Skart at space studios

On the origins of wishes. What a great show skart have put together, really amazing work. Go see

Rev Billy tour in the UK coming up!

Reverend Billy and the Life After Shopping Gospel Choir is touring
the UK May 19 to June 1st. We will perform in Norwich, Stamford,
Cambridge, Colchester, Ipswich, Exeter, Bristol, Liverpol, B'ham,
London and Brighton.

We will - in each of these cities - offer our "Fabulous Worship" in a
local performance venue. In most cities we will meet local activists
and exorcise chain store cash registers, parade with them and speak
truth to power with a foolish flourish!
It's a very interesting time in the life of those of us resisting the
DEMON MONOCULTURE! -- often in Britain centered squarely on hope to
disinvite Tesco's...

We look forward to talk to any of you who wants to write about it or
thrust a microphone in the Reverend's sermon.

Also, we do have one night open, Sunday the 31st of May in London,
and we are looking for a venue, if you've a lead we'll energetically
pursue it...

Reverend Billy
New York

london and strasbourg as starters of the great european rebellion vs financial capitalism and the security state

i don't know how to put it adequately, but i was witness in London vs
the G20 and in Strasbourg vs NATO of momentous developments in
european radicalism which cannot but be called historical. In London
we fought the inequality and immorality of financial capitalism that
started the crisis (as the economist titles: "get the rich!" is a
slogan gaining momentum all over europe), and in Strasbourg we went to
urban war against the securitization of internal politics and the
militarization of external politics.

In terms of my soon-to-be-published chromatological baedeker to
european activist politics, Anarchy in the EU (Agenzia X), the London
rebellion was mostly pink and green, with brushstrokes of black, while
the Strasbourg insurgence was pitch black, with splashes of red and
pink. After the suspension of habeas corpus at the climate camp in
kingsnorth last summer (people were stripsearched in a detention
center, while manacled arrested activists were placed standing at the
entrance) i had vowed to not return to england for a long while.
British-style schizopolicing (i chat with you amiably, while my
colleague files and beats you next) i can't stand. It's
psychologically vicious and it can turn violently nasty for relatively
minor infractions, as the murder of the newspaper seller by riot cop
charges around threadneedle sadly proves. In Italy and France you know
who you are against and lines are drawn in the sand. If you get
caught, beatings are normal, but the crowd of the demo will defend its
members as one. It's not as easy to get arrested. It's two sides
clashing, and no snatch squads can usually penetrate demos. German
policing is instead a combination of the two: psychological aggression
supplemented by invariably muscular policing.

Anyway, Financial Fools Day (mixing climate and bank protests) was a
stronger draw than my lingering fear of the filth. I made it to London
with belgian co-conspirators of radical europe, euromayday, and
rhythms of resistance. They stayed at ramparts, but luckily went back
to the continent before the raid thru the roof made by special forces
armed with taser guns on April 2. Others were not so luckily. Although
Rampart was behind the black horse of the apocalypse, which had a
great spokeswoman in Marina Pepper, its approach was 'fluffy' rather
than 'spiky', pink rather than black; activists were in fact sporting
pillows on which they had written slogans and demands on housing and
social spaces. It was the silver horse which exhibited a black
practice. The red horse (vs war) was hegemonized by trotskysts and
commies of all stripes, some frankly embarrassing (pro-putin signs??),
while the green horse attracted anarchogreens and eccentrics of all
sorts. From the start, they tried to 'kettle' us, an english
expression for the illiberal tactics of cordoning the protesting crowd
to sharply divide it from the rest of the multitude. So either you
stayed out of the kettle and lost your friend and loved one or had to
get in and have your freedom of mobility sequesterd by the cordon of
bobbies surrounding you at every step. But the people were so many,
that in fact it was the rest of protesters surrounding the cops, as
it became evident when we turned the street and got at the heart of
the City, the Bank of England. The incredible spectacle of 10,000
activists filling the square and surrounding the institution that has
bailed out chronic swindlers like rbs and northern rock left soon room
to anger at the fact that we were completely surrounded by thousands
of cops: we could not leave the square. Drinking and peeing soon
became very problematic. The four rivers of activists had converged on
the heart of financial capitalism, but Gordon Brown's government had
put dams all around. After hours like that, patience grew thin and the
carnival mood turned sour. We pushed back the riot cops all the way
down threadneedle. RBS had sailed its flag high on its main building
on the other side of the square, and the haughtiness of its
gloden-parachuted management made it a target for all the rage against
banks that is spreading across the UK, in the middle as well as the
working classes (viz. the occupation of ford-related plants by fired
workers). An rbs branch was left exposed and activists broke 2 (two!)
window glasses, sneaked in a tent, wrote S-C-U-M in reverse for the
bankers to read the next day. The 1000-strong block behind them
cheered. There was the first heavy charge. Then things quieted down
for a while.

