Category: Action Reports

Support Sarah Whitehead

Sarah White­head is a com­mit­ted veg­an activist who has ded­i­cat­ed her life to sav­ing ani­mals and help­ing peo­ple. She worked tire­less­ly as a nurse whilst res­cu­ing and rehom­ing abused and neglect­ed ani­mals, as well as cam­paign­ing against the noto­ri­ous Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences.

Sarah WhiteheadSarah White­head is a com­mit­ted veg­an activist who has ded­i­cat­ed her life to sav­ing ani­mals and help­ing peo­ple. She worked tire­less­ly as a nurse whilst res­cu­ing and rehom­ing abused and neglect­ed ani­mals, as well as cam­paign­ing against the noto­ri­ous Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. She is not some­one to sit back and let ani­mals be tor­tured and abused, she stands up and fights wher­ev­er she sees injus­tice and nev­er puts her­self first.

Sarah had been informed about an abused bea­gle. It was liv­ing out­side in a wood­en cage, and was muz­zled at all times except for when it got to eat. The dog was made to wear an elec­tric shock col­lar and the neigh­bours informed Sarah that they had wit­nessed beat­ings from its own­ers. The neigh­bours had also heard the dog scream­ing on many occa­sions.

The RSPCA had been called numer­ous times, but they failed to help this dog and left it with own­ers who had on occa­sions tied it to a radi­a­tor.

All avenues had been explored in try­ing to lift this ani­mal from hell. The RSPCA, despite numer­ous com­plaints and vis­its to the own­ers, did noth­ing; even the police had been called by neigh­bours, but they just told them to call the RSPCA.

What else was Sarah to do, but res­cue the bea­gle her­self? How else could this bea­gle be saved? Know­ing how much it was suf­fer­ing, could any­one just leave this bea­gle to live in pain?

Sarah was already on a sus­pend­ed sen­tence for res­cu­ing ani­mals from a noto­ri­ous pup­py farmer in West Sus­sex, which meant that if she re-offend­ed with­in two years she would be sent to prison for that “crime”. Even know­ing this risk to her free­dom, Sarah put the dog’s life and well-being first and lift­ed him to free­dom.

Unknown to Sarah she was under police sur­veil­lance dur­ing the res­cue as part of Oper­a­tion Achilles and the cam­paign against Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. Police fol­lowed her and watched her res­cue the bea­gle, and then watched her take the dog to its sec­ond stage of its jour­ney to it’s new home.

How­ev­er, once the bea­gle was hand­ed over, instead of fol­low­ing the bea­gle in order to return it to its own­er, they car­ried on fol­low­ing Sarah. Luck­i­ly this means that the bea­gle is still safe and liv­ing in a lov­ing home.

Some time lat­er once the police had fin­ished fol­low­ing Sarah around she was arrest­ed, the police weird­ly tried to accuse her of steal­ing the dog so that she could sell it for £500 to raise mon­ey for SHAC (Stop Hunt­ing­don Ani­mal Cru­el­ty) Where this sum of £500 came from is any­one’s guess and it shows how lit­tle the police under­stand the con­cept of ani­mal rights!

Sarah went on tri­al for bur­glary in June 2008. She plead­ed not guilty to the offence as she believed she had not com­mit­ted a crime in res­cu­ing this bea­gle. She told the court she believed she had act­ed rea­son­ably and hon­est and that it was the right thing to do because the police and RSPCA had failed to save this dog. State­ments from the neigh­bours were read in court which described the cru­el­ty to the dog, the beat­ings, and the screams but bizarrely the jury took the view that Sarah should have left the dog where it was and she was found guilty.

The judge sen­tenced Sarah to two years in prison, nine months of this is from the sus­pend­ed sen­tence she was on, and the extra 1 1/3 years is for res­cu­ing the bea­gle.

