Category: Action Reports

Bath Climate Camp Meeting (15.3) & Info

The next Bath Cli­mate Camp meet­ing will be this Thurs­day (the 15th) at 7.30 down­stairs in the Hob­gob­lin, 47 James’s Parade, Cen­tral Bath

At the last meet­ing, we decid­ed on the fol­low­ing actions/ideas

The next Bath Cli­mate Camp meet­ing will be this Thurs­day (the 15th) at 7.30 down­stairs in the Hob­gob­lin, 47 James’s Parade, Cen­tral Bath

At the last meet­ing, we decid­ed on the fol­low­ing actions/ideas
*The camp will be set up on the after­noon of Thurs­day the 19th of April (vol­un­teers need­ed, please e‑mail if you’re up for help­ing)
* Fri­day, all day, Blockade/protest/autonomous actions in and around Land and Marine HQ (the com­pa­ny build­ing the Welsh pipeline)
*Sat­ur­day — ‘Par­ty against Petrol’ — protest/action/party at rel­e­vant places througout Bath
*We decid­ed on plen­ty of oth­er things, such as hold­ing work­shops, kids activ­i­ties, evening enter­tain­ment and a camp kitchen, but we still need more ideas, enthu­si­asm and bod­ies to make the camp a suc­cess.
For any enquiries, or to be sent posters/booklets/leaflets etc, or to be kept in touch about the camp, please e‑mail bathclimatecamp@yahoo.co.uk

Hap­py camp­ing!

bathclimatecamp@yahoo.co.uk

First Aldermaston SOCPA arrest on run-up to Trident vote

11.03.2007
At the start of the week that sees a vote on Tri­dent replace­ment (14 March), Juli­et McBride from Alder­mas­ton Wom­en’s Peace Camp was arrest­ed after spend­ing over two hours on a high secu­ri­ty fence sur­round­ing the new Ori­on laser at the Atom­ic Weapons Estab­lish­ment, Alder­mas­ton.

Aldermaston Orion fence protest11.03.2007
At the start of the week that sees a vote on Tri­dent replace­ment (14 March), Juli­et McBride from Alder­mas­ton Wom­en’s Peace Camp was arrest­ed after spend­ing over two hours on a high secu­ri­ty fence sur­round­ing the new Ori­on laser at the Atom­ic Weapons Estab­lish­ment, Alder­mas­ton.

Juli­et was sub­se­quent­ly held for more than 10 hours and charged with Crim­i­nal Tres­pass under the Seri­ous Organ­ised Crime and Police Act 2005. The Attor­ney Gen­er­al must now decide whether to pro­ceed with a pros­e­cu­tion.

Her action was tak­en just before par­lia­ment pre­pares to vote on the gov­ern­ment motion on Tri­dent Replace­ment: “That this house sup­ports the government’s deci­sion as set out in the white paper The Future of the Unit­ed King­doms Nuclear Deter­rent (CM6994) to take the steps nec­es­sary to main­tain the UK min­i­mum strate­gic nuclear deter­rent beyond the life of the exist­ing sys­tem and to take fur­ther steps towards meet­ing the UK’s dis­ar­ma­ment respon­si­bil­i­ties under Arti­cle VI of the Non-Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty.”

While the White Paper out­lined its belief in the need for imi­nent deci­sions on replac­ing the sub­ma­rine fleet and mis­sile bod­ies, the gov­ern­ment claims that deci­sions on future nuclear war­heads will not be required until the next par­lia­ment. How­ev­er, work is already well under way on the new Ori­on laser — before any deci­sion is made in par­lia­ment, at an esti­mat­ed cost of over £180 mil­lion (see build­ing work in pic­tures). Ori­on will be able to repli­cate the con­di­tions of a nuclear explo­sion, can only be need­ed and intend­ed to design new nuclear war­heads.

For more info con­tact 07887 802879.

