Protest: clean up the press, clean up the police, clean up parliament

Protest when the Murdochs come to Westminster.

1.30pm, Tuesday 19th July outside Parliament.

Rupert and James Murdoch and Rebecca Brooks are being questioned in Parliament on Tuesday over corruption and criminality at the heart of the British establishment.

Make sure you are there so they know what we think.

London Calling: Dec 9th National demo against tuition fees

Dear fellow campaigners, what a long time a few weeks in politics can feel.

From Millbank to Newsnight, from Carnivals to Cat & Mouse games, ULU has certainly been at the forefront of student activism recently.

At Senate we voted to support peaceful direct actions and occupations and have been heavily involved in the building and organisation of various actions and demos and have called a National demo on Thursday Dec 9^th the day that MP’s will vote in Parliament on the raising of tuition fees.

As you can imagine, it’s been a really busy time so I’m sorry for not replying to all the thousands of requests to speak and/or attend meetings etc.

Six of ULU’s colleges are in occupation and many more actions are planned in the run up to the National Demo. ULU has been really active with all sorts of thing.

Our newly formed London Student Assembly is attracting hundreds of students each Sunday. We submit and pass motions, decide democratically what actions to take next and basically use these assemblies to coordinate our actions to ensure we have maximum unity and strength. The process was a bit painful to start with with the 1^st meeting taking over 3 hours! but we felt it was essential to make sure we are all singing off the same songsheet.

Yesterday we reconfirmed our support for a National Student Assembly sometime in early January. We will let you know more about this closer to the time.

Here’s a few more things that you can get involved in:

1) London Calling: National Demo on the day of the Fees Vote in Parliament.

Here’s a poster for Thursdays demo for you to print off and ut up or handout as flyers. I also have some available at ULU for those of you who don’t have a budget to do at your college.

http://ulucampaigner.wordpress.com/2010/12/05/london-calling-national-demo-against-tuition-fees/

It is imperative that we get as many people to ULU as possible in order to prevent more kettling and containments. If you are organising a meet up point at your campus please then bring it to ULU for 12 NOON.

...and I'm really please that NUS are now promoting this demo.

2) Please volunteer to be a Steward for the demo. Email campaigns@ulu.lon.ac.uk

3) Here also is the link to the Kings College (a ULU college) Petition that has already gathered 900 signatures in two days:http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41174/signatures.html

4) Don’t forget the ULU trip to Berlin for Holocaust Memorial Day. Book your flights and email campaigns@ulu.lon.ac.uk to let me know or call me to ask more details on 07850 177 637. See http://tinyurl.com/uluberlin for more details.

MP's Vote Against Fees Petition

In the coming week, the need to engage with the the wider public, the media and, most
importantly, the British Government, should lie at the very heart of
everything we do.

In this vein, a few of us at KCLSU have put forward a petition. In the
run-up to next week's vote, an intelligent poltical focus will prove
to be one of our greatest assets.

In it, we demand that MPs votes AGAINST the rise in tuition fees.

You can read it here: http://tinyurl.com/voteagainstfees

I would be extremely grateful if you could take the time to read what we have put forward and add your
signature if you agree with our sentiments. If you could also take a
few minutes to spread the word about this, then that would be
fantastic.

It is fair to say that we are sick of being branded lazy, apathetic
trouble-makers. A petition such as this provides a formal and academic
lobbying of our MPs. Our aim is to present this petition to Parliament
on Thursday and we need as many signatures as possible for this to
work. Tell your friends, family, dog - whoever. We need to get this
message out there.

Through this we can show them that we are not the uneducated, naive,
disaffected generation they would so readily have us be.

Thanks,

Natasha

Natasha Wynarczyk,

Editor-in-Chief of Roar,

VP Media and Engagement at KCLSU

Carnival of Resistance 24th Nov 2010 for National Day of Action

Nick Clegg talks to the hand

Daily Mail report and brilliant photos HERE.

