Yorkshire Forward taught something about flooding by local people

3rd Sep­tem­ber — York­shire For­ward, the Region­al Devel­op­ment Agency which has become famous for starv­ing grass-roots com­mu­ni­ty intia­tives of funds whilst giv­ing mil­lions to big busi­ness, held an out­ra­geous “Flood Sum­mit” at Finnin­ley air­port today. Local peo­ple vis­it­ed with pop-up tents and ban­ners, includ­ing one which read “fly­ing costs the earth”. The inten­tion was to leaflet the con­fer­ence’s par­tic­i­pants and hold alter­na­tive work­shops high­light­ing the link between avi­a­tion growth and wors­en­ing cli­mate change.

Yorkshire Forward climate protest3rd Sep­tem­ber — York­shire For­ward, the Region­al Devel­op­ment Agency which has become famous for starv­ing grass-roots com­mu­ni­ty intia­tives of funds whilst giv­ing mil­lions to big busi­ness, held an out­ra­geous “Flood Sum­mit” at Finnin­ley air­port today. Local peo­ple vis­it­ed with pop-up tents and ban­ners, includ­ing one which read “fly­ing costs the earth”. The inten­tion was to leaflet the con­fer­ence’s par­tic­i­pants and hold alter­na­tive work­shops high­light­ing the link between avi­a­tion growth and wors­en­ing cli­mate change.

The con­fer­ence was intend­ed as a bla­tant pat on the back for York­shire For­ward’s response to the recent floods. The choice of venue, Finning­ley “Robin Hood” air­port near Don­cast­er, show just how out of touch with real­i­ty these half-wits are. Finning­ley is already a major con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change, and also the recip­i­ent of over £5 mil­lion of York­shire For­ward mon­ey for a new “Air Acad­e­my”. Their sup­port for this crim­i­nal organ­i­sa­tion is like­ly to get much big­ger — they want to put around £20 mil­lion into a new access road!

The stat­ed aim of the sum­mit was billed as a chance “for York­shire For­ward to learn lessons from the floods” and it was attend­ed by promi­nent cli­mate crim­i­nals includ­ing John Hut­ton, Sec­re­tary of State for Busi­ness and Steven Timms, Min­is­ter for Com­pet­i­tive­ness. The campers mes­sage was clear; these blink­ered morons are bad­ly miss­ing the point — con­cen­trat­ing sole­ly on emer­gency respons­es, rather than on the pol­i­cy changes need­ed to pre­vent cli­mate change, is already hav­ing dev­as­tat­ing effects on York­shire!

The lessons from the York­shire flood­ing are clear – emis­sions from avi­a­tion must be includ­ed in the cli­mate bill and tax breaks and pub­lic sub­si­dies giv­en to the crim­i­nal air­port indus­try must cease.

The police, as usu­al, showed that they are enthu­si­as­tic sup­port­ers of cli­mate crime, and there were three arrests — two for leaflet­ing and one for break­ing bail con­di­tions that only apply to Heathrow! Maybe to a con­sta­ble, all air­ports look the same?

legal update — The two peo­ple arrest­ed for leaflet­ing have yet to be charged, but have been released on bail. The police’s deci­sion to arrest peo­ple for aggra­vat­ed tres­pass when their only “crime” was qui­et­ly leaflet­ing the par­tic­i­pants of a meet­ing is clear evi­dence that they are hap­py to act as the polit­i­cal enforcers for the rich and pow­er­ful as they fly us all to obliv­ion in the name of prof­it. The per­son arrest­ed for breach­ing bail con­di­tions was released with­out charge when a plod with a brain was final­ly found and the actu­al con­di­tions looked at rather than guessed at.

Despite loss of lib­er­ty, the action was well worth it, tak­ing up much of the pub­lic­i­ty for the event with the truth about cli­mate change, rather than the planned estab­lish­ment lies.

As the final act of polit­i­cal repres­sion, the par­tic­i­pants were told, on cam­era, by a police inspec­tor, that if they ever crossed a par­tic­u­lar round­about again they would be arrest­ed for aggra­vat­ed tres­pass!

The police state is here.

2007: indigenous resistance to Shell in BC, Anti-Canada Day, & ‘In Support of Sabotage’

Methane dis­pute reignites in B.C.
August 22, 2007

British Columbia shell blockadeMethane dis­pute reignites in B.C.
August 22, 2007

A group of pro­test­ers, includ­ing mem­bers of the Tahltan and Iskut Indi­an bands, blocked a road in north­west­ern British Colum­bia yes­ter­day, pre­vent­ing Roy­al Dutch Shell PLC crews from head­ing into a con­test­ed region to do road repair work and reignit­ing a debate over coal bed methane explo­ration in the area.
…
Oppo­nents says coal bed methane projects could pol­lute sur­face and ground water, threat­en fish and wildlife habi­tat, and dis­rupt a remote wilder­ness land­scape. Coal bed methane is nat­ur­al gas found in coal seams. B.C. cur­rent­ly does not have any coal bed methane pro­duc­tion, but the province has voiced sup­port for coal bed gas devel­op­ment.
…
In 2005, 13 peo­ple were arrest­ed at a block­ade at the same site that tar­get­ed For­tune Min­er­als Ltd., an Ontario-based com­pa­ny that has a coal project in the region.

—-

Natives Resist bannerAnti-Cana­da Day in Van­cou­ver
INDIGENOUS DAY OF ACTION AND RESISTANCE

On July 1st 2007, over 200 Indige­nous women, chil­dren, Elders and men (and non-native sup­port­ers) took the streets and the train tracks on a march and block­ade to mark their resis­tance to Cana­da as an oppres­sive force against their peo­ple. The march began at Grand­view Park and pro­ceed­ed down Com­mer­cial Dri­ve to Ven­ables Street where the CN rail lines were occu­pied and blocked for over an hour.

—-

Guelph, Ontario: In sup­port of sab­o­tage, not the AFN

[Con­tributed anony­mous­ly to news.infoshop.org]

June 29th: Today a rail block­ade was set up in Guelph Ontario, but it failed. This was due to a num­ber of com­pli­ca­tions, either way no trains were stopped.

Nev­er­the­less, this is the kind of dis­rup­tion that we strive to cre­ate every day, regard­less of whether it has been called for by sell­out col­lab­o­ra­tors, indi­vid­u­als or sim­ply for our own joy.

We want to make it clear that we do not sup­port the AFN; the ends that they seek through bar­gain­ing with the gov­ern­ment, that is respon­si­ble for the sys­tem­at­ic oppres­sion and exploita­tion of Native peo­ple, our land base, and pret­ty much every liv­ing thing exist­ing on the remain­der of this plan­et.

It is impor­tant to act at every oppor­tu­ni­ty we get to build momen­tum and com­mu­ni­ty, in order to chal­lenge the pow­ers of the State and Cap­i­tal­ism that are inces­sant­ly assault­ing our lives.

We do not act on sim­plis­tic calls to action (for action’s sake), but use these chances to coor­di­nate our efforts and add to the momen­tum we are build­ing with oth­ers, act­ing togeth­er on our desires to rede­fine the con­di­tions under which we live. We do this for our­selves and our allies, not for the dis­em­pow­er­ing polit­i­cal aims of the AFN.

It inspires us to see com­mu­ni­ties and indi­vid­u­als com­ming togeth­er, employ­ing direct action tac­tics in a coor­di­nat­ed day of dis­rup­tion, and acknowl­edge that inac­tion is to aban­don our allies in today’s actions. Unlike the AFN, we sup­port all acts of sab­o­tage that were cre­at­ed today and con­tin­ue to inspire us in our own bat­tles.
To the bar­ri­cades and into the night friends!

