Rioter's Blog

2007-04-08T09:43:00.000-07:00

La Francophonie – Let’s Celebrate Colonialism!

“La Francophonie” is supposedly the day where we celebrate the diversity and expanse of the French language. Now while I have nothing against the French language, I find this day a completely insensitive & rude slap in the face for the people who suffered from three hundred years of French oppression and colonialism.

Some of the most horrific and shameful atrocities and violations of human rights took place under the imperialism of Western powers such as France, England, Portugal and Belgium. To celebrate the internationalism of the French language is to celebrate the fact that France was so successful in colonising those “barbarians” all those years ago. After all, take a look at the maps below – there quite clearly is a strong correlation between areas that were colonised and areas that speak French now [source: Wikipedia].

Map of French colonised areas:

Map of French-speaking areas:

To pretend anything else – that French spread because it’s such a great language or so easy to speak is ridiculous! French spread because the French had guns, soldiers and ships. It’s a similar story with Spanish in South America and English around the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, what is happening now is that rather than embracing their true heritages, ex-colonialist countries are adopting French as their official languages; teaching classes only in French in public “out-reach” schools and changing their cultures to adapt to the ex-oppressor’s culture.

In countries such as Burkina Faso, Cote D’Ivoire, Mali, Togo, Niger, Benin, Cameroon, Gabon and Guinea, French is the only official language. On this note I applaud Vietnam as an example of a country which has taken the next step towards true independence – by changing its official language to Vietnamese. To get anywhere in life in terms of society & careers in the afore-mentioned countries, you have to be able to speak and write in French. As a result, tribal and minority cultures are finding that they must either change their ways (“progress”) or live in isolation.

I say this mainly from a Colombian perspective – I’ve been to Latin America recently, and I’ve seen what’s happening to local villages. In Peru and Ecuador, for example, descendents from the Inca are finding that the government-funded public schooling systems teach only in Spanish. As a result, old languages, and with them old ways and ideas are dying.

The same is the case in Africa, where the French language is being adopted as the way to modernise; the way forward (and in the process leaving the rest behind). This is why I’m saddened when we celebrate “la Francophonie” instead of the true languages, cultures heritages of the very people who need to be recognised the most in this world.

Juan de Francisco

2007-03-05T13:50:00.000-08:00

MANIFESTATION

EN SOLIDARITE AVEC LA JEUNESSE ALTERMONDIALISTE DANNEOISE.

MANIF. LE 9 MARS ENTRE 18 ET 21 HEURES DE RIVE A L’AMBASSADE DANNEOISE.

DEPUIS LE 1ER MARS 2007 LES JEUNES DE COPENHAGUE SONT DANS LES RUES DE LA CAPITALE... ILS PROTESTENT CONTRE LEUR GOUVERNMENT CONSERVATEUR QUI EST ENTRAIN DE FAIRE EVACUER UNE MAISON DE CULTURE ET D’ACCEUIL DES JEUNES. L’OCCUPATION DE CE BATIMENT A ETE REALISE PAR LES MOUVEMENTS DE JEUNES DES ANNEES 70.
LA MAISON A ETE VENDU PAR LE GOUVERNEMENT A UN GROUP CHRETIEN.
IL Y A DEJA EU DES MANIFESTATIONS DE SOLIDARITE AVEC CETTE CAUSE EN FRANCE ET EN ALLEMAGNE. NOTRE OBJECTIF:

MANIFESTER NOTRE RAGE DEVANT LES AMBASSADEURS DANNOIS A GENEVE. SIGNE: SIU-CIS: SINDICATS DES ETUDIANTS

2007-02-14T06:12:00.000-08:00

RIOTER’S BLOCK

CONFEDERATION INTERNATIONALISTE DES ETUDIANTS (CIE)
CONFEDERATION OF INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS (CIS) www.riotersblock.blogspot.com - www.brwg420am13.skyblog.com
www.freeweb.com /hakanah …………………………………………………………………….. …….. …………. …….. …………….. 420
This is a piece of my laptop a strong tool in the struggle
We need to change the negative elements of our academic system at school, we need to modify rules and regulations that repress student self expression. I am not saying this is an obligation I am simply saying it is necessary in the struggle for self and collective emancipation. The struggle is not over, it has just begun, we need to firstly concentrate on our academic studies and secondly work on our ...[continues at above link]

2007-01-21T02:41:00.000-08:00

Warning: some Israelis found this article offensive. If you cant take a bit of criticism without flipping out then don't read the article.

I thought id include a little map for your entertainment.

In 1948, Palestine was invaded. The Palestinians were not consulted and their territory annexed to Western invaders. Somehow this was not enough to appease the guilt of the West, having looked on as the Nazis killed millions of Jews (I’m looking at you Walker Bush). See that little black patch? Well that’s what the Palestinians got after the UN was done with them. ‘Thank you international community for standing up for the rights of a sovereign nation.’ But the Religious Fundamentalists of Israel were still not done and along with losing their country the Palestinians were driven out, in what can only be fairly qualified of ethnic cleansing. In the last map you just might notice little black smudges. That’s what’s left over today. Soon that too will have disappeared and the great country robbery will have been completed under your very own (uncaring) eyes.

Bravo!

2007-01-21T02:38:00.000-08:00

if you think you know the coolest site ever, you'll definitely reconsider after you look at this one. promise me you'll write it down, and remember it forever, on every sunday...heres why:

on the seventh day of the week, at approximately afternoonish time, secrets are posted on this site. but theres more to it than that. they are sent in on postcards that people have created. anyone can create. and everyone has a secret. so this site is obviously made for all.

i could rant on for pages about how i love the site, and how you should really love it too and everyone we know should love it as well. but i wont. because you'll see for yourself that you wont need convincing...

post secret is a community based project that helps people lessen the weight that their secrets take in their lives. people don’t want to share them because they are too difficult to tell to another person. but on the site, you can tell the world.

some of the secrets are mundane, and others are more grave, but it doesn’t matter. a secret is a secret, no matter what it is about. and it always feels better once they are shared.

the only way to know is to try it yourself, so check it out... and i promise it’ll be worth it.

  www.postsecret.blogspot.com 

2007-01-21T02:36:00.001-08:00

Anarchism

Anarchism is a very misunderstood concept. Upon hearing the term many would immediately associate the words ‘chaos’ and ‘disorder’ with it, thinking they are the same thing. This is an entirely false perception.

Anarchism is a philosophy aimed at abolishing capitalism and the State, as well as all forms of illegitimate authority and domination (such as hierarchy), with the end goal of creating a simpler form of society where laws and law-makers are absent and where the individual is free to make his or her own decisions at his or her own expense.

Why challenge authority? Simply because anarchists firmly believe that humanity is at its very best when living free of authority, and where people are co-operating with each other and deciding things for themselves, instead of being told what to do and how to do it.

Anarchists aim to build a decentralised society based largely on the community, where people give what they can in return for what they need. This is also emphasized through solidarity and mutual aid, where people look out for one another and help each other achieve individual or collective goals, instead of competing against each other.

Many also believe that anarchy mean lack of organization, which again, is a mistaken assumption. In fact, it should be emphasized that the success of anarchy is dependant on a structured and functional society, where people are willing to help and look out for one another. The only difference is that instead of being organized in the typical hierarchical manner (top down) society is organized from bottom up.

Anarchists oppose the State (i.e. large centralised governments such as in the United States) and capitalism for a number of reasons. For one, life would be in theory much simpler.

For example, all necessary and what some would call ‘unpleasant’ work such as disposal of garbage or growing food would be divided among all members of the community, leaving everyone with more time to pursue their interests and passions. Capitalism would be replaced with ‘solidarity economics’, meaning life would no longer consist simply of pursuing wealth and maximizing profit. There would no longer be any war between nations competing for resources since those resources would be shared out equally. Laws would be replaced with social customs and most crime as we know it would disappear. This is because most crime seen today (such as theft, arson and a lot of murder cases) is crime that stems from one individual or group of individuals wanting something that belongs to another.

These are just some of the features of the type of society anarchists seek to promote.

By challenging the current workings and relationships within our society and culture, as well as by providing alternatives to the current world we are living in, anarchists all over the world are working for a change that aims to stop the exploitation of the weak by the strong / poor by the rich as well as create a more sustainable society.

There is a long history behind anarchism and it should be noted that it is pretty near impossible to sum up the aims of the anarchist movement into such few words, and therefore, I urge you to check out www.anarchistfaq.org for a much more comprehensive look at the subject.

As stated before, anarchy is not a synonym to “chaos” and “disorder”. It simply implies a society organised and functioning without a government, where people are free to decide things for themselves, as long as those decisions do not harm or inhibit other people’s freedom to do so (unless of course a rational justification can be given). Whether or not you think this system would result in chaos is your opinion. However, what cannot be denied is that Anarchism is a growing movement throughout the world, and is attracting more and more people to its cause everyday.

If you think that the world would be a better place without government, capitalism and private property, then you too are an anarchist.

By John Shehy

You can contact John at smash.geneva@mail.com

2007-01-21T02:11:00.000-08:00

“WHITE NOISE”

Having a bias is part of being human. In moments of anger, angst or intense fear, when our opinions are challenged, biases can emerge more violently than they are intended, or indeed felt, and can make us say things that we regret. But supporting the fight against one injustice, should not require another to arm it. That is to say, if one man is torturing another, the third man ought not to resort to killing the torturer in order to save the victim. My words will of course be turned against me, and without further explanation, it would be justified. So, let me state, I am not supporting injustice. But I do believe that an eye for an eye turns the whole world blind.

On the news each day more corpses, bombardment, famine, suffering, poverty. But which of these have we not seen or heard of before? How is it then, that despite people’s concern, sympathy and good will, revolutionary spirit and brilliant ideologies, we are still facing the same problems that our ancestors were confronted with in 1917, 1848, 1789…? It is partly apathy, but not only. It would be wrong to think that our world survives as it is because of pure ignorance on the part of the fortunate minority.

But if they do care, if they do react – if people feel the pain of their fellow humans, why has society not evolved to a more just state? In order to answer this question, it is best to begin at the micro-level of our school. Privileged (and spoilt) as we are, there are many who may not care very much about that which does not affect them directly. However, there are people who do – people who feel the need to act when learning about the bombing of Somalia, or the flooding in Malaysia. Yet, they can only go so far. The power of the people is in fact so greatly removed that there is hardly anything that can be done. What can you and I, sitting at our desks and writing, do except perhaps raise awareness? We may protest, but in the end, the will of “the leaders” will not bend – George Bush, for example, strode in and invaded Iraq despite hundreds of demonstrations, millions of people across the world protesting against it. The sad fact of the matter is that we can shout as loud as we like, come together, as few as we are, and revolt and still be suppressed.

However, change can be initiated, and in the long run, prove fruitful. If we begin, in our own small communities (school, home etc.) to spark the ideas against injustice, we may eventually all be able to rise. Just because we do not qualify as adults, does not mean that we are indifferent to the ways of the world. Begin now, and things will change in the future. But static belief, conformism and apathy should be eschewed, or they will define what we become in the future – inhuman.

Therefore, though it is frustrating, horrifying, sickening, to recognize our current incapacity, know that voicing your concern on world matters is a first step. The world can change, and numbers matter. So, when in doubt, remember that together our united voice can shake the foundations of society, but divided – each individual’s call becomes indistinguishable white noise.

– R.A.P

2007-01-14T05:43:00.000-08:00

We need articles urgently.
email to riotersblock @ gmail.com

2006-12-27T03:24:00.000-08:00

So this is Christmas?

