as the SWP/GR ARE ALSO TRADE UNIONISTS AND TRADITIONAL PROTESTERS, WILL THey be marching with themselves. 'GUY Taylor, meet Guy Taylor', the mind boggles. Seriously tho, thye have created a situation where a swp front(GR) with many of the same members who would be marching as SWP members in the demo can now claim to be the anti-capitalist movement, (a much broader group than they claim), joining with the traditional demo and claiming 'unity with workers', confused you should be!


anyway, Here's to a peaceful Mayday, wherever you are...

The spc.org site is just one of many mirrors of the Ourmayday (London) site. It is now slightly out of date and a more up to date site can be found via:

 http://www.ourmayday.org/uk/

Also another unofficial static mirror of Ourmayday (London) site is maintained at:

 http://ourmayday.org/london/ourmayday/

that is being updated too but maybe slightly out of sync, having extra info or lack a little info.

Although if you are checking out IMC UK you will probably see updates before they hit:

 http://www.ourmayday.org/london/ourmayday/news.html

or

 http://www.ourmayday.org.uk/news.html

The copies of Ourmayday (London) website hosted on ourmayday.org are unofficial in that website access is not directly under control of the London Mayday Collective.

For Mayday elsewhere try:

 http://ourmayday.org/links.htm

Don't see what you want there then get in touch.

As far as spc.org charging £25 a month you can get webspace (with no limits on bandwidth also) for cheaper elsewhere, There have been many offers to do this for free from around the world. I guess it must come with lots added value, if it goes for £100 a month. Or if it is art you can charge more....

What on earth is the Evening Standard up to with this internet angle?

I mean what's wrong with hosting a protest site?

Hundreds of commercial hosting companies do this. It's all very odd to make a headline of a full page article about mayday focus on the website hosts.

It strikes me as a non-story really. But the preference given to it and the amount of copy devoted to it does concern me.

The text seems to have come from an article that was being written a couple of weeks ago by a freelance journalist called Ian Gomeche (sp?) - he's a freelance who has written for the times and s times quite a bit in the past -he wrote quite a lot last year about mayday (and othwer protest stuff). He has a habit of rubbing people up the wrong way with misquotes and a crazy style of jeuvenille 'investigative' journalism.

It appears he couldn't place his own article this year, and so passed (sold, one assumes) his research to the Evening Standard. His article was concentrating on the web hosting of the ourmayday.org.uk website - he had also been hasseling the corporate company who was looking after the domain name - apparently phoning up late night support staff and demanding to know why the corp company was hosting a domain for an anti-capitalist company, as well as demanding an answer from the company CEO...

I mean what's that all about eh? just strange.

I think the comments from the arts board and from the guy james stevens are spot on - so what is the Evening Standard trying to suggest? I wonder if the writers or the standard think that companies or organisations should not be allowed to host protest websites or deal with domain names used by protests or campaigns?

I think they owe us all an explanation.



The articles are at:

Arts Council aides May Day demo
by Nigel Rosser and Patrick Sawer
 http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/news/story.html?in_review_id=568453&in_review_text_id=535905

Eton May Day boy back for more
by Adam Blenford
 http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/news/story.html?in_review_id=568480&in_review_text_id=535932

May Day protest flashpoints
 http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/news/story.html?in_review_id=568456&in_review_text_id=535908

the buggers did not give me a by-line.

rats .


they have promised me lots of dosh though.

hello team as gus on 'drop the dead donkey' vwould say (note 'unisys operator' in the credits . unisys what ? not a 2200 mainframe surely? - wot i used to sell and work on when i was there . anyway, i don't know the person credited

everyone meet dean 'spyder' - daft name , daft guy - bell of rcs plc a crappy printing company in retford near nottingham . bell really hates my guts and posts lots of libellous rubbish about me all over the net and sends me loads of hate mail (like today's offering included below).

bell was a key organiser of the mayday riots last year but he is being very coy about revealing what he is orgainsing for this year's mayhem. we will have to wait and see.

when bell is not organising anarchist 'stunts' he likes to get utterly blasted in amsterdam dope cafes and then write about the experience all over the net . as if anyone would be in the slightest bit interested in a druggies drugging - except perhaps his mark thomas mailing list chums (group leader one steve kennedy of demon internet as i continually remind everyone.)

