Category: Action Reports

How many cops does it take to police a Tea Party? — Faslane 365

25.03.2007

Fifty peo­ple attend­ed a Tea Par­ty out­side the gates of the Faslane Nuclear Base in Scot­land. Tea was served in chi­na cups and saucers. A table dis­played veg­an scones, cucum­ber sand­wich­es and cakes. Local res­i­dents were invit­ed to share tea with activists and dis­cuss how to dis­arm Britians Tri­dent Weapons of Mass Destruc­tion.

Faslane tea party 1
Faslane tea party 225.03.2007

Fifty peo­ple attend­ed a Tea Par­ty out­side the gates of the Faslane Nuclear Base in Scot­land. Tea was served in chi­na cups and saucers. A table dis­played veg­an scones, cucum­ber sand­wich­es and cakes. Local res­i­dents were invit­ed to share tea with activists and dis­cuss how to dis­arm Britians Tri­dent Weapons of Mass Destruc­tion.

How many cops does it take to police a tea party?…Twenty Six Appar­ent­ly.

A small group of dis­ar­ma­ment activists trav­elled from Brighton to hold a Tea Par­ty at the Faslane Nuclear Base in Scot­land. An invi­ta­tion was sent out to local res­i­dents around the base who have been dis­turbed by the recent string of road block­ades which have been part of the Faslane365 cam­paign*. The Invi­ta­tion read “We would like to cor­dial­ly invite you to a Tea Par­ty full of sophis­ti­ca­tion, poise and wis­dom. We hope to talk with you and test the old eng­lish con­vic­tion that any prob­lem can be sort­ed out with a nice cup of tea”.

The Tea Par­ty was set up on the pave­ment out­side the base and a table dis­played an ele­gant array of veg­an scones, cucum­ber sand­wich­es and cakes. Fifty guests arrived from Glas­gow, Helens­burgh and all over Britain. Bemused passers by wit­nessed per­ma­nent res­i­dents of the Faslane Peace Camp** dressed in their finest gloves and hats, sip­ping tea from chi­na cups and saucers. Old gowns were worn and live gui­tar music enter­tained. The tea par­ty hosts said “We want­ed to counter the bar­bar­i­ty of nuclear weapons and show these uncivi­lased weapons of mass destruc­tion the prop­er way to behave”.

Peace activists and local res­i­dents alike, looked on with laugh­ter as twen­ty six police offi­cers arrived to ‘police’ the event. They formed a line across the gates to the base, cre­at­ing their own block­ade of the pre­vi­ous­ly unob­struct­ed entrance. After hun­gri­ly watch­ing cakes being eat­en, they made the rule that no one could cross the road. The guests con­tin­ued to ignore them and after three hours stood in a line they left.

Fun was had by all.

* Faslane365 is the cam­paign to con­tin­u­ous­ly block­ade the Faslane Nuclear Base for a year. www.faslane365.org
** Faslane Peace Camp has been locat­ed out­side the Sco­tish Nuclear Base for com­ing up to twen­ty five years. It has been wit­ness­ing and cam­paign­ing for peace, mak­ing it the longest stand­ing protest site in the UK.

Developing Social Centre — Sheffield

Any­body want to help devel­op a social cen­tre ..

45 Marl­bor­ough Road, Broomhill S10

We’ve been fix­ing up an old 20 room house in Broomhill.
We’ve housed des­ti­tute state­less, had plumb­ing work­shops, Bike work­shops some art works are appear­ing and Its been used as a film set for inde­pen­dent film.

Sheffield social centre 1
Sheffield social centre 2

Any­body want to help devel­op a social cen­tre ..

45 Marl­bor­ough Road, Broomhill S10

We’ve been fix­ing up an old 20 room house in Broomhill.
We’ve housed des­ti­tute state­less, had plumb­ing work­shops, Bike work­shops some art works are appear­ing and Its been used as a film set for inde­pen­dent film.
There is heat­ing and light­ing .. but NO elec­tric­i­ty.
We have a well stocked kitchen with the alter­na­tive super­mar­kets out the back of Somer­field and Sains­buries eas­i­ly acces­si­ble.

There is a great room down­stairs with an arched win­dow that would make a won­der­ful acoustic gig space.

