Category: Rest of Europe

Rest of Europe

News from the battles for free space in Copenhagen

Strug­gles around free space and squats con­tin­ue abounds in Copen­hagen, Den­mark. Not only are there still week­ly demos still for the cam­paign to have a new Youth­house (Ung­domshuset) but a new exten­sion to the famous squat­ted Chris­tia­nia has been occu­pied with great suc­cess.

Strug­gles around free space and squats con­tin­ue abounds in Copen­hagen, Den­mark. Not only are there still week­ly demos still for the cam­paign to have a new Youth­house (Ung­domshuset) but a new exten­sion to the famous squat­ted Chris­tia­nia has been occu­pied with great suc­cess. It also looks like the coun­cil has giv­en in to pres­sure from the squat­ters move­ment and agreed a new Youth House for the kids!!

69 WEEKS for UNGDOMSHUSET:
69 weeks. At least 1 demo every week. Thurs­day demo num­ber 69 was obvi­ous­ly sym­bol­ic (It was the street num­ber of the Youth­house) and the demo crew had announced it was going to last 24 hours, going through most parts of Copen­hagen with dif­fer­ent sorts of activ­i­ties planned through­out — four meals dur­ing the 24 hours, open air cin­e­ma, pirate par­ty, block­ing traf­fic, speech­es, con­certs and hap­pen­ings.
Ini­tial­ly there was some scep­tis­cism from both activists and police, but it soon became appar­ent that peo­ple were going to stick it out all 24 hours. The demo moved around Copen­hagen, stop­ping in dif­fer­ent loca­tions to give speech­es or show polit­i­cal films. At many points there were dis­agree­ments with the police fol­low­ing the demo, but the demo always got its way in the end, often stop­ping for long stretch­es in main roads block­ing traf­fic. After 21 hours — on Fri­day around 2 pm — the police had final­ly had enough of the demo act­ing autonomous­ly and con­fined the demo to a square in Vester­bro. This result­ed in a big pub­lic man­i­fes­ta­tion on the square with both bands and DJs com­ing from oth­er parts of the city to play.
After 24 hrs the demo end­ed in a count down and a big greet­ing to the activists and the city which had both been upside down for 24 hrs through sun and rain, light and dark­ness.
PICTURES: http://english.indymedia.dk/publish/show/180

A NEW YOUTH HOUSE COMES SLOWLY INTO BEING:
On Wed June 11th, the last city coun­cil meet­ing before sum­mer, the politi­cians of the coun­cil vot­ed in favor of the agree­ment on a new Ung­domshus in the build­ings of Dortheavej 61. The votes were 38 pro and 13 against. The votes were giv­en after 2 hours of dis­cus­sion. Activists has promised mil­i­tant activ­i­ty in the streets again if this meet­ing was unable to come to a deci­sion on a YES vote for a new place and an address.
The new house will be in what is now a local cul­ture cen­tre under the coun­cil. It will be in two con­nect­ed build­ings, one of which will be split in half. The cul­ture cen­tre will remain in the oth­er half of the build­ing and the city coun­cil has agreed to build a new add on to com­pen­sate for the space lost to the new Ung­domshus.
The first part of the take over (the small­er build­ing com­pris­ing 600 m²) will hap­pen on July 1st. After that the main build­ing will be avail­able for take over on Jan­u­ary 1st next year.
There has been very pos­i­tive con­tact between the left rad­i­cal scene and the lead­ers of the cul­ture cen­tre, who are wel­com­ing the new house.
PICTURE: http://english.indymedia.dk/system/photo/file/111/616161.jpg

