Category: London

Lon­don

Carbon Trading Company’s Offices Occupied

Today, Wednes­day 21st Feb 2007, in a non-vio­lent protest, activists occu­pied the offices of a com­pa­ny deal­ing in Car­bon Off­sets, whilst oth­er cam­paign­ers car­ried out an action out­side the Com­pa­ny’s offices in Kings Cross Lon­don. The action was car­ried out to high­light what they claim is the green­wash of this com­pa­ny, and the dan­gers of sidelin­ing the huge­ly impor­tant issue of cli­mate change. This action, sweep­ing coal under a car­pet, was car­ried out to demon­strate their asser­tion that car­bon trad­ing is to attempt to sweep the issues asso­ci­at­ed with cli­mate change under the car­pet.

Carbon Neutral Company protest 2Carbon Neutral Company protest 1Today, Wednes­day 21st Feb 2007, in a non-vio­lent protest, activists occu­pied the offices of a com­pa­ny deal­ing in Car­bon Off­sets, whilst oth­er cam­paign­ers car­ried out an action out­side the Com­pa­ny’s offices in Kings Cross Lon­don. The action was car­ried out to high­light what they claim is the green­wash of this com­pa­ny, and the dan­gers of sidelin­ing the huge­ly impor­tant issue of cli­mate change. This action, sweep­ing coal under a car­pet, was car­ried out to demon­strate their asser­tion that car­bon trad­ing is to attempt to sweep the issues asso­ci­at­ed with cli­mate change under the car­pet.

Below is a copy of Lon­don Ris­ing Tides press release relat­ing to this action.

LONDON RISING TIDE OCCUPY HEAD OFFICE OF CARBON NEUTRAL COMPANY IN LONDON

Lon­don Ris­ing Tide has occu­pied the head office of the Car­bon Neu­tral Com­pa­ny (for­mer­ly Future Forests) on the day they had been invit­ed to appear before the All Par­ty Par­lia­men­tary Com­mit­tee on Cli­mate Change, that is chaired by the Car­bon Neu­tral Com­pa­ny.

This is what they have to say:

CARBON ‘OFFSET’ = CLIMATE UPSET

Today we have occu­pied and with any luck shut down the head office of the Car­bon Neu­tral Com­pa­ny (CNC) here in King’s Cross. CNC is one of many busi­ness­es which sell ‘car­bon off­sets’ to peo­ple and com­pa­nies that want to can­cel out their con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate chaos (also known as ‘glob­al warm­ing’). CNC claims that it will neu­tralise the car­bon diox­ide (CO2) giv­en off by, say, Sil­ver­jet (a pri­vate jet air­line), and that it will do this by pay­ing peo­ple in devel­op­ing coun­tries to cut their own emis­sions with schemes that involve renew­able ener­gy or tree plant­i­ng. So what’s the prob­lem?

Car­bon off­set­ting: an excuse for no action?

Cli­mate chaos is an issue of jus­tice: it is hurt­ing the world’s poor­est (and least-pol­lut­ing) peo­ple first and hard­est, caus­ing mas­sive dis­as­ters and threat­en­ing mil­lions of species world­wide. Many peo­ple are now ques­tion­ing whether off­set­ting allows some of us in the rich­er, devel­oped world to car­ry on with our mas­sive­ly pol­lut­ing lifestyles, instead of low­er­ing our own emis­sions. Those who are buy­ing off­sets are often doing so with the best of inten­tions, but the fact remains that it’s a smoke­screen that has to stop.

If we com­pare the plan­et to a run­ning bath, full almost to the brim with CO2, to off­set CO2 emis­sions is like say­ing “I won’t turn off my tap. I’ll pay some­one else £10 to pay some­one else £2 to turn off their own tap.” (Guess who pock­ets the change?) The real­i­ty is that we need to turn off both, if we’re to have a chance of cut­ting CO2 emis­sions by 50% before 2016 (which is the sin­gle most impor­tant task fac­ing you and me, right here, right now in 2007.)

Not only is tree plant­i­ng a dis­cred­it­ed fail­ure when it comes to soak­ing up car­bon, many oth­er off­set schemes are look­ing pret­ty shab­by when looked at in detail by inde­pen­dent third par­ties.

Yes­ter­day, Car­bon Trade Watch released a report called “The Car­bon Neu­tral Myth – Off­set Indul­gences for your Cli­mate Sins” that gave a lot of evi­dence and infor­ma­tion as to why off­set­ting is inef­fec­tive, injust and dam­ag­ing to the cli­mate change debate. ( http://www.carbontradewatch.org/pubs/carbon_neutral_myth.pdf)

Who are we?