We're going to start work on a large post-traumatic editon of Rioters Block. Submissions can be up to 1000 words long.

2006-12-14T10:59:00.000-08:00

On cherche des traducteur(trices) pour traduire des textes de 500-600 mots de l'anglais au francais. Envoyez un mail a riotersblock(AT)gmail.com .

2006-12-13T05:13:00.000-08:00

12th and 13th T’n’P Night

The Text and Performance Evening of November 30th should have come with a couple of warnings:

For the 12th graders – “Warning – Shakespeare will be butchered”
For the 13th graders – “Warning – Enormous breasts”

But in all seriousness, I’ve been to many theatre evenings at Chat, and this one deserves a special mention. IT WAS INCREDIBLY HILARIOUS!! The 12th graders were brilliant, holding true to the words: “Shakespeare like you’ve never seen before!” They faced a tough challenge when they decided to perform a complicated 16th century play in a way that we could all understand and they did a remarkable job. I challenge anyone to find a more innovative and creative way to summarize the conflict between Desdemona & Othello than their succinct Jerry Springer scene, or to find a more tear-jerking song to show us the love between the two. By drawing on contemporary inspiration, the 12th graders turned Othello into something we could all enjoy and laugh at. Teachers, parents and students couldn’t stop laughing throughout the performance. And the TnP crew didn’t stop there. They pushed the envelope in every possible aspect, likening the scene where Othello is imbued by his enemies to a comic That 70’s Show scene, with their comparison of some of the most important facts and truths of life to a nine iron golf club. They did it pretty damn well too.

The 13th graders deserve no less praise. It’s hard to decide where to begin, they were all terrific. Honestly, you readers should get as many autographs as you can, because judging from their performance at the evening; quite a few of them definitely have talent for the big screen. Who knows? In a couple of year’s time the next James Bond could be Matt Tembo, and the Bond girl could easily be played by either Maxime Bouchard or Arnau Muntaner! ALL of the 13th grade’s Transformations – their IB performances – were amazing, but their final piece, Shakespeare’s Love’s Labors Lost was the crème de la crème. You really got the impression they put their heart into it. Who’d have thought that an absolutely hilarious scene involving M Duchene & Mme Bouvier clamouring over rioting students could have been infused into this play? ALL of their performances were top-notch, but I think the guys (who played the girls) deserve a special mention – from Arnau’s (disturbingly) perfect portrayal of a stereotypical slut to Maxime’s insanely funny acting to Yaniv’s crazy character – armed with jugs that could knock out a rhino at twenty paces. That woman could accomplish anything.

I think that most people agree with me when I say: “WE WANT MORE!”
Activista

2006-12-13T05:12:00.000-08:00

La Chat Animal Rights Group

Animal Rights Group. This phrase seems to provoke more laughter than anything else among the seemingly apathetic students of La Châtaigneraie. This is not to say that nobody cares about the group, but they are amazingly outnumbered by people who could not care less, and even people who are against the group. The sign-up sheet, which had already collected a few names on it, was removed for no reason last Friday morning. Also, as the person who started the group, I am openly mocked as I walk through the school hallways, and one of my classmates began wearing a very obvious fur hat the day after I announced the group, and others repeatedly point out the hat to me and laugh.
This attitude provokes, other than anger, two questions. Do students know about the horrible conditions animals are kept in, and not care? Or do they simply not know?
Do they realise that when they sit down in front of a traditional chicken dinner, that these animals were kept in cramped conditions, up to 7 chickens in an 18-inch (45 cm) cage, after having their upper beaks painfully cut off with scalding knives, and that in these cages, the chicken’s talons grow around the metal bars underneath them so that they cannot move at all, until they are slaughtered at the age of 7-8 weeks, while chickens in normal conditions live that many years?
Do La Chât’s students understand that when they slip on a fur coat, that these animals were either trapped in steel-jawed traps in the wild (the animals caught which were not needed for fur coats were, of course, thrown out), or raised on fur farms, which, despite the name which indicates this is not a place where the animals run about freely, but are kept in wire cages, usually outside despite the temperature, and with little or no veterinary care, until they are beaten with clubs or drowned (as to not harm the fur), and then skinned; because they are not “meat” animals, the corpses of the hundreds of animals this is done to (It takes the pelts of 60 mink to make a small fur coat) are simply discarded.
Would knowing information such as this cause students to stop mocking people who are against these treatments, and maybe even join the group? Or do La Chât’s students conform with all assumptions: that they are apathetic?

To learn more about animal rights and animal cruelty, try http://www.peta2.com/, or check out one of the many books in the MMC, under the number 179.3.
To contact the Animal Rights Group of La Châtaigneraie, email us at lachatanimalrightsgroup@hotmail.com.

2006-12-13T04:50:00.000-08:00

Personal responsibility
There are a lot of things wrong with the world. Big, scary things, hugely outside the control of any one individual. Solving them seems near impossible to anyone save an imaginary superhero. One such problem is poverty, a regular killer. In the time it has taken you to read the above sentences, one child has died as a direct cause of poverty. Since this time yesterday 29,000 have died and 1 billion live below the poverty line. This problem appears insurmountable, impossible to solve. Who could possibly tackle such a problem to save millions of lives every year?
Another problem is war. War is conducted by men with guns, thousands upon thousands of them, filled with rage, or worse, cold calculating precision. They fight for freedom, democracy or riches, often confusing each of these for the other. What could one person do to solve all this? Who could possibly combat this problem which crosses the boarders of all countries? It appears to be part of society and has been since its existence. How could we stop this?
These issues are important, and upon learning all these facts, chances are you made a decision regarding what you could and could not do. You probably decided these problems were too big to be handled alone. You probably decided to give up and continue living your life. Most likely, you bought goods this past week, went to school or work, rode in a car. This would place you in the luckier half of the world— you don't need to do anything as you are not directly affected by war or poverty. Yet to remain passive when recognizing the harsh realities that taint our world would be to ignore the fundament of human civilization: personal responsibility. Indeed, the harmonious functioning of a civilized society is reliant on the basic principle of personal responsibility which states that we are responsible for our actions. This means that if people know they are partaking in an act that deserves punishment, they must receive the latter. It is thus essential that all actions detrimental to society receive consequences.
This raises the question of where personal responsibility begins and ends. For example, remember those five children that died while you where reading this? Well as it turns out they all died in a hut in rural India. The reason is they could not receive care for their malnourishment because their father was not able to obtain grain as he had spent the last of the money a year ago, buying genetically modified grain from a large agro-pharmaceutical corporation. The farmer was not able to re-use the grain because the corporation had failed to tell him that it was modified to stop the practice of reusing grain. Since, subsistence farmers such as this man could not pay off their debts and they eventually ran out of food. Now take the child that died during that last paragraph. He was a charming little boy from South America that lived too close to a coal mine owned by a large mining company. The mine produced so much dust that he died from tuberculosis caused by the noxious air. Remember that item you bought? That Brand Name™ chocolate bar? Guess what, the financial conglomerate that owns the chocolate bar company also owns the mining company and the agro-pharmaceutical corporation. As it turns out, this conglomerate uses the chocolate bar revenue to pioneer aggressive business practices in Peru and Bangladesh and throughout the world. But surely your bar only cost you a couple of francs…
Now picture a generic white collar worker. He goes to work in an office building in Sydney every day. His job is to push a pen from one edge of the paper to the other. He has friends, a wife, kids, and a car. In his sub-urban garden sits his dog, which he walks every week on Saturdays. He doesn't really care what he is doing. He studied accounting and continues in his career path because it is expected of him. Does it matter whether he is calculating the benefits made by that conglomerate of which we spoke earlier? Does it really matter whether the deficit he recorded last week forced the Board of Directors to call in special favors from men high in the US government to send a peace keeping force to protect American interests from rebellions sweatshop workers in some developing country? And anyway, what would the white-collar worker do? It is all so big, so distant, so disconnected. The important thing to remember at this point is that all these events are not independent of each other and that if even one of the cogs in the system were to stop, perhaps the ten or so kids that died when you were reading this article could have been saved.
If the white-collar worker and the co-workers at his office went on strike, if you decided to have an apple, or better still, a Max Havelaar banana instead of that chocolate bar, if the miners, the factory workers, the sweatshop slaves, were all to grind the machines to a halt, were all to work together in concerted effort, then the negative effects of these corporations could very well be stopped along with the machines and tools they used to chain us with. So why don't we? Because we don't want to take responsibility for our actions. We are cowards that don't want accept that we are every bit as responsible for poverty, death and destruction as the big corporations and governments we criticize. In many ways we are the big corporations and governments, and now we must face the fact that our actions are the cause of death and misery.
-By RzBz

2006-12-10T10:03:00.000-08:00

Rioter's Block And Student Union Meeting called for Thursday Lunchtime (P6) outside MMC

2006-11-21T13:39:00.000-08:00

ARTICLE FOR RIOTER’S BLOCK

Written on the 16^th of November 2006

– MINORITIES –

There will always be a distinct minority which will disagree, which will have different desires from the masses and hence will instigate the momentum for change. Whether this change is intrinsically good or bad is another question, but there will at least be movement in the society, preventing evolution from reaching a standstill.

If we accept this, then it holds true that any society should nurture variety of opinion, to allow diversity of perspective and impede any possibility of monotony of thought from manifesting itself in the minds of the people. This is the killer of all intelligence and originality of thought and should be dutifully and diligently avoided.

Taken then, the accusation that so often is flung in the direction of this paper and its authors, that because the world is not a socialist or ideal one and is not ‘likely to change’, they claim that thinking as we do, differently, is futile and will serve no purpose.

Indeed? The segregation in America was wrong by all standards in the 1960’s, but that does not imply that the oppressed should not have risen in protest, that they should simply have accepted things as they were. Martin Luther King Jr., by that judgement, was a fool. This is not, by far, the singular example, but it proves the point. Minorities are not wrong simply because they are minorities. And acceptance of any state of repression, even when the future looks bleak, is defeatist.

Therefore, it is wrong to say that people should not think in terms of a better, more idealistic world. At least there are some, if not many, who may initiate some change. A stone dropped in a pond may sink to the bottom, but it sends ripples across the entire surface of the still water. You may accept the world as it is, but do not look down on those who cannot and do not. And when you are reaping the benefits of the revolutionaries’ tactics and methods, perhaps you will not condemn them so vehemently as you do now.

