Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 11:19 am Post subject: BAA wins protest ban
I'm pretty disgusted by this - here's hoping the protestors simply go 'illegal' in their desire to protest against those who are directly responsible for massive amounts of pollution to the planet simply so they can piss off to feckin Disneyland to come back with stories that every other 'traveller' in every other workplace has experienced. The kind of people who whinge the pathetic excuse that 'no one else is doing anything about it, so why should I?' - arses.
CLIMATE ACTIVISTS BLOCKADE DEPARTMENT FOR TRANSPORT TO STOP AIRPORT EXPANSION
9 activists have blockaded the Department for Transport in a bid to demand
that the government reverse their plans to more than double the UK's
airport capacity by 2030. Dressed in smart attire, the activists began
their action at 8.15 AM and remain superglued to the doors. Holding a
banner which reads “no airport expansion,” the activists aim to highlight
the impossible contradiction between the government's rhetoric on stopping
climate change and its plans to expand airports.
Leila Harris, one of the activists, said: “The camp has made clear that
expanding airports cannot be reconciled with stopping climate change.
Aviation is the fastest growing cause of climate change, already
accounting for 13 per cent of UK emissions. The government has said
nothing about how it plans to deal with this contradiction.” 1
“The Department for Transport must tear up all plans to expand UK
airports, and start talking about how we reduce the flights coming in and
out of this country. If they don't, this sort of action against them is
only the beginning”
This is the fourth direct action that has been held across the country in
support of the Camp for Climate Action. 2 On Wednesday three airports,
housing private jets owned by the super rich and the prime minister, were
closed by groups of activists. On Monday, climate activists set up a camp
on a barge carrying the wing of an Airbus A380 on its way to be assembled
in France.
ENDS
For more information and comment contact: Leo at the camp 07847 204 469 /
Leila Harris 07766 175 641
1.The government's own figures show that flights currently account for 13
per cent of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions (Gillian Merrion, written
answer to the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee,
Environmental Audit Third Report). This is not currently included in the
government's figures on UK emissions, nor is it included in the draft
climate change bill currently processing through parliament.
2.The Camp for Climate Action has been open since Tuesday 14th and is in
the process of planning a day of mass action on Sunday 19th which will
target the corporations making profit at the expense of stopping climate
change.
Shameless exaggerations of the climate protesters' dastardly plans have left us baffled at the camp
George Monbiot
Saturday August 18, 2007
The Guardian
The allegations have been plaguing the Heathrow climate camp all week. They began in the Evening Standard: "Hoax bombs to cause alerts. Assaults on airport fence ... Protest leaders calling themselves 'The Elders' advised 'clashes with police will happen'."
When I was asked on to Newsnight to discuss the issue of whether climate change is a greater threat than terrorism, we kept being dragged back to the hoax bombs. The story was later picked up across the media, including appearances in the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, and by Friday had been embellished with some lurid new quotes from the Metropolitan police in the Daily Express, which warned: "Extremist yobs hijack airport demo in plot to cause mayhem".
All this has left us at the protest camp scratching our heads. The actions planned for tomorrow have been discussed openly at huge meetings. But nothing even resembling the schemes proposed by the Evening Standard has even been mooted. The campers will certainly be breaking the law by taking direct action - all protests can now be deemed unlawful - but they will be governed by strict non-violent principles.
There are quite a few of us veterans here but age, sadly, confers no privileges: the camp is non-hierarchical, and no one has heard of "The Elders". There are plenty of anarchists, but the last thing they want is a ruck with the police, not least because - armed with nothing more than a sheaf of scientific papers - they would lose. As for scaling the perimeter fence, it has been ruled out on the grounds that we would probably be shot. Invading Heathrow's massive runways would put the lives of thousands at risk.
So where did the story come from? It was, or so the byline claimed, written by Robert Mendick, the Evening Standard's chief reporter. One of the campers phoned Mr Mendick and asked him what was going on. "I'm very constrained about what I can say for various reasons," Mr Mendick replied. "Suffice to say I understand what you're saying and I can't go into it. Er, and I would further say it's, er, not something I was actually massively involved with and, er, I'll leave it at that." "What do you mean?" "... I really can't go into it."
