2009-05-05

May 5th 2009 L'Aquila -- Strasbourg/ Baden-Baden -- London

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Against the unsustainable G8 university

On the 17th 18th and 19th of May an important event, the G8 University Summit, will be held in Italy, in the city of Turin

sponsored by the CRUI (Conference of Chancellors of Italian Universities), to whom will participate the chancellors and presidents of the universities of the member states of the G8, together with those of many other countries around the world.The object of the meeting is to propose itself as a direct referring point for the G8 of the heads of State and Government who will meet in the island of Sardinia (Italy) next summer.

More: http://www.edu-factory.org/edu15/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=157:against-the-unsustainable-g8-university-summit&catid=34:struggles&Itemid=53

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Reclaim the heights. Bury the G8!

Post Abruzzo sustainable relief by The Diggers 2.0.

APPEAL TO THE GLOBAL MULTITUDES

Seize this chance to build sustainable autonomous community structures
Capital engineers destruction and circulates myths of future prosperity. Its crisis should be met with the shock and awe of the full energies of the multitude.

Break your backs creating a post-industrial, post-capitalist commons.
A call to the global multitude to descend upon Abruzzo for the 7-11th July and help rebuild it in the image of the future!
SWARM at radicaleyes.it

We’ve negotiated, we’ve demanded, we’ve blockaded, we’ve gone global, we’ve tried being glocal. We’ve smashed and been mashed. Now it’s time to build the commons – our future.

More: http://www.radicaleyes.it

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re- wild re-cycle caravan

animalised brains full of holes

a chaotic diy bike caravan is leaving on the 30th of april
travelling from lappersfort (brugges) belgium
to the g8 in italy

More: http://www.indymedia.org/en/2009/04/922812.shtml

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Syracuse G8 on Environment

Against the destruction of the environment
Class struggle and people's self-management

Will our heroes, the great statesmen gathered at the G8 meeting, succeed in managing to conciliate profit and environmental protection?

Since the days of the first industrial revolution, there have been thousands of ecological disasters caused due to the thirst for profit.

True, in recent years, a greater sensitivity in citizens of the Western countries to environmental matters has forced industries to pay more attention to ecological matters. Indeed, by means of the perverse cycle of pollute/de-pollute, Capital has managed to find new ways to create profit, at everyone's cost. New ecological businesses are started in order to clean up particular territories which other businesses have polluted, and the percentage represented by this new business of the GDPs of various countries is growing by the year. So much so, in fact, that it is almost obligatory now to pollute so as not to lose out on this particular slice of the production cake. It is like a small-scale reproduction of the great capitalist circus - build and destroy, pollute and clean up.

More: http://www.fdca.it/fdcaen/environment/g8syracuse.htm

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Silvio Berlusconi wants G8 to be in earthquake-stricken city of L'Aquila

Aftershocks are still rippling through the region, and streets are strewn with the rubble of fallen buildings, but Silvio Berlusconi is undaunted. Yesterday, he unveiled an unlikely plan to switch one of the most exacting, high-profile global summits of the year to the ruins of L'Aquila, the earthquake-stricken city in central Italy still struggling to cope with the privations of its own inhabitants.

"What venue could be more appropriate?" Berlusconi asked yesterday after deciding to move this summer's G8 summit from the Mediterranean island of La Maddalena to the city devastated by the 6 April quake which killed 295 people.

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/24/silvio-berlusconi-g8-laquila

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"Press Special Forces"

BERLIN/BADEN-BADEN (GFP report) - The reporting on the NATO summit at the beginning of April was controlled centrally, and coordinated by arrangement with the agencies of repression of the state, as evidenced by statements by staff of the Südwestfunk (SWR) [the state broadcasting corporation in Baden-Württemberg]. According to this, the declared objective was to make the "official images" the "dominant images". The journalists accredited with NATO were prepared for their job by a trained war reporter, in close collaboration with the Baden-Württemberg police. The man in charge runs a private "security" company which trains the managers of German firms for secondment to war zones, and, he himself says, includes members of "police and military special units" among his trainers. He recently proposed that a "Special Forces Command" of government-paid press spokesmen be deployed in "cases of crises", such as terrorist attacks, which the authorities did not preclude on the occasion of the NATO summit.

More: http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/de/fulltext/57514

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Strasbourg protests: down the memory hole?

For reasons that perhaps are not entirely inexplicable, the demonstration against NATO last Saturday has been all but ignored by the bourgeois press. Over 30,000 activists demonstrating on the city of Strasbourg has been reduced to the activities of tens of Black Block supporters. Unfortunately it has also somewhat slipped through the lefty-media as well, (barring Socialist Worker). This is a shame as throughout the weekend there were clearly considerable steps forward to building international solidarity with other anti-capitalist/socialist organisations throughout Europe, but there were a lot of hard lessons learnt as well.

More: http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/04/strasbourg-protests-down-memory-hole.html

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After Strasbourg: On dealing with violence in one's own ranks

“The more violence, the less revolution,” Bart de Ligt wrote in The Conquest of Violence in 1936. If we accept this, then there was very little revolution in Strasbourg, despite all the romantic revolutionary rhetoric from certain groupings. I put this first in order to make it clear that this is a critique from a revolutionary perspective, and not a criticism of violence from a Green or Left-Party state-reformist point of view which accepts the state's monopoly on the use of force.

But as grass-roots revolutionaries, as nonviolent anarchists, we must also deal with violence from the ranks of social movements, for this violence is counterproductive from our perspective on revolution.

More: http://wri-irg.org/node/7270

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Discussion following my report "NATO Demo in Strasbourg ends in disarray..."

Dear Friends,

I am forwarding some of the comments I received following the eye-witness report that I wrote on April 5th, the day after the demonstration in Strasbourg. (“NATO Demo in Strasbourg ends in disarray following attacks by ‘hooligans’ and police”
http://www.gipfelsoli.org/Home/Strasbourg_Baden-Baden_2009/NATO_2009_english/6706.html)

The comments I received suggest that we ought to consider analyzing what happened in Strasbourg within an international and historical framework. For a more detailed and reflective report on Strasbourg that raises some of the same issues, see “Ingredients for a Disaster: NATO, Strasbourg and the Black Block” by Diana Johnstone (http://www.counterpunch.org/johnstone04072009.html). Maybe she, also, has received some interesting comments?

More: http://www.gipfelsoli.org/Home/Strasbourg_Baden-Baden_2009/NATO_2009_english/6828.html

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Riot police taught to treat the public 'as their enemy', former chief claims

Riot police are taught to treat the public as their “enemy” and regard every situation as a “threat”, former police chiefs will tell a top-level inquiry into the G20 protests.

By Richard Edwards, Crime Correspondent

David Gilbertson, a retired Scotland Yard commander and assistant inspector of constabulary, said that the “defensive” approach once central to British policing has “morphed into a faux US-style operation” where officers wear military-looking uniforms and used batons and Taser stun guns to clamp down on perceived dissent.

More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5188222/Riot-police-taught-to-treat-the-public-as-their-enemy-former-chief-claims.html

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I Predict A Riot: Sky Trains With The TSG

Hidden away on the Thames Estuary in Kent is a small town. Mobs of men and women, their faces hidden with balaclavas, roam the streets and fight pitched battles with police.

Drawing them into alleyways, they pelt officers with bricks and petrol bombs which explode with an orange 'crump' and blacken the sky with smoke.

But these battles aren't real and nor is the town.

This is the Met Police Public Order training facility, where street riots are simulated to provide training to Territorial Support Group (TSG) officers.

More: http://news.sky.com