Category: Squatting / Free Spaces / Protest Sites

Grassroots Gathering 2008, 30th May-1st June, Ireland

Call-out for GG 2008, June Bank Hol­i­day week­end 30/05/08 to 01/06/08, Dublin

Grassroots Gathering 2008 benefit flierCall-out for GG 2008, June Bank Hol­i­day week­end 30/05/08 to 01/06/08, Dublin

The Grass­roots Gath­er­ings – an insti­tu­tion of the move­ment-build­ing seen in Ire­land post-2000 – are com­ing out of hiber­na­tion this June Bank Hol­i­day week­end in Dublin. But it won’t be quite like before…

The sto­ry so far

The upsurge in social move­ment strug­gles around the turn of the cen­tu­ry, from the streets of Seat­tle to the bar­rios of Argenti­na, from the town­ships of South Africa to the docks of South Korea, set the tone for much of the oppo­si­tion­al pol­i­tics seen in the 2000s. Draw­ing clear lines around such moments is always dif­fi­cult: estab­lish­ing when some­thing has peaked, when some­thing has hit a plateau, and when some­thing is in decline. But UK-based col­lec­tive The Free Asso­ci­a­tion cap­tured a wide­spread sense of unease regard­ing this his­tor­i­cal con­tin­u­um in sum­mer 2007 when they observed that “the ‘we are win­ning’ sen­ti­ment of the cou­ple of years fol­low­ing Seat­tle has dis­ap­peared and been replaced by, at best, head-scratch­ing and soul-search­ing. More a case of WTF than WTO…”

The social move­ments land­scape of Ire­land did not go untouched by this chain of glob­al events: we’ve had our WTO moments and more recent­ly our WTFs. From 2001 – a high­point of the inter­na­tion­al wave of strug­gle – a key local sym­bol of glob­al devel­op­ments was the Grass­roots Gath­er­ings, open get-togeth­ers for any­one who want­ed to trans­form Irish soci­ety and the world in rad­i­cal ways – ‘grass­roots’ ways, in their focus on real democ­ra­cy, and bot­tom-up meth­ods, in keep­ing with the ethos of glob­al net­work­ing bod­ies born in the turn of the cen­tu­ry moment such as Peo­ple’s Glob­al Action (PGA). Though nev­er real­ly intend­ed as organ­is­ing plat­forms, the Gath­er­ings made up a key hub of Irish move­ment-build­ing and action: reclaim­ing the streets, build­ing social cen­tres, resist­ing war, envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion and EU neolib­er­al­ism, the net­works formed around the Grass­roots Gath­er­ings took their place in the glob­al upris­ing against cap­i­tal­ism.

But reflect­ing the col­lapse of that ‘we are win­ning’ sen­ti­ment inter­na­tion­al­ly, the Gath­er­ings them­selves had stalled by the end of 2005. It’s not as if this marked the death of Irish anti-cap­i­tal­ism – far too many good things have hap­pened in the mean­time, and too many great peo­ple have got on board for this to be true – but the sense of dis­tance from the heady days of the ear­ly part of the decade has become stronger. Lots has changed since Seat­tle.

So why res­ur­rect the Grass­roots Gath­er­ing in 2008? Falling back on forms that have already bro­ken down, until they break down again, is a self-defeat­ing strat­e­gy. It’s what you might do when you have no strat­e­gy at all. We need a time cap­sule back to 2003 or 2004 – to a hap­py-clap­py lucky dip of the same old work­shops on the same old cam­paigns, skill-shares and alter­na­tive lifestyle ideas – like we need a hole in the col­lec­tive head.

But unless we want to wal­low in cyn­i­cism, and bail out of his­to­ry like so many bro­ken, bit­ter ex-rad­i­cals before us, what we do need — and what is more chal­leng­ing — is to cre­ate a space in which to be crit­i­cal about our mis­takes and hand­i­caps, rather than just look back on them with a bale­ful eye; to learn from them, and to start to look for­wards and out­wards.

Maybe this means admit­ting that the forces set in motion at the turn of the decade have run their course. Maybe it does­n’t. Maybe it means we can’t speak of a ‘move­ment of move­ments’ any­more. Or maybe we can. Maybe it means that the idea of a ‘Grass­roots Gath­er­ing’ is obso­lete.

But one thing it def­i­nite­ly means is this: amid the lega­cy of the turn of the cen­tu­ry moment, a polit­i­cal sen­si­bil­i­ty (and maybe even a crit­i­cal mass of peo­ple) now exists here that did­n’t exist ten years ago: one that’s com­mit­ted to rad­i­cal social change, but not trapped in the dis­mal cul de sacs of Lenin­ist, Stal­in­ist and oth­er dog­mas. What­ev­er else has hap­pened, we have bro­ken through the ‘end of his­to­ry’ of the 1990s. Our local expe­ri­ence of post-2000 anti-cap­i­tal­ism has been idio­syn­crat­ic (com­pared to wider trends, the course of Irish his­to­ry often is); with­out the same move­ment tra­di­tions to draw upon as else­where, we reached our high-points lat­er, and while some oth­er nodes in the glob­al net­work have even col­lapsed, ours has­n’t. Activists from over­seas some­times remark that the move­ment in Ire­land seems fresh and out­ward-look­ing, unbur­dened by much of the bag­gage found else­where.

It may be that our sit­u­a­tion is marked as much by oppor­tu­ni­ty as by defeat. So what are we going to do about it?

What’s hap­pen­ing?

While this Grass­roots Gath­er­ing, like past ones, retains a vital ele­ment of straight ahead ‘pop­u­lar edu­ca­tion’ – with work­shops on themes as diverse as Mil­i­tant Research and Biotech­nol­o­gy – run­ning through it are also some more focused work­shop streams.

One of those ‘streams’ looks out­wards: ‘Rad­i­cal civ­il soci­ety and the state: hopes, fears and expe­ri­ences’ is geared not so much towards the con­cerns of a typ­i­cal Grass­roots Gath­er­ing activist milieu, but towards those of com­mu­ni­ty work­ers and activists, who will join us at this Gath­er­ing, and whose strug­gles against the vicis­si­tudes of Irish soci­ety par­al­lel the goals of the Grass­roots Gath­er­ings.

Anoth­er stream looks for­wards and, to some extent, inwards: ‘Think­ing about the Grass­roots Move­ment’ takes in ses­sions on strat­e­gy; on how to cre­ate move­ment cul­tures of respect and sol­i­dar­i­ty; and on the ques­tion: across our uneven efforts to build net­works region­al­ly, nation­al­ly and glob­al­ly, who are we, any­way, and what is it that unites us?

While some work­shops are yet to be finalised, a list of con­firmed ses­sions is below. Fol­low the links for more infor­ma­tion and blurbs on work­shops and streams. Watch this space for the final timetable, com­ing soon. Fun and games through­out the week­end pro­vid­ed with help from Elec­tron­ic Resis­tance, Seom­ra Spraoi and friends.

Where?

Ground zero for GG 2008 is in the heart of Dublin’s Lib­er­ties: the build­ing’s called Casadh, and it’s at 13, New­mar­ket Square, D8. A map will be post­ed below.

Oth­er stuff

Take a look at our wish-list if you’d like to help out. We might even have a few open­ings for last minute work­shop pro­pos­als, so don’t be shy about drop­ping us a line. We hope to make Grass­roots Gath­er­ing 2008 a child-friend­ly space. We also hope to accom­mo­date any­one with spe­cial needs, so if there’s any­thing we need to know, get in touch as soon as you can.

Con­tact

grassrootsgathering08@gmail.com for all cor­re­spon­dence; or

Tel: +353 85 724 3832

Links

http://www.myspace.com/grassrootsgathering08

http://grassrootsgathering.baywords.com/

Infor­ma­tion on ses­sions and streams at:

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog&pop=1…ate=1

Texts on the his­to­ry of the Grass­roots Gath­er­ings:

Lau­rence Cox, “The Grass­roots Gath­er­ings: Net­work­ing a ‘move­ment of move­ments’ ”.
http://www.wsm.ie/story/2799

Ter­ry, “A short his­to­ry of the Grass­roots Gath­er­ing”
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/73804

Ses­sions

Stream A: Rad­i­cal civ­il soci­ety and the state: hopes, fears and expe­ri­ences

(1) Rad­i­cal civ­il soci­ety and the state: hopes, fears and expe­ri­ences
(2a) What do we know?
(2b) Is what we’re doing work­ing?
(3) Ple­nary

Stream B: Think­ing about the Grass­roots move­ment (big ‘G’)

(1) Catch­ing up on who and what we are
(2) Going places: strat­e­gy and the Grass­roots move­ment
(3) Sol­i­dar­i­ty? Build­ing a healthy move­ment cul­ture

Stream C: Learn­ing about grass­roots move­ments (small ‘g’) – and every­thing else
(1) Time­line of the ‘Move­ment of move­ments’
(2) ABCs of social change
(3) Mil­i­tant Research
(4) What would it mean to win?
(5) Biotech­nolo­gies, food sov­er­eign­ty and cli­mate cri­sis
(6) Migrants in the move­ment
(7) The war against war
(8) Com­mu­ni­ty gar­den wan­der
(9) Social cen­tres net­work update
(10) The ‘gath­er­ing of gath­er­ings’: round-up from a sea­son of meets

More details and read­er at http://www.indymedia.ie/article/87693

Collection of Latest Radical Newsletters & Magazines available to download

All of the fol­low­ing are avail­able from here:

http://www.natterjackpress.co.uk/menu/downloads.php

All of the fol­low­ing are avail­able from here:

http://www.natterjackpress.co.uk/menu/downloads.php

Get down to your local rad­i­cal social cen­tre or book­shop for these newslet­ters — if they aren’t there then print them out / pho­to­copy and take down there. If your near­est social cen­tre isn’t that local, then you now know where you can get all the lat­est pub­li­ca­tions with­out hav­ing to trawl the net for them.

