First Directions to The Camp for Climate Action 2007.….

The camp dates are draw­ing near­er and near­er and we’re all des­per­ate to know where it will be… but we’ll just have to wait a lit­tle longer!

But what we do know is that if you get your­self to Staines rail­way sta­tion in West Lon­don by 10am on Tues­day 14th August, you will be greet­ed by our friend­ly wel­come team and prompt­ly trans­port­ed via a mag­i­cal mys­tery tour, to the camp! (There will also be lifts to the camp lat­er in the day and through­out the week.)

The camp dates are draw­ing near­er and near­er and we’re all des­per­ate to know where it will be… but we’ll just have to wait a lit­tle longer!

But what we do know is that if you get your­self to Staines rail­way sta­tion in West Lon­don by 10am on Tues­day 14th August, you will be greet­ed by our friend­ly wel­come team and prompt­ly trans­port­ed via a mag­i­cal mys­tery tour, to the camp! (There will also be lifts to the camp lat­er in the day and through­out the week.)

Camp for Cli­mate Action comes to Heathrow this sum­mer.

Avi­a­tion is the fastest grow­ing source of green­house gas emis­sions in the UK, and all our efforts to tack­le cli­mate change in oth­er sec­tors are undone by the mas­sive growth in air trav­el.
Hold­ing the camp at Heathrow aims to high­light the luna­cy of the gov­ern­men­t’s air­port expan­sion plans, tar­get indus­try giants prof­i­teer­ing from the cli­mate cri­sis, and raise aware­ness of the need to fly less.
The camp will also sup­port local res­i­dents in their long-term strug­gle against the build­ing of a third run­way and the destruc­tion of their com­mu­ni­ties.

There will be a day of mass direct action aim­ing to dis­rupt the activ­i­ties of the air­port and the avi­a­tion indus­try, but in the inter­ests of pub­lic safe­ty there will be no attempt to block­ade run­ways.

Although the loca­tion is dif­fer­ent, the phi­los­o­phy of the camp remains the same: to be a place for the bur­geon­ing net­work of peo­ple tak­ing rad­i­cal action on cli­mate change around the coun­try to come togeth­er for a week of low-impact liv­ing, edu­ca­tion, debate, net­work­ing, strate­gis­ing, cel­e­bra­tion, and direct action.
The camp will fea­ture over 100 work­shops cov­er­ing top­ics such as cli­mate change impacts, car­bon off­set­ting, bio­fu­els, peak oil, per­ma­cul­ture, prac­ti­cal renew­ables, cam­paign strat­e­gy, skills for direct action, and much more.
Run with­out lead­ers by every­one who comes along, it will be a work­ing eco­log­i­cal vil­lage using renew­able ener­gy, com­post­ing waste and sourc­ing food local­ly.

It all comes down to us, now. We are the last gen­er­a­tion that can do any­thing about cli­mate change. In 20 or 30 years’ time, should we not change our ways, we’ll be com­mit­ted to emis­sions increas­es that will see forests burn, soils decay, oceans rise, and mil­lions of peo­ple die. If we don’t get this issue right, so much else is lost too.

We still have time, but not for long. Make it count.

Why tar­get avi­a­tion?

It is the fastest grow­ing source of CO2 emis­sions.
It has been left out of the first fal­ter­ing frame­works to con­trol emis­sions, eg. the Kyoto Pro­to­col and the Cli­mate Bill.
It is the most dam­ag­ing form of trans­port.
Unlike the oth­er high emit­ting sec­tors (e.g. ener­gy and food pro­duc­tion), there is no alter­na­tive sus­tain­able tech­nol­o­gy.

The only way to reduce emis­sions from avi­a­tion is to reduce the num­ber of flights.
And unlike those oth­er sec­tors, avi­a­tion is not a neces­si­ty.
There is a major air­port expan­sion pro­gramme planned at 21 air­ports, with increas­es in capac­i­ty equiv­a­lent to a new Heathrow every 5 years. This expan­sion pro­gramme locks us into increased emis­sions, and undoes all our oth­er efforts else­where to reduce emis­sions.

Why tar­get Heathrow?

Nowhere in the UK is there a larg­er source of CO2 emis­sions. Most coun­tries emit less green­house gas­es than Heathrow’s planes.

Heathrow is the world’s busiest inter­na­tion­al air­port. It is an icon­ic glob­al sym­bol of avi­a­tion.
Heathrow is the heart of the UK?s avi­a­tion indus­try.
Heathrow is the cen­tral plank of the gov­ern­men­t’s air­port expan­sion plans. Heathrow has a planned third run­way that can be stopped.

The third run­way would bull­doze entire vil­lages and destroy com­mu­ni­ties. There is a big, estab­lished, long-term local cam­paign against Heathrow and BAA that we can join forces with.

There is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to high­light bias in the cor­rupt plan­ning process in favour of big busi­ness and devel­op­ment.

The pres­ence of Har­mondsworth deten­tion cen­tre near­by high­lights the plight of envi­ron­men­tal refugees and the fact that cli­mate change is fun­da­men­tal­ly an issue of social and glob­al injus­tice.

Aboriginal Elders Occupy Barrick Gold’s Australian Head Office

July 13th, 2007
Wirad­juri Elders Neville “Chap­py” Williams (third from left) and Ron Gard­ner (back to cam­era in wheel­chair) in tense nego­ti­a­tions with Bar­rick­’s Steve Robin­son (fourth from left) while oth­er Bar­rick staff and pro­tes­tors look on. Bar­rick Gold office foy­er, Perth West­ern Aus­tralia 11 July 2007.

Barrick Gold occupied, AustraliaJuly 13th, 2007
Wirad­juri Elders Neville “Chap­py” Williams (third from left) and Ron Gard­ner (back to cam­era in wheel­chair) in tense nego­ti­a­tions with Bar­rick­’s Steve Robin­son (fourth from left) while oth­er Bar­rick staff and pro­tes­tors look on. Bar­rick Gold office foy­er, Perth West­ern Aus­tralia 11 July 2007.

