Tag Archives | Anarchists

Anarchists Commemorated Inauguration By Smashing Bank Windows And ATM

By JacobSloan on January 25, 2013 in News 8

The proper way to ring in Barack Obama’s second term. Via Politico:

About 60 anarchists smashed windows and damaged an ATM machine overnight just blocks from the National Mall, police [said] Monday.

At about midnight Sunday night, a group moving through the Gallery Place/Chinatown/Mt. Vernon Square area of Washington, D.C., broke a window and splashed yellow paint on a TD Bank branch, smashed a window at a Hooters restaurant and broke the screen of an ATM machine belonging to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs Credit Union.

The damage took place at sites about 7 to 9 blocks from the mall, where hundreds of thousands of people gathered later Monday for the re-inauguration of President Barack Obama. The group dropped flyers saying, “Against Every Cop. Against Every Boss. Against Every President,” the report said.

… Read the rest

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Inside The FBI’s Manual On The Anarchist/Environmentalist Threat

By JacobSloan on September 20, 2012 in News 34

They are often students, are paranoid and resent authority, and hatch their plots in coffee houses and underground clubs. Via Green is the New Red, meet the FBI’s public enemy number one:

The materials…to train agents to identify and investigate “domestic terrorist” groups such as “black separatists,” anarchists, animal rights activists, and environmentalists…were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the ACLU. They offer additional insight into a disturbing pattern of FBI activity misrepresenting political activists as “terrorists” and manufacturing “domestic terrorism threats” where none exist.

Juxtapose this with militia extremists and white supremacists, who have murdered, lynched, bombed, assaulted government officials and created weapons of mass destruction. To most reasonable people, such a stark disparity between these groups would raise questions about how the FBI is allocating its domestic terrorism resources. How did such misguided policies come about?

… Read the rest

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Telltale Signs Of Undercover Infiltrators

By JacobSloan on August 29, 2012 in News 7

Is your annoying new friend an FBI-planted agent provocateur? For those involved in social activism, via the Portland Independent Media Center, Kristian Williams provides the warning signs from a series of recent cases:

A recent article in Seattle’s Stranger detailed a long-term police operation to monitor, infiltrate, and entrap activists in Seattle. The story is convoluted and more than a little absurd; it’s all rather like the plot of a Coen Brothers’ movie. But the short version is that an undercover Seattle cop infiltrated an after-hours party scene. The SPD hoped to find some dirt on local politicians, the FBI hoped to find a connection to the Earth Liberation Front, and after two years they finally managed to hook someone with a drug scam.

With this in mind, I will sum up three recent cases involving the use of provocateurs against the anarchist and radical environmentalist movements. And I’ll point out some of the warning signs that should have made people wary:

PROVOCATEUR PROFILE #1: “BRYAN OWENS”/BRYAN VAN BRUNT

1- Money issues: Bryan’s habit of throwing around cash meant that, even though a lot of people didn’t like him and were annoyed by his “blustery bro-dude personality,” they were willing to put up with it.

… Read the rest

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Documents Show FBI Raids Are Targeting Anarchists And Activists

By JacobSloan on August 1, 2012 in News 8

I’m curious to see this news get tweaked as a lighthearted Portlandia segment. The Portland Mercury on the revelation that the FBI is conducting raids on the homes of politically minded locals in search of “criminal evidence” such as black clothing, anarchist literature, and placard signs and flags:

The first interview with any of the Portlanders who were served grand jury subpoenas as FBI agents searched their homes on July 25 shines some light on what authorities may be hoping to achieve with the raids.

Dennison Williams was in bed at his house on Wednesday morning when he heard someone shout, “FBI!” Then came a loud crash, which turned out to be agents breaking down his front door, and Williams heard a bang and a saw a flash of light—the agents throwing flash grenades.

FBI officers entered his room with assault rifles and kept them aimed at him while they handcuffed him.

… Read the rest

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Anarchists Attack Nuclear And Nanotechnology Scientists

By JacobSloan on May 30, 2012 in News 23

Photo: Transguyjay (CC)

An underground coalition with a dystopian view of nuclear and nanotechnology advancement has unleashed several recent shooting and bombing attacks. Their purpose is to push back against science that they say are aiming us towards “self-destruction and total slavery.” Nature reports:

A loose coalition of eco-anarchist groups is increasingly launching violent attacks on scientists.

A group calling itself the Olga Cell of the Informal Anarchist Federation International Revolutionary Front has claimed responsibility for the non-fatal shooting of a nuclear-engineering executive on 7 May in Genoa, Italy. The same group sent a letter bomb to a Swiss pro-nuclear lobby group in 2011; attempted to bomb IBM’s nanotechnology laboratory in Switzerland in 2010; and has ties with a group responsible for at least four bomb attacks on nanotechnology facilities in Mexico. Security authorities say that such eco-anarchist groups are forging stronger links.

