Bristol Protest against G8 and Climate Catastrophe, 8th June

Stop them dri­ving the plan­et to destruc­tion

CRITICAL MASS, Fri­day 8th June — 8am in the MORNING!
Assem­ble on St. Augustines Parade at 8am sharp to move off when crit­i­cal mass forms.

G8 Bristol CM '07Stop them dri­ving the plan­et to destruc­tion

CRITICAL MASS, Fri­day 8th June — 8am in the MORNING!
Assem­ble on St. Augustines Parade at 8am sharp to move off when crit­i­cal mass forms.

What are we doing?
As a start we are call­ing for a crit­i­cal mass on the morn­ing of Fri­day June 8th as the wake up call to a day of action in sol­i­dar­i­ty with those protest­ing against the G8 meet­ing in Ger­many. We hope that this will act as a cat­a­lyst for oth­er groups and indi­vid­u­als in Bris­tol to mark the occa­sion how­ev­er they see fit.

Whether it be a pen­sion­ers mass march, a play­ground protest, or you and yer mates throw­ing a lit­er­al or sym­bol­ic wrench in the works, get off your arse and show ‘em you’re mad as hell and aren’t going to take it no more!

Why should you be angry?
CLIMATE CHAOS
We all know the ter­ri­fy­ing sta­tis­tics: a mil­lion species extinct by 2050, 19 of the 20 hottest years on record since 1980, Green­land and Antarc­ti­ca melt­ing, droughts, floods, famines. The G8 have had over 30 years to address cli­mate change and only suc­ceed­ed in pro­vid­ing tril­lions in sub­si­dies to the very indus­tries that are destroy­ing our plan­et and our future.

And while the G8 con­tin­ues to line their pock­ets, island states dis­ap­pear and hun­dreds of thou­sands die as a result of the freak weath­er con­di­tions caused by their irra­tional and uncon­trol­lable obses­sion with nev­er end­ing eco­nom­ic growth. We have a ten-year win­dow to act. As the mega­lo­ma­ni­ac G8 lead­ers meet in Ger­many, masked behind a bar­ri­er of fences and sol­diers, intent on lead­ing us fur­ther towards cat­a­stroph­ic and irre­versible cli­mate chaos, we must shout, scream and roar ˜no more”. Now is the time to take direct action and shut them down, them and their cli­mate crim­i­nal indus­try friends!

THE USUAL SUSPECTS
While cli­mate chaos effects us all, those on the front line are those already dev­as­tat­ed by the cru­el­ty of glob­al cap­i­tal­ism — the poor and dis­ad­van­taged. While the G8 looks to the mar­kets to solve the prob­lem by turn­ing emis­sions into a prod­uct that can be bought and sold, they pur­pose­ly ignore the only effec­tive solu­tion — an end to the con­sumerist mass-mar­ket soci­ety.

Iron­i­cal­ly con­sumerism is the way of life that the G8 is forc­ing poor­er coun­tries to adopt in order to have their pover­ty, debt and trade prob­lems alle­vi­at­ed. Soci­eties are manip­u­lat­ed into becom­ing pre­car­i­ous McCoun­tries: from export­ing cheap mass pro­duced goods from sweat­shops to feed west­ern appetites, to pro­vid­ing play­ground par­adis­es for the rich.

All this does is feed cli­mate chaos and cre­ate fur­ther car­bon emis­sions to be trad­ed as ‘cred­its’ between the rich­est coun­tries.

ANGRY YET?
So what are you going to do about it? Buy a wrist­band, go to a con­cert, sign a peti­tion, go on an organ­ised mass march?

Remem­ber Jubilee 2000? Third world debt is worse than ever.
Remem­ber Make Pover­ty His­to­ry? It didn’t.
Remem­ber Stop the War? We haven’t

The G8 lead­ers have car­ried on with their own agen­da and fan­cy foot­work. The only way that gov­ern­ments will lis­ten to us is if we force them to — this is the only effec­tive form of protest, which is why free­dom to protest effec­tive­ly is being erod­ed and out­lawed. We are sleep­walk­ing into a soci­ety where dis­sent will not be tol­er­at­ed, and it’s time to wake up!

Why June 8th?
The 8th of June Inter­na­tion­al Day of Action Against Cli­mate Change and the G8 has been called by the Inter­na­tion­al Ris­ing Tide Net­work. This is a call for autonomous, decen­tral­ized actions appro­pri­ate for your town, city, or local area.

We want to send a mes­sage to the pro­tes­tors on the streets and in the jails of Ger­many that we stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with them and their actions.

Why a Crit­i­cal Mass?
Crit­i­cal Mass demon­stra­tions are not just about high­light­ing the prob­lems fac­ing cyclists, they are used effec­tive­ly across the world as an effec­tive way of protest­ing. The first one hap­pened in San Fran­cis­co in1992 and since then enthu­si­asts in many towns and cities world­wide have fol­lowed suit. It is dif­fi­cult to describe CM as opin­ions dif­fer wide­ly but they seem to range from a sim­ple cel­e­bra­tion of cycling to an anti-author­i­tar­i­an block­ade of traf­fic, par­tic­u­lar­ly cars, with many facets in between.

Cycling protests have already been hap­pen­ing as a part of the actions against the G8 sum­mit, and the heavy hand­ed response to them shows that the author­i­ties feel they are effec­tive and fear them.

On the 7th May in Utrecht (Hol­land), mount­ed police attacked, beat, arrest­ed and did sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to a peace­ful bicy­cle car­a­van on its way to Ger­many — http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/369998.html for details.

On 25th May in Ham­burg (Ger­many), Over 250 peo­ple involved in the G8 mobi­liza­tion took to the streets of Ham­burg in a Crit­i­cal Mass. The police broke up the group of cyclists by dri­ving between them with vehi­cles and by run­ning and stand­ing in front of them. The cops fol­lowed the small­er groups of cyclists to get them to dis­perse. 12 peo­ple were arrest­ed and held for sev­er­al hours — http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/371656.html for details.