CHRISTIANIA EXPANDING!!
The area on Ref­shalevej right next to Chris­tia­nia that was squat­ted on the 31st of May is stil grow­ing and the dif­fer­ent hous­es and con­struc­tions are tak­en shape. Nei­ther the City coun­cil or the state approves of the sit­u­a­tion but can’t fig­ure out who has the author­i­ty to act on the squat since half the road is state prop­er­ty and the oth­er half belongs to the city.
Nei­ther the City coun­cil nor the state approves of the sit­u­a­tion but can’t fig­ure out who has the author­i­ty to act on the squat since half the road is state prop­er­ty and the oth­er half belongs to the city. Appar­ent­ly ‘the con­struc­tors’ on Ref­shalevej for once are ben­e­fit­ing from the bureau­cra­cy, since noth­ing will be done to clear the street until the two admin­is­tra­tions agrees on who’s doing what,
Mean­while small hous­es are being built both on water and on the ground as well as road­blocks to slow down car traf­fic has been estab­lished. Around 28 dif­fer­ent projects are cur­rent­ly under con­struc­tion and ‘the con­struc­tors’ invit­ed more peo­ple to join in!

PICTURES OF NEW SQUATTED REFSHALEEVEJ:
http://english.indymedia.dk/publish/show/175
http://english.indymedia.dk/publish/show/178

BUT EVICTION NOTICE NOW SERVED
The new area squat­ted near Chris­tia­nia — Ref­shalevej — has been giv­en notice. The evic­tion date is not finalised but will be up soon.
For some weeks activists have been build­ing in the new­ly squat­ted ground just out­side Chris­tia­nia called Ref­shalevej. Now the builders have been giv­en notice by the city coun­cil and the state who have joint own­er­ship over the area. An evic­tion is said to be pend­ing although no date has yet been offi­cial­ly giv­en.
The activists have stat­ed that they intend to resist the evic­tion non vio­lent­ly, and that they intend to resquat the area immideaite­ly fol­low­ing the evic­tion.

COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE STRUGGLE FOR UNGDOMSHUSET
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ungdomshuset

EVICTION AND RIOTS CHRONOLOGY + PICTURES/VIDEOS
http://www.emoware.org/ungdomshuset.asp
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/03/363973.html

COMPLETE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANIA:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania

Residents clash with riot police against dump construction (Corfu, 16/6/2008)

Mas­sive clash­es erupt­ed out­side the ‑under con­struc­tion- ille­gal garbage dis­pos­al cen­ter at Lefkim­mi, a vil­lage in south­ern Cor­fu, once the con­struc­tion com­pa­ny (DOMOKAT) is now tres­pass­ing land they haven’t

Corfu dump kids protestCorfu dump protestMas­sive clash­es erupt­ed out­side the ‑under con­struc­tion- ille­gal garbage dis­pos­al cen­ter at Lefkim­mi, a vil­lage in south­ern Cor­fu, once the con­struc­tion com­pa­ny (DOMOKAT) is now tres­pass­ing land they haven’t yet expro­pri­at­ed and paid. Some hun­dreds of local res­i­dents gath­ered in order to reclaim the area from the police forces and block the works. The cops attacked them using exces­sive tear gas and rub­ber bul­lets, they even sent the police chief injured to the hos­pi­tal, once he was­n’t in his uni­form and was­n’t recog­nised! Anoth­er three cops were injured dur­ing the clash­es. Three arrestees were tor­tured by the police­men and face charges.

The res­i­dents mobi­liza­tion came from a pop­u­lar assem­bly, one day before, that took place in Lefkim­mi’s high-school yard, also sug­gest­ing the fol­low­ing actions:
A whole island-wide demon­stra­tion on June 27 togeth­er with trade unions, envi­ron­men­tal asso­ci­a­tions and oth­ers, lead by the strug­gle co-ordi­na­tion com­mit­tee.
A demon­stra­tion in Cor­fu city blockad­ing the air­port sym­bol­i­cal­ly for two busy hours.
A sit-in at the entrance of the ring road to Mis­so­rachia and the pro­mo­tion of the issue of a total man­age­ment of sol­id wastes through­out the pre­fec­ture.

