Billionaire’s for Coal strike in Bank of America’s home state, 4 protests in 3 days

July 11th 2008

Bank of America, Asheville protestJuly 11th 2008
Today Asheville Ris­ing Tide’s bil­lion­aire bloc descend­ed on Bank of America’s region­al head­quar­ters to demand that BoA con­tin­ue to invest their mon­ey in coal. The Bil­lion­aires for Coal car­ried signs read­ing “More Prof­it, Less Moun­tains” and sipped on dirty (coal) mar­ti­nis to applaud BoA for its fund­ing of moun­tain­top removal coal min­ing as well as the new gen­er­a­tion of dirty coal plants. The Asheville Police Depart­ment did an excel­lent job of block­ing access to the bank entrance and the ATM sure­ly scar­ing off a num­ber of bank cus­tomers.

Two days before, activists with Croatan Earth First! vis­it­ed three Bank of Amer­i­ca branch­es in Raleigh and Chapel Hill. The activist entered the banks rais­ing a ruckus and hand­ing out fliers to cus­tomers until being forced to leave. The mot­ley crew of bil­lion­aires then pro­ceed­ed to demon­strate out­side and inform­ing the pub­lic of BoA’s dirty deeds. A few weeks before sev­er­al activists were detained by police in Char­lotte, NC (BoA’s home­town) for hang­ing anti-coal poster’s in the neigh­bor­hoods of sev­er­al BoA exec­u­tives homes. After inten­sive inter­ro­ga­tion, they were let go with­out charge (remem­ber kids, nev­er talk to cops).

Bank of Amer­i­ca is guilty of fund­ing such noto­ri­ous human rights abusers and eco­log­i­cal destroy­ers as Massey Ener­gy, Arch Coal, and Peabody Ener­gy. They have recent­ly hand­ed over heaps of cash to com­pa­nies such as Duke Ener­gy that is cur­rent­ly build­ing the 800 MW Cliff­side coal plant in Cliff­side, NC.

Spirit of Freedom (July 2008)

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)

Prisoner Solidarity 8Pro­duced 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 July 2008 edi­tion of Spir­it of Free­dom. As a num­ber of ELP sup­port­ers will be aware, ELP has tra­di­tion­al­ly ded­i­cat­ed our newslet­ters to fall­en friends, who have either been killed or seri­ous­ly injured as a result of their protest activ­i­ties. For the past few months ELP has­n’t car­ried any ded­i­ca­tion and we hoped that we would not have to ded­i­cate anoth­er newslet­ter to a fall­en friend again. How­ev­er last month, ELP received the heart­break­ing news about the death of Marie Vesco. Marie was a French activist liv­ing in Eng­land. She was involved with a num­ber of groups includ­ing ‘Food Not Bombs’. On Wednes­day the 4th of June 2008 Marie was cycling to the Car­ni­val Against the Arms Trade when a Four Wheel Dri­ve
vehi­cle (an SUV if your Amer­i­can) swerved across two lanes hit­ting Marie. A sec­ond vehi­cle then also hit Marie. Marie died instant­ly: she was just a few days away from her 20th birth­day. Marie is remem­bered as a warm, loud, fun, viva­cious fig­ure with an infec­tious laugh that was always ready to help oth­ers. ELP under­stands that at least two Crit­i­cal Mass cycle rides have already been ded­i­cat­ed to Marie. Like­wise in mem­o­ry of Marie ELP is ded­i­cat­ing this newslet­ter to her mem­o­ry. The loss of Marie is a blow for the move­ment and our thoughts are with her fam­i­ly and friends.

ECO-DEFENCE PRISONERS

Tre Arrow, SWIS #640393, Mult­nom­ah Coun­ty Deten­tion Cen­ter, 1120 S.W. 3rd Avenue, Port­land, Ore­gon 97206, USA. Await­ing sen­tenc­ing of six and a half years impris­on­ment hav­ing reached a non-coop­er­a­tion plea-bar­gain with the author­i­ties who accuse him of involve­ment in two 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 Board­er 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).

Rod Coro­n­a­do — See details in Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers List.

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).

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).

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, Colum­bia Coun­ty Jail, 403 Jack­son Street, Portage, Wis­con­sin 53901, 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, FDC — Seat­ac, Fed­er­al Deten­tion Cen­ter, P.O. Box 13900, Seat­tle, WA 98198, 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).

Gregg Avery TA7450, HMP Win­ches­ter, Rom­sey Road, Win­ches­ter, SO22 5DF, Eng­land. On remand accused of con­spir­a­cy to black­mail, in rela­tion to his involve­ment with the SHAC cam­paign. (Gregg is a veg­an).

Natasha Avery NR8987, HMP Bronze­field, Woodthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx. TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. Jailed for breach­ing her parole con­di­tions imposed on her for telling a fox hunt­ing mur­der­ing scum what she thought of them. Also await­ing tri­al accused of con­spir­a­cy to black­mail, in rela­tion to her involve­ment with the SHAC cam­paign. (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).

Mar­tin Bal­luch, Anti­rep 2008, Post­fach 101, 1070, Vien­na, Aus­tria. One of ten Aus­tri­an’s held on remand accused of var­i­ous ani­mal rights actions. (Mar­tin is a veg­an)

Christoph, Anti­rep 2008, Post­fach 101, 1070, Vien­na, Aus­tria. One of ten Aus­tri­an’s held on remand accused of var­i­ous ani­mal rights actions. At the moment Christo­pher does not wish to have his full name pub­lished.

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).

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. (Rod is a veg­e­tar­i­an).

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).

Sarah Gis­borne, LT5393, HMP Down­view, Sut­ton Lane, Sut­ton, Sur­rey, SM2 5PD, Eng­land. Serv­ing 5½ years for con­spir­a­cy to cause crim­i­nal dam­age fol­low­ing the dam­ag­ing of 8 vehi­cles owned by peo­ple linked to Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ence. Due for release at the end of July (Sarah 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).

Jan, Anti­rep 2008, Post­fach 101, 1070, Vien­na, Aus­tria. One of ten Aus­tri­an ‘s held on remand accused of var­i­ous ani­mal rights actions. At the moment Jan does not wish to have his full name pub­lished.

Kevin Kroem­mer, Anti­rep 2008, Post­fach 101, 1070, Vien­na, Aus­tria. One of ten Aus­tri­an’s held on remand accused of var­i­ous ani­mal rights actions. (Kevin is a veg­an)

Leo, Anti­rep 2008, Post­fach 101, 1070, Vien­na, Aus­tria. One of ten Aus­tri­an’s held on remand accused of var­i­ous ani­mal rights actions. At the moment Leo does not wish to have his full name pub­lished.

Sabine, Anti­rep 2008, Post­fach 101, 1070, Vien­na, Aus­tria. One of ten Aus­tri­an’s held on remand accused of var­i­ous ani­mal rights actions. At the moment Sabine does not wish to have their full name pub­lished.

