Category: London

Lon­don

Palm Oil Gala Dinner & Dance pictures

The Cli­mate Rush held a Gala Din­ner and Dance out­side the Mil­len­ni­um Hotel in Grosvenor Square, May­fair, Lon­don last night (1 July 2009) as a protest against the defor­esta­tion of trop­i­cal forests to grow bio­fu­el crops.

Palm Oil protestThe Cli­mate Rush held a Gala Din­ner and Dance out­side the Mil­len­ni­um Hotel in Grosvenor Square, May­fair, Lon­don last night (1 July 2009) as a protest against the defor­esta­tion of trop­i­cal forests to grow bio­fu­el crops.

A jazz band played, and suf­fragettes and orang-utans danced in the street out­side the Mil­len­ni­um Hotel in May­fair as prof­i­teers from glob­al despo­li­a­tion were hav­ing their own par­ty inside.

Trop­i­cal forests are being felled, releas­ing vast amounts of car­bon diox­ide, to grow bio­fu­el crops such as palm oil. Glob­al cor­po­ra­tions are mak­ing huge prof­its, indige­nous peo­ples are ille­gal­ly forced off their land and wildlife in these areas is large­ly elim­i­nat­ed.

As the Cli­mate Rush fly­er states, “90% of orang­utans have dis­ap­peared since the Suf­fragettes first appeared 100 years ago.

The event start­ed with a pic­nic in the park, the gar­den of Grosvenor Square oppo­site the hotel. Then the jazz band began to play and peo­ple moved out onto half of the street, reject­ing the pen police had cre­at­ed “for your safe­ty”. Many demon­stra­tors waved and posed and shout­ed greet­ings to Neil, the police pho­tog­ra­ph­er who was pho­tograph­ing and film­ing the event.

After danc­ing on the street for around half an hour there was a “rush” across the street to the hotel door­way, which made lit­tle impres­sion on the row of police across its front. Many of the police seemed rather amused through­out the event, although there were one or two who slight­ly lost their tem­per in the rush itself, and at one point two peo­ple were rather rough­ly thrown to the ground by a small police charge. Nei­ther seemed bad­ly injured.

Fol­low­ing this, a num­ber of the demon­stra­tors sat down on the road for a while. Half of the police then with­drew and watched from around 100 yards down the road. Even­tu­al­ly peo­ple got up and briefly danced a con­ga, then decid­ed to go back into the park to con­tin­ue their pic­nic, and I went home for din­ner.

Update from the Kew Bridge Eco Village

Week 2…

Since arriv­ing on the 6th June, we have cleared the site of most of the rub­bish, put our tents up, built a com­post toi­let and a kitchen, and have built a half round­house as a com­mu­nal struc­ture!

Week 2…

Since arriv­ing on the 6th June, we have cleared the site of most of the rub­bish, put our tents up, built a com­post toi­let and a kitchen, and have built a half round­house as a com­mu­nal struc­ture!

We have opened the gates to the local com­mu­ni­ty and so far we have had full sup­port from the neigh­bours and those in the near­by com­mu­ni­ties, as well as the local busi­ness­es and some unof­fi­cial sup­port from cer­tain local coun­cil­lors. So far we have received a load of dona­tions, includ­ing plants, wood, tents and build­ing mate­ri­als, but we are always in need of more things. Please check our wish list in the dis­cus­sion page of our face­book group!

Our gates are open every­day as we are essen­tial­ly a com­mu­ni­ty gar­den. We encour­age every­one from the local area to pay us a vis­it and share their ideas about what we should do with the land, as well as get­ting them to help us plant our veg­eta­bles and also just to chill out and get to know us all.

We will hold a pub­lic meet­ing every Thurs­day night at 7pm on site, and we shall try to make every Sat­ur­day an event filled open day.

Need­less to say, we still wel­come every­body from all over Lon­don and the world. We have had quite a few inter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors late­ly! Every­one is wel­come to come and stay as long as they fol­low site rules which include no drugs and alco­hol, as well as being con­sid­er­ate to oth­ers and you must active­ly par­tic­i­pate as a mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty.

We espe­cial­ly wel­come any­one with any skills or knowl­edge which may be use­ful or inter­est­ing. We encour­age peo­ple to hold work­shops to share their skills, whether it is about com­mon law, herbal reme­dies, yoga, or even how to make didgeri­doos or repair bicy­cles! Or even if you know noth­ing but just want to learn, come along too!

We are in the process of set­ting up a prop­er web­site where we can pub­lish our wish list, pod casts, and an event diary for all the work­shops we will be hold­ing.

Until then, please fol­low us on twit­ter! http://twitter.com/KewEcoVillage

Please come and vis­it us! We are open between 11 am and 8 pm, and are locat­ed at 2 Kew Bridge Rd, Brent­ford. Our near­est sta­tion is ‘Kew Bridge’ and the near­est tube is ‘Gun­ners­bury’.

Kew Bridge Eco Vil­lagers

Hands Off Lewisham Bridge — Eviction Alert — Call for support

An evic­tion notice has been served on the occu­pa­tion at Lewisham Bridge.

Bailiffs are arriv­ing at 10.30 on Wednes­day morn­ing.

An evic­tion notice has been served on the occu­pa­tion at Lewisham Bridge.

