Category: South West England

South West Eng­land

SOLIDARITY WITH MIGRANT WORKERS: DEMO AT AMEY HQ, OXFORD: MON 8TH DEC

SOLIDARITY WITH SACKED MIGRANT WORKERS 8/12/08

On Mon­day the 8th Decem­ber at 11.00am there will be a noisy demo out­side
Amey PLC’s Cor­po­rate HQ in Oxford (address below)called by the Cam­paign
Against Immi­gra­tion Con­trols, and The No Bor­ders Net­work

In Sep­tem­ber this year 5 migrant clean­ers were sacked by Amey Plc for “bring­ing the com­pa­ny into dis­re­pute”.

SOLIDARITY WITH SACKED MIGRANT WORKERS 8/12/08

On Mon­day the 8th Decem­ber at 11.00am there will be a noisy demo out­side
Amey PLC’s Cor­po­rate HQ in Oxford (address below)called by the Cam­paign
Against Immi­gra­tion Con­trols, and The No Bor­ders Net­work

In Sep­tem­ber this year 5 migrant clean­ers were sacked by Amey Plc for “bring­ing the com­pa­ny into dis­re­pute”.

(Those of you with long mem­o­ries may remem­ber Amey as the con­trac­tor for What­ley Quar­ry way back when in 1996.)

How were they dam­ag­ing the com­pa­ny image? By belong­ing to a Trade Union and telling oth­er staff at the Nation­al Phys­i­cal Lab­o­ra­to­ry (NPL) in Lon­don where they work what was hap­pen­ing to them. Since them they have had their appeal against dis­missal reject­ed.

Back­ground:

Julio (one of the sacked clean­ers) recent­ly described how Amey were con­tract­ed by the Nation­al Phys­i­cal Lab­o­ra­to­ry to do the clean­ing work. Orig­i­nal­ly there were 36 Latin Amer­i­can clean­ers. When Amey took over the con­tract at NPL the clean­ers were paid £7.10 per hour. The com­pa­ny were sur­prised at this rate of pay and so attempt­ed to get rid of those work­ers con­tract­ed at this rate of pay.

Their first act was to reduce the lev­els of staffing. When the work­ers resist­ed the com­pa­ny respond­ed using intim­i­da­tion. On one occa­sion the work­ers were invit­ed to a health and safe­ty train­ing ses­sion. Once in the room 60 police and immi­gra­tion offi­cers entered. Some of the work­ers did not have the papers need­ed to work and have since been deport­ed.

But this did not deter the oth­er work­ers who knew their rights and con­tin­ued to show a tremen­dous spir­it of sol­i­dar­i­ty and courage.

No Bor­ders Groups from Bristol,Oxford,London & South Wales are attend­ing. It would be great see oth­er groups and indi­vid­u­als there.

Trans­port is avail­able from Bris­tol. E‑mail: bristolnoborders@riseup.net

About The Cam­paign Against Immi­gra­tion Con­trols:

Immi­gra­tion con­trols are a weapon against the whole work force. They divide us and are a tool of dis­ci­pline the work­force. If there are work­ers with less right or no rights, this under­mines the posi­tion of work­ers as a whole. The answer must be to oppose immi­gra­tion con­trols. EQUAL RIGHTS ARE IN THE INTERESTS OF ALL WORKERS!

http://caic.org.uk/

About The No Bor­ders Net­work:

No Bor­ders is a net­work of groups strug­gling for the free­dom of move­ment for all and an end to all migra­tion con­trols. We call for a rad­i­cal move­ment against the sys­tem of con­trol, divid­ing us into cit­i­zens and non-cit­i­zens.

/www.noborders.org.uk

Amey
The Sher­ard Build­ing
Oxford Sci­ence Park
Edmund Hal­ley Road
Oxford
OX4 4DQ

“I got a let­ter from the gov­ern­ment the oth­er day, I opened and read it, it said they were suck­ers” Chuck D

48 hours of action against E.ON and new coal — pre-advertised events this Friday & Saturday

The 48 hours of action against E.ON and new coal are near­ly upon us, and final prepa­ra­tions are being made. Below is a selec­tion of pub­lic actions that have been organ­ised. You can also find infor­ma­tion and resources, includ­ing a media Q&A, on the E.ON F.OFF web­site at http://www.eon-foff.com

E.on F.off logoThe 48 hours of action against E.ON and new coal are near­ly upon us, and final prepa­ra­tions are being made. Below is a selec­tion of pub­lic actions that have been organ­ised. You can also find infor­ma­tion and resources, includ­ing a media Q&A, on the E.ON F.OFF web­site at http://www.eon-foff.com

Plus invite your friends to the Face­book event:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=32617789333

Plus post your reports from the day on www.indymedia.org.uk and here

Fri­day 28th Novem­ber

COVENTRY
Join War­wick Uni stu­dents at E.ON’s head­quar­ters in Coven­try.
Meet at 12pm on the piaz­za. We’ll march from there to the Head­quar­ters, arrive there about 12:30. Once there, there’ll be loads going on, includ­ing… .a ‘Catch the Car­bon’ com­pe­ti­tion, drum­ming work­shop, a mass die-in, visu­al­ly show­ing the effects cli­mate change are already hav­ing and more.
For more see: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=34220633837&ref=ts

LONDON
E.ON vs. Green­wash Gueril­las
8am-10am. Meet up in Trafal­gar Square at 8.00am to head down to E.ON’s Lon­don office at 100 Pall Mall and show E.ON their green­wash won’t wash. All inven­tive green­wash actions wel­come!

LONDON
World Devel­op­ment Move­ment kids demo at E.ON
Meet at 10am in Trafal­gar Square for the chil­dren to add their foot­prints to the ban­ner, then take our foot­prints to a ‘No new coal’ protest out­side E.ON’s Lon­don offices in Pall Mall. Come along with your chil­dren and par­tic­i­pate

Sat­ur­day 29th Novem­ber

LONDON
Stop Coal Stick­er Rush
Keep the pres­sure up on E.ON by spread­ing the word and putting up some E.ON F.OFF & Stop Coal stick­ers — you can get them from the Coal Hole (91–92 Strand, WC2R 0DW) from 1pm-3pm on Sat­ur­day.

NORWICH
Spoof E.on Recruit­ment Stall
Loca­tion — Out­side RBS, 5 Queen Street, Nor­wich.
Time — 12noon — 2pm, Sat­ur­day 29 Novem­ber.

Tar­get­ting Roy­al Bank of Scot­land the financier of New Coal and Eon

Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide is tar­get­ting the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land the financier or cli­mate chaos

Come and join in a day of shenani­gans tar­get­ted on RBS (now 60% owned by the British Tax­pay­er), the financier of new coal devel­op­ment in the UK. Be a bank rob­ber or help the cooks with their recipe for dis­as­ter!

Meet­ing at the ruined church at 12.00 on Cas­tle Green, then onto the RBS branch in Bald­win Street around 12.15, NatWest in Corn Street around 12.45 and then RBS insur­ance in Nel­son St around 1.15.

Par­ty and Protest in defi­ance of E‑on (own­ers of Kingsnorth) and coal expan­sion with solar pow­ered sound sys­tem and free cake 3.00 pm at the Hip­po­drome, St Augustines Parade

TopShop SwapShop (London), Buy Nothing Day action (+ Steal Something Day) + Leeds + Liverpool + Bristol

Ladies and Gen­tle­men we are proud to announce the restyling fash­ion mash-up event of the year!

TOPSHOP SWAPSHOP
2pm Sat 29th Novem­ber – Top­shop Oxford Street
Cred­it Crunch!

Ladies and Gen­tle­men we are proud to announce the restyling fash­ion mash-up event of the year!
Top Shop Swap Shop buy nothing day flier
TOPSHOP SWAPSHOP
2pm Sat 29th Novem­ber – Top­shop Oxford Street
Cred­it Crunch!

In the light of the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cri­sis and the out­rage over the sweat­shop con­di­tions that most high street brands make their clothes in, the swap­shop is your chance to re-vamp your wardrobe with a free con­science! Leap­ing away from the drudgery of big cor­po­rate fash­ion with it’s dodgy busi­ness prac­tices and spend spend spend atti­tude, the Top­shop swap­shop takes fash­ion back to it’s roots.

Sim­ply turn up at TOPSHOP on Oxford Street wear­ing an out­fit you wish to upgrade, then on the stroke of 2, mar­vel as hun­dreds of fash­ion moguls offer to trade your clothes with you.

Fan­cy that girls jumper? Why not offer to swap your belt for it?
That boy’s hat is to die for, how about a trade for your jeans?
Nice skirt, fan­cy trad­ing my t‑shirt for it?

After a hec­tic re-work­ing of your look you can then walk proud­ly back onto the streets of Lon­don town with a new wardrobe and not hav­ing spent a sin­gle pen­ny.

You can buy lots of clothes but you can’t buy style.

Please spread far and wide…

DISCLAIMER:

The above event is in no way sup­port­ed or con­doned by Top­Shop. Any sim­i­lar­i­ty to any brand liv­ing or dead is mere­ly coin­ci­den­tal.

http://www.spacehijackers.org

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Steal Something Day
Steal Some­thing Day, a shame­less 24-hour steal­ing spree! a cri­tique of BND and call to action, recy­cled from pre­vi­ous years for your enter­tain­ment

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Buy Noth­ing Day Leeds

In Brig­gate this Sat­ur­day (29th of Nov) there will be a Buy Noth­ing extrav­a­gan­za. We will have Christ­mas car­ols telling peo­ple of the woes of shop­ping, there will be hot tea and cof­fee to help ex-shop­pers read­just to there new found hap­pi­ness, and ideas of presents that do not involve con­sumerism. From
11am — till dark we will be ask­ing peo­ple to ques­tion con­sumerism and join us in buy­ing noth­ing!

Last year was a major suc­cess and BND strikes again. Please bake cakes, bring food and any­thing you would like to give away. There will be a free shop, music and tables. Bring any­thing down to join in the par­ty!
Leeds BND

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Liv­er­pool
Buy Nothing Day (Liverpool) flier
next to nowhere is proud to present an oppor­tu­ni­ty for all the liv­er­pool activists to join togeth­er in a spir­it of togeth­er­ness, open­ness & com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

i guess we can all agree that over-con­sump­tion is a very bad thing & i reck­on that most of us see cap­i­tal­ism as the root of the sick­ness that is infest­ing our soci­ety. yes?
any­one a racist? no? oh my, we seem to have some­thing in com­mon after all!

well, on sat­ur­day 29th novem­ber it’s time to put your mutu­al aid where your mouth is.

at 11am maybe meet & greet nick grif­fin (bnp) who could be plea­sur­ing our city with his pres­ence in his bid to become mep for the north west of eng­land. he’s called for the par­ty faith­ful to gath­er in protest at thear­rest of sev­er­al mem­bers last week. are we real­ly going to let this hap­pen?
meet at the top of church street at 10am.

after­wards, from 12pm, the social cen­tre shall be trans­formed into an oasis of anti-cap­i­tal­ism.

we’ll have:
a fab­u­lous free-shop full of qual­i­ty free good­ies,
free tea n’ cof­fee,
veg­an cafe (dona­tions only),
open mic, film, per­for­mance, spo­ken word…

now, i know that some peo­ple are a bit scared of actu­al­ly get­ting involved in next to nowhere, prefer­ing to dis­cuss the short­com­ings of the book­ing pol­i­cy from a safe dis­tance. just to be clear, and restate the bot­tom line of next to nowhere from its con­sti­tu­tion — every­one is wel­come to get involved at the social cen­tre pro­vid­ed that they are will­ing to work in a non-hier­ar­chi­cal way through con­sen­sus.

