Alicia raises the issue that "we keep hearing about Live8 distracting from G8 but not a lot about the G8 protests." Good point.
I'd recommend Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army's "G8 2005, Gleneagles: Repression, Resistance and Clowns" (IMC):
All over Scotland, (dis)organisations as varied as the grassroots network dissent! and the largely conservative coalition "make poverty history" protested against the 2005 G8 summit in Gleneagles. The reasons were as varied as the forms to express disagreement, from marching to blockading, from clowning to filming, from talking to direct action. Although police from all over the UK were busy containing protesters in pens, arresting, searching and holding them under section 60, discontent with the G8 agenda was voiced in many significant places and eventually supported by international solidarity. [Read the full article for summaries on issues, actions, timelines, repression and resistance in Scotland from Saturday 2 July to Friday 8 July.
] The protests began the previous weekend with the Make Poverty History demonstration in Edinburgh with about 200,000 people in white t-shirts. [Full list of reports]. The following day, there were demonstrations in Glasgow on the theme of Make Borders History highlighting the racist asylum and immigration politics of the G8 and other states in closing their borders to people escaping poverty and political persecution, and the start of three counter-conferences in Edinburgh.Monday, thousands of protesters drew attention to the nuclear arms possessed by the UK government by blockading the entrances into Faslane nuclear submarine facility. A Carnival of Full Enjoyment, in Edinburgh, was called on the same day to resist the daily grind of the institutions that plunge us into overwork, poverty and debt. Instead, it became quickly dubbed the Carnival for Full Policing as events in the city showed how fast a place can be turned into a temporary police state. Protesters, media and bystanders were cordonned-in for hours as Forward Intelligence Teams (FIT) roamed the city, stopping and searching people under section 60 for no obvious reason. The city of Edinburgh came to a stand-still as shoppers and tourists mixed with protestors facing lines of (riot) police and the ever present Clowns.On the Tuesday, activists protested at the Dungavel Detention Centre event though all detainees had been evacuted from it.
In addition, the above article and day by day breakdowns of the protests can be found at this page at UK Indymedia.
Lynda's e-mailed to note Patrick Cockburn's "Iraq's top Shia cleric warns of 'genocidal war'" (The Independent):
The slaughter of hundreds of civilians by suicide bombers shows that a "genocidal war" is threatening Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's most influential Shia cleric, warned yesterday.
So far he has persuaded most of his followers not to respond in kind against the Sunni, from whom the bombers are drawn, despite repeated massacres of Shia. But sectarian divisions between Shia and Sunni are deepening across Iraq after the killing of 18 children in the district of New Baghdad last week and the death of 98 people caught by the explosion of a gas tanker in the market town of Musayyib. Many who died were visiting a Shia mosque.
(Remember Patrick Cockburn was interviewed on Democracy Now! today. If you missed it, it's watch, listen and/or read.)
And yes, the Democracy Now! post is up twice. One has "sit" and one has "set" ("sit" is correct).
The e-mail posts continue to be e-mailed out more than they actually hit. It'll probably happen again. I know Mike noted one in his post today. I'm not sure which so we'll leave them both up.
(If I delete it and it's the one Mike noted, people clicking on the link he provides will find a "page cannot be found" message.)
If you need an additional reason, think of it as: Democracy Now! ("so nice, we noted it twice," as C.I. says).
Tomorrow we may have a post from Ruth. More likely it will be the day after. She's trying to follow up on something she heard. Kat has e-mailed that she's "minutes away" from finishing her latest Kat's Korner. If it's there when I post this, it will go up here immediately after. Otherwise, the earliest will be tomorrow morning. Kat says to tell everyone that she didn't want to do this review because she really hates the album but that e-mails keep asking for it "so don't come griping to me telling me you wish I hadn't said that!"
Cedric has started his own blog. He's calling it Cedric's Big Mix. He writes that it will be a little talk about music but mainly he'll be putting up stuff there that he likes on any given day. It's not a daily blog, he notes. (Cedric, if I don't have time to write you back tonight, yes, you can use anything of mine here.) Today he's "free styling about C-Murder's latest project." I'm pressed for time but, again in case I run out of time before I get to replying to the e-mails tonight, let me know what I can do to help.
