Attack on GM field in Pully, Switzerland

Dur­ing the night of June 23–24, an exper­i­men­tal field of GM wheat was attacked with her­bi­cides with the aim of killing the plants and pre­vent­ing research into genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied organ­isms. This was despite 24 hour guard, a dou­ble fence, CCTV and plain clothes cops in the sur­round­ing streets.

Dur­ing the night of June 23–24, an exper­i­men­tal field of GM wheat was attacked with her­bi­cides with the aim of killing the plants and pre­vent­ing research into genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied organ­isms. This was despite 24 hour guard, a dou­ble fence, CCTV and plain clothes cops in the sur­round­ing streets. Unlike in 2008 and 2009 when the field was also decon­t­a­m­i­nat­ed, the research cen­tre this year did not issue a press release about the eco­tage.

The activists explained, “Oppo­si­tion to genet­ic engi­neer­ing is part of a wider oppo­si­tion to the total con­trol of soci­ety and life that is being cre­at­ed thanks to the devel­op­ment of nano and biotech­nol­o­gy.

For these rea­sons, we also want to express our sol­i­dar­i­ty through con­crete actions with those who oppose this techno­scientf­ic cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem, and in par­tic­u­lar with Mar­co Camenisch, Sil­via, Cos­ta and Bil­ly, rev­o­lu­tion­ary pris­on­ers who are now jailed in Switzer­land because they under­stood that words are not enough and that action is need­ed to cre­ate rad­i­cal change, even if this means risk­ing their own free­dom.

Com­mu­nique in full

Anti-GM cycle car­a­van and links to oth­er anti-genet­ics info

Tesco targeted in Beeston, Nottingham

30.6.2010
In the ear­ly hours of Tues­day morn­ing, the gates of a con­struc­tion site of Tesco super­mar­ket in the Beston area of Not­ting­ham were d‑locked shut and graf­fi­ti was sprayed on the boards sur­round­ing the site say­ing ‘TESCO — FUCK OFF’ and ‘EVERY LITTLE HURTS — FUCK OFF TESCO’

30.6.2010
In the ear­ly hours of Tues­day morn­ing, the gates of a con­struc­tion site of Tesco super­mar­ket in the Beston area of Not­ting­ham were d‑locked shut and graf­fi­ti was sprayed on the boards sur­round­ing the site say­ing ‘TESCO — FUCK OFF’ and ‘EVERY LITTLE HURTS — FUCK OFF TESCO’

The more we allow our food sup­ply to be con­trolled by cor­po­ra­tions, or to be admin­is­tered by the log­ics of cap­i­tal­ism, the more we sur­ren­der our auton­o­my.

Tesco is just one cog in a cap­i­tal­ist machine that is based on exploita­tion and oppres­sion, and is ruin­ing our ecol­o­gy and envi­ron­ment.

Sol­i­dar­i­ty with all those in active resis­tance against cor­po­rate pow­er.

Licence to Spill — Liberate Tate create an oil spill at the Tate — inside & out

On the evening of the 28th of June at approx 7:15pm, Lib­er­ate Tate In protest over BP’s spon­sor­ship of the arts per­formed a “Solemn” oil like spill at the Tate’s Sum­mer par­ty.

Liberate Tate 1Liberate Tate 2On the evening of the 28th of June at approx 7:15pm, Lib­er­ate Tate In protest over BP’s spon­sor­ship of the arts per­formed a “Solemn” oil like spill at the Tate’s Sum­mer par­ty.

Dressed in black and veiled the per­form­ers car­ry­ing black buck­ets with BP logos spewed molasses over the entrance way as onlook­ers watched in amaze­ment as the Port­land stone floor was con­sumed by the black oil like mess.

Feath­ers were scat­tered and filled the air and in the same man­ner of approach the artists grace­ful­ly paced their escape.

Licence to Spill

“Apart from cat­a­stroph­ic spills like the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon, there are a whole host of adverse impacts that are asso­ci­at­ed with the pro­duc­tion of oil. On the local lev­el, it often involves extreme forms of pol­lu­tion for local com­mu­ni­ties, while region­al­ly oil is fre­quent­ly asso­ci­at­ed with greater mil­i­ta­riza­tion and conflict. Glob­al­ly, car­bon emis­sions, oil com­pa­nies, and our col­lec­tive depen­dence on the prod­uct they push, are tak­ing us ever clos­er to the edge of cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe. ”

To down­load Licence to Spill, a new release from Plat­form, vis­it http://www.carbonweb.org/showitem.asp?article=381&parent=39

Info : http://www.artnotoil.org.uk/

Watch the video of the action : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz-_2KLt1W0

—–

Anoth­er report, includ­ing what hap­pened inside the ex-gar­den sum­mer par­ty:
Flowery-dressed oil spills
BP-smocked
Sip­ping Pimms and gob­bling canapés many of the guests expressed con­fu­sion at whether these strik­ing actions were ‘art’ or not. Despite inac­cu­rate report­ing in var­i­ous media out­lets, Lib­er­ate Tate would like to claim full respon­si­bil­i­ty for these acts of cre­ative dis­obe­di­ence as art – art that refus­es to pre­tend to do pol­i­tics but is pol­i­tics, art that makes trans­form­ing the world a beau­ti­ful adven­ture.