Pre­vi­ous actions of Lefkim­mi res­i­dents in strug­gle: http://directactiongr.blogspot.com/2008/05/residents-clash-with-riot-policemen.html

More info in greek and some pho­tos-videos at:
http://xyta-lefkimis.blogspot.com/
http://enakcorfu.blogspot.com/
http://athens.indymedia.org

—-

from a mes­sage post­ed on myspace.com

Last Sat­ur­day, 14/6/2008, the res­i­dents of the south Cor­fu town of Lefki­mi have resumed their mobil­i­sa­tion against the build­ing of an open garbage-dump (XYTA) meant to acco­mo­date refuse from the tourist-rich north of the island. After lengthy direct-demo­c­ra­t­ic dis­cus­sions, the town’s “Peo­ple’s Coun­cil” has decid­ed to refuse the medi­a­tion of polit­i­cal par­ties and demand the imme­di­ate depar­ture of the riot police forces (MAT) sta­tioned in their area since the last street bat­tles (29/5) which led to the death of a 42 year old moth­er, an event that has trig­gered sol­i­dar­i­ty protest march­es across the coun­try. “No dia­logue can even start while our town is under occu­pa­tion”, claimed the res­i­dents iden­ti­fy­ing the riot police with the nazi forces of the 40s.

The sit­u­a­tion esca­lat­ed once again, when on Mon­day the 16th of July, faced with the gov­ern­men­t’s refusal of their terms, the res­i­dents of Lefki­mi errect­ed once again bar­ri­cades in an effort to inhib­it con­struc­tion of the new refuse unit. The renewed mobil­i­sa­tion of the res­i­dents was met with ruth­less repres­sion dur­ing which the riot-police used tear gas and, for the first time in recent greek his­to­ry, plas­tic bul­lets. Four res­i­dents and 3 police­men have been wound­ed dur­ing the clash­es, with the sit­u­a­tion remain­ing tense and rein­force­ments sent by the main­land.

field trial with genetically modified wheat destroyed (zurich, switzerland)

the local press reports as fol­low­ing:
ear­ly fri­day morn­ing (june 13, 2008) around 35 per­sons entered the research area (“Forschungsanstalt Agro­scope Reck­en­holz-Tänikon ART in Zürich Affoltern”) close to zurich and destroyed near­ly the whole field tri­al with genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied wheat by scyth­ing and tram­pling the plants.

the local press reports as fol­low­ing:
ear­ly fri­day morn­ing (june 13, 2008) around 35 per­sons entered the research area (“Forschungsanstalt Agro­scope Reck­en­holz-Tänikon ART in Zürich Affoltern”) close to zurich and destroyed near­ly the whole field tri­al with genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied wheat by scyth­ing and tram­pling the plants.

the research is ini­ti­at­ed by Agro­scope, uni­ver­si­ty of zurich and ETH (poly­tech. uni­ver­si­ty).
the present secu­ri­ty agents were threat­ened and could­n’t stop the action.
the police arrest­ed 5 per­sons after the action in the sur­round­ing area, but it might be dif­fi­cult to prove they’ve been involved.

http://tagi.ch/dyn/news/zuerich/888308.html
http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/zuerich/zerstoerungsaktion_in_gentech-versuchsfeld_1.759006.html

in 2003 a sim­i­lar, but small­er field tri­al was done by ETH in anoth­er vil­lage. dur­ing weeks green­peace tried to pre­vent oth­er activists destroy­ing the field so they could do an own spec­tac­u­lar action lat­er on: green­peace dumped dung on the field, but was stopped by the agents present.

Double supermarket expropriation (Athens, 13/6/2008)

“Today at 13:30 goods of basic neces­si­ty were expro­pri­at­ed from 2 super­mar­kets (Veropou­los and DIA) and hand­ed out in the open mar­ket of M. Voda. Fol­low­ing is the com­mu­nique dis­trib­uted at Veropou­los.

