Events at the Vortex Social Centre: Jan 22nd to Jan 27th

Vor­tex Social Cen­tre
139–141 Stoke New­ing­ton Church Street
Stoke New­ing­ton
N16

MON 22 Jan
8pm — Olympic Action Group meet­ing
Con­cerned about the finan­cial cost and neg­a­tive devel­op­ment plans for Lon­don 2012? Feel strong­ly that 2012 will be dam­ag­ing to you, your com­mu­ni­ty or the envi­ron­ment?

Vor­tex Social Cen­tre
139–141 Stoke New­ing­ton Church Street
Stoke New­ing­ton
N16

MON 22 Jan
8pm — Olympic Action Group meet­ing
Con­cerned about the finan­cial cost and neg­a­tive devel­op­ment plans for Lon­don 2012? Feel strong­ly that 2012 will be dam­ag­ing to you, your com­mu­ni­ty or the envi­ron­ment?
Join our group of like-mind­ed peo­ple, with the aim of sup­port­ing each oth­er and devel­op­ing ways to chal­lenge the neg­a­tive Olympic effect.
All wel­come

TUES 23 Jan
7pm — Cafe and cin­e­ma night.
Hot food, drink and anti-copy­wright cin­e­ma. Dona­tion.

WEDS 24 Jan
10am — 12pm Babies@Play.
New parent/baby group, come along for tea/coffee chat and play­time for babies. Bring your toys and ideas to share. Every wednes­day. Free.
10.30am — Court appear­ance for the evic­tion of the social cen­tre.
Clerken­well and Shored­itch Coun­ty Court
29 — 41 Gee Street
Lon­don
EC1V 3RE
All wel­come to attend.
7pm — Social Cen­tre gen­er­al meet­ing.
Come and get involved in the run­ning of the social cen­tre, pro­pose new intia­tives and cam­paigns

THURS 25 Jan
7pm — No Star­bucks in Stok­ie.
Anti Star­bucks cam­paign meet­ing to ensure the social cen­tre isn’t demol­ished for Star­bucks. All wel­come.

FRI 26 Jan
7pm — Cafe and cin­e­ma night.
Hot food, drink and anti-copy­wright cin­e­ma. Dona­tion.

SAT 27 Jan
8pm — Live jazz Upstairs at the Social Cen­tre.
Old jazzers relive the glo­ry days of the orig­i­nal Vor­tex. Dona­tion on the door.

Pho­to­graph­ic exhi­bi­tion:

Lon­don Social Cen­tres in Picures
Pho­to­graph exhibiton of the last five years of lon­don social cen­tres and a brief back­ground to each one.

Protest
Small col­lec­tion of pho­tographs from acclaimed pho­tog­ra­ph­er Guy Small­man cov­er­ing major demon­stra­tions across Europe over recent years.

We hope to open dai­ly from mid­day onwards for cof­fee, tea, soft drinks, cake and bis­cuits. Volu­enteers are always need­ed to help out. If you are inter­est­ed pop in and speak to some­one. Alter­na­tive­ly come to the meet­ings on Wednes­day.
See you there.

occupiedsocialcentre@hushmail.com

Critical Masses This Friday (& others)

This is the first crit­i­cal mass of 2007. Lets start as we mean to go on and make it a big one!

We cycle round the city to cel­e­brate the bicy­cle:
It’s for any­one that rides a bike;
Its a cel­e­bra­tion of get­ting round the city with­out pol­lut­ing it;

This is the first crit­i­cal mass of 2007. Lets start as we mean to go on and make it a big one!

We cycle round the city to cel­e­brate the bicy­cle:
It’s for any­one that rides a bike;
Its a cel­e­bra­tion of get­ting round the city with­out pol­lut­ing it;
Its about every jour­ney being an adven­ture instead of just sit­ting on a bor­ing bus or in a stress­ful car;
Its about cyclists rid­ing togeth­er to demand more respect from oth­er road users;
Its a way to meet oth­er cyclis­tas;
At rough­ly the same time on Fri­day hun­dreds of cities around the world do the same thing…all get togeth­er for crit­i­cal mass. its beau­ti­ful to know that as you ride with your mates through your own city that all around the world thou­sands of peo­ple are doing the same thing…

Rides in the UK this Fri­day include:
* Brighton — Gath­er 18:00 at the Lev­el (BN2 3FX)
* Cam­bridge — Maybe gath­er 18:30 Cam­bridge Mar­ket Square
* Leeds (This mon­th’s call­out) — Gath­er 17:30–18:00 Mil­le­ni­um Square
* Lon­don — Gath­er 18:30 Water­loo Bridge, by the Nation­al Film The­atre
* Man­ches­ter (videos of pre­vi­ous rides) — Gath­er 18:00 Cen­tral Library
* Not­ting­ham — Gath­er 17:30 Savoy cin­e­ma on Der­by Road in Lenton
* Oxford — Gath­er 17:45–18:00 Corn­mar­ket end of Broad Street out­side The Oxford Sto­ry
* Read­ing — Gath­er 17:30, Read­ing Town Hall

Please leave a com­ment if your ride has been left off (or is incor­rect).
————————————————————————
York Crit­i­cal Mass

In order not to clash with oth­er rides in the vicin­i­ty, York Crit­i­cal Mass is on the first Fri­day of every month mean­ing that the next ride is next Fri­day on 2nd Feb­ru­ary. Assem­ble at 5pm out­side Cost­cut­ters at the Uni­ver­si­ty or 5:30pm out­side York Min­ster. See you there!

