Posts Tagged ‘Bristol’
Dealing with “counter-terror” cops at the airport (UK)
Tuesday, January 12th, 2016
via RabbleLDN, also see – “Schedule 7″ – Important Advice for Anarchists Travelling To/From the UK.
Bristol Anarchist Chases Away Counter-Terror Police
Today at Stansted Airport, plainclothes police officers pulled aside a travelling anarchist (Tim from Bristol) and seemingly sought to coerce him into becoming an informant with a combination of intimidation, veiled threats, and offers of free alcohol. But when he started recording the officers on his mp3 player they quickly terminated the exchange and made a sharp exit.
He believes he was targeted by counter terror police because of his Anarchism, stating: “Anarchism is about ordinary people standing up to the rich and powerful – exactly what the police are there to prevent. These people claim to be protecting us, but they spend most of their time blacklisting trade unionists, spying on activists and harassing ethnic minorities.”
Here’s his full account of what happened today:
“As I was leaving the EU e-passport gate about 1pm today, I was approached by a man who came out from behind the desk to the left. He was a similar height to me, with short light brown hair/beard, and a light northern English accent. He said “Hi Tim, I’d like to have a word with you. I think you know what this is about”. I got my phone out and called a friend as soon as he started speaking. I told him I had a phone call which I needed to take. A man who had approached in the mean-time from the right, wearing a grey suit-jacket, asked me to turn my phone off. I repeated that I had to take the call. When my friend picked up I asked them to call my solicitor. (more…)
Tags: Bristol, Fuck the Police, Police Bastards, Repression, Schedule 7, UK
Posted in Social Control
Anarchist vandalism at the home of John Hirst, the chief executive of Destination Bristol (UK)
Wednesday, November 18th, 2015
John Hirst, the chief executive of Destination Bristol, the former manager of the Galleries shopping mall has a job that is about distraction through consumption. While many of us are stuck elbowing each other out the way to get the elusive best deal, buying stuff we don’t really need and sinking deeper into debt in a vain attempt to feel like we’re doing ok, John and his business class are doing very nicely. They get expensive cars and exotic holidays and we get bailiffs and debt recovery. One thing we do share is a planet on the brink of ecological collapse due to destructive mass consumerism championed and toasted by people like John. He claims he cycles 100 miles each week and is keen to show off how he does his bit for charities, but presides over the accelerating privatisation and corporate control of our city, the encroaching concretisation of green spaces like Castle Park and ever more CCTV surveillance of our every move. No dogs, no skaters, no street drinking, no street stalls, no demonstrations… the list goes on and quickly ends up as no unlicenced anything. Nothing without permission and nothing without payment.
John may be all smiles about making good business for Bristol but as always the wealth creation is only good for a few; the winners, like John. For most of us, the losers, it means getting trampled on by the needs of the rich and forced to work harder to pay so much more for everything. There’s a lot of us but we’re not all defeated and although we don’t dress as sharply as Lord John, we too can get things done.
On the night of Sunday 15th November we visited his posh (easily over half a million £!) house in quiet, suburban Downend to give some rewards of capitalism. As a reminder of all the shit jobs and environmental mess and as a contribution to the upcoming international day of action against consumerism, we left animal waste and coat hangers all over John’s garden and cars. Punctured tyres and spraypaint on his sports Jaguar and her Range Rover showed our contempt for his easy money and how John and his friends make their wealth at everyone else’s expense. Now we’re wondering if King Georgie red trousers [clownish leftie Mayor of Bristol] has a 24/7 bodyguard…
Tags: Bristol, Destination Bristol, Downend, John Hirst, UK, Vandalism
Posted in Direct Action
Bristol: Direct action against estate agents – CJA trashed (UK)
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2015
Award giving in recognition of services to landlords and their rights.
We proudly presented bricks through windows of CJA estate agents in Southville on the night of 31st August. All windows smashed and the international squatter symbol painted on their wall. Because despite the ban on squatting houses everyone should have a decent home.
