The Bath Bomb
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Issue #11
free/donat ion
June 08
Our pen is a molotov, and we’re gonna write all over Tesco!
Shall We Demo Rolf, You And I?
Last week saw one of the more bizarre demos in the history of Bath Animal Action, as they took the fight to Bath Racecourse. The cause was well known animal welfare activist Rolf Harris doing a gig after a night of racing at the course, which BAA considered a tad hypocritical bearing in mind the terrible death and injury and whipping rate of race horses. (A one in four chance of a race ending in death at Bath race course, and much higher national statistic, not to mention the fact that only 40% of purpose-bred horses are considered ‘good enough’ to race. Evidence indicates that many of the ‘failures’ are shot at the stables or slaughtered for meat). So opposed to animal cruelty is Rolf, that he even wrote a legendary song entitled ‘Slaughter on the Ice (shall we do it you and I?)’ in which he condones the murder of animal abusers. Don’t believe me? You can check it out on the Rolfsters’ Myspace! Members of BAA turned up on the night, joined by a two-strong counter demo to encourage Rolf not to do any more race course gigs and let punters know about the cruelty they support. Afterwards, activists headed inside, leafleting over 250 cars and, noticing a stack of pallets by the stage, one scaled the pallets and blasted Rolf’s animal rights song at him through an MP3 player rigged to a megaphone, while the crowd were shown disturbing images of horse racing accidents. Security stood by, looking uneasy, and formed a line to try and prevent activists getting on the track (something they had no intention of doing!). After reminding Rolf of his own moral convictions through the mediums of song and heckling, the activists slipped into the night, job done. What was supposed to be the race course’s biggest ever bash turned into a coup for the protesters, forcing the brutality of horse racing to the top of the agenda, and dominating talk and media coverage of the event. And as for Rolf – he even praised the demo in the Chronicle! We even heard a rumour that later that night, a balaclava’d pensioner was heard screaming ‘burn, you animal abusing bastards!’ in an Aussie accent while dousing the main stand in kerosene. Shall we do it Rolf?
http://seehere.blogspot.com/2006/07/rolf-harris-canadian-seal-cull-protest.html
http://www.chai-online.org/en/compassion/entertainment_racing.htm
Climate Action Starts on Your Dinner Plate
Bon appetit! On Tuesday the 3rd June, members of Bath Activist Network and Bath Animal Action proved that, sometimes, there is such thing as a free lunch, as part of a nationally co-ordinated day of action on the relationship between the environment and food production. Designed to coincide with the start of the UN talks on Food and Climate Change, activists gave out delicious vegan food from 12-3pm near the Pump Rooms on Stall Street, pointing out the negative ecological impacts of the animal products industry, such as land theft, deforestation, methane emissions, food scarcity and aquifer pollution. Food for thought, you might say. They also offered a side helping of education on food miles, biofuels, deadly agricultural chemicals and GMOs, advocating wild foraging, grow-your-own schemes, skip diving, and positive local food initiatives to sink your teeth into, such as the London Road and Southside Food Co-ops. The stall was much-loved by nearly all, especially the chocolate torte – although it did leave the nearby sausage vendor and Environmental Health busybodies with a sour taste.
See here for leaflet: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=103798308&blogID=402206974.
And for all of you who missed it on the day, here’s the recipe for that torte:
1. Line a circular dish with grease-proof paper and smear with a small amount of vegetable oil
2. Smash up some hobnobs and coat the bottom of the circular dish
3. Melt the following ingredients in a bowl over hot water, stirring: 450g dark chocolate, 5 table spoons of brandy, 5 table spoons glucose syrup or liquid glucose, available from most chemists.
4. When melted, add 1 pint of soya cream and stir.
5. Pour the mixture into the dish and put in fridge overnight 6. When you take it out of the fridge, dust with chocolate powder.
http://www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk/
http://www.vegansociety.com/home.php
Veganism, You Can’t Say ‘Fayrer’ Than That
The weekend of the 31st of May and 1st of June saw a contingent of Bath veggies take a trip to the annual Bristol Vegan Fayre. The event was a vegan’s dream, with bands ranging from Aswad to Bad Manners, and more free samples of vegan chocolate than you could ever imagine. As well as this, the event promoted environmental awareness, advice on healthy ethical living, national and global animal rights campaigns, and offered vegan cuisines from around the world, as well as (supposedly) the largest vegan barbeque ever. The debate of much of this year’s fayre was also ‘raw food’ diets and more activisty fare revolving around ongoing campaigns against cruelty. The weekend was a goodun, and upon tasting vegan cheese ‘Sheese’, the one veggie in the Bath contingent flipped to veganism, taking her boyfriend with her – result! Oh yeah, thanks to all the stalls who donated food to the Bath free lunch event such as Sheese, Yagga and Harvest.
http://www.bristolveganfayre.co.uk/
Bath Foie Gras Free! We Won!
