UK Promoted Newswire Archive
Occupy Nottingham
15-10-2011 20:55
Starting from around 3pm today, Nottingham's Market Square has been occupied by a gathering of people aiming "to show that we will no longer tolerate the corporate greed and Government corruption that threatens our way of life and everything we work for". The occupation is a part of, and in solidarity with, the hundreds of other occupations taking place in 82 countries on 15th October. The occupiers have been enjoying coming together in the sunshine, tents have been set up and a megaphone is being passed around for people to communicate their frustrations with the system. At the moment the police are relaxed and are keeping a low profile.
The good weather has meant that the atmosphere has been great - people have been happy sitting in the square, having a drink and socialising. A lot of families were there this afternoon and kids have been having fun playing in the 'real media' box and making placards. It's strange to see the square being used for social rather than commercial purposes - something we need to change in my opinion.
The relaxed atmosphere masks a deeper sense of frustration with the global capitalist system though. Speakers expressed their disgust with the lack of opportunities they find in recession and austerity hit Nottingham. One woman talked about how the council can't keep open homeless hostels, Sure Start and meals on wheels but they can find money for whicker statues for the shopping centre. One man who couldn't find work said "We are sick and tired of having no jobs, no chance of actually doing anything with our lives". Many people emphasised the need to take direct action to get what we need. "We've got a right to be here" said one man "because we've asserted our right to be here."
The police kept a low presence throughout the afternoon, although Notts police's public order man did pop up to chat to people. One man was taken aside and chatted to by coppers for holding a placard saying 'Up your bum'. Apparently, some gay men had taken offence at the negative connotations. Nothing wrong with being up a bum after all!
At one point a quite drunk man heckled speakers shouting "Get a job!" much to the embarrassment of his friend. After his curly '80s mullet was heckled he seemed to forget his anger and was soon happily performing for the crowd on the megaphone :)
One of the participants I spoke to about why he was there said that he was protesting against "the utter injustices going on in the world today on every level". He said he hoped to "start building a community, democratic-based process... where everybody has a valid opinion that counts." "The monetary system is a joke that makes us all slaves..." he said. "It's run, controlled and owned by the business corporations and the huge bankers and we don't really have a say". In conclusion "Capitalism sucks. We want to get rid of it."
Let's hope the occupation keeps going and the process it's a part of helps to build a better, more equal and cooperative community in our city.
Pics: Cops hassling #occupylsx
15-10-2011 20:55
For the last couple of hours police have been slowly pushing people back further from the occupation, and sometimes allowing people back inside, but mostly not. There have been some very aggressive invasions of the occupation space, with squads of riot police pushing people off the steps of the Cathedral and the surrounding streets. Dog units have been used as well. I find it quite shocking given the square was mostly full of people participating in the big assembly, singing, dancing and making banners.
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Jarrow March 2011 comes to Nottingham
15-10-2011 20:55
The Jarrow March 2011, which is marching from Jarrow in the North East to London to raise awareness of youth unemployment, arrived in Nottingham today. Marchers and supporters assembled on the Forest Rec at 12.30 and marched to the Market Square where a rally was held. It is the 75th anniversary of the original Jarrow Crusade, which an attempt to raise awareness of the intense poverty and unemployment in the North East. The marchers are demanding a number of major policy changes by the government to improve the lives of young people and give them a better future.
The marchers left Jarrow on 1st October and aim to be in London on 5th Nov and is supported by various trade unions and socialist political parties. They are making the following demands:
- A massive government scheme to create jobs which are socially useful and apprenticeships which offer guaranteed jobs at the end – both paying at least the minimum wage, with no youth exemptions.
- The immediate reinstatement of EMA payments, expanding them to be available to all 16-19 year olds.
- The immediate re-opening of all youth services that have been closed, including reinstating sacked staff.
- The scrapping of ‘workfare’ schemes – benefits should be based on need not forced slave labour.
- A massive building programme of environmentally sound, cheap social housing.
There was a good turnout of people to march with them including anti-cuts campaigners from Notts SOS and Notts Uncut as well as local trade union branches.
It was inspiring to see people so young speaking passionately and confidently about the changes they want to see in society and taking action to spread the word around the country. I spoke to 17-year old marcher Lizzie Graham from Gateshead, whose great-grandfather was one of the original Jarrow marchers in 1936. She said they'd had a really good response from people along the route of the march, including in Notts, adding "It just shows that this system of capitalism isn't working". "We want to do something from this", she concluded, "We don't want to just sit on the dole looking for a job."