Birm­ing­ham Crit­i­cal Mass: Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 2nd

Brum’s crit­i­cal mass is also on the first fri­day of the month, Fri­day 2nd Feb­ru­ary.
We meet up at Pigeon Park (St. Philip’s Cathe­dral) at 5:30pm and set off at 6pm.
The rides are get­ting more pop­u­lar and more cre­ative. There’s now a mobile soundsys­tem and for win­ter crit­i­cal mass’ rid­ers bring along fairy lights to illu­mi­nate the ride.
Sub­scribe to the list below if you want to get more involved!
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/brumcriticalmass

Glas­gow CM

This Fri­day at 5:30, George Square.
http://www.citystrolls.com/strolls/pages/critical.htm
=============================================
For list of UK rides & links, see also http://criticalmass.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Critical_Mass_rides#United_Kingdom

Bloody report from Ballinaboy/ Rossport, Ireland

Fri­day 19th Jan­u­ary 2007.
Today a good crowd of pro­tes­tors gath­ered at the usu­al ren­dezvous, approx 60+ peo­ple. The crowd was buoyed by the pres­ence of a mem­ber of Glob­al Com­mu­ni­ty Mon­i­tor, over from the states, and a film crew trav­el­ling with him. At 7.30 peo­ple pro­ceed­ed up the road, some wear­ing white jump suits with chem­i­cal con­t­a­m­i­nants inscribed on the front, poi­sons which the Bal­linaboy ter­mi­nal would pol­lute the local area, fresh water and sea with. The crowd was lead with a large ban­ner read­ing Cor­rib Ter­mi­nal Ill­ness.

Fri­day 19th Jan­u­ary 2007.
Today a good crowd of pro­tes­tors gath­ered at the usu­al ren­dezvous, approx 60+ peo­ple. The crowd was buoyed by the pres­ence of a mem­ber of Glob­al Com­mu­ni­ty Mon­i­tor, over from the states, and a film crew trav­el­ling with him. At 7.30 peo­ple pro­ceed­ed up the road, some wear­ing white jump suits with chem­i­cal con­t­a­m­i­nants inscribed on the front, poi­sons which the Bal­linaboy ter­mi­nal would pol­lute the local area, fresh water and sea with. The crowd was lead with a large ban­ner read­ing Cor­rib Ter­mi­nal Ill­ness.

As the crowd passed over the nar­row bridge tem­pers frayed and to nobod­ies sur­prise the Gar­dai ploughed into the pro­tes­tors, shov­ing them every which way. At this point two Gar­dai held Pat’s arms while anoth­er punched him in the face sev­er­al times. Sim­i­lar­ly his broth­er Mar­tin was seri­ous­ly assault­ed, suf­fer­ing cut­ting and bruis­ing to face and eye. But as the dawn has not yet bro­ken cap­tur­ing any image of this is vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble, espe­cial­ly giv­en the num­ber of Gar­dai there to hide each oth­ers activ­i­ties and deny same.
It’s very hard to ascer­tain if there is any log­i­cal point to the Gar­dai activ­i­ties with regard to wad­ing in and assault­ing all around them as oth­er than to bul­ly and injure peo­ple it serves no prac­ti­cal pur­pose. Usu­al­ly their excuse for push­ing and shov­ing is to ensure your safe­ty and make sure you are on the oth­er side of the white line so none of Shells work­ers or trucks can pos­si­bly be delayed for even a sec­ond. How­ev­er as can be seen in the first pho­to some Gar­dai are near­ly on the oth­er side of the road, where there is no hard shoul­der as this is on the bridge, and still they are push­ing, shov­ing and assault­ing peo­ple.

Yes­ter­day after the Gar­dai head­ed off for their break­fasts, leav­ing the trucks to fend for them­selves, local res­i­dents blocked access to the site, hold­ing up stone trucks for a peri­od of time. Secu­ri­ty appeared to pan­ic some­what clos­ing and lock­ing the site gates before Gar­dai with out a com­mand­ing offi­cer appeared on the scene to ush­er in the stalled trucks.