Also on the 25th, Bristol’s own Crit­i­cal Mass was sub­ject to a heavy-hand­ed police response. Although obvi­ous­ly not on the same scale, the rea­son behind it was the same — to smash the Crit­i­cal Mass as a form of protest because it is effec­tive. This forms part of a con­cert­ed effort by police across the UK to stop the protests, includ­ing attempts to crim­i­nalise the action and its par­tic­i­pants (that failed). See http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/371358.html for details. And see http://bristol.indymedia.org/newswire.php?story_id=24359&search_text=Critical%20mass&results_offset=15 for details of 200 plus rid­ers on Bris­tol CM on 28/11/05 held in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Lon­don CM after the cops threat­ened them. Who says CM isn’t polit­i­cal?

Why in the morn­ing?
The usu­al month­ly Crit­i­cal Mass in Bris­tol is a sep­a­rate enti­ty that focus­es on the rights of cyclists, while the inten­tion of the June 8th is to have a wider focus and so the change of time will dif­fer­en­ti­ate the two. Also there has been crit­i­cism that the month­ly Mass stops Bris­to­lians from get­ting home for the week­end, which can lead to a lack of wider sup­port.

This Crit­i­cal Mass is a present to the work­ing peo­ple of Bris­tol! If well attend­ed, the demon­stra­tion could mean big delays in get­ting to work on a Fri­day morn­ing, and a per­fect excuse for phon­ing in late — and who but the boss­es wouldn’t sup­port that! Spread the word to those you work with, but remem­ber we need the num­bers on the ride to make it hap­pen!

Remem­ber, the streets are ours, Crit­i­cal Mass is NOT ille­gal (yet!), and you have to get out of bed ear­ly in the morn­ing if you’re going to out­wit those who want to take away your free­dom to protest!

Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide Web­site — http://risingtide.org.uk/bristol

More info on the G8 protests in Ger­many -http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/371754.html

For posters and fly­ers see http://bristol.indymedia.org/newswire.php?story_id=26367

Brecon Tree Camp & Reading Community Garden court hearings — evictions possible

Nation­al Grid are get­ting ready to evict Bre­con, Bre­con are get­ting ready to fight, please join us.

Nation­al Grid have set the court date to begin the evic­tion of the Bre­con Tree Camp. There will be two peo­ple rep­re­sent­ing us, if you wish to be there ring the site phone on 07903152822. The hear­ing is in Cardiff on Thurs­day 7th June.

Nation­al Grid are get­ting ready to evict Bre­con, Bre­con are get­ting ready to fight, please join us.

Nation­al Grid have set the court date to begin the evic­tion of the Bre­con Tree Camp. There will be two peo­ple rep­re­sent­ing us, if you wish to be there ring the site phone on 07903152822. The hear­ing is in Cardiff on Thurs­day 7th June.

Peo­ple are need­ed on site, machin­ery has been moved almost onto the site and evic­tion is expect­ed from maybe Fri­day or Mon­day, if you are avail­able to come please, please do. Ring the site phone for infor­ma­tion or for advise on what needs doing, i.e legal sup­port.

This is it folks…

fightthepipe@hotmail.co.uk
http://www.fightthepipe.co.uk

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Evic­tion of squat­ted com­mu­ni­ty gar­den

A com­mu­ni­ty gar­den built on dis­used coun­cil land was opened to the pub­lic on may 19th. The land had been was pre­vi­ous­ly used as a shoot­ing gallery by junkies, but was turned into a beau­ti­ful gar­den, out­side offi­cial juris­dic­tion, by local activists.
The coun­cil, how­ev­er, put the wheels in motion for the evic­tion, before it even opened.
But the open­ing was a great suc­cess and the gar­den has opened every day since (ignor­ing the coun­cil’s injunc­tion).
At 10am on mon­day 4th June the evic­tion hear­ing will go ahead. There will be a demon­stra­tion out­side, com­plete with press cov­er­age.
There will be anoth­er demonstration/resistance on wednes­day or thurs­day (a more exact time when we have it) when the bailiffs come round to evict and close down the gar­den.

Please show your sup­port for this com­mu­ni­ty project by protest­ing out­side the court (Fri­ar street, read­ing) or help­ing resist the evic­tion lat­er in the week.

Many thanks, Kates­grove com­mu­ni­ty gar­den col­lec­tive

Brecon Tree Camp Open Day 9th June

Pro­tes­tors against Nation­al Grid’s mon­ster pipeline, need your sup­port, come and vis­it us in Bre­con.

To oppose Nation­al Grid’s 197 Mile long, 48 inch­es wide, 94 bar pres­sure gas pipe that is run­ning through the Bre­con Bea­con Nation­al Park there has been a protest site set up along the route, this is cur­rent­ly pre­vent­ing Nation­al Grid caus­ing more destruc­tion in this area. Hav­ing the camp is delay­ing work which will cost them mil­lions of pounds and gives us time to work on stop­ping them indef­i­nite­ly. It’s also fun, edu­ca­tion­al and free. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the time has come and evic­tion is due any day now, so…

Pro­tes­tors against Nation­al Grid’s mon­ster pipeline, need your sup­port, come and vis­it us in Bre­con.

