Category: Climate Chaos

Rossport Solidarity Camp eviction latest

Update on evic­tion threat to Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp

After over eigh­teen months of pro­vid­ing a base for activists sup­port­ing the local Shell to Sea cam­paign, the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp was served notice to quit by Mayo Coun­ty Coun­cil two weeks ago. For the past year and a half the coun­cil has accept­ed the cam­p’s exis­tence with­out com­plaint. It seems no coin­ci­dence that the coun­cil’s moves to evict the camp come at a time when Shell has been exten­sive­ly sur­vey­ing the estu­ary that runs along­side the camp in prepa­ra­tion for pipeline devel­op­ment. It is like­ly that pres­sure has been applied on the coun­cil to evict now to min­i­mize the risk of dis­rup­tion to the lay­ing of the pipeline.

Update on evic­tion threat to Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp

After over eigh­teen months of pro­vid­ing a base for activists sup­port­ing the local Shell to Sea cam­paign, the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp was served notice to quit by Mayo Coun­ty Coun­cil two weeks ago. For the past year and a half the coun­cil has accept­ed the cam­p’s exis­tence with­out com­plaint. It seems no coin­ci­dence that the coun­cil’s moves to evict the camp come at a time when Shell has been exten­sive­ly sur­vey­ing the estu­ary that runs along­side the camp in prepa­ra­tion for pipeline devel­op­ment. It is like­ly that pres­sure has been applied on the coun­cil to evict now to min­i­mize the risk of dis­rup­tion to the lay­ing of the pipeline.

On Tues­day the 31st July, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the camp attend­ed a court hear­ing in Castle­bar. Fol­low­ing sub­mis­sions from the cam­p’s bar­ris­ter regard­ing due process and the lack of time giv­en to the camp to pre­pare a case, the judge reluc­tant­ly agreed to adjourn the case until Sep­tem­ber the 3rd. How­ev­er, in the mean­time he imposed an ‘inter­im order of injunc­tion’ which allows only two camp mem­bers to remain liv­ing on site. Notably, pri­or to the hear­ing, the legal rep­re­sen­ta­tives of both par­ties had agreed terms for an adjourn­ment that allowed more peo­ple to remain on camp. The case is essen­tial­ly a civ­il dis­pute and the judge’s impo­si­tion of more strin­gent terms is indica­tive, once again, of the par­tial­i­ty of the judi­cia­ry with regard to Shell to Sea cas­es.

The pri­ma­ry func­tion of the camp is to pro­vide a space for peo­ple to sup­port the local cam­paign in resist­ing Shell. This can be done most effec­tive­ly if we have a secure base to work from. Con­se­quent­ly, at present, we have decid­ed to vacate the camp in accor­dance with the judge’s order. In an effort to be pre­pared for the dif­fer­ent poten­tial sce­nar­ios we could face, we have sought out pos­si­ble alter­na­tive loca­tions for the camp. Some peo­ple in the cam­paign will con­tin­ue to fight the evic­tion through the courts and after the hear­ing in Sep­tem­ber we will assess our options.

Com­mu­ni­ty sup­port fol­low­ing the evic­tion order has been over­whelm­ing. With­in a week an impres­sive fundrais­ing effort had been ini­ti­at­ed and we had offers of sev­er­al hous­es and fields to relo­cate to. We have also had help with mov­ing, clean­ing, dec­o­rat­ing and fur­nish­ing. Thanks to such incred­i­ble local assis­tance, one of these hous­es has been fixed up in the last week and is now being used as the tem­po­rary Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp base. Over the next few weeks we hope to make sev­er­al oth­er loca­tions inhab­it­able.

Two weeks ago our sit­u­a­tion seemed dire. Today, the spir­it of the camp is vibrant. It is clear that resis­tance here will not be ham­pered by repres­sion. So, while we’re sad to be tem­porar­i­ly giv­ing up our beau­ti­ful seashore home, the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp lives on — albeit in a slight­ly less rus­tic form. As before, vis­i­tors are always wel­come.

BAA climate camp Injunction: What’s Happened At Court & legal briefing

Judge’s read­ing (reports from first two days below) —

Deliv­er­ing her rul­ing in a 90-speech this morn­ing, Mrs. Jus­tice Swift struck out most of BAA’s appli­ca­tion, point­ing out that much of their evi­dence was based on news reports and web sites, and rul­ing that, as there is a “diver­gence of inter­est” with­in the groups named, [with the excep­tion of Plane Stu­pid], they should not be tar­get­ed.

BAA injunction gagsJudge’s read­ing (reports from first two days below) —

Deliv­er­ing her rul­ing in a 90-speech this morn­ing, Mrs. Jus­tice Swift struck out most of BAA’s appli­ca­tion, point­ing out that much of their evi­dence was based on news reports and web sites, and rul­ing that, as there is a “diver­gence of inter­est” with­in the groups named, [with the excep­tion of Plane Stu­pid], they should not be tar­get­ed.

She said it is regret­table that Geral­dine Nichol­son was ever named in the appli­ca­tion, and that there had been no sug­ges­tion –despite par­tic­i­pa­tion in pre­vi­ous demon­stra­tions– that Joss Gar­man or Leo Mur­ray had ever harassed or intend­ed to harass any­one.

She has there­fore delet­ed the major­i­ty of BAA’s appli­ca­tion, sub­sti­tut­ing word­ing of her own, intend­ed to allow law­ful protest, [as enshrined by right in Arti­cles 10 and 11 of the Euro­pean Con­ven­tion on Human Rights], although pre­vent­ing unlaw­ful dis­rup­tion of air­port oper­a­tions, [as already cov­ered by Heathrow’s by-laws].

The word­ing of her draft is being stud­ied while the court adjourns for lunch. She is pre­pared to fine-tune the details, when the court resumes at 2 o’clock.
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1st August -
Please note: this is an arti­cle writ­ten after tele­phone con­tact with peo­ple out­side the court. Please see the oth­er report here.

The High Court in Lon­don was the scenery of some fun­ny encoun­ters today as BAA put for­ward their case for an injunc­tion they served indi­vid­u­als from cer­tain anti-air­port groups ear­li­er last week. We’ll spare you all the bor­ing details, so let’s jump to the excit­ing bits. Basi­cal­ly, the whole thing was bad­ly put togeth­er from BAA’s side. Tim­o­thy Law­son Crut­ten­den (TLC) was rep­re­sent­ing BAA in this case, inter­est­ing­ly enough the same lawyers firm that tried to slap injunc­tions on pro­test­ers at Brighton’s weapons man­u­fac­tur­ers EDO. This even­tu­al­ly failed mis­er­ably…

Any­how, the start of the hear­ing was brought back to the after­noon and once in full swing, BAA put for­ward some evi­dence to give their injunc­tion some sub­stance. Their evi­dence were some arti­cles from the Evening Stan­dard and the Times news­pa­pers and a chap­ter from the Eco Defence Hand­book. Anoth­er bit of evi­dence was an arti­cle about last years Cli­mate Camp in which it was said that local peo­ple had joined the pro­test­ers and men­tiones were made about rad­i­cal direct action tac­tics. Inter­est­ing­ly enough, the jour­nal­ist who actu­al­ly wrote that was in court today as well and said that some of the things in the arti­cle he had just ‘put in’ or made up. As one does…

Evi­dence like this is classed as ‘hearsay’ as it is no direct evi­dence and there­fore pret­ty irrel­e­vant in court.

It was unclear whether the injunc­tion applied to the named peo­ple with­in the var­i­ous organ­i­sa­tions they served the papers to, or all mem­bers from those organ­i­sa­tions. If it would apply to all mem­bers of the named organ­i­sa­tions (over 5 mil­lion), it would prob­a­bly be dif­fi­cult to enforce but if it only applied to cer­tain indi­vid­u­als, than the injunc­tion would­n’t have a lot of effect.

