angry news from around the world

Italy - NO TAV - Arrests and denunciations throughout the country

2012-01-26T16:18:00.000-08:00

informa-azione

26/01/2012 - At 6:30 this morning, Thursday, January 26, 2012, a vast police operation ordered by the Public prosecutor of Turin has struck many friends, comrades, and No TAV resistants throughout Italy with arrests and cautionary measures. The practices of resistance that set off this massive operation concern conflictual episodes starting from the eviction of the Libera Repubblica della Maddalena [Free Republic of the Magdalene], passing through the siege of July 3 and the long Susa Valley summer.
Of the more than 40 measures, 25 are remands in prison, 15 measures of mandatory residence, 1 detention under house arrest and 1 prohibition of residence in the province of Turin.
This afternoon a No TAV demonstration in solidarity with comrades affected by this crackdown: appointment at 17.00 in Piazza Castello in Turin.
Candlelight vigil in solidarity at 20.30 No TAV Bussoleno.
Concentration of solidarity at Milan University at 16.00
Demonstration in Piazza del Nettuno in Bologna at 17.00
Demonstration outside prison of Quarto (Asti) at 18.00
Solidarity demonstration in Cagliari at 18.00
Solidarity demonstration in Padua at 18.30 at the prefecture
In Pistoia - Tomorrow night in Piazza S. 21e30 Bartholomew, a meeting will be held to organize protests and solidarity with Antonio and all those arrested in these hours. We will keep you updated.

The arrest warrants total 32 (some local media report 26).
From Biella we learn of one measure of obligation of residence and of a minor being held at the police station.
From Milan comes news of 5 arrest warrants, 3 of which have been put into act (including Maurizio and Stefano).
From Rovereto we learn of the arrest of Juan.

The number of arrests and charges in Piedmont is not yet clear. In addition to Gabriela, for whose arrest they broke into El Paso, and Maja, we have reports of some arrests made at several homes in Turin and in the Susa Valley, militants of Askatasuna social centre (George, Jacob and Luke), Tobias Mauro, Guido (councillor of Villar Focchiardo) and in the squat in via Muriaglio (Mambo). Also searches Barocchio. In the morning the occupants of the Mezcal climbed on to the roof when the police arrived; after a few hours and the arrival of solidarity, they came down to receive notifications of denunciation. The police stayed at the Mezcal until 13.00 looking for clothing, helmets and other equipment. Some No TAV resistants taken to police headquarters this morning have been released following notification of charges; entry to their home was made, it seems, using the 41 TULPS (search for weapons and explosives). Two No TAV affected by provisional measures remain unaccounted for. Samuel was arrested in Asti. From Rome comes news of 2 arrests. An arrest in Genoa. Antonio arrested in Pistoia. In Naples, the former home of Alessio was searched as well as the anarchist space 76 A.

From Bologna we receive:
The wave of repression against the movement has also struck in Bologna:
right now it seems that the situation in the capital of Emilia is 3 raids, 2 against anarchists and one against an activist of the TPO, also hit with an obligation to remain outside the region.One of the searches against the anarchists, in the presence of Rizzoli himself (Bologna, head of the political police, Digos) was very brutal until the arrival of a lawyer.The comrades were then taken to police headquarters for fingerprints and photographs and were charged. To them, as well as to all those detained, subjected to precautionary measures or raided, all our solidarity..
It is clear that in times of increasing poverty, in which a "technical government" has been called to prevent any situation of real struggle, this wave of repression is a warning.Who commands us would like to instill fear, instilling despair and fomenting division in those who struggle in the Susa Valley and anywhere else.
Finally, it is urgent to underline that these searches in Bologna insert themselves in a period of particular repressive recrudescence and doggedness of the police against anarchists and anyone who has chosen the rejection of any form of mediation or recognition by the institutions.
After the closing of the anarchist circle Fuoriluogo and the arrests in April, those of July 3 in the Susa Valley, they have continued to rain down accusations and court cases that in other circumstances would never have gone to trial. To that should be added a dozen 'new' verbal warnings, about twenty expulsion orders, two attempts to deal out special surveillance, and continuous controls by the Digos sometimes with threatening and violent behaviour also ending up with nights spent at the police station.
Concentration in the main square in Bologna at 17.oo
Anarchists in Bologna

L'Île-Rousse, Corsica - First floor of college ransacked

2012-01-24T13:25:00.000-08:00

corse matin (via cette semaine)18/01/2012 - "A cyclone." This is how the scene of vandalism discovered Monday morning by the cleaners of the establishment, on the first floor of the college-Pascal Paoli, in L'Île-Rousse was described. In each room, insults - tagged with black paint - designed specifically against teachers, supervisors, educators in general. Spanning whiteboards, but also on the tables, computer screens ... But the vandals did not stop there: computer equipment was also found destroyed. The rampage took place during the weekend, when the college was closed.
An investigation opened by police
An investigation was opened on Monday morning. There, investigators make use of the findings. Then the cleaners can finally clean up the devastation and restore the normal aspect to the damaged rooms by working hard all day Monday. "This morning, the teachers took the students over to the main college. They explained what had happened, and we did some prevention against violence." That afternoon, the teachers gathered in the General Assembly and came out on strike."In addition to verbal abuse and degradation of materials, student work and photographs of school trips have been damaged", complain teachers of the college collective of teachers. There is a security problem, they add. We want to ask a government contractor for the security of the institution. "At the scene, no sign of tampering was found.The investigation is ongoing. And even if no trail has been ruled out, investigators tends to favour students or ex-students of the institution. In terms of the faculty, there is concern that such acts, if they are not punished they will one day lead to aggression against not objects but people. The sackage of the first floor left a deep sense of unease. Giving a disturbing impression of "escalation" in a fairly quiet setting.

Fleury-Merogis, France - 14 vehicles burnt over weekend

2012-01-24T13:09:00.000-08:00

le parisien
10/01/2012 - Fleury-Merogis yesterday. Several cars were burned in the night from Sunday to Monday in the district Aunette. Certainty to the police, these fires are not accidental.
The bottom of the air still carries the faint smell of burnt rubber and the fragrance of exasperation. The car park, which is at the foot of the building 2, rue Jacques-Decour Fleury-Merogis, bears the marks of a restless night. Very early yesterday morning, four vehicles went up in smoke.Their remains are adjacent to two vehicles partially degraded. "It happened around 3:00 and other cars were also burnt out," laments one resident of this set HLM.[council estate]A hundred yards away, in front of the kindergarten-Robert Desnos, a rental van and a sedan are no more than carcasses. Nelson Mandela Street, facing a row of small houses, another vehicle was burned. A total of 11 fires were reported during the night from Sunday to Monday. Three others were also reported last Saturday, according to residents.

Fleury-Merogis prison nr Paris, France - Prison workshops destroyed by fire

2012-01-24T12:15:00.000-08:00

cette semaine

AFP - 02/01/2012 - According to the firemen of Essonne, the fire started around 9 am. A union source said the fire, extinguished about 11:30 am, destroyed the workshops of building D5 of the prison. About 150 prisoners were working on reconditioning costume jewelry have been evacuated. An inmate and a supervisor were overcome by fumes and taken to the hospital.
The origin of the fire had not been determined late Monday morning. The building will be renovated to D5 from the month of February, as part of a redevelopment of the prison.

Back to the burning of the workshop of the prison of Fleury Mérogis

18/02/2012
Mag du 91 - According to the analysis, the incident would be of criminal origin. Traces of an inflammable product were detected on site. For now, however, investigators have no suspect, in fact, it is difficult to know where the substance was used to trigger the fire. The damage to the prison is estimated at around 400,000 euros.

Hammamet, Tunisia - Students attack their high school with Molotov cocktails

2012-01-24T11:59:00.000-08:00

newsoftunisia (via cette semaine)
22/01/2012 - The situation is becoming increasingly critical in Tunisia and turns, in many cases, to drama! What just happened, Friday, January 20, Hammamet is unacceptable.[sic]

Students attacked their own school, the establishment Mohamed Boudhina in Hammamet, a sign of dissatisfaction with the administration which refused to grant them a ticket after asking them to be accompanied by their parents to justify their repeated absences.

The Director of the institution, Mr. Kamel Messaoud, spoke on the waves of Shems FM, indicating that the students were armed with Molotov cocktails, stones and firecrackers.

Saint-Gilles, Belgium - Victor Horta metro station completely sabotaged

2012-01-24T11:46:00.000-08:00

rtbf

22/01/2012 - The pre-metro station Horta in Saint-Gilles is currently out of service due to damage caused in the night from Saturday to Sunday, Brussels court officials have informed.
STIB hopes to reopen Horta station on Monday morning.
The station was completely stained with paint and the doors were blocked with pieces of wood. The damage is severe. The tram lines passing through the station do not stop here for thetime being.
The court in Brussels descended on the scene Sunday morning. The station has now been released by the court. It is now being cleaned by teams from the STIB.
"We are working hard to clean as soon as the station. The goal is to reopen the pre-metro station Monday morning. Tram lines 3, 4 and 51 do not stop there Sunday," said Van An Hamme, spokesman for the company to transport Brussels.

RTBF

Lisbon, Portugal - "Indignados" wrongly reported as victims of fascist attack. Here's what really happened.

2012-01-24T11:15:00.000-08:00

received by sysiphus

24/01/2012 - It was reported by the international media (and also sometimeslocally) that an "indignados" demo was attacked by fascists, or that they were sent away by the cops, once again playing the role of victims, but thisis far from what really happened. For the indignados no violence can come fromwhoever participates in "their" demos, "we" can only be good citizens who ask for democracy. All the rest, no matter what, is illusion or provocation.
A demo called for by the organizations of the indignados was about to beginwhen a group of about 30 fascists with banners and flags approached and triedto integrate with the demo. Already in last March 12 a group of fascists didparticipate in the massive 300,000 strong demo in Lisbon, with no response. Thistime however a few people decided the bastards wouldn't go on the demo. Andthen more people shared this idea, surrounding them. There was no violence a priori from thefascists, and no provocation apart from their simple presence. There was only adecision to not let them march together with us and to kick them out of thearea. The police intervened when the clashes began and some fascists were in trouble, amidst punches,kicks and stones. One of their banners was stolen, two flags burned and atleast one fascist had to go to the hospital. The remaining 15 fascists (theother 15 went away after the clashes) had to remain 100 meters away from thedemo the rest of the time, with dozens of riot cops protecting them.

What follows next is more or less what happened, translated from a Portuguesenewspaper (Diário Digital).

"Nationalist group not allowed to participate in demo after confrontations
A group of about 20 members of the Movimento de Oposição Nacional (MON -nationalist organization) was surrounded by cops this afternoon on the way tothe parliament, where the "indignados" were demonstrating, soon afterthe two groups were involved in clashes.
"We weren't going to make any provocation, we were going to participate inthe demo called for in the internet, when hooded individuals in black attackedus. They're people from the extreme left wing and this is a sign of theirtolerance. It's the thought dictatorship.", told us João Martins, a memberof the MON.
The group, surrounded by police officers, ended up going home and not integrating withthe demo.
João Martins, who told the group had already participated in"indignados'" demos before, said there was never any problems, thiswas the first time, "with one member of the MON going to the hospital witha broken skull, after being kicked and punched."
He added the group has "identitarian nationalist" ideals, but refusedany links to fascism or the extreme right wing, telling that their aim in theprotest was "to show indignation towards the rotten system rulling thecountry since 1974". "Everything for this motherland! For Portugal -and nothing else" is the slogan of the MON.
The riot police had to intervene at the beginning of the demo, after a group ofthe nationalist movement tried to integrate in the demo, where it was promptlyrejected. The insults ended up in violence. As soon as they showed their flags,the protesters started to call them "fascists" and "PIDE's"(the political police of Salazar).
The insults soon escalated to clashes, with stones, punches and kicks. The riotcops separated the two groups, but there was still time to burn two flags.
source:
http://diariodigital.sapo.pt/news.asp?section_id=13&id_news=554516

Benghazi, Libya - protestors storm ruling NTC headquarters with home-made grenades

2012-01-22T16:47:00.000-08:00

AFP

21/01/2012 - BENGHAZI, Libya — Angry protesters threw home-made grenades and stormed Libya's ruling National Transitional Council offices in the city of Benghazi, setting its front ablaze on Saturday, witnesses said.
The attack, the first such violent act against the NTC -- the body which is ruling Libya since the fall of Moamer Kadhafi's regime -- came in the eastern city which was also the first to rise up against the dictator last year.
The attack occurred as up to 2,000 protesters, including injured former rebels who helped topple Kadhafi's 42-year-old regime, demonstrated outside the NTC offices, witnesses and an AFP correspondent at the scene reported.
Witnesses said the grenade blasts occurred when wounded former rebels were protesting at being "marginalised" in the new Libya, demanding more transparency in the NTC and opposing what they said were opportunists from joining the ruling body.
Protesters in Benghazi have held demonstrations for several weeks, accusing the NTC of lacking transparency and recruiting members who were once seen as loyalists of the former regime.
On Saturday at least three blasts were heard by the AFP reporter who said he did not see any damage to the office or any casualties.
"The demonstrators attacked the building and turned NTC offices upside down," an NTC member said on condition of anonymity.
Other witnesses said protesters, armed with stones and iron bars, stormed and ransacked the offices as they occupied them.
"They set fire to the front (of the office), broke windows and damaged one of the armoured cars that was there," said Fathi Baja, NTC member and the council's political affairs chief.
He said he and NTC chief Mustafa Abdel Jalil, who had visited the office to calm the protesters, got out of the premises separately, adding that he was unaware of who was behind the attack.
"We do not know. Some were very young, like 15 years, some older. There were many. Some called for the resignation of the entire NTC except... Mustafa Abdel Jalil and another member," Baja told AFP by phone from Benghazi.
Abdel Jalil too faced the fury of the protesters as some threw plastic bottles at him when he tried to calm them down, witnesses said, adding that a brigade of some former rebels secured a passage to allow the NTC head and other council members to leave the building.
Home-made bombs were used regularly by the former rebels during last year's conflict against Kadhafi, especially to attack checkpoints of the former leader's forces.
The grenade blasts and ransacking of NTC offices come just two days after the council's deputy head Abdel Hafiz Ghoga was manhandled by university students in Benghazi.
Ghoga, who also serves as official spokesman for the interim government, had to be escorted away after being mobbed by angry students at the University of Ghar Yunis in Libya's second largest city.
He escaped unharmed but was forced to endure a tirade of abuse from the crowd, who accused him of opportunism because of his belated defection from the Kadhafi regime.
22/01
The deputy head of Libyan ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) Abdel Hafiz Ghoga announced his resignation after the national wave of mass protests against the new government, the Al Jazeera TV channel said on Sunday.

Lisbon, Portugal - Clashes in the streets after indignados demo is attacked by fascists

2012-01-22T16:23:00.000-08:00

euronews

21/01/2012 - Violence flared on the streets of Lisbon as members of the right-wing Portuguese nationalist party clashed with supporters of the left wing, indignados group.
The fascist demonstrators threw a lighted flare and used flags they were carrying to attack the indignados. Police had to intervene and separate the two factions.
The fighting erupted during a planned demonstration to protest against the country’s austerity measures. Thousands marched to parliament chanting slogans against the Troika – the IMF, European Central Bank and European Commission.
On Wednesday, the government, unions and employers signed a pact to make it easier for crisis- hit companies to hire and fire, cut redundancy pay-outs and the number of holidays.
Officials from the Troika, at the end of a three day visit, praised the government for the reforms required to meet the 78 billion euro rescue package.
see video:
//www.euronews.net/2012/01/21/troika-back-portugal-reforms-as-violence-flares/

Arida, Lebanon - Residents storm border crossing throwing rocks at Syrian outpost following murder of 17 year old fisherman by Syrian naval forces

2012-01-22T16:06:00.000-08:00

daily star
22/01/2012 - Arida, Lebanon: A tense atmosphere fueled by anger described the scene at the border town of Arida Sunday after residents held a funeral for a teenager who was killed when Syrian naval forces seized a fishing trawler carrying three Lebanese fishermen a day earlier.
During the funeral procession, angry residents stormed the border crossing, throwing rocks at the Syrian border outpost and shouting anti-Syrian slogans. Lebanese army personnel attempted to stop the young men from crossing into Syria but to no avail.

On Saturday morning at around 6:30 a.m., three fishermen, identified as Fady Hamad, 37, his brother Khaled Hamad, 33, and their nephew Maher Hamad, 17, were kidnapped by Syrian security forces after a Syrian naval vessel crossed three kilometers into Lebanon’s territorial waters.

Maher was shot in the stomach and killed when Syrian forces fired in the direction of the trawler, Arida residents said.

...

The Lebanese-Syrian border has become increasingly tense since the uprising in Syria began 10 months ago, with several incursions by the Syrian army, the killing of Lebanese citizens by Syrian security forces, and the firing at two fishing boats in August.

Jiyyeh, Beirut, Lebanon - Angry protests against repeated electricity cuts in various parts of the country

2012-01-22T15:55:00.000-08:00

dailystar lebanon

21/02/2012 - BEIRUT: Hundreds protested Saturday against repeated electricity cuts in Jiyyeh, Chouf, while 50 people blocked the main road leading to Beirut’s airport with burning tires.

In the Chouf region, upon the request of heads of municipalities and officials, protesters gathered in front of the Jiyyeh power plant carrying signs that said: "Leave, minister of darkness," and "The days of the war are better than your days."

Demonstrators also burned tires in front of the plant and blocked its main entrance.

Meanwhile in Beirut, Lebanese Army personnel and Internal Security Forces launched efforts to reopen the road to Rafik Hariri International Airport, blocked by some 50 men protesting poor electricity provision.

Severe electricity cuts fueled several protests Friday as residents and lawmakers staged a sit-in in the mountain town of Aley and small groups of protesters blocked roads in the south of the country.

Civil society groups and local officials from the districts of Aley and Upper Metn gathered near Aley’s Serail to protest severe power cuts and inadequate supplies of diesel in the region.

Energy and Water Minister Jibran Bassil has warned that the country will witness more electricity cuts, adding that he has submitted several emergency plans to Cabinet in a bid to temporarily resolve the crisis.

“I have warned that the situation will deteriorate and I stated that electricity cuts would increase even more and that the production process would worsen,” Bassil told Al-Joumhouria newspaper in an article published Tuesday.

Upon the request of heads of municipalities and officials of the Chouf region, the protesters gathered in front of the Jiyyeh power plant carrying signs that said: "Leave, minister of darkness," and "The days of the war are better than your days."

Protesters also burnt tires in front of the plan and blocked its main entrance.

Salford, Manchester, UK - Salford man gets lengthiest riot sentence yet for torching BBC car in August

2012-01-22T15:17:00.000-08:00

excerpts from salfordstar

22/01/2012- Last Friday, Salford man Zac Challinor got five and a half yearsin jail for torching the BBC Radio Manchester car at SalfordPrecinct. It was the lengthiest sentence doled out for any rioter.But, so far, the media hasn't bothered to report it.

Atmidnight on 9th August, Challinor posted on Facebook that he wasgoing to see what was happening in town. ...
Within hours,Salford streets erupted and Challinor was on the front line.
At5pm, Challinor threw a coin at lines of police in riot gear battlingwith youths in Brydon Close. Hundreds of youths overturned a BBCRadio Manchester car in Heywood Way. Challinor excitedly suggested'come on lets set it on fire' and lit the match. As smoke rose overSalford, the mob made their way to LIDL, smashing through theshutters. Challinor was captured on CCTV with armfuls of aerosols.Finally, Challinor aimed a kick at William Hills in the precinct butfor some reason stopped before the shutters were damaged around 9pm. Hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of damage was attributedall or in part to Challinor's actions.
Challinor received thelengthiest sentence of any rioter.
The majority of those brought before the courts for offences related to civil unrest during the summer are young men like Zac Challinor and Stephen Carter. Like Carter, another of Salford's sons serving time for riot related crime, Challinor was homeless, jobless and estranged from his family at the time of the riot.
Media blackout
In recent months, Salfordhas been awash with journalists. No-one reported on Challinor'slandmark sentence which will, like Carter's, form a bench mark forprosecutions taking place later this year. Within minutes of the BBCcar being set on fire, images were being broadcast on Youtube. Withtheir staff as the story, the BBC has shown little taste forbroadcasting what was behind the destruction.