Inter­net access is avail­able whilst bat­ter­ies stay charged.

If you have any meet­ings or social events that would ben­e­fit by being held in a free non com­mer­cial autonomous space come around and make use of the space. This would help us also main­tain and defend the space.

See you soon.
Fuck cops graphic
squat the world banner 1
»>Amaz­ing!

If I have done my home­work right, this house was used as a meet­ing room and cam­paign­ing cen­tre by local suf­fragettes at the turn of last cen­tu­ry.
Adela Pankhurst — the youngest Pankhurst daugh­ter — lived here 1910–1912.
We must con­tin­ue the rad­i­cal tra­di­tion of this beau­ti­ful house.

Demo, Norwegian Embassy, London over Norwegian involvement in Irish gas pipeline

23.03.2007

Sta­toil, Nor­way’s state owned oil com­pa­ny has inter­ests in a gas pipeline being con­struct­ed in Ire­land. Many locals oppose its con­struc­tion. Their protests against the pipeline have been policed in a heavy hand­ed way. The protest was tak­en to the Nor­we­gian embassy in Lon­don yes­ter­day.

Rossport demo @ Norwegian embassy23.03.2007

Sta­toil, Nor­way’s state owned oil com­pa­ny has inter­ests in a gas pipeline being con­struct­ed in Ire­land. Many locals oppose its con­struc­tion. Their protests against the pipeline have been policed in a heavy hand­ed way. The protest was tak­en to the Nor­we­gian embassy in Lon­don yes­ter­day.

The non-vio­lent protest out­side the Nor­we­gian embassy start­ed at around mid­day and con­tin­ued for more than an hour. Police were called but no arrests made. A sam­ba band played and and one police­man com­plained that the band real­ly need­ed a string sec­tion. It was a good humoured demo, but the point was made. I have per­son­al­ly seen a video of the protests in Ire­land and was shocked at the vio­lent way the police delt with often quite elder­ly pro­test­ers who include local fish­er­men and farm­ers. I saw them being beat­en with bat­tons, pushed and punched.
Press release by demon­stra­tors.
The demon­stra­tion held yes­ter­day 22nd March, 2007, by a nation­wide autonomous col­lec­tive, was high­light­ing Nor­way’s state-owned Sta­toild and gas com­pa­ny’s present involve­ment in the pro­posed gas pipeline adn refin­ery devel­op­ment in the West of Ire­land at Ross­port, coun­ty Mayo.
Sta­toil has an alleged eth­i­cal pol­i­cy, but there are not ethics involved in this devel­op­ment and no local sup­port or con­sul­ta­tion. The com­pa­ny, and thus the Nor­we­gian gov­ern­ment, are pro­mot­ing human rights abus­es by sup­port­ing the Irish State’s pol­i­cy of bru­tal sup­pres­sion of the right to protest using the Irish police (Gar­da), and pol­lut­ing Car­row­more Lake, the local drink­ing water sup­ply.
This group is issu­ing a demand to Nor­way and Sta­toil to stop its part in this devel­op­ment or face a call for a tourist boy­cott of Nor­way and dis­rup­tion of Nor­we­gian trade and com­merce to the UK.

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220307_Nor_Emb — video/x‑ms-wmv 8.4M

From the press release:

“The demon­stra­tion held today, by a nation-wide autonomous col­lec­tive (and one dog), was high­light­ing Nor­way’s state-owned Sta­toil and gas com­pa­ny’s present involve­ment in the West of Ire­land at Ross­port, Coun­ty Mayo.

Sta­toil has an alleged “eth­i­cal pol­i­cy”, but there are no ethics involved in this devel­op­ment and no local sup­port or con­sul­ta­tion. The com­pa­ny, and thus the Nor­we­gian gov­ern­ment, are pro­mot­ing human rights abus­es by sup­port­ing the Irish State’s pol­i­cy of bru­tal sup­pres­sion of the right to protest using the Irish police (Gar­da), and pol­lut­ing Car­row­more Lake, the local drink­ing water sup­ply.
This group is issu­ing a demand to Nor­way and Sta­toil to stop its part in this devel­op­ment or face a call for a tourist boy­cott of Nor­way and dis­rup­tion of Nor­we­gian trade and com­merce to the UK.”
The dog bit was not in the orig­i­nal release, that was my lil’ add on. So, sue me.

