Category: South East England

South East Eng­land

Earth First! Winter Moot — last update

Brighton, Feb­ru­ary 6–7‑8th 2009

The Earth First! Win­ter moot is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple who feel affil­i­a­tion with the ideas behind Earth First! to net­work, dis­cuss and reflect on the eco­log­i­cal direct action move­ment and to plan for the future. In con­trast with the year­ly EF! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing, which is held out­side for around five days, the win­ter moot is a short­er week­end meet­ing, inside, less aimed at skill shar­ing and more at look­ing where we are at as move­ment and where we want to be going.

EF! Winter Moot poster 2009Brighton, Feb­ru­ary 6–7‑8th 2009

The Earth First! Win­ter moot is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple who feel affil­i­a­tion with the ideas behind Earth First! to net­work, dis­cuss and reflect on the eco­log­i­cal direct action move­ment and to plan for the future. In con­trast with the year­ly EF! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing, which is held out­side for around five days, the win­ter moot is a short­er week­end meet­ing, inside, less aimed at skill shar­ing and more at look­ing where we are at as move­ment and where we want to be going.

Earth First! is not an organ­i­sa­tion, but a ban­ner for non-hier­ar­chi­cal organ­is­ing and the use of direct action to con­front, stop and even­tu­al­ly reverse the forces that are respon­si­ble for the destruc­tion of the Earth and its inhab­i­tants.

Top­ics that have been raised include (Updat­ed):
— the Copen­hagen cli­mate sum­mit with a num­ber of peo­ple from Den­mark com­ing over to talk about logis­tics, tac­tics and mobil­i­sa­tion
— the G20 sum­mit in Lon­don
— Leave it in the ground / coal
— GM
— Ross­port
— Strength­en­ing the EF net­work: com­mu­ni­ca­tion and secu­ri­ty, actionup­date and gath­er­ings
— Impli­ca­tions of the cri­sis
— Cli­mate and migra­tion / eco-activism and Nobor­der net­works
— Heathrow expan­sion
— UK Bio­fu­els
— Nan­otech­nol­o­gy
— Water-based actions

There will not be work­shops on any of these top­ics — please inform your­self on top­ics of your inter­est before the moot. We will be focus­ing on dis­cussing strat­e­gy and action plan­ning.

There will be a Sav­ing Ice­land meet­ing on the Fri­day after­noon before the gath­er­ing.

Please con­tact the orga­niz­ing col­lec­tive (moot2009@earthfirst.org.uk) know if you want to add any­thing, want to help with facil­i­ta­tion or have any oth­er queries. You are wel­come to use our PGP key below.
Sug­ges­tion: read the activist secu­ri­ty guide on http://www.activistsecurity.org/

There will be sleep­ing places arranged and food avail­able at cost price from Fri­day evening. The pro­gram will start on Sat­ur­day at 10 AM. Please be on time.

Venue: Cow­ley Club, 12 Lon­don Road.
http://www.cowleyclub.org.uk/
(Please do not con­tact the Cow­ley Club phone nr. with infor­ma­tion requests).
Click for direc­tions

Please note:
— No dogs please
— The week­end is not open to jour­nal­ists

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So, here’s the low­down on what the Dan­ish peo­ple com­ing over for the EF! Win­ter Moot will be talk­ing about.

*Copen­hagen Cli­mate Sum­mit*
Do we cheer them on, block them in, or close them down?

*When?*
*Where?*
*What?* Dan­ish Kli­max activists will kick off a dis­cus­sion about the move­ment to stop cli­mate change.
*Why?* The UN talks in Copen­hagen this Decem­ber are sup­posed to be the place where world lead­ers agree a new inter­na­tion­al deal to stop cli­mate change.
But progress so far has been under­mined by cor­po­rate lob­by­ing and false, mar­ket-based solu­tions. When activists from across Europe hit the streets of Copen­hagen, should we be call­ing on gov­ern­ments to do bet­ter, blockad­ing them in until they come up with a good deal, or be say­ing they are so flawed we should try to close them down?

Most peo­ple now agree that we need to do some­thing about cli­mate change. But there isn’t agree­ment on what. For cor­po­ra­tions and most gov­ern­ments its a form of green (or maybe green­washed) cap­i­tal­ism and before we even get there it will prob­a­bly be too late. In oppo­si­tion to this cor­po­rate agen­da, social move­ments in the South have pro­posed ‘cli­mate jus­tice’, a tran­si­tion to a sus­tain­able world which sees the rich minor­i­ty who caused cli­mate change pay to put it right, not try and push the costs onto the poor major­i­ty.

With­in this more pro­gres­sive agen­da pro­pos­als range from a ‘green new deal’ of state-led invest­ment for social and envi­ron­men­tal goals, to those who argue that only a grass­roots anti-cap­i­tal­ism can get us out of this mess. This is the polit­i­cal back­ground to the mobil­i­sa­tion around the Copen­hagen cli­mate talks and the strate­gic and tac­ti­cal deci­sions activists are try­ing to make about it.

This is a chance for activists who are less and more involved in cli­mate cam­paign­ing to come togeth­er and dis­cuss all these issues. We can also talk about how we mobilise for what may be one of the most impor­tant events since the ‘bat­tle’ of Seat­tle exact­ly 10 years pre­vi­ous­ly.

E.ON Targeted in Sweden in Solidarity with the Climate Camp

29.09.2008
An E.ON facil­i­ty in the work­ing class dis­trict of Moll­e­van­gen, Mal­mo was tar­gat­ed to high­light E.ON’s plans to build the UK’s first new coal fired pow­er sta­tion for 30 years.

eon grafittied in Sweden29.09.2008
An E.ON facil­i­ty in the work­ing class dis­trict of Moll­e­van­gen, Mal­mo was tar­gat­ed to high­light E.ON’s plans to build the UK’s first new coal fired pow­er sta­tion for 30 years.

Despite E.ON work­ing exten­sive­ly on renew­ables and reduc­ing car­bon emis­sions in Swe­den, the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to push coal in the UK.

The build­ing of Kingsnorth coal fired pow­er sta­tion on the Hoo penin­su­lar in Kent will cause res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems and haz­ardous wastes in the local area, raise the coun­try’s emis­sions to unsus­tain­able lev­els, swerve ener­gy sup­ply into non-renew­able dirty fos­sil fuels rather than renew­ables, and feed a com­mu­ni­ty-frac­tur­ing and pol­lut­ing glob­al coal mar­ket which along with the expan­sion of oth­er fos­sil fuels threat­ens the ecosys­tems of the plan­et.

The cam­paign against kingsnorth, like the poten­tial effects of the 8 new coal fired pow­er sta­tions the UK gov­ern­ment could sanc­tion this Autumn, is glob­al.

Swedish sol­i­dar­i­ty steps up to sup­port this cam­paign in the UK.

The grafit­ti is at a promi­nent inter­sec­tion in the city and will be seen by thou­sands of peo­ple who will ques­tion E.ON’s green spin and con­tra­dic­tion between its’ work in Swe­den and its new coal plans for the UK.

