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Story Links: Airbusted | Crap Arrest Of The Week | It's the Pits | Cordon Brown | Koch 'n' Bullish | Party & Protest | Bamboo - zled | Penalty Unfair | and finally...

AIRBUSTED

If you were in any doubt that the Camp for Climate Action is gonna have a big impact this year then check out Heathrow airport's reaction to having been chosen as the venue!

This year the camp will be at the world's busiest airport which is a bigger source of CO2 emissions than most countries. Of course it's sheer lunacy in this time of ecological crisis but the aviation industry are pushing to almost double the airport's capacity by increasing flights and building a third runway. The battle to stop them will be one of the most important environmental battles in Western Europe.

BAA (owners of the privatised Heathrow airport) are running scared of the climate campaigners and have called on the services of protest-busting corporate lawyer Timothy Lawson Cruttenden (TLC - see SchNEWS 581) to get an injunction under the Protection from Harassment Act. They want an exclusion zone not just around the airport and its infrastructure but between junctions 3-6 of the M4 and 13-16 of the M25. The exclusion zone being applied for also covers the Piccadilly line and the Heathrow Express. The injunction seeks, first and foremost, to prevent any protest of any kind at, or in the vicinity of, Heathrow Airport, and it is specifically aimed at stopping the Climate Camp from happening.

If an 'interim' injunction is granted (and its already been press-released by the Met) then police will be able to arrest those pitching tents, or carrying 'wooden poles, pallets, scaffold poles, bow saws, panel saws, fret saws, axes, screwdrivers or wheelbarrows' for any reason at all. In fact they seem to be taking this DIY culture thing pretty seriously. Also forbidden in a frivolous afterthought are 'balloons'. Basically an 'interim' injunction would enable those the police consider to be protesters to be confined to a 'designated protest zone'.

Four named individuals have been served with the by-now familiar black ringbinders of evidence that accompany TLC's attempts to restrict protest activity. Crucially, although only four people are named, they are deemed to represent certain groups - Plane Stupid, AirportWatch, Heathrow Association for the Control of Airport Noise (HACAN) and No Third Runway Action Group (NoTrag).

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WINGNUTS

While Plane Stupid are a grass roots direct action group (and more power to their elbow) of the kind that TLC specialises in bullying on behalf of corporate clients and the police, the others are broad-based umbrella groups featuring such subversives as Greenpeace, the RSPB (membership inc. Bill Bryson and the Queen) and Council for the Preservation of Rural England. And while we at SchNEWS would be more than happy to see her madge hauled off in the back of a paddywagon - we suspect that the enforcement of this bit of PFI martial law is going to be a little more selective.

In total the organisations affected number some five million members. That's quite a chunk and let's hope that this time TLC has bitten off more than he can chew. Greenpeace have assembled a legal team to fight the injunction, including a QC from Cherie Blair's chambers. In an effort to bolster the injunction it is claimed that it is being taken out on behalf of all of Heathrow's contractors, employees and even passengers. So it looks as if Court Number 4 at the Royal Courts of Justice is going to be a little crowded on Wednesday 1st August.

Despite the attempted legal crackdown, campaigners are still going ahead with the camp come what may. Leo Murray, named in the writ as the organiser of Plane Stupid, told SchNEWS, "This provides an enormous campaign opportunity - to illustrate the bullying tactics of BAA, the diversity of opposition to expansion and as a publicity outlet for the Camp for Climate Action. It will become abundantly clear that they've made a terrible mistake. The camp is doubtless going to go ahead regardless of rain, injunctions, or any other external influences, and BAA engaging a conscienceless legal mercenary to persecute a handful of people who are only tangentially connected to the Climate Camp - and implicate literally millions more - is not going to alter this. In fact, I would guess it is very likely to mean more people come to the camp than would otherwise have done".

Alex Harvey press spokesperson for the Climate Camp said: "We're not only adamant but confident that the camp will go ahead. This year's camp has a massive profile - we're here, we're going to do this thing and it's going to be fantastic".

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For more about some of the groups involved see:

Plane Stupid - www.planestupid.com

HACAN ClearSkies - www.hacan.org.uk

No Third Runway Action Group - www.notrag.org

Airport Watch - www.airportwatch.org.uk

The Camp for Climate Action
August 14 - 21 Eight days of low-impact living, debates, learning skills, and high-impact direct action tackling the root causes of climate change. Email info@climatecamp.org.uk web www.climatecamp.org.uk.