Around 3:30 we finally found a way outside the square and made it to
the Climate Camp, which had squatted the 200-meter stretch of asphalt
in front of the Carbon Trading Exchange and covered it with hundreds
of tents, food stalls, renewable-energy power systems, etc. Beyond the
banner "Nature doesn't to bailouts" a world of joyous solidarity and
pragmatic ecoactivism awaited. If the atmosphere in the City was
decidedly anticapitalist, here it was markedly postcapitalist, to use
the word that John Jordan employs to describe the second wave of the
movement that has taken off in late 00s and is apparent for all to see
in the last few days. Same-name green, black, pink-dotted pins were
distributed around, the sun was shining and there was a festival mood.
It was great! But as darkness fell (and I went to UEL for the
conference of the left vs G20; the university, frightened, had shut
down the whole complex to students for three days; half-a-kilometer
fron the ExCel center were the summit was held, for three days) things
turned ugly in the City: charges got very violent, and several banks
were smashed in response. It is then when Ian Tomlinson was killed.
Another victim of the european police state and its draconian
securitization of public politics, after Carlo, Rachel, Alexis, and
many others. Around the ame time, cops started to kettle the camp. The
voice had spread that an ecohacktive party was taking place at
Bishopsgate and hundreds of youngsters were coming with beers in their
hands from liverpool street. They found they couldn't get in and got
pissed. So legions of riot cops, some mounting horses, starting
kettling protesters, layer after layer, in a police tactics my belgian
buddy calls "pasticcio" (like pasta in the oven: a layer of activists,
a layer of cops, a layer of journalists, and so on).

In comparison to what happened in Strasbourg on April 2, 3, 4,
London's protesters were incredibly good-natured. In the city on the
Rhine associated in the public mind with the European Parliament
(altho now most of its works take place in Brussels) and Franco-German
postwar entente, a soldily binational contingent of thousands antifas,
anarchists, autonomists, and radicals of other allegiances (including
clown army, die linke, revolutionary socialists, kurdish
revolutionaries etc) set up camp at the no nato village near the
proletarian neighborhood of neuhof, determined to raise hell for the
summit marking the 60th anniversary of atlantic militarism and the
return of once-gaullist france in the american fold. After the news
that the yet-to-be-identified corpse of the protester (the muzzling of
the uk media on that event has been as unprecedented as disconcerting)
had been found near the bank of england reached the camp, at least two
thousands people started rioting in ganzau. They were joined by arab
kids living in the hood's projects. The police was overwhelmed.
Rioters also attacked the police barracks (left unattended) and
managed to seize back many scooters that had been earlier sequestered
by cops. In the next days the roar of those scooters could always be
heard. On the 3rd, barricades were erected (and the first set ablaze)
while a rain of projectiles fell on the police who had brutally
charged a peaceful contingent of clowns trying to reach the city
center. The blacks were determined to exact vengeance for the
aggression suffered by the pinks. The police had to back off from the
camp. It is then that i arrived at the camp organized by dissent.fr,
the libertarian network which came into being at Gleaneagles in 2005.
It was great. Altho more chaotic than Rostock, it was more beautiful.
It was set in a very large area and was supplemented by a smaller are
filled with stands, bars, concerts, djs one kilometer down the road.
Getting there thru the night was beautiful and magic. The place was
part rave part country fair and had the wildly free effervescence that
all events organized by free4all usually have. Congratulations! I
stood there rummaging thru antinazi tshirts waiting for Paolo to
arrive from London, where just the day before had been manhandled by
special forces at rampart. Around midnight we can hug again after we
last saw each other at threadneedle two days before. It's great to be
free together again! I have two bottles of meteor beer and enough to
smoke ourselves silly into sleep.

