8 Young people arrested campaigning for an anti-nuclear future

Faslane, 28th July 2007 — eight young peo­ple from Wales, Ger­many and Bel­gium have been arrest­ed this morn­ing, blockad­ing the gate at Faslane Nuclear Base in a protest against the renew­al of the British Tri­dent Nuclear weapons sys­tem. The block­ade came amongst live­ly and colour­ful actions car­ried out by young peo­ple from many coun­tries, from Wales and Ger­many to Japan and the US. The action takes the num­ber of arrests dur­ing the “Faslane 365” year long block­ade of Faslane naval base to over 900.

Faslane BANg bannerFaslane, 28th July 2007 — eight young peo­ple from Wales, Ger­many and Bel­gium have been arrest­ed this morn­ing, blockad­ing the gate at Faslane Nuclear Base in a protest against the renew­al of the British Tri­dent Nuclear weapons sys­tem. The block­ade came amongst live­ly and colour­ful actions car­ried out by young peo­ple from many coun­tries, from Wales and Ger­many to Japan and the US. The action takes the num­ber of arrests dur­ing the “Faslane 365” year long block­ade of Faslane naval base to over 900.

The group decid­ed to take action after hav­ing met at an ‘acad­e­my’ in Glas­gow where they dis­cussed the issue of Tri­dent nuclear weapons in the con­text of Europe and the rest of the world. They decid­ed that Tri­dent Replace­ment, which the British Par­lia­ment vot­ed for this spring, is not only a cur­rent British issue but will also affect and endan­ger the next gen­er­a­tion across the world.

They made a human knot in the road at the North Gate entrance to the base and stuck their hands togeth­er with super glue to make it as dif­fi­cult as pos­si­ble for the police to remove them. They were sup­port­ed by action from an inter­na­tion­al clown army, a simul­ta­ne­ous ted­dy block­ade, danc­ing and music from Japan­ese stu­dents and the poignant speech of a Hibakusha (Hiroshi­ma sur­vivor).

The block­aders includ­ed five peo­ple from Wales (Pem­brokeshire), Han­nah Chester (15), Nao­mi Proszyn­s­ka (15), Geor­gia Coles-Riley (16) Alexan­der Fer­raro (19) and Craig Wilkin­son (18). For some this is their sec­ond arrest as they have already been active in the Faslane365 cam­paign which has been run­ning since Octo­ber 2006. There were also two block­aders from Ger­many, Ste­fan Hittmey­er (21) and Tobias Bollinger (22) and one from Bel­gium, Andy Ver­maut (30).

Nao­mi Proszyn­s­ka from Wales said:
“Blockad­ing at Faslane changed the way I look at things. The rea­son why young peo­ple are not active on these issues is not because they don’t care about them, it’s because they don’t know about them.”

The young peo­ple decid­ed to take action to raise aware­ness among all young peo­ple that any nuclear weapons are a dan­ger to every­one. They also planned an aware­ness-rais­ing media cam­paign, a Euro­pean Post­card com­pe­ti­tion on nuclear weapons and have been keep­ing a blog at www.bang-europe.org. This will be con­tin­ued by five girls who will trav­el with Japan­ese Peace Boat to New York.

It is almost impos­si­ble for the youth of today to imag­ine a world with­out nuclear weapons, let alone a future.

ENDS
Inter­views are avail­able in Eng­lish, Welsh and Ger­man. Please con­tact Emi­ly Free­man in the first instance (+44) 01436850047 or emfreeman@hotmail.co.uk
[Alter­na­tive­ly (+44) 07828 658 628]

Pho­tographs avail­able, free from copy­right:
http://www.faslane365.org/photos

More infor­ma­tion:
BANg : www.bang-europe.org
Faslane 365: www.faslane365.org
Peace Boat: www.peaceboat.org

The “action acad­e­my” being held between 26th – 30th July was attend­ed by young peo­ple, from Ger­many, Wales, Bel­gium, Aus­tria, France, the US, Japan and many oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries. They have been joined by stu­dents from the Japan­ese Glob­al Uni­ver­si­ty who arrived on the Peace Boat as it trav­els between Japan and New York.

An inter­na­tion­al post­card design com­pe­ti­tion is being held to raise aware­ness of nuclear issues among young peo­ple. There will be an award cer­e­mo­ny at the event and the win­ning designs will be dis­trib­uted as post­cards on Nagasa­ki day (9th August).

The protest aims point out to the British Gov­ern­ment, and oth­er gov­ern­ments across Europe and the world, that nuclear weapons and, specif­i­cal­ly, Tri­dent replace­ment, are an inter­na­tion­al issue, and already affects peo­ple across the world. The con­se­quences of nuclear weapons know no bound­aries and pol­lute and destroy huge areas of the plan­et for ever.

Peace Boat:
Fol­low­ing the actions, five of the par­tic­i­pants, two from Wales, two from Aus­tria and one from Ger­many, will be join­ing the Glob­al uni­ver­si­ty onboard Peace Boat to take part in their sum­mer pro­gramme on Peace and Nuclear Weapons as they voy­age from Dublin to New York (31st July – 9th August). The par­tic­i­pants will be shar­ing infor­ma­tion and learn­ing about US, French and British nuclear weapons in Europe and exam­in­ing cul­tur­al and per­son­al issues around the nuclear threat, with stu­dents of the Glob­al Uni­ver­si­ty. Hiroshi­ma Day will be com­mem­o­rat­ed on board Peace Boat on 6th August and Nagasa­ki Day on arrival in New York on 9th August.

Since the 1950s stud­ies have shown that the threat of nuclear war has dam­aged the psy­cho­log­i­cal health of young peo­ple and soci­ety in gen­er­al. Over 6o years lat­er, since the first use of nuclear by the US in 1945, that dam­age con­tin­ues. The aware­ness of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of nuclear war aware­ness has a neg­a­tive impact on the feel­ings, emo­tions, per­cep­tion of life, and plans for the future of young peo­ple. The younger gen­er­a­tion con­stant­ly lives with con­scious­ness of the tremen­dous dan­ger of nuclear war and per­ceives it more acute­ly than adults. Fear, anx­i­ety, help­less­ness, and lack of con­fi­dence in the future leave an omi­nous imprint on the per­son­al­i­ty of the youth world­wide. Many are already vic­tims of a war which has not yet start­ed.

Oxford Climate Campers Take Over Carfax Tower!

28.07.2007

Today, four activists climbed to the top of Car­fax Tow­er and dropped a ban­ner satiris­ing the Oxford City Coun­cil logo (an ox cross­ing a ford) and pro­mot­ing the camp for cli­mate action. The ban­ner stayed put for over two hours.

On the ground around 25 peo­ple hand­ed out fly­ers for the camp, and there were shouts of “No more bull!” which were echoed back from the top of the tow­er.

Oxford climate camp banner drop 128.07.2007

Today, four activists climbed to the top of Car­fax Tow­er and dropped a ban­ner satiris­ing the Oxford City Coun­cil logo (an ox cross­ing a ford) and pro­mot­ing the camp for cli­mate action. The ban­ner stayed put for over two hours.

On the ground around 25 peo­ple hand­ed out fly­ers for the camp, and there were shouts of “No more bull!” which were echoed back from the top of the tow­er.