CRAP ARREST OF THE WEEK

For desserting on a bike....
It was a case of getting seriously unjust desserts for one Plane Stupid activist last week. On Sunday 8th, cycling along a cycle path close to Heathrow in West London, she was randomly stopped and searched by police for no apparent reason. Although not carrying anything apart from a recipe for avocado ice cream and a cycle map, she was arrested under Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 and held, along with another campaigner, for over thirty hours before being bailed on charges of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. Must have been the threat of green ice cream.

IT'S THE PITS

The Wiradjuri Aboriginal nation in central New South Wales are fighting the existence of a toxic gold mine on their sacred sites and land at Lake Cowal, one of many communities suffering the the destruction caused by multinational mining companies. Elders from the indigenous nation and their supporters occupied the Australian head office of the world's biggest gold mining company, Barrick Gold, in Perth on 11th July, in the latest incident in a long running battle.

Elders Neville "Chappy" Williams, Ron Gardner and 35 others were at the office to confront the company after the Wiradjuri people pinned an eviction notice to the front gate of Barrick's mine, as well as ask questions about the mining deed signed by Barrick and a group supposedly representing the traditional peoples, and other legal documents including the inventory of artefacts taken by Barrick when the mine was built.

The elders claim that the mine has been put up on land containing burials, thousands of artefacts, scarred trees and other evidence of long-term occupation of the land, but Barrick are refusing to disclose what has been collected during their works. The mine disturbs a massive amount of earth, leaving a 325 metre deep pit nearly a kilometre square in area.

Despite the worst drought ever in Australia this year, the mining company has taken 3,650 million litres of groundwater for the mining process, killing thousands of trees. Cyanide, a highly deadly chemical, is used to leach the gold before seeping back into the ground.

* For more see www.savelakecowal.org

CORDON BROWN

New Prime Minister, same old repression. This Wednesday (25th) Gordon Brown announced a raft of new civil liberty-curbing powers for the state - with plans to double detention without charge, the creation of a new 'unified border force' and additional electronic passport controls.

With little press reaction, UK plc appointed its first Minister of Security, former Navy Admiral Sir Alan West. At the same time came the announcement that the navy will be building two new supersized aircraft carriers capable of carrying 3,000 crew and 100 fighter planes to help the UK 'project' its power abroad - just what we always wanted; and a real bargain at £4bn!

Disappointed that last time they were only able to secure the evidence-less lock up of anyone they deem a 'suspected terrorist' for just four weeks, new plans are afoot to increase that limit to 56 days. Cops clearly reckon an extra few days of sleep deprivation and other 'soft' torture techniques will get the confessions just not quite ready to be coughed up by day 27.

The new unified border force will come with a new style uniform (Darkside black) complete with machine gun accessories. Entrances and exits from the UK will be electronically tracked by 2009, and all visas will be biometric from next year. Neo Labour will be making this latest attack on Muslim and other minority ethnic communities sweeter by persuading community groups to look the other way as they pick up £70m in funding to build 'interfaith links'. They'll be needing to sort out relations as 4,000 foreign prisoners will be getting the boot by Christmas and all foreign nationals staying in the UK for more than six months will required to have biometric identification by the end of 2008. And if that's not enough, Gordo promises another security review later in the 'summer' - plus ca change at No.10?

KOCH'N'BULLISH

A nondescript large industrial unit in Lenton, Nottingham had its anonymity taken away by local Disarm DSEI / anti-arms trade protesters on Tuesday when they descended on Heckler and Koch's UK headquarters.

H&K are the world's second largest maker of pistols and machine-guns for soldiers and death squads across the world, including Turkey, Iran, Mexico, Thailand, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Burma/Myanmar. Their weapons are in use in over 90 countries, including by British police, and the company has evaded EU arms controls to sell weapons to war-zones in Sudan, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Sierra Leone. Over half a million people are killed worldwide by small-arms annually.

A productive bit of research led a couple of intrepid investigators to buzz the company and ask "Excuse me, is this the Nottingham Small Arms Factory?" Although they didn't get a response as such, their suspicions were confirmed when armed police turned up minutes later and detained them for 45 minutes under the Terrorism Act.

The subsequent demo made it clear that gun merchants are not welcome in the city (which, by the way, has the highest gun crime rate in the UK). The peaceful protest obviously hit a raw nerve as the forty or so people in attendance attracted an almost equal number of cops, including members of the (London-based political squad) Forward Intelligence Team.

