For the spread of the riots: Manifesto in favour of violent direct action

Report prepared by social activists from Madrid (Spain), Basque Country and Argentina.

[24.08.02]

La Haine

From relevant groups within the Anti-globalisation movement, the usage of violent direct action on behalf of diverse collectives, which take part in these actions, has been ruled out, and even condemned. By means of these lines, we mind to supply simple issues as part of a debate, which might help to respect political tendencies combining both pacific and self-defence strategies. We do not intend to place violent direct action neither ahead of union labour, neighbourhood or faculty work. The previous issue is main, fundamental; this lays the foundations of every struggle ever meant to be for the people's sake. But there are several questions to be studied fearlessly, avoiding the pressure inherent to the ruling class' deceptive speech. ¿Is direct clash against anti-riots police and capitalist symbols positive? ¿Is the usage of violent direct action advisable?

Around Seattle, Prague or Gothenburg events, world leaders seemed rather agitated, something never seen since the disappearance of the USSR: Standstill summits, delegations being moved out and leaders being evacuated through the backdoor.

This came to pass because riots were to be performed not by hundreds, but thousands of people. The spread of the riots went beyond the police ability to suppress them. Therefore, it is a fact that actions carrying an outstanding load of violence play a special role within the resurgence of social clash lately.

But, ¿why comes up the need for violent direct action?

This need turns up in those cases in which means and procedures for protesting -which social movements have came to impose within the so-called parliamentary democracies- are exhausted. In these cases the system shows crystal clear its vision of these means as items with no other aim besides the maintenance of social balance and stability, avoiding the achievement of real successes.

Popular movement struggle, when extending and deepening its protesting actions, comes to confront the repressing system, and to infer that no partial solutions are worth -as ever, provisional-, but the destruction of capitalism and its replacement for social relations based upon equality and solidarity themselves.

In such a way, if by facing the lack of real solutions people take the streets by thousands in order to stop physically the wild policy developed by the FMI, the system will not consider this as "democratic" or "in order", since it is about a direct confrontation against the system itself. Therefore, repression is taken up.

Genoa was a clear example on this. Such was the denial in practice of the right to demonstrate during the G-8 summit, that even thousands of pacific demonstrators were forced to raise barricades and throw all kind of items in order not to be run over by the police.

Several left-wing groups argue that violent direct action can contribute to an increase in overall repression towards social movement. But we must not be confused about this matter: What in fact sparks off repression is the heightening of the clash, as a result of the organized struggle questioning the very basis of the system: the governments' ability to decide how to rule economy. And therefore, any kind of clash, though it may be pacific or even legal, will be crushed no matter what. Not because of direct violent action, since the main issue for the system here is to take political advantage of this state of disadvantage, launching an attack against the entire movement on the theoretical speech of "confronting the extremism of certain groups".

Violence is not being called forth by any particular organisation within the anti-globalisation movement. Violence belongs to the capitalist system's perpetuation process as a natural part, since it is continuous (being implemented upon people beyond any reason or justice: through over-exploitation or labour insecurity, housing shortage or social services denationalising) and able to be brought directly at any time, in order to keep action in check. The latter turns out to be the most common type, but should not outshine the daily violence held up by the ruling class.

Domination or control violence comes to fruition whenever the system intends to put a social group back into its previous state of passiveness. And whenever conscious commitment increases along with demand for solutions, violence is also to be increased in order to stop them.

In Genoa, while activists were arranging demonstrations pro peace and against economic genocide, the government was fixing up torture rooms within its police departments. While the former called up and coordinated people by thousands, the latter mobilised and organised armed policemen by hundreds.

The right to dissent in being surrounded by the rules of the so-called state of democracy. That is why the need for a spread of the riots and sabotage comes up. Because the system is not planning to dismantle itself, and because it does not leave any other chance to protest besides.

Next will be outlined how violent direct action is not only valuable, but also necessary, as a complement to pacific struggle, because of its connection to expression, disobedience and justice.