BAA was so unclear about this, the judge was said to be very con­fused and gave them until tomor­row morn­ing to get things straight: who are you ask­ing to be injunct­ed and for what rea­sons? The whole injunc­tion busi­ness seems to be a total joke, poor­ly pre­pared and main­ly used as a scare tac­tic. As things cur­rent­ly look, it won’t have any effect on the actu­al camp which is to take place from the 14th August. A spokesper­son for the Camp For Cli­mate Action was a lot clear­er than BAA: ’ This injunc­tion is total­ly irrel­e­vant to us. We won’t be intim­i­dat­ed or bul­lied. The camp is going ahead! ’

2nd August -
BAA used most of the morn­ing to put for­ward their case. It basi­cal­ly boiled down to a cou­ple of things. First­ly, BAA thinks that pos­si­ble dis­rup­tion caused by protests may high­t­en the risk of ‘Iraqi-style ter­ror­ism’ at the air­port. One of the exam­ples the BAA lay­w­er Tim­o­thy Law­son-Crut­ten­den used was that pro­test­ers might block­ade cars going to the air­port which in turn could ‘expos­ing them to a ter­ror­ist strike’. He added: ‘of course we see that in Bagh­dad every day’. Right.

The defence lawyer spent the after­noon putting for­ward that there are already far reach­ing laws in place as well as a com­pe­tent police force who will be able to take care of such events. An injunc­tion would just con­fuse the sit­u­a­tion, rather than add to it. The lay­w­er for Trans­port for Lon­don and the Lon­don Under­ground, agreed, urg­ing the court to throw out the injunc­tion, call­ing it ‘nei­ther nec­es­sary, desir­able nor clear’.

Sec­ond­ly, although BAA hint­ed yes­ter­day that they might not seek an injunc­tion for all mem­bers of organ­i­sa­tions sup­port­ing the camp for cli­mate action, it made it clear today that it is seek­ing to injunct the sup­port­ers besides the 4 named peo­ple on the injunc­tion.

The judge, Mrs Jus­tice Swift, said she will need the week­end to think things over, so a rul­ing can be expect­ed on Mon­day morn­ing. The hear­ing will con­tin­ue today (Fri­day) in the morn­ing, for a cou­ple of hours.

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Heathrow’s Injunc­tion — What it means

Every­thing you need­ed to know but did­n’t have a clue what to ask about Heathrow’s injunc­tion against pro­test­ers. Designed for the lay per­son, it is essen­tial read­ing for cli­mate campers.

Heathrow’s Injunc­tion – What it actu­al­ly means.

To say that Heathrow Air­port have shot them­selves in the foot with their mis­guid­ed attempt to impose an injunc­tion against all anti-air­ports pro­tes­tors, not just the Camp for Cli­mate Action, is an under­state­ment. There is an injunc­tion, but it is tooth­less. The main aim of the injunc­tion is to scare peo­ple off from com­ing to the camp and from tak­ing action at Heathrow Air­port so we want to explain what the injunc­tion real­ly means for Cli­mate Campers.

THE TERMS OF THE INJUNCTION

Who the injunc­tion applies to:
As well as a few named indi­vid­u­als, the injunc­tion has been grant­ed against a neb­u­lous group of ‘pro­tes­tors’, where pro­tes­tor means the anti-avi­a­tion protest group Plane Stu­pid, its sup­port­ers and those act­ing “in con­cert” with Plane Stu­pid to dis­rupt the oper­a­tion of Heathrow air­port.

What it restricts:
a) tres­pass­ing on Heathrow Airport’s land;
b) any activ­i­ty imped­ing, obstruct­ing or inter­fer­ing with the oper­a­tion of Heathrow Air­port;
c) incit­ing or help­ing oth­ers to do a) or b).

Noth­ing in the terms of the injunc­tion order exceeds cur­rent police pow­ers. Mrs Jus­tice Swift has based her order on exist­ing laws and bye-laws, and has not per­mit­ted the wide restric­tions that Heathrow want­ed.

SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE CLIMATE CAMP?
Noth­ing of sub­stance. The Camp for Cli­mate Action is not cov­ered by the injunc­tion. The Camp for Cli­mate Action is sep­a­rate from Plane Stu­pid. While it may be argued that there are links between indi­vid­u­als in Plane Stu­pid and the Camp, they are sep­a­rate organ­i­sa­tions. The Camp for Cli­mate Action exist­ed before Plane Stu­pid, and is a self-organ­is­ing enti­ty con­trolled by no oth­er organ­i­sa­tion.

ARE YOU COVERED?
The key phrase which deter­mines whether you become a ‘pro­tes­tor’ or not is whether you are act­ing ‘in con­cert’ with Plane Stu­pid and the three named indi­vid­u­als (col­lec­tive­ly called the Defen­dants) to dis­rupt oper­a­tions at Heathrow Air­port. Being part of the Cli­mate Camp does not auto­mat­i­cal­ly make you a ‘pro­tes­tor’ with­in the terms of this injunc­tion. You would need to do some­thing else in addi­tion which would link you with the defen­dants. Expe­ri­ence with oth­er injunc­tions indi­cates that to be act­ing ‘in con­cert’ with the Defen­dants would require you to:
a) be a known activist with Plane Stu­pid;
b) do an action explic­it­ly organ­ised by the Defen­dants for the pur­pose of dis­rupt­ing oper­a­tions at Heathrow Air­port;
c) use mate­ri­als pro­duced by the Defen­dants in an action which either tres­pass­es on, obstructs or inter­feres with Heathrow.

So to be safe we rec­om­mend that you don’t bring any ban­ners or leaflets or oth­er mate­ri­als with any ref­er­ence to Plane Stu­pid on them to the camp or on actions.

The injunc­tion comes to an end on 31st August. After that it dis­ap­pears alto­geth­er unless Heathrow can suc­cess­ful­ly apply to extend it.

SERVICE OF THE INJUNCTION
To be cov­ered by the injunc­tion you have to be served first. If you are not served then you can­not be cov­ered by its terms even if you fall under the def­i­n­i­tion of pro­tes­tor.

To prove you have been served Heathrow has to demon­strate that you were either
a) per­son­al­ly hand­ed a copy of the injunc­tion, or
b) seen / pho­tographed / videoed read­ing a copy of the injunc­tion whether on a web­site or the ones that are like­ly to be post­ed up on their prop­er­ty (this is called ser­vice by sub­sti­tu­tion).

We will deal with what to do about per­son­al ser­vice below, but ser­vice by sub­sti­tu­tion is very dif­fi­cult to prove. The injunc­tion requires Plane Stu­pid, HACAN and Air­port Watch to post the injunc­tion on their web­sites, and no doubt Heathrow will have it on theirs as well. How­ev­er, they still have to prove that you went to those web­sites and explic­it­ly viewed the terms of the injunc­tion – some­thing very dif­fi­cult to do, if not down­right impos­si­ble.

Heathrow will also dis­play the injunc­tion around its premis­es, in par­tic­u­lar on the fences and posts of its perime­ter. The pur­pose of this is to say that you must be aware of the terms if you were in the area. But it is an argu­ment like­ly to fall flat unless they have evi­dence to show that you actu­al­ly read the notices.

The court may decide that if you have been pro­vid­ed with the terms of the injunc­tion by some­one telling you (eg some­one shout­ing it over a mega­phone) then you have been served. How­ev­er there are any num­ber of prob­lems with prov­ing this in court (as has been show to be the case with the police using mega­phones to inform assem­blies of sec.14 orders).

PERSONAL SERVICE
It is very like­ly that, despite the hol­low­ness of their vic­to­ry that BAA will attempt to serve peo­ple per­son­al­ly with a copy of the injunc­tion order. The stan­dard tac­tic, prob­a­bly with the sup­port of the police, is to have spe­cial­ly appoint­ed indi­vid­u­als called ‘process servers’ whose job is to go around hand­ing out copies of the order to peo­ple they think are like­ly to be ‘pro­tes­tors’, and at the same time pho­to / video / record the fact with a descrip­tion of the per­son served.

To be served they must give you a copy of the order, but this can amount to tap­ping you on the body with it and drop­ping it at your feet, even as you are run­ning off. It is like­ly that these process servers will turn up at var­i­ous protests with copies to hand out. They are also like­ly to be out­side the cli­mate camp attempt­ing to serve it on peo­ple com­ing in or out.

