Sick of cops. Sicks of locked out squats.

As i was typing the last blog entry about getting some photo's up of our squat and it's ad-hoc mastery; the very squat i was typing about was being evicted! This was not your normal Sydney squat eviction. Generally things will go down one of two ways.

• The owner will show up, surprised to find someone living in their wasting house, feign some outrage and ask you to leave. Either immediately or within some time frame they see as reasonable or...
• The owner will show up with the police and do more of less the same thing; ask you to leave or give you abit of time.

But this was not to be the case for our Stanmore squat. Unfortunately Stanmore falls within the jurisdiction of Newtown Local Area Command, if anyone has had any dealings with these unpleasant folks you'll know why this is a problem.

On Saturday morning a few hardened criminal squatters were waking up, making small talk, sharing stories and cooking some pancakes when interrupted by a knock on the door. Without delay, the police arrested everyone within the house, regardless of whether they lived there or not. Loaded them into a paddywagon and left for the station.
When they arrived at the station they were detained for 45 minutes in the back of the wagon, then moved inside where they were separated and held for four hours. They were then charged and held in solitary confinement for a further two hours before being released on bail. All were charged with trespass which is unheard of among Sydney squatters.
All this for living in a house that had been empty for a decade, and will lie empty for another.

While the police response may seem unusual - and it is - it turns out that the kind of overreaction seen is only to be expected from Newtown Cops; those arrested were told by someone giving legal advice that the arresting officer had once stopped a man who was pushing a bicycle home, breath tested him and charged him with drink driving! To know that these kind of sociopaths have been granted amazing powers over our lives is either frightening, infuriating or both.

Although not all is lost. While our little crew has been physically broken up, we're still looking after each other and taking care of each others things. I've since moved into the most breathtakingly large squat i have ever heard of, we're in negotiations with the owners to arrange a caretakers lease and if all goes ahead and we're legalised then our crew will be back again, causing all sorts of nightmares for police, such as living in an empty building.





If you know someone who is taking direct action to better their life and the lives of others, and that person is not interested in perpetuating a system of exploitation then call crimestoppers on 1800 333 000 - Pigs Need To Know.

G20 Benefit

Help out some comrades who need it.

Greece

Perhaps having built a barricade when you’re sixteen provides you with a sort of safety rail. If you’ve once taken part in building one, even inadvertently, doesn’t its usually latent image reappear like a warning signal whenever you’re tempted to join the police, or support any manifestation of Law and Order? - Jean Genet

Greece. What is happening there is too complex and amazing for me to really sum up in a blog post. However other people, much more capable than myself have been attempting to do exactly that.
Over at Libcom there is a great page of info. For those who're more or less unfamiliar with what's going on this article provides a decent summary, and over at hyperborea there is a nice article with some excerpts of manifesto's and other things that have been said and produced by those involved.

I really wish i could provide more stuff myself, but I've been quite busy in the last week or two subverting the capitalist exploitation of roof, wall and suburb fetishism (soon to be written about).

Cops a-Zappin' the whole world round.

"[It was] the most horrendous experience [of my life]. At one point I just pretended like I was dead because I thought ... then they would stop." - Patricia Skelly, who has a mental illness, was tasered between nine and 15 times while in custody in jail and later in hospital.

The fact that police have been using tasers with little scrutiny in the USofA may come as little suprise to many of us, though the normal Australian reaction of "Heh; America is so fucked.", doesn't seem quite as comforting now that Aussie plod are carrying the electric weapons.
Between September 1999 and October 2008 at least 378 people have died after being stunned by police, and that's in North American alone, according to a list compiled by Truth Not Tasers. Despite the alarming statistics, Top Dog Scipione pushed hard to grow the ever expanding police powers to include the devices, that the United Nations has deemed a form of torture, into the Arsenal of NSW Cops.

Scipione is quoted as saying "There are people out there who are generally not very pleasant when it comes to having to intervene as a police officer - they're in the business of committing crimes, or they've lost control of their senses, be they heavily under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and police have to subdue them, we have to take them into custody,"
So perhaps Australia's mentally ill will face a similar experience that Patricia Skelly did. If not the mentally ill, scipione certainly seems interested in the use of electroshock weapons on drug effected people - a group that many say are most at risk when it comes to the use of tasers.

However; in the unlikely event that these tasers are withdrawn, police needn't worry about waste. Welsh police have shown recently that you don't even need a person to target when using a taser! "POLICE zapped a runaway sheep that was blocking traffic with a Taser stun gun, a weapon issued for use in violent situations." reports LimitedNews.

Pack'em, Rack'em, Stack'em.

"Thirty of South Australia's most hardened criminals have surrendered to police after rioting inside a jail.

The prisoners were barricaded in a high-security compound of the Port Augusta jail, surrounded by tactical response police who today brokered a resolution on a second day of negotiations with the inmates.

A group of 39 prisoners rioted late yesterday, forcing staff to withdraw as the inmates, brandishing weapons such as chair legs, smashed windows, computers and air-conditioners." Reports LiveNews.

Few news reports seem to shed any light on the legitimacy of the prisoners claims of bashings, though history would suggest that what happens behind the bars generally doesn't get out. Most News reports seem to focus attention on overcrowding being the cause for the "riots", while not exploring the fact that people denied of almost all liberty will probably harbor some resentment for the people and institutions involved in taking it from them.

Armed Party Poopers

"Riot squad police have shut down an illegal dance party in Sydney's inner suburbs sending home 1500 disgruntled party-goers." Reports Livenews.
The party was pretty awesome, with about 7 different area's set up throughout the factory, which had a really nice vibe. 3 floors, video installations, lights, lasers etc.

The cops, needless to say, over reacted to this, using unwarranted physical force on people who had just had their party needlessly shutdown.
Obviously upset they'd not been invited, they proceeded to invite all their friends including "Numerous additional police, including the Public Order and Riot Squad, the Dog Squad, Polair and Police Rescue"

From an email posted on a public forum; "To the party people - Your approach to modern life is an inspiration to part time anarchists, 8-ball sharks, lovers of cutting edge underground and all the other miscreants."