Category: South East England

Mon­day 13th — Air­bus wing
Tues­day 14th — Melt­down Chauf­feur Agency
Wednes­day 15th — hoax demo
Thurs­day 16th — Farn­bor­ough and Big­gin Hill air­ports, Bris­tol air­port, clown walk­a­bout
Fri­day 17th — trav­el agents closed, Depart­ment for Trans­port block­ade, XL Air­ways occu­pa­tion
Sat­ur­day 18th — kids’ freight block­ade, Carmel Agrex­co ware­house, Nip­pon strike sol­i­dar­i­ty
For the 24 hours of mass action, see sep­a­rate report.
Tues­day 21st — Har­mondsworth deten­tion cen­tre

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Mon­day 13th August 2007

A group of activists set up a cli­mate camp on the wing of an Air­bus A380 on its way to be assem­bled in France, pledg­ing to stay until gov­ern­ment min­is­ters come up with a ‘safe’ avi­a­tion pol­i­cy.

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Tues­day 14th August 2007

Four horse­men arrive at Ter­mi­nal 4 to coin­cide with Cli­mate Camp

Four dri­vers from the Melt­down Chauf­feur Agency went to Heathrow Ter­mi­nal 4 as request­ed by their clients and wait­ed patient­ly for them at the Arrival gate.

Video Four Horse­men arrive at Ter­mi­nal 4 — video/mp4 3.3M

On 14th August 07 (“offi­cial” start of Cli­mate camp), Four dri­vers from the went to Heathrow as request­ed by their clients and wait­ed patient­ly for them at the Arrival gate.

The clients did­n’t turn up — I guess they were delayed, but their arrival is inevitable.

Mrs D. Eath,

Mr. F. A. Mine,

Mr. P. E. Sti­lence,

and of course:

Mrs. War

Must be very angry by now and fed up of over­priced Star­bucks cof­fee, because their Chauf­feurs were asked to leave the air­port by the police… I guess the Four Horse­men are still wait­hing in arrivals…

Check out the hid­den cam­era footage…

(Pos­si­bly) bet­ter qual­i­ty footage on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU7D_3DBFGQ

Sor­ry folks, no sound­track, so don’t fid­dle with yer slid­er!

It’s about 4 dri­vers from a com­pa­ny called “Melt­down Chauf­feurs”. Coin­ci­c­ing with the first day of the Cli­mate Camp, they have a job to pick up four clients at Heathrow: Death, Famine, Pesti­lence and War: The four horse­men of the apoc­a­lypse.

The dri­vers wait at the arrival gate in Heathrow Ter­mi­nal 4, hold­ing up signs with the names of their clients, as dri­vers do. But the Four Horse­men are delayed. They don’t arrive at the sta­tion of Gatwick Express either.

Apoc­a­lypse did­n’t arrive this time. But unless we are chang­ing fast, “it will real­ly be the end of the world”.

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Wednes­day 15th August 2007

Police force cli­mate camp march to Heathrow air­port and block A4…

Just a quick report to say that today a small march of around 80 peo­ple left from the cli­mate camp to sup­port a local demon­stra­tion against heathrow expan­sion. They were very quick­ly sur­round­ed by over one hun­dred police — hav­ing just left the camp this hap­pened in what could be called a side street — then quite inex­plic­a­bly the police forced the group down sev­er­al streets towards the air­port. Still penned in on all side by police, they were then forced across the main A4 road (which police closed for some time before forc­ing the peo­ple across it) and then right up to the secu­ri­ty fence of Heathrow where they were held for over one hour.

Sev­er­al eye wit­ness­es have described how police were very heavy hand­ed from the out­set, throw­ing peo­ple who said they did not want to join the march into their cor­don. Par­ents were seper­at­ed from chil­dren as police offi­cers lit­er­al­ly threw peo­ple into the crowd who were sur­round­ed. Five peo­ple I’ve spo­ken to said that they would not engage in any dis­cus­sion and were scream­ing at peo­ple and even mak­ing jibes such as ‘you have no rights here’ before rough­ly shov­ing peo­ple into the penned in crowd.

Many peo­ple point­ed out that the main­stream media were there film­ing, but they sus­pect that the whole inci­dent may be portreyed as ‘the pro­tes­tors dis­rupt­ing air trav­ellers’ or ‘police foil attempt to block heathrow’ or ‘pro­tes­tors cause traf­fic chaos’.

Let’s see…

As to the protest by local cam­paign­ers, no one ever found it…

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Police cause hol­i­day hav­oc — and blame pro­test­ers

“Local res­i­dents will stage a protest against air­port expan­sion at Hat­ton Cross this after­noon” read the Cli­mate Camp notice­board. “Main Gate — 3.30”

Nobody can say who wrote it. Spokesper­sons for the two local protests organ­i­sa­tions deny all knowl­edge and NoTRAG were even con­cerned that peo­ple might wear their stick­ers.

But it did result in 60 or 70 peo­ple leav­ing the camp to give sup­port.

Local cops seemed sur­prised. Five ran from the main gate as they saw the pro­ces­sion mov­ing south, and sleepy pair on the south gate were alarmed to see they might have to do a bit of work.

So it came as a shock to find two police vehi­cles ready to form a road­block a cou­ple of hun­dred yards down a sub­ur­ban street. And odd that there seemed to be quite a few media folks already on the spot.

Ten min­utes lat­er, with the group (now down by ten who’d legged it down an alley) halt­ed in their progress, half a dozen Tac­ti­cal Sup­port Group vehi­cles turned up, park­ing on and there­fore block­ing Har­ling­ton High Street. They were to be there for a half hour, so there was soon quite a tail­back.

The 50 campers were now sur­round­ed by more than a hun­dred police offi­cers.

Kids cruised around on bikes, res­i­dents came out of their hous­es to watch. “Get bur­gled round here you can wait a week for a cop­per, bring fifty pro­test­ers you get a hun­dred” one told me.

The ket­tle now turned into a pro­ces­sion. Police seemed to know where the campers were going, which quite frankly was more than many of them did.

Turn­ing right onto the High Street the air­port became vis­i­ble in the dis­tance. Fear­ing what might be to come some asked to leave. “There’s no way I want to protest at the air­port” said one, but he was pushed back into the group. Legal observers attest to this, there are also pho­tographs of the inci­dent.

Mean­while motor­cy­cle police had been busy block­ing the busy A4 Bath Road that adjoins the air­port. As the pro­ces­sion was brought to halt some hun­dred yards short of the junc­tion for ten min­utes, the traf­fic had plen­ty of time to build.

And now, whether they liked it or not — and sur­round­ed and pushed around by more than a hun­dred police they had no say in the mat­ter — they were tak­en across the A4 and on to the air­port perime­ter road — the very thing that BAA and the police claimed was the worst sce­nario, and one which they were deter­mined to stop.

(I asked one of the TSG about tak­ing them into “the injunc­tion zone” — he said “…we’d won­dered about that…”)

So the court injunc­tion attempt, the claims that it enabled ter­ror­ism and all the oth­er BAA blus­ter was exposed for the sham that it was.

And no doubt some fam­i­ly — “a hard work­ing fam­i­ly that has saved all year to give the kids a hol­i­day” — can be found to have been delayed — not by the actions of pro­test­ers — but the by the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police Force act­ing — no doubt — on the instruc­tions of BAA and their ser­vants the State.

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Thurs­day 16th August 2007

Busi­ness flights block­ad­ed by cli­mate activists

Two inde­pen­dent groups of cam­paign­ers from the Camp for Cli­mate Action have this morn­ing stopped car­bon-inten­sive pri­vate jets from oper­at­ing at two air­ports in the south east.

Exec­u­tive flights at Big­gin Hill and Farn­bor­ough air­ports have been brought to a stand­still by cli­mate activists con­cerned at the huge growth in the use of pri­vate jets by busi­ness peo­ple. The activists D‑locked them­selves to the gates of the air­ports.