For more infor­ma­tion about the stop kingsnorth cam­paign see www.climatecamp.org.uk

Camp Bling announces emergency relaunch/new website on third anniversary.

Press release:

Camp Bling ‘Save Pri­o­ry Park!’ road cam­paign

Wednes­day 17th Sep­tem­ber 2008

Con­tact Camp Bling direct­ly on 07866 967601

Or e‑mail camp.bling@yahoo.co.uk

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

——————————————————————————————————–

Camp Bling announces emer­gency relaunch on third anniver­sary.

Press release:

Camp Bling ‘Save Pri­o­ry Park!’ road cam­paign

Wednes­day 17th Sep­tem­ber 2008

Con­tact Camp Bling direct­ly on 07866 967601

Or e‑mail camp.bling@yahoo.co.uk

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

——————————————————————————————————–

Camp Bling announces emer­gency relaunch on third anniver­sary.

‘The glob­al sit­u­a­tion has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly since the protest site was first set up specif­i­cal­ly to stop the road — both in terms of the over­all envi­ron­men­tal impacts and accel­er­at­ing pace.’ (www.campbling.org)

Pro­test­ers and sup­port­ers at Camp Bling will mark a third full year of occu­pa­tion to stop the con­tro­ver­sial Pri­o­ry Cres­cent road widen­ing on Tues­day 23rd Sep­tem­ber 2008 with an emer­gency relaunch to address envi­ron­men­tal cat­a­stro­phe as it unfolds and accel­er­ates around the world.

The camp are set to go live with new web­site: http://www.campbling.org on the anniver­sary date, to sup­port their objec­tive to stop the road widen­ing, whilst at the same time tak­ing a dra­mat­ic new turn to dis­cuss crit­i­cal issues such as con­sumer cul­ture, peak oil pro­duc­tion, mass extinc­tion, and the appro­pri­ate response to these and oth­er crises. (1)

Res­i­dent Gavin said, ‘we could not have pre­dict­ed how quick­ly the world was going to change when we first set up Camp Bling three years ago. Now we feel com­pelled to address the fun­da­men­tal need for lifestyle change dur­ing the com­ing crash, as west­ern soci­ety over­shoots the eco­log­i­cal lim­its of the earth.’

Lat­est mem­ber Paul added, ‘fund­ing towards the £13.5m Pri­o­ry Cres­cent scheme is unlike­ly to be grant­ed to the Coun­cil before 2011. A fur­ther three years defend­ing the site will pro­vide ample oppor­tu­ni­ty for us to begin to push a far more rad­i­cal agen­da. We have always walked the walk — now is the time for us to start talk­ing all about it.’ (2)

Peo­ple are invit­ed to vis­it both the vir­tu­al world of the new web­site, plus the real one of the road protest as the Blingers dig in for a fourth win­ter, with a com­pre­hen­sive revamp and ongo­ing build­ing work planned, and sup­port there­fore still very much required from the local com­mu­ni­ty.

——————————————————————————————-

ENDS.

NOTES TO EDITORS:

1) See ‘Tip­ping points’ page at http://www.campbling.org/ for lat­est back­ground data and def­i­n­i­tion of peak oil the­o­ry.

2) Southend Bor­ough Coun­cil lat­est Pri­o­ry Cres­cent cost esti­mate of £11.5m pre­sent­ed to Depart­ment for Trans­port does not include £2m already spent to date.

1000+ partridges liberated from game breeder

“Dur­ing a night in Sep­tem­ber, a group of lib­er­a­tionists set out to locate and destroy a large scale game breed­er in East Sus­sex.

1000+ partridges liberated from game breeder1000+ partridges liberated from game breeder“Dur­ing a night in Sep­tem­ber, a group of lib­er­a­tionists set out to locate and destroy a large scale game breed­er in East Sus­sex.

Water dis­pensers were sliced and com­bined with feed hop­pers to soil the grain, barbed wire fences were cut, and a near­by fox trap was chopped to pieces. How­ev­er tonight was­n’t about caus­ing eco­nom­ic loss. It was about lib­er­at­ing inno­cent lives.…. AND caus­ing eco­nom­ic loss!

Work­ers liv­ing on the site in a por­ta­cab­in and car­a­van with dogs bark­ing through the night did­n’t deter us. We locat­ed an inten­sive breed­er shed, crammed sol­id with hun­dreds of young Par­tridges. Out­side was a run where the birds could leave the dusty shed to walk through inch­es of their own excre­ment and see the out­side world through metres of wire mesh and net­ting. Not any more! A few hours with us there and the runs were in pieces, hav­ing removed the roof net­ting and rip­ping side pan­els down. Thou­sands of birds were herd­ed from the units and were last seen fly­ing off into the skies, back into the wild where they should be.

These ‘peo­ple’ are fair­ly thick types so in case it was­n’t clear who had been we left a few mes­sages around the place. ‘LOST SOMETHING?’ adorns the side of his now emp­ty breed­ing unit, along with ‘FUCK SHOOTING’.

ANIMAL LIBERATION NOW — what are you wait­ing for?

Coun­try­side Resis­tance”

Click here to view pho­tos; anony­mous com­mu­nique from Bite Back.

11th October day of action against surveillance — Freedom not Fear + ANPR news for car drivers

Call to mass action Sat­ur­day 11th Octo­ber against the sur­veil­lance state in sol­i­dar­i­ty with activists around the world http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/content/view/242/144/

Freedom not Fear banner logoCall to mass action Sat­ur­day 11th Octo­ber against the sur­veil­lance state in sol­i­dar­i­ty with activists around the world http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/content/view/242/144/

A broad move­ment of cam­paign­ers and orga­ni­za­tions is call­ing on every­body to join action against exces­sive sur­veil­lance by gov­ern­ments and busi­ness­es. On 11 Octo­ber 2008, con­cerned peo­ple in many coun­tries will take to the streets, the mot­to being “Free­dom not fear 2008”. Peace­ful and cre­ative action, from protest march­es to par­ties, will take place in many cap­i­tal cities.

—————

Sur­veil­lance mania is spread­ing. Gov­ern­ments and busi­ness­es reg­is­ter, mon­i­tor and con­trol our behav­iour ever more thor­ough­ly. No mat­ter what we do, who we phone and talk to, where we go, whom we are friends with, what our inter­ests are, which groups we par­tic­i­pate in — “big broth­er” gov­ern­ment and “lit­tle broth­ers” in busi­ness know it more and more thor­ough­ly. The result­ing lack of pri­va­cy and con­fi­den­tial­i­ty is putting at risk the free­dom of con­fes­sion, the free­dom of speech as well as the work of doc­tors, helplines, lawyers and jour­nal­ists.

The man­i­fold agen­da of secu­ri­ty sec­tor reform encom­pass­es the con­ver­gence of police, intel­li­gence agen­cies and the mil­i­tary, threat­en­ing to melt down the divi­sion and bal­ance of pow­ers. Using meth­ods of mass sur­veil­lance, the bor­der­less coop­er­a­tion of the mil­i­tary, intel­li­gence ser­vices and police author­i­ties is lead­ing towards the con­struc­tion of “Fortress­es” in Europe and on oth­er con­ti­nents, direct­ed against refugees and dif­fer­ent-look­ing peo­ple but also affect­ing, for exam­ple, polit­i­cal activists, the poor and under-priv­iledged, and sports fans.