Our group is called Lon­don Ris­ing Tide (LRT), and we are part of a wider nation­al and inter­na­tion­al move­ment that believes pas­sion­ate­ly in tak­ing direct action for ‘cli­mate jus­tice’. We reck­on it’s well past time for us to get cre­ative, to get move­ment-build­ing, to drown out the ris­ing tide of cor­po­rate ‘green­wash’ (ie. prof­it-dri­ven lies), to get food grow­ing with neigh­bours and friends, and to get seri­ous­ly dis­obe­di­ent, (but to do it with a good bit of humour).

A while ago, we were asked by the All Par­ty Par­lia­men­tary Com­mit­tee on Cli­mate Change to make a sub­mis­sion about planned Cli­mate Bill. The Com­mit­tee is admin­is­trat­ed by the Car­bon Neu­tral Com­pa­ny. After think­ing long and hard about it, this was our response:

‘We’re declin­ing the invi­ta­tion to address the meet­ing, since we believe in the cre­ation of mass move­ments striv­ing for sys­temic social and eco­log­i­cal change. Engag­ing with the com­mit­tee would be a dis­trac­tion from that, as it’s not in the inter­ests of either Par­lia­ment or pri­vate com­pa­nies to call for — or work for — such change. Also, we are deeply scep­ti­cal about the appar­ent pri­vati­sa­tion of the com­mit­tee process, espe­cial­ly when the com­pa­ny con­cerned is prof­it­ing hand­some­ly from the sale to the pub­lic of the pho­ny solu­tion that is the car­bon off­set.’

Next national climate camp organsing gathering Feb 17/18 in Leeds

The next nation­al organs­ing gath­er­ing will be in Leeds on Sat and Sun Feb 17th/18th. It will be at The Com­mon Place in Leeds city cen­tre and veg­an food, accom­mo­da­tio­nand creche will be pro­vid­ed (please con­tact us with accom­mo­da­tion, creche or any oth­er needs though so we can plan ahead).

Climate camp logo 2 The next nation­al organs­ing gath­er­ing will be in Leeds on Sat and Sun Feb 17th/18th. It will be at The Com­mon Place in Leeds city cen­tre and veg­an food, accom­mo­da­tio­nand creche will be pro­vid­ed (please con­tact us with accom­mo­da­tion, creche or any oth­er needs though so we can plan ahead).

Cli­mate campers are at it again! More than sev­en­ty peo­ple from around the UK met in Leeds in Jan­u­ary and decid­ed to organ­ise anoth­er Camp for Cli­mate Action this sum­mer from 14th to 21st August. As many of you know, for ten days last August hun­dreds of peo­ple gath­ered in the shad­ow of Drax coal-fired pow­er sta­tion in York­shire to share knowl­edge and inspi­ra­tion to tack­le the great­est threat to life on Earth, live an exam­ple of more just and sus­tain­able alter­na­tives, and con­front one of the UK’s biggest pol­luters in a day of mass direct action.

Fol­low­ing on from this suc­cess, Camp for Cli­mate Action 2007 will take place near to a tar­get relat­ing to avi­a­tion or the coal or oil indus­tries. The loca­tion will be cho­sen over the com­ing months. Organ­is­ing out­reach,
fundrais­ing, site prac­ti­cal­i­ties and work­shops is under­way. Self man­aged camp­ing, eat­ing and liv­ing neigh­bour­hoods around themes and geo­graph­i­cal areas are also being planned, con­tact details are on the web­site.

There is loads to do, and every­one is invit­ed to get involved — no expe­ri­ence nec­es­sary! The next nation­al plan­ning meet­ings will be held in Leeds at the Com­mon Place, on the 17th and 18th Feb­ru­ary, and then in
Bris­tol on the 17th and 18th March.

See www.climatecamp.org.uk for more info. There are lots of ways to get involved with­out com­ing to nation­al gath­er­ings, but com­ing to them is a great way of real­ly feel­ing part of the whole process, we work with con­sen­sus deci­sion mak­ing and col­lec­tive respon­si­bil­i­ty, every­one gets their say in how the whole thing goes.