‘actions speak loud­er than words’ — please can peo­ple work togeth­er in mutu­al sup­port to help make this world a bet­ter place and take on the evils which are fuck­ing up our world or say noth­ing and stop this on-going crit­i­cism from the side­lines, whilst doing noth­ing at nowhere.

who knows, the open-mic forum could even pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple to express their feel­ings about the social cen­tre, in a non-hier­ar­chi­cal way of course!
or, we could just have a good old-fash­ioned knees up…

togeth­er, let’s start to dance on the graves of mul­ti-nation­al cor­po­ra­tions!

feistyfingers[at]yahoo.co.uk
http://www.liverpoolsocialcentre.org

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Buy Noth­ing Day 2008 — Freeshop in Broad­mead, Bris­tol

Free shop, live music, cir­cus skills and face paint­ing? UWE stu­dents from the Peo­ple and Plan­et soci­ety are going to be tak­ing part in a ‘buy noth­ing day’ and will be run­ning a free shop on Sat­ur­day, bright­en­ing up the cold, grey, win­try streets of Bris­tol city cen­tre.

To recap­ture some of that lost Christ­mas Spir­it (the giv­ing that is, not the spend­ing!) we’ll be giv­ing away clothes, bric-a-brac and plen­ty more lit­tle gems for you to get your mitts on as well as bring­ing a lit­tle sun­shine to the often not-so-hap­py shop­pers of Bris­tol. If you have any­thing you want to get rid of, bring it along!

We’re look­ing for vol­un­teers to help inform and enter­tain (musi­cians, cir­cus enter­tain­ers, etc) so if your game bring your uni­cy­cle down and get involved! It kicks off at 11am and will be run­ning till 4pm, so Pop down to our mar­quee in-between the Gal­leries and Cabot Cir­cus (Just down from Ann Sum­mers!).

For more info e‑mail Lisa at lisatozer@hotmail.com

I’ll see you there!

A report from the No Borders network gathering

A report from No Bor­ders gath­er­ing in New­cas­tle

On 9 & 10 Novem­ber a gath­er­ing of No Bor­ders activists was held in New­cas­tle with groups and indi­vid­u­als from Brighton, Bris­tol, South Wales, Lon­don, Oxford, Man­ches­ter, Leeds, New­cas­tle, Edin­burgh and Glas­gow tak­ing part. Alto­geth­er, about 50–60 peo­ple attend­ed.

A report from No Bor­ders gath­er­ing in New­cas­tle

On 9 & 10 Novem­ber a gath­er­ing of No Bor­ders activists was held in New­cas­tle with groups and indi­vid­u­als from Brighton, Bris­tol, South Wales, Lon­don, Oxford, Man­ches­ter, Leeds, New­cas­tle, Edin­burgh and Glas­gow tak­ing part. Alto­geth­er, about 50–60 peo­ple attend­ed.

Sat­ur­day began with report backs from local groups, giv­ing us an impres­sion of the activ­i­ty of the No Bor­ders net­work. Oppo­si­tion against ID cards and the IOM, and actions against depor­ta­tion air­lines and immi­gra­tion snatch squads, are as much part of the No Bor­ders agen­da as is sol­i­dar­i­ty with detainees, depor­tees and migrant work­ers. It was obvi­ous that the vol­ume and vari­ety of actions is one of the strengths of the net­work which has helped it to con­tin­ue to devel­op and grow with­out los­ing momen­tum.

The inter­na­tion­al dimen­sion of the net­work was stressed when peo­ple told of large-scale block­ades of a deten­tion cen­tre in Bel­gium, of Ham­burg air­port to stop depor­ta­tions, and of the attempt to dis­man­tle a deten­tion cen­tre in Den­mark. Peo­ple felt it is increas­ing­ly impor­tant to con­tin­ue devel­op­ing info and action-shar­ing net­works with peo­ple across Europe and else­where. UK No Bor­ders activists are mak­ing con­nec­tions with cam­paign­ers in North­ern France to high­light the sit­u­a­tion of hun­dreds of refugees trapped in Calais.

Dis­cus­sions also devel­oped around the idea of orga­niz­ing a big­ger No Bor­ders event in the future that would include actions and info-shar­ing.

On Sun­day, the need to devel­op No Bor­ders pol­i­tics was stressed in a dis­cus­sion on ‘who are our allies’. At a local lev­el, whilst work­ing on some issues in coali­tion with groups and organ­i­sa­tions that dif­fer in char­ac­ter, No Bor­ders has a firm­ly anti-cap­i­tal­ist and anti-author­i­tar­i­an stance. Over all, the net­work reit­er­at­ed its explic­it anti-cap­i­tal­ist and anti-author­i­tar­i­an posi­tion, and a group formed to work on pub­lic­i­ty that offers an eas­i­ly acces­si­ble guide to No Bor­ders pol­i­tics. This could take the form of writ­ten pub­li­ca­tions and media projects such as the devel­op­ment of a film.

All in all, shar­ing infor­ma­tion and sto­ries was an inspir­ing expe­ri­ence and by strength­en­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions and net­work-wide tac­tics, peo­ple across the UK will con­tin­ue to devel­op their ideas and inspire each oth­er to take action against bor­ders and to pro­mote free­dom of move­ment for all.

The next gath­er­ing is pro­posed for February/March 2009 in Bris­tol
www.noborders.org.uk

2 weeks of Rooftop Occupation. Public Meeting Called with P4P

ROOFTOP OCCUPIERS CALL FOR PUBLIC MEETING TO DISCUSS THE FUTURE OF 87 ASHLEY ROAD, ST PAUL’S, BRISTOL

10.00am today (Wednes­day) marked 2 weeks of the rooftop occu­pa­tion — WE’RE STILL HERE!

Ashley Road bannerROOFTOP OCCUPIERS CALL FOR PUBLIC MEETING TO DISCUSS THE FUTURE OF 87 ASHLEY ROAD, ST PAUL’S, BRISTOL

10.00am today (Wednes­day) marked 2 weeks of the rooftop occu­pa­tion — WE’RE STILL HERE!

On Thurs­day 27th of Novem­ber an open pub­lic meet­ing is being held in The St Pauls Learn­ing Cen­tre at 6.30pm to dis­cuss this sit­u­a­tion. Sup­port­ers of the rooftop pro­test­ers will be in atten­dance to answer ques­tions, respond to local con­cerns and open a dia­logue with PfP.

Places for Peo­ple are pub­licly invit­ed to state and open­ly dis­cuss what their inten­tions for 87 Ash­ley Road are. This will help assure every­one that they are in fact going to rehouse peo­ple on the hous­ing wait­ing list.

We hope you can attend.
For fur­ther infor­ma­tion con­tact:
Email: 87AshleyRoad@gmail.com
Phone:07722 786 379

Back­ground:

On Novem­ber 12th 2008 Places for Peo­ple (PfP) exe­cut­ed an evic­tion order on 87 Ash­ley Road, a squat­ted build­ing occu­pied by 20 peo­ple who have been made home­less by this action. This build­ing was unused by PfP for four years and left emp­ty until May 2008 when squat­ters work­ing to house as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble moved in.
PfP have refused all attempts to nego­ti­ate a mutu­al­ly benif­i­cal agree­ment, repeat­ed­ly sub­mit­ted incor­rect pos­ses­sion claims to Bris­tol Mag­is­trates courts and threat­ened ille­gal evic­tion. At one stage the sit­ting mag­is­trate called PfPs rep­re­sen­ta­tion “a right dog’s break­fast.”

As bailif­f’s and builders work­ing on behalf of Places for Peo­ple entered the prop­er­ty sev­er­al squat­ters moved onto the roof to resist evic­tion and have been there ever since.
As far as the courts are con­cerned the evic­tion has been served despite pro­test­ers being on the roof.

This press release is being writ­ten on the 14th day of con­tin­u­al rooftop occu­pa­tion and is being sent to com­mu­ni­ty groups and indi­vid­u­als in the St. Pauls area, and Places for Peo­ple.

Builders have board­ed up all nor­mal exit points from the roof, leav­ing the roof pro­test­ers no safe, imme­di­ate access. PfP have instruct­ed builders to ren­der the prop­er­ty unin­hab­it­able by remov­ing ALL fix­tures and fit­tings.

There are no plan­ning appli­ca­tions cur­rent­ly under con­sid­er­a­tion by Bris­tol City Coun­cil for 87 Ash­ley Road. PfP have been vague about their inten­tions for the prop­er­ty, how­ev­er they have men­tioned plans that would not ben­e­fit any­one on the hous­ing list.

The protest is part of a con­tin­u­ing con­cern over Places for Peo­ple’s treat­ment of emp­ty prop­er­ties and it’s sell­ing off of rental stock on the open mar­ket. PfP are sell­ing prop­er­ties via the “shared own­er­ship” scheme while not replac­ing rental prop­er­ties for those most in need. This will lead to an even­tu­al return to the unaf­ford­able rental mar­ket and a worse deal for low-income fam­i­lies seek­ing decent acco­mo­da­tion.

—

1 week: rooftop Occu­pa­tion of Ash­ley Road update

Update: Dai­ly sol­i­dar­i­ty demon­stra­tions will take place from 4–6pm out­side the house. All are wel­come —-
Sat­ur­day Novem­ber 15, 2008
The rooftop occu­pa­tion has now been going for 81 hours. Morale is high, sup­port has been con­stant and much appre­ci­at­ed. Thank you. There are health and safe­ty ques­tions about Places for Peo­ple bar­ri­cad­ing them up there. Any sup­port, noise or pro­vi­sions is very wel­come! Come and say hel­lo to the 87 crew, still going!

Res­i­dents and squat­ters togeth­er against cor­rupt land­lords!

