Category: Yorkshire & The Humber

York­shire & the Hum­ber

CLIMATE ACTION NEWS SHEET 85, December/January 2008/2009

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UPCOMING/ONGOING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
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1. Camp for Cli­mate Action Gath­er­ing, 31.01.09–01.02.09
2. Earth First! Win­ter Moot, 6–8.02.09
3. Mobil­is­ing for the COP, 13–15.03.09
4. Do It Your­self! Course, 22–27.03.09
5. Fos­sil Fools Day 2009, 01.04.09
6. Coal Car­a­van, April 2009

————————-
UPCOMING/ONGOING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
————————-

1. Camp for Cli­mate Action Gath­er­ing, 31.01.09–01.02.09
2. Earth First! Win­ter Moot, 6–8.02.09
3. Mobil­is­ing for the COP, 13–15.03.09
4. Do It Your­self! Course, 22–27.03.09
5. Fos­sil Fools Day 2009, 01.04.09
6. Coal Car­a­van, April 2009
7. Earth Activist Train­ing, 11–26.07.09
8. Non­vi­o­lence for a Change Train­ing, Jan-Dec 2009

—————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
—————-
1. Case col­laps­es against E.On block­aders, 14.01.09
2. Heathrow’s third run­way gets the go-ahead and activists respond, Jan­u­ary 2009
3. Plane Stu­pid shut down Stanst­ed Air­port, 08–12.08
4. 48 hours of action against E.on and new coal, 28–29.11.08
5. Scot­tish coal rail ter­mi­nal shut down, 15.12.08
6. E.ON forced to aban­don recruit­ment tour, Novem­ber 2008
7. Kel­ster­back For­est Occu­pa­tion (Frank­furt Air­port), ongo­ing

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

1) Camp for Cli­mate Action New Year Gath­er­ing, 31.01.09 – 01.02.09
2008 saw the biggest Cli­mate Camp to date and the most incred­i­ble array of direct action against cli­mate change on record. But what does 2009 hold in store? Regard­less of whether you’ve been to a cli­mate camp, all are wel­come to come along to this excit­ing week­end gath­er­ing. We will be ask­ing our­selves whether there should be anoth­er big sum­mer event and, if so, what it should be. Already there have been many pos­si­bil­i­ties raised, rang­ing from anoth­er rur­al camp to a sin­gu­lar day of action. Oth­er ideas include an urban con­ver­gence or a cli­mate car­a­van. The gath­er­ing will also pro­vide a forum to talk http://climatecamp.org.uk/?q=node/468

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

3) Mobil­is­ing for the COP, 13–15.03.09
The UN Cli­mate Con­fer­ence of Par­ties num­ber 15 is set to take place in Copen­hagen on the 30th of Novem­ber 2009, and it will be the biggest cli­mate sum­mit ever to have tak­en place. More than 12,000 del­e­gates — busi­ness lead­ers, politi­cians, diplo­mats and lob­by­ists — are going to be dis­cussing an inter­na­tion­al treaty to replace the failed Kyoto Pro­to­col.

Tens of thou­sands of activists and pro­test­ers will be mak­ing their way to Copen­hagen for this major event. In Sep­tem­ber 2008 peo­ple from more than 23 coun­tries met in Copen­hagen and agreed on a Call to Action, call­ing for peo­ple to start mobi­liz­ing and to car­ry out actions local­ly as well as com­ing to Copen­hagen for mass actions.
Anoth­er inter­na­tion­al plan­ning meet­ing will take place in March (13th-15th) 2009 where the con­cepts and strat­e­gy for action will be dis­cussed. http://climateaction09.org/

4) Do It Your­self! 22–27.03.09
A course explor­ing tools for empow­er­ment and grass­roots social change, at the Find­horn Foun­da­tion

Can we man­age our own lives and com­mu­ni­ties at the grass­roots rather than retreat­ing into fear, blame and stereo­types or look­ing to oth­ers to solve the prob­lems? Many peo­ple believe that the answers to the big ques­tions lie in com­mu­ni­ty empow­er­ment, bot­tom up organ­is­ing. This course pro­vides a chance to become con­fi­dent using a range of tech­niques designed to this end and to clar­i­fy our visions for the poten­tial of these approach­es. We will also put aside time to deal with the emo­tions and doubts raised and include a range of short films and con­tem­po­rary case stud­ies.

The main aims of the course are to share with par­tic­i­pants tools, knowl­edges, and ini­tia­tives which can be used to empow­er them­selves and their com­mu­ni­ties, and inspire pos­i­tive social change, based on co-oper­a­tion and sol­i­dar­i­ty. The course will draw on the book DO IT YOUSELF – A Hand­book for Chang­ing Our World edit­ed by TRAPESE (see handbookforchange.org) Email for more info: trapese@riseup.net

5) Fos­sil Fools Day 2009, 01.04.09
Just in case you missed the news – Fos­sil Fools Day is back! On April 1st, join the glob­al day of resis­tance and pull a prank that packs a punch. Call-out now avail­able on the web­site, so help spread the word. If you would like leaflets and/or posters send us an email and we’ll post you some – info@risingtide.org.uk
www.risingtide.org.uk/fossilfoolsday2009

6) Coal Car­a­van, 17.04.09 – 04.05.09
The fab­u­lous cli­mate car­a­van lives on. This time we will be the COAL CARAVAN, walk­ing and cycling between the sites for pro­posed open cast mines and new pow­er sta­tions in the Mid­lands, York­shire and North East. On our route we’ll be talk­ing to local peo­ple, organ­is­ing bicy­cled pow­er films and events, hold­ing pub­lic dis­cus­sions and dis­plays, and link­ing groups from dif­fer­ent areas to help strength­en iso­lat­ed cam­paigns.