1. Stands for a way of expression.

Whatever we will not be allowed to express through their newspapers or networks, will be expressed by attacking their symbolic dominance. Our nonconformity and basic opposition to the neo liberal policy is expressed whenever we fight those repressive elements attending to protect that policy. Obviously, there is a clash.

In exchange, the media attached to neo liberal policies obtain a piece of news not only suitable for the information show biz context, but also desirable in order to criminalise social movements. But we ought to bear in mind that violent direct action and sabotage are also means to break the media blockage. The piece of news, still distorted, comes out in the media and, while we struggle daily in order to produce our own spreading channels (and to achieve self-management district by district, faculty by faculty), direct action stands out not only by making possible the expression of our discontent, but also by constituting the means for us to break the silence argued by the media towards our work.

It is not our responsibility to avoid facts from being twisted and commercialised by the official media, for that is its raison d'être. Our duty, in this case, is to denounce the purpose of banks and repression forces within society. Therefore, political actions against both previous become legitimate and essential, for it is about a will -physically asserted- to set up dissent, and to boost anti capitalist conscience by pointing at those responsible in fact for neo liberal policy.

2. Stands for a way of reversing the establishment.

It is a disobedience procedure facing law, a way of doing "what you are not supposed to do" pervading actions with a full political sense.

But we must bear in mind that specific riots may be easily taken up by the establishment, for being understood as collateral damages, that is, the unavoidable results for neo liberalism policy: The same formula put into practice when is about the so-called delinquency, drug trafficking or raping. They all make up inherent issues to a society fueled by inequality, oppression and patriarchy.

With regard to anti globalisation movement, the Spanish government has often stated that "we are ready to hold talks with anti globalisation groups, but strictly with those which may condemn the usage of violence along with riots caused by radicals".

In spite of the establishment being able to absorb riots (whenever they come on small scale), it is fact that these collateral damages do mean harm to establishment's both harmony and stability. And that is why they attempt to condemn and isolate this practice.

And for this particular reason we ought to consider those "scratches" as potential means for destabilising, and to call forth an area for people's power out of this concept, that is to say, a right and a weapon achieved by struggling movements in order to fight injustice.

Even if it is not allowed to break, we break. But not just anything: we break the representation or samples of capitalist domination, which may be anti-riot police, bank branches, private operators phone-boxes, McDonalds joints, etc...

3. It stands for a way of doing justice.

It is fair to provide direct responses against the violent imposition of the establishment, its labour scarcity, criminalisation of dissent, pressure from the media and its propaganda, etc...

It is fair and legitimate to rebel against the unquestionable fact of violence monopoly held up by the system.

It is fair and essential to draw by ourselves an area for politics labour of our own, outside the law limits; limits which are nothing but a self-defence instrument developed by the system, which defines levels of confrontation in order to control it, and justifies repression inside this context.

Small successes have been achieved already within the complex and wide front against neo liberal globalisation on account of a method which, even though it might not be as fundamental as base work, is working out as a crucial supplement: sticks and stones.

copied from http://www.lahaine.org/global/manifiesto_eng.htm

Discliamer:

Please note that the person who made this post does not necessarily agree with the views of the original authors of the above historically significant manifesto. It has been posted in order to promote debate about the various tactics available to 'anti-(corporate)-globalistaion' activists when engaging in mass demonstrations such as those which recently took place in Copenhagen.

Why Women Shave

Why do women shave their armpits?

It began with the May, 1915 edition of Harper’s Bazaar magazine that featured a model sporting the latest fashion. She wore a sleeveless evening gown that exposed, for the first time in fashion, her bare shoulders, and her (shaved) armpits. Shocking at first, this soon caught on. At the same time a marketing executive with the Wilkinson Sword Company, which made razor blades for men, designed a campaign to convince women that underarm hair was unfeminine. By 1917 the sales of razor blades doubled as women conformed to this feminine stereotype of shaving under their arms.

So, it's really for some company to make money and now is entrenched in many women's minds to go out and buy a razor to shave their "unfeminine" hair.

