Category: Rest of Europe

Lon­don: Cli­mate activist ‘super-glued to door’ of lastminute.com

An envi­ron­men­tal activist was so enraged that lastminute.com con­tin­ue to push ‘short haul’ flights whilst know­ing the dam­age they do to the cli­mate, that she super-glued her­self to the front door of the company’s Vic­to­ria HQ.

At 8am this morn­ing, Pen­ny East­wood – a mem­ber of cli­mate action group, Plane Stu­pid, past­ed super­glue over her hands and glued her­self to the front doors of the build­ing — block­ing staff from enter­ing their offices.

Pen­ny said, “Whilst G8 lead­ers have sim­ply spout­ed more hot air, I’ve showed what one woman alone can do to shut down cli­mate crim­i­nals.”

She added, “Lastminute.com irre­spon­si­bly encour­age peo­ple to binge-fly five times a year. They’re forc­ing the world towards the brink of eco-melt­down and all for a quick buck!”

Pen­ny East­wood is one of those plan­ning to attend this summer’s Camp for Cli­mate Action at Heathrow.

info@planestupid.com
http://www.planestupid.com

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Lon­don Ris­ing Tide and Friends descend­ed on Chelsea Trac­tor coun­try on Fri­day night in a protest against the G8’s pathet­ic attempt to “con­sid­er” cli­mate change and to reduce CO2 emis­sions.

The Tigers and Clowns block­ad­ed the E$$O sta­tion at Ful­ham Rd for over to two hours to high­light Exxon Mobil/E$$Os role in bankrolling our future down the pipe. Their sup­port for the Liq­uid Nat­ur­al Gas pipeline com­ing to a city near you is paving the way for new Gas Fired pow­er sta­tions, lock­ing us into anoth­er 30 years with these emis­sion-spout­ing beasts. The emis­sions from these sta­tions are com­pa­ra­ble to the exist­ing Coal Fired ones!

Because the tankers car­ry­ing this gas have to come from Qatar and are so huge, they can­not nav­i­gate the Suez Canal so have to cir­cum­nav­i­gate Africa, freez­ing the gas as they go. In terms of emis­sions this makes the final fig­ures at use almost as high as ener­gy derived from coal. LNG is NOT a clean fuel!

The protest went well with the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of peo­ple, includ­ing car dri­vers… were pos­i­tive to the mes­sage that we were giv­ing out. The Police arrived after about thir­ty min­utes, but after telling us to stay out of E$$Os fore­court, we remained for anoth­er hour: their threat of “ten min­utes of you’re in the van” being the usu­al brava­do. A good time was had by all, and the Tigers will con­tin­ue to prowl…….

To get in touch:
london@risingtide.org.uk

For more info on ESSO’s pipeline http://www.fightthepipe.co.uk

STOP THE PRESS:
With the pipeline con­verg­ing on two fronts the protest three camp in the Bre­con Bea­cons has just been served with an evic­tion notice and are now on high alert for Mon­day 11th. Activists are now dug-in and locked-on up trees with sup­port from local peo­ple, ready to resist. They need your sup­port. If you can get down there, ring the camp hot­line on 07917383517, or email
bristol@risingtide.org.uk

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At around 7.15 pm on the 8th May, in a non-vio­lent action activists from Lon­don Ris­ing Tide, who are con­cerned about cli­mate change, block­ad­ed an ESSO petrol sta­tion in West Lon­don.

They claim ESSO’s huge eco­nom­ic clout enables the com­pa­ny to influ­ence ener­gy pol­i­cy, and that that a high pres­sure pipeline cur­rent­ly being con­struct­ed to car­ry ESSO nat­ur­al gas to UK pow­er sta­tions is unsafe. They main­tain that the solu­tion to the cli­mate change prob­lem is an over­all reduc­tion in ener­gy use. The con­struc­tion of the pipeline has also led to con­cerns over its dam­age to envi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive areas.

Fun­ny clowns with red noses sup­port­ed activists who were dressed as ESSO tigers while motorists were leaflet­ed and engaged in debate about their ener­gy use. The police arrived after an hour or so and where gen­er­al­ly well behaved. At one point the police told activists they could only car­ry on their protest for anoth­er 10 min­utes how­ev­er a deal was done allow­ing access to for motorists to the petrol sta­tion, and the action car­ried on for anoth­er 45 min­utes or so.

This action was timed to coin­cide with the end of the G8 in Ger­many.