You are not required to stand still and sim­ply wait to be served. As they are offi­cers of the court you are not sup­posed to active­ly inter­fere with them serv­ing peo­ple but there is no require­ment for you to make their life easy for them. If some­one dodgy look­ing comes towards you with a sheaf of paper don’t hang around and take it, or open your win­dow to accept it. Don’t let them into the camp – they have no right to be there. In the past peo­ple have been very cre­ative in pro­tect­ing those that have not been served, for instance, form­ing spon­ta­neous group hugs around them or sim­ply stand­ing in a line between them and the process serv­er – process servers are not allowed to break the law to serve the injunc­tion order.

If a process serv­er is being aggres­sive, take action and make com­plaints – the are not allowed to assault peo­ple or act aggres­sive­ly. Video their actions (though not faces of those being served) in case there are any sub­se­quent court cas­es – you have a right to video both process servers and police alike, regard­less of what they say.

And if you have been served with the injunc­tion this does not mean you are auto­mat­i­cal­ly cov­ered by it – you still have to fall into the def­i­n­i­tion of ‘pro­tes­tor’ giv­en above. Sim­ply being a cli­mate camper or involved in a cli­mate camp protest does not mean that.

WHAT IS A BREACH OF THE INJUNCTION
If you are a ‘pro­tes­tor’ with­in the mean­ing of the injunc­tion and you tres­pass on Heathrow Air­port Ltd’s land (there is a map attached to the injunc­tion) then you are in breach of the injunc­tion. You are also in breach if you block­ade any road or oth­er form of trans­port for peo­ple or vehi­cles reach­ing the air­port, as this would amount to inter­fer­ing with or obstruct­ing the oper­a­tion of the air­port. What it does not stop is action against com­pa­nies involved with the air­port being tar­get­ed in their own right. It does not stop leaflet­ing or oth­er law­ful protest activ­i­ties from tak­ing place in any place not cov­ered under the tres­pass clause.

It is not a crim­i­nal offence to breach the injunc­tion as it is a civ­il mat­ter only. You can­not be arrest­ed for breach­ing the injunc­tion, even if the police say oth­er­wise. Note, how­ev­er, you can still be arrest­ed for break­ing the law and local bye-laws relat­ing to tres­pass, etc.

Incit­ing peo­ple to tres­pass, or to impede / inter­fere with Heathrow’s oper­a­tion will also be con­sid­ered to be breach­es of the injunc­tion, but then, only if they can prove that you were served or had knowl­edge that it was breach­ing the injunc­tion. Note, incite­ment can be an offence in its own right depend­ing on what you are incit­ing oth­ers to do.

WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU BREACH THE INJUNCTION
The injunc­tion does not give the police any pow­ers of arrest for breach of the injunc­tion (of course you may still be arrest­ed if you are sus­pect­ed of com­mit­ting a crim­i­nal offence). To pur­sue you for breach of the injunc­tion Heathrow must get the Court’s per­mis­sion, which is decid­ed at a ‘com­mit­tal’ hear­ing. Heathrow will need to first get your name and address in order to serve you with court papers about the com­mit­tal hear­ing. At that hear­ing they will have to prove that you had been served with the injunc­tion, and that you did some­thing that breached the terms of the injunc­tion.

Tech­ni­cal­ly a breach is con­tempt of court, and can car­ry a vari­ety of penal­ties depend­ing on the sever­i­ty of the breach, these range from a con­di­tion­al dis­charge, through fines and jail time. But jail time in par­tic­u­lar is very unlike­ly except for per­sis­tent breach­es. Tak­ing you to court for breach of the injunc­tion is an expen­sive and fair­ly point­less route for Heathrow, and some­thing they are unlike­ly to do as by the time they get you to Court the camp will be over. Most oth­er injunc­tions of this sort, such as the one at the cli­mate camp at Drax last year have proved unen­force­able and have been ignored by pro­test­ers with­out reper­cus­sions.

The pub­lic­i­ty gen­er­at­ed by these injunc­tion pro­ceed­ings has been a fan­tas­tic boost for the Cli­mate Camp itself and the cam­paigns against Heathrow and avi­a­tion in gen­er­al. You couldn’t pay for this sort of cov­er­age. We hope that no one will be deterred from com­ing to the Cli­mate Camp by the injunc­tion – that would be a sur­ren­der of our right to free­dom of protest and expres­sion. We can all be at the Camp, sure in our right to be there.

FINAL NOTES ON THE PROTECTION FROM HARASSMENT ACT
The out­come of these injunc­tion pro­ceed­ings is a vic­to­ry for pro­test­ers in the UK and has made a laugh­ing stock of Heathrow’s own­er BAA plc, as well as their lawyer Tim­o­thy Law­son-Crut­ten­den, the self-declared ‘mar­ket-leader’ in these types of injunc­tions. Mrs Jus­tice Swift threw out BAA’s appli­ca­tion for an injunc­tion under the Pro­tec­tion from Harass­ment Act (PHA) forc­ing BAA to fall back on the more tooth­less com­mon law option, so dam­ag­ing great­ly the abil­i­ty of cor­po­ra­tions to use the PHA to sti­fle legal protest.

For the last four years cor­po­ra­tions have been using the PHA to attack legit­i­mate protest. Orig­i­nal­ly designed to pro­tect peo­ple from stalk­ers, the Gov­ern­ment and com­pa­nies who are the tar­get of per­sis­tent protests have been rel­a­tive­ly suc­cess­ful in attempt­ing to declare oth­er­wise law­ful forms of protest such as march­es and leaflet­ing, the use of mega­phones, drums, whis­tles etc as amount­ing to harass­ment and there­fore have been able to obtain court orders restrict­ing or ban­ning protests out­right. The mis­use of this law has lead to a dra­con­ian infringe­ment of the rights to protest and assem­ble. It has also allowed cor­po­ra­tions to obtain court orders based on low­er stan­dards of proof than would be allowed in the crim­i­nal courts, yet the penal­ties for breach­ing the orders made are crim­i­nal in nature.

As a last point, we would like to dis­tance our­selves from the neg­a­tive com­ments by some fight­ing the injunc­tion in refer­ring to ‘ani­mal rights nuts’. The ani­mal rights move­ment has been at the front line fight­ing the dra­con­ian terms of injunc­tions under the Pro­tec­tion from Harass­ment Act for four years now. These injunc­tions have nev­er been about stop­ping ille­gal activ­i­ties, but about curb­ing the right to law­ful protest. The out­come of these cur­rent injunc­tion pro­ceed­ings is anoth­er step in that same fight.

legal.collective3@yahoo.co.uk

Bacton, Norfolk. Locals show solidarity with Shell to Sea

3.08.2007
Today a small group of local cam­paign­ers vis­it­ed Shel­l’s pro­cess­ing plant at Bac­ton on the North Nor­folk Coast to demon­strate sol­i­dar­i­ty with com­mu­ni­ties strug­gling against Shell in Co. Mayo, Eire. Bac­ton is one of the major land­fall loca­tions for North Sea gas in Eng­land and Shel­l’s refin­ery has been includ­ed in the recent SOCPA leg­is­la­tion.

bacton3.08.2007
Today a small group of local cam­paign­ers vis­it­ed Shel­l’s pro­cess­ing plant at Bac­ton on the North Nor­folk Coast to demon­strate sol­i­dar­i­ty with com­mu­ni­ties strug­gling against Shell in Co. Mayo, Eire. Bac­ton is one of the major land­fall loca­tions for North Sea gas in Eng­land and Shel­l’s refin­ery has been includ­ed in the recent SOCPA leg­is­la­tion.

ELF hits Rio Tinto Alcan in Essex in solidarity with Saving Iceland

In the ear­ly hours of 30/07/07, sabo­teurs struck at Smur­fit Kap­pa, a plas­tics fac­to­ry owned by Rio Tin­to Alcan in Chelms­ford, Essex. The gates were locked shut, office doors and load­ing bays were sab­o­taged with glue and a mes­sage left paint­ed on the wall. Vehi­cles belong­ing to Rio Tin­to were also sab­o­taged.

In the ear­ly hours of 30/07/07, sabo­teurs struck at Smur­fit Kap­pa, a plas­tics fac­to­ry owned by Rio Tin­to Alcan in Chelms­ford, Essex. The gates were locked shut, office doors and load­ing bays were sab­o­taged with glue and a mes­sage left paint­ed on the wall. Vehi­cles belong­ing to Rio Tin­to were also sab­o­taged.

