Category: South East England

South East Eng­land

Good news from Titnore + stalls, tidy-ups and open day/tours

Fur­ther suc­cess for the inspir­ing Tit­nore Woods cam­paign­ers report­ed in todays press

Trees saved from axe
Sun­day 24th August 2008

A con­tro­ver­sial hous­ing devel­op­ment has been revised to save hun­dreds of trees.

Plans to build 875 homes on green fields at West Dur­ring­ton, Wor­thing, sparked fury among envi­ron­men­tal­ists when they were unveiled in 2003.

Fur­ther suc­cess for the inspir­ing Tit­nore Woods cam­paign­ers report­ed in todays press

Trees saved from axe
Sun­day 24th August 2008

A con­tro­ver­sial hous­ing devel­op­ment has been revised to save hun­dreds of trees.

Plans to build 875 homes on green fields at West Dur­ring­ton, Wor­thing, sparked fury among envi­ron­men­tal­ists when they were unveiled in 2003.

Around 275 trees would have been axed under the orig­i­nal pro­pos­als as Tit­nore Lane, a wind­ing coun­try road, was straight­ened.

But the pro­pos­al led to pro­test­ers set­ting set up a per­ma­nent tree camp in woods near Tit­nore Lane.

Now the West Dur­ring­ton Con­sor­tium, which con­sists of build­ing firms with a stake in the devel­op­ment, has revised its design so that only 75 trees will be chopped.

It said around 2,350 trees would also be plant­ed on the site.

The new plan­ning appli­ca­tion will be con­sid­ered by Wor­thing Bor­ough Coun­cil lat­er this year.

—-

That’s real­ly good news about the plans not to cut the trees, but real­ly it’s no time to cel­e­brate. This is by no means a vic­to­ry as the ques­tion of ecol­o­gy in the area goes far beyond the very small patch of wood­land that was plan­ning to be cut down. If these hous­es are built then the area is fucked.

That is also only look­ing at it from an eco­log­i­cal point of veiw, when real­ly this, as with oth­er hous­ing devel­op­ments goes far beyond the eco­log­i­cal issues. The build­ing of 600 unaf­ford­able hous­es (along with the 200 set aside for “key work­ers”) has many effects on the area, it is anoth­er act of gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, this bat­tle is about more then trees and nature (for some involved) but part of an anti cap­i­tal­ist strug­gle.

Not to men­tion it is fuck­ing point­less build­ing more hous­es to rot and be unsold, except that we have more to squat in 10 years time.

They are nice trees though, I would be lying if i would say it did­n’t make smile to think at least some them might remain.

—–

WHEN is a wood not a wood? When it has a road run­ning right through it!

The “new” plan­ning appli­ca­tion for the West Dur­ring­ton devel­op­ment in Wor­thing, West Sus­sex, is being sold to the Wor­thing pub­lic as a “response to pub­lic opin­ion” that will spare many of the Tit­nore trees.

But, like the orig­i­nal plans, it includes access roads that will cut right through the beau­ti­ful ancient wood­land cur­rent­ly occu­pied by the protest camp. A wood is no longer a viable bio-sys­tem with a road cut­ting it in half. Wildlife like dormice and crest­ed newts will not sur­vive in what will be no more than road­side clumps of trees sur­round­ed by tar­mac and exec­u­tive homes.

The devel­op­ers do not men­tion that the lack of road widen­ing was forced on them through legal pres­sure, rather than dreamt up out of the good­ness of their hearts. And they do not men­tion what would be like­ly to hap­pen in a few years’ time, when the mas­sive increase in traf­fic to the new estate and the mega-Tesco would no doubt be expect­ed to force a re-think on Tit­nore Lane for the usu­al “safe­ty” rea­sons.

Need­less to say, the bat­tle against the destruc­tion of our coun­try­side in West Dur­ring­ton goes on! We are urg­ing every­one to send in their let­ters of objec­tion to plan­ning appli­ca­tion WB/04/00040/OUT as soon as pos­si­ble — Octo­ber 9 is the very lat­est dead­line. Write to James Apple­ton, Devel­op­ment Con­trol Man­ag­er, at Wor­thing Bor­ough Coun­cil, Port­land House, Rich­mond Road, Wor­thing BN11 1LF or email planning@worthing.gov.uk

There will also be stalls in Wor­thing town cen­tre, the first being next Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 6, from 11am at Hold­er’s Cor­ner, Mon­tague Street (near Liv­er­pool Gar­dens).

And, of course, the camp is still going strong. There is, how­ev­er, an urgent need for repairs to the infra­struc­ture and defences, which have degrad­ed over the last cou­ple of years. Polyprop rope is bad­ly want­ed — as well as finan­cial con­tri­bu­tions.

If you can spare an hour or two to help at the camp, a tidy-up day is being held on Sun­day Sep­tem­ber 21, from 10am. And then on Sun­day Sep­tem­ber 28 there will be an Open Day, from 2pm. This will includ­ed guid­ed tours, show­ing where the roads and hous­ing are planned to destroy the area. Bring food to share.

More info: www.protectourwoodland.co.uk

Earth First! gathering — programme and travel directions

Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing
Eco­log­i­cal Direct Action with­out Com­pro­mise
27 Aug — 1 Sept 2008, Nor­folk
Join us for 5 days of work­shops and plan­ning actions

Trav­el direc­tions:

Earth First! Gathering 2008 - print sizeEarth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing
Eco­log­i­cal Direct Action with­out Com­pro­mise
27 Aug — 1 Sept 2008, Nor­folk
Join us for 5 days of work­shops and plan­ning actions

Trav­el direc­tions:
The gath­er­ing this year will be held at Woolsey­bridge Farm — a love­ly site in Nor­folk with lots of trees and a lit­tle stream. It’s approx­i­mate­ly 1.5 miles NNE of Diss. Diss has reg­u­lar train ser­vices and a whole­food shop. The Grid Ref­er­ence of the site is TM130819. The post code is IP22 5SY.

The site is eas­i­ly acces­si­ble by pub­lic trans­port, you can get the train either to Diss or Nor­wich and then catch the bus route no 1 (Sim­monds) from Diss to Nor­wich or vice ver­sa — this route goes right past the site and we’ll be ask­ing the local bus com­pa­ny if they will stop right out­side the site on request. Or you could walk or cycle — it’s only 1.5miles away from Diss train sta­tion. Please come by pub­lic trans­port if at all pos­si­ble! .
We will run pick-ups from the train sta­tion for any­body who can’t use the bus ser­vice or for larg­er groups of peo­ple. If you need a lift please let us know well in advance (and not in the mid­dle of the night, when you’re at a train sta­tion some­where!). Ring the Gath­er­ing mobile on 07789 331857

For a map and fur­ther details on trav­el includ­ing bus times and direc­tions for dri­vers check out http://earthfirstgathering.org.uk/2008/where.html

Pro­gramme
This year’s pro­gramme focuss­es on info and plan­ning for actions, direct action skills as well as spaces to dis­cuss how we can respond to and deal with the widen­ing eco­log­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and soci­etal crises. We hope there’s some­thing for every­one.
We rec­om­mend that you arrive Tue evening, as work­shops will start on Wednes­day morn­ing and run until Sun­day evening

For more info about the gath­er­ing check out our web­site or email us (though we won’t be able to answer email after 21 Aug, as we’ll be on site set­ting up)

http://www.earthfirst.org.uk, sum­mer­gath­er­ing _ AT _ earthfirst.org.uk

The work­shops

Wednes­day

12:00
Intro­duc­tion to Earth First! and the gath­er­ing
Deal­ing with the main­stream media — how to get your mes­sage across
Basic electrics — for squats and homes.
Cap­i­tal­ism and cli­mate change — how to make the links vis­i­ble in actions
Queer net­work­ing ses­sion

2:30
Self-defence — mixed prac­tise ses­sion
Squat­ting FAQ — shar­ing tips and tricks
Action Recon­nais­sance for begin­ners
Intro­duc­tion to the root caus­es of eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion and an explo­ration of alter­na­tives
Advanced Nav­i­ga­tion

4:30
Sav­ing Ice­land — Intro­duc­tion to the cam­paign
Nuclear waste and nuclear weapons
Con­sen­sus Deci­sion-mak­ing
Intro­duc­tion to Ecol­o­gy
Con­fronting Abu­sive Behav­iours with­in our Com­mu­ni­ties — with­out the police/prison.

6:00
Library Space: Nego­ti­at­ing Safer Sex: tips on putting the the­o­ry into prac­tice, and mak­ing your sex life more fun as well as safer!

8:00
Cin­e­ma: Talk with video on resist­ing rain­for­est destruc­tion in Tas­ma­nia

Thurs­day

10:30
Deal­ing with Pub­lic Order sit­u­a­tions — under­stand­ing police tac­tics and how we can deal with to them/turn them to our advan­tage (runs until lunch)
State and cor­po­rate oppres­sion of the Aus­tralian Abo­rig­ines
Action recon­nais­sance — advanced skill­share, share your most clever tips and tricks for get­ting info for actions
Prac­ti­cal plant iden­ti­fi­ca­tion (begin­ners)
Activist trau­ma and recov­ery

12:00
Sav­ing Ice­land — an eval­u­a­tion of the camp this sum­mer
Secu­ri­ty for Activists Part I: Do’s and don’ts of organ­is­ing action, from arrang­ing to meet, plan­ning and what hap­pens after
Arrest sup­port for actions — how to pro­vide sup­port for your affin­i­ty group, medi­um sized actions or mega camps and gath­er­ings.
Intro­duc­tion to Earth First! and the sum­mer gath­er­ing

2:30
Wom­en’s self-defence — intro­duc­to­ry ses­sion
Food and Cli­mate Action: info for action
How to plan an action
Police liai­son for actions — what it is, its uses and lim­i­ta­tions and how to make it work.
Chang­ing light bulbs or smash­ing the sys­tem. Shar­ing +/- expe­ri­ences of work­ing within/outside the sys­tem

4:30
Oppos­ing nuclear expan­sion: plan­ning for action
How to plan and run a suc­cess­ful medi­um to long-term cam­paign
Night time skills Part I: intro­duc­tion (fol­lowed by prac­tise ses­sion at 8.30pm)
Legal and arrest work­shop
Intro­duc­tion to anar­chist history/potted anar­chist his­to­ries

6:00
Library space: open dis­cus­sion ?Direct action or pub­lic­i­ty stunt??
8:00

Cin­e­ma: Seashep­herd film and talk
8:30

Night time skills Part II — prac­tice your skills in the field.

Fri­day

10:30
Blockad­ing tac­tics
Cli­mate Camp debrief: a crit­i­cal look at the cli­mate camp, its achieve­ments and pol­i­tics
Intro­duc­tion to Earth First! And the sum­mer gath­er­ing
Com­put­er Secu­ri­ty for the non-tech­ni­cal
Prison Abo­li­tion: what’s wrong with prison? what do we mean by abo­li­tion and how can we make it hap­pen?

12:00
Food and cli­mate change: action and cam­paign plan­ning
Self-defence mixed prac­tise ses­sion
Squat­ting to resist — occu­pa­tions to resist the pow­ers of dark­ness
His­to­ry of Earth First!

2:30
The Earth First! Action Update and web­site: feed­back and get­ting involved
Resist­ing agro­fu­els — update on the sit­u­a­tion and action plan­ning
Sea Shep­herd — an intro to its cam­paigns and how to support/get involved.
Grow your own food — share you skills and expe­ri­ence
Queer Activist Forum: Rad­i­cal queers organ­ise for the future!