Mean­while, a group of peo­ple were try­ing to build an ark. Their excuse? The gov­ern­ment and big busi­ness won’t take action on cli­mate change, so we’d bet­ter build an ark to accom­mo­date the earth­’s 7 bil­lion peo­ple. They tried to get the police to assist. When asked who was in charge, an activist iden­ti­fied only as Noah, said:
“No one is in charge; this is an Ark‑y”(!)

The recent flood­ing around the UK has left many peo­ple home­less — in Oxford­shire, one of the worst hit areas, many peo­ple were evac­u­at­ed to safe­ty. A local demon­stra­tion last Wednes­day bemoaned the fact that the gov­ern­ment are not doing enough to help those worst hit by the floods. It has been report­ed, in The Guardian, that flash floods in Britain are like­ly to be the biggest imme­di­ate prob­lem caused by cli­mate change.

Link: www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/oxford/2007/07/377181.html (more pics there too!).

oxford@climatecamp.org.uk
http://climatecamp.org.uk

reports of critical masses & London video

Anoth­er Lon­don Crit­i­cal Mass police has­sle.

Police rou­tine­ly inter­fere with Crit­i­cal Mass, hold­ing up the front of the ride, tar­get­ing sound sys­tems and some­times tick­et­ing rid­ers. They also video and pho­to­graph rid­ers at the start of every event. It is odd though that they nev­er turn up for the Decem­ber ride, which is close to the New year cel­e­bra­tions.

Anoth­er Lon­don Crit­i­cal Mass police has­sle.

Police rou­tine­ly inter­fere with Crit­i­cal Mass, hold­ing up the front of the ride, tar­get­ing sound sys­tems and some­times tick­et­ing rid­ers. They also video and pho­to­graph rid­ers at the start of every event. It is odd though that they nev­er turn up for the Decem­ber ride, which is close to the New year cel­e­bra­tions.

They just had to spoil it did­n’t they. In what would have been a fast and flu­id Mass with no holdups at junc­tions and the police pro­vid­ing use­ful cork­ing, they decid­ed to shut down a sound sys­tem in Park Lane, well out­side the SOCPA zone, and hold up traf­fic by so doing. It is as if the police are des­per­ate to assert their author­i­ty one way or anoth­er. Maybe they have dif­fi­cul­ty try­ing to jus­ti­fy such a large police pres­ence and expense on rou­tine cycle rides. Luck­i­ly the sound sys­tem bod emerged from his unpleas­ant police encounter unscathed and with a smile on his face.

Video Part 1 — video/mp4 18M
Video Video part 2 — video/mp4 22M
The raw video is over two hours long and was made with a hel­met cam. It has been edit­ed down into two parts total­ing 11 min­utes.
—————–

Gagged! 18 — South Wales Anarchist Newsletter

Heres the pdf — http://lists.riseup.net/www/d_read/gagged/gagged18.pdf
audio to fol­low in the next few days.

Heres the pdf — http://lists.riseup.net/www/d_read/gagged/gagged18.pdf
audio to fol­low in the next few days.

some last minute diary dates:
Sat­ur­day 6pm — Social Ecol­o­gy sem­i­nar ‑at the PAD, An intro­duc­tion by Social
Ecol­o­gy Lon­don
Sun­day noon — after the fry up at the PAD a pre­sen­ta­tion on this years
cli­mate camp, films, talks etc etc
Mon­day 8pm — South Wales Anar­chists forum — a net­work­ing gath­er­ing with
reports from all the local groups & cam­paigns. All wel­come. 8pm, Glam­or­gan
Staff Club, West­gate Street, Cardiff. If what you read in Gagged! inter­ests
you, why not come along!
Tues­day 7pm — at the PAD read­ing group sub­ject ‘Tur­bu­lence’ see
www.turbulence.org.uk

GAGGED! #18 • August 2007• www.gaggedanarchist.tk • FREE
Pro­duced by South Wales Anar­chists • southwalesanarchists.org

War on Ter­ror = War on Civ­il Lib­er­ties

South Wales cops have asked the Home Office for inva­sive pow­ers to stop & search peo­ple in Cardiff fol­low­ing ter­ror attacks in Lon­don & Glas­gow Air­port. In a move which echoes politi­cians’ calls to extend intern­ment with­out charge, the police here are using the ter­ror attacks as an excuse to extend their pow­ers & fur­ther strip away civ­il lib­er­ties. Sec­tion 44 of the Ter­ror­ism Act gives the plod unprece­dent­ed stop & search pow­ers & has already been mis­used to has­sle demon­stra­tors & oth­ers.
Speak­ing at the begin­ning of July Divi­sion­al Com­man­der for Cardiff, Chief Super­in­ten­dent Josh Jones said: ‘Com­mu­ni­ties defeat ter­ror­ism & I ask any­one who is stopped by a police offi­cer over the next few days to help us by engag­ing pos­i­tive­ly & pass­ing on any infor­ma­tion that they may have.’

How­ev­er, Assis­tant Chief Con­sta­ble Giles York also said: ‘We have seen sev­er­al well inten­tioned calls to the police & I am very encour­aged at the vig­i­lance being shown by the pub­lic of South Wales , par­tic­u­lar­ly as there is no spe­cif­ic threat to the area.’

Does any­one else see a bit of a con­tra­dic­tion here? They’ve asked for pow­ers to stop & search peo­ple because of the threat of ter­ror­ism, while at the same time admit­ting there is no threat to peo­ple in Cardiff . This is oppor­tunist non­sense. The cops are yet again using people’s very real fear of ter­ror­ism as an excuse to get more pow­ers for them­selves.

Know your rights

If you’re stopped & searched under Sec­tion 44 of the Ter­ror­ism Act 2000 you have spe­cif­ic & clear rights that cops will ignore unless you make it clear you know them. They may try & get you to give them your per­son­al details, & they may attempt to pho­to­graph you – they are not allowed to do either. Here are some point­ers pro­vid­ed by the civ­il rights group Lib­er­ty:
• The police can only give you a pat down, remove out­er clothes (eg: jack­et, hat) search your bags, & have you emp­ty your pock­ets
• You do not have to give your name or address.
• You do not have to explain why you are there.
• You are not allowed to flee the search, but you are not required to be active­ly com­pli­ant. You are allowed to “go limp” as pas­sive resis­tance dur­ing the search if you do not wish to com­ply.
• There is no per­mis­sion to col­lect DNA data dur­ing the search.
• You do not have to com­ply with any attempt to pho­to­graph or record you (although you can­not wear a mask).
• Women can not be touched by male police dur­ing these search­es.
• Make notes about the offi­cers search­ing you — name, num­ber, & police force.
• Note the time & the events pre­ced­ing the search.
• Note the spe­cif­ic word­ing used by the police to explain their author­i­ty to search.
• Ask police for the rea­son that they are search­ing you. Specif­i­cal­ly, are they search­ing for ter­ror­ists or are they sim­ply try­ing to deter, delay, or incon­ve­nience you?
check out: www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk

Plod Spread Ter­ror Fears

South Wales Police have been bleat­ing to the press about the increased lev­el of calls from fright­ened mem­bers of the pub­lic about so-called ‘sus­pi­cious’ behav­iour. Instead of appeal­ing for calm or just keep­ing their mouths shut, they’ve encour­aged peo­ple to remain ‘vig­i­lant’ against unknown or non-exis­tent threats, & report every para­noid fan­ta­sy to the police.

