Macassar, Cape Town, South Africa:
If the State Can't Provide, People Must Be Allowed to Build Themselves
Martin Legassick

On Tuesday last week, backyarders in Macassar, desperate for homes, built shacks on municipal land on a field adjoining the N2 - and were illegally evicted by Cape Town's Anti-Land Invasion unit, together with the SAPS and Metro Police.

The Anti-G20 Protests Lacked Politics Mario Tronti interviewed by Tonini Bucci Even if it is ritualistic, even if it is yet again the hope that there will be movement within social conflicts, there is no circumventing the question, what kind of movement it was that we experienced against the G20 summit in London and against NATO in Strasbourg. Much has already been written and said. Newspapers and televisions have described it as a protest that emerged in response to the effects of the global economic crisis. Its composition is not that of the classical organized subject of the workers’ movement. The question is thus: Is a movement that acts outside of the traditional representational spheres (without any ties to trade unions or parties), automatically a movement outside of politics, or does it just conduct a different kind of politics? In short: Is the criticism against those who accuse this movement of not being able to transcend the symbolic gesture of anger and frustration too narrow-minded? We asked Mario Tronti. Tonini Bucci: What kind of movement is the one that we saw against the G20 in London? Mario Tronti: Maybe it makes sense to compare it to today’s major rally of the CGIL in Rome. Here we see a horizontally expanded world of work currently mobilized and organized by a large trade union. That’s the tradition, right? Even if there are many new features, not least the presence of migrants and a youthful kind of publicity, the world of work exists and is a protagonist, or at least has the will to continue to be a protagonist in Italian history. And then there are the effects of the crisis. Conflict has again emerged with the G20 off the back of the more or less effective measures that the European countries, the USA and others are deciding upon. To me that is a consolation. The demonstrations we have seen in other countries in the last few days are different from today’s. Here there is an organized force that makes an intervention and there are forces of movement. Given that the Anglo-Saxon countries are more exposed to the crisis, there is a different type of movement. I also don’t get the impression that this is still the antiglobalization movement. This is something else.

The Perfect Wave Edu-factory The Anomalous Wave has invaded the streets, and blocked the cities again, and again has conflicted on the link education-work, starting from the protests against the unsustainable and illegitimate G8 University Summit. In Turin, ten thousands students, moving from the Block G8 Building,decided to march across the centre, sanctioning banks and temporary employment agency, crying again that "We won't pay for your crisis". The whole Wave decided to break into the red zone, not to accept prohibitions to the freedom of movement, and to try to reach the venue of the illegitimate summit of the chancellors' baronial lobby: we protected the demonstration from the charges and we denounce the massive and excessive use of tear gas thrown at eye level against students. Yet another Wave that subverts the G8 University Summit, once again we demonstrate our dissent, day after day in every faculty we build up the autonomous university by the "self reform", we build up the reappropriation of income and the autonomous production of knowledge!

An Order to Bring Down "Tarnac 9" Support Committees Collective Statement of the Delegates from Nearly 30 "Tarnac 9" Support Committees Who Met in Limoges, Belgium, in March 2009 It is a failure. We haven't feared "anarcho-autonomous" terrorists weaving international networks. This invasion -- so brutal and crude -- by the political police has pushed us to put our bitterness into words, to leave our isolation. The day after the arrests, support committees sprung up like crocuses after the thaw. Without consultations or slogans, the contagion spread: concerts, debates, meetings, evening performances. . . . Everywhere the support has brought together dozens, even hundreds of people.

"Focusing: Greece, France and Communism" The Invisible Committee Everyone agrees. It will explode. A serious or daring air is suitable in the corridors of the Assembly, as if one would have repeated it in the bistro yesterday. One amuses oneself with the estimation of the risks involved. One already itemizes in detail the preventative operations in which the territory is turned into a grid. The festivities of the New Year take on a decisive turn. "This is the last year that there will be oysters!" So that the celebration is not totally eclipsed by the tradition of moral laxity, one must have the 36,000 cops and the 16 helicopters dispatched by [Michele] Alliot-Maria,[1] who -- around the time of the December [2008] student demonstrations -- lay in wait, trembling, for the least sign of Greek contamination. Under the reassuring remarks, one hears, always more clearly, the noise of preparation for open warfare. No one can continue to ignore the open gearing-up for action, cold and pragmatic, which no longer even bothers to present itself as an operation of pacification.

