Category: London

Lon­don

Photographers turn out in solidarity against new “terror law”.

Repost­ed: 16.02.2009: every­one knows Indy­medi­a’s a cop­per’s favourite read, but after a cou­ple of hun­dred snap­pers turned up out­side the yard this morn­ing they’ll be queu­ing up today to see whose mug’s on the wire.

Photographing gun copsRepost­ed: 16.02.2009: every­one knows Indy­medi­a’s a cop­per’s favourite read, but after a cou­ple of hun­dred snap­pers turned up out­side the yard this morn­ing they’ll be queu­ing up today to see whose mug’s on the wire.

Because snuck in today under the usu­al cov­er of the war against ter­ror came Sec­tion 76 of the Counter-Ter­ror­ism Act 2008.

This crim­i­nalis­es any­one ‘elic­it­ing, pub­lish­ing or com­mu­ni­cat­ing infor­ma­tion on mem­bers of the armed forces, intel­li­gence ser­vices and police offi­cers which is “like­ly to be use­ful to a per­son com­mit­ting or prepar­ing an act of ter­ror­ism”.

But giv­en the police’s reg­u­lar and bla­tant mis­use of oth­er laws such as Sec­tion 44 of the exist­ing Ter­ror­ism Act and Sec­tion 1 of PACE, pho­tog­ra­phers feel it’s a rac­ing cer­tain­ty that it’ll get used to sup­press evi­dence the police don’t want used against them.

“I can see it now”, wrote pho­tog­ra­ph­er Marc Vallee in Thurs­day’s Guardian ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/11/police-terrorism-photography-liberty-central) “If you don’t stop tak­ing pic­tures of me hit­ting this pro­test­er on the head, I’m going to nick you under sec­tion 76 of the Counter-Ter­ror­ism Act 2008.”

At least three legal cas­es are cur­rent­ly pend­ing relat­ing to such police over-exu­ber­ance at last year’s Cli­mate Camp in Kingsnorth, Kent. Almost two thou­sand cops from 26 forces assem­bled at a cost of over 6 mil­lion quid and — hav­ing first harassed and delayed the press — chose to lay in on a reg­u­lar basis on campers with steel batons.

Sad­ly for them these attacks were nev­er­the­less filmed and pho­tographed and this evi­dence stands ready to dis­prove the lies they make in jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for that behav­iour. Imag­ine how much eas­i­er life will be for them in future if those news­gath­er­ers can be tak­en away from the scene under threat of a ten year stretch.

High up behind the mir­rored win­dows of New Scot­land Yard the For­ward Intel­li­gence Team will have been at work pho­tograph­ing the pho­tog­ra­phers for their records.

And they’ll have noticed some­thing new — as well as the usu­al twen­ty or so pho­tog­ra­phers they always tar­get for “report­ing the news the wrong way” there were a cou­ple of hun­dred new faces: work­ing news pho­tog­ra­phers who’ve had it up to the back teeth with being pushed around ille­gal­ly on threat (and some­times the real­i­ty) of arrest.

It’s no longer just an activist minor­i­ty that sees through this sham of repres­sion pre­sent­ed almost as a health and safe­ty issue (keep­ing us safe from the bad men). Polit­i­cal police intru­sion is becom­ing ever more inva­sive, is affect­ing all our lives and fuck­ing up the free­doms we’re sup­posed to believe are (were?) our right.

This new law is just one more sub­tle tool in the armoury of pub­lic repres­sion and this extra­or­di­nary turnout by what is nor­mal­ly an apa­thet­ic and polit­i­cal­ly care­less bunch of pho­tog­ra­phers sends a clear sig­nal that the worm is final­ly turn­ing.

Demonstrators target Graff Diamonds in Solidarity with Kahlahari Bushmen (11.2.09)

Survival’s cam­paign tar­get­ing Graff Dia­monds over its involve­ment in a dia­mond mine planned on the land of Kala­hari Bush­men in Botswana has stepped up a gear.

Bushmen Demo- London 11.2.09Survival’s cam­paign tar­get­ing Graff Dia­monds over its involve­ment in a dia­mond mine planned on the land of Kala­hari Bush­men in Botswana has stepped up a gear. Thir­ty pro­test­ers gath­ered on the 11.2.09 out­side Graff’s flag­ship Lon­don store hold­ing plac­ards say­ing ‘Boy­cott Graff’ and ‘Botswana dia­monds: Bush­men despair’.

The store is based in the fash­ion epi­cen­tre of Lon­don sur­round­ed by shops from Yves San Lau­ren, Chanel etc. The dia­mond indus­tries main prod­uct is high image and thus has shown itself to be some­times more sus­cep­ti­ble to pres­sure than oth­er resource sec­tors such as min­ing and oil. Pre­vi­ous pick­ets by Sur­vival Inter­na­tion­al and pub­lic sham­ing of fash­ion hous­es and top mod­els result­ed in De Beers pulling out of the planned dia­mond min­ing in the Kala­hari.

There are 100,000 Bush­men in Botswana, Namib­ia, South Africa and Ango­la. They are the indige­nous peo­ple of south­ern Africa, and have lived there for tens of thou­sands of years.

