Category: London

Lon­don

CRITICAL MASS — friday, London — may be the biggest ever? Plus Bristol & Glasgow call-outs

police have won a high court appeal. it means that ‘organ­is­ers’ of the crit­i­cal mass bike ride have to inform the police ahead of time and nego­ti­ate a fixed route. since there are real­ly no organ­is­ers, the mass will have dif­fi­cul­ty com­ply­ing. it is sim­ply a get-togeth­er of cyclists to go for an unor­gan­ised but syn­chro­nis­tic ride. a large turn-out will com­pli­cate the enforce­ment of this repres­sive deci­sion.

police have won a high court appeal. it means that ‘organ­is­ers’ of the crit­i­cal mass bike ride have to inform the police ahead of time and nego­ti­ate a fixed route. since there are real­ly no organ­is­ers, the mass will have dif­fi­cul­ty com­ply­ing. it is sim­ply a get-togeth­er of cyclists to go for an unor­gan­ised but syn­chro­nis­tic ride. a large turn-out will com­pli­cate the enforce­ment of this repres­sive deci­sion.

back in octo­ber 2005, after the intro­duc­tion of SOCPA (seri­ous organ­ised crime and police act) sec­tion 132, con­trol­ling protest around par­lia­ment, police hand­ed out their leaflets warn­ing the mass may be con­trolled.

in response, around 1500 cyclists took to the streets in novem­ber, bring­ing cen­tral lon­don to a stand­still, and mak­ing it impos­si­ble for the police to enforce their crazy repres­sion.

you don’t have a lot of time to organ­ise, but if you want to build a sim­i­lar event, it’s up to every­one to spread this news far and wide — leaflet, poster and recruit your local cycle shop, write to your local news­pa­per (“local per­son intends to defy police ban by cycling on fri­day”), swamp your mail­ing lists, and so on and so on.

remem­ber, the crit­i­cal mass is not an ‘organ­ised’ event, and so can­not noti­fy the police in advance of its route. since it’s not organ­ised by any one per­son, it means every­one who wants a mass needs to do some­thing this week to make it hap­pen large! no-one will do it for you.

so start act­ing, and think pos­i­tive and huge — if 1500 can come out on a cold novem­ber night over this issue, think how many might turn up on a pleas­ant may evening?

——

“One of the three appeal judges hear­ing today’s case did rule in favour of the cyclists. Lord Jus­tice Wall said a rul­ing that the event fell with­in the Pub­lic Order Act was “poten­tial­ly oppres­sive”. “The police, in my judg­ment, know what the cyclists are going to do. They are going to ride around the Greater Lon­don area. “That is a per­fect­ly law­ful activ­i­ty, and if, for any rea­son, it ceas­es to be so, the police have ample pow­ers to intervene.The judge said it was a valid argu­ment that not only is the Crit­i­cal Mass ral­ly a part of Lon­don life, but that none of the bod­ies respon­si­ble for pub­lic trans­port in Lon­don had ever felt it nec­es­sary to ask the police to con­sid­er using the Pub­lic Order Act against it.”

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Bristol CM headerThis Fri­day — 25th of May — Crit­i­cal Mass

THIS FRIDAY — 25th of May — Crit­i­cal Mass from the Foun­tains @ 5:30pm

Crit­i­cal Mass isn’t BLOCKING traf­fic — We ARE Traf­fic.

Crit­i­cal Mass is a month­ly bicy­cle ride to cel­e­brate cycling and to assert cyclists’ right to the road, hap­pen­ing on the last Fri­day of
every month in hun­dreds of cities and towns around the world. We meet at 5.30pm out­side the Foun­tains near the Water­front to set off by 6pm.

We take a leisure­ly ride through the city of Bris­tol for 30 mins to an hour allow­ing us to make our point and com­mu­ni­cate effec­tive­ly with oth­er road users and author­i­ties.

By get­ting cars to slow down for cyclists we hope to raise aware­ness for:

the ben­e­fits of cycling
the need for more bus­es
the need for more cycle lanes
cut down your dri­ving
car dri­vers need to chill out
cycling is fun and there are lots of like mind­ed peo­ple will­ing to do
some­thing fun to help the envi­ron­ment.

Crit­i­cal Mass isn’t BLOCKING traf­fic — We ARE Traf­fic.

for more info see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Mass_%28bicycle%29
http://www.scorcher.org/cmhistory/howto.html
http://bristolcm.pbwiki.com/

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Glasgow CM May 07 flierBIG BIKE BLESSING — A Mass for Glas­gow Crit­i­cal Mass

Come all, come many …see you there with hol­ly oil.

www.glasgowcriticalmass.org.uk

May 25th, 5:30pm, George Sq, !!Bring your Bike to be Blessed!!

