Category: Action Reports

Urgent Update — Navy arrive to protect Shell — Beach on lockdown illegaly

August 29, 2008
Urgent call­out for sup­port

In the past two hours a mass of State and Shell secu­ri­ty has assem­bled in Broad­haven bay includ­ing a heav­i­ly armed navy ves­sel.

This is to pro­tect the first attempt at lay­ing the off­shore sec­tion of pipe.

LE OrlaAugust 29, 2008
Urgent call­out for sup­port

In the past two hours a mass of State and Shell secu­ri­ty has assem­bled in Broad­haven bay includ­ing a heav­i­ly armed navy ves­sel.

This is to pro­tect the first attempt at lay­ing the off­shore sec­tion of pipe.

The Gar­dai sealed a sec­tion of beach beside the camp ille­gal­ly for an hour before retreat­ing and now rear­riv­ing.

The bay is awash with secu­ri­ty ves­sels, gar­dai water units and also a large Navy ves­sel, pos­si­bly “The Orla” which is armed with a canon and small­er guns.

This is the largest recent attempt at crush­ing any resis­tance to the Shell project.
There is also a heavy Gar­da pres­ence on land with pro­test­ers being intimidated,filmed and harassed.

Sol­i­dar­i­ty need­ed!

—
Anti-shell flotilla
Today’s activ­i­ty off Glen­gad marks yet anoth­er esca­la­tion of the state’s response to protests against the destruc­tion of Erris and the Great Gas Rob­bery. The arrival in the bay of the LE Orla about 12 pm today with her 39 crew onboard may be intend­ed to show the Irish peo­ple that the state will tol­er­ate no protest or action by any­body, not least Ireland’s cit­i­zens, against Shell’s plans.

The involve­ment of the Naval Ser­vice in the ‘polic­ing’ of Broad­haven Bay for Shell is a first for Ireland’s navy – the first time one of their ships has been called upon by the Gar­dai as ‘back-up’ for a police oper­a­tion against protests.

Accord­ing to a Defence Forces spokesman, the LE Orla (which was for­mer­ly a British naval gun­ship patrolling Hong Kong) ‘was request­ed by Gar­daí as back-up at Broad­haven Bay, Co Mayo. It is there as an aid to the civ­il pow­er. It was request­ed to assist Gar­dai and pro­vide them with a plat­form at sea.’

When asked if an Irish naval ship had been involved in a sim­i­lar oper­a­tion before, he replied: ‘Not to my imme­di­ate knowl­edge.’

He added: “The Naval Ser­vice has been in dis­cus­sions with the Gar­dai about this oper­a­tion. Any oper­a­tion we under­take will be with the Gar­dai. We will not be involved in any oper­a­tion inde­pen­dent­ly of the Gar­dai.’

Shell sub­con­trac­tor activ­i­ty in the bay has increased today, espe­cial­ly with the deploy­ment of the winch­ing barge today to some­where near its oper­at­ing posi­tion when the Soli­taire comes. News this morn­ing is that the Soli­taire has left Killy­begs har­bour and is some­where on the high seas between there and Broad­haven Bay. Its arrival there is expect­ed tomor­row at the lat­est. Locals and Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp res­i­dents are on high alert, and if peo­ple can come over the next 24 hours to help peo­ple in the effort to stop Shell on the beach and in the bay they will meet with a very big wel­come indeed!

Defence Forces spokesman quotes via www.breakingnews.ie

—–

So heres the lat­est after a long and tense day here in the wild west from today.

The police pres­ence was increased this morn­ing in the area,both on land and water,that was the indi­ca­tion that some­thing was about to hap­pen

At around mid­day the dredger plat­form was towed in.

Peo­ple then start­ed to assem­ble from the var­i­ous points in the area and about 40 cops then went onto the beach and said noone was allowed to go there as it was a\ “restrict­ed area”.
The legal­i­ty of this move was chal­lenged in front of the TG4 cam­era and after half an hour the cops fucked off.and loi­tered there­after for a few hours

The winch ves­sel was then towed across the bay

Just as they were about to go in the winch ves­sel turned around and head­ed back to the pier at Ballin­glass — seem­ing­ly just a prac­tice run who knows.

All this time there were about 5–7 secu­ri­ty and Gar­da water unit boats patrolling the bay as well as the L.E Orla ‚a Navy bat­tle­ship with a big fuck off can­non on the front as well as small­er weapon­ry.

This is a full scale state and cor­po­rate assault on the bay,make no mis­take.
The Solitaire,the main pipe-lay­ing ship which Shell only have for a lim­it­ed peri­od etc is still in Killybegs,but is rumoured by both TG4 and RTE to be leav­ing Sat­ur­day morn­ing.
Sev­er­al Erris fish­er­men are still at sea stand­ing guard over their lob­ster pots which Shell must remove to com­mence work.

They are fac­ing extreme intim­i­da­tion.

Hope some of ye can make it down or maybe do an action where ye are.

Sol­i­dar­i­ty.

Shell to Sea visit Shell’s boats & picket begins again in Rossport & UK actions call-out

29.8.2008

29.8.2008
Yes­ter­day, with work in Broad­haven Bay still delayed, a small Shell to Sea marine team paid a vis­it to the cur­rent Shell water nerve-cen­tre based at Bal­ly­glass pier. Cur­rent­ly moored off Bal­ly­glass is a barge con­tain­ing winch­ing cable, the recent­ly returned Vlaan­deren VII which ran aground at Glen­gad two weeks ago and also the Zenne which is the back­hoe dredger that last Fri­day dropped tonnes of debris with­in feet of pro­tes­tors. Also around the area were a num­ber of oth­er small­er Shell boats.

The Shell to Sea pad­dlers were made up of mem­bers of the Sham­rock squadron (the J. Con­nol­ly, J. Larkin, M. Collins) & Emer­ald squadron (the Grainne) along with 2 mem­bers of the inter­na­tion­al flotil­la (the Guy Fawkes of York­shire squadron and the Robin Hood of Not­ting­ham squadron).

The pad­dlers had made their way about the 1km out to the boats before the Shell safe­ty and secu­ri­ty boats react­ed.
After about an hour pad­dling around the area the Shell to Sea team head­ed into Bal­ly­glass Pier to greet the Gar­da boat which was just launch­ing from the RNLI slip­way. The gar­daí polite­ly refused the request of a race from the J. Con­nol­ly (Sham­rock squadron) after which the team then made their way to the pub­lic slip­way where they were met by shore sup­port.

Mean­while marine train­ing con­tin­ued for the activists prepar­ing for the Soli­taire and asso­ci­at­ed boats.

——–

Rossport picketShell to Sea pro­test­ers stepped up their cam­paign against Shell’s off­shore pipe-lay­ing oper­a­tions by mount­ing a pick­et at the Shell com­pound, Glen­gad, Erris Co Mayo, Ire­land.

A dai­ly pick­et was main­tained at the Bel­lan­aboy refin­ery site from the sum­mer of 2005 till recent­ly. This is the first time since 2005 that a pick­et has been staged at the Shell ‘Secu­ri­ty Zone’ in Glen­gad. The pick­et start­ed at 7am and last­ed till 9am, dur­ing which time Shell secu­ri­ty, who were ready to leave after their overnight shift, remained on site for the dura­tion. Shell work­ers arriv­ing for work at the site remained out­side. The pick­et was stood down vol­un­tar­i­ly at 9am and the work­ers left and entered the com­pound con­se­quent­ly.

The orig­i­nal Bel­lan­aboy pick­et was effec­tive­ly bro­ken by the unlaw­ful and vio­lent behav­iour of An Gar­da Síochá­na which began on Octo­ber 3rd, 2006 and con­tin­ued through 2007. The Bel­lan­aboy pick­et dimin­ished sig­nif­i­cant­ly dur­ing that whole peri­od and into 2008, under­stand­ably, because of a sus­tained assault by the State against its own cit­i­zens, result­ing in much phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal injury to the com­mu­ni­ty and its sup­port­ers.

Today’s pick­et saw the return of many on the receiv­ing end of that attack and it has to be said that the women of Erris, many of whom have been bru­talised by An Gar­da Síochá­na in the past, were the first to return to the camp and the refreshed pick­et.

Mean­while, a Shell to Sea marine team took to the water from Inver pier to pay a vis­it to some Shell & Gar­da boats moored off Bal­ly­glass pier on the oppo­site side of that stretch of water. Apolo­gies, no pics in this report yet of that lit­tle expe­di­tion. Maybe lat­er.

No sign of the Soli­taire yet, prob­a­bly due to the fol­low­ing fac­tors:

1) Bad weath­er.

2) The Chief Pat O’Donnell’s suc­cess­ful defence of his pots from Shell thieves aboard the High­land Nav­i­ga­tor. Pat’s gear remains in the path of the Soli­taire and per­haps only the rul­ing of a judge can resolve that dis­pute, unless the Soli­taire steams through regard­less.

3) Stiff and grow­ing resis­tance.

——

Urgent Call For Actions Against Shell & Allseas

NOW IS THE TIME- Sup­port Shell to Sea, Ire­land. ANY DAY NOW the biggest pipe lay­ing ship in the world, the Soli­taire, is due to arrive. The ship is owned by ALLSEAS. Shell are attempt­ing to ille­gal­ly con­struct the off­shore sec­tion of the high pres­sure raw gas pipeline. Our com­mu­ni­ty are deter­mined to resist Shell here in Mayo, Ireland…but we need your help!

Actions are ongo­ing and will inten­si­fy with the arrival of the Soli­taire. There is a role for every­one, regard­less of age, expe­ri­ence, avail­abil­i­ty and skill. The areas you can help with are end­less and par­tic­u­lar­ly in the fields of camp sup­port, water based skills, legal, cook­ing, med­ical, media and of course direct action.

The atmos­phere is resur­gent in the area, with a fresh burst of con­fi­dence evi­dent among both locals, nation­al and inter­na­tion­al Shell to Sea activists. This is a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty to rein­vig­o­rate the fight against this project in a mean­ing­ful and effec­tive way.