“Science in centuries past promised us a golden age, but it is pushing us towards self-destruction and total slavery,” the letter continues.

… Read the rest

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The Cancer In Occupy

By majestic on February 10, 2012 in News 42

Chris Hedges writes about the Black Bloc at Alternet (thanks to Adam for the tip):

The Black Bloc anarchists, who have been active on the streets in Oakland and other cities, are the cancer of the Occupy movement. The presence of Black Bloc anarchists—so named because they dress in black, obscure their faces, move as a unified mass, seek physical confrontations with police and destroy property—is a gift from heaven to the security and surveillance state. The Occupy encampments in various cities were shut down precisely because they were nonviolent. They were shut down because the state realized the potential of their broad appeal even to those within the systems of power.

They were shut down because they articulated a truth about our economic and political system that cut across political and cultural lines. And they were shut down because they were places mothers and fathers with strollers felt safe.

Black Bloc adherents detest those of us on the organized left and seek, quite consciously, to take away our tools of empowerment.

… Read the rest

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Denmark’s Anarchist Christiania Village Goes Legit Via Fake “Stock Shares”

By JacobSloan on February 3, 2012 in News 1

This is my kind of capitalism. After 40 years, Christiania (a car-less, drug-addled autonomous squatter town surprisingly located in middle of urban Copenhagen) will buy the land on which it sits from the Danish government. But how to raise the money? The alternative society is selling symbolic ownership shares, and will have yearly “shareholder parties” which will no doubt be intense. The New York Times chimes:

Last summer, the Danish state offered to sell a good chunk of the 80-odd-acre former military base at the edge of downtown Copenhagen to Christiania, the alternative community whose residents had been squatting there illegally for four decades. For the residents, who fundamentally reject the idea of landownership, this presented an ideological quandary.

“Christiania has offered to buy it,” said Risenga Manghezi, a spokesman for the community. “But Christiania doesn’t want to own it.”

To resolve the contradiction, Mr. Manghezi and a handful of others decided to start selling shares in Christiania.

… Read the rest

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Can You Be An Anarchist And Business Owner?

By majestic on June 23, 2011 in News 35

Photo: revolution cycle (CC)

This article in the Washington Post raises a very interesting question:

A meeting of anarchists, progressives, a self-described “surly feminist” and others on the far left of the political spectrum is underway. They’re young and radical. They’re organizing intently. The matter at hand could be oppression, or the police state, or revolution.

But it’s not. It’s walking dogs.

They sit in a circle in the living room of a Petworth group house and tick off their “route updates,” which mostly consist of details about the new canine clients they’ve signed up.

That’s because business is booming.

The seven people present belong to Brighter Days, a dog walkers’ collective founded on anarchist principles. Last year, the five-year-old business grossed more than $250,000. Its members have equal ownership and make business decisions by reaching consensus during weekly meetings such as this one. Any of them can block any decision.

… Read the rest

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Anarchist’s FOIA Requests Reveal FBI Infiltration

By majestic on May 29, 2011 in News 2

Colin Moynihan and Scott Shane make anarchists look pretty smart in this report for the New York Times (or is it just that the FBI is utterly clueless?):

AUSTIN, Tex. — A fat sheaf of F.B.I. reports meticulously details the surveillance that counterterrorism agents directed at the one-story house in East Austin. For at least three years, they traced the license plates of cars parked out front, recorded the comings and goings of residents and guests and, in one case, speculated about a suspicious flat object spread out across the driveway.

“The content could not be determined from the street,” an agent observing from his car reported one day in 2005. “It had a large number of multi-colored blocks, with figures and/or lettering,” the report said, and “may be a sign that is to be used in an upcoming protest.”

Actually, the item in question was more mundane.

“It was a quilt,” said Scott Crow, marveling over the papers at the dining table of his ramshackle home, where he lives with his wife, a housemate and a backyard menagerie that includes two goats, a dozen chickens and a turkey.

… Read the rest

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Anarchist Groups Planning Major Disruptions To Royal Wedding

By BananaFamine on April 1, 2011 in News 33

He says they are putting together a “shock and awe” campaign. “It will involve a lot of fireworks, it will involve a lot of people dressed in black, it will involve a lot of very, very loud music to try and hack all the mainstream media broadcasts of that day.” CNN reports:

London, England (CNN) — “God Save the Queen … the fascist regime,” sang The Sex Pistols to mark Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Jubilee in 1977. Now, Britain’s anarchists are targeting the royals again.

According to one leading anarchist protester, plans are being drawn up for a demonstration using “shock and awe” tactics to disrupt Prince William’s marriage to Kate Middleton on April 29.

Charlie Veitch, a former City banker who was made redundant during the financial crisis, heads a group of colorful protesters called the “Love Police Academy.” He says that anarchists will put on a “disruption spectacular.”

“As an anarchist, philosophical and political anarchist, I cannot support the royal family, I cannot support this government’s actions,” he said.

… Read the rest

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