French police arrest anarchists for train sabotage + web link for more info

11th Novem­ber 2008
French police raid­ed alleged anar­chist cells in three cities on Tues­day and arrest­ed at least 10 sus­pects fol­low­ing a series of sab­o­tage attacks on the coun­try’s high-speed rail net­work.

11th Novem­ber 2008
French police raid­ed alleged anar­chist cells in three cities on Tues­day and arrest­ed at least 10 sus­pects fol­low­ing a series of sab­o­tage attacks on the coun­try’s high-speed rail net­work.

Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Michele Alliot-Marie said police intel­li­gence offi­cers had been inves­ti­gat­ing an “ultra-left anar­chist move­ment” for sev­er­al months and had act­ed fol­low­ing the week­end’s dis­rup­tion of train ser­vices.

“We found that this ultra-left move­ment has links in five Euro­pean coun­tries and in oth­er non-Euro­pean coun­tries,” she said, alleg­ing that the French gang has con­tacts in Bel­gium, Ger­many, Italy and Greece.

None of those arrest­ed works for the SNCF state rail net­work, she added.

A source close to the inves­ti­ga­tion told AFP anti-ter­ror­ist offi­cers were exam­in­ing “pos­si­ble links between the sus­pects and the Ger­man hard-left, which has claimed respon­si­bil­i­ty for actions agains trains car­ry­ing nuclear waste”.

Pres­i­dent Nico­las Sarkozy con­grat­u­lat­ed police on the arrests and wel­comed “the rapid and promis­ing progress made in the con­text of the inquiry.”

Thou­sands of pas­sen­gers and more than 160 train ser­vices were delayed Sat­ur­day after a gang jammed steel rods across over­head pow­er cables on three high-speed lines between Paris and Lon­don, Brus­sels and the French regions.

The attack halt­ed trains and dam­aged sev­er­al sec­tions of 25,000-volt pow­er lines, but no one was hurt.

In a sep­a­rate inci­dent on Sun­day in the south­west of the coun­try, anoth­er high-speed train rammed a pair of con­crete blocks placed on a line. There were no injuries and it is not yet clear whether the inci­dent was relat­ed.

Alliot-Marie said 10 sus­pects were being held, but an inte­ri­or min­istry offi­cial said more than 20 had ini­tial­ly been detained in raids con­duct­ed in Paris, the cen­tral town of Tarnac and the north­ern city of Rouen.

Fol­low­ing Sat­ur­day’s inci­dent, which fol­lowed at least one sim­i­lar inci­dent involv­ing the use of rods designed to rein­force con­crete and a series of oth­er acts of van­dal­ism, offi­cials spoke of a “con­cert­ed cam­paign” of sab­o­tage.

Experts from the SNCF state rail com­pa­ny told reporters that the sophis­ti­ca­tion of the attacks showed the sabo­teurs were tech­ni­cal­ly very com­pe­tent, since neu­tral­is­ing the pow­er lines required expert knowl­edge.

The TGV high-speed rail net­work has been the tar­get of sev­er­al extrem­ist cam­paigns over recent years by crim­i­nals seek­ing to black­mail SNCF, Basque sep­a­ratist guer­ril­las and mil­i­tant trade union­ists.

Sat­ur­day’s attacks were among the best planned, tak­ing out trains on lines north, east and south of the cap­i­tal at almost the same moment and plung­ing the nation­al net­work into chaos.

In addi­tion to nation­al ser­vices, Eurostar trains to Brus­sels and Lon­don and Thalys jour­neys to the Nether­lands and north­ern Europe were halt­ed.

Despite the most intense protests by anti-nuclear cam­paign­ers for sev­er­al years, a French ship­ment of radioac­tive waste arrived in Ger­many ear­ly on Tues­day after a 20-hour delay.

Eleven lor­ries car­ry­ing 123 tonnes of nuclear waste arrived at the Gor­leben dump in north­ern Ger­many just after mid­night (2200 GMT), police said.

For most of the jour­ney from west­ern France the waste trav­elled by train and was halt­ed for half a day at the Ger­man bor­der by three activists who had jammed their arms into a con­crete block under the track.

Once in Ger­many, around 16,000 baton-wield­ing police were deployed as around 15,000 demon­stra­tors ral­lied along the route to try to hin­der progress using tac­tics such as set­ting bar­ri­cades on fire on the tracks.

The train even­tu­al­ly arrived at its final des­ti­na­tion on Mon­day, more than 14 and a half hours late and the car­go was then trans­ferred to lor­ries for the final 20 kilo­me­tres (12 miles) trip to Gor­leben.

Along the final leg some 1,000 activists had to be removed one-by-one by riot police before the lor­ries could pass. Trac­tors had been parked across the road and activists chained them­selves to tall cement pyra­mids.

For updat­ed info and back­ground arti­cles, see http://tarnac9.wordpress.com/about/

John Gormley interrupted by Plane Mad

Novem­ber 5, 2008

Novem­ber 5, 2008
Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter John Gorm­ley was inter­rupt­ed dur­ing his speech to the Green Infra­struc­ture con­fer­ence this morn­ing in Malahide. The envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign group Plane Mad dis­rupt­ed the con­fer­ence to express their oppo­si­tion to anoth­er run­way at Dublin Air­port. The group oppose the run­way on the grounds that it will dou­ble the air­craft emis­sions at the air­port. These emis­sions play a dan­ger­ous part in caus­ing cli­mate change. Two activists dressed as car­toon crim­i­nals mimed build­ing a run­way around the podi­um that Gorm­ley was speak­ing from. Air­craft noise was simul­ta­ne­ous­ly played from the back of the room. One of the “crim­i­nals” moved among the audi­ence pass­ing out infor­ma­tion about the pro­posed new run­way form his bag of “swag”. The min­is­ter was also pre­sent­ed with a let­ter by the group which he accept­ed.

The activists were dressed as crim­i­nals to rep­re­sent the crime that it would be if Fin­gal Coun­ty Coun­cil and the Dublin Air­port Authority(DAA) were allowed to dou­ble capac­i­ty at Dublin Air­port. The activists had “DAA-CLIMATE CRIMINALS” writ­ten on their backs.

Min­is­ter Gorm­ley said that he agreed with them on this issue, indeed he had men­tioned the “seri­ous threat” of cli­mate change sev­er­al times in his speech. After the cam­paign­ers had made their point they were peace­ful­ly escort­ed out of the con­fer­ence suite and Mr Gorm­ley was allowed to con­tin­ue. Despite all he says Plane Mad con­tin­ue to be dis­ap­point­ed that nei­ther John Gorm­ley or his par­ty are clear or vocal enough in their oppo­si­tion to expan­sion at Dublin Air­port.

Ian Clot­wor­thy, one of car­toon crim­i­nals, said
“Fin­gal Coun­ty Coun­cil are not fit hosts for a green infra­struc­ture con­fer­ence when one of the least “green” pieces of infra­struc­ture in Ire­land is cur­rent­ly being built at Dublin Air­port.”
“We sup­port “UPROAR” in their cam­paign against this sec­ond run­way and we oppose it our­selves because of the con­tri­bu­tion of avi­a­tion emis­sions to cli­mate change”

UPROAR (Unit­ed Port­marnock res­i­dents oppos­ing anoth­er run­way) have been oppos­ing the con­struc­tion of a 2nd run­way for 8 years, since 2000. 850 peo­ple from the area object­ed to the run­way after the cam­paign was launched around Christ­mas 2000. UPROAR were ini­tial­ly extreme­ly suc­cess­ful in that the Inspec­tor review­ing the Envi­ron­men­tal Impact State­ment (EIS) and all the infor­ma­tion avail­able about the planned devel­op­ment found in favour of the objec­tors. The Inspec­tor rec­om­mend­ed that the plan­ning appli­ca­tion be refused on main­ly on the issue of noise pol­lu­tion and com­mu­ni­ty wel­fare. Her deci­sion how­ev­er, was over­turned by An Bord Pleanala.

Tara Shee­hy of Plane Mad who was also in the con­fer­ence suit in Malahide said,
“Dou­bling capac­i­ty at Dublin Air­port will also dou­ble the amount of emis­sions. Spend­ing mon­ey in an eco­nom­ic down­turn on such a project of pol­lu­tion is mad­ness.”

The Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency allo­cat­ed just over 20,000 tonnes CO2 equiv­a­lent for each of the years 2005, 2006 and 2007 to Dublin Air­port. This is only 1% of the 2 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 (at least), emit­ted by Dublin Air­port’s 21 mil­lion pas­sen­gers.

On a day when even Amer­i­ca can elect a pres­i­dent who claims to under­stand the impor­tance of cli­mate change, Plane Mad would like to see this “Green-tinged” gov­ern­ment halt their air­port expan­sion plans. Plane Mad will con­tin­ue to fight the sec­ond run­way until it is stopped.

http://www.planemad.org

Exeter’s first Critical Mass! Nov 1st 12.00

Come and join Exeter Crit­i­cal Mass, Novem­ber 1st. First Sat­ur­day of every month, meet out­side Exeter Cathe­dral

Exeter’s first Crit­i­cal Mass is tak­ing place on Novem­ber 1st and the first Sat­ur­day of every month- meet mid­day on Cathe­dral Green. Come and join in!

Critical Mass Ride Daily Celebrate MonthlyCome and join Exeter Crit­i­cal Mass, Novem­ber 1st. First Sat­ur­day of every month, meet out­side Exeter Cathe­dral

Exeter’s first Crit­i­cal Mass is tak­ing place on Novem­ber 1st and the first Sat­ur­day of every month- meet mid­day on Cathe­dral Green. Come and join in!

WHAT’S IS ALL ABOUT?
Crit­i­cal Mass is a cel­e­bra­tion of cycling, often described as an ‘unor­gan­ised coin­ci­dence’. It hap­pens when a lot of cyclists hap­pen to be in the same place at the same time and decide to cycle the same way togeth­er for a while

WHAT’S THE PURPOSE?
“Every­day, all over the world, peo­ple are resist­ing the prob­lem cul­ture of the car by get­ting on their bikes and rid­ing, instead of dri­ving.

Crit­i­cal Mass is a cel­e­bra­tion of the alter­na­tives to cars, pol­lu­tion, acci­dents and the loss of pub­lic spaces and free­doms.