Water qual­i­ty con­tin­ues to be a seri­ous issue, despite Co.Co. assur­ances that it is fine. Images below show water leav­ing the Bal­linaboy site, some clear­ly untreat­ed and look­ing very sim­i­lar to last year, sil­ver grey, when it was found to be heav­i­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with alu­mini­um. The main out­fall area from the site looks mar­gin­al­ly bet­ter, where the water is at least sup­posed to have been treat­ed by this point, how­ev­er it is also clear­ly looks noth­ing like drink­ing water qual­i­ty and exhibits some sil­ver grey colour­ing. Despite the fact that all water leav­ing the site is sup­posed to be treat­ed before leav­ing site you can clear­ly see the water from the truck wash at Gate 3 being pumped straight into exit­ing drains.
The past 3 days have seen mem­bers of Shell to Sea hand­ing out leaflets at the Shell green­wash events in Castle­bar and Bal­li­na. Very few peo­ple attend­ed these events, and num­bers must have been dou­bled or even tre­bled by the atten­dance of 2 school groups, 1 from sec­ondary school and 1 from pri­ma­ry school, nev­er to ear­ly to start brain wash­ing.

Our own pres­ence was wel­comed by many peo­ple pass­ing by and many who did go in to see Shells expen­sive PR work were firm­ly behind the stance of Shell to Sea. As we hand­ed out infor­ma­tion leaflets and chat­ted to peo­ple 1 passer­by even went into the hotel and brought out a tray of steam­ing hot whiskeys!

March on Worthing Police Station in support of Titnore, 17th Feb

A PROTEST march on Wor­thing Police Sta­tion has been called for Sat­ur­day Feb­ru­ary 17 in the face of police intim­i­da­tion of Tit­nore Woods cam­paign­ers.

A state­ment from Tit­nore Emer­gency Action (TEA), released on Thurs­day Jan­u­ary 18, said:

A PROTEST march on Wor­thing Police Sta­tion has been called for Sat­ur­day Feb­ru­ary 17 in the face of police intim­i­da­tion of Tit­nore Woods cam­paign­ers.

A state­ment from Tit­nore Emer­gency Action (TEA), released on Thurs­day Jan­u­ary 18, said:
“In the run-up to Christ­mas, sup­port­ers of the Tit­nore Woods cam­paign were try­ing to bring in food and cash dona­tions to the camp, for obvi­ous rea­sons.

“How­ev­er as you may have heard, on no less than two occa­sions Wor­thing Police offi­cers attend­ed the stall and threat­ened with arrest our friends mak­ing the col­lec­tions.

“This is noth­ing short of polit­i­cal harass­ment of Tit­nore sup­port­ers and flies in the face of local democ­ra­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly the fact that the cam­paign has won the sup­port of thou­sands of local peo­ple, who vis­it the stall to make their con­tri­bu­tion to the tree house heroes.

“In protest at this dra­con­ian and unnec­es­sary action, which has stopped vital fund-rais­ing at a vital time, we call for a MARCH ON WORTHING POLICE STATION on Sat­ur­day Feb­ru­ary 17, head­ing off at 2pm from Hold­ers Cor­ner, Mon­tague Place [near Mac­Don­ald’s], Wor­thing.

“This will also be an oppor­tu­ni­ty to express ongo­ing sup­port for the camp and the fight to Save Tit­nore Woods.

“We hope as many of you as pos­si­ble will be there to lend your sup­port for the efforts of our our friends on the stall and in the woods.

Tit­nore Emer­gency Action (TEA)”

Mean­while, cam­paign­ers say they have received some infor­ma­tion sug­gest­ing that an attempt­ed evic­tion of the Tit­nore camp might be very immi­nent. The source also sug­gest­ed that Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Army per­son­nel would be involved.

Wor­thing eco-action added: “While we do not want to “cry wolf” by sound­ing the alarm bells too often, we thought peo­ple should be aware of this. If any­one has any oth­er infor­ma­tion either sup­port­ing or con­tra­dict­ing this rumour, please get in touch with us, Pro­tect Our Wood­land or the camp. Or come to Thurs­day night’s Wor­thing Alliance meet­ing (Jan­u­ary 25). If there are plans to evict soon, there may be a con­nec­tion with the recent heavy-hand­ed treat­ment of Tit­nore sup­port­ers.

New London Social Centre

139–141 Stoke New­ing­ton Church Street N16 (old Vor­tex Jazz bar)

Open­ing day Sat­ur­day 20th Jan
map:  http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?G2M?X=533113&Y=186502&A=Y&Z=1
— - — - — -
On Sat 6th Jan a group of local peo­ple, along with oth­ers, occu­pied 139–141 Church Street with the inten­tion of open­ing it up as a social cen­tre. Pre­vi­ous­ly the home of the famous Vor­tex jazz club the build­ing is set to be demol­ished by noto­ri­ous land­lord Richard Mid­da to make way for a Star­bucks on the ground floor with lux­u­ry apart­ments above.

139–141 Stoke New­ing­ton Church Street N16 (old Vor­tex Jazz bar)

Open­ing day Sat­ur­day 20th Jan
map:  http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?G2M?X=533113&Y=186502&A=Y&Z=1
— - — - — -
On Sat 6th Jan a group of local peo­ple, along with oth­ers, occu­pied 139–141 Church Street with the inten­tion of open­ing it up as a social cen­tre. Pre­vi­ous­ly the home of the famous Vor­tex jazz club the build­ing is set to be demol­ished by noto­ri­ous land­lord Richard Mid­da to make way for a Star­bucks on the ground floor with lux­u­ry apart­ments above.

