[Onthebarricades] Reflections on protests, unrest and mobilisations, October 2007

[Andy]

*  "Forget Bono and bracelets, protest for real" - Naomi Klein

*  MEXICO:  State terror and dirty war: a year of state recuperation

*  UN food chief warns of mass revolt if food prices soar

*  BURMA:  A monk's tale of protest and escape

*  UK:  Toilet paper art sheds light on 1932 jail revolt - "it's comic 
violence, it's kind of carnival"

*  FRANCE:  The banlieues two years after the revolt


NOTE:  I won't even forward THIS little piece of dogshit on the Amsterdam 
unrest:
http://pajamasmedia.com/2007/10/amsterdam_is_a_riot.php
which not only refuses voice to the oppressed and uses stupid anathemas and 
labels, but is utterly empirically incoherent (if cracking down "works", why 
did the French unrest carry on for WEEKS after the crackdown started?!). 
The racism of the piece is also instantly apparent - and the comments are 
even worse ("shoot them in the streets like rabid dogs" rants one bigot).  I 
remain perplexed as to why this kind of anti-"crime" bigotry is so rarely 
recognised as the hate speech it so clearly is.

Notice too the rather dubious use of the term "gangs" and "gang violence" in 
the AFP article on France.  The term "gang violence" connotes the idea of 
clashes between groups of youths of different (ethnic, regional, sporting, 
friendship, criminal) allegiance - whereas in this case the discussion is of 
clashes between youths and police.  "Gang violence. between youths and 
police" really doesn't make much sense as a term.  The Gare du Nord incident 
was also covered at the time as a clash between youths and police, NOT 
between different groups of youths.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article2633537.ece

>From The Times
October 11, 2007
'Forget Bono and bracelets, protest for real'
Ben Hoyle, Arts Reporter
Naomi Klein, the poster girl of the anti-globalisation movement, has 
attacked the "Bono-isation" of protests against world poverty.
Speaking after an appearance at The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival she 
said that the involvement of celebrity campaigners such as the U2 singer and 
Bob Geldof had set back the cause of building a fairer world.
"The Bono-isation of protest, particularly in the UK, has reduced discussion 
to a much safer terrain," she said as she singled out for criticism the Make 
Poverty History campaign, which tied into the G8 summit at Glen-eagles in 
2005. "It was the stadium rock model of protest - there's celebrities and 
then there's spectators waving their bracelets. It's less dangerous and less 
powerful [than grass roots street demonstrations]."
Bono and Klein make a formidably glamorous pair of rival activists. He is 
the Dublin-born singer who has sold more than 140 million albums with U2 but 
devotes much of his time to twisting the arms of presidents and prime 
ministers to help the poor in Africa. He has received an honorary knighthood 
and been named Person of the Year for his work by Time magazine.
She is the elegant Canadian journalist who became a figurehead for the 
antiglobalisation movement with the publication of her first book, No Logo, 
seven years ago. It lambasted the exploitative, brand-driven consumer-ism 
created by multinational corporations such as Nike and sold more than a 
million copies in the process.
Klein, 37, describes her new book, The Shock Doctrine, as "much more overtly 
political". It sets out to demonstrate that Western politicians of the past 
40 years have persistently exploited disasters to push through lucrative, 
unpopular, free-market economic policies.
It has sharply divided opinion on both sides of the Atlantic and Klein now 
finds herself more isolated than she did after the release of No Logo.
"The movement has fizzled," she said. In her view it has been damaged by 
fear of government coercion in the US after the events of September 11, 
2001, and by the rise of blogs and chat rooms. "It's safer to mouth off in a 
blog than to put your body on the line. The internet is an amazing 
organising tool but it also acts as a release, with the ability to rant and 
get instant catharsis . . . it's taken that urgency away," she said.
Then there is the problem of crusading rock stars. "I think it's fantastic 
when celebrities engage with politics and stick their necks out. I think 
more people should do it, in less safe ways.
My problem with Bono is not about him being a celebrity or being rich. It's 
that his model of organising is dated."
"My analysis is that change isn't popular. It comes because a real 
counter-power emerges which carries negotiating power, which leads to 
change."
This activist model had been replaced by the idea that "we can make this 
really good argument and get some celebrity to endorse it".
"In terms of the movement this gen-trification of the protest space by the 
Bonos and the Geldofs has had a really corrosive effect. I really don't 
think it's a good thing."
Jamie Drummond, the executive director of Debt, Aids, Trade, Africa (DATA), 
founded with Bono in 2002 to eradicate extreme poverty and Aids in Africa, 
said that Klein was "missing the point", adding that effective change can 
only be brought about by a combination of outside mobilisation and inside 
manoeuvring, He added: "It's a gross simplification to think you can achieve 
anything without one or the other. It's not cool to meet President Bush. It 
would be a much better look for Bono to be wearing a balaclava and lobbing 
Molotov cocktails. But we want to win, rather than be on the margins moaning 
about the system."

