Activist Film Festival is seeking submissions

Under­cur­rents is call­ing for sub­mis­sions of short videos and ani­ma­tions on the theme of the fes­ti­val: social jus­tice and envi­ron­men­tal action.

Beyond TV 8 flierUnder­cur­rents is call­ing for sub­mis­sions of short videos and ani­ma­tions on the theme of the fes­ti­val: social jus­tice and envi­ron­men­tal action.

Sub­ject: Polit­i­cal Activist videos want­ed
From: under­cur­rents

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS OF FILMS

FOR BEYONDTV FESTIVAL NOVEMBER 2007

What is BEYONDTV?
From Novem­ber 28 to Decem­ber 2, 2007, Rad­i­cal media char­i­ty, Under­cur­rents will host the 8th annu­al BEYONDTV fes­ti­val of polit­i­cal doc­u­men­taries, ani­ma­tions and music videos from inspir­ing media direc­tors.

Under­cur­rents is call­ing for sub­mis­sions of short videos and ani­ma­tions on the theme of the fes­ti­val: social jus­tice and envi­ron­men­tal action.

Impor­tant Note: We do not screen dra­mas using actors

BEYONDTV will be host­ed at the Dylan Thomas Cen­tre and Tal­iesin Cin­e­ma Swansea from Novem­ber 28 — Decem­ber 2, 2007

More details at http://www.beyondtvfestival.info
beyondtv@undercurrents.org

Under­cur­rents
Old Exchange
Pier st
Swansea
SA1 1RY
UK

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) Day of Action — protests throughout England, Scotland & Wales — from cake to locked-on polar bears

Protests in Bris­tol, Lon­don, Manc, Nor­wich, Cam­bridge, Sheffield, Oxford, Edin­burgh, Truro, Birm­ing­ham, Glas­gow, Aberys­t­wyth, Cardiff, Bath, Brad­ford, St Andrews, Ply­mouth, Read­ing, Leam­ing­ton Spa, Leices­ter & Altrin­cham (‘read more’ for details, pho­tos, audio & video clips)

Protests in Bris­tol, Lon­don, Manc, Nor­wich, Cam­bridge, Sheffield, Oxford, Edin­burgh, Truro, Birm­ing­ham, Glas­gow, Aberys­t­wyth, Cardiff, Bath, Brad­ford, St Andrews, Ply­mouth, Read­ing, Leam­ing­ton Spa, Leices­ter & Altrin­cham (‘read more’ for details, pho­tos, audio & video clips)



Bristol RBS 3
Bristol RBS 4
Bristol RBS 5
A group of ‘cli­mate refugees’ blocked the vehi­cle entrance to the Roy­al Bank of Scotland’s Cor­po­rate Offices at Tem­ple Quay to shine the spot­light on cli­mate crim­i­nals RBS, the self-pro­claimed ‘Oil and Gas’ Bank. Four peo­ple from Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide for Cli­mate Action dressed as home­less polar bears have locked them­selves togeth­er and pre­vent­ed all vehi­cles enter­ing the RBS branch for six and a half hours.

Today’s block­ade last­ed six and a half hours with the last ‘cli­mate refugee’ being final­ly chis­eled out at 2.30pm. Four peo­ple are cur­rent­ly being held at Trin­i­ty police sta­tion.
The police used a dubi­ous method of deal­ing with it — they lift­ed peo­ple and suit­cas­es on to trol­leys and then wheeled them away. This caused severe dis­com­fort and pan­ic for the peo­ple on the ground and at least one of them has bruis­ing as a result.
RBS lost many hours today due to rock­ing up late cos of park­ing issues and the many employ­ees that spent the day star­ing out of the win­dows watch­ing the dra­ma unfold­ing and tak­ing pho­tos on their phones (check out you tube for clips!).

———-

PRESS RELEASE: ‘Cli­mate refugees’ locked up at the Oil Bank of Scot­land, Bris­tol

A group of ‘cli­mate refugees’ are block­ing the vehi­cle entrance to the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land’s Cor­po­rate Offices at Tem­ple Quay to shine the spot­light on cli­mate crim­i­nals RBS, the self-pro­claimed ‘Oil and Gas’ Bank.

Six peo­ple from Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide for Cli­mate Action dressed as home­less polar bears have locked them­selves togeth­er and are cur­rent­ly pre­vent­ing all vehi­cles enter­ing the RBS branch. This is part of a Nation­al Day of Local Action against the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land called by those huge­ly con­cerned with the dev­as­ta­tion to the cli­mate, plan­et and people.[1]

RBS-NatWest pub­licly pro­motes itself as “The Oil & Gas Bank”. They pro­vide the finan­cial fuel that is accel­er­at­ing cli­mate change. With­out these loans to oil and gas cor­po­ra­tions the projects would not hap­pen. [2]It is esti­mate that *in 2006, the bank pro­vid­ed over $10 bil­lion to fos­sil fuels – more than five times that pro­vid­ed to renew­able energy.[3]*

RBS pro­vide oil cor­po­ra­tions with loans to build new mas­sive­ly eco­log­i­cal­ly detri­men­tal drilling rigs, pipelines and oil tankers. [4] And as RBS’s prof­its rise so does the car­bon in the atmos­phere.

Glob­al cli­mate change already forces more peo­ple from their homes each year than war. And as the effects wors­en, one in sev­en peo­ple on Earth today could be forced to leave their homes over the next 50 years. [5]

A polar bear said, “I am here to let RBS know that their fun­nelling of cash into fos­sil fuel projects is mak­ing myself and mil­lions of oth­er ani­mals, includ­ing humans home­less.”

Anoth­er polar bear said “If car­bon diox­ide mol­e­cules had cor­po­rate tags of respon­si­bil­i­ty, the atmos­phere would be full of RBS logos min­gling with those of BP, Exxon and Shell!”

Con­tact:

Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide 07951789187
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Notes for Edi­tors

[1] The day of action was called by the UK Ris­ing Tide Net­work at this years Camp for Cli­mate Action which took place next to Heathrow Air­port. www.risingtide.org.uk

[2] In 2005 emis­sions from RBS financed oil and gas projects was about a quar­ter of the amount pro­duced by all UK homes.

[3] tak­en from: *The Oil and Gas Bank; RBS and the financ­ing of cli­mate change * http://peopleandplanet.org/dl/ddd/rbs_report.pdf

[4] RBS is help­ing force open the car­bon fron­tier, financ­ing con­tro­ver­sial projects in Nige­ria, the Cau­ca­sus and Wales. Its involve­ment in Angolan and Niger­ian oil fields encour­ages cor­rup­tion and con­flict, while gas projects from the Ara­bi­an Gulf to the Gulf of Mex­i­co threat­en envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion.

[5] Fig­ures from “Human Tide: The Real Migra­tion Cri­sis,” by Chris­t­ian Aid. The report calls for “urgent action by the world com­mu­ni­ty” if the worst effects of this cri­sis are to be avert­ed.

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one arrest at Roy­al Bank of Scot­land ban­ner drop this morn­ing in Lon­don

around a dozen activists from ‘ris­ing tide’ high­light­ed roy­al bank of scot­land’s shod­dy record of invest­ment in cli­mate change. one clam­bered on the glass canopy of their city hq to unfurl a ban­ner while oth­ers hand­ed out more than 900 leaflets

short­ly before 9am this morn­ing police sealed off the pave­ment under the glass canopy in front of 280 bish­ops­gate, the lon­don hq of the roy­al bank of scot­land. an activist had clam­bered up with a ban­ner pro­claim­ing ‘the oil bank of scot­land’, while a dozen oth­ers leaflet­ted passers-by and bank work­ers out­side the front doors.

the activists also had var­i­ous ban­ners, and one was fetch­ing­ly dressed as a polar bear.

the action last­ed about an hour and a half, while police pho­tog­ra­ph­er steve dis­combe used up the bat­tery of his long lens cam­era tak­ing shots of every­one involved. luck­i­ly, police back-up arrived with anoth­er bat­tery just as the ban­ner man came down.

police tried to seize the ban­ner from activists “as evi­dence” and after a short but com­ic game of ‘pig­gy in the mid­dle’, they suc­ceed­ed. in past cas­es around par­lia­ment square, it has been shown in court that if police have clear pho­tos of the ban­ner, under PACE they have no fur­ther right to seize the actu­al ban­ner, so in effect they stole it this morn­ing (as they often do!).

the ban­ner man was arrest­ed for ‘caus­ing a pub­lic nui­sance’ and it is believed he was tak­en to beth­nal green police sta­tion.

activists were high­light­ing the fact that RBS-NatWest have in the last five years fund­ed 655 mil­lion tonnes of emis­sions) which is more than the UK’s entire annu­al emis­sions. the bank has launched ‘avi­a­tion cap­i­tal’ to help put more planes in the sky, and it has pumped over $10billion into the oil and gas indus­try, fund­ing rigs, tankers and pipelines.

there is a fur­ther protest planned out­side the bank at 5pm today

20071015_RBS_WMV — video/x‑ms-wmv 15M

20071015_RBS_QT — video/quicktime 13M
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Lon­don pranks: ‘This Com­pa­ny is Out of Order’ signs left on 15 RBS and Natwest cash machines in cen­tral Lon­don. Pranksters do invis­i­ble the­atre in branch­es, try­ing to open accounts, hav­ing argu­ments about RBS’ uneth­i­cal poli­cies in the queues, and leav­ing piles of anti-RBS leaflets amongst their cor­po­rate pro­pa­gan­da. They then go under­ground for some ‘Tube Edu­ca­tion’, leaflet­ing and talk­ing to Tube pas­sen­gers.

————-

Nation­al cli­mate protests against Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, ‘The Oil and Gas Bank’

15 Octo­ber 2007
For imme­di­ate release, for pho­tographs con­tact Mike J Wells 07799152888

POLAR BEAR PINS BLAME ON RBS DOOR

Cli­mate Change direct action group Lon­don Ris­ing Tide and friends, this morn­ing occu­pied the head­quar­ters of the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land to expose their role in Cli­mate Chaos. This was one of many actions hap­pen­ing across the UK today as part of a UK Ris­ing Tide call out for a Nation­al day of action against RBS.

Activists dropped a ban­ner read­ing “RBS prof­its, cli­mate cops it” from the bal­cony, while oth­ers held plac­ards on the street in front of the build­ing on Bish­ops­gate.

A polar bear, cur­rent­ly sleep­ing rough since the artic ice became his­to­ry, also attend­ed to ask “why are RBS still invest­ing in fos­sil fuel projects like ‘gas pipelines’ in Wales and ‘Tar sands strip min­ing’ in what was Cana­di­an Arbo­re­al For­est?”