This devel­op­ment high­lights the con­tin­ued ero­sion (and unique char­ac­ter) of Church Street as a com­mu­ni­ty hub, where cor­po­rate logos increas­ing­ly pro­lif­er­ate while the cost of hous­ing in Hack­ney esca­lates beyond the means of most ordi­nary peo­ple. Again and again rich prop­er­ty devel­op­ers and the dom­i­nat­ing pow­er of cap­i­tal deter­mine our social, liv­ing and cul­tur­al needs — as with the evic­tion of the orig­i­nal Vor­tex pri­vate greed always wins out against com­mu­ni­ty need.

Social cen­tres are a means where­by peo­ple can come togeth­er to cre­ate, con­spire, com­mu­ni­cate and offer a col­lec­tive chal­lenge against this dom­i­na­tion.

Stoke New­ing­ton has always had a rich rad­i­cal tra­di­tion: Mary Woll­stonecraft writer, philoso­pher and ear­ly fem­i­nist worked in New­ing­ton Green, the Angry Brigade plot­ted against the state from Amhurst road, as well as the The Rad­i­cal Dairy social cen­tre being sit­u­at­ed round the cor­ner in Kynas­ton road. We hope to con­tin­ue this tra­di­tion.

The idea of social cen­tres is not only to occu­py social space but to cre­ate a crit­i­cal vis­i­ble pres­ence in the com­mu­ni­ty where peo­ple can engage with rad­i­cal ideas and events and encour­age par­tic­i­pa­tion in cre­at­ing those events.

Already planned is a reg­u­lar café, cin­e­ma and jazz nights, an exhi­bi­tion space for local artists, a parent/baby group and reg­u­lar ben­e­fits. We intend it to be a meet­ing space for all man­ner of local cam­paigns as well as polit­i­cal events. We invite you to par­tic­i­pate and con­tribute to the suc­cess of the new social cen­tre as a rad­i­cal way of organ­is­ing our­selves.…..

The Social Cen­tre meet­ing every Wednes­day 7pm, all wel­come.

PS Richard Mid­da has issued court papers (court date: Jan­u­ary 24th 10.30 am at Shored­itch coun­ty court) to take repos­ses­sion of the build­ing. We intend to fight against the pro­ceed­ings and invite peo­ple to get involved in the cam­paign to pre­vent Mid­da turn­ing Church Street into anoth­er cor­po­rate won­der­land.

Come on Sat­ur­day to find out more.
2pm — Cafe serv­ing cof­fee, tea, cold drinks, cake
5pm — Social Cen­tre Pre­sen­ta­tion. Find out who we are and what’s going on with the place
7pm onwards hot food, drink and chilled music

web­site: www.londonsocialcentre.org.uk
email:  occupiedsocialcentre@hushmail.com
tel: 07960641707

Why suppress Biovision/Biosquare? — 11–14th March, Lyon, France

From the 11th to the 14th of March 2007, the fifth edi­tion of Biovision/Biosquare Forum is going to take place in Lyon. These meet­ings are now con­sid­ered to be the biggest meet­ing in the world on biotech­nolo­gies. Stop Bio­vi­sion!

From the 11th to the 14th of March 2007, the fifth edi­tion of Biovision/Biosquare Forum is going to take place in Lyon. These meet­ings are now con­sid­ered to be the biggest meet­ing in the world on biotech­nolo­gies. Stop Bio­vi­sion!

Accord­ing to the orga­niz­ers :
« Bio­vi­sion : the world forum of life-sci­ences is an inter­na­tion­al plat­form for dia­logue, debate and con­struc­tive pro­pos­als for action, bring­ing togeth­er equal num­bers of rep­re­sen­ta­tives of civ­il soci­ety, sci­en­tists, indus­tri­al­ists and politi­cians on glob­al top­ics about health, food and envi­ron­ment. »
For 2007 the « mil­len­ni­um objec­tives for devel­op­ment » are announced as the major top­ic of the forum. These objec­tives include reduc­ing the extreme pover­ty on the plan­et by half, pro­vid­ing pri­ma­ry edu­ca­tion for all chil­dren and stop­ping the spread of the aids virus.

Behind this seduc­tive show­case lurks a pro­pa­gan­da tool to pro­mote accep­tance of biotech­nolo­gies, and a mar­ket­place where con­tracts are signed between research cen­ters and indus­tries (Biosquare), every­thing being of course spon­sored by big agri­cul­tur­al, chem­i­cal and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­tries.
Those firms, you know them : for exam­ple, Pfiz­er and Sanofi-Aven­tis (respec­tive­ly n°1 and n°3 in health care ), Bay­er (n°1 in the world in phy­tosan­i­tary prod­ucts) or, near Lyon, Rhone-Poulenc and Bio­merieux.