Who do you turn to when you no longer can cycle safe­ly in the city?
The police? The Coun­cil? The Prime Min­is­ter?
No … we need some­thing big­ger. We need the most pow­er­ful force to pro­tect our bikes on our jour­ney through the city on the next Crit­i­cal Mass bike ride. This is why we will be call­ing upon the All Mighty Lord to bless all of our self-pro­pelled vehi­cles. Amen! A Divine Inter­ven­tion will ensure our safe­ty so we will be bless­ing the bikes with our hol­ly waters, chant­i­ng hol­ly hymns from the hol­ly Bike Bible. Hal­lelu­jah! For it is the bikes that have been sent down from the heav­ens to save us and our burn­ing plan­et. Amen!

Come all, bring your chil­dren and your par­ents, join the mer­ry sounds of the Crit­i­cal Mass.

Why?

There is a grow­ing cycling cul­ture in Glas­gow that is not being addressed by the Glas­gow city coun­cil. Although the bike is by far the quick­est, most effi­cient and envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly means of get­ting around in the city, there are hard­ly any bike facil­i­ty, bike lanes are paired up taxis and bus­es and the list goes on.

Although the city coun­cil claims that there are up to “375km of iden­ti­fied cycle route” (www.glasgow.gov.uk/en/Residents/GettingAround/Cycling/) the major­i­ty of them are no longer than a cou­ple of hun­dred meters before they get cut by a road, a build­ing, or a park­ing lot.

Who?

Crit­i­cal Mass, Urban Play­ground, Glas­gow Kiss, The Weird Bike Show, and more

What to expect?

Well you should expect a safe and peace­ful bike ride with oth­er jol­ly cyclists, spon­ta­neous inter­ven­tions and a safe look into expe­ri­enc­ing the city on a self pro­pelled vehi­cle. As well a, a Giant Priest, a sound sys­tem on wheels, some weird bikes, a rick­shaw, and much much more.

The What?

There is also a fan­cy dress par­ty orga­nized by Bed­lam Boudoir and their incred­i­ble cos­tumes. We will have the bicy­cle stamp on the ride which will allow you a spe­cial dis­count for the par­ty lat­er on. Spe­cial points for com­ing as a reli­gious fig­ure to bless bike and dance at par­ty.

www.critical-mass.org
www.urban_discomfort.com
www.the-swarm.co.uk
www.glasgowkiss.org.uk

http://www.glasgowcriticalmass.org.uk

Virgin spoil-sports — TAA exhibition obstructed

19.05.2007
The Tem­po­rary Autonomous Art event tak­ing place in a squat­ted venue once used by Reuters was today obstruct­ed by a pri­vate secu­ri­ty firm appar­entl­ty employed by the Vir­gin Media Group who alleged­ly own the build­ing which has been left emp­ty for sev­er­al years until occu­pied by the TAA ear­li­er in the week.

TAA exhibition London 1TAA exhibition London 219.05.2007
The Tem­po­rary Autonomous Art event tak­ing place in a squat­ted venue once used by Reuters was today obstruct­ed by a pri­vate secu­ri­ty firm appar­entl­ty employed by the Vir­gin Media Group who alleged­ly own the build­ing which has been left emp­ty for sev­er­al years until occu­pied by the TAA ear­li­er in the week.

Today was the last day of the exhi­bi­tion which opened on the 16th May and involves the work of over a dozen artists from around the coun­try. The secu­ri­ty were assault­ing peo­ple attempt­ing to enter the site and the police were called. Over the course of sev­er­al hours the police attempt­ed to fig­ure out where the law stood on hav­ing secu­ri­ty guards obstruct­ing the pub­lic foot­path in order to pre­vent peo­ple from enter­ing a build­ing which was law­ful­ly occu­pied by some­one oth­er than the own­er instruct­ing the secu­ri­ty firm.

While the first police to turn up instruct­ed that it was a civ­il mater until the point of assault or obstruc­tion, the secu­ri­ty con­tin­ued as before as soon as the police left. The sec­ond set of police to arrive took a more prag­mat­ic approach. They said they’d do noth­ing until giv­en advice from high­er up and while they were there the secu­ri­ty were forced to step back from pulling peo­ple off the fences when they climbed over.

Mean­while, inside, kids played on a boun­cy cas­tle in the sun­shine and peo­ple wan­dered around look­ing at the wide vari­ety of art dec­o­rat­ing the large com­mer­cial build­ing. Work­shops were also tak­ing place around the build­ing and there was a sched­ule of films and exper­i­men­tal per­for­mances.

Short­ly before I left, high­er rank­ing police had arrived and were express­ing con­cern that they would be an unli­censed rave tak­ing place in the build­ing that evening as that’s what they were being told by the secu­ri­ty firm. The police asked if they could have a look around but after a peri­od of dis­cus­sion those inside said no.

As I left at around 6pm, the sit­u­a­tion remained that peo­ple want­i­ng to enter the prop­er­ty had to climb over a lad­der tied to the fence and could do so with­out obstruc­tion from either secu­ri­ty or police. It was not clear what would hap­pen next but the exhi­bi­tion is well worth a vis­it.