For more info on ESSO’s pipeline http://www.fightthepipe.co.uk

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Nor­wich petrol sta­tion shut down on DoA Against Cli­mate Change and the G8

Dur­ing this morning’s rush hour twelve activists from Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide braved the East Coast storm warn­ings and shut down their local Jet petrol sta­tion as part of the Inter­na­tion­al Day of Action Against Cli­mate Change and the G8.

Hav­ing met up at sil­ly o’clock in the morn­ing and gath­ered togeth­er ban­ners, rope and ‘Dan­ger, Glob­al Warm­ing’ haz­ard tape, we arrived at the Jet petrol sta­tion on Dere­ham Road only to find 8 of Norfolk’s finest lying in wait. Ignor­ing them, we unpacked our ban­ners and stretched them across the three entrances, pre­vent­ing vehi­cles from fill­ing up. Pass­ing motorists rush­ing to work were treat­ed to the sight of us jump­ing up and down in the rain, wav­ing ban­ners bear­ing the slo­gans ‘Closed for a Total Re-think’; ‘Social Change, Not Cli­mate Change’; and ‘Inter­na­tion­al Day of Action Against Cli­mate Change and the G8.’

We hand­ed out leaflets to dri­vers and pedes­tri­ans, explain­ing that the block­ade was part of a series of events tak­ing place around the world to high­light the role played by the lead­ers of the high-emit­ting G8 nations in caus­ing cli­mate change, and to show up this week’s so-called ‘cli­mate deal’ for the sham that it is.

One of the ban­ner wavers was heard to shout: ‘We will not stand by and watch the plan­et burn as the G8 lead­ers and their cor­po­rate bed­fel­lows triv­i­alise the great­est threat fac­ing human­i­ty with a blind faith in tech­no-fix­es and mar­ket mech­a­nisms such as fraud­u­lent car­bon off­set schemes. If we are going to tru­ly solve this prob­lem, we need a rapid trans­for­ma­tion to a low-ener­gy soci­ety – start­ing with the dis­man­tling of the oil indus­try.’

We chose the less well-known Jet as our tar­get to show that there is no such thing as a good oil com­pa­ny. Jet is owned by Cono­coPhillips, the fifth largest oil refin­er in the world, and the first West­ern oil com­pa­ny to enter Iraq after the start of the war. Jet and Cono­coPhillips have so far escaped the crit­i­cism that has been jus­ti­fi­ably heaped upon indus­try giants like Shell and BP, but they are no dif­fer­ent. Cono­coPhillips, like all oil com­pa­nies, destroys ecosys­tems and com­mu­ni­ties around the world, and is prof­i­teer­ing from oil wars and cli­mate chaos.

The response from dri­vers and passers-by was pre­dictably mixed, and although the ear­ly arrival of the police forced us to change our plans slight­ly, the action still served its pur­pose: to high­light the inabil­i­ty of G8 lead­ers to tru­ly tack­le cli­mate change, and to take action in sol­i­dar­i­ty with those dis­rupt­ing the sum­mit in Ger­many and those already suf­fer­ing from the effects of cli­mate change around the world.

norwich@risingtide.org.uk
http://www.risingtide.org.uk

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TOUR OF EEEEVIL IN WHANGANUI-A-TARA, NEW ZEALAND — ACTION REPORT

The num­ber of pro­test­ers had been few, the atten­tion by our friends in blue aston­ish­ing­ly intense — 2 cop cars and one pad­dy-wag­on were fol­low­ing the small group close­ly.

the Tour of EEEEEvil start­ed in Mid­land Park with a phat boom-box hail­ing out loud. first they cycled towards the US embassy. crayons were used to beau­ti­fy the pave­ment, being under heavy scruti­ny by secu­ri­ty guards and police.

a cat’s leap lat­er, the pro­test­ers rang the door-bell of the Ger­man embassy to tell them they are all scum­my pol­luters of the envi­ron­ment. next sta­tion was the British High Com­mis­sion where a ban­ner was unfold­ed to make cap­i­tal­ism his­to­ry.

final­ly, the group was not keen on vis­it­ing the oth­er embassies of the G8 and cycled through the CBD and dis­persed around Vic­to­ria St, receiv­ing smiles and applause from some peo­ple on the streets.

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BRISTOL CRITICAL MASS — ACTION REPORT

This morn­ing saw a good natured crit­i­cal mass reclaim the streets of Bris­tol from car-cul­ture. A crowd of 40 to 50 rid­ers gath­ered in sol­i­dar­i­ty with protests against the G8 and to draw atten­tion to the chaos of cli­mate change.

