Category: Action Reports

The Bath Bomb
@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #15
free/donation
Oct 08

Knowl­edge is Pow­er, So Arm Your­self

Of late, you’d be mis­tak­en for think­ing the end is indeed nigh. With the implo­sion of large chunks of the glob­al econ­o­my, and the fall of banks like Brad­ford and Bin­g­ley and North­ern Rock over here, Lehman Broth­ers, Fan­ny Mae and Fred­die Mac in the States, cap­i­tal­is­m’s days are look­ing num­bered. Far from being an inevitable and effi­cient sys­tem, it seems like the con­stant finan­cial fid­dling and cre­ative math required to meet tar­gets and pro­vide the illu­sion of con­tin­u­al growth, are caus­ing a glob­al cred­it crunch whose sting we’re all feel­ing. But whilst Brown & co donat­ed £25 bil­lion worth of cor­po­rate wel­fare to bail out blun­der­ing North­ern Rock in one day, mon­ey sore­ly need­ed for our pub­lic ser­vices is nowhere to be seen. But are there any oth­er answers? Well, last month saw the Bris­tol Anar­chist Book­fair at St Wer­burghs Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on Sat­ur­day the 13th Sep­tem­ber pulling in over 400 pun­ters, and on Sat­ur­day the 18th of this month will be the Anar­chist Book­fair in Lon­don. Expect reams of info on social­ly-just eco­nom­ics, alter­na­tive ener­gy and lifestyles, child­care, music, food, talks and work­shops, rad­i­cal the­o­ry and lessons learnt from the past. Cap­i­tal­ism has been fail­ing us now for decades with poor health, over-exploita­tion, over-work, increas­ing author­i­tar­i­an­ism, and a widen­ing pover­ty gap, and it’s high time we tried some­thing new. And if you can’t make it to Lon­don, we now have a new online rad­i­cal lend­ing library in Bath — so, if you fan­cy an inter­est­ing read on the real­ly cheap, check out the blog sec­tion of http://www.myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork.

http://www.anarchistbookfair.org/
www.bristolanarchistbookfair.org/

Labour of Hate

For the first time in decades, the annu­al Labour par­ty con­fer­ence was held out­side of Brighton, the politi­cians instead opt­ing for Man­ches­ter. The change in loca­tion did not bring a change in atti­tude though, and the con­fer­ence saw more of the now famil­iar cosy­ing up to big busi­ness, tired taglines and pro-war, pro-pri­vati­sa­tion rhetoric. Out­side the con­fer­ence how­ev­er, 4,000 cit­i­zens gath­ered to rip the agen­da away from Neo-Labour and their cor­po­rate bud­dies and high­light the grow­ing dis­gust the pop­u­la­tion feels at the con­tempt politi­cians show for the needs and desires of the aver­age per­son. A large part of the demo con­sist­ed of the anar­chist ‘free­dom of move­ment bloc’.

Made up of up to 500 peo­ple, the bloc gath­ered to demand free­dom of move­ment for migrants and an end to nation­al bor­ders, states and war. Before long, our flu­o­ro-jack­et­ed bud­dies from the deeply unpop­u­lar (and taser-hap­py) Man­ches­ter Met­ro­pol­i­tan showed an inter­est in the bloc, div­ing in to arrest activists trea­so­nous enough to don Gor­don Brown masks. After a short, sharp fight how­ev­er, the cops were sent pack­ing with no arrests made. From then on, police tried to make fre­quent incur­sions into the bloc, all of which were repelled, and the least suc­cess­ful end­ing with 15 cops get­ting tak­en pris­on­er and cut off from their bud­dies for a peri­od of 10 min­utes! The most notice­able aspect of the demo was the increased size and promi­nence of anar­chist pol­i­tics on the march, a phe­nom­e­non that has been grow­ing in recent years. While the demo was a most­ly non con­fronta­tion­al affair, it was suc­cess­ful in remind­ing Neo-Labour that while they pri­va­tise our resources, imprison and tor­ture our asy­lum seek­ing broth­ers and sis­ters, enclose us with CCTV and kill us with fuel prices — we are still watch­ing, and we will not be silent.