Bath Bomb #16 out now

The Bath Bomb
@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #16
free/donation
Nov 08

Because now it’s okay to love Amer­i­ca

We Won’t Pay For Their Cri­sis

The Bath Bomb
@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #16
free/donation
Nov 08

Because now it’s okay to love Amer­i­ca

We Won’t Pay For Their Cri­sis

Sat­ur­day the 22nd of Novem­ber sees a new cam­paign tak­ing to the streets of Bath. Going under the slo­gans ‘Can’t pay, Won’t pay’ and ‘We won’t pay for their cri­sis!’, the cam­paign will be tak­ing the fight to the greedy politi­cians, bankers and boss­es who are behind this finan­cial cri­sis. The cam­paign will also focus on pro­tect­ing the rights of aver­age peo­ple and will cen­tre around five key demands – 1) decent coun­cil sub­si­dies on gas and elec­tric bills, 2) afford­able food and hous­ing, 3) bailiffs and repos­ses­sion men out of our com­mu­ni­ties, 4) pro­tec­tion of jobs and ben­e­fits, and 5) full con­trol over the banks that our mon­ey has bailed out. These demands, and the cam­paign itself, are time­ly. Already, in the ear­ly stages of the cri­sis, unem­ploy­ment is up 20%, gas and elec­tric bill prices are up over 40% and home repos­ses­sions are up 70% on last year’s fig­ures. Now more than ever, we need to group togeth­er to pro­tect our­selves against the cal­lous greed of the wealthy. We need to be ready to fight against bailiffs who for too many years have strode unop­posed into our homes. We need to be ready to fight against the ener­gy com­pa­nies who increase our bills, leav­ing thou­sands to freeze while con­tin­u­ing to rake in prof­its. We need to be ready to fight against the gov­ern­ment who cut our ben­e­fits and use our mon­ey to bail out their big busi­ness bud­dies and we need to be ready to fight against the boss­es, who think noth­ing of mak­ing ded­i­cat­ed work­ers redun­dant to keep their own wal­lets fat. We have not caused this cri­sis, nei­ther have we asked for it. It has been caused by greedy politi­cians, bankers and boss­es, chas­ing after the big bucks, not wor­ry­ing about who they crush to get there. Yet who is expect­ed to pay when their shit hits the fan? Us. We are expect­ed to pay with our tax­es, with our jobs and with soar­ing food, rent and gas and elec­tric­i­ty costs. Well no more! This cam­paign is not just about wav­ing plac­ards or ‘mak­ing a point’, it is about win­ning. It is about tak­ing back what is ours from the greedy and wealthy who work so hard to take it from us, and it is a cam­paign that we can win togeth­er. If we are unit­ed in a belief that ‘enough is enough’, and a deter­mi­na­tion not to let them get rich from our labour while we strug­gle to make ends meet, we can and will win this cam­paign. So, to get involved, and wrench con­trol of our lives back from the greedy bas­tards at the top, meet at 12.30pm in the Abbey court­yard on Sat­ur­day the 22nd of Novem­ber.

Nude Girls Do It Togeth­er…

…Union­iz­ing to improve their work­ing con­di­tions, that is. Screen­ing on Sun­day Novem­ber the 30th as part of the month­ly Bub­bling Under rad­i­cal cin­e­ma, from 1 til 4pm, get an eye­ful of ‘Live Nude Girls Unite’, a doc­u­men­tary about the for­ma­tion of the first union of strip­pers in the US. This rau­cous film is to be pre­sent­ed by Bris­tol Indy­media, who are sure to come back with future offer­ings. Entry is free, and the Porter veg­gie lunch is high­ly rec­om­mend­ed. Get your plac­ards out for the lads!

Mini­bar — 0 Mega­BAN — 1

In the lat­est of a long line of foie gras vic­to­ries, Mini­bar have pulled the del­i­ca­cy from their menu after just two demos. At the end of the sec­ond 14 strong-protest, mem­bers of Bath Ani­mal Action and Bath Activist Net­work reached an ami­ca­ble agree­ment with the own­er that foie gras would be removed from the restau­rant with imme­di­ate effect. After this demo, activists paid a short and sharp vis­it to an emi­nent­ly less sen­si­ble foie gras pur­vey­or, Christophe LeCroix, own­er of The Pinch in St Margaret’s build­ings. Start­ing at 9pm, the demo last­ed only 10 min­utes, dur­ing which time the let­ter­box was flood­ed with leaflets, din­ers’ con­ver­sa­tions were drowned out with a bar­rage of noise, leaflets lit­tered the out­side of the build­ing and Christophe, seen cow­er­ing at the back of the restau­rant, brave­ly sent a wait­ress to lock the doors and draw the blinds. Christophe has twice removed and replaced foie gras from his menu, and is now sell­ing again, and despite his macho image, and a his­to­ry of punch­ing and sex­u­al­ly assault­ing both male and female activists, has twice been seen beg­ging pro­test­ers to leave him alone. Well, not any­more. BAA and BAN are back out­side The Pinch until foie gras comes off the menu for good. The protests could come at any time, but for now, we will leave Christophe to pon­der the fact that Hallowe’en is not the only time of year when things go ‘smash’ in the night! All foie gras-relat­ed com­plaints to:

Christophe LeCroix

The Pinch
11 St Margaret’s Build­ings
Bath, BA1 2LP
01225 421251
info@thepinch.biz

Tofu Sal­ad­fest Ahoy!

Sat­ur­day the 22nd Novem­ber is promis­ing to be a busy day for Batho­ni­ans, as we also have the Bath Veg­an Fayre! Run­ning at the Per­cy Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on New King Street from 12 til 3.30pm, all are wel­come to come along and sam­ple the deli­cious food, and find out how those pale and sick­ly lentil-eaters can still scrape up pro­tein enough to draw breath with­out a nice slab of steak or ched­dar. As well as infor­ma­tion on veg­gie health, nutri­tion, envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits, com­pas­sion­ate liv­ing, and veg­an-cater­ing eater­ies in the city, GeneWatch will also be there to talk about genet­ic mod­i­fi­ca­tion of ani­mals in sci­en­tif­ic research, just like the franken-doc­tors do up at Bath Uni­ver­si­ty – such as poten­tial­ly high-risk tam­per­ing with the genes of insects to con­trol food sup­plies. Con­tro­ver­sial? Con­tact eatoutveganbath@yahoo.co.uk for more infor­ma­tion.

www.vegansociety.com/
www.genewatch.org/

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

‘Baked Alas­ka’ film screen­ing, Mon­day 17th Novem­ber, 7.30pm, upstairs at the Rum­mer, Grand Parade

‘We Won’t Pay For Their Cri­sis’ march, Sat­ur­day 22nd Novem­ber, meet­ing 12.30, Bath Abbey Court­yard

Bath Veg­an Fayre, Sat­ur­day 22nd Novem­ber, 12–3.30pm, Per­cy Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, New King Street

Green Light lec­ture: the Sev­ern Bar­rage, Tues­day 25th Novem­ber, 7.30pm, BRLSI, Queen Square

Anti-foie gras demo, Fri­day 28th Novem­ber, meet­ing 7pm, the Cir­cus

‘Open­ing the doors to auton­o­my’: a day of work­shops, activ­i­ties and art­work on urban sur­vival – cred­it crunch­ing strate­gies for get­ting through hard times; from the legal­i­ties and prac­ti­cal­i­ties of squat­ting and resist­ing repossession/eviction & gen­tri­fi­ca­tion to urban for­ag­ing, a bike work­shop, tai chi & self-defence, screen­print­ing and DIY wire­less inter­net – this will be a day of shar­ing skills and build­ing the net­works to not only sur­vive the eco­nom­ic cri­sis but to begin to col­lec­tive­ly shape what may replace it; Sat­ur­day 29th Novem­ber, 11–6pm, the Red Fac­to­ry, Cave Street, St Pauls, Bris­tol

Bub­bling Under, Sun­day 30th Novem­ber, 1–4pm, Porter Cel­lar bar, George Street

Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, Wednes­day 3rd Decem­ber, 7.30–8.30pm, back room of The Bell

Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, Thurs­day 4th Decem­ber, 7.30–9pm, down­stairs Hob­gob­lin

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

Tran­si­tion Bath Forum, Tues­day 9th Decem­ber, 7pm, Wid­combe Social Club

Bath Green Drinks, Wednes­day 10th Decem­ber, 8.30pm, the Rum­mer, Grand Parade

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

Tal­ly Ho-peless

Well, it’s Novem­ber again, so that means hunt­ing season’s back on, and anoth­er 3 or 4 months of pompous red-coat­ed throw­backs and legal grey areas. Although hunt­ing was offi­cial­ly banned in Feb­ru­ary 2005, it turned out to be the one law police chose not to enforce, and a law fraught with so many loop­holes that most hunts could car­ry on just like as they like – pre­tend­ing to fol­low a trail set by a scent­ed rag rather than a fox, when they’re being watched. And so the fine tra­di­tion of hunt sab­o­tage can’t hang up its mud-crust­ed wellies, just yet. On Sat­ur­day the 1st Novem­ber, a small group from Bath, Bris­tol, Pewsey and New­port kept an eye on the Mon­mouthshire Hunt, fol­low­ing leaked info about their meet­ing point. Using cit­ronel­la spray to mask fox scent, cam­eras to mon­i­tor activ­i­ty, and a com­bi­na­tion of hunt­ing horns, voice calls and whips (crack­ing the air, not phys­i­cal­ly strik­ing) to call off or con­fuse the hounds, a crisp autumn day out in the Welsh coun­try­side was enjoyed by all, espe­cial­ly the two pur­sued fox­es that we helped escape. If you want to help save inno­cent lives and reclaim rur­al space from arro­gant thugs, then become an Anti: ring Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs on 07854 062336.

http://hsa.enviroweb.org/hsa.shtml

Green Space: Going, Going, Gone?

Res­i­dents and greens held a protest in Bath on Sat­ur­day the 8th Novem­ber out­side the Guild­hall, hop­ing to save Bathamp­ton Mead­ows from unnec­es­sary devel­op­ment. Poten­tial­ly a vic­tim of yet anoth­er B&NES Coun­cil jobsworth’s twist­ed log­ic, the idea is we can save nature by killing it; in this case, the ancient mead­ow will make way for a 1,400 space Park and Ride con­crete job to abate traf­fic con­ges­tion and pol­lu­tion in the city cen­tre. The prob­lem here is that the main cause of con­ges­tion in Bath is the flow of east to west and west to east through traf­fic, rather than that of dri­vers com­ing into the city, so the Park & Ride will be bare­ly used and what­ev­er slack is saved will just be tak­en up by sup­pressed demand. The con­sul­ta­tion ends after the 14th Novem­ber and the con­sul­ta­tion form can be down­loaded from the Save Bathamp­ton Mead­ows’ site: http://www.savebathamptonmeadows.org.uk. Why not sign up today? It can’t hurt.

Alder-Nasty Antics

One activist from BAN joined 300 oth­ers from around the UK to block­ade the Alder­mas­ton Atom­ic Weapons Estab­lish­ment on Mon­day the 27th Octo­ber, part of the ongo­ing cam­paign to kick weapons of mass destruc­tion out of the UK. AWE Alder­mas­ton is the site where exper­i­ments for the next gen­er­a­tion of unpop­u­lar ‘Tri­dent’ nuclear sub­ma­rine arma­ments will be designed. A major part in this cost­ly scheme is expect­ed to be the ‘Ori­on’ laser facil­i­ty, cur­rent­ly being built. The MoD has also recent­ly applied for plan­ning per­mis­sion to car­ry out ura­ni­um enrich­ment there, too. Pro­test­ers from as far afield as Scot­land, Lon­don, Nor­folk, Ply­mouth and Yeovil took part, meet­ing to plan actions the day before. At 5.30am, activists locked on to bar­rels of con­crete and blocked the first gate, caus­ing police to prompt­ly close the road. Anoth­er group of Green­ham women (Green­ham Com­mon being a famous and long-lived peace camp, run­ning 1981–2000) took a sec­ond, while sev­er­al oth­er groups locked and super­glued them­selves to Tadley gate, the main entrance for fac­tor work­ers. The main gate itself was also held for a short time. Both the Rinky Dink ped­al-pow­ered sound sys­tem and band Seize The Day also showed up. Work at the fac­to­ry was shut down most of the morn­ing, and 33 were charged with Obstruc­tion of the High­way. As usu­al, the state refus­es to heed pub­lic oppo­si­tion to Tri­dent: the cam­paign to shut them down con­tin­ues!

www.tridentploughshares.org

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

When You Threat­en One, You Threat­en All!