Assis­tant Chief Con­sta­ble Giles York said: ‘It is not only my offi­cers mak­ing South Wales a hos­tile area for any ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty, but also our com­mu­ni­ties. The pub­lic are our eyes & ears & we are grate­ful for the efforts they have tak­en to report any­thing which is slight­ly out of the ordi­nary.’
Exact­ly what are the best nuggets of ‘intel­li­gence’ a fright­ened pub­lic have passed on to York & his team?

‘We have received calls from busi­ness­es who are report­ing unusu­al pur­chas­es’, he said. ‘One super­mar­ket in South Wales noti­fied us of a group buy­ing a large amount of dig­i­tal cam­eras. In anoth­er call, the man­ag­er of a shop­ping cen­tre noti­fied us of a call he had received in which he was asked for maps of the cen­tre.’

Dig­i­tal cam­eras & maps of Cardiff ? Be afraid. Be very afraid.

York added: ‘Both of these calls turned out to have gen­uine expla­na­tions but I encour­age any­one to get in con­tact with us if they have any con­cerns, no mat­ter how triv­ial they may seem.’

Nobody is ille­gal

A Kebab-house was closed & 5 take­away work­ers arrest­ed when cops & immi­gra­tion bureau­crats raid­ed Cardiff’s ‘Chip Lane’ at the begin­ning of July.

One work­er at Dorothy’s Fish Bar said: “There have been lots of police here, at least 20 offi­cers. They sealed off Car­o­line Street at both ends & have been through all the take­aways look­ing for ille­gals. They checked all the staff’s pass­ports & their sta­tus.”

It isn’t known what peo­ple were nicked for, they could have been so-called ‘ille­gal immi­grants’ or asy­lum seek­ers await­ing Home Office approval to stay in the UK. Under cur­rent laws refugees are not allowed to work or earn mon­ey while their appli­ca­tions to stay are processed, hav­ing to live off tiny state hand­outs. If they work, they are forced into low-pay­ing menial jobs, & if dis­cov­ered they are arrest­ed & deport­ed.

Asy­lum seek­ers are often from coun­tries where there has been mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion by the West or regimes armed & sup­port­ed by the UK. Noth­ing can jus­ti­fy the suf­fer­ing that is imposed on inno­cent peo­ple like those arrest­ed in Cardiff in the name of ‘immi­gra­tion con­trols’. The rich will set­tle in whichev­er coun­try makes them pay the least tax, but the poor are forced to risk their lives to try & make a bet­ter life for them­selves. As Anar­chists we believe in com­plete free­dom of move­ment.

Pick­et lines

Roy­al mail staff in Wales took part in the 1st UK wide postal strike for 11 years on 29th June with anoth­er 24-hour strike begin­ning at 7pm on 12th July. Work­ers are angry at Roy­al Mails ‘mod­erni­sa­tion’ plans, which will result in the loss of 40,000 jobs & cuts in wages & pen­sions. It will also mean high­er stamp prices, less col­lec­tions, lat­er deliv­er­ies, cuts in week­end ser­vices & the clo­sure of even more post offices.

*****

A high school in Den­bighshire, north Wales, was forced to close as teach­ers staged a one day strike. Indus­tri­al action came fol­low­ing a long run­ning dis­pute over new pay arrange­ments intro­duced in 2006 & seri­ous con­cerns with work­ing prac­tices at the school with many staff feel­ing “demor­alised & under­val­ued”. Sound famil­iar? Ah the pre­dictabil­i­ty of cap­i­tal­ist work­ing rela­tions.

*****

Strike action at the trou­bled Grampian Food Group fac­to­ry, Llangefni, Angle­sey was can­celled at the last minute after work­ers accept­ed a 4% pay deal in a bal­lot on the 25th June. Work­ers were due to strike on 26th, 27th & 30th June because of dis­putes over pay, pen­sions & the grow­ing casu­al­i­sa­tion of the work­force.

*****

Health work­ers across the UK are still con­sid­er­ing strike action over a pay rise deal well below the rate of infla­tion. Ear­li­er this year health work­ers were offered a mis­er­able 2.5% pay rise. This was cut even fur­ther when both the gov­ern­ment & employ­ers said that in Wales, Eng­land & North­ern Ire­land this would be staged — with a 1.5% increase giv­en from April & the final 2.5% set­tle­ment paid from Novem­ber. How­ev­er, fol­low­ing work­ers com­plaints & union pres­sure the respec­tive gov­ern­men­tal bod­ies of Wales & North­ern Ire­land were forced to make u‑turns & health work­ers in these coun­tries will now receive their pay rise in full back­dat­ed from April. This does not yet apply to health work­ers in Eng­land. UNISON has con­duct­ed a bal­lot of its health work­er mem­bers (460,000 across the UK) for poten­tial indus­tri­al action sched­uled to take place in Sep­tem­ber 2007. Watch this space!

*****

Hos­pi­tal work­ers at Ysbyti’r Tri Chwm, Ebbw Vale held a demon­stra­tion out­side the hos­pi­tal in protest against £120-a-year car park­ing charges for staff, which were intro­duced in April. A spokesper­son for the Gwent NHS trust stat­ed that charg­ing for car park­ing was now stan­dard prac­tice at near­ly all NHS hos­pi­tals in south Wales & that there was a need to main­tain equi­ty with staff in oth­er hos­pi­tal sites who already pay charges. But many work­ers feel that they are being charged for the priv­i­lege of going to work & that park­ing should be free for all staff, patients & vis­i­tors. Too right!

“Wales?” Same old tory Sto­ry

David Cameron’s “New” Tories have appoint­ed an Eton-edu­cat­ed hered­i­tary peer who knows “absolute­ly noth­ing” about Wales as Welsh Affairs spokesman. Lord Glen­toran, who lives in North­ern Ire­land , said, “As far as the pol­i­tics of Wales is con­cerned, as of 48 hours ago I knew absolute­ly noth­ing. I now know noth­ing, plus a bit. I know noth­ing about the pol­i­tics but I know quite a lot about the geog­ra­phy.” he denied this was a prob­lem as he had once stayed with a “lit­er­al­ly work­ing class fam­i­ly in Bris­tol“ when he was 16, before join­ing the Army. You couldn’t make it up!

NO PIPELINE!

On the morn­ing of 19th June a huge num­ber of police & bailiffs arrived at the anti-pipeline tree camp in Sen­ny­bridge, Bre­con Bea­cons, to evict pro­test­ers from the trees.

The camp has suc­cess­ful­ly pre­vent­ed the destruc­tion of wood­land in the Bre­con Bea­cons Nation­al Park, on the route of the huge LNG pipleine, since Jan­u­ary this year. Pro­test­ers were tak­en to court in ear­ly June & had been await­ing the evic­tion. Some peo­ple were locked on high up in the trees whilst oth­ers were under­ground in tun­nels in order to delay Nation­al Grid’s mul­ti-mil­lion pound destruc­tive & dan­ger­ous project.The A40 road that ran past the camp was closed to traf­fic & police & bailiffs spent two days remov­ing the activists. Many peo­ple head­ed down to give sup­port but few made it onto site, most being kept in a police cor­don out­side with jour­nal­ists.