To oppose Nation­al Grid’s 197 Mile long, 48 inch­es wide, 94 bar pres­sure gas pipe that is run­ning through the Bre­con Bea­con Nation­al Park there has been a protest site set up along the route, this is cur­rent­ly pre­vent­ing Nation­al Grid caus­ing more destruc­tion in this area. Hav­ing the camp is delay­ing work which will cost them mil­lions of pounds and gives us time to work on stop­ping them indef­i­nite­ly. It’s also fun, edu­ca­tion­al and free. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the time has come and evic­tion is due any day now, so…

We invite you to join us on site for our open day on Sat­ur­day 9th June:

There will be:
Free Work­shops (includ­ing Climb­ing Instruc­tion by our qual­i­fied instruc­tor)
Free Food (suit­able for Veg­ans)
Infor­ma­tion and dis­play board about this pipeline
Free Accom­mo­da­tion (if you want to stay)
Advise and guid­ance in protest­ing
Fun, frol­ics and friend­ship!

This is the per­fect way to learn more about why we are protest­ing this pipeline, what can be done about it and to expe­ri­ence life on a protest site.

The Bre­con Camp is locat­ed about 5 miles from Bre­con Town Cen­tre, in the Nation­al Park on the A40 (West of Bre­con). It is oppo­site Pen­point Church and is obvi­ous­ly marked with ban­ners. Park­ing is avail­able in front of the camp, or a bus goes along the road every two hours and will stop out­side, or hitch­ing is usu­al­ly pos­si­ble. If you want to come down but have dif­fi­cult­ly with trans­port, email us, we might be able to help you.

For more infor­ma­tion check: www.fightthepipe.co.uk or email us at fightthepipe@hotmail.co.uk
Bre­con Tree Camp Site phone num­ber is 07903152822

Rostock, Global Agricultural day of action

Video Rush of the anti GM March, 03/06/2007; part of the G8 protests — for full cov­er­age, see indymedia.org.uk

Video 20070603_Anti_GM_March — video/x‑ms-wmv 11M

Rostock agriculture demo 2Rostock agriculture demo 1Rostock agriculture demo 3Video Rush of the anti GM March, 03/06/2007; part of the G8 protests — for full cov­er­age, see indymedia.org.uk

Video 20070603_Anti_GM_March — video/x‑ms-wmv 11M

Mac Users, down­load Flip4Mac to view.
Watch video.
Be hap­py.

Can I be nom­i­nat­ed for the best shots of the cutest kid award?

—————————————————
Ros­tock Sun­day. Glob­al Agri­cul­tur­al day of action.

Despite its claims to the con­trary the G8 has done bug­ger all to alle­vi­ate star­va­tion in the world. In fact the num­ber of peo­ple starv­ing in the world is now at an all time high. Sun­day was the day nom­i­nat­ed to draw atten­tion to all things unfair in the world of agri­cul­ture so a rov­ing demo toured the town to tack­le the issues

It has to be said that fol­low­ing Sat­ur­days car­nage this decid­ed­ly fluffy affair was a wel­come assign­ment. There was a band on a float which sound­ed like a cross between Orbital and the Lev­ellers, also a Sam­ba band and oth­er assort­ed drum­mers and musi­cians. As well as the usu­al activists sev­er­al farm­ers from Ger­many and around the world were in atten­dance rais­ing aware­ness about every­thing from GM crops and live­stock to exploita­tion, pol­lu­tion and cor­rupt sub­si­dies.

One port of call was Lidl whose crimes include low pay, non recog­ni­tion of unions, pro­mot­ing GM and sell­ing shit food. Speech­es were made here and at sev­er­al oth­er loca­tions.

Despite the obvi­ous fact that this demo was going to be less con­fronta­tion­al than a sit-in by the Hare Krish­nas, two hun­dred cops in full riot gear were in atten­dance. This gives the impres­sion that their Polic­ing is not what you would describe as ‘intel­li­gence led’. With noth­ing else to do they kept them­selves occu­pied by search­ing any­one under the age of 30 who was wear­ing an item of black cloth­ing. No arrests were made.

The demo fin­ished with more speech­es in the square with plen­ty of inter­est­ing facts and fig­ures. One exam­ple is that milk pro­duc­ing EU cows are sub­sidised for two dol­lars a day. Mean­while starv­ing Africans? One dol­lar a day!

Investigation leads to chicken rescue by Gloucestershire animal activists.

Glouces­ter­shire Ani­mal Action press release — For imme­di­ate release
Sun­day, June 03, 2007

Five month inves­ti­ga­tion leads to chick­en res­cue by Glouces­ter­shire ani­mal activists.

Five months ago activists from Glouces­ter­shire Ani­mal Action learned of a farm in Glouces­ter which had been vis­it­ed by DEFRA after the rot­ting car­cass­es of chick­ens and pigs were left caus­ing a stench which had affect­ed the local com­mu­ni­ty.

Glouces­ter­shire Ani­mal Action press release — For imme­di­ate release
Sun­day, June 03, 2007

Five month inves­ti­ga­tion leads to chick­en res­cue by Glouces­ter­shire ani­mal activists.

Five months ago activists from Glouces­ter­shire Ani­mal Action learned of a farm in Glouces­ter which had been vis­it­ed by DEFRA after the rot­ting car­cass­es of chick­ens and pigs were left caus­ing a stench which had affect­ed the local com­mu­ni­ty.

Local press cov­ered the inci­dent in which the farm own­er had claimed that around one hun­dred ani­mals die per week at the facil­i­ty. Activists vis­it­ed the farm at Lit­tle Wit­combe in Glouces­ter with the inten­tion of doc­u­ment­ing the con­di­tion in which the ani­mals were housed which have result­ed in the deaths of so many ani­mals.

With our inves­ti­ga­tion footage we hope to high­light the real­i­ty of mod­ern non caged “barn” egg busi­ness­es to show that free-range and barn eggs are in no way a guar­an­tee that your food is eth­i­cal­ly pro­duced in many cas­es barn egg sys­tems are worse than bat­tery cage sys­tems and if you wish to be a tru­ly eth­i­cal per­son you real­ly need to go veg­an. The gov­ern­ment has main­tained that veg­an­ism is a very healthy way to live, you can almost half your car­bon foot­print in most cas­es and you can live a cru­el­ty free lifestyle know­ing that no ani­mals or humans are being exploit­ed for your diet!