Bailiffs are arriv­ing at 10.30 on Wednes­day morn­ing.

Hands Off Lewisham Bridge are ask­ing for your sup­port in resist­ing the evic­tion. We need as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble to stay overnight on Tues­day. If you can’t stay overnight then please come down as ear­ly as pos­si­ble on Wednes­day morn­ing to sup­port the occu­pa­tion.

We want to let Lewisham Coun­cil know that they are evict­ing peo­ple who have been peace­ful­ly protest­ing over the destruc­tion of com­mu­ni­ty edu­ca­tion at our school.

Lewisham Coun­cil still don’t have plan­ning per­mis­sion for their new school. Lewisham Coun­cil still haven’t told us why the decant had to take place at East­er, when chil­dren were tak­ing SATs and band­ing tests. Lewisham Coun­cil still haven’t told us why they are pre­pared to wash their hands of the respon­si­bil­i­ty of edu­cat­ing our chil­dren.

If Lewisham Bridge Pri­ma­ry School is giv­en to Leathersellers we par­ents will have no say in the gov­er­nance of our school. Staff will be employed by Leathersellers who will set their own terms and con­di­tions tak­ing those teach­ers out of a col­lec­tive nation­al teach­ing body.

This is pri­vati­sa­tion! This is bring­ing the mar­ket into our kids’ edu­ca­tion, where the only moti­va­tion is prof­it and the only mea­sure is league table.

Trusts and acad­e­mies will com­pete for those chil­dren they believe to be desir­able and leave those whom they don’t on the scrapheap. Why have Pren­der­gast reject­ed the Trav­ellers Edu­ca­tion Ser­vice that used to be based at the school? Why have Pren­der­gast reject­ed the pro­pos­al to estab­lish a SEN (Spe­cial Edu­ca­tion­al Needs) unit at the new school?

A con­sul­ta­tion process has already start­ed for a trust led by Gold­smiths Uni­ver­si­ty which will gov­ern 3 schools: Addey & Stan­hope, Dept­ford Green and Cross­ways. It is a process that has exact­ly the same goal. To take our schools out of the pub­lic sec­tor and hand them over to the pri­vate sec­tor.

We can­not let them get away with this. We can fight this togeth­er and we can win!

Come down to Lewisham Bridge Pri­ma­ry School and let the bailiffs know that we’re not going eas­i­ly.

Hands Off Lewisham Bridge

07946 541 331

Face­book page: http://www.facebook.com/timbo.davies#/group.php?gid=94554226367

Climate activists blockade Peruvian Embassy & companies list

19 June 2009
Cli­mate change activists have blocked the entrance to the Peru­vian Embassy today in protest the country’s killing of indige­nous peo­ple in the Ama­zon rain­for­est.

Peruvian Embassy protest19 June 2009
Cli­mate change activists have blocked the entrance to the Peru­vian Embassy today in protest the country’s killing of indige­nous peo­ple in the Ama­zon rain­for­est.

Up to 100 peo­ple have been killed in recent clash­es over attempts to extract oil, gas, min­er­als and tim­ber from the for­est where indige­nous peo­ple have lived for cen­turies. On June 5, the gov­ern­men­t’s secu­ri­ty forces attacked a peace­ful block­ade, lead­ing to blood­shed on both sides with 30–100 esti­mat­ed deaths, over 100 injuries and numer­ous dis­ap­pear­ances.

Since the clash­es, the Peru­vian gov­ern­ment has sus­pend­ed some exploita­tion in the area, but it is unclear whether some com­pa­nies will be allowed to con­tin­ue.

Pro­test­ers from Lon­don Camp for Cli­mate Action are demand­ing to deliv­er a let­ter of protest to Peru­vian Ambas­sador Ricar­do Luna. The calls for oil and gas com­pa­nies in the Ama­zon to sus­pend their oper­a­tions until the gov­ern­ment agrees to peace­ful nego­ti­a­tions with local rep­re­sen­ta­tives; for an inde­pen­dent and impar­tial inquiry into the vio­lence; and for the lift­ing of all charges against Alber­to Pizan­go (the Pres­i­dent of Peru’s Ama­zon Indi­an organ­i­sa­tion, AIDESEP)

Pro­test­er Sam Gar­den­er said: “This protest is to show sol­i­dar­i­ty with the thou­sands of indige­nous peo­ple that are risk­ing, and some­times los­ing, their lives to pro­tect their homes in the Ama­zon.

“By destroy­ing the Ama­zon rain­for­est to extract fos­sil fuels, we are accel­er­at­ing cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change. The Ama­zon removes vast amounts of car­bon diox­ide from the atmos­phere. By cut­ting it down to remove yet more fos­sil fuels we are speed­ing towards a world­wide cat­a­stro­phe.”