Naomi Klein put the point on what's dangerous of Bono-isation. Bono is more 
used to get us to believe that everything is all right, and in the end we 
have come nowhere. Making poverty history starts where the roots are not on 
the top. The responsibility starts in Africa, not in the White House.
Margaret Engdahl, Lönsboda, Sweden
Bono, Geldorf, Sting....they are other servants of the Globalist, which are 
very smart to provide such a tools which makes people beliee that they are 
still free to express their opinion.
Does anything change? Hell,no!
In case you still did not get it, it 1984 Big Brother's time!
Julia, Paris, France
I totally agree with Klein. I think that despite Bono"s good intentions, in 
the end everything continue to be the same.
The real power lies with the people not with celebrities who only care about 
their pockets and fancy way of living (probably, Bono"s case and Gore"s 
case...).
Sílvia Lorena, Salvador, Brazil

http://libcom.org/news/state-terror-dirty-war-year-state-recuperation-mexico-08102007

State terror and dirty war: a year of state recuperation in Mexico

October 8th, 2007 by Alan

An in-depth look at the contemporary situation in Mexico in the aftermath of 
recent state offensives against movements in Chiapas, Oaxaca and San 
Salvador Atenco.
Following a heady 18 months of diverse and popular struggles up down the 
country, the Mexican state is using familiar tactics to reassert itself as 
the country's main authority. Enlisting the support of the US state and 
using the cover of a war on drugs (a war which the US now claims to have 
won, in part thanks to the deployment of 30,000 Mexican troops to different 
parts of the country) and the search for the culprits behind a recent 
bombing campaign attributed to Marxist-Leninist guerrillas the EPR (Ejército 
Popular Revolucionario - Popular Revolutionary Army), the Mexican police and 
army have spent the year of 2007 attacking - with increasing audacity - 
working class movements in places such as Oaxaca and the autonomous 
Zapatista communities in Chiapas.
Subcomandante Marcos, the infamous spokesman for the EZLN (Zapatista) 
movement, confirmed in a communiqué dated September 24th that La Comisión 
Sexta (the movement's leadership) had cancelled the second leg of their 
nationwide tour La Otra Campaña (The Other Campaign - which seeks to build 
an all-Mexican revolutionary movement) due to what political commentators 
are calling "the biggest [military] offensive in nine years" [link in 
Spanish] in Chiapas. Thus far in 2007, over 10,500 hectares of land have 
been seized by paramilitary groups masquerading as farmers' interest groups. 
Of course, these activities are done with the full approval of the local 
state infrastructure: Tribunal Unitario Agrario (the local land arbitration 
panel) had already rubberstamped these moves.
Moreover, the Chiapan state government - dominated by members of the highly 
corrupt social democratic PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional - 
Institutional Revolutionary Party) - and the municipal government of PRI's 
leftist split the PRD (Partido de la Revolución Democrática - Democratic 
Revolutionary Party) have been complicit in the continued presence of some 
79 permanent (para)military camps within the state of Chiapas, with their 
weapons pointed at the Zapatista communities.