Shell can only hold onto the rent­ed Soli­taire for a lim­it­ed peri­od of time and all efforts to hin­der its progress will seri­ous­ly dam­age Shel­l’s plans. ANY dis­rup­tion pro­vides us with a real oppor­tu­ni­ty to delay the project sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

The chop­py waters of Broad­haven Bay will hope­ful­ly aid us in our actions but we need you too!

Come to Erris!
Con­tact: email rossportsolidaritycamp@gmail.com & phone 0851141170

Or take action at home

http://www.allseas.com/uk
Allseas UK Lim­it­ed
Address: Knyvett House The Cause­way
City: Staines, Mid­dle­sex
Post­code: TW18 3BA
Tele­phone: +44 1784 898038
Fax: +44 1784 898030

Irish Embassy and Shell HQ Lon­don
Shell garages across the coun­try.

SMASH SHELL
rossportsolidaritycamp@gmail.com
http://www.indymedia.ie/mayo,
http://www.shelltosea.com
http://www.rossportsolidaritycamp110mb.com

ELF vandalises Seminis Office in Melbourne, Australia

The Mel­bourne office of Sem­in­is, a com­pa­ny which sells GM fruit and veg­etable seeds, and is owned by Mon­san­to, was van­dalised on the morn­ing of the 27th of August by the ELF.
The ELF cov­ered the build­ing in slo­gans declar­ing Sem­in­is as ‘scum’ and Earth rapists.

The Mel­bourne office of Sem­in­is, a com­pa­ny which sells GM fruit and veg­etable seeds, and is owned by Mon­san­to, was van­dalised on the morn­ing of the 27th of August by the ELF.
The ELF cov­ered the build­ing in slo­gans declar­ing Sem­in­is as ‘scum’ and Earth rapists.

Devonport submarine base blockaded by Trident Ploughshares, one arrest

Around thir­teen activists from anti-nuclear direct action group Tri­dent Ploughshares took the police by sur­prise when they block­ad­ed Devon­port naval dock­yard, near the cen­tre of Ply­mouth, in the ear­ly hours of Fri­day, 22 August, 2008. One man was arrest­ed. The Roy­al Navy base is used to refit nuclear sub­marines, includ­ing the Tri­dent nuclear mis­sile-car­ry­ing Van­guard fleet based at Faslane, Scot­land.

Devonport anti-nuke lock-onDevonport anti-nuke ladder blockadeAround thir­teen activists from anti-nuclear direct action group Tri­dent Ploughshares took the police by sur­prise when they block­ad­ed Devon­port naval dock­yard, near the cen­tre of Ply­mouth, in the ear­ly hours of Fri­day, 22 August, 2008. One man was arrest­ed. The Roy­al Navy base is used to refit nuclear sub­marines, includ­ing the Tri­dent nuclear mis­sile-car­ry­ing Van­guard fleet based at Faslane, Scot­land.

The block­aders, main­ly from the local Tamar­i­an affin­i­ty group and the Lon­don-based Muriel Lesters, obstruct­ed the main access road into the site at Camel’s Head. Dock­yard work­ers arriv­ing in vehi­cles were pre­vent­ed from enter­ing for half an hour, from around 7.30am on the last work­ing day before the Bank Hol­i­day week­end. The activists used two long met­al lad­ders, a lock-on tube with a chain attached, bicy­cle chains, a wheel­chair and their bod­ies to com­plete­ly block the incom­ing car­riage­way.

Police even­tu­al­ly arrived and had to divert traf­fic for a fur­ther hour, until the police cut­ting team final­ly arrived. At this point, the block­aders and their sup­port­ers agreed to leave, giv­en that most work­ers had already entered the base. They were able to keep all their ban­ners, lad­ders and oth­er blockad­ing equip­ment.

After releas­ing him­self from an arm lock-on tube (which had been passed through one lad­der and also chained to the cen­tral crash bar­ri­er), Daniel Vies­nik, 33, from Lon­don got up and then lay down again on the red line mark­ing the lim­it of the Min­istry of Defence prop­er­ty. He was sub­se­quent­ly joined by Irene Willis. After ignor­ing police requests to move, Mr Vies­nik was arrest­ed and car­ried away to a van. He was tak­en to Charles Cross police sta­tion and held for around three hours before being charged with obstruc­tion of the high­way and released. He was bailed to appear before Ply­mouth Mag­is­trates’ on 5th Sep­tem­ber.

Devonport anti-nuke die-inOn Sat­ur­day morn­ing, the group tied anti-Tri­dent ban­ners to promi­nent bridges and round­abouts on roads going into Ply­mouth. Lat­er, in the city cen­tre, they dressed them­selves in white ‘radi­a­tion suits’ and some of them attract­ed the atten­tion of passers-by with a ‘die-in’, their ‘corpses’ sprin­kled with ‘nuclear fall­out’ ash. Oth­ers leaflet­ed shop­pers and engaged inter­est­ed locals and sol­diers from the near­by Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Army cen­tre in dia­logue about the nuclear men­ace on their doorstep and pro­pos­als to turn the site into a nuclear sub­ma­rine grave­yard.

One of the block­aders said, “Plans to replace or upgrade the Tri­dent sys­tem con­tra­vene our inter­na­tion­al treaty oblig­a­tions, which is hyp­o­crit­i­cal and ille­gal. We would like to see the British gov­ern­ment lead by exam­ple in push­ing for glob­al abo­li­tion of nuclear weapons and stop wast­ing bil­lions of pounds of pub­lic mon­ey on these instru­ments of mass mur­der. Local work­ers should be retrained to use their skills for more peace­ful pur­pos­es.”

Fri­day’s block­ade was the top sto­ry report­ed on local BBC TV news and was also cov­ered by local ITV news, local radio and the Ply­mouth Her­ald news­pa­per.

Tri­dent Ploughshares is com­mit­ted to dis­arm­ing the UK Tri­dent nuclear weapons sys­tem in a non-vio­lent, open, peace­ful and ful­ly account­able man­ner.
The group is organ­is­ing a Big Block­ade at Alder­mas­ton, Berk­shire – Britain’s nuclear bomb fac­to­ry – sup­port­ed by the Cam­paign for Nuclear Dis­ar­ma­ment (CND), on Mon­day, 27 Octo­ber, meet­ing on 26 Octo­ber. Check the Tri­dent Ploughshares web­site for fur­ther details and to request a brief­ing pack. Arrestable block­aders and non-arrestable sup­port­ers are need­ed. There will be a week­end of non-vio­lent direct action train­ing in prepa­ra­tion for this action on 20–21 Sep­tem­ber in Lon­don. New­com­ers are warm­ly invit­ed to attend (it is also pos­si­ble to attend the train­ing just for one day).

Main­stream media cov­er­age of Devon­port block­ade:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7576964.stm (video)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/7576219.stm
http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/news/Nuclear-protest-dockyard/article-283835-detail/article.html

—-

Non-vio­lence train­ing work­shop 20–21 Sep­tem­ber

There will be a week­end work­shop of Tri­dent Ploughshares non­vi­o­lence
train­ing, focussing on prepa­ra­tion for the Octo­ber 27 Alder­mas­ton Big Block­ade at Waltham­stow Friend’s Meet­ing House, 1a Jew­el Road, off Hoe Street, Waltham­stow, Lon­don E17 4QU on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day 20th and 21st Sep­tem­ber.

The full week­end is pri­mar­i­ly for peo­ple think­ing of becom­ing mem­bers of Tri­dent Ploughshares and mak­ing an ongo­ing com­mit­ment. Peo­ple just wish­ing to pre­pare for the block­ade are wel­come to attend for the full week­end, but may also choose to attend on the Sat­ur­day only.

There is no charge for the work­shop, but par­tic­i­pants are asked to con­tribute towards expens­es if they are able to.

Con­tact Ali­son to reg­is­ter and for more details:
E‑mail: alison.crane [at] ntlworld.com
Tel: 01785 611 768 or 0845 4588 362 or 07886 972 319

Repression of Ecotopia camp & 30 arrested at die-in in Turkey

Urgent call for sol­i­dar­i­ty, please for­ward wýde­ly

Shock­ing repres­sion in Turkey!

Don't nuke the climate bannerUrgent call for sol­i­dar­i­ty, please for­ward wýde­ly

Shock­ing repres­sion in Turkey!

Greens, envi­ron­men­tal­ists, peace and nature sup­port­ers, and NGO’s from all over the World gath­ered on the 9th of August to join the 20th inter­na­tion­al Eco­topia gath­er­ing being held at Sarikum nature reserve in Sinop, Turkey. Eco­topia gath­er­ings pro­mote sus­tain­able ways of liv­ing, har­mo­ny with nature, and dis­cuss social jus­tice issues. This year, Eco­topia has sup­port­ed local anti-nuclear groups, raised con­scious­ness of nuclear issues and pro­mot­ed alter­na­tive ener­gy sources. How­ev­er, for the last week, local police have been exert­ing supres­sion on the camp by mak­ing reg­u­lar vis­its, and fol­low­ing and intim­i­dat­ing par­tic­i­pants out­side of the camp.

On Wednes­day 20th August, 6 inter­na­tion­als and 5 Turk­ish peo­ple were placed under cus­tody while stag­ing a peace­ful vig­il out­side the Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency (TAEK) in Sinop. Police have also shown supres­sion towards locals of Gerze town who approached the Eco­topia camp to request sol­i­dar­i­ty against the Ther­mal Coal Plant planned for con­struc­tion in their town. Today, the 22nd August, approx­i­mate­ly 10 armed offi­cers, ordered by the gov­er­nor of Sinop, raid­ed the Eco­topia camp to threat­en force­ful evic­tion if the sýte was not emp­tied with­in 3 hours. In sum­ma­ry, 2 days before our legal per­mit for he site ends, it has been force­ful­ly demand­ed that we shut down activ­i­ties imme­di­ate­ly.

