Tyres of luxury cars ventilated

Decem­ber 5th 2008
This night the action Air gone! start­ed to flat­ten the tyres of lux­u­ry cars as a con­tri­bu­tion to the cli­mate action day to paral­yse cli­mate killers.

German CO2 exhaust imageDecem­ber 5th 2008
This night the action Air gone! start­ed to flat­ten the tyres of lux­u­ry cars as a con­tri­bu­tion to the cli­mate action day to paral­yse cli­mate killers.

While the cli­mate alliance calls for pro­mo­tion par­o­dies against the green­wash­ing of the com­pa­nies, rad­i­cal cli­mate activists went a bit fur­ther that night.

In dif­fer­ent cities the tyres of expen­sive jeeps and sports cars were ven­ti­lat­ed. Aim of the action is not only car­bon expul­sion, but also to put on the agen­da the social and glob­al injus­tices con­nect­ed to cli­mate change, the group call­ing for the action explained. The biggest amount of emis­sions are caused by the indus­tri­al states — and, as it is made more than

clear by the exam­ple of lux­u­ry cars, it is main­ly the rich here as well — while the coun­tries in the South are most affect­ed already by the effects of cli­mate change.

Fly­ers were left at the cars explain­ing the actiond and demand­ing from the own­ers to immidi­ate­ly shut them down per­ma­nent­ly.

Sim­i­lar actions hap­pened a year ago in Berlin and aroused a lot of pub­lic atten­tion. This year the news­pa­per taz report­ed about the call to the action.

Mean­while the world cli­mate sum­mit dis­cussed about a fol­low-up of the Kyoto Pro­to­col in Poz­nan (Con­fer­ence of the par­tied COP 14), pro­duc­ing noth­ing but hot air, as a lot of cli­mate activists think. Back­ground info and state­ments from a semi-crit­i­cal NGO per­spec­tive on wir-klimaretter.de. For the fol­low­ing sum­mit in Decem­ber 2009 an inter­na­tion­al mobi­liza­tion was already start­ed by the rad­i­cal leftb from Den­mark (Ung­domshuset-Scene) as well as b y sozial move­ments from the glob­al south like Via Campesina

http://luftraus.wordpress.com

Students roll out red carpet for RBS greenwash award show

Stu­dents from Man­ches­ter Peo­ple and Plan­et groups host­ed an awards cer­e­mo­ny and award­ed the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land with the pres­ti­gious “2008 Green­wash Award”.

RBS Greenwash awardsStu­dents from Man­ches­ter Peo­ple and Plan­et groups host­ed an awards cer­e­mo­ny and award­ed the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land with the pres­ti­gious “2008 Green­wash Award”.

On Wednes­day 3rd Decem­ber stu­dents of Man­ches­ter host­ed an elab­o­rate awards cer­e­mo­ny out­side the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land offices. At 2pm, around 50 stu­dents wear­ing evening suits and ball gowns, rolled out a red car­pet and set up a podi­um. The pre­sen­ter bound­ed up onto the stage to begin the pro­ceed­ings.

After Oscars style nom­i­na­tions in which E.On, BP, Shell and BAA were announced as run­ners up, RBS was declared the win­ner of the 2008 Green­wash Award show.[1] A mock rep­re­sen­ta­tive from RBS’ Cor­po­rate Social Respon­si­bil­i­ty sec­tor call­ing him­self ‘Gra­ham Wascha’ then gave a very enter­tain­ing yet poignant speech about RBS’ green­wash. He was reward­ed with a gold­en stat­ue and a large cheque con­grat­u­lat­ing their mas­sive invest­ments in indus­tries that accel­er­ate cli­mate change.[2]

RBS-NatWest have fund­ed almost $16billion for coal com­pa­nies and explo­ration projects from May 2006 to April 2008[3], yet their green­wash claims that they are financ­ing a tran­si­tion to a low car­bon econ­o­my. [4][5]

This award show was part of a series of actions by stu­dents from the cam­paign­ing group Peo­ple and Plan­et against RBS and oth­er big dri­vers of cli­mate change. It fol­lows a recent action by Man­ches­ter stu­dents against RBS and E.On which saw over 50 stu­dents demon­strat­ing at a busi­ness recruit­ment fair. [6][7]

Quotes:

Abi­gail Dil­li­way, 21, pri­ma­ry edu­ca­tion stu­dent at Man­ches­ter Met­ro­pol­i­tan Uni­ver­si­ty says “I have cho­sen to take part in this action because I believe that RBS have com­mit­ted a green­wash atroc­i­ty. They have cho­sen to only cel­e­brate their invest­ment in renew­ables whilst fail­ing to com­pre­hend their invest­ment in fos­sil fuels and thus the dev­as­tat­ing envi­ron­men­tal impli­ca­tions of their actions.”

Alex Foun­tain, 20, busi­ness stud­ies stu­dent at Man­ches­ter Met­ro­pol­i­tan Uni­ver­si­ty says, “RBS claims to be com­mit­ted to a long-term tran­si­tion to a low car­bon econ­o­my yet con­tin­ues to mas­sive­ly fund fos­sil fuel infra­struc­tures. This will lock us into high emis­sions for many decades to come and jeop­ar­dise any attempts to stop run­away cli­mate change.”

ENDS

Notes to the edi­tor:

1. Green­wash – “Green­wash (a port­man­teau of green and white­wash) is a term used to describe the per­cep­tion of con­sumers that they are being mis­led by a com­pa­ny regard­ing the envi­ron­men­tal prac­tices of the com­pa­ny or the envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits of a prod­uct or ser­vice. It is a decep­tive use of green PR or green mar­ket­ing.”

Wikipedia — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwash

2. Cli­mate change is the biggest threat to a secure future cur­rent­ly fac­ing human­i­ty. If cur­rent trends con­tin­ue, aver­age glob­al tem­per­a­tures could rise by 6.4˚C by the end of the cen­tu­ry with dev­as­tat­ing and per­ma­nent results for the plan­et. — “Sum­ma­ry for Pol­i­cy­mak­ers”, Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change, 2007

3. RBS is respon­si­ble for $15.93 bil­lion worth of loans from May 2006 to April 2008 to com­pa­nies engaged in loans to com­pa­nies engaged in the extrac­tion and/or com­bus­tion of coal. — http://www.oyalbankofscotland.com/cioc/pdf/cashinginoncoal.pdf

4. In 2007 RBS’ embed­ded emis­sions (emis­sion due to its invest­ments) was over 43 mil­lion tonnes, more than Scot­land — PLATFORM, ‘The Oil and Gas Bank – RBS & the financ­ing of cli­mate change’, http://www.carbonweb.org/documents/Oil_&_Gas_Bank.pdf

5. RBS claim that they only lend to projects that con­form to the high­est envi­ron­men­tal and social stan­dards yet finances some of the dirt­i­est and most dan­ger­ous oil & gas projects, includ­ing the Baku-Tbil­isi-Cey­han pipeline from Azer­bai­jan to Turkey crit­i­cised by the WWF and Friends of the Earth for its human rights and pol­lu­tion impacts.

Videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPLW2H88q7g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Xm0q9_CfRw

London Critical Mass report (& recent legal ruling), & Exeter CM announcement

In the week of the law lords’ final rul­ing on the legal sta­tus of crit­i­cal mass, fri­day night saw around 200 cyclists brave the damp and cold to take part in the “com­mon­ly or cus­tom­ar­i­ly held pro­ces­sion” — for the third month in a

London Critical Mass penny farthingsIn the week of the law lords’ final rul­ing on the legal sta­tus of crit­i­cal mass, fri­day night saw around 200 cyclists brave the damp and cold to take part in the “com­mon­ly or cus­tom­ar­i­ly held pro­ces­sion” — for the third month in a row, no police direct­ly accom­pa­nied the ride. the ride itself was most­ly fun and smooth-going, but there was a col­li­sion at mar­ble arch that marred an oth­er­wise suc­ces­ful evening.

the mass went over water­loo bridge and then along the strand to white­hall and par­lia­ment square. after a few cir­cles there, the next stop was out­side new scot­land yard, where a very loud cycle sound sys­tem noti­fied their pres­ence to the police (along with chants of “one-nil, one-nil”). mov­ing on past buck­ing­ham palace and round the back streets of pic­cadil­ly, there was a brief stop at pic­cadil­ly cir­cus.

this is the third month with­out direct police accom­pa­ni­ment, and it seems each time the mass is get­ting bet­ter at con­trol­ling itself and oth­er road traf­fic for the safe­ty and ben­e­fit of all. it seemed that almost every­one was empow­ered to have a go at ‘cork­ing’ (block­ing incom­ing side roads at junc­tions to stop motor vehi­cles from min­gling with the mass). if done firm­ly and polite­ly, the road is kept clear for the whole mass to pass, and then the incon­ve­nience to oth­er motorists is min­imised and the cyclists keep mov­ing safe­ly and freely. also, the front rid­ers stopped every now and then to allow the mass to regroup. mean­while pedes­tri­ans were often catered for and let through at cross­ings etc.