The next day i have breakfast with Markus of euromayday helsinki. The
black bloc starts to move out of the camp. We follow it. About 2000
people, circa half of the camp. It's opened by the french who have a
great banner that says: "Pas de guerre entre les peuples, pas de paix
entre les classes". CNT flags abound. A slightly larger german block
follows, which has many bilingual banners. Then it's sympathetic
creative activists. A block of red flags follows. We take a turn on a
boulevard. Karcher barrier-trucks are in store for us on the left. On
the right, the Pont de l'Europe to Germany. In between, loads of
trucks packed with CRS in riot gear. The crowd grows and grows. We
gotta pass that bridge. The black head of the demo tries to smash
thru. It wavers back and forth. Injured protesters are ferried in the
back lines. A deluge of tear gases and stunt grenades are thrown.
Protesters respond with flings and stones. A pyre is set alight. We
hear the subbass echo of a series of fireworks bombs: boom, boom,
boom. The police line opens retreats behind a gated field on the side
of the bridge. We conquered the bridge! The black bloc could surround
the cops and beat'em up, if it wanted to, but it doesn't, because its
job is to smash and burn things, not hurt and humiliated people. They
say we're hooligans, if not terrorists, but we have never killed
anyone, unlike the police that faces us down. A graffiti went as far
as to say something like "we've got more in common with you cops than
with the élites you protect". Walking across the liberated bridge
makes us giddy with euphoria (or europhoria). We get to the island
that separates Strasbourg from Kehl. We want to make it either to the
other side of the Rhine or into the city center. They won't let us.
And the more they try to wall us in the rowdier the riot becomes. The
first thing we see is the franco-german customs post. It's soon
spraypanted "no border, no nation". Then its glasses are broken. Soon
a fire engulfs it. It's visible from the other bridge where berlusconi
is taking a phone call. Then we pass a vast expanse with a stage. The
trotskyites try to detour the whole demo in their chicken pen, but
anybody under30 refuses to do so and keep going forward. Problem is
there's a huge block of german riot cops blocking access to the other
side, with armored vehicles and wotnot. What do we do now? For a while
we hang out in the island in a surreal mood. CCTV cameras as smashed
by activists. The ibis hotel gets smashed by local kids. Accor has a
history of exploitation of poor immigrants, would tells us later that
night a local who gave us a ride back to the camp. They also set a
barricade on fire too close to the hotel. Some german black blocs
would like to set off the fire with extinguishers, problem is a
teenager has just thrown another extinguisher in the fire, and it
might explode at any time, so nobody can get too close. A pharmacy
also gets smashed, and later burned. But the two churches in the
vicinity are completely spared. Somebody chalks an anarchist heart
followed by the slogan "2000 years of lies" on its gates, but that's
about it. Then the official demo start. The french keufs have fucked
it up. They block the road with 12 vans, but the demo (around 20,000
people) has to go past them, and fire trucks are trying to get thru in
the opposite direction. We follow the developments from the first of
two railroad bridges. Markus predict that the cops will be surrounded
by the black blocsters who are now the tail of the demo, since we have
switched direction and are going back to strasbourg. The peace vans
and all the demonstrators squeeze on the rightside of the street to
let les pompiers thru. After this, the vans full of cops find
themselves surrounded by a stream of black hoods. Nothing really
happens. A few windows get smashed. But that's it. We move on. The
black block has a sense of honor. Only in battle, fighting is
commendable. We walk for a short while but then we find an impassable
wall of karcher trucks that target my group with shock grenades (two
of my friends get minor bleeds; one uses his sense of hearing from his
left ear for a while). It is then that it starts to get really ugly.
Pursued by the wall of police caterpillars, we managed to get two
feedstock train wagons in their way (pretty incredible feat; we're in
an industrial zone and train tracks crisscross streets). The bastards
lob tear gas grenades like crazy past them. They sting a lot more than
before. Then a scene that seems taken from Grapes of Wrath or Roma
città aperta occurs before our eyes. A beautiful dark-haired woman
with a toddler in one arm, hands out hundreds refilled bottles of
water to the street rebels. I'll never forget that poignant image.
French cops start closing in from the opposite side. The last battle
is on the second railway bridge, with antifas defending it as
non-violent protesters try to find refuge in the industrial port.
Rioters get on it and pelt the CRS with stones taken from the tracks.
If they take that bridge it's over for us. For half an hour the battle
rages. But we're tired. A small contingent of cops manages to climb
the bridge. They are caught in the crossfire of raining stones. But
altho scared they resist and finally manage to get at the top. The
french anarchist soundtruck puts himself sideways to protect
protesters who now put their hands in the air to signal their will for
a ceasefire. The bastards make us choke with gas in response. I make
my way into an expanse where tv crews are assembled and a turkish bar
is incredibly open. We eat, drink beer, and watch euronews. An amused
black-clad old lady claps when completely unwillingly i drop a can of
beer that sprays the face of a cop sitting in a riot van with his
window open. Everybody laughs so hard and vans behind him are honking
that he has to move and can't do shit about it. The day of the largest
urban rebellion in recent european history comes is unwinding. Before
the sun goes down we walk past the burned skeletal remains of douane
and ibis back to the camp. The day after we will be searched on the
way out by taunting cops, one of whom wears a peace flag as mantle
("do you thing it fits me?" he asks, "no", i reply). These are some of
the slogans that struck me in strasbourg: "smash nato" (color
graffiti, with the social center symbol with feminist crossed circle),
"monde de peur, monde qui meurt", "Legal, Illegal, Scheisslegal",
"contre le kapital, intifada mondiale" (k in the original).