Where­as the eco­log­i­cal dev­as­ta­tion direct­ly relat­ed to these indus­tries is more and more oppres­sive (cli­mat­ic warm­ing, deplet­ing the reserves of drink­able water, men­ac­ing the diver­si­ty of species, mul­ti­ply­ing dan­ger­ous­ly pol­lut­ed sites…) Where­as GMO seeds trap farm­ers in depen­dence on multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies Where­as patents on mol­e­cules hin­der access to vac­ci­na­tions and treat­ments for the most vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions fac­ing most seri­ous health risks Where­as less than 10% of com­mer­cialised chem­i­cal prod­ucts have been test­ed for poten­tial risk (cf Green­peace) and at the same time can­cer has increased 60% in France in the last twen­ty years Where­as those com­pa­nies have already been respon­si­ble for many scan­dals (Zyk­lon B, Roundup, Gau­cho, AZF, Bhopal, Sévéso …) Where­as the sci­en­tif­ic basis of genet­ic ther­a­py has not been estab­lished and research in this field is lit­tle more than tin­ker­ing.

Why would com­pa­nies that are respon­si­ble to a large degree for the cat­a­stroph­ic sit­u­a­tion in coun­tries of the south­ern hemi­sphere, sud­den­ly turn around and pay to allay the suf­fer­ings of the pop­u­la­tions of those same coun­tries ?

It is pri­mar­i­ly for them a way to cap­ture new inter­na­tion­al mass mar­kets for vac­cines, med­i­cines, seeds, chem­i­cals for agri­cul­ture and to appear phil­an­thropic at the same time. Thus they can con­tin­ue the pil­lage and eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion of the south­ern coun­tries while being sup­port­ed by the politi­cians of the rich ones.

It is impor­tant to empha­size that our elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives are active­ly sup­port­ing this meet­ing. The city of Lyon, the depart­ment of the Rhone, and the Region of Rhone-Alps are con­tribut­ing 2 532 000 euros to this event.

If the Bio­vi­sion Forum is tak­ing place in Lyon it is not an acci­dent but the result of eco­nom­ic inter­ests and the polit­i­cal deter­mi­na­tion (those meet­ings have been cre­at­ed by Ray­mond Barre, ex may­or of Lyon and are direct­ed by Phillipe Demarescaux, ex direc­tor of Rhone-Poulenc, and pres­i­dent of The sci­en­tif­ic foun­da­tion of Lyon ) of the Region of Rhone Alps to become the Euro­pean cen­ter for biotech­nolo­gies (Lyon) and nan­otech­nolo­gies (Greno­ble).

Where­as the Rhone-Alps Region declared itself a « non-GMO region » (dec­la­ra­tion n°04.00.193 of 28th and 29th of April 2004) and the major­i­ty of its pop­u­la­tion is against the spread of GMO.
Those polit­i­cal choic­es— so con­trary to the ideals of democ­ra­cy and the com­mon inter­ests of the people—are intol­er­a­ble. The pol­i­cy of always more « progress » for more and more prof­its has to stop now !

It is OUR future that is at stake. We want to decide by our­selves inde­pen­dent from the impe­ri­al­ism of big firms. We are invit­ing every­one to a mobil­i­sa­tion against this Forum of 2007, and to do all that we can to insure that it will be the last.

Col­lec­tif des resis­tances et des alter­na­tives de Lyon.
con­tact :  nonabiovision@no-log.org

New Year Destruction at the Hill of Tara, Ireland

In fla­grent con­tempt of best archae­o­log­i­cal and eco­log­i­cal prac­tice, a sys­tem­at­ic cam­paign of tree felling, earth clear­ance and mon­u­ment removal has begun at the Hill of Tara. This is even before the Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ship (PPP) con­tract for the M3 Motor­way, through the Tara / Skryne Val­ley, has even been signed. Dai­ly protests are tak­ing place, every 7am in the morn­ing at the Hill of Tara car park.

In fla­grent con­tempt of best archae­o­log­i­cal and eco­log­i­cal prac­tice, a sys­tem­at­ic cam­paign of tree felling, earth clear­ance and mon­u­ment removal has begun at the Hill of Tara. This is even before the Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ship (PPP) con­tract for the M3 Motor­way, through the Tara / Skryne Val­ley, has even been signed. Dai­ly protests are tak­ing place, every 7am in the morn­ing at the Hill of Tara car park.