The Bear said “Banks like RBS are the hid­den dri­vers of cli­mate change by offer­ing loans to fos­sil fuel projects that oth­er­wise the World Bank would not sup­port”.

RBS calls itself the ‘Oil and Gas Bank’, and is the pri­ma­ry UK fun­der of fos­sil fuel extrac­tion. RBS pro­vides oil com­pa­nies with the cap­i­tal to build and oper­ate drilling rigs, pipelines and oil tankers in some of the most sen­si­tive and unsta­ble places in the world. Through Avi­a­tion Cap­i­tal, RBS financ­ing allows air­lines to expand their fleets and put more planes into the skies.

The thir­ty oil and gas finance deals RBS signed between 2001 and 2006 will cre­ate 655 mil­lion tonnes of car­bon emis­sions over the next 15 years, which is more than the UK’s entire annu­al emis­sions. (2)

‘Banks like RBS who prof­it hand­some­ly from cli­mate-destroy­ing projects have stood in the shad­ows for too long, but they are as guilty as the oil com­pa­nies. If car­bon diox­ide mol­e­cules had cor­po­rate tags of respon­si­bil­i­ty, the atmos­phere would be full of RBS logos min­gling with those of BP, Exxon and Shell’, said Mar­tin Red­fern, from Lon­don.

For inter­views from the protest call 075 1311 9047

For more details vis­it
. www.risingtide.org.uk
. http://www.carbonweb.org/showitem.asp?article=268&parent=267
(www.platform.org.uk)
. www.londonrisingtide.org.uk
=========================

ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND.…THE ‘OIL AND GAS BANK’

Man­ches­ter Cli­mate Action tar­get­ed the RBS head­quar­ters on Deans­gate, Man­ches­ter, as part of a nation­al day of action called by the Ris­ing Tide net­work.

Local groups which formed to mobilise for this year’s Camp for Cli­mate Action, have this morn­ing tak­en action against RBS, a major backer of the avi­a­tion indus­try and the world’s self-described ‘Oil and Gas Bank’.

Ban­ners were dis­played read­ing: ‘Cli­mate Change: RBS Makes It Hap­pen’ and ‘No Pipeline! Green Ener­gy Not Gas’. Pro­test­ers were greet­ed by 3 Tac­ti­cal Aid Unit Vans and secu­ri­ty guards, but despite police attempts to stop noise under the pub­lic order act, the sam­ba band played and fly­ers were giv­en out to work­ers, cus­tomers and passers by.

RBS employs some 5,000 staff in the Greater Man­ches­ter area and is the 2nd largest pri­vate employ­er in the area.

RBS pro­vides oil com­pa­nies with the cash to build and oper­ate drilling rigs, pipelines and oil tankers. RBS also prof­its through the avi­a­tion indus­try. From the Niger Delta to the Arc­tic, RBS loans play a key role in
forc­ing open the new car­bon fron­tier, which con­tributes to envi­ron­men­tal destruction,disruption of indige­nous peo­ples and increased con­flict across the plan­et.

RBS is the sec­ond-largest bank in Europe and has glob­al assets of over $1120 bil­lion, includ­ing UK brands NatWest, Direct Line and Churchill Insur­ance. Despite cre­at­ing a heav­i­ly green washed pub­lic image through
spon­sor­ship of sports and the arts, RBS activ­i­ties have major destruc­tive impacts on the envi­ron­ment and soci­ety. The thir­ty oil and gas finance deals RBS signed between 2001 and 2006 locked us all into 655 mil­lion
tonnes of emis­sions over the next 15 years, more than the UK’s entire annu­al emis­sions.

Man­ches­ter Cli­mate Action meet reg­u­lar­ly, for more infor­ma­tion email:
manchester@climatecamp.org.uk. Next meet­ing is Tues­day 16th, 6pm, Eighth Day café, Oxford Rd (near Man­ches­ter Met­ro­pol­i­tan Uni­ver­si­ty, oppo­site All Saints Park.)

radio report of rbs protest — mp3 2.2M
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Triple wham­my for RBS in Nor­wich

Last night, the doors of the RBS-Natwest Group Tech­nol­o­gy office on Exchange Street and the main RBS branch on Queen Street were locked shut. When staff showed up for work this morn­ing at the Queen Street branch they found them­selves locked out, and gath­ered oppo­site the branch to see what would hap­pen. Soon after, 6 activists from Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide turned up with leaflets and ban­ners read­ing ‘RBS: Financ­ing Cli­mate Change’ and ‘Closed for a Total Re-think’. The d‑lock proved to be a good one, and the bank was delayed from open­ing for busi­ness for over an hour. Ris­ing Tiders hand­ed out leaflets and chat­ted to the wait­ing staff and cus­tomers, with the usu­al mixed response. Passers-by were gen­er­al­ly sup­port­ive, and the police showed up only at the very end, once the bank had re-opened and we were run­ning low on leaflets. After our 500-strong leaflet stash had been exhaust­ed, we decid­ed to call it a morn­ing.

norwich@risingtide.org.uk
http://www.risingtide.org.uk

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

Cam­bridge RBS action

At lunchtime on Mon­day 15 Octo­ber, around ten activists assem­bled out­side the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land branch on Trin­i­ty Street, Cam­bridge, as part of the nation­al day of action against the UK’s main bankroller of car­bon emit­ters. The pro­test­ers put up plac­ards next to the ATM, hand­ed out leaflets, and engaged passers-by and cus­tomers in dis­cus­sion.

Four police offi­cers were also in atten­dance, one tak­ing pic­tures of all the leaflet­ters. A num­ber of peo­ple who hap­pened to be pass­ing by want­ed to know the rea­son for this. Among these were an Amer­i­can woman who got quite strop­py with the offi­cers, and a young guy who want­ed to have pic­ture tak­en with one of the pro­test­ers (the police duti­ful­ly oblig­ed). Although the police came across all friend­ly, they did play their usu­al intim­i­da­tion tac­tics of drop­ping details of pro­test­ers into the con­ver­sa­tion that they could only have lift­ed from FIT files. On the flip­side, they asked for the plac­ards to be moved away from the ATM, as “cus­tomers might feel intim­i­dat­ed.”

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Roy­al Bank of Scot­land Tar­get­ed for Invest­ing in Cli­mate Change

A group of activists leaflet­ted the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land in Broomhill, Sheffield as part of a Nation­al Day of Action. Over 20 actions have tak­en place all around the coun­try includ­ing banks being locked up in Nor­wich and polar bears blockad­ing in Bris­tol. This is all part of a cam­paign against the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land which invests heav­i­ly in oil and gas, which is accel­er­at­ing cli­mate change.

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Oxford RBS
Quick Update on Today’s Oxford RBS Actions

Oxford cli­mate activists tar­get­ed a branch­es of both the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land and NatWest as part of the today’s Nation­al Day of Action. With ban­ners and oil-spat­tered T‑Shirts declar­ing “RBS Group — Fund­ing Cli­mate Change”, “Dirty Bankers — Shaft­ing The Plan­et”, and “The Oil Bank Of Scot­land”, they caused a stir in Oxford’s busiest shop­ping precinct and dis­trib­uted hun­dreds of leaflets to inter­est­ed cus­tomers and passers-by.

Activists also entered both branch­es with a large oil pipeline, explain­ing to cus­tomers and staff that they were deliv­er­ing it to the branch, but could­n’t leave until they’d spo­ken to Head Office to con­firm that it had arrived safe­ly. They stayed in each branch cheer­ful­ly (and loud­ly) rem­i­nisc­ing with staff and cus­tomers about all the oth­er pipelines and fos­sil fuel projects the bank was fund­ing, and how much cli­mate change they were caus­ing, until removed by the police. In the NatWest branch, they also man­aged to get a call put through to Head Office and asked them why RBS were fund­ing so many cli­mate-trash­ing projects (they did­n’t get any decent answers though).

No-one was arrest­ed, although one pro­test­er had to give their name and address under Sec­tion 50 of the Police Reform Act for “anti-social behav­iour” (they were appar­ent­ly caus­ing “alarm and dis­tress” by stand­ing in a bank, talk­ing about cli­mate change and hold­ing a card­board oil pipe).

Oxford Cli­mate Action meet on Mon­days at the Oxford Action Resource Cen­tre (OARC — www.theoarc.org.uk). To get involved, con­tact oxford@climatecamp.org.uk — new mem­bers always wel­come!

Link to video of Action

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Stu­dents from Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty protest­ed out­side RBS’s Cen­tral Branch in Edin­burgh as part of Ris­ing Tide’s nation­al day of action against RBS’s fund­ing of oil and gas extrac­tion.

Stu­dents from Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty Peo­ple & Plan­et group stepped up their cam­paign against the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land (RBS) this morn­ing. Along­side oth­er Peo­ple & Plan­et groups in Scot­land, and cam­paign­ers from Ris­ing Tide, they took part in a nation­al ‘day of action’ tar­get­ing the Edin­burgh-based bank.

The protests aim to high­light RBS’s role as one of the world’s largest fun­ders of cli­mate-wreck­ing oil and gas extrac­tion. Emis­sions result­ing from RBS-sup­port­ed projects around the globe are greater than those of the whole of Scot­land.

Cam­paign­ers gave out infor­ma­tion to cus­tomers, held ban­ners, and waved oil cov­ered hands out­side RBS’s cen­tral branch in St. Andrew’s Square.

Peo­ple & Plan­et recent­ly worked with cli­mate change experts PLATFORM to write a report into RBS (2). The report draws atten­tion to the bank’s cru­cial role in sup­port­ing the glob­al oil and gas extrac­tion indus­try, where it pub­licly mar­kets itself as ‘the oil and gas bank’.

Sarah Hol­l­i­day, a mem­ber of Edin­burgh Peo­ple & Plan­et said:

“RBS call them­selves ‘the oil and gas bank’. They pro­vide huge amounts of advice and fund­ing for new oil extrac­tion. Their fos­sil fuels projects world­wide will lock us in to emis­sions for decades to come – mak­ing a low car­bon econ­o­my impos­si­ble. They are the UK’s main finan­cial dri­vers of cli­mate change.”

The cam­paign is a part of the Peo­ple & Plan­et nation­al cam­paign, “Ditch Dirty Devel­op­ment”, which is also call­ing on the Depart­ment for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment to stop using aid mon­ey to fund fos­sil fuel projects (3).

More pho­tos can be found here.