Occupation of Shell’s proposed refinery site at Bellanaboy & 14 Sept day of action

On Mon­day 27th August 20 peo­ple occu­pied Shel­l’s pro­posed refin­ery site at Bel­lan­aboy, Coun­ty Mayo

After sev­er­al weeks of hol­i­day, work has recom­menced at the pro­posed refin­ery site at Bel­lan­aboy. Main­tain­ing the increased pres­sure that had been applied to Shell in the weeks before the hol­i­day peri­od, at around 8.30am this morn­ing around 20 peo­ple occu­pied the site. The pro­tes­tors bypassed secu­ri­ty and walked in through the main gate onto the site beside a lor­ry that was enter­ing. The group made their way to the main area where work was tak­ing place. Short­ly after their arrival all work on the site stopped. The pro­tes­tors took the site occu­pa­tion as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to inves­ti­gate claims that con­crete and steel that had been used in the ear­ly stages of con­struc­tion was sub­stan­dard. Upon ques­tion­ing (on cam­era) a senior work­er admit­ted that there were prob­lems with the qual­i­ty of mate­ri­als used in the foun­da­tions. Aside from prob­lems with a few over offi­cious secu­ri­ty and more senior work­ers, inter­ac­tion with peo­ple work­ing on site was ami­able and pro­vid­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty for infor­ma­tion shar­ing. After about half an hour three Gar­dai arrived. Their pres­ence was of lit­tle con­se­quence until work on site recom­menced at around 11.30. At this point, when some peo­ple attempt­ed to block trucks from mov­ing, the Gar­dai assault­ed a female pro­tes­tor, result­ing in cuts on her hands. They also attempt­ed to bun­dle anoth­er pro­tes­tor into a Gar­da car even though he had not been arrest­ed. At around 11.45 the pro­tes­tors made a tac­ti­cal deci­sion to leave the site en masse. They joined 20 oth­ers who were wait­ing out­side. A short while lat­er, when a new truck attempt­ed to enter site, the pro­tes­tors stopped its entry. The site was block­ad­ed until the Gar­daí returned half an hour lat­er. The day was wide­ly viewed as a suc­cess.

On Mon­day 27th August 20 peo­ple occu­pied Shel­l’s pro­posed refin­ery site at Bel­lan­aboy, Coun­ty Mayo

After sev­er­al weeks of hol­i­day, work has recom­menced at the pro­posed refin­ery site at Bel­lan­aboy. Main­tain­ing the increased pres­sure that had been applied to Shell in the weeks before the hol­i­day peri­od, at around 8.30am this morn­ing around 20 peo­ple occu­pied the site. The pro­tes­tors bypassed secu­ri­ty and walked in through the main gate onto the site beside a lor­ry that was enter­ing. The group made their way to the main area where work was tak­ing place. Short­ly after their arrival all work on the site stopped. The pro­tes­tors took the site occu­pa­tion as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to inves­ti­gate claims that con­crete and steel that had been used in the ear­ly stages of con­struc­tion was sub­stan­dard. Upon ques­tion­ing (on cam­era) a senior work­er admit­ted that there were prob­lems with the qual­i­ty of mate­ri­als used in the foun­da­tions. Aside from prob­lems with a few over offi­cious secu­ri­ty and more senior work­ers, inter­ac­tion with peo­ple work­ing on site was ami­able and pro­vid­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty for infor­ma­tion shar­ing. After about half an hour three Gar­dai arrived. Their pres­ence was of lit­tle con­se­quence until work on site recom­menced at around 11.30. At this point, when some peo­ple attempt­ed to block trucks from mov­ing, the Gar­dai assault­ed a female pro­tes­tor, result­ing in cuts on her hands. They also attempt­ed to bun­dle anoth­er pro­tes­tor into a Gar­da car even though he had not been arrest­ed. At around 11.45 the pro­tes­tors made a tac­ti­cal deci­sion to leave the site en masse. They joined 20 oth­ers who were wait­ing out­side. A short while lat­er, when a new truck attempt­ed to enter site, the pro­tes­tors stopped its entry. The site was block­ad­ed until the Gar­daí returned half an hour lat­er. The day was wide­ly viewed as a suc­cess.
Resis­tance con­tin­ues at Bel­lan­aboy!

Join the nation­al day of action on the 14th Sep­tem­ber

A nation­al mobil­i­sa­tion for a mass sit­down protest at the refin­ery at Bel­lan­aboy on the morn­ing of Fri­day 14 Sep­tem­ber.

Mass action, sit down block­ade: Sep­tem­ber 14th. Acco­mo­da­tion can be pro­vid­ed. Call 0851141170. If you can’t make it to Mayo, sol­i­dar­i­ty actions are also being called for…

Camberwell Squatted Centre Evicted 30–08-07

Just to let you know that the Cam­ber­well Squat­ted Cen­tre was evict­ed unex­pect­ed­ly this morn­ing by a van load of High Court bailiffs and 2 van loads of police, who climbed in to the build­ing at 4.30am and sur­prised the occu­pants. Helped by the South­wark Coun­cil scaf­fold­ing which gave them a leg up into the place.

Camberwell squat signJust to let you know that the Cam­ber­well Squat­ted Cen­tre was evict­ed unex­pect­ed­ly this morn­ing by a van load of High Court bailiffs and 2 van loads of police, who climbed in to the build­ing at 4.30am and sur­prised the occu­pants. Helped by the South­wark Coun­cil scaf­fold­ing which gave them a leg up into the place.

They gave us a few hours to move our stuff out, which we did, calm­ly. Refus­ing to be has­sled, sit­ting down now and again to have a rest and a cof­fee under the itchy eyes of the bailiffs. We took out all the res­i­dents stuff plus most of the gear we had put into the place to make it work­able and live­able — the plumb­ing, the locks, cook­ers, plates, pans, stereo etc. Some stuff we had to leave but very lit­tle.

Although we were caught on the hop, we manged to respond prac­ti­cal­ly and calm­ly, not break­ing down or los­ing it… Despite our attach­ment to the build­ing, our invest­ment of hard work and emo­tion, the feel­ings that have grown up through the events we have put on and the col­lec­tive expe­ri­ence we have had keep­ing the Squat Cen­tre going.

SO WHAT NOW?

Imme­di­ate­ly we are call­ing a meet­ing for Fri­day 31st August at 8pm, at 56a Info Shop, 56 Cramp­ton St, Lon­don SE17, to dis­cuss our next move: how we respond to the evic­tion, rehous­ing of res­i­dents, and the pos­si­bil­i­ties for our next move, as a group, a new build­ing?.… We would wel­come any­one who has been involved or attend­ed events to come down and help us plan what hap­pens now. It was your space as well!

Some of the events that have been planned for the next few weeks at the Squat may well hap­pen else­where, but this will be decid­ed at the meet­ing.

The most impor­tant thing to keep in mind here is — this is not the end. One build­ing may have been tak­en back by the prof­i­teer­ing scum who live off our backs… But the ideas, projects, plans, col­lec­tive ways of work­ing togeth­er for our­selves, con­tin­ue, whether it is in a new build­ing, or in oth­er ways… The inspi­ra­tion we have had from meet­ing so many peo­ple, from Cam­ber­well and beyond, will car­ry on and bear fruit in unex­pect­ed places.

BLACK FROG — YOU CAN’T TOUCH US!

Attempted Edinburgh Squat

Artists and activists squat­ted the old art col­lege on the grass­mar­ket at the week­end to open it up as a free arts space for the fes­ti­val and a com­mu­ni­ty resource cen­tre, and to con­test the squat­ting laws in Scot­land.

Artists and activists squat­ted the old art col­lege on the grass­mar­ket at the week­end to open it up as a free arts space for the fes­ti­val and a com­mu­ni­ty resource cen­tre, and to con­test the squat­ting laws in Scot­land.

The fol­low­ing is from an inter­view with one of the squat­ters who wish­es to remain anony­mous.

A few days before the evic­tion 18 peo­ple entered the build­ing and began work mak­ing it safe and clean, and start­ing paint­ing.

The squat­ters gained the atten­tion of the police due to clean­ers that still used the build­ing, who dis­cov­ered them and called the police.

