Bristol Actions in Solidarity with Rising Tide’s Call to Action: August-September 2007

GOLF COURSES
Parts of 3 golf cours­es were dug up: Tra­cy Park, Wick; Knowle, Stock­wood; and Fil­ton. In Knowle a mes­sage was sprayed up near the club house read­ing “Deca­dent waste of water”.

MOBILE PHONE MAST

GOLF COURSES
Parts of 3 golf cours­es were dug up: Tra­cy Park, Wick; Knowle, Stock­wood; and Fil­ton. In Knowle a mes­sage was sprayed up near the club house read­ing “Deca­dent waste of water”.

MOBILE PHONE MAST
A mobile phone mast at Broomhill, Bris­ling­ton, was sab­o­taged.

NON-PASSENGER RAILWAY LINE
The sin­gle track rail­way line that runs from the Roy­al Port­bury Dock in Avon­mouth to Par­son Street in Bed­min­ster was sab­o­taged. This non-pas­sen­ger line trans­ports cars and fos­sil fuel to the Mid­lands. In a wood­ed area on a straight sec­tion of the line the track was cut three quar­ters of the way through in two places and marked with high vis­i­bil­i­ty paint. A warn­ing ban­ner read­ing: “Stop: Trees on line” was fixed across the line sev­er­al hun­dred yards in front of this on the line. A pile of wood was placed across the line next to the dam­aged part.

This held up the trans­porta­tion of cars for only half an hour, but the repair to the line took at least anoth­er 4 hours.

4x4s
with­in the last 6 months both front tyres punc­tured on 40 4x4s in and around Bris­tol.

A “cor­po­rate enter­tain­ment” com­pa­ny called 4‑Play, which pro­vides off road dri­ving for 4x4s in the south west, had vehi­cles spray paint­ed “4‑play — blow-job the plan­et”.

Brecon Gas Pipeline Sabotaged

The Bre­con bea­cons gas pipeline works were sab­o­taged dur­ing a night action as part of the week of action against cli­mate change and in defence of the earth. Armed with only a wreck­ing bar and deter­mi­na­tion a small team was able to bypass the poor secu­ri­ty and ren­der immo­bile a total of 11 machines includ­ing tip­per trucks and exca­va­tors. Major engine and hydraulic com­po­nents were destroyed and the pipeline itself was holed in sev­er­al places.

The Bre­con bea­cons gas pipeline works were sab­o­taged dur­ing a night action as part of the week of action against cli­mate change and in defence of the earth. Armed with only a wreck­ing bar and deter­mi­na­tion a small team was able to bypass the poor secu­ri­ty and ren­der immo­bile a total of 11 machines includ­ing tip­per trucks and exca­va­tors. Major engine and hydraulic com­po­nents were destroyed and the pipeline itself was holed in sev­er­al places.
This action was car­ried out by nor­mal peo­ple and was easy to achieve oth­ers should con­sid­er sim­i­lar actions.
The pipeline is destroy­ing nat­ur­al habi­tats in order to sup­ply a fuel that we can­not burn if the life on this plan­et is to sur­vive. Con­sid­er the costs envi­ron­men­tal tax.

Who are our mystery callers at Barnstaple Quarry?

Some­one came to call at Barn­sta­ble quar­ry aggre­gate indus­tries and cut all the elec­tric cables in the build­ing and dam­aged a pri­vate­ly owned truck, and dam­aged an office and topped up their sta­tion­ary (don’t we all nick sta­tionery from work places!)

Some­one came to call at Barn­sta­ble quar­ry aggre­gate indus­tries and cut all the elec­tric cables in the build­ing and dam­aged a pri­vate­ly owned truck, and dam­aged an office and topped up their sta­tion­ary (don’t we all nick sta­tionery from work places!)

They wiped the white board clean and wrote ‘Earth First’ but oth­er then that not much of a clue as to why any­one would want to break in to an unwork­ing quar­ry..
Any­one got a clue as to what the protest is???

I’m the [rel­a­tive of some­one con­nect­ed to the quar­ry — edit­ed out email address & exact con­nec­tion]

see you all at the cli­mate camp

🙂

[we’ve not heard report of this except through this email con­tact — check out their web­sites at http://www.aggregate.com/ and http://www.aggregate-uk.com/index.html for poten­tial rea­sons this multi­na­tion­al con­struc­tion and build­ing mate­ri­als com­pa­ny was tar­get­ed]

Spirit of Freedom (August 2007) — 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)

“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 August 2007 edi­tion of Spir­it of Free­dom. Reg­u­lar read­ers of Spir­it of Free­dom will notice that this issue of the newslet­ter is slight­ly dif­fer­ent to pre­vi­ous issues. As long-term ELP sup­port­ers will be aware, back in 2000, after the arrests & remand­ings of a group of Irish anti-road pro­test­ers ELP launched its e‑mail “Urgent ELP!” ser­vice. Over the years this ser­vice has proven very pop­u­lar with most of our sup­port­ers now receiv­ing their news via e‑mail with very few peo­ple receiv­ing the newslet­ter in its paper ver­sion. With that in mind, ELP has decid­ed to end its paper ver­sion of its newslet­ter. And because most of the “Court Reports & Legal Updates” news con­tained in Spir­it of Free­dom has already been cir­cu­lat­ed via e‑mail we are drop­ping this from our newslet­ter and from now on “Spir­it of Free­dom” will sole­ly be a pris­on­er list­ing pub­li­ca­tion. How­ev­er, to remind every­one of all the pris­on­ers we do sup­port we will be cir­cu­lat­ing the “Spir­it of Free­dom” pris­on­er list­ing on a month­ly basis, to give every­one a reg­u­lar reminder of all the pris­on­ers we sup­port. Whilst look­ing through the list, if you notice an error, please con­tact ELP and we will cor­rect it imme­di­ate­ly. In the mean­time, remem­ber, no mat­ter where you are in the world, sup­port the eco-pris­on­ers and no com­pro­mise in defence of Moth­er Earth!

ECO-DEFENCE PRISONERS

Fadal­la Idris Ala­jaimy (address unknown). Sudan anti-dam pro­test­er on remand accused of Wag­ing War against the State for protest­ing against the con­struc­tion of a dam.

Mohamed Ahmed Ala­jaimy (address unknown). Sudan anti-dam pro­test­er on remand accused of Wag­ing War against the State for protest­ing against the con­struc­tion of a dam.

Tre Arrow, CS# 05850722, Van­cou­ver Island Region­al Cor­rec­tion Cen­ter, 4216 Wilkin­son Rd., Vic­to­ria, BC, V8Z 5B2, Cana­da. On remand accused of involve­ment with an arson on log­ging trucks and an arson on vehi­cles owned by a sand & grav­el com­pa­ny. Both arsons occurred in the USA. Tre is fight­ing his extra­di­tion to the USA.

Grant Barnes #1533241 22, Den­ver Coun­ty Jail, PO Box 1108, Den­ver, CO 80201, USA. Serv­ing 12 years for set­ting fire to a num­ber of SUV vehi­cles. On one of the vehi­cles the let­ters ELF was spray-paint­ed.

