Paganarchy Press

After several years of writing, editing, re-writing and re-editing, finally the book I've been working on is available! Initially, it's only on lulu.com but it will be in other places and in stores soon. Such an exciting day! Hope everyone reading this is feeling great!

You can see what I've done by clicking LIBER MALORUM: Children Of The Apple

Lots of love and apples to all of you xxxx Sean

Link: http://www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/thunderbird-and-trickster.html

An interesting article on Thunderbird and Tricksters mentioning Heyoka - the Lakota sacred clown. Interesting in how much of it overlaps our own tradition of Holy Fooling here...

However insulting or sacrilegious heyoka [sacred clowns] actions might be, they were tolerated, since it was assumed they were acting on the higher and more inscrutable imperatives of the Great Mystery. Heyoka were freed from all the ordinary constraints of life, and thus were usually not expected to marry, have children, or participate in the work of the tribe. Despite their bizarre acts (such as dressing in warm clothes during summer or wearing things inside out), they were trusted as healers, interpreters of dreams, and people of great medicine. Whenever they interrupted the solemnity of a ceremony, people took it as an admonition to see beyond the literalness of the ritual and into the deeper mysteries of the sacred. Like the flash of lightning, the heyoka's sudden outbursts and disturbances were thought to be the keys to enlightenment - much like the absurd acts of Zen masters in Japan.

more at http://www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/thunderbird-and-trickster.html

Ooo errr,

Just found this video of a rather nutty rebel clown on a mission to find a fairy at the Shambala Festival in 2005.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUgod3BJzc0

A good mate of mine Cath Connolly is an amazing puppeteer - with a friend of hers she has produced this amazingly funny vid.

check it now

Hooray! I finally found a copy of what is probably the best choon ever. The Monks' track "I Hate You" is generally considered by those in the know to be the first ever punk track. It has some very aggressive riffs, vocals and a catchy repeatable buzz line of "I hate you... but call me" and "You make me make me make me hate you baby... but call me".

What a powerful number it is. I'd only heard it once before and thought it was fantastic and it was always on the back of my mind to get it.

I found a copy of it on Optimo's Kill The DJ (Part 2) which is altogether a great album that you can buy from amazon.co.uk. I don't know much about Optimo, but you can check out the optimo site here.

Because I love good music and want you all to hear it, I've put a copy of "I Hate You" on my server which I'll keep up for a few weeks and which you can Listen to now. Please buy a copy if you like it and support good music!

I've had the most amazing weekend - my first ever munch, a fool's parade through the centre of London [pics | vid | dougie ] where we demanded the right to fool. Fooling, like free speech is a right denied to us by Blair's SOCPA legislation which all intelligent, pro-freedom people bitterly oppose.

After the parade, and a chill for a bit on parliament square, the fools, clowns and fairies had a convergence at Trafalgar Square. The Fairy Raid action and convergence had been organised by the wonderful flying folk over at Fairy Love. Truly wonderful people. And to be surrounded by such a large number of Fairies at one time was beautiful.

Then, finally, a few minutes to chill for a bit.

In the evening, the FooLuminati hosted an extremely FooLish ritual called Dance Of The Dunce on parliament square - with police permission!

The ritual was amazing and inspiring, but extremely foolish. what the fuck did the space hijackers think they were doing turning parliament square into a golf lawn during our rite? teeheehee - it great to be in ritual with them but i'll let Silver Sara explain it best:

Straight after the ritual an amazing ring of fire appeared in the air around parliament, i kid you not. the photographer's phone captured this image:

After the ritual, we all headed off to a crazy clown party and fundraiser for the People In Common. The People In Common are responsible for the most important Picnic in the world - the picnic on parliament square. The brave picnickers defiantly eat scones and drink tea despite this being considered Serious Organised Crime.

The picnickers know how to big it up and the party was awesome! A great opportunity to catch up with loads of cool friends, boogie through the night and paint each others faces - and that was just saturday! What a brilliant day it was - fools, fairies, clowns, ritualists, golfers, parades, charlie chaplin, friendly coppers, munchy clowns, the evil kevster, foolz magic and best boogie beats.

Sunday was even bigger but will have to wait for another time to get its own write up. Meanwhile, check what the fools were doing over in Sydney.

Happy Foolish New Year people!

xx Sean

Last Saturday, February 18th, Major NutCake and I went to Reclaim Love, a major love-in love-fest at the feet of the statue of Eros in Picadilly in London. The objective of the day: To Reclaim Love for the people. It was a party and a protest and a hippy shindig all rolled into one.

(image from Oscar Beard @ indymedia)

Reclaim Love every year on the saturday before St Valentines day. V Day brings out some extremes in people - on the one hand it is a day of widespread, quite gross commercialism where to prove your love for someone, you have to spend loads of dosh on cards, flowers and sweat-shop teddy bears. On the other hand, most people don't want to get suckered in by what is a consumerist waste machine so Valentines day leads to cynicism right?

