Category: Action Reports

Bristol Tree Felling Protest

July 8th 2008
A protest organ­ised by the Snuff Mills Action Group attract­ed a very healthy turnout last night despite adverse weath­er con­di­tions. Around 250 peo­ple turned out to express their dis­gust at Bris­tol City Coun­cils approval of a plan­ning appli­ca­tion to fell 27 trees in a con­ser­va­tion area.

Snuff Mills protestJuly 8th 2008
A protest organ­ised by the Snuff Mills Action Group attract­ed a very healthy turnout last night despite adverse weath­er con­di­tions. Around 250 peo­ple turned out to express their dis­gust at Bris­tol City Coun­cils approval of a plan­ning appli­ca­tion to fell 27 trees in a con­ser­va­tion area.

Grove Wood on Black­ber­ry Hill in Sta­ple­ton has been part of the hos­pi­tal site since it was orig­i­nal­ly built to house French pris­on­ers of war dur­ing the Napoleon­ic Wars but was sold off at auc­tion last year to Mr Hus­sain Jafari Najafaba­di of Clifton for £39,000 as part of the Gov­ern­ments dri­ve to sell off sur­plus state owned assets. The land forms part of the con­ser­va­tion area that runs from East­ville right through to Dow­nend.

Mr Jafari has a record of plan­ning vio­la­tions (most of which have been grant­ed ret­ro­spec­tive­ly) and, it is alleged, has been heard to be brag­ging of his long term plan to turn the site into a hotel and con­fer­ence cen­tre. His busi­ness deal­ings are car­ried out under a num­ber of alias­es.

Short­ly after pur­chas­ing the wood, the new landown­er set about cut­ting down trees with impuni­ty and sit­ed a por­tak­abin with­in sight of the main road, near the entrance to the Wood.

Bris­tol City coun­cil took no action and when he sub­mit­ted a plan­ning appli­ca­tion to fell the trees lin­ing the road, locals thought that con­ser­va­tion area sta­tus would prob­a­bly lim­it health and safe­ty work to prun­ing alone, giv­en the mas­sive impact on visu­al ameni­ty that felling would have.

Bris­tol City Coun­cil grant­ed the per­mis­sion cit­ing that the list­ed wall was being under­mined, a sew­er was affect­ed and high­way obstruc­tion.

The protest last night was the first of its kind in the cam­paign to save Grove Woods and Snuff Mills Action Group Spokesman Steve Mick­lewright said:
“We want to know the real ratio­nale behind this deci­sion, we are very sus­pi­cious about what’s hap­pened here and we want prop­er answers imme­di­ate­ly”.

He went on to say
“Come on Bris­tol City Coun­cil, do your job and stop pan­der­ing to rogue devel­op­ers.”

This full details of this cam­paign can be obtained from the link below, and the online peti­tion can be accessed also.
http://snuffmills.blogspot.com/

Illegal Arromight Arrest — The Footage

After telling one activists to stop using the mega­phone as it was annoy­ing the work­ers inside and the activist car­ry­ing on, he was arrest­ed for sec­tion 5, but with four activists and only two police offi­cers the games began. All charges have been dropped! What a sur­prise! See the videos below for the footage “bet you cant run as fast as me…”

After telling one activists to stop using the mega­phone as it was annoy­ing the work­ers inside and the activist car­ry­ing on, he was arrest­ed for sec­tion 5, but with four activists and only two police offi­cers the games began. All charges have been dropped! What a sur­prise! See the videos below for the footage “bet you cant run as fast as me…”

VIDEO 1: http://youtube.com/watch?v=spS578gQus0 — lead­ing upto the arrests
VIDEO 2: http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZVRKvJSTW7c — the fun con­tin­ued

Relat­ed Links-

www.sequani.wordpress.com
www.westernanimalrights.wordpress.com
www.shac.net
www.netcu.wordpress.com
www.arcops.wordpress.com
www.fitwatch.blogspot.com

WARN / ACAB
Home­page: http://westernanimalrights.wordpress.com

AMP-Ohio Utility Headquarters Overtaken by Earth First! — No More Business as Usual for Environmentally Destructive Profiteers

Earth First! activists demand can­cel­la­tion of pro­posed coal-fired pow­er plant in Meigs Coun­ty, Ohio

AMP-Ohio occupation

Earth First! activists demand can­cel­la­tion of pro­posed coal-fired pow­er plant in Meigs Coun­ty, Ohio

Colum­bus, OH — At 11:30am Mon­day morn­ing (8/7/2008), about 100 Earth First! activists occu­pied the head­quar­ters of Amer­i­can Munic­i­pal Pow­er, an elec­tric util­i­ty that pro­vides statewide ser­vice to mem­ber com­mu­ni­ties.

