Category: Other

Oth­er

ELP Information Bulletin (29th of December 2007)

Dear friends

ELP has just received two bits of Amer­i­can news. First off ALF/ELF pris­on­er, Jonathan Paul, has released his first prison dis­patch. Sec­ond­ly, we have been infored that ALF/ELF pris­on­er. Chris McIn­tosh has been moved to a new address:

Dear friends

ELP has just received two bits of Amer­i­can news. First off ALF/ELF pris­on­er, Jonathan Paul, has released his first prison dis­patch. Sec­ond­ly, we have been infored that ALF/ELF pris­on­er. Chris McIn­tosh has been moved to a new address:

First­ly here is the dis­patch from Jonathan Paul.…

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

11.14.07

Friends, sup­port­ers and fam­i­ly,

This is the first of 51 month­ly dis­patch­es I will be writ­ing until I am released in 2011. Although I will be writ­ing to let every­one know how I am doing while incar­cer­at­ed at FCI Phoenix, the pur­pose of these dis­patch­es are not going to be about me, but about the real issues that threat­en life as we know it on this plan­et.

First, I would like to thank every­one who has writ­ten me in the last few weeks. Your let­ters of sup­port have over­whelmed me with emo­tion and have giv­en me strength and hope. I thank all of you from the bot­tom of my heart. From the Anar­chist writ­ing group in NY, to my tribe of friends and to those I have nev­er met, the time you took to write to me has giv­en me much strength. I would like to put out spe­cial thanks to my sis­ters, Car­o­line and Alexan­dra, my won­der­ful Mom (Mum­sie) and my dear sweet wife, Tami. I under­stand your love is uncon­di­tion­al and with that I am blessed to have you as my fam­i­ly. To my wife Tami — who has been by my side since 1999, your devo­tion and com­mit­ment to me is unmatched by any­one, ever. Thank you for help­ing me pick up the mess left in the wake of this very dif­fi­cult time in our life. To those who are sup­port­ing Tami on a dai­ly basis — I thank you also. All I can to all of you is I would do the same for you and I am in your debt.

As for life here in prison, I want you all to know I am okay. Every day that pass­es is a day clos­er to my free­dom. I look for­ward to that day and that day will come.

I want to say a few words about some­one who has inspired and amazed me over the years, a com­mit­ted
activist who has been “down” for a very long time. Moved to activism after expe­ri­enc­ing the bru­tal
pover­ty and racism expe­ri­enced as a part of every­day life, Amer­i­can Indi­an Move­ment war­rior, Leonard
Pelti­er, has been in prison for over 30 years and is serv­ing two life sen­tences for crimes he did not
com­mit. Leonard worked to pro­tect his peo­ple and the earth from the pow­er­ful ener­gy cor­po­ra­tions and the
gov­ern­ment they rule. On the Pine Ridge reser­va­tion in the 1970’s the tra­di­tion­al Native Amer­i­cans fought for their way of life while under attack from the gov­ern­ment spon­sored goons, the FBI and the coal and ura­ni­um ener­gy cor­po­ra­tions that want­ed the Black Hills for resources. The Native Amer­i­cans of this land have been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly destroyed and oppressed in a geno­ci­dal cam­paign since the white man first stepped his ugly foot on North Amer­i­ca.

Leonard was accused and con­vict­ed of killing two FBI agents dur­ing a shootout on the Pine Ridge reser­va­tion in 1975. Leonard was wrong­ly con­vict­ed in 1977 based on coerced tes­ti­mo­ny and sup­pressed evi­dence. Leonard’s case is one of the most egre­gious exam­ples of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al and inves­tiga­tive mis­con­duct in the his­to­ry of Amer­i­can jurispru­dence. I first became aware of the strug­gles of the Amer­i­can Indi­an Move­ment when I was in jail for resist­ing a polit­i­cal grand jury in 1992–1993. I read In the Spir­it of Crazy Horse by Peter Matthiessen while incar­cer­at­ed and could­n’t put it down. Leonard’s sto­ry gave me strength dur­ing my 6 months resist­ing the grand jury. When I was released from jail I was com­pli­ment­ed on my strength and all I could think of was Leonard’s strength.

When I turned myself into prison last month, one of the first books my wife sent me was In the Spir­it of
Crazy Horse. I read this book, for the sec­ond time, behind bars and fin­ished it in the first two days. I
con­sid­er the strug­gles of AIM and think about their fight not only against geno­cide, but also eco­cide.
Our strug­gles are one strug­gle.

To my sup­port­ers and friends — when you sit down to write me a let­ter, please put the paper aside and
write to Leonard Pelti­er. He has been in prison for more than 30 years — he has remained strong with
unprece­dent­ed integri­ty. If you sup­port me, please sup­port him. He has sac­ri­ficed his free­dom for his
peo­ple and for moth­er earth. Leonard needs to hear from our “tribe”…the envi­ron­men­tal and ani­mal rights move­ments for his strug­gle is our strug­gle. Show him and his peo­ple that we are all part of one move­ment — a move­ment to stop the geno­cide, eco­cide, and oppres­sion of all beings. We are one and when we join into one we may actu­al­ly move for­ward and be able to effect change. By sup­port­ing Leonard, you are sup­port­ing me. If Leonard hears from you and it makes him smile, gives him some hope and strength, and lets him know that he is not and nev­er will be for­got­ten, then you are giv­ing me the strength and strength to our move­ments.

