Analysis
Political Discourse / Discussion / Theory.
Streets A Beach - The Indymedia Story
18-04-2008 12:21
Ever wondered just how indymedia started? or where it came from?
Free Event - Monday 5th May
As part of a season of events exploring the political and cultural legacies of 1968, this free Monday Love Special at the Roxy Bar & Screen will present the history of indymedia,
from the hills of Chiapas to Reclaim The Streets, Genoa and the G8
with guest attendant and Master of Ceremonies, MC Lee Harris, footsoulja of '68
Live music, DJ's and anarchy till 1am
Full article | 2 additions | 14 comments
Scientology's Corporate Exploitation Hurts People
05-04-2008 00:00
Scientology is a totalitarian, mafia-like organisation, which silences its critics by extreme intimidation and harrassment, claim thousands of Anonymous during their series of worldwide protests. About 8000 people picketed the institution in 17 countries and 108 locations on 10th of February, and on 15th of March they embarked on "Operation Party Hard". With "Operation Reconnect" on 12th of April protesters want to expose the brainwashing cult's disastrous effect on families with their "Policy of Disconnection".
Despite countless reports of members forced into bankruptcy, broken families and suicides, Birmingham City Council has endorsed the sinister Cult. There are also reports that Scientology's second biggest base in the UK will be established in Moseley Birmingham and there are protests against a Scientology exhibition in a shopping centre in West Bromwich.
Campaign groups:
[ BritLulz | Edinburgh | Manchester | Birmingham | London ]
UK-wide summary of protests against Scientology:
[ London 15th of March and 10th of February | Birmingham | Edinburgh | Glasgow | global summary of protest on xenu.net]
Reports:
[Scientology shuts down alternative news site | CoS operation manual leaked | The Censored film "The Profit" appears on Internet | Scientology given direct access to E-Bay Database | Scientology Injunction Denied Against "Anonymous" ]
Background Info:
[ Xenu.net | Wikipedia | Operation Clambake | theunfunnytruth | scientology lies | The scandal of scientology |
Newswire:
[ Bristol's Evening Post a front for Scientology? | The war on scientology | Scientology - what it is and why we fight it | Scientology's Gulags: inside the Rehabilitation Project Force | Fighting Scientology - an anarchist perspective | Scientology as Sci-Fi Fascism (corrected) | What's wrong with Narconon | Narconon off Southwark Council site]
Monday Love Returns....
29-01-2008 19:13
For the valentine month of February, Monday Love will be bringing you the finest in uptown, underground, raise your spirit and blow your mind live music, film and real life grassroots media.
Feb 25th - Monday Love 'Oil & Culture'
Come down for the last Monday Love of the season
Documentary films Source an award winning film about BP's Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, presented by Platform Londons own Mika.
Live Music from Ruth Theodore and Hip Hop Poetry from 'The Assembled Servants'
DJ Snuff bringing Protest Reggae, Funk & Hip Hop from (Speakers Corner)
free entry to all those who believe in something more than money & fear
Preserving disorder: freedom to protest and the future of SOCPA
16-11-2007 21:14
The Home Office has recently published a consultation paper which hints at what was really meant by Gordon Brown's promise to look again at the law which restricts demonstrations near parliament, far from repealing this legislation the consultation indicates that the government wants to extend the restrictions on demonstrations to cover the whole country.
The current law on demonstrations around parliament bans spontaneous protests, requiring demonstrators to seek advance police permission, which allows the police to impose arbitrary limits on numbers and effectively act as political censors. See a timeline of its effects.
A public meeting challenging the new proposal will be held at the London School of Economics on the 2nd December.
Links: SOCPA the movie | ASBOwatch | Repeal SOCPA | State of Emergency | schNEWS article | the Consultation Document | SOCPA topic page
Developments at rampART
13-11-2007 10:22
Breaking News December 12th: rampART gets eviction papers. The rampART social centre in London today received court papers for repossesion on the grounds of Tresspass. The hearing date is the 20th Dec. A meeting of all the effected groups/individuals to discuss a response and plan what will happen over the next month or so, will take place on Monday December 17th at 7pm
The rampART social center in East London has been open for over three and a half years, hosting thousands of meetings, screenings, performances, exhibitions and benefit gigs. During that period the building and resources have steady evolved to adapt the demands of its users. Now gentrification approaches with property developers planning to partially demolish the squatted houses next to the social center and build three new properties at the back.
