Category: Scotland (Highlands & Islands)

Scot­land (high­lands & islands)

National Squatters Meeting 9–10 February 2008 Leeds

So we are invit­ing peo­ple involved in all squat­ted autonomous spaces around the UK to meet and dis­cuss the squat­ting sit­u­a­tion and some prepa­ra­tion for the days of action in April.

Squat action days flierSo we are invit­ing peo­ple involved in all squat­ted autonomous spaces around the UK to meet and dis­cuss the squat­ting sit­u­a­tion and some prepa­ra­tion for the days of action in April.

So we are invit­ing peo­ple involved in all squat­ted autonomous spaces around the UK to meet and dis­cuss the squat­ting sit­u­a­tion and some prepa­ra­tion for the days of action in April. The idea for this meet­ing is inspired by the recent inter­na­tion­al meet­ing in Dijon.

Some of the ideas of what could be dis­cussed at this meet­ing are…
• Build­ing a stronger net­work between the squats/Autonomous spaces through­out the UK.
• Ini­tial plan­ning for the days of action.
• The repres­sion and resis­tance fac­ing Autonomous spaces in the UK.
• How we can make bet­ter use of Autonomous spaces in terms of con­nect­ing them to issues such as increased sur­veil­lance, hous­ing prob­lems, gen­tri­fi­ca­tion and the fun­da­men­tal issue of who owns and con­trols our land, space and lives.
• The impact of non squat­ted Autonomous spaces on the squat­ting move­ment.
• Break­ing out of the “squat­ting scene”.
• The impact of drugs on the move­ment.

This is just some ideas of what could come out of this meet­ing, obvi­ous­ly there is no set agen­da as this is decen­tral­ized so we want to make a col­lec­tive deci­sion about what will be dis­cussed at the start of the meet­ing.
We feel this could be a real­ly pos­i­tive week­end; we’d like to see loads of you there. We’ve cho­sen Leeds as a loca­tion even though not all of us live there, because although it might not feel like it to you down south but it’s a cen­tral loca­tion on this island!
Please get in touch if you’re gonna come along, our e‑mail is below. It is impor­tant for us to know how many peo­ple to expect. Please also get in touch if you want help set up or get involved in any oth­er way… Hope to see you all in Feb­ru­ary….

Squat Net­work
squatmeetup@googlemail.com

Fossil Fools Day, April 1st 2008

Ris­ing Tide Inter­na­tion­al is call­ing for a day of action against the fos­sil fuel indus­try on April 1st 2008…

Fossil Fools Day advance flierRis­ing Tide Inter­na­tion­al is call­ing for a day of action against the fos­sil fuel indus­try on April 1st 2008…
FOSSIL FOOLS DAY!

Roll up, roll up! The cli­mate cir­cus is in town. Cli­mate change threat­ens our very sur­vival, but the fools at the head of the fos­sil fuel empire con­tin­ue to plun­der the earth, with gov­ern­ments the will­ing court jesters at their side.

They would have us believe that we can escape cli­mate change with tech­no-fix­es, mar­ket mech­a­nisms and off­set schemes – all tech­no­crat­ic acro­bat­ics that dis­tract us from the truth: the only real solu­tion to cli­mate change is to keep fos­sil fuels in the ground.

For over a cen­tu­ry the fos­sil fuel indus­try has been fool­ing with our lives. From extrac­tion to com­bus­tion they have poi­soned our air, pol­lut­ed our water and ruined our cli­mate. On April 1st, 2008, we’re going to turn the tables and show them who the real fools are.

Find a local fos­sil fool – the coal-min­ing clown, the off­set con­tor­tion­ist, the avi­a­tor trip­ping on the high wire, the super­mar­ket food mile freak show, the oily strong man, or any oth­er fool that deserves your atten­tion – and join with thou­sands around the world in tak­ing one step clos­er to dis­man­tling the fos­sil fuel indus­try.

On Fos­sil Fools Day, bring the spir­it of car­ni­val and mis­chief to the fight for cli­mate jus­tice.

www.fossilfoolsday.org
www.risingtide.org.uk

(More info and resources com­ing soon… for now, put the date in your diary, spread the call-out above far and wide, and start schem­ing!)

300 on the streets of Helsinki for squat Elimäki — International Days Of Action For Squats & Autonomous Spaces — April 08

Helsin­ki, Fin­land: We get more time – 300 on the streets of Helsin­ki for squat Elimä­ki

Thurs­day was a day of vic­to­ry for the squat­ting scene in Helsin­ki. 300 peo­ple defied the real­ly shit­ty weath­er and gath­ered to demon­strate at the Youth Depart­ment of the city to show their sup­port to the social cen­tre Elimä­ki, aka squat E15.

Helsin­ki, Fin­land: We get more time – 300 on the streets of Helsin­ki for squat Elimä­ki

Thurs­day was a day of vic­to­ry for the squat­ting scene in Helsin­ki. 300 peo­ple defied the real­ly shit­ty weath­er and gath­ered to demon­strate at the Youth Depart­ment of the city to show their sup­port to the social cen­tre Elimä­ki, aka squat E15.

The Youth Depart­ment of Helsin­ki had gath­ered to decide on whether to rent the squat­ted house on Elimäenkatu (Elimäk­istreet) to be used as a social cen­tre for the youth of the city. This was the sec­ond time offi­cials from the city came togeth­er to decide on the issue. After post­pon­ing the deci­sion at their first meet­ing a month ago the board now unan­i­mous­ly decid­ed to inves­ti­gate the real con­di­tion of our house. The deci­sion can be under­stood as an offi­cial recog­ni­tion of the impor­tance to have an autonomous space in Helsin­ki.

The house on Elimäenkatu has been deemed in very bad con­di­tion by the offi­cials of the city. The state­ment has been sup­port­ed by no real mea­sure­ments or data what­so­ev­er and on the con­trary been proved wrong by the inves­ti­ga­tions we our­selves have made. This fact got rec­og­nized by the board of the Youth Depart­ment in their deci­sion to appoint a pri­vate con­struc­tion firm to inves­ti­gate fur­ther on the mat­ter.

The solu­tion that the squat­ters and some peo­ple from the city have been work­ing on is to have the house rent­ed by the Youth Depart­ment to be used as an autonomous social cen­tre. The house has been in this use since it was squat­ted in the begin­ning of August. After a long peri­od of bad events on our issue the out­look is now bet­ter. But it would be overt­ly opti­mistic to say that if the inves­ti­ga­tions on our house turn out to be good the city would sup­port us. Dur­ing the last months the politi­cians and offi­cials of the city have been chang­ing their state­ments on whether to legalise the house or not on a dai­ly basis. The Finnish media does not fol­low the game in the side-scenes where politi­cians and offi­cials are manip­u­lat­ing each oth­er to top­ple our project. We are far from secur­ing the only social cen­tre in Helsin­ki but much clos­er than before.

How­ev­er the sit­u­a­tion of Squat E15 devel­ops the squat­ting scene in Helsin­ki and oth­er Finnish cities is now stronger than ever before. We are con­stant­ly grow­ing in num­bers and a sup­port demo of 300 peo­ple (or more) is more than we ever could have mus­tered half a year ago. We now have recog­ni­tion for our needs and will not give up until we have this house or an equal­ly good place guar­an­teed to us. Last but not least the inter­na­tion­al sup­port we have been get­ting (Ghent, Copen­hagen, Ams­ter­dam, Tallinn and Malmö as far as we know) means a lot to a small
but grow­ing scene like ours. The strug­gle for free spaces con­tin­ues!

Love and sol­i­dar­i­ty
Social cen­tre Elimä­ki
www.valtaus.org

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Squat action days flierOn Fri­day the 4th and Sat­ur­day the 5th of April 2008, we call for two days of demon­stra­tion, direct action, pub­lic infor­ma­tion, street-par­ty, squat­ting… in defence of free spaces and for an anti-cap­i­tal­ist pop­u­lar cul­ture. Through these two days, we want to help cre­ate more vis­i­bil­i­ty of autonomous spaces and squats as a european/global polit­i­cal move­ment. We want to devel­op inter­con­nec­tions and sol­i­dar­i­ty between squats and autonomous spaces. We want to keep link­ing our spaces with new peo­ple and new strug­gles, and sup­port the cre­ation of autonomous spaces in places where there has not been a his­to­ry of this kind of action. We want to build, step by step, our abil­i­ty to over­come the wave of repres­sion falling on us.

We call for decen­tralised and autonomous actions of all kinds, depend­ing on what peo­ple feel to be the most appro­pri­ate to their local con­text. You’ll find below the polit­i­cal con­tent we wish to give to these two days.

