Canadian Press, December 15, 2009, London–British police say they have arrested three environmental activists who scaled the wall of the Canadian High Commission in London and cut down the Canadian flag.
The men, all in their 20s, initially chained themselves to the balcony but came down peacefully after just over an hour.
Police say the suspects are accused of aggravated trespassing and criminal damage for cutting down the Canadian flag.
The protesters are part of the Camp for Climate Action which is unhappy with Canada’s oil sands development.
The group earlier said in an e-mail that the activists planned to dunk the flag into a barrel of crude oil. A spokeswoman for the group told The Canadian Press that as far she knows, “that was done.”
A call to the High Commission was not returned immediately.

Source: http://www.tarsandswatch.org/activists-cut-down-flag-canadian-high-commission-london

From Canadian Youth Climate Coalition.

In response to Canada’s position, leaked by the CBC, CYDers at COP15 do a ‘lie-in’ to send the message ‘a lie for a lie’ to the Canadian Government.

Canadian Youth Delegation to Copenhagen, December 15:

The federal government has crossed a final line for us – the leaked documents obtained by the CBC on Monday show that they plan on weakening their global warming pollution targets even lower than their current pathetic levels. They have been lying to us and to the world for months.

We know that the targets they’ve set for Canada are so weak that if the world followed Canada then we would be committed to climate catastrophe. Our minority government knows it to, which is why they tried to keep their dirty little secret that they wanted to weaken them even further.

We must stand up together against a government whose policy is to knowingly condemn us to climate catastrophe. Join us in a phone rally during the final days of Copenhagen in support of a fair, ambitious, binding deal.

The most powerful thing that we can do is tell our MPs that things are different in Canada now – there is a massive movement of Canadians that are mobilizing to change Canada’s climate position and practices. So stand with us, and check out this new facebook group

News From Copenhagen

CBC uncovers Harper’s Secret Climate Plans

Leaked documents by the CBC late last night have slashed hopes that the Canadian government would take leadership on climate change in the second week of the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen. The documents revealed a proposed secret framework that would weaken sectoral commitments laid out in the 2007 Turning the Corner plan, exposing the Canadian government’s lack of intention to meet its national reduction target of 3% below 1990 levels by 2020, and to truly act on the climate problem. Learn all about the Leaked Email Scandal from CBC

SOURCE: http://cydcopenhagen.org/?page_id=764

photo credit: Nico Jankowski

Following yesterday’s arrest of CJA spokesperson Tadzio Muller after the Climate Justice Action press conference, about four more spokespeople were violently snatched out of the crowd today. At 18:00 a CJA press conference will address the arrests of the media spokespeople that aim to limit their freedom of speech [audio file of press conference]

[Video of undercover snatch squad making arrest | petition for release of "climate prisoners"]

As was reported yesterday, a CJA activist and spokes person, Tadzio Muller was violently snatched by plain clothes police minutes after he left a Climate Justice Action press conference [pic] at the Bella Centre, where COP15 is being held. The conference presented the rationale behind today’s Reclaim Power! action, which aimed to take over the climate conference for one day and turn it into a people’s assembly. Some mainstream media have since wrongly branded Tadzio as the “leader” of CJA (CJA is a non-heirarchical organisation), while others relay a more balanced view and echo fears that the police are trying to silence dissent by targeting spokes people.

These fears seem to have materialised: at todays action, Reclaim Power!, up to four additional CJA spokes people seem to have been arrested in a targetted manner by plain clothes police using pepper spray and plenty of muscle. Another arrest in the morning is unconfirmed. At 9:19 am the 6 plain clothes officers arrested one of the CJA spokes people at the Tornby station as the Green Bloc was assembling. Later in the day at 11:43pm, the police attacked the Blue bloc, took over the van, and arrested a further 2 CJA spokes people, it seems in a targeted fashion (YouTube video).

Following these arrests CJA called a special press conference at 6:00pm to denounce the deliberate targeting of spokes people. This targeting has stopped people from being able to express the opinions of CJA to the public and journalists, without having any operational impact on the actual actions. This is a narrow attack on the freedom of speech of activists, after many days of attack on their freedom to protest.

Today many activists were again arrested in a preventative manner, while others trying to make it to the Bella Centre were charged with batons and pepper sprayed to prevent them from holding a people’s assembly there. In a perverse twist, the police even threated to arrest the assaulted delegates and accredited COP15 participants who tried to join the assembly from inside the negotiations.