4:30
Queer Self-Defence: an intro to basic self-defence skills (ver­bal and phys­i­cal)
Set­ting up new direct action groups
Sav­ing Ice­land ? plan­ning actions for the com­ing year
Tech­no-fix­es and cli­mate change ? report by Cor­po­rate Watch
Urban self-reliance and self-suf­fi­cien­cy

7:30
Library: Pris­on­er Sup­port — An infor­mal get togeth­er to dis­cuss the state of pris­on­er sup­port in our move­ments, find out news and get advice on writ­ing to pris­on­ers, as well as mak­ing and writ­ing cards to send to pris­on­ers.

8:00
Cin­e­ma: A talk and film by a trib­al activist from Oris­sa oppos­ing min­ing

Sat­ur­day

10:30
Cam­paigns and Actions Round-up: UK and inter­na­tion­al news (no oth­er work­shops)

12:00
Wom­en’s self-defence prac­tise ses­sion plus run­ning along­side — intro­duc­tion to wom­en’s self-defence
Stop­ping GM test fields — dis­cus­sion on future campaign/actions
Research and destroy — how to research cor­po­ra­tions
Future mod­els of soci­ety — find­ing a path to sus­tain­able liv­ing
Intro­duc­tion to Earth First! and the sum­mer gath­er­ing
Using tripods for blockad­ing

2:30
Leave it in the ground — build­ing resis­tance to new coal min­ing and pow­er sta­tions
Facil­i­ta­tion of meet­ings
Activist Secu­ri­ty Part III: doing actions with­out leav­ing traces
Restora­tion Ecol­o­gy
Cre­at­ing safer spaces
Vis­it to Burston Strike School

4:30
Region­al meet­ings and action plan­ning (no oth­er work­shops)

6:00
Library Space: Work­ing with­out lead­ers — dis­cus­sion about core val­ues of anar­chism

8:00
Cin­e­ma: Smash Edo film and talk

Sun­day
11:00
Self defence mixed prac­tice ses­sion
Sort­ing out ways of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with­in EF!
Using radios on actions
Intro­duc­tion to Earth First! And the sum­mer gath­er­ing
Fences: get­ting over them/taking them down

12:15
The sum­mer gath­er­ing: feed­back on this year’s and get­ting involved in organ­is­ing the next one

2:30
Con­doms, cap­i­tal­ism and cli­mate change
Smash Edo
Intro­duc­tion to nav­i­ga­tion
What’s new in the world of law?
Fem­i­nist Health
Climb­ing trees, lamp posts and any­thing else

4:30
Rad­i­cal pol­i­tics in the age of col­lapse
The Roy­al Bank of Scot­land and Fos­sil Fuel Financ­ing
Get­ting your elec­tric­i­ty from solar pow­er and wind
Rad­i­cal Par­ent­ing
Look­ing after our men­tal health — shar­ing ideas and expe­ri­ences

8:00
Cin­e­ma: films — cli­mate camp footage, ready steady skip etc

Mon­day
Take-down: please stay for a day or two to help take down the site. If you’ve got access to a vehicle/van, it’d be great if you could help trans­port­ing mar­quees, recy­cling etc to the places they need to go. Cheers!

More info about the Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing
EF! is about direct action to halt the destruc­tion of the Earth. It’s about doing it your­self rather than rely­ing on lead­ers, gov­ern­ments or indus­try.
Direct action is at the heart of it, whether you’re stand­ing in front of a bull­doz­er, shut­ting down an open-cast mine or rip­ping up a field of GM crops.
We’re a loose net­work of peo­ple, groups and cam­paigns com­ing togeth­er for eco­log­i­cal direct action.
Join us for 5 days of work­shops, net­work­ing and plan­ning actions, run with­out lead­ers by every­one who comes along. The gath­er­ing is also a prac­ti­cal exam­ple of low-impact eco-liv­ing and non-hier­ar­chi­cal organ­is­ing.

http://www.earthfirst.org.uk, sum­mer­gath­er­ing _ AT _ earthfirst.org.uk

Foie Gras Restaurant Attacked in Solidarity with Climate Camp & Pheasant Shoot Sabotaged

“The Devon­shire Arms in Bolton Abbey is noto­ri­ous for its per­sis­tent use of foie gras and oth­er ‘del­i­ca­cies’ that require ani­mals to suf­fer acute­ly. This time the posh Devon­shire lan­drover had its four tyres slashed and was treat­ed to some paint strip­per.

Climate camp penknife“The Devon­shire Arms in Bolton Abbey is noto­ri­ous for its per­sis­tent use of foie gras and oth­er ‘del­i­ca­cies’ that require ani­mals to suf­fer acute­ly. This time the posh Devon­shire lan­drover had its four tyres slashed and was treat­ed to some paint strip­per.

This action is ded­i­cat­ed to the Camp for Cli­mate Action in Kingsnorth.

North York­shire ALF”

report­ed anony­mous­ly by Bite Back

—-

“Deep in rur­al Sur­rey we came across pheas­ant shoot­ing equip­ment so decid­ed to take some action.

Equip­ment was trashed, pens had holes cut in and hun­dreds of pounds worth of grain was left all over the floor to get wrecked.

In sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Ilk­ley Moor attacks*.

ALF”

anony­mous report from Bite Back
*Ilk­ley moor shoot post­poned

Day of action at Kingsnorth Camp for Climate Action

The day of action against Kingsnorth took dif­fer­ent forms: the Orange group nego­ti­at­ed with the police to take a route to the pow­er sta­tion, suit­able for kids and par­ents amongst oth­ers; the Green group went direct for the fences; the Blue group took to the water and the Sil­ver group was airborne(ish).

»>E.ON’s Defences Breached Fol­low­ing Olympic Efforts by Pro­test­ers

Green group 13The day of action against Kingsnorth took dif­fer­ent forms: the Orange group nego­ti­at­ed with the police to take a route to the pow­er sta­tion, suit­able for kids and par­ents amongst oth­ers; the Green group went direct for the fences; the Blue group took to the water and the Sil­ver group was airborne(ish).

»>E.ON’s Defences Breached Fol­low­ing Olympic Efforts by Pro­test­ers
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Sat­ur­day 09/08/08

Pro­test­ers Evade 26 Police Forces To Enter Pow­er Sta­tion Site

The Cli­mate Camp at Kingsnorth was cel­e­brat­ing today as pro­test­ers suc­ceed­ed in breach­ing the perime­ter fence and inner 10,000 volt elec­tric fence to enter the pow­er sta­tion site despite the best efforts of 26 police forces with over 1,500 police.

The day start­ed ear­ly with a flotil­la of boats – the Blue group — sail­ing towards Kingsnorth in the sun. Over twen­ty crafts made their way up the Med­way to con­verge on the coal load­ing jet­ty. Three peo­ple occu­pied the ledge above the pow­er sta­tion’s water inlet tun­nel while a ban­ner pro­claim­ing ‘CO2AL: Starter Gun for Cli­mate Chaos’ was hung from Dar­net Fort on an island in the Med­way direct­ly oppo­site the pow­er sta­tion.

Kent Police have been claim­ing that they had to res­cue rafters from the Med­way, but the par­tic­i­pants have stat­ed that the safe­ty pre­cau­tions they had tak­en were entire­ly suf­fi­cient and at no point were they in any dan­ger. “Its a bit cheeky for the police to say that we had to be res­cued when for starters we weren’t in any dan­ger, and sec­ond­ly, they were the ones who had con­fis­cat­ed our safe­ty boat this morn­ing,” said Rebel Rafter Harold Cry­er. “The Riv­er Police were very pro­fes­sion­al and cour­te­ous, unlike their land­lub­bing equiv­a­lents.”

Mean­while, around 1,000 peo­ple from the Orange group head­ed from the Camp direct­ly to the main gates at Kingsnorth, led by a colour­ful car­ni­val drag­on made by chil­dren dur­ing the camp. At the gates the Cam­p’s Chris­t­ian Cafe crew held a ser­vice giv­ing the pow­er sta­tion its last rites. The group blocked the main entrance even after a police heli­copter cir­cling above had demand­ed the marchers dis­perse.

The few hun­dred strong Green group made it to the perime­ter fence of the pow­er sta­tion. Some used a sec­tion of fenc­ing to make a lad­der to breach both the out­er and the inner elec­tric fence. Oth­ers climbed a near­by pylon to hang a ban­ner read­ing ‘Shut Down Kingsnorth’(2).

Spokes­woman Emi­ly Davies said, “It shows how seri­ous we are about stop­ping cli­mate change that peo­ple from all walks of life were pre­pared, despite bla­tant­ly intim­ida­to­ry polic­ing, to take direct action to dis­rupt E.ON. This Olympic effort cer­tain­ly deserves a gold medal.”

Campers have been sign­ing pledges to return to Kingsnorth if Min­is­ter for Busi­ness John Hut­ton gives E.ON the go-ahead to build the first coal-fired pow­er sta­tion in the UK for 30 years. They promise to take action against E.ON and oth­er com­pa­nies until they aban­don all such plans. Else­where in the coun­try peo­ple are cur­rent­ly down in tun­nels resist­ing evic­tion of a protest camp on the site of a pro­posed open-cast coal mine in Der­byshire.

“It’s been a great today, but a real vic­to­ry for us will be when we have con­clu­sive­ly scup­pered E.ON’s coal-fuelled mania. If Hut­ton gives the green light to this pow­er plant, E.ON can expect to be see­ing a lot more of us in the future,” said Ewa Steck­el, who has signed one of the pledges to stop the plant.

Bizarrely, Mal­colm Wicks, Ener­gy Min­is­ter stat­ed yes­ter­day that we need Kingsnorth to counter cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change. (1). Campers react­ed furi­ous­ly, “Mal­colm Wicks’ claim that build­ing an unabat­ed coal-fired pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth is nec­es­sary to save us from cli­mate change shows him to be delu­sion­al and dan­ger­ous­ly sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly illit­er­ate.” said camper Ania Kemp.

ENDS

Con­tacts:
07772 861 099 and 07932 096 677

(1) See inter­view in today’s Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/aug/08/carboncapturestorage.fossilfuels
Q Patrick Win­tour, Guardian: But why does the gov­ern­ment not set a cut off point, such as 2020, by which time coal sta­tions such as Kingsnorth would be shut if the clean coal tech­nol­o­gy was not in use?
A: Mal­colm Wicks: “I think if we did that at the moment, when we do not know 100% that CCS is going to work, the engi­neer­ing has not yet been test­ed and no one is ful­ly aware of what the costs might be, then that would put an end to coal-fired pow­er sta­tions and demon­stra­tion plant and peo­ple would build gas again.”

(2) pho­tos are avail­able from www.indymedia.org.uk

———-

Orange:
Orange group 1Orange group 2Orange group 3Orange group 4Orange group 5Orange group 6Orange group 7Orange group 8Orange group 9

Lit­tle video clip of orange march — video/avi 1.4M

Orange Block march­es to Pow­er Sta­tion. Arrives. Speech­es. Police say go back. They march back to camp. Some peo­ple stay. They are all arrest­ed.

–

The Chil­dren’s Rev­o­lu­tion joined togeth­er with the Orange march to Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion on the day of mass action and com­bined with the chil­dren of local res­i­dents to help form a huge block­ade which attract­ed the atten­tion of all the inter­na­tion­al news media.

The Chil­dren of the Eco War­riors marched along­side the Kingsnorth drag­on cre­at­ed by Raga the well known Quak­er peace activist, and they were led by Kristoff the clown and the Car­bon Town Cry­er band.

The march itself was fair­ly unevent­ful with a num­ber of arrests — there were mount­ed police at the front of the march and a snatch squad grabbed (only just, he near­ly got back into crowd) some­one for rolling up the ‘POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS’ tape that was doing no good as we were in both lanes of the dual car­riagewy, as the Orange group meet­ing agreed to do despite the Police insis­tence that the march, con­tain­ing fam­i­lies and chil­dren, use one lane while lor­ries could zoom past in the fast lane. No way Jose!

