Category: South West England

South West Eng­land

Fed Up Polar Bear Disrupts National BBC Wildlife Magazine HQ

This morn­ing, Tues­day Decem­ber 11th, at 10am, two mem­bers of “Arc­tic Asso­ciates” (aka Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide), and one grumpy refugee polar bear paid a vis­it to the nation­al offices of the BBC Wildlife Mag­a­zine at the top of Tow­er House in Broad­mead, Bris­tol. More than a hun­dred employ­ees looked on aghast (some wink­ing in sup­port) as “J. Smith” from Arc­tic Asso­ciates, flanked by Mr. Pole R. Bear, made a long and pas­sion­ate speech about the sad and dan­ger­ous irony of allow­ing the world’s sec­ond largest oil com­pa­ny- respon­si­ble for endan­ger­ing thou­sands of species through oil spills, tox­ic pol­lu­tion, and cli­mate change- to spon­sor their Wildlife Pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the Year Award Con­test, which is com­ing to Bris­tol Muse­um this Sat­ur­day Decem­ber 15th.

BBC Wildlife polar bearThis morn­ing, Tues­day Decem­ber 11th, at 10am, two mem­bers of “Arc­tic Asso­ciates” (aka Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide), and one grumpy refugee polar bear paid a vis­it to the nation­al offices of the BBC Wildlife Mag­a­zine at the top of Tow­er House in Broad­mead, Bris­tol. More than a hun­dred employ­ees looked on aghast (some wink­ing in sup­port) as “J. Smith” from Arc­tic Asso­ciates, flanked by Mr. Pole R. Bear, made a long and pas­sion­ate speech about the sad and dan­ger­ous irony of allow­ing the world’s sec­ond largest oil com­pa­ny- respon­si­ble for endan­ger­ing thou­sands of species through oil spills, tox­ic pol­lu­tion, and cli­mate change- to spon­sor their Wildlife Pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the Year Award Con­test, which is com­ing to Bris­tol Muse­um this Sat­ur­day Decem­ber 15th.

The vis­it evi­dent­ly cre­at­ed quite a stir, as employ­ees of BBC Wildlife gath­ered around to hear what the com­mo­tion was all about, and the press team, direc­tors, and build­ing secu­ri­ty simul­ta­ne­ous­ly con­verged on the pro­test­ers, who were final­ly asked to leave, after cir­cu­lat­ing through both the 9th and 14th floors of the build­ing, and speak­ing to the entire nation­al staff of the BBC Wildlife Mag­a­zine, who are now more aware than ever of the his­toric blun­der than was made when Shell’s £1,500,000 two year spon­sor­ship deal was accept­ed.

Iron­i­cal­ly, the poster child of this year’s Pho­tog­ra­phy Award is a polar bear stuck on a melt­ing ice­berg, the most vis­i­ble sym­bol of the cli­mate-dam­ag­ing nature of Shell’s core busi­ness.

If you’d like to get involved, come to the sHELL Wildlife Pho­tog­ra­phy Exhib­it PROTEST this Sat­ur­day Dec. 15th start­ing at Noon, in front of the Bris­tol Muse­um at the top of Park St. Please come dressed as any wildlife that sHELL is endan­ger­ing, and invite all your friends- putting a stop to green­wash­ing is a key bat­tle in the war against cli­mate change, and we want to stop our pub­lic muse­ums being used for this pur­pose**

The exhib­it will remain at the Muse­um until the 13th of Jan­u­ary.

**We are hav­ing a cos­tume mak­ing party/ plan­ning ses­sion this Wednes­day the 12th at Kebele- 14 Robert­son Rd. in Eas­t­on from 1700 to 2200 or so, with an open dis­cus­sion hap­pen­ing at 1930. There will be at least one sewing machine there, so bring mate­r­i­al, (fake) fur of the Shell- dam­aged wildlife of your choice- avail­able at all fine fab­ric shops, news­pa­per, black felt, ban­ner and sign mak­ing mate­ri­als, and your favourite bev­er­age to share.**

More infor­ma­tion about the cam­paign:

Despite dozens of peo­ple con­tact­ing the Bris­tol City Coun­cil and the muse­um and ask­ing them to reject the exhi­bi­tion, these requests have been met with excus­es, buck pass­ing, or sim­ply silence. It’s clear that our lead­ers would rather not face up to the fact that our pub­lic muse­um is in fact adver­tis­ing and green­wash­ing one of the worst multi­na­tion­al oil com­pa­nies which is wreak­ing hav­oc on peo­ple, wildlife, and habi­tat the world over (all in the name of wildlife pro­tec­tion?)

Appar­ent­ly the Bris­tol Muse­um, Bris­tol City Coun­cil, the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um, and BBC Wildlife Mag­a­zine see no prob­lem with exhibit­ing pho­tographs of endan­gered polar bears on melt­ing ice as part of a pho­tog­ra­phy exhi­bi­tion spon­sored by Shell. Do they think we’re stu­pid?

Our goal is to put pres­sure on the lat­ter two organ­i­sa­tions to reject Shell as a spon­sor, and for Shell to decide that the neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty involved with spon­sor­ing the com­pe­ti­tion sim­ply isn’t worth it any­more.

More infor­ma­tion about Shell:

http://onthelevelblog.wordpress.com/2007/10/04/shells-wild-lie/

Shell oper­ates in 145 coun­tries world­wide- one of the worst impacts is in Nige­ria, where Shell was com­plic­it in the 1995 mur­der of Ken Saro-Wiwa, an envi­ron­men­tal activist, as well as eight oth­ers by the Niger­ian mil­i­tary jun­ta.

Shell has been work­ing in the Niger Delta since 1956, caus­ing prob­lems to:

• local com­mu­ni­ties — gas flares burn day and night, roar­ing like jet engines and pol­lut­ing the air with thick sooty par­ti­cles that stick to almost every­thing and have seri­ous health impacts

• liveli­hoods — oil is a root of con­flict and suf­fer­ing in Nige­ria. Over 1000 law suits have been filed against Shell, yet it still refus­es to pay com­pen­sa­tion costs.

• the envi­ron­ment — pol­lut­ing oil spills and fires have occurred for decades due to Shel­l’s rust­ing pipes seri­ous­ly affect­ing local vil­lages, bio­di­ver­si­ty, and con­tribut­ing towards cli­mate change.

Come to the protest at noon on Sat­ur­day, and let ‘em know that Bris­to­lians won’t stand idly by while our plan­et is rav­aged, and our muse­um is com­plic­it in cov­er­ing up oil com­pa­ny lies.

The time for blind obe­di­ence has passed- it’s time to start dis­obey­ing.….

“Where oil reigns, life is hell”

-Oron­to Dou­glas, Envi­ron­men­tal Law­er, Niger Delta

Bath Bomb issue 5 now! & Bristle statement

Just your Christ­mas edi­tion of the month­ly Bathon­ian rab­ble rousi­ness, from deep with­in gen­tri­fy cen­tral

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Nev­er mind the Chron­i­cle… here’s the ever-fes­tive
The Bath Bomb

Just your Christ­mas edi­tion of the month­ly Bathon­ian rab­ble rousi­ness, from deep with­in gen­tri­fy cen­tral

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Nev­er mind the Chron­i­cle… here’s the ever-fes­tive
The Bath Bomb
Issue #5
free/donation
Dec ‘07

Bath Activists — 2 BNP – 0

Nazi Nick Grif­fin must’ve been hav­ing flash­backs on the 26th Novem­ber as yet anoth­er BNP meet­ing got shaft­ed by anti-fas­cists. This time the venue was Oxford Union, an upper class debat­ing soci­ety who booked Grif­fin and holo­caust deny­ing bas­tard David Irv­ing to speak to try and raise falling tick­et sales. Bath Activist Net­work sent 9 activists to the 1,000 strong demo. After get­ting bored of speech­es and plac­ards, we put our­selves to good use blockad­ing a side entrance to the meet­ing, our pres­ence being enough to deter the cops from let­ting the doors open. All oth­er entrances were block­ad­ed and BNP sup­port­ers were turfed out of a pub they were hid­ing in! The demo most­ly stayed peace­ful, save a brief instance dur­ing which the cops tried to stop activists get­ting into the build­ing. The cops – as they often do – failed, and the build­ing was breached many times through­out the night. The meet­ing was delayed by near­ly two hours, and the meet­ing end­ed up last­ing just 8 min­utes, with Grif­fin and Irv­ing being held in sep­a­rate loca­tions for their own safe­ty!

Annoy­ing though the BNP were, they were near­ly topped by the spoilt tweed-wear­ing lit­tle Har­ry and Wills wannabe daddy’s boys that con­sti­tute the major­i­ty of stu­dents at Oxford. Judg­ing by the way they were whing­ing and cry­ing in favour of the BNP, you could almost get the impres­sion that they were fas­cists them­selves. The rich sup­port­ing the nazis? Hmm­mm. Added to this, they didn’t even try to con­ceal their supe­ri­or­i­ty com­plex­es derived from the over-priced crash course in sodomy and brandy quaf­fling that counts for an edu­ca­tion at Oxford.