The recent government attacks in Chiapas are said to be linked to the Plan 
Puebla Panamá, a NAFTA-inspired initiative introduced in 2001 by the then 
Mexican President Vicente Fox in order to "promote the regional integration 
and development" of southern Mexico, the entire of Central American and 
Colombia. The programme would include further privatisation of land and the 
opening up of the area to even more capitalist investment - which would 
necessitate the removal of hostile political movements. In southern Mexico, 
this process dates back to the 1880s but has been stiffly resisted every 
step of the way.
In the communiqué, Marcos also expressed fear at the safety of EZLN members 
entering areas "where [the EPR] has presence or influence" without an EPR 
ceasefire, and that even in the event of an EPR ceasefire for the benefit of 
La Otra Campaña, that the "nervously stupid" PAN (Partido Acción Nacional - 
National Action Party) right wing government of Felipe Calderón "would 
launch an attack and later attempt to blame it on non-existent disputes with 
the EPR".
The EPR came into existence in 1996 in the south-western state of Guerrero. 
Heavily armed, they claimed to have killed 59 soldiers within 6 weeks of 
their formation. The Mexican state was still reeling from the Zapatista 
uprising and for a brief moment, revolution looked imminent. However, the 
shortcomings of the choice of an attempted clandestine insurrection quickly 
became apparent to the Zapatistas (who were quick to disassociate themselves 
from them), and like most leftists, the EPR became bogged down in a series 
of splits and disappeared for over 10 years.
The renaissance of the EPR last July took the form of several bomb attacks 
in the El Bajío region of central Mexico on gas lines owned by Pemex, the 
nationalised oil company. It was quickly followed by bombs in department 
stores and banks in Cuidad de Oaxaca before another bombing of a Pemex gas 
line, this time in Veracruz. Rumour is rife of the involvement of government 
agents in the newly active EPR faction(s), and some whispers centre around 
government attempts to orchestrate a situation similar to the Strategy of 
Tension in Italy in the 1970s, in which government agent provocateurs 
committed terrorist acts and blamed them on anarchists and revolutionaries 
in order to vindicate their subsequent repression. As of yet, these claims 
are just speculation, although such underhand tactics have been the 
intermittent modus operandi of the post-revolutionary Mexican state.
The EPR communiqués claim that their attacks are in response to the 
disappearance of their "leaders", Edmundo Reyes and Gabriel Alberto, in 
Oaxaca in May this year. The government claims another revolutionary 
organisation kidnapped him, a story the Mexican public has not swallowed. 
Reyes' daughter, Nadín Reyes Maldonado, has been especially explicit in 
blaming the state, while admitting that, upon her father's release, "there 
are some things he's going to have to explain to us".
Either way, the state has used the pretext of EPR's apparent association 
with the Oaxaca revolt to launch several more assaults on the APPO (Asamblea 
Popular del Pueblo de Oaxaca - Popular People's Assembly of Oaxaca) 
movement. In one incident in July, Emeterio Marino Cruz was beaten into a 
coma by police when he and fellow APPO members tried to participate in the 
celebration of the Guelagetza, a traditional Oaxacan festival. Cruz emerged 
from hospital deaf, dumb and paralysed in the right side of his body. Even 
the Mexican state found this story too much to condone, and have since 
detained five policeman (including three from the notoriously savage PFP 
[Policia federativa preventiva - Federal Preventative Police]).

However, that represents an anomaly in terms of the state's activities in 
Oaxaca. Conservative estimates put the death count at 20, with an unknown 
amount of disappearances and tens of political prisoners. This figure is 
still rising. Enrique Rueda Pacheco, head of the fiercely radical Oaxacan 
section of the SNTE (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores en Educación - 
National Union of Education Workers), whose strike in May last year started 
the revolt, was forced into exile by the Oaxaca state government's death 
threats, despite Pacheco's repeated attempts to end the teachers' strike.
The hand-wringers from Amnesty International have twice visited the area, 
twice wagged their fingers at the police and military, and twice their 
appeals have been ignored. The government even sent its own Comisión 
Nacional de los Derechos Humanos (National Human Rights Commission) - an 
organisation whose redundancy is almost universally recognised - down to 
investigate, with a rather ironic consequence. Their envoy, a panista 
(member of the PAN party), called for the resignation of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, 
the embattled PRI-affiliated state governor - a moderate prognosis in the 
circumstances - only to retract it publicly 24 hours later. It is in times 
of heightened class struggle such as these that the squabbling ruling 
factions suddenly find it in themselves to drop their differences.
Meanwhile, another tactic successfully used by Ortiz et al to break the 
revolt is to force a split in the local SNTE. Sección 22 has been joined by 
Sección 59, which was intended to be comprised of priístas (PRI supporters) 
and scabs (although even the scabs' union has found itself ignored by its 
party and thus is becoming more and more hostile towards local government). 
In response, as reported on Libcom, Sección 22 members formed the 
oppositional current CNTE (Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la 
Educación - National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers) [link in 
Spanish].
As for the APPO itself, it appears to be in a state of crisis, exhausted by 
the intensity of the last 17 months and merely focusing on continuing to 
exist rather than confronting its contradictions. Pacheco, the 
aforementioned exiled SNTE leader, has been "trying to end the teachers' 
strike since July [2006]" in favour of a movement that was broad enough to 
incorporate PRD and the Zapatistas, while the arrest of APPO's de facto 
leader, Flavio Sosa, revealed that he was still a member of the leftist PRD, 
despite the APPO's explicit prohibition of political party members. 
Concurrently to the writing of this article, one can participate in a poll 
[link in Spanish] on the APPO website which deals with the upcoming 
municipal elections. One can either choose that the APPO "participate [in 
the elections] and continue struggling [outside of electoralism]" or that it 
"doesn't participate and continues struggling". Thus far, the results are 
roughly two-thirds in favour of participation. As has been commented on 
Mexico before, at times the bourgeoisie prefers to rein in subversive or 
revolutionary elements, integrating them into the unwieldy and 
multi-tentacled state.
However, even if Oaxaca is being recuperated, it pales in comparison to the 
events in San Salvador Atenco in Estado de México, just outside Mexico City. 
Following a rebellion in May 2006 over the police's attempt to evict market 
stallholders (which are about as ubiquitous in Mexico as moustaches), the 
small town saw a new level of police violence. Unlike Oaxaca and Chiapas, 
the movement failed to organise itself sufficiently and was brutally crushed 
within a week. Around 400 people were taken prisoner in Atenco and 
neighbouring Texcoco, and the country was shocked by their systemised 
rounding up and subsequent beating, torture and rape (a subsequent 
investigation reported that "30 of 47 women detained suffered sexual abuse" 
[link in Spanish]). Most of the police brutality happened in the police vans 
on the way to be processed, but in a clear signal to would-be rebellious 
residents of Atenco, the police patrolled the town's narrow streets, 
emptying houses into the street, binding and masking their detainees and 
hitting them with batons as a means of "counting them".