Not an organ­i­sa­tion or group, but an idea or tac­tic, Crit­i­cal Mass allows peo­ple to reclaim cities with their bikes, just by get­ting togeth­er and out-num­ber­ing the cars on the road”

WHAT HAPPENS ON A CRITICAL MASS?
Each one is dif­fer­ent and they fol­low no set route, with the direc­tion being spon­ta­neous­ly cho­sen as peo­ple cycle along. Any­one is free to join or leave the ride as it ped­als along.

The ride lasts no more than a cou­ple of hours (depend­ing on the weath­er!) and usu­al­ly ends in a con­ve­nient­ly placed pub for more drinks.

Most all, they are peace­ful, safe and fun!

DO I NEED A BIKE?
Nope! Crit­i­cal Mass is not just for bikes — skate­boards, roller blades, wheel­chairs, pogo sticks — in fact any form of non-motorised, non-pol­lut­ing are all very wel­come!

Students Target Unethical Career Corporatism

On Mon­day 20th Octo­ber the annu­al AISEC Careers fair com­menced at Not­ting­ham Uni­ver­si­ty, fea­tur­ing many organ­i­sa­tions with despi­ca­ble or at least dubi­ous eth­i­cal cre­den­tials and social-respon­si­bil­i­ty records, inclu

BAE systems sickleE.on grim reaperOn Mon­day 20th Octo­ber the annu­al AISEC Careers fair com­menced at Not­ting­ham Uni­ver­si­ty, fea­tur­ing many organ­i­sa­tions with despi­ca­ble or at least dubi­ous eth­i­cal cre­den­tials and social-respon­si­bil­i­ty records, includ­ing BAE Sys­tems, Rolls-Royce, Qine­tiq, E.On, BP, RBS, MoD and the army. The fair also fea­tured some stu­dent activists and Grim Reapers who had made an appear­ance in order to remind fel­low stu­dents of the dead­ly con­se­quences of work­ing in the arms trade or cli­mate change indus­try.

AISEC claim to be ‘the inter­na­tion­al plat­form for young peo­ple to dis­cov­er and devel­op their poten­tial so as to have a pos­i­tive impact on soci­ety.’ The organ­i­sa­tion also claims to envi­sion “Peace and ful­fill­ment of humankind’s poten­tial.” Despite this, at Not­ting­ham, the organ­i­sa­tions’ main endeav­or appears to be to give a plat­form to arms deal­ers! For more see: http://www.aiesec.org/

Con­cerned about the pres­ence of such uneth­i­cal cor­po­rate enti­ties and the glar­ing hypocrisy of AISEC, a group of stu­dents came togeth­er with the aim of rais­ing aware­ness of the uneth­i­cal nature of many of the com­pa­nies at the fair and oppose the gen­er­al pres­ence of mech­a­nisms of the cap­i­tal­ist death machine.
BAE systems leafletCareers fair ethics - your choice leafletRolls Royce leaflet
The morn­ing began with flier­ing at var­i­ous stalls, col­lect­ing of shiny cor­po­rate merch, and using up the rep­re­sen­ta­tives time. Not­ting­ham Uni­ver­si­ty Secu­ri­ty were being their usu­al oppres­sive selves and tried to pre­vent the stu­dents from flier­ing near the glossy cor­po­rate stalls. Threats of call­ing the police were also issued. The stu­dents also had a per­ma­nent stall next to the army (cour­tesy of One World Week) from which alter­na­tive infor­ma­tion about com­pa­nies, per­son­al dis­cus­sion and careers guides could be dis­sem­i­nat­ed. When the army rep left his stall, a cou­ple of stu­dents kind­ly stepped in to fill his role and invite stu­dents to ‘join the impe­r­i­al death machine’.

In the after­noon four Grim Reapers appeared and went to pay a vis­it to the stalls of BAE and Rolls-Royce, much to the amuse­ment of passers-by and bewil­der­ment of cor­po­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, a rather unam­bigu­ous ban­ner was dropped in the main access stair­well of the build­ing read­ing ‘BAE KILL’. The four reapers loi­tered at BAE and Rolls-Royces stalls for an hour or so hand­ing our fliers and chat­ting to stu­dents and reps, before doing a mini-tour of oth­er dubi­ous cor­po­rate out­fits in Port­land Build­ing (E.On, BP, Qine­tiq). Uni­ver­si­ty Secu­ri­ty react­ed ini­tial­ly with ‘you lot have to leave or we’ll call the police’, one BAE rep inter­vened to assure secu­ri­ty “it’s cool, they’re Ok”. Secu­ri­ty lat­er changed their line to ‘please take off your masks it’s caus­ing intim­i­da­tion’, and final­ly, meek­ly asked ‘can you please stop film­ing’, before even­tu­al­ly leav­ing the stu­dents to do their thing. A com­bi­na­tion of knowl­edge about basic rights and the fact that they were armed with a video cam­era suc­cess­ful­ly pro­tect­ed the pro­test­ers from any sil­ly games that secu­ri­ty may have wished to play. Thank­ful­ly, this time, free­dom of expres­sion and the right to protest pre­vailed.

Some inter­est­ing dis­cus­sions were had with some of the rep­re­sen­ta­tives. One BAE rep was heard to pro­claim ‘Free Pales­tine’, despite work­ing for a com­pa­ny that has pro­vid­ed parts for Israeli mil­i­tary equip­ment (notably elec­tron­ics for the F‑16 fight­er air­craft) and also sub­con­tract­ed work to Israel. The same rep also con­fessed feel­ing slight­ly guilty about work­ing for BAE, despite being at the Careers fair pre­cise­ly with the pur­pose of try­ing to con­vince oth­ers to do the same thing! A Qine­tiq rep­re­sen­ta­tive admit­ted that he felt the stu­dent pro­test­ers were doing a good thing, and was ulti­mate­ly some­what envi­ous of the pas­sion they clear­ly had for this issue. He also sug­gest­ed that the stu­dent s should be tar­get­ing Air­bus and the MoD addi­tion­al­ly.

An event­ful time was had by all, espe­cial­ly BAE’s reps! E.ON were the only com­pa­ny to active­ly com­plain about the stu­dent protests (as far as we know), the moody gits! Clear­ly var­i­ous ted­dies were thrown out of var­i­ous pow­er-sta­tions. On Tues­day, the sec­ond day of the fair, the vast major­i­ty of the REALLY immoral com­pa­nies were not present.

For an awe­some video of the action see: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=VfJ8geHkaRk

The latest EF! Action Update is out, bringing you reports of eco-resistance for the darkening days…

Bring­ing light & inspi­ra­tion to the dark­er evenings are the action sto­ries in the lat­est Earth First! Action Update.

Block­ades of nuclear pow­er, roads & rivers around the world were joined “with this Shell-blockad­ing D‑lock I thee wed”.

Adjustable spanner photoBring­ing light & inspi­ra­tion to the dark­er evenings are the action sto­ries in the lat­est Earth First! Action Update.

Block­ades of nuclear pow­er, roads & rivers around the world were joined “with this Shell-blockad­ing D‑lock I thee wed”.

And if anti-fas­cist action, quar­ry sab­o­tage, squats, tree plat­forms, wrekin’ open­casts, scal­ing lux­u­ry hotels & the lat­est protest camp news was­n’t enough for you, chuck in some glue, arm tubes, a pool of oil, stink bombs, air­borne rape alarms and a Lego-sized occu­pa­tion, then there’s full reports from this sum­mer’s antics at the Camp for Cli­mate Action, Ross­port sol­i­dar­i­ty camp, EF! sum­mer gath­er­ing and Sav­ing Ice­land camp, plus a crop of glob­al cli­mate camps & news of protest & resis­tance from all 5 con­ti­nents.

“No nukes, no coal, no kid­ding” — with peo­ple dying (both lit­er­al­ly & sym­bol­i­cal­ly) from the activ­i­ties of the Earth-destroy­ers, peo­ple have been shout­ing to just “Leave it in the Ground”, drag­on boats have clashed with navy gun­boats in Ire­land, an oil war was declared in Nige­ria, and ‘moles’ spent a week under­ground dig­ging fur­ther and fur­ther away from the forces of dark­ness at an open-cast coal site.

Details of the new Coal Action Net­work, upcom­ing dates & a full con­tact list should help launch (or boost) you into the orbit of eco-resis­tance.

Sub­scribe and get it sent direct to a let­ter­box near you — you’d also be sup­port­ing the EF!AU to get print­ed and sent out to pris­on­ers & protest camps. If you want some to dis­trib­ute, con­tact us at: actionup­date (AT) earthfirst.org.uk

Down­load the lat­est issue or past issues here.

The EF!AU is there to inspire peo­ple to take eco­log­i­cal direct action, to pro­vide info to help you just get out and do it. Don’t feel shy, put your best foot for­ward.

The EF!AU is the quar­ter­ly newslet­ter of peo­ple tak­ing eco­log­i­cal direct action — send us news of your action or cam­paigns, and come along to the Win­ter Moot if you want to get involved in any of the cam­paigns you’ve read about.

What is Earth First!?