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.

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 Board­er Guard whilst on the run. In ‘02 Mar­co com­plet­ed a 12-year sen­tence in Italy for destroy­ing elec­tric­i­ty pylons in Italy.

Ibai Eder­ra, Car­cel de Pam­plona, C/San Roque. Apdo. 250, 31080 — Iruñez –Pam­plona, Navar­ra (España), Spain. Serv­ing just under 5 years for sab­o­tag­ing machin­ery at the con­tro­ver­sial Itoiz dam con­struc­tion site.

Bet­ty Kraw­czyk, Alou­ette Cor­rec­tion­al Cen­tre for Women, P.O. Box 1000, Maple Ridge, BC, V2X 3K4, Cana­da. Serv­ing 10-months for protest­ing against the devel­op­ment of the Win­ter Olympics site on tra­di­tion­al Squamish ter­ri­to­ry

Jef­frey Luers, #13797671, OSP, 2605 State St. Salem, OR 97310, USA. Serv­ing 22 years & 8 months for arson on a SUV deal­er­ship & the attempt­ed arson of an oil truck.

Ali Mohamed Alhas­sen Mas­sad (address unknown). Sudan anti-dam pro­test­er on remand accused of Wag­ing War against the State for protest­ing against the con­struc­tion of a dam.

Eric McDavid X‑2972521 4E 231A, Sacra­men­to Coun­ty Main Jail, 651 “I” Street, Sacra­men­to, CA 95814, USA. On Remand accused of plan­ning to destroy the prop­er­ty of the U.S. Forestry Ser­vice, mobile phone masts and pow­er plants.

Daniel McGowan, #63794–053, MDC Brook­lyn Met­ro­pol­i­tan Deten­tion Cen­ter, PO Box 329002, Brook­lyn, NY 11232, USA. Serv­ing 7 years for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against a lum­ber com­pa­ny. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy.

Jonathan Paul – See details in Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers List.

Costan­ti­no Ragusa, Casa Cir­con­dar­i­ale, Via Prati Nuovi 7, 27058 Voghera (PV), Italy. Il Sil­vestre activist serv­ing 2½ years. 1) 18-months for bur­gling and fire­bomb­ing a multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny. 2) 12-months for organ­is­ing an anti-GM protest. Costani­no is also await­ing tri­al accused of using explo­sives to dam­age an elec­tric­i­ty pylon in protest at nuclear ener­gy.

Joy­an­na Zach­er, #0707300576, San Bernardi­no CDC, 630 E. Rial­to Ave., San Bernardi­no, CA 92415, 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.

ANIMAL LIBERATION PRISONERS

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.

Gregg Avery TA7450, HMP Win­ches­ter, Rom­sey Road, Win­ches­ter SO22 5DF, Eng­land. On remand accused of con­spir­a­cy to black­mail, in rela­tion to his involve­ment with the SHAC cam­paign.

Natasha Avery NR8987, HMP Bronze­field, Woodthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx. TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. Jailed for breach­ing her parole con­di­tions imposed on her for telling a fox hunt­ing mur­der­ing scum what she thought of them. Also await­ing tri­al accused of con­spir­a­cy to black­mail, in rela­tion to her involve­ment with the SHAC cam­paign.

Nathan Block – See details in Eco Defence Pris­on­ers List.

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.

Don­ald Cur­rie TN4593, HMP White­moor, Longhill Road, March, Cambs, PE15 OPR, Eng­land. Serv­ing an Inde­ter­mi­nate Sen­tence, of not less than six actu­al years, for car­ry­ing out arsons against tar­gets asso­ci­at­ed the vivi­sec­tion indus­try includ­ing HLS.

Dar­ius Fullmer #26397–050, FCI Fort Dix Satel­lite Camp, P.O. Box 1000, Fort Dix, NJ 08640 USA. Serv­ing 12 months for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign.

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.

Sarah Gis­borne, LT5393, HMP Cookham Wood, Rochester, Kent, ME1 3LU, Eng­land. Serv­ing 5½ years for con­spir­a­cy to cause crim­i­nal dam­age fol­low­ing the dam­ag­ing of 8 vehi­cles owned by peo­ple linked to Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ence.

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.

Joseph Har­ris TN5728, HMP Bulling­don, Patrick Haugh Road, Arn­cott, Nr. Bices­ter, Oxon, OX25 1WD, Eng­land. Serv­ing 2 years for dam­ag­ing the prop­er­ty of peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences.

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

Josephine Mayo PR6508, HMP Drake Hall, Eccle­shall, Staffs, ST21 6LQ, Eng­land. Serv­ing 4 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion.

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.

Jonathan Paul, c/o Friends of Jonathan Paul, PMB 267, 2305 Ash­land St., Ste. C, Ash­land, OR 97520, USA. Sen­tenced to 51 months for an ALF arson on a horse meat plant. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy.

John Smith TB4887, HMP Lowd­ham Grange, Lowd­ham, Not­ting­ham, NG14 7DA, Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion.

Andrew Stepan­ian #26399–050, FCI But­ner Medi­um II Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, PO Box 1500, But­ner, NC 27509 USA. Serv­ing 36 months for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign.

Mark Tay­lor TT6636, HMP YOI Onley, Rug­by, Wark­wick­shire, CV23 8AP, Eng­land. Serv­ing four years for organ­is­ing loud demon­stra­tions out­side the offices of com­pa­nies with links to HLS.

Suzanne Tay­lor, TM7154, HMP Fos­ton Hall, Fos­ton, Der­by, Der­byshire, DE65 5DN, Eng­land. Serv­ing two and a half years for help­ing organ­ise loud demon­stra­tions out­side the offices of com­pa­nies with links to HLS.

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.

Joy­an­na Zach­er – See details in Eco Defence Pris­on­ers List.

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.

OTHER ANTI-WAR PRISONERS

Bren­dan Walsh 12473–052, FCI/FSL Elk­ton, PO Box 10, Lis­bon, OH 44432 USA. Serv­ing 5 years for an arson on an army recruit­ment office in protest at the War on Iraq.

THE LECCE FIVE
The Lec­ce Five 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

Lasan­dra Bur­well W063658, Ohio Refor­ma­to­ry for Women, 1479 Collins Ave. Marysville, OH 43040, USA. Serv­ing 5 years for tak­ing part in an anti-fas­cist demon­stra­tion which turned into a riot.

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.

Augustin Kraus, Vazeb­ni veznice, PP‑1, Lit­o­merice, 41 201, Czech Repub­lic. Serv­ing 14 months for his par­tic­i­pa­tion in attacks against local neo-nazis. His charge was “bod­i­ly harm”. He speaks Czech, Slo­vak and Pol­ish. You can also write him short post­cards in Eng­lish.

Chris­t­ian Süm­mer­mann, BNR: 727/07/7, JVA Tegel, Sei­del­str. 39, 13507 Berlin, Ger­many. Serv­ing 40 months for breach­ing the peace whilst serv­ing a sus­pend­ed sen­tence issued for anti-fas­cist activ­i­ties.