MediaCityUKhas become the forbidden city for thousands of Salfordiansdenied employment, to the elderly who will be confined to their homesby the closure of day centres, to women forced to give birth on thekitchen floor because of the closure of Salford Royal maternity unit,to the people whose homes are being repossessed, to the familiesforced out by regeneration to make way for new housing that theycannot access, or the schools reducing 25% of the teachingstaff....Repossession notices, redundancy notices, closurenotices – no damn notice is paid to the conditions that haveblighted Salford for years. The only notice given to those beyond theMedia City walls warn of powers to disperse groups under the AntiSocial Behaviour Act 2003 who seek to disrupt the brave newworld.
As the marketing of Media City struggles to maintainthe illusion of a cohesive community – `Our City, Your City' - thetruth is that it's their city now and disaffected youth, the elderly,the sick or impoverished have been cast aside.

...

Thetorching of the BBC car will never be seen as a symbol of workingclass struggle by the organisations at the interface of acceleratedsocial change and the digital revolution. But perhaps itshould, as youths gather in shadows of the precinct with nothing todo, nowhere to go...

http://www.salfordstar.com/article.asp?id=1261

Sicily, Italy - Farmers and truck drivers block roads, railways and ports in massive protest against cutbacks

2012-01-20T17:49:00.001-08:00

epoch times

20/01/2012 - Heralded as the “Five Days of Sicily,” members of the Pitchforks Movement of farmers, and the Shock Force truck drivers’ consortium have paralyzed the Italian island, Sicily.
Striking transportation workers are blocking main roads with their trucks to protest against Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti’s cutbacks. The drivers, belonging to the Association of Sicilian Businesses, have also been joined by farmers and fishermen.
The main complaint of the protesters is the excessive rise in fuel costs. According to the organizers, the five-day strike that will last until Friday night.
Long lines have formed at the few remaining gas stations with fuel on hand. Roads, railways, and ports have been blocked in different parts of Sicily. Two ferries that were ready to set sail to Naples and Genoa, were forced to dock at the southern port city of Palermo, while some buses belonging to the Catania-Palermo line have canceled their routes, reported Italian news agency ANSA.
In the town of Santa Flavia, which is 20 km (about 12 miles) from Palermo, a near-tragedy was avoided when more than 200 fishermen, accompanied by their wives and children, blocked the railroad tracks just before a scheduled train was to pass.

The town’s mayor, Antonio Napoli, said, “These people are desperate because, due to European Union regulations, they are no longer able to fish. The cost of diesel has also increased from 30 to 80 [euro] cents per litre in three years,” according to Corriere Della Sera, one of Italy’s main newspapers.

Catania, Sicily - Five municipal policemen attacked by group of local people who intervene in defence of immigrant street seller

2012-01-20T17:10:00.000-08:00

informa-azione

giornale di sicilia
20/01/2012 - CATANIA. Five municipal police officers were injured last night in Catania by a group of people - two of them have been arrested - which had initially prevented two policemen from checking the identity of an 'extracommunitarian' street vendor and subsequently attacked three other agents who had intervened in aid of their colleagues. The attack took place on the corner of the streets of San Giuliano and Antonio St. Ursula, in the old city.
The officers - one of whom was forced to fire a shot in the air with the pistol - were able to stop two young men, respectively 18 and 20 years, who were part of the group of attackers, who were arrested and placed under house arrest. The injured have been medicated in the ER and judged to heal within seven days.
"What has happened is a very serious matter. Officers were doing their duty to help fight lawlessness and illegal activity that this administration is undertaking, and were attacked not by immigrants, but by people from Catania who wanted to prevent them from doing their job." said the mayor of Catania Raffaele Stancanelli. [...]

Moscow, Russia - Girl punk band arrested for performing anti-Vladimir Putin song

2012-01-20T16:49:00.000-08:00

telegraph

Eight members of an all-girl punk group called Pussy Riot wearing brightly coloured mini-dresses and balaclavas climbed over railings onto a stone platform next to the cathedral to sing a song called Putin Has P***** Himself.

Russian police stood by while the band performed the song before detaining all the members and taking them to the nearby Kitai-Gorod police station.

Four members were later charged with the non-criminal public order offences and disobeying police, carrying a maximum punishment of 15 days behind bars, according to one band member who uses the nickname Garadzha Matveyeva.

In December the band gave a roof-top concert next to the police cell where protest leader and blogger Alexei Navalny was serving a short sentence.

They have also performed in the Moscow metro.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/9028106/Russian-all-girl-punk-band-Pussy-Riot-arrested-for-performing-Vladimir-Putin-song.html

Ioannina Penitentiary Centre, Greece - Letter from anarchist Rami Syrianos in regards to his case

2012-01-17T16:52:00.000-08:00

received by sysiphus 17/01/2012

Withouta doubt, we are living through a period where the living conditionsin this world are being renegotiated in their totality. Capitalism’sgleaming shop window has been shattered to reveal what lies behind: aprocess of putrefaction and decadence. Democratic hopes andcapitalist promises are being ousted alongside the fictitiousprosperity -through loans- of capitalism’s golden age experiencedin previous decades; at the same time the “promised land”—completewith private swimming pool, two cars, and four televisions— isreplaced by a gray desert of depression, desperation, insecurity, andfear. Domination, in a demonstration of its more then efficientflexibility, is withdrawing toward a new kind of digitally programmedtotalitarianism, and is creating bulwarks by setting up new policeunits, biometric databases, and even newer, more elastic“antiterrorist” laws—all in an attempt to steel itself againstthe enemy within, which is threatening the ever-so-fragile socialpeace. The transparent social galley is being transformed into amaximum-security prison, as social cohesion built up over years isset in renegotiation of the rules on which it was based: access towealth and consumption; the promises and hopes of social ascent andrecognition; the role of wage-labor as a means to satisfy needs anddesires and as a ticket to human self-fulfillment in a world ofconsumerist dreams and sensations.

Workis not simply and exclusively an economic process that commercializeshuman activity. Due to its totalitarian character, it imposes itselfas a generalized universal condition that creates and shapesrelationships and consciousness. It was through the re-significationof work as a means of attaining social ascent and of capitalistpromises of participation in consumption that Power was remodeled inthe minds of its subjects, was shared out and broadened, thusconsolidating the dominant discourse across classes. The rhetoric of“self-made businessmen”, of achieving social recognition throughbank loans, but also of self- fulfillment through consumption, foundfertile ground in attentive ears for the cultivation of acannibalistic consciousness whose supreme value was the ruthlesspursuit—even over dead bodies—of prestige, power, and wealth. Theold working class was transformed into petty-bourgeois/middle classproprietors who identified their own interests with those of thesystem, since apart from their chains (now made of plastic and in theform of loans) they also had their comforts and social status tolose. Under the terms of the generalized consensus taking shape, thetraditional repressive forces “withdrew” to the rearguard(although still developing under the surface) and a campaign ofenervation and individuation was launched, spearheaded byprefabricated lifestyle models, of access to centers ofentertainment, of social recognition, and consumerist happiness.Social peace was guaranteed through satisfying the new collectivedesires of a society that, hungry to consume products and images,dedicated itself to an orgy of de-signification of its own existence.This was the era in which existential poverty deepened, individuationand concern only for one’s own skin rooted themselves into people’sconsciences, and life kept on loosing more and more its meaning—cagedby work hours, televised reality shows, standardized entertainmentoutlets, and images of fictitious happiness. However, this festivalhad an expiration date and now the time has come to add up the bill,which will have to be paid plus the interest rates.

Thenew social conditions being shaped come to make the transitional leapfrom the internalization of control –made possible via access topower and consumer goods- to the internalization of obedience throughfear, insecurity, flexible work hours, unemployment, and images ofentire areas occupied by the mercenaries of the police. Using theinternational financial crisis as a pretext, an attempt ofunprecedented scale is being made to redistribute wealth toward thehighest social strata and simultaneously restructure social relationsin their entirety. The fictitious image of affluence is beingforcefully unseated, together with the illusions that accompanied it,and is replaced by that of a relentless future now dawning. Fear anduncertainty are coming to replace promises as the main driving forceof the social machinery and to establish themselves in the minds ofthe until recently happy subjects, who are now watching thedisintegration of their “earthly paradise” made from loans, asthey are touched by the same fate to which they themselves—untroubledby all the blood that accompanied their progress and happiness—oncecondemned people who live on the margins of capitalism. Wage-labor,the cornerstone of widespread social change, is being stripped of itsveneer as a means of ascent and success and demystified, thusrevealing its true face: a coercive process of producing inequalityand exploitation. Based on this condition, where the traditionalmechanisms of consensus previously in function are collapsing, andwith social cohesion becoming more and more fragile, Domination isadopting a discourse of war. It is declaring a permanent state ofemergency and fortifying itself behind flexible new “antiterrorist”laws, biological databases, surveillance systems, and thousands ofnew urban mercenaries/ police officers in preparation to face theenemy within who threatens the grand plans to impose a newtotalitarianism.

Therekindling of insurrectionary practices on a global level, thereappearance of metropolitan guerrilla warfare, the confrontationaldemos around the world, the revolts in the Arab world, the growingdistrust of the role of regime intermediary being played by the Left,and the turn towards more radical forms of struggle come to remind usthat the wager for a revolutionary solution has neither been lost norforgotten. Rather, it is entering the arena once again, more urgentand vital than ever. The prosecution, imprisonment, and murder ofthose who struggle are not the results of an attack launched byDomination; rather they constitute its defensive efforts undertakento address the cracks found throughout its foundation, which arebecoming more and more intensified, as faith in the image of itsomnipotence is dwindling day by day.

OnJanuary 31, while I was making my getaway after carrying out arobbery at the vehicle auction organized by the Public AssetManagement Agency Inc. (which conducts a wide range of differentauctions and is responsible for the liquidation of cars, motorcycles,and many other assets seized by the pigs or by customs), I wassurrounded and arrested by uniformed pigs from the DIAS squad. Theybrought me to Thessaloniki Police Headquarters, where I was strippeddown to my underwear, handcuffed behind my back, and made to standfacing a wall for about seven hours while various undercovers andother pigs joined the parade to get a look at me. I continuallyrefused to say anything other than that I am an anarchist, and I alsorefused to have my fingerprints and photograph taken.

Theylater brought me to my home, which they searched for five hoursbefore we returned to Police Headquarters. Once back there, a dozenpigs surrounded me and their chief attempted to begin a process ofinterrogation and humiliation of my principles in the style of a“friendly chat,” during which I heard grotesques such as: “We’rethe real revolutionaries and you’re just a selfish loser,” “We’reagainst the banks” (!), “While you refuse to help yourself, theother one has already squealed,” [some clichés never die]etc. The only thing I told them time and time again was that I am arevolutionary anarchist and that they are nothing more than Power’sthugs—lackey enforcers of the law without minds of their own, whohumiliate, torture, and murder in exchange for a salary. When morningcame, after getting in touch with my lawyer I found out that—becauseof a phone number written on a slip of paper I tragically forgot Ihad on me—they had arrested another person I knew from theantiauthoritarian milieu, and the mass media had printed photos ofboth of us. They then brought us to court, making a shockingspectacle out of the whole thing like always. They dressed us inwhite bulletproof vests, with panic-stricken pigs in balaclavaslooking like something out of a scene from a cheap Hollywood actionflick. The only thing I told the hearing judge was that I did what Idid as an anarchist in the context of the refusal of work, and thatthe other person being charged had nothing to do with the case. Theyruled that I was to be placed in pretrial detention, while the othercomrade was released because dozens of witnesses testified that hewas working at the self-managed café stand in the Polytechnicschool at the exact time of the robbery.

Robbingthe Public Asset Management Agency Inc. dealers of stolen goods is apartial expression of my refusal to submit to the oppressive, emptyreality imposed by the fragmented space and time of work hours andpredetermined paths; imposed by the coercive “you must” orderedby bosses and the alienated “I want” expressed by theirsubordinates; imposed by a production process that turns people intoliving spare parts for the machinery of consumption of images andproducts. Rejecting to play the role either of a victim ofexploitation by small or big bosses, or of the victimizer andcollaborator in exploiting others; sickened as much by the submissivework ethic of the “poor but honest” worker as by theoverambitious arrogance of the “successful careerist”; perceivingthe entire complex of social relations as an alienated result ofcapitalist production, I decided to shift into individual action,throwing myself into the polymorphic revolutionary anarchist process,part of which is the refusal of work. The refusal of work can’t bea choice divorced from a more generalized rupture with Domination,and obviously this refusal isn’t necessarily defined by the meansby which it is realized (i.e. a robbery). Raids on goods or money caneasily degenerate into a job, with fixed hours and all theconsequences that entails: the arrogance of being rich, theparticipation in consumerism, the fragmentation of time according to“work hours,” and the development of a (criminal) professionalidentity. Robbery, kidnapping, individual or collective expropriationof goods, sabotage, attacks on economic targets, collective livingexperiences, and give-away bazaars are all means that can be seenwithin the context of the overall refusal of the world of work, ofproduction and consumption of images and products, to the degree thatthey bear an awareness that places them within the widerrevolutionary struggle for individual and collective liberation.

Asa part of this polymorphic movement, I now find myself imprisoned inthe dungeons of Ioannina, paying the price for my consciousdecisions. The only thing I regret is not doing more outside thesewalls.

Notone step back!

RamiSyrianos, Ioannina Penitentiary Center, April 2011

translation by crossing the rubicon

Athens-Thessaloikni, Greece - DOES WORK LIBERATE? Solidarity poster for anarchist Rami Sirianos and comrade Kleomenis Savanidis

2012-01-17T16:50:00.000-08:00

received by sysiphus

17/01/2012 -

DOESWORK LIBERATE?

Workpenetrates and determines our whole existence. Time flows mercilessat her rhythm as we commute through identical depressive surroundingsat an ever increasing pace. Working time…productive time…freetime…Every single one of our activities falls within her context:acquiring knowledge is considered an investment for a future career,joy is transformed into entertainment and delves into an orgy ofconsumption, our creativity is crushed within the narrow limits ofproductivity, our relationships -even our erotic encounters- speakthe language of performance and usability… Our perversion hasreached such a point that we search for any form of work, evenvoluntary, in order to fill our existential void, in order to “dosomething”.

Weexist to work, we work to exist.

Theidentification of work with human activity and creativity and thecomplete domination of the doctrine of work as the natural destiny ofhumans have penetrated our consciousness to such a depth that therefusal of this enforced condition, of this social coercion, seems assacrilege towards the very concept of humanity.

Soany job is better than not having a job. This is the message spreadby the evangelists of the existent, sounding the kick-off for theever more frantic competition between the exploited for some scrapsfrom the bosses’ table; for the instrumentalization and completeleveling of social relationships in exchange for some miserable jobin the galleys of survival.

Itis not, however, only the terms and conditions of work which create adead-end. It is work as a totality, as a process of commercializationof human activity that reduces humans into living components of amachine consuming images and products. It is work as a universalcondition under which relationships and consciousness are formed, asthe backbone maintaining and reproducing this society based onhierarchy, exploitation and oppression. And as such, work must bedestroyed.

Sowe don’t merely become more content slaves or better managers ofmisery. So that we can re-signify the aim and essence of humanactivity and creativity by acting together and driven by the searchfor the joy of live through knowledge, awareness, discovery,camaraderie, solidarity. For individualand collectiveliberation…

LET’SLIBERATE OURSELVES FROM WORK

FREEDOMFOR THE ANARCHIST RAMI SIRIANOS

accusedof expropriating some of the stolen wealth from the ODDY

SOLIDARITYWITH COMRADE KLEOMENIS SAVANIDIS

prosecutedfor the same case without any evidence

Courtdate: 18^th of January 2012, Thessaloniki

Athens-ThessaloikniSolidarity Collaboration

San Juan, nr Manila, Philippines - Residents attack police during demolition of their homes

2012-01-15T16:37:00.000-08:00

euronews
12/-1/2012 - Anti-riot police take cover behind shields after residents threw a Molotov cocktail during the demolition of shanties in a village in San Juan city, near Manila in the Philippines.

Athens, Greece - Picasso and Mondrian paintings stolen from National Gallery

2012-01-15T16:21:00.000-08:00

athens news

9/01/2012 - A work by Picasso was one of the two paintings stolen from the National Gallery in central Athens at dawn on Monday during a break-in. The second painting is believed to be a 1905 Mondrian, one of the two works by the artist in the Gallery's collection.

The thieves escaped undetected, raising concerns about the safety of other exhibits at the museum.

The Picasso is a 1934 work that was presented as a gift to the gallery in the 1940s by a French association.

Police said the perpetrators entered via the rear of the building, breaking in through a mezzanine balcony door that they demolished, before removing the two paintings from their frames.

It is also believed that the perpetrator abandoned an effort to steal a third painting.

Police have taken footage from the museum's surveillance cameras for investigation.

The gallery contains mostly 19th and 20th century Greek paintings, but had just wound up a display of its western European collections that include prints and etchings by German master Albrecht Duerer and Rembrandt van Rijn. It had been due to close Monday for a long period of extension and refurbishment.

Romania, Bucharest and in other cities - Third day of riots following cuts in salary, increased VAT and planned changes to health system

2012-01-15T16:05:00.000-08:00

Romania Insider

15/01/2012 -
Thousands of Romanians took their anger to the streets over the week-end, with protests ending in clashes with the Police downtown Bucharest. Gendarmes and protesters alike were injured. Over 40 people were taken into the Police custody on Saturday evening, after a heated evening in the Universitate square downtown Bucharest. The Police managed to disperse protesters by firing tear gas and increasing troops on the street on Saturday evening in Bucharest. These were the most heated protests in Romania so far, after the country applied some harsh measures, such as a 25 percent public salary cut and an increase in VAT. The recent events show the decreasing popularity of president Traian Basescu and the Democratic Liberal Party (PDL) Government led by Emil Boc.
The spark for the recent protests in the Romanian capital was the proposed health law, which, if enforced, would have brought changes to the country’s emergency health system. Sub-secretary of state Raed Arafat’s resignation from the Health Ministry over the planned changes to the system was the pretext that send Romanians protesting. Initially started mid-last week as support demonstrations for Arafat, the protests soon turned against the Romanian president Traian Basescu, asking for his and the Government’s dismissal, and for early elections. Hundreds of people in other Romanian cities, like Iasi, Cluj, Timisoara joined the protests.
Basescu was publicly for the changes in the health law and quarreled on TV with Arafat. On Friday evening however, he publicly asked the Government to withdraw the proposal, saying it saw the public protest against it.

Palermo, Sicily, Italy - Molotov against headquarters of right-wing youth movement Giovane Italia

2012-01-08T18:01:00.000-08:00

Repubblica

06/01/2012 - Anincendiary bottle was launched yesterday at 11pm against the buildingin Via Paolo Paternostro 43, in Palermo, which hosts the headquartersof Giovane Italia [Young Italy, right-wing youth movement], the youth organization of Popolo della libertà [People of Freedom, PdL is centre-right political party in Italy. With the Democratic Party, it is one of the two major parties of the current Italian party system.The party was launched by Silvio Berlusconi and officially founded in a party congress on 27–29 March 2009, when Forza Italia and Alliance Nazionale were merged together].