At the end of the march, Notts Uncut led a tour of corporate tax dodgers in Nottingham. Other people stayed in the square for the Occupy Nottingham gathering. The Jarrow marchers are heading on to Loughborough tomorrow.
Occupy Birmingham Protest
15-10-2011 19:04
Undercover police agent publicly outed at conference
15-10-2011 18:41
Gathering at Victoria Square on international protest day 15th October
15-10-2011 17:43
http://15october.net). Five persons arrived at 10am to Victoria Square. More people started to join them during the morning and at noon al least 50 people were constantly in the gathering. There were people from different countries and ages varied from children to elderlies.
Pictures of #occupylsx #occupylondon 3pm
15-10-2011 14:21
The Sheffield Free School is underway!
15-10-2011 11:36
Daytime Venue: CADS (Creative Arts Development Space) Snow Lane Entrance, Shalesmoor, S3 7AL (5 mins from city centre, next to “Kit Locker”). See the image below for the latest timetable.
Full article | 2 additions | 4 comments
#occupy London gets underway #ows
15-10-2011 11:16
http://livestream.com/occupyLSX
Activists Occupy Roof of Green Hill Beagle Farm
14-10-2011 10:43
Michael Lyons: Appeal turned down at Royal Courts of Justice
13-10-2011 17:15
Campaigners Tell Cuadrilla to Frack Off
13-10-2011 14:27
Dale Farm: An End to the Legal Process? A Call to the Baricades!
13-10-2011 01:56
Quick Dale Farm Update.
12-10-2011 17:15
Planning regulations must be upheld, no ifs, no buts.
No official stay on Eviction - but looks to be Monday.
Palestine Today10 10 2011
10-10-2011 16:23
10 years in Afghanistan:torture and detention
10-10-2011 12:55
Friday 7th October 2011 marked the tenth anniversary of the start of the current NATO-led war in Afghanistan in 2001. As well as leading to the death of thousands of civilians and soldiers, the war in Afghanistan is also the birthplace of one of the lesser known aspects of the so-called "war on terror": the torture and arbitrary detention of thousands of prisoners of all ages and nationalities.
10 years in Afghanistan: 10 years of torture and arbitrary detention
Friday 7th October 2011 marked the tenth anniversary of the start of the current NATO-led war in Afghanistan in 2001. As well as leading to the death of thousands of civilians and soldiers, the war in Afghanistan is also the birthplace of one of the lesser known aspects of the so-called "war on terror": the torture and arbitrary detention of thousands of prisoners of all ages and nationalities.
Most of the prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay had been held at prisons in Afghanistan, such as Bagram and the Salt Pit near Kabul, before being taken to Guantánamo, on the other side of the world, or were taken to Afghanistan as victims of the CIA's kidnap and torture programme, "extraordinary rendition".
Campaigners from the London Guantánamo Campaign and the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign held actions on Friday 7th and Saturday 8th October to mark ten years of this ongoing brutality.
On the evening of 7th October, around a dozen people gathered outside the US Embassy in Mayfair to stand in solidarity with all victims of torture and prisoners held without charge or trial over the past ten years. This demonstration, part of a monthly action held outside the US Embassy by the London Guantánamo Campaign, was held especially to mark 10 years of arbitrary detention and torture at Bagram and other prisons. In particular, they called for justice for victims and for the American government to return Guantánamo prisoners Shaker Aamer and Ahmed Belbacha, who have links to the UK, to this country.
On 8th October, the London Guantánamo Campaign joined the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign for a special "Ten Hours for Ten Years" action to mark ten years of Shaker Aamer's illegal detention in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay as part of the Stop The War Coalition's Anti-War Mass Rally in Trafalgar Square. Shaker Aamer, a 44 year old Saudi national, who has a British wife and four children, including a son he has never met, was abused and tortured at Bagram before being sent to Guantánamo Bay where he has been held without charge or trial for almost the past ten years; he had been working for a Saudi charity in Afghanistan in 2001. He has never faced any charges or trial. Four other British residents whose release was sought at the same time as his by the British government in 2007 have long since returned to the UK. Although the government insists it is doing all it can, it has never explained why it has failed to secure his return to the UK.
