Live from the fields…

The Bath Bomb

It’s Our Birth­day – Make Us (Veg­an) Cake!

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #13
free/donation
Aug 08

Birth­day Bumps

To cel­e­brate our first anniver­sary, the Bath Bomb has teamed up for an exclu­sive part­ner­ship with the Bris­tol Evening Post, who are now offer­ing a free Bath Bomb with every issue! Mon­ey-grub­bing egghead MD Kevin Beat­ty, of media monop­oly Asso­ci­at­ed News­pa­pers (proud pro-fas­cist own­ers of the Dai­ly Mail, as well as North­cliffe Media — who have been busi­ly buy­ing out every local media out­let they can over the last 5 years and reduc­ing them to the same gener­ic mould) had this to say about the hap­py union: “…ven­ture cap­i­tal­ism… caviar…tax loopholes…fourth hol­i­day home in the Bahamas…co-opting any­thing rad­i­cal and real….” Hap­py first birth­day us! Now, we look eager­ly for­ward to the next year of bland­ly cen­sor­ing all opin­ion, cost cut­ting, and sack­ing sur­plus journos!

http://www.dmgt.co.uk/corporatestructure/associatednewspapers/

Life At Cli­mate Camp

Twelve activists from Bath Activist Net­work attend­ed this sum­mer’s Camp for Cli­mate Action, held from the 3rd-11th August, near Kingsnorth Pow­er Sta­tion, in the Hoo Penin­su­la of Kent. The Camp was not only held in defi­ance of E‑On’s plans to build the UK’s first coal-fired pow­er sta­tion for 33 years, but also to sug­gest alter­na­tives to the lifestyle options pro­vid­ed by state cap­i­tal­ism that dam­age the earth and its poor­est peo­ple. The Camp had no lead­ers; deci­sions were made col­lec­tive­ly and every­one vol­un­teered for jobs that need­ed doing. Veg­an food was pre­pared using local organ­ic ingre­di­ents and eat­en com­mu­nal­ly. It pro­vid­ed its own phys­i­cal and men­tal health care, secu­ri­ty, inde­pen­dent media (with inter­net access) and con­flict medi­a­tion. Grey water fil­tra­tion sys­tems were used to irri­gate the fields, rub­bish was recy­cled and com­post­ed and the waste from com­post loos will be used by local farm­ers. The site was pow­ered by wind and solar ener­gy. The tech­ni­cal poten­tial for glob­al wind and solar pow­er exceeds cur­rent ener­gy use. Plus, in gen­er­al, weath­er that is unfavourable for wind pow­er pro­duc­tion is favourable for solar ener­gy and vice ver­sa.

Enter­tain­ment was pro­vid­ed in the form of live music, ped­al pow­ered sound sys­tems, a cin­e­ma, barn dance, veg­an cake bak­ing ses­sions, pirate radio, karaoke and beer! Work­shops ranged from edu­ca­tion on envi­ron­men­tal sci­ence to recy­cled bike part jew­ellery mak­ing and prac­ti­cal fem­i­nist self-defence. All in all, a great nine days and well worth get­ting mud­dy for.

www.climatecamp.org.uk

Hoo Grrrs Wins

B. da Fucha con­tin­ues our exclu­sive report: “Not only was the Camp a near-per­fect exper­i­ment in sus­tain­able liv­ing, but was also a launch pad for uncom­pro­mis­ing action against the cli­mate crim­i­nals. What with the agro­fu­els indus­try being respon­si­ble for 75% of recent glob­al food price hikes, on Thurs­day the 7th August, activists block­ad­ed the Vopak bio­fu­els depot in near­by Thur­rock, which sup­plies so-called ‘green’ com­pa­nies like Green­er­gy and Tesco. Else­where, dur­ing the Camp, there were more ban­ner drops and lock-ons than you can shake an extend­able baton at, but here fol­low just a few:

Actions took place the same day at Gatwick Air­port against short-haul flights (139 flights from Lon­don to Edin­burgh, but only 22 trains); an oil-spat­tered ‘die-in’ at RBS’ HQ (‘The Oil and Gas Bank’, who pro­vides $20 mil­lion to pol­lut­ing coal projects such as Arch Coal’s Bond vil­lain-esque ‘Moun­tain Top Removal’ schemes); and — prov­ing that size isn’t every­thing — in Legoland in Wind­sor, Lego cam­paign­ers scaled and hung a ban­ner from E‑On’s mini repli­ca pow­er sta­tion!