As the video shows the ban­ner block­ing the door last­ed as long as it took the ten or more heav­i­ly armed police offi­cers from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Diplo­mat­ic Divi­sion to arrive. They removed the ban­ner imme­di­ate­ly and ush­ered the pro­tes­tors into one spe­cif­ic area of the pave­ment.

Two Irish cit­i­zens then decid­ed to try to apply for a Nor­we­gian pass­port, as Nor­way has prof­it­ed mas­sive­ly from Irish nat­ur­al resources, pro­duc­ing far supe­ri­or health and edu­ca­tion prospects in Nor­way than in Ire­land. So they fig­ured the least Nor­way could give back was a free pass­port and access to their health care.

The rep­re­sen­ta­tive, as the video shows, seemed to find the whole thing fun­ny at first, but watch his smile drop as he is shown print­ed images from the recent mon­th’s of vio­lence the local com­mu­ni­ty of Ross­port have suf­fered at the hands of the Gar­da.

As report­ed in the 6 Novem­ber 2006 release of Gar­da Review, Super­in­ten­dent Joe Gan­non, who is in charge of polic­ing the Shell/Statoil Cor­rib Gas Ter­mi­nal con­struc­tion site, was quot­ed: “There were no arrests. That was part of our strat­e­gy; we did not want to facil­i­tate any­one down there with a route to mar­tyr­dom. There has been that pol­i­cy ever since.”

No arrests. But baton charges, throw­ing old men and women in ten-foot deep trench­es, punch­ing, kick­ing, mar­tial arts tech­niques and dai­ly intim­i­da­tion are accept­able, it seems from this jour­nal­ist’s own expe­ri­ences over the last month.

Take Action Against Illegal Tree Felling in Liverpool!

Langtree McLean are cur­rent­ly cut­ting their way through trees at the for­mer Gar­den Fes­ti­val site in Liv­er­pool, even though they don’t have plan­ning per­mis­sion yet and they don’t own the site yet! If they get their way, the site will be almost com­plete­ly clear-felled!

woodchipper at site in LiverpoolLangtree McLean are cur­rent­ly cut­ting their way through trees at the for­mer Gar­den Fes­ti­val site in Liv­er­pool, even though they don’t have plan­ning per­mis­sion yet and they don’t own the site yet! If they get their way, the site will be almost com­plete­ly clear-felled!

They are destroy­ing semi-mature trees, includ­ing oaks, from the orig­i­nal plant­i­ngs for the Gar­den Fes­ti­val in the ear­ly 1980s. The tree-felling is also dev­as­tat­ing for the birdlife estab­lished on the site, as birds com­mence their breed­ing activ­i­ties at this time of year.

At a meet­ing this Sun­day 26th March, con­cerned peo­ple will be able to dis­cuss resis­tance strate­gies. Meet 2pm at the Old Police Sta­tion on Lark Lane. Vis­it http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?G2M?X=337249&Y=387623&A=Y&Z=1 for direc­tions.

National Grid feeling the pressure as time runs out on giant pipeline project (& video interviews)

Nation­al Grid’s pet pipeline is way behind sched­ule. They are in a pan­icked rush to get it built and avoid hefty fines, but a deter­mined protest cam­paign and the rugged welsh land­scape are gang­ing up on the ill-fat­ed pipe.

Nation­al Grid’s pet pipeline is way behind sched­ule. They are in a pan­icked rush to get it built and avoid hefty fines, but a deter­mined protest cam­paign and the rugged welsh land­scape are gang­ing up on the ill-fat­ed pipe.

Nation­al Grid will be penalised with hefty fines if they don’t com­plete the project on time, so they are pulling out the stops — dou­bling the num­ber of dig­gers they use from 200 to 400 and work­ing in 4 places at the same time.

Phase 1 of the project, from Mil­ford Haven to Ffe­lin­dre, is 90% com­plete, but phase 2, from Ffe­lin­dre to Tir­ley in Glouces­ter­shire, is far from.