Sean Kirt­ley WC 6977, HM Prison Blak­en­hurst, Hewell Lane, Red­ditch, B97 6QS, 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).

Andrew Stepan­ian #26399–050, FCI But­ner Medi­um II Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, PO Box 1500, But­ner, NC 27509 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 FIVE
The Lec­ce Five 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).

Augustin Kraus, Vazeb­ni veznice, PP‑1, Lit­o­merice, 41 201, Czech Repub­lic. Serv­ing 14 months for his par­tic­i­pa­tion in attacks against local neo-nazis. His charge was “bod­i­ly harm”. He speaks Czech, Slo­vak and Pol­ish. You can
also write him short post­cards in Eng­lish. (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).

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).

Michael W. Sykes, 100 East 2nd St, Mon­roe, Michi­gan 48161, 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

Products expropriation from supermarket (Athens, 1/7/2008)

“Anoth­er nov­el rob­bery of foods was realised at Marinopou­los super­mar­ket on Evdok­sos street, Neos Kos­mos. Unknown per­sons entered the super mar­ket as mere cus­tomers, filled their trol­leys with foods and left the store with­out pay­ing. Con­tin­u­ous­ly, they dis­trib­uted the foods at the peo­ple shoop­ing in a near­by open mar­ket, throw­ing leaflets with slo­gans against cost­li­ness…”

“Anoth­er nov­el rob­bery of foods was realised at Marinopou­los super­mar­ket on Evdok­sos street, Neos Kos­mos. Unknown per­sons entered the super mar­ket as mere cus­tomers, filled their trol­leys with foods and left the store with­out pay­ing. Con­tin­u­ous­ly, they dis­trib­uted the foods at the peo­ple shoop­ing in a near­by open mar­ket, throw­ing leaflets with slo­gans against cost­li­ness…”

Trans­la­tion from: http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=887219

Today around 12:30 an inter­ven­tion was realised at Marinopou­los super­marked on Evdok­sos street, at Neos Kos­mos. The peo­ple’s behav­iour was encour­ag­ing and sup­port­ive. A typ­i­cal exam­ple of that is that dur­ing the expro­pri­a­tion, out­side the store peo­ple gath­ered with their wheel-carts wait­ing for the prod­ucts dis­tri­b­u­tion.

Fol­low­ing is the text dis­trib­uted at the open mar­ket.

Every day that pass­es we expe­ri­ence intense­ly the con­se­quences of the increas­ing raise of prices the cap­i­tal is enforc­ing on soci­ety, the same time that wages and pen­sions remain at the same poor lev­el, lead­ing us below sur­vival lim­its. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, every kind of experts and respon­si­bles, cry out for the con­tin­u­ous raise of prices sug­gest­ing “boy­cottage” styled solu­tions that lead to the illu­sion of a stronge reac­tion to the prob­lem.
We select to react tak­ing prod­ucts of basic needs from shelves of large super­mar­ket chain stores and dis­trib­ut­ing them freely to those that they belong to.
We do not regard our action as rob­bery, because these prod­ucts are the fruits of our own exploit­ed work and belong to all of us.
This action isn’t altru­is­tic, but a sym­bol­ism with the aim to encour­age the social ensem­ble to an uncon­strained, free cir­cu­la­tion of goods and the con­scious eras­ing of the cash desks, over­com­ing the legal lim­i­ta­tions. For the gen­er­al­i­sa­tion of the chal­leng­ing of state and cap­i­tal.
Our choice to act with our faces cov­ered does­n’t mean in any case to fright­en the peo­ple, but to our per­son­al secu­ri­ty against those that think our action is ille­git­i­mate.

Ini­tia­tive of anar­chists for the free cir­cu­la­tion of goods

Note: It is the fourth of this kind of expro­pri­a­tions. Pre­vi­ous­ly, there were Sklaveni­tis on 31/5 and Veropou­los and DIA on 13/6

On the arson of Sprider store (Athens, 28/6/2008)

“After put­ing off the fire, fire­men found gas can­is­ters inside the store, a fact lead­ing invsti­ga­tions to an arson case, and police takes over…”

Sprider shop burnt“After put­ing off the fire, fire­men found gas can­is­ters inside the store, a fact lead­ing invsti­ga­tions to an arson case, and police takes over…”

Com­mu­nique sent via e‑mail to directactiongr@yahoo.gr:

On June 28, 2008 we chose to strike one of the well-known Sprid­er chain stores, at Lykovris­si. This choise was­n’t ran­dom at all.

We live an every day life turned into an are­na of com­pe­ti­tion as well as accu­mu­la­tion and demon­stra­tion of life­less objects. The expen­sive car, the classy out­fit, the new mobile phone and fast inter­net are the mod­ern val­ues of your world. The con­sumer crowds grum­bles over cost­li­ness while they buy off at their shop­ping ther­a­py a piece of “joy” and a ster­ile image of suc­cess and show-off. In our days, humans seek for an iden­ti­ty at the new acces­sories of their mobile phones, their cars’ cov­ers and fash­ion trends. And every­thing seems cool.

It is enough for one to choose, of Sat­ur­day night’s dilem­ma between Kolon­a­ki or Psyrri area, the right dress, the appro­pri­ate mobile phone and most of all that fake smile, to impress every­body around.

When it comes to every­day life, the lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, lone­li­ness, the slow sui­cide of alien­ation, the servi­tude to a job, the cops’ orders, the reporter’s truth, the boss­es’ exploita­tion… Who cares about all that? Besides, they’re not even a life-style trend to be adver­tised and fol­lowed faith­ful­ly.

Thus, all of you faith­ful con­sumers, titled with mis­ery and pro­pri­etors of the lie can keep dress­ing up your fan­cy noth­ing­ness tis­sued with all the shades of com­pro­mise and indif­fer­ence. We instead have cho­sen for our­selves the col­ors of war: As long as our life suf­fo­cates in the tis­sue of com­mer­cial adver­tise, use­less objects, styl­ish orders and all the sym­bols of a con­sumer par­adise, our rage with con­sious­ness will keep search­ing for break-outs.

We had writ­ten in our com­mu­nique con­cern­ing our pre­vi­ous strike against the Aiga­leo Police Sta­tion, that we do not need an inci­dent or a con­cur­rence to get to action. Now though, we come with an event. On July 11, 2008 the com­rades Mar­ios Tsoura­pas and Chris­sos­to­mos Kon­tore­vithakis face a jury, for their arson­ist attempt against a munic­i­pal police car, an action they have claimed respon­si­bil­i­ty for, and stand up to it.

All we have to say on that, is that the mate­r­i­al dam­ages and the total destruc­tion of this lux­u­ri­ous store are illus­tra­tive of our wil­ful­ness, in case of our com­rades impris­on­ment con­tin­ues.