The sit­u­a­tion at Rath Lugh: Rath Lugh is “ownedâ€? by Coillte, the State Forestry Board. Native trees are being sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly felled, even though Rath Lugh is a des­ig­nat­ed nation­al mon­u­ment, and strate­gi­cal­ly placed as part of the defen­sive for­ti­fi­ca­tions at Tara, on the north­ern slope of the Skyrne Val­ley. A new area is being worked just behind Lis­mullen. There are oth­er wood­ed areas between Rath Lugh and Blun­del­stown. It is vital that these be pre­served from the van­dal­ism that has already been per­pe­trat­ed. Coillte is legal­ly oblig­ed to pro­tect nation­al mon­u­ments on land in its care.  http://tarawatch.org/?p=234 Coillte’s con­tempt for the archae­o­log­i­cal sites on the land it over­sees has already been dis­played in the case of the Mooghaun hill­fort, which has been dam­aged by Coillte’s plant­i­ng of conifer trees there. Mooghaun hill­fort (Moghane in Irish), locat­ed in Co. Clare, is thought to be the largest hill­fort in Ire­land. Built c.1260–930 B.C., it is sit­u­at­ed “on a low hillock in a fair­ly gen­tly undu­lat­ing land­scape of good agri­cul­tur­al land dot­ted with many small lakesâ€? Gro­gan 1993: 39  http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/D/0392/D.0392.198910240071.html

Coillte is a state body; it is, how­ev­er, behav­ing as if it were a pri­vate cor­po­ra­tion, enti­tled to dis­pose of its “propertyâ€? as it sees fit. Again, Coillte’s record speaks for itself. In March 2001, Coillte approved the sale of 250 acres of land at Bel­lan­aboy, Co Mayo for the Cor­rib Gas Ter­mi­nal. In Decem­ber of 2004 the remain­ing area of 160 hectares was sold by Coillte to Shell for €2.75 mil­lion. Sub­se­quent­ly Coillte grant­ed Shell “wayleaveâ€? per­mis­sion to build a high-pres­sure raw gas pipeline through 3km of adja­cent Coillte land at Augh­oose, Co Mayo.  http://www.corribsos.com/index.php?id=439
Coillte over­sees more than 1.5 mil­lion acres on behalf of the State, so the stakes are high.

The sit­u­a­tion at Baron­stown:
Baron­stown lies in the heart of the Tara-Skyrne Val­ley, and has been described by the Archae­ol­o­gists who under­took the Dis­cov­ery Pro­gramme sur­vey at Tara as a Nation­al Mon­u­ment. It was how­ev­er, exclud­ed from the Envi­ron­men­tal Impact State­ment (EIS). There is grow­ing evi­dence of improp­er exca­va­tion meth­ods by the pri­vate archae­o­log­i­cal com­pa­nies over­seen by the Nation­al Roads Author­i­ty. Plas­tic bags con­tain­ing bones, lack­ing num­bers or mark­ings, are being found lying in ran­dom places. This in itself is proof of inad­e­quate archae­o­log­i­cal super­vi­sion.  http://tarawatch.org/?p=289

The sit­u­a­tion at Col­lier­stown: Again this was not­ed by the Dis­cov­ery Pro­gramme as being wor­thy of des­ig­na­tion as a Nation­al Mon­u­ment, but was exclud­ed from the EIS. It is a bur­ial site, with many graves of rec­tan­gu­lar shape, edged with stone slabs. These appear to be children’s graves.  http://tarawatch.org/?p=273

The sit­u­a­tion at Roestown:
Here, a com­plex of bee­hive souter­rains has been removed. Anoth­er has been new­ly dis­cov­ered, yet is short­ly to be removed. Tree felling has already occurred.  http://tarawatch.org/?p=304
All of this van­dal­ism is pos­si­ble because the Min­is­ter for the Envi­ron­ment has scrapped the her­itage pro­tec­tion pro­vi­sions in Irish law, and sub­sti­tut­ed an Act grant­i­ng him the pow­er to issue licens­es for unsu­per­vised archae­o­log­i­cal exca­va­tion of des­ig­nat­ed sites. Under this con­ven­tion, a host of licens­es have been issued for exca­va­tions in the Tara / Skryne Val­ley.  http://www.sacredireland.org/gallery.html These pic­tures give an indi­ca­tion of the dam­age that occurred in 2005:
The dig­gers move in:  http://www.sacredireland.org/12don.html
Earth Removal:  http://www.sacredireland.org/22don.html
 http://www.sacredireland.org/27don.html
 http://www.sacredireland.org/28don.html  http://www.sacredireland.org/24don.html
The bones of the dead:  http://www.sacredireland.org/bone.html
More exca­va­tor activ­i­ty:  http://www.sacredireland.org/12.html  http://www.sacredireland.org/13.html
Top­soil exca­va­tions:  http://www.sacredireland.org/3.html  http://www.sacredireland.org/18.html  http://www.sacredireland.org/digger.html

Camp Bling at ‘Prittlewel King’ awards

17.01.2007

Southend ‘May­or’ can­cels F5 road widen­ing at ‘Prit­tlewell King’ award cel­e­bra­tions

The cam­paign against the con­tro­ver­sial A127/A1159 Pri­o­ry Cres­cent ‘F5’ road widen­ing scheme took yet anoth­er dra­mat­ic new turn tonight, when dozens of local res­i­dents ‘stormed’ a cel­e­bra­tion at the town’s Clu­ni­ac Pri­o­ry to mark Southend Bor­ough Coun­cil receiv­ing the cov­et­ed British Archae­o­log­i­cal Awards 2006 ‘Current Archae­ol­o­gy Devel­op­er-Fun­der Archae­ol­o­gy Award,’ for the dis­cov­ery of the ‘King of Bling,’ in Prit­tlewell in late 2003.