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

OTHER PRISONERS

Oscar San­ta Maria Caro, CERESO, Miahu­at­lan de Por­firio Diaz, Oax­a­ca en Hall B, Cell 5., Mex­i­co. On remand. The exact charges against Oscar are unknown but Oscar is a mem­ber of RATA, a known ani­mal rights group.

Sacra­men­to Delfi­no Cano Her­nan­dez, CERESO, Miahu­at­lan de Por­firio Diaz, Oax­a­ca en Hall B, Cell 5., Mex­i­co. On remand. Co-defen­dant of Oscar San­ta Maria Caro.

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.

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.

MOVE
MOVE is an eco-rev­o­lu­tion­ary group who car­ried out protests in defence of all life. 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 Grate­ford, PO Box 244, Grate­ford, PA 19426–0244, USA.

Edward Good­man Africa (AM4974), 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

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

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.

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

North Amer­i­can ELP Pris­on­er Fund. The North Amer­i­can ELP group has set up a fund where peo­ple can pay mon­ey, for North Amer­i­can Eco-Defence and Ani­mal Rights pris­on­ers, which will then be dis­trib­uted to the North Amer­i­can pris­on­ers. For infor­ma­tion about the Fund and how to make a dona­tion please con­tact naelpsn@mutualaid.org

DEDICATION
This Edi­tion of Spir­it of Free­dom is ded­i­cat­ed to Bill ‘Aval­on’ Rodgers, the Amer­i­can ‘Ore­gon Defen­dant’ who end­ed his own life in Decem­ber 2005 whilst on Remand.

New Earth First Action Update OUT NOW!

The print­ed EF! Action Update is back again! After a bit of a lull a new edi­to­r­i­al col­lec­tive is in place and ready to roll. We have just pro­duced a sum­mer edi­tion in time for the Camp for Cli­mate Action, where you can pick up print­ed copies.

EF! AU logo 1The print­ed EF! Action Update is back again! After a bit of a lull a new edi­to­r­i­al col­lec­tive is in place and ready to roll. We have just pro­duced a sum­mer edi­tion in time for the Camp for Cli­mate Action, where you can pick up print­ed copies.

The Action Update is pro­duced quar­ter­ly to aid the shar­ing of news, infor­ma­tion and ideas amongst those inter­est­ed in tak­ing action. The next newslet­ter will be out in Novem­ber. If you’ve got news to share about your groups, cam­paigns and actions post them straight onto this web­site and we’ll make sure they’re includ­ed in the next edi­tion.

You can also down­load and print out the PDF of the Action Update by click­ing here.

launch of radical newsheet — the Bath Bomb

Today, sev­en activists from Bath Activist Net­work set up shop in the mid­dle of Bath to raise aware­ness and encour­age peo­ple to attend the upcom­ing. Cli­mate Camp

Bath Bomb logoToday, sev­en activists from Bath Activist Net­work set up shop in the mid­dle of Bath to raise aware­ness and encour­age peo­ple to attend the upcom­ing. Cli­mate Camp

Through­out the day we gave out hun­dreds of leaflets, stick­ers, newslet­ters and free cake. We unfurled a ban­ner and chalked art­work on the pave­ment (a com­mu­ni­ty sup­port offi­cer threat­ened to get some prop­er cops to arrest an activist for crim­i­nal dam­age, but we rang the coun­cil, who told us we were wel­come to chalk over as much pave­ment as we liked, leav­ing a slight­ly red faced cop!). We received loads of sup­port, loads of peo­ple were voic­ing dis­gust at the injunc­tion, and plea­sure that it was crap as far as injunc­tions go. Every­body knew about cli­mate camp and our argu­ments, and it seems to be a major talk­ing point at the mo. All in all a good and pro­duc­tive day — look­ing for­ward to the camp!

We also took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to start dis­trib­ut­ing our new month­ly newslet­ter ‘Bath Bomb’, giv­ing a rad­i­cal per­spec­tive on all the news and coun­cil sleaze in Bath! To get a copy e‑mailed every month, e‑mail bathbombpress@yahoo.co.uk

See y’all in the fields!

bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk
http://www.myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork

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The Bath Bomb is here!

The first edi­tion of what should turn out to be our month­ly alter­na­tive news sheet, right now as plain text — a work in progress!:

*The Bath Bomb * Issue 1 July/August ’07 * @nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute! *

“All the news the Chron did­n’t choose!”

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

Bath — 1, BNP — 0

As many read­ers will be aware, Nick Grif­fin, the leader of the Nazi BNP was due to speak at Bath Uni recent­ly. He was invit­ed by BNP youth leader Dan­ny Lake, a Bath Uni stu­dent.

Fac­ing mas­sive oppo­si­tion to the speech, the Uni banned Grif­fin from talk­ing. How­ev­er, local Antifa (anti fas­cist action) mem­bers got word that Grif­fin was being snuck into town to give a talk to a hard­core of BNP mem­bers at a secret loca­tion. Thanks to a well placed mole, Antifa found the loca­tion, and informed the man­ag­er, who was more than hap­py to can­cel the event (Lake had booked under the fake char­i­ty name ‘British Her­itage’!).

With only 2 hours’ notice, 20 activists were scour­ing the streets, look­ing for Nazi Nick and his bone­head mates. Upon get­ting word that the ‘fash’ were mov­ing toward Rev­o­lu­tion bar, the venue was occu­pied by anti-fas­cists with the full sup­port of the staff (one of whom was heard to say ‘do what it takes, just keep those bas­tards out!’). They then moved off to the Lit­ten Tree. Antifa went in after them and after a short ‘debate’, ‘per­suad­ed’ them to leave the pub. At this point, the old bill turned up and pre­vent­ed activists from chas­ing the flee­ing fas­cists. Luck­i­ly, well-placed spot­ters were able to fol­low.

They were found in Vicky Park, where, out num­bered 3 to 1 by anti-fas­cists, they had a five minute pic­nic before piss­ing off home. An inspec­tion of their cars revealed that none were from Bath, and had been shipped in from far and wide to give the impres­sion of hav­ing sup­port­ers.

The BNP are a nazi organ­i­sa­tion, led by a holo­caust deny­ing Hitler wor­ship­per with a track record of racial vio­lence. Bath organ­is­er Dan­ny Lake has been arrest­ed twice for harass­ing fam­i­lies attend­ing mul­ti­cul­tur­al events, and has a best mate in prison for bomb­ing a mosque. They’ve been shown once, and we can show them again — fas­cists are not wel­come in Bath!

Dis­eased Liv­er, Any­one?

Although hushed up in the Chron, in recent months, ani­mal rights groups in Bris­tol and Bath have been get­ting busy. ‘Paté de foie gras,’ a French import for the idle rich, is a cru­el culi­nary treat – ducks and geese spend life­times trapped in cages, dai­ly force-fed corn through painful tubes rammed down their throats, stom­achs expand­ing to burst­ing point, before their liv­ers are served on a plate. The tor­tured birds are often rid­dled with infec­tion, and eat­ing foie gras is linked to dis­eases like CJD and Alzheimer’s. Its man­u­fac­ture is also banned in the UK.