Spirit of Freedom (October 2008) — support the eco-prisoners

Pro­duced by EARTH LIBERATION PRISONERS SUPPORT NETWORK

“The whole expe­ri­ence has been tough, but all the kind and strength­en­ing words and wise thoughts from strangers made it much eas­i­er!” (For­mer Swedish Ani­mal Rights Pris­on­er)

Pro­duced by EARTH LIBERATION PRISONERS SUPPORT NETWORK

“The whole expe­ri­ence has been tough, but all the kind and strength­en­ing words and wise thoughts from strangers made it much eas­i­er!” (For­mer Swedish Ani­mal Rights Pris­on­er)

Wel­come to the Octo­ber 2008 edi­tion of Spir­it of Free­dom. The last month has been a month of mixed emo­tions for ELP. On the one hand we heard the bril­liant news that the Dutch ani­mal rights activist, Ger­ben Jan, was found not guilty of assault­ing a police offi­cer, caus­ing the offi­cer to break his leg, dur­ing an ani­mal rights demo in Swe­den. Instead Ger­ban was found guilty of resist­ing arrest for which he was fined and deport­ed. Also in an unex­pect­ed move, all the Aus­tri­an Ani­mal Rights pris­on­ers were released from prison pend­ing their tri­al! Plus, the Amer­i­can veg­an, Nathan Kno­erl, was grant­ed bail in his case where he is accused of involve­ment in an anti-vivi­sec­tion protest. Fol­low­ing Nathans release a sup­port cam­paign has been set up to try and help raise mon­ey for Nathan’s forth­com­ing legal case. For more info please e‑mail supportnathan@gmail.com. How­ev­er, just as ELP start­ed to think our pris­on­er lists might start to go down, we received news of fur­ther police raids in Aus­tria. ELP also learnt that, due to Frank Ambrose, grass­ing every­one up, the Amer­i­can’s Marie Mason, Stephanie Lynne Fultz, and Aren Burth­wick, have all had to enter Plea Bar­gains and admit some of the charges set against them. In Marie’s case she has admit­ted her direct role in an ELF arson on a Uni­ver­si­ty build­ing involved with GM crop tests, whilst Stephanie and Aren have admit­ted not report­ing a fire (Stephanie has admit­ted cut­ting Marie’s hair which was burnt fol­low­ing the arson). We don’t know what sen­tences Stephanie and Aren are like­ly to receive, but Marie is look­ing at 15 to 20 years and has been remand­ed into cus­tody. This is real­ly bad news, espe­cial­ly as it was hoped Marie might remain free until her sen­tenc­ing ear­ly next year. Around the world, peo­ple are being impris­oned for stand­ing up for what they believe in and try­ing to
help the ani­mals and the earth. So please, no mat­ter where you are in the world, sup­port the eco-pris­on­ers. And no com­pro­mise in defence of Moth­er Earth.

ECO-DEFENCE PRISONERS

Tre Arrow, #70936–065, (in tran­sit), USA. Serv­ing 78 months for his involve­ment in two ELF arsons. 1) an arson on log­ging trucks 2) an arson on vehi­cles owned by a sand & grav­el com­pa­ny. (Tre is a raw ener­gy veg­an — He has asked that his let­ters of sup­port are writ­ten on scrap paper or tree-free paper).

Grant Barnes #137563, San Car­los Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty, PO Box 3, Pueblo, CO 81002, USA. Serv­ing 12 years for set­ting fire to a num­ber of SUV vehi­cles. The let­ters ELF were spray paint­ed onto all of the vehi­cles. (Grant is a veg­an).

Nathan Block, #36359–086, FCI Lom­poc, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, 3600 Guard Road, Lom­poc, CA 93436, USA. Serv­ing 7 years & 8 months for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an SUV deal­er­ship. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Diet unknown).

Mar­co Camenisch, Post­fach 3143, CH-8105 Regens­dorf, Switzer­land. Serv­ing 18 years. 1) Ten years for using explo­sives to destroy elec­tric­i­ty pylons lead­ing from nuclear pow­er sta­tions. 2) Eight years for the mur­der of a Swiss Bor­der Guard whilst on the run. In ’02 Mar­co com­plet­ed a 12-year sen­tence in Italy for destroy­ing elec­tric­i­ty pylons in Italy. (Mar­co is a meat eater who encour­ages organ­ic liv­ing).

Daniele Casali­ni, Casa Cir­con­dar­i­ale, Via Burla 59, 43100 Par­ma, Italy. Il Sil­vestre activist await­ing tri­al accused of using explo­sives to dam­age an elec­tric­i­ty pylon in protest at nuclear ener­gy. (Daniele is a veg­an).

Rod­ney Coro­n­a­do #03895–000, FCI El Reno, PO Box 1500, El Reno, OK 73036, USA. Serv­ing one-year impris­on­ment after he informed peo­ple how to make an incen­di­ary device dur­ing a speech at an ani­mal rights gath­er­ing. (Meat eater).

Francesco Gioia, C.C. Sol­lic­ciano, Via Giro­lamo Min­ervi­ni 2/R, 50142 Firen­ze Sol­lic­ciano (FI), Italy. Il Sil­vestre activist await­ing tri­al accused of using explo­sives to dam­age an elec­tric­i­ty pylon in protest at nuclear ener­gy. (Francesco is a veg­e­tar­i­an and Straight Edge).

Pao­la Gori, Via delle Mac­chie 9, 57124 Livorno, Italy. Il Sil­vestre activist await­ing tri­al accused of allow­ing her house to be used to plan ille­gal activ­i­ty. (Pao­la is a veg­an).

Bryan Lefey #38664–086, FDC SeaT­ac, Fed­er­al Deten­tion Cen­ter, P.O. Box 13900, Seat­tle, WA 98198, USA. On remand accused of an ELF action that saw the dam­ag­ing of GM trees and the dam­ag­ing of US Forestry Ser­vice vehi­cles. (Diet unknown).

Jef­frey Luers, # 13797671, CRCI, 9111 NE Sun­der­land Ave, Port­land, OR 97211–1708, USA. Serv­ing 10 years for arson on a SUV deal­er­ship & the attempt­ed arson of an oil truck. The orig­i­nal sen­tence was 22 years & 8 months, but was reduced on appeal. (Diet unknown).

Marie Jeanette Mason, Neway­go Coun­ty Jail, PO Box 845, White Cloud, MI 49349, USA. Await­ing sen­tenc­ing hav­ing plead­ed guilty to involve­ment in ELF arson against a Uni­ver­si­ty build­ing car­ry­ing out Genet­i­cal­ly Mod­i­fied crop tests. Marie also plead­ed guilty to con­spir­ing to car­ry out ELF actions and also admit­ted involve­ment in 12 oth­er ELF actions. Marie is expect­ed to receive a sen­tence of between 15–20 years. (Marie is a veg­an).

Eric McDavid, 16209–097. FCI Vic­torville Medi­um II, PO BOX 5700, Ade­lan­to, CA 92301, USA. Serv­ing 19 years & 7 months for plan­ning to destroy the prop­er­ty of the U.S. Forestry Ser­vice, mobile phone masts and pow­er plants. At the point of his arrest no crim­i­nal dam­age has actu­al­ly occurred. (Eric is a veg­an).

Daniel McGowan, #63794–053, USP Mar­i­on, US Pen­i­ten­tiary, PO Box 1000, Mar­i­on, IL 62959, USA. Serv­ing 7 years for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an old growth log­ging cor­po­ra­tion. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Daniel is a veg­e­tar­i­an).

Jonathan Paul — See details in Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers List.

Bri­ana Waters 36432–086, FCI Dan­bury, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, Route 37, Dan­bury, CT 06811, USA. Serv­ing six years for involve­ment in an ELF arson on a Uni­ver­si­ty. (Diet unknown).

Joy­an­na Zach­er, #36360–086, FCI Dublin, 5700 8th St.- Camp Parks- Unit F, Dublin, CA 94568, USA. Serv­ing 7 years & 8 months for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an SUV deal­er­ship. Also admit­ted her role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Diet unknown).

ANIMAL LIBERATION PRISONERS
(All Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers fol­low a min­i­mum veg­e­tar­i­an diet and most are veg­an).

Jon Able­white TB4885, HMP Lowd­ham Grange, Lowd­ham, Not­ting­ham, NG14 7DA, Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion. (Jon is a veg­an).

Dan Amos VN7818, HMP Win­ches­ter, Rom­sey Road, Win­ches­ter SO22 5DF, Eng­land.
On remand hav­ing plead­ed guilty to con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Dan is a veg­an)

Gregg Avery TA7450, HMP Win­ches­ter, Rom­sey Road, Win­ches­ter, SO22 5DF, Eng­land. On remand hav­ing plead­ed guilty to con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Gregg is a veg­an).

Natasha Avery NR8987, HMP Bronze­field, Woodthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx. TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. On remand hav­ing plead­ed guilty to con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Nat is a veg­an).

Mel Broughton TN9138, HMP Wood­hill, Tat­ten­hoe Street, Mil­ton Keynes, Bucks MK4 4DA, Eng­land. On remand accused of involve­ment with an arson and black­mail cam­paign against an Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty vivi­sec­tion estab­lish­ment.
(Mel is a veg­an).

Jacob Con­roy #93501–011, FCI Vic­torville Medi­um I Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, P.O. Box 5300, Ade­lan­to, CA 92301, USA. Serv­ing 48 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Jake is a veg­an).

Don­ald Cur­rie A3660AA, HMP Parkhurst, New­port, Isle of Wight, PO30 5NX, Eng­land. Serv­ing an Inde­ter­mi­nate Sen­tence, of not less than six actu­al years, for car­ry­ing out arsons against tar­gets asso­ci­at­ed the vivi­sec­tion indus­try includ­ing HLS. (Don is a veg­an).

Lau­ren Gaz­zo­la #93497–011, FCI Dan­bury, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, Route #37Danbury, CT 06811, USA. Serv­ing 54 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Lau­ren is a veg­an).

Joshua Harp­er #29429–086, FCI Sheri­dan Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, P.O. Box 5000, Sheri­dan, OR 97378 USA. Serv­ing 36 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Josh is a veg­an).

Sean Kirt­ley WC 6977, HMP Stafford, 54 Gaol Road, Stafford, ST16 3AW, Eng­land. Serv­ing four and a half years for run­ning an anti-vivi­sec­tion cam­paign web­site. (Sean is a veg­an).

Kevin Kjon­aas #93502–011, FCI Sand­stone, PO Box 1000, Sand­stone, MN 55072 USA. Serv­ing 72 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Kevin is a veg­an).

Daniel McGowan — See details in Eco Defence Pris­on­ers List.

Heather Nichol­son VM4859, HMP Bronze­field, Woodthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx. TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. On remand accused of con­spir­a­cy to black­mail, in rela­tion to her involve­ment with the SHAC cam­paign. (Heather is a veg­an).

Jonathan Paul, #07167–085, FCI Phoenix, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, 37910 N 45th Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85086, USA. Sen­tenced to 51 months for an ALF arson on a horse meat plant. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Jonathan is a veg­an).

John Smith, TB4887, HMP Lind­holme, Bawtry Road, Hat­field Wood­house, Don­cast­er, DN7 6EE, Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion. (John is a veg­an).