At the pow­er sta­tion ban­ners were erect­ed on the gates, and the police kept a watch­ful eye on the speak­ers using the Bicy­col­o­gy sound sys­tem micro­phone.

At one pm a police heli­copter announced that the protest was over and that any­one who stayed in the vicin­i­ty would be arrest­ed under sec­tion 14 of the Pub­lic Order Act.

Most of the cli­mate campers drift­ed off back to the Camp for Cli­mate Action but many stayed out­side the pow­er sta­tion gates and the Rhythms of Resis­tance sam­ba band con­tin­ued their drum­ming at the near­by round­about.

Even­tu­al­ly the police start­ed to push and shove a group of teenagers who had been part of the flotil­la of lit­tle boats, and sev­er­al police hors­es were also used to try to force them to move back to the camp site.

One young girl appeared to be snatched from behind by the police and the rest of the group were shout­ed at and bul­lied for about twen­ty min­utes before the police final­ly gave up and left them alone.

———-

Green group:

Green group 1Green group 2Green group 3Green group 4Green group 5Green group 6Green group 7Green group 9Green group 10Green group 11Green group 12
There were sev­er­al breach­es of the perime­ter fence. Activists used extra fenc­ing that had been errect­ed in advance of the protests as make shift lad­ders to scale the inte­ri­or fence. Some also used them on the inner elec­tric fence (the fence being turned off), with a small num­ber of activists enter­ing Kingsnorth itself.

———-

Silver 1

Sil­ver group:
As part of the Sil­ver Group actions, Pasty the CCS pig became air­borne at around 11.03 for a short flight, but due to adverse weath­er con­di­tions the CCS pig nev­er flew far — boooooo!
Keep an eye out for future appear­ances 🙂
———-

Blue group:
Blue group 1Blue group 2Blue group 3Blue group 4Blue group 5Blue group 6

Eco Hero Kayak Crew splash out on the Med­way

A dar­ing crew of 8 cli­mate campers in inflat­able kayaks kept police boats busy for 3 hours this morn­ing head­ing towards Kingsnorth Pow­er sta­tion on the Med­way.

The fleet of 8 craft and 1 safe­ty boat dropped into the water at around 9am this morn­ing at a secret launch point near Rochester. They pad­dled towards Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion to join the protest against E‑on and the build­ing of the first new coal fired pow­er sta­tion in 34 years. Their mobile craft allowed them to evade police cap­ture for some time. The crew were picked up one by one by marine divi­sion offi­cers final­ly end­ing up in a stand off on the Hoo mud­flats close to the pow­er sta­tion. All 8 kayak­ers were final­ly picked up at around 12.30pm, turned over to the Har­bour Mas­ter and released with­out charge.
“The local papers say we’re crazy,” said one of the crew ” but what’s real­ly crazy is that gov­ern­ment and busi­ness are not seri­ous­ly com­mit­ted to com­bat­ing cli­mate change.”
All activist involved have signed a camp wide pledge to cam­paign to stop the build­ing of the new pow­er sta­tion.

—

8.30am and RAF Search and Res­cue is hov­er­ing over­head. Pirates are hid­ing in the bush­es at Upnor beach, tim­bers a’shiv­er­ing. Police believed they’d be con­struct­ing rafts at the camp, but the real­i­ty is they’d been built and buried in the woods two weeks before.

The heli­copter flies off upstream, and crews pour out of the woods. The inflat­a­bles got off eas­i­ly, the IKEAs (build it your­self rafts) had a lit­tle bit more trou­ble and two, sad­ly, were inter­cept­ed by police launch­es almost imme­di­ate­ly.

Oth­ers got away fine though, and sailed hap­pi­ly down the Med­way towards Kingsnorth.

One crew stopped off on the way at an old fort to make a ban­ner drop “Coal — Start­ing Gun for Cli­mate Chaos” before plough­ing on against a falling tide and get­ting stuck in the mud.

After­wards we met up with the Coast­guard. They were very friend­ly and com­pli­ment­ed the crews on their atten­tion to safe­ty. But they were scathing about police activ­i­ty ear­li­er in the week. “When we heard they’d raid­ed the camp and seized life jack­ets our hearts dropped” they said. “It was irre­spon­si­ble and could have put lives at risk”.

—-

On Sat­ur­day the 9th of august four activists using great skill and dex­ter­i­ty man­aged to gain access to the water inlet area of Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion and sat on a ledge above the water.

While the pro­test­ers sat calm­ly get­ting to know one anoth­er and mak­ing phone calls to the local press the riot police behind the razor wired fence began to cut holes using bolt crop­pers to allow climb­ing spe­cial­ists rigged with all their equip­ment to come from either side sur­round­ing the pro­test­ers. The police removed a large sign from behind and anoth­er hole was cut in order to allow the police to pull the peace­ful pro­test­ers through to the oth­er side of the fence where bark­ing dogs and riot police await­ed. All four pro­test­ers remained calm and decid­ed to link arms with one anoth­er. As the police strug­gled to pull them free they held on tight­ly and man­aged to remain there whilst more police joined in the task of remov­ing the peace­ful sta­t­ic pro­test­ers using all the force and tac­tics they could. Even­tu­al­ly after much effort from the police one by one the pro­test­ers were removed, after being hand­cuffed and searched (again) they were put in to the back of a police van this was the first of many as they went through at least three dif­fer­ent vehi­cle on the way to the sta­tion. Three of the pro­test­ers were released lat­er on that night and the fourth was charged in the ear­ly hours of Sun­day morn­ing where she then found out that unbe­known to her e’on had instruct­ed “the water inlet cool­ing sys­tem to be shut down” thus caus­ing major dis­rup­tion to the entire run­ning of the plant. The fourth activist was remand­ed and after attend­ing court on the mon­day morn­ing she was grant­ed bail.

Well done to every­one that took part weath­er in the action itself (green, blue, sil­ver and orange groups) or in cli­mate camp in gen­er­al (food, work­shops, set­ting up and secur­ing the camp) your input has been great­ly appre­ci­at­ed and this suc­cess would have not been pos­si­ble with­out you, thank you.

———-

Pylon-action:
Pylon action at Kingsnorth
This morn­ing, cli­mate camp activists scaled high volt­age trans­mis­sion pylons car­ry­ing elec­tric­i­ty from the pow­er sta­tion. As some activists began to scale the pylons, oth­ers made phone calls to the rel­e­vant bod­ies. They have now ascend­ed past barbed-wire anti-climb devices and have hung a ban­ner read­ing ‘Shut down Kingsnorth’.

Jo, one of the climbers, said: “We weighed up the risks and researched this care­ful­ly before decid­ing on this peace­ful action to shut down Kingsnorth today. The threat posed to our cli­mate change tar­gets by the Government’s pro­posed new gen­er­a­tion of coal-fired pow­er sta­tions is so great that we are pre­pared to do this occu­pa­tion to ensure Kingsnorth is shut for the day. Cli­mate change, dri­ven by car­bon dinosaurs such as Kingsnorth, already kills 160,000 peo­ple a year, accord­ing to the World Health Organ­i­sa­tion. It is utter mad­ness to build new coal-burn­ing plants when we need urgent and deep cuts in our car­bon emis­sions”.

The pro­tes­tors are set to remain for the rest of the day as oth­er protests against Kingsnorth and E.ON coal expan­sion plans gath­er pace.

The pro­tes­tors are from this year’s ‘Camp for cli­mate action’ at Kingsnorth in Kent. The week-long camp has been hold­ing work­shops on cli­mate change and show-cas­ing prac­ti­cal low – or zero – car­bon alter­na­tives. At the same time, it has been build­ing up to today: a day of action to shut down Kingsnorth.

E.ON, the Ger­man-owned ener­gy com­pa­ny, plans to build the first of a new series of coal-burn­ing plants in the UK. The com­pa­ny argues the plant will be ‘car­bon cap­ture ready’, But the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of experts agree the tech­nol­o­gy won’t be tech­ni­cal­ly or eco­nom­i­cal­ly viable for at least a decade, if ever. Should the tech­nol­o­gy not be proven as a viable option, there is cur­rent­ly no oblig­a­tion on the util­i­ty to fit car­bon cap­ture tech­nol­o­gy at all. In oth­er words, there’s a very strong chance we could end up with a stan­dard coal plant belch­ing out mil­lions of tonnes of car­bon diox­ide for half a cen­tu­ry to come.

The pylons are sit­ed on the Hoo penin­su­lar at post code DA12 3HU which can be reached by road and which has park­ing. OS grid ref­er­ence is TQ 694 737

Jo, one of those occu­py­ing the pylons, can be reached on 07879283517
Anoth­er cli­mate camp spokesper­son at the scene: Richard 07956163272
Avail­able for media inter­views: James 07964618657
Pho­tos avail­able at AP and oth­er out­lets

—

Update:
3 peo­ple, includ­ing the two climbers, were arrest­ed around lunchtime under a sec­tion of PACE as the police were unable to ver­i­fy their address­es (yeh, right). 4 hours lat­er and the police have yet to con­firm which police sta­tion they have been tak­en to.

This was one of the actions that have led to 1261 news arti­cles gen­er­at­ed by today’s actions, so far. Amaz­ing, huge respect.

Direct actions by people from the Camp for Climate Action

Cli­mate activists at Lon­gan­net call for clo­sure date
6.08.2008
One-night mini Scot­tish camp out­side UK’s dirt­i­est pow­er sta­tion. SNP Gov­ern­ment urged to set ear­ly clo­sure date for plant and guar­an­tee green jobs for coal work­ers in the grow­ing renew­ables rev­o­lu­tion.

No New Coal bannerCli­mate activists at Lon­gan­net call for clo­sure date
6.08.2008
One-night mini Scot­tish camp out­side UK’s dirt­i­est pow­er sta­tion. SNP Gov­ern­ment urged to set ear­ly clo­sure date for plant and guar­an­tee green jobs for coal work­ers in the grow­ing renew­ables rev­o­lu­tion.

A group of cli­mate pro­tes­tors were at Lon­gan­net pow­er sta­tion in Fife this morn­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Camp for Cli­mate Action near to Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion in Eng­land.

Lon­gan­net coal plant, which pro­duces a quar­ter of Scot­land’s elec­tric­i­ty, pro­duces around 10 mil­lion tonnes of car­bon diox­ide every year — rough­ly equiv­a­lent to the annu­al emis­sions of 2.5 mil­lion cars.

Eight sci­ences stu­dents from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Edin­burgh pre­sent­ed Scot­tish Pow­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives with the recent respect­ed ‘Zero Car­bon Britain’ report from CAT.

Daniel Abra­hams, a physics stu­dent, told Scot­tish Pow­er, who run the plant:
‘Any talk of ‘clean coal’ or car­bon cap­ture is a total dis­trac­tion. We need to rad­i­cal­ly reduce emis­sions in less than a decade and we just don’t have the time to wait for unproven tech­nol­o­gy when we already have renew­able solu­tions ready to roll. Lon­gan­net must close by 2015.’

Sarah Hol­l­i­day, a chem­istry stu­dent from the Isle of Tiree said:
‘The SNP must urgent­ly fund a tran­si­tion deal for all those in the coal indus­try. All those employed in the car­bon sec­tor must be guar­an­teed green jobs in the renew­ables rev­o­lu­tion.’

Notes to edi­tors:

1. Lon­gan­net ranked as the UK’s dirt­i­est pow­er sta­tion in a 2007 WWF report:
http://assets.panda.org/downloads/european_dirty_thirty_may_2007.pdf

2. The Scot­tish Cli­mate Bill will bind Min­is­ters to a tar­get of an 80% in green­house gas­es by 2050. An 80% cut in car­bon diox­ide would mean total emis­sions for the whole nation of 10–13 mil­lion tonnes a year. Lon­gan­net pro­duces 10 mil­lion tonnes now.