In Turkey, where democ­ra­cy is regress­ing, the author­i­ties do not tol­er­ate the advo­ca­cy of their peo­ple to lýve a safe, sus­tain­able and healthy life. In addi­tion, author­i­ties in the Turk­ish state and Sinop (where it it planned to build one nuclear tech­nol­o­gy cen­tre and 3 Ther­mal Coal plants) are dýs­turbed by the increas­ing local atten­tion on these projects, and are reluc­tant to allow peo­ple’s aware­ness and knowl­edge to grow inde­pen­dent­ly. As par­tic­i­pants rep­re­sent­ing more than 30 coun­tries, we are ask­ing for your sol­i­dar­i­ty, and request you to send the fol­low­ing text to the Turk­ish author­i­ties using the con­tact infor­ma­tion giv­en below.

For a nuclear-free world and a more demo­c­ra­t­ic Turkey, let’s block the phones and fax­es of the Turk­ish author­i­ties!

Eco­topia 2008 par­tic­i­pants

EYFA (Euro­pean Youth For Action)

SINYAD (Sinop Nük­leer­siz Kent ve Yaþam Derneði)

———————-

To whom it may con­cern,

We have been informed that the Eco­topia meet­ing being held at Sarikum nature reserve in Sinop, which was announced and received approval of its per­mit many months ago, is now under­go­ing a peri­od of intense police sup­pres­sion. This event is legit­i­mate and legal, and we are demand­ing that the pres­sure is released. We will keep our­selves informed on how this sit­u­a­tion devel­ops and will fol­low up on this request if nec­es­sary.

Name/organization:

Coun­try:

Sig­na­ture:

————————
CONTACTS:

Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Ýçiþ­leri Bakan­lýðý (Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs)
Tele­fon: +90 (312 )425 72 14
Fax: + 90 (312) 418 12 60
e‑mail: basin@icisleri.gov.tr

Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Sinop Valil­iði ( Gov­ern­er­ship of Sinop)
Tel : 0(368) 261 15 00 -
Fax: 0368 261 15 02 — 261 55 05 -
e‑mail: valilik@sinop.gov.tr, webmaster@sinop.gov.tr

———————————————

LÜTFEN ÇEVRENÝZE DAÐITINIZ…

Acil Dayanýþ­ma Çaðrýsý – 22 Aðus­tos 2008, Sinop

Dünyanýn dört bir yanýn­dan yeþiller, çevre­cil­er, doða ve barýþ yan­lýlarý ve çeþitli örgütler olarak bu yýl 20.‘si yapýlan “Ulus­lararasý Eko­topya Buluþma“mýzý gerçek­leþtirmek üzere 9 Aðus­tos’­ta Sinop Sarýkum’­da top­landýk. Bu yýl Eko­topy­a’nýn amacý yer­el anti-nük­leer guru­plar­la dayanýþ­ma saðla­mak, yenilenebilir ener­ji kay­naklarý ve sosyal adalet konu­larý üzerinde bil­inç art­týr­mak­tý. Bu etkin­lik doðay­la uyum­lu ve sürdüre­bilir bir yaþam hay­al­im­izi kýsacasý ‘eko­topy­amýzý’ kamp deney­im­imizde somut­laþtýrdýðýmýz, ekolo­jik bir yaþamýn mümkün olduðunu gördüðümüz, gös­ter­diðimiz, her katýlanýn evine bam­baþ­ka biri olarak döndüðü, her sene tekrar­lanan 15 gün­lük ortak düþümüz, ütopy­amýzdý. Ancak özel­lik­le son bir haf­tadýr aralýk­sýz devam eden polis ve jan­dar­ma baskýsý bu düþü bir kabusa çevir­di.

Önce, Sinop’­ta­ki Türkiye Atom Ener­jisi Kuru­mu (TAEK) önünde 20 Agus­tos Çarþam­ba günü nük­leer ener­jiyle ilgili olarak hak­lý bil­gilendirmek amacýy­la yap­týðýmýz barýþçýl bir eylem sýrasýn­da 6 yabancý uyruk­lu, 5 TC vatan­daþý, 11 arkadaþýmýz gözaltý­na alýndý. Ardýn­dan bizlere destek olmak için gelen ve yaþadýk­larý bölgede kurul­masý düþünülen ter­mik santrale karþý ses­leri­ni daha fazla duyura­bilmek için bizler­den destek bekleyen Gerze halký sadece biz­im­le görüþtüðü için jan­dar­manýn baskýlarý­na maruz kaldý. Son olarak da bugün bölge jan­dar­masýn­dan gelen yak­laþýk on kiþi­lik grup, hemen kamp alanýný terk etmem­iz gerek­tiði­ni, aksi halde zor kul­la­narak kam­pý daðý­ta­cak­larýný söyledil­er. Öze­tle izn­i­mizin bitme­sine iki gün kala etkin­liðimiz tehditler­le engel­len­m­eye çalýþýl­mak­tadýr.

Demokrasinin giderek ger­ilediði Türkiye’de, bugün otoritelerin artýk yaþamýn savunul­masý­na dahi taham­mülü kalmamýþtýr. Yine görülmek­te­dir ki üç ter­mik ve bir nük­leer teknolo­ji merkezi kurul­masý plan­lanan Sinop’­ta etk­ili güçler ve TC devleti Sinop halkýnýn uyanýþýn­dan ve fes­ti­val­im­ize giderek artan ilgisin­den rahat­sýz olmak­tadýr. Türkiye Cumhuriyeti hiçbir biçimde örgütlü ve bil­inçli bir toplum iste­memek­te, giderek bir polis devle­tine dönüþmek­te­dir. Yak­laþýk 30 ülke­den Eko­topy­a’nýn katýlým­cýsý bireyler olarak bizler, bu baskýlarýn giderek art­masýn­dan endiþe duyuy­oruz.

Siz­leri de aþaðý­da­ki hazýr met­ni kuru­munuz ya da ken­di­niz adý­na, iletiþim bil­gi­leri­ni verdiðimiz Türk kurum­larý­na gön­der­erek biz­im­le dayanýþ­maya çaðýrýy­oruz.

Dünyamýzýn gele­ceði ve daha özgür bir Türkiye için bakan­lýðýn ve Sinop valil­iðinin fak­slarýný kil­itleye­lim!

Eko­topya 2008 Katýlým­cýlarý

EYFA (Euro­pean Youth For Action)

SÝNYAD (Sinop Nük­leer­siz Kent ve Yaþam Derneði)

Sayýn Yetk­ili;

Aylar öncesin­den Türk otoriteler­ine ve Sinop Halký­na duyu­ru­lan “Eko­topya Buluþ­masýnýn” Jan­dar­ma baskýsýy­la engel­len­mek istendiði­ni haber almýþ bulun­mak­tayýz. Bütünüyle yasal ve meþru olan etkin­lik üzerinde­ki baskýlarýn ortadan kalk­masýný talep ediy­oruz. Aksi halde ulusal ve ulus­lararasý kamuoyu olarak olayýn takipçisi ola­caðýmýzý bildirmek ister­iz.

Ýsim / Kurum :

Ülke:

Ýmza:

ÝLETÝÞÝM BÝLGÝLERÝ:

Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Ýçiþ­leri Bakan­lýðý:
Tele­fon: +90 (312 )425 72 14
Faks: + 90 (312) 418 12 60
E‑posta: basin@icisleri.gov.tr

Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Sinop Valil­iði
Tel : 0(368) 261 15 00 -
Faks: 0368 261 15 02 — 261 55 05 -
e‑posta: valilik@sinop.gov.tr , webmaster@sinop.gov.tr

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30 arrest­ed at die-in dur­ing envi­ron­men­tal gath­er­ing Eco­topia in Turkey

Sinop (Turkey), 23rd of August. This after­noon, Turk­ish police arrest­ed 30 for­eign­ers from at least 18 coun­tries and 3 Turk­ish cit­i­zens who took part in a peace­ful “die-in” action in front of the Sinop province Governor‘s res­i­dence in Sinop.

On request of the Ger­man Embassy the Sinop Police Head­quar­ters claimed that nobody was tak­en under cus­tody.

The protests are direct­ed against the plans to build a Nuclear Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­tre in the Sinop region. Par­tic­i­pants are mem­bers of envi­ron­men­tal­ist move­ments world­wide. They want to draw atten­tion to the fact that nuclear ener­gy is dan­ger­ous, pol­lut­ing and expen­sive. Instead of invest­ing in nuclear tech­nol­o­gy, Turkey should use its great poten­tial for solar and wind pow­er, as well as increas­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy.

“The Turk­ish state seems to be very afraid of their cit­i­zens learn­ing how dan­ger­ous nuclear pow­er is. That is why author­i­ties do not tol­er­ate any protest, espe­cial­ly when for­eign­ers are involved. We are seri­ous­ly con­cerned about the denial of free­dom of speech in Turkey.”, says Niklas Hart­mann from Ger­many.

The action took place while the camp is under threat of evic­tion.

—

24.8.2008
22:54h.
The 32 arrest­ed peo­ple are sit­ting at the police sta­tion still. There is no offi­cial state­ment of arrest or cus­tody. When embassies asked for infor­ma­tion on arrestants police actu­al­ly denied to have tak­en peo­ple into cus­tody(…).
The group has been split into small­er groups and tak­en to hos­pi­tal for the com­pul­so­ry check on tor­ture and is now back at the sta­tion. They have been refused access to their lawyer, a cer­ti­fied trans­la­tor and to con­tact their embassy and even access to food and water.
Rumours have it that our lawyer was told by the police that peo­ple did­n’t want to see him.

Peo­ple have been asked to sign papers in Turk­ish with­out trans­la­tion. Before the promised release they will have to see a pros­e­cu­tor, even though they are not for­mal­ly arrest­ed.

23.20h: first group of 6 peo­ple got released, prob­a­bly because they signed the papers. We’ll deal with it now.

