Germany, Portugal, UK: Speed Cameras Under Siege

10/17/2010
Vigilantes attack speed cameras in Germany, Portugal and England.

Foam attack cameraVigilantes set fire to a speed camera last Sunday at just before 11pm in Thames Valley, England, the Buckinghamshire Advertiser reported. The extent of damage to the automated ticketing machine on Two Dells Lane in Orchard Leigh is unknown. Police have no idea who might be responsible.
Police in Euskirchen, Germany reported that vigilantes had ripped a traffic camera out of the ground last week. On Friday at around 2:15pm the automated ticketing machine was found in a field.
In Donaueschingen, vigilantes used foam to block the lens of the automated ticketing machine in the downtown area last weekend. Police have no idea who might be responsible, so they will assume anyone who recently received a ticket is a suspect, Sudkurier reported.
In Portugal, fewer speed camera citations were issued this year, Correio da Manha reported. Officials admitted that cameras had suffered “acts of vandalism” affecting the number of tickets issued, as well as cameras being taken offline because they were no longer operating properly.

Lisbon - Solidarity action with the comrades in Belgium

informa-azione

12/10/2010 - Lisbon cathedral woke up in the 12th of October with paintbombs and spraypainted. "The S.E.F and the church go hand in hand. That both go up in flames!" (S.E.F. is the Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras) "Solidarity with comrades in Belgium. Fire to the detention centres!"

Posted by sysiphus://sysiphus-angrynewsfromaroundtheworld.blogspot.com/2010/10/lisbon-solidarity-action-with-comrades.html

Despite Everything (Belgium)

To the rebels over here and over there
It’s not easy to catch reality into words, as feelings and desires always go beyond what is offered by vocabulary. It is however a vital thing to speak, trying to give expression to our thoughts and feeling. Certainly at times when the terror of the state and her troops of order try to silence everything.
For years we’ve been saying that we need space and time to enable us to think and speak freely. This space and time will never be given to us, we can only conquer them ourselves, eradicate them from the reality of thou shall and thou must. That’s why we’ve been speaking and we speak about revolt, about deeds which create space to live, to express our desires for freedom which no longer accept the sickening misery and ugliness of this world.
During the past week, the State chose to fill up all potential space with uniforms, riot vans, undercover police, detention and abuse. The state barely tolerates anarchists that encourage revolt by words and deeds, but during this week it was put all on all to prevent all encounters between the different rebellions which are heating up the social conflictuality in Brussels. And authority expressed itself by its easiest language: terror, that is to say, a systematic and indiscriminate violence.
The manifestation announced for the 1st of October against all closed centres, prisons, borders and against the state was not allowed to take place, no matter what. A prohibition to gather was declared in four of Brussels districts, while an imposing force of order arrested everyone who gathered around the meeting point. At the same time, other squadrons were controlling the neighbourhoods and metro stations with an iron grip. Both the prisons of Saint-Gilles and Forest were hermetically closed of by a squadron of riot police, while in the heart of rebellious Anderlecht the police were patrolling with balaclavas on their face and machine guns in their hands. Hundreds of people were preventively arrested, tens of them were humiliated, abused and beaten at the police stations.
Lets be clear: the state is not afraid of a hand full of anarchists, but fears the potential social infection which revolutionaries try to effect day by day. Since long Brussels seems to be a social powder barrel in which the social tensions are tried to be suppressed by more police and more wounded and dead persons on the side of those who try to confront in one way or another. The social tensions however continue to express themselves in a radical way: ranging from frequently recurring riots in the neighbourhoods to revolts in the closed centres and prisons, from well aimed attacks against the structures of state and capital to a spreading hostility against everything wearing a repressive uniform. The manifestation announced for the 1st of October was probably about to become one of the possibilities for encounter between the different rebelliousness and anti-authoritarian ideas- and this encounter got squashed.
Despite the militarised pacification of those last days, we will continue to focus on this social powder barrel, knowing that each opportunity can set fire to the powder. The proposal for demonstrating was blocked by many obstacles almost impossible to overcome, but other activities will make their way.
Despite the police walls trying to keep us separated, we continue to consider the encounter between different rebelliousness’s as a desirable and necessary possibility. No repressive state blackmail can soften our enthusiasm for this.
Despite the fact that our initiative got snatched from our hands, we are determined, in our hearths and heads, to snatch it back. Despite all, we continue. Nothing is over… the possibilities are still there to be grabbed.
For the moment, four comrades are staying behind the bars of the prison of Forest, charged with complicity to the attack on a police station in Brussels on the night of the 1st of October. Let’s make them feel our affection and solidarity.
Anarchists who won’t leave anything behind
Brussels, October 5th 2010
 