At a time of grow­ing pub­lic con­cern at the cli­mate impact of the avi­a­tion indus­try, busi­ness jets have escaped pub­lic scruti­ny. The actions are intend­ed to raise aware­ness of the true cost of this hid­den aspect of air
trav­el.

Richard George, cur­rent­ly at Big­gin Hill said, “The avi­a­tion indus­try would like us to think that all flights are being tak­en by hard-work­ing fam­i­lies on their once-a-year hol­i­day. We are here today to shine a light on the dark secret of avi­a­tion, name­ly the enor­mous growth in pri­vate jet use by the super-rich.”

The pro­test­ers added that the actions are focused only on the car­bon-inten­sive nature of pri­vate busi­ness jets. George added, “While ordi­nary peo­ple are try­ing to reduce their car­bon emis­sions, many busi­ness lead­ers insist on fly­ing in the most car­bon-inten­sive way pos­si­ble: a jet all of their own.”

Anoth­er pro­test­er point­ed out, “In the 21st cen­tu­ry we have instant com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Video-con­fer­enc­ing has been suc­cess­ful­ly used by the media, cor­po­ra­tions and uni­verisi­ties, yet fat-cats insist on being flown around the world in their own per­son­al jets. The time for such waste­ful use of ener­gy is sim­ply over.”

The block­ades began at 6.30 AM and are ongo­ing.

ENDS

Media con­tacts at the action loca­tions
Big­gin Hill: 07879 416694
Farn­bor­ough: 07909 651093

Media con­tacts for the Camp for Cli­mate Action
0777 286 1099 or 07858 177 178

Notes to Edi­tor
1) Accord­ing to The Econ­o­mist, the aver­age num­ber of pas­sen­gers on exec­u­tive jets in Europe is two.

2) Farn­bor­ough is the only air­port in Europe for the exclu­sive use of busi­ness air­craft. They recent­ly attempt­ed to dou­ble the num­ber of flights despite mas­sive local oppo­si­tion, although these plans were reject­ed last year.

The bbc says in a report post­ed at 9.33am that a group of about 10 peo­ple “chained them­selves to Big­gin Hill Air­port’s entrance gates” to voice “their oppo­si­tion against the growth in the num­ber of peo­ple using pri­vate jets.”

Accord­ing to the bbc, the spokesper­son stressed “that the group had no plans to pre­vent pas­sen­gers fly­ing out of Heathrow at the week­end.” And it reports that “a spokesman for Hamp­shire police said cli­mate change demon­stra­tors were also stag­ing a protest at Farn­bor­ough Air­port but the air­port remained open.” Accord­ing to the bbc, about 18 peace­ful pro­test­ers are present at Farn­bor­ough Air­port at the main entrance to the air­port.

11 arrest­ed at big­gin hill after being cut out of lock­ons

one group had locked them­selves togeth­er lying across the main pas­sen­ger entrance while oth­ers had locked them­selves to the main gate.

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Inter­view about the block­ade of Big­gin Hill air­port which took place on Thurs­day 16th August 2007.

Audio — mp3 3.6M

mp3 96kbps mono
5 mins 15 secs

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Dur­ing the Cli­mate Camp I spoke with some­one from Plane Stu­pid, a group who has been cam­paign­ing on issues sur­round­ing the avi­a­tion indus­try and its dis­as­ter­ous effects on Cli­mate Change. Here is a short inter­view with explains why we should cam­paign on the avi­a­tion-cli­mate change link.

ogg 3.7M
mp3 6.7MB
Video of block­ade at Farn­bor­ough Air­port

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Video inter­view with block­aders — video/mp4 6.8M

24 peo­ple took part in a block­ade at Farn­bor­ough Air­port this morn­ing with 9 peo­ple locked onto gates with lock-on devices. After an hour the aiport staff opened up an emer­gan­cy crash exit to allow the gath­ered busi­ness peo­ple in. Mean­while pro­test­ers hand­ed out leaflets to staff, pas­sen­gers and locals. Jets were delayed and after 2 hours a sec­ond emer­gency exit was opened. By this point the police warned peo­ple they would be arrest­ed and it was decid­ed to return to the camp. Although no one was arrest­ed, the police did seize lock-on devices. Some local media were present.

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Cli­mate chaos action at Bris­tol air­port today


Cli­mate chaos action at Bris­tol air­port today: Endan­gered goril­la in last stand shock!

An endan­gered goril­la has been sight­ed out­side Bris­tol air­port this after­noon on top of the tow­er­ing mon­u­ment to progress on the round­about. The clear­ly agi­tat­ed crea­ture is report­ed­ly attempt­ing to swat planes out of the sky as some sort of protest against cli­mate chaos. Pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ty from 3:30pm. More details to fol­low…

Cli­mate chaos action at Bris­tol air­port today:
Endan­gered goril­la in last stand shock!

An endan­gered goril­la has been sight­ed out­side Bris­tol air­port this after­noon on top of the tow­er­ing mon­u­ment to progress on the round­about. The clear­ly agi­tat­ed crea­ture is report­ed­ly attempt­ing to swat planes out of the sky as some sort of protest against cli­mate chaos. Pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ty from 3:30pm. More details to fol­low…

What we do know is this:

Avi­a­tion is the fastest grow­ing source of Car­bon Diox­ide (CO2) emis­sions, one of the pri­ma­ry caus­es of cli­mate change.

Despite a lot of hot air about tack­ling cli­mate chaos, the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to pro­mote air trav­el through tax breaks, sub­si­dies and a huge air­port expan­sion pro­gramme.

In the face of over­whelm­ing pub­lic oppo­si­tion, Bris­tol Inter­na­tion­al Air­port (BIA) is plan­ning to mas­sive­ly expand in the com­ing years.

BIA cur­rent­ly spews out more CO2 than the whole of Bristol’s traf­fic.

By 2019 it’s CO2 emis­sions are pre­dict­ed to be around 730000 tonnes, up from 430000 tonnes in 2005.

Air­port expan­sion rep­re­sents tun­nel vision eco­nom­ic progress at all costs. All the evi­dence is there to show it results in the destruc­tion of the local envi­ron­ment and com­mu­ni­ties as well as bring­ing more noise, pol­lu­tion and cli­mate chaos.

One of the friends of the rogue goril­la had this to say;

“The freak weath­er con­di­tions we are see­ing around the world and now clos­er to home are just the tip of the ice­berg. Cli­mate chaos means dead­ly heat waves, extreme floods, mass home­less­ness and refugee crises, ecosys­tem col­lapse, severe water short­ages, resource con­flicts and wars, mass extinc­tion… the list goes on. This is no longer a dis­tant threat to be quick­ly for­got­ten or dis­missed in the rush for cheap flights or the lat­est con­sumer item. Unless we take respon­si­ble, seri­ous action now to put an absolute cap on CO2 emis­sions and dras­ti­cal­ly alter our way of life, this plan­et will become an unin­hab­it­able night­mare world where human exis­tence itself will be in ques­tion. Have a nice day.”

This action is in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the cli­mate camp cur­rent­ly set up near Heathrow air­port. Despite police harass­ment and attempts by British Air­port Author­i­ties to sti­fle protest and oppo­si­tion with it’s now infa­mous injunc­tion, hun­dreds of peo­ple are there demon­strat­ing their resis­tance to air­port expan­sion and alter­na­tives for a bet­ter world based on ecol­o­go­cial sus­tain­abil­i­ty and equal­i­ty. More and more peo­ple recog­nise that real solu­tions to cli­mate chaos will not come from politi­cians or big busi­ness, but from ordi­nary peo­ple work­ing col­lec­tive­ly for far reach­ing, last­ing change.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion con­tact: kebelesocialcentre@riseup.net

As well as the very vis­i­ble goril­la action at the air­port’s front door a load of cli­mate chaos fly­ers were qui­et­ly dished out to unsus­pect­ing trav­ellers in need of read­ing mate­r­i­al at the check ins. When final­ly clocked by secu­ri­ty, after half an hour, the alter­na­tive trav­el agents were shown the way out and so joined in the mon­key busi­ness out­side.
This action was sim­ple and effec­tive. It showed what can be done with a few mates, not much prepa­ra­tion, about £20 and a lit­tle bit of humour and cre­ativ­i­ty…

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on thurs­day at the cli­mate camp, a small group of clowns decid­ed to do walk­a­bout with a wheel­ie bin. when the police stopped them under anti-ter­ror­ism pow­ers, they were in for a big sur­prise.