This morn­ing saw a good natured and fun crit­i­cal mass reclaim the streets of Bris­tol from car-cul­ture! A good crowd of 40 to 50 rid­ers gath­ered in the cen­tre ready to move off in a car­ni­val of cycling in sol­i­dar­i­ty with protests against the G8 and to draw atten­tion to the chaos of cli­mate change.

This morn­ing saw a good natured and fun crit­i­cal mass reclaim the streets of Bris­tol from car-cul­ture! A good crowd of 40 to 50 rid­ers gath­ered in the cen­tre ready to move off in a car­ni­val of cycling in sol­i­dar­i­ty with protests against the G8 and to draw atten­tion to the chaos of cli­mate change. It was inter­est­ing to note there was lots of media here this time – nor­mal­ly at a crit­i­cal mass these is no media, but (being cyn­i­cal) I won­der if the media arrived this time because there was a lit­tle agro at the last one? Shame that the media go for sen­sa­tion­al­ist news and not real news!

Any­way, the crowd moved off towards Tem­ple Quay, the new finan­cial heart of bris­tol (?) down Bald­win Street, over the bridge and down towards the round­about that con­nects to Bris­tol Tem­ple Meads, then over into tem­ple quay where we found a mur­al on the floor ‘We Have the Pow­er’ – very apt! Then on towards Broad­mead and onto the bot­tom of the M32 and round back to the foun­tains. A good morn­ings work!

The recep­tion was almost total­ly pos­i­tive, fly­ers were hand­ed out to pedes­tri­ans and fel­low cyclists and dri­vers explain­ing what this was all about. Lots of peo­ple waved, cheers and beeped as we passed. There were bemused faces in cor­po­rate Bris­tol as the be-suit­ed Tem­ple Quay was invad­ed by ped­al-pow­er!

This event just going to show how peo­ple can reclaim a pub­lic space from the relent­less grind of the rat-race and build some com­mu­ni­ty. Unlike the G8, we care about cli­mate change and got off our ass to do some­thing! See you at the next one!

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Ger­many: 60 — 70 peo­ple are blockad­ing a Shell-Sta­tion in Ever­sha­gen. Nine police emer­gency vehi­cles are at the loca­tion, how­ev­er hold­ing back.

20070608_Shell — video/x‑ms-wmv 7.6M
20070608_Shell — video/x‑ms-wmv 7.6M

On Fri­day sam­ba bands and pro­tes­tors shut down the Shell garage in Ever­sha­gen, Ros­tock

Police, unsur­pris­ing­ly, arrived in sec­onds, and the riot squads sur­round­ed the garage.

But, despite this, the Shell sta­tion was blocked for an hour.

In Ger­many fuel sta­tions are not kept in stock by tanker trucks. They run huge fuel pipelines from one to the oth­er, link­ing them across the city. And in every fuel sta­tion is an emer­gency shut-off but­ton.

And, low and behold, some­one hit the but­ton, shut­ting off the fuel sup­ply to some if not all the Shell garages across Ros­tock, caus­ing a slight headache for the multi­na­tion­al oil and gas com­pa­ny’s prof­its that day in the love­ly north-west Ger­man city.

More pho­tos at http://indymedia.ie/article/82971
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Port­land, Ore­gon, USA

ACTION #1: Anti-Bor­ders Action

The Lead­ers of the 8 most pow­er­ful coun­tries, who main­tain glob­al inequal­i­ty, war, and star­va­tion will meet behind closed doors to plot our future for us at a lux­u­ri­ous health resort in Ger­many June 6th thru 8th. There has been a call out for inter­na­tion­al days of action across the globe to coin­cide with the mobi­liza­tion against the G8. Hun­dred of thou­sands of peo­ple from around the world are con­verg­ing on Ger­many, even some of our neigh­bors in Port­land.

We hear that call and come togeth­er in Port­land as decen­tral­ized and autonomous groups to say No to the G8, No to there Lies, and No More Tricks. They are eight, we are six billion…lets start act­ing like it and reject their chaot­ic sys­tem of exploita­tion and con­trol.

We meet at the INS Office to say No to the Bor­der fence being built, ICE Raids, and to reject the idea that mul­ti-nation­al cor­po­ra­tions can freely cross bor­ders to exploit peo­ple and steal land. While the peo­ple are being con­tained by bor­ders, forced off lands and con­trolled by mil­i­ta­riza­tion.

Fri­day, June 8th at 5:30pm
INS Office
NW Broad­way

Sup­port­ed by: Cas­ca­dia Ris­ing Tide, Port­land Sin Fron­teras, Food not bombs, and Stu­dents for Uni­ty.