Pre­cise details of the route are to be con­firmed, but put the dates in your diary now! Meet up Fri­day 17th April (W. Mid­lands), to start our jour­ney on Sat­ur­day 18th. The Car­a­van will end two and a half weeks lat­er with a grand finale on Bank Hol­i­day Mon­day (4th May).
The car­a­van itself will not involve direct action (although we may offer train­ing, if local groups so request).
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/21915
/caravan@climatecamp.org.uk.

7) Earth Activist Train­ing, 11–26.07.09
Learn the skills to trans­form a piece of land, a com­mu­ni­ty, and our polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sys­tems. Spend two weeks in rur­al Devon learn­ing: Nature and wilder­ness aware­ness, Diver­si­ty in ecosys­tems and social move­ments, Solu­tions that exist: alter­na­tive ener­gy; organ­ic farm­ing; nat­ur­al build­ing; biore­me­di­a­tion & restora­tion, Soil and wood­land ecol­o­gy and much, much more …

On com­ple­tion par­tic­i­pants will receive a per­ma­cul­ture design cer­tifi­cate. The course will be held at Land­mat­ters Per­ma­cul­ture Coop­er­a­tive in Devon. Costs: £200 — £650 slid­ing scale accord­ing to income. http://www.landmatters.org.uk / earthactivisttraining@riseup.net

8) Non­vi­o­lence for a Change Train­ing, 2009
Turn­ing the Tide will offer month­ly work­shops in non­vi­o­lent meth­ods and strate­gies for social change. You can par­tic­i­pate as a mem­ber of the year-group (com­mit­ting to all eleven ses­sions) or only come to those work­shops which inter­est you.
http://www.turning-the-tide.org

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RECENT HAPPENINGS:
—————-

1) Case col­laps­es against E.On block­aders, 14.01.09
Two envi­ron­men­tal­ists, arrest­ed fol­low­ing a block­ade of E.On’s Not­ting­ham offices on Fos­sil Fools Day 2008, had the case against them dis­missed on Wednes­day 14th Jan­u­ary. The case col­lapsed after it emerged that the pros­e­cu­tion had offered no evi­dence to sup­port the charge of aggra­vat­ed tres­pass. The Crown Pros­e­cu­tion Ser­vice (CPS) were found to have been neg­li­gent in their admin­is­tra­tion of the case and were ordered to pay the defence’s costs.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/01/419126.html

2) Heathrow’s third run­way gets the go-ahead and activists respond,
Jan­u­ary 2009
Both Heathrow and Man­ches­ter air­ports were tar­get­ed Mon­day 12th Jan­u­ary with the domes­tic depar­ture lounges of both air­ports simul­ta­ne­ous­ly occu­pied by pro­test­ers. In Lon­don over 500 peo­ple defied air­port bylaws by stag­ing a sit-down din­ner, forc­ing air­port oper­a­tor BAA to close 18 check-in desks. In Man­ches­ter police used pow­ers under Sec­tion 14 of the Pub­lic Order Act to con­tain up to 100 pro­test­ers on the ground floor of Ter­mi­nal 3, with one arrest.

Mean­while, Green­peace revealed that a plot of land with­in the pro­posed expan­sion site had been pur­chased in an attempt to delay the con­struc­tion.

When the announce­ment came on Thurs­day 15th, ‘cli­mate suf­fragettes’ smashed the win­dows of the Depart­ment of Trans­port (http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/01/418697.html) and on Sat­ur­day 17th Jan, 500 flash mobbed at Heathrows ter­mi­nal 5.

For all the details, pic­tures, videos and more vis­it -
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/01/418105.html

3) Plane Stu­pid shut down Stanst­ed Air­port, 08–12.08
50 activists from Plane Stu­pid shut down Stanst­ed Air­port by camp­ing on the run­way and sur­round­ing them­selves with for­ti­fied secu­ri­ty fenc­ing. Plane Stu­pid announced ‘We are gen­uine­ly grate­ful for the lev­el of sup­port from peo­ple who have agreed with us that des­per­ate times call for des­per­ate mea­sures. We have used this action to ask for every­one to ‘please, do some­thing’. We hope that all those that have expressed sup­port for today’s action will now think about what they are going to do to ensure the sur­vival of our plan­et and peo­ple on it’.
http://www.planestupid.com/?q=content/plane-stupid-shuts-stansted-airport

4) 48 hours of action against E.on and new coal, 28–29.11.08
The 48 hours of action was a great first shot across the bows. E.On were rat­tled, local and nation­al media took an inter­est, resources were gath­ered and are now ready to go, a new web­site is now up and run­ning (http://www.e‑onf-off.org.uk/), a list of tar­gets has been com­piled and E.on know that if they try to build a new coal fired pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth then they will face a bar­rage of direct action — both towards their dai­ly oper­a­tions and their sup­ply chain. E.on be warned. Actions took place in: Lon­don, Brighton, Bris­tol, Nor­wich, Coven­try, Not­ting­ham & Coven­try and at Kingsnorth itself. http://risingtide.org.uk/node/309

Plus, ‘Green Banksy’ invades Kingsnorth dur­ing the 48 hours: An
uniden­ti­fied group alleged­ly pen­e­trat­ed Kingsnorth secu­ri­ty and switched off almost 500 megawatts of gen­er­at­ing capac­i­ty, cut­ting almost 2% off the nation’s pow­er sup­ply for about four hours.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/12/414463.html

