Tent City University 87


I am giving a talk at Occupy London’s Tent City University by St Paul’s at noon tomorrow. Many thanks to all who responded to my request to help the logistics of this. I am going to donate some copies of Murder in Samarkand and The Catholic Orangemen of Togo for people to read on the occupation.

I shall also be giving a talk at the Chapter Theatre, Cardiff on 13th November at 2.30pm, for Freedom from Torture (formerly the Medical Foundation for the Victims of Torture). This is a wonderful organisation which, among other things, does fantastic work for torture victims who are in the UK.

If anyone knows where I am giving a talk on 8 November please let me know!!!!


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87 thoughts on “Tent City University

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  • Responsible Citizen

    Not entirely irrelevant, I fear. Two recent snaps of the human instrument responsible for applying appropriate pressure to St Paul’s, so far forcing resignation of both Dean & Canon Chancellor:
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    http://tinyurl.com/6fj3blk
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    http://tinyurl.com/6eedktv
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    Of all Lord Mayors post-War, Mike Bear — an anglicization, as irony would have it of ‘Behr’ as in Bear Stearns — has most reason to revile agitators in general & community activists in particular.
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    For more than a decade he presided over the destruction of the centuries-old Spitalfields Market, hampered in his aim only by sustained opposition from Spitalfields Community Association. Bear was representative on the ground of notorious Balfour Beatty. (e.g. in March 2009 the company was found to be a subscriber to the Consulting Association, prosecuted by the Information Commissioner for breaching the Data Protection Act by holding a secret database of construction workers details, including union membership & political affiliations.)
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    Bear’s role as director of the Spitalfields Development Group is what first propelled him into financial-quarter politics and, in due course, as a kind of delayed thank you, into the Lord Mayor’s coach.
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    http://tinyurl.com/6fueljm
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    http://tinyurl.com/6y4jjnn
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    http://tinyurl.com/3rkjz8w
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    Didn’t realise till now that in some quarters the City of London is known as the Jewish Vatican. This tainted — I presume racist — source serves as a for-instance:
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    http://tinyurl.com/3m5zlqs
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    PS:
    Manchester-based Jewish Telegraph’s interview with gent on left of frame in above snap of joint hands-on opening of Tel Aviv stock exchange:
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    http://tinyurl.com/64btlae
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    As a friend of mine remarked a few weeks back when I pointed this out during Fox-Werrity scandal in which Gould featured: What if HMG had appointed a white supremacist as its ambassador to S. Africa? Or a Communist as ambassador to Moscow?
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    The above facts are as grubby as they are undeniable. They’re just the sort of thing that feeds racist sentiment, exemplified in veiled form, I presume, by the blog cited above, & by the likes of the obnoxious saxophonist Gilad Atzmon.
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    We are all Jewish. It’s just that some of us are more Jewish than others. I say this not entirely facetiously. Race, like Zionism, is a toxic 19th century construct. Mere demographic arithmetic renders it risible. All the more reason not to shy away from naming those who since 1945 are able to veil selfish & rapacious motives contrary to human interests under the mantle of one of the world’s great religious traditions.
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    PPS:
    I myself was born in Jerusalem.

  • craig Post author

    Larry Levin,

    I have niether the technology nor know-how. Experience seems to show that professional attention to sound quality needed for this to be worthwhile.

  • TFS

    Hope you will promote the following books down at OWS

    Griftopia, but Matt Taibbi (contributor to Rolling Stone magazine), explains how Wall Street screwed the world. It is also relevant to the e-petition from FairFuelUK, as it explains who started the fatefull rise of fuel, none other that Goldman Sacchs with secret deals some 16 yrs ago and why commodities (food) have spiralled upwards.

    Also a book by Glenn Greenwald ‘With Liberty and Justice for some’, self explanatory but should get some refernece material for the protestors.

    good luck with the talk.

    regards

    TFS

  • ingo

    Great news, I wish I was rid of my ‘Beckham’, hobblin’ around does not suit me, would love to be there, shall advertise your talk, good luck and have fun with the issues.

  • mary

    Craig speaks of the victims of torture above and the help given to them by Freedom from Torture.
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    Here the makers of instruments of torture are given carte blanche to display their wares at a Paris arms fair.
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    Israeli torture traders exhibit in Paris
    10/31/2011 – 18:10
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    An Israeli company selling instruments of torture and repression has been given refuge at a Paris arms fair, six years after it was expelled from a similar event in London.
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    Electroshock shields were one of the items offered by TAR Ideal Concepts at the Milipol exhibition in the French capital earlier this month, a source who attended this bazaar informed me. Those shields are explicitly designed to inflict pain on people who come into contact with them.
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    TAR’s participation went unnoticed by the mainstream media. That was in contrast to the 2005 UK Defense System and Equipment International (DSEI) exhibition. On that occasion, the Israeli firm was instructed to pack up its stand because its brochures solicited orders for stun guns, batons and leg cuffs. TAR founder Tomer Avnon complained at the time that it was hypocritical to single out his firm. “Don’t forget we were among booths offering everything from sniper rifles to silencers, cluster bombs and all sorts of nasty stuff,” he told The Jerusalem Post.
    […]
    http://electronicintifada.net/blog/david/israeli-torture-traders-exhibit-paris#.TrBLdSpYCSM

  • derek

    Craig

    If you talk to Robin at the ‘RealReform’ tent at St Pauls remind him he still has the Murder in Samarkand I lent him last year.