also say hello everyone to new listee william allan, the useless chairman of thus plc , the owners of demon. allan is so ineffective that he can't even control one rogue employee - - to whit kennedy. so what possible chance had he got of running a big
multinational as thus is attempting to be? no wonder cliff stanford of redbus who founded demon and then sold it to those thus idiots for 66m pounds said to me: 'yes i know kennedy. it is sad what is going on there now'.

pity that thus plc divested scottish power as i wanted to do a story about how little old scottish ladies are struggling on their state pensions to pay their electricity bills for their one bar electric fires in their bleak grotty gorballs high rises so that demon can pay kennedy zillions to do f all all day except trash peoples' lives e.g. mine and run his tawdry mark thomas mailing list full of disaffected self confessed heroin and/or other drugs addicted anarchistic layabouts including the uneducated mohecaned overgrown punk rocker mr spyder bell. (surely mohecans are very passe now? )

i want everyone on the list in london (wake up at the back francis!) to try and find a copy of the paper for me as i forgot about it and didn't get harvey to go out and buy one as i got him to do with the chess babe story .she has stopped emailing me . she does not love anymore . ahhh . i wonder why . might be something to do with nme calling her father a crook i suppose ? . the standard does not have the pics o their site just the text.

the guys on the standard desk have told me that different editions of the paper used different pics but generally it was a full page splash including thast eton yobbo who destroyed a mcdonalds on mayday the year before last when they dug up parliament and gave the churchill stature a turf mohecan haircut .. ahhh . we might have a prime suspect amonsgst us then! so that should earn me good cash. they did not use the stuff at all so we can do a follow up on that . we believe the us embassy is going to be targeted which would makke perfect sense as they are all trying to reinvent themseves as anti war type after s11.

talking of the us embassy, i must talk to them again about what i know about the idiot who put a price of 2000 pounds on bush's head in his 'new stateman' piece and then wondered why the secret service were suddenly very interested in the stupid w****r. i refer, of course, to the above mentioned mr mark 'john' thomas i.e. mr p***k face

obquote 1: 'kennedy lieutenant and thug mike bayliss ,MFI superstar (he calls himself a designer so how come he works in tacky mfi then - not exactly conran associates is it? ) ( btw conran's have build a swish restaurant complex next to eugene's pad in narylebone ) said 'i will not talk to a scottish nutcase ' . me: 'i resent that , i am NOT a scottish mutcase...... i'm an english nutcase'

the big writing is kule. i can't work out how to stop the crappy aol mail client doing this.

ian

obquote 2 : 'hello , this is bridget jones , wanton sex goddess .... oh hello mum' - bridget everitt's diary . apropos nothing at all except i like the quote

ian

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

evening standard 29th april 2002.