5) Scot­tish coal rail ter­mi­nal shut down, 15.12.08
30 cam­paign­ers from Coal Action Scot­land togeth­er with local res­i­dents peace­ful­ly block­ad­ed the entrance to the Scot­tish Coal-oper­at­ed Raven­struther coal rail ter­mi­nal in South Lanark­shire for 8 hours. The pro­tes­tors were act­ing to oppose the five open cast coal mines that deliv­er coal to the rail ter­mi­nal and in resis­tance to the thir­teen new open cast coal mines due to open in Scot­land. Pro­tes­tors erect­ed and scaled a 15ft scaf­fold­ing tri­pod, block­ing trucks from enter­ing the ter­mi­nal. Oth­ers locked them­selves by their necks to a con­vey­or belt and a bull­doz­er, pre­vent­ing coal stock­piles from being loaded onto trains. An
esti­mat­ed 6,380 tonnes of coal were stopped from being trans­port­ed from the coal mines to pow­er sta­tions, pre­vent­ing the equiv­a­lent to 11,675.4 tonnes of CO2 from being released into the atmos­phere.
http://coalactionedinburgh.wordpress.com/

6) E.ON forced to aban­don recruit­ment tour, Novem­ber 2008
Anti-coal protests at grad­u­ate careers fairs around the UK forced E.ON to can­cel its recruit­ment tour. The ener­gy com­pa­ny, which is plan­ning to build a new coal pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth, Kent, saw sev­en­teen of its careers events dis­rupt­ed. This was a co-ordi­nat­ed nation­al effort from stu­dents involved in Peo­ple & Plan­et, the Coal Action Net­work, and the Camp for Cli­mate Action. Leaflets, ban­ners, fan­cy dress, con­ver­sa­tions with atten­dees and eye-catch­ing stunts were used to embar­rass E.ON and dis­suade grad­u­ates from join­ing the com­pa­ny. The Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, one of E.ON’s main finan­cial back­ers, were also tar­get­ed at the fairs over their role in pro­vid­ing loans to build the pro­posed new pow­er sta­tion.
http://leaveitintheground.org.uk/?p=185

7) Kel­ster­back For­est Occu­pa­tion (Frank­furt Air­port), ongo­ing Resist Frank­furt Air­port Expan­sion — defend the for­est camp. After Heathrow, Frank­furt is the largest air­port in Europe. Fra­port (the com­pa­ny run­ning the air­port) and the Ger­man gov­ern­ment are try­ing to build a new run­way, to mas­sive­ly increase flights. To build the new run­way, Fra­port need to clear 250,000 m² of pro­tect­ed for­est. For sev­en months, activists have been squat­ting the for­est, build­ing tree plat­forms and float­ing rafts to resist attempts to chop down the for­est. Jan­u­ary 2009 is bring­ing threat of evic­tion — and they need all the help they can get.
http://waldbesetzung.blogsport.de/english-information/ or
http://waldbesetzung.blogsport.de/photos/

—————–
Ris­ing Tide UK,
c/o 62 Fieldgate Street,
Lon­don E1 1ES
www.risingtide.org.uk
www.artnotoil.org.uk
www.fossilfoolsday.org
Tel: 07708 794665

See also the Camp for Cli­mate Action (www.climatecamp.org.uk), Net­work for
Cli­mate Action (www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk) and Cli­mate Indy­media
(www.climateimc.org)

———-

Please send any­thing you’d like includ­ed in this news sheet to:
newssheet@risingtide.org.uk

To view pre­vi­ous edi­tions of the Ris­ing Tide News Sheet, vis­it the News
Sheet Archive at http://risingtide.org.uk/newssheet

This News Sheet was brought to you by Ris­ing Tide, a grass­roots net­work
of groups and indi­vid­u­als com­mit­ted to tak­ing action and build­ing a
move­ment against cli­mate change.

For more infor­ma­tion…
email: info@risingtide.org.uk
Phone: +44 (0)845 458 8923 / +44 (0)7708 794665
Address: 62 Fieldgate St, Lon­don, E1 1ES
Web site: http://risingtide.org.uk

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Leeds Social Centre in court next week

This arti­cle was writ­ten by vol­un­teers at the Leeds-Brad­ford Inde­pen­dent Media Cen­tre fol­low­ing inter­views with vol­un­teers from The Com­mon Place, Leeds’ rad­i­cal, autonomous social cen­tre.

This arti­cle was writ­ten by vol­un­teers at the Leeds-Brad­ford Inde­pen­dent Media Cen­tre fol­low­ing inter­views with vol­un­teers from The Com­mon Place, Leeds’ rad­i­cal, autonomous social cen­tre.

The Com­mon­Place is a social cen­tre locat­ed in Leeds, accom­mo­dat­ing a broad range of com­mu­ni­ty groups. The Com­mon­Place has been open since 2005 when it received fund­ing to estab­lish a com­mu­ni­ty resource in cen­tral Leeds. Since then, it has been entire­ly vol­un­teer run. Despite hav­ing no wages to pay, The Com­mon­Place pays rent and bills just like any oth­er city cen­tre venue. More recent­ly, The Com­mon­Place has been financed by bar sales at com­mu­ni­ty ori­en­tat­ed club­nights, sup­ple­ment­ed by mem­ber­ship sub­scrip­tions and dona­tions. With­out income from the bar, they would be forced to close per­ma­nent­ly.

As a demo­c­ra­t­ic club, all major deci­sions are made at a gen­er­al meet­ing, open to all mem­bers.

At the end of July 2008, The Com­mon­Place has its Club Premis­es Cer­tifi­cate (license) with­drawn by Leeds City Coun­cil (LCC), under Sec­tion 90 of the Licens­ing Act 2003. The club believe this was unfair and are appeal­ing to have the licence rein­stat­ed. The Com­mon­Place can­not dis­cuss the specifics of the appeal process at this time due to legal rea­sons: They are keen for their sto­ry to be told in due course.