Gangs of Con­science

Note: You can read the pre­vi­ous claim of the Gangs of Con­science (Sym­mories Syni­di­sis) on their attack against Aiga­leo Police Sta­tion here:
http://directactiongr.blogspot.com/2008/05/attack-against-police-station-plus.html

Double supermarket expropriation (Athens, 13/6/2008)

“Today at 13:30 goods of basic neces­si­ty were expro­pri­at­ed from 2 super­mar­kets (Veropou­los and DIA) and hand­ed out in the open mar­ket of M. Voda. Fol­low­ing is the com­mu­nique dis­trib­uted at Veropou­los.

Thou­sands of super­mar­kets so full of goods, why don’t we just pil­lage them for our old age! ‑N. Asi­mos

“Today at 13:30 goods of basic neces­si­ty were expro­pri­at­ed from 2 super­mar­kets (Veropou­los and DIA) and hand­ed out in the open mar­ket of M. Voda. Fol­low­ing is the com­mu­nique dis­trib­uted at Veropou­los.

Thou­sands of super­mar­kets so full of goods, why don’t we just pil­lage them for our old age! ‑N. Asi­mos

Final­ly! the super­mar­ket and cor­po­ra­tion sharks frozen the prices of their prod­ucts! Some of them were even more gen­er­ous reduc­ing their prices, in order to raise the “pur­chas­ing pow­er” of the con­sumers. In sim­pler words: to gain more! As we can tell that no one takes into account this bull­shit about a so-called price reduc­tion, we put into action again our own “pack of mea­sures” against cost­li­ness, expro­pri­a­tiong foods and basic stuff from large super­mar­kets.

PS. As far as it con­cers our cov­ered faces, we say that: keep­ing in mind that soci­ety is yet unready and uneasy to lis­ten close­ly and sup­port these facts, so we think it’s nec­es­sary to adopt the basic mea­sures for our own secu­ri­ty, against the sys­tems of secu­ri­ty and repres­sion mech­a­nisms, in order to con­tin­ue live and act freely. THE ONLY MEASURE AGAINST COSTLINESS IS THE EXPROPRIATION. MASSIVE INVASION IN THE SUPERMARKETS TO TAKE BACK ALL THAT BELONG TO US.

Angry anar­chists against cost­li­ness”

From: http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=880457

CANCELLED — Survival Picket in Solidarity with the Dongria Kondh Tribe — Stop Vendanta Mining Orissa, India.

The Don­gria Kondh tribe of India and the land they live in is threat­ened with destruc­tion by the UK com­pa­ny Vedan­ta. Vedan­ta wants to cre­ate a giant open-cast mine on the Don­gria Kond­h’s sacred moun­tain, destroy­ing the lush forests that grow there and pol­lut­ing the rivers.

Dongria Khonds in the State CapitolThe Don­gria Kondh tribe of India and the land they live in is threat­ened with destruc­tion by the UK com­pa­ny Vedan­ta. Vedan­ta wants to cre­ate a giant open-cast mine on the Don­gria Kond­h’s sacred moun­tain, destroy­ing the lush forests that grow there and pol­lut­ing the rivers. The Don­gria Kond­h’s lives will be com­plete­ly dev­as­tat­ed.

The Sur­vival demon­stra­tion out­side Coutts Bank pre­vi­ous­ly adver­tised on this web­site planned for the 10th June has been can­celled. In reac­tion to the planned pick­et Coutts has just informed Sur­vival that they no longer hold shares in Vedan­ta, the British-based com­pa­ny whose planned baux­ite mine will dev­as­tate the lands of Indi­a’s Don­gria Kondh tribe. More info to fol­low.

—-

WHERE? Out­side Coutts Bank, 440 Strand, Lon­don
WHEN? Tues­day 10th June 2008, 18.45 — 20.00

WHAT IS THE EVENT?

Coutts Bank hold shares in Vedan­ta. When Vedan­ta makes mon­ey, Coutts make mon­ey, so they are prof­it­ing from the abuse of the Don­gria Kondh.

On 10th June Coutts are host­ing the open­ing par­ty of Lon­don Jew­ellery Week, which they are spon­sor­ing. Sur­vival will be there, urg­ing Coutts to with­draw its shares in Vedan­ta, and to recog­nise the rights of the Don­gria Kondh to live inde­pen­dent­ly on their own land.

For direc­tions, please see the fol­low­ing link:
http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?x=530188&y=180575&z

Back­ground info:

There are 8,000 Don­gria Kondh liv­ing in the Niyam­giri Hills in Oris­sa, India.

The Niyam­giri Hills are an area of out­stand­ing nat­ur­al beau­ty, rich in wildlife and dense forests. The Don­gria Kondh farm the hill slopes, grow­ing crops in among the for­est and gath­er­ing wild fruit, flow­ers and leaves for sale. Their lifestyle and reli­gion have pro­tect­ed the forests of Niyam­giri for cen­turies.

The top of the moun­tain, which is wor­shiped by the Don­gria Kondh as the seat of their god, has rich deposits of the alu­mini­um ore baux­ite.

The min­ing project would lead to dis­place­ment of thou­sands of trib­al peo­ple and destroy bio­di­ver­si­ty and water sources. Niyam­giri hills are the source of Vamshad­hara Riv­er and major trib­u­taries of Nagaveli rivers – sacred to the Khonds. A large num­ber of wildlife species includ­ing tiger, leop­ards, ele­phant and mouse deer also abode in Niyam­giri hills. Many of these species are endan­gered. In the past, efforts have been made by var­i­ous gov­ern­men­tal and non-gov­ern­men­tal bod­ies to declare Niyam­giri hills as sanc­tu­ary or reserve area to pro­tect its pris­tine nat­ur­al habi­tat.

The local resis­tance against the project start­ed with the land acqui­si­tion process but because of the poor eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal clout of Don­gria Kondhs, their voic­es and con­cerns are ignored by local and state author­i­ties. This is hard­ly sur­pris­ing giv­en the Oris­sa gov­ern­men­t’s thrust on ‘accel­er­at­ing eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment’ by hand­ing over rich nat­ur­al resources to big pri­vate com­pa­nies, both domes­tic and for­eign, for a pit­tance. Pres­sure on the finan­cial back­ers of the scheme in Europe has already result­ed in sig­nif­i­cant dis­in­vest­ment is Nor­way and sim­i­lar action in the UK could real­ly stregth­en the tribes hand.

