Four police cars were torched Friday morning in the Mohawk community of Kanesatake, West of Montreal, Canada. Kanesatake Mohawk warriors burned down Grand Chief James Gabriel's house and ran him and his police off the territory last January after he tried to bring in outside police. The roads were barricaded and stayed free of police until May 6th when Quebec provincial police began patrols. Provincial Police have stated that they are unable to ensure the cheif's safety and have not made any arrests in connection with any of the incidents, Kanesatake was the location of a 1990 standoff in which armed Mohawks held off police and military forces for 78 days and halted encroachment of a golf course into a sacred territory.

Military rushes to fill out Abu Ghraib detainee's death certificates from cases dating back to 2002 as investigations loom near.

900 inmates at a jail in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil are holding over 20 guards and workers hostage in the second day of a prison uprising. The insurrection began when a mass escape attempt was thwarted by guards who were then relieved of their weapons and taken captive. 14 prisoners escaped successfully although two have since been recaptured. Earlier today a guard who was being held hostage was shot while escaping. He died en route to a hospital.

Anti-war activist Josh Connole received an apology and $20,000 from the West Covina Police Department for serving 8 days in jail and being labeled an "eco terrorist" earlier this year. Connole was falsely arrested for allegedly fire-bombing or vandalizing 133 hummers and SUVs last August. Recently un-sealed FBI search warrants reveal that Connole became a suspect after a neighbor became suspicious based on his anti-war politics, and electric car, then called in a tip. The FBI now claims that e-mails sent to local media sources clearing Connole came from Cal-Tech Physics Grad Student Billy Cottrell. Perhaps Josh Connole will be sharing some of his $20,000 settlement with Cottrell's defense fund.

The Boston Police Department is planning on using tactics learned from the Police Service of Northern Ireland to combat protest during the Democratic National Convention in August.

Norway will follow Ireland tomorrow as the second country in the world to ban smoking in all bars and restaurants. Toronto, Canada will also be implementing a city wide ban Tuesday. Smoking is on the decline in Ireland and New York where there are similar bans.

I’d Rather Firebomb An SUV Than Own One!
By Kirsten Anderberg

I understand why people are driven to firebomb new SUV’s on sales lots, I am not clear why people are driven to buy and drive them though. The pure gluttony of the American lifestyle is assaulting to people who care about the earth and its living things. Driving around, one driver, one car, in gas-guzzling, class-insulated, oblivion, is not innocuous, or even innocent, at this point in the game. And firebombing SUV’s is not innocent behavior either. I am sure when people do things like firebomb SUV’s, they do it with some understanding of the risk involved and realize if caught, they will be punished. I think all that is a given. So when I see a story like Jeff “Free” Luers’, it saddens me that our government is so lagging behind in so many areas, and they all culminate at the epicenter of Jeff’s sentencing.

Read more here

Atheist football star, Pat Tillman actually killed by Americans.

Between Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, metal shavings were poured into the engines, fuel tanks and hydraulic systems of five logging machines in Oregon's Malheur National Forest. Activists have been attempting to stop the sale since 2002. Although a lawsuit is pending a federal judge rejected the groups' motion for temporary injunctions and logging has continued. It is estimated that the equipment will take at least two weeks to repair and cost $100,000.

Rioting in Guadalajara at EU-Latin American Summit

racist violence in Pennsylvania.

Boston activist Joe Previtera was arrested Wednesday and is now facing felony charges for a silent, non-violent protest outside an army recruiting station, which lasted about a half an hour. Previtera's charges include misdemeanor disturbing the peace and felony making a false bomb threat and using a hoax device. Previtera stood still atop a crate for the duration of the demonstration dressed in a black hood and shawl and had a piece of wire attached to his fingers. His intention was to remind people of the military abuse, of Iraqi detainees, at the Abu Ghraib prison. Although the District Attorney requested a $10,000 bail, Previtera was released on personal recognizance.

Some US prisons as bad as Abu Ghraib.

The former head of the state prisons department, forced out by Gov. Mitt Romney in the wake of the prison slaying of defrocked priest John J. Geoghan, has landed a new job with the Norfolk County jail.

1 in 75 men in the US are in prison or jail.

Professor of Art arrested for having art supplies after he calls 911 when his wife has a heart attack. Local police call in FBI who detain him overnight and steal his equipment and artwork.

Rape of women in Iraqi prisons has horrific cultural implications, including murder by immediate family members. In US prisons sexual abuse of female prisoners reaches frightening proportions.

Sometimes it's all about the oil, and sometimes it's all about the water.

