Resistance to ‘Factory of Death’ continues

On Mon­day sev­er­al actions took place against the gov­ern­men­t’s nuclear weapons and their plans to devel­op new ones. The focus was AWE Alder­mas­ton, the mil­i­tary base near Read­ing where these weapons are devel­oped and main­tained.

On Mon­day sev­er­al actions took place against the gov­ern­men­t’s nuclear weapons and their plans to devel­op new ones. The focus was AWE Alder­mas­ton, the mil­i­tary base near Read­ing where these weapons are devel­oped and main­tained.

Activists from Tri­dent Ploughshares had been hold­ing an “Alder­mas­ton Sum­mer Gath­er­ing” for sev­er­al days shar­ing infor­ma­tion and leaflet­ting near­by vil­lages. Co-incid­ing with this, folks from the Catholic Work­er move­ment were hold­ing a “Faith and Resis­tance” retreat in Oxford cel­e­brat­ing the 30th anniver­sary of the first Ploughshares action.

As the day began around twen­ty TP folks block­ad­ed one of the main gates into the base, includ­ing four who “locked-on” with arm tubes. They left with­out any arrests after suc­cess­ful­ly blockad­ing for two hours.

Soon after­wards, 3 of the Catholic Work­ers cut through the perime­ter fence and broke into the base, “open­ing it for dis­ar­ma­ment”, while oth­ers car­ried out a vig­il at the gates of the base. They were arrest­ed, held until evening, charged with crim­i­nal dam­age, and may also face SOCPA charges.

Friends Of The Earth Cymru information stall against the Monster Incinerator at Ffos-y-fran

Friends Of The Earth CYMRU are hav­ing an infor­ma­tion stall in Merthyr precinct this Fri­day.
Join the Face­book page “No Mon­ster Incin­er­a­tor in Merthyr Tyd­fil” for a pow­er­point pre­sen­ta­tion on the Health Impact of incin­er­a­tors by world renown expert Prof Paul Con­nett!

Friends Of The Earth CYMRU are hav­ing an infor­ma­tion stall in Merthyr precinct this Fri­day.
Join the Face­book page “No Mon­ster Incin­er­a­tor in Merthyr Tyd­fil” for a pow­er­point pre­sen­ta­tion on the Health Impact of incin­er­a­tors by world renown expert Prof Paul Con­nett!
It looks as if Cov­an­ta are going for­ward with sub­mit­ting plan­ning appli­ca­tion on Novem­ber 1st — Direct Action and Aware­ness needs to be ramped up as much of the com­mu­ni­ty of Merthyr Tyd­fil are bliss­ful­ly igno­rant of the sci­en­tif­ic facts on the impact of diox­ins, nano-par­tic­u­lates and oth­er very nasty shit such as “Fly Ash”!

Successful Hinkley Demo

Sep­tem­ber 13, 2010
Pro­tes­tors blocked the Hink­ley Point main gates for almost an hour this liunch-time as they demon­strat­ed against the pre­ma­ture destruc­tion of upto 435 acres of open land and wildlife habi­tats before major con­sents are approved for the two giant reac­tors pro­posed by EdF.

Sep­tem­ber 13, 2010
Pro­tes­tors blocked the Hink­ley Point main gates for almost an hour this liunch-time as they demon­strat­ed against the pre­ma­ture destruc­tion of upto 435 acres of open land and wildlife habi­tats before major con­sents are approved for the two giant reac­tors pro­posed by EdF.

A large group of cam­paign­ers, togeth­er with local res­i­dents includ­ing chil­dren, held ban­ners and plac­ards in front of Hink­ley Point, pre­vent­ing any traf­fic move­ments. The Hink­ley main gates were forced to shut from 11.45 to 12.45pm and no traf­fic entered or left dur­ing that time. Some of the pro­tes­tors wore face paint images of sun­flow­ers, the Stop Hink­ley logo and anti-nuclear signs. Oth­ers dressed as nuclear ‘boffins’ and with a loud­hail­er led a march through the ear-marked green­field site.

The ‘nuclear boffins’ high­light­ed bad­ger setts which had been cement­ed over or had been cov­ered with met­al grills, beau­ti­ful old wood­lands and indi­vid­ual trees des­tined to be bull­dozed and they walked down some of the scores of sunken lanes criss-cross­ing the fields lined by ancient hedgerows brim­ming with wildlife.

At the coast the tour-guides showed where the so-called ‘tem­po­rary’ jet­ty will be built over the 200 mil­lion year old fos­sil-filled rocky beach.

At the beach des­ti­na­tion of the march, one cam­paign­er read aloud a poem on the need to respect nature and its part in glob­al ecol­o­gy.

Crispin Aubrey, spokesman for Stop Hink­ley who mar­shalled the demon­stra­tion, said: “There is obvi­ous strong feel­ing against destroy­ing this beau­ti­ful area. Despite being close to the exist­ing pow­er sta­tions there are large expans­es of beau­ty and tran­quil­i­ty. It’s wrong for EdF to jump the gun by trash­ing the area such a long time before it receives major con­sents for the two reac­tors.”

The protest was part of a two day Action Week­end. Yes­ter­day a series of talks and work­shops took place in Bridg­wa­ter for cam­paign­ers around the region. Three nation­al-lev­el speak­ers gave talks:

Green­peace

Ben Ayliffe, nuclear cam­paign­er for Green­peace said: “Green­peace is opposed to new nuclear pow­er sta­tions because they would make a min­i­mal con­tri­bu­tion towards reduc­ing green­house gas emis­sions, they have mul­ti­ple dan­gers from long-lived radioac­tive waste through to nuclear pro­lif­er­a­tion, and they are a dis­trac­tion from real solu­tions such as renew­able ener­gy.”

“In par­tic­u­lar we see two major prob­lems — waste dis­pos­al and eco­nom­ics – both could sink the pro­pos­al for Hink­ley C,” he said.

“The coali­tion gov­ern­ment has said that there will be no sub­si­dies for new nuclear plant. Eco­nom­ics could be the thing that makes it impos­si­ble for Hink­ley C to go ahead. No nuclear pow­er sta­tion has ever been built with­out pub­lic sub­sidy.”

On waste he said that the amount EDF were being asked to pay for dis­pos­ing of the radioac­tive lega­cy from Hink­ley C was not enough to cov­er the true cost. “It amounts to a £1 bil­lion sub­sidy to the com­pa­ny per year, accord­ing to our cal­cu­la­tions,” he said.

He also referred to delays and cost over-runs on sim­i­lar projects in both Fin­land and France, where the first reac­tors like the one pro­posed for Hink­ley C are being built.

The Green­peace strat­e­gy was to chal­lenge the process of approv­ing new nuclear pow­er sta­tions all the way. This includ­ed expos­ing the risky eco­nom­ics, pro­mot­ing the alter­na­tives and legal chal­lenges.

Health

Pro­fes­sor Chris Bus­by talked about stud­ies that he, and Som­er­set Health author­i­ty in the eight­ies, had shown that there was a high­er inci­dence of can­cers round Hink­ley Point and oth­er nuclear pow­er sta­tions. He said the inter­na­tion­al mod­el used by reg­u­la­tors to esti­mate the effects of radi­a­tion on human health is being wide­ly chal­lenged, and a for­mer head of the inter­na­tion­al radi­a­tion com­mis­sion accept­ed that their mod­el did not stand up in the case of a seri­ous acci­dent.

“Our stud­ies have shown raised lev­els of can­cer along the down­wind coast from Hink­ley to Burn­ham-on-Sea. Health offi­cials have object­ed to our find­ings on spu­ri­ous grounds includ­ing ran­dom clus­ters in oth­er areas but year on year we keep find­ing an entrenched prob­lem near Hink­ley. The offi­cials have got it wrong.”

Alter­na­tives

Neil Crump­ton, for­mer Friends of the Earth ener­gy cam­paign­er, pre­sent­ed an alter­na­tive vision of the UK’s elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply in which nuclear pow­er was mar­gin­alised and new sources of renew­able ener­gy, such as con­cen­trat­ed solar pow­er import­ed from North Africa, were devel­oped on a large scale. He also dis­missed the sug­ges­tion that the lights would go out with­out nuclear, list­ing the many oth­er options, includ­ing gas-fired plants, which were queue­ing up to fill any gap in sup­ply.

“Friends of the Earth and oth­er organ­i­sa­tions are con­fi­dent we can put for­ward a rea­son­able low car­bon ener­gy net­work based on cur­rent tech­nol­o­gy. More than that we can very soon tap resources like Clean Coal Tech­nol­o­gy and solar-pow­er from the Sahara to boost our own abun­dant nat­ur­al ele­ments of wind, tide and wave dri­ven elec­tric­i­ty.”

Jim Duffy

Stop Hink­ley Coor­di­na­tor

www.stophinkley.org

07798 666756

Quotes from Crispin Aubrey who coor­di­nat­ed the Action week­end: 01278 732921 / 07920 523673

Pro­fes­sion­al pho­tographs for the media avail­able imme­di­ate­ly from

Simon Chap­man: 07889 747916

http://www.stophinkley.org

Happendon Wood Occupied! New Direct Action Camp Against Scottish Coal

Ear­ly evening on Sun­day 12th Sep­tem­ber a group of autonomous indi­vid­u­als suc­cess­ful­ly occu­pied a new site in Hap­pen­don Wood, South Lanark­shire!

Ear­ly evening on Sun­day 12th Sep­tem­ber a group of autonomous indi­vid­u­als suc­cess­ful­ly occu­pied a new site in Hap­pen­don Wood, South Lanark­shire!

Coal Action Scot­land are invit­ing peo­ple to join The Hap­pen­don Wood Action Camp (THWAC) to help defend the wood from destruc­tion by Scot­tish Coal, and to take action in sol­i­dar­i­ty with com­mu­ni­ties in the area resist­ing the expan­sion of the coal indus­try in the Dou­glas Val­ley.

You can find out more about the camp at http://happendon.coalactionscotland.org.uk — and more infor­ma­tion about why we’re at Hap­pen­don and what we’re doing there will be com­ing very soon.

In the mean­time, check our press advi­so­ry, for imme­di­ate release, below:

Con­tact:
Sam Mac­don­ald (Off-site Con­tact: Infor­ma­tion and Pho­tos) 07984706188
Jo Reed (On-site Con­tact: Vis­its and Inter­views) 07806926040
media@coalactionscotland.org.uk

Scot­tish Coal’s
Hap­pen­don Wood Occu­pied

Last night (12/9/10) a group of peo­ple occu­pied areas with­in Hap­pen­don Wood, South Lanark­shire (1) to defend it from destruc­tion by Scot­tish Coal, part of the Scot­tish Resources Group. They have begun to build shel­ters and defences on the site, with large ban­ners hung from trees at the front of the site that say: “Defend­ing the Dou­glas Val­ley” and “No Open­cast Here”. The Hap­pen­don Wood Action Camp has come out of a long-term strug­gle by the local com­mu­ni­ty and Coal Action Scot­land (2) to halt coal expan­sion in the Dou­glas Val­ley which is already one of the most heav­i­ly mined areas in Europe.

