Bilderberg fringe festival, 6-9 June in Watford

Hertfordshire Constabulary have confirmed to the Watford Observer that, in the words of the Observer, a ‘shadowy summit of world leaders [is] taking place in Watford next month.

It continues: ”The Bilderberg Group of around 140 influential figures including royalty, politicians and business leaders will meet at The Grove from June 6 to June 9… The group’s annual meetings have in the past attracted storms of protests from campaigners who accuse it of hijacking the democratic process.’

So local people are putting on a free framily-friendly fringe festival to Occupy Bilderberg. There’ll be:

• International Speakers
• Comedians
• ‘Hug a Bilderberger’
• Music
• Poetry and spoken word
• Delicious local and ethically sourced food and drink, plus grilled Bilderburgers.

All ages welcome, although it should be pointed out that this is not the same as the toddler-focussed consumer Build-a-Bear festival, which is what I thought when I first heard about it.

Updates and more info are at bilderberg2013.co.uk and bilderbergfringefestival.co.uk.

Frack free February

Frack Free February is a Month of Action in Somerset with public meetings, talks, stalls, workshops, actions and more all raising awareness about the threats to our communities and the bigger picture of extreme energy.

The Frack Free February Month of Action is an opportunity to:

• Systematically raise awareness about fracking & extreme energy to communities at risk in Somerset – we will be distributing 50,000 leaflets across towns & villages in the PEDL licensed areas

• Create a wide variety of opportunities for participation and action to anyone moved by the literature and outreach activities & the thought of fracking taking place locally – see the list of actions below

• To generate momentum for the campaign in 2013 and significantly increase planning application response capacity across the county e.g. starting more local groups, increasing the number of newsletter sign ups and so forth, so that when applications are submitted, we can best respond and support each other across the county.

WAYS TO GET INVOLVED

• Organise a public meeting or event in your town or village – email us & we can support with any aspect, whether that’s graphic design, providing speakers or helping with the costs of hall hire
• Help us doordrop over 50,000 leaflets
• Got skills to share? Offer to lead, or participate in a workshop
• Get postering! Help us get posters up in every local shop in Somerset
• Ask your local groups to sign up to the coalition, we have a target of at least 50 new groups joining the coalition in February
• Help us make this happen – Donate!

For any of the above, please email info@frackfreesomerset.org

WHAT IS TAKING PLACE?

Click here to see an overview of all that is going on in February, click here for that list in chronological order.

 Reblogged with love from frackfreesomerset.org and frack-off.org.uk

Fuel poverty action weekend: 15 – 18 Feb

A national weekend of fuel bill assemblies and action will be taking place from Friday 15th – Monday 18th February. 

Find out what’s already planned and get organising in your own area. There will be a mass fuel bill assembly at the Department of Energy and Climate Change

Join and share the Facebook event

>>>>

Call out for Stop the Great Fuel Robbery below.

• Find out where fuel bill assemblies and actions are taking place. Click here. 
• Download our Stop the Great Fuel Robbery organising toolkit. Click here.
• Get clued up on the escalating fuel poverty crisis. Click here.
• Interested in why we think fuel bill assemblies are a powerful tactic? Read more here.
• Want to know how to organise a fuel bill assembly in your area? Read our step-by-step guide here.

Reblogged with love from fuelpovertyaction.org.uk

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Combe Haven: the second battle of Hastings

Reblogged from Combe Haven Defenders

Camp Decoy, the last of three camps standing in the way of the proposed Bexhill – Hastings Link Road (BHLR), faces eviction next Monday (28 Jan). If you have ever thought you might come and take a stand against this horrifying scheme, now’s the time.

We need to do absolutely everything we can to peacefully resist this eviction. We have been truly humbled over the last few weeks by the level of support from the local community, and from well-wishers far and wide.  But now we need people, lots of people, to stand together and say: “Enough is enough, it’s time to protect the countryside”.

See here for maps and directions from the nearest train station (Crowhurst).

Combe Haven is the first of 190 sites at risk of new road development.  If we allow this one, the others will follow and precious habitats all over the country will be lost forever.

Here’s how you can help resist the eviction of Camp Decoy:

1. Share this far and wide.  Facebook, Twitter, Email.  Phone your friends.  Phone your local radio station!  Tell everyone at work, at school, at college, and down the pub.

2.Donate! Use the donate button on the Combe Haven Defenders web-site, or send them a cheque. Every little helps: just £6 buys enough rope to secure a platform; £12 buys a lock to secure someone to it.

3.Most importantly – Come to Combe Haven and help to peacefully defend Camp Decoy!

CATCH THE COMBE HAVEN BUS!

Decoy Wood is the last remaining piece of woodland in the way of the BHLR.  Wait a week or two and it may be gone. If live in England, Wales or Scotland and you can get 20 people from your community to come, we will provide you with your very own Combe Haven Bus, for free!

These buses will bring people to Camp Decoy on Saturday, and on Sunday we hope to provide training in tree-climbing, locking-on, and a legal briefing.

