7 kam­era 38, g. Brest, ul. Kar­la Mark­sa 86, 224000 Belarus. On remand for fight­ing with neo-nazis. (Diet unknown).

OTHER PRISONERS

Olga Alek­san­drov­na Nevskaya, UU163/5, 7 Otryad, pos. Dzerzhin­skiy, Mozhaysk 140090 Moskovskaya oblast, Rus­sia. Eco-activist serv­ing 6 years for arson, crim­i­nal dam­age and caus­ing explo­sions in protest at the war in Chech­nya. Due for release in 2009. (Diet unknown).

Vagge­lis Botzatzis, Komo­ti­ni Juridi­cal Prison (“Dikastikes Fylakes Komo­ti­nis”), T.K. 69100, Greece. On remand accused of set­ting fire to two com­pa­ny cars owned by a energy/power com­pa­ny. It is believed that the per­son or per­sons unknown who car­ried out the arson did so in protest at the destruc­tion of the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment and in sup­port of two work­ers who died at the pow­er plant. Vagge­lis is also accused of set­ting fire to a bank and start­ing a fire inside a car yard. (Meat Eater).

Richard Sills (Address Unknown, USA). Serv­ing 15 months for bomb hoax­ing a Uni­ver­si­ty say­ing they would be tar­get­ed by the ALF if they didn’t stop their ani­mal exper­i­ments. (Diet unknown).

Michael W. Sykes, 696693, 3855 Coop­er St, Jack­son, MI 49201, USA. Youth held on remand accused of anti-sprawl arsons, crim­i­nal dam­age, spray-paint­ing an anar­chist sign and burn­ing the Amer­i­can flag. (Diet unknown)

Fran Thomp­son, #1090915 HU 1C, WERDCC, PO Box 300, Van­dalia, MO 63382, USA. Serv­ing Life for killing, in self-defence, a stalk­er who had bro­ken into her home. Before her impris­on­ment Fran was an eco, ani­mal & anti-nuke cam­paign­er. (Fran is a veg­an).

MOVE

MOVE is an eco-rev­o­lu­tion­ary group who car­ried out protests in defence of all life. All move pris­on­ers describe them­selves as veg­e­tar­i­ans. There are cur­rent­ly eight MOVE activists in prison each serv­ing 100 years after been framed for the mur­der of a cop in 1979. 9th defen­dant, Mer­le Africa, died in prison in 1998.

Deb­bie Simms Africa (006307), Janet Hol­loway Africa (006308) and Janine Philips Africa (006309) all at: SCI Cam­bridge Springs, 451 Fuller­ton Ave, Cam­bridge Springs, PA 16403–1238, USA.

Michael Davis Africa (AM4973) and Charles Simms Africa (AM4975) both at SCI Grater­ford, PO Box 244, Grater­ford, PA 19426–0244, USA.

Edward Good­man Africa (AM4974), SCI Mahanoy, 301 Morea Rd, Frackville, PA 17932, USA.

William Philips Africa (AM4984) and Del­bert Orr Africa (AM4985) both at SCI Dal­las Draw­er K, Dal­las, PA 18612, USA.

Mumia Abu Jamal, (AM8335), SCI Greene, 175 Progress Dri­ve, Way­nes­burg PA 15370, USA. In 1981 Mumia, for­mer Black Pan­ther and vocal sup­port­er of MOVE, was framed for the mur­der of a cop. He was orig­i­nal­ly sen­tenced to death but is cur­rent­ly await­ing re-sen­tenc­ing fol­low­ing a court hear­ing in 2001.

STATEMENT ON VIOLENCE
Some peo­ple list­ed in this newslet­ter have car­ried out vio­lent actions. ‘Spir­it of Free­dom’ does not con­done vio­lence. But we are also against cen­sor­ship & believe peo­ple can decide for them­selves who they wish to sup­port.

ABOUT E.L.P. SUPPORT NETWORK
ELP is an inter­na­tion­al eco-pris­on­er sup­port net­work found­ed, in Britain, in 1993 to sup­port jailed eco-activists. We sup­port the pris­on­ers by pro­duc­ing var­i­ous reg­u­lar pris­on­er lists:

Spir­it of Free­dom is ELP’s inter­na­tion­al month­ly pris­on­er list­ing which is cir­cu­lat­ed by e‑mail.

Urgent ELP! Bul­letin is an e‑mail ser­vice that dis­trib­utes the names of any new eco-pris­on­er as soon as ELP gets their details. For more info e‑mail ELP4321@hotmail.com

On-Line Newslet­ters — ELP has a num­ber of web­sites that pro­vide news, pris­on­er lists and addi­tion­al info about ELP & the pris­on­ers.

Eng­lish lan­guage ELP Web­site
www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk

Greek lan­guage ELP Web­site
http://greekelp.blogspot.com

North Amer­i­can ELP Web­site
www.ecoprisoners.org

Turk­ish lan­guage ELP Web­site
www.geocities.com/yesilanarsi/elp.htm

ELP Extra is an e‑mail group that cir­cu­lates the details of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, ELP learns about, who do not fall with­in the remit for sup­port by ELP. To sub­scribe to the list e‑mail ELP4321@Hotmail.com

Aus­tralian ELP.SN is our Aus­tralian con­tact. For more info e‑mail elp4321@hotmail.com

Bel­gium ELP.SN is our Bel­gium con­tact. For more info e‑mail elp_bel@hotmail.com

Ger­man ELP.SN is a pris­on­er led ini­tia­tive run by eco-pris­on­er Mar­co Camenisch. For more info con­tact Mar­co Camenisch, Post­fach 3143, CH-8105 Regens­dorf, Switzer­land.

