Anarchy in the U.K. — Hundreds Arrested as Violent Anti-Capitalists Occupy and Smash London!

Various reports put the number of protesters marching against budget cuts in the 500,000 range. That's a massive show of opposition, but it's the black bloc occupiers and violent anarcho-communists who're dominating the news. And that's half the kick of all this. Commentators are riffing on the headlines, for example, at Instapundit, "LONDON: Moochers And Looters Clash With Police." And at Slap Blog, "Rioting Anarchist Freeloaders Hijack and Rampage London," as well as PJ Tattler, "Wild Animals on the Loose in London":

The “largely peaceful” march saw masked thugs going wild in Oxford Circus smashing shop windows and attacking the police. Americans should take careful note of events, for the London mob has American cousins who share similar attitudes about budget cuts.

But see London's Daily Mail especially, "After blitz of the Ritz, it's the siege of Fortnum & Mason: Anarchists hijack the anti-cuts demo and go on rampage in central London" (via Memeorandum).

RELATED: At Telegraph UK, "Police intelligence gathering failed to prevent occupation of Fortnum & Mason: The disastrous policing of the cuts protests was principally a failure of intelligence-gathering."

I'll have some commentary on all of this later ...

Left-Wing Climate of Hate: Deception and Suppression Keep Casey Brezik Off National Radar

Actually, it did make Fox News, "Man Charged in Dean's Stabbing at College Minutes Before Speech." And AP, "Man Who Stabbed Penn Valley Comm. College Dean Targeted Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon."

But the story didn't gain much more traction nationally, as Ed Driscoll notes, "Doesn’t Fit the Narrative, or Drive the Agenda." And at Gateway Pundit, "Far Left Activist Slashes Throat of Man He Mistakes For Governor – Media Silent." And from Jack Cashill, "Left Wing Climate of Hate and Assassination":

Successful propaganda is composed of equal parts deception and suppression, and the apparatchiks in the mainstream media are much better at the latter.

They may have erred in pushing the Arizona assassination attempt beyond its ideological limits last week, but they succeeded brilliantly a few months earlier in suppressing news of a nearly lethal attempt by a genuine leftist.

The Other McCain has video clips: "Democrat Attacked After Vitriolic Rhetoric From Sarah Palin … No? Never Mind."

But I love this one the best, "Victimless Crime File: Pot Smoking Anarchist Casey Brezik Tries to Kill Community College Dean":

Brezik was reported to have been covered in “demonic” tattoos and to have scribbled a strange symbol on one of the schools walls. Some sources claim that the “demonic” symbols and tattoos were anarchist signs.

This was also not his first rodeo. He was arrested at the G-20 meetings earlier this year, something he proudly wrote about on his Facebook page:

Brezik’s Facebook page paints a portrait of an angry man. He had 26 friends and bragged in June about being the first person arrested at the G-20 Summit.

“Crossed the security fence. Ran from the cops. Was tackled. Spit on an officer. Was arrested, charged, and deported. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED,” he wrote.

For that Brezik spent two days in jail and got ten days (?!?) probation for assaulting a police officer. Had Canada taken his assault of a police officer more seriously today’s violence may not have happened.

Brezik’s devolution began much earlier however. His family reported him missing in March 2009 and he was listed as an endangered missing adult, which means he may have had mental health issues. Marijuana use is known to exacerbate existing mental problems.

It’s easy to blame Casey Brezik’s left wing politics for this violence, but the truth is that these traveling “radicals” are a drug culture and Casey Brezik was a user. The May Day riot in Asheville was another example of these “anarchists” getting high and running wild and the truth about anarchism is that troubled souls who self-medicate and drug addicts are 90% of that movement.

One thing I want to point out here is that marijuana played a significant roll in Brezik’s lifestyle and ultimately his crime. He was high when he tried to murder an innocent person and had more weed on him, suggesting that he planned on getting high again. Would he have tried to kill someone without pot? Maybe. But we know that if pot was legal this crime still would have happened and Brezik’s access to pot facilitated his insanity. This is not a victimless crime.

