[Schnews-txt] SchNEWS 856, 14th February 2014 - PLAIN TEXT

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WAKE UP!! WAKE UP!! It's yer funkier than a mosquito's tweeter.

SchNEWS, Issue 856, 14th February 2014

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FOLLOW THE YELLOW BRICK FOOTPATH


On January 4th 2014 it became apparent that, at the Barton Moss protest camp,
police removed a footpath sign in a tactic to arrest protesters for highway
obstruction. After countless arrests and pointless confrontations a court has
finally ruled that the road is a footpath. Nearly all of the 100 arrested had
charges of highway obstruction. Hopefully, this makes all of them officially
crap arrests. As a celebration, the camp had a party and despite the rain,
attendee's called it "better than Reading".

The camp is opposing fracking, like the widely reported camp at Balcombe, but
much colder and wetter.

 

Is the protest now advancing onto the freeway of victory?


http://www.schnews.org.uk/stories/FOLLOW-THE-YELLOW-BRICK-FOOTPATH


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BODGER & BADGER

Accident prone Owen Paterson takes on Britain's favourite mammal.


 

Fresh from the political kicking he's getting over the floods it's not clear
whether Environment secretary Owen Paterson has got his sights set on another
badger cull or not. But badgeristas up and down the country aren't taking any
chances and are keeping the pressure on.

 

The badger culls in 2013 were disrupted by constant direct action, and failed to
reach their targets, but culling is still being considered for summer this year.
Natural England has told landowners wanting to cull to start preparing their
applications, although the supposedly independent expert panel has yet to
release their assesment of the previous cull. Other options are also being
considered include contraceptive injections for badgers.

 

There are protests against the badger cull coming up in towns and cities all
round the country, including two in Birmingham that target the National Farmers
Union conference on the 25th Feb. The NFU have been the main advocates for the
cull, providing financial and practical support to the operation. Then there are
demos in St Alban's, Stratford upon Avon and Exeter in March. There won't be any
culling during the winter so campaigners are focussing on stopping new areas
from signing up to the cull. Some local councils and large landowners have
stated they will not support a cull, and there are numerous petitions to ask
more councils to reject culling.

 

SchNEWS spoke to Brighton Stop the Cull : "The badger cull is supposed to be
about stopping bovine TB, as badgers can transmit the disease. The ethics of
killing wildlife to prop up the intensive farming industry may be dubious.
However, in this case at least, it just doesn't work anyway. Killing badgers is
a bizarre distraction from solving the real problems involved with the dairy
industry." See Schnews 836 for more about Bovine TB and the dairy industry.

 

The government has now released the rather small amount of information about the
cull that they intend to tell the public (although perhaps even this was by
accident, apparently). The most interesting thing about this is the extreme spin
doctoring involved. Owen Paterson has even admitted stretching some of the
statistics about how many herds have been infected with TB since 2011.

 

The original stated aim was to kill 70% of the badger population of the cull
zones. At that point DEFRA were claiming that 7900 badgers were in the cull
zones.The estimate of the population then took a steep dive soon before the cull
started. This statistical skullduggery means that if the 70% of the original
population estimate had been killed, there would be no badgers left at all. In
the end DEFRA worked out that 1016 were killed by 'free shooting' which was the
method being trialled. In desperation the method was changed to trapping and
shooting which allegedley took the figure up to 1879, which definitely isn't
70%, whichever population estimate you use! SchNEWS awaits the announcement that
Somerset isn't underwater at all and that any evidence to the contrary can be
put down to the weather 'moving the goalposts'.

 

The pilot culls are also supposed to be testing whether free shooting is
effective and humane. There was never any method to seriously assess whether the
deaths were humane, nor post mortems to see how many badgers were actually
infected. In previous trials only 1% of badgers were infectious. Cases of TB had
already fallen before the cull started because stricter biosecurity had been
introduced, leaving the effect of culling to be interpreted however you wish. If
you were even allowed to see the data that is.

 

SIDE EFFECTS

 

The Hunt Saboteurs Association , the prime movers behind co-ordinating on the
ground resistance to the cull say the badger cull has resulted in lots more
people getting involved in direct action against bloodsports. They said "Every
single night of the cull so far there have been people out directly stopping it,
including many not normally inclined to pushing the boundaries of the law."
There's also been an upsurge in the market for badger costumes as a result of
numerous demos to save this iconic species (although SchNEWS reckons a panda
costume'd do in a pinch). There's a very popular sticker campaign run by Stop
the Cull to vote out the Tories because of the badgers. (Sadly Labour have
weighed in, with shadow environment spokeswoman Maria Eagle saying "This isn't
about being sentimental, I'm not one of those people who says that no badgers
should ever be culled)

 

The pilot culls are supposed to run for four years and be extended to new areas,
but the future of the whole project is currently twisting in the wind. What is
clear is that if it does continue opposition will be huge. Even those who don't
care about furry animals are angry that it cost £4000 to kill each badger so
far.