The Com­mon­Place has met with LCC twice in court (30th Sep­tem­ber, 28th Octo­ber), also del­e­gates of The Com­mon­Place met with the Licens­ing depart­ment on 15th Decem­ber 2008 with a view to resolv­ing mat­ters. On each occa­sion The Com­mon­Place has tried to deal with the coun­cil’s con­cerns in order to regain the orig­i­nal license.

A vol­un­teer from The Com­mon­Place said, “We were sor­ry to hear after our last meet­ing with them, that they did­n’t want to talk to us again before the hear­ing.” The appeal is due to be heard on 22nd to 26th Jan­u­ary 2009 at Leeds Mag­is­trates’ Court.

Anoth­er vol­un­teer, from the Bar Com­mit­tee said, “We’re puz­zled by how much inter­est the Police have shown since we’ve nev­er had any trou­ble or arrests when we’ve been putting on a night here … we just want to get things back to nor­mal.”

The Com­mon­Place are adamant that they are a mem­bers club, and that LCC have with­drawn this license wrong­ly; The Com­mon­Place is grate­ful for the con­tin­u­ing sup­port of mem­bers, donors and over 1000 Leeds res­i­dents who have signed a peti­tion in sup­port. To be kept informed, please see www.thecommonplace.org.uk where there are also instruc­tions on join­ing the mail­ing list and get­ting involved as a mem­ber.

COAL CARAVAN — route & dates update

The fab­u­lous cli­mate car­a­van lives on.

This time we will be the COAL CARAVAN, walk­ing and cycling between the sites for pro­posed open cast mines and new pow­er sta­tions in the Mid­lands, York­shire and North East.

The fab­u­lous cli­mate car­a­van lives on.

This time we will be the COAL CARAVAN, walk­ing and cycling between the sites for pro­posed open cast mines and new pow­er sta­tions in the Mid­lands, York­shire and North East.

On our route we’ll be talk­ing to local peo­ple, organ­is­ing bicy­cled pow­er films and events, hold­ing pub­lic dis­cus­sions and dis­plays, and link­ing groups from dif­fer­ent areas to help strength­en iso­lat­ed cam­paigns.

24 April 2009 Co2al Car­a­van launch par­ty, Sumac Cen­tre Not­ting­ham
25 April – set off to Ship­ley Glen
27/28 April – cycle to York­shire
29 April – Fair­bairn Ings
30 April — 2 May – cycle to North East
3 May – Anti-open­cast work­shops
4 May (Bank Hol­i­day Mon­day) – Grand Finale

The car­a­van itself will not involve direct action (although we may offer train­ing, if local groups so request). It will be open­ly organ­ised and if you would like to go on the list please email caravan@climatecamp.org.uk.

Stop the new Leeds Opencast

Join us on Sat­ur­day 10th Jan­u­ary 2009 to march around the pro­posed open cast coal mine site at New­ton Lane, near Fair­burn Ings nature reserve and Castle­ford.

YANC SAYS:

NO CO2AL HOLE

It’s time to say NO!

We don’t want a dirty open­cast coal site adding to cli­mate change

Join us on Sat­ur­day 10th Jan­u­ary 2009 to march around the pro­posed open cast coal mine site at New­ton Lane, near Fair­burn Ings nature reserve and Castle­ford.

YANC SAYS:

NO CO2AL HOLE

It’s time to say NO!

We don’t want a dirty open­cast coal site adding to cli­mate change

Join us on Sat­ur­day 10th Jan­u­ary 2009 to march around the pro­posed open cast coal mine site at New­ton Lane, near Fair­burn Ings nature reserve and Castle­ford. Meet at the White Horse in Led­ston at 12 noon for a 12:30 start. We will take a route on pub­lic rights of way around and through the pro­posed open cast site. The walk should take no more than an hour.

This protest event will be a joint ven­ture between YANC (York­shire Against New Coal) and RAGE (Res­i­dents Against Green­belt Expan­sion).

For a map of the area includ­ing loca­tion of Led­ston, see the RAGE web­site at: www.savefairburnings.org.uk

White Horse pub post­code is WF10 2AB. Add this post­code to mul­timap for direc­tions.

Mul­timap link: http://www.multimap.com/maps/?qs=WF10+2AB&countryCode=GB

We will have some ban­ners and plac­ards but please feel free to make and bring your own.

Media will be invit­ed.

If we are to tack­le cli­mate change, coal must be left in the ground. We need clean, green renew­able tech­nol­o­gy, ener­gy effi­cien­cy and decen­tralised ener­gy.

Your New Years Res­o­lu­tion? To stop cli­mate change!

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion see the YANC web­site: www.yanc.org.uk or find us on Face­book.

York­shire Against New Coal
events@yanc.org.uk

protests against the roll-out of the ID card scheme & database

Against the impo­si­tion of ID cards on Non-EU stu­dents and mar­riage visa hold­ers.

Fingerprinted barbed wire fence graphicAgainst the impo­si­tion of ID cards on Non-EU stu­dents and mar­riage visa hold­ers.

This is not the first time for­eign nation­als or migrants have been used as guinea pigs to test a law or tech­nol­o­gy. Exam­ples include the Asy­lum Reg­is­tra­tion Cards (ARC), which is a sim­i­lar card that asy­lum seek­ers have been required to car­ry since 2002. Once migrants have been used as a ‘road test’ for the wide­ly opposed ID scheme, the gov­ern­ment will start on the rest of us. From 2010 on, the gov­ern­ment pre­dicts that one mil­lion cards will be hand­ed out every year.