Andrew Stepan­ian #26399–050, USP Mar­i­on, P.O. Box 1000 Mar­i­on, IL 62959, USA. Serv­ing 36 months for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Andrew is a veg­an).

Ker­ry Whit­burn TB4886, HMP Lowd­ham Grange, Lowd­ham, Not­ting­ham, NG14 7DA, Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion. (Ker­ry is a veg­an).

Sarah White­head, VM7684, HMP Bronze­field, Woodthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx, TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. Serv­ing two years for: 1) res­cu­ing a pup­py from hor­rif­ic con­di­tions. 2) res­cu­ing over 100 ani­mals from a pet breed­er who was lat­er pros­e­cut­ed for ani­mal abuse. Also await­ing tri­al for SHAC activ­i­ty. (Sarah is a veg­an)

PLOUGHSHARES PRISONERS

Helen Wood­son, 03231–045, FMC Car­swell — Admin. Max. Unit, POB 27137, Ft. Worth, TX 76127, USA. Serv­ing 8 years 10 months for actions that focused on the inter­re­la­tion­ship of war & the destruc­tion of the nat­ur­al world. The actions includ­ed pour­ing red paint over the secu­ri­ty desk of a fed­er­al court and mak­ing threat­en­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Pre­vi­ous­ly Helen had served 20½ years for: 1) Using a ham­mer to dis­arm a nuclear mis­sile silo. 2) Burn­ing $25,000 on the floor of a bank whilst denounc­ing war, envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion & eco­nom­ic injus­tice. 3) Mail­ing warn­ing let­ters with bul­lets attached to Gov­ern­ment & cor­po­rate offi­cials. (Diet unknown).

THE LECCE DEFENDANTS
The Lec­ce Defen­dants have been charged with “sub­ver­sive asso­ci­a­tion” accused of dam­ag­ing Esso petrol pumps to oppose the War on Iraq; sab­o­tag­ing the cash machines of a bank which funds an immi­gra­tion cen­tre; and tar­get­ing the multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny Benet­ton in sup­port of Mapuche land rights activists in Chile. All of the defen­dants are cur­rent­ly either under house arrest or released on bail.

ANTIFA PRISONERS

Vah­tang Devitlidze, ul. Libbedo­va 42, UO 68/2, otryad 14, briga­da 142, g. Hagyshen­sk, Krasnodarskiy Kray, 352680 Rus­sia. Serv­ing 2½ years for stab­bing a neo-nazi in the leg whilst defend­ing him­self from attack. (Diet unknown).

Fabio Milan, C.C. via Pianez­za 300, 10151 Tori­no, Italy. On remand accused of fight­ing with the police after an anti-fas­cist protest. (Diet unknown).

Andrea Neff, Bnr: 746/07/2, Jus­tizvol­lzugsanstalt fur Frauen in Berlin, Arkonas­trasse 56, 13189 Berlin, Ger­many. Serv­ing 14 months for anti-fas­cist activ­i­ty. (Diet unknown).

Chris­t­ian Süm­mer­mann, Bnr: 441/08/5, JVA Plötzensee, Lehrter­str. 61, 10557
Berlin, Ger­many. Serv­ing 40 months for breach­ing the peace whilst serv­ing a sus­pend­ed sen­tence issued for anti-fas­cist activ­i­ties. (Diet unknown).

Tomasz Wiloszews­ki, Zak­lad Karny, Orze­chowa 5, 98–200 Sier­adz, Poland.
Serv­ing 15 years for acci­den­tal­ly killing a neo-nazi whilst defend­ing him­self. (Tomasz is a veg­e­tar­i­an).

Yuri Yure­vich Milevskiy, SIZO #7 kam­era 38, g. Brest, ul. Kar­la Mark­sa 86, 224000 Belarus. On remand for fight­ing with neo-nazis. (Diet unknown).

OTHER PRISONERS

Olga Alek­san­drov­na Nevskaya, UU163/5, 7 Otryad, pos. Dzerzhin­skiy, Mozhaysk 140090 Moskovskaya oblast, Rus­sia. Eco-activist serv­ing 6 years for arson, crim­i­nal dam­age and caus­ing explo­sions in protest at the war in Chech­nya. Due for release in 2009. (Diet unknown).

Vagge­lis Botzatzis, Komo­ti­ni Juridi­cal Prison (“Dikastikes Fylakes Komo­ti­nis”), T.K. 69100, Greece. On remand accused of set­ting fire to two com­pa­ny cars owned by a energy/power com­pa­ny. It is believed that the per­son or per­sons unknown who car­ried out the arson did so in protest at the destruc­tion of the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment and in sup­port of two work­ers who died at the pow­er plant. Vagge­lis is also accused of set­ting fire to a bank and start­ing a fire inside a car yard. (Meat Eater).

Richard Sills (Address Unknown, USA). Serv­ing 15 months for bomb hoax­ing a Uni­ver­si­ty say­ing they would be tar­get­ed by the ALF if they didn’t stop their ani­mal exper­i­ments. (Diet unknown).

Michael W. Sykes, 696693, 3855 Coop­er St, Jack­son, MI 49201, USA. Youth held on remand accused of anti-sprawl arsons, crim­i­nal dam­age, spray-paint­ing an anar­chist sign and burn­ing the Amer­i­can flag. (Diet unknown)

Fran Thomp­son, #1090915 HU 1C, WERDCC, PO Box 300, Van­dalia, MO 63382, USA. Serv­ing Life for killing, in self-defence, a stalk­er who had bro­ken into her home. Before her impris­on­ment Fran was an eco, ani­mal & anti-nuke cam­paign­er. (Fran is a veg­an).

MOVE

MOVE is an eco-rev­o­lu­tion­ary group who car­ried out protests in defence of all life. All move pris­on­ers describe them­selves as veg­e­tar­i­ans. There are cur­rent­ly eight MOVE activists in prison each serv­ing 100 years after been framed for the mur­der of a cop in 1979. 9th defen­dant, Mer­le Africa, died in prison in 1998.

Deb­bie Simms Africa (006307), Janet Hol­loway Africa (006308) and Janine Philips Africa (006309) all at: SCI Cam­bridge Springs, 451 Fuller­ton Ave, Cam­bridge Springs, PA 16403–1238, USA.

Michael Davis Africa (AM4973) and Charles Simms Africa (AM4975) both at SCI Grater­ford, PO Box 244, Grater­ford, PA 19426–0244, USA.

Edward Good­man Africa (AM4974), SCI Mahanoy, 301 Morea Rd, Frackville, PA 17932, USA.

William Philips Africa (AM4984) and Del­bert Orr Africa (AM4985) both at SCI Dal­las Draw­er K, Dal­las, PA 18612, USA.

Mumia Abu Jamal, (AM8335), SCI Greene, 175 Progress Dri­ve, Way­nes­burg PA 15370, USA. In 1981 Mumia, for­mer Black Pan­ther and vocal sup­port­er of MOVE, was framed for the mur­der of a cop. He was orig­i­nal­ly sen­tenced to death but is cur­rent­ly await­ing re-sen­tenc­ing fol­low­ing a court hear­ing in 2001.

STATEMENT ON VIOLENCE
Some peo­ple list­ed in this newslet­ter have car­ried out vio­lent actions. ‘Spir­it of Free­dom’ does not con­done vio­lence. But we are also against cen­sor­ship & believe peo­ple can decide for them­selves who they wish to sup­port.

ABOUT E.L.P. SUPPORT NETWORK
ELP is an inter­na­tion­al eco-pris­on­er sup­port net­work found­ed, in Britain, in 1993 to sup­port jailed eco-activists. We sup­port the pris­on­ers by pro­duc­ing var­i­ous reg­u­lar pris­on­er lists:

Spir­it of Free­dom is ELP’s inter­na­tion­al month­ly pris­on­er list­ing which is cir­cu­lat­ed by e‑mail.

Urgent ELP! Bul­letin is an e‑mail ser­vice that dis­trib­utes the names of any new eco-pris­on­er as soon as ELP gets their details. For more info e‑mail ELP4321@hotmail.com

On-Line Newslet­ters — ELP has a num­ber of web­sites that pro­vide news, pris­on­er lists and addi­tion­al info about ELP & the pris­on­ers.

Eng­lish lan­guage ELP Web­site
www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk

Greek lan­guage ELP Web­site
http://greekelp.blogspot.com

North Amer­i­can ELP Web­site
www.ecoprisoners.org

Turk­ish lan­guage ELP Web­site
www.geocities.com/yesilanarsi/elp.htm

ELP Extra is an e‑mail group that cir­cu­lates the details of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, ELP learns about, who do not fall with­in the remit for sup­port by ELP. To sub­scribe to the list e‑mail ELP4321@Hotmail.com

Aus­tralian ELP.SN is our Aus­tralian con­tact. For more info e‑mail elp4321@hotmail.com

Bel­gium ELP.SN is our Bel­gium con­tact. For more info e‑mail elp_bel@hotmail.com

Ger­man ELP.SN is a pris­on­er led ini­tia­tive run by eco-pris­on­er Mar­co Camenisch. For more info con­tact Mar­co Camenisch, Post­fach 3143, CH-8105 Regens­dorf, Switzer­land.

Greek ELP.SN is our Greek con­tact. For more info e‑mail greekelp@yahoo.gr

North Amer­i­can ELP is our North Amer­i­can con­tact. For more infor­ma­tion e‑mail naelpsn@mutualaid.org

Turkey ELP.SN is our Turk­ish con­tact. For more info e‑mail
yesilanarsi@yahoo.com

Earth Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers Sup­port Net­work
elp4321@hotmail.com
http://spiritoffreedom.org.uk

Police attack on London Critical Mass & I Bike MCR Mini Festival & South London CM reminder & Liverpool report

While there was a notable absence of police on the Sep­tem­ber Crit­i­cal Mass ride in Lon­don, we did have one unpleas­ant encounter with a very aggres­sive group of offi­cers from the TSG unit.

While there was a notable absence of police on the Sep­tem­ber Crit­i­cal Mass ride in Lon­don, we did have one unpleas­ant encounter with a very aggres­sive group of offi­cers from the TSG unit.