Peo­ple who con­stant­ly feel watched and under sur­veil­lance can­not freely and coura­geous­ly stand up for their rights and for a just soci­ety. Mass sur­veil­lance is there­by threat­en­ing the fab­ric of a demo­c­ra­t­ic and open soci­ety. Mass sur­veil­lance is also endan­ger­ing the work and com­mit­ment of civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions.

Sur­veil­lance, dis­trust and fear are grad­u­al­ly trans­form­ing our soci­ety into one of uncrit­i­cal con­sumers who have “noth­ing to hide” and — in a vain attempt to achieve total secu­ri­ty — are pre­pared to give up their free­doms. We do not want to live in such a soci­ety!

We believe the respect for our pri­va­cy to be an impor­tant part of our human dig­ni­ty. A free and open soci­ety can­not exist with­out uncon­di­tion­al­ly pri­vate spaces and com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

The increas­ing elec­tron­ic reg­is­tra­tion and sur­veil­lance of the entire pop­u­la­tion does not make us any safer from crime, costs mil­lions of Euros and puts the pri­va­cy of inno­cent cit­i­zens at risk. Under the reign of fear and blind action­ism, tar­get­ed and sus­tained secu­ri­ty mea­sures fall by the way­side, as well as tack­ling peo­ples’ actu­al dai­ly prob­lems such as unem­ploy­ment and pover­ty.

In order to protest against secu­ri­ty mania and exces­sive sur­veil­lance we will take to the streets in cap­i­tal cities in many coun­tries on 11 Octo­ber 2008. We call on every­body to join our peace­ful protest. Politi­cians are to see that we are will­ing to take to the streets for the pro­tec­tion of our lib­er­ties!

There are plans for a demo with music and noise at New Scot­land Yard. Are oth­ers else­where up for doing demos else­where in the UK at oth­er police sta­tions?

Wiki for info and dis­cus­sion re Lon­don / UK actions
at http://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/Freedom_Not_Fear_2008/London
and http://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/Diskussion:Freedom_Not_Fear_2008/London

It would be good to have a con­ver­sa­tion about this as we need to get some­thing good start­ed. Octo­ber 11th Vid-Fly­er http://www.ecln.org

———–

Vehi­cle spy-cam data to be held for five years

Author­i­ties will store details of car jour­neys sur­veilled by the new nation­al Auto­mat­ic Num­ber Plate Recog­ni­tion (ANPR) sys­tem for five years, the Home Office has revealed.

Senior police offi­cer had said the data on mil­lions of vehi­cles would only be kept for two years, the Guardian reports. The Infor­ma­tion Com­mis­sion­er’s Office (ICO) is exam­in­ing a com­plaint by Pri­va­cy Inter­na­tion­al over the extend­ed reten­tion peri­od. The pri­va­cy advo­ca­cy group described it as “unnec­es­sary and dis­pro­por­tion­ate”.

The ICO said: “Pro­longed reten­tion would need to be clear­ly jus­ti­fied based on con­tin­u­ing val­ue not on the mere chance it may come in use­ful.”

The ANPR sys­tem, head­quar­tered in Hen­don, north Lon­don, will be ful­ly oper­a­tional in the new year. Half of Eng­lish and Welsh police are already sup­ply­ing it with data from their upgrad­ed CCTV net­works.

Forces are being encour­aged to “ful­ly and strate­gi­cal­ly exploit” its poten­tial for track­ing sus­pects and vehi­cles by the Asso­ci­a­tion of Chief Police Offi­cers. It’s envis­aged that ANPR will be used as part of “main­stream polic­ing”, rang­ing from clamp­ing down on unin­sured dri­vers to counter-ter­ror oper­a­tions.

Cam­paign­ers have called for the gov­ern­ment to more clear­ly define which oth­er agen­cies will be allowed to inter­ro­gate the data­base and for what rea­sons.

Rossport Update on 11th September 2008 & solidarity action in Brighton & upcoming action in London

An update on the sit­u­a­tion as of this morn­ing in occu­pied Erris

After a tru­ly momen­tous day in Erris yesterday,things are much calmer this morn­ing.
The Soli­taire has been con­firmed to be sta­tionery in Killy­begs Co Done­gal.

An update on the sit­u­a­tion as of this morn­ing in occu­pied Erris

SolitaireAfter a tru­ly momen­tous day in Erris yesterday,things are much calmer this morn­ing.
The Soli­taire has been con­firmed to be sta­tionery in Killy­begs Co Done­gal.

Police pres­ence in the area is still very heavy this morn­ing although the gen­er­al atmos­phere (aside from at the com­pound gates) is slight­ly less tense. Mau­ra Har­ring­ton con­tin­ues her coura­geous hunger strike at the com­pound gates with round the clock sol­i­dar­i­ty from both locals and the camp.
Shell to Sea hunger striker

It is still not clear how exact­ly the Soli­taire sus­tained the dam­age to its “stinger”
The stinger is DEFINITELY slight­ly dam­aged in one sec­tion how­ev­er this reporter can con­firm that it was not so dam­aged on Tues­day night when it arrived in Broad­haven Bay and that con­di­tions all through­out Tues­day night were absolute­ly calm both at land and on sea (remem­ber­ing that the Soli­taire can oper­ate in extreme­ly heavy seas unhin­dered due to its size).

The cause of the dam­age is a heav­i­ly spec­u­lat­ed upon mat­ter and I will not add to oth­er than the fact that AllSeas Ltd may be con­trac­tu­al­ly relieved from its oblig­a­tions under a damge clause in the con­tract.

More from yes­ter­day

Lock-on protest

The 5 peo­ple who locked on in atro­cious con­di­tions for 6 and a half hours from 5.30am to mid­day and blocked the road were all released with­out charge from Bel­mul­let Gar­da Sta­tion. 4 were held for 6 and a half hours and 1 was released after 4 hours. They report that they were treat­ed well in Gar­da cus­tody and that their needs were attend­ed to cor­rect­ly.

Up to 15 peo­ple were in atten­dance in sol­i­dar­i­ty at one point or anoth­er dur­ing the day, Shell to Sea lock-on 1Shell to Sea lock-on 2Gar­dai refused to allow any to stay inside the walls of the (pub­lic) station,including a solic­i­tor who is part of the protests. The lock-on par­tic­i­pants are all in good form today and proud of their actions and a good day for the cam­paign.

Pat O’Don­nell and son
Pat O’Don­nell and son as has been pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed were again arrest­ed yes­ter­day morn­ing to pre­vent them exer­cis­ing their legal enti­tle­ment to fish the waters of Broad­haven Bay. The pair were again arrest­ed under the “blank cheque” that is Sec­tion 8 of the Pub­lic Order Act 1994.

This was the sec­ond time the pair were arrest­ed in 24 hours and released with­out charge,a spu­ri­ous use and fla­grant abuse of the law A pos­si­ble route to stem this behav­iour would be to seek an injunc­tion in the High Court to pre­vent the Gar­dai from using the law in this way,this how­ev­er is a very rare achieve­ment and is unlike­ly to be heard.