Theflames produced by the petrol bomb damaged the front door of thebuilding. This was announced by the youth movement. Some of the youngmembers were inside, but because of the noise caused by thestorm did not notice the incident and a neighbour gave the alarm.
"Ourheadquarters - said provincial president of GiovaneItalia, - has been repeatedly subject toattacks and damage. Only a few weeks ago, during a march organized bystudents at the community centre nearby, some masked youths stained the walls of the premises and threw stones at thewindows. This gesture is undoubtedly a serious leap in violence by opponents of the extreme left galaxy..

The gesture, according to Giovane Italia, "seems to be a clear intimidation" against the organization that has promoted in recent days, along with other movements of the right, the event next Saturday in Palermo in memory of young people of the MSI killed in the massacre Acca Larentia in 1978.
Also last night appeared in the city centre the written phrase "10, 100, 1000 Larentia Acca."

..........

The Acca Larentia killings refers to three deaths that occurred in Rome the evening of January 7, 1978 in which three activists of the Fronte della Gioventù (neo-fascist Youth Front) were fired upon from a group of five or six assailants armed with automatic weapons.

Responsibility for the attack was claimed a few days afterward through an audio cassette discovered next to a petrol station, on behalf of the Nuclei Armati di Contropotere Territoriale (Armed Groups of Territorial Counterpower):

« An armed nucleus, after skillfully gathering information and controlling the sewer (referring to the MSI Party headquarters) in Acca Larentia, hit the black rats in the exact moment in which they were leaving to go on with another violent action. Make no mistake comrades, the list is still long. »

Argentina - Government Christmas Tree Burned in Plaza de Mayo

2012-01-08T17:16:00.000-08:00

argentina independent
21 December 2012 - Various political and social organizations gathered yesterday [20] in Avenida 9 de Julio for what was called an act of remembrance for those who were killed as a result of police violence ten years ago.
The groups blocked traffic and burned tires in the street at the intersection of Avenida de Mayo as a way of protesting the events that happened during some of the most violent moments of the economic crisis on 19^th and 20^th December 2001.
Later they moved towards the Casa Rosada and set fire to the decorative Christmas tree put in place by the government of Argentina in the Plaza de Mayo.

The streets of Buenos Aires exploded on 20th December 2001 with police repression to the protestors who took to the streets starting the night before. The financial collapse and the extreme loss of wealth shocked the system. People were beaten, fired upon with water cannons, rubber bullets and eventually lead bullets, leaving to 39 dead. President de La Rúa fled the Casa Rosada by helicopter prompting a government collapse that saw the country welcome four new presidents in less than two weeks.

Valenciennes (North), France- Sabotage of television network

2012-01-08T16:42:00.001-08:00

cette semaine
December 30,2011
Hainaut. Hundreds of tenants without television after strangeacts of vandalism
Observer Valenciennes, 29/12/2011 6:13p.m.
Since last weekend, several hundred tenants in GHI, in seventowns of Valenciennes, were deprived of television as a result ofvandalism probably committed in the evening of December 24.
Thelandlord, who made the complaint, said that technicians have beenworking on site since then and the situation is now almost restored.Thursday 29 for example, 130 homes were still without TV inDouchy-les-Mines (of the 330 victims of this municipality alone). Thecities that were affected are: Raismes, St. Saulve, Trith, Marly,Beuvrages, and Douchy Quiévrechain. It seems that the vandalswere well informed and above all strangely organized ...

Portugal - Context of the struggle against the tolls (and not only) in the Portuguese highways – reported events since the infrastructures started to be built

2012-01-08T16:08:00.001-08:00

9 January, 2012

25th December2010, A28, Neiva (North) – toll gate burnt down. Burning tires were placedinside the cabin. A representative of a protest group (Comissão de Utentes doGrande Porto) condemned the action: “I think this was only an action ofvandalism and not a way of protest. It’s out of question to act this way.”

28^thDecember 2010, A28, Esposende (North) – toll gate sabotaged; masked people shota cabin containing electronic equipment with a handgun. “The companies running the A28 concession (LitoralNorte and ViaLivre) condemned the acts of vandalism happening against the tollsstructures in this highway”.

24^thApril 2011, A22, Boliqueime, Loulé and Olhão (South) – three structures ofsupport to the toll gates in Via do Infante (A22) burnt down. Inside them wasthe electrical equipment for the future toll gates. According to thenewspapers, the doors were broken into and inside were placed tires on fire.

26th April2011, A28, Neiva (North) – toll gate burnt down.

21^stMay 2011, A25, Cacia (Center) – toll gate burnt down.

23^rdMay 2011, A17, Mira/Vagos (Center) – toll gate burnt down. “The GNR (GuardaNacional Republicana) suspects that in several cases were used tires andfirelighters to start the fires, since they are fast burning materials anddisappear completely after the fire.”

25^thJune 2011, A25, Cacia (Center) – toll gate electric box set on fire. Theconcessionary (Ascendi) says they are going to make more patrols to protect thegates.

14^thJuly 2011, A22, Machados (South) – three machines working on the site of afuture road connection to the A22 were vandalized. Punctured tires, electric,gas and water cables cut and a message written on a truck: “one more road here:no thanks. Get out.”

12^thDecember 2011, A22, Boliqueime (South) – surveillance cameras of a toll gatewere destroyed by gun shots and a nearby box with electronic devices was burnt.

13^thDecember 2011, A22, Guia (South) – toll gate burnt down, and a car of therunning company shot at with a rifle.

14^thDecember 2011, A22 (South) – 60 cops of the Republican National Guard (GNR) startspending the nights next to every toll gate in the highway to try to stop thesabotages.

19^thDecember 2011, A22, Boliqueime (South) – boxes of optic fibre cables burnt, farfrom the eyes of the cops (these boxes aren’t close to the toll gates where thecops spend the night).

27^thDecember 2011, A22, Olhão/Tavira (South) – box of optic fibre cables burnt. It’sthrough these cables that the information from the toll gates is sent to thecentral. “After the police reinforcement close to the toll gates, the criminalsstarted to do this kind of actions to protest against the tolls.” Close toOlhão, another box had its cables cut this same day.

Throughout thesummer, a newsletter with more information on this struggle (chronology,companies involved in the different highways, info on the microchips used inthe license plates for automatic payment, map of known sabotages throughout thecountry, etc) and on other struggles is widely distributed in Lisbon, Setúbaland a few other places. Recently a weblog appeared in the internet containingsuggestions on “the things you shouldn’t do so as to avoid damaging the tollgates in the highways”.

Haimen, China - Police fire tear gas at Chinese seaside town protesters demanding release of detainees

2011-12-24T13:17:00.000-08:00

( / Associated Press ) - Villagers gather to protest Friday Dec. 23, 2011 in Haimen, China. Riot police in the southern Chinese coastal town fired tear gas at protesters Friday on the fourth day of unrest over a planned power plant expansion, according to a demonstrator’s account and TV footage. A crowd of protesters were locked in a standoff with police near the entrance to a highway in the town of Haimen, demanding authorities release an unknown number of demonstrators, a man surnamed Lin.

Haimen’s protesters are demanding a halt to the planned expansion of a coal-fired power plant which they say has contributed to what they say is a rise in cancer cases and heavy pollution in the seas, a serious problem for a town where many make their living from fishing.
The protests started Tuesday when thousands of people besieged a Haimen government office and blocked a highway. When riot police used tear gas in an attempt to disperse them, demonstrators hurled rocks, water bottles and bricks in return. Clashes broke out, injuring an unknown number of protesters and police, residents say.
In response to the protests, the local government said Tuesday that it would temporarily suspend the power plant project, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
But protesters say they have not heard directly from authorities on the matter and say several protesters in their teens or early 20s had been detained.
It was not immediately clear how many people have been taken into police custody, but Xinhua said Thursday that five people had been detained by Wednesday for vandalism during the protests.This is the third time police have used tear gas to disperse protesters in Haimen this week.
Hong Kong’s Cable TV showed footage of tear gas clouds being blown toward protesters, scattering the crowd of hundreds of people. Riot police with helmets and shields had formed a blockade at the entrance to the highway.

Portugal - Army defends motorway tolls

2011-12-24T12:41:00.000-08:00

informa-azione

Source: ANSAmed

MADRID,Dec. 19 - The Portuguese government has had to deploy the army alongthe A22 motorway in the Algarve, to avoid continuous acts ofvandalism against toll booths registered after the entry inforce of the toll on 8 December.

Agents of the InterventionUnit of the Republican National Guard patrol a dozen automatic payment booths set up along the 130 km of the A22 24 hours a day. Inparticular, the area of greatest risk located near the town ofBoliqueime, 70 km from the border with Ayamonte (Huelva), where last week a few cameras to read license plates were destroyed bybeing shot at or by arson. The army patrols, according to what theIberian media report today, are equipped with bulletproof vests,after an official of the company that manages the Algarve motorwaywas wounded recently by a rifle shot as he approached one ofthe electronic barriers which vandals had set on fire.
Fri,23/12/2011 - 12:03

Namu, Belgium - The Tax Office attacked

2011-12-24T12:32:00.000-08:00

suie e cendres

"In the night of 18 to 19, the buildings of the tax offices in Namur, not far from the rue du 4ieme Genie, were attacked. About ten windows were smashed."

24/12/2011

Bruges, Belgium - Failed escape with helicopter

2011-12-24T12:28:00.000-08:00

suie e cendres

BRUGES - Beginning of November, an planned escape from the prison of Bruges was inhibited by the police. A company offering helicopter flights in Knokke-Heist averted the police of a "suspicious reservation". The morning before the actual flight, police carried out a house search at the place of the person who reserved the flight, and found weapons and a check list on how to hijack the helicopter. They also discovered two getaway cars.

13/12/2011

Athens, Greece - Solidarity with Christos Stratigopoulos - Crisis means war

2011-12-24T11:19:00.000-08:00

translated from informa-azione

Socialand class war

The State and capital,seeking to impose social peace in these days of war in which we areliving, repress social struggles, accuse and imprison those whofight.

Anarchist ChristosStratigopoulos is in prison for having claimed responsibility fora robbery in a bank in Trikala, Greece in October 2009. From July2011 he should have been allowed a temporary release (from prison)and been released a few months later.

But the cops and judges haveextended his imprisonment by trying to attribute another robbery tohim, at a bank in Cephalonia in July 2009.
With false accusations,the State is trying to set up another case of repression againstrevolutionaries in Christos's case.
The accusers, with falseevidence and so-called witnesses and imaginative policemen, havetried to destroy him physically and socially.
Foreseeing ourmassive participation in all forms of social struggle that evolveinto social class conflict, this solid State tactic seeks to imposefear through the exemplary imprisonment of anyone who struggles.
Dionysios Manolatos, a resident of Cephalonia, either pushed toconsciously become a snitch or to try to gain some personal benefit,has become a false witness for the police.
The young cop SokratisMarkatos, keen to climb the hierarchy in his job, has falsifiedevidence and handed it to the local press so as to receive medals andfree himself from this impenetrable case.

THEY DON'T SCARE US, THEYMAKE US FURIOUS

SOLIDARITY IS OURWEAPON.

NONE OF OUR COMRADES HOSTAGE OF THE STATE

THECRIMINALS ARE THE BANKERS AND CAPITALISTS.

FREEDOM TO CHRISTOSSTRATIGOPOULOS

Assembly of Solidarity to Imprisoned andAccused Fighters

Wukan, China - 20,000 in open revolt against government land grabs and killing

2011-12-15T16:01:00.000-08:00

various sources

"For the first time on record, the Chinese Communist party has lost all control, with the population of 20,000 in this southern fishing village of Wukan, Guangdong now in open revolt." (Telegraph) Enraged over government land grabs, villagers have now overrun local authorities and driven police out. They remain barricaded within their village, roadblocks set up by both police and villagers preventing food and water
...For months, the 20,000 villagers who live in Wukan, near the city of Shanwei in the Guangdong province, have protested first against having nearly $154 million worth of their land seized and sold off by the local government, and then at the brutal tactics used by police to regain control.Back in September, villagers rioted, chasing out the local party secretary and drawing a harsh response from local riot police. The crackdown that followed resulted in the alleged death of a child. If that wasn't enough to further enrage locals, some of the seized land was was the site of a local cemetery. ...Locals said the land sold was collectively owned by the residents. They were unaware of the sale until construction work began on the land. Their outrage was also fuelled by the fact that some of the land was used for the graves of the village people’s ancestors.
4,500 villagers marched less than a month ago promising to escalate the situation if the government failed to solve the land problem.
The situation began to heat up again last Friday, when authorities arrested five of the villagers' 13 self-appointed representatives negotiating a solution. Another confrontation between villagers and riot police took place on Sunday at barricades set up by villagers to keep police out.
Then on Monday things really came to a head when one of the arrested representatives, Xue Jinbo died in police custody of a reported "heart attack." His family claims he was murdered.there are now no police, or government officials.

China's internet censors have blocked searches relating to the village of Wukan.

Villagers say that they have enough supplies to hold out for only 10 more days.

Wukan has been encircled by the police cordon since Sunday, after a failed attempt by 1,000 armed police to capture the village. No food or water is allowed in, and no villagers allowed out, some food is being smuggled in from the next village on motorbikes.

Portland,Oregon, US - Man foils Taser attack with 'Star Wars' light saber

2011-12-15T14:47:00.000-08:00

notes from oregonlive

14/12/2011 - When police tried to arrest a man in a toy store, he carried on swinging a "Star Wars" light saber he was holding. One cop tried to use his Taser on the man but it didn't work. Another used his Taser and made contact, but the man knocked one of the wires away with the light saber. Police arrested him after grabbing him and pinning him to the ground.He was sent for mental reports.

Trento, Italy - 12 DECEMBER - A DAY LIKE ANY OTHER

2011-12-15T03:05:00.000-08:00

informa-azione

Text of a poster put up recently inTrento

A DAY LIKE ANY OTHER

December 12,1969, Milan - Piazza Fontana bombing, 14 killed and 88 injured. It 'sthe debut of the "strategy of tension". While there isgrowing awareness that this is a State massacre, the judiciary arrestanarchists Pietro Valpreda and GiuseppePinelli. On December 15, Pinelli was murdered and thrown from thethird floor of police headquarters in Milan at the hands of the squadof executioner Luigi Calabresi.
December 12, 2011, Bologna - Firstday of the trial for the "Outlaw" inquiry. Five comradeswere arrested April 6 in Bologna, seven more are affected by heavyrestrictions, 26 in all charged with "criminal association withsubversive purposes", the documentation space Fuoriluogo isdevastated and impounded. On trial are years of struggle far from anyinstitutional compatibility and animated by a sincere contempt forthe order of this world, against the CIE [detention camps] andprisons, State racism and boss exploitation, the militarisation ofthe cities and the reappearance of neo-fascist groups, technologicaldomination and the attack on the living.
December 12, 2011,Florence - Final stage of the trial in which 19 anarchists areaccused of "subversive association with terrorist aims"(the infamous 270bis). Here, as in Bologna, the specific crimesalleged are small things: blocks, occupations, defacing, unauthorizeddemonstrations, incitement to commit a crime. Here too, theinvestigators are trying to make a clumsy distinction between"leaders" and "subjects". In the dock we find thebonds of life and struggle of those who choose to break with socialpeace and the security-frenzy, determined to upset the dreams (andprofits) of the bosses of the city.

December 12, 2011,Trento - First hearing of the trial of nine workers accused ofdefacing and threats. On May 24 the court of Bassano acquits thebosses of Tricom – Galvanica di Tezza sul Brenta, responsible forthe death of 14 workers as a result of exposure to hexavalentchromium, nickel and other nuisances. Outside the court the sentencewas greeted with slogans and the throwing of eggs. Justice remains aweapon in the hands of the ruling classes, the court has zealouslycarried out the task for which it was created: to legitimize theprofit of the bosses and suppress the struggles of the exploited.

TODAY AS IN THEPAST, THE TERRORISTS ARE THOSE WHO EXPLOIT AND POISON, WHO REPRESSAND BOMBARD: THE TERRORISTS ARE THE BOSSES AND THE STATE!

WECHOSE WHAT SIDE WE WERE ON A LONG TIME AGO:ACCOMPLICES OF THOSE WHO STRUGGLE AGAINST A WORLD OF WAR, PROFIT ANDCONTROL, ALONGSIDE THOSE WHO DO NOT BOW THEIR HEADS IN THE FACEOF THE REPRISALS OF THE STATE.

SOLIDARITY TO THECOMRADES OF BOLOGNA AND FLORENCE, TO THE WORKERS TRICOM AND THEIRFAMILIES

Thecomrades of Trento

Chilpancingo, Mexico - Two students killed during protest

2011-12-14T18:33:00.000-08:00

globalvoices
Two students, Jorge Alexis Herrera Pino and Gabriel Echeverría de Jesús, were killed on December 12, 2011 during a protest held by students of the rural school Raúl Isidro Burgos in Ayotzinapa, Chilpancingo, the capital of the state of Guerrero. The protest blocked the highway “Autopista del Sol” which leads to the tourist area of Acapulco.
La Jornada de Guerrero
Everything started with a smoke curtain, provoked by the tear gas bombs that came out of the hands of the federal police. [..] After that came the first gust of bullets form the federal police, who were authorized to proceed via radio. The second gust, which was longer, came from different hands: ministerial police opened fire against the students from the right lane (of the highway from north to south) […] It didn't take long for the federal police to aim at the same target. […] On the other side, Ayotzinapa's side, the rural students with a daily budget for food of 3.50 dollars, responded with sticks and stones. The domestic bombs that they had weren't used because they didn't have time to load them with gas from the 2 gas stations on of each side of the highway. Some, trying to defend themselves, had time to light up the bottles they got from the service station. The police then threw some fragmentation grenades at the students, that by then were seeking refuge in the space between the buses and concrete walls that divide the highway. There were five grenades in total and none detonated, but they provoked panic […]. The only ones not moving were two students, both 22 years old

We are the 1%

2011-12-14T17:52:00.000-08:00

finimondo.org

We'veseen you. We've heard you. You're everywhere. We know who you are.You are the 99% protesting against the excesses of capitalism and thewrongs of the State. You are the 99% who want electoral reform,social alternatives, economic subsidies and political measures. Youare the 99% terrified of losing their future, of no longer being ableto live as you have done till now: a job, a salary, a mortgage, apension. Live and let live, at least. Have a career, at best. That iswhat you are asking for.

Waitingfor a happy ending that never arrives, you cannot tolerate that somedo not share your daydream resignation. From Madrid to Athens, fromRome to Portland, you are ready to stop, denounce and beat up theangry ones do not see the institutions asguarantors of freedom but the cause of misery and oppression. Youonly appreciate revenge in fiction films; when the mask is off youprefer submission. Faced with a hideous rottensociety you fight in favour of a civil, measured, educatedprotest. A protest that remains at your level:on its knees.

Nowwe know who the 1% that you hate so much are. With your cordons, yourstewards, your accusations, you have shown everybody who your realenemy is. It is certainly not the ruling class, whom you address withrespect. It's us. We, who do not have a State to defend or improve.We, who do not have a market to protect or exploit. We, who do notwant to exercise or suffer authority. We, for whom life is notreducible to a card to clock in with or a bank account to besafeguarded. We, for whom the crisis was not born with the recentspeculations in the Stock Exchange or the incompetence of thosesitting in Parliament today, but from living in this very socialorder in all its aspects. We, for whom every day is precarious inthis world that we did not ask for, in which we have never seenourselves, which suffocates us.