As part of an ongo­ing series of direct actions, activists con­front­ed CEO Marc Gerken and demand­ed that AMP-Ohio can­cel its plans for con­struc­tion of a new and wide­ly opposed coal-fired pow­er plant in south­east Ohio.

Dozens of activists charged the build­ing and occu­pied the lob­by, dis­abled video cam­eras with sil­ly string, danced on fur­ni­ture, banged on pots and pans, and deliv­ered anti-coal mes­sages to employ­ees with chants and songs. Five activists locked them­selves down in the lob­by and two activists climbed the flag­poles in front of the build­ing, hoist­ing signs that read “no new coal!” and “we won’t stop until you do.”

Busi­ness as usu­al was dis­rupt­ed for sev­er­al hours while police forcibly removed demon­stra­tors from the prop­er­ty, arrest­ing eight. Bail mon­ey is still need­ed for sev­er­al activists. Please help out by donat­ing to the legal fund at http://earthfirstjournal.org/

Mor­gan Kipler, an Earth First!er from Colum­bus, said that the pro­posed plant “is cur­rent­ly the great­est threat to Ohio’s health, safe­ty, and wel­fare, and must be can­celled imme­di­ate­ly.”

Earth First! oppos­es the pow­er plant for a num­ber of rea­sons. The pro­posed plant would be a major cli­mate change con­trib­u­tor, emit­ting 7.3 mil­lion tons of CO2 into the air every year. The local impact is just as dra­mat­ic: Meigs Coun­ty ranks num­ber one in the state for lung can­cer inci­dence, and num­ber two for relat­ed mor­tal­i­ties.

A study released by the Clean Air Task Force shows Meigs Coun­ty to be in the cen­ter of a tri-state hot zone for pre­ma­ture death rates direct­ly attrib­ut­able to PM 2.5 expo­sures. PM 2.5 is the par­tic­u­late mat­ter released by pow­er plants respon­si­ble for a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of life-short­en­ing ill­ness­es includ­ing can­cer and car­dio­vas­cu­lar and res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases.

If the pro­posed AMP-OH plant is built, it will become one of five coal plants with­in a ten-mile radius to the south­ern tip of Meigs Coun­ty. Addi­tion­al­ly, four more coal-fired plants have been pro­posed for con­struc­tion in the area by oth­er elec­tric util­i­ty providers. This is an obvi­ous injus­tice as it forms the back­bone of the high­est con­cen­tra­tion of coal-fired pow­er plants in the coun­try.

The pow­er plant is also a bad deal for elec­tric cus­tomers. Costs of con­struc­tion have esca­lat­ed from $1.2 to $2.9 bil­lion since Octo­ber of 2005, an increase of about $1.7 mil­lion per day over the last 3 years! At a time of cost hikes, nation­wide pow­er plant can­cel­la­tions and rejec­tions, and pend­ing fed­er­al leg­is­la­tion on glob­al warm­ing emis­sions, AMP-Ohio is mak­ing a bad deci­sion for its mem­ber com­mu­ni­ties, the peo­ple of Meigs Coun­ty, and future gen­er­a­tions in Ohio and beyond.

Earth First! said it will con­tin­ue to resist the con­struc­tion of the AMP-Ohio plant with a diver­si­ty of tac­tics.

—–

Earth First! is an inter­na­tion­al move­ment root­ed in bio-cen­trism and direct action. This action con­cludes the Earth First! 2008 nation­al gath­er­ing, which took place in South­ern Ohio from June 30-July 7.

—

I was for­tu­nate enough to be at the AMP-Ohio head­quar­ters in March, when activists occu­pied AMP’s lob­by and demand­ed that AMP CEO Marc Gerken sched­ule a meet­ing with impact­ed com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to dis­cuss their con­cerns about the Meigs Coun­ty coal plant. Gerken promised to sched­ule the meet­ing, then broke his promise sev­er­al months lat­er.

AMP-Ohio are part of a small army of coal indus­try envi­ron­men­tal crim­i­nals, who are try­ing their hard­est to pol­lute our com­mu­ni­ties and cause cli­mate chaos in order to increase their prof­its. But in order to do that, they’re going to have to get past a small army of envi­ron­men­tal war­riors — like the activists who shut down AMP’s head­quar­ters on Mon­day — who are will­ing to put their per­son­al safe­ty on the line in order to con­front and shut down these cli­mate crim­i­nals.