You can write to Sarah at:

Sarah White­head VM7684
HMP Bronze­field,
Woodthor­pe Road,
Ash­ford,
Mid­dx
TW15 3JZ.
Unit­ed King­dom

Click here for Sarah’s sup­port page

Before going to prison, Sarah cam­paigned for the fol­low­ing groups, so please check out their web­sites:

Stop Hunt­ing­don Ani­mal Cru­el­ty
South­ern Ani­mal Rights Coali­tion
Grey­hound Action
Uncaged
BUAV
Veg­an Pris­on­ers Sup­port Group
Dr Had­wen Trust

ELF target Coca-Cola twice and wild boar freed

In sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Aus­tri­an activists, impris­oned ille­gal­ly by the state, the Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front (ELF) twice this month tar­get­ed Coca-Cola in Mex­i­co for their crimes against the earth and its inhab­i­tants, whilst in Spain, ELF and Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Front activists report­ed that they freed a boar that was await­ing death.

In sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Aus­tri­an activists, impris­oned ille­gal­ly by the state, the Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front (ELF) twice this month tar­get­ed Coca-Cola in Mex­i­co for their crimes against the earth and its inhab­i­tants, whilst in Spain, ELF and Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Front activists report­ed that they freed a boar that was await­ing death.

Report­ed: 28th June

received anony­mous­ly:

“On June 1 the bot­tler and dis­trib­u­tor of the multi­na­tion­al coca cola was attacked in Mex­i­co state; its walls were cov­ered in paint and a large paint­ing at the entrance read, ‘Multi­na­tion­al mur­der­ers;’ the attacks do not stop and will go on increas­ing.

Sol­i­dar­i­ty with pris­on­ers of Aus­tria!
For ani­mal lib­er­a­tion!
For the lib­er­a­tion of the land!
For human lib­er­a­tion!
Sab­o­tage and direct action!

FLT/ELF”

Report­ed: 24th June

trans­la­tion from www.accionvegana.org:

“On thurs­day 12 of june we freed a wild boar in Cac­eres. We opened the fence that kept him encaged. This easy action has giv­en back free­dom to an ani­mal that was wait­ing to be mur­dered by hunters.

We want to show our sol­i­dar­i­ty with our Aus­tri­an com­rades repressed and to every ani­mal lib­er­a­tion activist in jail.

ALF/ELF”

Report­ed: 7th June

anony­mous com­mu­nique (trans­la­tion):

“Coca-Cola, one of the Amer­i­can multi­na­tion­als respon­si­ble for the destruc­tion of our plan­et, com­plic­it in the exploita­tion and theft of water from indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties (Chi­a­pas), gen­er­at­ing human exploita­tion by forc­ing chil­dren to work more than 10 hours a day in their sug­ar­cane crops (El Sal­vador), mas­sive pol­lu­tion of rivers with tox­ic prod­ucts (India), con­trac­tor of para­mil­i­tary groups that killed union work­ers (Colom­bia), financer of death by vol­un­tar­i­ly giv­ing a por­tion of their prof­its to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, racist since the days of Nazi Ger­many, part­ner­ing with large mag­nates and multi­na­tion­als such as Nes­tle, McDon­alds, Chrysler, Tex­a­co, (like­wise) respon­si­ble for glob­al warm­ing, the bru­tal exploita­tion of the land and the food cri­sis afflict­ing the world today, should be a pri­ma­ry objec­tive for all those com­bat­ants who are fight­ing against the many aber­ra­tions and for the lib­er­a­tion of the land, ani­mals and humans, because this glob­al com­pa­ny alone is an exam­ple of the influ­ence of the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem on its own­ers, the extreme abuse of pow­er and the advanc­ing of its glob­al con­trol over many inno­cents.
Hence the Frente de Lib­eración de la Tier­ra has tak­en firm action against this scourge; in the evening of June 5 the walls of the com­pa­ny were splashed with paint with a spe­cial stench, the vehi­cles of the admin­is­tra­tors were like­wise vic­tims of our first but not last attack.
We will return but with even more force.