New York Times Whitewashes Marxist Revolutionary Frances Fox Piven

"I have considerable respect for non-violence, but I don’t treat it as inevitably a necessary rule ..."

That's the quote from Frances Fox Piven's discussion at the C-SPAN clip above.

Piven is a long-established Marxist revolutionary of the slow-burn academic variety. She's notorious for her longstanding call to break the American system through a revolt of the masses from below, called The Cloward-Piven Strategy.

But lately she's been aggressively promoting a more spontaneous form of violent unrest, massed street revolts to topple the American regime.

As reported a couple of weeks ago at The Blaze, "Frances Fox Piven Rings in The New Year By Calling for Violent Revolution":

She’s considered by many as the grandmother of using the American welfare state to implement revolution. Make people dependent on the government, overload the government rolls, and once government services become unsustainable, the people will rise up, overthrow the oppressive capitalist system, and finally create income equality. Collapse the system and create a new one. That‘s the simplified version of Frances Fox Piven’s philosophy originally put forth in the pages of The Nation in the 60s.

Now, as the new year ball drops, Piven is at it again, ringing in 2011 with renewed calls for revolution.

And see also Matthew Vadum's piece, "Marxist Frances Fox Piven Calls For a Violent Uprising Against the American System."

But you wouldn't know it from the New York Times, which has a piece this morning in the left's classic genre of disinformation and propaganda, "Spotlight From Glenn Beck Brings a CUNY Professor Threats":

On his daily radio and television shows, Glenn Beck has elevated once-obscure conservative thinkers onto best-seller lists. Recently, he has elevated a 78-year-old liberal academic to celebrity of a different sort, in a way that some say is endangering her life.

Frances Fox Piven, a City University of New York professor, has been a primary character in Mr. Beck’s warnings about a progressive take-down of America. Ms. Piven, Mr. Beck says, is responsible for a plan to “intentionally collapse our economic system.”

Her name has become a kind of shorthand for “enemy” on Mr. Beck’s Fox News Channel program, which is watched by more than 2 million people, and on one of his Web sites, The Blaze. This week, Mr. Beck suggested on television that she was an enemy of the Constitution.

Never mind that Ms. Piven’s radical plan to help poor people was published 45 years ago, when Mr. Beck was a toddler. Anonymous visitors to his Web site have called for her death, and some, she said, have contacted her directly via e-mail.

In response, a liberal nonprofit group, the Center for Constitutional Rights, wrote to the chairman of Fox News, Roger Ailes, on Thursday to ask him to put a stop to Mr. Beck’s “false accusations” about Ms. Piven.

“Mr. Beck is putting Professor Piven in actual physical danger of a violent response,” the group wrote.

Notice that? The classic propaganda whitewash. The country's unofficial newspaper of record is mounting a disinformation campaign against Glenn Beck. The MFM has been widely rebuked for its libelous reporting on the Arizona shooting, but there's clearly a demand for stories of this sort, since the political payoff has been considerable. While the Times is at pains to indicate that Piven wrote an article "45 years ago" calling for mass uprising, the piece doesn't report that Piven called for revolt once again, just two weeks ago, in the same journal, The Nation, "Mobilizing the Jobless":

Protests among the unemployed will inevitably be local, just because that's where people are and where they construct solidarities. But local and state governments are strapped for funds and are laying off workers. The initiatives that would be responsive to the needs of the unemployed will require federal action. Local protests have to accumulate and spread -- and become more disruptive -- to create serious pressures on national politicians. An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union, or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees.

A loose and spontaneous movement of this sort could emerge. It is made more likely because unemployment rates are especially high among younger workers. Protests by the unemployed led by young workers and by students, who face a future of joblessness, just might become large enough and disruptive enough to have an impact in Washington. There is no science that predicts eruption of protest movements. Who expected the angry street mobs in Athens or the protests by British students? Who indeed predicted the strike movement that began in the United States in 1934, or the civil rights demonstrations that spread across the South in the early 1960s? We should hope for another American social movement from the bottom -- and then join it.