= We are every­where…

For cen­turies, peo­ple have used squats and autonomous spaces, either urban or rur­al, to take con­trol of their own lives. They are a tool, a tac­tic, a prac­tice, and a way for peo­ple to live out their strug­gles. For decades, squat move­ments across Europe and beyond have fought cap­i­tal­ist devel­op­ment, con­tribut­ing to local strug­gles against destruc­tion; pro­vid­ing alter­na­tives to prof­it-mak­ing and con­sumer cul­ture; run­ning social cen­tres and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry activ­i­ties out­side of the main­stream econ­o­my. Demon­strat­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties for self-organ­is­ing with­out hier­ar­chy; cre­at­ing inter­na­tion­al net­works of exchange and sol­i­dar­i­ty. These net­works have changed many lives, break­ing out of social con­trol and pro­vid­ing free spaces where peo­ple can live out­side the norm.

Among oth­er things, these places pro­vide bases for meet­ings and projects, for the cre­ation and dis­tri­b­u­tion of sub­ver­sive cul­ture, for the non-mon­e­tary based exchange of goods, resources and knowl­edge, for exper­i­men­tat­ing with new ways of liv­ing, for col­lec­tive debates, for recy­cling and con­struc­tion, for agri­cul­tur­al activ­i­ties, for the pro­duc­tion of inde­pen­dant media.

Whether we speak of urban squats or of pur­chased land, of nego­ti­at­ed or re-appro­pri­at­ed rur­al land, of restored fac­to­ries or self-built build­ings, these spaces are refuges for rebels and out­laws, poor and home­less peo­ple, rad­i­cal activists, ille­gal immi­grants. Social cen­tres are cru­cial to us as part of a move­ment for social change.

= All over Europe, repres­sive agen­das are being pushed by gov­ern­ments

They are attack­ing long-stand­ing autonomous spaces such as the Ung­domshuset in Copen­hagen, Koepi and Rigaer Straße in Berlin, EKH in Vien­na and Les Tan­ner­ies in Dijon, squat­ted social cen­tres in Lon­don and Ams­ter­dam, Ifanet in Thes­sa­loni­ki, etc. In France, squats have become a pri­or­i­ty tar­get for the police after the anti-CPE move­ment and the wave of actions and riots that hap­pened dur­ing the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions peri­od. In Ger­many, many autonomous spaces have been searched and attacked before the G8 sum­mit. In Gene­va and Barcelona, two old and big squat­ting “fortress­es”, the author­i­ties have decid­ed to try to put an end to the move­ment. Where­as it is still pos­si­ble to occu­py emp­ty build­ings in some coun­tries, it has already become a crime in some oth­ers. In the coun­try­side, access to land is becom­ing hard­er and com­munes face increas­ing prob­lems from leg­is­la­tion on hygiene, secu­ri­ty and gen­tri­fi­ca­tion by the bour­geoisie and tourists. All over Europe, inde­pen­dent cul­tures are being threat­ened.

Sev­er­al months ago we saw run­ning bat­tles in the streets of Copen­hagen and actions every­where in Europe in an explo­sion of anger at the evic­tion of the Ung­domshuset social cen­tre. Since then, and with a few oth­er big resis­tance sto­ries that hap­pened over the last months, we’ve man­aged to renew the mean­ing of inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty.

We are moti­vat­ed by the same pas­sions, we feel the same deter­mi­na­tion, face a com­mon ene­my in repres­sion, and are unit­ed across bor­ders by our desire to build a world of equal­i­ty and self-deter­mi­na­tion. As unaligned and ungovern­able islands of uncon­trolled free­dom we want to con­tin­ue to act in sol­i­dar­i­ty, and strength­en our inter­na­tion­al links, no mat­ter how many kilo­me­tres there are between us.

= Issues beyond the actions

We also would like these days of actions to enable and inspire dis­cus­sion, to demon­strate var­i­ous pos­si­bil­i­ties & strate­gies, to be an occa­sion to share skills. These are some of the issues we would like to push:
* what do we expect from and under­stand by autonomous spaces?
* What is their role in the pur­suit of rad­i­cal social change?
* Where do they lie on the scale of’al­ter­na­tive’ to ‘con­fronta­tion­al’?
* share infor­ma­tion on the range of activ­i­ties that take place in autonomous social spaces along with ideas for how to make them work;
*ques­tion the pro­duc­tion of goods and ser­vices; and encour­age the exchange of knowl­edge par­tic­u­lar­ly between the town and the coun­try­side.
* share expe­ri­ences, inspire each oth­er, find out how oth­ers live col­lec­tive­ly, and their activ­i­ties, alter­na­tive eco­nom­ic exchange sys­tems…
* share var­i­ous ways of get­ting spaces all over europe: ille­gal occu­pa­tions, Do It Your­self con­struc­tions, wagen­burgs, buy­ing col­lec­tive­ly, free con­tracts…
* share prac­ti­cal resources and a feel­ing of sol­i­dar­i­ty between:
dif­fer­ent users of autonomous spaces (either cur­rent or poten­tial): co-oper­a­tives, peo­ple with­out papers, activists, trav­ellers, immi­grants, urban­ites, rur­al dwellers, small farms;
dif­fer­ent ways of using spaces; activ­i­ties for the com­mu­ni­ty, meet­ing area for groups, liv­ing spaces;
* enable the form­ing of com­mon strate­gies when faced with state repres­sion or evic­tion;

= Who are we, how can we col­lab­o­rate on this project, and make it hap­pen?

At the moment, we are a group of peo­ple involved with var­i­ous autonomous spaces around Europe, who decid­ed to start dis­cussing this call. We’ll meet var­i­ous col­lec­tives in the com­ing months and see how peo­ple feel about this pro­pos­al for euro­pean days of action, and how they want to get involved. Its suc­cess depends a lot on our capac­i­ty to cre­ate a big­ger inter­na­tion­al work­ing group. This would mean every­body who want­ed to take part into it would try to start disc­ss­ing the idea in var­i­ous spaces, cre­at­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing some pro­pa­gan­da mate­ri­als and net­work­ing infor­ma­tion about what’s going on near them dur­ing those days. We would also like to orga­nize a phys­i­cal meet­ing about all this in the upcom­ing months. Get in touch!

= Mate­ri­als

Fly­ers etc can be found on our web­site. Please down­load the PDF file, print it and spread it around squats and autonomous spaces in your area.

= Prepa­ra­tion meet­ing

The suc­cess of this call now depends upon our capac­i­ty to cre­ate a big­ger inter­na­tion­al work­ing group. The whole event will hap­pen with­out any “cen­tral com­mi­tee”, and will be made of a var­i­ous autonomous decen­tralised actions. Still, we think it is impor­tant to have a phys­i­cal meet­ing, in order to exchange ideas and strate­gies, dis­cuss the con­tents of the call, see how to cre­ate com­mon infor­ma­tion tools around that project, how to con­nect and help the var­i­ous local ini­tia­tives.
Thus, we’re call­ing for an inter­na­tion­al prepa­ra­tion & coor­di­na­tion meet­ing on Novem­ber 24th & 25th 2007, in the autonomous space “Les Tan­ner­ies”, locat­ed in Dijon, France. It is a squat­ted social cen­tre in a post-indus­tri­al envi­ron­ment, occu­pied since 1998. Thanks to years of strug­gle against the city coun­cil own­ing the build­ings, the project has reached a cer­tain degree of sta­bil­i­ty. It hosts a col­lec­tive house, a gig room, a hack­lab, a free shop, an infos­hop, a col­lec­tive gar­den, a library…

We hope that many of you will be able to join. Please tell us a bit in advance if you’re plan­ning to come, so that we get an idea of the num­ber of peo­ple we have to acco­mo­date and plan food for. You’re very wel­come to pass this invi­ta­tion to squats and autonomous spaces that you know.

= Get­ting in touch & help­ing out

Please get in touch, by writ­ing to april2008 at squat dot net. Any help with trans­la­tions in what­ev­er lan­guages is great­ly appre­ci­at­ed.
http://april2008.squat.net/

Autumn EF! Action Update out — and advance notice of the Winter Moot, 22–24 February (gathering of eco-activists), Nottingham

The lat­est issue of the quar­ter­ly EF!AU was dished up at the Anar­chist Book­fair — burst­ing at the seams, it had to be turned into a bumper issue, with a round-up of the actions around the time of the Camp for Cli­mate Action, plus loads of action reports from around the world since then — from pieing oil exec­u­tives, blockad­ing garages & air­ports, polar bears lock­ing-on, sab­o­tage, pris­on­ers, occu­pied spaces, dig­ger-div­ing, GM crop-trash­ing, to cake and the cun­ning use of mung beans (oh, and of course, much much more).

