Sun­day 19th August — mark­ing out 3rd run­way, march on BAA & block­ade, Cardiff ban­ner sol­i­dar­i­ty, Nor­wich Air­port sol­i­dar­i­ty demo, BA per­ish­ables block­ade
Mon­day 20th August — BAA block­ade con­tin­ues, New­cas­tle sol­i­dar­i­ty demo, Tyne­side Esso ban­ner drop, BP HQ, Sizewell nuclear pow­er sta­tion, Bridge­point own­ers Leeds/Bradford air­port occu­pa­tion, Trafal­gar Square, 2 car­bon off­set com­pa­nies occu­pied, clowns mark out run­way in Clive Soley’s gar­den

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Sun­day 19th August 2007

As part of the actions today from the cli­mate camp peo­ple are mak­ing a sym­bol­ic protest to mark out the bound­ary of the pro­posed third run­way

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Report from the Kids March from the Camp for Cli­mate Action



Just after mid­day the Kids and par­ents March along with the Rinky­Dink Sound sys­tem, the funer­al pro­ces­sion and a ‘mon­strous plane’ fig­ure (assem­bled by kids and par­ents in the days before), set off on the march to Sip­son Vil­lage. There were local res­i­dents wait­ing at the gates of the camp with their chil­dren to join with the march.

The march to Sip­son was held up every 100 meters or so by police with no clear rea­son stat­ed by them. Sev­er­al police vans were in front of the kids march and sev­er­al behind which effec­tive­ly held them sta­t­ic and obstruct­ing the march mov­ing for­ward could be used to move them on.

Even­tu­al­ly the kids march reached their intend­ed des­ti­na­tion which was a local gar­den cen­tre, where the pro­pri­etors open­ly wel­comed them. How­ev­er due to the fact that along the way the kids march had swelled (to around 5/600 ppl) with the num­ber of local res­i­dents and their chil­dren which had joined the march, num­ber were too great for the gar­den cen­tre. Local res­i­dents on the march and campers came to a joint agree­ment con­tin­ue on to Sip­son; the march left the gar­den cen­tre and con­tin­ued to move on.

The march to Sip­son was very live­ly with chants and singing and lots of sup­port and cheer­ing from locals. At Sip­son how­ev­er, a long delayed occurred over the deci­sion on where to go next. The nego­ti­a­tions on where to go next involved dis­cus­sions with the police, the local MP John McDon­ald was active in these nego­ti­a­tions con­vey­ing the wish­es of the march.

Sip­son and Har­mondsworth res­i­dents on the march want­ed to go onto Har­mondsworth and along with the Kids march, this is what was col­lec­tive­ly decid­ed and nego­ti­at­ed. At Har­mondsworth the plan was to assem­ble at the local vil­lage green. How­ev­er on the way to the vil­lage green march was blocked by a line of police with a pha­lanx of riot cops approach­ing behind the police line. A long stand off of around half an hour took place whilst fur­ther nego­ti­a­tions between a police com­man­der and John McDon­ald occurred. It was even­tu­al­ly agreed that the Kids March could advance down then road to Har­mondsworth Vil­lage Green, where the march began to have a series of speech­es.

The speech­es includ­ed John McDon­ald who thanked the Camp for Cli­mate Action as well as say­ing that the plans for the 3rd run­way would destroy Sip­son and Har­mondsworth, before declar­ing “No third run­way, we will win”.

Anoth­er speak­er was Chris­tine Shilling from NoTRAG — No Third Run­way Action Group Heathrow Air­port — (www.notrag.org), who said that 7 years ago she and a few neigh­bours became con­cerned about the run­ways and as their cam­paign began to grow .… she nev­er dreamed that what has hap­pened could have hap­pened and it had giv­en her con­fi­dence that they would win.

A local Har­mondsworth res­i­dent also spoke mov­ing­ly of his daugh­ter who was buried at the local Har­mondsworth cemetary and had been out­raged at the orig­i­nal plans which involved mov­ing the bod­ies from the grave­yard. He was deter­mined to stop the third run­way and that the cli­mate camp had enor­mous­ly lift­ed the spir­its of many. He said that the protests were peace­ful, but that if the politi­cians would not lis­ten to them then he did not think it would always be so and that peo­ple would have to take more direct action.

Anoth­er speak­er, George Mon­biot spoke of a local man, Richard Cox, also buried in the Har­mondsworth Ceme­tery who ‘invent­ed’ the Cox’s Orange Pip­pin apple (Cox’s apple). he went on to say that the local area used to be full of orchards, now buried under run­ways. Mon­biot said that the fact that we now have to fly in apples from far away demon­strates that the cause of all this is eco­nom­ic mad­ness with­out end.

After the speech­es when folks were decid­ing to leave the green, a set of deci­sions were col­lec­tive­ly made. Some decid­ed to leave the vil­lage green and head back towards the camp, oth­er decid­ed to head towards BAA and oth­ers decid­ed to stay on the green and dis­perse lat­er on.

Those groups going towards BAA and the camp sep­a­rat­ed at a junc­tion. The group that came back to camp did not have any fur­ther delays from the police and there were no inci­dents report­ed.

All in all an amaz­ing march – well done to all!!

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rush­es of the rush — video/mp4 5.2M

This video shows pro­test­ers head­ing towards the HQ of BAA from the Cli­mate Camp. They fan out when they pass the Police line to draw their escorts in dif­fer­ent loca­tions. video/mp4 1.5M

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The ket­tle behind the BAA block­ade

A whol­ly peace­ful group arrived behind BAA’s head­quar­ters around 3.30 this after­noon. Despite the fact that the con­tin­gent was large­ly com­posed of the CIRCA clowns, police respond­ed in their usu­al way by send­ing in the riot squad.

Groups arrived car­ry­ing ban­ners such as “Don’t run­away — cut the sys­tem’s wings” and “Vis­it Scot­land — but don’t come by plane”. With­in min­utes the atmos­phere was deaf­ened by sirens, and the adja­cent McDon­alds got its own police cav­al­ry for pro­tec­tion.

Clowns tried to defuse the ten­sion in their unique and famil­iar way but were rebuffed by over aggres­sive riot cops, who felt the need to man­han­dle them and push them rough­ly back into their new­ly cre­at­ed pen.

The crown num­bered maybe forty, the police pres­ence was in the hun­dreds.

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BAA get Pun­ished for the most Dev­as­tat­ing Cli­mate Change

Activists from Oxford are part of the — still ongo­ing — 100+ strong overnight block­ade at BAA HQ oppo­site Heathrow Air­port.

To Affin­i­ty and Beyond!

A strong group from the Oxford bar­rio formed sev­er­al affin­i­ty groups and trav­elled to Sip­son to mark out part of where the run­way, if built, will trash (in our case Heathrow Pri­ma­ry, a small school on Har­mondsworth Lane, iron­i­cal­ly bear­ing a con­corde as its logo). Although a few Oxo­ni­ans were caught in a ket­tle, penned in by the police, on the kids’ march, most man­aged to avoid being sur­round­ed. Then onto a quick detour at a friend­ly local pub (thanks for the free tea!) before head­ing towards BAA.

Funky Monks

One affin­i­ty group — dubbed the monks and the mikes — split off, to meet lat­er in the carpark at BAA. The Monks pro­ced­ed to deliv­er a ser­mon wor­ship­ping BAA and 40 — 50 peo­ple joined in to pros­trate them­selves in front of the build­ing. They sang a chant to depict the pro­posed air­port expan­sion. And invit­ed peo­ple to join in their only hymn:
“All things bright and beau­ti­ful,
all crea­tures great and small.
All things wise and won­der­ful,
BAA kills them all.”

Whilst the pray­ing and con­ga’ing was tak­ing place, activists from the Scot­tish bar­rio and a the clowns who arrived by bus were ket­tled in. Although it can be argued that this was a form of sub­lime masochism on the part of the riot cops who then had to put up with four hours of in-your-face clown­ing.

At 6pm, the sound sys­tems and kids’ march arrived. And then the police start­ed get­ting heavy-hand­ed.

Police fuck-wit­tery

The police began to cor­don peo­ple in once the march had arrived and they threw their weight around. One Oxford activist felt the wrong arm of the law as she tried to get to her part­ner and was thrown vio­lent­ly to the floor. For­tu­nate­ly, as Oxford is a strong group there were lots of wit­ness­es — and hugs to be had.

Block the BAA

Once every­one arrived, there was a brief bat­tle of sound-sys­tems (oh no, blocked in with music, danc­ing and food — damn!), and then peo­ple decid­ed to block the car park to BAA.


To fast-for­ward to where the author of this piece left, there was a tar­pau­lin city and singing going on at around mid­night — and the activists are still there now. We’re going back to join them.

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Cardiff sol­i­dar­i­ty with Heathrow protests

South Wales anar­chists and friends dropped a ban­ner in front of the Mil­le­ni­um Sta­di­um in Cardiff this after­noon in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the actions tak­ing place at the Cli­mate Camp in Heathrow.

http://www.southwalesanarchists.org/

& For news non-hier­ar­chi­cal action against Cli­mate change read Gagged!

gwentanarchists@yahoo.co.uk
http://www.gaggedanarchist.tk

More ban­ner drops in New­port & Cwm­bran

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Sol­i­dar­i­ty Demon­stra­tion With Heathrow Cam­paign­ers At Nor­wich Air­port

A small group of peo­ple act­ing as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of mem­bers of a wide range of local organ­i­sa­tions includ­ing Nor­wich FoE, Nor­wich Cam­paign against Cli­mate Change, Nor­wich and Nor­folk Green Par­ties, BROADS, and local air­port-area res­i­dents per­formed an avi­a­tion infor­ma­tion cam­paign at Nor­wich Air­port in sup­port of the cur­rent nation­al protests at Heathrow air­port against man­made cli­mate change action. Between 2.30 to 3.30pm today Sun­day 19th August in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Heathrow cli­mate change action, local cam­paign­ers hand­ed out edu­ca­tion­al leaflets to pas­sen­gers leav­ing from Nor­wich air­port to Euro­pean des­ti­na­tions.

A small group of peo­ple act­ing as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of mem­bers of a wide range of local organ­i­sa­tions includ­ing Nor­wich FoE, Nor­wich Cam­paign against Cli­mate Change, Nor­wich and Nor­folk Green Par­ties, BROADS, and local air­port-area res­i­dents per­formed an avi­a­tion infor­ma­tion cam­paign at Nor­wich Air­port in sup­port of the cur­rent nation­al protests at Heathrow air­port against man­made cli­mate change action.

See video at: http://tinyurl.com/2j4rw2

Between 2.30 to 3.30pm today Sun­day 19th August in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Heathrow cli­mate change action, local cam­paign­ers hand­ed out edu­ca­tion­al leaflets to pas­sen­gers leav­ing from Nor­wich air­port to Euro­pean des­ti­na­tions.

‘We high­light­ed the 37% increase in pas­sen­ger num­bers and the increased CO2 pol­lu­tion and noise pol­lu­tion’, said Cllr. Rupert Read, lec­tur­er at UEA and Nor­folk Green party’s lead can­di­date for the next Euro­pean elec­tions in 2009, and press con­tact for this event.

He con­tin­ued, ’We informed peo­ple about alter­na­tive trav­el arrange­ments avail­able to vis­it near­by Europe; train options are con­ve­nient and pro­vide much more time for relax­ation dur­ing the trip. For exam­ple, I went by train to Brus­sels last year – it was a love­ly trip. We need a change in atti­tude sim­i­lar to that that has already been expe­ri­enced in Ger­many, where, in a turn­around com­pared to pre­vi­ous years, many thou­sands of peo­ple con­scious­ly chose to hol­i­day at home, their rea­son being their desire to play their part in pre­vent­ing cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change. We have once chance, at this moment in his­to­ry, to do the right thing, and press for polit­i­cal change that will stop avi­a­tion expan­sion and air trav­el from ter­mi­nal­ly under­min­ing our chances of keep­ing the Earth’s cli­mate long-term hab­it­able for humans.‘

The cam­paign­ers high­light­ed fail­ing Gov­ern­ment poli­cies. Cllr. Andrew Boswell said, “New Labour promised a reduc­tion in CO2 pol­lu­tion but they are sim­ply not pre­pared to take the nec­es­sary actions. Instead of stem­ming the increase in flights and emis­sions, they are plan­ning to mas­sive­ly expand the avi­a­tion indus­try, for exam­ple, with new run­ways at Stanst­ed and Heathrow, and pro­posed four­fold flight increase at Nor­wich.

“Whilst our farm­ers pay VAT on trans­port costs, air­lines get away with sub­si­dis­ing imports of food from all over the world, putting our farm­ers’ liveli­hoods at risk.

“The gov­ern­ment must stop its pro­gramme of run­way expan­sion, which threat­ens to make res­i­dents’ lives a mis­ery and to destroy the cli­mate that our chil­dren will inher­it.”

Back­ground: Nor­wich air­port is sur­round­ed by hous­ing on three sides and its future expan­sion is there­fore an uneco­nom­ic under­tak­ing.

Nor­folk Green Par­ty has in the past argued for the devel­op­ment of much-need­ed hous­ing in the area, rather than for expand­ing a rather insignif­i­cant air­port. Nor­folk des­per­ate­ly needs afford­able hous­ing to house young peo­ple who are not able to pay steep house prices.

Nor­wich Air­port car­ried 745,879 pas­sen­gers in 2006, that is a 37% increase over the pre­vi­ous year 2005. The pro­ject­ed growth fore­cast is for 2.045 mil­lion pas­sen­gers by 2015 with a fur­ther increase to 2.974 mil­lion by 2030 – a four­fold increase from 2006. Add to this the many increas­ing civ­il recre­ation flights, train­ing flights, the incom­ing and out­go­ing flights for ser­vic­ing and engi­neer­ing repair, the heli­copter traf­fic, etc. and you have many more flights. This is dis­as­trous­ly unsus­tain­able, envi­ron­men­tal­ly.