We are always look­ing for newsletters/ zines/ pamphlets/ magazines/ arti­cles to host on our down­load page (prefer­ably as ‘imposed’ ready to be print­ed PDF) email us if you are involved in a pub­li­ca­tion.

* SchNews Week­ly — from their web site

* Rough Music — Issue 18 — May/June 2008 — Local Brighton ‘trou­ble mak­ing, dirt dig­ging’ newslet­ter

* Work­ers Sol­i­dar­i­ty — Issue 103 — May/June 2008 — Irish Anar­chist News

* No Pasaran — Issue 1 — May 2008 — New Antifa UK Anti Fas­cist newslet­ter

* Infos­hop News — Issue 1 — May 2008 — New 40 page roundup of news from the Infos­hop anar­chist news site

* Earth First! Action Update — May 2008 — anoth­er great new issue — a quar­ter­ly roundup of eco­log­i­cal and oth­er direct action from Britain and beyond

* Mesho — April 2008 — spoof news­pa­per made for the inter­na­tion­al days of action for squats and autonomous spaces

* Cor­po­rate Watch — Issue 40 — April/May 2008 — Iraq Inc., Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank, Arab-British cham­ber of Com­merce, West Papua, Review of Klein’s ‘Shock Doc­trine’, Diary + More

* Gagged — Issue 23 — April/May 2008 — South Wales Anar­chist Newslet­ter

* Resis­tance — Issue 102 — April/May 2008 — month­ly newslet­ter of the Anar­chist Fed­er­a­tion UK

* No Bor­ders — Issue 3 — Feb­ru­ary / March 2008 — No Bor­ders UK net­work newslet­ter

* Rup­ture — Feb­ru­ary 2008 — a great zine for and about free par­ties, squats and social cen­tres

* 325 — Issue 5 — Feb­ru­ary 2008 — an insur­gent mag­a­zine of social war and anar­chy

* Class War — Issue 93 — Win­ter 2007 — “Save the Plan­et — Get Rid of the Rich” get­ting straight to the point as always

* Organ­ise! — Issue 69 — Wnter 2007 — mag­a­zine of the Anar­chist Fed­er­a­tion

* Fire to the Pris­ons — Issue 2 — Decem­ber 2007 — Excel­lent new newsletter/magazine 30 pages of insur­rec­tionary anti-pris­on/­dom­i­na­tion news and analy­sis and pris­on­er sup­port infor­ma­tion

* Cross­ing Bor­ders — Issue 4 — Novem­ber 2007 — a newslet­ter on move­ments and strug­gles of migra­tion (this issue focus­ing on the No Bor­ders camp in the Ukraine)

* Front­line — Issue 6 — June/August 2007 — Colom­bia Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cam­paign quar­ter­ly mag­a­zine

* Direct Action — Issue 39 — Sum­mer 2007 — mag of UK anar­cho-syn­da­cal­ist Sol­i­dar­i­ty Fed­er­a­tion

* War­rior Wind — Issue 3 — May 2007 — a newslet­ter in sup­port of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers

* Incen­dio — Issue 1 — Spring 2006 — a bilin­gual (english/spanish) mag­a­zine on Latin Amer­i­can strug­gles and sol­i­dar­i­ty

* Rolling Thun­der — Issue 1 — Sum­mer 2005 — ‘an anar­chist jour­nal of dan­ger­ous liv­ing’

mail@natterjackpress.co.uk
http://www.natterjackpress.co.uk

Camp Titnore birthday protest!

CAMP TITNORE, the eco-protest site near Wor­thing, West Sus­sex, is cel­e­brat­ing its sec­ond birth­day on Sat­ur­day May 24.

To mark the occa­sion, a par­ty is being held on the steps of Wor­thing Town Hall in Chapel Road.

CAMP TITNORE, the eco-protest site near Wor­thing, West Sus­sex, is cel­e­brat­ing its sec­ond birth­day on Sat­ur­day May 24.

To mark the occa­sion, a par­ty is being held on the steps of Wor­thing Town Hall in Chapel Road.

The event has been giv­en added poignan­cy by scenes at the recent elec­tion count, when heavy-hand­ed secu­ri­ty and police threw out Save Tit­nore Woods! can­di­date Dawn Smith and her sup­port­ers.

Cam­paign­ers are invit­ing any­one who sup­ports the camp and the wider cam­paign to turn up in par­ty mode — with hats, bal­loons, cake and music. One said: “The cam­paign has, of course, being going a lot more than two years, but the extra­or­di­nary achieve­ment of those who have kept alive a con­tin­ued pres­ence in the woods since May 2006 just can­not be over-empha­sised.

“Not every one is able to get down to the camp to express their sup­port, so this event in the town cen­tre is a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to show the pro­test­ers you are with them in spir­it.

“Let’s make a real effort to cel­e­brate in style and com­mu­ni­cate our ongo­ing deter­mi­na­tion to see off this threat to Wor­thing’s envi­ron­men­tal her­itage!”

The inci­dent at the count hap­pened on Fri­day May 2, when Dawn, who was stand­ing for the Stop Dur­ring­ton’s Overde­vel­op­ment — Save Tit­nore’s Trees par­ty, in the bor­ough’s North­brook ward, was arrest­ed after a row at Wor­thing’s Assem­bly Hall, appar­ent­ly for “dis­or­der­ly behav­iour”.

She was thrown to the ground by police, held down with her hands behind her back, knelt on and hand­cuffed, then held for four hours at Dur­ring­ton police sta­tion — all for object­ing to her sup­port­ers being vio­lent­ly eject­ed from the count.

Dawn, who has not been charged, explained that there was con­fu­sion over the pass­es for her guests at the count, who includ­ed Tit­nore eco-campers. Names she had reg­is­tered did not seem to have been record­ed, in an offi­cial bun­gle.

Oth­er peo­ple, con­sid­ered of “respectable” appear­ance, were waved through by secu­ri­ty but they demand­ed ID from her sup­port­ers.

While she went to try and sort the error, some of the campers wan­dered through into the hall and were attacked and phys­i­cal­ly thrown out by secu­ri­ty staff in what she called a “com­plete over-reac­tion”.

Dawn object­ed vocal­ly. She said: “I shout­ed at them. The only rea­son they did this was because the guys had dread­locks. I’m not going to stand by and see some­one jumped on.”

Squatters resist Church eviction

12.05.2008

“As we for­give those who tres­pass against us”

As we write a stand­off is play­ing itself out on the streets of Brighton as sweat­ing police and bailiffs scratch their meaty chins and won­der what to do as for the first in years peo­ple are refus­ing to go qui­et­ly from their home. The space was opened up for the Days of Direct action for Autonomous Spaces on the 11th and 12th of April.

12.05.2008

“As we for­give those who tres­pass against us”

As we write a stand­off is play­ing itself out on the streets of Brighton as sweat­ing police and bailiffs scratch their meaty chins and won­der what to do as for the first in years peo­ple are refus­ing to go qui­et­ly from their home. The space was opened up for the Days of Direct action for Autonomous Spaces on the 11th and 12th of April.

For the last month, the derelict aban­doned Methodist church on the Lon­don Road, Brighton has been used for the first time in years by the com­mu­ni­ty as peo­ple have held work­shops, film screen­ings, free food, host­ed bands and opened the large space for free to any event that needs it.….….….… Almost what church halls were sup­posed to do!

How­ev­er, despite attempts to con­tact the Methodists and ask them to hon­or their pledge to sup­port “com­mu­ni­ty devel­op­ment for jus­tice, espe­cial­ly among the most deprived and poor” The space received its court papers on the 2nd of May.

Bar­ri­cad­ed in (actu­al­ly to the point where there are no doors left), “Locked on” and hung with ban­ners police and bailiffs are try­ing with­out suc­cess to gain access. The occu­piers are refus­ing to move. A crowd has gath­ered in sup­port out­side as peo­ple won­der what the pow­ers of law and orders next move will be…supply’s are being hoist­ed in from sup­port­ers by bas­ket as the “siege of Lon­don Road” looks set to continue.….Watch this space for fur­ther reports.

Check out http://www.myspace.com/88londonroadsquat for more details.

Stuck for something to do!? Uninspired & lacklustre..? The all new singing dancing EF!AU is here to lift your spirits

As if putting the boot into the genet­ics indus­try, fill­ing emp­ty spaces with joy & cre­ativ­i­ty, and fool­ing the fos­sil-heads was­n’t enough, peo­ple have been busy wash­ing lumps of coal and cov­er­ing them­selves with paint…we kid you not…all in aid of halt­ing the trash­ing of the plan­et!