To close this long chronicle, I'd like to point out that the
franco-german sink nato network managed to build cohesion and efficacy
and must be defended from criminalization by all leftists in europe.
The London repression is directly linked to the Strasbourg insurgence,
which makes the days between april 1 and april 4 probably the first
paneuropean social rebellion. If protesters had been allowed to reach
the two city centers without being oppressed by tens of thousands of
cops, the rioting would have been very limited. Like in Genoa, maximum
police security leads to total insecurity, both for the city and the
demonstrators. London-Strasbourg was a protest full of rage against
the two decades of neoliberal lies and monetarist arrogance that have
caused inequality and depression, disjointing society and broinging
immense social suffering. Especially strasbourg has seen arab kids
(also headscarved young girls could be seen at the demo) joining
forces with anarchoautonomists, as we have first seen in malmoe last
fall. An insurgent, precarious/immigrant youth is emerging as the
european revolutionary subject, while the black bloc could (ok, this
is an enormous stretch, but i surmise it as tendential hyphothesis)
potentially emerge as a european liberation army of sorts, the shock
forces we need to dislodge, if not completely overthrow, the current
élites in Strasbourg, Brussels, Frankfurt, Paris, Berlin, Rome that
are responsible for the crisis. The Great Rebellion vs the Great
Recession. This is wot we must accomplish in europe. The process has
been ignited.

Police 'assaulted' bystander who died during G20 protests

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/05/g20-protest-ian-tomlinson

The man who died during last week's G20 protests was "assaulted" by
riot police shortly before he suffered a heart attack, according to
witness statements received by the Independent Police Complaints
Commission.

Investigators are examining a series of corroborative accounts that
allege Ian Tomlinson, 47, was a victim of police violence in the
moments before he collapsed near the Bank of England in the City of
London last Wednesday evening. Three witnesses have told the Observer
that Mr Tomlinson was attacked violently as he made his way home from
work at a nearby newsagents. One claims he was struck on the head
with a baton.