Please write to Leonard at the fol­low­ing address:

Leonard Pelti­er

# 89637–132

USP LEWISBURG

U.S. PENITENTIARY

P.O. BOX 1000

LEWISBURG, PA 17837

In sol­i­dar­i­ty for the earth and ani­mals,

Jonathan Paul

#07167–085

FCI Phoenix

Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion

37910 N. 45th Ave.

Phoenix, AZ 85086

Jonathan’s co-defen­dants:

Daniel McGowan
#63794–053
FCI Sand­stone
Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion
PO Box 1000
Sand­stone, MN 55072

Nathan Block #36359–086
FCI Lom­poc
Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion
3600 Guard Road
Lom­poc, CA 93436

Joy­an­na Zach­er #36360–086
FCI Dublin
Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion
5701 8th St — Camp Parks- Unit E
Dublin, CA 94568

Friends and Fam­i­ly of Jonathan Paul
PMB# 267
2305 Ash­land St., Ste. C
Ash­land, OR 97520

Sec­ond­ly, an ELP sup­port­er has informed us that Chris ‘Dirt’ McIn­tosh has moved. Chris’ new address is:

Chris McIn­tosh
#30512–013
FCI Fair­ton
Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion
PO Box 420
Fair­ton, nj 08320
USA

Accord­ing to www.BOP.gov Chris is expect­ed to be at this address until 2012.

Please send let­ters of sup­port to Chris, Jonathan Paul, and all the oth­er pris­on­ers. Remind them they are not for­got­ten.

ELP Sup­port Net­work

+++++++++++++++++

Earth Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers Sup­port Net­work
BM Box 2407
Lon­don
WC1N 3XX
Eng­land
www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk

Shoshone Defenders of Mount Tenabo Constructing Encampment (occupied North America)

Decem­ber 1, 2008
At some point today, sev­er­al men will begin con­struct­ing a per­ma­nent arbor on the South­ern flank of Mt. Ten­abo, where they will camp and mon­i­tor the Cana­di­an min­ing com­pa­ny Bar­rick Gold.

Shoshone protest placardShoshone mountain destructionDecem­ber 1, 2008
At some point today, sev­er­al men will begin con­struct­ing a per­ma­nent arbor on the South­ern flank of Mt. Ten­abo, where they will camp and mon­i­tor the Cana­di­an min­ing com­pa­ny Bar­rick Gold.

The encamp­ment was called on dur­ing last week’s protest, where Shoshone Grand­moth­ers and their sup­port­ers attempt­ed to con­front Bar­rick Gold and bring an end to the destruc­tion of the pin­ion for­est — which began almost imme­di­ate­ly after the com­pa­ny got approval to go ahead with its ‘Cortez Hills Expan­sion Project.’

A mas­sive cyanide heap leach gold mine, the project will ulti­mate­ly destroy approx­i­mate­ly 6,800 acres of land — frac­tur­ing along with it, the spir­i­tu­al life and cul­tur­al prac­tices of the Shoshone Peo­ple.

“This is our treaty land. It was a treaty made with the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. It was not made with a for­eign nation. And it is a for­eign min­ing com­pa­ny that has come into our coun­try and is destroy­ing our moun­tain, our land, our food, our med­i­cine and they have no respect,” stat­ed one Grand­moth­er at the protest.

“…It can’t go on. It’s per­pe­trat­ing geno­cide against the Native Amer­i­can peo­ple. And we are not the only Native peo­ple suf­fer­ing this dis­tress,” said anoth­er. “It is hap­pen­ing world over; but we hap­pen to be West­ern Shoshon­es and this is our land and we’re protest­ing the poi­soned water, the destruc­tion of the land, the road we’re stand­ing on here, the big machines: every­thing that the min­ing indus­try stands for. They say they’re doing it respon­si­bly, but they’re not because when they leave the West­ern Shoshone peo­ple will still be here and the land will be bar­ren.”

To help make sure this doesn’t hap­pen, the West­ern Shoshone Defense Project (WSDP) asks that you help by mak­ing any of the fol­low­ing the dona­tions:

  1. 24 Nuts and Bolts (bolts need to be 1 foot in length with match­ing nuts)
  2. Gaso­line for saws and haul­ing costs.
  3. Food items such as eggs, bacon, meat, pota­toes, beans, etc. (includ­ing some sweets!)
  4. Helpers — to assist with con­struc­tion of arbor and for sup­port in the encamp­ment
  5. Mon­e­tary dona­tions for all of the above
  6. Moral sup­port and prayers

You can con­tact Joyce McDade for addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion, e‑mail: EJMcDade20@wmconnect.com

Enawene Nawe blockade dam construction site

12th Decem­ber 2007
Con­tin­u­ing their strug­gle against a large hydro­elec­tric dam project in the Brazil­ian Ama­zon, the Enawene Nawe set up a block­ade at one of the dam con­struc­tion sites late last week. Accord­ing to Sur­vival, about 100 mem­bers of the 420-strong tribe occu­pied the build­ing site, demand­ing an inde­pen­dent study into the impact they will have.

12th Decem­ber 2007
Con­tin­u­ing their strug­gle against a large hydro­elec­tric dam project in the Brazil­ian Ama­zon, the Enawene Nawe set up a block­ade at one of the dam con­struc­tion sites late last week. Accord­ing to Sur­vival, about 100 mem­bers of the 420-strong tribe occu­pied the build­ing site, demand­ing an inde­pen­dent study into the impact they will have.

The Enawene Nawe main­tain the dams will have a dev­as­tat­ing effect on the breed­ing cycle of the fish they depend on to sur­vive. They say the fish might not even be able to make it to their breed­ing grounds. The grounds them­selves are of great cul­tur­al and spir­i­tu­al sig­nif­i­cance to the Enawene Nawe. If the 11 dams go ahead as planned, the area may be destroyed.