Arts Council aides May Day demo

by Nigel Rosser and Patrick Sawer Anarchist leaders plotting the May Day demonstrations across London are organising their protests with the help of an Arts Council grant. They are planning a timetable for mayhem on an internet site hosted by a company that has received £43,000 of taxpayers' money in the past two years. The site, hosted by Greenwich internet arts organisation spc.org, identifies a number of places where demonstrations are expected to start on May Day. In the past seven days alone, agitators have accessed the site more than 10,000 times. As well as providing a timetable and location of demonstrations designed to stretch police resources across the capital, the anarchists also advertise a workshop for squatters on how to: siphon electricity from the mains; make DIY body armour; and avoid arrest by police. However, a spokeswoman for the London Arts Board - the regional body of the Arts Council that awarded spc.org £21,500 last year - said: "The passing of information is not incitement to violence. One of the ways spc serves individuals is to provide an opportunity for freedom of discourse without censorship. "The site doesn't incite violence and we wouldn't support anything that did. One of the ways artists have developed over the years is through free and frank discourse." Asked what artistic merit could be found in the site's plans to bring London to a standstill on 1 May, London Arts said: "Mayday celebrates an ancient cultural festival and arguably that is an artistic event." Nigel Pittam, Executive Director of London Arts, said: "London Arts refutes any suggestion that it supports organisations that promote or incite public disorder." This year's May Day demonstration is being orchestrated by protest group the Wombles - White Overall Movement Building Liberation through Effective Struggle. Their members wear padded white overalls to break through police lines in imitation of Italian anarchist group Ya Basta!, which took part in demonstrations at last year's G8 summit of world leaders in Genoa. These ended in violence and the killing of one protester by police. Although spc.org chiefs say groups wishing to be hosted on the internet should pay them £100 a month, one of the leaders of the Wombles, identified only as Sara, pays just £25 a month to place their plans on the internet. Anarchist leaders routinely disseminate their plans for demonstrations on the internet in the run up to May Day, which has become a showpiece for often violent anti-globalisation protests. Last year agitators used the internet to identify a number of sites for protests around London based on the Monopoly board but were foiled in their attempts to bring chaos to London when police corralled the vast majority of demonstrators in Oxford Circus for eight hours. The demonstration led to 65 arrests and cost around £20 million in lost business, police pay and extra security. In 2000, the Guerrilla Gardening website attracted thousands of people to Parliament Square and Whitehall. The result was tens of thousands of pounds worth of damage - the Whitehall branch of McDonalds was destroyed and a number of statues, including that of Winston Churchill, were defaced - and 97 arrests. Internet designer James Stevens, 39, set up spc.org. Mr Stevens said: "It is not out of the ordinary for us to host stuff like this. It just encourages people to look at the issues and participate in a positive way. I think it calms the waters and is a quite appropriate thing for us to be doing." Leaders of the May Day demonstration are planning a mass medieval football match along Oxford Street and the picketing of Horseferry Road magistrates court, where seven members of the Wombles will be on trial following alleged public order offences committed last October. Anarchist leaders admit they expect violence. At a meeting in Conway Hall in central London - led by 24-year-old Womble chief Allessio Lunghi - one speaker said: "We have a healthy disrespect for property. We can't be responsible for what individuals do on the day." However, the largest element of Wednesday's protests is likely to be a huge peaceful demonstration by trade unionists and anti-capitalists from Clerkenwell Green to Trafalgar Square, which could attract as many as 10,000 people. The socialist umbrella group Globalise Resistance will for the first time march side by side with trade union members angry at planned privatisation of public services and job cuts. Also for the first time the march, backed by the TUC, will be allowed to enter Trafalgar Square while Parliament is in session. Organisers from the London Mayday Organising Committee hope the weight of numbers on the march will swamp any elements looking for trouble. Guy Taylor, of Globalise Resistance, said: "We are all very excited about marching with the trades unions. " It makes sense really, because we are both anticapitalists and, together, we are a powerful force to be reckoned with. There is a lot of dissatisfaction among the public and workers at the moment over privatisation, terrible public services, thousands of redundancies and the prospect of a war with Iraq. "We think this will bring people out to protest in record numbers. "We believe that unity with trade unions is more effective and can do more to damage corporations than smashing shop windows." Roger Sutton, secretary of the London Mayday Organising Committee said there had never been trouble on the trade union march in the past and he did not expect any this year. The organisers are hoping the official march and rally will be swelled by thousands of angry members of the National Union of Teachers, the RMT rail union and the Communication Workers Union, all of whom are involved in disputes over pay, redundancies and privatisation.
Email this article to a friend © Associated Newspapers Ltd., 29 April 2002 Terms and Conditions



"Wombles" on trial over attack
Seven members of an anarchist group calling itself the "Wombles" have gone on trial accused of attacking police in central London.The Wombles - named after the children's book characters - denied charges of assaulting a policeman, threatening behaviour, being drunk and disorderly, and criminal damage, when they appeared at Horseferry Road Magistrates' Court.None of the defendants wore their Womble suits in court.
Email this article to a friend © Associated Newspapers Ltd., 29 April 2002
Terms and Conditions
This Is London




This Is London

Original Message in English:







ian ian ian ian ian.

what are we going to do with you?

a brief explanation for the hard of understanding.

i started work for the company i am with nearly 10 year ago , at the time
they were a small family concern and i was running a little a4 press in a
bungalow bedroom about 10 foot square.
now the company has 2 million pound presses , a workforce of around 60 and a
customer database of well over 25 000 clients.
i run a six colour press which is normally run by one person with two
assistants , i also do it for around 35% less per hour than the industry
standard.
do you really think it matters what my hair looks like you silly little man?

when i started work for this company i had dreadlocks half way down my back.
within the first year there my boss did a rant about the evils of nicotine
with a footnote that he thought they should legalise cannabis as it was
harmful in comparisson to nicotine and alcohol , both of which he abstains
from.

