The struggle of undocumented immigrants against the detention centers in Australia continues. In January, more than 180 detained immigrants armed with bricks and iron bars battled police at the Port Hedland detention center. The detainees temporarily took the center over until the police suppressed the revolt. A few days later, on January 24, a group of seven people scaled the roof of the Maribyrnong detention center, beginning an occupation to demand its closure. This action was taken in support of detainees protesting conditions in the centers. The purely symbolic nature of this action was shown when the group came down at 10 pm that night to face charges.
Detention centers such as these exist all over the world . The worsening conditions for those at the bottom of the present social order have forced many into migration in the attempt to find a reasonable way of surviving in the present world. The requirement of documents is a way of criminalizing these poor immigrants, justifying their interment into camps. Revolt is the only reasonable response.
SWITZERLAND (January 27, 2001)�Protesters were turned back by police when they attempted to get to Davos where the World Economic Forum was taking place. In response, people blocked roads and rail lines and beat security personnel. Several hundred people who were sent back to Zurich rioted, breaking windows, overturning garbage containers and burning cars. Damage was �massive�.
SWITZERLAND (January 27, 2001)�Protesters were turned back by police when they attempted to get to Davos where the World Economic Forum was taking place. In response, people blocked roads and rail lines and beat security personnel. Several hundred people who were sent back to Zurich rioted, breaking windows, overturning garbage containers and burning cars. Damage was �massive�. MOUNT SINAI, LONG ISLAND, NY (December 29, 2000)�Individuals using the name Earth Liberation Front (ELF) claimed responsibility for burning down four new luxury homes at Island Estates in Mount Sinai. Damages were estimated at $2,000,000.
GLENDALE, OR (January 1, 2001)�Individuals using the name Earth Liberation Front (ELF) torched the administrative offices of the Superior Lumber Company causing $400,000 in damages.
MIDDLE ISLAND, LONG ISLAND, NY (January 14, 2001)�Individuals using the name ELF hopped a fence at Melo�s Construction, took a gas can from the bed of a pickup and set fire to the truck and to a front-end loader. The truck was full of expensive saws, tools and other equipment. Damages were estimated at between $25,000 and $50,000.
FLAMES OF REVOLT IN ARIZONA Unknown individuals have taken up the torch in the battle against encroaching development in the area around the Phoenix Mountain Preserve. Developers, attempting to create an enclave of luxury homes on the edge of the preserve, have found the newly built houses being burnt to the ground before anyone can move in. Damage estimates have surpassed $5,500,000.
The arsonist(s) are clear about their reasons. They wish to stop suburban sprawl and have chosen to act directly in order to accomplish this. Development has always been an essential part of capitalism. This social system cannot survive unless it expands, and it is beginning to nibble away at the last of the earth�s wild spaces.
Demanding that the state curb the developers� activities is absurd since the state itself is a capitalist and is thus dependent upon the expansion of capital for its own continued existence. Thus, the battle against development must become the battle against the state and capital as a whole. These unknown individuals do not ask for dialogue with power; they do not try to move those in power to do what is impossible. Rather, they act for themselves to destroy that which is itself destroying the living world. Thus, the potential exists within these actions to move beyond this particular battle, to expand this critique in action to a critique of the totality of a civilization based on the commodification and the destruction of wildness, untamed beauty and life.
THESSALONIKI, GREECE (January 8, 2001)�Anarchists occupied the offices of Amnesty International in Salonika in solidarity with Nikos Maziotis whose appeal trial began in Athens on January 8. Solidarity was also expressed with Greek anarchist prisoners K. Kalaremas and Simos Seisidis, hunger striking prisoners in Turkey and Turkish anarchists who suffer at the hands of the state and of stalinists and leftists both inside and outside the prisons.