The demon­stra­tion was arranged ful­ly co-oper­a­tive­ly inform­ing Nor­wich Air­port, so as not to cause any alarm at their end. It will be entire­ly peace­ful, and will not even dis­rupt traf­fic or cause any con­ges­tion.

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BA World Car­go depot

police in huge num­bers, includ­ing sil­ver com­man­der, came hurtling from the BAA seige to the BA depot. Suport team cleared away, lock­ers on removed and nicked by about 22.10. The shift of cops releived the pres­sure at BAA which is report­ed to have a good par­ty vibe going into the night.

block­ade was in place four hours — all released with­out charge

update

The eight block­aders just got back to the camp after being held at Staines police sta­tion from 1am until 2.30pm this after­noon. The block­ade was in place from 8.30pm Sun­day evening until a quar­ter past mid­night, when the last block­ad­er was moved from the road. The freight cen­ter that was block­ad­ed han­dles exot­ic frozen foods flown in from around the world to be dis­trib­uted to the super­mar­kets. Amongst the many lor­ries back­ing up we spot­ted Sains­bury’s, Aldi and Farm Foods.

The protest high­light­ed the insan­i­ty of fly­ing food into this coun­try — clock­ing up air­miles and destroy­ing our local economies. The ban­ner encour­aged peo­ple: “Enjoy local food”

Sil­ver com­mand arrest­ed peo­ple ini­tial­ly under Sec­tion 68 (Aggra­vat­ed Tres­pass). This after­noon all were released with­out charge and with no fur­ther action tak­en. Nice one!

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Press Release — Cli­mate activists block­ade Heathrow freight depot

19th August 2007, 21:30

At 21:00, eight pro­test­ers from the Camp for Cli­mate Action have block­ad­ed British Air­ways’ World Car­go Depot at Hat­ton Cross, out­side Heathrow Air­port.

The pro­test­ers block­ad­ed vehi­cle access by lock­ing them­selves togeth­er in a ring with ‘arm tubes’.

British Air­ways han­dle air freight­ed food­stuffs, which are a rapid­ly grow­ing source of green­house gas emis­sions. Air freight­ing of food to UK grew by 140% between 1992 and 2002. Air freight­ed food amounts to 14% of total food-relat­ed CO2 emis­sions.

The pro­test­ers claim that import­ing fruit and veg­eta­bles from devel­op­ing coun­tries encour­ages unsus­tain­able farm­ing prac­tices, uses scarce water resources and keeps farm­ers locked into a cycle of pover­ty, com­pet­ing for ever low­er prices.

Anna Kay, one of the block­aders said, “We in the UK need to move to eat­ing local­ly pro­duced and organ­ic food instead of sup­port­ing this ener­gy inten­sive and envi­ron­men­tal­ly destruc­tive indus­try”.

The block­ade was organ­ised by an inde­pen­dent group of activists who have been tak­ing part in the Camp for Cli­mate Action.
ENDS

Notes to edi­tor:

Arm Tubes are lengths of tube into which two pro­test­ers put their arms and lock them­selves togeth­er.

Block­aders on loca­tion can be con­tact­ed on 07798 745613.

Camp Press Group can be con­tact­ed on 0777 286 1099 or 07858 177178

Police took ages to locate the block­ade despite the tar­get being pub­licly known as one of the Cli­mate Camps ‘plan B’ tar­gets. When their arrived, they arrived in force hav­ing reployed from the occu­pa­tion of the BAA HQ car park. Over 20 vans final­ly turned up with senior polices includ­ing sil­ver com­mand. They also appeared to be hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty locat­ing the spe­cial­ist team respon­si­ble for cut­ting peo­ple out of lock ons.

The sev­en peo­ple doing sup­port were threat­ened with arrest and hav­ing know­ing­ly breached the Heathrow Bylaws they decid­ed to leave after a quick dis­cus­sion with those in the lock on. The sup­port­ers are now back at the camp and as we write there is no indi­ca­tion that those in the lock on have yet been cut out and tak­en to a police sta­tion.

BA World Car­go Per­ish­ables was tar­get­ed high­light the unsus­tain­able and increas­ing trans­porta­tion of per­ish­able pro­duce by air includ­ing both flow­ers and food.

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Mon­day 20th August 2007

Update on BAA sit-in

20.08.2007 01:24
At least 200 peo­ple now block­ing the only road access to the main BAA build­ing.

Pro­tes­tors have set up shel­ters and are cur­rent­ly eat­ing, sleep­ing, singing and chill­ing with a tem­porar­i­ly more relaxed polic­ing style. Police are cur­rent­ly let­ting more peo­ple join, but it’s unclear how long this will last. Wheel­bar­row full of treats, includ­ing hot food, raised spir­its of the block­aders, who plan to stay until work­ers arrive for work in the morn­ing.






Small skir­mish will be ignored by Fer­ovial

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It is appar­ent that the lit­tle skir­mish out­side the BAA HQ will be noth­ing to when the real demo­li­tion of peo­ples’ homes and prop­er­ties begins in a few year’s time. What is not realised is that BAA is no longer ‘British’ Air­ports Author­i­ty but belongs to two Span­ish bil­lion­aires who also own the huge Span­ish con­struc­tion / prop­er­ty devel­op­ment Fer­ovial. In pur­chas­ing BAA they also inher­it­ed the grand­fa­ther rights of com­pul­so­ry pur­chase of all prop­er­ties in the way of air­port expan­sion. It is the only for­eign owned com­pa­ny can legal­ly demol­ish oth­er peo­ple’s prop­er­ties. Fer­ovial does­n’t give a damn about Cli­mate Change of the Cli­mate Camp. Fears of direct intim­i­da­tion from Fer­ovial against pro­test­ers is already caus­ing some con­cern around Heathrow.

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Not BAAd



After a some­what sur­re­al night of dark rum, wet ars­es, singing and watch­ing a white rab­bit attempt to fright­en off the rozzers (no, real­ly) we learned that the boss­es at BAA had sent every­one home for the day. I encour­age all BAA work­ers to think about what fun stay­ing at home and laz­ing about was and to phone in sick and/or sab­o­tage their work­place at every oppor­tu­ni­ty 😉

We left the car park feel­ing knack­ered but exhil­a­rat­ed, hav­ing sur­vived “the blue fury of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police” and shut down BAA for the day. BAA had tried to take five mil­lion peo­ple to court the pre­vi­ous week to stop any kind of protest or dis­sent from its prof­it-led cor­po­rate agen­da. And we had just spent the night in their bloody car park!

One affin­i­ty group mem­ber arranged a whip round at the camp to make up for the mon­ey BAA had lost pay­ing our legal costs and hav­ing to close for the day. Con­tri­bu­tions includ­ed rather a lot of spit, a week’s worth of old fag butts, a damp pack­et of rizla, a nap­py and an out of date trav­el­card (which lat­er had to be removed for use as roach mate­r­i­al). Unfor­tu­nate­ly overzeal­ous recy­cling crew at the camp mis­took the col­lec­tion for rub­bish. Which means that BAA will be get­ting from the camp the same amount as it has done for local peo­ple and for the envi­ron­ment; fuck all.

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New­cas­tle action.…

In sol­i­dar­i­ty with cli­mate camp protests.…

Due to var­i­ous com­mit­ments i had to leave cli­mate camp on sat­ur­day hav­ing been there since mon­day 13th. It was quite depress­ing know­ing i was miss­ing the big action. How­ev­er my inspi­ra­tional 10 year old son sug­gest­ed we took action in new­casle city cen­tre this morn­ing (mon­day 20th). He dressed as bat­man and I was a clown. We descend­ed on mon­u­ment, at 8am with help from 2 oth­er local activists (who kind­ly print­ed 300 leaflets about the cause)! We made ban­ners, “Cli­mate Change Kills” and “Stop BAA”. The local press came, inter­viewed my son and took pho­tos! We are hop­ing to make The Evening Chron­i­cle tomor­row. The action last­ed approx 90 min­utes and we got a good response from the pub­lic. Although more “fluffy” than we would have liked my son was lov­ing it and demands to come to cli­mate camp next year as i was unable to bring him this time.

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Tyne­side Esso Ban­ner Drop

Activists dropped a ban­ner on ESSO to high­light their fund­ing of cli­mate change deniers.

Pass­ing busi­ness­men and bent sci­en­tists were hand­ed checks for mil­lions of pounds from ESSO.
The office man­ag­er com­ment­ed; “ESSO aren’t here any more; all the demon­stra­tions aren’t good for busi­ness. We put all their mail in the bin; thats the best place for them, too!”
The Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty, over the road, was block­ad­ed.

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BP Head­quar­ters Occu­pied in Cen­tral Lon­don

Around 30 peo­ple have block­ad­ed the BP head offices in St James Sq, lon­don this morn­ing. Some are super­glued to each oth­er and some are D‑locked to rail­ings on te side of the build­ing.

Quot­ing one of the activists, Stan­ley Owen: ‘We can­not sus­tain infini­tive growth on a finite plan­et’. With its 31 mil­lion tonnes of fuel used a year, Heathrow is like the ‘biggest car­bon bon­fire’. BP is one of two fuel sup­pli­ers to the air­port.

The atmos­phere at the block­ade is very good. ‘Work­ers are not get­ting in, we’re talk­ing to them about hav­ing the day off’ said one of the sup­port­ers who have gath­ered in num­bers out­side the build­ing and are leaflet­ing work­ers and passers by.

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Block­ade at Sizewell B nuclear pow­er sta­tion

A group of five peo­ple have locked to con­crete blocks in the entrance of Sizewell nuclear pow­er sta­tion. They start­ed the action at 7.45am this morn­ing and unfurled a ban­ner read­ing ‘nuclear pow­er is not the answer to cli­mate chaos’.

The pro­test­ers have tar­get­ed the pow­er sta­tion to high­light that nuclear pow­er is no answer to cli­mate change.

Sizewell B nuclear pow­er sta­tion is oper­at­ed by British Ener­gy and is the UK’s only large pres­surised water reac­tor. In the first ten years of it’s oper­a­tion it pro­duced about 3% of the UK’s elec­tric­i­ty. British Ener­gy claim the pow­er sta­tion has reduced the amount of green­hous­es gas­es that would oth­er­wised have been released by fos­sil fuel gen­er­a­tion by around 60 mil­lion tonnes.

How­ev­er they have con­ve­nient­ly account­ed for only a tiny part of entire pro­duc­tion cycle. A large amount of ener­gy (and there­fore green­house gas emis­sions) are involved in the min­ing of ura­ni­um ore, it’s refin­ing and enrich­ment and the con­struc­tion and even­tu­al decom­mis­sion­ing of the nuclear pow­er sta­tions them­selves also needs to be fac­tored into the equa­tion.

Last year, dur­ing the cli­mate camp near Drax in York­shire, pro­test­ers block­ad­ed the Hartle­pool nuclear pow­er sta­tion.

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Sizewell Nuclear Pow­er Sta­tion Closed in Response to Cli­mate Change

Activists from the “Camp for Cli­mate Action” have today, 20 Aug 2007, block­ad­ed Sizewell nuclear pow­er sta­tion to oppose the myth that nuclear pow­er is car­bon neu­tral and a solu­tion to cli­mate change. The peace­ful protest, which start­ed 7:45 this morn­ing, is cur­rent­ly dis­rupt­ing traf­fic going in the main entrance to both Sizewell ‘A’ and ‘B’. Sizewell, on the Suf­folk coast, has been iden­ti­fied as a pos­si­ble site for a new nuclear reac­tor by Gov­ern­ment con­sul­tants recent­ly.

Five activists have chained them­selves togeth­er across the road to the plant. They are hold­ing ban­ners read­ing “Nuclear Pow­er is Not the Answer to Cli­mate Chaos” and “Don’t Nuke the Cli­mate”.

The action forms part of the wide­ly pub­li­cised Camp for Cli­mate Action cur­rent­ly tak­ing place out­side Heathrow air­port. The sur­prise block­ade of Sizewell nuclear pow­er plant was organ­ised to oppose plans for the con­struc­tion of new nuclear pow­er sta­tions. The British Government’s ener­gy white paper, pub­lished in May 2007, con­tains pro­pos­als for the con­struc­tion of a new gen­er­a­tion of nuclear pow­er sta­tions, sup­pos­ed­ly as a solu­tion to glob­al warm­ing. This is a claim that the pro­tes­tors strong­ly oppose.

At present, nuclear pow­er is respon­si­ble for pro­duc­ing around 4% of the UK’s ener­gy. The activists are con­cerned that the con­struc­tion of new nuclear pow­er plants will not pro­vide a real answer to the threats posed by glob­al warm­ing. One of them, Adam Con­way said: “If you take into account the whole life cycle of a nuclear reac­tor and all its fuel and waste then nuclear pow­er is not car­bon neu­tral. And that’s before you con­sid­er the dan­gers and inse­cu­ri­ties inher­ent in nuclear pow­er. To expand nuclear pow­er in response to cli­mate change would be to jump out of the fry­ing pan and into the fire.”

The pro­tes­tors also draw atten­tion to the as yet unsolved prob­lem of nuclear waste gen­er­at­ed by nuclear pow­er, and the risk of nuclear acci­dents. Mell Har­ri­son, co-ordi­na­tor of East­ern Region CND and one of the activists involved, com­ment­ed: “The con­struc­tion of new nuclear pow­er plants is not only incred­i­bly cost­ly, it’s also very short sight­ed. We would be able to pro­duce a lim­it­ed amount of elec­tric­i­ty for a cou­ple of gen­er­a­tions, but the com­ing hun­dreds of gen­er­a­tions will have to deal with the waste pro­duced by the nuclear indus­try. There is also a risk of cat­a­stroph­ic nuclear acci­dents and an increased risk of nuclear weapons pro­lif­er­a­tion. Large areas are still affect­ed by the radi­a­tion released by the dis­as­ter at Cher­nobyl, and now they are propos­ing build­ing new nuclear pow­er plants in an area that is at risk from sea lev­el rise.”

