On retransmet un texte de Crimethinc sur la révolte des derniers jours dans la Baie de San Francisco, traduit sur le nouveau site Lundi matin (beau travail)…
« Si on brûle, vous brûlez avec nous. FTP »
La nature et l’enchaînement des évènements qui se sont produits ces deux dernières semaines dans la baie de San Francisco sont inédits. On peut parler d’une révolte. Celle-ci s’inscrit dans le cadre du mouvement national grandissant déclenché par les émeutes de Ferguson suite à l’exécution par la police de Michael Brown ; mais elle est à placer aussi dans la continuité des luttes qui se sont développées depuis 2009 à Oakland à la suite de la mort d’Oscar Grant. Lire la suite →
A brief insider’s report on the April 20th Plan Nord protest
This was overall a great day of fighting, even though it wasn’t all victorious. From the very first moments, it could be felt that we were set to totally seize the day, and this was showing in black blocs serenely chanting and joking as they were dressing/gearing up. The Native spirit of the Earth was in us; harmonious, even in our drive towards disorder.
All thanks to the incompetence of Montreal’s fascist police force (only efficient at ganging up on individual street people) and the careless, mindless nihilo-capitalism of the political establishment, this April 20th’s protest against the corporate Plan Nord, a huge development plan aiming at robbing and raping roughly 70% of the Great North’s wilderness -through mining and hydroelectric development, mainly- has turned into the havoc that tons of student strikers and radicals alike were waiting for, deep inside.
Sabotaging and street-fighting among what it’s been a high-place of urban gentrification and pacification, the protesters of many different allegiances stormed the streets together and turned the opening of the Plan Nord conference at the Palais des Congrès into a microcosm of the ongoing class war, up against capitalism’s biggest, most violent push towards a new wave of colonization of Turtle Island’s land. This indicated how widespread and strong the awareness and opposition to corporate industrial development has grown
Shit finally hits the fan
Outside, battles have taken place between Police forces and rioters, successively going back and forth, where protesters made and extensive use of the (in)famous black bloc tactic of the « disperse and regroup later », thus creating a tense fight and machine of mass destruction of order for the whole afternoon. It started with the total destruction of one of the main entrances of the Palais, by massive paint-bombing and throwing of rocks, where the police took cover for a while, same place where they’d first started the fight by shooting a protester right in the face with a CS canister gun.
In the meantime, some protesters were able to slip inside the gigantic, futuristic, bleached out, building of the Palais to get near the place where the conference was happening, but were pushed back at the last minute by riot cops. The battle inside and outside has succeeded to delay PM Jean Charest’s speech for about 45 minutes and he was forced to skip the promo photo shots at the beginning.
Then as the fights spread, fronts of many offices and businesses for the rich elite in the area were rampaged, including the World Trade Center building, with its facade being successively spray-painted (a red « A » was sprayed right on the « W » logo at the main entrance, with « Plan Mort » next to it) and then windows-smashed. Gloating aside, there were several arrests (authorities report only a dozen, while student/activist orgs are reporting a few dozens), a few protesters got shot with tear gas cannons and beaten by goons, but a few cops were also injured in the scuffles, that turned at some point into a storm of thrown rocks, pieces of pavement and whatever was found relevant to be thrown at the violent, yet scared police.
In the face of the savage fury -first verbal and then more physical- of many protesters, the disorganization of the police troops grew rampant, while generalized fear could be clearly observed among their ranks, especially as different swarms of protesters were smashing order at many places at the same time. They were not just suddenly overwhelmed, but losing their faces as the « scarecrows », especially into people’s minds, just as more and more ordinary pedestrians were massing around and being treated just like the rest of the protesters. About the same kind of people to whom these corporate promoters/profiteers inside were trying to hand out a big, empty, carrot of promises, the increasingly frustrated proletariat was now being imposed the primitive, repressive, mind-warped argument of the stick. But so it seems, there are more and more people not buying into this one.
Attack on the World Trade Center: this time it wasn't a false flag, but a black flag!
Strangely, as the street battle was still unfolding between the walls of the financial center of downtown, screams and flash grenades being muffled out by the ordinary traffic noise, non-life was still relatively flowing as usual elsewhere in the area, with only the helicopters from the provincial police preying above like vultures as a faint signal of « something big » happening somewhere, added by the war-like radio reports of total mayhem happening at the Palais des Congrès… stuff that only proles would dream of in their wildest dreams. Perhaps they’re just waiting for a bunch of black blocs to show up and show them the way to liberation from their slavery?
There is another day of protest today against the Salon du Plan Nord, and huge (symbolic?) marches are set to be held, tomorrow, for Earth Day, so more updates may be flowing in soon, here and elsewhere. For live video coverage of the events, like the other student protests, have a look at CUTV Montreal.