there were an array of dif­fer­ent bikes too, with a cou­ple of mod­ern pen­ny far­things, a very tall ‘dou­ble deck­er’ bike (whose rid­er was heard now and then shout­ing for peo­ple to keep mov­ing — it was a long way down!!), there was a rick­shaw, and at least two sound sys­tems.

after a damp start, the rain held off, things were going smooth­ly until at mar­ble arch, a bicy­cle was hit by an irate motorist who had been briefly held up by a ‘cork’ at the top of park lane and then decid­ed to dri­ve like a lunatic. as sev­er­al cyclists went to aid, the dri­ver at first tried to dri­ve from the scene of the acci­dent, then scraped his own car door by push­ing it hard open against a near­by bicy­cle, and then assault­ed the cyclist by pok­ing him in the eye.

sev­er­al rid­ers kept the car sur­round­ed until police arrived. the first cops were from char­ing cross, and they seemed to be very much on the side of the motorist, even sug­gest­ing that they’d arrest the cyclist who was assault­ed! after a while some padding­ton offi­cers turned up, and act­ed more pro­fes­sion­al­ly, tak­ing details of the var­i­ous wit­ness­es, and even­tu­al­ly arrest­ing and hand­cuff­ing the crazy dri­ver.

a shout out to the cyclists that stuck around to help. next mass on box­ing day — meet (as cus­tom­ar­i­ly!) under water­loo bridge on the south bank at 6–6.30pm (last fri­day of every month)

—

Since 1994, Lon­don cyclists have been gath­er­ing every sin­gle month to cycle, par­ty and assert their right to the road — the famous Crit­i­cal Mass. 

Amidst oth­er police tac­tics aim­ing to break the d.i.y spir­it of the event, the Police attempt­ed to ban the ride in Sep­tem­ber 2005. The court case and oblig­a­tory appeals that ensued last­ed for 3 years until the 26th of Novem­ber 2008 when the Law Lords ruled in favour of Lon­don Crit­i­cal Mass. A vic­to­ry for Lon­don — but an unclear result for oth­er Crit­i­cal Mass­es around the coun­try.

The Crit­i­cal Mass bicy­cle ride has been going on in Lon­don since 1994 — a month­ly gath­er­ing of cyclist who cycle togeth­er through Lon­don with no planned route and no defined lead­ers or organ­is­ers.

In Sep­tem­ber 1995, the police effec­tive­ly tried to ban Crit­i­cal Mass by claim­ing it was an ille­gal pro­ces­sion, and that the organ­is­ers had to inform the police of the route ahead of the event. This is an exerpt from the leaflet they dis­trib­uted on that occa­sion :

“…Police can impose con­di­tions on pro­ces­sions, demon­stra­tions and oth­er assem­blies, and par­tic­i­pants ren­der them­selves liable to arrest if they fail to com­ply with those con­di­tions. These cycle protests are not law­ful because no organ­is­er has pro­vid­ed police the with the nec­es­sary noti­fi­ca­tion. Your par­tic­i­pa­tion in this event could ren­der you liable to pros­e­cu­tion. Police pol­i­cy in facil­i­tat­ing these events is cur­rent­ly under review…”

It may be dif­fi­cult for the police to accept it, but it is a well known fact that Crit­i­cal Mass has no set organ­is­ers. While some may print leaflets and oth­ers host a web­site, it’s a spon­ta­neous event ; peo­ple just show up on the last Fri­day of the month and ride togeth­er, any­one can go at the front and sug­gest ite­nar­ies. Claim­ing that Crit­i­cal Mass is organ­ised is like claim­ing that traf­fic jams are organ­ised. By their let­ter, the police refused cyclist the sta­tus of ‘traf­fic’ — one of Crit­i­cal Mass’ aim being to show that cyclists are traf­fic and should be allowed to use the road as much as cars.

The Octo­ber 2005 mass saw one of the biggest turnout ever in Lon­don — show­ing how many peo­ple care about Crit­i­cal Mass, and that peo­ple would not let the police stop it. Soon after, Des Key and Friends of the Earth start­ed a court case against the police.

The court case took sev­er­al years and went up to the House of Lords before fin­ish­ing, on the 26th of Novem­ber 2008, rul­ing in favour of crit­i­cal mass. The rul­ing stat­ed that Crit­i­cal Mass was cus­tom­ary, and there­fore did not need to apply for per­mis­sion, or to inform the police.

The rul­ing how­ev­er sug­gests that Crit­i­cal Mass is a pro­ces­sion — refus­ing the idea that cyclist are traf­fic. As such it is not clear how the rul­ing may be used in the future for peo­ple set­ting up new Crit­i­cal Mass­es around the UK who will not be able to claim these are cus­tom­ary events.

Police has been a reg­u­lar fea­ture at Crit­i­cal Mass for the past 3 or 4 years — occa­sion­aly pro­tect­ing cyclists from angry dri­vers, but always try­ing to man­age the ride, shout­ing at peo­ple who tried to do it them­selves and gen­er­al­ly being intim­i­dat­ing towards peo­ple who showed any form of ini­tia­tive. The police were try­ing to trans­form Crit­i­cal Mass into some­thing they could under­stand : an event where par­tic­i­pants are sheep­ish and sim­ply do as the organ­is­ers tell them to do.

It is unclear whether it is relat­ed to this judg­ment, the leav­ing of Ian Blair or oth­er inter­nal police mat­ters, but the police has not been at Crit­i­cal Mass for the past two months. Now that the judge­ment has ruled  in favor of Crit­i­cal Mass, they have even less of a rea­son for show­ing up — and we are going to have to re-learn how to man­age this event our­selves prop­er­ly.

—

Exeter Crit­i­cal Mass — meet 12.00 on Cathe­dral Green on Sat­ur­day Decem­ber 6th. To get in the mood come along to a screen­ing of “We are traf­fic” at Exeter Phoenix on Thurs­day Decem­ber 4th at 19.00

Thurs­day Decem­ber 4th@ 7.00 — We are Traf­fic Screen­ing -
Exeter Phoenix , Brad­ninch Place, Gandy St, Exeter,

We Are Traf­fic! chron­i­cles the his­to­ry and devel­op­ment of the “Crit­i­cal Mass” bicy­cle move­ment– one of the most spir­it­ed and dynam­ic social/political move­ments of the apa­thet­ic 90’s. In over 200 cities in 14 dif­fer­ent coun­tries, Crit­i­cal Mass has now become a month­ly rit­u­al.

With traf­fic con­ges­tion, pol­lu­tion, and road rage on the rise, grow­ing num­bers around the world are advo­cat­ing for trans­porta­tion alter­na­tives, and Crit­i­cal Mass is at the cut­ting edge of this mind­set.

Show­ing in the Black Box Film, every­one wel­come to stay after to talk about future events/critical mass­es etc and maybe for a drink at North­bridge Inn

Snacks pro­vid­ed — feel free to bring more snacks though!

——————————————————————————

Exeter Crit­i­cal Mass — Sat­ur­day 6th Decem­ber @ 12.00 Cathe­dral Green, Exeter -

Xmas Theme option­al — dec­o­rate your bikes!

WHAT’S IS ALL ABOUT?
Crit­i­cal Mass is often described as an ‘unor­gan­ised coin­ci­dence’. It hap­pens when a lot of cyclists hap­pen to be in the same place at the same time and decide to cycle the same way togeth­er for a while

WHAT’S THE PURPOSE?
“Every­day, all over the world, peo­ple are resist­ing the prob­lem cul­ture of the car by get­ting on their bikes and rid­ing, instead of dri­ving.

Crit­i­cal Mass is a cel­e­bra­tion of the alter­na­tives to cars, pol­lu­tion, acci­dents and the loss of pub­lic spaces and free­doms.

Not an organ­i­sa­tion or group, but an idea or tac­tic, Crit­i­cal Mass allows peo­ple to reclaim cities with their bikes, just by get­ting togeth­er and out-num­ber­ing the cars on the road”

WHAT HAPPENS ON A CRITICAL MASS?
Each one is dif­fer­ent and they fol­low no set route, with the direc­tion being spon­ta­neous­ly cho­sen as peo­ple cycle along. Any­one is free to join or leave the ride as it ped­als along.

The ride lasts no more than a cou­ple of hours (depend­ing on the weath­er!) and usu­al­ly ends in a con­ve­nient­ly placed pub for more drinks.

Most all, they are peace­ful, safe and fun!

DO I NEED A BIKE?
Nope! Crit­i­cal Mass is not just for bikes — skate­boards, roller blades, wheel­chairs, pogo sticks — in fact any form of non-motorised, non-pol­lut­ing are all very wel­come!

Protests mark the start of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Posnan (Poland)

Den­mark: Kli­maX rocks the COP15 sum­mit site

Activists from the copen­hagen based cli­mate activist group Kli­maX climbed onto the front of the con­fer­ence site Bel­la Cen­tret and threw out ban­ners. The site is sym­bol­ic in the way that its the actu­al site of the COP15 sum­mit excact­ly one year from now.