The fol­low­ing is the account from one activist involved in the inves­ti­ga­tion:

“We entered one of the long sheds which hadn’t been secured prop­er­ly late one evening, mak­ing sure to pro­tect the ani­mals inside we dis­in­fect­ed our feet and cloth­ing before enter­ing. To be hon­est I was expect­ing to have to search for ani­mals in a bad con­di­tion but the real­i­ty was it was more dif­fi­cult to find ani­mals that looked healthy, maybe one in fif­teen chick­ens weren’t in a bad con­di­tion. The air was acrid and filled with ammo­nia and dust par­ti­cles and the fans didn’t seem to be work­ing prop­er­ly. The work­er chart on the wall had said that 6 deaths had occurred in one day in a sin­gle shed and there are four­teen sheds on the farm. It would seem that this is the norm for a facil­i­ty that holds more than 70,000 chick­ens.”

Dur­ing the fol­low­ing months the activists returned to check the con­di­tions which didn’t seem to be improv­ing. After suf­fi­cient evi­dence had been gath­ered in order to high­light the plight of the hens inside a col­lec­tive deci­sion was made by those involved that we would attempt to res­cue and give vet­eri­nary care to a small amount of the chick­ens (Thir­teen in total).

The res­cue took place dur­ing the ear­ly hours of a warm night in May, three activists entered a barn with ani­mal car­ri­ers and record­ing equip­ment, footage was record­ed and pho­tos tak­en, the ani­mals were then care­ful­ly loaded into ani­mal car­ri­ers and into a con­vert­ed laun­dry bag, they were then trans­port­ed to a house for the night for food and water. The next morn­ing they were tak­en to live out their lives at a sanc­tu­ary. It should be remem­bered that these ani­mals have nev­er expe­ri­enced sun­light or fresh air and to see these intel­li­gent crea­tures being giv­en a chance to live with real food and fresh water in fan­tas­tic con­di­tions brought those involved to tears. We can only hope that the remain­ing thou­sands of ani­mals and bil­lions of ani­mals breed each year for our ani­mal diet expe­ri­ence the same lux­u­ry one day.

Glouces­ter­shire Ani­mal Action are a peace­ful group of indi­vid­u­als, we con­sid­er our actions to be total­ly jus­ti­fied and are will­ing to accept any reper­cus­sions as a result of our actions. Dur­ing our vis­its we saw no signs which indi­cat­ed that the prop­er­ty was pri­vate. We are aware that we have caused dam­age to a lock on the farm dur­ing our last vis­it and we will be send­ing a pay­ment to cov­er the cost of replac­ing the lock how­ev­er we will not be pay­ing for the chick­ens tak­en. We how­ev­er wel­come dona­tions via our web­site towards trans­porta­tion costs and vet bills.

Note: The activists wear face cov­er­ings dur­ing the res­cue to pre­vent iden­ti­fi­ca­tion this is for per­son­al safe­ty and to pro­tect their free­dom, ani­mal activists have been impris­oned for years after res­cu­ing ani­mals from facil­i­ties such as this one.

For infor­ma­tion about Glouces­ter­shire Ani­mal Action you can vis­it their web­site at www.stopanimalcruelty.co.uk or you can watch the full video of the res­cue online via YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=JllgcO0f_Gg

Enawene Nawe block highway to stop dam

4th June 2007
A few days ago the Enawene Nawe set up a road block­ade in protest to a series of hydro­elec­tric dams which will destroy their fish­ing grounds, which they depend on.

Today they dis­man­tled the block­ade and have begun trav­el­ling to the cap­i­tal of Brazil to meet gov­ern­ment offi­cials.

4th June 2007
A few days ago the Enawene Nawe set up a road block­ade in protest to a series of hydro­elec­tric dams which will destroy their fish­ing grounds, which they depend on.

Today they dis­man­tled the block­ade and have begun trav­el­ling to the cap­i­tal of Brazil to meet gov­ern­ment offi­cials.

From Sur­vival Inter­na­tion­al — The Indi­ans mount­ed the block­ade on 31 May to protest against plans to build a series of hydro­elec­tric dams along the Juru­e­na riv­er, which they say will destroy their vital fish­ing grounds.

Accord­ing to local press reports, sev­er­al neigh­bour­ing tribes joined the protest and about 100 Indi­ans armed with bows and arrows effec­tive­ly iso­lat­ed the north­west­ern part of the state.

A com­mis­sion com­posed of gov­ern­ment offi­cials and the police nego­ti­at­ed with the Enawene Nawe who agreed to halt their block­ade if they could meet with the pres­i­dent of FUNAI (the Brazil­ian government’s Indi­an affairs depart­ment) to raise their con­cerns.

A del­e­ga­tion of Enawene Nawe set out today on the long jour­ney to Brasília. (source. Also see this arti­cle about the block­ade)

Camping campaigners in byelaws battle (and a 9th June Aldermaston party invite!)

1.06.2007
New byelaws for Britain”s nuclear weapons fac­to­ry — AWE Alder­mas­ton — came into force yes­ter­day. This brief arti­cle reflects on the impli­ca­tions for cam­paign­ers and chal­lenges being mount­ed to yet anoth­er crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of protest … and invites women to join the peace camp for a fab­u­lous camp birth­day cock­tail par­ty on 9 June.

Aldermaston SOCPA sign1.06.2007
New byelaws for Britain”s nuclear weapons fac­to­ry — AWE Alder­mas­ton — came into force yes­ter­day. This brief arti­cle reflects on the impli­ca­tions for cam­paign­ers and chal­lenges being mount­ed to yet anoth­er crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of protest … and invites women to join the peace camp for a fab­u­lous camp birth­day cock­tail par­ty on 9 June.

