Make the G8 History Blog

London Blasts: Don't Let Them Win

Gabriele Zamparini. London, the city where I live, has been attacked. Ordinary people are paying the price, once again. Killing innocent people is an infamous act, never legitimate. Never justified. Never. But if we want to understand what’s going on without hysteria, we must look at the full picture. Again, not to apologize. But to understand. And hopefully to do something to build a better world.

Carnival for full policing

Stuart Hodkinson. After the political whitewash of Saturday's Live 8 and Make Poverty History, today saw the first serious protesting against the G8 summit in Scotland. The non-violent blockade against the Trident nuclear submarine base in Faslane passed off peacefully without incident. But at the originally Carnival of Full Enjoyment in Edinburgh, the streets of the Scottish capital experienced a very different reality with thousands of police shutting down the city and then physically turning on protesters, resulting in over 30 similar injuries when people were forced to jump over spiked railing at West Princes Street Gardens after being baton-charged by riot police.

Andrew Gilligan evicted from protest planning meeting

Anti-G8 protesters today threw out infamous journalist Andrew Gilligan from a meeting discussing tactics around the counter-G8 actions at the Dissent! convergence space at the Teviot student union. The former BBC Radio 4 Today correspondent now working for the London Evening Standard, who was at the centre of the war of words over the so called Iraq 'dodgy dossier' between the BBC and the UK government that led to the death of the scientist Dr David Kelly, failed to depart the packed 'Anti-Authoritarian Assembly' when journalists were asked to leave.

London police harrass Edinburgh-bound activists

Heading to Edinburgh tomorrow to protest against the G8? Then you might want to check in first with your local police station before travelling to save a bit of taxpayers money. From around 9am this morning, three riot vans were parked outside the squatted Institute for Autonomy space in Gower Street, Central London, and police stopped and searched people entering and leaving the building under section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, which gives the police the power to stop and search for "stolen and prohibited articles" under "reasonable suspicion". People were also harrassed outside the squatted Ramparts space in east London. Red Pepper understands that police have for the last week and a half been attempting to place the Institute for Autonomy under covert surveillance. See Indymedia

Live 'anti-G8' announced

SH. For music lovers who do want to 'mention the war' and believe that politics is about more than kissing Gordon Brown's hairy arse, then there's good news. While Bob, Bono and a load of other musical has-beens rattle out the same old crap on their corporate-sponsored zimmer-frames, real musicians with radical politics will be staging the biggest anti-G8 musical extravaganza Stirling has ever seen in the Live Music Marquee at the Hori-zone eco-village convergence camp near Forth Bank Stadium (just off the A91). Just like Live 8, PEACE NOT G8! is free. Unlike Live 8, O2 won't be making millions of pounds in text messages and all acts are free to slag off George Bush as much as they want. See Indymedia UK for the full details.

Edinburgh accommodation update

The Dissent! Edinburgh Accommodation Group has just released this urgent and important statement about the accommodation situation for protesters coming to Edinburgh. In short, it details how due to a variety of factors, the only legal mass accommodation secured is in assocation with the council on Hunter’s Hall Park, surrounding the Jack Kane Centre in the Niddrie estate. The group has reluctantly decided to endorse this but has reservations about a number of issues and wants to alert activists to them as well as encourage people to help create a Dissent! space within the accommodation.