“This is one of the biggest [projects] we have ever built,” says Kees Ezin­ga, head of oper­a­tions for con­trac­tor Nacap Land & Marine Joint Ven­ture. (Nation­al Grid have con­tract­ed them to do the actu­al build­ing bit.)
“Last year, we man­aged to [lay] 100 km of pipe in two spreads. But we have four spreads to go and are bring­ing in extra equip­ment,” says Ezin­ga. “Start­ing in April, we only have four months to [fin­ish] this job.”
Full arti­cle at…
http://enr.construction.com/news/transportation/archives/070226b.asp

Clear­ly its time to step up the protests and make it as hard as pos­si­ble for them to work. A con­cert­ed effort now could push the project far beyond the dead­line, cost­ing Nation­al Grid some seri­ous mon­ey and under­min­ing the via­bil­i­ty of the whole thing. Even if they do even­tu­al­ly get the thing built, it would be mas­sive­ly over-bud­get and, as hap­pened with the road-build­ing projects of the 90s, future destruc­tive and car­bon-inten­sive projects could be scrapped.

The protest camp in Bre­con is under imme­di­ate threat of an evic­tion, just when Nation­al Grid are start­ing to pan­ic. They need peo­ple to come and sup­port them, even if you can only come for the day. Its in the Bre­con Bea­cons Nation­al Park, in beau­ti­ful wood­land. You can find the lat­est news, pic­tures, and the site con­tact phone num­ber and direc­tions here:
http://risingtide.org.uk/node/193

There are lots of events com­ing up around the pipeline.

On Sat­ur­day 24th March, there will be a Car­ni­val against the Pipe, start­ing at 2pm in Tre­banos, near Swansea.
Details:
http://www.fightthepipe.co.uk/?m=200703

There will be a bike tour of the pipe, start­ing at the Car­ni­val and going all the way along the length to Glouces­ter­shire. Have a look at…
http://risingtide.org.uk/bristol/bikethepipe
to see the route and read more about it. The bike tour will be stop­ping to spread the word about the dodgy pipeline in the com­mu­ni­ties that it pass­es through.

On 20th-21st of April, Bath Cli­mate Camp, is tar­get­ting the offices of NACAP Joint Ven­ture Land & Marine, who are the con­trac­tors build­ing the pipe for Nation­al Grid…
They are inspired by the Cli­mate Camp at Drax last Sep­tem­ber.
More info : http://risingtide.org.uk/node/199

http://risingtide.org.uk/bristol

=====================================================

With evic­tion at the camp look­ing immi­nent, cam­paign­ers appeal for peo­ple to join them in the fight against the pipe.

Video 76.1MB — video/mp4 76M

Video 138MB — video/x‑ms-wmv 30M

Video also on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNzWVsO-3k4

Christiana callout for mass action

Call­out for activists to come to Chris­tia­nia to fight for the 24 year old Dan­ish squat­ted vil­lage, on Sat­ur­day 31st March.

After 24 years as an alter­na­tive and pro­gres­sive cul­ture cen­tre for the youth of Copen­hagen Ung­domshuset was stormed and evict­ed by the police on March 1st.

Ever since, thou­sands of peo­ple has been tak­en the streets all over the world to protest against the evic­tion and to demand a new place and a future for the cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal activ­i­ties that took place at Jagtvej 69.

Christiania mapCall­out for activists to come to Chris­tia­nia to fight for the 24 year old Dan­ish squat­ted vil­lage, on Sat­ur­day 31st March.

After 24 years as an alter­na­tive and pro­gres­sive cul­ture cen­tre for the youth of Copen­hagen Ung­domshuset was stormed and evict­ed by the police on March 1st.

Ever since, thou­sands of peo­ple has been tak­en the streets all over the world to protest against the evic­tion and to demand a new place and a future for the cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal activ­i­ties that took place at Jagtvej 69.

Ung­domshuset was not the only tar­get of repres­sion. Chris­tia­nia is also fight­ing attempts of nor­mal­iza­tion. We are strug­gling against an attack on every sin­gle one of our free spaces.