Lib­er­ate Your Mind at Bub­bling Under

Sun­day 28th Sep­tem­ber saw a return to the month­ly rad­i­cal film show­ings at the Porter Cel­lar Bar in Bath. This month, the line up includ­ed ‘Bombs and Batons’, a short film cov­er­ing Brighton’s Car­ni­val Against the Arms Trade on June 4th. The film gen­er­al­ly showed police offi­cers look­ing total­ly fazed and out of their depth amongst hun­dreds of demon­stra­tors tak­ing a stand against the lucra­tive arms trade (see below for more info). The sec­ond film, ‘Can’t Com­plain’, was made up of footage from a demon­stra­tion in Jan­u­ary out­side Brighton police sta­tion against the oppres­sion faced by those active in oppos­ing EDO/ITT. The third film took view­ers back in time to the tree camps of the 1990s. The film includ­ed dar­ing stunts by activists to halt the build­ing of the infa­mous New­bury Bypass. Whilst view­ers enjoyed the films, they tucked into the Porter’s famous veg­gie roast. Aside from the fab­u­lous food, pre­vi­ous show­ings have been accom­pa­nied by talks from polit­i­cal activists, live debates and work­shops on events such as this year’s Cli­mate Camp. Forth­com­ing events at Bub­bling Under will include films about Cli­mate Camp and cov­er­age of the 1990 poll tax demon­stra­tions. Organ­is­ers always wel­come sug­ges­tions to bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk for films, work­shops and debates.

Pigs Might Fly: Or Was He Pushed?

Matisse once said ‘flow­ers are every­where for those who are will­ing to look’. Well, this month, our flow­ers come in the form of the forced res­ig­na­tion of Sir Ian Blair — ex-head hon­cho of the Lon­don Met­ro­pol­i­tan police. Acts dur­ing his time at the top include the cold-blood­ed mur­der of Brazil­ian plumber Jean Charles ‘it’s one of them dark­’uns, sarge’ de Menezes, the res­ig­na­tion of almost every black and asian high rank­ing offi­cer he worked with amid claims of racism and the glee­ful pass­ing of laws to crim­i­nal­ize, beat and arrest legit­i­mate pro­tes­tors. The final turd on the moun­tain­ous steam­er that was Blair’s career came when it emerged that he chan­nelled tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey away from the police and into his mates’ pock­ets. So, good­bye to true scum in its purest form (and hop­ing that more of his bas­tard bud­dies go the same way), and a fond hope that his forced retire­ment ends soon and blood­i­ly with jour­nal­ists report­ing that the shoot­ing was noth­ing more than a trag­ic case of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty.

Shut ITT, You Slag

Fol­low­ing on from June’s smash­ing Car­ni­val Against the Arms Trade, on Wednes­day the 15th of Octo­ber, activists will con­verge from all round the nation on the EDO/ITT arms fac­to­ry in Brighton, for around 2. Rather than tooth­less­ly appeal­ing to the state’s fic­ti­tious benev­o­lent side to NOT spon­sor cor­po­rate mas­sacres half way across the world and at home, in the case of the ‘Smash EDO’ cam­paign, ordi­nary peo­ple are con­fronting the roots of war — the very man­u­fac­tur­ers of instru­ments of death (Nazi Ger­many-affil­i­at­ed ITT make the Pave­way mis­sile guid­ance sys­tem, used in Iraq and Pales­tine). Not peti­tion­ing them, but forc­ing them to stop, share by share, day by day, with the cam­paign bit­ing down and hold­ing tena­cious­ly on, until these prof­it-obsessed bas­tards are brought down. It’s his­to­ry in the mak­ing, an exam­ple of a focused cam­paign suc­ceed­ing at its aims, even in the face of state, police and media cen­sor­ship and harass­ment. And once ITT has been bank­rupt­ed, which com­pa­ny is next? Fol­low­ing this course, we will even­tu­al­ly have human­i­ty, mutu­al aid, and dare we say it, world peace… even if we have to smash, d‑lock, shout our­selves hoarse, and super­glue our way through every dodgy indus­try and evil mega­lo­ma­ni­ac to get it: be there on the day! The demo starts at 12 noon, meet­ing oppo­site Falmer train sta­tion. For trans­port down, drop us an email at bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk.