The lat­est issue of the quar­ter­ly EF!AU was dished up at the Anar­chist Book­fair — burst­ing at the seams, it had to be turned into a bumper issue, with a round-up of the actions around the time of the Camp for Cli­mate Action, plus loads of action reports from around the world since then — from pieing oil exec­u­tives, blockad­ing garages & air­ports, polar bears lock­ing-on, sab­o­tage, pris­on­ers, occu­pied spaces, dig­ger-div­ing, GM crop-trash­ing, to cake and the cun­ning use of mung beans (oh, and of course, much much more).

Down­load it to print out and share here. Do get in touch with the edi­to­r­i­al col­lec­tive to let them know if you’re dish­ing it up round your way, or need paper copies, or want to give them one of the rar­er ingre­di­ents, dosh (to send it to pris­on­ers, protest camps and far beyond) — their con­tact details and more are here

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The EF! Win­ter Moot will hap­pen from 22nd — 24th Feb­ru­ary 2008, in Not­ting­ham — more details near­er the time, as this is just advance notice.

It’s a gath­er­ing for envi­ron­men­tal activists — in the past, it’s been a chance for peo­ple involved in all kinds of eco­log­i­cal direct action to get togeth­er for a week­end indoors to chat about where things are at in the UK, and so improve all aspects of how we work togeth­er, in order to take direct action in defence of the earth.

Con­tact 0845–0223 5254 for more info

Activist Film Festival is seeking submissions

Under­cur­rents is call­ing for sub­mis­sions of short videos and ani­ma­tions on the theme of the fes­ti­val: social jus­tice and envi­ron­men­tal action.

Beyond TV 8 flierUnder­cur­rents is call­ing for sub­mis­sions of short videos and ani­ma­tions on the theme of the fes­ti­val: social jus­tice and envi­ron­men­tal action.

Sub­ject: Polit­i­cal Activist videos want­ed
From: under­cur­rents

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS OF FILMS

FOR BEYONDTV FESTIVAL NOVEMBER 2007

What is BEYONDTV?
From Novem­ber 28 to Decem­ber 2, 2007, Rad­i­cal media char­i­ty, Under­cur­rents will host the 8th annu­al BEYONDTV fes­ti­val of polit­i­cal doc­u­men­taries, ani­ma­tions and music videos from inspir­ing media direc­tors.

Under­cur­rents is call­ing for sub­mis­sions of short videos and ani­ma­tions on the theme of the fes­ti­val: social jus­tice and envi­ron­men­tal action.

Impor­tant Note: We do not screen dra­mas using actors

BEYONDTV will be host­ed at the Dylan Thomas Cen­tre and Tal­iesin Cin­e­ma Swansea from Novem­ber 28 — Decem­ber 2, 2007

More details at http://www.beyondtvfestival.info
beyondtv@undercurrents.org

Under­cur­rents
Old Exchange
Pier st
Swansea
SA1 1RY
UK

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) Day of Action — protests throughout England, Scotland & Wales — from cake to locked-on polar bears

Protests in Bris­tol, Lon­don, Manc, Nor­wich, Cam­bridge, Sheffield, Oxford, Edin­burgh, Truro, Birm­ing­ham, Glas­gow, Aberys­t­wyth, Cardiff, Bath, Brad­ford, St Andrews, Ply­mouth, Read­ing, Leam­ing­ton Spa, Leices­ter & Altrin­cham (‘read more’ for details, pho­tos, audio & video clips)

Protests in Bris­tol, Lon­don, Manc, Nor­wich, Cam­bridge, Sheffield, Oxford, Edin­burgh, Truro, Birm­ing­ham, Glas­gow, Aberys­t­wyth, Cardiff, Bath, Brad­ford, St Andrews, Ply­mouth, Read­ing, Leam­ing­ton Spa, Leices­ter & Altrin­cham (‘read more’ for details, pho­tos, audio & video clips)



Bristol RBS 3
Bristol RBS 4
Bristol RBS 5
A group of ‘cli­mate refugees’ blocked the vehi­cle entrance to the Roy­al Bank of Scotland’s Cor­po­rate Offices at Tem­ple Quay to shine the spot­light on cli­mate crim­i­nals RBS, the self-pro­claimed ‘Oil and Gas’ Bank. Four peo­ple from Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide for Cli­mate Action dressed as home­less polar bears have locked them­selves togeth­er and pre­vent­ed all vehi­cles enter­ing the RBS branch for six and a half hours.

Today’s block­ade last­ed six and a half hours with the last ‘cli­mate refugee’ being final­ly chis­eled out at 2.30pm. Four peo­ple are cur­rent­ly being held at Trin­i­ty police sta­tion.
The police used a dubi­ous method of deal­ing with it — they lift­ed peo­ple and suit­cas­es on to trol­leys and then wheeled them away. This caused severe dis­com­fort and pan­ic for the peo­ple on the ground and at least one of them has bruis­ing as a result.
RBS lost many hours today due to rock­ing up late cos of park­ing issues and the many employ­ees that spent the day star­ing out of the win­dows watch­ing the dra­ma unfold­ing and tak­ing pho­tos on their phones (check out you tube for clips!).

———-

PRESS RELEASE: ‘Cli­mate refugees’ locked up at the Oil Bank of Scot­land, Bris­tol

A group of ‘cli­mate refugees’ are block­ing the vehi­cle entrance to the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land’s Cor­po­rate Offices at Tem­ple Quay to shine the spot­light on cli­mate crim­i­nals RBS, the self-pro­claimed ‘Oil and Gas’ Bank.

Six peo­ple from Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide for Cli­mate Action dressed as home­less polar bears have locked them­selves togeth­er and are cur­rent­ly pre­vent­ing all vehi­cles enter­ing the RBS branch. This is part of a Nation­al Day of Local Action against the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land called by those huge­ly con­cerned with the dev­as­ta­tion to the cli­mate, plan­et and people.[1]

RBS-NatWest pub­licly pro­motes itself as “The Oil & Gas Bank”. They pro­vide the finan­cial fuel that is accel­er­at­ing cli­mate change. With­out these loans to oil and gas cor­po­ra­tions the projects would not hap­pen. [2]It is esti­mate that *in 2006, the bank pro­vid­ed over $10 bil­lion to fos­sil fuels – more than five times that pro­vid­ed to renew­able energy.[3]*

RBS pro­vide oil cor­po­ra­tions with loans to build new mas­sive­ly eco­log­i­cal­ly detri­men­tal drilling rigs, pipelines and oil tankers. [4] And as RBS’s prof­its rise so does the car­bon in the atmos­phere.

Glob­al cli­mate change already forces more peo­ple from their homes each year than war. And as the effects wors­en, one in sev­en peo­ple on Earth today could be forced to leave their homes over the next 50 years. [5]

A polar bear said, “I am here to let RBS know that their fun­nelling of cash into fos­sil fuel projects is mak­ing myself and mil­lions of oth­er ani­mals, includ­ing humans home­less.”

Anoth­er polar bear said “If car­bon diox­ide mol­e­cules had cor­po­rate tags of respon­si­bil­i­ty, the atmos­phere would be full of RBS logos min­gling with those of BP, Exxon and Shell!”

Con­tact:

Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide 07951789187
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Notes for Edi­tors

[1] The day of action was called by the UK Ris­ing Tide Net­work at this years Camp for Cli­mate Action which took place next to Heathrow Air­port. www.risingtide.org.uk

[2] In 2005 emis­sions from RBS financed oil and gas projects was about a quar­ter of the amount pro­duced by all UK homes.

[3] tak­en from: *The Oil and Gas Bank; RBS and the financ­ing of cli­mate change * http://peopleandplanet.org/dl/ddd/rbs_report.pdf

[4] RBS is help­ing force open the car­bon fron­tier, financ­ing con­tro­ver­sial projects in Nige­ria, the Cau­ca­sus and Wales. Its involve­ment in Angolan and Niger­ian oil fields encour­ages cor­rup­tion and con­flict, while gas projects from the Ara­bi­an Gulf to the Gulf of Mex­i­co threat­en envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion.

[5] Fig­ures from “Human Tide: The Real Migra­tion Cri­sis,” by Chris­t­ian Aid. The report calls for “urgent action by the world com­mu­ni­ty” if the worst effects of this cri­sis are to be avert­ed.

