UK Newswire Archive
Workers' Fightback - War Without Frontiers
16-05-2010 18:11
We believe... workers know how to run our workplaces far better than business people, the government, or trade union leaders!
We aim for... workers' control over our own jobs and our own lives!
Thai Embassy Details
16-05-2010 17:38
Anyone for a demo at the Thai Embassy? lets take it to them!A Union For All Workers
16-05-2010 17:08
Building the One Great Union of all workers in the UKVideo: Boycott P&G 2010 in Cambridge
16-05-2010 16:53
Video of the Boycott P&G 2010 protests in CambridgeTrailer: Outside the Law: Stories from Guantanamo
16-05-2010 16:22
A new documentary telling the story of Guantánamo: torture, extraordinary rendition and secret prisons. Examining how the Bush administration turned its back on domestic and international law, rounding up prisoners in Afghanistan and Pakistan without adequate screening and often for large bounty payments. Focusing on the stories of three prisoners, Shaker Aamer, Binyam Mohamed and Omar Deghayes, 'Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo' is powerful rebuke to the myth that Guantánamo holds “the worst of the worst”.
(Spectacle Productions, 2009; 75 mins., directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington)
Click here to view the Q & A sessions with former detainees
Excerpts and Extras
Released in advance of the film, these can be viewed online using the links below
Omar Deghayes on Torture and British Intelligence
Other information about the project can be found through the links below
Guantánamo: The Definitive Prisoner List
Electronic Press Kit (EPK) Resources for press and screenings
For full credits and ordering copies on DVD visit the Spectacle catalogue page.
For information about the latest screenings visit the Spectacle events page.
Video of ride to the Party at the Pumps 2
16-05-2010 15:22
Slight problem, we didn't know where we were going, deadly secret, and some were repeatedly left behind. They may or may not been able to catch up. Will ride leaders please bear this in mind next time.
The route taken was through Hyde Park and down Constitution Hill to the Mall and from there for a circuit of Parliament Square. Then along Whitehall and eventually making its way to the Angel and along Upper Street to the Shell Garage. The riders were greeted with a cheer and quickly merged with the partygoers.
More:
http://london.indymedia.org.uk/articles/4808
http://london.indymedia.org.uk/events/4683
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Take Back Parliament, Rise of the Purple People, London - Pictures
16-05-2010 14:55
FC St Pauli - Pirates of the League
16-05-2010 12:53
GuinnessWorld Records challenged over Moroccan flag stunt
16-05-2010 12:49
“Had Saddam flown a giant flag over Kuwait would Guinness sent a judge to measure it?” campaigners ask as Guinness gives record to Morocco for giant flag in occupied Western SaharaUS War Plan: ... little Nuclear Munitions
16-05-2010 12:14
Who is bombing in Iraq?
16-05-2010 12:06
Her Majestys Revenue and Customs e-mail: Alex Salmond SNP leader should be shot
16-05-2010 12:02
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'Rabbits' and 'Vivisectors' Support Boycott P&G 2010 in Cambridge
16-05-2010 11:48
Five new UK screenings of “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantanamo”
16-05-2010 11:29
Between May 21 and June 2, in London, Oxford and Brighton, there will be five screenings of the new documentary film, "Outside the Law: Stories from Guantanamo," followed by Q&A sessions with former prisoner Omar Deghayes and journalist and co-director Andy Worthington. Come along and find out how to put pressure on the new government to secure the release from Guantanamo of Shaker Aamer..Hinkley C application slips amidst uncertainty
16-05-2010 11:22
The anticipated date for the Hinkley C planning application to the Infrastructure Planning Commission has slipped by four months from 2nd August to 1st December. This is the second delay in the application which was originally expected at the beginning of July.The delay comes amidst new uncertainty over the project following the appointment of an anti-nuclear Energy Secretary Chris Huhne. In today's Times (1) Chris Huhne strengthened his assertion that new nuclear build will not receive any Government subsidies including in the event of a nuclear accident. This is a hardening of position from the previous Labour Government who had not insisted on full liability insurance for the proposed generation of reactors. The cost of full insurance may well be prohibitive to developers such as EdF Energy who want to build two giant reactors on the Somerset coast.
N-waste subsidy
Chris Huhne may also be under pressure from anti-nuclear Lib-Dem colleagues to examine other potential aspects of Government subsidy such as the Labour proposal for fixed pricing of nuclear waste management after the expected 60 year life of the reactors. This pricing model would give some assurance to the industry over future costs of nuclear waste disposal but could be at the expense of tax-payers. A Deep Disposal Repository is thought to cost between £12 and £20 billion. But no country in the world has a working deep repository and future costs could spiral. Barack Obama last year threw out the proposed US repository at Yucca Mountain in Utah after 20 years of development and the German nuclear repository has been mired in controversy following the discovery of misinformation from former Chancellor Helmut Kohl over its safety. Obligingly to the nuclear industry, the Labour Government missed out the risks of no repository being available in the recent 300 page National Nuclear Policy Statement. Chris Huhne will have the job of rewriting this document with obvious risks to nuclear developers.
