Tag Archives: rebellion
Oakland to Palestine Solidarity Mural
Brazil Needs a Great Revolution!
[The statement by the Revolutionary Front for the Defense of the People – Brazil (Frente Revolucionária de Defesa dos Direitos do Povo – Brasil), has now been translated into English. It provides important background on the current rebellion, as well as clarifying the revolutionary program and strategy to move forward. — Frontlines ed.]
———————————————————–
Proletarians and oppressed peoples of the world, unite!
“The law of the people is to fight, fail, fight again, fail again, fight again until victory!” — Chairman Mao Tsetung
Massive protests explode across the country and a spontaneous mass movement of hundreds of thousands takes the center of large cities and spreads everywhere, shaking and panicking all the old order. A new phase of the developments of the revolutionary situation is seen in protest and rebellion!Major storms are approaching.
The final straw was the brutal repression of the just and peaceful demonstration against the increase of the bus fares in the cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The outrage spread across the country and released popular anger no longer stifled by decades of political demagoguery and constant barrage of misleading government propaganda of a Brazil of great progress and improvement. When even television networks, radio and newspapers trumpeted the popularity of President Dilma as the one bringing full employment, creation of a new middle class, the development of the country with a sound economy against the global crisis that sinks the world’s largest economies – this suddenly exploded with the upheavals that arose as a tsunami.
Amid the deep and prolonged general crisis of the imperialist system that causes suffering worldwide, hitting hard working masses with mass unemployment, making brutal cuts in hard-won rights, pushing them to the streets by the millions, in a desperate fight for survival and resistance, repression launched by the capitalist governments in client countries has been unrelenting.
As a direct result of the contradictions and weaknesses of the economy of our country, dominated and plundered by imperialism, the popular revolt is the release of decades of screams stifled by the ‘eternal’ deception of fraudulent elections and false left demagoguery (PT/Workers Party; PSB/Brazilian Socialist Party; PCdoB/Communist Party of Brazil, etc). What happened? A snap broke the charm of a truth found to be a lie repeated a thousand times, and backfired, no longer the social anesthetic of bread and circuses. Continue reading
Brazil: “The Validity of revolutionary violence”
By R. Mineiro, Posted on 18/06/2013 in the blog of the newspaper, The New Democracy (rough translation by Revolutionary Frontlines)
We can see in the streets, the sizzling legacy of the Confederations Cup. Thanks FIFA.
The powers and communication monopolies, astonished, say they do not understand the meaning of such revolt. Isolated in their artificial paradises, they are scared to face the country. After ten years, hope returns, and things like this happen. The day dawned, “Every night has its dawn, rays of light break through all the darkness.” “Brazil woke up”, this phrase could be read on posters of many walls. Waking to dream.
In a historic night, lucky are those who could not sleep. The restless eruption of that attack is much more heartening than anything the defenders of the old fort have ever done.
The reactionary ruling classes, amidst the nightmare of the streets, make its plans to empty the demonstrations. Last week we saw the venomous attacks of its spokesmen. Arnaldo Jabor said that the youth was not worth a penny, Luiz Datena called us vandals and troublemakers. After it became clear that repression only increased the rebellion, the discourse changed. Yesterday, Jabor spoke of a generation that finds ideas; Datena told the CQC, which despite being in the media police, his specialty is human rights.
What a change in just one week. Now watch their “security experts” explain the demonstrations. The media often gives tips on how to behave in a job interview. But now we hear news reporters give us lessons about what we should or should not do in our protests. Continue reading
Philipppines: Parañaque demolition clash kills 1, hurts dozens
Residents hurl rocks at an anti-riot police vehicle during a demolition of shanties in Sucat, Paranaque city, metro Manila April 23, 2012. (REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco)
Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/International/2012/Apr-23/171093-philippine-demolition-clash-kills-1-hurts-dozens.ashx#ixzz1su3I4Uhe
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)
By Jamie Marie Elona
Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, INQUIRER.net
Monday, April 23rd, 2012
MANILA, Philippines — One person was killed and at least six were injured on Monday as heavily-armed riot police clashed with hundreds of residents of Silverio Compound in Parañaque City clashed with police-backed demolition teams Monday.
