Category: Climate Chaos

Saving Iceland Summer Mobilisation 2009!

Join us from 18th July to resist the indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion of Europe’s last remain­ing great wilder­ness and take direct action against heavy indus­try!

The Strug­gle So Far

Join us from 18th July to resist the indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion of Europe’s last remain­ing great wilder­ness and take direct action against heavy indus­try!

The Strug­gle So Far

The cam­paign to defend Europe’s great­est remain­ing wilder­ness con­tin­ues. For the past four years direct action camps in Ice­land dur­ing the sum­mer have tar­get­ed alu­mini­um smelters, mega-dams and geot­her­mal pow­er plants.

After the ter­ri­ble destruc­tion caused at Kárah­n­júkar and Hengill, it is time to crush the ‘mas­ter plan’ that would have seen every sin­gle major glacial riv­er dammed, every sub­stan­tial geot­her­mal field exploit­ed and the con­struc­tion of alu­mini­um smelters, oil refiner­ies and sil­i­con fac­to­ries, as well as a sig­nif­i­cant increase in Iceland’s green­house gas emis­sions.

The Sit­u­a­tion Now

Despite opti­mism fol­low­ing the ‘cut­lery rev­o­lu­tion’ where mass street protests and direct action brought down the Ice­landic gov­ern­ment and forced the issue of heavy indus­try back onto the polit­i­cal agen­da, the bat­tle is far from over.

The fall of alu­mini­um prices on the world mar­ket and the glob­al eco­nom­ic cri­sis has tak­en its toll on heavy indus­try projects and alu­mini­um com­pa­nies in Ice­land, putting many of the plans for alu­mini­um smelters, mega-dams and geot­her­mal pow­er plants on hold, or ruled out com­plete­ly. The heavy indus­try machine is far from hav­ing been defeat­ed but recent upris­ings show the deep impact Sav­ing Ice­land has had on the grass­roots and the polit­i­cal land­scape.

Polit­i­cal Changes

The recent elec­tions are a major blow for the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment in Ice­land, with the ‘Left Greens’ boot­ing the min­is­ter of the envi­ron­ment out for being too much of a gen­uine envi­ron­men­tal­ist. We are look­ing at a heav­i­ly for­ti­fied pro-heavy indus­try gov­ern­ment, doing away with any pre­tence of the gov­ern­ment being ‘Green’ or even remote­ly Left wing. On top of this, nation­al ener­gy com­pa­nies have already start­ed nego­ti­a­tions with oth­er types of indus­try in the North, where some politi­cians ruled out a new smelter.

Anar­chy in Ice­land

Years of work by Sav­ing Ice­land to intro­duce the ideas of direct action and anar­chy into main­stream soci­ety, cou­pled with a rad­i­calised pop­u­la­tion fol­low­ing the down­fall of the gov­ern­ment, has result­ed in a con­stant­ly grow­ing move­ment of rad­i­cal activists and anar­chists in Ice­land.

Over the past few months squat­ters have twice tak­en a social cen­tre and defend­ed it from evic­tion, refugee and no bor­ders activism is going strong, Food Not Bombs hit the streets every week and actions such as the four “skyr attacks” (where green yoghurt is thrown all over dis­plays, com­put­ers and suits) in two months have tar­get­ed politi­cians and nature killers.

The mutu­al sup­port between the Ice­landic rad­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty and Sav­ing Ice­land this sum­mer will make for a very excit­ing and action-filled mobil­i­sa­tion!

Tar­gets this Sum­mer

The Hel­gu­vík alu­mini­um smelter, tar­get­ed by Sav­ing Ice­land last sum­mer with an action that stopped con­struc­tion for a whole day after 40 activists invad­ed the site, is still being built. Pow­er­ing the smelter will mean eight new pow­er plants, at least sev­en of which will be geot­her­mal from the Reyk­janes Penin­su­la, dry­ing it up, and Hell­isheiði – also tar­get­ed by Sav­ing Ice­land last sum­mer that saw a drill rig shut down cost­ing thou­sands of pounds. One of the geot­her­mal plants pow­er­ing Cen­tu­ry’s smelter could be in Bitra, close to Hengill, where a local cam­paign last win­ter stopped con­struc­tion from tak­ing place. The eighth pow­er plant will prob­a­bly be a mega-dam on the beau­ti­ful Þjórsá Riv­er.

If ever there was a build­ing site and “test drilling sites” destroy­ing unique and frag­ile ecosys­tems and vul­ner­a­ble to direct action this sum­mer they are on the Reyk­janes penin­su­la, South West Ice­land!

Get involved!

Come to Ice­land from the 18th July and join us for a sum­mer of resis­tance and direct action. Check www.savingiceland.org for reg­u­lar updates and infor­ma­tion for peo­ple join­ing us, or email us on savingiceland@riseup.net to let us know when you’re arriv­ing.

Help sup­port our strug­gle with dona­tions, trans­la­tions, sol­i­dar­i­ty actions and by spread­ing the word.

Climate Rush Pedal Power

…A GOOD OLD-FASHIONED START-OF-SUMMER BIKE RIDE!

On Mon­day 1st June the UK Par­lia­ment returns from recess for the sum­mer sit­ting.
We want to give them a warm wel­come and remind them of the heat they can expect if they con­tin­ue to ignore cli­mate change.

…A GOOD OLD-FASHIONED START-OF-SUMMER BIKE RIDE!

On Mon­day 1st June the UK Par­lia­ment returns from recess for the sum­mer sit­ting.
We want to give them a warm wel­come and remind them of the heat they can expect if they con­tin­ue to ignore cli­mate change.

Ed Miliband (Sec­re­tary of State Ener­gy and Cli­mate Change) is in Bonn that evening, dis­cussing with oth­er ‘world lead­ers’ the agen­da for the UN Cli­mate Sum­mit in Copen­hagen. Let’s give our ‘lead­ers’ a taste of the civ­il dis­obe­di­ence they can expect if real cli­mate jus­tice fails to mate­ri­alise.

It is also the first evening of a coal con­fer­ence at the illus­tri­ous ‘Chatham House’. Every­one who’s any­one, at least in the coal world, will be there.

We’ll begin our bike-ride out­side their con­fer­ence before wind­ing our way through town.

Meet us from 5pm on St James Square, SW1Y 4LE. We’ll then move off at 6pm and take our bikes for a relaxed tour through Lon­don. Labour might think that invest­ing in elec­tric cars is the solu­tion to cli­mate change but we know that cars using elec­tric­i­ty from coal-fired pow­er sta­tions is yet anoth­er red-her­ring.

Camp Climat at Nantes

Activists cam­paign­ing against a pro­posed local air­port near Nantes, France, have announced a week of action from 3 — 9 August 2009.

“Le Camp Cli­mat” con­cept is tak­ing off over the chan­nel, just as it is in the UK. Activists cam­paign­ing against the pro­posed con­struc­tion of a new air­port 16 kilo­me­tres north of Nantes (Loire-Atlan­tique, 44) have announced a camp from the 3 — 9 August 2009.

Activists cam­paign­ing against a pro­posed local air­port near Nantes, France, have announced a week of action from 3 — 9 August 2009.