—

15.6.09: Live­ly and well attend­ed demo at the Embassy by Colec­ti­vo Peru­ano, togeth­er with the Coor­di­nado­ra Lati­noamer­i­cana, and was sup­port­ed by Latin Amer­i­can Youth Against Vio­lence

—

Some of the com­pa­nies with new con­tracts in the Ama­zon and else­where in Peru (signed April 2009, some indi­vid­u­al­ly and some as part of a con­sor­tium with Peru­petro) that I can find (but unable to secure direct links/locations in the UK) are:

Plus­petrol — http://www.pluspetrol.net/
Reliance — http://www.reliancepetroleum.com/
CNPC — http://www.cnpc.com.cn/eng/
Petrope­ru — http://www.cnpc.com.cn/eng/
Faulkn­er Suits Explo­ration (US)
Olympic (US or Cana­di­an)
Petro­lif­era — http://www.petrolifera.ca/
Pan Andean Resources (Dublin based) — http://www.panandeanresources.com/contact/
Kei (Aus­tralia)
Petro­Viet­nam (Viet­nam)
Gold­en Oil — http://www.goldenoilcorp.com/new/english/company/company01_4.php

How­ev­er, some of these com­pa­nies DO have UK based offices and trad­ing:

EMERALD ENERGY PLC
http://www.emeraldenergy.com/contact.htm
With a reg­is­tered office in Lon­don.

CONOCO PHILLIPS
http://www.conocophillips.co.uk/ContactUs/index.htm
An Amer­i­can com­pa­ny that is report­ed to have a new “mega con­ces­sion” of 10.5 mil­lion hectares in the Ama­zon for oil explo­ration.
Offices and activ­i­ties in Lon­don, Aberdeen, Teesside, Hum­ber, Thed­dlethor­pe, War­wick

There’s a report on their activ­i­ties in Peru here: http://www.amazonwatch.org/conoco2009.pdf

The sit­u­a­tion in Peru cur­rent­ly is dire.… the indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties have been mobi­liz­ing and resist­ing since April and at this time when their lead­ers are threat­ened with arrest and there are wide­spread mur­ders and dis­ap­pear­ances occur­ring it is key that those of us ben­e­fit­ting from these explo­rations (in the Glob­al North) do what we can to show sol­i­dar­i­ty and to put the pres­sure direct­ly on the com­pa­nies that are treat­ing Peru as a smor­gas­board of ways out of the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cri­sis…

Happy J18 — Ten Year Anniversary — Pics + Links

June 18th 2009
Ten year’s ago today and a glob­al Car­ni­val Against Cap­i­tal was erupt­ing across the world with co-ordi­nat­ed protests tak­ing place in over 40 coun­tries on June 18th 1999.

J18 flier frontJ18 crowd meets at Liverpool Street stationJune 18th 2009
Ten year’s ago today and a glob­al Car­ni­val Against Cap­i­tal was erupt­ing across the world with co-ordi­nat­ed protests tak­ing place in over 40 coun­tries on June 18th 1999.

Direct­ly tar­get­ing finan­cial cen­tres the J18 day of Inter­na­tion­al Action was stun­ning in its scale and ran along­side the G7/G8 meet­ing in Koln Ger­many. It fol­lowed the Glob­al Street Par­ty that had been held along­side the G7/G8 meet­ing in Birm­ing­ham in 1998 and co-ordi­nat­ed through Reclaim The Streets.

To remem­ber it, here’s a set of 23 pic­tures from Lon­don J18 cour­tesy of a pho­tog­ra­ph­er who was there for the morn­ing and the par­ty, but who missed the ensu­ing riot as police fought to regain con­trol of the City of Lon­don.

The rea­sons for strug­gle are greater now than then, and cli­mate change and eco­nom­ic melt­downs threat­en the lives and liveli­hoods of us all.

There’s too much to men­tion about J18, from the sheer joy of tak­ing the City to the full-on bat­tles, from the danc­ing and the masks to the spoof FT paper to pirate radio broad­casts, from the brick­ing up and storm­ing of the Lon­don Inter­na­tion­al Finan­cial Futures Exchange to the knock­ing out of CCTV cam­eras, from the elec­tron­ic dis­tur­bance actions to the begin­nings of Indy­media, from the exhaus­tion to the recrim­i­na­tions and the state back­lash against RTS and every­one else protest­ing for a bet­ter world.

But most of all it was GLOBAL: “Our Resis­tance is as Transna­tion­al as Cap­i­tal”

See this col­lec­tion of 2 pages of web links to orig­i­nal reports, web­sites, analy­sis, pic­tures and video:

http://www.delicious.com/directmedia/j18

Enjoy.

Greenwash Guerrillas confront the Guardian – Mon 15 Jun 09

Date­line: the­guardian CLIMATE CHANGE SUMMIT 2009, Hotel Rus­sell, Lon­don, UK, 08:30–09:30, Mon 15 Jun 09 – Despite cli­mate crim­i­nal cor­po­ra­tion E.ON’s efforts to bag bil­lions of quid from the British State to build new filthy dirty coal fired pow­er sta­tions at Kingsnorth, north Kent and else­where, the Guardian still too

Greenwash Guerillas at Guardian e.On climate conferenceDate­line: the­guardian CLIMATE CHANGE SUMMIT 2009, Hotel Rus­sell, Lon­don, UK, 08:30–09:30, Mon 15 Jun 09 – Despite cli­mate crim­i­nal cor­po­ra­tion E.ON’s efforts to bag bil­lions of quid from the British State to build new filthy dirty coal fired pow­er sta­tions at Kingsnorth, north Kent and else­where, the Guardian still took its pol­lut­ed mon­ey in spon­sor­ing its Cli­mate Change Sum­mit. What­ev­er next?

