Reclaimed space

Caironess

2012-01-27T15:50:00.003Z

Cairo Impressions II (May 2011)

2012-01-25T13:36:00.002Z

The AUC conference: an academic approach to the current Egyptian state of affairs

The American University Cairo conference was a great opportunity to learn of a more

academic approach to the challenges facing Egypt now. The sessions covered different

essential aspects of the Egyptian Revolution, from youth movements and social media to the

role of elections in the region, including the even more important issue of how to restructure

the security apparatus. As I walked in on the session on social media Hossam el-Hamalawy,

Egyptian journalist, prominent activist and blogger, tackled the different labels that the

Egyptian Revolution has been tagged with. As he eloquently put it, the idea that facebook

activists were behind the event called Revolution is ludicrous and falls short of reflecting the

reality of the Egyptian uprising. Media aided the cause by providing a helpful platform and

adopting a more proactive role than the traditional so-called impartial approach. As he pointed

out, activists and protesters used Al Jazeera and BBC Arabic to communicate between each

other, as the internet had been blocked at the time.

Marc Lynch, academic at George Washington University, discussed the innovation in the

spread and consumption of information in the region. As a politically neutral tool, technology

can also be used by the very repressive states the revolutions aim to overthrow. In Tunisia

and Egypt the state did not know how to deal with the use of technologies, but as proof that

the states can use it as effectively as the activists, the cases of Syria and Bahrain stand out.

If the use of social media allowed the reality of the Egyptian revolution to reach a wider

international audience, the question of its over-representation of certain sectors of society

remains unanswered. As he warned, if the US only listens to these people, this will lead them

to a serious misjudgement of the situation. The apolitical character of the revolution was

obvious as the revolution in Tahrir did not have anyone in control, as Hossam pointed out.

In order to ease communication with media outlets coalitions were formed. This made the

conversations with the media possible. Interestingly, the military junta also has facebook

presence. Still, it is obvious that they are not interested in changing public opinion or people’s

demands via social media campaigns. In fact they are fully aware they will have to use force,

as the junta’s recent attempts to control demonstrations and expressions of discontent show.

In the session dealing with the future of political parties, Samer Soliman from the American

University in Cairo exposed the challenges that newly formed parties are facing at the

moment: lack of social depth, lack of institutions and the current legislative framework. The

lack of trust in parties needs to be overturn if the younger individuals involved in the uprising

want to reach parliament, according to him. The cohesiveness of political parties depend on

the ability of members to highlight similarities over differences, as confidence needs to be

regained in the capability of parties to be representative. As Soliman pointed out religion

has traditionally been the cohesive social force. Similarly difficult are the challenges that

the Muslim Brotherhood faces at the moment. These relate to their ability to move beyond

the context they have been operating on so far. As it was discussed in this session, the older

generations of the Brotherhood have had to deal with a censorship that younger generations

have skipped. This translates into the different positions and faces the Brotherhood has

adopted. As a transitional period, the reality is that both parties and organizations like the

Muslim Brotherhood ought to mature to raise to the challenge.

The issue of the elections and the role of clientelism in relation to them was also much talked

about at the AUC conference. Mazem Hassam from Cairo University offered the results

of his research on different electoral systems and their importance in shaping the political

landscape of a country. It is normally taken for granted that systems are representative of

electoral processes. The issue is that politicians tend to choose a system that benefits them.

According to his analysis, the Egyptian process will be characterized initially by volatility and

most probably it will follow a similar path to Eastern Europe democratic transition processes.

Antonio Spinelli, an expert on electoral processes shared a comprehensive account of the

difficulties in finding a real democratic representative process as in fact, what works well

today does not work well tomorrow, hence processes change constantly and vary depending

on the country. By meeting the goals of transparency and accountability, the democratization

processes taking place after the Arab uprisings will ensure the change is essential and

durable and elections are credible. Credible elections require a credible legal framework,

therefore regulations ought to be enhanced and strengthened. If the elections lack credibility

accordingly to Spinelli we can expect more instability in the region. The Egyptian social

groups and individuals need to work together to overcome all of these issues.

Further into the subject of transitions and specifically about the state security apparatus,

Charles Powell from the Foundation for Spanish Transition provided a fascinating

comparative analysis of the cases in Spain and Egypt. The transition and consolidation

phases that a country like Spain endured are processes full of setbacks. But these setbacks

might have unexpected positive consequences, as in the attempted coup in 1981 reinforced

the democratic will of the nation, according to Powell. Based on the case of Spain, he went

through a series of tasks that the civilian leadership would have to tackle in order to promote

and preserve a new democracy: constitutional redefinition of the role of the armed forces,

creation of a unified defense ministry, removal of armed forces from law-enforcing tasks,

redefinition of the role of military intelligence, reform of military justice, removal of all

military activity from economic interests (this particular point raised a few laughs from the

audience, showing that trust in the Egyptian military force is far from strong) and reform of

the military education system and professionalization of the army.

Hossam Bahgat, from the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights gave a great insight into the

current role of the Egyptian security apparatus. Set up in 2002, this civil society initiative has

struggled to expose the violations and shed light of abuses committed to shame the government, their ultimate goal being the mobilization of political pressure towards self-reform. The endemic corruption of the Egyptian security apparatus and the green light given by Mubarak´s government in the name of anti-terrorism has shaped the abuses carried out, abuses fostered officially by the infamous emergency law, the culture within the apparatus, neighbouring abuses, agglomeration of power (no appointment in Egypt was carried out without security intervention), licenses and permits, and surveillance. According to his account, the military rulers are far from different to this bleak picture of Mubarak´s security state: ten thousand civilians have been deferred to military courts in the last months. Bahgat advises a complete overhaul of the legal framework is essential, specifically there are at least fifteen

different laws that need to be revisited. The competences of the interior ministry need to be brought down to mere law and order. Egypt needs judicial observation of detentions and a strong involvement of civil society. Linking with the theory exposed by Powell in regards to Spain, security sector reform is the key on how to understand and move on and deal with the past.

Bruce Rutherford from Colgate University went further on the role of the judiciary in the state

security reform. He stated that the judiciary seemed to be the institution less penetrated by the security apparatus. Mubarak´s regime had created a parallel legal institution to that of the judiciary, the main responsible agent in the abuses of the dictatorship. The less negative outcome of this situation is the relative independence of the judiciary itself, which according to him more or less escaped the sphere of influence of corruption and unaccountability. As the volume of cases has increased dramatically since the revolution started, the strengthening of the rule of law and support to a judiciary that is currently struggling is the key.

A current debate tackles the ongoing high profile prosecutions. According to Bahgat they lack

coherence and strategy. The trials have been rushed for the most serious crimes, for example

Mubarak’s trial for the slaughter of protesters when it is not known exactly how many were killed. The full extent of Mubarak’s abuses is unknown. The Egyptians deserve to know what the system was really like and who else was involved.

The role of creative art within the revolutionary process

The AUC conference on the challenges that face the current Egyptian revolution proved

to be a great opportunity to be exposed to a deeper understanding of Mubarak’s regime, of

the corrupted system and disregard for anything similar to accountability, of the nature of

the different forces behind the revolution and of the different possible scenarios Egypt will

be facing in the near future. Still, merging this experience with the opinions exposed in the

socialist conference provided a useful representation of the current complex social and political

landscape in Egypt. The Revolution is far from over and that is obvious. In fact, I overheard

on a couple of occasions the need of a revolution of the revolution. An important part of this

scene is the role of creative arts as new means to speak political change. Artists such as

Ganzeer have been working on what he called “taking Tahrir out of Tahrir and into the

neighbourhoods”, opinion shared by others such as Hossam el-Hamalawy, who called

for a “Tahrir inside universities and factories”, following the intense campaign by the

military to discredit the current strikes gripping the Egyptian workforce. The struggle

continues and takes on different shapes, possibly more difficult to read than a media-

friendly revolutionary Tahrir Square. This could be a sign that the changes are taking

place as we speak, as further demonstrations were met with police force on the 8th of

June as Hossam el-Hamalawy reports.

The different projects to avoid collective forgetting of the important reasons behind

what drove the Egyptians to Tahrir in the first place are visible on the walls of

Downtown Cairo, Zamalek and other neighbourhoods of the city. Two of the most

poignant have been the Martyrs Mural Project and the recent stencil action on the walls

of the Ministry of Interior to coincide with a protest against continued police torture,

marking the anniversary of Khaled Said’s murder in Alexandria at the hands of the

police. The Egyptian youths generally technologically savvy are taking advantage

of the available means to continue to spread the messages. The latest is a creation of

an interactive map that enables to identify the spots where revolutionary graffiti has

been created, enabling artists and public to locate and further create more works. Also

an initiative to archive and translate all documents related and produced about the

Revolution provide a useful gateway to all the literature produced so far. All of these

efforts signify a collective will not only not to forget the recent events, but also to allow

the city to talk through its walls what for years has not been able to say out-loud: the

times of passive witnessing of the dictatorial regime are over and the Egyptians will

face the difficult tasks ahead with the courage that took them to the streets in the first

place.

As an outsider I was made to feel welcomed, an aspect of Egypt that has not changed.

Still, and as I was reminded by one of the organizers of previous Cairo Conferences,

what Egypt needs now is not another international conference. The old conferences

functioned as means of pressuring the ousted Mubarak’s regime. Now the efforts

are by the Egyptians and for the Egyptians, and the organization and management of

these efforts against the counter-revolutionary attempts by the military junta take up

most of the time of the activists I met. As I walked out of the Commerce Syndicate

in Ramses street, the anti-riot police were in formation, about to charge a crowd of

people demonstrating in Ramses square. The day before, a microbus driver had died

in Azbakeya Police Station custody. As I walked the streets of Downtown Cairo the

tension was obvious. This is perhaps the new normality the Egyptian society faces

now, until the changes they long for and deserve materialize in long term stability, job

security, accountability and real democracy. The process has only just begun.

Published in Ekopolitik's Website in June 2011

Cairo Impressions I (May 2011)

2012-01-25T13:24:00.000Z

A useful way to remember the importance of the continuous support to the Egyptian Revolution is revisiting some of the moments where revolution and social change were ascertained, via conferences, walks or simple street talk.

A challenging task lies ahead if my intention in this article is to offer a truthful snapshot of a complicated political moment in the history of Arab politics and specifically in the development of Egypt as a free society. Therefore the account that follows of my trip to Cairo should be taken as a personal take on the current situation. There I participated in two conferences and caught up with the state of the Uprising via conversations with Egyptian friends.

As a student of Middle East politics and society, the revolts that begun in 2011 mark for me a U-turn in what until then had been a depressing state of affairs. For years now I have followed different initiatives in and outside this region, mainly dealing with the struggle for freedom and equality. These have taken the shape of demonstrations, meetings, conferences and so on. Understanding the position of Western powers as problematic both during colonial and post-colonial times pushed me to look for different ways to discern the manner they have been involved and continue to be involved in the decision-making process of countries in the area, and in the rest of the world for that matter. Therefore the idea of going to Cairo to attend a series of meetings on the Egyptian revolution seemed important in the context of the Arab revolts. Furthermore, I felt it could provide a platform to listen to the accounts of that struggle and to hopefully disseminate far and wide the details of the efforts to reshape a whole society.

Cairo Conference: a small share of the leftist perspective

The Cairo Conference has taken place on and off since the American aggression on Iraq. First conceived as an anti-war conference, it has benefited from the support of different international organizations, political parties, academics and individuals from across the board with different and sometimes opposing ideological stances. This year, though, the conference has mutated into something else and as I will explain below perhaps it was not as representative of the Egyptian opposition to Mubarak’s regime as it had been before.

With the backdrop of a Revolution in the making, many internationals gathered at the hall of Commerce Syndicate in Ramses Street. I had wondered up until then who exactly would come along. The opening session gave me a chance to hear voices from Syria, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, UK, Spain, Lebanon, India, USA, Canada and of course Egypt. The overall idea was clear: the Arab uprisings are needed and welcomed, and the Egyptian Revolution stands as a great source of inspiration to people committed to struggle for democracy or question the nature of established orders as uncontested paradigms of democratic values, as in the current Spanish movement for Real Democracy.

Within the common thread of the opening speeches that hailed the Egyptian and Arab revolutions there were particular voices that stood out. Their words are worth recalling here. The Libyan resistance representative eloquently spoke of the right of the Libyan people to demand what others can freely request or enjoy elsewhere. The struggle towards a democratic Libya by means of an empowered civil society was crushed brutally by Gaddafi’s armed forces. The hospitals were assaulted and the water and electricity supplies were cut. The future of Libya embodied in its young folk has been curtailed by means of violence. He declared that Gaddafi did not belong to Libya anymore as he held the photographs of maimed bodies; the result of attacks by loyal forces. Tackling one of the issues that perhaps stands uneasily in the anti-imperialist discourse of the broad left movement, specifically the left I am more familiar with in the UK, the Libyan resistance representative hailed the intervention of the international forces as an effective means to prevent further slaughter and disaster.