As such, although the FPDT (Frente del Pueblos en Defenso de la Tierra - 
People's Front in Defence of the Land) continues, forging links with APPO 
and the EZLN [link in Spanish], their main focus seems to be legal battles 
to free the huge amount of people still imprisoned (many of whom still haven't 
been charged, more than 15 months after the revolt) in jails in Santiaguito 
and Texcoco, only really emerging in public to record the victories and 
defeats in this process [link in Spanish - scroll down to "Campesinos en 
Atenco son Inocentes"]. However, it's worth noting the current unrest in 
Atenco can be traced back to a successful farmer-led movement against the 
attempted construction of an airport there in 2002 (in the end, an airport 
opened up the road in Toluca instead). As such, it seems unlikely that we've 
heard the last from there.
Indeed, there is plenty of ongoing class struggle in this country. Libcom 
has already reported on the national public sector workers' Movimiento 
ResISSSTE against a new law which would seriously deplete their pensions. 
There's also a massive ongoing strike in the glassworkers' industry based in 
the peyote-rich state of San Luis Potosí [link in Spanish], as well as 
miners' strikes in Zacatecas and Guerrero [link in Spanish]. Mexican 
strikers are partially helped by Mexican labour law, which (much to the envy 
of British workers) legally requires striking workers to occupy their 
workplace. The net effect of this law however, is that the many employers 
contest the legality of strikes in the court, and often workers suffer 
losing their right to strike on a legal technicality due to a right wing 
judge.
Generally however, the year of 2007 has been one of retreat for the Mexican 
working class, helped in no small part by the controversy over the 
presidential elections in summer 2006. The eventual victor, Calderón, who 
has defined his stay in power thus far through his combative stance against 
working class movements, is casually referred to as a "fascista" in the 
chattering classes, but the PRD's Andrés Manuel López Obrador has played his 
part too, distracting many would-be working class militants with his dead 
end post-electoral campaign based mainly on vague claims of electoral fraud. 
The FPDT is keen to point out [link in Spanish] that, like the rest of 
bourgeois political scene, Obrador was strangely silent in the aftermath of 
the brutality in Estado de México.
Nationally, the huge divisions still remain (Mexico is economically the most 
unequal country in the world, housing Carlos Slim, the world's richest man, 
while 40% of the country lives in extreme poverty) and there exists a 
general distrust of the corrupt, dishonest and hegemonic political elite. 
Unfortunately, the economic disparity has social ramifications too in 
widespread anti-indigenous attitudes and suspicion directed at people from 
barrios populares (the dangerous, if fascinatingly atmospheric, overcrowded 
suburbs on the edge of the great Mexican cities) The attempts of La Otra 
Campaña to build a national movement against this backdrop are to be 
commended, even if their main success thus far has been in publicising 
various local struggles throughout the country. However, as we have seen not 
only recently but also historically (in events such as the Tlatelolco 
students' massacre of 1968 and the strikes in Río Blanco in 1906-07 and 
Cananea in 1906 [both links in Spanish]) in this country, any movement with 
any sort of relevance will have to contend against the dual Mexican and 
American bourgeoisie.