Oh-so-many people are oh-so-sick of this ugly commercialism that they do not in any way celebrate St. Valentines day. They do not celebrate this global day of love because they are turned off by what is a blatant dash-for-cash.

Up step the Reclaim Love movement! By Reclaiming Love from the consumerist machine, and by allowing ourselves to celebrate Love in all its raw power, we avoided the worst of both darkened worlds - we don't get suckered in by the need to consume, and we don't poison our hearts with cynicism.

Instead we had a great day! About 1000 people were out on the streets including capoeiristas, puppetistas, funky bro's and funky sisters, clowns, fairies, . It was an all-age, all-gender, all-colour event with the block-rocking Samba Band and the Pedal Powered Sound System.... Saw loads of people there that I hadn't seen in ages: old friends, lovers and ritualistas from various parties, protests and love-ins from all over the way. All with one goal in common - we were there celebrating Love.

It seems to me that Love is the most powerful of all the emotions. It can really make your day, or ruin your year. It can bring extreme joy and dizzing delight - but unreturned love can also bring suicidal death and hell. Surely the most powerful of all emotions! As Eros has a great way with Love, that Eros is the real ruler of the universe as we know it. Eros is also a trickster, so I as a rebel clown I can really relate to his vibe. Today Eros, you are the god of all.

Venus, the main organiser of Reclaim Love promises to post some photos of the event on her site soon. They'll be posted on this gallery page.

Indymedia coverage: [ photos | video 1 | video 2 ]

Link: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/01/332263.html

Four Rebel Clowns took to Parliament Square on Monday, 23rd of January 2006 to address the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act section 132.

The rebel clowns[1] and many others had spent the day at Bow Street Magistrates court expressing solidarity with five defendants who had been charged under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 132 (SOCPA 2005). The bill, for those who don't know, outlaws all "demonstration without authorisation" within 1Km of parliament. These five defendants had had the audacity to hold signs reading �We have the Right To Protest.� The magistrate must have thought they were very clearly Serious Organised Criminals indeed - because she found them all GUILTY.

We Rebel Clowns grew up on a diet of gangster movies and had always thought that in order to be considered a Serious Organised Criminal we�d have to get into the UK Government - a prospect that was way too scary, even for us! But then after witnessing the court hearing, it dawned on us that it was actually a lot easier (and a lot more fun) to become a Serious Organised Criminal than we had previously realised.

Our first port of call was to visit our MPs in the House Of Commons. Just through the security gate and whoa � the duty sergeant stopped us from going in. Alas, we were deemed �not dignified enough� by a copper calling himself the �chief arbiter of style�. Apparently fashion is no joke in the house of parliament and despite Poppins being in her best dress uniform and all, we were all refused entry. �Not dignified enough?� Well I never! Do we think that the police, who are going to be lobbying their MPs today, no doubt in dress uniform, will meet with the same sartorial discrimination???!

Armed with a delicious cake baked and iced by the wondrous Mary Poppins and a banner reading �Serious Organised Crime? Ha Ha Ha!� we hapless Rebel Clowns made our way across the road to Parliament Square where they quickly aroused the attention of the ever-alert /cluster in flouro/. All eyes were on us!

When the coppers turned up, they thrust sheets of paper at us, which initiated this dialogue:

Cop: Read this. It is in your best interest to read this.

Caesar Buttocks: It�s in your best interest to read this! (points to
�Serious Organised Crime? Ha Ha Ha!� placard being held by him and Commodore Koogie)

Cop: It is illegal to demonstrate here. Are you demonstrating?

Marshall Darkness: Does it look like we are demonstrating?

Cop: I don�t know. I�m not a mind reader.

Marshall Darkness: Exactly!

(cops jump into car.)

Mary Poppins: Would you boys like some cake?

(cops don�t respond. Unsure of what to do, they talk to each other for 2 minutes before speeding off, leaving us there with placard in hand.)

It seems police are becoming much more reluctant to be used as the pet pawns of the politicians who legislated SOCPA 132. The day before our visit, cops had refused to arrest[2] Gary who was holding a banner reading �Parliament Square belongs to the people". Gary was told by the copper who came to speak with him that his banner was �not a protest, it's a statement of fact".

The empty SOCPA 132 actually makes it illegal to hold a �demonstration� in the zone without �police approval.� A large number of concerned people had recently tested the dubious wording of the legislation by holding many demonstrations[vid @ 3]. Whilst some folk �demonstrated� how to swing poi, others used a banner to demonstrate how to lie down, how to do a roly poly, how to ice a cake and how to peel a banana. All of these brave demonstrators on the 22nd luckily escaped arrest and the actual definition of �demonstration� remains untested in a court of law.