Den­mark: Kli­maX rocks the COP15 sum­mit site
KlimaX Posnan protest
Activists from the copen­hagen based cli­mate activist group Kli­maX climbed onto the front of the con­fer­ence site Bel­la Cen­tret and threw out ban­ners. The site is sym­bol­ic in the way that its the actu­al site of the COP15 sum­mit excact­ly one year from now.

“We need a humane solu­tion to the cli­mate cri­sis.” Says Sini Øster­gaard from Kli­maX “We can­not stand by and watch while the rich coun­tries buy CO2 quo­tas from the poor coun­tries. We have take action now.”

The activists brought ban­ners, music, cook­ies and tea while the secu­ri­ty peo­ple and diplo­mats attend­ing a con­fer­ence watched the fun.

“The clock is tick­ing and time has run out. We have to face the con­se­quences of our over-con­sump­tion in the west now.” says Thor from Kli­maX.

The police arrived but did­n’t both­er any­one. The activists promis­es that they’ll con­tin­ue their actions in the run-up to and under the cli­mate sum­mit. Already oth­er actions are brew­ing for the ime­di­ate future.

The inter­na­tion­al mobi­liza­tion for action at the cli­mate sum­mit:
http://climateaction09.org/

Kli­maX — Copen­hagen:
http://klimax2009.org

Video from a coor­po­rate news­pa­per (ignore lame com­er­cials):
http://ekstrabladet.tv/nyheder/indland/article1091836.ece

Kli­maX — Copen­hagen
international@klimax2009.org
http://www.climateaction09.org

========
RTNA Posnan protest
USA: Mon­day Dec. 1

Cli­mate Activists Invade DC Offices of Envi­ron­men­tal Defense, Daugh­ter
of ED Founder Accus­es Group of Push­ing False Solu­tions to Cli­mate Change

Off-site Media Con­tact: Matt Wal­lace, Ris­ing Tide North Amer­i­ca,
828–280-3462
On-site Con­tact: Dr. Rachel Smolk­er, Glob­al Jus­tice Ecol­o­gy Project
802–735-7794

***high res­o­lu­tion pho­tos avail­able soon at:
www.risingtidenorthamerica.org***

Wash­ing­ton, DC-As the UN Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change opened today in Poz­nan, Poland, grass­roots cli­mate activists took over the Wash­ing­ton DC office of Envi­ron­men­tal Defense. The activists stat­ed that they had tar­get­ed ED, one of the largest envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions in the world, because of the orga­ni­za­tion’s key role in pro­mot­ing the dis­cred­it­ed approach of car­bon trad­ing as a solu­tion to cli­mate change.

Dr. Rachel Smolk­er of Glob­al Jus­tice Ecol­o­gy Project and Glob­al For­est Coali­tion read a state­ment, which said in part, “My father was one of the founders of this orga­ni­za­tion, which sad­ly I am now ashamed of. The Kyoto Pro­to­col, the Euro­pean Emis­sions Trad­ing Scheme and vir­tu­al­ly every oth­er ini­tia­tive for reduc­ing emis­sions have adopt­ed their mar­ket approach­es. So far they have utter­ly failed, serv­ing only to pro­vide huge prof­its to the world’s most pol­lut­ing indus­tries. Instead of pro­tect­ing the envi­ron­ment, ED now seems pri­mar­i­ly con­cerned with pro­tect­ing cor­po­rate bot­tom lines. I can hear my father rolling over in his grave.”

The activists rearranged fur­ni­ture in the office, illus­trat­ing how mar­ket­ing car­bon is “like rear­rang­ing the deck chairs on the Titan­ic.” Oth­ers held signs read­ing “Keep the cap, ditch the trade” and “Car­bon trad­ing is an envi­ron­men­tal offense.”

Leo Cer­da, an indige­nous activist with Ris­ing Tide Ecuador said, “ED wants to turn the atmos­phere and forests into pri­vate prop­er­ty, and then give it away to the most pol­lut­ing indus­tries in the form of pol­lu­tion allowances that can be bought and sold. Not only is this an inef­fec­tive way to con­trol emis­sions, it is also a dis­as­ter for the poor and indige­nous peo­ples who are not par­ty to these mar­kets and are most impact­ed by cli­mate change.”

ED has been key in estab­lish­ing the U.S. Cli­mate Action Part­ner­ship, a busi­ness con­sor­tium advo­cat­ing for a cap and trade sys­tem with extreme­ly weak emis­sions reduc­tions. US CAP allows pol­luters like Duke Ener­gy, Shell, BP, DuPont, and Dow Chem­i­cal to claim they are green while con­tin­u­ing with busi­ness as usu­al. In recog­ni­tion, activists award­ed ED the “Cor­po­rate Green­wash Award,” a three foot tall green paint­brush. “We think this award is appro­pri­ate since Envi­ron­men­tal Defense spends more time paint­ing pol­luters green than actu­al­ly defend­ing the envi­ron­ment,” said Matt Wal­lace of Ris­ing Tide North Amer­i­ca.

Oppo­si­tion to car­bon trad­ing is grow­ing as it becomes appar­ent that mar­ket based schemes do lit­tle to fight cli­mate change while help­ing cor­po­ra­tions rake in prof­its. Ear­li­er this year, over 50 groups came togeth­er in the US to denounce car­bon trad­ing in a Dec­la­ra­tion Against the Use of Car­bon Trad­ing Schemes to Address Cli­mate Change. Glob­al­ly, hun­dreds of envi­ron­men­tal, social jus­tice, and indige­nous groups have come togeth­er to oppose such mar­ket based ini­tia­tives as inher­ent­ly unsus­tain­able and inef­fec­tive in cre­at­ing a just tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fuels.

========

Aus­tralia: Coal-fired pow­er sta­tion block­ade on the eve of inter­na­tion­al cli­mate nego­ti­a­tions

Novem­ber 27, 2008: This morn­ing, four peo­ple entered the Mun­morah Coal-Fired Pow­er Sta­tion on the NSW Cen­tral Coast, attach­ing them­selves to con­vey­or belts car­ry­ing coal.

Spokesper­son Ann-Marie Rohlfs says “In two days, the Rudd Gov­ern­ment will go to the Unit­ed Nations cli­mate change meet­ing in Poland. Instead of show­ing lead­er­ship, they are set to announce weak and inef­fec­tive domes­tic emis­sions reduc­tion tar­gets…”
“With the upcom­ing release of the Cli­mate White Paper, the Rudd Gov­ern­ment will hand tens of bil­lions of dol­lars in com­pen­sa­tion and free per­mits to pol­lut­ing indus­tries. Pub­lic mon­ey would be bet­ter spent invest­ing in a green renew­able future for Aus­tralia.”

Spokesper­son Nicky Ison says, “This week we wit­nessed the clo­sure of the BP solar plant in Home­bush Bay. Aus­tralia is miss­ing out on tens of thou­sands of new jobs by con­tin­u­ing to prop up the coal indus­try and pre­vent­ing the tran­si­tion to a renew­able ener­gy econ­o­my.”

In Sep­tem­ber, Nobel Prize Win­ner Al Gore said “I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civ­il dis­obe­di­ence to pre­vent the con­struc­tion of new coal plants.”

We are tak­ing him at his word.

Today’s block­ade at the Mun­morah Pow­er Sta­tion is part of a huge com­mu­ni­ty effort to kick Australia’s coal habit.

“We are fac­ing a cli­mate emer­gency, but our emis­sions are still ris­ing. We call on the Rudd Gov­ern­ment to ensure 2010 is the year Australia’s green­house emis­sions peak and begin to rapid­ly decline.

“If half of the homes in NSW had solar hot water sys­tems, there would be no need for Mun­morah Pow­er Sta­tion. We would save 1.5 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 annu­al­ly. As the old­est pow­er sta­tion in NSW, Mun­morah Pow­er sta­tion must be the first to go in the new green econ­o­my.”

For fur­ther com­ment:
Hol­ly Creenaune- 0417 682 541
Ann-Marie Rohlfs – 0406 021 920
Nicky Ison – 0423 717 567
For high res­o­lu­tions pho­tos and video footage, con­tact Nicky Ison on 0423 717 567

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://www.noborders.org.uk

.….

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

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

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

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

York­shire Activists block­ade Sheffield Bor­der Agency Cen­tre

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

Video — video/quicktime 13M

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

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

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

—

Liv­er­pool anti-ID pick­et: No One Is Ille­gal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For links to leaflet, video and oth­er stuff, see http://noborderswales.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/cardiff-protest-against-id-cards/
—

Soli­hull protest against the impo­si­tion of bio­met­ric ID cards on migrants

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

nobor­ders-brum @ riseup.net

—

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

—

Also in the news:

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

Buy Nothing Day reports — London x2, Norwich, Wrexham, Liverpool & Manchester

“Take your clothes off!

Swap Shop 1Swap Shop 2“Take your clothes off! Swap them with your friends for FREE!” was the mes­sage from the Space Hijack­ers http://www.spacehijackers.co.uk/html/welcome.html, who decid­ed to set up their clothes swap — “the restyling fash­ion mash-up event of the year” — on the low­er ground floor of TOPSHOP at Oxford Cir­cus (Lon­don). The idea was to demon­strate that “we don’t need to spend mon­ey we don’t have on things we don’t need.”

