Category: Action Reports

Swedish Peace Activists Repeatedly Break Into Weapon Factories

23.10.2008

23.10.2008
Using ham­mers and bolt cut­ters, peace activists repeat­ed­ly broke into weapon plants and dam­aged weapons in Swe­den. Activists from the Swedish group OFOG/Avrusta admit­ted dam­ag­ing twen­ty high explo­sive grenade launch­ers as well as inter­nal parts to a How­itzer 77. Five peo­ple were arrest­ed. Two remain in jail. Two activists who were arrest­ed and released were re-arrest­ed after they returned to the weapons plant to do more dam­age. A fifth per­son was arrest­ed Sat­ur­day in anoth­er break in. All are fac­ing tri­al on charges from crim­i­nal dam­age to tres­pass at places of nation­al secu­ri­ty.

Mem­bers of the Swedish peace and dis­ar­ma­ment group OFOG/Avrusta say they have been prepar­ing for more than a year to car­ry out the actions. OFOG, which loose­ly trans­lates as the word mis­chief, is a net­work of activists work­ing for a nuclear free and demil­i­ta­rized world. Avrus­ta is Dis­arm in Eng­lish. The group released infor­ma­tion to the press announc­ing their actions and post­ed videos of their entry and dam­age on You Tube. See: http://www.ofog.org/avrusta_aktionsvideo

At about 2:30 a.m. Thurs­day morn­ing, activists approached the BAE Sys­tems weapons facil­i­ty in Karl­sko­ga, Swe­den, about 240 kilo­me­ters away from Stock­holm. Accord­ing to state­ments to the press, they used bolt cut­ters cut open a hole in the secu­ri­ty fence and entered. They left behind a ban­ner wel­com­ing oth­ers, which said “The door is open — you are free to start dis­arm­ing.” The activists used ham­mers to dam­age inter­nal parts like cool­ing aggre­gates and hydraulic cylin­ders for the How­itzer 77. A ful­ly oper­a­tional How­itzer 77 can fire 6 rounds every sec­ond for 20 min­utes and has a fir­ing range of 30 kilo­me­ters. Inside, media reports note that the duo man­aged to affix a poster to the door that said, “In this fac­to­ry are man­u­fac­tured weapons that are used to wage wars — Dis­ar­ma­ment is under­way.” Dis­ar­ma­ment activists, Cat­tis Las­ka, 24, and Pelle Strin­lund, 37, were arrest­ed and charged with tres­pass­ing and crim­i­nal dam­age. Las­ka is a youth leader and Strin­lund is a writer. Both remain in jail pend­ing a hear­ing.

Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, oth­er activists entered a weapons facil­i­ty run by Saab in Eskil­stu­na, Swe­den, about 135 kilo­me­ters away. Accord­ing to OFOG/Avrusta, they dam­aged twen­ty grenade launch­ers with ham­mers and then alert­ed guards to their pres­ence. Anna Ander­s­son, 26, and Mar­tin Smed­je­back, 35, were arrest­ed and charged with tres­pass, severe crim­i­nal dam­age, and enter­ing a pro­tect­ed nation­al secu­ri­ty area. Ander­s­son is a web devel­op­er. Smed­je­back is a train­er in non-vio­lence. Both were released from jail on Fri­day.

The weapons dam­aged in the Saab plant were described as Carl Gus­tav type grenade launch­ers. These are shoul­der mount­ed anti-tank weapons that can fire high explo­sive rounds. The weapons were report­ed­ly found in box­es labeled for deliv­ery to “US” and “New Del­hi.” BAE has a long term con­tract with the Indi­an gov­ern­ment for how­itzers and grenade launch­ers, accord­ing to reports in the Hin­du Times.

After being released from jail Fri­day, Ander­s­son indi­cat­ed she was glad to be going to tri­al. “I look for­ward to a chance to eth­i­cal­ly and legal­ly argue for our actions in court. I hope one day the arms man­u­fac­tur­ers will be charged for the crim­i­nal dam­age that Swedish arma­ments cause in wars and con­flicts around the world.”

In a sur­prise move ear­ly Sat­ur­day, Ander­s­son and Smed­je­back returned to the weapons plant where they were arrest­ed again. They now remain in jail.

Also ear­ly Sat­ur­day morn­ing, a fifth mem­ber of the group, Anni­ka Spalde, 39, cut her way through the fence around a weapons plant in Karl­sko­ga and hung a ban­ner encour­ag­ing more dis­ar­ma­ment actions. She was lat­er arrest­ed. She is charged with severe crim­i­nal dam­age and tres­pass in a place of nation­al secu­ri­ty. Spalde, who was lat­er released, is a dea­con in the Swedish church, an author and peace activist.

BAE Sys­tems, own­er of the Karl­sko­ga plant, describes itself on its web­site as “the pre­mier glob­al defense and aero­space com­pa­ny” with 100,000 employ­ees world­wide and annu­al sales of $31.4 bil­lion. BAE author­i­ties con­firmed the break in. Curi­ous­ly, BAE press peo­ple in the US report­ed “very minor” dam­age while the BAE secu­ri­ty man­ag­er in Swe­den told the press there that he esti­mat­ed dam­age at 50,000 euros and was not cer­tain whether the dam­age would cre­ate delays in sched­uled deliv­er­ies of the weapons or not.