Denver's radical cheerleaders and other activists get creative in their response to U. S. military recruiters on their campus, and discover how easy it is to make the Army retreat.

Canadian activist Christopher Peter Geoghegan may serve up to 30 days in jail after planting a pie in the face of Alberta Premier Ralph Klein last July.

Total Information Awareness might be continuing under a new name.

Prisons:

Prison doctors in Ireland are on strike and might resign due to the poor level of care in prisons there. Here is some information on medical care in Prisons in the US.

Two guards were stabbed in Perry Correctional Institute in South Carolina. Perry is a Supermax prison, so the prisoners could not have gotten a weapon on the inside without guard complicity.

Many see alleged President Bush's seemingly ironic idea to tear down Abu Ghraib once a comparable institution is built as wasteful.

Prison interrogations in Iraq are seen as yielding little data on Iraqi Resistance

Striking workers in Beruit, Lebanon barricaded streets and faced off against soldiers, who killed at least five demonstrators today. The strikers main grievance is the high cost of gasoline. After the shootings protesters stormed the labor ministry, leaving the first floor in flames.

The National Archives Wednesday released transcripts of Henry Kissinger's phone calls from 1969 to August 1974, while he was national security advisor to President Richard Nixon. The 20,000 plus pages of records include Kissinger giving orders for an illegal bombing campaign: "A massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves." Kissinger is considered by many to be a war criminal and would be arrested if found in countries such as Great Britan, France, Brazil, etc.

Police in Camden, Georgia have been practicing their riot control tactics with the Marines in preparation for the upcoming G8 protests. Video

U.S. military police, at the Guantánamo Bay detention Camp Delta in Cuba, beat one of their own during an exercise, leaving Kentucky National Guardsman Sean Baker with brain damage. Baker posed as an unruly detainee and had his head repeatedly slammed against the floor by prison guards who weren't told it was a drill.

A BlockBuster video store in Italy was attacked yesterday with Molotov cocktails; "the chain is considered to be sensitive target for terrorist attacks"!

Thousands of people in Haiti and the Dominican Republic have drown in flash floods caused deforestation and three days of rain.

Two car bombs exploded today outside the Pakistan-American Cultural Center, in Pakistan. One police officer was killed, and 34 people (mainly police and journalists) were injured. The second bomb was timed to go off after the first in order to kill police officers that responded to the first blast.

The domestic terrorism squad, during a lull in activity, arrested seven animal rights activists and charged them with "multiyear conspiracy to terrorize Huntingdon Life Sciences". The indictment charged that the citizens used "telephone and e-mail blitzes, fax blitzes and computer blockades against HLS in order to divert HLS employees from their regular work." But, the attorney general said that their political speech was not protected by the first amendment. "We believe that the conduct they've engaged in is not a lawful exercise of their First Amendment rights". The individuals who were arrested were associated with the group, SHAC.

Some political speech gets the shaft in Georgia. Georgia governor, Sunny Perdue, in an unusual move, 'pre-emptively' declared a state of emergency last week that will last through through June 20, the entirety of the G8 conference. In conjunction, the Brunswick City Council amended its laws last week to give police authority to terminate protests during a state of emergency. The ACLU is suing the Bunswick City Council. The G8 Summit will carry on as planned, and the rights of the citizens to dissent will not.

Those interested in the protest should look here or here for more information.

More liberators and saviors raping and sexually exploiting teens:

Teenage rape victims fleeing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo are being sexually exploited by the United Nations peace-keeping troops sent to the stop their suffering, according to the Independent.

Animal rights activism is on the rise and gettting results.

Georgia State officials got nervous today and declared a state of emergency before anything happened.

Free Radio Santa Cruz recently received a visit from Federal Communications Commission (FCC) investigators, who ordered them to cease broadcasting. The station is avowedly pirate and is determined to fight any efforts to shut them down. The FCC shut down an un-licensed Spanish language station in the Philadelphia area last Thursday.

Supporters of anarchist prisoner Jeff 'Free' Luers to hold day of solidarity and action on June 12 worldwide
There are over 20 events planned for the June 12 day to support anarchist prisoner Jeff 'Free' Luers. Activists are holding film screenings, rallies, music shows and more in over 20 cities worldwide. Jeff is serving a 22.5 year sentence for the burning of 3 Sport Utility Vehicles in Eugene, Oregon in 2000. Jeff's appeal is set to go before the appellate court in late July.