  • mary

    ???

    I feel sorry for the people especially the Greek people.
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    Greece crisis deepens: Military chiefs sacked after shock call for referendum on austerity cuts sends markets tumbling
    Chiefs of staff at Greek National Defence, Army General and Air Force get arching orders for no clear reason
    Sarkozy and Merkel call emergency meeting over referendum call
    Huge losses for French banks exposed to Greek debt
    ‘More important than ever’ to push ahead with bailout, says Sarkozy
    FTSE 100 falls 3.4 per cent after opening
    Germany’s Dax falls and French CAC-40 plummet by more than 5 per cent
    59 per cent of Greeks think deal is ‘negative’
    ‘No’ vote could prompt country’s exit from the Euro
    228-year-old US brokerage MF Global goes bankrupt due to euro bonds
    Chinese warn hopes of ‘red knight’ riding to slay euro debt dragon are ‘misplaced’
    Comes as UK growth figures ‘better than expected’
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    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2055872/Markets-plummet-Greece-calls-shock-referendum-cuts-threatens-SINK-Euro-bailout.html

  • mary

    I thought that I had somehow deleted the ‘m’ from marching but no that is how it appears.

    By the left, arch!

  • wendy

    “Comes as UK growth figures ‘better than expected’”
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    .
    not real growth .. its a sleight of hand.

  • Greenmachine

    ‘Best Wishes’ Craig for your talk on the morrow. My daughter and I visited the camp last Thursday and were impressed by the ‘broad church’ of protestors and their intelligent discourse. The calm, measured determination evident in spreading the message of the immoral inequality and sheer criminality of ‘cartel capitalism’ is making headway. The about-turn of the Church authorities and the growing acceptance of the need for an alternative to the current criminal financial system is heart-warming. Now the MSM, especially the BBC (if not RT and Channel 4 news will have to do!), need to really engage in the debate!
    Keep up with Max Keiser and Gerard Celente to find out what’s really happening in global finance.

  • Clark

    Voila, put a microphone near to Craig, if you can. This will make the biggest difference to sound quality. A separate mic and a long cable are needed. I mic clipped to clothing or taped to the lectern would be good. Failing that, Craig could wear an MP3 recorder, and sound could be overdubbed onto the video later. If the recorder has digital sound, leave the record level quite low as Craig can get surprisingly loud when he makes a point.

  • Seen This?

    NATO engineered Gaddafi’s escape by South African mercenaries then bombed the convoy and left their proxies to finish the job brutally, if this article is to be believed. If so this is a cast iron war crime (or is that why the pressure was on to de-legitimise him / depose him before his death?):

    Danie Odendaal, one of the fighters, claimed he was with Gaddafi when the convoy was attacked. He has told South African media that three groups of South Africans were flown in to Libya via Dubai and Cairo to help the Gaddafi family under a deal done with Nato.

    The plan, he said, was initially to take Gaddafi to Niger. “We all believed they [certain Western countries] wanted him out of Libya. But then Nato attacked. It was a gruesome, gruesome orgy, I think we were sold out”. The dictator suffered brutal abuse before being killed. “The poor thing screamed like a pig,” he said. However, some rebels then helped the South Africans get away from the scene.

    The Independent has learnt that Mr Odendaal, who was travelling on a Greek passport, was sent to Cairo to receive treatment for injuries he had received and has since moved to Western Europe.

    However not all the mercenaries have been freed and Mr Odendaal has named two South Africans who were killed in the frantic confusion around Sirte. But the identities remain unverified and next-of-kin have not been informed.

    Revolutionary fighters present at the time of Gaddafi’s capture spoke of seeing bodies of white mercenaries which later disappeared. Abdullah Hakim Husseini, of the Misrata brigade, recalled: “There were, I think, three or four bodies of foreigners. We were told not to touch them, they would not be going back to Misrata… Later I heard they were from Zimbabwe and South Africa.”

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/wonga-coup-mercenaries-fixed-gaddafis-doomed-last-flight-6255407.html

  • Komodo

    City of London is now delaying eviction proceedings. Must have heard you were coming, Craig. Or noticed an upsurge of interest in their very sheltered financial status (see Cynical Highlander’s link, and mine, elsewhere). (Wish I had a personal lobbyist entitled to stand in the Commons….)