In the mid­dle of Botswana lies the Cen­tral Kala­hari Game Reserve, a reserve cre­at­ed both to pro­tect the tra­di­tion­al ter­ri­to­ry of the 5,000 Gana, Gwi and Tsi­la Bush­men (and their neigh­bours the Bak­gala­ga­di), and the wildlife and ecosys­tem of which are a part.

In the ear­ly 1980s, dia­monds were dis­cov­ered in the reserve. Soon after, gov­ern­ment min­is­ters went into the reserve to tell the Bush­men liv­ing there that they would have to leave because of the dia­mond finds.

In three big clear­ances, in 1997, 2002 and 2005, vir­tu­al­ly all the Bush­men were forced out. Their homes were dis­man­tled, their school and health post were closed, their water sup­ply was destroyed and the peo­ple were threat­ened and trucked away.

They now live in reset­tle­ment camps out­side the reserve. Rarely able to hunt, and arrest­ed and beat­en when they do, they are depen­dent on gov­ern­ment hand­outs. They are now gripped by alco­holism, bore­dom, depres­sion, and ill­ness­es such as TB and HIV/AIDS.

Unless they can return to their ances­tral lands, their unique soci­eties and way of life will be destroyed, and many of them will die.

Although the Bush­men won the right in court to go back to their lands in 2006, the gov­ern­ment has done every­thing it can to make their return impos­si­ble. It has:

Banned them from using their water bore­hole,
Refused to issue a sin­gle per­mit to hunt on their land (despite Botswana’s High Court rul­ing in Decem­ber that its refusal to issue per­mits was unlaw­ful),
Arrest­ed more than 50 Bush­men for hunt­ing to feed their fam­i­lies,
Banned them from tak­ing their small herds of goats back to the reserve.

Its pol­i­cy is clear­ly to intim­i­date and fright­en the Bush­men into stay­ing in the reset­tle­ment camps, and mak­ing the lives of those who have gone back to their ances­tral land impos­si­ble.

More infor­ma­tion on the Kala­hari Bush­men can be found on their own web­site : www.iwant2gohome.org or the web­site of Sur­vival Inter­na­tion­al (which is updat­ed more often): www.survival-international.org/tribes/bushmen

spike social centre eviction in progress — London

12.2.2009 9am
the spike sur­plus scheme of 39b con­sort road, peck­ham, Lon­don is being eve­ict­ed as we speak. bailiffs, cops, pcsos and “com­mu­ni­ty war­dens” are on site.

12.2.2009 9am
the spike sur­plus scheme of 39b con­sort road, peck­ham, Lon­don is being eve­ict­ed as we speak. bailiffs, cops, pcsos and “com­mu­ni­ty war­dens” are on site.

after a ten year project in the build­ing which has been in com­mu­ni­ty use for 150 years, the prop­er­ty divi­sion of sout­wark coun­cil have decid­ed to end the project. though they promised to give notice to clear the projects equip­ment before evic­tion, south­wark coun­cil gave instruc­tions to get a spe­cial court order so as not to give any notice at all.

Jere­my pil­grim of the south­wark coun­cil lead the police oper­a­tion, vis­it­ing the project for the first time this morn­ing after many pre­vi­ous invites to vis­it the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre.

peo­ple have been told to liase with bailiffs in order to col­lect the thou­sands of pounds worth of equip­ment still there.

www.spikesurplus.org

www.myspace.com/spikesurplus

Earth First! tree planting weekend in Pennines Fri 13th-Sun 15th March

The annu­al and occa­sion­al­ly hedo­nis­tic oppor­tu­ni­ty to plant thou­sands of native trees on a eco­log­i­cal­ly degrad­ed hill­side is hap­pen­ing in March. Organ­ised by Earth First!

EF! fist tree 1The annu­al and occa­sion­al­ly hedo­nis­tic oppor­tu­ni­ty to plant thou­sands of native trees on a eco­log­i­cal­ly degrad­ed hill­side is hap­pen­ing in March. Organ­ised by Earth First! activists in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Calderdale com­mu­ni­ty group Treespon­si­bil­i­ty we will be based in Heb­den Bridge in Calderdale. If you fan­cy a week­end of hard but sat­is­fy­ing work plant­i­ng native wood­land com­bined with good food and social­is­ing put the week­end of the 13–15th March in your diary.

Earth First! tree plant­i­ng week­end…

Date: Fri­day 13th — Sun­day 15th March

Venue: We will be stay­ing in a camp­ing barn with com­fy beds and heat­ing. Bring a sleep­ing bag.

Trans­port: Get your­self to Heb­den Bridge train sta­tion for a pick up at 6pm or 8pm on the 13th. Pick­ups are avail­able by arrange­ment at oth­er times if you e‑mail in advance.

Food: All food will be cooked col­lec­tive­ly and will be veg­an.

Cost: £25 for the week­end. This includes all food and acco­mo­da­tion. You’ll have to sup­ply you own beer. We will be vis­it­ing the famous Blue Pig pub­lic house on the Sat­ur­day night.

