Pirate Bay Defendants to Fight On Mats Lewan, CNet The verdict has been handed down in the Pirate Bay file-sharing case, but the legal actions are far from done. "The prosecutor leads 1-0 after the first round, but this will of course be appealed," said Per E. Samuelsson, defense lawyer for Carl Lundström, one of the four individuals sentenced in the Pirate Bay trial, according to the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Samuelsson calls the verdict a scandal. He also claims that his client will have to pay the damages ruled by the court--a total of $3.6 million--because the other three sentenced lack economic resources.

Franklin Rosemont RIP April 12th, 2009 David Roediger, Paul Garon, and Kate Khatib Franklin Rosemont, celebrated poet, artist, historian, street speaker, and surrealist activist, died Sunday, April 12 in Chicago. He was 65 years old. With his partner and comrade, Penelope Rosemont, and lifelong friend Paul Garon, he co-founded the Chicago Surrealist Group, an enduring and adventuresome collection of characters that would make the city a center for the reemergence of that movement of artistic and political revolt. Over the course of the following four decades, Franklin and his Chicago comrades produced a body of work, of declarations, manifestos, poetry, collage, hidden histories, and other interventions that has, without doubt, inspired an entirely new generation of revolution in the service of the marvelous. Franklin Rosemont was born in Chicago on October 2, 1943 to two of the area’s more significant rank-and-file labor activists, the printer Henry Rosemont and the jazz musician Sally Rosemont. Dropping out of Maywood schools after his third year of high school (and instead spending countless hours in the Art Institute of Chicago’s library learning about surrealism), he managed nonetheless to enter Roosevelt University in 1962. Already radicalized through family tradition, and his own investigation of political comics, the Freedom Rides, and the Cuban Revolution, Franklin was immediately drawn into the stormy student movement at Roosevelt. Looking back on those days, Franklin would tell anyone who asked that he had “majored in St. Clair Drake” at Roosevelt. Under the mentorship of the great African American scholar, he began to explore much wider worlds of the urban experience, of racial politics, and of historical scholarship—all concerns that would remain central for him throughout the rest of his life. He also continued his investigations into surrealism, and soon, with Penelope, he traveled to Paris in the winter of 1965 where he found André Breton and the remaining members of the Paris Surrealist Group. The Parisians were just as taken with the young Americans as Franklin and Penelope were with them, as it turned out, and their encounter that summer was a turning point in the lives of both Rosemonts. With the support of the Paris group, they returned to the United States later that year and founded America’s first and most enduring indigenous surrealist group, characterized by close study and passionate activity and dedicated equally to artistic production and political organizing. When Breton died in 1966, Franklin worked with his wife, Elisa, to put together the first collection of André’s writings in English.

New York City Anarchist Bob Palmer, 1924–2009 Bob Palmer, an activist in New York's anarchist community since the early 1960s, died late Saturday night, April 4, 2009, from complications arising from a chronic heart condition. He was 84. Palmer was an early member of the old Alternate U on 14 Street and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, and a founder of Ecology Action East, one of the many groups that comprised Alternate U. When Alternate U disbanded in the early 1970s Palmer and several other AU activists started a specifically anarchist space and free school, called Freespace Alternate U, that was located at 339 Lafayette Street. Freespace lasted until about 1980 and a few years later Palmer was instrumental in establishing the Anarchist Switchboard on Ninth Street on the Lower East Side. From the late 1980s Bob Palmer had been involved with the Libertarian Book Club, which still meets at 339 Lafayette Street, the famed "Peace Pentagon".

Jury: University of Colorado Wrongly Fired Prof Ivan Moreno DENVER (AP) - A jury ruled Thursday that the University of Colorado wrongly fired the professor who compared some Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi, a verdict that gives the professor $1 and a chance to get his job back. Then-Gov. Bill Owens was among the officials who called on the university to fire Ward Churchill after his essay touched off a national firestorm, but the tenured professor of ethnic studies was ultimately terminated on charges of research misconduct. Churchill said claims including plagiarism were just a cover and that he never would have been fired if it weren't for the essay in which he called World Trade Center victims "little Eichmanns," a reference to Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi leader who orchestrated the Holocaust. Jurors agreed. When the verdict was read, Churchill hugged his attorney, David Lane, and his wife, Natsu Saito. The jury awarded Churchill only $1 in damages, but he has maintained that money was never his goal. A judge will decide later whether Churchill should get his job back.

Jury: University of Colorado Wrongly Fired Prof Ivan Moreno A jury ruled Thursday that the University of Colorado wrongly fired the professor who compared some Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi, a verdict that gives the professor $1 and a chance to get his job back. "What was asked for and what was delivered was justice," Ward Churchill said outside the courtroom. Then-Gov. Bill Owens was among the officials who had called on the university to fire Churchill after his essay touched off a national firestorm, but the tenured professor of ethnic studies was ultimately terminated on charges of research misconduct. Churchill said claims including plagiarism were just a cover and that he never would have been fired if it weren't for the essay in which he called World Trade Center victims "little Eichmanns," a reference to Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi leader who helped orchestrate the Holocaust. Jurors agreed. When the verdict was read, Churchill hugged his attorney, David Lane, and his wife, Natsu Saito. "I can't tell you how significant this is," Lane said. "There are few defining moments that give the First Amendment this kind of light." A judge will decide whether Churchill gets his job back. Lane said a reinstatement motion would be filed within 30 days and a hearing would likely be scheduled in June.