Mau­ra Har­ring­ton’s hunger­strike
Mau­ra con­tin­ued coura­geous­ly with her refusal to eat until the Soli­taire leaves Irish ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters. She has been giv­ing inter­views to media at inter­vals and has been chat­ting with sup­port­ers when the police are at a safe dis­tance. Gar­dai were,at 4am on Wednes­day morn­ing ‚revving their engines extreme­ly loud­ly right in front of Mau­ra’s car in order to dis­turb her sleep as much as pos­si­ble. Sup­port­ers have main­tained a con­stant pres­ence since the begin­ning of the action at 5pm Tues­day.
The hunger strike con­tin­ues

SOLITAIRE
We do not know whether or not the Soli­taire will return. We remain on high alert.

All sol­i­dar­i­ty in what­ev­er form and wher­ev­er is need­ed and appre­ci­at­ed.

—

10th Sep­tem­ber:

Five Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty campers have locked on to a bridge about 100m from the gates of the Shell com­pound in Glen­gad. The campers have been locked on since 4:30am — 5am. Gar­daí have refused to call the fire brigade, but have put a makeshift wee tent over the pro­tes­tors, and have cut a drain in the side of the road to allow lodg­ing rain on the road to drain off.

Two fish­ing boat skip­pers (plus crews) have been arrest­ed after Gar­daí board­ed the ves­sels as they approached the Soli­taire at anchor in Broad­haven Bay. Local on-the-scene reports say that Pat ‘the Chief’ O’Don­nell and his son Jonathan are among those arrest­ed. Gar­daí are alleg­ing pub­lic order offences (I expect to hear they’ll all be released with­out charges soon). Gar­daí are pre­vent­ing access now to the com­pound gates, where Mau­ra Har­ring­ton remains in her car and on hunger strike. Gar­daí are using the lock-on action as a pre­text for stop­ping pub­lic move­ment along that stretch of road.There is only one pro­tes­tor keep­ing watch on Mau­ra with a cam­era, but sup­port­ers can get close to both of them through the fields near­by. Inter­net con­nec­tion has returned to the Camp office, since about an hour before this post­ing.

Wel­come to Ire­land 2008 — Shel­l’s lit­tle police state!

Get up to Mayo now and con­front their vio­lent thiev­ing plans!

Pat O’Don­nell and his son Jonathan were AGAIN arrest­ed this morn­ing as they were attempt­ing to to exer­cise their legal right to be a sea.

The lock-on con­tin­ues to block the road from the Bel­mul­let side and the police have set up a road-block form the oth­er side of the com­pund (Pol­lath­omais side)

The 2–3 mile area in between is a pen where the police are pre­vent­ing peo­ple from walk­ing (although peo­ple are access­ing the road,and Maura,through the fields.

The Police are attempt­ing to begin the cut­ting of the pipes that are being used in the lock-on,this could take quite some time as they are extreme­ly thick.

The lock-on par­tic­i­pants are lying in pud­dles of water at this stage as the rain con­tin­ues to lash down in Erris.

A con­stant vig­il was kept at Mauras side all ngith with at least 5 peo­ple there at all times to ensure the cops did­nt try any­thing.

The Soli­taire is sta­tionery at its anchor loca­tion and there is no activ­i­ty on the com­pound at Glen­gad.

It must be under­lined that the arrests of Pat O’Don­nell and his com­rades are TOTALLY spu­ri­ous ‚a bull­shit appli­ca­tion of Sec­tion 8 of the Pub­lic Order Act 1994 to keep the Chief and his fish­er­men col­leagues off the waters.

An injunc­tion is being sought to pre­vent fur­ther spu­ri­ous arrests.

——-

Brighton solidarity action with Shell to SeaTwo activists are cur­rent­ly occu­py­ing the roof of the Shell petrol garage on Pre­ston Road, Brighton in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the com­mu­ni­ties resist­ing the Cor­rib gas pipeline devel­op­ment in Ross­port, Ire­land. This action is in response to an urgent call out made by the Ross­port sol­i­dar­i­ty camp due to the pres­ence of the pipe lay­ing ves­sel, the Soli­taire, in Broad­haven bay and the immi­nent com­mence­ment of the build­ing of the pipeline.

The ship that is to build the pipeline is booked for the next two weeks. If Shell is able to fol­low its timetable to bring the pipeline into land, this will cre­ate mas­sive prob­lems for any resis­tance to the project in the future. Shell will be cre­at­ing ‘facts on the ground’ which will essen­tial­ly make it eas­i­er to push through a deci­sion on the land route, which local res­i­dents and cam­paign­ers have been fight­ing against. If work is pre­vent­ed at this time, it is unlike­ly that the ship will be able to return for at least two years as it has already been booked up.

Since 2005 there has been mas­sive resis­tance, includ­ing a strong cam­paign of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, from the local com­mu­ni­ty, around Ire­land and beyond.

Update — 4:30pm

The two pro­test­ers came down some­time after 3–30 and were imme­di­ate­ly arrest­ed fol­low­ing an accu­sa­tion by the man­ag­er (a real­ly nasty piece of work) of crim­i­nal dam­age to the roof. Quite how she knew this with­out look­ing can be for the courts to decide (can’t wait). They are now in Holling­bury Cus­tody suite.

—–

Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Action
12 noon Mon­day 15th Sep
Allseas UK offices,7 Albe­mar­le St, West­min­ster Lon­don WIS 4HQ

Allseas owns the Soli­taire which tried to lay the gas pipe in Broad­haven Bay, Mayo last Tues­day. It has been dam­aged and may return to Hol­land. A local Woman is on hunger strike until it leaves Irish waters and we in the UK have been asked to demon­strate at the Allseas offices in sup­port of Mau­ra. The offices pre­vi­ous­ly adver­tised on this web­site can­not be con­firmed as the Allseas offices so we are going to their reg­is­tered address in West­min­ster. Please show sol­i­dar­i­ty to the peo­ple of Erris if you can.

Aldermaston Big Blockade October 27 & Oct. 4th: “No Missile Defence at Menwith Hill & Derby Trident 22nd September

Help dis­rupt ille­gal work on WMD at Britain’s nuclear bomb fac­to­ry

Help dis­rupt ille­gal work on WMD at Britain’s nuclear bomb fac­to­ry

In 2006/7, Faslane 365 saw well over 1000 arrests dur­ing a year-long block­ade of the Tri­dent sub­ma­rine base in Scot­land . Last East­er, AWE Alder­mas­ton saw its biggest demon­stra­tion in two decades as 5000 peo­ple sur­round­ed the base to mark the 50th anniver­sary of the first Alder­mas­ton march. Tri­dent Ploughshares now invite you to a major block­ade of the Berk­shire nuke fac­to­ry, where bil­lions of pounds are cur­rent­ly being spent devel­op­ing new war­head facil­i­ties that will scup­per nuclear dis­ar­ma­ment for anoth­er 50 years. Help us uphold inter­na­tion­al law by blockad­ing this fac­to­ry of death in what promis­es to be a colour­ful cel­e­bra­tion of life and peo­ple pow­er. There is a role for every­one. This event is sup­port­ed by CND.