“Le Camp Cli­mat” con­cept is tak­ing off over the chan­nel, just as it is in the UK. Activists cam­paign­ing against the pro­posed con­struc­tion of a new air­port 16 kilo­me­tres north of Nantes (Loire-Atlan­tique, 44) have announced a camp from the 3 — 9 August 2009.

The air­port plans have a long his­to­ry, with the ori­gins of the plan to con­struct a “hub” for north-west France, dat­ing from 30 years ago. The pro­posed air­port will con­crete over 2000 hectares of tra­di­tion­al bocage: pas­toral land divid­ed by tra­di­tion­al hedgerows. By con­trast Britain’s sec­ond busiest air­port Gatwick occu­pies a site of only 300 hectares. And all this despite 3 air­ports already oper­a­tional (Nantes, Angers, Rennes) with­in 100 kilo­me­tres of the pro­posed sites. None of the exist­ing air­ports are oper­at­ing at any­thing like full capac­i­ty at the moment, nor will they in the future if cur­rent air tick­ets sales con­tin­ue their present down­ward trend.

Despite being beyond any rea­son­able con­cept of util­i­ty, the Pharaonique project rolls for­ward, with forced sales of farms, homes, and land. Sur­veys and geo­log­i­cal sam­pling of the site began in Octo­ber 2008.

Oppo­si­tion to the project is cen­tred on two main organ­i­sa­tions: the Camp Cli­mat, and a coali­tion that unites res­i­dent groups called ACIPA, which has long pur­sued a civ­il cam­paign amongst the French bureau­cra­cy.

As the threat becomes more immi­nent, many acts of resis­tance have already occurred: with trac­tor road­blocks and sab­o­tage of sur­vey works. A vis­it­ing offi­cial from the pre­fec­ture, come to announce the loss of land and homes, was flanned. The sur­vey work­ers now work along­side an escort of up to six­ty gen­darmes. Eight activists face fines of up to 15,000 euros and sen­tences of 2 — 4 months for their part in the resis­tance.

Le camp fonc­tion­nera de manière auto­gérée, avec pour principes de base : une empreinte écologique min­i­mum, des actions à fort impact auprès de la pop­u­la­tion locale et/ou des médias, des échanges de savoirs sur les pra­tiques alter­na­tives et écologiques, la mise en com­mun des béné­fices, la pra­tique du prix libre ou coû­tant et le développe­ment de réseaux. Il s’inscrira dans le cadre d’une semaine de résis­tance sur le site et fera suite à deux moments forts sur place : le fes­ti­val « Le Planch­er des Vach­es » (same­di 1er août) et le pique-nique annuel des opposants au pro­jet d’aéroport (dimanche 2 août).

(The basic prin­ci­ples of the autonomous camp are: a min­i­mal eco­log­i­cal foot­print, strong local links, strong media impact, edu­ca­tion­al activ­i­ties and exchanges, devel­op­ment of net­works, and com­mu­nal liv­ing with food at prix libre (con­tribute as you can afford). The camp forms part of a week of resis­tance at the site with a music fes­ti­val on the 1 August, and an annu­al local pic­nic on the 2 August.)

Notre-Dames-De-Lan­des is 202 kilo­me­tres from the fer­ry ter­mi­nal at St. Malo, which makes for a pleas­ant two day ride to be here, but Nantes is also well served by rail: the TGV from Paris (1 train/hour) takes 2h 20mins.

www.campclimat.org

Peru Indigenous In Standoff With Government

May 22nd 2009
For more than a month, indige­nous groups in the Peru­vian Ama­zon have been main­tain­ing block­ades of roads, rivers, air­ports and oil and gas pipelines to protest a series of new laws that would lead to increased indus­tri­al exploita­tion of their ter­ri­to­ries. The decrees were passed in accor­dance with the US-Peru Free Trade Agree­ment.

May 22nd 2009
For more than a month, indige­nous groups in the Peru­vian Ama­zon have been main­tain­ing block­ades of roads, rivers, air­ports and oil and gas pipelines to protest a series of new laws that would lead to increased indus­tri­al exploita­tion of their ter­ri­to­ries. The decrees were passed in accor­dance with the US-Peru Free Trade Agree­ment.

An esti­mat­ed 13,000 peo­ple from 65 tribes and 1200 com­mu­ni­ties are tak­ing part in the protests.

In response, Pres­i­dent Alan Gar­cia declared a state of emer­gency, sus­pend­ed civ­il lib­er­ties and dis­patched the army to the affect­ed regions. The Peru­vian and Argen­tin­ian nation­al oil com­pa­nies have both been forced to cease oper­a­tions in the region.

The police, mil­i­tary and extrac­tion com­pa­nies have used vio­lence to attempt to break the block­ades, result­ing in injuries and dis­ap­pear­ances — but the indige­nous groups are refus­ing to back down. Despite Garcia’s insis­tence that none of the laws will be revis­it­ed, the Peru­vian leg­is­la­ture has repealed one of the 10 laws and opened nego­ti­a­tions about the oth­er nine.

The Peru­vian government’s response to the cri­sis has sparked out­rage among indige­nous peo­ple and their allies world­wide, and the Peru­vian mis­sion to the Unit­ed Nations was recent­ly met with protests in New York.

For links to more news sto­ries, vis­it Inter­con­ti­nen­tal Cry.

For more infor­ma­tion, updates and photos/video of police bru­tal­i­ty at the protests, vis­it Ama­zon Watch.

See also:

Peren­co to Drill for Oil in Ter­ri­to­ry of Uncon­tact­ed Indige­nous (Jan­u­ary 7, 2009)

Peru Indige­nous Issue Oil Ulti­ma­tum (Octo­ber 22, 2008)

Indige­nous Vic­to­ry in Peru! (August 24, 2008)

Community action in Mt. Roskill against the motorway in NZ

On Fri­day the 15th of May a dozen Mt.Albert/Roskill/Waterview com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers and a dozen local anar­chists crashed the offi­cial open­ing of the SH20 motor­way exten­sion through Roskill that will meet up with a new motor­way through Mt. Albert and Water­view to form the pro­posed West­ern Ring Route.

Cop car blocks road

On Fri­day the 15th of May a dozen Mt.Albert/Roskill/Waterview com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers and a dozen local anar­chists crashed the offi­cial open­ing of the SH20 motor­way exten­sion through Roskill that will meet up with a new motor­way through Mt. Albert and Water­view to form the pro­posed West­ern Ring Route.

Four of us anar­chists arrived at the motor­way over­bridge at around 1pm after bik­ing down Domin­ion Road. When we got to the Domin­ion Rd/SH20 over­bridge some com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers were hold­ing signs and chant­i­ng “Shame on Joyce”. The open­ing par­ty was being held in a mar­quee direct­ly below the over­bridge. We joined in the chant­i­ng, were giv­en signs but 10 min­utes into it one anar­chists sug­gest­ed a break away march down the motor­way onramp and then back down the motor­way towards the par­ty. Anoth­er anar­chist quick­ly piped up sure, but lets ask the locals first. They were only too keen and led by a Mt. Albert res­i­dent and her young daugh­ter and Paul Davie, from the local com­mu­ni­ty board we trot­ted off down the onramp chant­i­ng. “Hey, Hey. Ho, Ho. The Motor­way has got­ta go!”. A cop car with two cops raced in front of us and tried and failed to stop us march­ing down the onramp. Straight onto the motor­way prop­er and into a more deter­mined line of police the march went; backed up by anoth­er posse of anar­chists who had just arrived.