Video send in the clowns — mp4 for­mat — video/mp4 4.0M

Video send in the clowns — wmv for­mat — video/x‑ms-wmv 4.4M

vid in wmv for­mat and mp4 for­mat

mp4 can be viewed using the free vide­olan vlc play­er avail­able for free down­load from the vide­olan web­site for all plat­forms. this play­er han­dles lots of dif­fer­ent vid codec for­mats and is worth check­ing out.

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Fri­day 17th August 2007

Trav­el cen­tres shut up shop for cli­mate camp


Trav­el agents were the tar­get of an action involv­ing chain­ing the doors of var­i­ous trav­el cen­tres in cen­tral Lon­don. Signs were placed on the doors of each shop (see attached).

To high­light the guilt of the cli­mate crim­i­nals that are the trav­el indus­try, a group of cli­mate activists chained the doors of 6 trav­el cen­tres in cen­tral Lon­don, leav­ing a notice stat­ing shops would be closed for the dura­tion of the camp. This action took place on the night of Fri­day 17th August; the six tar­gets includ­ed STA trav­el who are respon­si­ble for encour­ag­ing young peo­ple to buy ‘around the world tick­ets’ which com­prise of tak­ing sev­er­al long haul flights over a short peri­od of time, lead­ing to reck­less co2 emis­sions. Thomas Cook and ‘The Flight Cen­tre’ were also tar­get­ed.

This action was tak­en by an inde­pen­dent affin­i­ty group keen to high­light the need for the trav­el indus­try to wake up to the effects avi­a­tion has on the plan­et.

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Cli­mate Activists Block­ade Depart­ment For Trans­port To Stop Air­port Expan­sion

Offi­cial press release fol­lows .…

PRESS RELEASE – For Imme­di­ate Release

Pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ty

CLIMATE ACTIVISTS BLOCKADE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORT TO STOP AIRPORT EXPANSION

9 activists have block­ad­ed the Depart­ment of Trans­port in a bid to demand that the gov­ern­ment reverse their plans to more than dou­ble the UK’s air­port capac­i­ty by 2030 Dressed in smart attire, the activists began their action at 8.15am and remain super­glued to the doors. Hold­ing a ban­ner which reads “no air­port expan­sion” the activists aim to high­light the impos­si­ble con­tra­dic­tion between the gov­ern­men­t’s rhetoric on stop­ping cli­mate change and its plans to expand air­ports.

Leila Har­ris, one of the activists, said: “The camp has made clear that expand­ing air­ports can­not be rec­on­ciled with stop­ping cli­mate change. Avi­a­tion is the fastest grow­ing cause of cli­mate change, already account­ing for 13 per cent of UK emis­sions. The gov­ern­ment has said noth­ing about how it plans to deal with this contradiction”1

“The Depart­ment of Trans­port must tear up all plans to expand UK air­ports, and start talk­ing about how we reduce the flights com­ing in and out of this coun­try. If they don’t, this sort of action against them is only the begin­ning”

This is the fourth direct action that has been held across the coun­try in sup­port of the Camp for Cli­mate Action.2 On Wednes­day three air­ports, hous­ing pri­vate jets owned by the super rich and the prime min­is­ter, were closed by groups of activists.

1 The gov­ern­men­t’s own fig­ures show that flights cur­rent­ly account for 13 per cent of the UK’s green­house gas emis­sions (Gillian Mer­rion, writ­ten answer to the House of Com­mons Envi­ron­men­tal Audit Com­mit­tee, Envi­ron­men­tal Audit Third Report). This is not cur­rent­ly includ­ed in the gov­ern­men­t’s fig­ures on UK emis­sions, nor is it includ­ed in the draft cli­mate change bill cur­rent­ly pro­cess­ing through par­lia­ment.

2 The Camp for Cli­mate Action has been open since Tues­day 14th and is in the process of plan­ning a day of mass action on Sun­day 19th which will tar­get the cor­po­ra­tions mak­ing prof­it at the expense of stop­ping cli­mate change.

For more infor­ma­tion and com­ment con­tact: Leo at the camp 07847 204 469 / Leila Har­ris 07766 175 641

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Campers Glue on to DfT

9 became 10 today as a pass­ing pedes­tri­an joined Cli­mate Camp sup­port­ers in a Depart­ment for Trans­port lock on.

Smart­ly dressed campers arrived at the DfT just after 8am as worka­holic trans­port fans were scur­ry­ing to their desks.

Five super­glued them­selves to he doors and two to each oth­er, jam­ming the revolv­ing doors shut whilst two more occu­pied the roof of the door­way with a sign read­ing “No Air­port Expan­sion”.

The pass­ing pedes­tri­an, who declined to give his name and request­ed no pho­tos asked for a bike chain and locked him­self to a glass side door.

Com­mu­ni­ty police showed up short­ly and called in the real police who arrived in dribs and drabs over the next half hour. Ambu­lances showed up and just to com­plete the tri­an­gle, police called in the Fire Brigade for good mea­sure.

Full marks to the medics who did a sen­si­tive job with the soapy water keep­ing up and encour­ag­ing ban­ter through­out.

There were 10 arrests includ­ing, of course, our pass­ing hero.

In what turned out to be a very suc­cess­ful demon­stra­tion against the third run­way at Heathrow and air­port expan­sion in gen­er­al activists locked and glued on to the Depart­ment for Trans­port in cen­tral Lon­don. All have been arrest­ed. Some suf­fered minor injuries to their hands caused by the glue. The police were gen­er­al­ly clam, although some offi­cers (AB 922) became aggres­sive when they were pho­tographed. The action suc­ceed­ed in block­ing the main and cor­ner entrances of the build­ing for near­ly 3 hours. Work­ers in the build­ing seemed gen­er­al­ly amused by the spec­ta­cle although some seemed annoyed that they were being made to stand out in the sun and away from their desks. No pleas­ing some peo­ple I guess.…

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Cheap flights… Cheap Lives?!! — a report

This Fri­day a group of peo­ple occu­pied the head­quar­ters of XL Air­ways in Craw­ley, Gatwick air­port. The direct action was tak­en in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Con­golese refugees and asy­lum seek­ers in this coun­try. The group entered the offices leaflet­ing staff through­out the build­ing with ban­ner out­side (see above) and one per­son D‑locked them­selves to a post in recep­tion demand­ing to speak to the man­ag­er of XL Air­ways Mag­nus Thosstier­stonn.

On the 26th Feb­ru­ary 40 Con­golese asy­lum seek­ers were deport­ed on an XL char­tered plane to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Con­go (DRC). This includ­ed 19 chil­dren. Since their return to DRC they have been sub­ject­ed to human rights abus­es includ­ing rape and tor­ture. These abus­es have been cat­a­logued by a Kin­shasa lawyer cur­rent­ly in Lon­don. Now anoth­er group of Con­golese asy­lum seek­ers have received depor­ta­tion papers sched­uled for the 30th of August. It is believed that an XL char­ter plane will again be used as part of a Home Office con­tract.

