the mass remains massive...

...and tash gets arty. most importantly, no psychopathic drivers on the streets this month, and a sound system and decorations kept the carnival atmosphere going. a megaphone proved to be an "interesting" addition to the mass, although as a friend has remarked before, it's usually the people you want to shut up that get hold of them: "...tell george bush about climate change, a real weapon of mass destruction, maybe he'll start bombing cars, yes! bomb cars everyone, bomb cars..." ;)

not london-sized yet, but damn good fun!

no justice, no peace

i've spent the week running around like a headless chicken, both physically and metaphorically speaking. one of the consequences has been a self-imposed divorce from the media (of any description). it came as a nasty and unwelcome surprise to see in this week's schnews a 'crap arrest of the week' featuring mil rai and maya evans, the good people of justice not vengeance, who've done some great work campaigning against the 'war on terror' over the past years. a press release on the iraq mortality website describes the arrest:-

Today, Tuesday 25 October, two peace activists were arrested in Whitehall shortly after 9am for organising an unauthorised ‘bell-ringing’ remembrance ceremony marking the anniversary this week of the Lancet estimate that 100,000 people have died in Iraq of war-related causes.

Milan Rai, coordinator of Justice Not Vengeance, became the first person to be arrested as an organiser of an unauthorised demonstration under new legislation governing protests in the vicinity of Parliament.

The maximum penalty for being an ‘organiser’ of such a demonstration is a prison term of nearly a year, compared to a maximum fine of £1,000 for being a ‘participant’ in an unauthorised demonstration. All previous arrests connected with the new legislation have been of ‘participants’ rather than organisers.

The remembrance ceremony was to have consisted of four hours of bell-ringing to mark the deaths of 250 Iraqis and 97 British soldiers in the Iraq war, as part of an international project known as ‘100,000 Rings For Iraq’. Rai and his colleague Maya Evans were to have read out the names of Iraqis and British soldiers while ringing a bell once every minute.

Rai said as he was arrested: ‘Over a hundred thousand Iraqis have died. It’s time to replace British and US troops with a UN force.’

there's a video of the arrest here, that refuses to work on my computer but you might have more luck with.

this is particularly ironic timing, coming a week after the SOCA was lambasted at ftp, and shows the extent to which dissent is to be whitewashed from whitehall. the cartoon in shcnews is apt, introducing a cage in the outer hebrides as "britain's newly approved official protest site". it seems the powers that be are intent on vitiating and marginalising protest, especially against political nightmares for labour such as the iraq occupation.

for a more in-depth analysis from mil on the body counts conducted in iraq, and the human cost of the occupation, see this recent article by mil.

...i'm back!

well, briefly anyway. went to the anarchist bookfair and the freedom to protest conference at the weekend, so that was quite a flood of information, which i'll write up when i have the time. most of this week's been taken up being outraged by the sanctuary, an odious student paper that's sprung up on our campus and is publishing articles by the likes of stuart russell of the bnp. we've been having quite a discussion about it, relating to whether or not 'no platform' is the way to beat the fash or not. read disillusioned kid's decent post on the issue for more.

did someone say something about deadlines? bugger...

wot? no bloggin?

fear not, avid readers, for i have been busy here and here.

arbeit macht frei

there's been a lot of fuss in some sections of the media, and rightly so, about the police beating of robert davis, a 64-year old black man in new orleans. the police said he was drunk, but as tetsuo pointed out, the defendent denies having had a drink in 25 years. a pretty disgusting story, but an isolated case right? just some more examples of "bad apples" in the force.

well no, actually. an article by jessica azulay for the new standard (also published on znet), has some horrific news about the "law and order" situation in the city:

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans authorities are arresting hundreds on minor charges such as breaking curfew or public intoxication, housing them in brutal conditions and then pushing them through a court process that forces most into working on clean-up projects at police facilities, according to numerous interviews and documents obtained by TNS.