(Span­ish ver­sion avail­able at: http://barrick.live.radicaldesigns.org/article.php?id=165)

Elders and sup­port­ers of the Wirad­juri Abo­rig­i­nal Nation have occu­pied the Aus­tralian head office of the world’s largest gold min­ing com­pa­ny, Bar­rick Gold.

Around 35 peo­ple peace­ful­ly occu­pied Bar­rick Gold’s Aus­tralian head­quar­ters in Perth, West­ern Aus­tralia on Wednes­day in a bid to force the com­pa­ny to meet Wirad­juri pro­to­cols relat­ing to peo­ple with blood­lines to Lake Cow­al in Cen­tral New South Wales where Bar­rick is oper­at­ing a gold mine.

Elders Neville ‘Chap­py’ Williams and Ron Gard­ner sought from Bar­rick:

* copy of the Cow­al Gold Project Ancil­lary Deed between Bar­rick Aus­tralia Lim­it­ed and the so-called ‘Wirad­juri Con­dobolin Native Title Claim Group’
* a response to an evic­tion notice deliv­ered to Bar­rick
* a meet­ing with Bar­rick senior man­age­ment, and
* any legal papers the com­pa­ny has that are the prop­er­ty of the Wirad­juri Elders.

Barrick’s response was to call the police and to ask the pro­test­ers to leave the premis­es say­ing they were ‘tres­pass­ing on pri­vate prop­er­ty’. After a sit-in last­ing around an hour and being threat­ened with arrest, the Elders and sup­port­ers agreed to leave on the con­di­tion that Bar­rick agree to respond to the Elders’ ver­bal and writ­ten demands in writ­ing.

“We’re fed up with Barrick’s lack of cour­tesy to Wirad­juri Elders so we’ve been forced to take this kind of action. We’ve been try­ing to get a copy of the ancil­lary deed and oth­er doc­u­ments like a full inven­to­ry of arte­facts col­lect­ed at Lake Cow­al for a long time now,” Mr Williams said.

“All the Wirad­juri with ties to Lake Cow­al have a right to see the deed and the inven­to­ry, not just the five sell-outs who have signed away our ancient cul­tur­al her­itage. We’ve gone through the cor­rect chan­nels, through Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion, let­ters to Bar­rick and a request I made per­son­al­ly to Bar­rick Chair­man, Peter Munk in Cana­da on only 2 May at their AGM. They keep say­ing the deed is ‘com­mer­cial-in-con­fi­dence’. So what have they got to hide? They should be open with all of us Wirad­juri peo­ple, but they keep on act­ing in secret and putting a lot of spin on their pub­lic­i­ty about the mine and its so-called ‘ben­e­fits’. Their Perth pub­lic rela­tions offi­cer was extreme­ly rude to us and showed us no respect at all.”

“Bar­rick has not gone through the appro­pri­ate pro­to­col, nor have they spo­ken to the right Wirad­juri peo­ple about Lake Cow­al,” Ron Gard­ner said. A nine-year vet­er­an of the cam­paign to stop the gold mine in the Wirad­juri Nation’s heart­land, Gard­ner has strong feel­ings about the mine. Until recent­ly ill health has kept him away from the lake.

“I was shocked and emo­tion­al­ly upset to the point of tears when I saw the mine infra­struc­ture on our sacred place,” he said.

“There are buri­als out there and it’s a mas­sacre site. There are thou­sands of arte­facts and scarred trees in the area that are tes­ta­ment to our People’s long and con­tin­u­ing occu­pa­tion of the region, yet Bar­rick won’t release an inven­to­ry of all the arti­facts they have col­lect­ed or tell us what has hap­pened to the scarred trees that have been removed to make way for the mine.

“The mine has split the Wirad­juri com­mu­ni­ty. You don’t know who you can talk to or trust any more. Bar­rick con­tin­ues to deal with just a small group over the $9.2 mil­lion deal they made. They’ve set up the Wirad­juri Con­dobolin Cor­po­ra­tion (WCC) but you have to join to become a mem­ber. As Chap­py says, “We know who we are. You’re born into Wirad­juri. You don’t need a mem­ber­ship appli­ca­tion”.

“The WCC is not ben­e­fit­ing the major­i­ty of Wirad­juri peo­ple. Most of us still have the same prob­lems, poor health, hous­ing in need of main­te­nance and upgrade and lack of edu­ca­tion and job prospects.

“Bar­rick are wreck­ing the ecol­o­gy out there at Lake Cow­al. The com­pa­ny is draw­ing up to 3650 mega­l­itres of water a year out the ground­wa­ter and Lach­lan Riv­er near the lake and we’re still in the worst drought in record­ed his­to­ry.”

“They are using cyanide to leach gold from the ore. This inevitably leach­es into the soil and can make its way into the water sys­tem. Despite what the com­pa­ny says in its PR spin, gold min­ing is just not safe. One tea­spoon of 2% cyanide can kill a human and a lot of cyanide spills have occurred around the world. They are dig­ging up a mas­sive mount of earth out there and will leave a pit 1 kilo­me­tre long, 825 metres wide and 325 metres deep. It will be there for­ev­er, nev­er to be filled in, a lega­cy for future gen­er­a­tions.”

“They’ve cut down thou­sands of old trees that take hun­dreds of years to grow and pro­vide habi­tat for lots of native species. Yes, they’ve replant­ed some veg­e­ta­tion but thou­sands of trees have died because they weren’t watered in the con­tin­u­ing drought”, Mr Gard­ner said.

“So we’re not going to stop our protests against Bar­rick until we get some jus­tice,” Mr Williams said.