Over 5000 people attended the successful anti-war rally, according to the Stop The War Coalition, from all over the UK. Talks were given by politicians, representatives of NGOS, celebrities, journalists and musicians. Speakers included Stop The War President Tony Benn, journalists John Pilger and Lauren Booth, Jemima Khan, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, musicians Lowkey and Brian Eno as well as many others. The names of over 120 people who have died in Afghanistan were read out.
The action for Shaker Aamer, which was eventually reduced to 8 hours (ending at 6pm instead of 8pm) by the powers that be, consisted of volunteers taking turns to stand inside a cage to highlight his plight. Signatures were also collected on a petition to the government calling for his release to the UK. In another cage, protesters donning Bush, Blair and Cameron masks and wearing the notorious Guantánamo orange jumpsuits were finally - temporarily - put behind bars for their crimes against humanity. They were joined for a short while by Kate Hudson, CND General Secretary, and anti-war campaign Pat Arrowsmith who spoke out against Shaker Aamer's continuing imprisonment without charge or trial. At 3pm, around 20 protesters held up letters spelling "B-R-I-N-G S-H-A-K-E-R A-A-M-E-R H-O-M-E". The stall and the action attracted a lot of interest from demonstrators and passers-by.
At 4pm, the rally concluded with protesters being led down Whitehall to Downing Street by veteran 105-year anti-war campaigner Hetty Bower and former soldier Joe Glenton, who was jailed for refusing to serve in Afghanistan, to deliver a letter to the Prime Minister from military families and soldiers calling for British troops to return home from Afghanistan. Over a thousand people joined this part of the rally. However, protesters were only allowed to go as far as Downing Street and not towards Parliament Square, further down the road, and those who remained outside Downing Street were threatened with arrest under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA) 2005.
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Back in 2001/2002, foreigners in Afghanistan were arrested by local warlords who sold them to the American military for a bounty of $5000, a small fortune to its recipients. Many had their personal items and identification stolen. After being tortured and abused in Afghan prisons, most were then sent to another illegal prison at Guantánamo Bay. Conditions in Afghan prisons are reported to be worse, with former British Guantánamo prisoner, Moazzam Begg, describing Bagram as being worse than Guantánamo. Deaths are not uncommon; the 2007 Oscar-winning documentary film Taxi to the Dark Side tells the true story of the savage murder at the hands of US soldiers of an Afghan taxi driver in 2002. Banned torture techniques such as hooding, sleep deprivation, the use of white noise and repetitive music as torture as well as physical and sexual abuse have been reported.
Prisoner conditions have not improved over the past decade; Bagram is very much in the same state Guantánamo Bay was in several years with no exact details of the prisoners held there, although the majority are reported to be Afghan nationals. Prisoners do not have access to medical and legal representation or communication with their families, except through the Red Cross. While prisoners at Guantánamo Bay have described the experience of being held there as "being buried alive", in parts of Bagram, prisoners are quite literally buried alive in tiny cells in underground bunkers. Since Barack Obama became president in 2009, the facility has grown fourfold in size, going from a prisoner capacity of 600 to over 2400. Although the Afghan government is due to assume control of all prisons in Afghanistan from January 2012, the US military has decided to retain control over a prison at Parwan near Bagram, which it is currently expanding and claims it is using it to hold high-value detainees.
Afghanistan has also been a hotspot for secret CIA-run torture jails and a destination for victims of extraordinary rendition. British residents, formerly held at Guantánamo Bay, Binyam Mohamed, who was kidnapped in Pakistan and Bisher Al-Rawi and Jamil El-Banna, who were kidnapped in Ghana were all taken to Afghanistan where they were tortured. In spite of pressure from the All Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition, the transfer of prisoners will not feature in the forthcoming torture (detainee or Gibson) inquiry set up by the government; the British government was aware that British residents and nationals were being tortured while detained in Afghanistan in 2002.
Perhaps one of the most extraordinary stories to emerge is that of German citizen, Khaled El-Masri, who was kidnapped on holiday in Macedonia in 2003 and taken to Afghanistan where he was detained for several months: http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/4051/prmID/1873
The main feature of this decade-long practice of torture and abuse of prisoners is the complete lack of justice and due legal process. Prisoners are detained and held outside of the recognised confines of the law. Wikileaks earlier this year revealed how random the investigation of prisoners conducted at Guantánamo Bay were, prisoners - 170 of whom are still held without charge or trial - considered to be "bad men" and the "worst of the worst". While all the main political parties in Britain have openly condemned the continuing regime of illegal detention at Guantánamo Bay, for the main part, they continue to support the ongoing war in Afghanistan, in which similar, if not worse, facilities exist as part of the war effort there. Similarly, while Barack Obama talks about closing Guantánamo (he had promised to close it by January 2010 - last year!), money is being pumped into expanding the illegal detention facilities at Bagram and Parwan.