http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-30142420071024

Poor may riot if food price soars - U.N. food chief
Wed Oct 24, 2007 9:14pm IST

By David Brough
LONDON (Reuters) - Soaring food and energy prices could trigger political 
upheaval and riots in developing countries, the United Nations world food 
body chief Jacques Diouf said on Wednesday.
Food prices are booming: the Food and Agriculture Organization's food price 
index in July stood at its highest level since its inception in 1990, and 
was almost 70 percent higher than in 2000, the Rome-based FAO 
director-general said.
"There will be very serious strain on the little resources they (developing 
countries) have and a risk of social and political conflicts," Diouf said in 
an interview for Reuters Television.
"If food prices continue to be high, there are risks of riots."
"If you combine the increase of the oil prices and the increase of food 
prices, then you have the elements of a very serious crisis in the future," 
he added.
Protests over food prices have already taken place in some African 
countries, including Niger, Guinea and Burkina Faso, and in Yemen and 
Mexico.
Food costs account for the bulk of people's incomes in the world's poorest 
countries. More than 2 billion people live on $2 a day, according to Diouf.
Many of the poorest countries depend on imported crude oil, which is now 
trading at near record high prices.
The world's poorest people are the most vulnerable to the impact of surging 
cereals, vegetable oils and dairy prices.
Food prices are soaring because of falling stocks, rising production costs 
due to higher energy prices, adverse weather, faster economic growth and 
rising biofuels demand.
BOOST OUTPUT
Diouf, who was on an official visit to London to meet foreign office and aid 
officials, said African countries needed to boost food output to counter the 
upward pressure on local food prices and to produce their own biofuels.
"We have to take into consideration the great potential of natural 
resources, of water, soil and also people that exists in developing 
countries in general, and in Africa," the veteran Senegalese food agency 
chief said.
Diouf said soaring food prices would make it tougher in the short term for 
the international community to move closer to its millennium development 
goal to halve extreme poverty and hunger by 2015.
But he said that if the right policies were adopted in developing 
countries -- investments in rural infrastructure and in water control --  
prospects should improve.
Diouf estimated that some 854 million people are severely malnourished, the 
vast majority in Africa and Asia.
He said a major conference to be hosted by FAO was planned for June 2008 in 
Rome to discuss linkages between food prices, green fuel and climate change. 
Several heads of state are expected to attend.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/world/asia/26monk.html?_r=1&ref=asia&oref=slogin

A Monk's Tale of Protest and Escape From Myanmar
By THOMAS FULLER
Published: October 26, 2007
MAE SOT, Thailand, Oct. 25 - A 24-year-old Buddhist monk who says he was one 
of the leaders of the recent protests in Myanmar and escaped last week 
painted a picture on Thursday of a bare-bones group of young monks planning 
and organizing what became a nationwide uprising.
Skip to next paragraph
Enlarge This Image

Thomas Fuller/The International Herald Tribune
Ashin Kovida, a Buddhist monk, said he was a leader of recent protests in 
Yangon, Myanmar, and fled to Thailand last week.
Enlarge This Image