the report focuses on the procedure at a place known as "camp amtrak", a converted bus station, where inmates must sleep on concrete, with or without a blanket according to whether there's enough to go round, separated from the elements by a wire fence. they are denied phone calls because there is no telephone in the building. inmates are regularly maced in the night by police. unless they have the money for a private lawyer they have to put up with legal advice en masse from a public defender, who refuses to give individual advice. the "advice" given, looks extremely suspicious - either they can plead guilty and get sentenced to 40hrs community service (cleaning the police stations, prisons and court houses), or get sent to prison for a further 3 weeks to fight their case. it looks like the louisiana cops have been taking a leaf out of david blunkett's book (or was it that other germanic chap with the moustache): work makes you free.

so what do the police themselves have to say in their defence:

It’s keeping the bad guys off the streets from harassing the poor people of the New Orleans district from worrying about their houses being broken into or worrying about some drunk laying on their porch…

if i were leaving in n.o. right now i'd be more worried about a certain other sector of the population breaking in:

Jack, a black immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago, said police had arrested him on his own property and charged him with violating curfew, which in most neighborhoods here is still in affect from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.

"I was in my yard, and a young white guy came by the gate and I was talking to him and the police came and arrested both of us," he recounted. "He was outside breaking curfew; I was inside… behind the gate. The police broke my gate down with a pick-ax. They broke it completely off the fence."

Jack continued: "It makes me really angry, man. It made me realize that the law isn’t working the way it is supposed to."

shared identities

the excellent media reviews from jnv picked up an article that i missed out on in yesterday's paper:-

Councils, Whitehall departments and firms running public services will
routinely share personal data about citizens by 2010, acccording to
leaked documents seen by the Guardian.

The plans, drawn up by the Cabinet Office, could cause anger among
privacy campaigners. The documents suggest that identity cards, expected
to be issued from 2008, will play a big role in data sharing

(Guardian, Michael Cross, 'Leak reveals Whitehall plans for data shareout', page 10)

"Data sharing will increase under new proposals." but don't worry: "information sharing will be clarified and rolled out, balancing the potential value to the customer or taxpayer with privacy concerns." yes, i'm feeling very reassured. i know how much faceless organisations value my privacy by the frequency with which they pass my details on to other people to send me more junk mail.

It will involve government bodies routinely exchanging personal data about individuals, with the proposed national identity card set to play a major role.

and if that wasn't enough to scare you, the last paragraph's a clincher:-

In line with Labour reforms in education and the NHS, IT should underpin a "transformed government" in which "boundaries ... between central and local, and between public, private and voluntary continue to be less important and less visible" than today.
(Guardian, Michael Cross, 'Our failures are behind us, promise ministers', Technology section)

but i don't understand - why are you all refusing those lovely id cards?

the beat of the drum...

...is getting louder

to all the evolutionary psychologists...

nice comment on breaking the "biological" boundaries preventing women from gaining equality:

women may feel that despite all the attempts at changing society made by women, we have now come up against the biological imperatives that will always lock us out of the freedom and equality we desire. We cannot just wish away women's vulnerability to attack by men, women's shorter fertility span or the neediness of young children.

however...

Because whatever kernel of biological truth lies at the heart of these findings, the truth is that biology is not some immutable reality for women or for men.

so...

Is it really time to give up and impress upon young women only the risks that they are taking? Or should we say that it is really time for men to take responsibility for the violence that they commit?
[...] do we really want women to feel that they have no choice but to live a circumscribed life decided by red-toothed nature, while men are free to roam, and rule, the world?

it's certainly the case that the biological "realities" are often seen by many as absolute boundaries which there is no point in trying to change. but this is a fundamentally conservative position, appeasing all kinds of behaviour that is morally unacceptable. if we are serious about gender equality we must be serious about removing the obstacles that remain in its way.

policeman evangelist beats black man

race relations in new orleans are at a pretty low ebb anyway, and the news that officers lance schilling and robert evangelist were caught on camera beating a 64-year old black man, robert davis, on bourbon st ain't exactly helping:

There was no mistaking the ferocity of the police action against Mr Davis, however. He is seen on the tape flailing his arms helplessly as two of the officers punch him in the head twice and eventually drag him to the ground. Mr Davis is then seen lying face down on the pavement, with blood streaming down his face and arm into the gutter.

