An inter-imperialist clash is taking place in the Caucasus in which the Georgian dwarf is acting on behalf of the United States. The perfectly predictable and immediate Russian response - awarding Putin the first round - has only highlighted what an imbecile Georgia's president is. As a good nationalist, he (once again) made the choice in favour of an armed diversion, counting on US assistance which, though, was never going to be in the form of military intervention, when he should instead have been thinking about his country's disastrous state. By way of aside, it was another fine example of how dangerous it can be to be an ally of Washington. ...

As we predicted (in SchNEWS 644), last weeks protests in Denver outside the Democrat convention were nothing compared to the scenes out on the streets of St Pauls, Minnesota, during this week’s Republican National Convention (RNC). It seems that the thought of another Republican president is just too much to bear, and the Midwest city saw one of the biggest mass demonstrations in the States since the height of anti-war fervour in 2003. ---- While the world’s media have been fixated on the suitability of Sarah Palin for McCain’s running mate, battles have been raging outside the RNC. The party of war criminals have had to hold their convention protected by unprecedented levels of security. ...

Police held protesters at bay during a disturbance at Mears Park in St. Paul, where four were arrested. In all, there were 818 arrests in St. Paul and Minneapolis, and there were 3,700 police on the street during the four-day convention. ---- Aggressive riot police is a sign of the times, security officials say, but some say free speech is at stake. ---- The huge deployment of police in full riot gear across St. Paul this week may have unsettled the locals, but it is neither unprecedented nor even unusual in an era in which cities and nations crank up law enforcement operations in the face of mass protests and the possibility of terrorism. ...

Protesters—including Free Speech Movement veterans and a Berkeley city councilmember—gathered in Sproul Plaza Thursday to rally against the Aug. 24 UC Berkeley police raid on the Long Haul. ---- Campus police, accompanied by an FBI agent and at least one Alameda County Sheriff’s deputy, raided the collective at 3124 Shattuck Ave. and seized every computer and data storage device in the building in a search for what Assistant UCPD Chief Mitch Celaya called threatening e-mails. ---- “This was an illegal search and confiscation,” said Berkeley councilmember Kriss Worthington. “It’s pretty amazing that the UC Police Department can continually do things that are so stupid.” ...

From July 24th until July 28th 2008, the new Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) had its third annual national convention in College Park, Maryland. At the convention, national campaigns were presented and voted on by the attendees. A major campaign introduced at the convention was the Hundred Days campaign, which seeks to organize and engage newly politicized Americans in politics beyond the campaign season. During the first one hundred days of the next administration the campaign will organize two nationwide weeks of action to ensure that the people remain involved in politics after the election cycle. Laurie Rojas, member of Chicago SDS, collaborating author of the Hundred Days campaign and ...

"FERAL" rioters who wreaked havoc at 2006's G20 meeting have forced a Remembrance Day event to be cancelled. ---- The three-day defence expo due to start on November 11 has been scrapped amid fears of violence by "low-life anarchists". --- Organisers of the Asia-Pacific Defence and Security Exhibition, to be held in Adelaide, took the dramatic step after reports hundreds of protesters from Melbourne and Sydney planned to disrupt it. ---- In recent weeks, police gave several confidential briefings on the scale of the planned protests and the cost of countering them. ---- Police received intelligence on the protesters, including members of the ultra-militant group Mutiny. ...

In the opening days of September 2008 people from all over the country came together in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul to protest the agenda of the Republican National Convention. And in response, police cracked down, hard. And even before the events had begun police responded to mere calls for protest through strong-arm tactics reminiscent of a police state, including infiltration and spying by state agents against protest organizations and preemptive raids with guns drawn against private protest centers. During the event police responded with the indiscriminate arrest of hundreds of protesters, and even journalists recording the event where arrested. Decked out in full military garb ...

A meeting of all South Wales Anarchists has been called by Cardiff Anarchist Network for Monday 8th September at the Model Inn, Quay Street, Cardiff. 7.30pm start. ---- This meeting is a forum for anarchists in south Wales to discuss current events and future strategies as well as passing on information and generally keeping each other up to [...] August 19, 2008 Categories: Future Events . Tags: Anarchist, Cardiff, Wales . Author: cardiffanarchistnetwork . _________________________________________ ...

For decades, nationalism ­ African or Afrikaner ­ has been the dominant ideology in South Africa. It has drawn the working class into unity with the bosses, and divided workers from their fellow workers. It has promised freedom and delivered oppression; it has promised bread and delivered starvation. ---- Nationalism can play a progressive role when in opposition to an oppressive regime, but in power, it invariably becomes a weapon against the working class. ---- The pogroms of May 2008 are the latest disaster to arise from nationalism. Many will say that the African nationalism of the ANC­ or the PAC, or black consciousness ­ is the only force for liberation in South Africa. The Communist ...

This week the AAtW people joined Palestinians from the villages and the region and internationals in the struggle against the separation fence and occupation. At Bil'in - we joined the 185th Friday demonstration, with mild "retaliation" of state forces - tear gas the wind often carry towards them, and harmless blue colored water. See video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4CSmE8iorU In Ni'ilin, few demos during the week with a bit toned down repression during demonstrations but harassments villagers at nights, and increased efforts to block the way of the Israeli AAtW from arriving to the village. Israeli Media still cover the struggle in Bil'in and Ni'ilin but much less than previous weeks ...