The protest at Sizewell is one of many non­vi­o­lent actions that have been organ­ised by par­tic­i­pants in the “Camp for Cli­mate Action”, to draw atten­tion to the dan­gers of cli­mate change, and to high­light pos­i­tive solu­tions to the prob­lem. The site at Sizewell has been iden­ti­fied as one of a num­ber of pos­si­ble loca­tions for new nuclear pow­er sta­tions in the UK. Sizewell hosts the most recent­ly con­struct­ed civil­ian nuclear reac­tor in Britain, “Sizewell B” that began com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion of elec­tric­i­ty in 1995 fol­low­ing Britain’s longest ever pub­lic enquiry.

Con­tact: 01603 722898 Peter Lany­on (off­site)
07971 347549 Mell Har­ri­son (part of the block­ade)

—————

Sizewell nuclear pow­er­sta­tion block­ad­ed

Activists from the Camp have block­ad­ed Sizewell nuclear pow­er sta­tion. Press release below was writ­ten by activists before they block­ad­ed.

PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
20 August 2007

Sizewell Nuclear Pow­er Sta­tion Closed in Response to Cli­mate Change

Pho­tos (free from copy­right) avail­able from:
http://fme.sincerethought.org/gallery/v/2007/climate

Activists from the “Camp for Cli­mate Action” have today block­ad­ed Sizewell nuclear pow­er sta­tion to oppose the myth that nuclear pow­er is car­bon neu­tral and a solu­tion to cli­mate change. The peace­ful protest, which start­ed 7:45 this morn­ing, is cur­rent­ly dis­rupt­ing traf­fic going in the main entrance to both Sizewell ‘A’ and ‘B’. Sizewell, on the
Suf­folk coast, has been iden­ti­fied as a pos­si­ble site for a new nuclear reac­tor by Gov­ern­ment con­sul­tants recent­ly.

Five activists have chained them­selves togeth­er across the road to the plant. They are hold­ing ban­ners read­ing “Nuclear Pow­er is Not the Answer to Cli­mate Chaos” and “Don’t Nuke the Cli­mate”.

The action forms part of the wide­ly pub­li­cised Camp for Cli­mate Action cur­rent­ly tak­ing place out­side Heathrow air­port. The sur­prise block­ade of Sizewell nuclear pow­er plant was organ­ised to oppose plans for the con­struc­tion of new nuclear pow­er sta­tions. The British Government’s ener­gy white paper, pub­lished in May 2007, con­tains pro­pos­als for the
con­struc­tion of a new gen­er­a­tion of nuclear pow­er sta­tions, sup­pos­ed­ly as a solu­tion to glob­al warm­ing. This is a claim that the pro­test­ers strong­ly oppose.

At present, nuclear pow­er is respon­si­ble for pro­duc­ing around 4% of the UK’s ener­gy. The activists are con­cerned that the con­struc­tion of new nuclear pow­er plants will not pro­vide a real answer to the threats posed by glob­al warm­ing. One of them, Adam Con­way said: “If you take into account the whole life cycle of a nuclear reac­tor and all its fuel and
waste then nuclear pow­er is not car­bon neu­tral. And that’s before you con­sid­er the dan­gers and inse­cu­ri­ties inher­ent in nuclear pow­er. To expand nuclear pow­er in response to cli­mate change would be to jump out of the fry­ing pan and into the fire.”

The pro­test­ers also draw atten­tion to the as yet unsolved prob­lem of nuclear waste gen­er­at­ed by nuclear pow­er, and the risk of nuclear acci­dents. Mell Har­ri­son, co-ordi­na­tor of East­ern Region CND and one of the activists involved, com­ment­ed: “The con­struc­tion of new nuclear pow­er plants is not only incred­i­bly cost­ly, it’s also very short
sight­ed. We would be able to pro­duce a lim­it­ed amount of elec­tric­i­ty for a cou­ple of gen­er­a­tions, but the com­ing hun­dreds of gen­er­a­tions will have to deal with the waste pro­duced by the nuclear indus­try. There is also a risk of cat­a­stroph­ic nuclear acci­dents and an increased risk of nuclear weapons pro­lif­er­a­tion. Large areas are still affect­ed by the radi­a­tion released by the dis­as­ter at Cher­nobyl, and now they are propos­ing build­ing new nuclear pow­er plants in an area that is at risk from sea lev­el rise.”

The protest at Sizewell is one of many non­vi­o­lent actions that have been organ­ised by par­tic­i­pants in the “Camp for Cli­mate Action”, to draw atten­tion to the dan­gers of cli­mate change, and to high­light pos­i­tive solu­tions to the prob­lem. The site at Sizewell has been iden­ti­fied as one of a num­ber of pos­si­ble loca­tions for new nuclear pow­er sta­tions in the UK. Sizewell hosts the most recent­ly con­struct­ed civil­ian nuclear reac­tor in Britain, “Sizewell B” that began com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion of elec­tric­i­ty in 1995 fol­low­ing Britain’s longest ever pub­lic enquiry.

Con­tact: 01603 722898 Peter Lany­on (off­site)
07971 347549 Mell Har­ri­son (part of the block­ade)

END

——————

This audio report made by phone from those locked-on at Sizewell B nuclear pow­er sta­tion was made at around 11am Mon­day 20th as part of the 24 hours of action against cli­mate change. Those involved explain what they have done and why they are doing it.

Audio Click here to down­load or lis­ten to the report — mp3 425K

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York­shire flat­cap-wear­ers occu­py ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist offices

Cli­mate campers from the Yor­shire neigh­bour­hood today occu­pied the offices of ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists Bridge­point, new own­ers and would be expanders of Leeds/Bradford air­port, pre­sent­ing them with three demands:

1) Drop the plans to mas­sive­ly expand Leeds/Bradford Air­port

2) Close down Leeds/Bradford Air­port com­plete­ly.

3) Use the 150 mil­lion pounds from Leeds City Coun­cil to turn the air­port into an eco­park.

Just before 9am this morn­ing they entered the premis­es in War­wick Street, just around the cor­ner from Lon­don’s Pic­cadil­ly Cir­cus. Three ban­ners were unfurled in the win­dows, the out­side of which were lib­er­al­ly cov­ered with fly­ers explain­ing the occu­pa­tion.

After a short scuf­fle with secu­ri­ty Bridge­point direc­tor James Mur­ray agreed to come to the recep­tion to hear the pro­test­ers demands — it was made clear that this was the start of a long and sus­tain­able cam­paign against the air­port.

Work­ers arriv­ing for the day were offered York­shire pud­dings and engaged in con­ver­sa­tion, explain­ing the sci­ence of cli­mate change and rea­son­ing why Leeds air­port — and all the oth­ers — should­n’t be expand­ed.

Final­ly a dec­la­ra­tion from the peo­ple of York­shire was read out, a sou­venir snap was tak­en and peo­ple peace­ful­ly left the build­ing.

To his cred­it, direc­tor Mur­ray took his pud­ding upstairs with him.

—————-

Dec­la­ra­tion from Leeds peo­ple to shut down Leeds air­port

This dec­la­ra­tion was read out on 20th August in Lon­don dur­ing the occu­pa­tion of Bridge­point Cap­i­tal’s office.

A dec­la­ra­tion from the peo­ple of York­shire

To Bridge­point Cap­i­tal, the avi­a­tion indus­try, so-called cap­tains of indus­try, polit­i­cal lead­ers and the great York­shire pub­lic…

You may be aware that recent­ly Leeds Brad­ford Air­port was sold off lock stock and bar­rel by our five West York­shire coun­cils. It was bought by equi­ty giant Bridge­point, whose offices we are vis­it­ing today, for a stag­ger­ing £145 Mil­lion.

We have not­ed with great con­cern the inter­est that Bridge­point has shown in our region. Thanky­ou for the inter­est, but let us be clear we don’t need this kind of inter­est. You seem hun­gry to buy up com­pa­nies and expand them regard­less of social and envi­ron­men­tal costs.

It seems that you, as the new own­ers of our air­port, want to dou­ble pas­sen­ger num­bers from about 3 mil­lion pas­sen­gers to sev­en mil­lion by the year 2015. You say you are gong to spend £70 mil­lion to do this.

We have some advise for you. Save your mon­ey. Spend it some­where else it is want­ed more. Fur­ther expan­sion is out of the ques­tion. The air­port is ruin­ing our lives and our envi­ron­ment.

We are shocked and dis­mayed that you are plan­ning this kind of expan­sion. It flies in the face of the government’s plans to halt the growth of green­house gas­es. Do you real­ize that the Gov­ern­ment has set a nation­al tar­get for a reduc­tion in car­bon diox­ide (CO2) emis­sions from 1990 lev­els of 60% by 2050? It’s clear that even if you do know, you don’t care. Cur­rent growth in avi­a­tion means that in the future air trav­el will account for vir­tu­al­ly all our car­bon allowance as a coun­try – that’s before any of us turn on a light­bulb your indus­try have used up all the car­bon we are bud­get­ed to use as a nation. How self­ish. How stu­pid.

Do you real­ize that avi­a­tion has now become the fastest grow­ing source of green­house gas­es, the main con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change? Did you notice the dev­as­tat­ing floods that just hit our region from Hull to Sheffield and York, claim­ing lives, destroy­ing thou­sands of homes and caus­ing mil­lions in dam­ages? Do you real­ize this dev­as­ta­tion is linked to car­bon indus­tries like avi­a­tion?

Today we say Enough. This is why we are here. We, as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the peo­ple of York­shire demand the fol­low­ing:

• That Bridge­point Cap­i­tal imme­di­ate­ly divests itself from Leeds Brad­ford Air­port

• That full con­trol of the air­port is giv­en to the peo­ple of Leeds

• That con­sid­er­ing there are plen­ti­ful air­ports in the region at Man­ches­ter, Liv­er­pool, New­cas­tle and now Don­cast­er, Leeds Brad­ford Air­port is closed down.

• That the site of the air­port is made into an envi­ron­men­tal park using the £150 Mil­lion wind­fall that the local coun­cils received from sell­ing the air­port.

These are our demands. They are the only way we can pro­tect the future of our region, our chil­dren and our envi­ron­ment. We can­not watch as you prof­it from the plun­der of our future. The peo­ple of York­shire will not stop oppos­ing your expan­sion plans until our demands are met.

From the Dales and Val­leys of North­ern Eng­land.
This day, 20th August 2007.

——————

Want­ed: Bridge­point Cap­i­tal

For envi­ron­men­tal crimes against the peo­ple of York­shire…

In par­tic­u­lar… for plan­ning to expand Leeds Brad­ford Air­port…

… for propos­ing to dou­ble pas­sen­ger num­bers to 7 mil­lion

…for putting our envi­ron­men­tal future in great per­il

…and for ignor­ing warn­ings of sci­en­tists and gov­ern­ments about the links between air­port expan­sion and cli­mate change

www.climatecamp.org.uk

No Leeds Air­port Expan­sion Group

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Trafal­gar Square Cli­mate protest

Not wav­ing but drown­ing.…

Five ‘drowned’ fig­ures were float­ed in Trafal­gar Square foun­tains this morn­ing to high­light the link between fly­ing and cli­mate chaos. Each car­ried his/her own plac­ard with mes­sages such as “Your flight cost me my home”, ” Your flight cost me my chil­dren”, etc. Tourists and passers-by were giv­en leaflets made at the Camp for Cli­mate Action and many seemed unaware of the cur­rent cri­sis in Bangladesh, where half the coun­try is under water.

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Car­bon Off­set Com­pa­nies tar­get­ed by Cli­mate Camp Activists

Activists from the Camp for Cli­mate Action have simul­ta­ne­ous­ly tar­get­ed the offices of two sep­a­rate car­bon off­set com­pa­nies. The pro­tes­tors are dressed as red her­rings in order to high­light that car­bon off­set schemes are a dan­ger­ous dis­trac­tion from tak­ing effec­tive cli­mate action.

This morn­ing, the offices of two high pro­file car­bon off­set com­pa­nies in dif­fer­ent cities – the Car­bon Neu­tral Com­pa­ny in Lon­don and Cli­mate Care in Oxford — have been dis­rupt­ed.

The pro­tes­tors are colour­ful­ly dressed as red her­rings to sym­bol­ise the fact that car­bon off­set schemes are cor­rupt­ing the cli­mate change debate, tak­ing atten­tion away from effec­tive respons­es to the threat of cli­mate change and con­ning the gen­er­al pub­lic. Their aim is to dis­rupt the day-to-day run­ning of the offices and to raise awar­ness about the inef­fec­tive­ness of car­bon-off­set schemes – espe­cial­ly among well mean­ing office staff who may not real­ize the dam­age their work is doing to the fight to pre­vent run­away glob­al warm­ing.

Car­bon off­set­ting doesn’t work because:

We can­not know what emis­sions have been avoid­ed as a result of renew­able ener­gy projects – any hypothe­ses are guess­work. There­fore we can­not pos­si­bly cal­cu­late how much it would cost us to buy those sav­ings – off­set com­pa­nies are sell­ing us noth­ing but hot air.

Many schemes for ‘neu­tral­is­ing’ our emis­sions – such as tree plant­i­ng – have been com­plete­ly dis­cred­it­ed, being sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly illit­er­ate and based on invent­ed sav­ings and . Yet com­pa­nies such as Cli­mate Care and Car­bon Neu­tral con­tin­ue to use them.