1) Peo­ple & Plan­et is the UK’s largest stu­dent cam­paign­ing net­work. It cam­paigns on world pover­ty, human rights and the envi­ron­ment: www.peopleandplanet.org http://pandp.eusa.ed.ac.uk

2) The report, enti­tled ‘The Oil and Gas Bank’, can be found here

3)“Ditch Dirty Devel­op­ment” cam­paign web­site
“Oil Bank of Scot­land” cam­paign web­site

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Also in Edin­burgh: The locks of the main entrances to at least six Edin­burgh RBS branch­es were glued shut last night, and all of them had to have the locks replaced today.

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2 branch­es in edin­burgh were giv­en ‘pol­lu­tion awards’ — along with var­i­ous oth­er posters about RBS pol­i­cy. unfor­tu­natly the police drove by while one branch was just being fin­ished off, and took the still wet posters off. 🙁 — next time…

=========================
Truro RBS
Truro demo at RBS branch: Twelve activists from across Corn­wall gath­ered at the RBS branch in Truro for a two-hour demo with a friend­ly atmos­phere and good response from passers-by. They hand­ed out leaflets and slices of cake from a clock-shaped ‘11th hour’ cake, and made new con­nec­tions that built the foun­da­tions of a cli­mate action group for Corn­wall.

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Birm­ing­ham Uni flood cam­pus NatWest: Over thir­ty stu­dents from Birm­ing­ham Peo­ple and Plan­et descend­ed upon the Natwest branch on cam­pus. Some were dressed in boil­er suits and car­ried oil pipelines. Oth­ers, dressed as bankers and imper­son­at­ing mem­bers of the RBS Oil and Gas Team gave a high­ly sar­cas­tic pre­sen­ta­tion extolling the virtues of RBS’ oil and gas invest­ments. Oil pipes and boil­er suits. Dressed as bankers. Went in and gave mock pre­sen­ta­tion, imper­son­at­ed oil and gas team. Extolled virtues of RBS. 20 min­utes. Did pre­sen­ta­tion again a few more times on cam­pus. 30 peo­ple. Couldn’t all fit in. Birm­ing­ham Peo­ple and Plan­et.

=========================
Glas­gow Trea­cle Tart Cabaret: After a half hour dis­cus­sion with the cen­tral Glas­gow RBS branch man­ag­er in which they expressed their anger about RBS’ invest­ment in oil and gas, two intre­pid activists left the branch, only to make a quick cos­tume change and return as the hosts of the Trea­cle Tart Cabaret. They sang, danced, waved ban­ners and plac­ards, got up on the cashiers’ desks and strut­ted their stuff, and even per­formed an Oil Rap. At this point the bank decid­ed to lock its doors, lock­ing the Tarts in and cus­tomers out, and effec­tive­ly shut­ting the bank down for an hour. Inside the atmos­phere was pos­i­tive, with the locked-in staff and cus­tomers get­ting into the swing of things. One of the Tarts capped off the per­for­mance by cut­ting up her RBS deb­it card as a mag­ic trick.

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Around a dozen cli­mate change refugees queued out­side Nat West Bank in Aberys­t­wyth today, Mon­day 15th Octo­ber, to beg a ‘bank offi­cial’ for a home loan because cli­mate change was destroy­ing their cur­rent home. The refugees ranged from an Aussie through a Green­lan­der to an Artic Cod. As the refugees were inter­viewed, vol­un­teers hand­ed out fliers on Roy­al Bank of Scot­land , Nat West and their invest­ment in projects linked to cli­mate change. Mean­while, RBS and Nat West ATMs all mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­played signs read­ing ‘OUT OF ORDER’ in large let­ters. On close inspec­tion with a mag­ni­fy­ing glass, the very small print read ‘RBS and Nat West invest­ment pol­i­cy’. The pos­si­ble effects of cli­mate change on a num­ber of coun­tries were mapped on the pave­ment with chalk – dis­turb­ing before and after snap­shots. As the refugees were all turned down for home loans, they car­ried a protest ban­ner into the bank. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, being weak­ened by loos­ing their homes, the refugees dropped the ban­ner and, being weight­ed down with heli­um bal­loons, it drift­ed up and dis­played itself from the ceil­ing for a good half an hour before staff man­aged to get it down.

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

The main cardiff branch RBS on st Mary’s Street was closed 3 hours after 20 activists entered the build­ing caus­ing dis­trup­tion. Hun­dreds of leaflets were hand­ed out and ban­ners dis­played out­side. The process was repeat­ed at Natwest after­wards.

Lots of Police were in atten­dance includ­ing intel­li­gence gath­er­ers. Pho­tos to fol­low.

cardiffanarchists@riseup.net
http://southwalesanarchists.org

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

Don’t Bank On Oil In Bath

As part of today’s nation­al day of action against the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, 7 activists from Bath Activist Net­work pick­et­ed the RBS branch on Qui­et Street in Bath, for two hours over lunch time. Ban­ner on dis­play, cus­tomers and passers-by were leaflet­ed with mock-up imi­ta­tion RBS lit­er­a­ture and invi­ta­tions to ‘Open an oil rig today!’, inform­ing the pub­lic about the Terms and Con­se­quences of bank­ing with RBS, their dodgy invest­ment record in fos­sil fuel extrac­tion and avi­a­tion indus­tries, and the 160,000 esti­mat­ed glob­al deaths a year due to the effects of cli­mate change. Whilst staff and police com­plained about the seem­ing­ly out-of-order ATM out­side their door, we lis­tened to sto­ries of cus­tomers’ poor treat­ment by their bank, and also helped at least the one stu­dent find more eth­i­cal options for his new account. Also bemus­ing were the mem­bers of pub­lic who mis­took the busi­ness-suit­ed activists for bank employ­ees, and chat­ted about the ser­vice.

bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk
http://myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork

To read PLAT­FOR­M’s report on Roy­al bank of Scot­land, go here: http://peopleandplanet.org/dl/ddd/rbs_report.pdf
=========================

Brad­ford stu­dents leaflet cam­pus Natwest

Stu­dents from the uni­ver­si­ty of Brad­ford Peo­ple & Plan­et group leaflet­ed at the Natwest branch on cam­pus. That’s all the details I know, hope­ful­ly more details to fol­low.

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

St Andrews Uni P&P also did some protest per­for­mance art — ‘attempt­ing’ to open accounts in the town, etc.

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

Ply­mouth — after a pro­ces­sion along North Hill Street, a group of peo­ple held a four-hour demo at the RBS branch near Drake Cir­cus, com­plete with music and drum­ming. A good response from passers-by, with lots of cus­tomers ask­ing direct­ly for leaflets.

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

Read­ing Ris­ing Tide held a demo at the Read­ing RBS branch.

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

A group of 5 held a demo in Leam­ing­ton.

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

Cash-points were stick­ered with anti-RBS stick­ers in Leices­ter.

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

Leaflets were stuck on lamp-posts in Altrin­cham.

Worldwide Day of Action Against McDonalds 16th October

14th Octo­ber 2007 ear­ly demo report: near­ly 30 peo­ple took part in the Lon­don leg of the world­wide anti-McDon­ald’s day. It start­ed at noon at the Leices­ter Square McDon­ald’s. There was a Ronald McDon­ald attack­ing a per­son dressed as a cow. The cow went down well with the kids and even some adults! Lots of leaflets were hand­ed out and the pub­lic seemed to be recep­tive on the whole. Also, the police were notice­able by their absence. The demo moved onto the Shaftes­bury Avenue McDon­ald’s and fin­ished at about 3.30.

Dying for a burger (London McD demo)
14th Octo­ber 2007 ear­ly demo report: near­ly 30 peo­ple took part in the Lon­don leg of the world­wide anti-McDon­ald’s day. It start­ed at noon at the Leices­ter Square McDon­ald’s. There was a Ronald McDon­ald attack­ing a per­son dressed as a cow. The cow went down well with the kids and even some adults! Lots of leaflets were hand­ed out and the pub­lic seemed to be recep­tive on the whole. Also, the police were notice­able by their absence. The demo moved onto the Shaftes­bury Avenue McDon­ald’s and fin­ished at about 3.30.

Adopt-YOUR-Store — leaflets from Veg­gies or Do It Your­self. Details here

15th October — National Day of Local Action against Royal Bank of Scotland Update

It’s only a week away! There are plans afoot all over the coun­try, and there’s still time for you to organ­ise some­thing in your local area. A few things that might help:

Oily RBS logoIt’s only a week away! There are plans afoot all over the coun­try, and there’s still time for you to organ­ise some­thing in your local area. A few things that might help:

*There are leaflets avail­able to hand out on the day if you don’t fan­cy mak­ing your own. (Front — click here. Back — click here. And if you want editable ver­sions email us and we’ll email them to you).

*Stick­ers are also avail­able for what­ev­er sil­ly, seri­ous or sub­ver­sive pur­pose you can think of! Email us with a postal address to get a stash sent to you (these aren’t linked to the day of action so they’ll be use­ful into the future)
*There will be a nation­al press release about the day of action, so if you’re plan­ning some­thing pub­lic and want to let the nation­al press know about it, please send us the details. We’ll also do a press release on the day, so email us or bet­ter yet phone 07961 917535 to be includ­ed in the nation­al action round-up (and put it on Indy­media and here too of course!)

Orig­i­nal call out here

CLIMATE ACTION NEWS SHEET 72, OCTOBER 2007

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).

