Burma activists ‘lock on’ to Total

16.10.2007
Three direct activists have today shut down a busy Total fill­ing sta­tion in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Bur­ma’s non­vi­o­lent strug­gle for democ­ra­cy.

London Total 116.10.2007
Three direct activists have today shut down a busy Total fill­ing sta­tion in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Bur­ma’s non­vi­o­lent strug­gle for democ­ra­cy.

Under a ban­ner say­ing “May all beings be hap­py – Free Bur­ma ” the activists have locked them­selves togeth­er and begun to med­i­tate, lock­ing togeth­er the hoses, turn­ing off the pow­er and block­ing the entrance to the premis­es in Lon­don’s Maryle­bone Road.

The group have tar­get­ed Total to high­light the com­pa­ny’s role in prop­ping up one of the world’s most bru­tal dic­ta­tor­ships. The Burmese mil­i­tary rulers rou­tine­ly tor­ture pris­on­ers, use rape as a weapon of war, and have forcibly dis­placed almost one mil­lion peo­ple from their land – includ­ing to make way for a 63 kilo­me­tre gas pipeline built by Total.

Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s pro-democ­ra­cy leader, has said that “Total has become the main sup­port­er of the Burmese mil­i­tary regime.” She told the French week­ly Le Nou­v­el Obser­va­teur that “Total knew what it was doing when it invest­ed mas­sive­ly in Bur­ma while oth­ers with­drew from the mar­ket for eth­i­cal rea­sons”. She added, “the com­pa­ny must accept the con­se­quences. The coun­try will not always be gov­erned by dic­ta­tors.”

Matthew Her­bert, one of the activists, said: “All the peo­ples of Bur­ma will be free. There is no force as pow­er­ful as the non­vi­o­lent resis­tance of a unit­ed peo­ple, espe­cial­ly when the cause is as just and urgent as this. As Aung San Suu Kyi says, Total will be held account­able. Today’s action plays just one small part in that reck­on­ing.”

A fel­low activist, added: “The author­i­ty to rule comes from the peo­ple them­selves, the peo­ple of Bur­ma have had enough, they are with­draw­ing their con­sent to be con­trolled. This action is in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Bur­ma strug­gle for free­dom and a mes­sage to Total to with­draw from Bur­ma now.”

For more infor­ma­tion con­tact 07796 430141

Activist Film Festival is seeking submissions

Under­cur­rents is call­ing for sub­mis­sions of short videos and ani­ma­tions on the theme of the fes­ti­val: social jus­tice and envi­ron­men­tal action.

Beyond TV 8 flierUnder­cur­rents is call­ing for sub­mis­sions of short videos and ani­ma­tions on the theme of the fes­ti­val: social jus­tice and envi­ron­men­tal action.

Sub­ject: Polit­i­cal Activist videos want­ed
From: under­cur­rents

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS OF FILMS

FOR BEYONDTV FESTIVAL NOVEMBER 2007

What is BEYONDTV?
From Novem­ber 28 to Decem­ber 2, 2007, Rad­i­cal media char­i­ty, Under­cur­rents will host the 8th annu­al BEYONDTV fes­ti­val of polit­i­cal doc­u­men­taries, ani­ma­tions and music videos from inspir­ing media direc­tors.

Under­cur­rents is call­ing for sub­mis­sions of short videos and ani­ma­tions on the theme of the fes­ti­val: social jus­tice and envi­ron­men­tal action.

Impor­tant Note: We do not screen dra­mas using actors

BEYONDTV will be host­ed at the Dylan Thomas Cen­tre and Tal­iesin Cin­e­ma Swansea from Novem­ber 28 — Decem­ber 2, 2007

More details at http://www.beyondtvfestival.info
beyondtv@undercurrents.org

Under­cur­rents
Old Exchange
Pier st
Swansea
SA1 1RY
UK

Brighton police make early morning raid against squat.

16.10.2007
At 4am Brighton police demand­ed squat­ters leave a new squat on Franklin road. Despite resis­tance by 5am the squat­ters had been evict­ed by the police, who were act­ing unlaw­ful­ly with­out a court order.

All Coppers are Bastards16.10.2007
At 4am Brighton police demand­ed squat­ters leave a new squat on Franklin road. Despite resis­tance by 5am the squat­ters had been evict­ed by the police, who were act­ing unlaw­ful­ly with­out a court order.

The police refused to acknowl­edge the ‘Sec­tion 6’ notice and said they were igno­rant of the law, even though the group of squat­ters had been pre­vi­ous­ly evict­ed by the some of the same police recent­ly.

There was a dog unit, 4 squad cars, drugs unit, and 2 undercover/civil cars (whose reg­is­tra­tion plates were not­ed), as well as a senior offi­cer who was over­heard say­ing that he would per­son­al­ly not tol­er­ate squat­ting in Brighton. Not real­ly a sur­prise there.

3 cop­pers kicked the door in, whilst 8 squat­ters resist­ed their efforts. Whilst this was hap­pen­ing the pigs laughed and joked about going hol­i­day out­side.

When the squat­ters were hauled out of the build­ing they were threat­ened with arrest for not pay­ing elec­tric­i­ty or water bills. When the cops saw that there was 8 peo­ple, they could­n’t be both­ered with the paper work and just took peo­ples names instead.

The squat­ters argued with the cops for half an hour until they were threat­ened with deten­tion, as the squat­ters left the area with the few pos­ses­sions they could man­age to take from the dis­used build­ing which had been emp­ty for the last 3 years, they were fol­lowed and har­rassed by under­cov­er police for about an hour.

It comes as no sur­prise that the police don’t fol­low the law, they are an armed gang pro­tect­ing what they think is nor­mal soci­ety, but it is clear that if they think kick­ing young home­less peo­ple out into the rain at 4am is nor­mal, they got a lot to learn.

Right now we are not going to give up squat­ting, because we have no choice, but organ­is­ing our­selves against the pigs, land­lords and politi­cians is the best adven­ture going right now — and we sure as hell ain’t going to work for a liv­ing!

We won’t stop squat­ting until the pigs fly off a cliff !

Squat­ters Asso­ci­a­tion of Brighton

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) Day of Action — protests throughout England, Scotland & Wales — from cake to locked-on polar bears

Protests in Bris­tol, Lon­don, Manc, Nor­wich, Cam­bridge, Sheffield, Oxford, Edin­burgh, Truro, Birm­ing­ham, Glas­gow, Aberys­t­wyth, Cardiff, Bath, Brad­ford, St Andrews, Ply­mouth, Read­ing, Leam­ing­ton Spa, Leices­ter & Altrin­cham (‘read more’ for details, pho­tos, audio & video clips)

Protests in Bris­tol, Lon­don, Manc, Nor­wich, Cam­bridge, Sheffield, Oxford, Edin­burgh, Truro, Birm­ing­ham, Glas­gow, Aberys­t­wyth, Cardiff, Bath, Brad­ford, St Andrews, Ply­mouth, Read­ing, Leam­ing­ton Spa, Leices­ter & Altrin­cham (‘read more’ for details, pho­tos, audio & video clips)



Bristol RBS 3
Bristol RBS 4
Bristol RBS 5
A group of ‘cli­mate refugees’ blocked the vehi­cle entrance to the Roy­al Bank of Scotland’s Cor­po­rate Offices at Tem­ple Quay to shine the spot­light on cli­mate crim­i­nals RBS, the self-pro­claimed ‘Oil and Gas’ Bank. Four peo­ple from Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide for Cli­mate Action dressed as home­less polar bears have locked them­selves togeth­er and pre­vent­ed all vehi­cles enter­ing the RBS branch for six and a half hours.