Four of the five police officers involved appear to be white and the fifth was described as light-skinned.

apparently they then proceeded to start on the cameraman, not realising that he was a journalist. how many times does this kind of thing go on when the cameras aren't watching? how many of those officers will be charged and how many of those incidents will be investigated?

il-liberation

david blunkett is telling all those scrounging dole monkeys (oh he's probably said it in private) to get a job: "If people ... reassociate with the world of work, suddenly they come alive again". urm, davey boy, that's not really a general trend is it? let's face it, they're probably only going to be offered the most deadening jobs that everyone else has refused to do. "We can offer people liberation from dependence in a way that was never possible before," he said in a worrying turn. so he's "liberating" the jobless is he? given the manner in which his great leader has "liberated" iraq, the unemployed have reason to look busy. perhaps he should rename the department for work and pensions, the department of liberation through slavery.

feckin random

got this via dynamite lady.

I'm 'Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me'!

Which Line from Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody Are You?

she appears to be gallileo

benjamin and blackdrop

a good bit of catharsis, to return to reality after the fairytale land of hockerton, was going out to the blackdrop third birthday party on sunday. mate f had been telling me about blackdrop for ages but i'd never been able to make it until last month, and i was really impressed by the atmosphere and the openness of the evening, as well as the performances. basically, blackdrop is an open mic night, focussed on spoken word material, set up by a group that seems to largely comprise the members of wahaad, an african drumming group who've done loads of gigs for the peace movement in the past. as well as regulars from nottingham, they feature a guest performer each month too. last month it was spicy fingers from birmingham, who was amazingly versatile skipping from comic accounts of late night munchies to the dark depths of the african slave trade. this month we had the great pleasure of being in the presence of the great benjamin zephaniah.

the first part of the night was largely composed of reprises from last month which was a little disappointing, but the performers had seemed to be reperforming their best works for the birthday special. some striking new additions did come tho, from scarily young rappers ttm (true to nottingham) eschewing the fantasy worlds of their peers for something more real, and an amazing duo from leicester (damn, can't remember their names) who acted out a ballad of struggle. however great these were, they could only ever be a warm up for the benjamin, who soon had the (sizeable) audience in stitches with his "they can't get the reggae out me brain" on psychiatrists' attitudes to black people, and hanging on his every word with devastating pieces like "what stephen lawrence has taught us". from denouncing the illusion of money in favour of mutual aid, to his commitment to veganism ("be nice to yu turkey dis christmas...") he just seems to have the right attitudes towards everything, whilst being an amazing entertainer as well. from nicely spearing his father's attempts to turn him into a "macho man" to an amazing account of a sadhu with a mobile phone up his arse, you feel like he somehow has a deeper understanding of things that makes his message simple yet powerful.

i'll be back to blackdrop next month, first monday of the month, 7.30, canal house bar.

sustainable living?

on saturday i went on a guided tour of hockerton housing project, 20 miles north-east of nottingham. hockerton is "an exemplar of sustainable development" according to their website, comprising 5 ecohouses, self-sufficient for water, almost self-sufficient for power (two wind turbines and photovoltaic panels) and producing 80% of their own fruit and veg. sounds pretty good, right? i was interested in how they'd done it, and a friend who's a student of architecture was keen to book us on a day-long sustainable communities workshop. 35 quid seemed a little steep, but i was enthused and signed up.

having planned to get there by bus (keeping in with the spirit of things) we later realised that there were virtually none going to southwell at the time we wanted so sheepishly ended up going in the car. we were greeted by a guy who was later to guide us round the site, who seemed rather intrigued by our organisation: lenton anarchist forum. this seemed to be a source of some amusement to the fellow visitors throughout the day. this was not the kind of "eco warrior" i was used to. these people wore green wellies and came from surrey. i felt a little out of place.

the morning had the potential to be quite interesting: a couple of small group discussions on what makes a sustainable community (in terms of environmental, social, and economic aspects) and decision-making/rules of membership. unfortunately, the rather patriarchal atmosphere (there were several couples, in which the men usually dominated) and the fact that these were overwhelmingly middle-aged professionals contributed to making it stifling and uninspirational. my comments on alternative economies and consensus decision-making models were heard, but were misunderstood. i got the impression with the people attending, as i did with the people who lived in the community, that they wanted to keep their nice middle-class lifestyles thank you very much, they just didn't want to have to feel guilty about them. socially and economically they weren't radical at all.


