Two participants in the black bloc protest at Saturday’s anti-cuts rally tell Stephen Moss why they’re the true face of protest “Meet us outside the British Library. That seems appropriate.” I’m due to interview two men in their late 20s who were part of the “black bloc” direct action wing of last Saturday’s anti-cuts protest . We’d originally agreed to meet at a bar in King’s Cross, but they tell me later it was “too media” for their security concerns. I conduct an interview of sorts, but they are reluctant to tell me much about themselves other than that one is a “low-paid public sector worker”. In any case, they have come armed with handwritten answers to questions they have posed to themselves. Anarchists like to be in control. I agree to edit those answers for length, then show them the edited version. Their “self-interview” appears below. I never do learn their names. The media, police and other sections of the left have called the black bloc “criminals”, “hooligans” and “cowards”. How do you respond? In the legal sense, those who damage property or fight the police have committed crimes, so yes they are criminals. But in everyday language, a criminal is someone who lives by criminal means. We saw plenty of nurses, education workers, tech workers, unemployed workers, students, campaigners and charity workers on the bloc on Saturday, but we didn’t see any criminals. As for being hooligans or cowards, the black bloc formation is used for tactical purposes. We aren’t trying to be “hard” or to give ourselves a thrill. We are trying to give uncompromising opposition to capitalism an appropriate image on the streets – and not end up in jail. True cowardice would be not fighting an economic system that wants to destroy us. The black bloc is not a group or organisation; it’s something that happens on marches or actions. It’s not pre-planned; it relies on people turning up with the same ideas and clothes. That is why there is a “uniform”: people who want to take direct action and resist containment arrive on the day in black and identify people with the same ideas this way. We had no idea of the numbers before the event on Saturday, and no idea it would be so radical in its actions. The black bloc idea spread like a ripple through the march. As people saw others in black, they changed into black themselves. Some marchers even left the protest to buy black clothing. Is it not fair to say you hijacked the TUC march? No. To hijack it would have meant taking the front of the march and leading it away. What happened was that thousands of marchers left of their own accord to support our direct action and do some of their own. The black bloc largely avoided the march route, only dropping into it twice, briefly. We support the other marchers who didn’t take direct action, just like many of them supported us. Don’t you think the violence has invalidated your message? Our only collective points were the promotion of a confrontational attitude and the use of symbolic direct action to show that direct action in the wider society was both valid and possible, and that there is a radical movement in this country that’s going to put up a fight. We made these points. Anyway, you cannot be “violent” to property. The police chose to attack and arrest people in their defence of property, and got themselves hurt in the attempt. If they had acted rationally, and decided a cracked window was not worth a protester’s cracked skull, they would have been fine. Is the black bloc a reaction to police heavy-handedness? We don’t do “good cops” versus “bad cops”; whether they smile or snarl while they do it, their primary function is to defend the rule of the wealthy. We do not want the police to control us “more justly” in the interests of capitalism. We want them to stand back for a just society to be created. If they don’t, they have picked their side, and they will have to be opposed. Was the bloc anarchist? From the red and black flags in the crowd it seemed to be, but there is nothing inherently anarchist about masking up. By the evening thousands of people had left Hyde Park and were taking action all over central London; the open class warfare of the cuts has convinced far more than the UK’s minority of radicals that only actions count. Do you consider the black bloc to be the most radical part of the new movement? No. Occupations of universities and town halls are far more important, and this is where the anti-cuts movement has been heading. To develop, it needs to spread into workplaces next. The black bloc tactic was appropriate to give the day a confrontational edge, and to target the real enemies: the rich. The aim was to make people realise this is not an abstract struggle between “the economy” and us, but between a group of super-rich exploiters and those they are exploiting – the workers. There is now talk of a “mask law” in response to Saturday’s action. Don’t you feel responsible for that? Introducing a mask law would be a serious misjudgment. Already we’ve seen how the tactic of kettling has backfired on the police, creating a desire among the crowd to be mobile and in effect unpoliceable. A mask law would probably just make more people wear masks. If last Saturday is anything to go by, they already are. Protest Public sector cuts TUC Public services policy Public finance Trade unions Stephen Moss guardian.co.uk