For a 20min film of last years camp get
V For Video Activist — SchMOVIES DVD Col­lec­tion 2006 OUT Jan­u­ary 2007
— £6 (includ­ing P&P). Con­tact the SchNEWS Office 01273 685913 or  schnews@brighton.co.uk

leeds@climatecamp.org.uk
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk

Oil spill at the Natural History Museum (& demos in Aberdeen & Manchester)

3.02.2007

Today at the Shell-spon­sored Wildlife Pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the Year exhi­bi­tion at the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um, 20 activists inspired by the Camp for Cli­mate Action (1), smeared oil over the pho­tographs. This was an act of out­rage at Shell’s painful­ly trans­par­ent attempts to green­wash its rep­u­ta­tion via cul­tur­al spon­sor­ship.

3.02.2007

Today at the Shell-spon­sored Wildlife Pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the Year exhi­bi­tion at the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um, 20 activists inspired by the Camp for Cli­mate Action (1), smeared oil over the pho­tographs. This was an act of out­rage at Shell’s painful­ly trans­par­ent attempts to green­wash its rep­u­ta­tion via cul­tur­al spon­sor­ship.

Shel­l’s spon­sor­ship of the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um is deeply iron­ic, since it dev­as­tates wildlife and the envi­ron­ment around the world through the extrac­tion and pro­duc­tion of ever more oil and gas.

Today’s action comes hard on the heels of the release of Shel­l’s 2006 finan­cial fig­ures, doc­u­ment­ing the 13 bil­lions of pounds made at the expense of peo­ple and the plan­et. Shell’s activ­i­ties extract­ing oil result in major eco­log­i­cal and social impacts. Trad­ing 3.6 mil­lion bar­rels of crude oil equiv­a­lent a day, the com­pa­ny is also a major con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change, which has been pre­dict­ed to wipe out a quar­ter of all species on the plan­et by 2050, and to dev­as­tate the poor­est regions of the plan­et (2). The extent of the threat was high­light­ed on Fri­day with the release of the UN’s Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change fourth report.

For all these rea­sons, the cli­mate camp activists are call­ing on the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um to end its oily spon­sor­ship deal with Shell.

As the black oil-like liq­uid has been spread over the glass cov­er­ing the pho­tographs, the activists have not dam­aged the work itself. As Dan Bak­er said, “This is not an attack on the work of the pho­tog­ra­phers. Shell does not deserve to have its name asso­ci­at­ed with their beau­ti­ful images.” A ban­ner read­ing “Make Nature His­to­ry Muse­um — spon­sored by Shell” was also unfurled.

Activist Daisy Williams said, “This action sheds light on the ugly stain that cov­ers this exhi­bi­tion as a result of the Muse­um’s col­lu­sion with Shell. We’re here to make sure every­one knows about this despi­ca­ble green­wash spon­sor­ship deal. With more pub­lic pres­sure, we can kick Shell out of the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um!”

For high res­o­lu­tion pho­tos of today’s action, vis­it this image site:
https://www.theimagefile.com/?skin=2903&ppwd=ks8551dt&Action=_VC&id=59798

A short video of the Shell Oil Wildlife Pho­to­graph Exhi­bi­tion at the Lon­don Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um get­ting pol­lut­ed with sticky black stuff.
NHM_Shell_painting — video/x‑ms-wmv 12M

For inter­views call: 07913 299 852

And also today, on the occa­sion of the UN Inter­na­tion­al Pan­el on Cli­mate Change releas­ing it’s lat­est report ->

====================================================
Well done! Ten of us held a protest out­side a Shell petrol sta­tion in Aberdeen at the same time, with a large ban­ner and plac­ards, and we men­tioned the Lon­don action in our press release, too.

aberdeen_climatechange@yahoo.co.uk
http://climatechangecampaign.blogspot.com
====================================================
On 3rd Feb­ru­ary 07 the Cli­mate Change cam­paign­ers were joined by Rhythms of Resis­tance Man­ches­ter to raise aware­ness about glob­al cli­mate change issues. The event took place in the city cen­tre. Cam­paign­ers gave out news­pa­pers and leaflets inform­ing peo­ple about what they could do to make a dif­fer­ence and high­light­ing detri­men­tal gov­ern­ment plans regard­ing future ener­gy pro­vi­sion for the UK.

Rhythms of Resis­tance played draw­ing in spec­ta­tors who were then treat­ed to envi­ron­men­tal street the­atre. The atmos­phere was pos­i­tive and peo­ple seemed to engage with the issues.