These aren't the obscure rants of some raving idiot out in the progressive netroots fever swamps. Piven is establishment. But taking the Times' propaganda one step further is useful idiot Steve Benen:

If you've never heard of Frances Fox Piven, don't feel bad. Up until a couple of weeks ago, I hadn't either. Apparently she wrote some radical stuff about poor people and political activism in 1966, and the voices in Beck's head tell him this is important and relevant in 2011, never mind the fact that the vast majority of liberals haven't read her work and have no idea who she is.

That's a lie. Anyone who reads The Nation knows exactly who she is.

Leftists are liars.

They're liars. They're propagandists. And they're evildoers.

Exit videos from London and Toronto, featuring the kind of spontaneous unrest that Francis Fox Piven wants to bring to America:

See also Left Wing Rebel (via Memeorandum).

April Glaspie Memo Leaked

By Wikileaks, and leftist historian Juan Cole was all over it: "Glaspie Memo Vindicates Her, Shows Saddam’s Thinking."

She wasn't "vindicated," actually.

And Cole takes heat in the comments, and this one's representative:

I generally enjoy your blog posts, and read your blog regularly, however every once in a while you’ll write something that I just can’t understand coming from you. Usually it’s something supportive about Obama (which really from your position on middle eastern affairs makes absolutely no sense whatsoever – think Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel/Palestine, etc…).

Now, though, you write this. As another has said, this information has been out in the open for years. You write an article claiming that this old information purportedly “exonerates [Glaspie] from the charges by her political enemies in the US Congress that she inadvertently gave Saddam a green light to invade Kuwait.”

Yet the case against Glaspie has NEVER been that she gave an EXPLICIT “green light” to Saddam to invade Kuwait, but rather that her indifference on the matter was interpreted by Saddam as “good enough”. Nobody has accused Glaspie of giving Saddam “permission” to invade Kuwait. This entire article, based on years old information, is completely misguided.

I’m no defender of Saddam, but I am a defender of accurate and factual reporting on historical events. Your assertion that Saddam was “paranoid and desperate” and your implication that Iraq WASN’T in financial crisis is absurd. It is a fact that at the conclusion of the war Iraq had around $130 billion in international debt excluding interest. To portray that as simply an assertion of Saddam’s is dishonest.

I’m so sick of people painting this as such a black-and-white issue, and you should know better, Juan. The disputes between Iraq and Kuwait were not solely the fault of Iraq, even less so the fault of Saddam’s “paranoia”.

At the end of the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq WAS in serious financial trouble. Kuwait WAS exploiting the situation by over-producing oil in order to hold down Iraq’s economy. There WAS a legitimate border dispute between Iraq and Kuwait regarding slant drilling to be investigated. These disputes between the two states were exploited by the Ba’ath administration as a pretext for invasion, probably due to the economic pressure it was under (NOT “Saddam’s paranoia”). This was done following consultation with Glaspie, who never offered a concrete position on the matter. BOTH states are responsible for exploiting the situation to their benefit, which culminated in the invasion of Kuwait.

Kuwait isn’t simply the helpless victim as it was portrayed when the US exploited the situation in the exact same way, leading to the Gulf War. Its actions towards Iraq contributed to the lead up to the invasion.

A responsible historian would portray this event in its totality, including the actions of both sides which led up to the invasion. A responsible historian would identify where both legitimate grievences lie and where states are exploiting the situation to further their own interests. A responsible historian wouldn’t paint this in such a storybook manner, as you have here, with Saddam being the evil, “paranoid” mustache-twirling villain and Kuwait the helpless damsel in distress.

I would obviously be interested in hearing your response, or your justification for either this article or for your portrayal of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in general. I’m not trying to attack you but it’s just really disappointing when someone I hold in such high regard writes something as inaccurate and low quality as this. As I said before, I just can’t understand it.