The legislation itself is unwieldy, vague, irrelevant, devoid of all substance, embarrassing, in contradiction to the European Convention of Human Rights and is also a touch rude. It was written with the intent of banishing Brian Haw - a man who has been holding a continuous demonstration against British terror attacks on Iraq for Four and a Half Years. But the politicians and legislators forgot that they weren't allowed to make new laws work backwards and therefore couldn't keep Brian Haw out of sight and out of guilty mind by putting him in prison. Brian remains to this day.

With the original intention of the law prematurely ejaculating through their grey fingers, and to avoid everyone laughing at them, the politicians tried to cover the law's very small, flaccid bill with a big suit of anti-terrorist, protective armour and attempted to turn it on to the rest of us! But their attempts to stop us from protesting, just like their attempts to take over our democracy are doomed from the start - their legislation will not stand tall as more and more people (including the coppers) see that SOCPA is already very limp indeed. At the end of the day, we know what these politicians are really afraid of - free speech in the commons!

[1] http://www.clownarmy.org/
[2] http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/01/332051.html
[3] http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/01/332144.html
[3 mirror] http://paganarchy.net/blogs/sean.php/2006/01/25/illegal_demonstrations

Dilate, P*Soul, Size Doesn't Matter and Stop the Hiding Present: a Needless Jam... @ the Synergy Centre, Feb 18th, London SE5, nr Oval Tube

A bunch of very cool people here in London are organising a fantastic knees up for Feb 18th with all funds raised going to Stop The Hiding!.... Stop The Hiding is a group formed in 2001 in direct response to the severe lack of funding for domestic violence services such as Refuges and Outreach services within the community.

As part of the promotion, various DJs from Dilate, P*Soul & SDM have started an awesome MP3 Blog hosted by yours truly called Dilated Choonz. Check it our for sure! Also check the Dilated Choonz site for details on how to get party tickets. I believe there are still a few left!

See you there!

The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA) 2005, section 132 makes it illegal to hold a demonstration without prior police permission within 1Km of parliament. Even when demonstrators are given permission, the police then have the power to arbitrarily
* shut down a protest at their leisure,
* to restrict numbers of protestors,
* to restrict numbers of banners,
* to restrict sizes of banners,
* to restrict the volume of people speaking and the noise factor,
* to restrict the use of megaphones and
* to restrict the duration of a demonstration.

And say you want to demonstrate against Ian Blair for his involvement in covering up the Stockwell shooting. Under this legislation you have to ask his permission! Well where's the fun in that?!?!

And just what constitutes a "demonstration" anyway? Can you demonstrate how to fry an egg? Is that illegal?

Click here to watch a video of activists conducting various Illegal demonstrations at Parliament Square in London on January 22nd, 2006.

Ridiculous laws such as SOCPA 132 need to be tested and threatened from every angle possible. We must be creative as well as passionate when we work towards defending our freedoms.

[Disclaimer: These events may or may not have happened. Parts of events described may or may not be exaggerated. Global long-term over-consumption may or may not have ended. You be the judge.]

The London Gaggle of the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA) celebrated Buy Nothing Day on Saturday November 26th by not shopping in the shops, stores, cafes and malls around Oxford Circus.

Oops! What a bunch of silly clowns we were! We would forget our noses if they weren't screwed on. In fact, on Buy Nothing Day we actually forgot our own clown face paint! Fancy that! The embaressment! Whoa! So we decided our first port of call for the day would be the John Lewis mega store where there were many many (many many) many many people shopping.

My little clown heart goes out to how generous the John Lewis company is in when it comes time to celebrate Buy Nothing Day. The Oxford Street store celebrated by actually giving away free make-up to clowns! How great is that? They had a special place for clowns to get prepared at a stall with "make up testers" written above it.

There were many fabulous colours to choose from. Mostly, we choose white and red. We did really go a little bit overboard away I'm afraid and the lovely men from the Security Gaggle came up and told us "Hey, be nice clowns. Let some of the others have a turn on the make-up, you'll have to leave now". How right they were. It was Buy Nothing Day after all and we wouldn't want to be little clown piggies. Besides, our faces were almost completely white and we had stars and rainbows and pretty spirals so we said "Okay Security Gaggle, we'll go now and make room for others to also Buy Nothing".

Even leaving a shop like John Lewis can be a great fun game. Here's how you play: When the man in the security gaggle says "You'll all have to leave now" the fun comes when we clowns all call out to the other people in the store and say "You'll all have to leave now!" That game I'm sure could provide hours of fun and liven up even the most boring day out shopping. Try it.

As we were leaving, it occurred to us that some people in the store didn't actually know it was Buy Nothing Day, so on our way out we told them and encouraged each of them to celebrate it in their own special way.

Then....