The same hap­pened to Nazi Nick in Oxford as in Bath when the greasy hunch-backed lit­tle bas­tard came here, with a well-placed protest shut­ting his meet­ing down. The night was a huge suc­cess – block­ades, nazis get­ting pelt­ed with eggs, occu­pa­tions, out­wit­ting dozy cops – chaos! When will you get the mes­sage, Nick? Soci­ety hates you and your nazi views! Lis­ten­ing to sick bas­tards like Grif­fin is a good reminder that regard­less of colour or nation­al­i­ty, the only sig­nif­i­cant divide in soci­ety is rich and poor, the many and the few. As one chant went on the night, ‘They say race war — we say CLASS WAR!’

Bris­tle Mag: R.I.P.

We here at the Bath Bomb would like to tip our hats in fond farewell to our lit­er­ary fore­fa­thers at Bris­tle mag­a­zine. For many years, this rag pro­vid­ed Bris­tol and the south west With inspir­ing rad­i­cal news and rants. It was a great read, and well worth the odd £1.20 of dole!

http://www.bristle.org.uk

Kebab Shop Car­nage

Sta­tion Kebab Shop in Brad­ford-on-Avon has been forced to close after a vicious race attack left staff mem­bers with bro­ken bones. The attack comes short­ly after anti-racists were brand­ed fas­cists for shut­ting down a BNP meet­ing in Oxford. This attack is evi­dence enough to demon­strate what hap­pens when we let these bas­tards spread their poi­son. They whine about free­dom of speech, but they only use it to spread fear, vio­lence and hatred because of the colour of people’s skin – they’re racist thugs who need a fuckin hard boot to the face. The only debate worth hav­ing with a fas­cist is one where they end up inhal­ing their own teeth.

In a state­ment received by Bath Bomb today, local Antifa group have promised ret­ri­bu­tion against fas­cists oper­at­ing local­ly, and frankly, good luck to them! As Adolph Hitler once said ‘The only way the rise of the Ger­man Nazi par­ty could have been pre­vent­ed was if its ene­mies had have recog­nised it for what it was and smashed it in its infan­cy with the utmost force’. The only true words he ever said, and as true to the BNP and NF today as it was to him back in the 1930s’.

http://www.thisisbath.com/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=180730&command=displayContent&sourceNode=232315&home=yes&more_nodeId1=163047&contentPK=19121961

Hunt­ing As Usu­al, Sab­bing As Usu­al

It was a sun­ny autumn day when a group of us went for a trip to the coun­try. We ren­dezvoused with a group of peace­ful veg­gie com­man­does and went about our task. We were there to mon­i­tor and stop a group of sadis­tic inbreds who prance about on hors­es to sat­is­fy their blood­lust and infe­ri­or­i­ty com­plex­es (I am of course talk­ing about fox hunters, of the Ted­worth Hunt). Despite the ban, they are still hunt­ing, this was fur­ther clar­i­fied on a pre­vi­ous week when a group of sabs stopped a dig out (which involves the hunt send­ing a ter­ri­er down a fox hole to fight the trapped ani­mal, before yank­ing it out). They put on the pre­tences of drag hunt­ing (fol­low­ing a fake scent) but this is nor­mal­ly only for show or insur­ance should they “acci­den­tal­ly” kill any­thing.

On arriv­ing at the hunt there were the usu­al assort­ment of big-eared boys and oth­er odd­i­ties of the human species. We did our best to fol­low the hunt; jump­ing fences, blow­ing horns and chas­ing them around the coun­try­side. At one point after los­ing the hunt and then re-find­ing them again, some­thing must have flipped in the psy­chot­ic mind of the hunts­man and his fol­low­ers and they tried to ride us down (No sabs were seri­ous­ly injured). Short­ly after this inci­dent, their day thor­ough­ly ruined by the sabs, the hunt packed up ear­ly. We then went round a mate’s house for veg­an cake and tea. If you feel like get­ting involved give us a call on 07854 062336.

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

Events

every Mon­day Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs meet­ing — back room of the Bell, 8pm
every Wednes­day Lon­don Road Food Co-op; 4pm—7pm, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Lon­don Road
8th Dec Bath FreeShop — Stall Street 12–3pm
10th-24th Dec Anti-fur fort­night http://www.caft.org.uk
15th Dec Day of action against foie gras; con­tact bathanimalaction@yahoo.co.uk
16th Dec ‘Bub­bling Under’ — Porter Cel­lar Bar, 1–4pm; show­ing The Yes Men
21stDec ‘Left­ism’ at the Crown on Bath­wick Street — 9–1am; funds towards RAINBOW
2nd Jan Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing — back room of the Bell, 7.30–8.30pm
3rd Jan Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing — down­stairs Hob­gob­lin, 7.30–9pm
7th Jan Pub­lic meet­ing against Tesco’s; St Mary’s Church, Bath­wick Hill; con­tact bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk for mnore details

Reclaim The High Street

Mem­bers of Bath Activist Net­work descend­ed on town last Sat­ur­day for the mam­moth day of demo­ing that was ‘Reclaim the Plan­et’. Mov­ing away from the orig­i­nal ‘eco’ theme, activists adopt­ed a more gen­er­ous­ly anti-cap­i­tal­ist approach to ques­tion the con­sumer night­mare that is Xmas shop­ping. Now, we’re not anti Xmas, but we did want to high­light why this time of year sees the sweat­shop, ani­mal abuse and cli­mate change indus­tries prof­its soar, in this, the sea­son of good will. We start­ed off help­ing out Bath Stop the War Coali­tion on their anti-war vig­il which has been tak­ing place every Sat­ur­day, between 11.30 and 12.30 out­side the Abbey for the past sev­er­al years. An unjust war for oil, so we can keep dri­ving our 4x4s, import­ing our apples and buy­ing our plas­tic crap.
From there, we moved on to Bistro No.5, an iso­lat­ed bas­tion of ani­mal abuse that con­tin­ues to sell the bloat­ed liv­er of force-fed geese, oth­er­wise known as foie gras. Hav­ing already promised to take this sick ‘del­i­ca­cy’ off the menu, but put it back on, they weren’t best pleased to see us again. The man­ager­ess called the cops, who threat­ened some arrests, exchanged some stern words, then left after the day’s first police-pro­test­er round of ban­ter. This left a very unhap­py man­ager­ess and dur­ing a short and sharp phone call, the own­er promised to take it back off the menu!

We then moved on to Dis­ney, who use their ‘cute and cud­dly’ image to hide the fact that they employ third world chil­dren in sweat­shops to pro­duce their toys for slave labour wages. A ban­ner was unfurled, leaflets dis­trib­uted, and many cus­tomers left to shop in a more cru­el­ty-free envi­ron­ment. The demo was effec­tive and well received – we even received a vis­it from our flu­o­ro-jack­et­ed friends from the Bath Con­stab­u­lary, who were hap­py to let us con­tin­ue our peace­ful protest, and moved off after a anoth­er spot of jovial ban­ter!

From there we moved to the ever unpop­u­lar McDon­alds, who were pleased as ever to see us. More ban­ners, free cake and hun­dreds of leaflets were deployed as dozens of poten­tial cus­tomers pledged to boy­cott the place on the grounds of their dis­re­gard for ani­mal wel­fare, employ­ee rights, the envi­ron­ment and the seri­ous health impli­ca­tions of eat­ing there! All in all a long but suc­cess­ful day despite the ter­ri­ble weath­er. A fol­low-up event is being planned for next sum­mer, and loads is gonna be going on in-between, so keep yer eyes peeled!

http://www.mcspotlight.org/
http://www.nosweat.org.uk/node/183
http://www.banfoiegras.org.uk/
http://www.stopwar.org.uk/

Pup­py Punch­ers Pay The Price

On Sat­ur­day the 10th Novem­ber, activists descend­ed on Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences in Cam­bridgeshire, furi­ous at the company’s con­tin­ued ani­mal abuse. A research con­trac­tor for the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try, HLS kill 500 ani­mals dai­ly in the name of prof­it, with­out ever pro­duc­ing a sin­gle paper. But not just the cute and fluffy ani­mals suf­fer: 10,000 humans die every year in the UK alone as a result of dodgy drug side effects. But then what can you expect, when the gov­ern­ment refus­es to exam­ine whether ani­mal test­ing works or not? TGN 1412 hor­ri­bly injured 6 vol­un­teers in March of last year; like Vioxx, Con­ter­gan, and Thalido­mide did before, to name a few. But the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals have lob­bied hard for their priv­i­leges, and who cares about lives when there’s a quick buck to be made? Far eas­i­er to just lock up any­one who com­plains and call them ‘ter­ror­ists’ – just like the three SHAC activists in prison right now.

From 1 till 2, cam­paign­ers marched through Hunt­ing­don cen­tre, leaflet­ing and chant­i­ng, before mov­ing on to the labs itself. And what a place – ringed by razor­wire, fences and grim-look­ing cops, HLS is noth­ing short of a mod­ern day Auschwitz. For two hours we vent­ed our rage, with mega­phone, voice and siren, and heard how these bank­rupt mon­sters have been bailed out again and again by tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey, and also of the caught-on-cam­era HLS work­ers, laugh­ing as they hit cap­tive bea­gles in the face.

