In downtown Montréal on Friday night, police repression descended on a pro-Palestinian and anti-NATO demonstration. During the day, a first rally had begun around 4:30 p.m. The procession then set off to join a second demonstration. The latter denounced in particular the presence of a NATO delegation at the Palais des Congrès.
The officers of the SPVM (Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal) decided to disperse the demonstrators using pepper spray, tear gas and baton blows; in response, smoke bombs were used by the demonstrators, metal barriers were thrown in order to hinder the work of the police. The police officers were also the target of pyrotechnic projectiles. Several shop windows and windows of the Palais des Congrès were smashed, a police car and two other vehicles were set on fire. About 80,000 people took advantage of Friday to strike and participate in the movement. The police made 3 arrests.
*This release is based on the journal Block NATO, organised by CLAC and D4P, but it is independent. We will explain here the reasoning behind our actions of the evening of Friday, November 22nd, because we know why we do these things and we believe very strongly in what we do.
Let’s put things first in context : Friday marked the start of NATO’s parliamentary assembly in Montreal. NATO represents the military apparatus of the global north, it’s the biggest military alliance in history. While our governments are already making the life of the excluded and exploited a death circus, NATO pressures Canada to invest 50% more of its GDP into the military. That represents 55 billion dollars. NATO is a major decision-making body that embodies militarist and imperialist interests. It’s also an accomplice in the genocide happening in Palestine.
NATO includes the richest countries in the world, namely Canada, Germany, the United States, France, Italy and the UK, but it also conspires with non-member allies such as Japan and the Zionist entity (Israel). It protects the capitalist interests of the global north, with the United States as a semi-formal secretary. NATO organises the threat and capacity to act in devastating ways to counter any initiative of liberation of the global south. Its interests are imperialist: the States formed and governed by capital aspire to extend their power by exploiting external territories where they steal resources, destroy nature and enslave people through political, economic and/or military domination. It normalises the horror of its crimes against humanity by camouflaging them as humanitarian missions and by splitting the political costs between different countries, maintaining their democratic bases in ignorance or illusion.
The military interventions supported by NATO protect governments aligned with American interests and crush any alternative, keeping the global south under capitalist constraints. NATO’s alliance with the zionist entity is ideologically coherent, as a colonial enterprise, but Israel also provides technologies of control and weapons that NATO states use throughout the world, in their imperialist missions and on their own populations.
And oh by the way, no we don’t support Russia or prefer it to NATO, people typically think NATO is about defending against Russia, but we don’t even care, every fucking colonizer of this world has to be taken down, we hate this capitalist system and its extensions from the bottom of our heart.
The problem we’re fighting here isn’t specifically NATO’s assembly, nor the actions of the CDPQ (which requires every public employee to fund the Palestinian genocide), but they are symptoms of that problem. What the problem really is, is the dominant system which causes all these horrors : capitalism. There is no more time for calm and asking nicely. Resistance is legitimate, the State and the police can no longer have a monopoly on violence – if it’s the only language they’ll hear. We want the illusion to stop and we want to draw light, in the streets and in the media, to the horrors deployed right under our noses. We attack capital, materialised most densely downtown, to oppose symbolically and materially the most odious crimes committed for capitalism:
The windows of the Palais des Congrès, where the NATO summit is happening A car set on fire Riot police covered in paint Businesses’ windows smashed
Our acts are charged with rage born from the horrors we witness and denounce here, but also from our own grief: between climate collapse and housing crisis, inflation and shit jobs, health and education systems in ruins, xenophobia, transphobia, covid and depression, profiling and repression, the rise of fascism, etc. All of which answer to the same system. We have had enough and we are horrified, so we gather and we show our refusal. Our actions have had a symbolic and material impact: they have imposed costs financially, have disrupted and disturbed, have propagated our ideals and made visible this very legitimate and necessary struggle.