Today’s block­ade last­ed six and a half hours with the last ‘cli­mate refugee’ being final­ly chis­eled out at 2.30pm. Four peo­ple are cur­rent­ly being held at Trin­i­ty police sta­tion.
The police used a dubi­ous method of deal­ing with it — they lift­ed peo­ple and suit­cas­es on to trol­leys and then wheeled them away. This caused severe dis­com­fort and pan­ic for the peo­ple on the ground and at least one of them has bruis­ing as a result.
RBS lost many hours today due to rock­ing up late cos of park­ing issues and the many employ­ees that spent the day star­ing out of the win­dows watch­ing the dra­ma unfold­ing and tak­ing pho­tos on their phones (check out you tube for clips!).

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PRESS RELEASE: ‘Cli­mate refugees’ locked up at the Oil Bank of Scot­land, Bris­tol

A group of ‘cli­mate refugees’ are block­ing the vehi­cle entrance to the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land’s Cor­po­rate Offices at Tem­ple Quay to shine the spot­light on cli­mate crim­i­nals RBS, the self-pro­claimed ‘Oil and Gas’ Bank.

Six peo­ple from Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide for Cli­mate Action dressed as home­less polar bears have locked them­selves togeth­er and are cur­rent­ly pre­vent­ing all vehi­cles enter­ing the RBS branch. This is part of a Nation­al Day of Local Action against the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land called by those huge­ly con­cerned with the dev­as­ta­tion to the cli­mate, plan­et and people.[1]

RBS-NatWest pub­licly pro­motes itself as “The Oil & Gas Bank”. They pro­vide the finan­cial fuel that is accel­er­at­ing cli­mate change. With­out these loans to oil and gas cor­po­ra­tions the projects would not hap­pen. [2]It is esti­mate that *in 2006, the bank pro­vid­ed over $10 bil­lion to fos­sil fuels – more than five times that pro­vid­ed to renew­able energy.[3]*

RBS pro­vide oil cor­po­ra­tions with loans to build new mas­sive­ly eco­log­i­cal­ly detri­men­tal drilling rigs, pipelines and oil tankers. [4] And as RBS’s prof­its rise so does the car­bon in the atmos­phere.

Glob­al cli­mate change already forces more peo­ple from their homes each year than war. And as the effects wors­en, one in sev­en peo­ple on Earth today could be forced to leave their homes over the next 50 years. [5]

A polar bear said, “I am here to let RBS know that their fun­nelling of cash into fos­sil fuel projects is mak­ing myself and mil­lions of oth­er ani­mals, includ­ing humans home­less.”

Anoth­er polar bear said “If car­bon diox­ide mol­e­cules had cor­po­rate tags of respon­si­bil­i­ty, the atmos­phere would be full of RBS logos min­gling with those of BP, Exxon and Shell!”

Con­tact:

Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide 07951789187
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Notes for Edi­tors

[1] The day of action was called by the UK Ris­ing Tide Net­work at this years Camp for Cli­mate Action which took place next to Heathrow Air­port. www.risingtide.org.uk

[2] In 2005 emis­sions from RBS financed oil and gas projects was about a quar­ter of the amount pro­duced by all UK homes.

[3] tak­en from: *The Oil and Gas Bank; RBS and the financ­ing of cli­mate change * http://peopleandplanet.org/dl/ddd/rbs_report.pdf

[4] RBS is help­ing force open the car­bon fron­tier, financ­ing con­tro­ver­sial projects in Nige­ria, the Cau­ca­sus and Wales. Its involve­ment in Angolan and Niger­ian oil fields encour­ages cor­rup­tion and con­flict, while gas projects from the Ara­bi­an Gulf to the Gulf of Mex­i­co threat­en envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion.

[5] Fig­ures from “Human Tide: The Real Migra­tion Cri­sis,” by Chris­t­ian Aid. The report calls for “urgent action by the world com­mu­ni­ty” if the worst effects of this cri­sis are to be avert­ed.

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one arrest at Roy­al Bank of Scot­land ban­ner drop this morn­ing in Lon­don

around a dozen activists from ‘ris­ing tide’ high­light­ed roy­al bank of scot­land’s shod­dy record of invest­ment in cli­mate change. one clam­bered on the glass canopy of their city hq to unfurl a ban­ner while oth­ers hand­ed out more than 900 leaflets

short­ly before 9am this morn­ing police sealed off the pave­ment under the glass canopy in front of 280 bish­ops­gate, the lon­don hq of the roy­al bank of scot­land. an activist had clam­bered up with a ban­ner pro­claim­ing ‘the oil bank of scot­land’, while a dozen oth­ers leaflet­ted passers-by and bank work­ers out­side the front doors.

the activists also had var­i­ous ban­ners, and one was fetch­ing­ly dressed as a polar bear.

the action last­ed about an hour and a half, while police pho­tog­ra­ph­er steve dis­combe used up the bat­tery of his long lens cam­era tak­ing shots of every­one involved. luck­i­ly, police back-up arrived with anoth­er bat­tery just as the ban­ner man came down.

police tried to seize the ban­ner from activists “as evi­dence” and after a short but com­ic game of ‘pig­gy in the mid­dle’, they suc­ceed­ed. in past cas­es around par­lia­ment square, it has been shown in court that if police have clear pho­tos of the ban­ner, under PACE they have no fur­ther right to seize the actu­al ban­ner, so in effect they stole it this morn­ing (as they often do!).

the ban­ner man was arrest­ed for ‘caus­ing a pub­lic nui­sance’ and it is believed he was tak­en to beth­nal green police sta­tion.

activists were high­light­ing the fact that RBS-NatWest have in the last five years fund­ed 655 mil­lion tonnes of emis­sions) which is more than the UK’s entire annu­al emis­sions. the bank has launched ‘avi­a­tion cap­i­tal’ to help put more planes in the sky, and it has pumped over $10billion into the oil and gas indus­try, fund­ing rigs, tankers and pipelines.

there is a fur­ther protest planned out­side the bank at 5pm today

20071015_RBS_WMV — video/x‑ms-wmv 15M

20071015_RBS_QT — video/quicktime 13M
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Lon­don pranks: ‘This Com­pa­ny is Out of Order’ signs left on 15 RBS and Natwest cash machines in cen­tral Lon­don. Pranksters do invis­i­ble the­atre in branch­es, try­ing to open accounts, hav­ing argu­ments about RBS’ uneth­i­cal poli­cies in the queues, and leav­ing piles of anti-RBS leaflets amongst their cor­po­rate pro­pa­gan­da. They then go under­ground for some ‘Tube Edu­ca­tion’, leaflet­ing and talk­ing to Tube pas­sen­gers.

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Nation­al cli­mate protests against Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, ‘The Oil and Gas Bank’

15 Octo­ber 2007
For imme­di­ate release, for pho­tographs con­tact Mike J Wells 07799152888

POLAR BEAR PINS BLAME ON RBS DOOR

Cli­mate Change direct action group Lon­don Ris­ing Tide and friends, this morn­ing occu­pied the head­quar­ters of the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land to expose their role in Cli­mate Chaos. This was one of many actions hap­pen­ing across the UK today as part of a UK Ris­ing Tide call out for a Nation­al day of action against RBS.