Saab, own­er of the Eskil­stu­na plant, pro­claims it serves the glob­al mar­ket with prod­ucts, ser­vices and solu­tions rang­ing from mil­i­tary defense to civ­il secu­ri­ty. It says it has 13,700 employ­ees and world­wide sales of $2.5 bil­lion. Lasse Jon­s­son, spokesper­son for Saab, told the media, “They have scrapped a quan­ti­ty of weapons’ spare parts that await­ed export. Only after the police inves­ti­ga­tion has been com­plet­ed will we be able to cal­cu­late the exact extent of the dam­age caused.”

Maja Back­lund, spokesper­son for OFOG, was quot­ed in the Hin­du Times: “Civ­il dis­obe­di­ence and action are most vital parts of demo­c­ra­t­ic devel­op­ment. Our col­leagues who breached the Saab fac­to­ry man­aged to dam­age 25 grenade launch­ers of the Carl Gus­tav brand that are in exten­sive use in Kash­mir and oth­er war zones in India.” OFOG also claims that some of the weapons dam­aged were of the same type as used by the U.S. mil­i­tary in Iraq.

Mem­bers of OFOG claim Swedish weapons exports have risen 88 per­cent since the US inva­sion of Iraq. They fur­ther claim that the Swedish gov­ern­ment is vio­lat­ing its pol­i­cy of peace and neu­tral­i­ty by sup­ply­ing war­ring coun­tries with arms.

Dea­con Spalde insist­ed these actions were nec­es­sary. “When your gov­ern­ment sup­ports an ille­gal war and sells arms to dic­ta­tor­ships, it’s time for ordi­nary cit­i­zens like us to take action.”

OFOG/Avrusta said “This action is the first dis­ar­ma­ment cam­paign in the 21st cen­tu­ry in Swe­den.” At this point, the cam­paign says it con­sists of activists will­ing to risk arrest and anoth­er fifty sup­port peo­ple.

“Our activists have pre­pared them­selves for more than a year for this cam­paign,” said a group mem­ber who asked to remain anony­mous. “They are ready to serve time in prison if Swedish soci­ety should fail to see that non­vi­o­lent civ­il dis­obe­di­ence to sus­pend the dis­as­trous Swedish arms exports to wars and dic­ta­tor­ships is less of a breach of law than these amoral arms exports.”

More dis­ar­ma­ment actions, OFOG/Avrusta promis­es, will be forth­com­ing.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/10/swedish-peace-activists-repeatedly-break-into-weapon-factories/

http://ofog.org/about-campaign-avrusta

E.ON gets fingered : NEIN KINGSNORTH!

British Cli­mate Camp activists have tak­en their cam­paign to the Munich offices of E.ON.
For Imme­di­ate release. 14.30 — 22/10/08
E.ON gets fin­gered : NEIN KINGSNORTH!

E.on Munich fingeredBritish Cli­mate Camp activists have tak­en their cam­paign to the Munich offices of E.ON.
For Imme­di­ate release. 14.30 — 22/10/08
E.ON gets fin­gered : NEIN KINGSNORTH!

British Cli­mate Camp (1) activists have tak­en their cam­paign to stop the build­ing of a coal-fired pow­er sta­tion in Kent, UK, to the Ener­gy head­quar­ters of E.ON in Munich, Ger­many (2).

This morn­ing activists involved in the UK Cli­mate Camp coor­di­nat­ed a ‘flash mob’ style action at the office of E.ON Energie. Dressed in splash­es of E.ON red, around thir­ty peo­ple swamped the main entrance of the office to give E.ON the fin­ger. Play­ing on the ‘E.ON F.OFF’ logo (3) from this summer’s Cli­mate Camp the group held their mid­dle fin­gers in the air, send­ing a clear mes­sage that the mul­ti-nation­al is a tar­get across Europe.

“This sum­mer saw a pletho­ra of high­ly effec­tive actions against the ener­gy major in the UK” explained Jim­my Hoover, one of the UK Cli­mate Campers who trav­elled to Munich to coor­di­nate the action. “We want­ed to make it very clear to E.ON that its not just about one week in a field in Kent. We have the means and the moti­va­tion to take this cam­paign to stop Kingsnorth and new coal con­tin­ue all the way home to E.On’s head­quar­ters in Ger­many. Until the plans for this new coal-fired plant are dropped, we will drag E.On’s name through the mud and expose them for being the cli­mate crim­i­nals they are.”

Since this summer’s third and largest Cli­mate Camp, the group have open­ly stat­ed their inten­tion to return to the Hoo penin­su­la in Kent to pre­vent the build­ing of a new coal fired pow­er sta­tion, should it be giv­en plan­ning per­mis­sion by the British gov­ern­ment.

“When you’ve got the world’s top cli­mate sci­en­tist Jim Hansen explain­ing that this one pow­er sta­tion will make extinct up to 400 species (4), you’ve got to ask why E.On would still be push­ing ahead with this act of cli­mate van­dal­ism,” added Mel Evans. “Its clear that E.ON has their prof­its in mind, rather than the pub­lic inter­est and cli­mate secu­ri­ty. With the British tax-pay­er look­ing like­ly to own a 60% stake in the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land – who have pro­vid­ed loans to E.On to build Kingsnorth (5) — I for one don’t want my tax­es being used to trash the cli­mate. That’s why we’ve come here today to make sure they get the mes­sage loud and clear – E.On, F.OFF!”