A range of groups are organ­is­ing events to say “no” to Tri­dent replace­ment on 14 March. See http://tridentvoteday.org.uk

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

Titnore tree protest camp appeals for help (& audio report)

SPRING is in the air, the birds are singing in the trees and Tit­nore Woods in Sus­sex is once again a love­ly place to be…

With the end of a tough win­ter, the protest camp near Wor­thing has today appealed for help in a spring offen­sive aimed at mak­ing sure it is in fight­ing fit shape as its first anniver­sary and anoth­er rebel sum­mer approach.

SPRING is in the air, the birds are singing in the trees and Tit­nore Woods in Sus­sex is once again a love­ly place to be…

With the end of a tough win­ter, the protest camp near Wor­thing has today appealed for help in a spring offen­sive aimed at mak­ing sure it is in fight­ing fit shape as its first anniver­sary and anoth­er rebel sum­mer approach.

It was set up in May last year to oppose plans for a 875-home estate, access roads and new Tesco mega­s­tore on ancient wood­land and green fields in West Dur­ring­ton.

Top of the wish­list at the moment are pal­lets, long sup­port beams for tree­hous­es, climb­ing equip­ment (not har­ness­es) and climb­ing rope. Also some­one with a van or sim­i­lar vehi­cle who would be able to help clear away rub­bish from the site.

Most of all, of course, there is a plea for more peo­ple! Whether you can spare five min­utes, five hours, five days, five weeks or five months, your phys­i­cal pres­ence in any sup­port­ive capac­i­ty is always appre­ci­at­ed.

Why not get down there your­self and dis­cov­er the kind of envi­ron­men­tal direct action that they thought had gone out of fash­ion after New­bury?

The camp is in woods just north of “Som­er­set Lake”, a fish­ing lake east of Tit­nore Lane. How­ev­er, Tit­nore Lane is very dan­ger­ous for pedes­tri­ans and eas­i­est access is from Ful­beck Avenue, off Tit­nore Way. Take the path at the far east of Ful­beck Avenue, then turn left until there is a large gap in the hedgerow on the left, oppo­site a cleared square of ground on the right, and cross right over to the far side of the field, keep­ing the clump of trees to your left.

It can also be reached via the car park at Tesco’s in Dur­ring­ton, served by the “Pulse” bus route from Wor­thing town cen­tre. Basi­cal­ly head straight on from the entrance to the fields at the back end of the super­mar­ket car park, reach­ing the gap in the hedgerow men­tioned above.

Near­est rail­way sta­tions are Dur­ring­ton and Gor­ing by Sea on the main South Coast line with direct trains from Brighton, Portsmouth and Lon­don.

There is a camp phone — 0780 4245324.

More info: www.eco-action.org/porkbolter
www.protectourwoodland.co.uk

Indy­media Glob­al Report arti­cle on Tit­nore — mp3 5.5M
a piece about the camp made for the Indy­media radio show

News from the rampART

Been a while since there has been an update on the sit­u­a­tion at the ram­pART social cen­tre post­ed on the newswire. Below is the lat­est newslet­ter — reg­isiter as a mem­ber your­self via http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/rampart and get the lat­est news each week.

Been a while since there has been an update on the sit­u­a­tion at the ram­pART social cen­tre post­ed on the newswire. Below is the lat­est newslet­ter — reg­isiter as a mem­ber your­self via http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/rampart and get the lat­est news each week.

EX-VORTEX EVICTED…

We’re sor­ry to hear that the Vor­tex social cen­tre in Stoke New­ing­ton was evict­ed in the ear­ly hours of Tues­day morn­ing. Most of us involved in the ram­pART col­lec­tive have been so caught up in work­ing on the build­ing that we did­n’t get to vis­it the Vor­tex at all.

Despite the Vor­tex being evict­ed they’ll still be meet­ing until they find a new build­ing.

Tonight’s meet­ing (wednes­day 7th March) is at: 7.30pm
Ryan’s Bar (base­ment), 181 Stoke New­ing­ton Church St, N16 0UL
(map: http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?G2M?X=532996&Y=186437&A=Y&Z=1
(yel­low bar on the same side as the vor­tex up at albion road end of church street).