As with many mil­i­tary sites across Britain, land at AWE Alder­mas­ton has been sub­ject to spe­cif­ic mil­i­tary byelaws for many years. While these the­o­ret­i­cal­ly crim­i­nalise a range of oth­er­wise non-crim­i­nal activ­i­ties, they have not been enforced. At bases around the coun­try where byelaws have been used against pro­test­ers they have almost uni­ver­sal­ly fall­en fol­low­ing legal chal­lenges (most famous­ly at Green­ham Com­mon where thou­sands of cas­es were thrown out after the byelaws fell).

How­ev­er, as of 31 May 2007, spank­ing new byelaws for AWE Alder­mas­ton came into force. Undoubt­ed­ly the MoD will be hop­ing that they have learnt from pre­vi­ous byelaws dis­as­ters and now removed all tech­ni­cal, human rights, and oth­er inher­ent flaws. [1]

Human rights
The new Alder­mas­ton byelaws were qui­et­ly put out to con­sul­ta­tion in April 2006, and in their orig­i­nal form, would have pro­hib­it­ed all forms of protest at AWE Alder­mas­ton. The pro­posed byelaws would have denied the right to free­dom of peace­ful assem­bly and asso­ci­a­tion as they crim­i­nalised meet­ings, assem­blies and pro­ces­sions (sec­tions 7 (f) and (h)). They would also have pro­hib­it­ed hand­ing out leaflets and hold­ing plac­ards, thus deny­ing free­dom of expres­sion.

Alder­mas­ton Women’s Peace Camp(aign), and sup­port­ers, made sub­mis­sions to the MoD­’s Byelaws Review Com­mit­tee under the Human Rights Act, and suc­ceed­ed in gain­ing the removal or amend­ment of sev­er­al of the orig­i­nal­ly pro­posed “crim­i­nal” activ­i­ties.

Pro­tect­ing the MoD from peace­women
The con­sul­ta­tion on the Alder­mas­ton byelaws took place as the Ter­ror­ism Act 2006 enabled the pro­vi­sions of the Seri­ous Organ­ised Crime and Police Act (SOCRAP) to apply to Alder­mas­ton and a num­ber of oth­er mil­i­tary sites in the UK. To date, SOCRAP has been used once against a pro­test­er at Alder­mas­ton. It remains unclear as to whether the Attor­ney Gen­er­al will give assent for the pros­e­cu­tion to pro­ceed. [2]

Defence Estates com­ment­ed at the time that “The Mil­i­tary Lands Byelaws and the SOCAP pow­ers, although capa­ble of being used inde­pen­dent­ly, are mutu­al­ly sup­port­ive and togeth­er pro­vide a lay­ered form of legal pro­tec­tion for the Min­istry of Defence.” [3]

Impli­ca­tions for protest
The amend­ed byelaws, although the­o­ret­i­cal­ly allow­ing protest at Alder­mas­ton, now threat­en the very exis­tence of the wom­en’s peace camp — which has been protest­ing out­side the nuclear weapons fac­to­ry every month for the past 22 years. The new byelaws crim­i­nalise camp­ing and light­ing “bon­fires” (the women use a camp fire to keep warm and cook). The byelaws also crim­i­nalise things as sim­ple as attach­ing ban­ners to the fence at Alder­mas­ton, which women have tra­di­tion­al­ly done to alert passers by to the nuclear weapons fac­to­ry, or are as vague as “caus­ing annoy­ance to any oth­er per­son” [4]

It is impos­si­ble to pre­dict whether the new byelaws will be strict­ly enforced, how­ev­er, pre­sum­ably the MoD didn’t go to all the both­er of cre­at­ing new ones in order for them to sit on a shelf gath­er­ing as much dust as the pre­vi­ous ver­sion!

Chal­lenges
Women from Alder­mas­ton Women’s Peace Camp(aign) have called for a cel­e­bra­to­ry camp birth­day cock­tail par­ty on Sat­ur­day 9 June. This will be the first camp week­end after the byelaws come into force and we would like to invite as many women as pos­si­ble to join us. Of course this will be a fan­tas­tic par­ty in its own right, but we would also like to send a clear mes­sage to the MoD that women will con­tin­ue to occu­py space out­side AWE Alder­mas­ton, con­tin­ue resist­ing Britain’s nuclear weapons pro­gramme, and con­tin­ue claim­ing the right to protest. [5]

On anoth­er front, a legal chal­lenge to the byelaws has been mount­ed and there has been pos­i­tive legal advice on the prospects of its suc­cess. Trea­sury Solic­i­tors have been informed that despite the wel­come changes to the byelaws, they remain dis­pro­por­tion­ate and are incom­pat­i­ble with the Human Rights Act. The next step will be to bring a Judi­cial Review.

We don’t know whether the police will enforce the bylaws at the time of the par­ty. If they do, women should be able to attend the par­ty and not risk arrest pro­vid­ed they heed police state­ments at the time and move to safe pitch­es. That said, the more women that are pre­pared to risk arrest the greater the effec­tive­ness of the gath­er­ing.

Do come any­way: it is the wom­en’s cock­tail par­ty of the year!
—————–
NOTES:
1 Read the full byelaws at http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2007/20071066.htm
2 See http://www.aldermaston.net/news/169
3 See http://www.aldermaston.net/news/107
4 See AWE Byelaws, Sec­tion 7 (2)
(f) camp in tents, car­a­vans, trees or oth­er­wise;
(g) attach any thing to, or place any thing over any wall, fence, struc­ture or oth­er sur­face;
(j) act in any way like­ly to cause annoy­ance, nui­sance or injury to oth­er per­sons;
(k) light bon­fires or do any­thing like­ly to cause an out­break of fire;
5 See http://www.aldermaston.net for par­ty invi­ta­tion
info@aldermaston.net

The Basement Social Centre (Manchester) needs you! Workday 2nd June…

After the fire on Lever Street, the Base­ment Social Cen­tre is in need of urgent help.

