This weekend we have helped bring a citizen TV journalism workshop to Liverpool. The idea is for everyone to tool up on the basics of creating quality video with the technology you already have - mobile phones for example, and getting your news online fast. You don't even need a camera or phone - you could just learn collate what's already online. The workshop is designed to be simple and fun.

Steven's blog on Libcom presents some interesting detail around the refusal of the UK's largest union to support the General Strike planned for 30th June 2011. As with some other unions, the members want to strike but their leaders say no.

Pfffft, leaders, who needs 'em?

Ahead of the John Holloway talk & booklaunch event tomorrow (Weds 18th May 2011) we at the Northern editorial dungeon have been poring over our copious notes of the Crack Capitalism lecture last week, in the hope of doing some kind of reporting justice to this noteworthy event.

Imagine our delight, then, in finding that someone much more capable has already written the event up, so now we don't …

A Letter to/for Japanese Comrades

By Silvia Federici and George Caffentzis

In their letter of solidarity Silvia and George touch on the global significance and context of recent events in Japan, with particular reference to the role of nuclear power in militarised capitalism. In Japanese and English.

(Japanese text removed for technical reasons, but available by following the link)

Episode 80 of Dissident Island Radio brings you:

- Words from Temporary Autonomous Art about their upcoming weekend of exhibitions and events

- The notorious WAG, discussing the disillusion of their group and the formation of ALARM

- An update from the Ian Tomlinson inquest from Dean, who has been in attendance over the past few weeks

- The Counter Olympics Network discussing points objection …

Protesters who were attacked by police at protests in 2009 have won their case against the London Metropolitan Police in high court today.

(anonymised link below)

The Fortnum 145 are a group of people who were arrested and charged, following the occupation of Fortnum and Mason on 26 March this year.

So far, they’ve been part shocked, part amused, by the awful media coverage of the events of that day. Media spin about violence and attacks has been undermined by footage actually taken inside the store. The mass arrest happened amidst calls for the police to …

Fed up with the bogus coverage of the M26 actions? So were Liverpool Uncut:

"The occupation took place at 2.30pm, when over a dozen people entered the building and announced that they were staging a sit-in. The protesters announced that they were protesting against "the appalling coverage" of UK Uncut actions in London on March 26th and would show "how civilised the UK Uncut occupations are by ha…

Latest episode of It's the End of the World as we know it from the Stimulator, featuring footage provided by Northern Indymedia and London Indymedia during the March 26th 2011 anti-cuts protests in London!

This week:

1. Nippocalypse

2. Green Party uber alles

3. VerMutants

4. The E.N.D. of the U.K.

5. Conspiracy Rap

6. Squaddafi

Northern England has very different interactions between nuclear energy and geology than the Japanese archipelago does. Here, we have expert opinion being ignored by politicians looking for waste disposal sites. There, they had expert opinion being ignored in the siting of reactors. Similar propaganda methods were used in both.

In this piece, Ozaki describes his personal experience of the Japanes…

Good analysis as to why protestors can't be divided into 'good' and 'bad - a false dichotomy which attempts to split the movement for the advantage of the ruling powers that be and negate the necessary diversity of tactics that must occur for real social change to happen.

"Theresa May says face coverings could be banned and known troublemakers barred from political rallies in the wake of violence after Saturday's anti-cuts march"

"The government will consider giving the police new powers, including the banning of face coverings, following the weekend's anti-cuts march, the home secretary, Theresa May, has said."

"May said police could be given the power to ban…

A video posted on the guardian website by a journalist embedded with a TSG team during the m26 demos. Reveals police tactics and the "lines in the sand" that they were authorised to go over the top for. Also reveals the levels of personal choice that the TSG units have when faced with public order situations. Interesting from a tactical point of view for future actions.

UK threatens detainees' lives by withholding HIV medication

Most HIV+ immigration detainees helped by Medical Justice have been denied life-saving medication in detention according to our new research.

"Detained & Denied", based on the first ever comprehensive analysis of treatment of HIV+ immigration detainees in the UK draws on medical evidence from 8 independent clinicians who assessed the de…

Dissident Island Episode 77: DOWNLOAD NOW!!!