Remember, “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a seed a long time ago.” (Warren Buffet)

– R*A*P

---------------------------

Empty concepts, empty words, empty politics

Nationalism has always been a problem in Spain, but it has never reached today’s ridiculous extremes. President Zapatero has the whim to be remembered as the hero who saved Spain from Basque nationalist terrorism and for this reason he has invented a “process of peace” with the terrorist organisation ETA. There can be no process of peace when there is no war. And, as far as I know, there is no war going on in the Basque Country. This “peace” is among other things an insult to ETA’s innocent victims. Have their deaths been in vain? After decades of vehement anti-terrorism, the Spanish government now surrenders unconditionally to the wishes of a few fanatical empty heads – that is all it is reduced to in the end. Of the three million Basques, three thousand want independence. Three thousand. Zapatero faces opposition at home: what does he do? He attempts to legitimise his process of peace by presenting it to the European Union, conscious that sympathy for ETA is rather popular in Europe. But know this. One should understand and may sympathise with a “terrorist” who sacrifices his life for the cause of freedom and the end of oppressive occupation, but not with a coward murderer serving the ambitions of a few nationalist politicians. These ambitions are as stupid as they are varied. An example: Ibarretxe, head of the Basque Nationalist Party, has claimed that his ultimate dream is a World Cup final between Catalonia and the Basque Country (no, I didn’t make this up). Only ignorant fools can believe that heavy words like “oppression” can be applied to the situation in the Basque Country. However, whether Spain ends up divided into twenty different states is completely irrelevant. The country –or, should we say, group of countries– faces far more important social and economic problems that are deliberately hidden under this foolish and much publicised wave of nationalism. Spain is full of anachronisms, but the worst of them is nationalism. The Spanish right, worthy follower of Francoist values, now claims that the national political situation greatly resembles that of 1934, and that the country is on the verge of civil war due to the reckless policies of the “left”, which are destroying the unity of Spain. There is at least one important difference: the “left” of 1934 had a sense of social justice and revolutionary spirit that nowadays, I am ashamed to say, seem gone. This is not extraordinary considering that “left-wing” parties cease to be so under the appearance of “democracy” and parliamentarism. “Democracy’s” main success is putting the revolutionary spirit of the people in a state of hibernation. But if the numerous mistakes, corruption, incoherence and plain idiocy of this and all the other governments in the 30 years of Spanish “democracy” have not reawakened it, I really can’t see what can. People are led to believe that “democracy” is the only good system so that any other alternative must be bad. Conforming to “democracy” happens to be a moral obligation. Voting becomes necessary: it makes people think that they are participating, that they are taking the decisions. And there is nothing more satisfying for a voluntarily political ignorant person than a sense of self-importance. It reassures him in his ignorance. Solutions cannot possibly be found within the putrid “democratic” system. “Democracy”, “moderation”, “liberalism” and all those charming words are empty rhetoric, false and impractical. Action is required. And action can only be taken through that magic word – and one full of meaning: revolution. The main thing to avoid is “working against a system from within”. If we don’t want to end up becoming part of it!

A Zappatista

2006-11-19T03:20:00.000-08:00

This is American Justice.
Thats a link by the way.

2006-11-19T02:16:00.000-08:00

The Student Lounge

A place for and by the students

What the Students Want

The student lounge’s mission is to create an area on campus where all students feel welcome and can escape from the normal bustle, hustle and dreariness that reigns over the rest of the school. There are now so many students in our school that there are very few places where students can truly feel welcome and can relax. The lounge also allows us to find a place that does not come under the control which is imposed in other parts of the school. How do we know that this is what the students want? Because this is what they have been clamoring for, for years now, and this is what they have personally told senior Lounge activists.

What We Had

We used to have a whole large room dedicated to the students, 6 or 7 years ago. Due to the exponentially expanding student population, this then other leisure oriented areas of the school where rapidly eliminated, to the benefit of more classrooms. Most recently a group of students, dedicated and determined to cut through the red-tape to the core of the problem and fix it, occupied an unused area outside the MMC. This area was large enough and spacious enough to accommodate 20-25 students in relative comfort at its peak. What we, the Lounge activists, did was rehabilitate this space. We harmed to no one, taking away nothing from anyone, and giving hundred fold what this space offered to start off with. We used the materials available to create a closed off space, using boards and chairs, positioned to create a relaxed area. Of note is also the helpfulness and cooperation of the librarians. Came generous donations to the lounge in form of a kettle and a stereo and thus music and tea became unavoidable elements of the fledgling lounge. Arrived a carpet, bringing together this space that was still cold in appearance. The carpet gave this space a very nice finishing touch. How we were proud of our lounge. Our tireless efforts and commitment to create a space of peace and well being within the school finally truly paid off. Students started flowing in, giving this unused space its first breath of continuous activity since it was built, years ago. Thanks to our efforts the space was kept clean and ready… But then…

What Happened

It was Friday morning, the third day, that Mrs. Berrada arrived questioning our legitimacy and our right to exist in this (our) space. Mr. Chinal rapidly arrived on the scene in a state of obvious excitation and questioned more forcefully. Attempting as we could do defend the student’s space and effort, we eventually caved in under the threat of police (!) intervention. Accused of squatting we were given the very clear and imperious command to clear out or else. It appears that these two school authorities, whose offices are both found in the Main building, believed we were disrupting the entire school by our noisy and unruly existence. However we had noted no complaints from any of the users of the building or the MMC. We were also likened to dictatorial revolutionaries, vanguards prepared to take over for our own ends, disregarding those of the Students. We were accused, entirely falsely, of having taken over this space for our own selfish wants. These accusations were not true as all were welcome and indeed al grades enjoyed this space equally since its habilitation. We were however compelled to clear up our things in order to avoid any further trouble to the users of this space, who were being amalgamated to activists and against whom we feared the anger of the administration might turn upon. Thus the carpet was rolled up, the electronics stowed away, and the Lounge returned to its old, cold and silent self, occupied but by a handful of the more resilient students. However we remain confident that the Lounge can and will return to its former glory and surpass it…

Hopes and Plans

A small group of Student activists met with Mr. Binge and discussed the future of this space. We were requested to talk to the 12^th Graders Council, still considered as the elected representatives, and asked to submit a plan. Only then could the Lounge be approved. The more dedicated elements of the group vowed to bring back the lounge no matter what, risking anything for the students. A few refused point blank and negotiations with the Council. As it stands the Student Union, representative of the demands of student activists and the interests of the Lounge, is not supportive of the 12^th Graders Council who have shown nothing but disrespect towards our initiatives and actions, who were taken in the interests of the students, and who harmed nobody, on the contrary providing a long overdue service to the school. We are however prepared to inform the Council of our plans, which are as follow:

- To rehabilitate the Student Lounge as soon as possible

- To include the following within it

- A stereo (available)

- A kettle (available)

- A couch and other seating arrangements (Pledged and available)

- Music CDs, on the condition of their respectful use (Pledged and available)

- MP3 connection for the stereo (pledged and available)

- More boards, so that the space is closed up better (pledged and available

- A computer (pledged)

These are our plans. This is our history. We have come too far to be dismissed. We have achieved too much to be ignored.

the Student Union.

2006-11-14T07:25:00.000-08:00

Article inspired by “We The People” show on NDTV where the motion debated was “Are hospitals becoming hotels in India?”

Do the middle and upper classes represent the majority of the people of India? That would be a crafted statistic. One-third of the country’s population still live in abject poverty, barely surviving on less than a dollar a day. And yet, it is a ‘democratic’ society, where everyone has a voice. You would think therefore, that the government would address this issue, even if its only incentive was the fear of losing support of a large portion of the electorate. But it doesn’t work that way.

These millions of people, the real people, are not provided for by the government. They do not have social security, and though they are the ones who most need access to hospitals and medical care, they are denied it. Private hospitals are built like hotels and are subsidized (yes, subsidized) by the government. If you have the money, you have the service.

Thus we see the unequal distribution, the iron grip of the rich. The situation is in such dire straits that the poor have lost the will to act. And if they do not unite in action, they cannot express themselves with force.

But do not think that this is true only of India. One need not look further than America to observe this phenomenon in action, even in so-called ‘developed countries’. These societies were founded or have evolved into class obsessed systems and until this is obliterated, destroyed, revolutionized, a society cannot begin to consider itself democratic or civilized.

Not until the voice of every man and woman is heard. Not until the colour of your skin or the cost of your clothes is rendered insignificant in terms of your basic human rights. Not until your government bows to you, and not you to it, will the world begin a progressive step forward and initiate the negation of the backward process that began with imperialism.

This negation starts here, with us. If we respect each other, if we listen to what everyone has to say, we can set an example for others to follow.

So friends, let’s begin.

R*A*P

2006-11-08T11:30:00.000-08:00

18-19 October 2006 – STANDING ALONE, IB Theatre arts monologue evenings.

The IB Theatre arts class in thirteenth grade exploded on to their solo scenes with a consistent level of high-quality performances all around. The adaptations of plays and transformations of novels were impressively diverse though typically female dominated the show remained equally dispersed throughout varied psychological and historical themes in contemporary theatre.

The night was opened by Elise’s terrific interpretation of “I stand before you naked” by Joyce Carol Oates. We are taken in to the psyche of a truly desperately bored, devious housewife who spends her lonely hours at home signing checks off to every type of charity possible in order to be able to sleep well at night with a clear conscience. The notion of death and the possibility of ending up in hell after a life of effortless comfort strikes this lonely housewife who surrenders a full dependence upon the obsessive work of her husband and stays at home alone making steps towards heaven via the husbands pay checks. In this case the amusing twist came with the wild imaginary community that lives inside her mind that she protects by the use of her husbands gun. This was successfully used as a prop and handled with much precision of motion and timing of gestures. The hilarious mental disturbance of this woman was magnificently represented by Elise’s tone, clarity of expression and the often explosive comical thoughts and actions of her character. The wife launders the husbands money by taking away his payment cheques. She makes a full reconsideration of her humanitarian vocation and leaves the crowd cheering and laughing…

-Amongst the dying claps and cheers you could start to hear the voice of the typical wasted teenager at a school play over enthusiastically cheering; “That was splendid! Simply outstanding!”. Clapping along well past the crowds cheers you could instantly recognise the voice as coming from the one and only Assaf Levin. He made a direct and spontaneous entrance into the spectator’s zone in order to heat up the atmosphere for a tour of Willy Wanker’s magic chocolate factory!
Assaf’s transformation of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate factory was much appreciated by the audience whose widespread popularity made this show a comic success by invoking, in many of us a return to the good old days of our childhood’s illustrated by the genial imagination of Roald Dahl. Crowd interaction was necessary and well employed considering the fact that it was a tour. Assaf managed to make me feel like a little proletarian English kid who found a penny and won a trip to the most extravagant and colourful chocolate factory in the world presented by one hell of an eccentric dude. Wonka creates a whole range of tripped out magic candy inventions that are often accompanied by physiological deformations. Then the guy tells us he’s got pipes flowing with chocolate yet that Wanker of a Willy won’t let my poor ass taste that shit, instead he recommends that I pass by the factory shop on the way out! So I reckon the show was highly ironic yet the character proved very charismatic on the whole. I found that Assaf’s strong control of stage attention took us all on a debatably psychedelic trip of Wonka’s mystery candy elaboration. There is an interesting critique of the side-effects induced by synthetic melting-pot candy produced by large candy companies: The adverse effects of child vice and gourmet speculation. Fantastic round of applause for Assaf! 
-The next piece took me on the whole by pleasant surprise. Sophie brilliantly honoured a much loved absurd theatre classic with her sentimental and physical lover: her cello. The epic monologue was represented in its original French version and it took us through an entirely different approach to sexual instruments. It was executed with much elegance and sensuality whilst proving absurdly comic. For those who might remember back to the class of  05 Monologues, Nissa represented the same play also in its original French version and used much more mime than props. However, Sophie’s proved a great deal more extensive and was propped up by a great big cello which provided for much use of movement and touch that made her sexually incoherent attraction seem physically plausible. “Il faut que j’aprenne a jouer !»   mais tant qu’ on puisse toucher on peut toujours aimer !! Thumbs up to Sophie for taking us through her private affair with a cello and letting us enjoy the absurdly humorous situation it created. 
-Sacha impressively took the stage with the frustrated impatience of a young girl’s desire to get engaged with a man called Archie. Her dilemma comes through in her interior debate over whether she should and why she could not propose herself to this Archie type. She interpreted the role of Martha in Walter Ben Hare’s “A Leap year Leap”. Her expressions and movements were both very naturally represented with a great deal of elegance and humour. Sacha successfully satirised the much loved scene of a damsel in emotional distress over her potential fiancee. All her inner arguments as to her possibility of proposing and the level of their relationship are immediately nullified by a letter that arrives from Archie declaring his long omitted love for her and his proposal to marriage. Sacha successfully demonstrated the immediate elation felt by Martha upon reading Archie’ s romantic letter. I was stunned by the high level of naturally this performance was handled with. The quality was tops. Big up to Sacha for an amazing monologue
Due to format limitations the rest of the Wednesday and Thursday night performances will be reviewed in next weeks issue of Rioters Block. B*R*W*G*-

2006-11-07T11:28:00.000-08:00

Rioters Block has a new email adress:

riotersblock AT gmail DOT com

Also Rioter's Block is having a meeting on Thursday at Lunchtime outside the MMC

2006-11-07T11:05:00.000-08:00

- THE CONFORMITY OF OPINION -

One would expect, in a school such as ours that calls itself international, to find a diversity of opinion and an atmosphere of lively controversy. Che Guevara haunts every corner and backpack, a symbol of adolescent rebellion; yet most often coupled with that common teen abhorrence of communism and fascination with the free market. At the end of the day they all retire to those ‘ever reliable’ McDonalds, Burger King and Starbucks joints – American multi-national corporations that greedily conquer every inch of the planet and engulf the consumer.