Photographer Anna Branthwaite said: "I can remember seeing Ian
Tomlinson. He was rushed from behind by a riot officer with a helmet
and shield two or three minutes before he collapsed." Branthwaite, an
experienced press photographer, has made a statement to the IPCC.

Another independent statement supports allegations of police
violence. Amiri Howe, 24, recalled seeing Mr Tomlinson being hit
"near the head" with a police baton. Howe took one of a sequence of
photographs that show a clearly dazed Mr Tomlinson being helped by a
bystander.

A female protester, who does not want to be named but has given her
testimony to the IPCC, said she saw a man she later recognised as
Tomlinson being pushed aggressively from behind by officers. "I saw a
man violently propelled forward, as though he'd been flung by the
arm, and fall forward on his head.

"He hit the top front area of his head on the pavement. I noticed his
fall particularly because it struck me as a horrifically forceful
push by a policeman and an especially hard fall; it made me wince."

Mr Tomlinson, a married man who lived alone in a bail hostel, was not
taking part in the protests. Initially, his death was attributed by a
police post mortem to natural causes. A City of London police
statement said: "[He] suffered a sudden heart attack while on his way
home from work."

But this version of events was challenged after witnesses recognised
the dead man from photographs that were published on Friday.

An IPCC statement was due to be released the same day and is
understood to have portrayed the death as a tragic accident. However,
the statement's release was postponed as the complaints body received
information that police officers may have been more involved in
events than previously thought. An IPCC spokesman said yesterday that
in light of new statements it was "assessing" the information it had
received before deciding whether to launch a full investigation.

Part of the commission's inquiries will involve the examination of
CCTV footage from the area.

Liberal Democrat MP David Howarth said: "Eventually there will have
to be a full inquest with a jury. It is a possibility this death was
at police hands."

A police source told the Observer that Mr Tomlinson appears to have
become caught between police lines and protesters, with officers
chasing back demonstrators during skirmishes. He was seen stumbling
before he collapsed and died on Cornhill Street, opposite St
Michael's Alley, around 7.25pm.

At around 7.10pm, protesters had gathered outside the police cordon
to call for those contained inside - some for hours - to be let out.
Officers with batons and shields attempted to clear them from the road.

Around 7.20pm, five riot police, and a line of officers with dogs,
emerged from Royal Exchange Square, a pedestrian side street. Three
images taken around this time show Mr Tomlinson on the pavement, in
front of five riot police, and in apparent distress. He had one arm
in the air, and appeared to be in discussion with the officers.

Mr Tomlinson then appears to have been lifted to his feet by a
bystander. Minutes later he fell to the ground. "We saw this guy
staggering around," said Natalie Langford, 21, a student. "He looked
disorientated. About five seconds later he fell, and I grabbed my
friends to help him."

Police have claimed that when paramedics tried to move Mr Tomlinson
away for urgent treatment, bottles were thrown at them by protesters.
He was later pronounced dead at hospital.

Branthwaite added: "He [Mr Tomlinson] was not a mouthy kid or causing
problems, but the police seemed to have lost control and were trying
to push protesters back. The police had started to filter people into
a side street off Cornhill. There were a few stragglers who were just
walking through between the police and protesters. Mr Tomlinson was
one of those."

The police tactics during the G20 protests were condemned in the
aftermath of the demonstrations. The clearance of a climate camp
along Bishopsgate by riot police with batons and dogs after nightfall
on Wednesday came in for particular criticism.

Police storm convergence.

Met police storm convergence space for g 20 armed with tazer guns.

Met police storm convergence space

Met police storm convergence space for g20 armed with tazer guns.

Hmmm...

Homemade vegan food.

Katharine Ainger: Once beaten for stating the obvious, our time has come

from The Guardian (UK)

Katharine Ainger:
Once beaten for stating the obvious, our time has come

Ten years ago, the anticapitalist movement predicted this recession. Now
it must envisage an alternative global future

It was 1999 and the summer of corporate love. Many pundits - now talking
of "bad apples" and applauding bailouts - were predicting the
stockmarket
would go up forever. Not coincidentally, it was also a decade ago
that the
anticapitalist movement emerged with a rambunctious "carnival against
capital" in London's Square Mile; the contagion spread to the streets of
Seattle where the World Trade Organisation meeting was shut down by
protesters later that year.