Recent­ly, anoth­er share­hold­er, Axa, pulled out; but when will sci­ence final­ly learn to move to non-ani­mal test­ing, so then we can all just get on with our lives, rather than wav­ing plac­ards, or bed-bound in cash-strapped hos­pi­tals?

http://www.shac.net/HLS/exposed.html

Who Are Bath Activist Net­work?

We 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

The Wheels Of Green Bull Go Round And Round

Ever strain­ing to prove its green cre­den­tials, B&NES have recent­ly invest­ed in a pilot scheme of school­bus­es being run on rape­seed oil/biodiesel , as a mea­sure to cut CO2 emis­sions– with one at Three Ways in Bath and anoth­er at Nor­ton Hill, in Mid­somer Nor­ton. While my tree­hug­ger side wel­comes this, my inner cyn­ic gets scep­ti­cal: nitrous oxide emis­sion from fer­tilis­ers are around 3oo times worse than fos­sil fuel emis­sions, so, unless organ­ic, bio­fu­els are no friend to the plan­et. Sec­ond­ly, there is bare­ly enough farm­land around for food crops nev­er mind fuel, which will jump food prices, when the world’s already got more than enough star­va­tion prob­lems. In the South, bio­fu­el plan­ta­tions will also ruin indige­nous cul­ture by forc­ing peo­ple from their land into the cities, and will also eat into nature reserves. Small scale pro­duc­tion and recy­cling cook­ing oils may not be a bad thing, but means lit­tle prof­it for the agro­fu­els indus­try: yet again, the smell of ‘green­wash’ is in the air, and it’s start­ing to stink.

http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/

Suits, Gold Lamé And Video­tapes

Car­ry­ing on from last month’s ‘Fourth World War’, the Porter Cellar’s keep­ing it up with anoth­er ‘Bub­bling Under’ screen­ing: Sun­day 16th Decem­ber, from 1pm till 4pm, free entry, show­ing ‘The Yes Men’. A dark­ly com­i­cal doc­u­men­tary, it fol­lows the sto­ry of how two anti-cor­po­rate activists who set them­selves up as bogus big busi­ness reps, mak­ing ever-more ridicu­lous pre­sen­ta­tions at swanky indus­try con­fer­ences. Fol­low­ing com­mer­cial log­ic to its nasty extreme, they hoped to shake the audi­ence from their stu­por by straight-faced­ly offer­ing up busi­ness plans so bru­tal and down­right dis­gust­ing, that even the most greedy and self-serv­ing of fat cats would be incensed. But, whether propos­ing elec­tro-shock­ing sweat­shop work­ers into line with inflat­ed gold­en dil­dos, or recy­cled human fae­ces into a new range of burg­ers, the only reac­tion they ever get is enthu­si­as­tic applause… Prov­ing that once again, fact is stranger than fic­tion! Must be seen to be believed.

http://www.moles.co.uk/porter/view_porter_listing.ihtml?per=future
http://www.theyesmen.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 are avail­able on request.

And now, to the dis­claimer: As any­one is free to con­tribute to this newslet­ter, 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…

http://www.myspace.com/bathbomb

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bris­tle mag­a­zine (Bris­tol) — state­ment from the col­lec­tive

Whilst the com­rades at Bath Bomb are jump­ing the gun a bit by declar­ing ‘Bris­tle R.I.P’, the bris­tle Col­lec­tive, pub­lish­ers of bris­tle mag­a­zine, would like to advise activists, read­ers and Indy­media users of the fol­low­ing:

A state­ment from the bris­tle Col­lec­tive

Before the Bris­to­lian news-sheet came and went, before Bris­tol Indy­media was con­ceived, before the inter­net was a dai­ly (hourly) part of your lives, and before any­body & nobody had their per­son­al blog, there was bris­tle mag­a­zine.

What start­ed as a cut’n’paste A4 pho­to­copied & fold­ed freesheet (see image), in times of hope and high activ­i­ty when the Tories were beat­en and we were reclaim­ing those streets, devel­oped into a 2 or more colour mag­a­zine of between 24 and 40 pages. From a copied run of 50 to a pro­fes­sion­al print-run and sales of 1200, although nor­mal­ly half that, bris­tle evolved through the years. But its aim always remained the same: to give a space and a voice in Bris­tol & the south west to those shut out from the cor­po­rate media-main­stream of ads and bull­shit. To be a pub­li­ca­tion writ­ten by activists that would try to reach out beyond the activist scenes to com­bat the mis­in­for­ma­tion of gov­ern­ments and cap­i­tal.

Some 10 years and 24 issues (plus a book, var­i­ous free-sheets, t‑shirts, stick­ers etc) lat­er that task remains as valid and vital as ever, in fact more so! But for now bris­tle mag­a­zine is dor­mant. The con­tin­ued depar­ture over the last 2 years of long-term col­lec­tive mem­bers, and con­trib­u­tors, has not been coun­tered by suf­fi­cient new peo­ple. We have had some inter­est­ed new peo­ple, but their involve­ment, and usu­al­ly their stay in Bris­tol, has not been per­ma­nent.

Sad­ly there­fore, the remain­ing few col­lec­tive mem­bers, who are all deeply involved in oth­er projects too, have decid­ed to take a long term break and sus­pend pub­li­ca­tion of the mag­a­zine. We would like to thank all those who have con­tributed in any way to the mag­a­zine over the years, and send our love and sol­i­dar­i­ty to all those con­tin­u­ing to strug­gle for a free and bet­ter world. We look for­wards to see­ing you behind the bar­ri­cade of your choos­ing, be it wield­ing a pen, a spray can, or some­thing a lit­tle heav­ier.

For now we are look­ing into oth­er pos­si­ble ini­tia­tives involv­ing print media and the machin­ery need­ed. We would be inter­est­ed to hear from any­body con­sid­er­ing pub­lish­ing alter­na­tive print media. Indeed if you have the time, ener­gy, skills (research, writ­ing, dtp, dis­tro, art & car­toons, edit­ing etc) and longish-term com­mit­ment we could be per­suad­ed to relaunch bris­tle! Whilst we have closed the old bris­tle web­site & email, we can still be con­tact­ed c/o 14 Robert­son Rd, Bris­tol BS5 6JY, or email bristle@riseup.net

Salud!

Fossil Fools Day, April 1st 2008

Ris­ing Tide Inter­na­tion­al is call­ing for a day of action against the fos­sil fuel indus­try on April 1st 2008…

Fossil Fools Day advance flierRis­ing Tide Inter­na­tion­al is call­ing for a day of action against the fos­sil fuel indus­try on April 1st 2008…
FOSSIL FOOLS DAY!

Roll up, roll up! The cli­mate cir­cus is in town. Cli­mate change threat­ens our very sur­vival, but the fools at the head of the fos­sil fuel empire con­tin­ue to plun­der the earth, with gov­ern­ments the will­ing court jesters at their side.

They would have us believe that we can escape cli­mate change with tech­no-fix­es, mar­ket mech­a­nisms and off­set schemes – all tech­no­crat­ic acro­bat­ics that dis­tract us from the truth: the only real solu­tion to cli­mate change is to keep fos­sil fuels in the ground.

For over a cen­tu­ry the fos­sil fuel indus­try has been fool­ing with our lives. From extrac­tion to com­bus­tion they have poi­soned our air, pol­lut­ed our water and ruined our cli­mate. On April 1st, 2008, we’re going to turn the tables and show them who the real fools are.

Find a local fos­sil fool – the coal-min­ing clown, the off­set con­tor­tion­ist, the avi­a­tor trip­ping on the high wire, the super­mar­ket food mile freak show, the oily strong man, or any oth­er fool that deserves your atten­tion – and join with thou­sands around the world in tak­ing one step clos­er to dis­man­tling the fos­sil fuel indus­try.

On Fos­sil Fools Day, bring the spir­it of car­ni­val and mis­chief to the fight for cli­mate jus­tice.

www.fossilfoolsday.org
www.risingtide.org.uk

(More info and resources com­ing soon… for now, put the date in your diary, spread the call-out above far and wide, and start schem­ing!)

Bristol Cycle Circus 8th December

Join a colour­ful crit­i­cal mass of peo­ple and ped­dlers of all shapes and sizes and let our cycling cir­cus upstage and reveal Bris­tol’s cli­mate crim­i­nals.

Roll up Roll Up:

Call­ing all : bicy­cle trick­sters, bike pow­ered giz­mos, jug­glers, ban­ner mak­ers, poets, sto­ry­tellers, mobile musi­cians, per­form­ers.

Join a colour­ful crit­i­cal mass of peo­ple and ped­dlers of all shapes and sizes and let our cycling cir­cus upstage and reveal Bris­tol’s cli­mate crim­i­nals.