To be con­tin­ued…

01:25h.
Every­body fol­lowed by under­cov­er police all the time. Sev­er­al peo­ple picked from the street that had noth­ing to do with the action! Final­ly, nobody has seen the pros­e­cuter, but every­body out now. Police want­ed to deport us from town back to camp site before every­body was released. Sit­u­a­tion was real­ly threat­en­ing. Peo­ple now stay­ing with trade unions. More tomor­row.

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[press release] Police threat­ens Eco­topia camp in Turkey with evic­tion

23.8.2008
In the moment, the par­tic­i­pants of the 20th Eco­topia inter­na­tion­al envi­ron­men­tal­ist gath­er­ing at Sarikum nature reserve, Sinop, on the Turk­ish Black Sea coast, are await­ing and prepar­ing for force­ful evic­tion of their camp site by the Jan­dar­ma (Turk­ish Police), which are already present with under­cov­er agents and sev­er­al cars. The 70 par­tic­i­pants from over 30 coun­tries will peace­ful­ly resist this unjus­ti­fied raid. The off­i­cal rea­son for the announced evic­tion was the announce­ment of the inten­tion to take part in the week­ly per­mit­ted press con­fer­ence of the local anti-nuclear ini­tia­tive SÝNYAD (Sinop Nük­leer­siz Kent ve Yaþam Derneði).

Approx­i­mate­ly 10 armed offi­cers, ordered by the gov­er­nor of Sinop, had already raid­ed the camp on Fri­day to threat­en force­ful evic­tion if the site was not emp­tied with­in 3 hours. Lat­er, this dead­line was post­poned to the next morn­ing. Two days before, six par­tic­i­pants of the camp togeth­er with local activists were arrest­ed dur­ing an action in front of the office of the Turk­ish Nuclear Ener­gy Agency (TAEK) in Sinop. After only ten min­utes of spread­ing fly­ers and hold­ing a ban­ner, they were phys­i­cal­ly aggressed by under­cov­er police with­out any pri­or warn­ing. They were held in a police sta­tion for sev­er­al hours and fined for not obey­ing police orders. Police have also shown supres­sion towards locals of Gerze town who approached the Eco­topia gath­er­ing to request sol­i­dar­i­ty against the Ther­mal Coal Plant planned for con­struc­tion in their town.

“We are shocked by the behav­iour of the police and local author­i­ties who did not allow any peace­ful protest to hap­pen. They have also been con­stant­ly threat­en­ing par­tic­i­pants of the camp and deny­ing them, as well as locals, the right to pub­li­cal­ly express their opin­ion. Now they have can­celled the camp just because we announced that we would like to take part in an offi­cial­ly per­mit­ted anti-nuclear protest. This is not what we con­sid­er to be free­dom of speech! ”, says Lenka Kukuro­va, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Euro­pean Youth for Action (EYFA), the net­work that sup­ports the Eco­topia gath­er­ings.

The protests are direct­ed against the plans to build a Nuclear Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­tre in the Sinop region. The 20th inter­na­tion­al Eco­topia gath­er­ing is tak­ing place in Turkey this year, to sup­port local move­ments to keep Turkey free of nuclear pow­er. Par­tic­i­pants of the camp are mem­bers of envi­ron­men­tal­ist move­ments world­wide. They want to draw atten­tion to the fact that nuclear ener­gy is dan­ger­ous, pol­lut­ing and expen­sive. Instead of invest­ing in nuclear tech­nol­o­gy, Turkey should use its great poten­tial for solar and wind pow­er, as well as increas­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy.

For back­ground info:
http://ecotopiagathering.org
http://www.eyfa.org

CLIMATE ACTION NEWS SHEET 82, AUGUST 2008

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UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
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1) CLIMATE ACTION CAMP & NO BORDER CAMP, HAMBURG, GERMANY, 15–24.8.08
2) SHELL TO SEA WEEK OF ACTION, 17–23.08.08
3) EARTH FIRST! SUMMER GATHERING, NORFOLK, 27.8–1.9.08
4) BRISTOL ANARCHIST BOOKFAIR, BRISTOL, 13.09.08
5) TOWARDS CLIMATE ACTION IN COPENHANGEN 2009, DENMARK, 13–14.09.08

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UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-
1) CLIMATE ACTION CAMP & NO BORDER CAMP, HAMBURG, GERMANY, 15–24.8.08
2) SHELL TO SEA WEEK OF ACTION, 17–23.08.08
3) EARTH FIRST! SUMMER GATHERING, NORFOLK, 27.8–1.9.08
4) BRISTOL ANARCHIST BOOKFAIR, BRISTOL, 13.09.08
5) TOWARDS CLIMATE ACTION IN COPENHANGEN 2009, DENMARK, 13–14.09.08
6) CLIMATE CAMP WHAT NEXT MEETING, MANCHESTER, 26–28.09.08
7) NATIONAL MEETING TO RESIST NEW COAL, MANCHESTER, 11–12.10.08
8) FOSSIL FOOLS DAY 2009, 01.04.09

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RECENT HAPPENINGS:
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1) CAMP FOR CLIMATE ACTION, KINGSNORTH, KENT, 3–11.08.08
2) DERBYSHIRE COAL MINE EVICTED, 14.08.08
3) US CLIMATE CAMPS, JULY/AUGUST
4) SAVING ICELAND CAMP, JULY/AUGUST
5) AIRPORT OCCUPATION, GERMANY, ONGOING
6) STICKING IT TO THE PM, LONDON, 22.07.08
7) 32 4x4s DISARMED, OXFORD, 18.07.08
8) NEW RISING TIDE LEAFLET
9) NEW REPORT: CASHING IN ON COAL

————————-
UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-
1) CLIMATE ACTION CAMP & NO BORDER CAMP, HAMBURG, GERMANY, 15–24.8.08
‘These camps are going to take place in or near Ham­burg. It’s two dif­fer­ent camps, but prob­a­bly on the same camp site and doing togeth­er at least two mass actions like block­ades: on 22nd August at the depor­ta­tion air­port of Ham­burg and on 23rd at the har­bour or at the new coal pow­er plant. http://klimacamp08.org

2) SHELL TO SEA WEEK OF ACTION, 17–23.08.08
The Soli­taire (the biggest pipe lay­ing ship in the world) is set to begin ille­gal­ly con­struct­ing the off­shore sec­tion of the pipeline. It is believed that the Soli­taire is on a pret­ty tight sched­ule & booked up for the next 2 years, so ANY dis­rup­tion pro­vides us with a real oppor­tu­ni­ty to delay the project sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Mem­bers of the ‘Great Rebel Raft Regat­ta’ recent­ly deployed at the E.ON coal fired pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth in
Kent, Eng­land, have made their way from Cli­mate Camp UK to Erris, in order to assist Shell to Sea cam­paign­ers in their oppo­si­tion to this pipeline con­struc­tion at Glen­gad.

3) EARTH FIRST! SUMMER GATHERING, NORFOLK, 27.8–1.9.08
5 days of work­shops, net­work­ing and plan­ning actions in a beau­ti­ful field in Nor­folk. The gath­er­ing is also a prac­ti­cal exam­ple of low-impact eco-liv­ing and non-hier­ar­chi­cal organ­is­ing. www.earthfirstgathering.org.uk

4) BRISTOL ANARCHIST BOOKFAIR, BRISTOL, 13.09.08
St Wer­burghs Cen­tre, 10am to 5pm, free entry. With a work­shop by Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide: Why direct action? Social change not cli­mate change? www.bristolanarchistbookfair.org

5) TOWARDS CLIMATE ACTION IN COPENHANGEN 2009, DENMARK 13–14.09.08
Join the first inter­na­tion­al plan­ning meet­ing in Copen­hagen from the 13–14th of Sep­tem­ber 2008. The meet­ing aims at prepar­ing a large mobil­i­sa­tion for direct action against the root caus­es of cli­mate change in Copen­hagen and through­out the world dur­ing the UN Cli­mate Con­fer­ence (30 Nov-11 Dec 2009). More info:
http://klimax2009.org/?p=33&langswitch_lang=en Tell them you’re com­ing:
sept08@klimax2009.org

6) CLIMATE CAMP WHAT NEXT MEETING, MANCHESTER 26–28.09.08
All are invit­ed to the first Post-Cli­mate Camp Nation­al Gath­er­ing. The gath­er­ing will offer a chance to reflect on where we are at, decide where we go from here, and pro­vide info as to how to get involved in the ongo­ing direct action cam­paign to stop Kingsnorth.
Ques­tions? Email process@climatecamp.org.uk

7) NATIONAL MEETING TO RESIST NEW COAL, MANCHESTER, 11–12.10.08
A meet­ing to bring togeth­er groups and com­mu­ni­ties resist­ing coal in the UK – from open cast and deep coal mines, to pow­er sta­tions and coal imports. Share infor­ma­tion, plan for action, and build a strong net­work of resis­tance. www.leaveitintheground.org.uk

8) FOSSIL FOOLS DAY 2009, 01.04.2009
Four con­ti­nents, 150 actions, and an April Fool’s Day with a fan­tas­ti­cal­ly sub­ver­sive (and rad­i­cal­ly nec­es­sary) twist – we’re def­i­nite­ly doing that again! So Fos­sil Fools Day 2009 is a go – start pick­ing your fos­sil fuel tar­get now! Info and resources will be post­ed on the web­site soon, and look out for leaflets to dis­trib­ute in Decem­ber.