The action, designed as it was to sub­vert one of the icon­ic tem­ples of con­sumerism seemed to baf­fle police and did­n’t amuse the secu­ri­ty staff, who stopped me tak­ing pic­tures there. One oth­er pho­tog­ra­ph­er was man­han­dled out of the store, but I was treat­ed very polite­ly, with sev­er­al secu­ri­ty men stand­ing between me and the action and telling me that pho­to­graph was not allowed. On of the store man­agers even offered to per­son­al­ly help me find any clothes I might wish to buy else­where in the store, a pos­si­bil­i­ty I found most unlike­ly.

I left the store (with a rather large escort until I left the premis­es) and walked around to the side exit where I expect­ed the clothes swap­pers to be eject­ed, arriv­ing just before they emerged, and was able to pho­to­graph them con­tin­u­ing to swap clothes on the pave­ment in Regent Street. Here one police­man did attempt to pre­vent me from tak­ing pic­tures, claim­ing I was caus­ing an obstruc­tion (which clear­ly I was­n’t) and as usu­al I moved back a cou­ple of feet before return­ing to take pic­tures when he moved away.

Things did threat­en to get out of hand when a rather elder­ly police offi­cer (at my age all police­men are sup­posed to look young), helped by a ‘Red Cap’ (rather sin­is­ter pri­vate secu­ri­ty war­dens employed by the ‘New West End Com­pa­ny’ to ensure shop­pers don’t step out of line) start­ed to push peo­ple around, but most­ly oth­er offi­cers took a more sen­si­ble approach, some even talk­ing and jok­ing with the swap­pers as they con­tin­ued to exchange items of cloth­ing on the pave­ment.

Some shop­pers pass­ing by stopped to watch, and a few took a leaflet, but there was no evi­dence of any Dam­a­scene con­ver­sions, most hur­ry­ing on clutch­ing their loaded shop­ping bags, des­per­ate to spend more mon­ey.

One of those tak­ing part was held by the police for a while as they had decid­ed he was the ring­leader. He got a big cheer when he was released, wav­ing his pink ‘Get out of TOPSHOP Jail Free’ Chance Card and the Anti-social Behav­iour Act Notice for the Dis­per­sal of Groups (see http://www.opsi.gov.uk/ACTS/acts2003/ukpga_20030038_en_5 ) which the Met had issued. This required him to leave the Oxford St/Regent St area for the next 24 hours. For­tu­nate­ly the map pro­vid­ed did­n’t include the Red Lion, where he announced his inten­tion of going — and at this point I also left as I was already late for a meet­ing with friends in Streatham. Some of the oth­ers looked as if they were going to con­tin­ue their fun along Oxford Street.

========

All in all, I think it was a good action.

around 30–40 peo­ple turned up and swapped clothes, hun­dreds of leaflets were hand­ed out on oxford street before the action, and when it did hap­pen, Top­Shop had a shop full of Police, PCSO’s and secu­ri­ty, they closed the entrance to the shop and removed the ‘red phone box’ meet­ing point dis­play.

Lots of lit­er­a­ture was hand­ed out, and plen­ty of pret­ty activist flesh, (oh my).

two arrests hap­pened, one for refus­ing to give a name and address (sec­tion 50 of the Police Reform Act) appar­ent­ly it was anti-social behav­iour. On the con­trary I thought it was incred­i­bly social behav­iour show by the hijack­ers. Both arrests were released with­out charge fair­ly swift­ly. Although one was dri­ven to Trafal­gar square and dropped off there for no appar­ent rea­son?

Lat­er on the actions con­tin­ued with a street par­ty in King­ly Court shop­ping cen­tre, and then a road blo­cade at Sev­en Dials with plen­ty of danc­ing.

thanks to all of the non-shop swap­pers and to the love­ly peo­ple who swapped their clothes with mine for the great new out­fit I have.

========

Buy noth­ing day — brix­ton report

“Buy noth­ing day” is an inter­na­tion­al anti-con­sumerist day. Put sim­ply : peo­ple are encour­aged to stop shop­ing for one day. In Brix­ton, activist set up a stall to give away free food and oth­er free items.

Activists met at 11am at Library House to pick up veg­eta­bles and part of the con­tent of the Library House­’s freeshop. The items were brought to Brix­ton, and were giv­en out for free in front of the super­mar­ket next to the tube sta­tion.

——
Norwich rat race
To mark Buy Noth­ing Day, activists from Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide held a Rat Race in the Nor­wich city cen­tre.

The busiest high street in Nor­wich was today full of rats. The rats were equipped with plac­ards read­ing Work Hard­er, Earn More Mon­ey, Buy More Things, Keep Going, and leaflets telling peo­ple to join the con­sump­tion Rat Race. The reverse of the leaflet, revealed the spoof and informed peo­ple that today was buy noth­ing day and per­haps they should con­sid­er the envi­ron­men­tal and social con­se­quences of exces­sive con­sump­tion.

600 leaflets were hand­ed out in total (see below), and many passers-by expressed their sup­port, although one by pass­er was heard to call “Get a job” to which one of the rat (a teacher) shout­ed back, “It’s a Sat­ur­day you toss­er!” – the crowd of shop­pers that had gath­ered around the rats all laughed.BND Norwich flier front
BND Norwich flier back

——–
Wrexham BND freeconomy leaflet
“Free Socks!” “Why? Who’s hold­ing him?”
29.11.2008
In Wrex­ham town cen­tre this morn­ing, the local Freecon­o­my group held a Sock (FREE) Shop — that’s socks for free, not a shop free of socks or even free­ing Sock. Hun­dreds of pairs of warm socks were dis­trib­uted in sub­ze­ro tem­per­a­tures to peo­ple with cold feet — and hands — along with leaflets explain­ing what Freecon­o­my Wrex­ham does and invit­ing peo­ple to get involved in the hap­py world of giv­ing and shar­ing.

There was a great deal of puz­zle­ment about a stall offer­ing free socks in the town cen­tre on a busy Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

One pass­ing shop­per came over to find out more about our cam­paign to free the mys­te­ri­ous ‘Socks’ from his cap­tor. More com­mon­ly, peo­ple just could­n’t seem to believe that the socks were for free:

Free? What’s the catch? You don’t get any­thing for free… do you?

But of course you do. Or, at least, some­one does.…

Loads of stuff hap­pens for free all the time. Cap­i­tal­ism has only sur­vived this long because of the free labour which is pro­vid­ed by any­one whose work helps some­one else to get rich­er. Marx had some­thing to say about this. Land and resources stolen from the peo­ple — our own Eagles Mead­ow includ­ed — are used by busi­ness­es to gen­er­ate prof­it, and trashed in the process. We nur­ture our chil­dren for free because we love them, but all that free care and atten­tion is what brings the next gen­er­a­tion of work­ers into being — a free gift to cap­i­tal­ism. Much of the free stuff we do as par­ents, car­ers, part­ners, friends, ‘good neigh­bours’ and so on is large­ly invis­i­ble to the econ­o­my, although with­out it the econ­o­my as it is could­n’t func­tion at all.

Freecon­o­my Wrex­ham is just doing a bit to raise the pro­file of free giv­ing and encour­age peo­ple to spread their free gifts around rather than trash­ing them, which is what hap­pens when good stuff ends up at the tip, for exam­ple. We hand­ed out socks and leaflets for about 3 hours, by which time even mul­ti­ple lay­ers of our free socks could­n’t keep our feet and hands from freez­ing, so we called it a day.

LEAFLET TEXT

FREECONOMY WREXHAM… Bring and Take… Free for All…

What’s it all about?

Freecon­o­my Wrex­ham is:
for every­one; envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly; shar­ing; giv­ing; fun!; re-using stuff; com­plete­ly free; sus­tain­able.

Turn over to find out more…

Freecon­o­my Wrex­ham is about gift and shar­ing, show­ing that it is pos­si­ble to make things work with­out pay­ment or finan­cial prof­it. In a world where every­thing seems to have a price — often more than we can afford — it can be dif­fi­cult to imag­ine a com­plete­ly free event. But all the goods on our stalls and at our events are there for the tak­ing. Every­one is invit­ed to come and help them­selves.

Bring and Take is made pos­si­ble by every­one who gives their time and ener­gy to help out, who donates goods to be giv­en away, who loans a venue for free or lets us use a van or bakes a cake, and — most impor­tant­ly — every­one who takes away all the things that are donat­ed!

Re-use for the plan­et. Before you throw any­thing away, think about whether some­one else could use it. Nat­ur­al resources, time and skills were need­ed to make that item. If it’s binned, all those things are lost. By shar­ing and re-using, we can keep wealth in our com­mu­ni­ties, help each oth­er, cre­ate good­will and hap­pi­ness, and do a lit­tle bit to save the plan­et.

freeconomywrexham[at]yahoo.co.uk

——–
What, No Prices?
Liverpool Buy Nothing Day 08
More than 150 peo­ple came to Next To Nowhere’s Free Shop on Sat­ur­day in Liv­er­pool. This was a one-off event to mark Buy Noth­ing Day. The organ­is­ers encour­aged peo­ple to come in by offer­ing free tea and toast and free mistle­toe on the street out­side.