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Two injured after parcel bomb explodes in offices of Swissnuclear Two people have been injured after a parcel bomb exploded in the offices of the Swiss nuclear lobby, police said. The two female employees of Swissnuclear were taken to hospital with superficial burns and hearing damage, a police spokesman said, adding that it was not yet known who sent the parcel. Police cordoned off the office on the fourth floor of a building in the northern town of Olten. The police spokesman said forensic specialists were on the ground. Earlier this month, Switzerland suspended the approvals process for three new nuclear power stations so that safety standards could be reviewed after Japan’s earthquake and tsunami damaged the Fukushima nuclear plant. Swissnuclear says it works to promote the safe and efficient use of nuclear power and represents Swiss utilities Alpiq, Axpo, BKW, CKW and EGL, which run the nuclear plants that produce about 40% of Swiss electricity. Olten is home to the headquarters of Alpiq, where about 50 Greenpeace protesters held a demonstration on Thursday calling for the company to withdraw its application to build a new nuclear plant. A police spokesman said they were investigating whether there was any connection between the explosion and the demonstration. Greenpeace said it had nothing to do with the attack. “We are shocked that such action can be used for political purposes. Greenpeace is committed to non-violent protest,” said energy campaigner Florian Kasser. The centre-left Social Democrats and the Greens are calling for Switzerland to abandon nuclear power after the Japanese disaster. However, the energy minister, Doris Leuthard, has cautioned against a hasty decision, warning that abandonment would mean more gas power stations and a subsequent rise in carbon emissions. In 1990, Swiss voters backed a 10-year moratorium on the building of nuclear power plants but they rejected extending the freeze in 2003, opening the way for the government to consider new plants to replace those that needed to be retired. Last month, voters narrowly approved the building of a plant in Muehleberg to replace the old one there, which is 20% owned by Germany’s E.ON. Switzerland Nuclear power Europe Energy guardian.co.uk
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Revolutionary leadership wants defector returned and tried for crimes against humanity once Gaddafi is toppled Libya’s rebel leadership has called for Moussa Koussa, the former Libyan foreign minister who has defected to the UK , to be returned for trial for murder and crimes against humanity after Muammar Gaddafi is toppled. Mustafa Gheriani, a spokesman for the revolutionary council in its de facto capital, Benghazi, said the rebels were not bent on revenge against the regime’s officials but some of Gaddafi’s closest associates “have a lot of blood on their hands” and must stand trial. The British foreign secretary, William Hague, has said Britain is not offering Koussa immunity from prosecution . Hague called for other regime figures to abandon Gaddafi. Gheriani alleged Koussa had been partly responsible for assassinating opposition figures in exile, murderous internal repression and the Lockerbie plane bombing. “We want to bring him to court. This guy has so much blood on his hands. There are documented killings, torturing. There’s documentation of what Moussa Koussa has done,” Gheriani said.”We want him tried by Libyan people. I believe once we have our government 100% in control in Libya, things are normalised, we want him tried here. I think international law gives us that right.” Gheriani said it was up to Britain to decide whether to arrest Koussa in the meantime. Koussa’s arrival in London was evidence that Gaddafi’s regime “is starting to crumble”. He expected other senior officials to follow. “He is a very very major person to defect. Gaddafi trusted him more than some of his sons. Now Gaddafi doesn’t even trust his own people any more,” Gheriani said. Gheriani said a senior military official in Cofra, Colonel Saleh al-Zaroug, had defected to the rebels. He had served in an army division commanded by one of Gaddafi’s sons. The defection was impossible to confirm. Hague said Koussa was not being offered any immunity from British or