Greek ELP.SN is our Greek con­tact. For more info e‑mail greekelp@yahoo.gr

North Amer­i­can ELP is our North Amer­i­can con­tact. For more infor­ma­tion e‑mail naelpsn@mutualaid.org

Turkey ELP.SN is our Turk­ish con­tact. For more info e‑mail
yesilanarsi@yahoo.com

Earth Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers Sup­port Net­work
elp4321@hotmail.com
http://spiritoffreedom.org.uk

Penan mount logging road blockade

Penan mount log­ging road block­ade
8 Octo­ber 2008

Penan com­mu­ni­ties in Sarawak, Malaysia, have mount­ed a road block­ade against the log­ging com­pa­ny Inter­hill in an attempt to stop the destruc­tion of their last remain­ing rain­forests.

The Penan orga­nized the block­ade after nego­ti­a­tions with Interhill’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the com­pa­ny’s tim­ber camp failed.

Penan mount log­ging road block­ade
8 Octo­ber 2008

Penan com­mu­ni­ties in Sarawak, Malaysia, have mount­ed a road block­ade against the log­ging com­pa­ny Inter­hill in an attempt to stop the destruc­tion of their last remain­ing rain­forests.

The Penan orga­nized the block­ade after nego­ti­a­tions with Interhill’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the com­pa­ny’s tim­ber camp failed.

‘We are ask­ing Inter­hill to respect our Native Cus­tom­ary Rights and to stop log­ging our remain­ing pri­ma­ry forests,’ a Penan spokesman said.

The block­ade, in the Mid­dle Baram area of Sarawak, is being organ­ised by the Ba Abang, Long Item, Long Kawi and Long Pakan com­mu­ni­ties. A sim­i­lar block­ade was erect­ed in the area in June 2006 but was dis­man­tled by the police after two weeks.

The block­ade comes short­ly after Penan women raised a cry of alarm over cas­es of sex­u­al abuse and vio­lence by log­ging com­pa­ny work­ers in the region.

The Penan tribe are nomadic hunter-gath­er­ers. Many now live in per­ma­nent set­tle­ments, but con­tin­ue to rely on the for­est for their exis­tence.

Inter­hill is a Malaysian com­pa­ny, and has been log­ging pri­ma­ry rain­forests in Sarawak since the 1970s.

Source: Bruno Manser Fund

Back­ground info: www.survival-international.org

Saving Iceland Targets International Aluminium Conference

Today, Sep­tem­ber 25, the 11th Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Alu­mini­um Aloys (ICAA) met with angry protests. Activists from the envi­ron­men­tal­ist net­work Sav­ing Ice­land dis­rupt­ed the pro­ceed­ings at the Uni­ver­si­ty in Aachen.

Today, Sep­tem­ber 25, the 11th Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Alu­mini­um Aloys (ICAA) met with angry protests. Activists from the envi­ron­men­tal­ist net­work Sav­ing Ice­land dis­rupt­ed the pro­ceed­ings at the Uni­ver­si­ty in Aachen. Ear­ly this morn­ing, dur­ing one of Rio Tin­to Alcan’s lec­tures, the fire alarms in the build­ing were put on. Lat­er today — again dur­ing Rio Tin­to Alcan’s lec­ture — stink bombs were thrown and a high vol­ume rape alarm was put on and sus­pend­ed out of reach by green and black heli­um baloons. The audi­to­ri­um was also strewn with infor­ma­tion leaflets. The aim was to call atten­tion to the industry’s sin­gu­lar involve­ment in eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion in Ice­land, as well as on a glob­al scale.

The ICAA con­fer­ence is a week­long event held at a dif­fer­ent inter­na­tion­al loca­tion every 2 years. This is its first appear­ance in Ger­many and as such is run in par­al­lel to the Alu­mini­um trade fair in Essen, about 80 km away. This dou­ble event is sure to call togeth­er all major play­ers of an indus­try that still tries to present itself as hav­ing a green con­science, and with some suc­cess: Alcoa has been includ­ed in the Dow Jones Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Index, for the 7th year run­ning. [1] Envi­ron­men­tal­ists dis­pute this depic­tion in the strongest terms.

Glob­al Impacts
“There is no lev­el on which the con­tin­ued expan­sion of the alu­mini­um indus­try can be pur­sued sus­tain­ably” says Andreas Jager of Sav­ing Ice­land,” In India, for exam­ple, the pri­ma­ry mate­r­i­al, baux­ite, is open-cast mined and refined into alu­mi­na, strip­ping rain­fores cov­ered moun­tains, dis­plac­ing trib­al peo­ple from their land and pol­lut­ing the water sup­ply with “red mud” residue [2, 3]. In Aus­tralia and Jamaica, vir­gin forests are also destroyed for the same prize — and with the same tox­ic con­se­quences [4].