Real­ly, it’s free

Buy Noth­ing Day orig­i­nat­ed in the USA in 1992. It was intend­ed to make a state­ment about over-con­sump­tion and the amount of waste this gen­er­ates, and encour­age peo­ple to re-think their lifestyles. It gen­er­at­ed some con­tro­ver­sy, and still does, if the com­ments to the pre­vi­ous post­ing about Buy Noth­ing Day are any­thing to go by! Some peo­ple think con­sump­tion by itself is not the issue, oth­ers think the event is patro­n­is­ing to peo­ple who can’t afford to buy much any­way.
But none of the peo­ple who wan­dered into the free shop last Sat­ur­day seemed to feel patro­n­ised. Some, who had come to town to do Christ­mas shop­ping, looked in out of curi­ousi­ty, and found they pre­ferred doing some “non-shop­ping”, and get­ting some refresh­ments at the free cafe. Peo­ple with lit­tle mon­ey were hap­py to take away free items they need­ed, and for the peo­ple who had donat­ed things, it was sat­is­fy­ing to see goods they don’t need any more being tak­en for re-use. Not every­body who came had heard of Buy Noth­ing Day, and had to be reas­sured that every­thing real­ly was free!
What­ev­er the gen­er­al crit­i­cisms, this par­tic­u­lar free shop worked as a co-oper­a­tive event, it intro­duced peo­ple to the social cen­tre who had nev­er been there before, and it gave peo­ple a taste of how lib­er­at­ing it is to do with­out cur­ren­cy for once.

——–

Buy Noth­ing Day Man­ches­ter: Pri­mark Feels the Wrath of Santa’s Lit­tle Work­ers!

On Sat­ur­day 29th Novem­ber sev­en stu­dents braved Manchester’s heav­ing Mar­ket Street in sup­port of Buy Noth­ing Day 2008. In fes­tive dress and armed with some thought-pro­vok­ing cloth­ing labels of their own, the aim was to raise aware­ness about unnec­es­sary con­sumerism over Christ­mas, and to reveal the true cost of high street fash­ion to Sat­ur­day shop­pers.

The action began incog­ni­to, as the pro­tes­tors secret­ly deliv­ered mes­sages ques­tion­ing con­sumer greed and the uneth­i­cal sourc­ing of cheap fash­ion into the pock­ets, zips, and cuffs of cloth­ing in Pri­mark. Mes­sages such as “I won­der if the per­son who made this gar­ment is hap­py?”, and “Do you real­ly need anoth­er one of these?” were soon dot­ted around the bustling store and secu­ri­ty quick­ly react­ed, call­ing all clean­ers to the ground floor to remove the labels. The pro­test­ers escaped unscathed, mer­ry in the knowl­edge that the chances of hunt­ing out all the labels would be pret­ty slim.

After a quick change of clothes the pro­tes­tors took to the street, antlers and all. With a splen­did ban­ner and leaflets a‑plenty they approached the swarms of passers-by and announced that they need not spend mon­ey this Christ­mas to be hap­py. Some engag­ing debates ensued con­cern­ing con­sumerism and sweat­shops. It was felt by some that only the finan­cial­ly priv­i­leged could afford to have a con­science, and that out­lets such as Pri­mark offered those with a low­er income the chance to look (and there­fore feel) good. Oth­ers had been so far unaware of shops like Primark’s asso­ci­a­tion with fac­to­ries in India, and were gen­uine­ly shocked at some of the sto­ries the pro­tes­tors relayed about under­paid and mis­treat­ed work­ers. Whilst not every­body agreed, the val­ue of live­ly pub­lic debate can­not be under­es­ti­mat­ed. Talk­ing about some­thing is the first step to chang­ing it and per­haps now a few peo­ple will think twice before buy­ing some­thing just because it is cheap. It’s real cost is inhu­mane­ly high.

E.ON protests & actions — London (x3), Bristol, Norwich, Coventry (x2), Nottingham, Brighton & Kingsnorth

Pix-&-Vidz of E.ON F.OFF, Pall Mall, Lon­don — 28 Nov 08

Pix-&-Vidz of E.ON F.OFF, Pall Mall, Lon­don — 28 Nov 08
E.ON Pall Mall 1E.ON Pall Mall 2
Green­wash Gueril­las Lon­don Brigade, Detec­tion Pla­toon #1, pay a protest-ori­ent­ed vis­it to the Lon­don Office of filthy cli­mate crim­i­nal cor­po­ra­tion E.ON UK to con­front a Short-Sight­ed Fat Cat and PR Push­ers plug­ging ‘Clean Coal’ bullplop.

Cli­mate Camp: How to make an E.ON F.OFF plac­ard
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=jbqngfkMZmU
Very use­ful and gen­er­al­ly applic­a­ble method for plac­ard & ban­ner pro­duc­tion using a pro­ject­ed image

Telling E.ON to Take its ‘Clean Coal’ Green­wash & F.OFF

At a time when the glob­al cli­mate cri­sis demands clean, renew­able, ener­gy gen­er­a­tion solu­tions, a Ger­man ener­gy transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion called E.ON want to build a new filthy big coal pow­ered elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ing sta­tion [1] at Kingsnorth in north Kent [2]. All indi­ca­tions are that the UK ‘New’ Labour gov­ern­ment will give them the go ahead, despite the fact that their own Envi­ron­men­tal Audit Com­mit­tee has recent­ly called coal a ‘last resort, even with CCS’; where CCS = Car­bon Cap­ture & Stor­age, an unproven pipedream tech­nol­o­gy that won’t be avail­able for 20 years at the ear­li­est (or so says Alis­tair Dar­ling, the indus­try itself and the Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change).

So build­ing on the recent Mass Action Vic­to­ry which scup­pered E.ON’s UK grad­u­ate recruit­ment plan [3], a bevy of cli­mate cri­sis pro­test­ers tar­get­ed E.ON UK’s Lon­don office at 100 Pall Mall [4] from 8:00 this morn­ing. This is one of a num­ber of decen­tralised protest actions aris­ing from a call to ‘Take Back the Pow­er’ through ’48 Hours of Action against E.ON and New Coal’ over Fri 28 and Sat 29 Nov 08 by:
▪ E.ON F.OFF – http://www.e‑onf-off.org.uk
▪ Camp for Cli­mate Action – http://climatecamp.org.uk
▪ Ris­ing Tide – http://risingtide.org.uk
▪ Plane Stu­pid – http://www.planestupid.com
▪ Cam­paign against Cli­mate Change – http://www.campaigncc.org

Foot­notes

[1] E.ON’s pro­posed new filthy big coal pow­ered elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ing sta­tion – it will emit between 6 and 8 mil­lion tons of CO2 every year (equiv­a­lent to the annu­al emis­sions of Malaw­i’s 13 mil­lion peo­ple or more CO2 than Heathrow’s third run­way would burn) source – http://www.e‑onf-off.org.uk/why.html

[2] Kingsnorth in north Kent – http://tinyurl.com/KingsnorthCoal-map

[3] See ‘Mass Action Vic­to­ry Scup­pers E.ON’s UK Recruit­ment Plan’ – http://tinyurl.com/MAV-13-Nov-08

[4] E.ON UK’s Lon­don office at 100 Pall Mall – http://tinyurl.com/EON-LDN-map

All these pho­tos and video clips are ‘Copy­Left’
This means you are free to copy and dis­trib­ute any of my pho­tos you find here, under the fol­low­ing license:
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> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
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—-
E.on at the FA
On Fri­day 28th Novem­ber Lon­don Ris­ing Tide vis­it­ed the FA Head­quar­ters to protest about E‑on’s strive for new coal in the UK.

The FA cup is spon­sored by E.on and a full team of Ris­ing Tiders turned out to play foot­ball in T shirts bear­ing the names of the gov­ern­men­t’s pro­posed new coal fired pow­er­sta­tions.

Yel­low and Red cards explain­ing the facts about dirty coal were hand­ed out to staff leav­ing the head­quar­ters and pass­ing pub­lic.

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

—-
NatWest climate spoof
Stu­dents spoof natwest ads — 48hrs action on coal

In the 48 hours of action against e.on and new coal, South Lon­don stu­dents affli­at­ed with Peo­ple and Plan­et use their pho­to­shops skills and sense of fun to tar­get Natwest­’s invest­ment in cli­mate change.

Natwest, part of RBS, were giv­en shiney new posters boast­ing their invest­ment hab­bits to cus­tomers. We had a smashin time putting them up so print some out and have fun to. Also lots of stick­er­ing and fun with the space hijack­ers top­shop swap shop — good day!

see www.oyalbankofscotland.com

—-
Bristol EON 2Bristol E.ON 3Bristol EON 1
Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide and activists from in and around Bris­tol had a day of shenani­gans direct­ed at the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, E‑on and new coal.