The grounds are already heav­i­ly bur­dened by cat­tle ranch­ers, and the Soya Industry–who is behind the dam project.

Of course, this would not be hap­pen­ing if the Brazil­ian Gov­ern­ment demar­cat­ed the area, in fact the entire Rio Pre­to, when they rec­og­nized Enawene Nawe ter­ri­to­ry in 1996. The gov­ern­ment refused to do so.

Since then, the Enawene Nawe have been work­ing to have the Rio Pre­to includ­ed, but so far their voic­es have fall­en on deaf ears.

When the dam project came into focus late 2006/early 2007, they increased their efforts, for one, by orga­niz­ing block­ades. The ongo­ing one is the third this year.

The pre­vi­ous block­ade, set up on May 31, 2007, was met with some suc­cess.

Brazil Ama­zon Indi­ans Take on Soy Barons Block­ing Dam Site
From Brazz­il Mag, 11 Decem­ber 2007

The remote Enawene Nawe Indi­ans have block­ad­ed the con­struc­tion site of a hydro­elec­tric dam in the Brazil­ian Ama­zon, which they say will destroy their vital fish­ing grounds. Around 100 mem­bers of the 420-strong tribe occu­pied the build­ing site and a near­by high­way on Thurs­day, Decem­ber 6. They want to stop the con­struc­tion of a vast com­plex of hydro­elec­tric dams being built on the Juru­e­na riv­er, upstream from their land.

Com­pa­nies led by the world’s largest soya pro­duc­ers, the Mag­gi fam­i­ly, are push­ing for the con­struc­tion of the dams. But the Enawene Nawe, who eat no red meat, say that if the dams are built, the fish they rely on will no longer be able to reach their spawn­ing grounds.

The Enawene Nawe say they have not been con­sult­ed about the dams. They are demand­ing and inde­pen­dent study into the impact they will have.

A pre­vi­ous block­ade of a major high­way in June led the gov­ern­ment to nego­ti­ate with the Indi­ans, but plans for con­struc­tion of the dams con­tin­ued.

After the first oppo­si­tion action, the Brazil­ian gov­ern­ment agreed to sev­er­al key demands of the Enawene Nawe. The government’s Indi­an agency, FUNAI, promised that it would sur­vey lands claimed by the Enawene Nawe and oth­er tribes, with the aim of offi­cial­ly rec­og­niz­ing the areas as indige­nous.

For three days in May, the Indi­ans erect­ed bar­ri­cades in Mato Grosso state to protest against plans to build a series of hydro­elec­tric dams along the Juru­e­na riv­er. They were also demand­ing the offi­cial recog­ni­tion of their vital fish­ing waters in the Rio Pre­to area, which are being rapid­ly destroyed by cat­tle ranch­ers.

Neigh­bor­ing tribes joined the protest in sup­port of the Enawene Nawe’s demands, swelling the num­ber of pro­tes­tors to 200. The gov­ern­ment respond­ed quick­ly by dis­patch­ing offi­cials to nego­ti­ate with the Indi­ans on the bar­ri­cade. It even agreed to pay for rep­re­sen­ta­tives of var­i­ous tribes in Mato Grosso to trav­el to Brazil­ian cap­i­tal Brasília to meet with FUNAI’s pres­i­dent.

Bath Bomb issue 5 now! & Bristle statement

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

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

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

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

Bath Activists — 2 BNP – 0

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

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

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

Bris­tle Mag: R.I.P.

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

http://www.bristle.org.uk

Kebab Shop Car­nage

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

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

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

Hunt­ing As Usu­al, Sab­bing As Usu­al

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

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

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

Events

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

Reclaim The High Street

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

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

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

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

Pup­py Punch­ers Pay The Price

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

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

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

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

Who Are Bath Activist Net­work?

We are a local umbrel­la group cam­paign­ing on issues as diverse as devel­op­ment, envi­ron­men­tal­ism, anti-war, ani­mal rights, work­ers’ rights and more. Help­ing to pro­duce The Bath Bomb, we are open to any­one, and our mem­bers range from trade union­ists to anar­chists, lib­er­als to greens, and peo­ple who just want to change Bath for the bet­ter. For details on meet­ings, demos, or just to get in touch, ring us on 07949 611912, email bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk, or see our web­site: www.myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork

The Wheels Of Green Bull Go Round And Round

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

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

Suits, Gold Lamé And Video­tapes

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

http://www.moles.co.uk/porter/view_porter_listing.ihtml?per=future
http://www.theyesmen.org/

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

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

http://www.myspace.com/bathbomb

»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
bris­tle mag­a­zine (Bris­tol) — state­ment from the col­lec­tive

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

A state­ment from the bris­tle Col­lec­tive

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

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

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

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

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

Salud!

Police manhandle Tesco biofuel protestors – corporate protection gone mad?

3 pro­tes­tors who arrived to set up a peace­ful protest against Tesco’s invest­ments into bio­fu­els were man­han­dled by Police in cen­tral Lon­don on Decem­ber 8th who forced them into a met­al pen. Despite, this a peace­ful protest was held for an hour includ­ing a stop by 300 cyclists and 1 min­utes silence for those who are suf­fer­ing or who have died as the result of mas­sive expan­sion of large scale bio­fu­el plan­ta­tions across the South.

Tesco biofuel protest 1Tesco biofuel protest 23 pro­tes­tors who arrived to set up a peace­ful protest against Tesco’s invest­ments into bio­fu­els were man­han­dled by Police in cen­tral Lon­don on Decem­ber 8th who forced them into a met­al pen. Despite, this a peace­ful protest was held for an hour includ­ing a stop by 300 cyclists and 1 min­utes silence for those who are suf­fer­ing or who have died as the result of mas­sive expan­sion of large scale bio­fu­el plan­ta­tions across the South.

