Category: Culture Jamming/Subvertising

Be Proud to Make a Difference: Subvert an Army Ad & DSEi Day of Action, 11 September 2007, tank & critical mass

Army recruit­ment ads on phonebox­es in Oxford get the treat­ment they right­ly deserve!

Shut down the arms fair:Manzil Way phonebox (Class War stick­er already there!)

Pix­ies strike again in Oxford, this time to shut down a cer­tain arms fair, and also to pro­mote a cer­tain polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy…

http://dsei.org

army phonebox subvert 1army phonebox subvert 2Army recruit­ment ads on phonebox­es in Oxford get the treat­ment they right­ly deserve!

Shut down the arms fair:Manzil Way phonebox (Class War stick­er already there!)

Pix­ies strike again in Oxford, this time to shut down a cer­tain arms fair, and also to pro­mote a cer­tain polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy…

http://dsei.org

1pm Cus­tom House.

Come by bus. Come by DLR. Come by bike. Come by foot. Come by tank.

Get to Cus­tom House.

Invade ExCeL.

Shut down the arms fair.

Bring your friends.

4.30pm Can­ning Town bus sta­tion.

The del­e­gates will be at your dis­pos­al.

Please use your imag­i­na­tion and a diver­si­ty of tac­tics.

Have fun…

See www.dsei.org for more infor­ma­tion and direc­tions.

DISARM DSEi
disarm@dsei.org

———————–
Infor­ma­tion from today’s Space Hijack­ers press con­fer­ence

The Space Hijack­ers Arms Deal­ing at DSEi Arms Fair

Press Release

Every two years DSEi (Defence Sys­tems & Equip­ment Inter­na­tion­al), the worlds largest Arms fair, hap­pens at the ExCeL cen­tre in east Lon­don. Sell­ing every­thing from up close tor­ture weapons to long dis­tance civil­ian maim­ing bombs, the fair offers a wide range of choice to the 20,000 del­e­gates trav­el­ing to the fair from an assort­ment of cor­rupt regimes and often from coun­tries at war with each oth­er!

Pre­vi­ous­ly the Space Hijack­ers have attempt­ed to dis­rupt the fair, dis­guis­ing them­selves as arms deal­ers, board­ing trains to the fair with the deal­ers and then attempt­ing to sell them pros­thet­ic limbs (arms!) and lat­er sex toys (we fig­ured they were a bit too obsessed with phal­lic objects and were per­haps com­pen­sat­ing for a lack of weapons capa­bil­i­ties else­where).

On all pre­vi­ous occa­sions we have been escort­ed out of the area by the £4million worth of police who are called in to pro­tect the del­i­cate souls sell­ing the weapons in the fair. This year we have decid­ed to learn from the arms deal­ers them­selves and take a leaf out of their book.

After sev­er­al months of fundrais­ing and receiv­ing invest­ment from Artists Anony­mous, The Space Hijack­ers are now proud own­ers of a Sara­cen Mk1 tank, which we intend to dri­ve to the arms fair, right into the mix of pro­test­ers and police. As the pro­test­ers line up against the heav­i­ly armed police, we intend to roll up and auc­tion our tank to the high­est bid­der. If this so hap­pens to be an angry teenag­er in a bal­a­cla­va, then so be it. We don’t see how destruc­tion caused with our tank can pos­si­bly be our respon­si­bil­i­ty.

Sev­er­al peo­ple have got in touch with us claim­ing that this kind of behav­ior is slight­ly reck­less “what if some­one dri­ves over a police car in your tank?” Our response is sim­ple: we are sim­ply look­ing to make a prof­it, it’s just busi­ness trans­ac­tion. As with the arms deal­ers and their weapons, once the goods are out of our hands, how can we be held account­able for how they are used?

So ladies and gen­tle­men, roll up to the arms fair this Sep­tem­ber 11th and join in the bid­ding. We will have a pro­mo­tions team on hand to make the event mem­o­rable, danc­ing girls and boys, music and of course a 10 tonne armored vehi­cle ready to be dri­ven away!

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it:

http://www.spacehijackers.org
http://www.dsei.org

———————–
Bikes not Bombs logoAs part of a week of action against the DSEi arms fair there will be a ‘Bikes not Bombs’ crit­i­cal mass’ bike ride meet­ing up at Bank tube sta­tion at 10:30am on Tues­day, and rid­ing to the arms fair. Bikes and any oth­er human-pow­ered vehi­cle wel­come — no tanks!