CJA have showed real resilience and single mindedness to make a stand for maximum profit regardless of the tough conditions faced by tenants everywhere. In a letter to Bristol landlords in March this year they encouraged landlords to hike their rents and cynically take advantage of the housing crisis. Because the crisis is for landlords and property developers another business opportunity. They then arrogantly ignored a campaign by a local community union to hold them to account. So we found another way to encourage them to see the costs of their actions. Thousands of us are trapped in overcrowded, over priced and chronically undermaintained and decaying rented houses. We constantly struggle to pay the rent under the ever present threat of eviction and homelessness. Gentrification and colonisation of our areas pushes rents ever higher and forces us further out. This is social cleansing and it is a very profitable business. For greedy landlords and estate agents like CJA, decent, affordable homes don’t come into their sums. It’s all about investment opportunities and ruthless profiteering. Meanwhile, there is a huge increase in homelessness and the hostels are full to bursting. We don’t have to take this.
Let’s fight for a world without landlords, where people’s homes are not for the profit of the rich.
Tags: Bristol, Housing, Sabotage, Southville, Squatting, UK
Posted in Direct Action
Bristol: Banner drop for prisoners (UK)
Friday, May 8th, 2015
325 receives and transmits:
Our greetings go out to Em, who just turned 34 behind bars after laying traps for
police cars.
One banner read:
‘Happy Birthday to Anarchist Prisoner Emma Sheppard! – Down with all cages!’
We know what a boot looks like,
When seen from underneath,
We know the philosophy of boots…
Soon we will invade like weeds,
Everywhere but slowly;
The captive plants will rebel
With us, fences will topple,
Brick walls will ripple and fall
There will be no more boots
Meanwhile we eat dirt
and sleep; we are waiting
under your feet.
When we say attack
You will hear nothing
At first
- Margaret Atwood “Song of the Worms”
The other banner:
‘Capital is ‘Green’ as Nuclear is ‘Safe’ – Against Industrial Society – Hands Off
Billy, Silvia, and Costas.’
In reference to 3 anarchist ecologists who the Italian state want to re-try over an
unsuccessful action in Switzerland, and the capitalist marketing ploy of Bristol as
the European Green Capital.
Both banners were hung over the M32 during the morning rush hour on Thursday 30th April.
Recently word has reached us of international police collaboration in the UK
targeting action or publication groups allegedly connected to a thwarted plan to
liberate guerrillas from dungeons in Greece. Solidarity to the underground who, from
Scotland to Bristol to London, head out with hackles raised and spray-paint, rocks
or slingshots in their pockets and blazing hearts never extinguished. A wink of
complicity for those that defiantly acted for freedom and who got away.
State repression is a hurdle for any liberation tendency. Here in England
anarchists, outlaws, and would be fighters with the Kurdish resistance to ISIS (see
the case of Shilan Ozcelik) can all attest to that. We call attention to the common
thirst for freedom in all these cases. May struggle continue in every form that is
necessary. Regardless of the outcome of the election pantomime we are ungovernable.
- Anarchists in Solidarity
Tags: Banner drop, Bristol, Costantino Ragusa, Emma Sheppard, Luca Bernasconi, Shilan Ozcelik, Silvia Guerin, UK
Posted in Prison Struggle
Bristol: Slingshot attack on construction company Balfour Beatty and Evening Post newspaper (UK)
Saturday, March 28th, 2015
Over the night of March 15th and 16th, slingshots were fired at Balfour Beatty on Carter Road, Bishopsworth and The Post building close to Old Market, breaking several windows on each.
Balfour Beatty would never let something stupid like the environment stand in the way of ‘progress’, constructing the route for the controversial metrobus that will eventually cart people to and from their daily boredom. Whilst the media makes millions from a world of misery whilst constantly manipulating public opinion.
Note: The Evening Post building was attacked previously in 2011 and one anarchist comrade remains hunted for the attack. The newspaper is the usual scum-outlet of reactionary crap.