The fatality occurred as squatters blocked a road, hurling large stones at police, armed with shields and truncheons, who were trying to disperse them. Hundreds of illegal settlers burned tires, hurled rocks, bottles and bags filled with fish innards at police, who responded with tear gas.
Local precinct commander Senior Inspector Ani Endraca said one person was killed and another was in a critical condition after they were shot in the confusion.
“If you saw the situation here, you would think you were in Iraq,” he said, adding that five police and government personnel were hit by flying rocks.
He said it was only after the rioters were dispersed that police found a dead man on the road who appeared to have been shot in the head. It was not clear what caused the death of a man, who appeared to be a protester.
A village watchman was also shot and subsequently rushed to hospital, Endraca said, adding that it was not known who had shot the two men.
Local broadcaster GMA showed footage of a policeman firing an assault rifle towards the rioters as the police were showered with rocks.
“We will have to check on that,” said Endraca when told of the incident. Continue reading
Naked class warfare in the wake of the UK revolt
[An important debate is taking place among activists in the UK and internationally about the nature of the “rebellion” or “riot” in London last month. But there is no dispute over the scale of government/police repression which is being carried out against thousands of youth–detailed in this article from A World to Win News Service.– Frontlines ed.]
By Geoffrey Scott, London
Following the four days of rebellion that shook Great Britain last week in the wake of the police killing of a young Black man, Mark Duggan, the British state has unleashed a wave of repression whose severity has not been seen here in many years.
Almost 2,000 people have been arrested, and the police have announced that they hope to grab up as many as a thousand more from surveying CCTV footage. Most of the charges are the kind that would not result in detention, and still less in jail terms, in ordinary times. But the Magistrate’s courts have been working 24 hours a day after the upheaval and handing out three and four-month terms and worse in the name of restoring “law and order”. About half of those arrested have been sent over to the Crown courts, which alone have the authority to issue sentences of more than six months.
So far 138 youth under age 18 (legally children in England) have been sent to prison. The anonymity usually granted juveniles has been lifted by special order. The average age of those convicted in London is 19, and only one-third are being granted bail, instead of the usual 90 percent in Magistrate’s court. Jails and longer-term prisons are full to bursting, with 723 new inmates in the week before 19 August alone. Continue reading
LONDON AFIRE, by Mumia Abu-Jamal
10 August 2011
After decades of political betrayal by the Labour Party, and the blatant attacks on the working class by the Tories (the
British Conservative Party), there has emerged an angry and bitter class that has rocked what was once the center of a
global empire: London.
Fires have erupted In Birmingham, Croydon, Bristol, Liverpool and Tottenham at last count, sparked by the very same
fuse that lit the explosions of the 1960s, and 1990s: police violence-this time against a 29-year old father of four, Mark
Duggan.
But while this cop violence may prove a spark, that doesn’t mean it was the reason. Years of cutbacks, joblessness,
slashed educational opportunities and plain old political mean-spiritedness aimed at the poor and the dispossessed,
immigrants and the like, left sour tastes in the minds of many. Especially in the midst of a city that became the financial
center of Europe, who were living a life of excess and plenty. Continue reading
New York Times: “Rioting Widens in London on 3rd Night of Unrest”
[The New York Times, the leading imperialist media organizer, reports the events in London and the crisis in Britain in terms which express contempt for the masses in rebellion, and calculations of where this is all going–in terms of the sharpening of battlefronts for the class war which is leaping out of the shadows of “normal” life. All this from the viewpoint of the defenders, and managers, of the existing system. –Frontlines ed.]
By RAVI SOMAIYA and JOHN F. BURNS
August 8, 2011
Sang Tan/Associated Press A shop was set on fire Monday in Croydon, south London. The home secretary said there had been hundreds of arrests.
