Canadian Anarchists Organizing To Halt Security Fair By Jon Willing, Ottawa Sun A local anarchist group is threatening to shut down a massive security and technology fair in Ottawa, but police are keeping a close eye on their plans. The CANSEC event, which is in its 10th year, is described as a "gathering of war profiteers" by protesters. The Network to Oppose War and Racism and the PGA Bloc Ottawa are teaming up in an attempt to thwart the exhibition, which is being held at the Ottawa Congress Centre on Wednesday and Thursday. An event posting on the PGA Bloc website is calling to "shut down the CANSEC arms fair" and "shut down the war machine."

New York City Subpoenas Creator of Text Messaging Code By COLIN MOYNIHAN, New York Times When delegates to the Republican National Convention assembled in New York in August 2004, the streets and sidewalks near Union Square and Madison Square Garden filled with demonstrators. Police officers in helmets formed barriers by stretching orange netting across intersections. Hordes of bicyclists participated in rolling protests through nighttime streets, and helicopters hovered overhead. These tableaus and others were described as they happened in text messages that spread from mobile phone to mobile phone in New York City and beyond. The people sending and receiving the messages were using technology, developed by an anonymous group of artists and activists called the Institute for Applied Autonomy, that allowed users to form networks and transmit messages to hundreds or thousands of telephones.

Video Evidence of Illegal Police Action To Be Presented at Friday New York City Rally On-line version of press release with photos and links: http://times-up.org/index.php?page=still-we-speak-rally www.times-up.org FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contacts: Media: Barbara Ross 917.494.8164; John McGarvey: 917.572.0206 Legal: Wylie Stecklow 212 566 8000 VIDEO EVIDENCE OF ILLEGAL POLICE ACTION TO BE PRESENTED AT STILL WE SPEAK RALLY Cyclists join forces with community supporters to stop NYPD First Amendment abuses, one year after unconstitutional parade permit rules were enacted WHAT: Still We Speak rally followed by Critical Mass Ride WHEN: Friday, March 25th at 7:00 pm WHERE: Union Square Park North, 17th Street & Park Avenue New York, NY (March 26, 2008) This Friday, March 28th, Critical Mass participants will be joined by a diverse group of videographers, artists, activists and politicians outraged over NYPD regulatory constraints on the civil liberties of New Yorkers. Prominent speakers from the community will participate in the "Still We Speak" rally to denounce the NYPD's First Amendment abuses, including the parade permit rules which limit the number of people who can legally assemble in a public place.

Anarchist Buzz Concerns Intel Officials Canadian Probe Continues, N.Y. Hunts for New Leads U.S. and Canadian Authorities Meet to Go Over Evidence in the Times Square Bombing and a Vehicle Stop at the Canadian Border By RICHARD ESPOSITO and PIERRE THOMAS, ABC News March 7, 2008 Twenty-four hours after a gunpowder-packed ammunition case exploded at Times Square's military recruiting booth, authorities across the U.S. and Canada are concerned about an intelligence uptick on anarchist and anti-war activities, even as they actively hunt for the bomber and any links to five suspicious individuals stopped at the Canadian border about a month ago.

Judge Orders Production of NYPD Records on Police Videotaping of Lawful Protesters http://www.nyclu.org/node/1662 A federal court today ruled that the NYPD must turn over records of its videotaping practices in a case that asks if police in New York City are routinely photographing individuals engaged in lawful political protest. The New York Civil Liberties Union is co-counsel in the case.

Japanese Activist Says About G8-Protest, "Police in Japan Act More Subtly“ http://www.taz.de/1/politik/asien/artikel/1/polizei-in-japan-agiert-subt... Go Hirasawa mobilizes against the G8-summit in Japan with the group "No G8! Action“. Is the protest culture there very much different (than in Europe)? Go Hirasawa says that in Japan, open violence is not that common.

http://westerncapeantieviction.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/background-to-de... Background to Delft evictions 19 02 2008 Thoughts provoked by being interviewed by Keketso Sechane, Heart 104.9 radio, 19/2/2008

This article gives a useful overview of the exciting shack dwellers' movement in Durban which, together with the Anti-Eviction Campaign in Capetown, has created a powerful challenge to the managerial state. There is also a 5 minute YouTube film on this struggle at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZWIZX_8ub8 http://abahlali.org/node/2814 The University of Abahlali baseMjondolo

NOT BORED! writes:

"From a Dinner of Ashes to the Embers of Satin"

(On the Riots of November 2005 in France)

Les Amis de Nemesis

No more tomorrows,

Embers of satin,

Your intense heat

Is the [only] duty.[1]

— Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell

Many of the remarks made by the inhabitants of the banlieus, rioters or not, and related by the press, hit the bull's eye with respect to the crisis that comes to manifest itself in their cities and forces one to perceive that in these remarks there is an unusually well-developed degree of lucidity.

The "dump-city" phenomenon is so clear and massive that no one can be deceived on the subject -- without wanting to be so, for more or less shameful reasons. But here one touches upon a class of things that capitalist society, if it can prevent one from understanding them, can in no way modify them. Any "amelioration" implies fundamental transformations that are incompatible with the very nature of this society; this is why it is absurd to speak of the "creation of new job markets" at the moment when the old ones are disappearing very rapidly in all of the industrialized countries; or of "raising the level of individual development," while more developed individuals have more needs and desires, which will be even more difficult to satisfy, and such people would be capable of expressing their anger in a more diversified and contagious fashion; or of "raising professional education higher," while education does not provide employment and thus one would simply have unemployed workers who are more specialized than before; etc. etc.

One cannot "improve the lot" of a population condemned by the movement of value (that is to say, by the rarefaction of economically necessary human labor and by the necessity of only exploiting faraway and cheaper laborers) and [condemned] by the "political ideas" that see to the perpetuation of these necessities (the "ideas" that are no longer ideas and the "political men" who no longer have the right to have ideas, since real ideas would necessarily set aside the business plan [2] of "society," that is to say, of capital). If these durable and intangible impasses demonstrate anything, it is the fact that the question is no longer changing society but changing societies.

Kevin Keating writes:

"Another View of the Failed Bay Area Transit Fare Strike"

Kevin Keating

A brief re-examination of this missed opportunity in working class-based radical mass action on the West Coast on North America.... This article is derived from a series of posts on a forum on libcom.org. Some of these posts involved exchanges with an individual who writes under the name "Comrade Mobuto."

I.

By now many libcom.org readers will have seen or read a long document or pamphlet titled, "FARE STRIKE! San Francisco 2005: First-Hand Accounts," available here.

This account of the failed effort to foment a transit system fare strike is largely a fraud. It systematically misrepresents the character of the politics that the pamphlet's authors asserted, or attempted to assert, during the fare strike and during the lead-up to the fare strike.

My response that follows here is from an e-mail I originally sent to a London comrade about this.

The London comrade criticized the "FARE STRIKE! San Francisco 2005: First-Hand Accounts" pamphlet for not criticizing the leftist recuperators in the group called Muni Fare Strike. The people who produced this pamphlet were in the group called Muni Fare Strike during the Muni effort in 2005.