<nettime> Action news from Amsterdam & Prague

[Biotic Baking Brigade <bbb@asis.com>]

Dear correspondents,

Please find below some reports of recent events here in Europe. Even
though Prague is of greater importance, I am listing events from
Amsterdam first because this is a revolutionary pastry news list
before anything else. Another report on domestic affairs will follow
shortly.

>From the industrial sprawl of Holland,
Agent Apple for the BBB
----------------------------------------

Belgian neo-fascist leader well fed.....

Filip Dewinter is the leader of the Belgian (Flemish) extreme
right party 'Flemish Block' (Vlaams Blok). The party that
campaigns against 'foreigners' with a boxing glove as main
symbol, got to be one of the biggest flemish parties in last
elections, and the biggest in Antwerp, threatening to become
even bigger at next weeks elections.

He was invited to perform in the live tv-show 'Buitenhof Tv'
in neighbouring Netherlands om sunday September 24. But his
act was wrong from the first start. While parking his chique
Mercedes in Amsterdam, antifascist activist already found him.
His car was trashed, and without windows Dewinter, his
bodyguard and slightly wounded driver had to flee into a
police station. After the police brought him into the tv-
studios and the broadcasting had started, activists in the
audiance stormed the podium, grabbed the microfone and covered
DeWinter with chocolate pudding. The color brown was not a
coincidence.
After cleaning the fascist up, they tried to start the talk
again, but had to postpone because the noise of fireworks
outside on the street was too loud. To be able to get the
fascist out, police cleared the street chasing antifa's away,
wounding two of them.

On the tv-news pictures of the trashed car were shown. Clearly
visible on the back seat was the book Dewinter was reading
before he met trouble: "Rudolf Hess, My Father".

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October 3, 2000

World Bank -president James Wolfensohn came to Amsterdam to
open a conference on "Poverty-reduction and the role of private
capital". Protesters spoiled the party effectively.

At 08.00 in the morning the conference centre (university building in
the centre of Amsterdam) was sealed of by gates, more than a
hundred riot-cops, a watercannon and a bulldozer, with more cops
around the corner and plain-cloth snatch-squad teams all over. In
the night some unknown activists had already forced two windows
to throw in butric acid, put apparently it didn't stink enough to
disrupt the conference.
  About 150 protesters (newspaper NRC even wrote 300) tried to
block the entrance, but were pushed away by police. When
limousines with hot shots arrived to enter via the back, people tried
to run the police-lines, and three persons were arrested. A woman
charged of throwing a bike in front of one of the limo's was still
being held after a day. Police chased away the rest, a smokebomb
was lobbed, chanting could be heared inside of the conference-
building. Wolfensohn opened the conference by apologising for the
protests outside, and someone in the audience stood up to shout
at hime that he didn't need to apologise as the activists where
there to tell him something.

At noon some 100 activists entered the office of Check Airlines
(boasting on it's website to be official partner of the WB/IMF-
meeting in Prague). The activists wanted the airline company to
send out the demands; release of all WB/IMF prisoners in Prague,
and indemnity-payments for all those wounded and tortured in jail.
After the personel refused to fax the demands (they just kept on
doing their ususal work!), the activists took over the fax-machine
and did it themselves. But then riot-cops entered the building (after
having been hit by paint-bombs from inside), chased people outside
away and took everybody prison, including a mailman who had
nothing to do with the action but refused to go away. More than 40
arrested, all released after a few hours.

Then there was a lull of a few hours, and part of the riot-cops (and
all the snatch-squads) where sent away by their chiefs as they
thought it was all over now. But they still had to have dinner at the
Rijksmuseum (where all the big paintings hang). Shortly before
they had to arrive (by canal-boat!) a hundred or so activists popped
up, much to the surprise of the police. Small groups of activists
blocked entrances, hung banners all over, occupied the landing
stage for the boats, etc. Enter the riot-cops again, who start
forming lines on the road and then start chasing people away. But
the activists don't run easily; they form chains and refuse to run
even when hit by the long battons, which the cops do all the time.
Some of the police got hit by our secret weapon; plates with
whipped cream (later, after they used a lot of violence, bricks and
sticks were thrown). And the rows of activists kept comming back
all the time. Meanwhile the honoured guests arrived, walking
through rows of police, and booood at from all sides. Former prime-
minister Ruud Lubbers got whipped cream sprayed all over.
Later in the evening smallscale  fighting broke out between riot-
cops and activists throwing stones and building a barricade - soon
to be set afire - across the Stadhouderskade. As far as we know,
no arrests have been made.