Next we decided to break up into small groups - gaggles of two clowns and go and see which stores we could have the most fun in. Major Red Alert and I, being very vain clowns (we're vain because we're beautiful) decided to touch up our make up and make ourselves even more fabulous. So our next venue for celebrating Buy Nothing Day was, of course, the Boots Pharmacy. What a great bunch of people the management of Boots are.

Perhaps inspired by their John Lewis brothers and sisters, Boots also had decided to give away free make-up to clowns on Buy Nothing Day! Once Major Red Alert and I had our finishing touches in place (and the nice security men asking us to leave because I think they wanted a turn on the make-up themselves), we left and rejoined the rest of our gaggle. All together again, and beautiful, we swapped stories and tried to decide where to buy nothing next.

Group Hug!

The next place we bought nothing was in the fantastic coffee shop known as "Starbucks Coffee." There were many many friendly folk in there. They were so friendly we decided to play lots of games with them and even had a fantastic clown Group Hug! Oh What fun it was!

Pssst! Don't tell your mummies about this, but you can make a rude joke in Starbucks by colouring out some of the letters on the cups. I showed everyone in the store this trick. Take a look at how clever it is:

That's so clever! I wish I had thought of it!

Okay my friends, that's the end of Part I. Stay tuned over the next few days to read more about how on Buy Nothing Day our clown gaggle put a final end to global long-term over-consumption. You'll be glad you did!

As any reader of this blog or UK Indymedia must surely know by now, the UK Government has created SOCPA. The Serious Organised Crimed And Police Act. This law outlaws all protest within 1km of the UK parliament building and effectively outlaws freedom of speech within the zone. No matter how many times I tell people about it, I still get a shock as I realise the extreme audacity the people who make up the UK Government have...

As we know, the "authorities" busted up the free festival movement in the 1980's culminating in events like the Battle Of The Beanfield where a whole convoy of peaceful hippy travellers was beaten to a pulp by the police of the day. Then throughout the 1990's many police taskforces were mobilised with the sole aim of busting up free parties and raves. Many many excellent and self-organised parties were ruined by the police and many sound systems were wrecked by their policy of destruction. It seems all things carnivale and beautiful have been the target of the modern-day would-be overseers.

Now they've taken their attempts at consolidation of power to the next level - they've started outlawing protest. They've started with just a small area (1km around parliament square) but most people who have thought about this realise that the area is going to get bigger, and bigger... and bigger. In fact Schnews reports random Sussex superintendant Gray "claimed that you have to inform the police of any protests by law." which is patently false - but it certainly looks like that's the direction they are trying to take us in.

However, upon careful reading of the Serious Organised Crime And Police Act, it became apparent that the law only applies to human protestors - step up the teddys!

In honour of the many years of love we have given the likes of paddington and pooh, big ted and mr sock; in honour of all the nights we lay in bed cuddling our furry stuffed friends; in honour of a very basic right all sentient beings should have - the teddy bears have organised their own protest demanding that humans be given back the very basic right of free speech! Hooray The Teddys! We knew we could count on you!

With the teddy bears on our side, we can't lose. They are loving, caring, outspoken and committed to real grass-roots based freedom and democracy. In fact they care more about the core issues than most humans living in London care.

Thinking about it, it is pretty weird to think that the government has called the legislation banning protesting the "serious organised crime and police" act. What's serious organised crime about protesting I ask you? We can only guess that those in control are deeply, deeply scared of us. They are deeply scared that our ideas of anti-authority, freedom, peace and rebellion will spread. They are scared that we will disobey their orders and dance in the streets with wild abandon. They are scared that they will no longer be able to control us and our movements and our thoughts and our dreams.

However, the more draconian laws like this they bring in, the more people realise that the law serves no purpose at all. The more they take away our rights, the more we realise it is them who are making a mockery of the legal system. The more they lie about war, profit and climate change, the more lies they need to keep telling. They so deeply fear people knowing the truth about what they are doing that they can't possibly turn back now - but their deepest fear is that we will all one day realise that they are little more than insignificant old fools and that we no longer have to do what they say; that their only power is *our* fear.

That's the real power of (r)evolution - the decision to choose to disobey them and instead celebrate the carnival of life... just like the teddys have done.

More teddy pics are up on indymedia.

Hoorah!

As I reported in my note on the Strathclyde Police Slumber Party, I was arrested in Glasgow on July 8th, 2005. I was taken in to custody, quite literally for hugging a fairy.

What did you say?

I said I was arrested for hugging a fairy. Yeah that's right -

It was an extremely peaceful protest, and part of the manifestation against the G8 leaders who meeting up there. I was a clown at the time and one of the things I do best as a Rebel Clown is de-escalate violent and tense situations. Now of course, sometimes tense situations are called for, and I stay clear of them, but often the tension comes from hot-headed police looking for (or expecting) a fight. Being a clown lets me get away with a hell of a lot more than when I'm a civilian. Unparallel levels of foolish cheek abound!