The protest had been well adver­tised as a peace­ful protest, part of the cycle ride before the Lon­don Glob­al Cli­mate Action D8 march, that would start at 1030am and last until 1130am. On arriv­ing at 1000 to set up, one pro­tes­tor found that there were 5 police vans wait­ing on the cor­ner of Regent Street and Jermyn Street.

As three pro­tes­tors set up, police insist­ed that they stand with­in a met­al ‘pen’ that had been placed on the pave­ment. The pro­tes­tors refused as the pave­ment was very wide (see pho­tos), there was only going to be a few of them, and they did not intend to obstruct pedes­tri­ans. The police then man­han­dled the pro­tes­tors into the ‘pen’ (see pho­tos).

The 3 pro­tes­tors, Dr Andrew Boswell of bio­fu­el­watch and a Green par­ty coun­cil­lor in Nor­folk, Dr Derek Wall, Prin­ci­ple speak­er of the Green Par­ty and Claire Sims were joined by about 4 oth­er pro­tes­tors who leaflet­ed shop­pers going into Tescos and passers- by.

Around 300 cyclists arrived at 1115am, and Andrew Boswell and Derek Wall spoke to them (Andrew Boswell’s speech is append­ed below). The protest then con­clud­ed peace­ful­ly as it had start­ed.

Tesco describe their bio­fu­els invest­ments on their web­page at:
http://www.tescocorporate.com/biofuels.htm

‘We are already the UK mar­ket leader in bio­fu­els and dur­ing 2007 we aim to dou­ble the pro­por­tion we sell. This means that cus­tomers will be able to buy a 5% bioethanol mix at over 300 petrol sta­tions in the UK. This helps our cus­tomers reduce their emis­sions, as a car dri­ven with our bioethanol mix petrol is respon­si­ble for 4.5% less CO2. We were the UK’s first major retail­er to incor­po­rate bio­fu­el into our stan­dard petrol and diesel, with no price pre­mi­um.

We also use a 50:50 biodiesel mix in our own vehi­cles — the high­est per­cent­age blend used by any major dis­tri­b­u­tion fleet. We have a 25% stake in bio­fu­el sup­pli­er Green­er­gy, which has opened the UK’s largest sin­gle-line biodiesel plant, on the Hum­ber estu­ary, with an annu­al pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty of 100,000 tonnes. Green­er­gy buys rape­seed for con­ver­sion to biodiesel from around 1,500 farm­ers con­tract­ed through Grain­farm­ers, a large agri­cul­tur­al co-oper­a­tive in the UK.’

An arti­cle in Auto indus­try mag­a­zine
http://www.autoindustry.co.uk/news/02–04-07_6
describes how ‘Green­er­gy’s biodiesel plant in north-east Eng­land began com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion on Fri­day 30 March(2007), and should ramp up to full capac­i­ty of 100,000 tonnes/year in a cou­ple of weeks, accord­ing to the com­pa­ny. The plant refines biodiesel from rape­seed oil, palm oil and soya oil. Chief Exec­u­tive Robert Owens told Reuters that the sec­ond phase, which should take capac­i­ty to 200,000 tonnes is on sched­ule to be com­plet­ed in Novem­ber.’

Cyclist pho­tos from Mike Greenville’s web­site at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikegrenville/2096155112/in/set-72157603404734034/
etc. Oth­er pho­tos by Andrew Boswell.

Speech by Andrew Boswell

Thanks for join­ing us here for this protest against Tesco and their invest­ment in the large scale biodiesel indus­try. Thank you com­ing in a zero-car­bon way by ped­al pow­er.

Bio­fu­els are a cli­mate jus­tice issue, a social jus­tice issue, a human jus­tice issue. We are protest­ing here because of Tesco’s cor­po­rate involve­ment in the bio­fu­el indus­try and in par­tic­u­lar­ly Palm Oil for biodiesel.

Palm oil is in a lot of food prod­ucts. In fact it is 1 in 10 of Tescos prod­ucts.

But we are here today to protest against Tesco’s invest­ment in Green­er­gy Bio­fu­els Ltd and their role as a major dis­trib­u­tor of bio­fu­els. Tesco have been mar­ket-lead­ers of bio­fu­els amongst super­mar­kets. Green­er­gy uses palm oil, soya and rape­seed oil in their biodiesel and also sells Brazil­ian sug­ar ethanol, and they thus con­tribute to fur­ther glob­al warm­ing, defor­esta­tion and threat­en the liveli­hoods of many com­mu­ni­ties in the glob­al South.

Let’s just touch on the eco­log­i­cal, social and human issues with bio­fu­els. As the bio­fu­el indus­try expands, we see bio­fu­els cause pover­ty to indige­nous peo­ples. Peo­ple who have lived for gen­er­a­tions on land and in the for­est have their land grabbed. Social and land con­flicts result. There’s abus­es in human rights and labour rights.

When large mono­cul­tures are grown, often the peo­ple remain in vil­lages with­in the large plan­ta­tions of Soya or Palm. When pes­ti­cides are used, the pes­ti­cide plane does not select where to spray – peo­ple are often poi­soned, become ill and some­times die from pes­ti­cide poi­son­ing.