Thou­sands of super­mar­kets so full of goods, why don’t we just pil­lage them for our old age! ‑N. Asi­mos

“Today at 13:30 goods of basic neces­si­ty were expro­pri­at­ed from 2 super­mar­kets (Veropou­los and DIA) and hand­ed out in the open mar­ket of M. Voda. Fol­low­ing is the com­mu­nique dis­trib­uted at Veropou­los.

Thou­sands of super­mar­kets so full of goods, why don’t we just pil­lage them for our old age! ‑N. Asi­mos

Final­ly! the super­mar­ket and cor­po­ra­tion sharks frozen the prices of their prod­ucts! Some of them were even more gen­er­ous reduc­ing their prices, in order to raise the “pur­chas­ing pow­er” of the con­sumers. In sim­pler words: to gain more! As we can tell that no one takes into account this bull­shit about a so-called price reduc­tion, we put into action again our own “pack of mea­sures” against cost­li­ness, expro­pri­a­tiong foods and basic stuff from large super­mar­kets.

PS. As far as it con­cers our cov­ered faces, we say that: keep­ing in mind that soci­ety is yet unready and uneasy to lis­ten close­ly and sup­port these facts, so we think it’s nec­es­sary to adopt the basic mea­sures for our own secu­ri­ty, against the sys­tems of secu­ri­ty and repres­sion mech­a­nisms, in order to con­tin­ue live and act freely. THE ONLY MEASURE AGAINST COSTLINESS IS THE EXPROPRIATION. MASSIVE INVASION IN THE SUPERMARKETS TO TAKE BACK ALL THAT BELONG TO US.

Angry anar­chists against cost­li­ness”

From: http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=880457

Vandalism at subway station (Athens, 13/6/2008)

From reports at http://athens.indymedia.org it seems that a group attacked Vic­to­ri­a’s sub­way sta­tion, break­ing down cam­eras and tick­et check­ing machines, throw­ing leaflets and spray paint­ing slo­gans against sur­veil­lance and con­trol and in sol­i­dar­i­ty to the detained M. Tsourapas-Chr.Kontorevithakis. A near­by bank on Patis­sion avenue was also attacked.

From reports at http://athens.indymedia.org it seems that a group attacked Vic­to­ri­a’s sub­way sta­tion, break­ing down cam­eras and tick­et check­ing machines, throw­ing leaflets and spray paint­ing slo­gans against sur­veil­lance and con­trol and in sol­i­dar­i­ty to the detained M. Tsourapas-Chr.Kontorevithakis. A near­by bank on Patis­sion avenue was also attacked.

Demonstrators tear down privatisation fencing bars (Thessaloniki, Greece, 7/6/2008)

What hap­pened is a demon­stra­tion of hun­dreds of res­i­dents of Kala­maria (a large sub­urb of Thes­sa­loni­ki by the sea) and Thes­sa­loni­ki on the seafront of Kala­maria.

What hap­pened is a demon­stra­tion of hun­dreds of res­i­dents of Kala­maria (a large sub­urb of Thes­sa­loni­ki by the sea) and Thes­sa­loni­ki on the seafront of Kala­maria. There, pri­va­ti­za­tion works fence the one open area after the oth­er, so, after a deci­sion of a res­i­dents assem­bly, the demon­stra­tors tore down the fenc­ing bars of the local mari­na that pre­vent free access to the sea­side. This action was wel­comed with applause from local peo­ple.

Texts in greek and a lot of pho­tos can be found here:
http://indy.gr/ or here http://athens.indymedia.org/ or there: http://diexodos.blogspot.com/.

GroenFront! blocks E.ON Benelux HQ

June 3rd, Groen­Front! occu­pied the Benelux head­quar­ters of E.ON in Rot­ter­dam. The office was closed shut down from 6 AM — 1 PM, when police spe­cial­ists final­ly man­aged to remove some tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced lock-ons. Groen­Front! is demand­ing an imme­di­ate halt to the con­struc­tion of an E.ON coal pow­er plant on the Maasvlak­te, part of the port of Rot­ter­dam. The action is part of GroenFront!‘s “shrink or drown” cam­paign, which aims at bring­ing down the size of the Dutch econ­o­my to more man­age­able pro­por­tions. Sev­en pro­tes­tors were arrest­ed for refus­ing police orders or refus­ing to show an ID. They were released around mid­night.