Need more info? Con­tact: treesponsibility@yahoo.co.uk or call 07983743894

Climate Camp hits the City of London on April Fools Day, the eve of the G20 leaders’ London Summit. Join us!

Climate camp 2009 /// Stopping carbon markets /// Because nature doesn’t do bailouts.

G20 CCA logo

Climate camp 2009 /// Stopping carbon markets /// Because nature doesn’t do bailouts.

First the city traders spec­u­lat­ed with our homes, jobs and mon­ey – with dis­as­trous results. Now they are spec­u­lat­ing with our cli­mate and the very future of life on earth – and once again our gov­ern­ments are cheer­ing them on.

By cre­at­ing a brain-bend­ing sys­tem of car­bon pol­lu­tion licens­es, fos­sil fuel com­pa­nies and trad­ing firms have found a way to keep on churn­ing out glob­al warm­ing gas­es and to reap huge wind­fall prof­its at the same time.
Mean­while, the UK gov­ern­ment is jus­ti­fy­ing a third run­way at Heathrow and a coal-fired pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth by say­ing that these new “car­bon trad­ing” schemes will mag­i­cal­ly make all their emis­sions van­ish.

They are hand­ing con­trol of our cli­mate over to the same peo­ple and sys­tems that caused the finan­cial col­lapse. All the work­able and fair alter­na­tives aren’t get­ting a look-in

We need to stop this fool­ish­ness.

We’ve camped against the Heathrow run­way, we’ve camped against the Kingsnorth coal pow­er sta­tion. Now its time to camp against the over-arch­ing prob­lem: absolute faith in unfet­tered mar­kets and end­less eco­nom­ic growth. On April 1st the G20 lead­ers arrive in Lon­don. At a time of cli­mate cri­sis their response to the mar­ket melt­down is emer­gency loans to car man­u­fac­tur­ers, increased spend­ing to encour­age con­sump­tion, and bailouts for the very peo­ple who got us into this mess — just the thing that will make the cli­mate cri­sis worse.

Don’t let them get away with it: join our camp in the Square Mile! Gath­er at noon, April 1st, at the Euro­pean Cli­mate Exchange, Hasil­wood House, 62 Bish­ops­gate, EC2N 4AW. Bring a pop-up tent, sleep­ing bag, wind tur­bine, mobile cin­e­ma, action plans and ideas…let’s imag­ine anoth­er world.

Don’t let the finan­cial and fos­sil fools make the rules!

for updates, details on back-up plans, and mor­e­in­for­ma­tion, vis­it us again at http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20

To get involved, come to our plan­ning meet­ing on Sat­ur­day Feb­ru­ary 14th in Lon­don (arrive at the library hou­use, 52 Knatch­bull, at 1 pm for a 1:30 start) or come to the gath­er­ing on March the 6th/7th in Not­ting­ham.

Email g20 [@] climatecamp.org.uk for more infor­ma­tion.

Join the announce­ments list, the face­book page and event.

Please post this link, paste this text, and oth­er­wise spread the word!

Help cel­e­brate Fos­sil Fools Day and Finan­cial Fools Day

Call out for solidarity anti-nuke actions on 26th April (Chernobyl Day)

A call out for com­mon actions against the con­struc­tion of a new nuclear pow­er sta­tion

A call out for com­mon actions against the con­struc­tion of a new nuclear pow­er sta­tion

Present-day Belarus is a post sovi­et coun­try, on which ter­ri­to­ry a regime, police state in form and neolib­er­al in essence, for­ti­fied its posi­tion. For already 14 years the coun­try is run by one and the same per­son Alexan­der Lukashenko, a pop­ulist at the begin­ning of his gov­ern­ing and open­ly pur­su­ing anti­so­cial reforms now. The free­dom of speech, free­dom of the press, free­dom of assem­bly is not about our coun­try. These basic val­ues as well as the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion are sup­pressed. Peace­ful gath­er­ings dis­per­sions, polit­i­cal tri­als, pre­ven­tive deten­tions all this has become a norm of polit­i­cal prac­tice in Belarus.

A few years ago the rul­ing top start­ed to con­sid­er anoth­er ven­ture­some project the con­struc­tion of a nuclear pow­er sta­tion (NPS). Lukashenko took a deci­sion regard­less of the pub­lic wish­es and com­mon sense. The deci­sion was made with the active sup­port of the inter­na­tion­al nuclear lob­by. The con­struc­tion is to be under­tak­en by a Russ­ian cor­po­ra­tion Rosatom. It is to be held in a seis­mi­cal­ly active zone, in a dozen kilo­me­ters away from Lake Naroch the largest lake in Belarus, which is eco­log­i­cal­ly unique for our coun­try and is a tourists and hol­i­day-mak­ers attrac­tion. On the con­struc­tion will be spent $4 bil­lion, which oth­er­wise could be out­laid for alter­na­tive ener­gy means devel­op­ment.

But the above-list­ed points pale before the fact that Belarus shared 70% of radioac­tive con­t­a­m­i­na­tion after Cher­nobyl nuclear acci­dent. But the gov­ern­ment and the pres­i­dent are absolute­ly not con­cerned about that. They want to cre­ate a delayed-action bomb in the coun­try, where one third of the ter­ri­to­ry is unfit for farm­ing and berries/mushrooms gath­er­ing.