Sev­er­al vans of police were called to the scene. Peo­ple leaflet­ing inside offices were even­tu­al­ly removed, although the per­son locked on remained. The group out­side were sub­ject­ed to stop and search by police — keys were even­tu­al­ly found and the locked on per­son was removed and arrest­ed. All staff at XL offices were made aware of the protest and the com­pa­ny’s involve­ment in deport­ing vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple who have come to this coun­try to seek refuge.

The van of pro­test­ers was fol­lowed all the way home, stop and searched 4 times, once for every force that it passed through. The per­son arrest­ed for D‑locking in recep­tion was held in cus­tody for 16 hours — bail was refused due to the “polit­i­cal his­to­ry” of that activist. Free­dom to protest?! Even­tu­al­ly the arrest­ed per­son was tak­en to Craw­ley mag­is­trates courts this Sat­ur­day morn­ing charged with Aggra­vat­ed Tres­pass under the Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Act (1994) — an act that was brought in to crim­i­nalise a pre­vi­ous­ly civ­il offence and so deter exact­ly this sort of protest. Not deterred! It seems that due to an error by police this is an incor­rect charge an d a less­er charge of Tres­pass will be brought. The case was adjourned until 31st August, part­ly so that the defence can con­sid­er whether a case under Arti­cle 3 of the Human Rights act can be brought in terms of this direct action being tak­en to pre­vent an unlaw­ful act of act, the depor­ta­tion of Con­golese asy­lum seek­ers.

The Home Office/Border and Immi­gra­tion Agency are hold­ing a tri­bunal in Sep­tem­ber to review its pol­i­cy on deport­ing asy­lum seek­ers to the Con­go, a tri­bunal that has con­stant­ly been pushed back, increas­ing the fear and uncer­tain­ty of Con­golese asy­lum seek­ing safe­ty in this coun­try. The Con­go is sub­ject to resource wars, fuelled by cor­po­rate inter­ests, that kill 1,200 per week accord­ing to the UN. XL Air­ways prof­its from cheap flights that con­tribute to cli­mate chaos increas­ing the num­ber of envi­ron­men­tal refugees in the world. XL also prof­it from depor­ta­tion char­ter flights of peo­ple who have fled resource wars in the Con­go. Cheap flights… cheap lives?!!

This action can be seen as a bridge between the Camp for Cli­mate Action cur­rent­ly at Heathrow (and var­i­ous oth­er air­ports) and the No Bor­ders camp hap­pen­ing near Gatwick in Sep­tem­ber.

While in XL offices their man­agers defend­ed their busi­ness rights to prof­it from depor­ta­tion flights and refused to ruled out their involve­ment in such inhu­mane activ­i­ties “if we did­n’t do it some­one else would” was their atti­tude. Obvi­ous­ly for XL prof­its come before both peo­ple and plan­et.

// SEE ABOVE POSTINGS FOR XL CONTACT IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO EXPRESS YOUR VIEWS TO THEM AND KEEP COMING BACK TO THIS POSTING FOR UPDATES //

n.b. The bail con­di­tions of the per­son appear­ing in court on the 31st of August are to reside at their home in York­shire and go no clos­er than 500metres to any XL offices or UK air­port, unless a bona fide air pas­sen­ger. This per­son can no longer can be at the Camp for Cli­mate Action, can you??

Next depor­ta­tion flight

Con­golese refugees are receiv­ing depor­ta­tion orders for the 30th August. All indi­ca­tions are that XL will again be the com­pa­ny fly­ing them back. Please tele­phone, fax or email the com­pa­ny. Please be non-aggres­sive and non-offen­sive oth­er­wise it could be detri­men­tal to try­ing to stop peo­ple get­ting sent back.
Tel: 0870 320 7777
Fax: +44 (o)1883 627 564
Email: go to the web­site, www.XL.com, go to con­tact us, go to media enquiry. Hap­py email­ing.

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Sat­ur­day 18th August 2007

Chil­dren Block­ade At World Freight Cen­tre

At around 3pm this after­noon chil­dren and their par­ents from around the UK gath­ered at Heathrow’s World Freight Cen­tre to block­ade its access road. Around 15 peo­ple took part in the block­ade which was tak­en over by oth­ers from the Camp For Cli­mate Action after 45 min­utes. No one has been arrest­ed so far and police, FIT team as well as BAA secu­ri­ty are present at the scene. The block­aders unrolled a ban­ner read­ing ‘Enjoy Local Food’ to high­light the effects to cli­mate change that fly­ing food around the world caus­es.

———————-

Activists Tar­get Carmel Agrex­co in Con­juc­tion with Cli­mate Camp

At 1pm, approx­i­mate­ly 20 activists from Lon­don, Brighton, Read­ing and the near­by Cli­mate Camp entered the Carmel Agrex­co site in Hayes Mid­dle­sex where some activists have D‑locked the gates shut. They are being enter­tained by Sam­ba. Four police arrived on the scene almost imme­di­ate­ly.

PRESS RELEASE
State of Emer­gency — direct action against war, from the root to the fruit
18 August 2007

For imme­di­ate release

This after­noon a group of pro­test­ers from anar­chist group State Of Emer­gency have block­ad­ed the main UK ware­house of Israeli com­pa­ny Carmel Agrex­co in Hayes, Mid­dle­sex. Their action coin­cides with the near­by Camp for Cli­mate Action and is part of the grow­ing move­ment to boy­cott Israeli apartheid, which aims to end Israel’s breach of Inter­na­tion­al law and abuse of human rights in the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries of Pales­tine.

The action has been tak­en to coin­cide with the Camp for Cli­mate Action because all of Carmel Agrex­co’s pro­duce is air-freight­ed into Heathrow and also to high­light the con­se­quences of the resource wars which are inevitable as the cli­mate changes.

Accord­ing to the UK gov­ern­men­t’s own fig­ures air freight­ing of food is the fastest grow­ing mode of food trans­port, hav­ing increased by over 220% since 1992, and although it only accounts for 1% of food miles over­all it pro­duces 13% of the CO2 emis­sions from food trans­port.

The Israeli water author­i­ty, Mac­arot, drills wells to irri­gate Carmel’s crops close to exist­ing Pales­tin­ian wells but at a greater depth to dry up the Pales­tin­ian wells. The Israeli wells are for­ti­fied and guard­ed by the Israeli army, and many Pales­tini­ans are in Israeli pris­ons for the ‘crime’ of try­ing to obtain fresh water from wells in the set­tle­ments.

Israel has com­plete con­trol over water resources in the West Bank and uses 82 per­cent of the under­ground water. The Pales­tin­ian dai­ly con­sump­tion of water is 35 to 50 litres per capi­ta, while the dai­ly con­sump­tion of the Jew­ish set­tlers is 280 to 350 litres per capi­ta.

Much of Carmel Agrex­co’s fruit, veg­eta­bles, flow­ers, herbs and oth­er pro­duce is grown and packed on ille­gal Israeli set­tle­ments. Carmel Agrex­co is thus com­plic­it in war crimes under the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court Act 2001 (ICC Act).

Carmel Agrex­co is Israel’s largest importer of agri­cul­tur­al pro­duce into the Euro­pean Union and is 50% Israeli state owned. The ware­house is in Swal­low­field Way, Hayes, Mid­dle­sex, and is their main depot in the UK.

Many of the pro­test­ers have vis­it­ed Pales­tine and wit­nessed at first hand the suf­fer­ing of Pales­tini­ans under Israeli mil­i­tary occu­pa­tion. They have seen land that has been claimed by ille­gal Israeli set­tle­ments, but was stolen from Pales­tin­ian fam­i­lies. They have vis­it­ed vil­lages where the whole com­mu­ni­ty have been issued with demo­li­tion orders by the Israeli Army to make way for more ille­gal set­tle­ments.

The action today is part of three years of action against the com­pa­ny. Pales­tine sol­i­dar­i­ty pro­test­ers have tak­en part in five block­ades of the premis­es, the first in Novem­ber 2004.