* the­guardian MULTICULTURAL SUMMIT 2009, spon­sored by the BNP?
* the­guardian GEOGRAPHY SUMMIT 2009, spon­sored by the Flat Earth Soci­ety?
* the­guardian ABORTION RIGHTS SUMMIT 2009, spon­sored by the Soci­ety for the Pro­tec­tion of Unborn Chil­dren?

The Green­wash Gueril­las, Lon­don Brigade, Detec­tion Pla­toon #1 could not let this obscen­i­ty go un-protest­ed!

Vidz at YouTube

• Green­wash Guer­ril­las – 1. Action
» youtube.com/watch?v=NzEASynZxck

• Green­wash Guer­ril­las – 2. Inter­views
» youtube.com/watch?v=M5A6NYpvArs

An excel­lent full colour spoof edi­tion of the Guardian, using the news­pa­per’s own arti­cles from the last year to expose the destruc­tive role E.ON is play­ing in the UK’s fight against cli­mate change, was avail­able en mass for dis­tri­b­u­tion to sum­mit atten­dees, and a cou­ple of plucky com­rades infil­trat­ed the venue ear­ly doors to dis­trib­ute them.

Green­wash Gueril­las actions work best with­out inter­fer­ence from the filth, but because this event had already attract­ed activist atten­tion…
• Green­wash Alert — Guardian Cli­mate Change Sum­mit (17 Apr 09)
» www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/leedsbradford/2009/04/427737.html
…a Press Release was pub­lished in advance…
• Green­wash Guer­ril­las Tar­get­ing Guardian Cli­mate Change Sum­mit (14 Jun 09)
» www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/06/432268.html
…and sure enough Plod turned up mob-hand­ed.

How­ev­er… the cop-in-charge, a Sgt Salt­marsh – EK 10, was unlike any cop I’ve come across before – com­mu­nica­tive, co-oper­a­tive, open to com­pro­mise and nego­ti­a­tion, even charm­ing, while at the same being con­trol­ling and coer­cive. As we donned our white ‘green­wash haz­ard’ suits in leafy Rus­sell Square, he approached us and told us of the pen we’d be restrict­ed to, on the oppo­site cor­ner of a cross­roads from the sum­mit entrance to the Rus­sell Rooms in the Rus­sell Hotel, where­in the sum­mit was being held. But… although he men­tioned that our two infil­tra­tor com­rades were eject­ed from the venue, he said he’d made sure a copy of our spoof Guardian was on every atten­dees seat inside. Whether this was actu­al­ly so remains unver­i­fied. And… I found it easy to nego­ti­ate free­dom from being penned for media news gath­er­ers (myself and a video­g­ra­ph­er doc­u­men­tary film-mak­er), such that when a cou­ple of cop bot­tom-feed­ers tried to inter­fere with my record­ing the event on cam­era, I could say, “We’ve already secured a free­dom arrange­ment for media work­ers with your sergeant – you need to speak to him,” which ter­mi­nat­ed their inter­fer­ence and put them on the defen­sive.

We ini­tial­ly occu­pied the wide pave­ment space out­side the sum­mit entrance, and lashed our TOXIC GREENWASH HAZARD ban­ner to the rail­ings flank­ing the Rus­sell Rooms entrance. A hotel man­ag­er emerged and began tak­ing it down – and in a lat­er con­fab with Sgt Salt­marsh, got his smug grin wiped off his face (oh, for a sen­si­tive rifle micro­phone!). While threat­en­ing us with arrests under Sec­tion 12, Pub­lic Order Act 1986, Sgt Salt­marsh agreed to com­pro­mise over the loca­tion of the pro­test­er pen, and got his under­lings to drag crash bar­ri­ers across Her­brand Street to oppo­site the Rus­sell Rooms entrance. And two non-haz­ard-suit­ed com­rades were “allowed” to hand copies of our spoof Guardian to sum­mit atten­dees as they arrived. But the modus operan­di rai­son d’être of Green­wash Gueril­las – con­sen­su­al­ly run­ning e‑scanners over arriv­ing sum­mit atten­dees, and inter­pret­ing the scan­ners’ “moop-moop-NEEK” noise as “TOXIC GREENWASH DETECTED”, as both a street-the­atri­cal per­for­mance AND a seri­ous con­ver­sa­tion-starter – was com­plete­ly negat­ed by Sgt Saltmarsh’s impo­si­tions of Pub­lic Order Act con­di­tions.

But… in con­ver­sa­tions after­ward, he inti­mat­ed that his post-event intel­li­gence report would empha­sise how fluffy, peace­ful, and (if only under the coer­cive threats of mul­ti­ple Sec­tion 12 arrests) ulti­mate­ly co-oper­a­tive the Green­wash Gueril­las were on this occas­sion. Who knows – maybe in future he’ll have no grounds for pre-judg­ing our actions to entail a threat of “seri­ous pub­lic dis­or­der, seri­ous crim­i­nal dam­age or seri­ous dis­rup­tion to the life of the com­mu­ni­ty”, and we can protest with­out arrest threats? But I’m not hold­ing my breath, so to speak – bet­ter by far to only send advance Press Releas­es embar­goed until the action’s start time, or only send them at the action’s start time, so we’ve a high­er chance of peace­ful protest with­out ANY inter­fer­ence and obstruc­tion from the filth.