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


one arrest at Roy­al Bank of Scot­land ban­ner drop this morn­ing in Lon­don

around a dozen activists from ‘ris­ing tide’ high­light­ed roy­al bank of scot­land’s shod­dy record of invest­ment in cli­mate change. one clam­bered on the glass canopy of their city hq to unfurl a ban­ner while oth­ers hand­ed out more than 900 leaflets

short­ly before 9am this morn­ing police sealed off the pave­ment under the glass canopy in front of 280 bish­ops­gate, the lon­don hq of the roy­al bank of scot­land. an activist had clam­bered up with a ban­ner pro­claim­ing ‘the oil bank of scot­land’, while a dozen oth­ers leaflet­ted passers-by and bank work­ers out­side the front doors.

the activists also had var­i­ous ban­ners, and one was fetch­ing­ly dressed as a polar bear.

the action last­ed about an hour and a half, while police pho­tog­ra­ph­er steve dis­combe used up the bat­tery of his long lens cam­era tak­ing shots of every­one involved. luck­i­ly, police back-up arrived with anoth­er bat­tery just as the ban­ner man came down.

police tried to seize the ban­ner from activists “as evi­dence” and after a short but com­ic game of ‘pig­gy in the mid­dle’, they suc­ceed­ed. in past cas­es around par­lia­ment square, it has been shown in court that if police have clear pho­tos of the ban­ner, under PACE they have no fur­ther right to seize the actu­al ban­ner, so in effect they stole it this morn­ing (as they often do!).

the ban­ner man was arrest­ed for ‘caus­ing a pub­lic nui­sance’ and it is believed he was tak­en to beth­nal green police sta­tion.

activists were high­light­ing the fact that RBS-NatWest have in the last five years fund­ed 655 mil­lion tonnes of emis­sions) which is more than the UK’s entire annu­al emis­sions. the bank has launched ‘avi­a­tion cap­i­tal’ to help put more planes in the sky, and it has pumped over $10billion into the oil and gas indus­try, fund­ing rigs, tankers and pipelines.

there is a fur­ther protest planned out­side the bank at 5pm today

20071015_RBS_WMV — video/x‑ms-wmv 15M

20071015_RBS_QT — video/quicktime 13M
————-

Lon­don pranks: ‘This Com­pa­ny is Out of Order’ signs left on 15 RBS and Natwest cash machines in cen­tral Lon­don. Pranksters do invis­i­ble the­atre in branch­es, try­ing to open accounts, hav­ing argu­ments about RBS’ uneth­i­cal poli­cies in the queues, and leav­ing piles of anti-RBS leaflets amongst their cor­po­rate pro­pa­gan­da. They then go under­ground for some ‘Tube Edu­ca­tion’, leaflet­ing and talk­ing to Tube pas­sen­gers.

————-

Nation­al cli­mate protests against Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, ‘The Oil and Gas Bank’

15 Octo­ber 2007
For imme­di­ate release, for pho­tographs con­tact Mike J Wells 07799152888

POLAR BEAR PINS BLAME ON RBS DOOR

Cli­mate Change direct action group Lon­don Ris­ing Tide and friends, this morn­ing occu­pied the head­quar­ters of the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land to expose their role in Cli­mate Chaos. This was one of many actions hap­pen­ing across the UK today as part of a UK Ris­ing Tide call out for a Nation­al day of action against RBS.

Activists dropped a ban­ner read­ing “RBS prof­its, cli­mate cops it” from the bal­cony, while oth­ers held plac­ards on the street in front of the build­ing on Bish­ops­gate.

A polar bear, cur­rent­ly sleep­ing rough since the artic ice became his­to­ry, also attend­ed to ask “why are RBS still invest­ing in fos­sil fuel projects like ‘gas pipelines’ in Wales and ‘Tar sands strip min­ing’ in what was Cana­di­an Arbo­re­al For­est?”

The Bear said “Banks like RBS are the hid­den dri­vers of cli­mate change by offer­ing loans to fos­sil fuel projects that oth­er­wise the World Bank would not sup­port”.

RBS calls itself the ‘Oil and Gas Bank’, and is the pri­ma­ry UK fun­der of fos­sil fuel extrac­tion. RBS pro­vides oil com­pa­nies with the cap­i­tal to build and oper­ate drilling rigs, pipelines and oil tankers in some of the most sen­si­tive and unsta­ble places in the world. Through Avi­a­tion Cap­i­tal, RBS financ­ing allows air­lines to expand their fleets and put more planes into the skies.

The thir­ty oil and gas finance deals RBS signed between 2001 and 2006 will cre­ate 655 mil­lion tonnes of car­bon emis­sions over the next 15 years, which is more than the UK’s entire annu­al emis­sions. (2)

‘Banks like RBS who prof­it hand­some­ly from cli­mate-destroy­ing projects have stood in the shad­ows for too long, but they are as guilty as the oil com­pa­nies. If car­bon diox­ide mol­e­cules had cor­po­rate tags of respon­si­bil­i­ty, the atmos­phere would be full of RBS logos min­gling with those of BP, Exxon and Shell’, said Mar­tin Red­fern, from Lon­don.

For inter­views from the protest call 075 1311 9047

For more details vis­it
. www.risingtide.org.uk
. http://www.carbonweb.org/showitem.asp?article=268&parent=267
(www.platform.org.uk)
. www.londonrisingtide.org.uk
=========================

ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND.…THE ‘OIL AND GAS BANK’

Man­ches­ter Cli­mate Action tar­get­ed the RBS head­quar­ters on Deans­gate, Man­ches­ter, as part of a nation­al day of action called by the Ris­ing Tide net­work.

Local groups which formed to mobilise for this year’s Camp for Cli­mate Action, have this morn­ing tak­en action against RBS, a major backer of the avi­a­tion indus­try and the world’s self-described ‘Oil and Gas Bank’.

Ban­ners were dis­played read­ing: ‘Cli­mate Change: RBS Makes It Hap­pen’ and ‘No Pipeline! Green Ener­gy Not Gas’. Pro­test­ers were greet­ed by 3 Tac­ti­cal Aid Unit Vans and secu­ri­ty guards, but despite police attempts to stop noise under the pub­lic order act, the sam­ba band played and fly­ers were giv­en out to work­ers, cus­tomers and passers by.

RBS employs some 5,000 staff in the Greater Man­ches­ter area and is the 2nd largest pri­vate employ­er in the area.

RBS pro­vides oil com­pa­nies with the cash to build and oper­ate drilling rigs, pipelines and oil tankers. RBS also prof­its through the avi­a­tion indus­try. From the Niger Delta to the Arc­tic, RBS loans play a key role in
forc­ing open the new car­bon fron­tier, which con­tributes to envi­ron­men­tal destruction,disruption of indige­nous peo­ples and increased con­flict across the plan­et.

RBS is the sec­ond-largest bank in Europe and has glob­al assets of over $1120 bil­lion, includ­ing UK brands NatWest, Direct Line and Churchill Insur­ance. Despite cre­at­ing a heav­i­ly green washed pub­lic image through
spon­sor­ship of sports and the arts, RBS activ­i­ties have major destruc­tive impacts on the envi­ron­ment and soci­ety. The thir­ty oil and gas finance deals RBS signed between 2001 and 2006 locked us all into 655 mil­lion
tonnes of emis­sions over the next 15 years, more than the UK’s entire annu­al emis­sions.

Man­ches­ter Cli­mate Action meet reg­u­lar­ly, for more infor­ma­tion email:
manchester@climatecamp.org.uk. Next meet­ing is Tues­day 16th, 6pm, Eighth Day café, Oxford Rd (near Man­ches­ter Met­ro­pol­i­tan Uni­ver­si­ty, oppo­site All Saints Park.)

radio report of rbs protest — mp3 2.2M
=========================

Triple wham­my for RBS in Nor­wich

Last night, the doors of the RBS-Natwest Group Tech­nol­o­gy office on Exchange Street and the main RBS branch on Queen Street were locked shut. When staff showed up for work this morn­ing at the Queen Street branch they found them­selves locked out, and gath­ered oppo­site the branch to see what would hap­pen. Soon after, 6 activists from Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide turned up with leaflets and ban­ners read­ing ‘RBS: Financ­ing Cli­mate Change’ and ‘Closed for a Total Re-think’. The d‑lock proved to be a good one, and the bank was delayed from open­ing for busi­ness for over an hour. Ris­ing Tiders hand­ed out leaflets and chat­ted to the wait­ing staff and cus­tomers, with the usu­al mixed response. Passers-by were gen­er­al­ly sup­port­ive, and the police showed up only at the very end, once the bank had re-opened and we were run­ning low on leaflets. After our 500-strong leaflet stash had been exhaust­ed, we decid­ed to call it a morn­ing.

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

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

Cam­bridge RBS action

At lunchtime on Mon­day 15 Octo­ber, around ten activists assem­bled out­side the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land branch on Trin­i­ty Street, Cam­bridge, as part of the nation­al day of action against the UK’s main bankroller of car­bon emit­ters. The pro­test­ers put up plac­ards next to the ATM, hand­ed out leaflets, and engaged passers-by and cus­tomers in dis­cus­sion.