More Details can be found on the web­site of ‘Sur­vival — The Move­ment For Trib­al Peo­ple’:

http://www.survival-international.org/tribes/dongria

Direct Action Greece: 17th — 22nd May

Appelate Court’s expan­sion works sab­o­taged with fire (ATHENS)
Attack against the munic­i­pal police of Ilioupoli (ATHENS)
Bank fire­bombed (LOANNINA)
Uni­ver­si­ty rec­tors elec­tions sab­o­taged (ATHENS-PIRAEUS)
Sur­veil­lance cam­eras destroyed dur­ing squaters sol­i­dar­i­ty march (ATHENS)

Fence removal, AthensAppelate Court’s expan­sion works sab­o­taged with fire (ATHENS)
Attack against the munic­i­pal police of Ilioupoli (ATHENS)
Bank fire­bombed (LOANNINA)
Uni­ver­si­ty rec­tors elec­tions sab­o­taged (ATHENS-PIRAEUS)
Sur­veil­lance cam­eras destroyed dur­ing squaters sol­i­dar­i­ty march (ATHENS)
Fenc­ing bars around the poly­tech­nic school dis­man­tled (ATHENS)
Arson­ists hit a bank (THESSALONIKI)

Appelate Court’s expan­sion works sab­o­taged with fire (Athens, 22/5/2008)
This is a trans­la­tion of a claim sent to directactiongr@yahoo.gr:

“In the dawn of Thurs­day, MAy 22, we invad­ed the con­struc­tion site of the appelate court on Loukare­os street and moved into burn­ing up three machin­ery-vehi­cles, sab­o­tag­ing the con­struc­tion of the new court build­ings. With this inva­sion we dis­man­tled the pres­tige of the ene­my, strik­ing in one of the most for­mi­da­ble occu­pied spots of the city. Our action is wil­ful, to set the jus­tice itself on fire. Its nature, its ide­ol­o­gy, its insti­tu­tions.

It isn’t just the arro­gance and venge­ful­ness of the judges, the des­o­la­tion and anger in the faces of the accused, the agony to find the mon­ey, the fear of fac­ing prison. They are all part of this, that’s for sure. Jus­tice lies in the core of democ­ra­cy. It defends with a deci­sive vio­lence, direct­ly all inter­ests of this world. It has con­science of its role, its mean­ing today. It is clothed with all the demo­c­ra­t­ic ali­bis. The rules of courts, the high-court’s opin­ions, the laws, do not sim­ply safe­guard the regime. They are unceas­ing attacks with the aim to con­trol and man­age, to sub­or­di­nate every moment of our lives. The 10.000 pris­on­ers [note: the num­ber of the greek state’s pris­on­ers], the cam­eras that got legal­ized, the strik­ers sum­moned, the asy­lum bro­ken, indi­cate them. These are not mis­takes, we don’t talk about a few judges that don’t do their job well. We talk of the mod­ern mar­tial courts that safe­guard the dom­i­nant order. We speak of judges that dis­trib­ute 50 years in prison, every day, and then watch watch Lazopou­los on their TVs [note: a greek pop­ulist come­di­an com­ment­ing on the sys­tem’s faults]. And all of these, under the wrap­per of inde­pen­dance and unselfish­ness. In order to shut up the ques­tions, to blur crit­ics, to enforce as truth, inside every­one’s con­science this truth that is revealed in the threats and guilty silences.

That’s because jus­tice, apart from a mech­a­nism of sub­or­do­na­tion, is a tool to rearrange the social rela­tions. Dis­ci­pline, a sense of fair­ness, fear, are fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of inte­gra­tion of pro­hi­bi­tions on the total­i­ty of the social body. The civ­i­liza­tion of law­full and out­law, of fair and injust, of good and evil, is a civ­i­liza­tion that muti­lates social rela­tions. Is a civ­i­liza­tion of depen­den­cy from a venge­ful jus­tice sys­tem. Its val­ues end up to sys­tem­atize jus­tice to a machin­ery of indi­vid­u­als super­vis­ing each oth­er. Inse­cu­ri­ty, snitch­ing and fear for the oth­er, con­sti­tute behav­iours of the per­fec­tion of the mod­ern pat­tern of social orga­ni­za­tion. This sys­tem is n’t applied only inside the court hous­es but also in every expres­sion of our every­day life.

The new cour­t­house halls, the new high-sevu­ri­ty pris­ons, the pro­hi­bi­tions that pro­lif­er­ate, pave the way for the future offen­sives. Against the admin­is­tra­tion of jus­tice, we take vengeance on this world of author­i­ties untill its total over­throw.

Coman­do “Chris­tos Tsout­sou­vis”

PS. Our every hit is a beat of our heart. And our heart beats fierce­ly close to the hearts of our cap­tive com­rades. This action is ded­i­cat­ed to Gior­gos Vout­sis-Vogiatzis, impris­oned for rob­bing the ETE bank in Gizi.

Few notes: There is an old­er action claimed for “Coman­do Chris­tos Tsout­sou­vis” in Thes­sa­loni­ki, 2007: “On Tues­day 15 May, 22 years after the assas­si­na­tion of the armed guer­ril­la Chris­tos Tsout­sou­vis by cops, and at 4:30 in the morn­ing, the Rair­Road sta­tion local orga­ni­za­tion of New Democ­ra­cy (right-wing rul­ing par­ty), was tipped with a small token of our rage (1 petrol can and 3 home gas can­is­ters were enough to nudge them reface their offices), on the last repres­sive oper­a­tions against the rebels of the whole coun­try’s pris­ons.”
Chris­tos Tsout­sou­vis was an urban guer­ril­la, mem­ber of ELA (Peo­ple’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Strug­gle) and Anti­s­tate Fight. He was mur­dered on 15 May 1985 by under­cov­er police­men in Gizi, Athens after a shootout, suc­ceed­ing though to exe­cute three of them.

»

Attack against the munic­i­pal police of Ilioupoli (Athens, 22/5/2008)
From the mass-media:

“Mess and pan­ic were caused Thurs­day night, when a group of around 20 per­sons attacked the city hall of Ilioupoli. The masked-up group suprised the police­men, throw­ing red paints and broke with stones the glass win­dows of the city hall. Then, they destroyed with batons, sticks and knifes the per­son­al car of Ilioupoli’s may­or and two patrol cars of the munic­i­pal police. Accord­ing to infor­ma­tion, the attack of these young peo­ple was a form of protest and of sup­port to two detained anar­chists. The activists left on foot, towards the cen­tral square of Ilioupoli, throw­ing behind them com­mu­niques against the munic­i­pal author­i­ty. The police forces realised a man­hunt to find and arrest any”…

Fol­low­ing is a trans­la­tion of a com­mu­nique sent to directactiongr@yahoo.gr

“We select­ed to attack on the 22th of May, against the munic­i­pal police and the city hall of Ilioupoli, as a sig­nal of sol­i­dar­i­ty to the detained anar­chists M. Tsoura­pas and Chr. Kon­tore­vithakis, accused for attempt­ing to burn up a car of the munic­i­pal police in P. Faliro, and fac­ing a jury on July, 11.