Police, num­ber­ing approx­i­mate­ly 20, failed to gain entry to the well bar­ri­cad­ed main entrance, how­ev­er they broke through the side door that had yet to be rein­forced. One man had chained him­self to the door to pre­vent the police enter­ing, he removed him­self sec­onds before the door was bro­ken down. He was thrown to the floor and hand­cuffed behind his back.

The police shout­ed “lay your brush­es down” to those who were paint­ing at the time of the raid, as they began aggres­sive­ly push­ing peo­ple into a line against the wall. The details (names, address­es) of the squat­ters were tak­en sev­er­al times, some of them were hand­cuffed and oth­ers not, and they were allowed ton drink alco­hol by some offi­cers but at oth­er times this was pro­hib­it­ed. The police were appar­ent­ly very dis­or­gan­ised. The artists and activists were held in the build­ing for approx­i­mate­ly 3 hours.

They were all tak­en to St Leonards police sta­tion for ques­tion­ing and to have their DNA, fin­ger­prints and pho­tographs tak­en for the per­ma­nent bio­met­ric data­base. They were inter­viewed and ques­tioned specif­i­cal­ly about who their leader was, what group they belonged to and if they were part of or had knowl­edge of ‘the Black Bloc’.

All of the indi­vid­u­als were charged with aggra­vat­ed tres­pass and those who had obvi­ous­ly been paint­ing were charged with mali­cious mis­chief, and have all been bailed except one man who had out­stand­ing war­rants for oth­er protests. They are all due in court on the 20th of Sep­tem­ber.

Movimento Verde Eufémia mows first GM Field in South Portugal

On the 17th of August the “Movi­men­to Verde Eufémia” went into action of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, tar­get­ing the first trans­genic field in the Algarve GMO Free Zone in South Por­tu­gal. 65 mow­ers entered the field and were able to mow a hectare of GM corn in less than 20 min­utes. The action received sup­port from a parade of an extra 60 peo­ple.

Portugal GM decontamination 1Portugal GM decontamination 2On the 17th of August the “Movi­men­to Verde Eufémia” went into action of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, tar­get­ing the first trans­genic field in the Algarve GMO Free Zone in South Por­tu­gal. 65 mow­ers entered the field and were able to mow a hectare of GM corn in less than 20 min­utes. The action received sup­port from a parade of an extra 60 peo­ple.

POLITICAL BACKGROUND
This year the first GMO field ever has been plant­ed in the Algarve Region in Por­tu­gal. Already years before the plant­i­ng of his GM corn there has been strong oppo­si­tion from civ­il soci­ety against the cul­ti­va­tion of GMOs in the Algarve. This includes social and envi­ron­men­tal organ­i­sa­tions, farm­ers and a pub­lic opin­ion who is in gen­er­al against the cul­ti­va­tion and con­sump­tion of GM crops. Also from the polit­i­cal field oppo­si­tion was made. As a result the Algarve was the first GMO free zone in Por­tu­gal declared by the Jun­ta Met­ro­pol­i­tana do Algarve already in 2004. On the lev­el of the munic­i­pal­i­ties over time motions have been passed reject­ing the cul­ti­va­tion of GM crops on their ter­ri­to­ry.

Despite the strong oppo­si­tion with­in lay­ers of civ­il soci­ety and from local author­i­ties against GMOs the poli­cies of the Por­tuguese Gov­ern­ment and the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion con­stant­ly dis­re­spect the moral and demo­c­ra­t­ic right of those oppos­ing actors to ban GMOs from their fields and their plates.

MOVIMENTO VERDE EUFEMIA
For rea­sons described in the pre­vi­ous para­graph, an infor­mal group of peas­ants, ecol­o­gists and
con­cerned cit­i­zens have gath­ered to take direct action with the aim to re-estab­lish the demo­c­ra­t­ic, moral and eco­log­i­cal order. The move­ment that we are now start­ing will go under the name “Movi­men­to Verde Eufémia”, in homage to the peas­ant strug­gle against the for­mer por­tuguese fas­cist regime.

The strug­gle of Cate­ri­na Eufémia and the peas­ant move­ment of which she was part aimed at defend­ing the rights and the well-being of peas­ant com­mu­ni­ties. Our move­ment will con­tin­ue this strug­gle in the con­text of new appear­ing threats, name­ly the agro-biotech­nol­o­gy sec­tor and their pow­er­ful lob­by.

THE ACTION
The direct action involved 65 mow­ers, destroy­ing 1 hectare of the 50 hectare GM corn field in less than 20 min­utes around mid­day. The activists took the well con­sid­ered risk to announce the action before­hand in the media. This was done for rea­sons of receiv­ing the high­est media cov­er­age for the largest direct action since the post rev­o­lu­tion­ary peri­od in Por­tu­gal. How­ev­er, the activists were aware of risks of com­pro­mise that this deci­sion would bring along.

After 10 min­utes, the own­er and his col­leagues noticed the action. About 8 farm­ers attacked the group of mow­ers using phys­i­cal vio­lence. The mow­ers took a defen­sive stand by using their high­er num­ber but did not use vio­lence in return. One farmer fired shots from an alarm pis­tol and the activists were threat­ened with poi­son sprayers. One police patrol arrived short­ly after. All mow­ers abort­ed the action after 20 min­utes and moved on the pub­lic road to mix up in the parade. The 10 police offi­cers that were in the area could not do any­thing else but reg­u­lat­ing the traf­fic for the parade then count­ing more than 120 peo­ple, mov­ing towards the near­est vil­lage of Poço Bar­reto. 3 iden­ti­fi­ca­tions were made by the police, this involved the police speak­ers and the media spokesper­son. The whole group was picked up by busses and the action end­ed in all order.

Know­ing that the activist were hit­ting the prop­er­ty of a farmer, even though it was a big one they announced that they would pro­vide com­pen­sa­tion for the dam­age inflict­ed. In the end the activists intend­ed no harm towards the farmer him­self who for one or anoth­er rea­son choose to cul­ti­vate GM crops. The activists pro­posed that they would pro­vide the farmer with organ­ic seeds for the sur­face (50 hectares) which is cur­rent­ly being plant­ed with GM corn.

THE AFTERMATH
Now, five days after the action, the name Movi­men­to Verde Eufemia is still front­page news. All tele­vi­sion sta­tions and radio sta­tions give con­tin­u­ous updates on the case. Major polit­i­cal par­ty lead­ers are now involved in the debate. The Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture and the Min­is­ter of Inter­nal Admin­is­tra­tion are main actors in the debate while the Pres­i­dent has com­ment­ed on the issue as well on tele­vi­sion.

The dis­course from the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture is one that main­ly evolves around state­ments con­firm­ing sup­port towards the farmer in the legal pros­e­cu­tion of the activists and point­ing out that the activists hit a ‘poor farmer’ and they should be pun­ished for tres­pass­ing and destruc­tion of pri­vate prop­er­ty. An esti­ma­tion from the Min­istry after the min­is­ter vis­it­ed the field under huge media atten­tion, he came to the con­clu­sion that the dam­age counts up to around 4000 euros. How­ev­er the Order of Lawyers issued a press release yes­ter­day stat­ing that that deliv­ery of legal finan­cial sup­port to from the min­istry would be an ille­gal act as it would mean gov­ern­men­tal inter­fer­ence in a civ­il court case. As a reply to that the min­istry back off stat­ing that ‘obvi­ous­ly’ they meant to sup­port the farmer win the paper work and in the devel­op­ment of his legal dis­course in the court. Next to that, the min­is­ter of agri­cul­ture takes a com­plete­ly out­bal­anced pro-GMO posi­tion, say­ing that: “There is no prob­lem, this is sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly proven”. This can be con­sid­ered as a com­plete invalid state­ment since the sci­en­tif­ic world is at least very divid­ed on the mat­ter of GMOs.

The dis­course of the Min­istry of Inter­nal Admin­stra­tion, being the head of police, devel­ops main­ly around the goal to crim­i­nal­ize Movi­men­to Verde Eufemia and its last action. On one of the main tele­vi­sion sta­tions in a news stu­dio inter­view he labelled the action as ‘soft’ eco ter­ror­ism. The dis­course of the min­is­ter receives addi­tion­al­ly a lot of sup­port from the Pres­i­dent.

