[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> fwd : Call for an Anti-Capitalist Hacker Bloc (english)

[Quim Gil <qgil@metamute.com>]

Maybe someone here can give some technical details about this World Bank
meeting "in the Internet". The WB (no relation with Warner Bros. I
think) has budget enough to manage a digital meeting without any actual
connection with the noisy and risky Internet, isn't it?

On the other hand, even when the WB decided to suspend the meeting in
Barcelona the counter meeting platform has kept (and enforced?) its
activities. Yesterday a demonstration of thousands (50.000 as said by
the organizers, 8.000 as said by the police, 25.000 as mentioned in some
media) in the centre of the city ended up with the violent images mass
media audiences are getting used to.

This time, though, even mass media and politicians with responsibilities
in the city council seem to agree that at least some of the few & well
organized people that started the violent attacks against properties
were actually policemen in plain clothes. Meaning "plain clothes"
balaclavas plus anarchist and Catalan independentist iconography as
usual.

First the more than 1000 policemen dressed like the police use to dress
did nothing. The own organizers and pacific demonstrators were the ones
that tried to stop the unknown violents. Then the official police
charged the demonstration in a very democratic way, so is without making
any distinction between demonstrators, journalists, etc. 

Beating journalists is generally a guarantee of less stereotyped
chronicles in the mass media, as it seems that has happened:

Los organizadores acusan a la policía de instigar la violencia 
http://www.elperiodico.com/online/apuntador.asp?data=ed010625&idioma=CAS&publicacion=catalunya&urlname=http://www.elperiodico.com/EDICION/ED010625/CAS/CARP01/tex032.asp

Actos vandálicos en Barcelona ante la pasividad policial
http://www.elpais.es/articulo.html?d_date=20010625&xref=20010625elpepinac_12&type=Tes&anchor=elppor

La fiesta antiglobal acaba en batalla
http://www.vanguardia.es/cgi-bin/noticia.pl?link=vb2527a&sec=soc&dia=25_06

Final amb incidents per a una manifestació pacífica
http://www.lamalla.net/canal/sostenibilitat/drets_humans/article.asp?id=17617

And of course check http://barcelona.indymedia.org

Sorry for the lack of links in English. Reading the reports in the CNN
or BBC the impression is that f*** knows where were the foreign
correspondents on a hot & sunny Sunday morning in the Barcelona, that
lovely and trendy city with colourful Mediterranean culture and nice
food surrounded by amazing beaches. 

Pick any automatic translator, the worst translation will give you more
information that this
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/06/24/spain.protests/index.html ,
not to talk about this 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/talking_point/newsid_1394000/1394633.stm

Oh, just adding some URLs of the collectives that succeeded organizing
the countermove that made the Warner Br... I mean the World Bank to
think it twice before meeting in a hot hot city (not as hot as Qatar,
though):

http://www.rosadefoc.org - "Rose of fire" in Catalan, name used to
define the rebel Barcelona in the late XIX and early XX. The website of
the counter conference platform joined by associations and independent
groups but also by trade unions, political parties and town councils.

http://www.nodo50.org/bcn2001/ - The campaign followed from this very
active server.

http://www.lasagencias.net - The result of a seminar hosted and funded
by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA), currently a bunch of very
very active groups experimenting the intersection between art,
performance and revolt. With increasing success keeping the attention of
the mass media... and the police.

And now yes, some well founded information in English:
http://www.j25.org/

[All this information has been taken without moving my arse from London,
please contact the mentioned websites if you are looking for real
participants, activists, witnesses, etc.]

Quim Gil


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