Par­lia­ments have been climbed, air­port ter­mi­nals flash(mobb)ed, fields & var­i­ous oth­er sites occu­pied, build­ing stormed & block­ad­ed, pipelines block­ad­ed & destroyed…

EF! crossed tools 1As if putting the boot into the genet­ics indus­try, fill­ing emp­ty spaces with joy & cre­ativ­i­ty, and fool­ing the fos­sil-heads was­n’t enough, peo­ple have been busy wash­ing lumps of coal and cov­er­ing them­selves with paint…we kid you not…all in aid of halt­ing the trash­ing of the plan­et!

Par­lia­ments have been climbed, air­port ter­mi­nals flash(mobb)ed, fields & var­i­ous oth­er sites occu­pied, build­ing stormed & block­ad­ed, pipelines block­ad­ed & destroyed…

Throw into the mix ye oldie Reclaim the Streets, the tried and test­ed eeeeevil Mr/Ms Sab­o­tage, the launch of a new cam­paign ‘Leave it in the Ground’, plus a sum­mer-full of dates, new con­tacts list, it’s a won­der we’ve fit­ted in a brand new sexy EF! sum­mer gath­er­ing poster (front & back). Down­load the lat­est EF!AU to share with oth­ers, sub­scribe or check out some past issues. The next issue will come out at the begin­ning of August.

And of course, this year’s EF! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing (or fol­low the link to the left) is from Wednes­day 27th August to Mon­day 1st Sep­tem­ber 2008, if you want to plot & plan, and laugh & chat with old friends & new.

Phew, what a scorcher!

Tara Vigil Camp Being Evicted

May 08, 2008; 10:30 am
HELP NEEDED NOW

About a half an hour ago 20 Gar­dai, 20 OPW and 10–15 MD Secu­ri­ty descend­ed on the Hill to evict the Vig­il Camp.

May 08, 2008; 10:30 am
HELP NEEDED NOW

About a half an hour ago 20 Gar­dai, 20 OPW and 10–15 MD Secu­ri­ty descend­ed on the Hill to evict the Vig­il Camp.

2 Loader lor­ries and 12 oth­er vehi­cles are cur­rent­ly there . The Tem­ple struc­ture has been dis­man­tled, chopped into pieces and removed. They are now dis­man­tling the A Chairde hut and the Tipi. The sev­en Vig­il Keep­ers on site were not giv­en time to remove their per­son­al items and there is no chan­nel of com­mu­ni­ca­tion open as the work­ers turn their backs. There is no nego­ti­a­tion.

The OPW Archae­ol­o­gist said that she would PERSONALLY put out the fire. She is refer­ring to the Vig­il Fire that has been burn­ing for the Val­ley since Sum­mer Sol­stice June 06.

URGENT

Phone cred­it is urgent­ly need­ed on the Vig­il phone. Also urgent is the need for cam­eras and wit­ness­es to doc­u­ment this. Please do what­ev­er you can NOW. Send cred­it, bring help.

VIGIL PH: 086 1758557
Relat­ed Link: http://www.tarapixie.net

—

Vig­il keeps have man­aged to get some time.

The Gar­dai were not able to quote specif­i­cal­ly any law that would allow them to estin­guish the sacred fire, they have giv­en them a days grace to cer­e­mo­nous­ly remove the fire, but as it is specif­i­cal­ly the Hill of Tara sacred fire, it would have to be moved to anoth­er site on Tara!!!!! This in itself cre­ates a conun­drum.

No method state­ment has been pro­vid­ed.
Peo­ple are now allowed to remove per­son­al pos­ses­sions.
A recog­nised Fer­rovial employ­ee was assist­ing, but was wear­ing MD Secu­ri­ty cloth­ing. THIS IT OBVIOUSLY OUTRAGIOUS.

There is approx 20 vig­il keep­ers suround­ing the Tem­ple Ti-Pi/­Fire adamant that they have the right to con­tin­ue hold­ing the Vig­il.
There is a good atmos­phere, music + drums, kids and laugh­ter.
Ener­gy is high and spir­its are pos­i­tive.

—

3pm update:

The OPW did not pro­duce any paper­work for this evic­tion. Noth­ing signed and dat­ed by a Judge.

The Pro­tec­tors are cur­rent­ly blockad­ing their vehi­cles and not allow­ing them to LEAVE the site. Short­ly after this hap­pened, the OPW agreed to nego­ti­a­tions and are now at a meet­ing with mem­bers of the Vig­il.

—

Vig­il Press Release

Press Release on behalf of the Tara Sol­i­dar­i­ty Vig­il Camp
8th May 2008
At approx 10:30 this morn­ing, the Office of Pub­lic Works launched an evic­tion attempt on the Tara Sol­i­dar­i­ty Vig­il Camp, which is in situ on pub­lic land.

The Vig­il is “a non-hier­ar­chi­cal peo­ples’ sol­i­dar­i­ty vig­il, here in sup­port of local peo­ple and all indi­vid­u­als and groups in the cam­paigns to Save Tara. We are adamant in our non-affil­i­a­tion with any par­tic­u­lar polit­i­cal or reli­gious par­ties but wel­come any friends of Tara to the sacred Vig­il Fire, which has been burn­ing con­tin­u­ous­ly since the Sum­mer Sol­stice, 21st of June 2006”.

This morn­ing, 20 OPW employ­ees, up to 15 MD Secu­ri­ty Work­ers and 20 Gar­daí entered the camp and began to dis­man­tle tem­po­rary struc­tures which are used dai­ly by the Vig­il Keep­ers. The struc­tures include a Tem­ple, sev­er­al dwellings and meet­ing huts. The Tem­ple, which was made of wood, was des­e­crat­ed by chain­saw as the Keep­ers looked on in shock. Their pri­or­i­ty was to hold their ground pro­tect­ing the sacred flame with­in the Vig­il TiPi. To add insult to injury, hid­den with­in the group of MD Secu­ri­ty work­ers, wear­ing their logo was a known Fer­rovial employ­ee.

Fer­rovial Agro­man, a Span­ish com­pa­ny, are one of the com­pa­nies, in con­junc­tion with SIAC, who are con­tract­ed to build the con­tro­ver­sial M3 motor­way. This begs to fur­ther ques­tion the repeat­ed coop­er­a­tion between the Gar­daí and pri­vate secu­ri­ty for SIAC/ Fer­rovial Agro­man, on the back of the demo­li­tion of the Direct Action Protest Camp at Rath Lugh on 17th Apr2008.

The OPW Archae­ol­o­gist onsite stat­ed, and has been record­ed that she would “per­son­al­ly put out the fire”. Both the OPW onsite and the Gar­daí were ini­tial­ly refus­ing to acknowl­edge the sacred­ness of the fire and in doing so are not uphold­ing an individual’s right to reli­gious worship/practice. The OPW have also admit­ted on cam­era that this was not an offi­cial evic­tion, and that they didn’t even have the offi­cial doc­u­men­ta­tion or method state­ment to car­ry out the activ­i­ty.

When nego­ti­a­tions were final­ly pos­si­ble, the Gar­daí were not able to quote specif­i­cal­ly any law that would allow them to extin­guish this sacred fire. Talks since have pro­duce a guar­an­tee from Ms Fion­nu­la Par­nell, Archae­ol­o­gist from the Nation­al Mon­u­ments Depart­ment OPW, in the pres­ence of a Gar­dai, that no attempt to remove the fire, or the TiPi hous­ing it until the out­come of an agreed meet­ing on 19th May 2007. There are approx 30 vig­il keep­ers sur­round­ing the TiPi hous­ing the fire adamant that they have the right to con­tin­ue hold­ing the Vig­il and prac­tice their indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive beliefs. Sev­er­al of these peo­ple were assault­ed by the pri­vate­ly hired secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny in the pres­ence of Gar­dai, and will be fil­ing charges. Oth­er­wise, there is a great atmos­phere, music + drums, children’s laugh­ter in the air. Ener­gy is pos­i­tive and spir­its are high in the Sum­mer sun. This is why the Vig­il has attract­ed vis­i­tors from the 4 cor­ners of the world in the 23months of it’s exis­tence.

Ex-Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has in the past fore­warned of dan­ger­ous trends in mod­ern soci­ety “So much of what is hap­pen­ing with­in our soci­ety and in the wider world is bound up with ques­tions of reli­gion, reli­gious iden­ti­ty and reli­gious belief,” he said, “that gov­ern­ments which refuse or fail to engage with reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties and reli­gious iden­ti­ties risk fail­ing in their fun­da­men­tal duties to their cit­i­zens.” The Irish Con­sti­tu­tion (Arti­cle 8) recog­nis­es that cit­i­zens have a right to “Free­dom of con­science and the free pro­fes­sion and prac­tice of reli­gion are, sub­ject to pub­lic order and moral­i­ty, guar­an­teed to every cit­i­zen, and no law may be made either direct­ly or indi­rect­ly to endow any reli­gion or pro­hib­it or restrict the free exer­cise there­of or give any pref­er­ence, or impose any dis­abil­i­ty on account of reli­gious belief or reli­gious sta­tus”. The Euro­pean Con­sti­tu­tion (Part II — The Char­ter of Fun­da­men­tal Rights of the Union) Arti­cle II-70 recog­nis­es ”Free­dom of thought, con­science and reli­gion: 1) Every­one has the right to free­dom of thought, con­science and reli­gion. This right includes free­dom to change reli­gion or belief and free­dom, either alone or in com­mu­ni­ty with oth­ers and in pub­lic or in pri­vate, to man­i­fest reli­gion or belief, in wor­ship, teach­ing, prac­tice and obser­vance”.