Wewant nothing to do with your 99%. With your claims for a moderatecapitalism and a well-run State. With your political gait thatreduces power and privilege to the dimensions of a credit card. Withyour urban camping like nostalgic Boy Scouts.With the identification of your opponent, the source of the"injustice", becoming more and more nuanced, intangible andout of reach. With your arms ever more outstretched to politicians,industrialists and guardians, and always more vigorous against therebels. With your weaker and weaker actions that have become just acozy interlude for the status quo. No, we don't want your reforms,your collaborationism, your alienating jobs, your left claimsreheated so many times that they make us throw up.

Weknow what the real causes of the suffering we experience are: thethirst for power, the worship of money, but also the obedience theydemand and receive. These causes continue in the daily lives of humanbeings, in the actions, gestures and relationships that intertwine ina society where we feel strangers everywhere. And these causes -which must be rejected, deserted and demolished - have been welcomedin your movement. We never felt at home in 99% of our modern lifespent lining up to beg for crumbs, and yet you insist on defending99% of the problem. We'll take our chances elsewhere. Through thehopes, dreams and actions that have earned your condemnation.

Carry oncrossing the ocean of universal indignation. Raise your sails passingthe ropes to bureaucrats and policemen. Share space and air with thescum that have made life on this planet unlivable. Go straight to anew tomorrow, with the hold full of the shit yesterday. We won't comeaboard your ship, if anything we'll get off it. And we will stay onour rafts that you despise so much because they are small and light.

But becareful. A vessel that sails with our enemies on board is too good achance to miss. Laughing? You're not afraid of us because we don'thave the strength to come aboard? You've got it wrong. We are notinterested in your gold, we do not want to conquer you. We want tomake you go down with your entire cargo of death. To do so, we donot need a majestic fleet, just a fire ship. Small and light.

Banda Aceh, Indonesia - Over 60 punks arrested and their heads shaved. They have been imprisoned for 10 days in a 'moral rehabilitation' camp

2011-12-14T15:05:00.000-08:00

AFP
Indonesian sharia police are "morally rehabilitating" more than 60 young punk rock fans in Aceh province on Sumatra island, saying the youths are tarnishing the province's image.
Since being arrested at a punk rock concert in the provincial capital Banda Aceh on Saturday night, 59 male and five female punk rock fans have been forced to have their hair cut, bathe in a lake, change clothes and pray.

Hundreds of Indonesian punk fans came from around the country to attend the concert, organised to raise money for orphans.
Police stormed the venue and arrested fans sporting mohawks, tattoos, tight jeans and chains, who were on Tuesday taken to a nearby town to undergo a 10-day "moral rehabilitation" camp run by police.
Police said the objective was to deter the youths from "deviant" behaviour.A local rights activist Evi Narti Zain said the arrests breached human rights.
"What the police have done is totally bizarre. Being a punk is just a lifestyle. They exist all over the world and they don't break any rules or harm other people," she said.
Hasan denied the accusation, claiming the rehabilitation programme was merely an "orientation into normal Indonesian society".
Aceh, on the northernmost tip of Sumatra island, adopted partial sharia law in 2001 as part of a special autonomy package aimed at quelling separatist sentiment.
Only Muslims can be charged under sharia law, although the non-Muslim community is expected to follow some laws out of respect.
Nearly 90% of Indonesia's 240 million people are Muslims, but the vast majority practise a moderate form of Islam.
see
http://325.nostate.net/?p=3686

Athens, Greece - riot police attacked with petrol bombs outside the Culture Ministry in Exarcheia district

2011-12-13T09:13:00.001-08:00

athensnews
13 December 2011 - Youths attacked riot police with petrol bombs outside the Culture Ministry, in Athens' volatile Exarcheia district.

The overnight attack occurred shortly after Monday night's stand-off at Korydallos prison in western Athens, involving suspected members of the armed anarchist group Conspiracy of Fire Cells.

No one was hurt in the incident outside the ministry.

Athens, Greece - Escape attempt from Koridallos prison by Panagiotis Vlastos and three comrades of the CCF

2011-12-13T09:01:00.000-08:00

Press release about what happened in Korydallos, Greece, on December 12 2011

translated from informa-azione

Warning! This summary of events is based, inlarge part, of news and reports from the media. The news of someprison guards taken hostage by the prisoners, an action that lastedseveral hours, was yesterday and still is on the front pages of themedia. A version, or rather, the different versions of the factspresented by TV and newspapers have so many contradictory detailsthat are not worth mentioning. The statements of the prisoners havebeen transmitted in a fragmented way, we hope later to reproduce themin their entirety. The situation in the Greek prisons is howeverexplosive, and the facts of yesterday may have an unexpectedcontinuation ...

Yesterday, Monday, Dec. 12, shortly after18.00 a group of four (or five) prisoners attempted to escape fromKorydallos prison. They are PanagiotisVlastos, defined by the press as "one of the most dangerouscriminals in the country" (arrested in 1998 after a shootoutwith the police and accused of a series of robberies, murders,kidnapping of a shipowner, etc..) and members of the Conspiracy ofCells of Fire: the Mihalis brothers and Giorgos Nikolopoulos,Christos Tsakalos and Giorgos Polydoros (somemedia reports have also mentioned Theofilos Mavropoulos).

But finding themselvestrapped in the vicinity of the visiting room, with the help of a gunand some knives they took 3 guards as hostages. At that time therewere about 25 family members of prisoners in the visiting room,including some family members of anarchist prisoners, such as themother and cousin of Stella Adoniou and the parents of Kostas Sakkas.All of them were trapped, most likely because the jailers in themeantime had closed all the entrances. Nevertheless, newspapers havebeen writing articles titled "Members of the cells have takenthe family hostage."

Following negotiations beganthat lasted several hours. The prisoners refused to talk to thepolice and claimed to speak only with those in charge of the Ministryof Justice and the prison authorities and in the presence of a lawyerof their choice. Obviously, the whole area surrounding the prison wasimmediately surrounded by hundreds of riot police forces and theanti-terrorist Unit. It should be noted that family membersrefused to leave the room, fearing that when they left the riotpolice would raid to slaughter the rebels. Some of the prisonerswere able to communicate with the outside by telephone, but theirstatements were largely censored by the media. However, MihalisNikolopoulos was able to talk about the degrading conditions ofconfinement in general, lack of permits, the brutality of thejailers, i.e. the problems that all prisoners suffer. He also said:"Nothing will happen to the families. The only ones who can dodamage here are the cops, so they should move away. "
ChristosTsakalos said: "Today we tried to do something. To gain ourfreedom and the continuation of urban warfare. We lost a battle, butwe have not lost the war and continue to fight to win. We are anorganization that fights for the ideals of a free life without anyauthority. "

At 23.20 theprisoners "freed" the guards and handed over the revolverand 3 knives. The family members, after being released from theprison, were taken to police headquarters in Piraeus, where theytried to convince them to file a complaint against the prisoners, butthey refused.

Dison, Andrimont, Belgium - Fire in hangar of Solar-Tech

2011-12-09T06:31:00.001-08:00

suit et cendres

DISON - Fire erupted around 22h45 in the hangar of the company Solar-Tech. Solar Tech constructs photovoltaïc panels and wind mills. 6 fire engines came, it took them several hours to put out the fire. Damage to the hangar is said to be limited.

Brussels, Belgium - Action against Vinci, the nuclear and its world

2011-12-09T06:26:00.001-08:00

suit et cendres

"Here like elsewhere, some sand in the rails of daily routine...
In the night of Thursday to Friday, the office of Vinci Park in Ixelles (Brussels) was attacked.
The cables of the surveillance cameras were cut, the locks filled with glue and a chain was attached to block the entrance. Posters were pasted on the windows of the office with this text:" (text in french on http://bxl.indymedia.org/articles/3351)

Vinci is a company that constructs worldwide nuclear power plants, prisons, airports, High Speed lines etc.

Calais, France - Moorings of inflatable igloo of 'snow village' cut, letting it blow away

2011-12-09T01:29:00.001-08:00

cette semaine

Sunday, 04.12.2011, 05:10 - La Voix du Nord
Deprived of its moorings, cut by pranksters, the igloo of the snow village flew away.
On the night of Friday to Saturday, in the Place d'Armes, pranksters had some fun ... breaking the ropes connecting the inflatable igloo of the snow village to concrete blocks. The joke had unfortunate consequences because in the evening, a few gusts blowing in Calais gave the revelers a chance to witness an amazing spectacle. The igloo 18 feet in diameter and 8 metres high, was blown away, crashing a few dozen metres away on parked cars. "Customers in the cafes in the Place d'Armes came out, reports a Sangattois who watched the scene, they saw the igloo land on the cars. Someone called the managers of the snow village and people came to deflate, remove and fold the structure." The operations required about an hour's work. It will take until next week for the children's igloo, torn in several places, to be repaired and re-installed.

Lisbon, Portugal - A general strike not like the previous ones

2011-12-06T13:57:00.001-08:00

from Diario de Noticias and other mainstream media

«The government tried to undramatize the general strike, butit made the social and political tension grow. There were scuffles at the doorsof the parliament – with 7 arrested and 2 injured -, several tension pointsbetween flying pickets and police forces, even molotov cocktails thrown at taxoffices. The strike didn’t reach the open conflict of Athens, but it wasn’t theusual non-violent protest. […] Now, UGT and CGTP (the trade unionsconfederations) demand negotiations. […]

Flying pickets removed by riot cops of the PSP, train linesunblocked only after the intervention of GNR, molotov cocktails thrown at threetax offices, high tension close to the parliament with the protesters removingthe police barriers, seven arrested and two injured. The third general strikewasn’t like the previous ones. And it ended up raising the social and politicaltension – instead of calming it down.[…] The incidents deserved generalreproval. The trade unions confederations condemned them, and the Minister ofthe Interior (Miguel Macedo) enhanced their good behavior during the whole day.»

On the day of the strike and the following days the websitesof several institutions, including those of the PSP and police trade unions, banks,tax offices and the secret services were attacked by hackers “in solidaritywith the protests”.

St. Gregory (Rennes), France: 50 Areva workers laid off after anti-nuclear sabotage

2011-11-29T04:45:00.001-08:00

cette semaine

Ouest France, November 25, 2011 - A building housing offices of Areva in St. Gregory, near Rennes was vandalized on the night of Thursday to Friday.
Electricity metre fire
Layoffs today for fifty employees working in a building housing, in St. Gregory, offices of Areva, one of its subsidiaries, and a bank. Police said the building was vandalized on the night of Thursday to Friday. Outside the building, an electric metre was set on fire, interrupting the power supply of the three-story building.

On the wall of the building, a tag stating "War to nuclear and its world." "We condemn this militant action strikes the work tool," said the head of Areva's press office, who denounced the incident. Friday afternoon, police had not made any arrests.

After violent clashes between police and anti-nuclear activists, a convoy of highly radioactive nuclear waste left the rail terminal in Areva Valognes (Manche) on Wednesday bound for Germany.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3B__ovj2jU

Brasil - Mass escapes from Brasilian hellholes

2011-11-29T04:33:00.001-08:00

AFP
November 28, 2011 - BRASILIA—More than 130 prisoners have escaped from prisons in northeastern Brazil in recent days, with 52 inmates breaking out on Sunday, officials said.
The inmates, 15 of whom were recaptured within hours, fled after assaulting two police officers during breakfast at the prison complex, a police spokesman told AFP.
The prisoners were mostly serving time for robbery or violent assault, according to officials.
The escape comes after a break-out late Friday of 82 prisoners, most were serving sentences for murder, robbery and drug trafficking, who escaped from a prison in the northeastern state of Bahia.
The inmates had fled through a hole in the roof of a building in the prison complex. Authorities were only alerted after locals saw numerous men running in disarray from the jail.
The separate incidents highlighted chronic overcrowding in prisons and slow-pace of judicial proceedings. According to official figures, Brazil has 475,000 people in detention, of whom some 43 percent are being held pre-trial.
None of the escaped prisoners from Friday’s incident had yet been recaptured, officials said.

Cuneo, Italy – Communique read by Guido Mantelli at the demonstration against Casapound

2011-11-29T02:37:00.001-08:00

received by angrynews

After several months on the run, Guido presented himself at the preliminary hearing in Cuneo on Saturday, November 26, related to clashes that broke out in February during the contestation of the opening of a Casapound premises.
Today he will probably be imprisoned in the prison of Cuneo but it is possible that he will be soon be transferred.
To write to him:
Guido Mantelli
C.C. via Roncata 75
12100 CUNEO
Italy

And so another season is drawing to a close and, as when one reluctantly leaves summer pastures, it is time to go home. Of course, it is not with a light heart that I offer my wrists to be handcuffed, but it is something that I had taken into account at the start of this period in hiding because the charges at stake and the projects that await me once this matter has been got out of the way would not have justified a prolonged period on the run.
In the meantime, I took advantage of these months to take care of some matters that are dear to me, I went through beautiful valleys and mountains, met exceptional people and generous hearts, and I was particularly warmed by the fire of a solidarity that I have never felt lacking.
I also dedicated the necessary time to fruitful discussions that commitments and habits would not have otherwise permitted. To be honest, I even had time to “find it long,” perhaps more than on other occasions. Now that the trial that I went into hiding about this time has begun, I feel the need to give you my point of view on the most striking feature that distinguishes this judicial story, namely that it is an indictment against antifascism.
For my part, without exaggerating given my family’s past, I would say that anti-fascism is a congenital tension and that necessarily accompanies the struggle for a world free from bullying and authoritarianism. The anti-fascism that I have always known is practical, it is that which has never got lost in futile pacification without any change or the hypocrisy of calls for unjustified tolerance towards those who, in one way or another, want to impose authoritarian and liberticidal choices on society.
But I don’t make antifascism the exclusive field for criticizing and fighting this existent based on discrimination and
exploitation. So let me offer you a short excerpt from some reading that I’ve done during these months and which I endorse fully.
“... Fascism is historically short-lived, because it is the form of government that the bourgeoisie chooses when its principal form of power, democracy, is unable to fulfill its function: to ensure the accumulation of capital and their power over the producing classes. Once the role of watchdog has been fulfilled, fascism is put aside and the bastard democracy comes back into fashion. The fascists may have the illusion of an epochal transformation, but they are just the shit of transition, thugs, organised cops. Democracy, with its cargo of newspaper gossip-style ethics, with its mechanisms of consensus-building by the entrapment of the petty-bourgeois and a redistribution of the crumbs, fits better into the domain of the Capital ...
Hannah Arendt is absolutely right: ‘evil is mundane’.
There has never been a fascist experience that has not fed off the oppression of the lower classes and the consensus of the small dealer, the small proprietor, that group of animals that trades freedom for order and discipline so that the working class or the immigrants, in other words the ugly, dirty and bad, do not disturb it. Fascism has always been defined by “small” men that graze on national and patriotic mysticism, performing their miserable tasks with dedication. Little clerks of terror committed to doing the accountancy of the enemies to be eliminated. But the forced deportations that capital imposes on the outcasts of the earth, first starving them then concentrating them in the urban web where it can exploit them better or transform them into beggars, whores or in the army of the banlieue, are unmatched. Not to mention their ability to build concentration camps as large as continents, to poison land and rivers...”*.

The trial that awaits us is this sense exemplary: it is not the “good boys” of Casa Pound that we will be facing, but the Police force of Cuneo who is trying to get us out of the way for the umpteenth time, and complacent judges who, in setting up a trial for clashes in the streets, (a situation that by definition requires two opposing sides) deliberately decide to indulge in the criminalization of anti-fascists and let the black-shirted thugs go ahead. Perhaps “Cuneo Gold Medal of the Resistance” hasn’t noticed, but the trial that is taking place opposite the balcony of [antifascist partisan] Galimberti is really embarrassing for History.
Not to mention that until we wipe out the detritus of fascism, another threat will weigh on the roads to individual and collective self-determination. So, I am going to see for myself the faces of the authorities that have been invited to condemn anti-fascism in this land of partisans ... but I can’t wait for the moment to meet up with you again to continue along paths that can damage such a disastrous and harmful social system.
A hug to all those accused in the trial and to those who have not been nor will they be lacking in solidarity!
Guido

*. From the appendix “Appunti sulla storia del FMRP”, in Ricardo
Palma Salamanca, “Il grande riscatto”, Edizioni Colibrì, Milano 2010
(pagg. 267-268).

Grigny (Essonne), France - Bus set on fire with Molotov cocktail

2011-11-24T15:51:00.001-08:00

cette semaine

AFP, 06/11/2011 at 12:06 - A bus was set on fire with a Molotov cocktail last night in the district of Great Borne in Grigny (Essonne) by several individuals, prosecutors said today in Evry, confirming a report from Paris.
The newspaper said the incident occurred around 22h at La Treille. Individuals, the number of whom was not specified, first made the passengers, which included a driver and night mediators whose number has not been communicated, get off the bus. They then threw a Molotov cocktail inside it before fleeing. According to Le Parisien, two fire engines were needed to get the fire under control.
Last June, a bus was the object of an attempted arson attack in the district of Essonne.

Turin, Italy - seven city police cars on fire

2011-11-24T15:23:00.001-08:00

cette semaine, 17 November 2011

La Repubblica, 11 October 2011 - Seven cars of the municipal police of Turin [vigili urbani] were damaged by fire last night. The fires, arson, occurred around 2 am against vehicles parked at the corner of Corso Sansovino and Molise, belonging to the 5th district police of Turin. Two were completely destroyed, while five others were damaged ...

"This is a serious act of intimidation" said the Commander of the Municipal Police.

Sousse, Tunisia - 3 prison guards severely beaten by thirty people

2011-11-24T15:13:00.001-08:00

cette semaine
(November 17, 2011)
Businessnews, 11/16/2011 7:01 p.m.

Three prison guards under the General Administration of prisons returning home at night in Sousse, November 12, 2011, were violently attacked by about thirty individuals, according to TAP.
The guards were attacked by using knives, stones and iron bars and wooden clubs, causing them serious injuries in various parts of the body. They narrowly escaped death, due to the intervention of passers-by and security forces who arrested some of the attackers.

Andenne (Belgium): Mutiny at the prison, fires and serious damage

2011-11-24T14:58:00.001-08:00

cette semaine (November 18, 2011)
ANDENNE - Andenne Prison: "It's been long time since we had a riot on this scale." A riot broke out Wednesday around 21:30 in the prison of Andenne. More than 200 prisoners caused extensive damage to the building. Many emergency services had to intervene. Everything is back to normal around 2:00.
Shortly after 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, more than 200 prisoners from the prison of Andenne, more than half of those detained, refused to return to their cells after a range of free activities. They caused considerable damage inside the building. It took the intervention of the Directorate of Special Units of the Federal Police to get them to return to their cells. Firefighters and paramedics were also called in to assist. According to firefighters, no one was injured. About two o'clock in the morning, all prisoners were returned to the cells.
The damage in the hallways and common is significant, according to Andenne fire brigade. The prisoners set fire to a particular office, tore out radiators, hoses burned and windows broken. The water used to extinguish the fire caused extensive damage on the ground floor and three floors of the prison. "It's a smash up, breaking up for fun: radiators, doors, window pains pulled out, frames broken, computers, sometimes in the middle of the wings, furniture, everything is broken".

Beijing, China - Dozens of workers injured in massive strike at southern Chinese factory

2011-11-24T14:44:00.001-08:00

TWN, AFP - November 20, 2011-

BEIJING -- More than 7,000 workers went on strike at a southern Chinese factory making New Balance, Adidas and Nike shoes, clashing with police in a protest over layoffs and wage cuts, a rights group said.

Dozens of workers were injured on Thursday as police tried to break the strikers' blockade of the main road in the factory town near Dongguan in Guangdong province, China Labor Watch said in a statement late Friday.