The munic­i­pal police is anoth­er repres­sive mech­a­nism in duty bound to keep the nor­mal flow of con­sump­tion and hunt­ing the so-called black mar­ket and the street-sales­men, safe­guard­ing the prof­its of lux­u­rius shops, while it con­sti­tutes yet one insti­tu­tion of polic­ing in the mitrop­o­lis, against every­day petit-delin­quent behav­iours. The per­cep­tions that con­tributed to its for­ma­tion will be always a tar­get for us, and so will be their car­ri­ers. This spe­cif­ic attack against the city hall of Ilioupo­lis is not blind at all, since this munic­i­pal­i­ty through the for­mer munic­i­pal coun­sel­lor Athana­sios Kouret­sis invest­ed in the pilot project “The neigh­bor­hood’s munic­i­pal police­man” in the foot­steps of the failed police project “The neigh­bor­hood’s police­man”. This ex-cop that par­tic­i­pat­ed in Ilioupo­lis’ city coun­sil want­ed sim­ply to con­tribute in the strenghen­ing of the cit­i­zen’s sense of secu­ri­ty, as his pro­pos­al sug­gests. We will always stand opposed and choose the offen­sive way against the dog­ma of “Secu­ri­ty, law and order” based on a total sys­tem of insti­tu­tions and per­cep­tions that eter­nal­ize the mod­ern real­i­ty. Their effort to sharp­en repres­sion and con­trol over our dig­ni­ties and our lives, will now meet with the cli­max of our attacks.

FREEDOM FOR THE DETAINED ANARCHISTS
MARIOS TSOURAPAS AND CHRISSOSTOMOS KONTOREVITHAKIS”

»

Bank fire­bombed (Ioan­ni­na, 22/5/2008)
This is a trans­la­tion of the claim post­ed on http://athens.indymedia.org

“Today dur­ing the dawn, 22/5/08, we attacked a sub­sidiary of Piraeus bank on Dodo­nis street, close to the tech­ni­cal col­lege. We hurled 4 molo­tov cock­tails at the bank’s ATM, the cam­era, and the main entrance. This attack was under­tak­en despite the con­stat patrols of the cops, who even passed by a few min­ut­ed before the attack. Mate­r­i­al dam­ages were realised against the ATM and the entrance, break­ing a piece of the glass-win­dow. This attack was clear­ly sym­bol­ic, so a total destruc­tion of the bank was not an issue. We oppose every form of polic­ing and author­i­ty and we trust in vio­lent actions to over­throw the state. Sol­i­dar­i­ty to the actions that pre­ced­ed and to those that will fol­low.

COMRADES FROM THE STREETS OF EVERYDAY STRUGGLE.”

»

Uni­ver­si­ty rec­tors elec­tions sab­o­taged (Athens-Piraeus, 22/5/2008)

Stu­dents invad­ed halls where the rec­tors elec­tions were held accord­ing to the new “frame”-law con­cern­ing uni­ver­si­ties, in the tech­ni­cal insti­tutes of Athens and Piraeus, destroy­ing vot­ing papers, tak­ing away bal­lot box­es, break­ing them or throw­ing them to garbage. Stu­dents of DAP-NDFK (rul­ing par­ty right-wing stu­dent youth) that were present, tried to guard the elec­tions process but were repelled.

In the same time, over 35 fac­ul­ties are occu­pied by stu­dent assem­blies, against the new “frame”-law appli­ca­tion.

»

Sur­veil­lance cam­eras destroyed dur­ing squaters sol­i­dar­i­ty march (Athens, 20/5/2008)
Pho­tos of the march: http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=868546

Sur­veil­lance cam­eras were bro­ken, dur­ing the march in sol­i­dar­i­ty to the Vil­la Amalias squat. The march was organ­ised on the occa­sion of an arson attack against the squat two days ear­li­er, and hun­dreds of peo­ple demon­strat­ed in cen­tral Athens.

»

Fenc­ing bars around the poly­tech­nic school dis­man­tled (Athens, 17/5/2008)

Pho­tos: http://athens.indymedia.org/

Accord­ing to a report from athens.indymedia.org:

“After 12 in the morn­ing, peo­ple from the poly­tech­nic school self-man­aged infos­hop left­ists, stu­dents and oth­ers, gath­ered around Zografou gate and destroyed all the extra fenc­ing bars placed by the dead to pre­vent peo­ple from enter­ing the uni­ver­si­ty late at night and dur­ing week­ends. An oth­er door was also tak­en, so peo­ple wan’t both­er to jump over fences to enter the uni­ver­si­ty when it clos­es. Lat­er on, some threw the bars at the door of the dean hall and at the dean’s office.

While this action took place, three under­cov­er police­men gath­ered out­side the gates, but left when they became noticed. A riot police brigade was set out­side the near­by police sta­tion of Zografou, and a per­son was tak­ing pho­tos of the peo­ple gath­ered from a near­by build­ing, but left when peo­ple approached the build­ing.”

»

Arson­ists hit a bank (Thes­sa­loni­ki, 17/5/2008)
Respon­si­bil­i­ty claim at http://athens.indymedia.org/

“Ear­ly in the morn­ing of Sat­ur­day, we attacked the nation­al bank at Trian­dria. This action is sym­bol­ic, a sign of sol­i­dar­i­ty to the anar­chist V. Botzatzis and our three fugi­tive com­rades. No cap­tiv­i­ty can stop the war with the Exis­tent. Our rage will set their peace­ful nights on fire..”

Stuck for something to do!? Uninspired & lacklustre..? The all new singing dancing EF!AU is here to lift your spirits

As if putting the boot into the genet­ics indus­try, fill­ing emp­ty spaces with joy & cre­ativ­i­ty, and fool­ing the fos­sil-heads was­n’t enough, peo­ple have been busy wash­ing lumps of coal and cov­er­ing them­selves with paint…we kid you not…all in aid of halt­ing the trash­ing of the plan­et!

Par­lia­ments have been climbed, air­port ter­mi­nals flash(mobb)ed, fields & var­i­ous oth­er sites occu­pied, build­ing stormed & block­ad­ed, pipelines block­ad­ed & destroyed…

EF! crossed tools 1As if putting the boot into the genet­ics indus­try, fill­ing emp­ty spaces with joy & cre­ativ­i­ty, and fool­ing the fos­sil-heads was­n’t enough, peo­ple have been busy wash­ing lumps of coal and cov­er­ing them­selves with paint…we kid you not…all in aid of halt­ing the trash­ing of the plan­et!

Par­lia­ments have been climbed, air­port ter­mi­nals flash(mobb)ed, fields & var­i­ous oth­er sites occu­pied, build­ing stormed & block­ad­ed, pipelines block­ad­ed & destroyed…

Throw into the mix ye oldie Reclaim the Streets, the tried and test­ed eeeeevil Mr/Ms Sab­o­tage, the launch of a new cam­paign ‘Leave it in the Ground’, plus a sum­mer-full of dates, new con­tacts list, it’s a won­der we’ve fit­ted in a brand new sexy EF! sum­mer gath­er­ing poster (front & back). Down­load the lat­est EF!AU to share with oth­ers, sub­scribe or check out some past issues. The next issue will come out at the begin­ning of August.