CONTENTS:
———————————————-
UPCOMING ACTIONS AND EVENTS:
———————————————-
1) NATIONAL DAY OF LOCAL ACTION VS. ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND — 15.10.07
2) SAVE SWALLOWS WOOD — OCTOBER 2007 UPDATE
3) NATIONAL CLIMATE CAMP ACTION PLANNING MEETING — 3–4.11.07 OXFORD
4) CLIMATE CAMPS — 2008 GERMANY AND WORLDWIDE!
5) TARA UPDATE — 22.9.07 IRELAND
6) CRITICAL MASS UPDATES — NATIONWIDE
7) PLYMOUTH ENVIRONMENT CENTRE FILM NIGHTS — AUTUMN 2007
8) TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ART — OCT ’07, EDINBURGH & MANCHESTER
9) WRITE IN DEFENCE OF ISOLATED PERUVIAN TRIBES — 17.9.07
10) STUDENT CLIMATE PROJECT LAUNCH GATHERING – OXFORD, 30.11–2.12.07

———————————————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
———————————————-
1) ROSSPORT SOLIDARITY DEMOS — 14.9.07 LEEDS, LONDON, BRISTOL, READING,
MADRID & IRELAND
2) DIRECT ACTION IN BRISTOL — AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2007
3) WHY CARBON TRADING ISN’T WORKING — ARTICLES 2006/7
4) GAGGED! SOUTH WALES ANARCHIST NEWSLETTER — SEPTEMBER 2007
5) FEDERAL COURT BLOCKS SHELLS ARCTIC DRILLING — 14.9.07
6) BANK PULLS SAKHALIN‑2 FUNDING — 15.8.07
7) “FLOOD SUMMIT” AT AIRPORT — 3.9.07 DONCASTER, YORKS.
8) COAL ACTIONS IN AUSTRALIA — 2/3.9.07
9) GLOBAL ACTIONS AGAINST HEAVY INDUSTRY — 12.9.07
10) GREEK DIRECT ACTION — SEPTEMBER 2007
11) CRITICAL MASS AND CARFREE DAY IN BRUSSELS — 24.9.07
12) ART NOT OIL 2007 GALLERY HITS 50

———————————————-
UPCOMING ACTIONS AND EVENTS:
———————————————-
1) NATIONAL DAY OF LOCAL ACTION AGAINST ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND — 15.10.07
RBS, the self-described ‘Oil and Gas Bank’ and sec­ond-largest bank in
Europe is the lead­ing financier of cli­mate change. From West Africa to the
Ecuado­ri­an rain­for­est, from the North Sea to the Mid­dle East, RBS loans
play a key role in forc­ing open the new car­bon fron­tier. The thir­ty oil
and gas finance deals RBS signed between 2001 and 2006 locked us all into
655 mil­lion tonnes of emis­sions over the next 15 years — more than the
UK’s cur­rent annu­al emis­sions total!
On 15th Octo­ber, get togeth­er with your local group, build on con­nec­tions
made at the Camp, reach out to oth­ers in your area and con­front RBS with
your own cho­sen style of cre­ative direct action.

To find your near­est RBS branch or office:
www.rbs.co.uk/microsites/general/branch_locator/step1.asp
Down­load Plat­for­m’s report ‘The Oil and Gas Bank’:
www.carbonweb.org/documents/Oil_&_Gas_Bank.pdf
For help with plan­ning effec­tive actions: www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk

One such action is being planned in con­junc­tion with West Corn­wall Friends
of the Earth; Out­side Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, Green St (off Lemon Quay),
Truro,
12 noon, Mon 15th Oct. Con­tact RTUK for oth­ers.

2) SAVE SWALLOWS WOOD — OCTOBER 2007 UPDATE
A lot has been hap­pen­ing in the last few weeks, includ­ing the inau­gur­al
Glos­sop Crit­i­cal Mass. Also, there are two URGENT let­ter actions that they
need your help with. They should only take a few min­utes of your time.
www.saveswallowswood.org.uk

3) NATIONAL CLIMATE CAMP ACTION PLANNING MEETING — 3–4.11.07 OXFORD
The Cli­mate Camp did­n’t stop cli­mate change — but it’s part of a grow­ing
social move­ment that can! Come and take the next steps for­ward at the
upcom­ing UK-wide meet­ing on Nov 3–4 in Oxford. Every­one is wel­come,
whether you came to the camp, or were sim­ply inspired by it.
www.climatecamp.org.uk

4) CLIMATE CAMPS — 2008 GERMANY AND WORLDWIDE!
Fol­low­ing the mod­el estab­lished by the Camp for Cli­mate Action in the UK,
plans are afoot for a Cli­mate-Action Camp in Ger­many in 2008. This will
include knowl­edge exchange (in work­shops), self-organ­ised liv­ing that
min­imis­es the eco­log­i­cal foot­print, net­work­ing and direct action. There
are plans for sim­i­lar camps to be set up next year in sev­er­al coun­tries.
watch this space…
www.climatecamp.org.uk

http://www.klimacamp.org/

5) TARA UPDATE — 22.9.07 IRELAND
They are des­per­ate for more peo­ple and sup­plies on site. There are
cur­rent­ly just 20 peo­ple try­ing to stop work all over the Tara Skryne
val­ley.
www.tarapixie.net
www.savetara.com
www.circlecommunity.org
For recent videos & pho­tos of protests see;
http://livevideo.com/tarapixie

6) CRITICAL MASS UPDATES — NATIONWIDE
For info. and updates check;
http://www.urban75.com/Action/critical.html

7) PLYMOUTH ENVIRONMENT CENTRE FILM NIGHTS — AUTUMN 2007
Includ­ing “Reclaim Pow­er” 19.10.07 at 7pm fol­lowed by dis­cus­sion with
Ris­ing Tide rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

http://plymouthenvironmentcentre.org.uk/events.php#film-nights

8) TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ART SHOWS — OCTOBER 2007 EDINBURGH & MANCHESTER
Edin­burgh 10th-14th Octo­ber
Man­ches­ter 24th-28th Octo­ber
For fur­ther info. check;
http://www.randomartists.org/

9) WRITE IN DEFENCE OF ISOLATED PERUVIAN TRIBES — 17.9.07
Two com­pa­nies plan­ning to explore for oil in Peru­vian rain­for­est have
revealed their sen­si­tive plans to ‘com­mu­ni­cate’ with the pre­vi­ous­ly
uncon­tact­ed inhab­i­tants using mega­phones! In the past, oil com­pa­ny work­ers
in the Ama­zon region have been killed by iso­lat­ed Indi­ans. Despite this
risk to their own work­ers, and the equal dan­ger of spread­ing fatal
dis­eases to the Indi­ans, the com­pa­nies — Bar­rett Resources of the US and
Rep­sol YPF of Spain — have refused to sus­pend their plans.
http://www.survival-international.org/news/2502
You can help by writ­ing a let­ter;
http://www.survival-international.org/actnow/letters/isolatedindians

10) STUDENT CLIMATE PROJECT LAUNCH GATHERING – OXFORD, 30.11–2.12.07

‘The Stu­dent Cli­mate Project came out of dis­cus­sions at the 2007 Cli­mate
Camp, and
seeks bring togeth­er stu­dents to take col­lec­tive action against the root
caus­es of
Cli­mate Change. It will also devel­op ways to build the stu­dent move­ment
and deal
with Cli­mate Change issues in the edu­ca­tion sys­tem. The project is
non-hier­ar­chi­cal
and based on con­sen­sus deci­sion mak­ing, and the Launch Gath­er­ing is the
per­fect
oppor­tu­ni­ty to get involved, share your ideas and plan for action. See
www.studentclimateproject.org.uk’

———————————————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
———————————————-

1) ROSSPORT SOLIDARITY DEMOS — 14.9.07 LEEDS, LONDON, BRISTOL, READING,
MADRID & IRELAND
There were a series of demon­stra­tions held in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the day of
action against Shel­l’s plans for a gas pipeline & refin­ery in Mayo,
Ire­land.
In Ross­port itself over 150 peo­ple occu­pied the refin­ery site.
Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide held a sol­i­dar­i­ty demo at a Shell Garage in East­ville,
Bris­tol with leaflets and ban­ners.
For more details about the var­i­ous actions check;
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/5090
http://www.corribsos.com/index.php?id=1&type=page

2) DIRECT ACTION IN BRISTOL — AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2007
Activists in Bris­tol have been busy. Parts of three golf cours­es have been
dug up and the mes­sage “deca­dent waste of water” sprayed near a club
house. A mobile phone mast has been sab­o­taged. A non-pas­sen­ger line which
trans­ports cars and fos­sil fuel to the Mid­lands was cut three quar­ters of
the way through in two places and marked with high vis­i­bil­i­ty paint. A
warn­ing ban­ner read­ing: “Stop: Trees on line” was fixed across the line
sev­er­al hun­dred yards in front of this.
Also, with­in the last 6 months, the front tyres of forty 4x4s have been
punc­tured in and around Bris­tol.
Final­ly, a “cor­po­rate enter­tain­ment” com­pa­ny called 4‑Play, which pro­vides
off road dri­ving for 4x4s in the south west, has had vehi­cles spray
paint­ed with

“4‑play — blow-job the plan­et”.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/5050

3) WHY CARBON TRADING ISN’T WORKING — ARTICLES 2006/7
An excel­lent series of arti­cles on why the neolib­er­al approach to cli­mate
change isn’t work­ing can be found at;
http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/subject/climate/

4) GAGGED! ANARCHIST NEWSLETTER – SOUTH WALES, SEPT 2007
Down­load the PDF here;
https://lists.riseup.net/www/d_read/gagged/gagged19.pdf
Alter­na­tive­ly you can read it here;
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/5052

5) FEDERAL COURT BLOCKS SHELLS ARCTIC DRILLING — 14.9.07
A fed­er­al court has denied Shel­l’s lat­est request to lift an order
block­ing the com­pa­ny’s Arc­tic Ocean drilling. This rul­ing like­ly dooms the
Dutch oil giant’s drilling plans, at least for this year.
http://www.pacificenvironment.org/

6) BANK PULLS SAKHALIN‑2 FUNDING — 15.8.07
The Euro­pean Bank of Recon­struc­tion and Devel­op­ment has decid­ed to pull
its fund­ing for the $20-plus bil­lion Sakhalin‑2 liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas
project, locat­ed in Rus­si­a’s Far East.
Since Jan­u­ary, EBRD and the Sakhalin Ener­gy share­hold­ers (Gazprom, Roy­al
Dutch Shell, Mit­sui and Mit­subishi) have held talks over the pro­jec­t’s
finance. EBRD cut off dis­cus­sions in favour of financ­ing oth­er projects,
such as those that pro­mote sus­tain­able ener­gy.
http://www.pacificenvironment.org/

7) PROTEST AS RDA HOLDS “FLOOD SUMMIT” AT AIRPORT — 3.9.07 DONCASTER, YORKS.
York­shire For­ward (Region­al Devel­op­ment Agency) held an out­ra­geous “Flood
Sum­mit” at Finning­ley air­port. Local peo­ple vis­it­ed with pop-up tents and
ban­ners to leaflet the con­fer­ence’s par­tic­i­pants and hold alter­na­tive
work­shops high­light­ing the link between avi­a­tion growth and wors­en­ing
cli­mate change.
The con­fer­ence was intend­ed to con­grat­u­late the RDA on their response to
the recent floods. The choice of venue shows just how out of touch with
real­i­ty these half-wits are.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/5021