EOn Rotterdam lock-onJune 3rd, Groen­Front! occu­pied the Benelux head­quar­ters of E.ON in Rot­ter­dam. The office was closed shut down from 6 AM — 1 PM, when police spe­cial­ists final­ly man­aged to remove some tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced lock-ons. Groen­Front! is demand­ing an imme­di­ate halt to the con­struc­tion of an E.ON coal pow­er plant on the Maasvlak­te, part of the port of Rot­ter­dam. The action is part of GroenFront!‘s “shrink or drown” cam­paign, which aims at bring­ing down the size of the Dutch econ­o­my to more man­age­able pro­por­tions. Sev­en pro­tes­tors were arrest­ed for refus­ing police orders or refus­ing to show an ID. They were released around mid­night.

The E.ON plant is said to be CO2 cap­ture-ready, but in a leaked email con­ver­sa­tion between E.ON man­agers at the British Dept. of Indus­try, it appears E.ON itself has no faith in this tech­nol­o­gy at all and is not expect­ing it to work. Groen­Front! and clown army activists had ear­li­er tried to put a lit­er­al ‘cork’ on an exist­ing E.ON plant in Hol­land to illus­trate this point.

July 19th a bicy­cle protest and pic­nic are being organ­ised by locals from the area and GroenFront!-ers.

Anoth­er coal pow­er plant is being planned only 1 km from E.ON’s con­struc­tion site, by the Bel­gian com­pa­ny Elec­tra­bel, and there are also plans by NUON and RWE for new coal pow­er plants that Groen­Front! says it will oppose by direct action.

Groen­Front! was start­ed in 1996 as the Dutch and Bel­gian branch of Earth­First.

More info: http://www.groenfront.nl

Video of the action

World Naked Bike Ride UK

A peace­ful, imag­i­na­tive and fun protest against oil depen­den­cy and car cul­ture. A cel­e­bra­tion of the bicy­cle and also a cel­e­bra­tion of the pow­er and indi­vid­u­al­i­ty of the human body. A sym­bol of the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of the cyclist in traf­fic.

World Naked Bike Ride logoA peace­ful, imag­i­na­tive and fun protest against oil depen­den­cy and car cul­ture. A cel­e­bra­tion of the bicy­cle and also a cel­e­bra­tion of the pow­er and indi­vid­u­al­i­ty of the human body. A sym­bol of the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of the cyclist in traf­fic. The world’s biggest naked protest: 50+ cities and thou­sands of rid­ers par­tic­i­pate world­wide, includ­ing more than 1500 in the UK in 2007.

http://worldnakedbikeride.org/uk/

To check any details of rides below, see http://nakedwiki.org/wiki/UK

# Southamp­ton: Fri 6 June, 6pm
# Brighton & Hove: Sat 7 June, 11am
# York: Sat 7 June, 4pm
# Sheffield: Sun 8 June, 2pm
# Man­ches­ter: Fri 13 June, 6pm
# Cardiff: Sat 14 June, (time is still being finalised)
# Lon­don: Sat 14 June, 3pm
# Edin­burgh: 28 or 29 June — TBC

# There is dis­cus­sion about pos­si­ble rides in Cam­bridge, Belfast, Glas­gow, Oxford, or even a Bris­tol to Bath ride.