Greet­ings dear friends and com­rades

***please for­ward this mes­sage to any­one who may be inter­est­ed and / or able to help***

After the fire on Lever Street, the Base­ment Social Cen­tre is in need of urgent help.

Greet­ings dear friends and com­rades

***please for­ward this mes­sage to any­one who may be inter­est­ed and / or able to help***

Some bad news I’m afraid. Although The Base­ment is struc­tural­ly sound and in good spir­its the fire dam­age sus­tained by the rest of 24 Lever Street was much more severe than we were orig­i­nal­ly told. Most sig­nif­i­cant­ly the top two floors were gut­ted by fire and office above us was water­logged. Their floor­boards (ie our ceil­ing) needs total­ly replac­ing.

All ten­ants of the build­ing have been instruct­ed to vacate the premis­es as soon as pos­si­ble for health and safe­ty rea­sons whilst ren­o­va­tion is com­plet­ed. Hence the col­lec­tive clean-up oper­a­tion is now more of a box up and get out…

We urgent­ly need the fol­low­ing:

• Stor­age space – can you fit some of our trea­sures in your attic / cel­lar / shed / liv­ing room etc?
• Peo­ple to help us pack up and move dur­ing the next week or so
• Emp­ty box­es, access to vans, tools for remov­ing fit­tings, torch­es and head­lamps for work­ing with etc
would also all be handy
• If you have any items stored in the base­ment please get in touch as soon as pos­si­ble and arrange
col­lec­tion of them

NB we have had a new shut­ter fit­ted for secu­ri­ty rea­sons so please check some­one is about to unlock
before mak­ing a jour­ney

If you can help please
• ring / text the NEW BASEMENT MOBILE on 07925 771017 or
• email mustsocial@yahoo.co.uk
• come to the Gen­er­al Meet­ing this Thurs­day 31 May 7pm at The Town Hall Tav­ern Tib Lane,
http://www.whathappenedlastnight.net/manchester/bars/the%20town%20hall%20tavern

WE WILL BE BACK — but the time­line is a lit­tle blur­ry.
It’s like­ly to be a few (pos­si­bly 4ish) months. We will of course update you as soon as we know any­thing.

Our apolo­gies to every­one who is incon­ve­nienced by our enforced tem­po­rary clo­sure – we will strive to open again as soon as we can.

In the mean­time, thanks as ever to all who have shown sol­i­dar­i­ty, love and prac­ti­cal sup­port, we will return as soon as pos­si­ble in a stronger and more glo­ri­ous phoenix style

PS please also get in touch or come along on thurs­day if you’re inter­est­ed in some sub­ver­sive base­ment
shenani­gans dur­ing the ear to the ground gig this sun­day.

mustsocial@yahoo.co.uk
http://thebasement.clearerchannel.org/

»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»>

Urgent Base­ment Work­day Tomor­row

work­day from 12 noon, sat­ur­day 2nd june at the base­ment

sad­ly the base­ment social cen­tre is going to be shut for 4ish months due to the state of the build­ing above us. We need to get every­thing out as soon as pos­si­ble…

we urgent­ly need:
O cars and vans to help trans­port stuff
O places to store things (attics, cel­lars, spare rooms etc)
O peo­ple to help pack and move
O box­es!!!

if you can help with any of the above please call the base­ment mobile 07925771017
email mustsocial@yahoo.co.uk or pop down to 24 lever street on sat­ur­day after­noon and get stuck in

over the sum­mer we will also need help fundrais­ing and plot­ting to make sure our phoenix like res­ur­rec­tion is tru­ly splen­did.… watch out for details.…

love and indus­tri­al pack­ing tape

the base­ment col­lec­tive

*******please for­ward shame­less­ly to any­one who might be able to help******

Biofuels protest in Aberdeen

Aberdeen Cam­paign Against Cli­mate Change held a protest inside the audi­to­ri­um of the All Ener­gy con­fer­ence in Aberdeen on Wednes­day 23rd May. They unfurled anti-bio­fu­els ban­ners and inter­rupt­ed a speech by US Ambas­sador to the UK, Robert Tut­tle, in which he was prais­ing the efforts of the US to fight cli­mate change and was claim­ing that bio­fu­els are part of the solu­tion.

Aberdeen Cam­paign Against Cli­mate Change held a protest inside the audi­to­ri­um of the All Ener­gy con­fer­ence in Aberdeen on Wednes­day 23rd May. They unfurled anti-bio­fu­els ban­ners and inter­rupt­ed a speech by US Ambas­sador to the UK, Robert Tut­tle, in which he was prais­ing the efforts of the US to fight cli­mate change and was claim­ing that bio­fu­els are part of the solu­tion.

The pro­tes­tors left peace­ful­ly when asked and con­tin­ued their protest out­side the show venue, Aberdeen Exhi­bi­tion and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre.

The All Ener­gy con­fer­ence also pro­mot­ed wind, solar and marine ener­gy sources as part of the solu­tion to cli­mate change. The protest was held to make sure that peo­ple dis­tin­guish between these clean, tru­ly renew­able sources of ener­gy on the one hand and bio­fu­els from large-scale mono­cul­tures on the oth­er.

The Aberdeen edi­tion of the Press and Jour­nal report­ed the protest well (see pic­ture at
http://3276.e‑printphoto.co.uk/ajl/index.cfm?z=z&y=y&p_id=5176411&c_id=8
401&action=view).