3. Alex Salmond recent­ly described coal as a ‘fuel of the future’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7487184.stm

————

Cli­mate Activists Shut Down South’s Biggest Bio­fu­el Base, Thur­rock
Vopak biofuel action 2Vopak biofuel action 4
Vopak biofuel action 5

7.08.2008
This morn­ing cli­mate activists from around the coun­try have shut down the South’s biggest agro­fu­el depot.

The cam­paign­ers, who say that agro­fu­els will cause run­away cli­mate change if left unchecked, have dropped a 35 foot ban­ner from the top of one of the site’s biggest oil con­tain­ers and are block­ing fuel lor­ries from leav­ing or enter­ing the base.

Dean Rivers, who is cur­rent­ly chained to the roof of the oil depot said: “com­pa­nies like Green­er­gy and Tescos who use Thur­rock are prof­i­teer­ing out of the rush to bio­fu­els caus­ing food price ris­es, hunger for mil­lions, ecosys­tem destruc­tion and accel­er­at­ed Cli­mate Change. These are crimes against human­i­ty and the earth from which we may nev­er recov­er.” The protest is cur­rent­ly stop­ping one truck from leav­ing the Thur­rock site every 90 sec­onds.

George Mon­biot, who is at the Cli­mate Camp said “far from being a solu­tion to Cli­mate Change, agro­fu­els are so dam­ag­ing they make petro­le­um look green. They threat­en both to accel­er­ate Cli­mate Change and to trig­ger a glob­al human­i­tar­i­an dis­as­ter. I’m delight­ed that this depot has been block­ad­ed and I hope it sends a strong sig­nal that agro­fu­els are a part of the prob­lem not of the solu­tion.”

Last month, it was revealed that the US had buried a report from the World Bank which shows that agro­fu­els are respon­si­ble for 75% of recent food price ris­es. Despite this, both Europe and the USA con­tin­ue to invest bil­lions into the fuels, which under UK and EU law con­tin­ue to make up 2.5% of the UK fuel mix at the pump.

Julia Brown­low, who is block­ing lor­ries from enter­ing or leav­ing the site said “Agro­fu­els are destroy­ing the very ecosys­tems which can sta­bilise the cli­mate — with the col­lapse of the Ama­zon pos­si­bly just a few years away I am left with no choice but to take action.”

The protest will con­tin­ue for the rest of the day.

NOTES TO EDITORS

Agro­fu­els are bio­fu­els derived from plant mate­r­i­al grown in exten­sive mono­cul­tures.

what hap­pened & bio­fu­els explained — audio/x‑wav 7.0M
————

Anoth­er cli­mate camp action — Stu­dents Killed at Roy­al Bank of Scot­land’s HQ.
RBS die-in 2RBS die-in 17.08.2008
Fif­teen dead bod­ies are cur­rent­ly lying in a pool of oil block­ing the entrance to RBS Lon­don HQ at Liv­er­pool Street [1]. Stu­dents are stag­ing a ‘die-in’ block­ade to high­light the dev­as­tat­ing effects of cli­mate change. The pro­test­ers are demand­ing RBS stop fund­ing destruc­tive fos­sil fuel projects which will cre­ate cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe. The action is tak­ing place as part of the cli­mate camp and is co-ordi­nat­ed by the stu­dent action net­work PANDA [1].

A report released today by a coali­tion of envi­ron­men­tal NGOs [2] reveals that RBS is esti­mat­ed to have been involved in pro­vid­ing loans of over $20 bil­lion to coal-relat­ed com­pa­nies in the last two years – includ­ing the ener­gy com­pa­ny E.ON.

Head of Cli­mate Change Cam­paigns at Peo­ple & Plan­et, Bron­wen Thomas said

“Thou­sands of cli­mate change activists are cur­rent­ly gath­ered at the Cli­mate Camp in Kingsnorth to oppose E.ON’s plans to build the first coal-fired pow­er sta­tion in the coun­try for 33 years. Coal is the dirt­i­est fuel there is. Open­ing coal fired pow­er sta­tions is mad­ness — We should be stop­ping cli­mate change not mak­ing it worse”

PANDA stu­dent activist Alex Wood, 22, is cur­rent­ly chained to oth­er activists in front of RBS. He explained his rea­sons: “I’m risk­ing arrest today because RBS must take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the emis­sions caused by their invest­ments. Cli­mate change caus­es the death of 150, 000 peo­ple per year – each one of the fif­teen bod­ies lying out­side RBS rep­re­sents 10, 000 deaths. To stop this num­ber increas­ing RBS must act now.”

RBS, who refer to them­selves as ‘the oil and gas bank’ has also loaned mon­ey to com­pa­nies like Arch Coal, who are involved in the con­tro­ver­sial tech­nique of coal min­ing called Moun­tain Top Removal. This destroys the tops of entire moun­tains and pro­duces large quan­ti­ties of tox­ic sludge.

PHOTOS ON REQUEST: pandapress@hushmail.com

NOTES:

[1] RBS Lon­don HQ address is 250 Bish­ops­gate, Lon­don, EC2M 4NR

[2] PANDA is Peo­ple & Plan­et’s Asso­ci­at­ed Net­work for Direct Action. For more details see:
http://peopleandplanet.org/ditchdirtydevelopment

[3] The coali­tion of groups con­sists of Friends of the Earth Scot­land, Peo­ple & Plan­et, Plat­form, Bank­Track, Stop Cli­mate Chaos and Scot­tish Edu­ca­tion and Action for Devel­op­ment.

[4] For more info on the Cli­mate Camp vis­it www.climatecamp.org.uk

[5] For more info on the Roy­al Bank of Scotland’s financ­ing of fos­sil fuel extrac­tion see: www.peopleandplanet.org/ditchdirtydevelopment

————

Plane Stu­pid leaves Camp for Cli­mate Action for protest at Gatwick
7.08.2008
Nine pro­tes­tors from the anti-avi­a­tion group ‘Plane Stu­pid’ have left the Kingsnorth Cli­mate Camp to mount a protest against short-haul flights from the near­by Gatwick Air­port. The nine cli­mate activists had been plan­ning to protest against the government’s plans to expand Kingsnorth coal fire pow­er sta­tion. How­ev­er con­tin­u­al police intim­i­da­tion and vio­lence forced them to leave the camp, choos­ing instead to protest against the pop­u­lar­i­ty of short-haul flights, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the Edin­burgh Fes­ti­val, from Gatwick air­port.

The nine activists arrived at the air­port at 7.50am. They then split into three groups. The first group scaled the wall next to the esca­la­tor above the train sta­tion, occu­py­ing the roof struc­ture and drop­ping a ban­ner: ‘SHORT-HAUL FLIGHT? LET THE TRAIN TAKE THE STRAIN.’ The sec­ond group mount­ed the mez­za­nine above the arrivals lounge, hand­cuffed them­selves to a rail­ing and dropped a ban­ner: ‘STOP SHORT-HAUL’. The third group, dressed as ‘infor­ma­tion points’, with t‑shirts ask­ing, ‘can I hin­der?, leaflet­ed the sur­prised crowd with infor­ma­tion about the eco­log­i­cal cost of avi­a­tion and the irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty of those who fly short-haul.

Lot­ti Rut­ter, one of those hand­cuffed to the rail­ing, said:

‘It’s ter­ri­fy­ing – we’re approach­ing a cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe yet the Depart­ment for Trans­port do absolute­ly noth­ing to pro­vide us with a low car­bon trans­port pol­i­cy – there are a total of 139 flights from Lon­don to Edin­burgh as opposed to just 22 trains. We’re here today to protest against short-haul flights. We’re well aware that a lot of peo­ple will be choos­ing to go to the Edin­burgh Fes­ti­val and we’re here to ask them to make the right deci­sion – to take the train. In a time of cli­mate cri­sis any­thing else is more than irre­spon­si­ble: it’s Plane Stu­pid.’

Gatwick flies 26 times dai­ly to Edin­burgh. The same route is cov­ered by a four hour train ride from Lon­don King’s Cross. How­ev­er there are only 22 trains per day. The route from Lon­don to Edin­burgh (by air) is also cov­ered by Heathrow (66 flights), Stanst­ed (31 flights), Luton (12 flights) and Lon­don City Air­port (4 flights).

The activists are present­ly at Gatwick con­tin­u­ing their protest, after which those not arrest­ed will return to the Cli­mate Camp to con­tin­ue their envi­ron­men­tal action.

http://www.planestupid.com

————

World’s small­est cam­paign­ers scale Kingsnorth smoke­stack
Lego Kingsnorth occupation7.08.2008
E.ON’s repli­ca of the Kingsnorth coal-fired pow­er sta­tion has been occu­pied by one inch tall cli­mate change cam­paign­ers. The dra­ma unfold­ed at the Legoland park in Wind­sor – spon­sored by E.ON – where the Lego Kingsnorth is giv­en pride of place next to Big Ben and Canary Wharf.

The Lego cam­paign­ers struck as hun­dreds of peo­ple gath­er at this year’s Cli­mate Camp to protest the planned new coal plant at Kingsnorth in Kent.

The six cam­paign­ers appeared at the top of the con­struc­tion at around 11am this morn­ing, before unveil­ing a ban­ner say­ing STOP CLIMATE CHANGE down the length of the tow­er. Lego police are in atten­dance at the foot of the tow­er, along with a Lego police heli­copter.

E.ON proud­ly announced the con­struc­tion of Britain’s newest coal-fired sta­tion at Legoland in 2006. The Ger­man util­i­ty giant is Britain’s sin­gle biggest green­house gas pol­luter. The com­pa­ny is aim­ing to have Kingsnorth 2 built by 2012. Despite claims that the new plant will be more effi­cient, it is esti­mat­ed that it will emit 8.4 mil­lion tonnes of cli­mate chang­ing pol­lu­tants every year, com­pared to the 8.7 mil­lion tonnes the exist­ing plant releas­es annu­al­ly, and nowhere near the 80% reduc­tions need­ed to com­bat glob­al warm­ing.

Nei­ther the cam­paign­ers nor the police would com­ment, because they’re made of Lego and there­fore can’t talk.

legoactivist@googlemail.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/legoactivist

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Cli­mate Camp activists super­glue them­selves to RBS
8.08.2008
This morn­ing at 8.30 AM, activists from the Camp for Cli­mate Action super­glued them­selves to the front doors of the Roy­al Bank of Scotland’s Oil and Gas Divi­sion in Bish­ops­gate, Cen­tral Lon­don wield­ing a ban­ner read­ing “RBS: Cash­ing In On Coal”.

The fol­low­ing is tak­en from the Cam­p’s press release:

“Loca­tion: 199 Broadgate Court, Bish­op’s Gate, near Liv­er­pool Street sta­tion.

Roy­al Bank Of Scot­land Tar­get­ed By Cli­mate Camp Activists For The Sec­ond Day Run­ning

Activists from the Camp for Cli­mate Action have super­glued them­selves to the front doors of the Roy­al Bank of Scotland’s Oil and Gas Divi­sion in Cen­tral Lon­don [1]. Wield­ing a ban­ner read­ing “RBS: Cash­ing In On Coal”, the cam­paign­ers are stag­ing this protest to high­light the links between the finan­cial sec­tor, the fos­sil fuel indus­try, and dis­as­trous cli­mate change.