  • Tris

    Bravo Craig. They are doing a marvellous job of protesting peacefully and justly.

    They are a credit and an inspiration to us all.

  • Jives

    @ Craig

    Good luck with the speech tomorrow.

    Try and get it an audio recording if possible,no matter whether hi or lo quality.

    I have the sound engineering eqpt to clean it up,amplify,reduce noise spill etc and can send it back to you in whatever format you wish in order to embed it in your video.

    Cheers.

  • Ruth

    Seen this,
    It appears your story from the Independent has been changed very, very quickly.
    In the first publication of the article one of the paragraphs stated,

    ‘The private force of South Africans is said to have undertaken the task of getting Gaddafi out of Libya via a convoy in the belief it had the backing of the Western powers. The men were recruited, it is claimed, by a woman of British background living in Kenya and working on behalf of a company in London.’

    The article you gave a link to had an addition,

    ‘The private force of South Africans are said to have undertaken the task of getting Gaddafi out of the country via the convoy in the belief it had the backing of the Western powers. The men were recruited, it is claimed, by a woman of British background – whose name cannot currently be published for legal reasons – living in Kenya and working on behalf of a company in London.

    Why can’t it be published? It’s of major importance to know if the UK was implicated in Gaddafi’s death.

    Surely the ‘Wonga Coup’ was an SIS operation to take control of Equatorial Guinea’s resources just as this appears to have been a duplicitous plot by our great country to keep the rebels happy making it look as if they were responsible for Gaddafi’s death.

    I think it’s vital to find out who the woman is and the company in London ‘she worked on behalf of.’ There can’t be that many companies in London who hire mercenaries from South Africa.

  • Gerald

    That posting by “Mark Golding – Children of Iraq” is misleading, sensationalist bullshit.

    ‘Occupy’ Toronto – my ass.

    There has been no police shooting at “Occupy Toronto”.

    While I would be proud to think that Canadian activists are ahead of the wave, I don’t think they’re that far ahead – the YouTube video linked to was uploaded over a year ago.

  • mary

    Gerald – No need to sound so aggressive towards Mark or his website or so triumphant as it was a misleading upload. Things to come perhaps? Watch out for action by the Toronto police today. They have the form. There were also agents provocateurs in the Toronto G20 ‘riots’ who were identified by the colour of the soles of their boots! Ha! This is from the Occupy Toronto website.
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    Solidarity with Occupy Oakland and the General Strike!
    Posted by Outreach | November 2, 2011
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    In response to a police attack that hospitalised 25 people, and being forced off their occupation site, Occupy Oakland called for a general strike this Wednsday.
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    This call came out at an Occupy Oakland General Assembly that was attended by over 1500 people, and has since been taken up by a number of the city’s large unions, especially among their rank and file. This Wednsdays thousands of workers in Oakland will walk off their jobs and march in Oakland in solidarity with Occupy.
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    Major goals will be protesting at banks or corporations that refuse to shut down for the day, then marching in the evening to the Port of Oakland to try to shut down the night shift.
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    Occupy Toronto will be marching in solidarity with Occupy Oakland, and in solidarity with the Oakland General Strike!
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    Join us at 4:00 as we march to the financial sector to hold a rally and an assembly to decide where to go from there.
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    http://occupyto.org/2011/11/02/solidarity-with-occupy-oakland-and-the-general-strike/

  • mary

    and as regards the Children of Iraq, for your information from William Blum’s latest Anti Empire Report –

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    The Iraqi Lullabye
    On February 17, 2003, a month before the US bombing of Iraq began, I posted to the Internet an essay entitled “What Do the Imperial Mafia Really Want?” concerning the expected war. Included in this were the words of Michael Ledeen, former Reagan official, then at the American Enterprise Institute, which was one of the leading drum-beaters for attacking Iraq:
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    If we just let our own vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don’t try to be clever and piece together clever diplomatic solutions to this thing, but just wage a total war against these tyrants, I think we will do very well, and our children will sing great songs about us years from now.
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    After a year of the tragic farce that was the American intervention in Iraq I could not resist. I sent Mr. Ledeen an email reminding him of his words and saying simply: “I’d like to ask you what songs your children are singing these days.”
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    I received no reply.
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    Has there ever been an empire that didn’t tell itself and the world that it was unlike all other empires, that its mission was not to plunder and control but to enlighten and liberate?
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    http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer99.html

  • craig Post author

    Ruth,

    Interesting isn’t it. South African websites reckon it was Hart Security of 118 Piccadilly. The operation was coordinated by a man called Penfold. Made me wonder whether any relation to Peter Penfold – read The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and you will understand.

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