Ded­i­cat­ed to the fight­ers of Aus­tria = recent­ly impris­oned by the fas­cist state of that coun­try.
For­ward!

..:FLT:.. – Esta­do de Méx­i­co”

See also the pre­vi­ous Mex­i­can ALF/ELF action, click here

coal power station actions in Australia

Yes­ter­day (Fri­day June 27) CIA (Con­cerned, Inde­pen­dent Activists) locked on to and shut down a con­vey­or trans­port­ing coal into Muja pow­er sta­tion in Col­lie. Two activists were arrest­ed.

Muja power station actionYes­ter­day (Fri­day June 27) CIA (Con­cerned, Inde­pen­dent Activists) locked on to and shut down a con­vey­or trans­port­ing coal into Muja pow­er sta­tion in Col­lie. Two activists were arrest­ed.

In the ear­ly hours of this morn­ing a group of cli­mate cam­paign­ers entered the perime­ter of the Muja coal-fired pow­er sta­tion near Col­lie. West­ern Aus­tralia and shut down the con­vey­or belt sup­ply­ing coal into the sta­tion. This is a peace­ful protest against the con­tin­ued use and expan­sion of pol­lut­ing and unsus­tain­able pow­er gen­er­a­tion in West­ern Aus­tralia. One per­son has locked onto the con­vey­or belt used to trans­port coal into the pow­er sta­tion, pre­vent­ing its oper­a­tion and stop­ping the con­vey­or belt sup­ply of coal into the plant. Ben­jamin Cody, a thir­ty year old father of four from Bun­bury said that he was shut­ting down the plant to high­light and protest against gov­ern­ment approval of two new coal-fired pow­er sta­tions and plans for the con­struc­tion of two more. “Each of these will have a life­time of at least thir­ty years, com­mit­ting our­selves and future gen­er­a­tions of West Aus­tralians to dirty, pol­lut­ing and unre­li­able ener­gy until around 2040. The Car­pen­ter and Rudd Gov­ern­ments need to be held account­able, and the tran­si­tion to WA’s dean ener­gy future has to start now,” Mr Cody said. “Gen­er­at­ing elec­tric­i­ty from coal-fired pow­er sta­tions is the dirt­i­est way to pro­duce pow­er on the plan­et Col­lie could be the ‘Sil­i­con Val­ley’ of renew­able ener­gies if the gov­ern­ment were to direct invest­ment into renew­able tech­nol­o­gy. Instead this mon­ey is all being direct­ed towards the coal indus­try”.

Con­cerned Inde­pen­dent Activists (CIA) spokesper­son, Nicholas Mor­gan said, “It is dis­ap­point­ing and frus­trat­ing that short sight­ed politi­cians and vest­ed inter­ests are pre­vent­ing WA from mov­ing for­ward into the renew­able ener­gy indus­try. This is not about tak­ing away jobs, it’s about cre­at­ing more jobs in ener­gy indus­tries that are sus­tain­able and reli­able, such as wind, solar, wave, and geot­her­mal. Cur­rent­ly in Ger­many, there are rough­ly 250,000 jobs in the renew­able ener­gy indus­try which is grow­ing every year,” Mr Mor­gan said,“The world­wide renew­able indus­try is worth over $100 bil­lion and is dou­bling in size every 20 months. Aus­tralia has real inno­v­a­tive strength and could play a big part, with envi­ron­men­tal, employ­ment and oth­er eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits to fol­low. Aus­tralia risks being left behind in the dark ages”.

The action is also tak­ing place in the shad­ow of WA’s gas and ener­gy cri­sis. “It is absolute­ly unac­cept­able that in this day and age the West Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment is still rely­ing on fos­sil fuels for the state’s ener­gy needs” said Mr Mor­gan. “West­ern Aus­trali­a’s ener­gy emer­gency high­lights the need to invest in a range of clean and reli­able resources such as solar and wind. It is a sad joke that the gov­ern­ment is respond­ing to the lack of gas by reopen­ing the states dirt­i­est pow­er sta­tion which was decom­mis­sioned because it used old, pol­lut­ing tech­nol­o­gy”.