For high res images go to http://thevacuumcleaner.co.uk/eonmunich/

Notes to the Edi­tor:

(1) www.climatecamp.org.uk

(2) Bri­en­ner Straße 40 80333 München Ger­many +49 (0) 89 — 12 54 – 01 http://www.eon-energie.com/pages/eea_en/index.htm

(3) http://www.flickr.com/photos/monaxle/2739086776/

(4) James Hansen, NASA cli­mate sci­en­tist, esti­mates that if the new coal pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth in Kent goes ahead, it will result in 400 extinct species due to its con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate change. www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/04/climatechange.fossilfuels

(5) In 2007, RBS-NatWest took part in loans to E.ON, the com­pa­ny plan­ning to build Kingsnorth, total­ing $70 bil­lion.

nein.kingsnorth@googlemail.com
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk

Dongria Kohnd mass protest — Middlesbrough and Wolverhampton Councils Revealed as Vedanta Investors

Tribe dances in mass protest against British min­ing com­pa­ny
21 Octo­ber 2008

Hun­dreds of mem­bers of the Don­gria Kondh tribe danced and sang through the cap­i­tal of the Indi­an state of Oris­sa on Mon­day, armed with tra­di­tion­al weapons, to mark their oppo­si­tion to British com­pa­ny Vedanta’s plans to mine their sacred moun­tain.

Tribe dances in mass protest against British min­ing com­pa­ny
21 Octo­ber 2008

Hun­dreds of mem­bers of the Don­gria Kondh tribe danced and sang through the cap­i­tal of the Indi­an state of Oris­sa on Mon­day, armed with tra­di­tion­al weapons, to mark their oppo­si­tion to British com­pa­ny Vedanta’s plans to mine their sacred moun­tain.

A huge pro­ces­sion of the tribe and their sup­port­ers snaked through the Oris­san cap­i­tal, Bhubaneswar.

The FTSE 100 British com­pa­ny Vedan­ta, major­i­ty owned by Lon­don-based bil­lion­aire Anil Agar­w­al, has received the go-ahead from India’s Supreme Court to mine alu­mini­um ore on the Dongria’s land. The mine would destroy the forests and streams the Don­gria depend on, and would turn their sacred moun­tain into an indus­tri­al waste­land.

Don­gria man Jitu Jake­si­ka said at the demon­stra­tion, ‘We will car­ry on our strug­gle to save Niyam­giri at any cost.’

Survival’s direc­tor Stephen Cor­ry said today, ‘If fur­ther proof were need­ed that the Don­gria Kondh are deter­mined to stop Vedan­ta, this would be it. The Don­gria know that the mine would destroy them. Vedan­ta must heed their voic­es and pull out of this project.’

Last week Sur­vival sub­mit­ted a report to the Unit­ed Nations Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on Indige­nous Issues, say­ing, ‘Min­ing will dev­as­tate what the Don­gria Kondh hold sacred and the nat­ur­al resources from which they draw their spe­cif­ic iden­ti­ty as a peo­ple.’

Many British banks and pen­sion funds invest in Vedan­ta, includ­ing the Uni­ver­si­ties pen­sion fund (USS), F&C, Stan­dard Life, Bar­clays Bank, Abbey Nation­al and HSBC, as well as Mid­dles­brough and Wolver­hamp­ton Coun­cils. Sur­vival is cam­paign­ing for investors to pull out of Vedan­ta.

For more infor­ma­tion please con­tact Miri­am Ross at Sur­vival Inter­na­tion­al (+44) (0)20 7687 8734 or (+44) (0)7504 543 367 or email mr@survival-international.org

UK free-spaces news — Rampart & Worcester possible evictions

New social cen­tre under threat of ille­gal & pos­si­bly vio­lent evic­tion tomor­row
21.10.2008
This is to inform every­one as well as a call-out for sup­port — new­ly occu­pied com­mu­ni­ty and arts cen­tre in Worces­ter threat­ened with ille­gal and pos­si­bly vio­lent evic­tion tomor­row.

New social cen­tre under threat of ille­gal & pos­si­bly vio­lent evic­tion tomor­row
21.10.2008
This is to inform every­one as well as a call-out for sup­port — new­ly occu­pied com­mu­ni­ty and arts cen­tre in Worces­ter threat­ened with ille­gal and pos­si­bly vio­lent evic­tion tomor­row.

This is a call-out for sup­port — if you can get here before mid­night tonight and want to stay here, and eat with us and have a mer­ry night then please do. After mid­night, the last door will be ful­ly bar­ri­cad­ed. Any­one wish­ing to show sup­port for this ille­gal evic­tion after this point please turn up at 13–17 Car­den Street (off City Walls Road), Worces­ter WR1 around 11.30 tomor­row (WEDNESDAY), bring ban­ners, cam­eras and cam­era-phones and pro­vide pos­i­tive pub­lic rela­tions, because if they are forc­ing their way into our home IT IS ILLEGAL and we will not be scared by this bull­shit.

So what hap­pened…?
At about 15:30 today a bailiff arrived at the door with a let­ter on behalf of Keather Prop­er­ties Ltd. THE LETTER IS TRANSCRIBED AT THE BOTTOM FOR ANYONE WHO WANTS TO READ THE BOLLOCKS NOTICE

We’ve been on the phone to the Advi­so­ry Ser­vice for Squat­ters, and they have con­firmed that this is a total­ly ille­gal evic­tion. They have dealt with mat­ters like this on a day to day basis for 30 years and under­stand the law a lot bet­ter than most com­mer­cial lawyers. They assure us any attempt to evict tomor­row will be crim­i­nal and we should defend our­selves with num­bers and phys­i­cal bar­ri­cades. The ‘exer­cis­ing their rights’ part applies to land, and not build­ings. And see­ing as a tent can apply as a build­ing, an 8000 square ft com­mer­cial build­ing cer­tain­ly counts!