8 reasons why capitalists want to sell you deodorants

1) Body smells are erotic and sexual. Capitalists don’t like that because they are impotent and opposed to all manifestation of sensuality and sexuality. Sexually awakened people are potentially dangerous to capitalists and their rigid, asexual system.

2) Body smells remind us that we are animals. Capitalists don’t wants us to be reminded of that. Animals are dirty; they eat things off the ground, not out plastic wrappers. They are openly sexual. They don’t wear suits or ties, and they don’t get their hair done. They don’t show up to work on time.

3) Body smells are unique. Everyone has her own body smell. Capitalists don’t like individuality. There are millions of body smells but only a few deodorant smells. Capitalists like that.

4) Some deodorants are harmful. Capitalists like that because they are always looking for new illnesses to cure. Capitalists love to invent new medicines. Medicines make money for tem and win them prizes; they also cause new illnesses so capitalists can invent even more medicines.

5) Deodorants cost you money. Capitalists are especially pleased about that.

6) Deodorants hide the damage that capitalist products cause your body. Eating meat chemical-filled foods sold by capitalists make you smell bad. Wearing pantyhose or eating meat.

7) Deodorant-users are insecure. Capitalists like insecure people. Insecure people don’t start trouble. Insecure people also buy room fresheners, hair conditioners, makeup and magazines about dieting.

8) Deodorants are unnecessary. Capitalists are proud of that and they win marketing awards for it.

What is capitalism any way? Text from “Days of war, nights of love Crimethink for beginners”

Capitalism, that’s like democracy, isn’t it?
(And aren’t the enemies of capitalism the opponents of democracy? Didn’t we defeat them in the cold war?)
Actually, capitalism and democracy are two different things. Democracy is, essentially, the idea that people should have control over their own lives. That power should be shared by all rather than put in he hands of a few. Capitalism is something altogether different.
In the western nations we’re used to hear that we live in a democratic society. It’s true that we have governments that call itself democratic (although wether each of really has an equal say, or much of a say at all, in such a bloated and atrophied “representative democracy” is worth asking), but wether our society is itself democratic is another question entirely. Government is only one aspect of society, of course; and it is far from the most important one, when it comes to consider day to day life. The economic system of any given society has more influence over daily life than any court or congress could: for it is economics that decide who has control over the lands, resources and tools of society, what people have to do each day to survive and “get ahead” and ultimately how those people interact with each other and view the world.
And capitalism is, in fact, one of the least democratic economic systems. In democratic economy, each member of a society would have a say in how resources are used and how work is done. But in capitalist economy, in which all resources are private property and everyone competes each other fro them, most resources end up under the control of a few people (today, read: corporation). Those people can decide how everyone else will work, since most of them can’t live without earning money from them. They even get to determine the physical and physiological landscape of the society, since the own most of the land and control most of the media. And at bottom they aren’t really in control, either for they let their guard down and stop working to keep ahead they will quickly be truly has freedom under the capitalist system: everyone is equal at the mercy of the laws and competition

Statement on the G-20 Summit on the Financial Crisis, 15 November, 2008

From: http://casinocrash.org/?p=592

November 18th, 2008

By the Transnational Institute Working Group on the Global Financial and Economic Crisis

The summit of a selective group of 20 widely diverse countries meeting in Washington moved the discussion of a new global financial architecture a step further, but it was a baby step, not the giant leap that is urgently needed not only to reverse the financial crisis but also to restructure fundamentally the global financial and economic systems. Why was there so little progress?

First, George Bush, representing the country with the largest responsibility for the global crisis, is the lamest of lame ducks. He could not commit his successor to any real course of action. His insistence on free markets reflects a dangerous and outmoded ideology with regard to financial regulation – abundantly demonstrated by his speech prior to the G20 meeting convened in which he re-visited the ideas that are the source of the worst worldwide financial crisis of the past 90 years. These outmoded and discredited ideas were included, unfortunately, in the G20 Communiqué.