The strike at the Yucheng factory in Huangjiang township took place in the wake of layoffs last month of 18 managers, a move seen by workers as a preparation for the factory's relocation, the New York-based group said.
One of the fired managers told the China Business News his departure was part of a plan to shift production north to Jiangxi province to save on rising costs in the Pearl River Delta around Dongguan, a key manufacturing center.
The strike was the latest in a series of incidents involving labor disputes and perceived social injustices in Guangdong, known as the workshop of the world for the tens of millions of migrant workers who toil in factories there.
Workers at the Yucheng factory were also angered by the recent elimination of performance bonuses and a ban on the overtime they said they need to meet the cost of living.

Brisbane, Australia - suspected sabotage in Qantas Airways airliner during labour dispute

2011-11-24T14:30:00.001-08:00

AP Associated Press
2011-02 -11 - Australian police are investigating the suspected sabotage of the entertainment system on a Qantas Airways airliner during the ongoing bitter labor dispute between the airline and the aircraft maintenance union, officials said Wednesday.
Engineers noticed several wires were cut on the in-flight entertainment system of a Qantas Boeing 767 undergoing maintenance at Brisbane Airport on Australia's on east coast on Oct. 26, Qantas said in a statement.
Further investigation by the engineers revealed more cut wires had been covered up, the airline said.
"Given the nature of the incident, we immediately referred it tothe Australia Federal Police," Qantas said.
"There was no operational safety risk at any stage," it added.

Trento, Italy - Telecommunications repeaters sabotaged in solidarity with those arrested for clashes in Rome October 15

2011-11-24T11:37:00.001-08:00

informa-azione
source: 'L'adige' 17 november 2011
Incendiary attack on Mount Calisio

TRENTO. An incendiary attack on telecommunications repeaters took place on Mount Calisio, near Trento. A box containing equipment operated by Tower Tel was destroyed in the fire. On the wall the phrase "Solidarity with the arrested in Rome" was written. The damage is yet to be assessed.

According to findings by the Carabinieri, the attackers had set off the fire with petrol.

The glow ofthe flames was seen by inhabitants of the village of Villamontagna,who called the firebrigade. Further investigations were made bythe forensic police and the Digos [political police] also started toinvestigate.

At first the RTTR [regionaltelevision] decided to shut down for safety reasons following thearson attack last night on Mount Calisio, near Trento, on a number oftelecommunication towers. This isthe second attack within a week on broadcasters of the 'circuit' thattransmit the programmes of Santoro [a well known 'left wing'journalist who was censured by Berlusconi when he was with thenational tv, RAI], the RTTR have made known. Last Thursday twotransmitters of Telelombardia were stolen.

Theylater confirmed that that Santoro's programme would be broadcast inspite of the attack on the transmitters in Trentino. RTTRcommunicated that it will be able to transmit as usual from all theinstallations. The broadcaster then explained that yesterdayevening's attack had seen targeted "two systems with twoincendiary devices connected to timers. One belonged to the Tower Telcompany, which was completely destroyed, served the channels of Radio Maria, Radio Dimensione Suono, and the telephony of Brennercomand Vodafone. The other belonged to the company Op. Im, RTTR editors,TvAlpi, RTT, Terra Trentina, RTT music tv, and was only partiallydamaged as the incendiary device had not ignited and was defused bythe police bomb squad."

Thedamage, according to what has been referred, is still to be assessedand the broadcasting company confirmed that the carabinieri havecordoned off the area of the attack.

New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Delaware - Fiber optic lines cut during Verizon strike

2011-08-23T18:15:00.001-07:00

signalnews

15/08/2011 - The Verizon Strike, which began 6 days ago, grew further away from a compromise over the weekend as the company brought in the FBI to investigate several instances of sabotage, according to CNN.
Verizon claims that since the strike began it has recorded 90 instances of sabotage, including cut fiber optic lines, vandalism, and harassment of management.More than 45,000 union workers for the company’s wire line business–which provides landline phones as well as high-speed Internet and FiOS television–went on strike to protest a number of concessions the company has implored them to make. The concessions include eliminating two paid vacations, a pension freeze, aligning raises with job performance and getting the unions to pay $100 per employee per month for healthcare.
The cut fiber optic lines impacted Verizon’s service in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Also, a police station and a hospital lost service as a result of the sabotage. Since these are critical infrastructure, the FBI field office in New Jersey is investigating the matter.

Frenso, CA: West Coast Solidarity Action – Molotovs thrown into Fresno substation parking lot

2011-08-23T17:57:00.000-07:00

waronsociety

19/08/2011 -from indybay - In Solidarity with Everyone fighting against police brutality and the police state, molotovs were thrown into the parking lot of the Fresno SW substation where police cars and pig’s personal vehicles are parked. At least 2 cars burned.
This action is done in solidarity especially with those in the East Bay standing up against the murderous BART police who most recently executed Charles Hill. BART then used fascist type methods by shutting down all cell phones in stations where they thought protestors might be showing up. WE WILL NOT BE SILENCED!
All police are murderers. FPD recently executed Carl Maggioroni and have a reputation for executing people of color whether they are armed or not. The time to fight back is NOW! We live in a police state, this is all “business as usual” for them. We have to come together and fight back, FUCK THESE PIGS! This is war, play time is over, join the fight.
In solidarity with Oakland, Seattle, Chile, London, Greece…everyone who is fighting back.
See you in the streets.

Widnes, Chehire, UK - 25 year-old man dies after being sprayed with pepper spray and beaten by eleven cops.

2011-08-23T17:23:00.001-07:00

dailymail

23/08/2011 - A 25-year-old man collapsed and died after being overpowered with CS spray as he was being arrested by up to eleven police officers.
Jacob Michael was sprayed in the face inside his home in the Widnes area of Cheshire, but managed to flee officers before being brought down on a verge 30 metres away.
He was taken to a police station where he suddenly became unwell and was rushed to hospital by ambulance. He was pronounced dead two hours later.
The dead man - who was known as Jake - had been with his family and is believed to have dialled 999 himself over a threat made to him when police arrived at the semi-detached home at 5pm.
Police said they were arresting him on suspicion of affray but there was a struggle and Michael was blasted in the face with the spray.
Despite him being temporarily blinded by the effects, Michael managed to run out of the house and got to a grass verge before being tackled and brought to the ground by other police officers who were waiting nearby.
In the words of one of the many witnesses to the scene: 'What the police did was outrageous. He was handcuffed, on the floor with his legs restrained..
'They seemed to be kneeing him in the back of the head. I counted 11 cops. They were all sat on him, giving him a kicking and giving him side digs. There was one woman officer, the rest were men, and she was getting her kicks in as well.
'They started chasing him and hitting him in the back of the legs with batons.
'They had banged his head on the floor and they were giving him punches. He was already handcuffed and he was restrained when I saw him. I don't know what happened in the house, I just saw when they were on the street.
'He was shouting, "Help me, help me". He wasn't coherent. I don't know why they were bringing him in for affray. It doesn't matter, he didn't deserve that.
'He's never been in trouble before as far as I know.'
---
CS Pepper spray is an inflammatory product which causes immediate closing of the eyes, difficulty breathing, runny nose, and coughing.
The duration of its effects depends on the strength of the spray but the average full effect lasts around thirty to forty-five minutes, with diminished effects lasting for hours.
Although considered 'non-lethal', it may be deadly in rare cases, and concerns have been raised about a number of deaths in Britain where being pepper sprayed may have been a contributing factor for those people suffering from asthma
----
Last week bodybuilder Dale Burns, 27, became the first person in Britain to have died from a police Taser after officers shot him three times with the powerful 50,000-volt gun after reports of a disturbance at his bedsit in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria.

Bordj Sabath, Guelma, Algeria - Violent clashes due to lack of drinking water.

2011-08-23T16:56:00.000-07:00

el watan

21/08/2011 - Violent clashes between the national police and hundreds of young and not so young of Bordj Sabath, town located about fifty kilometers north west of the capital of the province of Guelma, pitted Sunday, early morning and continued until before breaking the fast.
The lack of drinking water since the beginning of Ramadan, is the reason for the protest during which the roads leading to the city were cut to traffic by the rioters, with burning tires and other assorted materials .
According to preliminary information, the police had used tear gas to make inroads among furious young people and allow the clearing of roads.
A preliminary assessment, according to informed sources, reported the death of a man of sixty years, after being hit by stone throwing just before breaking the fast.
The same sources also confirm the wounded among the population and the security services.
The director of the Algerian water explained by water scarcity, "the obsolescence of the 70 km long intake pipe that feeds Bordj Sabath from Ain Arkou (not pumping)."
He added that "under normal circumstances the people of this region are supplied every third day."
In the early evening, the chief town of the town of Bordj Sabath was still under surveillance.

Ragusa, Sicily - Revolt in detention centre for immigrants. 50 people escape, 5 cops wounded

2011-08-23T16:29:00.000-07:00

la repubblica

24/08/2011 - It was a night of guerilla warfare in the Pozzallo detention centre (Ragusa) where about one hundred immigrants tried to escape from the structure using pieces of iron disconnected from bunk beds to break the glass of the doors of the building. Fifteen policemen tried to quell the revolt but could could do little to stop the immigrants, moved to Pozzallo in recent days from the island of Lampedusa. Sixteen of the fugitives were tracked down at once, but about fifty are still missing and are being sought by police.
Thirteen immigrants were arrested and charged with damage and resisting a public officer. Five police officers were injured in the accident and were medicated at the emergency room of the Greater Modica, where they were then discharged.

Birmingham, UK - August 9 - Masked and hooded rioters fired shots at police

2011-08-20T15:05:00.001-07:00

CNN

Police have released dramatic security camera footage they say shows masked and hooded rioters firing shots at unarmed officers and a police helicopter in the English city of Birmingham.

The footage shows a group of 30 to 40 young men, dressed in black, in the Newtown area of Birmingham as they attacked a pub late on Tuesday August 9, West Midlands Police said in a statement.

As police tried to disperse the group, petrol bombs were thrown at a police car and shots were fired, police said. Officers believe the rioters intended to set fire to the pub.

Pantelleria, Strait of Sicily - Revolt in detention centre holding Tunisian migrants

2011-08-20T14:47:00.000-07:00

giornale di sicilia

17 August 2011 - PALERMO. A group of Tunisian migrants, held at the reception centre of Pantelleria, an Italian island in the Strait of Sicily, yesterday set fire to mattresses and furniture. The flames spread to the whole structure and the fire department intervened.
Eighty people were rescued by the police and the Finance military, and taken out of the hotel, some non-EU held there were able to get away and have not yet been traced. It is not the first time that riots have occured in the centre: two similar incidents occurred in July and early August.

Karranah, Bahrain - Cops injured in night of rioting in villages across the country

2011-08-20T14:27:00.000-07:00

gulf daily news

20 August 2011 - SIX policemen were injured, two of them seriously, while confronting rioters in Karranah on Thursday night. The Interior Ministry announced the injuries on its official Twitter account yesterday morning following a night of rioting in villages across the country.
Masked youths barricaded roads with bricks, cement blocks and overturned rubbish bins - hurling rocks at police dispatched to deal with the trouble.
However, sources inside the emergency services told the GDN yesterday that police were being routinely targeted on patrol - particularly in the past two weeks - by rioters who sometimes use women as shields.
"When we enter villages, we don't know if we will come out alive," they said. "While going on duties, we always tell our families not to wait for us.
"The rioters throw stones, metal rods and sharp objects at us, which can kill any human.
"And what are we wearing for safety - a helmet and bullet-proof jacket in some cases.
"They have damaged our jeeps which were used for patrolling, but they are cowards - they attack us and run away.
"They come out only at night and hide in dark places.
"As we can't see properly, we don't know where they come out from, they attack us and hide again.
"We are not only attacked by the young, but women, young girls and boys as well. A woman threw a big block from her balcony, which fell on our jeep, shattering its windscreen.

Germany - Hot August news

2011-08-20T13:08:00.000-07:00

directactionde

Leipzig - Arson-attack on CCTV-camera - 2nd August 2011 - Masked persons did huge damage by committing an arson attack (over 5000 euro) on a CCTV used by cops and by attacking the building of the AOK ( big insurance-company) with the use of stones. They might have wanted to start a direct confrontation with the police.

Around 2am eight black-dressed persons set up fire at Connewitzer Kreuz. A tram signal, traffic-sign and high-voltage-cable are burned. The fire took over and damaged the main cable of the CCTV-camera used by police. The unknown persons try to block this camera by attacking it with fire.
In the internet appeared a video. Underneath a comment saying: „ Again fire was set and AOK smashed. Yes, the resistance doesn't go on summer-holidays.“
Berlin - Car of security-company torched - 4th August 2011 - In the night of the 4th of August a car of the Piepenbrock company got arsoned in Berlin Schöneberg. The company does facility-management and cleaning-jobs, executed by precarious workers, mostly in big flats-buildings. There they get knowledge about the habits of the renters. This information is getting used by the security of the Piepenbrock-company. They work together with the cops and as a result play an active role towards a modern model of state and social control. For more about Piepenbrock:
Templin - Arson attack on police station - 5th August 2011 - Friday morning an arson attack was committed on the police station of Templin. Around 5:30am the officers heard a muffled noise coming from the facade and saw an unknown person escaping. The petrol-bomb, that got thrown on the facade just shortly sparkled and extinguished on its own. Just a little damaged was done and nobody got injured. The police are investigating in different directions.
Berlin - Copcar attacked - 06th August 2011 - A 45 year old police officer had to go to hospital because of an ear blast injury last night. He and another colleague were driving on Revaler Straße when they saw a crowd standing on the road in front of a club, waiting to get to the entrance. The cops told them to stand on the pavement, because car drivers really had problems seeing the crowd, as most of the people were dressed in black. When the officers went back in to their car a bottle got thrown at them and the right window got smashed. source: Polizeiticker
Freiburg - Car of the federal-police arsoned - 7th August 2011 - We received following claim:
"In the night to the 7th of august a car of the federal-police got attacked with several molotov-cocktails. That happened as a direct reaction on the repressive politics of the rioting executive-institution of the last days.
Controls, raids and evictions are committed against central autonomous spaces of this city. That cant happen with out a reaction!
For a militant perspective!"
Berlin - Broken windows at ex-Liebig 14 - 8th August 2011 - Once again unknowns damaged an ex-squatted house in Friedrichshain in the afternoon.
The owner reported that 2 windows and the doorbell panel of the house got destroyed.
The State security is investigating. source: Policepress
Berlin - And again broken windows - 9th August 2011 - A renter on Liebigstraße in Friedrichshain called the police last night, because unknowns smashed 3 windows of his flat. 2 of those got smashed and at the other one can see a round whole. The police assumes a political motivation and the State security is investigating. source: Policepress
Paint attack against „Pro Köln“ - Köln 9th August 2011 - following claim got published on indymedia:
"2 hours ago we attacked the offices of the right-populist party „pro Köln“ by using paintbombs.
We hope that we were able to bring a bit of colour into the brown daily life of this confused crowd and will come back regularly, with pleasure.
BUNTFRONT! ;)"
Köln - Headquarters of energy corporation RWE attacked with stones - 9th August 2011 - from the communique we received:
"Do not give up the hope-smash the energy-corporations! In the night of the 8th to the 9th of August we smashed the facade of the headquarters of RWE in Köln.
Not even one year passed by since the big accident (supergau) happened in Fukushima and will endanger the whole region for an unknown measure of time. People are contaminated – the rate of cancer and the number of children that will be born disabled will grow rapid. Contaminated water and food will fasten this processes.

Berlin - 9 cars in flames - 11th August 2011

In Zehlendorf and Steglitz 9 cars were set on fire in the night to Thursday.
On Wednesday a arsonist got sentenced to probation and one day after 9 cars are burning in Berlin.
On Bolchenerstraße in Zehlendorf 5 cars were burning. Shortly before midnight unknowns torched them. 3 cars burnt out completely and 2 got damaged. Half an hour later the police was called again.2 cars were torched in Steglitz on Gutsmuthstraße and 2 cars around the corner on Hackerstraße. source: BZ
Berlin - Car of regulatory agency torched - 12th August 2011

The series of car-arsons in Berlin is not ending. In the night of Friday 4 cars got set on fire in Schöneberg and Charlottenburg – during Thursday night already 9 cars were burning in Steglitz and Zehlendorf.
On Courbierestraße in Schöneberg an „Audi“ got badly damaged.
On Franklinstaße in Charlottenburg a car of the regulatory agency of Pankow got arsoned while it was parked on the ground of a car-dealership. 2 cars got damaged by the flames.
In Charlottenburg a Mercedes-Combi was burning later on.
Police investigates if a political motivation was the reason for the arsons. source: BZ
Berlin - Paint and stones thrown against a bank - 14th August - we received following claim:
"In the night of 14th august we smashed the windows of the bank 'Sparkasse', Heinrich-Heine Straße, Berlin. We painted on the window - 'UK brennt'.
This was in solidarity with the uprising recently in England and the people who are now getting repression.
Spread the insurrection!
Solidarity from Berlin."
Berlin - Cars arsoned - 16th August 2011

In the night to Thursday 11 cars got torched in between one hour in Charlottenburg. Police reported that the arsons started shortly after midnight. Almost every minute mostly luxury-cars got set on fire in the district Westend. Further on seven cars, a scooter and a bicycle got damaged by the flames.
Fire fighters extinguished the flames. Nobody got injured. If the arsons are politically motivated isnt clear yet. The state security investigates. source: Spiegel
Hamburg - Stones and paint against a newly constructed building - 16th August 2011

Unknowns threw stones and paintbombs against the building at Kleinen Schäferkamp. Protest against the changes in the district of Schanze?
In the night to monday unknown offenders threw glasses filled with paint against the facade of the building. The big windows at the main entrance got smashed and paint dripped down the facade and splashed as well on two cars that were parked nearby.“Undercover cops observed 4 suspicious persons around 0:08 am“, said Ulrike Sweden, the spokesperson of the police. But the men were able to escape. State security investigates.
Hanne Schöppner woke up around midnight because of a loud clash. She thought an accident happened and looked down from her balcony. The friend of her left the flat, a real estate on the 2nd floor of a newly constructed building, to check out what just happened. In the doorway he discovered the smashed and with brown paint damaged windows. „We couldnt really fall asleep again“, said the young woman on the morning. „Its scary and unsettling to get the hate of a small group.“ source: Abendblatt.de

Berlin - 15 cars torched - 17th August 2011

The massive series of car-arsons will not end in Berlin. In the night to Wednesday unknown offenders set fire to 15 cars. The investigators assume that the arsons of the last weeks were commited by leftextremists.
Most of the cars of last night were expensive – but as well a truck, a trailer and a scooter got arsoned. Most of the arsons happened in Charlottenburg, which is a decent district. The inhabitants are scared. source: Morgenpost

UK - The struggle against the existent continues

2011-08-13T16:14:00.000-07:00

(work in progress)

Thursday, August 4, Mark Duggan, a 'real straight up and down respected man' (words of London rapper, Chipmunk) from Tottenham in London, was blasted to death while on his way home in a cab by a mob of cops wielding Heckler & Koch MP5 carbines. 29 year old Mark, father of four young children, lived on the housing estate known as Broadwater Farm, a depressed predominantly Afro-Caribbean area. The area is infamous since the riot of 1985 after 49 year old Cynthia Jarrett collapsed and died of a heart attack as police raided her home. (During the riot a policeman, PC Blakelock, was hacked to death with a machete.) Today, in the words of a resident, 'if you're from Broadwater Farm, police are on you every day, you're not allowed to come off the estate. If you come off the estate they follow you.' They followed Mark Duggan and he ended up dead.