In total 12 peo­ple were arrest­ed, most receiv­ing cau­tions or con­di­tion­al dis­charge with a court fine. Nation­al Grid instant­ly began strip­ping away the land in order to pre­vent any­one occu­py­ing it again. Per­haps they for­get that the route of the pipe is 200 miles long…plenty of room for more resis­tance!
The camp was suc­cess­ful in rais­ing aware­ness of how the gov­ern­ment & cor­po­ra­tions are pri­ori­tis­ing mon­ey over the future of our envi­ron­ment. Any claim they make to be tak­ing cli­mate change & envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion seri­ous­ly becomes a joke when they hap­pi­ly over­rule objec­tions so they can destroy sup­pos­ed­ly ‘pro­tect­ed’ nat­ur­al land to make way for yet more fos­sil fuels. Check out: www.fightthepipe.co.uk

Who watch­es the watch­ers?

Five secu­ri­ty guards work­ing in Welsh Assem­bly build­ings, Cardiff were caught using CCTV cam­eras to look at near­by homes & hotels. While this has been going on for around two years, the voyeuris­tic secu­ri­ty guards have received noth­ing more than a slap on the wrist. An assem­bly spokesper­son claimed that these were “iso­lat­ed” inci­dences, which were not thought to have infringed any­one’s pri­va­cy. We bet the peo­ple whose hous­es were spied on feel a whole lot bet­ter now!

Wel­fare for the Rich

Work­ing class peo­ple in Wales are sub­si­dis­ing pri­vate indus­try not only through wage slav­ery (where the pay we take home is much less than the val­ue of the work we do), but also in huge pay­outs to busi­ness­es fund­ed by our tax­es.

Tax is meant to be cash we lend the state so that they can pay it back to us in essen­tial ser­vices, edu­ca­tion, health­care, & pen­sions. But politi­cians are giv­ing mil­lions to the rich so they can set up more busi­ness­es.

For 5 years the Welsh Assem­bly Gov­ern­ment has giv­en mil­lions of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey to busi­ness in the form of Assem­bly Invest­ment Grants (AIG) & Region­al Selec­tive Assis­tance (RSA). Dur­ing the first 4 years of the scheme’s oper­a­tions, over 1504 offers of AIG with a com­bined val­ue of £45.8 mil­lion were made to busi­ness­es. In the 7 year peri­od to March 2006 1173 offers of RSA with a com­bined val­ue of a whop­ping £650 mil­lion were made to busi­ness­es under­tak­ing cap­i­tal invest­ment projects in Wales.

These bribes for boss­es are typ­i­cal of the way in which gov­ern­ments oper­ate. Sweet­en­ers for the rich might look attrac­tive to politi­cians, & might even boost the econ­o­my & cre­ate a few jobs in the short-term. But in the long-term the peo­ple of Wales lose out big-time: Once prof­its at these sub­sidised busi­ness­es start to fall they close down their fac­to­ries, sack the work­force & move on to places where the labour is cheap­er & new gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies are to be had.

Under “New” Labour the gap between rich & poor has widened mas­sive­ly. Pay­outs to the rich are a major cause of this inequal­i­ty, the wealthy few can enjoy lives of com­fort & extrav­a­gance while 3 mil­lion British chil­dren live in pover­ty.

COME CAMP WITH US!

Organ­is­ing & strug­gling in our local com­mu­ni­ties is key to build­ing strong social move­ments & bring­ing about last­ing social change. But we also need to con­tin­ue to come togeth­er in mass mobil­i­sa­tions. It is at con­ver­gence spaces like the ones at the recent anti-G8 protests (see Gagged! #17) that we get a glimpse of our col­lec­tive pow­er. They offer us the space to organ­ise & come up with solu­tions to social & envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems with­out the need for lead­ers, where togeth­er we can cre­ate new worlds in the shell of the old. This sum­mer there are at least two major protest camps in the UK — come camp with us: you know you want to!

CAMP FOR CLIMATE ACTION

On 14th-21st August, some­where near Heathrow the 2nd Camp for Cli­mate Action will take place, with 8 days of low-impact, sus­tain­able liv­ing, learn­ing, col­lec­tive deci­sion-mak­ing & direct action to high­light the prob­lems of cli­mate change & solu­tions to halt it.

Cli­mate change is hap­pen­ing now. Peo­ple are dying of starv­ing now. Envi­ron­men­tal refugees are mov­ing now & accord­ing to the Red Cross already out­num­ber those dis­placed by armed con­flict. The sit­u­a­tion is only going to get worse — unless we act now! If we car­ry on with busi­ness as usu­al sci­en­tists pre­dict a pos­si­ble 6 degree rise in tem­per­a­ture. Last time the plan­et expe­ri­enced this was 250 mil­lion years ago & 95% of all life was wiped off the face of the earth.

Our entire way of life is cur­rent­ly struc­tured so that almost every aspect of our lives pro­duces harm­ful car­bon diox­ide emis­sion — trav­el, work, hous­ing, food. In order to cut these emis­sions by the 90% that many sci­en­tists believe nec­es­sary, some very major changes need to occur. So where is this change going to come from? We believe that far from offer­ing any solu­tions to our cur­rent eco­log­i­cal cri­sis gov­ern­ments are part of the prob­lem. Nei­ther can we expect cor­po­ra­tions or the mar­ket to offer any real solu­tions. Although we all need to make changes in the ways we live, it’s not enough just to switch brands. We need to chal­lenge the log­ic of cap­i­tal­ism, which got us into this mess in the first place. Cap­i­tal­ism is based on a very sim­ple prin­ci­ple — per­pet­u­al eco­nom­ic growth. This leads to the con­stant over pro­duc­tion of goods & ser­vices that we just don’t need, the con­sump­tion of the world’s finite resources & ever grow­ing amounts of waste that our ecosys­tem just can’t deal with. Expect­ing cor­po­ra­tions to sort this out is absurd. They are designed for one thing & that is the max­imi­sa­tion of prof­it.

The avi­a­tion indus­try is a major con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change. The main rea­son why the camp will be at Heathrow this year is to high­light the mas­sive con­tra­dic­tion of the gov­ern­ment claim­ing to be work­ing to reduce emis­sions while set­ting the con­di­tions for huge growth in fly­ing, through air­port expan­sion & sub­si­dies on air fuel, which has stim­u­lat­ed a mas­sive increas­ing in cheap flights.
Last year’s camp was a huge suc­cess (see Gagged! #13). Activists from south Wales joined over 600 peo­ple to take direct action against Drax pow­er­sta­tion, the UK’s largest car­bon diox­ide emit­ter & explored, debat­ed & dis­cussed grass roots alter­na­tives to the cur­rent sys­tem. Let’s make this year’s camp an even big­ger suc­cess! Togeth­er we can build a bet­ter world now! Check out: climatecamp.org.uk

No Bor­der Camp 2007

On 19th-24th Sep­tem­ber will be the UK’s first “No Bor­der Camp”, con­tin­u­ing the tra­di­tion of No Bor­der protest camps across the world since the late 1990s. The gov­ern­ment has recent­ly announced its plans to build a new deten­tion cen­tre near Gatwick air­port. This will be anoth­er in a long list of such places around the world. Places where peo­ple are locked up indef­i­nite­ly & with­out tri­al, & from where they can be forcibly deport­ed. Such deten­tion pris­ons are an inte­gral part of a sys­tem­at­ic, racist, & bar­barous pol­i­cy of suf­fer­ing. Togeth­er we can stop this one being built!