So read the ban­ner flut­ter­ing from the win­dow of the 89 Ash­ley Road squat in Bris­tol as bailiffs last week clam­oured at the door to evict the 20 res­i­dents who call the long dis­used build­ing ‘home’. This came as a sur­prise to res­i­dents who had not been served the manda­to­ry 7‑day notice of evic­tion a land­lord is required to pro­vide. What hap­pened next, and what of the sen­ti­men­tal mes­sage adorn­ing the front of the build­ing? Before we find out, a lit­tle look into the his­to­ry, and intend­ed future of the build­ing, those inside, and those who hope to get rich off it. Owned by prop­er­ty devel­op­ers ‘Places for Peo­ple’, the build­ing has been ear­marked for ‘regen­er­a­tion’ (read — gen­tri­fi­ca­tion) along with the sur­round­ing area. Despite the group’s claims that they are pri­mar­i­ly con­vert­ing homes into assist­ed accom­mo­da­tion for the home­less and elder­ly, Ash­ley Road is ear­marked to be turned into lucra­tive pri­vate flats, while the ‘char­i­ta­ble’ group is hap­py to allow oth­er­wise home­less peo­ple to be turfed out into the street at the begin­ning of win­ter. After res­i­dents saw the bailiffs, a call for sup­port was put out, and with­in an hour, around 50 activists, some from Bath, had descend­ed on Ash­ley Road, mak­ing the ille­gal evic­tion a logis­ti­cal impos­si­bil­i­ty. After a tense stand­off, the bailiffs and their police mates left, deject­ed. A vic­to­ry for sol­i­dar­i­ty, and a reprieve for the inhab­i­tants of Ash­ley Road. While the bailiffs will cer­tain­ly return soon, and may in the future be suc­cess­ful in their evic­tion attempts, the response of peo­ple to the fate of the squat demon­strates the pow­er of sol­i­dar­i­ty and col­lec­tive action over the often over­whelm­ing seem­ing forces of author­i­ty and pow­er.

Uncle Bul­gar­ia Weeps

Regret­tably, the Bath Bomb has just learnt about the demise of yet anoth­er of Bath’s great­est insti­tu­tions: Envolve. Who? Under the mot­to ‘Part­ner­ships in Sus­tain­abil­i­ty’, the for­mer envi­ron­men­tal char­i­ty start­ed out 14 years ago as the Bath Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre on Mil­som Street, and did exact­ly what it said on the recy­cled and biodegrad­able tin. Orig­i­nal­ly a resource for green activists and curi­ous passers­by, the cen­tre got too big for its boots, and moved to larg­er premis­es in the sub­ter­ranean tun­nel com­plex beneath Green Park Sta­tion – now depen­dent not just on its bene­fac­tors but also on state fund­ing. But such pay­outs rarely come with­out strings, and that proved the centre’s down­fall. Becom­ing more and more cor­po­rate, Envolve began a cam­paign of ostracism towards its more prag­mat­ic sup­port­ers, who recog­nise that ‘green cap­i­tal­ism’ is a con­tra­dic­tion in terms – they let go of staff and vol­un­teers deemed too rad­i­cal; arbi­trar­i­ly chose between which local cam­paigns have a right to be adver­tised or not; and then, one-by-one, kicked out use­ful but unprof­itable ini­tia­tives, like the green library, farm­ers’ mar­ket offices, meet­ing spaces for local greens, alter­na­tive trans­port offices, car-free schemes and food co-ops – after all, it doesn’t pay to be green. All that remained in the end was busi­ness con­sul­tants, edu­ca­tion offi­cers and a string of com­mu­ni­ty schemes they didn’t quite have the heart to grind out: a text­book exam­ple of state co-option. Hav­ing com­man­deered and neutered yet anoth­er group of poten­tial world-chang­ers, they then cut the fund­ing alto­geth­er – and that was that. The irony is that Envolve was held up entire­ly by com­pas­sion­ate peo­ple ham­strung by the restric­tive con­di­tions of their fund­ing, danc­ing to the master’s tune… but the road to hell is paved with good inten­tions. We here at the Bath Bomb hate to say I told you so, but… Let’s hope their suc­ces­sors, the Eth­i­cal Prop­er­ty Com­pa­ny, don’t go the same way.

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, ring us on 07949 611912, email bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk, or see our web­site: www.myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork

Danc­ing On The Grave Of Cap­i­tal­ism

It is not just in Bath that peo­ple are get­ting angry about hav­ing to pay for a cri­sis caused by politi­cians and big busi­ness. Cardiff, Bris­tol, Edin­burgh and Lon­don have also already seen mass action against the finan­cial cri­sis. In Lon­don, the finan­cial dis­trict has twice been invad­ed by hun­dreds of angry peo­ple demand­ing that the gov­ern­ment stops using our mon­ey to bail out fail­ing big busi­ness. The first Lon­don demo saw the police tak­en by sur­prise as hun­dreds showed their anger in the finan­cial dis­trict, attempt­ing, and only nar­row­ly fail­ing, to occu­py the Bank of Eng­land. The sec­ond demo, called on Hallowe’en and billed as a chance to ‘dance on the grave of cap­i­tal­ism’ saw a larg­er turnout of both police and pro­test­ers and end­ed in clash­es as peo­ple tried to make their way to the offices of recent­ly bank­rupt­ed firm Lehman Broth­ers. Up and down the coun­try, peo­ple are show­ing their dis­gust about a sys­tem that has failed us, and leaves us poor­er and poor­er while the rich con­tin­ue to get rich­er. At both Lon­don demos, stock­bro­kers promised to vio­lent­ly con­front pro­test­ers who dared to speak out about the sys­tem that keeps them rich and us poor, but, on both occa­sions, failed to mate­ri­alise. We can only imag­ine they are flick­ing the last of the white pow­der from their nos­trils, wip­ing a tear from their eyes, push­ing the ‘top floor’ but­ton on the lift and won­der­ing how their lit­tle game has gone so bad­ly wrong.

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.myspace.com/bathbomb

Remember remember, action security in November… [update: Observer article withdrawn]

Remem­ber to think about secu­ri­ty when plan­ning actions & cam­paigns, every month — there’s been a help­ful reminder in a Sun­day news­pa­per that our aims and the aims of the state are some­what dif­fer­ent!

Though the arti­cle can be tak­en to be a police unit safe­guard­ing their ongo­ing bud­gets and employ­ment — as has hap­pened in the past with sim­i­lar scare arti­cles (from the police & the secu­ri­ty ser­vices) — it’s also a handy reminder of the secu­ri­ty issues we should think about to ensure that our cam­paign­ing remains effec­tive. Check out the back­ground dirt on the journos below…

It Came From the Black Swampy - Eco-Terror!!CCTV camera 1Remem­ber to think about secu­ri­ty when plan­ning actions & cam­paigns, every month — there’s been a help­ful reminder in a Sun­day news­pa­per that our aims and the aims of the state are some­what dif­fer­ent!

Though the arti­cle can be tak­en to be a police unit safe­guard­ing their ongo­ing bud­gets and employ­ment — as has hap­pened in the past with sim­i­lar scare arti­cles (from the police & the secu­ri­ty ser­vices) — it’s also a handy reminder of the secu­ri­ty issues we should think about to ensure that our cam­paign­ing remains effec­tive. Check out the back­ground dirt on the journos below…

See the Activist Secu­ri­ty web­site for a full down­load­able book­let.

Also, try out this selec­tion of links:

Secu­ri­ty, Pri­va­cy, & Anonymi­ty for Auton­o­my…
ELF Press Office’s secu­ri­ty page
Top 100 Net­work Secu­ri­ty Tools

The orig­i­nal news­pa­per arti­cle:

Police warn of grow­ing threat from eco-ter­ror­ists

Fear of dead­ly attack by lone mav­er­ick as offi­cers alert major firms to dan­ger of green extrem­ism

Mark Townsend and Nick Den­ning,
The Observ­er, Sun­day Novem­ber 9 2008

Police have warned of the grow­ing threat of eco-ter­ror­ism after reveal­ing they are inves­ti­gat­ing a group which has sup­port­ers who believe that reduc­ing the Earth­’s pop­u­la­tion by four-fifths will help to pro­tect the plan­et.

Offi­cers from a spe­cial­ist unit ded­i­cat­ed to tack­ling domes­tic ter­ror­ism are mon­i­tor­ing an eco-move­ment called Earth First! which has advo­cates who state that cut­ting the Earth­’s pop­u­la­tion by 80 per cent will ease pres­sure on oth­er species. Offi­cers are con­cerned a ‘lone mav­er­ick’ eco-extrem­ist may attempt a ter­ror­ist attack aimed at killing large num­bers of Britons.

The Nation­al Extrem­ism Tac­ti­cal Co-ordi­na­tion Unit, which col­lates intel­li­gence and advice to police forces, has revealed that eco-activists are research­ing a list of tar­get com­pa­nies which they believe are major pol­luters or are exac­er­bat­ing the threat of cli­mate change.

The unit is cur­rent­ly mon­i­tor­ing blogs and inter­net traf­fic con­nect­ed to a net­work of UK cli­mate camps and rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal move­ments under the umbrel­la of Earth First!, which has claimed respon­si­bil­i­ty for a series of crim­i­nal acts in recent months.

A senior source at the unit said it had grow­ing evi­dence of a threat from eco-activists. ‘We have found state­ments that four-fifths of the human pop­u­la­tion has to die for oth­er species in the world to sur­vive.

‘There are a num­ber of very ded­i­cat­ed indi­vid­u­als out there and they could be dan­ger­ous to oth­er peo­ple.’

Earth First! says its mis­sion is ‘about direct action to halt the destruc­tion of the Earth’ and advo­cates ‘civ­il dis­obe­di­ence and mon­key­wrench­ing’, tac­tics that include sab­o­tage and dis­rup­tive behav­iour. The move­ment has links to US envi­ron­men­tal extrem­ists which have waged a cam­paign of vio­lence in Amer­i­ca, includ­ing the fire­bomb­ing of a string of 4x4 car deal­er­ships in Cal­i­for­nia in 2003 and alleged arson attacks on oth­er prop­er­ty.

The anti-extrem­ist unit has already alert­ed a num­ber of major com­pa­nies which have been accused of being car­bon pol­luters with advice on how they can with­stand being tar­get­ed by eco-ter­ror­ists. Com­pa­nies are thought to include air­port oper­a­tor BAA, an inter­na­tion­al min­ing con­glom­er­ate BHP Bil­li­ton and firms con­nect­ed to UK coal-fired pow­er sta­tions.

‘They are doing research of pos­si­ble tar­gets, look­ing at share­hold­ers and financiers. For exam­ple, they could research an air­line and see how many of its air­craft are not envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly,’ said the NETCU source.