Rio Tin­to, who have recent­ly acquired the busi­ness have arguably the worse record of any cor­po­ra­tion for abuse of the earth and its peo­ple. Whether they’re spon­sor­ing and train­ing para­mil­i­taries com­mit­ting geno­cide in the South Pacif­ic, remov­ing entire moun­tain tops in Africa or strip min­ing vir­gin rain­for­est that belongs to indige­nous tribes, they must be stopped.

Rio Tin­to’s recent acqui­si­tion of Alcan makes them par­ty to the great­est eco­log­i­cal crime cur­rent­ly being com­mit­ted in Europe. They are look­ing to turn Ice­land’s great wilder­ness­es into a series of mono­lith­ic pow­er sta­tions to pow­er alu­mini­um smelters; one of the most pol­lut­ing and ener­gy inten­sive indus­tries in the world. Rio Tin­to bring repres­sion wher­ev­er they go, in Bouganville in the South Pacif­ic they hired mer­ce­nar­ies to rape and mur­der all who opposed their mas­sive cop­per mine, Pan­gu­na. Their inva­sion into Ice­land is no dif­fer­ent and protests against heavy indus­try are being met with police vio­lence and activists are fit­ted up and sub­ject to state spon­sored slan­der.

It’s nec­es­sary to hit Rio Tin­to where it hurts, on the bot­tom line, the bal­ance sheet. Where it mat­ters.

EARTH LIBERATION FRONT

Oxford Climate Campers Take Over Carfax Tower!

28.07.2007

Today, four activists climbed to the top of Car­fax Tow­er and dropped a ban­ner satiris­ing the Oxford City Coun­cil logo (an ox cross­ing a ford) and pro­mot­ing the camp for cli­mate action. The ban­ner stayed put for over two hours.

On the ground around 25 peo­ple hand­ed out fly­ers for the camp, and there were shouts of “No more bull!” which were echoed back from the top of the tow­er.

Oxford climate camp banner drop 128.07.2007

Today, four activists climbed to the top of Car­fax Tow­er and dropped a ban­ner satiris­ing the Oxford City Coun­cil logo (an ox cross­ing a ford) and pro­mot­ing the camp for cli­mate action. The ban­ner stayed put for over two hours.

On the ground around 25 peo­ple hand­ed out fly­ers for the camp, and there were shouts of “No more bull!” which were echoed back from the top of the tow­er.

Mean­while, a group of peo­ple were try­ing to build an ark. Their excuse? The gov­ern­ment and big busi­ness won’t take action on cli­mate change, so we’d bet­ter build an ark to accom­mo­date the earth­’s 7 bil­lion peo­ple. They tried to get the police to assist. When asked who was in charge, an activist iden­ti­fied only as Noah, said:
“No one is in charge; this is an Ark‑y”(!)

The recent flood­ing around the UK has left many peo­ple home­less — in Oxford­shire, one of the worst hit areas, many peo­ple were evac­u­at­ed to safe­ty. A local demon­stra­tion last Wednes­day bemoaned the fact that the gov­ern­ment are not doing enough to help those worst hit by the floods. It has been report­ed, in The Guardian, that flash floods in Britain are like­ly to be the biggest imme­di­ate prob­lem caused by cli­mate change.

Link: www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/oxford/2007/07/377181.html (more pics there too!).

oxford@climatecamp.org.uk
http://climatecamp.org.uk

reports of critical masses & London video

Anoth­er Lon­don Crit­i­cal Mass police has­sle.

Police rou­tine­ly inter­fere with Crit­i­cal Mass, hold­ing up the front of the ride, tar­get­ing sound sys­tems and some­times tick­et­ing rid­ers. They also video and pho­to­graph rid­ers at the start of every event. It is odd though that they nev­er turn up for the Decem­ber ride, which is close to the New year cel­e­bra­tions.

Anoth­er Lon­don Crit­i­cal Mass police has­sle.

Police rou­tine­ly inter­fere with Crit­i­cal Mass, hold­ing up the front of the ride, tar­get­ing sound sys­tems and some­times tick­et­ing rid­ers. They also video and pho­to­graph rid­ers at the start of every event. It is odd though that they nev­er turn up for the Decem­ber ride, which is close to the New year cel­e­bra­tions.

They just had to spoil it did­n’t they. In what would have been a fast and flu­id Mass with no holdups at junc­tions and the police pro­vid­ing use­ful cork­ing, they decid­ed to shut down a sound sys­tem in Park Lane, well out­side the SOCPA zone, and hold up traf­fic by so doing. It is as if the police are des­per­ate to assert their author­i­ty one way or anoth­er. Maybe they have dif­fi­cul­ty try­ing to jus­ti­fy such a large police pres­ence and expense on rou­tine cycle rides. Luck­i­ly the sound sys­tem bod emerged from his unpleas­ant police encounter unscathed and with a smile on his face.

Video Part 1 — video/mp4 18M
Video Video part 2 — video/mp4 22M
The raw video is over two hours long and was made with a hel­met cam. It has been edit­ed down into two parts total­ing 11 min­utes.
—————–

Gagged! 18 — South Wales Anarchist Newsletter

Heres the pdf — http://lists.riseup.net/www/d_read/gagged/gagged18.pdf
audio to fol­low in the next few days.

Heres the pdf — http://lists.riseup.net/www/d_read/gagged/gagged18.pdf
audio to fol­low in the next few days.

some last minute diary dates:
Sat­ur­day 6pm — Social Ecol­o­gy sem­i­nar ‑at the PAD, An intro­duc­tion by Social
Ecol­o­gy Lon­don
Sun­day noon — after the fry up at the PAD a pre­sen­ta­tion on this years
cli­mate camp, films, talks etc etc
Mon­day 8pm — South Wales Anar­chists forum — a net­work­ing gath­er­ing with
reports from all the local groups & cam­paigns. All wel­come. 8pm, Glam­or­gan
Staff Club, West­gate Street, Cardiff. If what you read in Gagged! inter­ests
you, why not come along!
Tues­day 7pm — at the PAD read­ing group sub­ject ‘Tur­bu­lence’ see
www.turbulence.org.uk

GAGGED! #18 • August 2007• www.gaggedanarchist.tk • FREE
Pro­duced by South Wales Anar­chists • southwalesanarchists.org

War on Ter­ror = War on Civ­il Lib­er­ties

South Wales cops have asked the Home Office for inva­sive pow­ers to stop & search peo­ple in Cardiff fol­low­ing ter­ror attacks in Lon­don & Glas­gow Air­port. In a move which echoes politi­cians’ calls to extend intern­ment with­out charge, the police here are using the ter­ror attacks as an excuse to extend their pow­ers & fur­ther strip away civ­il lib­er­ties. Sec­tion 44 of the Ter­ror­ism Act gives the plod unprece­dent­ed stop & search pow­ers & has already been mis­used to has­sle demon­stra­tors & oth­ers.
Speak­ing at the begin­ning of July Divi­sion­al Com­man­der for Cardiff, Chief Super­in­ten­dent Josh Jones said: ‘Com­mu­ni­ties defeat ter­ror­ism & I ask any­one who is stopped by a police offi­cer over the next few days to help us by engag­ing pos­i­tive­ly & pass­ing on any infor­ma­tion that they may have.’

How­ev­er, Assis­tant Chief Con­sta­ble Giles York also said: ‘We have seen sev­er­al well inten­tioned calls to the police & I am very encour­aged at the vig­i­lance being shown by the pub­lic of South Wales , par­tic­u­lar­ly as there is no spe­cif­ic threat to the area.’

Does any­one else see a bit of a con­tra­dic­tion here? They’ve asked for pow­ers to stop & search peo­ple because of the threat of ter­ror­ism, while at the same time admit­ting there is no threat to peo­ple in Cardiff . This is oppor­tunist non­sense. The cops are yet again using people’s very real fear of ter­ror­ism as an excuse to get more pow­ers for them­selves.