Four police offi­cers were also in atten­dance, one tak­ing pic­tures of all the leaflet­ters. A num­ber of peo­ple who hap­pened to be pass­ing by want­ed to know the rea­son for this. Among these were an Amer­i­can woman who got quite strop­py with the offi­cers, and a young guy who want­ed to have pic­ture tak­en with one of the pro­test­ers (the police duti­ful­ly oblig­ed). Although the police came across all friend­ly, they did play their usu­al intim­i­da­tion tac­tics of drop­ping details of pro­test­ers into the con­ver­sa­tion that they could only have lift­ed from FIT files. On the flip­side, they asked for the plac­ards to be moved away from the ATM, as “cus­tomers might feel intim­i­dat­ed.”

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

Roy­al Bank of Scot­land Tar­get­ed for Invest­ing in Cli­mate Change

A group of activists leaflet­ted the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land in Broomhill, Sheffield as part of a Nation­al Day of Action. Over 20 actions have tak­en place all around the coun­try includ­ing banks being locked up in Nor­wich and polar bears blockad­ing in Bris­tol. This is all part of a cam­paign against the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land which invests heav­i­ly in oil and gas, which is accel­er­at­ing cli­mate change.

=========================
Oxford RBS
Quick Update on Today’s Oxford RBS Actions

Oxford cli­mate activists tar­get­ed a branch­es of both the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land and NatWest as part of the today’s Nation­al Day of Action. With ban­ners and oil-spat­tered T‑Shirts declar­ing “RBS Group — Fund­ing Cli­mate Change”, “Dirty Bankers — Shaft­ing The Plan­et”, and “The Oil Bank Of Scot­land”, they caused a stir in Oxford’s busiest shop­ping precinct and dis­trib­uted hun­dreds of leaflets to inter­est­ed cus­tomers and passers-by.

Activists also entered both branch­es with a large oil pipeline, explain­ing to cus­tomers and staff that they were deliv­er­ing it to the branch, but could­n’t leave until they’d spo­ken to Head Office to con­firm that it had arrived safe­ly. They stayed in each branch cheer­ful­ly (and loud­ly) rem­i­nisc­ing with staff and cus­tomers about all the oth­er pipelines and fos­sil fuel projects the bank was fund­ing, and how much cli­mate change they were caus­ing, until removed by the police. In the NatWest branch, they also man­aged to get a call put through to Head Office and asked them why RBS were fund­ing so many cli­mate-trash­ing projects (they did­n’t get any decent answers though).

No-one was arrest­ed, although one pro­test­er had to give their name and address under Sec­tion 50 of the Police Reform Act for “anti-social behav­iour” (they were appar­ent­ly caus­ing “alarm and dis­tress” by stand­ing in a bank, talk­ing about cli­mate change and hold­ing a card­board oil pipe).

Oxford Cli­mate Action meet on Mon­days at the Oxford Action Resource Cen­tre (OARC — www.theoarc.org.uk). To get involved, con­tact oxford@climatecamp.org.uk — new mem­bers always wel­come!

Link to video of Action

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

Stu­dents from Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty protest­ed out­side RBS’s Cen­tral Branch in Edin­burgh as part of Ris­ing Tide’s nation­al day of action against RBS’s fund­ing of oil and gas extrac­tion.

Stu­dents from Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty Peo­ple & Plan­et group stepped up their cam­paign against the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land (RBS) this morn­ing. Along­side oth­er Peo­ple & Plan­et groups in Scot­land, and cam­paign­ers from Ris­ing Tide, they took part in a nation­al ‘day of action’ tar­get­ing the Edin­burgh-based bank.

The protests aim to high­light RBS’s role as one of the world’s largest fun­ders of cli­mate-wreck­ing oil and gas extrac­tion. Emis­sions result­ing from RBS-sup­port­ed projects around the globe are greater than those of the whole of Scot­land.

Cam­paign­ers gave out infor­ma­tion to cus­tomers, held ban­ners, and waved oil cov­ered hands out­side RBS’s cen­tral branch in St. Andrew’s Square.

Peo­ple & Plan­et recent­ly worked with cli­mate change experts PLATFORM to write a report into RBS (2). The report draws atten­tion to the bank’s cru­cial role in sup­port­ing the glob­al oil and gas extrac­tion indus­try, where it pub­licly mar­kets itself as ‘the oil and gas bank’.

Sarah Hol­l­i­day, a mem­ber of Edin­burgh Peo­ple & Plan­et said:

“RBS call them­selves ‘the oil and gas bank’. They pro­vide huge amounts of advice and fund­ing for new oil extrac­tion. Their fos­sil fuels projects world­wide will lock us in to emis­sions for decades to come – mak­ing a low car­bon econ­o­my impos­si­ble. They are the UK’s main finan­cial dri­vers of cli­mate change.”

The cam­paign is a part of the Peo­ple & Plan­et nation­al cam­paign, “Ditch Dirty Devel­op­ment”, which is also call­ing on the Depart­ment for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment to stop using aid mon­ey to fund fos­sil fuel projects (3).

More pho­tos can be found here.

1) Peo­ple & Plan­et is the UK’s largest stu­dent cam­paign­ing net­work. It cam­paigns on world pover­ty, human rights and the envi­ron­ment: www.peopleandplanet.org http://pandp.eusa.ed.ac.uk

2) The report, enti­tled ‘The Oil and Gas Bank’, can be found here

3)“Ditch Dirty Devel­op­ment” cam­paign web­site
“Oil Bank of Scot­land” cam­paign web­site

————-

Also in Edin­burgh: The locks of the main entrances to at least six Edin­burgh RBS branch­es were glued shut last night, and all of them had to have the locks replaced today.

————-

2 branch­es in edin­burgh were giv­en ‘pol­lu­tion awards’ — along with var­i­ous oth­er posters about RBS pol­i­cy. unfor­tu­natly the police drove by while one branch was just being fin­ished off, and took the still wet posters off. 🙁 — next time…

=========================
Truro RBS
Truro demo at RBS branch: Twelve activists from across Corn­wall gath­ered at the RBS branch in Truro for a two-hour demo with a friend­ly atmos­phere and good response from passers-by. They hand­ed out leaflets and slices of cake from a clock-shaped ‘11th hour’ cake, and made new con­nec­tions that built the foun­da­tions of a cli­mate action group for Corn­wall.

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

Birm­ing­ham Uni flood cam­pus NatWest: Over thir­ty stu­dents from Birm­ing­ham Peo­ple and Plan­et descend­ed upon the Natwest branch on cam­pus. Some were dressed in boil­er suits and car­ried oil pipelines. Oth­ers, dressed as bankers and imper­son­at­ing mem­bers of the RBS Oil and Gas Team gave a high­ly sar­cas­tic pre­sen­ta­tion extolling the virtues of RBS’ oil and gas invest­ments. Oil pipes and boil­er suits. Dressed as bankers. Went in and gave mock pre­sen­ta­tion, imper­son­at­ed oil and gas team. Extolled virtues of RBS. 20 min­utes. Did pre­sen­ta­tion again a few more times on cam­pus. 30 peo­ple. Couldn’t all fit in. Birm­ing­ham Peo­ple and Plan­et.

=========================
Glas­gow Trea­cle Tart Cabaret: After a half hour dis­cus­sion with the cen­tral Glas­gow RBS branch man­ag­er in which they expressed their anger about RBS’ invest­ment in oil and gas, two intre­pid activists left the branch, only to make a quick cos­tume change and return as the hosts of the Trea­cle Tart Cabaret. They sang, danced, waved ban­ners and plac­ards, got up on the cashiers’ desks and strut­ted their stuff, and even per­formed an Oil Rap. At this point the bank decid­ed to lock its doors, lock­ing the Tarts in and cus­tomers out, and effec­tive­ly shut­ting the bank down for an hour. Inside the atmos­phere was pos­i­tive, with the locked-in staff and cus­tomers get­ting into the swing of things. One of the Tarts capped off the per­for­mance by cut­ting up her RBS deb­it card as a mag­ic trick.