For fur­ther details, see:
http://blockawe.blogspot.com
and
http://www.tridentploughshares.org

Tri­dent Ploughshares is a cam­paign to dis­arm the UK Tri­dent nuclear weapons sys­tem in a non-vio­lent, open, peace­ful and ful­ly account­able man­ner.

“Non-vio­lence is stronger than any weapon. If human­i­ty does not end the atom bomb I do not think the human species can last.” — Gand­hi, speak­ing on the day of his assas­si­na­tion

–

There will be a week­end work­shop of Tri­dent Ploughshares non­vi­o­lence train­ing, focussing on prepa­ra­tion for the Octo­ber 27 Alder­mas­ton Big Block­ade at Waltham­stow Friend’s Meet­ing House, 1a Jew­el Road, off Hoe Street, Waltham­stow, Lon­don E17 4QU on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day 20th and 21st Sep­tem­ber.

The full week­end is pri­mar­i­ly for peo­ple think­ing of becom­ing mem­bers of Tri­dent Ploughshares and mak­ing an ongo­ing com­mit­ment. Peo­ple just wish­ing to pre­pare for the block­ade are wel­come to attend for the full week­end, but may also choose to attend on the SATURDAY ONLY.
There is no charge for the work­shop, but par­tic­i­pants are asked to con­tribute towards expens­es if they are able to.

Con­tact Ali­son to reg­is­ter and for more details:
E‑mail: alison.crane [at] ntlworld.com
Tel: 01785 611 768 or 0845 4588 362 or 07886 972 319

——-

Show your strength of feel­ing against Amer­i­can Mis­sile Defense by com­ing to Men­with Hill near Har­ro­gate. This US sys­tem, which Brown qui­et­ly said yes to in 2007, is mak­ing huge waves in East­ern Europe: Poland has agreed to mis­siles and the Czech Repub­lic, despite a major­i­ty of its peo­ple against, has agreed to the US radar com­po­nent for MD. Rus­sia is already com­par­ing these plans to the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis…

CAAB holds an annu­al July 4th protest: Inde­pen­dence FROM Amer­i­ca, and an autumn protest: Keep Space for Peace week. We also have week­ly protests on Tues­day nights and have clocked up hun­dreds of arrests over the years!

START = This time we start in Ket­tlesing Lay­by HG3 2LP (oppo­site the Black Bull on the A59). TIME = 12 noon til 5‑ish.

*** SO WHOSE COMING TO THIS IMPORTANT DEMONSTRATION ? (APART FROM LOTS OF PEOPLE !!!)

Musi­cians = * Lion Sound * Local group * Karl Dal­las * Ylem www.myspace.com/ylemfolk * Mon­key Wrenchers * Peace Artistes www.peaceartistes.org.uk

Speak­ers = Col­in Challen (Labour MP Mor­ley and Roth­well)

Rebec­ca John­son (Acronym Insti­tute for Dis­ar­ma­ment Diplo­ma­cy)

Food = Lunch O’Lils

.……and much more

Have fun! Bring your friends!

http://www.caab.org.uk/

———

tri­dent nuclear protest rolls royce raynesway der­by 10.am 22/9/08

hope you’ll join us bring musi­cal instru­ments or cir­cus acts wel­come a611 der­by ring road nuclear plant demo

month­ly anti nuclear .demo 10.am mon­day 22/9/18 hope you’ll all come rolls royce make parts for tri­dent nuclear weapons 4 mass destruc­tion used in wars this is ille­gal ..any per­son wish­ing to come to this worth­while cause are more than wel­come .we need musi­cians cir­cus acts .anti nuclear ban­ners, rolls royce keep ura­ni­um tita­ni­un and many more sub­stances con­nect­ed with the man­u­fac­ture of weapons off mass destruc­tion .we believe also the swans on the riv­er at rear are car­ry­ing radio active traces from cool­ing process from reac­tors i live a mile away .my fish­ponds loose oxy­gen through acid rain either from celanese chem­i­cal plant or rolls royce .the area sur­round­ing these to plants have the high­est leukemia deaths in the uk .why ..its not uncom­mon for me to find wildlife dying in this ares why i myself feed all wildlife .i boast the most birds in my gar­den in area .then next minute they die ..defra claim it is legal for these indus­tries to poi­son ani­mals / to stop them get­ting in to what they pro­duce .celanese make cig­a­rette tips .which help kill man any way .so why kill wildlife ..when the things they go in destroy life any­way .mon­ey mon­ey mon­ey and wealth .any per­son trav­el­ling .can get off the train at spon­don sta­tion .1 mile away and get picked up /or even der­by sta­tion . i’ve a 7 seater .or if trav­el­ling by car .park in my pri­vate lane out of police view ill run you down post­code de21 7bs .email tigger1946@fsmail.net .or 07727226032

‘Leave it in the ground’ national meeting on 11 and 12 October in Manchester

Announce­ment – ‘Leave it in the ground’ nation­al meet­ing

Cli­mate change is the biggest threat fac­ing us, and burn­ing coal is the biggest his­tor­i­cal cause of cli­mate change. Every day more coal is burned, yet indus­try and gov­ern­ment seem intent on burn­ing even more.

Announce­ment – ‘Leave it in the ground’ nation­al meet­ing

Cli­mate change is the biggest threat fac­ing us, and burn­ing coal is the biggest his­tor­i­cal cause of cli­mate change. Every day more coal is burned, yet indus­try and gov­ern­ment seem intent on burn­ing even more.

‘Leave it in the ground’ is the slo­gan of a new net­work for groups tak­ing action oppos­ing new coal devel­op­ments in the UK, includ­ing the 30+ planned open­cast sites and sev­en new coal-fired pow­er sta­tions. Added to those already oper­at­ing, and the coal import and trans­port facil­i­ties, these projects rep­re­sent a mas­sive threat to our abil­i­ty to cut green­house gas emis­sions to safe lev­els, and would be a dis­as­ter for the cli­mate as well as for local areas.

The first ‘Leave it in the ground’ meet­ing will be held at the Yard The­atre, 41 Old Bir­ley
Street, Hulme, Man­ches­ter M15 5RF, on 11 and 12 Octo­ber.

The net­work plans to be a way for groups to share skills and expe­ri­ence in dif­fer­ent areas and to encour­age col­lab­o­ra­tion on com­mon goals. It is a loose net­work of equals, and is not affil­i­at­ed to any polit­i­cal par­ty or NGO.

