Angels Disrupt Nanotech Conference and Present ‘Can of Worms’ Award to former Monsanto Man.

A host of heav­en­ly angels from THRONG (The Heav­en­ly Right­eous Opposed to Nan­otech Greed) appeared today unto a nan­otech­nol­o­gy busi­ness con­fer­ence in order to bestow a “Can of Worms” Award on a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Nan­otech­nol­o­gy Indus­try. Cho­sen to receive the award was Mr Har­ry Swan, for­mer­ly of Mon­san­to, who is Nan­otech­nol­o­gy man­ag­er of Britain’s lead­ing pro­duc­er of car­bon nan­otubes, Thomas Swan & Co.

Nan­otech­nol­o­gy, the manip­u­la­tion of mat­ter at the lev­els of atoms and mol­e­cules (a mil­lion nano-angels can dance on the head of a pin), is being tout­ed to Indus­try as “the next big thing” despite major con­cerns over its safe­ty and dis­rup­tive soci­etal impacts.

Hold­ing a ban­ner that read “Nan­otech­nol­o­gy — its not big and its not clever”, a dozen angels sang a melod­ic cho­rus of “Hark the throng of angels sing, Nan­otech’s a dodgy thing” as the “Can of Worms” award was pre­sent­ed by THRONG archangel Sarah Phimn. She cau­tioned del­e­gates against the fool­ish attempt to rush nan­otech­nol­o­gy to mar­ket: “Where these nano fools rush in we angels fear to tread”, she said.

The “Nan­otech­nol­o­gy — Deliv­er­ing Busi­ness Advan­tage” con­fer­ence is intend­ed to con­vince UK busi­ness­es to adopt this con­tro­ver­sial set of tech­nolo­gies. The con­fer­ence, fea­tur­ing speak­ers from arms com­pa­ny BAE and chem­i­cal giant ICI, is in part spon­sored by The Insti­tute of Nan­otech­nol­o­gy — a UK Nan­otech Trade Group whose back­ers include GM crop com­pa­ny Syn­gen­ta, food giant Unilever and defence con­trac­tor Qine­tiq.

“The same greedy cor­po­ra­tions who messed with the genet­ic basis of life are now seek­ing to alter and pri­va­tize nature right down to the atom­ic lev­el”, explained THRONG spoke­san­gel Pan­do­ra Spocks. “We want to warn com­pa­nies attend­ing this con­fer­ence that get­ting into nan­otech is real­ly not a clever idea – for soci­ety or their busi­ness”

This is the first in what is hoped to become an annu­al “Can of Worms” award cer­e­mo­ny. This year’s prizewin­ner, Har­ry Swan, is very famil­iar with open­ing cans of worms: He was respon­si­ble for Mon­san­to’s pub­lic rela­tions attempt to con­vince the pub­lic to accept GM foods — just a small taste of the big­ger con­tro­ver­sy over nan­otech­nol­o­gy still to come.

Notes to Edi­tors:

- For more details, pho­tos and video con­tact Gabriel: +44(0)7746 411539
email: angelsagainstnanotech@crapmail.com

- Copies of the infor­ma­tion giv­en to del­e­gates and of Sarah Phimns award pre­sen­ta­tion speech will be avail­able at http://angelsagainstnanotech.blogspot.comand www.indymedia.org.uk

- Details of the con­fer­ence can be found athttp://www.imeche.org.uk/

- The Insti­tute of Nan­otech­nol­o­gy can be reached atwww.nano.org.uk

- THRONG are not affil­i­at­ed with THONG (but we offer them a tip o’ the hat!) seehttp://www.chicagothong.org/nanocommerce.php?photo=061

 

Award Speech giv­en by Sarah Phimn, THRONG Archangel, at “Nan­otech­nol­o­gy-Deliv­er­ing Busi­ness Advan­tage” con­fer­ence, Bucks UK — 9th Dec 2004

“Broth­ers and sis­ters
Be not afraid. We have tid­ings of great impor­tance. We are here on behalf of THRONG (The Heav­en­ly Right­eous Opposed to Nan­otech Greed) to hand over the first ever “Can of Worms Award” to a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the nan­otech indus­try.