The Guardian HERE

We were in the Financial Times, the Metro, on BBC News at 6 & 10pm then also the next day.

On Wednesday, what Nick Clegg intended to be a beautiful publicity stunt turned into a PR disaster when students

managed to grab the media attention. This photo I took inside 70 Whitehall demonstrates, perhaps, how scared the government are at the moment.

12 students from higher education and school students were invited to ‘discuss developing policy on the future of Higher Education Funding’ on the day that the coalition government released their report on education cuts.

He invited me, Clare Solomon, and 11 other education representatives, all of whom have colleges in Lib Dem constituencies, to what I can only describe as a sham consultation.

At 12.30 he released his report into the Brown Review. We were to meet him at 1pm. This gave us no time to download, digest and analyse the content therefore making a mockery of his attempt to pass off the meeting as though he had discussed it thoroughly with us.

Prior to the meeting we decided to write Hands Off Education on the palms of our hands a couple of us wore t-shirts with slogans on them underneath our regular clothes and managed to get past security with them concealed.

When Clegg invited the BBC to do a 3 minute panoramic shot of him looking cosy with students I was able to remove my shirt and tie and expose the message “Remember, Remember, the 3^rd of November: The Coalition Government Plot Blows Up Education’. His minders quickly tried to hide my striking t-shirt by surrounding me but I kept moving and waving my palm in the air.

This set the tone of the meeting, at which all students were very angry with Clegg, his bogus meeting and his defending of the massive cuts to education that he and his party are supporting.

Mr Clegg, along with all his Liberal Democrat colleagues, signed a pledge to vote against any rise in tuition fees. This Wednesday it was confirmed that the Deputy Prime Minister intends to break his promise and vote for fees to be trebled to £9,000 a year, despite having proposed their abolition at the general election and signing a pledge to “vote against any increase in fees.”

We demanded to know why the LibDems broke their manifesto promise of removing fees. Clegg said ‘you may live in a bubble but in the real world we have no alternative; what’s YOUR alternative then?’ he asked!! What a cheek. We told him to stop allowing companies like Vodaphone to dodge taxes, to halt the 55% pay increases for the bosses, to implement a progressive tax system across society, to stop funding war and Trident.

He said ‘that is complete nonsense’!!

When he tried to justify the loans scheme that poorer students will have to take to afford the fees one of the school students asked ‘are you saying that debt is acceptable?’

Elliot from Leeds Uni brought up the fact that Muslim students may not be able to take out loans because of the interest that is associated with the loans so large swathes of people will also not be able to afford the fees.

Elliot also pointed out that since education benefits the whole of society not just the individual who receives it (an educated society is more likely to vote, to have lower infant mortality, is more healthy etc etc) and that, therefore, it should not be the individual that pays. We need to push for progressive taxation across the whole of society so that the rich pay more tax and the poor less. This is the only fair way to fund the best education system.
We told him that we are committed to fighting both the cuts to education and to wider society and also against fees. We told him about the NUS & UCU demo; and we told him we will be hounding the LibDems wherever they go (like the EducCamp students in London have been doing to Vince Cable)

See you on November 10^th. Don’t forget the Big Demo and Breakfast at ULU from 8am, banner & placard making and student press conference at 10.15 all at ULU. Ask your coach to drop you at Mallet St.

Email campaigns@ulu.lon.ac.uk to book your breakfast. We have over 1,200 booked in so far so make sure you let me know asap.

see: http://ulucampaigner.wordpress.com

See more videos on this playlist: http://www.youtube.com/my_playlists?p=5A612FD02298763C

More news from Soas Steph in Copenhagen

Day 3: The Bella Center

the good news: no one from SOAS got arrested or badly hurt.
the bad news: there was a lot of police violence, tear gas, pepper spray and police batons used on everyone. The demonstration did not achieve its aim of getting into the Bella Centre, and the delegates from the NGOs who were planning to walk out to meet the demonstration were prevented by the police from getting out. HOWEVER the demonstrators did manage to carry out a peaceful People's Summit justoutside the Bella Center, a democratic-ish forum for all the
demonstrators from all over the world to get together to exchange ideas and get them heard. As I type this demonstrators have marched peacefully back to the city proper.