"Direct Actions, Demonstrations, Appeals and Events Against the G8 Summit in Italy" Gipfelsoli BLOCK G8 2009! In recent weeks progress is being made in the mobilization against the G8 summit in Italy. Particularly the planned transfer of the G8 site to the earthquake region of L´Aquila and to Rome (1) have caused intense debates and great interest in the present state of preparations.

Situationist Inheritors: Julien Coupat, Tiqqun and The Coming Insurrection Patrick Marcolini In twenty-nine issues and more than 1,500 published pages, Le Tigre has succeeded in never making a close study of the work of Guy Debord. Not without reason, the invocation of the situationist movement having become a banality in the media. In the preceding issue of Le Tigre, devoted in part to the texts of Julien Coupat and those close to him, there wasn't a precise analysis of the filiation between them and the situationists. Here's one.

"Resisting Degradations and Divisions" in South Africa S’bu Zikode interviewed by Richard Pithouse S’bu Zikode is the elected president of Abahlali baseMjondolo, a radical and radically democratic shackdwellers’ movement in South Africa that has committed itself to waging its struggles independently from party-political and NGO control.[1] Richard Pithouse: What is your understanding of a living politics?

"Bail Out the People" Movement Announces Three Important Projects ATTENTION ACTIVISTS AND ORGANIZERS! The Bail Out the People Movement is announcing three important projects: Endorse the call | Become a local organizer/volunteer FIRST: PROTEST THE G20 SUMMIT IN NEW YORK CITY! Saturday, September. 19 & Sunday, September 20, 2009 (tentative dates) ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE– BUT WE MUST FIGHT FOR IT! Bail Out People - Not Banks Money for Social Needs - Not War and Greed Jobs, Housing, Healthcare & Education are a Right Organize - Mobilize - Resist - Unite - Fight Back! The third G20 summit is going to be in NYC on or around September 20, 2009. The G20 summits are taking place in response to the greatest worldwide economic crisis since the 1930s. However, the purpose of these high-level meetings of governments and bankers is not to rescue the people of the world from depression level unemployment, evictions, homelessness, poverty, social and economic inequality and war. These summits are about fixing the economic and financial order that puts profits before people-and fixing that system by creating more poverty, misery and suffering. The last G20 Summit held in London in early April was met with massive protests both in London and throughout Europe. Now that the G20 is coming to the U.S., it is up to activists and organizations here to take up the challenge of uniting and working together to organize the widest protests possible. BOPM urges activists and organizations to endorse the call for protest at the G20 Summit in the fall, and to begin organizing for it. The potential for mass mobilization in September is truly infinite. So let’s begin the work required to realize that powerful potential.

Seven Greenpeace Activists Arrested in Banner-Hanging at Major Economies Forum Matt Leonard @ Greenpeace.org Hello everyone. At the Major Economies Forum this morning, 7 Greenpeace activists were arrested hanging a giant banner from a construction crane above the State Department. The banner remained up for several hours, including while Hillary Clinton was scheduled to address the MEF, and while Obama was speaking across the street at the National Academy of Sciences. The 7 arrested were charged with misdemeanors, and include Phil Radford, who begins his first day as the new Executive Director of Greenpeace today. This meeting is a major step in the lead up to Copenhagen. While not officially part of the UN process, the need for urgent action from the world's biggest polluters makes this meeting (today and tomorrow) a very important international event. There is also a large coalition rally happening now (with hundreds expected from Greenpeace, 350, AVAAZ, CCAN, Friends of the Earth and many more).