Where did originality and individual spirit go? A little while ago, Carpe Diem published an issue with a political cartoon on the front cover. This cartoon depicted a Muslim man (supposedly an Arab) reading a newspaper article about the failed/foiled (and alleged) terror plot while watching a trailer for the infamous ‘Snakes on a plane’ wondering, “Why didn’t we think of that?” I find it shocking, in such an international environment, that people can stoop so low. Have opinions – of course – but have some respect too. This cartoon clearly demonstrates the uniformity of opinion within the boundaries of our school system. And it is racist, discriminatory and unjust. This incriminating assumption on the part of the ‘first world’ countries in the west that “all Muslims are not terrorists but all terrorists are Muslim” shows just how far backward we have come from any possible sense of social justice or equality.

Have you ever held a minute’s silence for the thosands of victims in Palestine? Have you ever even considered the continued plight of the people in Afghanistan and Iraq, or remembered and respected the thousands who suffered from the Tsunami after 2004 was over? And now ask yourself if you’ve remembered or held silence for September 11^th victims, of the July 7^th bombings in London or even the Armistice of the First World War. Isn’t it perverse? These are ‘first world’ tragedies – that is why they are seen in so important and critical a light. These are disasters that have affected the countries that deem themselves MDC’s. I ask you, are you more developed if you are like the USA and have much money and weapons, and less developed if you’re like Egypt and economically poorer but with a wealth of culture and heritage? Oh yes, I see the logic.

These terms, these stereotypes, these segregations – how can we not yet be rid of them? It is a hypocritical world we inhabit, thinking the west superior because of its military might and power over others. Imperialism is still rife in new forms, and it will make people rise. Oaxaca will lead the way to revolution. And if you’re afraid of a repetition of 1917, then it is time to think and revolutionise your ideas. Have some respect for others, don’t look down at people, don’t use such sick stereotypes of other cultures. And don’t conform. Be original, think for yourselves. Or all the world will be lost to fools.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: I would like to thank the Carpe Diem for issuing the obscene cartoon that has inspired this article.

BY R*A*P*

2006-10-16T10:57:00.000-07:00

What happened to Feminism?

Pimps n Hoes, some would say they don’t approve of the theme and impose a boycott. Is there an ethical justification for lucrative prostitution? Though it is visibly apparent and biologically affirmed that the overall male physical strength is significantly superior to the female one, it seems that its significance is such that it has made the rampant male sexual thirst an act executable by force upon the female body. That act, commonly known as rape has historically been condemned yet clandestinely practiced widely by its very condemners. Even today we are not lacking in examples, we all know why religion has always been so implanted in education. Let us not forget that cases of child sexual molestation by use of force on boys and girls alike has most recently been practiced largely by priests.

Amongst the consequences of the superiority of male physical strength we also have the female dependence upon male protection in the domain of prostitution. In order for females to offer the sexual disposal of their body’s in exchange for money are forced to seek the protection to prevent or mostly to avenge physical abuses and rip-offs. Hence the sadly inevitable concept of Pimps n’ Hoes. The size of the commission pocketed by the pimp can unfortunately be made the entire sum that the “hoe” earns by use of the unjustly advantageous physical superiority of men. However this is greatly facilitated by the fact that prostitution is so widely condemned (mainly religiously) that it is commonly outlawed. This brings prostitution into the darkness of the black market. The drug and sex trades are the most dangerous to indulge in, not just due to police repression but also due to their disproportionate economic value which cause the defence of their practice from cops to competition to be of a very high level of violence.

Sex, drugs, money, and guns are due to prohibition tightly associated.

I say fuck that shit! Legalisation allows regulation, physical and legal security but more importantly for trade unionism. Dutch whores are fully unionised which means their labour rights are recognised and they get a full deserved salary of which they only pay a small portion to the state in the form of taxes: The state being their “pimp”.

In my view that is a wiser option to black market prostitution which in most cases lets male domination prevails. We can see that the male dominated prohibitionist state often claims a sexually equalitarian title but clearly lets male physical force take the lead and turns a blind eye on its use.

However the male attitude to female rights can only really change if there is a conscience of sexual inequality that is fervently opposed by all women. As in the class struggle; class conscience must be acquired by the working classes through education and action taken against the upper classes by the oppressed. A pacifist approach to the class struggle does not imply the murder of the entire upper class so much as to promote and realise an equal redistribution of the wealth and power to more autonomous groups within the working class. That pacifist approach applied to the feminist struggle would be to opt against getting rid of the problem of male physical oppression by killing all men and establishing a purely and orthodox “feminist society”. Unfortunately the term “feminism” seems to have become tainted with that radical violent approach just as Stalin tainted the class struggle with a fiercely authoritarian and repressive reputation.

“Whenever you ask girls whether they consider themselves feminists or not, most of them deny any association with the aforementioned term”. Has the system or the sexist male elements within it really managed to make the defense of their own rights a derogative term even to women? Have women come to accept male domination or do they find a sexual attraction to it? It certainly surprised one or two parents that the theme for a girl’s party be “pimps n’ hoes”, some to the extent of forcing a boycott of it on their kids. Surely that is an exaggerated approach because a party’s all about joking around and having a good time to ignore the politics of it for one night and enjoy satirising the concept.

But my question remains largely unanswered; what did happen to feminism anyway? Why accept the denial of pursuing studies to girls in increasingly Islamic governed countries? Why accept male sex appeal as a marketing tool in selling the female body in publicity? Why listen and dance to Snoop Dogg’s music when he appears in one of his video clips holding women by a leash attached to a dog collar around their neck!?

WHY IS THIS ARTICLE WRITTEN BY A MAN IN THE FIRST PLACE!?!

By BRWG

2006-10-14T02:45:00.000-07:00

Medical Marijuana Is Not a Libertarian Cause

“Medicine by regulation is better than medicine by referendum.” U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said that during arguments in the much-watched medical-marijuana case, Ashcroft v. Raich. Breyer, in other words, prefers that any change in the government’s prohibition of marijuana use be accomplished by an appeal to federal drug-enforcement authorities rather than by a public vote in the states, as occurred in California.

But what he is really saying is that medical oppression by an elite is better than medical oppression by the mob. Are those our only choices? Why must we have medical oppression at all? Why not medicine by free individual choice, or self-medication? The fact that this is not even on the table shows how far our society has moved from its individualist foundations.

America: the land of the “free”. They’re ‘free’ people but not free to make their own decisions about how they wish to be medicated. The way I see it, they have two choices if they need some sort of medication. They can take it the government’s way and pop pill after pill, whilst mixing medications, and then suffer the negative side affects. Or, they can go against the government and smoke weed. While weed also has side effects, these are fewer and they are not nearly as dangerous as most of the drugs that the government declares legal.

Another example of the oppression of medical marijuana is to do with a woman who lives in America. She has many diseases and disabilities. So many problems, in fact, that there is no medication that will work for her sickness. No medication except marijuana that is. The American government decided that what she was doing was illegal and she is now undergoing many court hearings because the ‘man’ wants to send her to jail. She can’t eat unless she has some THC in her body because it acts as an anti-nausea drug. The pain that she feels is also unbearable unless she’s vaporised some ganja.

Meanwhile, America is being hypocritical; as Cypress Hill would say: “They’re slinging sacks behind our backs”. There are 5 people who currently receive marijuana for medicinal uses from the US government. Just another example of how the USA doesn’t make sense.

by The Budman

2006-10-11T12:20:00.000-07:00

This piece, by Draloo Wekim is entitled Plan Nine, a wink to the 1959 horror flick « Plan Nine From Outer Space". Woolard's work is extremely political, but what really makes it exceptional the artist himself. His website ( www.draloo.com) is full of information on him and his work, but also incorporates pages from another website, Scariens.org, a large section on Scarienism and the "Scarien Creed", some form of Semi-spiritual theory that promotes 'Spiritual Anarchy' against the 'Rupublicats'. This 'Creed' features prominently in Draloo's work and in the theory behind it. . The 'Scarien Liberation Army', a possible reference to the 1980s group the Symbionese Liberation Army, encourages resistance to the American State and corporate power. Draloo Wekim’s postcards are interesting, both stylistically and conceptually. Draloo broadcasts his postcards throughout the USA and encourages others to do this as well. For a full set (5) of Draloo postcards e-mail: together.we.are.many@gmail.com

2006-09-01T02:25:00.000-07:00

Democracy?

Communism and anarchism are branded idealistic because human nature is egoistic and eager of power, but reading a definition of democracy I can’t but mock its… innocence? What is democracy if not another illusion? I’ll tell you what it is: a fraud. Democracy, as defined conventionally, does not exist in the Western world.

US-model democracy –for, after all, the US is the democracy of democracies isn’t it?– is a system that promises freedom and doesn’t deliver it. The blanket that hides a rancid imperialism with the typical crusade-like religious overtones and fanaticism implied. Fanaticism to combat fanaticism: 9-11 is responded with the massacre of 3,000 civilians in an innocent country, Afghanistan. It is remarkable that direct imposition from the mother of democracies is a necessary condition for the good working of the system. The results can be appreciated in Iraq, and they are self-explanatory. On the other hand, Hamas’ absolute majority in Palestine does not evidence the will of the people, but the result of terrorist pressure… Obviously, before spreading democracy and freedom throughout the world, the US should worry about making their own “democracy” worthy of that name.

Because power abuses are not the mere slips of a few “bad” men; they illustrate the corruption, degeneration and failure of, not just American, but Western democracy (for Europe readily consents and even cooperates). The point is not to blame Americans for this or that (although the promotion of ignorance is influential), but to bring the system down. We cannot allow its universalisation as the definitive form of government, predicted by the propagandists of democracy. It is known that all empires fall. And the empire of democracy is digging its own grave in the Middle East. But let us not remain passive and indifferent while this empire falls and another one takes its place. Let us accelerate its collapse and be able to remember it as the last one.

One of the first steps to let the hypocritical politicians, the populist mass media and the hidden industries and companies that move them in the background know that we are sick of their “democracy” is to refuse to vote. To vote is not only to recognise yesterday’s accepted evil as today’s good, it’s also cooperating with the evil. What does it matter who we vote anyways? Does it change anything? All democratic parties, if only for the fact that they support this false democracy, essentially defend the same injustices.