Before the protest a legal warn­ing let­ter was sent to Carmel Agrex­co stat­ing clear­ly why they are in breach of the law.

Today’s action aims to draw atten­tion to this com­pa­ny’s com­plic­i­ty, in mur­der, theft and dam­age of occu­pied land, col­lec­tive pun­ish­ment, apartheid and eth­nic cleans­ing, and oth­er breach­es of Inter­na­tion­al Law.

Con­tact info@stateofemergency.org.uk / tel. 07948 173982 for interviews/pictures

Links:

Pho­tos from inside Carmel Agrex­co
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/07/376036.html

Pho­tos of the last block­ade of Carmel Agrex­co
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/11/357149.html?c=on

Pho­tos of the sec­ond block­ade

Text of let­ter sent to Carmel Agrex­co by Pales­tine Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cam­paign

Report on Carmel’s Involve­ment in the Jor­dan Val­ley

Press release from pre­vi­ous tri­al (with links)

War on Wan­t’s Report -“Prof­it­ing from the Occu­pa­tion”

Notes to Edi­tors:

1. For com­ments please call 07948 173982

2. On 9th June 2005 a coali­tion of Pales­tin­ian Civ­il Soci­ety Organ­i­sa­tions issued a ‘Call for Boy­cott, Divest­ment and Sanc­tions against Israel until it com­plies with Inter­na­tion­al Law’. See http://www.stopthewall.org/downloads/pdf/BDSEnglish.pdf for the full state­ment and sig­na­to­ries.

3. Israel occu­pied the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights in 1967 in con­tra­ven­tion of inter­na­tion­al law.

Since then Israel has moved over 380,000 set­tlers into these occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries in con­tra­ven­tion of the Fourth Gene­va Con­ven­tion (arti­cle 49), the Hague Reg­u­la­tions and Unit­ed Nations Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil Res­o­lu­tions.

Israel con­tin­ues to build an ille­gal apartheid wall inside the West Bank despite the Advi­so­ry Rul­ing of the Inter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice in 2005 that the wall is ille­gal. Fifty five ille­gal Israeli set­tle­ments will be on the Israeli side of the wall sep­a­rat­ed from the West Bank.

Since 2000 Israel has demol­ished 664 Pales­tin­ian hous­es, in acts of col­lec­tive pun­ish­ment. These demo­li­tions con­sti­tute a war crime. They have demol­ished a fur­ther 12,953 Pales­tin­ian homes for ‘mil­i­tary rea­sons’ (often to expand Israeli set­tle­ments) and 1,214 because they were built ‘with­out a per­mit’

4,000 Pales­tini­ans have been killed as a direct result of Israeli mil­i­tary actions dur­ing the cur­rent upris­ing which began in Sep­tem­ber 2000.

(Above sta­tis­tics con­firmed by Israeli Infor­ma­tion Cen­tre Btse­lem see www.btselem.org )

Con­tact info@stateofemergency.org.uk/tel. 07948 173982 for interviews/pictures

http://www.stateofemergency.org.uk/

—-

The action is now over.

There were 6 arrests in total, two of them legal observers.

4 have been arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of bur­glary for being inside the premis­es.

There were over 60 activists present in total and every­one was stopped and searched by the police before they were allowed to leave.

The action meant that the depot was shut and unable to oper­ate for 3 hours.

.….….….….

Two arrest­ed, Carmel Argex­co up date at 13.30

Two arrests from inside the depo, as yet charges of those arrest­ed unknown.

Two of the activists locked on were arrest­ed at around 13.10.

One per­son remains locked to the front gate of Carmel Agrex­co at 13.40.

A large group of police offi­cers (the spe­cial­ist entry team appar­ent­ly) have entered the depo by the back gate wear­ing pur­ple latex gloves.

Activists inside have been cor­doned away from the back gate where the police have bro­ken and entered.

Around 30 peo­ple observ­ing the occu­pa­tion out­side of Carmel Agrex­co, have been forced into a police ‘bub­ble’ and are being pushed around.

Every­one has been pho­tographed by the For­ward Intel­li­gence team. ( FIT )

.….….……

5 Arrests and Carmel Agrex­co Offices Trashed
Update at 14.54

The Carmel Agrex­co action is now being wound up. 5 activists arrest­ed and the offices of Carmel Agrex­co the arch exporter of ille­gal Israeli set­tle­ment goods, have been trashed.

Update at 14.54

The Carmel Agrex­co action is now being wound up.

5 activists have been arrest­ed and the offices of Carmel Agrex­co the arch exporter of ille­gal Israeli set­tle­ment goods, have been trashed.

The police respond­ed to the action with heli­copter, and long slow searchers of any­one out­side the premis­es of Carmel Agrex­co under sec­tion 1 of PACE.

Peo­ple are now leav­ing the area.

——–

Where Have All the Flow­ers Come From?

A film of the action vs Carmel Agrex­co in Hayes, Mid­dle­sex dur­ing the Camp for Cli­mate Action 2007.

To down­load video: http://www.undercurrents.org/visionontv/dl/2/464489afe0dab9c1cedce634efa04a021186f223.torrent
(Please note that this is a tor­rent file, and a bit­tor­rent serv­er such as azureus will be nec­es­sary to down­load it — http://azureus.sourceforge.net/)

——————————–

Cli­mate Camper Arrest­ed Under Ter­ror­ism Act

17.08.2007
Ear­ly this morn­ing, 4 peo­ple made their way to Heathrow Air­port to sup­port a pick­et of dri­vers and ware­house work­ers at the car­go han­dler Nip­pon Express. The staff at the com­pa­ny walked out two days ago after the com­pa­ny once again refused to set­tle a pay and shifts dis­pute.

When walk­ing towards ter­mi­nal 2, where the pick­et was tak­ing place, a cou­ple of police offi­cers stopped the group and told them they were being ‘detained’ and searched under sec­tion 44 of the Ter­ror­ism Act 2000. Accord­ing to the police this was because the peo­ple were ‘on BAA prop­er­ty’. The grounds for ini­tial­ly stop­ping the group were that they ‘matched the pro­files of pro­test­ers at the cli­mate camp’ who were to ’cause pos­si­ble dis­or­der on BAA prop­er­ty’.

Anoth­er 9 offi­cers and one of the FIT team joined short­ly. A stu­dent jour­nal­ist who iden­ti­fied him­self and was tak­ing pho­tos was told that ‘under the ter­ror­ism act you have to give us your cam­era’. Reluc­tant to hand over the cam­era, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er was then grabbed by 4 offi­cers and forced to hand it over.

The police pro­ceed­ed to delete images off the cam­era, before hand­ing it back. They lat­er denied all knowl­edge of this. Anoth­er one of the group refused to give his details while being searched under Sec­tion 44 and was arrest­ed. He has been tak­en to West Dra­ton police sta­tion.

.….….….….….…

Sol­i­dar­i­ty with NIPPON work­ers // mass pick­et in sup­port of strike [11.30am Sat]

As the cli­mate camp con­tin­ues near heathrow, down the road a group of work­ers at NIPPON EXPRESS have been strik­ing against a new work regime which will effec­tive­ly mean a £1265 pay cut for many of them.

***************************************************************************************************************
SOLIDARITY WITH NIPPON WORKERS — MASS PICKET 11.30am SATURDAY 19th AUGUST
****************************************************************************************************************
Nip­pon work­ers are expect­ing us down there and we are more than wel­comed!

===============================================
[When?]
===============================================

11.30am at the gate of NIPPON EXPRESS — look out for the pick­et

Check the map out:
http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?x=508906&y=178196&z=1&sv=508906,178196&st=4&ar=Y&mapp=newmap.srf&searchp=newsearch.srf

For Lon­don­ers: trains from Padding­ton, first great west­ern to heathow or Oxford — 14 mins to
Hayes and Har­ling­ton (tick­ets inspects are down there) . Then get bus from out­side sta­tion 90 — H98, 140 towards heathrow. about 2 ‑3 stops down look on your right for the pick­et.
It is very easy to get down there so no excus­es!