They didn't trust to bring in Wolfenohn and the other biggest hot
shots by boat (as was originally the plan); they stopped their boat
halfway to put them in cars and drive in secretly through some
back entrance. As if they where the biggest crooks. So they where
lucky, because a special anarchist paintbomb unit had been
waiting for them on a distant bridge, and had let the first two boats
through, waiting for the third to appear....

On journalist heared the pr-folks of the World Bank complain that
the media didn't show any interest for the official program or the
WB, they where only interested in the activists.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Friday, September 29, 2000

"Kafka's Ghost Lives in Prague"
By Agent Creme de la Creme

I'm writing this piece three days after the "S26" Global Day of Action
seriously shook up Prague and the World Bank/IMF meetings.

There's so much to say, but I'll try and keep this relatively brief and
focused. In summary, yet another major financial meeting was seriously
disrupted by an amazing array of people from around the world. The usual
wave of problems, conflicts, and divisions have also arisen.

I arrived several days before S26 to find preparations lacking in most
respects, and many people stressed out about whether or not the action was
going to come off. For example, the communications group had hardly begun
to consider how thousands of people could exchange information quickly and
accurately (a problem which would later plague us). Fortunately, the NGO
sponsoring the official protest, INPEG, had managed to secure an enormous
warehouse space in a fairly central location through the help of a former
Czech dissident. Legal, media, communications, action, and nonviolence
meetings involved several hundred people total, far short of the thousands
expected and needed.

My experience in Prague has felt like a Kafka novel. From the moment I
arrived till my hopeful departure in the near future, I am always aware of
the presence of the State. Every neighborhood has uniformed police
performing random passport checks on pedestrians, and riding the Metro is
an experience straight out of Camus' The Stranger. While I have only been
passport checked once (they wrote down my details and sent me on my way),
my travelpartner has been checked five times. Not having one's passport on
hand is grounds for deportation, as the Czech State is looking for any
technicality to get rid of outside agitators. Wherever you go, you are
being watched in a much more obvious way than in the U.S.

I have to confess that my romantic illusions of Czech being a bohemian
stronghold of liberty have vanished. Much has been made of "the bloodless
Velvet Revolution" of 1989, where the dissidents managed to break free of
the Communist grip. . . and proceeded to embrace free market capitalism.
The secret police apparatus stayed in place, the manipulation through
government force and propaganda continued, the names merely changed. A
jailed dissident and famous playwright, Vaclav Havel, became President of
the new regime. As Kafka wrote, the slime of the old regime coats the new
one. Ironically yet perfectly, the World Bank/IMF meetings were held at the
former Soviet Palace of Culture. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!

In the months before S26, the Czech government carried out an incredible
campaign of slander and fear-mongering against the upcoming demonstrations,
calling the protesters "killers" and "barbarians." Schools were shutdown
for days and schoolchildren sent out of Prague. The State recommended that
civilians lock up their homes and flee the city--and 1/5 of the population
did! Havel, instead of confronting the injustice perpetrated by the World
Bank and IMF, welcomed these oppressors to his country and wined and dined
them at lavish dinners while condemning the protests. He tried to play the
role of a mediator between these repressive institutions and those trying
to shut them down, but in the end revealed the extent to which one has to
sell out in order to gain and remain in power.

So Prague was not a very fun place for anti-globalization activists to
visit during the last week. People's fear of us from the government
propaganda campaign showed clearly in their eyes. I guess I'm disappointed
that people fell for the hype, but then again its the same in most every
country, most of all in my own land of birth.

