Category: South West England

South West Eng­land

Eco-VIllage Occupation London 6th June Update + Other News.

Hel­lo friends,

In this report:

News of the upcom­ing Eco-Vil­lage occu­pa­tion tak­ing place on a dis­used piece of land near Ham­mer­smith start­ing on Sat­ur­day, 6th June (see attached e‑flyer for details).

Eco flyerHel­lo friends,

In this report:

News of the upcom­ing Eco-Vil­lage occu­pa­tion tak­ing place on a dis­used piece of land near Ham­mer­smith start­ing on Sat­ur­day, 6th June (see attached e‑flyer for details).

The lat­est from the Tyt­ing com­mu­ni­ty farm occu­pa­tion — infor­ma­tion on how you can get involved and sup­port the action.

And some inter­est­ing facts about the land in Britain.

ECO-VILLAGE OCCUPATION

The Eco vil­lage occu­pa­tion begins on the 6th June. Meet at Water­loo Sta­tion at 10AM under the clock. Please try to be on time.

********Please Note**********

If you are com­ing for the open­ing stage of the eco-vil­lage occu­pa­tion, you will need to bring a tent, water and food sup­plies. If you have access to kitchen equip­ment and oth­er use­ful tat that you would be OK to loan, please bring it along too.

***************************

The Eco-Vil­lage Occu­pa­tion is about to begin. Infi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ties lie ahead; what will hap­pen depends on what we make it. By cre­at­ing a sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ty in the heart of the urban jun­gle, we have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to raise the con­scious­ness of urban dwellers all around and shine a light on a way of liv­ing that goes far to solv­ing the prob­lem of the destruc­tion of peo­ple and plan­et.

Dur­ing the last pub­lic plan­ning meet­ing, we had con­sen­sus on the fol­low­ing issues:

- A no vehi­cle on site pol­i­cy. In order to max­i­mize liv­ing space and encour­age peo­ple to come to the vil­lage via sus­tain­able means.

- Acoustic music only. So that we don’t make ene­mies of the neigh­bours.

- All major deci­sions in the eco-vil­lage to be decid­ed via the con­sen­su­al deci­sion mak­ing of all the peo­ple in the eco-vil­lage.

Please come along and join us. Ide­al­ly, we are look­ing for com­mit­ted peo­ple who share in the vision of the eco-vil­lage com­mu­ni­ty and who are able to com­mit for an indef­i­nite peri­od, how­ev­er if you sim­ply want to stay for a night or two or even vis­it for a day, please feel free to come along.

This eco-vil­lage occu­pa­tion is inspired by The Land is Ours which cam­paigns peace­ful­ly for access to the land, its resources, and the deci­sion-mak­ing process­es affect­ing them, for every­one, irre­spec­tive of race, gen­der or age. for more infor­ma­tion, please vis­it:

www.tlio.org.uk

con­tact Car­olyn on: 01727 812369 or Gareth on: 07515 166011 or

diggers360@yahoo.co.uk

Tyt­ing Com­mu­ni­ty Farm Occu­pa­tion.

Six weeks ago a group of peo­ple (some fresh from the Raven’s Ait occu­pa­tion in Kingston) assert­ing their com­mon law right to live and grow food, com­menced the occu­pa­tion of Tyt­ing Com­mu­ni­ty Farm in Half Pen­ny Lane Guild­ford. (a pub­licly owned site which has been vacant for sev­er­al years).

Guild­ford coun­cil (the own­er of the prop­er­ty) has been try­ing with­out suc­cess and with much local oppo­si­tion to sell the com­mu­ni­ty farm off by divid­ing it into small­er lots.

The coun­cil were grant­ed an ‘inter­im pos­ses­sion order’ last Wednes­day (27th May) and threat­ened to send in the police to remove any­one still on the site. On Fri­day morn­ing, var­i­ous con­trac­tors arrived and board­ed up the farm­house (but no police).

Far from dent­ing their morale, the threat of force­ful evic­tion has sim­ply made those enjoy­ing life at the farm more deter­mined to stay their ground.

To see a video of what’s been hap­pen­ing at the farm please click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKe_uCHpokU

This occu­pa­tion is open to any­one who would like to be part of the com­mu­ni­ty, grow veg­eta­bles and live in a sus­tain­able way, whilst help­ing to retain com­mon rights to a valu­able and beau­ti­ful piece of com­mon land. If you want to get involved, sim­ply grab a tent and some food (plus some seeds if you have them) and come along. Here is a map of the loca­tion of the farm.

Facts about the land in Britain

did you know that.…

In Britain 70% of land is still owned by less than 1% of the pop­u­la­tion
Less than 8% of the coun­try is under con­crete
50% of the land in Eng­land and Wales remains unreg­is­tered
the Church of Eng­land has ‘mis­laid’ 1.5 mil­lion acres it owned 100 years ago
the Roy­al Fam­i­ly now own or con­trol the equiv­a­lent of an aver­age-sized coun­ty in Eng­land.

* infor­ma­tion cour­tesy of www.who-owns-britain.com

Bristol Co-Mutiny 12th — 20th Sept “Social Change Not Climate Change”

Cap­i­tal­ism and its pup­pet de‘mock’cracy are spi­ralling out of control:a self-cre­at­ed reces­sion, rock­et­ing unem­ploy­ment, soar­ing nation­al debt, the ille­gal and unjust occu­pa­tion of Afghanistan & Iraq, apa­thy towards mas­sacres in Pales­tine and Sri Lan­ka, the crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of free move­ment, the police assaults and murde

Co-mutiny flyerCap­i­tal­ism and its pup­pet de‘mock’cracy are spi­ralling out of control:a self-cre­at­ed reces­sion, rock­et­ing unem­ploy­ment, soar­ing nation­al debt, the ille­gal and unjust occu­pa­tion of Afghanistan & Iraq, apa­thy towards mas­sacres in Pales­tine and Sri Lan­ka, the crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of free move­ment, the police assaults and mur­ders of peo­ple on the streets, the con­struc­tion of larg­er air­ports and coal-fired pow­er sta­tions in the face of dev­as­tat­ing envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion, the pri­vati­sa­tion of social hous­ing, the list goes on.

But there is hope. There are anti gov­ern­ment protests from Greece to Paris, and Chi­na to Lon­don, as well as fac­to­ry and school occu­pa­tions across the U.K. World wide there are grow­ing, active, and increas­ing­ly angry rad­i­cal & work­ing class move­ments stand­ing up and resist­ing cli­mate chaos, oppres­sion, pover­ty, inse­cu­ri­ty and state con­trol.

Hand-in-hand with these protests are grass­roots actions to build a new soci­ety and take con­trol of our own lives. Ordi­nary peo­ple are find­ing ways to help each oth­er in the face of the cred­it cri­sis cre­at­ed by the banks and cor­po­ra­tions. We are re-learn­ing old skills and learn­ing new ones for the tran­si­tion to a just soci­ety; enabling us to cre­ate com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens, estab­lish hous­ing, food and worker’s co-ops, and use new eco­nom­ics in the neigh­bour­hoods where we live

In Bris­tol and sur­rounds, a diverse bunch of enraged cre­ative, dream­ers and schemers, builders and gar­den­ers, work­ers, stu­dents and unem­ployed have been drawn togeth­er by the com­mon threads of our indig­na­tion at how a com­bi­na­tion of cor­po­rate greed, social injus­tice and envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion is lead­ing us all towards cli­mate chaos and finan­cial col­lapse.

We invite you to con­verge on Bris­tol for an upris­ing of autonomous actions and events from 12th – 20th of Sep­tem­ber 2009.

The themes for those events and days of action are:

* Free­dom of move­ment (sur­veil­lance, migra­tion)
* Anti-mil­i­tarism (Sri Lan­ka, Afghanistan, Pales­tine, Fil­ton)
* Cli­mate jus­tice (Just tran­si­tion, financ­ing of cli­mate chaos, coal, air­ports)
* Finan­cial col­lapse / com­mu­ni­ty growth (role of banks, cre­at­ing a new econ­o­my)
* Work (Work­ers’ sol­i­dar­i­ty, co-oper­a­tive work­ing, work­place occu­pa­tions)
* Food (ani­mal rights, sus­tain­able food pro­duc­tion, per­ma­cul­ture)
* Autonomous spaces (gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, hous­ing, squat­ting)

The Co-Muti­neers will be organ­is­ing actions and events but we need you to get involved, wher­ev­er you are from and what­ev­er your expe­ri­ence.

We encour­age autonomous actions. Come on down, join the mutiny, get in touch!

comutiny@riseup.net
http://comutiny.wordpress.com

Dates for your diary:
Sat 12th Sep­tem­ber – Bris­tol Anar­chist Book Fare
Sun 13th – Sun 20th Sep­tem­ber – CoMutiny Action Con­ver­gence – insert your rev­o­lu­tion here!
Fri 18th – Sun 20th Sep­tem­ber – Days of action in defence of squats and autonomous spaces.

Bath Bomb #22 Out Now

THE BATH BOMB

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #22
free/donation
May 09

“Is It Under Your Car?”

Week­end Of Rage

Bath Bomb small logoTHE BATH BOMB

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #22
free/donation
May 09

“Is It Under Your Car?”

Week­end Of Rage

The last week­end of April saw BAN and friends pour out onto the streets of Bath for a (slight­ly tongue in cheek) week­end of rage – three days, three demos and a mod­est amount of anger! Pro­ceed­ings kicked off on the Fri­day with a demo out­side Allen Ford on Low­er Bris­tol Road. The demo was held in sol­i­dar­i­ty with UK Vis­teon work­ers sacked by Ford with no back pay, redun­dan­cy pack­age or pen­sions. Instead of accept­ing these offen­sive con­di­tions, the work­ers occu­pied their fac­to­ries and launched a cam­paign demand­ing the greedy boss­es pay up. The Bath demo was well received, with loads of horn honk­ing and raised fists from pass­ing motorists and pedes­tri­ans (see how you can sup­port the Vis­teon work­ers at http://www.visteonoccupation.org). Sat­ur­day saw a dozen BAN activists head down to Lon­don for the ‘World Day for Lab Ani­mals’ demo, focused against infa­mous vivi­sec­tors and ani­mal abusers Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. The 2,000 strong demo sent a strong mes­sage to HLS and all oth­er com­pa­nies who prof­it from vivi­sec­tion – “there’s no excuse for ani­mal abuse.” On Sun­day, local activists gath­ered out­side Bath police sta­tion to protest the mur­der of paper sell­er Ian Tom­lin­son at the hands of police at the recent G20 protests. The protest high­light­ed the fact that this was not a one-off, but a con­tin­u­a­tion of bru­tal and arro­gant police behav­iour that the pub­lic have been sub­ject­ed to for years. Pos­si­bly real­is­ing that repress­ing an anti-police repres­sion
demo would not go down too well, and that pub­lic opin­ion ain’t too police-friend­ly nowa­days, the local plod hid inside the sta­tion, not even com­ing out when activists began chalk­ing slo­gans around the front of the police sta­tion (the most promi­nent read­ing ‘ser­vants NOT mas­ters’). After a few hours, with hun­dreds of leaflets giv­en out and loads of pub­lic sup­port, activists left, eager to plot the next round of protests and action. BAN relies on ideas and ener­gy from the local com­mu­ni­ty, so to sug­gest a cam­paign or get involved, send an email to bathac­tivist­net [at] yahoo.co.uk. To see what they get up to and have planned for the future, check out www.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com

Jog On, Cop­per

This year’s May­day Anti-Mil­i­tarist Jog in Brighton was anoth­er roar­ing suc­cess, despite attempts to spoil the fun by a few foul-tem­pered indi­vid­u­als. Around 2,000 anti-mil­i­tarists and a large, per­haps sim­i­lar, num­ber of police took sev­er­al hours to com­plete the gru­elling course. In order to pre­vent the police from cheat­ing by start­ing
halfway along the track, the first part of the route – tak­ing in sev­er­al big sup­port­ers and investors in the local arms com­pa­ny, many hit by anony­mous sab­o­tage that night – was kept a secret by organ­is­ers until the very last minute. The sec­ond, longer part of the course, run­ning in decreas­ing cir­cles around the city cen­tre, was made up as
the ath­letes went along.

One big ben­e­fit of this secre­cy and con­fu­sion was that the police were unable to clear the area first, and were pow­er­less to pre­vent mem­bers of the pub­lic from wit­ness­ing the demo. Sad­ly, this oppor­tu­ni­ty was some­what wast­ed as over-excit­ed activists ran past glee­ful­ly cheer­ing their right to protest, leav­ing the pub­lic bemused as to what they were actu­al­ly protest­ing about. More plac­ards next time would be nice, as
would some bet­ter chants.