This action fol­lows the protest at RBS’s head­quar­ters yes­ter­day, when 15 stu­dents staged a “die-in” block­ade [2] to demand that the bank stop fund­ing fos­sil fuel projects includ­ing the pro­posed new coal pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth. Today’s action, which takes place as part of the cli­mate camp and involves mem­bers of the cli­mate action net­work Ris­ing Tide [3], will show the bank that this cam­paign pres­sure is not going to go away.

In 2007, projects financed by RBS were respon­si­ble for more emis­sions that the whole of Scot­land. Along with oth­er banks, RBS par­tic­i­pat­ed in financ­ing E.ON – the own­ers of Kingsnorth coal-fired pow­er sta­tion — $70 bil­lion over the course of 2007 [4]. RBS has financed com­pa­nies like Arch Coal, who are engag­ing in con­tro­ver­sial moun­tain top removal min­ing in the US [5], and are also financ­ing com­pa­nies like Dyn­e­gy [6] who are look­ing to roll out new coal pow­er sta­tions across Amer­i­ca.

Sarah Horne, who is at the Cli­mate Camp in Kent, said:
“The Cli­mate Camp has always been about far more than just stop­ping a new pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth. The fact that the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land has been tar­get­ed twice in as many days high­lights the inti­mate involve­ment of well-known high street banks in the destruc­tion of our cli­mate, thanks to the bil­lions of pounds they invest in fos­sil fuel projects each year. We need to shift to a dif­fer­ent kind of econ­o­my – one that doesn’t rely on end­less eco­nom­ic growth at all costs, and respects the nat­ur­al lim­its of the plan­et.”

Sam Har­ri­son, who is cur­rent­ly super­glued to the entrance of RBS’s oil and gas divi­sion, said “The fact that RBS have a spe­cial office ded­i­cat­ed entire­ly to fund­ing oil and gas projects shows exact­ly where their pri­or­i­ties lie. We need to rad­i­cal­ly reduce our use of fos­sil fuels to have any chance of avoid­ing dis­as­trous cli­mate change, so it is com­plete­ly per­verse for RBS to keep pour­ing so much mon­ey into oil, gas and coal. We’re here to make them to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for their actions.”

PHOTOS ON REQUEST: press@climatecamp.org.uk.

For updates and inter­views about the action con­tact Sam Har­ri­son on 07939 142072. For infor­ma­tion about the Camp for Cli­mate Action, call 07531396232 or see www.climatecamp.org.uk.

NOTES:

[1] RBS London’s Oil and Gas Divi­sion address is at 199 Broadgate Court, Bish­op’s Gate, near Liv­er­pool Street sta­tion.

[2] The stu­dents posed as oil-cov­ered dead bod­ies to block the entrance to RBS’s HQ. For more details on yesterday’s RBS action, con­tact Richard Roaf on 07801140192

[3] For more infor­ma­tion about Ris­ing Tide see www.risingtide.org.uk

[4] Project Finance, Issue No. 287, Feb­ru­ary 2008

[5] Bank Track, Mind The Gap, 2007, pp 124–5

[6] www.banktrack.org”

————

Naked protest at BERR
Naked BERR climate action 1
Naked BERR climate action 2
Pho­tographs of pro­test­ers super­glued to the sign of the Depart­ment for Busi­ness Enter­prise and Reg­u­la­to­ry Reform, 1 Vic­to­ria Street, Lon­don. August 8, 2008.

————

Cli­mate campers tar­get min­ing cor­po­ra­tion
BHP action 1BHP action 211.08.2008
An affin­i­ty group from Thames Val­ley Cli­mate Action, inspired by this year’s cli­mate camp, occu­pied the lob­by of BHP Bil­li­ton today, super­glu­ing them­selves to the doors and win­dows and climb­ing onto part of the archi­tec­ture. After sev­er­al hours, they man­aged to nego­ti­ate leav­ing with­out any arrests.

BHP are the world’s biggest min­ing cor­po­ra­tion. Based in Aus­tralia, they are respon­si­ble for min­ing hun­dreds of tonnes of coal, as well as for human rights abus­es world­wide. One exam­ple is their involve­ment in Cer­re­jón, the world’s biggest open­cast mine, in Colom­bia, which has dis­placed 14’000 peo­ple.

With all this in mind we decid­ed to dis­rupt busi­ness as usu­al at BHP’s head offices in Lon­don. We scat­tered coal in the lob­by, glued to the revolv­ing doors and near­by win­dows, while a sec­ond door near­by was D‑locked. Mean­while a team of mis­chie­vous fer­rets slipped upstairs in suits to see what else could be done, while oth­ers held a ban­ner out­side say­ing ‘BHP: Under­min­ing the future’ (a play on their vac­u­ous cor­po­rate slo­gan) and leaflet­ed the intrigued passers-by.

When the ‘fer­rets’ were dragged back down to the lob­by, they joined the rest of us. One of them also glued to the revolv­ing door, while the oth­er held a ‘Coal Heart­ed Killers’ ban­ner and even­tu­al­ly man­aged to scram­ble up onto a bit of the struc­ture.

A cou­ple of cops even­tu­al­ly showed up, but there was a tan­gi­ble reluc­tance on the part of BHP to esca­late the sit­u­a­tion; they seemed to want to do any­thing nec­es­sary to get us to qui­et­ly go away! It was main­ly because of this (and because they did­n’t have any easy way of get­ting the climber down) that we were able to nego­ti­ate get­ting every­one away with­out arrest, after the glued on folk had been unglued by the police using a spe­cial chem­i­cal solu­tion.

We adjourned to a near­by pub where we sat in mild shock at hav­ing done what we planned to do with­out the expect­ed has­sle of arrests..

We can hearti­ly rec­om­mend pay­ing them a vis­it! The mas­sive plate glass win­dows pro­vide a good view for passers-by, media etc.

BHP Bil­li­ton Plc
Neathouse Place
Vic­to­ria
Lon­don SW1V 1BH

There are also plen­ty of oth­er sim­i­lar­ly evil out­fits around cen­tral Lon­don — do your own research!

http://tvca.atspace.com/
http://leaveitintheground.org.uk/
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/

————

Cli­mate Cam­paign­ers Tar­get Mil­i­tary Base
Mildenhall climate action 111.08.2008
At USAF Milden­hall today, activists linked to the cli­mate camp made a sur­prise appear­ance. Dressed as mil­i­tary air­craft and traf­fic jam both with CO2 tech­ni­cians. They attempt­ed to enter­tain whilst defi­ant­ly edu­cat­ing the troops and passers by. They said they where there to raise aware­ness of the large CO2 emis­sions cre­at­ed by Mil­i­tary air­craft.

A sin­gle KC135 plane uses 44 gal­lons of fuel per minute, emit­ting approx­i­mate­ly the same amount of CO2 as 2000 cars. The planes are used for air-to-air refu­elling and can car­ry 30,000 gal­lons of fuel – enough to dri­ve a car over 30 times around the earth.

One of the activists, Mell Har­ri­son said ‘We are here to show that mil­i­tary air­craft are not only com­mit­ting war crimes, but cli­mate crimes also. You very rarely hear about the vast amounts of CO2 emit­ted by the mil­i­tary and at a time when all should be account­able for their car­bon foot­print now is the time to put our efforts and resources into tack­ling cli­mate change not fight­ing wars over oil resources. ’

Richard Jack­son dressed as KC-135 58–0036 said, ‘Nweeeeeeeeearhh­h­h­h­hh phut phut phut phut’

Whilst dressed as an ‘allur­ing’ car sales girl, Pete Lux said, “Even if you do not believe that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are counter pro­duc­tive as we do, there is still the large amount of unnec­es­sary fly­ing. Often the planes will do ‘touch and goes’ where they land and then take off sev­er­al times. This is a need­less emis­sion of car­bon diox­ide, in fact dur­ing the 2 hours of our pres­ence here we have had the same two air­craft tak­ing off and land­ing con­tin­u­al­ly. ”

Milden­hall is one of the major logis­tic bases for US Air Force and plays a major role in sup­port­ing com­bat air­craft in both Afghanistan and Iraq. US planes car­ry out about 40 ‘close air sup­port’ mis­sions every day in Iraq and a sim­i­lar num­ber in Afghanistan. Each KC-135 flies on aver­age, for 435 hours each year. There are 15 KC ‑135s at this US base alone. This results in over 160 mil­lion Kg of CO2 per year.

Whilst at the US air base some­body with the group was told by a female Suf­folk police offi­cer that if she did not tell them who they were, how long they would be there and num­bers expect­ed, she, as the ‘nice police’ , would have to call in ‘ the ones with shields and dogs’. So looks like the police tac­tics of the last few days con­tin­ue……
We did not see any pup­pies though.

As Cli­mate Camp fin­ish­es, the group say that the cam­paign against cli­mate crim­i­nals will con­tin­ue all year round.

The KC-135 uses 2650 gal­lons per hour = 44.16666667 gal­lons per minute
Car­ries 90700 kg of avi­a­tion fuel = 126000 litres = 27800 gal­lons.
Aver­age new car cre­ates 140g CO2 per km = 12.6 kg CO2 per hour = 0.21 Kg CO2 per minute.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/kc-135e.htm
http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=110
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avgas

————
Cli­mate camp activists tar­get envi­ron­men­tal­ly ‘irre­spon­si­ble’ meat indus­try
Climate camp activists target environmentally ‘irresponsible’ meat industryClimate camp activists target environmentally ‘irresponsible’ meat industryThis morn­ing, 11th August 2008, six Cli­mate Camp activists climbed the roof of Smith­field meat mar­ket to high­light the links between cli­mate change and meat con­sump­tion. The activists dropped a ban­ner bear­ing the mes­sage “Fight cli­mate change — Go Veg­an”.

The activists also quot­ed the 2007 UN Food and Agri­cul­ture report that found that 18% of glob­al green­house emis­sions are caused by ani­mal farm­ing – more than the entire trans­port sec­tor world­wide. The pro­tes­tors argue that all major polit­i­cal par­ties have failed to address this seri­ous prob­lem and as a con­se­quence the pub­lic have not been encour­aged to adopt an envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble diet.

The group is call­ing for more peo­ple to choose a veg­an diet, which excludes all ani­mal prod­ucts includ­ing meat, eggs and dairy, in order to mas­sive­ly reduce cli­mate alter­ing emis­sions. “An ani­mal-based diet is no longer sus­tain­able with cli­mate change threat­en­ing the plan­et, its ecosys­tems, and the peo­ple who depend on them,” said Clare Whit­ney, one of the activists.

The fos­sil fuel input to pro­duce a day’s food for a veg­an is just under 10,000 calo­ries, com­pared to 34,000 calo­ries for a meat eater – the equiv­a­lent of near­ly 1.5 tonnes more car­bon diox­ide per per­son per year. As such, the cli­mate camp pro­tes­tors main­tain, chang­ing the way we eat is one of the most pow­er­ful ways for indi­vid­u­als to reduce their car­bon foot­print.

Smith­field mar­ket is one of the largest whole­sale trad­ing places for meat prod­ucts in the UK. Eighty-five thou­sand tonnes of pro­duce pass through it each year includ­ing meat, poul­try and cheese.

Phil Mur­ray, 22, not­ed: “the meat indus­try is up there with short-haul flights as one of the most envi­ron­men­tal­ly irre­spon­si­ble sec­tors.”

The action took place as part of the Camp for Cli­mate Action, a week-long protest against the build­ing of a new coal-fired pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth in Kent, which, if built, will emit between 6 and 8 mil­lion tons of CO2 every year.

(This is actu­al­ly just our press release but since the back light on our lap­top just van­ished we’re going to have to leave it as that…)

Cli­mate Camp Veg­an Action Group
angelo.b@talk21.com

URGENT CALL OUT: MAYO NEEDS YOU! NOW IS THE TIME

Dur­ing the next 2 weeks, 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.