Protests at Irish embassy in London against Shell’s hell in north west Ireland

30.01.2007

At mid­day today, while a sam­ba band played below, a man who wished to be known as “G” climed the Irish embassy. This was in protest over the Irish gov­ern­ments col­lu­sioin with Shel­l’s activ­i­ties in North West Ire­land where they are con­struct­ing a pipeline and refin­ery. Many cam­paign­ers claim this pipeline and refin­ery pose as seri­ous envi­ron­men­tal risk. While there have been wide­spread protests in Ire­land itself many claim that the gov­ern­ment of Ire­land has giv­en Shell sus­pi­cious­ly favourable busi­ness terms on the deal. “G” was arrest­ed for on sus­pi­cion of crim­i­nal dam­age though there was no dam­age vis­i­ble from ground lev­el. For fur­ther details see the cor­po­rate watch web­site.

30.01.2007

At mid­day today, while a sam­ba band played below, a man who wished to be known as “G” climed the Irish embassy. This was in protest over the Irish gov­ern­ments col­lu­sioin with Shel­l’s activ­i­ties in North West Ire­land where they are con­struct­ing a pipeline and refin­ery. Many cam­paign­ers claim this pipeline and refin­ery pose as seri­ous envi­ron­men­tal risk. While there have been wide­spread protests in Ire­land itself many claim that the gov­ern­ment of Ire­land has giv­en Shell sus­pi­cious­ly favourable busi­ness terms on the deal. “G” was arrest­ed for on sus­pi­cion of crim­i­nal dam­age though there was no dam­age vis­i­ble from ground lev­el. For fur­ther details see the cor­po­rate watch web­site.

301007_Irish_Embassy_Shell_Hell — video/x‑ms-wmv 5.4M

Press Release

Today, sup­port­ers for the Anti-Shell Cam­paign took their protest to the Irish Embassy. The action was to tar­get the Irish State; Shell; Sta­toil and Marathon who are attempt­ing to con­struct a dan­ger­ous and exper­i­men­tal onshore raw gas pipeline and refin­ery in Coun­ty Mayo; a beau­ti­ful remote part of North West Ire­land.

There is mas­sive oppo­si­tion to this pro­posed pipeline by the local com­mu­ni­ty, Ire­land and inter­na­tion­al­ly. A cam­paign of direct action against this plan has been ongo­ing since 2005.

The action at the Embassy today is to demon­strate that this pol­lut­ing project will not just affect the area in which it is to be built, but will con­tribute to the ongo­ing organ­ised destruc­tion of the plan­et by Shell. The action is in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple direct­ly affect­ed by this unprece­dent­ed raw gas pipeline, which has been con­demned as pos­ing an unac­cept­able risk to health and safe­ty.

The Irish State active­ly encour­ages the Shell led con­sor­tium – Nor­we­gian owned Sta­toil and U.S. owned Marathon — by facil­i­tat­ing stages of the con­struc­tion project, includ­ing the chang­ing of laws to allow the project go ahead. These com­pa­nies are tax exempt, thus there is no finan­cial ben­e­fit to the Irish peo­ple. Shell are also deploy­ing hun­dreds of police, who dai­ly intim­i­date peo­ple and use vio­lence to deter them, espe­cial­ly at recent demon­stra­tions.

The action at the Embassy today is to show the con­cern which many peo­ple share about the cor­rup­tion and com­plic­i­ty of the Irish Dáil, using its pow­er to sell out the inter­ests of the Irish peo­ple, putting per­son­al prof­it before pub­lic inter­est, safe­ty and health.

Some Jan Critical Mass reports — London, Leeds, Manchester (& I Bike Mcr festival)

You nev­er know what the police are going to do next on the Lon­don ride. They clamp down on some things and relax on oth­ers from one month to the next and from one part of the ride to anoth­er. ‘Sham­bol­ic’ is per­haps the word that best describes their behav­iour. They seem at times to behave more like Anar­chists than the rid­ers. You would think with their radios they could at least arrive at some sort of a con­sen­sus. In addi­tion to our usu­al police overkill the For­ward Intel­li­gence Team were also in atten­dance at the South Bank, pok­ing their cam­eras in peo­ple’s faces. All this just because of a bike ride!

You nev­er know what the police are going to do next on the Lon­don ride. They clamp down on some things and relax on oth­ers from one month to the next and from one part of the ride to anoth­er. ‘Sham­bol­ic’ is per­haps the word that best describes their behav­iour. They seem at times to behave more like Anar­chists than the rid­ers. You would think with their radios they could at least arrive at some sort of a con­sen­sus. In addi­tion to our usu­al police overkill the For­ward Intel­li­gence Team were also in atten­dance at the South Bank, pok­ing their cam­eras in peo­ple’s faces. All this just because of a bike ride!