We, the Vig­il Keep­ers, call on Min­is­ter John Gorm­ley, as Min­is­ter of the Depart­ment of the Envi­ron­ment, Her­itage and Local Gov­ern­ment respon­si­ble for State Man­aged Vis­i­tor Ser­vices, to offi­cial­ly acknowl­edge the sacred Vig­il Fire on the Hill of Tara.

For ver­i­fi­ca­tion call Deb­bie Reil­ly on 086 175 8557

Issued on behalf of the Tara Sol­i­dar­i­ty Vig­il
Joanne Cor­bett 086 6030389 www.savetara.com

Save the Spike Surplus Scheme

The Spike Sur­plus Scheme in Peck­ham (Lon­don) is under threat from South­wark Coun­cil which has threat­ened to sell off the land. Please sign the peti­tion and help to save the only free cre­ative space in Peck­ham.

THE Spike Sur­plus Scheme is under seri­ous threat, we need help.

Spike skipThe Spike Sur­plus Scheme in Peck­ham (Lon­don) is under threat from South­wark Coun­cil which has threat­ened to sell off the land. Please sign the peti­tion and help to save the only free cre­ative space in Peck­ham.

THE Spike Sur­plus Scheme is under seri­ous threat, we need help.

For a decade we have pro­vid­ed a cre­ative com­mu­ni­ty space along­side a com­mu­ni­ty gar­den and dojo to aid the community’s well-being. Through­out the years a full range of musi­cal and cre­ative tal­ent has passed through our doors from pup­pet shows to Manu Chao. [Hun­dreds of excit­ing local musi­cian have used Spike facil­i­ties, rais­ing their pro­files through our ser­vices includ­ing advice and prod­uct. Spike has facil­i­tat­ed bands and oth­er users on their roads to suc­cess. Cours­es are free and open to all.]

Please have a look at/sign the “Save The Spike Sur­plus Scheme” peti­tion and for­ward to as many mates as pos­si­ble.

please sign/forward peti­tion at
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/paulk/

Togeth­er we can move for­ward

check out web­site
www.spikesurplus.org

or look us up under Peck­ham (his­to­ry sec­tion) in wikipedia

or myspace
myspace.com/spikesurplus

CLIMATE ACTION NEWS SHEET 79, MAY 2008

CONTENTS:

———————————————-
UPCOMING ACTIONS AND EVENTS:
———————————————-
1) CLIMATE CAMP NATIONAL GATHERING — LONDON, 10–11.5.08
2) SAVING ICELAND IN WALES AND SCOTLAND — 7th & 9th MAY ‘08
3) TURNING UP THE HEAT — LONDON, CARDIFF, MANCHESTER & ONLINE, 8/10/13.5.08
4) BIG BLETHER 6 — GLASGOW, 9–11.5.08

CONTENTS:

———————————————-
UPCOMING ACTIONS AND EVENTS:
———————————————-
1) CLIMATE CAMP NATIONAL GATHERING — LONDON, 10–11.5.08
2) SAVING ICELAND IN WALES AND SCOTLAND — 7th & 9th MAY ‘08
3) TURNING UP THE HEAT — LONDON, CARDIFF, MANCHESTER & ONLINE, 8/10/13.5.08
4) BIG BLETHER 6 — GLASGOW, 9–11.5.08
5) CLIMATE CAMP SPEAKERS’ TRAINING — MANCHESTER, 17.5.08
6) MAKE A NOISE! — LONDON, 31.5.08
7) CLIMATE ACTION WITH A BITE! — NATIONAL, 3.6.08

———————————————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
———————————————-
1) ‘MAYDAY! MAYDAY! INVASION OF THE CLIMATE SNATCHERS’ — INTERNATIONAL, 1.5.08
2) M1 PUBLIC NUISANCE CASE DISMISSED — SHEFFIELD, 1.5.08
3) BANK OF AMERICA, DIRTY COAL PROTEST – CHARLOTTE (USA), 23.4.08
4) GREENWASH GUERILLAS PIE FRIEDMAN — NEW YORK, 21.4.08
5) ECO-RELATED ARSON IN GREECE — 21.4.08
6) KOORAGANG COMMUNITY WALK-IN — AUSTRALIA, 19.4.08
7) BELGIAN AGRO-GIANT BLOCKADE — 17.4.08
8) TARA UPDATES — IRELAND, APRIL 08
9) BIOFOOLS DAY — NATIONWIDE, 15.4.08
10) PLANE STUPID TAKE TO THE ROOF — EDINBURGH, 14.4.08
11) BURN THE MIDNIGHT OIL! — TASMANIA, 14.4.08
12) COLLEGE GROVE UPDATES — AUSTRALIA, APRIL ‘08
13) CHEVRON TOXICO GOLDMAN AWARD — SAN FRANCISCO, 13.4.08
14) SUBVERTISING — NEW GROUP, APRIL ‘08
15) CARBON DETOX — NEW BOOK, APRIL ‘08
16) BRING CLIMATE CRIMINALS TO JUSTICE — WEBSITE, APRIL ‘08
17) PROTEST WATCH — WEBSITE, APRIL ‘08
18) AIRPORTWATCH BULLETIN — APRIL ‘08
19) THE BATH BOMB — APRIL ‘08
20) LONDON CRITICAL MASS, 14TH ANNIVERSARY — APRIL 08

———————————————-
UPCOMING ACTIONS AND EVENTS:
———————————————-
1) CLIMATE CAMP NATIONAL GATHERING — LONDON, 10–11.5.08
Green­peace HQ, Canon­bury Vil­las, Lon­don, N1 2PN. 10am-6pm.
This sum­mer the Camp for Cli­mate Action will pitch its tents out­side Kingsnorth coal-fired pow­er sta­tion in Kent for a week of edu­ca­tion, sus­tain­able liv­ing and direct action. Every­one is invit­ed to the camp, which is now part of an inter­na­tion­al move­ment, with eight cli­mate camps on four con­ti­nents planned for this sum­mer. Togeth­er, we will show that the blind pur­suit of eco­nom­ic growth at any cost is sim­ply insane, and is
to blame for the CO2 emis­sions and ecosys­tem destruc­tion that are caus­ing cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change. Come to the gath­er­ing and get involved!
www.climatecamp.org.uk

2) SAVING ICELAND IN WALES AND SCOTLAND — 7th & 9th MAY 08
Alu­mini­um smelt­ing, even when pow­ered by geot­her­mal ener­gy, emits so much green­house gas emis­sions that Ice­land now pro­duces 18 tons of CO2 equiv­a­lent per capi­ta, com­pared to the Euro­pean aver­age of 11. May 7th at 8pm — Sav­ing Ice­land will give a pre­sen­ta­tion of these issues at The Tree­house, Bak­er St. Aberys­t­wyth, and will describe the inter­na­tion­al direct action cam­paign and plans for this sum­mer’s camp in July. (There will be a num­ber of vehi­cles going from the UK to the camp.) Come and see some of the most stun­ning places of beau­ty on earth, and help pro­tect them with direct action!
May 9th — Veg­an ban­quet with live music, bar and raf­fle! The Ban­quet starts at 7pm at Old St Pauls Hall, Edin­burgh. £5 (unwaged / low income) and £7 (waged). All prof­it will go to fund­ing the Scot­tish Sav­ing Ice­land Col­lec­tive.
Email; savingicelandscotland@riseup.net to reserve your tick­ets!
More info; http://www.savingiceland.org.

3) TURNING UP THE HEAT — LONDON, CARDIFF, MANCHESTER and ONLINE, 8/10/13.5.08
Can big busi­ness save the plan­et? A series of inter­ac­tive debates on cli­mate change and cor­po­rate pow­er. Attend the live events or watch online!
Thurs­day 8 May — Can the free mar­ket stop cli­mate change? 7:30–9:30pm at Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al Human Rights Action Cen­tre 17–25 New Inn Yard Lon­don EC2A 3EA.
10.5.08 – ‘Will bio­fu­els help com­bat cli­mate change?’ 2:30–4:30pm Cardiff Uni­ver­si­ty, Main Build­ing, Shan­don The­atre, Park Place CF10 3AT.
13.5.08 – ‘Does cli­mate change mean we should restrict avi­a­tion & tourism?’ 7:30–9:30pm, Man­ches­ter Con­ven­tion Cen­tre, Cock­croft The­atre, Sackville Street M1 3BB.
To book your free place and to reg­is­ter to watch online please go to http://www.wdm.org.uk/heat or call 020 7820 4900 for more infor­ma­tion.