In the morning, I had taken part in Operation Splish Splash Splosh [indymedia] which was an extremely fun and fluffy occupation of a Shell service station. One reason for the extreme levels of fluffiness was that there had been about 50 civilians killed in London the day before, and some news reports at that time had tried to blame anarchists! What Cheek! So fluffy it was. Samba and clowns, fairies and mermaids. I am talking serious pink and silver tinsel!

Oh by the way, there was a ton of Irish people at the Shell garage. (If you are reading this and don't know what Shell is doing in Ireland, then click here now. Five people from County Mayo were locked up for over 3 months for refusing to surrender their land to Shell and the fight continues. Read the Ballad of the Rossport Five and more here)

After Splish Splash Splosh, a group of about 200 protestors, (including myself and the fairy) were being herded away from the town centre. Towards the rear of this herded group, there were some extremely rough police with loads of pushing and shoving and obviously up for a bit of aggro. One WPC took it on to herself to harass a pink-clad fairy who was walking a bit slower than most of the others. We never did quite figure out why the WPC was picking on the fairy. Perhaps it was due to the ominous looking feather duster? Maybe the fairy was wearing the wrong shade of pink? We simply don't know....

Joke:
Q: What do you call a woman who takes you to court?
A: Sue.

Anyway, I could quite visibly see that the fairy was in distress so I went over to chill the situation out. The WPC will all her wee might shoved the fairy straight into me. I held on to her as simple as that and half a second later I was arrested and charged with "Obstructing Police Business" and "Attempted Rescue Of A Prisoner".

I went to court last week and it all went amazingly well... The WPC and my arresting officer couldn't get their stories straight and went as far as claiming they were not tired even though they had arrested me after a 13 hour shift. They claimed they were not hot and bothered although it was Scotland's hottest day this year. It took next to no time before I was found NOT GUILTY on both charges!

Let it now be made completely official - HUGGING FAIRIES IS NOT A CRIME! Let that be a warning to our uniformed friends next time they try to stop clowns and fairies from hugging.

Phew, well that's all for now.

With lots of love from,

Commander-in-chief Seani Buttocks

My jester having a great time at Shambala Festival, Devon, England...

It was a great festival. It was there that I ran into the Fairy that saved my life in Scotland.

AFter the festival, a small crew of us squatted some traditional English country garden which overlooked some gorgeous Devon beach. It was magic.

A note to anyone using b2evolution. It's a very cool multi-user blog application. Spammers are causing us all nightmares! Here is one solution:

I have made it so that by default, all comments have comment_status 'draft'.

I was then wondering why new comments still showed up even though saved as draft within the DB.

Either I couldn't find the correct way to hide these posts, or there isn't one.

So I wrote one.

It seems that I needed a new function.. copy these steps if having comments hidden by default interests you.

1 - Inside b2evocore/_functions_bposts.php I created a function comment_statuses_where_clause which is pretty much exactly the same as statuses_where_clause() but with the SQL references to post_status changed to comment_status

2 - inside b2evocore/_class_commentlist.php, right under
$this->request .= ' AND '.statuses_where_clause( $show_statuses );
I put this line of code
$this->request .= ' AND '.comment_statuses_where_clause( $show_statuses );

3. inside htsrv/comment_post.php, in the SQL that adds the comment to the database, I've added a field so the SQL looks like this:


$query = "INSERT INTO $tablecomments( comment_post_ID, comment_type, comment_author_ID, comment_author, comment_author_email, comment_author_url, comment_author_IP, comment_date, comment_content, comment_status)
VALUES( $comment_post_ID, 'comment', ".$DB->null($author_ID).",
".$DB->quote($author).", ".$DB->quote($email).",
".$DB->quote($url).",'".$DB->escape($user_ip)."','$now',
'".$DB->escape($comment)."', 'draft' )";

$DB->query( $query );


4. That's it! The spam no longer appears anywhere on the site! The spammer has no chance of publishing and soon gives up.

5. But we still have to manually approve posts that we want, rather than the other way around. That's no big drama either. We are now in a position where we approve the comments that we want, rather than delete the spam we don't want. It's much more relaxing... This can be done in the admin section. I'll post instructions on how to do that shortly.

Do the site admins want me to write this up a bit more properly or become an active committer?

Spam me - aha - you can't!

Here's a sign we saw outside the Dolphin, a lovely little pub in Devon where we had a beer or two after Shambala festival last week.

Tuesday July 5th was a crazy day. Dozens of different autonomous affinity groups all planning and organising a multitude of different actions. It was discussed that if many groups are planning actions and they are not in contact with each other then some groups would probably succeed though many would fail. Our affinity group - a gaggle of London clowns thought it would be best to join in the main blockade on the road to Gleneagles. What happened on Tuesday night and Wednesday before Gleneagles is a story in itself -



Last Night a fairy saved my life.