How­ev­er it is not all bad news. Now that the media have almost exhaust­ed all vari­a­tions on head titles stretch­ing over two pages, they also start to go more in debt, cov­er­ing the dif­fer­ent opin­ions and posi­tion on GMOs and explain for exam­ple the sta­tus of GMO Free Zones. Through their press releas­es, MVE has invit­ed all asso­ci­a­tions in Por­tu­gal to use the media space cre­at­ed to voice their argu­ments against GMOs. In a reac­tion to that, some main actors in the GMO debate, who ini­tial­ly dis­tanced them­selves from the action, and still do, they have now tak­en up the oppor­tu­ni­ty to voice their con­cerns on GMOs. For that rea­son and oth­er reac­tions that the action has pro­voked from the polit­i­cal field the MVE has expressed their con­tent see­ing that their action has result­ed in an open­ing of the debate on GMOs

INVESTIGATION
Now, for the activists involved in the action it is clear that they should be very care­ful in their cur­rent steps. The min­is­ter of Inter­nal Admin­is­tra­tion him­self is, as announced in the media, involved in the coor­di­na­tion of the inves­ti­ga­tion car­ried out by the Infor­ma­tion and Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice (SIS) and the Police Jus­tice Depart­ment (PJ). Their aim is to uncov­er the net­works of activists that were involved in the action in order to run legal pros­e­cu­tion.

KNOW MORE
MVE has cur­rent­ly a blow where you can fol­low up on the devel­op­ment of the case. The link is http://eufemia.ecobytes.net/

ARGUMENTS AGAINST GMOs
The argu­ments against GMOs are sit­u­at­ed on dif­fer­ent lev­els. For the con­sumer, the few inde­pen­dent stud­ies that were car­ried out, indi­cate that they can induce aller­gic reac­tions, can­cer and oth­er long term neg­a­tive effects, which have not been stud­ied pro­found­ly yet. Intro­duc­ing GM crops in agri­cul­ture pro­duces effects that are irre­versible. The mod­i­fied genes quick­ly start appear­ing in oth­er crops, on oth­er field and in oth­er species, a process which is impos­si­ble to pre­vent. Besides that the cul­ti­va­tion of trans­genic may induce cumu­la­tive effects, rang­ing from the appear­ance of weed resis­tant to her­bi­cides and insects resis­tant to insec­ti­cides until the death of organ­isms that do not form any dan­ger to the agri­cul­tur­al crops. These effects go along with the appear­ance of mul­ti­ple forms of eco­log­i­cal insta­bil­i­ties. The major study about the effects of trans­genic in the envi­ron­ment was pub­lished by the British gov­ern­ment in 2003. It came to the con­clu­sion that cul­ti­vat­ing GMOs is a lot worse to wild life than con­ven­tion­al agri­cul­ture. North-Amer­i­can farm­ers that chose to cul­ti­vate GMOs already under­stood the dis­ad­van­tages: high­er expens­es on seeds, more con­sump­tion of pes­ti­cides, clos­ing inter­na­tion­al (and even local) mar­kets, prod­ucts that are less prof­itable because they are GMOs. Because of genet­ic con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, bio­log­i­cal farm­ers are forced the emi­grate or change pro­fes­sion. Insur­ance com­pa­nies are not will­ing to secure trans­genic cul­tures because of the high risks involved. Lloyds, one of the major insur­ance com­pa­nies allo­cat­ed GMOs in the same finan­cial risk lev­el as acts of ter­ror­ism. The use of GMOs implies that farm­ers are for­bid­den to use sec­ond gen­er­a­tion seeds pro­duced by their own crop. This is an asser­tion for the seed sell­ing com­pa­nies to con­tin­ue their busi­ness the next year.
Already tens of farm­ers in the US and Cana­da have already been con­vict­ed in tri­bunal, hav­ing used sec­ond gen­er­a­tion seeds with­out autho­riza­tion.

Movi­men­to Verde Eufemia
http://eufemia.ecobytes.net/

Itoiz Dam — new prisoner

Long term sup­port­ers of ELP will be aware of the Itoiz dam action in Spain, where back in the late 1990s anony­mous eco-activists sab­o­taged the con­struc­tion site of the con­tro­ver­sial Itoiz dam caus­ing so much dam­age the con­struc­tion was delayed by over a year. One of the things the activists did was cut the cab­bles of the machines which took the dam wall blocks to the top of the dam.

Long term sup­port­ers of ELP will be aware of the Itoiz dam action in Spain, where back in the late 1990s anony­mous eco-activists sab­o­taged the con­struc­tion site of the con­tro­ver­sial Itoiz dam caus­ing so much dam­age the con­struc­tion was delayed by over a year. One of the things the activists did was cut the cab­bles of the machines which took the dam wall blocks to the top of the dam.

As ELP report­ed at the time, fol­low­ing the action, eight men, who were all linked to a law­ful cam­paign against the con­struc­tion, were accused of involve­ment in this action. Despite being inno­cent all eight feared they would­n’t get a fair tri­al so all eight went under­ground. How­ev­er despite not hav­ing their sus­pects in deten­tion that did­n’t stop the Span­ish police
who held a tri­al for the eight men in their abscense. And sur­pris­ing­ly enough, as the eight weren’t there to explain their inno­cence, all eight were found guilty and sen­tenced to four years and 10 months impris­on­ment.

As ELP sup­port­ers will be aware, over the fol­low­ing years a small num­ber of the Itoiz Dam sus­pects have been caught by the police and thrown into prison.

The lat­est Itoiz Dam sus­pect to be cap­tured is JULIO VILLANUEVA. He was arrest­ed ten days ago on the 17th of August 2007.

Please send urgent let­ters of sup­port to:

JULIO VILLANUEVA
C.P. PRISION DE PAMPLONA
31080 IRUNA (NAVARRA)
SPAIN

24 hours of climate direct action (mass & affinity group actions spread like wildfire); plus video/audio clips

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

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
BAA kids 4
BAA kids 3
BAA kids 2
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.
Rinky Dink at climate camp
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.
BAA banners 2
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
BAA 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.
BAA night-time occupation 1
BAA night-time occupation 2
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
Cardiff camp solidarity banner

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

BA world cargo blockade 1
BA world cargo blockade 2
BA world cargo blockade 3
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.
BAA night-time occupation 3
BAA night-time occupation 4
BAA night-time occupation 5
BAA night-time occupation 6
BAA night-time occupation 7
BAA night-time occupation 8
BAA night-time occupation 9Small 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
BAA occupation morning 1
BAA occupation morning 2
BAA occupation morning 3
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
BP blockade 1BP blockade 2BP blockade 3
BP blockade 4BP blockade 5

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.

—————

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
Sizewell blockade 1

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
Bridgepoint occupation 1Bridgepoint occupation 3Bridgepoint occupation 2
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
Trafalgar Square drowning climate 1Trafalgar Square drowning climate 2
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

Red Herrings @ carbon offsetting company
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
clowns in 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

4x4s disarmed in the city of Stockholm

24th August: a new­ly formed activist group, call­ing itself The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle, has struck repeat­ed­ly against SUVs in the cen­tre of Stock­holm over the last weeks. Some 300 of those killer machines have so far been tem­porar­i­ly dis­armed. The Indi­ans deflate the tyres of the SUVs and leave a let­ter to the own­er on the wind­screen, where­in the action is explained (trans­la­tion attached below). Con­sid­er­able fury has arisen among the SUV-own­ers of the city, as evi­dent in the lynch atmos­phere in count­less com­ments on the web­site of the group as well as in var­i­ous army, car and sports com­mu­ni­ties on the web. In one inci­dent, an own­er chased an Indi­an for 20 min­utes. Three Indi­ans have been nabbed by the police – appar­ent­ly giv­ing high pri­or­i­ty to stem­ming this crime – and face var­i­ous crim­i­nal charges. How­ev­er, the group is deter­mined to con­tin­ue tak­ing direct action against SUVs, as they con­sti­tute one of the most provoca­tive and insane sources of unnec­es­sary car­bon emis­sions (inso­far as con­spic­u­ous con­sump­tion of mon­ster vehi­cles is not deemed a gen­uine human need).