The oth­er bonus was the inabil­i­ty of the police to imple­ment the bru­tal tac­tics that cul­mi­nat­ed in the mur­der of Ian Tom­lin­son at the G20 last month. Unable to pen the mobile and agile protest in or baton charge immo­bile groups, the police failed to pro­voke any seri­ous vio­lence. Apart from the odd point when police trapped pro­test­ers on a hill and wad­ed in mob-hand­ed with batons fly­ing, the march passed large­ly with­out inci­dent, though activist street medics had to treat 40 most­ly minor injuries (hav­ing to escort more seri­ous cas­es through to para­medics, despite police inter­fer­ence). Vis­it­ing cop­pers from London’s Met were so dis­ap­point­ed with the lack of blood­shed, that they took to stalk­ing and mock­ing known activists.

The Jog was part of an ongo­ing 4 and a half year cam­paign against local bomb-trig­ger man­u­fac­tur­ers EDO/ITT, with­out whom explo­sives recent­ly dropped on Pales­tine, Iraq and Afghanistan would have posed no threat what­so­ev­er. If EDO – who have lost mil­lions and cycled through var­i­ous over-stressed CEOs – suc­cumbs and col­laps­es, the entire ‘defence’
indus­try will trem­ble before the might of pop­u­lar opin­ion and direct democ­ra­cy.

http://www.smashedo.org.uk

Get­ting Off To A Wob­bly Start

Pos­si­bly spurred on by recent job loss­es and wors­en­ing con­di­tions at
work, a rad­i­cal union has start­ed mak­ing a huge come­back in the UK. The
IWW (indus­tri­al Work­ers of the World, or Wob­blies) are an inter­na­tion­al
union with a rep­u­ta­tion for nev­er back­ing down from a fight with the
boss­es, and using sol­i­dar­i­ty and direct action to get the goods. The
IWW believes that all work­ers should be unit­ed with­in a sin­gle union,
giv­ing us greater strength and bar­ter­ing pow­er. They believe that we
should be divid­ed not by pro­fes­sion, but by class, and that work­ers
should unite to con­front the greed of the employ­ing class. The IWW is a
fight­ing union that has already suc­ceed­ed in pre­vent­ing lay­offs and
get­ting sacked work­ers rein­stat­ed across the UK. With­out the
bureau­crat­ic struc­ture of the tra­di­tion­al unions or reliance on cor­rupt
union offi­cials, and an empha­sis on direct democ­ra­cy, the IWW is a
union that is grow­ing by the minute as the reces­sion bites. A Bath
branch of the IWW has just been formed, and has already tak­en part in
work­ers rights sol­i­dar­i­ty in the area. They are look­ing to grow, so if
you are inter­est­ed in join­ing, or have any ques­tions, email
rocsec@iww.org.uk and ask to be put in touch with local mem­bers. As
times get hard­er, it’s more and more impor­tant to keep in mind the
slo­gan of the IWW: ‘an injury to one is an injury to all!’

EVENTS

Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs meet­ings, 2nd and 4th Mon­day of the month, 8pm, The
Bell, Wal­cot Street

Lon­don Road Food Co-op, Wednes­days, 4–7pm, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre,
Lon­don Road

The Lost Plot work­day, Thurs­days, 10am-dusk, Bathamp­ton

Bath Stop The War Coali­tion vig­il, Sat­ur­days, 11.30am-12.30, Bath Abbey
Court­yard

Veg­gie Pride! In Birm­ing­ham, Sat­ur­day 16th May, coach­ing leav­ing
Bris­tol 11.30am, £11 waged/£8 unwaged, http://www.veggiepride.org.uk

Remem­ber Gaza march, Sat­ur­day 16th May, assem­ble 12 noon, Malet Street,
Lon­don, WC1E 7HY

Bub­bling Under, Sun­day 17th May, 1–4pm, Porter Cel­lar, George Street

Friends of Bird’s Marsh Welly Walk, Sun­day 17th May, meet 10am, car
park of the King Alfred pub, Malmes­bury Road, Chip­pen­ham SN15 1QA,
www.friendsofbirdsmarsh.com

Recy­cle Your Sun­days, Sun­day 17th May, the reg­u­lar series of socia­ble,
easy-paced cycle rides. www.rysbath.org.uk/Hazel 01225 469199

Bath Cycling Cam­paign meet­ing, Mon­day 18th May, venue TBC, 7.30pm,
http://www.bathcyclingcampaign.org.uk

Film: Mes­sage in the Waves, Thurs­day 21st May, 7.30pm, upstairs at The
Cork, West­gate Street

Anti-foie gras demo, Fri­day 22nd May, meet Queen Square 7pm

Cardiff Anar­chist Book­fair, Sat­ur­day 23rd May, 10am-6pm, Cathays
Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, 36 Cathays Ter­race, Cardiff, free entry,
http://southwalesanarchists.org/2009/01/08/cardiff-anar…-2009

Cli­mate Camp gath­er­ing, Sat­ur­day 23rd May — Sun­day 24th May, starts
11am-7pm, Heb­den Hey Hos­tel, Hard­cas­tle Crags, Heb­den Bridge, West
York­shire, HX7 7AW

Tran­si­tion Bath Pic­nic in the Park, Mon­day 25th May, by the pond in
Vic­to­ria park, 12–4pm, look for the flag!

Tran­si­tion Bath Trans­port & Built Envi­ron­ment Group meet­ing, Wednes­day

27th May, 7pm, 55 New King Street, Bath, www.transitionbath.org.uk

Tran­si­tion Drinks, Wednes­day 27th May, 8pm, upstairs at The Raven

Per­for­mance: ‘Roots – A Tale Of Love And Veg­eta­bles’, Thurs­day 28th May
– Sun­day 7th June, BOG Low­er Com­mon Allot­ments

Bris­tol Veg­an Fayre, Sat­ur­day 30th May – Sun­day 31st May, 11am, the
Amphithe­atre and Water­front Square, Har­bour­side, Bris­tol,
http://www.bristolveganfayre.co.uk

Recy­cle Your Sun­days, Sun­day 31st May, the reg­u­lar series of socia­ble,
easy-paced cycle rides, www.rysbath.org.uk/Hazel 01225 469199

Bath Friends of the Earth meet­ing, Mon­day 1st June, 8pm, Still­point,
Broad Street Place, Broad Street

Talk: Eco Refur­bish­ment of Hous­es, Mon­day 1st June, 7.30pm, Grove
Street Church Hall, £2 entry

Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, Wednes­day 3rd June, 7.30–8.30pm, back­room
of The Bell, Wal­cot Street

Green­light lec­ture: A Sus­tain­able Food Plan for Britain, Wednes­day 3rd
June, doors open 7pm, British Roy­al Lit­er­ary & Sci­en­tif­ic Insti­tu­tion
16–18 Queen Square, £3 waged/£1.5 unwaged

Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, Thurs­day 4th June, 7.30–9pm, down­stairs
at The Hob­gob­lin, St James Parade

Cym­ru Cli­mate Camp gath­er­ing, Sat­ur­day 6th June, South Wales

Anar­chist Move­ment Con­fer­ence, Sat­ur­day 6th June – Sun­day 7th June,
Queen Mary & West­field Col­lege, Lon­don, E1 4NS,
http://www.conference09.org.uk

Bath Green­peace meet­ing, Mon­day 8th June, 7.30–9pm, Still­point, Broad
Street Place

Tran­si­tion Open Forum, Tues­day 9th June, 7pm, Wid­combe Social Club

Bath Green Drinks, Wednes­day 10th June, 8.30pm, the Porter, George
Street

Bath FreeShop, Sat­ur­day 13th June, 12–3pm, out­side Pump Rooms, Stall
Street

Broad­lands Orchard­share Vol­un­teer­ing Day, Sat­ur­day 13th June, 12–4pm,

Broad­lands Orchard, Box Road, Bath­ford, email broad­land­sor­chard­share
[at] googlemail.com or phone 07532 472 256

CoMutiny meet­ing, Sat­ur­day 13th June, 2–7pm, Bris­tol

Calais No Bor­der Camp, 23rd-29th June, France

Dan­ish Cli­mate Camp, Den­mark, Sat­ur­day 11th July – Sun­day 19th July,
http://camp09.dk

French Cli­mate Camp Mon­day, Mon­day 3rd August – Sun­day 9th August,
France, http://www.campclimat.org

Belgian/Dutch Cli­mate Action Camp, Mon­day 3rd August — Sun­day 9th
August, near Antwerp, http://www.klimaatactiekamp.org

The Camp for Cli­mate Action in Scot­land, Mon­day 3rd – Tues­day 11th
August, Scot­land, http://climatecampscotland.org.uk

Cym­ru Cli­mate Camp, Thurs­day 13th – Sun­day 16th August 2009, Merthyr
Tyd­fil, South Wales, http://climatecampcymru.org

Greek No Bor­ders Camp, Tues­day 25th August – Mon­day 31st August,
Lesvos, Greece, http://lesvos09.antira.info

The Camp for Cli­mate Action 2009, Thurs­day 27th August and Wednes­day
2nd Sep­tem­ber, Lon­don, http://www.climatecamp.org.uk

Bris­tol Co-Mutiny: Social Change Not Cli­mate Change gath­er­ing, Sun­day
13th Sep­tem­ber – Sat­ur­day 19th Sep­tem­ber,
www.westsideclimateaction.wordpress.com

Inter­na­tion­al Day of Cli­mate Action, Sat­ur­day 24th Octo­ber,
http://www.350.org/ oct24

Giv­ing It A Load Of Agro

Back on the after­noon of the17th of April, 13 activists from Action
Against Agro­fu­els occu­pied the offices of Blue-NG, a joint ven­ture
between Nation­al Grid sub­sidiary NG Blue Pow­er and 20C. The com­pa­ny,
based at Ralph Allen House on Rail­way Place, was tar­get­ed due to its
build­ing of the UK’s first veg­etable oil pow­er plants. The Biased
Chron­i­cle hys­ter­i­cal­ly decried the activists’ sup­posed own goal at
tar­get­ing the brain child of the ‘green­est man in the city’ Andrew
Mer­cer, for­mer sil­i­con val­ley exec and founder of Foot­down, an
entre­pre­neur who throws his mon­ey at any­thing he thinks will sell. But
in real­i­ty the com­pa­ny, now aim­ing to build their sec­ond plant at a
site in Southall in Lon­don, as well at least anoth­er 43 plants, are in
the process of exac­er­bat­ing cli­mate change. They claim to source
indige­nous rape­seed oil (even though there’s not enough land or
pro­duc­tion to feed cur­rent needs), which pro­duces 59–70% more
green­house gas emis­sions than stan­dard diesel due to the nitrous oxide
fumes from fer­til­iz­er alone, a gas 300 times more potent than CO2. And
then there is soil ero­sion from mono­cul­ture farm­ing, the loss of
habi­tat for wild­flow­ers, birds and bees already threat­ened (maybe
Andrew will rehome them all, too?), air and noise pol­lu­tion in the
pissed off local com­mu­ni­ty, who also risk lung and heart dis­ease from
fine par­ti­cle emis­sions in an area with already one of the high­est
asth­ma rates in the coun­try.

But it’s also worth con­sid­er­ing that increased use of rape­seed oil will
push up reliance on oth­er veg oils (which Blue NG won’t rule out the
import of), such as soy­bean, jat­ropha (an inva­sive weed from India) or
the cost-effec­tive palm oil: pro­duc­tion of these, par­tic­u­lar­ly the
last, is well known for peat­land destruc­tion, rain­for­est defor­esta­tion,
bio­di­ver­si­ty loss (slaugh­ter­ing orang utans), and land theft from
indige­nous peo­ples. But pos­si­bly worse, con­sid­er­ing a glob­al
agri­cul­tur­al slump of 20–40%, with his­toric droughts in India, South
Amer­i­ca, Chi­na and the south­ern US states, Aus­tralia and, to a less­er
extent, Europe (and glob­al food reserves at their low­est in 25 years)
is the threat to food secu­ri­ty. Nev­er mind chip-fat cars and car­bon
neu­tral sec­ond homes – are we real­ly gonna feed green­wash­ing com­pa­nies
whilst peo­ple the world over are starv­ing?

http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/files/blue_ng_factsheet1…9.pdf
http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/files/Blue_NG_Open_Lette…r.pdf
http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/news/BREAKING-NEWS-Activist.…html

Thanks Allot(ment)

In the last few years, demand for allot­ments has gone through the roof
with more and more peo­ple tak­ing an inter­est in grow­ing their own veg.
But with a wait­ing list of up to eight years in some parts of B&NES,
who can blame peo­ple for putting the idea on the back burn­er? But now,
envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­ers have launched a scheme which will see peo­ple
who can’t man­age their gar­dens shar­ing them with would-be gar­den­ers
(check out http://www.bathorganicgroup.org for more info). The scheme
is great, and should intro­duce loads of peo­ple to the green,
mon­ey-sav­ing and ful­fill­ing world of gar­den­ing. How­ev­er, we shouldn’t
ignore the cause of the allot­ment short­age – B&NES! The coun­cil are
con­ve­nient­ly for­get­ting their legal oblig­a­tion to pro­vide every­one who
wants one with a shiny new allot­ment. To under­stand why, we need to
trav­el back to 1908, and plunge into the text of the Small­hold­ings and
Allot­ments Act. This leg­is­la­tion, still in force, oblig­es local
author­i­ties to pro­vide suf­fi­cient allot­ments to meet local demand. This
means, in the words of Geoff Stokes of the Nation­al Soci­ety of
Allot­ment and Leisure Gar­den­ers, “exact­ly what it says, coun­cils have a
legal duty to pro­vide a suf­fi­cient num­ber of plots to meet local
demand, and you should not have to wait more than a rea­son­able amount
of time for one.” The act was intro­duced as a response to the
increas­ing urban­iza­tion of the rur­al work­ing class, and as the threat
to green space has con­tin­ued to rise, so has our need for, and right
to, allot­ment space.