Christian Caryl, Contributing Editor at Foreign Policy and Newsweek, Slams Julian Assange and WikiLeaks

And Caryl's currently a Senior Fellow at MIT's Center for International Studies (CIS). And he's got a refreshing take on the WikiLeaks phenomenon, at New York Review, "Why WikiLeaks Changes Everything":

Among the cables released so far are revelations that have prompted headlines around the world, but there are also dispatches on Bavarian election results and Argentine maritime law. If the aim is to strike a blow against American imperial designs—as Assange has suggested in some of his statements—I don’t see how these particular cables support it. Assange has claimed to Time magazine that he wants to “make the world more civil” by making secretive organizations like the US State Department and Department of Defense accountable for their actions; he also told Time that, as an alternative, he wants to force them “to lock down internally and to balkanize,” protecting themselves by becoming more opaque and thereby more “closed, conspiratorial and inefficient.” This is, to say the least, a patently contradictory agenda; I’m not sure how we’re supposed to make sense of it. In practical terms it seems to boil down to a policy of disclosure for disclosure’s sake. This is what the technology allows, and Assange has merely followed its lead. I don’t see coherently articulated morality, or immorality, at work here at all; what I see is an amoral, technocratic void.

As Alan Cowell has written in The New York Times, the careers of some foreign officials—and not necessarily high-level ones—have already been destroyed or threatened by these revelations.

In at least one case the person’s name had been redacted, but his identity was clear enough from the context. One is justified in asking: Will deaths occur as these and other statements are published? We do not know, and we may not hear about them if they do. But damage of various kinds is sure to result. (For his part, Assange seems remarkably unable to discuss these very real dangers; in the Time interview he claims that “this sort of nonsense about lives being put into jeopardy” is simply an excuse.) Can WikiLeaks at least tell us why this was necessary?

In the old days, journalists would have done what WikiLeaks’s print media partners, like The Guardian and Der Spiegel, are attempting to do now: make judgments about which documents to release and whether or not to redact the names mentioned in them based on the larger public interest and the risk of inflicting harm on innocent bystanders. Yet one cannot escape the feeling that the entire exercise is rendered tragicomically moot by the mountain of raw material looming, soon to be equally accessible, in the background. Khatchadourian contends that WikiLeaks is evolving into something more like a conventional journalistic organization, one that will make value judgments about what it’s doing rather than simply dumping documents into cyberspace willy-nilly. But the sheer scale of what the group does suggests that this is something of a fool’s errand. Assange says the organization has been releasing the cables at the rate of about eighty a day. (By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, that means that we have three thousand days of revelations to go as this article goes to press.)

The comparison some people have been making between the WikiLeaks document dumps and the Pentagon Papers affair back in the 1970s is illuminating precisely because it shows how little the two stories have in common. As pointed out by Max Frankel, an ex–New York Times editor who was one of those overseeing publication of the papers, the leaker in that case, Daniel Ellsberg,

was not breaching secrecy for its own sake, unlike the WikiLeakers of today; he was looking to defeat a specific government policy. Moreover, he was acutely conscious of the risks of disclosure and did not distribute documents betraying live diplomatic efforts to negotiate an end to the fighting. And it took him years to find a credible medium of distribution, which is now available at the push of a button.

I’m fully aware that Daniel Ellsberg has lent his support to Julian Assange. That’s his right. But I think he might be overlooking a few vital points.

One of the most obvious is that WikiLeaks is posting these raw documents on the Web, the most permissive information medium we have yet to invent. As a result we are now experiencing yet another jump from the ploddingly analog to the explosively digital. Just as the concept of “privacy” fades into obscurity when sixteen-year-olds can present their innermost thoughts to an audience of billions, so, too, the Internet distribution of official secrets changes the rules of the game. Once all the documents are online they will be subjected not only to the often clumsy ministrations of journalists and historians but also to the far more efficient data-mining programs and pattern- analysis software of foreign governments and private companies (the extent of which, in the case of China’s handling of Google, the cables themselves make clear). The implications for the conduct of government policy (not to mention individual lives) are monumental. I wish I could predict what they might be, but I can’t. I’m not sure anyone can.

There's more at the link.