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RECENT HAPPENINGS:
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1) CAMP FOR CLIMATE ACTION, KINGSNORTH, KENT, 3–11.08.08
From the Heathrow Con­fer­ence to the Car­a­van, from the work­shops to beau­ti­ful camp life, from the GRRR pirates to the fence breach­ers to the bail break­ers, and the flur­ry of affin­i­ty group actions before, dur­ing and after the camp, the 2008 Camp for Cli­mate Action was a roar­ing suc­cess. We out­smart­ed 26 police forces to run the biggest cli­mate camp ever. We cov­ered the riv­er in boats, filled the streets with peo­ple, cov­ered the pow­er sta­tion gates with ban­ners and hit at least eight oth­er tar­gets with autonomous actions. We flood­ed the nation­al, local and inde­pen­dent media with our sto­ries and mes­sages. E.ON and the Gov­ern­ment threw every­thing they could at us, and they still couldn’t hold us back. Actions, in no par­tic­u­lar order, includ­ed: an office inva­sion of min­ing com­pa­ny BHP Bil­ton, tak­ing over an incin­er­a­tor site in Newhaven, a block­ade of Cargill over its rain­for­est destruc­tion and land-grab­bing, a pro-veg­an roof occu­pa­tion and ban­ner drop at Smith­field Meat Mar­ket, a protest at US air base Milden­hall to high­light mil­i­tary CO2 emis­sions, a ban­ner drop from an elec­tric­i­ty pylon, a naked protest at DBERR, the world’s small­est pro­test­ers climb­ing E.ON’s smoke­stack (at Legoland), actions at Roy­al Bank of Scot­land (not once but twice – stu­dents do a die-in and Ris­ing Tiders bust out the super­glue), a demo at Lon­gan­net pow­er sta­tion in Fife, a mul­ti-pronged attack on Gatwick by Plane Stu­pid, the shut­ting down of the South’s biggest bio­fu­el stor­age facil­i­ty, and in
a sin­gle day of may­hem in the City, the Cli­mate Car­a­van tar­get­ed RBS and the PR firms for Shell, BAA & E.ON.
www.climatecamp.org.uk
Pho­to slide show: http://blip.tv/file/1167973
Video: http://www.undercurrents.org/visionon/

2) DERBYSHIRE COAL MINE EVICTED, 14.08.08
The squat in Der­byshire, a protest on the site of a pro­posed new open-cast coal mine, came to end with the evic­tion of the remain­ing two pro­test­ers, who had res­olute­ly resist­ed attempts to clear the site by furi­ous­ly dig­ging for vic­to­ry. Come to the nation­al Leave it in the Ground meet­ing in Octo­ber to help with the next steps. www.leaveitintheground.org.uk

3) US CLIMATE CAMPS, JULY/AUGUST
All three US Cli­mate Camps have now wound down, with action high­lights includ­ing the South­east Cli­mate Con­ver­gence occu­py­ing a nuclear facil­i­ty in Vir­ginia, the Bil­lion­aires for Coal strik­ing Bank of Amer­i­ca 4 times in 3 days and a protest at NW Nat­ur­al Gas fol­low­ing the West Coast Con­ver­gence. And check out http://www.uncampement.net/?q=en/node/775 for
the ongo­ing (8–24 August) camp in Que­bec, Cana­da.

4) SAVING ICELAND CAMP, JULY/AUGUST
Sav­ing Iceland’s fourth action camp is now over but the fight goes on. The three-week camp was at Hell­isheiði, where Reyk­javík Ener­gy is expand­ing their geot­her­mal pow­er plant, first of all to sup­ply ener­gy to alu­mini­um smelters. Actions includ­ed: work on the Cen­tu­ry Aluminum’s exist­ing smelter as well as a steel fac­to­ry were block­ad­ed, hold­ing up a shift
change for sev­er­al hours. A Reyk­javik Ener­gy geot­her­mal drill site at Hell­ishei­di, being built for Cen­tu­ry, was com­plete­ly shut down for a day as activists locked to machines, climbed the drill and occu­pied the pow­er con­trol room. The nation­al pow­er com­pa­ny Landsvirkjun had it’s office invad­ed, and it’s CEO Fridrik Sophus­son had his home vis­it­ed. Sav­ing Ice­land nailed an evic­tion notice to his door. www.savingiceland.org

5) AIRPORT OCCUPATION, GERMANY, ONGOING
In Ger­many cli­mate activists have been squat­ting a wood­land since the begin­ning of June to stop the con­struc­tion of yet anoth­er new run­way for the already mas­sive Frank­furt air­port. The camp con­tin­ues to grow with over 30 peo­ple liv­ing on site and has the sup­port of the com­mu­ni­ty. Demos and actions are being organ­ised togeth­er with local res­i­dents’ groups
against air­port expan­sion. Amaz­ing tree­hous­es, walk­ways and funky ground shel­ters have been con­struct­ed to make life pleas­ant in the woods and to resist evic­tion as long as pos­si­ble. Peo­ple are wel­come to join in. www.waldbesetzung.blogsport.de

6) STICKING IT TO THE PM, LONDON, 22.07.08
On 22nd July a Plane Stu­pid cam­paign­er super­glued him­self to Prime Min­is­ter Gor­don Brown in 10 Down­ing Street. He’d been invit­ed to receive an award for protest­ing, so prompt­ly decid­ed to car­ry on in that vain! Whilst ask­ing Gor­don about refus­ing to meet West Lon­don
res­i­dents opposed to the con­struc­tion of a third run­way at Heathrow, the intre­pid pro­test­er put his super­glue cov­ered hand onto Brown’s poly­ester suit. When Brown went to turn away he found he was stuck and for once had no option but to lis­ten. www.planestupid.com

7) 32 4x4s DISARMED, OXFORD, 18.07.08
32 SUV own­ers woke up in Oxford on 18th July to dis­cov­er that their envi­ron­men­tal­ly destruc­tive vehi­cles had been dis­abled using the ‘mung bean trick’ to let down their tires.

8) NEW RISING TIDE LEAFLET
At long last, Ris­ing Tide has a new leaflet – who we are, what we do and why we do it, wrapped up in an inspir­ing pho­to col­lage pack­age. Sneak a peak at , or email info@risingtide.org.uk to get a bunch post­ed to you for dis­tri­b­u­tion in your local area.

9) NEW REPORT: CASHING IN ON COAL
High street banks are mak­ing mil­lions by pro­vid­ing the finan­cial fuel that dri­ves the expan­sion of coal extrac­tion and com­bus­tion. This report exam­ines the role in the last two years of the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land (RBS), HSBC and Bar­clays in pro­vid­ing and arrang­ing the finan­cial means to the coal indus­try to extract and burn vast quan­ti­ties of coal. The report reveals that RBS has helped lend more mon­ey to the coal indus­try, in more deals, than any oth­er major UK bank. www.carbonweb.org

—————–
Ris­ing Tide UK,
c/o 62 Fieldgate Street,
Lon­don E1 1ES
www.risingtide.org.uk
www.artnotoil.org.uk
www.fossilfoolsday.org
Tel: 07708 794665

See also the Camp for Cli­mate Action (www.climatecamp.org.uk), Net­work for Cli­mate Action (www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk) and Cli­mate Indy­media (www.climateimc.org)

———-

Please send any­thing you’d like includ­ed in this news sheet to:
newssheet@risingtide.org.uk

To view pre­vi­ous edi­tions of the Ris­ing Tide News Sheet, vis­it the News Sheet Archive at http://risingtide.org.uk/newssheet

This News Sheet was brought to you by Ris­ing Tide, a grass­roots net­work of groups and indi­vid­u­als com­mit­ted to tak­ing action and build­ing a move­ment against cli­mate change.

For more infor­ma­tion…
email: info@risingtide.org.uk
Phone: +44 (0)845 458 8923 / +44 (0)7708 794665
Address: 62 Fieldgate St, Lon­don, E1 1ES
Web site: http://risingtide.org.uk

PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO A FRIEND AND INVITE THEM TO JOIN THE LIST

To sub­scribe or unsub­scribe vis­it:
http://risingtide.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/rt-news

A week of free workshops, discussions & skill-sharing in London

The plan­ning for the Lon­don FreeSchool week is going well with con­firmed work­shops and the such like start­ing to appear on the web­site. Bowl Court Social Cen­tre, the orig­i­nal loca­tion for the weeks event, was sad­ly evict­ed a cou­ple of weeks ago.

The plan­ning for the Lon­don FreeSchool week is going well with con­firmed work­shops and the such like start­ing to appear on the web­site. Bowl Court Social Cen­tre, the orig­i­nal loca­tion for the weeks event, was sad­ly evict­ed a cou­ple of weeks ago. How­ev­er, the event lives on and has moved to the ram­pART ( http://www.rampart.co.nr) and LARC ( http://www.londonarc.org.) After all a free school should not be lim­it­ed and con­tained by con­crete walls!

The dead­line for work­shops is soon approach­ing so if you are up for facil­i­tat­ing some­thing over the week drop us a line ( deschooling_society@lists.riseup.net) with a brief descrip­tion of the event, how long you will need, your avail­abil­i­ty between the 1st and 7th Sep­tem­ber and if you have any spe­cial require­ments (e.g. Tools / equip­ment). If you do this by mon­day then we can include it in the timetable.

If you want to know what is hap­pen­ing over the week and when, you are unfor­tu­nate­ly going to have to wait until the full timetable has been released next Wednes­day. But here’s a lit­tle taster…

MONDAY 1st SEPTEMBER 12:30pm – 1:30pm
Wel­come to Lon­don FreeSchool!
Come along, have some lunch, meet each oth­er and find out about the week ahead.

GENDER & AUTONOMOUS SPACES
Autonomous spaces are not immune from the kind of casu­al sex­ism that is still com­mon in the wider cul­ture but the prob­lem is rarely dis­cussed. One solu­tion has been to set up women only spaces but many peo­ple feel that these avoid the prob­lem rather than address­ing it. This work­shop will be about explor­ing how peo­ple feel about ques­tions of gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty in the con­text of rad­i­cal activism and how we can find ways to address the issues.

SAFER SPACES
Its about acknowl­edg­ing that oppres­sive behav­iours and ideas are still with in our ‘rad­i­cal’ activist com­mu­ni­ties, no mat­ter how ‘rad­i­cal’ we think we are. The point of the work­shop is to get peo­ple to think and talk about this, find ways to deal with this in their com­mu­ni­ties and work to stop their own oppres­sive behav­iours.