For more back­ground infor­ma­tion on how this ‘drip drip’ approach to impos­ing bio­met­ric ID cards relates to migra­tion man­age­ment and the Home Office’s points sys­tem read:

http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=3147
http://nobordersmanchester.blogspot.com/2008/11/defy-id-cards-no-one-is-illegal.html

==========
No No No ID cardsNewcastle ID cards protest
27th Novem­ber 2008
This evening approx­i­mate­ly 13 activists from No Bor­ders North East hand­ed out 200 anti-ID card leaflets to shop­pers in Cen­tral New­cas­tle. Ban­ners and plac­ards were also held, and a very pos­i­tive response was giv­en from the pub­lic.

Tues­day saw the intro­duc­tion of Iden­ti­ty Cards for non-EU cit­i­zens. No Bor­ders views this as yet anoth­er attempt to vic­tim­ize an often voice­less group, and so has orches­trat­ed a series of protests this week through­out the coun­try.

http://www.noborders.org.uk

.….

This morn­ing, dur­ing the peak rush hour time of 7.30 — 9.00 am, 4 activists from No Bor­ders North East per­formed an anti‑i.d card ban­ner drop from a bridge over one of the city’s busiest inner motor­ways. The largest ban­ner read “No To ID Cards, Free­dom For All!” and was accom­pa­nied by a small­er No Bor­ders ban­ner.

The reac­tion from the dri­vers below was over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive, with many honk­ing horns, wav­ing and giv­ing thumbs up.

Today sees the start of the ID card scheme, with non-EU cit­i­zens apply­ing for, or renew­ing visas for study or mar­riage, being made to car­ry a card and have their details put on the Gov­ern­men­t’s data­base. Immi­gra­tion law already gives the Home Office pow­ers it would like to exert over every­body. Under a cloud of anti-immi­gra­tion hys­te­ria the gov­ern­ment is increas­ing it’s social con­trol and attempt­ing to ush­er in unprece­dent­ed pow­ers of sur­veil­lance over the whole pop­u­la­tion.

The police came along while we were doing it, but did­nt seem to have any prob­lem with it. Inter­est­ing­ly how­ev­er, they said that an anar­chist sym­bol can be deemed offen­sive and thus remov­able under a pub­lic order act (?!). We told them that our No Bor­ders ban­ner with a large anar­chist sym­bol was­n’t in fact anar­chist relat­ed, and they believed us for some rea­son.… 😉
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York­shire Activists block­ade Sheffield Bor­der Agency Cen­tre

1.12.2008
At 8am this morn­ing a group of York­shire activists block­ad­ed the Sheffield Bor­der Agency Inter­ro­ga­tion Cen­tre at Vul­can House using bicy­cle locks and super­glue to attach them­selves to both entrances. The group are there in response to the intro­duc­tion of com­pul­so­ry ID cards for non-EU peo­ple on stu­dent or mar­riage visas. They are dis­play­ing two ban­ners, one reads “My iden­ti­ty is not your prop­er­ty” and the oth­er “Noth­ing to hide? Every­thing to fear! Defy ID!”

Some appli­cants have been turned away by the Bor­der Agency staff but many were sup­port­ive of the actions the group has tak­en. Speak­ing to a block­ad­er, one appli­cant said that by intro­duc­ing com­pul­so­ry ID cards, the gov­ern­ment have shown that “they just want to con­trol peo­ple”. Bor­der Agency staff have called the police to remove the pro­test­ers but at the time of send­ing (10:30am) the pro­test­ers are still in place.

An activist from Brad­ford (who is cur­rent­ly super­glued to two oth­ers in front of the main entrance) said “The gov­ern­ment are try­ing to intro­duce ID cards through the back door, tar­get­ing some of the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple in the coun­try.” A Sheffield activist added “If we want to save the peo­ple of Great Britain from ID cards, we must act now!”

Gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tion has meant that, since 25^th Novem­ber, for­eign spous­es and non-EU stu­dents who apply for, or renew, visas will be forced to attend an inter­ro­ga­tion and be issued with an ID card that will hold their name, pho­to­graph, nation­al­i­ty and immi­gra­tion sta­tus, along with a bio­met­ric chip that will hold their fin­ger­prints and dig­i­tal image. The details will be held indef­i­nite­ly on the UK Iden­ti­ty Ser­vice data­base. Delays meant that the Sheffield Bor­der Agency Cen­tre only began inter­ro­ga­tions from today (1^st Decem­ber).

Update — 11 activists were arrest­ed (sig­nif­i­cant­ly more than were thought to be locked on) after hold­ing the block­ade for more than three hours. All released with with ver­bal cau­tions.

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Lunar House ID poster
Iden­ti­ty Cards Protest, Lunar House, Croy­don

26.11.2008
On the cor­ner of George Street in Croy­don, Lon­don, a Novem­ber sun was warm­ing the shop­pers and office work­ers on their lunch breaks, but a few hun­dred metres north on Welles­ley Road a bit­ing Siber­ian wind seared the demon­stra­tors out­side Lunar House. It seemed appro­pri­ate that such a freez­ing blast should sur­round the UK head­quar­ters of the Bor­der and Immi­gra­tion Agency and indeed be gen­er­at­ed by its twen­ty sto­ries of the grim ear­ly 1970s office com­plex. After all its rai­son d’être is to give would-be immi­grants and asy­lum seeks an extreme­ly cold recep­tion.

Its bleak anonymi­ty is also a warn­ing of things to come for all of us in a Brave New Britain of state sur­veil­lance and con­trol whose infra­struc­ture is increas­ing­ly with us through secu­ri­ty cam­eras, the inter­cep­tion mobile phone sig­nals and elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions and the planned intro­duc­tion of uni­ver­sal ID cards.