ACTION #2: Anti-Dam Action

On Fri­day, Stop La Paro­ta PDX launched its cam­paign to pres­sure com­pa­nies with ties to the financ­ing of La Paro­ta Dam to sev­er all con­nec­tions to the destruc­tive project.

Activists held a col­or­ful demon­stra­tion in front of the Lloyd Cen­ter Sears to demand the Sears Hold­ing Cor­po­ra­tion cut all ties to Grupo Car­so. Grupo Car­so is the finan­cial umbrel­la of Mex­i­can bil­lion­aire, Car­los Slim Helú, who has pub­licly declared that Grupo Car­so sub­sidiaries will be involved in every aspect of La Paro­ta.

La Paro­ta, a 765-megawatt hydro­elec­tric dam slat­ed for the Papa­gayo Riv­er in Guer­rero, Mex­i­co, is a clas­sic infra­struc­ture expan­sion project result­ing from trade agree­ments like NAFTA and the FTAA in the worst of ways. The dam would sub­merge 43,000 acres of for­est and farm­land along the river’s banks, dis­plac­ing at least 25,000 most­ly indige­nous campesinos (sub­sis­tence farm­ers) from the Com­mu­nal Lands of Cac­ahu­ate­pec. Already, indige­nous resis­tance to the dam has been met with impris­on­ment and mur­der.

Far from being a renew­able ener­gy source, sed­i­ment accu­mu­la­tion lim­its the elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ing capac­i­ty of dams to 50–100 years. Mean­while, large dams are sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tors to glob­al warm­ing. As the tremen­dous bio­mass of a trop­i­cal for­est decays beneath a reser­voir, it gives off green­house gas­es. Dams in trop­i­cal regions have been shown to pro­duce any­where from two to 40 times as much car­bon diox­ide as an equiv­a­lent coal-fired plant.

The rea­son for this bla­tant exploita­tion and eco­cide? Elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed from La Paro­ta would be incor­po­rat­ed into an inter­na­tion­al ener­gy grid and used to pow­er fac­to­ry-cen­ters, maquilado­ras (export-ori­ent­ed sweat­shop cor­ri­dors). The phe­nom­e­non of seiz­ing indige­nous lands and then forc­ing inhab­i­tants into work­ing for sub­op­ti­mal wages is not ‘eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment,’ but a mod­ern ver­sion of colo­nial­ism.

The CFE made no attempt to include the campesinos in the deci­sion-mak­ing process regard­ing La Paro­ta. In July 2003, with­out giv­ing notice or seek­ing per­mis­sion, the com­mis­sion sim­ply sent in machin­ery to build two tun­nels to divert the flow of the Papa­gayo. Farm­ers from sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties respond­ed with road block­ades and encamp­ments to keep CFE equip­ment out of the area. The ongo­ing road­blocks have been large­ly suc­cess­ful, and the CFE has been forced to pull out most of its equip­ment In Chilpancin­go, the state cap­i­tal, the pro­test­ers were 30,000 strong. Their mes­sage was clear: “We are ready to die for the land.”

The demon­stra­tion was held both in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the resist­ing campesinos as well as the resis­tance in Ger­many to the G8. La Paro­ta is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of the glob­al sys­tem of oppres­sion cre­at­ed by orga­ni­za­tions like the G8 to fur­ther the inter­ests of transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions at the cost of peo­ple and envi­ron­men­tal integri­ty.

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For Imme­di­ate Release
June 8, 2007
www.risingtidenorthamerica.org

Asheville Crit­i­cal Mass Con­fronts Bank of Amer­i­ca for Invest­ments in Coal Indus­try

Today dozens of cyclists paid a sur­prise vis­it to Bank of Amer­i­ca to protest their finan­cial back­ing of coal com­pa­nies as a part of the Inter­na­tion­al Day of Action Against Cli­mate Change and G8. After tying up down­town traf­fic, the 30-strong bike ride descend­ed on the down­town Asheville head­quar­ters of Bank of Amer­i­ca. Once there, a num­ber of peo­ple dumped coal in front of the main entrance, while anoth­er per­son spon­ta­neous­ly sac­ri­ficed their bike lock and locked the front doors shut.

With police still not in sight, the bike ride con­tin­ued on to anoth­er Bank of Amer­i­ca branch, where par­tic­i­pants plas­tered the bank in stick­ers, hand­ed out fly­ers to cus­tomers, and held ban­ners read­ing, “Stop Bank­ing on Cli­mate Change” and “Cli­mate Chaos: Brought to you by Bank of Amer­i­ca.”