Planned events for Inter­na­tion­al Wom­ens Day have been relo­cat­ed with the help of the local Kur­dish and Turk­ish com­mu­ni­ties. A scaled-down pro­gramme of events on Thurs­day 8th March will now take place in the IMSC com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter on near­by Tyssen Road, N16. Work­shops on DJing, self-defence, assertive­ness, dreams and polit­i­cal music will be run­ning as well as live music and food and refresh­ments.

FIRE EXCITE…

The new fire exit we’ve been work­ing on has now final­ly been com­plet­ed so we are hap­py to ‘reopen’ for larg­er events. How­ev­er, the new fire exit also means the hall is no longer sound proof so expect events to end ear­li­er until we come up with a solu­tion to sound­proof­ing the door while retain­ing it’s func­tion as an emer­gency exit.

FIRE ENTER…

This fri­day we have the fire inspec­tion so wish us luck. We think the place is pret­ty much as ready is it’s like­ly to get. Thanks to all those who came through with items off the wish list.

RAMPART EVENTS

- TIBETIAN NATIONAL UPRISING PARTY, SATURDAY 10TH

On Sat­ur­day evening we’ve got an after demo event organ­ised by the
Tibetan Youth. It starts at 7pm with films and goes on till 12.

- COMING SOON

* We were going to restart the cin­e­ma nights this Fri­day but con­fu­sion over pos­si­ble relo­ca­tion of an event booked for the Vor­tex means we’ll leave it this time and relaunch in the next cou­ple of weeks. We’d like to hear from you whether we should stick to Thurs­day nights or would you pre­fer Tues­days or per­haps Fri­day nights end­ing in a social, music and refresh­ments?
We intend to try to have a pro­gram arranged a month ahead so please let us know about any films you think should be shown.

* We’d also like to hear from those inter­est­ed in a dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy skill share (prac­ti­cal and dis­cus­sion based work­shop on shoot­ing with a focus on social jus­tice reportage). Please con­tact us to reg­is­ter your inter­est and help us choose a date.

- BOMB THE BEETS

A new Lon­don Food Not Bombs group is now up and run­ning and serv­ing free, hot veg­an food to all who are hun­gry every week in a park in Whitechapel. They are still look­ing for more peo­ple to be involved with cook­ing, skip­ping, or just to come down and sup­port the project, bring­ing food, music, ener­gy etc when­ev­er it takes place. If you would like to be involved in the Food Not Bombs project (see www.foodnotbombs.net for more infor­ma­tion about the idea and the moti­va­tions and prin­ci­ples which guide it), send an email to londonfnb@lists.riseup.net , or just come down to help with cook­ing or the park to help with serv­ing (and eat­ing!) on Sat­ur­days.

They meet mid­day sat­ur­day at the ram­pART then serve food from around 3pm in Altab Ali park on Whitechapel High Street, which is vir­tu­al­ly oppo­site Aldgate East tube sta­tion (and Free­dom Books, the anar­chist book shop). Serv­ing usu­al­ly lasts until about 4.30 then it’s back to ram­pART to wash up. Feel free to bring ban­ners, signs, music, leaflets etc etc, and if you need cook­ing for an event, just send them the details…

— RAMPART REGULARITIES

Remem­ber there is self defense class­es every mon­day evening and sam­ba prac­tice every wednes­day evening except for the third wednes­day of every month when it’s the wom­en’s anar­chist nui­sance cafe.

“YOU ARE ONE OF US”

Also remem­ber that the ram­pART is, for var­i­ous rea­sons, a pri­vate mem­bers club. Mem­ber­ship is free and you can join by sign­ing up to the mail­ing list. Please also famil­iar­ize your­self with the loca­tion of fire exits, fire alarms, extin­guish­ers and first aid kits next time you vis­it.

FINALLE

OH WISHFULL THINKING!