24th August: a new­ly formed activist group, call­ing itself The Indi­ans of the Con­crete Jun­gle, has struck repeat­ed­ly against SUVs in the cen­tre of Stock­holm over the last weeks. Some 300 of those killer machines have so far been tem­porar­i­ly dis­armed. The Indi­ans deflate the tyres of the SUVs and leave a let­ter to the own­er on the wind­screen, where­in the action is explained (trans­la­tion attached below). Con­sid­er­able fury has arisen among the SUV-own­ers of the city, as evi­dent in the lynch atmos­phere in count­less com­ments on the web­site of the group as well as in var­i­ous army, car and sports com­mu­ni­ties on the web. In one inci­dent, an own­er chased an Indi­an for 20 min­utes. Three Indi­ans have been nabbed by the police – appar­ent­ly giv­ing high pri­or­i­ty to stem­ming this crime – and face var­i­ous crim­i­nal charges. How­ev­er, the group is deter­mined to con­tin­ue tak­ing direct action against SUVs, as they con­sti­tute one of the most provoca­tive and insane sources of unnec­es­sary car­bon emis­sions (inso­far as con­spic­u­ous con­sump­tion of mon­ster vehi­cles is not deemed a gen­uine human need).

Update: New indi­an tribes has appeared and has struck against SUVs in Malmö, Gothen­burg and Sundsvall.

The Indi­ans would like to rec­om­mend this form of direct action to all like-mind­ed groups. If selec­tive SUV-dis­ar­ma­ment is done repeat­ed­ly and on a mas­sive scale, it will devel­op from a slight annoy­ance in the eyes of the own­ers into a real obsta­cle for dri­ving the things, thus putting an end to per­haps the most obnox­ious aspect of bour­geois car­bon addic­tion. Imag­ine wak­ing up to a car with­out air in the tyres every morn­ing, or even once a week! It’s not a com­pli­cat­ed manoeu­vre: just unscrew the cap of the valve, insert a grain of grav­el or stone in it, and screw it back on. The grain will push down the peg in the mid­dle of the valve, mak­ing sure the air is gen­tly released. The whole manoeu­vre will take about 10 sec­onds. Leave the SUV, and lis­ten to the beau­ti­ful sound of the air peter­ing out.

Let­ter to SUV own­ers:
Your SUV kills!
We have deflat­ed one or sev­er­al tyres of your SUV. Don’t take it per­son­al. It’s your car we don’t like. You are cer­tain­ly aware of the large amount of fuel it con­sumes, so we don’t have to enlight­en you about that. But either you are igno­rant of, or you don’t care about the fact that all the gas you con­sume by dri­ving around in your SUV in the streets of the city has dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for oth­ers. Sci­en­tists are entire­ly sure that we are very close to push­ing cli­mate change over a thresh­old, into a phase where it will be total­ly out of con­trol.

When the glac­i­ers melt, people’s source of water dis­ap­pear. When the deserts spread, agri­cul­tur­al fields become uncul­tivable. When the sea lev­el ris­es, homes are inun­dat­ed. Result: bil­lions of refugees, count­less deaths. It’s already esti­mat­ed that 160 000 peo­ple die every year due to the effects of cli­mate change, accord­ing to the WHO.
As an afflu­ent Swede you will sur­vive longer then most. Those most vul­ner­a­ble, and already worst afflict­ed by the glob­al warm­ing caused by North­ern afflu­ence, are the peo­ple of poor coun­tries. In the end, how­ev­er, cli­mate chaos will affect us all, poor peo­ple as well as rich.

This does not have to hap­pen if we impose a rad­i­cal cut on car­bon emis­sions. Now.
Not tomor­row. That’s why we have dis­armed your SUV by deflat­ing the tires.
Since you live in a city with a func­tion­ing and acces­si­ble pub­lic trans­porta­tion sys­tem you will have no prob­lem going where you want with­out your SUV.

Police actions & (counter-)surveillance at the climate camp; FITwatch

See also oth­er reports of direct actions & police vio­lence.

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Eye in the sky sur­veil­lance at cli­mate camp

Thurs 16th — a police heli­copter drones over­head cir­cling the camp while since the morn­ing a large crane / cher­ry pick­er has had cctv cam­eras mount­ed on it (& pos­si­bly direc­tion­al micro­phone) and hoist­ed high over the camp.

See also oth­er reports of direct actions & police vio­lence.

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Eye in the sky sur­veil­lance at cli­mate camp
CCTV on cherry picker at camp
Thurs 16th — a police heli­copter drones over­head cir­cling the camp while since the morn­ing a large crane / cher­ry pick­er has had cctv cam­eras mount­ed on it (& pos­si­bly direc­tion­al micro­phone) and hoist­ed high over the camp.

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Pics of vio­lent arrests this after­noon at around half three / quar­ter to four near A4 — Sat 19th (cli­mate camp)
BAA policing 6
BAA policing 7
BAA policing 8
New­ly deployed riot police start chas­ing two peo­ple down the street, push­ing them over and tack­ling them to the ground then vio­lent­ly restrain­ing them.

good news!

the 2 peo­ple in those shots were arrest­ed, but let go once they were out of site of the cam­eras. The police were well aware that no offences had actu­al­ly been com­mit­ted, and they would not be able to get some bol­locks like pub­lic dis­or­der to stick with legal­ly clued up cli­mate campers.

There is noth­ing fake about the the pics tho — they were dealt with com­pre­hen­sive­ly. The first had a shield thrown at him and the sec­ond was not tack­led but pushed into a wire fence then stood on by three offi­cers. Nei­ther of the detained are unused to con­fronta­tion, they are seen cov­er­ing their heads due to phys­i­cal and ver­bal threats that were being made by the offi­cers. Both had cuts and bruis­ing but noth­ing seri­ous — unlike the camper tram­pled by a riot horse.

They aren’t at all sur­prised or intim­i­dat­ed by the arrests — the police did the usu­al schizo act:
“DON’T FUCKING MOVE!” “GET THAT ARM BEHIND YOU!” “MOVE AND I’LL BATTER YOU”
.…

“You alright mate? Any injuries? We’re just here to help Mr –, as long as you protest legal­ly we’re all for it. Help us to help you. Ok mate, on you go.”

- Which unsur­pris­ing­ly has not changed their feel­ings towards Her Majesty’s finest.

Sol­i­dar­i­ty with all those arrest­ed and injured — we still made it!

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Polit­i­cal Apartheid: Polic­ing of the Cli­mate Camp Protests.

“If you go over there, I will facil­i­tate your law­ful protest” said one of the com­mand­ing cop­pers out­side the action that took place at Agrex­co on Sat­ur­day after­noon.

His idea of a “law­ful protest” became clear very quick­ly as his offi­cers pushed us into a ket­tle and held us there until peo­ple were tak­en out one by one and searched under Sec­tion One of PACE, before being sent on our mer­ry way. FIT pho­tog­ra­phers were on hand to pho­to­graph each indi­vid­ual as they were searched. That 40 campers man­aged to get off site and to a known tar­get in the mid­dle of the heav­i­ly policed area is some­thing else that FIT will have a hard time explain­ing to the pow­ers that be.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly the main stream media have all but ignored the wide­spread (ab)use of Stop and Search pow­ers that Cli­mate campers were sub­ject­ed to over the dura­tion of the camp.


The wide­spread use of stop and search is of course extreme­ly dodgy, and it was also appar­ent that wide­spread abuse of the pow­er had been sanc­tioned at a high lev­el.