Roll up Roll Up:

Call­ing all : bicy­cle trick­sters, bike pow­ered giz­mos, jug­glers, ban­ner mak­ers, poets, sto­ry­tellers, mobile musi­cians, per­form­ers.

Lets bring the real­i­ty and caus­es of cli­mate change to our streets..

Meet: Col­lege Green, 1pm
8th Decem­ber

Inter­na­tion­al day of action on cli­mate change

We want to take cre­ative action on cli­mate chaos! We invite you to join us on our Cycle Cir­cus where togeth­er we will reveal the cli­mate crim­i­nals with their con­fi­dence tricks and green wash.

Our first stage will be The Roy­al Bank of Scot­land where last month saw 30 actions in the UK on this biggest investor of oil and gas projects, they haven’t gone away and nor have we.

The next stage is up to us all. Talk, share ideas, plan ‚pre­pare, turn up, trans­form!

Cli­mate change is the biggest issue of our time effect­ing every­one and most of all the poor. We can take back con­trol togeth­er, cre­ate the world we want to live in and have fun along the way! Lets take the stage of those who green wash our streets and our minds to make us think its all bet­ter. Pic­ture this, peo­ple tak­ing to the streets because enough is enough, no more exploita­tion! Our plan­et’s on the brink of eco­log­i­cal cri­sis and we won’t let cor­po­ra­tions get away with our world.

Lets halt the infra­struc­ture of more fos­sil fuel projects lock­ing us into a future of cli­mate chaos and that offer big buck high tech non-solu­tions.

Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide is an open group mak­ing col­lec­tive action ded­i­cat­ed to tack­ling the root caus­es of cli­mate chaos and cre­at­ing cli­mate jus­tice. We want to invite peo­ple to join this inter­na­tion­al day of action on cli­mate change.

Buy Nothing Day – 24th November 2007 — Steal Something Day

The last Sat­ur­day of Novem­ber sees Inter­na­tion­al Buy Noth­ing Day tak­ing place in many cor­ners of the globe; par­tic­u­lar­ly the afflu­ent cor­ners!

Steal Something Day
The last Sat­ur­day of Novem­ber sees Inter­na­tion­al Buy Noth­ing Day tak­ing place in many cor­ners of the globe; par­tic­u­lar­ly the afflu­ent cor­ners!

This year Buy Noth­ing Day will be marked in Birm­ing­ham city cen­tre by a num­ber of activ­i­ties aimed at rais­ing the pro­file of a range of aspects asso­ci­at­ed with mass con­sumerism.

Sev­er­al groups will be putting togeth­er Buy Noth­ing Day themed stalls, dis­plays and events, includ­ing a San­ta Claus parade, Free Shops, Free Food, Bicy­cle-pow­ered Free Drinks and (free) Music.

If you have any­thing to give away for free, be it pos­ses­sions, ideas or skills then leave your mon­ey at home and get out­side to enjoy a con­sump­tion free day.
Buy Noth­ing Day aims to chal­lenge con­sumer lifestyles on envi­ron­men­tal, human rights and polit­i­cal grounds, but if you have oth­er rea­sons to “Stop Shop­ping” then Sat­ur­day 24th would be an ide­al time to tell the world about them.

—

Come down to the peace gar­dens in man­ches­ter at 11 am. There will be a free stall and loads of info and music etc. Rhythms of Resis­tance band have organ­ised this plus a cou­ple of small tables and a web­site for free things — all addi­tions wel­come.
www.freemanchester.org .In the after­noon oth­er things are planned for after the Karen Reiss­man demo so it would be great to see you all any­time from eleven.

Any free stuff or info about free events or peo­ple want­i­ng to do mini work­shops would be very wel­come.

—

Sat­ur­day 24th Novem­ber. Get stuff you want for free! Give your old stuff away!
Don’t throw away things that could be use­ful to others…freecycle them! Bring things to give away, and pick up some­thing for your­self or for Christ­mas gifts…for free!
10.30am to 12.30pm The Southville Cen­tre, Beauley Road, Bris­tol BS3 1QG.
Event organ­ised by Tran­si­tion Bris­tol www.transitionbristol.org & Freecy­cle Ash­ton Bed­min­ster & Southville
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/freecycleashtonbedminstersouthville
This event coin­cides with Nation­al Buy Noth­ing Day
www.buynothingday.co.uk

—
Bristol Buy Nothing Day undead posterBristol Buy Nothing Day undead 1
Buy Noth­ing Day: Con­sumer Zom­bie Flash­mob

Broad­mead (junc­tion of Mer­chant St and Broad­mead), Bris­tol, 2pm, Sat­ur­day 24th Novem­ber

This Novem­ber, envi­ron­men­tal­ists, social activists and con­cerned cit­i­zens in as many as 65 coun­tries will hit the streets for a 24-hour con­sumer fast in cel­e­bra­tion of the 15th annu­al Buy Noth­ing Day.

Fea­tured in recent years by the likes of CNN, MSNBC, Wired, the BBC, USA Today, The Age and the CBC, the inter­na­tion­al event has been gain­ing main­stream momen­tum as the cli­mate cri­sis dri­ves aver­age peo­ple to seek out green­er alter­na­tives to unre­strained con­sump­tion.

Timed to coin­cide with one of the busiest shop­ping days on the retail cal­en­dar, as well as the unof­fi­cial start of the inter­na­tion­al hol­i­day-shop­ping sea­son, Buy Noth­ing Day has tak­en many shapes, from relaxed fam­i­ly out­ings, to free, non-com­mer­cial street par­ties, to polit­i­cal­ly charged pub­lic protests. Any­one can take part pro­vid­ed they spend a day with­out spend­ing.

In past years, street activists have proven par­tic­u­lar­ly imag­i­na­tive in their cel­e­bra­tions, bring­ing zom­bie march­es, cred­it-card cut-ups, and shopa­holic clin­ics to malls and pub­lic squares in an effort to expose the envi­ron­men­tal and social con­se­quences of First World over-con­sump­tion.

Kalle Lasn is the co-founder of the Adbusters Media Foun­da­tion, the orga­ni­za­tion respon­si­ble for launch­ing Buy Noth­ing Day as a year­ly, glob­al event. He explains that while most par­tic­i­pants used to see the day sim­ply as an escape from the mar­ket­ing mind games and fran­tic con­sumerism that have come to char­ac­ter­ize mod­ern life, the focus has since shift­ed in light of the new polit­i­cal mood sur­round­ing cli­mate change.

“So much empha­sis,” he notes, “has been placed on buy­ing car­bon off­sets and com­pact flu­o­res­cent light­bulbs and hybrid cars that we are los­ing sight of the core cause of our envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems: we con­sume far too much.”

“Buy Noth­ing Day isn’t just about chang­ing your rou­tine for one day. It’s about start­ing a last­ing lifestyle com­mit­ment. With over six bil­lion peo­ple on the plan­et, it is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the most afflu­ent – the upper 20% that con­sumes 80% of the world’s resources – to set out on a new path.”

Last year, Bris­tol Uni­ver­si­ty and UWE Peo­ple and Plan­et activists worked togeth­er to cre­ate a per­for­ma­tive and cre­ative way to cel­e­brate Buy Noth­ing Day, bring­ing the undead to the streets of broad­mead to par­o­dy the way in which first world over con­sump­tion is unques­tion­ing­ly march­ing towards eco­log­i­cal and social dis­as­ter.

This year on Novem­ber 24th join the zom­bie con­sumers as they stag­ger and stum­ble around Bris­tol’s soul­less retail dis­trict in an attempt to make peo­ple think about their con­sumer habits in an enter­tain­ing and enjoy­able way.

Rumours abound of pos­si­ble undead orches­tras and ghoul­ish cir­cus per­form­ers…

But as is the case with any flash­mob… no one quite knows what will hap­pen until it emerges and self-organ­is­es itself into exis­tence.

For videos doc­u­ment­ing last year’s BND actions check out

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wlMMaLqxXng

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wlMMaLqxXng
—

Steal Some­thing Day for the orig­i­nal call-out and cri­tique of Buy Noth­ing Day

Woman’s protest halts phone mast

19th Novem­ber 2007
A woman has spent the day in a mud­dy hole out­side her house to pre­vent work­men build­ing a mobile phone mast.

Ruth Tay­lor beat the work­men to the site in Charl­ton Road, Keyn­sham, just before 0800 GMT and stood in the way.

19th Novem­ber 2007
A woman has spent the day in a mud­dy hole out­side her house to pre­vent work­men build­ing a mobile phone mast.

Ruth Tay­lor beat the work­men to the site in Charl­ton Road, Keyn­sham, just before 0800 GMT and stood in the way.

Bath and North East Som­er­set Coun­cil (B&NES) refused plan­ning per­mis­sion for the mast, but failed to tell O2 in the reg­u­lat­ed time.

The coun­cil has apol­o­gised and O2 has said it would meet with res­i­dents on Tues­day to dis­cuss their con­cerns.

I’m not con­fi­dent we’ll stop it alto­geth­er but delight­ed that we have stalled them
Ruth Tay­lor

Work had begun to pre­pare the site for the 13m (42.6 ft) mast but Ruth Tay­lor decid­ed to take on the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions firm.