So what does he mean? Why is Mr Mendick unable to say where the claims in his story came from? How did he manage to write an article that he was not "massively involved with"? Is there a computer programme at the Evening Standard that composes reporters' articles on their behalf? I left messages for Mr Mendick yesterday but was unable to speak to him.
Protests like this have two peculiar vulnerabilities. One is that anyone can claim to speak on their behalf, either in person or online, whether or not they are involved. The other is that anyone can say anything about them without fear of being corrected, let alone sued: accusations can be levelled at the collective that could not be directed at any of its members. As long as the claims remain in the plural, they can be stretched as far as public credulity will allow.
During one roads protest in the 1990s we were accused of stabbing guards with hypodermic needles filled with blood, setting pit traps lined with metal spikes in the hope of catching and killing the police and arming ourselves with catapults and crossbows to take out the contractors: all nonsense, of course. Yet when some of us were hospitalised by guards (alongside several others, I had a bone broken during an unprovoked attack), most of the newspapers wouldn't touch the story for fear of being sued by the security firm.
Scare stories about anarchist baby eaters are as old as protest. We can't prevent their publication - all we can ask is that you read them with the scepticism their authors failed to employ.
UPDATE: Police attack protesters' march towards BAA
Riot police armed with truncheons backed by mounted police waded into
protesters slowly marching from the Camp for Climate Action towards BAA
headquarters. The march was part of the day of mass action which had been
publicly announced the yesterday. On-site medics have treated at least
five people who sustained head injuries and one person who had been
trodden on by a police horse.
The fact that the majority of the corporate media had been covering the
children's demonstration at a separate location meant that the police
could act with relative impunity in violently assaulting the protestors.
One reporter from Channel 5 who was present at the attack said that they
had been kicked by the police.
Despite the heavy handed attack, around three hundred people managed to
reach the BAA headquarters and proceeded to occupy the entrance and car
park, stringing up banners denouncing the company. Dozens of police vans
and lines of riot police cordoned off the area and prevented hundreds more
from entering the site, effectively blockading the site on behalf of the
Camp for Climate Action.
Protestors had targeted the BAA headquarters in order to highlight the
corporate profiteers of climate change rather than choosing to disrupt the
passengers at Heathrow. As promised by the camp, the mass action made no
attempt to disrupt Heathrow.
In a separate action earlier on in the day, three teenaged women, aged 14,
15 and 16 occupied a roof at the BAA-owned Heathrow Business Academy
opposite the BAA headquarters and dropped a banner that said "Make Planes
History." Their protest continues.
There have been 6 confirmed arrests and 6 more that are currently
unconfirmed today. Today's arrests bring the total of confirmed Climate
Camp-related arrests to 56.
ENDS
Notes to editor:
The teenagers who dropped the banner are currently on the roof of the
Heathrow Business Academy and can be contacted on 079821 04537
For further enquiries, contact the camp media team on 0777 286 1099 or
07858 177 178
For a photo of the teenagers on the roof, contact Mike on 07966 372 890
Guardian Environment Editor Lambasts the Heathrow Climate Camp’s “Media Mismanagement”
Last week’s peaceful protests at the Heathrow Camp for Climate Action (http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/) were a heartening sign of sanity in response to the huge climate threat facing us. Activists drew attention to the role of aviation in global warming, conducted seminars on climate science and undertook a series of nonviolent demonstrations. A mass siege even temporarily shut down the national headquarters of British Airports Authority (BAA), owners of Heathrow airport.
Actions were not limited to Heathrow. They included British Petroleum’s headquarters, Sizewell A and B nuclear power stations, and the offices of “red herring” carbon offsetting companies in Oxford and London. Despite a heavy police presence, including some provocation, at Heathrow, the protesters were almost wholly calm and peaceful. They were, as they said so well, “armed only with peer-reviewed science”. Here at Media Lens, we were pleased to receive regular press releases from the climate camp, posting them within minutes on our message board.