This would be a dif­fer­ent sto­ry if we only lived here.. but for two sol­id weeks we have been putting all our love and ener­gy into this place. We have had dreams become real­i­ty in cre­at­ing a space where any­one is wel­come and can come and cre­ate any­thing, any­time they want.

Com­mu­nal cook­ing, cir­cuit bend­ing and sewing work­shops, music prac­tice, paint­ing, and much much more was on the agen­da — our gallery cov­ered with work from many dif­fer­ent local artists, and now we have been dis­cov­ered we are being pre­sent­ed with ille­gal and vio­lent threats.

This whole thing is new to us.. but the bar­ri­cades are being strength­ened and peo­ple are get­ting ready for a poten­tial­ly long day of defend­ing the Wet Paint build­ing.

This is a call-out for sup­port — if you can get here before mid­night tonight and want to stay here, and eat with us and have a mer­ry night then please do. After mid­night, the last door will be ful­ly bar­ri­cad­ed. Any­one wish­ing to show sup­port for this ille­gal evic­tion after this point please turn up at 13–17 Car­den Street (off City Walls Road), Worces­ter WR1 around 11.30 tomor­row (WEDNESDAY), bring ban­ners, cam­eras and cam­era-phones and pro­vide pos­i­tive pub­lic rela­tions because if they are forc­ing their way into our home IT IS A CRIMINAL OFFENCE and we will not be scared by this bull­shit.

call us on 07965710354

Your friends at WET PAINT 🙂

.….….….blah blah blah

TAKE NOTICE

KEATHER PROPERTIES LTD (LANDOWNER) are the own­ers of the land on which you are tres­pass­ing and require you to leave. You are here with­out con­sent and are there­fore tres­pass­ing and have no right to remain. You should there­fore leave togeth­er with all your vehi­cles and goods by 1200 hours on the 22 day of Octo­ber 2008.

If you fail to do so, KEATHER PROPERTIES LTD (LANDOWNER) will exer­cise its rights to self-help to remove you from the land and have instruct­ed Bailiffs from Swift Cred­it Ser­vices Lim­it­ed to do so on its behalf. This right, under Com­mon Law, is set out on Hals­burys law of Eng­land. The police will attend if nec­es­sary to ensure that there is no breach of the peace.

Should this enforce­ment action by nec­es­sary , you will be held respon­si­ble for all costs of your removal and trans­porta­tion and KEATHER PROPERTIES LTD (LANDOWNER) may take pro­ceed­ings against you for the recov­ery of these costs.

KEATHER PROPERTIES LTD (LANDOWNER) will be enti­tled to take such action because you failed to respond to a request to leave the land on which you are cur­rent­ly tres­pass­ing.

DATED THIS 21 DAY OF OCTOBER 2008
SIGNED
LANDOWNER KEATHER PROPERTIES LTD
ADDRESS C/O ROBERT DAVIES PARTNERSHIP LTD.

wetpaint@riseup.net

—

SAVE the Ram­pART

21 Octo­ber 2008
Ram­pART Lon­don’s longest last­ing lib­er­at­ed space is fac­ing evic­tion.

yes­ter­day a mem­ber of the Ram­pART col­lec­tive talked to a guy out­side Ram­pART, who intro­duced him­self as Stu­art who was also present at court on the 20th of Decem­ber. he said that the coun­cil build­ing con­trol depart­ment had been has­sling them and he’d nar­row­ly avoid­ed them slap­ping a court order on them last week in rela­tion to dan­ger­ous parts of the build­ing such as slates hang­ing off etc.

they have been try­ing to get us evict­ed since March and got there­fore a war­rant from the high court, which means they are using the high court bailiffs, the police say they need 80 offi­cers and demand­ed £25,000 for the costs. so the own­er took the police to court and the police backed down. the hold up is still the police who have not giv­en a date yet…

so.…

basi­cal­ly the Ram­pART could be evict­ed any time and it’s just the police being the ones that has held it up. we will not get notice of the date of the
evic­tion and we will find it dif­fi­cult to hold off 80 cops and bailiffs on a sur­prise 5am evic­tion. we do need to pro-active­ly find anoth­er build­ing as a back­up. we won’t give in with­out resist­ing the evic­tion to make a state­ment against gen­tri­fi­ca­tion and the evic­tion of free spaces in east Lon­don.

we invite you to come and get cre­ative in its defence. this Thurs­day we are launch­ing an ongo­ing time of action.

we’ll start build­ing and cook­ing @ 3 pm, then Dan­ish activists will share expe­ri­ences from the youth house @ 6 pm, din­ner around 7.30 and build­ing and direct action skill-shar­ing after that. we need tools for mak­ing the bar­ri­cades effi­cient and beau­ti­ful, so if you have access to tools or mate­ri­als please bring them along.

when we fight for Ram­part we are not just fight­ing to defend the space. we are part of a world wide strug­gle against the cap­i­tal­ist world order.

we are fight­ing for every­one’s rights to learn and edu­cate, share, live and love with­out author­i­ties.