FIT at menwith hill

Food, music, fun and FIT, Men­with Hill, 4th July Inde­pen­dence from Amer­i­ca Day

Anoth­er well attend­ed demo at Men­with, with blaz­ing sun, music, food and increased lev­els of sur­veil­lance.

Food, music, fun and FIT, Men­with Hill, 4th July Inde­pen­dence from Amer­i­ca Day

Anoth­er well attend­ed demo at Men­with, with blaz­ing sun, music, food and increased lev­els of sur­veil­lance.

There were maybe 100 or so attend­ing, along with stu­pid num­bers of police, includ­ing for the first time, mem­bers of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan FIT team. They were very cam­era shy, and only appeared briefly to pho­to­graph par­tic­i­pants as they set off for a tour of the base. I guess that they left the bulk of the ‘evi­dence gath­er­ing’ to North Yorks offi­cers, who were very busy through­out the day.

There was music on the day from seize the day, who played some crack­ing tunes. Bet­ter was the anar­chist punk band at the end who blast­ed the occu­pants of the base with a selec­tion of hard­core tunes as the sun set behind them, all cap­tured on film by the police!

Also for the first time was a vis­i­ble Anar­chist pres­ence on the day, with a red and black flag fly­ing in the Sun next to CAAB’s upside down Stars and stripes.

After a brief tour of the base the march head­ed back to the main gate where Lunch out Lils from Sheffield pro­vid­ed some excel­lent and much need­ed food!

One arrest on the day, Lindis Per­cy who was arrest­ed for breach of bail con­di­tions, i sus­pect for cross­ing the ‘yel­low line’ at one of the gates. i observed the Evi­dence gath­ers in con­ver­sa­tion with senior offi­cers at this point in the day, check­ing that they had evi­dence of Lindi’s trans­gres­sion on film…

All in all anoth­er well attend­ed demo — bet­ter that it was held in the evening i think a there did some to be plen­ty of new faces there.

As an aside i also noticed that a new wind farm is in the process of being con­struct­ed near Men­with. maybe coin­ci­dence but could also be an ensured pow­er sup­ply dur­ing the com­ing oil crash??

“In some cas­es, (a mil­i­tary) instal­la­tion can depend on near­by gen­er­a­tion, includ­ing renew­able ener­gy for its back­up ener­gy sup­ply where the util­i­ty has the capa­bil­i­ty of seg­re­gat­ing its ser­vice area from out­side influ­ences. This cre­ates self-sus­tain­ing region­al “islands” which should not be over­looked as instal­la­tions engage in emer­gency plan­ning to serve crit­i­cal instal­la­tion func­tions. Plan­ning must nec­es­sar­i­ly be coor­di­nat­ed with region­al ener­gy sup­pli­ers, trans­mis­sion com­pa­nies, and major ener­gy users.”

Aldermaston Nuke Frocks and shots: on cocktail parties and builder blocking

Yet anoth­er fan­tas­tic oppor­tu­ni­ty to mix busi­ness with plea­sure! Alder­mas­ton Wom­en’s peace camp(aign) host anoth­er fab­u­lous wom­en’s cock­tail par­ty at the peace camp on Sat­ur­day 12 July, while Block the Builders meet in near­by Read­ing the fol­low­ing after­noon to plot the down­fall of the nuclear-indus­tri­al com­plex 😉

Aldermaston camp cocktail flierYet anoth­er fan­tas­tic oppor­tu­ni­ty to mix busi­ness with plea­sure! Alder­mas­ton Wom­en’s peace camp(aign) host anoth­er fab­u­lous wom­en’s cock­tail par­ty at the peace camp on Sat­ur­day 12 July, while Block the Builders meet in near­by Read­ing the fol­low­ing after­noon to plot the down­fall of the nuclear-indus­tri­al com­plex 😉

Since 2002, the Atom­ic Weapons Estab­lish­ment Alder­mas­ton has been the recip­i­ent of a sub­stan­tial invest­ment pro­gramme to upgrade and devel­op new nuclear weapons facil­i­ties. The project is on the same scale as Heathrow’s Ter­mi­nal Five. Alder­mas­ton is where Britain research­es, designs and man­u­fac­tures it’s nuclear weapons. Lat­est news and back­ground info on devel­op­ments at the site can be found at http://www.aldermaston.net/news.

In March 2007 a par­lia­men­tary vote paved the way for a new fleet of nuclear-armed sub­marines to replace the exist­ing four Tri­dent subs, with deci­sions and announce­ments on new war­heads and mis­siles expect­ed to be made over the com­ing years (…in pub­lic … though who would buy £15bn sub­marines with­out already hav­ing com­mit­ted to arm­ing it?)

