Are you aware this is the same time as the Disabled People and UK Uncut protest against the brutal welfare reforms meeting at Holborn, then again welfare is somehow a 'minority interest' and one wonders how many 'activists' would support it anyway.

so, when was this agreed?

I think you will find that the Holborn protesters will all be at the party at St Paul's.
We are all working together even if we are not all in exactly the same places at exactly the same time.
Somebody has to do the work.

Just wondering if indymedia could be made a troll-free site; it can get a bit tedious sometimes. What do you think, fragile?

'Defend' and 'Rights' must be on the list of protestor cliches from which decade? Oh, take ya pick, comrades. Isn't 'Defend The Right To Protest' not only a really boring-ass name and dullard idea in these suddenly more 'interesting times' of Tahrir Sq, Syntagma Sq, Puerta del Sol, Occupy Wall St, Occupy Prestwich and also some kind of Leftist front campaign at heart. Their website feature the roll call of traditional signers-up to these nebulous and utterly old school stylee politics:

1) loads of union flunkeys who have never defended any real effective protest by the brothers (and sisters) since the introduction of The Employment Act of 1980 outlawed mass picketing, one of the best effective tactics of working class solidarity.

2) a bunch of NUS officers and SU reps who may or may not be going somewhere career wise but are hardly the spokespeople of a generation sticking it to the Man (or WoMan) like the mighty working-class street fighitn' Jack Straw was when he was leader of the NUS in 1969 before becoming Home Sec and Foreign Sec later and being a creepy scary dude with specs and total power.

3) Billy Bragg, whose relevance to UK politics passed it's sell by date when you could buy 'Life's A Riot With Spy Vs Spy' for cheap in Woolworths (which I did) in 1984, one year before he hooked up with Red Wedge to try to elect an embryonic neo-liberalised Labour Party to power. The Blair years, being the Labour Party's eventual total neo-liberalising and only chance of election and, of course, the world of shit of which we are reaping currently.

4) Slavoj Zizek, the reconstructed Bernard Manning of the academic communists Uni End of the Pier show summer and winter season.

5) Education Activist Network (SWP front) / National Campaign Against Cuts & Fees (56 other varieties of Leftie fronts trying hard at Networked Leninism but falling back on ideological impasses)

'Defend' is alway a popular choice with the masses as they rush out and defend this and that thing to ensure their 'right' to protest. It's about on a imagination par with the also popular front runner for campaign names - 'Smash'...as in 'Smash Cameron', 'Smash the Education Act', 'Smash The New Potatoes'.

Surely there is no 'right' to protest really and if there was who would say it was 'okay' for you to protest as opposed to people getting up and saying 'fuck this for a game of soldiers' because they were super-pissed about stuff. So asking for it to be okay please can we protest instead of just doing it and dealing with the consequences is about as good as asking for 'unjust' banking system to become a just one. Consequentially, with rights or no rights, the cops come and bash you round the head based on orders from above anyhow. Many people seem to not realise this subtle point that protest cannot be protected from state violence by have a 'right' to do it. That's not really how the system works. Only in the minds of liberals who think the system can be made to be so much betterer and just and fair. Such liberals being happy that we have a minimum wage of £4.98 for young'uns and £6.08 for old'uns for all those proletarian retail workers, security guards, hotel and catering staff enjoying the fruits of such a just society.

Let's not be silly. Let's just be out on the streets because that's where we like to be and that's where the heart of the political matter is. So get on down the Occupy on Saturday and say FUCK THAT to the suits of the Corporation of London, the Metropolitan and The City po-lice, St Paul's god-botherers, anyone who asks 'but what do Occupy want..can you give me five bullet points so I don't have to deal with anything that might make brain move in mysterious ways?', the politicians over at the Dung House and any silly sausage who thinks 'we can all just get along, us 99% y'all and reform capitalism to be NICE' as the TSG step-up and taser a random selection of Occupy people regardless of their score on the Liberal-Pacifist-o-meter.

Saying 'FUCK THAT' is not a right, it's a pleasure. It needs no defence.

needs no defence? well you obviously haven't been in court these last few months supporting people facing jail terms for protest then, unlike the folk from Defend The Right To Protest. They have been providing court support for defendants, their friends and families, to great effect. Some people have been sent to prison for long stretches, others have been found not guilty, all have had the support of DTRP as well as the Legal Defence and Monitoring Group and Green and Black Cross. These groups work is worth a million bitchy words typed on your laptop from your cosy home. Get up at 6am and travel across London for hours to be in court all day helping out and then tell me our rights don't need defending.

I do all those things in defence of those attacked and those imprisoned, have done and will do and a movement that doesn't support these isn't worth shit. Maybe I should have put this in as a footnote somewhere to avoid the knee-jerk accusation of keyboard warrior, cosy home, nothing to say, jaded old bore, can't possible have anything to say because he criticises the current political activist scene and it's prized register of communication.

However, there were many other arguments made about the dull use of the 'word' defence and some other observations which I thought were quite interesting.

Anyhow, back to my sofa, happily masturbated and sated now as part of the Global Commentariat.

Forgot to say. Legal support and a criticism of the idea of 'rights' are not mutually exclusive.