 

 

For more info on how to get involved on the streets or in the fields.

 

Stop the Cull

 


http://www.schnews.org.uk/stories/BODGER-and-BADGER


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COME ONE, COME ALL (EXCEPT THE ROMANIANS)


Those hilarious madcap god-bothering racists UKIP are planning a meeting in
Portslade (just up the road from SchNEWS' TOWERS)Â  next Tuesday (18th). Unite
against Fascism and other local anti-fascists  plan to make a ruckus outside.

Earlier this year Nigel Farage went to Hove and was opposed by a mass demo 
There were also more peaceful attempts to disturb UKIP by reporting a
cancellation of the Hove meeting. In-between the talks of denied Holocaust
claims and being caught in the rain that "was caused by the gays", UKIP will be
talking about topics such as banning the immigrants. Or maybe they won't get a
chance to talk. Who knows?

 

Schnews will be live on the scene!

See the footage here afterwards - https://vimeo.com/schnews


http://www.schnews.org.uk/stories/Come-one,-Come-all-(except-the-Romanians)


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BOSNIAKTION


Bosnia-Herzegovina has been shaken by a series of uprisings and riots.Massive
protests have now shut down the capital Sarajevo and five other Bosnian
cities. To get to the bottom of it SchNEWS spoke to Bosnian blogger Amila
Bosnae.

Spring has come early to Bosnia-Herzegovina

If you're not very familiar with Bosnia-Herzegovina, the first thing you need to
know is that it has one of the most bloated administrations in the world. The
Dayton Agreement which ended the war in 1995 divided the country into many
smaller administrative units, completely based on ethnic lines. With a
population of less than 4 million, it has a state government with three (3)
Presidents—one for each of the main ethnic groups—then two larger entities,
Serb-dominated Republika Srpska (RS; not actually a republic) and a Federation
of Bosnia-Herzegovina (FBiH) with mainly Croats and Bosniaks. The latter is
divided into ten cantons, and both they and RS are divided into municipalities.
There is also one town that has a special status outside of the two larger
entities. Everything is divided, even some schools where children are kept apart
according to their ethnicity. At every level there are Presidents, ministers,
governments, cabinets—hordes and hordes of bureaucrats producing nothing
except a piece of paper now and then. That doesn't stop them from awarding
themselves ridiculously high salaries, of course. Corruption and nepotism are
rife, youth unemployment is above 50 % and twenty years of severe mismanagement
have taken their toll.

 

The current rebellion is not the first of its kind, although what we are seeing
now is different in character from previous waves of protests. Last summer, the
Baby Revolution became the first large movement to take to the streets and show
solidarity across the imposed ethnic lines, completely freaking the politicians
out. Those protests, also called the #JMBG protests, started because the state
apparatus had stopped issuing ID numbers for newborns (the acronym for the ID
number is JMBG). The politicians would not agree on a law regulating it so it
simply halted. When their negligence endangered the lives of infants who needed
treatment in other countries but couldn't get passports, people took to the
streets. The protests quickly gained momentum, but ultimately fizzled out.
However, other protests had and have been going on without gaining exposure in
mainstream media: for instance, workers who hadn't been paid in years had been
protesting weekly, but their protests were falling on deaf ears.

 

Precisely one such protest was what sparked this current rebellion. Workers from
the northern town of Tuzla, who had lost their jobs when their companies were
privatised and then declared bankrupt had for a long time been protesting. Last
Thursday, their anger finally spilled over, spreading through the streets of
Tuzla. There were reports of police brutality that day. On Friday the 7th of
February, the protests not only spread to other cities, but escalated to proper
riots. Government buildings were set ablaze, several governments forced to step
down. The protesters of Tuzla formulated a list of demands, the first of which
was to protect the protests. Other cities quickly followed.