Mean­while, on Sat­ur­day the 9th, to the tune of 60 or so arrests, activists laid siege to Kingsnorth with a three-pronged attack: over water, land, and, appar­ent­ly, air. 1,000 made their way over roads in a peace­ful and fam­i­ly-friend­ly parade, though restrict­ing crowd con­trol bar­ri­ers van­ished one by one (to onlook­ing plod’s dis­may), and there were some minor scuf­fles due to police bru­tal­i­ty. Mean­while, over the fields, a 200-strong brigade of Green Guer­ril­las clam­bered, crawled, wad­ed and leapt their way to Kingsnorth, even­tu­al­ly breach­ing three rings of fenc­ing (luck­i­ly, wily sabo­teurs had secret­ly shut the elec­tric­i­ty before­hand), fac­ing riot cops, Alsa­tians and hors­es. And along the Med­way, with ‘The Great Rebel Raft Regat­ta’, a mot­ley flotil­la of 28 home­made pirate ves­sels braved the cur­rents, with one craft get­ting through.

Else­where, pro­test­ers clam­bered atop pylons, and occu­pied Sel­f­ridges in Lon­don, chained to a ban­ner read­ing ‘Our con­sump­tion will fuck us all.’ And the next day, shenani­gans con­tin­ued, with the Smith­field­’s meat mar­ket wak­ing to the sight of rooftop mes­sages: ‘Fight Cli­mate Change — Go Veg­an,’ and a squadron of imi­ta­tion planes edu­cat­ing USAF Milden­hall about the links between cli­mate dis­as­ter and mil­i­tary ven­tures.

At the end of the day, 4 peo­ple got into Kingsnorth and dis­rupt­ed oper­a­tions, despite the £17 mil­lion security/policing bud­get, and the day was won — and, if they do make the mis­take of com­menc­ing build­ing work, we will be back, and we will shut them down!”

http://www.indymedia.org.uk
www.thegrrr.net/

FACT BOX

If E‑On is giv­en the go-ahead:

- It will under­mine the Government’s com­mit­ment to meet Euro­pean tar­gets for pro­duc­ing 20% of ener­gy from renew­ables by 2020
— The UK’s chances of meet­ing the nec­es­sary 80% emis­sions reduc­tions by 2050 will be blown
— The inef­fi­cient, cen­tralised ener­gy gen­er­a­tion sys­tem that’s respon­si­ble for 2/3s of all the ener­gy with­in fos­sil fuels being wast­ed will be propped up, poten­tial­ly for anoth­er 50 years
— It will emit as much car­bon diox­ide as the world’s 24 low­est emit­ting coun­tries com­bined

FFI, check out these two new pub­li­ca­tions:

Smith, Kevin — Cash­ing In On Coal; RBS, UK Banks and the Glob­al Coal Indus­try; avail­able from http://www.carbonweb.org
Fauset, Claire – Tech­no-Fix­es: a crit­i­cal guide to cli­mate change tech­nolo­gies; avail­able from http://www.corporatewatch.org

QUOTE OF THE MONTH: “I’m not here to fuck about – I’m not here to feed the police hob­nobs!”

Polic­ing The Cli­mate Camp

While up to 3,000 peo­ple at Cli­mate Camp worked hard to cre­ate a peace­ful, eco-friend­ly, edu­ca­tion­al space, anoth­er group in the area were work­ing equal­ly hard to make sure that none of this came to fruition. Nor­mal­ly, it is advis­able to ignore the police, view them as a pet­ty dis­trac­tion and move on, but the (mis)behaviour of the boys in blue at this year’s Camp war­rants a clos­er look.