The rampART itself is under no immediate threat and regular activities continue as normal with Food Not Bombs, Rhythms Of Resistance, Radical Theory Group, Dissident Island Radio, WANC, and a new homeopathy clinic among the regular users. Coming up are a benefit for 'Papers For All' and an indymedia training session. Meanwhile the rampART collective is taking stock of its past and looking to the future with a special users meeting taking place on the Sat 17th Nov. All groups that have used the space or might like to use the space are invited to take part in discussions about how the social center is being run and the direct it should take in the coming year.
Links : The rampART and its evolution | Developers make their move on Rampart Street | Rampart Update in Indymedia Offline #21 (oct07) | Free food criminals | Reclaim Your Health | Load of WANC | Indymedia training session - be the media |
Events : Thursday - bands and distros | Friday - Papers for All fundraiser | Saturday - rampART user meeting, plus party
Full article | 1 addition | 24 comments
Indymedia UK Facing Legal Censorship… again!
06-10-2007 08:25
Indymedia UK has been issued with a takedown notice [10th of September & 21st of September] from lawyers acting for Alisher Usmanov. The notice served to Indymedia charged Indymedia with publishing allegedly libellous accusations about Usmanov, one of the richest men in Russia, recently linked to a possible hostile takeover of Arsenal FC.
The author of the posting, Craig Murray, is a former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan and claims to have inside knowledge of the businessman’s allegedly illegal dealings. Murray was sacked by the UK government for exposing the Uzbek government’s use of torture to attain ‘intelligence’ information, and for exposing and criticising UK-US support for a vicious dictator in pursuit of resources.
Murray’s allegations are that Usmanov “is a criminal”, “a gangster and racketeer”. Allegations of criminality seem partly to have been inferred from his connections to “Uzbek mafia boss and major international heroin overlord Gafur Rakimov”. However, Murray also suggested that Usmanov has a criminal past, having been charged with “various offences” in the Soviet Union.
Usmanov’s lawyers minded Murray that Usmanov was pardoned, and all charges against him were removed from police records. However, in response to what seems an inaccurate statement from Usmanov’s lawyers, Murray alleged that "Usmanov is a criminal. He was in no sense a political prisoner, but a gangster and racketeer who rightly did six years in jail. The lawyers cunningly evoke 'Gorbachev', a name respected in the West, to make us think that justice prevailed. That is completely untrue". Furthermore, Murray implies that the pardon was spurious because the real source was the Dictator of Uzbekistan, Islom Karimov.
Karimov himself is an unsavoury character. On completing his investigation into allegations of torture in Karimov’s Uzbekistan, the United Nations Special Rapporteur noted that the use of torture was ‘pervasive and persistent’. He also reported that he had ‘no doubt that the system of torture is condoned, if not encouraged, at the level of the heads of the places of detention where it takes place or of the chief investigators’
Though evidence to support Murray’s allegations has not yet been presented directly to Indymedia UK (but has been collected in his book "Murder in Samarkand"), the Daily Mail informs us that, ‘[r]eports years ago claimed Britain's National Criminal Intelligence Service was monitoring him for alleged links — never proven — to suspected mafia figures.' More recently, the allegations have been repeated by Tom Wise MEP in the European Parliament
Indymedia UK is now waiting for Usmanov’s lawyers to confirm exactly what information posted on the web site is defamatory, and it looks like they have resolved to remove any defamatory material. Indymedia, as with other small non-commercial media groups, has very limited options available to them due to the UK’s archaic and elitist libel laws.
Indymedia hopes, however, to avoid the forms of complete censorship that other web hosts have pursued.
For further information on this case, see Bloggerheads | Chicken Yoghurt | Moscow Times.
For further information on Murray’s research on UK-US (at least tacit) support for terrorism in Uzbekistan, see
Legality, Morality and the War on Terror: [ video | audio | report ].