The Scot­tish Resources Group have applied for plan­ning per­mis­sion for a mixed use devel­op­ment (3) on this land (which is in an area of Great Land­scape Val­ue) in the Dou­glas Val­ley, but they intend to open­cast the area first. The South Lanark­shire min­er­als plan high­lights areas with­in the new devel­op­ment as hav­ing recov­er­able coal deposits that can be exca­vat­ed dur­ing the cur­rent local plan. Scot­tish Coal actu­al­ly wouldn’t be allowed to build on the land with­out open cast­ing it first, oth­er­wise this would be “ster­il­is­ing the nations asset” and there­fore ille­gal. (4)

Scot­tish Coal have not yet pub­licly declared their inter­ests in open­cast­ing Hap­pen­don Wood but many mem­bers of the local com­mu­ni­ty have expressed deep con­cerns that they will be blight­ed with yet anoth­er open­cast coal mine. In a recent meet­ing about the devel­op­ment, MSP for Clydes­dale Karen Gillon told local res­i­dents that she did not doubt that they would remove the coal, in spite of the fact that the area that SRG wish to devel­op takes in the open­cast work­ings at Poniel, which are cur­rent­ly due to be restored. Local res­i­dent and Dou­glas and Gle­spin Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil Chair­per­son Lind­say Addi­son is enraged by the behav­iour of Scot­tish Coal in South Lanark­shire:

“We have seri­ous con­cerns that this is an excuse for anoth­er open­cast. We do not want this devel­op­ment, let alone anoth­er mine. We will fight it all the way and sup­port the efforts of the wider com­mu­ni­ty in its oppo­si­tion to new coal in the Dou­glas Val­ley.”

SRG’s appli­ca­tion for plan­ning per­mis­sion for this devel­op­ment is ongo­ing; the deci­sion by the coun­cil will like­ly be made in the com­ing months. Ques­tions have been raised about the close rela­tion­ship between Scot­tish Coal and South Lanark­shire Coun­cil (SLC) result­ing in SLC issu­ing each mem­ber of the Dou­glas and Gle­spin Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil legal notices stat­ing that pro­ceed­ings against them are to begin at Lanark Sher­iff Court over alleged libel claims. This move is seen by the com­mu­ni­ty as an attack on their free­dom of speech. (5)

Notes to Edi­tors:

1. Loca­tion: In South Lanark­shire, about 30 miles south of Glas­gow, Hap­pen­don Wood is an area just off the B7078, sur­round­ing the Dew­ers ware­house site and Poniel Open­cast work­ings. To reach the site, dri­ving south along the B7078 from Les­ma­hagow (run­ning along­side the M74), take the first left after Hap­pen­don Ser­vices onto the C‑road; the site front is on your left after about half a mile. A map is avail­able at http://coalactionscotland.org.uk/?page_id=1974#Where

2. Work­ing with and sup­port­ing com­mu­ni­ties across Scot­land, the Coal Action Scot­land col­lec­tive exists to chal­lenge the advance­ment of coal as an ener­gy source by inform­ing peo­ple about the dan­gers posed by new coal, pro­mot­ing alter­na­tives, work­ing with those involved, and direct­ly chal­leng­ing new coal exploita­tion from source to point of use. Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp was set up just along the road from Hap­pen­don Woods last year where peo­ple stayed for over sev­en months, end­ing in a five day evic­tion and a total of 45 arrests. See: http://coalactionscotland.noflag.org.uk/

3. This appli­ca­tion is Poniel / Hap­pen­don Mixed Use Devel­op­ment appli­ca­tion from the Scot­tish Resources Group (Scot­tish Coal). It is for “Mixed use devel­op­ment com­pris­ing indus­tri­al and stor­age and dis­tri­b­u­tion ware­hous­ing, busi­ness units/office accom­mo­da­tion, hotel with con­fer­ence and com­mer­cial leisure facil­i­ties, retail/restaurant floor­space, land­scap­ing, open space and asso­ci­at­ed infra­struc­ture (plan­ning per­mis­sion in prin­ci­ple)”, but it is expect­ed that once they get per­mis­sion for this they will actu­al­ly be bound to open­cast the area for coal. The plan­ning ref­er­ence for the appli­ca­tion is: CL/10/0180.

4. The Coal Author­i­ty issue licences to coal com­pa­nies. The fol­low­ing was dis­cov­ered in cor­re­spon­dence between them and Scot­tish Coal:
‘Where devel­op­ment is pro­posed over areas of coal and past coal work­ings at shal­low depth, The Coal Author­i­ty is of the opin­ion that appli­cants should con­sid­er wher­ev­er pos­si­ble remov­ing the rem­nant shal­low coal. This will enable the land to be sta­bilised and treat­ed by a more sus­tain­able method; rather than by attempt­ing to grout fill any voids and con­se­quent­ly unnec­es­sar­i­ly ster­il­is­ing the nation’s asset.’

5. For arti­cles and quo­ta­tions on the legal threats to the Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil see:
http://www.lanarkgazette.co.uk/news/South-Lanarkshire-Council-copyright-threat.6526004.jp
http://coalactionscotland.org.uk/?p=1966
http://www.jonathanmitchell.info/2010/09/02/whats-wrong-with-south-lanarkshire/

Stop Nuclear Power Network UK Gathering

Date for your diaries:

Sat­ur­day 23rd and Sun­day 24th Octo­ber

Bris­tol
_______________________________________

Meet peo­ple from your region that are tak­ing action, make plans togeth­er and build sol­i­dar­i­ty with peo­ple who live next door to Hink­ley.
_______________________________________

Sol­i­dar­i­ty with Stop Hink­ley

Date for your diaries:

Sat­ur­day 23rd and Sun­day 24th Octo­ber

Bris­tol
_______________________________________

Meet peo­ple from your region that are tak­ing action, make plans togeth­er and build sol­i­dar­i­ty with peo­ple who live next door to Hink­ley.
_______________________________________

Sol­i­dar­i­ty with Stop Hink­ley
Hink­ley C in Som­er­set near Bris­tol, could become the first nuclear pow­er sta­tion built in Britain for 20 years, Stop Hink­ley is a com­mu­ni­ty cam­paign to stop dead­ly nuclear sites being built near their homes.www.stophinkley.org

Action against EdF
EDF is one of the largest elec­tric­i­ty com­pa­nies and ful­ly owned by the French state. In Britain, EDF is push­ing hard for nuclear new build, and wants new reac­tors at four sites, the first being Hink­ley C. www.boycottedf.org.uk

Cam­paign against the rerere-CON­sul­ta­tion
The gov­ern­ment is tak­ing its pro-nuclear pro­pa­gan­da on tour around the UK for the third time this Autumn in an attempt to escape legal chal­lenges to its nuclear ambi­tions. We plan to be there, let­ting every­one know the Green­washed, prof­it dri­ven agen­da they are spew­ing out.

More info com­ing soon.

Sign up to our mail­ing list by email­ing stopnuclearpower-subscribe@lists.riseup.net

Bath Bomb #33 Out Now!

THE BATH BOMB

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #33
free/donation
Sep­tem­ber 2010

“More rusty barbed wire than cut­ting edge”

*

The First Cut Is The Deep­est

Whilst we’ve nev­er claimed to be the cut­ting edge of jour­nal­ism, the Bath Bomb has become privy to a series of unpleas­ant plans from coun­cils in the south­west:

THE BATH BOMB

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #33
free/donation
Sep­tem­ber 2010

“More rusty barbed wire than cut­ting edge”

*

The First Cut Is The Deep­est

Whilst we’ve nev­er claimed to be the cut­ting edge of jour­nal­ism, the Bath Bomb has become privy to a series of unpleas­ant plans from coun­cils in the south­west:

Somerset’s most ded­i­cat­ed N.H.S. pro­fes­sion­als are being “strong-armed and rail­road­ed” into defect­ing from the Pri­ma­ry Care Trust to join social enter­prise ven­tures, with­out the chance of a prop­er con­sul­ta­tion. But at a meet­ing filled with angry health vis­i­tors, school nurs­es, local hos­pi­tal and oth­er work­ers in Bridg­wa­ter on Wednes­day 1st Sep­tem­ber, they vot­ed “No!” to pri­vati­sa­tion. Their cam­paign is now seek­ing pub­lic sup­port for the P.C.T. meet­ing at Wyn­ford House, Lufton Way, in Yeovil on Wednes­day 15th Sep­tem­ber from 10am, where the deci­sion is expect­ed to be made.

Employ­ment Min­is­ter Chris Grayling has start­ed a cru­sade to force the 260 young Inca­pac­i­ty Ben­e­fit claimants in B.&N.E.S. (and a fur­ther 530 in Wilt­shire) into work – regard­less of whether they’re fit to or not. There are already wider moves to slash the Wel­fare Bill, and expand the con­tro­ver­sial Work Capa­bil­i­ty Assess­ment health test, but Grayling some­how seeks to frame this witch-hunt as a form of phil­an­thropy: “Thou­sands of young peo­ple with their lives ahead of them just parked on sick­ness ben­e­fits with no way out.” A big man with a big heart.

Three out of sev­en youth key work­ers in the Bath area are to be cut, along­side their youth cen­tres. Youth work­ers who have been col­leagues for years are now being turned against each oth­er, anx­ious­ly com­pet­ing to not put a foot wrong and lose their jobs, or be ‘matrix’ed. Whether crime rates will go up as deprived kids are alien­at­ed even fur­ther, is hard to say.

Waste man­age­ment ser­vices in the vil­lage of Old Wel­ton are to be cut and shipped out to Bath. As they share the Trans­fer Sta­tion site with oth­er pub­lic ser­vices, there is expect­ed to be a knock-on ‘tip­ping point’ effect where more ser­vices are sent off to the big city, even­tu­al­ly drain­ing the area of a large por­tion of its employ­ment, and its econ­o­my.

Mean­while G.M.B. union work­ers in Bris­tol are being ille­gal­ly threat­ened with dis­ci­pli­nary action for shar­ing news of intend­ed cuts with their unions.

But peo­ple aren’t just gonna sit and take it: a noisy 40-strong demo out­side Bris­tol City Coun­cil took place on Tues­day 7th Sep­tem­ber, with many a union ban­ner and speak­er. Sat­ur­day the 4th saw the Bath Stop The War Coali­tion find unan­i­mous con­sen­sus from the 90 bal­lot­ed on their reg­u­lar vig­il, who would rather cut Tri­dent than ser­vices. On Wednes­day 22nd Sep­tem­ber, from 7.30pm, a ‘Fight the Cuts’ pub­lic meet­ing will take place, down­stairs at Friends Meet­ing House on York Street. Though speak­ers will be present from the tra­di­tion­al unions – such as the N.U.T., G.M.B., Uni­son, U.C.U. and Bath Trades Coun­cil – we need a wider pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion from oth­er affect­ed peo­ple, so we can sort this crap out! You owe it to your­self to come along!