Destruc­tion of Ice­landic Wilder­ness, for weapons
“ In Ice­land, the country’s unique nat­ur­al land­scape is being raid­ed for its ener­gy poten­tial by these multi­na­tion­al invaders: at a time when the world is final­ly wak­ing up to cli­mate change, the effect of our high ener­gy depen­dence, the process of alu­mini­um pro­duc­tion requires colos­sal quan­ti­ties of elec­tric­i­ty, for which it plans to block and har­ness every glacial riv­er, exploit every geot­her­mal field and trans­form Iceland’s wild beau­ty into a spent and pol­lut­ed waste­land, dot­ted with smelters. This does not equate to green ener­gy, par­tic­u­lar­ly con­sid­er­ing that the planned Ice­landic alu­mini­um smelters will far exceed the gen­er­ous 1,600,000 tonnes of emis­sions per­mit­ted to that coun­try under the Kyoto Con­ven­tion [5].

“And the end prod­uct? For the most part, mil­i­tary hard­ware used for destruc­tion of every imag­in­able kind, avi­a­tion, which is increas­ing­ly being shown to be incom­pat­i­ble with a sta­ble cli­mate, and dis­pos­able pack­ag­ing, a symp­tom of our waste­ful soci­ety. There can be no future for this indus­try, above all oth­ers, if we are to avoid envi­ron­men­tal cri­sis.”

Rio Tin­to Alcan’s Envi­ron­men­tal and Human Crimes
Sav­ing Ice­land protests Rio Tinto’s invest­ments in Ice­land and in Africa. In Ice­land the RT-Alcan smelter in Haf­nar­fjor­dur, south­west Ice­land is being upgrad­ed to increase pro­duc­tion. The Budarhals dam is cur­rent­ly being con­struct­ed to pow­er the smelter expan­sion.

“The peo­ple of Haf­nar­fjor­dur vot­ed against expan­sion of the smelter in a local ref­er­en­dum, but still pro­duc­tion is being increased,” says Jager. “The smelter dis­cards its tox­ic spent potlin­ings in a land­fill in the sea that floods at high tide [6]. We do not want more pol­lu­tion and we do not want more dams here in Ice­land, which are destroy­ing our beau­ti­ful wilder­ness. Espe­cial­ly for a com­pa­ny with the most abysmal record in human rights,” states Jager.

Rio Tin­to has been accused of sub­ject­ing it’s work­ers to poi­son­ing in mines, of hav­ing secu­ri­ty guards shoot­ing locals look­ing for small amounts of gold in one of it’s mines and hav­ing union-mem­bers spied upon and fired [7, 8]. It has also hired mer­ce­nary forces against local pop­u­la­tions protest­ing it’s oper­a­tions in Papua and Bougainville [9, 10, 11].

The Nor­we­gian gov­ern­ment has sold its shares in Rio Tin­to because it’s Gras­berg mine in West Papua has dev­as­tat­ed the land of the Amungme and Kamoro tribes. Nor­way sold its almost £500 mil­lion shares in Rio Tin­to fol­low­ing rec­om­men­da­tions from its Coun­cil on Ethics to exclude the com­pa­ny from its gov­ern­ment pen­sion fund [12].

Inter­na­tion­al Sol­i­dar­i­ty
Peo­ple all around the world are wak­ing up and becom­ing aware of the destruc­tion caused by the alu­mini­um indus­try, as well as the sit­u­a­tion in Ice­land. Last week, big ban­ners were hanged up in Copen­hagen say­ing: “The Alu­mini­um Indus­try is Destroy­ing All Major Ice­landic Rivers!” [13].

Foot­notes and fur­ther ref­er­ence:

[1] http://savingiceland.puscii.nl/?p=3182&a…
[2] http://savingiceland.puscii.nl/?p=602&am…

[3] http://savingiceland.puscii.nl/?p=2607&a…
[4] http://savingiceland.puscii.nl/?p=2233&a…
[5] http://savingiceland.puscii.nl/?page_id=…
[6] Rio Tin­to Alcan (2008). Alcan Envi­ron­ment: Potlin­ings. http://www.riotintoalcan.is/?PageID=111 [Accessed Sep­tem­ber 24th, 2009].
[7] SBS Aus­tralia (200). Date­line, Report on Rio Tin­to, August 2000.
[8] Asia-Pacif­ic Human Rights Net­work, “Rio Tinto’s Record and the Glob­al Com­pact,” July 13th 2001.
[9] Wikipedia Ger­many (22–7‑2007), http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandline-Af…
[10] Con­tract between PNG Gov­ern­ment and San­d­line: http://coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProj/PNG….
[11] Sarei v Rio Tin­to, 456 F.3d 1069 (9th Cir. 2006), USA.
[12] Sur­vival Inter­na­tion­al (2008). Nor­we­gian gov­ern­ment – Rio Tinto’s Papua mine uneth­i­cal. http://www.survival-international.org/ne… [Accessed Sep­tem­ber 24th, 2008]
[13]

Camp Bling announces emergency relaunch/new website on third anniversary.

Press release:

Camp Bling ‘Save Pri­o­ry Park!’ road cam­paign

Wednes­day 17th Sep­tem­ber 2008

Con­tact Camp Bling direct­ly on 07866 967601

Or e‑mail camp.bling@yahoo.co.uk

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

——————————————————————————————————–

Camp Bling announces emer­gency relaunch on third anniver­sary.