The pick­et, called by Lon­don NoBor­ders http://london.noborders.org.uk and NO2ID http://www.no2id.net/, marked the start of Bio­met­ric ID cards, which are being issued from today, 25 Novem­ber 2008, to all non-EU stu­dents and spous­es apply­ing for, or renew­ing visas for study or mar­riage. The cards will have a pho­to­graph with name, date of birth, nation­al­i­ty, immi­gra­tion sta­tus and bio­met­ric details, includ­ing fin­ger­prints and dig­i­tal facial image will be stored on a chip on the card as well as being held indef­i­nite­ly on the UK Iden­ti­ty Ser­vice data­base.

Soon all for­eign nation­als in the UK will be required to have these cards, which will be rolled out to oth­er groups includ­ing stu­dents who want a stu­dent loan by 2010. And from 2011 you will need to get one – and have your details on that data­base — if you want to renew or get a pass­port.

What wor­ries many of us is not just the use to which our own gov­ern­ment and secu­ri­ty ser­vices might make of such data – link­ing to face recog­ni­tion soft­ware work­ing on images from secu­ri­ty cam­eras and mobile phone data would enable our every move to be tracked – but the cer­tain­ty that it will get into oth­er hands – such as those of our US friends in the CIA, as well as crim­i­nal and com­mer­cial organ­i­sa­tions who will have their own ideas about how such all-per­va­sive data might be used.

Among those at today’s demon­stra­tion was David Mery http://gizmonaut.net/bits/suspect.html a man who has achieved a small per­son­al vic­to­ry against the jug­ger­naut data­base state.

Mery was stopped by police enter­ing South­wark tube sta­tion on 28 July for being “calm on arrival, almost too calm” and hav­ing a lar­gish ruck­sack and a strong French accent. It was three weeks after the Lon­don bomb­ing – and — per­haps luck­i­ly for him, six days after the shoot­ing of Jean Charles de Menezes. This time at least the police didn’t shoot first and ask ques­tions lat­er, but his treat­ment in the months and years fol­low­ing the event can most favourably be described as Kafkaesque. He final­ly (or at least prob­a­bly) suc­ceed­ed in hav­ing both his fin­ger­prints and DNA record removed from the police data­bas­es, but it took over two years of fight­ing. His blog http://gizmonaut.net/ and arti­cles are essen­tial read­ing for any­one who won­ders why civ­il lib­er­ties are impor­tant.

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Leeds NO2ID have burnt a mock ID card in protest at the intro­duc­tion of the ID card scheme for for­eign nation­als

Video — video/quicktime 13M

Around 20 activists braved the freez­ing tem­per­a­tures and rain to gath­er in Leeds last night on the eve of the intro­duc­tion of ID cards for for­eign nation­als.

The protest was made my burn­ing a mock ID card in pub­lic.

The Protest passed off peace­ful­ly with­out the pres­ence of West York­shire Police.

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Liv­er­pool anti-ID pick­et: No One Is Ille­gal

20 stu­dents and No Bor­der­s/an­ti-ID cam­paign­ers from Man­ches­ter made their way to Liv­er­pool on 25th Novem­ber, the day that the gov­ern­ment intro­duced ID cards for non-EU nation­als liv­ing in the UK. There they joined a group of 30 Mersey­side activists out­side Reliance House to protest at the intro­duc­tion of com­pul­so­ry ID cards for inter­na­tion­al stu­dents and non-EU spous­es on that day.

Reliance House is where inter­view­ing, pho­tograph­ing and fin­ger­print­ing will take place from 4th Decem­ber before being issued with a bio­met­ric ID card. It is also Liverpool’s report­ing cen­tre where those seek­ing asy­lum have to ‘sign in’ on a reg­u­lar basis while their claims are being processed. If their claims fail they can be held, with­out pri­or notice, in the immi­gra­tion deten­tion facil­i­ty in the same build­ing for up to 7 days.

It is thus imper­a­tive to make the con­nec­tion between ID cards and the assault on the rights of non-EU nation­als want­i­ng to live, work and study in the UK. Peo­ple from Man­ches­ter No Bor­ders had brought along plac­ards and ban­ners pro­claim­ing that “no one is ille­gal”. Where the state rein­forces the divi­sion between legal and ‘ille­gal’ peo­ple our sol­i­dar­i­ty must extend to those most affect­ed by the scheme.

Some men­tion in the news:
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/2008/11/25/protests-in-city-over-id-cards-100252–22330184/
http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/news/display.var.2470740.0.Protests_as_first_ID_card_scheme_launched_in_Britain.php
http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2008/11/26/protesters-say-no-to-introduction-of-id-cards-for-foreign-students-64375–22341365/

(Dur­ing the pick­et of Reliance House, some first con­tact was made with indi­vid­ual No Bor­der activists from Liv­er­pool, Mersey­side and North Wales. If you are from this region and want to get active in a No Bor­ders group, please email us, so we can get you in touch)

manchesternoborders@riseup.net
http://www.manchesternoborders.org.uk

—
Cardiff No ID protest
Over 60 peo­ple attend­ed our protest against the intro­duc­tion of Bio­met­ric ID Cards for non-EU stu­dents and spous­es on Tues­day. The demon­stra­tion was held for a cou­ple of hours at mid­day out­side the Cardiff office of the UK Bor­der Agency at 31–33 New­port Road. Peo­ple the gov­ern­ment is forc­ing to car­ry ID cards will have to attend this cen­tre for inter­ro­ga­tion, pho­tograph­ing and fin­ger­print­ing.