See also http://www.taaexhibitions.org/ and http://www.randomartists.org/

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update:
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Sat­ur­day 19th May 9pm

Has Lon­don gone anti-arts and cul­ture?
The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police have today launched a major oper­a­tion, which includes the cor­don­ing of two pub­lic roads and involv­ing the use of a con­sid­er­able num­ber of police offi­cers and vehi­cles. Result­ing in a stand off last­ing over 12 hours so far, (at 8pm), the police oper­a­tion has man­aged to pre­vent any­one enter­ing on the last day of a high­ly suc­cess­ful and inspi­ra­tional art exhi­bi­tion.

Yes, read that again … an Art Exhi­bi­tion …

Launched on Wednes­day the Tem­po­rary Autonomous Art exhi­bi­tion has attract­ed a large num­ber of tal­ent­ed artists from all over Britain and Europe to pro­duce one of the most excit­ing and inno­v­a­tive exhi­bi­tions that Lon­don has seen, achiev­ing almost unan­i­mous acclaim from every­one who has vis­it­ed.

Run­ning for four days from mid­day to mid­night one would have thought that such a qual­i­ty mul­ti­cul­tur­al event would be cel­e­brat­ed by the author­i­ties, but no, they insist that the place is going to turn in to some kind of rave and used it as an excuse to pre­vent the law­ful access to local pub­lic high­ways and the build­ing itself.

The build­ing is full of high qual­i­ty art, pro­duced by ded­i­cat­ed artists and the very con­cept of a rave is enough to hor­ri­fy any­one involved. The very thought of hun­dreds of works of art trashed in an ille­gal rave in incom­pre­hen­si­ble, so the ques­tion must arise as to why?

Has the Met lost it’s sens­es? On a Sat­ur­day night when the under­staffed, over­stretched police force is hav­ing it’s busiest night of the week they are sent out in force to pre­vent an art exhi­bi­tion!

Tem­po­rary Autonomous Art is (was) being held at 15–25 New North Road, Lon­don (Nr Old St) and is appar­ent­ly the most dan­ger­ous event in town

more info 07722044788

Earth First! summer gathering — Wednesday 18th July until Sunday 22nd July 2007 — location & programme announced

What is the Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing?

* Are you fed up with bare-faced lies from politi­cians, big busi­ness and the media?
* Have you had enough of a world where cor­po­rate prof­it comes before life and dig­ni­ty?
* Do you want to see an end to mind­less con­sump­tion>
* Then this Gath­er­ing is for you! Read on…

EF! gathering '07 logo (rabbit/fence)What is the Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing?

* Are you fed up with bare-faced lies from politi­cians, big busi­ness and the media?
* Have you had enough of a world where cor­po­rate prof­it comes before life and dig­ni­ty?
* Do you want to see an end to mind­less con­sump­tion>
* Then this Gath­er­ing is for you! Read on…

Explor­ing alter­na­tives to the cor­po­rate world of greed, lies & exploita­tion -

The Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing is the place where peo­ple involved in rad­i­cal eco­log­i­cal direct action — or those who want to be involved — get togeth­er for five days of time and space to talk, walk, share skills, learn, play, rant, find out what’s going on, find out what’s next, live out­side, strate­gise, hang out, incite, laugh and con­spire.

The gath­er­ing is also a prac­ti­cal exam­ple of non-hier­ar­chi­cal low-impact liv­ing in action.

We are a diverse com­mu­ni­ty with a wide range of approach­es to our action, so there should be plen­ty to inter­est and inspire every­one whether you have been active for years or are com­plete­ly new to it all.

More info at earthfirstgathering.org.uk

Plane Stupid Callout for Local Groups

Plane Stu­pid (www.planestupid.com) is call­ing out for local Plane Stu­pid groups to form to fight the fastest grow­ing cause of cli­mate change (avi­a­tion) in your area. Plane Stu­pid thinks that local groups tak­ing action in their area but with­in a wider net­work of Plane Stu­pid activists is the best way to fight the unsus­tain­able growth of the avi­a­tion indus­try. If you would like to set up a group in your area all you need is a few enthu­si­as­tic mem­bers com­mit­ted to using direct action to fight cli­mate change.

Plane Stupid plane fist logoPlane Stu­pid (www.planestupid.com) is call­ing out for local Plane Stu­pid groups to form to fight the fastest grow­ing cause of cli­mate change (avi­a­tion) in your area. Plane Stu­pid thinks that local groups tak­ing action in their area but with­in a wider net­work of Plane Stu­pid activists is the best way to fight the unsus­tain­able growth of the avi­a­tion indus­try. If you would like to set up a group in your area all you need is a few enthu­si­as­tic mem­bers com­mit­ted to using direct action to fight cli­mate change.