Courtesy of Ashin Kovinda
Mr. Kovida led monks through the streets of Yangon on September 19.
During a six-hour interview in this border town, the monk, Ashin Kovida, 
said he had been elected the leader of a group of 15 of his fellows and led 
daily protests in Yangon from Sept. 18 through Sept. 27, the day after the 
authorities began raiding monasteries.
He said he was inspired by the popular uprisings in Yugoslavia against the 
government of Slobodan Milosevic, videos of which were circulated by 
dissident groups in Myanmar.
Eight members of his organizing committee are "missing" and six others are 
hiding in Yangon, he said. He described escaping to Thailand by using a 
false identification card, dyeing his hair blond and wearing a crucifix.
Many details of Mr. Kovida's account could not be independently confirmed, 
but his role as an organizer was well known among nongovernmental 
organizations in Myanmar, formerly Burma, and Western human rights groups.
Hlaing Moe Than, 37, a leading organizer of students in the September 
demonstrations who also fled to Thailand, was shown a picture of Mr. Kovida 
on Thursday and confirmed his identity.
"He is one of the famous leaders among the Buddhist monks during the 
protests," Hlaing Moe Than said.
Mr. Kovida's group received financial help from three well-known Burmese 
dissidents - an actor, a comedian and a poet - but it did not receive 
foreign aid during the protests, he said.
One of his main preoccupations, he said, was providing food for the 
thousands of monks who came to Yangon, Myanmar's main city, to join the 
protests. He said he also worried about what he called "fake monks," whom he 
suspected the military government had planted.
The spark for the demonstrations came on Sept. 5, when the police fired 
warning shots at protesting monks in Pakokku, in central Myanmar, Mr. Kovida 
said.
"The first time I heard the information, I was speechless," he said. "It was 
an unbelievable thing."
Older monks and abbots urged the monks to protest in the monasteries, but 
the younger monks thought protesting in their cloistered world would do no 
good, he said.
He reached out to students he had met during alms collections and began to 
plan marches in Yangon.
"We realized that there was no leadership - a train must have a locomotive," 
he said.
He said he helped supervise the printing of hundreds of pamphlets, titled, 
"The Monks Will Come Out Onto the Streets."
"We delivered to all the monasteries." in Yangon, he said. "We tried to 
distribute to other regions as much as possible."
On Sept. 18, he led the first column of monks through the streets in Yangon, 
he said.
On Sept. 19, about 2,000 protesters, including 500 monks, sat on the tiled 
floor in Sule Pagoda, a focal point of the protests. "To continue 
demonstrations in a peaceful way we must have leadership," Mr. Kovida said 
he told them. "I call on 10 monks to come join me in the front."
Fifteen monks came forward, he said, to form what they called the Sangga 
Kosahlal Apahwe, the Monks Representative Group.
"In this country at present we are facing hardships," he said he told the 
crowd, after he was elected chairman of the group. "People are starving; 
prices are rising. Under this military government there are so many human 
rights abuses. I call on people to come to join together with us. We will 
continue these protests peacefully every day until we win. If there are no 
human rights, there is no value of a human."
He said that, for a week, he met with his group of organizers in the morning 
and led marches at noon. He said he heard reports on the Burmese-language 
service of the BBC about other monks who had organized themselves but he had 
never met them.
Then, on Sept. 26, the government began a violent crackdown. Security forces 
clubbed and tear-gassed protesters, blocked their path and arrested 
hundreds.
"The police pulled the monks' robes and beat them," Mr. Kovida said. "Nuns 
were stripped of their sarongs."
He said he escaped by climbing over a brick wall.
The next day, as the crackdown intensified, he said he changed out of his 
robes and fled to a village about 40 miles away where, with the help of 
relatives and friends, he hid in an abandoned wooden hut.
He was so afraid of attracting the attention of neighbors that he suppressed 
his coughs and never left the dark hut for two weeks, he said. He relieved 
himself using a plastic bucket, he said, and friends occasionally dropped 
off food.
On Oct. 12, his adoptive mother, whom he called Daw Thin Thin Khaing, was 
detained, news that was immediately relayed to him. He fled into the night, 
barefoot.
"I ran down a large road," he said. "Whenever a car came I hid in the 
bushes."
He headed back to Yangon, he said, where he dyed his hair blond. He bought a 
crucifix in a local market and, several days later, boarded a bus heading 
toward the Thai border.
Using a false identity card, he passed about eight checkpoints and reached 
Myawadi, a border town, on Oct. 17. The next morning, he said, he crossed 
the Moei River to Thailand in a boat, bypassing the official border post.
An Oct. 18 article in The New Light of Myanmar, the state-run newspaper, 
accused him of hiding "48 yellowish high-explosive TNT cartridges" in his 
monastery.
Now, facing almost certain detention in Myanmar, Mr. Kovida said he would 
request refugee status in Thailand.
"I have been in the monkhood since I was so young," he said. "My whole life, 
I have been studying only Buddhism and peaceful things."
Pornnapa Wongakanit contributed reporting.