Before anything was even attacked, the police charged, pepper-sprayed and hit us. In our fight, we have seen the complicit posture of our governments : police violence is an obvious manifestation of it. To repress our actions, the police, the state’s guard dogs, have used weapons and tactics developed by the zionist entity and other NATO investments. The police have again and always defended the interests of the rich and the State: pepper-spraying, beating, breaking ribs, gassing, poisoning. It tries to choke hopes of freedom for human lives and nature, currently massacred, but we are still standing. We denounce the arrests and many injuries (cracked skull, broken arm, projectiles in the eyes, etc.), but we are still standing. The Fall was warm and winter will burn hotter, because the struggle is all we have left, because we need to do everything we can, because we love our revolutions deeply, because we love our comrades and what we know we can do together.
The media will focus on our violence, they will manipulate our messages, our messages confronting the atrocities perpetrated by Israel and NATO – responsible for millions of deaths. So it is crucial to say again that it is the brutality of the oppressive structures governing us that we fight, that the worst violence is the State’s and that that violence is a direct consequence of capitalism.
A few days ago, masked people raised barricades and confronted the police around the National Institute in solidarity with Ayekan, political prisoner being kept in pre-trial detention.
Also calling for the dismissal of “Rocco”, directive of the DEM who has interfered in the resolution of the petition demanded by the students of the same school.
17th of November is the day that the student revolt against the dictatorship – that took place in Athens, Greece in 1973 – is being commemorated. The 3days commemoration leads to a march at the streets of almost every city in Greece.
Decades later the commemoration of the student revolt continues with the participation of tens of thousands all over Greece, based on the fact that the anniversary has been linked with current politics, thus taking part in it is not just an act of remembrance of what the revolted students achieved at the time, but serves as a means of expression against current issues and policies imposed on the greek society. Based on the fact that on that commemoration day the marches are being heavily guarded by thousands of policemen, people react since they are there to honor those that resisted against the State oppression, only to be met by the Police State of our current time, creating a tense atmosphere where a riot may erupt at any time.
Lock-on devices inside vans used to block the gates of Israeli arms company R&D hub in Filton and headquarters at Aztec West
~ Scott Harris ~
Palestine Action says its activists today blockaded the entrances of two sites in Bristol operated by Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons company. The activists used lock on devices inside vans to block the gates at both sites.
One of the sites, at Filton, is the most recent of Elbit facilities in England, the brand new £35m R&D hub of Israel’s biggest weapons firm. The other site is Elbit’s headquarters at Aztec West 600. This HQ is used by used by Elbit to oversee their logistical, financial, and operational affairs throughout the country, making it a key hub for Israel’s arms trade in Britain.
This is the latest in a series of actions undertaken at the site since the start of Palestine Action’s campaign. According to Israeli media, Elbit provides up to 80% of the Israeli military’s land based military equipment and 85% of its military drones. It supplies vast numbers of munitions and missiles – including the ‘Iron Sting’ recently developed and deployed for the first time in Gaza, along with wide categories of surveillance technologies, targeting systems, and other armaments.
“Direct action against Elbit aims to disrupt this: targeting the source of colonial violence and genocide against the Palestinian people, undermining Elbit’s profiteering from Israel’s daily massacres”, said the group in a press release.
A few days ago, hooded individuals erected barricades and confronted the police in the vicinity of the National Institute in solidarity with Ayekan, a political prisoner who is currently in preventive detention.
Also, the expulsion of “Rocco,” a DEM executive who has interfered with the resolution of the petition demanded by students of the same educational institution, is being demanded.
Evil Enbridge out of the Great Lakes! Shut Down Line 5 NOW! A noisy disruption swept through the cocktail reception of the LDC gas forum in Chicago. The 3 day forum consisted of talks from directors and players in the oil and gas industry, hype-ing false solutions like carbon capture technologies, and how to keep expanding the oil and gas industry further while we descend into a world of deeply uncertain futures as climate change reshapes and ravages ecosystems on a global level and biodiversity rapidly declines.