If you are wait­ing, or if you sim­ply can’t find a plot, you can use the
law to your advan­tage. All you need is for six peo­ple who are
reg­is­tered on the elec­toral roll to get togeth­er and put a well-argued
case to the coun­cil: explain that the demand for allot­ments is not
being met and that it’s their legal duty to meet it. Legal­ly, they will
have to respond, prefer­ably by pro­vid­ing more allot­ments. If this
fails, accord­ing to Geoff Stokes, you would be with­in your rights to
take your coun­cil to a judi­cial review. So there you have it – why not
con­tact Bath Organ­ic Group to try and share a gar­den, but if that
fails, don’t let the coun­cil off the hook – get togeth­er with some
mates and demand a slice of the green pie!

Bath Activist Net­work are a local umbrel­la group cam­paign­ing on issues
as diverse as devel­op­ment, envi­ron­men­tal­ism, anti-war, ani­mal rights,
work­ers’ rights and more. Help­ing to pro­duce The Bath Bomb, we are open
to any­one, and our mem­bers range from trade union­ists to anar­chists,
lib­er­als to greens, and peo­ple who just want to change Bath for the
bet­ter. For details on meet­ings, demos, or just to get in touch, email
bathac­tivist­net [at] yahoo.co.uk, or see our web­site:
http://www.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com

GOT A STORY? WANT TO RECEIVE THE BATH BOMB BY EMAIL? HOPING TO SUE? Con­tact us by e‑mailing bath­bomb­press [at] yahoo.co.uk. Large print
e‑versions avail­able on request.

Nature Doesn’t Do Bailouts

As report­ed last month, the Camp for Cli­mate Action shut down the
Euro­pean Car­bon Exchange in Lon­don for a day. So what is car­bon trad­ing
and why did they do it?

It is claimed that car­bon trad­ing cuts emis­sions by lim­it­ing the amount
of car­bon that is allowed to be emit­ted, and divid­ing this amount up
among coun­tries and cor­po­ra­tions. They are giv­en ‘car­bon cred­its’ that
basi­cal­ly give them a license to pol­lute. Cred­its can be sold by
pol­luters who have emit­ted less than their quo­ta, or earned through
projects that claim to save car­bon. But there are sev­er­al major
prob­lems with this. Car­bon trad­ing is based on the free mar­ket ide­ol­o­gy
of con­tin­u­al eco­nom­ic growth, intend­ed to make sus­tain­abil­i­ty
prof­itable. Yet it’s doomed to fail, because it trusts the exact same
mar­ket forces that have caused envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion in the first
place. Because car­bon is so cheap, it’s cheap­er to buy these abstract
cred­its than actu­al­ly invest­ing in renew­ables or effi­cient tech­nol­o­gy.

The most pol­lut­ing com­pa­nies have a huge influ­ence over gov­ern­ment and
are giv­en allowances free of charge. BP and Shell have made huge
prof­its by sell­ing these car­bon cred­its, while the NHS had to pay tens
of thou­sands for theirs. In 2005, the total num­ber of cred­its giv­en out
by the EU insane­ly went beyond the over­all emis­sions lim­it by 10%. It
is almost impos­si­ble to prop­er­ly cal­cu­late or mon­i­tor these emis­sions;
some com­pa­nies apply for cred­its for emis­sions-reduc­ing projects that
would have gone ahead any­way, while oth­ers exag­ger­ate their sav­ings.
Cred­its are also often earned through projects that aren’t real­ly green
– such as agro­fu­el plan­ta­tions or tree-plant­i­ng “emis­sions off­set”
projects. And some gov­ern­ments in the glob­al south delib­er­ate­ly impose
poor envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions so that the stan­dard for projects to be
judged against is very low, so that more mon­ey can be earned. South
Africa’s Depart­ment of Mines and Ener­gy has admit­ted that com­pa­nies
lob­bied them to low­er renew­able ener­gy tar­gets, for exam­ple. Oth­er
projects, such as agro­fu­els, have been asso­ci­at­ed with human rights
abus­es, often tak­ing place on stolen com­mu­nal land. By con­trast,
small-scale local projects cre­at­ed by peo­ple who real­ly need the mon­ey
gen­er­al­ly don’t attract cred­its as they’re con­sid­ered not to be worth
the paper­work.

Car­bon trad­ing is a farce allow­ing com­pa­nies to car­ry on pol­lut­ing as
usu­al, while mak­ing a tidy prof­it. The IPCC pre­dicts that, in order to
stop the most dev­as­tat­ing effects of cli­mate change, car­bon emis­sions
must reach their peak by 2015 – that’s only 6 years! We don’t have time
for dis­trac­tion tech­niques that main­tain our reliance on fos­sil fuels
and divert resources away from real solu­tions.

http://www.corporatewatch.org
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk
http://climatecampcymru.org

Liv­ing With Ill Eagles

After last month’s hol­i­day, the Porter Cellar’s ‘Bub­bling Under’ film
series is back on this month on Sun­day the 17th May, from 1pm-4pm. The
lat­est offer­ing will be a film about undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants and the
prob­lems they face. Rais­ing impor­tant ques­tions about the rights of
indi­vid­u­als to seek a bet­ter life free of pover­ty, uncer­tain­ty and war,
this film will be pre­sent­ed by Bris­tol No Bor­ders: now with added guest
speak­er! Be there, or be a tool (of the state).

http://www.noborders.org.uk

Lost The Plot?

A new vol­un­teer-run land project has been set up in Bathamp­ton, and is
open­ing its gates to all-com­ers every Thurs­day, from 10am til dusk, for
their week­ly work­day. Things are still in their infan­cy at the moment,
but veg is already in the ground, and orchard restora­tion and for­est
gar­den­ing is planned, per­ma­cul­ture stylee. If you want to get your
hands dirty with the Lost Plot crew, then text Rory on 07506 214172 for
more info and direc­tions.

Calais On Camp­ing

The Calais No Bor­der camp, run­ning from the 23rd to the 29th June, is
an excit­ing joint ven­ture between French activists and the UK No
Bor­ders Net­work. It aims to high­light the real­i­ties of the sit­u­a­tion in
Calais and North­ern France; to build links with the migrant
com­mu­ni­ties, and also between migrants sup­port groups; and last­ly, but
not least, to chal­lenge the author­i­ties on the ground, to protest
against the increased repres­sion of migrants. For cen­turies, Euro­pean
impe­r­i­al pow­ers have exploit­ed the land, resources and peo­ple of the
major­i­ty world to become wealthy and pow­er­ful, leav­ing war,
envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion and mas­sive inequal­i­ty in their wake. Those
who attempt the jour­ney to the UK are chal­leng­ing this injus­tice by
their move­ment.

But at the end of this jour­ney they face anoth­er human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis –
increas­ing­ly repres­sive immi­gra­tion poli­cies. This makes the Calais
bor­der an impor­tant focal point in the strug­gle for free move­ment. But
this camp is not just about Calais: we are call­ing for the free­dom of
move­ment for all, not just the priv­i­leged few, and an end to bor­ders
and all migra­tion con­trols. We need to build a rad­i­cal transna­tion­al
move­ment to chal­lenge these racist poli­cies that divide us into
cit­i­zens and non-cit­i­zens, into the doc­u­ment­ed and the undoc­u­ment­ed.
This will be a place to strength­en this move­ment, and we need your help
to make it hap­pen. We call on all who want to show sol­i­dar­i­ty to join
us in Calais. If you want to get involved in help­ing to organ­ise the
camp, sup­port us with fundrais­ing and pub­lic­i­ty, host an event on
Calais and No Bor­ders or offer prac­ti­cal sup­port, please get in touch:
calais@riseup.net. No one is ille­gal! Free­dom of Move­ment for all!

http://www.london.noborders.org.uk/calais2009
http://www.noborders.org.uk
http://www.calaisnoborder.eu.org

FIT­ted Up

One of the less pleas­ant devel­op­ments in polit­i­cal polic­ing in recent years has been the cre­ation and wide­spread deploy­ment of For­ward Intel­li­gence Teams, known gen­er­al­ly as FIT. Recruit­ed as civil­ians in order to avoid hav­ing to give them ID num­bers, the FIT can be seen at every major protest in the coun­try, heft­ing sev­er­al grand’s worth of high-end cam­eras and flanked by a pair of angry-look­ing bruis­ers. Their alleged pur­pose is sur­veil­lance and evi­dence-gath­er­ing; they are there to pho­to and film any law­break­ing for lat­er sub­mis­sion in court, or to track down the per­pe­tra­tors. But their activ­i­ties are far more sin­is­ter. They try to gath­er facial images of as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble, and store these on a data­base indef­i­nite­ly; they also take note who speaks to who. Poten­tial­ly, this would cre­ate a vast data­base allow­ing the cops to track every­one involved in pol­i­tics in the UK. In real­i­ty, the vast amount of data col­lect­ed – the pho­tog­ra­phers claim to be paid per pic­ture – makes this data­base unlike­ly to be of use, and in any case, FIT tend to be far away when things do kick off. The sur­veil­lance is aimed pri­mar­i­ly at intim­i­dat­ing the aver­age demon­stra­tor, in clear vio­la­tion of the right of assem­bly and protest.

Occa­sion­al­ly, the FIT are used against pro­test­ers iden­ti­fied by oth­er police. How­ev­er, it is unknown how use­ful sev­er­al dozen facial shots are for the sub­se­quent actions of the police, which include fol­low­ing alleged organ­is­ers around demos mak­ing threat­en­ing com­ments about their moth­ers, and forc­ing their way into activists’ homes in the mid­dle of the night to con­duct ran­dom search­es.

And now, to the dis­claimer: As any­one is free to con­tribute, the opin­ions expressed in each arti­cle are not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflec­tive of each con­trib­u­tor. Nat­u­ral­ly, any right-wing or cor­po­rate bull­shit will be binned and spat on. Need­less to say, the opin­ions of the author of this dis­claimer does not nec­es­sar­i­ly rep­re­sent the views of any oth­er con­trib­u­tor…

For fur­ther info on any of our sto­ries see www.thebathbomb.blogspot.com

Police Raid on Newly Opened Squat, Bristol. Occupants evicted within 40 minutes.

27.04.2009
Thank you to every­one who came down in sol­i­dar­i­ty. Big thanks to all.

27.04.2009
Thank you to every­one who came down in sol­i­dar­i­ty. Big thanks to all.

This is what occurred: Reliance secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny respond­ed to an alarm that went off inside the build­ing. The police were then called. The first cop­per on scene was pre­pared to depart say­ing that ‘they have squat­ters rights and it is a civ­il mat­ter’, and then Reliance called the police again and 3 riot vans and 5 police cars turned up.

Whilst some of the Reliance per­son­nel tried to take sitex met­al sheets off, in order to gain access, the police suit­ed up and arrived at the main door with bat­ter­ing ram in hand.

The occu­pants were giv­en the option of leav­ing now with no charge (‘leave now and you can walk’), or stay and get nicked. After a group meet­ing, the occu­pants decid­ed to remain. The police (with riot shields and shouts of ‘stand down, stand down’) then bashed down the door, detained the occu­pants and bailed them to the street, to return to Trin­i­ty police sta­tion in May, on sus­pi­cion of crim­i­nal dam­age.

They were allowed leave with cheers for each per­son res­onat­ing from the crowd.

There were a cou­ple of com­e­dy moments: name­ly a con­ver­sa­tion between Reliance secu­ri­ty and squat­ters:
Squat­ter: Can I tell you a joke?
Reliance: Go on then
Squat­ter: What do call a man with no shins?
Reliance: What?
Squat­ter: Tony!