What­ev­er Next?
I rec­om­mend anoth­er Gov­ern­ment of the Dead protest pro­duc­tion:
“New” Labour Zom­bie Lunchtime Lurch
• Date: Thu 18 Jun 09, 13:00 & lurch­ing onwards to 15:00
• Ren­dezvous: “New” Labour Par­ty HQ, 39 Vic­to­ria St, Lon­don, SW1H 0HA
• Shout Out: Brown bare­ly sur­vived the Par­lia­men­tary Labour Par­ty meet­ing on Mon 08 Jun 09. Since he’s hang­ing on for grim death, we can look for­ward to a peri­od of “Zom­bie Dead Man Walk­ing” gov­ern­ment in the run up to an elec­tion. Can we take the pow­er to the streets? YES WE CAN!!
• Who-What: The Gov­ern­ment of the Dead will be send­ing a whole lurch of zom­bies down there to “New” Labour Par­ty HQ on Thu 18 Jun, from 13:00 lunchtime, when zom­bies could be hun­gry. Zom­bies are not known for their sense of direc­tion, so they could head off to Par­lia­ment and Down­ing Street at a slow shuf­fle, or they might end up stag­ger­ing across St James’ Park to Buck­ing­ham Palace, demand­ing to be dis­solved and put out of their mis­ery.
• Dress Code: this can be ordi­nary clothes, but torn up or blood­stained is a good look, espe­cial­ly with trendy blairite suits; on the oth­er hand, why not go for the goth­ic?
• Make­up: green/white pale skin, good healthy look for a zom­bie, blood, wounds, sores all rec­om­mend­ed; PVC glue gives good skin-peel effect.
• Loco­mo­tion: SLOW, gets there in the end.
» Loca­tion & Pub­lic Trans­port Map: tinyurl.com/NLZLL-map
» Face­book Event Page: tinyurl.com/NLZLL-FB
» Web: tinyurl.com/GotDead-future

World Naked Bike Rides UK (& Manchester Critical Mass)

Brighton:

In Brighton, organ­is­ers of the sev­en-mile ride were warned by Sus­sex Police last month that par­tic­i­pants could face pros­e­cu­tion if offi­cers received com­plaints about the nudi­ty.

But, after advice from civ­il lib­er­ties group Lib­er­ty, cyclists entered dis­cus­sions with local police chiefs and resolved the impasse.

Brighton:

In Brighton, organ­is­ers of the sev­en-mile ride were warned by Sus­sex Police last month that par­tic­i­pants could face pros­e­cu­tion if offi­cers received com­plaints about the nudi­ty.

But, after advice from civ­il lib­er­ties group Lib­er­ty, cyclists entered dis­cus­sions with local police chiefs and resolved the impasse.

Co-organ­is­er Dun­can Blinkhorn said: “This is a fun if out­ra­geous way to make the seri­ous point that we should not have to tol­er­ate roads, cities and a plan­et dom­i­nat­ed by the brutish­ness of cars that rou­tine­ly foul the air we all breathe, destroy lives and impov­er­ish the envi­ron­ment.”

—-

Lon­don:

On Sat­ur­day 12 June 2010 the sev­enth Lon­don World Naked Bike Ride will return to the streets of the cap­i­tal, allow­ing rid­ers to see the city sights from the com­fort of a bike or skates. The ride is easy and upbeat, and rid­ers dec­o­rate their bod­ies and bikes with mes­sages of protest against oil depen­den­cy and car cul­ture.

Around 1200 rid­ers turned out for the Lon­don World Naked Bike Ride on Sat­ur­day, com­plet­ing a 10km cir­cuit through some of the major tourist and shop­ping streets of the cap­i­tal and as in pre­vi­ous rides cre­at­ing quite a stir for the five min­utes or so while they passed.

Lon­don police, also on ped­al cycles but ful­ly clothed, accom­pa­nied the cyclists and eased their pas­sage through the traf­fic. Nudi­ty is not in itself an offence and police allow the now annu­al protest to take place.

Crowds sev­er­al deep lined the edge of the road in pop­u­lar tourist spots includ­ing Trafal­gar Square, and even many of the shop­pers in Oxford St stopped con­sum­ing to watch, although from the many com­ments I heard, many were unclear about the pur­pose of the event.

Some rid­ers did have slo­gans on their bod­ies, main­ly about oil and traf­fic, and some bikes car­ried A4 posters read­ing REAL RIGHTS FOR BIKE and CELEBRATE BODY FREEDOM or had flags stat­ing ‘CURB CAR CULTURE’ which made clear the pur­pose of the event to the care­ful onlook­er, but for most peo­ple it seemed sim­ply a spec­ta­cle of naked or near-naked bod­ies. Though of course also a rare treat for any bicy­cle spot­ters.

Rid­ers rode in a vari­ety of dress and undress. Apart from shoes — vir­tu­al­ly essen­tial on a bike — some wore noth­ing, while oth­ers added body paint, cycle hel­mets, hats, shorts or briefs, bras and often a cam­era; a few rode ful­ly dressed. As on pre­vi­ous events there were con­sid­er­ably more men than women, some­thing that isn’t ful­ly reflect­ed in my pic­tures. Although there were few­er women, more of them were in colour­ful body paint or oth­er­wise stood out from the crowd.