Fast-track Planning
It is not clear yet what the Energy Secretary plans for the unelected quango which is the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC). The Conservatives have vowed to break it up in favour of a more democratic and locally accountable planning process with ministerial sign-off. In any case a rewritten Nuclear Policy Statement (NPS) to guide the planning process may also involve the appraisal of the on-site spent fuel store which EdF want to build alongside Hinkley C. The spent nuclear fuel will be so hot and radioactive it will need to cool in the storage pond for one hundred years when it comes out of the reactor. Given the 60 year life of the reactors, the dangerous toxic fuel would be sited at Hinkley and other nuclear sites for 160 years but inexplicably the Labour NPS document did not require the IPC to examine this crucial part of the power station planning application.
Public Inquiry
Chris Huhne's colleague and former Shadow Energy Secretary, Simon Hughes, has called for a public inquiry into the 'Justification' of new nuclear build. The 'Justification' process is an EU requirement to judge the health detriment of new radioactive processes against any benefits. Governments can call a public inquiry to make this judgement but the Labour Government signaled that pro-nuclear Ed Milliband would say yes or no in his role as Energy Secretary. Stop Hinkley supported other campaigners and academics (2) in saying this biased approach was wrong and in fairness a public inquiry was needed. If Chris Huhne does set up the inquiry this will delay EdF and other nuclear proposals, adding to their costs and increasing the likelihood of the development not taking place.
No information on the reason for the Hinkley C planning application delay is currently (Saturday evening) available on either the Infrastructure Planning Commission website or that of EdF Energy, with no press releases on the latter website since January this year. But the Projects page of the IPC website (3) clearly shows the new delayed date.
Reactions to EdF consultation
EdF Energy has also been expected to launch the second phase of its local consultation on Hinkley C for some time with an anticipated date of late spring or early summer. They received over 1,000 replies to the first round of their consultation from which the results have still not been revealed. According to their December '08 Hinkley C Newsletter (4), respondents to a pilot questionnaire felt the top 'issues that needed to be addressed to a very great extent' (EdF's emphasis) were:
Pollution / emissions control 77%
Health and safety of surrounding communities 75%
Traffic on local roads 68%
Since then the 'Save Cannington Action Group' has called for a complete rerouting of traffic through the village and for the abandonment of plans for hostels, park and ride schemes and a lorry depot which campaigners say would traumatise the village. 800 Canningtonians signed a petition to this effect.
Williton residents have also called for plans for hostels to be thrown out with a West Somerset Free Press poll showing a large majority against local hostels. The local view seems to be that the anticipated 4,000 workers should be accommodated within the massive 500 acre Hinkley site.
In an unusual act of defiance, West Somerset Council last month rejected an EdF planning application to dig twenty trenches near the village of Shurton after numbers of angry villagers wrote in to say the plan was not justified and development should be contained nearer the coast (5).
Jim Duffy, spokesman for Stop Hinkley said: "It's an uncertain time right now for the nuclear industry with the sudden requirement on them to insure their reactors against a nuclear disaster. This and other costs which the taxpayer was expected to underwrite may well be making EdF think twice about their giant projects at Hinkley and Sizewell. I hope Chris Huhne and his colleagues stick to their guns over public subsidies, reverse the unelected fast-track planning process and set up the public inquiry on nuclear justification that top academics have called for. These are fair requirements but the industry might just find they can't match them. If they walk away it will be a relief for many, many people."