August 6 - The arrogance of the killers in uniform in the face of the protest by the victim's family and supporters, plus the brutal attack on a 16 year old girl by police during the vigil was the last straw.

http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

That night in Tottenham the police station was attacked, police cars set on fire, a double-decker bus ends up a twisted wreck after being engulfed in flames, press photographers are beaten and relieved of their equipment for the decades of lies they have propagated. Bank windows smashed. Countless shops looted, stuff thrown all over the streets. Young guys storm McDonald's and start frying up burgers and chips. Indignant anger clears the brain, flushes out the cops in the head. Collective fury at this latest police murder combines with the daily bullying and humiliation of being stopped and searched, the moralising, the false promises, useless lives, no future, desire for status-affirming 'needs' unattainable due to increased taxes, unemployment and cutting of benefits, 4 million cameras, glaring security cops at the entrance to every store, the colonization of all remaining urban space by trendy bars filled with the noisy chatter of the carefree... that and much more that we don't know and will never experience welled up and fueled the will to smash through the invisible and plate glass barriers that hold everything in place.

The hostages of the open prison, the young people of the ghettos of London, rise up and the capitalists' nightmare finally materialises, as the last link in the consumer chain of submission snaps. It explodes into a free-for-all when, in a flash of illumination the solution to the existential dilemma is found: MUST HAVE/CAN'T HAVE = TAKE. It's simple: learn and apply, possibly burning store to ashes on retreating.

The rioting escalates, scores more people come into the area responding to call outs on twitter to come up and fight the cops and loot shops. Over the following days it spreads to many other parts of London and onward towards other cities.

The rage also spreads beyond the main clashes in Nottingham, Manchester, Bristol, Gloucester, Liverpool, Birmingham. In many incidents the stories escape categorisation or quantification. One thing sure that is not reported and deliberately ignored is the chiefly anti-authoritarian flavour to the uprising, the government and corporations relentlessly branding the people 'scum', 'thieves' and other low simple catchphrases of demonisation. The failure in this to stop young people identifying with the uprising is obvious when it is seen how quickly the riots replicate and need little trigger to begin breaking the Queen's peace. Mainstream media reporting becomes incredibly formulaic, and the bosses make mileage from their scenes of interest in reaching their political objectives, looping the same images over and over, overlaid with the stereotypical talking heads' condemnation and reassurance. The widespread disorder does not stop. The people who lost their fear go outside, collect themselves to attack and take as much as they can.

The police are overwhelmed and beaten by the small fluid groups who don't wait around to be crushed, but instead move quickly, spreading terror in those who can't identify themselves as belonging to the mob.

Some anarchists and 'rebels with consciousness' did rush towards the smoke signals on the horizon. For some only to stop in their tracks, in many cases riveted to the spot as spectators of a scenario never played out in their wildest dreams: crowds of young people queuing up outside high street stores like customers at the January sales, calmly forcing their way inside under the implacable gaze of rows of riot cops, to reappear later with huge bags, even trolleys, overflowing with consumer goods.

Elsewhere, behind the hastily improvised barricades erected and set alight by local kids in back streets as they prepare to greet their daily enemy - the cops in their anti-riot vans - with a hail of bottles and stones, the outsider, immediately recognisable by age and colour, is viewed with suspicion. Who are you? What do you want? In various areas, the odd gang, spurred by the momentary shift in the balance of power in the streets, starts high-jacking people's cars and driving off in them or setting them alight, or trashing and looting corner shops, holding no attraction but for the benefit of diversionary chaos so that other small groups can organise and initiate their own attacks. For some, black clothes and face masks are a sign of organised illegality and command respect accordingly. Each area and particular environment creates differing possibilities and modes of co-operation and confrontation. Still days after the clashes there is a changed air in the glances and atmosphere between those in the different sectors of the clash, put under the same rule. Open fighting against the police and the system they defend is a unifying feature for popular resistance against all regimes.

Very soon it became clear that this seemingly strange police tactic of standing by and watching looters empty stores was no accident, as it had already been reported by right-wing media that the police would let the situation play itself out for 3 days before going in with heavy repressive blows, a story which subsequently disappeared from the news. This standard British counter-insurgency tactic, developed in the colonies and in Northern Ireland, is used in the preliminary stages of the social insurgence to attempt to create a situation of havoc where all the contradictions of the mess of society can exacerbate, to force the false question: Do you want an authoritarian regime to maintain repressive order, or do you want 'lawless chaos'? The question is posed by power to the servile masses, using the rebellious as their spear of inquiry.

The police removed their personnel from the most seriously affected areas, giving space for the riot to literally burn out - letting the 'violence' reach such a point as to deny the intensification which could have resulted had the clash been kept at a certain social level, possibly drawing in anarchists, leftists and angry students.

The front line of the clash – that against cops, police stations, media, politicians, started to disappear as the target of these attacks withdrew or were overcome. This channeled the affray into the requisitioning of goods by uncontrolled masses. The design was to secure the forces of the police following their defeat on the streets in order to prepare the massive repressive operation from CCTV surveillance, snitching and investigation - and provoke a media-boosted backlash from those who identify with the system of work and law demanding that the police enforce a severe crackdown. A backlash which was not only seen in the posses of marauding shop-keepers and British nationalists, but also in the citizenist outcry for an open prison society by tidy controlled individuals not adverse to controlling others.

On Wednesday August10th the moment that power had been waiting for in some form or another occurs. Three young men defending local Asian-owned shops in Birmingham are killed when a car is rammed into them. An irreparable loss for those who knew and loved them, a great gain for power. The articulate appeal of one of the fathers in his heartfelt call for 'peace' (how many rivers of tears were spilled that day for sons killed by the capitalist moloch all over the planet) is relentlessly exploited by the class enemy, just as the resulting coming together of Sikhs and Muslims to defend their structures is depicted as a triumph of democracy. The fact that the divide and rule policy that characterises British power was instrumental in the partition of India and creation of Pakistan, an operation that resulted in over a million dead, has been erased from the annals of history. Rule Britannia! This Disney-like multicultural paradise is a fragile mosaic of erstwhile plundered peoples seeking to survive, living shoulder to shoulder each with their miserable prospects of inclusion or exclusion according to their capacity for collaboration, subservience, and self-mutilation.

One part of the equation that has been totally ignored over these days are the producers of the much coveted goods themselves. Crimes spring from fixed ideas. The sacredness of property is one of these ideas and is the crime par excellence that is dangled before the disinherited masses. Just as war is disconnected from murder in the psyche of the common man or woman, the plunder of the resources of the planet and subjection of the invisible producing slaves is totally absent from their diatribes about 'stealing' and 'looting'. What is a high street store in flames compared to the existence of the store itself? Every supermarket is a 'crime scene', MacDonald's and Coca Cola are veritable motors of mass destruction. After babbling sensational accounts of the riots from the teleprompter, the newsreader's disapproving frown erupts into a beaming smile as she announces the news that Apple has surpassed Exxon Mobile to become 'the world's most valuable company'. Wonderful Apple, such style, smart gadgets. Perhaps the searing profits should be put down to good management as we read in the daily press: The man now running Apple, Tim Cook, had a delicate job last year. After nearly a dozen workers committed suicide at Foxconn, a contract manufacturing plant in China, he flew to visit the company – and pressured them to improve working conditions. One move was to hang large nets from the factory buildings.

To see the recent events as something that do not concern anarchists and conscious rebels would be just as absurd as to simply take them at face value and join in the looting spree for a moment of quick gratification or to be 'in the reality of the struggle'. That doesn't mean staying at home safely out of the way of these amoral 'greedy' rioters. What can a movement of predominantly vegan, bicycle-riding anti-commodity anarchists or their moralising anarcho-workerist counterparts have to do with the pluri-appropriation of plasma screens, trainers and fashion labels? The dividing line, which anarchists cannot stomach in spite of their heritage, is that the rebellious protagonists of the past days were not fighting for the noble cause of 'freedom' but were fighting for themSELVES. Selves alienated and stunted by the voracious reality they have been born into, spurred into action in an immediate assault on forbiddance. Now they are being demonised by those who should know better, for their lack of 'political awareness' and altruism. In such situations anarchists can only take stock and seek to put into action elements of a projectuality that is already being elaborated and experimented in small agile groups. What is evident from this flash-point of insurrection is that the anarchist movement, for want of a better term, here in Britain, is largely inadequate as to be insignificant in terms of the attack and the capability to prepare a line of flight beyond the existent, let alone during a mass riot.

If the uprising has caught us unprepared, if we have not already found our affinities, worked out our ideas and put into practice minimal attacks on the reality of dominion and class oppression, it is not from the 'children of men' that we will get the best indications to enter and extend the struggle. Anarchists risk being passive spectators, 'provocateurs', or simply clumsy gatecrashers of someone else's party.

Some comrades have already begun the trajectory of their own projectuality, their own experimentation and attack, which has also materialised over these days alongside or within some of the attacks on the structures of the consumer god and its servants. Without flags, banners or high-sounding political claims. Others are asking themselves how to move in that direction, how to carry on now that 'society', the great myth, the centuries-old swindle adapted to the imperatives of the corporate cartels defended by their servants, government, cops and media, is being reasserted.

Now the party's over, the CCTV footage is being analyzed, facial recognition software is being deployed, the snitches are queuing up for payment. 'Wanted' photos are being displayed on huge 'digi-trucks' driven throughout the cities. People's doors are being smashed in by screaming gangs of riot cops wielding battering rams. Families are being given eviction orders in the old fascist ardor for collective punishment. Welfare payments are to be discontinued. Kangaroo courts are working 24/7 and the cell doors are slamming shut as the “community” is polarised in open conflict. Almost 2,000 arrests so far. Police and politicians argue the toss as to who subdued the battle and Twitter and Facebook have been saved from banishment by becoming the instrument of the good citizens. The broom has been stolen from the reprobate witch to become the symbol of citizenship as hundreds sweep and sweep in this neo Civil Defence corps.

The media and soft cops are hard at work to find the magic formula, the new superglue to hold together the untenable. On the margins, some good anarchists and leftists will give a hand, no doubt.
Nothing will ever be the same after what has happened over the past few days. Our task is not to join forces with the recuperators but, using every means, to start to identify significant objectives and contribute to creating the conditions where the excluded, on whose backs they come into existence, can do something to destroy them.
We are moving into a phase of new, more brutal, more fascistic levels of repression with full consensus of reawakened, engaged citizens. The way has been paved for acceptance of the next stage in British neo-fascism, the Olympics and the related massive installations for surveillance and control.

The struggle against the existent continues, opening up new encounters and fields of experimentation to combine with the unyielding ingredients of all our interventions: affinity, solidarity and self-organisation of the attack.

Saint-Gilles prison, Belgium - Screws on strike following attacks

2011-08-07T09:58:00.000-07:00

cette semaine

03/07/2011 - GRÈVE SAINT-GILLES The personnel of the prison of Saint-Gilles decided to go on srtike yesterday morning. A work stoppage lasted until Sunday night at 10 pm. The movement could continue today if staff decide at the general meeting. If the guards of Saint-Gilles prison abruptly left their posts yesterday, it is not least because of an attack on one of their colleagues on Sunday at 6 am at the subway exit of the south station, gare du Midi. It was the last straw for the personnel that have seen three similar attacks in less than two weeks. The other reason for this spontaneous movement of discontent is the arrival in Saint-Gilles prison of Farid le Fou. A transfer that the guards were expecting for September 15, but management just told them that the convicted person most feared by the guards in the country would be ahead of schedule, on 16 August! Enough to arouse the anger of staff. "There was a tacit agreement with the Director General of Prisons, that the prisoner would not be sent to Saint-Gilles prison during the holidays, when the prison is short staffed, with contracted out personnel who are not used to such inmates considered dangerous. This agreement was not respected by management", laments Cosimo, prison guard and Regional Delegate CSPF. The last straw was this Sunday, the assault of a guard at the South Station while he was on his way to the prison. In only a few days, three staff have been assaulted outside the prison. Starting with a nurse outside the prison walls. Last Wednesday, a uniformed guard coming out of the subway with a colleague was stabbed just because he works in prison. This Sunday, the guard who was attacked was also in uniform. According to the management it is argued that the authors only wanted his backpack, but the attack was too much for the staff of St. Gilles.(dhnet)

Jamioulx, Belgium - Three escape from prison after taking guard hostage

2011-08-07T09:34:00.000-07:00

suie e cendres

31/07/2011 - CHARLEROI - Three prisoners took a guard hostage and forced her to open all the doors of the prison. They beat another guard who tried to intervene. Once outside the prison, the three prisoners forced her to get into her car. They drove away with her, and a bit further two prisoners got out of the car. The two carjacked another vehicle and drove away. The guard was released, unharmed, several hours later alongside a highway in France.
The guards went on strike to protest against the recent wave of violent escapes. Also guards from other prisons joined the strike. Meanwhile, police are also threatening to go on strike because they have to replace the striking guards. Last year, in 2010, more than 6000 cops had to do duty in the prisons to replace striking guards. (lavenir)

Tottenham, London, UK - People take to the streets after police killing. Petrol bombs thrown at police and a shop, two patrol cars and a bus on fire

2011-08-06T15:16:00.000-07:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14434318
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14434117
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP42NUScVI4
bbc
Protesters have gathered outside the police station on the High Road in Tottenham, north London.
It comes after a 29-year-old father-of-four, named locally as Mark Duggan, was shot dead by police on Thursday.
The Metropolitan Police said missiles were thrown at the cars, both were set alight and riot officers deployed.
A spokesman said about 300 people were on the streets but not all were involved in the disorder.
He said that officers dispatched to disperse the crowd had had bottles and other missiles thrown at them.
The force said the incident began after police officers parked two patrol cars on Forster Road and High Road and began patrolling on foot.
The spokesman said: "At approx 20:20 BST a number of bottles were thrown at these two cars - one was set alight and the second was pushed into the middle of the High Road. It was subsequently set alight.
daily mail
A family friend of Mr Duggan said the man's friends and relatives had organised the protest because 'something has to be done' and the marchers wanted 'justice for the family.'
Some of those involved lay in the road to make their point, she said.
'They're making their presence known because people are not happy,' she added. 'This guy was not violent. Yes, he was involved in things but he was not an aggressive person. He had never hurt anyone.'
It was revealed yesterday that Mr Duggan had been travelling in a minicab and was gunned down after an apparent exchange of fire.
sky news
2.01am "The Metropolitan Police have also opened their Gold Command Control centre, in south London - normally only used for major incidents, such as the Royal wedding and the student protests. This control centre is only ever activated for major public order events. It has to be a significant event for them to take the decision to move all their commanders down to this control room. There is a very real fear tonight that these localised disturbances do have the potential to spill out into other areas. Petrol bombs and missiles were also thrown at police, and there are reports of shops being burgled and looted. Two vans were set alight near a block of residential flats just off the High Road, as the violence appeared to spread away from the initial disturbance. Sky News were forced to withdraw camera crews from the area as the situation became increasingly volatile in the early hours of the morning."

Hama, Syria - 'People are being slaughtered like sheep' in the streets

2011-08-04T16:11:00.001-07:00

smh

05/08/2011 - Gunmen in plainclothes are randomly shooting people in the streets of the besieged Syrian city of Hama and families are burying their loved ones in gardens at home for fear of being killed themselves if they venture out to cemeteries, a resident says.
Military forces launched an offensive against anti-government dissent in Hama on Sunday and at least 100 people have been killed since, according to human rights groups.
Phones, internet and electricity have been cut or severely hampered for days.
The resident told the Associated Press that people are being forced to ration food and share bread to get by during the holy month of Ramadan, when many Muslims fast from dawn to dusk then celebrate with large, festive meals after sundown.
"People are being slaughtered like sheep while walking in the street," said the resident, who spoke by phone on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
"I saw with my own eyes one young boy on a motorcycle who was carrying vegetables being run over by a tank."
He said he left Hama briefly through side roads to smuggle in food supplies.
The resident said about 250 people have been killed since Sunday.

Essex, UK - Car showroom arson causes £200,000 damage

2011-08-04T15:53:00.000-07:00

bbc essex

02/08/2011 - A fire that caused about £200,000 of damage to cars, motor homes and caravans on the forecourt of an Essex car showroom was arson, police said.

Crews were called to Cherrytree Garage, in London Road, Little Clacton, in the early hours of Monday to find the vehicles on fire.

Two motor homes were completely destroyed by the blaze.

Israel - Jewish, Arab workers and youth protest against social conditions in Israel

2011-08-04T15:33:00.000-07:00

wsws

1 August 2011 - An estimated 150,000 mostly young people in Israel, both Jewish and Arab, protested Saturday over spiralling living costs and the economic and social policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The demonstrations—held in eleven cities, with the largest in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa—mark a significant development in the “tent city” movement against high housing costs launched by students nearly three weeks ago. With a total population of about 7 million, 150,000 people represents a large percentage of the country.
While still in its early stages, a movement within the Israeli working class is being driven by worsening social inequality, economic hardship, and enormous anger with the Netanyahu government and the existing political setup in the country.
Yediot Aharonot columnist Nahum Barnea described the protests as unprecedented. “Whether the crowds numbered 100,000 or 200,000, never have such numbers descended into the streets over social issues,” he wrote. “Who would have believed that 150,000 Israelis would take the trouble to go out into the street in the name of social change… the alienation and cynicism that typified the public in the past number of years has now been replaced by involvement and protest.”
The largest protest was in Tel Aviv, where up to 100,000 people marched through the city centre. According to media reports, another 10,000 rallied in Jerusalem outside the prime minister’s residence and 8,000 marched in Haifa. A smaller demonstration in central Nazareth involved both Jews and Arabs, the first such joint rally since the housing protests began.
Slogans included: “The people demand social justice”, “We want justice, not charity”, and “When the government is against the people, the people are against the government”. Protestors also made banners pointing to the influence of the recent uprisings in Egypt and other Arab countries. One read: “This is the Israeli spring”, and another, “Mubarak, Assad, Netanyahu!”
One young person was asked by the RT news network whether the protests had been inspired by events in Arab countries. He replied, “There is a lot of influence of what happened in Tahrir Square… There’s a lot of influence of course. That’s when people understand that they have the power, that they can organise by themselves, they don’t need any more the government to tell them what to do, they can start telling the government what they want.”
These developments presage a major shift within the Zionist state. Amid a worsening global economic breakdown, the social crisis in Israel is laying bare the objective potential for unifying Jewish workers with their Arab brothers and sisters both within Israel and throughout the Middle East. Opening up is a new path of political and social struggle, in opposition to the Zionist ruling elite, the Arab bourgeoisie and their imperialist backers—on the basis of common class interest, not nationality, race or religious identity.
Wider layers of the Israeli population are being drawn into the protest movement. Prominent musicians and writers have joined the demonstrations. Yesterday about 1,000 parents and their young children participated in a “strollers’ march” in Jerusalem and Haifa to protest against excessive day care centre costs and inadequate parental leave provisions.
A strike of public hospital medical professionals is in its fifth month. On Sunday, hundreds of doctors, medical residents and hospital interns protested near the Knesset (parliament) demanding adequate funding for the public health system.
Today, local authority workers are set to strike in support of the antigovernment protests, shutting down public offices and leaving rubbish uncollected.
The Netanyahu government has been plunged into crisis. A comment published by Ynet News columnist Attila Somfalvi noted: “Some 150,000 people who left their homes yesterday directed their fury at the man who they view as the culprit behind the State’s privatisation and burial of concern for the regular folk. These are not a bunch of ‘spoiled brats’ who can be dismissed with a disparaging hand gesture or by rolling one’s eyes; these are working people; angry people facing collapse... This protest is making its way to the top of the government, shakes up Likud, rocks the leather chairs in the Knesset and makes the prime minister and finance minister sweat and seek an escape route from the fury pouring into the street.”
The Shas party, which represents ultra-orthodox Jews and has 11 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, has warned it may withdraw from Netanyahu’s coalition government, potentially triggering new elections.
The prime minister has rushed to try to defuse the protest movement. Immediately after Saturday’s demonstrations Netanyahu called a cabinet meeting and announced that a “special team” of ministers and experts would listen to the protest leaders and submit a plan to “alleviate Israelis’ economic burden”. He declared: “We are all aware of the genuine hardship of the cost of living in Israel… we must deal with the genuine distress, seriously and responsibly. This, without a doubt, compels us to change our list of priorities.”
This hollow rhetoric has been accompanied by various sops in response to the protestors’ demands. Last Tuesday, Netanyahu promised to build 50,000 units of housing within 18 months. The government yesterday announced that the excise tax on petrol is to be lowered for one month, during August, and that some elderly people will have their home heating grant doubled. The prime minister has also suggested that he hopes to cut taxes and water charges.
At the same time, Netanyahu has made clear that there will be no serious concessions to the social demands of the protesting workers and youth. “We must avoid irresponsible, hasty and populist steps that are liable to cause the country to deteriorate into the situation of certain European countries, which are on the verge of bankruptcy and large-scale unemployment,” he declared.
Finance minister and senior Likud member Yuval Steinitz raised the spectre of state bankruptcy even more sharply. “We see the talk about the debt crisis in Europe,” he said. “We are even hearing talk of a possible default in the United States. My supreme duty is to ensure we do not reach this situation in the State of Israel... we will not turn the rich and the business people and the investors and the industrialists into the enemies of the people, because they are part of a healthy economy.”
The financial markets are clearly bringing enormous pressure to bear on the Netanyahu government, urging a continuation of pro-business policies irrespective of mass opposition. The value of Israeli government bonds declined after the weekend’s rallies. “Growing protests over rising prices increase pressure on the government to act,” Tel Aviv bond trader Ehud Itzhakov told Bloomberg. “There is concern in the market the government may need to raise more debt, which is creating uncertainty about the deficit.”
The Israeli Treasury Department is reportedly outraged over the government’s limited spending announcements in response to the protests. The director general of Israel’s finance ministry, Haim Shani, resigned yesterday. He cited “differences of opinion in fundamental issues” with the finance minister, adding that “events of the past few days have exacerbated the problems.”
It remains to be seen how the Netanyahu government responds to the crisis in the next days and weeks, but there is a real danger that a provocation will be launched against the Palestinian people or neighbouring Arab states as a diversion.

