Category: Capitalism / Globalisation

Protest against G8 climate ministerial, London

Police arrest­ed two pro­test­ers at a noisy demon­stra­tion protest­ing the cli­mate poli­cies of G8 min­is­ters meet­ing today in the City of Lon­don.

About 40 activists beat pots and pans and blew whis­tles to demon­strate their oppo­si­tion to G8 cli­mate poli­cies, argu­ing that they served the inter­ests of big busi­ness rather than the world’s poor like­ly to be most affect­ed by glob­al warm­ing.

They were out­num­bered by more than 50 police offi­cers behind a met­al bar­ri­cade set up to defend an entrance to The Brew­ery on Chiswell Street, where the min­is­te­r­i­al meet­ing dis­cussing respons­es to the cli­mate cri­sis was being held.

‘The min­is­te­r­i­al meet­ing’s aim was to con­tin­ue with busi­ness as usu­al while por­tray­ing indus­tri­al­ized-coun­try gov­ern­ments as the sav­iours of the envi­ron­ment. We were here today to say enough is enough. We need true cli­mate jus­tice now,â€? said Matthew Rob­bins of Ris­ing Tide, a Lon­don-based envi­ron­men­tal group.

The pro­test­ers stressed G8 and World Bank poli­cies of sub­si­diz­ing oil explo­ration and extrac­tion, which they said could only make glob­al warm­ing worse.

“This shows how afraid of the truth min­is­ters are, when they have to bar­ri­cade them­selves out of hear­ing of the pub­lic” said Amy Tan­ner of the G8 Cli­mate Action Group.

The arrests, on pub­lic order grounds, were made as pro­test­ers paused by anoth­er entrance to The Brew­ery where they had moved prepara­to­ry to dis­pers­ing.

The protest fol­lowed Mon­day’s Alter­na­tive Sum­mit for Cli­mate Jus­tice, held at near­by Toyn­bee Hall.

The alter­na­tive sem­i­nar was also watched close­ly by more than 20 police in what one par­tic­i­pant char­ac­ter­ized as “the sort of attempt at intim­i­da­tion that is becom­ing rou­tine in Blair’s Britain”.

 

In the build-up to the G8 Sum­mit in Scot­land in July this year the Labour Gov­ern­ment will share its future vision of mar­ket envi­ron­men­tal­ism with 20 coun­tries (includ­ing the G8 them­selves).

So will they prac­tice what they preach or preach what they prac­tice?

£5.5 bil­lion road-build­ing pro­gramme to build 200+ new roads.

Air­port expan­sion (12 new run­ways across Britain); refuse to tax avi­a­tion fuel despite gov­ern­ment promis­es to tax pol­lut­ing indus­tries

£500 mil­lion of pub­lic mon­ey for export guar­an­tees to the oil and gas sec­tor per year in the last three years via the UK Export Cred­it Guar­an­tee Depart­ment (ECGD).

Nuclear ener­gy classed as ‘green’ with Labour plans for more reac­tors

Why leave the future sta­bil­i­ty of the plan­et in the hands of these prof­it-dri­ven mega­lo­ma­ni­acs as eco­log­i­cal and social jus­tice is pil­laged world­wide.

 

 

 

Climate Change activists STOP London’s oil traders

Thir­ty-five Green­peace vol­un­teers halt­ed trad­ing on the glob­al oil mar­ket by occu­py­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Petro­le­um Exchange in Lon­don. They entered the high secu­ri­ty build­ing near Tow­er Bridge short­ly before 2pm, just as the world mar­ket in Brent crude was about to switch to Lon­don.

They attached dis­tress alarms to heli­um bal­loons, blew foghorns and hand­cuffed them­selves to the trad­ing pit, forc­ing the exchange to shut down. The Inter­na­tion­al Petro­le­um Exchange does one thou­sand bil­lion dol­lars of busi­ness each year and trad­ing at the Lon­don exchange sets the price for 60 per­cent of the world’s oil.