I did not take part in the demonstration but I did make it to the People's Summit. I spent most of the night in the kitchen of the school we are staying in helping to get breakfast ready for the 100- odd activists. This involved skipping at the nearby supermarket at 3AM for fruits and bread and making many many pots of coffee. The first few people were up at 5AM. The police showed up around 7AM, and searched people's bags as they left. On the whole, it is still early to come to any conclusions, but I like to think today's action was a success, and the police left people alone after awhile. People were fearing violence from the demonstrators, but almost all of it came from the police.

You can hear the People's assembly on
Indymedia.co.uk. This page has updates: http://indymedia.dk/action_timelines/16th-dec

Any member of the Green Group list can write to the whole list.
Simply send an email to soasgreengroup@lists.riseup.net
To unsubscribe, go to https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/soasgreengroup
and click on unsubcribe.
>

Iraq enquiry - Bush, Blair & Brown have blood on their hands

Loads of press swamped them as soon as we turned up.

Here's the CNN report: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/11/24/uk.iraq.inquiry/

Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1230507/Brown-MUST-face-Iraq-war-inquiry--agreed-finance-it.html

How many cops in the BNP?

I had this video entitled 'How many cops in the BBC?' originally-woops. Mind you, we could ask that question too no? I wondered why no one could find it so here it is again with corrected title...better late than never.



This video was filmed at the National Stop the War demo at which two or three shit heads (racists, fascists?) turned up and hurled abuse at Tony Benn calling him unpatriotic and worse (although I didnt hear exactly what was said other than the 'unpatriotic' coz I was a bit to far away to catch it. They refused to move so we chased them away. And, only a couple of days after the BNP leader appeared on Question Time these (and I think I am correct in saying theya re far right racists at least becasue they refused to deny it) they had the damn cheek, and confidence to come to an anti-war a demo of TENS OF THOUSANDS on their own and scream shit at us.

Anyway, this is why we ned to continue our No Platform position. Don't give these people a platform to legitimise thier fascist views.

(Why is my blog not allowing spaces between my paragraphs?)

LIVING WAGE FOR THE LIVING DEAD!!!

An AntiCapitalist Zombie Movie from Halloween from our comrades in Aotearoa. Still loving their creativity...

Soas students r amongst those blockading Carmel Agrexco

From Soas comrade Ola Shahbha and Abu Assad via email, text and http://www.Indymedia.org.uk


Carmel Agrexco blockaded for a second day, public protest tomorrow
Abu Assad | 07.11.2009 09:16 | Palestine

Demonstrate tomorrow, Sunday, outside the gates of Carmel Agrexco, the 50% Israeli state owned company responsible for exporting at least 60% of illegal settlement goods from the occupied West Bank.

Today activists from a coalition of Palestine solidarity groups have blockaded the company for the second day. The activists locked themselves to oil drums filled with concrete and positioned themselves to block the two access roads to the depot. Tomorrow we want the business closed again, maximising disruption to Agrexco at a key time, the start of the Israeli Avocado season.

We are calling for a mass demonstration starting tomorrow from 12pm; bring flags, banners, noise, and a strong desire to keep Israeli goods out of our supermarkets. The nearest train station is Hayes and Harlington, which is served from Paddington station. The 11.15 train from Paddington will arrive in time for the demonstration.

A link to the map of the site can be found here:

 http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&hs=iTE&q=agrexco%20hayes%20Swallowfield%20Way&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl
Abu Assad

Something inside so strong London Gay Men's Choir

10yrs since Soho nailbombs, Ian Baynham was viciously murdered in Trafalgar Sq last week in a homophobic attack.

Around 5-7,000 people attended this vigil called at short notice to protest at the attacks and to pay their respects. The air was both positive and political.