===============================================
[What?]
===============================================

NIPPON are also plac­ing these demands on the work­ers:

1) 44 Days a year more work
2) Over­time rate on Sun­day to be reduced to 25%
3) Hol­i­day pay is reduced by 60 — 75 hours
4) Shift pay reduced by £326 (Day shift) and £512 (Night shift)
5) Loss of £1265 a year pay for some work­ers
6) A 1.7% below infla­tion pay rise
7) Stop of shift pay on over­time
8) 9hrs pay loss on bank hol­i­days.

With these ridicu­lous demands from the com­pa­ny boss­es, the NIPPON EXPRESS work­ers decid­ed that strik­ing and a show of sol­i­dar­i­ty against this offen­sive is what is need­ed. NIPPON EXPRESS is locat­ed a few stops from Hayes & Har­ling­ton Rail­way sta­tion (head­ing south) and a few stops from the Camp for Cli­mate Action.

===============================================
[Why?]
===============================================

Build­ing work­ing class mil­i­tan­cy in all indus­tries is a pre­req­ui­site to chal­leng­ing the dom­i­na­tion of cap­i­tal­ism across our world. Cli­mate change has been caused by the cap­i­tal­ists and their ser­vants in gov­ern­ment through its own inescapable log­ic of exploita­tion, growth and prof­it. The strug­gle against cli­mate change is the strug­gle against cap­i­tal­ism, The strug­gle against cap­i­tal­ism is a strug­gle against the world of work impo­si­tion and wage slav­ery. We can not solve the worlds prob­lems under cap­i­tal­ism. We can not escape cap­i­tal­ism. We must destroy it.

Cli­mate Class Strug­glers

==============================================
[SOME MORE LINKS]
===============================================
some addi­tion­al back­gound:
1] http://publish.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/08/378309.html
2] http://www.tgwu.org.uk/Templates/News.asp?NodeID=93614&int1stParentNodeID=42438&int2ndParentNodeID=42438&Action=Display

.….….….….……

Car­go-Strik­er and Cli­mate-Camper Sol­i­dar­i­ty

Car­go work­ers at Nip­pon Express Heathrow depot are out on strike against changes that would see them work­ing 25% longer hours for no extra pay. Cli­mate campers have been keen to show their sup­port and have vis­it­ed the pick­et line through­out the cur­rent 48-hour stop­page, which ends at 6am Sun­day. This morn­ing about 30 campers brought a ban­ner (and about 20 police!) and chat­ted to strik­ers for a cou­ple of hours.

The obvi­ous link between the two strug­gles is the com­mon ene­my: cap­i­tal­ist prof­it, for which the plan­et is being destroyed and for which work­ers pay and con­di­tions are for­ev­er under attack. “Only a demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly planned econ­o­my can end the exploita­tion of work­ers and envi­ron­men­tal chaos,” said one camper.

Car­go work­ers don’t need the avi­a­tion indus­try — if car­go went by sea, their jobs would still exist — in fact work­ers told the campers that the Heathrow depot already han­dles some sea-freight.

Sev­er­al strik­ers have been down to the camp on pre­vi­ous nights and shared a few beers and the socia­ble atmos­phere; today they shared their pick­et-line bar­be­cue with the campers as every­one chilled out (except the cops who stood in a line sweat­ing in the August sun­shine).

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For the 24 hours of mass action, see sep­a­rate report.
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Tues­day 21st August 2007

Polit­i­cal Polic­ing out­side Har­mondsworth Deten­tion Cen­tre.

A group of around 30 from the Cli­mate Camp, includ­ing many from No Bor­ders, made their way (with an un-nec­es­sary police escort) to Har­mondsworth Immi­gra­tion Deten­tion Cen­tre at mid­day on Tues­day, only to be forcibly penned by police into a car park invis­i­ble to the road. The action was to high­light the link between deten­tion cen­tres and cli­mate change, and to show sol­i­dar­i­ty to those inside, detained for com­mit­ting no crime.

It was a cru­el and demor­al­is­ing irony: here we were in a pen made from those steel fences used in crowd con­trol, our protest – about wrong­ful deten­tion – itself detained. The police out­num­bered us, sur­round­ing the pen. It took much spir­it to get our chants going, but with the wel­come arrival of a mic and speak­er from Bicy­col­o­gy, we had a good go at “NO BORDERS! NO NATIONS! NO DEPORTATIONS!!”.

A woman from No Bor­ders man­aged to get one of the detainees on the phone, so that even though they may not have been able to hear us (we were quite far from the build­ings), peo­ple inside knew we were there. A few peo­ple spoke, recit­ed poems and sang songs. Most mem­o­rable was a heart-wrench­ing Ben­gali song, which – the singer explained as she trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish for us, would be under­stood by envi­ron­men­tal refugees from Bangladesh inside.

The link between the Cli­mate Camp and deten­tion cen­tres is in no way con­vo­lut­ed. Cli­mate change is already pro­duc­ing mil­lions of envi­ron­men­tal refugees. These mil­lions will become hun­dreds of mil­lions in a busi­ness as usu­al sce­nario. Many of those refugees man­ag­ing to flee to this coun­try, along with many flee­ing tor­ture and war, are met not with com­pas­sion and asy­lum, but bru­tal repres­sion and deten­tion. The poli­cies of UK plc with regard to cli­mate change are hurt­ing these peo­ple, but instead of help­ing them, UK plc locks them up.

When we arrived at the deten­tion cen­tre we stopped to have a meet­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of the direct democ­ra­cy in action back at the camp. Just as the first pro­pos­als were being made, the police stepped in quot­ing the much abused High­ways Act of 1859. We were of course block­ing the high­way, but main­ly on account of being sur­round­ed by a num­ber of police greater than our own. A man asked a senior offi­cer whether two peo­ple were allowed to remain on the pave­ment hold­ing a ban­ner. He was com­plete­ly ignored, like­wise was a woman who stepped up and asked the same. Then with­in sec­onds we were being pushed by the police into the pre-pre­pared pen they had made for us. Claim­ing that they were allow­ing us to protest, sev­er­al police­man then made absolute­ly sure that we could not get our mes­sage across to any­one dri­ving past by stand­ing in front of our ban­ners.

We left the deten­tion cen­tre before the start of vis­it­ing hours at 2pm to make sure that our protest wasn’t used by the police and secu­ri­ty force at the deten­tion cen­tre as an excuse to with­hold vis­its. Walk­ing back, a few of us man­aged to give the now-oblig­a­tory-for-cli­mate-campers police escort the slip. It was with an unease about the future that I felt joy at being allowed to walk down the road with­out being accom­pa­nied by the police.

About 100 work­shops have been hap­pen­ing at the cli­mate camp. Some work­shop intros were videoed: road cam­paigns work­shop (video/mp4 831K), social ecol­o­gy lon­don work­shop (video/mp4 3.7M), deal­ing with cli­mate scep­tics work­shop (video/mp4 1.9M), how renew­ables are being co-opt­ed by cor­po­rates (video/mp4 9.5M), Sav­ing Ice­land work­shop (video/mp4 27K), bio­fu­el cri­tique work­shop (video/mp4 6.4M), Mark Lynas on the 2 degrees tip­ping point the­o­ry (video/mp4 2.7M)

Cli­mate Camp work­shop: Wales LNG Pipeline

After two days of set­ting up the site and run­ning around deal­ing with the police and main­stream media, the work­shops at the Cli­mate Camp began yes­ter­day.

One of the most excit­ing of the work­shops so far was an impas­sioned report and dis­cus­sion on the Liqui­fied Nat­ur­al Gas pipeline devel­op­ment that is cur­rent­ly under­way from Mil­ford Haven to Tir­ley in Glouces­ter­shire.