Dur­ing the next 2 weeks, 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.

After the suc­cess of Cli­mate Camp, come over to Ire­land and sup­port a com­mu­ni­ty deter­mined to resist Shell…but they need your help!
Although local resis­tance has been ongo­ing, the police and a hired secu­ri­ty force have meant it is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult. A few weeks ago 13 peo­ple were arrest­ed in Glen­gad (1 man remains in hos­pi­tal). How­ev­er the police are now just escort­ing peo­ple from the site and not arrest­ing peo­ple.

There­fore there is a real need for clever actions to help delay cur­rent con­struc­tion at the land­fall area in Glen­gad and the planned off­shore pipe lay­ing. The local peo­ple are call­ing for your assis­tance at this time.

It is expect­ed that once the off-shore pipe lay­ing is done, there will be anoth­er qui­et peri­od for sev­er­al months before con­struc­tion is due on the onshore sec­tion pos­si­bly next spring or sum­mer, so NOW IS THE TIME TO COME!

If you can­not come over please do what you can from home …organ­ise Ross­port film nights, protest at Shell garages & offices, con­tact the Irish Embassy & media.

Trav­el details on camp web­site www.rossportsolidaritycamp.110mb.com
The cheap­est and eas­i­est way to trav­el from Eng­land-Ire­land is to get a coach or train tick­et that includes fer­ry too. www.sailandrail.com — 08705 455 455 www.coachacross.com
Acco­mo­da­tion is avali­able at the camp house
we can win but we need you
e‑mail: rossportsolidaritycamp@gmail.com
Home­page: http://www.shelltosea.com, www.rossportsolidaritycamp.110mb.com, www.indymedia.ie/mayo

Spirit of Freedom (August 2008)

Pro­duced by EARTH LIBERATION PRISONERS SUPPORT NETWORK

“The whole expe­ri­ence has been tough, but all the kind and strength­en­ing words
and wise thoughts from strangers made it much eas­i­er!” (For­mer Swedish Ani­mal Rights Pris­on­er)

Pro­duced by EARTH LIBERATION PRISONERS SUPPORT NETWORK

“The whole expe­ri­ence has been tough, but all the kind and strength­en­ing words
and wise thoughts from strangers made it much eas­i­er!” (For­mer Swedish Ani­mal Rights Pris­on­er)

Wel­come to the August 2008 edi­tion of Spir­it of Free­dom. As peo­ple will soon see, ELP’s pris­on­er lists have grown yet again. If we exclude the Geek anar­chist, Vagge­lis Botzatzis, and the two Amer­i­cans Richard Sills and Michael Sykes (all of whom are list­ed by ELP as ‘Oth­er Pris­on­ers’), there are now 40 list­ed ani­mal & earth lib­er­a­tion pris­on­ers in Europe & Amer­i­ca.
There are also a num­ber of non-list­ed pris­on­ers, who are not list­ed either by their own choice, or because they betrayed their fel­low activists and became infor­mants. And remem­ber these num­bers do not include those peo­ple who are either under House Arrest or on Bail pend­ing Tri­al. Nor do they include the activists whose loca­tions are cur­rent­ly unknown and who are described by the police as “on the run”. See­ing so many good peo­ple removed from their fam­i­lies & loved ones for mere­ly act­ing out of com­pas­sion and a desire to stop envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion and ani­mal abuse is heart­break­ing.
Some of the pris­on­ers ELP lists are very well known, oth­ers are less well known. How­ev­er ALL of them deserve our love and sup­port. ALL of the list­ed pris­on­ers wel­come let­ters of sup­port. Even if it’s just a card say­ing “Hi. I’m think­ing of you”. So please, no mat­ter where you are in the world, sup­port the eco-pris­on­ers. And no com­pro­mise in defence of Moth­er Earth.

ECO-DEFENCE PRISONERS

Tre Arrow, SWIS #640393, Mult­nom­ah Coun­ty Deten­tion Cen­ter, 1120 S.W. 3rd Avenue, Port­land, Ore­gon 97206, USA. Await­ing sen­tenc­ing of six and a half years impris­on­ment hav­ing reached a non-coop­er­a­tion plea-bar­gain with the author­i­ties who accuse him of involve­ment in two arsons. 1) an arson on log­ging trucks 2) an arson on vehi­cles owned by a sand & grav­el com­pa­ny. (Tre is a raw ener­gy veg­an — He has asked that his let­ters of sup­port are writ­ten on scrap paper or tree-free paper).

Grant Barnes #137563, San Car­los Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty, PO Box 3, Pueblo, CO 81002, USA. Serv­ing 12 years for set­ting fire to a num­ber of SUV vehi­cles. The let­ters ELF were spray paint­ed onto all of the vehi­cles. (Grant is a veg­an).

Nathan Block, #36359–086, FCI Lom­poc, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, 3600 Guard Road, Lom­poc, CA 93436, USA. Serv­ing 7 years & 8 months for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an SUV deal­er­ship. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Diet unknown).

Mar­co Camenisch, Post­fach 3143, CH-8105 Regens­dorf, Switzer­land. Serv­ing 18 years. 1) Ten years for using explo­sives to destroy elec­tric­i­ty pylons lead­ing from nuclear pow­er sta­tions. 2) Eight years for the mur­der of a Swiss Board­er Guard whilst on the run. In ’02 Mar­co com­plet­ed a 12-year sen­tence in Italy for destroy­ing elec­tric­i­ty pylons in Italy. (Mar­co is a meat eater who encour­ages organ­ic liv­ing).

Daniele Casali­ni, Casa Cir­con­dar­i­ale, Via Burla 59, 43100 Par­ma, Italy. Il Sil­vestre activist await­ing tri­al accused of using explo­sives to dam­age an elec­tric­i­ty pylon in protest at nuclear ener­gy. (Daniele is a veg­an).

Rod Coro­n­a­do — See details in Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers List.

Francesco Gioia, C.C. Sol­lic­ciano, Via Giro­lamo Min­ervi­ni 2/R, 50142 Firen­ze Sol­lic­ciano (FI), Italy. Il Sil­vestre activist await­ing tri­al accused of using explo­sives to dam­age an elec­tric­i­ty pylon in protest at nuclear ener­gy. (Francesco is a veg­e­tar­i­an and Straight Edge).

Pao­la Gori, Via delle Mac­chie 9, 57124 Livorno, Italy. Il Sil­vestre activist await­ing tri­al accused of allow­ing her house to be used to plan ille­gal activ­i­ty. (Pao­la is a veg­an).

Bryan Lefey #38664–086, FDC SeaT­ac, Fed­er­al Deten­tion Cen­ter, P.O. Box 13900, Seat­tle, WA 98198, USA. On remand accused of an ELF action that saw the dam­ag­ing of GM trees and the dam­ag­ing of US Forestry Ser­vice vehi­cles. (Diet unknown).

Jef­frey Luers, # 13797671, CRCI, 9111 NE Sun­der­land Ave, Port­land, OR 97211–1708, USA. Serv­ing 10 years for arson on a SUV deal­er­ship & the attempt­ed arson of an oil truck. The orig­i­nal sen­tence was 22 years & 8 months, but was reduced on appeal. (Diet unknown).

Eric McDavid, 16209–097. FCI Vic­torville Medi­um II, PO BOX 5700, Ade­lan­to, CA 92301, USA. Serv­ing 19 years & 7 months for plan­ning to destroy the prop­er­ty of the U.S. Forestry Ser­vice, mobile phone masts and pow­er plants. At the point of his arrest no crim­i­nal dam­age has actu­al­ly occurred. (Eric is a veg­an).

Daniel McGowan, #63794–053, FCI Terre Haute, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, P.O. Box 33, Terre Haute, IN 47808, USA. Serv­ing 7 years for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an old growth log­ging cor­po­ra­tion. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. At the moment Daniel is in tran­sit as he has been ordered to appear before some Grand Juries. Daniel is refus­ing to answer the Grand Jury ques­tions and is gain­ing addi­tion­al prison time because of this (Daniel is a veg­e­tar­i­an).

Jonathan Paul — See details in Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers List.

Bri­ana Waters, 36432–086, FDC — Seat­ac, Fed­er­al Deten­tion Cen­ter, P.O. Box 13900, Seat­tle, WA 98198, USA. Serv­ing six years for involve­ment in an ELF arson on a Uni­ver­si­ty. (Diet unknown).

Joy­an­na Zach­er, #36360–086, FCI Dublin, 5700 8th St.- Camp Parks- Unit F, Dublin, CA 94568, USA. Serv­ing 7 years & 8 months for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an SUV deal­er­ship. Also admit­ted her role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Diet unknown).

ANIMAL LIBERATION PRISONERS
(All Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers fol­low a min­i­mum veg­e­tar­i­an diet and most are veg­an).

Jon Able­white TB4885, HMP Lowd­ham Grange, Lowd­ham, Not­ting­ham, NG14 7DA, Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion. (Jon is a veg­an).

Dan Amos VN7818, HMP Exeter, 30 New North Road, Exeter, Devon, EX4 4EX, Eng­land. On remand hav­ing plead­ed guilty to con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Dan is a veg­an)

Gregg Avery TA7450, HMP Win­ches­ter, Rom­sey Road, Win­ches­ter, SO22 5DF, Eng­land. On remand hav­ing plead­ed guilty to con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Gregg is a veg­an).

Natasha Avery NR8987, HMP Bronze­field, Woodthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx. TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. On remand hav­ing plead­ed guilty to con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Nat is a veg­an).

Mel Broughton TN9138, HMP Wood­hill, Tat­ten­hoe Street, Mil­ton Keynes, Bucks MK4 4DA, Eng­land. On remand accused of involve­ment with an arson and black­mail cam­paign against an Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty vivi­sec­tion estab­lish­ment.
(Mel is a veg­an).

Mar­tin Bal­luch, (JA Josef­s­tadt), Jus­ti­zanstalt Wr. Neustadt, Max­i­m­il­iang. 3, 2700 Wr. Neustadt, Aus­tria. One of ten Aus­tri­an’s held on remand accused of var­i­ous ani­mal rights actions. (Mar­tin is a veg­an)

Christoph, Anti­rep 2008, Post­fach 101, 1070, Vien­na, Aus­tria. One of ten Aus­tri­an’s held on remand accused of var­i­ous ani­mal rights actions. At the moment Christo­pher does not wish to have his full name pub­lished. (Christoph is a veg­an).

Jacob Con­roy #93501–011, FCI Vic­torville Medi­um I Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, P.O. Box 5300, Ade­lan­to, CA 92301, USA. Serv­ing 48 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Jake is a veg­an).

Rod­ney Coro­n­a­do #03895–000, FCI El Reno, PO Box 1500, El Reno, OK 73036, USA. Serv­ing one-year impris­on­ment after he informed peo­ple how to make an incen­di­ary device dur­ing a speech at an ani­mal rights gath­er­ing. (Rod is a veg­e­tar­i­an).

Don­ald Cur­rie A3660AA, HMP Parkhurst, New­port, Isle of Wight, PO30 5NX, Eng­land. Serv­ing an Inde­ter­mi­nate Sen­tence, of not less than six actu­al years, for car­ry­ing out arsons against tar­gets asso­ci­at­ed the vivi­sec­tion indus­try includ­ing HLS. (Don is a veg­an).

Jür­gen Faul­mann, Jus­ti­zanstalt Wr. Neustadt, Max­i­m­il­iang. 3, 2700 Wr. Neustadt, Aus­tria. One of ten Aus­tri­an’s held on remand accused of var­i­ous ani­mal rights actions. (Jur­gen is a veg­an).

Lau­ren Gaz­zo­la #93497–011, FCI Dan­bury, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, Route #37Danbury, CT 06811, USA. Serv­ing 54 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Lau­ren is a veg­an).