There will also be a ride on Thurs­day evening for the arms deal­ers’ din­ner, leav­ing from by the NFT under Water­loo Bridge at 6:30pm.

http://dsei.org/

New Earth First Action Update OUT NOW!

The print­ed EF! Action Update is back again! After a bit of a lull a new edi­to­r­i­al col­lec­tive is in place and ready to roll. We have just pro­duced a sum­mer edi­tion in time for the Camp for Cli­mate Action, where you can pick up print­ed copies.

EF! AU logo 1The print­ed EF! Action Update is back again! After a bit of a lull a new edi­to­r­i­al col­lec­tive is in place and ready to roll. We have just pro­duced a sum­mer edi­tion in time for the Camp for Cli­mate Action, where you can pick up print­ed copies.

The Action Update is pro­duced quar­ter­ly to aid the shar­ing of news, infor­ma­tion and ideas amongst those inter­est­ed in tak­ing action. The next newslet­ter will be out in Novem­ber. If you’ve got news to share about your groups, cam­paigns and actions post them straight onto this web­site and we’ll make sure they’re includ­ed in the next edi­tion.

You can also down­load and print out the PDF of the Action Update by click­ing here.

Earth First! summer gathering — Wednesday 18th July until Sunday 22nd July 2007 — location & programme announced

What is the Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing?

* Are you fed up with bare-faced lies from politi­cians, big busi­ness and the media?
* Have you had enough of a world where cor­po­rate prof­it comes before life and dig­ni­ty?
* Do you want to see an end to mind­less con­sump­tion>
* Then this Gath­er­ing is for you! Read on…

EF! gathering '07 logo (rabbit/fence)What is the Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing?

* Are you fed up with bare-faced lies from politi­cians, big busi­ness and the media?
* Have you had enough of a world where cor­po­rate prof­it comes before life and dig­ni­ty?
* Do you want to see an end to mind­less con­sump­tion>
* Then this Gath­er­ing is for you! Read on…

Explor­ing alter­na­tives to the cor­po­rate world of greed, lies & exploita­tion -

The Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing is the place where peo­ple involved in rad­i­cal eco­log­i­cal direct action — or those who want to be involved — get togeth­er for five days of time and space to talk, walk, share skills, learn, play, rant, find out what’s going on, find out what’s next, live out­side, strate­gise, hang out, incite, laugh and con­spire.

The gath­er­ing is also a prac­ti­cal exam­ple of non-hier­ar­chi­cal low-impact liv­ing in action.

We are a diverse com­mu­ni­ty with a wide range of approach­es to our action, so there should be plen­ty to inter­est and inspire every­one whether you have been active for years or are com­plete­ly new to it all.

More info at earthfirstgathering.org.uk

Starbucks opening greeted by local knees up

Described as “a prop­er east-end knees up”, locals gath­ered out­side the new Star­bucks store for a tea par­ty, “in defence of our area, and to show off the love­ly cul­ture we have”.

whitechapel starbucks protest 1
whitechapel starbucks protest 2
Starbucks 'welcome' posterDescribed as “a prop­er east-end knees up”, locals gath­ered out­side the new Star­bucks store for a tea par­ty, “in defence of our area, and to show off the love­ly cul­ture we have”.

The group said that the area has a vibrant com­mu­ni­ty of local cafés and small cof­fee shops and are “wor­ried about an oncom­ing bland­ing of local cul­ture, as oth­er multi­na­tion­al chains fol­low Star­bucks into the area and attempt to gen­tri­fy it with their bland cor­po­rate décor, homoge­nous facades and taste­less prod­ucts.”

From about 1pm till 4pm they set up a stall and gave out free fair trade teas and home made cakes in an attempt to show what the area will be miss­ing if Star­bucks and their ilk are allowed to set­tle in. They gave out maps of the area on which were marked alter­na­tive local places to buy cof­fee and keep mon­ey with­in the local com­mu­ni­ty.

The Lon­don Food Not Bombs group, who have been giv­ing away free hot meals every sat­ur­day in the park oppo­site, join the tea par­ty with a sound sys­tem and steam­ing pots of food which soon attract­ed a queue.

Police even­tu­al­ly stepped in and threat­ened to arrest those gath­er­ing around the stall for obstruc­tion of the high­way. The Food Not Bombs groups moved across the road to their nor­mal spot in the park. Every­one else shuf­fled a few feet back behind the build­ing line but packed up short­ly after any­way as all the tea and bis­cuits had run out.