The protest was held in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the mas­sive anti-G8 protests in Ger­many, where lead­ers of the 8 rich­est coun­tries con­tin­ue to drag their feet on mak­ing any mean­ing­ful reduc­tions in green­house gas emis­sions. The bike ride was orga­nized by Asheville Ris­ing Tide, a group ded­i­cat­ed to con­fronting the root caus­es of cli­mate change.

Bank of Amer­i­ca plays a major role in per­pet­u­at­ing cli­mate change by its mas­sive invest­ments in the coal indus­try. Pound for pound, burn­ing coal releas­es more C02 emis­sions then any oth­er fos­sil fuel. Bank of Amer­i­ca has facil­i­tat­ed near­ly $1 bil­lion in loans to Massey Ener­gy and Arch Coal, two of the largest com­pa­nies involved in the envi­ron­men­tal­ly dev­as­tat­ing process of moun­tain­top removal coal min­ing. Moun­tain­top removal min­ing has already reduced 500 square miles of moun­tains to rub­ble and buried over 1,200 miles of streams in South­ern Appalachia.

Bank of Amer­i­ca has also made loans and facil­i­tat­ed stock offer­ings for Peabody Ener­gy to the tune of sev­er­al bil­lion dol­lars. Peabody is infa­mous for its human rights vio­la­tions against Native Amer­i­cans. Since 1975, over 14,000 indige­nous peo­ple, most­ly Dine’, have been forcibly relo­cat­ed off of their ances­tral lands to make way for Peabody’s Black Mesa strip mine in north­east­ern Ari­zona. This strip mine, the largest in the US, has dev­as­tat­ed thou­sands of acres of indige­nous land and drained local aquifers that are essen­tial for sus­tain­ing life in this desert cli­mate. In addi­tion to these abus­es, Peabody Ener­gy, along with a num­ber of oth­er com­pa­nies fund­ed by Bank of Amer­i­ca, are pur­su­ing the con­struc­tion of a new wave of dirty coal plants.

“By tar­get­ing coal indus­try investors, we can under­mine their finan­cial sup­port which they depend on to con­tin­ue oper­a­tion. The less mon­ey they have, the less coal they can extract and burn. In the face of cat­a­clysmic cli­mate change, we do not have time to wait for gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions. We must direct­ly inter­vene now!” said Jen­nifer Clayson, who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the ride.

This week’s G8 meet­ings failed to even begin to address cli­mate change. While some Euro­pean coun­tries pushed for 50% emis­sions cuts by 2050, the US man­aged to derail even this goal, which falls far short of the reduc­tions that are nec­es­sary. In the end, the G8 coun­tries agreed to “con­sid­er” cut­ting green­house gas emis­sions. “In the face of mas­sive species extinc­tion, drought, and ris­ing sea lev­els, the best these world lead­ers can come up with is to ‘con­sid­er’ doing some­thing? Until there is real change, we, along with peo­ple around the world, will con­tin­ue to take direct action
against those respon­si­ble for cli­mate change,” said Liam Jef­fer­son. Accord­ing to sci­en­tists, green­house gas emis­sions need to be slashed by at least 80% by 2050 to avoid the worst impacts of cli­mate change.

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San Fran­cis­co Bike ride against G8

On Fri­day June 8, 2007, there was a crit­i­cal mass-style bicy­cle ride with an anti-G8 theme which ini­tial­ly gath­ered at Justin Her­man plaza, and then pro­ceed­ed along the Embar­cadero, Colum­bus Avenue, Mar­ket Street, Valen­cia St., and then end­ed at Dolores Park. Every­thing pro­ceed­ed peace­ful­ly, and the size of the group was good for being able to be aware of every­one’s loca­tion. There was a large police pres­ence the entire time. This might have stemmed from a fias­co of police response to the 2005 G8 protest which result­ed in com­man­ders get­ting reas­signed, inven­tive charges against par­tic­i­pants and FBI vis­its to jour­nal­ists.

Most peo­ple on the side­walks appeared hap­py to see us, or at least had no neg­a­tive reac­tion. Some­times call-in radio shows and rant­i­ng sec­tions on youtube and news­pa­per web­sites give the feel­ing that the pub­lic has a lot of antibi­cy­cle fanat­ics, but we did­n’t see any.