Know your rights

If you’re stopped & searched under Sec­tion 44 of the Ter­ror­ism Act 2000 you have spe­cif­ic & clear rights that cops will ignore unless you make it clear you know them. They may try & get you to give them your per­son­al details, & they may attempt to pho­to­graph you – they are not allowed to do either. Here are some point­ers pro­vid­ed by the civ­il rights group Lib­er­ty:
• The police can only give you a pat down, remove out­er clothes (eg: jack­et, hat) search your bags, & have you emp­ty your pock­ets
• You do not have to give your name or address.
• You do not have to explain why you are there.
• You are not allowed to flee the search, but you are not required to be active­ly com­pli­ant. You are allowed to “go limp” as pas­sive resis­tance dur­ing the search if you do not wish to com­ply.
• There is no per­mis­sion to col­lect DNA data dur­ing the search.
• You do not have to com­ply with any attempt to pho­to­graph or record you (although you can­not wear a mask).
• Women can not be touched by male police dur­ing these search­es.
• Make notes about the offi­cers search­ing you — name, num­ber, & police force.
• Note the time & the events pre­ced­ing the search.
• Note the spe­cif­ic word­ing used by the police to explain their author­i­ty to search.
• Ask police for the rea­son that they are search­ing you. Specif­i­cal­ly, are they search­ing for ter­ror­ists or are they sim­ply try­ing to deter, delay, or incon­ve­nience you?
check out: www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk

Plod Spread Ter­ror Fears

South Wales Police have been bleat­ing to the press about the increased lev­el of calls from fright­ened mem­bers of the pub­lic about so-called ‘sus­pi­cious’ behav­iour. Instead of appeal­ing for calm or just keep­ing their mouths shut, they’ve encour­aged peo­ple to remain ‘vig­i­lant’ against unknown or non-exis­tent threats, & report every para­noid fan­ta­sy to the police.

Assis­tant Chief Con­sta­ble Giles York said: ‘It is not only my offi­cers mak­ing South Wales a hos­tile area for any ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty, but also our com­mu­ni­ties. The pub­lic are our eyes & ears & we are grate­ful for the efforts they have tak­en to report any­thing which is slight­ly out of the ordi­nary.’
Exact­ly what are the best nuggets of ‘intel­li­gence’ a fright­ened pub­lic have passed on to York & his team?

‘We have received calls from busi­ness­es who are report­ing unusu­al pur­chas­es’, he said. ‘One super­mar­ket in South Wales noti­fied us of a group buy­ing a large amount of dig­i­tal cam­eras. In anoth­er call, the man­ag­er of a shop­ping cen­tre noti­fied us of a call he had received in which he was asked for maps of the cen­tre.’

Dig­i­tal cam­eras & maps of Cardiff ? Be afraid. Be very afraid.

York added: ‘Both of these calls turned out to have gen­uine expla­na­tions but I encour­age any­one to get in con­tact with us if they have any con­cerns, no mat­ter how triv­ial they may seem.’

Nobody is ille­gal

A Kebab-house was closed & 5 take­away work­ers arrest­ed when cops & immi­gra­tion bureau­crats raid­ed Cardiff’s ‘Chip Lane’ at the begin­ning of July.

One work­er at Dorothy’s Fish Bar said: “There have been lots of police here, at least 20 offi­cers. They sealed off Car­o­line Street at both ends & have been through all the take­aways look­ing for ille­gals. They checked all the staff’s pass­ports & their sta­tus.”

It isn’t known what peo­ple were nicked for, they could have been so-called ‘ille­gal immi­grants’ or asy­lum seek­ers await­ing Home Office approval to stay in the UK. Under cur­rent laws refugees are not allowed to work or earn mon­ey while their appli­ca­tions to stay are processed, hav­ing to live off tiny state hand­outs. If they work, they are forced into low-pay­ing menial jobs, & if dis­cov­ered they are arrest­ed & deport­ed.

Asy­lum seek­ers are often from coun­tries where there has been mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion by the West or regimes armed & sup­port­ed by the UK. Noth­ing can jus­ti­fy the suf­fer­ing that is imposed on inno­cent peo­ple like those arrest­ed in Cardiff in the name of ‘immi­gra­tion con­trols’. The rich will set­tle in whichev­er coun­try makes them pay the least tax, but the poor are forced to risk their lives to try & make a bet­ter life for them­selves. As Anar­chists we believe in com­plete free­dom of move­ment.

Pick­et lines

Roy­al mail staff in Wales took part in the 1st UK wide postal strike for 11 years on 29th June with anoth­er 24-hour strike begin­ning at 7pm on 12th July. Work­ers are angry at Roy­al Mails ‘mod­erni­sa­tion’ plans, which will result in the loss of 40,000 jobs & cuts in wages & pen­sions. It will also mean high­er stamp prices, less col­lec­tions, lat­er deliv­er­ies, cuts in week­end ser­vices & the clo­sure of even more post offices.

*****

A high school in Den­bighshire, north Wales, was forced to close as teach­ers staged a one day strike. Indus­tri­al action came fol­low­ing a long run­ning dis­pute over new pay arrange­ments intro­duced in 2006 & seri­ous con­cerns with work­ing prac­tices at the school with many staff feel­ing “demor­alised & under­val­ued”. Sound famil­iar? Ah the pre­dictabil­i­ty of cap­i­tal­ist work­ing rela­tions.

*****

Strike action at the trou­bled Grampian Food Group fac­to­ry, Llangefni, Angle­sey was can­celled at the last minute after work­ers accept­ed a 4% pay deal in a bal­lot on the 25th June. Work­ers were due to strike on 26th, 27th & 30th June because of dis­putes over pay, pen­sions & the grow­ing casu­al­i­sa­tion of the work­force.

*****

Health work­ers across the UK are still con­sid­er­ing strike action over a pay rise deal well below the rate of infla­tion. Ear­li­er this year health work­ers were offered a mis­er­able 2.5% pay rise. This was cut even fur­ther when both the gov­ern­ment & employ­ers said that in Wales, Eng­land & North­ern Ire­land this would be staged — with a 1.5% increase giv­en from April & the final 2.5% set­tle­ment paid from Novem­ber. How­ev­er, fol­low­ing work­ers com­plaints & union pres­sure the respec­tive gov­ern­men­tal bod­ies of Wales & North­ern Ire­land were forced to make u‑turns & health work­ers in these coun­tries will now receive their pay rise in full back­dat­ed from April. This does not yet apply to health work­ers in Eng­land. UNISON has con­duct­ed a bal­lot of its health work­er mem­bers (460,000 across the UK) for poten­tial indus­tri­al action sched­uled to take place in Sep­tem­ber 2007. Watch this space!

*****

Hos­pi­tal work­ers at Ysbyti’r Tri Chwm, Ebbw Vale held a demon­stra­tion out­side the hos­pi­tal in protest against £120-a-year car park­ing charges for staff, which were intro­duced in April. A spokesper­son for the Gwent NHS trust stat­ed that charg­ing for car park­ing was now stan­dard prac­tice at near­ly all NHS hos­pi­tals in south Wales & that there was a need to main­tain equi­ty with staff in oth­er hos­pi­tal sites who already pay charges. But many work­ers feel that they are being charged for the priv­i­lege of going to work & that park­ing should be free for all staff, patients & vis­i­tors. Too right!

“Wales?” Same old tory Sto­ry

David Cameron’s “New” Tories have appoint­ed an Eton-edu­cat­ed hered­i­tary peer who knows “absolute­ly noth­ing” about Wales as Welsh Affairs spokesman. Lord Glen­toran, who lives in North­ern Ire­land , said, “As far as the pol­i­tics of Wales is con­cerned, as of 48 hours ago I knew absolute­ly noth­ing. I now know noth­ing, plus a bit. I know noth­ing about the pol­i­tics but I know quite a lot about the geog­ra­phy.” he denied this was a prob­lem as he had once stayed with a “lit­er­al­ly work­ing class fam­i­ly in Bris­tol“ when he was 16, before join­ing the Army. You couldn’t make it up!

NO PIPELINE!

On the morn­ing of 19th June a huge num­ber of police & bailiffs arrived at the anti-pipeline tree camp in Sen­ny­bridge, Bre­con Bea­cons, to evict pro­test­ers from the trees.