Some of the speeches that followed, for example the Canadian representative of Stop the War , mentioned the need to support the Libyan uprising against Gaddafi but condemned the NATO intervention. Interestingly I did not witness a comprehensive explanation of what the Libyan people ought to do as an alternative means to oust their dictator. This makes an interesting debate for the leftist internationalist movement as perhaps I am not able to escape the important issue of perspective. When the Libyan people hail the international forces intervention as they are being saved from a certain death is there really space for outsiders to comment and criticise this? Of course the cause can be easily hijacked by the Western countries involved in the intervention once the worst is over, and the resistance will probably face tough negotiations. But when the reality of a house to house massacre is imminent, is there a possibility of anything else than immediate action? I do not know myself. What I do know is that I would rather listen to those who face that reality to try to find an answer to these questions. Condemnation of the intervention in the Libyan context, as hypocritical as the Western coalition might be, seems to overlook the fact that it is easy to be outside of Libya and think this way. I suppose this ought to be discussed somewhere else.

Another of the most interesting interventions was the Yemeni human rights activist that called for an urgent focus on the situation in Yemen. She reminded the conference attendees that people were being killed then and that somehow Yemen would stand as a key factor of stability of turmoil in the region. Similar calls were made by the Syrian envoy. As testimony of the reputation of the Cairo Conference, the international delegates found a forum to voice their views on the present revolutions. The other side of the coin is that it seems the conference had more pulling power internationally. Even though there were several Egyptian speakers and attendees, the lack of an Egyptian majority in the audience was also representative of the current political landscape taking shape in Egypt.

This concern was also voiced by a couple of delegates when the lack of Muslim Brotherhood representatives was pointed out. Some went on to criticise the organization of the conference itself as highly unrepresentative of the current moment. Evidently the conference had a very clear thread linking most delegates: a socialist ideological basis. There is no real issue with this if interventions had shown more self-awareness and had not deemed workers as the only real force and agent behind the revolutions. My personal criticism of this kind of discourse is that, as well intentioned as it might be, it excludes certain sectors of society such as informal labourers, students, elderly, jobless, middle classes and so on. It is precisely the unity of all the peoples that made the revolution possible in the first place, therefore narrowing the actors to the working class might have the opposite effect: alienation of all the other folk that would not feel represented in the discourse.

The reasons behind the decision by the conference not to invite the Muslim Brotherhood were further explained by the commission: the Brotherhood’s stand in regards to the recent demonstrations and strikes has been far from supportive. Furthermore, it has strengthened its links with the military junta, a move that has been seen by some as a way to secure a portion of the power-share in a future government. But at the same time there are other arguments: the Muslim Brotherhood is anything but an homogeneous group united under one opinion. Furthermore, the Ikhwan as it has been voiced in a simultaneous conference at the American University in Cairo is trying different positions and possibly shaping its own official policies as it comes. After all their legal status is also something they ought to internalize and accept as part of their existence and after years of persecutions the generational differences in life experiences of its members might be shaping an internal struggle. Their absence in this conference was difficult to justify, particularly as it triggered further important absences like the Nasserist groups.

The fact is that as this conference unfolded it was obvious this was not as important as previously held Cairo Conferences or as well attended as expected. But at the same time perhaps it shows the reality of an Egyptian political realm that is not only healthy, but much alive and kicking. The proof of this rests in the simultaneous events taking place in one weekend: this conference, the AUC conference “From Tahrir: Revolution or Democratic Transition”, a conference on women’s rights and several different meetings with representatives of unions and farmers. It seems that Egypt has difficult times ahead, but if we go by the level of activity that continues even under the military junta’s rule (as much as they try to control it), a strong civil society might be taking shape, and an even stronger sector of independent unions might hold further power in the Egyptian struggle towards their democracy.

Turkey and Britain: of acceptable Muslim democracies and British interests.

2012-01-19T19:55:00.000Z

Turkey has been praised as a successful example of how Muslim and democracy are not exclusive terms. As it becomes increasingly difficult to justify economic and military ties with long established dictatorships such as British links with Gaddafi or Mubarak’s old regimes, along comes Turkey, to provide some European premiers with the option of a new discourse of what relations with a self-proclaimed Muslim democracy ought to look like. Specifically, Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, (AKP), promotes a conservative practice of Islam whilst embracing the traditional accentuated expressions of Turkish nationalism attached to the politician’s profession if she or he wants to remain within the legality.

Winner of the 2002 elections, the then newly formed AKP changed as needed the previous policies of the religious conservative Refah to legitimize the expectations of a new class of business men. AKP profited in popularity via brotherhoods which were not part of the state nor civil society and further developed instrumentalization of religion in Turkey. One of the most popular at the moment is the Fetullah Gülen movement, which manages to combine Islam and free market, and focuses on indoctrination via educational institutions all over the globe.

In spite of their religious tendencies, what was most convenient for those countries promoting the free international flow of capital was AKP’s stance on capitalist policies. Firm believers in privatization and promoters of mass consumption, AKP makes a perfect ally for European countries seeking further economic options in a dire scenario whose ideological coordinates are dictated by market forces. Using the common language of free market, Erdogan’s government and the UK counterpart have engaged in a hasty romantic affair, where they are both unable to admit to each other’s deficiencies. The religious character has been utilized to legitimize AKP’s policy within Turkish borders and with Middle East countries, inasmuch it has provided the UK premier with an easy discourse of artificial tolerance.

Going beyond the discourse, how exactly are these countries benefiting from each other? In order to avoid the necessary intervention on tax avoiding corporations and profit-enhancing schemes, UK companies are taking advantage of agreements between Turkey and UK. Tesco recently expressed its will to expand further in Turkey. A country where striking is heavily penalized and where child labour is common occurrence, Tesco's investment is everything but unquestionable.

Turkey had not yet achieved anything similar to a welfare state. Its long standing issues of working conditions, of access to education, of women's rights, of minority rights, amongst others have been only partially invested in, and those struggling for any of these points are in fact in need of urgent international support. Considering the curtailment of freedoms that the current UK government deems as necessary to put the economy "back on track" it is hardly surprising they consider Turkey as a worthy ally.

But there is more. UK and Turkey's agreements to increase their ties include further contracts between the Turkish Defense industry and British multinational BAE systems. Turkish aspirations to become the 10th biggest world economy are good enough to justify the links between the countries. What is not mentioned in any of the public statements of BAE systems or both governments is who is the likely target of those arms.

What would happen if the UK government was to bomb and kill 35 of its citizens as it happened in the South Eastern village of Uludere last December? There are different scenarios of course. Could we imagine that the majority of media outlets, clearly controlled by the state, wrongly labelled these citizens as terrorists and therefore the massacre as justifiable? It is well known how the voices of dissent are treated: jailed or threatened or both. Could we see a prime minister that instead of humbly stepping down, hardly apologised for the army's alleged mistake and continued to accuse the opposition of siding with terrorists? Perhaps, and this is the key to the alliance between these countries, it is not an inconceivable reality.

AKP has recently been portrayed also as successfully winning the power struggle with the once-unbeatable Turkish army. In reality, they are doing away with any possible contender, paving the way for a virtually uncontested rule.

Children in Turkey are indoctrinated from the first day of school. It is likely that for all of those without a Turkish origin, the exclusion is traumatizing. For those of Turkish origin, their notion of identity is exacerbated until it becomes a racist formula. Yet Erdogan's AKP betrayed its own attempt to deal with the country's institutionalized inequalities which took shape in the so-called Democratic Opening in 2009. The prosecution of civil society advocates, opposition members, human rights groups and anyone that does not buy AKP's populism has shown exactly the undemocratic path AKP has chosen.

Repression in Turkey is brutal. Censorship is common occurrence. Acceptance of difference is almost non existent. Yet Erdogan and his entourage of businessmen campaigned in the Middle East marketing their product, a Muslim democracy that apparently works. With an urgent need of an uprising within its borders that liberates its citizens of an abhorrent and excluding nationalism, Turkey stands as an awkward ally for anyone that not only speaks of true democracy but also practices it.

A year went by.

2012-01-19T19:51:00.000Z

Revolutions. Bloods. Anger and friends. Possibilities, Love. London. Essays and libraries. Hard work, harder homes. Stretching out and findings. France and Spain. Paris and Badajoz. Love and Revolution. Istanbul. Earthquakes, Iraq and Kurdistan. Cairo, sweet and sour. Dust, planes, articles and Cyprus. Love, tears, books and coffees. France, London, Spain and Love.

Unmissable article on Western countries arm sales to ME dictatorships

2011-10-22T23:21:00.000+01:00

From Al Jazeera:

In Egypt and Bahrain, protesters held up tear gas canisters stamped "Made in USA", giving longstanding US support for autocratic Arab regimes a painful physical manifestation.

Unmissable! US hypocrisy at work. OCCUPY EVERYTHING!

2011-10-14T11:06:00.001+01:00

Witness call out

2011-10-10T10:28:00.000+01:00

Witnesses needed! Important message from LDMG and GBC.
Your help is needed if you attended any of the following:

Nov/Dec 2010 student protests
March 26th (Piccadilly, Oxford Street, Trafalgar Square, UK Uncut action)
June 30^th

Even if you didn’t attend – you can help simply by spreading the word.
What YOU saw during these demos might stop someone going to prison.
We need your help.
Defendants need your help.
We need you to respond to this call out and we need you to spread the word – especially through the student networks. Many people do not seem to know how serious this is. Already we have many people in prison when they really should not be there!
We need all potential witnesses to come forward.
If you were on any of these protests this could well be YOU!
The job of LDMG (Legal Defence and Monitoring Group) and GBC (Green and Black Cross) is to stop people going to prison by helping people prepare their best defence – but of late we are spending way too much time preparing people for prison instead, and many of the cases could have been so different if we had more witnesses come forward. It is hard to know if you could be useful as a witness but we hope to find that out if you get in touch with some basic information.
It is often the case that during a trial it is simply the police version of events against the defendant’s, and it is often blatantly obvious that the police are lying (yes, shock horror). In most cases the judge and the jury often believe the police version of events (yes, shock horror). And it often doesn’t mater if defendants are telling the truth, if they don’t have good strong witnesses, they have far less chance of being believed and therefore being found not guilty.
Witnesses do not have to have seen the arrest or indeed the incident itself and often it is helpful if you were simply there, saw the mood of the crowd, witnessed unprovoked police attacks etc..
Judges dealing with these cases are being incredibly harsh in their sentencing, more harsh than many of us have ever known before, and things show no sign of easing up as the public’s memories of the protests fade.
It seems like the courts are attempting to send out a massive message to anyone who dares to challenge the cuts and the system that is behind them in order to ensure that people dare not protest. We need to support all those going through this court process. It could easily have been any one of us who were arrested and preparing for the possibility of prison right now.
There is no sense or justice in many of these arrests. Some people were trying to protect themselves and those around them when attacked by police in an unprovoked manner, many weren’t even doing that, they were simply ‘in the wrong place at the wrong time’.
So far it has mainly been people pleading guilty that have been sentenced, but trials are now starting to take place and the gaps in the defence for some are huge – many defendants believe that if they get up on the stand and tell the truth they will be found not guilty – sadly it just doesn’t work like that.
As we approach the one year mark for some of these protests, many of those facing charges are incredibly stressed concerning what lies ahead if they are found guilty and it is heartbreaking to see, especially when you know that it doesn’t have to be like that.
What little justice there is seems to have gone out of the window. Their best hope is other people! Once more – they desperately need more witnesses to come forward in order to stop people going to prison.
There are various call-outs that have gone around about specific arrests, these will be collated further over the coming days and added to the following links. Please read through them.
In the meantime, please get in touch with the address below tell them which protests you were on and where you were. You can leave it that vague for now. They will get in touch with you about specifics if you were in a place where people are calling for witnesses.
In the meantime these are a few of the requests:

- People who witnessed the policeman falling off his horse on student protest in Dec and/or witnessed the police charge into the crowd
- December 9th 2010. Parliament Square/Broad Sanctuary between about 2 and 3.30pm. If you were in Parliament Square or Broad Sanctuary (in front of Westminster Abbey) during this time please come forward.
- Witnesses to events near the Treasury from about 5.30 to 8.30pm on 9 December 2010.
- Witnesses from March 26th at Trafalgar Square mid – late evening.
There are more details of other call-outs here:
http://greenandblackcross.org/legal/appeals
and a couple more here…
http://ldmg.org.uk/witness%2520support.html
If you think that you can help please get in touch with LDMG asap!
ldmgmail@yahoo.co.uk
and please cc your messages to
courtsupport@riseup.net

In solidarity.

On the gates of fortress Europe.

2011-10-07T15:09:00.000+01:00

Africa SIGUE en venta

2011-10-07T14:18:00.004+01:00

ElPaís habla sobre las compañías que se benefician de la desgracias de otros, cuando ser "otro" en África parece ser equivalente a no ser nada. Después de años de salvaje explotación, la historia continua.