A group of people entered the hotel hosting the conference and crashed the attendee’s welcome reception of the 2024 LDC Mid-Continent Gas Conference. A banner with the words, “Enbridge Out of the Great Lakes, Shut Down Line 5 Now!” on one side and, “Evil Enbridge, Fuck Off!” on the other side was unfurled at the cocktail hour reception. People sang, and chanted with a bullhorn, played instruments, and left messages for Enbridge and other gas companies inside the hotel. After causing a ruckus inside, the group walked outside to the bar’s patio overlooking the Chicago River, and less than one mile from Lake Michigan, to “greet” more LDC conference attendees with noise, banners, and rowdy jeers. One person was arrested by the pigs for allegedly trespassing and released onsite.
Notably present, Enbridge, the pipeline company responsible for moving tar sands from Alberta, Canada to its conglomeration of pipelines surrounding the Great Lakes region, known as the “Lakehead pipeline system” hosted talks and presentations as a major contributor at the LDC gas forum. Enbridge directors even gave a girl-boss presentation named: “Empowering Women in Energy: Tomorrow is Together”, in an attempt to say their industry of death and destruction is at least inclusive to women and anyone else who wishes a oil & gas fueled speedy demise to human existence on this planet
🛢️🤡🛢️
In the Great Lakes region, Enbridge’s Lakehead pipeline system, surrounds Lake Michigan uniquely on all sides, and while the Lakehead pipeline system doesn’t entrap the other great lakes in this same way, it still weaves through them in various dangerous and unstable routes with innumerable areas that have huge potential to contaminate water in the largest surface freshwater system in the world when these pipelines will unavoidably break and spill. Line 5 is poised to do just this kind of irreparable ecocidal damage at any moment in the Straits of Mackinaw and on Bad River reservation land as it continues to transport oil even with its operating permits revoked since 2020.
Lake Michigan is, of course, the source of water used by Chicagoans to drink from, and is the same source of water used by the downtown hotel where this gas forum was hosted. Water from Lake Michigan came out of the faucets that all these oil and gas industry clowns used during their time at the forum in Chicago. Yet somehow Enbridge directors and other gas industry tycoons like to pretend they don’t have to drink this water and they will gladly have bullshit networking forums in tasteless high end hotels next to the shores of the freshwater that gives this bioregion so much life. Even as they plan more half baked schemes to continue the operation of Line 5 and hire far away contractors for foolish tunnel and reroute plans that are doomed to fail.
Evil Enbridge you can’t hide, we charge you with ecocide! From Chicago to Kalamazoo the Midwest fucking hates you!
We encourage more people to take action to disrupt the LDC gas forum in whatever creative and imaginative ways that you see possible. LDC gas forums have more nonsensical plans to host forums in different regions around the so called united states, and people should confront all of them, but especially villainous Enbridge directors, where they host these forums and wherever else they go!
Doom to the pipelines! Doom to the gas forums! Evil Enbridge fuck off!
04/11 Incendiary Attack to Bus Red del Transantiago in población La Victoria 6 years after the death of comrade Kevin Garrido, in the place were found pamphlets with the phrases:
“War to death against all bastard authority!”;
“Compañerx Kevin Garrido present!”;
“May solidarity not be just a manhandled word, may solidarity be an angry action that gives injections of strength and energy to the heart of every brother in captivity”;
“For the destruction of all prisons! Compañerxs Joaquin Garcia Aldo and Lukas, prisoners of July 6th and every comrade in prison to the street! With our dead in memory and in action Kevin Garrido, Freddy Muñoz, Alonso Verdejo, Lupi, Belen, Bau, Mauricio Morales, Sebastian Oversluij, Luciano and every comrade assassinated present! Solidarity with the comrades of the inba”.
Chiapas burns. It burns with a war between organized crime cartels. It burns with the proliferation of armed groups everywhere. It burns with conflicts for territorial control encouraged by the state and federal governments. It burns with violence against those who struggle against violence.
Faced with this, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation creates common lands to contribute to peace. It plans meetings to reflect on the crisis of civilization. It stimulates the arts and sciences to combat the catastrophe. It proposes dialogue, creativity, critical thinking, reflection. It proposes life.