Press release:

Camp Bling ‘Save Pri­o­ry Park!’ road cam­paign

Wednes­day 17th Sep­tem­ber 2008

Con­tact Camp Bling direct­ly on 07866 967601

Or e‑mail camp.bling@yahoo.co.uk

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

——————————————————————————————————–

Camp Bling announces emer­gency relaunch on third anniver­sary.

‘The glob­al sit­u­a­tion has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly since the protest site was first set up specif­i­cal­ly to stop the road — both in terms of the over­all envi­ron­men­tal impacts and accel­er­at­ing pace.’ (www.campbling.org)

Pro­test­ers and sup­port­ers at Camp Bling will mark a third full year of occu­pa­tion to stop the con­tro­ver­sial Pri­o­ry Cres­cent road widen­ing on Tues­day 23rd Sep­tem­ber 2008 with an emer­gency relaunch to address envi­ron­men­tal cat­a­stro­phe as it unfolds and accel­er­ates around the world.

The camp are set to go live with new web­site: http://www.campbling.org on the anniver­sary date, to sup­port their objec­tive to stop the road widen­ing, whilst at the same time tak­ing a dra­mat­ic new turn to dis­cuss crit­i­cal issues such as con­sumer cul­ture, peak oil pro­duc­tion, mass extinc­tion, and the appro­pri­ate response to these and oth­er crises. (1)

Res­i­dent Gavin said, ‘we could not have pre­dict­ed how quick­ly the world was going to change when we first set up Camp Bling three years ago. Now we feel com­pelled to address the fun­da­men­tal need for lifestyle change dur­ing the com­ing crash, as west­ern soci­ety over­shoots the eco­log­i­cal lim­its of the earth.’

Lat­est mem­ber Paul added, ‘fund­ing towards the £13.5m Pri­o­ry Cres­cent scheme is unlike­ly to be grant­ed to the Coun­cil before 2011. A fur­ther three years defend­ing the site will pro­vide ample oppor­tu­ni­ty for us to begin to push a far more rad­i­cal agen­da. We have always walked the walk — now is the time for us to start talk­ing all about it.’ (2)

Peo­ple are invit­ed to vis­it both the vir­tu­al world of the new web­site, plus the real one of the road protest as the Blingers dig in for a fourth win­ter, with a com­pre­hen­sive revamp and ongo­ing build­ing work planned, and sup­port there­fore still very much required from the local com­mu­ni­ty.

——————————————————————————————-

ENDS.

NOTES TO EDITORS:

1) See ‘Tip­ping points’ page at http://www.campbling.org/ for lat­est back­ground data and def­i­n­i­tion of peak oil the­o­ry.

2) Southend Bor­ough Coun­cil lat­est Pri­o­ry Cres­cent cost esti­mate of £11.5m pre­sent­ed to Depart­ment for Trans­port does not include £2m already spent to date.

Bath Bomb 14 hits the streets

Anoth­er issue of Bath’s should-be award win­ning grass­roots pub­li­ca­tion…

anti-cop, right? copy and dis­trib­ute
The Bath Bomb
Issue #14
“All the news the Chron did­n’t Use!”

free/donation

Sept ‘08

Reds, Shite And Booze

Bath Bomb logoAnoth­er issue of Bath’s should-be award win­ning grass­roots pub­li­ca­tion…

anti-cop, right? copy and dis­trib­ute
The Bath Bomb
Issue #14
“All the news the Chron did­n’t Use!”

free/donation

Sept ‘08

Reds, Shite And Booze

Sat­ur­day the 16th of August was to be the sec­ond annu­al Red, White and Blue Fes­ti­val of the BNP, a so-called fam­i­ly event, held on the farm of for­mer Tory coun­cil­lor Alan Warn­er, in Den­by, Der­byshire. Though pitch­ing them­selves as the media-friend­ly ‘Nazi-Lite’ face of mod­ern nation­al­ism, Nick Griffin’s par­ty still can’t quite drag itself away from its hard­line right-wing roots, as betrayed in the pro­gram’s high­lights: talks on ‘her­itage and cul­ture’, night-time nav­i­ga­tion and sur­vival skills, kooky Mor­ris-style danc­ing around a horse skull, stalls sell­ing Union Jack attired gol­li­wogs, and let’s not for­get the Hitler Youth-esque kids’ camp, teach­ing 12-year-olds live ammo marks­man­ship, knife-fight­ing, tech­niques for deal­ing with ‘Marx­ist teach­ers,’ and how to make ‘Dutch arrow’ throw­ing spears (erm.. that does­n’t sound very British). How­ev­er, this insan­i­ty isn’t the sort of shit that ordi­nary peo­ple stand for and, whilst res­i­dents and local activists have been mak­ing plans to shut it down, nation­al­ly, Antifa and the organ­ised Left con­verged.