Appear­ances were made by both Gabe Myers, who was basi­cal­ly arrest­ed dur­ing the 2005 protest as a ‘suck­er’ and charged (and lat­er let go) with felony lynch­ing after drop­ping a foam sign in the road as a police car drove at high speed towards him, and also Josh Wolf, who spent a record amount of time in jail for refus­ing to speak to a grand jury formed to probe the bat­tery of the oth­er offi­cer who was dri­ving the vehi­cle. Grand juries gath­er­ing evi­dence and issu­ing indict­ments are allowed unre­strict­ed ques­tion­ing of wit­ness­es, unlike reg­u­lar court­room prac­tice, and a wit­ness is not allowed to have a lawyer present. In sit­u­a­tions where a polit­i­cal group is involved (such as the Red Scare of the 1950s), these juries are capa­ble of vast­ly over­reach­ing and gath­er­ing long lists of names of peo­ple unin­volved in crimes, who could be brand­ed as sus­pects. Press reports cre­at­ed a con­fus­ing pic­ture, but Wolf was not con­sid­ered in con­tempt of court for refus­ing to tes­ti­fy about the injury of the offi­cer, or to show his video tape, but rather he did­n’t agree to unre­strict­ed ques­tions about par­tic­i­pants who he had a con­fi­den­tial jour­nal­is­tic rela­tion­ship with.

The ride was pret­ty nice. It was very sun­ny, and most of the route had long stretch­es unin­ter­rupt­ed by short cycle lights. The nature of the large police response was inter­est­ing in that only a small group of friend­ly bicy­cle offi­cers, plus some Harley and motor­bike rid­ing police offi­cers were mixed togeth­er in the crowd. We had no trou­ble split­ting the road and tun­nel with cars, and things felt much safer than dur­ing ordi­nary times when you inevitably split the right lane with bus­es and right-turn­ing cabs. In a few cas­es, there was mixed body lan­guage when some offi­cers object­ed to the tail-end of the group con­tin­u­ing to move on a red light, so peo­ple became wor­ried and stopped. Yet oth­er offi­cers appeared to be hur­ry­ing the group through on the red by stop­ping traf­fic. In any case, every so often one could squint two blocks down and make out police vans, Chevy Suburban/Tahoes, and cars mov­ing by, some­times briefly sound­ing a horn as though they were try­ing to get around traf­fic. Occa­sion­al­ly the ride would come across a new group of police parked well away from the start, such as Colum­bus avenue. Then at the end where peo­ple lis­tened to music, while a small­er group stood across the street, it seemed like more vans with police emblem kept turn­ing the cor­ner to dri­ve by.
Rea­sons behind the neg­a­tive response by thou­sands of peo­ple (from the left, right, and cen­ter) to the G8 are dif­fi­cult to sum­ma­rize briefly. On the sur­face, a meet­ing of world lead­ers might appear to be a pos­i­tive thing, akin to the cre­ation of the UN. In addi­tion, it isn’t clear how much could real­ly get dis­cussed dur­ing 2–3 days of talks, or how any­thing so omi­nous could arise out of this.

The eas­i­est way to explain it is that the era of colo­nial­ism nev­er end­ed. Gov­ern­ments (span­ning mul­ti­ple pres­i­dents) have spent the last few decades work­ing close­ly with large com­pa­nies and are con­trol­ling the economies and gov­ern­ments of most of the third world against the inter­ests of their pop­u­la­tions. It is easy to let your eyes glaze over and think “yes, we just need to invest in Africa” and not real­ize that the areas of Africa with the most for­eign ‘invest­ment’ are the most impov­er­ished, for instance the hor­ri­ble resource wars in the Con­go (where the Unit­ed States helped assas­si­nate their demo­c­ra­t­ic leader in the 60s, and installed a dic­ta­tor), or Shell Oil destroy­ing the land base in the Niger­ian Delta while shar­ing none of its prof­its.

Much of the deci­sions and con­tent of these meet­ings is worked out before­hand. Insti­tu­tions such as the World Bank are where the details of public/private plans are worked out by small com­mit­tees. One of the most com­mon mech­a­nisms for cre­at­ing third world pover­ty is the forc­ing of coun­tries to take loans for large infra­struc­ture projects such as dams, water­works and pow­er grids which aren’t used by work­ing class, are car­ried out by first world cor­po­ra­tions (such as Bech­tel in Bolivia) and end up indebt­ing the pop­u­la­tion for decades.