Second, this meeting – sometimes called Bretton Woods II - was so hastily put together that unlike Bretton Woods I, its principal outcome was merely to reveal the fault lines of the debate, defined by the U.S. and European positions, although not that of Great Britain. The Europeans, led by president Nicholas Sarkozy of France, argued that since the 1980s, finance has become a quintessentially global phenomenon with money and credit washing across borders. Financial entities are thus able to exploit the inability of nation states to tax or regulate them effectively. Consequently, the Europeans call for a new global financial architecture that starts with, and gives primacy to, new cross-border global financial regulatory authorities. These global institutions are not now in place, must be constructed, and should be the G20’s core project for the immediate future. The Europeans note that existing international regulatory institutions, like the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the Financial Stability Forum, have very limited membership, cannot issue binding standards and rules, are heavily influenced by the financial lobby, and have proven to be totally inadequate both in predicting the financial crisis and in acting to stem it.

The United States’ counter-argument rests on the nation state, locates the primacy of regulatory authority in national governments, and adds new, cross-border forms of transnational collaboration and co-ordination. It starts with existing national regulatory regimes, upgrades them considerably, and expands them to encompass new financial instruments and institutions heretofore unregulated. The North Americans argue that this system offers the best tools for the broadest possible political control because it is rooted in national governments – their executives and parliaments, which are themselves subject to popular oversight, however imperfect. Behind these arguments, however, lie both ideology and the desire to protect the U.S.’s and UK’s financial sectors’ competitiveness as global financial industry centres.

The G20 Communiqué avoids this debate and attempts to diminish the distance between the U.S. and European positions. Several other fault lines emerged at the G20 meeting. Europe wants to go faster, broader, and deeper with new regulations than the U.S. and wants more co-ordination of policy intervention. The weakness of the G20 Communiqué also indicates that governments are paying more attention to the interests of their financial lobbies than to the interests and urgent needs of their own citizens and citizens worldwide.

Pushing all these divisions into the future and giving the new U.S. administration the necessary space to formulate its own positions, the G20 limited its scope to some broad general principles and an action plan for the next four and a half months that includes only measures that should have been taken long ago to correct the most obvious gaps in transparency and regulation. Whether or not these meagre measures are implemented will depend mainly on how aggressive civil society is in holding the G20 to their limited commitments.

No set of basic but effective principles, guidelines and criteria is yet on the official agenda. We offer four that should be minimum demands in exchange for the unprecedented taxpayer bailouts:

• Total transparency – all financial instruments and all financial institutions to report fully on their activities and this information made available to the public;
• A 10 percent rule – all financial instruments require a minimum 10 percent collateral, capital reserves in order to eliminate the uninhibited leveraging (sometimes only 1 dollar actually held for every $30-$40 lent to borrowers) that is a major source of the meltdown;
• All current and future financial instruments should be brought under the umbrella of financial regulation;
• New national and global regulatory systems to be subject to the widest and deepest democratic participation, including oversight, monitoring, and access to decision-making.

In our view, the global financial implosion is but one of several converging crises caused by government neglect and an ideology celebrating an individualist- based, free-for-all market fundamentalism over the need for civic responsibility. This irresponsible neglect has permeated governing regimes at every level: local, national, regional, and global. Consequently, two other enormous global problems now worsen and converge with the financial crisis: the planetary climate crisis and inequality within and across nations. The same political recklessness that has brought us financial default is also guilty with regard to the global climate and inequality crises of the 21st century.

Furthermore, the financial crisis has now become a crisis of the real economy. The private financial institutions receiving taxpayer bailouts should be obliged to lend to the real economy in order to ease the transformation towards an environmentally robust economy. They must be prevented from further indulging in exotic financial instruments that have greatly contributed to the current worldwide financial meltdown. We support the call for a minimum fiscal stimulus of at least 2 percent of GDP. The earlier anaemic attempts at fiscal stimulus of the G7 were far too small to have any effect.