Finally! After a year of relentless demos, blood, sweat, tears, and a good deal of begging for mercy, Bath centre is Foie gras free! The news came after the Royal Crescent agreed to drop the sick delicacy after a noisy demo followed by what we can genuinely call a civilised and pleasant discussion (seriously!). After that, it only took a phone call to the Bath Spa hotel to persuade them to ditch foie gras. The final list of establishments who no longer sell reads as follows – Le Petit Cochon (now ‘Pinch’), Epicerie Gourmande, Beaujolais, Bistro No.5 (who, like Le Petit Cochon, unfortunately had to learn the hard way what happens when foie gras slips back onto the menu – direct action stylee!) The Fine Cheese Company, Royal Crescent Hotel, Bath Spa Hotel and Cavendish Hotel, who were up for a scrap, but ultimately got KO’d at the end of round one! After a long, hard and often tiring campaign, we are glad to be able to leave the foie gras campaign on a high note after dealing with reasonable folks such as the head chef of the Royal Crescent. Never ones to take a break, Bath Animal Action are busy sniffing out more animal abuse in the city, and will be checking up on certain restaurants on a very regular basis. So, for now at least, from all of us over at Foie Gras Free HQ – over and out!
Smashed EDO
On Wednesday the 4th June, 5-600 anarchists and anti-war campaigners from around the country descended on the offices of bomb builders EDO MBM in Brighton, for a colourful and riotous Carnival Against The Arms Trade! A small delegation from BAN joined the throng. EDO, owned by former Nazi colluders ITT, are the manufacturer of the Paveway missile system, used in the murder of thousands in Iraq, as well as other nasty toys used in the occupation of Palestine. However, their evil has not gone unnoticed, and they’ve been the target of the 4-year ‘Smash EDO’ campaign [of ‘On The Verge’] fame, forcing the company to the loss of a huge court injunction to sell off their Rugged Systems division, and cycle through nine company directors. The parade started at midday on the Level, with sound systems, a critical mass bike ride, puppetry, circus performers and a gathering crowd kitted out in various shades of blood red. The chanting mass then made its way across the sunlit reclaimed streets of Brighton to the foot of Home Farm Road, where the company is based, carried along by the sound of samba and running police. At last, outside the offices, and faced by a heavy Sussex Police and London Forward ‘Intelligence’ Team welcome, the scene turned into a virtual music video: baton swinging, rock throwing, pushes and counter-pushes, all set to the tune of Rage Against the Machine’s ‘Know Your Enemy,’ and the sound of the police. Injuries were traded, eight arrests were made, one copper received a white gloss paint makeover, and the campaign lived up to its name, with the trashing of windows, the director’s car and computers. As one banner said, ‘Stop killing people, you fucking twats.’ Whoop, whoop.
Tricky Tesco Tries It Again
Is it a turd that won’t flush? Is it that cousin you’ve been trying to avoid for years unexpectedly knocking on the door? Worse, it’s another fucking Tesco! Just a quick shout out to all concerned with the blood-sucking parasite otherwise known as Tesco. It appears the store’s property developers have purchased the Bath Press site in a bid to open their first superstore in Bath. Groups including Bath Activist Network are already plotting against Tesco, and the coming campaign promises to be a bitter fight, but one that we can win. But we will not win unless we move away from the dour nimbyism that has dominated ‘Bath heritage’ style protest over the past couple of years. What we need is creativity, energy and an understanding that wherever Tesco goes, and whatever it does, people, animals and the planet get fucked over. We need – and are busy building – an uncompromising campaign that stands up for Moorland Road, and all small traders, stands up for the environment, checkout assistants, shelf stackers, Ecuadorian banana pickers and Chinese sweatshop workers, all used and abused by Tesco. We will fight Tesco and we will win, but we will not just fight Tesco away from our doorsteps, we will fight it as an idea, in its entirety – we will fight against everything that Tesco is, and hopes to be. The writing is on the wall Tesco – out of Oldfield Park, off our planet! To get involved in the campaign, Contact us at bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk
Bath Bomb Benefit Bash!