Grandes compañías compran tierras para producir alimentos que luego exportan - Mientras, los habitantes locales pasan hambre

We are the 99 percent

2011-10-07T12:27:00.000+01:00

OCCUPY EVERYTHING.

The kleenex worker

2011-09-24T12:24:00.000+01:00

Fuck the police!

2011-09-22T16:08:00.001+01:00

Last Sunday, the Turkish police closed down a street in my neighbourhood.
Us: Why is it closed?
Them: It is closed.
I guess their eloquency expands across borders. This reminded me of how much I despise them, and how much they ought to be despised. A great article on the powers and abuses of UK police:

On Monday 8th August, in South London, three hundred young people gathered outside Battersea’s Lavender Hill police station "taunting" the police to come out. In Nottingham, three police stations were attacked including Canning Circus police station, which was firebombed. The Pembury Estate in Hackney erupted when the police stopped and searched a teenager. As one young girl said in Peckham that day:
“I will die for the cause of FUCK THE POLICE! They fuck our lives up every day!”

Continue reading

Erdogan hails. Erdogan hopes.

2011-09-17T12:23:00.000+01:00

(Erdogan tours the Arab world)
(Don't come back)

Belediye, where is my seat?

2011-09-17T12:02:00.001+01:00

(Perhaps thrown away in the streets of Tarlabasi).

Companies ejected from London arms fair for 'promoting cluster bombs'

2011-09-17T10:55:00.000+01:00

Whilst Cameron is happy to be in free Libya...

In London:

The world's largest arms fair has thrown out two exhibitors after they were found to be promoting cluster munitions that have been banned by the UK and condemned by more than 100 other countries.

Spanish police brutality- Please spread and shame these bastards!

2011-08-19T13:01:00.001+01:00

2011-08-17T10:52:00.001+01:00

And completely (un)related.

Spain before and after the 15th of May Movement

2011-08-12T14:52:00.004+01:00

(My mum)

Manuela Alonso Morgado is a civil servant in the regional administration of Extremadura,
in the South East of Spain. She was born in 1959 still under Franco's dictatorship. In 1975
she became politically active in the Union of Communist Youths of Spain, she was part of
the provincial committee. That year the dictator died, when the party was still illegal. The
transition to democracy was peaceful but not ideal, as it was said at the time. In 1977, she
spent three days in the provincial jail of Badajoz, accused of calling for a general strike. She
was held incommunicado as the authorities used the state of exception as an excuse. In the
1980s she gave up the communist militancy, but not the protests. She participated
in demonstrations against the Iraq war and more recently against the Israeli attacks on Palestine,against the repression of the Western Sahara peoples and against certain immigration laws. Since the 15th of May she is part of the "Indignant" Movement.

In Spain we had started to forget what democracy meant. Politicians were forgetting
as they had created a beneficial system for themselves, and citizens were forgetting
because they thought all they had to do was vote every four years. This degeneration of
the democratic system was accelerated due to several reasons: a clearly unfair electoral
law that benefits the two party system and that allows for a vote not to have the same
value depending on where the vote is cast.

The two main parties, continuously antagonizing each other in the Congress thus
neglecting their responsibilities, have shielded themselves voting favorable laws and
thus protecting their priviledges. This in turn has perpetuated their feuds and has
degenerated into an intolerable level of corruption, gone unpunished until now. The loot
of their misdeeds has been systematically concealed in tax havens whose existence is
still not contested by the government.

In addition to this, the judiciary is not in that much of good democratic health, as the
long-awaited segregation of powers has not been achieved, which sometimes provokes
the collapse of the application of the law.

All of these shortages of our democracy have been made more obvious when the
actual economic crisis was thrown over us. Also called fraud by the indignants of the
15M movement. PSOE (Socialist Workers Party of Spain) stands as the head of a
government who has not managed the crisis as a so-called workers party, but as a party
carrying out the same politics as PP (Popular Party) would do, a right-wing politics that
reflects the opposition’s discourse, pure neo-liberalism. All the social politics that had
been the base of the socialists were in danger then due to the reforms that the financial
markets demanded. Most of the rights acquired after many years of trade union struggle
have been systematically erased from the collective agreements as we were under the
scrutiny of the credit rating agencies and the banks, the real governing bodies of this
country.

The trade unions, comfortably established and in a lethargic state, timidly called for a
general strike that did not have much repercussion.

Spain added its own imprint in the global financial crisis: the real estate bubble that
burst on our faces, even when we had known all along it would end this way. Thus, in
the economically stronger years, the majority of Spanish families bought properties at
inflated prices, well beyond their means, instigated by the banks that were handing out
credit without making sure or guaranteeing their debts would be repaid.

Many construction workers are now filling up the neverending queues of unemployment
in all of the country’s autonomies. Thus, we encounter the real victims of all this
process: more than 4.000.000 unemployed citizens. Many survive thanks to an
underground economy that the government wants to get rid of though this still does
not explain how people have not gone out to the streets to protest. Aggravated by the
fact that the thousands of mortgages have not been paid by the now jobless mortgage
owners, the banks were seizing their properties and demanding high interests payments
from them.

Considering this social and economic landscape, the real surprise is that there had not
been a strong contestation before in the shape of citizen movement in the streets.

And in the middle of all this the 15th of May arrived.

Indignation was made public: spontaneously and without endorsing any party, as a
citizen-led and social movement that emerged due to different causes, even though
some sources associate it to antecendents such as the book by an old French militant,
Stephan Hessel, that called for the youth to react in the face of such an unjust crisis;
others saw the origin of the revolt in the revolutions sweeping the Arab world since
spring; or in a civil movement that covertly developed. Evidently, the number of
reasons are abundant.

It was called for and it had the success hoped for, it even exceeded expectations. The
camping initiatives stemmed from this, they started in Madrid and expanded to almost
all the provinces. The assemblies determined and grouped the revindications in three
items:
1. Real and participatory democracy.
2. Control of the political class, end of their priviledges and transparency in their
management.
3. End to corruption in society: reasonable property prices, responsible consumption,
bigger control of the Banks, no more unjustified pre-retirements to workers of big
companies.

The politicians’ reactions to this indignation have been of different nature: they
have gone from looking down on the demonstrators calling them anti-system
and “perroflauta” (young homeless marginal people), asking for them to be forcibly
evicted from the squares (which has happened in two or three cases and with
gratuitous violence), and so on. Not one person from the political class has felt that
this indignation was directed towards them, or has shown any sensibility until now.
Consequently, this movement has a long and arduous job ahead. They are young,
without future, without home, without work and WITHOUT FEAR, as it was read on
many of the banners in the squares.

On the 12th of June the camps were dismantled by the protesters after assisting to the
inaugural acts of the new municipal corporations, voted in the recent municipal and
regional elections, and shouting You don’t represent us! But the movement does not
stop here, as they say, it has just started. Now it will spread to the neighbourhoods and
of course through internet. The social networks have been a fundamental tool for this
intitiative, in order to announce it and spread it widely.

Luckily, it seems part of the citizenry has woken up and wants to defend itself. The
15M has arrived to stay.

The indignants are mainly young students or graduate unemployed students. Professors,
lawyers, doctors, civil servants, young fathers and mothers with their children, elderly
men and women who have had their pensions frozen, unemployed middle age women,
mothers that were bringing food to their camping children, musicians and dancers that
came along to show solidarity, citizens that came to bring breakfast to the indignants,
inmigrants that felt supported, this is what I have seen in the assemblies. I have also

seen solidarity, respect, tolerance, generosity, citizen consciousness, rebellion, critical
spirit... human concepts that were about to become endangered species.

2011-08-12T14:35:00.000+01:00

About urban policy

Riots have nearly always resulted in politicians simplifying the problem even more, and citizens looking away even further.

After a riot, your average city will become more afraid, more authoritarian, more segregated, more exclusive and less tolerant. That is the real tragedy of the post-war western urban riot, first it shocks and terrifies us, then for a moment it makes us see flashes of the kind of city we should be working towards, which then fades away into the darkness.

Feral Capitalism Hits The Streets by David Harvey

2011-08-12T08:48:00.001+01:00

"Nihilistic and feral teenagers” the Daily Mail called them: the crazy youths from all walks of life who raced around the streets mindlessly and desperately hurling bricks, stones and bottles at the cops while looting here and setting bonfires there, leading the authorities on a merry chase of catch-as-catch-can as they tweeted their way from one strategic target to another.

The word “feral” pulled me up short. It reminded me of how the communards in Paris in 1871 were depicted as wild animals, as hyenas, that deserved to be (and often were) summarily executed in the name of the sanctity of private property, morality, religion, and the family. But then the word conjured up another association: Tony Blair attacking the “feral media,” having for so long been comfortably lodged in the left pocket of Rupert Murdoch only later to be substituted as Murdoch reached into his right pocket to pluck out David Cameron.

There will of course be the usual hysterical debate between those prone to view the riots as a matter of pure, unbridled and inexcusable criminality, and those anxious to contextualize events against a background of bad policing; continuing racism and unjustified persecution of youths and minorities; mass unemployment of the young; burgeoning social deprivation; and a mindless politics of austerity that has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with the perpetuation and consolidation of personal wealth and power. Some may even get around to condemning the meaningless and alienating qualities of so many jobs and so much of daily life in the midst of immense but unevenly distributed potentiality for human flourishing.

More here.

#riotcleanup or #riotwhitewash?

2011-08-11T12:06:00.001+01:00

Fantastic article on the discourse and the aftermath of the UK riots by the University for Strategic Optimism:

It’s going to take more than posturing, ‘blitz-spirit’, keep-calm-and-carry-on clap-trap and colonial Kipling-esque “keeping your head” to fix this mess. The strikingly middle-class, broadly white efforts to sweep issues of inequality under the carpet of a simulated big-society photo-op has been a telling, if little discussed, aspect of the recent rioting, making little headway in the scramble of blogposts and tweets attempting hasty analyses of the unfolding turmoil. This doughty bunch of volunteer cleaners, the substitution for a non-existent community, appeared right on cue to fill the media narrative all day following a night of London’s most extensive social unrest in decades. Even Mayor Boris had leisurely returned from holiday to be snapped with the broom-wielding bourgeoisie of Clapham as they amassed for a bit of symbolic social cleansing.

More here.

Subscribe news| Archive | RSS Ağrı KCK Trial: Prison Sentences of almost 92 Years

2011-06-17T10:00:00.002+01:00

From Bianet,

Eleven people who stood trial in the scope of the KCK case in Ağrı were sentenced to imprisonment of 91 years and eleven months in total. The court did not hear their defence speeches because the defendants requested to speak Kurdish at the hearing.

In this Turkish Court Kurdish does not exist. Blindness does though, of the most dangerous kind.

La guerra cada vez más privada

2011-06-17T09:57:00.001+01:00

Una pena que no haya más guerras para aumentar los beneficios, oiga.

2011-05-26T14:10:00.001+01:00

“He aquí la tesis: la rebelión ha de tener una base intocable, protegida no meramente del ataque sino del miedo al ataque: una base como la que la revuelta árabe tenía en los puertos del Mar Rojo, en el desierto o en las mentes de los hombres convertidos a su credo. Debe tener un enemigo extranjero y sofisticado, en forma de ejército disciplinado de ocupación demasiado pequeño para cumplir la doctrina de la extensión: muy pocos soldados como para ajustar el número al territorio, como para dominar con eficacia el área completa desde puestos fortificados. Debe contar con una población amistosa, no activamente amistosa pero simpatizante hasta el punto de no desvelar los movimientos rebeldes al enemigo. Las rebeliones pueden hacerse con un 2 por ciento de la fuerza en activo, siempre que el 98 por ciento pasivo simpatice con la causa. Los pocos rebeldes activos deben poseer las cualidades de resistencia, velocidad y ubicuidad, y contar con arterias de abastecimiento independientes. Deben contar también con el equipo técnico necesario para destruir o paralizar las comunicaciones organizadas del enemigo, ya que la guerra irregular viene a ser aquello que Willisen definía como estrategia, “el estudio de la comunicación” en su grado extremo, para atacar ahí donde el enemigo no está. En sesenta palabras: si se garantiza la movilidad, la seguridad (en la forma de negar blancos al enemigo), el tiempo y la doctrina (la idea de convertir a cada individuo en simpatizante y amigo), la victoria estará del lado de los insurgentes”.

Italian peace activist killed in Gaza

2011-04-15T10:07:00.001+01:00

Guess who is behind the lack of jobs for working men?

2011-04-02T15:33:00.002+01:00

According to the universities minister, WOMEN.

I mean, it has to be a joke.

2011-04-01T01:17:00.001+01:00

2011-03-27T19:07:00.001+01:00

The impunity of these bastards makes me cry in rage.