“They’ve made their posi­tion very clear and looks like they won’t budge. But we’re not alone. We have many rock sol­id sup­port­ers here in Aus­tralia like Kungarakan/Gurindji Elder Speedy McGuin­ness from the North­ern Ter­ri­to­ry, who is fight­ing his own bat­tle against new ura­ni­um mines on Abo­rig­i­nal land there.

“We have great sup­port from the stu­dents who sat in at Barrick’s Perth head office and our Abo­rig­i­nal and non-Abo­rig­i­nal friends across Aus­tralia and the world in the Coali­tion to Pro­tect Lake Cow­al. We’ve also got a great inter­na­tion­al coali­tion going with First Nations peo­ples where Bar­rick is dam­ag­ing and destroy­ing Abo­rig­i­nal lands in Africa and North and South Amer­i­ca. We’ll nev­er give up the fight until the mine is stopped and our land is returned to us,” he said.

This is an ongo­ing sto­ry. Bar­rick faxed a let­ter to the Elders yes­ter­day after­noon Perth time in response to their demands. The Elders have referred it to their legal coun­sel for advice.

http://www.savelakecowal.org/intro.html
Con­tact: Neville ‘Chap­py’ Williams +61 416 316 774
Ron Gard­ner +61 414 098 536

Saving Iceland Summer of Resistance Kicks off in Reykjavik

12.07.2007
A day of action in Reyk­javik kick starts Sav­ing Ice­land’s Sum­mer of Resis­tance to heavy indus­try and the alu­mini­um indus­try’s cor­po­rate inva­sion of Europe’s largest wilder­ness.

Iceland blockade12.07.2007
A day of action in Reyk­javik kick starts Sav­ing Ice­land’s Sum­mer of Resis­tance to heavy indus­try and the alu­mini­um indus­try’s cor­po­rate inva­sion of Europe’s largest wilder­ness.

Fol­low­ing on from Sav­ing Ice­land’s inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence: ‘The Glob­al Con­se­quences of Heavy Indus­try’ where speak­ers and del­e­gates from five con­ti­nents gath­ered to unite strug­gles against the alu­mini­um indus­try, was a day of pub­lic actions.

The Inter­na­tion­al Sum­mer of Dis­sent begins!

First­ly at Kringlan Shop­ping Mall:

Over 50 peo­ple from 5 dif­fer­ent con­ti­nents start­ed the day at Kringlan Shop­ping Mall, Reyk­javik, to protest against the con­sumer cul­ture that demands new alu­mini­um fac­to­ries. Rev­erend Bil­ly, from the Church of Stop Shop­ping, and his new deci­ple Rev­erend Snor­ri, lead a flock of devot­ed and extreme­ly noisy earth lovers (also known as Sav­ing Ice­land activists) through the con­sumerist hell that is a the shop­ping mall.

“The for­eign cor­po­ra­tions who want to dam Ice­lands great rivers, and put pol­lut­ing smelters on our shores — they want us to keep shop­ping.”

“The Alu­mini­um indus­try makes most of its mon­ey from war­planes, tanks and mis­siles (30%, actu­al­ly.) They pro­pose the com­plete damming of Ice­lands wilder­ness rivers, this isnald’s famouse beau­ty buried under indus­tri­al reser­voirs. Let us stop the war machine and the ruin of Ice­land’s wilder­ness. The same cor­po­ra­tions that keep us shop­ping, make war around the world. Isn’t a shop­ping mall like a ‘human’ dam? We re stopped, hyp­no­tized, put in debt. Our ener­gy is tak­en from us. Save the coun­try and save our­selves…”

…Then a march down Lau­gave­g­ur (Reyk­javik’s busiest street)…

… for a ral­ly at Alþin­gi

On the lawn out­side the Alþin­gi, the Ice­landic Par­lai­ment, peo­ple gath­ered togeth­er to speak out against the alu­mini­um indus­try. Peo­ple from Trinidad, who are win­ning a fight against Alcoa, from South Africa, who are fight­ing a nuclear pow­ered Alcan plant, from the East of Ice­land, who have been dev­as­tat­ed by the recent Alcoa Rey­dar­fj­dur fac­to­ry and Karah­n­jukar dams, from Brasil, who is fight­ing the damming of the Ama­zon for alu­mini­um fac­to­ry ener­gy, and many more gave inspir­ing speech­es and lead ener­gy filled songs against the alu­mini­um indus­try.

…and final­ly at the Prime Min­is­ter’s Office
Street the­atre activists then set up an alu­mini­um smelter, installed some tomb stones and hand­ed out dirty Ice­landic water (Ice­land prides itself on its pure water, yet it is pol­lut­ing and destroy­ing its water for the sake of heavy indus­try dams).

activist video footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJF7uK4cCOM
RUV cov­er­age (Ice­land’s state TV): http://dagskra.ruv.is/streaming/sjonvarpid/?file=4338360/5

For updates and details of upcom­ing actions see: http://www.savingiceland.org/
For more videos of Sav­ing Ice­land actions and the recent con­fer­ence see: http://www.youtube.com/user/octoplasm

Cabinet refuses consultation with Herefordshire public: ‘Hereford Eight Arrested’

July 12 2007 — Here­ford­shire Coun­cil Cab­i­net refused this after­noon to guar­an­tee that they would con­sult with the pub­lic or even allow full coun­cil to debate the future of the Dine­dor Ser­pent.

July 12 2007 — Here­ford­shire Coun­cil Cab­i­net refused this after­noon to guar­an­tee that they would con­sult with the pub­lic or even allow full coun­cil to debate the future of the Dine­dor Ser­pent.

Cab­i­net mem­ber Cllr. June French told reporters and pro­test­ers that it would not be an agen­da item today, but that it would be dis­cussed at an unspec­i­fied future date. She could not guar­an­tee that it would be debat­ed by the full coun­cil or allowed a vote. Cllr. French announced an inter­nal inquiry into how the coun­cil had han­dled the pub­lic­i­ty around the Ser­pent.