Lin­da Ware of Cil­frew Res­i­dents Asso­ci­a­tion gave a full and frank account of the cam­paign over the last 18 months by res­i­dents and eco­log­i­cal activists against the destruc­tion of the south Wales coun­try­side, the increas­ing reliance on new forms of fos­sil fuels, the hor­rif­ic health and safe­ty con­cerns and the lack of con­sul­ta­tion with the peo­ple who’s lives are being ruined by this devel­op­ment.

“peo­ple pow­er is the most pow­er­ful thing there is”

There have been sev­er­al protest camps at Tre­banos, Mil­ford Haven, & Bre­con as well as mass direct action in Cil­frew and else­where.

For a back­ground to the cam­paign check out:
http://www.fightthepipe.co.uk
http://risingtide.org.uk/bristol/pipeline
http://www.gaggedanarchist.tk

Lin­da high­light­ed the coun­cil cor­rup­tion that is so endem­ic to Labour dom­i­nat­ed welsh local gov­ern­ment. Her expla­na­tion of why she has cho­sen to stand as a prospec­tive Plaid Cym­ru coun­cil­lor raised inter­est­ing ques­tions about the appeal of the welsh nation­al­ist move­ment to com­mu­ni­ty strug­gles such as this.
“We are going nation­al­ist, not because we believe in nation­al­ism, but because we oppose Labour and there is no oth­er alter­na­tive”

The lack of media cov­er­age out­side Wales has been inter­est­ing in it’s absence. There have been only a hand­ful of arti­cles men­tion­ing the devel­op­ment in the UK press. This is in con­trast to the Ross­port pipeline which has got much more media atten­tion despite being in a dif­fer­ent coun­try. It would appear that due to ‘safe­ty con­cerns’ the press are being leaned on not to cov­er the sto­ry.

The pipeline is only the begin­ning of a south west wales pow­er cor­ri­dor that the DTI envis­age stretch­ing from mil­ford haven to the east of Swansea, with a num­ber of pow­er sta­tions and ener­gy extrac­tion sites clus­tered around the area. The new gen­er­a­tion coal pow­er sta­tion in Neath Port Tal­bot has already been announced and methane is already been extract­ed and stored in dis­used mines in the area.

This pipeline is set to be the first of many, as devel­op­ments are on the table for pipelines to con­nect from Tir­ley to Leeds and Ply­mouth.

Peo­ple’s respons­es to what they heard cen­tred around three themes: cor­po­ra­tions behind LNG, media response, and direct action.

The con­struc­tion of the pipeline is being done by Nation­al Grid, who have been the main focus for direct action so far. How­ev­er the con­sor­tium behind the devel­op­ment is head­ed by Exxon Mobil among oth­ers. The finance has been put up by oil and gas loan spe­cial­ists the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land.

What Next?

There was a feel­ing that we need to increase the knowl­edge amongst envi­ron­men­tal activists of the full pic­ture of the pipeline devel­op­ment and its wider impli­ca­tions.

get­ting a high­er lev­el of cov­er­age in UK and inter­na­tion­al media.

Tak­ing the strug­gle to the big play­ers behind it. Espe­cial­ly as they have a pres­ence on many high streets.

Under­tak­ing a speak­ing tour of social cen­tres, with a par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on the routes of the oth­er pro­posed pipelines.

“We can do all the talk­ing in the world but the only thing that will have an effect on cor­po­ra­tions is direct action”

cardiff@risingtide.org.uk
http://www.risingtide.org.uk/bristol/pipeline

I think work has already start­ed on 2 sec­tions of the gas pipeline run­ning west through Devon to Ply­mouth, work has been ongo­ing this sum­mer on the sec­tion to the east of Ply­mouth just to the south of the A38 (near totnes) and I think work is going on on anoth­er sec­tion to the east of Exeter

Audio avi­a­tion — mp3 2.3M

Audio mark lynas — mp3 4.2M

“Two Degree Time­bomb” by Mark Lynas

“Avi­a­tion: The Need to Stop Expan­sion” with some­one from Air­port­watch and local cam­paign group HACAN (nb he does­n’t real­ly mean there were 1500 peo­ple in the work­shop!)

Audio is mp3, mono, 96kbps

(sor­ry about the back­ground noise dur­ing the avi­a­tion inter­view but it was done in a tent when it start­ed to rain rain rain…)

This pan­el dis­cus­sion hap­pened dur­ing an evening at the Cli­mate Camp. It’s an hour or var­ied thoughts about the present and future of cli­mate sci­ence and what our response should be to it. The pan­elists are Oli and Sophie involved in the Cli­mate camp set up, Richard from CAT and George Mon­biot.
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Coun­ter­ing rub­bish about the camp!
17.08.2007




In spite of the planes tak­ing of every 45 sec­onds, cli­mate camp activists are pret­ty pleased that the smart folk who sort­ed the loca­tion land­ed us in such a bril­liant lit­tle bit of coun­try­side.

Just to do our bit for the local envi­ron­ment, 20 inspired cli­mate activists, inspired by the ini­tia­tive of the Scot­tish Bar­rio, sur­rep­ti­tious­ly made their way out the camp main gate this morn­ing, tow­ing wheel­ing bins and loads of recy­cling bags, to gath­er togeth­er the junk lying at the side of the lane. 4 com­put­er mon­i­tors, dozens of sacks and a pret­ty inven­tive plas­tic dil­do were the hall of the day…

The camp recy­cling team dealt with the lot, and the locals seemed pret­ty impressed with our efforts..

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




At around 8am this morn­ing I saw a cou­ple of police fol­low­ing a group of peo­ple push­ing a large cylin­der in a wheel­bar­row south through the camp towards the air­port. Could it be a lock-on device intend­ed for a block­ade I won­dered? No, it was a domes­tic water heat­ing cylin­der and short­ly after peo­ple walked by with a load of pipe and then three solar water heat­ing pan­els.

I decid­ed it would be good to doc­u­ment the renew­able ener­gy sys­tems being used on site and went to fetch my cam­era before return­ing to take some pic­tures and find out about the sys­tem they were putting togeth­er.

Along with the 166 litre tank and the three 1m x 1.5m dou­ble glazed flat plate col­lec­tors, they also had a small­er head­er tank with a ball cock. I was told that the sys­tem would ini­tial­ly pow­er two show­er cubi­cles but they might dou­ble the num­ber if it appeared to be pow­er­ful enough. They referred to the design as an indi­rect ther­mal store sys­tem and guessed that they’d have around 1.5kw of heat avail­able.

Wan­der­ing back north through the site I was sur­prised and pleased to find anoth­er solar show­er being being built in the West Side neigh­boor­hood . I’d spent a cou­ple of hours with them before I arrived on site while held and the police road block dur­ing vehi­cle search­es last sun­day night. They had pur­chased a wind tur­bine much like mine while at the big green gath­er­ing and erect­ed it for the first time at the cli­mate camp. It’s rate at 300 watts at quite low speeds for a bar­gain 300 pounds includ­ing the mast, guys, stakes, charge con­trollers, every­thing. Theirs is the 24 volts ver­sion and they using it to charge the bulk of their 500 amp/hrs bat­tery bank — most­ly used for light­ing in their neigh­bor­hoods com­mu­nal spaces. Addi­tion­al­ly they have a cou­ple of small solar pan­el’s which they use to charge one of their bat­ter­ies at 12 volt which they’ve been using for their lit­tle sound sys­tem. But I digress — back to their solar show­er, it’s pret­ty much all made from reclaimed mate­ri­als — the flat plate col­lec­tor was built from an old cen­tral heat­ing radi­a­tor and has been placed in a glazed frame that had pre­vi­ous­ly con­tained a menu dis­played out­side of a restau­rant. The head­er tank was a home brew­ing bar­rel and the main tank anoth­er bar­rel inside a bin and insu­lat­ed with fiber lag­ging. The whole thing was erect­ed on a frame­work of reclaimed tim­ber.