This time the cops decid­ed to get tough with rid­ers with­out lights and those who go through red lights and also with sound sys­tems in the SOCPA zone. Did you know, it is OK for some­one with a car to play their sound sys­tem in the vicin­i­ty or Par­lia­ment but not for a cyclist with a sound sys­tem? How dis­crim­i­na­to­ry is that? Any­way, the cops allowed an extra long ‘bikes high’ stop in Oxford Cir­cus but no stop what­so­ev­er in Pica­dil­ly Cir­cus. Those rid­ers who were pulled for going through red lights are now fac­ing a £30 fine, despite the fact that some cops were actu­al­ly ush­er­ing oth­er rid­ers through red lights!

One of the high­lights of the ride was storm­ing through the Ald­wych under­pass, some­thing the police nor­mal­ly pre­vent. We had a fun time with Bri­an Haw in Par­lia­ment Square, he led the “More bikes less cars!” chants on his mega­phone and seemed in a very good spir­its. The ride split up after that at around 9pm, going off in all direc­tions and leav­ing our yel­low coat­ed ret­inue behind, chin-wag­ging among them­selves.
http://www.criticalmasslondon.org.uk

Quick­time video ver­sion — video/mp4 8.3M
Win­dows video ver­sion — video/x‑ms-wmv 8.6M

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

45 peo­ple rode around Leeds for just under an hour last night, with no police inter­ven­tions. The largest ride for some years, its hoped that this is the begin­ning of rever­sal in the down­ward trend of recent times.

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

crit­i­cal mass man­ches­ter last fri­day and the next one..

Crit­i­cal Mass on Fri­day was absolute­ly amaz­ing. We stood around chat­ting out­side the library for ages just chill­in and social­is­ing and meet­ing the many new­com­ers to the mass. Peo­ple mak­ing the I Bike MCR did some film­ing for part of the film and some­one tak­ing pho­tos for the bicy­cle exhi­bi­tion in March.

Then the 40 or so of us took to the streets, rid­ing around the city cen­tre and down past the sta­tion right down Grosvenor street and onto oxford road where mass­es of stu­dents wait­ing for some gig cheered us as we rode by the union. We rode through Rusholme and then up to With­ing­ton and back , hard­ly any neg­a­tiv­i­ty at all instead we were greet­ed with cheers and friend­ly beeps and waves from car dri­vers and pedes­tri­ans… woooo!
After the ride we all went for a nice cold beer..mmm

Join us on Fri­day 23rd Feb for the next one, which will end at the ram­pant lion on upper brook st/anson rd where we will have our very own cel­e­brate crit­i­cal mass par­ty with bands and dj’s play­ing reg­gae, ska and punk..

email us at: mcrcriticalmass@yahoo.co.uk
be our myspace friend: http://www.myspace.com/mcrcriticalmass
see our web­site: http://velorution.x21.org.uk

Man­ches­ter I bike Mcr fes­ti­val:

From 30th March to 20th April the I Bike MCR fes­ti­val takes place in
Man­ches­ter. It is a grass­roots fes­ti­val organ­ised by cyclists for cyclists
with diverse events that will entice any cyclist. From Bicy­cle Polo
class­es and match­es to All­ey­cat rac­ing to a Bicy­cle Art Exhi­bi­tion,
there’s some­thing for every­one.

Those involved in organ­is­ing the event are cyclists from dif­fer­ent walks
of life includ­ing cycling instruc­tors, dai­ly com­muters, bicy­cle
mes­sen­gers, Crit­i­cal Mass advo­ca­cy group mem­bers and bicy­cle mechan­ics.

Timetable

Fri­day 30th March
6pm Crit­i­cal Mass bike ride, meet at Cen­tral Library to cel­e­brate the
bicy­cle over car cul­ture.

8pm Exhi­bi­tion Open­ing at The Base­ment, 24 Lever St. The open­ing event
will be one to remem­ber and will fea­ture the pre­mier screen­ing of new
Man­ches­ter bicy­cle film “I bike MCR”. We shall also be show­ing oth­er
bicy­cle films and hav­ing a roller race (an indoor bicy­cle race- on
rollers) with lots of prizes to be won! Local acoustic bands will be
per­form­ing includ­ing the amaz­ing Coop­er Jones and Dr But­ler’s Hat­stand
Med­i­cine Band

Sat­ur­day 31st March
1pm Platt Fields Park Bicy­cle Polo class. Oxford bicy­cle polo team are
com­ing to teach us how to play the sport. Please email to reserve a place.
(they return 2 weeks lat­er to play a match: Man­ches­ter vs Oxford)

Sun­day 1st April
2pm Cen­tral Library April Fools Day Bicy­cle Trea­sure Hunt. A fun trea­sure
hunt around our city.