We, Anti­nu­clear resis­tance, an anar­chy group, come out against nuclear pow­er engi­neer­ing on the whole and against the NPS con­struc­tion specif­i­cal­ly in Belarus. A part of polit­i­cal forces in Belarus, includ­ing oppo­si­tion, sup­port­ed the NPS con­struc­tion. Unlike them we do not believe in NPS safe­ty irre­spec­tive of the polit­i­cal regime, with­in which it is func­tion­ing and being con­struct­ed. Our activ­i­ty is based upon non-author­i­tar­i­an prin­ci­ples, we do not coop­er­ate with any polit­i­cal par­ties on a reg­u­lar base, but with eco­log­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions and grass­roots ini­tia­tives.

On 26 April, the anniver­sary of the Cher­nobyl nuclear acci­dent, an annu­al demon­stra­tion Charnobyl­s­ki Shlah (The Cher­nobyl Path) takes place in com­mem­o­ra­tion of the acci­dent and the peo­ple who fell the imme­di­ate and lin­ger­ing vic­tims of it. Start­ing with the year of 1996 anar­chists take part in the demo with eco­log­i­cal and anti­nu­clear slo­gans. But nowa­days the demon­stra­tion, instead of just mourn­ing and com­mem­o­ra­tive event, is
gain­ing a protest mood: in the coun­try, where dozens of thou­sands peo­ple have died as a result of the nuclear acci­dent after­maths and hun­dreds of thou­sands have acquired acci­dent-caused ill­ness­es or become hand­i­capped, a new NPS is to be con­struct­ed! And that is done accord­ing to the com­mon reg­u­la­tions of an author­i­tar­i­an police state not ask­ing the peo­ples opin­ion, but just con­fronting them with the fact.

On 26 April we will again take a most active part in the Charnobyl­s­ki Shlah (The Cher­nobyl Path), well try to pass along to every­one our clear anti­nu­clear posi­tion, will inform as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble of the approach­ing dan­ger. But now it is not enough! As an instru­ment of strug­gle against the state law­less­ness we rely on the inter­na­tion­al sup­port. We urge anar­chists, envi­ron­men­tal­ists, anti­au­thor­i­tar­i­ans of the world to car­ry out sol­i­dar­i­ty actions on 26 April 2009. We call for a decen­tral­ized day of action of any form, which could help peo­ple learn some­thing about our prob­lem and stop the impu­dent author­i­ty and their spon­sors from IAEA.

If you already take actions on 26 April on your local prob­lems con­cern­ing nuclear pow­er engi­neer­ing, please put on your list the demand for abo­li­tion of the NSP con­struc­tion in Belarus. You are also wel­come to par­tic­i­pate in The Cher­nobyl Path in Min­sk and oth­er actions in Belarus.

Togeth­er we will be able to stand up for the right for life on a clean and eco­log­i­cal­ly safe plan­et!

If you have any inten­tion to make sol­i­dar­i­ty actions with the Belaruss­ian anti­nu­clear move­ment or par­tic­i­pate in the demon­stra­tion in Belarus please con­tact us:

antiatombel@riseup.net

Spread out the call out through any acces­si­ble for you infor­ma­tion chan­nels

belarus anar­chists
http://belarus.avtonom.org

Climate Rush gets chained to Parliament

28 jan­u­ary 2009

Climate Rush chained to parliament28 jan­u­ary 2009
As I write this blog our MPs are debat­ing the sub­ject of the third run­way in the Com­mons. Although any deci­sion made will not be bind­ing it is pos­si­ble that there will be a labour revolt over the cur­rent deci­sion to go ahead when a vote is held at 7pm this evening. A not insignif­i­cant amount of MPs are seri­ous­ly annoyed with our gov­ern­men­t’s col­lu­sion with BAA, with two MPs decid­ing to resign over the issue this morn­ing.

Cli­mate Rush were out­side the gates of Par­lia­ment to show what they think of our far­ci­cal democ­ra­cy at 10.30am this morn­ing, cun­ning­ly bear­ing chains under large coats. It was an easy stroll over to the rail­ings and a leisure­ly pad­lock­ing ensued before any police even took any notice. Eight women and two men dressed in assort­ed Edwar­dian-style gear unfurled their lov­ing­ly sten­cilled aprons bear­ing the immor­tal DEEDS NOT WORDS, and pro­ceed­ed to smile for the atten­dant press.

After about an hour the police decid­ed to move every­one else off the area with a bit of force, before then mak­ing a u‑turn and let­ting every­one back in. They threat­ened arrest sev­er­al times, for protest­ing in a SOCPA area (you have to apply to protest any­where near Par­lia­ment) with­out a per­mit, and then for refusals to unchain. This was much to the amuse­ment of the pro-cannabis lob­by over the way in the square, who heck­led us through their mega­phone. I think they may take tips from us in the future. Tourists stopped to have their pho­tos tak­en. Suf­fragettes drank tea from a flask and ate turk­ish delight.