As the days progressed toward the big day, things picked up steam bigtime.
Loads of people began arriving on the weekend and momentum was clearly in
the air. After a reconnaissance of the area around the conference center on
Sunday and a meeting of the street action groups on Monday morning, I began
to feel optimistic that we could actually blockade the delegates in. That
reminded me of Seattle, where I didn't think we would succeed until we were
well under way in doing so. The growing numbers of people also helped to
lessen the rampant and justified paranoia, since the cops and the fascists
now had many more of us to contend with than before. And yes, there have
been many fascist attacks during the last week. Over 30% of the police
voted for the far-right fascist party in the last election, so it's really
no surprise that they let neo-nazi scum roam the streets (and in the jails)
beating up people with impunity.

Over the course of several international meetings, INPEG planned out a
meeting place and march route. The idea was for a "Unity March" of all the
groups to gather at one place, and then after a short march together break
into three groups (blue, yellow, and pink...which for our purposes we will
call red) who would then surround and lay siege to the center from
different directions. Predictably, the plan was roundly criticized for
various reasons (as it would have been regardless of its content, we're
such a lovely movement), the one most obvious being that it focused way to
much on the North side of the center and not enough on the South side. In
the future, more than one meeting point should be an essential component of
any plan because it's very effective in splitting the cops up on those rare
occasions when we have numbers on our side. Also, the multi-color strategy
worked well for strategical/logistical reasons and has potential to lessen
the dogma wars in the following way: if it's clear that one color will be
composed by mostly militant types, then pacifist types can choose to pick a
different color march and vice versa. More on the dogma wars soon.

The days before S26 were really exciting for me. So many brilliant memories
to carry away from here: 1,000 radicals from different cultures chanting
"No Pasaran!", the echoes ricocheting off the walls of a Soviet-style
industrial space; translations into different tongues during the various
meetings; the sense of a growing, vibrant international movement and
solidarity with millions of people around the world against a more-or-less
common enemy (more on that later as well!); dressing like a tourist and
discretely passing through thongs of police during scout missions; and of
course, drinking absinthe in the pubs till the wee hours talking love and
revolution.

On the morning of S26 I met up with the blue route, a group composed mostly
of anarchists with large contingents from Spain, Greece, Poland, Czech, and
several dozen Norte Americanos. As we waited in the Namesti Miru (peace
square) a pink & silver group came by. These were mostly Brits who wanted
to do an autonomous action with their samba band and try and get round to
the critical south end quickly. Also, they quite sensibly didn't want to
get mixed in with an obnoxious bunch of authoritarian Socialists who had
2,500 of their people in the red march.

The following is an account of the blue route from a friend who was part of
the Infernal Noise Brigade, the marching band from Seattle. After that will
follow a report from another friend's experiences in the Czech prison
system, and that will close this report. Please feel free to write back
with questions/comments.

"S26 started with about 5000 gathering in Namesti Miru,
a square at the center of town, north of the Congress
Center, with an enormous cathedral at the center.
there was a mobile sound system, and many people in
costumes, some banners hung from the trees, a giant
blue globe that said "Balls to the IMF," a pink tank
with a very sexy face painted on her front (reference
to an action in 1989 when a monument made from a
Soviet tank was painted pink--i think without the
face...), a few puppets and many flags. The group was
divided into 4 color coded groups by distributing
leaflets, colored whistles, and using flags. A 5th
group approached autonomously from the south of the
Center. We all processed together for several blocks
and then my group, the blue (made up of Czech, Slovak,
Polish and Greek anarchists and the band I'm in, the
Infernal Noise Brigade, which was joined by an English
and an Italian) peeled off from the main march. We
headed south via the western route.

A bit of geography: the Congress Center was built by
the Communists and designed to withstand seige and
nuclear disaster, so it is on the edge of a valley,
with an unapproachable drop-off, and there is one
primary access road connecting it to the center of
town, which is like a state highway, connecting Prague
to the 2 other major cities in the country. There is
an incredibly high bridge spanning the valley which
leads directly to the Congress center. So to approach
the CC from Nam. Miru one must either take the bridge
(which the cops had been rehearsing on for a week,
maneuvering their tanks/armored personnel carriers
around on it at 2am) or go looping around on either
side on fairly narrow and winding cobblestoned
streets. To the west is the Vltava river, so the blue
route went right along the river.