When searched on Sun­day morn­ing the offi­cer (XB 125) failed to give me his name, and then pro­ceed­ed to hand a half fin­ished wit­ness state­ment that I had in my pock­et to DM167, who pro­ceed­ed to “look after it” by read­ing it. I point­ed out that it was beyond their pow­ers to read my per­son­al doc­u­ments as they were search­ing me for items asso­ci­at­ed with crim­i­nal dam­age, and a flim­sy piece of paper just was­n’t good enough for any kind of crim­i­nal dam­age, but DM167 ignored me and read the whole thing.

Oth­er searched I wit­nessed or heard of, includ­ed:

-Numer­ous peo­ple peo­ple out­side the main gate being forcibly detained after their search­es were over, until the FIT pho­tog­ra­ph­er arrived to take their pic­ture. Phys­i­cal force was used to make peo­ple com­ply with being pho­tographed, despite the fact that noth­ing had been uncov­ered in the search.

-Peo­ple being arrest­ed when they were searched under Sec­tion One of PACE, tak­en to a van and ‘de-arrest­ed’ once they had giv­en their names and address­es. (Hint: Tell them you will only give it to the cus­tody seargeant — that cre­ates more of a dilem­na for them)

An activist well known to FIT being held up for ages whilst they checked the IMEI num­ber of her phone — (remem­ber the basis of the search is sus­pi­cion of being equipped to com­mit crin­i­mal dam­age). Whilst she was on her enforced wait, a plain clothes used the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make threats to her. She was with her tod­dler at the time.

-Activists wait­ing for the release of the arrest­ed from the Agrex­co action being searched a num­ber of times in the carpark out­side West Dray­ton nick on Sarur­day night. When they went into the near­by pub cops fol­lowed them in, searched them and then got the pub to bar them.

-An activist had a FITWATCH spot­ter card con­fis­cat­ed because “it might be used in the com­mis­sion of a crime” — ie the cop thought it might be used to sin­gle out an indi­vid­ual cop at a demo.

Need­less to say, the search­es did noth­ing to pre­vent the actions — the major­i­ty of campers left in blocks which weren’t searched, and in any case peo­ple knew when search­es were hap­pen­ing and when they weren’t, so (just as Pales­tini­ans do with their equiv­a­lent — mov­ing Israeli road­blocks,) any one intent on get­ting some­thing in or out of the camp just had to wait for the right moment. Fur­ther­more, few if any arrests were for crim­i­nal dam­age, and cer­tain­ly it would have been less than 1% of those on camp (even if the num­ber on camp was only 1000 as claimed by the cops).

For many of the locals this will have been their first expe­ri­ence of the polit­i­cal apartheid that pro­tes­tors expe­ri­ence on a con­stant basis at the hands of the Met. Any reas­sur­ance they might have had about the PACE Code of Prac­tice, will have been dis­pelled as they wit­nessed the heavy hand­ed use of the tac­tic which was quick­ly backed up by the use of phys­i­cal force if any­one object­ed to the abuse of the process.

Being stopped and searched can be a very dis­em­pow­er­ing expe­ri­ence, where your most per­son­al space is trashed and your (alleged) rights are com­plete­ly sus­pend­ed, while the cops sur­round you, threat­en you and abuse their pow­ers. One per­son I spoke to was keen that com­plaints should be made about the indi­vid­ual offi­cers who abused their pow­ers, so that they were inves­ti­gat­ed, and the com­plaint would be left to sit on their file. If too many com­plaints sat on a cop­pers file, it could affect pro­mo­tion prospects in the future. It may also be of assis­tance to future vic­tims of these mind­less, order fol­low­ing thugs in uni­form. And ulti­mate­ly it may make cops more inclined to do things by the book in the future.

Hope­ful­ly a hap­pi­er les­son could be learnt from the events of Tues­day night, when an inva­sion of cops was repelled by campers. It is clear that if we show each oth­er sol­i­dar­i­ty and work togeth­er, we can more effec­tive­ly take on, and beat the repres­sive tac­tics of cops. And boy does­n’t it feel good when we do!

FITWATCH activ­i­ties received wide­spread sup­port on site, as FIT teams were sub­ject­ed to the very same tac­tics that they have them­selves employed on activists for years. On the whole the tac­tic used was to get up close and per­son­al, and to make every pos­si­ble attempt to obstruct the civil­ian cam­era­men from tak­ing their intru­sive and abu­sive up close and per­son­al pho­tos of peo­ple doing noth­ing ille­gal. FIT teams were forced to focus their atten­tion on those obstruct­ing the camer­men, leav­ing oth­ers alone to get on with what they were doing. See­ing a FIT cam­era­man drop his long lens was a very sat­is­fy­ing moment for me, as was each time I saw him with his short­er alter­na­tive lens. If the tac­tic is to be more effec­tive, then plans for actions and meet­ings where FIT are like­ly to be present should include plans to tack­le and neu­tralise the FIT teams. It only takes a very small group to keep a team busy for hours!

The usu­al bull­shit was used to smear cam­paign­ers, with talk of “vio­lent activists linked to J18”, and “crim­i­nal ele­ments invad­ing the camp” “a secret group called ‘The Elders’ ” and “sus­pect bomb pack­ages” and the media lapped it up. At the end of the camp, when arrests and vio­lence by pro­tes­tors can be seen to have been much low­er than the nor­mal events in many towns on a Sat­ur­day night, the media con­tin­ued to talk of pro­tes­tors “scuf­fling with police” and “clash­es between pro­tes­tors and the police”, even when such events were real­ly pro­tes­tors being attacked by heav­i­ly tooled thugs, as is even evi­denced by the medias very own pho­tographs. And journos won­der why we don’t trust them and did­n’t allow them to freely roam the site!

Com­man­der Joe Kaye also made the claim that “If we frus­trate them, then they will go in for con­fronta­tion because their aim is anti-state. We are talk­ing about anar­chists.” If you aren’t an anar­chist then pre­sum­ably you just lie down for the kick­ing when the cops go out of their way to frus­trate your so-called rights accord­ing to his fee­ble thought process.

At the end of the day, the bul­ly boy tac­tics were frus­trat­ed and failed. As one of the first to arrive at the BAA build­ing yes­ter­day, I am pret­ty cer­tain that they sim­ply did­n’t expect pro­tes­tors to arrive there, and there was a mad flur­ry to form lines around the build­ing as we sat down to pic­nic on the verge right out­side the build­ing. Get­ting there was sim­ple enough, we just hung back when they went in to form the ket­tle, and then strolled back down the road as cop atten­tion was divert­ed by clowns mak­ing a break for it over the fields. There were so few cops, that when they tried search­ing after our pic­nic, they missed a whole group of new arrivals run­ning to the car park, and end­ed up being forced to aban­don the search­es in order to deal with oth­er stuff

For a long time protests in Britain, and espe­cial­ly in Lon­don have been unpleas­ant expe­ri­ences, with the cops call­ing the shots most of the time, and search­es and pet­ty arrests being the order of the day. Those who have gone to express their anger and dis­gust at the greedy mil­i­taris­tic fuck­wit­tery of the rul­ing class­es and cor­po­ra­tions, have end­ed up being boxed in, abused and crapped over by sheer force of num­bers and a will­ing­ness on the part of cops to abuse their pow­ers, whilst being cheered on by the journos.

Whilst Com­man­der Kaye’s polic­ing oper­a­tion went out of its way to give even more peo­ple rea­sons to hate the state, it seems that his cops were not up the task of total­ly repress­ing the activ­i­ties of the camps, and once again the Met was shown to be less than use­less when they are con­front­ed with a field. We won some vic­to­ries at the camp, and we should build on those in the near future. We are devel­op­ing new tac­tics, and must com­bine these with our expe­ri­ence of the usu­al tac­tics to ren­der them even more inef­fec­tu­al in the future.
(1)http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0„2–2007380547,00.html — pho­to by Get­ty images

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Traf­fic Jams on M4 as Police Set up Check­points

Police set up check­points on both car­riage­ways of the M4 yes­ter­day (Sat­ur­day 18th August) caus­ing traf­fic tail­backs through­out the evening. The dis­rup­tion was cov­ered in the Guardian and oth­er news out­lets.