Who knows? Per­haps we might take a livre out of France’s book, where 2.5 mil­lion took to the streets on Tues­day the 7th, against Sarkozy’s aus­ter­i­ty plans. No to Job Cuts! No to Pen­sion Cuts! No to Ser­vice Cuts! Cut Tax Eva­sion! Cut I.D. Cards! Cut Tri­dent! Cut the Pay Gap! Cut a Tory! Vive La Strike!

http://bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com
http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/news/260–25s-sickness-benefit-B-NES/article-2602689-detail/article.html
http://bristol.indymedia.org.uk/article/693333

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Tory Scum, Out Of Brum!

ACTION STATIONS! ACTION STATIONS! EVERYONE TO THE STREETS! Sun­day 3rd Octo­ber will be our first chance to show our anger at the Con-Dem cuts. As the Tories kick off their par­ty con­fer­ence in Birm­ing­ham, they will be met by thou­sands of angry pro­test­ers from the diverse sec­tions of soci­ety that are being forced to bear the brunt of the cuts onslaught. The mes­sage will be clear: this cri­sis was caused by the rich, and we refuse to pay for it with job loss­es, pay reduc­tions, ser­vice cuts and hiked V.A.T., while the toffs at the top con­tin­ue to line their pock­ets. Plans for the protest are shap­ing up nice­ly, with many unions, com­mu­ni­ty groups and oth­ers gear­ing up to make some noise. Those angry pranksters over at Class War have booked them­selves a team at the Tory Par­ty pub quiz, and are call­ing for as much help (with the ques­tions of course!) as pos­si­ble. There is also a ‘direct action’ bloc shap­ing up, which promis­es to dis­rupt pro­ceed­ings nice­ly. So, whether you want to peace­ful­ly protest, or have some­thing a bit more live­ly in mind, there will be some­thing for you on the day. This will be the start of a mas­sive cam­paign against the cuts and there will even be trans­port run­ning to the demo from Bath — leav­ing at 9am from Lau­ra Place foun­tain (though details may change), tick­ets are £10 waged or £5 unwaged, and to get yours, e‑mail either bathagainstcuts[at]yahoo.co.uk or tel 07908 355456.

*

Get Shorty

Kil­ter, Bath’s unique out­door the­atre com­pa­ny, plants the seeds of change with their play­ful, engag­ing ‘Roots Replant­ed’ show, inves­ti­gat­ing food-secu­ri­ty in the fast approach­ing post-oil world. Elope to the Hamp­ton Row Allot­ments from Fri­day 10th to Sun­day 12th of this month, down the bean-rows, for an inti­mate tale of love and veg­eta­bles. Times are 6.30pm Thurs­day to Sat­ur­day, and addi­tion­al show­ings at 2.30pm on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day. Or catch them lat­er at Pease­down St John Com­mu­ni­ty Farm or Bloom­field Allot­ments at Bear Flat. Book­ings can be made by ring­ing 01225 386777.

On invi­ta­tion from Frome Friends of Pales­tine, “Israel’s bravest, most prin­ci­pled” his­to­ri­an Ilan Pappe will be speak­ing at the Mason­ic Hall on North Parade on Fri­day 17th Sep­tem­ber at 8pm. His talk will exam­ine the ongo­ing his­to­ry of Zion­ism, from its roots in the racist soils of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry to the sit­u­a­tion today. His book The Eth­nic Cleans­ing of Pales­tine, effec­tive­ly cost him his job at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Haifa four years ago. Admis­sion is £5.

B.&N.E.S. Coun­cil seem to final­ly be doing some­thing right, as, from 4th Octo­ber, week­ly col­lec­tions of food waste will reach 72,000 house­holds, con­vert­ing the £48+ per tonne tax­pay­er bur­den to agri­cul­tur­al com­post in Glouces­ter­shire. With any luck, the £400,000 imple­men­ta­tion cost will come straight from John Everit­t’s pock­et? And maybe sort­ing out a por­tion of the annu­al 20 mil­lion tonnes of super­mar­ket and indus­try U.K. waste will be next, right?

A gang of racists attacked the Indi­an Cur­ry Nights restau­rant in Augus­ta Place, off Upper Bris­tol Road, on Tues­day 24th August. Two wait­ers were minor­ly hurt, and a win­dow was tar­get­ed by thrown rocks. Con­sid­er­ing attacks on take­aways and mosques in the city over the last cou­ple of years, per­haps it’s way past time that local anti-fas­cists stepped it up?

Police Sergeant Mark Andrews showed his true colours back in July ’08, when he smashed 59-year-old Pamela Somerville’s face against the cell floor at Col­erne cop­shop. Recent­ly sent down this week for six months for Actu­al Bod­i­ly Harm, for once a cop­per has paid a price for his actions. But can we all rest easy now that the friend­ly bob­bies have cleaned them­selves up once more? Or are cas­es like Andrews and (Ian Tom­lin­son’s killer) Simon Har­wood per­haps not just a cou­ple of bad eggs, but instead symp­to­matic of a wider insti­tu­tion­al vio­lence, and near-com­plete free­dom from con­se­quence, infect­ing the whole of the force?

Rad­i­cal cam­paign­ing groups such as Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide have called for an inter­na­tion­al day of action against the coal indus­try on Tues­day 12th Octo­ber; more details to fol­low

http://www.kiltertheatre.org
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb5245/is_7840_231/ai_n29412429/
http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/news/Council-gears-food-waste-scheme/article-2604136-detail/article.html
http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/news/Police-appeal-waiters-attacked-Bath-park/article-2603995-detail/article.html
http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/news/Police-officer-faces-sack-cell-brutality-woman-59/article-2607007-detail/article.html

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GOT A STORY? WANT TO RECEIVE THE BATH BOMB BY EMAIL? HOPING TO SUE? Con­tact us by e‑mailing bathbombpress[at]yahoo.co.uk. Large print e‑versions avail­able on request. And for more info on any of our sto­ries, check out http://www.thebathbomb.blogspot.com

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Fash In The Pan

The August bank hol­i­day week­end was due to be a big day for the British far-right, with two high-pro­file demos designed to put racist thug­gery firm­ly back on the map; but unfor­tu­nate­ly for them, it was­n’t to be.

The week­end start­ed off with media rev­e­la­tions that, far from being a grow­ing dynam­ic par­ty, as fuhrer Grif­fin would have us believe, the fas­cist B.N.P. is in fact falling apart. On the verge of bank­rupt­cy due to finan­cial mis­man­age­ment, lack of sup­port and a cost­ly law­suit (filed by Unilever when Grif­fin used the Mar­mite logo in a par­ty broad­cast), the rats are well and tru­ly flee­ing the ship. First to go was Richard Barn­brook, ama­teur gay porn direc­tor and the B.N.P.‘s sole mem­ber on the Greater Lon­don Assem­bly, who quit after call­ing for a “full inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion” into cor­rup­tion in the par­ty. He was fol­lowed short­ly by Lee Barnes, the par­ty legal offi­cer and ‘unsteady’ Eddy But­ler, for­mer Nation­al Front full-timer and B.N.P. press offi­cer, both of whom assert­ed that Grif­fin was exer­cis­ing a dic­ta­to­r­i­al stran­gle­hold over the par­ty. Just to prove them wrong, Grif­fin expelled a fur­ther 30 high-rank­ing par­ty mem­bers for chal­leng­ing his abil­i­ty to lead the par­ty. So, with the B.N.P. slid­ing off the scene, the stage was set for the thick-as-shit boot boys of the Eng­lish Defence League to take the far-right lime­light.

They intend­ed to do this with a mass march through Brad­ford on Sat­ur­day 28th, in the hope of ignit­ing fur­ther Asian riots to jus­ti­fy their anti-immi­grant agen­da. Deter­mined to cause a ruckus, the E.D.L. banned women from the demo, pre­dict­ed a turnout of 5,000, and dubbed the demo “the big one”. In the event, the ‘Bat­tle of Lit­tle Big One’ was a dis­ap­point­ing washout, with only 700 fas­cists being dwarfed by sev­er­al thou­sands of com­mu­ni­ty and anti-fas­cist activists, who told the E.D.L. in no uncer­tain terms that they would not be goad­ed into full-scale riot­ing. How­ev­er, that did­n’t stop a few naughty lads and ladies smash­ing up the E.D.L. coach­es as they fled the scene. The high point of the day came when a sym­pa­thet­ic cop­per forced a lone E.D.L. skin­head into a crowd of locals, despite his tear­ful protes­ta­tions. Appar­ent­ly no-one saw exact­ly what hap­pened, but an ambu­lance was observed speed­ing away from the scene short­ly after­wards!

So, on to bank hol­i­day Mon­day, and sun­ny Brighton, where fringe fas­cist group the ‘Eng­lish Nation­al Alliance’ had called a ‘March for Eng­land’ (their stat­ed tar­gets were mus­lims, immi­grants, stu­dents and paci­fists — nice!). They pre­dict­ed a turnout of over 300 patri­ot­ic war­riors, which turned out on the day to be around 50 jug-eared Burber­ry mod­els scream­ing racist slo­gans at any­one unfor­tu­nate enough to be in earshot. The turnout then pro­ceed­ed to get turned over by 300 assem­bled anti-fas­cists who dis­rupt­ed the march con­tin­u­ous­ly until the police called full-time and escort­ed the fas­cists home for their own safe­ty!

What was billed as being a week­end that would put racist pol­i­tics back on the map, end­ed in two woe­ful­ly under-attend­ed demos, vast­ly larg­er anti-fas­cist counter-events, unan­i­mous rejec­tion of the fas­cists by local com­mu­ni­ties and the vir­tu­al dis­in­te­gra­tion of the far-right’s bright­est star, the B.N.P. It may be too ear­ly to cheer, as a dying beast still has fangs, but the news is encour­ag­ing and sug­gests that a few hard shoves could boot these groups to where they belong — the dust­bin of his­to­ry.