Even­tu­al­ly, the bolt­cut­ters arrived, and the police chopped through the chains. But still no arrests, in fact they appeared des­per­ate to avoid any arrests, clear­ly dread­ing the extra pub­lic­i­ty over our demon­stra­tion of true democ­ra­cy in action — orders seemed to change rapid­ly from whomev­er was pass­ing them down from on high. After all the Suf­fragettes had been freed a group hud­dle ensued to decide on whether to fur­ther attempt arrest, but it was decid­ed that this might prove near­ly impos­si­ble giv­en that it had already proved so dif­fi­cult, and instead we went off for a cup of tea and a plate of chips in the Methodist Church Hall cafe.

I’d like to think that some­thing sen­si­ble might occur in gov­ern­ment today, like our elect­ed politi­cians real­is­ing that build­ing a third run­way is not com­pat­i­ble with cut­ting 80% of our CO2 emis­sions, as already agreed. Alas I fear not.…
Join the fun with Cli­mate Rush if you’d like to voice your opin­ion on this mat­ter on a future date.

climaterush.co.uk

More pho­tos at http://www.ameliasmagazine.com/amelias_blog/2009/01/climate_rush_gets_chained_to_p.php

E.On Ref Off!

On Sat­ur­day 24th Jan­u­ary a group of Lon­don Cli­mate Camp activists turned up at Stam­ford Bridge dressed as foot­ball ref­er­ees to show E.ON the red card.

Eon red card 1Eon red card 2On Sat­ur­day 24th Jan­u­ary a group of Lon­don Cli­mate Camp activists turned up at Stam­ford Bridge dressed as foot­ball ref­er­ees to show E.ON the red card. Over 40,000 Chelsea and Ipswich fans arriv­ing for the game heard us blow­ing the whis­tle on E.ON’s dirty FA Cup spon­sor­ship mon­ey, and thou­sands of them were per­son­al­ly hand­ed an “E.ON F.OFF” red card explain­ing how the com­pa­ny is mak­ing foul prof­its from the cli­mate cri­sis. It was all good fun and reac­tions were pret­ty pos­i­tive — E.ON them­selves would have paid tens of thou­sands to get the oppo­site pub­lic­i­ty for their brand!

Activists take action “In Defence of Ancient Forests”

26.01.2009
Today, pro­test­ers climbed trees and hung ban­ners in front of the Aus­tralian High Com­mis­sion in Lon­don to raise aware­ness of the con­tin­ued log­ging of Australia’s old growth and high con­ser­va­tion val­ue forests. An emer­gency report com­piled by envi­ron­men­tal and protest groups in Tas­ma­nia was deliv­ered detail­ing the dev­as­ta­tion of pub­lic forests at the hands of wood­chip com­pa­ny Gunns Ltd. The com­pa­ny pro­pose more than 10km of log­ging roads to access 12 log­ging ‘coupes’ all of which con­tain irre­place­able ecosys­tems and some of the tallest trees on the plan­et.

Australian wilderness protest at Embassy26.01.2009
Today, pro­test­ers climbed trees and hung ban­ners in front of the Aus­tralian High Com­mis­sion in Lon­don to raise aware­ness of the con­tin­ued log­ging of Australia’s old growth and high con­ser­va­tion val­ue forests. An emer­gency report com­piled by envi­ron­men­tal and protest groups in Tas­ma­nia was deliv­ered detail­ing the dev­as­ta­tion of pub­lic forests at the hands of wood­chip com­pa­ny Gunns Ltd. The com­pa­ny pro­pose more than 10km of log­ging roads to access 12 log­ging ‘coupes’ all of which con­tain irre­place­able ecosys­tems and some of the tallest trees on the plan­et.

Last Mon­day, con­cerned mem­bers of the British pub­lic deliv­ered a peti­tion with 936 names to the embassy ask­ing for an imme­di­ate halt to log­ging old growth for­est in Tas­ma­nia.
The protest is moti­vat­ed by the evic­tion of the long stand­ing protest camp in the Upper Flo­ren­tine val­ley in Tas­ma­nia. To date 30 pro­test­ers and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers act­ing in the defence of the protest camp have been arrest­ed.

“We have gained sup­port from the Rt Hon Nor­man Bak­er MP, who is in the process of tabling an ear­ly day motion in Par­lia­ment express­ing con­cern about the extent of log­ging in the Upper Flo­ren­tine val­ley in Tas­ma­nia” said for­est cam­paign­er Phil Neale.

In July, fol­low­ing a meet­ing in Que­bec, The World Her­itage Com­mit­tee request­ed the State Par­ty to con­sid­er an “exten­sion of the prop­er­ty to include appro­pri­ate areas of tall euca­lypt for­est”, once more high­light­ing this issue as being an inter­na­tion­al con­cern.
This request has reit­er­at­ed inter­na­tion­al con­cerns with the con­tin­ued destruc­tion of Tas­ma­ni­a’s ancient forests.