- Words from some Grow Heathrow residents about their upcoming PEDAL bike ride to Palestine as well as talking to us about Reclaim the Fields

- Justus, our German correspondent, spoke to us about Antifa in Dresden and Anit-Nuclear actions across Germany

- An audio piece from Dale Farm travellers site in Essex, the biggest travellers site in Europe some of …

Dissident Island Episode 77: DOWNLOAD NOW!!!



- Words from some Grow Heathrow residents about their upcoming PEDAL bike ride to Palestine as well as talking to us about Reclaim the Fields

- Justus, our German correspondent, spoke to us about Antifa in Dresden and Anit-Nuclear actions across Germany

- An audio piece from Dale Farm travellers site in Essex, the biggest travellers site in Europe some of …

An audit of the UK Border Agency’s process for reviewing the immigration detention of individuals who claim they are survivors of torture, published on 1st March 2011 by the Home Office over a year after it was conducted, totally fails to deliver on its intention to establish the extent to which the UKBA is complying with its policy against the detention of torture victims except in ‘very exc…

As we navigate our way through the baffling conundrums of cultural appropriation and related matters, here's some ancient writing on the subject.

"Freed's black slang and flamboyant delivery was soon cleaned up, with white jocks perfecting the pronunciation and selling Coke and Clearasil to white teens. But the honest, down-to-earth sounds of R&B did not produce a good format for advertisements a…

This Saturday 12th February there’s a ‘Northern Towns Rally Against the Cuts’ demo in Halifax called by Calderdale Joint Trades Unions. It starts at 10.30am at Halifax Town Hall car park with a march from there to the Piece Hall – for the usual speeches no doubt, telling us just how bad the cuts are.

While it’s good that something is happening and everyone who opposes the cuts should inde…

London NoBorders has received information that the hotel company Arora International ( in form of their branchArora Management Services Limited) has started a second attempt to make money from the Home Office's deportation business.

The company plans to use the site of a residential school for children with behavioural and learning difficulties in Pease Pottage, Crawley, Sussex owned by the Arora…

Shannon Lucid, recounting what the two Russian cosmonauts told her every time they left the Mir space station for a spacewalk, 1996

Indymedia UK, one of the oldest Indymedia websites worldwide, will fork in two projects by the 1st of May 2011. A contentious point was IP monitoring by uk.indymedia.org which led to a fierce controversy ( [3] | [4] | [5] | [6] ). Both the British Indymedia website…

Blog from the streets of cairo using one of the very few internet connections still available there after the government has shut down the internet.

Also includes a link to the @dancefromiraq twitter feed that has been providing regular updates as to the situation there during the uprising.

In the media’s coverage of climate change, are we really still stuck on square one of some ghastly board game?

Global warming was recognised as a hugely serious problem as far back as 1988 when the United Nations set up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Since then the science has become more solid, more detailed, in fact irrefutable: the risk of dangerous climate change ha…

Today's episode of Liberation Frequency features an interview with Jamie Heckert on the intersections between queer and anarchist theories. Jamie Heckert is a prolific independent scholar and researcher in sexualities. Deric Shannon interviewed him when he was in Edinburgh in March 2010 for the Political Studies Association conference.

(listener's note: scholarly but very accessible and impor…

No one suspected Mark Kennedy was undercover when he joined environmental activists – but has he now switched sides? (probably not)

The first clashes have occurred between Sea Shepherd volunteer activists and Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean whale sanctuary bordering the Antarctic continent. For the first time in seven years of campaigning in the southern ocean Sea Shepherd have been able to locate the whaling fleet before whaling was able to begin.

The proposed open cast coal mine near Ledston, which comes under Leeds City Council, has been rejected.

This Yorkshire Evening News article has the story from their oh-so-expert point of view *ahem*

Notably the coal from this proposed mine was to be used at Drax, Eggborough and Ferrybridge power stations. "Five years is what it will take, all this for only 14 days coal to keep the above mentione…