We still need…
a sole­noid valve from a bro­ken wash­ing machine.
a length of hose pipe
some 3/4 inch ply or chip board, at least the size of a door.
some­body to fix the leak­ing toi­let

Stuff we have that you might want…
loads of long pieces of fab­ric includ­ing black stretchy stuff.
lots of dex­ion angle iron piece of var­i­ous lengths.
blue gloss paint

ID-DAY — National Day of Action against ID CARDS 26/3/07

DEFY ID CARDS & THE DATABASE STATE

TAKE BIG BROTHER DOWN

ID-DAY

Is a nation­al day of autonomous action against ID cards and the Data­base state.
Across the coun­try peo­ple will be protest­ing against the open­ing of the new ID ‘enrol­ment’ cen­tres.

DEFY ID CARDS & THE DATABASE STATE

TAKE BIG BROTHER DOWN

ID-DAY

Is a nation­al day of autonomous action against ID cards and the Data­base state.
Across the coun­try peo­ple will be protest­ing against the open­ing of the new ID ‘enrol­ment’ cen­tres.

West Midlands Climate Camp neighbourhood meeting, 14th march

Come and get involved in organ­is­ing the West Mid­lands Neigh­bour­hood for Cli­mate Camp 2007!

There will be a meet­ing next Wednes­day 14th March at the Spot­ted Dog, Alces­ter Street, Dig­beth start­ing at 7.30. to dis­cuss the set­ting up of a West Mid­lands Neigh­bour­hood at Cli­mate Camp 2007. Also sort­ing out trans­port from the West Mid­lands to the next nation­al gathering/planning meet­ing for the camp, which will be in Bris­tol on the 17th and 18th March.

Come and get involved in organ­is­ing the West Mid­lands Neigh­bour­hood for Cli­mate Camp 2007!

There will be a meet­ing next Wednes­day 14th March at the Spot­ted Dog, Alces­ter Street, Dig­beth start­ing at 7.30. to dis­cuss the set­ting up of a West Mid­lands Neigh­bour­hood at Cli­mate Camp 2007. Also sort­ing out trans­port from the West Mid­lands to the next nation­al gathering/planning meet­ing for the camp, which will be in Bris­tol on the 17th and 18th March.

There is now a mailing/discussion list for every­one in the West Mid­lands who is going to or who wants to be involved with the Camp for Cli­mate Action 2007. If you would like to either go to the Cli­mate Camp or be
involved in any of the plan­ning the list home page, where you can sub­scribe, is at http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/wmclimatecamp

http://www.climatecamp.org.uk

Sheffield Rossport Soldarity Action

7.03.2007
Today at 16:00 a peace­ful demon­stra­tion was held at the Shell Garage on Hoyle Street, Netherthor­pe in Sheffield. This demon­stra­tion was an act of sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Ross­port, Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land and the cam­paign Shell­toSea, who are oppos­ing Shells plans to build a poten­tial­ly lethal high pres­sure gas pipe line and refin­ery in a marine spe­cial area of con­ser­va­tion.

Sheffield Rossport Shell solidarity 1
Sheffield Rossport Shell solidarity 27.03.2007
Today at 16:00 a peace­ful demon­stra­tion was held at the Shell Garage on Hoyle Street, Netherthor­pe in Sheffield. This demon­stra­tion was an act of sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Ross­port, Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land and the cam­paign Shell­toSea, who are oppos­ing Shells plans to build a poten­tial­ly lethal high pres­sure gas pipe line and refin­ery in a marine spe­cial area of con­ser­va­tion.

The local peo­ple of Ross­port are suf­fer­ing bul­ly­ing and intim­i­da­tion tac­tics from both Shell and the Irish Gov­ern­ment.

A ban­ner declar­ing
“HANDS OFF ROSSPORT”
“NO PIPELINE”
and “Leave it as it is” writ­ten in Gael­ic, was hung from the garage roof by pirates bear­ing the Irish Tri­colour.

Fliers explain­ing the rea­sons for the action and the dan­gers of Shells pro­posed pipeline were dis­trib­uted to Shells cus­tomers with a request to boy­cott Shell.