Two demos per­suad­ed Bistro No. 5 to drop it from their menu, so the cam­paign moved on to Le Petit Cochon, in Mar­garet Build­ings – and what fun they had! The high­ly excitable staff had no prob­lems with kick­ing off, scuf­fles inside and out, bro­ken glass and upend­ed tables being the order of the day. As thedin­ers gaw­ped on, head chefand own­er Christophe charged out, push­ing and shov­ing any­one with­in reach, shout­ing “I love ducks! I f**k ducks!” After the bes­tial­i­ty con­fes­sions died down, this larg­er-than-life char­ac­ter plant­ed a kiss on one pro­test­er, and then with­drew. Two weeks lat­er, seem­ing­ly calmed down, he claimed to have dropped foie gras. Or had he, the lying cad? Our rov­ing reporter went under­cov­er to dis­cov­er the truth, and eas­i­ly exposed the not-so-cun­ning ruse: the
restau­ran­t’s still sell­ing the putrid stuff, so watch this space for fur­ther break­ing news…

Every Lit­tle (Trick in the Book) Helps

After try­ing to worm their way into Bath for years, Tesco’s final­ly seem to be get­ting their way. With rejec­tion after rejec­tion at Lon­don Road and Odd Down, yet again they were turned down at the for­mer car show­room site John Tallis, at Bath­wick Hill. But, nev­er known for play­ing fair, what with all the farms and oth­er small-scale sup­pli­ers they’ve ripped off and destroyed over the years – pay­ing sup­pli­ers 4% less than any oth­er super­mar­ket – they went cry­ing off to a gov­ern­ment plan­ning inspec­tor, who over­turned the coun­cil’s deci­sion.

So, now we’ll be stuck with yet anoth­er Tesco’s Express. Whilst com­pa­ny spokes­peo­ple lie through their teeth, claim­ing that their stores give “oth­er local busi­ness­es a boost”, the truth is that with their con­stant price goug­ing, local shops like Bath­wick Stores, Tuck Time and oth­er estab­lished small stores are like­ly to soon go under. Indeed, rough­ly 50 inde­pen­dent shops are squeezed out of the UK every year by big super­mar­kets like these. So, soon, local roads will be clogged with deliv­ery trucks, road safe­ty will hit blood-stained rock bot­tom with inad­e­quate road-cross­ings, and more local jobs will be cut, because super­mar­kets employ two thirds less staff than small­er stores. So here’s to big­ger dole queues!

Well, whilst doing our best to sup­port local shops, when the new Tesco’s arrive, let’s make sure we give them all a big wel­come: plant­i­ng con­crete-crack­ing Japan­ese knotweed should be just the thing!

Events List­ing

Mon­day nights Bath Hunt Sabo­teur meet­ings 8pm back room of Bell
11th Aug Bath Free Shop @ Stall Street 12–3pm
14th—21st Aug Nation­al Camp for Cli­mate Action nr Heathrow
5th Sept Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing back room of Bell 7.30–8.30pm
6th Sept Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing down­stairs Hob­gob­lin 7.30–9pm
11th-14th Sept Dis­arm DSEI @ The Excel Cen­tre in Lon­don
19th-24th Sept No Bor­der Camp nr Gatwick
21st Sept Left­ism ben­e­fit club night for Bris­tle mag­a­zine @ The Crown 9–2am

Who Are Bath Activist Net­work?

We are 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

Get out Yer Life­jack­ets for the West­ern River­side Yup­pie Flood!

Yup, the coun­cil have done it again and sold off the west­ern river­side area to be turned into lux­u­ry flats.

There is major cause for con­cern on all fronts. A flood plain will be destroyed, mak­ing localised flood­ing immi­nent, bad­ger, owl and king­fish­er habi­tats will be destroyed, many Bath res­i­dents will have their views ruined by huge apart­ment build­ings, and we’ll have to deal with an influx of more yup­pies.

There are also plans to demol­ish the his­toric Bath Press to make way for a super­mar­ket to cater for the new res­i­dents. The 200 work­ers of the press, many of whom had put in 30-plus years were told to get out with next to no warn­ing to make way for the new devel­op­ment.

Crest Nichol­son, the devel­op­ment com­pa­ny (who make a cushy side­line evict­ing fam­i­lies from house­boats to build pricey water­side flats for…. you guessed it — yup­pies!) have kind­ly offered to make 20% of the hous­ing ‘affordable’…cheers! That means that Batho­ni­ans from the sur­round­ing area aren’t ever going to see inside these flats! Instead of putting effort into pro­vid­ing bet­ter facil­i­ties and con­di­tions for ordi­nary peo­ple, the coun­cil are ignor­ing our needs and cater­ing for the rich to make a quick buck.

As numer­ous oth­er ‘tourist’ cities across the world have shown us, flood­ing our com­mu­ni­ties with rich com­muters will have dis­as­trous effects – push­ing house prices up, suck­ing resources from the com­mu­ni­ty while putting noth­ing back and build­ing cof­fee bar after f**king cof­fee bar!

There are a mil­lion good argu­ments against this devel­op­ment, but the same old good rea­son for the coun­cil­lors – prof­it. Actions against the devel­op­ment are due to start soon, we’ll keep you post­ed!

Flights of Fan­cy?

Whilst cli­mate change is seem­ing­ly on every­one’s lips, for the British air­line indus­try, it’s (big) busi­ness as usu­al. Despite hot air from Num­ber 10 about ‘car­bon emis­sions reduc­tion tar­gets’, air pas­sen­ger num­bers are planned to dou­ble over the next 20 years; nev­er mind the fact that planes pol­lute 10 times worse than trains. This week, the British Air­port Author­i­ty is des­per­ate­ly push­ing through a new law to crim­i­nal­ize up to 5,000,000 mem­bers of green groups round the coun­try. The planned injunc­tion, lucra­tive work for silk-tongued lawyers, will not only ban pro­test­ers from areas inside and around Heathrow, but also from the Pic­cadil­ly line, M4 and M25.

But who are these heinous eco-ter­ror­ists that BAA is so afraid of? Earth First!? Al Qae­da? Erm, no. It’s groups like Friends of the Earth, the RSPB, The Cam­paign for the Pro­tec­tion of Rur­al Eng­land and No Third Run­way Acton Group, based in the vil­lages of Har­mondsworth and Sip­son: mem­bers include the Queen, Prince Charles and hun­dreds of BA staff, so they’re pre­sum­ably banned, too.

All this palaver is an attempt to nip this mon­th’s nation­al Camp for Cli­mate Action in the bud – a week of edu­ca­tion, work­shops and activism, set to pitch up near Heathrow. The event is expect­ed to attract huge num­bers of rent-a-cops: just like the OTT polic­ing we saw back here in April, for the Bath Cli­mate Camp. And if this ridicu­lous ban does go through, it will be yet fur­ther proof that the courts are sim­ply hired flunkies at the cor­po­ra­tions’ beck and call. These peo­ple are ful­ly pre­pared to bull­doze over an entire vil­lage for a new run­way, putting sil­ly pipedreams like ‘eco­nom­ic growth’ before peo­ple’s lives.