international justice. He had come to the UK on a private plane from Tunisia having left Libya of his own free will. “Gaddafi must be thinking to himself: ‘Who will be the next to walk away?’” It would not be “helpful to advertise” whether or not other senior members of the regime planned to quit but he believed many likely privately opposed Gaddafi’s actions, Hague said. Koussa was in a secure place in the UK and talking voluntarily to British officials, including staff at Britain’s Tripoli embassy now based in London. Koussa’s defection provides Britain with an unparalleled source of intelligence on state of the Libyan ruler’s inner circle. But his arrival in the UK has also led to expectations that he will be questioned about his possible involvement in or knowledge of atrocities including the Lockerbie bombing and the murder of PC Yvonne Fletcher. Koussa was expelled from the UK in 1980 and became the head of Libyan foreign intelligence for 15 years, including the period of the Lockerbie bombing, which happened in 1988. He has always denied Libya was involved. Jack Straw, a former foreign secretary, has described Koussa as a key player with a “fundamentally important” role in negotiations to bring Libya back into the international fold. “Moussa Koussa’s apparent defection, certainly his unscheduled visit here, will be a very important factor in just adding to the weight against the Gaddafi regime and tipping the balance against him,” Straw told the BBC. “From a distance what’s clear is that there is unlikely to be any military victory for either side. So it does depend on which side psychologically collapses.” Alongside Koussa’s defection, it has emerged that Barack Obama signed a secret government order authorising covert US help to the Libyan rebels . Opposition fighters are trying to recover some of the territory retaken by a government counterattack that has brought Gaddafi’s forces once again within striking distance of Benghazi. The revolutionary leadership has called for more of the air strikes that allowed it to surge forward towards Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte. But after their tanks and artillery were destroyed by the coalition, government troops switched tactics, using armoured pickup trucks to outflank and ambush the ragtag opposition forces. Rebels trying to recapture the town of Brega came under rocket and mortar fire early on Thursday. Libya Middle East Arab and Middle East unrest Chris McGreal guardian.co.uk
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Digital channel orders three hour-long episodes of comedy drama based on Douglas Adams novel BBC4 has recommissioned Dirk Gently, the adaptation of the late Douglas Adams novel starring Stephen Mangan. The digital channel has ordered another three hour-long episodes of the comedy drama, following the pilot broadcast in late 2010, for later this year. Adapted by the Bafta-winning writer Howard Overman – who is also behind Misfits, Vexed and Merlin – Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency follows the exploits of Adams’s chaotic character as he uses his unusual methods to solve crimes. The Dirk Gently books have formed the basis of a play and a BBC Radio 4 series, but this is the first time they have been adapted for TV. Dirk Gently is being made by ITV Studios in association with the Welded Tandem Picture Company. The executive producers are Saurabh Kakkar for ITV Studios and Eleanor Moran for the BBC. The drama was commissioned by Ben Stephenson, controller of BBC drama commissioning, and BBC4 controller Richard Klein. •
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Grandparents should be included in contact agreements but have no legal right to access, according to a government review Grandparents should be included in agreements on the future of their grandchildren following a divorce, under proposals for family law reform unveiled in a government review , but would not have rights of contact set down in law. The importance of grandparents would be incorporated in Parenting Agreements – reached without going to court if possible, with separating parents able to access online and phone help – which would focus on where the child spends time rather than defining “contact” and “residence”. The importance of relationships with both parents, grandparents and other relatives, and friends valued by the child, would be included. However, said David Norgrove, chair of the Family Justice Review Panel, who led the review, talk of grandparents’ “legal rights” was approaching the situation from the wrong perspective. “We don’t come at this from the rights of adults,” he said on the Radio4 Today programme. “We are approaching this from the best interests of the children.” The interim report recommends a simplified and speeded-up system, to end the present confusion