Academic fury over order to study the big society

2011-03-27T16:06:00.002+01:00

Guess what? In this country you will be able to research only what this lunatic government allows you to... as it happens it will allow the humanities to research and provide ideological grounds to their who-is-stupid-enough-to-believe-you idea of the (neoliberal) big society.

If this is not open class war I dont know what is.

From the Guardian.

Encounters of the 3rd kind- two

2011-03-27T15:55:00.002+01:00

Regent st.
A group of protestors is being hounded by the pro-riot police. One of them has just been arrested. I run over to witness, to record and spread the word. Between moving vans. Nine or ten officers putting one person in a van. By force.
A line is formed a la kettle. I am just next to it on the "outside" (whatever that might mean). Another guy is next to me, we want to see what's going to happen to these people. There are also legal observers. A friend comes and takes me out. The guy next to me is pushed out for doing... nothing. I don't think the pro-riot officer cared much about my shouting.
Thumbs up to the pro-riot police for their imposition of violence.

Encounters of the 3rd kind- one.

2011-03-26T23:22:00.002Z

As we try to approach Picadilly Road and head to Fortnum & Mason in aid of friends, we realise a police barrier forming in Regent St. A riot policeman screams once out you cant come in. We ask him which side is out. He wants us out of that space fast. We try to find out why we havent been told that now we are outside of the (invisible) line we can't go back into Picadilly. We ask him again. It's because he says so. My friend asks again. The officer decides to push him several times out of the police barrier to the point I need to step in and scream dont touch him. He doesnt dare touch me but still forces us out.

When the body of the police is made up of animals that get off on the illusion that they might have some kind of power, I want to scream in their faces that they are only pawns. That they are used for the benefit of someone else, benefits they will never see.

But it's impossible. Looking at them up close it's fairly easy to realise who the real violent elements are, using their own language.

Well done to all and my admiration to everyone on the frontlines. Hopefully only the beginning.

Workers' Militia map for tomorrow- distribute!

2011-03-25T23:48:00.001Z

Download here.

Great stuff. Viva el movimiento.

reclaim space!

2011-03-24T09:38:00.002Z

The defendant's guide to arrest

2011-03-24T00:28:00.001Z

No Comment: The Defendants Guide to Arrest has been updated and republished by LDMG.

This little booklet is essential reading for anyone at risk of arrest, which means anyone involved in protests. You can download a copy of "No Comment" here or for a hard copy please send a self addressed envelope with a 2nd class stamp on it to No Comment c/o BM Haven, London WC1N 3XX. Groups wanting bulk copies should email us.

Suspend all cultural programming on the 26th of March!

2011-03-24T00:24:00.003Z

From Artsagainstcuts,

UCL occupation needs support

2011-03-24T00:02:00.001Z

UCL have re-occupied in solidarity with striking UCU lecturers and in the build up to March 26th. The management are responding brutishly; identifying individuals to name in court and being made liable for huge legal fees as well as threats over disciplinary action.

UCL are responding with the strong principled and courageous position they are known for and not backing down. They are holding a protest in the quad at 15.30 on Thursday 24th of March. Their protest at 15.30 is not just about their occupation but is also aimed at stopping the meeting where the new fees will be set for UCL.

This is a call out for support. Respond by turning up, telling your friends, sending messages of solidarity, spreading far and wide.

Foreign students numbers to be cut by 25%

2011-03-22T17:05:00.003Z

With steps like this we are steadily turning into an openly racist society with a state that implements institutional exclusion on the grounds of country of origin. And I definitely don't want to be part of that.

From the Guardian:

The number of foreign students and their dependants coming to Britain could be cut by around 100,000 a year under plans unveiled by the government.

Theresa May, the home secretary, said the "radical" clampdown would close fake colleges and block entry for those who cannot speak English adequately.

There will also be tougher restrictions on non-EU students staying in the UK after their course finishes – including a rule that they must find a job that pays at least £20,000 a year.

May told MPs that while the coalition wanted to attract the "brightest and best" to the UK, the visa system became "broken" under the Labour government.

"This package will stop the bogus students, studying meaningless courses at fake colleges," she said.

"It will protect our world-class institutions. It will stop the abuse that became all too common under Labour.

"And it will restore some sanity to our student visa system."

She said she expected the measures would reduce the number of student visas issued by 70,000-80,000 annually – equivalent to a 25% decrease.

Officials indicated the number of dependants coming to the UK was likely to go down by around 20,000.

The past...

2011-03-22T13:42:00.000Z

...is now not a land to return to in a simple politics of memory. It has become a synchronic warehouse of cultural scenarios, a kind of temporal central casting, to which recourse can be taken as appropriate, depending on the movie to be made, the scene to be enacted, the hostages to be rescued.

2011-03-22T12:59:00.000Z

Goldsmiths in occupation!!

The students listed their aims as:

We also stand in solidarity with all staff whose jobs are under threat, including the lecturers and porters at Goldsmiths and call on the management to make a statement guaranteeing job security.

We oppose the cuts to education and the rest of the public sector, which are an attempt to offset the financial crisis onto the living standards of ordinary people.

We stand in solidarity with other universities in occupation and encourage others to follow this example.

We demand that our management open the books and release all financial documents, making them accessable to students and staff.

We oppose the ongoing casualisation lecturers have suffered as a result of the marketisation of the education system. Part of this process has been the intoduction of the points immigration based system and shutting down of nurseries.

We support the student not suspects campaign demand that the university end co-operation with the UK Border Agency.

We call on workers, students, pensioners and the unemployed to come out onto the streets on 26^th March. Time for bargaining is over.

Perdiendo la memoria

2011-03-22T00:12:00.003Z

Desde Insurgente.

UN Declares War on Libya

2011-03-18T23:56:00.001Z

Interesting article from IPS.

March 18, 2011 · By Phyllis Bennis

UN resolution goes far beyond no-fly zone to allow all necessary measures against Qaddafi.

Libya’s opposition movement faces a ruthless military assault. They have already paid a far higher price in lost and broken lives than activists in any of the other democratic uprisings shaping this year’s Arab Spring. They are desperate. So it is not surprising that they have urged, demanded, pleaded for international support from the powerful countries and institutions most able to provide immediate military aid, even if it threatens their independence. Yesterday the UN Security Council gave them what they asked for.

Or did it? The legitimacy of the Libyan protesters’ demand does not mean that the decision by the United Nations and the powerful countries behind it was legitimate as well. The Libyan opposition, or at least those speaking for it, asked for a no-fly zone, for protection from the Qaddafi regime’s air force, to allow them to take on and defeat their dictatorship on their own terms. Many of us opposed that idea, for a host of reasons including the dangers of escalation and the threat of a new U.S. war in the Middle East. But whatever one thinks about that demand, the Security Council resolution went far beyond a no-fly zone. Instead, the United Nations has essentially declared war on Libya.

[Note: Friday morning EDT, Libyan Foreign Minister Mousa Kusa announced a ceasefire. Early reports have not shown any change on the ground, and the ceasefire claim focused on preventing the division of the country rather than protecting civilians. But serious or not, the ceasefire claim should be tested, and answered with an immediate halt in U.S.-European-NATO war preparations. New diplomatic efforts should be launched under the auspices of regional governments and organizations, aimed at ending the Qaddafi regime’s brutal control and establishing real democracy in Libya. Answering a ceasefire declaration, even if not yet implemented, with a military escalation is the opposite of what is needed. What we need is both negotiations and accountability – not greater militarization.]

Protecting Civilians or Ousting Qaddafi?

While the UN resolution was taken in the name of protecting civilians, it authorizes a level of direct U.S., British, French, NATO and other international military intervention far beyond the “no-fly zone but no foreign intervention” that the rebels wanted. Its real goal, evident in the speeches that followed the Security Council’s March 17th evening vote, is to ensure that “Qaddafi must go” — as so many ambassadors described it. Resolution 1973 is about regime change, to be carried by the Pentagon and NATO with Arab League approval, instead of by home-grown Libyan opposition.

The resolution calls for a no-fly zone, as well as taking “all necessary measures… to protect civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory.” The phrase “all necessary measures” is understood to include air strikes, ground, and naval strikes to supplement the call for a no-fly zone designed to keep Qaddafi’s air force out of the skies. The U.S. took credit for the escalation in military authority, with Ambassador Susan Rice as well as other Obama administration officials claiming their earlier hesitation on supporting the UN resolution was based on an understanding of the limitations of a no-fly zone in providing real protection to [in this case Libyan] civilians. It’s widely understood that a no-fly zone is most often the first step towards broader military engagement, so adding the UN license for unlimited military escalation was crucial to getting the U.S. on board. The “all necessary measures” language also appears to be the primary reason five Security Council members abstained on the resolution. For Russia, China, Germany, India and Brazil, that phrase meant giving the Pentagon and NATO a blank check backed by UN legitimacy. Unfortunately, their unease was not strong enough to result in opposition to the resolution; the collective abstention of the five still allowed the resolution to pass with a ten-zero vote in favor.

Some supporters of the resolution (which sadly included South Africa) insisted on explicitly excluding a “foreign occupation force.” But in the real world, that prohibition means little. Any U.S., British, or French troops arriving in Libya could easily be disguised as an “assistance team” or “training mission” or any of a host of well-honed diplomatic pseudonyms for what would otherwise be easily identified as foreign occupation forces. The language was designed to assuage regional and international concerns that the UN resolution threatened to turn the Libyan opposition’s struggle into a third US-NATO war in the Middle East.

But in fact the UN resolution threatens exactly that. The resolution’s focus on immediate military engagement on behalf of the rebels (exactly what led to a deafening celebration in opposition-held Benghazi when the vote was announced) threatens to sideline the referral of the Qaddafi regime’s crimes to the International Criminal Court and other potential pressure points, in favor of escalating the militarization of the entire region and internationalizing the military battle. Imposition of a no-fly zone will not have any impact on the regime’s tank and artillery assaults currently underway, but it is likely to be the first international engagement. That means the first U.S. (or French or British, both of which are rumored to be trying to out-run the Pentagon as first to engage in Libya) military action will likely be bombing Libyan air defenses. If one of those U.S. or British or French planes is shot down, leading to a NATO pilot or bomber team ending up in Qaddafi’s custody, it’s a pretty good bet that special forces or other ground troops would quickly be deployed to rescue the captured airmen. Under those circumstances, the claim so often heard that this resolution “allows everything except boots on the ground,” will be quickly proven untrue. U.S. or other NATO boots on the ground may yet be in store for Libya.

Dangers: dividing Libya, military stalemate, or…?

There is a significant danger that the engagement of international military forces in what is shaping up as a civil war in Libya could result in a longer-term stalemate, perhaps based on the division of the country between the regime-controlled western sector, and the rebel-held east. In fact, the text of the UN resolution seems to anticipate the likelihood that international military involvement will go on for a long time. It calls on governments participating in the military attacks in Libya to keep the UN secretary-general informed of their actions, and asks the SG to “report to the Council within 7 days and every month thereafter” on implementation of the resolution. That is not how you describe a short-term effort to help end an urgent crisis.

There continues to be breathtaking hypocrisy from the U.S. and its allies in responding to the disparate Arab movements. The U.S. demanded not only that the Arab League endorse any authorization to use force in Libya, but also that Arab countries agree to actually participate in any UN-authorized or NATO-led military action. Apparently at least two governments from Arab Gulf states have agreed. Qatar is one of them. The other likely one is United Arab Emirates, who along with Saudi Arabia, just sent hundreds of troops into democracy-shaken Bahrain, to help the king there keep his monarchy’s hold on absolute power. The U.S., fearful of losing Bahrain’s strategic port as home for the Navy’s Fifth Fleet, has yet to condemn the foreign troops imported to Bahrain to suppress the democracy protesters. So far, the Obama administration’s only response to the soldiers pouring into Bahrain has been to urge the heavily armed foreign troops to support dialogue between the Bahraini people and their discredited king.

Learning from history

Thirty years ago the U.S. decision to arm and strengthen Saddam Hussein’s weaker Iraqi side against the stronger Iranian side kept the Iran-Iraq War going, U.S. war profiteers wealthy, and young Iranians and Iraqis dying, far longer than might otherwise have been the case. Soon after, the U.S. bribed and threatened Security Council members to get most of them to endorse a U.S. war against Iraq. Then in 1991 George Bush used a false humanitarian claim to justify imposing a “U.S.-UK only” no-fly zone in already war-ravaged Iraq, without even bothering going to the UN..

Today is not quite 1991, and Libya is not quite Iraq. The decision made in the Security Council yesterday may not lead to a third U.S. war in the Middle East. It may not even lead to a long military stalemate or a permanent division of Libyan territory. But the new resolution brings all those dangers closer.

The Libyan opposition, or at least much of it, has made a legitimate demand for international support; for all the right humanitarian reasons, many people in many parts of the world have supported their right to some kind of support. Governments, however, are not people, and do not make strategic decisions for humanitarian reasons. Governments do not use scarce resources and most especially do not deploy military force, to achieve humanitarian goals. So the cold strategic calculations of powerful governments cannot be viewed as a legitimate response to the humanitarian needs of Libya’s people or the humanitarian impulses of international civil society.