8 pro­test­ers sub­se­quent­ly refused to leave the Coun­cil build­ing until Cab­i­net mem­bers guar­an­teed a full pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion. When this guar­an­tee was not forth­com­ing, the prostestors, includ­ing an elder­ly peo­ple, refused to leave. They were peace­ful­ly escort­ed from the premis­es by the police.

Update 10:15pm: The pro­test­ers were arrest­ed on charges of ‘aggres­sive tres­pass’. They have just been released on bail hav­ing spent sev­er­al hours in police cells in Worces­ter and are expect­ed back in Here­ford short­ly. They will have to report back on July 26th and face either a cau­tion or be tak­en to court.

“All the Coun­cil had to do today was guar­an­tee a prop­er pub­lic debate, and then this would not have hap­pened”, said a cam­paign spokesper­son. “What do they have to hide? Those arrest­ed are the Here­ford suf­fragettes — all because Here­ford­shire Coun­cil won’t be open and demo­c­ra­t­ic in it’s pro­ce­dures.”

Calls con­tin­ue to grow for Here­ford­shire Coun­cil to pause con­struc­tion to allow a full pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion and for all elect­ed coun­cil­lors to have a say in the final deci­sion and not just the Cab­i­net.

Back­ground info & oth­er cam­paign news at http://www.rotherwasribbon.com/

For court case updates, see July 2007 archive.

Camberwell Squatted Centre: Under immediate threat!!! Court & events update

The Cam­ber­well Squat­ted Cen­tre has seen its court date brought for­ward to TUESDAY 10th JULY plac­ing the Cen­tre under dan­ger of evic­tion in the very near future. How can you help?

Camberwell squat flierThe Cam­ber­well Squat­ted Cen­tre has seen its court date brought for­ward to TUESDAY 10th JULY plac­ing the Cen­tre under dan­ger of evic­tion in the very near future. How can you help?

Emer­gency meet­ing MONDAY 9th JULY at 7.30 pm
Cam­ber­well Squat­ted Cen­tre
190 Warham St
off Cam­ber­well New Rd
Cam­ber­well SE5
bus 185, 36, 436
tube Oval

We have been in occu­pa­tion of the build­ing on Warham St since 10th March. Since then we have filled almost every day with events for any and every­one.

Now we are fac­ing the real­i­ty that we have always faced, that we will be thrown out of the build­ing we have lov­ing­ly restored to life.

So see you in court Mr Prop­er­ty Spec­u­la­tor…

Please check our web­site for news and also to see how you can keep the spir­it of the Cam­ber­well Squat­ted Cen­tre alive

Black Frog Col­lec­tive
@
blackfrog@alphabetthreat.co.uk
http://www.56a.org.uk/warham.html

Court update
»»»»»»

Cam­ber­well Squat — own­ers grant­ed Pos­ses­sion Order

Cam­ber­well Squat Cen­tre | 11.07.2007 01:43 | Free Spaces | Social Strug­gles | Lon­don
Tues­day July 10th, the own­ers of the build­ing were grant­ed a Pos­ses­sion Order to regain the prop­er­ty. Bail­ifs could pay a vis­it any time from Wednes­day 11th. Please come along, we plan to stay in the cen­tre for as long as we can…

After two adjourn­ments and much legal shenan­ni­gan­ing the Cam­ber­well Squat­ted Cen­tre at 192 Warham Street SE5 has entered its final phase…

Twice we have man­aged to gain adjourn­ments on the grounds that we had a licence to stay in the place grant­ed by Sean Dav­ey and John Desmond, the two char­ac­ters we had been deal­ing with from the own­ers’ side, which had not been prop­er­ly end­ed before the case was brought… This time the licence argu­ment was prop­er­ly test­ed in a court. We thought we would lose.

Although we were telling the truth and Sean had grant­ed a licence, the oth­er side claimed Sean and John hadn’t done any such thing and any­way even if they had, had no author­i­ty to do so, ie they aren’t the own­ers, only care­tak­ers and builders, not enti­tled to give us per­mis­sion to stay…
They gave evi­dence, we gave evi­dence. The Judge chose to believe them.

Prop­er­ty being nine tenths of the law, we had expect­ed that this would hap­pen, regard­less of the facts in the case. The Judge in fact called us liars, though not in such words. And said they were reli­able wit­ness­es. I.e. we were squat­ters and they busi­ness­men. They want the space to demol­ish
it, build yup­pie flats or what­ev­er mon­ey-mak­ing scheme they can con­coct. Our whole project was about sub­vert­ing their world-view.

So it goes. When we squat­ted the build­ing, we expect­ed a short time there; the licence, quick­ly revoked, gave us hope of longer, but in fact we have strung it out thus far and achieved much, We have had some bril­liant events, met and got to know some fine peo­ple, explored new ways of being, in a space under our con­trol, not for prof­it but for fun and with a view to work­ing towards a dif­fer­ent world.

We always knew we would be mov­ing on some time – but this is not the end. Every such occu­pied space is a cre­ation in itself, as well as a stage along a road. The process­es we have evolved in run­ning the space, inter­act­ing there, as well as the ideas, infor­ma­tion, social­is­ing, exchange of ideas and expe­ri­ences, add up to more than the rick­ety four walls or the dead hand of prop­er­ty.

Oth­er projects will arise, oth­er spaces will be squat­ted, all of us who have been through the build­ing will take the four months we have spent there for­ward in our hearts.

We don’t yet know how long we have before the bailiffs arrive. While we are still there we will car­ry on hav­ing events, using the space, cel­e­brat­ing the time we still have. We hope you will all come by, hang out, help to keep up the amaz­ing atmos­phere that has grown up in the place. We do need peo­ple to come and hang out in the day, to keep the build­ing secure, in case of ear­ly evic­tion attempts… Do drop by. You have all helped to make this project a liv­ing thing.

Check the web­site or come by the Squat to keep in touch with what’s hap­pen­ing on the evic­tion front.