Joshua Harp­er #29429–086, FCI Sheri­dan Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, P.O. Box 5000, Sheri­dan, OR 97378 USA. Serv­ing 36 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Josh is a veg­an).

Felix Hnat (JA Eisen­stadt), Jus­ti­zanstalt Wr. Neustadt, Max­i­m­il­iang. 3, 2700 Wr. Neustadt, Aus­tria. One of ten Aus­tri­an’s held on remand accused of var­i­ous ani­mal rights actions. (Felix is a veg­an).

Jan, Anti­rep 2008, Post­fach 101, 1070, Vien­na, Aus­tria. One of ten Aus­tri­an’s held on remand accused of var­i­ous ani­mal rights actions. At the moment Jan does not wish to have his full name pub­lished. (Jan is a veg­an).

Kevin Kroem­mer, Anti­rep 2008, Post­fach 101, 1070, Vien­na, Aus­tria. One of ten Aus­tri­an’s held on remand accused of var­i­ous ani­mal rights actions. (Kevin is a veg­an)

Sean Kirt­ley WC 6977, HM Prison Blak­en­hurst, Hewell Lane, Red­ditch, B97 6QS, Eng­land. Serv­ing four and a half years for run­ning an anti-vivi­sec­tion cam­paign web­site. (Sean is a veg­an).

Kevin Kjon­aas #93502–011, FCI Sand­stone, PO Box 1000, Sand­stone, MN 55072 USA. Serv­ing 72 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Kevin is a veg­an).

Leo, Anti­rep 2008, Post­fach 101, 1070, Vien­na, Aus­tria. One of ten Aus­tri­an’s held on remand accused of var­i­ous ani­mal rights actions. At the moment Leo does not wish to have his full name pub­lished. (Leo is a veg­an).

Daniel McGowan — See details in Eco Defence Pris­on­ers List.

Chris­t­ian Moser, Jus­ti­zanstalt Wr. Neustadt, Max­i­m­il­iang. 3, 2700 Wr. Neustadt, Aus­tria. One of ten Aus­tri­an’s held on remand accused of var­i­ous ani­mal rights actions. (Chris­t­ian is a veg­an).

Heather Nichol­son VM4859, HMP Bronze­field, Woodthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx. TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. On remand accused of con­spir­a­cy to black­mail, in rela­tion to her involve­ment with the SHAC cam­paign. (Heather is a veg­an).

Jonathan Paul, #07167–085, FCI Phoenix, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, 37910 N 45th Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85086, USA. Sen­tenced to 51 months for an ALF arson on a horse meat plant. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Jonathan is a veg­an).

Sabine, Anti­rep 2008, Post­fach 101, 1070, Vien­na, Aus­tria. One of ten Aus­tri­an’s held on remand accused of var­i­ous ani­mal rights actions. At the moment Sabine does not wish to have their full name pub­lished. (Sabine is a veg­an).

Andrew Stepan­ian #26399–050, USP Mar­i­on, P.O. Box 1000 Mar­i­on, IL 62959, USA. Serv­ing 36 months for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Andrew is a veg­an).

Elmar Völkl (JA Eisen­stadt), Jus­ti­zanstalt Wr. Neustadt, Max­i­m­il­iang. 3, 2700 Wr. Neustadt, Aus­tria. One of ten Aus­tri­an’s held on remand accused of var­i­ous ani­mal rights actions. (Elmar is a veg­an).

Ker­ry Whit­burn TB4886, HMP Lowd­ham Grange, Lowd­ham, Not­ting­ham, NG14 7DA, Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion. (Ker­ry is a veg­an).

Sarah White­head, VM7684, HMP Bronze­field, Woodthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx, TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. Serv­ing two years for: 1) res­cu­ing a pup­py from hor­rif­ic con­di­tions. 2) res­cu­ing over 100 ani­mals from a pet breed­er who was lat­er pros­e­cut­ed for ani­mal abuse. Also await­ing tri­al for SHAC activ­i­ty. (Sarah is a veg­an)

PLOUGHSHARES PRISONERS

Helen Wood­son, 03231–045, FMC Car­swell — Admin. Max. Unit, POB 27137, Ft. Worth, TX 76127, USA. Serv­ing 8 years 10 months for actions that focused on the inter­re­la­tion­ship of war & the destruc­tion of the nat­ur­al world. The actions includ­ed pour­ing red paint over the secu­ri­ty desk of a fed­er­al court and mak­ing threat­en­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Pre­vi­ous­ly Helen had served 20½ years for: 1) Using a ham­mer to dis­arm a nuclear mis­sile silo. 2) Burn­ing $25,000 on the floor of a bank whilst denounc­ing war, envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion & eco­nom­ic injus­tice. 3) Mail­ing warn­ing let­ters with bul­lets attached to Gov­ern­ment & cor­po­rate offi­cials. (Diet unknown).

THE LECCE FIVE
The Lec­ce Five have been charged with “sub­ver­sive asso­ci­a­tion” accused of dam­ag­ing Esso petrol pumps to oppose the War on Iraq; sab­o­tag­ing the cash machines of a bank which funds an immi­gra­tion cen­tre; and tar­get­ing the multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny Benet­ton in sup­port of Mapuche land rights activists in Chile. All of the defen­dants are cur­rent­ly either under house arrest or released on bail.

ANTIFA PRISONERS

Vah­tang Devitlidze, ul. Libbedo­va 42, UO 68/2, otryad 14, briga­da 142, g. Hagyshen­sk, Krasnodarskiy Kray, 352680 Rus­sia. Serv­ing 2½ years for stab­bing a neo-nazi in the leg whilst defend­ing him­self from attack. (Diet unknown).

Augustin Kraus, Vazeb­ni veznice, PP‑1, Lit­o­merice, 41 201, Czech Repub­lic.
Serv­ing 14 months for his par­tic­i­pa­tion in attacks against local neo-nazis. His charge was “bod­i­ly harm”. He speaks Czech, Slo­vak and Pol­ish. You can also write him short post­cards in Eng­lish. (Diet unknown).

Fabio Milan, C.C. via Pianez­za 300, 10151 Tori­no, Italy. On remand accused of fight­ing with the police after an anti-fas­cist protest. (Diet unknown).

Andrea Neff, Bnr: 746/07/2, Jus­tizvol­lzugsanstalt fur Frauen in Berlin, Arkonas­trasse 56, 13189 Berlin, Ger­many. Serv­ing 14 months for anti-fas­cist activ­i­ty. (Diet unknown).

Chris­t­ian Süm­mer­mann, Bnr: 441/08/5, JVA Plötzensee, Lehrter­str. 61, 10557 Berlin, Ger­many. Serv­ing 40 months for breach­ing the peace whilst serv­ing a sus­pend­ed sen­tence issued for anti-fas­cist activ­i­ties. (Diet unknown).

Tomasz Wiloszews­ki, Zak­lad Karny, Orze­chowa 5, 98–200 Sier­adz, Poland.
Serv­ing 15 years for acci­den­tal­ly killing a neo-nazi whilst defend­ing him­self. (Tomasz is a veg­e­tar­i­an).

Yuri Yure­vich Milevskiy, SIZO #7 kam­era 38, g. Brest, ul. Kar­la Mark­sa 86, 224000 Belarus. On remand for fight­ing with neo-nazis. (Diet unknown).

OTHER PRISONERS

Olga Alek­san­drov­na Nevskaya, UU163/5, 7 Otryad, pos. Dzerzhin­skiy, Mozhaysk 140090 Moskovskaya oblast, Rus­sia. Eco-activist serv­ing 6 years for arson, crim­i­nal dam­age and caus­ing explo­sions in protest at the war in Chech­nya. Due for release in 2009. (Diet unknown).

Vagge­lis Botzatzis, Komo­ti­ni Juridi­cal Prison (“Dikastikes Fylakes Komo­ti­nis”), T.K. 69100, Greece. On remand accused of set­ting fire to two com­pa­ny cars owned by a energy/power com­pa­ny. It is believed that the per­son or per­sons unknown who car­ried out the arson did so in protest at the destruc­tion of the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment and in sup­port of two work­ers who died at the pow­er plant. Vagge­lis is also accused of set­ting fire to a bank and start­ing a fire inside a car yard. (Meat Eater).

Richard Sills (Address Unknown, USA). Serv­ing 15 months for bomb hoax­ing a Uni­ver­si­ty say­ing they would be tar­get­ed by the ALF if they did­n’t stop their ani­mal exper­i­ments. (Diet unknown).

Michael W. Sykes, 100 East 2nd St, Mon­roe, Michi­gan 48161, USA. Youth held on remand accused of anti-sprawl arsons, crim­i­nal dam­age, spray-paint­ing an anar­chist sign and burn­ing the Amer­i­can flag. (Diet unknown)

Fran Thomp­son, #1090915 HU 1C, WERDCC, PO Box 300, Van­dalia, MO 63382, USA.
Serv­ing Life for killing, in self-defence, a stalk­er who had bro­ken into her home. Before her impris­on­ment Fran was an eco, ani­mal & anti-nuke cam­paign­er. (Fran is a veg­an).

MOVE
MOVE is an eco-rev­o­lu­tion­ary group who car­ried out protests in defence of all life. All move pris­on­ers describe them­selves as veg­e­tar­i­ans. There are cur­rent­ly eight MOVE activists in prison each serv­ing 100 years after been framed for the mur­der of a cop in 1979. 9th defen­dant, Mer­le Africa, died in prison in 1998.

Deb­bie Simms Africa (006307), Janet Hol­loway Africa (006308) and Janine Philips Africa (006309) all at: SCI Cam­bridge Springs, 451 Fuller­ton Ave, Cam­bridge Springs, PA 16403–1238, USA.

Michael Davis Africa (AM4973) and Charles Simms Africa (AM4975) both at SCI Grater­ford, PO Box 244, Grater­ford, PA 19426–0244, USA.

Edward Good­man Africa (AM4974), SCI Mahanoy, 301 Morea Rd, Frackville, PA 17932, USA.

William Philips Africa (AM4984) and Del­bert Orr Africa (AM4985) both at SCI Dal­las Draw­er K, Dal­las, PA 18612, USA.

Mumia Abu Jamal, (AM8335), SCI Greene, 175 Progress Dri­ve, Way­nes­burg PA 15370, USA. In 1981 Mumia, for­mer Black Pan­ther and vocal sup­port­er of MOVE, was framed for the mur­der of a cop. He was orig­i­nal­ly sen­tenced to death but is cur­rent­ly await­ing re-sen­tenc­ing fol­low­ing a court hear­ing in 2001.

STATEMENT ON VIOLENCE
Some peo­ple list­ed in this newslet­ter have car­ried out vio­lent actions. ‘Spir­it of Free­dom’ does not con­done vio­lence. But we are also against cen­sor­ship & believe peo­ple can decide for them­selves who they wish to sup­port.

ABOUT E.L.P. SUPPORT NETWORK
ELP is an inter­na­tion­al eco-pris­on­er sup­port net­work found­ed, in Britain, in 1993 to sup­port jailed eco-activists. We sup­port the pris­on­ers by pro­duc­ing var­i­ous reg­u­lar pris­on­er lists:

Spir­it of Free­dom is ELP’s inter­na­tion­al month­ly pris­on­er list­ing which is cir­cu­lat­ed by e‑mail.

Urgent ELP! Bul­letin is an e‑mail ser­vice that dis­trib­utes the names of any new eco-pris­on­er as soon as ELP gets their details. For more info e‑mail ELP4321@hotmail.com

On-Line Newslet­ters — ELP has a num­ber of web­sites that pro­vide news, pris­on­er lists and addi­tion­al info about ELP & the pris­on­ers.