The Libyan opposition faced – and faces – a brutal regime willing to risk international opprobrium to escalate military force against its population. One wishes that there was a global, civil society-based protection force, perhaps modeled on the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War, capable of responding and providing serious protection to civilians facing such an assault. But such a force does not yet exist. One might wish that regional neighbors such as Tunisia and especially Egypt, where new governments struggle to gain and keep the support of their newly empowered populations, were willing and able to provide sufficient military assistance to Libya’s democratic forces, putting their military power, now at least partly under popular control, at the disposal of the regional democratic movement rising across the Arab world.

There may be new, not yet thought of ways of providing real solidarity to desperate movements, that do not threaten the authenticity and independence of the Libyan – and other – branches of these expanding Arab democratic revolutions. But yesterday’s UN resolution is not the way. The UN Charter calls for ending the scourge of war, not globalizing it.

Gadafi compara su entrada en Bengasi con la de Franco en Madrid

2011-03-17T23:36:00.001Z

Desde el Publico,

El líder libio, Muamar el Gadafi, ha comparado hoy en un audio difundido por la televisión estatal libia la entrada de Franco en Madrid durante la guerra civil española con la que él pretende llevar a cabo esta noche en Bengasi. "Vosotros sois la quinta columna en la ciudad", ha dicho dirigiéndose a los habitantes de Bengasi, que considera sus hipotéticos partidarios, y ha señalado que se apoyará en ellos en este día "en el que liberarán la ciudad".

(toda una leccion de memoria)

2011-03-17T23:35:00.000Z

Mapa de la Memoria

2011-03-17T15:41:00.001Z

Gracias a la Asociacion para la Recuperacion de la Memoria Historica,

Ver Mapa de la Memoria en un mapa más grande

Ghetto biennale: A Salon des Refuses for the 21st century

2011-03-16T00:01:00.001Z

What happens when first world art rubs up against third world art? Does it bleed?

New Look for Mecca

2011-03-14T23:49:00.002Z

palpitations from 2010.

(from Urban Modernity and the Middle East)

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia — It is an architectural absurdity. Just south of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the Muslim world’s holiest site, a kitsch rendition of London’s Big Ben is nearing completion. Called the Royal Mecca Clock Tower, it will be one of the tallest buildings in the world, the centerpiece of a complex that is housing a gargantuan shopping mall, an 800-room hotel and a prayer hall for several thousand people. Its muscular form, an unabashed knockoff of the original, blown up to a grotesque scale, will be decorated with Arabic inscriptions and topped by a crescent-shape spire in what feels like a cynical nod to Islam’s architectural past. To make room for it, the Saudi government bulldozed an 18th-century Ottoman fortress and the hill it stood on.

I wonder what it looks like now. Would there be a small Tahrir?

Inside Out.

2011-03-14T23:34:00.000Z

TED Prize Winner JR & INSIDE OUT from TED Prize on Vimeo.

Three Scandinavian ISM activists trapped by curfew in Awarta village following settlers’ murder

2011-03-14T22:51:00.000Z

From International Solidarity Movement.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Today the village of Awarta, near Nablus, is facing the second day of a severe curfew imposed by the Israeli military, following Friday morning’s murder of a settler family in the settlement Itamar . Three ISM activists–Cinda, 23, Chad, 25, from Sweden, and Cissy, 53, from Norway–are currently trapped in the village. Anyone caught stepping outside of their house is arrested. Soldiers have said that they’ll maintain the curfew until they’ve apprehended the settler family’s murderer. The army hasn’t presented any evidence that the murderer was from Awarta, and villagers have said to the ISM that they strongly doubt the murderer was even Palestinian as the settlement is so heavily guarded it would be impossible to break in. Soldiers are beating people and continuing their house raids: destroying houses from the inside, cutting off electricity, and polluting the drinking water by throwing mud in the water-tanks. 30 homes were occupied by soldiers last night. Computers and phones have been destroyed and money and property were stolen by the soldiers. In the last two days soldiers have been throwing sound grenades inside and outside the houses, and shooting in the air. The ISM activists may be arrested soon, but they intend to stay as long as possible because they feel their presence improves the behavior of the soldiers, and villagers have asked them to stay. As of 12:30pm the ISM activists are locked in a room with the children of the family that they’ve been staying with while soldiers search the house. They've heard an unconfirmed report that 100 village men were taken into detention at the school for interrogation a few hours ago.

For more information:
Cinda, ISM activist inside the village: +972 59 741 4023
ISM Media Office, Ramallah: +972 59 760 6276

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Precarity: the People's Tribunal

2011-03-14T00:49:00.002Z

From Carrot Workers' Collective...

20 March 2011
2pm – 7pm

ICA, Theatre.

Free entry (call box office to book a place)

The concept and experience of precarity is by no means new to this moment. Labour flexibilisation, privitisation of the welfare state and changing border regimes have increasingly tied the experiences of localised everyday lives to volatile global market dynamics. Freedoms gained through the struggles of the 70s: for a greater range of work places and hours, for more creative and fulfilling tasks etc. have been met with an increase in unpaid or poorly paid work, unstable job prospects and the anxieties born of a highly competitive landscape. In this landscape, cultural and education workers, while at the centre of so-called growth sectors such as the ‘knowledge’ and ‘creative’ economies join their fellow workers in conditions of severe exploitation and uncertainty. Current initiatives to decrease benefits, privatise health care, and cut subsidies to child care rapidly intensify this.

On Sunday 20th March, Precarity: A Participatory People’s Tribunal will bring together people, testimonies, evidence and archives to stimulate collective discussions and propositions about the conditions of precarity that face us today. Following independent tribunal formats such as the Permanent Peoples Tribunal, derived from the Russel Tribunals used to expose war crimes committed against the Vietnamese people the end of the Vietnam War, the event will build upon collective process of identification, acknowledging complicit behaviours, posing survival strategies, and enacting alternatives.

As if the passage from one to another involved not a journey but a change of elements.

2011-03-12T17:55:00.004Z

Poetry from Strange Maps.

Imagined cities built from the fragments of real ones: something similar is happening in Tout bien rangé, a cartography-based artwork by French artist Armelle Caron. It consists of a series of map pairs, one a blind, but recognisably real city map, the other what looks like an assembly kit for that same city, with the its blocks impracticably but neatly arranged by shape and size.

Istanbul’s Gated Communities

2011-03-09T18:16:00.000Z

From Bidoun.

In The Architectural Uncanny, Anthony Vidler discusses the connection between “urban memory” and the city. He writes, “In the traditional city, antique, medieval or Renaissance, urban memory was easy enough to define; it was that image of the city that enabled the citizen to identify with its past and present as a political, cultural and social entity; it was neither the “reality” of the city nor a purely imaginary …the city might be recognized as “home,” as something not foreign, and as constituting a moral and protected environment for actual daily life.”1 Vidler goes on to offer a crucial point on the notion of what he terms the “uncanny” in global cities. As a result of ethnic and social diversity and accompanying segregation in global cities, he argues, it is difficult to create a collective urban memory with which citizens can identify. As a result, obscure identifications with place lead to urban discourses based on fear, safety and insecurity. Urban ghettos, peripheries of city centers, gated communities and other urban areas whose inhabitants have diverse cultural, economical and social backgrounds are mythologized via such discourses even if they are not entirely based on fact.

TAHRIR ATTACK CAIRO MARCH 9 5.15 PM

2011-03-09T17:17:00.000Z

Hands off Libya!!

2011-03-08T23:41:00.001Z

Desde el Publico.

“Es una crisis humanitaria en nuestro patio. No puedo imaginar que permanezcamos al margen si continúa.” -Anders Fogh Rasmussen, secretario general de la OTAN-
.
En el Mediterráneo se está rifando un bombardeo, y Gadafi lleva todas las papeletas. Bueno, Gadafi no: los libios, que serán los que sufran los humanitarios misiles si la OTAN decide salvarlos.
Se está rifando, y no sé si queda tiempo para detener la tómbola, porque veo muy lanzados a los partidarios de la intervención. No sólo se multiplican las declaraciones públicas y los contactos entre países para, como mínimo, establecer una zona de exclusión aérea. Además los preparativos militares siguen adelante, por si acaso.
Según contaba Al Yazira, Malta es ya el centro de operaciones, donde se está preparando todo lo necesario para una posible intervención. Y desde hace días los aviones de vigilancia AWACS sobrevuelan la región. A lo que se suma un confuso incidente con militares británicos sobre el terreno.
El ardor guerrero y los movimientos de tropas y armamento tienen siempre un punto de no retorno, cruzado el cual ya no hay más remedio que seguir adelante y llegar hasta el final. Lo que cuesta poner en marcha un ejército no es nada comparado con lo que cuesta detenerlo una vez echa a andar. Uno empieza a mover barcos, aviones y soldados, y a partir de cierto volumen ya no hay quien los devuelva a casa. No sabemos si hemos pasado ya ese punto crítico, pero parece que andamos muy cerca.
Ya sea con una coartada humanitaria, o con una coartada estratégica –ante un hipotético vacío de poder en un país cercano y donde hay tantos intereses-, me temo que vamos camino de otra guerra, para así cumplir esa ley no escrita de que todo presidente estadounidense debe empezar una.
Además, no veo a la gente con mucho ánimo de pancarta, y ya hay encuestas con una mayoría favorable a intervenir, cosa nada extraña dado el bombardeo de la otra guerra, la de propaganda. Para acabar de animar la rifa, los propios sublevados piden una intervención de la que quizás acaben arrepentidos un día.
A la velocidad que va todo, me temo que sólo falte un detalle: elegir el nombre de la operación. Ya saben, algo bonito tipo “Libertad duradera”. ¿Alguna sugerencia?

2011-03-07T00:11:00.000Z

2011-03-06T23:29:00.002Z

Libya: the hand that feeds

2011-03-05T13:55:00.001Z

From Counterfire.

The first to fall have been the universities. There isn’t a top British university that has not taken money from a nasty Middle East leader and what is more embarrassing is that their names are emblazoned on libraries, laboratories, technology parks and research centres for all the world to see. Worst hit, so far, is the London School of Economics.

I would elaborate on nasty here, as it seems oversimplified. Nevertheless, spot on.

Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) Research Seminar Series

2011-03-05T13:45:00.001Z

Thursday March 24, 2011

Monika Halkort (Queens University)

Counterfeit Citizenship, On the Politics of Property in Nahr el Bared, a Palestinian Refugee Camp in Lebanon

Further info: www.gold.ac.uk/anthropology/dept-seminars/

Daily Star reporter quits in protest at tabloid's 'anti-Muslim' coverage

2011-03-05T13:10:00.002Z

The reporter, who was once made to dress up in a burqa, now accuses the paper of inciting racial tensions and Islamaphobia. "You may have heard the phrase 'the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil sets off a tornado in Texas'," Peppiatt wrote to the proprietor, Richard Desmond, in a letter seen by the Guardian.

"Well, try this: 'The lies of a newspaper in London can get a bloke's head caved-in down an alley in Bradford.' If you can't see that words matter, you should go back to running porn magazines."

More more more!

2011-03-05T12:59:00.002Z

From the Guardian.

As part of the fall-out, billionaire US financier George Soros last night apologised for having advised the LSE to take Libyan money. Soros studied at LSE as an undergraduate, and had advised the school that it was acceptable to receive the contribution from Gaddafi's son, Saif, on the grounds that he appeared at the time to be a believer in open society and claimed to be working to move Libya in that direction. A spokesman for Soros said he had come to see that his advice was "a mistake in judgment, which he now greatly regrets".

we love dictators

we hate dictators

we love dictators

we hate dictators

... OH, the hypocrisy.

Out of Place

2011-03-05T12:36:00.000Z

Aren't we all?

Tate Modern’s Level 2 Gallery presents Out of Place, an exhibition that has arisen from a collaboration between Tate Modern and Darat al Funun, Amman, Jordan. The exhibition features four artists from different backgrounds whose diverse political and social circumstances have prompted them to consider their environment. The artists in Out of Place each explore the relationship between dominant political forces and personal and collective histories by looking at urban space, architectural structures and the condition of displacement.

6 billion ways- TODAY

2011-03-05T12:21:00.001Z

I wish I could be everywhere at once.

Decolonizing Knowledge and Power: Postcolonial Studies, Decolonial Horizons

2011-03-05T12:15:00.001Z

Interesting...

Objectives
Historical understanding of the correlations between knowledge and coloniality in the sphere of economy (labor, natural resources), authority (government, international relations), gender and sexuality (patriarchy, heterosexual normativity), and subjectivity (the ideology of truth, the figure of the expert, identity formation, the role of the media bringing together dominant philosophy of knowledge in the formations of subjectivity).
Conceptual understanding through a set of key words already well established in the postcolonial studies and decolonial thinking.
Prospective orientation: seminar instructors will encourage participants in formulating their own critical questions, designing research projects decolonizing knowledge and methodology, working on a philosophy of education geared toward decolonizing the mind.