of different agencies and courts. A new family justice service led by a national family justice board is proposed, with a unified courts system, and specialist judges hearing each case from start to finish. Norwood said a year of interviewing children, parents and people working in the sector had convinced him that the present system is not working, and is complex, very slow, and very expensive. “Children are the most important people in the family justice system,” he said. “Family justice is under huge strain. Cases take far too long and delays are likely to rise. Children can wait well over a year for their futures to be settled. This is shocking.” The panel also wants to see the system speeded up where a child is in danger and must be taken into care, with a timetable for resolving the situation set for each child, and less reliance on unnecessary expert reports, which, it concludes, also cause delay. There will now be a period of public consultations on the recommendations before the panel presents its final report in December. Family law Children Family Divorce Older people guardian.co.uk
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Time running out for President Laurent Gbagbo as Alassane Ouattara’s rebel forces prepare for final assault to take power Rebels forces fighting to install Ivory Coast’s democractically elected president are preparing to advance on the country’s largest city, Abidjan, after seizing a key port and the official capital overnight. Power seems to be slipping away from the incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo, after troops loyal to his rival, Alassane Ouattara, swept south, taking the official capital, Yamoussoukro, and the port of San Pedro late on Wednesday. Residents and combatants from both sides said opposition troops are in control and it is now largely calm apart from some sporadic shooting. Now attention turns to Abidjan, where the mood is tense ahead of a possible rebel assault. Ouattara’s prime minister, Guillaume Soro, told French radio that Gbagbo has just hours to leave power peacefully. Ouattara’s New Forces, renamed the Republic Forces (FRCI), have made huge gains in the past two days, seizing swaths of territory in the centre, east and west. Seydou Ouattara, a military spokesman, told Reuters: “We have taken the port of San Pedro. Gbagbo’s forces have all left. We are in full control.” One San Pedro resident, who declined to be named, said: “Shooting started at around 9pm, then we saw the rebels’ vehicles drive into the town. Everyone’s staying indoors, but we’re still hearing a lot of gunfire.” Witnesses saw soldiers taking off their uniforms and throwing guns and ammunition into ditches as they fled from the rebel army. Others say some soldiers simply switched sides and joined the Republican Forces. Earlier, residents of Yamoussoukro said they braced themselves for conflict before sporadic gunfire erupted. Serge Kipre, who runs a small clothing store in the city, said: “The night before, we were all calling each other to make sure nobody went outside. In the morning, I saw loads of police with balaclavas and Kalashnikovs racing across town. The market closed, shops shuttered. Everybody seemed on edge.” But the approach of the rebels was eagerly awaited by many young pro-Ouattara supporters, who cheered as they drove by in 4x4s. Kipre added: “They set a police station ablaze because they felt they would be liberated soon. We are so tired of this situation, we just want them to get it over with.” The capture of Yamassoukro, which is in a pro-Ouattara area, is symbolic but not decisive; it is the capital in name only. Gbagbo’s seat of power is in Abidjan – the commercial capital – where fighting has raged for months. But the fall of Yamoussoukro opens up the main road to Abidjan, just 143 miles away. Earlier this month, a leader of rebel forces, which have controlled northern Ivory Coast since the 2002-03 civil war, told the Guardian they would “surprise all the analysts” by removing Gbagbo quickly and cleanly. Such confidence appears to have been borne out so far as the rebels make rapid advances on three fronts and encounter little resistance. Ally Coulibaly, Ouattara’s ambassador to Paris, claimed rebel forces now controlled three-quarters of the country. “President Alassane Ouattara was patient and gave Mr Laurent Gbagbo every possibility to leave power peacefully,” he told the French radio station France Inter. “He refused every offer made to him.” Ivorians eventually had to take up arms to avoid a massacre of the civilian population, he added. On Wednesday, the UN security council imposed travel bans and asset freezes on Gbagbo, who is already under European Union and US sanctions. The resolution also sought to prevent use of heavy weapons in Abidjan. France’s UN ambassador, Gerard Araud, said: “I think the sense of urgency is obvious since … the confrontation is extending in Ivory Coast and the situation is worsening by the hour.” He added the message “is very simple: Gbagbo must go. It is the only way to avoid a full-fledged civil war”. Ivory Coast David Smith guardian.co.uk