17.01.2007

Southend ‘May­or’ can­cels F5 road widen­ing at ‘Prit­tlewell King’ award cel­e­bra­tions

The cam­paign against the con­tro­ver­sial A127/A1159 Pri­o­ry Cres­cent ‘F5’ road widen­ing scheme took yet anoth­er dra­mat­ic new turn tonight, when dozens of local res­i­dents ‘stormed’ a cel­e­bra­tion at the town’s Clu­ni­ac Pri­o­ry to mark Southend Bor­ough Coun­cil receiv­ing the cov­et­ed British Archae­o­log­i­cal Awards 2006 ‘Current Archae­ol­o­gy Devel­op­er-Fun­der Archae­ol­o­gy Award,’ for the dis­cov­ery of the ‘King of Bling,’ in Prit­tlewell in late 2003.

Amid chaot­ic scenes, Coun­cil­lors and Dig­ni­taries attend­ing the cel­e­bra­tion received a speech from Southend ‘Mayor’ John Smith, who apol­o­gised on behalf of the Coun­cil for their inten­tion to destroy the East Sax­on king’s bur­ial site, promised to return the award received last Octo­ber in Birm­ing­ham, and then dra­mat­i­cal­ly announced the imme­di­ate can­cel­la­tion of the F5 road widen­ing, after hav­ing, ‘finally lis­tened to and tak­en note of the major­i­ty of peo­ple in Southend who have been shown repeat­ed­ly to oppose the scheme.’

Local res­i­dent Pat­sy Link who joined the demon­stra­tors said, ‘This award pre­sent­ed to Southend Bor­ough Coun­cil is said to cel­e­brate the mer­its of devel­op­er fund­ed archae­ol­o­gy, which in the case of the dis­cov­ery of the bur­ial has pro­vid­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to rewrite his­to­ry. Southend Bor­ough Coun­cil now has a site to rival the Sut­ton Hoo ship bur­ial in Suf­folk, but still seeks to bury it under 10 feet of con­crete for the road widen­ing. To cel­e­brate then destroy it is noth­ing short of sheer luna­cy on the part of the peo­ple here tonight at the Priory.’

A deci­sion to fund the road widen­ing has been await­ed from the Depart­ment for Trans­port since a local Pub­lic Inquiry took place in March 2004. Infor­ma­tion from the East of Eng­land Region­al Part­ner­ship Group shows that costs have now risen to an esti­mat­ed £25m for the 870 metre length of car­riage­way, mak­ing it poten­tial­ly, ‘The most expen­sive stretch of road in the world.’

In the mean time local protest site Camp Bling still occu­pies the land above the bur­ial, 4 as it has for six­teen months since first being set up by locals in Sep­tem­ber 2005. It is rumoured that one of the deep­est protest tun­nel sys­tems ever known has since been dug to help defend the camp, and num­bers have grown sig­nif­i­cant­ly as the fund­ing deci­sion is await­ed.

Mabel Jones of Prit­tlewell said, ‘If the local Coun­cil and cen­tral Gov­ern­ment per­ceive that this cam­paign is only about a hand­ful of peo­ple against the road scheme then they need to think again and quick­ly. Tonight has shown that a large cross sec­tion of the local com­mu­ni­ty are not just against the scheme, but will active­ly attempt to stop it if the fund­ing go ahead is now given.’

 http://blingblog.bravejournal.com/

Thrupp Lake (Radley Oxfordshire) update

There were once nine lakes…

Local peo­ple have joined forces with ecol­o­gists and envi­ron­men­tal activists in a pledge to save Thrupp Lake (at Radley, near Oxford), fol­low­ing a deci­sion by Npow­er boss­es to dump 500,000 tonnes of fly-ash on to the site.

There were once nine lakes…

Local peo­ple have joined forces with ecol­o­gists and envi­ron­men­tal activists in a pledge to save Thrupp Lake (at Radley, near Oxford), fol­low­ing a deci­sion by Npow­er boss­es to dump 500,000 tonnes of fly-ash on to the site.

Thrupp lake is a nature reserve as des­ig­nat­ed by Oxford­shire Coun­ty Coun­cil, with many rare plants, insects and ani­mals includ­ing water voles and otters.

The plan is to cut down over 1,000 trees so that Npow­er can drain then fill the lake with 500,000 tonnes of tox­ic waste ash from the near­by Did­cot Pow­er Sta­tion. The waste ash is pul­verised fly-ash which can be recy­cled and used in var­i­ous build­ing prod­ucts such as cement and breeze blocks. Past study found traces of many nas­ties includ­ing Polo­ni­um 210!

