Edinburgh Anarchists

Friday 12 noon, PF’s office on Chambers Street.

PROTEST THIS FRIDAY OUTSIDE CROWN OFFICE AND PROCURATOR FISCAL ON CHAMBERS STREET. SOLIDARITY IS OUR WEAPON!

(THIS HAS BEEN CALLED ON VERY SHORT NOTICE, SO PLEASE HELP SPREAD THE WORD QUICKLY AND WIDELY)
In solidarity with the protest outside the Department of public prosecution going on in London called by various people including the Tomlinson family.

Ian Tomlinson was killed by police action at the G20 and not even any charges brought. The utter disgust at what has happened by the general public has been encouraging and so to show support towards Ian’s family and the complete hatred and contempt we have for the legal system that works in the favour of them and not us – we have decided to call for demo outside the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal in Solidarity.

If you work, try and …get half a day off like many of us are doing. Most importantly spread the word to all your friends and family.

Everyone to the streets! Never forget Never forgive

We had this posted to us, makes sense to repost it here now:

In St Andrews, we say “Nae Tae G20!

No to G20 neo-liberalism! No to economic exploitation! No to environmental destruction!

Yes to sustainability, community cooperation and peoples’ representation!
Yes to liberation, solidarity, equality, human rights and peace!
Yes to revolution!

On the first weekend in November, the financial leaders of the world’s twenty richest countries will be hosting closed door meetings in order to decide how our world should be run. The Group of Twenty (G20) finance ministers have chosen to host these meetings in the town of St Andrews, Scotland, and in response groups of residents and students have paved the way to make our voices heard.

We the residents and students of this community are coming into the streets to say loud and clear, “The G20 is not welcome in our town,” or as the Scots say, “Nae tae G-20!” We are joining together to say that the neo-liberal development, trade and environmental policies furthered by the G20 will not solve the global financial crisis, not solve the global ecological crisis and do not address the ever-increasing wealth gap. We are resisting the G20 because it is a mechanism of the global ruling elite that seeks to enrich the “1st world” at the expense of increasing poverty for the “underdeveloped” and “developing” world.

There are a number of organizations making exciting plans in St. Andrews during the weekend of the G20 meeting, and while Put People First (g20standrews.org) has organized an educational event, we have set our sights on getting people into the streets to show our collective dissent. To this end we have called for two days of festive actions:

- Friday, November 6, 2009, 11:00am, join us for a protest rally at the center of town fountain, located near the intersection of Market Street and College Street.

- Saturday, November 7, 2009, 1:30pm, join us for a march, also starting at the fountain at the center of town. The march will be gathering at 1:30pm and departing by 2:00pm.

In addition to these actions, groups are encouraged to organize locally in their communities, and come to St Andrews to share their creative resistance with us during these two days. We will do our best to support your action if you require some assistance.

This action has been endorsed locally by Stop the War, the Scottish Socialist Party, numerous St Andrews University student societies, and assorted Scottish workers unions.

Please direct all questions, endorsements, press inquiries and hate mail to NaeTaeG20@gmail.com and for more information as it arises visit: http://naetaeg20.wordpress.com/

(From here)

Four months ago it was a 15-year-old schoolboy in Greece – today it’s a 47-year-old newspaper seller in the UK.

Enough with the state murders!

Whether civilians’ deaths are caused because of “heart attacks” (most likely due to police terror) or head injuries (due to police brutality) or “misfires” (due to police stupidity), we say we have had Enough!

Enough! Of your lies in attempting to cover up your mistakes
Enough! Of your “Robocop” attitude
Enough! Of your “to serve and protect” fake masks
Enough! Of you being the guard dogs of the privileged elite

We say Enough! and we are going to say it out loud so everyone can hear us.

Saturday 11th of April at 1:30pm in Bristo Square (Edinburgh)

Bring friends, banners, candles and something to make noise with (drums, whistles etc.)

You might also want to see the video footage of the police assaulting Ian Tomlinson, and read the articles by Glasgow Anarchists (“This is not an appeal to calm“) and Bristle (“Are these FIT officers?“, “Alexis, Ian, Athens, London, wherever you go a cop is a cop” and “G20 police medics: creating demand“).

See you Saturday.

…And so they killed someone. Details are sketchy but a man, in his 30s collapsed and died inside a police kettle. The police have started to spin this in a number of ways:

• release information too late for today’s papers
• they are “investigating” but seem to already know he died of “natural causes”
• no information about the man’s condition, but we are expected to gasp in astonishment at the claim that folk were chucking bottles at the police medics while they apparently were treating him.
• What next? Probably release of the least flattering photo they can find of the guy, stories about the number of demonstrations he’d been on. It’s legal to slander the dead, as Jean Charles de Menezes’ family found out.

Here’s something about those saintly police medics, reported on the London IMC timeline long before this was known (emph. added):

13.31 - G20 Meltdown: Clashes on Threadneedle St, caused by police cordon maintained for no apparent reason, Seior officers declined to give reasons for cordon when asked, police medics seen reaching over lines of colleges to beat protesters.

