South Coast Newswire Archive

27-02-2009 14:19

Flying people to torture and death

A Brighton family was forcibly deported to Algeria last week on an Air Algérie flight from Heathrow. The first attempt to deport them on a British Airways flight three days before had failed, allegedly because there was 'a problem with their tickets.' Both times campaigners from Brighton and London gathered at the airport and leafleted crew members and passengers to try and get them to protest on board, which may explain why the deportation was cancelled the first time. Earlier that week, about 50 Iraqi refugees refused asylum were not so lucky to have 'tickets with problems' or protesters leafleting at the airport. Instead, they were surreptitiously taken through the VIP entrance at Stansted airport and put on a special 'ethnic charter flight' operated by a Czech airline, which carried them to Erbil in northern Iraq. A few deportees were taken off the plane, just before it took off, after last-minute interventions by solicitors and MPs. One deportee was flown back to London after winning a High Court injunction.

[Full Story | 3 comments ]

---

27-02-2009 14:09

Climate suffragettes rush annual coal industry awards

Another climate rush occured last night at the Landmark hotel at Marylebone. Around 100 protesters rushed into the hotel where the annual coal awards (yes, really) were meant to be taking place. In the light of the seriousness of climate change it was propably a bit of a PR own goal for the coal industry to be celebrating the dirtiest fuel on the planet. An alternative awards ceremony took place with more apropriate catagories....

[Full Story | 1 comment ]

---

27-02-2009 13:09

Victory for Plymouth Occupation!

Students of Plymouth University have successfully won most of their demands in just 4 days of negotiation with their university management.

The following is an extract from their blog.

[Full Story ]

---

27-02-2009 03:59

Act Now - Reclaim journalism re:Sri Lanka

Vithyatharan, the latest casualty of the killing of journalism seems saved momentarily as the international attention is focussed on his violent abduction. The government and police seem to have produced him inside the system in a nondescript Colombo police station but for how long?
As the UK parliament is being forced to act due to the mounting pressures of UK Tamils and other activists its inertia due to recent 'War on Terror and Truth' needs a push from us all. Act Now.

[Full Story | 1 addition | 1 comment ]

---

27-02-2009 03:07

Hope Happening - 2nd Palestine Cafe Event

Radical Hope Happened at the YOMA Cafe in Southampton for Palestine
add your responses / thoughts for zine making please

[Full Story | 1 addition ]

---

27-02-2009 00:22

Climate Rush Landmark Coal Industry Decision

Climate Rush tackled the climate criminals pathetic annual coal awards tA victory of sorts. The coal awards bailed out, cancelling the venue a couple of weeks ago fearing the attention of the climate rush and instead moved to a different venue earlier in the day.

The Landmark hotel management were less than happy about the righteous fury brought down on them by the dirty coal scum and said they'd not be accepting bookings from their ilk again.

Cops managed to arrest one bloke for not dressing the part and the suffragettes kicked arse yet again. his evening at the Landmark Hotel .

[Full Story | 1 comment ]

---

26-02-2009 14:50

BBC1 ITV Channel 4 Camden "Supper Virus" Lab - work has started

Most people are aware of the plans to build a "super virus" lab in Camden, alongside St Pancras International behind the British Library. The lab is likely to be level 3 facility meaning that it could contain anthrax and bird flu. I have just been told today by Helia Evens the secretary for Somers Town tenants association that work has indeed started to "explore risk assessment". A news item was also shown very late on TV two days ago...so late that most people would have missed it.

[Full Story | 7 comments ]

---

26-02-2009 08:47

More pain in the aviation industry

Anti aviation campaigners may find they are increasingly pushing at an open door over the coming year and more as the recession bites hard into passenger numbers and aviation industry profits. The fall against of the pound against the euro and the dollar have made increasing numbers stay at home where the pound in their pocket still feels like it is worth something. Even with fuel prices under half what they were last summer and ticket prices cut to encourage custom, there are simply far less people seeing a quick overseas break as a viable option right now.

[Full Story | 4 comments ]

---

26-02-2009 07:56

Police spending through the roof but little protection against crime

Police today were getting a proper slagging off in the media this morning after the think tank 'Reform' published a damning report on policing in this country. The report, A New Force, found the current 43 forces operate as inefficient and expensive fiefdoms run by chief constables who are only accountable to weak police authorities. Meanwhile the UK taxpayer cough up more for policing than any other leading country yet the police fail to protect them from either serious or local crime. Sadly no media report I saw makes the connection between the inefficiency of the police on tackling crime and their increasing focus on politic policing.