Food secu­ri­ty and sov­er­eign­ty is anoth­er big issue. Glob­al­ly we are see­ing mas­sive amounts of food crops for exam­ple Corn, Wheat, Soya, being sold for fuel. Or land where com­mu­ni­ties grew food becomes tak­en over for grow­ing full crops. A more imme­di­ate prob­lem is that bio­fu­els, along with oth­er caus­es (cli­mate change droughts and increas­ing afflu­ence in Chi­na and India – EXPAND), have forced up world food com­mod­i­ty prices. Wheat has gone up 75% in just the last few months. This impacts poor coun­tries who can­not grow all their food and have to buy on the inter­na­tion­al mar­kets – they can buy less food. These coun­tries often have peo­ple close to star­va­tion who are forced into star­va­tion by these ris­ing prices.

The UN has also high­light­ed that land dis­place­ment could cause up to 60 mil­lion bio­fu­el refugees – 5 mil­lion in Kali­man­tan in Indone­sia alone. Once dis­placed from their tra­di­tion­al lands, peo­ple may try to eak out a less than sub­sis­tence exis­tence on what remains of their home­lands, often hav­ing lost their tra­di­tion­al food sources, or they may migrate in the mega-cities of the glob­al South and become the urban poor.

We will have 1 min­utes silence at the end of this speech for those peo­ple suf­fer­ing now or who have died as a result of the rich world’s mad rush to bio­fu­els.

Mas­sive bio­fu­el pro­duc­tion will also con­tribute to sys­temic eco­log­i­cal prob­lems such as water deple­tion, soil ero­sion and chem­i­cal poi­son­ing of the land by exces­sive fer­til­iz­ers and pes­ti­cides.

But let’s return to Palm Oil.

Defor­esta­tion and peat­land destruc­tion is a mas­sive con­trib­u­tor to glob­al green­house gas emis­sions – about 20% of emis­sions each year. In real­ly badyears like 1997 when there was mas­sive peat­land burn­ing in South East Asia, even more – pos­si­bly 40% in 1997. Palm Oil plan­ta­tions are planned on a mas­sive scale across South East Asia and into pris­tine rain­for­est and peat­lands.

So right now, Indone­sia and Malaysia are set to destroy mil­lions of hectares of rain­for­est and peat­lands for Oil palm plan­ta­tions to feed Euro­pean cars.
And Tescos and Green­er­gy are help­ing them.

The New Sci­en­tist report­ed last month that palm oil biodiesel, pro­duced this way, can pro­duce up to 36 times – yes, 36 times, that is 3600% — more car­bon emis­sions than ordi­nary fos­sil diesel.

We would do all bet­ter to start dri­ving Hum­mers than use this fuel!

In South Amer­i­ca, our demand for bio­fu­els is push­ing up the price of soya and fuelling the destruc­tion of the Ama­zon, on which all our sur­vival depends.
And Tescos and Green­er­gy want to sell us Soya biodiesel too.

We have to also address Gov­ern­ments.
Europe’s bio­fu­el poli­cies are dri­ving defor­esta­tion and the EU wants a 10 fold increase in bio­fu­els by 2020. If we do not stop them, then every­thing else we do as a move­ment will become irrel­e­vant, because we will have no hope of stop­ping run­away cli­mate change.

Such mas­sive bio­fu­el expan­sion is set to fur­ther dam­age the cli­mate, fur­ther risk food sup­plies for many of the world’s most vul­ner­a­ble, cause more strife and vio­lence in land dis­putes, and cre­ate even more bio­fu­el refugees dis­placed from their tra­di­tion­al lands.

We can­not grow all the nec­es­sary crops in the North.
Even bio­fu­els grown on Euro­pean soil with heavy nitro­gen fer­til­iz­er regimes pro­duce nitrous oxide – a green­house gas 300 times more dam­ag­ing than CO2 that dam­ages the cli­mate.
And Tescos and Green­er­gy pro­mote oil seed rape biodiesel too.
A recent study showed that the fer­til­iz­er used in grow­ing it can pro­duce up to 70% more GHG emis­sions that fos­sil diesel.

So Tesco and Green­er­gy are mak­ing us cli­mate loosers, what­ev­er biodiesel they sup­ply – Palm, Soya, or Oilseed rape. We have to stop them, the EU and the our Gov­ern­ment.

The UK Gov­ern­ment is blind­ly fol­low­ing the EU and has man­dat­ed 2.5% bio­fu­els at the pump from next April 15th. This will go down in cli­mate jus­tice his­to­ry as April Bio­fools day. Unlike Apartheid South Africa, no one will be able to boy­cott their part in increas­ing glob­al warm­ing.

We need deep real cuts in our trans­port emis­sions … by trav­el­ling less, by using cars less, by using pub­lic trans­port more, by using cycling and walk­ing more, by mak­ing the car indus­try deliv­er strict fuel effi­cien­cy stan­dards, by trans­port pol­i­cy that builds mass tran­sit sys­tems, by social and plan­ning pol­i­cy that helps peo­ple live clos­er to their work and trav­el less, by pro­duc­ing most of our food local­ly and by reduc­ing imports and the vol­ume of trade.

We must resist this ‘mad rush to bio­fu­els’. Today, we will be hand­ing in a let­ter to Gor­don Brown at 10, Down­ing Street with demands for cli­mate jus­tice.

• The UK and EU gov­ern­ments must aban­don all tar­gets for bio­fu­els
• They must ban all imports of bio­fu­els
• They must imple­ment a mora­to­ri­um on grow­ing large-scale bio­fu­els in the EU

There is only one way to stop bio­fu­els from push­ing us into run­away cli­mate change and that is such a mora­to­ri­um. Over 200 NGOs from North and South have signed such a call to the EU, and this week a large num­ber of NGOs from Africa pub­lished their own African Call for an Agro­fu­el Mora­to­ri­um.