Final­ly, while it seems like indi­vid­u­als have lit­tle chance of influ­enc­ing such pow­er­ful insti­tu­tions, it is impor­tant to remem­ber that the WTO has had to make major con­ces­sions to embold­ened latin amer­i­can, african, and SE asian con­tin­gents after the major turn­ing point after the 1999 protests. The sign­ing of Merkel’s Cli­mate state­ment was regard­ed as a big suc­cess dur­ing this meet­ing, although the lack of con­crete actions promised in this agree­ment makes it seem like the pub­lic was just suc­cess­ful in mak­ing the lead­ers want to seem respon­sive. You as an indi­vid­ual might not be able to change it all by your­self, but it is com­ing about as an emer­gent prop­er­ty of a move­ment of less than 10% of the pop­u­la­tion who become activists.

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FLORIDA: CRITICAL MASS
Pick­et signs blew in the wind as three bik­ers rode slow­ly but sure­ly down Dix­ie High­way. Unit­ing with activists world­wide in protest of the Group of Eight sum­mit in Heili­gen­damm, Ger­many, Lake Worth con­tributed a total of six. But the issues they brought hit close to home.

Their des­ti­na­tion was the Palm Beach Gar­dens home of FPL Group Inc. Chief Exec­u­tive Lewis Hay III.
Their com­plaint: FPL’s deci­sion to build the West Coun­ty Ener­gy Cen­ter, a nat­ur­al gas plant, about 1,000 feet from a wildlife pre­serve, accord­ing to the group’s fli­er. “You can’t smoke 1,000 feet from a school, but you can put a pow­er plant 1,000 feet from an ani­mal pre­serve?” asked sup­port­er Rachel Kijew­s­ki, 22.

The group rode a large part of the four-hour trek in front of their veg­gie truck. The beat-up blue solu­tion to glob­al warm­ing fights petrol with veg­etable oil. “Its exhaust smells like tem­pu­ra,” said bike rid­er Pana­gi­oti Tsolkas.

Most dri­vers’ reac­tions to the trio were pos­i­tive, giv­ing them thumbs-up. Their jour­ney, how­ev­er, was not with­out chal­lenges. Moth­er Nature poured down rain all Fri­day after­noon. Aver­ag­ing 7 to 10 mph on the high­way, the group pressed on, stop­ping traf­fic the entire way until they were stopped out­side the gate lead­ing to Hay’s home inside Old Marsh Coun­try Club.

As the G‑8 sum­mit’s gath­er­ing of the eight indus­tri­al pow­er­hous­es comes to a close, Lynne Purvis said she feels their fight is just begin­ning.
“It’s hard you know,” Purvis said.
“We’re all pret­ty low bud­get. These rich exec­u­tives have all this secu­ri­ty and mon­ey and to sup­ply these things and we use card­board signs and pub­lic tran­sit.” Laugh­ing in spite of their small num­bers, the pro­tes­tors remained opti­mistic.
“We’d love if he decid­ed not to build an ener­gy cen­ter,” she said. “As easy as it is for him to keep this in his nine-to-five life, it affects us too.”

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Not­ting­ham: Activists pick­et A453 exhi­bi­tion

The High­ways Agency held a fan­cy exhi­bi­tion in Clifton today, to pro­mote their planned widen­ing of the A453. So cli­mate-change activists pick­et­ed it.

With thoughts of the G8 and the inter­na­tion­al day of action on cli­mate change in our heads, we came to the road­builder’s PR show to put the oth­er side of the argu­ment. Our dis­play was a lot less flash than that of the H.A. but we got our mes­sage across, and many vis­i­tors to the exhi­bi­tion were very sup­port­ive.

We want­ed to point out the links between the pro­posed A453 scheme and the pro­posed M1 widen­ing and EMids Air­port expansion…a com­bined recipe for more traf­fic growth, more pol­lu­tion, more C02 pumped into our dying atmos­phere. Strange­ly the H.A. exhi­bi­tion made no men­tion of cli­mate change, although they were tack­ling pol­lu­tion by giv­ing away free in-car air fresh­en­ers!

The exhi­bi­tion is at Clifton Leisure Cen­tre, Southchurch Dri­ve all day tomor­row (sat 9th). Why not email your com­ments on road­build­ing and cli­mate to A453Widening@highways.gsi.gov.uk as well.

climateactionnow@hotmail.co.uk

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In Por­tu­gal, the G8 Net­work has made accions in city of Lis­bon and Por­to at 8 of June, Inter­na­tion­al Day of Direct Accion for Cli­mate Accion. You can see fotos and videos in the blog www.geoito2007.blogspot.com