The London Guantánamo Campaign will continue to seek the closure of Guantánamo, Bagram and similar prisons elsewhere. We are currently in the process of organising a series of events to mark the tenth anniversary of Guantánamo Bay in January 2012; this will include a candlelight vigil outside the US Embassy on Wednesday 11 January at 6-8pm and a demonstration in central London on the afternoon of Saturday 7 January. Please check us on Facebook or visit our blog: http://londonguantanamocampaign.blogspot.com/ for updates and more details.
We are also collecting signatures on a petition to the American ambassador which we will deliver to the embassy on Guantánamo's 10th birthday on 11 January 2012. Please add your name to the petition: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/release_aamer_and_belbacha/
The Save Shaker Aamer Campaign will also hold an event outside Downing Street on International Human Rights Day, 10 December, calling for the release of Shaker Aamer. Please check out the website: www.saveshaker.org for details.
A new documentary film, "YOU DON'T LIKE THE TRUTH - 4 days inside Guantánamo" about Omar Khadr, a Canadian national who has been held and convicted at Guantánamo Bay for war crimes allegedly committed in Afghanistan when he was 14 (he is now 24), went on general release on Friday 7 October. It is currently playing at the Ritzy in Brixton: The Ritzy - Picture House, Brixton Oval, Coldharbour Lane, Brixton, London, SW2 http://www.picturehouses.co.uk/cinema/Ritzy_Picturehouse/
© Pictures and report by Aisha Maniar for the London Guantánamo Campaign
london.gtmo [at] gmail.com
http://londonguantanamocampaign.blogspot.com/
More media on these actions:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.267294963311347.68095.114010671973111&type=1
Friday demonstration:
Saturday action:
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/pictures/photos-11393/pictures-london-anti-war-protest-8-oct/3
http://www.demotix.com/photo/863090/stop-war-coalition-march-downing-street-london
http://www.demotix.com/photo/864350/ten-years-stop-war-coalition-london
http://www.demotix.com/photo/864351/ten-years-stop-war-coalition-london
Pictures from Block the Bridge NHS action
09-10-2011 20:55
Some snaps from today's mass action against the Health and Social Care bill. Called by UKuncut and supported by several trade unions and ngos. Around 2000 people taking part in civil disobediance to block westminster bridge.
Block The Bridge, Block The Bill - QuikPix
09-10-2011 20:55
Dateline: Westminster Bridge, London, UK, 13:00-16:40, Sun 09 Oct 2011 - Enraged by the attempt by the Cameron-Clegg clique of millionaire politician pratts to wreck our National Health Service, today hundreds of people from all over the UK heeded UK Uncut's Call to Direct Action and physically blockaded Westminster Bridge. On a sunny Sunday afternoon, just three days before a vote in the House of Lords which could scupper the Con-Dem government's NHS-wrecking bill, we symbolically Blocked The Bill by Blocking The Bridge between the law-makers in the Houses of Con-mens to the west and St Thomas Hospital to the east.
At the request of UK Uncut, I'm uploading these photos as soon as possible, without the photo-editing an captioning that normally characterises my Indymedia Action Reports. So, letting the pix speak for themselves,
Share-&-Enjoy,
Up the Revolution,
Tim Dalinian Jones
Footnotes
All these photos and video clips are 'CopyLeft' This means you are free to copy and distribute any of my photos and videos you find here, under the following license:
• Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License
» Human-readable summary –http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
» Attribution: tim.dalinian.jones@gmail.com
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Pics: Block the Bill + Occupy London Assembly
09-10-2011 14:55
During the Block the Bridge, Block the Bill NHS action an assembly with hundreds of people participating was held to discuss the wave of occupations that have been occuring worldwide, and to talk about plans to occupy the london stock exchange on Oct 15th. Many people were also talking about the student protests planned for 9th November and the strikes on 30th November.
See http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/blog/block-the-bridge-block-the-bill