This action is part of a grow­ing trend around Aus­tralia of com­mu­ni­ties who are frus­trat­ed with the lack of action being tak­en by gov­ern­ments on cli­mate change. “All over the world peo­ple are reclaim­ing their pow­er and assert­ed their right to live in a world free from dan­ger­ous cli­mate change”.

———-

3rd July 2008 — Cli­mate Camp hails Green­peace action: promis­es more to come…

Organ­is­ers of the Camp for Cli­mate Action have applaud­ed Green­peace for this morn­ing shut­ting down the coun­try’s biggest sin­gle source of car­bon diox­ide, Erar­ing Pow­er Sta­tion, south of New­cas­tle…

Erar­ing pow­er sta­tion is equal first in the dubi­ous hon­our of biggest CO2 emit­ter in Aus­tralia with anoth­er Hunter pow­er sta­tion, Bayswa­ter in Muswell­brook.

Camp spokesper­son, Hol­ly Creenaune, said that direct action against the caus­es of cli­mate change was a rea­son­able response to the inac­tion of Gov­ern­ment on reduc­ing coal depen­dence.

“The longer the Gov­ern­ment pre­var­i­cates on this issue, the more peo­ple will take action them­selves against coal pow­er and exports.”

“Green­peace have tak­en action that any rea­son­able per­son would take in the face of the urgent need to stop emit­ting green­house gas­es and the hes­i­tan­cy of Gov­ern­ment to take lead­er­ship.

“Next week hun­dreds of peo­ple will fol­low their bold lead and take part in the largest sin­gle direct action against the caus­es of cli­mate change that Aus­tralia has ever seen.”

The Camp for Cli­mate Action will cul­mi­nate in a peace­ful direct action on 13th July at the Car­ring­ton coal ter­mi­nal, where hun­dreds of peo­ple will walk onto the coal rail line and stop coal exports in their tracks.

“This is the real­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion: hav­ing wast­ed the last decade doing noth­ing about cli­mate change but car­ry­ing on increas­ing our green­house pol­lu­tion, we are now faced with the need to begin decom­mis­sion­ing pow­er sta­tions and wind­ing back coal exports.”

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion

Hol­ly Creenaune 0417 682 541
Georgina Woods 0438 223 771

Issue Two of the ‘Roadblock Report’ Now Out!

3/7/2008
Issue two of the inde­pen­dent newslet­ter of the I‑69 cam­paign is now out for your down­load­ing, print­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing plea­sure.
You can find both the first and the sec­ond issue on the web­site of Road­block Earth First! http://stopi69.wordpress.com/resources or on the media archive sec­tion of the I‑69 Media Office’s web­site http://i69mediaoffice.wordpress.com/media-archive

3/7/2008
Issue two of the inde­pen­dent newslet­ter of the I‑69 cam­paign is now out for your down­load­ing, print­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing plea­sure.
You can find both the first and the sec­ond issue on the web­site of Road­block Earth First! http://stopi69.wordpress.com/resources or on the media archive sec­tion of the I‑69 Media Office’s web­site http://i69mediaoffice.wordpress.com/media-archive
In this issue:

- let­ter from the edi­tors about media/independent media
‑break­ing news sto­ries about
• the tree sit evic­tion,
• Bloom­ing­ton torch march,
• retal­ia­to­ry actions across Indi­ana,
‑action reports on:
• home demos,
• sol­i­dar­i­ty demos,
‑updates on
• the nature walks on the route,
• the com­mu­ni­ty bar­bq,
‑opin­ion pieces about
• the flood­ing in Indi­ana,
• a response to alle­ga­tions of vio­lence in office demos.
‑I-69 Lis­ten­ing project inter­view
‑Crit­i­cal thought piece on the future of the ‘anti-glob­al­iza­tion move­ment.