At that point a pad­dy­wag­on appeared and assumed a posi­tion direct­ly behind the line of pro­tes­tors, mak­ing this author scram­ble up the bank to the over­bridge, (a bit wor­ried at immi­nent arrest). How­ev­er although I heard that a Crown car drove into the pro­tes­tors down below, they stood and chant­ed for about half-an hour even while rain drove the crowd of jour­nal­ists under cov­er.

After that pro­tes­tors marched back up to the over bridge and con­tin­ued to yell and chant, dis­rupt­ing the cer­e­mo­ny going on below. Banksie’s apper­ance pro­mot­ed chants of “shame” and “scum”.

After that we left and head­ed home, con­tent in the knowl­edge that this motor­way will be stopped by deter­mined com­mu­ni­ty resis­tance that all auck­lan­ders should be part of.

Resis­tance Pho­tog­ra­phy: SH20 Protest

Some facts:
$2.8 bil­lion cost of build­ing a tun­nel and a $2.3 bil­lion cost of build­ing a motor­way.

400–500 homes will be destroyed in the build­ing of the motor­way.
[ Cost­ing the Water­view Option ]

In the year to June 2008 the Auck­land Region­al Trans­port Author­i­ty report­ed that fare­box rev­enue on rail ser­vices was just $17 mil­lion and on the North­ern Busway $3.42 mil­lion. So the cost of free pub­lic trans­port on the trains and the North­ern Busway is around $20 mil­lion. 1/100 of the cost of the Water­view motor­way. [ ARTA Annu­al Report ]

The right-wing dom­i­nat­ed Auck­land City Coun­cil last year cut more than $800 mil­lion from the city council’s bud­get. This is a third of the cost of the motor­way and shows how upside down local and cen­tral gov­ern­ment spend­ing is. It includ­ed:

The Tama­ki ward, the city’s poor­est ward took $450 mil­lion of cuts to upgrades on essen­tial com­mu­ni­ty ser­vices like pools, libraries and arts cen­tres made by a bunch of coun­cil­lors who live in Remuera and Par­nell. Mean­while $60 mil­lion that would have been spent on upgrad­ing Mt. Roskill and Otahuhu libraries, buy­ing new library books and build­ing new swim­ming pools in Avon­dale and Otahuhu was also cut.
[ Manukau Couri­er: “We can walk on bro­ken foot­paths but can’t swim in no pool.” ]

A $86 mil­lion cut in stormwa­ter repairs means that Auck­land beach­es will con­tin­ue to be washed in human waste dur­ing over­flows.

The coun­cil also cut footpath,cycleway and walk­way spend­ing by $66 mil­lion, pub­lic trans­port spend­ing by $20.8 mil­lion and new park-and-ride facil­i­ties by $5 mil­lion.

Bath Bomb #22 Out Now

THE BATH BOMB

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #22
free/donation
May 09

“Is It Under Your Car?”

Week­end Of Rage

Bath Bomb small logoTHE BATH BOMB

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #22
free/donation
May 09

“Is It Under Your Car?”

Week­end Of Rage

The last week­end of April saw BAN and friends pour out onto the streets of Bath for a (slight­ly tongue in cheek) week­end of rage – three days, three demos and a mod­est amount of anger! Pro­ceed­ings kicked off on the Fri­day with a demo out­side Allen Ford on Low­er Bris­tol Road. The demo was held in sol­i­dar­i­ty with UK Vis­teon work­ers sacked by Ford with no back pay, redun­dan­cy pack­age or pen­sions. Instead of accept­ing these offen­sive con­di­tions, the work­ers occu­pied their fac­to­ries and launched a cam­paign demand­ing the greedy boss­es pay up. The Bath demo was well received, with loads of horn honk­ing and raised fists from pass­ing motorists and pedes­tri­ans (see how you can sup­port the Vis­teon work­ers at http://www.visteonoccupation.org). Sat­ur­day saw a dozen BAN activists head down to Lon­don for the ‘World Day for Lab Ani­mals’ demo, focused against infa­mous vivi­sec­tors and ani­mal abusers Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. The 2,000 strong demo sent a strong mes­sage to HLS and all oth­er com­pa­nies who prof­it from vivi­sec­tion – “there’s no excuse for ani­mal abuse.” On Sun­day, local activists gath­ered out­side Bath police sta­tion to protest the mur­der of paper sell­er Ian Tom­lin­son at the hands of police at the recent G20 protests. The protest high­light­ed the fact that this was not a one-off, but a con­tin­u­a­tion of bru­tal and arro­gant police behav­iour that the pub­lic have been sub­ject­ed to for years. Pos­si­bly real­is­ing that repress­ing an anti-police repres­sion
demo would not go down too well, and that pub­lic opin­ion ain’t too police-friend­ly nowa­days, the local plod hid inside the sta­tion, not even com­ing out when activists began chalk­ing slo­gans around the front of the police sta­tion (the most promi­nent read­ing ‘ser­vants NOT mas­ters’). After a few hours, with hun­dreds of leaflets giv­en out and loads of pub­lic sup­port, activists left, eager to plot the next round of protests and action. BAN relies on ideas and ener­gy from the local com­mu­ni­ty, so to sug­gest a cam­paign or get involved, send an email to bathac­tivist­net [at] yahoo.co.uk. To see what they get up to and have planned for the future, check out www.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com

Jog On, Cop­per

This year’s May­day Anti-Mil­i­tarist Jog in Brighton was anoth­er roar­ing suc­cess, despite attempts to spoil the fun by a few foul-tem­pered indi­vid­u­als. Around 2,000 anti-mil­i­tarists and a large, per­haps sim­i­lar, num­ber of police took sev­er­al hours to com­plete the gru­elling course. In order to pre­vent the police from cheat­ing by start­ing
halfway along the track, the first part of the route – tak­ing in sev­er­al big sup­port­ers and investors in the local arms com­pa­ny, many hit by anony­mous sab­o­tage that night – was kept a secret by organ­is­ers until the very last minute. The sec­ond, longer part of the course, run­ning in decreas­ing cir­cles around the city cen­tre, was made up as
the ath­letes went along.

One big ben­e­fit of this secre­cy and con­fu­sion was that the police were unable to clear the area first, and were pow­er­less to pre­vent mem­bers of the pub­lic from wit­ness­ing the demo. Sad­ly, this oppor­tu­ni­ty was some­what wast­ed as over-excit­ed activists ran past glee­ful­ly cheer­ing their right to protest, leav­ing the pub­lic bemused as to what they were actu­al­ly protest­ing about. More plac­ards next time would be nice, as
would some bet­ter chants.

The oth­er bonus was the inabil­i­ty of the police to imple­ment the bru­tal tac­tics that cul­mi­nat­ed in the mur­der of Ian Tom­lin­son at the G20 last month. Unable to pen the mobile and agile protest in or baton charge immo­bile groups, the police failed to pro­voke any seri­ous vio­lence. Apart from the odd point when police trapped pro­test­ers on a hill and wad­ed in mob-hand­ed with batons fly­ing, the march passed large­ly with­out inci­dent, though activist street medics had to treat 40 most­ly minor injuries (hav­ing to escort more seri­ous cas­es through to para­medics, despite police inter­fer­ence). Vis­it­ing cop­pers from London’s Met were so dis­ap­point­ed with the lack of blood­shed, that they took to stalk­ing and mock­ing known activists.