Trav­el­ling between Vic­to­ria Street and Buck­ing­ham Palace Road on Fri­day night, we ran into a van load of police dressed in over­alls, fleeces and base­ball caps. Their van was an odd sil­ver grey colour and appar­ent­ly was not equipped with a siren or flash­ing lights.

To com­pen­sate for their lack of ade­quate appa­ra­tus the offi­cers, led by # SX 836, attempt­ed to force their way through the mass by knock­ing rid­ers to the ground, and drag­ging oth­ers to the side of the road and dump­ing them on the pave­ment.

At one point SX 836 encour­aged dri­vers of oth­er vehi­cles to ram the mass, telling them “Just dri­ve at them, they’ll get out of the way!” despite the fact that we were all in the mid­dle of a traf­fic jam at the time. Anoth­er offi­cer involved whose num­ber I man­aged to note down was QA 232.

Pho­tos::
http://18hz.deid.net/2008/septembermass/vikings03im.jpg
http://18hz.deid.net/2008/septembermass/vikings01im.jpg

High­er res­o­lu­tion ver­sions of my pho­tos can be fund at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29703759@N08/sets/72157607617808713/

One hel­l­l­l­ll of a mass (lon­don)

crit­i­cal mass lon­don | 01.10.2008 23:33 | Cli­mate Chaos | Lon­don
And there’s plen­ty more dra­ma to come …

I got out of work at about half past five, so i came down to the south bank ear­ly; the tide was out, so i spent a while strolling on the beach of the Thames. It’s an amaz­ing place — a beach in the mid­dle of a city of sev­en mil­lion peo­ple, and desert­ed except for me and two or three oth­ers. Like a rub­bly, silty secret gar­den.

Back up on ground lev­el, we once again set off a good few ticks after sev­en. Boo hiss. But at least we went through the Kingsway under­pass!

But — shock hor­ror! — with no cops. I did­n’t see a sin­gle poli­ceper­son accom­pa­ny­ing the ride — did my eyes deceive me? How could this be? Any­body know? We did have the cycling ambu­lance­man with us, though.

I’m very pleased to say that, as far as i could tell, the mass ran like clock­work. We kept togeth­er (most­ly — we split into a fast and a slow pack after Buck­ing­ham Palace, and i bounced between the two for a bit), we corked — we even let pedes­tri­ans through! Bril­liant! Pats on backs all round!

Although one thing that was evi­dent was much more aggres­sion from dri­vers, par­tic­u­lar­ly black cab dri­vers. Recent­ly, we’ve always had cop­pers around, and cab­bies have behaved them­selves. Tonight, though, their basic feroc­i­ty was ful­ly in evi­dence. There were two main instances of this that i saw.

The first was on High Hol­born, at the junc­tion where i spoke to the ambu­lance­man — this was why i was stopped. The mass was com­ing along from the east; i think the advance bulk had passed through, and then was a thin­ner stream of us com­ing along behind. A black cab was sat in Grape Street (i think — i’m look­ing at a map here; one of the side streets off on the north, just before the junc­tion), and i imag­ine had been wait­ing a while for the mass to pass. When it thinned out, he took his chance (we had­n’t corked him), and came out onto High Hol­born, turn­ing right, and stay­ing in the right­mos lane. Fifty metres ahead of him was a red light at the junc­tion. Less than fifty metres ahead of him was a mass­er, rid­ing slow­ly. The cab dri­ver drove less slow­ly — he drove right up to with­in inch­es of the mass­er, tail­gat­ed him for ten metres or so, and then quite delib­er­ate­ly drove straight into the back of him. The guy went down, the cab stopped, and a crowd of us clot­ted around the scene. Luck­i­ly, the guy was­n’t hurt.

I was to the left of this, in the sec­ond or third lane over, and a lit­tle way behind the cab; i saw every­thing hap­pen right in front of me. It was quite obvi­ous that the cab dri­ver did it delib­er­ate­ly: the mass­er was rid­ing at a con­stant speed, and the dri­ver accel­er­at­ed, hit­ting him. he had dri­ven to with­in inch­es of him, which is sim­ply not a safe way to dri­ve.

So, we made sure the taxi was­n’t going any­where, took pho­tos of the scene, reg­is­tra­tion plate, dri­ver, etc, and some of us who had seen it gave the guy our details. The cab­bie was­n’t giv­ing his details, though. Some­one called the police, and after a while our friends in blue duly turned up and did their best to work every­one up into a froth­ing rage. Do cops get train­ing in deal­ing with angry pun­ters (oth­er than with a trun­cheon)? Because these guys were to defus­ing con­fronta­tions as Guy Fawkes was to the bomb squad. Any­way, even­tu­al­ly, ques­tions were asked, details were record­ed and exchanged, and the lead cop­per declared that he was record­ing this as a no-injury col­li­sion, and they weren’t going to fol­low it up. Appar­ent­ly delib­er­ate­ly dri­ving into a cyclist does­n’t count as care­less dri­ving or any­thing. He came out with, essen­tial­ly, the usu­al crap about ‘our word against his’. Dur­ing this i had a long chat with the oth­er cop­per, who seemed very nice when he was­n’t try­ing to start a fight, but com­plete­ly clue­less about cycling, and indeed road safe­ty gen­er­al­ly. Still, i’m sure if i want­ed an elec­tri­cian shot dead, he’d be just my man.

I also talked to the mass­er who was hit, his two friends, and a couri­er­ish guy who also stopped. I did­n’t quite get the vic­tim’s name. Nice lad. As i said, he was­n’t hurt, but his back wheel went under the cab’s, and was pret­ty bent. I had a look at it: the hub looked like it should be okay, and the tyre and tube should be fine, but he’s going to need a new rim, (it was a Bon­trager, the poor thing!) spokes, and brake disc. Basi­cal­ly, he’s going to need a new wheel. I could­n’t see any dam­age to the stays, mech, etc, but he needs to take it to a bike shop to get it checked out. He’s got the cab­bie’s insur­ance details; he did­n’t real­ly seem to under­stand about how insur­ance works, but i’m sure he knows some­one who does.

I sug­gest­ed we bend the wheel back into shape so he could at least roll the bike home, so we found a fence and did a bit of ghet­to tru­ing — an essen­tial urban cycling skill, and the sec­ond time i’ve had to do it on a mass! He and a friend set off walk­ing for King’s Cross to catch a train home. I sin­cere­ly hope he did­n’t decide to try and ride — he had rather a touch of teenage invin­ci­bil­i­ty, so i wor­ry he might have.

Any­way, one of his friends had received a sig­nal that the rest of the mass was at Buck­ing­ham palace, so he, the couri­er­ish guy and i set off. We got there a few min­utes before the mass set off again — i just had time to wish Des Kay well with the Lords and ride a lap round the top of the Vic­to­ria Memo­r­i­al.

After that, we start­ed to get spread out, between the main body at the front and a long tail of slow rid­ers. I’m a speed­ster myself, so i was half tempt­ed to go a bit sheep­dog on them and get them mov­ing, but i end­ed up bounc­ing back and forth — going for­ward, help­ing cork or just wait­ing, and being caught up.

Taxi inci­dent num­ber two came as we rode down Theobald’s road. A stream of traf­fic was try­ing to come in from the right, i think from Red Lion Street (again, i’m look­ing at a map and guess­ing), and had been corked. There were only a few peo­ple there, so i looped back and joined them.

At the front of the queue was a taxi dri­ver. He was­n’t very hap­py about being stopped, and insist­ed we move. We did­n’t, of course — the mass was still pass­ing. He got rather upset, and start­ed shout­ing. He then start­ed edg­ing his taxi for­ward — he went from being a foot away from us to actu­al­ly press­ing his right fend­er into my leg and start­ing to push me over; there was anoth­er guy beside me, and a few peo­ple around us, and we made it clear we weren’t going any­where until the mass had passed. It did, and i was set to go — but he was still press­ing into my leg, which meant i actu­al­ly could­n’t get on my bike and move off. If i had, and he’d edged for­ward any fur­ther, i would have gone straight under him. Bit of an impasse, cue much shout­ing.

Even­tu­al­ly, he stopped his engine, got out of his cab, and came up to me and tried to shove my bike out of the way. Because he’d stopped, i was actu­al­ly able to move, and was quite hap­py to do so, so in a way, his move was quite suc­cess­ful! There was a bit more shout­ing, with nei­ther side real­ly want­i­ng to let the oth­er have the last word (although i was silent — i just want­ed to get home and have my din­ner), and a dis­gust­ing drunk old fat man walked over and start­ed shout­ing and shov­ing a lady mass­er about, but even­tu­al­ly we dis­en­tan­gled our­selves and rode on.

By this point, i was get­ting tired and hun­gry, our num­bers were down, and i decid­ed to call it a night. We hit the junc­tion with Rose­bery Avenue, where i turn left. The mass default­ed to head­ing straight on, but a few peo­ple were shout­ing to go left: i men­tioned that i was in favour of that because i want­ed to go home; the girl beside me said she want­ed to go left because she want­ed some dori­tos, which i found quite puz­zling.

It was only after i’d sped away into the night that i realised she’d said ‘bur­ri­tos’, and must have been refer­ring to the real­ly good lit­tle bur­ri­to place at Angel. I could have kicked myself, because i could real­ly have gone for a bur­ri­to right then.

And that, as they say, is that.

http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/cm-london
http://www.criticalmasslondon.org.uk/

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

I Bike MCR presents a week long series of cycling events and activ­i­ties to cel­e­brate the bicy­cle from 6th-12th Octo­ber 2008

I Bike MCR is a grass­roots vol­un­tary group where every­one gives their time and skills for free. We organ­ise events that aim to pro­mote cycling and to build a strong sup­port­ive cycling com­mi­u­ni­ty in MCR. We do this in our own spare time because we believe that giv­ing our time to make a change will be worth it.

It will be a free fes­ti­val in order to make it acces­si­ble to every­one no mat­ter their eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion. We will, how­ev­er, ask for dona­tions to go to help­ing the I Bike MCR cycle cam­paign, you can give mon­ey or time please look here for info:
http://www.ibikemcr.org.uk/minihelp.htm

MINI FESTIVAL TIMETABLE
Every week-day morn­ing we will be hav­ing a group ride from Owen’s Park in Fal­low­field down Oxford Road to the Uni­ver­si­ties so that stu­dents can meet each oth­er and gain con­fi­dence by cycling in togeth­er as a group.