Activists dropped a ban­ner read­ing “RBS prof­its, cli­mate cops it” from the bal­cony, while oth­ers held plac­ards on the street in front of the build­ing on Bish­ops­gate.

A polar bear, cur­rent­ly sleep­ing rough since the artic ice became his­to­ry, also attend­ed to ask “why are RBS still invest­ing in fos­sil fuel projects like ‘gas pipelines’ in Wales and ‘Tar sands strip min­ing’ in what was Cana­di­an Arbo­re­al For­est?”

The Bear said “Banks like RBS are the hid­den dri­vers of cli­mate change by offer­ing loans to fos­sil fuel projects that oth­er­wise the World Bank would not sup­port”.

RBS calls itself the ‘Oil and Gas Bank’, and is the pri­ma­ry UK fun­der of fos­sil fuel extrac­tion. RBS pro­vides oil com­pa­nies with the cap­i­tal to build and oper­ate drilling rigs, pipelines and oil tankers in some of the most sen­si­tive and unsta­ble places in the world. Through Avi­a­tion Cap­i­tal, RBS financ­ing allows air­lines to expand their fleets and put more planes into the skies.

The thir­ty oil and gas finance deals RBS signed between 2001 and 2006 will cre­ate 655 mil­lion tonnes of car­bon emis­sions over the next 15 years, which is more than the UK’s entire annu­al emis­sions. (2)

‘Banks like RBS who prof­it hand­some­ly from cli­mate-destroy­ing projects have stood in the shad­ows for too long, but they are as guilty as the oil com­pa­nies. If car­bon diox­ide mol­e­cules had cor­po­rate tags of respon­si­bil­i­ty, the atmos­phere would be full of RBS logos min­gling with those of BP, Exxon and Shell’, said Mar­tin Red­fern, from Lon­don.

For inter­views from the protest call 075 1311 9047

For more details vis­it
. www.risingtide.org.uk
. http://www.carbonweb.org/showitem.asp?article=268&parent=267
(www.platform.org.uk)
. www.londonrisingtide.org.uk
=========================

ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND.…THE ‘OIL AND GAS BANK’

Man­ches­ter Cli­mate Action tar­get­ed the RBS head­quar­ters on Deans­gate, Man­ches­ter, as part of a nation­al day of action called by the Ris­ing Tide net­work.

Local groups which formed to mobilise for this year’s Camp for Cli­mate Action, have this morn­ing tak­en action against RBS, a major backer of the avi­a­tion indus­try and the world’s self-described ‘Oil and Gas Bank’.

Ban­ners were dis­played read­ing: ‘Cli­mate Change: RBS Makes It Hap­pen’ and ‘No Pipeline! Green Ener­gy Not Gas’. Pro­test­ers were greet­ed by 3 Tac­ti­cal Aid Unit Vans and secu­ri­ty guards, but despite police attempts to stop noise under the pub­lic order act, the sam­ba band played and fly­ers were giv­en out to work­ers, cus­tomers and passers by.

RBS employs some 5,000 staff in the Greater Man­ches­ter area and is the 2nd largest pri­vate employ­er in the area.

RBS pro­vides oil com­pa­nies with the cash to build and oper­ate drilling rigs, pipelines and oil tankers. RBS also prof­its through the avi­a­tion indus­try. From the Niger Delta to the Arc­tic, RBS loans play a key role in
forc­ing open the new car­bon fron­tier, which con­tributes to envi­ron­men­tal destruction,disruption of indige­nous peo­ples and increased con­flict across the plan­et.

RBS is the sec­ond-largest bank in Europe and has glob­al assets of over $1120 bil­lion, includ­ing UK brands NatWest, Direct Line and Churchill Insur­ance. Despite cre­at­ing a heav­i­ly green washed pub­lic image through
spon­sor­ship of sports and the arts, RBS activ­i­ties have major destruc­tive impacts on the envi­ron­ment and soci­ety. The thir­ty oil and gas finance deals RBS signed between 2001 and 2006 locked us all into 655 mil­lion
tonnes of emis­sions over the next 15 years, more than the UK’s entire annu­al emis­sions.

Man­ches­ter Cli­mate Action meet reg­u­lar­ly, for more infor­ma­tion email:
manchester@climatecamp.org.uk. Next meet­ing is Tues­day 16th, 6pm, Eighth Day café, Oxford Rd (near Man­ches­ter Met­ro­pol­i­tan Uni­ver­si­ty, oppo­site All Saints Park.)

radio report of rbs protest — mp3 2.2M
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Triple wham­my for RBS in Nor­wich

Last night, the doors of the RBS-Natwest Group Tech­nol­o­gy office on Exchange Street and the main RBS branch on Queen Street were locked shut. When staff showed up for work this morn­ing at the Queen Street branch they found them­selves locked out, and gath­ered oppo­site the branch to see what would hap­pen. Soon after, 6 activists from Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide turned up with leaflets and ban­ners read­ing ‘RBS: Financ­ing Cli­mate Change’ and ‘Closed for a Total Re-think’. The d‑lock proved to be a good one, and the bank was delayed from open­ing for busi­ness for over an hour. Ris­ing Tiders hand­ed out leaflets and chat­ted to the wait­ing staff and cus­tomers, with the usu­al mixed response. Passers-by were gen­er­al­ly sup­port­ive, and the police showed up only at the very end, once the bank had re-opened and we were run­ning low on leaflets. After our 500-strong leaflet stash had been exhaust­ed, we decid­ed to call it a morn­ing.

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

=========================

Cam­bridge RBS action

At lunchtime on Mon­day 15 Octo­ber, around ten activists assem­bled out­side the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land branch on Trin­i­ty Street, Cam­bridge, as part of the nation­al day of action against the UK’s main bankroller of car­bon emit­ters. The pro­test­ers put up plac­ards next to the ATM, hand­ed out leaflets, and engaged passers-by and cus­tomers in dis­cus­sion.

Four police offi­cers were also in atten­dance, one tak­ing pic­tures of all the leaflet­ters. A num­ber of peo­ple who hap­pened to be pass­ing by want­ed to know the rea­son for this. Among these were an Amer­i­can woman who got quite strop­py with the offi­cers, and a young guy who want­ed to have pic­ture tak­en with one of the pro­test­ers (the police duti­ful­ly oblig­ed). Although the police came across all friend­ly, they did play their usu­al intim­i­da­tion tac­tics of drop­ping details of pro­test­ers into the con­ver­sa­tion that they could only have lift­ed from FIT files. On the flip­side, they asked for the plac­ards to be moved away from the ATM, as “cus­tomers might feel intim­i­dat­ed.”

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Roy­al Bank of Scot­land Tar­get­ed for Invest­ing in Cli­mate Change

A group of activists leaflet­ted the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land in Broomhill, Sheffield as part of a Nation­al Day of Action. Over 20 actions have tak­en place all around the coun­try includ­ing banks being locked up in Nor­wich and polar bears blockad­ing in Bris­tol. This is all part of a cam­paign against the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land which invests heav­i­ly in oil and gas, which is accel­er­at­ing cli­mate change.