lunchbreak was a good time to unwind sat by the lake, and for the anarchists to express their doubts with one another. next up was the tour of the site. we examined the two wind turbines and heard about the nimbyism that almost put paid to their erection, looked at reed beds, compost heaps, allotments and reservoirs. we were shocked to realise the extent to which they farmed animals (sheep, chickens, fish) for meat and animal products. once again, lifestyle was put ahead of sustainability and ethics. the group all seemed to have cars, although bikes were in abundance too. interestingly they'd been having a security scare after some bikes were nicked, and people wanted security cameras and gates installed. i sighed inwardly (again).


the houses themselves were pretty amazing. earth-sheltered and with walls about 50cm thick, they had no need for heating being so well insulated that the warmth of their inhabitants was trapped inside. even the tiled floors were warm on socked feet. apparently the mass (concrete), which is inside the polystyrene insulation, absorbs and stores the heat, warming the air. large glass conservatories on the front let loads of light in and made the houses seem spacious and airy. architect friend, c, wasn't convinced tho, muttering about the use of concrete (not degradable) and polystyrene (an oil-based material). the houses cost the same per sqm to build as newbuild, which was impressive, but alternatives such as straw bale houses are much cheaper, and genuinely eco-friendly.

so, as you can probably tell, i was sceptical to say the least. this kind of "solution" only seems open to the well-financed and rule-bound. i suppose i was looking for a much more radical solution, using the shift from "modern life" with all its problems as a spur for social reorganisation as well as material changes. some of the concepts and technology was interesting to see and got me thinking about things like water treatment and power generation that i'd not really considered much before. think i'll wait a bit longer to find a rather more coherent approach to living tho.

stave them off

yesterday's guardian reports that in some immigration detention centres prison officers routinely carry wooden staves to enforce discipline. obviously no one told them that the inmates are meant to be in their care and are not criminals. an easy mistake to make given successive governments' attempts to make finding asylum in britain an impossibility. the prison service is apparently withrawing all of these weapons soon.... oh no, not because they're an intimidating weapon almost certain to make everyone less secure, but because they "don't provide adequate protection". they're replacing them with plastic batons, which makes my previous comments about the police and plastic swords more believable.

fanatics in our midst

i've just been ejected from the portland cafe. i was sitting, as i have done for the past couple of years or so at lunch time, eating my sandwhiches in a seat by the window. the cafe was fairly empty. the portland cafe is a large room in the student union at nottingham. it seems to have been leased to a private catering business, but i presume that it is still owned by the student union. i've certainly always treated the place although it was just somewhere that any student was free to go to.

the manager shuffled nervously up to me, acting like he was just going round straightening chairs. finally he leaned over towards my table, smiling but very defensive and said "next time, don't bring your own food to my cafe". i looked back at him, fairly surprised. i should probably have used the opportunity to find out exactly what his claim was, or at least made some challenge, but i was in the middle of my lunch. i'm never going to actually buy any of their food because it's a) not vegan and b) ridiculously overpriced. i've been a fairly faithful consumer of their fair trade coffee and tea though, so it is a shot in the foot for this guy and a bit of a cheek too.

i should have seen it coming. commericalisation has been creeping in, with the introduction of signs saying "only food purchased here to be consumed here" or something to that effect (up until now, fairly unanimously ignored in my experience), a tv screen constantly broadcasting adverts, and big ads on the walls. i guess they just couldn't tolerate me any longer. just yesterday i noticed a disgusting notice behind the sandwhich bar:

We're fantical about freshness. We're so obsessed with making sure that our sandwhiches reach you fresh that unsold items are thrown away 3hrs after they are made.
We're that fanatical!

you certainly are! so obsessed with keeping a smart clean image to justify your hiked up prices you will go to obscene measures like throwing out perfectly good food whilst thousands of people starve in the city. preachers of hatred indeed! makes me want to start a food not bombs collective.