This is why we call on all our friends and sup­port­ers for a huge unit­ed protest from Chris­tia­nia Sat­ur­day the 31 of March at 2pm. For more infor­ma­tion check www.ungeren.dk and www.jagtvej69.dk. For con­tact write to
ktownhc@care2.com

We invite every­one to come and fill the streets Copen­hagen with peo­ple to show the politi­cians, that we will not accept them evict­ing and tear­ing down a lib­er­at­ed space with­out offer­ing any­thing in return to the kids and
young­sters of the city. Nor will we accept the stran­gu­la­tion of Chris­tia­nia.

All over Europe our free spaces are threat­ened and attacked by the gov­ern­ments. We will not accept this aggres­sion on our lives and we will not accept the repres­sion against the right to a diver­si­ty of cul­tures.

We demand free space for every­one who refus­es to join the com­mer­cial­ized dull­ness of main­stream soci­ety.

We demand a youth house now and we demand a com­plete stop to the aggres­sion against Chris­tia­nia.

We will nev­er sur­ren­der

The Protest will include grannys kids and bikes. there will be sleep­ing­places for peo­ple from abroud.

pass this mes­sage on to all friends!

greet­ings from the old Youth­house crew, the new youth­house moove­ment in CPH and the defend chris­tia­nia ini­tia­tiv.

http://www.christiania.org/

Geneva Motor Show: all arrested before demo

Paris, 19 March 2007: For the occa­sion of the clo­sure day of the Gene­va Motor Show, some 10 activists from dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions were plan­ning to do a small demo at the inside of the Gene­va motor show, deploy­ing a ban­ner to point out the hyp­ocrite dis­course of the car man­u­fac­tur­ers.

anti-4x4 logo 1Paris, 19 March 2007: For the occa­sion of the clo­sure day of the Gene­va Motor Show, some 10 activists from dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions were plan­ning to do a small demo at the inside of the Gene­va motor show, deploy­ing a ban­ner to point out the hyp­ocrite dis­course of the car man­u­fac­tur­ers.

As a pre­ven­tive mea­sure, Police Detec­tives of the Gene­va Can­ton have tak­en the whole group of activists and the cam­era crews in their pres­ence in cus­tody, and kept them for more than 8 hours for ques­tion­ing.
Jeroen Ver­ho­even, Coor­di­na­tor of the 4x4network and par­tic­i­pat­ing in the action, has been hand-cuffed and tak­en away to the police sta­tion for ques­tion­ing. The activists have been charged of being” the alleged authors of threats alarm­ing the pub­lic”, even if the action did not take place!

In order to avoid any dis­si­dent voice at the motor show, the activists have been phone-tapped, hand-cuffed, strip searched, their DNA and fin­ger­prints have been tak­en, and video mate­r­i­al, lap­tops and mobile phones have been seized by the Gene­va Police. The dis­pro­por­tion­ate char­ac­ter of the mea­sures tak­en to pre­vent a non-vio­lent action, gives rea­son to ques­tion the under­ly­ing motive of this inter­ven­tion of the Gene­va Police.

Jeroen Ver­ho­even strong­ly rejects the meth­ods of the Swiss Police Detec­tives, who use anti-ter­ror­ist laws to intim­i­date and muz­zle anti-4x4ac­tivists and says that: “Appar­ent­ly point­ing out the risks of cli­mate change is equal to alarm­ing the pub­lic and as such a crim­i­nal act under Swiss law”.
Only car man­u­fac­tur­ers seem to have the right to “inform” the gen­er­al pub­lic trough adver­tis­ing for cli­mate killing gas-guz­zlers.

Because Cli­mate Change is indeed a “threat which can alarm the gen­er­al pub­lic”, the Euro­pean groups unit­ed in the 4x4network will con­tin­ue, despite the intim­i­da­tions, to demand bind­ing leg­is­la­tion for the emis­sions of new­ly sold cars, with a tar­get of 120gC02/km by 2012.

Con­tact:
Jeroen Ver­ho­even +32.2 542 61 01 (mobile phone seized…)
http://www.4x4network.org/

Anti-Trident Protest at Atomic Weapons Establishment — 19th March

Almost thir­ty demon­stra­tors braved the chilly ear­ly morn­ing weath­er at the gates of the Atom­ic Weapons Estab­lish­ment in Alder­mas­ton, Berk­shire — Britain’s nuclear bomb fac­to­ry — to protest against Par­lia­men­t’s deci­sion last Wednes­day to renew Tri­dent, and against the con­struc­tion and devel­op­ment work that has been going on all the while at the site, even before any demo­c­ra­t­ic deci­sion has been made on the future of Britain’s nuclear war­heads. Par­tic­u­lar­ly notice­able is the work on the Ori­on laser, which is designed to cir­cum­vent the Com­pre­hen­sive Test Ban Treaty and facil­i­tate the devel­op­ment and test­ing of a new gen­er­a­tion of nuclear war­heads, in con­tra­ven­tion of the Nuclear Non-Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty.

