1600x1200 is way too big for most screens and way too slow loading for people with dial-up connections.

Please, please, please repost these pics at 600 x 400.

Funny - just a day before (August 16th) there was a similar soccer match in Wageningen, the Netherlands.

(url: http://www.indymedia.nl/nl/2003/08/13308.shtml). This one was with 14 teams.

History in short: at August 16, 1997 was the first of the so-called 'Artikel 140' soccer competitions. Article 140 of the Dutch book of criminal law is the conspiracy paragraph. It is the part of the law which makes it possible to, for instance, arrest&prosecute all participants of a legal demonstration for [insert law violation here] if only one participant (who may be a provocator sent there by the cops) commits a crime.

In 1997 several groups of people which were active in different branches of the 'extragovernmental opposition' (like the squatters and ex-squatters of Vrankrijk (Amsterdam), Hotel Bosch (Arnhem), ACU (Utrecht), antimilitarists, mobile organic/vegan kitchen Rampenplan and many others) decided to organized a soccer competition of potential artikel 140 targets. This first competition unexpectedly generated a sum of money - which was donated to a support group for political refugees from countries like Iraq, Kurdistan and Somalia who were denied access to Europe.

Everybody enjoyed the idea to continue with this formula: a soccer competition by and for activists of different directions of the radical political spectrum, of which the proceeds are used to support a political project which everybody likes.

So last Saturday it was for the 7th time. I really enjoyed the day! The funniest team (imho) was a team of Tokers, called Dopje 13 (named after key 13 of a standard European toolkit, the one which is best suited to be used as a roachclip). The team didn't make many points but at least they seemed to know where the goal was. Not bad for a bunch of hemp activists of which some even smoked during the match.

The anti-imperialist teams lost temporarily to the
bourgeois rich of Piedmont, but we'll be back. Next time we come calling it won't be to borrow the soccer field.

Why the match stops when the cops arive? Is itillligal to play soccer in the Land of the Free?

It was being played on a rich, upper-middle class area high school's football field up on the hills. So if it's not a simple pickup game and more like a real game with jerseys and supporters, then you're supposed to get a permit. And this game didn't have one. Sure, the game could have been played on other fields in Oakland or Berkeley, but it wouldn't be nearly as "nice" as this one.

Anarchists and Communists playing soccer "football" in an open field like 4 billion other people in this world, won't happen they are too plugged into the establisment, and are reduced to bitching like little girls.