we are fight­ing for our dreams.

now is the time to show Lon­don and the rest of the world that the strug­gle con­tin­ues…

rampart@mutualaid.org
http://www.rampart.co.nr

Students Target Unethical Career Corporatism

On Mon­day 20th Octo­ber the annu­al AISEC Careers fair com­menced at Not­ting­ham Uni­ver­si­ty, fea­tur­ing many organ­i­sa­tions with despi­ca­ble or at least dubi­ous eth­i­cal cre­den­tials and social-respon­si­bil­i­ty records, inclu

BAE systems sickleE.on grim reaperOn Mon­day 20th Octo­ber the annu­al AISEC Careers fair com­menced at Not­ting­ham Uni­ver­si­ty, fea­tur­ing many organ­i­sa­tions with despi­ca­ble or at least dubi­ous eth­i­cal cre­den­tials and social-respon­si­bil­i­ty records, includ­ing BAE Sys­tems, Rolls-Royce, Qine­tiq, E.On, BP, RBS, MoD and the army. The fair also fea­tured some stu­dent activists and Grim Reapers who had made an appear­ance in order to remind fel­low stu­dents of the dead­ly con­se­quences of work­ing in the arms trade or cli­mate change indus­try.

AISEC claim to be ‘the inter­na­tion­al plat­form for young peo­ple to dis­cov­er and devel­op their poten­tial so as to have a pos­i­tive impact on soci­ety.’ The organ­i­sa­tion also claims to envi­sion “Peace and ful­fill­ment of humankind’s poten­tial.” Despite this, at Not­ting­ham, the organ­i­sa­tions’ main endeav­or appears to be to give a plat­form to arms deal­ers! For more see: http://www.aiesec.org/

Con­cerned about the pres­ence of such uneth­i­cal cor­po­rate enti­ties and the glar­ing hypocrisy of AISEC, a group of stu­dents came togeth­er with the aim of rais­ing aware­ness of the uneth­i­cal nature of many of the com­pa­nies at the fair and oppose the gen­er­al pres­ence of mech­a­nisms of the cap­i­tal­ist death machine.
BAE systems leafletCareers fair ethics - your choice leafletRolls Royce leaflet
The morn­ing began with flier­ing at var­i­ous stalls, col­lect­ing of shiny cor­po­rate merch, and using up the rep­re­sen­ta­tives time. Not­ting­ham Uni­ver­si­ty Secu­ri­ty were being their usu­al oppres­sive selves and tried to pre­vent the stu­dents from flier­ing near the glossy cor­po­rate stalls. Threats of call­ing the police were also issued. The stu­dents also had a per­ma­nent stall next to the army (cour­tesy of One World Week) from which alter­na­tive infor­ma­tion about com­pa­nies, per­son­al dis­cus­sion and careers guides could be dis­sem­i­nat­ed. When the army rep left his stall, a cou­ple of stu­dents kind­ly stepped in to fill his role and invite stu­dents to ‘join the impe­r­i­al death machine’.

In the after­noon four Grim Reapers appeared and went to pay a vis­it to the stalls of BAE and Rolls-Royce, much to the amuse­ment of passers-by and bewil­der­ment of cor­po­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, a rather unam­bigu­ous ban­ner was dropped in the main access stair­well of the build­ing read­ing ‘BAE KILL’. The four reapers loi­tered at BAE and Rolls-Royces stalls for an hour or so hand­ing our fliers and chat­ting to stu­dents and reps, before doing a mini-tour of oth­er dubi­ous cor­po­rate out­fits in Port­land Build­ing (E.On, BP, Qine­tiq). Uni­ver­si­ty Secu­ri­ty react­ed ini­tial­ly with ‘you lot have to leave or we’ll call the police’, one BAE rep inter­vened to assure secu­ri­ty “it’s cool, they’re Ok”. Secu­ri­ty lat­er changed their line to ‘please take off your masks it’s caus­ing intim­i­da­tion’, and final­ly, meek­ly asked ‘can you please stop film­ing’, before even­tu­al­ly leav­ing the stu­dents to do their thing. A com­bi­na­tion of knowl­edge about basic rights and the fact that they were armed with a video cam­era suc­cess­ful­ly pro­tect­ed the pro­test­ers from any sil­ly games that secu­ri­ty may have wished to play. Thank­ful­ly, this time, free­dom of expres­sion and the right to protest pre­vailed.

Some inter­est­ing dis­cus­sions were had with some of the rep­re­sen­ta­tives. One BAE rep was heard to pro­claim ‘Free Pales­tine’, despite work­ing for a com­pa­ny that has pro­vid­ed parts for Israeli mil­i­tary equip­ment (notably elec­tron­ics for the F‑16 fight­er air­craft) and also sub­con­tract­ed work to Israel. The same rep also con­fessed feel­ing slight­ly guilty about work­ing for BAE, despite being at the Careers fair pre­cise­ly with the pur­pose of try­ing to con­vince oth­ers to do the same thing! A Qine­tiq rep­re­sen­ta­tive admit­ted that he felt the stu­dent pro­test­ers were doing a good thing, and was ulti­mate­ly some­what envi­ous of the pas­sion they clear­ly had for this issue. He also sug­gest­ed that the stu­dent s should be tar­get­ing Air­bus and the MoD addi­tion­al­ly.