This won’t hap­pen just because we ask the gov­ern­ments for it. We are up against the largest cor­po­rate inter­est alliance ever : big oil, big agribusi­ness, chem­i­cal, biotech, car man­u­fac­tur­ers and ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists, with the sup­port of much of the glob­al polit­i­cal elite, includ­ing the top neo­con mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment of the US.

We won’t stop the destruc­tion with­out a large move­ment against agro­fu­els. We don’t want bio­fu­els, AND we don’t want the cli­mate, social and human injus­tice that they will cause. We must suc­ceed for all our oth­er efforts to com­bat cli­mate change to be worth­while.

This is why bio­fu­el­watch is call­ing for a nation­al week of local action against agro­fu­els from 26th Jan­u­ary and would like all of you to con­tribute how­ev­er you can in your area. Not just in Jan­u­ary, but for through­out com­ing years to help us build a grass­roots cam­paign through­out the UK.

Please help us with pub­lic­i­ty and events in your local area. Get one of our leaflets being hand­ed out today and check out our web­site www.biofuelwatch.org.uk.

We must demand that Tesco, and com­pa­nies like them, dis­in­vest from bio­fu­els. They must drop the plans to sell bio­fu­els.

We must resist and force the Gov­ern­ment to lis­ten.

We can defeat Brown’s bio­fu­el­ing bungling dri­ven by his US and EU mas­ters. We can defeat the bio­fu­el mad­ness. Let’s start resist­ing it today.

Let’s now have a min­utes silence for those who are suf­fer­ing for rapid, mas­sive bio­fu­el pro­duc­tion across the Glob­al South, and remem­ber those who have died in pro­tect­ing their land, or from pes­ti­cides, or from star­va­tion, or from pover­ty.

http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk

EarthFirst! blockade at coal-fired power plant in Rotterdam, NL

8.12.2007
On Sat­ur­day morn­ing a col­lec­tive of twen­ty Dutch Earth­First! activists blocked the coal con­vey­or- belt to a plant owned by the Ger­man ener­gy giant E.on on the Maasvlak­te near Rot­ter­dam. This day, Decem­ber 8, has been announced as an inter­na­tion­al action­day in the protest against the coal indus­try. The grow­ing num­ber of coal-fired pow­er plants world­wide and in the Nether­lands at the moment is the biggest threath to the cli­mate. Sec­ond­ly, this action is part of the protest against the plans for a new E.on coal-fired plant, right next to the exist­ing one on the Maasvlak­te.

Maasvlakte lock-ons 2

8.12.2007
On Sat­ur­day morn­ing a col­lec­tive of twen­ty Dutch Earth­First! activists blocked the coal con­vey­or- belt to a plant owned by the Ger­man ener­gy giant E.on on the Maasvlak­te near Rot­ter­dam. This day, Decem­ber 8, has been announced as an inter­na­tion­al action­day in the protest against the coal indus­try. The grow­ing num­ber of coal-fired pow­er plants world­wide and in the Nether­lands at the moment is the biggest threath to the cli­mate. Sec­ond­ly, this action is part of the protest against the plans for a new E.on coal-fired plant, right next to the exist­ing one on the Maasvlak­te.

Sev­er­al activists have locked them­selves to the con­vey­or-belt which trans­ports the coals to the pow­er­plant. ‘Unfor­tu­nate­ly that won’t mean they’ll shut down the entire pow­er plant. There’s enough sup­ply at the fur­nace to keep it run­ning for a while. If we real­ly man­age to shut down the plant there’ll be enough oth­er plants to cov­er the short­age’, accord­ing to Flip, one of the par­tic­i­pat­ing activists. The activists plan to stay as long as pos­si­ble. They demand the can­cel­la­tion of the con­struc­tion plans for the new E.on coalpow­er­plant.

In the Nether­lands five new coal-fired pow­er plants are planned to be built. E.on is mak­ing a con­cert­ed effort to be the first com­pa­ny to start build­ing next spring. E.on is also plan­ning to build a coal-fired plant in Antwer­pen, Bel­gium. These new pow­er plants do not cor­re­spond at all with the cli­mate-ambi­tions of the Nether­lands and specif­i­cal­ly Rot­ter­dam to reduce CO2 emis­sions. Coals are the most pol­lut­ing ener­gy source pos­si­ble, because apart from CO2, the emis­sions also include heavy met­als, radioac­tive par­ti­cles and oth­er green­house gas­es. Because of this, build­ing a new pow­er plant makes sure any attempt to solve the cli­mate cri­sis will nev­er suc­ceed. Besides, the build­ing of new coal-fired plants inter­feres with the devel­op­ment of sus­tain­able ener­gy. The pol­lut­ing sources fill the ener­gy grid and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment invest­ments will only be used for car­bon cap­ture and stor­age.

The com­pa­ny E.on is run­ning a PR cam­paign, using pret­ty words like ‘Clean Coals’ and ‘the Cap­ture Ready prepa­ra­tion’ of the new plant to defend them­selves. Both these terms have been proved to be based on noth­ing. The min­ing of coals is extreme­ly pol­lut­ing; so there is no such thing as ‘Clean Coals’. Large part­sof the Earth are being destroyed; there is severe pol­lu­tion of water and soil in the min­ing areas of the Unit­ed States, Colum­bia, Indone­sia and South Africa. In the coalmines, min­ers are being exploit­ed and annu­al­ly thou­sands of peo­ple die as a result of dis­as­ters.