Cam­ber­well Ver­sus Death!

EVENTS PLANNED –

Obvi­ous­ly we could be evict­ed before the lat­er ones here!

WEDNESDAY 11th?FILM NIGHT: THE WORKING CLASS GOES TO HEAVEN?
Lulù is a real hard work­er. For this rea­son he is loved by the mas­ters and hat­ed by his own col­leagues. The unions decide agi­ta­tions against the mas­ters. Lulù does­n’t agree…Classic REFUSAL of WORK movie from Italy!! Sub­ti­tles. 7.30pm

THURSDAY 12th:?A talk about the Oper­a­tion Span­ner case of the 1990s, the pros­e­cu­tion and jail­ing of con­sent­ing gay men for their sado-masochis­tic sex lives and the strug­gle against their crim­i­nal­iza­tion. Talk by a founder of the Span­ner Cam­paign.

FRIDAY 13TH: Café/Bar, 8 till 1… Is there any­one out there fan­cies cook­ing for this…? The usu­al cooks are a bit tired and all Ram­sayed out… Any vol­un­teers email us… It’s not that hard.

SATURDAY 14th
Star­bucks Work­ers Rebel… A film night, talk and social in sup­port of Star­bucks work­ers organ­is­ing against their evil cap­i­tal­ist boss­es in 3 con­ti­nents. We will be show­ing the film ’Cof­fee Sirens’ about Star­bucks work­ers organ­is­ing, plus talks from peo­ple involved in pick­et­ing Star­bucks here over their attacks on union organ­is­ers in the USA and else­where. 8pm onwards, plus social after.

SUNDAY 15th
3pm: open meet­ing to dis­cuss what hap­pens next: Cam­ber­well Squat­ted Cen­tre is in court on the 20th of July, fac­ing evic­tion… We will prob­a­bly lose, after hero­ic adjourn­ments in the last two court appear­ances. So what next? For those who want to see anoth­er local autonomous social and rebel­lious space, we’re meet­ing to work out where to go and how things car­ry on.

MONDAY 16th
BUILDING MEETING
7pm

TUESDAY 17th
POLISH LESSONS. For the very begin­ners and very com­mit­ed. Bring pen and paper. Some home­work. 7.30pm
SPANISH LESSONS. For the not so begin­ners. 7.30pm

WEDNESDAY 18th FILM NIGHT: INVESTIGATION OF A CITIZEN ABOVE SUSPICION
Anoth­er clas­sic movie from 1970’s Italy!! A dis­turb­ing por­trait of police pow­er as played out through twist­ed eroti­cism and State repres­sion. Sub­ti­tles. 7.30pm

THURSDAY 19th Peace Time In Pales­tine: Ille­gal occu­pa­tion. Ille­gal Con­fis­ca­tion. Humiliation.?The Wall of Shame. Inter­na­tion­al Sup­port. A talk and slideshow by a wit­ness and human rights observ­er after two months in Pales­tine (more on http://ana-en.blogspot.com). 7.30pm

Saving Iceland Camp Location

BRINGUR, Mos­fell­sheiði, South West Ice­land. You will go through the flat val­ley of Mos­fells­dalur and as you start climb­ing up to the moors you will pass the white vil­la of Gljúfrasteinn. It is the first dirt track on the right after you have passed Gljúfrasteinn. Keep going on the track until you final­ly see the camp! The track is a bit rough but fine for small cars as long as you dri­ve slow­ly.

Saving Iceland camp 2007BRINGUR, Mos­fell­sheiði, South West Ice­land. You will go through the flat val­ley of Mos­fells­dalur and as you start climb­ing up to the moors you will pass the white vil­la of Gljúfrasteinn. It is the first dirt track on the right after you have passed Gljúfrasteinn. Keep going on the track until you final­ly see the camp! The track is a bit rough but fine for small cars as long as you dri­ve slow­ly.
Camp phone for new arrivals (not press!): (+354) 8570709.
Press (fjölmiðlar): (+354)663 7653 or (+354) 8430629.

How to get to the camp:

Take bus 15 from Hlem­mur to Háholt (the end sta­tion).

It goes from Hlem­mur 16 min and 46 past every our on week­days, but 11 and 41 past every our in evenings and week­ends.

From Háholt take bus 27 to Laxnes.

It leaves at 12:28, 16:28, 20:08 and 22:08 on week­days.
8:08, 12:08, 16:08; 20:08 and 22:08 on sat­ur­days.
12:08, 16:08, 20:08 and 22:08 on sun­days.

From there you will have to walk on the main road until you see a small road to the right, which will lead you to the camp. There is a small sign and some ban­ner or clothes hang­ing on the gate.

A bus tick­et costs 280 kr. and you should ask for a tick­et called “skip­ti­mi­di” so you will not have to pay for both bus­es.

critical masses (reports from end June/beginning July 2007)

Man­ches­ter:Ace mass on fri­day woo! despite all the stu­dents being away for the sum­mer there was still an ace turnout of around 30–40 people.nice. and a few stayed for a nice bbq in the park which was real love­ly.

Man­ches­ter:Ace mass on fri­day woo! despite all the stu­dents being away for the sum­mer there was still an ace turnout of around 30–40 people.nice. and a few stayed for a nice bbq in the park which was real love­ly.