The sec­ond issue is for­mat­ted in 8.5”X11”, to be dou­ble sided. Email road­block­re­port (at) yahoo.com if you would like a dif­fer­ent for­mat.

As well, the I‑69 Media Office is announc­ing the launch of its new web­site, i69mediaoffice.wordpress.com . The I‑69 Media Office is an inde­pen­dent clear­ing­house for anti-I-69 infor­ma­tion and action report­ing. Please explore our ‘under con­struc­tion’ web­site for more infor­ma­tion on what we do.

Brighton squatted social centre eviction

88 LONDON ROAD SOCIAL CENTRE EVICTION

88 LONDON ROAD SOCIAL CENTRE EVICTION

At 7am this morn­ing the anar­chist social cen­tre at 88 Lon­don Road, Brighton was forcibly evict­ed, despite resis­tance. The Vic­to­ri­an church had been occu­pied since the Squat­ting Days of Action on the 4th and 5th of April. The space was intialy opened as part of a two day inter­na­tion­al event, com­mit­ted to cre­at­ing autonomous spaces and high­light­ing the impor­tance of squat­ting and glob­al net­work­ing.

Since then, the com­mu­ni­ty at 88 Lon­don Road had suc­ces­sive­ly resist­ed one pri­or evic­tion attempt from police. The space was being used as a social cen­tre for grass­roots move­ments, free cafes, work­shops and a lot of oth­er pos­si­ble projects for the ben­e­fit of the local com­mu­ni­ty.

Two of the occu­p­ing mem­bers of 88 were arrest­ed when they pro­longed the evic­tion by climb­ing to the rafters, clam­ber­ing into a car­go net and hang­ing high above the injus­tice below. The whole evic­tion was over by mid­day and the coun­cil spent the rest of the after­noon board­ing up an amaz­ing space that held so much poten­tial.

we will be back.….…

http://www.myspace.com/88londonroadsquat

Wembley Summer Camp Open: Squat The Land, Smash School Privatisation

Teach­ers, res­i­dents and cam­paign­ers in Wem­b­ley, Brent, North West Lon­don, have re-squat­ted the Wem­b­ley Sports Ground and are call­ing out for peo­ple to join them, squat the land and join the largest protest against

Wembley Tent CityWembley treehouseTeach­ers, res­i­dents and cam­paign­ers in Wem­b­ley, Brent, North West Lon­don, have re-squat­ted the Wem­b­ley Sports Ground and are call­ing out for peo­ple to join them, squat the land and join the largest protest against the pri­vati­sa­tion of the UK edu­ca­tion sys­tem.

Brent local teach­ers, res­i­dents and cam­paign­ers have made a call out for peo­ple to help squat the land at Wem­b­ley Park Sports Ground on Bridge Road, next to Wem­b­ley Park under­ground sta­tion, and join the largest and most promi­nent cam­paign against the accel­er­at­ing pri­vati­sa­tion of the UK edu­ca­tion sys­tem, the brain child of ex-prime min­is­ter Tony Blair.

Peo­ple are asked to join the Tent City Occu­pa­tion or just vis­it, help build net­works, share infor­ma­tion and knowl­edge on non-vio­lent-direct-action, and when the con­struc­tion work­ers arrive, which could be as ear­ly as this week, help in and exe­cute non-vio­lent-direct-action to halt the project.

On 03 June 2008 Brent Town Coun­cil approved the child char­i­ty Ark pro­pos­al to begin the con­struc­tion of the pri­va­tised Wem­b­ley Acad­e­my School.

The meet­ing held by coun­cil heads at Brent Town Hall, descend­ed into farce, as the local com­mu­ni­ty, angry that they were ignored dur­ing all pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions with the coun­cil and Ark, were threat­ened with removal from the plan­ning meet­ing and the Acad­e­my plan­ning appli­ca­tion deci­sion to be made in secret, which would have been an ille­gal move on the part of the coun­cil.