The Jog was part of an ongo­ing 4 and a half year cam­paign against local bomb-trig­ger man­u­fac­tur­ers EDO/ITT, with­out whom explo­sives recent­ly dropped on Pales­tine, Iraq and Afghanistan would have posed no threat what­so­ev­er. If EDO – who have lost mil­lions and cycled through var­i­ous over-stressed CEOs – suc­cumbs and col­laps­es, the entire ‘defence’
indus­try will trem­ble before the might of pop­u­lar opin­ion and direct democ­ra­cy.

http://www.smashedo.org.uk

Get­ting Off To A Wob­bly Start

Pos­si­bly spurred on by recent job loss­es and wors­en­ing con­di­tions at
work, a rad­i­cal union has start­ed mak­ing a huge come­back in the UK. The
IWW (indus­tri­al Work­ers of the World, or Wob­blies) are an inter­na­tion­al
union with a rep­u­ta­tion for nev­er back­ing down from a fight with the
boss­es, and using sol­i­dar­i­ty and direct action to get the goods. The
IWW believes that all work­ers should be unit­ed with­in a sin­gle union,
giv­ing us greater strength and bar­ter­ing pow­er. They believe that we
should be divid­ed not by pro­fes­sion, but by class, and that work­ers
should unite to con­front the greed of the employ­ing class. The IWW is a
fight­ing union that has already suc­ceed­ed in pre­vent­ing lay­offs and
get­ting sacked work­ers rein­stat­ed across the UK. With­out the
bureau­crat­ic struc­ture of the tra­di­tion­al unions or reliance on cor­rupt
union offi­cials, and an empha­sis on direct democ­ra­cy, the IWW is a
union that is grow­ing by the minute as the reces­sion bites. A Bath
branch of the IWW has just been formed, and has already tak­en part in
work­ers rights sol­i­dar­i­ty in the area. They are look­ing to grow, so if
you are inter­est­ed in join­ing, or have any ques­tions, email
rocsec@iww.org.uk and ask to be put in touch with local mem­bers. As
times get hard­er, it’s more and more impor­tant to keep in mind the
slo­gan of the IWW: ‘an injury to one is an injury to all!’

EVENTS

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

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

The Lost Plot work­day, Thurs­days, 10am-dusk, Bathamp­ton

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

Veg­gie Pride! In Birm­ing­ham, Sat­ur­day 16th May, coach­ing leav­ing
Bris­tol 11.30am, £11 waged/£8 unwaged, http://www.veggiepride.org.uk

Remem­ber Gaza march, Sat­ur­day 16th May, assem­ble 12 noon, Malet Street,
Lon­don, WC1E 7HY

Bub­bling Under, Sun­day 17th May, 1–4pm, Porter Cel­lar, George Street

Friends of Bird’s Marsh Welly Walk, Sun­day 17th May, meet 10am, car
park of the King Alfred pub, Malmes­bury Road, Chip­pen­ham SN15 1QA,
www.friendsofbirdsmarsh.com

Recy­cle Your Sun­days, Sun­day 17th May, the reg­u­lar series of socia­ble,
easy-paced cycle rides. www.rysbath.org.uk/Hazel 01225 469199

Bath Cycling Cam­paign meet­ing, Mon­day 18th May, venue TBC, 7.30pm,
http://www.bathcyclingcampaign.org.uk

Film: Mes­sage in the Waves, Thurs­day 21st May, 7.30pm, upstairs at The
Cork, West­gate Street

Anti-foie gras demo, Fri­day 22nd May, meet Queen Square 7pm

Cardiff Anar­chist Book­fair, Sat­ur­day 23rd May, 10am-6pm, Cathays
Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, 36 Cathays Ter­race, Cardiff, free entry,
http://southwalesanarchists.org/2009/01/08/cardiff-anar…-2009

Cli­mate Camp gath­er­ing, Sat­ur­day 23rd May — Sun­day 24th May, starts
11am-7pm, Heb­den Hey Hos­tel, Hard­cas­tle Crags, Heb­den Bridge, West
York­shire, HX7 7AW

Tran­si­tion Bath Pic­nic in the Park, Mon­day 25th May, by the pond in
Vic­to­ria park, 12–4pm, look for the flag!

Tran­si­tion Bath Trans­port & Built Envi­ron­ment Group meet­ing, Wednes­day

27th May, 7pm, 55 New King Street, Bath, www.transitionbath.org.uk

Tran­si­tion Drinks, Wednes­day 27th May, 8pm, upstairs at The Raven

Per­for­mance: ‘Roots – A Tale Of Love And Veg­eta­bles’, Thurs­day 28th May
– Sun­day 7th June, BOG Low­er Com­mon Allot­ments

Bris­tol Veg­an Fayre, Sat­ur­day 30th May – Sun­day 31st May, 11am, the
Amphithe­atre and Water­front Square, Har­bour­side, Bris­tol,
http://www.bristolveganfayre.co.uk

Recy­cle Your Sun­days, Sun­day 31st May, the reg­u­lar series of socia­ble,
easy-paced cycle rides, www.rysbath.org.uk/Hazel 01225 469199

Bath Friends of the Earth meet­ing, Mon­day 1st June, 8pm, Still­point,
Broad Street Place, Broad Street

Talk: Eco Refur­bish­ment of Hous­es, Mon­day 1st June, 7.30pm, Grove
Street Church Hall, £2 entry

Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, Wednes­day 3rd June, 7.30–8.30pm, back­room
of The Bell, Wal­cot Street

Green­light lec­ture: A Sus­tain­able Food Plan for Britain, Wednes­day 3rd
June, doors open 7pm, British Roy­al Lit­er­ary & Sci­en­tif­ic Insti­tu­tion
16–18 Queen Square, £3 waged/£1.5 unwaged

Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, Thurs­day 4th June, 7.30–9pm, down­stairs
at The Hob­gob­lin, St James Parade

Cym­ru Cli­mate Camp gath­er­ing, Sat­ur­day 6th June, South Wales

Anar­chist Move­ment Con­fer­ence, Sat­ur­day 6th June – Sun­day 7th June,
Queen Mary & West­field Col­lege, Lon­don, E1 4NS,
http://www.conference09.org.uk

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

Tran­si­tion Open Forum, Tues­day 9th June, 7pm, Wid­combe Social Club

Bath Green Drinks, Wednes­day 10th June, 8.30pm, the Porter, George
Street

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

Broad­lands Orchard­share Vol­un­teer­ing Day, Sat­ur­day 13th June, 12–4pm,

Broad­lands Orchard, Box Road, Bath­ford, email broad­land­sor­chard­share
[at] googlemail.com or phone 07532 472 256

CoMutiny meet­ing, Sat­ur­day 13th June, 2–7pm, Bris­tol

Calais No Bor­der Camp, 23rd-29th June, France

Dan­ish Cli­mate Camp, Den­mark, Sat­ur­day 11th July – Sun­day 19th July,
http://camp09.dk