Crit­i­cal mass has a my space account
here:http://www.myspace.com/mcrcriticalmass
and a face­book account here:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=597661675&ref=mf

also an email list at http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/manccriticalmass

so if you have pho­tos or film of the mass­es please post or upload them or email for the pass­words and i’ll send them out to you. also please use these and this list to dis­cuss ideas and calls for help with future events for after the crit­i­cal mass. In the past we’ve had ben­e­fit gigs, par­ty in the woods, film nights, meals, beers in pubs, pic­nics, bike polo work­shops, art exhi­bi­tion, roller races etc etc. It would be ace if every­one could be involved in organ­is­ing these. maybe we could even get togeth­er a lit­tle cm events work­ing group..would any­one be inter­est­ed in this? we could get togeth­er either after cm or in the month to share ideas, organ­i­sa­tion and tasks.

these things can be dis­cussed on this list or on myspace com­ments or on the face­book note or wall

ALSO
At pre­vi­ous crit­i­cal mass­es in Man­ches­ter we decid­ed on the fol­low­ing tips to ensure that we are all safe,that we cause least annoy­ance as pos­si­ble, to make sure the ride stays togeth­er and to ensure that every­one feels com­fort­able. Remem­ber some­times peo­ple on crit­i­cal mass come because it is a chance to reclaim the road and to feel safe, peo­ple who would­nt usu­al­ly ride in cen­tral man­ches­ter and also chil­dren, so its good to keep the nice friend­ly atmos­phere to encour­age cycling and that safe environment…if peo­ple want to dis­cuss these its great, they were points that were agreed at sev­er­al crit­i­cal mass­es by peo­ple shout­ing and wav­ing hands and that kind of thing. there is no organ­is­er and every­one should be able to have their say. (in a way that is respon­si­ble and look­ing after each oth­er)

1. If the light goes on red as the ride approach­es the lights we stop and wait for green.
2. If the light changes part way through the ride get­ting through around 2 peo­ple per lane of oncom­ing traf­fic stop and cork the road. This basi­cal­ly means that they stand in the mid­dle of that lane hold­ing up their hand/ a sign say­ing ‘thank you for wait­ing’ so that cars will stop and let the ride stay togeth­er and go through the light safe­ly. Thank­ing the dri­vers when every­one is through..we are try­ing to get dri­vers onto bikes not to hate us!!!
3. Slow­er rid­ers and chil­dren and peo­ple with less con­fi­dence ride at the front of the ride and to the left hand side so that they can set the pace and help to stay togeth­er and also feel safer as they are less like­ly to be near traffic/ annoyed dri­vers.
4. We don’t have a set route for crit­i­cal mass, instead who­ev­er is at the front at the time can choose where we go, so we take it in turns! just shout left or right or straight on in plen­ty of time!
5. Have fun!

Future crit­i­cal mass dates are

MEET CENTRAL LIBRARY 6PM FRIDAY:
27th July
31st August
28th Sep­tem­ber
26th Octo­ber
30th Novem­ber
28th Decem­ber

2008
25th Jan­u­ary
29th Feb­ru­ary (woo leap year!)
28th March
etc etc

Lon­don: Crit­i­cal Mass 29th June — The June Crit­i­cal Mass, with a few hun­dred cyclists, was a fun ride through the City and Hol­born and man­aged to stay dry the whole way through!

Sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple left Water­loo bridge at about 7pm, cycling across Black­fri­ars bridge, along Ludgate Hill, past the Muse­um of Lon­don and onto Liv­er­pool Street sta­tion. After some cir­cling of Fins­bury Cir­cus the mass kept mov­ing on to Old Street where we had a brief rest. Mov­ing off the mass head­ed for Cam­bridge Cir­cus along Theobalds road and High Hol­born. From there it moved up and along Oxford Street and down to West­min­ster Square where there were some skir­mish­es with the cops over the sound sys­tem (see the account: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/06/374738.html)

It was a fun ride. The police for the most part seemed to keep their dis­tance. Enter­tain­ing­ly a cou­ple of police start­ed head bob­bing to the music in Old Street — I’m hop­ing some­one got a film of it! Let’s hope next month is slight­ly sun­nier though.

Edin­burgh: It went pret­ty well. Around 50 peo­ple. Con­sid­er­ably more than last month. There was no police inter­ven­tion, apart from pre­vent­ing all vehi­cles to go across North Bridge, since it was shut again. We sim­ply divert­ed down Lei­th Street, went all the way round the round­about, then along Queen Street to the mead­ows from there. In the last 5 min­utes the heav­ens opened.

Glas­gow got the sun and a ride out to the West End com­plete with bike lifts and a film screen­ing after­wards.

July York Crit­i­cal Mass Ride Small but Suc­cess­ful

Well, it was­n’t a big ride, with just 19 peo­ple tak­ing part, but we had fun, made cycling vis­i­ble and encoun­tered some com­plete idiots who need their 2 ton weapons remov­ing from beneath them. The dri­ver of a bright red Audi on Nun­nery Lane expend­ed much petrol revving, over­tak­ing (twice) and gen­er­al­ly being an idiot with­out any gain for him­self, oth­er than a nice pic­ture show­ing that he, like a notable group of York’s dri­vers, has no con­cern what­so­ev­er for cycle lanes or cyclists. No one was hurt, but as one per­son put it lat­er “we gave as good as we got”, ver­bal­ly of course.

Next months ride will prob­a­bly also be small, but that’s no excuse not to show up. On Fri­day August 3rd we’ll be return­ing to the streets of York to pro­mote cycling, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and fun, same time and same place.

Protesters decontaminate the UK’s last remaining GM potato trial

Dur­ing the night of Fri­day 6th July, a group of activists con­verged on Britain’s last remain­ing GM tri­al site just out­side Cam­bridge. They scaled the secu­ri­ty fences and destroyed the crop of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied pota­toes.

Biohazard (red)Dur­ing the night of Fri­day 6th July, a group of activists con­verged on Britain’s last remain­ing GM tri­al site just out­side Cam­bridge. They scaled the secu­ri­ty fences and destroyed the crop of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied pota­toes.

The pota­to plants were already flow­er­ing, spread­ing genet­ic con­ta­gion into the sur­round­ing coun­try­side.

A sim­i­lar tri­al planned in Hull was aban­doned ear­li­er this year after a strong cam­paign and mas­sive con­cern from near­by farm­ers. With the destruc­tion of the Cam­bridge crop, Britain is once again GM free.