This is an event that many — rid­ers and watch­ers — enjoy and some­thing that real­ly does make thou­sands of peo­ple stop and stare, but as in pre­vi­ous years it seems to fail to get a clear mes­sage across, per­haps because those tak­ing part do so for such var­ied rea­sons. This isn’t essen­tial­ly a natur­ist ral­ly and nudi­ty alone just isn’t enough to get the point of the event across.

* Lon­don is the largest day­time WNBR event in the world. We had 1,200 par­tic­i­pants on Sat­ur­day 13 June 2009!!! Pre­vi­ous­ly we had 1,000 (2007 & 2008), 800 (2006), 250 (2005) and 58 (2004).

—-

Man­ches­ter:

The weath­er was per­fect, the rid­ers were excep­tion­al and the start­ing point was love­ly. We rode in joy and fun and lots of noise for almost the whole route and the crowds loved us. It all went a bit pear-shaped on Port­land Street when some well-inten­tioned but sad­ly ill-informed con­stab­u­lary stopped the ride and tried to make us get dressed. We undressed around the cor­ner any­way, and we did get a lot of won­der­ful media cov­er­age. It ain’t gonna hap­pen again folks, we’ll make sure of that! Next year’s going to have the best ride ever!

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Sheffield:

There were 18 naked rid­ers which was down from last year’s 27 par­tic­i­pants, although the weath­er was just as nice and sun­ny with a warm gen­tle breeze. The gold­en sun­shine and clear blue skies, made it a won­der­ful day for ever­body. This year, as it was our sec­ond annu­al ride, we were hop­ing for around one hun­dred naked rid­ers. How­ev­er, as the Lon­don WNBR was held in the after­noon, this may have low­ered the turn out as folk thronged to the Lon­don ride which had over one thou­sand rid­ers.

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Southamp­ton:

On a dry and ‘warm enough’ evening 150 rid­ers attend­ed. The con­voy was led in fine style by a pair of Pen­ny Far­things dat­ing from the 1890s. We felt that these vehi­cles from a time before the inter­nal com­bus­tion engine neat­ly debunked the fool­ish idea that roads are made for cars! Helped by the state­ly pace of the vin­tage bikes, the ride stayed close­ly bunched togeth­er which gave a sense of uni­ty. We were greet­ed warm­ly by bystanders as we passed, and most car dri­vers were tol­er­ant (though there were the odd few aggres­sive excep­tions). Though num­bers were about the same as last year, it seemed to me there was a greater show of naked­ness this time, so hoorah for Southamp­ton rid­ers!

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York:

AN 87-year-old woman was among the par­tic­i­pants in this year’s York Naked Bike Ride.

Mar­garet Dust­man, who lived in Acomb for more than 50 years before mov­ing to Mir­field, said she took part because she was against people’s devo­tion to petrol and fash­ion.

Mrs Dust­man cycled off in the alto­geth­er, but oth­ers were there in var­i­ous states of undress, wear­ing Indi­an head­dress, biki­nis and var­i­ous slo­gans daubed on their bod­ies.

Oth­er reports, pho­tos and things at http://www.worldnakedbikeride.org/uk/

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The Crit­i­cal Mass­es in Man­ches­ter have been attend­ed by well over 100 peo­ple each month, for the last cou­ple of years — hoorah!

Videos of May 2009 ride parts 1 2 3 4

See you there — every last fri­day of the month 6pm cen­tral library MCR

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Thugs Seek Jobs at Shell HQ

The main doors at Shells head­quar­ters were closed to staff at 9am today, 12 June as pro­test­ers dressed as ‘thugs’ turned up for a job inter­view. Shell secu­ri­ty locked all doors as pro­test­ers tried to enter the build­ing for what they said was a job inter­view “we hear Shell are hir­ing thugs to sink ships in Ire­land”.

Shell Thugs 4 HireThe main doors at Shells head­quar­ters were closed to staff at 9am today, 12 June as pro­test­ers dressed as ‘thugs’ turned up for a job inter­view. Shell secu­ri­ty locked all doors as pro­test­ers tried to enter the build­ing for what they said was a job inter­view “we hear Shell are hir­ing thugs to sink ships in Ire­land”.

Pro­test­ers tried to enter the Head­quar­ters but the doors were locked as they went in. The doors remained locked for about an hour and a half, despite the var­i­ous demon­stra­tions the pro­test­ers gave of their ‘thugery’ skills even sim­u­lat­ing how they coud hold a fish­er­man cap­tive why sink­ing his boat.

One of the pro­test­ers Saman­tha John­son said “Shell have been hir­ing hit squads to ter­rorise local pro­test­ers at their activ­i­ties abroad, as with the Ogo­ni peo­ple in the Niger Delta. Now, they have import­ed these meth­ods to Ire­land. Indeed, last month a for­mer Shell secu­ri­ty guard was iden­ti­fied as one of the mer­ce­nar­ies employed in an assas­si­na­tion plot in Bolivia”.

This protest is in response to an inci­dent in Ross­port, Ire­land at 2am yes­ter­day morn­ing where 4 masked men sunk a local fisherman’s boat, with the own­er and a crewmem­ber still on it. 2 of the men were armed and held the fish­er­men while the oth­ers went below deck to sink the boat.