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=74026&in_page_id=34

Toilet paper art sheds light on jail riot
Thursday, November 1, 2007

The big tissue: The sketch shows inmates partying as a guard stands on a 
wall
The discovery of a 75-year-old sketch on toilet paper has been hailed as 
providing important new evidence on one of Britain's worst jail riots.
The pencil drawing, made by an unknown former inmate, depicts the uprising 
at Dartmoor Prison in January 1932.
One prisoner was shot and injured and a further 80 seriously hurt by guards 
when 300 rioting convicts laid siege to the prison in Devon.

Protesting at poor conditions, the inmates started fires and rampaged 
through the jail with handmade spears.
The daughter of a prison officer sent the drawing to researchers after an 
appeal for information about the riot. Dr Alyson Brown, of Edge Hill 
University in Ormskirk, Lancashire, said: 'This picture is quite different 
from the official images of the riot. It's a cartoon, which says something 
for a start.
'You see prisoners playing musical instruments and smoking and, while there 
is violence, it's comic violence. It's a kind of carnival.'
The loo roll picture features in the November issue of BBC History Magazine. 
Editor Dave Musgrave said: 'This source casts a fascinating new light on the 
riot, for which the official line was that the convicts were on the rampage 
and out of control.'

http://www.france24.com/france24Public/en/news/world/20071027-France-suburbs-riots-two-year-anniversary.html

By  AFP
Parisian suburbs mark riot's two year anniversary
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Two years after youth riots broke out in the suburbs of cities across 
France, little has changed. The government plans a reform in January, but in 
the meantime residents are left with raw memories.
Two years after the 2005 youth riots in France's mostly immigrant suburbs, 
the low-income estates facing high crime and unemployment remain a 
"powderkeg", police and politicians warn.

President Nicolas Sarkozy's government is due in January to unveil a 
Marshall-type plan for the hundreds of out-of-town areas where simmering 
discontent among ethnic minority youths boiled over into violence on October 
27, 2005.

The three weeks of arson attacks and street battles with police were sparked 
by the accidental deaths of two teenagers of African origin, who died after 
climbing into a power sub-station while running from the police.

Hundreds of people were injured, more than 10,000 vehicles and 300 buildings 
torched, as the violence spread from the Paris suburbs to the rest of the 
country, leading the government to declare a national state of emergency.

The riots exposed France's failure to integrate its large minorities, with 
the French-born children of African immigrants facing racial discrimination 
and jobless rates reaching 40 percent in some "cites", or estates.

Sarkozy's tough-talking stance as interior minister at the time -- he vowed 
to clean out one estate with a "power hose" after a young boy was killed in 
a shoot-out between two gangs -- made him a hate figure for many rioters.

As president, he sent out a powerful signal by appointing three women of 
African origin to his government -- including Housing Minister Fadela Amara, 
a women's rights campaigner of Algerian parents.

Since June, Amara has been travelling the country to draw up a national plan 
to boost education and youth employment in the suburbs.

But social workers and opposition politicians warn the ingredients that 
sparked the 2005 riots remain firmly in place.

"It is still a powderkeg, there is a deep sense of territorial isolation and 
a lack of opportunities," said Manuel Valls, the Socialist mayor of Evry 
south of Paris.

"The situation has got worse," said Francois Pupponi, the Socialist mayor of 
Sarcelles, a poor north Paris suburb.

"All it will take is a match for everything to go up in flames like in 2005. 
There are more and more weapons out there," warned a police officer from the 
Paris area under cover of anonymity.

Gang violence continues to break out sporadically between youths and police 
in troublespots near Paris and elsewhere.

Earlier this month some 50 masked youths went on a rampage in a twon in 
eastern France, using metal bars to smash a firefighters' vehicle, torching 
cars and buildings and clashing with police.

Clashes between gangs broke out last month at Paris's main Gare Du Nord 
station, which was the scene of a major riot in March, when youths attacked 
windows, vending machines and shops before being dispersed with tear-gas.

Police fear that youth gangs from the suburbs could cause trouble on the 
sidelines of marches against Sarkozy's reform programme next month -- as 
happened during mass youth job protests in March 2006.

Ministers insist the suburbs are a "priority" for Sarkozy, with Urbanism 
Minister Christine Boutin stressing their "extraordinary potential".

But an association of 120 suburb mayors, of all political stripes, on 
Thursday denounced the "contradiction between new of an umpteenth Marshall 
plan for the suburbs and a drop in funding for the towns involved."

As part of the suburb plan, the mayors are calling for 30 measures to 
improve their constituents' daily lives, starting with stepped up transport 
links and powerful tax incentives to get more suburb residents into work.