Long Island activist Connor Cash was acquitted yesterday, in a case alleging that he was a leader in an Earth Liberation Front cell, which claimed responsibility for a string of anti-sprawl arsons in 2001. The FBI has had limited success in convicting people affiliated with the group. They are now offering a $50,000 reward for information regarding two 2001 anti-genetic engineering arsons in Washington and Oregon.

Two McDonalds were bombed yesterday, in Rome and Istanbull. The Rome bombs were disabled by the police but the Istanbul bombs went of damaging the store without causing injuries to people.

Camilo Mejia, a U.S. Army soldier, may spend up to a year in a military jail after refusing to return to Iraq, after being convicted today. Mejia opposes the war on moral grounds but was not granted conscientious objector status. What is going on in that picture though? It looks like somebody in the back ground is surrendering, the other guy is clapping, and the two guys leading Mejia away just look silly with their fluorescent vests.

RNC Delegates to Attend Broadway Shows on August 29
The RNC has announced the specific shows each RNC state delegation will see in a so-called Salute to Broadway, 5pm on August 29th. On that night, 13,373 delegates will attend eight Broadway performances. What a wonderful opportunity to let the RNC delegates know what you think of the RNC being held in your city! Read more about the Republican National Convention.

First the Starbucks barristas, and now the nannies want a union. Kinda makes me wanna sing.

According to Grist magazine: Over the course of 10 days in mid-April, the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued three "guidances" and one directive -- all legally binding interpretations of law -- that threaten to seriously dilute the meaning of the word organic and discredit the department's National Organic Program.

In other news: the Supreme Court of Canada sided with Monsanto today in the firm's lopsided patent fight against Percy Schmeiser, a Saskatchewan farmer. [Both via metafilter]

A federal judge dismissed criminal charges Wednesday against the environmental group Greenpeace, ending an unusual case that drew the ire of free-speech advocates and critics of the Bush administration. [Via agonist]

Students workers and others opposed to neo-liberal trade policies clashed with police Tuesday outside a trade meeting, of representatives from Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and the United States, in Cartengena, Colombia. Note that according to Reuters Colombia, Peru and Ecuador is "home to 80 million, mostly poor, consumers" rather than 80 million, mostly poor, people as I would have thought.

Tony Blair was welcomed to Turkey yesterday by four explosions at British banks and Molotov cocktails, which were thrown at the British Council's office.

An 18 year old Ontario man is on trial for the murder of a police officer and is alleged to have had a plan to bomb the police station and shoot officers who survived.

Fascists and racist attacks against minority communities are on the rise in Northern Ireland. The White Nationalist Party is planning a neo Nazi rock show and if they can get away with that have ambitions of running for political office. Fortunately there are those who plan to stop them.

Starbucks workers in New York City have organized a union with the Industrial Workers of the World IU/660 and have submitted union cards today to the National Labor Relations Board for a certification election.

Repercussions from the Abu Ghraid prisoner torture (let's just be honest and call it what it is) scandal and the ongoing occupation in Iraq were being felt in Iran yesterday when a crowd chanting anti-U.S. and British slogans hurled rocks and attempted to storm the British Embassy in Tehran.

The Republicans are coming! But so are the protesters regardless of Bloomberg and the NYPD's greatest wishes and refusal to issue any permits.

The Montreal Anarchist Book Fair ended this weekend with a march, of at least 100 people, who vandalized luxury cars and houses including a Ferrari and a Porsche. Police made 20 arrests.

Colin Powell's "Meet the Press" appearance was cut short today by one of his own staff, who evidently decided that the interview had gone on too long.

St. Petersburg, Florida - The jury in the TyRon Lewis case returned a verdict in favor of the city yesterday. TyRon, who was black, was shot and killed by police during a traffic stop in 1996, he was unarmed at the time, but allegedly refused to leave his vehicle and was attempting to hit an officer with it. His death sparked nights of rioting in St. Petersburg. A riot broke out on Wednesday, but a large prepared police presence saw that there were no out bursts following the verdict. TyRon's family, who filed the 1.6 million wrongful death suit, may appeal.

Hundreds of French entertainment workers disrupted the Cannes Film Festival by storming a theatre, smashing windows an engaging police. The workers have been protesting planned government unemployment benefit cuts. Three police and three demonstrators were injured, including one who went to a hospital with a head injury. Elsewhere in the city a peaceful march led by superstar leftist filmmaker Michael Moore and celebrity anti-globalization farmer Jose Bove received a little notice.

Anti-Racist Action in Topeka, Kansas confronted white supremacist Billy Roper and his new White Revolution group forcing them to cut there demonstration short.

