Hackney roof top defiance north london February 20, 2012

Anti eviction at work, squats saved by the people. Early friday morning, police and bailiffs turned up to evict a row of squatted houses in Dalston lane, but luckily the anti eviction squad was out, in numbers this time with over 60 people blocking the road and lining the rooftop.

please remove your banner, its rude...

nice turn out

pan left

pan right

helpless
As the morning progressed with music, sandwiches and the barking of a dog, the police and bailiffs were helpless bystanders, who finally agreed they would leave on the condition that the 'fuck the Olympics banner was removed because its a bit rude, as the people on the roof top laughingly refused, the police drove away morally defeated.
In this time of uncertain squatting future, people are standing up in solidarity to house each other, at a real grass roots level.
A lovely morning, and houses saved.

UPDATED: Coca-Cola Wall At Hackney Wick Defaced (london)

Published on February 23rd, 2012

As predicted by many, the controversial Coca-Cola wall in Hackney Wick has been given the fire extinguisher treatment. It didn’t last long did it!
Before the wall was dogged, The London Vandal had spoken to Monorex, the agency behind this work, and they offered this comment on the wall:
“We try to do our bit to make advertising a little more exciting and support artists in many ways – like the INSA wall in Birmingham! That Olympic wall was destined for print advertising – so our hand painted image, we feel, was the better solution! Monorex & Coke were always planning on commissioning original art after this campaign.Part of our agreement”.



We have no idea if Coca-Cola are going to dig deep in their pockets to keep this wall maintained throughout the Olympics, or if they are going to abandon it now that they have filmed and photographed it. If they do try to painting this wall, you can be sure this won’t be the last time it get’s dogged.
Here is the video advert that Coca-Cola used the wall in, just so you can see what all of the fuss is about:

UPDATE:
High Rise Murals, who worked with Monorex on this project, have just been online and posted this photo. Seems like Coca-Cola will not be maintaining the wall after all!
High Rise Murals are asking the residents of Hackney Wick how they would like to see the wall filled on their Facebook page. Thanks to The Visual Yard for the update.

Preparations for military repression at UK 2012 Olympics

Hundreds of soldiers from 3rd

battalion The Parachute Regiment

spent last week learning how to

contain and arrest "rioters" in a

series of exercises mirroring last

summers violence. During the

exercises at the Lydd training base in

Kent, the elite troops were pelted

with petrol bombs and missiles and

"fought" running battles with gangs

of protesters as part of the

battalion's "public order training".

The battalion is the lead unit in the

Airborne Task Force - the Army's

premier rapid response unit and can

be called on to deal with a wide

range of emergency situations - from

hostage rescue to riot control -

around the world.

In the past, riot training was carried

out by all troops deploying to

Northern Ireland where public

disturbances were commonplace.

But those “skills” have been “lost”

following the major withdrawal of

troops from the streets of the

occupied land.

During last week's training package

young soldiers were taught how to

use body-length use riots shields,

protect themselves from missiles

and how to identify and arrest "ring

leaders' using specially trained

"snatch squads".

Troops were trained into how to

work as teams armed with bodylength

shields in driving back hostile

crowds.

Last summer's rioting was sparked

by the police shooting of Mark

Duggan in Tottenham and the brutal

beating of a young girl when the

family and friends demanded

answers.

The violence quickly spread across

London and to other cities where

police were attacked with fire

bombs, shops were looted and

businesses burnt to the ground.

One senior police source said: "The

police couldn't cope with last

year's riots and the Army came very

close to being deployed.”

"All of the Army's riot equipment

was in Scotland at the time and

that created a time delay but

lessons from that have been learnt.

The Army could have deployed but

it would have been only marginally

quicker than the police.”

The riots were the best for a

generation and caused over £300m

of damage. Hundreds of shops and

warehouses were looted as masses

of people and gangs of youth

informally organised attacks via

twitter and other social media sites.

The number and spontaneity of the

riots often meant that police from

forces across the country, but

especially in London, were stretched

to the limit and in many cases

overwhelmed.

THE GAMES OF FINANCE ARE

ONLY ABOUT MONEY, SOCIAL

CONTROL & SPECTACLE

AGAINST THE MEGA-PROJECT

OF THE SPECULATORS AND

CORPORATE ELITES

RIOT 2012

Counter Olympics - meeting date in London

A BIG meeting to prepare for Countering the Olympics is being held in London later this month.