Eng­lish lan­guage ELP Web­site
www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk

Greek lan­guage ELP Web­site
http://greekelp.blogspot.com

North Amer­i­can ELP Web­site
www.ecoprisoners.org

Turk­ish lan­guage ELP Web­site
www.geocities.com/yesilanarsi/elp.htm

ELP Extra is an e‑mail group that cir­cu­lates the details of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, ELP learns about, who do not fall with­in the remit for sup­port by ELP. To sub­scribe to the list e‑mail ELP4321@Hotmail.com

Aus­tralian ELP.SN is our Aus­tralian con­tact. For more info e‑mail elp4321@hotmail.com

Bel­gium ELP.SN is our Bel­gium con­tact. For more info e‑mail elp_bel@hotmail.com

Ger­man ELP.SN is a pris­on­er led ini­tia­tive run by eco-pris­on­er Mar­co Camenisch. For more info con­tact Mar­co Camenisch, Post­fach 3143, CH-8105 Regens­dorf, Switzer­land.

Greek ELP.SN is our Greek con­tact. For more info e‑mail greekelp@yahoo.gr

North Amer­i­can ELP is our North Amer­i­can con­tact. For more infor­ma­tion e‑mail naelpsn@mutualaid.org

Turkey ELP.SN is our Turk­ish con­tact. For more info e‑mail yesilanarsi@yahoo.com

Cobham, Surrey : Activists Blockade Cargill Europe Head Office

1.08.2008
Since 7.50 am this morn­ing, 20 par­tic­i­pants in this year’s Camp for Cli­mate Action and mem­bers of Action Against Agro­fu­els have been blockad­ing the only access gate to Cargill’s Euro­pean region­al head office in Cob­ham, Sur­rey. 8 activists have locked on to the gates clos­ing the site down com­plete­ly. Agrobusi­ness giant Cargill are being tar­get­ed by the pro­test­ers for their role in rain­for­est destruc­tion and land-grab­bing as well as for prof­i­teer­ing from the food cri­sis.

Cargill blockade, Cobham1.08.2008
Since 7.50 am this morn­ing, 20 par­tic­i­pants in this year’s Camp for Cli­mate Action and mem­bers of Action Against Agro­fu­els have been blockad­ing the only access gate to Cargill’s Euro­pean region­al head office in Cob­ham, Sur­rey. 8 activists have locked on to the gates clos­ing the site down com­plete­ly. Agrobusi­ness giant Cargill are being tar­get­ed by the pro­test­ers for their role in rain­for­est destruc­tion and land-grab­bing as well as for prof­i­teer­ing from the food cri­sis.

Han­nah Ritchie from the group says: “Cargill is using the boom in agro­fu­els to expand soya, palm oil and sug­ar plan­ta­tions, dis­plac­ing com­mu­ni­ties, food crops and destroy­ing ecosys­tems. Destroy­ing rain­forests and oth­er bio­di­verse ecosys­tems, includ­ing healthy soils, is one of the quick­est ways of heat­ing the plan­et. This is why we are blockad­ing the Cargill office two days before the offi­cial start of the Cli­mate Camp at Kingsnorth.”

Accord­ing to the UN World Food Pro­gramme, 100 mil­lion more peo­ple are going hun­gry as food prices have risen by 83% in three years. At the same time, Cargill’s prof­its have risen to record lev­els, going up by 86% in just nine months, since the com­pa­ny is prof­i­teer­ing from high food prices.

Jor­dan Craig says: “For com­pa­nies like Cargill, agro­fu­els are an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make more prof­its from food, to take over more land from small farm­ers and com­mu­ni­ties and to fur­ther destroy local food pro­duc­tion. This is why we need an imme­di­ate halt to gov­ern­ment poli­cies such as the manda­to­ry blend­ing of petrol and diesel with bio­fu­els in the UK, as well as an end to ‘free trade’ food and agri­cul­tur­al poli­cies which sole­ly boost the pow­er and the prof­its of agribusi­ness­es like Cargill. Instead of agro­fu­els, we need to have poli­cies that sup­port Food Sov­er­eign­ty, i.e. which put peo­ple’s right to food first and sup­port small-scale, bio­di­verse, organ­ic farm­ing, instead of ener­gy-inten­sive agri­cul­ture.”

Con­tacts:

Par­tic­i­pants in the action can be con­tact­ed at the fol­low­ing num­bers 07527–124478 or 07964–068147

Notes:

1. Agro­fu­els are bio­fu­els made from crops and trees grown on mono­cul­tures for that pur­pose.

2. Cargill owns 25% of shares in the UK’s biggest bio­fu­el sup­pli­er, Green­er­gy Inter­na­tion­al. They have major invest­ments in US corn ethanol, Brazil­ian sug­ar cane ethanol, as well as palm oil and soya, and they are involved in joint ven­tures to devel­op GM agro­fu­els. Cargill is the world’s biggest grain trad­er, the biggest exporter of sug­ar cane and soy­bean from Brazil, the biggest soy­bean crush­er in Paraguay and one of the world’s five largest palm oil traders.

3. For more infor­ma­tion about the harm which Cargill is caus­ing to com­mu­ni­ties and ecosys­tems in Brazil, Paraguay and Papua New Guinea, see http://understory.ran.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/cargill_letter1.pdf

www.biofuelwatch.org.uk

Cambridge Mill Road Social Centre evicted but car-park squatted

On Fri­day 1st around 9AM, police and bailiffs kicked down the door to the social cen­tre and start­ed evict­ing peo­ple from the premis­es. No advance warn­ing was giv­en. It goes to show that Tesco can nev­er be trust­ed, as they reneged on their promise not to take pos­ses­sion of the build­ing before they need­ed to start build­ing.

On Fri­day 1st around 9AM, police and bailiffs kicked down the door to the social cen­tre and start­ed evict­ing peo­ple from the premis­es. No advance warn­ing was giv­en. It goes to show that Tesco can nev­er be trust­ed, as they reneged on their promise not to take pos­ses­sion of the build­ing before they need­ed to start build­ing.

Tesco were obvi­ous­ly very con­fi­dent that the pre­vi­ous night’s plan­ning meet­ing (to allow them to build waste and air­co facil­i­ties) would find in their favour. As it turned out, their appli­ca­tion was turned down. No doubt Mill Road­’s Broad­way will soon sport a set of shiny met­al win­dow boards.

—

We cor­doned off part of the car park behind the evict­ed mill road social cen­tre, and are now squat­ting the site.

At 3:15pm today (Fri­day) we cor­doned off part of the car park behind the evict­ed mill road social cen­ter, so at to make a clear bound­ary, and are now squat­ting the site. Please feel free to come and join us. As it is open air, accom­mo­da­tion is camp­ing. If any­one has any spare tar­pau­lin they could give/lend us this would be use­ful.

Police invade Climate Camp — and FIT are ejected

2.08.2008
The For­ward Intel­li­gence Team made a for­ay onto the field today but were eject­ed from the field by campers.

Police incursionPolice try to nick climate camp plumbingClimate campers sit on woodpileWood chain from cops to camp2.08.2008
The For­ward Intel­li­gence Team made a for­ay onto the field today but were eject­ed from the field by campers.

Police still feel con­fi­dent to wan­der about the site in pairs — fol­lowed and escort­ed, natch — but the arrival of the FIT with cam­eras proved too much.

Accord­ing­ly they were sur­round­ed and eject­ed from the field today by the camp.

Num­bers are swelling — the clmate camp info line is very busy with last minute requests for direc­tions — and we will soon be empow­ered to reclaim absolute own­er­ship of the site.

———-

Activists dove under police vans and formed human chains to pre­vent them from get­ting on site, and peo­ple scram­bled up the dou­ble tripods — but campers were out­num­bered 3 to 1 by the police.

Although police claimed to be search­ing for mate­ri­als that could be used on the 9th August day of action, they also seized items such as guy-ropes for safe­ly secur­ing mar­quees, radios used in med­ical emer­gen­cies, and build­ing mate­ri­als essen­tial for the con­struc­tion of com­post toi­lets. The seizures went as far as the con­fis­ca­tion of such ridicu­lous items as a bicy­cle repair kit, three board games and a pack of chil­dren’s crayons.

But the real stand off took place over water pipes and wood for the kitchens. In a twist of supreme irony, as the coun­cil dug a pipeline to deliv­er fresh water, activists had to engage in a tug of war with the police to keep the water pipes on site — which they did suc­cess­ful­ly. And as the police brought in a flat-bed lor­ry to remove wood for the kitchens, activists climbed onto the wood­pile and pre­vent­ed it from being tak­en away.

As the police gave in and the lor­ry drove away, a cheer went up and campers imme­di­ate­ly formed a human chain to car­ry the wood up to the kitchens. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there is for the time being a small police pres­ence on site.

Every­thing is now calm on site, but the raid has put the set-up back by half a day, so more peo­ple on site are need­ed to get the camp ready for this Sun­day. The big push will be hap­pen­ing over Fri­day and Sat­ur­day as the major­i­ty of mate­ri­als arrive, and there’s plen­ty of work to be done — so come on down!

31.07.2008
This after­noon over 100 police offi­cers invad­ed the Cli­mate Camp, claim­ing to search for mate­r­i­al that could be used for crim­i­nal dam­age. Since there are only around 150 peo­ple cur­rent­ly on site, more peo­ple are urgent­ly need­ed to make the site more secure. There are reports that sev­er­al peo­ple were arrest­ed.

Activists who blocked police vehi­cles were removed in a very heavy hand­ed man­ner. The names and details of many peo­ple were tak­en. Mate­ri­als were removed from site, includ­ing a wet suit. All the while, a police heli­copter was in the sky over the camp.

Police have now left.

—

IMC time­line:

19:10 — Police num­bers on site are now sub­stan­tial­ly reduced but they have installed a mobile police sta­tion at the entrance to the camp and there is talk of a per­ma­nent patrol. Campers cur­rent­ly nego­ti­at­ing the return of the prop­er­ty stolen by police, much of which is essen­tial to set­ting up the camp infra­struc­ture.

18.36 — The wood pile has been saved. Peo­ple sat on the wood­pile pro­tect­ing it and even­tu­al­ly the police gave up and sent the recov­ery vehi­cle away. The seizure of water pipe was also attempt­ed but stopped by peo­ple sit­ting on it.

18.15 — Cur­rent­ly the police are remov­ing the pile of con­struc­tion wood using a 24 hour recov­ery vehi­cle. Oth­er con­fis­cat­ed items now include: lots of rope, lots of tools, 3 boardgames, a lad­der, boil­er suits, flares. Police have emp­tied entire vans. Half of the police have gone off-site, the oth­er half stopped the search but are still on-site. So far 2 peo­ple have been arrest­ed, 1 for stop­ping police from going into their tent (obstruc­tion).

16.40 — Over 200 police offi­cers have entered the site with vehi­cles and a police heli­copter is hov­er­ing over­head. Police were issued with a war­rant for the search­ing and seiz­ing of arti­cles for use in crim­i­nal dam­age. Con­fis­cat­ed items have includ­ed: planks of wood, car­pet and a war-on-ter­ror boardgame. Every tent is being searched. Peo­ple are up in the tripods. Some offi­cers are report­ed act­ing aggres­sive­ly towards peo­ple try­ing to resist the search. For­ward Intel­li­gence Teams (FIT) are walk­ing around the site pho­tograph­ing and film­ing peo­ple.

—

Any mate­ri­als relat­ing to the Day of Action, includ­ing things that appear to be innocu­ous (oars, inflat­a­bles, pumps, D‑locks for bikes and so on) may be seized by the police.

You may like to store such items off­site for col­lec­tion at a lat­er date.