The day start­ed with a ban­ner drop on one of the fly­overs cross­ing the M32 motor­way run­ning into the city cen­tre. Over lunchtime the main RBS branch in the city cen­tre was pick­et­ed, with activists hand­ing out forged £20 ban­knotes (see below) to passers-by and cus­tomers only to have an ‘RBS bank rob­ber’ steal them back to give to E‑on and the coal indus­try (see pho­to). A mock bank state­m­ate was also dis­trib­uted show­ing RBS’s invest­ment in coal around the world set against the tax­pay­er fund­ed bail out of the bank. The pick­et moved on to an E‑on ‘Fam­i­ly Foot­ball’ event in the Broad­mead shop­ping cen­tre (see pho­to). Mid after­noon saw over 50 activists gath­er­ing in the city cen­tre for a reclaim the streets par­ty. The par­ty, with mobile sound sys­tem roamed the city cen­tre forc­ing the city cen­tre branch of NatWest to close ear­ly and leav­ing the RBS branch unus­able after a very messy cake fight!

http://risingtide.org.uk/bristol

—-

Nor­wich RT Spoof E.on Stall
Norwich E.ON spoof stall
29.11.2008
Today six activists from Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide set up a spoof E.on stall on the Roy­al Bank of Scotland’s doorstep (RBS is one of E.on’s core sources of fund­ing).

The spoof (despite all mate­ri­als read­ing E.on F.off – includ­ing a table cloth, ban­ner, t‑shirts, leaflets, badges and stick­ers) fooled many of the pub­lic. Passers-by said things like “we don’t want to hear any­thing about E.on” and “I’m not a fan of E.on” (it real­ly was amaz­ing how hos­tile peo­ple were to E.on). Once they were informed that we were reveal­ing the truth about E.on and Coal most then took a leaflet and badge.

In total we gave out 400 leaflets and under­took a ques­tion­naire on behalf of E.on.
Results showed that …

50% of peo­ple didn’t know that E.on plans to build a new coal fired pow­er sta­tion – they do now.
90% of peo­ple didn’t know that RBS will part fund­ing it – again we made sure to inform them of this fact.
Last­ly, 100% of peo­ple said they thought that coal fired pow­er sta­tions should be shut down and replaced with renew­able ener­gy sources.

We’ll pass on our find­ings to E.on as soon as pos­si­ble!
Norwich E.ON leaflet frontNorwich E.ON leaflet back
norwich@risingtide.org.uk
http://www.risingtide.org.uk/norwich

—-
Coventry E.ON protest
On Fri­day morn­ing, War­wick Uni­ver­si­ty Peo­ple and Plan­et held a demon­stra­tion at the UK head­quar­ters of E‑ON in Coven­try. This was part of the nation­al 48 hours against E‑ON. The demon­stra­tion was attend­ed by around 30 peo­ple, includ­ing a num­ber from Coven­try uni­ver­si­ty and Leam­ing­ton Ris­ing Tide. The group left cen­tral cam­pus at around mid­day and marched to E‑ON HQ, chant­i­ng and drum­ming. The action was colour­ful and live­ly; enter­tain­ment includ­ed some car­bon cap­ture the­atre and singing (see below). We also leaflet­ed employ­ees walk­ing past. Spir­its were high and strength­ened by the knowl­edge of the oth­er actions to come in the nation­al 48 hours of actions.

Grace Kel­ly, EON

E.ON: I want to talk to you!
Pro­tes­tor: The last time we talk, Mr E.ON, I reduced you to tears! I promise you, it might well hap­pen again!

**Verse 1**

E.ON: Do I attract you?
Do I pol­lute you with my CO2?
Am I too dirty?
Am I too mirky?
Don’t I like what you like?

Pro­tes­tor: You could be whole­some
But you’re still loath­some
I should stop being so shy

E.ON: Why don’t you like me?
Why don’t you like me?
Why are you mak­ing me cry?

**Pre-cho­rus**

Pro­tes­tor: We tried to keep it all pret­ty,
Just a lit­tle ban­ner or two,
But when your plans are so shit­ty,
There’s noth­ing else I could do!

**Cho­rus**

E.ON: I can be Brown
I can be blue
I can pol­lu-ute the sky
I can be hurt­ful
I can burn peo­ple!
I can burn any­thing I like!

Pro­tes­tor: You got­ta be green
Got­ta be clean
Got­ta be every­thing more!

E.ON: Why don’t you like me?

Why don’t you like me?

Pro­tes­tor: Why don’t you walk out the door!

**Verse 2**

E.ON: How can I help it
How can I help it
How could I stop burn­ing coal?
Coal is my baby
My lit­tle lady
I like to get in it’s hole.
Why don’t you buy me
Why don’t you buy me
Why don’t you buy CCS?
When old coal over
I’ll been much bold­er
And still pol­lute noth­ing less.

**Pre-Cho­rus**

Pro­tes­tor: We tried to keep it all pret­ty,
Just a lit­tle ban­ner or two,
But when your plans are so shit­ty,
There’s noth­ing else I could do!

**Cho­rus**

E.ON: I can be Brown
I can be blue
I can pol­lu-ute the sky
I can be hurt­ful
I can burn peo­ple!
I can burn any­thing I like!

Pro­tes­tor: You got­ta be green
Got­ta be clean
Got­ta be every­thing more!

E.ON: Why don’t you like me?
Why don’t you like me?

Pro­tes­tor: Why don’t you walk out the door!

**Bridge**

Pro­tes­tor: Say what you want to sat­is­fy your­self
But you only want what rich investors say that you should want
(should want)

**Cho­rus**

—-
E.ON HQ father christmas1 Decem­ber 2008
E‑ON HQ occu­pied
E.ON HQ occupation 1
E.ON HQ occupation 2
E.ON HQ occupation 3
Short­ly after 9am two mini bus­es packed with San­tas arrived out­side their head­quar­ters and a score of fes­tive pro­test­ers armed with sacks of coal poured in to the build­ing.

For a good half hour they toured the offices, real­ly scor­ing a bulls­eye when they inad­ver­tent­ly crashed the board­room where a full scale meet­ing was in progress. Even after secu­ri­ty man­aged to clear the upper floors the huge recep­tion area was occu­pied until well into the after­noon.

Out­side secu­ri­ty goons and police cre­at­ed a cor­don and refused entry to dozens of vis­i­tors. Clear­ly a good num­ber of meet­ings were post­poned as a result.

The mood soured slight­ly towards the end and extra grumpy police were sum­moned to kill the fes­tive spir­it. After some jostling the spec­tre of Scrooge emerged and four were arrest­ed, charges not known.

—-

Yes­ter­day (1st Decem­ber), activists from across the coun­try staged the third demon­stra­tion against e.on’s head­quar­ters in Coven­try in eight days. Gra­ham, e.on’s secu­ri­ty boss for the day, bemoans the impact on the com­pa­ny…

Yes­ter­day, activists from across the coun­try staged the third demon­stra­tion against e.on’s head­quar­ters in Coven­try in eight days. Gra­ham, e.on’s secu­ri­ty boss for the day, bemoans the impact on the com­pa­ny.

We’d thought we had seen the end of the protests. The 48 hours of action that had been called was annoy­ing enough, but that would be it. We’d tak­en down the Har­ris fenc­ing around our head­quar­ters and were wait­ing for just anoth­er days work run­ning and plan­ning to build coal-fired pow­er sta­tions. Before we knew it two van loads of peo­ple dressed in San­ta Clause cos­tumes with “e.on f.off” embla­zoned on them, were unload­ing coal, scram­bling on our build­ing and gen­er­al­ly run­ning amok.

Just before 9am yes­ter­day morn­ing, about 15 man­aged to get inside the build­ing bring­ing, they say, presents of coal, because appar­ent­ly e.on has been very naughty this year – because we want to build a new coal fired pow­er sta­tion in Kingsnorth and con­tin­u­ing to con­tribute to cli­mate change. Out­ra­geous. We are a decent, respectable com­pa­ny. Some man­aged to get to a board­room meet­ing and dish out a lump of coal to all sit­ting there. Oth­ers got scar­i­ly close to the CEO’s office. Oth­ers engaged with staff on the large open plan office that made their voic­es heard by all. It took us a good hour to clear the pesky San­tas from the build­ing.

Mean­while there was one unsuc­cess­ful attempt to scale part of the roof, but at the revolv­ing doors at the main entrance, two were able to get up and hold up a ban­ner. Sev­er­al of those in the foy­er glued onto side doors, while yet anoth­er San­ta, found him­self in the mid­dle of the revolv­ing doors, also glued on in the midst of a pile of coal bags with “Co2 al” print­ed on them. Lat­er yet anoth­er San­ta glued them­selves to a bar­ri­er.

Some claimed to have be bring­ing the mys­ti­cal solu­tion of “car­bon cap­ture and stor­age” – coal left as it is.

We had to lock the entire build­ing down, for­bid staff from leav­ing, and turned away loads of vis­i­tors that were arriv­ing, it being a busy day for us. This despite us hav­ing already intro­duced var­i­ous secu­ri­ty mea­sures such as new turn­stiles – maybe next time we’ll have them locked so the pro­tes­tors can­not sim­ply walk through them to the open office.