In Lis­bon we made, in Down Town (Augus­ta Street), a batlle for cli­mate jus­tice (“World isn´t a tar­get, from CO2 has to be saved”), in wich the peo­ple of the street tried to stop the 8 lead­ers of G8 to fill the world, speacil­ly south hem­is­fere, with pol­lu­tion: the world against the pol­i­tics of G8! In a world map the G8 throw black balls (the CO2) to the poor­est coun­tries while peo­ple throw green balls (“the good actions for cli­mate”) to pre­vent cli­mate dis­as­ter and social injus­tice: mean­ing that G8 are his­tor­i­cal respon­s­ables for cli­mate change and their pol­i­tics will not pre­vent seri­ous dis­as­ters that affect pri­mar­i­ly the poor­er, because they will con­tin­ue to polute the world mak­ing busi­ness of pol­lu­tion and explor­ing the poor­est coun­tries. We made also some games in the street, invit­ing peo­ple to step pol­lu­tion and save cli­mate (the G8 stepped the actions to save cli­mate and not pol­lu­tion…), and put ban­ners in one of the most pol­lut­ed avenues in city due to auto­mo­bile traf­fic say­ing: “400 thou­sand cars for day…is to much”, “less car, more pub­lic trans­ports, less polu­tion”, “free­dom to move, city to the peo­ple”.

In Por­to we sim­u­late, in Down Town (San­ta Cata­ri­na Street), a emis­sions trad­ing mar­ket. The G8 leader trad­ed emis­sions between them (black bal­lons) and then offered pol­lu­tion to the peo­ple on the street.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to all!

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A bad smell sur­round­ed Bicy­clist’s Square last fri­day morn­ing, Glob­al Direct Action Day against G8 and Cli­mate Change. All around the world, peo­ple rel­caimed the streets to say no to the letarghy of the 8 lead­ers that met in Ger­many behind fences and armys.

In Sao Paulo, Brasil, 25 human beings joined to cel­e­brate life, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and the act of liv­ing togheter in a Crit­i­cal Mass ride for life. In Ger­many, there’re only 8 human beings decid­ing to keep war and preada­to­ry waste of resources that destroys the plan­et and kills lifes all around the globe.

A tree was plant­ed on Bicy­clist’s Square. It was in hon­or of a home­less man that was sleep­ing below the Square and was killed by a car on may 25th, a few hours before may Crit­i­cal Mass take the streets to cel­e­brate life.

First stop: Ital­ian Con­sulate. Fiats, Fer­raris, Masser­atis, Lam­borgh­i­nis and Berlus­co­nis kills thou­sands of human beings every year.

Sec­ond stop: Petro­brás build­ing, the brazil­ian fuel com­pa­ny. The plan to make Brazil become a huge cane brake is no ener­getic or eco­log­i­cal solu­tion, but only a way to fuel an obses­sion and keep the state of war, envi­ro­men­tal destruc­tion and irra­tional mobil­i­ty stan­darts.

Off the bikes on the cross­walk, going to the third stop: Japan Con­sulate. Hon­das, Toy­otas and Mit­subishis kills thou­sands of peo­ple every year all around the world.

Fourth stop: French Con­sulate. Renaults and Peu­geots pol­lute as much as the oth­ers. In Sao Paulo, air pol­lu­tion kills about 8 peo­ple a day. More than a half of the air pol­lu­tion comes from pri­vate cars.

Still We Ride

Fifth stop: Ger­man Con­sulate. Mer­cedes, BMWs and Aud­is spread indi­vid­u­al­ism and agres­siv­i­ty, con­tribut­ing to the plan­e­tary state of war.

Who makes prof­it on that?

In front of British Con­sulate, Earth on Dan­ger on the hands of war poo­dle Tony Blair.

They’re respon­si­ble for recy­cling in São Paulo.

Love against war.

Ethanol is a lie.

Mr. Puttin was’t there.

We’re traf­fic.

Crit­i­cal Mass at Daslu, the store where the rich­est peo­ple in Brazil shops. Our “G8-peo­ple” shop there and seems to feel nau­sea about their own land: eng­lish writ­ten phras­es, employ­ees dress­ing french but­ler clothes, just beside the pol­lut­ed Pin­heiros riv­er and sur­round­ed by third world fave­las.

Cana­di­an con­sulate on World Trade Cen­ter Sao Paulo: Earth in dan­ger (and it’s not because of Bin Laden).

U.S. Con­sulate. Out­side, it looks like Guan­tanamo.

Note to Mr. Bush: “Brazil isn’t a cane brake / G8: State Ter­ror”

66 years old, 22 years rid­ing.

A gift from Crit­i­cal Mass: one less car!