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Bath Activist Net­work are a local umbrel­la group cam­paign­ing on issues as diverse as devel­op­ment, envi­ron­men­tal­ism, anti-war, ani­mal rights, work­ers’ rights and more. Help­ing to pro­duce the Bath Bomb, we are open to any­one, and our mem­bers range from trade union­ists to anar­chists, lib­er­als and greens, and peo­ple who just want to change Bath for the bet­ter. For details on meet­ings, demos, or just to get in touch, e‑mail bathactivistnet[at]yahoo.co.uk, or see our web­site: http://www.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com

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UPCOMING EVENTS

 

draw­ing class­es: ‘Remem­ber­ing the Present’, Mon­days & Tues­days, Stokes Croft Muse­um, 81–83 Stokes Croft, Bris­tol, http://www.stokescroftmuseum.info

 

Lon­don Road Food Co-op, Wednes­days, 4–7pm, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Lon­don Road, http://www.londonroadfoodcoop.blogspot.com

 

exhi­bi­tion: ‘Remem­ber­ing the Present’, Wednes­days, Thurs­days & Fri­days, 11am-3pm, Stokes Croft Muse­um, 81–83 Stokes Croft, Bris­tol, http://www.stokescroftmuseum.info

 

Bathamp­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Grow­ers work­day, Thurs­days, 10am-dusk, Mill Lane, Bathamp­ton, e‑mail thelostplot[at]googlemail.com/ tel Chris 07792 444628

 

Bathamp­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Sup­port­ed Agri­cul­ture project: fruit pick­ing, Thurs­days and Sun­days, http://www.transitionbath.org/bathampton-csa-news

 

Bath Stop The War Coali­tion vig­il, Sat­ur­days, 11.30am-12.30, Bath Abbey Court­yard

 

Brad­ford-On-Avon peace vig­il, Sat­ur­days, 11.30am-12.30, by the peace stat­ue oppo­site West­bury Gar­dens by the Town Bridge, Brad­ford-On-Avon

 

exhi­bi­tion: ‘Remem­ber­ing the Present’, Sat­ur­days, 12–4pm, Stokes Croft Muse­um, 81–83 Stokes Croft, Bris­tol, http://www.stokescroftmuseum.info

 

Recy­cle Your Sun­days, Sun­days, 10.30am, starts Abbey Church­yard, the reg­u­lar series of socia­ble, easy-paced cycle rides, http://www.bathrys.org.uk/ tel Hazel 01225 469199

 

one year part-time ‘Prac­ti­cal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty’ course, starts Sep­tem­ber 2010, Bris­tol; explor­ing per­ma­cul­ture design, organ­ic hor­ti­cul­ture, wood­land man­age­ment, green build­ing, eco­log­i­cal inter­ac­tions, ener­gy, group dynam­ics, re-local­i­sa­tion, cre­at­ing change, com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment and more; http://www.shiftbristol.org.uk

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Fri­day 10th Sep­tem­ber, Hamp­ton Row Allot­ments, Bath­wick, 6.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

‘Bris­tol Green Doors’: 52 peo­ple will open their homes show­cas­ing ener­gy waste reduc­tion, Sat­ur­day 11th to Sun­day 12th Sep­tem­ber, http://www.bristolgreendoors.org

 

Bris­tol Anar­chist Book­fair, Sat­ur­day 11th Sep­tem­ber, 10.30–6pm, Hamil­ton House, 80 Stokes Croft, Bris­tol; e‑mail bristolanarchistbookfair[at]riseup.net; http://www.bristolanarchistbookfair.org

 

Stop Hink­ley ‘C’ talks and work­shops, Sat­ur­day 11th, 11–5pm, Trin­i­ty Hall, St Sav­iours Avenue, Bridg­wa­ter, http://www.stophinkley.org

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sat­ur­day 11th Sep­tem­ber, Hamp­ton Row Allot­ments, Bath­wick, 2.30pm & 6.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

Stop Hink­ley ‘C’ protest/guided tour, Sun­day 12th Sep­tem­ber, 12 mid­day, Hink­ley Point pow­er sta­tion, near Bridg­wa­ter, http://www.stophinkley.org

 

‘The Atmos­phere Of Heav­en’:  his­to­ry walk, Sun­day 12th Sep­tem­ber, 12 mid­day, walk begins 3 Rod­ney Place, off Cliftin Down Road, Bris­tol, http://www.brh.org.uk/misc/gas.html

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sun­day 12th Sep­tem­ber, Hamp­ton Row Allot­ments, Bath­wick, 2.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

film: ‘Grass’, Sun­day 12th Sep­tem­ber, 7.30pm, Pier­ian Cen­tre, 27 Port­land Square, St Pauls, Bris­tol, £5 entry, http://www.pieriancentre.com

 

Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, Mon­day 13th Sep­tem­ber, 8–9pm, The Bell, Wal­cot Street, e‑mail bathanimalaction[at]yahoo.co.uk; http://www.bathanimalaction.blogspot.com

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Thurs­day 16th to Fri­day 17th Sep­tem­ber, Pease­down St John Com­mu­ni­ty Farm, Dunker­ton Hill, BA2 8PJ, 6.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

Taunton Wom­ens Refuge punk ben­e­fit gig, Thurs­day 16th Sep­tem­ber, 7pm, Road­house, taunton, free entry, feat. Rat Attack, As We Sink!, Fights & Fires, Sub­gen­er­ates & Bats About Bats; http://www.tauntonwomensrefuge.org.uk

 

‘Wild Food in Autumn’ walk & for­ag­ing course, Fri­day 17th to Sun­day 19th Sep­tem­ber, Monk­ton Wyld Court, near Char­mouth, Brid­port, Dorset, £215 residential/£145 non-res­i­den­tial, http://www.monktonwyldcourt.co.uk/

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sat­ur­day 18th Sep­tem­ber, Pease­down St John Com­mu­ni­ty Farm, Dunker­ton Hill, BA2 8PJ, 2.30pm & 6.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

Bris­tol Free Veg­an Food Fair ben­e­fit gig, Sat­ur­day 18th Sep­tem­ber, 7.30pm, the Black Swan pub, 438 Sta­ple­ton Road, Bris­tol, feat Dad­dy Long Bones, Budd, Mol­ly Sam­son, Ren, D.J. Dub Simi­an & The Long Dead Beat, £3/£4 entry

 

Region­al South West Ani­mal Rights Coali­tion meet­ing, Sun­day 19th Sep­tem­ber, 12–5pm, Kebele Com­mu­ni­ty Co-op, 14 Robert­son Road, Eas­t­on, Bris­tol, e‑mail regionalarc[at]googlemail.com

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sun­day 19th Sep­tem­ber, Pease­down St John Com­mu­ni­ty Farm, Dunker­ton Hill, BA2 8PJ, 2.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

Seed Sav­ing work­shop, Sun­day 19th Sep­tem­ber, 2.30–5pm, put on by Bath Organ­ic Group, places are lim­it­ed, tel 01225 319117, £2.50 entry

 

‘The Glob­al Cir­cle of Peace’: mul­ti­me­dia work of art to cel­e­brate U.N. World Peace Day, Tues­day 21st Sep­tem­ber, 6.30–8.00pm, Kingston Parade Gar­dens, http://www.theglobalcircleofpeace.com

 

two-day work­shop: ‘Hold­ing the Vision’, Wednes­day 22nd to Thurs­day 23rd Sep­tem­ber, 10–4.30pm, Bris­tol, £45–75 entry, with Starhawk; e‑mail shiftbristol[at]yahoo.co.uk; http://www.starhawk.org

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Thurs­day 23rd to Fri­day 24th Sep­tem­ber, Bloom­field Allot­ments, Bear Flat, 6.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

‘An Old Home Fit for the Future’: vis­it to vic­to­ri­an eco-effi­cient house, Fri­day 24th Sep­tem­ber, 3–7pm, 16 Pul­teney Gar­dens, Wid­combe, Bath, BA2 4HG,  http://www.transitionbath.org/old-home-fit-for-the-future

 

Crit­i­cal Mass Bike Ride, Sat­ur­day 25th Sep­tem­ber, meet 1pm, Kingsmead Square, http://www.bathcyclingcampaign.org.uk

 

‘An Old Home Fit for the Future’: vis­it to vic­to­ri­an eco-effi­cient house, Fri­day 25th to Sun­day 26th Sep­tem­ber, 11–6pm, 16 Pul­teney Gar­dens, Wid­combe, Bath, BA2 4HG,  http://www.transitionbath.org/old-home-fit-for-the-future

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sat­ur­day 25th Sep­tem­ber, Bloom­field Allot­ments, Bear Flat, 2.30pm & 6.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

Bath Ani­mal Action info stall, Sun­day 26th Sep­tem­ber, 2–4pm, Stall Street, e‑mail bathanimalaction[at]yahoo.co.uk; http:///www.bathanimalaction.blogsppot.com

 

Kil­ter the­atre: ‘Roots: Replant­ed’ (per­for­mance about food secu­ri­ty issues), Sun­day 26th Sep­tem­ber, Bloom­field Allot­ments, Bear Flat, 2.30pm, £9 (£7 con­ces­sions), tel 01225 386777 to book, http://www.kiltertheatre.org

 

Tran­si­tion Bath Social, Mon­day 27th Sep­tem­ber, 7.15pm, the Love Lounge/ back room of the Bell, Wal­cot Street; bring food to share; http://www.transitionbath.org

 

Bath Cycling Cam­paign meet­ing, Mon­day 27th Sep­tem­ber, 7.30pm, the Ris­ing Sun, Grove Street, http://www.bathcyclingcampaign.org.uk

 

Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs meet­ing, Mon­day 27th Sep­tem­ber, 8–9pm, The Bell, tel Justin 07854 062336

 

Bath Social­ist Forum meet­ing, Mon­day 27th Sep­tem­ber, 8pm, upstairs St James Wine Vaults, pre­sent­ed by Ken Loach

 

speak­ers & dis­cus­sion: ‘Cli­mate Jus­tice: Think Glob­al, Act Local’, Tues­day 28th Sep­tem­ber, 7–9pm, Uni­tar­i­an Meet­ing House, Brunswick Square, Bris­tol; F.F.I. e‑mail Katharine[at]wdm.org.uk / tel Katharine 020 7820 4900; http://groups.wdm.org.uk/bristol

 

No Bor­ders Camp Bel­gium, Wednes­day 29th Sep­tem­ber to Sun­day 3rd Octo­ber, Brus­sels, http://www.noborderbxl.eu.org/?lang=en

 

‘Low Car­bon Bath Con­sul­ta­tion’: Thurs­day 30th Sep­tem­ber, 6.30–8.30pm, Build­ing of Bath Col­lec­tion, The Count­ess of Huntington’s Chapel, The Vine­yards, Paragon, Bath, for a book­ing, e‑mail gkillick[at]bptrust.org.uk, or ring 01225 338727

 

Nation­al March for Farmed Ani­mals, Sat­ur­day 2nd Octo­ber, 12pm start, Cavendish Square, Lon­don

 

anti-Tory demon­stra­tion, Sun­day 3rd Octo­ber,  Tory Par­ty Con­fer­ence, Birm­ing­ham more details tbc

 

Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, Thurs­day 7th Octo­ber, 7.30–9pm, down­stairs at the Hob­gob­lin, St James Parade, http://ww.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com

 

Legal fees ben­e­fit punk gig: ‘SUBVERT 2010 — A Fes­ti­val Of Resis­tance’, Fri­day 8th to Sun­day 10th Octo­ber, Bris­tol, feat Hel­lkrush­er, Rui­dosa Immu­ni­di­cia, War All The Time, Ignosy, The Wankys, The Extin­guish­ers & Bul­letrid­den, as well as veg­an cafés/ stalls/ films/ work­shops & pic­nic; more details tbc

 

Bath Green Drinks, Wednes­day 13th Octo­ber, 8pm, the Ris­ing Sun, Grove Street

 

Region­al day of action against the cuts, Sat­ur­day 23rd Octo­ber

 

Lon­don Anar­chist Book­fair, Sat­ur­day 23rd Octo­ber, 10am-7pm, Queen Mary’s, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don, Mile End Road, Lon­don, http://www.anarchistbookfair.org.uk

 

Bris­tol Free Veg­an Food Fair, Sat­ur­day 30th Octo­ber, 12–5pm, Broad­mead Bap­tist Church, Union Street, Bris­tol, BS1 3HY, http://www.bristolanimalrights.org.uk/veganfoodfair

 

Coali­tion of the Resis­tance Con­fer­ence, Sat­ur­day 27th Novem­ber, Lon­don, more details tbc

 

Camp for Cli­mate Action Aus­tralia, Wednes­day 1st to Sun­day 5th Decem­ber, Bayswa­ter Pow­er Sta­tion, http://www.climatecamp.org.au

 

Cli­mate Camp Aotearoa, Thurs­day 16th to Tues­day 21st Decem­ber,  Welling­ton New Zealand, http://www.climatecamp.org.nz/node/51

 

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‘Fat­cat Boss­es Get The Cream’ Shock­er!