The 2003 Avi­a­tion White Paper out­lines plans for between dou­ble and triple the cur­rent num­ber of pas­sen­ger flights. This involves mas­sive air­port expan­sion all over Britain at rate equiv­a­lent to the build­ing of a new Heathrow every 5 years. The UK’s top cli­ma­tol­o­gists pre­dict that avi­a­tion’s emis­sions alone are pre­dict­ed to exceed the gov­ern­men­t’s tar­get for the coun­try’s entire out­put of green­house gas­es in 2050 by around 134%. (Tyn­dall Cen­tre for Cli­mate
Chan­g­eRe­search)

Plane Stu­pid has become one of the direct action groups of the emerg­ing grass­roots cli­mate move­ment in Britain. Our dra­mat­ic impact has come by means of a series of high-pro­file direct actions and a near obses­sive focus on clear, basic demands that peo­ple under­stand: the scrap­ping of air­port expan­sion plans, a tax on air­craft fuel and
plane tick­ets, and an end to unnec­es­sary and unsus­tain­able short haul flights.

Since we formed in less than 18 months ago; we have dis­rupt­ed the world’s largest inter­na­tion­al avi­a­tion indus­try con­fer­ence in Cen­tral Lon­don; ground­ed planes through the occu­pa­tion of a taxi­way at the short-haul East Mid­lands Air­port; blocked the entrance to BAA’s head­quar­ters at Heathrow twice; staged a roof-top protest at easy­Jet’s cor­po­rate head­quar­ters in Lon­don, tem­porar­i­ly shut down tens of trav­el agents across the UK and helped angry Heathrow res­i­dents dis­rupt the trans­port min­is­ter’s speech. We also inspired and over­saw Britain’s first nation­al day of action against short haul flights, which saw local groups hold demon­stra­tions at six region­al air­ports and out­side Flight Cen­tre trav­el agents in cities across the UK.

Gov­ern­ment and indus­try’s prof­i­teer­ing from cre­at­ing cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change will go unchecked unless YOU do some­thing today! Join us by set­ting up a local group with some like mind­ed peo­ple in your area to help us scrap air­port expan­sion, get avi­a­tion fuel and tick­ets taxed and end­ing short haul flights.

Con­tact info@planestupid.com or call 07948 219 493 for advice on set­ting up a local group or for some­one to come and speak in your area about Plane Stu­pid. Also on the 12th and 13th of May we will be at the Cam­paign against Cli­mate Change con­fer­ence in Lon­don (http://www.campaigncc.org/) where you can come and speak to us.

www.planestupid.com
info@planestupid.com

SHAC TAKES THE FLAK: FLIMSY PRETEXT FOR COUNTRY-WIDE ARRESTS OF ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS

4.5.07
In yet anoth­er ham­merblow aimed at the ani­mal rights move­ment, police made 32 arrests across the UK in the ear­ly hours of Tues­day morn­ing in ‘Oper­a­tion Achilles’. Assis­tant Chief Con­sta­ble Adri­an Lep­pard of Kent Police says the arrests are “one of the largest, if not the largest, police oper­a­tion that has tar­get­ed ani­mal extrem­ism in the UK.” Three prop­er­ties were also searched in Bel­gium and the Nether­lands.

4.5.07
In yet anoth­er ham­merblow aimed at the ani­mal rights move­ment, police made 32 arrests across the UK in the ear­ly hours of Tues­day morn­ing in ‘Oper­a­tion Achilles’. Assis­tant Chief Con­sta­ble Adri­an Lep­pard of Kent Police says the arrests are “one of the largest, if not the largest, police oper­a­tion that has tar­get­ed ani­mal extrem­ism in the UK.” Three prop­er­ties were also searched in Bel­gium and the Nether­lands.

700 police were involved as homes and ani­mal sanc­tu­ar­ies were raid­ed, with police seiz­ing com­put­ers, mobile phones and cash. The whole oper­a­tion was designed with max­i­mum pub­lic­i­ty in mind — the press were tipped off in advance and duti­ful­ly report­ed on the lat­est crack­down on ani­mal rights ‘extrem­ism’. Almost all those arrest­ed had some con­nec­tion with the SHAC cam­paign

Of course what did­n’t hit the head­lines was the num­ber of prop­er­ties raid­ed with­out arrests being made and the fact that 24 hours lat­er only nine of those arrest­ed had been charged — two with black­mail and the oth­er sev­en with ‘con­spir­a­cy to black­mail’. Twen­ty were released on bail and one with­out charge. Two of those nicked, main organ­is­ers in the SHAC cam­paign, have been held for fur­ther ques­tion­ing.

Cru­cial­ly, the police inves­ti­ga­tion — in a nod to cor­po­rate mar­tial law — used intel­li­gence and foren­sic sup­port from the pri­vate sec­tor. The phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and biotech­nol­o­gy indus­try greet­ed news of the raids with glee: “News of today’s oper­a­tion will act as a great fil­lip to the med­ical research com­mu­ni­ty across Europe,” said a state­ment issued by Ais­ling Bur­nand, chief exec­u­tive of Britain’s BioIn­dus­try Asso­ci­a­tion.

One source close to SHAC told SchNEWS, “This has all the hall­marks of a fish­ing expe­di­tion, designed to cause mas­sive dis­rup­tion to ani­mal rights cam­paigns and show Big Phar­ma here and abroad that the police are mak­ing strides against the ani­mal rights move­ment.”