=========================
Oxford RBS
Quick Update on Today’s Oxford RBS Actions

Oxford cli­mate activists tar­get­ed a branch­es of both the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land and NatWest as part of the today’s Nation­al Day of Action. With ban­ners and oil-spat­tered T‑Shirts declar­ing “RBS Group — Fund­ing Cli­mate Change”, “Dirty Bankers — Shaft­ing The Plan­et”, and “The Oil Bank Of Scot­land”, they caused a stir in Oxford’s busiest shop­ping precinct and dis­trib­uted hun­dreds of leaflets to inter­est­ed cus­tomers and passers-by.

Activists also entered both branch­es with a large oil pipeline, explain­ing to cus­tomers and staff that they were deliv­er­ing it to the branch, but could­n’t leave until they’d spo­ken to Head Office to con­firm that it had arrived safe­ly. They stayed in each branch cheer­ful­ly (and loud­ly) rem­i­nisc­ing with staff and cus­tomers about all the oth­er pipelines and fos­sil fuel projects the bank was fund­ing, and how much cli­mate change they were caus­ing, until removed by the police. In the NatWest branch, they also man­aged to get a call put through to Head Office and asked them why RBS were fund­ing so many cli­mate-trash­ing projects (they did­n’t get any decent answers though).

No-one was arrest­ed, although one pro­test­er had to give their name and address under Sec­tion 50 of the Police Reform Act for “anti-social behav­iour” (they were appar­ent­ly caus­ing “alarm and dis­tress” by stand­ing in a bank, talk­ing about cli­mate change and hold­ing a card­board oil pipe).

Oxford Cli­mate Action meet on Mon­days at the Oxford Action Resource Cen­tre (OARC — www.theoarc.org.uk). To get involved, con­tact oxford@climatecamp.org.uk — new mem­bers always wel­come!

Link to video of Action

=========================

Stu­dents from Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty protest­ed out­side RBS’s Cen­tral Branch in Edin­burgh as part of Ris­ing Tide’s nation­al day of action against RBS’s fund­ing of oil and gas extrac­tion.

Stu­dents from Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty Peo­ple & Plan­et group stepped up their cam­paign against the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land (RBS) this morn­ing. Along­side oth­er Peo­ple & Plan­et groups in Scot­land, and cam­paign­ers from Ris­ing Tide, they took part in a nation­al ‘day of action’ tar­get­ing the Edin­burgh-based bank.

The protests aim to high­light RBS’s role as one of the world’s largest fun­ders of cli­mate-wreck­ing oil and gas extrac­tion. Emis­sions result­ing from RBS-sup­port­ed projects around the globe are greater than those of the whole of Scot­land.

Cam­paign­ers gave out infor­ma­tion to cus­tomers, held ban­ners, and waved oil cov­ered hands out­side RBS’s cen­tral branch in St. Andrew’s Square.

Peo­ple & Plan­et recent­ly worked with cli­mate change experts PLATFORM to write a report into RBS (2). The report draws atten­tion to the bank’s cru­cial role in sup­port­ing the glob­al oil and gas extrac­tion indus­try, where it pub­licly mar­kets itself as ‘the oil and gas bank’.

Sarah Hol­l­i­day, a mem­ber of Edin­burgh Peo­ple & Plan­et said:

“RBS call them­selves ‘the oil and gas bank’. They pro­vide huge amounts of advice and fund­ing for new oil extrac­tion. Their fos­sil fuels projects world­wide will lock us in to emis­sions for decades to come – mak­ing a low car­bon econ­o­my impos­si­ble. They are the UK’s main finan­cial dri­vers of cli­mate change.”

The cam­paign is a part of the Peo­ple & Plan­et nation­al cam­paign, “Ditch Dirty Devel­op­ment”, which is also call­ing on the Depart­ment for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment to stop using aid mon­ey to fund fos­sil fuel projects (3).

More pho­tos can be found here.

1) Peo­ple & Plan­et is the UK’s largest stu­dent cam­paign­ing net­work. It cam­paigns on world pover­ty, human rights and the envi­ron­ment: www.peopleandplanet.org http://pandp.eusa.ed.ac.uk

2) The report, enti­tled ‘The Oil and Gas Bank’, can be found here

3)“Ditch Dirty Devel­op­ment” cam­paign web­site
“Oil Bank of Scot­land” cam­paign web­site

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Also in Edin­burgh: The locks of the main entrances to at least six Edin­burgh RBS branch­es were glued shut last night, and all of them had to have the locks replaced today.

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2 branch­es in edin­burgh were giv­en ‘pol­lu­tion awards’ — along with var­i­ous oth­er posters about RBS pol­i­cy. unfor­tu­natly the police drove by while one branch was just being fin­ished off, and took the still wet posters off. 🙁 — next time…

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Truro RBS
Truro demo at RBS branch: Twelve activists from across Corn­wall gath­ered at the RBS branch in Truro for a two-hour demo with a friend­ly atmos­phere and good response from passers-by. They hand­ed out leaflets and slices of cake from a clock-shaped ‘11th hour’ cake, and made new con­nec­tions that built the foun­da­tions of a cli­mate action group for Corn­wall.

=========================

Birm­ing­ham Uni flood cam­pus NatWest: Over thir­ty stu­dents from Birm­ing­ham Peo­ple and Plan­et descend­ed upon the Natwest branch on cam­pus. Some were dressed in boil­er suits and car­ried oil pipelines. Oth­ers, dressed as bankers and imper­son­at­ing mem­bers of the RBS Oil and Gas Team gave a high­ly sar­cas­tic pre­sen­ta­tion extolling the virtues of RBS’ oil and gas invest­ments. Oil pipes and boil­er suits. Dressed as bankers. Went in and gave mock pre­sen­ta­tion, imper­son­at­ed oil and gas team. Extolled virtues of RBS. 20 min­utes. Did pre­sen­ta­tion again a few more times on cam­pus. 30 peo­ple. Couldn’t all fit in. Birm­ing­ham Peo­ple and Plan­et.

=========================
Glas­gow Trea­cle Tart Cabaret: After a half hour dis­cus­sion with the cen­tral Glas­gow RBS branch man­ag­er in which they expressed their anger about RBS’ invest­ment in oil and gas, two intre­pid activists left the branch, only to make a quick cos­tume change and return as the hosts of the Trea­cle Tart Cabaret. They sang, danced, waved ban­ners and plac­ards, got up on the cashiers’ desks and strut­ted their stuff, and even per­formed an Oil Rap. At this point the bank decid­ed to lock its doors, lock­ing the Tarts in and cus­tomers out, and effec­tive­ly shut­ting the bank down for an hour. Inside the atmos­phere was pos­i­tive, with the locked-in staff and cus­tomers get­ting into the swing of things. One of the Tarts capped off the per­for­mance by cut­ting up her RBS deb­it card as a mag­ic trick.

=========================



Around a dozen cli­mate change refugees queued out­side Nat West Bank in Aberys­t­wyth today, Mon­day 15th Octo­ber, to beg a ‘bank offi­cial’ for a home loan because cli­mate change was destroy­ing their cur­rent home. The refugees ranged from an Aussie through a Green­lan­der to an Artic Cod. As the refugees were inter­viewed, vol­un­teers hand­ed out fliers on Roy­al Bank of Scot­land , Nat West and their invest­ment in projects linked to cli­mate change. Mean­while, RBS and Nat West ATMs all mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­played signs read­ing ‘OUT OF ORDER’ in large let­ters. On close inspec­tion with a mag­ni­fy­ing glass, the very small print read ‘RBS and Nat West invest­ment pol­i­cy’. The pos­si­ble effects of cli­mate change on a num­ber of coun­tries were mapped on the pave­ment with chalk – dis­turb­ing before and after snap­shots. As the refugees were all turned down for home loans, they car­ried a protest ban­ner into the bank. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, being weak­ened by loos­ing their homes, the refugees dropped the ban­ner and, being weight­ed down with heli­um bal­loons, it drift­ed up and dis­played itself from the ceil­ing for a good half an hour before staff man­aged to get it down.