Real off­sets would have to save the same amount of car­bon with­in the same time frame as it is released. Trees are assumed by the off­set com­pa­nies them­selves to take at least 99 years to absorb the car­bon emit­ted in a 2 hour flight. Even if it did work, it would be like fill­ing a bath­tub with a buck­et while try­ing to emp­ty it with a thim­ble; the bath will soon over­flow.

Most tech­no-fix off­set schemes are based in the devel­op­ing world. Even if every poor nation on the plan­et went car­bon-free today, indus­tri­alised nations would still have to slash our car­bon emis­sions if we are to have any hope of pre­vent­ing cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change. Emis­sions from devel­op­ing nations are not the prob­lem.

“Car­bon off­set com­pa­nies are sell­ing well-inten­tioned con­sumers a dan­ger­ous peace of mind by pre­tend­ing that they can make emis­sions dis­ap­pear” said Theo Mid­dle­ton, one of the activists in the Cli­mate Care office. “Cli­mate Care and BA have teamed up to offer fliers a false oppor­tu­ni­ty to buy their way out of their respon­si­bil­i­ty to the cli­mate.”

“Car­bon off­sets are inef­fec­tive, based on dubi­ous sci­ence and lead peo­ple to believe they
are help­ing when they are not – the con­cept and the prac­tice are a con,” said Sophie Nathan, who is tak­ing part in the Car­bon Neu­tral Com­pa­ny inva­sion. “Real cli­mate action involves tak­ing direct respon­si­bil­i­ty for per­son­al emis­sions lev­els as well as engag­ing in
polit­i­cal organ­i­sa­tion for wider change.”

Notes for Edi­tors

Car­bon off­set com­pa­nies have been on the receiv­ing end of a great deal of neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty in the last year. This is the sec­ond time in 2007 that the Car­bon Neu­tral Com­pa­ny has had its offices occu­pied by envi­ron­men­tal activists.Both com­pa­nies were also neg­a­tive­ly por­trayed in a recent Chan­nel 4 doc­u­men­tary on the off­sets indus­try
and in a report put out ear­li­er in the year by the Ams­ter­dam-based think tank, the Transna­tion­al Insti­tute. New Inter­na­tion­al­ist mag­a­zine focused on the debate in July last year, expos­ing inef­fec­tive and dam­ag­ing off­set meth­ods for fight­ing cli­mate change.

This is big busi­ness — British Air­ways report­ed a £620m pre-tax prof­it for the year end­ing March 2006, a 20 per cent increase on the pre­vi­ous year, despite the increase in fuel costs dur­ing the peri­od, and its short haul ser­vice moved into prof­it for the first time in a decade. This was a peri­od of expan­sion and prof­itabil­i­ty as much for Cli­mate Care as it was for British Air­ways. In July 2006, Cli­mate Care’s David Welling­ton wrote that “in the past 10 to 12 months we have seen a 10-fold increase in sales,” and that 85 per cent of this growth was in “online sales for off­set­ting flight emis­sions”.

i
see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6382253.stm

ii
see
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/dispatches/the+great+green+smokescreen/589267

iii
“BA Prof­its Up by 20%,” 24 May 2006, from the Busi­ness Trav­el
Europe web­site

iv
E Add­key, “Boom in Green Hol­i­days as Eth­i­cal Trav­el Takes Off,”
The Guardian, 17 July 2006

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Clowns mark out site of 4th run­way — in Lord Soley’s gar­den

This report in by phone around 6pm from Sgt Slideshow Bob tak­ing part in Oper­a­tion Eal­ing Com­e­dy , the mark­ing out of the site of a ‘pro­posed 4th run­way’ in the gar­den of Lord Soley who is the for­mer Labour MP for Ham­mer­smith, and now cam­paign direc­tor for Future Heathrow, an alliance of trade unions, busi­ness groups, air­lines and pro­fes­sion­al asso­ci­a­tions which sup­port the airport’s sus­tain­able mod­erni­sa­tion.

Audio Click here to down­load or lis­ten to report — mp3 185K

MP3 32kbs, 1min

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Audio Pod­cast on Cli­mate Camp day of actions…

In this pod­cast we focus in on one direct action which took place at the BAA offices at Bath Road in Heathrow. We were there for 24 hours. We inter­viewed sev­er­al peo­ple some of whom who were penned in at oth­er actions and this pod­cast gives a flavour of how the day went on Sun­day 19th August 2007, the Day of Action.

http://www.archive.org/download/ClimateCampDayOfActionBaaSit-inHeathrow2007/ClimateCampDayOfActionBaaSit-inHeathrow2007_vbr.m3u
“>Stream

Down­load: ogg open source for­mat or mp3 for­mat

Audio report from some of those camp­ing overnight at BAA

This report came in by phone at around 11pm on Sun­day night from some of those cur­rent­ly occu­py­ing the entrance to the car park of the BAA HQ near Heathrow air­port.

Click here to down­load or lis­ten to report — mp3 373K

Audio Lis­ten to 1:20am update from block­ade — mp3 316K

Juli­a’s rush­es from sun­day day of action at cli­mate camp

Video juli­a’s rush­es — video/mp4 2.8M

Kids March, a view of the site, gen­er­al march chilled action, and the BAA offices pro­tect­ed by Police

Video kryp­tik’s video rush­es from sun­day — video/mp4 4.9M

fran’s rush­es of the rush to the south

Some nice bits some nasty. It was a rush to Baa

Video rush­es of the rush — video/mp4 5.2M

Video of cli­mate pro­test­ers break­ing out of camp in a fan for­ma­tion

This video shows pro­test­ers head­ing towards the HQ of BAA from the Cli­mate Camp. They fan out when they pass the Police line to draw their escorts in dif­fer­ent loca­tions.

Video fan for­ma­tion pro­test­ers on the way to BAA — video/mp4 1.5M

Video rush­es of peo­ple rep­re­sent­ing them­selves for cli­mate action

It’s lunchtime, at the cli­mate camp and groups of peo­ple are leav­ing site on protest and action. This video shows how they are com­mu­ni­cat­ing their mes­sage and hav­ing a laugh. Con­tains, paper demo, kids march, exit the sys­tem, sam­ba, cli­mate band jam, and more!

Video day of action video rush­es mid­day­ish from jo — video/mp4 4.4M

video of a group leav­ing the cli­mate camp site on day of action

A quick video of a group leav­ing the cli­mate camp on the day of action. There are some ful­ly colour­ful “shields” with the images of young peo­ple from the glob­al south lead­ing the group.

Video leav­ing the cli­mate camp on the day of action — video/mp4 1.0M

Mon­day 13th — Air­bus wing
Tues­day 14th — Melt­down Chauf­feur Agency
Wednes­day 15th — hoax demo
Thurs­day 16th — Farn­bor­ough and Big­gin Hill air­ports, Bris­tol air­port, clown walk­a­bout
Fri­day 17th — trav­el agents closed, Depart­ment for Trans­port block­ade, XL Air­ways occu­pa­tion
Sat­ur­day 18th — kids’ freight block­ade, Carmel Agrex­co ware­house, Nip­pon strike sol­i­dar­i­ty
For the 24 hours of mass action, see sep­a­rate report.
Tues­day 21st — Har­mondsworth deten­tion cen­tre

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Mon­day 13th August 2007

A group of activists set up a cli­mate camp on the wing of an Air­bus A380 on its way to be assem­bled in France, pledg­ing to stay until gov­ern­ment min­is­ters come up with a ‘safe’ avi­a­tion pol­i­cy.

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Tues­day 14th August 2007

Four horse­men arrive at Ter­mi­nal 4 to coin­cide with Cli­mate Camp

Four dri­vers from the Melt­down Chauf­feur Agency went to Heathrow Ter­mi­nal 4 as request­ed by their clients and wait­ed patient­ly for them at the Arrival gate.

Video Four Horse­men arrive at Ter­mi­nal 4 — video/mp4 3.3M

On 14th August 07 (“offi­cial” start of Cli­mate camp), Four dri­vers from the went to Heathrow as request­ed by their clients and wait­ed patient­ly for them at the Arrival gate.

The clients did­n’t turn up — I guess they were delayed, but their arrival is inevitable.

Mrs D. Eath,

Mr. F. A. Mine,

Mr. P. E. Sti­lence,

and of course:

Mrs. War

Must be very angry by now and fed up of over­priced Star­bucks cof­fee, because their Chauf­feurs were asked to leave the air­port by the police… I guess the Four Horse­men are still wait­hing in arrivals…

Check out the hid­den cam­era footage…

(Pos­si­bly) bet­ter qual­i­ty footage on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU7D_3DBFGQ

Sor­ry folks, no sound­track, so don’t fid­dle with yer slid­er!

It’s about 4 dri­vers from a com­pa­ny called “Melt­down Chauf­feurs”. Coin­ci­c­ing with the first day of the Cli­mate Camp, they have a job to pick up four clients at Heathrow: Death, Famine, Pesti­lence and War: The four horse­men of the apoc­a­lypse.

The dri­vers wait at the arrival gate in Heathrow Ter­mi­nal 4, hold­ing up signs with the names of their clients, as dri­vers do. But the Four Horse­men are delayed. They don’t arrive at the sta­tion of Gatwick Express either.

Apoc­a­lypse did­n’t arrive this time. But unless we are chang­ing fast, “it will real­ly be the end of the world”.

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Wednes­day 15th August 2007

Police force cli­mate camp march to Heathrow air­port and block A4…

Just a quick report to say that today a small march of around 80 peo­ple left from the cli­mate camp to sup­port a local demon­stra­tion against heathrow expan­sion. They were very quick­ly sur­round­ed by over one hun­dred police — hav­ing just left the camp this hap­pened in what could be called a side street — then quite inex­plic­a­bly the police forced the group down sev­er­al streets towards the air­port. Still penned in on all side by police, they were then forced across the main A4 road (which police closed for some time before forc­ing the peo­ple across it) and then right up to the secu­ri­ty fence of Heathrow where they were held for over one hour.

Sev­er­al eye wit­ness­es have described how police were very heavy hand­ed from the out­set, throw­ing peo­ple who said they did not want to join the march into their cor­don. Par­ents were seper­at­ed from chil­dren as police offi­cers lit­er­al­ly threw peo­ple into the crowd who were sur­round­ed. Five peo­ple I’ve spo­ken to said that they would not engage in any dis­cus­sion and were scream­ing at peo­ple and even mak­ing jibes such as ‘you have no rights here’ before rough­ly shov­ing peo­ple into the penned in crowd.

Many peo­ple point­ed out that the main­stream media were there film­ing, but they sus­pect that the whole inci­dent may be portreyed as ‘the pro­tes­tors dis­rupt­ing air trav­ellers’ or ‘police foil attempt to block heathrow’ or ‘pro­tes­tors cause traf­fic chaos’.

Let’s see…

As to the protest by local cam­paign­ers, no one ever found it…

—————–

Police cause hol­i­day hav­oc — and blame pro­test­ers

“Local res­i­dents will stage a protest against air­port expan­sion at Hat­ton Cross this after­noon” read the Cli­mate Camp notice­board. “Main Gate — 3.30”

Nobody can say who wrote it. Spokesper­sons for the two local protests organ­i­sa­tions deny all knowl­edge and NoTRAG were even con­cerned that peo­ple might wear their stick­ers.

But it did result in 60 or 70 peo­ple leav­ing the camp to give sup­port.

Local cops seemed sur­prised. Five ran from the main gate as they saw the pro­ces­sion mov­ing south, and sleepy pair on the south gate were alarmed to see they might have to do a bit of work.

So it came as a shock to find two police vehi­cles ready to form a road­block a cou­ple of hun­dred yards down a sub­ur­ban street. And odd that there seemed to be quite a few media folks already on the spot.

Ten min­utes lat­er, with the group (now down by ten who’d legged it down an alley) halt­ed in their progress, half a dozen Tac­ti­cal Sup­port Group vehi­cles turned up, park­ing on and there­fore block­ing Har­ling­ton High Street. They were to be there for a half hour, so there was soon quite a tail­back.

The 50 campers were now sur­round­ed by more than a hun­dred police offi­cers.

Kids cruised around on bikes, res­i­dents came out of their hous­es to watch. “Get bur­gled round here you can wait a week for a cop­per, bring fifty pro­test­ers you get a hun­dred” one told me.

The ket­tle now turned into a pro­ces­sion. Police seemed to know where the campers were going, which quite frankly was more than many of them did.

Turn­ing right onto the High Street the air­port became vis­i­ble in the dis­tance. Fear­ing what might be to come some asked to leave. “There’s no way I want to protest at the air­port” said one, but he was pushed back into the group. Legal observers attest to this, there are also pho­tographs of the inci­dent.

Mean­while motor­cy­cle police had been busy block­ing the busy A4 Bath Road that adjoins the air­port. As the pro­ces­sion was brought to halt some hun­dred yards short of the junc­tion for ten min­utes, the traf­fic had plen­ty of time to build.

And now, whether they liked it or not — and sur­round­ed and pushed around by more than a hun­dred police they had no say in the mat­ter — they were tak­en across the A4 and on to the air­port perime­ter road — the very thing that BAA and the police claimed was the worst sce­nario, and one which they were deter­mined to stop.

(I asked one of the TSG about tak­ing them into “the injunc­tion zone” — he said “…we’d won­dered about that…”)

So the court injunc­tion attempt, the claims that it enabled ter­ror­ism and all the oth­er BAA blus­ter was exposed for the sham that it was.