NETCU CLOSES IN

As details emerged of the botched raid on Fresh­fields Ani­mal Sanc­tu­ary in Liv­er­pool, sanc­tu­ary head Dave Cal­len­dar told SchNEWS, “At 5.30 they kicked in the door and seized three staff mem­bers. At 6.20 they seized two oth­ers as they turned up for work. There were about six­ty cop­pers — they set up a cor­don and refused access to any­one. Those seized were held in vans but not arrest­ed. My farm man­ag­er had his col­lar­bone bro­ken after he was grabbed by three police when he climbed the back wall to check on our pigs. He was held in a van for three hours and refused access to med­ical atten­tion. Although the police brought an RSPCA inspec­tor with them it was clear that when we regained access to the site that noth­ing had been done for the ani­mals. Also they allowed ani­mals to escape, which we’re still look­ing for. They took every sin­gle piece of hard­ware, mobile phones, pho­to­copiers, you name it — but they did­n’t take a sin­gle piece of paper­work. It’s dif­fi­cult to see it as any­thing oth­er then delib­er­ate intim­i­da­tion and dis­rup­tion — nobody here is involved with the Hunt­ing­don cam­paign. We’re a pro-active com­mu­ni­ty organ­i­sa­tion and we’re not going to let them walk all over us.”

The raids come against a back­drop of a decline in crim­i­nal inci­dents relat­ed to ani­mal rights and demon­strate that the Nation­al Extrem­ism Tac­ti­cal Co-ordi­nat­ing Unit’s (see www.netcu.org.uk) efforts are now aimed firm­ly at the ‘legit­i­mate’ above ground ani­mal rights move­ment. With SHAC once again able to con­duct demos out­side HLS (see SchNEWS 581) and activism spread­ing across Europe, Britain’s polit­i­cal police seem intent on decap­i­tat­ing the A.R. move­ment, by any means nec­es­sary.

* See www.shac.net for more
* Fresh­fields Ani­mal Sanc­tu­ary see www.freshfieldsrescue.org.uk

Plane Stupid mark ten years of Blair — BAA HQ blocked

2.05.2007 Green activists today marked the tenth anniver­sary of Tony Blair com­ing to pow­er by vis­it­ing his best friends in indus­try to high­light the revolv­ing door between Labour and the avi­a­tion indus­try and his fail­ure to tack­le cli­mate change. (1) A team of pro­tes­tors from cli­mate action group, Plane Stu­pid, (2) are block­ing the ‘revolv­ing door’ to BAA’s Heathrow HQ to oppose gov­ern­ment and indus­try plans for air­port expan­sion.

BAA 10 years of Blair2.05.2007 Green activists today marked the tenth anniver­sary of Tony Blair com­ing to pow­er by vis­it­ing his best friends in indus­try to high­light the revolv­ing door between Labour and the avi­a­tion indus­try and his fail­ure to tack­le cli­mate change. (1) A team of pro­tes­tors from cli­mate action group, Plane Stu­pid, (2) are block­ing the ‘revolv­ing door’ to BAA’s Heathrow HQ to oppose gov­ern­ment and indus­try plans for air­port expan­sion.

The activists have chained up the front doors to the offices and have dumped copies of the sci­ence of cli­mate change, reports from the UN and from the Tyn­dall Cen­tre, into the recep­tion area. The activists have pledged not to allow the staff out until they’ve read the sci­ence. Oth­er cam­paign­ers have unfurled a ban­ner out­side the build­ing stat­ing, “Read the sci­ence. www.planestupid.com”

Cam­paign­er for Plane Stu­pid, Leo Mur­ray, explained:

“In years to come, Blair will be remem­bered for sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly approv­ing cli­mate-wreck­ing projects like air­port expan­sion. But it might not have hap­pened if it weren’t for the fact that the revolv­ing door between Labour and BAA just hasn’t stopped spin­ning.” (3) (4)

He added:

“We can’t believe that if BAA had read the sci­ence, they’d still be push­ing ahead with their cli­mate-crazy plans for air­port expan­sion. With Blair prepar­ing to leave office, UN cli­mate sci­en­tists gath­er­ing in Bangkok, and the hottest April on record, it’s time BAA used their enor­mous influ­ence to tell Blair to ditch expan­sion plans or leave with a lega­cy of fail­ing on cli­mate change.”

This Friday’s IPCC report on mit­i­ga­tion of cli­mate emis­sions, a draft copy of which has been obtained by Plane Stu­pid, con­firms, “Land use plan­ning and trans­port demand man­age­ment can make a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion.”