Meet in the carpark area of Owens Park (map)
8.15am, we’ll leave at 8.30am PROMPT to get into uni at 8.45am
We hope this will con­tin­ue after the week fes­ti­val is over.

Mon­day 6th Octo­ber
7.30pm Coun­cil Cham­bers Man­ches­ter Uni­ver­si­ty
Bicy­cle Film Night

Tues­day 7th Octo­ber
Meet 6pm Out­side Man­ches­ter Uni­ver­si­ty refec­to­ry
A bicy­cle tour around our city, tak­ing you to the nicest parks, the best bike shops, cool places to hang out, the best cycle routes, nice land­marks and nice pubs.

Wednes­day 8th Octo­ber
2pm — 5pm Email info@ibikemcr.org.uk to book a place
FREE Bicy­cle Con­fi­dence lessons. Book asap to reserve a place.
No mat­ter whether you need some tips on how to deal with a par­tic­u­lar junc­tion or how to ride one hand­ed you can ben­e­fit from a bike con­fi­dence class with a qual­i­fied cycling instruc­tor.

7pm Bas­ket­ball courts in Platt Fields Park
The Spokes Bicy­cle Dance Troupe,
The all woman Spokes bike dance troupe have an open prac­tice to encour­age more bike lov­ing women to get involved and join them in danc­ing with their bikes to encour­age more women and girls to cycle.

Thurs­day 9th Octo­ber
6pm Whit­worth Park, Den­mark Road
Bicy­cle Polo Prac­tice. We will teach new­com­ers how to play this exhil­a­rat­ing and fun sport.

Fri­day 10th Octo­ber
Reg­is­ter at 6pm, Ride at 7pm…
Meet in the carpark behind the Sand­bar, Grosvenor Street (map)
I Bike MCR Super­heroes Trea­sure­cat.
No mat­ter what bike you’re on or how well you know the city you can take part (and have a chance to win!) in this trea­sure hunt on bicy­cles.

* Dress as a super­hero for more points..go all out!
* Ride as a dynam­ic duo, both peo­ple must be present at each check­point but only one needs to do the task (if you can’t find a part­ner before­hand, don’t wor­ry you’re sure to find one on the night)
* With a final sprint to see which out of your pair is the super­hero and which is the side­kick
* If the phone rings answer it. You may get a secret mis­sion to win more points, then choose if you want to go for fastest time or most points
* Prizes for a wide vari­ety of things NOT JUST FASTEST. inc.Team back at any time with the most points, Win­ner of the final sprint, Best cos­tume and loads more…So it’s open for any­one to win a prize no mat­ter how lit­tle you know the city or how fast you can ride

Amaz­ing prizes from:
Cant­goslo
Baga­boo
Seag­ull Bags
HK Fixed
Knog
Edin­burgh Bicy­cle Co-oper­a­tive
Bicy­cle Bou­tique

Sat­ur­day 11th Octo­ber
Noon at Pic­cadil­ly train sta­tion
or 1.30pm at Delamere For­est Infor­ma­tion Cen­tre
Moun­tain bik­ing in Delamere For­est
(you can hire moun­tain bikes there)

8pm The Sand­bar Grosvenor Street (map)
Moon­light Ride: a 3 hour cir­cu­lar ride into the night with a pub stop.

Sun­day 12th Octo­ber
Noon Meet Sains­bury’s Carpark, off Wilm­slow Road, Fal­low­field
A ride along one of Man­ches­ter’s nicest off road cycle routes, the Fal­low­field Loop, where we will stop off to help cre­ate a mur­al depict­ing the cel­e­bra­tion of the bicy­cle. Every­one wel­come to get involved mak­ing the Fal­low­field Loop brighter and fun. Bring brush­es, tat­ty clothes, paints and lots of enthu­si­asm (don’t wor­ry if you not that artis­tic we’ll find some way for you to help!)

info@ibikemcr.org.uk
http://ibikemcr.org.uk/

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

The 4th South Lon­don crit­i­cal mass bike ride is this fri­day and every first fri­day of the month.

Come and lib­er­ate the streets of south lon­don, tak­ing the mass to the mass­es not just to shoppers,tourists and irate cab­bies. Meet 6.30pm out­side Peck­ham Library,off Peck­ham High Street.

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

Big Turnout for Liv­er­pool Crit­i­cal Mass

This mon­th’s crit­i­cal mass was big­ger than ever. The ride end­ed at Next To Nowhere (social cen­tre) where the rid­ers got free refresh­ments and saw a film.

Dozens of cyclists of all ages and back­grounds, from stu­dents to social work­ers, turned out. They includ­ed a vis­i­tor who has recent­ly come from New Zealand and took part in crit­i­cal mass rides there.

After doing a tour around the city cen­tre they stopped at the social cen­tre, where they were giv­en free soup and cakes, and watched a film show­ing the his­to­ry of how the Crit­i­cal Mass rides start­ed in San Fran­cis­co in 1993. The rides in that city grew to thou­sands-strong, and worked beau­ti­ful­ly through col­lec­tive organ­i­sa­tion, with­out com­mit­tees or lead­ers. They had the effect of caus­ing more peo­ple to com­mute by bicy­cle instead of car, and to use the bicy­cle as their nor­mal trans­port. This was dis­rupt­ed when the San Fran­cis­co police decid­ed the cyclists need­ed to be “organ­ised” and made to fol­low offi­cial­ly des­ig­nat­ed routes. Ulti­mate­ly, how­ev­er, the cyclists decid­ed they did­n’t want or need to be organ­ised.

Liv­er­pool Crit­i­cal Mass has not so far had any police inter­fer­ence, and is suc­cess­ful­ly enabling cyclists to use the roads safe­ly, and assert their right to be recog­nised as road users. But as one cyclist said, “If the police want­ed to organ­ise us — how? There are no lead­ers and no-one’s in charge. There’s just a bunch of cyclists who hap­pen coin­ci­den­tal­ly to turn up at the Chi­nese arch on the sec­ond Fri­day of the month, and go for a ride togeth­er.”

A bunch of cyclists may, coin­ci­den­tal­ly, be at the Chi­nese arch on Nel­son Street at 6pm on 12th Novem­ber and 15th Decem­ber. They would wel­come any-one who wants to turn up and ride along with them.

CLIMATE ACTION NEWS SHEET 82, AUGUST 2008

————————-
UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-
1) CLIMATE ACTION CAMP & NO BORDER CAMP, HAMBURG, GERMANY, 15–24.8.08
2) SHELL TO SEA WEEK OF ACTION, 17–23.08.08
3) EARTH FIRST! SUMMER GATHERING, NORFOLK, 27.8–1.9.08
4) BRISTOL ANARCHIST BOOKFAIR, BRISTOL, 13.09.08
5) TOWARDS CLIMATE ACTION IN COPENHANGEN 2009, DENMARK, 13–14.09.08

————————-
UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-
1) CLIMATE ACTION CAMP & NO BORDER CAMP, HAMBURG, GERMANY, 15–24.8.08
2) SHELL TO SEA WEEK OF ACTION, 17–23.08.08
3) EARTH FIRST! SUMMER GATHERING, NORFOLK, 27.8–1.9.08
4) BRISTOL ANARCHIST BOOKFAIR, BRISTOL, 13.09.08
5) TOWARDS CLIMATE ACTION IN COPENHANGEN 2009, DENMARK, 13–14.09.08
6) CLIMATE CAMP WHAT NEXT MEETING, MANCHESTER, 26–28.09.08
7) NATIONAL MEETING TO RESIST NEW COAL, MANCHESTER, 11–12.10.08
8) FOSSIL FOOLS DAY 2009, 01.04.09

—————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
—————-

1) CAMP FOR CLIMATE ACTION, KINGSNORTH, KENT, 3–11.08.08
2) DERBYSHIRE COAL MINE EVICTED, 14.08.08
3) US CLIMATE CAMPS, JULY/AUGUST
4) SAVING ICELAND CAMP, JULY/AUGUST
5) AIRPORT OCCUPATION, GERMANY, ONGOING
6) STICKING IT TO THE PM, LONDON, 22.07.08
7) 32 4x4s DISARMED, OXFORD, 18.07.08
8) NEW RISING TIDE LEAFLET
9) NEW REPORT: CASHING IN ON COAL

————————-
UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-
1) CLIMATE ACTION CAMP & NO BORDER CAMP, HAMBURG, GERMANY, 15–24.8.08
‘These camps are going to take place in or near Ham­burg. It’s two dif­fer­ent camps, but prob­a­bly on the same camp site and doing togeth­er at least two mass actions like block­ades: on 22nd August at the depor­ta­tion air­port of Ham­burg and on 23rd at the har­bour or at the new coal pow­er plant. http://klimacamp08.org

2) SHELL TO SEA WEEK OF ACTION, 17–23.08.08
The Soli­taire (the biggest pipe lay­ing ship in the world) is set to begin ille­gal­ly con­struct­ing the off­shore sec­tion of the pipeline. It is believed that the Soli­taire is on a pret­ty tight sched­ule & booked up for the next 2 years, so ANY dis­rup­tion pro­vides us with a real oppor­tu­ni­ty to delay the project sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Mem­bers of the ‘Great Rebel Raft Regat­ta’ recent­ly deployed at the E.ON coal fired pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth in
Kent, Eng­land, have made their way from Cli­mate Camp UK to Erris, in order to assist Shell to Sea cam­paign­ers in their oppo­si­tion to this pipeline con­struc­tion at Glen­gad.