This beautiful song sung by the choir was beautifully placed and made the vigil feel very special. There was a lot of emotion; couples, lgbt or not, could all feel the emotion. I'm sure Ians family gained strength from the solidarity.

A two minute silence followed speeches by local figureheads and Ians family and friends, and a naming of all those murdered in homophobic attacks was read out.

Click the link below for the video I took.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPgjicK5He8

Sent from my iPhone

http://solomonsmindfield.net
http://twitter.com/solomonsmfield

University of Vienna occupied for Free Education

Since Oct.22nd thousands of students at the University of Vienna are occupying various lecture halls to protest against the increasing commercialisation [against the Bologna process] and for free and emancipatory public education!!

Please send messages of support to http://unibrennt.at/

...and forward this post as wide as possible.

I will translate some of the German soon.

"There are more than 2500 people in the main lecture hall (audimax) and around. there's food, music and political debate, and the clear will to continue the occupation and keep the new space that we have opened up for our self organization.


there is no central organization, and n permanent structure, but the degree of spontanous self organization is amazing. people that have never been involved in student political groups (or any other) are taking action and working their asses off, turning from more or less passively accepting their situation to being actors and organizers."


Facebook group:

Official blog: http://unibrennt.at/

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=163329887062&ref=mf

http://emancipating-education-for-all.org/content/academy-arts-vienna-occupied

[Posted with iBlogger from my iphone ]

Burn your TV licence. BBC shame on you

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbMBRTdolUM


Sent from my iPhone

http://solomonsmindfield.net
http://twitter.com/solomonsmfield

Bectu Union supports members refusing to work if/when BNP are on Question Time

free speech? why Nazi Nick Griffin should not be allowed on question time and protest date


Dear Everyone

Unite Against Fascism is not the only organisation which believes that the Nazis should not be allowed to appear on the BBCs flagship political discussion programme, Question time. The TV technicians' union has attacked the BBC's decision to invite BNP leader Nick Griffin on to Question Time and pledged to join a demonstration against the recording of the programme.

THE PROTEST WILL BE ON 22ND OCTOBER LATE AFTERNOON IN LONDON—DETAILS TO BE ANNOUNCED BUT BOOK TIME OFF NOW TO COME ALONG IF YOU CAN GET TO LONDON

Bectu said it would support any of its members who refused to work on the programme, which will be transmitted on October 22.General secretary Gerry Morrissey said: "We believe there should be no media coverage of the BNP and I have raised this issue with the director general, Mark Thompson.

"He said they have been invited on to the programme because they have won elections, but we strongly disagree.

"We will be arranging a demonstration and lobby outside the Question Time studios and we will be working with anti-fascist groups to ensure there is a significant turn out."

We know that it sounds bad to say we want to stop the views of someone from being aired--but you have to ask yourself are Nazis the same as others with whom you disagree? And the answer is no. they are not just people with offensive views. They are Nazis. And Nazis engage in mass murder when they get power. They also shut down every kind of democratic organisation in civil society.

The argument that they must be allowed to be on TV to expose them is mistaken for two reasons

Firstly: it is not necessary to have Hitler to speak in order to expose his views. Therefore it is not necessary for Nick Griffin and the Nazi BNP to be given air time on the state TV to expose them. We already know they are racist and fascist

Secondly: like Hitler, Griffin intends to use the platforms afforded in a democratic society to hide his true nature until it is too late. He won't be exposed on the BBC. He will wear a suit and lie. he will use parliament and the BBC and legal methods , distancing himself from the thugs who commit racist attacks up to the point when he feels strong enough, as Hitler did, to smash all of that and emerge as a dictator.

By then it will be too late.

Even now, when Nazis speak people die because the thugs gain confidence. Racist attacks increased when the BNP organised in east London and had their bookshop in south London. Stephen Lawrence died during a spate of racist attacks and he died not far from the BNP bookshop--his alleged killers later being found to read the BNP paper. David Copeland the nail bomber in London was a BNP security force member.

