Tuesday, June 02, 2009
“Climate Change is here. It has a human face.”
Some time ago the World Health Organisation reported that Climate Change was responsible for approximately 150,000 deaths in 2000.
According to the new Human Impact Report by the Global Humanitarian Forum, we are now up to 300,000 deaths per year, along with 325 million people “seriously affected”, 500 million at “extreme risk” and 4 billion “vulnerable”. Climate Change is not some distant terror, it’s happening right here, right now.
Meanwhile Greenpeace has released a fantastic 20 minute documentary about the ‘Kingsnorth 6’. In 2007 they climbed the smokestack at Kingsnorth power station in Kent in defiance of plans to build the first new UK coal power station for about 30 years. It’s inspiring stuff which beautifully conveys the reasoning and reality behind taking direct action. The battle against coal is still raging but significant progress has been made, in part thanks to these people.
Want to get involved? The 5th UK Climate Camp is happening from the 27th August to 2nd September.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Telling the story of the raid on political squats after the G20 protests:
“Some of us thought the men and women in balaclavas, padded uniforms, helmets and carrying riot shields were pointing toy guns at us. In fact, as we discovered later, they were tasers, which are designed to stun but are occasionally known to kill.”
“One member of the collective was punched in the face, another was pushed downstairs, had his head smashed against the wall and was met with looks of disbelief when he pleaded with officers to protect his glasses. One of the residents of the building was punched and kicked, narrowly avoided taser fire and was arrested in his pyjamas.”
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
On a sunny July morning last year I walked along Victoria Street in Westminster with a couple of friends. As we reached the Southside Building we propped a ladder up against the flat awning above its door and climbed up.
We were there to protest against Edelman PR, who were contracted by E.ON shortly after Climate Camp announced its intention to visit Kingsnorth that summer.
Given that E.ON are hoping to build the UK’s first new coal power station for 30 years, many activists found it somewhat laughable that they were sponsoring the Guardian climate change summit. So on the 16th July 2008, while others were saying “E.ON F.OFF” outside the Business Design Centre, we unfurled our banner: “EDELMAN PR: SPINNING THE CLIMATE OUT OF CONTROL”.
At the same time, two others had managed to smuggle themselves inside the building, and ran around Edelman’s office alerting the staff to the toxic levels of greenwash we had detected.
The truth is, E.ON doesn’t sponsor climate change conferences or hand out energy-saving lightbulbs because of its alarm about the impending climate chaos, it does these things in an attempt to lie to the public that it is an environmentally conscious company. These initiatives, together with stories of “clean coal” and cutesy marketing are invented in close collaboration with Edelman, who have previously worked for the likes of Microsoft and Wal-Mart. They are not designed to safeguard the future of life on earth, but profit margins.
Literally minutes after we arrived, the first police car pulled up. Numbers continued to increase until there were about 8 police vehicles on the scene for the sole purpose of watching us stand on a roof.
After some time, Superintendent Ovens climbed out of a first-floor window in order to talk to us. He started to make quite far-fetched claims about how we were likely to fall through the roof, ricochet off the pavement and knock into a passing school-bus, thereby killing approximately 30 people. Or something like that. Anyway, the gist was that we were told to come down immediately. We refused and continued negotiating for some time.
Meanwhile many passers by were smiling, waving, and talking to our friends at the street level who handed out leaflets explaining our protest. One of these people was John McDonnell MP, a vocal opponent to the Heathrow third runway, who cheerfully remarked that we were doing a good job.
There were two ways for our protest to end: with repercussions or without them. What the police wanted was for us to come down as soon as possible, so we decided to negotiate. After some wrangling Ovens conceded that he would be willing to make a promise not to arrest us if we came down immediately (it was lunchtime by this point, so we had already been going a few hours).
Somewhat naively, we took this to mean we would walk away and forget about it, so upon receipt of the written and signed promise, we descended our ladder. However, we were immediately detained by the police and each given an £80 Fixed Penalty Notice fine for causing “harassment, alarm or distress”.