The Tate Sum­mer Par­ty had been planned to be in the muse­um gar­dens and involve speech­es from BP exec­u­tives. How­ev­er, due to the rumours of dis­rup­tion, Tate was forced to hold the entire event inside the muse­um and no speech­es were made.

As the evening sun baked down on the stone court­yard of Tate Britain and mem­bers of the cul­tur­al and cor­po­rate elite made their way into the par­ty, 13 fig­ures dressed in black, their faces veiled, appeared from around the cor­ner. In a mourn­ful pro­ces­sion the art-activists approached the entrance car­ry­ing large bar­rels brand­ed with the BP logo. Dozens of pho­tog­ra­phers and TV cam­eras swarmed and a moment of tense silence enveloped the area. Some­thing was going to hap­pen.

Then in a per­fect­ly chore­o­graphed moment, the front pha­lanx poured hun­dreds of litres of the black liq­uid all over the entrance, whilst oth­ers threw feath­ers into the air which gen­tly drift­ed down into the huge sticky black pools. The som­bre fig­ures walked calm­ly away, dis­ap­pear­ing into the city, as the secu­ri­ty redi­rect­ed the guests to anoth­er entrance as the cleanup oper­a­tion began.

Mean­while, despite the heavy secu­ri­ty at the door, two Lib­er­ate Tate art-activists man­aged to infil­trate the par­ty wear­ing large flo­ral bouf­fant dress­es under­neath which were con­cealed large sacks filled with the oily molasses. Call­ing them­selves Toni Hay­ward and Bob­bi Dud­ley, they began their per­for­mance in the crowd­ed cen­tral gallery. At first drips began to fall from their hand­bags. “Oh, I seem to have a leak” whis­pered one of them to the lined up wait­ers dressed in bril­liant white, who kind­ly pro­vid­ed nap­kins to stem the spill.

Soon the sacks under their dress­es burst releas­ing tens of litres of ‘oil’ across the shiny par­quet floor. As a crowd formed around them, the two donned BP brand­ed pon­chos and scram­bled on all fours try­ing to clean up the mess using their high heel shoes to pour the slick back into their hand­bags, but to no avail. “Com­pared to the size of the gallery this is a tiny spill, a drop in the ocean,” they apol­o­gised to the view­ers, “we’ll def­i­nite­ly have it cleaned up by, say, August”.

The polite crowd that had formed con­tin­ued to watch appre­cia­tive­ly for anoth­er 20 min­utes, amidst a sea of cam­era-phones. Many began debat­ing among them­selves whether this was art or not (“I think it is. I like it”), whether Tate had organ­ised it, and what their per­son­al aes­thet­ic reac­tions to it were (“If I had seen this out­side, I think I would have felt as I do see­ing it… inside”). More than one invit­ed artist open­ly described this to their fel­low drinkers as the most sophis­ti­cat­ed work in the room.

LIBERATE TATE

Lib­er­ate Tate, is a net­work ded­i­cat­ed to tak­ing cre­ative dis­obe­di­ence against the Tate until it drops its oil com­pa­ny fund­ing. The 28 June art activist per­for­mances fol­low on from last month’s dis­rup­tion of Tate Modern’s 10th Birth­day cel­e­bra­tions by hang­ing dead fish and birds from dozens of giant black heli­um bal­loons.

The net­work was found­ed dur­ing a work­shop in Jan­u­ary 2010 on art and activism, com­mis­sioned by Tate. When Tate cura­tors tried to cen­sor the work­shop from mak­ing inter­ven­tions against Tate spon­sors, the incensed par­tic­i­pants decid­ed to con­tin­ue their work togeth­er beyond the work­shop and set up Lib­er­ate Tate.

www.twitter.com/liberatetate

Images: www.immoklink.com/BP-Tate/index.html

www.youandifilms.com/2010/06/license-to-spill/

See also LIBERATE TATE COMMUNIQUE 1 http://bit.ly/9RFfxJ (MAY 2010)

Full Video Report http://www.youandifilms.com/2010/06/licence-to-spill-full-report/

Just Do It: Get Off Your Arse and Change the World

Doc­u­men­tary fol­low­ing the for­tunes of envi­ron­men­tal activists in 2009 launch­es inno­v­a­tive crowd-fund­ing appeal