Sutton, England - Large fire destroys site office at Carshalton property development

2011-08-03T12:30:00.000-07:00

sutton guardian

30/07/2011 - A fire ripped through a site office at a development in Carshalton last night.London Fire brigade received the first calls at about 7.50pm Friday night of a blaze in Durand Close, Carshalton.
The street is an old 1950s council estate that is currently being redeveloped.
Crews from Sutton and Wallington were first on the scene and reported smoke punching through the front of the building and flames out of the rear of the building, an old shop that was being used as a site office.
Above the site office was two derelict flats and the fire had spread vertically to these as well.
The flats were securely locked to prevent anyone entering the derelict building, adding to the fire fighters’ difficulties in accessing the property to put out the fire.
Crews from Mitcham, Norbury, Wandsworth, West Norwood and Wimbledon also attended with rescue units and aerial ladders to help control the large blaze.
The fire was finally put out at about 1am.
There was nobody in the site office, which was completely destroyed.
Fire investigation teams and the police are investigating the cause of the fire.

Bari, Italy - Hundreds of immigrants in revolt

2011-08-02T11:02:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_dhFGyPEho

ROME - Hundreds of immigrants in Bari detention centre for immigrants have blocked roads and tracks near the centre in protest against the bureaucratic delays that delay the release of the status of refugees. Clashes in Isola Capo Rizzuto, in front of the reception centre.
In Bari, the migrants blocked Highway 16 in both directions and the railway line that passes close to Cara. The police have intervened massively. Violent clashes, dozens of injuries among agents, thirty arrested. The situation was a mess all morning, until the start of a negotiation and, at 2pm, at the end of the protest when the prefect of Bari provided written guarantees to respond to immigrants by Wednesday.
The rail traffic on the Bari-Foggia was interrupted between Bari and Bari Palese Airport Industrial Zone. This caused the cancellation of 12 regional trains and delays for many long-distance trains.
Shortly after clashes began between immigrants and the police. Some demonstrators armed with stones and iron bars attacked police. Police cars were damaged. Immigrants also attacked a bus, with stones. Most immigrants come from Central Africa: Mali, Nigeria and Cameroon.
They lit some fires along the railway line and placed rocks on the tracks. The blocks were gradually removed by the police and the Railway employees. With a series of charges and the use of tear gas the police have made the protesters retreat to the area of Cara. Immigrants, however, continued to resist and were armed with iron bars and stones.

FUCK FASCISM!!! Solidarity event for the 6 antifascists being held in Wormwood Scrubs prison, London

2011-08-02T10:43:00.000-07:00

clik on leaflet to read

Rome, Italy - Massive fire at Tiburtina station. Was it sabotage against the TAV?

2011-08-01T17:35:00.001-07:00

radinrue
24/07/2011 - Dozens of hours were necessary for Roman firefighters to stop the fire that paralyzed rail traffic all over Italy. The fire destroyed a new building under construction in the Tiburtina station in Rome. The Italian railways are advising passengers not to take the train if possible. According to preliminary information available, no one was hurt. The damage is "enormous".The reasons for this fire have not yet been established, but the prosecutor does not rule out arson. The old part of the station of Turina was also affected, mainly administrative offices of the Italian Railways.Tiburtina is one of the largest rail interchanges in the city of Rome. The station under construction is to house the TAV - High-speed Italian trains. The TAV is facing many hostile voices, recently in the Turin area violent protests were organized against the project of this train. But members of the collective opposed to the TAV strongly denied being linked directly or indirectly to the fire on Sunday.Chaos without trains due to the fire moved to Bologna, Florence, and in Mediolano as well as the Roman station of Turina.
The building affected by fire will be destroyed, it is unrecoverable according to various experts.
Rome's metro has also experienced very strong perturbations due to the fire.

Here is what some Italian comrades have to say:

finimondo.org, 07/27/11

Corda tesa

While in Val Susa the battle between the volunteers rushing to defend the Free Republic of the Maddalena was raging against the Praetorians sent to enforce the Republic of Slave Italy, a blaze in the night in Rome destroyed the new control room of Tiburtina station (a node of the Tav), blocking the national rail traffic. The suspicion that there may be a link between the protests in the valley and the metropolitan fire was immediate, as was immediate the outrage and denial of "NoTav People" through its public representatives; institutional assurances on probable natural causes were late in coming and not very convincing: it is a short circuit, less likely to be sabotage, or perhaps the side effect of a simple theft of copper.

But this suspicion has been creeping for hours and has not entirely disappeared - midway between hope and fear – a lot is being said. On the fear of the authorities as the possibilities of action. Those who are terrorised and those who are enthusiastic: the possibility that the struggle against the Tav could come out of this far away valley in Piedmont to explode throughout the country. That it finally gets rid of the unbearable citizenist litany to take up the weapon of sabotage. A thought at the same time terrible and wonderful. And not only is it possible, it is also easy. No video surveillance system, no increased patrols will ever be able to guarantee the effectiveness of a rail network which is spread over tens of thousands of miles. There is no need to take a train and get on the wagon of politics to try to stop the High Speed. There is no need to be generous, humble and silent labourers for the small differently republican strategists.

The fire in Rome burned for fifteen hours before being extinguished. But the ashes left behind rebel embers continue to sprout. Tav sites have burned elsewhere in Italy, as did the lorries of a company involved in the work of Chiomonte. And now firemen are arriving from everywhere with their water pumps, those that spit foam and those that bring out press releases. It is especially the latter – the spokespersons, representatives, leaders - who are working the most to throw water on the fire. The day before yesterday, they disapproved of the fire in Florence, yesterday they were horrified by that of Rome, now they condemn that of Susa. But what, within the noble and generous "NoTav People" were not all the minds, the methods, all the behaviour supposed to live together in respect for differences? Were not all welcome, those who make prayers to heaven ajust as those who throw curses on earth?

Well no. It's all rhetoric, lies, as demonstrated by the spitting of condemnation on the flames of the sabotage, too singular to deserve the applause of the masses. The ovations addressed to other hunter-alpine soldiers who guarded the Chiomonte site. The only thing that seems welcome in Val Susa is the foul cohabitation - product of collusion between those who advocate that another politic is possible, another Republic is possible, another State is possible, and those who would like the end of all politics all Republics, all States. A dialectical game carried out by an alternation of tacit agreements and patient sighs, of closed eyes and plugged noses, linguistic acrobatics and timely omissions, in view of settling the final account. Lies and hypocrisy, with in the precociously dried up heart the hope of having become so skilled that one can even manage to do business with bankers.

Suspicions about the fire in Rome, like the certainties concerning those in the regions of Modena, Florence and Susa, are there to warn that this putrid political friendship that guarantees concorde where there can only be conflict, might well cease from one moment to the next.

Lyon, France - Detention centre set on fire! Thousands of euro damage

2011-07-31T17:27:00.000-07:00

cette semaine

29/07/2011 - Lyon Capital - After a fire destroyed part of the Administrative Detention Centre (ARC) from Lyon Saint-Exupéry, eight people caught red-handed at the scene were placed in custody. Hundreds of thousands of euros of property damage could be imputed to them.
According to preliminary investigation conducted by the Regional Directorate of the Police and air borders (PAF), the fire started in five different parts of the detention centre in Lyon, Thursday, July 28, shortly after 13h . Upon arrival of firefighters, eight people were caught red-handed at the scene of the fire started in the part reserved for men of the CRA. They were placed in custody in order to sort out their respective responsibilities. But after several hours' questioning, police have still failed to understand who on Friday had started the fire, and who was an accomplice. "There will certainly be prosecution in this case," a police source said Friday late afternoon. A judicial inquiry could be opened at the end of police custody Saturday night, before a criminal trial.
The damage has not yet been evaluated. A safety committee will spend the next few days to assess the damage. In the meantime, the centre is closed. Of the detained, 58 people were transferred to other detention centres, in Nimes and Toulouse.
..In Lyon, never had a fire forced the closure of the detention centre. A precedent in 2007 had not caused much damage. There is already talk of hundreds of thousands of euros' damage.

Rome, Italy - Riot at immigrant detention centre, eight cops injured

2011-07-31T17:19:00.000-07:00

signalfire

July 31, 2011 - Rome. Eight police officers were injured overnight as detainees burned mattresses and threw bottles in a riot at an immigrant detention centre outside Rome, Italian news agency ANSA reported on Saturday, as cited by AFP.

The riot broke out when four Algerian detainees were brought back to the centre after trying to escape the closely-guarded Ponte Galeria facility near Rome’s Fiumicino airport – essentially a holding centre for deportations.
The riot lasted around three hours and detainees trashed rooms and threw rocks, bottles and metal pipes at police. Firemen put out several blazes.
The protest follows similar scenes on Wednesday at a centre in Sicily in which 300 asylum-seekers — many of them African migrant workers from Libya – blocked a road and set off fires, asking to be granted refugee status.

Santiago, Chile: Two Citizen Safety guard posts torched

2011-07-31T16:46:00.000-07:00

From Liberación Total (July 29, 2011) via mass media, translated by this is our job:

During the evening of Thursday, July 28, two Santiago Municipality Citizen Safety guard posts were attacked.

The first attack happened at around 10 p.m., when masked perpetrators threw Molotov cocktails at a guard post located at the intersection of Calle Erasmo Escala and Calle Maipú. The resulting fire partially damaged the exterior, and the municipal guard stationed there sustained minor injuries after cutting himself while exiting through the window.

The second attack took place 20 minutes later, just meters from the first, at another Citizen Safety guard post located at the intersection of Calle Martínez de Rosas and Calle Maturana. There, the masked perpetrators forcibly removed the municipal guard before dousing the guard post with gasoline and pelting it with Molotov cocktails. The resulting fire completely destroyed the guard post.

Carabineros and Investigative Police (PDI) “intelligence” agents arrived at the scene of both incidents to investigate in an attempt to determine the perpetrators’ identities. Prosecutor Humberto Vásquez is leading the investigation, and he used the press to call on citizens to collaborate with the authorities’ information gathering, especially if any video recordings of the attacks exist.

Also present was Santiago mayor Pablo Zalaquett. The extreme rightist classified the incidents as anarchist attacks, adding that “those responsible will rot in prison” as an example to anyone else who dares to subvert authority.

The following text was found on leaflets at the sites of both attacks:

REVENGE ATTACK

We condemn and avenge the beating of an unnamed comrade by Citizen Safety during the June 23 march.

We have witnessed how Citizen Safety, in complicity with the Carabineros, harasses and persecutes street vendors.

These municipal functionaries have been transformed into Zalaquett’s police, and since they are police, we will attack them as such.

No aggression will go unanswered.

Grigny (Essonne), France: sabotage against electrical CCTV

2011-07-30T11:53:00.000-07:00

cette semaine

28/07/2011 - Le Parisien 27/-7/2011 - Part of the private owners have been without public lighting from two to three weeks. The residents suspect an act of vandalism to the installation of surveillance cameras.
"There is not much to say. We are immersed in total darkness, it is appalling," says one resident wearily. Behind him, the towers of the giant block of flats Grigny 2 can only be seen by the lights still on in some apartments. It is 22h30, and at down below some of these 104 apartments, areas Surcouf, Lavoisier, Pasteur, and Vayssiere, not one lamp is working.
While experts are trying to determine where the failure comes from, it seems that acts of vandalism associated with the installation of video surveillance in the neighbourhood are at the origin. A vast field of 185 cameras funded by the state as part of urban renewal should indeed be officially delivered today. While the inhabitants themselves, are coping with the darkness at sunset." It is urgent. This raises real issues of security," says the Mayor of Grigny. Yesterday, the elected official has warned the provisional administrator of this estate under guardianship because of its debts and part of the lighting has been restored, especially in Surcouf.

Southwest China - Hundreds of people riot after disabled street vendor beaten to death by security forces

2011-07-30T11:37:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQeLqSGpFaA

bankok post

This image was posted on Chinese website Youku.com and shows Chinese police marching through Anshun, in southwest China's Guizhou province on July 26. Hundreds of people rioted in southwest China after security forces reportedly beat a disabled street vendor to death, according to government authorities and state media.The crowd gathered in Guizhou province's Anshun city Tuesday afternoon after the hawker died, the local government said, in an incident that bore a close similarity with riots last month in China's southern industrial heartland.A police spokesman said the one-legged man had argued with the "chengguan", the official Xinhua news agency said Wednesday, referring to a municipal security force charged with regulating street hawking and similar activities.

Comments posted by netizens said the "chengguan" -- two men and one woman -- beat the disabled vendor to death. The Xinhua report said an investigation was under way to find out how he died.

Hong Kong-based Cable TV broadcast images of the unrest, showing overturned cars, people throwing stones at shield-wielding police, and injured, bleeding protesters.

It said police used water cannons to disperse the crowd, and that shooting sounds were heard, believed to be the firing of tear gas.

The "chengguan" are widely disliked in China, where they have a reputation for using brute force against civilians -- in particular illegal street vendors.

Rumours that "chengguan" had beaten a street hawker to death and manhandled his pregnant wife in the southern province of Guangdong sparked violent rioting last month.

Television images at the time showed hundreds of police officers and armoured vehicles deployed on the streets, with people hurling bricks at local officials, vandalising ATMs and police posts.

These incidents are the latest in a recent bout of unrest in China sparked by perceived social injustices.

Earlier in June, hundreds of people battled police and destroyed cars in Guangdong after a factory worker was wounded in a knife attack over a wage row.

And in late May, thousands of ethnic Mongols protested in northern China for several days after the killing of a herder laid bare simmering tensions in the region.

Trento, Italy: sabotage of an ENI petrol station

2011-07-30T11:30:00.000-07:00

informa-azione/cette semaine

25/07/2011 - From local newspapers, we learn that on the night of July 15 to 16, an ENI petrol station [Italian oil multinational]. Unknown persons threw red paint against the building, and injected polyurethane [that is to say, expanding foam] into pumps and self-service vending slots, making some of the pumps unusable for several days. The claim refers to Libya [that is to say against the NATO intervention] and those imprisoned in Bologna in April.

Val Susa, Italy - Sabotage against collaborator of the construction site and dissociation of the No Tav movement

2011-07-30T10:43:00.000-07:00

informa-azione/cette semaine

25/07/2011 - From the local press - Last night around 4am, Italcoge, one of the companies working on the site of TAV, was attacked. Vandals set fire to five trucks parked outside the Susa headquarters. They forced a gate to enter the courtyard. After putting "diavolina" on the tires [that is to say, fire starter, or ZIP Ndt], they then set them on fire: one truck was completely destroyed, another heavily damaged and three others slightly so. After the attacks against the construction site, this is the first raid against the Valsusine company. Some time ago, a founding partner of Italcoge, Ferdinando Lazzaro, was assaulted in the street by demonstrators who had sent him to the hospital with a fractured elbow.
The No Tav, on their official website, deny their involvement in the raid: "We believe that this gesture does not support the No Tav movement, but is an attack and a way of intervening in the struggle that we do not share. (...) This act goes in the opposite direction of the No Tav initiatives that make participation and mass resistance the central node of a battle that makes gifts to no one .. ".
Translated from the Italian from a local newspaper, reproduced on informa-azione, Monday, 25/07/2011 - 12:39
cette semaine, translator's note: Mass has been pronounced! May each one say what they think clearly about this sabotage and the reaction of all those involved in the website of the para-institutional No Tav movement, who would continue to use it to send texts or translate theirs (especially in France without at least clarifying that this is a site of collaborators with power).
And enough about on this "mass", this "people" of the valley that would all be standing together ... First, there are pro-Tav people in the valley, and then some of those who are against it are not resisting it. Finally there is the question of why, especially for all those who resist. And finally, there is above all the question of why, for all those who are resisitng.
Why that can more or less lived according to taste, at least until some dissociate from others by pointing them out to the cops: according to these scales, the unknown authors of this successful and focused attack would be those who do not make the "masses" the alpha and omega of their ideas and practices, those who think that attacks of the few are not inconsistent with the rallies or demonstrations of the many. Follow their eyes ...
This practice of dissociation (or distancing oneself, as appropriate) and its consequences (indicating to power who to suppress in order to save one's own ass), is not an isolated case, it is more than common in all "popular" struggles, at least since the 70s. May each one draw the practical consequences against this garbage (www.notav.info managers, since this release was signed directly by the site) and their friends: on the one hand those who defend it, on the other those who, in not breaking with them publicly and clearly, are socially contributing to their power to harm ...