At pre­vi­ous events, the vast major­i­ty of police harass­ment has been focused (entire­ly unsuc­cess­ful­ly) around pre­vent­ing direct action and effec­tive protest. This year how­ev­er, the aim of the police seemed to be to stop the Camp from hap­pen­ing at all. On the first day of set­ting up, with only 70 pro­tes­tors present, hun­dreds of police descend­ed on the site, caus­ing crim­i­nal dam­age, mak­ing arbi­trary arrests and beat­ings. They then pro­ceed­ed to con­fis­cate hun­dreds of items includ­ing water drainage sys­tems, dis­abled toi­lets, chil­drens’ crayons, guy ropes, cook­ing equip­ment, solar pan­els and wind tur­bines. Activists put up a brave and pro­tract­ed fight that pre­vent­ed the police from steal­ing much more. This set the tone for the polic­ing, with tac­tics rang­ing from repet­i­tive ille­gal and intru­sive stop and search­es, the arrest­ing of inno­cents (and release straight after Camp with­out charge; just to clear away pro­tes­tors), the con­fis­ca­tion of arti­cles rang­ing from bikes to tents; also, hun­dreds of riot police rou­tine­ly attempt­ed to storm the site, using batons, shields and the threat of police dogs, caus­ing numer­ous injuries (includ­ing head injuries to a grand­moth­er and teenage girl, sat at the gate dur­ing an attack) almost every morn­ing between 2 and 6am, as well as con­stant low-lev­el fly­ing over the Camp dur­ing the small hours (in vio­la­tion of Arti­cle 5 of the Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights relat­ing to sleep depri­va­tion and men­tal tor­ture). Dur­ing one attack, the local MP who was present wit­nessed such a bru­tal attack that he lodged sev­er­al com­plaints with police high-ups and lat­er declared sup­port for the Camp — he even received a dose of pep­per spray to the face from one overzeal­ous cop­per! It is worth not­ing that due to deter­mined resis­tance from campers, the police were suc­cess­ful­ly kept off site all week, except for that first raid. While refus­ing to be vic­tims of police bru­tal­i­ty, many hard­ened activists were shocked by the inten­si­ty, fre­quen­cy and sheer unpro­voked bru­tal­i­ty of police aggres­sion towards the Camp and its inhab­i­tants.

So why were the police so des­per­ate to pre­vent the cam­paign­ers’ mes­sage being spread, and why was the empha­sis of their oper­a­tion on dis­rup­tion of work­shops and the gen­er­al smooth run­ning of the Camp? Two rea­sons spring to mind. First­ly, the envi­ron­men­tal direct action move­ment, with Cli­mate Camp at its core, has swollen in size and effec­tive­ness over the past few years, and threat­ens to become a move­ment capa­ble of mak­ing real, rad­i­cal and last­ing change — some­thing the state will nev­er be will­ing to let hap­pen with­out a fight. Sec­ond­ly, cli­mate change is becom­ing very real to the peo­ple of this coun­try. Floods, dras­tic hikes in the price of fuel and food are all prod­ucts of gov­ern­ment-dri­ven cli­mate change. As such, Cli­mate Camp is gain­ing a strong social rel­e­vance — its crit­i­cisms of cap­i­tal­ism increas­ing­ly valid and its solu­tions increas­ing­ly tan­gi­ble. As water lev­els and reces­sion rise, and dis­con­tent and anger start to grow in more and more peo­ple, the gov­ern­ment (as in New Orleans) respond with greater author­i­tar­i­an­ism and social con­trol. They will also defend their crum­bling ide­ol­o­gy and attempt to vio­lent­ly repress those who show anoth­er way.

Despite the police oper­a­tion being a bun­gled yet bru­tal fail­ure, it does set a wor­ry­ing prece­dent for polit­i­cal polic­ing, the first signs of a gov­ern­ment who, lack­ing cred­i­bil­i­ty, respect, or answers, turns to vio­lence to pro­tect its increas­ing­ly iso­lat­ed and unpop­u­lar agen­da.

As well as rad­i­cal­is­ing the less mil­i­tant activists present, the police activ­i­ty also rad­i­calised near­by res­i­dents, with one local poll show­ing 50% of vil­lagers now sup­port­ing the Camp.