We have been watch­ing the earth­ly plain for many mil­len­nia and from the fir­ma­ment we have noticed of late many fools rush­ing into the great nan­otech­nol­o­gy gam­ble. This caus­es us much con­cern. Those we see rush­ing into nan­otech include: the great fool­ish armies of the world; the fool­ish US pres­i­dent and of course the transna­tion­al com­pa­nies fresh from mak­ing fool­ish things such as weapons (like BAE Sys­tems), pes­ti­cides (like BASF) and GM Crops (Syn­gen­ta).
Where these nano fools rush in, we angels fear to tread.

Our angel­ic host will pass out amongst you hym­nals to explain our con­cern.

And its not just us in the heav­en­ly high get­ting our halos in a twist about small things. Envi­ron­men­tal groups, the insur­ance indus­try, trade unions … why even roy­als and roy­al soci­eties are issu­ing stern warn­ings:
— about the tox­i­c­i­ty of nanopar­ti­cles.
— about the mil­i­tary use of nan­otech­nolo­gies.
— about how nanosen­sors will increase con­trol and sur­veil­lance.
— about how nan­otech­nol­o­gy will strength­en cor­po­rate pow­er.
— about patents on mat­ter.
— about cir­cum­vent­ing dis­abil­i­ty rights.

It is clear to us that the emerg­ing field of Nan­otech­nol­o­gy is an almighty can of worms fraught with prob­lems, dan­gers and, lets face it, real­ly bad PR prob­lems..

And so we are here to present the first ever Can of Worms Award to:
Mr Har­ry Swan (of Thomas Swan and Co.)

Now.. you might not all realise but Har­ry is no stranger to open­ing messy cans of worms.

He was PR spokesper­son for Mon­san­to. He had the job of con­vinc­ing the British pub­lic that they want­ed GM foods. Oops!
Lat­er Har­ry took a job with a com­pa­ny that helps big oil and biotech com­pa­nies attack envi­ron­men­tal and human rights groups. tut tut!

But with an unerr­ing nose for new cans of worms, Har­ry has now returned to the fam­i­ly firm to stake its future on becom­ing the UK’s major pro­duc­er of car­bon nan­otubes — tox­ic asbestos-like fibres.

Har­ry, with nei­ther reg­u­la­tions, safe­ty tests or a clear lia­bil­i­ty regime in place for nan­otech­nol­o­gy we can already hear those worms squirm­ing .. You are a very deserved win­ner of this can of worms..
But real­ly we would advise you NOT to open it.…”

 

A Nano-hymn

Hark the throng of angels sing, nan­otech’s a dodgy thing
Piece by piece the world defiled
God­like sci­ence run­ning wild
Care­ful al ye peo­ple wise
Nano could be your demise
We will not coop­er­ate
With your cor­po­rate nano-state
Hark the throng of angels sing, nan­otech’s a dodgy thing

Leaflet at:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2004/12/302569.pdf More info from:
http://angelsagainstnanotech.blogspot.com/

Video at:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2004/12/302638.wmv

Battle of Sherwood commences as Under-sheriff risks protestors lives

Eviction Aruga!! Sherwood eviction

Evic­tion under­way at Sher­wood Green Protest site, Not­ting­hamshire — Under-Sher­iff risks tun­nellers’ lives, trees pro­tes­tors have been cleared, tree-felling under­way.

After over 14 months spent pro­tect­ing a vil­lage green from ille­gal destruc­tion. Pro­test­ers in Sher­wood for­est are fac­ing the tough­est day — Police turned up with­out warn­ing at 8 this morn­ing and start­ed to evict them.

The trees were evict­ed quite fast , but there is a tun­nel net­work that will take far longer. The tun­nels are well stocked and extreme­ly well defend­ed.

No notice was giv­en that the evic­tions were to take place and the Under-Sher­iff of Not­ting­ham (whose ulti­mate­ly in charge of evic­tions in the area) told the pro­test­ers only last week, that there would not be an evic­tion while legal cas­es were still out­stand­ing.

Pro­test­ers and local peo­ple are cur­rent­ly try­ing to pre­vent the police from get­ting near the tun­nels to stop any fur­ther destruc­tion of the vil­lage green.

As this release goes out, the beech tree which is at least a cou­ple of hun­dred years old is fac­ing the axe.