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Texas judge says request for country legend to sing for his freedom was simply a joke that ‘got out of hand’ Willie Nelson may not be singing his way out of jail after all. A judge has corrected earlier reports that the terms of a plea deal would require the country legend to perform a song at a Texas courthouse . To resolve his November arrest for possession of marijuana , Nelson may simply pay a fine by post. According to judge Becky Dean-Walker, the story of a judicial serenade was simply a runaway punchline. Last week, Hudspeth County prosecutor Kit Bramblett said they would waive Nelson’s drugs charge if he agreed to “pay a small fine and … sing Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain with his guitar right there in the courtroom”. Yesterday, Dean-Walker told the Associated Press that Bramblett was trying to be funny “and it got out of hand”. Nelson must still pay about $378 (£236) in fines and fees, however. Nelson was arrested on 26 November 2010, when border patrol officers found a small quantity of marijuana on his tour bus. “I had forgotten that there was this little bag of weed on the bus that had been in the back there for weeks when I had been gone,” Nelson told Rolling Stone . “Naturally when they stopped us there the dogs came on and the first thing they went to was that little bag of pot.” The singer initially faced up to 180 days in jail. Willie Nelson Country Drugs United States Sean Michaels guardian.co.uk
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Get up to speed on the 13-strong shortlist which brings together authors as diverse as Philip Roth, Dacia Maraini and Philip Pullman Christine Oliver
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Five-year-old victim named as Thusha Kamaleswaran still in hospital along with 35-year-old man who was also wounded The five-year-old girl believed to be the youngest victim of London’s escalating gang shootings has been named as Thusha Kamaleswaran. She was gravely injured on Tuesday night when shot in the chest by teenagers on bicycles who opened fire on a south London shop, while trying to kill two rival gang members hiding inside. A spokesman for the Metropolitan police said her condition remains “critical but stable” in hospital. A 35-year-old man, believed to live upstairs from the shop in Stockwell, south London, was also shot in the face and critically injured. Both victims are of Sri Lankan origin. The girl was visiting relatives at the shop with her family when the shooting started, just after 9pm. Community sources say the area has been plagued by youth gang violence that has spiked in recent months. Police introduced hardline section 60 stop-and-search powers covering a large swath of the borough, meaning they can search somebody without suspecting an offence has been committed. Police say two youths ran into the Stockwell Food and Wine shop seeking shelter from three boys pursuing them on bicycles. One opened fire, shooting into the shop with handguns, it is believed, and then fled. Kirubakaran Nantheesparan, a family friend of the shop owners, saw the lead-up to, and aftermath of, the shooting. “They were screaming at each other and throwing bottles,” he said. “Then I saw one pull out a gun and fire the shots. I saw the gun right next to me. I heard the shots fired and we all backed down. “At first we thought they had been hit by bottles but there was too much blood. “We didn’t know that the girl had been shot. She was lying down in the shop in shock. “The girl was lying on the ground and the mum ran over to her. She screamed: ‘Call the police, call the police!’ There was so much blood.” Mareh Silva, 34, who was coming out of the shop, said she saw three boys, aged between 14 and 17, drop their bikes outside. She said their faces were covered with black scarves and balaclavas and she could only see their eyes as they ran into the shop. “I looked in and saw a lot of blood on the floor but I didn’t want to look at what had happened; I was very scared.” Detective Chief Inspector Tony Boughton urged the intended targets to come forward: “They are an important part in helping us understand exactly what was happening and should be able to direct us to those responsible.” A youth worker, who gave only the name Jason, said one of the targets was an 18-year-old man he knew. “It’s just fights and retaliation. It’s nothing to do with drugs. It’s a back-and-forth dispute.” Community sources said the viciousness of the gang wars was shown by an incident last