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.
Tuesday, 23 August 2011
Frenso, CA: West Coast Solidarity Action – Molotovs thrown into Fresno substation parking lot
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Saturday, 20 August 2011
Birmingham, UK - August 9 - Masked and hooded rioters fired shots at police
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
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
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
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
Saturday, 13 August 2011
UK - The struggle against the existent continues
(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.
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.
Sunday, 7 August 2011
Saint-Gilles prison, Belgium - Screws on strike following attacks
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)
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
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)
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)
Saturday, 6 August 2011
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
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
bbcProtesters 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."
Thursday, 4 August 2011
Hama, Syria - 'People are being slaughtered like sheep' in the streets
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
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
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.
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.
Wednesday, 3 August 2011
Sutton, England - Large fire destroys site office at Carshalton property development
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.
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.
Tuesday, 2 August 2011
Bari, Italy - Hundreds of immigrants in revolt
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.
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.
Monday, 1 August 2011
Rome, Italy - Massive fire at Tiburtina station. Was it sabotage against the TAV?
radinrue24/07/2011 - 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 tesaWhile 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.
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