The motor­way was closed down to one lane, first in one direc­tion and then the oth­er, as police scanned vehi­cle num­ber plates with cam­eras mount­ed inside vans. Once past the num­ber plate recog­ni­tion cam­eras, vehi­cles were fun­nelled down to one lane where Police could flag down the vehi­cles they want­ed to stop. Such road­side setups are used to catch out dri­vers with­out insur­ance or up to date vehi­cle tax or MOTs. They can also be used to check reg­is­tra­tions against lists of stolen vehi­cles, or vehi­cles on watch lists.

Sim­i­lar tech­nol­o­gy was deployed against pro­tes­tors last year at the Camp for Cliamte Action which took place in the shad­ow of the Drax coal fired pow­er sta­tion in York­shire.

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Polic­ing the Police at Cli­mate Camp — a per­son­al account of FIT Watch
FIT @ climate camp
FIT Watch was set up a cou­ple of months ago to oppose and mon­i­tor the activ­i­ties of the For­ward Intel­li­gence Teams. These are cops who rou­tine­ly harass and intim­i­date pro­test­ers (for full back­ground see www.fitwatch.blogspot.com). Whilst we’ve had a pres­ence at a cou­ple of pub­lic meet­ings, Cli­mate Camp has been our first oppor­tu­ni­ty to prac­tice our tac­tics in a protest sit­u­a­tion
FIT watch @ climate camp 1
And it’s been work­ing. FIT are being made to feel uncom­fort­able. They’ve been forced into a reac­tive sit­u­a­tion and it is empow­er­ing because we have seized the ini­tia­tive.

FIT Watch can be done by any­one and can be as pas­sive or as con­fronta­tion­al as you wish. Here are some tac­tics we have found to be effec­tive:

1. Hold­ing large ban­ners in front of pho­tog­ra­phers. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly effec­tive with dou­ble sheets on sticks which can block a cam­era from a dis­tance. This is the least con­fronta­tion­al way of block­ing pho­tog­ra­phy.
2. Tak­ing pho­tos of them. They real­ly don’t like this but it isn’t ille­gal. With any pho­tos it’s always good to either try and get the cop’s num­ber in the shot, or note it down.
3. Fol­low­ing the FIT. Pick a team and tail them. Turn their tac­tics onto them – every­thing time they send a text mes­sage look over their shoul­der, lis­ten to their phone con­ver­sa­tions, look at what they’re writ­ing in their note­books.
4. Watch out for group hud­dles, espe­cial­ly with senior offi­cers and go and unob­tru­sive­ly stand by them. This dis­rupts their brief­in­gs and there’s always the pos­si­bil­i­ty you might learn some use­ful infor­ma­tion.
5. Upload any infor­ma­tion gath­ered about the FIT to www.fitwatch.blogspot.com or email to defycops@yahoo.co.uk
6. Put your­self phys­i­cal­ly in the way of the cam­era men by stand­ing con­stant­ly in front of the cam­era and con­stant­ly shad­ow­ing them. This has been the most con­fronta­tion­al tac­tic used so far and has there­fore been the one peo­ple have been arrest­ed for. How­ev­er it has also been pos­si­ble to do this with­out arrest.

CAUTIONARY NOTE: ANY ACTION INVOLVING THIS LEVEL OF PROXIMITY TO FIT TEAMS MEANS THEY WILL TRY AND ENGAGE YOU IN CONVERSATION. DO NOT ANSWER THEIR QUESTIONS.

Two peo­ple have been arrest­ed for Obstruct­ing the police in the course of their duty this week. They were both charged and plead­ed not guilty. Any wit­ness­es should con­tact defycops@yahoo.co.uk

There have been many rumours as to why the FIT teams made their incur­sions into camp on Tues­day night. Some peo­ple say it was a response to being pissed off with FIT Watch, oth­ers that it was a test to see how we would react. Anoth­er the­o­ry is they were try­ing to kick some­thing off as shown by the pres­ence off vans of TSG and ambu­lances.

How­ev­er they weren’t expect­ing the strong response from the camp and vio­lent­ly pushed, kicked and hit peo­ple. A com­bi­na­tion of strength of num­bers and peo­ple will­ing to push them back forced them off site and peo­ple felt empow­ered by this vic­to­ry. How­ev­er it was not the non vio­lent vic­to­ry report­ed in many places. Peo­ple right­ly act­ed in self defence and we would not have got them off site if we had sim­ply walked towards them with our hands in the air as has been described in some places. Some peo­ple did raise their hands, but this was only after the cops had backed off the site.

FIT Watch is work­ing, but we need more peo­ple. The next big event is DSEi and it’d be great if peo­ple car­ry on the FIT Watch tac­tics.

defycops@yahoo.co.uk
http://www.fitwatch.blogspot.com

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inter­view with fit­watch at cli­mate camp

ear­li­er this week, a fit­watch sup­port­er was arrest­ed for ‘obstruct­ing a police offi­cer in the course of their duty’. but what exact­ly is the duty of the har­rass­ing, inva­sive for­ward intel­li­gence team phot­g­ra­phers and offi­cers? do they get off on watch­ing campers pee­ing?

Video fit­watch mp4 — video/mp4 1.3M

Video fit­watch wmv — video/x‑ms-wmv 1.5M

emi­ly was arrest­ed on the obstruc­tion charge, and although it’s an offence attract­ing a max­i­mum one month sen­tence, she was unnec­es­sar­i­ly held in cus­tody overnight. at uxbridge court the next day she had bail con­di­tions set ban­ning her from the cli­mate camp site from 2pm.

at 2 pm she gave this inter­view out­side the camp about the rea­son and aims of fit­watch and about her arrest and bail con­di­tions.

the film is just one minute long and is avail­able in two for­mats.

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.
wmv is avail­able if you real­ly must use cor­po­rate soft­ware

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Cli­mate camp and ter­ror­ism
BAA night-time occupation 10
It should come as no sur­prise that police are apply­ing dra­con­ian anti-ter­ror­ism ´leg­is­la­tion´ to com­bat eco-pro­tes­tors at the Cli­mate Camp. For the author­i­ties net­works of dis­sent are the real ter­ror­ists.

To under­stand why police, cor­po­rate spokes­peo­ple and politi­cians should attempt to con­flate protest with ter­ror­ism means real­ly get­ting to grips with what con­sti­tutes ter­ror­ism for those in author­i­ty.

What comes to mind when you think of ter­ror­ism? Expolo­sions, muti­lat­ed bod­ies, dis­traught bystanders? Yet these have been ever-present when we wit­ness airstrikes and hear accounts of the behav­iour of coali­tion forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. If ter­ror­ism was all about vio­lence then this years airstrikes by the US on Soma­lia could not fail to be cat­e­gorised as such.

But none of this is ter­ror­ism because it does not threat­en the worlds lead­ers and their inter­est­ed fol­low­ers. By exten­sion, what threat­ens the sta­tus quo is not just vio­lent attacks by the likes of Al‑q´eeda but the break­ing of crim­i­nal as opposed to moral law and civ­il dis­obe­di­ence.

It is worth focus­ing on civ­il dis­obe­di­ence for a moment or two. What makes civ­il dis­obe­di­ence effec­tive is its rejec­tion of dis­ci­plines imposed by author­i­ties. It is use­ful to think of the exer­cise of pow­er in three stages- a)informal, uncod­i­fied rules or oth­er mech­a­nisms of con­trol, (for exam­ple some cin­e­mas ban the con­sump­tion of food that has not been pur­chased from the cin­e­mas own out­lets, b) for­mal rules cod­i­fied in law such as those that pro­tect prop­er­ty c) when these fail to obtain the desired results then force is applied. It is the infor­mal rules that civ­il dis­obe­di­ence fre­quent­ly tar­gets. For exam­ple Heathrow is a maze of infor­mal injunc­tions. Inside the air­port pas­sen­gers must sub­mit to var­i­ous pro­ce­dures even those that seem ridicu­lous such as only car­ry­ing 100ml of flu­id onboard flights as if it would make any dif­fer­ence if you were car­ry­ing 125ml. The air­port is a fan­tas­tic exam­ple of the Panop­ti­con where you are watched and ordered through­out by seem­ing­ly innocu­ous pet­ty rules that exist to dis­rupt mass­es of peo­ple in order to exert con­trol. This helps to explain why the camp itself is so unpop­u­lar with the author­i­ties. It is a mass which is ordered pri­mar­i­ly from with­in which cre­ates an autonomous space where plots can be hatched.