Egyptian Solidarity Meeting TODAY AT GOLDSMITHS

2011-03-03T11:17:00.003Z

The Revolution has only just begun.....

Film screening of footage from the heart of the revolution plus special guest speakers:

John Rees, National officer of Stop the War Coalition
Noha Atef, Egyptian blogger and journalist
Dr Vivian Ibrahim, SOAS, Spokesperson for United Egyptians

Time	03 March · 18:00 - 20:00

Location	RHB 143, Goldsmiths College University Of London

Demonstrate: Solidarity with the Arab peoples

2011-02-23T00:20:00.001Z

STOP THE WAR COALITION
Newsletter No.1190
22 February 2011
Email office@stopwar.org.uk
Tel: 020 7801 2768
Web: http://stopwar.org.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/STWuk
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/stopthewarcoalition

IN THIS NEWSLETTER
1) FEBRUARY 25: SOLIDARITY WITH THE ARAB PEOPLES
2) MARCH 2: WHAT NEXT FOR THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION?
3) MARCH 3: AFGHANISTAN PUBLIC MEETING IN PARLIAMENT
4) MARCH 12: DAY OF ACTION AGAINST AFGHANISTAN WAR
5) CONFERENCE ON AFGHANISTAN AND THE WAR ON TERROR
6) SPECIAL EGYPT T-SHIRT TO HELP FUND EGYPTIAN SPEAKERS

*********************************
1) FEBRUARY 25: SOLIDARITY WITH THE ARAB PEOPLES

As millions in the Arab world take to the streets against
repressive, western backed regimes, it is very important that
people here show their support for the protestors. Libyan,
Bahraini, Egyptian and Yemeni organisations have called a United
We Stand: Solidarity with the Arab Peoples demonstration in
London this Friday 25 February.

DEMONSTRATE SOLIDARITY FOR THE ARAB PEOPLES
FRIDAY 25 FEBRUARY. ASSEMBLE 3.30 PM
BAHRAINI EMBASSY 30 BELGRAVE SQUARE, SW1X 8QB
MARCH TO DOWNING STREET VIA LIBYAN EMBASSY
Supported by Libya Watch for Human Rights, British Libyan
Solidarity Campaign, Yemeni Human Rights Watch, Egypt Liberation
Initiative, Bahraini Freedom Movement, Stop the War Coalition,
Palestine Solidarity Campaign, British Muslim Initiative.

*********************************
2) MARCH 2: WHAT NEXT FOR THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION?

PUBLIC MEETING
WEDNESDAY 2 MARCH 7PM
CONWAY HALL, RED LION SQUARE
LONDON WC1R 4RL
SPEAKERS: Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Louise Christian, John
Rees, Azza Zaki, Youssef El-Bady and others.

*********************************
3) MARCH 3: AFGHANISTAN PUBLIC MEETING IN PARLIAMENT

As popular uprisings continue against some of the most hated
British backed despots and dictators, the horror of Britain's
current foreign policy in Afghanistan is barely reported.

Heavy fighting is taking place in a number of regions of
Afghanistan. Just yesterday there were two reports of massacres
of civilians in the Eastern part of the country.

The provincial governor of Kunar province reports 63 civilians
were killed in a NATO airstrike and the US military themselves
have admitted killing unknown numbers of civilians in a an air
attack in Nangarhar province two days ago. The overall the level
of violence is higher than at any time since 2001.

The parliamentary group of MPs campaigning for withdrawal from
Afghanistan has organised a meeting in parliament for Thursday 3
March.

THURSDAY 3 MARCH
DEVELOPMENTS IN THEAFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN WAR
CHAIR: CAROLINE LUCAS MP
SPEAKER: PAUL ROGERS
6.30PM TO 8.00PM
COMMITTEE ROOM 17, HOUSE OF COMMONS
LONDON SW1A 0AA

*********************************
4) MARCH 12: DAY OF ACTION AGAINST AFGHANISTAN WAR

Stop the War is organising a day of action against the occupation
of Afghanistan which will also be an opportunity to get out on
the streets and show solidarity with the people of the Middle
East. Local Stop the War groups will be organising stalls,
protests and petitioning sessions.

FOR UPDATES ON LOCAL STOP THE WAR EVENTS, SEE:
http://bit.ly/hgxBok

*********************************
5) CONFERENCE ON AFGHANISTAN AND THE WAR ON TERROR

On June 11 Stop the War is holding a Conference on Afghanistan
and the War on Terror to analyse the crisis faced by NATO in
Central Asia and the Middle East. Speakers will include Mehdi
Hassan from the New Statesman, US author and activist David
Swanson, Jeremy Corbyn MP, and from Military Families Against the
War, Joan Humphries and Joe Glenton. More speakers to be
announced soon.

*********************************
6) SPECIAL EGYPT T-SHIRT TO HELP FUND EGYPTIAN SPEAKERS

Stop the War is planning a national tour of speakers from the
Egyptian uprising. To help fund the cost of bringing the Egyptian
speakers to the UK, a special T-shirt has been produced by
Philosophy Football T-Shirts and Verso Books.

FOR PICTURE OF T-SHIRT AND HOW TO BUY, SEE:
http://bit.ly/hIyf0N

It catches on!

2011-02-16T09:11:00.002Z

"The street belongs to us!"

2011-02-13T16:57:00.000Z

A reflection on Revolution in Egypt

2011-02-13T16:13:00.004Z

In this screening at the Tate, a BBC journalist confirms everything I think about the BBC.
-It's of course something we have to welcome, the Egyptians have embraced secularism and have distanced themselves from religious fundamentalist tendencies.
-It is not up to us to judge their Revolution, validating it somehow. They will do whatever they want with it. It's their Revolution!
(and I could have gone on: what "we" need to do is hold our governments accountable for their international policies, complicit in support and aid of dictatorships like Mubarak's. )

ثورة دائما

2011-02-11T23:06:00.003Z

Sitting in silence right now, trying to process everything.

Today in Edgware Road a car beeping its horn slowly made its way through the street. An Egyptian woman was hanging from the passengers window, in one hand an Egyptian flag. In the other a plate full of sweets. With a gigantic smile she was offering them to everyone.

It's one of the scenes of today that will forever remain printed in my memory. Cars, vans, bikes, beeping horns, smiles, flags... people taking over the street. People chanting. Mobile phones, more smiles. I smile along. I can hardly contain the emotion.

Today I walked back to the tube.

In the street a young man with the Egyptian flag wrapped around him hugged his girlfriend. They hugged and they kissed and they laughed, and they kissed some more. I thought about the last minutes I spent on Egyptian soil some time ago. Another couple was saying goodbye. They could not kiss, they could just hug each other unable to express much more than that. One scene reflecting the other with a Revolution in between.

Today a brave Revolution achieved the impossible.

Mabrouk to all of you.

What bliss to be alive, to be an Egyptian

2011-02-11T22:58:00.001Z

Tomorrow's London demonstration in Trafalgar Square will be a
celebration of the astounding achievement of the Egyptian people.

And it will be a expression of the international solidarity that
must be maintained. As one of the protesters in Tahrir Square
said, "We have got rid of the dictator. It's the first step. Now
we must get rid of the dictatorship."

Whatever happens, the historical significance of the Egyptian
revolution is momentous. In Tariq Ali's words, "The age of
political reason is returning to the Arab world. The people are
fed up with being colonised and bullied." (READ MORE:
http://bit.ly/hSy6aj)

Hosni Mubarak and the Egypt-Israel axis were central to the "war
on terror". In just 18 days, the Egyptian people have brought
into question the whole US strategy for controlling the Middle
East and its resources.

Everyone who can should come to Trafalgar Square on Saturday 12
February, 12noon to 2pm. This is a moment to treasure, not just
for the Egyptian people, but for all who wish to see a more just
and peaceful world.

If you're coming to the demonstration, which is called by Amnesty
International, the TUC, and more than 20 other organisations,
please wear red, white or black -- the colours of the Egyptian
flag.

IN CELEBRATION & SOLIDARITY WITH THE EGYPTIAN PEOPLE
DEMONSTRATE: SATURDAY 12 FEBRUARY 12NOON TO 2PM
TRAFALGAR SQUARE, LONDON. Please wear red, white or black.
For more details, see: http://bit.ly/14uRwZ

2011-02-10T19:43:00.003Z

After speaking to an Egyptian friend in Cairo everything becomes clearer.
This is only the beginning.

He, who was not involved in any political activism, told me that has been demonstrating everyday in Tahrir. That they will not stop. That this Friday will witness the biggest demonstration of all.

This is only the beginning.

الخبز والحرية والعدالة الاجتماعية

Shokran Hossam

2011-02-10T19:35:00.001Z

Egypt:Demonstration in solidarity - Saturday 12 February in London

2011-02-10T00:16:00.001Z

Letter To Egypt - Alf Shukr

2011-02-08T22:21:00.001Z

الخبز والحرية والعدالة الاجتماعية

2011-02-07T18:49:00.001Z

Solidarity with the Egyptian Uprising in London

2011-02-05T00:34:00.001Z

Tomorrow, 5th of Feb.
12:00 at the Egyptian Embassy
12:30 from the American Embassy to the Egyptian.

DOWN WITH MUBARAK'S REGIME.

2011-02-03T18:47:00.002Z

An Egyptian friend tells me how her two friends in Cairo were followed by thugs the other day after demonstrating.

They forced their way into the girls home.

They threatened them.

They said they would be reported as spies.

The neighbours came and defended the girls. Eventually the Mubarak sponsored thugs left. One of the girls left the country. The other stays somewhere else now.

DOWN WITH MUBARAK!!!! FREEDOM FOR ALL EGYPTIANS NOW!!!!

Egypt needs you.

2011-02-03T16:35:00.000Z

This last article of Sandmonkey blog, before arrest and censure !
PLEASE COPY IT, SHARE IT !

Thursday, 3 Feb 2011

Egypt, right now!

I don’t know how to start writing this. I have been battling fatigue for not sleeping properly for the past 10 days, moving from one’s friend house to another friend’s house, almost never spending a night in my home, facing a very well funded and well organized ruthless regime that views me as nothing but an annoying bug that its time to squash will come. The situation here is bleak to say the least.

It didn’t start out that way. On Tuesday Jan 25 it all started peacefully, and against all odds, we succeeded to gather hundreds of thousands and get them into Tahrir Square, despite being attacked by Anti-Riot Police who are using sticks, tear gas and rubber bullets against us. We managed to break all of their barricades and situated ourselves in Tahrir. The government responded by shutting down all cell communication in Tahrir square, a move which purpose was understood later when after midnight they went in with all of their might and attacked the protesters and evacuated the Square. The next day we were back at it again, and the day after. Then came Friday and we braved their communication blackout, their thugs, their tear gas and their bullets and we retook the square. We have been fighting to keep it ever since.

That night the government announced a military curfew, which kept getting shorter by the day, until it became from 8 am to 3 pm. People couldn’t go to work, gas was running out quickly and so were essential goods and money, since the banks were not allowed to operate and people were not able to collect their salary. The internet continued to be blocked, which affected all businesses in Egypt and will cause an economic meltdown the moment they allow the banks to operate again. We were being collectively punished for daring to say that we deserve democracy and rights, and to keep it up, they withdrew the police, and then sent them out dressed as civilians to terrorize our neighborhoods. I was shot at twice that day, one of which with a semi-automatic by a dude in a car that we the people took joy in pummeling. The government announced that all prisons were breached, and that the prisoners somehow managed to get weapons and do nothing but randomly attack people. One day we had organized thugs in uniforms firing at us and the next day they disappeared and were replaced by organized thugs without uniforms firing at us. Somehow the people never made the connection.

Despite it all, we braved it. We believed we are doing what’s right and were encouraged by all those around us who couldn’t believe what was happening to their country. What he did galvanized the people, and on Tuesday, despite shutting down all major roads leading into Cairo, we managed to get over 2 million protesters in Cairo alone and 3 million all over Egypt to come out and demand Mubarak’s departure. Those are people who stood up to the regime’s ruthlessness and anger and declared that they were free, and were refusing to live in the Mubarak dictatorship for one more day. That night, he showed up on TV, and gave a very emotional speech about how he intends to step down at the end of his term and how he wants to die in Egypt, the country he loved and served. To me, and to everyone else at the protests this wasn’t nearly enough, for we wanted him gone now. Others started asking that we give him a chance, and that change takes time and other such poppycock. Hell, some people and family members cried when they saw his speech. People felt sorry for him for failing to be our dictator for the rest of his life and inheriting us to his Son. It was an amalgam of Stockholm syndrome coupled with slave mentality in a malevolent combination that we never saw before. And the Regime capitalized on it today. Today, they brought back the internet, and started having people calling on TV and writing on facebook on how they support Mubarak and his call for stability and peacefull change in 8 months. They hung on to the words of the newly appointed government would never harm the protesters, whom they believe to be good patriotic youth who have a few bad apples amongst them. We started getting calls asking people to stop protesting because “we got what we wanted” and “we need the country to start working again”. People were complaining that they miss their lives. That they miss going out at night, and ordering Home Delivery. That they need us to stop so they can resume whatever existence they had before all of this. All was forgiven, the past week never happened and it’s time for Unity under Mubarak’s rule right now.