GETTING RID OF EDUCATION: COMMUNITIES FOR LEARNING
No ones needs to be edu­cat­ed. We all learn all the time. What peo­ple need are resours­es and sup­port to help them get where they want to go. What does this sort of an organ­i­sa­tion look like and how can you start one? Come and find out!
Leslie Bar­son (Safran) home edu­cat­ed her two chil­dren and found­ed and runs The Oth­er­wise Club, a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre for fam­i­lies choos­ing not to send their chil­dren to school, in NW Lon­don since 1993.

SCHOOL PRIVATISATION
A dis­cus­sion on school pri­vati­sa­tion in the UK and the Wem­b­ley Tent City Occu­pa­tion ( http://www.tentcityoccupation.co.uk/) with Hank Roberts.

A PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION TO FOOD BUYING GROUPS
Have you ever thought of get­ting togeth­er with a group of peo­ple to buy food in bulk? Come and meet oth­er folks who’d like to do the same, to find out more and start plan­ning your food-buy­ing group. Cheap­er food, autonomous organ­is­ing, stronger links with­in our com­mu­ni­ties, and no more
super­mar­kets: let’s make the best of the reces­sion!
Please bring pens and paper, espe­cial­ly mark­ers and flipchart-like paper, to share if you have any

FOOD NOT BOMBS…
is a net­work of inde­pen­dent direct action groups. They all use food that is being thrown away, cook deli­cious veg­an meals and serve it for free to any hun­gry per­son! Come with us for a bit of skip­ping (get­ting food from the bins!), veg­an cook­ing, serv­ing and clean­ing! It’s polit­i­cal, fun and empow­er­ing!

BASICS OF GENETICS
what’s a cell? what’s a chro­mo­some? what’s the DNA? what’s a gene? what’s a genome? what’s a genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied organ­ism? what’s cloning? etc.
Have you ever asked your­self these ques­tions?
We’ll try to talk about all that togeth­er!

INTERNET ARCHITECTURE / PHILOSOPHY
The idea for the dis­cus­sion is to look at the way the tech­ni­cal aspects of the inter­net have polit­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal impli­ca­tions. Some of these are well known, oth­ers not so well known. Start­ing
from a few tech­ni­cal points I hope the group can dis­cuss gen­er­al ideas around the hack­er cul­ture that has shaped the inter­net, as it applies to social net­works and polit­i­cal engage­ment. Some sam­ple prin­ci­ples from inter­net engi­neer­ing cul­ture:
“Be con­ser­v­a­tive in what you do; be lib­er­al in what you accept from oth­ers.” (Jon Pos­tel)
“We reject: kings, pres­i­dents and vot­ing. We believe in: rough con­sen­sus and run­ning code.” (David D. Clarke)

deschooling_society@lists.riseup.net
http://londonfreeschool.wordpress.com

Good news from Titnore + stalls, tidy-ups and open day/tours

Fur­ther suc­cess for the inspir­ing Tit­nore Woods cam­paign­ers report­ed in todays press

Trees saved from axe
Sun­day 24th August 2008

A con­tro­ver­sial hous­ing devel­op­ment has been revised to save hun­dreds of trees.

Plans to build 875 homes on green fields at West Dur­ring­ton, Wor­thing, sparked fury among envi­ron­men­tal­ists when they were unveiled in 2003.

Fur­ther suc­cess for the inspir­ing Tit­nore Woods cam­paign­ers report­ed in todays press

Trees saved from axe
Sun­day 24th August 2008

A con­tro­ver­sial hous­ing devel­op­ment has been revised to save hun­dreds of trees.

Plans to build 875 homes on green fields at West Dur­ring­ton, Wor­thing, sparked fury among envi­ron­men­tal­ists when they were unveiled in 2003.

Around 275 trees would have been axed under the orig­i­nal pro­pos­als as Tit­nore Lane, a wind­ing coun­try road, was straight­ened.

But the pro­pos­al led to pro­test­ers set­ting set up a per­ma­nent tree camp in woods near Tit­nore Lane.

Now the West Dur­ring­ton Con­sor­tium, which con­sists of build­ing firms with a stake in the devel­op­ment, has revised its design so that only 75 trees will be chopped.

It said around 2,350 trees would also be plant­ed on the site.

The new plan­ning appli­ca­tion will be con­sid­ered by Wor­thing Bor­ough Coun­cil lat­er this year.

—-

That’s real­ly good news about the plans not to cut the trees, but real­ly it’s no time to cel­e­brate. This is by no means a vic­to­ry as the ques­tion of ecol­o­gy in the area goes far beyond the very small patch of wood­land that was plan­ning to be cut down. If these hous­es are built then the area is fucked.

That is also only look­ing at it from an eco­log­i­cal point of veiw, when real­ly this, as with oth­er hous­ing devel­op­ments goes far beyond the eco­log­i­cal issues. The build­ing of 600 unaf­ford­able hous­es (along with the 200 set aside for “key work­ers”) has many effects on the area, it is anoth­er act of gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, this bat­tle is about more then trees and nature (for some involved) but part of an anti cap­i­tal­ist strug­gle.

Not to men­tion it is fuck­ing point­less build­ing more hous­es to rot and be unsold, except that we have more to squat in 10 years time.

They are nice trees though, I would be lying if i would say it did­n’t make smile to think at least some them might remain.

—–

WHEN is a wood not a wood? When it has a road run­ning right through it!

The “new” plan­ning appli­ca­tion for the West Dur­ring­ton devel­op­ment in Wor­thing, West Sus­sex, is being sold to the Wor­thing pub­lic as a “response to pub­lic opin­ion” that will spare many of the Tit­nore trees.

But, like the orig­i­nal plans, it includes access roads that will cut right through the beau­ti­ful ancient wood­land cur­rent­ly occu­pied by the protest camp. A wood is no longer a viable bio-sys­tem with a road cut­ting it in half. Wildlife like dormice and crest­ed newts will not sur­vive in what will be no more than road­side clumps of trees sur­round­ed by tar­mac and exec­u­tive homes.

The devel­op­ers do not men­tion that the lack of road widen­ing was forced on them through legal pres­sure, rather than dreamt up out of the good­ness of their hearts. And they do not men­tion what would be like­ly to hap­pen in a few years’ time, when the mas­sive increase in traf­fic to the new estate and the mega-Tesco would no doubt be expect­ed to force a re-think on Tit­nore Lane for the usu­al “safe­ty” rea­sons.

Need­less to say, the bat­tle against the destruc­tion of our coun­try­side in West Dur­ring­ton goes on! We are urg­ing every­one to send in their let­ters of objec­tion to plan­ning appli­ca­tion WB/04/00040/OUT as soon as pos­si­ble — Octo­ber 9 is the very lat­est dead­line. Write to James Apple­ton, Devel­op­ment Con­trol Man­ag­er, at Wor­thing Bor­ough Coun­cil, Port­land House, Rich­mond Road, Wor­thing BN11 1LF or email planning@worthing.gov.uk

There will also be stalls in Wor­thing town cen­tre, the first being next Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 6, from 11am at Hold­er’s Cor­ner, Mon­tague Street (near Liv­er­pool Gar­dens).

And, of course, the camp is still going strong. There is, how­ev­er, an urgent need for repairs to the infra­struc­ture and defences, which have degrad­ed over the last cou­ple of years. Polyprop rope is bad­ly want­ed — as well as finan­cial con­tri­bu­tions.

If you can spare an hour or two to help at the camp, a tidy-up day is being held on Sun­day Sep­tem­ber 21, from 10am. And then on Sun­day Sep­tem­ber 28 there will be an Open Day, from 2pm. This will includ­ed guid­ed tours, show­ing where the roads and hous­ing are planned to destroy the area. Bring food to share.

More info: www.protectourwoodland.co.uk

Pipeline work stopped in Mayo

21.8.2008
Today at 10am, fif­teen Shell to Sea activists entered the water at Glen­gad Beach to stop pipeline dredg­ing work. Dinghies, surfers and swim­mers sur­round­ed the machine and stopped work.

21.8.2008
Today at 10am, fif­teen Shell to Sea activists entered the water at Glen­gad Beach to stop pipeline dredg­ing work. Dinghies, surfers and swim­mers sur­round­ed the machine and stopped work.

Around three Gar­dai in a Gar­da boat began arrest­ing the pro­test­ers and tak­ing the boats at 10.55am. With no regard for health and safe­ty pro­to­cols, the Gar­dai entered the sea to wres­tle with pro­test­ers in the water. On at least one occa­sion they worked togeth­er with the Shell secu­ri­ty team who grabbed one pro­test­er and held him until the Gar­dai reached them.

Three pro­test­ers moved onto a rock in the sea near the dredg­ing oper­a­tion. At around 11:40am work start­ed again. The dredg­ing machine picked up large amounts of debris from the sea bed and dumped it with­in inch­es of the pro­test­ers. Despite the clear dan­gers, the Gar­dai did not ask for the work to stop. The three were arrest­ed at around mid­day.

Today’s action was part of a Shell to Sea week of action against the pipeline.

The pipe lay­ing ship, the Soli­taire, is yet to arrive in the bay so actions are like­ly to con­tin­ue well into next week.

Come to Mayo and get involved.

Bath Bomb #13 Out Now

Live from the fields…

The Bath Bomb

It’s Our Birth­day – Make Us (Veg­an) Cake!

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #13
free/donation
Aug 08

Birth­day Bumps

Live from the fields…

The Bath Bomb

It’s Our Birth­day – Make Us (Veg­an) Cake!