***

An affinity group meeting during the Great Climate Swoop at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station
Doc­u­men­tary fol­low­ing the for­tunes of envi­ron­men­tal activists in 2009 launch­es inno­v­a­tive crowd-fund­ing appeal

***

In ear­ly 2009, Emi­ly James began film­ing the clan­des­tine activ­i­ties of sev­er­al envi­ron­men­tal direct action groups across the UK. Allowed unprece­dent­ed access, Emi­ly doc­u­ment­ed a year of esca­lat­ing action that began in spring with the now infa­mous G20 demon­stra­tions in Lon­don. Always in the thick of it and with ever her trusty cam­era to hand she sad­dled up with The Cli­mate Rush “Bike Rush” as they brought West­min­ster to a stand­still, pitched up with The Cli­mate Camp as they occu­pied Black­heath, masked up with The Great Cli­mate Swoop as they stormed the fences at Rat­cliffe-on-Soar coal pow­er sta­tion, and then accom­pa­nied them all to win­try Copen­hagen as they took their protest to the streets out­side the UN COP 15 cli­mate talks. And those are just the head­lines!

‘Just Do It’ fol­lows the tri­umphs, trau­mas and clan­des­tine activ­i­ties of civ­il dis­obe­di­ent envi­ron­ment activists as they take on the com­bined forces of glob­al cap­i­tal­ism, run away cli­mate change and the pesky Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police. Hav­ing gath­ered over 250 hours of mate­r­i­al, she and her team are now embark­ing on the chal­leng­ing task of turn­ing this footage into a fea­ture length film, which will inspire peo­ple to take action on cli­mate change. Check out the trail­er here: http://just-do-it.org.uk/.

Set for release in 2011, the Just Do it mod­el can be thought of as the ulti­mate in inde­pen­dent film pro­duc­tion. Unlike a TV fund­ed doc­u­men­tary, our inno­v­a­tive crowd-fund­ing mod­el allows us to work com­plete­ly free from exter­nal inter­fer­ence, be it edi­to­r­i­al or styl­is­tic. This means that we can focus entire­ly on mak­ing a film that does jus­tice to the excit­ing footage we have cap­tured. Our pro­duc­tion mod­el gives us com­plete con­trol. This is bot­tom up film­mak­ing, not the usu­al top-down, and it is dri­ven by pas­sion and cre­ative vision, rather than by desire for rat­ings or com­mer­cial imper­a­tive.

“It’s pre­cise­ly the kind of film that wouldn’t get made with­in the exist­ing prof­it and rat­ings-dri­ven fund­ing struc­tures,” explains Just Do It direc­tor, Emi­ly James, “Crowd-fund­ing through dona­tion enables us, as cre­ative artists, to be sup­port­ed by our audi­ence in a more direct way, with­out the involve­ment of cul­tur­al gate­keep­ers. This is anoth­er nail in the cof­fin for tra­di­tion­al media.“

‘Just Do It’ aims to tell an impor­tant sto­ry fre­quent­ly obscured by the agen­da of the cor­po­rate media. If you too think this is a sto­ry which should be told, then please donate here: http://just-do-it.org.uk/fund-this-film — whether it’s a ten­ner or a grand, it will be grate­ful­ly received.

Shell due to start work next week & report from Rossport Solidarity Camp

June 25, 2010
Things are get­ting very busy here — after a peace­ful June Gath­er­ing the camp is once more set to become a focal point for resist­ing Shell pipeline work. Shell are due in the estu­ary any day now to drill 80 bore­holes — pipeline sur­vey work that should take all sum­mer. Yes­ter­day we shut down the Shell office in Bel­mul­let. Today Mau­ra Har­ring­ton was jailed for non pay­ment of fines. Niall and Pat are still in jail. Gen­er­al­ly it seems that lots of peo­ple are wis­ing up to the oil indus­try in the wake of the BP dis­as­ter in the Gulf of Mex­i­co.…

Strength in Community, RossportJune 25, 2010
Things are get­ting very busy here — after a peace­ful June Gath­er­ing the camp is once more set to become a focal point for resist­ing Shell pipeline work. Shell are due in the estu­ary any day now to drill 80 bore­holes — pipeline sur­vey work that should take all sum­mer. Yes­ter­day we shut down the Shell office in Bel­mul­let. Today Mau­ra Har­ring­ton was jailed for non pay­ment of fines. Niall and Pat are still in jail. Gen­er­al­ly it seems that lots of peo­ple are wis­ing up to the oil indus­try in the wake of the BP dis­as­ter in the Gulf of Mex­i­co.…