I noted Caryl's credentials at the title above because he seems so unusual --- and incredibly lucid. Continuing the essay he unfolds the logic of the argument, which is to say that the enormity of the latest WikiLeaks data dump is greater than any one individual or institution to manage. And the consequences --- collateral damage for the information leakers, who are less interested in changing policies than they are in bringing down governments --- are the untold and potentially catastrophic risks to the lives and careers of honest people carrying out their jobs in government, military institutions, humanitarian organizations, and so forth. These are questions ultimately of tremendous power, and Caryl in fact indicates his support for much of what WikiLeaks is supposedly all about --- greater transparency and accountability of governments. But in the end, Julian Assange comes out looking both quite poor and insignificant in this account. And Caryl perhaps might have continued a bit more by delving into the motivations of Assange, and especially his more enthusiastic adherents on the anarcho- and neo-communist left. If there was ever an equalizing force for anti-establishment actors to take down the state sources of world hegemonic power, WikiLeaks is it. Its utility lies not so much in exposure of government duplicity, corruption, or realpolitik, but in radicalizing the radicals, and enabling their growing revolutionary program. And recall there's an almost perfect ideological correlation betwen those who favor and those who oppose the WikiLeaks project. Even purportedly moderate leftists are gung ho on this transformationalist agenda, while either naive or in conscious denial to the nihilist destruction that's essential to the anarcho- and neo-communist program. Caryl does yoeman's work in getting the alternative meme out in leftist outlets like New York Review. It's an interesting development that will hopefully gain traction.

I'll have more later, in any case ...

New Video of Attack on Royal Couple

Previously: "Students Attack Royal Couple in Violent London Protests."

RELATED: At Instapundit, "Anarchy is Back."

Don't Text and Drive

At Mashable, "AT&T Documentary Takes on Texting-While-Driving."

I don't text and drive. I hate that others do. Should the state prohibit it? Of course, but check with the anarcho-commies like JBW for the "nanny state" whining (and the stoned Reason-oids as well, unfortunately).

Anarchist Bomb Blasts at Swiss and Chilean Embassies in Rome

At Telegraph UK, "'Anarchists' launch bomb attacks on two Rome embassies." (At Memeorandum.)

The Rome prosecutor's office has opened a terrorism inquiry. It's thought that the blasts have roots in the "eco-terrorism movement." Also at NYT, "Parcel Bomb Attacks Strike at Embassies in Rome." And Rome has been rocked by weeks-long student protests. The anarcho-terrorists have their roots in those organizations. I hope I'm wrong, as I always say, but the attacks are likely to escalate and deadly anarcho-violence is coming to America in due time (recall my reporting on the Occupy California movement, for example). Added: From Verum Serum, "Bombs at Embassies in Rome Similar to Attacks in Greece Last Month."

Greek Protests Turn Violent

More anarcho-asshats. And anarcho-communist asshats.

At NYT, "Anti-Austerity Protest in Greece Turns Violent":

ATHENS — Thousands of Greeks took to the streets of the capital on Wednesday for a protest against a fresh wave of austerity measures which was marred by violence as a general strike brought international travel and public services to a standstill.

The walkout — Greece’s seventh general strike this year — grounded flights, kept ferries in ports, halted train services and shut down government offices and schools while leaving hospitals to operate on emergency staffing and causing a news blackout as journalists joined the action. Public transport was operating for most of the day to enable Athenians to attend demonstrations in the city center.

Around 20,000 people answered the call of unions representing civil servants, private sector workers and the Communist Party for three separate demonstrations. The rallies were mostly peaceful until the early afternoon, when self-styled anarchists broke off from the crowd and attacked the police with firebombs and chunks of stone torn up from sidewalks.

Protesters Trash Italy After Berlusconi Survives Confidence Vote

Anarcho-asshats everywhere.

See Business Week,"Protests erupt as Italian PM Berlusconi wins vote," and London's Daily Mail, "Riot breaks out on streets of Rome as scandal-hit Silvio Berlusconi survives as Italian premier by just THREE votes." Additional video at NYT, "Video of Unrest on Rome’s Streets After Berlusconi Wins Vote."