French Cli­mate Camp Mon­day, Mon­day 3rd August – Sun­day 9th August,
France, http://www.campclimat.org

Belgian/Dutch Cli­mate Action Camp, Mon­day 3rd August — Sun­day 9th
August, near Antwerp, http://www.klimaatactiekamp.org

The Camp for Cli­mate Action in Scot­land, Mon­day 3rd – Tues­day 11th
August, Scot­land, http://climatecampscotland.org.uk

Cym­ru Cli­mate Camp, Thurs­day 13th – Sun­day 16th August 2009, Merthyr
Tyd­fil, South Wales, http://climatecampcymru.org

Greek No Bor­ders Camp, Tues­day 25th August – Mon­day 31st August,
Lesvos, Greece, http://lesvos09.antira.info

The Camp for Cli­mate Action 2009, Thurs­day 27th August and Wednes­day
2nd Sep­tem­ber, Lon­don, http://www.climatecamp.org.uk

Bris­tol Co-Mutiny: Social Change Not Cli­mate Change gath­er­ing, Sun­day
13th Sep­tem­ber – Sat­ur­day 19th Sep­tem­ber,
www.westsideclimateaction.wordpress.com

Inter­na­tion­al Day of Cli­mate Action, Sat­ur­day 24th Octo­ber,
http://www.350.org/ oct24

Giv­ing It A Load Of Agro

Back on the after­noon of the17th of April, 13 activists from Action
Against Agro­fu­els occu­pied the offices of Blue-NG, a joint ven­ture
between Nation­al Grid sub­sidiary NG Blue Pow­er and 20C. The com­pa­ny,
based at Ralph Allen House on Rail­way Place, was tar­get­ed due to its
build­ing of the UK’s first veg­etable oil pow­er plants. The Biased
Chron­i­cle hys­ter­i­cal­ly decried the activists’ sup­posed own goal at
tar­get­ing the brain child of the ‘green­est man in the city’ Andrew
Mer­cer, for­mer sil­i­con val­ley exec and founder of Foot­down, an
entre­pre­neur who throws his mon­ey at any­thing he thinks will sell. But
in real­i­ty the com­pa­ny, now aim­ing to build their sec­ond plant at a
site in Southall in Lon­don, as well at least anoth­er 43 plants, are in
the process of exac­er­bat­ing cli­mate change. They claim to source
indige­nous rape­seed oil (even though there’s not enough land or
pro­duc­tion to feed cur­rent needs), which pro­duces 59–70% more
green­house gas emis­sions than stan­dard diesel due to the nitrous oxide
fumes from fer­til­iz­er alone, a gas 300 times more potent than CO2. And
then there is soil ero­sion from mono­cul­ture farm­ing, the loss of
habi­tat for wild­flow­ers, birds and bees already threat­ened (maybe
Andrew will rehome them all, too?), air and noise pol­lu­tion in the
pissed off local com­mu­ni­ty, who also risk lung and heart dis­ease from
fine par­ti­cle emis­sions in an area with already one of the high­est
asth­ma rates in the coun­try.

But it’s also worth con­sid­er­ing that increased use of rape­seed oil will
push up reliance on oth­er veg oils (which Blue NG won’t rule out the
import of), such as soy­bean, jat­ropha (an inva­sive weed from India) or
the cost-effec­tive palm oil: pro­duc­tion of these, par­tic­u­lar­ly the
last, is well known for peat­land destruc­tion, rain­for­est defor­esta­tion,
bio­di­ver­si­ty loss (slaugh­ter­ing orang utans), and land theft from
indige­nous peo­ples. But pos­si­bly worse, con­sid­er­ing a glob­al
agri­cul­tur­al slump of 20–40%, with his­toric droughts in India, South
Amer­i­ca, Chi­na and the south­ern US states, Aus­tralia and, to a less­er
extent, Europe (and glob­al food reserves at their low­est in 25 years)
is the threat to food secu­ri­ty. Nev­er mind chip-fat cars and car­bon
neu­tral sec­ond homes – are we real­ly gonna feed green­wash­ing com­pa­nies
whilst peo­ple the world over are starv­ing?

http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/files/blue_ng_factsheet1…9.pdf
http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/files/Blue_NG_Open_Lette…r.pdf
http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/news/BREAKING-NEWS-Activist.…html

Thanks Allot(ment)

In the last few years, demand for allot­ments has gone through the roof
with more and more peo­ple tak­ing an inter­est in grow­ing their own veg.
But with a wait­ing list of up to eight years in some parts of B&NES,
who can blame peo­ple for putting the idea on the back burn­er? But now,
envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­ers have launched a scheme which will see peo­ple
who can’t man­age their gar­dens shar­ing them with would-be gar­den­ers
(check out http://www.bathorganicgroup.org for more info). The scheme
is great, and should intro­duce loads of peo­ple to the green,
mon­ey-sav­ing and ful­fill­ing world of gar­den­ing. How­ev­er, we shouldn’t
ignore the cause of the allot­ment short­age – B&NES! The coun­cil are
con­ve­nient­ly for­get­ting their legal oblig­a­tion to pro­vide every­one who
wants one with a shiny new allot­ment. To under­stand why, we need to
trav­el back to 1908, and plunge into the text of the Small­hold­ings and
Allot­ments Act. This leg­is­la­tion, still in force, oblig­es local
author­i­ties to pro­vide suf­fi­cient allot­ments to meet local demand. This
means, in the words of Geoff Stokes of the Nation­al Soci­ety of
Allot­ment and Leisure Gar­den­ers, “exact­ly what it says, coun­cils have a
legal duty to pro­vide a suf­fi­cient num­ber of plots to meet local
demand, and you should not have to wait more than a rea­son­able amount
of time for one.” The act was intro­duced as a response to the
increas­ing urban­iza­tion of the rur­al work­ing class, and as the threat
to green space has con­tin­ued to rise, so has our need for, and right
to, allot­ment space.

If you are wait­ing, or if you sim­ply can’t find a plot, you can use the
law to your advan­tage. All you need is for six peo­ple who are
reg­is­tered on the elec­toral roll to get togeth­er and put a well-argued
case to the coun­cil: explain that the demand for allot­ments is not
being met and that it’s their legal duty to meet it. Legal­ly, they will
have to respond, prefer­ably by pro­vid­ing more allot­ments. If this
fails, accord­ing to Geoff Stokes, you would be with­in your rights to
take your coun­cil to a judi­cial review. So there you have it – why not
con­tact Bath Organ­ic Group to try and share a gar­den, but if that
fails, don’t let the coun­cil off the hook – get togeth­er with some
mates and demand a slice of the green pie!

Bath Activist Net­work are a local umbrel­la group cam­paign­ing on issues
as diverse as devel­op­ment, envi­ron­men­tal­ism, anti-war, ani­mal rights,
work­ers’ rights and more. Help­ing to pro­duce The Bath Bomb, we are open
to any­one, and our mem­bers range from trade union­ists to anar­chists,
lib­er­als to greens, and peo­ple who just want to change Bath for the
bet­ter. For details on meet­ings, demos, or just to get in touch, email
bathac­tivist­net [at] yahoo.co.uk, or see our web­site:
http://www.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com

GOT A STORY? WANT TO RECEIVE THE BATH BOMB BY EMAIL? HOPING TO SUE? Con­tact us by e‑mailing bath­bomb­press [at] yahoo.co.uk. Large print
e‑versions avail­able on request.