And no doubt some fam­i­ly — “a hard work­ing fam­i­ly that has saved all year to give the kids a hol­i­day” — can be found to have been delayed — not by the actions of pro­test­ers — but the by the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police Force act­ing — no doubt — on the instruc­tions of BAA and their ser­vants the State.

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Thurs­day 16th August 2007

Busi­ness flights block­ad­ed by cli­mate activists

Two inde­pen­dent groups of cam­paign­ers from the Camp for Cli­mate Action have this morn­ing stopped car­bon-inten­sive pri­vate jets from oper­at­ing at two air­ports in the south east.

Exec­u­tive flights at Big­gin Hill and Farn­bor­ough air­ports have been brought to a stand­still by cli­mate activists con­cerned at the huge growth in the use of pri­vate jets by busi­ness peo­ple. The activists D‑locked them­selves to the gates of the air­ports.

At a time of grow­ing pub­lic con­cern at the cli­mate impact of the avi­a­tion indus­try, busi­ness jets have escaped pub­lic scruti­ny. The actions are intend­ed to raise aware­ness of the true cost of this hid­den aspect of air
trav­el.

Richard George, cur­rent­ly at Big­gin Hill said, “The avi­a­tion indus­try would like us to think that all flights are being tak­en by hard-work­ing fam­i­lies on their once-a-year hol­i­day. We are here today to shine a light on the dark secret of avi­a­tion, name­ly the enor­mous growth in pri­vate jet use by the super-rich.”

The pro­test­ers added that the actions are focused only on the car­bon-inten­sive nature of pri­vate busi­ness jets. George added, “While ordi­nary peo­ple are try­ing to reduce their car­bon emis­sions, many busi­ness lead­ers insist on fly­ing in the most car­bon-inten­sive way pos­si­ble: a jet all of their own.”

Anoth­er pro­test­er point­ed out, “In the 21st cen­tu­ry we have instant com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Video-con­fer­enc­ing has been suc­cess­ful­ly used by the media, cor­po­ra­tions and uni­verisi­ties, yet fat-cats insist on being flown around the world in their own per­son­al jets. The time for such waste­ful use of ener­gy is sim­ply over.”

The block­ades began at 6.30 AM and are ongo­ing.

ENDS

Media con­tacts at the action loca­tions
Big­gin Hill: 07879 416694
Farn­bor­ough: 07909 651093

Media con­tacts for the Camp for Cli­mate Action
0777 286 1099 or 07858 177 178

Notes to Edi­tor
1) Accord­ing to The Econ­o­mist, the aver­age num­ber of pas­sen­gers on exec­u­tive jets in Europe is two.

2) Farn­bor­ough is the only air­port in Europe for the exclu­sive use of busi­ness air­craft. They recent­ly attempt­ed to dou­ble the num­ber of flights despite mas­sive local oppo­si­tion, although these plans were reject­ed last year.

The bbc says in a report post­ed at 9.33am that a group of about 10 peo­ple “chained them­selves to Big­gin Hill Air­port’s entrance gates” to voice “their oppo­si­tion against the growth in the num­ber of peo­ple using pri­vate jets.”

Accord­ing to the bbc, the spokesper­son stressed “that the group had no plans to pre­vent pas­sen­gers fly­ing out of Heathrow at the week­end.” And it reports that “a spokesman for Hamp­shire police said cli­mate change demon­stra­tors were also stag­ing a protest at Farn­bor­ough Air­port but the air­port remained open.” Accord­ing to the bbc, about 18 peace­ful pro­test­ers are present at Farn­bor­ough Air­port at the main entrance to the air­port.

11 arrest­ed at big­gin hill after being cut out of lock­ons

one group had locked them­selves togeth­er lying across the main pas­sen­ger entrance while oth­ers had locked them­selves to the main gate.

—

Inter­view about the block­ade of Big­gin Hill air­port which took place on Thurs­day 16th August 2007.

Audio — mp3 3.6M

mp3 96kbps mono
5 mins 15 secs

—

Dur­ing the Cli­mate Camp I spoke with some­one from Plane Stu­pid, a group who has been cam­paign­ing on issues sur­round­ing the avi­a­tion indus­try and its dis­as­ter­ous effects on Cli­mate Change. Here is a short inter­view with explains why we should cam­paign on the avi­a­tion-cli­mate change link.

ogg 3.7M
mp3 6.7MB
Video of block­ade at Farn­bor­ough Air­port

—

Video inter­view with block­aders — video/mp4 6.8M

24 peo­ple took part in a block­ade at Farn­bor­ough Air­port this morn­ing with 9 peo­ple locked onto gates with lock-on devices. After an hour the aiport staff opened up an emer­gan­cy crash exit to allow the gath­ered busi­ness peo­ple in. Mean­while pro­test­ers hand­ed out leaflets to staff, pas­sen­gers and locals. Jets were delayed and after 2 hours a sec­ond emer­gency exit was opened. By this point the police warned peo­ple they would be arrest­ed and it was decid­ed to return to the camp. Although no one was arrest­ed, the police did seize lock-on devices. Some local media were present.

—————————-

Cli­mate chaos action at Bris­tol air­port today


Cli­mate chaos action at Bris­tol air­port today: Endan­gered goril­la in last stand shock!

An endan­gered goril­la has been sight­ed out­side Bris­tol air­port this after­noon on top of the tow­er­ing mon­u­ment to progress on the round­about. The clear­ly agi­tat­ed crea­ture is report­ed­ly attempt­ing to swat planes out of the sky as some sort of protest against cli­mate chaos. Pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ty from 3:30pm. More details to fol­low…

Cli­mate chaos action at Bris­tol air­port today:
Endan­gered goril­la in last stand shock!

An endan­gered goril­la has been sight­ed out­side Bris­tol air­port this after­noon on top of the tow­er­ing mon­u­ment to progress on the round­about. The clear­ly agi­tat­ed crea­ture is report­ed­ly attempt­ing to swat planes out of the sky as some sort of protest against cli­mate chaos. Pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ty from 3:30pm. More details to fol­low…

What we do know is this:

Avi­a­tion is the fastest grow­ing source of Car­bon Diox­ide (CO2) emis­sions, one of the pri­ma­ry caus­es of cli­mate change.

Despite a lot of hot air about tack­ling cli­mate chaos, the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to pro­mote air trav­el through tax breaks, sub­si­dies and a huge air­port expan­sion pro­gramme.

In the face of over­whelm­ing pub­lic oppo­si­tion, Bris­tol Inter­na­tion­al Air­port (BIA) is plan­ning to mas­sive­ly expand in the com­ing years.

BIA cur­rent­ly spews out more CO2 than the whole of Bristol’s traf­fic.

By 2019 it’s CO2 emis­sions are pre­dict­ed to be around 730000 tonnes, up from 430000 tonnes in 2005.

Air­port expan­sion rep­re­sents tun­nel vision eco­nom­ic progress at all costs. All the evi­dence is there to show it results in the destruc­tion of the local envi­ron­ment and com­mu­ni­ties as well as bring­ing more noise, pol­lu­tion and cli­mate chaos.

One of the friends of the rogue goril­la had this to say;

“The freak weath­er con­di­tions we are see­ing around the world and now clos­er to home are just the tip of the ice­berg. Cli­mate chaos means dead­ly heat waves, extreme floods, mass home­less­ness and refugee crises, ecosys­tem col­lapse, severe water short­ages, resource con­flicts and wars, mass extinc­tion… the list goes on. This is no longer a dis­tant threat to be quick­ly for­got­ten or dis­missed in the rush for cheap flights or the lat­est con­sumer item. Unless we take respon­si­ble, seri­ous action now to put an absolute cap on CO2 emis­sions and dras­ti­cal­ly alter our way of life, this plan­et will become an unin­hab­it­able night­mare world where human exis­tence itself will be in ques­tion. Have a nice day.”

This action is in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the cli­mate camp cur­rent­ly set up near Heathrow air­port. Despite police harass­ment and attempts by British Air­port Author­i­ties to sti­fle protest and oppo­si­tion with it’s now infa­mous injunc­tion, hun­dreds of peo­ple are there demon­strat­ing their resis­tance to air­port expan­sion and alter­na­tives for a bet­ter world based on ecol­o­go­cial sus­tain­abil­i­ty and equal­i­ty. More and more peo­ple recog­nise that real solu­tions to cli­mate chaos will not come from politi­cians or big busi­ness, but from ordi­nary peo­ple work­ing col­lec­tive­ly for far reach­ing, last­ing change.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion con­tact: kebelesocialcentre@riseup.net

As well as the very vis­i­ble goril­la action at the air­port’s front door a load of cli­mate chaos fly­ers were qui­et­ly dished out to unsus­pect­ing trav­ellers in need of read­ing mate­r­i­al at the check ins. When final­ly clocked by secu­ri­ty, after half an hour, the alter­na­tive trav­el agents were shown the way out and so joined in the mon­key busi­ness out­side.
This action was sim­ple and effec­tive. It showed what can be done with a few mates, not much prepa­ra­tion, about £20 and a lit­tle bit of humour and cre­ativ­i­ty…

——————–

on thurs­day at the cli­mate camp, a small group of clowns decid­ed to do walk­a­bout with a wheel­ie bin. when the police stopped them under anti-ter­ror­ism pow­ers, they were in for a big sur­prise.

Video send in the clowns — mp4 for­mat — video/mp4 4.0M

Video send in the clowns — wmv for­mat — video/x‑ms-wmv 4.4M

vid in wmv for­mat and mp4 for­mat

mp4 can be viewed using the free vide­olan vlc play­er avail­able for free down­load from the vide­olan web­site for all plat­forms. this play­er han­dles lots of dif­fer­ent vid codec for­mats and is worth check­ing out.

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Fri­day 17th August 2007

Trav­el cen­tres shut up shop for cli­mate camp


Trav­el agents were the tar­get of an action involv­ing chain­ing the doors of var­i­ous trav­el cen­tres in cen­tral Lon­don. Signs were placed on the doors of each shop (see attached).

To high­light the guilt of the cli­mate crim­i­nals that are the trav­el indus­try, a group of cli­mate activists chained the doors of 6 trav­el cen­tres in cen­tral Lon­don, leav­ing a notice stat­ing shops would be closed for the dura­tion of the camp. This action took place on the night of Fri­day 17th August; the six tar­gets includ­ed STA trav­el who are respon­si­ble for encour­ag­ing young peo­ple to buy ‘around the world tick­ets’ which com­prise of tak­ing sev­er­al long haul flights over a short peri­od of time, lead­ing to reck­less co2 emis­sions. Thomas Cook and ‘The Flight Cen­tre’ were also tar­get­ed.

This action was tak­en by an inde­pen­dent affin­i­ty group keen to high­light the need for the trav­el indus­try to wake up to the effects avi­a­tion has on the plan­et.

——————–

Cli­mate Activists Block­ade Depart­ment For Trans­port To Stop Air­port Expan­sion

Offi­cial press release fol­lows .…

PRESS RELEASE – For Imme­di­ate Release

Pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ty

CLIMATE ACTIVISTS BLOCKADE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORT TO STOP AIRPORT EXPANSION

9 activists have block­ad­ed the Depart­ment of Trans­port in a bid to demand that the gov­ern­ment reverse their plans to more than dou­ble the UK’s air­port capac­i­ty by 2030 Dressed in smart attire, the activists began their action at 8.15am and remain super­glued to the doors. Hold­ing a ban­ner which reads “no air­port expan­sion” the activists aim to high­light the impos­si­ble con­tra­dic­tion between the gov­ern­men­t’s rhetoric on stop­ping cli­mate change and its plans to expand air­ports.

Leila Har­ris, one of the activists, said: “The camp has made clear that expand­ing air­ports can­not be rec­on­ciled with stop­ping cli­mate change. Avi­a­tion is the fastest grow­ing cause of cli­mate change, already account­ing for 13 per cent of UK emis­sions. The gov­ern­ment has said noth­ing about how it plans to deal with this contradiction”1

“The Depart­ment of Trans­port must tear up all plans to expand UK air­ports, and start talk­ing about how we reduce the flights com­ing in and out of this coun­try. If they don’t, this sort of action against them is only the begin­ning”

This is the fourth direct action that has been held across the coun­try in sup­port of the Camp for Cli­mate Action.2 On Wednes­day three air­ports, hous­ing pri­vate jets owned by the super rich and the prime min­is­ter, were closed by groups of activists.

1 The gov­ern­men­t’s own fig­ures show that flights cur­rent­ly account for 13 per cent of the UK’s green­house gas emis­sions (Gillian Mer­rion, writ­ten answer to the House of Com­mons Envi­ron­men­tal Audit Com­mit­tee, Envi­ron­men­tal Audit Third Report). This is not cur­rent­ly includ­ed in the gov­ern­men­t’s fig­ures on UK emis­sions, nor is it includ­ed in the draft cli­mate change bill cur­rent­ly pro­cess­ing through par­lia­ment.

2 The Camp for Cli­mate Action has been open since Tues­day 14th and is in the process of plan­ning a day of mass action on Sun­day 19th which will tar­get the cor­po­ra­tions mak­ing prof­it at the expense of stop­ping cli­mate change.

For more infor­ma­tion and com­ment con­tact: Leo at the camp 07847 204 469 / Leila Har­ris 07766 175 641

———–

Campers Glue on to DfT

9 became 10 today as a pass­ing pedes­tri­an joined Cli­mate Camp sup­port­ers in a Depart­ment for Trans­port lock on.

Smart­ly dressed campers arrived at the DfT just after 8am as worka­holic trans­port fans were scur­ry­ing to their desks.

Five super­glued them­selves to he doors and two to each oth­er, jam­ming the revolv­ing doors shut whilst two more occu­pied the roof of the door­way with a sign read­ing “No Air­port Expan­sion”.

The pass­ing pedes­tri­an, who declined to give his name and request­ed no pho­tos asked for a bike chain and locked him­self to a glass side door.