so....
when you phone up and he tells everyone to hang up on you because you are
mental...

do you really think that he is going to pay any attention to your insane
ramblings about me growing cannabis in my garden and selling iit to everyone
in retford? bearing in mind of course that unlike your misguided self he is
fully aware that i have no garden to speak of?

in your mental frenzy you have decided that the photos i posted way over a
year ago were of dope plants in my garden when in actual fact they were
plants growing in the wild several miles from my house.
if you had the intelligence to check these things out you would also have
noticed that they were all male plants as well and as such would hardly get
the inhabitants of retford stoned as you seem to think.

i can see where you get your flair for investigative journalism from now.

having been shunned as the epithet loony by my boss you then decide to start
ranting at a variety of ladies who work in the office and who are
unfortunate enough to be in a position where they have to answer the phone
no matter what kind of imbecile is on the other end. ( f.y.i. they have all
been told to hang up as soon as they find out its you ).
the ones that i love dearly were sharing your words of wisdom with me this
morning and much hilarity did abound.

onto other matter....

where on earth do you think it is going to get you phoning up my friends and
asking them for information on me?
one of my best friends in the entire world phoned me up the other morning
and informed me of your calls to her.
obviously you got her number off the cards i have on display on my design
page. thanks for visiting my site by the way , i hope you were impressed
with what you saw.

again top quality undercover work there mr g. how long did you have her
fooled?
20 seconds?
30?

ra -ra.

now then , if your head isnt hurting too much after all that reading we'll
get onto the serious bit.

last time you hassled me you got off lightly , because of your mental state
i decided it was unreasonable to press charges.
the last thing i want to see is anyone sectioned on my account.

im sure the police must have told you that you should lay off , but it
appears to have slipped your memory.
so i'll remind you...

dont phone anyone i know again or i will be straight to the local police who
handled the case last time.
dont keep spreading these lies and accusations about me , particularly
whilst they are being recorded on answer machines etc, its going to get you
into trouble.

do you realise how serious your actions are?

do you realise how absurd you sound when you phone people up that dont know
you and tell them that you think its disgusting that i work for them?

you are currently guilty of harrasment , attempted blakmail and malicious
phone calls.

this is your last polite warning.

any more bollocks from you and i will press charges.

xpyda

as author of the main 'london evening standard' piece (the role of the arts council in funding the main mayday site - yesterday 29th april 2002) i would like to help explain why 'the standard' featured the 'internet angle' (to quote a previous post) so heavily .

i have 30 years good IT experience including stints at companies like rolls royce and unisys in fairly senior positions. therefore when i formulate and reseach my stories, i natually tend to play to my strenghts such as computing and the internet in particular.

i managed to persuade the 'evening standard' guys that the fact that spc.org has so far received 43 thousand pounds of taxpayers' money while charging sara womble a trifing 25 pounds a month to host this high volume site (the prime mayday organiser's site) was significant, just as other aspects of the whole story (as yet unpublished so i won't elaborate here ) are also of significence.

o.k so i'm obviously biassed , but i DO think the whole question of the organisers' web sites is important simply because the net is being used as the primary organising medium by the colletive [i thougth helicopters have collectives - ed?. they do . these collectives are different - me.]

i mean, consider how important sites like this one , indymedia, are in the scheme of things.

several companies , including one in seattle and therefore largly untouchable , have so far 'got off lightly' regarding mayday web sites but not for much longer now that the standard has broken the story.

i did indeed give 'the times' first refuasal as i largely did last year (although i also gave a good wodge last year to ;'the express' and 'the standard' etc - nigel rosser of 'the standard' might even get round to paying me sometime this century for last year's stuff if i'm really lucky)


come in web fusion aka host europe plc of nottingham which is run by a rich arab playboy who is playing computers called abby harddon.! your time is now up!

i do try and be objective but obviously the public is more interested in reading about punch ups on oxford street than anarchistic dogma . also, i am merely the provider of story ideas which i then research if the guys on the papers
think that they might want to use them . the 'spin'put on a story by the papers' jornalists /editor is totally outside my control. for example, when i did the story about von taylor's express for 'the times'last year , i did not eve know that they were doing an 'anarchists up against the wall type of editoral on the story until read it in the paper along with everyone else.- not that i necessaraily diagee with that :-)

i do a lot of scam busting and getting people their money back, justice etc . i ran a series on internet scams in the sunday express last summer.

if any of you have any CONSTRUCTIVE (i.e. not just f**k off w***er) story ideas on anarchists, animal rights or any other issue where a story will help stich up a scammer or expose a crook or injustice etc. then please feel free to email me at  anarchistflames@aol.com

thanks

ian g

From an experienced indymedia journo.