 

Again, the ruling elites are freaking out because the masses are clearly
focusing on socio-economic issues. Everything would be so much easier if people
would just stay in their enemy tribes, but a flag won't feed any mouths, and a
flag seems to be the only answer any of the politicians in power have. So they
have tried to misrepresent the protests, discredit the protesters as 'druggies'
and 'hooligans'; they have sent riot police to beat them up, and they are using
the pliant mainstream media to repeat the mantra of ethnic animosity. In the
Serb-dominated part of the country, this seems to have worked especially well,
as hardly any protests have taken place there. But it seems that the ball has
started rolling, and even though there certainly are obstacles, it's a pretty
big ball.

 

Watching this uprising after last summer's #JMBG protests, I mostly feel like I
am watching a neglected muscle being exercised or new wings being spread.
Mistakes will certainly be made as the movement grows stronger and comes into
its own, but it moves me to tears to see the immense interest in the people's
assemblies being held across Bosnia-Herzegovina these days. This evening, one
was held in Sarajevo, but there were so many people present that most of them
couldn't even get inside the building where it was held. Therefore, another one
is planned to take place on Friday at the Olympic hall Zetra which has thousands
of seats.

 

The demands of the protesters differ from town to town, but have a number of
similarities: protect the protests, state salaries need to go down, the
governments need to resign and be replaced by people with no party affiliations,
rip-off privatisations need to be annulled, transparency ensured, corruption
fought. All real and huge problems that those in power are panicking to see
addressed out loud. They are working to turn the protests into an ethnic issue
yet again; leaders from RS have met with top-officials in Belgrade while the
Croatian Prime Minister visited Mostar. They all talk about threats to the
stability, and while it certainly is worrying that foreign heads of state feel
the need to meddle in Bosnia-Herzegovina—with the country's recent history in
mind—more and more people are realising that the only stability they are
afraid of is the stability of their own thrones.

 

Since the uprising started, those of us on the outside have been going on little
sleep and even less food as we frantically try to keep up, assist however we can
and above all make sure the correct information is available in foreign
languages. A group of us are working on a project called 'Bosnia-Herzegovina
Protest Files' where we translate declarations from the protesters, videos,
articles and witness accounts. An avalanche of texts is being produced about the
uprising at the speed of light. It can be overwhelming and seem chaotic, but we
are undeniably watching history unfold. It's all still very early days, but we
are hopeful.


http://www.schnews.org.uk/stories/BOSNIAKTION


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THE KRAK-EN WAKES 

An outlook on the squatting situation in the Netherlands.


These days despite being officially criminalised in October 2010 squatting is
definitely not over in the Netherlands but is just somewhat shorter lived.
Nearly every weekend a squatting action takes place.

 

SchNEWS went along to one of the actions and got talking to Annabeth, one of the
people who has shown up to help crack a building. "It's not necessarily, in my
opinion, the best thing, to do it so in the open but this is how they've always
done it here. They [the squatters] show up en masse during the day, a few people
go in, the rest stay outside and get seen by the neighbours. This is what they
used to do before the squatting ban but things were different then".

 

The call-out asked for people to gather on Sunday (9th) at 13:00 at one of
Amsterdam's social centres. On the day, we wait to make sure there are
sufficient numbers to go ahead with the action.

Without enough numbers the action would have been abandoned. When there are
enough people present (around twenty to twenty five), everyone jumps on their
bikes and cycles to the chosen property, an abandoned post office. On arrival
there is a rush of activity whilst people transport materials in, that will be
used to block other entry points. A few stay inside to secure the building;
everyone else gathers outside to watch for police or other undesirables and
guard and protect the people inside.

 

Ten-fifteen minutes later and the first cop car trundles around the corner. They
approach the protesters and swap the usual pleasantries. Whilst on the action
there are two designated spokespeople, everyone else has been asked not to
engage in conversation with police. Another cop car joins the first, soon
followed by a third.

 

Squatter B: "If a fourth police car shows up, start worrying."

 

It doesn't. The coppers stand around, consult each other and then leave. The
building is secured, everyone that took part in the action inspects the new
gaff, congratulates the new residents on their lovely new home and says their
goodbyes.

 

Since the squatting ban has come in these actions have become the norm. In this
instance the whole thing was accomplished in a matter of hours and was
relatively easy and hassle free. The downside is that people can be evicted and
back on the street in a matter of days. According to our sources the whole thing
is a gamble as some new squats stay below the radar while others don't.