For a copy of the Nation­al Extrem­ism Tac­ti­cal Co-ordi­na­tion Unit (NETCU)’s advice for police on how to deal with pro­test­ers, see here:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/08/405393.html
and here:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/08/405409.html
Police assaults dur­ing a search: http://www.medwaymessenger.co.uk/news/default.asp?article_id=46009
police steal­ing bikes: http://blip.tv/file/1149491/
Law­suits against the police made easy!: http://217.12.8.115/uk.f271.mail.yahoo.com/ya/securedownload?clean=0&fid=Inbox&mid=1_59089_ACW2ktkAAGe7SKP16g3MGjdp7HQ&pid=2&tnef=&prefFilename=suingthepolice.htm&cred=Liy1IXXCscVFc0JQh0o9r3FJcEo3Cltuasu_YRgi8gS1sxTCSf89fxmLQ5lXFFBax1bXeuLBv7NytQfoli4g9qGZzKgDw8pKj9hIjxGArb36Jkkhbg–&ts=1218709236&partner=ymail&sig=JSHCW3uQSwpEnGdyw35J5A–

Unnat­ur­al Dis­as­ters

Much dis­cus­sion and debate in Kent focused on the very real issue of how the lives of peo­ple in the third world are being affect­ed by cli­mate change and how this will be esca­lat­ed in the future. Whilst for some of us, cli­mate change seems a rel­a­tive­ly abstract notion, for much of the major­i­ty world it is a dai­ly real­i­ty. For many women and girls, their role is pri­mar­i­ly that of car­er. A speak­er dur­ing one action at this year’s Camp drew lis­ten­ers’ atten­tion to the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in India, where progress, which has offered girls oppor­tu­ni­ties in edu­ca­tion, is being coun­ter­act­ed by errat­ic rain­fall, draw­ing girls away from edu­ca­tion and back to domes­tic roles. As well as this, Indi­a’s poor­est women and girls are often involved in what the UN brands ‘cli­mate sen­si­tive’ activ­i­ties, such as pad­dy cul­ti­va­tion and fish­ing, mean­ing that flood­ing and oth­er cat­a­stro­phes will put their lives and liveli­hood on the line.

Despite these set­backs, women are on the front lines in the fight against cli­mate change. For instance, in parts of Bangladesh where farm­ers face cat­a­stroph­ic flood­ing which has been increased by cli­mate change, women have adapt­ed their farm­ing meth­ods to cope, includ­ing cre­at­ing float­ing hyacinth beds and rear­ing ducks.

http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2804

GREEN CAMPAIGNERS SAID:

- “If it is seri­ous about tack­ling cli­mate change, the gov­ern­ment must throw out this pro­pos­al and pro­mote invest­ment in clean and green alter­na­tives” — Robin Web­ster, Friends of the Earth.
— Car­o­line Lucas of the Green Par­ty said the move was a “mas­sive step back­wards.” She said “ulti­mate­ly it’s utter­ly unnec­es­sary, there are oth­er ways of gen­er­at­ing energy…it’s not dif­fi­cult to be slight­ly more effi­cient than the old pow­er sta­tions…”
— “In the same amount of time and for less mon­ey, we could imple­ment an ener­gy sys­tem that will do far more to stop cli­mate change and ensure ener­gy secu­ri­ty than nuclear or coal-fired pow­er: a com­bi­na­tion of renew­ables, effi­cien­cy, and com­bined heat and pow­er” — Green­peace

http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/the-convenient-solution-20070718
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/climate/the-case-against-coal-frequently-asked-questions
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/greenpeace-shuts-down-coal-fired-power-station-20071008

…but that’s enough about so-called ‘experts’ – what do YOU say?