Guardian columnist George Monbiot, who visited the climate camp, hailed it as a success:
“All the facilities that 1,500 people would need - including running water, sanitation, hot food twice a day, banks of computers and walkie-talkies, stage lighting, sound systems, even a cinema - were set up in a few hours on unfamiliar ground, in the teeth of police blockades. A system of affinity groups and neighbourhoods, feeding their decisions upwards to general meetings, permitted a genuine participatory democracy of the kind that you will never encounter in British public life. The actions themselves were disciplined and remained non-violent, even when the police got heavy. I left the camp on Sunday evening convinced that a new political movement has been born.” (Monbiot, ‘Beneath Heathrow's pall of misery, a new political movement is born,’ The Guardian, August 21, 2007)
Activist Chris Shaw reported back:
“I attended the climate camp and found the event deeply inspiring and uplifting. The camp was characterised by values of selflessness, solidarity and cooperation. I have never known anything like it - intelligent and deeply committed people acting together for a greater cause. My predictive powers are no better than [astrologer] Russell Grant's, but I sincerely feel this is the beginning of a movement which will have a profound impact on how we live our lives.” (Email to ‘Crisis Forum’ mailing list, August 21, 2007)
Not all visitors were as enthused. Guardian environment editor John Vidal wrote bitterly:
“I went to the camp twice, and to the HQ of the metropolitan police once for a briefing last week. Frankly, it was easier and far more pleasant getting into Scotland Yard. A small but anonymous faction of the old protest movement at the climate camp had decided from the start that the 'corporate' press is actually the enemy, and therefore has to be excluded.” (Vidal, ‘Climate camp’s media mismanagement,’ The Guardian, August 21, 2007; http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/2007/08/climate_camps_media_mismanagme.html)
Vidal concluded of the activist movement seeking action on climate change:
“Via its media strategy it threatens to become one more totalitarian, exclusive group that is neither liked nor taken seriously. Rather than being armed with ‘nothing but peer-reviewed science‘, as it proclaims, it seems to be armed with ill-founded suspicion.”
On August 22, we sent the following email to Vidal:
Dear John,
We hope you’re well.
In our experience few people do self-pity better than your average corporate journalist. And yes, John, that's what you are: an employee of a large corporation, the Guardian Media Group (GMG), dependent on advertisers for 75% of its income. However well-intentioned, your presentation of yourself as a loyal friend of the green movement has always been riddled with compromise, conflicts of interest and awkward silences.
Consider the Trader Media Group (TMG), valued at $1.35 billion, in which the GMG has a majority stake (‘Guardian Media Group announces sale of stake in Trader Media Group,’ March 23, 2007; http://www.gmgplc.co.uk/media/pressreleases/tabid/213/default.aspx?pressreleaseid= 3&cid=viewdetails). TMG publishes over 70 publications on a weekly basis. These, presumably, are publications raging against the despoliation of our precious planet as we teeter on the brink of catastrophe; they are surely devoted to building dissident awareness and resistance.
Your website announces:
"Some of the most recognised publications include Auto Trader, Bike Trader, Truck Trader and Top Marques. TMG also owns the UK's busiest automotive web site http://www.autotrader.co.uk which attracts some 2.3 million unique users per month. Due to the high volume of visits the web site receives, autotrader.co.uk can be found in the top 20 visited web sites in the UK. In addition TMG also offers interactive services on digital television and mobile phones.
"With an annual turnover in excess of £280 million, TMG employs over 4,000 employees, located over 35 locations throughout the UK and Ireland. TMG also has three international operations located in Holland, Italy and South Africa."
As an embedded part of the corporate system, your newspaper is hardly in favour of the far-reaching, radical action that is required to respond to climate change. Your paper’s adverts, special offers, and 99.9% of its reporting and commentary, are all about business as usual, about protecting the status quo.
You write:
"Just when the campers were saying that climate action had to become a mass movement and were appealing to the public to join them, they were deliberately keeping the media out - the very people needed to open up the debate."
Just as they, the corporate media, have been keeping out radical activists for years!