The solution must not be found within the democratic system. However, the way I see it, straight social revolution cannot succeed in the present because the worker of today, despite the fact that his situation has changed little, is unconscious, kept in a state of hibernation. A social revolution risks the fate of previous ones: to be poisoned by capitalism and become all it seeks to destroy. A fundamental preliminary step is to reject the system within ourselves, with all the consequences. We must liberate our minds, for democratic imperialism, not content with the physical subjugation of other people, also attempts to control its own subjects’ minds. This action alone, the first stone of the building, signifies quite a challenge for a young person of shallow and selfish ambitions, imbued in capitalist culture, like you and I are meant to be. But it can be done. We shall not stand up for a specific party to move conformist masses towards a lie. What we defend above all is individual and global freedom, which essentially go together. Currently an illusion, yes, and quite an exemplary one too, worthy of our attention and efforts. But one that must become reality and that will never be a fraud.

- a Zappatista

2006-08-25T01:35:00.000-07:00

The following is a declaration of independance originally posted here.

This text is copy-right free, so if you want to use it for a flyer or something you can. Also if you want to modify it you can. Itd be nice however if you did not take all the credit for it.

"We are the workers of the world. We are the oppressed, the poor, the hungry. We are those who have known no freedom but that which has been given to us from the plate of our Masters. We hereby declare independence from those who wish to keep us down. We declare a Free State one in which equality and freedom reign masters of all. We declare ourselves free from Capital and those who serve it. We bow down to no god or master. We hold our heads high with dignity as we say “Ya Basta!” In this declaration we henceforth declare ourselves to be independent from any State. Due to Capitals Insidious and all-permeating nature we do not establish our own physical State. Instead we create a world of freedom in our own hearts and minds. Wherever we are we are free of the bonds of slaver that not so long ago held us down. We declare ourselves independent and free, unbound by the laws that ensure that we are chained down. We declare ourselves independent of these gods that ensure we remain docile. We declare that the only laws which we will follow are those that will ensure that our freedom will not die. We declare that the only masters or governments we serve and follow are those in our hearts and consciousnesses. Bourgeois, Capitalists, Cops, Oppressors be prepared for we have declared our independence of you and we will fight to protect our precious freedom.

Having taken note of our independence we now ask you to note our grievances and demands. These are many, as many as there are oppressed, beaten down and starving people. However we have reduced these to a more acceptable number.
1. We indentify power and its distribution as the source of many of the problems our brothers and sisters face today. Thus we demand that this power be broken down and redistributed back to the people.
2. We identify material positions as the source of power. Thus we demand a redistribution of this wealth in order for everyone to be able to live in dignity and equality, the two things that ccan guarantee our freedom.
3. We identify the police and armed forces of every country as the force legitimising the conservation of the status quo and as tools of reaction against our freedom. Thus we demand that the standing forces and police of every country be demobilised and their weaponry confiscated and destroyed.
These are our first demands. Non-compliance with these demands will be perceived as an aggressive attitude to our idependence and will place the perpetrators of sucha threat in a de facto state of war with all those that seek freedom."

- RzBz

2006-08-24T06:44:00.000-07:00

Shopping Spree
How to Get Free Books, CDs, and Movies from Focus on the Family & Thereby Taking Money out of the Pockets of Anti-Gay Bigots in 12 Easy Steps

BY NOEL BLACK

Gay marriage is on the ropes and you may be feeling despondent about the tedious process and dim prospects for any kind of meaningful change in the near future. And why wouldn't you? There are a total of eight states in the U.S. that don't have Defense of Marriage amendments either on the books or in the works, and Massachusetts is still the only state that permits same-sex marriage. The Washington State Supreme Court handed down its anti-gay-marriage decision several weeks ago and Washington's gay community is licking its wounds and contemplating an incremental push for civil unions.

When I'm feeling despondent over the state of gay rights in Americaâor the concurrent assaults on reproductive freedom, science, and rational thoughtâthere's just one thing that helps me overcome my feelings of despair: getting free shit from Focus on the Family!

Few people know that Focus on the Familyâthe powerful evangelical Christian para-church based in Colorado Springsâwill give you, absolutely free of charge, books, CDs, and DVDs. Usually people pay for these products, and the millions of dollars raised helps Focus on the Family produce yet more books and CDs featuring Dr. James Dobson and other Focus "experts." (Focus on the Family's experts, when they're not chatting on the phone with Karl Rove, run around the country teaching people how to stop being so gay and when it's appropriate to kick their kids' asses.)

Not only does ordering free stuff from Focus on the Familyâsent to myself or people I don't likeâsatisfy a deeply juvenile impulse, it has the added benefit of taking money directly out of homo-hater Dobson's pocket. The one drawback is that getting free shit from Focus on the Family is a tad time consuming and a bit tricky, but it's well worth the effort.

Here's how to do it:

1. Go to www.family.org and you will see their home page.

2. Once you're at the home page, look for the "Resources" link in the blue bar on the left-hand side, right above the "Search" box, and click it.

3. Under the "Resource Category" menu on the left-hand side, you'll notice categories such as "Homosexuality." Go ahead and click that for shits and giggles.

4. It's time to start shopping! Scroll down a little bit and feel the homophobia flow. How about a nice copy of A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality? Go ahead and click the "Add to Cart" button.

5. Now comes a tough decision: Do you have the book sent to yourself so you can sell it on eBay for cash (my personal favorite) or do you keep it on your mantel as a high-larious conversation piece to point at and laugh when your friends and family come over? Or do you send it to a jerk? I always opt for sending it to myself. Yes, you may end up on the Focus on the Family mailing list (though I've been doing this for some time and have never received anything beyond what I ordered), but reading Focus on the Family's junk mail is a good way to keep tabs on their activities and it will cost them even more money in postage.

Please note: Focus on the Family won't send you more than $100 worth of materials for free in any given shopping trip, so be sure to keep it reasonable and return often.

6. Select "Add New Shipping Address" and click "Proceed to Checkout." Or, hell, continue to shop and pick up a box set of The Chronicles of Narnia on CD.

7. The next screen will ask you to sign up for an account and give your information. Don't worry, they don't ask for your credit-card number. Enter whatever name and address you like, because you won't be paying.

8. Once you've filled out all the required fields (you can also create a fake e-mail account if you're super paranoid), click "Proceed to Checkout" one more time. You'll now find yourself at the "Here Is Your Cart" field. Annoying thing alert: You may have to reenter your info again after this field to actually set up your account. But just keep going until you get to the "How Much Would You Like to Donate?" page.

9. So, how much would you like to donate? Zero dollars, obviously. Don't be fooled by the field in the lower-right-hand corner that shows you the suggested donation amounts. Simply select "Enter other total amount" and enter 0.00 as the amount you would like to pay. (Don't put in a dollar sign or it will ask you for credit-card information!) Proceed to checkout.

10. You'll now be led to a screen that will try to make you feel guilty about the amount you haven't donated. But don't feel bad! Just proceed to checkout again.

11. Jesus! Here you are on the twelfth step and you still don't have your self-hatred materials! And you thought preventing homosexuality was supposed to be easy! Click "Checkout Now" and you're done.

Congratulations!

You have just removed a few dollars from the coffers of a major anti-gay organization. You can further capitalize on your brief investment of time by selling the item/s on eBay. You'd be surprised how much money you can getâa friend of mine makes a few hundred extra dollars every few months on this perfectly legal activity.

And if your conscience begins to bother you, think of it this way: Focus on the Family would probably like for you to have the materials anyway, because there's that minute chance that, once in your hands, the materials may inspire you to have a personal relationship with Jesus.

Finally, don't forget to pass this information on to all your friends. Proselytizing isn't just for Christians, you know. Go gay!

2006-07-29T07:16:00.000-07:00

Right now i am unable to update this website as regularly as i would like. However let me bring to your attention the Indymedia website that is covering the ongoing (genocidal) war in Lebannon. Also of note is the text entitled "Daddy, why did Israel do this to us?" by Raida Hatoum.

I highly advise you get involved in your community to bring this war to an end.

2006-07-20T06:03:00.000-07:00

Firstly i'd like to appologize for not updating Rioter's Blog more often, but what with the hoilidays and so on i really havent been bothered to. However fro those of you who have nto been really following whats been going on outside of your homes ill do a quick run down of the dismall situation in the world today.

A few months a go hope ran in the air. From the streets of Paris to those of Atenco, Mexico a few months ago the world was vibrant wiht resistance. This has all evaporated into thin air as throughout the globe the orces of ruthless reaction and deadly repression roll on into the soft belly of innocence, gutting it and leaving its still-warm twitchin body for dead. In recent weeks we have witnessed as from the streets of Mexico, to those of Beiruth the million little deaths of democracy at the hands of smiling tyrants.
Most urgent is the situation in Lebannon. There hundreds are displaced and tens die each day under the treads of the mighty Israeli war mahine. Since earlier on this year, this fanatically religious terrorist state has been reinforcing its offensives on the native Arab nations that surround it. Palestine especially has suffered tremedously in the past few months as the Israelis have cut off their supplies, deprivin g tens of thousands of the basic necessities such as water and food. Most hospitals have either been bombed or are disfunctional due to the lack of electricity. In fact no one has any electricity in Gaza after the Israeli aviation destroyed every electricity plant in that area. In complete disregard for the legal deomocratic process in place within the Palestinian "controlled" areas by bombing, repetedly, the buildings of government. And they still manage to attempt to convince the world that they are the victims, that they are prey to dastardly acts of terrorism that fully justiy destroying the lives of scores of civilian palestinians, including but not limited to children, women and old men. But what is the worse thing? That the hipcrites sitting in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Washington have almost convinced the world they are under attack? Or the idiotic excuse they used to kill so many thousands? That one soldier, a non-commanding officer, was captured by Palestinian militants. After this event a righteous storm of unbriddled fury swelled throughout the world. indignation that a soldier was captured? in a war? Who are they kidding? Do they really beleive that the public will swallow this? perhaps the worst thing of this whole sorry affair is that the sheepish public did beleive it was a legitimate excuse...
Now it is upon Lebanon that Israel has turned its holy wrath. Provoked or not this attack upon the Lebanese people has already killed thousands and dsplaced many more. is there no respite for the imperialist biggots?