The INB [Infernal Noise Brigade] were somewhere in the middle of the blue
march--we didn't want to lead it for many reasons (not
wanting to contribute to the imperialistic activism
many brits and americans were doing, not wanting to
hold up the march if there was a need to move
extremely quickly, etc). We arrived at one of the
access points to the CC [Congress Center],
and found the police on a hill above us.
The front lines immediately began
throwing bottles and cobblestones at the police, who
responded by attacking with a water cannon. We were
far enough back and the angle was wrong for the cannon
so we weren't hit at all for quite a while; we got our
gas masks ready and then played. Several molotovs
were thrown as well. The police began firing massive
amounts of concussion grenades, which explode quite
loudly and burn if you're too close to them. This
battle went on for what seemed like a long time before
they began firing tear gas. One of the canisters
which was thrown into a wooded area caught fire (they
are highly flammable...) and some of the blue group
put it out.

The INB pulled off to a side street, shielded by a
tree from the water cannon, where we could continue to
play music and be out of the way. I've never seen
anything like it. After an hour or 2, we decided to
pull out, as the intersection was unlikely to be taken
from the police, with their superior weapons and their
extremely superior position above...we wanted to be
somewhere more effective.

The communication system was quite difficult, with
mobile phones being the only real way of
communicating--fortunately the mobile system did not
crash, which apparently it often does in European
actions. The result was that enormous numbers of
people were gathering often-conflicting bits of
information and giving it to us (the INB tactical
group which followed the lead of and assisted the
Czech tactical group for the blue march). Frequently
we would painstakingly reach a decision and then
before implementing it we'd get new info which felt
more crucial and we'd end up altering our plan.

We went to another location, leaving much of the blue
group, and joined the pink and silver group (UK Earth
First with an enormous samba band which they put
together and trained over the week before the action).
Shortly after we arrived they pulled out, and so we
went up and played in between the line of police and
the line of seated protesters. The intersection
itself wasn't seeming too strategic, other than that
it was tying up a few water tanks and many riot cops,
but it was a good time, there were many Czechs there
who were pleased, and the reaction of the cops and the
neighbors looking down from their windows was well
worth the ineffectiveness of it strategically. the
cops were alternating between fear and smiles; they
definitely didn't know what to think of us, and the
neighbors were taking photos and smiling and waving.

We stopped playing and then snatch squads arrived, so
some of us backed off and worked on a new plan with
some of the blue group which had just arrived. It
took ages to create, but finally we went around to a
place where we heard delegates were leaving (again,
with INB somewhere near the middle of the march) and
we ended up coming extremely close to the congress
center, to a very poorly defended police line--cops in
shirt sleeves with shields and little else. The front
of the march broke through the line and the whole
group rushed through, coming so close to the building
that seemed so impenetrable, we could see into the
windows, I never dreamed we'd get so close. Then from
around the corner charged what felt like a hundred
riot cops, unloading a frightening amount of
concussion grenades, chasing us with the water cannon.
We ran and they continued chasing. It was wild--I
have been in other crowd situations where people are
running and panicking and it's been really scary, but
this felt really together, we ran until someone called
to stop and we would stop briefly, see that our
respective groups were together, and then run again.
Eventually a large group of us (INB and some of the
polish and czech scouts/tactical folks) dashed down a
hill where we doubted the police woiuld follow,
certainly not with water cannon. Running with all of
our drums and everything was so difficult, but happily
for me I'd had a massive running training session to
catch the last train from the action camp last week
where we ran about a km of a 2km road. Good skill,
running.

We then went around to the southern part of the march
and found an enormous massing of cops with 8 trucks
(water tanks and APCs) at one intersection and 3
trucks just around the corner. There was a sit down
blockade of the road, and it was the first place we'd
heard of/been to all day that had seen no fighting at
all. They asked the band to stop playing as they
feared we would get people riled up and throwing
things, so we went and took a long-needed break and
gathered more information.