The pro­posed agen­da for this meet­ing includes:

Sat­ur­day 11th

§ Intro­duc­tion to the UK coal indus­try
§ Updates on oppo­si­tion to coal devel­op­ments in the UK, includ­ing the cam­paigns against the Ffos-y-Fran (near Merthyr Tyd­fil) and Lodge House (Der­byshire) open­cast sites, the 2008 Cli­mate Camp and the pro­posed Kingsnorth coal-fired pow­er sta­tion block­ade.
§ Dis­cussing cli­mate change solu­tions, includ­ing the impor­tance of a social­ly just tran­si­tion to a low-car­bon econ­o­my.
§ Think­ing about how our net­work will func­tion, its deci­sion-mak­ing struc­ture, name and com­mu­ni­ca­tions
§ Plan­ning ini­tial events and strat­e­gy for the net­work
§ Region­al net­work­ing between groups

Sun­day 12th

§ Media train­ing
§ Intro­duc­tion to direct action plan­ning
§ Fur­ther dis­cus­sions on cli­mate change, cli­mate jus­tice and inter­na­tion­al net­work­ing

If you can only make one day of the meet­ing, please try to come on Sat­ur­day. We will aim to start at 10:00 and to fin­ish by 18:00 to allow for trav­el. The meet­ing will free, lunch and evening meal on Sat­ur­day and lunch on Sun­day will be avail­able for dona­tions.

If you would like to attend, please reg­is­ter by email­ing info@leaveitintheground.org.uk, with ‘meet­ing’ in the sub­ject line, stat­ing how many of your group wish to attend, any spe­cial dietary or access require­ments and whether you want accom­mo­da­tion for Sat­ur­day night. Free accom­mo­da­tion will prob­a­bly be ‘crash­pad’ only, but we can pro­vide details of near­by hotels etc.

For those trav­el­ling from far off, we will oper­ate a ‘pool fare’ sys­tem to even out the costs of trav­el. The venue is about ten min­utes walk from Man­ches­ter Oxford Road sta­tion, and is served by num­ber 54 and 86 bus­es, with many oth­ers serv­ing the near­by Stret­ford road. More details on the GMPTE web­site.

Common Ground Community Garden Celebrates Success with Party on 6 September!

After a year and half of green-fin­gered, com­mu­ni­ty-spir­it­ed direct-action, we — the organ­is­ers of Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den — are cel­e­brat­ing suc­cess … and we invite all our friends,

Common Ground fete flier frontCommon Ground fete flier backAfter a year and half of green-fin­gered, com­mu­ni­ty-spir­it­ed direct-action, we — the organ­is­ers of Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den — are cel­e­brat­ing suc­cess … and we invite all our friends, neigh­bours and sup­port­ers to join in the fun!

Since open­ing the gar­den in May 2007, we have resist­ed being crim­i­nalised while fight­ing for green, com­mu­ni­ty-man­aged space in our neigh­bour­hood. Since turn­ing a coun­cil owned derelict plot into a beau­ti­ful com­mu­ni­ty gar­den, we and our neigh­bours have ignored injunc­tions, protest­ed evic­tion attempts and even faced arrest. But final­ly, we have not only def­i­nite­ly won new sites for at least one com­mu­ni­ty gar­den, but Com­mon Ground itself has been grant­ed a legal license! Suc­cess*!

Read­ing Grass­roots Action (RGA)** who run the gar­den, have been work­ing with Kates­grove Res­i­dents Asso­ci­a­tion (KRA) and have man­aged to agree the license for Com­mon Ground with Read­ing Bor­ough Coun­cil (RBC), which sees the gar­den being insured by KRA and re-opened to the pub­lic until the coun­cil demol­ish the exist­ing build­ings***. We have also vis­it­ed three sites in Kates­grove which could be used for one or more long-term gar­dens. We have cho­sen our pre­ferred sites and hope to agree terms as soon as pos­si­ble****.

To cel­e­brate this suc­cess, we will be hold­ing one more com­mu­ni­ty event at Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den on Sat­ur­day 6th Sep­tem­ber — and this time we have the full con­sent of the coun­cil! The event, run­ning from 2–9pm, will fea­ture fun for all the fam­i­ly such as games includ­ing a raf­fle, face-paint­ing, fresh food and drink and a live graf­fi­ti exhi­bi­tion pro­duced by local artists. In addi­tion, we will have diverse acoustic music from acts includ­ing Lon­dons ‘Babar Luck’ and ‘The King Blues’ as well as oth­er local acts. And of course, vis­i­tors will be able to find out more about what else we are up to and get involved in the new com­mu­ni­ty gar­den in Kates­grove.

We would real­ly love to wel­come every­body to the gar­den one last time and thank every­one who has sup­port­ed the project, so we hope to see you there!

But thats not all… Sup­port­ers of Com­mon Ground are organ­is­ing an all-night after par­ty at a near­by venue! There will be a room for band (punk, ska etc) and a room for DJ’s (hiphop, drum n bass, dub­step, tech­no etc) and con­firmed acts include Bro­ken Note and the Bath Dub Soundsys­tem. See you there!

Thanks,
‘Com­mon Ground’, part of ’Read­ing Grass­roots Action’.

NOTES FOR THE EDITOR:

* Whilst we are cel­e­brat­ing, we want to thank every­one who has sup­port­ed us for mak­ing this project a seri­ous of suc­cess­es from day one. Com­mon Ground has always been about bring­ing peo­ple togeth­er, mobil­is­ing peo­ple into tak­ing action to improve our com­mu­ni­ty with­out wait­ing for those in pow­er to do it for us (we reck­on you might wait for ever oth­er­wise!). It has been about a small piece of land tak­en back under com­mu­ni­ty con­trol and used to ben­e­fit the neigh­bour­hood, in con­trast to the usu­al sit­u­a­tion where resources are used sole­ly to make prof­its and ben­e­fit boss­es and share­hold­ers. In this way, Com­mon Ground was a suc­cess every time peo­ple joined us to ignore injunc­tions, each time we saw off evic­tion days, each time peo­ple took the ini­tia­tive to work in their gar­den. It has been a suc­cess as it was respect­ed by young peo­ple, as it was enjoyed by local work­ers and fam­i­lies and as diverse peo­ples — from squat­ters and anar­chists to res­i­dents of all back­grounds — had con­ver­sa­tions we wouldn’t oth­er­wise have had. So, thank you!

** Read­ing Grass­roots Action (RGA) aims to help increase the col­lec­tive pow­er of ordi­nary peo­ple like our­selves, improv­ing our liv­ing and work­ing con­di­tions and cre­at­ing new demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions which act as exam­ples of the world we want to see. We are guid­ed by our hope of one day liv­ing in a soci­ety of gen­uine free­dom and equal­i­ty, with all resources com­mon­ly owned and demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly organ­ised by every­one for every­one. Sev­er­al peo­ple involved in Com­mon Ground were already RGA mem­bers and in April 2008 the groups became one and the same, with RGA look­ing for­wards to help­ing cre­ate a long-term com­mu­ni­ty gar­den in Kates­grove and mov­ing on to tack­le oth­er cam­paigns in Read­ing. If inter­est­ed in join­ing or sup­port­ing RGA, peo­ple are encour­aged to email us at rgacollective(AT)hotmail.co.uk.

*** The build­ings from Crown Street round to the begin­ning of Sil­ver Street have unfor­tu­nate­ly been left by RBC to fall into a state of dis­re­pair over the last few years. We would pre­fer them to be ren­o­vat­ed, as we believe they could be brought back to life as good-look­ing and use­ful build­ings. How­ev­er, RBC wish to demol­ish them as soon as pos­si­ble, as they hope to sell yet more pub­licly owned land to a pri­vate prop­er­ty devel­op­er.