For more infor­ma­tion on the local cam­paign please see:

http://shelltosea.com
http://www.indymedia.ie
http://struggle.ws/rsc/

or con­tact 07775752160

Text of Fli­er
===============

Boy­cott Shell

Shell,Statoil and Marathon, sup­port­ed by the Irish gov­ern­ment, wants to build a dan­ger­ous, exper­i­men­tal raw gas pipeline and refin­ery in north­west Ire­land. But they are being stopped…

* Health and safe­ty

The pipeline, at 5 times the usu­al pres­sure, would be built over unsta­ble bog­land, with a his­to­ry of land­slides and in very close prox­im­i­ty to peo­ple’s homes/ It would be 70m from the near­est home, 30m from a pub­lic house and 3 fam­i­lies would have to cross the pipeline every day to leave their hous­es. A recent inde­pen­dent safe­ty analy­sis by US based pipeline con­sul­tants found: “The Cor­rib pipeline is not a ‘nor­mal’ pipeline, giv­en its poten­tial to oper­ate under exot­i­cal­ly high pres­sures adn because of unknown gas com­po­si­tions asso­ci­at­ed with gas field pro­duc­tion. This can seri­ous­ly increase the like­li­hood of pipeline fail­ure.” The safe­ty analy­sis said: “pipeline rout­ing should be at least 200m away from dwellings and 400m away from unshel­terd indi­vid­u­als to avoid mas­sive casu­al­ties and/or mul­ti­ple fatal­i­ties.”

* Envi­ron­ment

The refin­ery will have nine chim­neys up to 140ft high releas­ing car­bon diox­ide and methane. 16 hous­es are with­in a 2km radius of the plant. Air and water emis­sions from the refin­ery would pol­lute the local envi­ron­ment. The emis­sions from the pro­posed refin­ery at Ballinboy will pol­lute Car­row­more Lake which
sup­plies the region with water. Broad­haven bay is where Shell plans to pump the waste from the refin­ery: includ­ing lead, nick­el, mag­ne­sium, phos­pho­rus, chromi­um, arsenic, and mer­cury. This bay pro­vides livli­hoods for local com­mu­ni­ties through fish­ing. Shell claim there is “no evi­dence that Broad­haven Bay is of par­tic­u­lar impor­tance to whales and dol­phins”, con­trary to the find­ings of a UCC study(commissioned by Shell). The UCC research team record­ed over 220 sight­ings of sev­en whale and dol­phin species, plus sight­ings of two seal species in Broad­haven Bay and north-west Mayo waters.

* The great gas give­away

The Irish gov­ern­ment has helped Shell in this project. In 1975 for oil and gas exploita­tion in Ire­land the terms were between 8% to 16% pro­duc­tion roy­al­ties to the gov­ern­ment and a 50% tax rate. In addi­tion there would be an up to 50% gov­er­ment par­tic­i­pa­tion in the exploita­tion of any find, as the estab­lish­ment of a gov­ern­ment ener­gy com­pa­ny was planned. More­over gas was sold to gov­ern­ment com­pa­nies at reduced bulk dis­count. Suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments between 1985 and 1992 whit­tled this away to a sit­u­a­tion where there are no roy­al­ties, no gov­ern­ment par­tic­i­pa­tion, and a 25% tax rate. Fur­ther­more there is a 100% tax write-off mean­ing multi­na­tion­als can count their pro­duc­tion, devel­op­ment and explo­ration costs as ‘tax’ and hence pay less tax, or even con­ceiv­ably no tax. Laws were changed to allow Shell to use pri­vate land through a Com­pul­so­ry Aqui­si­tion Order. Gov­ern­ment owned forestry was sold to Shell for the refin­ery site.

Essen­tial­ly this is a great gas give­away, while under­fund­ed pub­lic ser­vices go down the tube. The pri­vati­sa­tion of nat­ur­al resources is no aber­ra­tion, when the same is planned for An Post, Dublin Bus, and Irish Rail, with inevitable impact on jobs and ser­vices; indeed the down­grad­ing of the pub­lic health ser­vice is to the advan­tage of the pri­vate sec­tor. Big busi­ness enjoys very low tax rates and the super-rich ben­e­fit from tax eva­sion amnesties, while more than 85% of income tax is paid for by PAYE work­ers.