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



Around a dozen cli­mate change refugees queued out­side Nat West Bank in Aberys­t­wyth today, Mon­day 15th Octo­ber, to beg a ‘bank offi­cial’ for a home loan because cli­mate change was destroy­ing their cur­rent home. The refugees ranged from an Aussie through a Green­lan­der to an Artic Cod. As the refugees were inter­viewed, vol­un­teers hand­ed out fliers on Roy­al Bank of Scot­land , Nat West and their invest­ment in projects linked to cli­mate change. Mean­while, RBS and Nat West ATMs all mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­played signs read­ing ‘OUT OF ORDER’ in large let­ters. On close inspec­tion with a mag­ni­fy­ing glass, the very small print read ‘RBS and Nat West invest­ment pol­i­cy’. The pos­si­ble effects of cli­mate change on a num­ber of coun­tries were mapped on the pave­ment with chalk – dis­turb­ing before and after snap­shots. As the refugees were all turned down for home loans, they car­ried a protest ban­ner into the bank. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, being weak­ened by loos­ing their homes, the refugees dropped the ban­ner and, being weight­ed down with heli­um bal­loons, it drift­ed up and dis­played itself from the ceil­ing for a good half an hour before staff man­aged to get it down.

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

The main cardiff branch RBS on st Mary’s Street was closed 3 hours after 20 activists entered the build­ing caus­ing dis­trup­tion. Hun­dreds of leaflets were hand­ed out and ban­ners dis­played out­side. The process was repeat­ed at Natwest after­wards.

Lots of Police were in atten­dance includ­ing intel­li­gence gath­er­ers. Pho­tos to fol­low.

cardiffanarchists@riseup.net
http://southwalesanarchists.org

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

Don’t Bank On Oil In Bath

As part of today’s nation­al day of action against the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, 7 activists from Bath Activist Net­work pick­et­ed the RBS branch on Qui­et Street in Bath, for two hours over lunch time. Ban­ner on dis­play, cus­tomers and passers-by were leaflet­ed with mock-up imi­ta­tion RBS lit­er­a­ture and invi­ta­tions to ‘Open an oil rig today!’, inform­ing the pub­lic about the Terms and Con­se­quences of bank­ing with RBS, their dodgy invest­ment record in fos­sil fuel extrac­tion and avi­a­tion indus­tries, and the 160,000 esti­mat­ed glob­al deaths a year due to the effects of cli­mate change. Whilst staff and police com­plained about the seem­ing­ly out-of-order ATM out­side their door, we lis­tened to sto­ries of cus­tomers’ poor treat­ment by their bank, and also helped at least the one stu­dent find more eth­i­cal options for his new account. Also bemus­ing were the mem­bers of pub­lic who mis­took the busi­ness-suit­ed activists for bank employ­ees, and chat­ted about the ser­vice.

bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk
http://myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork

To read PLAT­FOR­M’s report on Roy­al bank of Scot­land, go here: http://peopleandplanet.org/dl/ddd/rbs_report.pdf
=========================

Brad­ford stu­dents leaflet cam­pus Natwest

Stu­dents from the uni­ver­si­ty of Brad­ford Peo­ple & Plan­et group leaflet­ed at the Natwest branch on cam­pus. That’s all the details I know, hope­ful­ly more details to fol­low.

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

St Andrews Uni P&P also did some protest per­for­mance art — ‘attempt­ing’ to open accounts in the town, etc.

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

Ply­mouth — after a pro­ces­sion along North Hill Street, a group of peo­ple held a four-hour demo at the RBS branch near Drake Cir­cus, com­plete with music and drum­ming. A good response from passers-by, with lots of cus­tomers ask­ing direct­ly for leaflets.

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

Read­ing Ris­ing Tide held a demo at the Read­ing RBS branch.

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

A group of 5 held a demo in Leam­ing­ton.

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Cash-points were stick­ered with anti-RBS stick­ers in Leices­ter.

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Leaflets were stuck on lamp-posts in Altrin­cham.

Worldwide Day of Action Against McDonalds 16th October

14th Octo­ber 2007 ear­ly demo report: near­ly 30 peo­ple took part in the Lon­don leg of the world­wide anti-McDon­ald’s day. It start­ed at noon at the Leices­ter Square McDon­ald’s. There was a Ronald McDon­ald attack­ing a per­son dressed as a cow. The cow went down well with the kids and even some adults! Lots of leaflets were hand­ed out and the pub­lic seemed to be recep­tive on the whole. Also, the police were notice­able by their absence. The demo moved onto the Shaftes­bury Avenue McDon­ald’s and fin­ished at about 3.30.

Dying for a burger (London McD demo)
14th Octo­ber 2007 ear­ly demo report: near­ly 30 peo­ple took part in the Lon­don leg of the world­wide anti-McDon­ald’s day. It start­ed at noon at the Leices­ter Square McDon­ald’s. There was a Ronald McDon­ald attack­ing a per­son dressed as a cow. The cow went down well with the kids and even some adults! Lots of leaflets were hand­ed out and the pub­lic seemed to be recep­tive on the whole. Also, the police were notice­able by their absence. The demo moved onto the Shaftes­bury Avenue McDon­ald’s and fin­ished at about 3.30.

—

Adopt-YOUR-Store — leaflets from Veg­gies or Do It Your­self. Details here

15th October — National Day of Local Action against Royal Bank of Scotland Update

It’s only a week away! There are plans afoot all over the coun­try, and there’s still time for you to organ­ise some­thing in your local area. A few things that might help:

Oily RBS logoIt’s only a week away! There are plans afoot all over the coun­try, and there’s still time for you to organ­ise some­thing in your local area. A few things that might help:

*There are leaflets avail­able to hand out on the day if you don’t fan­cy mak­ing your own. (Front — click here. Back — click here. And if you want editable ver­sions email us and we’ll email them to you).

*Stick­ers are also avail­able for what­ev­er sil­ly, seri­ous or sub­ver­sive pur­pose you can think of! Email us with a postal address to get a stash sent to you (these aren’t linked to the day of action so they’ll be use­ful into the future)
*There will be a nation­al press release about the day of action, so if you’re plan­ning some­thing pub­lic and want to let the nation­al press know about it, please send us the details. We’ll also do a press release on the day, so email us or bet­ter yet phone 07961 917535 to be includ­ed in the nation­al action round-up (and put it on Indy­media and here too of course!)

Orig­i­nal call out here

CLIMATE ACTION NEWS SHEET 72, OCTOBER 2007

Com­piled and sent out by Ris­ing Tide UK: info at risingtide.org.uk
To receive this News Sheet month­ly, email news-sub­scribe at risingtide.org.uk
with the sub­ject line ‘sub­scribe’ (with­out the quotes).

CONTENTS:
———————————————-
UPCOMING ACTIONS AND EVENTS:
———————————————-
1) NATIONAL DAY OF LOCAL ACTION VS. ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND — 15.10.07
2) SAVE SWALLOWS WOOD — OCTOBER 2007 UPDATE
3) NATIONAL CLIMATE CAMP ACTION PLANNING MEETING — 3–4.11.07 OXFORD
4) CLIMATE CAMPS — 2008 GERMANY AND WORLDWIDE!
5) TARA UPDATE — 22.9.07 IRELAND
6) CRITICAL MASS UPDATES — NATIONWIDE
7) PLYMOUTH ENVIRONMENT CENTRE FILM NIGHTS — AUTUMN 2007
8) TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ART — OCT ’07, EDINBURGH & MANCHESTER
9) WRITE IN DEFENCE OF ISOLATED PERUVIAN TRIBES — 17.9.07
10) STUDENT CLIMATE PROJECT LAUNCH GATHERING – OXFORD, 30.11–2.12.07

———————————————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
———————————————-
1) ROSSPORT SOLIDARITY DEMOS — 14.9.07 LEEDS, LONDON, BRISTOL, READING,
MADRID & IRELAND
2) DIRECT ACTION IN BRISTOL — AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2007
3) WHY CARBON TRADING ISN’T WORKING — ARTICLES 2006/7
4) GAGGED! SOUTH WALES ANARCHIST NEWSLETTER — SEPTEMBER 2007
5) FEDERAL COURT BLOCKS SHELLS ARCTIC DRILLING — 14.9.07
6) BANK PULLS SAKHALIN‑2 FUNDING — 15.8.07
7) “FLOOD SUMMIT” AT AIRPORT — 3.9.07 DONCASTER, YORKS.
8) COAL ACTIONS IN AUSTRALIA — 2/3.9.07
9) GLOBAL ACTIONS AGAINST HEAVY INDUSTRY — 12.9.07
10) GREEK DIRECT ACTION — SEPTEMBER 2007
11) CRITICAL MASS AND CARFREE DAY IN BRUSSELS — 24.9.07
12) ART NOT OIL 2007 GALLERY HITS 50

———————————————-
UPCOMING ACTIONS AND EVENTS:
———————————————-
1) NATIONAL DAY OF LOCAL ACTION AGAINST ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND — 15.10.07
RBS, the self-described ‘Oil and Gas Bank’ and sec­ond-largest bank in
Europe is the lead­ing financier of cli­mate change. From West Africa to the
Ecuado­ri­an rain­for­est, from the North Sea to the Mid­dle East, RBS loans
play a key role in forc­ing open the new car­bon fron­tier. The thir­ty oil
and gas finance deals RBS signed between 2001 and 2006 locked us all into
655 mil­lion tonnes of emis­sions over the next 15 years — more than the
UK’s cur­rent annu­al emis­sions total!
On 15th Octo­ber, get togeth­er with your local group, build on con­nec­tions
made at the Camp, reach out to oth­ers in your area and con­front RBS with
your own cho­sen style of cre­ative direct action.

