Call for 'blue bucket' Olympic protests

ANTI-OLYMPIC protesters in London are planning to target controversial VIP lanes with a 'blue bucket' campaign.

Anarchist blogger Ian Bone says: "To take the piss out of the VIP lanes with their flashing blue police escort lights everyone is encouraged to stick a blue bucket on their car roof…or bicycle or head.

"That’ll do fine as an action everyone can relate to – the more daring may want to join the VIP lanes on the first day or the days before and after.

"The beauty of the idea is that everyone can do it – all over London with blue buckets on their roofs and tooting their horns it will be saying  WE ARE ALL VIPs.

"Others who want to take the blue bucket tactic further can devise their own actions. The whole campaign will have everyone laughing at the expense of the VIPs.

"Spread the idea comrades. this will be far better than a demo or whatever LET'S MAKE IT THE BLUE BUCKET OLYMPICS."

The lanes, which will be implemented across 39 miles of road in central London, will allow 80,000 accredited members of the ‘Olympic family’ - not just athletes, but also officials and sponsors, to by-pass congestion on the busy roads, even when they are not heading to Olympic events.

Effectively, this creates a privileged class consisting of bureaucrats and bosses of multinational corporations like McDonald's and Coca-Cola.

Their vehicles will even be given priority over non-999 ambulance journeys.

Undercover investigations by Channel 4 have revealed that rich businessmen were being offered the chance to ‘buy’ access to the VIP road lanes for £20,000 a head.

Keep up to date with the global insurrection - follow Vast Minority on Twitter.   

Counter Olympics - meeting date in London

A BIG meeting to prepare for Countering the Olympics is being held in London later this month.

The event is being staged on Saturday January 28, from 10.30am to 5pm, at Toynbee Hall, Commercial Road, London E1 6LS.

Says a statement on the CounterOlympics website: "There are now fewer than seven months before the shenanigans hit town, with each day bringing more news about runaway finances, contaminated topsoil, privatised housing, militarised neighbourhoods, losses of basic liberty, corruption, undemocratic planning decisions…

"While the bigwigs are gaining billions, just what do the rest of us lose?

"This will be a day-long opportunity to investigate and interrogate all aspects of Olympic theft, debt, repression, pollution, corporatisation, sponsorship, displacement, and lack of community consultation.

"From NOGOE and Save Wanstead Flats to Vancouver and Athens, a range of local, national and international activist groups will share their stories. Then it’s up to us all to create the mass mobilisation needed to expose these Olympic-sized lies!

"Whether you’re an avid organiser or new to the game, now is the time to get involved."

Keep up to date with the global insurrection - follow VM on Twitter.

2012 London Olympics - the enemy of democracy

THE 2012 London Olympics are the enemy of democracy and anarchists must protest against them, despite draconian threats from the state.

That's the forceful message from a new post on the Rebel Cleaners blog.

It says: "While company directors, corrupt politicians and bankers are comfortably seated together to supervise and reap profits from the labour of others (how capitalist!) we'll still be on the streets showing that we're strong, we're angry and that these bastards are losing their control over us.

"Now, there is something that our rulers absolutely do not want broadcasting around the world. There'll be no shortage of cameras about, as pretty much every news agency in the world will be operating here in Britain this summer.

"It's not hard to see why the rich are so worried. Protests, direct action, strikes and the like are set to undo every bit of material gain they're hoping to raid from the Olympic Games.

"How can the rich push the sponsors if the TV cameras are showing pictures of people angry at those exact same sorts of mega-corporations?

"How can the rich get their billionaire buddies to travel to Britain to spend their cash in London's fancy hotels and restaurants, if these places are under threat of being attacked by black bloc tactics?

"How can the British government continue to dictate to Greece and other countries through the IMF and EU about their economic policies when the people riot against British economic policy?

"How can foreign policy be enforced when TV screens from Hong Kong to Houston are showing pictures of people critical to these policies?

"The answer is, they can't. So, prepare to kiss your fantasy of legitimate protest goodbye."

The blog lists various measures being taken by the British state to ensure that the corporate, not people's, voices are heard this summer:

• Protests near to the Olympic sites are to be banned. We've already seen bans on protests enforced in parts of London, under the façade of anti-fascism. It's also looking like the legislation is being expanded to include new powers to the police to attack protesters wherever they may be, with encampments such as that at St Paul's or Parliament Square targeted in particular..
• Display, production, or even possession of posters, leaflets,  which critises the government, Olympics, or sponsors has been criminalised. Just printing this article authorises the police to break in, seize your computer, search your home and arrest you for it. Sorry about that.
• 13,500 soldiers to be deployed to "maintain order", including drones, the Royal navy's biggest aircraft carrier, a dozen Eurofighter Typhoons and several attack helicopters mounting tank killing missiles. Oh and a cute jingoistic Nuremberg Rally style military parade too.
• Total control of the media. Reporters or networks that report anything that does not fit into the corporate plan, are threatened with being shut down and having their license (yes, license) to write, or broadcast, what's going on, revoked.
• The push to further militarise the police, by giving them new powers to disperse protest quicker and new weapons such as tasers, water cannons, rubber bullets and chemical warfare agents.

Keep up to date with the global insurrection - follow VM on Twitter.

Anti-Olympic resistance kicks off in Canada

ANARCHISTS clashed with police in Vancouver, Canada, over the weekend in a high-profile protest at the corporate junket known as the Winter Olympics.

Reported the LA Times: "Anti-Olympic protests erupted into clashes with police Saturday as a roaming band of masked activists broke plate-glass shop windows at the iconic Hudson's Bay Co., smashed car windows and hurled trash cans and news racks into busy intersections.

"Riot police moved in several times to secure key downtown thoroughfares and occasionally wrestled protesters to the ground with batons, though there were no serious injuries.

"Police were finally able to corner the band of about 300 protesters on a commercial block in Vancouver's west end and then formed a cordon around the leaders, sealing them off as the crowd screamed 'Let them go!'

"They were released a short while later on the condition that they disperse. Police said about 100 masked 'criminal' anarchists were marching among about 200 protesters who appeared to be law-abiding."

In response to this blatant police attempt to criminalise dissent, an anti-Olympics campaigner told the paper: "The Vancouver Organizing Committee are the criminal element that have pilfered the public coffer of as much money as they could, and we're going to see the effects of it after these Games with cuts to education, cuts to housing, cuts to all the public services."

Alissa Westergard-Thorpe of the Olympic Resistance Network was quoted by the Canadian Press accusing the police of trying to intimidate Olympic critics and pointing out that the protesters hadn't been 'violent' at all, as had been widely claimed.

"Protesters have never been violent toward human beings," she said. "Property damage is not the same as violence, and it certainly is nothing compared to the tools that police have, manhandling them, pushing them, hitting them with bicycles."