How­ev­er, it’s not all doom and gloom: oth­er planned air­port expan­sions up and down the coun­try are now being beat­en back: Man­ches­ter, Coven­try, Luton, and Birm­ing­ham schemes were all reject­ed, and maybe soon Bris­tol Air­port will join ’em!

Join the Dots – from Local Dis­pute to Nation­al Dis­as­ter?

Lost his­to­ry, increased pol­lu­tion, unin­hab­it­able homes, not being con­sult­ed on local issues?

At the moment we may feel like a divid­ed pop­u­lace at the mer­cy of gov­ern­ment, coun­cil and cor­po­ra­tions. But if we link small local dis­putes over devel­op­ment across the coun­try, cre­at­ing net­works to oppose them, we will begin to see the change we crave.

Take Bath, for exam­ple – West­ern River­side Devel­op­ment, Tesco’s at Bath­wick Hill, the recent demo­li­tion of Churchill House despite mass protest… And fur­ther from home at Heathrow, where peo­ple are fight­ing against the third run­way, pro­tect­ing the beau­ti­ful old vil­lages they stand to lose. As a mem­ber of NOTRAG (a local group oppos­ing the run­way) says: “if it hap­pens to us, who’s next?”

“Democ­ra­cy only works if vot­ers are active and informed” All it takes for us to be more in con­trol, is for us to pull togeth­er local­ly and nation­al­ly, learn­ing from each oth­ers’ actions and to fit cam­paigns into our ordi­nary lives, next to the wash­ing up or get­ting the din­ner, to remind the gov­ern­ment that we are all part of that gov­ern­ment too. These lit­tle bits will reap huge ben­e­fits – for you, your neigh­bours, your chil­dren and even the world!

Some things you could do: attend local meet­ings, or, if you’re part of a group, link up with oth­er groups over a com­mon goal, get involved in protests, cre­ate your own. If you oppose the new Tesco’s, what would you like in its place? Make that hap­pen instead. And if the Tesco’s does get built, don’t shop there! Think neigh­bour­hood watch on a grander scale – being aware of what’s going on in your area, sup­port­ing those around you and try­ing not to leave any­one out, is enough. Share the work so it does­n’t over­whelm and keep morale up by shar­ing the deci­sion not to take ‘no’ for an answer.

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Con­tact us by e‑mailing bathbombpress@yahoo.co.uk. Large print e‑versions are avail­able on request

Sixteen Metre Banner Dropped from Edinburgh Crags to Promote Heathrow Climate Camp

3rd August:
Dur­ing rush-hour this morn­ing, activists dropped a 16 metre long ban­ner from the Edin­burgh Crags to pro­mote Cli­mate Camp. The ban­ner read ‘This plan­et has no emer­gency exits’, and then gave the web­site for the cli­mate camp: www.climatecamp.org.uk.

3rd August:
Edinburgh climate camp banner dropDur­ing rush-hour this morn­ing, activists dropped a 16 metre long ban­ner from the Edin­burgh Crags to pro­mote Cli­mate Camp. The ban­ner read ‘This plan­et has no emer­gency exits’, and then gave the web­site for the cli­mate camp: www.climatecamp.org.uk.

After two hours of tan­gled ropes and wrestling with the wind, the ban­ner was final­ly hung. With­in ten min­utes of the suc­cess­ful drop, park rangers turned up and informed the activists that they would be arrest­ed for ‘breach of peace’ if the ban­ner was not imme­di­ate­ly removed. The ranger informed the ban­ner-hang­ers that they were on ‘the queen’s prop­er­ty’ and could also be fined. The activists man­aged to retain the ban­ner and have not been charged as yet.

Press spokesper­son for the Scot­tish Bar­rio of the camp, Katie Glass said, ‘We’re hop­ing as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble from Scot­land will make the trip to the camp, to rep­re­sent this coun­try in what we feel is an issue of nation­al and glob­al impor­tance. Clear­ly action needs to be tak­en now regard­ing cli­mate dam­age, espe­cial­ly in wake of the mas­sive flood­ing down south. We don’t feel the wel­fare of the nat­ur­al world can be left to Gov­ern­ments, Indus­try, or any­one who stands to prof­it from fur­ther­ing the dam­age already being done. It’s becom­ing increas­ing­ly urgent that we all take action to ensure the con­tin­ued via­bil­i­ty of life on this plan­et.’

Many peo­ple will be trav­el­ling from Edin­burgh and around Scot­land to the camp next week, along with an esti­mat­ed five thou­sand oth­ers from around Britain and Europe. The camp takes place between August 14th and 21st, on a site near Heathrow Air­port, whose plans for con­struc­tion of a third run­way have made it the pri­ma­ry focus for the protests.

A court deci­sion on the Air­port’s attempt­ed injunc­tion, which would make it ille­gal for any mem­bers of cer­tain char­i­ties and organ­i­sa­tion (poten­tial­ly affect­ing up to five mil­lion peo­ple, includ­ing the Roy­al Fam­i­ly) is expect­ed lat­er today. Ms Glass says ‘what­ev­er the court deci­sion, the Scot­tish Bar­rio will not be bul­lied into stay­ing away. We’ll see you down there.’

For more info on the scot­tish bar­rio con­tact scot­land (at) risingtide.org.uk
scot­tish­bar­rio (at) lists.riseup.net

Iceland camp closes — actions continue — arrest update

Protest Camp Clos­es but Actions Con­tin­ue

27 July 2007

Today we wrapped our protest camp at Bringur, Mos­fell­shei­di, but we are not through with this sum­mers actions.

This means that if you are plan­ning to join us in our fight against heavy indus­try in Ice­land you are not too late. We have plen­ty of ener­gy left and loads of tar­gets to protest at.

Protest Camp Clos­es but Actions Con­tin­ue

27 July 2007

Today we wrapped our protest camp at Bringur, Mos­fell­shei­di, but we are not through with this sum­mers actions.

This means that if you are plan­ning to join us in our fight against heavy indus­try in Ice­land you are not too late. We have plen­ty of ener­gy left and loads of tar­gets to protest at.

Write to us at savingiceland@riseup.net if you want to find us or call 8572692.

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Locals of Haf­nar­fjor­dur Protest Against May­or’s Betray­al of ALCAN Ref­er­en­dum

26 July 2007

Locals in Haf­nar­fjor­dur protest­ed on Thurs­day against the Coun­cil’s attempts to betray the results of the local ref­er­en­dum in March about the enlarge­ment of the ALCAN smelter which is sit­u­at­ed in near­by Straumsvik.

In spite of a mas­sive PR cam­paign paid for by ALCAN (includ­ing an ille­gal gath­er­ing by ALCAN of per­son­al data about indi­vid­u­als in Haf­nar­fjor­dur) the major­i­ty of the inhab­i­tants reject­ed the enlarge­ment.

After the ref­er­en­dum both ALCAN and the May­or of Haf­nar­fjor­dur, Lud­vik Geirs­son, issued a series of con­tra­dic­to­ry state­ments claim­ing that the results of the ref­er­en­dum were not legal­ly bind­ing.