=========================

The main cardiff branch RBS on st Mary’s Street was closed 3 hours after 20 activists entered the build­ing caus­ing dis­trup­tion. Hun­dreds of leaflets were hand­ed out and ban­ners dis­played out­side. The process was repeat­ed at Natwest after­wards.

Lots of Police were in atten­dance includ­ing intel­li­gence gath­er­ers. Pho­tos to fol­low.

cardiffanarchists@riseup.net
http://southwalesanarchists.org

=========================

Don’t Bank On Oil In Bath

As part of today’s nation­al day of action against the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, 7 activists from Bath Activist Net­work pick­et­ed the RBS branch on Qui­et Street in Bath, for two hours over lunch time. Ban­ner on dis­play, cus­tomers and passers-by were leaflet­ed with mock-up imi­ta­tion RBS lit­er­a­ture and invi­ta­tions to ‘Open an oil rig today!’, inform­ing the pub­lic about the Terms and Con­se­quences of bank­ing with RBS, their dodgy invest­ment record in fos­sil fuel extrac­tion and avi­a­tion indus­tries, and the 160,000 esti­mat­ed glob­al deaths a year due to the effects of cli­mate change. Whilst staff and police com­plained about the seem­ing­ly out-of-order ATM out­side their door, we lis­tened to sto­ries of cus­tomers’ poor treat­ment by their bank, and also helped at least the one stu­dent find more eth­i­cal options for his new account. Also bemus­ing were the mem­bers of pub­lic who mis­took the busi­ness-suit­ed activists for bank employ­ees, and chat­ted about the ser­vice.

bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk
http://myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork

To read PLAT­FOR­M’s report on Roy­al bank of Scot­land, go here: http://peopleandplanet.org/dl/ddd/rbs_report.pdf
=========================

Brad­ford stu­dents leaflet cam­pus Natwest

Stu­dents from the uni­ver­si­ty of Brad­ford Peo­ple & Plan­et group leaflet­ed at the Natwest branch on cam­pus. That’s all the details I know, hope­ful­ly more details to fol­low.

=========================

St Andrews Uni P&P also did some protest per­for­mance art — ‘attempt­ing’ to open accounts in the town, etc.

=========================

Ply­mouth — after a pro­ces­sion along North Hill Street, a group of peo­ple held a four-hour demo at the RBS branch near Drake Cir­cus, com­plete with music and drum­ming. A good response from passers-by, with lots of cus­tomers ask­ing direct­ly for leaflets.

=========================

Read­ing Ris­ing Tide held a demo at the Read­ing RBS branch.

=========================

A group of 5 held a demo in Leam­ing­ton.

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Cash-points were stick­ered with anti-RBS stick­ers in Leices­ter.

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Leaflets were stuck on lamp-posts in Altrin­cham.

Last week’s direct action news from Greece

direct action report 7–15 Octo­ber
DIRECT ACTION NEWS FROM GREECE — http://directactiongr.blogspot.com

This blog is an attemp to cov­er, pub­li­cise and trans­late all known direct action news (most­ly con­cern­ing Greece but also near coun­tries as well), apart from the mass media medi­a­tion, pro­vid­ing an open data­base on sab­o­tage-van­dal­ism-riot­ing and oth­er fine pop­u­lar arts that blos­som through­out the ruins of our post-indus­tri­al soci­ety. It came as a per­son­al response to a wider need for all direct action to have its own prop­er spaces, in order to speak for itself, spaces avail­able to any­one that cares. So, i am will­ing to pub­lish all com­mu­niques and com­ments con­cern­ing the actions found here. There will not be pub­lished here actions claimed by any for­mal organ­i­sa­tions or par­ties. These gen­tle­men can ‑at least- afford their own image-mak­ing. You are wel­come to send your own reports to directactiongr@yahoo.gr

direct action report 7–15 Octo­ber
DIRECT ACTION NEWS FROM GREECE — http://directactiongr.blogspot.com

This blog is an attemp to cov­er, pub­li­cise and trans­late all known direct action news (most­ly con­cern­ing Greece but also near coun­tries as well), apart from the mass media medi­a­tion, pro­vid­ing an open data­base on sab­o­tage-van­dal­ism-riot­ing and oth­er fine pop­u­lar arts that blos­som through­out the ruins of our post-indus­tri­al soci­ety. It came as a per­son­al response to a wider need for all direct action to have its own prop­er spaces, in order to speak for itself, spaces avail­able to any­one that cares. So, i am will­ing to pub­lish all com­mu­niques and com­ments con­cern­ing the actions found here. There will not be pub­lished here actions claimed by any for­mal organ­i­sa­tions or par­ties. These gen­tle­men can ‑at least- afford their own image-mak­ing. You are wel­come to send your own reports to directactiongr@yahoo.gr

http://directactiongr.blogspot.com/search/label/english

LAST WEEK’S NEWS…

15 sur­veil­lance cam­eras destroyed, Poly­tech­ni­cal School (Athens, 15/10/2007)
Source & leaflet text (greek only): athens.indymedia.org

Today at 3 o’clock peo­ple from the self-man­aged infos­hop of the poly­tech­ni­cal school and oth­er com­pan­ions, broke down 15 sur­veil­lance cam­eras around the school’s library and destroyed the mon­i­tors and the whole con­trol room.

A leaflet explain­ing the rea­sons of this action cir­cu­lat­ed last days as well as dur­ing the action, slo­gans against sur­veil­lance and social con­trol were spray-paint­ed and two ban­ners were hanged on the library area.

***

Arson at Eth­ni­ki Bank and rul­ing par­ty’s offices (Thes­sa­loni­ki, 15/10/2007)
Source (greek only): http://www.kathimerini.gr/4dcgi/_w_articles_kathremote_1_15/10/2007_207901

A dou­ble arson attack was realised around 3:10 in the morn­ing, when a sub­sidiary of Eth­ni­ki Bank on Leon­tos Sofou Str. in the city cen­ter and the local offices of Nea Dimokra­tia (the greek rul­ing par­ty) were made tar­gets of gas-can­is­ter bomb­ings.

***

Deputy edu­ca­tion min­is­ter’s office attacked (Athens, 14/10/2007)
Source: http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_politics_100021_15/10/2007_88953

Uniden­ti­fied per­sons left a incen­di­ary device with gas can­is­ters that explod­ed in front of mr. Lyk­ourent­zos office, on the sec­ond floor of an apparte­ments block at Solonos Str. in cen­tral Athens.

Anoth­er res­i­dent of the block found the device and called the police, but in his effort to extin­guish the fire that burnst out, he got some minor burns him­self.

***

Munic­i­pal Police offices attacked (Athens 12/10/2007)
Source (greek only): http://news.antenna.gr/articleDetail/0,3091,167424,00.html

Some 15 per­sons wear­ing hoods attacked the offices of the munic­i­pal police in Paleo Faliro, Athens, late Sat­ur­day night. They threw stones and caused minor dam­ages to the offices entrance.