The event is being staged on Saturday January 28, from 10.30am to 5pm, at Toynbee Hall, Commercial Road, London E1 6LS.

Says a statement on the CounterOlympics website: "There are now fewer than seven months before the shenanigans hit town, with each day bringing more news about runaway finances, contaminated topsoil, privatised housing, militarised neighbourhoods, losses of basic liberty, corruption, undemocratic planning decisions…

"While the bigwigs are gaining billions, just what do the rest of us lose?

"This will be a day-long opportunity to investigate and interrogate all aspects of Olympic theft, debt, repression, pollution, corporatisation, sponsorship, displacement, and lack of community consultation.

"From NOGOE and Save Wanstead Flats to Vancouver and Athens, a range of local, national and international activist groups will share their stories. Then it’s up to us all to create the mass mobilisation needed to expose these Olympic-sized lies!

"Whether you’re an avid organiser or new to the game, now is the time to get involved."

LET THE OLYMPIC GAMES DIE IN THE LAND THEY WERE BORN

	In times of war for the imposition of global domination, where the bosses proceed to inter-state coalitions and capitalist completions, coordinating their operations in the name of "anti"terrorism to establish totalitarian control and to loot the world... In times of an all-out attack against the peoples of the so-called "third world", whose genocide from starvation and diseases and their enslavement in the dungeons of mass production-multinationals' colonies are nourishing the well-being of the "developed" world; whose death during the new order's crusades and under military occupation, their confinement and torturing inside concentration camps and the attempts to neutralize their resistance have become the foundation stone for the Security of domination's projects... In times of intensified exploitation, surveillance and repression for the excluded and those who resist within the walls of the western world... ...The olympic games are a front-window of capitalism and domination itself. An advertisement for the world of class slavery and for the means to impose it. A global gala, sealing in one more level the cooperation of the local bosses with multinational corporations, international political staffs and agencies of repression. For the greek state, a participant in the criminal coalition that is launching the global terror-war, the olympic games are a step to upgrade its role in the world's elite and strengthen its pre-eminent position in the Balkans. They are its own way to contribute to the expansion of this terror-war and especially to this aspect that concerns the militarization of western societies and the extermination of the "internal enemy". Inside the country, the games are the spearhead for the state's attack against the exploited and oppressed, as well as the means to accelerate the imposition of a long-lasting State of Emergency, signifying a new era of repression and social control. In the name of accomplishing the National Grand Idea, the "ideals" of profit are praised by all kind of bosses: companies, contractors and state officials who handle the huge 2004 budgets. In this giant commercial enterprise which will cost more than 6 billion euros, the proletarians are forcefully labeled "volunteers" to pay its cost by being robbed through the taxes, the expensiveness and wage freeze, but also to pay its price: by speeding up the rhythms of work, in extremely dangerous conditions and under new forms of surveillance, with their own blood in working "accidents". These human sacrifices (more than 620 dead immigrant and local workers the last four years) in the altar of profit and due of the bonuses given for the fast termination of the Works, have taken nightmarish dimensions in the olympic construction sites where hundreds of workers are killed or seriously injured. A new model of absolute exploitation and expendable humans is consolidated in the olympic works, to characterize from now on the conditions of labor in every other site of wage slavery. At the same time, as the games offer a unique opportunity for capitalist pillage, the natural environment is plundered and destroyed, while the urban landscape is redeveloped according to the new norms of commercialization and surveillance of public spaces. The local version of international "anti"terrorism is being established trough the colossal operation "safe olympic games", including: the collaboration of "anti"-terrorist specialists from greek, US, british, israeli, australian, german, french and spanish secret services, military exercises by greek and foreign special forces, based on scenarios of "pre-emptive action" and "management of disproportionate threats"    NATO's engagement after official demand made by the greek state, with spying aircrafts, special units on alert and navy patrolling in the Aegean and Mediteranea sea, mass imports of modern weapons and the installation of technologically advanced equipment monitoring public spaces and persons, such as the C4I system developed by the american multinational SAIC (a company providing know-how, infrastructure and armament for the war in Afghanistan and Iraq). Hundreds of surveillance cameras are being placed and forbidden "red zones", where access is possible only for those having license, are instituted. All areas around athletic facilities, hotels, ports