Nature Doesn’t Do Bailouts

As report­ed last month, the Camp for Cli­mate Action shut down the
Euro­pean Car­bon Exchange in Lon­don for a day. So what is car­bon trad­ing
and why did they do it?

It is claimed that car­bon trad­ing cuts emis­sions by lim­it­ing the amount
of car­bon that is allowed to be emit­ted, and divid­ing this amount up
among coun­tries and cor­po­ra­tions. They are giv­en ‘car­bon cred­its’ that
basi­cal­ly give them a license to pol­lute. Cred­its can be sold by
pol­luters who have emit­ted less than their quo­ta, or earned through
projects that claim to save car­bon. But there are sev­er­al major
prob­lems with this. Car­bon trad­ing is based on the free mar­ket ide­ol­o­gy
of con­tin­u­al eco­nom­ic growth, intend­ed to make sus­tain­abil­i­ty
prof­itable. Yet it’s doomed to fail, because it trusts the exact same
mar­ket forces that have caused envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion in the first
place. Because car­bon is so cheap, it’s cheap­er to buy these abstract
cred­its than actu­al­ly invest­ing in renew­ables or effi­cient tech­nol­o­gy.

The most pol­lut­ing com­pa­nies have a huge influ­ence over gov­ern­ment and
are giv­en allowances free of charge. BP and Shell have made huge
prof­its by sell­ing these car­bon cred­its, while the NHS had to pay tens
of thou­sands for theirs. In 2005, the total num­ber of cred­its giv­en out
by the EU insane­ly went beyond the over­all emis­sions lim­it by 10%. It
is almost impos­si­ble to prop­er­ly cal­cu­late or mon­i­tor these emis­sions;
some com­pa­nies apply for cred­its for emis­sions-reduc­ing projects that
would have gone ahead any­way, while oth­ers exag­ger­ate their sav­ings.
Cred­its are also often earned through projects that aren’t real­ly green
– such as agro­fu­el plan­ta­tions or tree-plant­i­ng “emis­sions off­set”
projects. And some gov­ern­ments in the glob­al south delib­er­ate­ly impose
poor envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions so that the stan­dard for projects to be
judged against is very low, so that more mon­ey can be earned. South
Africa’s Depart­ment of Mines and Ener­gy has admit­ted that com­pa­nies
lob­bied them to low­er renew­able ener­gy tar­gets, for exam­ple. Oth­er
projects, such as agro­fu­els, have been asso­ci­at­ed with human rights
abus­es, often tak­ing place on stolen com­mu­nal land. By con­trast,
small-scale local projects cre­at­ed by peo­ple who real­ly need the mon­ey
gen­er­al­ly don’t attract cred­its as they’re con­sid­ered not to be worth
the paper­work.

Car­bon trad­ing is a farce allow­ing com­pa­nies to car­ry on pol­lut­ing as
usu­al, while mak­ing a tidy prof­it. The IPCC pre­dicts that, in order to
stop the most dev­as­tat­ing effects of cli­mate change, car­bon emis­sions
must reach their peak by 2015 – that’s only 6 years! We don’t have time
for dis­trac­tion tech­niques that main­tain our reliance on fos­sil fuels
and divert resources away from real solu­tions.

http://www.corporatewatch.org
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk
http://climatecampcymru.org

Liv­ing With Ill Eagles

After last month’s hol­i­day, the Porter Cellar’s ‘Bub­bling Under’ film
series is back on this month on Sun­day the 17th May, from 1pm-4pm. The
lat­est offer­ing will be a film about undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants and the
prob­lems they face. Rais­ing impor­tant ques­tions about the rights of
indi­vid­u­als to seek a bet­ter life free of pover­ty, uncer­tain­ty and war,
this film will be pre­sent­ed by Bris­tol No Bor­ders: now with added guest
speak­er! Be there, or be a tool (of the state).

http://www.noborders.org.uk

Lost The Plot?

A new vol­un­teer-run land project has been set up in Bathamp­ton, and is
open­ing its gates to all-com­ers every Thurs­day, from 10am til dusk, for
their week­ly work­day. Things are still in their infan­cy at the moment,
but veg is already in the ground, and orchard restora­tion and for­est
gar­den­ing is planned, per­ma­cul­ture stylee. If you want to get your
hands dirty with the Lost Plot crew, then text Rory on 07506 214172 for
more info and direc­tions.

Calais On Camp­ing

The Calais No Bor­der camp, run­ning from the 23rd to the 29th June, is
an excit­ing joint ven­ture between French activists and the UK No
Bor­ders Net­work. It aims to high­light the real­i­ties of the sit­u­a­tion in
Calais and North­ern France; to build links with the migrant
com­mu­ni­ties, and also between migrants sup­port groups; and last­ly, but
not least, to chal­lenge the author­i­ties on the ground, to protest
against the increased repres­sion of migrants. For cen­turies, Euro­pean
impe­r­i­al pow­ers have exploit­ed the land, resources and peo­ple of the
major­i­ty world to become wealthy and pow­er­ful, leav­ing war,
envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion and mas­sive inequal­i­ty in their wake. Those
who attempt the jour­ney to the UK are chal­leng­ing this injus­tice by
their move­ment.

But at the end of this jour­ney they face anoth­er human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis –
increas­ing­ly repres­sive immi­gra­tion poli­cies. This makes the Calais
bor­der an impor­tant focal point in the strug­gle for free move­ment. But
this camp is not just about Calais: we are call­ing for the free­dom of
move­ment for all, not just the priv­i­leged few, and an end to bor­ders
and all migra­tion con­trols. We need to build a rad­i­cal transna­tion­al
move­ment to chal­lenge these racist poli­cies that divide us into
cit­i­zens and non-cit­i­zens, into the doc­u­ment­ed and the undoc­u­ment­ed.
This will be a place to strength­en this move­ment, and we need your help
to make it hap­pen. We call on all who want to show sol­i­dar­i­ty to join
us in Calais. If you want to get involved in help­ing to organ­ise the
camp, sup­port us with fundrais­ing and pub­lic­i­ty, host an event on
Calais and No Bor­ders or offer prac­ti­cal sup­port, please get in touch:
calais@riseup.net. No one is ille­gal! Free­dom of Move­ment for all!

http://www.london.noborders.org.uk/calais2009
http://www.noborders.org.uk
http://www.calaisnoborder.eu.org

FIT­ted Up

One of the less pleas­ant devel­op­ments in polit­i­cal polic­ing in recent years has been the cre­ation and wide­spread deploy­ment of For­ward Intel­li­gence Teams, known gen­er­al­ly as FIT. Recruit­ed as civil­ians in order to avoid hav­ing to give them ID num­bers, the FIT can be seen at every major protest in the coun­try, heft­ing sev­er­al grand’s worth of high-end cam­eras and flanked by a pair of angry-look­ing bruis­ers. Their alleged pur­pose is sur­veil­lance and evi­dence-gath­er­ing; they are there to pho­to and film any law­break­ing for lat­er sub­mis­sion in court, or to track down the per­pe­tra­tors. But their activ­i­ties are far more sin­is­ter. They try to gath­er facial images of as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble, and store these on a data­base indef­i­nite­ly; they also take note who speaks to who. Poten­tial­ly, this would cre­ate a vast data­base allow­ing the cops to track every­one involved in pol­i­tics in the UK. In real­i­ty, the vast amount of data col­lect­ed – the pho­tog­ra­phers claim to be paid per pic­ture – makes this data­base unlike­ly to be of use, and in any case, FIT tend to be far away when things do kick off. The sur­veil­lance is aimed pri­mar­i­ly at intim­i­dat­ing the aver­age demon­stra­tor, in clear vio­la­tion of the right of assem­bly and protest.