We decided to join with the pink and silver group who
were a block or two away. There had been recent
fighting there and loads of people who were still a
bit scattered. Our tactical group joined with theirs
and we all went together (about a thousand of us?)
towards the opera house, where delegates were to go
after the meetings. It was fantastic, we took the
entire street, not a cop in sight, and we walked for
about an hour, playing the whole time. One of our
people lit up a fire staff and 2 fire breathers came
over and spit plumes into the air. One of our songs
has pretty consistent silent breaks in it and the
crowd was shouting into the silence, a thousand voices
raised as one, it was extraordinary.

We got word that about 1000 people had surrounded the
opera house and that the event had been cancelled, so
many people were planning to head up north to a palace
where a banquet for 6000 delegates was to take place.


We reached the edge of Vaclavske nam., a site of
massive historical significance where the 1968
rebellion kicked off, where Jan Palach self-immolated
in protest of the Soviet occupation, and where some of
the most significant moments of the 1989 revolution
took place. It is now a glittering capitalist
shopping center full of multinational businesses and
banks, and one place that INPEG has been carefully
planning around, to prevent demonstrations from coming
too close to it as the potential for massive property
damage is so high. Some of the group ahead of us went
on into the square, but we turned away and began
heading up the road towards the opera house, and the
banquet beyond. The rest of the march followed, and
some of those ahead came back nd joined us.

The INB pulled off to the side of the road shortly
after, I was exhausted and couldn't go further, and I
knew how far away the banquet was and knew that I
couldn't march and play that far. We were all hungry,
and so took a break. From there we learned that the
Mcdonalds at VAclavske nam had been trashed and we
heard rounds and rounds of concussion grenades
(sounding eerily like gunfire) and saw clouds of tear
gas rising. We decided not to go to the banquet and
divided in 2 groups, one going home and the other
going to eat and meet up with some of the UK EF!ers to
talk about the next day.

On the way to eat we slipped over to VAclavske nam and
climbed up to the front of the museum at one end of
the very long square, perfect vantage point for the
events below. Saw about a thousand protesters
standing up to a double line of riot cops, possibly
100 of them?? WEnt to leave and were trapped for a
few minutes, cops refusing to let us leave when we
asked. They pulled out shortly after and we slipped
off, 2 people opting to stay behind.

Went to get food split again, with three of us going
off to a different place from the other three. My
group met with others and after eating, decided to
take taxis home as we'd heard that the police were
sweeping the streets and arresting anyone vaguely
suspicious looking. The other group was waiting for a
tram home and a police van pulled up and arrested 2 of
them, the third escaped and made it home to tell us
what had happened. We've heard nothing from them yet.


People in jails are being sexually harassed, tied up
and beaten, pepper sprayed, shipped off to border
police, deported. 422 arrested (these numbers are
difficult to confirm as no one is being allowed phone
calls so we rely on calls from outside reporting
missing people), 130 are internationals.

This morning an action was planned to blockade at the
hilton--5 arrests occurred there, there were about 50
activists there, the police attacked them with tear
gas and water cannons.

Another action was planned, which would leave from
nam. Miru, meeting there at 9. About 3-400 are still
there and have until just recently been blockaded in
the square by the police--they are now sitting there
and some are being allowed to leave.

The convergence center has been heavily harassed all
night last night and was in the process of being shut
down last I heard (several hours ago). It's thought
that the czech space coordinator (one of 3) was being
arrested, though this is still unconfirmed.

Our infocenter, a space in downtown posh prague, was
smashed up pretty badly by fascists last night.
Fascists have been attacking leftist/radicals pretty
consistently for weeks.

A spanish woman who was organizing was arrested and
severely injured, and taken to hospital. She escaped
from the hospital and has found medical care elsewhere
and is fine, but in hiding.

The city's medical services have been the most
impressive i've seen at any mass action--they have
been all over the city, i haven't heard at all of them
refusing to go into any area, they were even there at
the massive seige this morning at the blue group
blockade.