A more comprehensive integrated set of proposals is therefore needed:

• Closure of tax havens in countries of convenience and attention to other forms of tax evasion that allow global companies and wealthy individuals to avoid their statutory tax obligations in their countries of origin;
• A commitment that no country be allowed to become insolvent;
• Refusal of the nearly bankrupt and discredited IMF as the global dispenser of funds. The failed IMF ideology contributed to this global financial crisis in the first place;
• Integration of southern countries as well as experts from NGOs and other parts of civil society into all discussions of a new global financial architecture;
• Introduction of taxes on cross-border financial transactions – such as the Tobin Tax – that are new sources of tax revenues for government to pay for the financial bailouts, dampen financial speculation, and slow down the turnover of financial transactions in the global economy;
• Limits to the riskiness of any new financial product or instrument, for example, by public governmental certification of a risk assessment of the product before it comes on market;
• Suspension of the financial services negotiations within the GATS section of the Doha Round on trade liberalization. The deregulation and anti-regulation orientation of these negotiations is totally at odds with the premises of the G20 discussions for re-regulation and new regulation of the global financial sector;
• Public disclosure of all lobbyists before national and global regulatory authorities;
• Limits on excess compensation of top level management of financial institutions and elimination of forms of incentive compensation that reward excessively risky behaviour;
• Involvement of global institutions other than the International Financial Institutions discussions concerning the new global financial architecture, including the UN and its appropriate agencies.

The world is not undergoing a crisis in the system but a crisis of the system in which the real economy has become subservient to the financial economy. All solutions must be based on this underlying truth. Nothing less than a Global Round on a Reconstructed Economic Order is required to address an integrated reform and restructuring of the global economy – including finance, trade, investment, production, corporate codes of conduct, labour standards, systemic risk and environmental regulation. The efforts of the G20 are puny compared to the comprehensive and serious process appropriate to the scale of these converging crises of the 21st century.

---

by Susan George, Barry K. Gills, Myriam Vander Stichele and Howard M. Wachtel for the TNI Working Group on the Global Financial and Economic Crisis, Amsterdam, 17 November
2008

Global day of action - November 15th 2008

Resisting Capitalism and it ' Financial and Ecological ' crises during the
G20 richest nations summit.

Other worlds are possible - A Grassroots Anti-Capitalist call for action.

On November 15, the G20 richest nations will convene in Washington to try
to put the financial meltdown behind them and repair the international
capitalist system. The factories continue to be closed, jobs cut, pensions
destroyed, houses evicted, unemployment rises, uncertaintity, horrible
anti-immigrant measures are pushed for by right-wingers, homelessness
increase, relationships break down and food and basic housing spiral beyond
the reach of the poor the world over while the environment around us
collapses. We are living through a profound period of rapid and terrifying
change, an intensification of the long crisis that is capitalism and this
time the meltdown really is global. Even conservative media and staunch
economic-rationalists are saying this could be the worst since the great
depression... and they are trying to re-organise a Bretton Woods II project
for a new capitalism. World over there is direct action and civil
disobedience resistance taking many forms and proposals of many types
circulating as always and now with new consideration given the cost we will
be asked to pay to bail-out this rotten system - food riots, strikes for
wage increases and backpay of stolen wages, price reduction campaigns,
radical discussions on the crises, fuel protests,the sharing of radical
everyday strategies for living in hard times, looting of supermarkets, as
yet sporadic but hopefully growing resistance to evictions, sit-downs,
protests at financial institutions and districts are spreading, thousands
of the italian universities occupation movements saying " we will not pay
for your crisis. " As the money and environmental crises intensify so too
hopefully the struggles, with this as the stage we offer a humble proposal
for this global day of action against capital, the G20 - hoping to see
another thread of struggle emerge.

- Another thread that calls for common and grassroots control of our lives,
an alternative to the left or right hand of capital or to put it another
way an alternative to private enterprise or the state management of capital

- neither a future regulated capital or the free market versions often
known as 'neo-liberalism.' A world in which we create old and new commons
based on our real needs as an alternative to the capitalist and state
system.