Com­mu­ni­ty police showed up short­ly and called in the real police who arrived in dribs and drabs over the next half hour. Ambu­lances showed up and just to com­plete the tri­an­gle, police called in the Fire Brigade for good mea­sure.

Full marks to the medics who did a sen­si­tive job with the soapy water keep­ing up and encour­ag­ing ban­ter through­out.

There were 10 arrests includ­ing, of course, our pass­ing hero.

In what turned out to be a very suc­cess­ful demon­stra­tion against the third run­way at Heathrow and air­port expan­sion in gen­er­al activists locked and glued on to the Depart­ment for Trans­port in cen­tral Lon­don. All have been arrest­ed. Some suf­fered minor injuries to their hands caused by the glue. The police were gen­er­al­ly clam, although some offi­cers (AB 922) became aggres­sive when they were pho­tographed. The action suc­ceed­ed in block­ing the main and cor­ner entrances of the build­ing for near­ly 3 hours. Work­ers in the build­ing seemed gen­er­al­ly amused by the spec­ta­cle although some seemed annoyed that they were being made to stand out in the sun and away from their desks. No pleas­ing some peo­ple I guess.…

————————-

Cheap flights… Cheap Lives?!! — a report

This Fri­day a group of peo­ple occu­pied the head­quar­ters of XL Air­ways in Craw­ley, Gatwick air­port. The direct action was tak­en in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Con­golese refugees and asy­lum seek­ers in this coun­try. The group entered the offices leaflet­ing staff through­out the build­ing with ban­ner out­side (see above) and one per­son D‑locked them­selves to a post in recep­tion demand­ing to speak to the man­ag­er of XL Air­ways Mag­nus Thosstier­stonn.

On the 26th Feb­ru­ary 40 Con­golese asy­lum seek­ers were deport­ed on an XL char­tered plane to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Con­go (DRC). This includ­ed 19 chil­dren. Since their return to DRC they have been sub­ject­ed to human rights abus­es includ­ing rape and tor­ture. These abus­es have been cat­a­logued by a Kin­shasa lawyer cur­rent­ly in Lon­don. Now anoth­er group of Con­golese asy­lum seek­ers have received depor­ta­tion papers sched­uled for the 30th of August. It is believed that an XL char­ter plane will again be used as part of a Home Office con­tract.

Sev­er­al vans of police were called to the scene. Peo­ple leaflet­ing inside offices were even­tu­al­ly removed, although the per­son locked on remained. The group out­side were sub­ject­ed to stop and search by police — keys were even­tu­al­ly found and the locked on per­son was removed and arrest­ed. All staff at XL offices were made aware of the protest and the com­pa­ny’s involve­ment in deport­ing vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple who have come to this coun­try to seek refuge.

The van of pro­test­ers was fol­lowed all the way home, stop and searched 4 times, once for every force that it passed through. The per­son arrest­ed for D‑locking in recep­tion was held in cus­tody for 16 hours — bail was refused due to the “polit­i­cal his­to­ry” of that activist. Free­dom to protest?! Even­tu­al­ly the arrest­ed per­son was tak­en to Craw­ley mag­is­trates courts this Sat­ur­day morn­ing charged with Aggra­vat­ed Tres­pass under the Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Act (1994) — an act that was brought in to crim­i­nalise a pre­vi­ous­ly civ­il offence and so deter exact­ly this sort of protest. Not deterred! It seems that due to an error by police this is an incor­rect charge an d a less­er charge of Tres­pass will be brought. The case was adjourned until 31st August, part­ly so that the defence can con­sid­er whether a case under Arti­cle 3 of the Human Rights act can be brought in terms of this direct action being tak­en to pre­vent an unlaw­ful act of act, the depor­ta­tion of Con­golese asy­lum seek­ers.

The Home Office/Border and Immi­gra­tion Agency are hold­ing a tri­bunal in Sep­tem­ber to review its pol­i­cy on deport­ing asy­lum seek­ers to the Con­go, a tri­bunal that has con­stant­ly been pushed back, increas­ing the fear and uncer­tain­ty of Con­golese asy­lum seek­ing safe­ty in this coun­try. The Con­go is sub­ject to resource wars, fuelled by cor­po­rate inter­ests, that kill 1,200 per week accord­ing to the UN. XL Air­ways prof­its from cheap flights that con­tribute to cli­mate chaos increas­ing the num­ber of envi­ron­men­tal refugees in the world. XL also prof­it from depor­ta­tion char­ter flights of peo­ple who have fled resource wars in the Con­go. Cheap flights… cheap lives?!!

This action can be seen as a bridge between the Camp for Cli­mate Action cur­rent­ly at Heathrow (and var­i­ous oth­er air­ports) and the No Bor­ders camp hap­pen­ing near Gatwick in Sep­tem­ber.

While in XL offices their man­agers defend­ed their busi­ness rights to prof­it from depor­ta­tion flights and refused to ruled out their involve­ment in such inhu­mane activ­i­ties “if we did­n’t do it some­one else would” was their atti­tude. Obvi­ous­ly for XL prof­its come before both peo­ple and plan­et.

// SEE ABOVE POSTINGS FOR XL CONTACT IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO EXPRESS YOUR VIEWS TO THEM AND KEEP COMING BACK TO THIS POSTING FOR UPDATES //

n.b. The bail con­di­tions of the per­son appear­ing in court on the 31st of August are to reside at their home in York­shire and go no clos­er than 500metres to any XL offices or UK air­port, unless a bona fide air pas­sen­ger. This per­son can no longer can be at the Camp for Cli­mate Action, can you??

Next depor­ta­tion flight

Con­golese refugees are receiv­ing depor­ta­tion orders for the 30th August. All indi­ca­tions are that XL will again be the com­pa­ny fly­ing them back. Please tele­phone, fax or email the com­pa­ny. Please be non-aggres­sive and non-offen­sive oth­er­wise it could be detri­men­tal to try­ing to stop peo­ple get­ting sent back.
Tel: 0870 320 7777
Fax: +44 (o)1883 627 564
Email: go to the web­site, www.XL.com, go to con­tact us, go to media enquiry. Hap­py email­ing.

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Sat­ur­day 18th August 2007

Chil­dren Block­ade At World Freight Cen­tre

At around 3pm this after­noon chil­dren and their par­ents from around the UK gath­ered at Heathrow’s World Freight Cen­tre to block­ade its access road. Around 15 peo­ple took part in the block­ade which was tak­en over by oth­ers from the Camp For Cli­mate Action after 45 min­utes. No one has been arrest­ed so far and police, FIT team as well as BAA secu­ri­ty are present at the scene. The block­aders unrolled a ban­ner read­ing ‘Enjoy Local Food’ to high­light the effects to cli­mate change that fly­ing food around the world caus­es.

———————-

Activists Tar­get Carmel Agrex­co in Con­juc­tion with Cli­mate Camp

At 1pm, approx­i­mate­ly 20 activists from Lon­don, Brighton, Read­ing and the near­by Cli­mate Camp entered the Carmel Agrex­co site in Hayes Mid­dle­sex where some activists have D‑locked the gates shut. They are being enter­tained by Sam­ba. Four police arrived on the scene almost imme­di­ate­ly.

PRESS RELEASE
State of Emer­gency — direct action against war, from the root to the fruit
18 August 2007

For imme­di­ate release

This after­noon a group of pro­test­ers from anar­chist group State Of Emer­gency have block­ad­ed the main UK ware­house of Israeli com­pa­ny Carmel Agrex­co in Hayes, Mid­dle­sex. Their action coin­cides with the near­by Camp for Cli­mate Action and is part of the grow­ing move­ment to boy­cott Israeli apartheid, which aims to end Israel’s breach of Inter­na­tion­al law and abuse of human rights in the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries of Pales­tine.

The action has been tak­en to coin­cide with the Camp for Cli­mate Action because all of Carmel Agrex­co’s pro­duce is air-freight­ed into Heathrow and also to high­light the con­se­quences of the resource wars which are inevitable as the cli­mate changes.

Accord­ing to the UK gov­ern­men­t’s own fig­ures air freight­ing of food is the fastest grow­ing mode of food trans­port, hav­ing increased by over 220% since 1992, and although it only accounts for 1% of food miles over­all it pro­duces 13% of the CO2 emis­sions from food trans­port.

The Israeli water author­i­ty, Mac­arot, drills wells to irri­gate Carmel’s crops close to exist­ing Pales­tin­ian wells but at a greater depth to dry up the Pales­tin­ian wells. The Israeli wells are for­ti­fied and guard­ed by the Israeli army, and many Pales­tini­ans are in Israeli pris­ons for the ‘crime’ of try­ing to obtain fresh water from wells in the set­tle­ments.

Israel has com­plete con­trol over water resources in the West Bank and uses 82 per­cent of the under­ground water. The Pales­tin­ian dai­ly con­sump­tion of water is 35 to 50 litres per capi­ta, while the dai­ly con­sump­tion of the Jew­ish set­tlers is 280 to 350 litres per capi­ta.

Much of Carmel Agrex­co’s fruit, veg­eta­bles, flow­ers, herbs and oth­er pro­duce is grown and packed on ille­gal Israeli set­tle­ments. Carmel Agrex­co is thus com­plic­it in war crimes under the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court Act 2001 (ICC Act).

Carmel Agrex­co is Israel’s largest importer of agri­cul­tur­al pro­duce into the Euro­pean Union and is 50% Israeli state owned. The ware­house is in Swal­low­field Way, Hayes, Mid­dle­sex, and is their main depot in the UK.

Many of the pro­test­ers have vis­it­ed Pales­tine and wit­nessed at first hand the suf­fer­ing of Pales­tini­ans under Israeli mil­i­tary occu­pa­tion. They have seen land that has been claimed by ille­gal Israeli set­tle­ments, but was stolen from Pales­tin­ian fam­i­lies. They have vis­it­ed vil­lages where the whole com­mu­ni­ty have been issued with demo­li­tion orders by the Israeli Army to make way for more ille­gal set­tle­ments.

The action today is part of three years of action against the com­pa­ny. Pales­tine sol­i­dar­i­ty pro­test­ers have tak­en part in five block­ades of the premis­es, the first in Novem­ber 2004.

Before the protest a legal warn­ing let­ter was sent to Carmel Agrex­co stat­ing clear­ly why they are in breach of the law.

Today’s action aims to draw atten­tion to this com­pa­ny’s com­plic­i­ty, in mur­der, theft and dam­age of occu­pied land, col­lec­tive pun­ish­ment, apartheid and eth­nic cleans­ing, and oth­er breach­es of Inter­na­tion­al Law.

Con­tact info@stateofemergency.org.uk / tel. 07948 173982 for interviews/pictures

Links:

Pho­tos from inside Carmel Agrex­co
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/07/376036.html

Pho­tos of the last block­ade of Carmel Agrex­co
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/11/357149.html?c=on

Pho­tos of the sec­ond block­ade

Text of let­ter sent to Carmel Agrex­co by Pales­tine Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cam­paign

Report on Carmel’s Involve­ment in the Jor­dan Val­ley

Press release from pre­vi­ous tri­al (with links)

War on Wan­t’s Report -“Prof­it­ing from the Occu­pa­tion”

Notes to Edi­tors:

1. For com­ments please call 07948 173982

2. On 9th June 2005 a coali­tion of Pales­tin­ian Civ­il Soci­ety Organ­i­sa­tions issued a ‘Call for Boy­cott, Divest­ment and Sanc­tions against Israel until it com­plies with Inter­na­tion­al Law’. See http://www.stopthewall.org/downloads/pdf/BDSEnglish.pdf for the full state­ment and sig­na­to­ries.

3. Israel occu­pied the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights in 1967 in con­tra­ven­tion of inter­na­tion­al law.

Since then Israel has moved over 380,000 set­tlers into these occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries in con­tra­ven­tion of the Fourth Gene­va Con­ven­tion (arti­cle 49), the Hague Reg­u­la­tions and Unit­ed Nations Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil Res­o­lu­tions.

Israel con­tin­ues to build an ille­gal apartheid wall inside the West Bank despite the Advi­so­ry Rul­ing of the Inter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice in 2005 that the wall is ille­gal. Fifty five ille­gal Israeli set­tle­ments will be on the Israeli side of the wall sep­a­rat­ed from the West Bank.

Since 2000 Israel has demol­ished 664 Pales­tin­ian hous­es, in acts of col­lec­tive pun­ish­ment. These demo­li­tions con­sti­tute a war crime. They have demol­ished a fur­ther 12,953 Pales­tin­ian homes for ‘mil­i­tary rea­sons’ (often to expand Israeli set­tle­ments) and 1,214 because they were built ‘with­out a per­mit’

4,000 Pales­tini­ans have been killed as a direct result of Israeli mil­i­tary actions dur­ing the cur­rent upris­ing which began in Sep­tem­ber 2000.

(Above sta­tis­tics con­firmed by Israeli Infor­ma­tion Cen­tre Btse­lem see www.btselem.org )

Con­tact info@stateofemergency.org.uk/tel. 07948 173982 for interviews/pictures

http://www.stateofemergency.org.uk/

—-

The action is now over.

There were 6 arrests in total, two of them legal observers.

4 have been arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of bur­glary for being inside the premis­es.

There were over 60 activists present in total and every­one was stopped and searched by the police before they were allowed to leave.

The action meant that the depot was shut and unable to oper­ate for 3 hours.

.….….….….

Two arrest­ed, Carmel Argex­co up date at 13.30

Two arrests from inside the depo, as yet charges of those arrest­ed unknown.

Two of the activists locked on were arrest­ed at around 13.10.

One per­son remains locked to the front gate of Carmel Agrex­co at 13.40.