4) BIG BLETHER 6 — GLASGOW, 9–11.5.08
Talamh Life Cen­tre, Near Glas­gow.
BB is a meet­ing place for activists to bring and share ideas, infor­ma­tion and enthu­si­asm and to cre­ate action out of inspi­ra­tion. Every­one is wel­come to par­tic­i­pate and con­tribute — big or small. There will be work­shops on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day, includ­ing every­thing from cli­mate change issues, cre­ative cam­paign­ing and tran­si­tion towns to nuclear resis­tance, yoga and wood­land crafts. BB is a non-prof­it organ­i­sa­tion and entrance will be by dona­tion. www.bigblether.org.uk

5) CLIMATE CAMP SPEAKERS’ TRAINING — MANCHESTER, 17.5.08
If you would like to talk to peo­ple about the Cli­mate Camp and help inspire hun­dreds of peo­ple to come this year, then this train­ing is for you. The net­work­ing team in con­junc­tion with COIN (http://coinet.org.uk/) and TRAPESE (http://trapese.clearerchannel.org/) have designed a short presentation/ work­shop that any­one can give to groups inter­est­ed in com­ing to the camp.
10:30 till 5:30pm.
Con­tact; speakers@climatecamp.org.uk to book your place.

6) MAKE A NOISE! — LONDON, 31.5.08
An agen­da for colos­sal air­port expan­sion and colos­sal cli­mate change demands a colos­sal response. You’re invit­ed to a car­ni­val on Sat­ur­day 31st May, which will make its way from Hat­ton Cross Tube Sta­tion (Pic­cadil­ly Line, 12pm) to Sip­son, the vil­lage that will be wiped out if Heathrow expan­sion goes ahead. At the end, you’ll have the chance to help form a great big NO! spelt out by human bod­ies. Organ­is­ers hope to set a new world record for the biggest and loud­est NO! in the world.
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/make-a-noise-20080408

7) CLIMATE ACTION WITH A BITE! — NATIONAL, 3.6.08
The food we eat con­tributes up to a third of the emis­sions poi­son­ing the plan­et. It’s time for a detox! Cli­mate action starts on your din­ner plate, at the super­mar­ket, on your allot­ment and in your back yard, at the food dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­tres, down on the farm, in your high street, at the air­port and the lor­ry park. What­ev­er your tastes, there’s some­thing for every­one on this action menu! Local food mar­kets, free food stalls, work­shops and film show­ings, street the­atre, info stalls, protests and direct action, cook­ing demon­stra­tions, allot­ment shows. Get cre­ative and get involved!
This Day of Action on Cli­mate Change has been called by the Net­work for Cli­mate Action in co-oper­a­tion with the Ris­ing Tide Net­work and the Camp for Cli­mate Action. It has been planned to coin­cide with The UN Con­fer­ence on World Food Secu­ri­ty and Cli­mate Change, which runs from 3rd to 5th June.
Please email; foodNO@SPAMdaysofclimateaction.org.uk for fur­ther info.

———————————————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
———————————————-
1) ‘MAYDAY! MAYDAY! INVASION OF THE CLIMATE SNATCHERS’ — INTERNATIONAL,
1.5.08
This day of action tar­get­ed false cap­i­tal­ist solu­tions to cli­mate chaos.
There were actions in Europe and Cana­da:
Leam­ing­ton Ris­ing Tide vis­it­ed the E.on head­quar­ters in Coven­try to expose the truth behind its green­wash and show that car­bon cap­ture is a false solu­tion to the prob­lem of cli­mate change. Peo­ple arrived at 8am to hand fliers to the work­ers, while one pro­test­er occu­pied the roof of the build­ing. The day was a great suc­cess with a fes­tive vibe and no arrests. Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide got togeth­er with Earth First for a Crit­i­cal Mass to Sizewell nuclear pow­er sta­tion to high­light that nuclear is not a solu­tion to cli­mate change. In Lon­don, The Coal Clean­ing Com­pa­ny launched their enter­prise with E.on; accord­ing to the chat­ty clean­ers, “There’s no mess too big! We make coal Fos­sil Fuel Fresh!” In York peo­ple from groups across the city and both Uni­ver­si­ties took part in a ban­ner protest out­side Roy­al Bank of Scot­land’s cen­tral branch in the city. Leaflets were hand­ed out sum­maris­ing RBS’s cli­mate crimes. Mean­while, mem­bers of the Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front and Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Front joined forces to car­ry out an action against unnec­es­sary urban devel­op­ment in the south-west. A JCB and oth­er vehi­cles were dam­aged on a road con­struc­tion site.
Green­wash fly­ers were hand­ed out at the Green Liv­ing Show in Toron­to Cana­da, while in Paris “Biofuel=Danger” was chalked on the side of the French Agri­cul­tur­al Research insti­tute.
http://www.daysofclimateaction.org.uk/
http://risingtide.org.uk/node/276

2) M1 PUBLIC NUISANCE CASE DISMISSED — SHEFFIELD, 1.5.08
Sev­en cli­mate camp activists opposed to the widen­ing of the M1 had the case against them dis­missed from Sheffield Crown Court. The Judge resound­ing­ly reject­ed the pros­e­cu­tion’s argu­ment that the hang­ing of ban­ners over the motor­way could con­sti­tute a pub­lic nui­sance.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20611

3) BANK OF AMERICA, DIRTY COAL PROTEST – CHARLOTTE (USA), 23.4.08
Activists with Asheville Ris­ing Tide, Rain­for­est Action Net­work, and Croatan Earth First! hit the streets of Char­lotte to protest at Bank of America’s annu­al share­hold­ers meet­ing. Bank of Amer­i­ca has seen an esca­lat­ing lev­el of protest in the past year for its fund­ing of the coal indus­try.
http://www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/wordpress/2008/04/23/asheville-rising-tide-confronts-bank-of-america-shareholders/

4) GREENWASH GUERILLAS PIE FRIEDMAN — NEW YORK, 21.4.08
Thomas Fried­man, the author and NY Times colum­nist, was invit­ed to Brown Uni­ver­si­ty to give a keynote speech on Earth Day, before a packed audi­to­ri­um. His talk about how cor­po­rate envi­ron­men­tal­ism can restore Amer­i­ca to its “nat­ur­al place in the glob­al order” was inter­rupt­ed with a sur­prise vis­it from the Green­wash Guer­ril­las. After splat­ter­ing him with two green cream pies they threw leaflets to the crowd explain­ing their action.
http://greenwashguerrillas.wordpress.com/
http://www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/wordpress/2008/04/22/greenwash-guerrillas-pie-thomas-friedman-on-earth-day/

5) ECO-RELATED ARSON IN GREECE — 21.4.08
Eco-relat­ed arson against the min­istry of devel­op­ment offices in Athens was car­ried out in protest against the plans to build new pow­er plants using coal. “When cap­i­tal­ism is self-declared envi­ron­ment friend­ly, it is only to mea­sure and man­age the symp­toms of the cri­sis it pro­duced itself.”
http://directactiongr.blogspot.com/

6) KOORAGANG COMMUNITY WALK-IN — AUSTRALIA, 19.4.08
A crowd of around 50 pro­test­ers walked onto the con­struc­tion site for a new coal ter­mi­nal on Koor­a­gang Island in New­cas­tle. They stopped work at the site in protest against the expan­sion of the coal indus­try and its con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate change. Georgina Woods, spokesper­son for Ris­ing Tide New­cas­tle said, “His­tor­i­cal­ly, ordi­nary peo­ple have achieved extra­or­di­nary things by tak­ing direct action to pre­vent immoral or
unsup­port­able actions…Many of us here today have nev­er done any­thing like this before, but we are doing it now, because we may not get anoth­er chance.” 16 of the pro­test­ers were arrest­ed and charged with tres­pass. More com­mu­ni­ty direct action against coal exports will take place in July this year.
http://www.risingtide.org.au/communitywalkin

7) BELGIAN AGRO-GIANT BLOCKADE — 17.4.08
In Bel­guim thir­ty activists blocked the gates of the Cargill fac­to­ry in Ghent.
This action was tak­en to high­light the agro-giant’s involve­ment in every­thing from bio­fu­els to soy mono­cul­ture, GMO to pesticides…The action began at around 6h30 in the morn­ing and last­ed until after 5 p.m. Dur­ing all that time, not one truck with soy could enter or leave the firm.
http://www.aseed.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=552&Itemid=211

8) TARA UPDATES — IRELAND, APRIL 08
On Thurs­day 17th April there was a peace­ful evic­tion of the Rath Lugh Camp. Four Pro­tec­tors who were on site were told by Gar­dai that they had to gath­er up their belong­ings and leave. This was not done in an aggres­sive man­ner and was com­plied with by the Pro­tec­tors.
http://www.tarapixie.net/
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20557
Tara trip report — A group from Brighton went over to Ire­land recent­ly to sup­port the Irish pro­test­ers attempts to halt the work on the M3 Motor­way.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20502