“We are call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Rudd and Pre­mier Bartlett to heed the advice of the IUCN now and place an imme­di­ate mora­to­ri­um on log­ging in the glob­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant forests of the Styx, Weld and Upper Flo­ren­tine” — Ula Majew­s­ki spokesper­son for grass roots cam­paign group ‘Still Wild, Still Threat­ened’.

There where unnec­es­sary amounts of police in the area but no arrests.

For more infor­ma­tion vis­it www.huon.org and www.stillwildstillthreatened.org

CLIMATE ACTION NEWS SHEET 85, December/January 2008/2009

————————-
UPCOMING/ONGOING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-

1. Camp for Cli­mate Action Gath­er­ing, 31.01.09–01.02.09
2. Earth First! Win­ter Moot, 6–8.02.09
3. Mobil­is­ing for the COP, 13–15.03.09
4. Do It Your­self! Course, 22–27.03.09
5. Fos­sil Fools Day 2009, 01.04.09
6. Coal Car­a­van, April 2009

————————-
UPCOMING/ONGOING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-

1. Camp for Cli­mate Action Gath­er­ing, 31.01.09–01.02.09
2. Earth First! Win­ter Moot, 6–8.02.09
3. Mobil­is­ing for the COP, 13–15.03.09
4. Do It Your­self! Course, 22–27.03.09
5. Fos­sil Fools Day 2009, 01.04.09
6. Coal Car­a­van, April 2009
7. Earth Activist Train­ing, 11–26.07.09
8. Non­vi­o­lence for a Change Train­ing, Jan-Dec 2009

—————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
—————-
1. Case col­laps­es against E.On block­aders, 14.01.09
2. Heathrow’s third run­way gets the go-ahead and activists respond, Jan­u­ary 2009
3. Plane Stu­pid shut down Stanst­ed Air­port, 08–12.08
4. 48 hours of action against E.on and new coal, 28–29.11.08
5. Scot­tish coal rail ter­mi­nal shut down, 15.12.08
6. E.ON forced to aban­don recruit­ment tour, Novem­ber 2008
7. Kel­ster­back For­est Occu­pa­tion (Frank­furt Air­port), ongo­ing

————————-
UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-

1) Camp for Cli­mate Action New Year Gath­er­ing, 31.01.09 – 01.02.09
2008 saw the biggest Cli­mate Camp to date and the most incred­i­ble array of direct action against cli­mate change on record. But what does 2009 hold in store? Regard­less of whether you’ve been to a cli­mate camp, all are wel­come to come along to this excit­ing week­end gath­er­ing. We will be ask­ing our­selves whether there should be anoth­er big sum­mer event and, if so, what it should be. Already there have been many pos­si­bil­i­ties raised, rang­ing from anoth­er rur­al camp to a sin­gu­lar day of action. Oth­er ideas include an urban con­ver­gence or a cli­mate car­a­van. The gath­er­ing will also pro­vide a forum to talk http://climatecamp.org.uk/?q=node/468

2) Earth First! Win­ter Moot, 6–8.02.09
The Earth First! Win­ter Moot is a week­end to reflect on where we are as a rad­i­cal ecol­o­gist move­ment and on where we are going. The moot will be about dis­cussing strat­e­gy, strength­en­ing the EF! net­work, secu­ri­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and action plan­ning. A ses­sion is also reserved for dis­cussing a UK mobil­i­sa­tion for the UN cli­mate con­fer­ence in Copen­hagen late 2009. The moot will be held in Brighton (t.b.c.). Please check the web­site near­er to the time for fur­ther details and email any items you would like to add an item to the agen­da to moot2009 at earthfirst.org.uk.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/21557

3) Mobil­is­ing for the COP, 13–15.03.09
The UN Cli­mate Con­fer­ence of Par­ties num­ber 15 is set to take place in Copen­hagen on the 30th of Novem­ber 2009, and it will be the biggest cli­mate sum­mit ever to have tak­en place. More than 12,000 del­e­gates — busi­ness lead­ers, politi­cians, diplo­mats and lob­by­ists — are going to be dis­cussing an inter­na­tion­al treaty to replace the failed Kyoto Pro­to­col.

Tens of thou­sands of activists and pro­test­ers will be mak­ing their way to Copen­hagen for this major event. In Sep­tem­ber 2008 peo­ple from more than 23 coun­tries met in Copen­hagen and agreed on a Call to Action, call­ing for peo­ple to start mobi­liz­ing and to car­ry out actions local­ly as well as com­ing to Copen­hagen for mass actions.
Anoth­er inter­na­tion­al plan­ning meet­ing will take place in March (13th-15th) 2009 where the con­cepts and strat­e­gy for action will be dis­cussed. http://climateaction09.org/

4) Do It Your­self! 22–27.03.09
A course explor­ing tools for empow­er­ment and grass­roots social change, at the Find­horn Foun­da­tion

Can we man­age our own lives and com­mu­ni­ties at the grass­roots rather than retreat­ing into fear, blame and stereo­types or look­ing to oth­ers to solve the prob­lems? Many peo­ple believe that the answers to the big ques­tions lie in com­mu­ni­ty empow­er­ment, bot­tom up organ­is­ing. This course pro­vides a chance to become con­fi­dent using a range of tech­niques designed to this end and to clar­i­fy our visions for the poten­tial of these approach­es. We will also put aside time to deal with the emo­tions and doubts raised and include a range of short films and con­tem­po­rary case stud­ies.