Though the pow­ers-that-be have no issue with the fas­cist nature of the event, as soon as they realised the storm of resis­tance that was build­ing, police banned the fes­ti­val’s music and liquor licens­es — but did­n’t sub­ject the fes­ti­val to even a mod­icum of the has­sle they did with Cli­mate Camp. Their true colours shined even more so on the day, releas­ing hood­ied-up agents provo­ca­teurs into the 400-strong SWP, UAF, TUC-dom­i­nat­ed march and ral­ly, and Mersey­side cops out­did them­selves by phon­ing and attempt­ing to fit up known anti-fas­cist activists by offer­ing sup­posed lifts to the demo. Whilst the marchers were engag­ing in token pushy-shovey and chant­i­ng with the police line (a lip ser­vice ges­ture to demo­c­ra­t­ic free­dom was made in the form of 30 pro­test­ers escort­ed to the entrance to the fes­ti­val for an insult­ing 15 min­utes, against a hail of BNP abuse), Antifa made their own plans. That morn­ing, 80 masked up and made their way through the under­growth to con­front the fash direct­ly, intend­ing to set up a sys­tem of road­blocks and sab­o­tage. How­ev­er, fol­low­ing the first bar­ri­cade, police vio­lence forced them back and into a string of run­ning bat­tles — cul­mi­nat­ing in more than 30 arrests and one injured cop.

So unfor­tu­nate­ly, RWB was­n’t crashed, but was sur­round­ed by chaos (as well as drunk­en sieg-heils) and vil­lagers are now plead­ing with the BNP not to come back; to add your voice to this request, con­tact Alan Warn­er (The Bun­ga­low, Cod­nor Den­by Lane, Den­by Vil­lage, Der­byshire, DE5 8PT, 01773 748129/ 07810 383595, or alan.warner@w3z.co.uk) or organ­is­er David Shap­cott (6 The Spin­ney, Burn­ley, Lan­cashire, BB12 0PB, 07871 029681). But Antifa’s antics do bring up seri­ous ques­tions — con­sid­er­ing the strate­gic impor­tance of the BNP’s RWB, why did so few oppo­nents put in an appear­ance? And how did small, yet admit­ted­ly rabid, clus­ters of cops put supe­ri­or num­bers of deter­mined mil­i­tants to rout and infight­ing, with thrown bricks occa­sion­al­ly hit­ting their own? Beyond talk of machis­mo, organ­i­sa­tion and vio­lence, per­haps more activists need to focus on their own per­son­al lim­its and be hon­est with them­selves over what threats they are pre­pared to face… Not only for the suc­cess of indi­vid­ual actions and the move­ments’ cred­i­bil­i­ty, but also in terms of both our own safe­ty and that of our com­rades And next year, let’s real­ly stop them!

http://www.antifa.org.uk/
http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/688740
http://netcu.wordpress.com
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2008/09/03/bnp…22309

Sainsbury’s And Tesco — Destroy­ing Com­mu­ni­ties All Over The World

While Tesco threat­ens to infest Bath with crap­py ‘food’ and depress­ing, repet­i­tive jobs under patron­iz­ing boss­es who don’t care about you, Sainsbury’s look set to crawl their way into Odd Down. The site pro­posed by Store­gap Com­mer­cial and Odd Down Devel­op­ments would be the same size as Bath’s Mor­risons. If you’re in favour of good qual­i­ty food prod­ucts made with a regard to ani­mal wel­fare and envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty, work­er’s rights and the fair dis­tri­b­u­tions of wealth — or if you sim­ply hate being rushed around as if you were in a chaot­ic cat­tle mar­ket every time you go out to buy gro­ceries, while being blind­ed by arti­fi­cial light­ing — we’d love to have you on board our cam­paign, aimed at resist­ing super­mar­ket expan­sion and cre­at­ing viable alter­na­tives. Email bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk for more details.

A brief update on the Tesco Express on Bath­wick Hill — orig­i­nal­ly due to open ear­ly this year, now, due to the actions of local com­mu­ni­ty and activists, it’s still yet to open its doors due to the enforce­ment of the con­di­tions they tried to weasel out of com­plet­ing.

Watching/Smashing Up The Watch­ers

Your faith­ful, yet para­noid jour­nal­ists here at Bath Bomb tow­ers have giv­en many col­umn inch­es over the past few months to the increas­ing sur­veil­lance we are sub­ject­ed to nowa­days. Britain is now the most sur­veil­lance-heavy coun­try in the world, nar­row­ly best­ing notable com­peti­tors such as Chi­na and the good ol’ US of A. Indus­try insid­ers have agreed that CCTV is almost use­less in deal­ing with real crimes, such as rape and mur­der, and only real­ly comes in use­ful when deal­ing with those things that only politi­cians and the rich count as crimes, such as shoplift­ing. Tak­ing into account their inef­fi­cien­cy at solv­ing seri­ous crime, it can be sen­si­bly assumed that the prime func­tion of CCTV (on which our per­vy gov­ern­ment spends mil­lions each year) is social con­trol; of spread­ing the idea that you can­not step out of line because you are always being watched. Well, now, final­ly, we have a chance to strike back! Octo­ber the 11th is an inter­na­tion­al day of protest and decen­tralised action against CCTV and sur­veil­lance. Want to be part of the fun? A plas­tic bag or well aimed spray can blast can tem­porar­i­ly dis­able a CCTV cam­era, while ham­mers and screw­drivers can do a much less sub­tle, yet longer last­ing job! Won­der­ing how to access those cam­eras in hard to reach places? A paint­brush tied to a bam­boo stick does the trick! There are lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of legal and ille­gal ways we can strike back against big broth­er, so let’s use the 11th as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to show the state we can live out­side of their con­trol, laws, author­i­ty and oppres­sion. If noth­ing else, use the day as a chance to look a CCTV cam­era (or com­mu­ni­ty sup­port offi­cer) dead in the eye, flip a fin­ger and defi­ant­ly shout (safe in the knowl­edge that thou­sands across the globe are doing the same thing) ‘stop look­ing at me fun­ni­ly you weirdos!’.