An event­ful time was had by all, espe­cial­ly BAE’s reps! E.ON were the only com­pa­ny to active­ly com­plain about the stu­dent protests (as far as we know), the moody gits! Clear­ly var­i­ous ted­dies were thrown out of var­i­ous pow­er-sta­tions. On Tues­day, the sec­ond day of the fair, the vast major­i­ty of the REALLY immoral com­pa­nies were not present.

For an awe­some video of the action see: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=VfJ8geHkaRk

EDF Exposed — LRT action

20 Octo­ber 2008
Lon­don Ris­ing Tide’s Green­wash Gueril­las Brigade, Detec­tion Pla­toon #1, moved into action this morn­ing at 08:00 hours – tar­get­ing dirty great ener­gy cor­po­ra­tion Élec­tric­ité de France (EDF) at the cen­tral Lon­don head­quar­ters (HQ) of their UK sub­sidiary EDF Ener­gy.

EDF greenwash guerillas20 Octo­ber 2008
Lon­don Ris­ing Tide’s Green­wash Gueril­las Brigade, Detec­tion Pla­toon #1, moved into action this morn­ing at 08:00 hours – tar­get­ing dirty great ener­gy cor­po­ra­tion Élec­tric­ité de France (EDF) at the cen­tral Lon­don head­quar­ters (HQ) of their UK sub­sidiary EDF Ener­gy.

Lon­don Ris­ing Tide used to meet fort­night­ly, but the wild suc­cess of the mas­sive Cli­mate Camp 08 out­side the Kingsnorth coal-fired pow­er sta­tion [1] has boost­ed the vet­er­an cli­mate change cam­paign to even high­er lev­els of par­tic­i­pa­tion and direct action. I attend­ed a ‘Film Night for New­com­ers’ on Thu 18 Sep 08, as did a whole bunch of folks new to Ris­ing Tide, and such was the upswing of enthu­si­asm, ener­gy and cre­ativ­i­ty, we’ve been meet­ing week­ly ever since.

Inspired by our sis­ters and broth­ers in France demon­strat­ing against new nuclear pow­er, we chose to tar­get EDF’s attempts to mus­cle in their FALSE nuclear solu­tion to the loom­ing dis­as­ter of cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate chaos. Test­ing the met­tle of sea­soned cam­paign­ers, we new­bies chose 08:00–09:00 on a Mon­day morn­ing to kick up a stink about the dan­gers to the bios­phere, human­i­ty, and REAL renew­able ener­gy solu­tions posed by the nuclear fis­sion indus­try rear­ing its ugly head.

And inspired by the response of our Argen­tinean sis­ters and broth­ers to hav­ing their life sav­ings stolen by the banks, we made ours a Noize Demo [2] – pots and pans, whis­tles and sam­ba bells echoed off the blank face of the bland cor­po­rate archi­tec­ture at No.40 Grosvenor Place, draw­ing the atten­tion of EDF boss­es inside and thou­sands of pedes­tri­ans, cyclists, bus+coach pas­sen­gers, van+truck dri­vers, and motorists out­side to the green­wash bull­shit leak­ing out of their stone-n-glass bas­tion. And in return, scores of vehi­cle horns salut­ed our protest, sound­ing a gen­er­al pub­lic approval for protest against Nuclear Cap­i­tal’s dirty machi­na­tions for new nukes.

If you feel inspired to take action for a future free from the threat of cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate chaos, you’ll be wel­comed with open arms and a cup of some­thing hot and refresh­ing at Lon­don Ris­ing Tide’s next meet­ing: Thu 23 Oct 08, 19:30 to 21:00, at the Lon­don Action Resource Cen­tre (LARC), 62 Fieldgate Street, Whitechapel, Lon­don E1 1ES – and down t’pub after (option­al ;-).

—-

For imme­di­ate release
Cli­mate activists to tar­get EDF

Pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ty: 20 Octo­ber 2008 8.30am, 40 Grosvenor Place, Lon­don

On Mon­day 20 Octo­ber cli­mate activists call­ing them­selves the Green­wash Guer­ril­las will be on hand to detect “dan­ger­ous lev­els of radioac­tive­g­reen hypocrisy”[1] emi­nat­ing from the lon­don offices of pro-nuclear lob­bi­ests EDF.

Equipped with green­wash detec­tors and kit­ted out in tox­ic-waste suits, activists will be test­ing office work­ers for pro-nuclear PR con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, and high­light­ing the unsus­tain­abil­i­ty of the gov­ern­ments cur­rent ener­gy pol­i­cy.

The activists are out­raged that giv­en the recent­ly announced tar­get of an 80% reduc­tion in Car­bon diox­ide emis­sions, Gor­don Brown, and of course his broth­er Andrew (head of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions for EDF), are argu­ing that new nuclear pow­er should be cen­tral to our ener­gy secu­ri­ty.

Nuclear pow­er is far from car­bon neutral[2]

Nuclear pow­er is unsafe[3]

Nuclear pow­er is huge­ly expensive[4]

Real sus­tain­able solu­tions exist[5]

The real solu­tions to the ener­gy gap and cli­mate change are avail­able now!