Insult has been added to injury once again, as a G.M.B. union sur­vey scru­ti­nised 151 coun­cil and met­ro­pol­i­tan accounts and dis­cov­ered how 129 chief execs are paid more than £150,000 a year. It went on to note how two earned more than £300,000, and 76 earned between £200,000 and £300,000. In the south­west, B.&N.E.S. Coun­cil head hon­cho John Everitt net­ted a com­fy £211,859 this year, includ­ing pen­sion con­tri­bu­tions and expens­es; though his rivals at Corn­wall Coun­ty and Bris­tol City did bet­ter. Life’s hard, eh?

And this is at a time when coun­cils claim to be hard up, slash­ing jobs, ser­vices, and hand­ing out pay freezes like they were sweets to kids. Stand­ing there shiv­er­ing in the play­ground, in their plas­tic mac. Local gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Bob Neill makes an inter­est­ing point: “We need to stamp out a cul­ture of dupli­ca­tion, which is why, in many cas­es, coun­cils should be look­ing towards shar­ing chief exec­u­tives.” But actu­al­ly stamp­ing on the guy seems a bit harsh; instead of cut­ting the 300 out of 7,000 coun­cil jobs, sure­ly it would make more sense to cut just one… After all, the dole queue is nice this time of year, John.

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Grub Street Mee­ja

Pity the shit-upon peo­ple of Bath, whose local lose-papers, the Bath Com­ic and the West­ern Dai­ly Piss, are two of the apolo­gies for jour­nal­ism in the city.

Time was when the Com­ic would give reg­u­lar and gen­er­ous cov­er­age to anti-war, anti-coun­cil and anti-devel­op­er stunts, but since the lat­est edi­tor took over, it looks as if any­thing like­ly to rock the boat gets packed off on an extend­ed Hol­l­i­day. The big trou­ble with the Com­ic is that it has its head well and tru­ly up the rec­tums of cor­po­rate crooks and shys­ters like B.&N.E.S., Bath Rug­by, First­Bus, Crest Nichol­son (West­ern River­side), Mor­ley Fund Man­age­ment (South­gate), and oth­ers. Proof that the Com­ic had aban­doned any pre­tence of seri­ous news report­ing and had achieved full Beano sta­tus, came with its hilar­i­ous but read­er­ship-insult­ing ‘Attack of the giant seag­ulls’ front-page last month.

The Piss, part of the same bar­rel-scrap­ing North­cliffe out­fit should, after the appoint­ment of ITS lat­est, yes-man edi­tor, be renamed the West­ern Mil­i­tary Gazette or West­ern Dai­ly War, as all this cur­rent bunch of r‑slickers do is pump out the same tired Cameron-lov­ing war­mon­ger­ing pro­pa­gan­da dri­v­el as their sta­ble­mate the Dai­ly Fail.

All the Com­ic and Piss are good for is wip­ing your arse on; the only fault there is that the print comes off on your bum.

The glossies are no bet­ter. Bath Life, a crim­i­nal waste of newsprint, is stuffed full of estate agent waf­fle and oth­er adver­tis­ing, and page after page of ‘Invi­ta­tion Only’ bash­es fea­tur­ing dozens of Bath Z‑z-z lis­ters grin­ning gorm­less­ly for the cam­eras in a pre­ten­tious par­o­dy of Coun­try Life’s soci­ety columns. Pub­lish­ers guilty of this rub­bish are Media Clash, the same bunch of brown-nosers who churn out the coun­cil’s spin-rag ‘Con­nect’. Some­one should tell them that con­nect­ing is not enough; they should try switch­ing on as well.

As for what lit­tle of inter­est the free­bies Bath Mag­a­zine and Folio con­tain, you’d be bet­ter off buy­ing Venue, which does arts and alter­na­tive far bet­ter. It is pub­lished by the Piss/Comic group, but, hey, nobody’s per­fect!

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If I Had A Ham­mer…

Fol­low­ing the suc­cess­ful acquit­tal of the nine ‘Decom­mis­sion­er’ activists who smashed up Brighton-based bomb fac­to­ry E.D.O./I.T.T. (see B.B. #31), the Smash E.D.O. cam­paign is call­ing for one last shove to close the fac­to­ry all togeth­er. For six years, the com­pa­ny, which sup­plies bomb com­po­nents to Israel, Afghanistan, the U.S.A. and any­one else who has enough cash, has been under relent­less assault from activists, who have block­ad­ed, protest­ed, smashed and exposed the com­pa­ny’s dodgy deal­ings time and time again. The demo has been called for Wednes­day 13th Octo­ber, and promis­es to be a lit­tle on the tasty side, and as the name ‘I.T.T.‘s Ham­mer­time’ sug­gests, peo­ple may have more than wav­ing plac­ards in mind! Peo­ple have been request­ed to get down and stay at the con­ver­gence space from the night before, but also to help fli­er for the event in their home towns before­hand. For more infor­ma­tion on the cam­paign, check out http://www.smashedo.org.uk, or drop them an e‑mail at smashedo[at]riseup.net.

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Cru­el­ty-Free: You Can’t Say Fayr­er Than That

The sec­ond annu­al Bath Veg­an Fayre 2010 filled a hole on Sat­ur­day 4th Sep­tem­ber, with over 150 pass­ing through the doors. Held at Man­vers Street Bap­tist Church in the cen­tre, free of entry fee and cru­el­ty, the event last­ed from 12 til 4pm. Oth­er­wise, the day stuck to much the same recipe as the pre­vi­ous year: with a tan­ta­liz­ing spread of steam­ing soups, nib­bles, cakes, sweets and savouries – some nut-free, some wheat-free, all meat and dairy-free – fill­ing the bowls and bel­lies of queues of hun­gry fayre-goers. The tea and fruit juices flowed like nev­er before, whilst the tables were filled with relaxed con­ver­sa­tion and ingest­ed edu­ca­tion. As well as the over-bur­dened info tables (with every­thing from nutri­tion, envi­ron­men­tal ethics, recipes, ani­mal rights, med­ical sci­ence and updates for cam­paigns against Noah’s Ark Zoo, hunts, foie gras out­lets and ani­mal labs), free sam­ples table, read­ing cor­ner and chil­dren’s area, there was also a prize raf­fle. Pun­ters includ­ed the usu­al sus­pects of dread­ied and alter­na­tive veg­gie types on the make for free pick­ings, for starters, but also a healthy flow of the unini­ti­at­ed from the street.

By the end of the day, many a hap­py scav­enger got their just desserts, and were heard utter­ing the immor­tal words: “I had no idea veg­an food could taste this good!” Hey, even veg­gies need more than a diet of inde­scrib­able slop every now and again. Next up is the Bris­tol Free Veg­an Fair at Broad­mead Bap­tist Church on Sat­ur­day 30th Octo­ber, from 12 til 5pm, and their ben­e­fit gig at the Black Swan on Sta­ple­ton Road, on the 18th of this month.

http://bathanimalaction.blogspot.com/p/today-uk-is-home-to-around-300000.html
http://www.vegansociety.com/home.php
http://www.bristolanimalrights.org.uk/

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Cycle-logy 101

Ped­al­phile activists group Bicy­col­o­gy will be crank­ing things up a gear in Bris­tol next week­end, with a trio of car-free fun days for all the fam­i­ly. On Sat­ur­day 18th Sep­tem­ber, they’ll be ‘Doing it with­out a car’ at Mina Park in St Werburgh’s; go sam­ple their col­lec­tion of bike acces­sories, book your ride in with the women bike mechan­ics for free advice and safe­ty checks, or get down to some D.I.Y. cre­ative ses­sions — turn tyres into bike belts, bike chains into bracelets or cob­ble your­self togeth­er a last minute carnie cos­tume. All this just in time for the next day’s ‘Bris­tol Bike Car­ni­val’ — start­ing in the city cen­tre at 12 mid­day, expect day­g­lo, dinosaur skele­ton pup­pets and two-wheeled gonzo weird­ness. Then, after a day’s rest, Tues­day will be ‘Food is our Fuel — Cycle for your Sup­per!’ An explo­ration of mod­ern agri­cul­ture, its prob­lems and its solu­tions, this three-hour long gen­tle cycle starts at 6pm out­side Tesco Metro in Broad­mead, and heads out of the city for black­ber­ry and wild food pick­ing – hot food and drinks will be pro­vid­ed on dona­tion. Bring your bike, lights, ruck­sack or pan­nier, and accom­pa­nied chil­dren.

And in relat­ed Bath news, a bike refurbishment/homelessness fund-rais­ing project has recent­ly re-opened, called ‘ReCY­CLEd’, at 35 Corn Street. E‑mail bikes[at]julianhouse.org.uk, for details.

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Toys Tory

While the resis­tance against the Con-Dem cuts is shap­ing up nice­ly, the same can­not be said for the cut-crazy coali­tion who have been hit in recent weeks by a string of embar­rass­ing fallings-out. Tories attack­ing Tories, Tories attack­ing Lib-Dems and Lib-Dems attack­ing both each oth­er and the Tories (although we don’t think any­one has noticed or cared). The first of the cracks began to show when odi­ous Osborne informed the press that nuke pro­gramme Tri­dent would have to be fund­ed by the defence bud­get, rather than the tra­di­tion­al fun­ders, the Trea­sury. It turns out Osborne had let every one know his plans – except the Min­is­ter for Defence, Liam Fox. This news came to the delight of T.V. jour­nal­ists as Fox brand­ed the propo­si­tion “ridicu­lous”, assert­ing that after a 20% bud­get cut, there was no way the M.o.D. could pay for Tri­dent. Osborne shot him down on live T.V. as a lit­tle bick­er­ing match erupt­ed before the very eyes of bor­der­line orgas­mic tel­ly journos. The spat has yet to be resolved.