The camp will be an exper­i­ment in self-organ­i­sa­tion. A chance to work togeth­er to stop the build­ing of a new deten­tion cen­tre & gath­er ideas for how to build up the fight against migra­tion con­trols. It will be an impor­tant oppor­tu­ni­ty to chal­lenge & over­come the arti­fi­cial bor­ders of class, race, sex, sex­u­al­i­ty, & nation­al­i­ty which divide us from each oth­er, & act in sol­i­dar­i­ty with one anoth­er for a world with­out bor­ders.

‘Free­dom of move­ment’ is such a scary prospect for the wealthy few because migra­tion under­mines a cen­tral dimen­sion of con­tem­po­rary glob­al cap­i­tal­ism — that peo­ple liv­ing in dif­fer­ent parts of the world can be paid dif­fer­ent wages. Bor­ders, migra­tion con­trols, notions of cit­i­zen­ship & the ‘rights’ that these entail are all inte­gral mech­a­nisms through which this unequal, exploita­tive world sys­tem is main­tained. With­out them there would be no way of con­fin­ing peo­ple to a cer­tain place, a cer­tain set of work­ing con­di­tions & rate of pay. Check out: www.noborders.org.uk

COPWATCH

Cop Wankers Part II
Last month Gagged! report­ed how PC Richard Bowen got away with an 18 month sus­pend­ed sen­tence & avoid­ed jail after mas­tur­bat­ing in front of an arrest­ed woman in the back of a pan­da car. He was ordered to do 100 hours com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice as a painter & dec­o­ra­tor on the estate where he grew up. Let’s hope he doesn’t run out of wall­pa­per paste. This month we can reveal that yet anoth­er UK rozzer, Essex Police’s Mar­tin Chap­man, has been sus­pend­ed for the same thing. It must be some­thing about the uni­form. There is a sil­ver-lin­ing though: a few more like this & they might all go blind.

Gwent Cops on Tax Pay­er-Fund­ed fun
Mem­bers of the Gwent Police were liv­ing it up at our expense at major events this sum­mer. Cops were sent on free trips to Glas­ton­bury & Wim­ble­don, alleged­ly to get hints & tips on how to police major events ahead of the Ryder Cup, to be held in New­port in 2010. Super­in­ten­dent Nigel Rus­sell denied any sug­ges­tions cops had been on a jun­ket to Europe’s biggest music fes­ti­val, claim­ing they did not see any bands. “You won’t catch the cops in the mosh­pit,” he said, try­ing des­per­ate­ly not to sound like a cock.

Police Num­bers Fall
Over­paid work-shy plod are retir­ing in their droves & not enough new ones are tak­ing their place, accord­ing to new fig­ures. For the first time in ages more police are leav­ing Welsh forces than are being recruit­ed, because of a rise in retire­ment & res­ig­na­tion rates. The num­ber of cops resign­ing from the four Welsh forces has more than dou­bled since 2002, while retire­ments have also shot up, from 110 in 2002 to 269 last year.

Cop Cars Trashed at Gyp­sy Camp
Two South Wales Police vehi­cles had their win­dows smashed in a dis­tur­bance at an offi­cial traveller’s camp. A Gyp­sy Coun­cil spokesman told the press he didn’t know any­thing about the inci­dent, but added: “I’m sur­prised the police left their cars unat­tend­ed. It doesn’t mat­ter where they go on hous­ing estates any­where in the coun­try, they shouldn’t leave them unat­tend­ed. I don’t know any police force that would leave their cars.”

Welsh Plod Ignored Male Rape Vic­tim
Police have apol­o­gised to a rape vic­tim after their han­dling of his case was crit­i­cised by the Inde­pen­dent Police Com­plaints Com­mis­sion. Geof­frey Cole, from Neath, was sex­u­al­ly assault­ed in Octo­ber 2005. When he report­ed the crime, police offi­cers didn’t take him seri­ous­ly, & failed to make ade­quate efforts to exam­ine the crime scene for evi­dence. Mr Cole’s attack­er has nev­er been caught.

Diary Dates ‑If you are unsure about attend­ing any of the events list­ed below, why not get in touch?

August
1–5 — Big Green Gath­er­ing — Sus­tain­able liv­ing, music & hip­pies. Som­er­set. www.big-green-gathering.com
6 — South Wales Anar­chists forum — a net­work­ing gath­er­ing with reports from all the local groups & cam­paigns. All wel­come. 8pm, Glam­or­gan Staff Club, West­gate Street, Cardiff.
11 — No Bor­ders Info-day & Social — to mobilise for the No Bor­der camp; with speak­ers, films, food & live music. From 1pm at the PAD.
14–21 — Camp for Cli­mate Action – near Heathrow air­port. www.climatecamp.org.uk
27–30 — Smash EDO Action Camp — Direct Action against the war machine. www.smashedo.org.uk
Sep­tem­ber
11 — Dis­arm Desi — actions against Defence Sys­tems & Equip­ment Inter­na­tion­al arms fair. ExCel Cen­tre, Lon­don. www.dsei.org
19–24 — No Bor­ders Camp, near Gatwick. www.noborders.org.uk

Got any news or an event you want us to cov­er? send details to news@gaggedanarchist.tk

An audio ver­sion of Gagged! is avail­able, just check out www.gaggedanarchist.tk, where you can also sub­scribe online. Five thou­sand copies of each issue are dis­trib­uted through­out the region, we always look­ing to get Gagged! into new places. If you are inter­est­ed in get­ting involved in any way, please get in touch info@gaggedanarchist.tk

Peo­ples Autonomous Des­ti­na­tion
a phys­i­cal space in Cardiff for groups & indi­vid­u­als who can­not or will not work with­in the con­straints of gov­ern­men­tal or cor­po­rate con­trol.
Veg­an fryup every sun­day from 12noon.
Not-for-prof­it-shop every wednes­day from 5pm. Plus free shop all the time.
meet­ings every wednes­day from 7pm.
& lots more, check our notice board!
118 Clifton Street, Cardiff CF24 1LW • www.thepad.org.uk

Cam­paign Groups
Cardiff Ris­ing Tide
is a grass­roots group com­mit­ted to tak­ing action & build­ing a move­ment against cli­mate change. Meet irreg­u­lar­ly, get in con­tact for details.
cardiff@risingtide.org.uk
www.risingtide.org.uk
No Bor­ders Wales
organ­is­es on migra­tion issues & acts to break down bound­aries that divide us. Meet thurs­days 7pm at PAD.
noborderswales@riseup.net
www.noborders.org.uk
Cardiff Read­ing Anti-Cap­i­tal­ism
is a study/reading group explor­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary vision & strat­e­gy. Meet 7pm last tues­day of the month at PAD.

Cardiff Anar­chist Net­work (CAN) is a col­lec­tive of peo­ple who want to pur­sue polit­i­cal demon­stra­tions through direct action. There are no lead­ers, just like mind­ed indi­vid­u­als. cardiffanarchists@riseup.net myspace.com/cardiffanarchists Meet 8pm mon­days at PAD.

Gwent Anar­chists are like mind­ed indi­vid­u­als believ­ing in auton­o­my, respect & jus­tice; against all forms of exploita­tion & big­otry. Aim­ing to increase the knowl­edge of, & cre­ate a resis­tance to gov­ern­ments & big busi­ness abus­ing peo­ple & the earth. gwentanarchists@yahoo.co.uk myspace.com/gwentanarchists Meet 8.30pm every oth­er mon­day at the Murenger House, High Street, New­port.