Moscow, Russia - Flames to a police station

2011-07-29T17:38:00.000-07:00

blackblocg.info | culmine

28/07/2011 - On the night of July 6, 2011 a group of urban guerrillas set fire to the entrance of the police station located on ul.Sindacato, ecc. Bldg 130. 4. This station has several characteristics: it is located in a non-residential building, and is coated with an inflammable construction material which greatly facilitated the fire. In addition, it is a den of common bandits in grey uniform. The unrecorded rampant corruption of the police, because of their power and privileges - is well known. Nothing new about this - to any reasonable person the reasons for our actions are clear. Join the fight for freedom, justice and dignity! ACAB

Val Susa, Italy - Night raids after demonstrators launch lead balls, bolts and stones against police

2011-07-29T16:14:00.001-07:00

la stampa

29/07/2011 - The Digos has made a series of raids in the night in Turin, Susa Valley and the Canavese. At the centre of the investigation some members of the anarchist, autonomous and also the No Tav movement. One of them was accompanied to police headquarters for legal clarifications. The operation, coordinated by the deputy director of Digos Tartone Cecilia, came two hours after the end of the clashes in the Chiomonette site between about two hundred hooded demonstrators and law enforcement.
Of the seven raids that have already occurred, two were on the delegation of the judicial authorities for threatening behaviour, while five are the initiative of Digos looking for weapons and explosives in relation to the attacks made against the police in recent days. At the moment - the police announced - some slingshots, firecrackers and gas masks were discovered and seized.
The same 'equipment' used last night, when the extremists launched lead balls, bolts and stone against police. The resultt is six wounded, one in serious condition with a leg injury: three policemen, two pcarabinieri and a finance guard. The attacks were unleashed from two sides: the archaeological area, which in recent days has already suffered serious damage, and the area under the motorway viaduct Clarea. Calm returned around 3.30, but the A32 was closed for 5 hours.
The police report that "protractedvehement attacks." The protesters tried to attack a metal cable to the network in an attempt to eradicate it, but the rope was cut off by the police. During the night, protesters also set fire to the wooded area opposite the Archaeological Museum, which was promptly extinguished. For the duration of the unrest on the Avana road, in the area of Chiomonte power plant, a hundred inhabitants of the Susa Valley against the railway infrastructure, carried out a vigil of protest.
---------
Antenna 3
Last night a patrol of the Traffic Police, the ring road of the Val Susa near the exit of the A32 Turin-Bardonecchia, Turin arrested a 46 year old man, carrying 57 gas masks and 118 filters, a sporting sling and 96 balls of lead. The man who, according to police, belongs to the Committee for the popular struggle against the high-speed railway, has been charged with illegal possession of offensive objects. In the car in which he was traveling, the agents found a few boxes still packed with masks, worth about three thousand euros. According to the police station, in shops in Val Susa and around Turin, there has been an "extraordinary increase" in sales of construction material, such as helmets, padded gloves as well as gas masks in recent day.

Trento, Italy - Vodafone antenna destroyed by fire in solidarity with Billy Costa and Silvia and the struggle against the TAV

2011-07-28T16:04:00.000-07:00

culmine - Source: local press

28/07/2011 - A tongue of flame hundreds of feet high. So, on the night between Sunday and Monday, fire destroyed the Vodafone antenna on via Fersina, within walking distance of Dolomiti Energia and some houses. Arson, fed by a bottle of gasoline on the ground, among vines and corn, the claim: "The unpredictability of life will take you with fire." And then "No Tav", "No harmfulness" (already left as a signature on the wall of the railway construction site in Rovereto in the arson attack of ten days ago), and "against power and against control," and finally "freedom to Billy Costa and Silvia." A leaflet written by hand with a sharp-edged calligraphy reminiscent of the writings of the years of terrorism. Writing, above all, that makes it impossible to identify the handwriting. The investigations of the police are, as always in the early stages, 360 degrees, but the track is most likely anarchist. Also because in the past mobile phone repeaters were in the viewfinder. The alarm was launched around 2 am by a passerby who saw the antenna turned into a huge torch. Hence the intervention of firefighters and police. The first engaged in trying to minimize the damage, the latter in search of items that can help get identification of the authors of the fire. The chosen area is within walking distance from Dolomiti Energia but also a short distance from houses even though the antenna is immersed in a vineyard. According to a first hypothesis, those who started the fire left the car along the road and then walked into the country. With them, it seems, they had a plastic bottle which was found with a few drops of gasoline still inside. Then the fence that runs around the repeater,which was soaked in inflammable liquid, was cut. At this point it took a little flame to start the fire which quickly conquered the whole antenna. The heat burned the skirt that covered the wires thus making it useless to the repeater and causing thousands of euros damage. Yesterday, after an inspection of the engineers in charge carabinieri arrived to find a quick solution, but it seems that the intervention is not easy. Nevertheless, there was no major inconvenience to Vodafone mobile with regard to coverage. Concerning the arson it has been advised that the prosecution will now have to carry out a series of investigations to try to reconstruct what happened.

Kanaker, Syria - Dawn raid against solidarity results in 11 dead and 250 arrested

2011-07-28T15:12:00.000-07:00

montrealgazette

28/07/2011 - Syrian forces pursued a deadly crackdown on anti-regime dissents Wednesday, killing 11 people in a "vengeance" raid near Damascus and arresting hundreds outside the capital, activists said.
The latest violence came as about 200 Syrian youth activists opened a four-day meeting in Istanbul to discuss ways of improving coordination among groups seeking to topple President Bashar al-Assad.
The raid targeted Kanaker, a town of 250,000 people west of Damascus, Ammar Qorabi, head of the National Organization for Human Rights, told AFP in Nicosia.
"The security forces entered homes at dawn on Wednesday and during the operation 11 people were shot dead and more than 250 arrested," said Qorabi, providing AFP with the names of the victims.
"A bulldozer and army tanks" backed the operations, while 11 vehicles were used to whisk away those arrested, who are between 15 and 40 years old, he said, adding that electricity, water and Internet connections were cut.
Qorabi said the raid was an "act of vengeance" because Kanaker residents had provided supplies to the southern town of Daraa, the epicentre of more than four months of anti-regime protests.
In a statement emailed to AFP, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Daraa has been under curfew since Saturday. The group provided the names of eight people it said were killed in the crackdown in Kanaker.
It said troops and security forces stormed Kanaker at dawn under heavy gunfire.
"Residents of Kanaker threw stones at the tanks" and set tires ablaze to block their approach.
According to the Syrian Observatory, 18 tanks were positioned at the entrances of Kanaker, but four had to withdraw under a barrage of stones from residents.
At least 1,486 civilians have been killed in the crackdown on the uprising that started in mid-March, while thousands have been arrested and thousands more fled the country, human-rights groups say.
Some groups say at least 12,000 people have been detained since the anti-regime protests erupted.

Santiago, Chile - Special Forces Carabineros use tear gas and water cannons to disperse hooded demonstrators from city centre

2011-07-28T14:39:00.000-07:00

lanacion

28/07/2011 - Carabineros of Special Forces used tear gas and water cannons to disperse hooded demonstrators blocking the road south of the Alameda Bernardo O'Higgins in front of Arturo Prat street in the heart of Santiago this Wednesday morning.
Some 30 subjects starred in the action at 07:00 AM hours causing traffic congestion in several blocks in the direction east of the main artery of the capital until the arrival of the police about 15 minutes later.
The incidents were recorded almost in front of the Central House of the University of Chile and a few metres from the National Institute, establishments that are still in the framework of conflict about education.
The group fled to the latter compound, according to Carabineros, the same left carrying the materials used in the barricades from the emblematic lyceum in the centre of Santiago.

From house arrest in Santiago, Chile - Mónika Caballero in solidarity with the comrades of the CCF and with Billy, Silvia and Costa

2011-07-28T14:13:00.000-07:00

culmine

28/07/2011
In anticipation of the start of the political-judicial-thriller media spectacle known as "caso bombas", I am breaking the silence of house arrest to send a fraternal greeting to the comrades the o.r.cc.f. who yesterday saw the conclusion of their first trial. The exemplary vindictive measures of the powerful have shown themselves in the territory denominated the Greek State.

It may seem a poor strategy on the part of one risking a sentence of 20 years' prison (accused of participation in a non-existent illicit terrorist association and the placing of explosives) to show solidarity with people who declare themselves guilty, but I am not interested in entering the rationale of the oppressors and observing implacably as they imprison the warriors that collide with this society and who, attacking, passed to action with conviction. Solidarity to those who have passed to the offensive has always been criticized by the pseudo-revolutionaries who see anti-authoritarian practices as youth fashion, and when the war carries high costs they take a distance and become mere spectators of a battle which they have neither the ovaries nor the balls to continue, nor is it to make a group sacrifice or deliver oneself easily to the enemy.
But what would happen if you did not make acts of solidarity toward those who have been struck by capital? Is it less dangerous to support those that are legally innocent? I am an anarchist and I am not interested in the laws of society. Solidarity is not just a high-sounding word of communiques, it is material and concrete practice.

Wherever they are, an imprisoned anti-authoritarian cannot feel alone. Tomorrow could already be late…
For you prisoners of the "Halandri case":
I read your communiques and declarations, I have made many of your words my own and cherish them like a beautiful treasure, without ever having had the opportunity to exchange a word with you I call you comrades and I feel your heavy sentences in my bones.

The hegemony of power uses (will use) the same strategies, the trial that is being carried out in this part of the world is a bad copy of other trials, your trial will be a model to be followed for many governments, it will be "the great antiterrorist victory". But all this happens where there is the most beautiful disobedience. Ideas cannot be defeated, indeed they reinforce themselves in others that hold them carved in their chest. I imagine the pleasure on the faces of the guards at seeing the bodies of such worthy people behind bars, anger and disgust inebriate me at a mere attempt to be in their place. Prison, death and escape are in the DNA of the unyielding, they are the cost for having bitten the chains.

Walls and borders separate us, ideas unite us.
A tiny gesture… I hope it will give you a smile in these hard times.
I would like to take this opportunity to send a hug of solidarity to Silvia, Costa and Billy
I give you a poem by Sandra Trafilaf, political prisoner of Pinochet's military dictatorship, written around 1984.

"Fences and metal doors
surround this underworld
trying imprison our joy of living
and loving
the letters of my comrades
are fluttering
in this improvised writing desk
cries and voices from afar
mingle with their words
confused, dark memories
of murderous volleys
and all the same I
fill up again with struggles
and victories.
I am not alone."

Mónika Caballero
An anarchist awaiting trial
Ps: I would like to thank each individual and/or collective that spreads each release and makes possible interaction between comrades.

Lugano, Switzerland - On the trial of Billy Costa and Silvia and the week of action

2011-07-27T01:33:00.000-07:00

informa-azione

27/07/2011 - "The 3 were sentenced to 3 years and 6 months, 3 years and 8 months and 3 years and 4 months, exceeding the demands of the prosecutor. The judge accepted the argument maintaining all the accusatory charges (preparatory acts of arson, illegal transport and concealment of material) excluding the charge of illegal trade (importing) in explosives.
From 18 to 22 July the comrades were in solitary confinement in Lugano prison with new additional restrictions. Despite requests by lawyers, the trial, except for the testimony of two experts, was held in German. The lawyers had requested interviews with their clients after the verdict because they feared that not even the verdict by the presiding judge would be translated. But the three lawyers were stopped by anti-riot cops while the three were taken away in a hurry (under protection of a military helicopter). From the start, federal prosecutors and the judge revealed a willingness to come down relentlessly on the 3, as is obvious, the State will not tolerate anyone escaping its logic of delegation, submission and resignation, acting in first person to stop their project of dominion. "The militarization of the trial further emphasizes that it is politics that are directing this trial," said Marcel Bosonnet, one of the lawyers.
Comrades from Switzerland and beyond came together to express their solidarity, giving life to a series of initiatives during the entire week. In addition to the scheduled debates there were demonstrations outside the court and the prison in Lugano, information bookstalls, leaflets, a presence downtown and spontaneous demonstrations in Bellinzona and Lugano, and other initiatives.
The week was very eventful, solidarity broke the monotony of quiet days in Ticino, the trial has not gone unnoticed. Our presence in the city and initiatives enabled us to pass on our message, taking leading projects and responsibilities of IBM to the streets, repeating the need for opposition to the techno-industrial system.
Against progress and nanotechnology, a roar shakes apathy! "
Their addresses are still:

Silvia Guerini
c/o
Regionalgefängnis Biel
Spitalstrasse 20
2502 Biel/Bienne, Switzerland

Luca Bernasconi
c/o
Regionalgefängnis Thun
Allmendstr. 34
3600 Thun, Switzerland

Costantino Ragusa
c/o
Regionalgefängnis Bern
Genfergasse 22
3001 Bern, Switzerland

Zurich, Switzerland - attacks in solidarity with Silvia, Billy and Costa, sentenced to 3.8, 3.4 and 3.2 years in prison

2011-07-26T23:53:00.000-07:00

informa-azione

26/07/2011 - indymedia.ch
The trial against Sylvia, Billy Costa who were sentenced yesterday to 3.8, 3.4 and 3.2 years in prison was held in Bellinzona on 19 - 22 July. To them our solidarity: our struggles certainly can not be put on trial!
In the night between 22 and 23 July we visited both AXPO and the court of Zurich. At the headquarters of AXPO, Zollstrasse 62, Zurich, broken windows and: Silvia Costa and Billy! sprayed.
The Axpo Holding AG (formerly NOK Nordostschweiz. Kraftwerke and CKW, Centralschweiz Kraftwerke) is a corporation owned by, among others, several northeastern Swiss cantons. Axpo produces, sells and distributes electricity throughout Europe. It is also one of the leading companies in Switzerland with an important role in the construction and operation of nuclear power plants. In 2007 it was the first, along with other energy companies, to lobby to get the mandate for the construction of three new nuclear power stations in Switzerland. That is why the substantial profits of the trade of electricity continue to remain in the hands of a few companies, including AXPO.
The court in Zurich, headquarters of bourgeois justice, judges and powerful capital. The place where the trial of revolutionary anarchist Marco Camenisch was held in 2004!
And another salute to Walter Wüthrich (Swiss Federal Criminal Court judge) and the federal prosecutor asshole Stadler:
Wüthrich, Stadler aus der Traum, bald liegt ihr im Kofferraum!
The struggle against this system will not be stopped by your repression!
Solidarity!

Xinjiang, China - 18 dead during attack on police station

2011-07-20T12:20:00.000-07:00

reuters

20/07/2011 - BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Wednesday raised the death toll to 18 from a clash at a police station in the restive far western region of Xinjiang, saying that 14 rioters died along with two policemen and two hostages in the worst violence there in a year.
Government officials previously said at least four people were killed in what they described as a terrorist attack. But the Germany-based exile group World Uyghur Congress said it was an attack on unarmed protesters.
The clash marked the worst violence in about a year in the far western region, home to many Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people native to the area, many of whom resent the growing presence of majority Han Chinese in Xinjiang.
Xinjiang is strategically vital to China and Beijing has shown no sign of loosening its grip on the territory, which accounts for one-sixth of China's land mass and holds rich deposits of oil and gas and borders Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Central Asia.
The exile group had said 20 Uighurs were killed -- 14 beaten to death and 6 shot dead -- and 70 arrested, when police opened fire on protesters, leading to fighting between the two sides.
The Xinjiang government's website (www.xinjiang.gov.cn) said that police fatally shot the 14 rioters after giving "legal education and warnings," adding that 18 rioters had bought and made weapons and sneaked into the desert city of Hotan days before the clash on Monday.
The report said the rioters, armed with axes, knives, daggers, Molotov cocktails and explosive devices, "crazily beat, smashed and set on fire" the police station, and hung "flags of extreme religion" on the top of the station.
Two policemen and two hostages were also killed in the clash and four of the rioters were arrested, it added. "It was an organized, premeditated and severe violent terrorist attack to local politics-and-law departments," the report said.
The website also showed three pictures it said were taken on the scene of the incident, showing police with guns storming into a police station, which in one photo was on fire.

Huy, Belgium - Two guards taken hostage; two prisoners escape

2011-07-20T12:08:00.000-07:00

suie e cendres

18/07/2011 - HUY - Two prisoners escaped after having taken hostage two guards with a cutter knife. They were working in the workshop of the prison, took the two guards hostage and forced the others to open all the gates. Outside the prison, they released one guard, taking the other one to his car. With him and his car, they drove away to Charleroi where they eventually released the guard. The escaped prisoners are 24 and 23 years old and were condemned to long sentences (13 years for armed robberies and theft with violence).
The guards went on 'minimum service' to protest against the violent escape, which means no prisoner gets visits, walks, showers or other activities.

Andenne - Guards taken hostage; failed attempt to escape prison
19/07/2011 - ANDENNE - In the early morning, a prisoner tried to escape. He took two guards hostage threatening them with a self-made bomb. The prisoner got to the front of the prison, but there police officers managed to arrest him. The incident caused further unrest in the prison.
Just as their collegeas from Huy where the day before two other prisoners escaped, the guards on their side decided to go on "minimum service", which means no showers, no walks, no visits, no activities for all the prisoners.

Bellinzona, Switzerland - Prosecutor asks for three to three and a half years sentence for Silvia, Billy and Costa

2011-07-20T12:01:00.000-07:00

informa-azione

20/07/2011 - Source: cdt.ch - Corriere del Ticino
BELLINZONA - The federal prosecutor Hansjorg Stadler has asked prison sentences from three years to three and a half years for three suspected eco-terrorists on trial before the Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona. The word now passes to the defence.
The three are accused of an attempted attack on the nanotechnology research centre of IBM in Rüschlikon, which was then still under construction. They must answer charges of intentional acts preparatory to a fire, concealment and transportation of explosive materials and unauthorized trade of explosives.

Bellinzona, Switzerland - Mobilization for the Trial of Silvia, Costa & Billy

2011-07-19T11:49:00.000-07:00

325 nostate

Freedom for Silvia, Costa & Billy – Solidarity with all the Revolutionary Prisoners

All meetings will be held in “Casa del Popolo” in Bellinzona, Switzerland, (in front of the train station). As well as the presence during the hearings there will be demos in the city throughout the week.

18 July – 6pm : Struggle against Nuclear Plants
Contributions of past and ongoing experiences. Debate about the possibilities of intervention. Updates on Marco Camenisch

20 July – 6pm : Nano & Biotechnologies
Presentation of information materials and discussion. Video projection of “RFID-la police totale”.

21 July – 6pm : Debate about the importance of solidarity for the revolutionary movement
Information about other trials, like the one that will be held on September 28-29-30 against a comrade of Aufbau and SRI

In April 2010 Silvia, Costantino and Billy were arrested close to Zurich and since then, accused of wanting to attack an IBM laboratory of nanotechnology research with explosive material, they are imprisoned in the Swiss jails. A little more than a year after our comrades are going to be processed (July 18-22) while IBM laboratory “Binning and Rhorer nanotechnology centre”, which opened last May, will be starting its horrible projects. IBM, American corporation pioneer in nanotechnology, through miniaturization of electronic components on nanometric scale would like to transform human beings, animals, natural environment and infrastructures into gears of a mega-machine for life’s absolute control.
What does it matter if economic efficiency kills, attacks, stresses, depresses and makes everything sick, if it plunders the ecosystem and undermines survival on the earth, if it subdues bodies and spirits to its speed, if it justifies itself just by itself and it feeds on itself, out of any sense. In the name of the “functional”, idealized value, the “perfect” machine is trying to take the place of human beings, imperfect, inconstant, fragile.
Our struggle, that of Billy, Costa and Silvia, united with that of every revolutionary and rebel in the world, has always been direct to fight the systems of exploitation and control. Our comrades have never concealed their hostility against those who are everyday exploiting, poisoning and terrorizing. In their eyes the enemy has always been visible, easy to find. It’s not difficult to recognize that the new technologies (nanotechnology, biotechnology and cybernetics) are some of the means of power, in the hands of a few people, to subject everything and everyone.
The progress of the techno-industrial system reinforces thanks to them, necessary fuel of a development model that needs the consent and the total social peace, but they will never get them. We will always fight those people who are turning the earth into a silicon land, made of cables and concrete and who are going to make our lives a virtual substitute of existence. We’ll also fight against the state and the capitalistic system that with their illogical theories turn men into slaves, animals into goods and the planet into a permanent reserve to sack. We need proper answers… we need fighters!