One of the pro­test­ers today Sean Reil­ly said “This shows the extremes Shell go to, to get what they want. They are will­ing to put 2 men in hos­pi­tal for vocal­ly express­ing oppo­si­tion.

Plane Stupid stage ‘Corporate Takeover’ at London City Airport

June 10th: 5 eco activists have shut down oper­a­tions at Lon­don City Air­port. The group, who are wear­ing pin­striped suits and bowler hats entered at 2.30 am today.

City airport action 1City airport action 2City airport action 3June 10th: 5 eco activists have shut down oper­a­tions at Lon­don City Air­port. The group, who are wear­ing pin­striped suits and bowler hats entered at 2.30 am today. They cut through the perime­ter fence and formed a human wheel clamp around one of the airport’s busi­ness jet fleet at the west end of the run­way. The need to avoid sparks around high­ly flam­able avi­a­tion fuel could meen that the nor­mal process of cut­ting them out of their arm­tubes could be severe­ly ham­pered.

Check out the pho­tos on our Flickr pho­to­stream.

Video

The ‘eco-takeover’ puts the spot­light on the self­ish­ness of pri­vate jet use:

“Because of their low pas­sen­ger capac­i­ty, small jets emit between five and 10 times more car­bon per pas­sen­ger than com­mer­cial flights,” said spokes­woman Nan­cy Birch. “In an age where we face poten­tial­ly cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change, this is no longer an accept­able form of trans­port. It’s time that pri­vate jets were ground­ed for good.”

Until the down­turn, the pri­vate jet busi­ness was the fastest grow­ing seg­ment of the avi­a­tion sec­tor. Over the last ten years it has expand­ed by almost 50%.

“This is yet anoth­er exam­ple of the insane rush towards mas­sive air­port and flight expan­sion,” Birch con­cludes. “The avi­a­tion indus­try seems to think it can pol­lute its way out of cli­mate change. But any­one with half a brain will know that this is just plane stu­pid.”

Lon­don City air­port blights the lives of some of the poor­est peo­ple in Lon­don. Newham has been known to expe­ri­ence air pol­lu­tion lev­els which reg­u­lar­ly exceed EU safe­ty lim­its for high­t­ly tox­ic chem­i­cals such as Nitrus Oxide and has the high­est lev­els of mor­tal­i­ty in under 30s in the UK from asth­ma, a mat­ter that Asth­maUK are cur­rent­ly inves­ti­gat­ing.

While it seems the group have suc­cess­ful­ly shut down the pri­vate Jet cen­tre part of the air­port, locals are report­ing that pub­lic flights start­ed run­ning from City from 7am. No one is claim­ing that the pro­test­ers have yet been arrest­ed or removed, which sug­gests that the Air­port are breach­ing health and safe­ty by con­tin­u­ing oper­a­tions in this restrict­ed area. If the five are still in posi­tion then they will have been locked on for 7 hours and a half hours now…

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Police cut­ting teams weren’t sight­ed in the area at the time the press team were forced to leave. Acsess roads have now been shut down, and the woman with the phone in the arm­tube can’t take calls any­more, so it’s dif­fi­cult to get any news of what’s going on. More pho­tos are avail­able on the Plane Stu­pid web­site, check out the flickr stream.

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Notes to the edi­tor

A total of 27 local and region­al air­ports around the UK are cur­rent­ly seek­ing to expand their activ­i­ties.

Lon­don City Air­port recent­ly received local author­i­ty per­mis­sion to expand its com­mer­cial flights from 80,000 to 120,000. The air­port aims to increase this total to 170,000 by 2030.

Activists tar­get­ed Lon­don City Air­port because it is one of the key dri­vers of the pri­vate jet busi­ness. The air­port cur­rent­ly sees an aver­age of 170 move­ments (take-offs and land­ings) per week. The airport’s Jet Cen­tre pre­dicts this fig­ure will increase to more than 530 a week by 2030.

Lon­don City Air­port was closed at the time of the eco-takeover. Secu­ri­ty was giv­en two hours’ warn­ing before the first flights of the day.

The airport’s Jet Cen­tre com­pris­es a mix­ture of pri­vate­ly-owned jets and a for-hire busi­ness jet oper­a­tion run by Pri­vate­Jet.

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8:30am update & local group press release:

Locals are con­firm­ing that flights start­ed from city air­port at 7am. While the pri­vate Jet Cen­tre where the group are locked on does apear to have been sucess­ful­ly shut down, it is alarm­ing that the air­port is pre­pared to dis­re­gard health and safe­ty reg­u­la­tions and con­tin­ue to run flights in the area. There have been no reports that the group have been arrest­ed or removed so far. If they are still there then they have been locked on for 7 hours now…

For the local cam­paign group per­spec­tive see below-

PRESS RELEASE FIGHT THE FLIGHTS — LONDON CITY AIRPORT

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 10 June 2009

FIGHT THE FLIGHTS RESPONSE TO PLANE STUPIDS ACTION AT LONDON CITY AIRPORT

Fight the Flights is not a direct action group, but we ful­ly appre­ci­ate the frus­tra­tion that the cli­mate change activists feel in get­ting their voic­es, and con­cerns heard on avi­a­tion expan­sion, and how avi­a­tion is one of the fastest grow­ing sources of CO2 emis­sions.