Wednes­day 4th April
Moon­light Pub Ride Start 7pm Sand­bar, Grosvenor St (off Oxford Road/opp.
All Saints Park. A night ride out and around the out­skirts of Man­ches­ter
stop­ping off at some love­ly pubs for a drink on the way.

Fri­day 13th April
Hell Of The North West All­ey­cat
Fix­ies and road­ragers ride the all­ey­cat for a fast race round our city. £5
entry, amaz­ing prizes to be won. with some donat­ed by the won­der­ous Twin
Six and Keirin Cul­ture
Email to reg­is­ter

Alleykit­ten
Shop­pers, bmx’s and sil­ly bikes ride alleykit­ten for a ran­dom race full of
games and non­sense round our city cen­tre. £5 entry, amaz­ing prizes to be
won. Email to reg­is­ter

Sat­ur­day 14th April
1pm Platt Fields Park Bicy­cle Polo Match: Man­ches­ter vs Oxford.

For more infor­ma­tion see the web­site: www.ibikemcr.org.uk or email
info@ibikemcr.org.uk

ex-vortex eviction thwarted this morning (pics and film)

dozens of sup­port­ers arrived this morn­ing to ensure that no ille­gal evic­tion could take place at the occu­pied social squat in the build­ing that used to host the vor­tex jazz club in stoke new­ing­ton church street.

dozens of sup­port­ers arrived this morn­ing to ensure that no ille­gal evic­tion could take place at the occu­pied social squat in the build­ing that used to host the vor­tex jazz club in stoke new­ing­ton church street.

there was much local sup­port as res­i­dents don’t want more lux­u­ry flats, a tesco, or a star­bucks, all of which are pos­si­ble plans for the site under own­er richard mid­da’s stew­ard­ship.

mid­da is so unpop­u­lar in the area that a pho­tog­ra­phy stu­dio was sold to alex ross (the present own­er of the spence bak­ery) at under mar­ket val­ue, rather than allow mid­da to buy it, even although he was offer­ing far more.

a woman police offi­cer who attend­ed the scene was clear­ly sym­pa­thet­ic to the squat­ters, and after seek­ing advice and clar­i­fi­ca­tion, report­ed that the bailiffs would have to return once they had writ­ten clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the court (which may take up to two weeks).

one inde­pen­dent pho­tog­ra­ph­er was so tak­en with the offi­cer that he asked if she had a boyfriend — his hopes were dashed when she told him she was mar­ried.

quick­time — video/mp4 6.5M
flip4mac/wmv — video/x‑ms-wmv 7.1M

films attached in wmv and mp4 for­mats

if you can’t see the film just by click­ing on it (and wait­ing awhile, as these are sev­er­al megabytes of data), then right-clik-hold (ctrl-clik on mac) instead and ‘down­load linked file’ before watch­ing it on your view­er of choice
on mac or pc, i rec­om­mend down­load­ing vlc which is a free view­er from viedolan, or also mplay­er (free too)
on a mac, if you insist on watch­ing the wmv, then down­load ‘flip4mac’ so you can watch it on quick­time, as the win­dows media view­er itself puts all sorts of nas­ties on your sys­tem.

================================================================================
Ear­li­er report:

From 8.30am around 70–80 peo­ple, the major­i­ty local res­i­dents, turned out to sup­port the resis­tance to the threat­ened evic­tion of the Vor­tex Occu­pied Social Cen­tre. The own­er, Richard Mid­da, a well known thug and prop­er­ty devel­op­er threat­ened to use force to evict the occu­piers if they did not leave by 9.00am.

But like the say­ing goes “they make plans we make his­to­ry”! After see­ing such a response, com­posed of all age ranges and faced with no few­er than 15 film and video cam­eras the police inter­vened and there­by start­ing a debate on the fin­er points of law. With the cops in the mid­dle of this legal debate a deci­sion was made to send one per­son from the Social cen­tre and the own­er, mid­da, to Stoke New­ing­ton Police sta­tion where inde­pen­dent legal advise is now being sort.

This is cur­rent as of 9.50am.