9) BIOFOOLS DAY — NATIONWIDE, 15.4.08
From April 15th, all petrol fore­courts will be required by law to sell only fuel which is blend­ed with 2.5% agro­fu­el. Cor­po­ra­tions like Tesco are already jump­ing on the new “green” band­wag­on, speak­ing lit­tle of the greater emis­sions, dis­place­ment, pover­ty and hunger that will be left in its path. The only answer to the ener­gy cri­sis is a big shift in the way in which we live, trav­el and eat.
Nation­wide protest includ­ed; Aberdeen, Bolton, Chel­tenham, Leeds, Man­ches­ter, Not­ting­ham, Nor­wich and hun­dreds out­side Down­ing Street in Lon­don.
Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide and Espa­cio Bris­tol-Colom­bia were joined by oth­ers to inform the pub­lic about this issue at Tesco in East­ville, Bris­tol. A group of bio­fu­el activists made a colour­ful ban­ner and fly­er tour of Brighton city cen­tre and Sus­sex Uni­ver­si­ty. Agro-fuels pro­test­ers dis­abled the fuel pumps of two BP fill­ing sta­tions in Edin­burgh. Also in Scot­land, five mem­bers of the Edin­burgh Clown Army were detained for ques­tion­ing at a peace­ful and enter­tain­ing bio­fu­els protest in Brunts­field, and in Glas­gow a bio­fool ban­ner was hung.
http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20546

10) PLANE STUPID TAKES TO THE ROOF — EDINBURGH, 14.4.08
Two envi­ron­men­tal activists from the cli­mate action group, Plane Stu­pid Scot­land, climbed onto the roof of the Scot­tish Par­lia­ment in Edin­burgh to protest against plans for expan­sion of Scot­tish air­ports. They unfurled a large ban­ner which car­ried a par­o­dy of the Trainspot­ting design, “Choose Life.” The ban­ner read, “Plane Stop­ping: Choose the future. Say no to air­port expan­sion.”
http://www.planestupid.com/?q=content/plane-stupid-scotland-occupy-roof-scottish-parliament

11) BURN THE MIDNIGHT OIL! — TASMANIA, 14.4.08
Activists from Still Wild Still Threat­ened have wel­comed a 6 metre tall Peter Gar­rett (MP and singer from Mid­night Oil) to the Upper Flo­ren­tine Val­ley. Activists took the ‘giant Gar­rett’ on a tour of coupe FO42F which is due to be burnt in the imme­di­ate future to high­light their con­cerns about the con­tin­ued log­ging and burn­ing of some of Tasmania’s most car­bon dense forests.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20536

12) COLLEGE GROVE UPDATES — AUSTRALIA, APRIL 08
29 April 2008 — Activists have set up a new camp in the Col­lege Grove for­est area that is due to be destroyed in the next stage of devel­op­ment.
http://www.globalwarmingfg.com/
14 April 2008 — Col­lege Grove pro­test­ers stop machines for the day:
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20535
10 April — Police Vio­lence at treesit action in Col­lege Grove, Bun­bury, Aus­tralia. Two activists were arrest­ed with one tak­en to hos­pi­tal after a force­ful and vio­lent push by WA Police. A spokes for the Com­mu­ni­ty Inde­pen­dent Activists (CIA) group says it was the “most vio­lent dis­play by police in 15 years of for­est activism.”
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20531

13) CHEVRON TOXICO GOLDMAN AWARD — SAN FRANCISCO, 13.4.08
Two cam­paign­ers who have spear­head­ed a land­mark class-action law­suit against Chevron in Ecuador have been award­ed the Gold­man Prize, the world’s most pres­ti­gious envi­ron­men­tal hon­or, for their efforts to make the com­pa­ny clean up what experts believe is the world’s worst oil-relat­ed dis­as­ter. The Gold­man Prize Comes two weeks after these dam­ages were esti­mat­ed at up to $16 Bil­lion. Chevron Tox­i­co is the inter­na­tion­al cam­paign to hold Chevron­Tex­a­co account­able for its tox­ic con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the Ecuado­ri­an Ama­zon.
http://www.amazonwatch.org/

14) SUBVERTISING — NEW GROUP, APRIL ‘08
A new group want to set up a cli­mate-focused nation­al sub­ver­tis­ing net­work where every­one has a role and where peo­ple are well sup­port­ed. If you would like to get involved, see http://www.myspace.com/subvertising

15) CARBON DETOX — NEW BOOK, APRIL ‘08
A new book by George Mar­shall of COIN. Mark Lynas,author of Six Degrees, says:
“Buy this book and thrust it into the hands of some­one who still does­n’t believe in the cli­mate cri­sis. No oth­er book goes fur­ther in address­ing peo­ple’s denial and their resis­tance to change.”
http://www.carbondetox.org/

16) BRING CLIMATE CRIMINALS TO JUSTICE — WEBSITE, APRIL ‘08
A cam­paign to estab­lish a legal process in the UK and abroad to facil­i­tate the crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters and key busi­ness lead­ers whose poli­cies and activ­i­ties con­tribute to the mass loss of life which cli­mate change is cer­tain to now cause.
www.climatecriminals.co.uk

17) PROTEST WATCH — WEBSITE, APRIL ‘08
A new site which aims to become a com­pre­hen­sive resource for any­body inter­est­ed in active­ly protest­ing in the UK.
http://www.protestwatch.org.uk/

18) AIRPORTWATCH BULLETIN — APRIL ‘08
Air­port­Watch updates for April. See;
http://www.aef.org.uk/downloads//AirportWatch_bulletin_April2008.pdf

19) ‘THE BATH BOMB’ — APRIL 08
Anti-copy­right: copy and dis­trib­ute! Issue #9 free/donation. See;
http://www.myspace.com/bathbomb

20) LONDON CRITICAL MASS, 14TH ANNIVERSARY — APRIL ‘08
For ride reports/info. see;
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20584
http://www.criticalmasslondon.org.uk/main.html

———-

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

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

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

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

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

Com­piled and sent out by Ris­ing Tide UK: info at risingtide.org.uk
To receive this News Sheet month­ly, email news-sub­scribe at risingtide.org.uk
with the sub­ject line ‘sub­scribe’ (with­out the quotes).

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

London InterACTIVE diners club / radical assembly — 14th May

This week sees the sec­ond Inter­ac­tive Din­ers Club, an ini­tia­tive relaunched for the 21st cen­tu­ry. Those who expe­ri­enced the orig­i­nal pre Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Act Inter­ac­tive Din­ers Clubs in the ear­ly nineties, the RTS meet­ings of the mid 90’s, or the late 90’s Lon­don Under­ground meet­ings etc. will know what kind of thing to expect.

This week sees the sec­ond Inter­ac­tive Din­ers Club, an ini­tia­tive relaunched for the 21st cen­tu­ry. Those who expe­ri­enced the orig­i­nal pre Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Act Inter­ac­tive Din­ers Clubs in the ear­ly nineties, the RTS meet­ings of the mid 90’s, or the late 90’s Lon­don Under­ground meet­ings etc. will know what kind of thing to expect. The idea is to inspire and re-ener­gise each oth­er, form new links, strength­en old alliances, share skills and resources, raise aware­ness and get peo­ple involved.

This is a social and net­work­ing event for activists and cam­paign­ers in Lon­don (or beyond). It’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty to net­work with oth­er activists, speak about cam­paigns you are involved in and learn about oth­er projects tak­ing place. It takes the form of a go-round where every­body present gets to intro­duce them­selves and the cam­paigns or projects they are involved in. Food is then served and every­one gets to chat, plot and con­spire.

It takes place on WED 14TH MAY, 7pm at the new squat­ted social cen­tre in Shored­itch. The address is 6 Bowl Court, off Plough Yard which is next to the Drunk­en Mon­key at the junc­tion of Great East­ern Street and Shored­itch High Street. Near­est tubes are Old Street and Liv­er­pool Street.

Please bring (veg­an) food to share along with leaflets, fly­ers, posters etc for upcom­ing events.

It is hoped that these assem­blies will hap­pen every month at dif­fer­ent autonomous spaces around Lon­don. Please net­work this wide­ly to make it hap­pen.

Date: 14th May 2008
Time: 7pm
Address: 6 Bowl Court, EC2A 3LJ
Tubes: Old St or Liv­er­pool St

Bath Bomb #10 Out Now

The month­ly out­poured bile of Bath’s ide­al­ists and mis­an­thrope’s reach­es dou­ble fig­ures…

The Bath Bomb
Issue #10
free/donation
May 08

Shock As 200 Shop­pers Freeze Sol­id In Town Cen­tre!

The month­ly out­poured bile of Bath’s ide­al­ists and mis­an­thrope’s reach­es dou­ble fig­ures…

The Bath Bomb
Issue #10
free/donation
May 08

Shock As 200 Shop­pers Freeze Sol­id In Town Cen­tre!