Geneva Motor Show: all arrested before demo

Paris, 19 March 2007: For the occa­sion of the clo­sure day of the Gene­va Motor Show, some 10 activists from dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions were plan­ning to do a small demo at the inside of the Gene­va motor show, deploy­ing a ban­ner to point out the hyp­ocrite dis­course of the car man­u­fac­tur­ers.

anti-4x4 logo 1Paris, 19 March 2007: For the occa­sion of the clo­sure day of the Gene­va Motor Show, some 10 activists from dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions were plan­ning to do a small demo at the inside of the Gene­va motor show, deploy­ing a ban­ner to point out the hyp­ocrite dis­course of the car man­u­fac­tur­ers.

As a pre­ven­tive mea­sure, Police Detec­tives of the Gene­va Can­ton have tak­en the whole group of activists and the cam­era crews in their pres­ence in cus­tody, and kept them for more than 8 hours for ques­tion­ing.
Jeroen Ver­ho­even, Coor­di­na­tor of the 4x4network and par­tic­i­pat­ing in the action, has been hand-cuffed and tak­en away to the police sta­tion for ques­tion­ing. The activists have been charged of being” the alleged authors of threats alarm­ing the pub­lic”, even if the action did not take place!

In order to avoid any dis­si­dent voice at the motor show, the activists have been phone-tapped, hand-cuffed, strip searched, their DNA and fin­ger­prints have been tak­en, and video mate­r­i­al, lap­tops and mobile phones have been seized by the Gene­va Police. The dis­pro­por­tion­ate char­ac­ter of the mea­sures tak­en to pre­vent a non-vio­lent action, gives rea­son to ques­tion the under­ly­ing motive of this inter­ven­tion of the Gene­va Police.

Jeroen Ver­ho­even strong­ly rejects the meth­ods of the Swiss Police Detec­tives, who use anti-ter­ror­ist laws to intim­i­date and muz­zle anti-4x4ac­tivists and says that: “Appar­ent­ly point­ing out the risks of cli­mate change is equal to alarm­ing the pub­lic and as such a crim­i­nal act under Swiss law”.
Only car man­u­fac­tur­ers seem to have the right to “inform” the gen­er­al pub­lic trough adver­tis­ing for cli­mate killing gas-guz­zlers.

Because Cli­mate Change is indeed a “threat which can alarm the gen­er­al pub­lic”, the Euro­pean groups unit­ed in the 4x4network will con­tin­ue, despite the intim­i­da­tions, to demand bind­ing leg­is­la­tion for the emis­sions of new­ly sold cars, with a tar­get of 120gC02/km by 2012.

Con­tact:
Jeroen Ver­ho­even +32.2 542 61 01 (mobile phone seized…)
http://www.4x4network.org/

Whitechapel Knees Up against Starbucks

Star­bucks, everyone’s favourite nip­ple-less mer­maid mer­chants, have decid­ed to move into the east end with a new store in Whitechapel. It’s an area with a vibrant com­mu­ni­ty of local cafés and small cof­fee shops, as well as being an area local to many Space Hijack­er agents. As you can prob­a­bly guess, we are less than pleased about our new neigh­bour…

Starbucks knees upStar­bucks, everyone’s favourite nip­ple-less mer­maid mer­chants, have decid­ed to move into the east end with a new store in Whitechapel. It’s an area with a vibrant com­mu­ni­ty of local cafés and small cof­fee shops, as well as being an area local to many Space Hijack­er agents. As you can prob­a­bly guess, we are less than pleased about our new neigh­bour…

We are wor­ried about an oncom­ing bland­ing of local cul­ture, as oth­er multi­na­tion­al chains fol­low Star­bucks into the area and attempt to gen­tri­fy it with their bland cor­po­rate décor, homoge­nous facades and taste­less prod­ucts. In defence of our area, and to show off the love­ly cul­ture we have, we are putting on a tea par­ty out­side the new Star­bucks!

We will be set­ting up a stall and giv­ing out free fair trade teas, home made sand­wich­es, and all man­ner of oth­er good­ies to our neigh­bours, in an attempt to show what the area will be miss­ing if Star­bucks and their ilk are allowed to set­tle in.

Bring along tea, bis­cuits, home-made cakes, jams, and scones to share. Bring your din­ing room fur­ni­ture out into the street, bring bunting, music and of course bring friends.

1pm
Sat 24th March
Out­side the new Star­bucks
Whitechapel High St
Lon­don

Oppo­site Altab Ali Park
Tube — Aldgate east or Whitechapel
Bus – 25, 205, 106 or 254

http://www.spacehijackers.org

Call for workshops at the Earth First! Summer Gathering 2007

This year’s gath­er­ing is from 18 — 22 July in Nor­folk, near a main­line rail­way sta­tion.