LONDON — The rioting and looting that convulsed poorer sections of London over the weekend spread Monday to at least eight new districts in the metropolitan area and broke out for the first time in Britain’s second-largest city, Birmingham, in what was developing into the worst outbreak of social unrest in Britain in 25 years.
By early Tuesday, unrest was also reported by the police in two other major cities, Liverpool and Bristol, and an enormous fire was consuming a large warehouse in the Enfield section of London.
Prime Minister David Cameron, apparently caught off guard while on vacation with his family in Tuscany, reversed an earlier decision not to cut short his holiday in the face of plunging world financial markets and boarded a plane for home to lead a cabinet-level meeting on Tuesday to deal with the turmoil.
For Mr. Cameron’s government — indeed for Britain — the rapidly worsening situation presented a profound challenge on several fronts.
For a society already under severe economic strain, the rioting raised new questions about the political sustainability of the Cameron government’s spending cuts, particularly the deep cutbacks in social programs. These have hit the country’s poor especially hard, including large numbers of the minority youths who have been at the forefront of the unrest.
Together with the inevitable pressures to restore some of the spending cuts, Mr. Cameron and his colleagues have to confront the dark shadow that the rioting has cast on plans for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. That $15 billion extravaganza will have its centerpiece in a sprawling vista of new stadiums and an athletes’ village that lie only miles from the neighborhoods where much of the violence in the last three days has taken place. With the Games set to begin in barely 12 months, Britain will have to satisfy Olympic officials that there is no major risk of the Games being disrupted, or ruined, by a replay of the rioting.
Luke MacGregor/Reuters Police officers in riot gear tried to block a road near a burning car in the northern district of Hackney, in London, where rioting continued for a third night.
Beyond these challenges is the crisis that has enveloped London’s Metropolitan Police, popularly known as Scotland Yard, on which security for the Olympics, and the immediate hopes of quelling the rioting, depend.
Even before the outbreak of violence, the police have been deeply demoralized by the government’s plan to cut about 9,000 of about 35,000 officers and by allegations that it badly mishandled protests against the government’s austerity program last winter and failed to properly investigate the phone-hacking scandal that has dominated the headlines here for much of the summer. The force now faces widespread allegations that it failed to act quickly and forcefully enough to quell the rioting at its outset over the weekend. Continue reading
London: Mass condemnation of police killing of Mark Duggan
LONDON RIOTS – THE INCIDENT THAT CAUSED THE TROUBLE
RIOTS IN LONDON, POLICE CARS SET ALIGHT AFTER YOUNG FATHER SHOT BY
6 August 2011
BBC: Riots in Tottenham after Mark Duggan shooting protest (news after BBC’s commercial)
BBC: The BBC’s Andy Moore reports from behind police lines after a BBC satellite truck came under attack from youths throwing missiles–Petrol bombs have been thrown at police and three patrol cars, a bus and buildings have been set on fire in a riot in Tottenham, north London. Eight injured police officers have been taken to hospital, at least one of them with head injuries.
The unrest began after a protest over the fatal shooting by police of 29-year-old Mark Duggan on Thursday.
About 300 people gathered outside the police station on the High Road after demonstrators demanded “justice”.
London Ambulance Service said a total of 10 people had been treated and nine had been taken to hospital.
Two patrol cars were set alight at about 20:20 BST but officers were not inside at the time.
Cdr Stephen Watson: “We had no information to suggest that we would have the scale of disorder that now confronts us” Continue reading
UK: Tottenham in flames as riot follows protest of police killing (Guardian)
Two police patrol cars, a passenger bus and several shops were attacked and set alight in north London as violence erupted
- Sarah Bolesworth, Barry Neild, Peter Beaumont, Paul Lewis and Sandra Laville
- The Observer, Sunday 7 August 2011
Riots erupt in Tottenham with police cars, a bus and shops set on fire. Photograph: Sky News
Two police cars, a bus and several shops were attacked and set ablaze in north London on Saturday night as violence erupted following a protest demanding “justice” over a fatal police shooting.