The term ‘Cap­ture Ready prepa­ra­tion’ used by E.on is a fraud. A car­bon-cap­tur­ing pow­er plant will use between 24 and 40 per­cent of its pro­duced ener­gy on the cap­ture process. It must there­fore burn more coal to pro­vide the same amount of out­put ener­gy as a non car­bon-cap­tur­ing pow­er plant.

The type of plant E.on is about to build has proven to be extreme­ly unsuit­able for car­bon stor­age. The fumes released by this spe­cif­ic type of plant con­tain many pol­lu­tants and thus are com­pli­cat­ed and expen­sive to treat. E.on’s promise to start cap­tur­ing car­bon ‘as soon as it is tech­ni­cal­ly and com­mer­cial­ly viable’ is there­fore com­plete­ly point­less and has only result­ed in an emp­ty spot on the blue­prints, reserved for a future cap­tur­ing instal­la­tion.

So what if you can­not burn coals as an ener­gy source? Flip: ‘Besides the pos­si­bil­i­ty of decen­tralised and actu­al sus­tain­able ener­gy, it is most of all nec­es­sary to use less pow­er. Sus­tain­able pow­er has its lim­its as well. If we real­ly want to antic­i­pate the deple­tion of nat­ur­al resources and the ensu­ing cli­mat­ic dis­as­ter, we’ll some­how have to find a dif­fer­ent way of liv­ing that won’t include dog­mat­ic eco­nom­ic growth. Play more with less’.

The Dutch Earth­First! action is part of the ‘Shrink or Sink’ cam­paign, fight­ing both the cli­mate and ener­gy cri­sis and rapid­ly decreas­ing biover­si­ty. Direct action against the con­struc­tion of new coal-fired plants is one of the main top­ics of the cam­paign.

Maasvlakte lock-ons locations
Maasvlakte banner

Fossil Fools Day, April 1st 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ffos y Fran Coal Mine, 5th Dec 2007: activists chained to bulldozers to prevent work on open-cast coal mine (video added)

More than thir­ty cli­mate activists and local res­i­dents this morn­ing took mass direct action to pre­vent exca­va­tion work on Britain’s biggest ever open-cast coal mine at Ffos-y-fran in South Wales. (1)

open cast lock-onMore than thir­ty cli­mate activists and local res­i­dents this morn­ing took mass direct action to pre­vent exca­va­tion work on Britain’s biggest ever open-cast coal mine at Ffos-y-fran in South Wales. (1)

Cli­mate cam­paign­ers from all over Wales (2) joined with local peo­ple from Merthyr Tyd­fil to evade police and secu­ri­ty before tak­ing over the 1,000 acre site on a hill­top near Cardiff. They have chained them­selves to bull­doz­ers and oth­er heavy machin­ery to pre­vent work on the mine and have unfurled large ban­ners. They’ve pledged to pre­vent work on the site for as long as they can by climb­ing onto, and chain­ing them­selves to the 1,300 horse­pow­er yel­low dig­gers. The lead­ing envi­ron­men­tal­ist and author, George Mon­biot, is amongst their ranks.

Cli­mate Pro­tes­tor, Tim Hel­weg-Larsen, from Mach­nyn­l­leth, said:

“Gor­don Brown’s offi­cials this week jet off to Bali for UN talks on cut­ting car­bon emis­sions but at home they’re try­ing to drag us into a new coal age.”

He added:

“Coal is the filth­i­est fuel known to man and projects like this mine could destroy all our chances of tack­ling glob­al warm­ing. The bat­tle over this hill­top in Wales is a fight for the sta­bil­i­ty of the glob­al cli­mate and it epit­o­mis­es this government’s hypocrisy on cli­mate change.” (3)

Merthyr res­i­dent, Leon Stan­field, explained:

“We’ve protest­ed this mine in all the con­ven­tion­al ways. Now we’re turn­ing to direct action as a last resort. This project is wreck­ing both the local and the glob­al envi­ron­ment and is putting the health of our com­mu­ni­ty and its chil­dren at risk.”

Over 10,000 local peo­ple peti­tioned against the pit.

NOTES FOR EDITORS:

(1) Back­ground about the mine is here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/oct/09/energy
Miller Argent is the con­sor­tium dig­ging this pit. They are min­ing for 11 mil­lion tonnes of coal from the site. When this is burned, it will emit more than 30 mil­lion tonnes of car­bon diox­ide. The edge of the mine pit will be just 36 metres from people’s homes.

(2) Activists are from the group who organ­ised the Camp for Cli­mate Action out­side Heathrow dur­ing the sum­mer. www.climatecamp.org.uk

(3) The gov­ern­ment has con­vened a UK coal forum to “bring for­ward ways of strength­en­ing the indus­try, and work­ing to ensure the UK has the right frame­work to secure the long term future of coal fired gen­er­a­tion.”
http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file39568.pdf (page8)

- ENDS —

Stream­ing for online view­ing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuCn5HMI2M4

Full rez screen­ing copy
http://blip.tv/file/get/Undercurrents-PolarBearsPopulateWelshCoalMine312.mp4

Golf course in Sydney dug in with warning

24.11.2007
The anony­mous vis­i­tors were clear about why they caused the dam­age they did. “Warn­ing!: you bas­tards kill one bird and we will destroy all your greens at our leisure. We will be watch­ing and wait­ing” read a note on a piece of card­board that was stuffed into one of the holes.

24.11.2007
The anony­mous vis­i­tors were clear about why they caused the dam­age they did. “Warn­ing!: you bas­tards kill one bird and we will destroy all your greens at our leisure. We will be watch­ing and wait­ing” read a note on a piece of card­board that was stuffed into one of the holes.