Sev­er­al peo­ple are known to be in tun­nels, local res­i­dents watch in anger, and the Not­ting­hamshire Police who pre­vi­ous­ly assured them that no tree-felling would take place until the tun­nels had been evict­ed, have now allowed felling to com­mence  of very large mature trees, direct­ly above the sit­ing of the tun­nels which could cause a fatal tun­nel col­lapse.

For infor­ma­tion tele­phone: Olan Trust 08708 080 080 or Fax: 08708 080 081

www.sherwoodgreen.net

Peat Excavation Site Sabotaged — Chat Moss

Ear­li­er this year a peat exca­va­tion works at Chat Moss near Man­ches­ter was Sab­o­taged. The site where the extrac­tion was tak­ing place was of high eco­log­i­cal val­ue and in the vacin­i­ty of a wildlife Site of Sci­en­tif­ic Impor­tance. Peat bogs also have great val­ue as Co2 sinks.

Under cov­er of a gale peo­ple entered the peat exca­va­tion site at Chat Moss. A tur­bo engined peat cut­ter and a cat­api­lar tracked exca­va­tor both had their engines destroyed. Locks on work­shops, stor­age area and office all had their locks sealed. This action was tak­en in defense of the wild. It was easy, any­body could do it all it takes is the will to act!

Sherwood Forest Camp on High Eviction Alert

Sherwood Back Off Bellway

Sher­wood For­est protest camp at Mans­feild Wood­house, Not­ting­hamshire are on high evic­tion Alert after they have been issued new Papers ear­li­er this week, Bal­ifs and unmarked secu­ri­ty vans are now patrolling the area and equip­ment is being deliv­ed to site.
The camp expects to be evict­ed very soon. They need peo­ple to act now, get on camp

Accord­ing to peo­ple on site they could be evict­ed with­in the week, or by christ­mass. there is lots of activ­i­ty and des­per­at­ly need help in preper­a­tions and to have peo­ple on site as once the cor­don goes up you won’t get in. So get on camp as soon as pos­si­ble.
If you are not on the phone tree call the SUMAC cen­tre on 0845 4589595 or the site 07800 501248
Web­site and maps etc.http://www.veggies.org.uk/sherwood/index.htm

They obvi­ous­ly need climb­ing tat, mate­ri­als and food etc.

Solidarity Action for Nine Ladies

Ear­ly this morn­ing activists blocked Stan­cliffe Stone a sub­sidiary of Mar­shalls PLC for three and a half hours using two tripods.

The action was done to show that regard­less of the camp being evict­ed from 9 Ladies site, that Mar­shalls or Stan­cliffe Stone are still very easy to shut down and that activists can cause eco­nom­ic dam­age in a peace­ful non vio­lent way.

Nanotech conference at Leeds’ Royal Armouries disrupted at lunchtime today (Friday 12th November)

At lunchtime today, a meet­ing of com­pa­nies involved in nan­otech­nol­o­gy indus­tries was invad­ed and dis­rupt­ed by a group of peo­ple opposed to tech­nolo­gies of social con­trol.

The protest took 3 main parts. First­ly, an infor­ma­tion gath­er­ing exer­cise to gain fur­ther details of who is involved in what, for future actions. Sec­ond­ly, the hall was vis­it­ed and made extreme­ly unple­sant by a well-known sub­stance for stink­ing out con­fer­ences: com­frey in water left to rot for a cou­ple of months, and fish bait. vis­i­tors to the hall an hr after said peo­ple were hold­ing their noses and not stay­ing, and the smell was hideous. Leaflets were also giv­en out. The third aspect was the seiz­ing of the tan­noy and a com­mu­nique being read out. This coin­cid­ed with a talk on nan­otech which drowned it out, and was heard in every room through the muse­um. Leaflets were also scat­tered down. Two of these peo­ple were held by secu­ri­ty until the police arrived, took down the name and address and date of birth that the two claimed were theirs, quick check to make sure there was no war­rant on the names giv­en, and then released.

Nan­otech­nol­o­gy is the newest weapon against diver­si­ty, rebel­lion, dif­fer­ence, auton­o­my and free­dom. The US mil­i­tary is, of course, the biggest investor as it tries to ensure total dom­i­na­tion of all life on the plan­et. The British gov­ern­ment has also invest­ed £90 mil­lion in nan­otech­nol­o­gy and most indus­tries and uni­ver­si­ties* are devel­op­ing inter­ests in the field.