1 — The Green­wash Guer­ril­las reveal PR tac­tics employed by cor­po­ra­tions to deflect atten­tion from their poor envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards for the green­wash it tru­ly is.
www.greenwashguerrillas.org http://www.greenwashguerrillas.org>

2 — Gen­er­at­ing a unit of elec­tric­i­ty from nuclear pow­er cre­ates at least 33% of the CO2 emis­sions of a unit pro­duced from gas when min­ing, dis­pos­al & decom­mis­sion­ing are also con­sid­ered.
www.stormsmith.nl/report20050803/Chap_1.pdf
http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-climate_change_debate/2587.jsp#one

3 — Over 100 staff at the EDF oper­at­ed Tri­c­as­tin plant were irra­di­at­ed on 24 Jul 2008, the fourth such scare in a fort­night.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/jul/26/britishenergygroupbusiness.utilities

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/2454654/French-nuclear-leak-prompts-urgent-security-review.html

France’s inde­pen­dent radi­a­tion watch­dog sound­ed the alarm Thurs­day after a nuclear leak – the fourth such scare in a fort­night.

French nuclear oper­a­tor EDF comes in for a past­ing, for say­ing that the lat­est nuclear blun­ders had no impact on “peo­ples health” or “the envi­ron­ment” because the dos­es emit­ted fell short of the max­i­mum lim­its set by inter­na­tion­al stan­dards.

Elec­tric­ité de France work­ers were exposed to radioac­tive par­ti­cles on Wednes­day 23rd July, that escaped from a pipe at a nuclear reac­tor at the Tri­c­as­tin com­plex. Experts said that the lat­est inci­dent involved the high­est num­ber of work­ers to be col­lec­tive­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed in French nuclear his­to­ry.

4 — Nuclear pow­er sta­tions require huge ini­tial invest­ments, ongo­ing main­te­nance and the decom­mis­sion­ing costs*
* (at least £63 bil­lion).

www.nda.gov.uk/documents/upload/news_release_national.pdf

Last week it emerged the cost esti­mate for clean­ing up nuclear waste in the UK had risen by £10bn in one year. That increase is the same as the cur­rent cost of the 2012 Olympics — the finances of which have gen­er­at­ed so much polit­i­cal heat.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/jul/26/britishenergygroupbusiness.utilities

5 — New nuclear pow­er sta­tions are a dis­trac­tion from the real solu­tions to cli­mate change: decen­tralised ener­gy as seen in Scan­di­navia, renew­able tech­nolo­gies and ener­gy effi­cien­cy.

Renew­ables would come online more quick­ly, require no fuel and won’t have the dan­ger or cost of the nuclear pow­er. The gen­er­at­ing cost of onshore wind pow­er is already cheap­er than nuclear pow­er, with nowhere near the lev­el of invest­ment and no emis­sions.

Lon­don Ris­ing Tide,
c/o 62 Fieldgate Street, Lon­don E1 1ES; Tel: 07708 794665
www.londonrisingtide.org.uk
www.artnotoil.org.uk — (send us your art!)
Shel­l’s now spon­sor­ing ‘Oedi­pus’ at the Nation­al The­atre. Look out for the
gallery of images made in response, which we’ll add to the ‘Shel­l’s Wild
Lie’ counter-exhi­bi­tion: www.artnotoil.org.uk/gallery/v/Shell
See also the Camp for Cli­mate Action site: climatecamp.org.uk
as well as Cli­mate Indy­media: climateimc.org

Guerrilla Gardening Comes To Chester

A group of Chester res­i­dents, hav­ing noticed that there is neglect­ed and orphaned land all over the city, decid­ed to form a guer­ril­la gar­den­ing troop. The term ‘guer­ril­la gar­den­ing’ is used loose­ly to describe dif­fer­ent forms of rad­i­cal gar­den­ing. Some­times this is gar­den­ing with polit­i­cal aims — per­haps high­light­ing land use issues — or some­times it is about grow­ing food.

A group of Chester res­i­dents, hav­ing noticed that there is neglect­ed and orphaned land all over the city, decid­ed to form a guer­ril­la gar­den­ing troop. The term ‘guer­ril­la gar­den­ing’ is used loose­ly to describe dif­fer­ent forms of rad­i­cal gar­den­ing. Some­times this is gar­den­ing with polit­i­cal aims — per­haps high­light­ing land use issues — or some­times it is about grow­ing food.

The troop of Guer­ril­la Gar­den­ers have been out and about in Chester. Their first project inv­oled trans­form­ing three lit­ter strewn planters on Christle­ton Road, one of the main gate­ways to the city. Lit­ter and weeds were removed and replaced with win­ter pan­sies, daf­fodils, for­get-me-nots and hon­ey­suck­le.

The troop wants to reclaim land from per­ceived neglect and mis­use. Armed with trow­els, bulbs and vision, their idea is to gar­den every­where, any­where.

One Guer­ril­la Gar­den­er stat­ed:

’ I was fed up of see­ing these planters filled with rub­bish and weeds every time I walked into the City Cen­tre. I want­ed to reclaim this resource for us all to enjoy’

The Guer­ril­la Gar­den­ers want to make Chester a more appeal­ing place to live, beau­ti­fy­ing the neigh­bour­hood and giv­ing it back to the com­mu­ni­ty.

To get involved or donate plants/saplings/ shrubs

con­tact chesterguerrillagardeners@hotmail.co.uk

The latest EF! Action Update is out, bringing you reports of eco-resistance for the darkening days…

Bring­ing light & inspi­ra­tion to the dark­er evenings are the action sto­ries in the lat­est Earth First! Action Update.

Block­ades of nuclear pow­er, roads & rivers around the world were joined “with this Shell-blockad­ing D‑lock I thee wed”.