Tuesday night on the way to Gleneagles was absolutely hellish. The cops stopped us to hassle us nine times. Each time was slightly different. I was thoroughly searched six times. Many of the cops were extremely hostile to me and the clowns I was with. It was extremely intimidating but that seems to be the price we have to pay when we want to speak out against injustice these days. I suppose I had better get used to it! Nah fuck that - I don't want to get used to state-sanctioned bullies. It's disgusting.

After many hours of walking through the streets, trying to avoid this harassment, finally at about 3am we found a field we could take shelter in, but one of the gaggle announced he had hay-fever so a small number of us when and slept in a dirty puddle in a road. We were under-dressed and it very cold. It started pissing it down on us and was extremely annoyed, wet and tired.

Then what? Then the midges came out and swarmed us looking for a feed! So not only were we cold, wet and tired but we were majorly harassed by these tiny bugs as well as the police. Evil Sorcerors cursing us couldn't have done more to put us off the path if they'd tried! We didn't get much sleep. Maybe half an hour or so and the puddle we slept in slowly got deeper. Egads what a night!

When morning came, a few of the gaggle could take no more and went back to camp. The rain and cold and tiredness and midges had been too much - but combined with the ongoing police harassment, that was trivial. However half of us went on, determined to make it to Gleneagles. Personally I felt that I had put so much time (1 year or so) into preparing for the G8 protests that I couldn't give up no matter how much it ruined me. So, we started the walk along the freeway towards Gleneagles. We were stopped and searched (harrassed) a few more times before getting to Blackford.

By this time, I was extremely distraught and in tears. Although it was only really about 8am, I felt that the first day of direct action and protests had essentially failed. I didn't know at that time that many groups had created successful blockades and in many cases had stopped traffic and stopped delegates from getting to Gleneagles. Even though our group had been majorly picked on, we were apparently an extremely effective decoy allowing other groups to succeed where we'd failed! However, I didn't know this at the time...

We had breakfast in Blackford but I was by this time an emotional wreck. I found it really hard to comprehend the extreme levels of state-sanctioned harassment I was being subjected to. That people can be so viciously sadistic to each other is beyond me. Where does this come from? I know the world is full of terrible acts of persecution, violent discrimination and outright fascism, but I had never before been this intensely at the receiving end of it.

Our gaggle and some other random people finished breakfast and were stopped and victimised as we left the cafe. The cops stole many things from us including Miss P's soap bubbles. Why did they steal her soap bubbles except to cause more distress???

The harassment got to me - On the 11th time I was stopped I broke down knowing I wouldn't be able to make it to Gleneagles. I would stay in Blackford and watch the gaggle continue the journey without me... I shouldn't stop off here on my own the gaggle advised. If only someone would stay with me???

Then out of the corner of my teary eye I saw a wondrous and beautiful fairy.

The night before she had been given a lift to the official drop-off point but scarily for her, none of her fairy clan had turned up. In fact, they had been dropped off at an altogether different place. She too had suffered police harassment and had spent the night in a different puddle with some people she didn't know. Different puddle, different midges, different police - same harassment! A fairy shouldn't have to go through this kind of distress!

The fairy and I were stopped by police one more time but we simply couldn't handle the stress, so we ran into the Blackford church yard and took refuge. Police were hurling abuse at us over the church wall but they didn't come in. We went out the back onto the church lawn, and cried under a tree. A very sad distressed clown and a very sad distressed fairy became very close friends very quickly. Her name was Jen The Fairy and she was beautiful. We swapped stories, nurtured each other, helped each other overcome the harassment we'd been victim to and slowly got our acts together. Talking to her restored my faith in both fairy and humankind. And it was really chuffing to know that she felt the same way about me. A clown had made a fairy's life better. Yippee!

After two hours of recovering, healing and grounding in the church, we both decided "right, it's only the 1st day of protests out of three. We should go back to the camp site and come again another day." We left the church, careful to see there were no cops hanging around and then started the slow walk back to Stirling.

But just as we left the church a bus pulled up with "Auchterarder" written on the front. (Auchterarder is the name of the town in which Gleneagles sits). We both looked at each other and jumped onto the bus! Having nurtured each other back to full fairy and clown health we were once again ready to hit the crowds and express our opinions... She donned her wings and I my nose... Oh yes, we did protest that day, and how!

I haven't seen nor heard from Jen The Fairy since that morning in Blackford, but if anyone sees her, please give her my love. You'll know her when you see her from the twinkle in her eyes. Oh yeah, and the fairy wings.



Update August 20th: I found my fairy! More on this soon...

A gaggle of nine clowns from the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army went to Parliament Square yesterday not to protest the new law outlawing such protests. The new law, which we didn't break is more correctly termed The Section 132 Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. Well, we're clowns so there's no way we could engage in Serious Organised Crime so of course we didn't protest.