A fixed penalty notice is a handy way for the police to impose an immediate penalty on people without having to go through all that tiresome paperwork of arrest, interviews, charging and prosecution. For a specific range of offences, they can simply decide that you committed the offence and issue a fine for it. You have the option of contesting the notice and potentially being summonsed to a trial, but do most people bother with that? I doubt it.
However, we activist types are not most people and felt a little taken aback by the allegation that we had caused harassment, alarm or distress, especially given the overwhelmingly positive reaction from the general public. So two of us decided to contest the penalty, with a fairly strong hunch that the Crown Prosecution Service would realise it’s a waste of time and not summons us.
We were wrong, so last December found ourselves pleading Not Guilty at Westminster Magistrates’ court. To throw an additional spanner in the works, the court had refused us both legal aid, even after appeal, arguing that the case was simple enough that we could to represent ourselves. We did manage to get legal representation on a pro-bono basis in the end, but suffice to say the idea of handling an estimated day and a half long trial, and cross examining experienced police officers alone was a bit of a headache.
Eventually, on Monday, we went to court for the trial. Plan A was to try to get the case thrown out. Basically the way we had seen Ovens’ promise not to arrest us, not being totally experienced with the legal system, was as a promise not to prosecute us. We’re sure he realised this, and no mention of the fixed penalty notice was made on the rooftop, so we argued there had been an abuse of process.
This was rejected by the judge, who was unsympathetic, so the prosecution proceeded with presenting their evidence, which involved some photos and the testimonies of about 5 police officers. The evidence was weak; aside from regularly noting that there was likely to be a grave accident involving thousands of people, the police failed to really give much weight to their allegations. When pressed by our barrister, one officer said he noticed someone crossing the road because of our protest! Asked if there had been any further reaction he said yes, but that it was difficult to describe.
After the prosecution’s evidence, we submitted that there was no case to answer. While rejecting this, the judge indicated that he was only just persuaded that there was a prima facie case. On this basis our barrister decided not to call any defence evidence, and so the judge found us: not guilty!
With the benefit of hindsight, clearly we should have been more specific in our negotiations, and made sure we received a promise not to prosecute. Whether that would actually have been agreed or not, though, is unclear.
People have said to me that I did the right thing, that they supported me, were glad I was making a stand. I agree, kind of, but the amount of time, energy and money that has been wasted on this case is quite ridiculous. The judge refused to award any costs because he essentially thought the police behaved as they should have, and even seemed a little sad that there wasn’t enough evidence to find us guilty. I’m pleased we won our case, I’m pleased we exposed Edelman and E.ON for what they are, but I can’t help thinking that I could have spent more time on other more strategic activism if I had just paid the damn fine.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
This Rails error is a nasty bugger:
=> Booting Mongrel (use 'script/server webrick' to force WEBrick)
=> Rails application starting on http://0.0.0.0:3000
=> Call with -d to detach
=> Ctrl-C to shutdown server
** Starting Mongrel listening at 0.0.0.0:3000
** Starting Rails with development environment...
Exiting
/opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-2.0.2/lib/commands/servers/mongrel.rb:16: warning: already initialized constant OPTIONS
/opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-2.0.2/lib/commands/servers/mongrel.rb:19: undefined method `options' for []:Array (NoMethodError)
from /opt/local/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:32:in `gem_original_require'
from /opt/local/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:32:in `require'
from /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.0.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:496:in `require'
from /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.0.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:342:in `new_constants_in'
from /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.0.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:496:in `require'
from /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-2.0.2/lib/commands/server.rb:39
from /opt/local/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `gem_original_require'
from /opt/local/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `require'
from script/server:3
As others have pointed out, it occurs when you are missing gems. Unfortunately nowhere does the error actually say that. In order to get a more helpful error message, run script/console, which will tell you exactly which gem is missing.