—and an old clas­sic from the sar­gent in charge: ‘Can I speak to the organ­is­er, or your spokesper­son?’ Amaz­ing, they nev­er learn do they?!

— A bat­ter­ing ram police offi­cer was hilar­i­ous­ly referred to by their col­leagues as ‘Cap­tain Chaos’, which caused the occu­pants much con­stant mirth. ‘Whose Cap­tain Chaos then, when’s he com­ing!’

141 Ash­ley Road has been emp­ty for near­ly a year now since the pre­vi­ous occu­pants (who were squat­ters) were evict­ed and emp­ty for longer before that. It is on the cor­ner before the shops on Ash­ley Road and Grosvern­er Road, and the gar­den is reg­u­lar­ly used for drug deals. Locals com­plain about this, yet Places for Peo­ple have done noth­ing about this prop­er­ty for years.

87 Ash­ley Road whose roof was occu­pied for 3 weeks dur­ing evic­tion resis­tance, remains emp­ty to this day, (despite Places for Peo­ple’s assur­ances that it would be turned into afford­able hous­ing.)

The direc­tor of places for peo­ple receives a salary of £250,000 a year.

Squat­ters, self-hous­ing them­selves, are tak­ing mat­ters into their own hands, and the onus off social hous­ing cor­po­ra­tions to house them. The argu­ment that squat­ters delay social hous­ing is rub­bished by the fact that 87 and 141 Ash­ley Roiad have remained emp­ty for months and years after the evic­tion of squat­ters, and not turned into afford­able social hous­ing. It seems P4P are more con­cerned with sell­ing off social hous­ing stock on the pri­vate mar­ket as can be seen with the new flats up at the top of Ash­ley Road.

This is a com­pa­ny that claims to be work­ing to house peo­ple, yet it appears prof­it is the only moti­va­tion they have.

and anoth­er joke from the day:
One of the riot vans had a stick­er say­ing Oper­a­tion Relent­less which after inves­ti­ga­tion is a cam­paign of fear against ‘those who com­mit crime’: laugh­able.

Blue NG offices in Bath occupied by 13 members of Action Against Agrofuels (AAA)

AAA occu­pied Blue NG offices on Fri­day 17th, Via Campesina Day, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with mil­lions of peas­ant land-work­ers demon­strat­ing glob­al­ly against agro­fu­els.

Blue NG protestAAA occu­pied Blue NG offices on Fri­day 17th, Via Campesina Day, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with mil­lions of peas­ant land-work­ers demon­strat­ing glob­al­ly against agro­fu­els. Blue NG are com­mit­ting a crime against human­i­ty and the plan­et by using mis­in­for­ma­tion* to win sup­port for the new mar­ket of agro­fu­el pow­er sta­tions, when vir­tu­al­ly all agro­fu­els have been shown to cause ecosys­tem destruc­tion, accel­er­at­ed cli­mate change & food pover­ty.

* For more on Blue-NG mis­in­for­ma­tion see…
http://sites.google.com/site/foodnotfuelorg/Home/facts-on-biofuels/biofuels-for-electricity/BlueNGinconsistenciesApril2009.doc?attredirects=0

On 17th April 2009 13 cli­mate and social jus­tice activists occu­pied the head office of Blue NG, the com­pa­ny which is plan­ning to build the UK’s first bio­fu­el pow­er plants. Ban­ners were hung from the build­ing and activists demand­ed that the com­pa­ny stops invest­ing in bio­fu­els.

Blu­eNG ini­tial­ly plans eight pow­er plants which would run on vir­gin veg­etable oil. Cam­paign­ers warn that those pow­er plants will sig­nif­i­cant­ly boost the UK’s imports of palm oil, which is linked to defor­esta­tion and the dis­place­ment of rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, includ­ing indige­nous peo­ples. Blue NG speaks about using rape­seed oil but has failed to rule out using palm oil. In Ger­many, 1.3 bil­lion kWh of ener­gy are pro­duced from palm oil burn­ing because this is the cheap­est veg­etable oil and Ger­man providers have found it impos­si­ble to afford rape­seed oil.

STATEMENT:

We are here to demand that you stop invest­ing in agro­fu­els. We need tru­ly renew­able ener­gy but call­ing pes­ti­cide-sprayed mono­cul­tures for bio­fu­els renew­able is obscene.

Already, small farm­ers and indige­nous peo­ples are being evict­ed, far more peo­ple are going hun­gry and ever more forests and oth­er diverse ecosys­tems are being destroyed in order to grow fuel for our cars. While hun­dreds of civ­il soci­ety groups and insti­tu­tions, includ­ing he Euro­pean Envi­ron­ment Agency, our Envi­ron­men­tal Audit Com­mit­tee, the UN Rap­por­teur for the Right of Food and even the OECD were against Europe’s bio­fu­el tar­gets for trans­port, your com­pa­ny was draw­ing up plans to fur­ther push up an already com­plete­ly unsus­tain­able demand for bio­fu­els.

Soon after sci­en­tists pub­lished stud­ies which unequiv­o­cal­ly show that today’s agro­fu­els are dis­as­ter for the cli­mate and that using land for agro­fu­els means less ecosys­tems and less food, you pub­lished your plans to build the first veg­etable oil pow­er plant in Beck­ton. It so hap­pens that, in Beck­ton, asth­ma lev­els are already excep­tion­al­ly high, almost cer­tain­ly due to air pol­lu­tion.

You then made false and mis­lead­ing claims to gar­ner polit­i­cal sup­port for those destruc­tive plans. Many peo­ple liked what you said about com­bin­ing geo-pres­sure and com­bined heat and pow­er, yet your two pub­lished plan­ning appli­ca­tions involve nei­ther – as for CHP, you don’t even plan to sup­ply heat to prop­er­ties or indus­try. But even if those claims had not been false, the ener­gy will still come from one of the most destruc­tive and cli­mate-dam­ag­ing types of fuel.

You con­tin­ue to make false state­ments about the fuel you will use. You tell media reporters you have a sus­tain­able sourc­ing agree­ment – yet the par­ty you claim to have that agree­ment with knows noth­ing about it. Just this month, you pub­lished claims that you could pow­er your plants from half a mil­lion hectares of set aside land in the UK and that this would be cli­mate-friend­ly. This is absurd – as any­body in the indus­try must know, most of that set aside land has already been ploughed up in what even Defra fears is a dis­as­ter for our bio­di­ver­si­ty. And far from being cli­mate-friend­ly, rape­seed oil is grown with so many fer­tilis­ers that it’s up to 70% worse for the cli­mate than fos­sil fuel oil.

Your bio­mass pol­i­cy boasts that you will min­imise indi­rect impacts. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, you haven’t told any­body just how you plan to do that – after all nobody else has come up with any cred­i­ble ideas for this either. Except for one study which makes it clear that the only way that could be done was by mak­ing sure less food was grown and more peo­ple went hun­gry. Is this what you mean when you say “If we are going to be suc­cess­ful in our fight against cli­mate change in the con­text of an eco­nom­ic down­turn and ris­ing ener­gy and food prices, we have to make some hard choic­es.”? Though the only suc­cess this project might bring is prof­its, no oth­er ben­e­fits.

And final­ly, the rea­son we are here on this par­tic­u­lar day is that we wish to sup­port the Inter­na­tion­al Day of Action called by Via Campesina, in mem­o­ry of land­less farm­ers killed in Brazil on the same day in 1996. Via Campesina and many oth­er groups right­ly demand poli­cies which sup­port food sov­er­eign­ty, not mono­cul­tures to grow fuel for Europe, and rights and sup­port for small farm­ers and for bio­di­verse, organ­ic farm­ing which tru­ly helps to counter cli­mate change. Bio­fu­el com­pa­nies like Blue NG are under­min­ing our hopes for an agri­cul­ture sys­tem which can feed peo­ple, reduce cli­mate change, safe­guard bio­di­ver­si­ty and sup­port com­mu­ni­ties’ rights and liveli­hoods. Your choic­es are your respon­si­bil­i­ty and we demand that you stop all sup­port for agro­fu­els. We will not stop cam­paign­ing until you stop your sup­port for agro­fu­els.

Gloucestershire Airport is held to ransom

April 11, 2009
Glouces­ter­shire Air­port was plunged into dark­ness as envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­ers stole lights in protest against a new green pol­i­cy.

Cam­paign­ers from Plane Stu­pid say they are hold­ing a set of hi-tech solar pow­ered lights to ran­som until the air­port becomes more eco-friend­ly.

Plane Stupid logo 2April 11, 2009
Glouces­ter­shire Air­port was plunged into dark­ness as envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­ers stole lights in protest against a new green pol­i­cy.

Cam­paign­ers from Plane Stu­pid say they are hold­ing a set of hi-tech solar pow­ered lights to ran­som until the air­port becomes more eco-friend­ly.

Kevin Lis­ter from the protest group said: “We have stolen the pho­to­volta­ic lights from the sign at the air­port.

“These lights high­light the stu­pid­i­ty of the council’s posi­tion with the air­port.

“The idea that fit­ting eco-friend­ly lights at the air­port can off­set the huge envi­ron­men­tal dam­age that the planes will cause is an insult to those of us that care.”

The cam­paign­ers sprang into action after Glouces­ter City Council’s Overview and Scruti­ny Man­age­ment com­mit­tee agreed to rec­om­mend the airport’s green pol­i­cy to cab­i­net at a meet­ing on Thurs­day.

In a ran­som note sent by email to local coun­cil­lors and air­port head of oper­a­tions Dar­ren Lew­ing­ton, Kevin apol­o­gised for hold­ing the envi­ron­men­tal­ly-friend­ly lights hostage, and stat­ed his terms.

The state­ment said: “We will hand them (the lights) back once the tar­gets in the green man­age­ment plan are set in accor­dance with the lat­est sci­ence, which demands that we imme­di­ate­ly move to a zero-car­bon econ­o­my, and when there is a cat­e­gor­i­cal agree­ment that if the air­port breach­es the lim­its, oper­a­tions will cease for the mea­sure­ment peri­od.”

Mr Lew­ing­ton said: “First of all, I would like to say the air­port is very pleased that both the Glouces­ter and Chel­tenham com­mit­tees have endorsed the pol­i­cy, and I hope their cab­i­nets will fol­low suit.

“It’s dis­ap­point­ing that Kevin has tak­en this par­tic­u­lar action. This is theft and crim­i­nal dam­age, and those are the plain facts for Plane Stu­pid.

“The green pol­i­cy is very much a work­ing doc­u­ment and it’s not appro­pri­ate at this stage to include the demands that Kevin has made.

“It’s ear­ly days and the doc­u­ment will evolve, but this stunt is, in my per­son­al opin­ion, a bit inap­pro­pri­ate.”

Glouces­ter City Coun­cil leader Paul James respond­ed to Kevin’s actions, brand­ing them “irre­spon­si­ble.”

He said: “We can’t con­done break­ing the law, which is what this is.

“I do have respect for peo­ple who want to make sure the air­port is envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, but this isn’t the best way to go about it.

“The best thing for him to do would be to work with us and co-oper­ate, rather than show­ing a con­tempt for democ­ra­cy.”

Cam­paign­ers from Plane Stu­pid say they are hold­ing a set of hi-tech solar pow­ered lights to ran­som until the air­port becomes more eco-friend­ly.

Why climate camping & other protest? Ecological debt day for your city…coming soon!

Eco­log­i­cal debt: no way back from bank­rupt

3 planetsEco­log­i­cal debt: no way back from bank­rupt

While most gov­ern­ments’ eyes are on the bank­ing cri­sis, a much big­ger issue — the envi­ron­men­tal cri­sis — is pass­ing them by, says Andrew Simms. In the Green Room this week, he argues that fail­ure to organ­ise a bailout for eco­log­i­cal debt will have dire con­se­quences for human­i­ty.

“Nature Does­n’t Do Bailouts!” said the ban­ner strung across Bish­ops­gate in the City of Lon­don.

Civil­i­sa­tion’s biggest prob­lem was out­lined in five words over the entrance to the small, par­al­lel real­i­ty of the peace­ful cli­mate camp. Their tents bloomed on the morn­ing of 1 April faster than daisies in spring, and faster than the police could stop them.

Across the city, where the world’s most pow­er­ful peo­ple met simul­ta­ne­ous­ly at the G20 sum­mit, the same prob­lem was almost com­plete­ly ignored, mer­it­ing only a sin­gle, after­thought men­tion in a long com­mu­nique.

World lead­ers dropped every­thing to tack­le the finan­cial debt cri­sis that spilled from col­laps­ing banks.