8) COAL ACTIONS IN AUSTRALIA — 2/3.9.07
On the 2nd Sep­tem­ber, twelve Green­peace activists were arrest­ed at the
world’s biggest coal port at New­cas­tle, 160km north of Syd­ney, after
paint­ing the mes­sage “Aus­tralia Push­ing Export Coal” on the side of a coal
ship and unfurl­ing a large ban­ner in Chi­nese call­ing on Chi­na to be
cau­tious of John Howard and George Bush’s attempts to sab­o­tage Kyoto. The
protest comes at the start of the 2007 APEC (Asia Pacif­ic Eco­nom­ic
Coop­er­a­tion) forum meet­ing being host­ed by Aus­tralia.
http://www.greenpeace.org/australia/news-and-events/media/releases/climate-change/apec-coal-protest
The fol­low­ing day activists locked them­selves on to a coal con­vey­or belt,
forc­ing the shut-down of a gen­er­a­tor and halv­ing pro­duc­tion from
Vic­to­ri­a’s biggest coal fired pow­er sta­tion.
http://www.realactiononclimatechange.blogspot.com/

9) GLOBAL ACTIONS AGAINST HEAVY INDUSTRY — 12.9.07
Peo­ple in South Africa, Ice­land, Trinidad, Den­mark and Amer­i­ca held a
series of coor­di­nat­ed protests against heavy indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion. This is
the first event of a new and grow­ing glob­al move­ment that began at the
2007 Sav­ing Ice­land protest camp in Ölfus, Ice­land.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/5067

10) GREEK DIRECT ACTION — SEPTEMBER 2007
For direct action news from Greece, check;
http://directactiongr.blogspot.com/

11) CRITICAL MASS AND CARFREE DAY IN BRUSSELS — 24.9.07
For details and some great pics see;
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/09/381930.html

12) ART NOT OIL 2007 GALLERY HITS 50

and over 1500 hits. Take a look and send in your own work:
www.artnotoil.org.uk

*The Bath Bomb * Issue #3 October ‘07 * @nti-copyright: copy and distribute! *

“Soapy suds of truth in a bath­tub of b*llshit!””

Oh, Just More Shops…

Walk­ing past the rub­ble of the South­gate Cen­tre, could my ears be deceiv­ing me? I have now heard sev­er­al peo­ple remark­ing how nice the view looks with­out the build­ings. The lat­est one of these came when I was walk­ing behind three very fash­ion­able look­ing girls who looked like they were ‘born to shop’:

Bath Bomb small logo“Soapy suds of truth in a bath­tub of b*llshit!””

Oh, Just More Shops…

Walk­ing past the rub­ble of the South­gate Cen­tre, could my ears be deceiv­ing me? I have now heard sev­er­al peo­ple remark­ing how nice the view looks with­out the build­ings. The lat­est one of these came when I was walk­ing behind three very fash­ion­able look­ing girls who looked like they were ‘born to shop’:
“What are they putting there?”
“Oh, just more shops.”
Could it be that more peo­ple than we real­ize would like more from life? Could it be time for some­thing new? Could it be that con­sumer cul­ture is real­ly on the wane? Coz it’s gonna take more than a Deben­hams to impress me.
What would the peo­ple of Bath like to see in a new shop­ping centre’s place? What could hap­pen if we let our imag­i­na­tions run wild? Why not get in touch with your ideas?

Reduce Car­bon, Cut Cap­i­tal­ism!

Sun­day the 16th Sep­tem­ber saw the arrival of the ‘Cut the Car­bon’ march in Bath. The group, includ­ing a mem­ber of MST, a Brazil­lian peas­ants move­ment who take land back from the rich to cul­ti­vate and feed their fam­i­lies, has been march­ing all over the UK, start­ing in Dublin, and end­ing the fol­low­ing week in Lon­don, to pub­li­cise the effects of cli­mate change on the plan­et. The group was met in Abbey Court­yard by 50 sup­port­ers, includ­ing a con­tin­gent from Bath Activist Net­work, wav­ing red and black flags and a ban­ner read­ing ‘social change not cli­mate change!’.
Their mes­sage was sim­ple, we can all do our bit to help stop cli­mate change, but it is the rich and the big busi­ness­es, from oil com­pa­nies to coal min­ing cor­po­ra­tions to the road build­ing indus­try, that are real­ly rap­ing the plan­et. We reck­on that the solu­tions to cli­mate change, pover­ty, wage slav­ery and greed can all be solved when we get togeth­er and take the pow­er away from those caus­ing the prob­lems — politi­cians, the idle rich and the cor­po­ra­tions. Bath Bomb would like to wish the ‘Cut the Car­bon’ marchers well on the last leg of their jour­ney and good luck in spread­ing their impor­tant mes­sage.

Work Kills

A new cam­paign has start­ed in Bath to high­light the dan­gers of casu­al and tem­po­rary work. This cam­paign is aimed at stu­dents and young peo­ple, many of whom are killed and injured doing this type of work each year. The cam­paign is being run by the Trades Coun­cil, a grass-roots trades union group, and the Simon Jones cam­paign (an action group set up to demand jus­tice for a stu­dent killed at work due to the neglect of com­pa­ny man­age­ment)
The cam­paign will be talk­ing at schools and uni­ver­si­ties, offer­ing advice and help. In ear­ly 2008, there will be a pub­lic meet­ing and an exhi­bi­tion (keep an eye on the Bath Bomb for fur­ther details!)
This cam­paign is need­ed because the state jus­tice sys­tem and boss­es care more for con­trol and prof­its at work than safe­ty.

www.simonjones.org.uk

Events List­ing

Mon­day nights Bath Hunt Sabo­teur meet­ings back room of Bell, Wal­cot Street, 8pm
6th Oct Fight the Pipe ben­e­fit gig, 8pm, The Plough in Eas­t­on, Bris­tol, with Crow­zone, Drug Snif­fin’ Dogs and Burnt Pork­chops
13th Oct Bath FreeShop out­side Hol­land & Bar­retts, Stall Street, 12–3pm
14th Oct Per­ma­cul­ture Col­lec­tiec Cafe food, film & work­shop, Kebele Kul­ture Pro­jekt 14 Robert­son Road, Bris­tol, from 5.30pm
15th Oct Day of action against Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, details tbc
19th Oct ‘Left­ism’ Ben­e­fit club night in aid of B.A.N., down­stairs at The Crown, Bath­wick Street, 9pm-1am
19th Oct Anar­chist Black Cross ben­e­fit gig, 8pm, The Junc­tion, 51 Stokes croft, with Born Dead, Jesus Bruis­er, 7 Crowns and War/System
21st Oct ‘Bub­bling Under: Behind The Mask’ Porter Cel­lar Bar, George Street, 1–4pm
23rd Oct cheap house clear­ance, ben­e­fit­ing ani­mal shel­ter in Kent! Ring 07990 847700 for details
27th Oct Anar­chist Book­fair in Lon­don www.anarchistbookfair.org.uk
1st Nov Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing down­stairs Hob­gob­lin, St James Parade, 7.30–9pm
1st-11th Nov Bath Film Fes­ti­val www.bathfilmfestival.org
3rd Nov Bash The Rich, Not­ting Hill, Por­to­bel­lo road, Lon­don, 2pm www.bashtherich.org.uk [come along if you’re Class War or cop]
3rd Nov Gagged! ben­e­fit gig, Le Pub, Cax­ton Place, New­port, 9pm, with No Choice, Kilnaboy & Gun­rack?
7th Nov Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing back room of the Bell, Wal­cot Street, 7.30–8.30pm
10th Nov SHAC demo Hunt­ing­don town cen­tre, nation­al day of action against ani­mal abuse in Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences, www.veggieromance.com/f/61290
13th Nov Green Light Lec­ture — ‘Peak Oil: how to face the chal­lenge of glob­al oil decline’ — BRLSI, Queen Square, 7.30pm
24th Nov Punk all-day­er gig, ben­fit­ting legal costs from the Nation­al Camp for Cli­mate Action, from 1pm at back­room [Wal­cot Palais!] of the Porter Butt on Lon­don Road — Tofu Love Frogs, Kilnaboy, Span­ner, Jesus Bruis­er, and more!

Fur Patrols

Here in the Bath Bomb office it’s start­ing to get a bit nip­py, now that win­ter’s on its way. But don’t wor­ry, this isn’t a call for heat­ing dona­tions — we’ve still got plen­ty of Chrons to feed the fire! What this does mean though, is that fur will soon start return­ing to our high streets, and we can’t have that. Around 40 mil­lion inno­cent ani­mals die every year to feed the fash­ion mar­ket, often spend­ing their entire lives in tiny cages, going mad with hunger and fear. ‘Pelt­ing’, or slaugh­ter, often takes the form of bru­tal hang­ings, elec­tro­cu­tion, car exhaust gassing — that is, if they’re not skinned alive.
For the last cou­ple of years, Bath Ani­mal Action and friends have been cam­paign­ing against fur out­lets in the city, with a string of suc­cess­es: Square signed the fur-free pledge last year, and John Antho­ny the year before. After weeks of reg­u­lar demos, it now remains to be seen as to whether Eleano­ra Brown at AH Moda will bring in rab­bit fur, again. Cry­ing wolf like any of today’s best actress­es, she col­lab­o­rat­ed with police last year to try and fit up a cou­ple of activists on false Pub­lic Order charges back in Jan­u­ary, both of whom were found not guilty.
BAA sleuths are now inves­ti­gat­ing the shop­ping cen­tres of the city to see if any stores are intent on prof­it­ing from this ani­mal abuse. Real fur is soft­er than syn­thet­ic fur, and if you do sus­pect any stores of sell­ing, please drop them a line: bathanimalaction@yahoo.co.uk.