3rd June Food & Climate Change Day of Action — more actions, in Nottingham, London x3, Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool & Amsterdam

Actions co-incid­ing with the UN Con­fer­ence on World Food Secu­ri­ty and Cli­mate Change got off to an ear­ly start, with Sun­day see­ing the first of an out­break of veg­an food give-aways, in Man­ches­ter, with a spot of guer­ril­la gar­den­ing; the rash spread on Mon­day with GM labs occu­pied. The Ready Steady Skip web­site tried to soothe, but on the day, the action con­ta­gion spread…

Actions co-incid­ing with the UN Con­fer­ence on World Food Secu­ri­ty and Cli­mate Change got off to an ear­ly start, with Sun­day see­ing the first of an out­break of veg­an food give-aways, in Man­ches­ter, with a spot of guer­ril­la gar­den­ing; the rash spread on Mon­day with GM labs occu­pied. The Ready Steady Skip web­site tried to soothe, but on the day, the action con­ta­gion spread…Nottingham Food & Climate day 1Nottingham Food & Climate day 2
Cli­mate change and ani­mal rights activists joined togeth­er in Not­ting­ham today to give away free veg­an food, plants & skipped veg­eta­bles.

Pass­er-bys were enticed to our stall by the offers of free chips, veg­an pasties and toma­to plants. We hand­ed out leaflets about cli­mate change & food and had lots of chats with peo­ple about the world food cri­sis & our solu­tions of eat­ing a local, organ­ic & veg­an diet. An amaz­ing num­ber of peo­ple already grew there own food & lots more were encour­aged to give it a go. We had a real­ly pos­i­tive response from the pub­lic and peo­ple seemed gen­uine­ly inter­est­ed in the infor­ma­tion leaflets we hand­ed out.

More pho­tos.

The next free veg­an food give­away in Not­ting­ham is going to be on the 4th July.

A hand­ful of us then vis­it­ed Fresh & Ecoworks com­mu­ni­ty gar­den based at St Ann’s allot­ments. We had a tour of the amaz­ing gar­dens & saw a bril­liant exam­ple of local, organ­ic food being pro­duced in the city. See
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2006/08/348168.html
and
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2007/10/382929.html

We tod­dled off home in the rain, chilli plants in hand, inspired to grow our own.

—–
London Food not Bombs climate food day
Food & Cli­mate Change Action — Lon­don

For the Food & Cli­mate Change day of action, Whitechapel Food Not Bombs and Brix­ton Reclaim Your Food teamed up to serve free veg­an food in front of a Mac Don­ald’s in Cam­ber­well.

The groups had a stall right in front of a Mac Don­ald in Cam­ber­well for two hours, serv­ing out fresh­ly skipped, lov­ing­ly cooked free veg­an food to passers by, and engag­ing peo­ple in con­ver­sa­tion about the link between the food they eat and cli­mate change. For good mea­sure, the group was accom­pa­nied by a bicy­cle sound sys­tem, to liv­en up the atmos­phere.

All in all, over a hun­dred serv­ings were giv­en out, count­less more peo­ple saw the stall and were giv­en leaflets high­light­ing some of the links between food and cli­mate change on the fol­low­ing top­ics : waste ; veg­an­ism ; organ­ic food ; local­ly pro­duced food.

The menu includ­ed a spicy mash, a cur­ry, a pump­kin soup, a sal­ad, some gua­camole, some stuffed aubergines, some veg­gies burg­ers, an apple cake, a fruit sal­ad and more.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the Mac Don­ald’s man­agers weren’t too hap­py about peo­ple giv­ing out free food in front of their win­dow shop — but the police seemed to decide oth­er­wise. The groups were asked to remove a ban­ner from the Mac Don­ald win­dow shop, but were oth­er­wise per­mit­ted to stay there as long as there was­n’t too much obstruc­tion.

londonfnb@lists.riseup.net
http://www.londonfnb.org

–

25 pro­test­ers organ­ised by Bio­fu­el­watch and Food Not Fuel, Lon­don came togeth­er for a protest out­side Newham town hall in East Ham on Sat­ur­day to raise pub­lic aware­ness of the plan­ning appli­ca­tion for the UK’s first bio­fu­el-fired pow­er plant to be built, in Beck­ton. Ban­ners and plac­ards quot­ed many sta­tis­tics such as the num­ber of peo­ple going hun­gry because of agro­fu­els and the num­ber of peo­ple who could be fed with one tank of bio­fu­el. Over 500 sig­na­tures object­ing to the plant were collected…it appears that Beck­ton, one of the most pol­lut­ed Lon­don bor­oughs, is pre­pared to fight back.