Pem­brokeshire Anar­chists is a group of like mind­ed peo­ple who believe in direct action, jus­tice, free­dom & auton­o­my, are against cap­i­tal­ism, exploita­tion & big­otry. pembrokeshireanarchists@riseup.net myspace.com/pembrokeshireanarchists

Rhond­da Cyon Taf Anar­chists are an autonomous group of free-think­ing indi­vid­u­als who reject cap­i­tal­ism & resist state con­trol through direct action. We work towards the cre­ation of a world based on jus­tice & free­dom. rctanarchists@riseup.net

For more news from all over the world like the sort you find in Gagged! take a look at: www.schnews.org.uk www.indymedia.org.uk www.libcom.org www.anarkismo.net www.infoshop.org

info@gaggedanarchist.tk
http://www.gaggedanarchist.tk

Saving Iceland Blockades Hellisheidi Power Station

26.07.2007
Sav­ing Ice­land block­ad­ed two roads to Hell­ishei­di Pow­er Sta­tion in Ice­land at 7am this morn­ing.

The activists locked on to dif­fer­ent vehi­cles and one climbed a crane on the work­site and unfurled a gigan­tic ban­ner: “STOP PRODUCING ENERGY FOR WEAPONS”

Hellisheidi26.07.2007
Sav­ing Ice­land block­ad­ed two roads to Hell­ishei­di Pow­er Sta­tion in Ice­land at 7am this morn­ing.

The activists locked on to dif­fer­ent vehi­cles and one climbed a crane on the work­site and unfurled a gigan­tic ban­ner: “STOP PRODUCING ENERGY FOR WEAPONS”
Reports have just come in say­ing that 8 have been arrest­ed but that the climber in the crane is still free.

For more info please see:
http://www.savingiceland.org/hengill
http://www.savingiceland.org/node/857
http://www.savingiceland.org/node/858
http://www.savingiceland.org/vopnaveita

Camp for Climate Action — all the info you need to get there with the right stuff, take action & do workshops

The Camp for Cli­mate Action 2007 — Tues­day 14th August to Tues­day 21st August
Check out Indy­media for news dur­ing the camp — this web­site will not get updat­ed for the dura­tionsite occu­pied: come on down.

Key infor­ma­tion for peo­ple com­ing
Avenge the Plan­et — www.reclaimtheskies.com — infor­ma­tion for action
24 Hours of Mass Action
Location/getting there
Work­shop pro­gramme
Toolk­it for cli­mate action
Injunc­tion: all-clear details & legal brief­ing
Legal advice to read before arrival

Camp for Climate Action heads in ground bannerThe Camp for Cli­mate Action 2007 — Tues­day 14th August to Tues­day 21st August
Check out Indy­media for news dur­ing the camp — this web­site will not get updat­ed for the dura­tionsite occu­pied: come on down.

Key infor­ma­tion for peo­ple com­ing
Avenge the Plan­et — www.reclaimtheskies.com — infor­ma­tion for action
24 Hours of Mass Action
Location/getting there
Work­shop pro­gramme
Toolk­it for cli­mate action
Injunc­tion: all-clear details & legal brief­ing
Legal advice to read before arrival
Eight days of low-impact liv­ing, debates, learn­ing skills, and high-impact direct action tack­ling the root caus­es of cli­mate change. Why?

The sci­ence is clear: glob­al emis­sions of car­bon diox­ide must go into rapid decline with­in the next decade. If they don’t, human­i­ty faces a bleak future.

To achieve this in a way that respects glob­al jus­tice means 90% cuts in devel­oped coun­tries like the UK. How will we cut emis­sions and end inequal­i­ty? How will we achieve this in the face of an eco­nom­ic sys­tem intent on expand­ing at any cost, with cor­po­ra­tions steal­ing the lan­guage of change to dis­guise busi­ness as usu­al? Ordi­nary peo­ple will have to join togeth­er to cre­ate real solu­tions and take direct action against the root caus­es of the prob­lem.

This year the Camp for Cli­mate Action will be at Heathrow, the world’s busiest air­port and a big­ger source of CO2 emis­sions than most coun­tries. It’s sheer luna­cy in this time of eco­log­i­cal cri­sis, but the avi­a­tion indus­try are push­ing to almost dou­ble the air­port’s capac­i­ty by increas­ing flights and build­ing a third run­way. The bat­tle to stop them will be one of the most impor­tant envi­ron­men­tal bat­tles in West­ern Europe.

What we do now decides what the future holds. Those who came before us didn’t know the prob­lem, those who come after us will have severe­ly lim­it­ed options. We have both the pow­er and the respon­si­bil­i­ty to make a rad­i­cal­ly bet­ter world.

By unit­ing in col­lec­tive action this sum­mer we can begin to make it hap­pen.

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

New­ly pub­lished — leaflet and web­site:
Heathrow Air­port and the indus­tries that make it work

Avenge the Plan­et — encour­ag­ing affin­i­ty group action against the avi­a­tion indus­try
Hot action not hot air

Full details at www.reclaimtheskies.com

Out Now! Toolkit for Climate Action

Just in time for the 2007 Cli­mate Camp — the Toolk­it for Cli­mate Action is now ready. With this toolk­it we hope to inspire you to take action — at home, at school, at work, in your com­mu­ni­ty. The toolk­it has been put togeth­er by the Net­work for Cli­mate Action, which is has grown out of and is asso­ci­at­ed with the Cli­mate Camp.

Network for Climate Action logoJust in time for the 2007 Cli­mate Camp — the Toolk­it for Cli­mate Action is now ready. With this toolk­it we hope to inspire you to take action — at home, at school, at work, in your com­mu­ni­ty. The toolk­it has been put togeth­er by the Net­work for Cli­mate Action, which is has grown out of and is asso­ci­at­ed with the Cli­mate Camp.

The toolk­it con­tains mass­es of use­ful infor­ma­tion relat­ed to cli­mate chaos includ­ing:
*use­ful con­tacts, *action resources, *group work­ing, *out­reach ideas, *images and graph­ics, *press and media, *facts and sci­ence, *pos­i­tive alter­na­tives, *fly­ers and posters, *films and music

You can look at it on the web:

http://www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk

It’s also avail­able as a pack con­tain­ing a DVD with all the resources on it, print­ed guides on direct action, legal issues, media and pub­lic­i­ty, plus a con­tact list for peo­ple involved in cli­mate action.

Pick up your pack at the Big Green Gath­er­ing or the Cli­mate Camp.

Or if you can’t wait or aren’t going there, we can post one to you.

Dona­tions would be great too!
Con­tact Details
http://www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk/toolkit/contactus.html

CONTRIBUTE!
We’d like the resource web­site grow and maybe we’ll even put out a sec­ond paper edi­tion. If you are up for help­ing get in touch! Let us know you have any use­ful cli­mate relat­ed resources that should be on it.

FEEDBACK
The pack­’s been put togeth­er by just a few peo­ple and it was lots and lots of work — which means that some of it may not be as great as it could be. It’d be real­ly good to get your com­ments and offers of help to improve it.

http://www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk

5 detained after peaceful ‘Bamboo Blockade’ as Japanese A‑bomb survivors appeal to Britian to get rid of Trident

At around 2.30 pm today (July 25), Strath­clyde police arrest­ed 10 peo­ple, includ­ing atom­ic bomb sur­vivors (‘Hibakusha’) from Nagasa­ki dur­ing a non­vi­o­lent block­ade of the main gates of the Faslane nuclear base in Scot­land, where the UK’s Tri­dent nuclear weapons are deployed.