I can tell you that e.on are deeply unhap­py at being made a fool of so com­pre­hen­sive­ly yet again. On the day that Lord Turn­er released his report that the gov­ern­ment would fail dra­mat­i­cal­ly to reach its CO2 reduc­tion tar­gets if e.on are allowed to build a new pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth before con­tro­ver­sial car­bon cap­ture and stor­age tech­nolo­gies have been devel­oped. The protests made Radio 4 head­line news at mid-day, much of the local media and oth­er press. There were at least four cam­eras from main­stream media while a num­ber of oth­er inde­pen­dent pho­to­jour­nal­ists were also there to make sure it was prop­er­ly cov­ered. The boss­es are not hap­py, and the pro­tes­tors got some good images.

My staff, from Ini­tial Ren­tok­il, were not enthu­si­as­tic about how they had been made to look like bum­bling idiots. They need to calm down a bit and stop kneel­ing on people’s necks because they have been defied. Some of them were not help­ing their boss­es by being rude to the BBC cam­era­man and oth­er media. They strut­ted up and down like lost pen­guins, try­ing to shove peo­ple around and shov­ing cam­eras in to the faces of the San­ta Claus­es – though they all got waves back. We had to seem impor­tant by telling staff in the can­teen that they were not allowed to look at the pro­tes­tors – the top brass were get­ting jumpy by then.

Some of my secu­ri­ty need to think as well, it seems. Wasn’t the bright­est thing to say that pro­tes­tors were fine to stay at the main door. Nor was telling the pro­tes­tors on the roof of the door that they could not attach the ban­ner to the wall because e.on would not be able to get it down.

If all that was not enough bum­bling, in a deft move­ment, the San­ta Claus’s realised that the staff had not locked the revolv­ing door and used the fact to get a half-dozen back in to the build­ing were they ran around singing altered Christ­mas hymn about no new coal. Loads of more images for the wait­ing press, includ­ing them congo’ing through our main foy­er.

Even­tu­al­ly they released them­selves, and pro­ceed­ed to leave. West Mid­lands police were there, and had kept a pret­ty use­less, low pro­file through­out the day. Now, at the request of our boss they decid­ed to do some­thing. They were very low on num­bers and clear­ly were not up for remov­ing the actu­al protest, despite the fact the pro­tes­tors were clear­ly peace­ful and most­ly singing their sil­ly songs. The police tried to form a line to stop them leave but their pub­lic order train­ing was woe­ful­ly bad and kept let­ting them escape through despite the fact they were car­ry­ing sacks of coal.

A num­ber were seized and arrest­ed; though some were let go because the police were lit­tle bet­ter than our secu­ri­ty guards in terms of know­ing what they were doing. Four end­ed up going to the cells, of which two have been released. They rest sailed away.

All in all, quite a bad day for us here at e.on. We’re going to have to rethink our entire secu­ri­ty plan, hav­ing been com­pre­hen­sive­ly embar­rassed. The boss­es are fum­ing at hav­ing e.on’s rep­u­ta­tion yet again dragged through the mud, and it is clear that the cam­paign against us is not going to fade away.

By the way, there is a load of email address­es for our var­i­ous com­pa­nies at http://www.eon.com/en/infoservice/3027.jsp

Hope­ful­ly we’ll not see more pro­tes­tors soon.

Anoth­er report, pho­tos of police cor­don­ing Father Christ­mases, and videos
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Nottingham E.ON demo 2Nottingham E.ON demo 1
Nottingham E.ON demo 3
As part of 48 hours of nation­wide action against E.ON, called for by the Camp for Cli­mate Action, Ris­ing Tide, Plane Stu­pid and Cam­paign against Cli­mate Change, Not­ting­ham stu­dents called a demon­stra­tion out­side E.ON’s city cen­tre offices (Mount St, NG1 6PG)

They met at 11.45 in front of the the town hall in Mar­ket Square on Fri­day 27th Nov. Then moved over to the offices at 12pm to fly­er and protest about E.ON’s plans to build a new coal fired pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth in Kent, a ven­ture that will wreck any seri­ous plans to cut car­bon emis­sions and pro­tect the plan­et and its’ pop­u­la­tion from the most dis­as­trous effects of cli­mate change.

The polic­ing and secu­ri­ty arrange­ments seemed a lit­tle exces­sive to me, to man­age 10 stu­dents and fluffy toy!

Why tar­get EON and Kingsnorth?

The pro­posed pow­er sta­tion will emit between 6 and 8 mil­lion tons of CO2 every year, and is just the first in a plan to build up to sev­en new coal fired pow­er sta­tions. This will wreck the UK’s chances of meet­ing its own tar­get of an 80% reduc­tion in car­bon emis­sions by 2050.

Cli­mate change isn’t about warmer sum­mers, here in the UK. It’s about seri­ous changes that will cost mil­lions of peo­ple (par­tic­u­lar­ly those that are the worst off and liv­ing pre­car­i­ous­ly) their liveli­hoods and lives. If we can stop E.ON, oth­er com­pa­nies will be dis­cour­aged from risk­ing sim­i­lar plans, and we will send the strong mes­sage that the ener­gy cri­sis needs to be tack­led pos­i­tive­ly, imple­ment­ing the solu­tions that will get us off fos­sil fuels.

E.ON’s pro­posed new big coal pow­ered elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ing sta­tion – it will emit between 6 and 8 mil­lion tons of CO2 every year (equiv­a­lent to the annu­al emis­sions of Malaw­i’s 13 mil­lion peo­ple or more CO2 than Heathrow’s third run­way would burn) source – http://www.e‑onf-off.org.uk/why.html

Kingsnorth in north Kent – http://tinyurl.com/KingsnorthCoal-map

For pho­tos of the FIT sur­veil­lance again in Not­ting­ham, see also https://indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/11/413951.html

and .…. ear­li­er Not­ting­ham action on the sub­ject:

Not­ting­ham Spring into Action :: Rat­cliffe-on-Soar Pow­er Sta­tion
http://indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2007/04/367714.html
http://indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2007/04/367736.html
http://indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2007/04/367757.html

‘Clean’ Coal On Tri­al [Fea­ture] inc Rat­cliffe case court reports
http://indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2008/01/389386.html

Fos­sil Fools Block­ade E.On Offices in Not­ting­ham : Pic­tures 1
http://indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2008/04/395382.html

Fos­sil Fools Block­ade E.On Offices in Not­ting­ham : Pic­tures 2
http://indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2008/04/395403.html

Fos­sil Fools Block­ade E.On Offices Sur­veil­lance and Spe­cial­ist Equip­ment
http://indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2008/04/395429.html

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Brighton E.ON protest
Brighton – 28th
In Response the the 48 hours of action against Eon and new coal Brighton activists staged 2 actions over the 48 hours. The first action on Fri­day 28th Activists staged a demon­stra­tion out­side the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land with a large ban­ner say­ing ‘RBS and EON fund Cli­mate chaos’ With some sub­ver­sive clean­ing ladies attempt­ing to Clean some coal but strange­ly to no avail – (Illus­trat­ing the unfeesabil­i­ty of ‘clean coal’). There was also alter­na­tive ‘bank­ing advice’being offered to passers by, let­ting them know about RBS and its invest­ments in EON and the build­ing of a new coal-fired pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth.

On the Sat­ur­day 29th
A stam­pede of endan­gered ani­mals decend­ed on Brighton Town cen­tre hand­ing out fly­ers to raise aware­ness about EON and its plans to build at Kingsnorth. In the mid­dle of the large shop­ping cen­tre fore­court the ani­mals staged a dra­mat­ic ‘die-in’. With bewil­dered shop­pers and secu­ri­ty guards crowd­ing round this trag­ic scene, Moth­er earth her­self addressed the crowd and explained what might hap­pen to the ani­mal king­dom and the human one if EON and oth­er Coal hun­gry com­pa­nies were allowed to have their way and wreak cli­mate hav­oc!

—-

Kingsnorth action cov­er­age — “Intrud­er enters E.ON pow­er sta­tion and switch­es off 2% of UK sup­plies”

SOLIDARITY WITH MIGRANT WORKERS: DEMO AT AMEY HQ, OXFORD: MON 8TH DEC

SOLIDARITY WITH SACKED MIGRANT WORKERS 8/12/08

On Mon­day the 8th Decem­ber at 11.00am there will be a noisy demo out­side
Amey PLC’s Cor­po­rate HQ in Oxford (address below)called by the Cam­paign
Against Immi­gra­tion Con­trols, and The No Bor­ders Net­work

In Sep­tem­ber this year 5 migrant clean­ers were sacked by Amey Plc for “bring­ing the com­pa­ny into dis­re­pute”.

SOLIDARITY WITH SACKED MIGRANT WORKERS 8/12/08

On Mon­day the 8th Decem­ber at 11.00am there will be a noisy demo out­side
Amey PLC’s Cor­po­rate HQ in Oxford (address below)called by the Cam­paign
Against Immi­gra­tion Con­trols, and The No Bor­ders Net­work

In Sep­tem­ber this year 5 migrant clean­ers were sacked by Amey Plc for “bring­ing the com­pa­ny into dis­re­pute”.