Occa­sion­al­ly, the FIT are used against pro­test­ers iden­ti­fied by oth­er police. How­ev­er, it is unknown how use­ful sev­er­al dozen facial shots are for the sub­se­quent actions of the police, which include fol­low­ing alleged organ­is­ers around demos mak­ing threat­en­ing com­ments about their moth­ers, and forc­ing their way into activists’ homes in the mid­dle of the night to con­duct ran­dom search­es.

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.thebathbomb.blogspot.com

Rossport: Tripod action at Glengad — Work halted at Shell’s illegal compound — update

May 14th 2009
Cam­paign­ers using a dar­ing “tri­pod” tech­nique have halt­ed the ille­gal work being under­tak­en by Shell at the Cor­rib Gas land­fall site at Glen­gad in Co Mayo.

Glengad tripods 1Glengad tripods 2May 14th 2009
Cam­paign­ers using a dar­ing “tri­pod” tech­nique have halt­ed the ille­gal work being under­tak­en by Shell at the Cor­rib Gas land­fall site at Glen­gad in Co Mayo.

Shell con­trac­tors were due this morn­ing to extend the con­struc­tion com­pound down onto the pub­lic beach at Glen­gad. How­ev­er, ear­ly bird Shell to Sea cam­paign­ers blocked access to the beach at 5 am by erect­ing two spe­cial­ly-designed tripods, each 20 feet in height. Two men attached them­selves to the top of the tripods using climb­ing equip­ment and as of lunchtime are still sus­pend­ed from the tripods.

The men, who live local­ly, are both in good form and a par­ty atmos­phere is evi­dent on the shore­line below them. Gar­daí and Shell secu­ri­ty have not attempt­ed to remove them so far, as to do so would put the two men’s safe­ty at risk.

Giant tripods of this nature have been deployed by cam­paign­ers around the world as a form of direct action. This is the first time tripods have been used in Ire­land for this pur­pose.

The com­pound has been erect­ed ille­gal­ly with­out plan­ning per­mis­sion to facil­i­tate works along the shore­line, which them­selves have yet to receive full legal con­sent. It is present­ly the sub­ject of legal pro­ceed­ings tak­en by An Taisce against Mayo Coun­ty Coun­cil, which has facil­i­tat­ed Shel­l’s ille­gal­i­ty at every point along the way.

Shell to Sea spokesper­son Mau­ra Har­ring­ton said: “Yet again, Shell is dis­re­gard­ing both the law and the will of the local com­mu­ni­ty by try­ing to extend their ille­gal com­pound onto the pub­lic beach. Today’s action shows that we are as deter­mined as ever to obstruct this obscene project, and the give­away of Irish nat­ur­al resources.”

As of 13.30, the new Gar­da Inspec­tor in Bel­mul­let, Joe Doher­ty, has direct­ed the two activists to come down for their own safe­ty under Sec­tion 8.1 of the Pub­lic Order Act. One of those sus­pend­ed has asked Doher­ty to apol­o­gise for punch­ing him in the stom­ach dur­ing the action last Sat­ur­day evening at the com­pound. For the time being at any rate, the Gar­daí and Shell secu­ri­ty have been out-manoeu­vred.

——

May 15th:

The two peo­ple on the tri­pod came down of their own accord at 5:30 yes­ter­day evening after 12 hours up on the tripods. At this stage all site work­ers exclud­ing secu­ri­ty had left the com­pound for the day. The two climbers then left the area along with sup­port­ers car­ry­ing their tripods unac­cost­ed by the watch­ing Gar­daí. The beach was patrolled by Gar­daí and Secu­ri­ty work­ing side by side for the rest of the night.

At 3:30 this morn­ing under the cov­er of dark­ness Shell stripped the cliff and broke out onto the beach. They now have an enclosed com­pound as far as where the tripods extend­ed yes­ter­day.

Shell may have suc­ceed­ed in break­ing onto the beach but over­all the com­mu­ni­ty spir­it is upbeat and momen­tum seems to be build­ing. This real­ly is the time to come and stand with the com­mu­ni­ty

second recent spate of Manchester 4x4s deflated

May 13, 2009
Probe into Man­ches­ter attacks on 4x4s
POLICE are hunt­ing a rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal activist after a series of attacks on gas-guz­zling 4x4 vehi­cles.

Each of the vehi­cles, also known as Chelsea Trac­tors, either had their tyres slashed or let down.

And on every vehi­cle, all dam­aged in areas of south Man­ches­ter, a note was left say­ing they had been tar­get­ed because ‘they con­tribute to cli­mate change’.

flat-tyred 4x4May 13, 2009
Probe into Man­ches­ter attacks on 4x4s
POLICE are hunt­ing a rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal activist after a series of attacks on gas-guz­zling 4x4 vehi­cles.

Each of the vehi­cles, also known as Chelsea Trac­tors, either had their tyres slashed or let down.

And on every vehi­cle, all dam­aged in areas of south Man­ches­ter, a note was left say­ing they had been tar­get­ed because ‘they con­tribute to cli­mate change’.

Own­ers of such cars have been brand­ed irre­spon­si­ble by envi­ron­men­tal­ists, for their vehi­cle’s size and fuel con­sump­tion.

Crit­ics say the large four-wheel dri­ve vehi­cles were orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed for use by farm­ers on rough ter­rain in the coun­try­side.

But they have become pop­u­lar with mid­dle-class fam­i­lies liv­ing in cities and are used for school runs and shop­ping trips.

Two sep­a­rate attacks have now tak­en place in Man­ches­ter in less than a month.

Tyres on 20 cars were slashed or let down overnight in the Lady­barn and With­ing­ton areas of the city.

Overnight on Thurs­day April 23, the tyres on 11 cars were also slashed or let down in Lady­barn, With­ing­ton and Dids­bury. All the areas are also pop­u­lar with stu­dents.

On both occa­sions, notes left on all the cars were addressed ‘Dear road user’, and blamed the vehi­cles for cli­mate change.

They went on to say such large vehi­cles were respon­si­ble for green­house gas emis­sions, intim­i­dat­ed oth­er road users and pedes­tri­ans, and used oil which was the cause of wars.

They end­ed by say­ing the ‘attack’ was not on the own­er, but on their choice of car.

Detec­tive Inspec­tor Dami­an Moran, from Greater Man­ches­ter Police, said: “Those respon­si­ble might believe they are mak­ing a point, but this behav­iour is crim­i­nal.

“It is mind­less van­dal­ism with no regard for the dis­tress and nui­sance caused to decent mem­bers of our com­mu­ni­ty and will not be tol­er­at­ed.