CCTV News Part Deux

The Bath Bomb can exclu­sive­ly reveal that Big Broth­er (as in 1984, not that real­i­ty TV farce of squawk­ing, ego­ma­ni­a­cal lobot­o­my-cas­es) is chang­ing the way it inter­feres with The Peo­ple and scape­goats the young. Pre­vi­ous­ly obvi­ous CCTV instal­la­tions are now being gut­ted into redun­dant bluff cam­eras, with the real cam­era place­ments being hid­den near­by in tiny black case­ments, though their lens will still need to be exposed to the light of day. And, it’s also recent­ly emerged that sin­is­ter sci­en­tists at Bath Uni have been spy­ing on Blue­tooth users in the city for the last three years, with­out con­sent, with ‘City­ware’ scan­ners fol­low­ing around 3,000 devices every week­end, fol­low­ing cit­i­zens’ move­ments and shop­ping pat­terns. Tar­get­ed mar­ket­ing, or mark­ing tar­gets? We’ve heard it all. Stay out of trou­ble kids!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jul/21/civilliberties…yfull

The­o­ry Cor­ner Part A: Are All Cops Real­ly Bas­tards?

After read­ing the The­o­ry Cor­ner: ‘Are All Cops Bas­tards?’ arti­cle in July’s issue 12, I got the per­mis­sion of said arti­cle’s author to have my say on this com­plex issue. Yes, the police have devolved from your friend­ly neigh­bour­hood bob­by; the one who made you feel a bit safer, who gave you direc­tions and popped round for a cup of tea (how wrong can you go with old TV pro­grammes as your barom­e­ter for real­i­ty?) They’ve gone from this to a mind­less mass automa­ton who go on pow­er trips and think that any­one who finds them­selves at a demon­stra­tion of any sort, be they strong or not so strong, young or not so young, deserves to at best be spo­ken to in a patron­iz­ing man­ner and at worst be man­han­dled away and arrest­ed for no good rea­son.

BUT, and this is a big but. Tak­ing it as read that the ulti­mate goal of ‘chang­ing the world’ is, in fact, to make that world a bet­ter place for every­one, then we have to realise that cops are in fact human, despite the lengths they can go to try to hide this fact. Take away the uni­form, the weapons, the smug above-you atti­tude and you will find some­one with the same basic needs and desires as every­one else. I’m sure the answer is not to engage in this cat-and-mouse rela­tion­ship with them, slag­ging them off (though they often have no qualms about doing the same to us — for exam­ple the sick­en­ing com­ments on the ‘Police Inspec­tor’s Blog’), just as that is not the way to go with the Rich, though that is anoth­er arti­cle. This, to me, seems a lazy way of going about things that will just enable the sta­tus quo to be kept; we get to make our jokes about PC Plod and nev­er have to come to terms with the fact that they will be part of this new soci­ety.

I don’t know what the way for­ward is, I think it is a slow path, where we get out of our cosy activist cor­ners and mix with peo­ple of all walks of life, even those who make us feel ill with what they’re doing to the world. We wel­come peo­ple and talk to them about our way of life, with­out judg­ing or forc­ing any­one to see it our way. Some will come over to our side. Some will resist, but we nev­er know what effect our view­point is hav­ing on them. It is hard to change, and won’t hap­pen over night. But only with these small vic­to­ries and grad­ual changes will any real and last­ing change ever come about. To describe a group of peo­ple as large­ly irre­deemable, will cause defen­sive­ness — we have to believe in the pos­si­bil­i­ty in peo­ple to change, whether they show us any proof of this or not. You can do so much more with peace and wel­come than you can with vio­lence, judge­ment and iso­la­tion — isn’t that what ‘our side’ is all about? After all, this oth­er way’s been tried so many times before, in fact it’s all we as a human race has ever done, and has it ever worked? With this dis­mis­sive atti­tude we con­demn our­selves to a lim­it­ed suc­cess, when with all our skills, ener­gy, ideas and com­pas­sion, we can achieve so much more.

http://inspectorgadget.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/young‑m…n‑go/ (police inspec­tor’s blog)
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&…34851 (newslet­ter issue 12)

Stop The Wars, Stop The Walls & Stop Wall Street

Despite what the Dai­ly Mail would have us believe, we are all now a wit­ness to an unprece­dent­ed rise in bor­der man­age­ment and social con­trol. Neo-Labour is at the fore­front of this squeeze, and are hold­ing their annu­al par­ty con­fer­ence in Man­ches­ter this month. Coin­cid­ing with this, with vio­lence peak­ing in Afghanistan, drag­ging on in Iraq, and break­ing in Geor­gia, Stop The War have called for a ‘Troops Out’ march on Sat­ur­day the 20th at 12 mid­day, and the UK No Bor­ders net­work have also jumped in — anti-author­i­tar­i­ans and all oth­ers against bor­ders, states and war can con­sid­er them­selves humbly invit­ed to join the ‘Free­dom of Move­ment’ bloc, assem­bling at the north end of Albert Square — fol­low the red and black flags!