Although green extrem­ists have yet to embark on an orches­trat­ed cam­paign of vio­lence in the UK, offi­cers warn that they may be about to launch a cam­paign of intim­i­da­tion and fear aimed at dis­rupt­ing busi­ness­es. ‘For some peo­ple, if they can jus­ti­fy it in their minds, then it’s a noble cause even if it’s a crim­i­nal action. They haven’t start­ed yet, but we believe they will come up with a strat­e­gy and tac­tics,’ said the source at the unit, who described the move­ment as well-fund­ed and organ­ised.

A spate of recent attacks, for which Earth First! sup­port­ers have claimed respon­si­bil­i­ty, has includ­ed van­dal­ism of branch­es of sev­en Ger­man banks such as Deutsche Bank and Allianz AG. The actions were appar­ent­ly because the banks hold shares in UK Coal, which plans to build new coal-fired pow­er sta­tions.

A state­ment on the Earth First! web­site explains the attacks by say­ing: ‘Exploita­tion of the envi­ron­ment and peo­ple by the state and indus­try go hand in hand. They can­not be sep­a­rat­ed and both must be attacked. Social war, not cli­mate chaos.’

Anoth­er attack hit a quar­ry in Stafford­shire which belongs to Bar­don Aggre­gates, a com­pa­ny hat also owns a con­tro­ver­sial quar­ry at Glen­san­da on the north-west coast of Scot­land. The Scot­tish quar­ry is accused of spoil­ing the High­lands envi­ron­ment. The Earth First! web­site states: ‘We slashed tyres, stripped paint jobs, glued locks and trashed con­vey­or belts. All the earth movers were hit and many of the cement and aggre­gate trucks. This action cost us very lit­tle but should cost Bar­don thou­sands.’

Among the net­work of groups under the Earth First! umbrel­la are var­i­ous cli­mate camps. Last August police found a stash of knives and weapons beside one such camp in Kent. Pro­test­ers, how­ev­er, said they had noth­ing to do with the weapons and accused police of launch­ing a ‘smear cam­paign’.

A spokesman for Der­by Earth First! said the move­ment was strict­ly non-vio­lent, if not always law-abid­ing. He said: ‘If some­one does eco­log­i­cal dam­age we would per­haps break the law and pro­tect the ecol­o­gy, but the ecol­o­gy also includes humans.

‘We’re all about com­mu­ni­ties. Cap­i­tal­ism is the prob­lem and we want to return to a more sus­tain­able time. But we are not about reduc­ing the pop­u­la­tion, that is just scare­mon­ger­ing by the police.’

The rise of eco-extrem­ism coin­cides with the fall of the ani­mal rights activist move­ment. Police said the ani­mal rights move­ment was in ‘dis­ar­ray’ and that its ring­lead­ers had either been pros­e­cut­ed or were await­ing pros­e­cu­tion, adding that its ‘crit­i­cal mass’ of hard­core extrem­ists was suf­fi­cient­ly deplet­ed to have halt­ed its effec­tive­ness. Last Thurs­day a promi­nent ani­mal rights activist accused of plant­i­ng petrol bombs at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty was cleared of pos­sess­ing an explo­sive sub­stance with intent.

Reports on the Earth First! Jour­nal web­site, which tells users how to send encrypt­ed emails, reveals con­nec­tions to the Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front (ELF) which has been linked to a series of vio­lent attacks in the US. ELF was clas­si­fied as the top domes­tic ter­ror­ism threat in the US by the FBI in March 2001.

The ELF was found­ed in 1992 in Brighton by mem­bers of the Earth First! move­ment who want­ed to form a break­away group that would use more extreme tac­tics.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/09/eco-terrorism-earth-first-elf

Dirt dug on arti­cle writ­ers:

From: http://ianbone.wordpress.com/2008/11/10/the-guardian-eco-terrorism-and-the-armyexclusive/

THE GUARDIAN ECO-TERRORIST JOURNO IS ARMY INTELLIGENCE OFFICER……..EXCLUSIVE!

Curios­er and Curiouser……I’m check­ing for Nick Den­ning — co-author with Mark Townsend of yesterday’s hilarous Observ­er piece on eco ‑ter­ror­ism. He doesn’t appear to have any pre­vi­ous as a jour­nal­ist. But what’s this?? A piece writ­ten by Townsend in Afghanistan in August 2007 where he’s embed­ded with the Roy­al Anglian Reg­i­ment in Sangin………and shar­ing a heli­copter ride with NICK DENNING — COMMANDER OF 1 PLATOON A COMPANY in the Roy­al Anglian reg­i­ment!!! And less than a year lat­er this Den­ning is pro­vid­ing intel­li­gence to his mate on The Guardian on eco — teror­ism!!! Some expla­na­tions from The Guardian reqired on this one methinks! Watch this space…………

Also see http://ianbone.wordpress.com/2008/11/09/guardian-journalists-police-patsies-yet-again/
And http://ianbone.wordpress.com/2008/11/11/god-bone-youre-a-cunt-the-observer-replies/

Fun­ny & infor­ma­tive.

—OR—

This ‘Nick Den­ning’ is clear­ly not the crick­eter and Ian Bone’s sug­ges­tion that he is an army offi­cer is unlike­ly. It is more like­ly to be the ND who worked at the BBC as a researcher and a bit of work on Google pulls up a num­ber of requests that he has made for infor­ma­tion.

For instance:

http://www.stewartbyfc.co.uk/fusionnews/archive.php?show=month&month=July&year=2004

The most like­ly expla­na­tion is that this is the per­son – that he is a researcher who wants to break into nation­al jour­nal­ism.

——

Schnews arti­cle & quotes from the journo

——

The Observer/Guardian blog on the sub­ject if you want to post some­thing there is http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2008/nov/10/activists-kingsnorth

——
Update:
The read­ers’ edi­tor on … anony­mous sources and claims of eco-ter­ror­ism

The Observ­er, Sun­day Novem­ber 23 2008

You might think The Observer’s con­cern for the envi­ron­ment arose only in the past 20 years as glob­al warm­ing became appar­ent, but it has actu­al­ly been read­ing the signs since 1925. Wal­dorf Astor, then the paper’s for­ward-think­ing own­er, took a keen inter­est in all things envi­ron­men­tal and urged his edi­tor, JL Garvin, to appoint a cor­re­spon­dent to cov­er ecol­o­gy and agri­cul­ture. Step for­ward Sir William Beach Thomas, who became, in effect, the first envi­ron­ment cor­re­spon­dent.

Much lat­er, The Observ­er was to inves­ti­gate and reveal the ‘green­house effect’ and to warn of its pos­si­ble con­se­quences. Thou­sands of words have been devot­ed to the sub­ject ever since, win­ning a loy­al audi­ence, par­tic­u­lar­ly among those who are active in the envi­ron­ment move­ment. So there was under­stand­able dis­may at a recent sto­ry which told of a ‘grow­ing threat from eco-ter­ror­ists’.

Police were said to be inves­ti­gat­ing the eco-move­ment Earth First! which, they claimed, had sup­port­ers who believed that reduc­ing the Earth­’s pop­u­la­tion by four-fifths would help pro­tect the plan­et. The Nation­al Extrem­ism Tac­ti­cal Co-ordi­na­tion Unit was con­cerned that a lone mav­er­ick might attempt a ter­ror­ist attack. It had also warned sev­er­al com­pa­nies they were being tar­get­ed as major pol­luters by the group and had offered them advice on how to with­stand attack.

It’s per­fect­ly legit­i­mate to report police secu­ri­ty con­cerns, but none of the state­ments were sub­stan­ti­at­ed. No web­site links were offered, no names were men­tioned, no com­pa­nies iden­ti­fied and no police source would go on the record.

The arti­cle linked Earth First! to cli­mate camps estab­lished last sum­mer, includ­ing one at Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion, Kent, and at Heathrow.

While the paper had no inten­tion of sug­gest­ing that every activist was a poten­tial ter­ror­ist, sev­er­al cli­mate campers wrote to protest. ‘If a jour­nal­ist is told by a sin­gle anony­mous source that a move­ment of peo­ple has among it indi­vid­u­als who would take the lives of men, women and chil­dren in a ter­ror attack, what stan­dard of evi­dence does that jour­nal­ist require? In this case: no evi­dence what­so­ev­er. The claim itself was the sto­ry.’

We’ve been here before. Oth­er news­pa­pers report­ed on a pre­dict­ed ‘sum­mer of hate’ at cli­mate camps that nev­er mate­ri­alised and the Press Com­plaints Com­mis­sion found against the Evening Stan­dard at cli­mate campers were plan­ning attacks at Heathrow.

Envi­ron­men­tal­ist Kei­th Met­calf explained that Earth First! sup­port­ed direct action against prop­er­ty, but not against peo­ple. He believed that the debate around sus­tain­able pop­u­la­tion size had been twist­ed to imply that envi­ron­men­tal­ists wished to kill peo­ple.

He also repeat­ed the belief of sev­er­al oth­ers that Nec­tu was brief­ing in this man­ner in order to make pros­e­cu­tions eas­i­er and to boost its fund­ing, which is at risk owing to the decline in ani­mal rights cam­paigns. I can’t ver­i­fy that or the fears about mass mur­der because, despite repeat­ed requests, Nec­tu won’t respond. Accord­ing­ly, The Observ­er has decid­ed to with­draw the sto­ry.

87 Ashley Road Eviction Happening NOW!! and Kebele’s 13th Birthday Party 28th November — invite

Novem­ber 12, 2008
The inhab­i­tants of 87 Ash­ley Road woke up this morn­ing to a gar­den full of cops and bail­liffs here to evict them from the house that is a home to around 15 peo­ple, and make them home­less.

Bristol squat rooftop occupationNovem­ber 12, 2008
The inhab­i­tants of 87 Ash­ley Road woke up this morn­ing to a gar­den full of cops and bail­liffs here to evict them from the house that is a home to around 15 peo­ple, and make them home­less.

As I arrived on the scene(around 10.30 am), Ash­ley Rd was cor­doned off both sides of the house, and there was also police pres­ence behind the house. The bailiffs were already in the build­ing at this point, and all inhab­i­tants had left, apart from 2 that man­aged to get onto the roof. They even called a heli­copter in to ‘check that there were 2 peo­ple on the roof’ (I thought that’s what eyes were for!) As I was leav­ing to come and write this (12.30pm), 3 more heads popped up over the roof! Hope­ful­ly, by the time i’m back, that roof will see a num­ber more occu­py­ing it. A bailiff appar­ent­ly told one squat­ter, that there are plans to turn the build­ing into offices — so not social hous­ing for those in need at all!!

If you would like to come and sup­port, or just know more about what is going on, please come along to 87 Ash­ley Rd. We won’t leave qui­et­ly while they’re mak­ing peo­ple home­less and turn­ing our com­mu­ni­ty into a busi­ness park!!

—-

23:36 — 5 peo­ple still on roof

not much else to say, except they seem to be in good spir­its, have plen­ty of peo­ple giv­ing them sup­port on the ground . we have our own mobile inci­dent sup­port unit on the scene. no police at the moment, but secu­ri­ty with a cou­ple of dogs inside the house.

be good if peo­ple could be their as ear­ly as they can tomor­row morn­ing.