http://www.smashedo.org.uk/shut-itt.htm

Pos­i­tive’s Not News

It’s come to our atten­tion here at the Bath Bomb of a wor­ry­ing ten­den­cy in the local press. Whilst the same is true of nation­al and region­al papers the UK over, the Bath Chron­ic has tak­en upon itself to ignore pos­i­tive local events and ini­tia­tives which show com­mu­ni­ties organ­is­ing their own needs and doing good for them­selves and their neigh­bours; take for exam­ple, the case of the River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Youth Cen­tre’s open evening on the 26th Sep­tem­ber, where local youth showed off their music tal­ents and staff put on food and high­light­ed to res­i­dents the impor­tant work the cen­tre is doing. Staff were told by the Chron that such pos­i­tive sto­ries, which you might mis­tak­en­ly believe are the fare of local rags all over the land, were not high enough pri­or­i­ty to war­rant a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, nor any more than reluc­tant cov­er­age; per­haps the kids should have been out mug­ging peo­ple like a prop­er hood­ie? Like­wise, worth­while activist events through­out the last six months have been equal­ly cen­sored: ‘Roots of Change’, ‘There is such thing as a free lunch!’, the Bath FreeShop… the list goes on. If these pro­test­ers had lived up to the stereo­type and been busy break­ing stuff, then per­haps that would have shift­ed a cou­ple more papers? So whilst the Chron puts a cyn­i­cal spot­light on the neg­a­tive, the triv­ial, the celeb-obsessed, or fear-mon­ger­ing, is it real­ly the job of the media to decide what its read­ers are per­mit­ted to know or think?

Bath — 2, BNP — 0

Remem­ber last year when Nick Grif­fin, head Nazi of the BNP, tried to come to speak at Bath Uni? Local anti-fas­cists mobilised to first kick him off cam­pus, then out of sev­er­al pubs, then into a field where the cops made him and his bone­head mates go home after a 5‑minute speech on pub­lic safe­ty grounds! Well, it looks like the Nazis may be back. Reports sug­gest that sev­er­al BNP activists were hand­ing out fly­ers at Bath Uni ear­li­er this month. This month also saw a few hun­dred Nazis from across Europe con­verge at the Bun­ga­low Inn in Som­er­set (against the scared own­er’s wish­es) to drunk­en­ly sieg heil their depart­ed fuhrer Ian Stew­art Don­ald­son, singer of fas­cist band Skrew­driv­er, who brave­ly mar­tyred him­self over a decade ago after drunk­en­ly falling in front of a car! While this was a one-off event, the BNP at Bath Uni may not be so, and Bath anti-fas­cists would appre­ci­ate any infor­ma­tion on the sit­u­a­tion there. The BNP are vicious racists who oppose immi­gra­tion and trade unions and have a long his­to­ry of racial vio­lence, Hitler-wor­ship and Holo­caust denial (their leader still denies the Holo­caust, call­ing it the ‘Holo­hoax’, and recent­ly claimed in a speech to Amer­i­can Nazis that he would be hap­py to kill for the white race). We have kicked them out of Bath once, and we can do it again. Any infor­ma­tion will be treat­ed as con­fi­den­tial and can be sent to bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk.

Com­put­er Says ‘No… 2ID’

Despite long resis­tance, the racist state will be push­ing in ID cards, this year, start­ing on the 25th Novem­ber with easy tar­gets the immi­grants. Incensed at this, 35 activists from No Bor­ders across South Wales, Bath, Bris­tol and beyond con­verged on the Home Office Iden­ti­ty and Pass­port Office in New­port, on Sat­ur­day the 5th Octo­ber. Despite the driz­zle and minor police intim­i­da­tion, they stayed on for two hours, leaflet­ing the pass­ing pub­lic about this insid­i­ous new (old) scheme. Whilst the cards will reach immi­grants next month, if the scheme does­n’t meet too much oppo­si­tion, it will then be rolled out to work­ers in ‘sen­si­tive’ loca­tions in 2009, and then stu­dents in 2010. Act­ing on flawed ‘intel­li­gence’, bungling cop­pers turned up an hour before­hand to police the demo, and the office itself shut its bar­ri­er after one hour. But what’s all the big deal? Sure­ly if you have noth­ing to hide, you have noth­ing to fear? Man­age­ment of this data­base (the most com­plex in Europe) will be doled out to pri­vate com­pa­nies like PA Con­sult­ing, who already lost 30,000 peo­ple’s records back in August. Will their strug­gling soft­ware be able to han­dle this larg­er strain? We hope so, because with an increas­ing reliance on tech­nol­o­gy, and numer­ous such com­put­er cock-ups, what’s to say that sim­i­lar inci­dents won’t result in oth­er hor­ror sto­ries, with data-loss vic­tims unable to work, unable to pay bills, unable to shop, and unable to access basic ser­vices. But what about ID cards stop­ping crime? Unless the cards or RFID chips (radio fre­quen­cy iden­ti­fi­ca­tion implants) mirac­u­lous­ly address mal­nour­ish­ment, domes­tic abuse or pover­ty cycles, then these cards won’t pre­vent crime. So giv­en that, why is Big Broth­er so intent on build­ing up all this info? As the proverb goes, “First they came for the com­mu­nists, and I did noth­ing because I was not a com­mu­nist. Then they came for the trade union­ists, and I did noth­ing because I was not a trade union­ist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did noth­ing because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to help me.”

http://current.com/topics/88831947_data_loss
http://www.no2id.net/
http://noborderswales.wordpress.com

Your Gov­ern­ment Wants You Dead!