The camp has suc­cess­ful­ly pre­vent­ed the destruc­tion of wood­land in the Bre­con Bea­cons Nation­al Park, on the route of the huge LNG pipleine, since Jan­u­ary this year. Pro­test­ers were tak­en to court in ear­ly June & had been await­ing the evic­tion. Some peo­ple were locked on high up in the trees whilst oth­ers were under­ground in tun­nels in order to delay Nation­al Grid’s mul­ti-mil­lion pound destruc­tive & dan­ger­ous project.The A40 road that ran past the camp was closed to traf­fic & police & bailiffs spent two days remov­ing the activists. Many peo­ple head­ed down to give sup­port but few made it onto site, most being kept in a police cor­don out­side with jour­nal­ists.

In total 12 peo­ple were arrest­ed, most receiv­ing cau­tions or con­di­tion­al dis­charge with a court fine. Nation­al Grid instant­ly began strip­ping away the land in order to pre­vent any­one occu­py­ing it again. Per­haps they for­get that the route of the pipe is 200 miles long…plenty of room for more resis­tance!
The camp was suc­cess­ful in rais­ing aware­ness of how the gov­ern­ment & cor­po­ra­tions are pri­ori­tis­ing mon­ey over the future of our envi­ron­ment. Any claim they make to be tak­ing cli­mate change & envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion seri­ous­ly becomes a joke when they hap­pi­ly over­rule objec­tions so they can destroy sup­pos­ed­ly ‘pro­tect­ed’ nat­ur­al land to make way for yet more fos­sil fuels. Check out: www.fightthepipe.co.uk

Who watch­es the watch­ers?

Five secu­ri­ty guards work­ing in Welsh Assem­bly build­ings, Cardiff were caught using CCTV cam­eras to look at near­by homes & hotels. While this has been going on for around two years, the voyeuris­tic secu­ri­ty guards have received noth­ing more than a slap on the wrist. An assem­bly spokesper­son claimed that these were “iso­lat­ed” inci­dences, which were not thought to have infringed any­one’s pri­va­cy. We bet the peo­ple whose hous­es were spied on feel a whole lot bet­ter now!

Wel­fare for the Rich

Work­ing class peo­ple in Wales are sub­si­dis­ing pri­vate indus­try not only through wage slav­ery (where the pay we take home is much less than the val­ue of the work we do), but also in huge pay­outs to busi­ness­es fund­ed by our tax­es.

Tax is meant to be cash we lend the state so that they can pay it back to us in essen­tial ser­vices, edu­ca­tion, health­care, & pen­sions. But politi­cians are giv­ing mil­lions to the rich so they can set up more busi­ness­es.

For 5 years the Welsh Assem­bly Gov­ern­ment has giv­en mil­lions of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey to busi­ness in the form of Assem­bly Invest­ment Grants (AIG) & Region­al Selec­tive Assis­tance (RSA). Dur­ing the first 4 years of the scheme’s oper­a­tions, over 1504 offers of AIG with a com­bined val­ue of £45.8 mil­lion were made to busi­ness­es. In the 7 year peri­od to March 2006 1173 offers of RSA with a com­bined val­ue of a whop­ping £650 mil­lion were made to busi­ness­es under­tak­ing cap­i­tal invest­ment projects in Wales.

These bribes for boss­es are typ­i­cal of the way in which gov­ern­ments oper­ate. Sweet­en­ers for the rich might look attrac­tive to politi­cians, & might even boost the econ­o­my & cre­ate a few jobs in the short-term. But in the long-term the peo­ple of Wales lose out big-time: Once prof­its at these sub­sidised busi­ness­es start to fall they close down their fac­to­ries, sack the work­force & move on to places where the labour is cheap­er & new gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies are to be had.

Under “New” Labour the gap between rich & poor has widened mas­sive­ly. Pay­outs to the rich are a major cause of this inequal­i­ty, the wealthy few can enjoy lives of com­fort & extrav­a­gance while 3 mil­lion British chil­dren live in pover­ty.

COME CAMP WITH US!

Organ­is­ing & strug­gling in our local com­mu­ni­ties is key to build­ing strong social move­ments & bring­ing about last­ing social change. But we also need to con­tin­ue to come togeth­er in mass mobil­i­sa­tions. It is at con­ver­gence spaces like the ones at the recent anti-G8 protests (see Gagged! #17) that we get a glimpse of our col­lec­tive pow­er. They offer us the space to organ­ise & come up with solu­tions to social & envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems with­out the need for lead­ers, where togeth­er we can cre­ate new worlds in the shell of the old. This sum­mer there are at least two major protest camps in the UK — come camp with us: you know you want to!

CAMP FOR CLIMATE ACTION

On 14th-21st August, some­where near Heathrow the 2nd Camp for Cli­mate Action will take place, with 8 days of low-impact, sus­tain­able liv­ing, learn­ing, col­lec­tive deci­sion-mak­ing & direct action to high­light the prob­lems of cli­mate change & solu­tions to halt it.

Cli­mate change is hap­pen­ing now. Peo­ple are dying of starv­ing now. Envi­ron­men­tal refugees are mov­ing now & accord­ing to the Red Cross already out­num­ber those dis­placed by armed con­flict. The sit­u­a­tion is only going to get worse — unless we act now! If we car­ry on with busi­ness as usu­al sci­en­tists pre­dict a pos­si­ble 6 degree rise in tem­per­a­ture. Last time the plan­et expe­ri­enced this was 250 mil­lion years ago & 95% of all life was wiped off the face of the earth.

Our entire way of life is cur­rent­ly struc­tured so that almost every aspect of our lives pro­duces harm­ful car­bon diox­ide emis­sion — trav­el, work, hous­ing, food. In order to cut these emis­sions by the 90% that many sci­en­tists believe nec­es­sary, some very major changes need to occur. So where is this change going to come from? We believe that far from offer­ing any solu­tions to our cur­rent eco­log­i­cal cri­sis gov­ern­ments are part of the prob­lem. Nei­ther can we expect cor­po­ra­tions or the mar­ket to offer any real solu­tions. Although we all need to make changes in the ways we live, it’s not enough just to switch brands. We need to chal­lenge the log­ic of cap­i­tal­ism, which got us into this mess in the first place. Cap­i­tal­ism is based on a very sim­ple prin­ci­ple — per­pet­u­al eco­nom­ic growth. This leads to the con­stant over pro­duc­tion of goods & ser­vices that we just don’t need, the con­sump­tion of the world’s finite resources & ever grow­ing amounts of waste that our ecosys­tem just can’t deal with. Expect­ing cor­po­ra­tions to sort this out is absurd. They are designed for one thing & that is the max­imi­sa­tion of prof­it.

The avi­a­tion indus­try is a major con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change. The main rea­son why the camp will be at Heathrow this year is to high­light the mas­sive con­tra­dic­tion of the gov­ern­ment claim­ing to be work­ing to reduce emis­sions while set­ting the con­di­tions for huge growth in fly­ing, through air­port expan­sion & sub­si­dies on air fuel, which has stim­u­lat­ed a mas­sive increas­ing in cheap flights.
Last year’s camp was a huge suc­cess (see Gagged! #13). Activists from south Wales joined over 600 peo­ple to take direct action against Drax pow­er­sta­tion, the UK’s largest car­bon diox­ide emit­ter & explored, debat­ed & dis­cussed grass roots alter­na­tives to the cur­rent sys­tem. Let’s make this year’s camp an even big­ger suc­cess! Togeth­er we can build a bet­ter world now! Check out: climatecamp.org.uk

No Bor­der Camp 2007

On 19th-24th Sep­tem­ber will be the UK’s first “No Bor­der Camp”, con­tin­u­ing the tra­di­tion of No Bor­der protest camps across the world since the late 1990s. The gov­ern­ment has recent­ly announced its plans to build a new deten­tion cen­tre near Gatwick air­port. This will be anoth­er in a long list of such places around the world. Places where peo­ple are locked up indef­i­nite­ly & with­out tri­al, & from where they can be forcibly deport­ed. Such deten­tion pris­ons are an inte­gral part of a sys­tem­at­ic, racist, & bar­barous pol­i­cy of suf­fer­ing. Togeth­er we can stop this one being built!