The Exchange spe­cialis­es in so-called ‘open out­cry’ trad­ing, where all orders have to be shout­ed in a clear and audi­ble voice. But the Green­peace vol­un­teers with their float­ing alarms and foghorns have made that form of trad­ing impos­si­ble.

An IPE spokes­woman said open out­cry trad­ing was sus­pend­ed for an hour but elec­tron­ic trad­ing con­tin­ued through­out.”

“I have to say we weren’t lis­tened to by the traders. They were more inter­est­ed in punch­ing us than lis­ten­ing to us,” Tin­dale said.

“They pulled a met­al book­case down on our heads. They were try­ing to use that to push us back out so that was the moment we decid­ed to retreat for every­one’s safe­ty.”

One pro­test­er was injured. He was treat­ed at the scene before being tak­en to a hos­pi­tal.

“It was to send a mes­sage to the oil indus­try on the day Kyoto comes into force that busi­ness as usu­al is no longer an option,” Tin­dale told jour­nal­ists by tele­phone from the cen­tral Lon­don build­ing on Wednes­day.

“The oil indus­try has been key to pre­vent­ing progress on cli­mate change which is why it has tak­en so long for Kyoto to come into force. But sci­en­tists are telling us we are get­ting dan­ger­ous­ly close to the point of no return,” he added.

“To be ramp­ing up pro­duc­tion — which the oil indus­try seems to be doing — on the day Kyoto comes into force is sim­ply irre­spon­si­ble,” he added.

The Green­peace raid was one of a num­ber of protests staged across the globe.

Green groups marked the day with protests out­side U.S. embassies and con­sulates, street parades in Japan and by carv­ing fast-melt­ing ice sculp­tures of kan­ga­roos in Aus­tralia.

Today is a day for action. After a long and ardu­ous process the Kyoto Pro­to­col comes into force and busi­ness as usu­al is not an option.

The Kyoto Pro­to­col is designed to cut emis­sions of green­house gas­es from fos­sil fuels like oil. But Kyoto tar­gets, which are now legal­ly bind­ing, fall well short of what is need­ed to seri­ous­ly fight cli­mate change. We are rapid­ly approach­ing a point of no return. Tony Blair and oth­er world lead­ers must use this year’s G8 to move the world onto a dif­fer­ent track.

Dan­ger­ous cli­mate change is already with us. Accord­ing to the World Health Organ­i­sa­tion 150,000 peo­ple are killed every year by cli­mate change. The Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change, a UN body com­pris­ing the world’s most emi­nent cli­mate sci­en­tists, pre­dicts tem­per­a­tures will rise this cen­tu­ry by as much a five degrees Cel­sius.

Tony Blair has said he will put cli­mate change at the top of the agen­da for this sum­mer’s G8 meet­ing in Scot­land, but he has thus far failed to push for a strong Euro­pean posi­tion or extract con­ces­sions from Pres­i­dent Bush, while UK car­bon diox­ide emis­sions have not gone down since New Labour came to pow­er.

Nanotech conference at Leeds’ Royal Armouries disrupted at lunchtime today (Friday 12th November)

At lunchtime today, a meet­ing of com­pa­nies involved in nan­otech­nol­o­gy indus­tries was invad­ed and dis­rupt­ed by a group of peo­ple opposed to tech­nolo­gies of social con­trol.

The protest took 3 main parts. First­ly, an infor­ma­tion gath­er­ing exer­cise to gain fur­ther details of who is involved in what, for future actions. Sec­ond­ly, the hall was vis­it­ed and made extreme­ly unple­sant by a well-known sub­stance for stink­ing out con­fer­ences: com­frey in water left to rot for a cou­ple of months, and fish bait. vis­i­tors to the hall an hr after said peo­ple were hold­ing their noses and not stay­ing, and the smell was hideous. Leaflets were also giv­en out. The third aspect was the seiz­ing of the tan­noy and a com­mu­nique being read out. This coin­cid­ed with a talk on nan­otech which drowned it out, and was heard in every room through the muse­um. Leaflets were also scat­tered down. Two of these peo­ple were held by secu­ri­ty until the police arrived, took down the name and address and date of birth that the two claimed were theirs, quick check to make sure there was no war­rant on the names giv­en, and then released.