Tel que reporté ici il y a quelques semaines, le réseau de hackers Antisec/Luzsec avait, durant leur « Week of Mayhem », réalisé l’exploit d’infiltrer et « domper » l’ensemble de la base de données de Strafor, méga-agence de renseignements privée. Il s’avère que Stratfor, basée au Texas, qui est un des principaux contractants de la CIA et de plusieurs des plus gros services de Police américains, ainsi que de plusieurs des 500 compagnies les plus riches aux USAs, comme les agences de rensignement de plusieurs gouvernements d’à travers le globe, dans la tradition de tout « bon » gouvernement corporatiste irresponsable, tel qu’on les aime si bien de nos jours. Un de ses récents « contrats » fut d’espionner une partie du mouvement Occupy, selon une fuite révélée en Janvier dernier par Anonymous. (liste des clients corporatifs de Stratfor, rendue publique)
Maintenant Wikileaks, en partenariat avec Anonymous, vient de faire sauter une autre bombe sur le front médiatique dans la guerre de l’information, alors que non seulement cet exploit avait toute l’ampleur qu’Antisec lui avaient donné à travers leur communiqué plein de lulz, mais toutes les informations juteuses sur les Strafor, ces liens avec les services secets et ses petits jeux sales à l’échelle mondiale, sont maintenant rendues publiques sur Wikileaks…
Plus de 5 millions de emails internes de la compagnie Stratfor, basée au Texas, qui s’étendent sur la période de juillet 2004 à fin décembre 2011. Les révélations les plus choquantes, les secrets les plus déconcertants, les opérations les plus sales, les connections et transactions les plus louches… tout y est!
Un exemple des implications de cette agence de rensignement privée à l’étranger: l’espionnage des activistes du désastre écologique et humanitaire de Bhopal en Inde, pour le compte de Dow, corporation responsable de la mort et l’intoxication de dizaines de milliers de résidents de Bhopal durant la catastrophe en ’84…
Pour se tenir à jour sur ces leaks, et voir ce que d’autres y ont trouvé:
(oubliez pas que le net public n’est PAS sécure et peut être éventuellement utilisé contre vous, à commencer par Google et ses services.Utilisez Tor! )
Y en a pour des heures de plaisir… Bonnes lectures, et prenez bien soin de tout sauvegarder à un endroit sûr!
Vn
(…et non je ne suis pas un Anonymous, mais je commence à bien les aimer ces gens!)
Going back to the UK riots, and behind the dumb sensationalism that I, myself, have contributed to, the background of this sudden uprising needs a bit more clarification…
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.
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.
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 recognizable by age and color, 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.
At the heat of the moment, I wanted to share over a dozen bone-chilling XXX hardcore riot porn videos with you, faithful readers -all thanks to a demented anthropologist from Paris/St-Denis- since I can no longer hide my twisted addiction to violence, in this desert world of horrid peace and revolting interpersonal void…
Gigantic fires, flash riots attacking violent cops, pillage, threat of all-out martial law and military intervention… all this in the city that was previously known to be the CCTV Fortress of Police State capitalism, London. All the pieces are falling in the right place on the board, but since we’re all pawns in the game, who can predict the outcome?
But please remember, that the spectacle stays a spectacle unless you become one of its actors, as you could notice in last week’s popular article Riot in Hollywood.
Smiling faces, some beneath scarves and balaclavas. This is Hackney, London. Or this was Hackney last night. It is somewhere else tonight and somewhere else again in just a couple of hours. The smiles are because the streets have been taken and nobody is afraid of the police anymore.
Some people say the burning of a police car is not political, that the looting of a shop is egotistical and thuggish, that the smashing of windows is irresponsible. For those who say this is not political they have been living in this city with their eyes shut, not seeing the massive and increasing inequality and social and economic repression. Policy. Housing policy. Urban policy. Welfare policy. Financial policy. With what results – not only are people living in shit housing, with shit jobs, getting shit from police on a daily basis – most can only look forward to more shit as the cut backs and financial crisis hit the bottom hardest.
There are also those who say it is not political because the targets are all wrong – local shops and some housing are unfortunately also amongst the victims. They also say it is not political because the looting is for the black market rather than food and necessities, or because people are stealing bikes and cameras off of spectators but this is not a neatly organised riot as some would have it. This is a reaction, a revolt, a bursting of a bubble of angst, repression, lack of options and possibility and pure boredom and depression. And once that bubble is burst everything is a potential target for revenge for a police murder, but also entertainment, gaining possessions and regaining power over ones existence for a moment, and over the whole city for some days.
Like all street action, each person involved will have their own expression meaning there are constantly ongoing political discussions and arguments between people on the streets on the causes and the actions to be taken. To say these people are not political, to say the people involved are all thugs and not political is a lie. How can the discussion and action on ongoing harassment and police murder not be political? How can discussion about how to react to the problems in the community, the government cuts to education and youth activities, the lack of employment, the lack of even the smallest level of self-determination not be political? How can this many young people all of a sudden be understood only as common thugs and criminals?
In a comment in one newspaper, a newcomer to Hackney complained that while he used to feel safe in the neighborhood, knowing that all the social issues and shootings were internal to the gangs, he was now terrified to leave his house. This is telling of how segregated even the most diverse neighbourhoods are and how problems in communities can be so easily ignored as long as the victims are young and black. In these days the victims are not the young and black.
Apart from fear, how are the rest of the people reacting? Some are furious, furious about the destruction of neighborhoods that have it hard enough, some are organised and defend their neighborhood like the Turkish community in Stoke Newington as the chased a group of rioters away from the area, and some are organising vigils and discussions on the streets to find a different reaction to the killing of Mark Duggan.
Day three, and sirens are still continuously blaring through the streets. All workers in central London were warned by the police to leave work early and go home to avoid the expected evening riots. A COBRA meeting has been held (cabinet office briefing room A) after the Prime Minister was convinced he had to cut his Tuscany holiday short and fly back to London. Rubber bullets have been mentioned, and more police seems to be the only remedy they want to stuff down our throats for a social disease that only became deadly when the police killed a man.
"L'écocide (...) culmine tous les problèmes de l'humanité en une seule et même constatation: à force de nous rendre entre nous la vie impossible nous sommes en train de rendre TOUTE vie impossible."
- La Mauvaise Herbe, vol. 7 no.2
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