Next to West Side I found the Scot­land neigh­bor­hood which had a sin­gle 40 watt pan­el charg­ing a cou­ple of deep cycle leisure bat­ter­ies in rota­tion and being used for light­ing. Like­wise, East Side had just one pan­el being used in a sim­i­lar way. The York­shire neigh­bor­hood (rumored to be serv­ing the best food on site) had just two pan­els sup­ply­ing a healthy 100 watts max while the South Coast neigh­bor­hood had three 63 watts uniso­lars pan­els. These seem quite pop­u­lar on site despite their large phys­i­cal size, and are appar­ent­ly more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly to the man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nique which appar­ent­ly involves spray­ing sil­i­con onto the pan­el rather than using actu­al crys­tal wafers.
Pass­ing the Man­ches­ter neigh­bor­hood I found them start­ing to set up a pret­ty mas­sive array of six of the uniso­lar 63 watt pan­els. In total, this sys­tem would pro­vide 380 watts in opti­mum con­di­tions and I was told that the tech­nol­o­gy used was par­tic­u­lar­ly suit­able to the cloudy con­di­tions would in the UK. Char­ing a 660 amp/Hr bat­tery bank, their sys­tem would clear­ly be more than capa­ble of pro­vid­ing all their neigh­bor­hoods needs so they were plan­ning on pro­vid­ing their sur­plus pow­er to their neigh­bors.

A sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion was found at the West Mid­lands neigh­bour­hood. Their lit­tle 400 watt wind tur­bine was lov­ing the high winds found on site this week. This par­tic­u­lar type of gen­er­a­tor per­forms bad­ly in more typ­i­cal wind speeds but the last few days has seen it fre­quent­ly knock­ing out it’s max­i­mum out­put. Along with their wind pow­er, they also had 120 watts worth of solar pan­els and as their own pow­er needs were quite mod­est they were doing what they called ‘rov­ing bat­tery charg­ing’ and charg­ing up bat­ter­ies for oth­er peo­ple on site.

Tak­ing a break, I stopped off for a piss and noticed that all to the toi­lets on site (and the cen­tral kitchen) where equipped with a small stand alone solar pan­el and bat­tery to sup­ply light­ing. Mean­while ‘V3’, who run cours­es on wind ener­gy, have two 58 watt pan­els and a 500 watt home made Huge Pig­ot designed wind tur­bine. They’ve been charg­ing oth­er peo­ples bat­ter­ies but a site wide short­age of spare bat­ter­ies has left their wind gene sit­ting idle for much of the time.

The two big providers on site dwarf those found in the neigh­bor­hoods. Ray-Mun­do is sup­ply­ing the indy­media open access suite with anoth­er 1,150 watts of solar and a 2,250 amp/Hr bat­tery bank. Mean­while, the gigan­tic Gen­er­a­tor X truck has 1.5kw of solar and a bank of bat­ter­ies equiv­a­lent to an incred­i­ble 3,000 amp/hr. The orig­i­nal plan for the camp site lay­out placed the major pow­er providers near the biggest uses of pow­er on site but due to the police pre­vent­ing vehi­cle access to the camp, both these trucks have been parked in the adja­cent field (also being used as the police car park).

Back at the indy­media tent there is pow­er rig that I bought along from the ram­pART social cen­tre. This sys­tem con­sists of a 600 amp/hr bat­tery bank plus a 300 watt invert­er. Pow­er is gen­er­at­ed by 220 watts of solar and a 200 watt tur­bine. The Chi­nese made tur­bine is very sim­i­lar to the one used at the West Side Neigh­bor­hood, but rat­ed at 200 watts not 300. Both are designed to pro­duce their rat­ed pow­er in fair­ly low winds so have been max­ing out a lot of the time dur­ing the time at the camp. While the Ray-Mun­do sys­tem has been pro­vid­ing the pow­er for the open access inter­net suite, the ram­pART sys­tem has been pow­er­ing the lap­tops used by those edit­ing and upload­ing mul­ti­me­dia work. On the Wednes­day night the sys­tem was pressed into ser­vice to pow­er the PA and the light­ing in the main mar­quee dur­ing the ceilidh.

I’ve prob­a­bly missed a few of the sys­tems on site. Even as I type, anoth­er big wind tur­bine is being pre­pared to be raised and the Col-Tech gen­er­a­tor is expect­ed to arrive some time this evening to take over sup­ply­ing the main mar­quee.
Mark in the process of prov­ing the camp with hot show­ers. They are being built using all sal­vaged mate­ri­als, the solar pan­els com­ing from a house in Oxford under­go­ing a refit. No pump is nec­ces­sary as the water is moved using the nat­ur­al laws of physics; warm water ris­es, cold water falls — the ther­mo syphon sys­tem. Mark — “I just hope it works! All we need is the sun to stay..”

How to set up a grey water recy­cling sys­tem using bath tubs and straw

com­post toi­lets on the cli­mate camp site — a diy guide (video/mp4 5.3M)

posh show­ers at the cli­mate camp — video/mp4 1.9M

Video a com­post toi­let in progress — video/mp4 3.7M

Video a solar show­er from recy­cled mate­r­i­al — video/mp4 80K

Video solar pan­els with a low impact — video/mp4 5.4M

Video a rock­et stove to save ener­gy — video/mp4 5.9M

Video a wind tur­bine gen­er­at­ing pow­er — video/mp4 1.8M

On Thurs­day the cli­mate camp was vis­it­ed by pupils and par­ents from Heathrow Pri­ma­ry School, which along with two oth­er local schools will be demol­ished by the pro­posed third run­way. The school is an inte­gral part of the com­mu­ni­ty with for­mer pupils becom­ing teach­ers, and the head­mas­ter — Mr Hobbs — serv­ing over 25 years. The school also received the bor­oughs top marks in the last Ofst­ed report.

Today, Fri­day 17th August, sev­er­al local groups toured the cli­mate camp, along with sev­er­al local res­i­dents who moved onto the site to camp.

One group was a local scout group with some of them doing their envi­ron­ment badge. They came for a tour around the infra­struc­ture includ­ing the solar show­ers, com­post toi­lets, solar pan­els, wind gen­er­a­tors and pow­er providers, the indy­media com­put­er tent and rinky dink the ped­al pow­ered bicy­cle sound sys­tem. Liv­ing local­ly their homes are under threat from the Heathrow air­port expan­sion.

—

Bicy­col­o­gy Cli­mate Camp out­reach day


A short report on Bicy­col­o­gy’s day out from the Cli­mate Camp on Sat­ur­day vis­it­ing a local hous­ing estate to fix bikes and spread the word about the Camp.

On Day 5 (Sat­ur­day 18/8/07) of the Cli­mate Camp, Bicy­col­o­gy, the cycle activism and edu­ca­tion col­lec­tive, went out from the Camp to vis­it a hous­ing estate in Feltham near Heathrow at the invi­ta­tion of the res­i­dents.

The group rode out in the morn­ing, “facil­i­tat­ed” by a police escort despite assur­ances from the cyclists that after sev­er­al nation­al cycle tours they knew how to cycle safe­ly and assertive­ly on UK roads.

The group set up in a small park in the mid­dle of the estate, offer­ing free Dr Bike checks, ped­al-pow­ered games, music from the Ped­als II soundsys­tem, bike jew­ellery mak­ing. They also pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion about cycling, cli­mate change and the Cli­mate Camp. Around 80 locals came along, main­ly kids, and every­one seemed to have a good time.

A van load of police kept watch to forstall any riots, and even made a sor­tie to play footie with the local kids for a while before appar­ent­ly being ordered back in their van by high­er com­mand.

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