We started the day out by walking the perimeter of the new zone. We had a magic map and traced out a lot of the route with chalk. We weren't shy at all - we warned many people on which side of the line they were allowed to protest. Just to clarify the law for those who missed us - if you are on the London Eye and you are wearing a "Save The Whales" T-Shirt, you can be arrested for Serious Organised Crime. We were very helpful and let many people know this. We were surprised how few of London's 8 million knew about this law.



Eventually on our travels we turned up in Trafalgar Square... The Serious Organised Crime act makes an exception to this place which is not covered. In fact it specifically mentions Trafalgar Square in the legislation. This is odd, I thought to my clown self. Is it not Serious Organised Crime to protest here? But luckily some helpful security guards came up to us and informed us: "You are right, Trafalgar Square is exempt from the Serious Organised Crimes Act and that is not the reason you cannot protest here. The reason you cannot protest here is because our supervisor doesn't allow it."



"Right you are!" we thought to ourselves and continued on our merry way...



Eventually we made it in to the danger-zone and turned up in Parliament Square. Some Police gave us a flyer that said

"We believe you may be, or are about to be, involved in a demonstration blah blah blah Serious Organised Crime blah blah blah The demonstration has not been authorised blah blah blah if found guilty you may be liable to a fine or, in certain circumstances a term of imprisonment.




Nice and friendly!



There were 150 or so other people not demonstrating when we got there. Most of them didn't protest because they also are not involved in Serious Organised Crime. A clown from my gaggle was stopped and searched [pictured below] but of course, he is not involved in Serious Organised Crime and he didn't protest. Maybe they just wanted to say hello to him and hear some of his bad jokes? He has a lot of them!







Maybe the younger and more sensitive readers should turn away now because there was at least one extremely scary moment in the middle of the day and I don't want to give anyone nightmares... Out of nowhere we saw a number of people engage in scary Serious Organised Crime!!!



All of a sudden these people were holding up placards! Haven't they read the new crime's act? Have they no respect for authority? Don't they know that the new law makes unauthorised protesting in Central London completely illegal? These Serious Organised Criminals are a danger to, a danger to, a danger to, oh I didn't read the small print of the Act but I'm sure they are a danger... But I did read the placards, which read "Protest By Right, Not By Police Permission."



The placard-wielding Seriously Organised Criminals were dragged off by the police and the rest of us didn't protest for another hour or so... Later on a gaggle of us went to Islington Police Cells where we played Pass The Clap and other clown games until the five dangerous Serious Organised Criminals were released on bail...

Two people were arrested on Friday, July 8th in Glasgow some time after the Boogie On The Bridge demonstration...

One, a male [me, pictured] was a clown with dreadlocked hair under a khaki bandana and a big red clown nose, white face paint and was wearing a pair of john-lennon-style shades and a khaki fishing jacket pink patches of pink fluff sewn onto it. He was effectively arrested for hugging the fairy who was being taken in to custody at the time. The fairy, a female, was wearing a pink t-shirt with "terrorist?" [that's a question mark] on it. She was carrying a pink feather duster and was wearing a rainbow tutu. The fairy was arrested with the majorly trumped-up charge of "Assaulting An Officer"! The clown's charges are "Obstructing Police Business" and "Attempted Rescue Of A Prisoner"... These charges are complete bullshit and we can prove it too - but we need your help. Did you see this clown get nicked?

Someone filmed the whole arrest! About a minute before the arrests, someone with a vid camera filmed the clown complaining... If you are the filmer and you are reading this now, please come forward with this footage! A cop had been stomping on the clown's feet and shoving the clown about. The cop was majorly aggressive. The clown wanted this aggression filmed for the permanent record... Another cop was pushing and shoving the fairy all over the place and purposefully pushing her into people... The clown went on camera and reported the abusive behaviour saying something like "This cop is a real bully, he is pushing and shoving and stomping on my feet. Please film his face and make him famous"...

1 minute later, with the camera still rolling, both the clown and the fairy were arrested together!!! If we can find the guy who filmed this, we believe both the clown and the fairy cases will be dropped pretty quickly... If you didn't film this, but witnessed it, please contact g8legalsupport.

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Did you witness and/or film these 2 arrests? If so, please contact me and/or G8LegalSupport on g8legalsupport@riseup.net

Please Note: If you witnessed any arrest at all in Scotland during the G8 protest, then the G8 Legal Support crew may need your help. There Were hundreds of still and vid cameras about at every different anti-G8 manifestation. If you witnessed any arrest, Read this. Contacting G8 Legal Support with your vital information and/or film could help someone stay out of prison.

About a week ago, I was told there was a photo of me (my clown) in Al Jazeera. I didn't think much of it at the time. Nor did I spend a lot of time pondering over the many many images of Sacha and I that have been posted to Indymedia [ Sacha | Splish Splash Splosh | highland gaggle | cat | getting searched | stopped ]

But this morning I found out my Glasgow Experience has been told in this week's Schnews as Crap Arrest Of The Week!!