All in all, i've never seen anything like it, i've
learned an incredible amount. It's been great to
support decisions made by locals/easterners, though it
has been challenging being a band which is accustomed
to leading crowds. But it seems to be working. And
we're having a good time, though worried much about
our 2 missing folks."

----------------------

I'm am writing you at 6 :15 am in the morning of september 30, 2000, after
yet another hectic day/night, after 4 days with very little sleep, from home
in Belgium.  Kaylene is in Germany and will arrive here later this morning
by train.  That Prague S26 turned a bit ugly may not be news to you anymore.
   I have to say I did not see any of the street fights, riots, stone
throwing, fires, gas, bullets or tear gassing.  as I was arrested brutaly
S26 around 5pm and simply writing this sentence is difficult as it brings
tears to my eyes from the horribles memories of being beaten to pieces,
screamed at, thrown to the ground and kicked over and over, screamed at, and
dragged in a pain compliance arm hold to the jail bus while they beat the
sides of my knees with batons, and I could not even stand on my left leg
anymore.  Both sides were purple, and screaming from pain only brought more
brutality with rough pushes and more horrible screaming in complete
notdecodable Czech language.  I will write up a detailed account of what
happened, but I'll just stick to the basics here, or at least I'll try,
maybe I'll get on a roll.

Megan, Kaylene and I stayed in the peaceful area of the protest all day,
marched and took photos.  The police blockades looked impressive with tanks,
watercanons and tons of cops.  We heard about heavy fighting with molotiv
coctails and everything and stayed away from that ;  When we heard the
fighting was over we went to check it out, hoping to find some other
peacefulblockades further down perhaps.  We came upon a street Na Slupi
which looked like all hell had broken loose there just less than an hour
before, with stones everywhere, sidewalks broken up, a smashed car,
smoldering trash, a stench of lingering gas, and streets wet from the
watercanon.  It was calm as the fight had moved away out the area, I guess.
Some other folks were calmly walking around, as we did.  Police was around,
but seemed calm and in control of the situation as the danger was gone.  Or
so I thought.

I got a little closer to take photos of the debris with cops in the
background and within seconds -it went so fast I froze and didn't even think
of running away - all I could bring out was «I"m only taking a photo »-these
cops, about 5 or more grabed me and beat me down by hardly  hitting the side
right under the knee very hard, immobilizing me.  That's how it all started,
but it was only the beginning of what was so outrageous it seemed unreal.

To cut it short, (-police screaming czech obsenities (according to a Czech
onboard who said he could not believe what he was hearing) and pushing and
violently grabbing being part of the every fifteen minutes reality-) we were
bussed to the police station in 2 rounds, as our first bus didn't make it
because it got ambushed and the front windown thrown in and blockaded.  As
the sirens sounded, and the stones were destroying the exposed cop part of
the bus, the bus drove backwards and escaped (unfortunately, because for a
split second it looked like liberation was possible.) ; I cannot descibe the
intensity of this.  Seattle was a walk in the park.    We were transferred
to another bus.

Police station « booking » consisted of locking us up in a room 2 by 3
meters (that's about 6 by 9 feet) with twelve people.  Sometimes they'd
close the door and it was completely dark, other times they slammed it
creating a huge scary loud noise.  We stayed in there for at least 5 hours,
I think, only to be taken out one at a time for writing your name, getting
your head slammed down to the table, fingerprinted, photo taken, etc.  It
started to feel like routine procedures (pushing, kicking, screaming, .).
Not exactly a pleasant strip seach either when you get certain body parts
squeezed.  Then we could give our statement, where I tried to get as much
accounts of police brutality in, but much was left out and my words were
consistently watered down to make it appear that I might still have been at
the fight.  (for instance I said I was arrested at 5 or after ; they wrote «
between 4 :30 and 5 », and so on).  Not signing didn't feel like an option,
as they had forced (at that time the mere threat of more beating was very
intimidating) us to sign a promise to pay 1000 Ck (about30 USD) for a
infraction traffic violation of being in a zone declared off limits ; this
with the promise we would get out that night ;  Yeah right ..     Not so ;