We need everyone, whether it’s for peaceful resistance, legal observation or general support.  Whether you are willing to risk arrest or not – there’s a job for you!

The bus will return to your community after a few days of action, depending on the situation on the ground.

For more information about the Combe Haven Bus, please phone or text 07766 335506

The ZAD in France is set to successfully resist eviction

Saturday, November 17^th – Day of Reoccupation.

A yellow forklift truck leads the way; walking close behind is a block of Zadists carrying a fortified banner declaring: No to the airport and its world.

Behind them 20 tractors pull huge agricultural trailers filled with building materials: piles of pallets, straw bales, tyres, doors, windows, prefabricated wooden walls, hundreds of planks, corrugated iron roofing, tools – pretty much anything you can think of, including kitchen sinks.

We sit on top of one of the trailers. The affinity group from our local village has decided to build one of the constructions for today’s reoccupation action – we have named it the Black Bloc Sanitaire – it’s a shower block and bank of compost loos. The pile of building materials that we sit on is much more messy than the trailer behind us which carries the wood for a group of young architects. The architects have a super neat stack of carefully numbered pallets and the rumour is that they have already practiced setting up their dormitory building in the main hall of the Nantes school of architecture. Our construction doesn’t even have plans that are to scale, but we are hoping that the collective energy of the day and a dose of spontaneity will see something rise from the pile of rubbish we are sitting on. This is the opportunity of a life time for anyone who has ever dreamt of building their own cabin, rebel palace or fortress: A free plot of land, no planning permissions or building regulations and hundreds of people keen to help build.

None of us know where we are heading, the location has been kept a secret. From high up we see the river of human being flowing behind us, snaking through the country lanes as far as the eye can see. As always, we have Radio Klaxon on in the background, they have just announced that the mainstream media think that there are 40,000 people are on the action and over 400 tractors! We are all here on an illegal demonstration whose aim is to build a rebel settlement together on the land earmarked for the airport (see part 1). Last night the president interrupted a state visit of Poland to make a statement about the protest, reminding the French public of the “power of the law.”

A year ago, when I first saw the flyer for this action, with its floating date to reoccupy 4 weeks after the first eviction, I thought it was a great idea but that it would be a handful of tired traumatised post eviction activists symbolically rebuilding a couple of huts. Little did I imagine I would be taking part in one of the largest act of mass disobedience I’ve ever experienced and that we would have enough material to build a hamlet. The fact that there is not a single police officer in sight, however, not even a helicopter watching above, is strangely disconcerting.

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UK premiere of ZAD photography exhibition

We are delighted to announce the UK premiere of a photography exhibition of the ZAD, an anarchist anti-airport collective in France. Like Grow Heathrow, the ZAD is a post-capitalist protest site in the proposed site of an airport. breathtaking photos that have never been seen before tell the story of the tens of thousands of everyday people who are resisting eviction and fighting for climate justice and the right to stay on their land, in their homes.

1 December – 5 January

Grow Heathrow

Free

For Bristol-based brizzlers, we are delighted to announce that the highly recommended exhibition will be available on Sat 15 and Sun 16 December in Bristol. More information is available from the curators, the Cut The Crap Collective.

Preview a selection of the photos

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Shell to Sea

On the far west coast of Ireland in County Mayo, a rebellion is still brewing against plans for a mega gas pipeline project orchestrated by oil giant Shell. Last week two members of Transition Heathrow made a solidarity visit to the local campaign, here is their report.

Within moments of cycling down the road past the Corrib Gas Pipeline site near Rossport, Ireland, we found ourselves being tailed by a security car, while two frantic looking security guards stood alert by one of the entrances into the site. We had not planned any direct action, we were just on our way to the Rossport Solidarity Camp for a short visit.

The camp have packed up for the winter and moved into a house down the road generously donated to them by a local resident. The house is now the main hub for the campaign, where all electricity is powered by a wind turbine and the vegetable garden out front provides food for the campaigners. This was where we arrived and met the 9 or 10 activists who are sticking it out for the winter.

Donkeys guarding Shell’s compound

The Problem

Local resident Pat – who like most people round there has lived in the area all his life, as his family had before him – invited us into his house for some local mackerel and explained to us his reasons for opposing the Pipeline. Probably top of the list is a sense that local people have never been consulted on the plans, despite the enormous implications for life in this once-tranquil corner of the world. Fishing is an essential part of the local culture and economy, and faces devastation by the pipeline as fishermen lose access to waters they have always sailed. Access to the beaches and boglands is also being undermined, with fences being erected along the shoreline where once people went collecting cockles. And to cap it off, Shell has been awarded the right to compulsorily purchase property from locals for its pipeline route – the first time a private body has been awarded this power in Ireland. The traditional and legal rights of locals have been trampled over in the name of private profit.

