G20 Benefit

Help out some comrades who need it.

The [We Need A Name For This Place] Squat.

While comrades in Melbourne were being harassed by landlords, squatting communities in Papua New Guinea having their settlements burnt and demolished by cops, Big Bbusiness planning to descend on squatters in Ghana, and Kenyan squatters demanding land be returned by the Government; one of Sydney's largely gentrified, though conveniently located Inner-West suburbs got a whole lot more squatty!

A few comrades and me have turned a really (really) nice empty, into a really (really) great home.

After squatting our place, we noticed that a large industrial building next door was also empty, and so now that is being used as well, with plans afoot to create a people's kitchen.

We were shown our place by friendly squatters from down the road, who have helped us out a lot. which just goes to show that if you want to squat in Sydney, you just need to get in contact with the squatters. The community in Sydney is actually quite vibrant despite being smallish in comparison to other cities, and everyone involved is happy help out - so squat!
We've been living here for about a month now, these photo's were mostly taken before we moved in. So a lot has changed.

For some pictures, starting with the overgrown yard. This was cleaned up pretty quickly with a lot of initial enthusiasm (and before the 40°C days.)
Some of the rooms;
Our ghetto lock;

Front bedroom clothing solutions;

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).

Hugo Chávez - Paints a pretty picture

Much like Hitler, Venezuelan (quasi)revolutionary Hugo Chavez, has been revealed to have abit of an eye for painting.
And it also has been revealed that businessmen have an eye for the works created by the hero of the working class.
3 Businessmen recently bought this work "La Luna de Yare" or "The Yare Moon", for $255,000 in an Auction which started at $14,000.
Members of his party reportedly remarked that they were suprised of the price. Proceeds are expected to go towards funding his socialist party.

I Scream, You Scream...
An anarchist Ice cream truck is touring about the United states offering helpful tips and propaganda to its customers, as well as delicious ice cream.
The truck drivers name is Aaron and he is a co-founder of The Center for Tactical Magic, which says of itself;

The Center for Tactical Magic engages in extensive research, development, and deployment of the pragmatic system known as Tactical Magic. A fusion force summoned from the ways of the artist, the magician, the ninja, and the private investigator, Tactical Magic is an amalgam of disparate arts invoked for the purpose of actively addressing Power on individual, communal, and transnational fronts. At the CTM we are committed to achieving the Great Work of Tactical Magic through community-based projects, daily interdiction, and the activation of latent energies toward positive social transformation.

Aaron remembering his first customer says “My first customer was a little old lady who got an ice cream, and I asked if she wanted a piece of propaganda. She said: ‘Only one? I’ll take Anarchy, Black Panthers and Earth First.’ I was like, ‘Right on.’”

More Here

Home Improvement #1

Introducing; The House!
The dwelling is a modest 1 bedroom terrace about 2-3 Kilometers from the CBD. My rigorous researching leads me to believe that it has been unoccupied for well over a year, in which time it has been left to the mercy of the elements, and by the looks of things, vandals.
Every window is missing, there is a lot of debris on the floor, carpet needs cleaning, electricity and gas need connecting, the toilet needs to be sealed, yard cleaning up, shower head installed, new coat of paint and I'm sure there will be many more things to add to this list as i spend more time in the space.
The pictures below show the space as it was when it was first entered. I intend to update this section of the blog fairly regularly, detailing the work being done, and answering any questions i can from potential squatters or curious minds.
To view these posts, and these posts only, at the bottom of this post click the "home improvement" label.
Enjoy!

Front Door; A view from the hallway.

The Kitchen

Hot water System!

A Door (obviously)

The next few home improvements should be somewhat more interesting, and i hope to deliver some squaterlicous blogness to you soon. Take care.

Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized that they were naked

"Eurgh!" Was the general reaction by Tea Tree Gully Council to these works produced by Margaret Tuckey and Scott Eames.
According to the ABC "A painting of a nude woman by art lecturer Margaret Tuckey and a bust by emerging sculptor Scott Eames have been knocked back by Tea Tree Gully Council, in Adelaide's north-east.

The artists were told by organisers their pieces were inappropriate for an exhibition which was likely to be viewed by children"

Eames said he couldn't get his mind around the decision "in this day and age", whereas Tuckey commented on the "moral gaurdian" role assumed by the council. And in a post modern response Russel Starke of Greenhill Galleries said "I just think that it's astonishing in this day and age that these people may think that they're moral guardians".

Penrith
Penrith regional gallery will be hosting a number of different exhibitions between the 23rd of August and the 2nd of November, around the theme of Samoa, with both social history and visual arts looked at.
One of these that looks pretty amazing is "SAMOA MO SAMOA: SAMOA FOR SAMOA - THE STORY OF THE MAU:
This important exhibition, drawn from the Alexander Turnbull Photographic Archives of the New Zealand National Library, chronicles Samoa remarkable Mau Movement for Independence. Samoa was the first Pacific nation to achieve independence and the Mau strategy of highly organised passive resistance is a political model of great significance and an achievement of which older Samoans are most proud. This collection of historic photos records the leading figures and key events of Samoa's little known political history from colonial rule to independence."

Melbourne Students Recycle Buildings!
"STUDENTS have barricaded a Melbourne University-owned property demanding an end to the student housing crisis.