3) EARTH FIRST! SUMMER GATHERING, NORFOLK, 27.8–1.9.08
5 days of work­shops, net­work­ing and plan­ning actions in a beau­ti­ful field in Nor­folk. The gath­er­ing is also a prac­ti­cal exam­ple of low-impact eco-liv­ing and non-hier­ar­chi­cal organ­is­ing. www.earthfirstgathering.org.uk

4) BRISTOL ANARCHIST BOOKFAIR, BRISTOL, 13.09.08
St Wer­burghs Cen­tre, 10am to 5pm, free entry. With a work­shop by Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide: Why direct action? Social change not cli­mate change? www.bristolanarchistbookfair.org

5) TOWARDS CLIMATE ACTION IN COPENHANGEN 2009, DENMARK 13–14.09.08
Join the first inter­na­tion­al plan­ning meet­ing in Copen­hagen from the 13–14th of Sep­tem­ber 2008. The meet­ing aims at prepar­ing a large mobil­i­sa­tion for direct action against the root caus­es of cli­mate change in Copen­hagen and through­out the world dur­ing the UN Cli­mate Con­fer­ence (30 Nov-11 Dec 2009). More info:
http://klimax2009.org/?p=33&langswitch_lang=en Tell them you’re com­ing:
sept08@klimax2009.org

6) CLIMATE CAMP WHAT NEXT MEETING, MANCHESTER 26–28.09.08
All are invit­ed to the first Post-Cli­mate Camp Nation­al Gath­er­ing. The gath­er­ing will offer a chance to reflect on where we are at, decide where we go from here, and pro­vide info as to how to get involved in the ongo­ing direct action cam­paign to stop Kingsnorth.
Ques­tions? Email process@climatecamp.org.uk

7) NATIONAL MEETING TO RESIST NEW COAL, MANCHESTER, 11–12.10.08
A meet­ing to bring togeth­er groups and com­mu­ni­ties resist­ing coal in the UK – from open cast and deep coal mines, to pow­er sta­tions and coal imports. Share infor­ma­tion, plan for action, and build a strong net­work of resis­tance. www.leaveitintheground.org.uk

8) FOSSIL FOOLS DAY 2009, 01.04.2009
Four con­ti­nents, 150 actions, and an April Fool’s Day with a fan­tas­ti­cal­ly sub­ver­sive (and rad­i­cal­ly nec­es­sary) twist – we’re def­i­nite­ly doing that again! So Fos­sil Fools Day 2009 is a go – start pick­ing your fos­sil fuel tar­get now! Info and resources will be post­ed on the web­site soon, and look out for leaflets to dis­trib­ute in Decem­ber.

—————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
—————-

1) CAMP FOR CLIMATE ACTION, KINGSNORTH, KENT, 3–11.08.08
From the Heathrow Con­fer­ence to the Car­a­van, from the work­shops to beau­ti­ful camp life, from the GRRR pirates to the fence breach­ers to the bail break­ers, and the flur­ry of affin­i­ty group actions before, dur­ing and after the camp, the 2008 Camp for Cli­mate Action was a roar­ing suc­cess. We out­smart­ed 26 police forces to run the biggest cli­mate camp ever. We cov­ered the riv­er in boats, filled the streets with peo­ple, cov­ered the pow­er sta­tion gates with ban­ners and hit at least eight oth­er tar­gets with autonomous actions. We flood­ed the nation­al, local and inde­pen­dent media with our sto­ries and mes­sages. E.ON and the Gov­ern­ment threw every­thing they could at us, and they still couldn’t hold us back. Actions, in no par­tic­u­lar order, includ­ed: an office inva­sion of min­ing com­pa­ny BHP Bil­ton, tak­ing over an incin­er­a­tor site in Newhaven, a block­ade of Cargill over its rain­for­est destruc­tion and land-grab­bing, a pro-veg­an roof occu­pa­tion and ban­ner drop at Smith­field Meat Mar­ket, a protest at US air base Milden­hall to high­light mil­i­tary CO2 emis­sions, a ban­ner drop from an elec­tric­i­ty pylon, a naked protest at DBERR, the world’s small­est pro­test­ers climb­ing E.ON’s smoke­stack (at Legoland), actions at Roy­al Bank of Scot­land (not once but twice – stu­dents do a die-in and Ris­ing Tiders bust out the super­glue), a demo at Lon­gan­net pow­er sta­tion in Fife, a mul­ti-pronged attack on Gatwick by Plane Stu­pid, the shut­ting down of the South’s biggest bio­fu­el stor­age facil­i­ty, and in
a sin­gle day of may­hem in the City, the Cli­mate Car­a­van tar­get­ed RBS and the PR firms for Shell, BAA & E.ON.
www.climatecamp.org.uk
Pho­to slide show: http://blip.tv/file/1167973
Video: http://www.undercurrents.org/visionon/

2) DERBYSHIRE COAL MINE EVICTED, 14.08.08
The squat in Der­byshire, a protest on the site of a pro­posed new open-cast coal mine, came to end with the evic­tion of the remain­ing two pro­test­ers, who had res­olute­ly resist­ed attempts to clear the site by furi­ous­ly dig­ging for vic­to­ry. Come to the nation­al Leave it in the Ground meet­ing in Octo­ber to help with the next steps. www.leaveitintheground.org.uk

3) US CLIMATE CAMPS, JULY/AUGUST
All three US Cli­mate Camps have now wound down, with action high­lights includ­ing the South­east Cli­mate Con­ver­gence occu­py­ing a nuclear facil­i­ty in Vir­ginia, the Bil­lion­aires for Coal strik­ing Bank of Amer­i­ca 4 times in 3 days and a protest at NW Nat­ur­al Gas fol­low­ing the West Coast Con­ver­gence. And check out http://www.uncampement.net/?q=en/node/775 for
the ongo­ing (8–24 August) camp in Que­bec, Cana­da.

4) SAVING ICELAND CAMP, JULY/AUGUST
Sav­ing Iceland’s fourth action camp is now over but the fight goes on. The three-week camp was at Hell­isheiði, where Reyk­javík Ener­gy is expand­ing their geot­her­mal pow­er plant, first of all to sup­ply ener­gy to alu­mini­um smelters. Actions includ­ed: work on the Cen­tu­ry Aluminum’s exist­ing smelter as well as a steel fac­to­ry were block­ad­ed, hold­ing up a shift
change for sev­er­al hours. A Reyk­javik Ener­gy geot­her­mal drill site at Hell­ishei­di, being built for Cen­tu­ry, was com­plete­ly shut down for a day as activists locked to machines, climbed the drill and occu­pied the pow­er con­trol room. The nation­al pow­er com­pa­ny Landsvirkjun had it’s office invad­ed, and it’s CEO Fridrik Sophus­son had his home vis­it­ed. Sav­ing Ice­land nailed an evic­tion notice to his door. www.savingiceland.org

5) AIRPORT OCCUPATION, GERMANY, ONGOING
In Ger­many cli­mate activists have been squat­ting a wood­land since the begin­ning of June to stop the con­struc­tion of yet anoth­er new run­way for the already mas­sive Frank­furt air­port. The camp con­tin­ues to grow with over 30 peo­ple liv­ing on site and has the sup­port of the com­mu­ni­ty. Demos and actions are being organ­ised togeth­er with local res­i­dents’ groups
against air­port expan­sion. Amaz­ing tree­hous­es, walk­ways and funky ground shel­ters have been con­struct­ed to make life pleas­ant in the woods and to resist evic­tion as long as pos­si­ble. Peo­ple are wel­come to join in. www.waldbesetzung.blogsport.de

6) STICKING IT TO THE PM, LONDON, 22.07.08
On 22nd July a Plane Stu­pid cam­paign­er super­glued him­self to Prime Min­is­ter Gor­don Brown in 10 Down­ing Street. He’d been invit­ed to receive an award for protest­ing, so prompt­ly decid­ed to car­ry on in that vain! Whilst ask­ing Gor­don about refus­ing to meet West Lon­don
res­i­dents opposed to the con­struc­tion of a third run­way at Heathrow, the intre­pid pro­test­er put his super­glue cov­ered hand onto Brown’s poly­ester suit. When Brown went to turn away he found he was stuck and for once had no option but to lis­ten. www.planestupid.com

7) 32 4x4s DISARMED, OXFORD, 18.07.08
32 SUV own­ers woke up in Oxford on 18th July to dis­cov­er that their envi­ron­men­tal­ly destruc­tive vehi­cles had been dis­abled using the ‘mung bean trick’ to let down their tires.

8) NEW RISING TIDE LEAFLET
At long last, Ris­ing Tide has a new leaflet – who we are, what we do and why we do it, wrapped up in an inspir­ing pho­to col­lage pack­age. Sneak a peak at , or email info@risingtide.org.uk to get a bunch post­ed to you for dis­tri­b­u­tion in your local area.

9) NEW REPORT: CASHING IN ON COAL
High street banks are mak­ing mil­lions by pro­vid­ing the finan­cial fuel that dri­ves the expan­sion of coal extrac­tion and com­bus­tion. This report exam­ines the role in the last two years of the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land (RBS), HSBC and Bar­clays in pro­vid­ing and arrang­ing the finan­cial means to the coal indus­try to extract and burn vast quan­ti­ties of coal. The report reveals that RBS has helped lend more mon­ey to the coal indus­try, in more deals, than any oth­er major UK bank. www.carbonweb.org

—————–
Ris­ing Tide UK,
c/o 62 Fieldgate Street,
Lon­don E1 1ES
www.risingtide.org.uk
www.artnotoil.org.uk
www.fossilfoolsday.org
Tel: 07708 794665

See also the Camp for Cli­mate Action (www.climatecamp.org.uk), Net­work for Cli­mate Action (www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk) and Cli­mate Indy­media (www.climateimc.org)

———-

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

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

Earth First! gathering — programme and travel directions

Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing
Eco­log­i­cal Direct Action with­out Com­pro­mise
27 Aug — 1 Sept 2008, Nor­folk
Join us for 5 days of work­shops and plan­ning actions

Trav­el direc­tions:

Earth First! Gathering 2008 - print sizeEarth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing
Eco­log­i­cal Direct Action with­out Com­pro­mise
27 Aug — 1 Sept 2008, Nor­folk
Join us for 5 days of work­shops and plan­ning actions

Trav­el direc­tions:
The gath­er­ing this year will be held at Woolsey­bridge Farm — a love­ly site in Nor­folk with lots of trees and a lit­tle stream. It’s approx­i­mate­ly 1.5 miles NNE of Diss. Diss has reg­u­lar train ser­vices and a whole­food shop. The Grid Ref­er­ence of the site is TM130819. The post code is IP22 5SY.