Between 2006 and 2007 new leg­is­la­tion was intro­duced aimed at lim­it­ing the right to and scope of protest at Britain’s nuclear weapons facil­i­ties (SOCPA and mil­i­tary lands byelaws).
Despite this, in March 2008 an esti­mat­ed 5,000 peo­ple came to Alder­mas­ton to make their voic­es heard in oppo­si­tion to the exten­sion of Britian’s nuclear weapons pro­gramme, and the wom­en’s peace camp con­tin­ues its 23-year tra­di­tion as a vis­i­ble pres­ence at the wire.

The camp is invit­ing women to come to Alder­mas­ton on Sat­ur­day 12 July to join a cel­e­bra­tion of the right to protest (frocks and shots option­al but encour­aged) and of wom­en’s strength in the strug­gle against patri­ar­chal mil­i­tary mad­ness. Music, snacks, veg­an cake (pos­si­bly…), ice and a twist.

Non­vi­o­lent direct action net­work Block the Builders are meet­ing the fol­low­ing day in Read­ing to dis­cuss the ongo­ing builder-block­ing efforts at Alder­mas­ton, aimed at slow­ing and cost­ing the con­struc­tion of new weapons-relat­ed facil­i­ties. See http://www.blockthebuilders.org.uk for details.

Come and meet us, dis­cuss the issues and have a fab­u­lous time!

info@aldermaston.net
http://www.aldermaston.net

Camp for Climate Action: Great Rebel Raft Regatta update & newspaper launched

THE GREAT REBEL RAFT REGATTA UPDATE

RaftsTHE GREAT REBEL RAFT REGATTA UPDATE

Fol­low­ing a pro­fes­sion­al recon­nais­sance and Health and Safe­ty test trip by boat last Wednes­day, rebel rafters and expe­ri­enced sailors gave the thumbs up for the water borne dis­obe­di­ence on the Mass Day of Action, August 9th. Launch­ing with the tides and if the weath­er is not blow­ing a gale, the action was deemed total­ly do able and has the poten­tial to be a spec­tac­u­lar suc­cess. The key will be in the num­ber of rafts, the more rafts ( or any­thing that floats !) there are the more impos­si­ble it will be for the forces of dark­ness to stop the arma­da reach­ing it’s tar­get. So start pack­ing pad­dles, canoes,inflatables, rafts, dinghies, amphibi­ous vehi­cles etc.. with your tent. Try to encour­age any yacht or boat peo­ple, pirates or sailors you know to join in. All rebel rafters will be requit­ed to attend a water safe­ty work­shop that will be run dai­ly for the three
days lead­ing up to the day of action, and will have to wear life jack­ets ( if you don’t have your own, these will be pro­vid­ed by the camp). A write up is avail­able on the GRRR web­site.

Mean­while many groups across the coun­try are get­ting excit­ed by the GRRR bug and plan­ning to build rafts and get teams togeth­er. If your group has any news, pic­tures of rafts or ideas to share, then send it to the con­stant­ly updat­ed news feed on www.thegrrr.net . For any fur­ther enquiries email: pirates@thegrrr.net

CLIMATE CAMP NEWSPAPER HITS THE STREETS AND FESTIVALS

Last week 30,000 news­pa­pers, beau­ti­ful­ly designed in black and bright cyan and not look­ing any­thing like a bor­ing polit­i­cal paper, came off the print­ing press and began their jour­ney around the coun­try.

Pub­lished to inspire peo­ple to come to the camp it is filled with full pages images of last years events, por­traits of hot cli­mate campers, a stun­ning map of this years camp and texts that describe the pol­i­tics of rad­i­cal cli­mate activism. If you would like copies to hand out in the street, fes­ti­vals, drop off in cafe’s etc. con­tact distribution@climatecamp.org.uk with your address and how many you want, they will be sent out asap or ring Isa 07984158 108 to find out where you can pick some up. The pdf’s is now online here: http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/node/23

Trial Set for McDonalds Protester!

Date for tri­al set for Cam­bridge pro­test­er. Sup­port appre­ci­at­ed!

The cam­paign­er who was arrest­ed under Sec­tion 5 of the Pub­lic Order Act in a McLi­bel anniver­sary protest in Cam­bridge (See http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/06/401637.html for details and video) had his first hear­ing last Thurs­day. A tri­al date of the 15th Sep, 10.00 a.m. at Cam­bridge Mag­is­trates Court at 43 Haux­ton Road, Cam­bridge was set. The court set a full day tri­al for the case.