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

On Fri­day 28h of Novem­ber Kebele Sound brings you:

The Destroy­ers — 15 strong East­ern Euro­pean Folk Riot (http://www.thedestroyers.co.uk)

The Glitzy BagHags — Kitchen sink skif­fle (http://www.myspace.com/glitzybaghags)

Cir­cus of Inven­tion — Jelly­bean Punk-Hop (http://www.myspace.com/circusofinvention)

DJs: Nat­ty Bear­face — Jungle/Dubstep
Black Rain­bow — Global/Bass
B.O.C. — ska

plus late Anar­coustic Lounge with: Clay­ton Bliz­zard, Cos­mo, Anar­co Folko, and Bones at the Bot­tom of the Bar­rel

@ The Trin­i­ty Cen­tre, 9pm-3am

Tick­ets £7 Avail­able in advance for Kebele Infos­hop, Sat­ur­days 11am till 2pm

All pro­ceeds to Kebele. Need some back­ground?

For 13 years Kebele has pro­vid­ed a wide range of ser­vices, events and activ­i­ties, and a place for peo­ple to meet, share ideas and organ­ise for a bet­ter world. From squat­ted begin­nings and resist­ed evic­tion to hous­ing co-op, through to com­mu­ni­ty co-op and vol­un­teer-run anar­chist social cen­tre, it’s a long sto­ry with plen­ty of ups and downs along the way.

Most recent­ly, there’s been rev­o­lu­tion­ary reor­gan­is­ing and ren­o­va­tions and we’re not fin­ished yet…! There’s so much to learn from col­lec­tive­ly organ­is­ing and sus­tain­ing a street lev­el com­mu­ni­ty project with­out lead­ers or prof­it motives.

Our prin­ci­ples of equal­i­ty, inclu­sion, shared respon­si­bil­i­ty, co-oper­a­tion, sol­i­dar­i­ty, not for prof­it, and direct action remain at the heart of this autonomous space and we hope Kebele con­tin­ues to help keep Bris­tol’s thriv­ing counter cul­ture alive and kick­ing.

Part of a wider, expand­ing net­work of social cen­tres, Kebele aims to be a reflec­tion of the world we want to see in our every­day actions and organ­is­ing; a liv­ing, work­ing exam­ple of what we’re told is unre­al­is­tic and impos­si­ble…

Do you have ideas for Kebele events or activ­i­ties?
There’s lots of ways to get stuck in! Drop in and say hel­lo!
For more info and a cal­en­dar of events see http://www.kebelecoop.org
Con­tact Kebele on 0117 9399469 or kebelesocialcentre@riseup.net
Kebele is at 14 Robert­son Road, Eas­t­on. BS5 6JY.
http://www.kebelecoop.org

CLIMATE ACTION NEWS SHEET 84, OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2008

————————-
UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-
1) RBS, E.ON and Shell uni­ver­si­ty recruit­ment tours, Oct/Nov 08
2) Cli­mate Camp Nation­al Gath­er­ing, Brad­ford, 8/9.11.08
3) Remem­ber­ing Ken Saro-Wiwa, 10.11.08
4) Shared Plan­et Con­fer­ence, Birm­ing­ham, 21–23.11.08
5) 48 hours of action against E.On and new coal, 28/29.11.08
6) Buy Noth­ing Day, 29.11.08

————————-
UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-
1) RBS, E.ON and Shell uni­ver­si­ty recruit­ment tours, Oct/Nov 08
2) Cli­mate Camp Nation­al Gath­er­ing, Brad­ford, 8/9.11.08
3) Remem­ber­ing Ken Saro-Wiwa, 10.11.08
4) Shared Plan­et Con­fer­ence, Birm­ing­ham, 21–23.11.08
5) 48 hours of action against E.On and new coal, 28/29.11.08
6) Buy Noth­ing Day, 29.11.08
7) Nation­al Cli­mate March, 06.12.08
8) Earth First! Win­ter Moot, 6–8.02.09
9) Fos­sil Fools Day 2009, 01.04.09

—————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
—————-
1) Towards Copen­hagen 2009 – the first glob­al gath­er­ing, 13/14.09.08
2) Coal pow­er sta­tion block­ad­ed in Vir­ginia, USA, 15.09.08
3) Ross­port — Soli­taire leaves Irish waters with no pipeline laid! 20.09.08
4) Flash­mob against air­port expan­sion a suc­cess! 23.09.08
5) Cli­mate Camp polic­ing con­demned, 30.09.08 & 28.10.08
6) Boston (US) Ris­ing Tide pay Citibank a vis­it, 7/10/08
7) Day of Action Against Paci­fi­Corp dam, 10.10.08
8) Par­lia­ment rushed by cli­mate activists, 13.10.08
9) Oxford stu­dents just say no to BP jobs, 14.10.08
10) Art Not Oil vis­it the NT and hoax boss Hyt­ner, 15.10.08
11) Pro­test­ers dis­rupt Euro­pean bio­fu­els sum­mit, 16.10.08
12) Scot­tish cli­mate activists tar­get Scot­tish First Min­is­ter, 16.10.08
13) Green­wash Guer­ril­las EDF Action, 22.10.08
14) Man­ches­ter stu­dents flash­mob RBS and E.On recruit­ment stalls, 23.10.08
15) Bar­clays’ coal invest­ments tar­get­ed in Leam­ing­ton Spa, 25.10.08
16) Pro­tes­tors stop work at Ship­ley open-cast; Ship­ley Bodge court case
col­laps­es, 27.10.08
17) The Rain­bow War­rior goes to Kingsnorth, 29.10.08
18) Bris­tol Uni­ver­si­ty Death Fair
19) Con­vey­er belt lock-on stops Aus­tralian coal pow­er sta­tion, 1.11.08

————————-
UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-

1) RBS, E.ON and Shell uni­ver­si­ty recruit­ment tours, OCT/NOV 08
Cli­mate crim­i­nals are recruit­ing now, in a Uni­ver­si­ty near you. Find out when and where, as they have kind­ly post­ed their itin­er­aries online.
www.makeitrbs.com/events/

www.shell.com/home/content/gbr/aboutshell/careers/students_and_graduates/calendar_of_events/calendar_of_events_30052008.html

www.eon-uk.com/Careers/Graduates/807.aspx

Stuck for a direct action idea? Check out Ris­ing Tide’s “15 ways to top­ple
the Fos­sil Fuel Empire” on our web­site.

2) Cli­mate Camp Nation­al Gath­er­ing, Brad­ford, 8/9.11.08
The next Cli­mate Camp gath­er­ing will be in Brad­ford on the 8th and 9th Novem­ber. Come along and get involved.This month we will be in the fair city of Brad­ford, based up at the stu­dent union. Food will be pro­vid­ed by the deli­cious Tree­house Cafe and crash space will be near­by.

Large Group Facil­i­ta­tion Train­ing
Seeds for Change are run­ning a Large Group Facil­i­ta­tion Train­ing for Cli­mate Campers on Fri­day Novem­ber 7th in Leeds (just down the road from the gath­er­ing in Brad­ford), 11AM to 5.30 PM. Please email process at climatecamp.org.uk asap if you are inter­est­ed.

3) Remem­ber­ing Ken Saro-Wiwa, 10.11.08
Film screen­ing and fundrais­er at 7PM at LARC in Lon­don, 62 Fieldgate St, E1 1ES. On the 13th anniver­sary of the mur­der of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the rest of the Ogo­ni 9 by the Niger­ian state in 1995, with Shell in close cahoots, we will be remem­ber­ing what they fought for and what they died for. We’ll also be hear­ing about the inspi­ra­tional resis­tance of peo­ple around the world to Shel­l’s unfor­tu­nate­ly far from unique brand of destruc­tion, duplic­i­ty and over­all may­hem in the chase for ever-greater prof­its. There will be film screen­ings of ‘Those Who Dance’ and ‘Shad­ows and Light: Oil, Pow­er, and the Niger Delta’, inspi­ra­tional art on the walls and food and drink. Funds raised will go towards Art Not Oil’s new cam­paign against the Shell-spon­sored Oedi­pus pro­duc­tion cur­rent­ly run­ning at the Nation­al The­atre.

4) Shared Plan­et Con­fer­ence, Birm­ing­ham, 21–23.11.08
The Uni­ver­si­ty of Birm­ing­ham — Shared Plan­et is the UK’s largest stu­dent con­fer­ence on world pover­ty, human rights and the envi­ron­ment. It brings hun­dreds of stu­dents togeth­er for a week­end packed with big-name speak­ers, skills and issue based work­shops, debates, dis­cus­sions, film and a mas­sive par­ty! http://peopleandplanet.org/events/sharedplanet

5) 48 hours of action against E.On and new coal, 28/29.11.08

The UK Gov­ern­ment is call­ing for an 80% reduc­tion in car­bon emis­sions by 2050, we are call­ing for 48 hours of action against E.ON and new coal NOW. Join us in say­ing ‘No to New Coal’: get your friends togeth­er and plan an action for your area. Go stick­er­ing, blockad­ing, serv­ing direct action warn­ing notices at sup­ply chain premis­es, organ­ise an aware­ness rais­ing talk, hang a ban­ner, get cre­ative on the streets, the options are end­less. Get togeth­er, get cre­ative, and plan an action! For more infor­ma­tion vis­it — www.e‑onf-off.org — where a list of poten­tial tar­gets, action ideas and plen­ty of resources will fol­low short­ly.

6) Buy Noth­ing Day, 29.11.08
Sat­ur­day Novem­ber 29h 2008 is Buy Noth­ing Day. It’s a day where you chal­lenge your­self to switch off from shop­ping and tune into life. The rules are sim­ple, for 24 hours you will detox from con­sumerism and live with­out shop­ping. Any­one can take part pro­vid­ed they spend a day with­out spend­ing – bet­ter yet, get togeth­er with some friends and chal­lenge con­sumer cul­ture direct­ly!
www.buynothingday.co.uk

7) Nation­al Cli­mate March, 06.12.08
March on Par­lia­ment to demand that the gov­ern­ment acts on cli­mate now! The march this year goes to Par­lia­ment Square to demand that the gov­ern­ment act now on cli­mate. The march will start at Speak­ers Cor­ner, Hyde Park — assem­ble 12 noon. The march will be pre­ceed­ed by a cli­mate protest bike ride start­ing from Lin­col­n’s Inn Fields at 10.30 am: see more here. There will be an After-Par­ty in the Syn­er­gy Cen­tre from 5.00 pm till late.!
www.campaigncc.org/index.shtml

8) Earth First! Win­ter Moot, 6–8.02.09
The Earth First! Win­ter Moot is a week­end to reflect on where we are as a rad­i­cal ecol­o­gist move­ment and on where we are going. The moot will be about dis­cussing strat­e­gy, strength­en­ing the EF! net­work, secu­ri­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tions and action plan­ning. A ses­sion is also reserved for dis­cussing a UK mobil­i­sa­tion for the UN cli­mate con­fer­ence in Copen­hagen late 2009. The moot will be held in Brighton (t.b.c.). Please check this web­site near­er to the time for fur­ther details and email any items you would like to add an item to the agen­da to moot2009 at earthfirst.org.uk.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/21557

9) Fos­sil Fools Day 2009, 01.04.09
Just in case you missed the news last month – Fos­sil Fools Day is back! Whether you’ve been look­ing for a chance to dip a toe into the grow­ing cli­mate action move­ment, or have had your kick-ass action planned since last year, now is the time to do it – what­ev­er it is. On April 1st, join the glob­al day of resis­tance and pull a prank that packs a punch. Call-out now avail­able on the web­site, so get spread­ing the word. Info and resources will be post­ed on the web­site soon, and look out for leaflets to dis­trib­ute in Decem­ber.
www.risingtide.org.uk/fossilfoolsday2009

—————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
—————-

1) Towards Copen­hagen 2009 – the first glob­al gath­er­ing, 13/14.09.08
The first social move­ments’ meet­ing was from 13–14 Sep­tem­ber 2008, in a free school in Nor­rberg, host­ed by the Dan­ish move­ment Cli­maX (klimax2009.org). There were about 100 peo­ple present from 21 coun­tries around the world, and mobil­isa­ta­tions towards Decem­ber 2009 were well and tru­ly launched. For the call to action, trans­la­tions, and a per­son­al per­spec­tive on the meet­ing, see http://risingtide.org.uk/copenhagen. To get involved, send an email to cli­mate09-int-sub­scribe at list.riseup.net.