In the face of this, capital, the State and organized crime (the tripod that underpins the national catastrophe) respond with more violence. On October 16, the EZLN, in the voice of Subcomandante Moisés, denounced that people from the community of Palestina have been attacking the Zapatista community of 6 de Octubre, belonging to the Caracol de Jerusalén, threatening the inhabitants with expulsion from their lands, recovered in the 1994 uprising and peacefully occupied by them for three decades. This with promises of “legalization” of the lands in favor of the invaders from Palestine by the municipal and state governments and with the participation of organized crime. For this reason, the EZLN is contemplating the cancellation of the announced series of meetings, which would begin this December.
In addition to this, the nefarious assassination of Father Marcelo Perez Perez, tireless fighter for peace in Chiapas, last Sunday in San Cristobal de Las Casas. To put an end to every voice dedicated to building peace and denouncing violence, abuse and arbitrariness… that seems to be the slogan of the powers that be in this crumbling state and country.
Faced with this, thousands of people marched in various cities on October 24, the international day of struggle in support of the Zapatista communities. The march in Mexico City included the participation of the National Indigenous Congress, the Otomí community residing in the Samir Flores House of the Peoples and thousands of people in solidarity.
These were the words of the CNI-CIG in Front of the National Palace:
Words of the Resident Otomí Community in Mexico City:
Portugal’s capital experienced a second night of riots into the early hours of Wednesday morning, triggered by the murder of Odair Moniz, a Cape Verdean man who was shot and killed by a police officer late on Sunday night.
The uprising spread to areas including Amadora near Lisbon, with bins and even buses set on fire. In the Zambujal neighbourhood, a Carris bus was seized by militants who subsequently set it on fire.
During the night, riots also took place in the municipality of Oeiras, where shots were fired and another bus was set on fire, as well as a smaller vehicle and several bins.
In Sintra, a projectile was thrown at the police station in Casal de Cambra. In nearby Damaia, rioters threw firecrackers and stones onto the public highway and set alight several bins.
Two police officers were injured in the municipalities of Amadora and Oeiras “as a result of stone-throwing, both of whom required hospital treatment and one of whom went on sick leave”.
Three people had been arrested following the riots.
The murder of Odair Moniz
Police murdered Odair Moniz, a 43 year old Black man, who was born in Cape Verde, in the Alto neighbourhood of Cova da Moura shortly before 6 am on Monday morning.
Odair Moreno Moniz, generally known as “Dá”, had lived for over two decades in Portugal. He was married and the father of three children, 19, 18 and 2 years old.
Although an initial PSP (public security police) statement accounts for an attempted aggression by Moniz, allegedly wielding a knife, which was then found by the PSP next to the site of the events, this information was denied by the agents themselves.
The news of Odair Moniz’s death triggered a revolt in the Zambujal neighborhood, where he lived, with several residents considering that what happened were “two shots against a disarmed worker”
On Tuesday, dozens of people gathered outside the flat where Moniz lived in the Zambujal neighbourhood of Amadora to pay tribute. The 43-year-old owned and ran a local café and was known to everyone in the neighbourhood.
The vigil and protest was called by an association of local residents.
Residents emphasised Odair’s much loved personality and refused to believe the PSP’s version of events surrounding Moniz’s death.
Gilberto Pinto, president of the neighbourhood residents’ association, warned authorities that local anger could spread. “This will snowball, a feeling of injustice has taken hold.”
Evil Enbridge out of the Great Lakes! Shut Down Line 5 NOW! A noisy disruption swept through the cocktail reception of the LDC gas forum in Chicago. The 3 day forum consisted of talks from directors and players in the oil and gas industry, hype-ing false solutions like carbon capture technologies, and how to keep expanding the oil and gas industry further while we descend into a world of deeply uncertain futures as climate change reshapes and ravages ecosystems on a global level and biodiversity rapidly declines.