Thursday when a 16-year-old was stabbed in daylight in Brixton by up to 10 youths. The victim was wearing a stab vest and his attackers had plunged the knife into him about 20 times. The three gangs involved in the violence in the borough of Lambeth include one called the GAS gang and another known as AMD. Lee Jasper, an adviser on policing to former London mayor Ken Livingstone, said: “Lambeth is in the grip of a vicious war between three gangs. Every week there are casualties. This tragedy is the latest of a series of vicious attacks over the last month. Attempting to tackle this issue through enforcement alone will not work. That’s been the main strategic approach of the last three years and we are still seeing a rise in youth violence, violence generally.” Figures for Lambeth show increases in knife and gun crime, as well as in serious youth violence, according to police figures for the year to April 2010. Gun crime Crime London Gangs Vikram Dodd Maev Kennedy guardian.co.uk
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Anwar al-Awlaki uses online magazine to explain why Middle East revolts are not a setback for al-Qaida Senior al-Qaida leaders have welcomed the uprisings in the Arab world in their first comprehensive statement on recent events, published in an internet magazine earlier this week. Anwar al-Awlaki – the radical preacher who grew up in America but is now a fugitive in Yemen – used a lengthy article in an English-language magazine called Inspire to explain why the revolts sweeping the Middle East were not a setback for al-Qaida. “Our mujahideen brothers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and the rest of the Muslim world will get a chance to breathe again after three decades of suffocation,” Awlaki wrote in an article entitled The Tsunami of Change. The magazine also featured translated excerpts of earlier statements by senior figures in al-Qaida, such as deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, which had previously only been posted in obscure extremist forums. Zawahiri calls on the “people of freedom and honour in Tunisia, Egypt and in each of the Islamic lands” not to let their recent efforts go to waste. His statement appears to have been written before the fall of President Hosni Mubarak nearly two months ago. Experts say the fact that no more recent statement is available indicates how isolated the al-Qaida No 2, who is believed to be hiding in Pakistan’s rugged western border areas, currently is. The fifth issue of Inspire, which is thought to be produced by the al-Qaida affiliate, Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, is slickly produced with colour graphics, pages of selected quotes from western analysts and several pages of illustrated instruction on how to strip and clean an AK47 rifle. “It is our opinion that the revolutions that are shaking the thrones of dictators are good for the Muslims, good for the mujahideen and bad for the imperialists of the west and their henchmen in the Muslim world,” reads an opening editorial. The magazine is clearly designed to counter claims that the mass, largely secular, pro-democracy movements of recent months in the Middle East show the marginalisation of radical violent Islam within the Muslim world. Although James Stavridis, Nato’s supreme allied commander for Europe and commander of US European Command, said earlier this week that intelligence had revealed “flickers” of al-Qaida presence among rebels fighting Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, most analysts agree that the organisation has played no role at all in recent events in the Arab world. Noman Benotman, a former member of the Libyan Fighting Group – the Islamist group once affiliated with al-Qaida – told the Guardian that Gaddafi had effectively eliminated radical Islamism in Libya although “there may be a very few unorganised individuals, very young on the whole, now active”. Efforts by al-Qaida to rebuild networks in Egypt in recent years have failed while their local affiliate in north Africa, Al-Qaida in the Maghreb, has been largely forced to retreat to isolated desert zones in the south. Awlaki, who is believed to be behind several recent attempts to launch terrorist attacks in America , quotes Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, claiming that the “success of peaceful protests discredited the extremists and exposed their bankrupt arguments”. “The outcome doesn’t have to be an Islamic government for us to consider what is occurring to be a step in the right direction,” the 39-year-old cleric writes. The magazine invited questions for Awlaki or contributions to be sent to email addresses, one each from Yahoo, Google and Hotmail. al-Qaida Global terrorism Arab and Middle East unrest Jason Burke guardian.co.uk
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