Last week­end saw a break from the banal­i­ty of the famil­iar shop-till-you-drop rou­tine of town cen­tre. A cou­ple of hun­dred peo­ple, using Face­book, organ­ised a flash mob in which peo­ple milling around town would freeze at a giv­en time, and stay that way for five min­utes before, at anoth­er sig­nal, con­tin­u­ing on as nor­mal. Bath Bomb sent a reporter into town to see what the fuss was about, and the results proved pret­ty impres­sive. Two hun­dred peo­ple, frozen in mid sand­wich, con­ver­sa­tion and dance blocked a large area of the city cen­tre while con­fused onlook­ers laughed and spec­u­lat­ed. At one point, a mis­er­able shop­per laden with bag upon bag of dis­pos­able cul­ture walked past moan­ing to her daugh­ter that the frozen mob was ‘prob­a­bly just a bunch of pro­test­ers’. My reac­tion had been that this was more an arty style event than a protest, but the mis­er­able woman strain­ing under tonnes of plas­tic got me think­ing. Whether inten­tion­al­ly or not, this was a protest, and a very mean­ing­ful one. The mes­sage was that town is ours, the streets are our play­ground — the stag­ing ground for fun, adven­ture and friv­o­li­ty. The frozen mass­es briefly wrest­ed town from those neon gods of con­sumerism who would see our
town cen­tre reduced to noth­ing more than a means to get to shops, buy things, then go home again. The freeze event gave us a brief glimpse of how we can trans­form and re-imag­ine our sur­round­ings, turn the banal into the beau­ti­ful and do some­thing with our town more impor­tant, fun and inter­est­ing than more f**king shop­ping! So let’s take a leaf out of the book of our frozen com­rades and start using town as a place for meet­ing, frol­ick­ing, shar­ing and cre­at­ing. Who needs cap­i­tal­ism, when we’ve got imag­i­na­tion?!

The End Of The Begin­ning Of Some­thing Spe­cial In Chip­pen­ham

Remem­ber last month we brought you news of a new squat in Chip­pen­ham? We are sad to report that the build­ing is now back in the hands of its law­ful own­er — a man who has let the place rot while liv­ing miles away for over 25 years. Dur­ing the brief his­to­ry of The 78 as the build­ing became known, it pro­vid­ed a glimpse of what a fair soci­ety could look like. As well as pro­vid­ing a home for some, the space was a com­mu­nal meet­ing place, organ­ic gar­den and a cen­tre of learn­ing, co-oper­a­tion and fun. Before the evic­tion, The 78 was in the process of organ­is­ing gar­den­ing work­shops, a free shop, free child day care for young par­ents and a week­ly veg­an cafe. The build­ing itself was con­sid­er­ably ren­o­vat­ed by the occu­piers and neigh­bours (who were entire­ly sup­port­ive and glad that
space was no longer wast­ed ) agreed that it has nev­er looked nicer! Still, the evic­tion is not the end — every­one who went to the place was inspired by the pas­sion, ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment to equal­i­ty and the envi­ron­ment showed by the occu­piers. Where one lib­er­at­ed space falls, anoth­er springs up and we can’t wait to see what the future holds for Chip­pen­ham. In its short his­to­ry, The 78 suc­ceed­ed in win­ning hearts and minds of peo­ple who would oth­er­wise have neg­a­tive views of squat­ters, rad­i­calised and inspired a com­mu­ni­ty and brought togeth­er strangers who are now friends, com­rades and part­ners in lib­er­a­tion and adven­ture. The 78 is dead, long live The 79!

Top Shop Sweat Shop Stitch Up

A 17-strong coali­tion of stu­dents from Hayesfield Eth­i­cal Group and Bath Uni’s One World Soci­ety, as well as the usu­al rent-a-mob from B.A.N., endured the sun­shine and soul­less con­crete on Wednes­day the 24th April, to demon­strate out­side Top Shop’s use of sweat­shop labour. Indeed, the vast major­i­ty of UK high street fash­ion gets rich from the exploita­tion of des­per­ate work­ers in the glob­al South, but the Arca­dia Group, of
which Top Shop is the lead­ing brand, is high­ly influ­en­tial. Where­as own­er Philip Green made the record books in 2005 for net­ting the biggest share div­i­dend in his­to­ry, $1.2 bil­lion, work­ers in Cam­bo­dia are coerced into invol­un­tary over­time work below any liv­ing wage, suf­fer­ing shock­ing health and safe­ty, physical/verbal abuse from man­age­ment, dai­ly
strip-search­es, and are barred from union­i­sa­tion. Women are often refused employ­ment if preg­nant, and if they do become so, are still forced to do stand­ing work in uncom­fort­able tem­per­a­tures, until they quit. To add insult to injury, work­ers often con­tract blad­der infec­tions from lack of access to drink­ing water or toi­let use. Demon­stra­tors leaflet­ed and held ban­ners air­ing Top­shop’s dirty laun­dry, ask­ing cus­tomers to per­suade their favourite brand to gen­uine­ly change its ways: like it or not, these fash­ion car­tels have the pow­er to change indus­try con­di­tions for bet­ter as well as worse, if only they’d stop spout­ing emp­ty PRomis­es for one sec­ond.

Hair today, gone tomor­row?

I’m not going to make this any more com­pli­cat­ed than it needs to be — for most women to go about their dai­ly lives feel­ing like their nat­ur­al form, their unadul­ter­at­ed bod­ies, are at least wrong, at worst dis­gust­ing, is in itself wrong and dis­gust­ing. It’s not just women, although present­ly they do seem to fare worse, a sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion of us have prob­lems these days feel­ing inad­e­quate and ugly, as if we need to change our appear­ance con­stant­ly, dai­ly, to be accept­able or even to look stun­ning — it is our duty to look as fab­u­lous as we can at what­ev­er cost. You’ve got women in their 60s with design­er vagi­nas match­ing that of a 16 year old, 16 year olds hav­ing cos­met­ic surgery when they’re bare­ly grown yet and 10 year olds being tak­en to salons to have their legs
waxed.

A healthy back­lash is begin­ning to grow. For exam­ple, the live jour­nal site ‘fuck shav­ing’, and on recent body image shows I’ve seen not one, but two women liv­ing their lives per­fect­ly hap­pi­ly, with full on nat­ur­al beards. I am fas­ci­nat­ed — to me, they don’t look ugly, or wrong, or dis­gust­ing. They don’t even look like men. They just look like them­selves. So, I beg of you soci­ety, can’t we just be us? This may seem like a sim­ple thing on paper, but it is a huge step to take (or maybe lots of lit­tle ones.) But it is such a worth­while step to take and I feel the world would be bet­ter off for it, chang­ing many things, not just how we feel about our­selves when we look in the mir­ror. Cause this image stuff ain’t just van­i­ty — it real­ly does deeply affect, and even destroy, lives.

May­day! May­day! The Ducks Are Revolt­ing!

And now for our oblig­a­tory foie gras cam­paign update: we’ve recent­ly heard that good old Christophe at The Pinch, the French restau­rant in St Mar­garet’s Build­ings for­mer­ly known as Le Petit Cochon, has decid­ed to brave the storm of con­tro­ver­sy and put the ‘del­i­ca­cy of despair’ back on the menu. When will they learn? Mean­while, we received this anony­mous report: “In the ear­ly hours of the 2nd May, in anger at Bistro Num­ber 5’s con­tin­ued sale of foie gras, Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Front vol­un­teers d‑locked their front entrance, cost­ing them hours of lost rev­enue for the fol­low­ing day. It’s high time they re-eval­u­at­ed whether prof­it­ing from ani­mal abuse real­ly is good busi­ness!” If you feel moved to let the man­age­ment of either of these out­lets know your feel­ings on force-feed­ing and ani­mal tor­ture, here’s their con­tact details — The Pinch tel:
01225 421251, info@thepinch.biz and Bistro Num­ber 5 tel: 01225 444 499,
fax: 01225318 668 chrome@globalnet.co.uk /ym/Compose?To= chrome@globalnet.co.uk&YY=10755&y5beta=yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b.

And remem­ber, The Bath Bomb in no way con­dones repeat­ed phone calls or threat­en­ing behav­iour, and nei­ther does it con­done spread­ing these com­pa­nies’ details to every spam­mer or junk mail list you can think of.

Gov­ern­ment gets F- As Teach­ers Strike

There were impres­sive march­es and ral­lies in towns and cities across Britain on Thurs­day 24th April. More than 2000 strik­ing teach­ers, lec­tur­ers and civ­il ser­vice work­ers from across Bris­tol, Bath, Glouces­ter­shire and Som­er­set joined a live­ly and noisy march which brought traf­fic to a halt in Bris­tol. This march was sup­port­ed by mem­bers of Bath
Activist Net­work. This action occurred to a back­ground of an eco­nom­ic cri­sis where the poor are being forced to bail out the rich. Tax­pay­ers are expect­ed to pay £100 bil­lion to North­ern Rock, when in a time hon­oured fash­ion, the man who over­saw the col­lapse of his bank, walked off with a £750,000 pay off. The response of politi­cians to this cri­sis is for new labour Brown to abol­ish the 10p tax law, hit­ting the poor­er work­ers the most and for the shad­ow chan­cel­lor, George Osborne, this week, to call for greater con­trol of trades unions as a mat­ter of urgency. With almost every­thing ris­ing in price, the media warns of a ‘sum­mer of dis­con­tent’ here and abroad. This means through riots, strikes and days of actions, work­ers and the poor are tak­ing con­trol of their own lives and not rely­ing on politi­cians and boss­es to sort out their prob­lems.
This grow­ing spir­it of resis­tance must be sup­port­ed by all those who wish to build a more just soci­ety. If you’re fired up about these issues, come to Bub­bling Under on Sun­day 18th May, 1–4 as usu­al at the porter cel­lar bar on George Street, where there will be a free show­ing of ‘The Gama Strike: A Vic­to­ry For All Work­ers.’ This is a film about migrant work­ers in the Irish Repub­lic who were sup­port­ed by local work­ers to fight back against slave con­di­tions.