and airports in the five olympic cities are sealed and sterilized with the use of sensors to locate anything and anyone considered as suspect. In the streets, the death squads of a police occupation army undertake "cleansing operations" against the homeless, drug addicts and immigrants, while the former US base in Aspropyrgos, outside Athens, is transformed in to an olympic concentration camp. In Heraklio, Crete, Roma families will be evicted out of their settlement to be relocated in an old military base. During the games, 50.000 soldiers will take position around Athens and patrolling inside the red zones. Through these orgiastic preparations, the repressive apparatus is modernized, and the new role of the army in the confrontation of the "internal enemy" is promoted. The "zero tolerance" doctrine against any expression of social and class dissidence is rooting and the borders, where already hundreds of refugees are loosing their lives, are even more fortified. The olympics are proclaimed "matter of national interest" and their safety becomes the ideological vehicle for the implementation of methods that are either way considered as priorities for the intensification of state terrorism, in the framework of constructing a global Guantanamo. Within this situation, "court-martials" are set, such as the one that accomplished its mission inside Koridallos prison, imposing to the accused as "November 17" members exterminative sentences of political convenience, and the one that is taking place now against the five accused for participation in E.L.A (Revolutionary Popular Struggle), with the judges cynically admitting that "the trial must be finished before the olympics". These are trials aiming at having the institution of "independent justice" legalize the tortures and confinement in "white cells", the collaborators and the pogrom against the dissidents of terror-democracy. After they're finished, political prisoners will be sent to the new isolation wing, which was recently built in the jail of Larisa. Participation in social-class struggles and the expression of solidarity are both criminalized, and every choice to resist without apologizing to state legality, rejecting the mediation of institutions is baptized "terrorism". The greek state signs international "anti"terrorist acts and treaties allowing extradition. Within these circumstances it was decided to extradict in Germany Sinan Bozcourt - Taylan, a Kurdish communist arrested in Greece on the same day that many other political refugees from Turkey were arrested in different countries of Fortress-Europe. Using the alibi of the olympics' safety, the greek secret service and police authorities are officially now after political refugees, Arab and muslim immigrants, anarchists and anti-authoritarians, announcing that their places are being watched and their email and telephone communication monitored. The fact that the recently formed european task force -which introduces the term of confronting "anarchist terrorism" for reasons of preemptive repression- is dealing, among other things, with the safety of the olympics, and the press statement of a greek police official that "until the games we will be finished with the anarchists", are indicating that this is a chance for the state to attack social militants in an examplary way in order to intimidate society and disarm the idea of resistance. The olympics, as the bosses' Grand Idea, propagandized by the whole spectrum of the authoritarian system (political parties, financial institutions and the Media) is a contemporary ideological machine to extract social consent, consisting of the most conservative figures, such as nationalism, to the most modern "values" of consumerism and "voluntary" offer of unpaid labor in the service of the bosses. We do not forget that, here as much as globally, the excess of multi-advertised means, mechanisms and methods of repression the state and capital are getting armed with, as well as their intimidating campaign, reflect also their insecurity caused by existent and imminent social explosions. They reflect the failure they taste in their effort to present their domination as indisputable and totally invulnerable, when all over the world there are struggles and revolts bursting against globalization of exploitation and oppression, against war and capitalist peace. Today, the olympics concentrate the state's effort to deepen its authority in society, repressing all those resisting its plans. But this campaign is not adequate to instill fear, discourage and deter the multiform expressions of social and class struggle. On the contrary, it is a condition highlighting the necessity to intensify and spread this struggle in every front the bosses are opening with their aggression and in every front they try to close to their account. We antagonize the projects of the growing commercialization and surveillance of public spaces, reclaiming them and transforming them to spaces of resistance. We sabotage social peace. We resist the "anti"terrorist war inside and outside the borders. We stand in solidarity with political prisoners and persecuted social fighters. We act together with all those revolting against the dictatorship of the State and Capital. REKINDLE THE FLAMES OF SOCIAL AND CLASS WAR DESTROY THE BOSSES' GRAND IDEA Open Assembly of Anarchists-Antiauthoritarians June 2004

http://squathost.com/anarchist_assembly/en/f2004.htm