The movement, which was essentially demanding democratic control over
the
global economy, wreathed summit after summit of the G8, the WTO and the
World Bank with protest and teargas. It was wild, infuriating,
diverse and
sometimes incoherent, as only a network that encompasses indigenous
peoples, radical environmentalists, workers and kids in hoodies could
be.
The movement was like the child in the crowd as the emperor of global
neoliberalism wheeled by, pointing out that his cloaks were woven from
financial fictions and economic voodoo.

They must now be credited for their prescience. Today, everybody can see
the emperor has no clothes; but as the G20 meets in London next week to
ensure financial "stability" for a return to business as usual, it
appears
rather as though the emperor has rushed back to the very same
discredited
tailors to bail them out and commission several new outfits.

And what of the movement that predicted the crash? Post 9/11 it lost
momentum as it was forced to rechannel energy into fighting rearguard
actions against state repression and the war on terror. Yet the less
visible but vital processes of developing workable alternatives,
building
grassroots movements, and popular education continued. The movement also
effected a palpable cultural shift of alternative economic ideas and
environmental concerns towards the mainstream; in Latin America social
movements helped elect governments that were prepared to challenge
neoliberal doctrine. Movement demands also foreshadowed a rebalancing of
power towards the global south, and helped to delegitimise the
institutions of the global economy.

These ideas have never been more relevant or necessary. Clearly we
need a
vision, and it doesn't look as if the G20, still so in thrall to
financial
capital, will deliver one. So could this be the hour for a movement that
was beaten, teargassed and imprisoned for pointing out the now
blindingly
obvious?

NGOs, churches and trade unions are mobilising thousands to turn out
on 28
March with the demand to "Put people first"; 1 April is "Financial Fools
Day", when direct action activists and environmentalists will be setting
up a climate camp outside the European Climate Exchange in London -
because the same financial system now in crisis is being entrusted to
cut
emissions through the artificial creation of a market in carbon credits.
Meanwhile another group called G20 Meltdown is promising a carnival
at the
Bank of England. The climate camp has an open process and has worked
hard
to establish its social base of legitimacy; the carnival is more of a
hotchpotch, and it's unclear who will turn up. Perhaps some windows will
be broken - and frankly, it would be astonishing if no one was angry
enough to do so.

Whatever they decide, the G20 and other leaders are going to be faced
with
increasing unrest from those paying with their jobs, their social
security
and their taxes for a crisis not of their making and a bailout not of
their choosing. From Haiti to India, people are rioting over food. We
are
entering a singular moment of climate chaos and food shortages, a social
and energy crisis as well as financial meltdown. The solutions the
"alter-global" networks have developed offer a way out that is based on
whole systems thinking. Fundamental to this vision is an economy that
meets the needs of everyone on a planet of finite resources.

Which is why the climate camp in the city, with its slogan "Because
nature
doesn't do bailouts", is one of the most interesting of all the
movements
coalescing in London next week. It's a potent mix of seasoned
anti-globalisation activists who are skilled in creative direct
action and
a new generation that is energised and refreshingly undogmatic. The camp
has taken a key component of the globalisation movement - the temporary
autonomous zones of street parties and convergence centres liberated in
cities during summit protests - to a new level, creating a
transformational space which prefigures the world they want, featuring
everything from wind turbines and composted waste to decentralised
decision-making and creative play.

At the end of this year, almost exactly 10 years to the day since
Seattle,
this new incarnation of the movement will be on the streets during the
Copenhagen climate summit demanding real climate justice that does not
rely on the current "business as usual" proposals. Perhaps
anticapitalism
had the right idea at the wrong moment in history. Perhaps its moment
has
come.

• Katharine Ainger is co-author of We Are Everywhere, a book documenting
global social movements.

http://www.climateaction09.org