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #13
free/donation
Aug 08

Birth­day Bumps

To cel­e­brate our first anniver­sary, the Bath Bomb has teamed up for an exclu­sive part­ner­ship with the Bris­tol Evening Post, who are now offer­ing a free Bath Bomb with every issue! Mon­ey-grub­bing egghead MD Kevin Beat­ty, of media monop­oly Asso­ci­at­ed News­pa­pers (proud pro-fas­cist own­ers of the Dai­ly Mail, as well as North­cliffe Media — who have been busi­ly buy­ing out every local media out­let they can over the last 5 years and reduc­ing them to the same gener­ic mould) had this to say about the hap­py union: “…ven­ture cap­i­tal­ism… caviar…tax loopholes…fourth hol­i­day home in the Bahamas…co-opting any­thing rad­i­cal and real….” Hap­py first birth­day us! Now, we look eager­ly for­ward to the next year of bland­ly cen­sor­ing all opin­ion, cost cut­ting, and sack­ing sur­plus journos!

http://www.dmgt.co.uk/corporatestructure/associatednewspapers/

Life At Cli­mate Camp

Twelve activists from Bath Activist Net­work attend­ed this sum­mer’s Camp for Cli­mate Action, held from the 3rd-11th August, near Kingsnorth Pow­er Sta­tion, in the Hoo Penin­su­la of Kent. The Camp was not only held in defi­ance of E‑On’s plans to build the UK’s first coal-fired pow­er sta­tion for 33 years, but also to sug­gest alter­na­tives to the lifestyle options pro­vid­ed by state cap­i­tal­ism that dam­age the earth and its poor­est peo­ple. The Camp had no lead­ers; deci­sions were made col­lec­tive­ly and every­one vol­un­teered for jobs that need­ed doing. Veg­an food was pre­pared using local organ­ic ingre­di­ents and eat­en com­mu­nal­ly. It pro­vid­ed its own phys­i­cal and men­tal health care, secu­ri­ty, inde­pen­dent media (with inter­net access) and con­flict medi­a­tion. Grey water fil­tra­tion sys­tems were used to irri­gate the fields, rub­bish was recy­cled and com­post­ed and the waste from com­post loos will be used by local farm­ers. The site was pow­ered by wind and solar ener­gy. The tech­ni­cal poten­tial for glob­al wind and solar pow­er exceeds cur­rent ener­gy use. Plus, in gen­er­al, weath­er that is unfavourable for wind pow­er pro­duc­tion is favourable for solar ener­gy and vice ver­sa.

Enter­tain­ment was pro­vid­ed in the form of live music, ped­al pow­ered sound sys­tems, a cin­e­ma, barn dance, veg­an cake bak­ing ses­sions, pirate radio, karaoke and beer! Work­shops ranged from edu­ca­tion on envi­ron­men­tal sci­ence to recy­cled bike part jew­ellery mak­ing and prac­ti­cal fem­i­nist self-defence. All in all, a great nine days and well worth get­ting mud­dy for.

www.climatecamp.org.uk

Hoo Grrrs Wins

B. da Fucha con­tin­ues our exclu­sive report: “Not only was the Camp a near-per­fect exper­i­ment in sus­tain­able liv­ing, but was also a launch pad for uncom­pro­mis­ing action against the cli­mate crim­i­nals. What with the agro­fu­els indus­try being respon­si­ble for 75% of recent glob­al food price hikes, on Thurs­day the 7th August, activists block­ad­ed the Vopak bio­fu­els depot in near­by Thur­rock, which sup­plies so-called ‘green’ com­pa­nies like Green­er­gy and Tesco. Else­where, dur­ing the Camp, there were more ban­ner drops and lock-ons than you can shake an extend­able baton at, but here fol­low just a few:

Actions took place the same day at Gatwick Air­port against short-haul flights (139 flights from Lon­don to Edin­burgh, but only 22 trains); an oil-spat­tered ‘die-in’ at RBS’ HQ (‘The Oil and Gas Bank’, who pro­vides $20 mil­lion to pol­lut­ing coal projects such as Arch Coal’s Bond vil­lain-esque ‘Moun­tain Top Removal’ schemes); and — prov­ing that size isn’t every­thing — in Legoland in Wind­sor, Lego cam­paign­ers scaled and hung a ban­ner from E‑On’s mini repli­ca pow­er sta­tion!

Mean­while, on Sat­ur­day the 9th, to the tune of 60 or so arrests, activists laid siege to Kingsnorth with a three-pronged attack: over water, land, and, appar­ent­ly, air. 1,000 made their way over roads in a peace­ful and fam­i­ly-friend­ly parade, though restrict­ing crowd con­trol bar­ri­ers van­ished one by one (to onlook­ing plod’s dis­may), and there were some minor scuf­fles due to police bru­tal­i­ty. Mean­while, over the fields, a 200-strong brigade of Green Guer­ril­las clam­bered, crawled, wad­ed and leapt their way to Kingsnorth, even­tu­al­ly breach­ing three rings of fenc­ing (luck­i­ly, wily sabo­teurs had secret­ly shut the elec­tric­i­ty before­hand), fac­ing riot cops, Alsa­tians and hors­es. And along the Med­way, with ‘The Great Rebel Raft Regat­ta’, a mot­ley flotil­la of 28 home­made pirate ves­sels braved the cur­rents, with one craft get­ting through.

Else­where, pro­test­ers clam­bered atop pylons, and occu­pied Sel­f­ridges in Lon­don, chained to a ban­ner read­ing ‘Our con­sump­tion will fuck us all.’ And the next day, shenani­gans con­tin­ued, with the Smith­field­’s meat mar­ket wak­ing to the sight of rooftop mes­sages: ‘Fight Cli­mate Change — Go Veg­an,’ and a squadron of imi­ta­tion planes edu­cat­ing USAF Milden­hall about the links between cli­mate dis­as­ter and mil­i­tary ven­tures.

At the end of the day, 4 peo­ple got into Kingsnorth and dis­rupt­ed oper­a­tions, despite the £17 mil­lion security/policing bud­get, and the day was won — and, if they do make the mis­take of com­menc­ing build­ing work, we will be back, and we will shut them down!”

http://www.indymedia.org.uk
www.thegrrr.net/

FACT BOX

If E‑On is giv­en the go-ahead:

- It will under­mine the Government’s com­mit­ment to meet Euro­pean tar­gets for pro­duc­ing 20% of ener­gy from renew­ables by 2020
— The UK’s chances of meet­ing the nec­es­sary 80% emis­sions reduc­tions by 2050 will be blown
— The inef­fi­cient, cen­tralised ener­gy gen­er­a­tion sys­tem that’s respon­si­ble for 2/3s of all the ener­gy with­in fos­sil fuels being wast­ed will be propped up, poten­tial­ly for anoth­er 50 years
— It will emit as much car­bon diox­ide as the world’s 24 low­est emit­ting coun­tries com­bined

FFI, check out these two new pub­li­ca­tions:

Smith, Kevin — Cash­ing In On Coal; RBS, UK Banks and the Glob­al Coal Indus­try; avail­able from http://www.carbonweb.org
Fauset, Claire – Tech­no-Fix­es: a crit­i­cal guide to cli­mate change tech­nolo­gies; avail­able from http://www.corporatewatch.org

QUOTE OF THE MONTH: “I’m not here to fuck about – I’m not here to feed the police hob­nobs!”

Polic­ing The Cli­mate Camp

While up to 3,000 peo­ple at Cli­mate Camp worked hard to cre­ate a peace­ful, eco-friend­ly, edu­ca­tion­al space, anoth­er group in the area were work­ing equal­ly hard to make sure that none of this came to fruition. Nor­mal­ly, it is advis­able to ignore the police, view them as a pet­ty dis­trac­tion and move on, but the (mis)behaviour of the boys in blue at this year’s Camp war­rants a clos­er look.

At pre­vi­ous events, the vast major­i­ty of police harass­ment has been focused (entire­ly unsuc­cess­ful­ly) around pre­vent­ing direct action and effec­tive protest. This year how­ev­er, the aim of the police seemed to be to stop the Camp from hap­pen­ing at all. On the first day of set­ting up, with only 70 pro­tes­tors present, hun­dreds of police descend­ed on the site, caus­ing crim­i­nal dam­age, mak­ing arbi­trary arrests and beat­ings. They then pro­ceed­ed to con­fis­cate hun­dreds of items includ­ing water drainage sys­tems, dis­abled toi­lets, chil­drens’ crayons, guy ropes, cook­ing equip­ment, solar pan­els and wind tur­bines. Activists put up a brave and pro­tract­ed fight that pre­vent­ed the police from steal­ing much more. This set the tone for the polic­ing, with tac­tics rang­ing from repet­i­tive ille­gal and intru­sive stop and search­es, the arrest­ing of inno­cents (and release straight after Camp with­out charge; just to clear away pro­tes­tors), the con­fis­ca­tion of arti­cles rang­ing from bikes to tents; also, hun­dreds of riot police rou­tine­ly attempt­ed to storm the site, using batons, shields and the threat of police dogs, caus­ing numer­ous injuries (includ­ing head injuries to a grand­moth­er and teenage girl, sat at the gate dur­ing an attack) almost every morn­ing between 2 and 6am, as well as con­stant low-lev­el fly­ing over the Camp dur­ing the small hours (in vio­la­tion of Arti­cle 5 of the Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights relat­ing to sleep depri­va­tion and men­tal tor­ture). Dur­ing one attack, the local MP who was present wit­nessed such a bru­tal attack that he lodged sev­er­al com­plaints with police high-ups and lat­er declared sup­port for the Camp — he even received a dose of pep­per spray to the face from one overzeal­ous cop­per! It is worth not­ing that due to deter­mined resis­tance from campers, the police were suc­cess­ful­ly kept off site all week, except for that first raid. While refus­ing to be vic­tims of police bru­tal­i­ty, many hard­ened activists were shocked by the inten­si­ty, fre­quen­cy and sheer unpro­voked bru­tal­i­ty of police aggres­sion towards the Camp and its inhab­i­tants.