To find your near­est RBS branch or office:
www.rbs.co.uk/microsites/general/branch_locator/step1.asp
Down­load Plat­for­m’s report ‘The Oil and Gas Bank’:
www.carbonweb.org/documents/Oil_&_Gas_Bank.pdf
For help with plan­ning effec­tive actions: www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk

One such action is being planned in con­junc­tion with West Corn­wall Friends
of the Earth; Out­side Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, Green St (off Lemon Quay),
Truro,
12 noon, Mon 15th Oct. Con­tact RTUK for oth­ers.

2) SAVE SWALLOWS WOOD — OCTOBER 2007 UPDATE
A lot has been hap­pen­ing in the last few weeks, includ­ing the inau­gur­al
Glos­sop Crit­i­cal Mass. Also, there are two URGENT let­ter actions that they
need your help with. They should only take a few min­utes of your time.
www.saveswallowswood.org.uk

3) NATIONAL CLIMATE CAMP ACTION PLANNING MEETING — 3–4.11.07 OXFORD
The Cli­mate Camp did­n’t stop cli­mate change — but it’s part of a grow­ing
social move­ment that can! Come and take the next steps for­ward at the
upcom­ing UK-wide meet­ing on Nov 3–4 in Oxford. Every­one is wel­come,
whether you came to the camp, or were sim­ply inspired by it.
www.climatecamp.org.uk

4) CLIMATE CAMPS — 2008 GERMANY AND WORLDWIDE!
Fol­low­ing the mod­el estab­lished by the Camp for Cli­mate Action in the UK,
plans are afoot for a Cli­mate-Action Camp in Ger­many in 2008. This will
include knowl­edge exchange (in work­shops), self-organ­ised liv­ing that
min­imis­es the eco­log­i­cal foot­print, net­work­ing and direct action. There
are plans for sim­i­lar camps to be set up next year in sev­er­al coun­tries.
watch this space…
www.climatecamp.org.uk

http://www.klimacamp.org/

5) TARA UPDATE — 22.9.07 IRELAND
They are des­per­ate for more peo­ple and sup­plies on site. There are
cur­rent­ly just 20 peo­ple try­ing to stop work all over the Tara Skryne
val­ley.
www.tarapixie.net
www.savetara.com
www.circlecommunity.org
For recent videos & pho­tos of protests see;
http://livevideo.com/tarapixie

6) CRITICAL MASS UPDATES — NATIONWIDE
For info. and updates check;
http://www.urban75.com/Action/critical.html

7) PLYMOUTH ENVIRONMENT CENTRE FILM NIGHTS — AUTUMN 2007
Includ­ing “Reclaim Pow­er” 19.10.07 at 7pm fol­lowed by dis­cus­sion with
Ris­ing Tide rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

http://plymouthenvironmentcentre.org.uk/events.php#film-nights

8) TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ART SHOWS — OCTOBER 2007 EDINBURGH & MANCHESTER
Edin­burgh 10th-14th Octo­ber
Man­ches­ter 24th-28th Octo­ber
For fur­ther info. check;
http://www.randomartists.org/

9) WRITE IN DEFENCE OF ISOLATED PERUVIAN TRIBES — 17.9.07
Two com­pa­nies plan­ning to explore for oil in Peru­vian rain­for­est have
revealed their sen­si­tive plans to ‘com­mu­ni­cate’ with the pre­vi­ous­ly
uncon­tact­ed inhab­i­tants using mega­phones! In the past, oil com­pa­ny work­ers
in the Ama­zon region have been killed by iso­lat­ed Indi­ans. Despite this
risk to their own work­ers, and the equal dan­ger of spread­ing fatal
dis­eases to the Indi­ans, the com­pa­nies — Bar­rett Resources of the US and
Rep­sol YPF of Spain — have refused to sus­pend their plans.
http://www.survival-international.org/news/2502
You can help by writ­ing a let­ter;
http://www.survival-international.org/actnow/letters/isolatedindians

10) STUDENT CLIMATE PROJECT LAUNCH GATHERING – OXFORD, 30.11–2.12.07

‘The Stu­dent Cli­mate Project came out of dis­cus­sions at the 2007 Cli­mate
Camp, and
seeks bring togeth­er stu­dents to take col­lec­tive action against the root
caus­es of
Cli­mate Change. It will also devel­op ways to build the stu­dent move­ment
and deal
with Cli­mate Change issues in the edu­ca­tion sys­tem. The project is
non-hier­ar­chi­cal
and based on con­sen­sus deci­sion mak­ing, and the Launch Gath­er­ing is the
per­fect
oppor­tu­ni­ty to get involved, share your ideas and plan for action. See
www.studentclimateproject.org.uk’

———————————————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
———————————————-

1) ROSSPORT SOLIDARITY DEMOS — 14.9.07 LEEDS, LONDON, BRISTOL, READING,
MADRID & IRELAND
There were a series of demon­stra­tions held in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the day of
action against Shel­l’s plans for a gas pipeline & refin­ery in Mayo,
Ire­land.
In Ross­port itself over 150 peo­ple occu­pied the refin­ery site.
Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide held a sol­i­dar­i­ty demo at a Shell Garage in East­ville,
Bris­tol with leaflets and ban­ners.
For more details about the var­i­ous actions check;
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/5090
http://www.corribsos.com/index.php?id=1&type=page

2) DIRECT ACTION IN BRISTOL — AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2007
Activists in Bris­tol have been busy. Parts of three golf cours­es have been
dug up and the mes­sage “deca­dent waste of water” sprayed near a club
house. A mobile phone mast has been sab­o­taged. A non-pas­sen­ger line which
trans­ports cars and fos­sil fuel to the Mid­lands was cut three quar­ters of
the way through in two places and marked with high vis­i­bil­i­ty paint. A
warn­ing ban­ner read­ing: “Stop: Trees on line” was fixed across the line
sev­er­al hun­dred yards in front of this.
Also, with­in the last 6 months, the front tyres of forty 4x4s have been
punc­tured in and around Bris­tol.
Final­ly, a “cor­po­rate enter­tain­ment” com­pa­ny called 4‑Play, which pro­vides
off road dri­ving for 4x4s in the south west, has had vehi­cles spray
paint­ed with

“4‑play — blow-job the plan­et”.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/5050

3) WHY CARBON TRADING ISN’T WORKING — ARTICLES 2006/7
An excel­lent series of arti­cles on why the neolib­er­al approach to cli­mate
change isn’t work­ing can be found at;
http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/subject/climate/

4) GAGGED! ANARCHIST NEWSLETTER – SOUTH WALES, SEPT 2007
Down­load the PDF here;
https://lists.riseup.net/www/d_read/gagged/gagged19.pdf
Alter­na­tive­ly you can read it here;
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/5052

5) FEDERAL COURT BLOCKS SHELLS ARCTIC DRILLING — 14.9.07
A fed­er­al court has denied Shel­l’s lat­est request to lift an order
block­ing the com­pa­ny’s Arc­tic Ocean drilling. This rul­ing like­ly dooms the
Dutch oil giant’s drilling plans, at least for this year.
http://www.pacificenvironment.org/

6) BANK PULLS SAKHALIN‑2 FUNDING — 15.8.07
The Euro­pean Bank of Recon­struc­tion and Devel­op­ment has decid­ed to pull
its fund­ing for the $20-plus bil­lion Sakhalin‑2 liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas
project, locat­ed in Rus­si­a’s Far East.
Since Jan­u­ary, EBRD and the Sakhalin Ener­gy share­hold­ers (Gazprom, Roy­al
Dutch Shell, Mit­sui and Mit­subishi) have held talks over the pro­jec­t’s
finance. EBRD cut off dis­cus­sions in favour of financ­ing oth­er projects,
such as those that pro­mote sus­tain­able ener­gy.
http://www.pacificenvironment.org/

7) PROTEST AS RDA HOLDS “FLOOD SUMMIT” AT AIRPORT — 3.9.07 DONCASTER, YORKS.
York­shire For­ward (Region­al Devel­op­ment Agency) held an out­ra­geous “Flood
Sum­mit” at Finning­ley air­port. Local peo­ple vis­it­ed with pop-up tents and
ban­ners to leaflet the con­fer­ence’s par­tic­i­pants and hold alter­na­tive
work­shops high­light­ing the link between avi­a­tion growth and wors­en­ing
cli­mate change.
The con­fer­ence was intend­ed to con­grat­u­late the RDA on their response to
the recent floods. The choice of venue shows just how out of touch with
real­i­ty these half-wits are.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/5021