Stop Shell
Roof Occu­pa­tion Protest at Shel­l’s Bel­mul­let Offices
Cam­paign­ers hung a ban­ner read­ing “Ener­gy should­n’t cost the earth” from the roof of Shell offices in Bel­mul­let on Thurs­day morn­ing at 8am. This protest con­nect­ed the envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter suf­fered by the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty & peo­ple of Louisiana with the threat faced by the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty and peo­ple of Erris. In par­tic­u­lar the protest was in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Pat O’Don­nell who has been jailed for his coura­geous defense of the seas and his liveli­hood.
The protest blocked the entrance to the offices pre­vent­ing Shell work­ers from enter­ing that day!
Press Release and pho­tos here: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/97054

Fore­shore License Grant­ed — Bore­hole Drilling Immi­nent
Yes­ter­day Shell cir­cu­lat­ed a let­ter giv­ing notice that the bore­hole drilling would com­mence “in the com­ing days”.
Recent­ly Shell got the sign-off from “Green” Min­is­ter John Gorm­ley on plans to bore 80 bore-holes in Sruwad­da­con bay. Once again the com­mu­ni­ty and camp will be oppos­ing the Shell work both on land and at sea. Water-action train­ing is ongo­ing. It will be a sum­mer long job if they get start­ed, so sup­port up here would be great when­ev­er pos­si­ble. Now would be a good time to come.

There have already been con­trac­tors around doing ini­tial sur­veys for the con­tract to con­struct the 5km tun­nel under the estu­ary — one can­di­date com­pa­ny is called ICOP from Italy. Pres­sure on them would be no harm.

Here is their web­site: http://www.icop.it/tool/home.php
And address:
I.CO.P. S.p.A.
via Sil­vio Pel­li­co 2
33031 Basil­iano UD,
Italy

And con­tacts: info@icop.it, tunnelcom@icop.it, fondazioni@icop.it, amministrazione@icop.it, personale@icop.it, acquisti@icop.it, tecnici@icop.it

T. +39 0432–838611
F. +39 0432–838681

Please write to Pat & Niall — polit­i­cal pris­on­ers
As a lot of you are aware Pat O’Don­nell and Niall Har­nett are cur­rent­ly in Castlerea Prison for con­vic­tions aris­ing from protests against the Cor­rib Gas project. You can read more on Pat’s jail­ing here: http://www.shelltosea.com/content/shell-corrib-gas-who-…llies or more on Nial­l’s jail­ing here: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/96547

Please also ‘Like’ the ‘Sup­port Shell to Sea pris­on­ers of con­science’ page on Face­book (if you’re on it): http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Support-Shell-to-Sea-prisoners-of-conscience/112831115416555?ref=ts and Pat’s page at http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Pat-ODonnell/313999028104?ref=ts

Let­ters to Pat and Niall great­ly appre­ci­at­ed -
Pat O Don­nell / Niall Har­nett,
Castlerea Prison,
Har­ris­town,
Castlerea,
Co Roscom­mon,

Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp Wish­list
You might have some­thing lying around that you don’t want or need any­more.
At the moment we could use:

* Wheel­ie bins, plas­tic bar­rels, pal­lets (will prob­a­bly find local­ly)
* Work­ing Recharge­able Pow­er tools
* Boats and out­board motors of any size or make: Pow­er boats, sail boats, rigid sea kayaks would be espe­cial­ly use­ful as they can’t be punc­tured or sunk too eas­i­ly
* Band­saw
* PV pan­els, invert­ers, bat­ter­ies
* Trail­er that a Ford Tran­sit could tow. Some­thing like a horse trail­er and fair­ly weath­er proof would be ide­al to trans­port bikes.
http://www.shelltosea.com
ross­port­sol­i­dar­i­ty­camp at gmail dot com

—

Annu­al Ross­port Gath­er­ing report

Sup­port­ers from around the world joined in the annu­al gath­er­ing over the past week­end at the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp at Broad­haven Bay, Coun­ty Mayo in sup­port of the Shell to Sea cam­paign. A large con­tin­gent of cyclists trav­elled from Britain via Merthyr Tyd­fil in Wales where anoth­er cam­paign is focussed to stop an ugly open-cast coal mine which is destroy­ing the envi­ron­ment, pol­lut­ing air and water and endan­ger­ing the com­mu­ni­ty.

The gath­er­ing at Ross­port has been held every year since before the jail­ing of the Ross­port 5 in 2005 — local res­i­dents who refused, for rea­sons of health, safe­ty and clean envi­ron­ment, to allow Shell / Sta­toil to lay an exper­i­men­tal high-pres­sure raw gas pipeline through their prop­er­ties. The Irish gov­ern­ment had, in an unprece­dent­ed move, pro­vid­ed the mul­ti-nation­als with com­pul­so­ry pur­chase orders. The five were giv­en indef­i­nite prison sen­tences but were released after 3 months fol­low­ing mas­sive pub­lic out­cry. A lat­er hear­ing vin­di­cat­ed them when the orig­i­nal pipeline route was reject­ed because of dan­ger­ous prox­im­i­ty to dwellings.