3,000,000 € attack against European Space Agency research institute (Portugal)

/325.nostate.net/?p=1130
22 September 2010
Castelo Branco (Portugal): Fire in institute causes three million euros in damages
The fire that started this Wednesday at dawn in the building of the Instituto de Soldadura e Qualidade (ISQ; Welding and Quality Institute), in Castelo Branco, caused over three million euros in damages, according to its administrator Joaquim Guedelha.
The fire was ignited around 3h24 in the morning of September 8th, on the trucks parked next to the building and then spread to the institute. It was put down around 7h, as said by the chief of the fire brigade.
Joaquim Guedelha told Lusa (news agency) that the pavilion is going to be rebuilt, despite the huge damage, and maybe it’ll be ready to start functions again in three months, so that the Laboratory for Thermodynamical Trials (LABET), which is part of the ISQ, can restart its activity.
“We had several certification trials of cooling systems and transportation of perishable products going on, apart from the trials of materials we were doing for the European Space Agency (ESA)”, he said.
“The technical part of the installations is quite damaged, but the offices seem to be safe. By now it seems the project we were conducting for the ESA is safeguarded, but it’s still too soon to draw any conclusions”, said Vasco Pires.
The Castelo Branco ISQ, through its Laboratório de Ensaios Termodinâmicos (LABET), was testing the heat-resisting coating of the first ESA (European Space Agency) space shuttle.
Joaquim Guedelha underlined that the materials that were being tested are “unique, since this is the only place which is conducting these trials”.
All the materials and machinery inside the building were destroyed, but the administrator is optimistic: “we’re going to build other cooling tunnels similar to the one we had and put the machinery working, so that we can accomplish the objectives we had together with the European Space Agency”, he said.
Joaquim Guedelha also told that the ISQ will try to find temporary installations in Castelo Branco for the trials to go on until this building is rebuilt.
The Judiciary Police is investigating.
Source: Correio da Manhã, Público, Portuguese Indymedia and others

Verdict of the trial against the arrested at the anti-authoritarian demo of April 25th 2007, in Lisbon.

solidarity arrested demo lisbon april 2007‏
Veredicto do julgamento dos detidos na manifestação anti-autoritária de 25 de Abril de 2007 em Lisboa.

Chegou hoje, dia 14 de Julho de 2010, ao fim o julgamento dos 11 detidos (entretanto uma rapariga infelizmente faleceu) na manifestação anti-autoritária contra o fascismo e contra o capitalismo, de 25 de Abril de 2007.

Por ausência de prova, prova em contrário ou dúvida, o tribunal deu como não provados os actos apresentados pelo Ministério Público que eram por esse atribuídos aos arguidos e que se podiam enquadrar nos crimes de ofensa à integridade física agravada qualificada, injúria agravada e coacção e resistência sobre funcionário. Todos os arguidos foram absolvidos de todas as acusações.

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Today, July 14th,2010 ended the trial against the 11 arrested (one girl unfortunately died in the meantime) at the anti-authoritarian demo against fascism and capitalism of April 25th 2007.

Due to of lack of evidence, contradictory evidence or doubt, the court decided as non proven the facts presented by the public prosecutor as having been done by the defendants, and which fitted the categories of qualified aggravated physical offense, aggravated verbal offense and coercion and resistance over state agent (all crimes against police officers). All of the defendants were acquitted of all charges.

On the 25th of April 2007 happened in Lisbon an anti-authoritarian demo against fascism and capitalism. Close to 500 people took part on a march through one of the city’s richest areas, where paint was thrown at shops, banks and a riot cop van and slogans were spray painted on walls. To this shamelessness the guards of democratic order replied with a police charge and beatings against the demonstrators and everyone who were passing-by. As a result of this charge and of a few Hollywood-style chases throughout the city centre 11 individuals were arrested, charged among other things with insults and assaults on police officers. On the 7h of December 2009 the trial is due to begin, at the court Campus de Justiça de Lisboa.

We know that the real point is more than a few damaged windows and offended cops. It is the attempt to grab the totality of life and of using all the tools we want in the struggle against a social order that consumes and destroys individuals, our relationships and the world we inhabit. It is precisely because this democratic order can not tolerate all the beautiful and wild things and people that still exist that in the last few years we´ve seen and felt a growing criminalization in the media, and the persecution by the forces of repression, of many of our and others’ actions and daily activities.