Syd­ney, Aus­tralia — Van­dals vis­it­ed the War­ringah Golf Club over the week­end and dur­ing the night wrecked exten­sive dam­age on four putting greens and dug holes in three oth­ers. The anony­mous vis­i­tors were clear about why they caused the dam­age they did. “Warn­ing!: you bas­tards kill one bird and we will destroy all your greens at our leisure. We will be watch­ing and wait­ing” read a note on a piece of card­board that was stuffed into one of the holes.

Ani­mal rights advo­cates and neigh­bours have been in an uproar since the club hired a marks­man to shoot native wood ducks who land on the course. The ducks are con­sid­ered by the golfers to be a nui­sance because the make small holes in the turf as they for­age for food. The club and some employ­ees have been inun­dat­ed with phone calls and emails since the shoot­er was hired.

Totally Immoral — A Day of Action against Total Oil

The Total out of Bur­ma Day of Action took place on Sat­ur­day 24 Novem­ber. Protests were held at 36 Total petrol sta­tions across the UK. Some sta­tions were block­ad­ed and all the protests received great sup­port from the motor­ing and pedes­tri­an pub­lic.

The Total out of Bur­ma Day of Action took place on Sat­ur­day 24 Novem­ber. Protests were held at 36 Total petrol sta­tions across the UK. Some sta­tions were block­ad­ed and all the protests received great sup­port from the motor­ing and pedes­tri­an pub­lic.

On Sat­ur­day 24 Novem­ber, protests were held at 36 Total petrol sta­tions across the UK. The protests called upon Total Oil to pull out of Bur­ma and stop financ­ing the Burmese mil­i­tary regime. Protest loca­tions includ­ed Brad­ford, Brighton, Chatham (Kent), Cardiff, Guernsey, Lon­don, Man­ches­ter, Oxford and Vir­gina Water (Sur­rey).

Block­ades occurred at some sta­tions, with sev­er­al last­ing for an hour or more. In Cam­den, Lon­don 10 pro­tes­tors blocked the York Way Total sta­tion for an hour, while 15 stu­dents in Sur­rey block­ad­ed the Vir­ginia Water petrol sta­tion for more than 2 hours. Through­out the UK the protests received sup­port from motorists and pedes­tri­ans alike. Many dri­vers turned away from the petrol sta­tions upon see­ing the protests, some inform­ing pro­tes­tors that they would not to buy from Total again. At all the tar­get­ted petrol sta­tions busi­ness was notice­ably slow, and in some cas­es vir­tu­al­ly non-exis­tent, dur­ing the protests.

Paul Gold­ing, one of the pro­tes­tors, said, “Total’s invest­ment in Bur­ma is the largest in Europe. By pay­ing mil­lions of dol­lars to the Burmese dic­ta­tor­ship every year they are help­ing keep it in pow­er. If the West wants to help end the oppres­sion and ongo­ing human rights abus­es in Bur­ma, then quite sim­ply, we must stop our com­pa­nies from fund­ing the oppres­sors.”

In Lon­don, protests took place at 14 Total petrol sta­tions dur­ing the course of the day. The final protest in Lon­don attract­ed over 30 sup­port­ers and took place at the Bak­er Street petrol sta­tion on Maryle­bone Rd, NW1, from 4pm to 6pm. In Guernsey, cam­paign­ers protest­ed at all 14 Total sta­tions on the island, and pick­et­ed the main sta­tion on the island for 3 hours. [2]

The day of action was part of a grow­ing glob­al cam­paign call­ing on French oil com­pa­ny Total to stop fund­ing the Burmese jun­ta:

- Boy­cott: Last week, the glob­al inter­net advo­ca­cy web­site Avaaz.org launched a glob­al boy­cott of Total, as well as US oil com­pa­ny Chevron, for their pres­ence in Bur­ma – with near­ly 50,000 sign­ing up in ten days [3].
— Divest­ment: Euro­pean pen­sion funds with­drew almost £110m in invest­ments from Total in a mat­ter of days in protest at the com­pa­ny’s involve­ment in Bur­ma. [4]
— Pop­u­lar protests: Since Octo­ber week­ly protests have tak­en place in Lon­don out­side Total Oil’s offices. Oth­er spon­ta­neous protests have occurred out­side Total garages around the UK. [5]

Pho­tos are avail­able from http://www.flickr.com/photos/toastyoneuk

For more infor­ma­tion & pho­tos con­tact:
— Jonathan Steven­son on 07818 651124, jjjstevenson@fastmail.fm
— Paul Gold­ing on 07984 799 958 or paul@pellarin.demon.co.uk

NOTES FOR EDITORS:

[1] Total Oil has had a joint busi­ness ven­ture with the Burmese gov­ern­ment since 1992. Its major project is the Yadana gas project in south­ern Bur­ma, which earns the mil­i­tary regime hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars every year. Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s democ­ra­cy leader, has said that “Total is the biggest sup­port­er of the mil­i­tary regime in Bur­ma.” For more infor­ma­tion about Total Oil’s invest­ment in Bur­ma see the Bur­ma Cam­paign UK web­site: http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/total.php.

[2] A full list of protests on 24 Novem­ber, plus fur­ther infor­ma­tion about the cam­paign, can be found at: http://totaloutofburma.blogspot.com.

[3] See http://www.avaaz.org/en/burma_corporate/. Total’s prod­ucts in the UK include its net­work of petrol sta­tions, as well as such brands as Bostik (mak­ers of Blu-tack) and Spon­tex clean­ing prod­ucts.

[4] See http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0„2204744,00.html

[5] For reports, see http://totaloutofburma.blogspot.com