http://www.manchesternoborders.org.uk
http://www.stopwar.org.uk
http://www.acbar.org
http://www.bathstopwar.org.uk/

Racist BIAs­tards Feel The Heat In Bris­tol

In oth­er immi­gra­tion-relat­ed news, No Bor­ders activists recent­ly paid a vis­it to the British Immi­gra­tion Author­i­ty offices in Por­tishead. BIA round up failed immi­gra­tion appli­cants for forced depor­ta­tion. Favourite tac­tics include ‘dawn raids’, intend­ed to round up the whole fam­i­ly before the kids can get to school. Recent brave deeds by our jack­boot­ed friends have includ­ed the forced removal of a Columbian sin­gle moth­er from the Bris­tol area, her 7‑year-old son send­ing a let­ter to his class mates from a deten­tion cen­tre read­ing ‘I don’t know why I am here, they have put me in prison, but I promise I haven’t done any­thing wrong’. When activists arrived at the Por­tishead BIA cen­tre, from which Bath and Bris­tol dawn raids are launched, the build­ings’ locks were glued, the entire fleet of vehi­cles used for dawn raids were destroyed with span­ners, etch­ing flu­id and paint strip­per and the slo­gan ‘racist thugs work here’ was daubed over walls for all to see. BIA rep­re­sent the sharp end of the state’s racist war on asy­lum seek­ers, who, hav­ing fled per­se­cu­tion, ter­ror and tor­ture, ask only for a safe place to live, and not to be deport­ed to cer­tain death and impris­on­ment. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the major­i­ty find out the hard way that gov­ern­ment the world over is a bru­tal mech­a­nism for the repres­sion and incar­cer­a­tion of ordi­nary peo­ple. We must stand side by side with oth­er oppressed peo­ples strug­gling for a decent stan­dard of life, and like the BIA sabo­teurs, fight for a world with­out bor­ders or gov­ern­ments, and respond by any means nec­es­sary to the vio­lent and destruc­tive forces of state and cap­i­tal.

Frothy Cin­e­mat­ic Under­cur­rents

After the sum­mer break, the Bub­bling Under series of rad­i­cal film lunch­es will return to the big[ish]screen at the Porter Cel­lar, start­ing again on Sun­day the 28th Sep­tem­ber, from 1 til 4pm, free entry. This month, we will be show­ing a cou­ple of film­lets — one about the recent Camp for Cli­mate Action in Kent, and the oth­er about the upcom­ing Shut I.T.T./Smash EDO day of action in Brighton, fol­low­ing up on June’s suc­cess­ful Car­ni­val Against the Arms Trade. Come along for great grub, food for thought, and mediocre com­pa­ny! Drop us a line if you have any ideas for upcom­ing films, to show on the third Sun­day of the month.

http://www.smashedo.org.uk/shut-itt.htm
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/

The­o­ry Cor­ner Part B: Meta­mor­pho­sis and Lib­er­a­tion

It’s all too easy to feel help­less in the face of the state, like a tiny cog in a tow­er­ing machine. Reli­gion and tele­vi­sion preach the impor­tance of “find­ing your­self” and “stay­ing true” to that self once you’ve found it. But we should­n’t feel trapped and lim­it­ed by our genes and the expe­ri­ences and con­di­tion­ing soci­ety has giv­en us — we have no true self and life should be about cre­at­ing it, not find­ing it! As human beings we have a vast poten­tial for self-change. The aware­ness of the abil­i­ty you pos­sess to change your­self can be extreme­ly lib­er­at­ing. It’s impor­tant to start small — choose a habit at ran­dom you wish to adopt or elim­i­nate. At first, this should be some­thing so sim­ple you can’t fail at it, like hav­ing an extra sug­ar in your tea each morn­ing. Keep the same goal for two or three weeks, and scrib­ble it on a post-it note and stick it to the fridge, if this helps you remem­ber. There are all sorts of self-hyp­no­sis tech­niques that can help. Focus­ing intent­ly on your goal while in an altered state of con­scious­ness accessed by med­i­ta­tion, danc­ing, drum­ming, chant­i­ng, orgasm, art… (try star­ing intent­ly at your­self in a mir­ror while try­ing not to let your eyes dis­tort the image) are all ways to do this. Remem­ber to ground after­wards! Laugh­ter helps.

It’s impor­tant to set a new tar­get once you’re done with the old one. Start small and your con­fi­dence and self-dis­ci­pline will grow so long as you make willed self-change a habit. Work up to big­ger goals and you’ll realise that things you thought you could­n’t do are total­ly pos­si­ble — con­fronting a pho­bia, going veg­an, tak­ing direct action. Elim­i­nat­ing fears and smash­ing taboos (eat­ing food from skips, act­ing odd­ly in pub­lic) can be so empow­er­ing and widen your range of pos­si­ble expe­ri­ences.

http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/chaos/rites/beyondwa.…html