Date for tri­al set for Cam­bridge pro­test­er. Sup­port appre­ci­at­ed!

The cam­paign­er who was arrest­ed under Sec­tion 5 of the Pub­lic Order Act in a McLi­bel anniver­sary protest in Cam­bridge (See http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/06/401637.html for details and video) had his first hear­ing last Thurs­day. A tri­al date of the 15th Sep, 10.00 a.m. at Cam­bridge Mag­is­trates Court at 43 Haux­ton Road, Cam­bridge was set. The court set a full day tri­al for the case.

The pros­e­cu­tion hand­ed over wit­ness state­ments and said they want­ed to use CCTV from McDon­alds as well as a Youtube video (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ld3I4zVxc2A). Well, have a look and judge for your­self. What an evil dan­ger­ous protest, right?

The cam­paign­er is still await­ing his request for legal aid and so has no rep­re­sen­ta­tion at this time.

Sec­tion 5 of the Pub­lic Order Act basi­cal­ly is words or behav­iour like­ly to cause ‘harass­ment, alarm or dis­tress’ and as we all know hold­ing a plac­ard and express­ing your views in McDon­alds is very harass­ing, alarm­ing and dis­tress­ing and a ter­ri­ble crime!

Tri­al Date:
15th Sep, 10.00 a.m. at Cam­bridge Mag­is­trates Court at 43 Haux­ton Road, Cam­bridge – Sup­port Wel­come!

New Social Centre Opens / Frome Squatters’ Network

6.07.2008
The new Social Cen­tre in Frome, a short ways south of Bath, is host­ing it’s first pub­lic event this Thurs­day — the first meet­ing of the Frome Squat­ters’ Net­work!

The Frome Autonomous Zone

6.07.2008
The new Social Cen­tre in Frome, a short ways south of Bath, is host­ing it’s first pub­lic event this Thurs­day — the first meet­ing of the Frome Squat­ters’ Net­work!

The Frome Autonomous Zone
..is a large house on Som­er­set Road, Frome, which aims to become a ful­ly func­tion­ing Social Cen­tre as soon we get our acts togeth­er. We can offer meet­ing and arts spaces and are work­ing on a music room.

The cen­ter is at 36, Som­er­set Road, near the junc­tion with Wey­mouth Road. Just look for the huge ban­ner and the red and black flag flut­ter­ing proud­ly from the roof!

The Frome Squat­ters’ Net­work
…aims to con­nect with squat­ters and every­one inter­est­ed in squat­ting, in order to cre­ate a social, polit­i­cal and prac­ti­cal net­work for the pro­mo­tion of squat­ting in the Frome area. If you’re in the area and look­ing to squat, drop by — there’s plen­ty of emp­ties to go round!

The meet­ing begins at 7pm.

No Cops — No Journos — No Fash

Arsonist hit car dealership (Athens, 5/7/2008)

A fire erupt­ed at 03:22, inside a car deal­er­ship, on Kala­makiou street, 97, at Alimos, wreck­ing 5 cars and dam­ag­ing 14 oth­ers and also the build­ing.

Source: http://www.naftemporiki.gr/news/static/08/07/05/1535490.htm

A fire erupt­ed at 03:22, inside a car deal­er­ship, on Kala­makiou street, 97, at Alimos, wreck­ing 5 cars and dam­ag­ing 14 oth­ers and also the build­ing.

Source: http://www.naftemporiki.gr/news/static/08/07/05/1535490.htm

250 hens liberated for Sean Kirtley

“With one more com­rade behind bars, we decid­ed to turn to a more direct form of action.

250 hens liberated for Sean Kirtley250 hens liberated for Sean Kirtley“With one more com­rade behind bars, we decid­ed to turn to a more direct form of action. Sean Kirt­ley got over 4 years for edit­ing a web­site. So why both­er doing any­thing legal?

Tak­ing the mes­sage from the gov­ern­ment loud and clear, we took up the tools of lib­er­a­tion dur­ing the night and made our way to an egg bat­tery farm south of York. We ‘broke in’ by open­ing the door to the low­er sec­tion of the farm and climb­ing up to the cages. Over-night we freed 250 hens and took them all to new homes across the coun­try.

This action is ded­i­cat­ed to Sean whose spir­it will still be out­side those bars help­ing ani­mals in the face of gov­ern­ment stitch-ups and a cor­rupt legal sys­tem.

The change is in our hands, the bat­tle has just begun…
The Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Front”

anony­mous com­mu­nique — addi­tion­al pho­tos

Sup­port Sean Kirt­ley