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Squatters in pub fight

November 20, 2009
SQUATTERS have set up home in a historic former pub and now want to highlight the plight of the dilapidated building.

Alan Woods: Ningún bombillo brillará, ninguna rueda girará, sin el permiso amable de los trabajadores del mundo.

Haiti Night + Why Black is the new Green
5.30pm
Saturday 21st November
Glasgow Social Centre
66/68 Osborne Street
Glasgow
G1 5QH

Twelve anti-vivisection campaigners today held a noisy and visual demo at the University of Bradford following the expose of animal abuse inside their laboratory.

Indymedia at 10 // Copenhagen troublemakers // Nuclear Power People // Sasquatch

Why the tar sands are important for anti-military campaigning

Health Departments are servants of the drug company pawns
of the CDC, of the meat and dairy industries, of landlords. They are undemocratic, exceed by
many times their mandated powers.

"In an unprecedented defeat for the Federal Reserve, an amendment to audit the multi-trillion dollar institution was approved by the House Finance Committee with an overwhelming and bipartisan 43-26 vote on Thursday afternoon despite harried last-minute lobbying from top Fed officials and the surprise opposition of Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who had previously been a supporter."

Clarion call from "The Spirit of Christmas"

November 12, 2009

Dan Viesnik explains why CAAT supporters dress up for the Spirit of Christmas and the message they are bringing to visitors.

Members of London Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT), East London Against the Arms Fair (ELAAF), the London Catholic Worker and Trident Ploughshares met visitors outside the Spirit of Christmas Fair at London's Olympia, on 7 November 2009

When the UK steps up its attacks on asylum seekers, South Yorkshire says No. Join our demonstration in Sheffield on Saturday 28th at 11am outside Sheffield Town Hall.

At today's NUJ's policy-making annual delegate meeting (ADM) in Southport, a motion supporting Indymedia was carried with nobody speaking against it.

Media Freedon - Indymedia Support - Motion 12

Police seizure of a UK Indymedia server in Manchester, has prompted the ADM to call for better legal safeguards for all online content. In Motion 12, the NEC has been instructed to provide support for Indymedia through members working with the site. Charley Allan of the Morning Star said: “They need our help – they’re under attack. Indymedia are vulnerable to the police.”

 http://www.nujadm.org.uk
 http://www.nuj.org.uk

This is the call for Revolutionary Solidarity with our Swedish anarchist comrade Jonatan and for all fighting prisoners! Please spread it and publish it on your websites, blogs and lists.
Attack!

Trident Ploughshares Press Release

20 November 2009 - For immediate release

Anti-nuclear activists held a banner which read "Disarm the Seas" on the Rhu Spit as the first nuclear-powered Astute Class submarine sailed through the Rhu narrows on the west coast of Scotland at 10:45am this morning (20 November, 2009). Rainbow peace flags and a colourful CND banner fluttered in a brisk wind to greet the crew of HMS Astute, who stood at attention on the deck of the brand new hunter-killer submarine as it sailed into Faslane Naval Base for the first time. The demonstration was organized by Helensburgh CND and Trident Ploughshares.

Sat 28th Nov - Tues 1st Dec
RESIST new coal! Stop climate chaos!

With signs that the eviction may happen any minute, Mainshill Solidarity Camp need all the support they can get (see  http://coalactionscotland.noflag.org.uk for current details).

George Monbiot's latest article on peak oil is introduced thus: "It’s probably too late to prepare for peak oil, but we can at least try to salvage food production."

Of course governments are doing nothing to transition to the production of food without fossil fuels -- what little is happening is coming from the grass roots, see for example the Soil Associations pages on community supported agriculture:

 http://www.soilassociation.org/Takeaction/Getinvolvedlocally/Communitysupportedagriculture/tabid/201/Default.aspx

The following article was published in the corporate media and the role that the tiny number of voices like that of George Monbiot play in the bigger picture is considered in the latest Medialens alert:

A Comparative Review of Flat Earth News and Newspeak
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/sheffield/2009/11/442004.html

For more background on peak oil and food and what it means, essentially the end of industrial civizilation, listen to this talk by Nafeez Ahmed from last year:

Food Crisis & Peak Oil
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/sheffield/2008/11/413658.html

The fall of sycophants / call to arms !

Businesses in the centre of Manchester must wish it could be Christmas every day. Or to be more precise, that the Christmas shopping period came more frequently. They got an early present of their own this week, when the Council proudly announced it will be providing city-centre shops with a free marketing campaign worth £600,000.

* 2010 Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar - on the theme of Indigenous Resistance *

* 42 Gorgeous Full Colour pages of art and writings by prisoners and supporters *

* See  http://www.certaindays.org/ for full details and all artwork *

* Order from:  http://www.natterjackpress.co.uk/magazines/certain-days-calendar.php *

Jonathan Cook has been covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from Nazareth, Israel, as a freelance reporter for the past eight years. Before that he was a staff journalist at the Guardian and Observer newspapers. His latest books on the conflict are ‘Israel and the Clash of Civilisations’ (Pluto, 2008) and ‘Disappearing Palestine’ (Zed, 2008). His website is www.jkcook.net

In the two-part Guest Media Alert that follows, Cook attempts the truly Herculean task of dissecting and comparing the key arguments in Nick Davies’s book ‘Flat Earth News’ and our own recently published ‘Newspeak in the 21st Century.’ The results are enthralling but demanding - even hardened media analysts will require a plentiful supply of tea and biscuits throughout.

Please do not underestimate the unique nature of the analysis Cook is offering. While Davies’s book was discussed, reviewed, and applauded, far and wide in both print and broadcast media, our own book (published in September) has so far limped to just two, largely dismissive, reviews in mainstream outlets, in the Guardian and Times Higher Education (THE), totalling exactly 1,000 words. Our previous book, Guardians of Power (2006), has never been mentioned, let alone reviewed, in any mainstream national UK newspaper.

The truth is that dissident media analyses are consistently ignored in this way - it is not just us. And so Cook’s comparison of Davies’s mainstream view of the media with an analysis based on Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s “propaganda model of media control” is a vanishingly rare event. As ever, Cook’s experience as a professional journalist adds a fascinating additional dimension to his analysis.

Cook produced this mega-review - nearly 10,000 words of it - completely free of charge. It is an extraordinary act of generosity from a fine and thoughtful journalist. We would like to express our sincere thanks to him. If you would like to thank him or otherwise comment, you can write to him here:  mail@jkcook.net