The site is eas­i­ly acces­si­ble by pub­lic trans­port, you can get the train either to Diss or Nor­wich and then catch the bus route no 1 (Sim­monds) from Diss to Nor­wich or vice ver­sa — this route goes right past the site and we’ll be ask­ing the local bus com­pa­ny if they will stop right out­side the site on request. Or you could walk or cycle — it’s only 1.5miles away from Diss train sta­tion. Please come by pub­lic trans­port if at all pos­si­ble! .
We will run pick-ups from the train sta­tion for any­body who can’t use the bus ser­vice or for larg­er groups of peo­ple. If you need a lift please let us know well in advance (and not in the mid­dle of the night, when you’re at a train sta­tion some­where!). Ring the Gath­er­ing mobile on 07789 331857

For a map and fur­ther details on trav­el includ­ing bus times and direc­tions for dri­vers check out http://earthfirstgathering.org.uk/2008/where.html

Pro­gramme
This year’s pro­gramme focuss­es on info and plan­ning for actions, direct action skills as well as spaces to dis­cuss how we can respond to and deal with the widen­ing eco­log­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and soci­etal crises. We hope there’s some­thing for every­one.
We rec­om­mend that you arrive Tue evening, as work­shops will start on Wednes­day morn­ing and run until Sun­day evening

For more info about the gath­er­ing check out our web­site or email us (though we won’t be able to answer email after 21 Aug, as we’ll be on site set­ting up)

http://www.earthfirst.org.uk, sum­mer­gath­er­ing _ AT _ earthfirst.org.uk

The work­shops

Wednes­day

12:00
Intro­duc­tion to Earth First! and the gath­er­ing
Deal­ing with the main­stream media — how to get your mes­sage across
Basic electrics — for squats and homes.
Cap­i­tal­ism and cli­mate change — how to make the links vis­i­ble in actions
Queer net­work­ing ses­sion

2:30
Self-defence — mixed prac­tise ses­sion
Squat­ting FAQ — shar­ing tips and tricks
Action Recon­nais­sance for begin­ners
Intro­duc­tion to the root caus­es of eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion and an explo­ration of alter­na­tives
Advanced Nav­i­ga­tion

4:30
Sav­ing Ice­land — Intro­duc­tion to the cam­paign
Nuclear waste and nuclear weapons
Con­sen­sus Deci­sion-mak­ing
Intro­duc­tion to Ecol­o­gy
Con­fronting Abu­sive Behav­iours with­in our Com­mu­ni­ties — with­out the police/prison.

6:00
Library Space: Nego­ti­at­ing Safer Sex: tips on putting the the­o­ry into prac­tice, and mak­ing your sex life more fun as well as safer!

8:00
Cin­e­ma: Talk with video on resist­ing rain­for­est destruc­tion in Tas­ma­nia

Thurs­day

10:30
Deal­ing with Pub­lic Order sit­u­a­tions — under­stand­ing police tac­tics and how we can deal with to them/turn them to our advan­tage (runs until lunch)
State and cor­po­rate oppres­sion of the Aus­tralian Abo­rig­ines
Action recon­nais­sance — advanced skill­share, share your most clever tips and tricks for get­ting info for actions
Prac­ti­cal plant iden­ti­fi­ca­tion (begin­ners)
Activist trau­ma and recov­ery

12:00
Sav­ing Ice­land — an eval­u­a­tion of the camp this sum­mer
Secu­ri­ty for Activists Part I: Do’s and don’ts of organ­is­ing action, from arrang­ing to meet, plan­ning and what hap­pens after
Arrest sup­port for actions — how to pro­vide sup­port for your affin­i­ty group, medi­um sized actions or mega camps and gath­er­ings.
Intro­duc­tion to Earth First! and the sum­mer gath­er­ing

2:30
Wom­en’s self-defence — intro­duc­to­ry ses­sion
Food and Cli­mate Action: info for action
How to plan an action
Police liai­son for actions — what it is, its uses and lim­i­ta­tions and how to make it work.
Chang­ing light bulbs or smash­ing the sys­tem. Shar­ing +/- expe­ri­ences of work­ing within/outside the sys­tem

4:30
Oppos­ing nuclear expan­sion: plan­ning for action
How to plan and run a suc­cess­ful medi­um to long-term cam­paign
Night time skills Part I: intro­duc­tion (fol­lowed by prac­tise ses­sion at 8.30pm)
Legal and arrest work­shop
Intro­duc­tion to anar­chist history/potted anar­chist his­to­ries

6:00
Library space: open dis­cus­sion ?Direct action or pub­lic­i­ty stunt??
8:00

Cin­e­ma: Seashep­herd film and talk
8:30

Night time skills Part II — prac­tice your skills in the field.

Fri­day

10:30
Blockad­ing tac­tics
Cli­mate Camp debrief: a crit­i­cal look at the cli­mate camp, its achieve­ments and pol­i­tics
Intro­duc­tion to Earth First! And the sum­mer gath­er­ing
Com­put­er Secu­ri­ty for the non-tech­ni­cal
Prison Abo­li­tion: what’s wrong with prison? what do we mean by abo­li­tion and how can we make it hap­pen?

12:00
Food and cli­mate change: action and cam­paign plan­ning
Self-defence mixed prac­tise ses­sion
Squat­ting to resist — occu­pa­tions to resist the pow­ers of dark­ness
His­to­ry of Earth First!

2:30
The Earth First! Action Update and web­site: feed­back and get­ting involved
Resist­ing agro­fu­els — update on the sit­u­a­tion and action plan­ning
Sea Shep­herd — an intro to its cam­paigns and how to support/get involved.
Grow your own food — share you skills and expe­ri­ence
Queer Activist Forum: Rad­i­cal queers organ­ise for the future!

4:30
Queer Self-Defence: an intro to basic self-defence skills (ver­bal and phys­i­cal)
Set­ting up new direct action groups
Sav­ing Ice­land ? plan­ning actions for the com­ing year
Tech­no-fix­es and cli­mate change ? report by Cor­po­rate Watch
Urban self-reliance and self-suf­fi­cien­cy

7:30
Library: Pris­on­er Sup­port — An infor­mal get togeth­er to dis­cuss the state of pris­on­er sup­port in our move­ments, find out news and get advice on writ­ing to pris­on­ers, as well as mak­ing and writ­ing cards to send to pris­on­ers.

8:00
Cin­e­ma: A talk and film by a trib­al activist from Oris­sa oppos­ing min­ing

Sat­ur­day

10:30
Cam­paigns and Actions Round-up: UK and inter­na­tion­al news (no oth­er work­shops)

12:00
Wom­en’s self-defence prac­tise ses­sion plus run­ning along­side — intro­duc­tion to wom­en’s self-defence
Stop­ping GM test fields — dis­cus­sion on future campaign/actions
Research and destroy — how to research cor­po­ra­tions
Future mod­els of soci­ety — find­ing a path to sus­tain­able liv­ing
Intro­duc­tion to Earth First! and the sum­mer gath­er­ing
Using tripods for blockad­ing

2:30
Leave it in the ground — build­ing resis­tance to new coal min­ing and pow­er sta­tions
Facil­i­ta­tion of meet­ings
Activist Secu­ri­ty Part III: doing actions with­out leav­ing traces
Restora­tion Ecol­o­gy
Cre­at­ing safer spaces
Vis­it to Burston Strike School

4:30
Region­al meet­ings and action plan­ning (no oth­er work­shops)

6:00
Library Space: Work­ing with­out lead­ers — dis­cus­sion about core val­ues of anar­chism

8:00
Cin­e­ma: Smash Edo film and talk

Sun­day
11:00
Self defence mixed prac­tice ses­sion
Sort­ing out ways of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with­in EF!
Using radios on actions
Intro­duc­tion to Earth First! And the sum­mer gath­er­ing
Fences: get­ting over them/taking them down

12:15
The sum­mer gath­er­ing: feed­back on this year’s and get­ting involved in organ­is­ing the next one

2:30
Con­doms, cap­i­tal­ism and cli­mate change
Smash Edo
Intro­duc­tion to nav­i­ga­tion
What’s new in the world of law?
Fem­i­nist Health
Climb­ing trees, lamp posts and any­thing else

4:30
Rad­i­cal pol­i­tics in the age of col­lapse
The Roy­al Bank of Scot­land and Fos­sil Fuel Financ­ing
Get­ting your elec­tric­i­ty from solar pow­er and wind
Rad­i­cal Par­ent­ing
Look­ing after our men­tal health — shar­ing ideas and expe­ri­ences

8:00
Cin­e­ma: films — cli­mate camp footage, ready steady skip etc

Mon­day
Take-down: please stay for a day or two to help take down the site. If you’ve got access to a vehicle/van, it’d be great if you could help trans­port­ing mar­quees, recy­cling etc to the places they need to go. Cheers!

More info about the Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing
EF! is about direct action to halt the destruc­tion of the Earth. It’s about doing it your­self rather than rely­ing on lead­ers, gov­ern­ments or indus­try.
Direct action is at the heart of it, whether you’re stand­ing in front of a bull­doz­er, shut­ting down an open-cast mine or rip­ping up a field of GM crops.
We’re a loose net­work of peo­ple, groups and cam­paigns com­ing togeth­er for eco­log­i­cal direct action.
Join us for 5 days of work­shops, net­work­ing and plan­ning actions, run with­out lead­ers by every­one who comes along. The gath­er­ing is also a prac­ti­cal exam­ple of low-impact eco-liv­ing and non-hier­ar­chi­cal organ­is­ing.

http://www.earthfirst.org.uk, sum­mer­gath­er­ing _ AT _ earthfirst.org.uk

Rath Lugh update, Ireland

August 14th 2008

Rath Lugh bannerRath Lugh tree-sitAugust 14th 2008
Pro­tec­tors were stag­ing a Tree Protest near the Col­lier­stown site high­light­ing the fact that rough­ly 62 bod­ies were removed from their sacred bur­ial grounds to make way for the con­struc­tion of the M3 Motor­way. Col­lier­stown grave­yard dates from pre­his­toric times with buri­als con­tin­u­ing into the ear­ly medieval era.

The Tree Protest was giv­en huge sup­port from pass­ing motorists. Locals also joined in com­ing out of their homes to give encour­age­ment and there were plen­ty of vol­un­teers to take stints to main­tain a pres­ence.