Fuck you Ian G. I am going to put you up against a brick wall and shoot you down verbally…..keep reading. You want to see indymedia wiped out, don’t you? That would seriously please you….

You want to talk about justice? You seriously wouldn’t know where to start helping someone who has had their human rights abused. If you came near me after I had beaten by a cop, I would tell you to fuck off. Do you know why? You don’t understand Human rights. You would helped one person and be biased against another…..if it was an anti-capitalist lying on the floor and you had witnessed the beating, you would twist the story and your editor would mangle the truth even further. Another thing, following this line of thought, and your obviously right wing journalism( you will probably voting tory or BNP, yes?) (you admitted being biased, also), tend to lend support to a very vicious type of fascism , which is on the spread out of France and Italy but these things are unimportant to you or you are ignoring them because you are concentrating on us, aren’t you? You are that quiet racist journalist who writes about soft Tory policy as though it is the best thing for the planet….but you hide behind your words and fail to realize you are helping the nazis in Europe (and you cannot admit that your ideas amount to support of Le Pen.) your should be ashamed of yourself….my father fought the nazis….at your age….

Have you read George Monbiot today? He says that the anti-capitalists must help fight and deny power to fascists and nazis like Le Pen and Berlusconi because the fascist right is stealing the coat of the ‘ anti-Globalisation movement’, well, I have moved past just being an anti-globalisation journo onto be a full blown anti-capitalist, opposed to the capitalist system. (These are my personal views….not of indymedia. I restrain myself in the capacity as a biased journo)

My view is that I need fifty Gandhi’s to help me do what I need to do….does that educate you to my intentions? Before you print even more lies? Violence is the route chosen by nazis and fascist’s, like you and the evening standard. On the subject of biased newspapers, why aren’t you shouting down Le Pen more? Or the Times? Or the Telegraph? Or the Daily Mail? You are all fucking Quiet! Because Tory = BNP = Le-Pen = Berlusconi = you……the right wing corporate media who are helping to them into power…..by printing their crap…..look how Le Pen used the politics of crime to rise…..and the fucking BNP are copying him!…and the Tory party….don’t hear them very loudly distancing themselves from Le Pen? And you are helping them by targeting us!!!!

If you want to take on the big boys then take on IMC , ian. You are out of your fucking depth. Like picking on small community networks like SPC? They are around all year and the 43, 000 goes to helping many other people and paying expensive internet charges to the capitalist system. Mayday is just an event…..more of a union event then us this year….

And yet you accuse us of organizing, yes?

By your obvious implied view, you want IMC banished from the earth, right? The Dismantling of 90 IMC sites by George bush is a priority for you? You want to stop the anti-capitalist movement from gaining strength because it is a threat to everything you are greedy about. Well, think about this for a second…..If you took out the French IMC, you would be helping Le Pen get elected. Right? You are either incapable of response because you are a one way corporate media journo or you want the BNP in 10 Downing Street……

I really want you to expand on your point that you make by stating,

“i mean, consider how important sites like this one , indymedia, are in the scheme of things.”

What do you mean or are you too scared to take on 90 sites? Believe me, I can wipe out any arguments you may have about us. You will be naturally biased against us, you will try an argument that we are assisting the destruction of capitalism and that we organise….I leave you with the thought that you would wipe out an entire pillar of democratic internet and the open GNU project worldwide…which I think ….reminding you what you said….

“i have 30 years good IT experience including stints at companies like rolls royce and unisys in fairly senior positions.

Forgive me if I am wrong, you would recommend the same software to these companies and ‘sell consultancy’ .yes?

Bring on the argument……

hi

just to correct the scottish wannabe journalist ian keith gomeche of banchory, i have never attended a mayday demonstration if my life, but then facts dont normally come into it, with that tosser. the thug bit is quite amusing too. so tosser of bachory could you please check your facts.

diggers