This was quick­ly fol­lowed by bout #2, fea­tur­ing High­er Edu­ca­tion Min­is­ter David Wil­letts in the blue cor­ner vs. Devey boy him­self in the, umm­mm, oth­er blue cor­ner. This time the argu­ment was over milk. Now, some of you may remem­ber that one of Thatch­er’s less pop­u­lar deci­sions was the removal of free milk from schools; so what has Wil­letts done? In the image of the Tory God­moth­er, Wil­letts proud­ly told the assem­bled press pack that under-fives no longer deserved their free milk, and that it was to be cut. After a rapid apol­o­gy at the foot of this Thatch­er shrine, Cameron popped his head out of the door of Down­ing Street to con­tra­dict his edu­ca­tion min­is­ter, prompt­ing oppo­si­tion M.P.s to notice that “This is a coali­tion in chaos, mak­ing pol­i­cy on the hoof. The Gov­ern­ment does­n’t seem to have a clue.” As if Cameron did­n’t have enough trou­ble keep­ing his own house in order, the Lib-Dems have also start­ed hav­ing a pop, with many Lib-Dem M.P.s (in fact almost all of them that don’t have a cab­i­net seat) promis­ing a rebel­lion over Con-Dem V.A.T. increase plans, with promi­nent Lib-Dem­mers such as Charles ‘5 years on the wag­on’ Kennedy and Simon Hugh­es pub­licly crit­i­cis­ing Con-Dem pol­i­cy. To add anoth­er dol­lop of the stinky stuff on the smoul­der­ing feck pile that is the coali­tion, Clegg has crawled out of David’s cosy ori­fice to take the reigns while the Camerons sun them­selves. Like a naughty school­boy, Clegg took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­tra­dict key Con-Dem poli­cies relat­ing to immi­gra­tion, Tri­dent and hous­ing ben­e­fits, some­thing that he has been warned about in the past. Looks like some young upstart will be get­ting an Eton-style bot­ty-thrash­ing when dad­dy Cameron rolls back into town!

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The Filth And The Fur­ry

As men­tioned back in B.B. #30, the U.K. Gov­ern­ment has per­formed a spec­tac­u­lar U‑turn on its pol­i­cy regard­ing bovine tuber­cu­lo­sis, and has cho­sen to go ahead with a nation-wide bad­ger cull. Last week, Envi­ron­ment Sec­re­tary Car­o­line Spel­man approved the cull for T.B. hotspots, hand­ing the license to kill over to indi­vid­ual farm­ers’ dis­cre­tions.  These wannabe 007’s of the Nation­al Farm­ers Union lob­by will need to prove that a cull is nec­es­sary before being allowed to kill and/or vac­ci­nate (shoot and gas first, a spoon­ful of med­i­cine lat­er?) any­thing black and white in a 50 square mile zone; what sort of proof required is yet to be dis­closed, but a sham of a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion is expect­ed lat­er this month. At least this might stop farm­ers from rolling gunned down bad­gers onto high­ways in the mid­dle of the night, as imi­ta­tion road­kill.

The Welsh Assem­bly were pushed into a U‑turn of their own, of sorts, back in July, when the Bad­ger Trust and oth­er ani­mal ‘wel­fare’ activists won their legal chal­lenge on a tech­ni­cal­i­ty, push­ing kill-crazy plans back for months. These pro-culling deci­sions fly in the face of the ten-year Inde­pen­dent Sci­en­tif­ic Study Group on Cat­tle T.B., who con­clud­ed in 2007 that culling could­n’t mean­ing­ful­ly con­trol the dis­ease, and that car­ri­er bad­gers would dis­perse the dis­ease over a wider area. This posi­tion has been loose­ly cor­rob­o­rat­ed by Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don and the Zoo­log­i­cal Soci­ety of Lon­don. But screw all that, the Con-Dems say – let’s shoot us some varmints! Yee­haw! In a “care­ful­ly man­aged” and “sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-led” man­ner, of course.

As ever, ani­mal right­sies are much-need­ed to save our fur­ry friends – check out http://www.badger-killers.co.uk, or con­tact bathanimalaction[at]yahoo.co.uk for ideas.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/7982848/Farmers-to-be-handed-powe
rs-to-cull-badgers.html
http://www.bathanimalaction.blogspot.com

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First Class News!

In a heart­en­ing bit of news just in, a pub­lic sur­vey has found that sev­en out of every eight peo­ple oppose the pri­vati­sa­tion of the postal ser­vice (one of the Tories’ key poli­cies) and would pre­fer it to be kept pub­lic. Bil­ly Hayes, head of the posties’ union said “This poll reaf­firms what we already knew — the British pub­lic do not want their postal ser­vices sold off. The union and the com­pa­ny have worked hard to agree a ful­ly fund­ed mod­erni­sa­tion plan and that work needs sup­port from the Gov­ern­ment.” How­ev­er, the will of the pub­lic con­tra­dicts Tory plans to put a bill before Par­lia­ment demand­ing the pri­vati­sa­tion of the ser­vice. Will this be anoth­er case of the Tories ignor­ing the opin­ions of the aver­age per­son and try­ing to plough ahead with their agen­da of cuts and pri­va­ti­za­tion? We sus­pect so, so if you like your postal ser­vice pub­lic, lets get ready to fight for it!

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And now, to the dis­claimer: as any­one is free to con­tribute, the opin­ions expressed in each arti­cle are not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflec­tive of all con­trib­u­tors. Nat­u­ral­ly, any right-wing or cor­po­rate bull­shit will be binned and spat upon. Need­less to say, the opin­ions of the author of this dis­claimer do not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect the opin­ions of any oth­er con­trib­u­tor.

Crude Awakening info update

12 Sept 2010

THE CRUDE AWAKENING MASS OUTREACH EMAIL

A mass action to switch off oil

Sat­ur­day, 16 Octo­ber 2010, Cen­tral Lon­don

12 Sept 2010

THE CRUDE AWAKENING MASS OUTREACH EMAIL

A mass action to switch off oil

Sat­ur­day, 16 Octo­ber 2010, Cen­tral Lon­don

Have you been think­ing it’s about time a whole load of peo­ple got togeth­er to take mass action against oil in cen­tral Lon­don? We thought so. And so it fol­lowed that the Crude Awak­en­ing was launched. The mobi­liza­tion is now in full swing and every­one is invit­ed to help pub­li­cize and pre­pare. There is loads to do….please have a read through this email and get involved!

The email is in three parts:

Upcom­ing events and how to get involved
Fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions
The call out — please copy and paste and help this get all over the Inter­net!

1. How to get involved and build up events you are all invit­ed to.

Events already planned are list­ed bel­low:

In Lon­don……

17th Sep­tem­ber, net­work­ing meet­ing at 6pm just inside the entrance to the Brunei Gallery at SOAS, a meet­ing for peo­ple inter­est­ed in help­ing to do out­reach in the Lon­don area the Cli­mate Camp out­reach group are meet­ing.

There is going to be a Lon­don coor­di­nat­ing and plan­ning meet­ing for the Crude Awak­en­ing very soon, and the details will be announced short­ly.

Thurs­day 23rd Sep­tem­ber at 7.30pm, Cli­mate Action Film Night, Lon­don Action Resource Cen­tre, Whitechapel (for address see www.londonarc.org)

An evening of films and dis­cus­sion about cli­mate activism and the oil indus­try, host­ed by Lon­don Ris­ing Tide.

A screen­ing of two short films of recent actions against BP and Shell by Ris­ing Tide and friends, plus Petrop­o­lis, a visu­al­ly stun­ning and dis­turb­ing doc­u­men­tary about the Cana­di­an Tar Sands. Fol­lowed by a brain­storm­ing ses­sion on tak­ing direct action against the oil indus­try in Lon­don — includ­ing all the lat­est info on the Crude Awak­en­ing, an oily mass action hap­pen­ing on Sat­ur­day 16th Octo­ber. For any­one who believes in cli­mate jus­tice and wants to help make it hap­pen; any­one hacked off with the greed and irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty of oil giants like BP; any­one back from the Cli­mate Camp and look­ing to get involved local­ly… every­one welcome.…and there’ll be cake!

The Crude Awak­en­ing Lon­don Rab­ble Rouser – a mass out­door team game, warm­ing us up for the big day– date, place and time to be announced.

Sat­ur­day 2nd Octo­ber. MOLASAPULTPARTY FUNDRAISER .… Venue TBC, more details to fol­low short­ly

Sat­ur­day the 2nd and Sun­day the 3rd Octo­ber Stilt mak­ing work­shop for the stilt block on the mass action!.…
This time we’re think­ing big, we’re think­ing high, we’re think­ing tall.… and we’re going as a Stilt Bloc.

Yep, thats right! On stilts!

So in order for this to hap­pen we’re hav­ing a skill share week­end in Lon­don to build stilts and learn how to walk on them. The week­end is Sat 2nd and Sun 3rd Octo­ber, 10am to 6pm.

And even if you don’t want to be up high, each stilt walk­er will need a bud­dy stay­ing on the ground so there’s a place for every­one, young and old, big or small, high or low.….. we need you at this week­end too!!!

Its all free and lunch is includ­ed.…

We need RSVPs so we know num­bers. Email: stilt.bloc@gmail.com

Oh and its MEXICAN DAY OF THE DEAD theme.….

In Man­ches­ter….

Sat 9th Oct — Mass Action train­ing

Tue 12th Oct — Pub­licly announced rouser for CJA inter­na­tion­al day of action

Crude Awak­en­ing mobil­i­sa­tion

We hope that there will be loads more to fol­low but this is what is lined up so far. If you are plan­ning a build up event let us know so we can adver­tise it please.

There is a huge amount to do to mobi­lize quick­ly for an event this big. Maybe you could organ­ise a film show­ing or talk (we can prob­a­bly send a speak­er if you email us). You could put on an affin­i­ty group or action train­ing work­shop, or host a fundrais­er. You could book a coach and fill it. You could run a work­shop so peo­ple can build prac­ti­cal stuff , for exam­ple a load of dis­pos­able bikes to bring along (email us to let us know if you do make lots of use­ful stuff). You could have a stall and hand out fly­ers at your fresh­ers fair (again email for mate­ri­als). You could make a sten­cil and graf­fi­ti adver­tise for it all across your city/ region. Unless every­one gets involved there is a real dan­ger we won’t get the num­bers we need.
The Crude Awak­en­ing is now on crab­grass! Join it, join a work­ing group and lets get plan­ning! https://we.riseup.net/thecrudeawakening (crab­grass is a lit­tle bit like face­book for activists and is a way of organ­is­ing on line). And sign up for more infor­ma­tion by email and text alerts on the web­site. www.crudeawakening.org.uk. Our face­book page is a lit­tle slow to get off the ground but it will soon be buzzing.

Please also raise The Crude Awak­en­ing as an agen­da point at the next organ­is­ing meet­ing at your Social Centre/ Friends of the Earth Group/ Union/ Cli­mate Camp neighbourhood/ Hous­ing Coop etc. Get peo­ple talk­ing and excit­ed and com­mit­ted to the idea that they are going! If you are not already in a group or affin­i­ty group you are of course still total­ly wel­come. You will prob­a­bly want to make con­tact with some like mind­ed folk to talk things through and make some plans before the big day. For exam­ple you could go to climatecamp.org.uk or risingtide.org.uk and find your local active group, or email us and we can try to sign­post you on. At the least try to get a cou­ple of mates to come with you, so that you have some sup­port as a group of friends (known by activists as an affin­i­ty group).

2. Fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions

Q. Nei­ther the web­site nor the fly­er gives much info. What is going on?

A. As you have prob­a­bly twigged there is also a delib­er­ate sense of mys­tery around the action. So often with recent mass actions we have said exact­ly where we are going to go, and the police have had as much time to pre­pare as us, mak­ing things much more dif­fi­cult for peo­ple who want to be involved in mass and effec­tive direct action . With this project we are exper­i­ment­ing a lit­tle bit. The 10 tar­gets are left unspec­i­fied, giv­ing the action more chance of being suc­cess­ful. But at the same time we can open­ly adver­tise that we all need to be in Cen­tral Lon­don so we can get loads of peo­ple togeth­er at the same place at the same time for the mass action. And those peo­ple need to be ready to take action and to have fun. This is not a march and it’s not a camp. This is an action that needs prepa­ra­tion and we can all be involved in most of that preparation….although the tar­gets will be a sur­prise until much lat­er.