The camp will be an exper­i­ment in self-organ­i­sa­tion. A chance to work togeth­er to stop the build­ing of a new deten­tion cen­tre & gath­er ideas for how to build up the fight against migra­tion con­trols. It will be an impor­tant oppor­tu­ni­ty to chal­lenge & over­come the arti­fi­cial bor­ders of class, race, sex, sex­u­al­i­ty, & nation­al­i­ty which divide us from each oth­er, & act in sol­i­dar­i­ty with one anoth­er for a world with­out bor­ders.

‘Free­dom of move­ment’ is such a scary prospect for the wealthy few because migra­tion under­mines a cen­tral dimen­sion of con­tem­po­rary glob­al cap­i­tal­ism — that peo­ple liv­ing in dif­fer­ent parts of the world can be paid dif­fer­ent wages. Bor­ders, migra­tion con­trols, notions of cit­i­zen­ship & the ‘rights’ that these entail are all inte­gral mech­a­nisms through which this unequal, exploita­tive world sys­tem is main­tained. With­out them there would be no way of con­fin­ing peo­ple to a cer­tain place, a cer­tain set of work­ing con­di­tions & rate of pay. Check out: www.noborders.org.uk

COPWATCH

Cop Wankers Part II
Last month Gagged! report­ed how PC Richard Bowen got away with an 18 month sus­pend­ed sen­tence & avoid­ed jail after mas­tur­bat­ing in front of an arrest­ed woman in the back of a pan­da car. He was ordered to do 100 hours com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice as a painter & dec­o­ra­tor on the estate where he grew up. Let’s hope he doesn’t run out of wall­pa­per paste. This month we can reveal that yet anoth­er UK rozzer, Essex Police’s Mar­tin Chap­man, has been sus­pend­ed for the same thing. It must be some­thing about the uni­form. There is a sil­ver-lin­ing though: a few more like this & they might all go blind.

Gwent Cops on Tax Pay­er-Fund­ed fun
Mem­bers of the Gwent Police were liv­ing it up at our expense at major events this sum­mer. Cops were sent on free trips to Glas­ton­bury & Wim­ble­don, alleged­ly to get hints & tips on how to police major events ahead of the Ryder Cup, to be held in New­port in 2010. Super­in­ten­dent Nigel Rus­sell denied any sug­ges­tions cops had been on a jun­ket to Europe’s biggest music fes­ti­val, claim­ing they did not see any bands. “You won’t catch the cops in the mosh­pit,” he said, try­ing des­per­ate­ly not to sound like a cock.

Police Num­bers Fall
Over­paid work-shy plod are retir­ing in their droves & not enough new ones are tak­ing their place, accord­ing to new fig­ures. For the first time in ages more police are leav­ing Welsh forces than are being recruit­ed, because of a rise in retire­ment & res­ig­na­tion rates. The num­ber of cops resign­ing from the four Welsh forces has more than dou­bled since 2002, while retire­ments have also shot up, from 110 in 2002 to 269 last year.

Cop Cars Trashed at Gyp­sy Camp
Two South Wales Police vehi­cles had their win­dows smashed in a dis­tur­bance at an offi­cial traveller’s camp. A Gyp­sy Coun­cil spokesman told the press he didn’t know any­thing about the inci­dent, but added: “I’m sur­prised the police left their cars unat­tend­ed. It doesn’t mat­ter where they go on hous­ing estates any­where in the coun­try, they shouldn’t leave them unat­tend­ed. I don’t know any police force that would leave their cars.”

Welsh Plod Ignored Male Rape Vic­tim
Police have apol­o­gised to a rape vic­tim after their han­dling of his case was crit­i­cised by the Inde­pen­dent Police Com­plaints Com­mis­sion. Geof­frey Cole, from Neath, was sex­u­al­ly assault­ed in Octo­ber 2005. When he report­ed the crime, police offi­cers didn’t take him seri­ous­ly, & failed to make ade­quate efforts to exam­ine the crime scene for evi­dence. Mr Cole’s attack­er has nev­er been caught.

Diary Dates ‑If you are unsure about attend­ing any of the events list­ed below, why not get in touch?

August
1–5 — Big Green Gath­er­ing — Sus­tain­able liv­ing, music & hip­pies. Som­er­set. www.big-green-gathering.com
6 — South Wales Anar­chists forum — a net­work­ing gath­er­ing with reports from all the local groups & cam­paigns. All wel­come. 8pm, Glam­or­gan Staff Club, West­gate Street, Cardiff.
11 — No Bor­ders Info-day & Social — to mobilise for the No Bor­der camp; with speak­ers, films, food & live music. From 1pm at the PAD.
14–21 — Camp for Cli­mate Action – near Heathrow air­port. www.climatecamp.org.uk
27–30 — Smash EDO Action Camp — Direct Action against the war machine. www.smashedo.org.uk
Sep­tem­ber
11 — Dis­arm Desi — actions against Defence Sys­tems & Equip­ment Inter­na­tion­al arms fair. ExCel Cen­tre, Lon­don. www.dsei.org
19–24 — No Bor­ders Camp, near Gatwick. www.noborders.org.uk

Got any news or an event you want us to cov­er? send details to news@gaggedanarchist.tk

An audio ver­sion of Gagged! is avail­able, just check out www.gaggedanarchist.tk, where you can also sub­scribe online. Five thou­sand copies of each issue are dis­trib­uted through­out the region, we always look­ing to get Gagged! into new places. If you are inter­est­ed in get­ting involved in any way, please get in touch info@gaggedanarchist.tk

Peo­ples Autonomous Des­ti­na­tion
a phys­i­cal space in Cardiff for groups & indi­vid­u­als who can­not or will not work with­in the con­straints of gov­ern­men­tal or cor­po­rate con­trol.
Veg­an fryup every sun­day from 12noon.
Not-for-prof­it-shop every wednes­day from 5pm. Plus free shop all the time.
meet­ings every wednes­day from 7pm.
& lots more, check our notice board!
118 Clifton Street, Cardiff CF24 1LW • www.thepad.org.uk

Cam­paign Groups
Cardiff Ris­ing Tide
is a grass­roots group com­mit­ted to tak­ing action & build­ing a move­ment against cli­mate change. Meet irreg­u­lar­ly, get in con­tact for details.
cardiff@risingtide.org.uk
www.risingtide.org.uk
No Bor­ders Wales
organ­is­es on migra­tion issues & acts to break down bound­aries that divide us. Meet thurs­days 7pm at PAD.
noborderswales@riseup.net
www.noborders.org.uk
Cardiff Read­ing Anti-Cap­i­tal­ism
is a study/reading group explor­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary vision & strat­e­gy. Meet 7pm last tues­day of the month at PAD.

Cardiff Anar­chist Net­work (CAN) is a col­lec­tive of peo­ple who want to pur­sue polit­i­cal demon­stra­tions through direct action. There are no lead­ers, just like mind­ed indi­vid­u­als. cardiffanarchists@riseup.net myspace.com/cardiffanarchists Meet 8pm mon­days at PAD.

Gwent Anar­chists are like mind­ed indi­vid­u­als believ­ing in auton­o­my, respect & jus­tice; against all forms of exploita­tion & big­otry. Aim­ing to increase the knowl­edge of, & cre­ate a resis­tance to gov­ern­ments & big busi­ness abus­ing peo­ple & the earth. gwentanarchists@yahoo.co.uk myspace.com/gwentanarchists Meet 8.30pm every oth­er mon­day at the Murenger House, High Street, New­port.