Be sure to sign the petition bellow:

http://fromisraeltolebanon.info/

2006-06-18T03:21:00.000-07:00

By 1^Зпэмұ
By RzBz

2006-06-14T03:40:00.000-07:00

Graffitying

One of the greatest advantages of tagging, graffiti or writing is that it is one of those things that most people don’t know whether to condemn or not, so people will think twice before denouncing you. None the less it requires some organization and ethics so that you don’t end up in jail or give a negative image to the community as whole. The first thing to do is meet up with other artists. This has several advantages. If you cannot draw nor have no artistic skills they will be able to teach about some techniques. Also they will know how to operate spray cans and things. The most important advantage though is that you'll be able to go on "bombing" raids (this is what some people call graffiti) on your own. Going on your own may seem like a good idea (no need to coordinate, less crowds and so on) but eventually you will be caught, due to the facts you cant be looking out for yourself AND create appreciable pieces of work. Not only this but you a lone person is more dubious than a group. A good number for a graffing "cell" is 3. This enables one person to work comfortably, one person to look out and another to assist the first. Taking turns is a good idea so that no one person is bored or tired of what they are doing. Good places to meet fellow artists will vary from city to city but looking for your nearest graph shop is good. There you'll be able to meet fellow graphers without having to ask awkward questions. A good place to network in Geneva is the 242 (242 shop - rue du vieux-billard 4 / 1205 geneve) street-shop. It sells tons of good materials and attracts a large crowd from the urban underground artistic community. You should be able to find someone to work with.
Your gear is essential to any successful operation. The first thing you’ll need is "writing" equipment: spray paint is ideal, because of its versatility and rapidity of use. A problem with spray paints is their size and the noise they make. Special bags can be bought or made, and pocket cans purchased though. Regular paints would work as well but spray paint is really a must. Stencils are good if your going to be doing many of the same throughout your area and work fast and well once you know how (www.stencilrevolution.com for more info on that). A respirator is very useful so you don’t hurt your lungs but cost a lot and are difficult to make. You should also plan to take gloves and a hat. Your clothes should not be too showy and cover at least your fore arms and legs. Once you and your partners are geared up you should try to fin the time you can all go. A good moment is around 3 or 4 in the morning if you’re going to go to a major urban or residential center as this is the time people are least alert. If not you can plan to go some time after midnight at least, once again not to get caught. At least for the first few times, try to go with someone more experienced than you. Get around fast is essential if you plan to hit large areas fast. Good means include bicycles, roller skates and skate boards if you don’t have a car or can’t use one. OF course a car would be best because you can relax and spray calmly; waiting for each layer to dry inside your vehicle, but this may not be convenient in some situations. The essential thing is not to get caught of course. IF you do get busted attempt to remain calm: avoid antagonizing the police officer or rent-a-cop and avoid breaking down and crying. This way they may just let you off. Avoid having any personal items such as ID cards on you as they may fall out. Try to keep up the artistic or intellectual value of your work or it will get quickly buffed over. Try to get recognition by keeping the same style for most of your work. Always try to find the best location such as high places, government buildings, trains ect. so that your work gets a maximum of coverage.
There are a few rules you should remember when painting on walls:

- Never hit any place you know cannot afford it (especially poorer areas)- Never Vandalize: tagging should not solely destructive- Try not to paint over other artists work (unless it’s fascist or bad) - Don't boast- Don't steal other artists work
-Rzbz

2006-06-10T11:13:00.000-07:00

First up is another collage i made. That's a refugee child in case you were wondering. it sould be the right sizae and fomat for most screens as a back ground. It is rather fancy and rather not very good, but i try.

This is an advertisement for this very website. Feel free to print one or two if you want ot show your support and stick them up wherever you feel like. im also working on some neat little stickers. E-mail me if you want some.
This is another collage. It is even poorer than the previous one.

Sorry.
Once agian the right size for a Back ground.
Tune in Monday for another update.

Talking of which Rioter's Blog Updates Bi weekly, on the weekend and on wednesday or thursday.

We still need writers so please feel free to send us your articles, recipies drawings, ect...

2006-06-04T04:03:00.000-07:00

"EZLN calls for International Support

Zapatista Army of National Liberation
May 3, 2006

Compañeros and Compañeras around the World:

This is Insurgent Lt. Col. Moise's speaking to you,

Today we have entered into a Red Alert.

Our compañeras and compañeros from Texcoco near San Salvador Atenco (State of Me'xico) were attacked. This is a place where our compañero Subcomandante Marcos has just visited. We are calling for a national and international mobilization against the government of Vicente Fox for May 4th beginning at 8 in the morning in front of Mexican embassies.

Up to this point we do not know how many dead and injured there might have been because our brothers and sisters from Atenco were confronted by the forces of the bad government and they defended themselves.

Stay tuned compañeros and compañeras.
We will be in contact when necessary. "

-This was released on the Third of May 2006. I realise its abit late but these events were of major importance. I was unable to report on them in the newspaper at the time. If you want more information on theis visit www.ezln.org.mx .

More events of importance are renewed violence in the French Banlieues. Int he night of te 30th to the 31st the marginalised area of montfermeil saw many confrontations between the police and masked youth. In between 200 and 300 young people attacked the police in the area after the police had arrested a young man and his mother. This was perceived as yet another police provocation in an area that saw the birth of the riots last autumn. This area has virtually no public transport to the city of Paris. only an erratic bus service connects this area to the outside. this is seen by many of the inhabitants as a step to exclude the poor from Paris. During the violece several cars were burnt and six Policemen were injured. Many people were arrested, mainly for throwing rocks. One of the young men that had been with the two electrocuted last year and had set off the first riots was arrested.
Nicolas Sarkozy has been attempting to dress these events up as racial riots. He has stated that those rioting are mainly young Blacks and Aravs, two large minorities in France. He has also stated that the riots are the work of organised criminal organisations ina n attempt to take full control of the "Cités", implying that all Blacks and Arabs are criminals. The fact is that these riots are the consequence of the politics of the government and parts of french society who seem to be attempting to minimise the problems of poverty by placing it to the sude and carefully ignoring it.
Nicolas Sarkozy seems poised to take ofver the government from Jacques Chirac, at the expense of VIllepin. This definitely confirms frances shoft to the Right, exposed during the last elections with Le Pen's assention to the second electoral round fro presidency. Sarkozy's UMP party is ideologically close to Le Pen's Front National.

All images ar copyright to their respective owners

2006-05-31T12:03:00.000-07:00

This is a collage of various pictures i made. the images are porbably copyright to someone. By the way the man lying on the floor is Carlo Giuliani. He is dead. Read the short peice entitled "Why they killed Carlo " In one of my previous posts.

Incidentaly this image should be large enough for most desktops. Feel free to use to that purpouse. Or any other for that matter.

2006-05-30T07:32:00.000-07:00

This is another comic, on war this time. Same author as the previous one.

To enlarge any of these pictures just click on them.

2006-05-30T07:09:00.000-07:00

This is a comic about religion. If i have offended any one: tough poo. this is is hitherto unpublished so once again make the most of it.

2006-05-22T13:41:00.000-07:00

Rebel dignity

There are those who will never be crushed. There are those who even dead continue fighting. There are those who cease to be human and become an idea, a concept, a revolution. There are those whose names are forgotten but whose actions linger on.

In southern Mexico over fifteen years ago there was a group of men and women that congregated. They remembered. They remembered that they had not always been oppressed; they remembered when there had been a time when their people had lived in dignity. It was this memory that animated them, that directed their movement at the beginnings. They were indigenous man and women who had remembered this. Then they remembered that once they had fought. They had fought oppression like the one they were living now. They remembered that they had fought the Spanish conquerors. They remembered that their forefathers had stood up and fought. They also remembered that again they had fought the continuers of the conquistador tradition in Mexico, many years after. They remembered that man that had stood out amongst so many heroes: Emiliano Zapata, who had shouted out: “Land and Liberty!” He was long dead, but his memory remained and it was these memories that united these shadows that collected in the dusty and disused corners of the Mexican South. It was these memories that, like a magnet brought these people together in the darkness. The anger had been breeding for a long a time. Now it crystallized into a thought, an organisation an aim.

For a time they stayed in the dark of the forest, forgotten, pushed aside by the government. But in cool darkness of the undergrowth they planned, they plotted. Silently they moved from township to Run-down Township. They spoke to the men and women there. They organised. They thought. They formulated plans. And they came to the conclusion that they would need to fight. The anger was too great. The unhearing ears of the government too deaf. And so they gathered support. Hundreds, and soon thousands drifted towards this group that now had a plan, an aim and a name. The Zapatista Army for National Liberation. Thousands of Zapatistas infiltrated the corrupt police in Chiapas. On New Years Eve they volunteered to take a shift no one else wanted. On January the First 1994 the insurrection occurred. Almost as if in dream the police stations were seized and the army gained control of large swathes of the state.

BY now the anger of the indigenous Mexicans had a face and a name. The army marched on the capital, Mexico. At first it seemed like a conventional army, invading a land it had no right to hold. But the Zapatistas had a weapon the conquering armies of Spain, France and corrupt capitalist imperialism had never had. They had the weight of memory. They used as a great club, smashing the threatening vision of hundreds of masked men marching across the country. For as they took town after village after town they allowed the people there to refuse and fight their rule. They allowed the towns to rule themselves. They did not conquer. The liberated in a way no army has ever done. As the fire spread across Mexico sparks flew off in the winds of change and settled around the globe starting fires, small or large, in the USA, Europe, Africa, South America and Asia. These fires were never to go out, even as the Zapatistas were crushed by the armies of corruption, by the American backed Mexican troops. As entire villages were destroyed by the advancing tanks, around the world the flames of dissent were already burning. The flames have never gone out. They have grown stronger even as the Zapatistas were pushed back into the Jungles of Chiapas, Mexico. The fires blazed in Genoa. The fires blazed in Nairobi. The fires blazed in Paris. The fires Blazed in Washington. The fires Blazed in Seattle. And the fires blaze on, constantly stoked by change, and fuelled by revolt, anger and discontent. The sparks were not lost. They found try tinder around the globe that was ready to go up. The Zapatistas started a fire that now reaches across the globe. A fire of red flames. A fire who sounds like hope. A fire that creates even as it destroys.

A fire that will not be put out now it has started.

By RzBz

Exclusive to Ritoer's Blog so make the most of it!!

2006-05-21T12:45:00.000-07:00

Why they killed Carlo Giuliani

In July 2001 the rich and powerful of the world collected like vermin in Genoa. The eight most corrupt, power hungry, powerful men in the world congregated in this small costal Italian town in the intention of dividing up the world like one big pie. This yearly event had always brought controversy, protest and often violence. However Genoa was going to be a turning point for anti-G8 protests. Because in Genoa we were explicitly shown exactly what these men were prepared to do. Because in Genoa, on that hot summer day Carlo Giuliani died. HE was shot in the face by the neo-fascist Italian police when they opened fire on the crowed attempting to disrupt the conference of the Few, the conference of the Powerful. As if to make sure that the sprit of the movement was dead, the Carbineri drove over his body in their Land Rover.

Who exactly Carlo Giuliani was is not relevant. The governments tried to add insult to injury by calling him a vagrant. But the fact is that Carlo Giuliani died fighting against a system that he believed was unjust. This was the first time this kind of event happened in Europe. It is almost certainly not the last time. Five years on very little has changed. Europe has continued its great rightwards drift, while in the USA the Christian right, in all its fascistic glory is sliming its way into every nook and cranny of society. Skinheads walk the streets of the West, while black men and women, Asian, African and Latin American migrants are shot in cold blood and impunity. In Brazil revolutionaries are tracked down and shot, accused of being part of a problem the system created. In Korea the expansion of US military base threatens the livelihoods of hundreds. In Western Africa ant-IMF protesters are shot and killed by the police. The Oppression will not stop until the criminals and the societies they seek to protect are destroyed, taken down brick by brick. Justice for all the Carlos who has died over the years will only be brought once those corrupt men in their seats of power are brought to popular justice for mass homicide. Only once these men and the system which allows them to continue to rule us all is destroyed, only then will the people know, peace, only then will they know rest from the relentless pace of profits, productivity and money imposed by these people. Only then will we know equality and freedom from want. Only then will misery and starvation disappear. Only then will men women and children finally know something else but the crushing jaws of capitalism…

So we must fight back, with our words, with our music, with our drawings with our actions. Unless we do this many more of us will be crushed under the steel boot of the Market and Imperialism…

- RzBz

2006-05-21T01:08:00.000-07:00

Trust, Power and War

Society is built on trust. Everyday, we trust other people to be honest and do their work truthfully so that everybody else has a certain level of security. On the plane, you trust that the pilot will get you safely to the desired destination. At home, you trust that electricity will be provided faithfully. And yet, when these trusts are broken, there emerges from the depths of society the unruly tension and chaos that underlies all human existence. What happens when the plane is hijacked? And when the lights go out for good? What happens when a miscalculation causes a building to collapse on top of hordes of innocent and unsuspecting people? Therefore, if trust is so fundamentally important, why is it that the people who rule nations, who make the important decisions, who pick and chose in an almost totalitarian manner the lives of their citizens, are the ones who are the most untrustworthy?