- Another thread that recognises that these crises have been bought down on
us by not only bankers and speculators, but also by bosses, landlords and
petty bureaucrats as well as all politicians and other members of the
ruling classes. They made it and it is for us to create new relationships
and egalatarian forms of organisation to push beyond capitalism. We must
stop them. Their arrogance is limitless. After having caused the worst
slump since the Great Depression, the same fuckers have thrown the world
into insolvency would now like to appear as saviors of the world economy:
hypocrites full of bullshit, that's what they are!

- A thread that knows they are part of hundred of years of resistance to
the rule of money, contrived panics, exploitation, poverty, disorder,
repression, annihilation and the destruction of the earth on which we
depend for survival.

- A thread that recognises the need for the interlinking of global social
and labor conflicts.

- A thread that is interested and actively debating and possibly trying to
create proposals for other worlds, - should we push for our trillions too
perhaps to be used as seeds to set up grassroots alternatives, what would
debt resistance or anti-eviction movements look like in our areas, what of
price reduction campaigns or other ways of providing for our basic needs
and freedom?

Perhaps massive globally co-ordinated anti-lay-off campaigns, community
building, unemployed workers movements, the blocking of cities, growing
homeless and temp-worker resistance, reclaiming of space for social
activities, strategies that asks questions and learns from other seemingly
unrelated struggles - a movements of networks ...the eventual occupation of
all life by your desires... there are many other proposals being
considered. *

The can be no capitalist fix or new capitalist deal to the ecological and
capitalist crises- we will not beg, but create new worlds.

The tactics or actions are open to you, mobilisations, blockades, sit-ins,
a few dignified placards - some leaflets or an teach-in, sabotages and
other attacks - we have limitless desires and long history to draw upon.

For this global action we call on the global anti-capitalist movements and
all those from below that are feeling the destruction of their lives and
our world, those already resisting from the grassroots or seeing the need,
to organise for and beyond November 15th 2008 - grassroots,
anti-capitalist action... Make plans. We hope this day will enrich the
many ongoing strategies of resistance that are going beyond protest **

* http://cutdump.blogsome.com/2008/11/07/more-crises-proposals/

**
http://cutdump.blogsome.com/2008/11/07/beyond-once-of-protests-of-the-crisis/

POST U.S. ERECTION WRAP UP 2008

Farewell to the terrorist monkey
who nuked the legitimacy of the United Nations.
Here comes Obama, the new corporate lackey,
so stay tuned to the farcical spectacle on your favourite TV station.

Farewell to the imbecile puppet
who waged war with reckless abandon in the face of worldwide opinion.
Here comes Obama, the guy who will stop it.
Ha! Not likely! For he is right under the thumb of the corporations.

Republican, Democrat: two sides of the same coin,
both batting for the position of slavery incorporated.
Obama, McCain: better cover up your loins,
both wouldn't stop waging wars until the whole world is decimated.

Do you want the puppet on the "right:
or the puppet on the "left"?
Well you got the muppet on the right,
masquerading around as the saviour of the disadvantaged.
What a fucking farce!
Another godalmighty blast from the past!

Come January 20, watch the bombs keep dropping
and the war debt keep increasing
and the loss of innocent life keep increasing
and the U.S. economy keep collapsing.

The end is nigh for the terrorist incumbent.
Children blown sky high in countries rendered defenseless.
Obama, you're the guy to keep the massacre going.
When your time comes, go hunt down them terrorists.

Obama, Osama, Obama, Osama.
The end is nigh! Blow them sky high!
Obama, Osama, Obama, Osama.
The end is nigh! Blow them sky high!

Obama is a Zionist!
Obama is a Zionist!
Obama is a Zionist!
Obama is a Zionist!

Fuck you Bush!
Fuck you Obama!
Fuck you McCain!
Fuck you Biden!

by Stephanie Chen

http://poeticiansparadise.blogspot.com/

6/11/08