And of course, this year’s EF! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing (or fol­low the link to the left) is from Wednes­day 27th August to Mon­day 1st Sep­tem­ber 2008, if you want to plot & plan, and laugh & chat with old friends & new.

Phew, what a scorcher!

Bath Bomb #10 Out Now

The month­ly out­poured bile of Bath’s ide­al­ists and mis­an­thrope’s reach­es dou­ble fig­ures…

The Bath Bomb
Issue #10
free/donation
May 08

Shock As 200 Shop­pers Freeze Sol­id In Town Cen­tre!

The month­ly out­poured bile of Bath’s ide­al­ists and mis­an­thrope’s reach­es dou­ble fig­ures…

The Bath Bomb
Issue #10
free/donation
May 08

Shock As 200 Shop­pers Freeze Sol­id In Town Cen­tre!

Last week­end saw a break from the banal­i­ty of the famil­iar shop-till-you-drop rou­tine of town cen­tre. A cou­ple of hun­dred peo­ple, using Face­book, organ­ised a flash mob in which peo­ple milling around town would freeze at a giv­en time, and stay that way for five min­utes before, at anoth­er sig­nal, con­tin­u­ing on as nor­mal. Bath Bomb sent a reporter into town to see what the fuss was about, and the results proved pret­ty impres­sive. Two hun­dred peo­ple, frozen in mid sand­wich, con­ver­sa­tion and dance blocked a large area of the city cen­tre while con­fused onlook­ers laughed and spec­u­lat­ed. At one point, a mis­er­able shop­per laden with bag upon bag of dis­pos­able cul­ture walked past moan­ing to her daugh­ter that the frozen mob was ‘prob­a­bly just a bunch of pro­test­ers’. My reac­tion had been that this was more an arty style event than a protest, but the mis­er­able woman strain­ing under tonnes of plas­tic got me think­ing. Whether inten­tion­al­ly or not, this was a protest, and a very mean­ing­ful one. The mes­sage was that town is ours, the streets are our play­ground — the stag­ing ground for fun, adven­ture and friv­o­li­ty. The frozen mass­es briefly wrest­ed town from those neon gods of con­sumerism who would see our
town cen­tre reduced to noth­ing more than a means to get to shops, buy things, then go home again. The freeze event gave us a brief glimpse of how we can trans­form and re-imag­ine our sur­round­ings, turn the banal into the beau­ti­ful and do some­thing with our town more impor­tant, fun and inter­est­ing than more f**king shop­ping! So let’s take a leaf out of the book of our frozen com­rades and start using town as a place for meet­ing, frol­ick­ing, shar­ing and cre­at­ing. Who needs cap­i­tal­ism, when we’ve got imag­i­na­tion?!

The End Of The Begin­ning Of Some­thing Spe­cial In Chip­pen­ham

Remem­ber last month we brought you news of a new squat in Chip­pen­ham? We are sad to report that the build­ing is now back in the hands of its law­ful own­er — a man who has let the place rot while liv­ing miles away for over 25 years. Dur­ing the brief his­to­ry of The 78 as the build­ing became known, it pro­vid­ed a glimpse of what a fair soci­ety could look like. As well as pro­vid­ing a home for some, the space was a com­mu­nal meet­ing place, organ­ic gar­den and a cen­tre of learn­ing, co-oper­a­tion and fun. Before the evic­tion, The 78 was in the process of organ­is­ing gar­den­ing work­shops, a free shop, free child day care for young par­ents and a week­ly veg­an cafe. The build­ing itself was con­sid­er­ably ren­o­vat­ed by the occu­piers and neigh­bours (who were entire­ly sup­port­ive and glad that
space was no longer wast­ed ) agreed that it has nev­er looked nicer! Still, the evic­tion is not the end — every­one who went to the place was inspired by the pas­sion, ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment to equal­i­ty and the envi­ron­ment showed by the occu­piers. Where one lib­er­at­ed space falls, anoth­er springs up and we can’t wait to see what the future holds for Chip­pen­ham. In its short his­to­ry, The 78 suc­ceed­ed in win­ning hearts and minds of peo­ple who would oth­er­wise have neg­a­tive views of squat­ters, rad­i­calised and inspired a com­mu­ni­ty and brought togeth­er strangers who are now friends, com­rades and part­ners in lib­er­a­tion and adven­ture. The 78 is dead, long live The 79!

Top Shop Sweat Shop Stitch Up

A 17-strong coali­tion of stu­dents from Hayesfield Eth­i­cal Group and Bath Uni’s One World Soci­ety, as well as the usu­al rent-a-mob from B.A.N., endured the sun­shine and soul­less con­crete on Wednes­day the 24th April, to demon­strate out­side Top Shop’s use of sweat­shop labour. Indeed, the vast major­i­ty of UK high street fash­ion gets rich from the exploita­tion of des­per­ate work­ers in the glob­al South, but the Arca­dia Group, of
which Top Shop is the lead­ing brand, is high­ly influ­en­tial. Where­as own­er Philip Green made the record books in 2005 for net­ting the biggest share div­i­dend in his­to­ry, $1.2 bil­lion, work­ers in Cam­bo­dia are coerced into invol­un­tary over­time work below any liv­ing wage, suf­fer­ing shock­ing health and safe­ty, physical/verbal abuse from man­age­ment, dai­ly
strip-search­es, and are barred from union­i­sa­tion. Women are often refused employ­ment if preg­nant, and if they do become so, are still forced to do stand­ing work in uncom­fort­able tem­per­a­tures, until they quit. To add insult to injury, work­ers often con­tract blad­der infec­tions from lack of access to drink­ing water or toi­let use. Demon­stra­tors leaflet­ed and held ban­ners air­ing Top­shop’s dirty laun­dry, ask­ing cus­tomers to per­suade their favourite brand to gen­uine­ly change its ways: like it or not, these fash­ion car­tels have the pow­er to change indus­try con­di­tions for bet­ter as well as worse, if only they’d stop spout­ing emp­ty PRomis­es for one sec­ond.

Hair today, gone tomor­row?

I’m not going to make this any more com­pli­cat­ed than it needs to be — for most women to go about their dai­ly lives feel­ing like their nat­ur­al form, their unadul­ter­at­ed bod­ies, are at least wrong, at worst dis­gust­ing, is in itself wrong and dis­gust­ing. It’s not just women, although present­ly they do seem to fare worse, a sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion of us have prob­lems these days feel­ing inad­e­quate and ugly, as if we need to change our appear­ance con­stant­ly, dai­ly, to be accept­able or even to look stun­ning — it is our duty to look as fab­u­lous as we can at what­ev­er cost. You’ve got women in their 60s with design­er vagi­nas match­ing that of a 16 year old, 16 year olds hav­ing cos­met­ic surgery when they’re bare­ly grown yet and 10 year olds being tak­en to salons to have their legs
waxed.