Pem­brokeshire Anar­chists is a group of like mind­ed peo­ple who believe in direct action, jus­tice, free­dom & auton­o­my, are against cap­i­tal­ism, exploita­tion & big­otry. pembrokeshireanarchists@riseup.net myspace.com/pembrokeshireanarchists

Rhond­da Cyon Taf Anar­chists are an autonomous group of free-think­ing indi­vid­u­als who reject cap­i­tal­ism & resist state con­trol through direct action. We work towards the cre­ation of a world based on jus­tice & free­dom. rctanarchists@riseup.net

For more news from all over the world like the sort you find in Gagged! take a look at: www.schnews.org.uk www.indymedia.org.uk www.libcom.org www.anarkismo.net www.infoshop.org

info@gaggedanarchist.tk
http://www.gaggedanarchist.tk

Camp for Climate Action — all the info you need to get there with the right stuff, take action & do workshops

The Camp for Cli­mate Action 2007 — Tues­day 14th August to Tues­day 21st August
Check out Indy­media for news dur­ing the camp — this web­site will not get updat­ed for the dura­tion — site occu­pied: come on down.

Key infor­ma­tion for peo­ple com­ing
Avenge the Plan­et — www.reclaimtheskies.com — infor­ma­tion for action
24 Hours of Mass Action
Location/getting there
Work­shop pro­gramme
Toolk­it for cli­mate action
Injunc­tion: all-clear details & legal brief­ing
Legal advice to read before arrival

Camp for Climate Action heads in ground bannerThe Camp for Cli­mate Action 2007 — Tues­day 14th August to Tues­day 21st August
Check out Indy­media for news dur­ing the camp — this web­site will not get updat­ed for the dura­tion — site occu­pied: come on down.

Key infor­ma­tion for peo­ple com­ing
Avenge the Plan­et — www.reclaimtheskies.com — infor­ma­tion for action
24 Hours of Mass Action
Location/getting there
Work­shop pro­gramme
Toolk­it for cli­mate action
Injunc­tion: all-clear details & legal brief­ing
Legal advice to read before arrival
Eight days of low-impact liv­ing, debates, learn­ing skills, and high-impact direct action tack­ling the root caus­es of cli­mate change. Why?

The sci­ence is clear: glob­al emis­sions of car­bon diox­ide must go into rapid decline with­in the next decade. If they don’t, human­i­ty faces a bleak future.

To achieve this in a way that respects glob­al jus­tice means 90% cuts in devel­oped coun­tries like the UK. How will we cut emis­sions and end inequal­i­ty? How will we achieve this in the face of an eco­nom­ic sys­tem intent on expand­ing at any cost, with cor­po­ra­tions steal­ing the lan­guage of change to dis­guise busi­ness as usu­al? Ordi­nary peo­ple will have to join togeth­er to cre­ate real solu­tions and take direct action against the root caus­es of the prob­lem.

This year the Camp for Cli­mate Action will be at Heathrow, the world’s busiest air­port and a big­ger source of CO2 emis­sions than most coun­tries. It’s sheer luna­cy in this time of eco­log­i­cal cri­sis, but the avi­a­tion indus­try are push­ing to almost dou­ble the air­port’s capac­i­ty by increas­ing flights and build­ing a third run­way. The bat­tle to stop them will be one of the most impor­tant envi­ron­men­tal bat­tles in West­ern Europe.

What we do now decides what the future holds. Those who came before us didn’t know the prob­lem, those who come after us will have severe­ly lim­it­ed options. We have both the pow­er and the respon­si­bil­i­ty to make a rad­i­cal­ly bet­ter world.

By unit­ing in col­lec­tive action this sum­mer we can begin to make it hap­pen.

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

New­ly pub­lished — leaflet and web­site:
Heathrow Air­port and the indus­tries that make it work

Avenge the Plan­et — encour­ag­ing affin­i­ty group action against the avi­a­tion indus­try
Hot action not hot air

Full details at www.reclaimtheskies.com

Out Now! Toolkit for Climate Action

Just in time for the 2007 Cli­mate Camp — the Toolk­it for Cli­mate Action is now ready. With this toolk­it we hope to inspire you to take action — at home, at school, at work, in your com­mu­ni­ty. The toolk­it has been put togeth­er by the Net­work for Cli­mate Action, which is has grown out of and is asso­ci­at­ed with the Cli­mate Camp.

Network for Climate Action logoJust in time for the 2007 Cli­mate Camp — the Toolk­it for Cli­mate Action is now ready. With this toolk­it we hope to inspire you to take action — at home, at school, at work, in your com­mu­ni­ty. The toolk­it has been put togeth­er by the Net­work for Cli­mate Action, which is has grown out of and is asso­ci­at­ed with the Cli­mate Camp.

The toolk­it con­tains mass­es of use­ful infor­ma­tion relat­ed to cli­mate chaos includ­ing:
*use­ful con­tacts, *action resources, *group work­ing, *out­reach ideas, *images and graph­ics, *press and media, *facts and sci­ence, *pos­i­tive alter­na­tives, *fly­ers and posters, *films and music

You can look at it on the web:

http://www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk

It’s also avail­able as a pack con­tain­ing a DVD with all the resources on it, print­ed guides on direct action, legal issues, media and pub­lic­i­ty, plus a con­tact list for peo­ple involved in cli­mate action.

Pick up your pack at the Big Green Gath­er­ing or the Cli­mate Camp.

Or if you can’t wait or aren’t going there, we can post one to you.

Dona­tions would be great too!
Con­tact Details
http://www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk/toolkit/contactus.html

CONTRIBUTE!
We’d like the resource web­site grow and maybe we’ll even put out a sec­ond paper edi­tion. If you are up for help­ing get in touch! Let us know you have any use­ful cli­mate relat­ed resources that should be on it.

FEEDBACK
The pack­’s been put togeth­er by just a few peo­ple and it was lots and lots of work — which means that some of it may not be as great as it could be. It’d be real­ly good to get your com­ments and offers of help to improve it.

http://www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk

No More Bull On Climate Change: Action this Saturday

24.07.2007

PRESS RELEASE
NO MORE BULL ON CLIMATE CHANGE
Cli­mate change cam­paign­ers to descend on Corn­mar­ket Street

Drowning bull24.07.2007

PRESS RELEASE
NO MORE BULL ON CLIMATE CHANGE
Cli­mate change cam­paign­ers to descend on Corn­mar­ket Street

No more bull…

This Sat­ur­day many envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­ers will descend on Corn­mar­ket Street to raise aware­ness about cli­mate change. A colour­ful, vibrant, and var­ied crowd will be run­ning around Oxford.

One activist who will be tak­ing part in one of the many actions this Sat­ur­day said:
“Cli­mate change is the most press­ing issue of our time, if we don’t take action now to slow down the oncom­ing dis­as­ter then no-one can.”

The main action will occur from 12pm at a well-known land­mark, oth­er actions will be tak­ing place around the town. There will also be a Flash Mob beach par­ty resplen­dent in biki­nis and bermu­da shorts.

The recent flood­ing in Oxford­shire led to many peo­ple being removed from some of the worst hit areas, the Oxford Mail report­ed that over 200 peo­ple need­ed to be evac­u­at­ed to safety[1]. The Guardian report­ed that the ‘flash floods in Britain are like­ly to be the biggest imme­di­ate prob­lem caused by cli­mate change’[2].

Anoth­er cam­paign­er semi-joked of the cur­rent flood­ing:
“If the water keeps on ris­ing, we’ll have to build an ark!”

This action has been called as part of the upcom­ing Camp for Cli­mate Action[3] where hun­dreds of peo­ple will meet, par­tic­i­pate in work­shops, and take action on the root caus­es on cli­mate change.

The Camp for Cli­mate Action will be at Heathrow Air­port from the 14th – 21st August.

ENDS

Notes to edi­tor:

1.Matt Wilkin­son, ‘Flood­ing: Evac­u­a­tion hotel full’, Oxford Mail, 24/07/07
2.Matthew Weaver, ‘Flash floods ‘biggest cli­mate threat to UK’, The Guardian, 12/07/07
3.The Camp for Cli­mate Action is a nation­al cam­paign to encour­age peo­ple to tack­le the root caus­es of cli­mate change. In 2006, 600 cam­paign­ers marched on Drax Pow­er Sta­tion in Sel­by to protest against car­bon emis­sions; this year the avi­a­tion indus­try will be chal­lenged. See www.climatecamp.org.uk for more details.
4.A study by Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty, pub­lished by the Inter-gov­ern­men­tal Com­mit­tee on Cli­mate Change, found that there will 25 mil­lion envi­ron­men­tal refugees who will be dis­placed by cli­mate chaos.