Gripped by a pan­ic so com­plete, there was no pol­i­cy dog­ma too deeply engrained to be dug out and instant­ly dis­card­ed. We went from tri­umphant, finance-dri­ven free mar­ket cap­i­tal­ism, to bank nation­al­i­sa­tion and mov­ing the dec­i­mal point on indus­try bailouts quick­er than you can say sub-prime mort­gage.

But the eco­log­i­cal debt cri­sis, which threat­ens much more than pen­sion funds and car man­u­fac­tur­ers, is left to lan­guish.

It is like hav­ing a Com­mis­sion on House­hold Ren­o­va­tion ago­nise over which expen­sive design­er wall­pa­per to use for paper­ing over plas­ter cracks whilst ignor­ing the fact that the walls them­selves are col­laps­ing on sub­sid­ing foun­da­tions.

Beyond our means

Each year, human­i­ty’s eco­log­i­cal over­draft gets larg­er, and the day that the world as a whole goes into eco­log­i­cal debt — con­sum­ing more resources and pro­duc­ing more waste than the bios­phere can pro­vide and absorb — moves ever ear­li­er in the year.

The same pic­ture emerges for indi­vid­ual coun­tries like the UK — which now starts liv­ing beyond its own envi­ron­men­tal means in mid-April.

Because the glob­al econ­o­my is still over­whelm­ing­ly fos­sil-fuel depen­dent, the accu­mu­la­tion of green­house gas­es and the prog­no­sis for glob­al warm­ing remain our best indi­ca­tors of “over­shoot”.

World famous French free-climber Alain Robert, known as Spi­der­man, climbed the Lloyds of Lon­don build­ing for the OneHundredMonths.org cam­paign as the G20 met, to demon­strate how time is slip­ping away.

Using thresh­olds for risk iden­ti­fied by the Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change (IPCC), on cur­rent trends, in only 92 months — less than eight years — we will move into a new, more per­ilous phase of warm­ing.

It will then no longer be “like­ly” that we can pre­vent some aspects of run­away cli­mate change. We will begin to lose the cli­mat­ic con­di­tions which, as Nasa sci­en­tist James Hansen points out, were those under which civil­i­sa­tion devel­oped.

Small div­i­dend

As “nature does­n’t do bailouts”, how have our politi­cians fared who ripped open the nation’s wal­let to save the banks?

Not good.

Accord­ing to the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF), the UK spent a stag­ger­ing 20% of its GDP in sup­port of the finan­cial sec­tor.

Yet the amount of mon­ey that was new and addi­tion­al, announced in the “green stim­u­lus” pack­age of the Trea­sury’s Pre-Bud­get Report, added-up to a van­ish­ing­ly small 0.0083% of GDP.

Glob­al­ly, the green shade of eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus mea­sures has var­ied enor­mous­ly. For exam­ple, the shares of spend­ing con­sid­ered in research by the bank HSBC to be envi­ron­men­tal were:

* the US — 12%
* Ger­many — 13%
* South Korea — 80%

The inter­na­tion­al aver­age was around 15%. HSBC found the UK planned to invest less than 7% of its stim­u­lus pack­age (dif­fer­ent from the bank bailout) in green mea­sures.

Com­par­ing the IMF and HSBC fig­ures actu­al­ly reveals an inverse rela­tion­ship — pro­por­tion­ate­ly, those who spent more on sup­port for finance had weak­er green spend­ing.

So here we are, faced with the loss of an envi­ron­ment con­ducive to human civil­i­sa­tion, and we find gov­ern­ments pros­trate before bare­ly repen­tant banks, with their backs to a far worse eco­log­i­cal cri­sis.

Extreme mar­kets

On top of low and incon­sis­tent fund­ing for renew­able ener­gy, the shift to a low car­bon econ­o­my is being fur­ther frus­trat­ed by anoth­er mar­ket fail­ure in the trade for car­bon seen, for exam­ple, in the EU’s Emis­sions Trad­ing Scheme.

Bad mar­ket design, fee­ble car­bon reduc­tion tar­gets and the reces­sion have all con­spired to dri­ve down the cost of car­bon emis­sion per­mits, wreck­ing eco­nom­ic incen­tives to grow renew­able ener­gy.

Worse still, the dif­fi­cul­ty of account­ing to ensure that per­mits rep­re­sent real emis­sions has led both ener­gy com­pa­nies and envi­ron­men­tal­ists to warn of an emerg­ing “sub-prime car­bon mar­ket”.

Rely­ing on mar­ket mech­a­nisms is attrac­tive to gov­ern­ments because it means they have less to do them­selves. But they will fail if car­bon mar­kets are just hot air.

There seems to be a hard-wired link between mem­o­ry fail­ure and mar­ket fail­ure.

As the his­to­ri­an E J Hob­s­bawm observed in The Age of Extremes: “Those of us who lived through the years of the Great Slump still find it almost impos­si­ble to under­stand how the ortho­dox­ies of the pure free mar­ket, then so obvi­ous­ly dis­cred­it­ed, once again came to pre­side over a glob­al peri­od of depres­sion in the late 1980s and 1990s”.

Per­haps the great­est fail­ure is one of imag­i­na­tion.

Some peo­ple alive today lived through those past reces­sions and depres­sions. They know they can be nasty and need avert­ing.

But the last time the Earth­’s cli­mate real­ly flipped was at the end of the last Ice Age, more than 10,000 years ago. No one can remem­ber what that felt like.

Lessons of his­to­ry

Look­ing for­ward, the IPC­C’s worst case sce­nario warns of a max­i­mum 6C rise over the next cen­tu­ry.

Look­ing back, how­ev­er, indi­cates that an unsta­ble cli­mate sys­tem holds worse hor­rors.

Work by the sci­en­tist Richard Alley on abrupt cli­mate change indi­cates the plan­et has pre­vi­ous­ly expe­ri­enced a 10C tem­per­a­ture shift in only a decade, and pos­si­bly “as quick­ly as in a sin­gle year”.

And, around the turn of the last Ice Age, there were “local warm­ings as large as 16C”.

Imag­ine that every day of your life you have tak­en a walk in the woods and the worse thing to hap­pen was an acorn or twig falling on your head.

Then, one day, you stroll out, look up and there is a threat approach­ing so large, unex­pect­ed and out­side your expe­ri­ence that can’t quite believe it, like a mas­sive goth­ic cathe­dral falling from the sky.

In tack­ling cli­mate change we need urgent­ly to recal­i­brate our respons­es, just as gov­ern­ments had to when they res­cued the reck­less finance sec­tor.

Then offi­cials had to ask them­selves “is what we are doing right, and is it enough?”

They must ask them­selves the same ques­tions on the eco­log­i­cal debt cri­sis and cli­mate change.

The dif­fer­ence is, that if they fail this time, not even a long-term busi­ness cycle will come to our res­cue. If the cli­mate shifts to a hot­ter state not con­vivial to human soci­ety, it could be tens of thou­sands of years, or nev­er, before it shifts back.

Remem­ber; nature does­n’t do bailouts.

Andrew Simms is pol­i­cy direc­tor of the New Eco­nom­ics Foun­da­tion (nef), and author of Eco­log­i­cal Debt: Glob­al Warm­ing and the Wealth of Nations

——

One Plan­et Liv­ing http://www.oneplanetliving.org

Your city’s Eco­log­i­cal Debt Day:

Using the lat­est data avail­able WWF has cal­cu­lat­ed when res­i­dents of British cities will have con­sumed their fair share of nat­ur­al resources for 2008 – or when their eco­log­i­cal debt day is.

City Eco­log­i­cal debt day

Win­ches­ter 10 April
St Albans 13 April
Chich­ester 14 April
Brighton & Hove 14 April
Can­ter­bury 17 April
Oxford 17 April
Southamp­ton 21 April
Durham 22 April
Cam­bridge 23 April
Portsmouth 23 April
Edin­burgh 23 April
Chester 24 April
Aberdeen 24 April
Ely (East Cambs) 26 April
Here­ford (Coun­ty of Here­ford­shire) 28 April
Stir­ling 28 April
Lon­don 29 April
Lich­field 29 April
Lan­cast­er 30 April
New­cas­tle upon Tyne 30 April
Wells (Bath and NE Som­er­set) 1 May
Bath (Bath and North East Som­er­set) 1 May
Ripon (Har­ro­gate) 2 May
Man­ches­ter 2 May
Inver­ness (High­land) 2 May
Pre­ston 2 May
Nor­wich 2 May
Peter­bor­ough 2 May
Dundee City 3 May
Leeds 3 May
York 3 May
Sheffield 3 May
Der­by 4 May
Carlisle 4 May
Leices­ter 4 May
Worces­ter 4 May
Ban­gor (Gwynedd) 4 May
St Davids (Pembrokeshire)4 May
Not­ting­ham 4 May
Liv­er­pool 4 May
Bris­tol 5 May
Birm­ing­ham 5 May
Lin­coln 5 May
Brad­ford 5 May
Glas­gow 6 May
Cardiff 6 May
Exeter 6 May
Coven­try 7 May
Swansea 8 May
Sal­ford 8 May
Wolver­hamp­ton 8 May
Truro (Car­rick) 8 May
Sun­der­land 8 May
Wake­field 9 May
Glouces­ter 9 May
Stoke on Trent 10 May
Kingston upon Hull 10 May
Sal­is­bury 10 May
Ply­mouth 11 May
New­port 11 May

April 1st 2009 — Fossil Fools’ Day goes global

Today saw not only mass protests in Lon­don ahead of the G20 sum­mit, but local demon­stra­tions in cities around the UK and across the globe. Under the ban­ner of Fos­sil Fools Day, activists held protests at banks, ener­gy com­pa­nies and pow­er sta­tions across the UK, the USA, Cana­da and South Africa to high­light the twin eco­nom­ic and cli­mate crises.

'It's Going to Get Worse' placardToday saw not only mass protests in Lon­don ahead of the G20 sum­mit, but local demon­stra­tions in cities around the UK and across the globe. Under the ban­ner of Fos­sil Fools Day, activists held protests at banks, ener­gy com­pa­nies and pow­er sta­tions across the UK, the USA, Cana­da and South Africa to high­light the twin eco­nom­ic and cli­mate crises.

For more pho­tos vis­it here and if your action isn’t in the list below email us and we’ll add it to the site.

In the UK …

On the eve of the G20, activists descend­ed on Lon­don to high­light the links between the finan­cial and the cli­mate cri­sis. While the ‘Finan­cial Fools Day’ Street Par­ty got under­way out­side the Bank of Eng­land, the Camp for Cli­mate Action set up camp out­side the Euro­pean Cli­mate Exchange. Their mes­sage: “Stop­ping car­bon mar­kets — because nature doesn’t do bailouts”. It was­n’t until the evening that the police cleared the space — full sto­ry here. Mean­while over at the Excel Cen­tre, the Cam­paign Against Cli­mate Change is hold­ing an Ice-berg “Cli­mate Emer­gency” demo.

Ear­li­er in the week, the Oil Goliath BP was felled by Fos­sil Fools Day’s David as BP post­poned its cen­te­nary par­ty at the British Muse­um to be held on April 1st, due to a demon­stra­tion orga­nized by Art Not Oil and Ris­ing Tide.

Plymouth RBS glued for FFDIn Ply­mouth, Ris­ing Tide pen­guins super-glued them­selves to the entrance of RBS to high­light RBS’s fund­ing of fos­sil fuels projects. RBS are one of the biggest investors in the fos­sil fuel indus­try and pro­vid­ed $16 bil­lion to coal-relat­ed com­pa­nies in 2007 alone. Ann Smith of Ris­ing Tide Ply­mouth today said: “RBS is now 57% owned by the UK tax­pay­er. Cli­mate change requires a move to renew­able ener­gy, not con­tin­ued sup­port for the expan­sion of the fos­sil fuel indus­try”. For more pho­tos vis­it This is Ply­mouth

In Oxford­shire, the ear­ly hours of April 1st saw local activists hang­ing ban­ners from bridges over the A34 between Oxford and Did­cot. Ban­ners read “Cau­tion: Cli­mate Change Ahead”, “Give Way to Wind” and “Fos­sil Fool: 3rd exit” com­plete with pic­tures of Did­cot Pow­er Sta­tion. With Did­cot (run by RWE NPow­er) due for de-com­mis­sion­ing in a few years, it is time to pur­sue renew­able options local­ly. One of the activists said: “We want not only Did­cot, but also the gov­ern­ment and the G20 to see the fol­ly of their actions in pur­su­ing unsus­tain­able tech­nol­o­gy. We have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to pur­sue safe, cheap alter­na­tives and ensure a clean­er future. The wise choice would be to grasp this oppor­tu­ni­ty”.