A healthy back­lash is begin­ning to grow. For exam­ple, the live jour­nal site ‘fuck shav­ing’, and on recent body image shows I’ve seen not one, but two women liv­ing their lives per­fect­ly hap­pi­ly, with full on nat­ur­al beards. I am fas­ci­nat­ed — to me, they don’t look ugly, or wrong, or dis­gust­ing. They don’t even look like men. They just look like them­selves. So, I beg of you soci­ety, can’t we just be us? This may seem like a sim­ple thing on paper, but it is a huge step to take (or maybe lots of lit­tle ones.) But it is such a worth­while step to take and I feel the world would be bet­ter off for it, chang­ing many things, not just how we feel about our­selves when we look in the mir­ror. Cause this image stuff ain’t just van­i­ty — it real­ly does deeply affect, and even destroy, lives.

May­day! May­day! The Ducks Are Revolt­ing!

And now for our oblig­a­tory foie gras cam­paign update: we’ve recent­ly heard that good old Christophe at The Pinch, the French restau­rant in St Mar­garet’s Build­ings for­mer­ly known as Le Petit Cochon, has decid­ed to brave the storm of con­tro­ver­sy and put the ‘del­i­ca­cy of despair’ back on the menu. When will they learn? Mean­while, we received this anony­mous report: “In the ear­ly hours of the 2nd May, in anger at Bistro Num­ber 5’s con­tin­ued sale of foie gras, Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Front vol­un­teers d‑locked their front entrance, cost­ing them hours of lost rev­enue for the fol­low­ing day. It’s high time they re-eval­u­at­ed whether prof­it­ing from ani­mal abuse real­ly is good busi­ness!” If you feel moved to let the man­age­ment of either of these out­lets know your feel­ings on force-feed­ing and ani­mal tor­ture, here’s their con­tact details — The Pinch tel:
01225 421251, info@thepinch.biz and Bistro Num­ber 5 tel: 01225 444 499,
fax: 01225318 668 chrome@globalnet.co.uk /ym/Compose?To= chrome@globalnet.co.uk&YY=10755&y5beta=yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b.

And remem­ber, The Bath Bomb in no way con­dones repeat­ed phone calls or threat­en­ing behav­iour, and nei­ther does it con­done spread­ing these com­pa­nies’ details to every spam­mer or junk mail list you can think of.

Gov­ern­ment gets F- As Teach­ers Strike

There were impres­sive march­es and ral­lies in towns and cities across Britain on Thurs­day 24th April. More than 2000 strik­ing teach­ers, lec­tur­ers and civ­il ser­vice work­ers from across Bris­tol, Bath, Glouces­ter­shire and Som­er­set joined a live­ly and noisy march which brought traf­fic to a halt in Bris­tol. This march was sup­port­ed by mem­bers of Bath
Activist Net­work. This action occurred to a back­ground of an eco­nom­ic cri­sis where the poor are being forced to bail out the rich. Tax­pay­ers are expect­ed to pay £100 bil­lion to North­ern Rock, when in a time hon­oured fash­ion, the man who over­saw the col­lapse of his bank, walked off with a £750,000 pay off. The response of politi­cians to this cri­sis is for new labour Brown to abol­ish the 10p tax law, hit­ting the poor­er work­ers the most and for the shad­ow chan­cel­lor, George Osborne, this week, to call for greater con­trol of trades unions as a mat­ter of urgency. With almost every­thing ris­ing in price, the media warns of a ‘sum­mer of dis­con­tent’ here and abroad. This means through riots, strikes and days of actions, work­ers and the poor are tak­ing con­trol of their own lives and not rely­ing on politi­cians and boss­es to sort out their prob­lems.
This grow­ing spir­it of resis­tance must be sup­port­ed by all those who wish to build a more just soci­ety. If you’re fired up about these issues, come to Bub­bling Under on Sun­day 18th May, 1–4 as usu­al at the porter cel­lar bar on George Street, where there will be a free show­ing of ‘The Gama Strike: A Vic­to­ry For All Work­ers.’ This is a film about migrant work­ers in the Irish Repub­lic who were sup­port­ed by local work­ers to fight back against slave con­di­tions.

Free Your Time-www.myfreethyme.com

Why buy when the best things in life are free? Cred­it cards, stu­dent loans and debt are the vices that trap us into this con­sumer cul­ture. Man made mon­ey and mon­ey made man: mad. Media brain­wash­es us into think­ing that if we work hard­er, earn more mon­ey and buy more things then we will be accept­ed. Exces­sive con­sumerism is ruin­ing both the air we
breathe and the ground we walk on. All we need is an aware­ness of what we can con­tribute to a soci­ety of free­thinkers that is sim­ple and reward­ing to become part of.

So, the web­site, www.myfreethyme.com, was set up with this ethos in mind, with a mis­sion to dis­cov­er alter­na­tive ways of liv­ing which help pre­serve the plan­et, inspire trust and keep change in your pock­et jin­gling. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less from Freecy­cle, grow-your-own and net­tle munch­ing, to bin div­ing, couch­surf­ing and woof­ing, the ulti­mate aim being to cre­ate a nur­tur­ing eco-space rather than a mon­ey grab­bing metrop­o­lis. There are many com­mu­ni­ties which func­tion on human com­pas­sion, not on mon­ey; the aim is to get these voic­es heard and known about. As a stu­dent at Bath Spa Uni­ver­si­ty, I was amazed at how lit­tle the gen­er­al stu­dent pop­u­la­tion knows about the ways of free liv­ing. I was
inspired by read­ing about the Free Econ­o­my walk­er, Mark Boyle, and his attempt to get to Gand­hi’s birth­place with­out a pen­ny in his pock­et. Though angry that most of the news­pa­pers ridiculed his jour­ney and did­n’t focus on the phi­los­o­phy behind it, it led me to become part of the FreeEcon­o­my landshare/skillshare com­mu­ni­ty (justfortheloveofit.org) and I realised this was some­thing worth shout­ing about.

See­ing these things in action can inspire change, and who bet­ter to help out than the Bath Activist Net­work. As part of the Big Green Week bonan­za, a live Freecyle stall was set up at the SU and wel­comed with many a “What? Free? No fee?” squawks of glee as the skint stu­dents rum­maged and browsed. In a uni­ver­si­ty where they charge 15p for a sachet of toma­to sauce and 30p for hot water, the gen­er­al reac­tion was wel­come shock mixed with curios­i­ty and many a stu­dent-friend­ly bar­gain picked up. All in all, it went glo­ri­ous­ly well. If you have any free liv­ing sto­ries, feel free and let me know at thegreensofa@yahoo.com , I’d love to hear them.
Bath FreeShop is out­side Hol­land and Bar­ratts the sec­ond Sat­ur­day of every month if you’ve got some a han­ker­ing to get rid of some stuff then join us for some free
Earl Grey tea.