Back­ground:
The US gov­ern­ment have been sab­o­tag­ing progress at inter­na­tion­al cli­mate con­fer­ences for years and their emis­sions con­tin­ue to rise steeply. Large-scale bio­fu­els do not mit­i­gate glob­al warm­ing but make it hap­pen even faster, as rain­forests and oth­er ecosys­tems are rapid­ly being destroyed to make way for vast mono­cul­tures to grow crops for cars in rich nations. Bio­fu­el pro­duc­tion has already been respon­si­ble for glob­al food price ris­es which have been the tar­get of recent riots in Mex­i­co. Peo­ple in the glob­al South are suf­fer­ing a dou­ble wham­my, first­ly as they are suf­fer­ing most from severe weath­er events caused by exces­sive green house gas emis­sions from rich coun­tries and now by hav­ing their liveli­hoods destroyed by mas­sive bio­fu­els mono­cul­tures which are imposed by rich coun­tries try­ing to solve their ener­gy prob­lems. Peo­ple are being forcibly removed from their bio­di­verse farms and are suf­fer­ing health prob­lems from agri­cul­tur­al chem­i­cals. Both inten­sive agri­cul­ture and defor­esta­tion are major con­trib­u­tors to glob­al warm­ing and bio­fu­els threat­en to great­ly increase those emis­sions.

For more info on bio­fu­els see www.biofuelwatch.org.uk.

aberdeen_climatechange@yahoo.co.uk
http://climatechangecampaign.blogspot.com

Critical Mass reports — London, Manchester, Glasgow, Bristol, Edinburgh, York

Lon­don:
The cycle police were pret­ty laid back and vast­ly out­num­bered, though they did still try to man­age the ride by block­ing the front so that the back could catch up. What does it mat­ter if a 1,000 rid­ers get split into two or more though? Towards the end of the ride the police seemed to give up doing any­thing, they did­n’t even try to stop a cou­ple of cars going the wrong way down a one way street, and they just blend­ed in and became a part of the Mass.

Lon­don:
London May 07 Critical Mass 3The cycle police were pret­ty laid back and vast­ly out­num­bered, though they did still try to man­age the ride by block­ing the front so that the back could catch up. What does it mat­ter if a 1,000 rid­ers get split into two or more though? Towards the end of the ride the police seemed to give up doing any­thing, they did­n’t even try to stop a cou­ple of cars going the wrong way down a one way street, and they just blend­ed in and became a part of the Mass.

The police inter­vened with an inci­dent with a young rid­er at King’s Cross. I could­n’t make out whether the rid­er had been involved in acci­dent and the police were just tak­ing par­tic­u­lars or if the rid­er was being rep­ri­mand­ed. Any­way this led to some boo­ing from the Mass.

Par­tic­i­pants did quite a lot of blockad­ing traf­fic and even a small sit
down in Par­lia­ment Square, though this was prob­a­bly cel­e­bra­to­ry and
defi­ant. Noth­ing was done to stop the sound sys­tems play­ing in the SOCPA zone this time. The impres­sion I got from oth­er rid­ers was that this was a very good Mass. I went expect­ing the worst and got almost the best.

http://criticalmasslondon.org.uk

———————————

the inci­dent at kings cross involved a rid­er being caught steal­ing a light from the back of a cops bike. the police got pissed and tried to arrest her but a few oth­er rid­ers, and unfor­tu­nate­ly i mean a few, inter­vened and let it be known that it would be very dif­fi­cult for the police to arrest her — which they decid­ed would there­fore not be worth it. i per­son­al­ly think that those on the CM should not allow fel­low rid­ers to be arrest­ed — an easy thing to acheive when we vast­ly out­num­ber the cops.
respect to the few that helped out.

———————————
The atmos­phere on the ride was real­ly friend­ly with a few small sound sys­tems and a vari­ety of pret­ty mad bikes and trail­ers adding to the mag­ic. There were loads of new faces and peo­ple of every age and back­ground.

There were also plen­ty of cops. They had talked to a few peo­ple as the ride met up at Water­loo Bridge and were seen hand­ing some kind of paper­work to the own­er of one of the sound sys­tems, but no sign of any sig­nif­i­cant attempt to cur­tail the ride. Far from being oppres­sive, they kept them­selves to them­selves on the whole.

I per­son­al­ly got a quite pissed off a few times by seem­ing­ly incon­sid­er­ate behav­ior from the ride itself — for exam­ple, not let­ting pedes­tri­ans cross the road. In anoth­er exam­ple, a bus com­ing in the oppo­site direc­tion was blocked by cyclists on the wrong side of the road and held up for at least ten min­utes as a result.
The cops did grab a few idiots and give them some stern words on sev­er­al occa­sions through­out the ride for cycling on the wrong side of the road into oncom­ing traf­fic.

The police made fools of them­selves at Par­lia­ment Square when they tried to block the rides third or forth rota­tion around the square and end­ed up stalling the ride there for a good half hour. The ride would have moved off much quick­er if left to it’s own devices as the ride likes to move and becomes impa­tient when peo­ple stop.

———————————

Videos from Lon­don:

Quick­time video — video/mp4 9.3M
Win­dows video — video/x‑ms-wmv 13M

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Man­ches­ter video rough-cut

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Glasgow CM May '07 blessing
BIG BIKE BLESSING — Anoth­er great Crit­i­cal Mass bike ride in Glas­gow

About 80 cyclists came out to the Big Bike Bless­ing on this sun­ny evening in Glas­gow. The priest from the church of the Hol­ly Bikes were sent by St Cycle to help cyclists real­ize that by rid­ding their bikes they are actu­al­ly sav­ing the city dwellers and the plan­et at the same time. Every cyclists was praised as a hero, a sav­ior for they are the only ones that can help this oil dri­ven econ­o­my. They are the only ones that can bring fresh air to the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed city. They are the ones tak­ing action on a dai­ly bases no mat­ter where they are from, what their reli­gion might be, or what their pro­fes­sion is. The bike will save us. AMEN!