It is no won­der that some cam­paign­ers feel they are being pushed into tak­ing non vio­lent direct action because the sys­tem is fail­ing peo­ple of their demo­c­ra­t­ic rights to pro­tect their com­mu­ni­ties, futures and their envi­ron­ment from harm­ful ‘run­away’ air­port and flight expan­sion.

Just under a 100,000 res­i­dents in east and south east Lon­don will be affect­ed by the increas­ing exces­sive noise lev­els from Lon­don City Air­port upon expan­sion, and yet less than 10,000 were claimed to have been con­sult­ed by the Lon­don Bor­ough of Newham. Most will not be enti­tled to any noise insu­la­tion. They will have to live with the con­se­quences every day of their lives, each time a flight takes off and lands. The major­i­ty do not have the option to move, and many lived in the area long before the air­ports cre­ation.

Ben­e­fits?

In just over 20 years the air­port has only man­aged to direct­ly employ 120 Newham res­i­dents out of the 406 direct­ly employed staff the air­port claim to employ.

Lon­don tax­pay­ers have also paid £24million for the air­ports secu­ri­ty pro­vid­ed by the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police over the past 5 years, which the air­port refuse to pay.

In addi­tion the air qual­i­ty above Lon­don City Air­port exceeds EU direc­tive lev­els by 50% and was termed as ‘tox­ic’ but this was not acknowl­edged by the Lon­don Bor­ough of Newham. In a bor­ough which has the high­est lev­el of mor­tal­i­ty in under 30s with asth­ma in the whole coun­try, Newham should be focussing on improv­ing air qual­i­ty, not adding to the pol­lu­tion by approv­ing fur­ther expan­sion at this res­i­den­tial­ly sit­u­at­ed air­port in the most dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed area of Eng­land.

Erod­ed Democ­ra­cy

Res­i­dents have been con­stant­ly thwart­ed and ignored by this gov­ern­ment and the Lon­don Bor­ough of Newham when pro­vid­ing evi­dence against the expan­sion. Requests for a pub­lic inquiry into the planned 50% expan­sion of flights at Lon­don City Air­port was refused by Hazel Blears, Sec­re­tary of State in 2008, whilst the Lon­don Bor­ough of Newham showed no con­cern that 100s of homes in Green­wich will now be in the crash zone and failed to address the risk to res­i­dents and com­mu­ni­ties who live, work or trav­el through the crash zone in both Newham and Green­wich. How­ev­er in con­trast the gov­ern­ment and coun­cil appear to con­sis­tent­ly lis­ten to the avi­a­tion at the expense of the com­mu­ni­ties: this is expan­sion at any cost.

With a gov­ern­ment that does not lis­ten to local con­cerns on the effects of expan­sion on third par­ty safe­ty, increas­ing pol­lu­tion lev­els, the effect on res­i­dents health and children’s devel­op­ment, and the con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate change, it is no won­der that we are see­ing actions such as this more fre­quent­ly.

London eco-village occupation — wish-list, directions, & film

Around 70 pro­test­ers have occu­pied an emp­ty plot of land next to Kew Bridge in Brent­ford, Lon­don (TW8 0EW). They’ve set up an eco-vil­lage.

London Eco-VillageAround 70 pro­test­ers have occu­pied an emp­ty plot of land next to Kew Bridge in Brent­ford, Lon­don (TW8 0EW). They’ve set up an eco-vil­lage.

This will show­case com­mu­ni­ty based sus­tain­able meth­ods of liv­ing such as veg­etable grow­ing, com­post toi­lets. They in the process of set­ting up tents and are clean­ing the site of rub­bish.

Lon­don eco-camp: Day One — video/quicktime 13M

We could do with the more of the fol­low­ing if you are think­ing of vis­it­ing:

>Big water con­tain­ers (>10ltrs)
>Oil for bolts
>Screws, bolts, coach bolts.
>Sta­tion­ary: paper, pens, sticky tape, etc.,
>Ban­ner mak­ing material/paints.
>Tarps
>String and Rope
>Spades shov­els and forks
>Lots of hose for mov­ing water.

We have a real­ly awe­some and secure site, it looks like we are stay­ing we have one large issue. Most of the site is heav­i­ly over­looked so we need to keep things tidy, make things visu­al­ly inter­est­ing and have banners/posters so peo­ple know what we are up to. The local have been very sup­port­ive so far due to the pro­posed use of the site we are occu­py­ing. Lets keep it that way…any help much appre­ci­at­ed.

If you would like to join our autonomous space in west lon­don then how do you get there?

1. Cycle; from cen­tral lon­don there is one road with no change. The A315, it changes names to many things but starts south of Hyde Park (as Knights­bridge and Kens­ing­ton Road) and con­tin­ues through Chisick (Chiswick High Street) right untill the round about where the camp is set­up. From kew bridge the camp can be clear­ly seen.

2. Take a train: from south east lon­don this is the best option. Train are reg­u­lar out of water­loo and take about 25 min­utes to get to Kew Bridge sta­tion. You can take your bike on these trains.

3. Get dad­dy to give you a lift in his heli­copter: you may get thrown out.

We are at Kew Bridge
Map: http://tinyurl.com/n7ny33