We dis­played ban­ners, held plac­ards, waved giant mock ID cards and dis­trib­uted 600 copies of this leaflet — the reac­tion from passers by was com­plete­ly sup­port­ive. Many peo­ple used their lunch­break to join the protest for a short while before return­ing to work or study. This protest was part of a nation­wide day of action out­side UKBA cen­tres by No Bor­ders Net­work who, along with Defy ID, NO2ID and oth­er groups, held protests in Croy­don, Liv­er­pool, Glas­gow, Soli­hull, and New­cas­tle. Though many of these protests around the coun­try got into local news­pa­pers, Welsh media cov­er­age has been min­i­mal.

This protest appears to be just the start of resis­tance to ID Cards, the British Air­line Pilots’ Asso­ci­a­tion (BALPA) has threat­ened indus­tri­al action if the gov­ern­ment goes ahead with it’s plan to impose ID cards on air­port work­ers next year. Tens of thou­sands of peo­ple have signed up to NO2ID’s pledge not to reg­is­ter for a card, even if that means going to prison. No Bor­ders South Wales will be protest­ing out­side the Bor­der agency again, on Wednes­day 10th Decem­ber when the Cardiff office will start to reg­is­ter peo­ple, join us if you can.

“These new ID cards are not only a repres­sive mea­sure against non-EU stu­dents and spous­es, they are the first shot in an attack against everyone’s lib­er­ty. In tar­get­ing a large­ly voice­less migrant group, who have the least chance to com­plain and the most to lose, the gov­ern­ment is fol­low­ing a famil­iar path of repres­sive regimes through­out his­to­ry. Immi­gra­tion law already gives the Home Office pow­ers it would like to exert over every­body. By resist­ing the repres­sion of migrants, we defend the free­dom of every­one!“

For links to leaflet, video and oth­er stuff, see http://noborderswales.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/cardiff-protest-against-id-cards/
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Soli­hull protest against the impo­si­tion of bio­met­ric ID cards on migrants

26.11.2008
Yes­ter­day Nobor­ders Birm­ing­ham protest­ed against the impo­si­tion of bio­met­ric ID cards at the UK Bor­der Agency Office in Soli­hull. They were met by a puz­zling dis­pro­por­tion­ate police response at Domin­ion Court, 41 Sta­tion Road, Soli­hull — around 12 police offi­cers, includ­ing 3 police vans and an evi­dence gath­er­er. This may have some­thing to do with the polic­ing of a pre­vi­ous protest around the cor­ner at Sand­ford House, the home office report­ing cen­tre, where hun­dreds of Con­golese demon­stra­tors fac­ing mass depor­ta­tion occu­pied the main road http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/birmingham/2007/04/368076.html

A ban­ner pro­claim­ing ‘Free­dom of Move­ment for All’ was held by the entrance of the UK Bor­ders Agency Office. The police offered to ‘facil­i­tate’ our protest by a seem­ing­ly polite offer to arrange for a met­al bar­ri­er to hang our ban­ner from. How­ev­er, we realised that the six foot high hedge in front of the build­ing would make our protest invis­i­ble to almost every­one, so instead we hung our ban­ner by the main road and dis­trib­uted around 600 leaflets to some very inter­est­ed mem­bers of the pub­lic.

Fol­low­ing a con­cerned report from a ded­i­cat­ed com­mu­ni­ty police offi­cer ear­li­er in the day, two equal­ly com­mit­ted coun­cil work­ers from the envi­ron­men­tal and health depart­ment at Soli­hull Coun­cil turned up in their lunch hour to ensure that the lit­er­a­ture being dis­trib­uted was of a polit­i­cal, rather than com­mer­cial, nature and thus would not run afoul of local bye-laws on littering/flyering (no one seemed quite sure). This fol­lows sev­er­al oth­er inci­dents known to us in cen­tral Birm­ing­ham where coun­cil offi­cials have attempt­ed to apply sim­i­lar bye-laws (with accom­pa­ny­ing threats of fines and court appear­ances) to dis­suade peo­ple from hand­ing out polit­i­cal lit­er­a­ture. It has been not­ed before that the par­lia­men­tary leg­is­la­tion which serves as the basis of these bye-laws specif­i­cal­ly exempt­ed mate­ri­als of a polit­i­cal nature. The coun­cil work­ers also showed some inter­est in the ban­ner, rais­ing con­cern over the man­ner of its attach­ment to some local shrubs and some­thing else about pri­vate prop­er­ty, but in the end they seemed to decide that nei­ther the pub­lic nor the shrubs were at any risk (poten­tial, real, or oth­er­wise) and returned to what remained of their lunch hour.

Two stu­dents from Pak­istan informed us that they had to book an appoint­ment to begin the bio­met­ric ID card process and they could­n’t return home until this had been com­plet­ed. They claimed today they were told by staff that they would be required to give blood sam­ples and have iris scans for their bio­met­ric cards so if they com­mit­ted any ‘crimes’ in the UK they could be iden­ti­fied imme­di­ate­ly. It appears that the pri­vate com­pa­ny con­tract­ed to the tune of £5.6 bil­lion, and entrust­ed with sen­si­tive bio­met­ric data, are already doing their best to impress upon appli­cants that ID cards will be effec­tive at ‘fight­ing crime’. Lib­er­ty, the civ­il lib­er­ties and human rights organ­i­sa­tion, have already expressed con­cern about the Government’s abil­i­ty to safe­guard individual’s inti­mate details on the Nation­al Iden­ti­ty Reg­is­ter after Gov­ern­ment depart­ments last year lost 30 mil­lion pieces of per­son­al data, includ­ing those of 25 mil­lion child ben­e­fit claimants. ‘We have ID cards in our coun­try but they aren’t bio­met­ric’ said one of the stu­dents. ‘It feels very dis­crim­i­na­to­ry that we are being tar­get­ed first. Why aren’t they pro­cess­ing UK nation­als first?’ The inter­na­tion­al stu­dents also point­ed out that this was cost­ing them a great deal of mon­ey. Not only did they have to pay exor­bi­tant fees for their cours­es but on top of that they have to pay £300 for their visas and now they have to pay for their bio­met­ric ID cards and they are only per­mit­ted to work 20 hours a week. They also added that these mea­sures would serve to put over­seas stu­dents off study­ing here cit­ing Aus­tralia as a more wel­com­ing alter­na­tive.