In Portsmouth, mem­bers of Portsmouth Cli­mate Action Net­work and the University’s Peo­ple & Plan­et group took up posi­tion out­side the Nat West Bank in Com­mer­cial Road to encour­ag­ing shop­pers to tell Roy­al Bank of Scot­land — NatWest to stop fund­ing cli­mate chaos. Activists said: “It is our mon­ey that RBS-NatWest is using to extract tar sands, burn coal and fuel cli­mate chaos. We believe that the only way to pre­vent dan­ger­ous cli­mate change is by invest­ment in renew­ables, not in dirty coal. We are call­ing on the pub­lic to con­tact RBS-NatWest and the UK gov­ern­ment and tell them what they think about them bankrolling cli­mate chaos.”

In Bournemouth, mem­bers of direct action group Plane Stu­pid turned up at Bournemouth Air­port to give them a Fos­sil Fool Award for ‘Out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to local, nation­al and glob­al pol­lu­tion’. Tara Bosworth said, “Bournemouth Air­port may well be the biggest sin­gle source of green­house gas emis­sions in Dorset and they are expand­ing their oper­a­tions, more than dou­bling the num­ber of flights, now that’s plane stu­pid and why they are get­ting our Fos­sil Fool award.” A mem­ber of the air­port staff accept­ed the award but declined hav­ing his pic­ture tak­en.

Fos­sil fool themed street the­atre took place in both Frome in Som­er­set and Totnes in Devon. In Totnes, the Inter­na­tion­al Cli­mate Crim­i­nal known as ‘Old King Coal’ was put on tri­al. The pris­on­er, who is not in good health, was led from The Plains up to the Civic Square where he was tried before a jury of local cit­i­zens and school­child­ren. Unfor­tu­nate­ly oth­er mem­bers of the Fos­sil Fools Gang, includ­ing Oil and Gas, remain at large and are a con­tin­ued dan­ger to the plan­et.

In South Africa …

FFD in South Africa - SasolIn Johan­nes­burg, Earth­life Africa award­ed Sasol (the South African Coal, Oil and Gas Cor­po­ra­tion) the pres­ti­gious 2009 Fos­sil Fool of the Year Award for pro­duc­ing 72 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 per year (over 15% of South Africa’s total emis­sions) and for try­ing to build a new coal-to-liq­uid pow­er plant. Although Sasol ini­tial­ly resist­ed accept­ing the award (one can only imag­ine why), the efforts of a deter­mined group of pro­test­ers final­ly forced the taint­ed tro­phy to be accept­ed.
For more infor­ma­tion vis­it: here or here.

In the USA …

Boston Mannequins on FFD 09In Boston, Mass­a­chu­setts, the “Man­nequins For Cli­mate Jus­tice” shut down the Ken­more Square branch of Bank of Amer­i­ca. A man­nequin was chained to the doors of the bank short­ly before open­ing this morn­ing. The lone man­nequin pro­test­er, Guy Fox, said, “Even a dum­my like me can see that Bank of America’s mas­sive loans to coal com­pa­nies and sup­port for the epi­dem­ic of fore­clo­sures and evic­tions has to stop now.” Fox fur­ther said, “Bank of Amer­i­ca seems deter­mined to be so evil it’s almost com­i­cal, but peo­ple resist­ing the bank’s prac­tices will have the last laugh. Hap­py April Fools to all the cap­i­tal­ist fos­sil fools!”

In Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia, a bike ride/march high­light­ed BP’s $500 mil­lion deal with Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia. Under this deal, the oil giant BP is invest­ing $500 mil­lion for the uni­ver­si­ty to research bio­fu­els, rais­ing issues of green­wash­ing, false solu­tions, and the inter­ac­tion between a pub­lic uni­ver­si­ty and a pri­vate cor­po­ra­tion.

Asheville FFD 09In Asheville, North Car­oli­na, pro­test­ers declared Gov­er­nor Pur­due to be in bed with Duke Ener­gy, and demand­ed the can­cel­la­tion of the Cliff­side coal plant. In response to the North Car­oli­na Divi­sion of Air Qual­i­ty (DAQ) rul­ing that Duke Energy’s Cliff­side coal plant is a “minor source of emis­sions”, pro­test­ers gath­ered at noon out­side Gov­er­nor Purdue’s West­ern North Car­oli­na office in down­town Asheville to demand that she revoke the plant’s per­mit. In a demon­stra­tion orga­nized by Asheville Ris­ing Tide, pro­test­ers set up a bed in front of Gov­er­nor Purdue’s office with peo­ple in busi­ness suits rep­re­sent­ing Duke CEO Jim Rogers, DAQ head Kei­th Over­cash, and Gov­er­nor Pur­due under sheets and cov­ered in mon­ey. A ban­ner read­ing, “Gov­er­nor Pur­due in bed with Duke Ener­gy” pro­vid­ed a back­drop to the under-the-sheets liai­son.

In Den­ver, Col­orado, a Fos­sil Fools Day ral­ly of con­cerned cit­i­zens, health experts, and envi­ron­men­tal and neigh­bor­hood lead­ers demand­ed a tran­si­tion to clean ener­gy. The ral­ly, led by WildEarth Guardians, and joined by Sier­ra Club, Green­peace, Clean Ener­gy Action, Safe­Minds, stu­dents, church mem­bers, and affect­ed near­by com­mu­ni­ties, was held in the shad­ow of the Chero­kee coal burn­ing pow­er plant at Denver’s Heron Pond Nat­ur­al Area, and called upon Gov­er­nor Rit­ter to help Col­orado seize clean ener­gy solu­tions and keep Col­oradoans safe from coal. Car­ry­ing hand­made signs and hold­ing pin­wheels to sym­bol­ize a tran­si­tion to clean ener­gy, dozens of cit­i­zens demon­strat­ed their frus­tra­tions with the sta­tus quo and their hope for pro­tect­ing their future.

In New Orleans, con­ser­va­tion groups, stu­dents, and con­cerned cit­i­zens joined forces at Entergy’s head­quar­ters to protest about the company’s plans to expand their use of coal pow­er in Louisiana. “Louisiana’s coast is ground zero for cli­mate change impacts,” said ral­ly orga­niz­er Jonathan Hen­der­son. “Enter­gy should be a respon­si­ble neigh­bor and work to lim­it coast-destroy­ing pol­lu­tion and pro­tect rate-pay­ers from future car­bon price increas­es”.

In the spir­it of the “Coal Cir­cus,” stu­dents from Bowl­ing Green, Ken­tucky organ­ised a ‘Mon­ster Mash’ and a crit­i­cal mass bike ride.

Stu­dents in Tempe, Ari­zona, also hopped on their bikes and declared them­selves “too cool for fos­sil fools.”

In Cana­da …

Five actions in one day in down­town Toron­to? No foolin!
Today Rain­for­est Action Net­work activists kicked Fos­sil Fools Day off with a bang, drop­ping ban­ners off of a high­way, greet­ing over 4,000 cars (we count­ed) stuck in dead­lock traf­fic over a peri­od of two hours. From bridges, we broad­cast mes­sages about Roy­al Bank of Cana­da (RBC)’s financ­ing of the Cana­di­an Tar Sands from our makeshift Pirate Radio sta­tion. Our ban­ners read “Pirate Radio 89.9 FM Tune in now” and “Roy­al Bank cre­ates cli­mate chaos. Renew­ables not tar sands.” The pour­ing rain didn’t block our view of car after car reach­ing for the radio dial as they drove under us.

We began by dress­ing up and imper­son­at­ed bank employ­ees. About 16 of us rode ele­va­tors for up to two more hours, chat­ting up oth­er RBC per­son­nel — “Hey, on my way to work today I heard about how RBC is financ­ing the destruc­tion of Native ter­ri­to­ries in Alber­ta, caus­ing peo­ple can­cer and pol­lut­ing the water! Tar Sands are the world’s dirt­i­est oil. Did you know that? I had no idea! I’m telling my man­ag­er right away!”

Mean­while, out­side the HQ, sev­er­al more of us leaflet­ed and held ban­ners read­ing “RBC Cre­ates poi­soned water in our com­mu­ni­ty,” “Renew­ables not tar sands” and “RBC: financ­ing can­cer and tox­ic sludge.”

Back inside, a lone Torontan walked inside the main office with a beau­ti­ful bou­quet of bal­loons. I don’t know where he got the idea to release them in the atri­um, or how a ban­ner read­ing “ROYAL BANK CREATES CLIMATE CHAOS” got attached….I also don’t know how they’re gonna get it down. Watch him do it.

Lat­er that evening, dozens of activists recon­vened out­side RBC head­quar­ters along­side “Tar­bie,” an oil-soaked ver­sion of RBC’s prized mas­cot “Arbie” who explained to passers­by that he and RBC are help­ing finance one of the fastest grow­ing sources of water pol­lu­tion and green­house gas emis­sions on the plan­et, and how they con­flict with the finan­cial giant’s PR promis­es to pro­mote clean water.

To read more on RBC and the Cana­di­an Tar Sands, vis­it It’s Get­ting Hot in Here.

www.fossilfoolsday.org

Fight Speciesism! #8 — Out Now

Spring 2009 issue of the lat­est anti-speciesist, anti-cap­i­tal­ist, abo­li­tion­ist direct action news is out now.

Arti­cles: SHAC 7 sol­i­dar­i­ty, oper­a­tion sink­ing ship, hunt sab­bing, mink released, ‘fash­ion’ shop closed, lib­er­a­tionists arrest­ed, max mara cam­paign, inter­na­tion­al actions, pris­on­er let­ters, police under attack, alf vs wagenin­gen uni, pris­on­er sup­port, mon­keys fight back, netcu, bull­ring riots, aeta 4, earth lib­er­a­tion, mex­i­can actions, whale wars, riot­ing in lon­don and edo smashed.

Fight Speciesism! #8 - Out Now Spring 2009 issue of the lat­est anti-speciesist, anti-cap­i­tal­ist, abo­li­tion­ist direct action news is out now.

Arti­cles: SHAC 7 sol­i­dar­i­ty, oper­a­tion sink­ing ship, hunt sab­bing, mink released, ‘fash­ion’ shop closed, lib­er­a­tionists arrest­ed, max mara cam­paign, inter­na­tion­al actions, pris­on­er let­ters, police under attack, alf vs wagenin­gen uni, pris­on­er sup­port, mon­keys fight back, netcu, bull­ring riots, aeta 4, earth lib­er­a­tion, mex­i­can actions, whale wars, riot­ing in lon­don and edo smashed.

FS! #8 https://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2009/03//424982.pdf

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Anti­speciesist Action is a col­lec­tive of mil­i­tant anti­speciesists and ani­mal lib­er­a­tionists com­mit­ted to con­fronting ani­mal abuse, suf­fer­ing and exploita­tion of non-human beings through the use of direct action.

Bath Bomb #20 Out Now

THE BATH BOMB

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #20
free/donation
Mar 09

“News and abuse from Bath and beyond”

Somer Ten­ants Do ‘Ave ‘Em

Bath Bomb logoTHE BATH BOMB

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #20
free/donation
Mar 09

“News and abuse from Bath and beyond”

Somer Ten­ants Do ‘Ave ‘Em

Ever got that sink­ing feel­ing that your land­lord is a lit­tle more con­cerned with cash than your well­be­ing? That must be the feel­ing amongst Somer ten­ants who now face a well-above-infla­tion rent hike of 7.5%. Somer’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion? They say that their rent is below the local aver­age, and that they need the mon­ey for main­te­nance work. Hmm… A cou­ple of points spring to mind here that may go some way to debunk­ing Somer’s greedy lit­tle lies. One, being a sup­pos­ed­ly social hous­ing trust, specif­i­cal­ly set up for peo­ple on low-to-no incomes, hav­ing a low­er than aver­age rent rate is noth­ing to boast about – it is the sole func­tion of Somer to pro­vide low cost hous­ing for Bath res­i­dents after all. Their claim to pro­vide “low­er than region­al aver­age” rent also falls down when a brief look at local prop­er­ty web­sites reveals the region­al aver­age month­ly rent for a 2 bed­room flat to be a whop­ping £894.00! In an area with a far high­er than usu­al (you might say dis­gust­ing­ly high) per­cent­age of toffs, the rent is obvi­ous­ly going to be wild­ly beyond the bud­get of the aver­age per­son in social hous­ing. Somer also claims to need the addi­tion­al rent mon­ey for main­te­nance work. Okay, this sounds rea­son­able, but should that cash be sucked from the pock­ets of res­i­dents or from the cof­fers of Somer’s direc­tors? A recent advert to recruit anoth­er direc­tor to Somer reveals a £125,000 annu­al salary (plus bonus­es, plus 10% car allowance) – so who best should shell out for the work? And what have our brave Coun­cil done to come to our aid? Don Fos­ter – as well his oth­er admit­ted­ly urgent duties of pos­ing for the local press with mouth­fuls of banana (what are you good for?) – has asked Somer to intro­duce the hike over two years instead of one. We’ll, we’ve got news for you Don­ny boy, whether they ram it home hard, or slide it in gen­tly, we’re still get­ting screwed! With the reces­sion wors­en­ing, Somer have once again showed that they val­ue prof­it over peo­ple and that the Coun­cil pri­ori­tis­es busi­ness inter­ests over Bath res­i­dents. If we want fair rent, it looks like we’ll have to fight for it our­selves, and not rely on Dodgy Don’s das­tard­ly deals with degen­er­ate direc­tors to den­i­grate dwellings.