**** RBC have offered three poten­tial sites which could be used for green, com­mu­ni­ty space in Kates­grove. Of these, the site on the cor­ner of Southamp­ton Street and the one on the cor­ner of Elgar Road are our favourites. Over the next few months, RGA and KRA will work to agree terms with RBC in order to gain access one or both of these sites. We appeal to the local com­mu­ni­ty, and to any­body who sup­ports this project to get in touch, and any help with work or dona­tions would be very wel­come!

rgacollective@hotmail.co.uk
http://www.rgacollective.org.uk

CLIMATE ACTION NEWS SHEET 82, AUGUST 2008

————————-
UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-
1) CLIMATE ACTION CAMP & NO BORDER CAMP, HAMBURG, GERMANY, 15–24.8.08
2) SHELL TO SEA WEEK OF ACTION, 17–23.08.08
3) EARTH FIRST! SUMMER GATHERING, NORFOLK, 27.8–1.9.08
4) BRISTOL ANARCHIST BOOKFAIR, BRISTOL, 13.09.08
5) TOWARDS CLIMATE ACTION IN COPENHANGEN 2009, DENMARK, 13–14.09.08

————————-
UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-
1) CLIMATE ACTION CAMP & NO BORDER CAMP, HAMBURG, GERMANY, 15–24.8.08
2) SHELL TO SEA WEEK OF ACTION, 17–23.08.08
3) EARTH FIRST! SUMMER GATHERING, NORFOLK, 27.8–1.9.08
4) BRISTOL ANARCHIST BOOKFAIR, BRISTOL, 13.09.08
5) TOWARDS CLIMATE ACTION IN COPENHANGEN 2009, DENMARK, 13–14.09.08
6) CLIMATE CAMP WHAT NEXT MEETING, MANCHESTER, 26–28.09.08
7) NATIONAL MEETING TO RESIST NEW COAL, MANCHESTER, 11–12.10.08
8) FOSSIL FOOLS DAY 2009, 01.04.09

—————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
—————-

1) CAMP FOR CLIMATE ACTION, KINGSNORTH, KENT, 3–11.08.08
2) DERBYSHIRE COAL MINE EVICTED, 14.08.08
3) US CLIMATE CAMPS, JULY/AUGUST
4) SAVING ICELAND CAMP, JULY/AUGUST
5) AIRPORT OCCUPATION, GERMANY, ONGOING
6) STICKING IT TO THE PM, LONDON, 22.07.08
7) 32 4x4s DISARMED, OXFORD, 18.07.08
8) NEW RISING TIDE LEAFLET
9) NEW REPORT: CASHING IN ON COAL

————————-
UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-
1) CLIMATE ACTION CAMP & NO BORDER CAMP, HAMBURG, GERMANY, 15–24.8.08
‘These camps are going to take place in or near Ham­burg. It’s two dif­fer­ent camps, but prob­a­bly on the same camp site and doing togeth­er at least two mass actions like block­ades: on 22nd August at the depor­ta­tion air­port of Ham­burg and on 23rd at the har­bour or at the new coal pow­er plant. http://klimacamp08.org

2) SHELL TO SEA WEEK OF ACTION, 17–23.08.08
The Soli­taire (the biggest pipe lay­ing ship in the world) is set to begin ille­gal­ly con­struct­ing the off­shore sec­tion of the pipeline. It is believed that the Soli­taire is on a pret­ty tight sched­ule & booked up for the next 2 years, so ANY dis­rup­tion pro­vides us with a real oppor­tu­ni­ty to delay the project sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Mem­bers of the ‘Great Rebel Raft Regat­ta’ recent­ly deployed at the E.ON coal fired pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth in
Kent, Eng­land, have made their way from Cli­mate Camp UK to Erris, in order to assist Shell to Sea cam­paign­ers in their oppo­si­tion to this pipeline con­struc­tion at Glen­gad.

3) EARTH FIRST! SUMMER GATHERING, NORFOLK, 27.8–1.9.08
5 days of work­shops, net­work­ing and plan­ning actions in a beau­ti­ful field in Nor­folk. The gath­er­ing is also a prac­ti­cal exam­ple of low-impact eco-liv­ing and non-hier­ar­chi­cal organ­is­ing. www.earthfirstgathering.org.uk

4) BRISTOL ANARCHIST BOOKFAIR, BRISTOL, 13.09.08
St Wer­burghs Cen­tre, 10am to 5pm, free entry. With a work­shop by Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide: Why direct action? Social change not cli­mate change? www.bristolanarchistbookfair.org

5) TOWARDS CLIMATE ACTION IN COPENHANGEN 2009, DENMARK 13–14.09.08
Join the first inter­na­tion­al plan­ning meet­ing in Copen­hagen from the 13–14th of Sep­tem­ber 2008. The meet­ing aims at prepar­ing a large mobil­i­sa­tion for direct action against the root caus­es of cli­mate change in Copen­hagen and through­out the world dur­ing the UN Cli­mate Con­fer­ence (30 Nov-11 Dec 2009). More info:
http://klimax2009.org/?p=33&langswitch_lang=en Tell them you’re com­ing:
sept08@klimax2009.org

6) CLIMATE CAMP WHAT NEXT MEETING, MANCHESTER 26–28.09.08
All are invit­ed to the first Post-Cli­mate Camp Nation­al Gath­er­ing. The gath­er­ing will offer a chance to reflect on where we are at, decide where we go from here, and pro­vide info as to how to get involved in the ongo­ing direct action cam­paign to stop Kingsnorth.
Ques­tions? Email process@climatecamp.org.uk

7) NATIONAL MEETING TO RESIST NEW COAL, MANCHESTER, 11–12.10.08
A meet­ing to bring togeth­er groups and com­mu­ni­ties resist­ing coal in the UK – from open cast and deep coal mines, to pow­er sta­tions and coal imports. Share infor­ma­tion, plan for action, and build a strong net­work of resis­tance. www.leaveitintheground.org.uk

8) FOSSIL FOOLS DAY 2009, 01.04.2009
Four con­ti­nents, 150 actions, and an April Fool’s Day with a fan­tas­ti­cal­ly sub­ver­sive (and rad­i­cal­ly nec­es­sary) twist – we’re def­i­nite­ly doing that again! So Fos­sil Fools Day 2009 is a go – start pick­ing your fos­sil fuel tar­get now! Info and resources will be post­ed on the web­site soon, and look out for leaflets to dis­trib­ute in Decem­ber.