Hol­ly oil was used to bless about 20 bikes and every cyclist was thanked for their incred­i­ble achieve­ment, their hero­ic act of using their self pro­pelled vehi­cles. They were told that the Great St Cycles is look­ing over all of us and that we will be looked after dur­ing our ride around the city as long as we stick togeth­er.

The cer­e­mo­ni­ous aspect of this gath­er­ing actu­al­ly cre­at­ed some great inter­ac­tions and made peo­ple curi­ous to the point of want­i­ng to know more. There were some very inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion about our reli­gious belief in bikes (which chal­lenged peo­ple in their own beliefs). This also brought all the cyclists togeth­er.

As for cul­tur­al diver­si­ty, and just to show that it’s not about the reli­gion but about bikes, there were a few peo­ple send­ing bless­ings dressed in a more Hin­du style as well. There was even some strange rep­tile that decid­ed to join the cer­e­monies of the day.

The Weird Bike Show brought out the ZEM (Zero Emis­sions Machine) once again, with it’s hop­ping sound sys­tem and pro­vid­ed the broth­ers and sis­ters from the church of the Hol­ly Bikes a bril­liant ride.

The promised Divine Inter­ven­tion did occur around Tron­gate where a pair of shoes belong­ing to no oth­er than St Cycles were care­ful­ly left on top of an elec­tric box before he him­self was tak­en to the sky.

As for the police charg­ing cyclists of block­ing traf­fic last month, there was a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent vibe this month. There were two police offi­cers on bikes that came along to the ride. They were very mel­low and there­for were giv­en quite a few bless­ings.

We also have some excel­lent footage that shows how fast bikes can get out of the way to let things like fire trucks and the police through. The only thing hold­ing these emer­gency vehi­cles up were the motors … not bikes.

The mass fin­ished in George Sq where every­one left was stamped with a ‘Bike Route’ Stamp ensur­ing a spe­cial dis­count to the gig at the Art School with Jum­ble Sales Sound Sys­tem and Bed­lam Boudoir fan­cy bur­lesque night.

For those that claimed Crit­i­cal Mass was dead … I’m pleased to inform you that our num­bers are still grow­ing and we’re lov­ing it.

Bless you Bike!!

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Bristol CM May 07 wheel trashed
Bristol CM May 07 arrestBristol CM May 07 arrest 2
Bris­tol: Crit­i­cal Mass yes­ter­day was phe­nom­e­nal. I think we had over 100 par­tic­i­pants and it was flow­ing beau­ti­ful­ly for about 40 min­utes… Then of course some dri­vers, three I think, all got a bit impa­tient all at once and a cou­ple of cyclists were knocked over, 14 police cars an ambu­lance and a riot van, two arrests lat­er, tail backs from the Foun­tains right up past Stokes Croft… all got a bit nasty. It will be inter­est­ing to see if the press have any­thing to say and what the police pres­ence is next time…

Just to be clear though, whilst there was quite a lot going on as far as I am aware at least one of those arrest­ed got stuck in to the fra­cas after the police arrived and had noth­ing to do with the ride itself, and nei­ther of the cyclists who were hit behaved inap­pro­pri­ate­ly at any point. No motorists were arrest­ed and the police let one hit and run dri­ver leave the scene with­out for­mal­ly record­ing an acci­dent, despite him hav­ing delib­er­ate­ly rammed a cyclist and ruined his bicy­cle.

So, peo­ple, I under­stand there will be anoth­er ride on the 29th of May. Meet 5.30pm at the Foun­tains, leave at 6pm. Those of you who aren’t at Glas­ton­bury that is. The more rea­son­able cyclists that attend the bet­ter we can cre­ate a good organ­ic flow and have a safe and effec­tive ride to cel­e­brate cycling.

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I was at the Edin­burgh Crit­i­cal Mass yes­ter­day, with about 15 or 20 of us there. It went along fair­ly peace­ful­ly, with the excep­tion of the police in the mid­dle of the mead­ows. The ban­ner that some­one had, had to be tak­en down, but apart from that there was no issue, apart from some tail­backs.

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York’s May Crit­i­cal Mass a suc­cess

Some­where between 35 and 40 rid­ers took part in this months ride includ­ing a num­ber of new faces. Flags dis­play­ing state­ments such as “One Less Car” and “I [bike] YRK” were attached to peo­ple’s bikes as they assem­bled at the Min­ster. The large amounts of flier­ing in the pre­vi­ous week seemed to have had a won­der­ful effect, though the weath­er could have been bet­ter. We met some inter­est­ing respons­es along the way. When we reached the sug­gest­ed end point of St Samp­sons Square, the ride end­ed up con­tin­u­ing to cir­cle the square for some time before final­ly stop­ping. It def­i­nite­ly looks like, hav­ing slipped to just 20 a month, the ride is head­ing back to high­er num­bers, and could make 100 by the end of the year.
At 6:05 the ride left, head­ing for Hol­gate Road and Pop­ple­ton Road. After cross­ing Clifton Bridge, the ride head­ed down Water End into Clifton, and after a messy turn, pro­ceed­ed along Kingsway North to the round­about, where the cus­tom­ary 2.5 rota­tions was achieved. The ride then fol­lowed Crighton Avenue to Bur­ton Stone Lane, where the away team coach for the evening’s City match was found com­ing in the oppo­site direc­tion. The ride turned towards town, in along Bootham, through Gilly­gate, through Lord May­ors walk and out along Monkgate, where the round­about pro­vid­ed yet more fun. Back in, through Bootham Bar, and round the Min­ster, then over to the Assem­bly Rooms and Dav­ey Gate. At this point, the ride approached the agreed fin­ish­ing point in St Samp­sons Square. Due to the cycle racks and phones, the ride went round the first side, where upon, instead of turn­ing into the square, it con­tin­ued onwards around and around. So imma­ture, but so much fun!