–

In Lon­don, veg­an cam­paign­ers we took to the streets of Chancery Lane to
treat the city work­ers to some veg­an food sam­ples. The response was good,
with a range of inter­est­ed peo­ple com­ing to taste the food. We gave away
hun­dreds of recipe book­lets, and leaflets for this year’s Lon­don Veg­an
Fes­ti­val.

—–
Bristol biofuels on food & climate day
Bris­tol Protest Over Tesco’s Bio­fu­els Claim

Bio­fu­els far from the panacea to petrol prices and cli­mate change, have added to the glob­al food price hike by tak­ing land pre­vi­ous­ly occu­pied by food crops. A study by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta found that grow­ing bio­fu­el on con­vert­ed rain­forests, peat lands, savan­nas or grass­lands cre­at­ed up to 420 times more car­bon diox­ide than it saved.

Wheat Prices have dou­bled in the UK over the past year, and con­sumers and retail­ers have so far man­aged to absorb this. But else­where in the world, peo­ple are going with­out wheat (and oth­er sta­ples) and bak­ers are going out of busi­ness.

To illus­trate this issue, a dozens bak­ers (rather than a bak­ers dozen!) will be fol­low­ing up Bris­tol Ris­ing Tides demo in April of this year to illus­trate the true cost of Agro-fuels. They will be at Tesco, East­ville between 4.30pm and 7pm

Ms Bread of Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide said:

“The ques­tion is do we want do feed our cars or feed our­selves?”

Tesco has made false claims about the source of the fuel sold at its ser­vice sta­tions, accord­ing to an inves­ti­ga­tion that found that the chain sold the most envi­ron­men­tal­ly dam­ag­ing types of biodiesel ‑Palm Oil — whilst claim­ing that it ‘s bio­fu­el was sourced from rel­a­tive­ly sus­tain­able UK-plant­ed rape seed oil.[2]

Mr A.Baker of Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide said:

“Its now clear that we leave big busi­ness to deal with cli­mate change, this is the kind of thing that will hap­pen — a bloody dis­as­ter”

At this years Cli­mate Camp (3rd — 10th August) there will be a nation­al day of action against Agro­fu­els.

[1] Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide is part of the Inter­na­tion­al Ris­ing Tide for Cli­mate Jus­tice net­work
www.risingtide.org.uk
[2] The Times,April 14, 2008 “Tesco green fuel ‘adds to cli­mate change”

Leaflet

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Taste the Waste
Wait­ing for (social) Change!

4/06/2008
Today in the Char­ing Cross area of Glas­gow a group of wait­ers invit­ed passers-by to ‘Taste the waste’ and sam­ple their free food. The menu was made up entire­ly out of skipped goods from super­mar­ket bins and includ­ed such delights as: home­made veg­an fre­quent fly­er banana cake, skipped chip, res­cued roast veg. and binned beans. This was part of the call to action on Food and Cli­mate Change by the Net­work for Cli­mate Action (http://networkforclimateaction.org.uk).

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Liv­er­pool host­ed a free veg­an food fair at its social cen­tre ‘Next to
Nowhere’. Around 50 peo­ple attend­ed and loads of food and infor­ma­tion was giv­en out. The event allowed for a lot of infor­mal dis­cus­sion, with a social area cre­at­ed for this pur­pose. Peo­ple were delight­ed to hear that they can come back for veg­an food every Sat­ur­day after­noon 1–5pm.