Honest politicians? That's an oxymoron. And yet, we must admit that it is in human nature to make mistakes. You and I make them everyday and are always anxious to be forgiven and allowed another chance to prove ourselves. But the mistakes made by politicians have macabre and extensive consequences. War, terrorism, totalitarianism, massacres - these have all been attributes of government policies (not neccessarily mistakes) in the past. So what exactlly is the problem here? It is not the fact that politicians make mistakes, they are human, they are naturally prone to do so. The problem lies in their power. If their power was not so great, their mistakes would not have such grave and large-scale impacts. While George Bush and his cabinet may have made a mistake (or so they claim now that it is strategically useful to do so) in invading Iraq and forcing modern imperialism on the basis of non-existant weapons of mass destruction, this mistake would not have been possible had the president of the United States been attributed a lesser lever of power.

We must question then, why there are a few, elite individuals making the choices and decisions for a society? Why can the society not do so itself? America is just one extreme example of this hidden dictatorship, and it is one that we should hope we shall not see emerge in our own respective countries.

What is the solution? The solution is a society where everyone works for the better good of everyone else. Where everyone has a voice and that voice is loud and clear, not feeble and ignored as it tends to be in the nations of today. And the demoliton of singular power would aid this cause greatly. We cannot trust individuals to make the decisions for us - we must make them ourselves, collectively. And though this may seem a herculean feat, it can be achieved, through the highest form of democracy - but only once absolute equality is an established and consistent feature of society.

R.A.P

2006-05-15T10:52:00.000-07:00

Wheatpasting

Wheatpaste, otherwise known as Marxist glue, due to its affinity to being used by leftwing organizations, can be used to stick paper onto a wall, and with luck, it’ll stay there for a long time, especially if cooked and applied right. Wheatpaste is made extremely easily with common household items, and can be made in ten minutes flat. The basic principle behind it is the mixture of flour and water to make a thick sticky paste, that when dry acts as; you guessed it, glue. The actual process comprises of the following:

measure out 1 cup of water and 3 tablespoons of flour
set the water on the stove, but don’t let it boil
mix the 3 tablespoons of flour with a bit of water, to make a creamy consistency, make sure there are no lumps, because those are a hassle
once the water is almost boiling, add the flour/water mixture to the almost boiling water and mix thoroughly
bring the water/flour mixture to a gentle boil, letting it bubble for a minute or two

Now its done. Pour it off into something and clean the pan and you are set. There are various other things you can do to the wheatpaste, such as add sugar for strength, or add some wood glue, but that’s just some people. I keep it simple.

As for application, I find the easiest method is to pour it into one of those squeezy ketchup bottles so you can squirt it on a wall, then using a brush to smooth it out. Otherwise a jam jar full of it and a paintbrush will do just fine. For proper application, apply a layer of wheatpaste behind the paper, place the paper down, and then apply another layer of wheatpaste to make sure it sticks well. Make sure to cover all the edges so no one can rip down the wheatpaste. It should dry in a couple of hours, and hopefully be permanent.

You can paste up pretty much any kind of paper, but the best kind is thin newsprint paper, or anything thin pretty much. Even thicker paper works, but its hard to keep all the edges down. There you have it, how to make and use wheatpaste. Now go color up our cities please.

from Rioter's Block # 7

2006-05-02T13:21:00.000-07:00

The USA, the distribution of power and Lies

The Very first Lie: The USA is democracy

The USA is not a democracy. In a democracy, the people are ruled by men and women who were voted in by their people. In the USA this cannot be considered the case. In the USA and indeed much, if not all, of the Western World, the people are directly influenced to take decisions concerning who they elect by the media. The media hold the main source of power in that depending on what the Media say the people will take decision. Seeing as the media in general are the only source of information concerning these matters the people of any media-centric country will ultimately hold the power. For example if the main television network decides to support a given candidate, then people who watch that television network will also begin to support him. However a more balanced view could come from the other networks that could support another candidate or give more objective news. However due to basic law of supply and demand these ‘independent’ networks will have to align them with what their consumers want. And if a large section of the potential audience is conditioned to believe one thing the networks will have to cater for this belief and support it to be able to feed their families. Far from is it to make some ranting raving anti-American comment. It is not the United States which is the problem, nor even is it the people who govern it. These are just symptoms, the visible gangrene of a problem much deeper and much more powerful than one imagines. The real issue is system-wide.

The Second Lie, as told by the Revolutionaries

Many liberals, socialists, angst-ridden teens and “alternative types” can sustain quite a long rant about how evil and wrong the United States and its leader, President George Walker Bush, are. However this is a lie or a mistake. The United States are just the apparent tip of an iceberg that stems worldwide and permeates the very fabric of “civilized” society. As given by the example of the Media ima Western-style, media-centric democracies, and the entire system is ruled by the laws of the market. This is one of the hallmarks of neo-liberalism as denounced by the Zapatistas. The Market is allowed to influence the way people make decisions. The Media is just one of the most prominent examples but there are many more. Thus attacking the USA and demonizing its leaders is more or less an act of ignorance. The world is not controlled by the USA but the Market. And the Market is controlled by the large turns-national companies that know no borders to their expansion. They are the ones that are real in charge and it is to them and their, bloated, cruel ambitious Coos that people will turn to when push comes to shove. It is all the Mc Donald’s, Coca Colas, Shells and Altheas that must be destroyed or at least limited before change can occur.

-RzBz

From Rioters Block #6 published may 3

2006-04-11T06:53:00.000-07:00

The Case OF MUmia Abu-Jamal

The short front page article published in Rioter's Block number 4 is one of the few most controvertail peices to have been published in the papaer. I heard nand spoke to many people who where convinced of Mumia Abu-Jamal's guilt. In the view of the evidence and contexxt in which Mumia was tried i beleive it will be virtually impossible to determine his guilt. However, wether or not he shot the police man Falkner is not the real issue here. It is to igbnore the real forces at work int he USA than to think that it is the execution of a potentially innocent man. This occurs all the time in America and will coninue so lon gas the system exists. No, what is really at stake here is freedom. The reasomn Mumia Abu-Jamal's case is so important is that it examplifies the way the US government works. Is it a coincidence that Mumia Abu-Jamal had beena prominent Black Panther since he was 13? Is it a coincidence that he was one the most articulate and outspoken Panther of his generation? Is it also a coincidence that the FBI had a program aimed at silencing and disrupting the activities of the Black PAnthers, inimidating, black -mailing and atticking members of the Black Panther Party?
All of this does not prove Mumias innocence. However it does to a large extent question the integrity and objectiveness of the overwhelingly white American government. An argument i have heard many times is that insitutionalised racism has disapeared from the glorious United States of AMerica. This is an aboniable misconception. I have heard people assert that the USA is a free country and that is just not the way things are done anymore: ISnt it? HAs the US government abandoned the old mobster gangland tactics for freedom and equality for all
? Then what is going on at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay? Torture, extortion and harrassment in an illegal prisoner camp that defies all conventions and treaties.If they do it abroad, is not the next logical step as to assume that they do it at home? That to silence their opponents they would resort to imrisoning them, threatening the oppnents' lives? Did an illustrious historian not once said "Foreign policy is just an extention of domestic policy".
I ask all these questions of the USA not because i love that glorious country, not because i beleive it is grreat democracy that ought to be defended from the evil men that direct it. I ask these questions of the USA specifically because it is the greatest Power the world has ever seen, extending control over many aspects of daily life through out the world. Thus it is this country that must be brought down in order for the Revolution to succeed. Once the US is toppled all other countries should turn to the ideas of Marx as they are freed of their anglo-saxon, WASP forged cultural and economic chains. This is why we must compile evidence in order to undermine the USA's credibility in the eyes of the world. this should not be difficult to do as the list o fthe USA's crimes extend back to its conception over 200 years ago. However it should be done.

2006-04-11T06:48:00.000-07:00

On Education

Whether a country is developed or in the process of developing can easily be distinguished from the visual state of things. Just a ride through the streets is usually enough to provide a more or less accurate image of the state of the infrastructure. But the real sadness, the real fact of the matter lies in the stories of the people when you see the world from their point of view. Though there is poverty, corruption and all that lies in between, behind the haze of development there is an enthusiasm unmatched by those growing up in more fortunate circumstances. In schools which provide at least a minimum level of education to those who need it and desire it most, and those who can least afford it, teachers are respected and all are welcomed with the equal belligerence of children who long to learn. During the summer, I met and learnt with and taught some children from a slum in a school. There, I met two boys who were in what I then considered to be, a most 'unusual' situation. Though they were already sixteen, they had to learn with the younger children in this school because they had never attended regularly and were therefore almost completely illiterate. Only three days after I began to teach them, they came to say goodbye to me, adding that they might not see me again. When I asked why, they said that their brother, while employed only in small jobs, made enough money to keep his family going and it was time for them to do the same. I started arguing that getting an education was more important, that it would get them better jobs and provide an improved standard of living if they studied now. In short, I told them what we are taught everyday – that education is the answer. In response, they smiled knowingly and said simply, "Our families need our help today. If we wait for an education, we may not have a family to benefit." And it was the bare truth. Even while I had been preaching what I had been taught, my words had sounded hollow because the statement was so far from the reality.
These two boys were past their innocence and already considering the responsibility of a family to look after, something, which very few of us are burdened with in the West. It is true that education benefits greatly in the long-term. But for families who cannot afford the education, the children grow up knowing that however much they may want to learn, it will never become a reality.
This is not only due to the impoverished state of millions of people around the world, but also because of the weakness of the state system and government, whose responsibility it is to implement certain policies that make standard things (such as food, education and water) accessible to everyone, cost-free. But the few government schools that are in place are low in standard of teaching and attendance. It is vital that schooling, at least primary if not entirely, be gratuitous and available to everyone regardless of social status. We would not confront the situation of these boys, as millions do, if this were the case.
Education cannot be the answer to all of life's questions. But it is most certainly the answer to some. The example of these two boys is a lesson: it tells us two things. First, that Western ideals that education must come first and foremost cannot hold in every situation, that sometimes people, who we presume to be ignorant, must make much more complex choices than we have had to face. Second, if education were made more available, this type of situation could eventually be eradicated. Education is still a very vital component in the advancement of a developing society. But though they say 'practice what you preach' now we must try to understand why sometimes, they cannot.

From Issue #5 published Friday 7

2006-04-11T06:47:00.000-07:00

On obedience

In a school or indeed any system in which one human finds him or herself above another, obedience is a crucial issue. Often a teacher will consider (s)he has won when the student complies. But is this really a victory. IS the docility of the student really beneficial for humanity?

It is in our earliest youth that we learn to be docile, to be obedient. Obedience is one of the fundamental values taught by parents , teachers and society in general. We are conditioned to believe that obedience makes you a better person. This is false. Obedient, docile, servile human beings are exactly what keeps the system running. Without our compliance to their rules the entire system will come crashing down as cog after gear after cog collapse. This is why the system has become conditioned to support and encourage those that obey, that conform, that comply while marginalising and destroying those that do not.