Free Your Time-www.myfreethyme.com

Why buy when the best things in life are free? Cred­it cards, stu­dent loans and debt are the vices that trap us into this con­sumer cul­ture. Man made mon­ey and mon­ey made man: mad. Media brain­wash­es us into think­ing that if we work hard­er, earn more mon­ey and buy more things then we will be accept­ed. Exces­sive con­sumerism is ruin­ing both the air we
breathe and the ground we walk on. All we need is an aware­ness of what we can con­tribute to a soci­ety of free­thinkers that is sim­ple and reward­ing to become part of.

So, the web­site, www.myfreethyme.com, was set up with this ethos in mind, with a mis­sion to dis­cov­er alter­na­tive ways of liv­ing which help pre­serve the plan­et, inspire trust and keep change in your pock­et jin­gling. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less from Freecy­cle, grow-your-own and net­tle munch­ing, to bin div­ing, couch­surf­ing and woof­ing, the ulti­mate aim being to cre­ate a nur­tur­ing eco-space rather than a mon­ey grab­bing metrop­o­lis. There are many com­mu­ni­ties which func­tion on human com­pas­sion, not on mon­ey; the aim is to get these voic­es heard and known about. As a stu­dent at Bath Spa Uni­ver­si­ty, I was amazed at how lit­tle the gen­er­al stu­dent pop­u­la­tion knows about the ways of free liv­ing. I was
inspired by read­ing about the Free Econ­o­my walk­er, Mark Boyle, and his attempt to get to Gand­hi’s birth­place with­out a pen­ny in his pock­et. Though angry that most of the news­pa­pers ridiculed his jour­ney and did­n’t focus on the phi­los­o­phy behind it, it led me to become part of the FreeEcon­o­my landshare/skillshare com­mu­ni­ty (justfortheloveofit.org) and I realised this was some­thing worth shout­ing about.

See­ing these things in action can inspire change, and who bet­ter to help out than the Bath Activist Net­work. As part of the Big Green Week bonan­za, a live Freecyle stall was set up at the SU and wel­comed with many a “What? Free? No fee?” squawks of glee as the skint stu­dents rum­maged and browsed. In a uni­ver­si­ty where they charge 15p for a sachet of toma­to sauce and 30p for hot water, the gen­er­al reac­tion was wel­come shock mixed with curios­i­ty and many a stu­dent-friend­ly bar­gain picked up. All in all, it went glo­ri­ous­ly well. If you have any free liv­ing sto­ries, feel free and let me know at thegreensofa@yahoo.com , I’d love to hear them.
Bath FreeShop is out­side Hol­land and Bar­ratts the sec­ond Sat­ur­day of every month if you’ve got some a han­ker­ing to get rid of some stuff then join us for some free
Earl Grey tea.

Green Space Invaders Evad­ed

Con­grat­u­la­tions are due to the res­i­dents of Twer­ton and sur­rounds, who’ve just fought off plans to destroy green space near the much-loved Bath City Farm, flood­ing the Coun­cil with over 1,000 objec­tions. Somer Hous­ing, well-known for its com­mit­ment to sell­ing off need­ed social hous­ing to unscrupu­lous pri­vate land­lords on the cheap, whinged about the foil­ing of their ploy to build 30 hous­es on the 1.6 con­test­ed acres
between Cotswold View, The Hol­low and the City Farm: where they no doubt would have done the same. Bath City Farm is manned by ded­i­cat­ed vol­un­teers and pro­vides wood­craft skills, inter­ac­tion with the nat­ur­al world and mean­ing­ful leisure to local youths, and need the land to both progress their work and pro­vide res­i­den­tial allot­ments.

Boris John­son — May­or Or Mani­ac?

Boris John­son says he’s a fem­i­nist. Actu­al­ly he’s sex­ist. And the worst kind of sex­ist. He thinks that by stat­ing he’s a fem­i­nist and say­ing a few pro-women things, that when he begins one of his ridicu­lous­ly mis­guid­ed rants about men and women and the edu­ca­tion sys­tem, peo­ple will say, well, he can’t be sex­ist, the man says he’s a fem­i­nist. Truth
is, as far as this writer’s con­cerned any­way, as long as we car­ry on gen­der stereo­typ­ing, this idi­ot­ic tug of war that is the per­pet­u­al see saw of men on top, women on top, men on top, will con­tin­ue — with casu­al­ties on both sides (domes­tic vio­lence against either sex, rape, misog­y­ny, hatred of men, unfair pay at work and gen­er­al dishar­mo­ny and fight­ing against rather than help­ing each oth­er.)

Boris John­son may be enter­tain­ing, he comes off like a char­ac­ter from a com­e­dy show, and maybe that’s a nice change next to some rather bor­ing politi­cians, but is this the kind of fig­ure­head we want as may­or of Lon­don? He’s out of touch, out­spo­ken and seems so harm­less. But it seems to me, to let some­one like this have such a posi­tion of pow­er is a very dan­ger­ous thing. When are peo­ple going to wake up to the mock­ery our gov­ern­men­tal sys­tem has become, from the jibes and jeers of the com­mons, to the buf­foon­ery of Mr John­son him­self, and choose some­thing dif­fer­ent? (ps — NOT the BNP.) As for Boris — do us a favour, give the man some bells and a fun­ny hat and call a nump­ty a nump­ty.

SHAC Attack

On Sat­ur­day 26th April, a con­tin­gent from bath went to Hor­sham, west sus­sex, for the Nation­al Stop Hunt­ing­don Ani­mal Cru­el­ty demos against Nor­var­tis, a com­pa­ny that tests on pri­mates and sup­plies the noto­ri­ous vivi­sec­tion lab, Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. The protest start­ed at Hor­sham park and around 500 peo­ple marched through the cen­tre of Hor­sham to sub­ur­bia where the ani­mal abus­ing com­pa­ny is locat­ed. After a few speech­es some of the pro­test­ers under­stand­ably got upset and start­ed shak­ing the fences. The com­pa­nies body guards (police) soon stopped this how­ev­er, after a brief strug­gle. All in all a good day, and we went back to the park where leg­endary veg­an cater­er Veg­gies pro­vid­ed veg­an burg­ers and cake. It seems Nor­var­tis UK got off light­ly, the Span­ish HQ hav­ing been van­dalised at a recent demo in Barcelona.

EVENTS

Mon­day nights Bath Hunt Sabs Meet­ing, 8pm, Bell
Wednes­days 4–7pm Lon­don Rd Food Co-op, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre
Sat­ur­days 11.30am-12.30 Bath Stop The War Vig­il, Abbey Court­yard
12th May, 7.45pm Green­peace meet­ing, Still­point, Broad Street
14th May, 8.30pm Bath Green Drinks, upstairs, the Rum­mer
17th May, from 6pm Punk ben­e­fit gig, The Junc­tion, Stokes Croft, Bris­tol
18th May, 1–4pm Bub­bling Under, Pot­er Cel­lar Bar, George Street
21st May Smash EDO phone/email block­ade-see www.smashedo.org.uk
29th May, from 7.30pm Talk by chair of CND, Friends Meet­ing House, York Street
31st May‑1 June Bris­tol Veg­an Fayre, The Water­side, Bris­tol
2 June, 8pm Friends of the Earth meet­ing, Still­point, Broad St
3 June, 12–3pm There is such a thing as a free lunch stall, Queen Sq
And now, to the dis­claimer: As any­one is free to con­tribute, the opin­ions expressed in each arti­cle are not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflec­tive of each con­trib­u­tor. Nat­u­ral­ly, any right-wing or cor­po­rate bull­shit will be binned and spat on. Need­less to say, the opin­ions of the author of this dis­claimer does not nec­es­sar­i­ly rep­re­sent the views of any oth­er con­trib­u­tor…

For fur­ther info on any of our sto­ries see www.myspace.com/bathbomb

Q: Who Are Bath Activist Net­work? A: A local umbrel­la group cam­paign­ing on issues as diverse as devel­op­ment, envi­ron­men­tal­ism, anti-war, ani­mal rights, work­ers’ rights and more. Help­ing to pro­duce The Bath Bomb, we are open to any­one, and our mem­bers range from trade union­ists to anar­chists, lib­er­als to greens, and peo­ple who just want to change Bath for the bet­ter. For details on meet­ings, demos, or just to get in touch, ring us on 07949 611912, email bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk , or see our web­site: www.myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork

GOT A STORY? WANT TO RECEIVE THE BATH BOMB BY EMAIL? HOPING TO SUE?
Con­tact us by e‑mailing bathbombpress@yahoo.co.uk . Large print e‑versions avail­able on request.