2) Coal pow­er sta­tion block­ad­ed in Vir­ginia, USA, 15.09.08
At 6:00am on Sep­tem­ber 15 around 40 peo­ple block­ad­ed the con­struc­tion site of Domin­ion Vir­gini­a’s Wise Coun­ty coal-fired pow­er sta­tion. Eleven pro­test­ers were arrest­ed after four hours. Pro­test­ers locked their bod­ies to eight large steel drums, two of which had oper­a­tional solar pan­els illu­mi­nat­ing a ban­ner that read “renew­able jobs to renew Appalachia.” In addi­tion, pro­test­ers held a 10’x30’ ban­ner, which said: “we demand a clean ener­gy future.”

3) Ross­port — Soli­taire leaves Irish waters with no pipeline laid! 20.09.08
On Fri­day the 20th Sep­tem­ber, the pipe lay­ing ship, the Soli­taire, final­ly left Irish waters. Dur­ing the ship’s time in Ire­land, Shell failed to lay any part of the off­shore pipe line. The depar­ture of the Soli­taire is a mas­sive vic­to­ry for the Shell to Sea cam­paign. Resis­tance in the past six weeks has tak­en many dif­fer­ent forms: fish­er­men pre­vent­ing the ship’s access to the bay by refus­ing to move from her path, site inva­sions by local peo­ple and the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp, numer­ous water­borne actions to pre­vent work by sup­port­ers from oth­er parts of Ire­land and fur­ther afield, nation­al and inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty actions and final­ly, an 11 day hunger strike by local cam­paign­er Mau­ra Har­ring­ton, that con­tin­ued until the ship left Irish waters. The events of the last 6 weeks have inspired not only those involved, but also many who wit­nessed them from afar, new links and friend­ships have been forged and many lessons learned. In the after­math, the Shell to Sea cam­paign can clear­ly be seen to have been revi­tal­ized, both local­ly and nation­al­ly. It is unclear when the ship will attempt to return to Broad­haven Bay. It is pos­si­ble it could still be this year if repairs are quick and a suit­able weath­er win­dow appears, or it may not be until next spring. How­ev­er, while it may be uncer­tain exact­ly when the ship will return, what is cer­tain, is that it will meet even greater oppo­si­tion upon its next arrival. Come and be part of it! The Ross­port com­mu­ni­ty is call­ing on peo­ple every­where to put pres­sure on Shell, Allseas (the com­pa­ny that owns the Soli­taire) and Irish embassies to demand that the Soli­taire leaves Irish waters imme­di­ate­ly.

4) Flash­mob against air­port expan­sion a suc­cess! 23.09.08
Over 100 cam­paign­ers staged a colour­ful flash­mob against air­port expan­sion at mid­day today out­side Man­ches­ter Town Hall. The group includ­ed Lon­don cam­paign­ers opposed to the expan­sion of Heathrow. The flash­mob was timed to coin­cide with the Labour Par­ty Con­fer­ence. At 12.45 pre­cise­ly the cam­paign­ers stripped off to reveal red t‑shirts with the words ‘Stop Air­port Expan­sion’ embla­zoned across them. They then lay down to form the words ‘TAKE TRAINS’ with their bod­ies. The protest marked the pub­lic launch of the recent­ly formed ‘Stop Expan­sion at Man­ches­ter Air­port’.

5) Cli­mate Camp polic­ing con­demned, 30.09.08 & 28.10.08
A spokesman for Med­way Trades Union Coun­cil said “We have decid­ed to hold an inquiry into the Polic­ing of the Cli­mate Camp because of our con­cern over the lev­el of polic­ing and var­i­ous inci­dents such as a police­man in riot gear assault­ing a pro­test­er with a riot shield, as shown on TV, and oth­er alle­ga­tions includ­ing local cam­paign­ers being sub­ject­ed to pep­per spray and a local coun­cil­lor being pushed to the ground”

Also, in the House of Com­mons, MPs accused police of unnec­es­sary aggres­sion towards cli­mate campers. Home Office min­is­ters were told that offi­cers “pro­voked vio­lence against peace­ful pro­test­ers” and even arrest­ed some­one for “aggres­sive­ly pick­ing up lit­ter”.
www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/09/409732.htm

6)Boston (US) Ris­ing Tide pay Citibank a vis­it, 7/10/08
Four activists chained them­selves to the front entrance of the Citibank branch in Har­vard Square, Cam­bridge. The action start­ed as a protest in front of the Bank of Amer­i­ca branch a block away before march­ing down the street to Citibank, where the four activists had already chained them­selves to the front door, clos­ing the bank for a peri­od of time. Over 150 peo­ple attend­ed the protest, while many more onlook­ers gath­ered in Har­vard Square. The action, using the tag-line “Not With Our Mon­ey”, was intend­ed to raise aware­ness of the con­nec­tions between the cur­rent finan­cial cri­sis and the impend­ing cli­mate cri­sis. Both Bank of Amer­i­ca and Citi Bank are respon­si­ble for fund­ing dirty coal pow­er that harms the envi­ron­ment, and engag­ing in preda­to­ry lend­ing prac­tices that are fuelling the fore­clo­sure cri­sis and have left fam­i­lies in Boston home­less. Sev­er­al groups were involved with the protest includ­ing Ris­ing Tide Boston and Rain­for­est Action Net­work, both envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice groups, and City Life/Vida Urbana, a ten­ants’ rights orga­ni­za­tion.

7) Day of Action Against Paci­fi­Corp dam, 10.10.08
A coali­tion of Kla­math Riv­er Indi­an tribes, fish­er­men, con­ser­va­tion­ists and local sup­port­ers (includ­ing Cas­ca­dia Ris­ing Tide) ramped up their cam­paign to remove four fish-killing dams on the riv­er today when they held a spir­it­ed protest in front of PacifiCorp’s head­quar­ters in Port­land. The “Day of Action Against Paci­fi­Corp” start­ed off at 8:30 a.m. on Sep­tem­ber 18th when local activists hung a ban­ner pro­claim­ing “War­ren Buf­fett Kills Salmon, Jobs and Com­mu­ni­ties” over Inter­state-84 in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Tribes. Around 200 peo­ple con­verged in front of Paci­fi­Corp for a press con­fer­ence. After the con­fer­ence, 70 peo­ple occu­pied the area in front of the head­quar­ters, effec­tive­ly shut­ting down the front entrance to Paci­fi­Corp as com­pa­ny staff locked the doors.

8) Par­lia­ment rushed by cli­mate activists, 13.10.08
Demand­ing deeds not words from the gov­ern­ment, 500 Cli­mate Rush­ers gath­ered in Par­lia­ment Square to cel­e­brate 100 years to the day since the Suf­fragettes rushed par­lia­ment demand­ing votes for women. After shar­ing tea and cake on the lawn of Par­lia­ment Square, men and women dressed in Edwar­dian garb became a lit­tle less civilised, and the doors of to Par­lia­ment were locked as cli­mate activists rushed the main entrance. Although no one got in, the sounds of pro­test­ers strik­ing the doors were clear­ly audi­ble from the inside.
www.climaterush.co.uk

9) Oxford stu­dents just say no to BP jobs, 14.10.08
Activists infil­trat­ed an attempt by BP to woo Oxford grad­u­ates at a top-notch hotel on Octo­ber 14th. One inter­rupt­ed the cheesy BP PR man’s pre­sen­ta­tion as he claimed that he ‘loved the coun­try­side’ — while putting the gloss on oil and gas explo­ration, extrac­tion and financ­ing — to ask, why then, has BP spent more on its green sun­flower rebrand­ing than on its annu­al renew­able ener­gy bud­get? Activists then gave their own pre­sen­ta­tion of BP’s activ­i­ties around the world, why major oil com­pa­nies are counter-pro­duc­tive to cli­mate change solu­tions, and why any tempt­ed grad­u­ates should recon­sid­er their career options. A mem­ber of Colom­bia Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cam­paign gave a first hand account of BP’s com­plic­i­ty in envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion, sub­vert­ing peace­ful social move­ments and fund­ing death squads. A moment of stunned silence was fol­lowed by applause as the re-edu­cat­ed audi­ence aban­doned the shindig.

10)Art Not Oil vis­it the NT and hoax boss Hyt­ner, 15.10.08
After a vis­it to the the­atre (Dar­ling!), arty cli­mate activists cooked up a let­ter claim­ing to be from NT boss Nicholas Hyt­ner ques­tion­ing the use of oil spon­sor­ship in the arts. The NT were none too pleased about this and the ensu­ing row reached the let­ters pages of luvvie-week­ly “The Stage”(a first for the direct action move­ment?). Art not Oil ask: “We’re ask­ing peo­ple if they’re up for mak­ing an art­work of some kind as a response This could be an image, song, film or poem to appear on our web­site, or to be print­ed on a post­card or some­thing sim­i­lar. We’re open to ideas. (Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we aren’t able to pay for your work, but we have no wish to pos­sess it!) If this is of inter­est, we’d love to see it as soon as pos­si­ble, as ‘Oedi­pus’ runs until Jan­u­ary 2009 only.”
www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/10/411200.html and
http://www.thestage.co.uk/features/feature.php/22157/chit-chat-hytner-miss-or-maybe-an-attack-

11) Pro­test­ers dis­rupt Euro­pean bio­fu­els sum­mit, 16.10.08
On World Food Day, 16th Octo­ber, activists from Action Against Agro­fu­els dis­rupt­ed the Bio­fu­els Expo in Newark, one of the largest bio­fu­el indus­try con­fer­ences in Europe. Four ban­ners were dropped, as pro­test­ers climbed on the roof out­side the main entrance and on a ledge inside the main exhi­bi­tion hall, where they remained for over three hours. Rape alarms were set off across the exhi­bi­tion cen­tre. Ban­ners read “Agro­fu­els for cars and pow­er plants wors­en cli­mate change”, “Land-grab­bing for agro­fu­els caus­es hunger”, “Agro­fu­els — a cli­mate crime” and “Green­wash­ing hunger and defor­esta­tion”. Sep­a­rate­ly, Leeds Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents held a ban­ner and leaflet­ting protest out­side the con­fer­ence.