Genet­ic engi­neer­ing was recog­nised as hav­ing mas­sive social and eco­log­i­cal impli­ca­tions and this ensured world­wide resis­tance against it. Nan­otech­nol­o­gy, which has the abil­i­ty to trans­form all mat­ter, has far more dra­mat­ic effects and needs dras­tic action to con­front this new assault on diver­si­ty of life.

Nan­otech, and its links to biotech­no­log­i­cal, infor­ma­tion­al and cog­ni­tive sci­ences, pro­vides the state with yet more tools with which to con­trol all dis­sent and iron out all life into a homo­ge­neous, manip­u­la­ble mass. Be it advances in sur­veil­lance tech­nolo­gies, the abil­i­ty to dis­able neur­al trans­mit­ters and break apart DNA strands by remote con­trol, arti­fi­cial­ly cre­ate ‘workaholism’ in labour­ers, or ‘stamp out’ phys­i­cal and men­tal dif­fer­ence, nan­otech­nol­o­gy puts mind con­trol, body con­trol, social con­trol and con­trol of the nat­ur­al world more firm­ly in the hands of the state, the cor­po­ra­tions and the rul­ing elite.

Just as biotech­nol­o­gy was sold to us as a green tech­nol­o­gy that would feed the world, so nan­otech is being her­ald­ed. Both instinct and rea­son tell us to take action against these new tech­nolo­gies before we lose our last lib­er­ties to them.

Leeds action is a UK first!

How­ev­er, we were beat­en by North Amer­i­cans tak­ing their clothes off in Octo­ber — Action in Chica­go by THONG at nanocom­merce 2004 — (Top­less Humans Organ­ised for Nat­ur­al Genet­ics) — see
http://www.chicagothong.org/nanocommerce.php?photo=061 for amus­ing pho­tos and also
http://nanobot.blogspot.com/2004/10/nano-industry-hits-bottom.html for indus­try reac­tion
and before that, a 30 Jan 2004 protest of the ground­break­ing of the Mol­e­c­u­lar Foundry, a new Dept of Ener­gy nanochem­istry facil­i­ty at the Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab in Berke­ley, CA USA;

and those pesky Con­ti­nen­tal-types:
actions/protest against nanotech/converging tech­nolo­gies in Greno­ble by piece­set­main­doeu­vre (anti tech activists — dis­rupt­ing nano-con­fer­ences) — seewww.piecesetmaindoeuvre.com

* These are easy tar­gets
* Get scared, then get active!

FURTHER INFO ON NANOTECH:

For those who, like many of us, have buried our heads in the sand about this new tech­nol­o­gy, but have decid­ed it is time to learn and to act, the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion should assist:

http://www.etcgroup.org — cam­paign­ing but non-rad­i­cal group with info on nan­otech; see ‘The Big Down’ report
http://www.wtec.org/ConvergingTechnologies/Report/NBIC_frontmatter.pdf- info from the “oth­er side”
http://www.leedsef.org.uk/atomtech.htm — earth first! web­site with an 8 page nan­otech arti­cle some­where on it!

Another Director Resigns from ‘Bridge Across the Bay Co’

Prof. Bill Davies has announced his res­ig­na­tion from the noto­ri­ous ‘Bridge Across the Bay Com­pa­ny’ after protests last week at the Lan­cast­er Enivi­ron­ment Cen­tre.

Lan­cast­er Earth First! have been informed that Pro­fes­sor Bill Davies, who was one of the direc­tors for the com­pa­ny inves­ti­gat­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of build­ing an 11mile bridge across More­cambe Bay from Heysham to Bar­row has sent an email explain­ing that he is no longer a direc­tor of the com­pa­ny.

Vis­it Lancasteraction.co.uk for lat­est updates…
earthfirst@lancasteraction.co.uk

Protesters Storm the Stage of the “Champion Canterbury Awards”, Aotearoa/New Zealand

About 20 pro­test­ers made quite a ruckus at Thurs­day’s “Cham­pi­on Can­ter­bury Awards” in Christchurch.

Atten­dees to the awards, includ­ing Helen Clark and the Christchurch may­or, were greet­ed with drums, chants, heck­les (‘Why don’t you get a real job?’ was a favourite) and ban­ners.