This fall in Oaxaca marks a season of commemorations. Already marches for fallen APPO members Jose Jimenez Colmenares and Lorenzo San Pablo Cervantes have woven their ways through the streets of the city, pausing at the spots they were murdered in 2006, holding ceremonies at the Cathedral. Twenty-four more such processions await Oaxaca in the coming months. That number will only grow as efforts are pursued to identify the, at minimum, eight bodies in hidden graves discovered recently in Oaxaca's main cemetery. ---- In what is a lifetime for social movements and a blink of an eye in history's ledger, a little more than two years have passed since the people of Oaxaca erupted in spontaneous but ...

Over the past two weeks in Denver and St. Paul, thousands of anarchists and other folks have come together to protest the conventions being held by the two wings of the Corporate Party. These protests were the culmination of almost two years of organizing. Organizers arranged not just protests, but many other events as well. Their efforts were met with severe and significant police repression, with over 800 people being violently arrested by the authorities and many others being violently attacked and terrorized. In response to these events, the police, the corporate media, and others have said many things about anarchists involved in these protests. While many of the comments on numerous ...

Both the people who said they wanted to disrupt the Republican National Convention in St. Paul and the police who tried to stop them were well-organized and had military-like strategies from the start, with police strategies evolving as the week went on. ---- Just as top police brass met each morning to discuss new intelligence and their plans for the day, so did anarchist groups, St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington said Friday. ---- The two sets of strategies played out during the four-day gathering, resulting in 818 RNC-related arrests and groups decrying the police actions as overly aggressive and limiting free speech. Police have said they acted properly. ...

As the November elections approach discussion about what to do grows among anarchists. Should I vote? Should I vote and also protest that the whole election process is corrupt? Or should I just stay at home and work for social justice in other ways? Since September 9th is Paul Goodman's birthday and he said that anarchist's should vote if it might have a good effect, maybe I should think about which people to vote for. The September LBC Anarchist will be an open space to talk about these questions. Already committed to speaking are Judith Malina, Court Wayne and Bob Erler, but anyone attending will a chance to share their views with the rest of us and the discussion should progress as the ...

I ran with a student group called the Campus Antiwar Network for reasons I won't get into here. The night before we had contact with another group that was in our sector and agreed to let them use us as a shield and distraction for there activities. Our plan was to occupy intersections until they got too hot and then bounce to another intersection and repeat. We agreed that we would be a distraction when the cops were coming down on them and also a place they could dive into and lose themselves when they were pursued. It turned out that they dressed pretty straight and could change appearance pretty quick. ---- After marching 5 miles with a large group going to the permitted march we split up and ...

The RNC Welcoming committee* opened the doors of its headquarters today for media, trying to put a human face on the group of anti-authoritarians linked by police to planned and perpetrated violence during the Republican National Convention. ---- Member Celia Kutz said the group also had to talk because police actions had become personal. ---- "The Welcoming Committee has become a target," she said. ---- The panel of six members — three women and three men — used their real names to address the press and detailed their involvement with the group while also decrying the treatment of members being held in the Ramsey County and Hennepin County jails. ...

At this moment, the Oaxacan social movement appears to be fragmented and pulled in many different directions. It's necessary to turn the corner in order to visualize the profound change that we all long for and need in Oaxaca. -- Oaxaca Repression ---- At this moment, the Oaxacan social movement appears to be fragmented and pulled in many different directions, some seeking an uncomfortable relationship with the regime, others hoping the worst has passed, and still others moving in new directions. There seems to be a general paralysis, expressed in the common belief that only a divine intervention (without a doubt well-deserved) can actually put an end to this regime. We know ...

On 15 March 2008 a xenophobic mob attacked shops of immigrants in Mamelodi, the township with the most immigrants in Tshwane (Pretoria). Fifteen shops were looted and burnt down; in one of them a nine-year-old girl died in the flames. Residents of the township publicly declared that immigrants burnt their own shops (Pretoria News, 16.4.08). ---- On 18 March two immigrants were killed in Atteridgeville near Tshwane, more were hurt, and shops of immigrants burnt down. This led to more attacks in the area. Hundreds fled to the local police station, others to a school, to save themselves. In the following weeks more attacks happened and four more people were killed. Out of the hundreds of refugees at ...

Greek anarchists stormed a supermarket Thursday and handed out food for free in the latest of a wave of raids provoked by soaring consumer prices. ---- About 20 unarmed people, mostly wearing black hoods, carried out the midday robbery in the northern city of Thesaaloniki, police said. ---- Local media have labelled the raiders "Robin Hoods" following previous raids. ---- They take only packets of pasta, rice and cartons of milk which they drop in the middle of the street for people to collect, a police official said. ---- "They have never stolen money or hurt anyone. They ask people to remain calm but use ambush tactics, jumping over cash desks," he said. ---- "When they attack without hoods, people ...

Contents of the September 2008 issue: ----- WELCOME TO MANCHESTER - Labour Party annual conference. ----- LOCALS SAY "NEVER AGAIN" TO SCUMFEST - Direct action at the BNP Red White and Blue Festival. ----- CENTRAL EUROPEAN WORKERS STRIKE BACK - In Iceland, following deaths at power construction site. ----- UNIONS SLAMMED FOR FAILING LOW PAID WORKERS - Women workers still getting a raw deal. ----- TAKING BACK OUR PRIDE - 18 years of the Manchester gay pride festival, but money talks too much. ----- E'ON, F'OFF! - A PLEASANT STROLL TO KINGSNORTH - Report back from the 3rd Camp for Climate Action. ----- TIME TO TRIM THE FAT (AND GET SOME EXERCISE) - Opposition to Wembley academy school. ----- SUBVERT - Diary ...