That plan­ning meet­ing approved the tem­po­rary hous­ing of 200 school pupils in huts while the Ark Acad­e­my is built around them over the next two years, putting chil­dren in dan­ger on a con­struc­tion site, cranes over­hang­ing the por­ta­cab­ins and tem­po­rary accom­mo­da­tion, just so the mon­ey flow from UK tax­pay­er to the pri­va­tised school investor, and the prof­it, can start by Sep­tem­ber 2008.

One rea­son the Wem­b­ley Acad­e­my open­ing date was moved for­ward from Sep­tem­ber 2009 to 2008 was because local oppo­si­tion against the Acad­e­my and the pri­vati­sa­tion of UK edu­ca­tion has been so mas­sive in Brent, Ark thought that advanc­ing the school start date would crush the resis­tance.

Con­nec­tions are being made with the Bat­tersea Crane Dis­as­ter Group, the Con­struc­tion Safe­ty Cam­paign and the Pim­li­co school teach­ers who are also fight­ing the pri­vati­sa­tion of their school by ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist, and Tory par­ty fun­der, John Nash and his com­pa­ny Sov­er­eign Cap­i­tal.

Pim­li­co school pupils are already being put at risk, as 1050 chil­dren are being edu­cat­ed while the school is demol­ished around them. Cranes are already over­hang­ing their class rooms and con­struc­tion debris and dust believed to con­tain asbestos is sweep­ing across the play­ground into class­rooms.

But this sit­u­a­tion, autho­rised by local and nation­al gov­ern­ment, will see 200 chil­dren being edu­cat­ed in the mid­dle of a con­struc­tion site. With the cur­rent safe­ty record of UK con­struc­tion sites, it draws seri­ous con­cern for the well­be­ing of the stu­dents.

But anoth­er con­cern is pri­vate invest­ment tak­ing over the UK edu­ca­tion sys­tem, instill­ing their pri­vate, cor­po­rate, and reli­gious indi­vid­ual beliefs in the edu­ca­tion sys­tem.

The Vardy Foun­da­tion, set up by Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist Reg Vardy, already has its hands on sev­er­al UK Acad­e­mies and has since erad­i­cat­ed evo­lu­tion from the schools, teach­ing only cre­ation­ism.

The Wem­b­ley Ark Acad­e­my will be run by french/swiss and mul­ti­mil­lion­aire Arki Bus­son — long-term friend of Tony Blair — who is known to hold what can only be described as strict Catholic beliefs.

Ark is set to run 12 UK Acad­e­my schools, six of which will be opened by Sep­tem­ber 2008.

As con­struc­tion work begins and the resis­tance turns to non-vio­lent-direct-action to halt the project, con­struc­tion could begin as ear­ly as this work, pri­vate secu­ri­ty and police are expect­ed to be employed to force evic­tion on the pro­tes­tors.

The teach­ers, res­i­dents and cam­paign­ers of Brent have asked for all to come, squat the land, save the Wem­b­ley Sports Ground and sur­round­ing green space for the local com­mu­ni­ty and wildlife, and halt the fur­ther gen­tri­fi­ca­tion of Wem­b­ley.

Bring your mum, your broth­er, your dog — squat this land, join the protest, make a stand and to say no to the pri­vati­sa­tion of UK edu­ca­tion. Say no to edu­ca­tion for prof­it. Join the Wem­b­ley Park Tent City Occu­pa­tion.

Make a stand. Say no to pri­va­tised edu­ca­tion. Get on the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Under­ground line to Wem­b­ley Park, bring a tent, bring a friend, and make a stand.