8) COAL ACTIONS IN AUSTRALIA — 2/3.9.07
On the 2nd Sep­tem­ber, twelve Green­peace activists were arrest­ed at the
world’s biggest coal port at New­cas­tle, 160km north of Syd­ney, after
paint­ing the mes­sage “Aus­tralia Push­ing Export Coal” on the side of a coal
ship and unfurl­ing a large ban­ner in Chi­nese call­ing on Chi­na to be
cau­tious of John Howard and George Bush’s attempts to sab­o­tage Kyoto. The
protest comes at the start of the 2007 APEC (Asia Pacif­ic Eco­nom­ic
Coop­er­a­tion) forum meet­ing being host­ed by Aus­tralia.
http://www.greenpeace.org/australia/news-and-events/media/releases/climate-change/apec-coal-protest
The fol­low­ing day activists locked them­selves on to a coal con­vey­or belt,
forc­ing the shut-down of a gen­er­a­tor and halv­ing pro­duc­tion from
Vic­to­ri­a’s biggest coal fired pow­er sta­tion.
http://www.realactiononclimatechange.blogspot.com/

9) GLOBAL ACTIONS AGAINST HEAVY INDUSTRY — 12.9.07
Peo­ple in South Africa, Ice­land, Trinidad, Den­mark and Amer­i­ca held a
series of coor­di­nat­ed protests against heavy indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion. This is
the first event of a new and grow­ing glob­al move­ment that began at the
2007 Sav­ing Ice­land protest camp in Ölfus, Ice­land.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/5067

10) GREEK DIRECT ACTION — SEPTEMBER 2007
For direct action news from Greece, check;
http://directactiongr.blogspot.com/

11) CRITICAL MASS AND CARFREE DAY IN BRUSSELS — 24.9.07
For details and some great pics see;
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/09/381930.html

12) ART NOT OIL 2007 GALLERY HITS 50

and over 1500 hits. Take a look and send in your own work:
www.artnotoil.org.uk

Call to organise a German climate camp 2008. Plus new climate camp 2007 photo galleries, video (& links to news compilations)

Call to pre­pare and organ­ise a cli­mate camp in Ger­many!

1) The idea
2) How the idea emerged and how where we can go from here
3) Why organ­ise a cli­mate camp?
4) Com­mu­ni­ca­tion

Short haul flights are for birdsCall to pre­pare and organ­ise a cli­mate camp in Ger­many!

1) The idea
2) How the idea emerged and how where we can go from here
3) Why organ­ise a cli­mate camp?
4) Com­mu­ni­ca­tion

1. The Idea

Fol­low­ing the mod­el estab­lished by the Camp for Cli­mate Action in the UK, which was held for the sec­ond time this year, we want to ini­ti­ate the process of organ­is­ing a Cli­mate-Action Camp in Ger­many in 2008. Just like in the UK we want to cre­ate links between the exchange of knowl­edge (in work­shops), self-organ­ised liv­ing (in the camp) that min­imis­es our eco­log­i­cal foot­print, net­work­ing and direct action.

The last two camps in the UK specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed par­tic­u­lar instal­la­tions, against which direct or the­mat­i­cal­ly appro­pri­ate actions were organ­ised. Last year’s tar­get was the UK’s largest coal-fired pow­er sta­tion, while this year the camp drew atten­tion to the avi­a­tion indus­try and the expan­sion of London’s Heathrow air­port. Whether we should also choose such focal points in Ger­many should be dis­cussed at the prepara­to­ry meet­ings.

2. How the idea emerged and how where we can go from here

This email and ini­tial call emerged from this year’s Camp for Cli­mate Action in the UK, when sev­er­al Ger­man-speak­ing peo­ple met there who had all, inde­pen­dent­ly of each oth­er, had the idea of organ­is­ing such a camp in Ger­many. We hope to use a first plan­ning meet­ing either on the last week­end in Octo­ber or the first week­end in Novem­ber (26.–28.10. / 2.–4.11) some­where in the geo­graph­i­cal cen­tre of Ger­many to decide how to go on from here. If you want to attend the meet­ing, go to http://www.doodle.de/yu8vxh39em9zh7s7 and enter your pre­ferred date – we can then select the most suit­able date (pro­vid­ed it doesn’t clash with local organ­i­sa­tion). Both date and loca­tion should be agreed on by the end of Sep­tem­ber.

3. Why organ­ise a Cli­mate-Action Camp

Cli­mate chaos is a real­i­ty. And there’s not much time left to lim­it the dam­age. Which is exact­ly why we can’t sim­ply jump into knee-jerk activism that sim­ply repro­duces the caus­es of the prob­lem. Rather, we need to take pro­found direct action, with­out of course exclud­ing peo­ple. We also need ground­ed analy­ses of the fun­da­men­tal struc­tures that serve to high­light the urgent need for social trans­for­ma­tion and can com­mu­ni­cate infor­ma­tion about the under­ly­ing caus­es to a wider audi­ence.

Cli­mate Change is not only an eco­log­i­cal prob­lem, but also a ques­tion of the dis­tri­b­u­tion of its con­se­quences. It thus also pos­es social ques­tions. This is why we need imme­di­ate and direct action. Of course, we also need to dis­cuss many oth­er ques­tions, for exam­ple the fol­low­ing (a first rough list com­piled by us in the camp):

- How can we act effec­tive­ly?
— What does a car­bon-neu­tral life look like? What kind of utopias do we need? Which alter­na­tives can we live already now?
— Why are the media sud­den­ly inter­est­ed in the issue of cli­mate change? Which inter­ests are push­ing this? Are these inter­ests also our own?
— Do we trust states and busi­ness­es to save us? Or do we cre­ate our own solu­tions?
— How do we judge the cli­mate change poli­cies pur­sued until now by envi­ron­men­tal NGOs? What are their effects?
— Is it pos­si­ble to pro­tect the cli­mate in the con­text of the cur­rent socio-eco­nom­ic sys­tem? Or is there a need for rad­i­cal social change?
— Who prof­its from cli­mate change? And what does that mean for our actions?

A cli­mate camp could pur­sue these and many oth­er ques­tions, inspire peo­ple to think and act politi­co-eco­log­i­cal­ly, it could be a space for exper­i­men­ta­tion, think-tank and a space to net­work fur­ther com­mon actions. Of course, we’d first have to decide:

- What could a cli­mate camp in Ger­many look like?
— How could it be organ­ised?
— Who would join?

4. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion

Info:
Web­site of the UK Camp for Cli­mate Action:
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/

Indy­media reports:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/actions/2007/climatecamp/

Web­site of the UK-based Net­work for Cli­mate Action
http://www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk

Reports on Indy­media Ger­many:
http://de.indymedia.org/2007/09/193563.shtml

For future com­mu­ni­ca­tion sign up to our email list
http://lists.trilos.net/mailman/listinfo/klimacamp

We are also work­ing on set­ting up some sort of inter­net-pres­ence. Details to be decid­ed at our first meet­ing.
http://www.klimacamp.org/

If you want to get in touch with us direct­ly, let us know via the mail­ing list. We are from dif­fer­ent parts of Ger­many (e.g. Freiburg, Berlin, Wend­land region, Bre­men) and can maybe trav­el to where you are to report back from the Camp with fotos and movies (as moti­va­tion in the run-up to the first organ­i­sa­tion­al gath­er­ing).

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

Camp for Cli­mate Action 2007 video — the insid­er’s view

A 30 minute film of the cli­mate camp has been edit­ed from mate­r­i­al shot on camp by indy­media type media activists work­ing with the cli­mate camp.

New pho­to gal­leries by var­i­ous peo­ple from this year’s camp

And the handy com­pi­la­tions of news, pho­tos, audio & video on this site:

Cli­mate Camp Land Occu­pied & direc­tions
Camp for Cli­mate Action — all the info you need to get there with the right stuff, take action & do work­shops
Camp for Cli­mate Action up & run­ning — work­shops, eco-infra­struc­ture, lit­ter pick & Bicy­col­o­gy day out, plus assort­ed pho­tos
Direct actions sta­tions — cli­mate camp
Police actions & (counter-)surveillance at the cli­mate camp; FIT­watch
24 hours of cli­mate direct action (mass & affin­i­ty group actions spread like wild­fire); plus video/audio clips

and news of the US cli­mate con­ver­gences & actions on the West Coast and in the South East