http://www.caft.org.uk/

How Many MPs Does It Take To Veto Nuclear Pow­er…

We are hear­ing more and more that nuclear is the solu­tion to our pow­er needs, how plants are so much safer these days, blah blah blah. STOP. This is a dan­ger­ous thing to be con­sid­er­ing and will not even achieve what we need it to (nuclear pow­er, which only sup­plies elec­tric­i­ty, would only cut UK emis­sions by 4% by 2025–2030, by the government’s own fig­ures). Renew­able ener­gy will get for­got­ten about in the process, with hard­ly any fund­ing allo­cat­ed to research.
Nuclear pow­er is waste­ful, caus­es a lot of pol­lu­tion, is dan­ger­ous in many ways and isn’t even more reli­able see­ing as it still needs a fuel source which we must get from oth­er coun­tries. Renew­able ener­gy offers a sup­ply of clean fuel that is right on our doorsteps (such as wind, solar and geot­her­mal), it will achieve much more and soon­er. The government’s stub­born insis­tence on nuclear pow­er is anoth­er exam­ple of a quick fix that seems like it’s solv­ing a prob­lem when real­ly it’s only a tem­po­rary mea­sure that will come back to bite us in the ass in the future. Hard. We’ve got to stop cut­ting cor­ners and take the route that might take a bit more effort, may be a bit less famil­iar, but that is ulti­mate­ly the only way to begin to get us out of this mess we’ve got our­selves into.
Have your say here www.greenlightonbath.org/ with a ques­tion­naire or send out the mod­el let­ter to add your views to the Government’s review of the future of nuclear ener­gy. Also on this site, under the resources link is an inter­est­ing DVD you can view amongst oth­er things. The dead­line for this is the 10th Octo­ber, but if you miss that, as it’s short notice, there’s bound to be more oppor­tu­ni­ties to have your say. We must all shout loud and be deter­mined in our refusal of nuclear. The def­i­n­i­tion of stu­pid is doing the same thing (over and over) and expect­ing dif­fer­ent results. Also remem­ber two easy things you can do to reduce your ener­gy use — low ener­gy light bulbs (they cost more but last much longer) and turn off your stand­bys!

www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/index.php
http://nuclearpower2007.direct.gov.uk/reg/reg.asp

Direc­tor’s [Bolt] Cut

The sec­ond film in the ‘Bub­bling Under’ alter­na­tive cin­e­ma series screens on Sun­day the 21st of this month, down­stairs at Porter Cel­lar on George Street, at 1pm. Kei­th Mann, for­mer ani­mal lib­er­a­tionist jail­bird, intro­duces ‘Behind The Mask’, a doc­u­men­tary about peo­ple who risk their lib­er­ty to save ani­mals. He’ll also be dis­cussing his book ‘From Dusk Til Dawn’. Great veg­gie food also avail­able.

www.fromdusktildawn.org.uk

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

Dirty Mon­ey

Not a week goes by now with­out anoth­er cli­mate change and severe weath­er hor­ror sto­ries hit­ting the press, caus­ing around annu­al 160,000 deaths world­wide. And we know some of the cul­prits, too: while com­pa­nies like Esso, Shell and Nation­al Grid plun­der the earth and endan­ger our lives, the finance to do this has to come from some­where. This is where the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land come in. The self-pro­claimed ‘Oil & Gas Bank’, whilst oth­er investors are jump­ing to fund renew­ables projects round the world, RBS is busy under­cut­ting com­peti­tors, and fund­ing the dead­liest and dirt­i­est projects around: liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas in Qatar, oil pipelines in Azerbaijan/Georgia, tar sand extrac­tion in Cana­da, North Sea Oil, and anoth­er drilling project off the coast of Rus­sia, the sum­mer feed­ing ground of the threat­ened west­ern grey whale. And then they fund air­port expan­sion, too!
In 2005, their var­i­ous fund­ed projects pro­duced near­ly 4 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 emis­sions, as well as dis­plac­ing indige­nous peo­ples and encour­ag­ing oil wars the world over.
Also, remem­ber Bath Cli­mate Camp? That was set up to oppose Land & Marine’s LNG pipeline in south Wales, also fund­ed by RBS, putting the lives of thou­sands in jeop­ardy from poten­tial gas explo­sions. Eco-cam­paign­ers are call­ing for a nation­al day of action against the bank [who also own NatWest, Direct Line and Churchill Insur­ance] on the 15th of this month, so keep a look out!

www.theoilandgasbank.com
www.risingtide.org.uk
www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk
www.carbonweb.org/documents/Oil_&_Gas_Bank.pd
To find your near­est RBS branch or office:www.rbs.co.uk/microsites/general/branch_locator/step1.asp

HOT OFF THE PRESS!:
Cad­bury’s prove yet again that they could­n’t give a Fudge about their staff, with the announced clo­sure of their suc­cess­ful fac­to­ry in Keyn­sham, Wink-ing out 500 jobs. And whilst it’s Time Out for the work­ers who have helped make the Mr Big execs rich, the relo­ca­tion to Poland will no doubt prove a tidy Boost to the confectioner’s prof­its; as well as stir­ring up Moro racism and anti-Pole resent­ment over here. Greedy bas­tards.

http://www.thisisbath.com/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=180730&command=displayContent&sourceNode=232315&home=yes&more_nodeId1=163047&contentPK=18568762

Well Fed Not An Ani­mal Dead!

Sat­ur­day morn­ing of the 22nd Sep­tem­ber saw Bath Ani­mal Action and sup­port­ers hold­ing a stall of veg­an food, gratis, prov­ing that there is such thing as a free lunch! Held as part of ‘Go Veg­gie Month’, it all went like hot cakes, and the pub­lic enjoyed it, too! Recipes were swapped and debates were had, and a real feel­ing of com­mu­ni­ty was [not Don!] fos­tered.

Fox Hunt­ing’s Fishy His­to­ry

Did you know that the expres­sion ‘red her­ring’ orig­i­nates from peas­antry in cen­turies past try­ing to sab­o­tage fox hunts? Pissed off with low pay, long hours and crap work­ing con­di­tions, it was a week­end pas­time for many of the 18th and 19th Cen­tu­ry rur­al poor to ruin their rich mas­ters’ hob­by. Amongst oth­er tac­tics, they did this by lay­ing her­rings and oth­er fish in the under­growth, dis­tract­ing the hounds from the scent of the fox, allow­ing it to escape. Our meth­ods may have changed since then, but hunt sabo­teurs are still out in the fields every week­end pro­tect­ing hunt­ed wildlife from the over-rich, under-IQ’d inbreds that con­sti­tute Britain’s rul­ing class. If you are inter­est­ed in pub­li­cis­ing Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs, help­ing us raise mon­ey, or bet­ter yet, com­ing out and help­ing us active­ly sab­o­tage local hunts, email bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk or give us a bell on 07854 062336

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring
http://hsa.enviroweb.org/hsa.shtml

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

Camp Hope — 20/21st October vs Gloucestershire Airport expansion

Camp For Hope At Staver­ton Air­port, Glouces­ter­shire 20/21st Octo­ber. Inspired by the Camp for Cli­mate Action 2007 activists and local res­i­dents are organ­is­ing a camp to protest the expan­sion of Glouces­ter­shire Air­port at Staver­ton. “Camp Hope” will take place at a secret loca­tion near the air­port on the 20/21 Octo­ber.

Gloucestershire Airport sandwich boardCamp For Hope At Staver­ton Air­port, Glouces­ter­shire 20/21st Octo­ber. Inspired by the Camp for Cli­mate Action 2007 activists and local res­i­dents are organ­is­ing a camp to protest the expan­sion of Glouces­ter­shire Air­port at Staver­ton. “Camp Hope” will take place at a secret loca­tion near the air­port on the 20/21 Octo­ber.

Loca­tion is near the air­port and to be announced on our web­site on the evening of 19th Octo­ber.

Staver­ton Air­port want to extend their run­way and increase ser­vices. The extra noise and fumes will dam­age the local envi­ron­ment and the huge amounts of CO2 will add to glob­al warm­ing.

We need to put our chil­dren’s future and the envi­ron­ment before the prof­its of an air­port.

Sat­ur­day 20th Oct:

Learn about glob­al warm­ing, what it means to you and your chil­dren. Learn what you can do about it.

Work­shops and dis­cus­sions start at 13:00pm

Lead speak­er David Drew MP

Sun­day 21st Oct:

Peace­ful protest against the air­port’s impacts on noise, the envi­ron­ment, and the area’s image

The air­port claims “only a small minor­i­ty are opposed to the devel­op­ment,” Come and show them that you are not part of a small minor­i­ty by mak­ing your voice heard

You can come and camp for the week­end, or just come for the Sat­ur­day or Sun­day.

For pub­lic trans­port to the air­port, take the 94 bus to Staver­ton Bridge. Also, park­ing is avail­able. Stew­ards will direct you from the air­port entrance

Take a look at http://campforhopeatstaverton.blogspot.com or www.myspace.com/campofhope and http://kevsclimatecolumn.blogspot.com For more infor­ma­tion email CampForTheFuture@btinternet.com

If any­one has access to any of the fol­low­ing it could be very use­ful :

* Mar­quees, yurts, car­a­vans, tem­po­rary struc­tures, tents
* Wood for build­ing (espe­cial­ly 2x2, 3x2, 18mm ply)
* Nails, wood­screws etc.
* Wood for burn­ing
* Food (veg­an, local­ly pro­duced, organ­ic)
* Water con­tain­ers
* Water pip­ing
* Water
* Hay/Straw
* Vans and trail­ers
* Beer
* Scraps of mate­r­i­al (the big­ger the bet­ter)
* Banners/Banner mak­ing equip­ment
* Peo­ple to give workshops/speeches
* Enter­tain­ment
* Cable ties
* Tarpaulains
* Cara­bi­nas
* Solar elec­tric­i­ty (PV) pan­els
* 12v Bat­ter­ies
* Wheel­ie bins
* Buck­ets
* Rope
* Gaffa tape (what every site is built on)

We also need peo­ple to help to organ­ise and pub­li­cise the event. If you have any time which you can use to help out it would be great­ly appre­ci­at­ed.

Allotment Holders Sowing the Seed of Resistance in Reading

On Mon­day 17th Sep­tem­ber 07 Cow Lane allot­ment hold­ers began their first action against plans to bull­doze the site to make way for a new road as part of the Read­ing sta­tion upgrade.

Cow Lane allotmentsOn Mon­day 17th Sep­tem­ber 07 Cow Lane allot­ment hold­ers began their first action against plans to bull­doze the site to make way for a new road as part of the Read­ing sta­tion upgrade.

See http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/08/377780.html for pre­vi­ous report.

Allot­ment hold­ers where alert­ed to the arrival of sur­vey­ors gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion for the new road design last week. To ensure this event did not go unno­ticed allot­ment hold­ers quick­ly mobilised to greet and dis­miss the sur­vey­ors.

Most allot­ment hold­ers were at work, how­ev­er a small group man­aged to make a very vis­i­ble pres­ence at the gates to the allot­ment site. They erect­ed a 10 metre long ban­ner over the entrance, fash­ioned some makeshift plac­ards and hand­ed out 500 leaflets to pass­ing motorists, many of whom where very sup­port­ive, hoot­ing there horns and stop­ping to take leaflets. The usu­al sharp-wit­ted rant of ‘Get a Job’ was only heard once towards the end of the day. Friends from Com­mon Ground com­mu­ni­ty gar­den and asso­ci­at­ed activists also turned up to show sup­port.