I talk as if the system where a living organism: it is in many ways. Societies grow and are destroyed, to be replaced by newer ones that are more efficient than the older ones. Eventually these are replaced and thus a process of naturally societal elimination occurs. Those societies unable to compete will eventually disappear, engulfed in the better society or smashed up and destroyed. Thus societies which have encouraged their members to obey and conform to the society have survived and eventually taken over.

This is why we must fight extra hard against conformism and obedience. We must at every turn oppose the system. BY disobeying we encourage others to disobey, which in turn encourages others. Thus the spirit spreads throughout a population like wildfire and eventually the system is brought down. In practice though, what do these disobediences represent? These can be vandalism (graffiti and so on), civil disobedience and refusal to comply with authority figures and ‘superiors’: police officers, teachers and so on.

A note of warning however: doing things that jeopardises your ability to help anyone in the near or distant future is not a Good Thing.

-RzBz

From Issue #4 published April 5

2006-04-11T06:41:00.000-07:00

Imperialism Watch

China

China had started off so well. A large country, a potential and past superpower becoming Communist like Russia. The promise of a revolution to sweep the world, for workers to unite in a common front inspired by Mao Zedong… Yes it had all started so well, but then it went horribly wrong. After Mao’s botched reforms China rapidly followed Soviet Russia in the spiral towards dictatorship. These two countries perfected beurocratic totalitarianism to an extent rarely seen before. Perhaps it had been seen before under the imperial rule of China, before the arrival of the West. One of the oldest beurocracies on earth. Perhaps what China became was hardly a surprise. Perhaps the past of a nation can plague it forever.

In any case the fact is that the PLA invaded Tibet. The massive immovable Party rewrote Tibetan history. Since then the people of Tibet have not known freedom. The ballant imperialism of the Chinese government is often unnoticed and unheard of.1.6 million Tibetans have died since the invasion of Tibet the West ignored it all. Not since the mid-60s has the case of Tibet been taken to the UN and into international spotlight. Once again, fear of China’s implacable, ruthless and aggressive economic and foreign policies have pushed the money hungry bourgeois capitalists to ignore the plight of an entire people…

by RzBz

From Issue # 4 published April 5

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Can communism succeed?

The previous issues of Rioter’s Block have already made it sufficiently clear that communism has never been implanted for enough time to be able to appreciate any consequences. How can one judge the functioning of a theory that has never been tested, but rather used as a catchword and a tool of totalitarian dictators to reach supreme power?

The fact that communism has not been put to practice does not mean that it cannot be in the future, in the same way as the fact that the telephone did not exist in the 18^th Century did not prevent its invention later on. The world is for us to change it. Moreover, the world is for us to improve it. We have the capacity and the means to do this. All we lack is consensus on the way to do so and the final determination to take that way.

To seek refuge in claims of the type “communism cannot work because people are selfish” is what we do not need or want. If we are to have such an oversimplified and cynical mentality, then we may as well arrive to conclusions such as “murder and crime will never cease to exist, because people are evil in nature”. Why punish crime then? What is the point of us humans inhabiting this planet if we’re not going to at least make an effort to improve our, and by “our” I mean everyone’s, standard of life?

I agree: at the moment, communism cannot possibly succeed. Under our present conditions, progress is virtually a utopia. Conformism, passivity and indifference, expressed at their height by the easy-to-say and narrow-minded “logic” that “humans cannot be communist because communism is too idealistic”, are the worst diseases that affect humankind nowadays.

This is why Rioter’s Block wants you to wake up, to look beyond the veil of egoistic interests and national boundaries and to contribute to purge the world of indifferent conformists who can sit back and enjoy life while others are forced to make this possible. The world can be changed. Because not everyone is selfish, and not everyone is evil. And not everyone has good dreams while millions of people are dying of hunger. Not everyone wants this world to remain as it is. But for a change to happen, for an improvement to be made, we must all become conscious that communism is the best, if not the only, path.

-A Zappatista

From ISsue #4 published April 5

2006-04-11T06:39:00.000-07:00

On Equality

The more fortunate have become the ignorant numb. The political climate, the tensions between nations, wars, genocides – the problems of the world - these are trivial matters, if anything, to the bourgeoisie of today. But why should we care, you say, when we are safe? Unfortunately, that is the tone taken by most. Why should we care that George Bush invaded Iraq on unjust and immoral grounds? Why should we care that millions in Africa who suffer from AIDs are unknowingly subject to inhumane tests? Why should we care if genocide in Rwanda tears the country and its people apart? Because we are human beings. We are citizens of the world. Whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, man does not live by himself - man is born into society.
We live amongst others, therefore what concerns their well-being concerns ours. It is no fault of a man where he is born and into what situation. Every man, woman, child is conceived and born in the same way, with the same right to freedom and a future. So how is it that some suffer while others prosper? Is it right that those who have more should be able to exercise the freedom to keep those who have less in chains?
This is the catastrophic truth – the fact that one human being is discriminated against by others based purely on social status, race, disability and appearance – things that have no bearing on a person's worth. Because of these prejudices, those who are subject to the discrimination retaliate, often in violent ways. It is not an act of aggressive hate – but an act of despair and a cry for recognition of each man's equality. We are equal, that is a fact that should not be denied. And any system that promotes this idea is worthy of attention.
it asks people to sacrifice a little of what they have, since they have more than enough, to enable someone else to survive another day. Today it is ridiculed, tomorrow it will be violently opposed, but one day the universal truth of Communism will be recognised. And those who understand the intelligence and humanity in Marx's ideology, should fight to bring that day of enlightenment ever closer.

From Rioter's Block Issue # 3 Published March 31st

2006-04-11T06:37:00.000-07:00

“Communists are hypocrites”

How often have you heard that accusation? Easy to say… But hard to prove, isn’t it? “Well”, they’ll say, “if you’re a ‘commie’, you shouldn’t have a car. If you’re a ‘commie’, you shouldn’t go to La Chat. If you’re a ‘commie’, you shouldn’t have money”. Since when, readers will ask themselves, is communism the ideology of the idiots?

It isn’t. Communism is a political and economic doctrine that advocates for the proletariat’s revolution to overthrow capitalism and progress towards a higher social order in which property is equally shared by the people.

Just because I’m a communist, it doesn’t mean I have no right to a good education or a good standard of life. By that logic, the only communists in the planet are the poor, the homeless, the malnourished. This may lead to common misconceptions of the concept of communism, a result of years of anti-communist propaganda. Being poor, readers, is not a prerequisite for being a communist.

Moreover, being rich is not an obstacle for being a communist. Wealthy people are not the enemies of communism; capitalism is. Ideology should never be equated to economic status, although I suppose under fascism they do come to be the same thing.

I insist: communism wants an equal share of property, not the destruction of property. Communism doesn’t want to make everyone be equally poor, but everyone to be equally prosperous.

The charge that “communists are hypocrites” because they go against their own principles comes from the mouths of ignorant people, people who want to remain uninformed, people who turn away from communism as a hypocritical evil and prefer to give in to the tempting offers of that paradigm of sincerity that fascism claims to be, people who will inexplicably do anything to avoid the, sooner or later inevitable, prospect of revolution and freedom.

-“L”

From Rioter's Block issue #2 published March 27

2006-04-11T06:35:00.000-07:00

The USSR, teen rebellion and anti-Communism

Any leftist (Anarchist, Communist or Socialist) will come to a point where he/she will ask him or herself why it is people can still support ideas that do not promote equality and harmony amongst people. Why is it that seemingly well educated, perfectly intelligent men and women will so emphatically reject the harmony and prosperity that most leftwing ideas (through logical reasoning) offer. Why is it that they turn to capitalist, rightwing views, when the stated aim of these is to maintain the class system and all it entails, such as poverty and exploitation for many, and power and wealth for few?

I believe there are several reasons for this. The first is a very basic misconception: the USSR was communist. It was not. The USSR was a totalitarian dictatorship for virtually all of its existence. It was meant to have been built on Marx’s idea but corrupt, power hungry men usurped and used the hype of these ideas for their own ends (most notably Iosef Stalin). Right wing, or anti-communists, will often quote the USSR as a prime example of communism. It is not. Communism promotes freedom. Communists, anarchists and socialists were persecuted under Stalin’s rule as much (if not more) as the rest of the population.

Another reason for the rejection of leftwing ideas as a step forwards is as a kind of rebellion. This may seem illogical, but one must understand that these revolutionary ideas have (since the 90s) passed on into mainstream teenage culture. Che Guevara has become the icon of vaguely rebellious teenagers worldwide. Being a “Commie” or having an A on your bag have become signs of belonging in teenage culture. As all large-scale cultural shifts, it has created a counter reaction. Teen rebellion has now shifted from being against the system, to being against those who are against the system. Rather than being a well informed opinion, anti-communism (at least in teens) has become a kind of rebellion in itself.

This I think stems from the very real problem of peer pressure and opinions. Here peer pressure from rebellious teens claiming to be “commies” has lead to the pent up teen rebellion of the others being directed at what appears to be the majority of leftists.

- RzBz

From Rioter's Block Issue #2 printed March 27

2006-04-11T06:31:00.000-07:00

Closet Fascists at La Chataigneraie and at Large

Fascists at la Chataigneraie? The international school that supposedly teaches freedom, tolerance and peace? Well its true. There are two main types of fascists in the world: those who accept their own views and those who don’t, posing for conservatives, capitalists, and most often anti-communists. Most often these are the ones you will find most viciously attacking communism, usually resorting to bringing Stalin into the argument and equating it to fascism, these are the most insidious types of fascists. Most often they will not admit to themselves they are fascists. They will often reject any connection to fascism, yet when we examine the typical mentality of one of these “closet fascists”, we see that they’re way of thinking is very much geared in the same way as that of a typical fascist or Neo-Nazi. We see that most often this person will glorify weapons and militarism, cultivating a real love for everything military (guns, apparel, and lingo). This might be accompanied by, or preceded by, a passion for videogames that themselves glorify militarism of this nature. Often they will support or at least attempt to defend Nazi ideals, though never presented as such.

These include ideas such as nationalism and this idea that certain people are somehow inferior and should be shot (these ‘untermenschen’ will include communists, homosexuals and mentally handicapped people). Often they will say that Hitler was ‘not so bad’, and ‘not all wrong’. Evidence of this kind of thinking was found some weeks ago in the Art Dept bathrooms. “Fuck Communism” and “long live the National Elitists”. National Elitists?!? Neo Nazis under a more acceptable and less politically charged package.

Now do not misunderstand me: these traits are in no way indicative of being a fascist. However it is this kind of person who will stand by silently when Neo-Nazis walk in, who will think ‘hey it should be pretty neat to be in their number’, who will join in to feel a sense of belonging to an organised, strong, militaristic movement. It is my personal belief that many people have forgotten the bad of fascism and Nazism, mostly under their silent insidious whispering. It is these silent unwitting agents of fascism that are most dangerous to the cause of freedom, by giving fascist ideas a sensible and positive spin.

Fascism: Extremist nationalistic ideology. They believe that the government should be in charge of every aspect of civilian life. They believe society should more like the military. They are diametrically opposed from an ideological standpoint, to Communism-anarchism. They do not shy away from violent means to enforce their views. May resort to a “that’s gay” or similar argument when outwitted