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RECENT HAPPENINGS:
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1) CAMP FOR CLIMATE ACTION, KINGSNORTH, KENT, 3–11.08.08
From the Heathrow Con­fer­ence to the Car­a­van, from the work­shops to beau­ti­ful camp life, from the GRRR pirates to the fence breach­ers to the bail break­ers, and the flur­ry of affin­i­ty group actions before, dur­ing and after the camp, the 2008 Camp for Cli­mate Action was a roar­ing suc­cess. We out­smart­ed 26 police forces to run the biggest cli­mate camp ever. We cov­ered the riv­er in boats, filled the streets with peo­ple, cov­ered the pow­er sta­tion gates with ban­ners and hit at least eight oth­er tar­gets with autonomous actions. We flood­ed the nation­al, local and inde­pen­dent media with our sto­ries and mes­sages. E.ON and the Gov­ern­ment threw every­thing they could at us, and they still couldn’t hold us back. Actions, in no par­tic­u­lar order, includ­ed: an office inva­sion of min­ing com­pa­ny BHP Bil­ton, tak­ing over an incin­er­a­tor site in Newhaven, a block­ade of Cargill over its rain­for­est destruc­tion and land-grab­bing, a pro-veg­an roof occu­pa­tion and ban­ner drop at Smith­field Meat Mar­ket, a protest at US air base Milden­hall to high­light mil­i­tary CO2 emis­sions, a ban­ner drop from an elec­tric­i­ty pylon, a naked protest at DBERR, the world’s small­est pro­test­ers climb­ing E.ON’s smoke­stack (at Legoland), actions at Roy­al Bank of Scot­land (not once but twice – stu­dents do a die-in and Ris­ing Tiders bust out the super­glue), a demo at Lon­gan­net pow­er sta­tion in Fife, a mul­ti-pronged attack on Gatwick by Plane Stu­pid, the shut­ting down of the South’s biggest bio­fu­el stor­age facil­i­ty, and in
a sin­gle day of may­hem in the City, the Cli­mate Car­a­van tar­get­ed RBS and the PR firms for Shell, BAA & E.ON.
www.climatecamp.org.uk
Pho­to slide show: http://blip.tv/file/1167973
Video: http://www.undercurrents.org/visionon/

2) DERBYSHIRE COAL MINE EVICTED, 14.08.08
The squat in Der­byshire, a protest on the site of a pro­posed new open-cast coal mine, came to end with the evic­tion of the remain­ing two pro­test­ers, who had res­olute­ly resist­ed attempts to clear the site by furi­ous­ly dig­ging for vic­to­ry. Come to the nation­al Leave it in the Ground meet­ing in Octo­ber to help with the next steps. www.leaveitintheground.org.uk

3) US CLIMATE CAMPS, JULY/AUGUST
All three US Cli­mate Camps have now wound down, with action high­lights includ­ing the South­east Cli­mate Con­ver­gence occu­py­ing a nuclear facil­i­ty in Vir­ginia, the Bil­lion­aires for Coal strik­ing Bank of Amer­i­ca 4 times in 3 days and a protest at NW Nat­ur­al Gas fol­low­ing the West Coast Con­ver­gence. And check out http://www.uncampement.net/?q=en/node/775 for
the ongo­ing (8–24 August) camp in Que­bec, Cana­da.

4) SAVING ICELAND CAMP, JULY/AUGUST
Sav­ing Iceland’s fourth action camp is now over but the fight goes on. The three-week camp was at Hell­isheiði, where Reyk­javík Ener­gy is expand­ing their geot­her­mal pow­er plant, first of all to sup­ply ener­gy to alu­mini­um smelters. Actions includ­ed: work on the Cen­tu­ry Aluminum’s exist­ing smelter as well as a steel fac­to­ry were block­ad­ed, hold­ing up a shift
change for sev­er­al hours. A Reyk­javik Ener­gy geot­her­mal drill site at Hell­ishei­di, being built for Cen­tu­ry, was com­plete­ly shut down for a day as activists locked to machines, climbed the drill and occu­pied the pow­er con­trol room. The nation­al pow­er com­pa­ny Landsvirkjun had it’s office invad­ed, and it’s CEO Fridrik Sophus­son had his home vis­it­ed. Sav­ing Ice­land nailed an evic­tion notice to his door. www.savingiceland.org

5) AIRPORT OCCUPATION, GERMANY, ONGOING
In Ger­many cli­mate activists have been squat­ting a wood­land since the begin­ning of June to stop the con­struc­tion of yet anoth­er new run­way for the already mas­sive Frank­furt air­port. The camp con­tin­ues to grow with over 30 peo­ple liv­ing on site and has the sup­port of the com­mu­ni­ty. Demos and actions are being organ­ised togeth­er with local res­i­dents’ groups
against air­port expan­sion. Amaz­ing tree­hous­es, walk­ways and funky ground shel­ters have been con­struct­ed to make life pleas­ant in the woods and to resist evic­tion as long as pos­si­ble. Peo­ple are wel­come to join in. www.waldbesetzung.blogsport.de

6) STICKING IT TO THE PM, LONDON, 22.07.08
On 22nd July a Plane Stu­pid cam­paign­er super­glued him­self to Prime Min­is­ter Gor­don Brown in 10 Down­ing Street. He’d been invit­ed to receive an award for protest­ing, so prompt­ly decid­ed to car­ry on in that vain! Whilst ask­ing Gor­don about refus­ing to meet West Lon­don
res­i­dents opposed to the con­struc­tion of a third run­way at Heathrow, the intre­pid pro­test­er put his super­glue cov­ered hand onto Brown’s poly­ester suit. When Brown went to turn away he found he was stuck and for once had no option but to lis­ten. www.planestupid.com

7) 32 4x4s DISARMED, OXFORD, 18.07.08
32 SUV own­ers woke up in Oxford on 18th July to dis­cov­er that their envi­ron­men­tal­ly destruc­tive vehi­cles had been dis­abled using the ‘mung bean trick’ to let down their tires.

8) NEW RISING TIDE LEAFLET
At long last, Ris­ing Tide has a new leaflet – who we are, what we do and why we do it, wrapped up in an inspir­ing pho­to col­lage pack­age. Sneak a peak at , or email info@risingtide.org.uk to get a bunch post­ed to you for dis­tri­b­u­tion in your local area.

9) NEW REPORT: CASHING IN ON COAL
High street banks are mak­ing mil­lions by pro­vid­ing the finan­cial fuel that dri­ves the expan­sion of coal extrac­tion and com­bus­tion. This report exam­ines the role in the last two years of the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land (RBS), HSBC and Bar­clays in pro­vid­ing and arrang­ing the finan­cial means to the coal indus­try to extract and burn vast quan­ti­ties of coal. The report reveals that RBS has helped lend more mon­ey to the coal indus­try, in more deals, than any oth­er major UK bank. www.carbonweb.org

—————–
Ris­ing Tide UK,
c/o 62 Fieldgate Street,
Lon­don E1 1ES
www.risingtide.org.uk
www.artnotoil.org.uk
www.fossilfoolsday.org
Tel: 07708 794665

See also the Camp for Cli­mate Action (www.climatecamp.org.uk), Net­work for Cli­mate Action (www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk) and Cli­mate Indy­media (www.climateimc.org)

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Please send any­thing you’d like includ­ed in this news sheet to:
newssheet@risingtide.org.uk

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This News Sheet was brought to you by Ris­ing Tide, a grass­roots net­work of groups and indi­vid­u­als com­mit­ted to tak­ing action and build­ing a move­ment against cli­mate change.

For more infor­ma­tion…
email: info@risingtide.org.uk
Phone: +44 (0)845 458 8923 / +44 (0)7708 794665
Address: 62 Fieldgate St, Lon­don, E1 1ES
Web site: http://risingtide.org.uk

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