Tags: Balfour Beatty, Bristol, Fuck the Mainstream Media, Sabotage, UK
Posted in Direct Action
Taglia e mandato di cattura per un compagno anarchico – Reward and arrest warrant for anarchist comrade (UK)
Saturday, December 6th, 2014
REPRESSIONE IN UK
3 dicembre 2014-Dai mass-media britannici si legge del mandato di cattura, con taglia di 10.000 sterline per chiunque offra informazioni su di un compagno anarchico, già libero/latitante da 3 anni in seguito alla repressione seguita all’esplosione di guerriglia urbana del 2011 a Bristol ed ad una serie di attacchi, anonimi e firmati ELF, FAI.
I media fanno riferimento a più di cento attacchi avvenuti nel Regno Unito negli ultimi negli ultimi tre anni che hanno prodotto più di 20 milioni di sterline di danni,a vari obiettivi tra cui tralicci per le telecomunicazioni, banche, auto di lusso ed un centro di addestramento della polizia integralmente distrutto durante un attacco, tra cui l’ultimo in solidarietà a Nikos Romanos avvenuto pochi giorni fa.
Il compagno ricercato, Huw Norfolk, è accusato di alcuni di questi attacchi.
Di seguito un suo scritto dalla latitanza, tratto da Since the Bristol Riots
Noi siamo i “ragazzi perduti”, arrabbiati e disillusi da false promesse, la “gioventù incontrollabile” nsoddisfatta del misero futuro che ci viene offerto, i “componenti inutili” che rifiutano o sono in ogni caso esclusi dalla schiavitù salariata o gli “elementi di rottura” che combattono per distruggerla dall’interno, la “minoranza di guastatori” degli schemi della normalità obbediente-gerarchica-razzista-patriarcale, “gli incappucciati” in rivolta costante contro tutto questo ed oltre. Siamo i vostri figli, e quelli della vostra società.
Ed oggi è venuto il tempo per i componenti di quella società di decidere se saranno la mano che cerca di fermarci,o la mano che accende la propria cospirazione per l’auto-determinazione.
Huw ‘Badger’ Norfolk
Solo un’ altro in fuga.
Ottobre 2011
-
REPRESSION IN UK
December 3, 2014 – According to the British mass-media, there is an arrest warrant, with a size of £10,000 to anyone offering information about an anarchist comrade, already free / fugitive for three years following the repression that followed the explosion of urban warfare 2011 in Bristol and a series of attacks, anonymous and signed ELF, FAI.
The media refer to more than one hundred attacks that occurred in the UK in the last three years, that have produced more than £20 million of damage, at various targets including pylons for telecommunications, banks, luxury cars and a center of police training completely destroyed during an attack, including the latest in solidarity with Nikos Romanos, which occurred a few days ago.
The comrade sought, Huw Norfolk, is accused of some of these attacks.
The following pamphlet was written by persons unknown: Since the Bristol Riots
“We are the “lost kids” angry and disappointed by false promises, the “uncontrollable youth” unsatisfied with the paltry futures offered to us, the “useless components” who reject or are excluded anyway from wage-slavery or the “disruptive elements” who fight to destroy it from within, the “minority of trouble-makers” within the constructs of obedient-hierarchical-racist-patriarchal normality, the “hooded rioters” within the constant revolt against all that and more. We are your children, and those of your society. And it is time today for the components of that society to decide if they will be the hand trying to stop us, or the hand lighting their own conspiracy for self-determination.”
Huw ‘Badger’ Norfolk
just another fugitive.
October 2011
-
More from ABC Bristol:
http://bristolabc.wordpress.com/2014/10/15/statement-against-police-harassment/
http://bristolabc.wordpress.com/defendant-solidarity/police-harassment/
http://bristolabc.wordpress.com/2014/11/18/action-report-back-at-ya-police-harassment/
ABC Hurricane:
Tags: ABC Bristol, Bristol, Croce Nera Anarchica - Italia, Earth Liberation Front, Fuck the Law, Fuck the Mainstream Media, Fuck the Police, Huw 'Badger' Norfolk, Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI), Nikos Romanos, Repression, UK
Posted in Social Control
Revenge for Rémi, street fires for nuclear industry, prison society and the European Green Capital (UK)
Wednesday, November 26th, 2014
325 receives and transmits:
French police have killed Rémi Fraisse while they try to rout a combative forest occupation that prevents the Sivens dam. We have burned a vehicle in the service of the French multinational GDF (who work towards the new nuclear reactor not far away at Hinkley Point on top of other nuclear projects in many countries, force dams on irreplaceable Amazonian indigenous lands with the support of Brazil’s military, provide facility management for the police force in this region, run utilities on the Shetland Islands for one of the biggest oil and gas terminals in Europe, manage multiple French prisons, and all around design technologies which attempt to disguise industrial capitalism as sustainable development for the same banks and commercial entities as always).