“The work­men turned up at about five to eight so I threw on my wellies which I’ve had ready by the door, dashed out here and got here first,” she said.

When they saw Mrs Tay­lor the work­men went away.

B&NES had 56 days to tell O2 the firm had been refused plan­ning approval but it took them 57 days.

Ongo­ing nego­ti­a­tions

In a state­ment the coun­cil said: “The coun­cil is aware of the con­cern that fail­ure to noti­fy O2 with­in the allot­ted time has caused to local res­i­dents and apol­o­gis­es for this.

“The coun­cil will as a mat­ter of urgency con­tin­ue to liaise with the oper­a­tors and oth­er par­ties to seek to resolve this sit­u­a­tion.

“Nego­ti­a­tions about a pos­si­ble re-sit­ing of the mast to River­side at some point in the future are ongo­ing.

“How­ev­er the site is not owned by the coun­cil or O2, and any deci­sion about this will need to be made by the site own­er.”

“There are bet­ter places that the coun­cil should have looked at and O2 should be look­ing at and it just is not right,” said Mrs Tay­lor.

“I’m not con­fi­dent we’ll stop it alto­geth­er but delight­ed that we have stalled them,” she said.

O2 said they must build the mast due to pres­sure from the gov­ern­ment and the pub­lic to boost cov­er­age.

Video of group of res­i­dents meet­ing O2 at site

300 on the streets of Helsinki for squat Elimäki — International Days Of Action For Squats & Autonomous Spaces — April 08

Helsin­ki, Fin­land: We get more time – 300 on the streets of Helsin­ki for squat Elimä­ki

Thurs­day was a day of vic­to­ry for the squat­ting scene in Helsin­ki. 300 peo­ple defied the real­ly shit­ty weath­er and gath­ered to demon­strate at the Youth Depart­ment of the city to show their sup­port to the social cen­tre Elimä­ki, aka squat E15.

Helsin­ki, Fin­land: We get more time – 300 on the streets of Helsin­ki for squat Elimä­ki

Thurs­day was a day of vic­to­ry for the squat­ting scene in Helsin­ki. 300 peo­ple defied the real­ly shit­ty weath­er and gath­ered to demon­strate at the Youth Depart­ment of the city to show their sup­port to the social cen­tre Elimä­ki, aka squat E15.

The Youth Depart­ment of Helsin­ki had gath­ered to decide on whether to rent the squat­ted house on Elimäenkatu (Elimäk­istreet) to be used as a social cen­tre for the youth of the city. This was the sec­ond time offi­cials from the city came togeth­er to decide on the issue. After post­pon­ing the deci­sion at their first meet­ing a month ago the board now unan­i­mous­ly decid­ed to inves­ti­gate the real con­di­tion of our house. The deci­sion can be under­stood as an offi­cial recog­ni­tion of the impor­tance to have an autonomous space in Helsin­ki.

The house on Elimäenkatu has been deemed in very bad con­di­tion by the offi­cials of the city. The state­ment has been sup­port­ed by no real mea­sure­ments or data what­so­ev­er and on the con­trary been proved wrong by the inves­ti­ga­tions we our­selves have made. This fact got rec­og­nized by the board of the Youth Depart­ment in their deci­sion to appoint a pri­vate con­struc­tion firm to inves­ti­gate fur­ther on the mat­ter.

The solu­tion that the squat­ters and some peo­ple from the city have been work­ing on is to have the house rent­ed by the Youth Depart­ment to be used as an autonomous social cen­tre. The house has been in this use since it was squat­ted in the begin­ning of August. After a long peri­od of bad events on our issue the out­look is now bet­ter. But it would be overt­ly opti­mistic to say that if the inves­ti­ga­tions on our house turn out to be good the city would sup­port us. Dur­ing the last months the politi­cians and offi­cials of the city have been chang­ing their state­ments on whether to legalise the house or not on a dai­ly basis. The Finnish media does not fol­low the game in the side-scenes where politi­cians and offi­cials are manip­u­lat­ing each oth­er to top­ple our project. We are far from secur­ing the only social cen­tre in Helsin­ki but much clos­er than before.

How­ev­er the sit­u­a­tion of Squat E15 devel­ops the squat­ting scene in Helsin­ki and oth­er Finnish cities is now stronger than ever before. We are con­stant­ly grow­ing in num­bers and a sup­port demo of 300 peo­ple (or more) is more than we ever could have mus­tered half a year ago. We now have recog­ni­tion for our needs and will not give up until we have this house or an equal­ly good place guar­an­teed to us. Last but not least the inter­na­tion­al sup­port we have been get­ting (Ghent, Copen­hagen, Ams­ter­dam, Tallinn and Malmö as far as we know) means a lot to a small
but grow­ing scene like ours. The strug­gle for free spaces con­tin­ues!

Love and sol­i­dar­i­ty
Social cen­tre Elimä­ki
www.valtaus.org

—————————-

Squat action days flierOn Fri­day the 4th and Sat­ur­day the 5th of April 2008, we call for two days of demon­stra­tion, direct action, pub­lic infor­ma­tion, street-par­ty, squat­ting… in defence of free spaces and for an anti-cap­i­tal­ist pop­u­lar cul­ture. Through these two days, we want to help cre­ate more vis­i­bil­i­ty of autonomous spaces and squats as a european/global polit­i­cal move­ment. We want to devel­op inter­con­nec­tions and sol­i­dar­i­ty between squats and autonomous spaces. We want to keep link­ing our spaces with new peo­ple and new strug­gles, and sup­port the cre­ation of autonomous spaces in places where there has not been a his­to­ry of this kind of action. We want to build, step by step, our abil­i­ty to over­come the wave of repres­sion falling on us.

We call for decen­tralised and autonomous actions of all kinds, depend­ing on what peo­ple feel to be the most appro­pri­ate to their local con­text. You’ll find below the polit­i­cal con­tent we wish to give to these two days.

= We are every­where…

For cen­turies, peo­ple have used squats and autonomous spaces, either urban or rur­al, to take con­trol of their own lives. They are a tool, a tac­tic, a prac­tice, and a way for peo­ple to live out their strug­gles. For decades, squat move­ments across Europe and beyond have fought cap­i­tal­ist devel­op­ment, con­tribut­ing to local strug­gles against destruc­tion; pro­vid­ing alter­na­tives to prof­it-mak­ing and con­sumer cul­ture; run­ning social cen­tres and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry activ­i­ties out­side of the main­stream econ­o­my. Demon­strat­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties for self-organ­is­ing with­out hier­ar­chy; cre­at­ing inter­na­tion­al net­works of exchange and sol­i­dar­i­ty. These net­works have changed many lives, break­ing out of social con­trol and pro­vid­ing free spaces where peo­ple can live out­side the norm.

Among oth­er things, these places pro­vide bases for meet­ings and projects, for the cre­ation and dis­tri­b­u­tion of sub­ver­sive cul­ture, for the non-mon­e­tary based exchange of goods, resources and knowl­edge, for exper­i­men­tat­ing with new ways of liv­ing, for col­lec­tive debates, for recy­cling and con­struc­tion, for agri­cul­tur­al activ­i­ties, for the pro­duc­tion of inde­pen­dant media.

Whether we speak of urban squats or of pur­chased land, of nego­ti­at­ed or re-appro­pri­at­ed rur­al land, of restored fac­to­ries or self-built build­ings, these spaces are refuges for rebels and out­laws, poor and home­less peo­ple, rad­i­cal activists, ille­gal immi­grants. Social cen­tres are cru­cial to us as part of a move­ment for social change.

= All over Europe, repres­sive agen­das are being pushed by gov­ern­ments

They are attack­ing long-stand­ing autonomous spaces such as the Ung­domshuset in Copen­hagen, Koepi and Rigaer Straße in Berlin, EKH in Vien­na and Les Tan­ner­ies in Dijon, squat­ted social cen­tres in Lon­don and Ams­ter­dam, Ifanet in Thes­sa­loni­ki, etc. In France, squats have become a pri­or­i­ty tar­get for the police after the anti-CPE move­ment and the wave of actions and riots that hap­pened dur­ing the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions peri­od. In Ger­many, many autonomous spaces have been searched and attacked before the G8 sum­mit. In Gene­va and Barcelona, two old and big squat­ting “fortress­es”, the author­i­ties have decid­ed to try to put an end to the move­ment. Where­as it is still pos­si­ble to occu­py emp­ty build­ings in some coun­tries, it has already become a crime in some oth­ers. In the coun­try­side, access to land is becom­ing hard­er and com­munes face increas­ing prob­lems from leg­is­la­tion on hygiene, secu­ri­ty and gen­tri­fi­ca­tion by the bour­geoisie and tourists. All over Europe, inde­pen­dent cul­tures are being threat­ened.

Sev­er­al months ago we saw run­ning bat­tles in the streets of Copen­hagen and actions every­where in Europe in an explo­sion of anger at the evic­tion of the Ung­domshuset social cen­tre. Since then, and with a few oth­er big resis­tance sto­ries that hap­pened over the last months, we’ve man­aged to renew the mean­ing of inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty.