Pub­lic con­cern and demon­stra­tions had failed to sway NIAB, the Nation­al Insti­tute for Agri­cul­ture and Botany, who are car­ry­ing out the five-year tri­al on behalf of BASF, a multi­na­tion­al chem­i­cal cor­po­ra­tion. Many feel that if cor­po­ra­tions refuse to lis­ten to pub­lic opin­ion it is nec­es­sary to take direct action.

Fri­day’s action fol­lows the lat­est in a series of protests, on the pre­vi­ous Sun­day (July 1st), when demon­stra­tors marched on the pota­to field. On that occa­sion, they were met by over­whelm­ing num­bers of police and two par­tic­i­pants were arrest­ed.

This time, how­ev­er, no such obsta­cles were met, and the activists were able to suc­cess­ful­ly decon­t­a­m­i­nate the field.

If this tri­al had been allowed to run full term it could have led to a whole new gen­er­a­tion of GM crop tri­als in this coun­try. Fri­day night’s events show that pub­lic con­cern about GM food and will­ing­ness to take direct action to keep Britain GM free remain high.

Sumac work-month — get involved!

The Sumac is closed for busi­ness through­out the whole of July to do some long over­due main­te­nance and redec­o­ra­tion!

We are look­ing for any­one and every­one to get involved — whether you are high­ly skilled at DIY or just enthu­si­as­tic!

The Sumac is closed for busi­ness through­out the whole of July to do some long over­due main­te­nance and redec­o­ra­tion!

We are look­ing for any­one and every­one to get involved — whether you are high­ly skilled at DIY or just enthu­si­as­tic!

Hope­ful­ly peo­ple will be work­ing almost every day through­out the month… to find out when peo­ple are like­ly to be there to work with call the cen­tre on 0845 458 9595 or 0115 9608254.

Work-week­ends ‑on the fol­low­ing week­ends there will be even more peo­ple than nor­mal fix­ing and paint­ing, as well as hope­ful­ly some food and booze for vol­un­teers:

July 7–8th main­te­nance jobs
July 21st-22nd Dec­o­ra­tion prepa­ra­tion and main­te­nance
July 27th ‑28th Dec­o­ra­tion

If you are from out of town, we can find you some­where to stay.

Sumac Cen­tre is found at 245 Glad­stone St, For­est Fields Not­ting­ham. For direc­tions look at the web­site.
http://www.sumac.org.uk

Cambridge GM potato demo report & photo series & court update (with added video)

There was a protest today against the last remain­ing GM pota­to tri­al in the UK just out­side of Cam­bridge.

Despite being heav­i­ly out­num­bered by the police & Chubb secu­ri­ty guards, pro­test­ers were able to make their way right up to the twen­ty metre perime­ter fence sur­round­ing the tri­al site (with elec­tric fence inside). Two demon­stra­tors were arrest­ed, one for attempt­ing to breach the fence and anoth­er some dis­tance from the site.

Cambridge GM protest 3Cambridge GM protest 8Cambridge GM protest 4There was a protest today against the last remain­ing GM pota­to tri­al in the UK just out­side of Cam­bridge.

Despite being heav­i­ly out­num­bered by the police & Chubb secu­ri­ty guards, pro­test­ers were able to make their way right up to the twen­ty metre perime­ter fence sur­round­ing the tri­al site (with elec­tric fence inside). Two demon­stra­tors were arrest­ed, one for attempt­ing to breach the fence and anoth­er some dis­tance from the site.
Cambridge GM protest 1
Pro­test­ers played fris­bee and ate a pic­nic at the site but, due to being out­num­bered, were not in a posi­tion to get through the fence to decon­t­a­m­i­nate the site.
Cambridge GM protest 5
Cambridge GM protest 6
Cambridge GM protest 7
Cambridge GM protest 2

Full write up of protest and some back­ground

One knew right from arriv­ing at the start point of this protest in Gir­ton that the police were going to be total­ly in con­trol. Pro­test­ers were great­ly out­num­bered. Also there were no main­stream jour­nal­ists present at all. There were lines of police pho­tog­ra­phers with big cam­eras and long lens­es posi­tioned all around the cen­tre of the vil­lage. This was clear­ly a way of warn­ing any locals who might wish to become involved that they would be treat­ed as poten­tial crim­i­nals even though it was a very fluffy protest. Pro­test­ers set off along the road, turned off onto a pub­lic foot­path towards the site, escort­ed and watched all the way by dozens of police on foot and in vehi­cles. Police made a token attempt to stop every­one from leav­ing the foot­path but the deter­mined pro­test­ers quick­ly nipped through a gap in the hedge and straight onto the cor­po­rate land that was alleged­ly pro­tect­ed by a hur­ried­ly obtained injunc­tion. From there, one could see the test plot in the dis­tance across corn fields with many expen­sive police 4X4s sur­round­ing it. Pro­test­ers then walked care­ful­ly along the head­lands so as not to be accused of dam­ag­ing the adjoin­ing (hope­ful­ly non GM) wheat and bar­ley crops and then set­tled down to pic­nic right next to the block and mesh fence that had only just been erect­ed around the pota­to test site. Many of the pic­nicers lunch box­es seemed to con­tain pota­to sal­ad! One very brave pro­test­er man­aged to leap over this fence when most of the yel­low jack­ets were dis­tract­ed but was imme­di­ate­ly arrest­ed. A lit­tle while lat­er a very polite man from Chubb secu­ri­ty came to announce that an injunc­tion had been obtained and that every­one was with­in the injunct­ed area and that he would be very great­ful if every­one were to leave soon. After con­fer­ring amongst them­selves, pro­test­ers realised that because they were so out­num­bered by both police and pri­vate secu­ri­ty guards and because a six foot fence stood between them and the much despised crop, the protest could only be a sym­bol­ic one and so they upped and left.