Local rag, the Nottingham Evening Post, showed just how weak its commitment to reporting is when they pulled the story from page 2 after being told by a police press officer that it would be 'irresponsible' for the media to publish the arms company's address (...yes, so obviously it's: NSAF Ltd, Unit 3, Easter Park, Lenton Lane, Nottingham NG7 2PX). See http://disarmdsei.evey.org

* Three campaigners from Brighton were found guilty last week for their parts in a blockade of the EDO MBM arms factory a year ago (those parts largely being placed in barrels filled with concrete - see SchNEWS 552). They were sentenced to the not-so-heavy punishment of 12 months conditional discharge. While the judgement must've been something of a bonus for prosecutors and police who have already seen over 40 arrested protesters win their cases and go free, this sentence has at least still seen those accused go free - unpunished so long as they are not caught being naughty again for a year. And they're all lodging appeals in any event.

And they weren't the only losers in the case - EDO company director Peter Davies has resigned since his first appearance in the case back in March, making him the fifth director to quit since the campaign and awkward cross-examinations in court began. www.smashedo.org.uk

PARTY & PROTEST

10-13 - AR2007 International Animal Rights Gathering 2007, Appelscha, northern Netherlands. Next to a forest with camping. The day before (9th), there will be an Animal Rights march through Amsterdam, focusing on fur and vivisection targets. Sleeping places are arranged in Amsterdam, after the march everyone will move on to the gathering site... www.ar2007.info

BAMBOO-ZLED

A survivor of the Nagasaki A-bomb had the indignity of being arrested for a non-violent protest outside the British nuclear base, Faslane, this week. Part of the year-long rolling campaign to obstruct the place and highlight the stupidity of the decision to renew Trident and generally continue to nuclear it all up (See SchNEWS 583, 563). Masahiko Moriguchi, who was seven years old when the genocidal mega-bomb fell, was arrested along with nine other peace campaigners on Wednesday afternoon when a Japanese delegation, supported by around 100 others, successfully shut down the bomb factory with a 'Bamboo Blockade'.

Police moved in to break up the demo, arresting and then dearresting four elderly women and a young man who had been singing peace songs at the gate. Three Japanese men and one Finnish women were detained after holding up cops with a bamboo arm lock which took over an hour to cut through.

Mr Moriguchi said: "The Faslane 365 campaign is encouraging the epoch-making first step towards the abolition of nuclear weapons by calling on Britain to renounce Trident."

His son Shinya said: "The UK's decision on whether to renew the Trident system is not only a British matter, but will influence proliferation and insecurity around the world. I wish the UK to make a wise and rational decision and pioneer the road to nuclear abolition, which would make this world safer." See www.faslane365.org

PENALTY UNFAIR

Since the railways were privatised, ticket prices unsurprisingy went up, largely filling the pockets of investors instead of improving the service. Not content with clobbering the ticketless with a £10 fine, recently all networks upped the 'penalty' to a full twenny quid. South West Trains issued a memo to its 'revenue enforcement' officers saying that they must always presume someone traveling without a ticket is guilty and to sting them for a score regardless of the excuse. But what if you arrived at the station, your train's about to leave and there's a big queue for tickets?

The penalty fares rules state that if there were "no facilities available to issue the appropriate ticket" you can't get done. One barrister, Richard Colbey, says this means that there must have been someone ready to sell you a ticket and if that person (or machine) is serving a queue then the facilities to buy aren't actually available. That's paragraph 7.4 of the penalty fares rules, by the way. To fine you the train company has to sue you through the county court and so far none have done so. Happy traveling!

...and finally...

Quelle surprise as boffins prove that barely having a brain is no barrier to being a bureaucrat!
A team of researchers at Universite de la Mediterranee in Marseille have been shocked by scans of one Frenchman's brain which showed just a huge fluid-filled area where brain tissue should normally be. Despite this, the 44-year-old stunned them by using his ultra thin layer of grey matter to score 75 in an IQ test and hold down a marriage, two kids and a job in the civil service.

"What I find amazing to this day," said brain specialist Dr Max Muenke, "is how the brain can deal with something which you think should not be compatible with life." - We had no idea Max had as bad an opinion about working for the government as we do...

And perhaps that last time you tried to deal with 'the system' and thought you'd been lumbered with a small minded bureaucrat, maybe you were right (and it's not just that you filled out the form wrong / were caught blatantly trying on a new fiddle)

Disclaimer

SchNEWS warns all readers - don't expect a soft landing at Heathrow next month. Honest!

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