Oth­er Routes Of Change

Cli­mate Cam­p’s all over now, but the ‘Roots of Change’ day Bath Activist Net­work put on back in July to pro­mote it, yield­ed more than just that. We set up, er, camp in the Green Park Mar­ket, with stalls to let peo­ple know what BAN do and what Camp was all about. We were also joined by Tran­si­tion Town Bath, Viva! and Lon­don Road Food Co-op. There was a beau­ti­ful pho­to-dis­play from last year’s Cli­mate Camp and Bath’s FreeShop, with loads of peo­ple stop­ping to look and browse. The day real­ly put the mes­sage across that there was some­thing for every­one and encour­aged peo­ple to go at their own pace, chang­ing as much or as lit­tle as they liked. Whether plung­ing in at the deep end with ten days of com­mu­nal liv­ing and non vio­lent direct action at Cli­mate Camp, or pad­dling in the shal­low, but no less impor­tant end, by mak­ing small­er tweaks to every­day life, embrac­ing ideas such as shop­ping at a food co op or try­ing a veg­e­tar­i­an or veg­an diet. These changes often lead to more, after all, and too often peo­ple get put off mak­ing any changes due to a feel­ing of pres­sure and lack of sup­port. The oth­er main point is that these changes don’t have to be all doom and gloom — chang­ing some­thing and putting some­thing enjoy­able in its place is much bet­ter than giv­ing some­thing up — enrich­ing our lives rather than dimin­ish­ing them. I’ve recent­ly been find­ing it a very com­fort­ing thought that there is an active com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple, often behind the scenes, who are work­ing on green ener­gy alter­na­tives for an uncer­tain future. There are still improve­ments to make, but I am con­stant­ly impressed by the amaz­ing­ly ded­i­cat­ed, ambi­tious and cre­ative peo­ple involved in these projects and the improve­ments they are able to make to any­thing they lay their hands on, from veg­an food to prac­ti­cal­i­ties such as com­post toi­lets. When the shit comes down, we’ll be using it as fer­til­iz­er.

http://www.transitionbath.org.uk/
http://www.envolve.co.uk/projects/food_coop.html
http://www.viva.org.uk/

If I Can’t Dance…

On the 5th Sep­tem­ber at the Porter Butt in Bath, all are cor­dial­ly invit­ed to a gig fundrais­er, ben­e­fit­ing the upcom­ing Bris­tol Anar­chist Book­fair — more info to fol­low! Speak­ing of which, the book­fair takes place on Sat­ur­day the 13th Sep­tem­ber, from 10am til 5pm, at St Wer­burghs Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, on Hor­ley Road in Bris­tol. Entry is free, and all are wel­come. Oh, and there’ll be a veg­an caff, too! If any­one wants to help dis­trib­ute fly­ers and posters, get in touch: bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk.

www.bristolanarchistbookfair.org

EVENTS

Mon­day nights — Bath Hunt Sabs Meet­ing, 8pm, Bell, Wal­cot Street
Wednes­days — Lon­don Road Food Co-op, 4–7pm, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Lon­don Road
Sat­ur­days — Bath Stop The War Vig­il, 11.30am-12.30, Abbey Court­yard
Weds 27th Aug-1st Sept — Earth­First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing, Nor­folk, see www.earthfirstgathering.org.uk
Weds 3rd Sept — Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, 7.30–8.30pm, back room of Bell, Wal­cot Street
Thurs­day 4th Sept — Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, 7.30–9pm, down­stairs of Hob­gob­lin, St James Parade
Fri 5th Sept — punk ben­e­fit gig for Bris­tol Anar­chist Book­fair, 8–11pm, Porter Butt, Lon­don Road
Sat 6th Sept — Car­ni­val Against Vivi­sec­tion march, 12pm, meet oppo­site Led­bury train sta­tion
Tues 9th Sept — Tran­si­tion Town Bath Open Forum, 7–8pm , Wid­combe Social Club, Wid­combe Hill
Sat 13th Sept — Bris­tol Anar­chist Book­fair, 10–5, St Wer­burghs Cen­tre
Sat 13th Sept — Bath FreeShop, 12–3, out­side Pump Rooms, Stall Street
Tues 15th Sept — screen­ing of ‘11th Hour’ film, 7.30pm, upstairs The Rum­mer
Sat­ur­day 27th Sept — Nation­al Anti Fur march and ral­ly, 12pm, Bel­grave square, Lon­don, see http://www.caft.org.uk/furmarch/2008.htm

How Many Cops Does It Take To Change A Light­bulb?

In answer to this age-old ques­tion, let’s con­sid­er the cop-installed gen­er­a­tor, turned off in mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances the night fol­low­ing the police inva­sion of the Camp for Cli­mate Action. Our benev­o­lent state secu­ri­ty guards seemed to have a lit­tle trou­ble switch­ing the light back on. It took half an hour and six cops to find the light switch, but hey, I’m sure the coun­try is safe in their hands.

For fur­ther info on any of our sto­ries see www.myspace.com/bathbomb

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

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Con­tact us by e‑mailing bathbombpress@yahoo.co.uk. Large print e‑versions avail­able on request.

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

B B Jenk­ins