So why were the police so des­per­ate to pre­vent the cam­paign­ers’ mes­sage being spread, and why was the empha­sis of their oper­a­tion on dis­rup­tion of work­shops and the gen­er­al smooth run­ning of the Camp? Two rea­sons spring to mind. First­ly, the envi­ron­men­tal direct action move­ment, with Cli­mate Camp at its core, has swollen in size and effec­tive­ness over the past few years, and threat­ens to become a move­ment capa­ble of mak­ing real, rad­i­cal and last­ing change — some­thing the state will nev­er be will­ing to let hap­pen with­out a fight. Sec­ond­ly, cli­mate change is becom­ing very real to the peo­ple of this coun­try. Floods, dras­tic hikes in the price of fuel and food are all prod­ucts of gov­ern­ment-dri­ven cli­mate change. As such, Cli­mate Camp is gain­ing a strong social rel­e­vance — its crit­i­cisms of cap­i­tal­ism increas­ing­ly valid and its solu­tions increas­ing­ly tan­gi­ble. As water lev­els and reces­sion rise, and dis­con­tent and anger start to grow in more and more peo­ple, the gov­ern­ment (as in New Orleans) respond with greater author­i­tar­i­an­ism and social con­trol. They will also defend their crum­bling ide­ol­o­gy and attempt to vio­lent­ly repress those who show anoth­er way.

Despite the police oper­a­tion being a bun­gled yet bru­tal fail­ure, it does set a wor­ry­ing prece­dent for polit­i­cal polic­ing, the first signs of a gov­ern­ment who, lack­ing cred­i­bil­i­ty, respect, or answers, turns to vio­lence to pro­tect its increas­ing­ly iso­lat­ed and unpop­u­lar agen­da.

As well as rad­i­cal­is­ing the less mil­i­tant activists present, the police activ­i­ty also rad­i­calised near­by res­i­dents, with one local poll show­ing 50% of vil­lagers now sup­port­ing the Camp.

For a copy of the Nation­al Extrem­ism Tac­ti­cal Co-ordi­na­tion Unit (NETCU)’s advice for police on how to deal with pro­test­ers, see here:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/08/405393.html
and here:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/08/405409.html
Police assaults dur­ing a search: http://www.medwaymessenger.co.uk/news/default.asp?article_id=46009
police steal­ing bikes: http://blip.tv/file/1149491/
Law­suits against the police made easy!: http://217.12.8.115/uk.f271.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_59089_ACW2ktkAAGe7SKP16g3MGjdp7HQ&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename=suingthepolice.htm&cred=Liy1IXXCscVFc0JQh0o9r3FJcEo3Cltuasu_YRgi8gS1sxTCSf89fxmLQ5lXFFBax1bXeuLBv7NytQfoli4g9qGZzKgDw8pKj9hIjxGArb36Jkkhbg–&ts=1218709236&partner=ymail&sig=JSHCW3uQSwpEnGdyw35J5A–

Unnat­ur­al Dis­as­ters

Much dis­cus­sion and debate in Kent focused on the very real issue of how the lives of peo­ple in the third world are being affect­ed by cli­mate change and how this will be esca­lat­ed in the future. Whilst for some of us, cli­mate change seems a rel­a­tive­ly abstract notion, for much of the major­i­ty world it is a dai­ly real­i­ty. For many women and girls, their role is pri­mar­i­ly that of car­er. A speak­er dur­ing one action at this year’s Camp drew lis­ten­ers’ atten­tion to the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in India, where progress, which has offered girls oppor­tu­ni­ties in edu­ca­tion, is being coun­ter­act­ed by errat­ic rain­fall, draw­ing girls away from edu­ca­tion and back to domes­tic roles. As well as this, Indi­a’s poor­est women and girls are often involved in what the UN brands ‘cli­mate sen­si­tive’ activ­i­ties, such as pad­dy cul­ti­va­tion and fish­ing, mean­ing that flood­ing and oth­er cat­a­stro­phes will put their lives and liveli­hood on the line.

Despite these set­backs, women are on the front lines in the fight against cli­mate change. For instance, in parts of Bangladesh where farm­ers face cat­a­stroph­ic flood­ing which has been increased by cli­mate change, women have adapt­ed their farm­ing meth­ods to cope, includ­ing cre­at­ing float­ing hyacinth beds and rear­ing ducks.

http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2804

GREEN CAMPAIGNERS SAID:

- “If it is seri­ous about tack­ling cli­mate change, the gov­ern­ment must throw out this pro­pos­al and pro­mote invest­ment in clean and green alter­na­tives” — Robin Web­ster, Friends of the Earth.
— Car­o­line Lucas of the Green Par­ty said the move was a “mas­sive step back­wards.” She said “ulti­mate­ly it’s utter­ly unnec­es­sary, there are oth­er ways of gen­er­at­ing energy…it’s not dif­fi­cult to be slight­ly more effi­cient than the old pow­er sta­tions…”
— “In the same amount of time and for less mon­ey, we could imple­ment an ener­gy sys­tem that will do far more to stop cli­mate change and ensure ener­gy secu­ri­ty than nuclear or coal-fired pow­er: a com­bi­na­tion of renew­ables, effi­cien­cy, and com­bined heat and pow­er” — Green­peace

http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/the-convenient-solution-20070718
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/climate/the-case-against-coal-frequently-asked-questions
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/greenpeace-shuts-down-coal-fired-power-station-20071008

…but that’s enough about so-called ‘experts’ – what do YOU say?

Oth­er Routes Of Change

Cli­mate Cam­p’s all over now, but the ‘Roots of Change’ day Bath Activist Net­work put on back in July to pro­mote it, yield­ed more than just that. We set up, er, camp in the Green Park Mar­ket, with stalls to let peo­ple know what BAN do and what Camp was all about. We were also joined by Tran­si­tion Town Bath, Viva! and Lon­don Road Food Co-op. There was a beau­ti­ful pho­to-dis­play from last year’s Cli­mate Camp and Bath’s FreeShop, with loads of peo­ple stop­ping to look and browse. The day real­ly put the mes­sage across that there was some­thing for every­one and encour­aged peo­ple to go at their own pace, chang­ing as much or as lit­tle as they liked. Whether plung­ing in at the deep end with ten days of com­mu­nal liv­ing and non vio­lent direct action at Cli­mate Camp, or pad­dling in the shal­low, but no less impor­tant end, by mak­ing small­er tweaks to every­day life, embrac­ing ideas such as shop­ping at a food co op or try­ing a veg­e­tar­i­an or veg­an diet. These changes often lead to more, after all, and too often peo­ple get put off mak­ing any changes due to a feel­ing of pres­sure and lack of sup­port. The oth­er main point is that these changes don’t have to be all doom and gloom — chang­ing some­thing and putting some­thing enjoy­able in its place is much bet­ter than giv­ing some­thing up — enrich­ing our lives rather than dimin­ish­ing them. I’ve recent­ly been find­ing it a very com­fort­ing thought that there is an active com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple, often behind the scenes, who are work­ing on green ener­gy alter­na­tives for an uncer­tain future. There are still improve­ments to make, but I am con­stant­ly impressed by the amaz­ing­ly ded­i­cat­ed, ambi­tious and cre­ative peo­ple involved in these projects and the improve­ments they are able to make to any­thing they lay their hands on, from veg­an food to prac­ti­cal­i­ties such as com­post toi­lets. When the shit comes down, we’ll be using it as fer­til­iz­er.

http://www.transitionbath.org.uk/
http://www.envolve.co.uk/projects/food_coop.html
http://www.viva.org.uk/

If I Can’t Dance…

On the 5th Sep­tem­ber at the Porter Butt in Bath, all are cor­dial­ly invit­ed to a gig fundrais­er, ben­e­fit­ing the upcom­ing Bris­tol Anar­chist Book­fair — more info to fol­low! Speak­ing of which, the book­fair takes place on Sat­ur­day the 13th Sep­tem­ber, from 10am til 5pm, at St Wer­burghs Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, on Hor­ley Road in Bris­tol. Entry is free, and all are wel­come. Oh, and there’ll be a veg­an caff, too! If any­one wants to help dis­trib­ute fly­ers and posters, get in touch: bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk.

www.bristolanarchistbookfair.org

EVENTS

Mon­day nights — Bath Hunt Sabs Meet­ing, 8pm, Bell, Wal­cot Street
Wednes­days — Lon­don Road Food Co-op, 4–7pm, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Lon­don Road
Sat­ur­days — Bath Stop The War Vig­il, 11.30am-12.30, Abbey Court­yard
Weds 27th Aug-1st Sept — Earth­First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing, Nor­folk, see www.earthfirstgathering.org.uk
Weds 3rd Sept — Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, 7.30–8.30pm, back room of Bell, Wal­cot Street
Thurs­day 4th Sept — Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, 7.30–9pm, down­stairs of Hob­gob­lin, St James Parade
Fri 5th Sept — punk ben­e­fit gig for Bris­tol Anar­chist Book­fair, 8–11pm, Porter Butt, Lon­don Road
Sat 6th Sept — Car­ni­val Against Vivi­sec­tion march, 12pm, meet oppo­site Led­bury train sta­tion
Tues 9th Sept — Tran­si­tion Town Bath Open Forum, 7–8pm , Wid­combe Social Club, Wid­combe Hill
Sat 13th Sept — Bris­tol Anar­chist Book­fair, 10–5, St Wer­burghs Cen­tre
Sat 13th Sept — Bath FreeShop, 12–3, out­side Pump Rooms, Stall Street
Tues 15th Sept — screen­ing of ‘11th Hour’ film, 7.30pm, upstairs The Rum­mer
Sat­ur­day 27th Sept — Nation­al Anti Fur march and ral­ly, 12pm, Bel­grave square, Lon­don, see http://www.caft.org.uk/furmarch/2008.htm

How Many Cops Does It Take To Change A Light­bulb?

In answer to this age-old ques­tion, let’s con­sid­er the cop-installed gen­er­a­tor, turned off in mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances the night fol­low­ing the police inva­sion of the Camp for Cli­mate Action. Our benev­o­lent state secu­ri­ty guards seemed to have a lit­tle trou­ble switch­ing the light back on. It took half an hour and six cops to find the light switch, but hey, I’m sure the coun­try is safe in their hands.

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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Con­tact us by e‑mailing bathbombpress@yahoo.co.uk. Large print e‑versions avail­able on request.

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…

B B Jenk­ins