Lat­er they sur­faced with the idea that the ref­er­en­dum only applied to a plan­ning per­mis­sion of a cer­tain spot by the exist­ing fac­to­ry and that noth­ing could stop it being built on a land­fill on the oth­er side of the fac­to­ry. (1)

The locals dropped two dif­fer­ent ban­ners. One stat­ing that ‘NO MEANS NO — ENLARGEMENT IS CRIMINAL’ and the oth­er say­ing ‘NIETSCHE KILLED GOD — LUDVIK KILLED DEMOCRACY’.

Sav­ing Ice­land wish to con­grat­u­late the inhab­i­tants of Haf­nar­fjor­dur for their con­tin­u­ing oppo­si­tion to the evil that has now meta­mor­phised into Rito Tin­to-ALCAN.

1.- See: ALCAN and May­or decide: To Hell with Democ­ra­cy in Haf­nar­fjör­dur!

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State Harass­ment of Sav­ing Ice­land Activists

Sav­ing Ice­land demands that:
*The activist cur­rent­ly in prison is either moved to a wom­ens prison with a full apol­o­gy or released imme­di­ate­ly for lack of state resources.
*All stolen pass­ports must be released imme­di­ate­ly, accord­ing to inter­na­tion­al law.
*An end to the crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion and state harass­ment of envi­ron­men­tal activists.

The Ice­landic Police have stepped up their repres­sion of Sav­ing Ice­land activists whilst their 2007 Sum­mer protest camp fin­ish­es. [1] One activist has been refused the right to appeal her prison sen­tence and is cur­rent­ly in soli­tary con­fine­ment. Fif­teen have had their pass­ports stolen by the Police, who refuse to give any firm rea­sons as to why or when they will be returned. Five peo­ple were arrest­ed for putting up polit­i­cal street art, includ­ing the own­er of the build­ing that was to be paint­ed. Nine police vehi­cles turned up at a par­ty in which many SI activists were attend­ing and entered the build­ing with­out war­rant.

After being arrest­ed in the vicin­i­ty of the Rio Tin­to-Alcan alu­mini­um smelter in Straumsvik on the 24th of July [2], one activist had her sen­tence from the 2006 protest camp laid on her. Instead she was giv­en the choice to either imme­di­ate­ly pay 100,000 ISK or serve eight days in prison. She was refused her right to appeal, which would have giv­en her a month to choose her options. She chose to go to prison instead of pay­ing her fine. Now she is in Heg­ningarhusid, an all mens prison, and there­fore in soli­tary con­fine­ment.

“Why, if there were no spaces in a wom­en’s prison, and if she should have been giv­en her time of appeal, has she been rushed off into a mens prison, leav­ing her iso­lat­ed and in soli­tary con­fine­ment? This is ille­gal and feels like a polit­i­cal deci­sion designed to unfair­ly treat polit­i­cal activists.” says Sav­ing Iceland´s Snor­ri Páll Jóns­son Úlfhildar­son

Fif­teen utlendi­gar (for­eign) activists have had their pass­ports siezed by the Reyk­javik Police Dep. After many con­tra­dic­to­ry state­ments, Geir Jon, Head of Police, has stat­ed that all pass­ports will be sent to the Keflavik or Sey­d­is­fjor­dur police depart­ments who will return the pass­ports upon the activists depar­ture. We won­der whether this will be the case, or whether activists are to be kept in the coun­try ille­gal­ly until the time of their tri­al.

“Pass­ports are the prop­er­ty of the state that issues them, not the Ice­landic states to do with as they please. If some­one whose iden­ti­fi­ca­tion has been seized by the police needs urgent med­ical atten­tion or seeks a res­i­dents per­mit in Ice­land, for exam­ple, how are they to do this with­out their id?” says Úlfhildar­son

Four polit­i­cal street artists were about to apply paint to a wall in Lau­gave­g­ur, Reyk­javik, at 4am on the 28th of July, when they were sur­round­ed by nine spe­cial forces police. Whilst the own­er of the wall that was to be paint­ed made it clear that he gave full per­mis­sion to the artists, the police decid­ed to arrest not only the artists, but the own­er of the house too! In total, five were arrest­ed, pho­tographed, impris­oned for up to sev­en hours and final­ly released with­out charge.

On the same night a house par­ty in Selt­jarnar­ness which was attend­ed by Sav­ing Ice­land activists was sur­round­ed by police. Over twen­ty police­men in nine cars and vans turned up to tell the partiers to turn their music down. Also, two of the police­men were rel­a­tives of the peo­ple inside, one hav­ing been brought all the way from Haf­nar­fjor­dur. The police entered a wing of the house which was uncon­nect­ed to the par­ty with­out a war­rant.

Sav­ing Ice­land demands that:
*The activist cur­rent­ly in prison is either moved to a wom­ens prison with a full apol­o­gy or released imme­di­ate­ly for lack of state resources.
*All stolen pass­ports must be released imme­di­ate­ly, accord­ing to inter­na­tion­al law.
*An end to the crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion and state harass­ment of envi­ron­men­tal activists.

Tree protest in Manchester

Protest saves tree — for now — 31/ 7/2007

A BATTLE by res­i­dents to save a cop­per beech from the axe has won a tem­po­rary reprieve for the 100-year-old tree. The 65ft giant, on May­field Road in Whal­ley Range, was due to be felled after a firm that owns a near­by house claimed its roots are dam­ag­ing foun­da­tions.

But res­i­dents on their way to work staged a spon­ta­neous protest by climb­ing into the branch­es. They have vowed to climb the tree every morn­ing until they see evi­dence that its roots are caus­ing dam­age.

Manchester tree protestProtest saves tree — for now — 31/ 7/2007

A BATTLE by res­i­dents to save a cop­per beech from the axe has won a tem­po­rary reprieve for the 100-year-old tree. The 65ft giant, on May­field Road in Whal­ley Range, was due to be felled after a firm that owns a near­by house claimed its roots are dam­ag­ing foun­da­tions.

But res­i­dents on their way to work staged a spon­ta­neous protest by climb­ing into the branch­es. They have vowed to climb the tree every morn­ing until they see evi­dence that its roots are caus­ing dam­age.

A tree preser­va­tion order was removed at the request of Man­ches­ter-based prop­er­ty devel­op­er North­ern Group, which plans to refur­bish the house.

Kate White­side, 38, who lives next door and was one of the neigh­bours who took part in the tree-climb­ing protest, said: “We believe you need a very good rea­son to cut down a mature tree like this. We’ve been ask­ing the coun­cil to show us the doc­u­ments for almost a month.

“We’re not irra­tional and if it is caus­ing dam­age and has to go then so be it. But until we see the evi­dence that jus­ti­fies cut­ting it down, we will cam­paign to save it.”

Nathan Eziars, of North­ern Group, said: “We have done every­thing by the book and have approval from the coun­cil to fell it. The large root sys­tem is caus­ing struc­tur­al dam­age to the prop­er­ty and we have sub­mit­ted reports from struc­tur­al engi­neers to the coun­cil.