On a sim­i­lar note, it turns out that the equal­ly dodgy Night­stone hous­ing asso­ci­a­tion are lean­ing on elder­ly res­i­dents on Wal­cot Street to move out, as they want to bump up the rent and lure in young pro­fes­sion­als instead. But the res­i­dents are still refus­ing to budge – we’ll keep you post­ed.

http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/news/Somer-tenants-face‑7–35-rent-rise/article-725102-detail/article.html
http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/news/slip-ups-banana-record-attempt/article-752574-detail/article.html

Game On!

Whilst big busi­ness and the state claimed “We did­n’t know” when the eco­nom­ic col­lapse kicked in last year, any­body with half a brain could see the reces­sion com­ing from miles away. Maybe all these wealthy cap­i­tal­ists thought it was just a game. Well now it is: BAN presents the ‘It’s Not My Respon­si­bil­i­ty’ game on Sat­ur­day the 14th March! The game is played with two teams, one rep­re­sent­ing lib­er­ty, and the oth­er rep­re­sent­ing well-dressed big busi­ness and the state. The game is played with pre-pro­vid­ed big bal­loons, and the idea is to bounce away the respon­si­bil­i­ty bal­loons – (Boo! Hiss!) Cred­it Crunch, Bank­rupt­cy, Unem­ploy­ment, Sur­veil­lance, Com­pe­ti­tion, Bailiffs – whilst shar­ing the bal­loons rep­re­sent­ing the more anar­chic side of life – Free­dom, Com­mu­ni­ty, Coop­er­a­tion, Eth­i­cal Liv­ing, Fun, Courage… The more peo­ple the mer­ri­er, so come and join this cre­ative oppor­tu­ni­ty to share wis­dom with the peo­ple of Bath, and the odd tourist. Meet at the FreeShop stall out­side the Pump Rooms on Stall Street Sat­ur­day at 1.30pm, and let the games com­mence at 2pm. Bring musi­cal instru­ments, a sense of play­ful­ness, and pom-poms to cheer on your side. Oh, and dress to impress!

Sum­mit For The Week­end

In a few weeks’ time, the lead­ers of the world’s rich­est 19 coun­tries, plus del­e­gates from all EU states, will be meet­ing in Lon­don to dis­cuss deep­en­ing the glob­al reces­sion. And as it is get­ting more and more obvi­ous that it is them and their fat­cat and banker bud­dies who have got us into this mess, we’ll be there to meet them! The week of action kicks off with the ‘Put Peo­ple First’ march on Sat­ur­day the 28th. Meet­ing at 11am at the Embank­ment, it calls for “jobs, jus­tice and cli­mate” and is shap­ing up to be pret­ty huge. The demo will con­sist of thou­sands of peo­ple who’ve had just enough of ‘busi­ness as usu­al’, as well as the usu­al sus­pects: social­ists, envi­ron­men­tal­ists, trade union­ists and anar­chists. This will be fol­lowed up by sev­er­al mid­week events, start­ing with ‘Storm The Banks’: start­ing at 11am on Wednes­day the 1st of April, four simul­ta­ne­ous protests will make their way into the heart of London’s finan­cial dis­tricts, where some will par­ty, some will protest and some will be a lit­tle bit naugh­ti­er! There’s room enough for all forms of dis­sent — peace­ful pro­test­ers, direct action enthu­si­asts, expe­ri­enced and inex­pe­ri­enced pro­tes­tors alike. Towards the end of the event, the Net­work for Cli­mate Action have called for a camp to be set up in the finan­cial dis­trict to oppose the car­bon-dri­ven econ­o­my that led to this reces­sion – bring a sleep­ing bag, food, and sense of adven­ture, ‘cos this one’s not to be missed! The fol­low­ing day will see a series of protests around the venue of the G20 sum­mit (the ExCeL Cen­tre), dur­ing which some will attempt to block the del­e­gates out, some will try to get in, and oth­ers will hold a ral­ly. The actions are look­ing to be pret­ty dynam­ic, so if you’re feel­ing pissed of at the state we’re in, then this is the event for you. Peo­ple will be trav­el­ling to all of the events from Bath, so to find some­one to trav­el down with, drop Bath Activist Net­work an email to the usu­al address. What will you tell your grand­kids when they ask you where you were when the rev­o­lu­tion start­ed? (Not up late slav­ing over two-bit rad­i­cal news rags, we hope!)

http://www.g‑20meltdown.org/
http://www.putpeoplefirst.org.uk/
http://stopwar.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1084&Itemid=1

Tak­ing Lib­er­ties Back

On Sun­day the 22nd of March (a week lat­er than usu­al, for those who’re pay­ing atten­tion), the lat­est in the series of ‘Bub­bling Under’ film screen­ings will roll at the Porter Cel­lar on George Street, from 1pm. This month’s film, pre­sent­ed by Bris­tol Indy­media, will be ‘The Take’: in the wake of Argenti­na’s dra­mat­ic eco­nom­ic col­lapse of 2001, Latin Amer­i­ca’s most pros­per­ous mid­dle class sud­den­ly found itself wan­der­ing a ghost town of aban­doned fac­to­ries and mass unem­ploy­ment. The For­ja auto plant lay dor­mant too, until its for­mer employ­ees decid­ed to take it back, and refused to leave! Fac­ing off against boss­es, bankers and a whole sys­tem that sees their beloved fac­to­ries as noth­ing more than scrap met­al for sale, the work­ers are part of a dar­ing new grass­roots move­ment of work­ers who occu­py bank­rupt busi­ness­es and cre­ate jobs and viable futures in the ruins of crum­bling economies – it remains to be seen whether Batho­ni­ans will fol­low suit! Direct­ed by jour­nal­ist Avi Lewis and writer Nao­mi Klein.

http://www.thetake.org/index.cfm?page_name=argentina_hostpry_timeline

EVENTS

Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs meet­ings, 2nd and 4th Mon­day of the month, 8pm, The Bell, Wal­cot Street

Lon­don Road Food Co-op, Wednes­days, 4–7pm, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Lon­don Road

Bath Stop The War Coali­tion vig­il, Sat­ur­days, 11.30am-12.30, Bath Abbey Court­yard

Bath FreeShop, Sat­ur­day 14th March, 12–3pm, out­side Pump Rooms, Stall Street

Broad­lands Orchard­share Vol­un­teer­ing Day, Sat­ur­day 14 Mar, 12–4pm, Broad­lands Orchard, Box Road, Bath­ford, email broad­land­sor­chard­share [at] googlemail.com or phone 07532 472 256

Reclaim­ing Pub­lic Space street par­ty, Sat­ur­day 14th March, 2–3pm, base of Mil­som Street

Nation­al Squat Meet 2009, Sat­ur­day 14th – Sun­day 15th March, some­where in Bris­tol!, FTI near­er the time site or call 07790073015

‘Build­ing Bridges in the Sum­mer of Rage,’ Wednes­day 18th March, 7.30pm, Kebele, 14 Robert­son Road, Bris­tol: dis­cus­sion on anar­chist iden­ti­ty and pub­lic engage­ment: shar­ing ideas and tac­tics for mak­ing anar­chism more acces­si­ble and vis­i­ble. Free/donation.

‘ Garbage War­rior’ screen­ing, Thurs­day 19th March, 7.30pm, upstairs at the Cork, West­gate Street, dona­tion entry

Sol­i­dar­i­ty pick­et with EDO Decom­mis­sion­er defen­dants on remand in prison, Sat­ur­day 21st March, 3pm, meet at cor­ner of Cam­bridge and Glouces­ter Road, Bris­tol, bring fly­ers, plac­ards, ban­ners and noise­mak­ers: http://decommisioners.wordpress.com/2009/03/03/resistin…rime
Send let­ters of sup­port and sol­i­dar­i­ty to the 2 polit­i­cal pris­on­ers: Robert Alford VP 7552 HMP Lewes , 1 Brighton Rd, Lewes, Sus­sex, BN7 1EA; Eli­ja Smith VP 7551 HMP Bris­tol, 19 Cam­bridge Rd, Hor­field, BS7 8PS;
See here for info on writ­ing to the pris­on­ers:
http://bristolabc.wordpress.com/2009/01/30/things-to-do…mand/

Bub­bling Under screen­ing, Sun­day 22th March, 1–4pm, Porter Cel­lar bar, George Street

‘The Age of Stu­pid’ eco film screen­ings, Sun­day 22nd – Tues­day 24th March, 6pm, 8.30pm & 1pm, Lit­tle The­atre, £6.90 entry

Greek Rebel­lion Info Tour, Fri­day 27th March, 7.30pm, Kebele, 14 Robert­son Rd, Bris­tol

‘Put Peo­ple First’ march, Sat­ur­day 28th March, 11am, Lon­don, http://www.putpeoplefirst.org.uk/

Bris­tol Anar­chist Book­fair 09 punk ben­e­fit gig, Sun­day 29th March, 7pm, The Junc­tion, Stokes Croft, £5, with Cross-Stitched Eyes, the A‑Heads and Jesus Bruis­er

‘Green Light’ lec­ture on wind pow­er, Tues­day 31st March, 7pm, BRLSI, 16–18 Queen Square, £3 waged, £1.50 unwaged

Storm The Banks car­ni­val, Wednes­day 1st April, 11am, Lon­don, http://www.g‑20meltdown.org/

Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, Wednes­day 1st April, 7.30–8.30pm, back­room of The Bell, Wal­cot Street

Anti-G20 protests, Thurs­day 2nd April, ExCeL cen­tre, Lon­don, http://stopwar.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1084&Itemid=1

‘Chris Carls­son in Con­ver­sa­tion,’ Fri­day 3rd April, 7.30pm, St Wer­burghs Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Hor­ley Road, Bris­tol, talk by the author of ‘Now­topia’, a founder of crit­i­cal mass bike-ins, mem­ber of San Fran­cis­co rad­i­cal his­to­ry group, http://www.nowtopia.org

Bath Friends of the Earth meet­ing, Mon­day 6th April, 8pm, Still­point, Broad Street Place, Broad Street

Bath Green Drinks, Wednes­day 8th April, 8.30pm, the Rum­mer, Grand Parade

Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, Thurs­day 9th April, 7.30–9pm, down­stairs at The Hob­gob­lin, St James Parade

Bath FreeShop, Sat­ur­day 11th April, 12–3pm, out­side Pump Rooms, Stall Street

Bath Green­peace meet­ing, Mon­day 13th April, 7.30–9pm, Still­point, Broad Street Place

Tran­si­tion Open Forum, Tues­day 14th April, 7pm, Wid­combe Social Club

‘Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay: From Poll Tax Rebel­lion to Reces­sion Resis­tance’ talk and film, Thurs­day 23rd April, 7.30pm, The Cube cin­e­ma, Dove Street South, Bris­tol

World Day for Lab Ani­mals march, Sat­ur­day 25th April, Hyde Park, Lon­don, coach leav­ing Bath £10n waged, £8 unwaged, info@wdail.org to book place

The­o­ry Cor­ner: Safe­ty Or Snob­bery? B&NES vs. NFA Round 3

Last week, the Chron­i­cle gave front page to the sto­ry of a young woman ASBO’d out of Bath for three years, the third home­less per­son to be sim­i­lar­ly eject­ed in as many months. Yet how much of a threat is the home­less com­mu­ni­ty to the rest of the city’s pop­u­la­tion? Are they thiev­ing, anti-social and threat­en­ing like the Coun­cil, or are they on the receiv­ing end of B&NES syco­phan­tic dri­ve to sweep away any­thing ‘unde­sir­able’ from the eyes of the wealthy? And before we start with the Dai­ly Mail-esque cries of “it’s their own fault,” sta­tis­tics show that the vast major­i­ty of home­less have been the vic­tims of domes­tic or sex­u­al abuse at a young age, or have served in the armed forces, spat out with­out the skills to inte­grate when they cease being use­ful killers. In this journalist’s expe­ri­ence, I’ve had next to no trou­ble with Bath’s home­less, and only ever once have been threat­ened. There are how­ev­er groups that I have often been made to feel unsafe by – those peo­ple who fol­low the accept­able con­ven­tions of suc­cess­ful soci­ety, who get ham­mered in a bar or club ever week­end before spilling out onto the pic­turesque Geor­gian streets to puke, threat­en passers­by and fight the ear­ly hours away. So why is it the home­less who bear the brunt of B&NES’ right­eous wrath, rather than the bet­ter off, drunk­en lit­tle daddy’s boys?