Bamboo Faslane blockade 1Bamboo Faslane blockade 2At around 2.30 pm today (July 25), Strath­clyde police arrest­ed 10 peo­ple, includ­ing atom­ic bomb sur­vivors (‘Hibakusha’) from Nagasa­ki dur­ing a non­vi­o­lent block­ade of the main gates of the Faslane nuclear base in Scot­land, where the UK’s Tri­dent nuclear weapons are deployed.

The Japan­ese group, sup­port­ed by around 100 oth­ers, includ­ing a large group of Quak­ers, placed peace cranes in front of the main (North) gate of the base. As police moved in to remove the cranes, four grand­moth­ers from Fukuo­ka and the son of a Nagasa­ki bomb sur­vivor sat in front of the gate, while five more, includ­ing his father and peace cam­paign­ers from Hiroshi­ma, Nagasa­ki and Fin­land locked them­selves togeth­er with bam­boo arm locks. The Japan­ese appealed to the Scot­tish and British gov­ern­ments not to deploy or renew the Tri­dent nuclear weapon sys­tem. Though the police quick­ly ‘dear­rest­ed’ four elder­ly women and one young man, who had sat in front of the gate singing Japan­ese peace songs, it took them near­ly an hour to cut the bam­boo block­ade and reopen the gate. The four Japan­ese men and a Finnish woman were charged with ‘breach of the peace’ and tak­en to Clyde­bank Police Sta­tion.

As he was arrest­ed, Masahiko Moriguchi, head of the edi­to­r­i­al com­mit­tee of the peri­od­i­cal ‘Tes­ti­mo­ny – Voic­es of Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki’ who sur­vived the atom­ic bomb­ing of Nagasa­ki when he was 7 years old, said: “The Faslane 365 cam­paign in the UK is encour­ag­ing the epoch-mak­ing first step towards the abo­li­tion of nuclear weapons by call­ing on Britain to renounce Tri­dent. As one who expe­ri­enced the A‑bomb, I want­ed to see this nuclear base with my own eyes and per­son­al­ly take part in this action to halt the nuclear weapons.”

His son, Shinya Moriguchi (born in Nagasa­ki, now aged 30), was among those lay­ing cranes in front of the gate. He said: “The UK’s deci­sion on whether or not to renew the Tri­dent sys­tem is not only a British mat­ter, but will influ­ence pro­lif­er­a­tion and inse­cu­ri­ty around the world. I wish the UK to make a wise and ratio­nal deci­sion and pio­neer the road to nuclear abo­li­tion, which would make this world safer.”

Before being arrest­ed in the Bam­boo Block­ade, Kohei Ueya­ma from Hiroshi­ma (aged 26), said he came to Faslane to show sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Scot­tish peo­ple tak­ing non­vi­o­lent action to get rid of Tri­dent: “If we do some­thing for peace in our neigh­bour­hood and coun­try, we can solve any inter­na­tion­al prob­lem.”

Sev­er­al mem­bers of the del­e­ga­tion are pro­fes­sors, sci­en­tists and teach­ers. Yoshiko Sakai, a retired quan­tum chemist, said she was “eager for Britain to be the first coun­try that has the hon­our of abol­ish­ing nuclear weapons”. Physics pro­fes­sor Kouichi Toyoshi­ma added, “As a mem­ber of the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty, I feel it’s my duty to make every effort to elim­i­nate all such weapons from the world, since the sci­en­tists of today must take over the respon­si­bil­i­ty of our pre­de­ces­sors.”

Miyoshi Eisaku (60), Pro­fes­sor of Engi­neer­ing from Fukuo­ka, brought an exhi­bi­tion of pho­tographs and paint­ings from Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki. As he was arrest­ed he said “We have to bear wit­ness to the hor­ror of nuclear weapons so that they are nev­er ever used in this world again.”

The names of those detained for the Bam­boo Block­ade are:
Kouichi Toyoshi­ma, Pro­fes­sor of Physics from Saga Uni­ver­si­ty, aged 59
Kohei Ueya­ma (26) from Hiroshi­ma
Masahiko Moriguchi, head of the edi­to­r­i­al com­mit­tee of the peri­od­i­cal ‘Tes­ti­mo­ny — Voic­es of Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki’
Anna-Lin­néa Rund­berg from Åland Islands, Fin­land (mem­ber of the Faslane 365 Steer­ing Group).

The names of the group who risked arrest by sit­ting down with peace cranes and singing in front of the gate are:
Yasuko Kuramo­to (67) retired teacher from Fukuo­ka
Yoshiko Sakai (67) retired researcher in quan­tum chem­istry
Shinya Moriguchi (30), the son of Masahiko Moriguchi, and a sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion Hibakusha from Nagasa­ki.
Mariko Kuro­ki, lan­guage teacher from Fukuo­ka
Kayoko Toyoshi­ma, who is Pro­fes­sor Toyoshima’s wife.

No More Bull On Climate Change: Action this Saturday

24.07.2007

PRESS RELEASE
NO MORE BULL ON CLIMATE CHANGE
Cli­mate change cam­paign­ers to descend on Corn­mar­ket Street

Drowning bull24.07.2007

PRESS RELEASE
NO MORE BULL ON CLIMATE CHANGE
Cli­mate change cam­paign­ers to descend on Corn­mar­ket Street

No more bull…

This Sat­ur­day many envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­ers will descend on Corn­mar­ket Street to raise aware­ness about cli­mate change. A colour­ful, vibrant, and var­ied crowd will be run­ning around Oxford.

One activist who will be tak­ing part in one of the many actions this Sat­ur­day said:
“Cli­mate change is the most press­ing issue of our time, if we don’t take action now to slow down the oncom­ing dis­as­ter then no-one can.”

The main action will occur from 12pm at a well-known land­mark, oth­er actions will be tak­ing place around the town. There will also be a Flash Mob beach par­ty resplen­dent in biki­nis and bermu­da shorts.

The recent flood­ing in Oxford­shire led to many peo­ple being removed from some of the worst hit areas, the Oxford Mail report­ed that over 200 peo­ple need­ed to be evac­u­at­ed to safety[1]. The Guardian report­ed that the ‘flash floods in Britain are like­ly to be the biggest imme­di­ate prob­lem caused by cli­mate change’[2].

Anoth­er cam­paign­er semi-joked of the cur­rent flood­ing:
“If the water keeps on ris­ing, we’ll have to build an ark!”

This action has been called as part of the upcom­ing Camp for Cli­mate Action[3] where hun­dreds of peo­ple will meet, par­tic­i­pate in work­shops, and take action on the root caus­es on cli­mate change.

The Camp for Cli­mate Action will be at Heathrow Air­port from the 14th – 21st August.