“I under­stand there are strong feel­ings about it, but it’s a health and safe­ty issue. The tree is affect­ing the struc­tur­al integri­ty of the prop­er­ty, which we plan to refur­bish as soon as the plan­ning depart­ment can process our plans.”

A coun­cil spokesman said: “The coun­cil made a deci­sion hav­ing received expert advice on the impact of the tree. We are sat­is­fied with the advice we received and there­fore plan­ning per­mis­sion was grant­ed.”

Sev­er­al groups of Man­ches­ter res­i­dents have staged tree top protests in recent years in a bid to thwart devel­op­ers’ plans.

Cam­paign­ers bat­tled for six years to pre­serve the old Bir­ley Tree, on Bir­ley Fields in Hulme. The 110-year-old Ital­ian poplar was even­tu­al­ly brought down after a dawn raid by work­men with chain­saws in 1999.

Plans to build a sec­ond run­way at Man­ches­ter Air­port also saw pro­test­ers take to the trees in the late 90s. Eco war­rior Swampy and fel­low envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­ers first dug tun­nels under the site.

When evict­ed from there, they moved to near­by Cedar’s Wood and Arthur’s Wood in the Bollin Val­ley and attempt­ed to stop the lop­ping of trees on the run­way’s flight path by chain­ing them­selves in branch­es.

Pro­test­ers and bailiffs clashed as Cedar’s Wood was cleared, and the 40 who remained in Arthur’s Wood had to be removed one by one.

The run­way final­ly opened in 2001.

From Man­ches­ter Evening News

Saving Iceland Blockades Rio Tinto-Alcan Smelter in Hafnarfjordur

Sav­ing Ice­land
Press Release (in Ice­landic below)
July 24th, 2007

LANDSVIRKJUN INVOLVED IN COAL & NUCLEAR POWERED RIO TINTO-ALCAN SMELTER IN AFRICA

Smelter blockade 25th JulySav­ing Ice­land
Press Release (in Ice­landic below)
July 24th, 2007

LANDSVIRKJUN INVOLVED IN COAL & NUCLEAR POWERED RIO TINTO-ALCAN SMELTER IN AFRICA

HAFNARFJORDUR – Sav­ing Ice­land has closed access to RioTinto’s Straumsvik smelter in South-West Ice­land. About 20 pro­tes­tors have locked their arms in met­al tubes and climbed onto cranes on the smelter site. Sav­ing Ice­land oppos­es plans for a new RioT­in­to-Alcan smelter in Keil­isnes or Thor­lak­shöfn, expan­sion of the exist­ing smelter, and a new coal and nuclear pow­ered smelter in South Africa.

“Protests against Alcan have been suc­cess­ful. Of course the peo­ple of Haf­nafjor­dur have stopped the expan­sion of Straumsvik and recent­ly, in Kashipur, North­east India, Alcan had to give up it’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in a baux­ite mine because of protests against their human rights vio­la­tions and envi­ron­men­tal deves­ta­tion. Alcan has been accused of cul­tur­al geno­cide in Kashipur, because min­ing and dams have already dis­placed 150.000 main­ly trib­al peo­ple there . Norsk Hydro left the project when police tor­tured and opened fire on pro­tes­tors, and then Alcan moved in,” says Sav­ing Iceland’s Snor­ri Páll Jóns­son Úlfhildar­son.

“This case and sim­i­lar cas­es, and Alcan’s involve­ment in arms pro­duc­tion, shows how ruth­less they are. The takeover by RioT­in­to is rather unlike­ly to make Alcan into a respon­si­ble cor­po­rate cit­i­zen.”

“RioT­in­to-Alcan haven’t blown off their inter­est in a new smelter in Ice­land. Haf­nafjor­dur is still being named by Alcan despite the ref­er­en­dum , and a new smelter might be built in Thor­lak­shöfn or Keil­isnes. Sav­ing Ice­land rejects this, and we express our sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple in South Africa oppos­ing RioTinto-Alcan’s coal- and nuclear pow­ered smelter plans there. Landsvirkjun has also got­ten involved in this , so it is very impor­tant that peo­ple in Ice­land reject these neo-colo­nial devel­op­ments that destroy the envi­ron­ment and com­mu­ni­ties. ” says Úlfhildar­son.

Doc­u­men­ta­tion of Alcan’s links to the arms indus­try, the South-African deal with Landsvirkjun, and some of the his­to­ry of Rio Tin­to is attached to this press release.

More infor­ma­tion:
http://www.savingiceland.org
Snor­ri Páll Jóns­son Úlfhildar­son

ALCAN’S LINKS TO THE ARMS INDUSTRY
RioTinto-Alcan’s alu­mini­um alloys are sold for a whole range of mil­i­tary pur­pos­es. Alcan is the main sup­pli­er for Euro­pean Aero­space and Defense and Space, pro­duc­er of mil­i­tary heli­copters, mil­i­tary satel­lites, the Eurofight­er Tycoon, Mirage F1, EF18 Hor­net and oth­er jets . EADS is the world’s lead­ing pro­duc­er of mis­siles . Deals made between the EADS and Alcan are pre­sent­ed as between Air­bus and Alcan, to cloud the mil­i­tary involve­ment ; it is com­mon for all alu­mini­um com­pa­nies to hide their ‘defense’ prod­ucts under the title ‘aero­space’. But at the same time, mil­i­tary prod­ucts need to be mar­ket­ed, so images of fight­er jets are dis­played on Alcan Aerospace’s web­site .

EADS claims to sell to coun­tries that “guar­an­tee a respon­si­ble approach to high-tech mil­i­tary air sys­tems. It draws on decades of exper­tise in mil­i­tary avi­a­tion.” But can you trust a com­pa­ny that is sick enough to add video frag­ments from Nazi Ger­many, glo­ri­fy­ing first world war and Nazi air­planes , on the same web­page as this quote?

RIO TINTO-ALCAN: ALUMINIUM TO IRAQ
Alcan fur­ther sup­plies Boe­ing a “vari­ety of high per­for­mance alu­minum-prod­ucts” . Boe­ing pro­duces the Apache and Chi­nook mil­i­tary heli­copters used in Iraq and less known prod­ucts that bright­en your day, such as the the ‘Small Diam­e­ter Bomb’ and the ‘Joint Direct Attack Muni­tion.’ Then there are Alcan’s asso­ci­a­tions with Das­sault ., a French arms man­u­fac­tur­er, which pro­duces a range of alu­mini­um fight­er-jets . Alcan has also been pro­mot­ing itself to Naval ser­vices .

RIO TINTO-ALCAN: PLANS FOR AFRICA
RioT­in­to-Alcan has signed a let­ter of intent with the Govt. of Cameroon to expand the exist­ing Alu­cam smelter with 150.000 Mtpy, and build a new 150.000 Mtpy smelter. The Lom Pan­gar Dam, to be con­struct­ed by the gov­ern­ment, would pow­er this . Alcan have a large num­ber of projects planned Africa – their “green­field project pipeline” includes Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea, Mada­gas­car and South Africa. ‘Green­field’ means that untouched nature will be destroyed for the mines, infra­struc­ture, smelters, and dams that would pow­er them.

APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA, ESKOM AND LANDSVIRKJUN
Alcan was active in apartheid South Africa between 1949–1986 . Now they want to come back and devel­op a new smelter in the near zero-tax ‘Coega Devel­op­ment Zone’ near Port Eliz­a­beth, pow­ered by coal and nuclear deliv­ered by Eskom, one of the worlds largest elec­tric­i­ty com­pa­nies. “Thir­ty per­cent of the poor com­mu­ni­ties of South Africa don’t have elec­tric­i­ty, and now that will be going straight to Alcan,” says Ler­a­to Maregele, a S‑African activist vis­it­ing Ice­land .
Elkom is a ‘sis­ter-com­pa­ny’ of Iceland’s Landsvirkjun . Landsvirkun want to be part of this deal and more gen­er­al­ly branch out to Africa.
Landsvirkjun can be expect­ed to try and sell their exper­tise to Eskom’s var­i­ous hydropro­jects in Mozam­biqu, Ugan­da and Con­go. They will try to be part of damming the Con­go riv­er, a project twice the size of China’s Three Gorges, that will have a dev­as­tat­ing effect on the cen­tral African rain­for­est.

RIO TINTO’S ABYSMAL RECORD
While we can con­clude that Alcan itself heav­i­ly sup­plies the arms indus­try and is invad­ing Africa as it invades Ice­land, it is now part of Rio Tin­to, the world’s largest pri­vate min­ing com­pa­ny, “long crit­i­cized for gross human rights vio­la­tions dat­ing back to its sup­port of apartheid in South­ern Africa.”
We will name some of the many cas­es. Rio Tin­to has been know to sub­ject it’s own work­ers to poi­son­ing in mines, hav­ing secu­ri­ty guards shoot­ing locals on the spot look­ing for small amounts of gold in one of it’s mines and hav­ing union-mem­bers spied upon or fired in its Brazil­ian gold mines.

Rio Tin­to has been involved with mer­ce­nary scan­dals. The Papua New Guinean (PNG) Gov­ern­ment, in joint ven­ture with Rio Tin­to, hired pri­vate mer­ce­nary com­pa­nies San­d­line Inter­na­tion­al, a Lon­don-based pri­vate mil­i­tary com­pa­ny, com­posed pri­mar­i­ly of for­mer British and South African spe­cial forces sol­diers, which had been involved in the civ­il wars in Ango­la and Sier­ra Leone and were now payed to fight the pop­u­la­tion of Bougainville, an island near PNG. The mine had been closed by the peo­ple of the island because of the dis­as­trous eco­log­i­cal effects .
Cit­i­zens of Bougainville have filed a class action law­suit in the Unit­ed States against Rio Tin­to aris­ing from the envi­ron­men­tal dam­age caused by the mine and war crimes occur­ring dur­ing the civ­il war years. In August 2006, the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Cir­cuit reject­ed Rio Tin­to’s effort to dis­miss the claim.

S. Das & F. Padel, “Dou­ble Death — Aluminium’s Links with Geno­cide”, Eco­nom­ic and Polit­i­cal Week­ly, Dec. 2005, also avail­able at http://www.savingiceland.org/doubledeath
Chan­dra Sid­dan, “Blood and Baux­ite”, Mon­tre­al Mir­ror, Nov 20–26, 2003, Vol. 19 No. 23.
“Smelter Expan­sion on Land­fill?”, Ice­land Review, June 20th 2007.
RUV News, 26-02-2007, http://ruv.is/heim/frettir/frett/store64/item145391/. Note that RUV has Alcoa and Alcan con­fused.
EADS web­site, http://www.eads.com/1024/en/businet/defence/mas/combat_aircraft/combat_aircraft.html
EADS pro­mo­tion film, “A Brief Glance at EADS”, http://www.eads.com/xml/content/OF00000000400004/1/10/41434101.mov
AFX News, June 13, 2007, http://www.abcmoney.co.uk/news/13200786914.htm
Alcan Press Release, “Com­pa­ny To Pro­vide Crit­i­cal Alu­minum Mate­ri­als For Full Range Of Air­craft Includ­ing A380”, June 13, 2007, http://www.decisionplus.com/fr/fintools/stock_news.asp?Market=TSE&Symbol=AL&NewsID=20070613/021501
http://www.alcanaerospace.com/Aerospace/aerospace.nsf/html/FWFGHOME?Open&LG=1, dd. 22–7‑2007.
EADS pro­mo­tion film, “90 years of air­craft his­to­ry in Augs­burg”, http://www.eads.com/1024/en/businet/defence/mas/mas.html and http://www.eads.com/xml/content/OF00000000400004/0/64/41488640.asx
US Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey, “Min­er­als Year­book 2005,” Sep­tem­ber 2006, p. 5.2.
Boe­ing Web­site Image Gallery of Small Diam­e­ter Bomb: http://www.boeing.com/companyoffices/gallery/images/missiles/sdb/sdb.html
Boe­ing Image Gallery: http://www.boeing.com/companyoffices/gallery/images/missiles/sdb/sdb.html
Alcan Press Release, “Alcan Con­tributes to Suc­cess of Eighth Ari­ane 5 ECA Launch,” Dec 13th, 2006.
http://www.dassault-aviation.com/
“Pacif­ic 2004, Inter­na­tion­al Naval and Mar­itime Expo­si­tion for the South­ern Pacif­ic,” Aero­space Mar­itime and Defence Con­fer­ence, http://www.ideea.com/pacific2004/embassy/smithbriefing.pdf
US Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey, “Min­er­als Year­book 2005,” Sep­tem­ber 2006, p. 5.5.
Alcan Press Release, “Alcan to Explore Devel­op­ment of Baux­ite Mine and Alu­mi­na Refin­ery in Mada­gas­car,” Sep­tem­ber 11th 2006.
Alcan’t web­site, http://www.alcant.co.za/history.html
Grapevine, Issue 10, July 13, 2007. Inter­view also avail­able at http://www.savingiceland.org/node/870
RUV News, 26-02-2007, http://ruv.is/heim/frettir/frett/store64/item145391/. Note that RUV has Alcoa and Alcan con­fused.
Inter­na­tion­al Rivers Net­work & Earth­Life Africa, “Eskom’s Expand­ing Empire
The Social and Eco­log­i­cal Foot­print of Africa’s Largest Pow­er Util­i­ty,” June 2003, http://www.irn.org/programs/safrica/index.php?id=030601eskomfactsheet.html
Asia-Pacif­ic Human Rights Net­work, “Rio Tinto’s Record and the Glob­al Com­pact,” July 13th 2001, http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=623.
SBS Australia’s tele­vi­sion pro­gram Date­line in a report on Rio Tin­to, August 2000.
Wikipedia Ger­many (22–7‑2007), http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandline-Affäre
Con­tract between PNG Gov­ern­ment and San­d­line: http://coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProj/PNG/htmls/Sandline.html.
Sarei v Rio Tin­to, 456 F.3d 1069 (9th Cir. 2006), USA.