A large group of police offi­cers (the spe­cial­ist entry team appar­ent­ly) have entered the depo by the back gate wear­ing pur­ple latex gloves.

Activists inside have been cor­doned away from the back gate where the police have bro­ken and entered.

Around 30 peo­ple observ­ing the occu­pa­tion out­side of Carmel Agrex­co, have been forced into a police ‘bub­ble’ and are being pushed around.

Every­one has been pho­tographed by the For­ward Intel­li­gence team. ( FIT )

.….….……

5 Arrests and Carmel Agrex­co Offices Trashed
Update at 14.54

The Carmel Agrex­co action is now being wound up. 5 activists arrest­ed and the offices of Carmel Agrex­co the arch exporter of ille­gal Israeli set­tle­ment goods, have been trashed.

Update at 14.54

The Carmel Agrex­co action is now being wound up.

5 activists have been arrest­ed and the offices of Carmel Agrex­co the arch exporter of ille­gal Israeli set­tle­ment goods, have been trashed.

The police respond­ed to the action with heli­copter, and long slow searchers of any­one out­side the premis­es of Carmel Agrex­co under sec­tion 1 of PACE.

Peo­ple are now leav­ing the area.

——–

Where Have All the Flow­ers Come From?

A film of the action vs Carmel Agrex­co in Hayes, Mid­dle­sex dur­ing the Camp for Cli­mate Action 2007.

To down­load video: http://www.undercurrents.org/visionontv/dl/2/464489afe0dab9c1cedce634efa04a021186f223.torrent
(Please note that this is a tor­rent file, and a bit­tor­rent serv­er such as azureus will be nec­es­sary to down­load it — http://azureus.sourceforge.net/)

——————————–

Cli­mate Camper Arrest­ed Under Ter­ror­ism Act

17.08.2007
Ear­ly this morn­ing, 4 peo­ple made their way to Heathrow Air­port to sup­port a pick­et of dri­vers and ware­house work­ers at the car­go han­dler Nip­pon Express. The staff at the com­pa­ny walked out two days ago after the com­pa­ny once again refused to set­tle a pay and shifts dis­pute.

When walk­ing towards ter­mi­nal 2, where the pick­et was tak­ing place, a cou­ple of police offi­cers stopped the group and told them they were being ‘detained’ and searched under sec­tion 44 of the Ter­ror­ism Act 2000. Accord­ing to the police this was because the peo­ple were ‘on BAA prop­er­ty’. The grounds for ini­tial­ly stop­ping the group were that they ‘matched the pro­files of pro­test­ers at the cli­mate camp’ who were to ’cause pos­si­ble dis­or­der on BAA prop­er­ty’.

Anoth­er 9 offi­cers and one of the FIT team joined short­ly. A stu­dent jour­nal­ist who iden­ti­fied him­self and was tak­ing pho­tos was told that ‘under the ter­ror­ism act you have to give us your cam­era’. Reluc­tant to hand over the cam­era, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er was then grabbed by 4 offi­cers and forced to hand it over.

The police pro­ceed­ed to delete images off the cam­era, before hand­ing it back. They lat­er denied all knowl­edge of this. Anoth­er one of the group refused to give his details while being searched under Sec­tion 44 and was arrest­ed. He has been tak­en to West Dra­ton police sta­tion.

.….….….….….…

Sol­i­dar­i­ty with NIPPON work­ers // mass pick­et in sup­port of strike [11.30am Sat]

As the cli­mate camp con­tin­ues near heathrow, down the road a group of work­ers at NIPPON EXPRESS have been strik­ing against a new work regime which will effec­tive­ly mean a £1265 pay cut for many of them.

***************************************************************************************************************
SOLIDARITY WITH NIPPON WORKERS — MASS PICKET 11.30am SATURDAY 19th AUGUST
****************************************************************************************************************
Nip­pon work­ers are expect­ing us down there and we are more than wel­comed!

===============================================
[When?]
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11.30am at the gate of NIPPON EXPRESS — look out for the pick­et

Check the map out:
http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?x=508906&y=178196&z=1&sv=508906,178196&st=4&ar=Y&mapp=newmap.srf&searchp=newsearch.srf

For Lon­don­ers: trains from Padding­ton, first great west­ern to heathow or Oxford — 14 mins to
Hayes and Har­ling­ton (tick­ets inspects are down there) . Then get bus from out­side sta­tion 90 — H98, 140 towards heathrow. about 2 ‑3 stops down look on your right for the pick­et.
It is very easy to get down there so no excus­es!

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[What?]
===============================================

NIPPON are also plac­ing these demands on the work­ers:

1) 44 Days a year more work
2) Over­time rate on Sun­day to be reduced to 25%
3) Hol­i­day pay is reduced by 60 — 75 hours
4) Shift pay reduced by £326 (Day shift) and £512 (Night shift)
5) Loss of £1265 a year pay for some work­ers
6) A 1.7% below infla­tion pay rise
7) Stop of shift pay on over­time
8) 9hrs pay loss on bank hol­i­days.

With these ridicu­lous demands from the com­pa­ny boss­es, the NIPPON EXPRESS work­ers decid­ed that strik­ing and a show of sol­i­dar­i­ty against this offen­sive is what is need­ed. NIPPON EXPRESS is locat­ed a few stops from Hayes & Har­ling­ton Rail­way sta­tion (head­ing south) and a few stops from the Camp for Cli­mate Action.

===============================================
[Why?]
===============================================

Build­ing work­ing class mil­i­tan­cy in all indus­tries is a pre­req­ui­site to chal­leng­ing the dom­i­na­tion of cap­i­tal­ism across our world. Cli­mate change has been caused by the cap­i­tal­ists and their ser­vants in gov­ern­ment through its own inescapable log­ic of exploita­tion, growth and prof­it. The strug­gle against cli­mate change is the strug­gle against cap­i­tal­ism, The strug­gle against cap­i­tal­ism is a strug­gle against the world of work impo­si­tion and wage slav­ery. We can not solve the worlds prob­lems under cap­i­tal­ism. We can not escape cap­i­tal­ism. We must destroy it.

Cli­mate Class Strug­glers

==============================================
[SOME MORE LINKS]
===============================================
some addi­tion­al back­gound:
1] http://publish.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/08/378309.html
2] http://www.tgwu.org.uk/Templates/News.asp?NodeID=93614&int1stParentNodeID=42438&int2ndParentNodeID=42438&Action=Display

.….….….….……

Car­go-Strik­er and Cli­mate-Camper Sol­i­dar­i­ty

Car­go work­ers at Nip­pon Express Heathrow depot are out on strike against changes that would see them work­ing 25% longer hours for no extra pay. Cli­mate campers have been keen to show their sup­port and have vis­it­ed the pick­et line through­out the cur­rent 48-hour stop­page, which ends at 6am Sun­day. This morn­ing about 30 campers brought a ban­ner (and about 20 police!) and chat­ted to strik­ers for a cou­ple of hours.

The obvi­ous link between the two strug­gles is the com­mon ene­my: cap­i­tal­ist prof­it, for which the plan­et is being destroyed and for which work­ers pay and con­di­tions are for­ev­er under attack. “Only a demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly planned econ­o­my can end the exploita­tion of work­ers and envi­ron­men­tal chaos,” said one camper.

Car­go work­ers don’t need the avi­a­tion indus­try — if car­go went by sea, their jobs would still exist — in fact work­ers told the campers that the Heathrow depot already han­dles some sea-freight.

Sev­er­al strik­ers have been down to the camp on pre­vi­ous nights and shared a few beers and the socia­ble atmos­phere; today they shared their pick­et-line bar­be­cue with the campers as every­one chilled out (except the cops who stood in a line sweat­ing in the August sun­shine).

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For the 24 hours of mass action, see sep­a­rate report.
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Tues­day 21st August 2007

Polit­i­cal Polic­ing out­side Har­mondsworth Deten­tion Cen­tre.

A group of around 30 from the Cli­mate Camp, includ­ing many from No Bor­ders, made their way (with an un-nec­es­sary police escort) to Har­mondsworth Immi­gra­tion Deten­tion Cen­tre at mid­day on Tues­day, only to be forcibly penned by police into a car park invis­i­ble to the road. The action was to high­light the link between deten­tion cen­tres and cli­mate change, and to show sol­i­dar­i­ty to those inside, detained for com­mit­ting no crime.

It was a cru­el and demor­al­is­ing irony: here we were in a pen made from those steel fences used in crowd con­trol, our protest – about wrong­ful deten­tion – itself detained. The police out­num­bered us, sur­round­ing the pen. It took much spir­it to get our chants going, but with the wel­come arrival of a mic and speak­er from Bicy­col­o­gy, we had a good go at “NO BORDERS! NO NATIONS! NO DEPORTATIONS!!”.

A woman from No Bor­ders man­aged to get one of the detainees on the phone, so that even though they may not have been able to hear us (we were quite far from the build­ings), peo­ple inside knew we were there. A few peo­ple spoke, recit­ed poems and sang songs. Most mem­o­rable was a heart-wrench­ing Ben­gali song, which – the singer explained as she trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish for us, would be under­stood by envi­ron­men­tal refugees from Bangladesh inside.

The link between the Cli­mate Camp and deten­tion cen­tres is in no way con­vo­lut­ed. Cli­mate change is already pro­duc­ing mil­lions of envi­ron­men­tal refugees. These mil­lions will become hun­dreds of mil­lions in a busi­ness as usu­al sce­nario. Many of those refugees man­ag­ing to flee to this coun­try, along with many flee­ing tor­ture and war, are met not with com­pas­sion and asy­lum, but bru­tal repres­sion and deten­tion. The poli­cies of UK plc with regard to cli­mate change are hurt­ing these peo­ple, but instead of help­ing them, UK plc locks them up.

When we arrived at the deten­tion cen­tre we stopped to have a meet­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of the direct democ­ra­cy in action back at the camp. Just as the first pro­pos­als were being made, the police stepped in quot­ing the much abused High­ways Act of 1859. We were of course block­ing the high­way, but main­ly on account of being sur­round­ed by a num­ber of police greater than our own. A man asked a senior offi­cer whether two peo­ple were allowed to remain on the pave­ment hold­ing a ban­ner. He was com­plete­ly ignored, like­wise was a woman who stepped up and asked the same. Then with­in sec­onds we were being pushed by the police into the pre-pre­pared pen they had made for us. Claim­ing that they were allow­ing us to protest, sev­er­al police­man then made absolute­ly sure that we could not get our mes­sage across to any­one dri­ving past by stand­ing in front of our ban­ners.

We left the deten­tion cen­tre before the start of vis­it­ing hours at 2pm to make sure that our protest wasn’t used by the police and secu­ri­ty force at the deten­tion cen­tre as an excuse to with­hold vis­its. Walk­ing back, a few of us man­aged to give the now-oblig­a­tory-for-cli­mate-campers police escort the slip. It was with an unease about the future that I felt joy at being allowed to walk down the road with­out being accom­pa­nied by the police.

About 100 work­shops have been hap­pen­ing at the cli­mate camp. Some work­shop intros were videoed: road cam­paigns work­shop (video/mp4 831K), social ecol­o­gy lon­don work­shop (video/mp4 3.7M), deal­ing with cli­mate scep­tics work­shop (video/mp4 1.9M), how renew­ables are being co-opt­ed by cor­po­rates (video/mp4 9.5M), Sav­ing Ice­land work­shop (video/mp4 27K), bio­fu­el cri­tique work­shop (video/mp4 6.4M), Mark Lynas on the 2 degrees tip­ping point the­o­ry (video/mp4 2.7M)

Cli­mate Camp work­shop: Wales LNG Pipeline

After two days of set­ting up the site and run­ning around deal­ing with the police and main­stream media, the work­shops at the Cli­mate Camp began yes­ter­day.

One of the most excit­ing of the work­shops so far was an impas­sioned report and dis­cus­sion on the Liqui­fied Nat­ur­al Gas pipeline devel­op­ment that is cur­rent­ly under­way from Mil­ford Haven to Tir­ley in Glouces­ter­shire.

Lin­da Ware of Cil­frew Res­i­dents Asso­ci­a­tion gave a full and frank account of the cam­paign over the last 18 months by res­i­dents and eco­log­i­cal activists against the destruc­tion of the south Wales coun­try­side, the increas­ing reliance on new forms of fos­sil fuels, the hor­rif­ic health and safe­ty con­cerns and the lack of con­sul­ta­tion with the peo­ple who’s lives are being ruined by this devel­op­ment.

“peo­ple pow­er is the most pow­er­ful thing there is”

There have been sev­er­al protest camps at Tre­banos, Mil­ford Haven, & Bre­con as well as mass direct action in Cil­frew and else­where.

For a back­ground to the cam­paign check out:
http://www.fightthepipe.co.uk
http://risingtide.org.uk/bristol/pipeline
http://www.gaggedanarchist.tk

Lin­da high­light­ed the coun­cil cor­rup­tion that is so endem­ic to Labour dom­i­nat­ed welsh local gov­ern­ment. Her expla­na­tion of why she has cho­sen to stand as a prospec­tive Plaid Cym­ru coun­cil­lor raised inter­est­ing ques­tions about the appeal of the welsh nation­al­ist move­ment to com­mu­ni­ty strug­gles such as this.
“We are going nation­al­ist, not because we believe in nation­al­ism, but because we oppose Labour and there is no oth­er alter­na­tive”

The lack of media cov­er­age out­side Wales has been inter­est­ing in it’s absence. There have been only a hand­ful of arti­cles men­tion­ing the devel­op­ment in the UK press. This is in con­trast to the Ross­port pipeline which has got much more media atten­tion despite being in a dif­fer­ent coun­try. It would appear that due to ‘safe­ty con­cerns’ the press are being leaned on not to cov­er the sto­ry.