Officers on horseback and others in riot gear clashed with hundreds of rioters armed with makeshift missiles in the centre of Tottenham after Mark Duggan, 29, a father of four, was killed on Thursday.
At one point, rioters broke through police ranks and attempted to storm Tottenham’s police station, pelting officers with bricks, bottles and eggs. As a police helicopter flew over Tottenham High Road, youths in masks and hoods added combustible material to two burned out police cars, included a bundle of documents and an awning ripped down from one of the shops. Some attempted to persuade the rioters to disperse, one young man shouting: “Go home now people.”
But others filled bottles with petrol to throw at the police lines. Continue reading
Uigher, Tibetan, and Mongolian rebellion at internal Han colonization: Cracks in the Chinese wall
Saturday, Aug. 6, 2011
By Brahma Chellaney, writing in the Japan Times
NEW DELHI — In the face of a spreading ethnic Uighur rebellion, authorities in Chinese-ruled Xinjiang have alleged that a prominent Uighur separatist they captured had received terrorist training in Pakistan, China’s “all-weather ally.”
The charge came on a day when Pakistan’s spy agency chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, after having just visited Xinjiang, was holding talks in Beijing on securing greater Chinese support to blunt the growing U.S. pressure.
The charge may reflect China’s irritation with Pakistan’s inability to contain the cross-border movement of some Uighur separatists. It also suggests that China’s long-standing policy of coddling Pakistan is turning around to bite it in its ethnic rear. Continue reading
Grassroots politics flourish in Greek turmoil
Hara Kouki and Antonis Vradis in Al Jazeera
|
||
| 17 Jun 2011 | ||
Few people would want to be in the shoes of Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou these days. Faced with an ostensible mutiny in the ruling social-democrat PASOK party, his worries have been exacerbated by the appearance of an unprecedented, continuous wave of protests in the streets of Athens by thousands of people – who had never demonstrated until a few weeks ago. Since May 25, 2011, Greece has entered a period of spectacular turmoil, with thousands of people taking over the central squares of its major cities. What happened? The €110 billion ($157 billion) Memorandum of Agreement signed between the Greek government and the troika of the IMF, the EU and the ECB in May 2010 was met by much weaker dissent than many had expected. This is, after all, the country that, as recently as December 2008, saw a spectacular youth uprising in reaction to the police killing of 15-year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos. Continue reading |
Cairo lessons: Safeguard your initiative, don’t put it all on Facebook, rely on the masses
[Written just before Mubarak’s departure, this article focuses on the careful planning behind the apparently “spontaneous” eruption of the mass demonstrations which seized the initiative and changed the balance of forces. — Frontlines ed.]
Wall Street Journal
FEBRUARY 11, 2011
The Secret Rally That Sparked an Uprising
Cairo Protest Organizers Describe Ruses Used to Gain Foothold Against Police; the Candy-Store Meet That Wasn’t on Facebook
by CHARLES LEVINSON and MARGARET COKER
CAIRO—The Egyptian opposition’s takeover of the area around the parliament this week began with a trick—the latest example of how, for more than two weeks, young activists have outwitted Egypt’s feared security forces to spur an uprising many here had long thought impossible.
Reuters
On Tuesday, young opposition organizers called for a march on the state television building a few blocks north of their encampment in central Tahrir Square. Then, while the army deployed to that sensitive communications hub, protesters expanded southward into the lightly defended area around Egypt’s parliament building.
As Egypt’s antigovernment protests reached their 17th day on Thursday, President Hosni Mubarak’s regime was deep in turmoil. The head of the ruling National Democratic Party said he advised Mr. Mubarak to step down. The country’s army moved to take control of the streets. But Mr. Mubarak, to the rage of demonstrators, didn’t step aside.
The demonstrations that now bedevil Mr. Mubarak across Cairo and Egypt took seed in part thanks to one trick play, interviews with several protest planners show. Continue reading
Frontlines of Revolutionary Struggle 