Plane Stu­pid are one of the groups behind the adver­tise­ments in today’s nation­al news­pa­pers head­lined, “Vote for cli­mate change.” (5)

Notes for Edi­tors:

(1) The BAA/Labour revolv­ing door:
— In advance of the government’s 2003 avi­a­tion white paper which paved the way for their expan­sion pro­gramme, BAA was the main sup­port­er of lob­by group, “Free­dom to fly.” This group is thought to be the brain child of Steve Hard­wick, Direc­tor of Pub­lic Affairs at BAA who took time out to work on the Labour elec­tion cam­paigns of 1997 and 2001.
— “Free­dom to fly” was direct­ed by John Prescott’s for­mer per­son­al polit­i­cal advi­sor from 1999–2001, Joe Irvin. When, after a year, Joe Irvin resigned, he was replaced by Dan Hodges. Hodges is the son of Glen­da Jack­son MP, who hap­pens to have been Labour’s first avi­a­tion min­is­ter.
— Joe Irvin has this week been appoint­ed as one of Gor­don Brown’s top advi­sors (4)
— BAA’s “Free­dom to Fly” was chaired by Labour peer, Bren­da Dean.
— The gov­ern­ment appoint­ed Avi­a­So­lu­tions to assess the respons­es to its con­sul­ta­tion on expan­sion. Avi­a­So­lu­tions is run by for­mer high-fly­ers from BAA, Sea­mus Healey, Paul Eden and his wife, Liz. Also on the company’s board was Lyne Mered­ith, who pre­vi­ous­ly worked as BAA’s direc­tor of plan­ning and envi­ron­ment.
— BAA hosts from its West Lon­don offices, “Future Heathrow,” an indus­try lob­by group chaired by Labour peer, Lord Soley. Launched per­son­al­ly by then-trans­port sec­re­tary, Alis­tair Dar­ling, it was estab­lished to ensure that the third run­way and sixth ter­mi­nal is built.

(2) Plane Stu­pid is Britain’s first nation­al direct action group against the unsus­tain­able avi­a­tion growth. www.planestupid.com

(3) For more details and sources on the revolv­ing door between BAA and Labour: http://www.turnuptheheat.org/?page_id=24

(4) http://news.independent.co.uk/people/pandora/article2483864.ece and http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0„2–2007180865,00.html

(5) For more on the ads, includ­ing the press release, see www.spurt-aviation.com

For interviews/info:

press@planestupid.com
www.planestupid.com

- ENDS –

At 5.30pm — four peo­ple were arrrest­ed for aggra­vat­ed tres­pass after BAA refused to read the sci­ence.

Call for Submissions: Zine on Property Destruction

Enter­ing the rad­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty, many quick­ly find them­selves con­stant­ly hear­ing about debate over prop­er­ty destruc­tion. Is it vio­lence? Does it mat­ter if it’s vio­lence? Is it effec­tive? Is it alien­at­ing? And on and on. I’ve been hear­ing this argu­ment pret­ty much since I reg­u­lar­ly start­ed attend­ing protests. At this point, I almost don’t want to deal with the sub­ject. Nat­u­ral­ly, you’re ask­ing, “Then why the hell do you want to make a zine about it?”

Enter­ing the rad­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty, many quick­ly find them­selves con­stant­ly hear­ing about debate over prop­er­ty destruc­tion. Is it vio­lence? Does it mat­ter if it’s vio­lence? Is it effec­tive? Is it alien­at­ing? And on and on. I’ve been hear­ing this argu­ment pret­ty much since I reg­u­lar­ly start­ed attend­ing protests. At this point, I almost don’t want to deal with the sub­ject. Nat­u­ral­ly, you’re ask­ing, “Then why the hell do you want to make a zine about it?”

The answer is sim­ple: I may be sick of the debate, but that’s just me. As the war in Iraq drags on (drag­ging blood­ied Iraqi corpse upon blood­ied Iraqi corpse with it) and dis­con­tent and dis­il­lu­sion­ment with this whole socio-polit­i­cal-eco­nom­ic sys­tem increas­es, more peo­ple are get­ting involved in the fight against cap­i­tal­ism and its machines of war (both the armies abroad and the police at home). For many, when they start going to protests and demon­stra­tions, they have at best mixed feel­ings about things like prop­er­ty destruc­tion, vio­lent­ly resist­ing the police, or even just march­ing in the street with­out a per­mit. And some appre­hen­sion about these tac­tics is com­plete­ly under­stand­able. After all, every­thing in this sys­tem is designed to teach us that prop­er­ty (or per­haps more accu­rate­ly, cor­po­rate prop­er­ty) is sacred, that police should always be obeyed (or else) and that break­ing the law, even small laws, is moral­ly and eth­i­cal­ly wrong and can nev­er be jus­ti­fi­able.

And so, this is a call for arti­cles, sto­ries, art, or any­thing else about the tac­tic of prop­er­ty destruc­tion and its mer­its for a zine that seeks to give those on the fence about this issue a gen­tle nudge (and maybe con­vince them to rip down the fence!). Since this is meant to be a zine for peo­ple new to social move­ments, I respect­ful­ly ask that the tone of the arti­cles keep that in mind when choos­ing their words. To put it plain­ly, please no anti-lib­er­al rants–they piss me off too, but this is sup­posed to be the case for prop­er­ty destruc­tion, not the case against lib­er­als (maybe next time!).