Nan­otech­nol­o­gy is the newest weapon against diver­si­ty, rebel­lion, dif­fer­ence, auton­o­my and free­dom. The US mil­i­tary is, of course, the biggest investor as it tries to ensure total dom­i­na­tion of all life on the plan­et. The British gov­ern­ment has also invest­ed £90 mil­lion in nan­otech­nol­o­gy and most indus­tries and uni­ver­si­ties* are devel­op­ing inter­ests in the field.

Genet­ic engi­neer­ing was recog­nised as hav­ing mas­sive social and eco­log­i­cal impli­ca­tions and this ensured world­wide resis­tance against it. Nan­otech­nol­o­gy, which has the abil­i­ty to trans­form all mat­ter, has far more dra­mat­ic effects and needs dras­tic action to con­front this new assault on diver­si­ty of life.

Nan­otech, and its links to biotech­no­log­i­cal, infor­ma­tion­al and cog­ni­tive sci­ences, pro­vides the state with yet more tools with which to con­trol all dis­sent and iron out all life into a homo­ge­neous, manip­u­la­ble mass. Be it advances in sur­veil­lance tech­nolo­gies, the abil­i­ty to dis­able neur­al trans­mit­ters and break apart DNA strands by remote con­trol, arti­fi­cial­ly cre­ate ‘workaholism’ in labour­ers, or ‘stamp out’ phys­i­cal and men­tal dif­fer­ence, nan­otech­nol­o­gy puts mind con­trol, body con­trol, social con­trol and con­trol of the nat­ur­al world more firm­ly in the hands of the state, the cor­po­ra­tions and the rul­ing elite.

Just as biotech­nol­o­gy was sold to us as a green tech­nol­o­gy that would feed the world, so nan­otech is being her­ald­ed. Both instinct and rea­son tell us to take action against these new tech­nolo­gies before we lose our last lib­er­ties to them.

Leeds action is a UK first!

How­ev­er, we were beat­en by North Amer­i­cans tak­ing their clothes off in Octo­ber — Action in Chica­go by THONG at nanocom­merce 2004 — (Top­less Humans Organ­ised for Nat­ur­al Genet­ics) — see
http://www.chicagothong.org/nanocommerce.php?photo=061 for amus­ing pho­tos and also
http://nanobot.blogspot.com/2004/10/nano-industry-hits-bottom.html for indus­try reac­tion
and before that, a 30 Jan 2004 protest of the ground­break­ing of the Mol­e­c­u­lar Foundry, a new Dept of Ener­gy nanochem­istry facil­i­ty at the Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab in Berke­ley, CA USA;

and those pesky Con­ti­nen­tal-types:
actions/protest against nanotech/converging tech­nolo­gies in Greno­ble by piece­set­main­doeu­vre (anti tech activists — dis­rupt­ing nano-con­fer­ences) — seewww.piecesetmaindoeuvre.com

* These are easy tar­gets
* Get scared, then get active!

FURTHER INFO ON NANOTECH:

For those who, like many of us, have buried our heads in the sand about this new tech­nol­o­gy, but have decid­ed it is time to learn and to act, the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion should assist:

http://www.etcgroup.org — cam­paign­ing but non-rad­i­cal group with info on nan­otech; see ‘The Big Down’ report
http://www.wtec.org/ConvergingTechnologies/Report/NBIC_frontmatter.pdf- info from the “oth­er side”
http://www.leedsef.org.uk/atomtech.htm — earth first! web­site with an 8 page nan­otech arti­cle some­where on it!