Athens Indymedia A police car patroling in Exarchia, central Athens, passing through Mesologgiou cobbled street (considered an alternative place with music, bars etc and lots of youth in the streets, so we can easily assume the police car was sent there to provoke and harass the youth), was confronted by a few young people, shouting to the policemen to get lost. There are a few reports that an empty bottle or a brick was thrown to the police car. The cops went out of the car provoking the youth and one of the pigs shot against one 15-16 year old boy, right on the heart, murdering him in cold blood. The name of the boy that stood up to the cops is Alexandros Grigoropoulos. Anarchists and residents gathered, but riot police forces circled the area. There are hundreds of policemen in the streets around central Athens. Anarchists gather in squats, universities, and central squares at Greece's largets cities to protest and fight back the police... after seeing this from Yahoo news feed:

Terrorism or Tragicomedy Giorgio Agamben Free the Tarnac Nine On the morning of November 11, 150 police officers, most of which belonged to the anti-terrorist brigades, surrounded a village of 350 inhabitants on the Millevaches plateau, before raiding a farm in order to arrest nine young people (who ran the local grocery store and tried to revive the cultural life of the village). Four days later, these nine people were sent before an anti-terrorist judge and “accused of criminal conspiracy with terrorist intentions.” The newspapers reported that the Ministry of the Interior and the Secretary of State “had congratulated local and state police for their diligence.” Everything is in order, or so it would appear. But let’s try to examine the facts a little more closely and grasp the reasons and the results of this “diligence.” First the reasons: the young people under investigation “were tracked by the police because they belonged to the ultra-left and the anarcho autonomous milieu.” As the entourage of the Ministry of the Interior specifies, “their discourse is very radical and they have links with foreign groups.” But there is more: certain of the suspects “participate regularly in political demonstrations,” and, for example, “in protests against the Fichier Edvige (Exploitation Documentaire et Valorisation de l'Information Générale) and against the intensification of laws restricting immigration.” So political activism (this is the only possible meaning of linguistic monstrosities such as “anarcho autonomous milieu”) or the active exercise of political freedoms, and employing a radical discourse are therefore sufficient reasons to call in the anti-terrorist division of the police (SDAT) and the central intelligence office of the Interior (DCRI). But anyone possessing a minimum of political conscience could not help sharing the concerns of these young people when faced with the degradations of democracy entailed by the Fichier Edvige, biometrical technologies and the hardening of immigration laws. As for the results, one might expect that investigators found weapons, explosives and Molotov cocktails on the farm in Millevaches. Far from it. SDAT officers discovered “documents containing detailed information on railway transportation, including exact arrival and departure times of trains.” In plain French: an SNCF train schedule. But they also confiscated “climbing gear.” In simple French: a ladder, such as one might find in any country house.

Caucus for a New Political Science Issues Statement, Defends Rashid Khalidi Nicholas Kiersey EMAIL: kiersey@ohio.edu WEB: http://www.apsanet.org/~new/ STATEMENT: http://homepage.mac.com/thenervousfishdown/files/khalidi.html PHONE: (740) 466-5799 The Caucus for a New Political Science issued a statement today condemning recent efforts by John McCain and Sarah Palin to impugn the integrity of Dr. Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University. Founded at the American Political Science Association’s 1967 annual meeting in Chicago, the Caucus is the oldest organized grouping of progressive political scientists in the United States. The Caucus is united by the idea that Political Science as an academic discipline should be committed to advancing progressive political development. Today’s statement follows below.

La Sapienza University of Rome Occupied in Protest Against Privatization "University is not going to pay your crisis!!" This morning in La Sapienza University of Rome has taken place a general assembly , participated in by over 10.000 students, asking the Director Luigi Frati to suspend lessons and the academic year as a protest against law 133, that will cause definitive privatization of italian university, massive job cuts and huge cuts of public foundings for research and education.

Fifth Annual Peoples Global Action Gathering PGA - People's Global Action - started in 1998, it has been a tool and a diffuse structure coordinating groups and people sharing common struggles and practices, in accordance with various anticapitalist and anti-authoritarian principles (see the hallmarks). PGA initiated the Intercontinental caravan in 1999, as well as international action days of actions against the G8, the WTO, the World Bank, the IMF... In Seattle, Genoa, Prague, and in a number of less popular events, PGA was a driving force behind numerous actions and reflections. At the convergence of international initiatives and local struggles, groups close to the PGA are now looking for new drives to challenge stagnation.