The Mutatoes Are Coming !!! And Cambridge GM site location/walk report. And Rampart events

Every­thing you ever want­ed to know about Franken­spuds, but were afraid to ask.
@ ram­pART (www.rampart.co.nr) this Tues­day (17th), 8pm
16 ram­part street, lon­don E1 2LA

Films and dis­cus­sion on GM crops tri­als in the UK and the pre­vi­ous­ly sucess­ful cam­paign to stop them. Plus update on the biotech indus­tries lat­est attempts to push this shit down our throats.

This month a con­tro­ver­sial exper­i­men­tal genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied pota­to crop is due to be plant­ed in the UK by the Ger­man chem­i­cal giant BASF (off­shoot of the infa­mous AG Far­ben). The tri­als are the first GM crops to enter British soil in near­ly 3 years, after pub­lic oppo­si­tion forced a u‑turn in gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate plans for patent­ed crops.

The pota­to tri­als are a poor­ly dis­guised test of pub­lic oppo­si­tion, so to make sure that oppo­si­tion is ade­quate­ly expressed, a nation­al ral­ly is tak­ing place on Sat 21st April. Come along, learn about the his­to­ry of the anti-GM cam­paign and find out about trans­port from Lon­don. For more info, con­tact rally@mutatoes.org (0113 262 9365) or check out the web­site www.mutatoes.org

——————————————

Here is an aer­i­al view of the site of the forth­com­ing GM pota­toes tri­als in Cam­bridge:

Defra have pub­lished the 6 fig­ure grid ref­er­ence for the GM Pota­to tri­al site near Cam­bridge.
It is: TL430627
You can see the Defra doc­u­ment here — http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/gm/regulation/pdf/trials.pdf

——————————————

We protest­ed against Gm pota­toes

We had around 60 demon­stra­tors tramp­ing over the NIAB fields to oppose the new GM pota­to crop tri­al just out­side of Cam­bridge.

We received a lot of media atten­tion and it was a fun day out for all the fam­i­ly includ­ing nation­al speak­ers, coun­try walks, shout­ing and all round­ed off with deli­cious pota­to soup… oh! and don’t for­get the pirate trike sound sys­tem!

——————————————

More ram­pART news and events…

» Thurs­day Cin­e­ma (19th April), from 8pm sharp

> Regen­er­a­tion Game (75min), by Mike Lane, an activist and film­mak­er from Liv­er­pool

We live in a city that has third world con­di­tions in many of our com­mu­ni­ties and in this day and age, in the 21st cen­tu­ry, that is fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong. This doc­u­men­tary film is about ordi­nary peo­ple like our­selves, peo­ple who had their lives adverse­ly affect­ed by our civic lead­ers with­in the Liv­er­pool city coun­cil, and by var­i­ous local and cen­tral gov­ern­ment agen­cies and rich prop­er­ty devel­op­ers. It is also about peo­ple and how they empow­er them­selves, how they stood up and said no, about local democ­ra­cy or the lack of it. Com­mu­ni­ty activists always knew that regen­er­a­tion fund­ing would be redi­rect­ed away from Liv­er­pool poor areas and put into the pock­ets of the rich.

The spe­cif­ic exam­ples looked at in this doc­u­men­tary are:

1) How the coun­cil has col­lud­ed with local land devel­op­ers in order to take away from the peo­ple of Liv­er­pool coun­cil hous­ing and land in order to providecheap land for the devel­op­ers so they can build hous­es for sale.

2) The coun­cil togeth­er with prop­er­ty devel­op­ers is steal­ing prop­er­ty from home own­ers through com­pul­so­ry pur­chase orders sup­pos­ed­ly to enable the widen­ing of the Edge Lane cor­ri­dor.

3) the attempt of coun­cil togeth­er with prop­er­ty devel­op­ers to destroy a busi­ness in the heart of Liv­er­pool in order to help one of the Britain’s rich­est man, the Duke of West­min­ster, to become rich­er.

> The Bat­tle of Broad­way Mar­ket (60min), a doc­u­men­tary by Emi­ly James

At the end of Novem­ber 2005 an occup­tion was start­ed by local res­i­dents at 34 Broad­way Mar­ket to pre­vent it being knocked down for lux­u­ry flats. Over the next few months sup­port mul­ti­plied and the news trav­elled around the world. It’s a sto­ry that brings in cor­rupt prop­er­ty devel­op­ers, an incom­petant coun­cil, ram­pant gen­tri­fi­ca­tion and the ques­tion of just what sort of com­mu­ni­ty we want in 21st cen­tu­ry Lon­don.

» OTHER NEWS

> ram­pART anniver­sary post­poned

We’re sor­ry to have to annouce that the ram­pART anniver­sary events we were plan­ning for next month have now been post­poned as there is a real­ly bad clash with a very inter­est­ing (and quite sim­i­lar) sound­ing event tak­ing place in a squat­ted space else­where in Lon­don.

We’re hop­ing to find new dates in June for the anniver­sary after the G8 — details next week hope­ful­ly.

Check out the ‘com­pe­ti­tion’ on www.randomartists.org
Tem­po­rary Autonomous Art:london
Free Entry — Wed 16th Sat­ur­day 19th May
Info lines 07050 614804 / 07092 805720

» COMING SOON

> Barcelona Pirate Uni­ver­sary

Com­ing next week (prob­a­bly Thurs­day 26th but TBC)… a pre­sen­ta­tion from Pirat Uni­ver­si­ty, an open space, free and exper­i­men­tal edu­ca­tion project based in an autono­mus squat­ed space in Barcelona. Some of the activ­i­ties include ‘the noth­ing work­shop’, pirat his­to­ry and uncon­sious hack­ing, sex­u­al recy­cled toys work­shop, open­source sewing­work­shop, alter­na­tive med­i­cine, pirate TV and oth­ers. (for more infor­ma­tion www.universitatpirata.org)

They will also be pre­sent­ing info and films about oth­er grass­roots projects tak­ing place in Barcelona.

Details in next newslet­ter.

» WISH LIST

Help. We still need a nice big fuse box / con­sumer unit.