 

The Netherlands was suffering from a severe housing shortage in the sixties
whilst many buildings stood empty, this led to an increased tolerance for
squatting. In 1971 the courts ruled that if a property had stood empty for over
a year and the property owner could not show he would start using the property
in the immediate future then squatting would be tolerated until the owner went
through court proceedings to have the property returned. Squatting became even
more popular in the seventies and early eighties. The Dutch capital, Amsterdam
became a hub for squatters with over 20,000 in residence as part of the wave of
the kraakbeweging (squatters movement- in dutch kraken means to crack or to
squat). A Amsterdam Busters. 

 

Post ban property owners have sought different ways of repelling squatters and
anti-squatting companies have been created due to the demand in the market.
Anti-Kraak BV, Camelot and Ad Hoc are some of the anti-squatting businesses that
flourished, taking advantage of people's homelessness and desperation to make
some quick euros. Companies such as these place occupants in the empty
properties for rent that amounts to half the going rate, giving occupants 2
weeks notice to get out. Companies like Anti-Kraak BV make money through the
rental fees the tenants pay to them with no contracts involved. For the property
owners it is payment enough that no squatters have occupied the property.

 

Annabeth we met earlier is not convinced... "They stop people from squatting and
take advantage of tenants that can't afford rent prices. They give them a room
for a month and then throw them out. Its just long enough to get rid of
squatters, how is that helping someone, are you kidding?"

 

In these times of austerity - despite the criminalisation of seeking shelter -
Amsterdam's squatters are still up to the challenge.

 

 


http://www.schnews.org.uk/stories/THE-KRAK-EN-WAKES-


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DO YOU GIVE ATOS?


Wednesday 19th of February, has been declared a national day of action against
ATOS, the private company that runs the Department for Work and Pensions'
notorious fitness to work tests.

The Work Capability Assessment is part of the government's drive to target
anyone in receipt of state benefits - an effort to force people off sickness and
disability benefits onto the cheaper Job Seeker's Allowance.

Even leaving aside the morality of the political onslaught on the poorest, ATOS
administration of the WCA has been cack-handed from the beginning, coming in
from criticism from the Public Audit Office. 40% of appeals against ATOS 'back
to work' decisions are successful. They've repeatedly told terminally ill people
that they're fit for work and removed their benefits. In a further twist of the
screw benefits are now suspended during the appeals process, leaving victims
nowhere to turn except food banks.

This really is a national day of action so look for your local assessment centre
and get down there!

 

London , Brighton + National 

 

Black Triangle:

http://blacktrianglecampaign.org/

 

Disabled People Against Cuts

http://dpac.uk.net/

 


http://www.schnews.org.uk/stories/DO-YOU-GIVE-ATOS


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Disclaimer

SchNEWS warns all readers, if it looks like shit and smells like shit then it is
shit!

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SchMOVIES - http://www.schnews.org.uk/schmovies/index.php


RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARCHIVE
Part one of the SchMOVIES collection 2009-2010

This DVD features a number of films which were held by Sussex police
for over a year following the raid and confiscation of all SchMOVIES
equipment during an intelligence gathering operation in June 2009
related to the Smash EDO campaign.



REPORTS FROM THE VERGE - Smash EDO/ITT Anthology 2005-2009

A new collection of twelve SchMOVIES covering the Smash EDO/ITT's
campaign efforts to shut down the Brighton based bomb factory since
the company sought its draconian injunction against protesters in
2005.



UNCERTIFIED - OUT NOW on DVD- SchMOVIES DVD Collection 2008
Films on this DVD include... The saga of On The verge - the film they
tried to ban, the Newhaven anti-incinerator campaign, Forgive us our
trespasses - as squatters take over an abandoned Brighton church,
Titnore Woods update, protests against BNP festival and more... To
view some of these films click here



'ON THE VERGE' - the Smash EDO campaign film

Screenings throughout the year, or download or order a copy.

For updates and details click here
http://www.schnews.org.uk/schmovies/index-on-the-verge.htm



TAKE THREE - SchMOVIES Collection DVD 2007
*** OUT NOW ***

This is the third SchMOVIES DVD collection featuring short direct
action films produced by SchMOVIES in 2007, covering Hill Of Tara
Protests, Smash EDO, Naked Bike Ride, The No Borders Camp at Gatwick,
Class War plus many others. To buy a copy click here:
http://www.schnews.org.uk/schmovies/index.html#take-three


To download (free) and watch a selection of SchMOVIES short films
click
here http://www.schnews.org.uk/schmovies


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PARTY & PROTEST
What's On? Check out our Party and Protest guide at
www.schnews.org.uk/party-and-protest - it's updated every week, has
sections on regular events, local events, protest camps and more...


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