The pupose of this genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crop tri­al is alleged­ly to eval­u­ate the resis­tance of a new GM pota­to vari­ety to late blight in the field. I real­ly can­not see why this exper­i­ment has to be done in the open coun­try­side rather than inside a closed lab­o­ra­to­ry. Blight needs par­tic­u­lar con­di­tions of tem­per­a­ture, humid­i­ty and air cir­cu­la­tion in order to strike. These con­di­tions would be easy to sim­u­late in a large cli­mat­i­cal­ly con­trolled green­house but out in a field, the cor­rect con­di­tions may not be achieved from one year to the next despite the fos­sil fuel cor­po­ra­tion’s best/worst attempts to change our cli­mate. Not only that but the grow­ing pota­toes were vis­i­bly in flower, there­fore pro­duc­ing GM pollen and I did indeed see at least two bee hives pre­sum­ably installed and main­tained by BASF about 300 metres away near the hedge. Since it would be eas­i­ly pos­si­ble to pinch out the GM pollen pro­duc­ing flow­ers on such a small plot (doing this actu­al­ly INCREASES pota­to yield by about 15%) and since the flow­ers had­n’t been removed, one has to con­clude that BASF delib­er­ate­ly want to spread GM pollen around Cam­bridgeshire as part of their open-air exper­i­ment. Pity any local hon­ey pro­duc­ers as they could lose their organ­ic sta­tus over this. I’m won­der­ing if BASF have any mon­i­tor­ing hives 3km away rather than just 300m as bees can eas­i­ly trav­el this dis­tance in search of flow­ers or maybe BASF don’t want to know such a fact?

Being a keen pota­to fanci­er and grow­er, I have a par­tic­u­lar inter­est in this blight issue. Pota­to late blight is a par­tic­u­lar­ly dev­as­tat­ing fun­gus that spreads faster than any oth­er plant dis­ease.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato_blight
This is the same dis­ease that caused the famous 1845 Irish pota­to famine that claimed a mil­lion lives. (In fact it would be more accu­rate to say that the British gov­erne­ment caused the deaths by com­plete­ly ignor­ing the famine and suf­fer­ing that they knew was occur­ring.) Blight, being a fun­gus, thrives in warm damp still weath­er. Last year’s very wet ear­ly autumn weath­er caused my own pota­to crop to dra­mat­i­cal­ly suc­cumb to blight in just two days. In that short peri­od, the foliage changed from healthy green to a black putre­fy­ing slime and the only rem­e­dy at that stage is to attempt to remove every scrap of infect­ed mate­r­i­al from the soil, lift all the tubers from the ground and dry the intact ones as quick­ly as pos­si­ble before stor­ing them. It’s not over then — one has to fre­quent­ly check the stored pota­toes for months and pull out the con­sid­er­able num­ber that con­tin­ue to go putrid before the tuber blight spreads to the entire sack. As a rule, fun­gal dis­eases can only be con­trolled by spray­ing with quite strong chem­i­cals. The only per­mit­ted (just) organ­ic con­trol is Bor­deaux mix­ture — cop­per sul­phate and lime. This is only mod­er­ate­ly effec­tive — rather use­less under severe con­di­tions like last year as, since cop­per suphate is sol­u­ble, it has to be reap­plied after each heavy rain by which time, the dis­ease may have become unstop­pable. So you can see that inor­gan­ic pota­to grow­ing can require strong chem­i­cals and organ­ic grow­ing is real­ly quite prob­lem­at­ic. In these days of unsta­ble weath­er, my over­rid­ing cri­teri­um for choos­ing pota­to vari­eties to grow now is no longer flavour or out­ra­geous colour but blight resis­tance. I would tru­ly love a 100% blight resis­tant pota­to to grow myself. How­ev­er I can­not see myself trust­ing an injunc­tion wield­ing GM cor­po­ra­tion’s cre­ation any fur­ther than I could throw that entire cor­po­ra­tion uphill. As I see it their over­rid­ing inter­est is not to help strug­gling farm­ers or alle­vi­ate world famine. It is prof­it and the wish to mono­plise and dom­i­nate the pota­to seed mar­ket with just a very few expen­sive patent­ed-up-to-the-hilt vari­eties.

If you go to the super­mar­kets, you’ll see on dis­play just six or so vari­eties of pota­toes. In fact world­wide there are an amaz­ing 5000 dif­fer­ent vari­eties, 800 or so vari­eties in this coun­try and about 150 of these are eas­i­ly avail­able com­mer­cial seed vari­eties. The con­se­quences of any mar­ket dom­i­nat­ing GM vari­ety could cause the grad­ual extinc­tion of many irre­placa­ble her­itage vari­eties. Being bru­tal­ly hon­est, the few her­itage vari­eties that I’ve tried grow­ing myself have been too sus­cep­ti­ble to blight for me to con­tin­ue to grow them organ­i­cal­ly. How­ev­er tucked in amongst all those thou­sands of vari­eties there could be some almost for­got­ten about ones that have nat­u­ral­ly high resis­tance. Not only that but this huge repos­i­to­ry of vari­eties can be used in tra­di­tion­al selec­tive breed­ing pro­grams to pro­duce new non GM vari­eties that have much high­er resis­tance. This year I am try­ing Sár­po Mira, Sár­po Axona and Ver­i­ty which are all new vari­eties recent­ly cre­at­ed in just this way and that are claimed to have excep­tion­al resis­tance. So the point I am mak­ing is that there are clear and hope­ful­ly viable alter­na­tives to genet­ic manip­u­la­tion with­out the risks.

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GM pro­test­er court news

Two pro­test­ers were in court this morn­ing hav­ing been arrest­ed on Sun­day dur­ing protests at the site of the UK’s only GM tri­al — pota­toes.

Both were charged with Crim­i­nal Dam­age. One pled not guilty, and that tri­al will resume in 4 weeks. The oth­er pled guilty and was fined.

Ted­dy Bears Pic­nic — video/quicktime 31M