We can’t be sure that this mix of secret and pub­lic plan­ning will work, but we can give it a go, have some fun and maybe make some progress…..but maybe, just maybe we have got it total­ly nailed and this will be the best mass action in Lon­don ever! If you don’t show up there it will be dif­fi­cult for you to know. Our advice is don’t miss it 😉

Q. So what do I need to do to pre­pare?

A. Peo­ple need to be ready to move, and to stand their ground. Don’t bring with you any­thing that you can’t eas­i­ly walk with or get on a tube with. But do bring with you stuff that will help you and your affin­i­ty group hold a space in what ever way you feel you want to. Whether you want to bring arm­tubes, dis­pos­able bikes or a huge slow mov­ing met­al and wood­en tow­er with a papi­er-mâché rhi­no head (that can fit on and off a tube!?); diver­si­ty of tac­tics and affin­i­ty group plan­ning are key to this work­ing. Peo­ple can also pre­pare stuff to make this action look beau­ti­ful; pup­pets, masks, ban­ners, a portable molasses fondue……you get the idea.

Q. Why Oil?

A. For a whole host of rea­sons. Here are just a few…..
Because oil com­pa­nies search for new oil reserves to make them­selves rich­er while our cli­mate spins into cri­sis.
Because the UK gov­ern­ment starts wars for oil.
Because of human rights abus­es and mur­der in West Africa.
Because of the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon spill.
Because of the destruc­tion of wilder­ness in the Arc­tic and the coast of Rosport in Ire­land.
Because of UK pub­lic mon­ey being used by bailed out banks to fund new oil projects.
Because Lon­don is brim­ming with oil mon­ey, oil spon­sor­ship and oil com­pa­nies.
Because glob­al ener­gy resources are the peo­ples com­mons.
Because oil com­pa­nies and the filthy rich peo­ple who prof­it from them have no place in a sus­tain­able future.
Because Copen­hagen failed and now it’s down to us.
Because oil has had it’s day and it’s time we pulled the plug.

Hope that that made things a lit­tle clear­er. And more spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion will be sent out soon. If you are still strug­gling with the idea, it is a bit like the Great Cli­mate Swoop of 2009, except where we are going is kept secret. Remem­ber, you are being asked to come and move around Lon­don, so stay mobile, be cre­ative, be prepat­ed and be ready to stand your ground. So talk in your affin­i­ty group about the ways in which you are going to be able to hold a space and equip­ment and mate­ri­als that you might want to bring along to help you. The action is open, and will be shaped by the peo­ple who are there. Only the tar­gets and how we are get­ting to them are secret.

3. The call out – please copy and paste and help get this all over the Inter­net!

THE CRUDE AWAKENING

A mass action to switch off oil

Sat­ur­day, 16 Octo­ber 2010, Cen­tral Lon­don

Floods in Pak­istan, drought in Rus­sia, huge glac­i­ers break­ing up in Green­land…

Our cli­mate sys­tem is rapid­ly slid­ing into cri­sis, as oil com­pa­nies destroy peo­ple’s lives and the envi­ron­ment to keep suck­ing up their prof­its.

Oil sat­u­rates every aspect of our lives. Oil prof­its lubri­cate the finan­cial mar­kets and its spon­sor­ship clings like a bad smell to our cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions. It flows through pipelines to the pumps, air­ports and fac­to­ries of our cities.

The fail­ure of the UN COP15 process showed us – if there was ever any doubt – that gov­ern­ment and indus­try can’t tack­le cli­mate change. It’s up to us and it’s time to up the ante.

As a move­ment, our actions against coal and avi­a­tion have made a real dif­fer­ence. Now oil’s time is up.

Togeth­er, on Octo­ber 16, let’s give the oil indus­try a Crude Awak­en­ing.

Meet in cen­tral Lon­don. Be ready to move. Be ready to stay and stand your ground.

Be cre­ative. Be pre­pared. Be there.

Find out more, get involved and sign up for text alerts at www.crudeawakening.org.uk
Face­book: http://bit.ly/c6S0kg
Twit­ter: @crudeawake

Part of the CJA glob­al week of action for cli­mate jus­tice
Sup­port­ed by: Space Hijack­ers, Cli­mate Camp, Plane Stu­pid, Ris­ing Tide, Lib­er­ate Tate, Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Insur­rec­tionary Imag­i­na­tion, UK Tar Sands Net­work

Hope to see you on the streets,
Crude Awak­en­ing
crudeawakening.org.uk

Two emails re US evidence Cherney Bari bomb

Dar­ryl Cher­ney and Judi Bari were both mem­bers of the IWW at the time.

http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_16025546

SAN FRANCISCO — The sur­vivor of an Oak­land car bomb­ing reopened a 20-year-old case Wednes­day when he asked a fed­er­al judge to bar the FBI from destroy­ing bomb frag­ments he argued could con­tain evi­dence.

Dar­ryl Cher­ney and Judi Bari were both mem­bers of the IWW at the time.

http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_16025546

SAN FRANCISCO — The sur­vivor of an Oak­land car bomb­ing reopened a 20-year-old case Wednes­day when he asked a fed­er­al judge to bar the FBI from destroy­ing bomb frag­ments he argued could con­tain evi­dence.

Author­i­ties this week said they exhaust­ed all leads and noti­fied the lawyers that evi­dence from the bomb­ing would be destroyed. Judge James Larsen ordered the FBI to pre­serve the evi­dence until the court decides how to resolve the issue.

The Earth First activist, Dar­ryl Cher­ney, claimed the FBI still has two sets of bomb rem­nants that could con­tain DNA evi­dence, as well as a hand-let­tered sign and duct tape. The evi­dence could lead author­i­ties to the iden­ti­ty of the per­son who plant­ed a bomb in Cher­ney’s car, which explod­ed in Oak­land two decades ago.

Lawyers for Cher­ney filed the motion Wednes­day before U.S. Dis­trict Judge James Larsen.

Cher­ney won a $4.4 mil­lion law­suit against the FBI and Oak­land police for civ­il rights vio­la­tions com­mit­ted against him and fel­low Earth First orga­niz­er Judi Bari relat­ed to the bomb­ing.

The two were on their way to a Save the Red­woods Fes­ti­val in San­ta Cruz when the bomb explod­ed May 24, 1990.

The blast ripped through the floor­board, seri­ous­ly injur­ing Bari. Cher­ney suf­fered minor injuries.

Oak­land police and the FBI claimed the cou­ple made the bomb. They said the bomb explod­ed acci­den­tal­ly and arrest­ed Cher­ney and Bari on felony explo­sive charges. The FBI lat­er admit­ted the bomb was not in the back seat as agents pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed but that it was placed under the dri­ver’s seat, accord­ing to a KGO Radio report.

Also, the nails in the bomb did not match oth­ers found in oth­er parts of the car.

The charges against Bari and Cher­ney were lat­er dropped by the Alame­da Coun­ty dis­trict attor­ney, who cit­ed insuf­fi­cient evi­dence to pro­ceed fur­ther. Bari died of can­cer in 1997.

Both charged that the FBI and Oak­land police nev­er con­duct­ed a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion, tar­get­ing only Bari and Cher­ney as sus­pects. A fed­er­al jury award­ed $4.4 mil­lion to Cher­ney and Bar­i’s estate in 2002. Jury mem­bers said their civ­il rights were vio­lat­ed when the FBI and Oak­land police arrest­ed them and ille­gal­ly searched their homes.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/08/BANR1FAM6L.DTL

(09–08) 16:54 PDT SAN FRANCISCO — It’s an infa­mous case that nev­er seems to go away, even after mil­lions of dol­lars have been paid out in civ­il set­tle­ments and police say the trail has gone cold.

The case is the 1990 bomb­ing in Oak­land of Earth First envi­ron­men­tal activists Judi Bari and Dar­ryl Cher­ney, who were near­ly killed when a nail-stud­ded explo­sive device blew up in their car.

Nobody was ever charged with the attack, and now, two decades lat­er, the FBI wants to destroy the last bits of evi­dence it has been stor­ing ever since the inves­ti­ga­tion drib­bled dry — rem­nants of the bomb and one like it that blew up in a North Bay town a few days ear­li­er.

Not so fast, says Cher­ney, 54, who has nev­er giv­en up try­ing to solve the case him­self.

Say­ing in court briefs that the evi­dence “pro­vides the last best hope for learn­ing who bombed Judi Bari,” Cher­ney and his lawyers were in fed­er­al court Wednes­day in San Fran­cis­co to try to force the FBI to turn the evi­dence over to them so they can run DNA and oth­er tests on it.

They man­aged to get U.S. Mag­is­trate Judge James Lar­son to order the evi­dence pre­served for 30 days while he decides its fate, but the judge indi­cat­ed the clock is tick­ing fast — and not in Cher­ney’s favor.
Main­tain­ing inter­est

“Frankly, I think it would behoove your side to talk to some­one in the attor­ney gen­er­al’s office to see if they can get inter­est­ed in this,” Lar­son told Cher­ney’s attor­ney, Den­nis Cun­ning­ham, refer­ring to the U.S. attor­ney gen­er­al’s office.

The idea would be for fed­er­al author­i­ties — or any­one involved in inves­ti­gat­ing the bomb­ing two decades ago — to reopen the case, or at least indi­cate enough inter­est to want to hang on to the FBI’s evi­dence.

Fail­ing that, the judge seemed inclined to let the agency go ahead and destroy the pieces of the explo­sives. He did say, how­ev­er, that he would do more research and con­sult with those who pre­vi­ous­ly dealt with the issue in court before he makes his deci­sion.
‘Hard to accept’

That gave Cher­ney’s back­ers hope, and they said Wednes­day they would be check­ing with inves­ti­ga­tors and pros­e­cu­tors to see if any­one wants to take pos­ses­sion of the bomb bits.

“There’s no rea­son they can’t keep these two box­es,” Cun­ning­ham said. “It’s hard to accept that these things have no more use when the bomber or bombers have nev­er been found.”

At issue are the rem­nants of the bomb that blew up in Bar­i’s car on May 24, 1990, on Park Boule­vard, and of a sim­i­lar device that par­tial­ly explod­ed in Cloverdale on May 9. The Cloverdale bomb explod­ed at the Louisiana-Pacif­ic Corp. mill, caus­ing min­i­mal dam­age, and was accom­pa­nied by a card­board sign read­ing, “LP screws mill work­ers.”

Both bombs are pre­sumed to have been made by the same per­son — some­one who sent a let­ter to the San­ta Rosa Press Demo­c­rat, sign­ing it as “the Lord’s Avenger” and giv­ing details that law enforce­ment said only the bomber would know. The evi­dence is being kept in two box­es in an FBI stor­age room in San Fran­cis­co.
Fin­ger­prints sought

“We need to be able to look at these bomb parts, do DNA test­ing on them, use them to try to find out who bombed us,” Cher­ney, who lives in Gar­berville (Hum­boldt Coun­ty), said after the hear­ing. By try­ing to destroy the parts, he said, “the FBI is run­ning cov­er for the bomber.”