Students Attack Royal Couple in Violent London Protests

And just minutes before, while in route to the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium, Prince Charles joked, "Hopefully we’ll be able to brave our way through, get there and be all right."

Added: From Glenn Reynolds, "ANARCHY IN THE U.K." And at WSJ, "Violent Protests Follow U.K. Fee Vote."

Three Deaths Shifted Course of Greek Crisis

The story's at WSJ, and it's sad. This is what you get with the left, and it's undereported:

Above the seething streets of this ancient city, Angeliki Papathanasopoulou—four months pregnant and at work in a downtown bank—tried to soothe her fearful mother on the other end of the phone.

It was noontime on May 5, and the tension was palpable as angry crowds gathered in Athens's main squares, readying to protest deep spending cuts needed to earn an international bailout.

"Don't worry," Ms. Papathanasopoulou told her mother on that May day. "I'm on an upper floor." Besides, the 32-year-old was leaving work early at 3 p.m., for a doctor's appointment to learn whether the child she carried was a girl or a boy.

She never found out. Shortly after 2 o'clock, as the throngs marched past her building on Stadiou Street, hooded men shattered the window, poured gasoline on the floor and hurled in a Molotov cocktail. Toxic smoke filled the three-story bank, sending 24 people who worked there climbing out of windows or clambering onto roofs of adjacent buildings.

Ms. Papathanasopoulou and two colleagues, people who had watched her marry her husband nine months before, succumbed to the thick black fumes before they could make it out.

"She and I did everything together. We were best friends," says her husband, Christos Karapanagiotis. "No one could imagine this."

For decades, Greece had tolerated unruly, sometimes violent protests against the state. Athens's radical anarchist fringe, of which police believe the arsonists were members, even enjoyed moral legitimacy in the eyes of many Greeks. The attitude reflected society's deep mistrust of its rulers and, more recently, anger at a debt crisis that nearly tipped the country into bankruptcy.

May 5 changed all that.

The deaths of three innocent employees shocked Greece, shifting the national mood and the course of this year's crisis. Instead of rising social unrest as many had feared, Greece has seen only fragmented opposition to the euro zone's most drastic austerity measures. An expected backlash against the ruling Socialist government failed to materialize in recent local elections. And last week, when the government announced fresh budget cuts, the streets were mostly quiet.

Some Greeks say it took a tragedy to burst the romantic idea of rebellion rooted in their history of resistance to the state, forcing a sobered society to face the need for radical economic overhaul. It wasn't lost on Greek commentators that the three who died went to work that day instead of protesting.

It's completely oxymoronic to pair anarchic and romanticism, at least nowadays. But until more folks wake up and challenge the anarcho-socialist-enabling media we'll be seeing more unnecessary deaths like these.

Resist these people. They are bad here, bad there, and bad for the world.

RELATED: "Not Just ‘Yes,’ But ‘Hell, Yes!’"

Communization

I'm intrigued by the hard-left militancy at the Oakland Oscar Grant riots. Recall that the "Occupy California" forces were among the rioters and looters on the ground. They celebrated the looting as "liberating the shoes" from the capitalist immiseraters. I just found one of the movement's mobilization pamphlets from earlier this year, "After the Fall: Communiqués from Occupied California." These folks are fairly sophisticated in the ideological outlook. The introductory essay discusses the state's crisis of educational funding and advocates direct action toward revolutionary "communization." Looking at Wikipedia, I see this description:

Communization is the process of the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production, which, in societies dominated by the capitalist mode of production, are "owned" by individual capitalists, states, or other collective bodies. In some versions of communist theory, communization is understood as the transfer of ownership from private capitalist hands to the collective hands of producers, whether in the form of co-operative enterprises or communes, or through the mediation of a state or federation of workers' councils on a local, national, or global scale. In these accounts, communization means that the multitude or humanity as a whole, directly or indirectly, takes over the tasks of planning the production of goods for use (not for exchange) and according to socially-determined needs. People would then have free access to those goods rather than exchanging labor for money and then exchanging labor for goods as in less advanced phases of socialism.