There were three key tar­gets of the awards: Sol­id Ener­gy for plan­ning to dec­i­mate Hap­py Val­ley on the West Coast with their pro­posed Cyprus Mine; Crop & Food who are cur­rent­ly test­ing ’roundup-ready’ GE onions; and the Can­cer Soci­ety who spend a mas­sive amount of their bud­get on vivi­sec­tion.

Pro­test­ers dressed in $2‑shop suits man­aged to get into the con­fer­ence, despite the heavy police pres­ence, enjoyed a few glass­es of com­pli­men­ta­ry wine and stormed the stage just pri­or to the award cer­e­mo­ny begin­ning. They had ample time to chant, scream and explain what they were opposed to. They also car­ried a ban­ner that read “Don’t Award the Cap­i­tal­ist Hoard”.

The police that were out­side intim­i­dat­ing the pro­test­ers pan­icked and quick­ly turned to race inside but ran straight passed the three pro­test­ers as they casu­al­ly made their own way out.

No arrests result­ed, though numer­ous peo­ple were threat­ened.

Helen Clark was report­ed as say­ing that she thought she was in for a night of “The­atre­s­ports” before she realised it was “just the local anar­chists”.

The Christchurch Press report­ed the events in a cou­ple of columns. They tried to defend them­selves as the pri­ma­ry spon­sors of the event but, instead, summed up the pro­test­ers stand­point with accu­ra­cy unusu­al in main­stream media.

“[The awards] are an unabashed cel­e­bra­tion of the virtues of cap­i­tal­ism… A tiny band of pro­test­ers called them­selves “anti-cap­i­tal­ists” … deplored the hon­our­ing of those who “exploit­ed” or made prof­its from the com­mu­ni­ty, ani­mals and the envi­ron­ment.”

The pro­test­ers also staged their own “Cor­po­rate Backscratch Awards” out­side, with awards like ‘eco-ter­ror­ist’ for Sol­id Ener­gy, ‘bio-haz­ard’ for Crop and Food and ‘ani­mal tor­ture’ for the Can­cer Soci­ety.

None of the camps were will­ing to accept their awards on the night, so were vis­it­ed Fri­day morn­ing where they were delight­ed to see the pro­test­ers again and grate­ful­ly accept­ed the awards.

Save Happy Valley campaigners hunger strike and occupy mine site (New Zealand/Aotearoa)

Save Happy Valley treesit

Two South Island stu­dents began a hunger strike today in protest of the pro­posed“Cypress” mine in Hap­py Val­ley. The stu­dents will con­fine them­selves to a small plat­form sus­pend­ed from a tree on the road to Stock­ton, near Gran­i­ty on the West Coast.

“What we are doing may seem dan­ger­ous, but the dan­gers posed by the Cypress Mine are far greater. We want to illus­trate the hunger and suf­fer­ing that glob­al cli­mate change will cause, to empathise with those who have no voice in the world.” stat­ed Fiona Gib­son, one of the hunger strik­ers.

A num­ber of pro­tes­tors from around New Zealand have also occu­pied the site of the pro­posed mine for the sec­ond time.

The pro­posed mine will extract 500,000 tonnes of coal from the mine each year for 10 years, most­ly for export. Pro­tes­tors say the mine will cause mas­sive loss of veg­e­ta­tion, and destroy habi­tat for endan­gered insects and kiwi. [ Read more ]

Talking CCTV cameras nicked wholesale, in Wakefield!

Thieves broke into Busi­ness Homes’ new busi­ness park in Wake­field last week and stole the 60 cam­eras and sen­sors that made up its “state of the art secu­ri­ty sys­tem”.

The theft was par­tic­u­lar­ly embar­rass­ing giv­en that two of the site’s occu­pants are HM Inspec­torate of Con­stab­u­lary and HM Pris­ons Ser­vice.

“This was a seri­ous­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed sys­tem,” insists direc­tor Simon Houl­ston, prompt­ing me to ask how the bur­glars did away with it.

“There are cam­eras hooked up to a cen­tral office in Black­burn,” he says. “If the men watch­ing the screens see a bur­glar they send a mes­sage out on loud­speak­ers to the office warn­ing them to leave.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, in this case the thieves just did­n’t lis­ten. “One oth­er per­son did, though. The old lady next door lat­er told us she had heard the voice of God, last night, telling her, in a strong Lan­cashire accent, to leave the vicin­i­ty as soon as pos­si­ble.”

(from The Tele­graph)