A new route is now being put for­ward, but is still con­sid­ered unac­cept­able by Shell to Sea who believe that the only safe way to bring the gas ashore is by refin­ing it at sea and bring­ing it in at low pres­sure. The dan­gers have been well high­light­ed by dis­as­ters world­wide includ­ing the Piper Alpha explo­sion, the pipeline explo­sion at Carls­bad, New Mex­i­co (August 2000 when a fam­i­ly of 12 liv­ing over 200 metres away were com­plete­ly wiped out), the out­ra­geous death and destruc­tion in Nige­ria and now the BP oil dis­as­ter.

The Merthyr to Mayo cycle ral­ly called at Castlerea prison to sup­port fish­er­man Pat O’Don­nell and fel­low Shell to Sea sup­port­er Niall Har­nett who are both now serv­ing jail terms for obstruct­ing police who had been brought in the ensure Shell employ­ees were not ham­pered in their work — the Irish gov­ern­ment takes care of big busi­ness with­out regard for the liveli­hoods of the local com­mu­ni­ty and the health of their envi­ron­ment !

The whole project was pushed ahead with­out con­sult­ing the local peo­ple — the refin­ery, 9 km inland (select­ed because it was state-owned forestry land) now approach­ing com­ple­tion and the sea­ward pipeline layed. But still no legal­ly per­mit­ted nor local­ly agreed inland route ! And not like­ly to be ! Local cam­paign­ers have had their lives total­ly dis­rupt­ed for more than 10 years now with this non­sense and are utter­ly com­mit­ted to the point of putting their lives on the line, lit­er­al­ly.

Mining applications ‘frozen’ after protest in Philippines

24 June 2010
Six hun­dred indige­nous peo­ple and farm­ers took to the streets on Palawan Island in the Philip­pines on June 7, to protest against plans to mine nick­el on their land.

Palawan climber24 June 2010
Six hun­dred indige­nous peo­ple and farm­ers took to the streets on Palawan Island in the Philip­pines on June 7, to protest against plans to mine nick­el on their land.

The demon­stra­tors called upon the provin­cial gov­ern­ment to pre­vent the com­pa­nies Macro Asia and Ipil­ian Nick­el Min­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (INC) from min­ing in the UNESCO World Bios­phere Reserve, which is their home. They also expressed their anger at news that Cana­di­an min­ing com­pa­ny MBMI has been grant­ed ini­tial approval to mine.

As a result of nego­ti­a­tions with pro­test­ers, the provin­cial gov­ern­ment agreed that its endorse­ments of both Macro Asia and INC’s plans required fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion. The com­pa­nies’ appli­ca­tions have been ‘frozen’ until all issues are clar­i­fied.

The pro­tes­tors called their demon­stra­tion a ‘Kara­ban’ ral­ly; Kara­ban is the indige­nous Palawan’s word for the bam­boo quiver that con­tains darts for their blow­pipes. It is a sym­bol of their iden­ti­ty, and sig­ni­fies, they say, that they are will­ing to take ‘what­ev­er action is nec­es­sary’ to stop the min­ing com­pa­nies enter­ing their tra­di­tion­al ter­ri­to­ries

Indige­nous spokesper­son for ALDAW (Ances­tral Land/Domain Watch) Arti­so Man­dawa, said, ‘Min­ing is not devel­op­ment, it cre­ates con­flict among peo­ple, and it destroys our cul­ture by bring­ing for­eign val­ues to our com­mu­ni­ty. Some of my peo­ple still have lim­it­ed con­tact with the out­side and are not even reg­is­tered in the nation­al and provin­cial cen­sus. They are the first inhab­i­tants to arrive on this island and yet, for the gov­ern­ment, they appear not to exist.’

Maman Tuwa, an elder of the iso­lat­ed Palawan tribe from Mt Gan­tong, fears that min­ing will destroy his com­mu­ni­ty. ‘If our moun­tains are defor­est­ed, how are we going to sur­vive? What are we going to plant if the soil of the uplands will be washed down to the low­lands? How are we going to feed our chil­dren? We’ll sure­ly die’.

Survival’s direc­tor Stephen Cor­ry said, ‘We wel­come the deci­sion to freeze the min­ing appli­ca­tions on the land of the Palawan trib­al peo­ple, and we urge the Philip­pine gov­ern­ment to ensure that no min­ing takes place on their land with­out their gen­uine free, pri­or and informed con­sent. We also call upon Pres­i­dent-elect Benig­no Aquino III, to revoke the 1995 Min­ing Act which has been so dis­as­trous for the indige­nous peo­ples of the Philip­pines.’