(Those of you with long mem­o­ries may remem­ber Amey as the con­trac­tor for What­ley Quar­ry way back when in 1996.)

How were they dam­ag­ing the com­pa­ny image? By belong­ing to a Trade Union and telling oth­er staff at the Nation­al Phys­i­cal Lab­o­ra­to­ry (NPL) in Lon­don where they work what was hap­pen­ing to them. Since them they have had their appeal against dis­missal reject­ed.

Back­ground:

Julio (one of the sacked clean­ers) recent­ly described how Amey were con­tract­ed by the Nation­al Phys­i­cal Lab­o­ra­to­ry to do the clean­ing work. Orig­i­nal­ly there were 36 Latin Amer­i­can clean­ers. When Amey took over the con­tract at NPL the clean­ers were paid £7.10 per hour. The com­pa­ny were sur­prised at this rate of pay and so attempt­ed to get rid of those work­ers con­tract­ed at this rate of pay.

Their first act was to reduce the lev­els of staffing. When the work­ers resist­ed the com­pa­ny respond­ed using intim­i­da­tion. On one occa­sion the work­ers were invit­ed to a health and safe­ty train­ing ses­sion. Once in the room 60 police and immi­gra­tion offi­cers entered. Some of the work­ers did not have the papers need­ed to work and have since been deport­ed.

But this did not deter the oth­er work­ers who knew their rights and con­tin­ued to show a tremen­dous spir­it of sol­i­dar­i­ty and courage.

No Bor­ders Groups from Bristol,Oxford,London & South Wales are attend­ing. It would be great see oth­er groups and indi­vid­u­als there.

Trans­port is avail­able from Bris­tol. E‑mail: bristolnoborders@riseup.net

About The Cam­paign Against Immi­gra­tion Con­trols:

Immi­gra­tion con­trols are a weapon against the whole work force. They divide us and are a tool of dis­ci­pline the work­force. If there are work­ers with less right or no rights, this under­mines the posi­tion of work­ers as a whole. The answer must be to oppose immi­gra­tion con­trols. EQUAL RIGHTS ARE IN THE INTERESTS OF ALL WORKERS!

http://caic.org.uk/

About The No Bor­ders Net­work:

No Bor­ders is a net­work of groups strug­gling for the free­dom of move­ment for all and an end to all migra­tion con­trols. We call for a rad­i­cal move­ment against the sys­tem of con­trol, divid­ing us into cit­i­zens and non-cit­i­zens.

/www.noborders.org.uk

Amey
The Sher­ard Build­ing
Oxford Sci­ence Park
Edmund Hal­ley Road
Oxford
OX4 4DQ

“I got a let­ter from the gov­ern­ment the oth­er day, I opened and read it, it said they were suck­ers” Chuck D

Telmex phone booths sabotaged in Mexico City

Com­mu­niques from the 96 phone booths sab­o­taged in four sep­a­rate actions by the eco-anar­chist cell for direct attack, the Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front (ELF) and the Lud­dites Against the Domes­ti­ca­tion of Wild Nature (LCDNS);

Telmex sabotagedTelmex sabotagedCom­mu­niques from the 96 phone booths sab­o­taged in four sep­a­rate actions by the eco-anar­chist cell for direct attack, the Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front (ELF) and the Lud­dites Against the Domes­ti­ca­tion of Wild Nature (LCDNS);

“Dur­ing four days last week 37 tele­phone receivers of pub­lic tele­phones belong­ing to the ‘telmex’ phone com­pa­ny in Mex­i­co City were cut (with the help of bolt cut­ters and wire cut­ters), leav­ing the phones unus­able.
Telmex, in addi­tion to being respon­si­ble for the destruc­tion of the plan­et, also finan­cial­ly sup­ports, direct­ly and with adver­tis­ing, sadis­tic bull­fights.
The sab­o­tage con­tin­ues … it will not stop …

arm your desires … do not let the moment pass …

until the exploita­tion ends.

eco-anar­chist cell for direct attack.

mex­i­co city 31 octo­ber 2008”

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“Inspired by the action on Octo­ber 31 in Mex­i­co City, we have like­wise sab­o­taged 25 phone booths of the Telmex com­pa­ny.

Frente de Lib­eración de la Tier­ra [Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front]”

—————————-

“Sab­o­tage to 4 telmex tele­phones.

On Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 8, with the means with­in our reach we sab­o­taged 4 pub­lic tele­phones belong­ing to the super mil­lion­aire Car­los Slim and his busi­ness telmex. Telmex not only finan­cial­ly sup­ports bull­fights, but is also one of the major destroy­ers of the plan­et.
These sab­o­tages will not stop… until the end of exploita­tion of flo­ra and fau­na.
For ani­mal lib­er­a­tion… com­mit­ment and direct action…

eco-anar­chist cell for direct attack.

mex­i­co city (d.f.) novem­ber 9, 2008”

—————————-

Novem­ber 12:

The com­pa­ny that destroys the earth and its inhab­i­tants, Telmex, received a new attack from the Lud­dites Against the Domes­ti­ca­tion of Wild Nature (LCDNS); at night we sab­o­taged 30 tele­phones, tear­ing them from their respec­tive booths.

The sab­o­tage against Telmex will not stop until civ­i­liza­tion falls.

We are the stone in your shoes!

Rev­o­lu­tion and insur­rec­tion, Mex­i­co.”

—————————-

Source — www.directaction.info

NEW SOCIAL JUSTICE CENTRE IN BIRMINGHAM

24.11.2008
A new social cen­tre is devel­op­ing near Birm­ing­ham City Cen­tre. Please come and get involved.

JUSTICE NOT CRISIS have moved on from their squat­ted Cllr John Lines home­less vil­lage, http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/21744
into the Fire­bird pub, on the local Ben­more estate.

24.11.2008
A new social cen­tre is devel­op­ing near Birm­ing­ham City Cen­tre. Please come and get involved.

JUSTICE NOT CRISIS have moved on from their squat­ted Cllr John Lines home­less vil­lage, http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/21744
into the Fire­bird pub, on the local Ben­more estate.

The protest has become much more than a hous­ing demon­stra­tion. “Its a response to the lack of youth pro­vi­sion, com­mu­ni­ty pro­vi­sion and the lack of com­mu­nal spaces for peo­ple to meet with­out the need to spend mon­ey.”

Since enter­ing the pub the group has been clean­ing up, inside and out, mak­ing it safe and secure. There is a cosy com­mu­ni­ty space and the young peo­ple from the local area have been giv­en their own space to do their own thing. They’ve brought in their own pool table and a sofa. They have also dec­o­rat­ed the entrance dur­ing a grafit­ti work­shop.

Free advice on debt, ben­e­fits and hous­ing is being offered to local res­i­dents, a fire­place has been built from recy­cled mate­ri­als found on-site and a library has been start­ed.

The begin­nings of a Social Cen­tre are emerg­ing from the ini­tial Jus­tice Not Cri­sis protest and the col­lab­o­ra­tion between the dif­fer­ent groups involved. For more infor­ma­tion on Social Cen­tres go to; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_centre

We are still in the process of fix­ing up the space and any­one is wel­come to come down and get involved.

Some of us will be at the film screen­ing this Thurs­day at The Spot­ted Dog in Dig­beth at 7.30pm, show­ing and talk­ing about we’ve been up to.

For more info;
http://www.justicenotcrisis.wordpress.com

——-

Pre­vi­ous updates (since last report):

THE JOHN LINES HOMELESS VILLAGE FINDS NEW LOCATION

Novem­ber 9, 2008
Fol­low­ing the grant­i­ng of an evic­tion by Birmingham’s coun­ty court The Coun­cil­lor john Lines Home­less Vil­lage has moved to a new site.

Fol­low­ing our live inter­view on BBC1’s The Pol­i­tics Show cam­paign­ers form JUSTICE NOT CRISIS moved tents and belong­ings to a new site just 50m away. The old site has been cleaned up and the remain­ing few things will be removed tomor­row (Mon­day) before the bailiffs turn up SO NO BIG CLEAN UP EXPENSE coun­cil­lor Lines.

The site is at the start for the Per­shore Road (city end). Park­ing is avail­able in Bal­sall Heath Road. Click here for a map.

——-

HOUSING DEMO MOVES TO A THIRD SITE

Post­ed on Novem­ber 12, 2008
Hav­ing moves to a new site just yards from the orig­i­nal site we have now been told to move again. We didn’t want to cost the coun­cil any mon­ey be refus­ing and mak­ing the coun­cil pay for a bailiff so we have left the site.
Our new loca­tion is at the old Fire­bird Pub in Belle­vue. We have cho­sen this site as the build­ing has been emp­ty for years, is van­dalised dai­ly and is an eye­sore. The land could be used for social hous­ing, com­mu­ni­ty facil­i­ties, a busi­ness that could pro­vide jobs, etc but the own­ers have left it emp­ty and falling down.

Belle­vue is almost oppo­site the old camps and can be reached by bus­es: 61,62, & 63 Bris­tol Road, 45 &47 Per­hore Road or the 8A & 8C.

Click here for a map.

See top of sto­ry for more info.

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JNC CAMPAIGNER STABBED IN THROAT