We were bussed to the « foreign police » station, where our belongings got
inventorized, and we were cramped in a room the same size of 2 by 3 meters,
but this time with 24 people ( ! ! !). for the rest of the night until the
sun had been up for some time outside.  It seemed like the extremely rough
treatment was over, and they started to behave nicer (my request to pee was
okayed after 6 hours, huray) ;  We were told that we were going to a
detention center for processing : deportation if found guilty, release if
found innocent ; and if innocent we should be out as fast as the paperwork
moves, another day, maybe two.  Then they took us there, a prison-like
complex in the middle of the woods 100 kilometers from Prague.

Over 24 hours had passed until we received any water and food.

Anyways, I was in a spacious room (4 by 8 meters, plus a corner with
stinking toilet and sink) , with a view behind the bars of the woods, and a
fenced of guarded walking yard where illigal immigrants from asia and other
areas got their daily walk before deportation.  We were visited by a ladybug
(the window opened, and opened quite wide since previous inhabitants had
broken part of the framing), and saw two cats walk outside, the highlights
of that day. ;  I was taken to the hospital for checkup on my injured left
leg, but found okay.  The pain had subsided and the purple only remained in
a spot on my right leg (which was beaten had enough to have been bleeding a
little) ;  I need to say many people were roughed up far worse, and not
because they actualy participated in the cop stoning/firebombing, many were
arrested in similar situations, or as they tried to escape the fight, take a
photo or in the peaceful civil disobedience which got broken up very
violently as well.

Anyways, at the hospital the doctor, a very nice and sympathetic man who
translated what the police was telling him, seemed very disturbed, as the
nurse was standing by almost with tears in her eyes, as I and a Swedish
women who had injured her ankle badly and was in the ambulance with me, . as
we were told we were actually not in a detention center, but in a
concentration camp, and the earliest release would be in one month, IF we
behaved nicely, otherwise we'd be there till February (180 days being the
maximum to hold a foreigner) ;  We believed it at first as the tone and mood
was so convincing.  (The sadistic cop probably just gets a kick out of
seeing people being shocked)

I struggled my way out of one othe the metal handcufs, but was then told
that if I even tried to escape they'd kill me.

The next day the great news came that the ambassador from Spain had arrived
and all Spanish and Basque people would be released asap.  They were out
early early in the morning.  The word was that the beatings of them had been
televised in Spain, and Catalnonyan anarchists had threatened to « burn down
Barcelona » if the government would not get them out immediately ;  And as
there were Basques locked up as well, ETA had threatened to set off car
bombs all over the country if no action was taken immediately.  They were on
their way to Spain before the sun was up.  The rest followed later ;  I was
the only Belgian there, and the only one of 5 who had been abused ; the
consul of the Belgian Ambassy came to personally pick me up, and got me to
Prague, where I had 24 hours to leave the country.  The Czeck cops on the
street simply made me want to get the hell out of there asap, so I took the
metro/bus to the airport, no planes to Brussels, so I flew (or « fleed « if
you want) to Paris, and trained it to Brussels right after arrival in Paris,
to be picked up at 5 am by my sister.  Expensive ordeal, but. Home sweet
home ! ;  There were supposedly 114 arrestees at that center, but far more
have been arrested we were told.   Americans we there as well ; no clue as
to what happened to them ;  my guess they were bussed to germany as well,
but I"m not 100% certain.  Greetings from Europe, as the sun rises here on a
better day than yesterday.

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"And here I end, having put my Arm as far as my strength will
go to advance Righteousness: I have Writ, I have Acted, I have Pied, I have
Peace: and now I must wait to see the Spirit do its own work in the hearts
of others, and whether Amerika shall be the first Land, or some others,
wherin Truth shall sit down in triumph." --Agent Blackberry (1999), after
the Digger Gerrard Winstanley (1650)

The Biotic Baking Brigade.....coming soon to a bioregion near you.

bbb@asis.com                              http://www.asis.com/~bbb/

Friends of the BBB: c/o POB 40130, San Francisco, CA 94111, Amerika

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