Adjustable spanner photoBring­ing light & inspi­ra­tion to the dark­er evenings are the action sto­ries in the lat­est Earth First! Action Update.

Block­ades of nuclear pow­er, roads & rivers around the world were joined “with this Shell-blockad­ing D‑lock I thee wed”.

And if anti-fas­cist action, quar­ry sab­o­tage, squats, tree plat­forms, wrekin’ open­casts, scal­ing lux­u­ry hotels & the lat­est protest camp news was­n’t enough for you, chuck in some glue, arm tubes, a pool of oil, stink bombs, air­borne rape alarms and a Lego-sized occu­pa­tion, then there’s full reports from this sum­mer’s antics at the Camp for Cli­mate Action, Ross­port sol­i­dar­i­ty camp, EF! sum­mer gath­er­ing and Sav­ing Ice­land camp, plus a crop of glob­al cli­mate camps & news of protest & resis­tance from all 5 con­ti­nents.

“No nukes, no coal, no kid­ding” — with peo­ple dying (both lit­er­al­ly & sym­bol­i­cal­ly) from the activ­i­ties of the Earth-destroy­ers, peo­ple have been shout­ing to just “Leave it in the Ground”, drag­on boats have clashed with navy gun­boats in Ire­land, an oil war was declared in Nige­ria, and ‘moles’ spent a week under­ground dig­ging fur­ther and fur­ther away from the forces of dark­ness at an open-cast coal site.

Details of the new Coal Action Net­work, upcom­ing dates & a full con­tact list should help launch (or boost) you into the orbit of eco-resis­tance.

Sub­scribe and get it sent direct to a let­ter­box near you — you’d also be sup­port­ing the EF!AU to get print­ed and sent out to pris­on­ers & protest camps. If you want some to dis­trib­ute, con­tact us at: actionup­date (AT) earthfirst.org.uk

Down­load the lat­est issue or past issues here.

The EF!AU is there to inspire peo­ple to take eco­log­i­cal direct action, to pro­vide info to help you just get out and do it. Don’t feel shy, put your best foot for­ward.

The EF!AU is the quar­ter­ly newslet­ter of peo­ple tak­ing eco­log­i­cal direct action — send us news of your action or cam­paigns, and come along to the Win­ter Moot if you want to get involved in any of the cam­paigns you’ve read about.

What is Earth First!?

World Anti Mcdonalds Day

McCru­el­ty: “We’re not lov’in it” – Cam­bridge

McDonalds World Food Day protest CambridgeMcCru­el­ty: “We’re not lov’in it” – Cam­bridge

Two cam­paign­ers held a belat­ed mini protest for World Day Against McDon­alds today 18th Oct 08 in Cam­bridge city cen­tre. The ‘What’s Wrong With McDon­alds’ leaflets were dis­trib­uted. (For a copy see http://www.mcspotlight.org/campaigns/current/resources/index.html ) Passers by showed an inter­est and took leaflets. Some peo­ple took pic­tures.

Back in June one of the activists was arrest­ed on a walk in protest at the same McDon­alds and is await­ing tri­al in Decem­ber. The activist is charged under Sec­tion 5 of the Pub­lic Order Act. See http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/cambridge/2008/06/401637.html
A pre-tri­al hear­ing was held in July where a tri­al was set for Sep­tem­ber. How­ev­er it was lat­er post­poned until Decem­ber after a wit­ness was appar­ent­ly ill.

—–

World anti mcdon­alds day began for us in Coventry.Around 9 of us gave out hun­dreds of anti mcdon­alds leaflets and yum­my veg­an burgers.Most of the pub­lic we’re supportive,especially as there was free food,and showed gen­uine interest.One guy who start­ed with “I hate veg­ans & love big juicy cheese­burg­ers” left with one of our burg­ers and a smile on his face.

We had the Mcdon­alds manager,who pro­claimed to be veggie,come out with:“What about vegetables,u kill veg­eta­bles!”. Despite us telling him that veg­eta­bles have nei­ther ner­vous system,brain or a heart beat…he disagreed(saying they did! haha).

It was real­ly pos­i­tive day,with no police hassle,and plen­ty of warmth from the pub­lic

Art Not Oil / LRT visits Shell sponsored Oedipus

On Wednes­day 15th Octo­ber Art Not Oil made it’s first vis­it to the Nation­al The­atre to high­light Shel­l’s spon­sor­ship of the autumn pro­duc­tion of Oedi­pus.

Oedipus demoOedipus publicityOn Wednes­day 15th Octo­ber Art Not Oil made it’s first vis­it to the Nation­al The­atre to high­light Shel­l’s spon­sor­ship of the autumn pro­duc­tion of Oedi­pus.

Shell is spon­sor­ing the Nation­al The­atre’s new pro­duc­tion of ‘Oedi­pus’, and, unsur­pris­ing­ly, Art Not Oil is prepar­ing a response on var­i­ous fronts. We’re ask­ing peo­ple if they’re up for mak­ing an art­work of some kind as a response This could be an image, song, film or poem to appear on our web­site, or to be print­ed on a post­card or some­thing sim­i­lar. We’re open to ideas. (Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we aren’t able to pay for your work, but we have no wish to pos­sess it!) If this is of inter­est, we’d love to see it as soon as pos­si­ble, as ‘Oedi­pus’ runs until Jan­u­ary 2009 only.

london@risingtide.org.uk
http://www.londonrisingtide.org.uk