All pho­tos cour­tesy of free­lance jour­nal­ist Jason N. Parkin­son
All Stills © Jason N. Parkin­son 2008 All Rights Reserved

Tent City Occu­pa­tion (see here for con­tact details)

http://www.tentcityoccupation.co.uk/

—-

Pre­vi­ous cov­er­age

Anti-Acad­e­my Teach­ers Take To The Trees

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/09/380945.html

Wem­b­ley Teach­ers Say No To Pri­va­tised School­ing

http://jasonnparkinson.blogspot.com/2008/06/wembley-teachers-say-no-to-privatised.html

200 School Pupils In Huts On A Con­struc­tion Site

http://jasonnparkinson.blogspot.com/2008/06/200-school-pupils-in-huts-on.html

Save Our Schools 22-minute film avail­able on Reel News issue 13

http://www.reelnews.co.uk/

Climate Camp Bike Ride

Peo­ple will be rid­ing to the cli­mate camp, start­ing from Glas­gow, descend­ing souther­ly pick­ing up thou­sands en route.

The final leg, Lon­don to Kingsnorth is on sun­day 3 August meet­ing under Water­loo bridge (south­side) at 9am
For more info on the route and how to get involved e‑mail climatecampbikeride@lists.riseup.net
Up the the veloru­tion.

Peo­ple will be rid­ing to the cli­mate camp, start­ing from Glas­gow, descend­ing souther­ly pick­ing up thou­sands en route.

The final leg, Lon­don to Kingsnorth is on sun­day 3 August meet­ing under Water­loo bridge (south­side) at 9am
For more info on the route and how to get involved e‑mail climatecampbikeride@lists.riseup.net
Up the the veloru­tion.

Coal Gets Left In The Ground A Bit Longer

Activists occu­py­ing Bodge House / Lodge House / Prospect Farm (all the same place) to obstruct its destruc­tion for open­cast coal extrac­tion had a court vic­to­ry on Mon­day.

Activists occu­py­ing Bodge House / Lodge House / Prospect Farm (all the same place) to obstruct its destruc­tion for open­cast coal extrac­tion had a court vic­to­ry on Mon­day.

Har­worth Estates (Agri­cul­tur­al Land) Lim­it­ed, the new green­wash name for the out­fit for­mer­ly known as Har­worth Min­ing Inter­na­tion­al Lim­it­ed were sent pack­ing by the judge with a flea in their ear. They could­n’t prove they actu­al­ly owned the place or had prop­er­ly end­ed the farmer’s ten­an­cy. If they do the all home­work set by the judge prop­er­ly, they’ll be allowed to try again on 18th July.

Mean­time, the occu­pa­tion goes on.

pre-Climate Camp street medic training — Leeds- 18–20th July 2008

The UK Action Medics are run­ning a 2 1/2 day street medic train­ing in Leeds dur­ing the run-up to Cli­mate Camp. It will be a 20 hour course that will teach you the basics of gen­er­al First Aid, as well as skills to deal with med­ical sit­u­a­tions spe­cif­ic to direct action, such as deal­ing with chem­i­cal weapons and the police.

The UK Action Medics are run­ning a 2 1/2 day street medic train­ing in Leeds dur­ing the run-up to Cli­mate Camp. It will be a 20 hour course that will teach you the basics of gen­er­al First Aid, as well as skills to deal with med­ical sit­u­a­tions spe­cif­ic to direct action, such as deal­ing with chem­i­cal weapons and the police. We will also be offer­ing sec­tions specif­i­cal­ly tai­lored to sit­u­a­tions like­ly to arise at this year’s Cli­mate Camp, such as water safe­ty and pub­lic health. The course will involve sce­nar­ios and hands-on prac­tice and, although we can­not offer you any offi­cial accred­i­ta­tion, the 2 1/2 day train­ing is the min­i­mum stan­dard for mem­ber­ship of the Action Medics, and will equip you for a wide range of sit­u­a­tions, from hypother­mia to baton wounds.

The train­ing will be on the 18th-20th of July, which is Fri­day to Sat­ur­day. There will be 3 or 4 hours on Fri­day evening and two full days on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day. Veg­an food will be pro­vid­ed, as well as accom­mo­da­tion if need­ed — we ask for a dona­tion of £30 to cov­er costs, although this will be less if we can find a venue for free.