The main aims of the course are to share with par­tic­i­pants tools, knowl­edges, and ini­tia­tives which can be used to empow­er them­selves and their com­mu­ni­ties, and inspire pos­i­tive social change, based on co-oper­a­tion and sol­i­dar­i­ty. The course will draw on the book DO IT YOUSELF – A Hand­book for Chang­ing Our World edit­ed by TRAPESE (see handbookforchange.org) Email for more info: trapese@riseup.net

5) Fos­sil Fools Day 2009, 01.04.09
Just in case you missed the news – Fos­sil Fools Day is back! On April 1st, join the glob­al day of resis­tance and pull a prank that packs a punch. Call-out now avail­able on the web­site, so help spread the word. If you would like leaflets and/or posters send us an email and we’ll post you some – info@risingtide.org.uk
www.risingtide.org.uk/fossilfoolsday2009

6) Coal Car­a­van, 17.04.09 – 04.05.09
The fab­u­lous cli­mate car­a­van lives on. This time we will be the COAL CARAVAN, walk­ing and cycling between the sites for pro­posed open cast mines and new pow­er sta­tions in the Mid­lands, York­shire and North East. On our route we’ll be talk­ing to local peo­ple, organ­is­ing bicy­cled pow­er films and events, hold­ing pub­lic dis­cus­sions and dis­plays, and link­ing groups from dif­fer­ent areas to help strength­en iso­lat­ed cam­paigns.

Pre­cise details of the route are to be con­firmed, but put the dates in your diary now! Meet up Fri­day 17th April (W. Mid­lands), to start our jour­ney on Sat­ur­day 18th. The Car­a­van will end two and a half weeks lat­er with a grand finale on Bank Hol­i­day Mon­day (4th May).
The car­a­van itself will not involve direct action (although we may offer train­ing, if local groups so request).
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/21915
/caravan@climatecamp.org.uk.

7) Earth Activist Train­ing, 11–26.07.09
Learn the skills to trans­form a piece of land, a com­mu­ni­ty, and our polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sys­tems. Spend two weeks in rur­al Devon learn­ing: Nature and wilder­ness aware­ness, Diver­si­ty in ecosys­tems and social move­ments, Solu­tions that exist: alter­na­tive ener­gy; organ­ic farm­ing; nat­ur­al build­ing; biore­me­di­a­tion & restora­tion, Soil and wood­land ecol­o­gy and much, much more …

On com­ple­tion par­tic­i­pants will receive a per­ma­cul­ture design cer­tifi­cate. The course will be held at Land­mat­ters Per­ma­cul­ture Coop­er­a­tive in Devon. Costs: £200 — £650 slid­ing scale accord­ing to income. http://www.landmatters.org.uk / earthactivisttraining@riseup.net

8) Non­vi­o­lence for a Change Train­ing, 2009
Turn­ing the Tide will offer month­ly work­shops in non­vi­o­lent meth­ods and strate­gies for social change. You can par­tic­i­pate as a mem­ber of the year-group (com­mit­ting to all eleven ses­sions) or only come to those work­shops which inter­est you.
http://www.turning-the-tide.org

—————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
—————-

1) Case col­laps­es against E.On block­aders, 14.01.09
Two envi­ron­men­tal­ists, arrest­ed fol­low­ing a block­ade of E.On’s Not­ting­ham offices on Fos­sil Fools Day 2008, had the case against them dis­missed on Wednes­day 14th Jan­u­ary. The case col­lapsed after it emerged that the pros­e­cu­tion had offered no evi­dence to sup­port the charge of aggra­vat­ed tres­pass. The Crown Pros­e­cu­tion Ser­vice (CPS) were found to have been neg­li­gent in their admin­is­tra­tion of the case and were ordered to pay the defence’s costs.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/01/419126.html

2) Heathrow’s third run­way gets the go-ahead and activists respond,
Jan­u­ary 2009
Both Heathrow and Man­ches­ter air­ports were tar­get­ed Mon­day 12th Jan­u­ary with the domes­tic depar­ture lounges of both air­ports simul­ta­ne­ous­ly occu­pied by pro­test­ers. In Lon­don over 500 peo­ple defied air­port bylaws by stag­ing a sit-down din­ner, forc­ing air­port oper­a­tor BAA to close 18 check-in desks. In Man­ches­ter police used pow­ers under Sec­tion 14 of the Pub­lic Order Act to con­tain up to 100 pro­test­ers on the ground floor of Ter­mi­nal 3, with one arrest.

Mean­while, Green­peace revealed that a plot of land with­in the pro­posed expan­sion site had been pur­chased in an attempt to delay the con­struc­tion.

When the announce­ment came on Thurs­day 15th, ‘cli­mate suf­fragettes’ smashed the win­dows of the Depart­ment of Trans­port (http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/01/418697.html) and on Sat­ur­day 17th Jan, 500 flash mobbed at Heathrows ter­mi­nal 5.