Note: Two anar­chists are being detained for an alleged arson against a munic­i­pal police car in Faliro, Chris­sos­to­mos Kon­tore­vithakis and Mar­ios Tsoura­pas, (for more infor­ma­tion: http://www.geocities.com/anarcores/faliro3)

***

Two banks burnt up (Athens, 12/10/2007)
Source (greek only): http://news.pathfinder.gr/greece/news/434581.html — http://www.ethnos.gr/article.asp?catid=5592&subid=2&pubid=48619

A lit­tle before 22:00 around 20 per­sons wear­ing hoods attacked two banks (one “Eth­ni­ki” and one “Agroti­ki” bank) in Ilisia area in Athens. They broke the glass win­dows and threw molo­tov cock­tails inside the banks. They all man­aged to escape police forces and run to the Zografou uni­ver­si­ty area.

Lat­er on, the police arrest­ed eight per­sons but left them free because they found no evi­dence, except from one of them that car­ried a wood­en glob and will be pros­e­cut­ed.

***

OTE telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions office fire­bombed (Athens, 10/10/2007)
Source (greek only): http://www.naftemporiki.gr/news/static/07/10/10/1423317.htm

A few min­utes before 6:00 a group of about ten unknown per­sons attacked the offices of OTE telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny in Exarcheia, Athens.

***

Sports Muse­um under attack (Thes­sa­loni­ki, 07/10/2007)
Source (greek only): http://www.kathimerini.gr/4dcgi/_w_articles_kathremote_0_07/10/2007_206771

Accord­ing to the news­pa­per’s report, a small group of uniden­ti­fied per­sons, a few min­utes before 3:00, hurled molo­tov cock­tails at the entrance of the Sports Muse­um, locat­ed near the Aris­to­tle Uni­ver­si­ty. The fire caused minor dam­ages and was extin­guished by the muse­um’s guards. The group left the area when the police arrived.

***

Demon­stra­tors mess up “anti“terrorist con­ven­tion (Volos, 07/10/2007)
Source (greek only): Athens Indy­media

After a sol­i­dar­i­ty to the immi­grants march, demon­stra­tors invad­ed a con­ven­tion held at the Thes­salia Uni­ver­si­ty, dur­ing the crim­i­nol­o­gist Mairy Bossi’s speach.

Mairy Bossi has been the sci­en­tif­ic con­sul­tant of the min­istry of pub­lic order, she was as well will­ing to lead a “study of the social char­ac­ter­is­tics” of the 529 arrestees of the tech­ni­cal school’s occu­pa­tion in Athens, 1995, and she has also been a wit­ness of accu­sa­tion at the so-called ELA (peo­ple’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary strug­gle) jury, etc.
Her speach was inter­rupt­ed and she was forced to leave the room, when peo­ple threw cof­fees and snacks from the buf­fet at her.

The night before there was also an attack against the immi­grants con­cen­tra­tion cen­tre in Volos.

http://directactiongr.blogspot.com/search/label/english

Samhain bagpipe gathering at Tara, plus action days 31st October ‑5th November

Samhain Bag­pipe Gath­er­ing
Feis-Teamhrach (The Great Feast of Tara)

Come cel­e­brate the Celtic New Year at Tara

Samhain
Samhain Bag­pipe Gath­er­ing
Feis-Teamhrach (The Great Feast of Tara)

Come cel­e­brate the Celtic New Year at Tara
Hill of Tara, near Navan, co Meath, Ire­land.

Relight­ing the Ancient Bea­con fires & Samhain Shindig

Bring your feast­ing food that you want to eat and share

Wed Oct 31st Light­ing Taras 7 Bea­cons And Feast
Thurs 1st/Fri 2nd Nov DAYS OF ACTION
Sat Nov 3rd Fire, Music and Ban­quet
Mon 5th (and every Mon) direct action Route walk.

Vig­il camp 00353 861 758557 Action camp 00353 861 537146

Call­ing all musi­cians, bards, per­form­ers & poets
Bring your flutes, whis­tles, drums and voic­es to the Halls of Tara. Big call out to all
BAGPIPE play­ers to gath­er on the Wed and Sat.
Call­ing all Peo­ple to join in the Defense of TARA
Act now to pre­serve this world her­itage site!

Fliers/posters to down­load at www.tarapixie.net

For direc­tions to Tara check the web­sites below
www.savetara.com www.tarawatch.org
www.tarapixie.net

SAVE IRELAND’S TARA VALLEY!

Worldwide Day of Action Against McDonalds 16th October

14th Octo­ber 2007 ear­ly demo report: near­ly 30 peo­ple took part in the Lon­don leg of the world­wide anti-McDon­ald’s day. It start­ed at noon at the Leices­ter Square McDon­ald’s. There was a Ronald McDon­ald attack­ing a per­son dressed as a cow. The cow went down well with the kids and even some adults! Lots of leaflets were hand­ed out and the pub­lic seemed to be recep­tive on the whole. Also, the police were notice­able by their absence. The demo moved onto the Shaftes­bury Avenue McDon­ald’s and fin­ished at about 3.30.

Dying for a burger (London McD demo)
14th Octo­ber 2007 ear­ly demo report: near­ly 30 peo­ple took part in the Lon­don leg of the world­wide anti-McDon­ald’s day. It start­ed at noon at the Leices­ter Square McDon­ald’s. There was a Ronald McDon­ald attack­ing a per­son dressed as a cow. The cow went down well with the kids and even some adults! Lots of leaflets were hand­ed out and the pub­lic seemed to be recep­tive on the whole. Also, the police were notice­able by their absence. The demo moved onto the Shaftes­bury Avenue McDon­ald’s and fin­ished at about 3.30.

—

Adopt-YOUR-Store — leaflets from Veg­gies or Do It Your­self. Details here

Food not Bombs and Midlands Vegan Campaign join up in anti-Mcdonalds action

Birm­ing­ham Food Not Bombs returned to the streets on Sat­ur­day the 13th of Octo­ber for Nation­al Anti-McDon­alds Day, in com­bi­na­tion with the recent­ly formed Mid­lands Veg­an Cam­paign.

Brum anti-McDonalds Day & Food Not Bombs stallBirm­ing­ham Food Not Bombs returned to the streets on Sat­ur­day the 13th of Octo­ber for Nation­al Anti-McDon­alds Day, in com­bi­na­tion with the recent­ly formed Mid­lands Veg­an Cam­paign.

We set up direct­ly in front of the McDon­alds and Pret a Manger (which is owned by McD) on Cher­ry Street, Birm­ing­ham City Cen­tre, serv­ing “fast food” in the form of cooked-on-the-spot veg­gie burg­ers (with home-made veg­an may­on­naise and chunky toma­to sal­sa), as well as the tra­di­tion­al Food Not Bombs cur­ry and cakes.

The serv­ing was a resound­ing suc­cess, with FnB get­ting through approx­i­mate­ly 200 veg­gie burg­ers and sev­er­al large groups of young peo­ple who had been going into McDon­alds per­suad­ed to turn them down in favour of free veg­an food instead. Pub­lic reac­tion was over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive, every­one from home­less peo­ple to stu­dents and shop­pers queue­ing up and small chil­dren even tak­ing sal­ad!