The technique of gas extraction that Shell is using is experimental, bringing raw, unprocessed gas across the land rather than processing it at sea. If something went badly wrong, people living within a quarter of a mile of the compound would be immediately killed – you can bet Shell didn’t tell anyone that while they were making their case. And their plans for a safety valve rely on technology that by their own admission hasn’t been invented yet.

To add insult to injury, the project will not even benefit the struggling Irish economy. Due to a deal struck in 1987 between the then Prime Minister and a number of oil giants, Ireland gets hardly any of the money generated from the project – endemic political corruption has been blamed for this £600 billion giveaway.

Unity and Divisions

In an inspiring demonstration of community strength, local action has already delayed the pipeline by 12 years. It is so controversial that in 2005, 5 locals went to jail for 94 days after breaching an injuction against protest. But, in moves highly reminiscent of BAA’s treatment of the people of the Heathrow villages, Shell has played the community off against each other in order to weaken the resistance. Their tactic worked to some extent. All the local people we met talked about the “split in the community” that was created by Shell’s dirty tactics. One local even said that without this “split” the campaign would have been won by now.

Lorries held up in roadblock demonstration

Instead, Shell are busy at work every day trying to complete the project. They have just got the Bore Hole machine to the site, which will enable the start of the pipeline through the sea to where the gas is. If plans continue at the current rate it is expected they will be reaching the gas by around 2015 – leaving plenty more time for direct action, which continues on a weekly basis. In the time we were there, a roadblock demonstration took place and 5 people were in court from a previous action a few months ago. The resistance continues, and those people we had a chance to chat to were inspiring examples of endurance and strength in the face of corporate greed and destruction backed up by state violence.

• For more information see Shell to Sea campaign website: http://www.shelltosea.com
• Award winning Documentary Pipe Down is also well worth a watch and is free to watch on Vimeo here: http://vimeo.com/8668733
• Visitors to Rossport Solidarity Camp are also very welcome. Directions to the camp house can be found here: http://www.rossportsolidaritycamp.org/?page_id=23

25,000 activists reoccupy proposed airport in France

Today Le Monde reports that an incredible 25,000 activists took direct action to reoccupy the site of a proposed airport in Nantes, France. Some protesters had been evicted from their squats. The amazing reoccupation united local farmers who risk losing their land with climate activists and thousands of protesters concerned about cost, pollution and noise.

For more information about the ZAD, visit zad.nadir.org.

We have been inspired by the passionate grassroots support for local people’s struggle to take their lives into their own hands and say, “no” to an unaffordable, polluting airport being built on their homes and farms. Check out these beautiful photos of the ZAD and you’ll wish you were there too.

‘No Dash For Gas’ end week long occupation

After a whole week on top of the chimney of West Burton Power Station in Nottinghamshire, the last member of “No Dash For Gas” has come down ending the most successful occupation of a UK power station ever.

The group occupied the site in protest at the 20 proposed new gas power stations that the government and Big Energy want to build – one of these being the West Burton site. These new builds will inevitably make Britain dependent on another highly polluting and increasingly expensive fuel for decades to come, throwing efforts to tackle climate change on the scrapheap and causing household energy bills to soar.

For every day that people were up there, they prevented 2371 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, equivalent to taking 465 cars off the road for a year. Over 20,000 tonnes of CO2 in total.

One of the campaigners who was up the chimney, Anneka said:

“The dash for gas is a direct result of intense lobbying by the Big Six energy companies; and given that gas is such an expensive and volatile commodity, their influence over politicians is going have a huge impact on the poorest people in this country currently living in fuel poverty.”

Writing on the New Internationalist blog, Riley Coles said:

“A carbon-free power system is entirely possible, and we can create it by investing unprecedented funds into energy efficiency.  We (can) invest massively in renewable energy, creating hundreds of thousands of green jobs. Britain has enough off-shore wind potential alone to power itself six times over. According to WWF, up to 88 per cent of Britain’s electricity could be renewable by 2030.          

We also need to break up the big power corporations and start to treat power generation and distribution as a public good, not a means by which powerful corporations fleece ordinary people. We’re not talking about rolling out a carbon-free electricity system next week – more like 2030 – but if we don’t stop the new dash for gas then it won’t be a reality until it’s far too late to make a difference. We’ll lose decades, but the climate won’t wait for us. When we’ve seen the government mobilize billions of pounds to bail out the banks, you’ve got to ask yourself, where’s the pocket change from that to revolutionize the energy system?”

Sounds very sensible. Sending massive support from Transition Heathrow – we hope you got our tweets from the top of the chimney!

Just Do It unleashed online

The action-packed and inspirational direct action documentary Just Do It – a tale of modern-day outlaws joins the digital world!

Going behind the scenes of the secretive world of direct action into unchartered territory, Just Do It is a unique look at the planning and plotting behind the mass media headlines.

You can now download or stream the film direct from the Just Do It website here or get your hands on the FREE Creative Commons version of the film via the wonderful folks at VODO. Spread the word, share the news and get watching! http://justdoitfilm.com/jdi-goes-digital