This was in the Long Ashton area, where we then also burned an audacious 4×4, two luxury sports cars, and a vehicle of OCS (who are considered one of the top security companies in the UK, providing guard personnel, patrols, CCTV instillation and monitoring, etc.). (more…)
Tags: Arson, Bristol, F.A.I. Torches in the Night -Earth Liberation Front, Nikos Romanos, Rémi Fraisse, UK
Posted in Direct Action
Responsibility claim for the burning of police vehicles in Keynsham by ‘Uncivil Disobedients / FAI’ (UK)
Saturday, September 6th, 2014
From the midst of the terror-fervor, the advance of the surveillance state, and display of force by the law.
This is to report incendiary action bringing life to our hatred for the police, inkeeping with our wider effort for the eradication of authority and it’s civilisation and with not a step back before repression which fails to inhibit us…
It took place in Keynsham (on 3rd September) at the police-station where a fleet of support group vans and other marked force vehicles are kept close to the ring-road which skirts Bristol. We rigged all three mobile-CCTV vans at their charging station inside the perimeter to the side of the cop-den with short fuses, then more fuel in containers was primed to incinerate an extra riot squad minibus parked to the front after we’d left the area. When the fires were detected, the riot bus and at least one of the camera vans were already burnt. According to the media an individual was arrested shortly after, who they are probably even now dimly realising they have no evidence to charge because we alone are responsible for the blaze under their snouts.
The police-station is situated close to the massive Keynsham Police Centre due to now open which is also to assimilate the functions of the old Bath and Radstock stations as part of a newly-constructed series of the force’s multi-purpose detention suites, crime investigation centres, an operations base and the tri-force firearms facility which was burned down by the hands of anarchists one year ago. (more…)
Tags: Arson, Bristol, Chile, Freddy Fuentevilla Saa, Fuck the Law, Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI), Juan Aliste Vega, Keynsham, Marcelo Villarroel Sepúlveda, Solidarity Action, UK, Uncivil Disobedients / Informal Anarchist Federation
Posted in Direct Action
Filton, Bristol: ‘FAI “Sacco & Vanzetti” Circle of Propaganda by Life & by Deed’ take responsibility for an incendiary attack against BAE Arms Development Centre in the context of the NATO Summit (UK)
Saturday, August 30th, 2014
In the context of the NATO summit in Newport, a cell of the Federazione Anarchica Informale (FAI) has struck BAE Systems in Filton, Bristol:
We mounted our attack against the BAE Systems arms factory in the Filton area of Bristol by setting a fire against the fuel tank outside the onsite Advanced Technology Centre (Impact Facility – High Power Electro Magnetic Facility section) on August 29th. Today we now announce carrying this out in the context of the NATO summit in Newport in five days. Britain is rife with military industrial complex structures all year round and everyone can draw her or his own conclusion.
BAE Systems are possibly the largest so called defence multinational and they are Britain’s largest manufacturing employer. Some of their major projects with the British Armed Forces alone are the NATO Eurofighter jets and nuclear submarines.