One Land­scape Archi­tect had the audac­i­ty to turn up only to be turned away with a clear mes­sage that we intend to fight to save our allot­ments, and those com­pa­nies involved would not be immune from action.

The allot­ments are under threat due to the clo­sure of one of the Cow Lane bridges and a sub­se­quent diver­sion of the road as a part of devel­op­ment plans for Read­ing sta­tion. The road will also affect the Read­ing Fes­ti­val site, Mobile home res­i­dents and the River­side Sports and social cen­tre.

We also made it into our local rag ( http://www.getreading.co.uk/news/2015/2015224/protest_over_allotment_land)

Find out more about us and our cam­paign at www.cowlane.org.uk

Oth­er allot­ment sites under threat!
www.lifeisland.org
www.eastleigh-allotments-association.org.uk

Rossport solidarity — Leeds, London, Bristol, Reading, Madrid, Ireland (Clare, Belfast) & at Bellanboy

15.09.2007
Yes­ter­day morn­ing at 8am, a ban­ner was hung over the A58 /Leeds Inner Ring Road in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the day of action against Shel­l’s plans for a gas pipeline & refin­ery in Mayo, Ire­land.

15.09.2007
Yes­ter­day morn­ing at 8am, a ban­ner was hung over the A58 /Leeds Inner Ring Road in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the day of action against Shel­l’s plans for a gas pipeline & refin­ery in Mayo, Ire­land.

The ban­ner read:
Stop Shell Hell in Ire­land
www.shelltosea.com

——–

Activists con­struct ‘high pres­sure pipeline’ at Irish Embassy in Lon­don

Fri­day morn­ing at 9.30 am, diplo­mats and passers-by were sur­prised to wit­ness a “dodgy agree­ment” between a ‘Shell rep­re­sen­ta­tive’ and ‘the Taoiseach’, and find a ‘pipeline under con­struc­tion’ at the Irish Embassy in Lon­don. A group of activists had gath­ered at the Embassy to high­light and shame the Irish Gov­ern­men­t’s involve­ment with Shell in the con­struc­tion of a high pres­sure raw gas pipeline at Ross­port in Coun­ty Mayo.

The demon­stra­tors unveiled their ban­ner: “Bertie Ahern: Shelling Ire­land out!” In the style of Char­lie Chap­lin, activists dressed as Bertie Ahern and a Shell rep­re­sen­ta­tive per­formed a series of ‘dodgy deals’. The Irish Taoiseach “begged” Shell to “Take own­er­ship of our nat­ur­al resources – for noth­ing!”, and offered Shell and oth­er oil com­pa­nies “100% of the prof­it” with “low tax­a­tion”, “gar­da oppres­sion”, “false pros­e­cu­tions of pro­tes­tors” and “the oppor­tu­ni­ty to destroy EU-pro­tect­ed envi­ron­ments” as sweet­en­ers. The aim of the per­for­mance was to draw to atten­tion the irra­tional­i­ty of the gov­ern­men­t’s sup­port of Shel­l’s con­struc­tion of the dan­ger­ous and exper­i­men­tal pipeline in Mayo.

Anne-Marie O’Reil­ly, an activist at the embassy this morn­ing, explained:

“I can under­stand why Shell would be in favour of these terms and would­n’t have any objec­tion to the gar­da baton charg­ing peace­ful pro­tes­tors. But I can­not com­pre­hend why the gov­ern­ment would give away Ire­land’s resources and allow the destruc­tion of envi­ron­ment and com­mu­ni­ty when there is no ben­e­fit to Irish peo­ple. Per­haps anoth­er sto­ry of cor­rup­tion will emerge when it’s too late to stop the pipeline?”

The action coin­cid­ed with the sit-down protest at the refin­ery in Bel­linaboy and with ‘Shell to Sea’ sol­i­dar­i­ty actions in Brighton, Berlin and across Europe.

——–

Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide did a sol­i­dar­i­ty demo at the Shell Garage on Muller Road, East­ville, Bris­tol from 5:30 till 7:30. It was small but per­fect­ly formed, with good leaflets (thanks to Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty posse) and ban­ners (thanks to clever trevor).

Sev­er­al dri­vers changed their minds and went else­where for their petrol when they saw us or spoke to us about what is going on in Ross­port at Shel­l’s behest. We hand­ed out leaflets at the zebra cross­ing, where bored and exas­per­at­ed dri­vers were trapped in their lit­tle met­al box­es carp­ing, honk­ing and scratch­ing at each oth­er like bat­tery chick­ens. It gave them some­thing to read in the exten­sive traf­fic jam that sat next to the garage.
Sev­er­al Irish passers-by showed par­tic­u­lar inter­est.

The fore­court was almost com­plete­ly emp­ty most of the time we were there, so we effec­tive­ly shut it down with­out any police action or oth­er such quo­tid­i­an aggro.

Pho­tos were tak­en and will appear short­ly if for­tune and our sil­i­con mas­ters smile upon us.

Our press release is below.

STARTS

We are at the Shell petrol sta­tion on Muller Road in Bris­tol today (Sep 14th) occu­py­ing the fore­court in protest against Shell’s treat­ment of the peo­ple of Ross­port, in Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land.

From 6pm we will be there, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the com­mu­ni­ty of Ross­port, who have been impris­oned, beat­en and intim­i­dat­ed by the Irish police at Shell’s request.

We are activists from Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide, a group who cam­paigns about cli­mate change and human rights.

Shell want to build a dan­ger­ous and envi­ron­men­tal­ly destruc­tive gas pipeline and refin­ery right next to people’s hous­es on unsta­ble marsh land. There is mas­sive oppo­si­tion in the local com­mu­ni­ty and there has been sup­port for their strug­gle across Ire­land and inter­na­tion­al­ly, with many Shell garages being tar­get­ed for demos.

In 2005, 5 men were jailed for 3 months for refus­ing to allow Shell access to their land. Fol­low­ing their impris­on­ment the com­mu­ni­ty set up a pick­et at the pro­posed refin­ery site, stop­ping work for over a year. Last autumn, large num­bers of police moved into the area and beat the com­mu­ni­ty off the streets. Numer­ous peo­ple were hos­pi­tal­ized and the police bru­tal­i­ty has been inter­na­tion­al­ly con­demned. More recent­ly state repres­sion has involved the ini­ti­a­tion of mali­cious pros­e­cu­tions against promi­nent local cam­paign­ers. Despite the strong forces work­ing against them, the com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­ues to resist. We are here in sup­port of their strug­gle.

ENDS
Con­tact: Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide 07988 460373 or 07983 350021

Notes for jour­nal­ists

Major Crit­i­cisms of the Project

Unprocessed gas will be piped at unique­ly high pres­sure lev­els, dan­ger­ous­ly close to dwellings and through sev­er­al SACs’ (spe­cial areas of con­ser­va­tion), sup­pos­ed­ly under the pro­tec­tion of EU law.
The gas will be processed at a refin­ery with­in the catch­ment area of the local reser­voir, Car­row­more lake, which pro­vides the drink­ing water for 10,000 peo­ple.
An Taisce (The Irish Nation­al Trust) has stat­ed that if the project goes ahead, Car­row­more Lake will even­tu­al­ly have to be closed as a source of drink­ing water.
The refin­ery will be a huge source of air and water pol­lu­tion. Between 200,000 and 300,000 kg of methane (a major green­house gas) will be emit­ted annu­al­ly, with the risk of vapor cloud explo­sions and acid rain.
The site will hold over 5000 tonnes of dan­ger­ous chem­i­cals. Over 1500 tonnes of methanol (a highy tox­ic chem­i­cal) are expect­ed to be ‘lost’ each year. This will be emit­ted, with the waste water, into
Broad­haven bay, “an impor­tant area for a num­ber of marine mam­mal species and for oth­er marine life” accord­ing to a report com­mis­sioned by Shell. The waste water would also con­tain heavy met­als such as arsenic, mer­cury and cad­mi­um. Any waste not pumped into the bay will drain instead into Car­row­more Lake.
The project will adverse­ly impact on the liveli­hoods of the region’s farm­ers and fish­er­men due to the mas­sive land, air and water pol­lu­tion.
All the prof­its from the gas extrac­tion will go direct­ly to the oil com­pa­nies, the Irish peo­ple will gain noth­ing.

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion is avail­able from:
www.gcmonitor.org/article.php?id=576
www.indymedia.ie
www.corribsos.com

http://risingtide.org.uk/bristol

——–

On Fri­day 14th Sep­tem­ber, Read­ing Grass­roots Action and oth­ers from around Read­ing took part in a pick­et of a lcoal Shell garage. This pick­et was made in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the anti-pipeline/re­fin­ery com­mu­ni­ty strug­gle tak­ing place in Ross­port, Ire­land.

We protest­ed for about an hour on the fore­court, giv­ing out many leaflets to dri­vers. The Police arrived just as we left.

The fol­low­ing leaflet was giv­en out:

NO SHELL HELL IN IRELAND!

In Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land, a busi­ness coali­tion led by Shell Oil — with the approval of the Irish gov­ern­ment and full pro­tec­tion by the police — are plan­ning to:

- Forcibly take land from local res­i­dents and build an exper­i­men­tal high pres­sure gas pipeline (at four times the usu­al pres­sure) run­ning next to homes and destroy­ing rare eco-sys­tems. The pipe will run through bog­gy land with a his­to­ry of land­slides. In Mex­i­co, a pipeline of low­er pres­sure explod­ed, killing twelve peo­ple.

- Con­struct a gas refin­ery on unsta­ble bog, using pre­vi­ous­ly untried meth­ods to sta­bilise the bog sur­face. Emis­sions from the refin­ery will bad­ly pol­lute the near­by Car­row­more Lake, source of the region­al water sup­ply. Con­crete being used in the con­struc­tion has already been found to be faulty.

- Pump tox­ic waste into Broad­haven Bay, the source of local fish­er­men’s liveli­hoods. A research team found that Broad­haven Bay was an impor­tant breed­ing and rear­ing area for dol­phins and whales.
Nor­mal and best prac­tice is to refine the gas off­shore, bring­ing it ashore at much low­er pres­sure. Yet, the gov­ern­ment is hap­py with the dan­ger to local peo­ple and is giv­ing Irish gas away for prac­ti­cal­ly noth­ing, forc­ing the Irish peo­ple to pay the costs. But things are not going to plan…

Shell hoped to have the whole thing up and run­ning by 2003. Yet, with extra­or­di­nary courage, local peo­ple have protest­ed, block­ad­ed and refused to com­ply. To date, no work has been able to start on the pipeline, and hard­ly any work has hap­pened on the refin­ery.