This occu­pa­tion has its roots in both the tra­jec­to­ry of occu­pa­tions from the Rad­i­cal Dairy (Stoke New­ing­ton) in 2002 and the sub­se­quent spaces (Occu­pied Social Cen­tre — Ken­tish Town,Ex-Grandbanks — Tufnell Park, Insti­tute of Auton­o­my — Blooms­bury, The Square — Blooms­bury), BUT also in last years occu­pa­tion of “Francesca’s Cafe” on Broad­way Mar­ket — Hack­ney and Daslton the­atre in Dal­ston.

It shows that rad­i­cal polit­i­cal inter­ven­tions in the form of occu­pied social cen­tres can res­onate with pre-exisit­ing social ten­sions and anto­gan­isms, espe­cial­ly around gen­tri­fi­ca­tion and “com­mu­ni­ty” issues and acti­vate peo­ple to self-organ­ise and take some con­trol on how their environment(and qual­i­ty of life) are shaped.
If your in the area come down, we have now occu­pied both sides of the pave­ment due to num­bers.
one of the Vor­tex Anar­chists

occupiedsocialcentre@hushmail.com
http://www.londonsocialcentre.org.uk

Hell at Shell petrol Stations: London blockade

Report 1 — On the evening of the 24th Jan­u­ary two Shell petrol sta­tions in north Lon­don were block­ad­ed by activists who are con­cerned over Shel­l’s aggres­sive busi­ness prac­tices and poor human rights record.

Report 1 — On the evening of the 24th Jan­u­ary two Shell petrol sta­tions in north Lon­don were block­ad­ed by activists who are con­cerned over Shel­l’s aggres­sive busi­ness prac­tices and poor human rights record.

For more details of Shells record see:

www.shelltosea.com
www.shellfacts.com
www.corporatewatch.com
www.artnotoil.org.uk

The non-vio­lent actions took place at Shell sta­tions on Hol­loway Road and Upper Street in north Lon­don. No arrests were made. How­ev­er some motorist became aggres­sive, made threats and insult­ed block­aders. The police did not over react and one offi­cer made the com­ment “sup­pose we can look this up on the usu­al web­site can we?” Here it is offi­cers.

After the last action at the sta­tion on Hol­loway Road one very friend­ly black cab dri­ver con­grat­u­lat­ed block­aders and asked for pub­lic­i­ty cards to hand out to his pas­sangers. Thank for your sup­port mate.

240107_Shell_Hell_WMV — video/x‑ms-wmv 18M

Report 2 — On 24th Jan­u­ary Lon­don Ris­ing Tide once again helped their friends at Rhythms of Resis­tance Sam­ba Band and oth­ers keep Shell aware that the cam­paign to pre­vent the dam­ag­ing high pres­sure gas pipeline and refin­ery near Ross­port in Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land is still rolling.

…and rolling is what it was, with even a bit of rock­ing. We tried the new tac­tic with mea­sured suc­cess of short spells at a series of North Lon­don Shell garages blockad­ing the entrance and exits with band, ban­ners and ban­danas (there was also men­tion of bananas when it came to irate dri­vers).

Hol­loway Road was the first stop where hav­ing set up and told the gas guz­zlers on the fore­court that we were not block­ing them in, one of them decid­ed to dri­ve at us from behind. Hav­ing stepped back just in time, bang­ing the win­dow as it surged past, the dri­ver got out of her 4 x 4 (fun­ny that, it always seems to be) and vio­lent­ly threat­ened to do unspeak­able things to us as indi­vid­u­als from about 2 inch­es away. More fos­sil fuelled dri­ver luna­cy fol­lowed and we decid­ed to get rolling to the next garage when push­ing came to pull us away as plod were sum­moned.

On arriv­ing at the famil­iar ter­ri­to­ry of the Shell Upper Street garage we kit­ted up and last­ed a bit longer, even turn­ing away petrol thirsty black cab dri­vers, before more vio­lence threat­en­ing behav­iour from peo­ple block­ad­ed out. The thin line of Sam­ba resist­ed and held out as we turned away the ubiq­ui­tous Isling­ton SUVs. The usu­al sup­port from the Fire Brigade was good for keep­ing up our spir­its.

After that it was back to Hol­loway Rd with less abuse but more plod and we retired to the pub when they called for back-up since the final whis­tle of the Spurs v Arse­nal game was about to be blown along with plod’s patience.