Without pictures, I think it’s reasonable to assume that on a quick glance police medics treating a prone body look a lot like police thugs beating a prone body, no?

4 hours after this man died, the police were merrily carrying on with their Operation Glencoe (read about the famous massacre at wikipedia). Interesting name. Having allowed the climate camp group to set up, they waited until nightfall) and for the famous 24 hour rolling news coverage to roll over and fall asleep) before wading into the camp and kicking fuck out of people. (Who, as if it matters, were steadfastly refusing to retaliate and had taken no action you could construe as violent, or any property destruction) Having smashed the camp, people were pursued into the night.

Now, if that wasn’t the Met’s plan from the offing, I’d love to hear their justification for calling this, “Operation Glencoe”

Further to what I said about the pointlessness of 24 hour news. Our state broadcaster is covering the real issues:

1940 Jamie Oliver is preparing tonight’s meal despite the fact that his wife, Jools, is due to give birth to their third child imminently. For security reasons, the dad-to-be will have to hand over his mobile phone when he enters 10 Downing Street. But officials have promised to keep him informed should Jools go into labour.

1936 While the leaders talk shop over dinner, their spouses will sit with stars of sport, business and the arts. US first lady Michelle Obama will be seated between Harry Potter author JK Rowling and Olympic gold medallist Dame Kelly Holmes.

1930 The G20 leaders are in for a feast tonight. Chef Jamie Oliver is preparing a meal of Welsh lamb, Jersey Royal new potatoes and asparagus. Vegetarian heads of government can choose potato dumplings instead.

Meanwhile, the filth are moving in on the Climate Camp, at Bishopgate and all day separate from the Bank of England stuff, trying to start a fight:

Between 10 and 30 arrests at climate camp as people attempt to non-violently prevent the police from destroying sections of the camp. Bikes thrown around, tents smashed up, several injuries reported.

Having watched this unfold on the news, the journalists are being played like a fucking fiddle by the cops. Temporary lulls in their numbers just as embedded Guardian journalists stop twittering and TV hacks prepare for the 6 o’clock bulletins. While the news plays, so do the pigs, knocking out teeth and hippie girls. Now the night shift have started, sharing their vol-au-vents with St. Obama

By the time 10 o’clock rolls around, expect much Hello! style blather and little about the heat coming down on those on the street.

Ahh the weird parallel universe of rolling news. Just watched 5 minutes of footage of a guy with blood streaming down his head, shouting at police. And the guy from the BBC blandly carries on his voiceover, only commenting when there’s scuffling at the police line, chatting on to the chief cop as he sets up his narrative of, “these are the [bad] protesters that haven’t spoke to us, they aren’t like the others, they’re fine.” Clearly setting the scene for them to put the boot in later on.

Also: that’s the biggest-looking crowd of 3000 I’ve ever seen….

I just want to talk about lawfulness of this £50 overdraft fee....

Apparently there’s some business going on in London this week. Newspapers are calling it “unprecedented”, but repeating the same mixture of police lies and credulous journalism we were subject to here around the G8 in 2005.

The IMC UK topic page is here. You could also try Twitter, if it doesn’t break and you have the patience.

It’s becoming a bit of a truism that if you want sense about political issues, the ones that effect your day-to-day life, the last place you should look is the Politics section of any given newspaper. Those pages are given over to adverts for various political parties, as surely as the motoring pages are for advertising brands of car.

Proving this further, snarky Guardian TV critic Charlie Brooker has turned his lip up at politicians’ contempt for non-politicians this morning and it’s deliciously foul.

On Jack Straw, “Having pissed in the public’s face, Straw went on to shake the final drips down its nose.”

On politicians’ hypocrisy: “Ministers wouldn’t speak frankly at cabinet meetings if they felt their discussions would be subjected to the sort of scrutiny that, say, our every waking move is.”

And getting to the rotten core of the matter:

It’s all over. The politicians have finally shut us out of their game for good and we have nowhere left to turn. We’re not part of their world any more. We don’t even speak the same language. We’re the ants in their garden. The bacteria in their stools. They have nothing but contempt for us. They snivel and lie and duck questions on torture – on torture, for Christ’s sake – while demanding we respect their authority. They monitor our every belch and fart, and insist it’s all for our own good.

Straw wrote, “If people were angels there would be no need for government . . . But sadly people are not all angels.” That rather makes it sound as though he believes politicians aren’t mere people. Maybe they’re the gods of Olympus. Maybe that’s why they’re in charge.

I love it when my belief that, at core, most people are anarchists is confirmed by anarchist arguments turning up in unexpected places. People are not angels or saints, that’s why they should not wield power over people. This is adding to a picture of people not-really-that-turned-off  by attempted police scaremongering about a supposed “Summer of Rage” beginning with anti-G20 protests in London.