Bath Bomb doesn’t print itself – you do, on your boss’s photocopier! But there are still costs involved with running a free sheet, and as always, we’re skint. That’s why we’re using BANers Jon and Fin’s joint birthday party as an excuse to scrounge cash off the unsuspecting public. The Gig will start at 8.00pm at the Porter Butt and the suggested donation on the door is £4. The line up includes Welsh folk-punk aficionados Kiln(A)boy, local dubsters Dirty Revolution and psychobilly legends the Cheater Slicks. We’re also splitting the proceeds with the Bristol Anarchist Book fair collective. Good music, good causes, good times, so get yourself down!
http://www.stuffit.org/abookfair/
Bubbling Under – Climate Camp Special
On Sunday the 15th of June, Bubbling Under will be bringing us two masterpieces of the activist film world covering the J18 protest/riots and last year’s Camp for Climate Action at Heathrow. Thrown into the deal will be a speaker from the Climate Camp movement hell bent on talkin’ your ass down to this August’s Camp at Kingsnorth coal-fired power station in Kent. It is, as always, free entry and will be starting at 1pm, and due to the fact that most of Bath’s activists sleep in fields between mid June and September, this will be the last Bubbling under until September!
Freedom To Move, Freedom To Stay
On Thursday 15th May, from 12-2pm, 14 activists from Bristol No Borders and B.A.N., picketed the Bristol-based office of the IOM. What’s the IOM, you may ask? Hiding behind those three unassuming letters, it’s the International Office for Migration. Beyond the walls of the anonymous-seeming Parkhouse Business Centre, 10 Park Street, this shadowy institution specialises in migration management: reducing people to the equivalent of products, they direct the desperate to wherever cheap labour is demanded, and then, when the job’s done, ditch ’em. There’s no job too dirty – when national governments around the world want to wash their hands of the negative PR of deportation, kidnapping, slavery and de facto murder – i.e. sending Iraqis back to war-torn Iraq – the IOM steps in. Need an off-shore, deniable, concentration camp to forget about those pesky asylum seekers? The IOM’s the company for you! Would you like barbed wire and handcuffs with that?
But they don’t just fill a market niche, like any other business-savvy enterprise. These people determine immigration policy. They also bribe refugees to go home with cash incentives, just so it all seems nice and civil – but if you refuse, you get locked up and dragged back anyway. So, in the light of the IOM’s blatant breach of every basic human right going, the activists leafleted and spoke to passers-by, lifting the lid on the atrocities of the pen-pushers inside. The pickets will continue every month, with the next one on the 19th June.
Meanwhile, the day before in Bath, UK Border Agency grunts raided the Ocean Pearl restaurant in the Podium, arresting 7 so called ‘illegal workers’. This raid was a repeat performance of that which struck the Cinnamon restaurant of Keynsham last September [as reported in BB#2]. Clair Fennessy, running this operation, had this to say for herself: “We carry out operations like these to put a stop to illegal migrant working and its harmful social effects.”
Yeah, lady, you’re a saint.
Warning Poison Alert
Over the past couple of weeks, pet owners in bath around the Sydney Gardens/Widcombe area, have been shocked and disgusted to discover a brown syrupy liquid that has killed 4 of their dogs and caused at least 20 more to need trips to the vet. The council denies any involvement and has put up warnings. The substance, which smells of coal tar/bitumen has been sent to Bristol Uni for analysis. Dog walkers please be aware and if you have any info please contact bathanimalaction@yahoo.co.uk
STOP PRESS! So it turns out that the poison used was residue discharge from fireworks…
Coming Up
Roots, Manuva, Action. Keep your ear to the ground, the Roots Of Change are coming. This will be an event on 12th July held in the Green Park Market from 2-5pm to big up Climate Camp and distribute info on climate change issues in general. Help make this event colourful and well attended!! Contact Bath Activist Network to get involved.
For further info on any of our stories see www.myspace.com/bathbomb
EVENTS
Monday nights
Bath Hunt Sabs Meeting, 8pm, Bell
Wednesdays 4-7pm
London Rd Food Co-op, Riverside Community Centre
Saturdays 11.30am-12.30
Bath Stop The War Vigil, Abbey Courtyard
25th June, 6.30pm
Bristol Anarchist Bookfair meeting, Kebele, Bristol
25th June, 8pm
Transition Bath Transport Group, 55 New King St
28th June, tbc
Transition Bath Local and Wild food event Www.transitionbath.org.uk
30th June, 7.30-9.30
Transition Bath Energy Group, upstairs, the Ram pub, Widcombe
2nd July, 7.30-8.30
Bath Animal Action meeting, back room of Bell
3rd July, 7.30-9
Bath Activist Network meeting, Hobgoblin
12th July, 2-5pm
Roots Of Change, Green Park Market
18th July, 9pm-late
Leftism, proceeds to BAN, £2/3 The Crown Inn, Bathwick Hill
Q: Who Are Bath Activist Network? A: A local umbrella group campaigning on issues as diverse as development, environmentalism, anti-war, animal rights, workers’ rights and more. Helping to produce The Bath Bomb, we are open to anyone, and our members range from trade unionists to anarchists, liberals to greens, and people who just want to change Bath for the better. For details on meetings, demos, or just to get in touch, ring us on 07949 611912, email bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk, or see our website: www.myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork
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