Fairford Air Tattoo Weekly Bulletin

Thank you to everyone who has either offered support for the Sponsored Bike ride or has committed to coming. The numbers are really building up now and the whole initiative is starting to build a momentum of its own.

I will try and send around a weekly bulletin to update you all on where the preparations have gotten to, what sort of things that we need to to do next, what help is needed, and to allow on line discussion.

Please send this this bulletin around your networks and if you receive this second hand, and want to be on the mailing list, then please contact me at the above email address.

Our objective in this is big - we want to totally deligitimise the right of corporations and armed forces to pollute and destroy our planet by going for their bases of power and making the excess consumption that they create and that supports them morally reprehensible and illegal. 

The solution to climate change is fundamentally an issue about challenging the power structures in our global society – and those power structures stem from the military industry complex. Without tackling the military industrial complex and connecting it directly with the failure of climate change agreements, there will never be the progress that we desperately need.

I have already done one You Tube clip which was an invite to the Sponsored bike ride. I will prepare another clip in the next couple of days which will highlight the challenge that we face and the challenge we want to give to the show. I don't want to make this a "Kevin Lister" event so if anyone wants to do something similar or do it, then please feel free and let me know.

The Air Tattoo have started distributing their leaflets around local shops and businesses – they show no shame and have proudly highlighted the illegal  A-10 and their intent to be the loudest celebration on earth. 

The fliers have the road maps to the show – so do start planning out your routes.

If you see any in your local shops, libraries, pubs, etc they are "on offer" so you can legally take the lot and bin them.

A Google search on the Air Tattoo is now looking good with a huge number of highly placed hits of anti Air Tattoo web pages on the first and second search pages, thus providing a constant challenge to the right to continue with this sort of event. 

Katy Holcome has done an excellent bit of art work on their header and a superb analysis of the trivial amount they contribute to charity, see http://directactionstation.com/?p=3476. 

We have a firm offer of accommodation a couple of miles from our Friday rendezvous, and we we should get some other local accommodation sorted shortly. It is a house - though could get a bit squashed, so we will pitch some tents up in the garden before hand as well, though if you have space please bring camping equipment with you.

We have a harpist committed to coming - but anyone else on the mail list that is musical please bring instruments. 

We have people willing to provide logistics to and from the Kemble station

CADU have spotted Fairford Air Tattoo on-line articles which show that they are planning to bring two A-10 ground planes this year.

Other groups that have committed to come include CADU,  Child victims of War and the great guys (Ornella and Bob) that broke into the ams factory in Brighton to smash it up to the best of their ability in defense of the families being bombed by Israel. 

It is possible that there may be some funding to cover costs. This would be amazing, because at the moment our budget is zero and the Air Tattoo's accounts show them with £250k for advertising and marketing. 

In conjunction with the build up to the Air Tattoo protest, I am also trying to put pressure on the Serious Fraud Office to prosecute Birmingham International Airport for environmental fraud. They are going ahead with a massive expansion then fraudulently claiming on their web site they are concerned about climate change. See my blog for correspondance. If anyone has time, please also write the SFO and demand that they instigate proceedings - we need to make the right to excess consumption illegal and immoral. It is this expansion of high fossil fuel burning industries that is leading to the wars that social disruption around the planet, which this event and its illegal weapons has come to represent. 

We have a high profile environmental speaker who may be coming. 

Gloucestershire and Wilts Standard should hopefully be covering the bike ride in next weeks edition.

We will announce details of the Friday rendezvous place on Facebook - Fairford Air Tattoo Sponsored Bike Ride 

To reaffirm the event starts on the Friday (15th July) , which is the industry day. We will start our protests at 5:00 pm to the sounds of Bob Dylan's Masters of War.

Things that need to be done - and if anyone can help it will be brilliant:

• Posters need to be designed - we have a printing company on stand-by - we just need the designs to be done

• Can people who can do workshops please confirm

• We need to identify people who can provide logistics support - i.e. car lifts to and from Kemble Station

• If anyone has had legal observer training and would like to do legal observing - could they let me know

• We need people that can help raise sponsorship money for the Fallujah hospitals.

• A really good write up on the latest legal and technical issues associated with DU would be amazing for posters/web site

• We will have a banner making workshops in the lead up to the event and we need to get material and super cool designs. Any artists out there that can help?
• I would like to put a list of names together that I can give my solicitor, so that in the event that I am arrested before the event, my solicitor can contact these people who can raise the profile of any arrest. If you are prepared to be on the list, then please let me know. 

And finally this week's poem, I am not yet born

In solidarity, 

Kevin