The pipeline is only the begin­ning of a south west wales pow­er cor­ri­dor that the DTI envis­age stretch­ing from mil­ford haven to the east of Swansea, with a num­ber of pow­er sta­tions and ener­gy extrac­tion sites clus­tered around the area. The new gen­er­a­tion coal pow­er sta­tion in Neath Port Tal­bot has already been announced and methane is already been extract­ed and stored in dis­used mines in the area.

This pipeline is set to be the first of many, as devel­op­ments are on the table for pipelines to con­nect from Tir­ley to Leeds and Ply­mouth.

Peo­ple’s respons­es to what they heard cen­tred around three themes: cor­po­ra­tions behind LNG, media response, and direct action.

The con­struc­tion of the pipeline is being done by Nation­al Grid, who have been the main focus for direct action so far. How­ev­er the con­sor­tium behind the devel­op­ment is head­ed by Exxon Mobil among oth­ers. The finance has been put up by oil and gas loan spe­cial­ists the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land.

What Next?

There was a feel­ing that we need to increase the knowl­edge amongst envi­ron­men­tal activists of the full pic­ture of the pipeline devel­op­ment and its wider impli­ca­tions.

get­ting a high­er lev­el of cov­er­age in UK and inter­na­tion­al media.

Tak­ing the strug­gle to the big play­ers behind it. Espe­cial­ly as they have a pres­ence on many high streets.

Under­tak­ing a speak­ing tour of social cen­tres, with a par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on the routes of the oth­er pro­posed pipelines.

“We can do all the talk­ing in the world but the only thing that will have an effect on cor­po­ra­tions is direct action”

cardiff@risingtide.org.uk
http://www.risingtide.org.uk/bristol/pipeline

I think work has already start­ed on 2 sec­tions of the gas pipeline run­ning west through Devon to Ply­mouth, work has been ongo­ing this sum­mer on the sec­tion to the east of Ply­mouth just to the south of the A38 (near totnes) and I think work is going on on anoth­er sec­tion to the east of Exeter

Audio avi­a­tion — mp3 2.3M

Audio mark lynas — mp3 4.2M

“Two Degree Time­bomb” by Mark Lynas

“Avi­a­tion: The Need to Stop Expan­sion” with some­one from Air­port­watch and local cam­paign group HACAN (nb he does­n’t real­ly mean there were 1500 peo­ple in the work­shop!)

Audio is mp3, mono, 96kbps

(sor­ry about the back­ground noise dur­ing the avi­a­tion inter­view but it was done in a tent when it start­ed to rain rain rain…)

This pan­el dis­cus­sion hap­pened dur­ing an evening at the Cli­mate Camp. It’s an hour or var­ied thoughts about the present and future of cli­mate sci­ence and what our response should be to it. The pan­elists are Oli and Sophie involved in the Cli­mate camp set up, Richard from CAT and George Mon­biot.
=============

Coun­ter­ing rub­bish about the camp!
17.08.2007




In spite of the planes tak­ing of every 45 sec­onds, cli­mate camp activists are pret­ty pleased that the smart folk who sort­ed the loca­tion land­ed us in such a bril­liant lit­tle bit of coun­try­side.

Just to do our bit for the local envi­ron­ment, 20 inspired cli­mate activists, inspired by the ini­tia­tive of the Scot­tish Bar­rio, sur­rep­ti­tious­ly made their way out the camp main gate this morn­ing, tow­ing wheel­ing bins and loads of recy­cling bags, to gath­er togeth­er the junk lying at the side of the lane. 4 com­put­er mon­i­tors, dozens of sacks and a pret­ty inven­tive plas­tic dil­do were the hall of the day…

The camp recy­cling team dealt with the lot, and the locals seemed pret­ty impressed with our efforts..

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At around 8am this morn­ing I saw a cou­ple of police fol­low­ing a group of peo­ple push­ing a large cylin­der in a wheel­bar­row south through the camp towards the air­port. Could it be a lock-on device intend­ed for a block­ade I won­dered? No, it was a domes­tic water heat­ing cylin­der and short­ly after peo­ple walked by with a load of pipe and then three solar water heat­ing pan­els.

I decid­ed it would be good to doc­u­ment the renew­able ener­gy sys­tems being used on site and went to fetch my cam­era before return­ing to take some pic­tures and find out about the sys­tem they were putting togeth­er.

Along with the 166 litre tank and the three 1m x 1.5m dou­ble glazed flat plate col­lec­tors, they also had a small­er head­er tank with a ball cock. I was told that the sys­tem would ini­tial­ly pow­er two show­er cubi­cles but they might dou­ble the num­ber if it appeared to be pow­er­ful enough. They referred to the design as an indi­rect ther­mal store sys­tem and guessed that they’d have around 1.5kw of heat avail­able.

Wan­der­ing back north through the site I was sur­prised and pleased to find anoth­er solar show­er being being built in the West Side neigh­boor­hood . I’d spent a cou­ple of hours with them before I arrived on site while held and the police road block dur­ing vehi­cle search­es last sun­day night. They had pur­chased a wind tur­bine much like mine while at the big green gath­er­ing and erect­ed it for the first time at the cli­mate camp. It’s rate at 300 watts at quite low speeds for a bar­gain 300 pounds includ­ing the mast, guys, stakes, charge con­trollers, every­thing. Theirs is the 24 volts ver­sion and they using it to charge the bulk of their 500 amp/hrs bat­tery bank — most­ly used for light­ing in their neigh­bor­hoods com­mu­nal spaces. Addi­tion­al­ly they have a cou­ple of small solar pan­el’s which they use to charge one of their bat­ter­ies at 12 volt which they’ve been using for their lit­tle sound sys­tem. But I digress — back to their solar show­er, it’s pret­ty much all made from reclaimed mate­ri­als — the flat plate col­lec­tor was built from an old cen­tral heat­ing radi­a­tor and has been placed in a glazed frame that had pre­vi­ous­ly con­tained a menu dis­played out­side of a restau­rant. The head­er tank was a home brew­ing bar­rel and the main tank anoth­er bar­rel inside a bin and insu­lat­ed with fiber lag­ging. The whole thing was erect­ed on a frame­work of reclaimed tim­ber.

Next to West Side I found the Scot­land neigh­bor­hood which had a sin­gle 40 watt pan­el charg­ing a cou­ple of deep cycle leisure bat­ter­ies in rota­tion and being used for light­ing. Like­wise, East Side had just one pan­el being used in a sim­i­lar way. The York­shire neigh­bor­hood (rumored to be serv­ing the best food on site) had just two pan­els sup­ply­ing a healthy 100 watts max while the South Coast neigh­bor­hood had three 63 watts uniso­lars pan­els. These seem quite pop­u­lar on site despite their large phys­i­cal size, and are appar­ent­ly more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly to the man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nique which appar­ent­ly involves spray­ing sil­i­con onto the pan­el rather than using actu­al crys­tal wafers.
Pass­ing the Man­ches­ter neigh­bor­hood I found them start­ing to set up a pret­ty mas­sive array of six of the uniso­lar 63 watt pan­els. In total, this sys­tem would pro­vide 380 watts in opti­mum con­di­tions and I was told that the tech­nol­o­gy used was par­tic­u­lar­ly suit­able to the cloudy con­di­tions would in the UK. Char­ing a 660 amp/Hr bat­tery bank, their sys­tem would clear­ly be more than capa­ble of pro­vid­ing all their neigh­bor­hoods needs so they were plan­ning on pro­vid­ing their sur­plus pow­er to their neigh­bors.

A sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion was found at the West Mid­lands neigh­bour­hood. Their lit­tle 400 watt wind tur­bine was lov­ing the high winds found on site this week. This par­tic­u­lar type of gen­er­a­tor per­forms bad­ly in more typ­i­cal wind speeds but the last few days has seen it fre­quent­ly knock­ing out it’s max­i­mum out­put. Along with their wind pow­er, they also had 120 watts worth of solar pan­els and as their own pow­er needs were quite mod­est they were doing what they called ‘rov­ing bat­tery charg­ing’ and charg­ing up bat­ter­ies for oth­er peo­ple on site.

Tak­ing a break, I stopped off for a piss and noticed that all to the toi­lets on site (and the cen­tral kitchen) where equipped with a small stand alone solar pan­el and bat­tery to sup­ply light­ing. Mean­while ‘V3’, who run cours­es on wind ener­gy, have two 58 watt pan­els and a 500 watt home made Huge Pig­ot designed wind tur­bine. They’ve been charg­ing oth­er peo­ples bat­ter­ies but a site wide short­age of spare bat­ter­ies has left their wind gene sit­ting idle for much of the time.

The two big providers on site dwarf those found in the neigh­bor­hoods. Ray-Mun­do is sup­ply­ing the indy­media open access suite with anoth­er 1,150 watts of solar and a 2,250 amp/Hr bat­tery bank. Mean­while, the gigan­tic Gen­er­a­tor X truck has 1.5kw of solar and a bank of bat­ter­ies equiv­a­lent to an incred­i­ble 3,000 amp/hr. The orig­i­nal plan for the camp site lay­out placed the major pow­er providers near the biggest uses of pow­er on site but due to the police pre­vent­ing vehi­cle access to the camp, both these trucks have been parked in the adja­cent field (also being used as the police car park).

Back at the indy­media tent there is pow­er rig that I bought along from the ram­pART social cen­tre. This sys­tem con­sists of a 600 amp/hr bat­tery bank plus a 300 watt invert­er. Pow­er is gen­er­at­ed by 220 watts of solar and a 200 watt tur­bine. The Chi­nese made tur­bine is very sim­i­lar to the one used at the West Side Neigh­bor­hood, but rat­ed at 200 watts not 300. Both are designed to pro­duce their rat­ed pow­er in fair­ly low winds so have been max­ing out a lot of the time dur­ing the time at the camp. While the Ray-Mun­do sys­tem has been pro­vid­ing the pow­er for the open access inter­net suite, the ram­pART sys­tem has been pow­er­ing the lap­tops used by those edit­ing and upload­ing mul­ti­me­dia work. On the Wednes­day night the sys­tem was pressed into ser­vice to pow­er the PA and the light­ing in the main mar­quee dur­ing the ceilidh.

I’ve prob­a­bly missed a few of the sys­tems on site. Even as I type, anoth­er big wind tur­bine is being pre­pared to be raised and the Col-Tech gen­er­a­tor is expect­ed to arrive some time this evening to take over sup­ply­ing the main mar­quee.
Mark in the process of prov­ing the camp with hot show­ers. They are being built using all sal­vaged mate­ri­als, the solar pan­els com­ing from a house in Oxford under­go­ing a refit. No pump is nec­ces­sary as the water is moved using the nat­ur­al laws of physics; warm water ris­es, cold water falls — the ther­mo syphon sys­tem. Mark — “I just hope it works! All we need is the sun to stay..”

How to set up a grey water recy­cling sys­tem using bath tubs and straw

com­post toi­lets on the cli­mate camp site — a diy guide (video/mp4 5.3M)

posh show­ers at the cli­mate camp — video/mp4 1.9M

Video a com­post toi­let in progress — video/mp4 3.7M

Video a solar show­er from recy­cled mate­r­i­al — video/mp4 80K

Video solar pan­els with a low impact — video/mp4 5.4M

Video a rock­et stove to save ener­gy — video/mp4 5.9M

Video a wind tur­bine gen­er­at­ing pow­er — video/mp4 1.8M

On Thurs­day the cli­mate camp was vis­it­ed by pupils and par­ents from Heathrow Pri­ma­ry School, which along with two oth­er local schools will be demol­ished by the pro­posed third run­way. The school is an inte­gral part of the com­mu­ni­ty with for­mer pupils becom­ing teach­ers, and the head­mas­ter — Mr Hobbs — serv­ing over 25 years. The school also received the bor­oughs top marks in the last Ofst­ed report.

Today, Fri­day 17th August, sev­er­al local groups toured the cli­mate camp, along with sev­er­al local res­i­dents who moved onto the site to camp.

One group was a local scout group with some of them doing their envi­ron­ment badge. They came for a tour around the infra­struc­ture includ­ing the solar show­ers, com­post toi­lets, solar pan­els, wind gen­er­a­tors and pow­er providers, the indy­media com­put­er tent and rinky dink the ped­al pow­ered bicy­cle sound sys­tem. Liv­ing local­ly their homes are under threat from the Heathrow air­port expan­sion.

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Bicy­col­o­gy Cli­mate Camp out­reach day


A short report on Bicy­col­o­gy’s day out from the Cli­mate Camp on Sat­ur­day vis­it­ing a local hous­ing estate to fix bikes and spread the word about the Camp.

On Day 5 (Sat­ur­day 18/8/07) of the Cli­mate Camp, Bicy­col­o­gy, the cycle activism and edu­ca­tion col­lec­tive, went out from the Camp to vis­it a hous­ing estate in Feltham near Heathrow at the invi­ta­tion of the res­i­dents.

The group rode out in the morn­ing, “facil­i­tat­ed” by a police escort despite assur­ances from the cyclists that after sev­er­al nation­al cycle tours they knew how to cycle safe­ly and assertive­ly on UK roads.

The group set up in a small park in the mid­dle of the estate, offer­ing free Dr Bike checks, ped­al-pow­ered games, music from the Ped­als II soundsys­tem, bike jew­ellery mak­ing. They also pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion about cycling, cli­mate change and the Cli­mate Camp. Around 80 locals came along, main­ly kids, and every­one seemed to have a good time.

A van load of police kept watch to forstall any riots, and even made a sor­tie to play footie with the local kids for a while before appar­ent­ly being ordered back in their van by high­er com­mand.

info@bicycology.org.uk
http://www.bicycology.org.uk