EVENTS

Mon­days
Bath Hunt Sabs Meet­ing, 8pm, Bell
Wednes­days
Lon­don Rd Food Co-op, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, 4–7pm
Sat­ur­days
Bath Stop The War Vig­il, Abbey Court­yard, 11.30–12.30
Sat­ur­day 20th Sept
No Wars No Bor­ders, All Saints Park, Man­ches­ter, 12.30
Fri­day 26th Sept
Anti-foie gras demo, out­side Mini­bar, John St, 7–9pm
Sun­day 28th Sept
Bub­bling Under, the Porter Cel­lar Bar 1–4pm
Wednes­day 1st Oct
Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, back room of the Bell, 7.30–8.30pm
Thurs­day 2nd Oct
Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, Hob­gob­lin, down­stairs 7.30–9pm
Fri­day & Sat­ur­day 3–4th Oct
No Bor­ders Fest, TJs, New­port
Sat­ur­day 11th Octo­ber
Day of action against sur­veil­lance
Sat­ur­day 11th Oct
West­side Cli­mate Camp Gath­er­ing, Wind­mill Hill City Farm, Bris­tol, 10–5
Sat­ur­day 11th Oct
Bath Freeshop, Stall St, 12–3pm
Wednes­day 15th Oct
Smash I.T.T, opp Falmer Sta­tion, Brighton, meet 12noon

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

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…

Q: Who Are Bath Activist Net­work? A: 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

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Con­tact us by e‑mailing bathbombpress@yahoo.co.uk. Large print e‑versions avail­able on request.

Peru: Amazon Indians Direct Action Against Government

Thou­sands of Ama­zon Indi­ans are protest­ing against the Peru­vian gov­ern­ment. Protests have been going on for more than a week and involve an esti­mat­ed 14,000 Indi­ans from all over the Peru­vian Ama­zon. A road and a riv­er have been block­ad­ed, boats belong­ing to a gas com­pa­ny have been inter­cept­ed, an oil pipeline has been closed, and a hydro­elec­tric plant has been tak­en over.
The protests are in response to new laws passed by the gov­ern­ment. The Indi­ans say the laws under­mine their rights and make it eas­i­er for com­pa­nies to take con­trol of their ter­ri­to­ries.

Thou­sands of Ama­zon Indi­ans are protest­ing against the Peru­vian gov­ern­ment. Protests have been going on for more than a week and involve an esti­mat­ed 14,000 Indi­ans from all over the Peru­vian Ama­zon. A road and a riv­er have been block­ad­ed, boats belong­ing to a gas com­pa­ny have been inter­cept­ed, an oil pipeline has been closed, and a hydro­elec­tric plant has been tak­en over.
The protests are in response to new laws passed by the gov­ern­ment. The Indi­ans say the laws under­mine their rights and make it eas­i­er for com­pa­nies to take con­trol of their ter­ri­to­ries.

‘(We) are the vic­tims of a sys­tem­at­ic vio­la­tion by the Peru­vian state of the fun­da­men­tal rights we have over our ter­ri­to­ries,’ a state­ment from Peru’s nation­al Ama­zon Indi­an organ­i­sa­tion, AIDESEP, said. ‘The per­son respon­si­ble for this is the pres­i­dent, Alan Gar­cia, who has vio­lat­ed Peru’s con­sti­tu­tion and inter­na­tion­al agree­ments pro­tect­ing indige­nous peo­ples’ rights.’

AIDESEP and oth­er indige­nous lead­ers have been in talks with mem­bers of the gov­ern­ment, but these have since bro­ken down. Peru’s prime min­is­ter has said that talks can resume if the protests are called off.

The protests start­ed on August 9, the UN Day for Indige­nous Peo­ples. One of the Indi­ans’ main com­plaints is that the gov­ern­ment has failed to con­sult them about the new leg­is­la­tion, con­tra­ven­ing inter­na­tion­al law and the recent­ly approved UN Dec­la­ra­tion on Indige­nous Peo­ples’ rights.

AIDESEP has called for the protest to go on ‘indef­i­nite­ly’ until their demands are met. These include the repeal of thir­ty-nine laws.

Protests by thou­sands of Ama­zon Indi­ans across the Peru­vian jun­gle have had major impacts on the Peru­vian gov­ern­ment.

The protests have been in response to new laws passed by the gov­ern­ment that the Indi­ans say under­mine their rights and make it eas­i­er for out­siders to seize con­trol of their ter­ri­to­ries.

Fol­low­ing the protests, Peru’s Con­gres­sion­al Com­mis­sion on Andean, Ama­zon­ian and Afro-Peru­vian peo­ples, the Envi­ron­ment and Ecol­o­gy has pro­posed a bill to repeal the two most con­tro­ver­sial laws — Leg­isla­tive Decrees 1015 and 1073. Con­gress is due to vote today on whether to do so.

Peru’s prime min­is­ter has described the Com­mis­sion’s deci­sion as estab­lish­ing ‘a bad prece­dent’ because it was made in response to the protests. Mean­while, Peru’s pres­i­dent appealed to Con­gress not to repeal the two laws, say­ing it would be a ‘his­tor­i­cal­ly seri­ous mis­take’ and would con­demn Indi­an com­mu­ni­ties to ‘anoth­er cen­tu­ry of back­ward­ness and mis­ery.’

The gov­ern­ment has declared a state of emer­gency in some parts of the Peru­vian Ama­zon. There are reports of police fir­ing bul­lets and spray­ing tear gas to dis­perse crowds, leav­ing some Indi­ans wound­ed.

Reports say that Peru’s nation­al Ama­zon Indi­an organ­i­sa­tion, AIDESEP, has called for a sus­pen­sion of the protests.