To all of those people I say: NEVER! I am sorry that your lives and businesses are disrupted, but this wasn’t caused by the Protesters. The Protesters aren’t the ones who shut down the internet that has paralyzed your businesses and banks: The government did. The Protesters weren’t the ones who initiated the military curfew that limited your movement and allowed goods to disappear off market shelves and gas to disappear: The government did. The Protesters weren’t the ones who ordered the police to withdraw and claimed the prisons were breached and unleashed thugs that terrorized your neighborhoods: The government did. The same government that you wish to give a second chance to, as if 30 years of dictatorship and utter failure in every sector of government wasn’t enough for you. The Slaves were ready to forgive their master, and blame his cruelty on those who dared to defy him in order to ensure a better Egypt for all of its citizens and their children. After all, he gave us his word, and it’s not like he ever broke his promises for reform before or anything.

Then Mubarak made his move and showed them what useful idiots they all were.

You watched on TV as “Pro-Mubarak Protesters” â€“ thugs who were paid money by NDP members by admission of High NDP officials- started attacking the peaceful unarmed protesters in Tahrir square. They attacked them with sticks, threw stones at them, brought in men riding horses and camels- in what must be the most surreal scene ever shown on TV- and carrying whips to beat up the protesters. And then the Bullets started getting fired and Molotov cocktails started getting thrown at the Anti-Mubarak Protesters as the Army standing idly by, allowing it all to happen and not doing anything about it. Dozens were killed, hundreds injured, and there was no help sent by ambulances. The Police never showed up to stop those attacking because the ones who were captured by the Anti-mubarak people had police ID’s on them. They were the police and they were there to shoot and kill people and even tried to set the Egyptian Museum on Fire. The Aim was clear: Use the clashes as pretext to ban such demonstrations under pretexts of concern for public safety and order, and to prevent disunity amongst the people of Egypt. But their plans ultimately failed, by those resilient brave souls who wouldn’t give up the ground they freed of Egypt, no matter how many live bullets or firebombs were hurled at them. They know, like we all do, that this regime no longer cares to put on a moderate mask. That they have shown their true nature. That Mubarak will never step down, and that he would rather burn Egypt to the ground than even contemplate that possibility.

In the meantime, State-owned and affiliated TV channels were showing coverage of Peaceful Mubarak Protests all over Egypt and showing recorded footage of Tahrir Square protest from the night before and claiming it’s the situation there at the moment. Hundreds of calls by public figures and actors started calling the channels saying that they are with Mubarak, and that he is our Father and we should support him on the road to democracy. A veiled girl with a blurred face went on Mehwer TV claiming to have received funding by Americans to go to the US and took courses on how to bring down the Egyptian government through protests which were taught by Jews. She claimed that AlJazeera is lying, and that the only people in Tahrir square now were Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. State TV started issuing statements on how the people arrested Israelis all over Cairo engaged in creating mayhem and causing chaos. For those of you who are counting this is an American-Israeli-Qatari-Muslim Brotherhood-Iranian-Hamas conspiracy. Imagine that. And MANY PEOPLE BOUGHT IT. I recall telling a friend of mine that the only good thing about what happened today was that it made clear to us who were the idiots amongst our friends. Now we know.

Now, just in case this isn’t clear: This protest is not one made or sustained by the Muslim Brotherhood, it’s one that had people from all social classes and religious background in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood only showed up on Tuesday, and even then they were not the majority of people there by a long shot. We tolerated them there since we won’t say no to fellow Egyptians who wanted to stand with us, but neither the Muslims Brotherhood not any of the Opposition leaders have the ability to turn out one tenth of the numbers of Protesters that were in Tahrir on Tuesday. This is a revolution without leaders. Three Million individuals choosing hope instead of fear and braving death on hourly basis to keep their dream of freedom alive. Imagine that.

The End is near. I have no illusions about this regime or its leader, and how he will pluck us and hunt us down one by one till we are over and done with and 8 months from now will pay people to stage fake protests urging him not to leave power, and he will stay “because he has to acquiesce to the voice of the people”. This is a losing battle and they have all the weapons, but we will continue fighting until we can’t. I am heading to Tahrir right now with supplies for the hundreds injured, knowing that today the attacks will intensify, because they can’t allow us to stay there come Friday, which is supposed to be the game changer. We are bringing everybody out, and we will refuse to be anything else than peaceful. If you are in Egypt, I am calling on all of you to head down to Tahrir today and Friday. It is imperative to show them that the battle for the soul of Egypt isn’t over and done with. I am calling you to bring your friends, to bring medical supplies, to go and see what Mubarak’s gurantees look like in real life. Egypt needs you. Be Heroes.

Sat 5 Feb, London Demo in Solidarity with the Egyptian People!!

2011-02-03T10:15:00.001Z

Emergency Demonstration
Saturday 5 February 2.30pm
Solidarity with the Egyptian people
Assemble US Embassy, Grosvenor Square
London W1A 1AE
March To Egyptian Embassy

The talk of the town

2011-01-30T20:57:00.003Z

(literally)

This conversation happens as I head home in London. Following a conversation on the phone with someone asking about my Egyptian friends, a woman sitting next to me reacts. I can feel she wants to tell me something. She dares later on, when we are waiting in the bus stop. She says she had heard me talk about Cairo. Her daughter lives there. She teaches children in a private school. She has been told to pack up for a week, they are all being moved to Sharm tomorrow.

We went on to talk about how she hadn't realised that Mubarak was a dictator, a US sanctioned one. How it's been kept away. How she agrees with the people demonstrating. How she thinks students in the UK are doing great as "people can't just take what their governments are imposing on them."

This is Egypt in the streets of London today.

!الحرية الآن

2011-01-30T14:50:00.000Z

STOP THE WAR COALITION PUBLIC MEETING
WEDNESDAY 2 FEBRUARY 7PM
SOLIDARITY WITH THE EGYPTIAN UPRISING
CONWAY HALL, RED LION SQUARE, LONDON WC1R 4RL
SPEAKERS INCLUDE: George Galloway, Dina Makram - Ebeid Egyptian activist
John Rees - eye witness from Cairo, Bernard Regan

Egypt has been a cornerstone of the US "war on terror" and America's strategy
for dominating the Middle East. Not for nothing is Egypt second only to Israel
in the amount of US aid it receives, including $1.3 billion a year for the
security forces alone--the same forces who have killed dozens of protesters in
the last few days and injured hundreds more.

President Mubarak has made Egypt a US client state for decades. If his tyranny
is overthrown the implications are momentous.

As one commentator noted, "Every Egyptian knows today that the United States
government is not a friend of Egypt, it is a friend and ally of the Mubarak
regime — a regime that does not represent the Egyptian people. Democracy is
not the United State's gift to the world and it will not be acquired under
American tutelage. Real democrats don't bankroll dictatorships." (SEE:
http://bit.ly/ghsnxI)

As well as expressing solidarity with the uprising for democracy in Egypt, Stop
the War's public meeting on Wednesday 2 February will discuss the implications
for the anti-war movement.

London protest

2011-01-30T14:38:00.000Z

الحرية الآن!

2011-01-29T19:01:00.000Z

Pics of protest in London today!

DOWN WITH MUBARAK

2011-01-29T12:33:00.003Z

La lucha en contra del regimen brutal de Mubarak (con la ayuda de EEUU) continua... Lo que pensaba casi imposible esta pasando. Las calles de El Cairo hablan alto y claro. MABROUK!!!!!!

Egipto...

2011-01-26T17:38:00.001Z

University for Strategic Optimism brings cheer to Christmas market

2010-12-21T20:25:00.002Z

Please see the lyrics below if you feel compelled to join in. You might.

La Universidad por el Optimismo Estratégico os desea felices y festivas revoluciones!

On the first day of Christmas my gov’ment gave to me…

- unpayable tuition fees

On the second day of Christmas my gov’ment gave to me

- Two-faced Michael Gove

- And unpayable tuition fees

On the third day of Christmas my gov’ment gave to me…

- Spineless Lib Dems

- Two-faced Michael Gove

- And unpayable tuition fees

On the fourth day of Christmas my gov’ment gave to me…

- Promises reversed

- Spineless Lib Dems

- Two-faced Michael Gove

- And unpayable tuition fees

On the fifth day of Christmas my gov’ment gave to me…

- Lifelong debt

- Promises reversed

- Spineless Lib Dems

- Two-faced Michael Gove

- And unpayable tuition fees

On the sixth day of Christmas my gov’ment gave to me…

- MPs a lying

- Lifelong debt

- Promises reversed

- Spineless Lib Dems

- Two-faced Michael Gove

- And unpayable tuition fees

On the seventh day of Christmas my gov’ment gave to me

- Schoolchildren kettled

- MPs a lying

- Lifelong debt

- Promises reversed

- Spineless Lib Dems

- Two-faced Michael Gove

- And unpayable tuition fees

On the eighth day of Christmas my gov’ment gave to me…

- Bailouts for banking

- Schoolchildren kettled

- MPs a lying

- Lifelong debt

- Promises reversed

- Spineless Lib Dems

- Two-faced Michael Gove

- And unpayable tuition fees

On the ninth day of Christmas my gov’ment gave to me…

- Local council sackings

- Bailouts for banking

- Schoolchildren kettled

- MPs a lying

- Lifelong debt

- Promises reversed

- Spineless Lib Dems

- Two-faced Michael Gove

- And unpayable tuition fees

On the tenth day of Christmas my gov’ment gave to me…

- Police horses charging

- Local council sackings

- Bailouts for banking

- Schoolchildren kettled

- MPs a lying

- Lifelong debt

- Promises reversed

- Spineless Lib Dems

- Two-faced Michael Gove

- And unpayable tuition fees

On the eleventh day of Christmas my gov’ment gave to me

- Slashed social housing

- Police horses charging

- Local council sackings

- Bailouts for banking

- Schoolchildren kettled

- MPs a lying

- Lifelong debt

- Promises reversed

- Spineless Lib Dems

- Two-faced Michael Gove

- And unpayable tuition fees

On the twelfth day of Christmas my gov’ment gave to me…

- Massive welfare cuts

- Slashed social housing

- Police horses charging

- Local council sackings

- Bailouts for banking

- Schoolchildren kettled

- MPs a lying

- Lifelong debt

- Promises reversed

- Spineless Lib Dems

- Two-faced Michael Gove

Fitwatch

2010-12-21T01:29:00.002Z

A great site that helps invert the roles of observed/observer in a country obsessed with databases, CCTV, containment, media spinning and right/wrong discourses.

Fitwatch began in 2007 as a response to the constant harassment and intrusive surveillance protesters received from Forward Intelligence Teams (FIT). Deploying a range of tactics, Fitwatch has worked to ensure FIT policing is on the agenda not only within activist circles, but also in the wider public through our media work.

We believe in the right to protest without intimidation and harassment. We oppose the use of ‘intelligence led’ policing and believe FIT should not be used to disrupt and deter protest. The police should not be compiling protest databases nor should they be profiling activists and we work to challenge these practices.

Fitwatch researches and publishes information about FIT and other intelligence gathering carried out by the police or agencies such as the ACPO domestic extremism teams. We have been responsible for obtaining important evidence regarding the existence of police protester databases, the use of extremism units to monitor protest, the harassment of journalists by FIT, and the inclusion of protester details in Criminal Intelligence Reports.

Fitwatching is also known as a form of direct action. Fitwatchers place FIT under surveillance, taking and publishing their photos and names. Fitwatchers also resist FIT by deliberately obscuring their view, making it difficult for them to take photos and notes of protesters. Fitwatching can be done by anyone and exists as a tactic separately to this blog. However, we advocate direct action and are happy to support Fitwatchers in any way we can, including publishing photographs or information we receive.

2010-12-19T00:28:00.002Z

A state that functions like this doesn't have the faintest idea of what democracy is, let alone freedom of speech, of movement, public space and real social policy.

Save the Post Study Work visa in UK

2010-12-18T21:27:00.001Z

Please find attached the petition to save the Post Study Work visa, a
scheme that the Coalition Government plans to scrap.  The visa allows
non-EU graduates who have earned their degree in the UK to work for an
additional two years.  Please help us save it for future students, and at
the very least ensure that current students are allowed to apply for the
visa upon their graduation next year.  Changing the rules "mid-game" would
be unfair and misleading to many international students.