A Korean anti-U.S. military group is reportedly disbanding after two years of protests and calling for the accountability of the soldiers who ran down two schoolgirls in 2002. Anti-U.S. sentiment is the strongest in South Korea of all the Asian nations.

Jailed environmental activist Tre Arrow is waiting for a Canadian immigration panel to decide whether he is affiliated with Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and if so if the ELF is a terrorist group as the FBI asserts. If so Tre's refugee application won't be accepted.

Last Sunday a young reporter from the New York Times came to the Anarchist Soccer games I play, in Tompkins Square Park, looking for a story.

Riots broke out in St. Petersburg, Florida last night after while the city fights a court case seeking monetary compensation for the family of TyRon Lewis, a black motorist who was shot to death by police in 1996. TyRon's murder set off two nights of rioting. The socialist Uhuru Movement has been distributing flyers reading will St. Pete learn or will St. Pete burn? Local TV coverage

Batam, Indonesia - Police attempted to evict and demolish over 400 squatted houses, but were met with resistance from residents who pelted them with rocks and burned their vehicles. Police responded by shooting at the squatters, wounding two. Corporate media vehicles were also attacked.

Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski signed an executive order Tuesday officially creating a state Office of Homeland Security. The office is supposed to facilitate the cooperation of local and federal agencies including law enforcement, fire prevention, health and the military in fighting terrorists. This is troubling news to hear in an age when everyone from civil disobedience protesters to teachers unions are being labeled as terrorists and U.S. citizens are being denied constitutional protection when labeled enemy combatants.

Long Island activist and Food Not Bomber Connor Cash is in the midst of trial for anti-sprawl arsons on behalf of the Earth Liberation Front in 2000. A juror in the case was dismissed today for disparaging his supporters to another juror during a lunch break.

Anti-nuclear power, anarchist, activist Marco Camenisch is on on trial for murder in Switzerland. 98 people were arrested Saturday at a support demonstration in Zurich. 52-year-old Camenisch was sentenced to ten years in prison after bombing an electric power plant in 1979. He allegedly shot a prison guard while escaping two years and on later. After a series of similar bombing in Italy he was caught in a shoot out and served 12 years in prison starting in 1993.

Derrick Jensen debunks the forest industry's propaganda and then tackles "taking down civilization" in his forth coming book.

A close look revels that prisons run by the U.S. within our own borders are no more humanely run than the notorious Abu Ghraib.

Is anybody else not surprised that the FDA decided that you still need a doctor's prescription to get the morning-after pill. The FDA ruled against the recommendation of their own scientific advisers to allow the over the counter sale of the Plan B emergency contraception.

Pirates in Holland, Michigan crashed the town's Kinderparade yesterday, before being run off by local police.

Camille Acey, of the The Benjamin Ickies Preservation Society (they played NYC's Leap Day Pirate Parade) together with her band, built a rock garden out of 175 pounds of neutral-tone buttons, on the roof of Flux Factory in Queens. Camille and her fellow urban roof-top guerilla and backyard gardeners were profiled in yesterday's New York Times.

A new study by marine ecologists suggests that the microscopic bits of plastic that have been polluting the world's oceans at greater and greater levels over the past four decades are causing serious harm to sea life.

Last night a widely unpopular new Starbucks was fire-bombed in South East Portland. The store was due to open Thursday across the street from the Red and Black worker owned coffee shop. Nobody from the Red and Black would talk to William McCall, the AP reporter who wrote the story, so he made up some stuff.

Mayor Gavin Newsom (D) implemented his new "Care Not Cash" homeless initiative on Monday, cutting assistance to the poorest San Franciscans by 83 percent. Homeless activists and their supporters held an eleven person sit-in at City Hall and a large permitted demonstration nearby.

The alleged suicide death of a black motorist, who had been pulled over by police, in Cincinnati sparked a riot, in city that has seen 19 black men die at the hands of police since 1995. An angry crowd opened fire on police and set fire to at least one media van and damaging another. No arrests were made. In 2001 people rioted for three days after police shot a black man as he ran away from them.

Direct action protesters “want to put New York on the map," this coming August when the Republican National Convention comes to town to nominate George W. Bush.

Jailed environmental activist Tre Arrow has ended his hunger strike which lasted about a month and a half. Arrow who eats only raw foods was fasting to protest injustice in the U.S. legal system and because the Vancouver Island Regional Correctional Centre had not supplied him with suitable meals.

Those Greek anarchists are at it again, three timed explosions seriously damaged an Athens Police station this morning, exactly 100 days before the start of the Olympic Games. Anarchist groups in Greece have been protesting the Olympic Games coming to Athens for a number of months, through marches and attacks similar to today's against banks, police, and private security targets, without as of yet causing a loss of life.