The use of for­eign nation­als as guinea pigs for the more wide­spread intro­duc­tion of ID cards is a strat­e­gy to run a test­bed for the tech­nol­o­gy on peo­ple with­out a voice. It has become appar­ent that the gov­ern­ment is like­ly to pick off cer­tain sec­tions of the com­mu­ni­ty in Britain one at a time. This divide and rule strat­e­gy has been used through­out his­to­ry, most notably by the Nazi regime in Ger­many.

When the British gov­ern­ment came for the migrants,
I remained silent;
I was not a migrant.

When they came for the air­line work­ers,
I remained silent;
I was not an air­line work­er.

When they came for the con­victs,
I did not speak out;
I was not a con­vict.

When they came for the health work­ers,
I did not speak out;
I was not a health work­er.

When they came for the stu­dents,
I did not speak out;
I was not a stu­dent.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

nobor­ders-brum @ riseup.net

—

ID demo
http://glasgowanarchists.wordpress.com/

—

Also in the news:

ID ‘read­ing’ machines on Cana­da and Mex­i­co bor­ders
‘Smart’ CCTV in Portsmouth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please spread far and wide…

DISCLAIMER:

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

http://www.spacehijackers.org

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

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Buy Noth­ing Day Leeds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Buy Noth­ing Day 2008 — Freeshop in Broad­mead, Bris­tol

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

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

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

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

I’ll see you there!

A report from the No Borders network gathering

A report from No Bor­ders gath­er­ing in New­cas­tle

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

A report from No Bor­ders gath­er­ing in New­cas­tle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See the Activist Secu­ri­ty web­site for a full down­load­able book­let.

Also, try out this selec­tion of links:

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

The orig­i­nal news­pa­per arti­cle:

Police warn of grow­ing threat from eco-ter­ror­ists

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dirt dug on arti­cle writ­ers:

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

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

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

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

Fun­ny & infor­ma­tive.

—OR—

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

For instance:

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

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

——

Schnews arti­cle & quotes from the journo

——

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

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

The Observ­er, Sun­day Novem­ber 23 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CLIMATE ACTION NEWS SHEET 84, OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
—————-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—————-
Com­piled and sent out by Ris­ing Tide UK.

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The latest EF! Action Update is out, bringing you reports of eco-resistance for the darkening days…

Bring­ing light & inspi­ra­tion to the dark­er evenings are the action sto­ries in the lat­est Earth First! Action Update.

Block­ades of nuclear pow­er, roads & rivers around the world were joined “with this Shell-blockad­ing D‑lock I thee wed”.

Adjustable spanner photoBring­ing light & inspi­ra­tion to the dark­er evenings are the action sto­ries in the lat­est Earth First! Action Update.

Block­ades of nuclear pow­er, roads & rivers around the world were joined “with this Shell-blockad­ing D‑lock I thee wed”.

And if anti-fas­cist action, quar­ry sab­o­tage, squats, tree plat­forms, wrekin’ open­casts, scal­ing lux­u­ry hotels & the lat­est protest camp news was­n’t enough for you, chuck in some glue, arm tubes, a pool of oil, stink bombs, air­borne rape alarms and a Lego-sized occu­pa­tion, then there’s full reports from this sum­mer’s antics at the Camp for Cli­mate Action, Ross­port sol­i­dar­i­ty camp, EF! sum­mer gath­er­ing and Sav­ing Ice­land camp, plus a crop of glob­al cli­mate camps & news of protest & resis­tance from all 5 con­ti­nents.

“No nukes, no coal, no kid­ding” — with peo­ple dying (both lit­er­al­ly & sym­bol­i­cal­ly) from the activ­i­ties of the Earth-destroy­ers, peo­ple have been shout­ing to just “Leave it in the Ground”, drag­on boats have clashed with navy gun­boats in Ire­land, an oil war was declared in Nige­ria, and ‘moles’ spent a week under­ground dig­ging fur­ther and fur­ther away from the forces of dark­ness at an open-cast coal site.

Details of the new Coal Action Net­work, upcom­ing dates & a full con­tact list should help launch (or boost) you into the orbit of eco-resis­tance.

Sub­scribe and get it sent direct to a let­ter­box near you — you’d also be sup­port­ing the EF!AU to get print­ed and sent out to pris­on­ers & protest camps. If you want some to dis­trib­ute, con­tact us at: actionup­date (AT) earthfirst.org.uk

Down­load the lat­est issue or past issues here.

The EF!AU is there to inspire peo­ple to take eco­log­i­cal direct action, to pro­vide info to help you just get out and do it. Don’t feel shy, put your best foot for­ward.

The EF!AU is the quar­ter­ly newslet­ter of peo­ple tak­ing eco­log­i­cal direct action — send us news of your action or cam­paigns, and come along to the Win­ter Moot if you want to get involved in any of the cam­paigns you’ve read about.

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