On reflec­tion over out stout we agreed it was des­per­ate­ly sad that such anger of par­tic­u­lar­ly 4 x 4 dri­vers only had the unhealthy out­let of threat­en­ing us. Espe­cial­ly when Shell’s sta­tu­spher­ic dis­re­gard of the planet’s atmos­phere and the atmos­phere of liv­ing in Mayo, Ogo­ni­land or Sakhalin seemed a bet­ter place to vent their frus­tra­tion.

Unlawful eviction planned for Vortex Social Centre tomorrow (Friday 26th Jan)

We need as many peo­ple in the build­ing at to ensure the secu­ri­ty of the social cen­tre against the bailiffs. Please cir­cu­late this wide­ly and let as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble know.

We need as many peo­ple in the build­ing at to ensure the secu­ri­ty of the social cen­tre against the bailiffs. Please cir­cu­late this wide­ly and let as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble know.

Prop­er­ty own­er of 139–141 Church street Richard Mid­da was grant­ed a pos­ses­sion order by Shored­itch coun­ty court on wednes­day 24th Jan. The next stage legal­ly is for the courts to issue a bailiffs war­rant to court appoint­ed bailiffs who will car­ry out the evic­tion on a pre-arranged date. This date we should know about in advance. Only court appoint­ed bailiffs have the right to car­ry out an evic­tion.

Imme­di­ate­ly after the court hear­ing on wednes­day Mid­da, along with his own hired pri­vate bailiffs came round to the social cen­tre (where the parent/baby group were meet­ing) threat­en­ing peo­ple while demand­ing he now had the right to the build­ing any every­one must leave. He, nor his hired goons, have a legal right to repos­sess the build­ing.

This morn­ing (thurs­day 25th) he stuck a notice on the door say­ing his pri­vate bailiffs com­pa­ny (used pri­mar­i­ly to harass ten­ants for rent) will be return­ing at 9am on fri­day morn­ing to ensure we vacate the premis­es. He has no legal right to do this.

Not only then is this an unlaw­ful evic­tion any attempt by him to gain access, or attempt to forcibly remove peo­ple from the premis­es, will be a crim­i­nal offence.

We need as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble in, at, and around the social cen­tre to pre­vent him gain­ing access (this is still our social cen­tre!) and that any activ­i­ty he engages in will be doc­u­ment­ed by us.

Be at the social cen­tre at 8.30am. bring cam­eras, cam­corders, your friends. The more of us there are the stronger we are.

occupiedsocialcentre@hushmail.com
http://www.londonsocialcentre.org.uk

LONDON MEDIC TRAINING

3–5th Feb­ru­ary, we are hold­ing an action­medics train­ing. all wel­come. email  training@actionmedics.org.uk to book a place and get venue details.

What this course is and is not:
This is a 24-hour street medic train­ing. We will cov­er the major­i­ty of the basic infor­ma­tion and skills you will need to pro­vide first aid at protests and direct actions.

3–5th Feb­ru­ary, we are hold­ing an action­medics train­ing. all wel­come. email  training@actionmedics.org.uk to book a place and get venue details.

What this course is and is not:
This is a 24-hour street medic train­ing. We will cov­er the major­i­ty of the basic infor­ma­tion and skills you will need to pro­vide first aid at protests and direct actions.
This will not make you ready for any­thing. This course is a foun­da­tion in first aid and some prac­tice. More diverse and deep­er skill comes with time and prac­tice as well as con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion in health care. You are not a “real” medic until you are in the streets inter­act­ing with patients.
One thing we do not teach is Car­diopul­monary resus­ci­ta­tion (CPR). CPR is a great and some­times nec­es­sary skill. But we do not cov­er it here due to time con­straints. You will have to find your own course.
This is NOT a cer­tifi­cate course. You will receive no cer­ti­fi­ca­tions or licens­es of any kind. If you have a first aid cer­tifi­cate (such as First Aid at Work) this will not count as a refresh­er course (sor­ry).

http://www.actionmedics.org.uk

N London Social Centre needs help now!

24.01.2007

The squat­ted Vor­tex social cen­tre has been fend­ing off an ille­gal evic­tion attempt this morn­ing. There is a call out for folks to help tonight and tomor­row morn­ing

24.01.2007

The squat­ted Vor­tex social cen­tre has been fend­ing off an ille­gal evic­tion attempt this morn­ing. There is a call out for folks to help tonight and tomor­row morn­ing

Vor­tex Social Cen­tre
139–141 Stoke New­ing­ton Church Street
Stoke New­ing­ton
N16
Help need­ed Wednes­day night (24th) and Thurs­day morn­ing (25th)
Get on down there and see what help you can offer