Infor­ma­tion was giv­en out about MCDon­ald­s’s exploita­tion of work­ers, its destruc­tive impact on the envi­ron­ment and about the con­nec­tions between food pol­i­tics and wider issues such as home­less­ness, pover­ty and war, as well as infor­ma­tion about veg­an alter­na­tives includ­ing fly­ers for the upcom­ing Free Veg­an Food Fair in Kings Heath on Sat­ur­day Novem­ber 10th.

Mid­lands Veg­an Cam­paign accom­pa­nied the stall with eye­catch­ing ban­ners, posters and plac­ards, as well as donat­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly deli­cious car­rot cake.

All in all an extreme­ly enjoy­able, inspir­ing and sat­is­fy­ing day…

For more info and to get involved con­tact:
Food not Bombs: brum_fnb@lists.riseup.net or 07904529362
Mid­lands Veg­an Cam­paign: mvc94@yahoo.co.uk or check out www.veganmidlands.org.uk

Eric McDavid US Green Scare prisoner — found guilty & update

It has been two weeks since the jury found Eric guilty, and we are still try­ing to regroup and get ready for the next round. While this is going to be a long process – one which will require your help and sup­port in a vari­ety of ways – there is one thing that sim­ply can­not be put off.

It has been two weeks since the jury found Eric guilty, and we are still try­ing to regroup and get ready for the next round. While this is going to be a long process – one which will require your help and sup­port in a vari­ety of ways – there is one thing that sim­ply can­not be put off.

The jail is still deny­ing Eric veg­an food. After endur­ing a two-week hunger strike in March 2006, Eric was final­ly giv­en veg­an meals on April 24, 2006. This last­ed for 15 full months. Then, with­out any warn­ing or rea­son­able expla­na­tion, the jail cut off Eric’s veg­an meals one week before his tri­al began. Since that time, he has been sur­viv­ing off the few options he can pur­chase from com­mis­sary (peanut but­ter, beans, chips…) and the lit­tle food he can pull off of the meal trays they bring him (usu­al­ly bread and fruit – some­times oat­meal in the morn­ing). Clear­ly, this is not enough to con­sti­tute a healthy, bal­anced diet. It is the jail’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­vide Eric with the food he needs to remain healthy and strong. This is obvi­ous­ly some­thing they are com­plete­ly able to do, as they did so for 15 months with no prob­lems.

Eric has been con­tem­plat­ing what cours­es of action are open to him in this mat­ter, but unfor­tu­nate­ly, his options have become even more lim­it­ed. The suit that Eric filed against the jail to secure veg­an meals was dis­missed by the judge, great­ly dimin­ish­ing any hope he had for redress in the courts. A hunger strike could be extreme­ly risky due to the bout of peri­cardi­tis for which he was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal in April. It is unclear whether his heart could han­dle the strain a hunger strike would put on his body – he could quick­ly end up back in the hos­pi­tal, poten­tial­ly with a VERY seri­ous heart con­di­tion.

Because Eric’s options are so lim­it­ed, in the jail and in the courts, he needs sup­port from the out­side more than ever. This seems to be the only hope for change. In the mean­time, Eric con­tin­ues to lose weight, and his health will soon begin dete­ri­o­rat­ing. Please call the jail imme­di­ate­ly and request that Eric be giv­en veg­an meals…again. When you call, be pre­pared to sit through a lot of ring­ing and pos­si­bly trans­fers. The per­son who made the deci­sion to cut off Eric’s food before tri­al is Lt. Ilg, and the per­son who over­sees him is Scott Jones. Feel free to request to speak to either of these peo­ple when call­ing the jail.

It’s always help­ful to have Eric’s x‑reference num­ber handy when call­ing the jail, in case the per­son you are speak­ing with asks for it. Eric’s x‑ref is: x‑2972521. You can call the jail at :

916–874-6752
916–874-6905

Below are some things you might sug­gest while talk­ing to the jail:

1)The jail fed Eric veg­an food for 15 months with no prob­lems. There is no rea­son they can­not con­tin­ue to do so.

2)The jail is respon­si­ble for pro­vid­ing Eric with a healthy diet. Eric has made it clear that he will not eat food that is not veg­an. As such, they will be respon­si­ble for any health prob­lems that Eric suf­fers due to his lack of nutri­tion.

3)The jail can­not claim they are unable to pro­vide Eric with veg­an food due to asso­ci­at­ed costs. This is sim­ply false. The jail is paid thou­sands of dol­lars by the feds to house fed­er­al inmates (such as Eric). They are prof­it­ing from Eric’s incar­cer­a­tion (and let’s face it, veg­an food is sim­ply cheap­er to begin with…)

In an affi­davit filed with the court in March 2006, Eric wrote, “…my veg­an beliefs and moral­i­ty are ani­mat­ed by the way of liv­ing which shows a respect for all life, rec­og­niz­ing the rights of liv­ing crea­tures; extend­ing to them the com­pas­sion and kind­ness exem­pli­fied toward peo­ple. It is a tru­ly eth­i­cal rela­tion­ship between humans and oth­er liv­ing crea­tures. My veg­an lifestyle is based upon my own health and my own eth­i­cal and moral under­pin­nings which I have arrived at con­sci­en­tious­ly and I am firm­ly con­vinced it is the right and appro­pri­ate way to live. It is health­i­er for me and the plan­et I live on. It is as sin­cere­ly held to me as oth­ers hold their own reli­gious beliefs.” Through­out his time in the Sacra­men­to Coun­ty Main Jail, Eric has main­tained his integri­ty and resolve to live his life in the most eth­i­cal and com­pas­sion­ate way pos­si­ble. Let’s do our part to sup­port him and ensure that he does not suf­fer for doing so. Please call the jail and request that Eric be giv­en veg­an meals imme­di­ate­ly. And then call again, and again, and again – until this sim­ple demand is met.

Last­ly, thanks to an out­pour­ing of sup­port, Eric is cur­rent­ly very well off on books. At this point, he’s ask­ing that peo­ple please hold off on send­ing any addi­tion­al books until he’s able to get through the ones he cur­rent­ly has. We will post an update as soon as he’s able to receive more. As far as finan­cial con­tri­bu­tions, the best way to con­tribute to Eric is to donate to his legal defense; we are prepar­ing to file an appeal and need to raise funds as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. We are cur­rent­ly able to cov­er Eric’s com­mis­sary needs. Thank you again for keep­ing Eric in your thoughts and doing so much to help him through this very dif­fi­cult time.

Let­ter from Eric 10/5/07
Dear friends,

Below is a let­ter from Eric. We want to keep this short, and leave you with his words, but just a quick note: last night Mark filed a 28-page motion for a new trial/to acquit based on the errors made through­out the tri­al. Most of these have been dis­cussed in pre­vi­ous alerts and court reports, with the excep­tion of one. When the court issued it’s answers on Thurs­day morn­ing to the ques­tions the jury asked Wednes­day after­noon, the judge told the jury not to write down the answers, as the jury would be issued a type-writ­ten response upon their return to the jury room. The answer giv­en to the first ques­tion in court (whether or not Anna was a gov­ern­ment agent in August 2004) was an unequiv­o­cal “yes.” How­ev­er, the answer giv­en to the jury upon their return to the delib­er­a­tion room was a type-writ­ten “No.” This clear­ly could have had alarm­ing impacts on the ver­dict they decid­ed upon in Eric’s case…