So.. nazis alone should not be given a platform--the muder of 6 million jews is not a matter for polite debate. if you wouldnt tolerate Hitler on the beeb.. LETS STOP NAZI NICK from getting the space to organise murder

Elane Heffernan
Cause Creator

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DSEi arms dealers dinner TONIGHT.

Meet them at the Dorchester Hotel, Park Lane, LONDON UK. 

 

Assemble outside 6pm!
 

Meet and greet the arms dealer scum who make their money from massacre, torture, rape, forced migration and environmental destruction wherever they go.

PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY

Netanyahu war criminal protest-more photos & videos soon

Today's protest called at less than 24 hours notice was lively, vibrant and determined. Mutiny TV was there recording protesters, police and general passers-by. Following the murder of Ian Tomlinson by police being caught on camera the police were clearly on their guard although some of them still acted like idiots.
I cant quite work out youtube channel for Mutiny TV but HERE is the link to Elly getting arrested. Originally they tried to charge her with 'unlawful protesting' which didnt hold any weight because we had permission to protest (I KNOW, having to get permission to protest is bad enough). They then charged her with obstructing the highway. She is to appear in court next week. Will keep you posted.


A little later on, after the protest had dispersed, loads of Israeli supporters turned up with Israel flags. The remaining protestors started up again. Anika, who you can see HERE, and her sister were also arrested. Not sure what their status is at the moment. We managed to get them all solicitors immediately.


Ian, who is visiting from China, came along to add his voice to the support for Palestinians. His video will be uploaded soon. As will a great interview with Rabbi Elgahan Beck.

More on all this soon. And if you are a wizz at Youtube/Ustream/Livestream/Qik etc please get in contact. Mutiny TV is looking for more people to jump on board.

It's a thin blue line-no, really, it really is

Egyptian TAX COLLECTORS lead the wave of militancy

The most unlikely of striking workers show that militancy should/could come from any quarter.

Egyptian TAX COLLECTORS rally for their Free Union. Previously in Egypt all unions were connected and organised by the State. Last year in a wave of occupations, strikes and protests the Tax Collectors won the right for a Free Union. But now this is under threat due to the Government awarding a commison to the State-backed union.

This from Arabawy, where you can get regular updates (his blog is linked at the bottom of mine under 'IST blogs' for easey finding)

Egypt’s property tax collectors are starting an open-ended strike on Tuesday, protesting the Finance Ministry’s decree by which a project for a social welfare fund was commissioned to the state-backed union instead of the independent union that enjoys the support of the majority of the ministry’s civil servants.

There are also many many links to other similar posts on his blog. Look for his automatic 'Bookmarks' on his blog or on his Delicious account.

The Mirror reports well on Joe Glenton

It's not often that I want to report what is being said in the red top Daily Mirror but I couldn't resist this one. The last line is great...

Why Joe Glenton should not be facing a court martial

By Paul Routledge 7/08/2009

If you’re a deskbound general continually demanding more men, more weapons and more money to subdue Afghanistan, you get endless air time, a peerage and a gold-plated pension.

If you’re a humble squaddie with service in theatre, whose doubts about the war are so serious you go Awol for two years, you face disgrace, a court martial and possibly jail.

Lance Corporal Joe Glenton, 27, of the Royal Logistic Corps, has been charged with desertion for refusing to return to Afghanistan, and faces extra charges for speaking out about a war he (and plenty of his mates) say is unwinnable.

When MoD top brass say the same thing it makes headlines, not a charge sheet.

Rarely has the class distinction between officers and men been so clearly defined.

Breaking news: Vestas workers re-enter factory site

No quite in the building yet. More news as soon as I get it

UPDATE: they have been forced back out again but are in fighting spirits.

They are all now building for the National Day of Action for this Wednesday.

See my post below for some of their suggestions.

Well done anjd solidarity from London and SOAS Occupiers