Peace flagsAlmost thir­ty demon­stra­tors braved the chilly ear­ly morn­ing weath­er at the gates of the Atom­ic Weapons Estab­lish­ment in Alder­mas­ton, Berk­shire — Britain’s nuclear bomb fac­to­ry — to protest against Par­lia­men­t’s deci­sion last Wednes­day to renew Tri­dent, and against the con­struc­tion and devel­op­ment work that has been going on all the while at the site, even before any demo­c­ra­t­ic deci­sion has been made on the future of Britain’s nuclear war­heads. Par­tic­u­lar­ly notice­able is the work on the Ori­on laser, which is designed to cir­cum­vent the Com­pre­hen­sive Test Ban Treaty and facil­i­tate the devel­op­ment and test­ing of a new gen­er­a­tion of nuclear war­heads, in con­tra­ven­tion of the Nuclear Non-Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty.

The action was called by Block the Builders, fresh from their suc­cess­ful block­ade of Par­lia­ment Square in Lon­don on Wednes­day. Amongst those present on Mon­day were the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kent Stu­dent CND — mak­ing their debut at Alder­mas­ton; the knit­ting grannies; and Jane from Bris­tol, who went to school local­ly and was cel­e­brat­ing her 85th birth­day; and of course mass­es of police! The sto­ry was cov­ered by the New­bury Week­ly News, who were par­tic­u­lar­ly intrigued by the knit­ting grannies:

http://www.newburytoday.co.uk/News/Article.aspx?articleID=3997

The next planned block­ade and protest at Alder­mas­ton has been called by Tri­dent Ploughshares for Tues­day 10th April (just after East­er week­end). Please come along and bring your mates too, and help keep up the pres­sure!

More details:
http://www.tridentploughshares.org/events.php3#1477
http://www.blockthebuilders.org.uk/index.php

Whitechapel Knees Up against Starbucks

Star­bucks, everyone’s favourite nip­ple-less mer­maid mer­chants, have decid­ed to move into the east end with a new store in Whitechapel. It’s an area with a vibrant com­mu­ni­ty of local cafés and small cof­fee shops, as well as being an area local to many Space Hijack­er agents. As you can prob­a­bly guess, we are less than pleased about our new neigh­bour…

Starbucks knees upStar­bucks, everyone’s favourite nip­ple-less mer­maid mer­chants, have decid­ed to move into the east end with a new store in Whitechapel. It’s an area with a vibrant com­mu­ni­ty of local cafés and small cof­fee shops, as well as being an area local to many Space Hijack­er agents. As you can prob­a­bly guess, we are less than pleased about our new neigh­bour…

We are wor­ried about an oncom­ing bland­ing of local cul­ture, as oth­er multi­na­tion­al chains fol­low Star­bucks into the area and attempt to gen­tri­fy it with their bland cor­po­rate décor, homoge­nous facades and taste­less prod­ucts. In defence of our area, and to show off the love­ly cul­ture we have, we are putting on a tea par­ty out­side the new Star­bucks!

We will be set­ting up a stall and giv­ing out free fair trade teas, home made sand­wich­es, and all man­ner of oth­er good­ies to our neigh­bours, in an attempt to show what the area will be miss­ing if Star­bucks and their ilk are allowed to set­tle in.

Bring along tea, bis­cuits, home-made cakes, jams, and scones to share. Bring your din­ing room fur­ni­ture out into the street, bring bunting, music and of course bring friends.

1pm
Sat 24th March
Out­side the new Star­bucks
Whitechapel High St
Lon­don

Oppo­site Altab Ali Park
Tube — Aldgate east or Whitechapel
Bus – 25, 205, 106 or 254

http://www.spacehijackers.org