No to Torture - former British ambassador to Uzbekistan speaks out against UK/US torture collaboration [ audio 1 | audio 2 | report ]
Nerve 10 - Injustice For All?
03-05-2007 22:50
Nottingham and Slavery - A Hidden History
16-03-2007 19:48
As Britain continues the 2007 celebration of 'Abolition 200', the legal end of Britain's official involvement in trans-Atlantic slave trading, and with most eyes on the main slave trade ports like Bristol and Liverpool, our local councils seem quite unconcerned about direct or indirect involvement with the profits of slavery in Notts and East Midlands, and seem happy just to leave local churches to do the soul searching. Let's ask some questions...
An easy example of Notts involvement in slavery is the well-known Mellish family, whose name is probably best associated in local minds with a Nottingham school. The family is known to have had involvement with ownership and official dealings with plantation estates in the West Indies in the 18th century. Even a cursory look at the Mellish family online archive record reveals inheritance of slave plantation estate property from the governor of the Bahamas (John Tinker), and we can read about William Mellish's official dealings with plantation monies in Jamaica as Receiver General for the Customs & Excise (he was also MP for Retford).
Photos: George Africanus: Re-dedication of former slave's grave
Links: The Mellish and Buchanan Families of Blyth and Hodsock - A Brief History | The Nottingham Sparrow, Nottingham AF | 'Slavery - the Hidden History', Bristol Radical History Group | Anti-slavery march demands reparations for slave trade
How do we know?
19-02-2007 19:27
Over 50 people came together at Nottingham University for an event called 'the Knowledge Lab'. The event was aimed at bridging the gap between activism and academia and to provide a collective space for anti-capitalist reflection. It is normally organised within universities, which the organisers say are 'institutions essentially geared towards the production of knowledge as a resource for corporate interest and as justification for particular constellations of power relations. Hence the 'Knowledge Lab' has become an attempt to claim back some of the university's space, resources and know-how from the military-industrial complex and make them available for people concerned about and working against the status quo of unceasing commodification, exploitation, war, and biospherical destruction.
It was the 4th time the event was organised and focussed on 'Knowledge' this time. Workshops were based around questions such as 'how do we know'? what is knowledge'? 'where do we gain our knowledge from'? 'does someone hold control over our knowledge'? 'how does gender affect knowledge'? 'how does education effect knowledge'? 'how are our senses affected by advertising and the media'? and 'how can suppressed knowledge be released into the mainstream'? Other sessions included a presentation and discussion on an alternative education project called 'Travelling School of Life', an experiment in anarchism and concensus decision making called 'SOMA' and an Open Spaces for Dialogue and Enquiry session aimed at looking at what knowledge is and what controls, thus affects it.
Audio: Organiser explains about the 4th Knowledge Lab | Chat with a Knowledge Lab regular about its history and aims | Audio of part of the Open Spaces for Dialogue and Enquiry session on 'Knowledge' | Affective Knowledge & Alternative Media (part 1) + (part 2)
Links: Knowledge Lab website | Peace Conference & Knowledge Lab :: some photos | Travelling School of Life Workshop at Knowledge Lab 4 in Nottingham | Audio reports and background from the 4th Knowledge Lab | Affective Knowledge & Alternative Media, some audio
MI6 Iran Disinfo: The Prelude to War?
05-02-2007 22:49
There have been many warnings [ 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 ] about the possible use of US or Israeli nuclear weapons against Iran. Furthermore, Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research has warned that this is just one part of the US "military roadmap" for the Middle East [ text | video | audio ], while Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed wrote last summer that the war had already started.
Needless to say, a war on Iran would be illegal, and would only add to the long list of war crimes that Bush, Blair and their conspirators are guilty of. But then, what would legality matter if we became a planet of the nuclear dead?
On 9th Feburary 2007 Iranian refugees dropped a banner in Birmingham with the slogan "Support movement for democracy in Iran, No to criminal regime in Iran, No to imperialist war on Iran".
Read: Selected Articles on the Proposed US-Israeli Nuclear War on Iran | Articles on the looming war with Iran | Middle East: Cradle or Graveyard of Empire? | Indybay feature: The US gears up for war with Iran | Iran: A Chronology of Disinformation