The Outdoor Skillshare a success

23rd June 2010
Over a hun­dred peo­ple came togeth­er last week­end for the Out­door Skill­share. Held at Talamh Hous­ing Coop in South Lanark­shire, the week­end aimed to bring peo­ple togeth­er to share the skills need­ed to occu­py land and defend it from evic­tion. Work­shops cov­ered var­ied top­ics includ­ing cook­ing for the mass­es, dig­ging tun­nels, radio com­mu­ni­ca­tion and climb­ing trees.

23rd June 2010
Over a hun­dred peo­ple came togeth­er last week­end for the Out­door Skill­share. Held at Talamh Hous­ing Coop in South Lanark­shire, the week­end aimed to bring peo­ple togeth­er to share the skills need­ed to occu­py land and defend it from evic­tion. Work­shops cov­ered var­ied top­ics includ­ing cook­ing for the mass­es, dig­ging tun­nels, radio com­mu­ni­ca­tion and climb­ing trees.

The week­end also had ses­sions on skill-shar­ing and run­ning work­shops to share the skills to facil­i­tate par­tic­i­pa­to­ry work­shops. It is hopped that more skill-shar­ing and events of this type will hap­pen across the UK in the future.

Lewis from Leeds who trav­elled up for the week­end said: “It was a real­ly amaz­ing event and I real­ly learned a lot. I’d nev­er put on a har­ness or cooked on a giant gas burn­er before so it was a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to prac­tise these things. I real­ly feel like all of us who came to this week­end will be able to go to a protest camp and actu­al­ly chip in.”

Lau­ra, part of the group that organ­ised the event said: “We were sur­prised at the num­ber of peo­ple who came and the atmos­phere and peo­ples atti­tude was amaz­ing. Peo­ple organ­ised spon­ta­neous ses­sions and those of us giv­ing work­shops learned new ways of doing things. It was such a great week­end and I hope we get a chance to do it again.”

The tem­po­rary camp over looked the for­mer site of the Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp, now a func­tion­ing open cast mine, and was sur­round­ed by Bro­ken Cross and Poniel open cast coal mines. South Lanark­shire has been blight­ed by open cast coal mines for decades and has also been a hive of resis­tance by the com­mu­ni­ty and envi­ron­men­tal­ists. Over the week­end peo­ple from the local com­mu­ni­ties vis­it­ed the event, includ­ing some local young peo­ple who took part in the kids climb­ing work­shop.

out­doorskill­share [at] riseup.net
http://outdoorskillshare.noflag.org.uk

Greenwash spill at the BP-sponsored National Portrait Gallery

On Tues­day night (22 June 2010) at 6.07 PM the Lon­don brigade of the Green­wash Guer­ril­las got a call from a pan­icked pedes­tri­an out­side the Nation­al Por­trait Gallery.

BP Portrait Gallery greenwash guerrillasOn Tues­day night (22 June 2010) at 6.07 PM the Lon­don brigade of the Green­wash Guer­ril­las got a call from a pan­icked pedes­tri­an out­side the Nation­al Por­trait Gallery. It seemed that the prize­giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny for BP Por­trait Award was about to start, and tox­ic green­wash had begun to gush uncon­trol­lably from the gallery’s front doors.

Arriv­ing on the scene, armed with the lat­est in green­wash detect­ing equip­ment and wear­ing pro­tec­tive bio­haz­ard suits, the Guer­ril­las
imme­di­ate­ly iden­ti­fied sev­er­al sources of the leak. Green­wash lev­els appeared to be the strongest any­where a bright green BP logo was to be
found: from the mas­sive ban­ners fronting either side of the grand entrance, to the micro­scop­ic embroi­dery on a secu­ri­ty guard’s lapel. The
Guer­ril­las were giv­en the run-around by gallery secu­ri­ty and the Met­ro­pol­i­tan police, who escort­ed Britain’s cul­tur­al estab­lish­ment into
the awards cer­e­mo­ny first at the front, then around the side, then back at the front entrance again. By 7 PM, every­one had con­vened at the front entrance, and the Guer­ril­las set to work to con­tain the leak, quar­an­tine the area, and warn atten­dees against enter­ing the build­ing.

Many clean-up efforts were tried, from throw­ing golf balls and old tires at the leak to try­ing to plug it with mud, but for some rea­son the spill just kept gush­ing. Mean­while, some Guer­ril­las attempt­ed to arm the atten­dees – most of whom, inex­plic­a­bly, were deter­mined to enter the
con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed build­ing – with infor­ma­tion about BP, oil indus­try spon­sor­ship of the arts, and the best way to pro­tect them­selves from
green­wash.