A let­ter from Eric…

i’ve been told that my con­duct has been seen by some as inspi­ra­tional, i’m grate­ful to be able to pro­vide a source of strength to those in my fam­i­ly who find them­selves in a time of need — more so as being a part of their process of growth and self cre­ation… but my behav­ior is, in a sense, self­ish­ly borne — my intent orig­i­nates from a per­spec­tive which encom­pass­es my fam­i­ly and their future gen­er­a­tions… though, the term “fam­i­ly” i don’t uti­lize in a con­ven­tion­al or every­day sense — the bub­ble has expand­ed beyond the cus­tom­ary… it holds with­in it the micro and macro, all those with whom i have shared that mut­ed and unblink­ing stare of under­stand­ing — be it on the streets, at a skill­share or class, con­cert, speech or march, ral­ly, home-demo or a real­ly free mar­ket — at a con­ver­gence cen­tre, library, camp­site, crit­i­cal mass, on an on-ramp, along­side of a high­way, at a rest stop, from a train, in a for­est, a city park or square, or at a stream, riv­er, lake, hot-spring or beach… this bub­ble also includes each and every one of those indi­vid­ual places — unique unto them­selves in appear­ance, local­i­ty, time and energy/personality ~ as well as the non-humyn inhab­i­tants there­in, who aid in the con­tin­u­al self-cre­ations of those envi­ron­ments… keep­ing that self­ish­ness close to my Heart and mind is some­thing i aim for — know­ing that all my life i have been con­di­tioned by our soci­ety to the con­trary… dur­ing my ten days of “dis­ci­pli­nary iso­la­tion” last fall an idea made itself known to me ~ it was to cre­ate with that which is pro­vid­ed, not nec­es­sar­i­ly to its par­tic­u­lar pur­pose, but to my own… this includes the pain which resides with­in my Heart due to the sep­a­ra­tion between us… i’ve come to see ener­gy as the most mal­leable aspect of this real­i­ty, and the emo­tions that surge through our bod­ies can be uti­lized for any num­ber of means and ends… pain­less stag­nant can fes­ter into hate and reac­tion — but uti­lized with a con­scious and open intent it could nur­ture the cat­a­lysts required to move through our thresh­olds… hate is the death of joy and reac­tion is noth­ing more than uncon­scious reflex brought about by a cer­tain stim­u­lus (per­ceived or not) which induces pre­dictable respons­es — in most cas­es, con­ced­ing to the terms and def­i­n­i­tions of the ini­tia­tor, allow­ing the stim­u­lus to have affect, sig­ni­fies it’s suc­cess… con­scious cre­ations with the cycles of growth and health do not fit into the matrix of cause and effect — their qual­i­ties and forms flow through the rigid struc­tures that seek to encap­su­late, reform, define… … i object to being pigeon­holed (phys­i­cal­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly) by cleav­ing to some mar­shal or war­rioresque mantra that many have cho­sen when con­front­ed with sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances — what they chose is for their own per­son­al path, what they’ve per­ceived as nec­es­sary for their sur­vival… from where i stand, it feels that if i fol­lowed that train of thought i would be adher­ing to a path too well-worn ~ and don’t get me wrong, i hon­or and respect those that have come before me who con­tin­ue to adhere to the wis­dom in their hearts, but those known trails can also be used by oth­ers that have scout­ed them for weak­ness­es ~ if expe­ri­ence has taught me any­thing, it’s been to stick to the deer trails or cre­ate my own… anoth­er of my recent lessons has been to rec­og­nize the benef­i­cent qual­i­ties of shape-shift­ing, as defined by ter­ry tem­pest williams = “this has noth­ing to do with incon­sis­ten­cy. it has to do with seiz­ing the moment, per­ceiv­ing what is nec­es­sary in that moment … know­ing what each occa­sion demands, and stand­ing our ground in the places we live…” … but this is nei­ther the time nor the place to ful­ly delve into such things, for this let­ter has anoth­er intent… … … through­out this expe­ri­ence i have been in awe of the lov­ing sup­port giv­en by fam­i­ly, known and unknown from around the coun­try and the world, who have nour­ished me dur­ing this part of my jour­ney ~ i’ve received such an inun­dat­ing amount of mail that i haven’t been able to respond to it all ~ there is no con­cept that can ade­quate­ly express my thanx and appre­ci­a­tion to you all… … to all of those unknown and unnamed beau­ti­ful indi­vid­u­als who have aid­ed me on this case, i am impa­tient­ly wait­ing to thank you prop­er­ly with a huge hug… … chris­tine, i haven’t for­got­ten about the veg­an din­ner i promised… … to my coun­sel mark, who’s exper­tise in his field is unques­tion­able — his abil­i­ties, pas­sion, and deter­mi­na­tion pro­vide a well­spring of strength, espe­cial­ly know­ing that he con­tin­ues to fight for me — as he said on the 27th “it’s only the open­ings of the third quar­ter” ~ the notion of grat­i­tude does­n’t begin to encom­pass the feel­ing in my heart, my friend, much love… … to jed, my investigator/case manager/Elder, your ener­gies vest­ed into this case have been the bedrock of ground­ed explo­ration, bal­anc­ing the some­times fren­zied and bois­ter­ous antics that accom­pa­ny markus’ high ener­gy nature, thank you my friend… … i’d also like to thank bob, my first inves­ti­ga­tor, for his time, com­pa­ny and aid work­ing on the hours upon hours of tran­scripts with me over that first sum­mer (which my part­ner and sis­ter painstak­ing­ly gleaned from the shock­ing­ly abhor­rent qual­i­ty of fbi record­ings)… … the actions and aid of sac pris­on­er sup­port have and con­tin­ue to tran­scend any and all of my ideas con­cern­ing pris­on­er sup­port groups and have been mon­u­men­tal in this expe­ri­ence on every con­ceiv­able front — too much love… … the Love, Sup­port, and Under­stand­ing of my Par­ents and Sis­ters goes beyond scope, sim­i­le, and metaphor — i Love you all … … and i Feel and Know in my Heart, Body, and Soul that my sur­vival has been impact­ed to an inex­press­ible degree by the Love and Sup­port of my Part­ner ~ and the inter­twin­ing of Our Paths has brought a Depth and Qual­i­ty of Life i had nev­er before imag­ined to exist — my Thanx tran­scend lan­guage and my Love, only a Begin­ning… … …

my Thanx and Love 2 U All

This is far from Over

D

find your joy

More info at http://www.supporteric.org/
More info on the Green Scare at http://greenscare.org/

15th October — National Day of Local Action against Royal Bank of Scotland Update

It’s only a week away! There are plans afoot all over the coun­try, and there’s still time for you to organ­ise some­thing in your local area. A few things that might help:

Oily RBS logoIt’s only a week away! There are plans afoot all over the coun­try, and there’s still time for you to organ­ise some­thing in your local area. A few things that might help:

*There are leaflets avail­able to hand out on the day if you don’t fan­cy mak­ing your own. (Front — click here. Back — click here. And if you want editable ver­sions email us and we’ll email them to you).

*Stick­ers are also avail­able for what­ev­er sil­ly, seri­ous or sub­ver­sive pur­pose you can think of! Email us with a postal address to get a stash sent to you (these aren’t linked to the day of action so they’ll be use­ful into the future)
*There will be a nation­al press release about the day of action, so if you’re plan­ning some­thing pub­lic and want to let the nation­al press know about it, please send us the details. We’ll also do a press release on the day, so email us or bet­ter yet phone 07961 917535 to be includ­ed in the nation­al action round-up (and put it on Indy­media and here too of course!)

Orig­i­nal call out here