Well, those who choose to get pissed up in bars and clubs pour their pay­pack­ets into Bath’s econ­o­my. They’re maybe not vis­i­bly dif­fer­ent from you and I, and they fol­low more accept­able out­lets for anti-social behav­iour than Bath’s street dwellers. So a mes­sage to the lit­tle fas­cist gate­keep­ers in office who think it’s okay to decide who stays and who goes: the home­less aren’t a threat and they’re not ver­min. You may not like them, or like see­ing them, but that’s your frag­ile sen­si­bil­i­ties being offend­ed rather than your well­be­ing. B&NES are not expelling the poor for your safe­ty or mine, they’re pur­su­ing gen­tri­fi­ca­tion to impress the tourists and keep this look­ing like a her­itage city, what­ev­er that is. The Council’s ‘out of sight, out of mind’ pol­i­cy is noth­ing short of clas­sist dis­crim­i­na­tion that they get away with because chunks of the pop­u­la­tion view those poor­er than they as some unde­sir­able ‘oth­er’, scared of a stereo­type rather than fact. Until we address the fun­da­men­tal prob­lems at the root of our soci­ety, rather than allow­ing those at the top to bul­ly and vic­timise those in need of sol­i­dar­i­ty, things can only get worse.

And for Sonya: until we sweep the bureau­crats out of our city, don’t let the bas­tards grind you down.

South West Women Reclaim The Night

On Fri­day the 20th of Feb­ru­ary the streets of Bris­tol were brought to life when 300 women marched in sol­i­dar­i­ty to demand safer streets and the right to roam at night with­out fear. The march was won­der­ful­ly colour­ful and com­prised a sam­ba band, bel­ly dancers and females, (and some males) of all ages. The response of onlook­ers was very pos­i­tive and was often joined by bystanders. The march last­ed for two hours and was fol­lowed by speech­es, fundrais­ing and aware­ness-rais­ing stalls and music at the Trin­i­ty Cen­tre in Lawrence Hill.
This was organ­ised with the inten­tion of achiev­ing three key goals.

First­ly, improve­ments in rape con­vic­tion rates: alarm­ing­ly, the con­vic­tion rate of rape cas­es is in decline, being only 4.2% in Avon and Som­er­set, high­light­ing yet anoth­er major prob­lem with the judi­cial sys­tem. Sec­ond­ly, the event sought to obtain vol­un­teers and fund­ing for the Bris­tol Rape Cri­sis Cen­tre (email info [at] bristolrapecrisis.org.uk for more infor­ma­tion). And third­ly, the event also addressed the fact that, whilst sex edu­ca­tion is taught wide­ly in schools, there is still a dis­tinct lack of sup­port and edu­ca­tion avail­able to young­sters on respect­ful rela­tion­ships and safe, con­sen­su­al sex. Incen­tives for such sup­port in schools are advo­cat­ed by var­i­ous organ­i­sa­tions like Wom­en’s Aid, and the Nation­al Children’s Bureau, whose cam­paign ‘Beyond Biol­o­gy’ seeks to help young peo­ple pre­pare for the issues they will face as they grow up. If you would like to encour­age your local school to take this issue more seri­ous­ly, a mod­el let­ter is avail­able through the fol­low­ing link: http://www.bristolfeministnetwork.com/activism.html.

All in all, the event was a great suc­cess and will hope­ful­ly bring women a step clos­er to the free­dom they con­tin­ue to fight for.

Bath Activist Net­work are a local umbrel­la group cam­paign­ing on issues as diverse as devel­op­ment, envi­ron­men­tal­ism, anti-war, ani­mal rights, work­ers’ rights and more. Help­ing to pro­duce The Bath Bomb, we are open to any­one, and our mem­bers range from trade union­ists to anar­chists, lib­er­als to greens, and peo­ple who just want to change Bath for the bet­ter. For details on meet­ings, demos, or just to get in touch, email bathac­tivist­net [at] yahoo.co.uk, or see our web­site: www.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com

GOT A STORY? WANT TO RECEIVE THE BATH BOMB BY EMAIL? HOPING TO SUE? Con­tact us by e‑mailing bath­bomb­press [at] yahoo.co.uk. Large print e‑versions avail­able on request.

Can’t Pay, Shouldn’t Pay

As the reces­sion con­tin­ues to bite, a group in Bath have had an ear­ly tan­gi­ble suc­cess in their effort to stop the work­ing class bear­ing the brunt of an upper class cri­sis. A Bath res­i­dent approached the group’s reg­u­lar ‘Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay’ stall in White­way as a sud­den job cut had left the fam­i­ly strug­gling and unable to pay Coun­cil Tax. Good ol’ B&NES did the decent thing and imme­di­ate­ly resort­ed to court and repos­ses­sion threats. For­tu­nate­ly, the campaign’s legal team were able to inter­vene, stop the court action, and get repay­ments fixed at a rea­son­able, humane lev­el. A small start, of course, and it’s going to be a long fight, but the White­way group have expe­ri­enced solic­i­tors, a high lev­el of com­mu­ni­ty sup­port, and a will­ing­ness to put bailiffs in their place, wher­ev­er that might be. If you know some­one hav­ing prob­lems with bailiffs, or have any infor­ma­tion on the activ­i­ties, move­ments or where­abouts of these par­a­sites, you can con­tact the cam­paign con­fi­den­tial­ly on resist­bailiffs [at] yahoo.co.uk, or give them a call on 07794 774938.

Bird Abusers Get Cocky

After a slight lull in the local anti-foie gras cam­paign (at least we had one issue off) – caused by the scum being dri­ven under­ground by spir­it­ed protests – some opti­misti­cal­ly-called restau­ra­teurs decid­ed to stick their heads back above the para­pet. Appar­ent­ly dis­ap­point­ed that the reces­sion has yet to fin­ish them off, the masochists at Beau­jo­lais, off Queen Square, have placed the ‘del­i­ca­cy’ back on the menu. Not con­tent with attract­ing the inevitable noisy con­tin­gent of ani­mal rights activists to a series of demos out­side their premis­es, they’ve also decid­ed to charge enough that most of their cus­tomers will prob­a­bly be join­ing the demo once they see the bill… If you’re one of the rare minor­i­ty of locals who haven’t yet been hand­ed a leaflet about foie gras, it’s a pate made from duck or goose liv­er. But to get the per­fect tex­ture, the unfor­tu­nate birds spend the last 12 weeks of their lives in bat­tery cages, being force-fed through a tube shoved down their throats, until their dis­eased liv­ers swell to ten times the nat­ur­al size. It’s ille­gal to pro­duce in the UK, but EU laws allow posh-poseur restau­rants to acquire the slop, dodgy black mar­ket-style, and sell it on at a huge mark-up to the crowds of wealthy aris­to-wannabes who throng Bath cen­tre in the evenings. And so, the first in a short series of week­ly demos will be hap­pen­ing soon out­side a Beau­jo­lais near you. Save the birds! Starve the rich! After all, what else is there to do on a Fri­day night?

www.banfoiegras.org.uk

Off The Map, But Still Squat­ting The Lot

In a fol­low-up to last month, two days after the ille­gal evic­tion of a squat­ted prop­er­ty in Twer­ton, mem­bers of the Squat­ters Com­mu­ni­ty Asso­ci­a­tion of Bath retook their home. Despite the first legal hash-job, and Net­work Rail’s inep­ti­tude in secur­ing the build­ing or indeed the occu­piers’ pos­ses­sions with­in, the SCABs report that they are cur­rent­ly safe and sound back in from the win­ter rain, wind, snow (and what­ev­er else the con­fused cli­mate is pass­ing off as weath­er), and work has re-com­menced erad­i­cat­ing damp and dry rot from the inte­ri­or of the his­toric build­ing, replac­ing dam­aged beams, ren­der­ing the sab­o­taged pow­er sup­ply safe, and clear­ing debris. Indeed, whilst Net­work Rail is more inter­est­ed in piss­ing mon­ey away on bailiffs and illic­it prop­er­ty empire expan­sion than actu­al­ly see­ing to the work of main­tain­ing its sub­stan­dard and over­priced rail net­work, the occu­pants are get­ting down to the duty of clean­ing away the tan­gled foliage on the out­side of the build­ing, that near­by res­i­dents had been demand­ing for years. In the mean­time, fur­ther threats of police raids were made on the 18th of last month, but a six­teen-strong resis­tance demo and com­mu­ni­ca­tions from the Advi­so­ry Ser­vice for Squat­ters per­suad­ed bul­ly­ish British Trans­port Police to no-show.

http://www.squatter.org.uk/

The Dai­ly New Tesco Express

They breed like flies, don’t they? No soon­er than the monop­o­lis­ing spoilt brats whee­dle their new store onto Bath­wick Street, but there’s due to be anoth­er one tak­ing over the exist­ing Somer­field in West­on. And they’ve also been upset­ting res­i­dents by apply­ing for a 6am to 11pm liquor license that the spine­less Coun­cil will no doubt grant. Must be déjà vu.

http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/news/Concern-Tesco-drinks-licence-bid/article-744662-detail/article.html

BNP Can’t Do That There Here

What’s in a name? Nick Grif­fin, leader of far right nation­al­ist BNP, would have posed the exact same ques­tion on Sun­day the 8th of March, when he was due to talk at a fundrais­ing char­i­ty do for the party’s Euro elec­tions. The BNP are so respectable that they were forced to book the func­tion room of the Park Hotel in Glouces­ter­shire under a false name, as usu­al. How­ev­er, as antifas­cists organ­ised to gate­crash, the hotel itself was tipped off as to nature of their hate­mon­ger­ing guests and can­celled, as did their back-up venue. So, instead they all went home, tails between legs. Despite the party’s new dri­ve towards legit­i­ma­cy – “we’re not racist, but” – the ongo­ing free ‘Soho Road to the Pun­jab’ exhi­bi­tion in Bris­tol, cel­e­brat­ing 50 years of Bhangra music & cul­ture in the UK (sit­u­at­ed in Cen­tral Library off Col­lege Green), has recent­ly been attacked by racists who stole exhi­bi­tion mate­ri­als and left behind a BNP call­ing card. Equal­ly com­pro­mis­ing the party’s be-suit­ed facade is the fact that many high-up mem­bers of the group, such as for­mer chief lieu­tenant Tony Lecomber, dab­ble in assault, explo­sives, arson, assault and even the odd attempt­ed con­tract killing. Fun for all the fam­i­ly, eh?

http://lancasteruaf.blogspot.com/2009/03/anger-as-bnp‑l.…html
http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/the-real-bnp/BNP terroris…s.php

Ero­sion Of Civ­il Lib­er­ties: Case #324

Since the 16th of last month, the Ter­ror­ism Act 2000 was amend­ed by sec­tion 76 of the Counter-Ter­ror­ism Act 2008, now mak­ing it ille­gal to take pho­tos, or indeed to “elic­it infor­ma­tion” about police intel­li­gence ser­vices, or the mil­i­tary, which might be “use­ful to a per­son… prepar­ing an act of ter­ror­ism.” Which seems okay, if you lived in a par­al­lel world where the def­i­n­i­tion of ter­ror doesn’t get stretched to the point of ridicu­lous­ness where leafleters, CND Quak­ers or let­ter-writ­ers are con­sid­ered ter­ror­ist: the pen may be might­i­er than the sword, but it’s hard­ly on the scale of nail­bombs. Pre­vi­ous to this, the pres­ence of cam­eras has often been a use­ful tool for keep­ing police with­in the law, or at least aid­ing in pros­e­cu­tions against them… So remem­ber, gen­tle tourists, don’t acci­den­tal­ly catch a cop­per in your hol­i­day snaps, or you might be one of them for­eign ter­ror­ists, and go down for 10 years.

http://www.bjp-online.com/public/showPage.html?page=839141

And now, to the dis­claimer: As any­one is free to con­tribute, the opin­ions expressed in each arti­cle are not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflec­tive of each con­trib­u­tor. Nat­u­ral­ly, any right-wing or cor­po­rate bull­shit will be binned and spat on. Need­less to say, the opin­ions of the author of this dis­claimer does not nec­es­sar­i­ly rep­re­sent the views of any oth­er con­trib­u­tor…

For fur­ther info on any of our sto­ries see www.thebathbomb.blogspot.com