ENDS

Notes to edi­tor:

1.Matt Wilkin­son, ‘Flood­ing: Evac­u­a­tion hotel full’, Oxford Mail, 24/07/07
2.Matthew Weaver, ‘Flash floods ‘biggest cli­mate threat to UK’, The Guardian, 12/07/07
3.The Camp for Cli­mate Action is a nation­al cam­paign to encour­age peo­ple to tack­le the root caus­es of cli­mate change. In 2006, 600 cam­paign­ers marched on Drax Pow­er Sta­tion in Sel­by to protest against car­bon emis­sions; this year the avi­a­tion indus­try will be chal­lenged. See www.climatecamp.org.uk for more details.
4.A study by Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty, pub­lished by the Inter-gov­ern­men­tal Com­mit­tee on Cli­mate Change, found that there will 25 mil­lion envi­ron­men­tal refugees who will be dis­placed by cli­mate chaos.

Tara’s Last Stand?

vio­lence on tara
7 arrests
court case today
urgent help need­ed

www.indymedia.ie click on ´watch revolt footage here‘

 faeryarmy@yahoo.co.uk

Tara’s Last Stand?

vio­lence on tara
7 arrests
court case today
urgent help need­ed

www.indymedia.ie click on ´watch revolt footage here‘

 faeryarmy@yahoo.co.uk

Tara’s Last Stand?

An open let­ter to all who are inter­est­ed in the defence of the earth and the stand­ing-up to pow­er.
Please for­ward, copy, or cir­cu­late.

Place: Tara Val­ley, Hill of Tara, Coun­ty Meath, Repub­lic of Ire­land
Time: NOW

His­to­ry: Tara Hill and Val­ley are part of an ancient tem­ple com­plex of earth­works, henges, raths (forts), and souter­rains (under­ground tomb cham­bers). Many of the works pre-date the pyra­mids. Tara was used as the crown­ing place of the old high kings of Ire­land. It is still in use for cer­e­monies today, and is par­tic­u­lar­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Samhain (Hallowe’en).

Threat: The Irish gov­ern­ment have sanc­tioned a route through the Tara val­ley of the M3 motor­way. This road will be tolled, is the least-favourable of the five options avail­able accord­ing to prin­ci­ples of road-build­ing and eco­nom­ic sense, will ’save’ fif­teen min­utes of time to the M50 bot­tle­neck (British M25 equiv­a­lent) dur­ing the morn­ing rush hour to Dublin, and is being sit­ed on a stretch of road that is not even that busy. A gigan­tic com­plex of shop­ping malls is planned at an inter­change, due to be sit­ed 1000 yards from the Hill of Tara. Many ancient mon­u­ments have already been destroyed. Many more new and unusu­al find­ings DUG UP DURING THE EXCAVATION OF THE LAND FOR THE ROAD have been either record­ed by record’ (ie made a note of in a book and destroyed) or are being stored in ware­hous­es. Such ancient arte­facts dug up include human bones from old graves.

Actions to date: Around ten to twelve reg­u­lar peo­ple have tak­en it in shifts for the past year in keep­ing an unbro­ken vig­il fire and camp burn­ing on Tara Hill. These peo­ple have held up the progress of the road by direct action, includ­ing dig­ger-div­ing thus far.

Cur­rent Sit­u­a­tion: The Euro­pean Par­lia­ment (EU) has told the Irish Gov­ern­ment that the work they are doing is ille­gal and to cease imme­di­ate­ly. Just after this was announced in the press, many more dig­gers and machines were sent, on Wednes­day July 18th, to a mon­u­ment on the site known as ‘Soldier’s Hill’ for the road com­pa­ny to estab­lish a com­pound. Hav­ing recruit­ed many more dri­vers, and turned them into nom­i­nal secu­ri­ty guards for the day, the com­pa­ny deployed its staff to aggres­sive­ly remove all pro­tes­tors from site. Sev­en pro­tes­tors were arrest­ed for not fol­low­ing a policeman‘s orders and pub­lic order offences. Three were bailed at 500 Euros, with the con­di­tion they cease to go to the sites to protest. A fur­ther four refused those bail con­di­tions and were remand­ed on a week’s cus­tody at Clover Hill prison, Dublin, until a court case pend­ing Wednes­day July 25th. Inter­net footage of the high lev­els of vio­lence utilised by the road company’s men sur­prised even the long-term cam­paign­ers at Ross­port, used to deal­ing with such intim­i­da­tion.

The Last Stand: A court case is pend­ing in the EU court, but the road com­pa­ny, aim­ing to save on much lost time and mon­ey has start­ed a big push, and has now reached the part of the route where a gigan­tic WOODHENGE was unearthed dur­ing the exca­va­tion. This site is cur­rent­ly being ‘record­ed by record’ by state-appoint­ed archae­ol­o­gists. Their work is SAID to need anoth­er two to three weeks to com­plete. The EU court case is due mid-to-late August The Henge is look­ing like the site of the last stand. The com­pa­ny has draft­ed in round-the-clock secu­ri­ty. The Irish Police has said it will arrest any­one found on site, even if they are mere­ly mount­ing a peace­ful protest. The road com­pa­ny and the Irish Gov­ern­ment have con­tin­ued destroy­ing mon­u­ments, even before the ‘record­ing by record’ process has fin­ished. There are cur­rent­ly around ten to twen­ty pro­tes­tors on site.

A Plea: If any­one out there has it in their heart, time, space, trip, what­ev­er to come and lend a hand, the fol­low­ing three gen­er­al areas would love to be catered for:

1. DIRECT ACTION: any­one with any expe­ri­ence of, enjoy­ment in doing and a con­tin­ued desire to do lock­ing-on, tree-house build­ing, rope­way-sling­ing and so on are instruct­ed to make their way to the site as soon as pos­si­ble. This plea is espe­cial­ly direct­ed to those who are part of the vic­to­ri­ous Nine Ladies camp in Der­byshire, who may be at a loose end and may want to get involved in this action. It may only last a month, one way or the oth­er. Although Irish police has said it will arrest any­one on site, there is still the pos­si­bil­i­ty of dig­ger-div­ing and road-block­ing, pro­vid­ed the num­bers are increased.

2. MAGIC ACTION: as part of a psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare front, music, dance, song, par­ty­ing and all the rest of it are very wel­come at this time. This is not only a call for Direct Action peo­ple. The fes­ti­val of Lugh­nasa (Lam­mas or Har­vest Fes­ti­val) starts on Wednes­day August 1st and it is intend­ed to hold cer­e­mo­ny, play games, sing, recite poet­ry, and have a par­ty in the woods, from then and through­out the week­end of July 3rd to 5th, and on and on. Even if you can only make it over for a few days, do come for the par­ty any­way!

3. PRACTICAL ACTION: All man­ner of kitchen work­ers, camp-clean­ers, fire-ten­ders- you-name-it-ers, what­ev­er it takes to main­tain a decent camp. There are always things to do, and there are not real­ly enough there yet to make the stand that is required.

THE NUMBERS GAME:

Expe­ri­enced Direct Action pro­tes­tors reck­on that a good stand could be made at the Henge if there are AT LEAST ONE HUNDRED PEOPLE THERE. If there are TWO HUNDRED, then the posi­tion is that much stronger, while THREE HUNDRED would, it is reck­oned, tip the bal­ance against the road com­pa­ny.

In order for the road to be stopped, AS MANY AS POSSIBLE are plead­ed with to help in any way they can, to come to Tara AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Oth­er­wise, it may be too late.

Thank you for your time.

We Hope to See you on the Hill

yours, in love of the land,

THE FIANNA FAERY (Sol­diers of Faery)
TARA BRIGADE
HILL OF TARA