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Amsterdam on food & climate change day 1Amsterdam on food & climate change day 2
Pigs say: If you care about cli­mate change, eat less meat, milk and eggs

On Tues­day June 3rd, a group of pigs made a small action for a more veg­an Ams­ter­dam. They hand­ed out veg­an snacks to encour­age peo­ple not to buy that ham for din­ner. It may look like the pigs act­ed out of self-inter­est, but today their mes­sage was that meat pro­duc­tion is a major cause of cli­mate change. While the UN is con­fer­ring in Rome on World Food Secu­ri­ty and Cli­mate change, the pigs put a focus on that aver­age Euro­peans have a diet of dis­as­ter. Rais­ing ani­mals for food gen­er­ates more green­house gas­es than all the cars and trucks in the world com­bined.

Quite some peo­ple in front of the Albert Hei­jn on Joden­breestraat were hap­py to taste the organ­ic, veg­an falafel and choco­late cake and many said they are veg­e­tar­i­ans already. Peo­ple were sur­prised to hear that pro­duc­ing one kilo of cheese cause as much green­house gas emis­sions as dri­ving a car for 60 km. A Brazil­ian woman had wit­nessed the expand­ing soy fields used for feed­ing ani­mal indus­try.

“Con­sumers can make a huge improve­ment by avoid­ing ani­mal prod­ucts and imports, and by sup­port­ing local, organ­ic farm­ers instead. But humans need to organ­ise them­selves fast against the dom­i­nant cul­ture if they want to save them­selves from cli­mate chaos” the pig­gies stat­ed after all the food had been hand­ed out.

Tonight, Wednes­day June 4 from 19 there will be a film night in Plan­tage Dok­laan 12, with organ­ic veg­an food and ideas on how to com­bat cli­mate change. (See pro­gramme on the web­site)

Web­site: http://www.howtocookaplanet.net

Ready Steady Skip: Trailer and website launched!

Ready Steady Skip — the game show where need­less­ly wast­ed food is recov­ered from the bin and turned into deli­cious dish­es before your very eyes!

Ready Steady Skip — the game show where need­less­ly wast­ed food is recov­ered from the bin and turned into deli­cious dish­es before your very eyes!

And now, the moment you’ve all been wait­ing for: http://www.readysteadyskip.org.uk/

Ready Steady Skip is a bit like “Scrapheap Chal­lenge” meets “Ready Steady Cook” — skip­ping for food and whip­ping up some tasty dish­es, with plen­ty of hilar­i­ty (and peo­ple div­ing into skips).

Every year over 17 mil­lion tons of food are put straight into land­fill sites, yet over 4 mil­lion tons of this is per­fect­ly edi­ble and still well with­in it’s sell-by date. A whop­ping 5 mil­lion tons of food are wast­ed annu­al­ly by con­sumers alone: that is, more than a quar­ter of all food we buy goes into the bin. It’s high time this insan­i­ty stopped!

Skip­ping (aka. “Free­gan­ism” or “Dump­ster Div­ing”) is all about reclaim­ing per­fect­ly edi­ble food “waste” from the jaws of an insane sys­tem found­ed on greed, and mak­ing good use of it.

We’ve launched the Ready Steady Skip trail­er and web­site to coin­cide with the Days Of Cli­mate Action food day (3rd June 2008), which is high­light­ing the fact that the food we eat con­tributes up to a third of the emis­sions that are poi­son­ing the plan­et. When you con­sid­er the amount of food that is just thrown away, it brings home how need­less this luna­cy is. Nobody ever need go hun­gry — yet peo­ple still starve every day.

The pro­gramme was shot here in Not­ting­ham at the begin­ning of March, and the full episode will be released online in July 2008. We’re also try­ing to organ­ise a screen­ing (and pos­si­bly even anoth­er con­test) at the Cli­mate Camp.

Keep an eye on our web­site for updates!

Pre­vi­ous Notts Indy­media piece: Ready, Steady, Skip!! — The Pic­tures 1

info@readysteadyskip.org.uk
http://www.readysteadyskip.org.uk/