the total commericalisation of universities has turned students into consumers with no rights, prey for the advertisers and salesmen that unions like nottingham's are so keen to prostitute themselves to. education is another commodity. vice chancellors are business managers with more interest in being able to attract big corporations to their campuses than students. whilst i have only been denied access to one of the few decent places to sit and eat lunch, students elsewhere have not been so lucky. witness the trial last week of the george fox 6 who have been successfully prosecuted for aggravated trespass by their own university, for interrupting a "corporate venturing" conference attended by companies such as bae and shell. the university is an amoral slave to the dollar. decisions are made not on the ethics of an act, but on its effects on a university's brand image.

it's enough to put you right off your lunch.

who are the 'terrorists'?

there seems to be a great deal of uncertainty over what terrorism is amongst the police of this country. if they're not shooting innocent people they're locking them up, detaining them, or searching them. it seems that anti-terrorist laws are not simply racist, but are increasingly becoming a byword for anti-opposition laws. the scotsman reports that over 600 people were held under section 44 of the terrorism act during the labour party conference. amazingly enough many of those held were protesting against the conference. if i were suspicious i might suspect that the laws were being used to quash protests, in a similar manner to the massive police presence around the dsei arms fair (where s44 has also, controversially, been used in the past).

free country my arse.

do you know who i am?

just checking my email when i came across this mildly amusing piece of tabloid tattle. it seems that the grand old duke of got a bit antsy about having to undergo a security check at an airport in australia. shows what a bizzarely sheltered world these strange genetic experiments live in doesn't it, when they don't realise how routine this kind of thing is now. it would be good to get a transcript of what was said, perhaps "do you know who my mother is?" or "insolent proles!", who knows?

fortunately the airport staff knew how to deal with tantrums:

Managers and security were called and it was suggested to the Prince that he sit down in the next room and think about it for a while...
Eventually he reluctantly agreed

yes, all this to avoid being subjected to a 10 second scan. you see andy, even royals aren't exempt anymore. bow down before the machine.

the lethal alternative to lethal force

those who keep their ears to the ground concerning potential new methods of police repression will know all about tasers. these are the guns that fire electrodes into their target and then unleash a 50,000 volt shock. apart from the notorious use of electroshock equipment by torturers the world over, they are widely carried by us police forces and their uk counterparts have recently been given the green light for their use here too. amongst others disillusioned kid has been following the distinctly unappealing story of the taser reporting on the use of tasers on 12-year old girls, the psychologically different and protesters, amongst others (also see his excellent article here). the reason usually touted for why the police should have them is that they are a "non-lethal" alternative to guns. not only is there plently of evidence that they are not actually used in this manner at all (not many police would have shot to kill in the examples above) but today's guardian reports that the taser may not even be non-lethal after all.

according to the report:

Mr Smith [President of Taser Inc] also said that Taser uses the term "non-lethal" as defined by the US Department of Defence - which does not mean the weapon cannot cause death, but that it is not intended to be fatal.

hmmm... i don't think that would stand up in court would it?

Other changes include substituting the phrase "leave no lasting after-effects" to "are more effective and safer than other use-of-force options"

remember, these are just the changes taser have been forced to make - the reality is probably consideraly dodgier. reassuringly tho, a spokeswoman for the Association of Chief Police Officers said British authorities "did not call Tasers non-lethal and never had done". they were quite happy to let their forces loose with these weapons knowing full well that they could kill suspects. and given how well-trained those forces are (remember the police tasering a suspected suicide bomber in birmingham, which could have blown him and his surroundings up?) it isn't exactly backed up by a study quoted in the guardian article:

Home Office researchers discovered people who had been in contact with CS gas were at "serious risk" of catching fire if a Taser gun was subsequently used. Many officers are told to use CS gas to resolve a situation before employing a more extreme method such as a Taser.

isn't that reassuring? given these changes isn't it rather galling that taser continue to claim that tasers "save lives everyday"? in that case wouldn't we save more lives by arming the police with toy guns or plastic swords?

still, it could be worse. apparently, until the recent "voluntary" changes to legislation by taser, people under the age of 18 could purchase them in the usa (adults still can). i'm sure it would add an interesting new dimension to playground fights but thanfully this is an arena in which the truly non-lethal weapons still hold their ground...

pedal powered

nottingham critical mass: leaves the texaco garage at 5.30pm on the last friday of the month