“If any­one knows any­thing or has seen any­thing sus­pi­cious dur­ing those two nights that might help us catch those respon­si­ble, please con­tact me.”

[- main­stream report from M.E.N.]

—-

Man­ches­ter activists deflate SUV tyres

“A group of con­cerned Man­ches­ter res­i­dents deflat­ed the tyres of a num­ber of Sports Util­i­ty Vehi­cles (SUV’s) last night to protest their con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate change, oil con­sump­tion and road traf­fic acci­dents. Around 80 vehi­cles in the Chorl­ton area were tar­get­ted. The tyres were let down and not slashed, this was done with­out any dam­age to the tyres.

“Giv­en the threat of cli­mate change and the gov­ern­ments inac­tion in deal­ing with it, the group say that direct action such as this is, unfor­tu­nate­ly, nec­es­sary. Large SUV’s con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate change is more than the aver­age car as they emit sub­stan­tial­ly more green­house gas­es. These large vehi­cles also have high­er con­sump­tion and there­fore require more oil: a finite resource which many con­flicts are required to secure access to.

“This issue is not just about cli­mate change and world con­flicts, SUV’s are a seri­ous safe­ty haz­ard. Road traf­fic sta­tis­tics have shown that in car col­li­sions involv­ing SUV’s, peo­ple in the oth­er car are 6 times more like­ly to die than if they had col­lid­ed with an aver­age car, and fur­ther­more SUV’s are twice as like­ly to be fatal in col­li­sions with pedes­tri­ans.

“James, a mem­ber of the group, said, “These vehi­cles are total­ly unsuit­able for the city, they’re dan­ger­ous, pol­lut­ing and an unnec­es­sary sta­tus sym­bol. They should not be on our city roads.”

“Large SUVs are a sym­bol of exces­sive con­sumerism and due to a wide range of issues, dri­ving one in urban areas con­sti­tutes anti-social behav­iour to which we are all vul­ner­a­ble.”

[- activist press release]

‘Mother Earth in climate crisis’ say indigenous people

12 May 2009
A state­ment by indige­nous rep­re­sen­ta­tives from around the world describes ‘Moth­er Earth (as) no longer in a peri­od of cli­mate change, but cli­mate cri­sis.’

12 May 2009
A state­ment by indige­nous rep­re­sen­ta­tives from around the world describes ‘Moth­er Earth (as) no longer in a peri­od of cli­mate change, but cli­mate cri­sis.’

The state­ment, known as the Anchor­age Dec­la­ra­tion, was released after indige­nous peo­ple from the Arc­tic, North Amer­i­ca, Asia, the Pacif­ic, Latin Amer­i­ca, Africa, the Caribbean and Rus­sia met in Anchor­age, Alas­ka for the ‘Indige­nous Peo­ples’ Glob­al Sum­mit on Cli­mate Change’.

‘We are deeply alarmed by the accel­er­at­ing cli­mate dev­as­ta­tion brought about by unsus­tain­able devel­op­ment,’ the Dec­la­ra­tion says. ‘We are expe­ri­enc­ing pro­found and dis­pro­por­tion­ate adverse impacts on our cul­tures, human and envi­ron­men­tal health, human rights, well-being, tra­di­tion­al liveli­hoods, food sys­tems and food sov­er­eign­ty, local infra­struc­ture, eco­nom­ic via­bil­i­ty, and our very sur­vival as Indige­nous Peo­ples.

‘Moth­er Earth is no longer in a peri­od of cli­mate change, but in cli­mate cri­sis. We there­fore insist on an imme­di­ate end to the destruc­tion and des­e­cra­tion of the ele­ments of life.’

The Dec­la­ra­tion lists four­teen spe­cif­ic calls for action. These include reduc­ing lev­els of glob­al car­bon emis­sions; indige­nous par­tic­i­pa­tion in cli­mate change debate; the recog­ni­tion of indige­nous peo­ples’ rights in schemes to ‘Reduce Emis­sions from Defor­esta­tion and Degra­da­tion’ (REDD); the aban­don­ment of ‘false solu­tions’ to cli­mate change such as nuclear ener­gy, ‘clean coal’ and agro­fu­els; the recog­ni­tion by gov­ern­ments of indige­nous peo­ples’ rights; and the return and restora­tion of ‘lands, ter­ri­to­ries, waters, forests, sea ice and sacred sites’ tak­en from indige­nous peo­ples by gov­ern­ments in the past.

The Dec­la­ra­tion ends with an offer to ‘share with human­i­ty our tra­di­tion­al knowl­edge… rel­e­vant to cli­mate change, pro­vid­ed our fun­da­men­tal rights… are ful­ly rec­og­nized and respect­ed. We reit­er­ate the urgent need for col­lec­tive action.’

Read the Anchor­age Dec­la­ra­tion

Rossport: 150 people attempt to take down Shell’s compound

On Sat­ur­day 9th May approx 150 S2S sup­port­ers both from across the coun­try and with­in the local com­mu­ni­ty have made a sus­tained effort to halt the ongo­ing work at the head of the pro­posed Shell pipeline at its site in Glen­gad. Peo­ple of all ages par­tic­pat­ed in the action, where ropes and chains where used to attempt to pull down the out­er fenc­ing of the site.

On Sat­ur­day 9th May approx 150 S2S sup­port­ers both from across the coun­try and with­in the local com­mu­ni­ty have made a sus­tained effort to halt the ongo­ing work at the head of the pro­posed Shell pipeline at its site in Glen­gad. Peo­ple of all ages par­tic­pat­ed in the action, where ropes and chains where used to attempt to pull down the out­er fenc­ing of the site. These effort have so far been repulsed by a very large secu­ri­ty oper­a­tion from both the state and pri­vate secu­ri­ty firm IRM secu­ri­ty. There is in excess of 150 gar­da, incud­ing the noto­ri­ous pub­lic order units. Most are post­ed and lined out at the out­side rear of the com­pound, com­pli­ment­ed on the inside by a fur­ther 100 hired hands IRM Secu­ri­ty

At present there have been some “arrests ” of sup­port­ers at tonight action so far. Fig­ures at present range from 6–8. These peo­ple are being phys­i­cal­ly detained but the cops are refus­ing to offi­cial­ly arrest them, or at least refus­ing to com­ment pub­li­cal­ly that the arrests have been made, and won’t tell observers which Gar­da sta­tion those detained are being tak­en to. Gar­da seem to be delib­er­ate tar­get­ing peo­ple from out­side the local area, and avoid­ing arrest­ing local mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty. It has been sug­gest­ed that this make much bet­ter media cov­er­age, no doubt some of which we will see in tomor­row papers. There is a prison van, the type used to car­ry pris­on­sers to court, inside the com­pound where Shell and secu­ri­ty staff work. Whilst there is move­ment of cops in and out of the van, it is unclear if peo­ple are being detained in it at the moment.

The sit­u­a­tion has been described by one sup­port­er as calm, though there are con­ti­n­ung skir­mish­es as peo­ple attempt to dis­rupt the ongo­ing con­tro­ver­sial and devi­sive work being car­ried out by Shell again­ist the wish­es of the local com­mu­ni­ty.