The focus is on prac­ti­cal skills, but there will also be many of the reg­u­lar diverse and inter­est­ing work­shops.

EF! summer gathering 2007 logoThis year’s gath­er­ing is from 18 — 22 July in Nor­folk, near a main­line rail­way sta­tion.

The focus is on prac­ti­cal skills, but there will also be many of the reg­u­lar diverse and inter­est­ing work­shops.

The idea is to have mul­ti­ple work­shop ses­sions, e.g. four two-hour slots spread over four days build­ing up skills in a par­tic­u­lar area, so peo­ple can learn the basic skills to actu­al­ly do the job at oth­er mobil­i­sa­tions, events like the cli­mate camp — or wher­ev­er. For exam­ple plumb­ing, elec­tri­cal skills, medics…and what­ev­er else peo­ple want to do… It’s not just about the prac­ti­cal skills but also about get­ting to know each oth­er and start­ing to work togeth­er.

If you would like to offer a work­shop please write to:
martinshaw64@riseup.net

Thanks — the EF! sum­mer gath­er­ing col­lect­ing
Gen­er­al con­tact details etc at http://www.earthfirstgathering.org.uk/

please for­ward to peo­ple you think would be inter­est­ed.

Bedminster subvert

Cam­paign­ers in Bris­tol have altered a ‘benefit cheat­s’ bill­board so the orig­i­nal mes­sage tar­get­ing peo­ple work­ing ille­gal­ly while on ben­e­fit, now high­lights the gov­ern­ments deci­sion to halt an inquiry into a cor­rupt arms deal with Sau­di Ara­bia.

Blair arms deals subvertCam­paign­ers in Bris­tol have altered a ‘benefit cheat­s’ bill­board so the orig­i­nal mes­sage tar­get­ing peo­ple work­ing ille­gal­ly while on ben­e­fit, now high­lights the gov­ern­ments deci­sion to halt an inquiry into a cor­rupt arms deal with Sau­di Ara­bia.

The poster in West St, Bed­min­ster, now fea­tures the head of Tony Blair and state­ments such as “If I keep qui­et about mak­ing a few extra bribes it doesn’t make me a hyp­ocriteâ€?, “No ifs, no buts. No dodgy arms deal­sâ€? and “Corruption is a crimeâ€?. The changes expose the government’s con­tra­dic­tion of pur­su­ing the poor for work­ing extra hours while on ben­e­fit at the same time as cur­tail­ing an inquiry into bribery and cor­rup­tion.

Since 2003, the Seri­ous Fraud Office had been inves­ti­gat­ing claims that Sau­di offi­cials enjoyed pros­ti­tutes and lux­u­ry hol­i­days paid for by a £60m ‘slush fund’ admin­is­tered by BAE Sys­tems, which sup­plied Tor­na­do fight­ers under the Al-Yamamah arms deals of the 1980s and 1990s. How­ev­er in Decem­ber the gov­ern­ment cur­tailed the inves­ti­ga­tion after it was report­ed that the Sau­di author­i­ties had sus­pend­ed talks on a fur­ther multi­bil­lion pound deal to buy Eurofight­er jets from BAE Sys­tems.

The world’s lead­ing anti-bribery watch­dog, the Organ­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Coop­er­a­tion and Devel­op­ment has writ­ten to the gov­ern­ment demand­ing an expla­na­tion for its con­tro­ver­sial deci­sion. Lau­rence Cock­croft, direc­tor of the anti-cor­rup­tion watch­dog Trans­paren­cy Inter­na­tion­al, described the gov­ern­men­t’s deci­sion to call off the SFO as ‘a tremen­dous step back­wards’.

Mean­while in Blair’s Britain inequal­i­ty between rich and poor con­tin­ues to grow. The Insti­tute for Fis­cal Stud­ies has found that income inequal­i­ty in Britain rose by 40% between 1979 and 2001, a larg­er increase than in any oth­er devel­oped coun­try, with a par­tic­u­lar­ly pro­nounced diver­gence between the super-rich and the abject poor.

This ben­e­fit “cheatsâ€? cam­paign has coin­cid­ed with the gov­ern­ment stop­ping a cor­rup­tion inquiry for no good rea­son and the first Prime Min­is­ter being inter­viewed by the police about cash for hon­ours. It there­fore seems hyp­o­crit­i­cal Blair to now crack down and scape­goat those work­ers whose hourly rate is so low that they must rely on ben­e­fit.