GM Potatoes to be grown in Cambridge — campaign meeting, 13th March

The Ger­man multi­na­tion­al chem­i­cal com­pa­ny, BASF, has been grant­ed per­mis­sion to plant genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied pota­toes at NIAB in Cam­bridge from the end of this month.

BASF were forced to pull out of these exact same trails in Ire­land last year because they could/would not com­ply with con­di­tions imposed by the Irish Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency. Clear­ly the safe­ty rules being set by the British gov­ern­ment are suf­fi­cient­ly lax so as not to incon­ve­nience the com­pa­ny. No such crop trails have tak­en place in this coun­try in the last three years, after mas­sive pub­lic pres­sure forced the gov­ern­ment and the com­pa­nies involved in the tech­nol­o­gy to back down.

The Ger­man multi­na­tion­al chem­i­cal com­pa­ny, BASF, has been grant­ed per­mis­sion to plant genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied pota­toes at NIAB in Cam­bridge from the end of this month.

BASF were forced to pull out of these exact same trails in Ire­land last year because they could/would not com­ply with con­di­tions imposed by the Irish Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency. Clear­ly the safe­ty rules being set by the British gov­ern­ment are suf­fi­cient­ly lax so as not to incon­ve­nience the com­pa­ny. No such crop trails have tak­en place in this coun­try in the last three years, after mas­sive pub­lic pres­sure forced the gov­ern­ment and the com­pa­nies involved in the tech­nol­o­gy to back down.

You could have been for­giv­en for think­ing that that argu­ment was over and the anti-GM bat­tle won…but you would be wrong…

If you are con­cerned about the return of GM exper­i­men­ta­tion right here on our doorstep, come along to a meet­ing to dis­cuss how we can resist it. The meet­ing will take place at 3 Fletch­ers Ter­race (off Mill Road) at 7:30 next Tues­day (13th of March) and is open to every­one.

Map to Fletch­ers Ter­race — http://tinyurl.com/2n67hy

Bel­low are some resources that give some inter­est­ing back­ground infor­ma­tion about GM in gen­er­al and the pro­posed trails here in Cam­bridge in par­tic­u­lar.

An arti­cle in The Ecol­gist, 22 Sep­tem­ber 2006
http://www.theecologist.org/archive_detail.asp?content_id=612

Whole load of GM info and links
http://www.munlochygmvigil.org.uk/uk_2006.htm#Anchor-GM-49575

Friends of the Earth Press Release on the GM pota­to issue
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/uk_government_urged_to_rej_30112006.html

WATCH THIS SPACE FOR FURTHER UPDATES ON THE CAMPAIGN…

Call for workshops at the Earth First! Summer Gathering 2007

This year’s gath­er­ing is from 18 — 22 July in Nor­folk, near a main­line rail­way sta­tion.

The focus is on prac­ti­cal skills, but there will also be many of the reg­u­lar diverse and inter­est­ing work­shops.

EF! summer gathering 2007 logoThis year’s gath­er­ing is from 18 — 22 July in Nor­folk, near a main­line rail­way sta­tion.

The focus is on prac­ti­cal skills, but there will also be many of the reg­u­lar diverse and inter­est­ing work­shops.

The idea is to have mul­ti­ple work­shop ses­sions, e.g. four two-hour slots spread over four days build­ing up skills in a par­tic­u­lar area, so peo­ple can learn the basic skills to actu­al­ly do the job at oth­er mobil­i­sa­tions, events like the cli­mate camp — or wher­ev­er. For exam­ple plumb­ing, elec­tri­cal skills, medics…and what­ev­er else peo­ple want to do… It’s not just about the prac­ti­cal skills but also about get­ting to know each oth­er and start­ing to work togeth­er.

If you would like to offer a work­shop please write to:
martinshaw64@riseup.net

Thanks — the EF! sum­mer gath­er­ing col­lect­ing
Gen­er­al con­tact details etc at http://www.earthfirstgathering.org.uk/

please for­ward to peo­ple you think would be inter­est­ed.