A dra­mat­ic head­line? We at Bath Bomb are known for our occa­sion­al sen­sa­tion­al­ism, but on this occa­sion, we are being ‘dead­ly’ seri­ous. Recent fig­ures sug­gest that 1/3 of the pop­u­la­tion is going to be forced into a choice between suf­fi­cient fuel or suf­fi­cient food this win­ter. By encour­ag­ing price hikes in the pri­vate fuel sec­tor and choos­ing to sup­port fail­ing busi­ness rather than aver­age peo­ple, the gov­ern­ment of this coun­try will lit­er­al­ly be respon­si­ble for thou­sands of deaths this win­ter. Let’s put this in per­spec­tive — the gov­ern­ment is per­fect­ly will­ing to shell out hun­dreds of mil­lions of OUR mon­ey to slow the inevitable col­lapse of cap­i­tal­ism, while just down the road in Swin­don, 69% of coun­cil house res­i­dents were recent­ly dis­cov­ered to be liv­ing well below the pover­ty line. There is plen­ty to be angry at the gov­ern­ment over that we spend much time focus­ing on — the war on the Iraqi peo­ple and sur­veil­lance soci­ety being a cou­ple of exam­ples, but it is about time we start to resist the bru­tal­i­ty that the state dish­es out to us all on a dai­ly basis; the fuel pover­ty, the cuts to NHS, edu­ca­tion and job­seek­ers, the mea­gre sup­port for low income fam­i­lies. The gov­ern­ment has shown that it stands on the side of busi­ness above the needs of the peo­ple. The class war, this epic social bat­tle between the haves and the have-nots was not start­ed by us, it was start­ed by a rul­ing class who care more for prof­it and preser­va­tion of the sta­tus quo than the lives of its cit­i­zens. We have had war declared on us by the polit­i­cal class and we need to begin ask­ing ‘how will we respond to the assault of busi­ness and gov­ern­ment on our lives’ and how can we organ­ise to take back what is ours, our basic rights to warmth, food, afford­able hous­ing, enjoy­ment and an end to wage slav­ery? How will we organ­ise to win the class war?

Mini Bar-stards

Just a quick­ie: on Fri­day 26th Sep­tem­ber, activists from Bath Ani­mal Action and BAN did a short, sharp demo against foie gras sell­er Mini Bar on John Street, who have tak­en it upon them­selves to sell the stuff. See every oth­er issue of Bath Bomb for more on foie gras and the cam­paign. As per usu­al, BAA will be back again and again, until Mini Bar sees sense.

EVENTS

Mon­days — Bath Hunt Sabs Meet­ing, 8pm, Bell
Wednes­days — Lon­don Rd Food Co-op, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, 4–7pm
Sat­ur­days — Bath Stop The War Vig­il, Abbey Court­yard, 11.30–12.30
Weds 15th Oct — Smash ITT, Falmer Sta­tion, Brighton, 12noon
Fri 17th Oct — Chris Baines’ green spaces in cities talk, Guild­hall, 7pm £6
Sat 18th Oct — Lon­don Anar­chist Book­fair www.anarchistbookfair.org
Fri 24th Oct — Bath Mad­hat­ters Birth­day Par­ty, Man­vers St Bap­tist Church, 3–6pm
Fri 24th Oct — anti-foie gras demo, against Mini­bar, John St, 7–9
Sat 25th Oct — ben­e­fit gig, the White Hart, Eas­t­on, 6pm, £7 entry
Sun 26th Oct — Bub­bling Under, Porter Cel­lar Bar, 1–4pm
Mon 27th Oct — Block the Builders, Alder­mas­ton AWE block­ade
Weds 29th Oct — Bath Bomb ben­e­fit gig, the Junc­tion, Stokes Croft, Bris­tol, 8‑late
Sat 1st Nov — Bath FreeShop, Stall Street, 12–3pm
Weds 5th Nov — Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, back­room of Bell, 7.30–8.30
Thurs 6th Nov — BAN meet­ing, down­stairs Hob­gob­lin, 7.30–9
Sat 22 Nov — Bath Veg­an Fayre, Per­cy Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre 12–4pm

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.myspace.com/bathbomb

Q: Who Are Bath Activist Net­work? A: 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, ring us on 07949 611912, email bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk, or see our web­site: www.myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork

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