Green Space Invaders Evad­ed

Con­grat­u­la­tions are due to the res­i­dents of Twer­ton and sur­rounds, who’ve just fought off plans to destroy green space near the much-loved Bath City Farm, flood­ing the Coun­cil with over 1,000 objec­tions. Somer Hous­ing, well-known for its com­mit­ment to sell­ing off need­ed social hous­ing to unscrupu­lous pri­vate land­lords on the cheap, whinged about the foil­ing of their ploy to build 30 hous­es on the 1.6 con­test­ed acres
between Cotswold View, The Hol­low and the City Farm: where they no doubt would have done the same. Bath City Farm is manned by ded­i­cat­ed vol­un­teers and pro­vides wood­craft skills, inter­ac­tion with the nat­ur­al world and mean­ing­ful leisure to local youths, and need the land to both progress their work and pro­vide res­i­den­tial allot­ments.

Boris John­son — May­or Or Mani­ac?

Boris John­son says he’s a fem­i­nist. Actu­al­ly he’s sex­ist. And the worst kind of sex­ist. He thinks that by stat­ing he’s a fem­i­nist and say­ing a few pro-women things, that when he begins one of his ridicu­lous­ly mis­guid­ed rants about men and women and the edu­ca­tion sys­tem, peo­ple will say, well, he can’t be sex­ist, the man says he’s a fem­i­nist. Truth
is, as far as this writer’s con­cerned any­way, as long as we car­ry on gen­der stereo­typ­ing, this idi­ot­ic tug of war that is the per­pet­u­al see saw of men on top, women on top, men on top, will con­tin­ue — with casu­al­ties on both sides (domes­tic vio­lence against either sex, rape, misog­y­ny, hatred of men, unfair pay at work and gen­er­al dishar­mo­ny and fight­ing against rather than help­ing each oth­er.)

Boris John­son may be enter­tain­ing, he comes off like a char­ac­ter from a com­e­dy show, and maybe that’s a nice change next to some rather bor­ing politi­cians, but is this the kind of fig­ure­head we want as may­or of Lon­don? He’s out of touch, out­spo­ken and seems so harm­less. But it seems to me, to let some­one like this have such a posi­tion of pow­er is a very dan­ger­ous thing. When are peo­ple going to wake up to the mock­ery our gov­ern­men­tal sys­tem has become, from the jibes and jeers of the com­mons, to the buf­foon­ery of Mr John­son him­self, and choose some­thing dif­fer­ent? (ps — NOT the BNP.) As for Boris — do us a favour, give the man some bells and a fun­ny hat and call a nump­ty a nump­ty.

SHAC Attack

On Sat­ur­day 26th April, a con­tin­gent from bath went to Hor­sham, west sus­sex, for the Nation­al Stop Hunt­ing­don Ani­mal Cru­el­ty demos against Nor­var­tis, a com­pa­ny that tests on pri­mates and sup­plies the noto­ri­ous vivi­sec­tion lab, Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. The protest start­ed at Hor­sham park and around 500 peo­ple marched through the cen­tre of Hor­sham to sub­ur­bia where the ani­mal abus­ing com­pa­ny is locat­ed. After a few speech­es some of the pro­test­ers under­stand­ably got upset and start­ed shak­ing the fences. The com­pa­nies body guards (police) soon stopped this how­ev­er, after a brief strug­gle. All in all a good day, and we went back to the park where leg­endary veg­an cater­er Veg­gies pro­vid­ed veg­an burg­ers and cake. It seems Nor­var­tis UK got off light­ly, the Span­ish HQ hav­ing been van­dalised at a recent demo in Barcelona.

EVENTS

Mon­day nights Bath Hunt Sabs Meet­ing, 8pm, Bell
Wednes­days 4–7pm Lon­don Rd Food Co-op, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre
Sat­ur­days 11.30am-12.30 Bath Stop The War Vig­il, Abbey Court­yard
12th May, 7.45pm Green­peace meet­ing, Still­point, Broad Street
14th May, 8.30pm Bath Green Drinks, upstairs, the Rum­mer
17th May, from 6pm Punk ben­e­fit gig, The Junc­tion, Stokes Croft, Bris­tol
18th May, 1–4pm Bub­bling Under, Pot­er Cel­lar Bar, George Street
21st May Smash EDO phone/email block­ade-see www.smashedo.org.uk
29th May, from 7.30pm Talk by chair of CND, Friends Meet­ing House, York Street
31st May‑1 June Bris­tol Veg­an Fayre, The Water­side, Bris­tol
2 June, 8pm Friends of the Earth meet­ing, Still­point, Broad St
3 June, 12–3pm There is such a thing as a free lunch stall, Queen Sq
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

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

Eco-related arson against ministry of development offices in Greece (Athens, 21/4/2008)

A trans­la­tion of the parts of a com­mu­nique sent to “Eleft­herotip­ia” news­pa­per and pub­lished on 25/04/2008, not men­tion­ing any group’s name:

A trans­la­tion of the parts of a com­mu­nique sent to “Eleft­herotip­ia” news­pa­per and pub­lished on 25/04/2008, not men­tion­ing any group’s name:

“Kavala, Almy­ros at Volos, Man­tou­di at Evia, Astakos at Etoloakar­na­nia, Elef­si­na: Res­i­dents mobi­liza­tions are realised against the plans of build­ing new pow­er plants using coal. Pub­lic Pow­er Com­pa­ny (PPC) in coop­er­a­tion with nation­al or inter­na­tion­al part­ners pro­motes its invest­ment plans, with­in the coun­try as well as in the Balka­ns, respond­ing to the sys­tem’s increas­ing needs for pow­er con­sump­tion, some­thing that sig­ni­fies the con­stant ampli­fi­ca­tion of econ­o­my and the wider sub­or­di­na­tion of our exis­tance to it.”

“When cap­i­tal­ism is self-declared envi­ron­ment friend­ly, it is only to mea­sure and man­age the symp­toms of the cri­sis it pro­duced itself.”

“We don’t share any envi­ron­men­tal­ist com­pa­sion. It is impos­si­ble to fit with­in any green slo­gans that belit­tle any per­spec­tive of rup­ture in their par­tial­i­ty. The con­cern raised by the envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion is dis­armed through the par­tic­i­pa­tion of active cit­i­zens in iron­ic pro­gramms of beach clean­ing or the ridicu­lous con­sumers prefer­ance for “eco-friend­ly” enter­pris­es.”

“The impacts of the use of coal are only a part of the symp­toms of the devel­op­ment this world promis­es: cli­mate change, species extinc­tion, deser­ta­tions, for­est destruc­tion. This is why, the way we talk and act against every­thing that turns our lives to a total dis­as­ter, aims at the con­stant sub­ver­sion of the cap­i­tal­ist struc­tures, the total over­throw of the author­i­tar­i­an rela­tion­ships.”

source: http://directactiongr.blogspot.com