For all the details, pic­tures, videos and more vis­it -
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/01/418105.html

3) Plane Stu­pid shut down Stanst­ed Air­port, 08–12.08
50 activists from Plane Stu­pid shut down Stanst­ed Air­port by camp­ing on the run­way and sur­round­ing them­selves with for­ti­fied secu­ri­ty fenc­ing. Plane Stu­pid announced ‘We are gen­uine­ly grate­ful for the lev­el of sup­port from peo­ple who have agreed with us that des­per­ate times call for des­per­ate mea­sures. We have used this action to ask for every­one to ‘please, do some­thing’. We hope that all those that have expressed sup­port for today’s action will now think about what they are going to do to ensure the sur­vival of our plan­et and peo­ple on it’.
http://www.planestupid.com/?q=content/plane-stupid-shuts-stansted-airport

4) 48 hours of action against E.on and new coal, 28–29.11.08
The 48 hours of action was a great first shot across the bows. E.On were rat­tled, local and nation­al media took an inter­est, resources were gath­ered and are now ready to go, a new web­site is now up and run­ning (http://www.e‑onf-off.org.uk/), a list of tar­gets has been com­piled and E.on know that if they try to build a new coal fired pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth then they will face a bar­rage of direct action — both towards their dai­ly oper­a­tions and their sup­ply chain. E.on be warned. Actions took place in: Lon­don, Brighton, Bris­tol, Nor­wich, Coven­try, Not­ting­ham & Coven­try and at Kingsnorth itself. http://risingtide.org.uk/node/309

Plus, ‘Green Banksy’ invades Kingsnorth dur­ing the 48 hours: An
uniden­ti­fied group alleged­ly pen­e­trat­ed Kingsnorth secu­ri­ty and switched off almost 500 megawatts of gen­er­at­ing capac­i­ty, cut­ting almost 2% off the nation’s pow­er sup­ply for about four hours.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/12/414463.html

5) Scot­tish coal rail ter­mi­nal shut down, 15.12.08
30 cam­paign­ers from Coal Action Scot­land togeth­er with local res­i­dents peace­ful­ly block­ad­ed the entrance to the Scot­tish Coal-oper­at­ed Raven­struther coal rail ter­mi­nal in South Lanark­shire for 8 hours. The pro­tes­tors were act­ing to oppose the five open cast coal mines that deliv­er coal to the rail ter­mi­nal and in resis­tance to the thir­teen new open cast coal mines due to open in Scot­land. Pro­tes­tors erect­ed and scaled a 15ft scaf­fold­ing tri­pod, block­ing trucks from enter­ing the ter­mi­nal. Oth­ers locked them­selves by their necks to a con­vey­or belt and a bull­doz­er, pre­vent­ing coal stock­piles from being loaded onto trains. An
esti­mat­ed 6,380 tonnes of coal were stopped from being trans­port­ed from the coal mines to pow­er sta­tions, pre­vent­ing the equiv­a­lent to 11,675.4 tonnes of CO2 from being released into the atmos­phere.
http://coalactionedinburgh.wordpress.com/

6) E.ON forced to aban­don recruit­ment tour, Novem­ber 2008
Anti-coal protests at grad­u­ate careers fairs around the UK forced E.ON to can­cel its recruit­ment tour. The ener­gy com­pa­ny, which is plan­ning to build a new coal pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth, Kent, saw sev­en­teen of its careers events dis­rupt­ed. This was a co-ordi­nat­ed nation­al effort from stu­dents involved in Peo­ple & Plan­et, the Coal Action Net­work, and the Camp for Cli­mate Action. Leaflets, ban­ners, fan­cy dress, con­ver­sa­tions with atten­dees and eye-catch­ing stunts were used to embar­rass E.ON and dis­suade grad­u­ates from join­ing the com­pa­ny. The Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, one of E.ON’s main finan­cial back­ers, were also tar­get­ed at the fairs over their role in pro­vid­ing loans to build the pro­posed new pow­er sta­tion.
http://leaveitintheground.org.uk/?p=185

7) Kel­ster­back For­est Occu­pa­tion (Frank­furt Air­port), ongo­ing Resist Frank­furt Air­port Expan­sion — defend the for­est camp. After Heathrow, Frank­furt is the largest air­port in Europe. Fra­port (the com­pa­ny run­ning the air­port) and the Ger­man gov­ern­ment are try­ing to build a new run­way, to mas­sive­ly increase flights. To build the new run­way, Fra­port need to clear 250,000 m² of pro­tect­ed for­est. For sev­en months, activists have been squat­ting the for­est, build­ing tree plat­forms and float­ing rafts to resist attempts to chop down the for­est. Jan­u­ary 2009 is bring­ing threat of evic­tion — and they need all the help they can get.
http://waldbesetzung.blogsport.de/english-information/ or
http://waldbesetzung.blogsport.de/photos/

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

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

———-

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

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

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

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

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

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

To receive this News Sheet month­ly, send an email to news-sub­scribe at
risingtide.org.uk with the sub­ject line ‘sub­scribe’ (with­out the quotes
and replace at with @).