12) Scot­tish cli­mate activists tar­get Scot­tish First Min­is­ter, 16.10.08
At 4am, res­i­dents from Clyde­bank, Pais­ley, Kirk­lis­ton and Cra­mond peace­ful­ly set up a stereo and blast­ed aero­plane noise through the entrance of the First Min­is­ter’s pri­vate res­i­den­cy in Edin­burgh. The action stands as a protest ‘dawn cho­rus’ to high­light the expe­ri­ence of liv­ing life in the shad­ow of a grow­ing air­port. Iron­i­cal­ly, the stereo caused 110 deci­bels of noise — the equiv­a­lent of a jum­bo jet tak­ing off. For half an hour about ten res­i­dents sur­round­ed the build­ing dressed in bright paja­mas, night caps, clutch­ing ted­dy­bears, with ear defend­ers to dis­play the dan­ger­ous lev­els of noise pol­lu­tion endured by their fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties. Their plac­ards stat­ed “It’s time to wake up to the impacts of avi­a­tion” and “have a taste of your own med­i­cine”. The res­i­dents took these steps to state loud and clear to the First Min­is­ter, who holds ulti­mate say over the fate of the expan­sion plans, that he can­not ignore any of the effects of air­port expan­sion. These impacts include dan­ger­ous noise lev­els, ris­ing air pol­lu­tion, cli­mate change and increas­ing eco­nom­ic uncer­tain­ty dur­ing the cur­rent cred­it crunch.

13) Green­wash Guer­ril­las EDF Action, 22.10.08
Lon­don Ris­ing Tide’s Green­wash Gueril­las Brigade, Detec­tion Pla­toon #1, moved into action on Mon­day morn­ing, 22 Octo­ber, at 08:00 hours – tar­get­ing ener­gy cor­po­ra­tion Élec­tric­ité de France (EDF) at the cen­tral Lon­don head­quar­ters of their UK sub­sidiary EDF Ener­gy. EDF has recent­ly bought out British Ener­gy and have announced that they plan to build 4 new nuclear pow­er sta­tions in the UK in the com­ing years. Inspired by our coun­ter­parts in France demon­strat­ing against new nuclear pow­er, we chose to tar­get EDF’s attempts to mus­cle in their FALSE nuclear solu­tion to the loom­ing dis­as­ter of cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate chaos. Our action (con­sist­ing of 12 Green­wash Gueril­las) high­light­ed the dan­gers of nuclear pow­er to the bios­phere, human­i­ty, and REAL renew­able ener­gy solu­tions.

14) Man­ches­ter stu­dents flash­mob RBS and E.On Recruit­ment Stalls, 23.10.08
A busy careers fair at Man­ches­ter’s GMex was inter­rupt­ed yes­ter­day by sev­er­al long whis­tle blasts. 30 or so pro­tes­tors sud­den­ly revealed their yel­low ‘Leave it in the Ground’ t‑shirts and sur­round­ed the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land stall, hold­ing ban­ners and chant­i­ng ‘leave it in the ground!’. A pro­tes­tor then read some extracts from the excel­lent report “Cash­ing in on Coal”, which shows that RBS is a cli­mate crim­i­nal, pour­ing mon­ey into new fos­sil fuel extrac­tion projects. The secu­ri­ty guards even­tu­al­ly began drag­ging pro­tes­tors out so they did­n’t get a chance to vis­it the E.ON stall. How­ev­er the protest con­tin­ued out­side where peo­ple hand­ed out leaflets explain­ing how E.ON (with a fat loan from RBS) plans to build the first new coal pow­er sta­tion in the UK in 30 years, while secu­ri­ty guards repeat­ed­ly threat­ened to have them arrest­ed for tres­pass­ing.

15) Bar­clays’ coal invest­ments tar­get­ed in Leam­ing­ton Spa, 25.10.08
Leam­ing­ton Ris­ing Tide took aim at a town cen­tre Bar­clays on Sat­ur­day 25 Octo­ber 2008 in protest at the bank’s heavy invest­ment in dirty coal. Ban­ners, leaflets and bal­loons let peo­ple know that ‘Bar­clays are fuelling glob­al warm­ing’. One of the ban­ners used an image of scales to demol­ish the myth that Bar­clays cares about cli­mate change: they invest a whop­ping 3,300 mil­lion invest­ed in coal against 15 mil­lion in renew­able tech on the oth­er. Over the last two years, Bar­clays has been involved in 17 sep­a­rate loans to the coal indus­try, and togeth­er with RBS and HSBC, has loaned $70 bil­lion to E.ON alone.

16) Pro­tes­tors stop work at Ship­ley open-cast; Ship­ley Bodge court case col­laps­es, 27.10.08
Pro­tes­tors from Earth First! stopped work at an open-cast coal site for over two hours – they ran onto the site and clam­bered on dig­gers & dumpers and held out ban­ners stop­ping the work safe­ly. Some of the dig­ger dri­vers were very friend­ly and were glad to have a break as they work very long shifts, from 7am‑6:30 with only lunch & half hour breaks at 10 & 3. Today work had not been able to start till 10 as nature was fight­ing its own cor­ner, with rain drown­ing the site, and it was stopped again at 1 for 3 hours due to the protest.

Mean­while, the first court case aris­ing from the evic­tion of Bodge House, Ship­ley, where pro­test­ers occu­pied the site of the pro­posed open cast coal mine from June until August, col­lapsed today after the pros­e­cu­tion admit­ted that it did­n’t have the evi­dence to sup­port its case. The crown pros­e­cu­tor asked for an adjourn­ment, the defence object­ed, the dis­trict
judge agreed with the defence and dis­missed the case. Let’s hope the oth­ers go the same way.

17) The Rain­bow War­rior goes to Kingsnorth, 29.10.08
The Green­peace flag­ship Rain­bow War­rior led a peace­ful arma­da of boats down the Med­way to Kingsnorth, and thir­ty cam­paign­ers, each car­ry­ing flags from 30 nations, dis­em­barked onto Kingsnorth’s jet­ty. E.on’s pro­posed new plant would emit as much car­bon diox­ide as the world’s 30 least pol­lut­ing coun­tries com­bined (hence the flags), dash­ing our chances of beat­ing cli­mate change and spelling dis­as­ter for mil­lions of fam­i­lies around the world. Mean­while, anoth­er group of vol­un­teers — includ­ing two of the Kingsnorth Six (recent­ly cleared of crim­i­nal dam­age to Kingsnorth’s smoke­stack using the defence of cli­mate change) – occu­pied a small, con­crete, E.ON-owned island just next to the jet­ty until they were forced to leave by a high court injunc­tion.
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/vigil-ends-20081030

18) Bris­tohl Uni Death Fair, 29.10.08
This time it was the 4 horse­man of the apoc­a­lypse (well, 2 of them) who high­light­ed the real­i­ty behind the shiny facades of com­pa­nies like E.On and BAE Sys­tems.
http://westsideclimateaction.wordpress.com

19) Con­vey­er belt lock-on stops Aus­tralian coal pow­er sta­tion, 1.11.08
29 peo­ple from Ris­ing Tide Aus­tralia have been arrest­ed after a cli­mate change protest at Bayswa­ter pow­er sta­tion today. Four peo­ple attached them­selves to machin­ery, stop­ping the con­vey­or belts that car­ry coal to Bayswater’s fur­naces for six hours while 25 oth­ers occu­pied the coal piles.
http://www.risingtide.org.au/node/802

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Com­piled and sent out by Ris­ing Tide UK.

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When you threaten One you threaten All: Eviction Succesfully Resisted in Bristol

An attempt­ed ille­gal evic­tion occurred this after­noon at Uni­ty Home, num­ber 87 Ash­ley Road, St Pauls, Bris­tol. IT WAS RESISTED

Unity Home eviction resistance 1Unity Home eviction resistance 2Unity Home eviction resistance 3An attempt­ed ille­gal evic­tion occurred this after­noon at Uni­ty Home, num­ber 87 Ash­ley Road, St Pauls, Bris­tol. IT WAS RESISTED

Own­er­ship of the house is claimed by Places for Peo­ple, Britain’s largest hous­ing asso­ci­a­tion. Its chief exec­u­tive, David Cow­ans, topped the list of rich­est “social” hous­ing providers with a salary of £257,928 in 2007 (Every sin­gle pen­ny on the backs of the poor). Instead of pro­vid­ing ade­quate social hous­ing they work for cor­po­rate gain and through spec­u­la­tion with our mon­ey are feel­ing the pinch of the prop­er­ty mar­ket crash. This is a social hous­ing provider play­ing with pub­lic mon­ey.

Num­ber 87 is actu­al­ly owned by Places for People’s char­i­ta­ble arm (Places for Peo­ple Indi­vid­ual Sup­port), which is sup­posed to pro­vide hous­ing for home­less and the elder­ly. They plan to turn the major­i­ty of the house into pri­vate owned apart­ments. It cur­rent­ly is hous­ing 20+ peo­ple.

It has been emp­ty for over 3 years and squat­ted by a large num­ber of oth­er­wise home­less peo­ple since April 2008.

At 12.00pm today (28 Oct 2008), bailiffs act­ing for Places for Peo­ple arrived – short­ly to be accom­pa­nied by the police – demand­ing that the res­i­dents be out by 12.30pm. They claimed paper­work had been sent through to the occu­pants, but in fact no notice of evic­tion had come through. This was an ille­gal attempt at mak­ing peo­ple home­less and was answered with sol­i­dar­i­ty.

A crit­i­cal mass of peo­ple began to build in response to those resist­ing the ille­gal evic­tion and by about 1.30pm there were between 30–50 peo­ple out­side the gates on Ash­ley Road, with many many more inside, ready to resist what the bailiffs and police were prepar­ing.

Peo­ple took to the roof, occu­pied spaces in win­dows, defend­ed the doors – for­ti­fy­ing the build­ing. A ban­ner was dropped explain­ing: WHEN YOU THREATEN ONE YOU THREATEN ALL – for the defence of squats and autonomous spaces. Against com­pa­nies like Places for Peo­ple – Britain’s most com­mer­cialised, cor­rupt land­lord.

A stand off ensued and even­tu­al­ly by around 2.00pm the bailiffs and police depart­ed the scene. A beau­ti­ful vic­to­ry for sol­i­dar­i­ty in resist­ing the cor­po­rate takeover of our city.

This evic­tion threat is immi­nent and all sup­port is need­ed.

The res­i­dents of the build­ing have made repeat­ed attempts to nego­ti­ate a set­tle­ment with P4P but com­mer­cial gain seems their only aim. The res­i­dents ask all those who believe in hous­ing for all and the stand against gen­tri­fi­ca­tion to join them.

Squat­ters and res­i­dents togeth­er against cor­rupt land­lords!