In 2005, five local farm­ers were jailed for not allow­ing Shell on their land, one farmer has suf­fered a stroke after intim­i­da­tion by Shell con­trac­tors and in late 2006 extreme police vio­lence was used against pro­tes­tors. How­ev­er, block­ades by local peo­ple conit­nue tak­ing place every morn­ing and last month, activists from UK took part in an occu­pa­tion of the site, along with local peo­ple and oth­ers, stop­ping work for two hours. This is cost­ing Shell mil­lions!

Today is a day of action against Shell. About 200 peo­ple block­ad­ed the refin­ery this morn­ing by sit­ting in the entrance way. Rough­ly 170 then entered the site and stood on machin­ery to stop work. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, riot police are once again pro­tect­ing the cor­po­ra­tion instead of cit­i­zens, and there has been heavy vio­lence against peace­ful pro­tes­tors, and sev­er­al bru­tal arrests. In spite of this, the sit-down block­ade con­tin­ued, stop­ping all deliv­er­ies to the site.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it: www.corribsos.com and www.indymedia.ie

——–


There was a sol­i­dar­i­ty pick­et of the Irish Embassy in Madrid, organ­ised by the Fed­eración Anar­quista Ibéri­ca, the Iber­ian sec­tion of the Inter­na­tion­al of Anar­chist Fed­er­a­tions (http://www.iaf-ifa.org/) They have also made up posters about Ross­port, and car­ried arti­cles in their month­ly mag­a­zine, Tier­ra y Lib­er­tad.

I think the ban­ner reads ‘Shell Destroys the State Com­plies’

——–

Clare Rossport demo
Clare Shell to Sea Pick­et — 14th Sept ’07.

In Sol­i­dar­i­ty with Mayo and today’s Sit-Down Protest at Bel­lan­aboy.

It’s been clear for the last 2 years that the argu­ment against the Shell Cor­rib Gas Project is won.

And the amount of cars beep­ing their horns in Ennis this evening is tes­ta­ment to the sup­port for Shell to Sea, gen­uine­ly.

The Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ue in their refusal to debate the argu­ments and nego­ti­ate a set­tle­ment, and they per­sist in using force against the protests at Bel­lan­aboy, a protest that has gained nation­al and inter­na­tion­al sup­port and recog­ni­tion as … LEGITIMATE & JUST.

Greens — You have buried your heads in the Fian­na Fáil mire. Yoy are com­plic­it now. You are prov­ing your­selves to be unre­li­able and unwor­thy of trust. The Green Par­ty pumps for Shell.

email clareshell­tosea at gmail dot com
phone 085 1607287
——–
Belfast Rossport demo
Sol­i­dar­i­ty Shell pick­et in Belfast
Fri­day Sep­tem­ber 14, 2007

Belfast Shell to Sea organ­ised a pick­et of the Shell sta­tion in Ander­son­stown today in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the nation­al mobil­i­sa­tion in Bel­lan­aboy in Mayo.

Over a dozen activists took part in the pick­et and dis­trib­uted leaflets to pass­ing motorists and pedes­tri­ans, and received a lot of honk­ing from cars show­ing their sup­port. Despite it tak­ing place dur­ing rush hour and the road being extreme­ly busy, the fore­court of the sta­tion was left desert­ed for most of the time the pick­et was on.

email shell­toseabelfast at gmail dot com

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Bellanboy September 07 blockade
News from protest at Ross­port

Text mes­sage from the site of pro­posed refin­ery reports at 7.30 ” good turn out, over 200 so far, no trucks through the main gates and low police pres­ence”.

Updates

- 8:28
Between 50–120 have just stormed the main gate of the refin­ery and are head­ing up the cen­tral road to where the machin­ery is work­ing.

- 8:40
Pro­test­ers have gone through the sec­ond gate and are on the main site.

- 8:50
Text received from the protest:
“They kept the machines going until the last minute, peo­ple are stand­ing on a drilling machine, most work stopped, pro­test­ers and cops wan­der­ing around enor­mous site”.

- 8.59
” Two arrests, one bad­ly beat­en, get­ting pushed out pret­ty aggres­sive­ly’

- 9:34

The are now over 150 peo­ple occu­py­ing refin­ery site. There have been 7 deten­tions with peace­ful pro­tes­tors being assault­ed by sev­er­al Gar­daí who were not in the usu­al uni­form…

At least two pro­tes­tors were seri­ous­ly assault­ed and tak­en away.

- 9.47: “Riot police out in force. Protest cor­doned off. batons out and lots injured. Three arrest­ed so far”.

- 10:00
Site has been cleared by Pub­lic Order Unit with some bru­tal­i­ty. Arrestees appear to have been released in Bel­mul­let or along the road.

There’s a sit down protest out­side the gate with approx­i­mate­ly 170 pro­tes­tors being ringed by a large force of the coun­try’s finest.

Reports com­ing in of cops scream­ing to each oth­er to’break their fuck­ing arms’ with a lot of kick­ing and punch­ing going on (obvi­ous­ly direct­ed at the peace­ful pro­tes­tors). sev­er­al cops real­ly went for it but we’ve record­ed good video evi­dence. Cam­eras and tape are being hid­den to avoid a repeat of the inci­dent last year at Lennon’s quar­ry where a video cam­era was tak­en and smashed by the cops.

One fair­ly seri­ous assault to report and pos­si­bly 2 or 3 pro­tes­tors unac­count­ed for…

- 10:42
A num­ber of those arrest­ed were released either out­side the gates of the main site or once they reached Bel­mul­let. It is unclear as to whether peo­ple have been charged or not.

There is a sit down protest out­side the gate once more with 170 — 200 pro­tes­tors being ringed by a large force of the coun­try’s finest.

Rossport Day of Action: September 14th & daily blockades

There is a nation­al day of action at the Shell site at Bel­lan­aboy, Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land. For those who cant make the demo- sol­i­dar­i­ty actions are also being called for…

Gener­ic media action leaflet — application/pdf 384K

There is a nation­al day of action at the Shell site at Bel­lan­aboy, Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land. For those who cant make the demo- sol­i­dar­i­ty actions are also being called for…

Gener­ic media action leaflet — application/pdf 384K

Fri­day 14th Sep­tem­ber : Day of action in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Ross­port com­mu­ni­ty resist­ing Shell.

On the 14th of Sep­tem­ber a mass blockad­ing action has been called for at Shell’s pro­posed refin­ery site at Bel­lan­aboy in Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land. Sol­i­dar­i­ty actions are also called for. (To make life super easy a leaflet that can be adapt­ed and used is attached)

Over the past five years the rur­al com­mu­ni­ty around Ross­port have been resist­ing Shell’s attempts to build a gas refin­ery and high pres­sure pipeline. If the devel­op­ment goes ahead it will have dev­as­tat­ing social and envi­ron­men­tal con­se­quences for the region (for detailed info see www.corribs2s.org). Recent­ly, state repres­sion against the com­mu­ni­ty has been stepped up. The lat­est tac­tic to try and silence oppo­si­tion is an attempt to cre­ate a cul­ture of fear through the use of mali­cious pros­e­cu­tions. Key cam­paign­ers, includ­ing the head of the Fish­er­men (a strong lob­by group against the devel­op­ment) and the local cam­paign spokesper­son, have been tar­get­ed and false­ly charged with assaults on Gar­dai (see http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/world/actions/2006/mayo/). There are sev­er­al cas­es com­ing up over the next few months and the defen­dants are almost cer­tain­ly look­ing at serv­ing time. In 2005, when the ‘Ross­port 5’ were jailed for refus­ing to allow Shell access to their land, the strug­gle here became a nation­al issue and sup­port was wide­spread nation­al­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly. Across Ire­land there were dai­ly pick­ets of Shell garages and oth­er sol­i­dar­i­ty actions, the boost this gave to the com­mu­ni­ty was huge. Over the past year, although resis­tance here con­tin­ues as before, out­side sup­port has become less obvi­ous. The region is remote, with­out overt exter­nal sup­port its easy for peo­ple to feel iso­lat­ed and that their strug­gle has been for­got­ten. The strength of resis­tance here is a mas­sive inspi­ra­tion and the com­mu­ni­ty deserve sup­port, espe­cial­ly at time when a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of cam­paign­ers are fac­ing los­ing their lib­er­ty.

Sol­i­dar­i­ty actions could involve going to the Irish Embassy, vis­it­ing a Shell office or sim­ply blockad­ing or leaflet­ing a Shell garage. The major pur­pose for tak­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty action is to boost the cam­paign here by mak­ing the com­mu­ni­ty aware that they haven’t been for­got­ten. So, while it’d be great if peo­ple got togeth­er a huge spec­tac­u­lar action, if you’ve not much time, spend­ing an hour with a ban­ner and leaflets at a Shell garage is super easy and total­ly valu­able. For exam­ple, last Autumn, peo­ple orga­nized a Ross­port sol­i­dar­i­ty action in Brighton that took fuck-all organ­i­sa­tion and went real­ly well. Peo­ple were rung the night before, there was a meet­ing at lunchtime, a ban­ner quick­ly paint­ed, some leaflets made and then about 20 peo­ple shut down the garage for the after­noon. The fuel was turned off and peo­ple got on the roof with the ban­ner. It was prop­er old-skool fun, no one got nicked, and it was real­ly cool to get a bunch of peo­ple togeth­er so quick­ly and take action togeth­er.

So, if you can find a spare hour or two next Fri­day, it‘d be great if u could do a quick (or long!) anti-shell action, and post it on Indy­media after… It’d prob­a­bly even be fun. Also, if any­one fan­cies a vis­it to Ire­land, there’s stuff hap­pen­ing reg­u­lar­ly over here and places to stay and its beau­ti­ful…

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Dai­ly block­ades again at Bel­lan­aboy

Direct action stepped up in resis­tance to Shel­l’s project in Bel­lan­aboy

Gar­dai pres­ence has mas­sive­ly reduced at Bel­lan­aboy and the dai­ly pick­ets are once again stop­ping vehi­cles enter­ing the site. Block­ades are gen­er­al­ly held for between 10 and 40 min­utes before the cops arrive and are repeat­ed at reg­u­lar inter­vals throught the day. For footage of one of the block­ades check out…

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=YfSFrtv9XcA

Mass action on Fri­day 14th Setem­ber at Bel­lan­aboy. Sol­i­dar­i­ty actions also called for..