Despite the best efforts of the Guer­ril­las, green­wash unfor­tu­nate­ly con­tin­ues to spew forth from the BP-spon­sored Nation­al Por­trait Gallery
and count­less oth­er oil-spon­sored arts insti­tu­tions across Lon­don. But resis­tance is grow­ing, and this sum­mer might just be remem­bered as the
tip­ping point in the cam­paign to free art from oil.

More info:
http://www.risingtide.org.uk
http://www.artnotoil.org.uk

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?
BP’s spon­sor­ship of the Nation­al Por­trait Award is green­wash – a way of clean­ing up BP’s tat­tered pub­lic image and cov­er­ing up its shock­ing
envi­ron­men­tal and human rights record.

Green­wash is as tox­ic as oil. With it, BP buys our approval, and hopes we’ll for­get about the gush­er in the Gulf, the 300 000 lives already lost each year due to cli­mate change, and the fact that the com­pa­ny is poised to enter the Cana­di­an tar sands – the most destruc­tive project on earth.

Every pound the Nation­al Por­trait Gallery accepts from BP is taint­ed. In response to chang­ing pub­lic opin­ion, cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions even­tu­al­ly
decid­ed that it was no longer in their best inter­ests to take mon­ey from the tobac­co indus­try. It’s high time we kicked Big Oil out of our
gal­leries too.

Check out a bril­liant video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-adx5mS2klA

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

Protest against BP — This Saturday 26/06 1pm at Tottenham Hale BP Garage, London

Against cli­mate crimes in the name of prof­it and in sol­i­dar­i­ty with work­ers exploit­ed by giant cor­po­ra­tion BP, come and protest this Sat­ur­day 26 June, 1pm at Tot­ten­ham Hale BP garage.

Haringey Sol­i­dar­i­ty Group have organ­ised a protest against giant cor­po­ra­tion BP this Sat­ur­day 26 June, from 1pm at Tot­ten­ham Hale BP Garage (map here: http://tiny.cc/28p38)

Against cli­mate crimes in the name of prof­it and in sol­i­dar­i­ty with work­ers exploit­ed by giant cor­po­ra­tion BP, come and protest this Sat­ur­day 26 June, 1pm at Tot­ten­ham Hale BP garage.

Haringey Sol­i­dar­i­ty Group have organ­ised a protest against giant cor­po­ra­tion BP this Sat­ur­day 26 June, from 1pm at Tot­ten­ham Hale BP Garage (map here: http://tiny.cc/28p38)

We aim to draw atten­tion to the many cli­mate crimes BP is respon­si­ble for, all in the name of prof­it, show sol­i­dar­i­ty with work­ers exploit­ed by the cor­po­ra­tion and encour­age peo­ple to build col­lec­tive and local alter­na­tives to the cli­mate cri­sis.

See the text of the leaflet below.
An on-line ver­sion is avail­able here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4403399/BP_Protest.pdf

Please cir­cu­late wide­ly, come along, bring ban­ners, plac­ards, etc…

—–

BP – Guilty of Cli­mate Crimes!

Called by Haringey Sol­i­dar­i­ty Group as part of Haringey Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Month

The dan­ger­ous greed of BP has seen them trash­ing the plan­et in pur­suit of prof­it – across the world, BP is guilty of cli­mate crimes that should all be front page news.

The Gulf of Mex­i­co: BP’s faulty drilling results in one of the worst oil spills in his­to­ry, killing work­ers, endan­ger­ing wildlife across the region and leav­ing a mas­sive clean-up oper­a­tion.

Cana­da: Extrac­tion of mil­lions of bar­rels of tar sands oil, pro­duc­ing 3–5 times the green­house gas­es of con­ven­tion­al oil, caus­ing mass defor­esta­tion and pol­lut­ing indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties.

Colom­bia In Jan­u­ary, indus­tri­al action organ­ised by trade union­ists in the region of Casanare was severe­ly repressed by BP, with the help of a spe­cial police force known for anti-work­er vio­lence.

Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline: This crude oil pipeline, run­ning through Turkey, Geor­gia and Azer­bai­jan, was financed by BP, vis­i­bly scar­ring the land­scape and wreck­ing areas of great nat­ur­al beau­ty, includ­ing nat­ur­al spring water reserves.

Not to men­tion com­mu­ni­ties across the world! While adding to the wealth of a few, BP is destroy­ing the com­mon wealthe of the many. We need to act local­ly to resist com­pa­nies like BP dic­tat­ing the way our economies are struc­tured – for prof­it and against the envi­ron­ment.

See over for how we can take action col­lec­tive­ly in our com­mu­ni­ties to fight cli­mate change and cre­ate a future sus­tain­able soci­ety.