Despite the U.S. Constitution the New York City Police Depertment has declared that they will deny the right of any group to assemble with out a permit. They also said that any protests during the Republican National Convention will not be allowed to even apply for a permit unless they do so eleven weeks in advance of the convention.

German Government officials are happy to say that this years May Day protests in Berlin were marked by fewer street fires, overturned cars, and broken windows than previous years. Though the 250 riot police who were injured this year are more than last year but that is never the first consideration.

Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R) is trying to pass a new death penalty law. Massachusetts abolished capital punishment through a constitutional amendment in 1982 and has not had an execution since 1947. It's one of only twelve states without one. Conservatives have made efforts but failed to resurrect the puishment with regularity over the past few years but by slim margins. The new bill is being made with the help of scientists and will according to Romney put "science above all other considerations".

Hundreds of cyclists took to Dublin's streets Friday, in the largest Critical Mass the city had ever seen. The following day thousands of anarchists, workers and anti-capitalists took to the streets in a number of actions and marches in opposition to borders and capitalism. Police used a water cannon against demonstrators; it was the first time one had been used in the South. The cannon had to be borrowed in advance from Northern Ireland. Dublin is the new seat of the European Union which was meeting Saturday. Pictures, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

A Texas couple, with ties to white supremacist and militia groups, were caught with a stockpile of chemical weapons, machine guns, more than 100,000 rounds of ammunition, pipe bomb materials, and binary explosives. They were arrested shortly after a package they sent containing forged identification documents was delivered to the wrong address with a note inside which read "hope this package gets to you okay, we would hate to have this fall into the wrong hands." William Krar, 63, and his common-law wife Judith Bruey, 55 of Tyler, Texas will appear in court for sentencing this week. Krar pled guilty in November to possessing chemical weapons for the purpose of creating a dangerous weapon.

After yesterdays attack on an oil refinery in Saudi Arabia, in which five Westerners were killed and a body mutilated publicly, a Western engineering firm said today that it is evacuating all 90 foreign staff and their families from the Saudi city of Yanbu. The U.S. embassy urged the 35,000 Americans living in the country to leave and for others to not travel there.

Friday a federal judge unsealed 48 search warrants the FBI requested which allowed them to search homes, attach tracking devices to cars, search e-mail accounts and examine daily the trash of Pomona, California activist Josh Connole and his girlfriend. The warrants reveal why the FBI originally targeted Connole and that they discovered hair fibers at the scene of the 125 burned out and vandalized Hummers and SUVs, which is why a judge order Bill Cottrell to supply a DNA sample. The arson was commited in the name of the Earth Liberation Front. Cottrell was arrested after an e-mail he sent to the media, telling them that Connole was innocent, was traced to his school.

May Day is celebrated with labor demonstrations across the globe. In Northern Ireland 6,000 march against racism.

There was an attack this morning on an Exxon Mobil / SABIC oil refinery in Saudi Arabia. Gunmen claimed the lives of at least three Americans, two Britons, an Australian and a Saudi.

Ted Koppel read aloud the 721 names of U.S. soldiers who died in Iraq. The Nightline tribute was not aired on seven local affiliated stations owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, causing an outcry of protest from left and right including former Vietnam prisoner of war Sen. John McCain. The controversy is reminiscent of when last month media conglomerate and Bush supporter Clear Channel pulled Howard Stern of their stations after his commentary turned critical of Bush.

Investors looking for opputunities to make more money are finding privately owned prisons, part of the ballooning prison industry, to be a sure bet. According to the Bureau of Justice there are 2.2 million people incaceratd in prisons in the U.S. Thats 1 in every 143 people and those numbers are growing at alarming rates. In the last deacde the prison population increased by 3.6 percent, the vast majority them being people of color, poor, and for non-violent crimes.

A prison uprising in Madrid Friday left a deputy governor with eight stab wounds to his head and neck. Prisoners were protesting there treatment, saying that the jailers were using torture. Another official was taken hostage, but the revolt was ended after five hours.

An article about my friend Bill, his politics and life. Bill and his family are very nice people. I stayed with them, at another farm where they used to live near Richmond, Virginia. Bill is a Catholic anarchist priest who is active in anti-militarism causes like Food Not Bombs.

Hundreds of California truckers held a protest Friday morning in response to what they see as excessive government fees and rising fuel prices. Five drivers slowed down and then abandoned their rigs on the Golden State Freeway outside Los Angeles during morning rush hour.