[Full Story | 1 comment ]

---

25-02-2009 10:46

Plymouth University Occupied!

Around 20 students from the University of Plymouth have occupied room 202 of the Smeaton building, in the middle of campus.

[Full Story | 2 comments ]

---

24-02-2009 11:18

Andrew Beckett: Decommissioning the arms trade

Comment is free

Decommissioning the arms trade

When government agencies cloak arms exports to Israel in secrecy, we have a moral and legal right to prevent their damage

[Full Story ]

---

23-02-2009 09:55

Waking the Dead

According to the FT, the Government has decided to extend more credit to Northern Wreck as a way of propping up the falling housing market. The bank is also to be broken up into a good bank and a bad bank with taxpayers left to cover the losses on the toxic waste, whilst the private sector will no doubt be allowed to pick up the healthy part on the cheap.

[Full Story ]

---

23-02-2009 03:21

Camden People have decided that the campaign remains local & not London AR

There are plans to build a deadly virus containment facility and animal testing lab on a Camden Council house estate, alongside St Pancras International behind the British Library. The threat of virus leak is very real, Foot & Mouth disease was leaked form govt facility Pirbright in Surrey into the water supply. Camden needs council homes and community facilites not a deadly lab.

[Full Story | 12 comments ]

---

22-02-2009 21:44

Hope happening - Palestine Cafe Event Southampton

You are invited to the second Palestine Cafe Happening in Southampton

[Full Story | 2 comments ]

---

22-02-2009 11:46

Worthing Freedom March Kicks Off

A REBELLIOUS 'Freedom Picnic' in Worthing, West Sussex, on Sunday (March 1) will kick off a month-long festival of liberty-related events in the seaside town.
Publicity for the 2pm event in Liverpool Gardens calls on people to "defy the drink ban" and "irritate the town wardens", while bringing "food, drink and smoking substances to share".
It forms part of Freedom March, an eclectic mix of activities, including folk singing and photography as well as more traditional meetings, which is aimed at mobilising local opinion on the topical issue of freedom coming attack from the authorities.
Four days after the picnic, Freedom for Palestine will be on the agenda when a member of the International Solidarity Movement will be speaking at a Freedom March event staged at The Grand Victorian Hotel opposite Worthing station at 8pm.
The month will also include a talk by former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Desghayes at the Labour Hall in Lyndhurst Road at 2pm on Sunday March 29 and a protest against surveillance and 'police state' powers meeting outside the town hall in Chapel Road on Saturday March 14 at 2pm.

[Full Story ]

---

21-02-2009 21:25

Direct Action; Estonia, Mexico, Germany, France, UK & USA

17th-21st February

FUR STORE COVERED IN RED PAINT (Estonia)
FREEDOM FOR TWO HENS (Mexico)
DIRECT ACTION AGAINST THE FUR TRADE (Germany)
TELMEX PHONES GLUED SHUT (Mexico)
GRAFITTI IN SUPPORT OF DAN WADHAM (France)
HOME VISIT FOR ANALYST AT HLS INVESTOR (UK)
FAST FOOD RESTAURANT LOCKS GLUED (USA)
BOOBY-TRAPPED LETTERS SENT TO VIVISECTORS (USA)

[Full Story ]

---

21-02-2009 17:12

Israeli student jailed for refusing to serve in army tours UK, 5-14 March

Tamar Katz, a 19 year old Israeli war-refuser jailed for 51 days last year, will be doing a speaker tour of Britain between 5 and 14 March 2009.

[Full Story | 3 comments ]

---

21-02-2009 16:45

Earth Day 2009

I want you to forget about April 22, 2009. Just do whatever you normally do on that day; don’t write anything in your diary; don’t put a circle round the date on your calendar; don’t make a special effort to talk about the environment. Why should you? If you are not a hypocrite then Earth Day will mean nothing special to you because like all other days it will just be sustainable living as usual.

[Full Story ]

---

21-02-2009 14:31

CND and the inconsistencies of anti-unilateralists

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.

[Full Story ]

---

21-02-2009 14:25

Murder of Small Farmer Rights Organizer Sparks Protests in Yaracuy, Venezuela

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.

[Full Story ]

---