From artillery and aerial drones with specialist communication systems to the Israeli Air Force F16 fighter bombers and the shackles used on detainees in Guantánamo Bay you can find BAE Systems across the world behind imperialist conquest and the death or immiseration of millions. The company now has branches in criminal intelligence and investigation that deal with matters like cyber threats to the banking industry and was contracted by the European Union to devise the Strategic Crime and Immigration Information Management System : essentially an international police database. They are in line to profit from managing the transition of analytics from analysis of physical locations to analysis of individuals and how they interact for the advantage of law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
The factory where we hit produces hardware including that of naval frigates and combat vehicles and there hundreds of staff with the Advanced Technology Centre design cutting edge weaponry for global markets. Just a few of their specialities are :
Abnormal behaviour detection & video analytics
Bio-inspired technology
Micro & nanotechnology and smart materials
Technologies for covert & secure operations
BAE Systems are at the forefront of military robotics as well as the latest innovations such as cloaking devices for tanks and body armour formed from liquid to make the modern flesh and blood killing machine even more agile and deadly. Look to their armoured land vehicles which are autonomous of human supervision (like those patrolling the Israeli-Gaza and Israeli-Lebanon border zones) or the tiny above ground or under water machines modelled on insects for audio-visual reconnaissance to see a sign of our future they are preparing.
The company make explicit reference to the age of asymmetric warfare and the crossover from use of their products on the battle field to use within society at large : a common phenomenon in the sector. A case to illustrate this is the high power BAE Systems night vision gear finding its way into the civilian surveillance camera market to advance the project making open prisons out of the urban centres and anywhere it is needed to protect the system and its commodities.
Need we write more to demonstrate how technological development under the civilised power structure is leading us to a desolate automated landscape of near total dominance and potential annihilation? The hour is late and the brave new world with amplified demand for submission will be the price for our indifference.
To go after them on what they thought was safe ground is what we decided to return in kind for the business BAE Systems have chosen. Through the attack we are with those incarcerated for their own path towards anarchy :
Gianluca Iacovacci and Adriano Antonacci
Marco Camenisch
Nicola Gai and Alfredo Cospito
Every year they spend inside, the destructive acts will multiply. Honour also to fighters of days gone by who walked armed against dominance in their time.
FAI “Sacco & Vanzetti” Circle of Propaganda by Life & by Deed
August 23-30, Anarchist Prisoners Global Week of Solidarity!
Tags: Adriano Antonacci, Alfredo Cospito, Arson, BAE Systems, Bristol, FAI "Sacco & Vanzetti" Circle of Propaganda by Life & by Deed, Filton, Gianluca Iacovacci, Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI), International Week for Anarchist Prisoners, Marco Camenisch, NATO, Nicola Gai, UK
Posted in Direct Action
Attack on Army Cadet base in Bristol (UK)
Friday, August 29th, 2014
We took action in the build up to the NATO summit who will meet in Newport to continue their power mongering disguised as benevolent international peacekeeping. To be clear, this ‘peace’ they want to keep is that of the capitalist order: the ‘peace’ of producing, consuming and obeying.
NATOs rhetoric of democracy and human rights hides its aggressive colonisation force as it moves into areas strategic for resources and political control. Meanwhile, on the ‘home front’ the role of suppressing the ‘internal enemy’ is quite clear. NATO, aware of the insurrection that flared up during the ‘Arab Spring’ just below the Mediterranean border outlined the ‘Urban Operations in the year 2020’ report envisaging “scenarios of armies engaged manually to suffocate the revolts of the poor in the suburbs of big western towns”. The powers that be are clearly honing this type of counter-insurgency warfare as much as interstate military conflict in the darkening future of further societal breakdown, economic and ecological catastrophes.
We chose the Army Cadet base in north-east Bristol, burning 1 car and 1 minibus. as an example of the ways in which militarisation works its way into the fabric of daily life. In recent years, Schools Commissioner Elizabeth Sidewell suggested that every school should have a combined Cadet force “to increase the armed forces everyday contact and influence with young people” in order to ensure the continued support of the population. The presence of the military even in schools is presented as just a natural part of ‘community’ and that competition, discipline and top down obedience are necessary characteristics.
We are in solidarity with those who took to the streets 3 years ago in August 2011, as well as those who have recently been on the streets of Ferguson, another area currently receiving military treatment. Following these insurrectionary moments the government saw one of the functions of its push for more cadets and military involvement in education in general as being to keep young people out of trouble and from being ‘anti-social’. The Phoenix School in Oldham, military academies and others are all manifestations of this promotion of blind discipline and nationalism.
FIRE TO THE MILITARY!
Random Anarchists
Tags: Army Cadets, Arson, Bristol, NATO, UK
Posted in Direct Action
