UK Newswire Archive
Reduce Repair Reuse Recycle - Transforming Oil Rigs into Eco-Resorts
21-02-2009 16:03
Once we complete the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, there’ll be a lot of unused oil rigs sitting around. One architecture firm, the Morris design team, already has an idea that’s making waves: turning them into oceanic eco-resorts. Their ‘Rig Hotel’ concept reuses an abandoned oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, transforming it into a luxury resort offering amenities like boating, snorkeling, and diving as well as acting as a destination for conferences and business meetings.
University anti-Zionist twinning with Palestine
21-02-2009 15:55
Last week, at a relatively well-attended meeting, my branch Executive seconded a motion to support a twinning with a Palestinian university, building on existing Student Union work. A few of us decided to propose an additional note about “the increase in antisemitic atmosphere on British campuses associated with Israel’s conflicts”. We are all broadly supportive of the twinning but conscious that in our institution it has been a vehicle for intensifying calls for the ostracisation and dissolution of Israel. Our intervention was fairly puny and didn’t say what needed to be said about this twinning - in retrospect since it was almost certain to fall we should have made more amendments.Illegal trade in endangered birds flourishes in Delhi
21-02-2009 15:42
Group 4 Securicor Attacks South African Shack Dwellers' Movement Against
21-02-2009 15:05
Group 4 Securicor private security guards are being used on the increasingly violent war on the poor in South Africa as the ANC continues with its project to drive the poor out of the cities. For useful links giving background to this statement see
http://abahlali.org/node/4807
Dutch ALF rejects government non violence agreement
21-02-2009 14:51
In the past five years, the Dutch animal rights organisation Dierenbevrijdingsfront (similar to Britain’s radical Animal Liberation Front) has claimed over 40 incidents including night-time visits to the homes of pharmaceutical company staff, damaging cars belonging to workers and arson.I’ll Get Arrested to Stop the Burning of Coal
21-02-2009 14:35
Coal is killing the planet. It’s as simple as that – so it’s easy to understand why 350.org founder Bill McKibben is willing to risk getting arrested in order to participate in a major act of civil disobedience at a coal-fired power plant next month.Student University Occupations: A Growing Movement
21-02-2009 14:32
Around 200 students from the University of St. Andrews have been in occupation of Lower College Hall, a key University building, since Wednesday at 12 when a petition signed by over 600 students and staff was handed to the university.CND and the inconsistencies of anti-unilateralists
21-02-2009 14:31
I am in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament. I’m not a peacenik, in that I don’t hold all violence to be inherently unjustifiable, but the very idea of nuclear war makes my mind boggle. That we, that is, the UK, retain a nuclear arsenal with the capacity to wipe out millions if not hundreds of millions of lives is effectively a crime against all humanity. I’ve met a few Labourite activists who believe we should keep our weapons, but I’ve never yet met one who is consistent about it.Murder of Small Farmer Rights Organizer Sparks Protests in Yaracuy, Venezuela
21-02-2009 14:25
Small farmer rights groups plan to march across the city of San Felipe in Venezuela’s Yaracuy state this Saturday to demand that the hired assassins of Nelson López, a small farmer rights organizer, be brought to justice. López, who was shot fifteen times in the back last Thursday, is the 213th small farmer (campesino) to be murdered since 2001, the year the government of President Hugo Chávez passed a sweeping land reform law which set the conditions for re-distribution of idle sections of large estates to small farmers, according to the Ezequiel Zamora National Farmers’ Front (FNCEZ), one of the groups convoking Saturday’s marches.A new primary curriculum
21-02-2009 14:16
The Independent Primary review published its review of the curriculum in English primary schools today. It confirms what much previous research in primary schools – including from the schools inspectorate Ofsted – has shown: that a strong focus on testing ‘the basics’ of reading, writing and maths has led to a narrowing of the curriculum as experienced by primary pupils in many schools, particularly in the last couple of years of primary school. While classroom time spent on English and Maths steadily increased from 1996 to 2004, time spent on other subjects like history, geography, art and personal, social and health education dropped by as much as 20 per cent. And styles of learning in year 6 have become more like learning in the first few years of secondary school – quite the reverse of what should be happening given that we know these have always been an important factor in switching some young people off their learning once they have made the transition from primary to secondary school.Two of Top Five HLS Investors Sell Their Shares
21-02-2009 13:36
Report exposes false claims of British unions’ “Britons First” campaign
21-02-2009 13:17
A report issued February 17 by Britain’s Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) exposes as false the central claims of the GMB and Unite trade unions in the recent dispute at the Lindsey oil refinery in North Lincolnshire.Finkelstein talks: The misuse of anti-Semitism and abuse of history - Mon 23 Feb
21-02-2009 12:40
Norman Finkelstein explores the corruption and bias of scholarship surrounding the Palestine-Israel conflict. The talk will examine the growing tendency of pro-Israel commentators to use spurious charges of anti-Semitism to deflect and discredit legitimate criticism of Israel.
Jews Sans Frontieres: Joel Kovel fired from Bard College for anti-Zionism
21-02-2009 11:02
Public Action Against Judicial Corruption & Institutional Failures in the UK
21-02-2009 08:19
Demonstration against Judicial Corruption, Unlawful Imprisonments, Convention Rights Violations, Institutional Failures and unaccountability in the UK; Every Week outside HMP WORMWOOD SCRUBS, DU CANE ROAD, LONDON W12 0AE; Commencing 12pm - 3pm.Obama goes to WAR! (three cartoons by Latuff)
21-02-2009 07:29
Camden "Super Virus" Lab consortium start exploratory work at site
21-02-2009 01:34
There are plans to build a high level virus containment facility and animal testing lab on a Camden council house estate Somers Town, alongside St Pancras International behind the British Library. The lab has been criticised by MI5, MPs, councillors and local people. Foot & Mouth disease was leaked from similar govt facility Pirbright in Surrey. Exploratory works have begun this week at the site.Full article | 1 addition | 3 comments
G-20 Bank of England reclaim the streets Party
20-02-2009 23:36
Capitalism has been heating up our world for years, melting the icecaps, burning up the rainforests, pushing the planet to tipping point. Now we're going to put the heat on them. At the London Summit , the G20 ministers are trying to get away with the biggest April Fools trick of all time. Their tax-dodging, bonus-guzzling, pension-pinching, unregulated free market world in meltdown, and those fools think we're going to bail them out. They've gotta be joking!Say no to 'Israeli Science Day' at our Science Museums
20-02-2009 22:55
The Zionist Federation of Britain, a pro-Israel lobby group, wants to hold an "Israeli Science Day" at the Science Museums in Manchester and London.The Stop the War Coalition and activists in the UCU union in Manchester are mobilising to stop this insulting event from happen at the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry (Mosi).
nuke mark lynas
20-02-2009 22:53
Mark Lynas is a seriously well informed person. While many of us use broad phrases like 'climate change impact', he has very precise knowledge.To show that climate change isn't something that's going to happen but is already here, he visited many parts of the world already affected, reporting it in the book High Tide: Notes From A Warming World.
As the global temperature is likely to rise up to six degrees this century, he wrote Six Degrees. Six chapters, each detailing the results of extensive research on what the next degree of warming is likely to cause.
He's also a prolific writer of articles, and has spoken out in favour of radical activists such as the Camp for Climate Action.
So it was surprising when, in May 2005, he came out as a convert to the idea of nuclear power using some questionable lines of thinking.