Jim Duffy
Stop Hinkley Coordinator
www.stophinkley.org
Notes:
(1) Times 15th May 2010:
David Cameron strode into the Department for Energy and Climate Change. “I want this to be the greenest government ever." “I’m not ideologically opposed to nuclear,” Mr Huhne insisted. “My scepticism is based on whether or not they can make it work without public subsidy. One of the things the coalition agreed with some passion in the current circumstances of fiscal restraint was that there will be no public subsidy for nuclear power.” Even support in the event of a disaster was out of the question, he said. “That would count as a subsidy absolutely. There will be no public bailouts . . . I have explained my position to the industry and said public subsidies include contingent liabilities.” This is an important hardening of the position held by the Labour administration and could make it much harder for companies to finance the plants. “It is a challenge for them, as no-one has yet built a nuclear power station without public subsidy for some time.” Charles Hendry, the Tory Energy Minister, will be responsible for overseeing nuclear policy, Mr Huhne said. He added that he would prefer not to give his personal preferences.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7...2.ece
(2) Western Daily Press on Stop Hinkley support for calls for Justification inquiry:
http://stophinkley.org/NewsPages/news100315wdp.htm
Guardian 11th March on 90 academics' calls for public inquiry:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/11/independ...tions
(3) IPC Projects page with new date for anticipated Hinkley C application:
http://infrastructure.independent.gov.uk/?page_id=202
(4) Hinkley Point Newsletter July '09:
http://hinkleypoint.edfconsultation.info/websitefiles/H...9.pdf
(5) BBC report on council rejection of EdF planning application
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/somerset/hi/people_and_plac...6.stm
Kurds from Turkey at Iran's border to support General Strike against execution
16-05-2010 09:35
Here is a clip of how a demonstration of a few hundred Kurdish people from Turkey marched to the Turkey/Iran border trying to cross over to join the strike in the Kurdish province in Iran yesterday 13 May.Polish veganarchist arrested in Holland
16-05-2010 09:00
Renata Zelazna is a Polish anarchist and vegan that has been studying and living in Holland. She is also spent some time living in Brighton, UK.Video of Guerilla Gardening in Parliament Square.
16-05-2010 07:23
The gardening got off to a good start despite police objections.
Starting with an elevated view of the camp, the video shows police searching a tent, which apparently they do every day. There then follows a discussion with police which was unresolved. Finally there are shots of the gardening in progrress.
More:
http://london.indymedia.org.uk/articles/4806
democracy village open day
15-05-2010 23:22
guerilla gardening, open mic, music, anarchy and partying on a summer's afternoon
despite police threats to remove a village oak tree that had been planted earlier in the week, the guerilla gardening event continued and flowers, plants and vegetables were planted in a circle around the oak sapling right in the middle of the square.
police conducted a search of one of the tents, and then, as is customary, hassled brian haw, who has suffered ten years of their abuse.
strangely, and i think suspiciously, police then completely withdrew, and apart from a couple stationed outside parliament, there were fewer police and community support around than i think i've ever seen on a saturday afternoon in that area.
speaking to village organisers, i learnt that the democracy village has been holding regular consensus meetings throughout the week, and there have been direct actions of one sort of another each day.
today, being a much more open affair, attracted a large contingent of all sorts of people. on the positive side, this meant that many different groups represented, and the idea of 'unity through diversity' was seen in words and action. on the negative side, there was a lot of alcohol being consumed openly in the square, and some people were clearly there to drink rather than to engage in any political discourse or action. this was a source of some friction, and some people were using the open mic to suggest that the site might be better off without alcohol or drugs, while others took the opposing view.
one man stood quietly with a small A4 banner "no alcohol - no drugs on this site" but he became an object first of ridicule and then abuse. in fact it was saddening and ironic to see self-proclaimed anarchists telling him to take down his banner. these 'anarchists' presumably don't like being told by the police that they need authorisation to hold up a banner in parliament square, so what the fuck did they think they were doing?. eventually the lone protestor was literally chased off the site after having his banner snatched from him - a very depressing spectacle, and not my idea of anarchy in action.
the party/protest was set to go on throughout the night, and they will be joined at 11pm by a climate protest group who are also conducting an overnight vigil.
during next week, the village is hoping to move away from party mode and back to meetings and daily direct actions. it is very difficult to forecast police response, but one inspector has said that the police are waiting for a court order instigated by the GLA (who apparently have jurisdiction over the square), and will not do anything before then. again, i find this suspicious. where there's a will (or no ulterior motive) such a court order could be raised overnight usually.
one thing i feel i can safely predict is that there will be an attampt to clear the site before the state opening of parliament a week on tuesday, the 25th.
i mentioned in a previous article of tensions and a rift between brian haw's decade-long encampment, and the new villagers. part of this tension comes from a genuine fear from brian's parliament square peace campaign that the authorities might take the opportunity when clearing the new camp, to also move brian, especially as david cameron is on record as saying that on seizing power, he will clear the square of the continuous protest.
while many facets of the democracy village are very positive, today's bacchanalian festivities must leave brian haw and his supporters fearing for their precarious presence in the square. on 23rd may, just 2 days before the state opening of parliament, it will be the fourth anniversary of the night when 72 police pounced in the middle of the night and stole most of brian's display which was an amazing exhibition of the government's genocide (later reproduced by mark wallinger in his turner-prize winning installation at tate britain in 2006).
brian and co must be wondering if they will get through 23rd may this year, or whether the new kids on the block are going to give the police an excuse to finish the job.
i hope the villagers enjoy their party weekend, but then get down to the serious business of challenging the state and boxing rather more clever next week.
Bradford Provide Rooftop Platform for Lab Opposition
15-05-2010 23:05