——————————

Build­ing Alter­na­tives to the Cli­mate Cri­sis

Oppres­sive and destruc­tive cor­po­ra­tions like BP do not serve the gen­er­al inter­est. We need to end our depen­den­cy on oil and fos­sil fuels, which grad­u­al­ly destroys the plan­et and our lives, and aim for the devel­op­ment of renew­able ener­gy man­aged by the com­mu­ni­ty.

We can organ­ise local­ly and take back con­trol of our lives and envi­ron­ment by build­ing sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ties for the ben­e­fit of all. Peo­ple in Haringey are get­ting togeth­er to form col­lec­tive, grass­roots alter­na­tives and solu­tions to the cli­mate cri­sis.

See below for how to get involved!

Haringey Sol­i­dar­i­ty Group

We are a group of local peo­ple who want to get rid of the cur­rent sys­tem which places prof­it and pow­er before people’s real needs. To do this, we believe we all need to get organ­ised, fight back and take over the deci­sion-mak­ing in com­mu­ni­ties and work­places. We sup­port and par­tic­i­pate in local cam­paigns, spread ideas and help cre­ate effec­tive oppo­si­tion to the pow­ers that be.

www.haringey.org.uk, email info@haringey.org.uk, write to PO Box 2474, Lon­don N8 or call 0845 223 5270

Sus­tain­able Haringey

An inde­pen­dent infor­mal net­work for every­body want­i­ng to make Haringey more sus­tain­able. It brings togeth­er groups and indi­vid­u­als already mak­ing pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tions and wel­comes those who would like to find out how to do more. In June there are events hap­pen­ing across the bor­ough as part of Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Month.

See www.sustainableharingey.org.uk for fur­ther details

Oil execs gather — we besiege ( + video link)

As oil exec­u­tives gath­ered at a Lon­don hotel for their annu­al strate­gis­ing con­fer­ence on Mon­day 21st June, up to 200 cli­mate activists crossed the riv­er from BP-spon­sored Tate Mod­ern to con­verge on the front entrance with a sam­ba band and a giant p

Drum it Out 1Drum it Out 2As oil exec­u­tives gath­ered at a Lon­don hotel for their annu­al strate­gis­ing con­fer­ence on Mon­day 21st June, up to 200 cli­mate activists crossed the riv­er from BP-spon­sored Tate Mod­ern to con­verge on the front entrance with a sam­ba band and a giant paper-mache oil-cov­ered seabird.

Titled “Drum It Out”, the protest also put the indus­try on tri­al before a Peo­ple’s Court which loud­ly found it guilty of crimes of pol­lu­tion, war crimes, cli­mate crime, and more.

The court heard live tes­ti­mo­ny by wit­ness­es not only from the Gulf, but from Nige­ria, Ghana, Colom­bia, Peru, from Iraq which has suf­fered the dev­as­ta­tion of a war for oil, from Cana­da where indige­nous peo­ple are resist­ing the Tar Sands oil project destroy­ing a land as large as Eng­land, and from Kenya and Chi­na which are suf­fer­ing droughts as a result of the chang­ing cli­mate. “The Gulf of Mex­i­co is not the only dis­as­ter,” the pro­test­ers said — “in fact it’s not even the largest, and in some places this destruc­tion of life has been going on for decades. The oil indus­try is not sus­tain­able. They think they rule the world, but they are fac­ing resis­tance every­where. They can­not come to this hotel and think they will car­ry on busi­ness as usu­al”.

A dead fish award was pre­sent­ed to Bloody Oil in its var­i­ous com­pa­ny guis­es, and a “fish” was deliv­ered to the hotel to be passed on to Con­gress del­e­gates.

Fol­low­ing the tri­al, the main and back entrance were besieged by the drum­ming crowd, with no injuries and no arrests. Two activists who had suc­ceed­ed in pen­e­trat­ing the build­ing were uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly eject­ed. The Drum Out will be fol­lowed this Sat­ur­day by a Teach In, at the School of Ori­en­tal and African Stud­ies, where cam­paign­ers will learn more about the ongo­ing resis­tance by work­ers and com­mu­ni­ties in oil regions, will link-up live with organ­is­ers in Ghana, and will dis­cuss how to work togeth­er to bring the indus­try down. One pro­test­er com­ment­ed, “If even half the mon­ey invest­ed in sub­si­dis­ing oil, clean­ing up its dis­as­ters and fund­ing its wars were devot­ed to alter­na­tive forms of ener­gy, peo­ple would­n’t be suf­fer­ing these out­rages, and the plan­et would be safe.”

london[at]climatecamp.org.uk

Watch the Video http://www.youandifilms.com/2010/06/bloody-oil-drum-em-out/