We are moti­vat­ed by the same pas­sions, we feel the same deter­mi­na­tion, face a com­mon ene­my in repres­sion, and are unit­ed across bor­ders by our desire to build a world of equal­i­ty and self-deter­mi­na­tion. As unaligned and ungovern­able islands of uncon­trolled free­dom we want to con­tin­ue to act in sol­i­dar­i­ty, and strength­en our inter­na­tion­al links, no mat­ter how many kilo­me­tres there are between us.

= Issues beyond the actions

We also would like these days of actions to enable and inspire dis­cus­sion, to demon­strate var­i­ous pos­si­bil­i­ties & strate­gies, to be an occa­sion to share skills. These are some of the issues we would like to push:
* what do we expect from and under­stand by autonomous spaces?
* What is their role in the pur­suit of rad­i­cal social change?
* Where do they lie on the scale of’al­ter­na­tive’ to ‘con­fronta­tion­al’?
* share infor­ma­tion on the range of activ­i­ties that take place in autonomous social spaces along with ideas for how to make them work;
*ques­tion the pro­duc­tion of goods and ser­vices; and encour­age the exchange of knowl­edge par­tic­u­lar­ly between the town and the coun­try­side.
* share expe­ri­ences, inspire each oth­er, find out how oth­ers live col­lec­tive­ly, and their activ­i­ties, alter­na­tive eco­nom­ic exchange sys­tems…
* share var­i­ous ways of get­ting spaces all over europe: ille­gal occu­pa­tions, Do It Your­self con­struc­tions, wagen­burgs, buy­ing col­lec­tive­ly, free con­tracts…
* share prac­ti­cal resources and a feel­ing of sol­i­dar­i­ty between:
dif­fer­ent users of autonomous spaces (either cur­rent or poten­tial): co-oper­a­tives, peo­ple with­out papers, activists, trav­ellers, immi­grants, urban­ites, rur­al dwellers, small farms;
dif­fer­ent ways of using spaces; activ­i­ties for the com­mu­ni­ty, meet­ing area for groups, liv­ing spaces;
* enable the form­ing of com­mon strate­gies when faced with state repres­sion or evic­tion;

= Who are we, how can we col­lab­o­rate on this project, and make it hap­pen?

At the moment, we are a group of peo­ple involved with var­i­ous autonomous spaces around Europe, who decid­ed to start dis­cussing this call. We’ll meet var­i­ous col­lec­tives in the com­ing months and see how peo­ple feel about this pro­pos­al for euro­pean days of action, and how they want to get involved. Its suc­cess depends a lot on our capac­i­ty to cre­ate a big­ger inter­na­tion­al work­ing group. This would mean every­body who want­ed to take part into it would try to start disc­ss­ing the idea in var­i­ous spaces, cre­at­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing some pro­pa­gan­da mate­ri­als and net­work­ing infor­ma­tion about what’s going on near them dur­ing those days. We would also like to orga­nize a phys­i­cal meet­ing about all this in the upcom­ing months. Get in touch!

= Mate­ri­als

Fly­ers etc can be found on our web­site. Please down­load the PDF file, print it and spread it around squats and autonomous spaces in your area.

= Prepa­ra­tion meet­ing

The suc­cess of this call now depends upon our capac­i­ty to cre­ate a big­ger inter­na­tion­al work­ing group. The whole event will hap­pen with­out any “cen­tral com­mi­tee”, and will be made of a var­i­ous autonomous decen­tralised actions. Still, we think it is impor­tant to have a phys­i­cal meet­ing, in order to exchange ideas and strate­gies, dis­cuss the con­tents of the call, see how to cre­ate com­mon infor­ma­tion tools around that project, how to con­nect and help the var­i­ous local ini­tia­tives.
Thus, we’re call­ing for an inter­na­tion­al prepa­ra­tion & coor­di­na­tion meet­ing on Novem­ber 24th & 25th 2007, in the autonomous space “Les Tan­ner­ies”, locat­ed in Dijon, France. It is a squat­ted social cen­tre in a post-indus­tri­al envi­ron­ment, occu­pied since 1998. Thanks to years of strug­gle against the city coun­cil own­ing the build­ings, the project has reached a cer­tain degree of sta­bil­i­ty. It hosts a col­lec­tive house, a gig room, a hack­lab, a free shop, an infos­hop, a col­lec­tive gar­den, a library…

We hope that many of you will be able to join. Please tell us a bit in advance if you’re plan­ning to come, so that we get an idea of the num­ber of peo­ple we have to acco­mo­date and plan food for. You’re very wel­come to pass this invi­ta­tion to squats and autonomous spaces that you know.

= Get­ting in touch & help­ing out

Please get in touch, by writ­ing to april2008 at squat dot net. Any help with trans­la­tions in what­ev­er lan­guages is great­ly appre­ci­at­ed.
http://april2008.squat.net/

eco demo in Bath on 1st December — updated

On the 1st of Dec, Bath Activist Net­work will be putting on a demo/party high­light­ing rad­i­cal alter­na­tives to envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion.

The name of the event has been changed to ‘reclaim the plan­et’ — which we felt more closley matched our feel­ings about eco-destruc­tion than the rather vague ‘par­ty for the plan­et’!. The meet­ing place is still abbey court­yard, but the meet­ing time is now 11.30. We are hop­ing to make this a South West wide event (and fur­ther afield if your up for mak­ing the jour­ney!- crash space will be avaid­able), so please come along!

On the 1st of Dec, Bath Activist Net­work will be putting on a demo/party high­light­ing rad­i­cal alter­na­tives to envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion.

The name of the event has been changed to ‘reclaim the plan­et’ — which we felt more closley matched our feel­ings about eco-destruc­tion than the rather vague ‘par­ty for the plan­et’!. The meet­ing place is still abbey court­yard, but the meet­ing time is now 11.30. We are hop­ing to make this a South West wide event (and fur­ther afield if your up for mak­ing the jour­ney!- crash space will be avaid­able), so please come along!

We will be mov­ing through Bath say­ing hel­lo to some of our favourite plan­et trash­ers, play­ing music, shar­ing food, play­ing games and mak­ing mis­chief!

Wear pink, wear black, bring cake, bring anger — all wel­come!! We are work­ing hard on our shiny new ped­al pow­ered sound sys­tem, which will hope­ful­ly be ready for the day!

We chose the date of the demo to be delib­er­ate­ly close to the nation­al cli­mate change march in Lon­don — the hope being to high­light rad­i­cal alter­na­tives to cli­mate change, pro­vide a more rad­i­cal alter­na­tive to the Lon­don demo and get away from those damn RESPECT ban­ners! See y’all there!

Bath Activist Net­work
bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk
http://www.myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork

Climate Action News Sheet, 73 November 2007

CONTENTS:
———————————————-
UPCOMING ACTIONS AND EVENTS:
———————————————-
1) WILD LIE EXHIBITION PURSUES SHELL TO ABERYSTWYTH — 10–17.11.07

CONTENTS:
———————————————-
UPCOMING ACTIONS AND EVENTS:
———————————————-
1) WILD LIE EXHIBITION PURSUES SHELL TO ABERYSTWYTH — 10–17.11.07
2) FREE FILM SCREENING OF ‘THE WARNING’ — LONDON, 12.11.07
3) TOTTERDOWN ART TRAIL — BRISTOL, 16–18.11.07
4) OXFORDSHIRE ECO-HOUSE OPEN DAYS — 24–25.11.07
5) BANNER PROTEST AT BIOFUELS CONFERENCE — LONDON, 27.11.07
6) CRITICAL MASS DATES AND UPDATES – OCT/NOV 2007
7) CLIMATE CHANGE BIKE RIDE / NATIONAL MARCH — LONDON, 8.12.07
8) BEYONDTV FESTIVAL — SWANSEA, 28.11.07–2.12.07
9) CLIMATE CAMP EXHIBITION ON TOUR — WINTER 2007
10) LOW-IMPACT LIVING INITIATIVE COURSES — WINTER 2007
11) PLYMOUTH ENVIRONMENT CENTRE ART EXHIBITION – NOV/DEC 2007
12) EARTHFIRST MOOT / NEW ACTION UPDATE — WINTER 2007
13) FOSSIL FOOLS DAY — 1.4.08
———————————————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
———————————————-
1) SONGS OF FREEDOM AT OPENING OF SHELL’S WILD LIE EXHIBITION — 27.10.07
2) NATIONAL DAY OF LOCAL ACTION VS. ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND — 15.10.07
3) PEOPLE’S BLOCKADE OF WORLD’S BIGGEST COAL PORT — AUSTRALIA, 3.11.07
4) GREENWASH GUERILLAS DISRUPT “CARBON TRAITORS” IN NEW YORK — 30.10.07
5) BP EXECUTIVE PIED AT EUROPE’S LARGEST BIOFUELS EVENT — 17.10.07
6) CAMP HOPE, GLOUCESTER — 20–21.10.07
7) PLANE STUPID AT MANCHESTER AIRPORT — 8.10.2007
8) GREENPEACE PROTESTORS SHUT DOWN POWER PLANT — 8.10.07
9) TOTAL BLOCKADES — OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007
10) NUFFGLOBAL FILMS — NOVEMBER 2007
11) ESCALATING DEFLATION CAMPAIGN AGAINST 4X4S IN SWEDEN – OCT ‘07
12) DIRECT ACTION NEWS FROM GREECE — 7–15.10.07
13) BATH BOMB, ISSUE 4 — NOVEMBER 2007