Npow­er have already destroyed sev­en oth­er lakes in the imme­di­ate area. The locals have been try­ing to save the lakes for many years using all legal means and have failed. Their lat­est chal­lenge is to get the lake des­ig­nat­ed to vil­lage green sta­tus, which would save the lake. How­ev­er, Npow­er have said they will begin work BEFORE this appli­ca­tion will even be heard in court! The locals have wel­comed us with open arms to fight this along­side them.

As part of this, our group occu­pied an emp­ty prop­er­ty on the shore of the lake on Decem­ber 28th with a view to pro­tect the lake and using all non-vio­lent means to resist evic­tion (Lock-on’s and bar­ri­cades etc), whilst also open­ing the build­ing up (com­pul­sary pur­chased by Npow­er) as a field cen­ter for the study of the local ecol­o­gy.

Recent News: Npow­er took us to Coun­ty Court on 10th Jan­u­ary to gain a repos­ses­sion order to evict us, how­ev­er, they did not expect us to have such a great legal team behind us. The order for repos­ses­sion was thrown out as the papers were ille­gal­ly served to us by Npow­er! Local press
head­line was “Squatters win first roundâ€?. We are in court again Weds. 24th Jan. at the Coun­ty Court in Oxford. We have a bar­ris­ter work­ing on the case and are putting up a stiff legal defense.

At present: We are work­ing on defend­ing the build­ing and record­ing and pho­tograph­ing the local ecol­o­gy (we need proof that cer­tain species inhab­it the area as part of the defense). We are still in LEGAL pos­ses­sion of the build­ing and we have mas­sive local sup­port. The house is mas­sive and the lake is absolute­ly beau­ti­ful.

HOW YOU CAN HELP : Vis­it us! Remem­ber we are in legal pos­ses­sion and you are allowed to stay. Stay with us to defend the build­ing if we get evict­ed, or come to do some ecol­o­gy work. Bring your friends! (You may even see the Radley Lake Pen­guin!). Bring us things we need off our ‘Wish
List’. Come and sup­port us in court on the 24th – bring ban­ners etc.

Catch the train to Radley sta­tion (one stop from Oxford), and it is about a fif­teen minute walk to the site. For direc­tions ring the site mobile.
SITE MOBILE NUMBER IS: 07772 0553 384

For more infor­ma­tion see www.saveradleylakes.org.uk or check out our progress on UK Indy­media or Indy­media Oxford.

Watch the video (video/x‑msvideo 34MB)

WISH LIST
Food, Fur­ni­ture, Blan­kets, Duvets, Sleep­ing Bags, Water­proofs, Lad­ders,
Buck­ets, Kitchen knives and cut­lery, plates etc., Rope and Polyprop, Nuts,
bolts, Nails, Screws, Wire mesh, Tools, Span­ners, wrench­es, Sock­et sets,
Bot­tled Water (1 ltr), Ban­ners, Paint, Shov­el, Tim­ber for build­ing, Cable
ties, Climb­ing Carib­i­neers for lock-on’s, Chains, 45 gal­lon oil drums,
Fake ani­mal Fur (Yes thats right),Cash, YOU!

UNIVERSITY, RESEARCH INSTITUTE TARGETED BY ANTI-VIVISECTION ACTIVISTS

anony­mous com­mu­nique:

“Aberys­t­wyth Uni­ver­si­ty and the Insti­tute of Grass­lands and Envi­ron­men­tal Research (IGER) car­ry out cru­el and point­less tests on ani­mals.

Welsh activists have there­fore been busy with the foll­wing actions to try and per­suade them they should end their involve­ment with ani­mal test­ing alto­geth­er.

anony­mous com­mu­nique:

“Aberys­t­wyth Uni­ver­si­ty and the Insti­tute of Grass­lands and Envi­ron­men­tal Research (IGER) car­ry out cru­el and point­less tests on ani­mals.

Welsh activists have there­fore been busy with the foll­wing actions to try and per­suade them they should end their involve­ment with ani­mal test­ing alto­geth­er.

Japan­ese knotweed is a very destruc­tive weed that spreads very eas­i­ly. Large quan­ti­ties of this was spread over dif­fer­ent parts of the uni­ver­si­ty grounds.

*Over a thou­sand let­ters say­ing “end your involve­ment in vivi­sec­tion” were sent to Aberys­t­wyth Uni­ver­si­ty Freep­ost address

*Butric acid was spread in toi­lets, chang­ing rooms and library
The smell is very hard to remove and boy does it smell

*Over 50 texts were made to uni­ver­si­ty staff home phone num­bers just before a major open day.
When a text reach­es the home phone it con­verts to a sim­u­lat­ed voice mes­sage. It warned of chaos on the open day fol­lowed by oth­er actions.

*Impor­tant peo­ple with­in these insti­tu­tions had mes­sages sprayed in red on their dri­ves and gates.

Also IGER signs were sprayed with red slo­gans.

More impor­tant peo­ple had their per­son­al car details used to apply for lots of car insur­ance quotes includ­ing their home and work phone num­bers and work e‑mails.

Lots more to come until they issue a state­ment say­ing they will stop test­ing on ani­mals.”