Oh the fame! Oh the Glory!

You see, Schnews is without doubt my favourite weekly read. I've been subbed on their mailing list for about 5 years and was first turned on to after the Praha 2000 IMF/World Bank protests. If you want to know what's happening in the world of global, grass-roots activism, and feel like reading an intelligent account of real issues affecting people, then check it out - not just coz I'm in there - honest!

[Disclaimer: I have tried to make light of last week's experience in Strathclyde Police cells but this in no way reflects the serious torment I, and my fellow G8 protestor detainees experienced. I wrote the following as my clown whilst actually in the cells and the act of writing was therapeutic for me during an intensely dehumanising experience.]

On the weekend of July 8th through July 11th, I was a very lucky clown as I was invited to the Strathclyde Police Slumber Party! I got the invitation because I hugged a fairy during a street parade. "Oh What Joy" I thought to my little clown self, excitedly anticipating party food, party games and new friends!

We did indeed play many games. I think the favourite was "Wake Up Everybody! Wake Up!" We really liked that game so much that we played it about 70 times over the weekend... Every hour on the hour "Wake Up Everybody!" It was great!

Another game we played was called "Please Sir, Can I have some more?" We played that a lot too. Whenever we wanted a glass of water or a sheet of toilet paper we played this exciting game.

All weekend we played party games and we even played tricks on each other. They played a lot of tricks on me. One trick they liked to play was "Dinner Time"... This trick involved telling me it was "Dinner Time" but instead of bringing me dinner, they brought "gloopy poopy". A very clever trick I thought. Of course, I knew it was a party trick and I didn't eat it.

When I was a young clown I onced played a trick on my clown friend. This trick involved hiding my friends clothes behind the washing machine when he was in the bath. My friend had to look for a whole 10 minutes before he found his trousers!! I think the Strathclyde police liked this trick too because they took Dr Kramer's clothes off him (except his underwear). They hid his clothes so well that he didn't get to find them the whole time we were at the slumber party!

Speaking of hiding things, one of the favourite games was "hide and seek"...Everyone played this game really well! In fact I didn't see any of the other guests at the slumber party for the whole 3 days I was there!

I must say, there were a couple of things that I didn't understand that are different from a normal slumber party. For example when my cousin had his party we all slept in the same room. But at Strathclyde Police slumber party we each had to sleep in our own room! They have a very big house you see... My room was called "Isolation Unit C, Cell 5."

Also, I wish they had told us to bring our own sheets and pillows because they didn't have any of their own but they did give me a feral duvet... Hmm, come to think of it they didn�t have any beds either. Hey maybe they had furniture too, but I didn�t see that either! Oh they do hide things ever so well.

It was a fun slumber party and I can still hear the policeman's voice saying "Wake Up Everybody! Wake Up!" ringing in my ears. I shall write to them and my solicitor friends and tell them about what a fun slumber party it was and how they could make it more fun the next time.

Bye For Now!

Major Hassles

This weekend I spent in training at the army - the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army or CIRCA to be precise.

Some very cool people, with some great ideas on how to use humour, games and NVDA to transform our world into a better place. Poking fun and playing games with a very definite goal looks like it could really work well for me as I am quite in tune with my jester energy already. I'm already looking forward to getting my uniform sorted and I'll upload some pics when I get a chance to.

CIRCA is a part of the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, a "new network of socially engaged artists and activists whose work falls in between resistance and creativity, culture and politics, art and life." It's obviously better to engage in creative and imaginative action rather than go all confrontational... Remember, we can't really transform the world into our playground using militant confrontation. The militancy simply spirals ever onward and out of control... It continues to amaze me that some folk continue to think that fighting the powers-that-be using force rather than fun will actually achieve anything. Instead of militancy, there is a great surrealist bent to CIRCA and the way it operates. If it provokes people into thinking for themselves then I'm all for it! And using the jester vibe to poke fun and the status quo is always important otherwise some things will never change.

Oh of course CIRCA is fully non-hierarchical and fully anarchistic as all enlightened political and organisational groups should be.

At the G8 Dissent summit I will probably hook up with the clown army rather than work primarily with pagans as I usually do. The pagan cluster doesn't seem to be forming a very cohesive unit and I feel it will be interesting to to transfer my pagan work across and play with the magick in a clown army uniform!

I look forward to 'socking', playing 'teeheehe', saying 'yeah but' and 'fishing' with several hundred other clowns who are making the journey to Scotland to protest the G8.

Remember, I'm not an activist dressed as a clown, I'm a clown going to a protest.

[ update June 21st ]

Well I'm still really keen on the clowns but the pagans do seem to be forming a cohesive cluster which is fantastic! Maybe I'll drift between the groups. Who knows? Watch this space and send good vibes...