When I say arti­cles, I mean pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished or unpub­lished arti­cles argu­ing for the valid­i­ty or effec­tive­ness of prop­er­ty destruc­tion. It does­n’t even have to be some­thing you wrote. If there’s an arti­cle that you think is real­ly great and think that it should be includ­ed, tell me about it (things like, where I can find it, who wrote it, and how I can get ahold of them). There’s two kinds of sto­ries that would be real­ly great to have for this zine: per­son­al accounts and “his­tor­i­cal” accounts. Per­son­al accounts would be some­thing talk­ing about wit­ness­ing or even com­mit­ting an act of prop­er­ty destruc­tion, how it made you feel, what impact it had, etc. Obvi­ous­ly this is very sen­si­tive, so try­ing to be rel­a­tive­ly vague is best (and also see the next para­graph for the best way to sub­mit things like that). A “his­tor­i­cal” account would be more of a gen­er­al sto­ry (prefer­ably con­tem­po­rary) of how prop­er­ty destruc­tion put pres­sure on an insti­tu­tion to win a con­crete goal. Art would be any­thing that would be an image. A car­toon, a cool draw­ing, what­ev­er.

If you have any­thing to con­tribute, please send an email to tacticaldiversity@gmail.com. I may want to edit some of your sub­mis­sion for var­i­ous rea­sons (most like­ly space). Any edits or cuts will be run by you first. If for some rea­son you can’t or don’t want to sub­mit some­thing online, send an email and we can dis­cuss oth­er meth­ods of sub­mis­sion. As was said above, send­ing per­son­al accounts about prop­er­ty destruc­tion over email is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a good idea. In fact, for both our sakes, it’s a bad idea. Any per­son­al accounts should be sub­mit­ted will an anony­mous email ser­vice like www.willselfdestruct.com (be sure to make it at least 1 view). If you want me to respond some­how, you can leave an email address in the will­selfde­struct mes­sage and I can respond in kind. If you don’t leave a way to respond to you, I may make edits with­out run­ning them by you first. Also, a major goal is to make sure that every piece pub­lished is pub­lished with the cre­ator’s per­mis­sion. This zine isn’t going to be sold any­where and will be dis­trib­uted for free, but I still don’t want to use oth­er peo­ple’s stuff in this zine with­out their express per­mis­sion. So yeah, don’t sub­mit oth­er peo­ple’s work act­ing like it’s your’s and get peo­ple pissed at me. If you run an infos­hop or any oth­er rad­i­cal space that could dis­trib­ute this zine upon com­ple­tion and are inter­est­ed in receiv­ing copies, drop a line and you’ll be kept in the loop when it comes time to pub­lish.

In love and rage,
Casey Ford

Critical Mass reports

Police charge cyclists at Glas­gow Crit­i­cal Mass
29.04.2007

Last night the police com­mit­ted a sur­pris­ing u‑turn in their approach to deal­ing with Glas­gow Crit­i­cal Mass. The Mass has pre­vi­ous­ly been accom­pa­nied by cycle offi­cers “to ensure the safe­ty of the cyclists” how­ev­er there has been no police pres­ence since last Sep­tem­ber. This changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly with the April Crit­i­cal Mass.

Police charge cyclists at Glas­gow Crit­i­cal Mass
29.04.2007

Last night the police com­mit­ted a sur­pris­ing u‑turn in their approach to deal­ing with Glas­gow Crit­i­cal Mass. The Mass has pre­vi­ous­ly been accom­pa­nied by cycle offi­cers “to ensure the safe­ty of the cyclists” how­ev­er there has been no police pres­ence since last Sep­tem­ber. This changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly with the April Crit­i­cal Mass.

Last night the police com­mit­ted a sur­pris­ing u‑turn in their approach to deal­ing with Glas­gow Crit­i­cal Mass. The Mass has pre­vi­ous­ly been accom­pa­nied by cycle offi­cers “to ensure the safe­ty of the cyclists” how­ev­er there has been no police pres­ence since last Sep­tem­ber. This changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly with the April Crit­i­cal Mass; the 50–70 cyclists were tailed by a police van for the major­i­ty of the ride with the police stop­ping some of the rid­ers at the front of the mass and warn­ing them not to con­tin­ue else they may face charges. In the midst of the cycle run, while the Mass duti­ful­ly wait­ed at a red light, the two offi­cers (A303 and A628) made their way to the front of the mass and select­ed three cyclists, appar­ent­ly at ran­dom. It should be not­ed that these three were not the cyclists spo­ken to by the police ear­li­er. These arbi­trar­i­ly cho­sen cyclists have been charged with “Cycling with­out due con­sid­er­a­tion for oth­er road users” under sec­tion 29 of the 1988 Road Traf­fic Act (exact word­ing: If a per­son rides a cycle on a road with­out due care and atten­tion, or with­out rea­son­able con­sid­er­a­tion for oth­er per­sons using the road, he is guilty of an offence.In this sec­tion “road” includes a bri­dle­way). They were informed that a report will be sub­mit­ted to the Procu­ra­tor Fis­cal for fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion. Watch this space.

http://www.glasgowcriticalmass.org.uk


Crit­i­cal Mass Lon­don 13th Anniver­sary ride.
16MB film — mp4
The very well attend­ed Mass got off to a good start, despite a spelling mis­take on the kind­ly donat­ed t‑shirts. There was the usu­al large police pres­ence with its usu­al intim­i­dat­ing video­ing of rid­ers. Pity they can’t take their own med­i­cine and try to con­ceal their faces.