If you can please return your signed petitions to Xixi Zheng no later than
11th January (but preferably as soon as possible), that would be great.
She can be reached on 07850 037459 or at aabbcici@gmail.com.  She is based
in New Cross.

You can also return completed petitions to Christina Zhang, the
International Students Officer at NUS Headquarters in Central London.  She
can be reached at Christina.Zhang@nus.org.uk.

David Cameron on 'Police Violence'

2010-12-12T15:44:00.002Z

The full force of the law of the land...
(or how language became yet another tool of violence)

2010-12-12T01:35:00.003Z

After a week that defied common perceptions of the end of History and crap alike, the overwhelming feeling of movement seems to be taking over. And it's ever changing and ever inclusive of difference, hence its strength.
THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED.
(but for now, here it comes...)

2010-12-09T01:28:00.000Z

Goldsmiths Library Occupied

2010-12-07T19:24:00.000Z

GOLDSMITHS OCCUPATION STATEMENT

We have occupied the university library in opposition to the increase in university fees and cuts in education as a whole. We act in solidarity with all those facing cuts across the social sphere.

We oppose the proposed change in fees structure and the cuts to teaching subsidy across education in the UK – which will include a 100 percent cut to funding for teaching in arts, humanities and social sciences.

We have taken over Goldsmiths’ Library, the most publicly visible and accessible physical space in the college. We are opening it as a centre for organisation, available 24 hours a day to students and all those on the receiving end of the government’s assault in the Lewisham community. We offer our support to recipients of the EMA grant, benefits and services, all of which are being attacked by local and national government. We support library staff at Goldsmiths and public libraries across Lewisham.

The proposed changes in Higher Education represent a historically unprecedented attack on society. In response, we have taken the exceptional step of deciding that no staff shall work in the library building, although students are welcome to come and join us. Until our demands are met, there will be no business as usual at the college.

We act to support and intensify the efforts of all those involved in the nationwide wave of occupations.

We demand that Goldsmiths’ management:

• Immediately make a public statement opposing fees and the vote for their increase due in parliament on 9th December. We refuse all current and further cuts at Goldsmiths.

• Implement no further cuts to departments and budgets at Goldsmiths, nor any further redundancies.

• Steps forward to defend all those from Goldsmiths arrested or in other ways victimised during the current struggles against the cuts. We condemn the police’s violent and heavy-handed tactics used against students, staff and their supporters.

• Do not penalise library staff in any way, nor dock their pay during the occupation

• Ceases its campaign of cuts against the Goldsmiths Nursery.

• Retract their threat to charge Goldsmiths’ Student Union £15,000 in response to the occupation of Deptford Town Hall. This occupation, like that one, is independent of the Student Union.

• Do not take any disciplinary actions whatsoever against those involved in this occupation.

Solidarity to all fighting the cuts!!

University for Strategic Optimism

2010-11-25T00:04:00.002Z

Please forward widely! Free education CAN happen. Moreover, it can happen in PUBLIC spaces.

University For Strategic Optimism: Inaugural Lecture

2010-11-24T23:30:00.002Z

Please forward widely! the time of reclaiming free education in public spaces has come... if this isn't one of the best ways to reclaim space I don't know what is.
Please join and LONG LIVE!

SOAS IN OCCUPATION

2010-11-22T23:26:00.000Z

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE USE
Contact:
Bernard Goyder 07551319742
Elly Badcock 07581418837

Central London college occupied by students over education cuts.

Students at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, have today taken over the Brunei Gallery, a central college building, in protest at the Coalition government’s plans to impose £4.3bn cuts to higher education.
SOAS is predicted to face 100% cuts to its teaching budget as it specialises in languages and humanities subjects.
Following a mass meeting of the Students’ Union last week, which voted to support occupations at the college, protestors gathered on campus at Monday lunchtime.
The Brunei Gallery was taken over shortly after by cheering students.
The demands are as follows:

Occupation Statement

“At a huge Emergency General Meeting (EGM) last week, SOAS students voted in favour of occupation as part of our fight against Coalition government plans to cut higher education funding and raise tuition fees. Today, over sixty students have occupied the Brunei Suite at SOAS. This number is growing.

We stand in solidarity with other University occupations across the country and all those resisting the government’s draconian and unnecessary cuts. We encourage all students to participate in the National Day of Action against fees and cuts on 24th November. We call on the University administration to join us in our fight to defend education. In particular, we demand:

No victimisation of participants in this occupation and in previous and future student actions against fees and cuts.

That students who participate in the walk-out organised on the 24th of November are not marked as absent from lectures or tutorials on that day

Greater transparency in the School’s budget and in the School’s financial decisions.

That Paul Webley, SOAS Director, releases a statement openly condemning all cuts to higher education and any rise in tuition fees, and writes to the Government in the form of an open letter asking Vice-Chancellors across the country to unite against all threats to Higher Education.

That Paul Webley and SOAS management refuse to budget for the cuts and commit not to raise tuition fees.

We also request that all lecturers devote 15 minutes of lecture time to discuss the impact of the cuts in their classes throughout this week.

The occupation space is open to all students and staff and we encourage everyone to participate in occupation activities”

ENDS

A new legal advice card has been issued for students and staff going on protests

2010-11-22T09:59:00.001Z

From Indymedia....

As many universities look to soon be going into occupation a legal briefing document has been put together by the Green and Black Cross legal team. Please print these and distribute them amongst occupiers and anyone taking action on the 24th. It is vital that everyone in occupation has a bust card. Please print plenty of these.

The BUST CARD (Downloadable below)– prepared by Green and Black Cross legal team. Make sure that every person on your occupation has a copy of this. Print double-sided landscape, then cut in half lengthways, and fold into three.

We need to look our for eachother on actions. Please re-post all of these documents to your blogs, send the documents around your email lists, or link to this post on facebook. At least one person from each occupation or action should be responsible for printing this material for everyone.

2010-11-20T23:10:00.001Z

The consequences of Spanish postcolonialism.

Occupations, Direct Actions: Logistics and Legalities

2010-11-16T22:19:00.001Z

Via Clare (thank you)

Occupations, Direct Actions: Logistics and Legalities

Workshop on Occupations, Walk-outs, and Road Blockages Wednesday November 17th, 3.30pm

In the wake of the events at Millbank, The University of London Union is proud to announce a workshop to assist in the escalation of our campaign against cuts and fees.

This is a meeting for students.

ULU will be inviting speakers to give insights and answer questions to engender activists on campuses around London with the tools to successfully make our universities, our cities, and our country ungovernable.

Endorsed by NUS President Aaron Porter in many forums and LIVE on BBC Breakfast on Thursday 11 November, peaceful, non-violent direct actions and occupations are a legitimate form of protest and he, along with many of us, are calling for these tactics to be employed as wide as possible: for maximum disruption as Aaron said in response to the LibDems going back on their manifesto pledges.

Please forward this invite, email it, tweet it and invite people to this invite on Facebook (if you know what I mean!)
This meeting has been agreed by a number of ULU reps and looks to be a big one.

See you Wednesday. C

Week of Collective Thought+Action

2010-11-06T21:46:00.001Z

Dear all,

Join us this week for days of collective action and thought:

*MONDAY 8 November*
13.00 – 19.00
Centre for Possible Studies, 64 Seymour Street, W1
(Marble Arch tube)
PROTEST LAB I
From Complaints to Campaigns: Crafting a Common Analysis.
Open Drop-in Workshop Session to Produce Slogans, Texts, Chants, Action, Banners, Flyers, Stickers, Badges.

*TUESDAY 9 November*
13.00 – 21.00
Centre for Possible Studies, 64 Seymour Street, W1
(Marble Arch tube)
PROTEST LAB II
Tools for Collective Action: The Demo as Lab.
Open Drop-in Workshop Session to Produce Slogans, Texts, Chants, Actions, Banners, Flyers, Stickers, Badges.

*WEDNESDAY 10 November*
11.00 – late
DEMONSTRATION!
Join the Precarious Workers Block at the Demo Against Cuts to Education!
Meet 10am Goldsmiths or, 11am at ULU, Malet Street, WC1, or 12 noon at 4th Plinth, Trafalgar Square. Meet together after the Demo at 4pm outside National Gallery for post demo actions.

*FRIDAY 12 November*
18.00 – 20.00
Goldsmiths, University of London: Main Building
(follow signs from main entrance)
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER A DEMONSTRATION? / I OCCUPATIONS
Discussion and workshop with students from Middlesex and other recently occupied universities.

*SATURDAY 13 November*
17.00 – 20.00
Goldsmiths, University of London: Main Building
(follow signs from main entrance)
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER A DEMONSTRATION? / II ORGANISING OTHERWISE
Workshop on co-operatives with Calverts and Co-operative Assistance Network.

Who are organising this with:
the PRECARIOUS WORKERS BRIGADE
We are a growing group of precarious workers in culture & education. We call out in solidarity with all those struggling to make a living in this climate of instability and enforced austerity. We come together not to defend what was, but to demand, create and reclaim:

* EQUAL PAY
no more free labour; guaranteed income for all

* FREE EDUCATION
all debts and future debts cancelled now

* DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS
cut unelected unaccountable and unmandated leaders

* THE COMMONS
shared ownership of space, ideas, and resources

Join us this week and beyond to learn, create & struggle together!

Reclaimed space

Caironess

Cairo Impressions II (May 2011)

Cairo Impressions I (May 2011)

Turkey and Britain: of acceptable Muslim democracies and British interests.

A year went by.

Unmissable article on Western countries arm sales to ME dictatorships

Unmissable! US hypocrisy at work. OCCUPY EVERYTHING!

Witness call out

On the gates of fortress Europe.

Africa SIGUE en venta

Grandes compañías compran tierras para producir alimentos que luego exportan - Mientras, los habitantes locales pasan hambre

We are the 99 percent

The kleenex worker

Fuck the police!

Erdogan hails. Erdogan hopes.

Belediye, where is my seat?

Companies ejected from London arms fair for 'promoting cluster bombs'

Whilst Cameron is happy to be in free Libya...

In London:

The world's largest arms fair has thrown out two exhibitors after they were found to be promoting cluster munitions that have been banned by the UK and condemned by more than 100 other countries.

Spanish police brutality- Please spread and shame these bastards!

Spain before and after the 15th of May Movement

Feral Capitalism Hits The Streets by David Harvey

#riotcleanup or #riotwhitewash?

Subscribe news| Archive | RSS Ağrı KCK Trial: Prison Sentences of almost 92 Years

La guerra cada vez más privada

Italian peace activist killed in Gaza

Guess who is behind the lack of jobs for working men?

Academic fury over order to study the big society

Encounters of the 3rd kind- two

Encounters of the 3rd kind- one.

Workers' Militia map for tomorrow- distribute!

reclaim space!

The defendant's guide to arrest

Suspend all cultural programming on the 26th of March!

UCL occupation needs support

Foreign students numbers to be cut by 25%

The past...

Perdiendo la memoria

UN Declares War on Libya

UN resolution goes far beyond no-fly zone to allow all necessary measures against Qaddafi.

Gadafi compara su entrada en Bengasi con la de Franco en Madrid

Mapa de la Memoria

Ghetto biennale: A Salon des Refuses for the 21st century

New Look for Mecca

Inside Out.

Three Scandinavian ISM activists trapped by curfew in Awarta village following settlers’ murder

Precarity: the People's Tribunal

As if the passage from one to another involved not a journey but a change of elements.

Istanbul’s Gated Communities

TAHRIR ATTACK CAIRO MARCH 9 5.15 PM

Hands off Libya!!

Libya: the hand that feeds

Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) Research Seminar Series

Daily Star reporter quits in protest at tabloid's 'anti-Muslim' coverage

Out of Place

6 billion ways- TODAY

Decolonizing Knowledge and Power: Postcolonial Studies, Decolonial Horizons

Objectives

Egyptian Solidarity Meeting TODAY AT GOLDSMITHS

Demonstrate: Solidarity with the Arab peoples

It catches on!

"The street belongs to us!"

A reflection on Revolution in Egypt

ثورة دائما

What bliss to be alive, to be an Egyptian

الخبز والحرية والعدالة الاجتماعية

Shokran Hossam

Egypt:Demonstration in solidarity - Saturday 12 February in London

Letter To Egypt - Alf Shukr

الخبز والحرية والعدالة الاجتماعية

Solidarity with the Egyptian Uprising in London

Egypt needs you.

Sat 5 Feb, London Demo in Solidarity with the Egyptian People!!

Emergency DemonstrationSaturday 5 February 2.30pmSolidarity with the Egyptian peopleAssemble US Embassy, Grosvenor SquareLondon W1A 1AEMarch To Egyptian Embassy

The talk of the town

London protest

الحرية الآن!

DOWN WITH MUBARAK

Emergency Demonstration
Saturday 5 February 2.30pm
Solidarity with the Egyptian people
Assemble US Embassy, Grosvenor Square
London W1A 1AE
March To Egyptian Embassy