He said he also wants copies of two fin­ger­prints lift­ed from evi­dence in the case that inves­ti­ga­tors said nev­er yield­ed a sol­id lead.

The like­li­hood that anoth­er agency will want to take over the evi­dence or reopen the case seems slim. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Oak­land Police Depart­ment and FBI said they con­sid­er the case closed, as did Assis­tant U.S. Attor­ney Joseph Sher when he argued on the FBI’s behalf Wednes­day in court.

“We see no rea­son for this evi­dence to be retained,” Sher said after the hear­ing. “The inves­ti­ga­tion is done.”

The FBI, he added, does­n’t rou­tine­ly hand over evi­dence to pri­vate cit­i­zens, espe­cial­ly not bombs.

Cher­ney and Bari were injured when the bomb, locat­ed on the floor behind the dri­ver’s seat of her Sub­aru sta­tion wag­on, explod­ed as the two were head­ed to a ral­ly to begin a cam­paign of protests to pro­tect old-growth forests, called Red­wood Sum­mer.

Inves­ti­ga­tors prompt­ly brand­ed the two as eco-ter­ror­ists, and Cher­ney and Bari were soon arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of hav­ing cob­bled up the bomb them­selves. But pros­e­cu­tors dropped the case weeks lat­er.
Suc­cess­ful civ­il law­suit

The pair filed a civ­il law­suit against the FBI and the Oak­land Police Depart­ment for false arrest and slan­der. Although Bari died of can­cer in 1997, Cher­ney pur­sued the case until he won a $4 mil­lion set­tle­ment in 2004 from the agen­cies. He split the mon­ey with Bar­i’s estate.

“I want to make it clear,” said Cher­ney, who is still with Earth First. “We are going to get those bomb com­po­nents. If they’re done, hand them over.”

E‑mail Kevin Fagan at kfagan@sfchronicle.com.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/08/BANR1FAM6L.DTL#ixzz0z0xTGRxF

Solidarity needed for russian anarchist forest defenders

The Russ­ian move­ment to defend the Khim­ki for­est is a move­ment defend­ing all forests. If cor­po­ra­tions and politi­cians work­ing in the inter­est of a glob­al neolib­er­al and envi­ron­men­tal­ly destruc­tive mod­el is able to exploit the Khim­ki for­est and con­tin­ue repress­ing the activists in spite of a his­tor­i­cal­ly broad and strong move­ment in Rus­sia defend­ing the for­est, than it can be done any­where.

The Russ­ian move­ment to defend the Khim­ki for­est is a move­ment defend­ing all forests. If cor­po­ra­tions and politi­cians work­ing in the inter­est of a glob­al neolib­er­al and envi­ron­men­tal­ly destruc­tive mod­el is able to exploit the Khim­ki for­est and con­tin­ue repress­ing the activists in spite of a his­tor­i­cal­ly broad and strong move­ment in Rus­sia defend­ing the for­est, than it can be done any­where. Sol­i­dar­i­ty with the activists is the only way to both stop repres­sion and to save the Khim­ki for­est more per­ma­nent­ly. Please join the action called for by our Russ­ian friends!

Patrick Bond, Cen­tre for Civ­il Soci­ety Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Project, Dur­ban, South Africa

Mark Brown, Art Not Oil/Rising Tide, UK

Car­men Buer­ba de Comite de Defen­sa Eco­log­i­ca Michoa­cana, Mex­i­co

Nico­la Bullard, Focus on the Glob­al South, Thai­land

Ellie Cij­vat, Friends of the Earth Swe­den

Joshua Kahn Rus­sell, Ruckus Soci­ety, USA

Tom Kucharz, Ecol­o­gis­tas en Acción, Spain

Maduresh Kumar, Nation­al Alliance of Peo­ple’s Move­ments, India

Marea Cre­ciente Mex­i­co

Adri­ana Mat­a­lon­ga, Miguel Valen­cia y Mauri­cio Vil­le­gas from Eco­mu­nidades and Klimaforum10, Mex­i­co

Uddhab Pyakurel, South Asian Dia­logue on Eco­log­i­cal Democ­ra­cy, India

Josie Rif­faud, Via Campesina, France

Marko Ulvi­la and Thomas Wall­gren, Democ­ra­cy Forum Vasud­hai­va Kutum­bakam, Fin­land

You find infor­ma­tion and the call for action Sep­tem­ber 17–20 issued by Cam­paign for the Release of the Khim­ki Hostages in many lan­guages at www.khimkibattle.org. Below you find the text in Eng­lish, Span­ish, and French and more links on the issue.

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A Call for Inter­na­tion­al Days of Action in Sup­port of Alex­ei Gaskarov and Max­im Solopov

Sep­tem­ber 17­20, 2010

On July 28, 2010, more than two hun­dred young antifas­cists and anar­chists car­ried out a spon­ta­neous demon­stra­tion out­side the town admin­is­tra­tion build­ing in Khim­ki, a sub­urb of Moscow. They demon­strat­ed in defence of the Khim­ki For­est, which was at that time in the process of beings cut­ting down
for the needs of big busi­ness. The demon­stra­tion, dur­ing which sev­er­al win­dows were bro­ken, received a great deal of pub­lic atten­tion. The author­i­ties respond­ed with a wave of repres­sions. The day after the demon­stra­tion, two well-known social activists, Alex­ei Gaskarov and Max­im Solopov, were arrest­ed. They are now threat­ened with up to sev­en years in
prison for dis­or­der­ly con­duct, although there is no evi­dence of their com­plic­i­ty in ille­gal activ­i­ties. Mean­while, the police con­tin­ue to hunt down and harass oth­er activists, espe­cial­ly those involved in the antifas­cist move­ment.

The cam­paign to save the Khim­ki For­est has been going on for the past three years. The author­i­ties had decid­ed to build a seg­ment of a planned Moscow­Saint Peters­burg toll high­way, the first of its kind in Rus­sia, through the for­est. This would lead to the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions in the region, and local res­i­dents and Mus­covites would be deprived of yet anoth­er recre­ation zone. Despite the avail­abil­i­ty of alter­na­tive routes that would not require clear-cut­ting the for­est and
vig­or­ous protests by envi­ron­men­tal­ists and ordi­nary cit­i­zens against the planned route, the author­i­ties f0r a long time ignored the voice of soci­ety and on sev­er­al occa­sions took mea­sures to sup­press their crit­ics.

Khim­ki author­i­ties and the high­way project con­trac­tor have used vio­lence and oth­er tac­tics against Khim­ki For­est defend­ers. They refused to give per­mis­sion for protest demon­stra­tions, recruit­ed nation­al­ist thugs to break
up a peace­ful protest camp orga­nized by envi­ron­men­tal­ists and local res­i­dents, and ille­gal­ly arrest­ed and beat up jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing the sto­ry. Near­ly two years ago, Mikhail Beke­tov, edi­tor-in-chief of the news­pa­per Khimkin­skaya Prav­da and a crit­ic of the local admin­is­tra­tion, was severe­ly beat­en by per­sons unknown; the attack left Beke­tov per­ma­nent­ly
dis­abled. Sergei Pro­tozanov, the lay­out design­er of anoth­er local oppo­si­tion paper, was mur­dered in sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances six months lat­er.

After the July 28 demon­stra­tion, the Russ­ian police and secret ser­vices unleashed an unprece­dent­ed drag­net against antifas­cists. Peo­ple who had even just once come to the atten­tion of the Cen­ter for Extrem­ism Pre­ven­tion and
FSB for their involve­ment with the antifas­cist move­ment have been forcibly tak­en in for ques­tion­ing. In sev­er­al cas­es they have been sub­ject­ed to harsh phys­i­cal coer­cion in order to com­pel them to give the tes­ti­mo­ny required by inves­ti­ga­tors. In addi­tion, ille­gal search­es have been car­ried out in their apart­ments. All these actions on the part of law enforce­ment
author­i­ties are vio­la­tions of Russ­ian and inter­na­tion­al law.

Fright­ened by the numer­ous and grow­ing protests against the clear-cut­ting of the Khim­ki For­est, the author­i­ties have final­ly made con­ces­sions by agree­ing to review the advis­abil­i­ty of the planned route for the toll high­way. But this does not mean vic­to­ry. Alex­ei Gaskarov and Max­im Solopov are still in
police cus­tody for no rea­son at all. They are hostages of the author­i­ties.

In late Sep­tem­ber, the next hear­ing in their case will take place. The judge will decide whether to keep them in police cus­tody pend­ing com­ple­tion of the inves­ti­ga­tion and tri­al. Every­one who cares about the fate of these two young men must do every­thing in their pow­er to see that they are set free.
The Cam­paign for the Release of the Khim­ki Hostages calls on peo­ple around the world to orga­nize days of action on Sep­tem­ber 17, 18, 19, and 20 to pres­sure the Russ­ian author­i­ties to release Alex­ei and Max­im.

We ask you to hold protests out­side of Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion embassies, con­sulates, trade mis­sions, and cul­tur­al cen­ters, as well as at pub­lic events and con­certs con­nect­ed to Rus­sia. We also ask you to send faxes,e‑mails, and protest let­ters to the court, the pros­e­cu­tor¹s office, and the coun­try¹s polit­i­cal lead­er­ship. In the very near­future we will inform you of
address­es where you can send these protests as well as more details about the ongo­ing repres­sions in Rus­sia. Look for this infor­ma­tion on our web­site

http://khimkibattle.org in Eng­lish, Ger­man, Russ­ian, and French.

Join our cam­paign!

Cam­paign for the Release of the Khim­ki Hostages

+7 (915) 053‑5912 * info@khimkibattle.org * http://khimkibattle.org

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Back ground infor­ma­tion:

Chtode­lat news, Khim­ki Ter­ri­to­ry of Law­less­ness
http://chtodelat.wordpress.com/2010/08/02/khimki-territory-of-lawlessness/

Why we need sol­i­dar­i­ty with Russ­ian envi­ron­men­tal­ists and antifas­cists
http://www.aktivism.info/socialforumjourney/?p=1748

Website Revamp

May 2011
We are real­ly very sor­ry for the extra­or­di­nary hic­cough with this site — this is the first time we’ve been able to even edit this mes­sage — it’s been so frus­trat­ing for every­one!

May 2011
We are real­ly very sor­ry for the extra­or­di­nary hic­cough with this site — this is the first time we’ve been able to even edit this mes­sage — it’s been so frus­trat­ing for every­one!

It’s work­ing now (apart from old images not being acces­si­ble), and being grad­u­al­ly repop­u­lat­ed with the news we’ve missed. There’s a new Resources sec­tion too. Let us know (via sub­mit sto­ry) any­thing that could be bet­ter.

We hope by the end of the process you’ll feel wel­comed back with open arms, with new bells and whis­tles on their way. Thank you for bear­ing with us, and we look for­ward to your sto­ries again mak­ing this a valu­able resource for all.