The police returned to their pre­vi­ous tac­tic of block­ing the front of the ride, thus adding to traf­fic con­ges­tion. At the entrance to Par­lia­ment Square the front of the ride was blocked for sev­er­al traf­fic light cycles. Final­ly, in frus­tra­tion, and after some boo­ing at the block­ers, rid­ers decide to go around on the pave­ment to enter the Square. At some point the ride split into two but man­aged to join up again in the Strand. Video­ing stopped at the couri­ers’ pub, while the ride con­tin­ued on into the night head­ing East­wards.

All in all very enjoy­able and mer­ry ride.

new north london occupied social centre

the old mountview the­atre school site in crouch end is open­ing its doors to the pub­lic on sun­day the 29th april after being aban­doned by the dra­ma school now based in wood green. the new social cen­tre ben­e­fits from a small the­atre, which can be con­vert­ed for cin­e­ma nights, as well as exhi­bi­tion space, large work­shop spaces, a bar and kitchen, and res­i­den­tial area.

Crouch Hill social centre 1the old mountview the­atre school site in crouch end is open­ing its doors to the pub­lic on sun­day the 29th april after being aban­doned by the dra­ma school now based in wood green. the new social cen­tre ben­e­fits from a small the­atre, which can be con­vert­ed for cin­e­ma nights, as well as exhi­bi­tion space, large work­shop spaces, a bar and kitchen, and res­i­den­tial area.

the launch par­ty for this excit­ing new art com­mu­ni­ty starts at 5pm on sun­day and will be a show­case of tal­ent fea­tur­ing an art exhi­bi­tion, live art, cabaret, bands, and film. there will be a wide range of music with a con­firmed line-up of hip-hop, folk, elec­tro, and indy. full details to fol­low.

there will be food and drink and entry is by dona­tion.

mem­bers of project 142 and the 491 gallery are among the organ­is­ers of this new com­mu­ni­ty which will be called “project 104” as it is sit­u­at­ed at 104 crouch hill, lon­don n8.

future usage and events are still in the plan­ning stage — ideas are wel­come

near­est tube is fins­bury park, from where you can walk 15 mins up stroud green road and over crouch hill. or catch the w7 bus from the wells ter­race exit of the tube sta­tion. project 104 is just over the brow of the hill about halfway down on the right.
crouch hill sil­ver­link sta­tion is a short walk away too (turn right out of sta­tion and walk over the hill).

call 07903 297199 for more info

Reclaim Power — 15min film version online

In the sum­mer of 2006, 600 peo­ple set up a Camp for Cli­mate Action in the shad­ow of one of the biggest C02 emit­ters in Europe: Drax coal-fired pow­er sta­tion in York­shire / UK. With over one hun­dred work­shops on a wide range of top­ics, the 10 day camp was a space of col­lec­tive learn­ing, sus­tain­able liv­ing and tak­ing direct action on the root caus­es of cli­mate change. The gath­er­ing that showed prac­ti­cal low ener­gy solu­tions in action, cul­mi­nat­ed in a day of protest and mass direct action in an attempt to shut down Drax.

In the sum­mer of 2006, 600 peo­ple set up a Camp for Cli­mate Action in the shad­ow of one of the biggest C02 emit­ters in Europe: Drax coal-fired pow­er sta­tion in York­shire / UK. With over one hun­dred work­shops on a wide range of top­ics, the 10 day camp was a space of col­lec­tive learn­ing, sus­tain­able liv­ing and tak­ing direct action on the root caus­es of cli­mate change. The gath­er­ing that showed prac­ti­cal low ener­gy solu­tions in action, cul­mi­nat­ed in a day of protest and mass direct action in an attempt to shut down Drax.

You can down­load this 15 min ver­sion of the film ‘Reclaim Pow­er — voic­es from the camp for cli­mate action’ here:

http://video.indymedia.org/en/2007/04/821.shtml

order the mul­ti­lin­gual DVD 62 min + sev­er­al extras — or this 15 min ver­sion in DVD qual­i­ty here: orders@cinerebelde.org or networking@climatecamp.org.uk

More infor­ma­tion about the camp 2007: http://climatecamp.org.uk

You are wel­come to post or link up this 15 min clip on your web­sites. Please include a link to cine rebelde: http://www.cinerebelde.org/site.php3?id_rubrique=166〈=en