You claim:
“The paranoia comes from years of being rolled over by certain newspapers and being consistently harassed by the police. It has led to a defensive culture and deep mistrust and mistakes. It is also a hangover of American authoritarianism and Puritanism....”
Not so; it comes from decades of corporate media performance functioning as a propaganda arm of powerful interests.
Apart from the corporate nature and priorities of the GMG, just look at the institutional, business and establishment links of those who sit on the Trust: corporate media, the Labour party, KPMG Corporate Finance, Tesco, the Bank of England (http://www.gmgplc.co.uk/ScottTrust/TheTrustees/CurrentTrustees/ tabid/254/Default.aspx).
More importantly, examine the output of the Guardian, as Media Lens has done in many media alerts since 2001 and in our book, 'Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media' (Pluto Press, 2006).
Choose a subject: climate change, sanctions on Iraq, Iraqi WMD, illegality of the 2003 invasion, Iraqi civilian casualties, Iran, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Haiti, Venezuela, Nicaragua, missile defence, arms sales, UK militarism. The Guardian has, like the liberal media generally, provided effective cover for the crimes and abuses of western state-corporate power over the years, while maintaining the illusion of providing a forum for radical challenge and serious debate.
If activists are finally waking up to this fact and making you part of the story to be analysed and discussed - rather than accepted on blind faith - then there’s finally a chance of genuine progress.
You write:
“No argument was ever won by people trying to hide or manipulate freedom of movement or speech. It is an ugly culture that cannot welcome its potential friends, and debate with its enemies, and which feels it must control people's perceptions so crudely.”
What does the corporate media do on a daily basis? Crude perception management is what your adverts are all about. Honest analysis reveals the same of your paper’s editorials and slanted news reports. When have you ever discussed the crucial role of the corporate media in obstructing action on climate change? When have you discussed the role of corporate advertising in papers such as your own in normalising the biocidal status quo?
George Monbiot made a rare mention of these issues recently (‘The editorials urge us to cut emissions, but the ads tell a very different story’, August 14, 2007; http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2148256,00.html). It was a courageous piece because, as he well knows, the discussion is all but forbidden in a system you consider a “free press”. As for welcoming potential friends and allies - the thinkers and ideas that really matter are all but excluded from your pages. Small fig leaves of dissent are allowed, but not enough to make a difference. The picture is overwhelmingly conformist, heavily favouring the business status quo.
You write of the climate camp:
“Via its media strategy it threatens to become one more totalitarian, exclusive group that is neither liked nor taken seriously.”
The corporation is one of the most totalitarian organisations imaginable: control is strictly top-down with zero public input and minimal staff input flowing back up the chain of command. As the Canadian lawyer Joel Bakan has noted, the corporate motivation is essentially “psychopathic”: all concerns, values, motivations are subordinated to the bottom line of maximised profits as a matter of legal obligation. That’s what you are part of.
As for being taken seriously, your diatribe against the climate camp tells its own story. When has a corporate journalist ever railed in this manner against the restrictions imposed by the US/UK military in Iraq, against the control freaks of New Labour, against the taboo on discussing their advertisers‘ products and services?
Your piece is a good example of how respect is reserved for the powerful, while the powerless are considered fair game to be patronised and in effect told off with impunity. It’s all part of the great myth of balanced professional journalism. It turns out that ‘balanced’ is that which does not offend powerful interests. You are very much part of the corporate media problem, John. The sooner we all wake up to this, the better.
Best wishes,
David Edwards & David Cromwell
Postscript
We approached Comment is Free (CiF), the online section of the Guardian whose declared aim is "to host an open-ended space for debate, dispute, argument and agreement and to invite users to comment on everything they read.” We mentioned that we had a piece in response to Vidal’s blog which would also address the Guardian and the Scott Trust. CiF editor Georgina Henry responded:
“But why would I be interested in commissioning piece about the Guardian and the Scott Trust from you?” (Email, August 22, 2007)
A good question. Perhaps not all comment is welcome; particularly when it offers critical analysis of the newspaper in question.
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