The venue is as yet uncon­firmed, but the train­ing will take place in cen­tral Leeds, and we can give you direc­tions from the train/bus sta­tion. It is essen­tial to book a place so we know how many peo­ple are com­ing — please email medics@climatecamp.org.uk to do this, or with any ques­tions.

The Action Medics will be run­ning a medic space at this year’s Cli­mate Camp. Your help would be wel­come – we require that vol­un­teers have either tak­en:

a) our week­end Action Medics train­ing & CPR train­ing
OR
b) First Aid At Work, with expe­ri­ence of sce­nar­ios and CPR train­ing

If you’d like to be involved, please email us at medics@climatecamp.org.uk

www.actionmedics.org.uk

Products expropriation from supermarket (Athens, 1/7/2008)

“Anoth­er nov­el rob­bery of foods was realised at Marinopou­los super­mar­ket on Evdok­sos street, Neos Kos­mos. Unknown per­sons entered the super mar­ket as mere cus­tomers, filled their trol­leys with foods and left the store with­out pay­ing. Con­tin­u­ous­ly, they dis­trib­uted the foods at the peo­ple shoop­ing in a near­by open mar­ket, throw­ing leaflets with slo­gans against cost­li­ness…”

“Anoth­er nov­el rob­bery of foods was realised at Marinopou­los super­mar­ket on Evdok­sos street, Neos Kos­mos. Unknown per­sons entered the super mar­ket as mere cus­tomers, filled their trol­leys with foods and left the store with­out pay­ing. Con­tin­u­ous­ly, they dis­trib­uted the foods at the peo­ple shoop­ing in a near­by open mar­ket, throw­ing leaflets with slo­gans against cost­li­ness…”

Trans­la­tion from: http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=887219

Today around 12:30 an inter­ven­tion was realised at Marinopou­los super­marked on Evdok­sos street, at Neos Kos­mos. The peo­ple’s behav­iour was encour­ag­ing and sup­port­ive. A typ­i­cal exam­ple of that is that dur­ing the expro­pri­a­tion, out­side the store peo­ple gath­ered with their wheel-carts wait­ing for the prod­ucts dis­tri­b­u­tion.

Fol­low­ing is the text dis­trib­uted at the open mar­ket.

Every day that pass­es we expe­ri­ence intense­ly the con­se­quences of the increas­ing raise of prices the cap­i­tal is enforc­ing on soci­ety, the same time that wages and pen­sions remain at the same poor lev­el, lead­ing us below sur­vival lim­its. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, every kind of experts and respon­si­bles, cry out for the con­tin­u­ous raise of prices sug­gest­ing “boy­cottage” styled solu­tions that lead to the illu­sion of a stronge reac­tion to the prob­lem.
We select to react tak­ing prod­ucts of basic needs from shelves of large super­mar­ket chain stores and dis­trib­ut­ing them freely to those that they belong to.
We do not regard our action as rob­bery, because these prod­ucts are the fruits of our own exploit­ed work and belong to all of us.
This action isn’t altru­is­tic, but a sym­bol­ism with the aim to encour­age the social ensem­ble to an uncon­strained, free cir­cu­la­tion of goods and the con­scious eras­ing of the cash desks, over­com­ing the legal lim­i­ta­tions. For the gen­er­al­i­sa­tion of the chal­leng­ing of state and cap­i­tal.
Our choice to act with our faces cov­ered does­n’t mean in any case to fright­en the peo­ple, but to our per­son­al secu­ri­ty against those that think our action is ille­git­i­mate.

Ini­tia­tive of anar­chists for the free cir­cu­la­tion of goods

Note: It is the fourth of this kind of expro­pri­a­tions. Pre­vi­ous­ly, there were Sklaveni­tis on 31/5 and Veropou­los and DIA on 13/6