———————————————-
UPCOMING ACTIONS AND EVENTS:
———————————————-
1) WILD LIE EXHIBITION PURSUES SHELL TO ABERYSTWYTH — 10–17.11.07
Imme­di­ate­ly after host­ing the 2006 Shell Wildlife Pho­tog­ra­ph­er exhi­bi­tion (organ­ised by the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um and BBC Wildlife mag­a­zine) Aberys­t­wyth Arts Cen­tre is show­ing our counter-exhi­bi­tion; ‘Shel­l’s Wild Lie’. http://www.aberystwythartscentre.co.uk/whatson/exhibitions/
‘Shel­l’s Wild Lie’, has been put togeth­er as part of Lon­don Ris­ing Tide’s ‘Art Not Oil’ cam­paign, and fea­tures pho­tographs and illus­tra­tions that we con­sid­er give a truer snap­shot of the dis­as­trous effects that Shell and the whole fos­sil fuel indus­try have on our plan­et:
http://www.artnotoil.org.uk/gallery/v/Shell/
Book it your­self, and tell the Muse­um and BBC Wildlife what you think:
m.dixon@nhm.ac.uk, cc’ing to feedback@nhm.ac.uk,
wildlifeletters@bbcmagazinesbristol.com & info@artnotoil.org.uk

2) FREE FILM SCREENING, THE WARNING — LONDON, 12.11.07
The first UK screen­ing of the award-win­ning film “The Warn­ing” will be on 12th Novem­ber, 8pm at Pass­ing Clouds Works in Dal­ston, east Lon­don. This doc­u­men­tary charts the strug­gle of Siber­ian com­mu­ni­ties to pro­tect their sacred lands from preda­to­ry oil com­pa­nies. Pass­ing Clouds is behind ‘Uncle Sam’s’, which is on 438 Kings­land Road. Get there from Shored­itch /Old Street on the 242, 243, 67 or 149 bus­es.

3) TOTTERDOWN ART TRAIL — BRISTOL, 16–18.11.07
Includ­ing art, films and exhi­bi­tions con­nect­ed with cli­mate change and peak oil. www.frontroom.org.uk

4) OXFORDSHIRE ECO-HOUSE OPEN DAYS — 24–25.11.07
Are you plan­ning to ren­o­vate your house in the most envi­ron­men­tal way pos­si­ble? Do you want to slash ener­gy bills and make your house warmer and health­i­er? Are you sell­ing your house and want to improve its poor ener­gy rat­ing? Do you want to pre­pare for life in the cli­mate change cen­tu­ry? 18 eco-hous­es in Oxford­shire are open­ing their doors to the pub­lic to share the tech­niques, prod­ucts and pos­si­bil­i­ties of eco-ren­o­va­tion. This is a superb oppor­tu­ni­ty to see a wide range of approach­es and talk to the house own­ers direct­ly about their expe­ri­ences.
www.ecovation.org.uk
www.coinet.org.uk

5) BANNER PROTEST AT BIOFUELS CONFERENCE — LONDON, 27.11.07
This will take place out­side the Bio­fu­el Finance and Invest­ment World Con­fer­ence at Roy­al Gar­den Hotel, Kens­ing­ton High Street (near High Street Kens­ing­ton tube sta­tion) on Tues­day, 27th Novem­ber, 12 noon to 2pm.
Bio­fu­el invest­ment means more glob­al warm­ing, more defor­esta­tion, more peo­ple going hun­gry because of high­er food prices and food short­ages, and more human rights abus­es and refugees as agribusi­ness­es take con­trol over ever larg­er areas of land.
www.biofuelwatch.org.uk

6) CRITICAL MASS DATES AND UPDATES — OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007
Sheffield; last Fri­day of the month, 5:30pm at the Uni­ver­si­ty Con­course.
Lon­don; last Fri­day of the month, 6:00pm under Water­loo Bridge by the NFT, South Bank. Next ride Novem­ber 23rd 2007.
http://criticalmasslondon.org.uk/main.html
For reports on the Octo­ber rides see;
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/6274

7) CLIMATE CHANGE BIKE RIDE / NATIONAL MARCH — LONDON, 8.12.07
Sat­ur­day 8 Decem­ber, Cyclists assem­ble 10am Lin­col­n’s Inn Fields. Cycling to Par­lia­ment Square to link up with main march to US Embassy, (timed to coin­cide with the UN cli­mate talks in Bali). Marchers assem­ble 12 noon Mill­bank for main march. [West­min­ster Tube]
2.30 pm Ral­ly at US embassy. Speak­ers include Chris Huhne MP, Michael Meach­er MP, Car­o­line Lucas MEP, Zac Gold­smith, George Mon­biot. The Nation­al Demo in Lon­don will be one of many glob­al cli­mate demon­stra­tions tak­ing place on the 8th.
http://www.campaigncc.org

8) BEYONDTV FESTIVAL — SWANSEA, 28.11.07–2.12.07
Under­cur­rents will host the 8th annu­al BEYONDTV fes­ti­val of polit­i­cal doc­u­men­taries, ani­ma­tions and music videos from inspir­ing media direc­tors. All films will have a theme of social or envi­ron­men­tal activism. Host­ed in the very heart of Swansea, BeyondTV promis­es to be an enter­tain­ing week with all pro­ceeds going to to sup­port the char­i­ty work of under­cur­rents.
http://beyondtvfestival.clearerchannel.org/whatisbtv

9) CLIMATE CAMP EXHIBITION ON TOUR — WINTER 2007
The Cli­mate Camp exhi­bi­tion doc­u­ments in sound, words, instal­la­tions and images the life, work­shops and direct action of those ten busy days in August. It exam­ines the issues and think­ing of peo­ple who seek to stop the world sleep­walk­ing into a dis­as­ter that is man­i­fest­ly pre­ventable, but huge­ly prof­itable for a pow­er­ful few. This exhi­bi­tion will be tour­ing UK cities threat­ened by region­al air­port expan­sion.
Work­shops, talks and film screen­ings will appear at http://www.minimouse.me.uk/show as they are con­firmed.
Pho­tographs from the show are a selec­tion from those to be seen at
http://www.minimouse.me.uk/photographers.html

10) LOW-IMPACT LIVING INITIATIVE COURSES — WINTER 2007
LILI will be run­ning 10 cours­es at a new venue called Unstone Grange (nr. Sheffield) and 28 one day cours­es at Hack­ney City Farm in Lon­don. For the full range of cours­es for 2007–2008, see;
http://www.lowimpact.org/courses.htm

11) PLYMOUTH ENVIRONMENT CENTRE ART EXHIBITION – NOV-DEC 2007
Ply­mouth Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre is hold­ing a fund-rais­ing art exhi­bi­tion and auc­tion at the B‑bar in the Bar­bi­can The­atre, Ply­mouth.
Exhi­bi­tion — Fri­day 23rd Novem­ber to Thurs­day 13th Decem­ber 2007
Auc­tion — Thurs­day 13th Decem­ber 2007 start­ing at 7pm
http://plymouthenvironmentcentre.org.uk/art_auction.php

12) EARTHFIRST MOOT / NEW ACTION UPDATE — WINTER 2007
To down­load the EF! Action Update and for advance notice of the Win­ter Moot (Feb­ru­ary gath­er­ing of eco-activists) see;
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/6347

13) FOSSIL FOOLS DAY — 1.4.08
The site is now run­ning and will be fill­ing up with images, ideas, graph­ics, posters, links…
Check for updates on what promis­es to be a mem­o­rable day of action.
http://www.fossilfoolsday.org

———————————————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
———————————————-
1) SONGS OF FREEDOM AT OPENING OF SHELL’S WILD LIE EXHIBITION — 27.10.07
15 or so folk from all over Car­bon Town gath­ered today to sing a new hymn of hope to an oil-free future in the co-opt­ed cathe­dral that is the Unnat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um, where the heart­break­ing­ly beau­ti­ful Shell Wildlife Pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the Year exhi­bi­tion has just opened. Grad­u­al­ly the singers were removed, gath­er­ing again on the pave­ment out­side with
images from the Shel­l’s Wild Lie exhi­bi­tion and more songs. Spir­its were high, and respons­es from the pub­lic love­ly and heart-warm­ing. No police were present. It still looks as if the cam­paign to get Shell kicked out as spon­sor might bear fruit — we’ll find out very soon if its 2 year con­tract will be renewed. Let’s keep the pres­sure up!
For a full report and what you can do to help, see;
http://risingtide.org.uk/node/231
http://www.artnotoil.org.uk//content/view/39/1/
For a short film of the action, see;
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/10/384607.html