For those seek­ing to pre­vent the vio­lent forms of ter­ror­ism it is essen­tial to main­tain con­trol through sur­veil­lance of the air­port and its out­er perime­ter. The author­i­ties explain patient­ly time and time again that anti-ter­ror­ist leg­is­la­tion is for our own good- they are seek­ing to pro­tect free­dom not to cur­tail it. (Inter­est­ing­ly this was a stance Hitler took by claim­ing to be pro­tect­ing the Ger­man peo­ple from a Jew­ish led con­spir­a­cy to enslave them). The camp is they claim an obsta­cle to such pro­tec­tion- it obstructs their abil­i­ty to detect ter­ror­ists or to respond to ter­ror­ist events once they hap­pen. Per­haps they sug­gest ter­ror­ists are hid­ing with­in the camp qui­et­ly sub­vert­ing naive and ide­al­is­tic pro­tes­tors to Jihad. Or per­haps even the pro­tes­tors are for­mu­lat­ing a new ide­o­log­i­cal threat to free­dom- pro­pos­als for some kind of eco-caliphate ruled by George Mon­biot rebrand­ed as a druid mar­tyr come back from the dead.

Yet none of these claims stand up to the mer­est scruti­ny. Hence the bemuse­ment of campers and sec­tions of the ´lib­er­al media´at the smears. Yet things become clear­er once we inter­pret anti-ter­ror­ism leg­is­la­tion as a response to the sup­posed threat to hier­ar­chi­cal forms of order posed by net­work forms of organ­i­sa­tion. it is theme net­works of dis­sent that threat­en the dom­i­nant sto­ry of social strength and progress through eco­nom­ic growth.

Of course the fig­ure­head is Al-qée­da and its impos­si­bly dense maze of inter­con­nect­ed units and affil­i­ates unit­ed by a counter-dis­course of Anti-west­ern sen­ti­ment. Yet the anti-ter­ror­ist response must be extend­ed to oth­er net­worked forms of oppo­si­tion that reject the dom­i­nant par­a­digm through civ­il dis­obe­di­ence and dis­repect for pri­vate prop­er­ty rights. First the ´loonies´are tar­get­ed such as ani­mal rights pro­tes­tors, next will be the envi­ron­men­tal­ists, then the human rights activists.

The extent to which anti-ter­ror­ist pow­ers giv­en to the police and oth­ers can be described as laws is lim­it­ed. Many have had lit­tle debate in par­lia­ment and they are fre­quent­ly deliv­ered in response to con­sul­ta­tions with senior police offi­cers. They seem in real­i­ty more like anti-leg­is­la­tion mask­ing the use of arbi­trary coer­cion — a clear retreat from UK law as it has devel­oped over the cen­turies and a des­per­ate attempt to ´cor­rect´ dis­senters before a final resort to vio­lence.

This is all good news real­ly. The ridicu­lous cam­era mount­ed on a crane over­look­ing the camp shows how scared they are. It is amus­ing to watch the spec­ta­cle of the camp run­ning along­side dai­ly accounts of crash­ing stock mar­kets- some­what rem­i­nis­cent of a J G Bal­lard nov­el.

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Press release from Cli­mate Camp Media: Police attack pro­test­ers
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For Imme­di­ate Release

UPDATE: Police attack pro­test­ers’ march towards BAA
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Riot police armed with trun­cheons backed by mount­ed police wad­ed into pro­test­ers slow­ly march­ing from the Camp for Cli­mate Action towards BAA head­quar­ters. The march was part of the day of mass action which had been pub­licly announced the yes­ter­day. On-site medics have treat­ed at least five peo­ple who sus­tained head injuries and one per­son who had been trod­den on by a police horse.
battered on way to BAA
BAA policing 4
The fact that the major­i­ty of the cor­po­rate media had been cov­er­ing the children’s demon­stra­tion at a sep­a­rate loca­tion meant that the police could act with rel­a­tive impuni­ty in vio­lent­ly assault­ing the pro­tes­tors. One reporter from Chan­nel 5 who was present at the attack said that they had been kicked by the police.

Despite the heavy hand­ed attack, around three hun­dred peo­ple man­aged to reach the BAA head­quar­ters and pro­ceed­ed to occu­py the entrance and car park, string­ing up ban­ners denounc­ing the com­pa­ny. Dozens of police vans and lines of riot police cor­doned off the area and pre­vent­ed hun­dreds more from enter­ing the site, effec­tive­ly blockad­ing the site on behalf of the Camp for Cli­mate Action.

Pro­tes­tors had tar­get­ed the BAA head­quar­ters in order to high­light the cor­po­rate prof­i­teers of cli­mate change rather than choos­ing to dis­rupt the pas­sen­gers at Heathrow. As promised by the camp, the mass action made no attempt to dis­rupt Heathrow.

In a sep­a­rate action ear­li­er on in the day, three teenaged women, aged 14, 15 and 16 occu­pied a roof at the BAA-owned Heathrow Busi­ness Acad­e­my oppo­site the BAA head­quar­ters and dropped a ban­ner that said “Make Planes His­to­ry.” Their protest con­tin­ues.

There have been 6 con­firmed arrests and 6 more that are cur­rent­ly uncon­firmed today. Today’s arrests bring the total of con­firmed Cli­mate Camp-relat­ed arrests to 56.

ENDS

Notes to edi­tor:

The teenagers who dropped the ban­ner are cur­rent­ly on the roof of the Heathrow Busi­ness Acad­e­my and can be con­tact­ed on 079821 04537

For fur­ther enquiries, con­tact the camp media team on 0777 286 1099 or 07858 177 178

For a pho­to of the teenagers on the roof, con­tact Mike on 07966 372 890

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Late after­noon march to BAA — Cops go crazy

When the group left from the rear of the camp, at first mount­ed police tried to ride into peo­ple but soon backed off and allowed them to stream across the field. As the peo­ple approched the oppo­site side of the field there were many vans of riot police arriv­ing in adja­cent streets and deploy­ing to meet the pro­tes­tors. There were even van loads of police get­ting changed into their riot gear on the M4 motor­way before scram­bling up the bank. As pro­tes­tors moved along the fence or tried to climb out of the field the police attacked them with batons and shields. I saw sev­er­al hit, punched, repeat­ed­ly thrown to the ground, pushed into ditch­es, and sworn at. Over the next 15 min­utes more and more riot police kept arriv­ing (some­thing like 100), many run­ning into the field fol­low­ing mount­ed police that had gal­loped into a gap in the fence. Police pre­vent­ed media from enter­ing the field and a high hedge pre­vent­ed them film­ing the scenes in the field.

The police offi­cers were clear­ly hyped up after days of sit­ting around wait­ing for this demon­stra­tion. They lashed out against peace­ful demon­stra­tors with­out cause or provo­ca­tion. Many pro­tes­tors man­aged to keep skirt­ing the field try­ing to get away from the chas­ing riot police, althouth two groups got sur­round­ed and detained for sev­er­al hours. Many man­aged to get over to the BAA build­ing for the demon­stra­tion there.

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FIT Watch Spot­ter Card
FITwatch spotter card (climate camp)
Here is the spot­ter card used by FIT Watch at cli­mate camp. We had sev­er­al requests for the coloured orig­i­nal, so here it is.

Hope­ful­ly we should be pro­duc­ing a new one for DSEi with some of the love­ly pho­tos we’ve been tak­ing at camp. If any­one has any pho­tos they think would be good to be includ­ed, please email them to us at defycops@yahoo.co.uk

defycops@yahoo.co.uk
http://www.fitwatch.blogspot.com