In the struggle for the liberation of our lives, we know who our comrades are and who are our enemies, and we go on finding all the others with whom we can meet in the joy of revolt. The solidarity with the accused is not limited to that court nor to the dates set by others: it must spread and become part of a struggle that doesn’t have as a point of reference the steps taken by repression, but the steps that we in our own rebellion want to take.

Their attempt to stop us through fear, to isolate us or to make us change our discourse can only have as a result the merciless attack to a power that has no borders.

A few anarchists from Lisbon

Lisbon - Let’s destroy work

Tuesday 2 June 2009

We are not concerned with the political problems of those who see unemployment as a danger to democracy and order. We do not feel any nostalgia for lost professionalism. We don’t want better wages or the continuation of subsidies. Nor are we for the abolition of work, the discovery of alternative ways of life, or the reduction to the minimum to live happily.

We want the destruction of this system that makes us beg for a minimum to not to starve to death.

We want the destruction of work and this society, of what we do during the day and it’s continuation that extends until night, a perpetuate circle that never seems to end; prisoners in this prison without bars or walls, but whose objective is exactly the same: the resignation to what they tell us to accept, to the bosses’ orders and to the police that protects them and protects what we want to destroy.

We want the destruction of this rule that makes us continue like this, prisoners of a job that takes us all: our time, our creativity, our energy. The destruction of work is above all the destruction of survival, demanding a step into the unknown and, above all, extreme creativity.

Destroying work means attacking, attacking that in which work is based on and that which it produces. The attack does not affect profit indirectly, as a strike does, but hits the structure directly, either the means of production or the end product. And the object to be destroyed, although it is property, it is also work, because it is something that results from work.

For the liberation of our lives, let’s destroy work and all this society.

leaflet given out by anarchists on Lisbon demo 29 MAY 2010

anarchist bookfair lisbon

21st, 22nd and 23th of May CLIK ON THE POSTER FOR MORE INFO...

FREEDOM FOR ALL IN GREECE AND EVERYWHERE!! international solidarity !!

Last Tuesday, March 23rd, a few hundred flyers were handed out at the entrance, inside and around the Commercial and Economic Section of the Greek Embassy in Lisbon.

The text of the flyer:

« Freedom for all, in Greece and everywhere.

It’s true, the situation in Portugal is the same as in Greece. Populations living in poverty, on a daily misery in which we feel life turning into survival, at the same time that bosses and banks rob us of each moment and each place that used to be ours. Police, courts and prisons for those who dare to confront that misery and, increasingly, even for those who do not confront it at all. People that with a disgusting regularity are persecuted, beaten or murdered with shots by the police, because we all are a potential threat, no more no less, because the State has the authority and the weapons and the fear of revolt. Prisons that efficiently do their job: to eliminate dignity, to serve as a warehouse of undesirables, to give the example, to execute rebelliousness. To execute, plain and simply.

But in Portugal, as in Greece, as everywhere, there are those who do not stay still in the face of this system of exploitation, of oppression, of the elimination of everything that still breaths freely. There are those who put despair and resignation away, and grab life with nails and teeth, going for the attack.

Christos Stratigopoulos and Alfredo Maria Bonanno are only two of those individuals, arrested on October 2009, following a bank robbery in Trikala, Greece. Regardless of the crimes they are being charged with, the struggle for freedom is the crime they’ve always committed.

We want to denounce, in particular, the abusive detention of Alfredo M. Bonanno under unacceptable conditions in the prison of Koridallos (Athens), worsened even more with the attempt to frame him up with another bank robbery on July 2009. The politics of vengeance of the State has the aim of eliminating physically and psychologically this comrade of 73 years old who faces serious health problems. Alfredo Bonanno is an anarchist, involved in the movement since decades ago, active in the resistance against the dictatorship of the Greek colonels (1967-1974), and writer and editor of many anarchist texts. These are the true reasons for which they keep him in prison under conditions that endanger his life.

We demand the immediate release of Alfredo Maria Bonanno.

For the destruction of all prisons.

International solidarity initiative to Alfredo M. Bonanno and Christos Stratigopoulos »

On the same day a banner with the words “Against the Greek State and all prisons / Freedom for Bonanno and Christos” was hung on the Alameda fountain, in Lisbon.