2) NATIONAL DAY OF LOCAL ACTION VS. ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND — 15.10.07
From Edin­burgh to Corn­wall, block­ades to invis­i­ble the­atre, polar bears to trea­cle tarts; RBS felt the sting today. All in all there were 32 actions across the coun­try includ­ing firsts for sev­er­al groups. Every­one is delight­ed with the phe­nom­e­nal response to the day of action…except RBS of course! The actions high­light­ed their role as one of the world’s
largest fun­ders of cli­mate-wreck­ing oil and gas extrac­tion. For full reports on the var­i­ous fan­tas­tic protests see;
http://risingtide.org.uk/node/230
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/10/383812.html
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/5176

3) THE PEOPLE’S BLOCKADE OF THE WORLD’S BIGGEST COAL PORT — AUSTRALIA,
3.11.07
Ris­ing Tide Aus­tralia esti­mate that about 400 peo­ple came to Horse­shoe Beach, New­cas­tle and that about 250 entered the ship­ping chan­nel to block­ade the world’s biggest coal port with canoes, kayaks and inner tubes. This was a fan­tas­tic show of com­mu­ni­ty deter­mi­na­tion to take action against Aus­trali­a’s biggest con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate change, despite
resis­tance from gov­ern­ment and indus­try. As well as being a pow­er­ful and sym­bol­ic action, the protest suc­ceed­ed in dis­rupt­ing coal exports from New­cas­tle Har­bour.
http://www.risingtide.org.au/peoplesblockadereport

4) GREENWASH GUERILLAS DISRUPT “CARBON TRAITORS” IN NEW YORK — 30.10.07
Ris­ing Tide North America’s Green­wash Guer­ril­las paid a sur­prise Hal­loween vis­it to the Car­bon Mar­ket Insights con­fer­ence in New York City. Pos­ing as del­e­gates, two pro­test­ers took the stage at the exclu­sive event and pre­sent­ed the 700 atten­dees with a “Deed to the Atmos­phere” denounc­ing Car­bon Trad­ing as a sham approach to the fos­sil fuels cri­sis. The action was the first in the US to tar­get the grow­ing Car­bon Trad­ing indus­try.
http://risingtidenorthamerica.org/wordpress/category/front-page/

5) BP EXECUTIVE PIED AT EUROPE’S LARGEST BIOFUELS EVENT — 17.10.07
A stunned audi­ence gasped as a cream-pie was launched at BP Bio­fu­els’ Europe & Africa Direc­tor Oliv­er Mace, while activists swarmed the stage and hand­ed out leaflets to atten­dees. One of the pro­test­ers D‑locked him­self to the podi­um, telling del­e­gates “we need to reduce our con­sump­tion now – tech­no­log­i­cal fix­es are not the answer.” Pan­ic alarms
were then set off around the room and the con­fer­ence was halt­ed.
There was also a demo out­side the event and a lock on block­ade at a D1 refin­ery. D1 are one of the biggest traders in bio­fu­el spe­cif­ic crops.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/10/384123.html
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/5205
http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/expoprotests.php

6) CAMP HOPE, GLOUCESTER — 20–21.10.07
Camp Hope took place in a field oppo­site the entrance to Glouces­ter­shire Air­port on the week­end of 20/21 Octo­ber 2007. Activists set up the camp in protest at the pro­posed expan­sion and increased avi­a­tion at Staver­ton in Glouces­ter. Work­shops and dis­cus­sions includ­ed those giv­en by; Bicy­col­o­gy, Plane Stu­pid, Seeds For Change, Stop Bris­tol Air­port Expan­sion and Bio­fu­el­watch.
http://www.myspace.com/campofhope

7) PLANE STUPID AT MANCHESTER AIRPORT — 8.10.2007
Activists from Man­ches­ter Cli­mate Action and Man­ches­ter Plane Stu­pid block­ad­ed the secu­ri­ty check-in of ter­mi­nal 3 of Man­ches­ter Air­port. Pas­sen­gers were denied access to the depar­ture lounge by sev­en activists locked togeth­er using arm-tube devices. Leaflets and train timeta­bles were hand­ed out. Two ban­ners were unfurled read­ing, Man­ches­ter City Council…supporting cli­mate chaos and Domes­tic flights cost the Earth. The action was inspired by the Camp for Cli­mate Action.
http://www.planestupid.com/?q=content/climate-change-activists-blockade-domestic-flights

8) GREENPEACE PROTESTORS SHUT DOWN POWER PLANT — 8.10.07
Green­peace cam­paign­ers staged a dawn raid at a pow­er plant which could be the site of Britain’s first new coal-fired sta­tion for 20 years. More than 50 activists said they want­ed Prime Min­is­ter Gor­don Brown to reject the pro­pos­al for the Kingsnorth site, on the Hoo Penin­su­la, in Kent. After enter­ing the site, one team locked on to con­vey­or belts while anoth­er team climbed to the top of the chim­ney.
http://greenpeace.org.uk/tags/kingsnorth

9) TOTAL BLOCKADES — OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2007
A wave of demon­stra­tions against the oil giant Total and its role in sup­port­ing the bru­tal regime in Bur­ma have tak­en place in Lon­don, Brad­ford, Cardiff and Oxford. While not strict­ly cli­mate-based, these protests keep the spot­light on crim­i­nals like Total. Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s pro-democ­ra­cy leader, said that “Total has become the main sup­port­er of the Burmese mil­i­tary regime.” She told the French week­ly Le Nou­v­el Obser­va­teur that “Total knew what it was doing when it invest­ed mas­sive­ly in Bur­ma while oth­ers with­drew from the mar­ket for eth­i­cal rea­sons”.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/5122 & 5137, 5204, 5207 & 6346

10) NUFFGLOBAL FILMS — NOVEMBER 2007
NUF­F­glob­al film fes­ti­val sup­port­ed a project to pro­duce 25 short films on dif­fer­ent aspects of cli­mate change made by young film-mak­ers from around the world. For more info and to watch the clips online see;
http://nuffglobal.net/

11) ESCALATING DEFLATION CAMPAIGN AGAINST 4X4S IN SWEDEN – OCT ‘07
One thou­sand 4x4s have now been dis­armed by The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle! The cam­paign is spread­ing like wild­fire, prompt­ing nation­al debate and furi­ous aggres­sion among SUV-own­ers.
http://asfaltsdjungelnsindianer.wordpress.com/

12) DIRECT ACTION NEWS FROM GREECE — 7–15 OCTOBER 2007
http://directactiongr.blogspot.com

13) BATH BOMB, ISSUE 4 — NOVEMBER 2007
For the 4th edi­tion of Bath’s pre­miere rad­i­cal tabloid see; http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/11/385124.html

Com­piled and sent out by Ris­ing Tide UK: info at risingtide.org.uk
To receive this News Sheet month­ly, email news-sub­scribe at risingtide.org.uk
with the sub­ject line ‘sub­scribe’ (with­out the quotes).

Autumn EF! Action Update out — and advance notice of the Winter Moot, 22–24 February (gathering of eco-activists), Nottingham

The lat­est issue of the quar­ter­ly EF!AU was dished up at the Anar­chist Book­fair — burst­ing at the seams, it had to be turned into a bumper issue, with a round-up of the actions around the time of the Camp for Cli­mate Action, plus loads of action reports from around the world since then — from pieing oil exec­u­tives, blockad­ing garages & air­ports, polar bears lock­ing-on, sab­o­tage, pris­on­ers, occu­pied spaces, dig­ger-div­ing, GM crop-trash­ing, to cake and the cun­ning use of mung beans (oh, and of course, much much more).

The lat­est issue of the quar­ter­ly EF!AU was dished up at the Anar­chist Book­fair — burst­ing at the seams, it had to be turned into a bumper issue, with a round-up of the actions around the time of the Camp for Cli­mate Action, plus loads of action reports from around the world since then — from pieing oil exec­u­tives, blockad­ing garages & air­ports, polar bears lock­ing-on, sab­o­tage, pris­on­ers, occu­pied spaces, dig­ger-div­ing, GM crop-trash­ing, to cake and the cun­ning use of mung beans (oh, and of course, much much more).

Down­load it to print out and share here. Do get in touch with the edi­to­r­i­al col­lec­tive to let them know if you’re dish­ing it up round your way, or need paper copies, or want to give them one of the rar­er ingre­di­ents, dosh (to send it to pris­on­ers, protest camps and far beyond) — their con­tact details and more are here

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The EF! Win­ter Moot will hap­pen from 22nd — 24th Feb­ru­ary 2008, in Not­ting­ham — more details near­er the time, as this is just advance notice.

It’s a gath­er­ing for envi­ron­men­tal activists — in the past, it’s been a chance for peo­ple involved in all kinds of eco­log­i­cal direct action to get togeth­er for a week­end indoors to chat about where things are at in the UK, and so improve all aspects of how we work togeth­er, in order to take direct action in defence of the earth.

Con­tact 0845–0223 5254 for more info