About 25 members from the Student Housing Action Collective [SHAC] have taken over a property in Faraday St Carlton that has been left vacant since 2005."
The super squatting students selected several sites left vacant by the university, which i believe are these sites here, nice find!

Sign their petition!

I hope their (SHAC) venture is more successful than ASHC who were involved in a similar action two years ago. Stay strong!

I too plan to squat a building in the near future, so stay tuned as I'll keep details a-coming.

Protests grow from the barrel of a gun

War Profiteers are heading to the small town of Adelaide. The scum intend to meet on the 90th anniversary of the end of World War One, presumably to mourn the 40 Million casualties, and also the fact that they were not around to personally profit from the business opportunities that presented themselves as much of Europe attempted to kill one another.
Some Punks reckon that "The profits of war are of course, huge and for every person who has their life destroyed by a gun, a mine, a bomb, a razor wire fence or a steel capped boot, for every child orphaned by and for every woman raped in war, there's an arms dealer making a tidy profit."
They go on to remind us that "The last time the world's arms peddlars held a show in Australia, AIDEX'91, the Australian people, churches, unions, solidarity and green groups showed them that they were not welcome here and successfully cancelled the proposed follow up show in 1993." So check these guys out.

This is what AIDEX'91 looked like:


While searching the interweb i stumbled across a link to this site, which i thought would be interesting for some of you. The Author says;

I've been planning this for a while now. Biking almost 4000 miles across the midwestern and eastern USA. If there's a definition of insanity I suppose that'd be it.

But I can tell you why I want to do this. Because I'm destined to live my life as a timid pencil pusher, at least until the day I get too old or too tied down to bike epic journeys. And I'm taking this opportunity to just say "F*** normality". I want to tell people that I did something so outrageous and insane, they wouldn't believe it.

I want to do it even if it kills me.

And if my bicycle breaks down midway, I'll walk.

We'll see what happens.

And you can see what happens, just check it out; http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/3510

Also! "SORRY Melbourne but Sydney is the only Australian city to be included in the first international version of the famous money board game, Monopoly.

The harbour city will appear on the game's red strip alongside New York and London, following a world wide poll on which cities should be included. " More.

"Delusional" Protesters successful.

More than 40 protesters have been arrested at a climate action rally in Newcastle when they blocked a railway line delivering coal.

The Camp for Climate Action protest has shut down the main train line for most of the day.

Around 1,200 people have been protesting at the Carrington Coal Terminal, stopping three trains carrying 20,000 tonnes of coal from entering the terminal. - ABC Full story here

Unlike other certain other Climate Camps around the world, this weekends camp in Newcastle seems to have included coal miners themselves, or at least one. Peter Kennedy a coal miner and unionist says we need to "move toward green energy" and "speak out against the forever growing cancer called coal mining."

And today activists have thrown a sabot again, this time at Kooragang Coal Terminal, also in Newcastle.
The 5 protesters seem to have chained themselves to a coal conveyor belt and halted the terminal completely for two hours according to a spokesman from the plant.
The protesters reckon that we need a "transition to a renewable energy economy." and that "International examples prove that renewable energy will create tens of thousands of jobs for those most affected by climate change and those long-dependant on the destructive coal economy." More here.

Meanwhile Barry O'Farrel calls protesters delusional and shoots at straw men in claiming "Everyone understands the need to adjust to climate change, it isn't going to happen overnight, it's unreasonable to expect it to happen overnight and we need to get real about this." Everyone apparently understands the need to adjust, but those bringing attention to this need are delusional, makes sense.

Anyway check out these pictures from here:

Smoke Stack Lightning

"Queensland Energy Minister Geoff Wilson says he is shocked by the behaviour of Greenpeace activists at the Swanbank power station, west of Brisbane this morning." - ABC News

Minister Geoff, the humanitarian, is also very worried about the protesters safety, saying of the smoke stack they have climbed that "The structure itself is over 37 years old, there may be some issues with the integrity of it" - which raises the obvious question; apart from the damage to the environment, is this a structure that has been threatening the safety of workers without a peep, yet merits concern when someone makes a point using it?
Geoff also thinks that 4 people making a potentially dangerous point is "unnecessary and irresponsible and extreme", possibly more "unnecessary and irresponsible" than continuing with coal technology in the face of climate disaster

In other environment news some clever scientists have tinkered with and found a very promising (and from what i can tell, quite surprisingly basic) alteration of conventional solar technology, which may see solar become comparable in price to fossil fuel energy. For more, click here.

It seems that Greenpeace aren't the only members of the cast worried about impending climate disaster. From yesterday (10th) till the 15th at Newcastle there is a Camp For Climate Action going on, and i wish i had heard about it's awesomeness earlier.
Hopefully it is not too late for some of you to make it along (look at me talking like i actually have readers). The way it is being structured is very refreshing, and i recommend checking out their website, if for nothing other than interests sake.
There is planned a mass disobedience/train blockade on Sunday, to quote; "If we leave solving climate change to business and government, they will fail. Writing letters, lobbying, and changing our light bulbs is not working. We need to take action ourselves, engage in civil disobedience and non-violent direct action to prevent the expansion of the fossil fuel industries that are endangering life on earth. When laws are unjust or are destroying our future, people of conscience have a responsibility to act. It’s just as true now as it was in the 1700’s when Irish politician Edmund Burke said “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.”

Oh! By the way, in case this isn't obvious - this is the first post on here. Hope you've enjoyed it, and hope there will be more to follow.

-Liam