A SINGULAR AND GENEROUS THINKER OF ANARCHISM, HIS WORK TRACED LIVING LINES OF REVOLT AND CREATION ~ David Berry ~ Daniel Colson, anarchist theorist and labour historian, died on 9 January in Lyon. He was 82. Colson was an active member of the anarchist movement in Lyon from the early 1970s, a member of the collective that ran the city’s anarchist bookshop ‘La Gryffe’ from its creation in 1978, and a member of the editorial collective that has produced the anarchist review Réfractions since 1997. A professor of sociology at the University of Saint-Etienne, he published extensively on labour history, revolutionary syndicalism, anarchism and, latterly, philosophy. Colson first moved to Lyon, France’s second biggest city, in 1966, when he went to university there to study sociology, after two years studying philosophy at a seminary near Clermont-Ferrand. At the university he discovered revolutionary politics, and soon became active in the student movement, which was dominated in the late 1960s by Maoists, Trotskyists and other assorted ‘gauchistes’ (‘leftists’—originally a pejorative term used of the student revolutionaries of 1968 by the French Communist Party, referencing Lenin’s “Left-Wing” Communism, An Infantile Disorder). Through his friendship with the libertarian communist Michel Marsella, Colson also learned about anarchism, the Socialism or Barbarism group around Cornelius Castoriadis, Situationism, Luxemburgism, etc. Like so many of his contemporaries he was involved in the campaign against US imperialism and in particular the Vietnam war, and was the prime mover in the ‘Vietnam Committee’ in Lyon’s old town. The group produced a newsletter, Informations rassemblées à Lyon (IRL), and after the repression and collapse of the 1968 movement, the Vietnam Committee transformed itself into the ‘Comité de quartier du Vieux-Lyon’ (Old Lyon Neighbourhood Committee). When asked years later what the objectives of this committee had been, Colson replied: “Nothing less than creating the embryo of an insurrection at a local level.” Influenced by the automobile workers occupying the local Berliet factories, the group decided to occupy the local ‘Maison des jeunes’ (youth centre), which had been where the committee had met over the previous months. “We were very ambitious. We were seriously hoping, when the right conditions arose, to take over the local police station—including its armoury.” That plan never materialised, although the group did occupy the town hall briefly. Colson was inspired by 1968 and especially by his experience of “spontaneity in action and in organisation”, including widespread co-operation between students and workers. He was also inspired by the discovery of three important books: the four-volume history of the First International written by the Swiss anarchist James Guillaume; the Russian anarchist Voline’s The Unknown Revolution (originally published in French in 1947, but republished in the aftermath of 1968 in a series edited by Daniel Guérin and the anarchist artist Jean-Jacques Lebel); and Anti-Œdipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972) by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Not that he understood Anti-Œdipus at all when he first tried to read it—he found it “pretty indigestible” in fact— and even ten years later when he tried again, it was only the first chapter that he really got to grips with: for Colson, that chapter successfully demolished the “enormous Marxist theoretical apparatus” that dominated the French left at that time, and made clear “not only the theoretical but also the emancipatory, ethical, philosophical and practical power of anarchism”. Colson was actively involved with a number of anarchist newspapers: the Cahiers de mai (the May Notebooks, which was launched in June 1968 and was the voice of the Action Committees which had sprung up across France), ICO (Informations et Correspondences Ouvrières, Workers’ News and Letters, focussed on autonomous workers’ struggles, outside of trade unions and parties), and IRL (Informations rassemblées à Lyon, literally News Gathered in Lyon, which published eye-witness accounts and documents on social struggles in the Lyon area not published by the mainstream press or the main left-wing papers). IRL, which Colson helped create, was interested in workers’ struggles, but also illegalism and other forms of resistance, and discussed a range of movements: anarchism, council communism, feminism, ecology, antimilitarism, sexual liberation, etc. In 1978, Colson was one of the original group of anarchist activists who set up the La Gryffe bookshop in Lyon, and the collective is still going strong. As well as selling the usual range of anticapitalist, antiauthoritarian material, La Gryffe also has a meeting room that regularly hosts debates, exhibitions, film showings, etc. When Colson published a book about the collective in 2020, he was careful not to give an idealised view of a successful anarchist collective at work, but to highlight also the long and sometimes difficult history that La Gryffe was built on, including some serious differences of opinion and conflicts within the collective, but conflicts which were worked through and resolved according to anarchist principles. Having returned to academia, Colson gained his doctorate in 1983 with a thesis—later published as a book—on anarcho-syndicalism and communism in the labour movement in Saint-Etienne, 1920-25. (If ever you’ve been confused about the difference between the terms ‘syndicalism’, ‘revolutionary syndicalism’ and ‘anarcho-syndicalism’, and how the once revolutionary syndicalist French labour movement came to be dominated by Communism, this is the book for you.) A second historical-sociological book followed in 1998 on the iron and steel industry—and its owners, the famous ‘iron barons’ or forgemasters—in Saint-Etienne from the mid-nineteenth century to the First World War. Colson explained once in a talk he gave on ‘Proudhon and the contemporary relevance of anarchism’—the main thrust of which was to argue for the rehabilitation of Proudhon, who remained unpopular in anarchist circles—that he had discovered Proudhon at about the same time in the 1970s that he discovered “the left-wing Nietzscheanism” of Foucault and especially Deleuze. Deleuze, he argued, “developed an emancipatory thought which had a lot in common with Proudhon.” Indeed, moving away from his earlier sociological work, and after writing books on Proudhon and Malatesta, Colson became increasingly focussed on philosophy, and was especially interested in Spinoza, Leibniz, Nietzsche, Deleuze and Guattari (among others) and how their thinking related to anarchism. This led to a number of conference papers, journal articles and books on these subjects—in 2022, for instance, he published a book on ‘working-class anarchism and philosophy’. Unfortunately only one of his books has been translated (by Jesse Cohen) into English: the Little Philosophical Lexicon of Anarchism. From Proudhon to Deleuze—“a provocative exploration of hidden affinities and genealogies in anarchist thought”. Daniel Colson was an active member of the anarchist movement in Lyon from the early 1970s, a member of the collective that ran the city’s anarchist bookshop ‘La Gryffe’ from its creation in 1978, and a member of the editorial collective that has produced the anarchist review Réfractions since 1997. A professor of sociology at the University of Saint-Etienne, he published extensively on labour history, revolutionary syndicalism, anarchism and, latterly, philosophy. Colson first moved to Lyon, France’s second biggest city, in 1966, when he went to university there to study sociology, after two years studying philosophy at a seminary near Clermont-Ferrand. At the university he discovered revolutionary politics, and soon became active in the student movement, which was dominated in the late 1960s by Maoists, Trotskyists and other assorted ‘gauchistes’ (‘leftists’—originally a pejorative term used of the student revolutionaries of 1968 by the French Communist Party, referencing Lenin’s “Left-Wing” Communism, An Infantile Disorder). Through his friendship with the libertarian communist Michel Marsella, Colson also learned about anarchism, the Socialism or Barbarism group around Cornelius Castoriadis, Situationism, Luxemburgism, etc. Like so many of his contemporaries he was involved in the campaign against US imperialism and in particular the Vietnam war, and was the prime mover in the ‘Vietnam Committee’ in Lyon’s old town. The group produced a newsletter, Informations rassemblées à Lyon (IRL), and after the repression and collapse of the 1968 movement, the Vietnam Committee transformed itself into the ‘Comité de quartier du Vieux-Lyon’ (Old Lyon Neighbourhood Committee). When asked years later what the objectives of this committee had been, Colson replied: “Nothing less than creating the embryo of an insurrection at a local level.” Influenced by the automobile workers occupying the local Berliet factories, the group decided to occupy the local ‘Maison des jeunes’ (youth centre), which had been where the committee had met over the previous months. “We were very ambitious. We were seriously hoping, when the right conditions arose, to take over the local police station—including its armoury.” That plan never materialised, although the group did occupy the town hall briefly. Colson was inspired by 1968 and especially by his experience of “spontaneity in action and in organisation”, including widespread co-operation between students and workers. He was also inspired by the discovery of three important books: the four-volume history of the First International written by the Swiss anarchist James Guillaume; the Russian anarchist Voline’s The Unknown Revolution (originally published in French in 1947, but republished in the aftermath of 1968 in a series edited by Daniel Guérin and the anarchist artist Jean-Jacques Lebel); and Anti-Œdipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972) by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Not that he understood Anti-Œdipus at all when he first tried to read it—he found it “pretty indigestible” in fact— and even ten years later when he tried again, it was only the first chapter that he really got to grips with: for Colson, that chapter successfully demolished the “enormous Marxist theoretical apparatus” that dominated the French left at that time, and made clear “not only the theoretical but also the emancipatory, ethical, philosophical and practical power of anarchism”. Colson was actively involved with a number of anarchist newspapers: the Cahiers de mai (the May Notebooks, which was launched in June 1968 and was the voice of the Action Committees which had sprung up across France), ICO (Informations et Correspondences Ouvrières, Workers’ News and Letters, focussed on autonomous workers’ struggles, outside of trade unions and parties), and IRL (Informations rassemblées à Lyon, literally News Gathered in Lyon, which published eye-witness accounts and documents on social struggles in the Lyon area not published by the mainstream press or the main left-wing papers). IRL, which Colson helped create, was interested in workers’ struggles, but also illegalism and other forms of resistance, and discussed a range of movements: anarchism, council communism, feminism, ecology, antimilitarism, sexual liberation, etc. In 1978, Colson was one of the original group of anarchist activists who set up the La Gryffe bookshop in Lyon, and the collective is still going strong. As well as selling the usual range of anticapitalist, anti-authoritarian material, La Gryffe also has a meeting room that regularly hosts debates, exhibitions, film showings, etc. When Colson published a book about the collective in 2020, he was careful not to give an idealised view of a successful anarchist collective at work, but to highlight also the long and sometimes difficult history that La Gryffe was built on, including some serious differences of opinion and conflicts within the collective, but conflicts which were worked through and resolved according to anarchist principles. Having returned to academia, Colson gained his doctorate in 1983 with a thesis—later published as a book—on anarcho-syndicalism and communism in the labour movement in Saint-Etienne, 1920-25. (If ever you’ve been confused about the difference between the terms ‘syndicalism’, ‘revolutionary syndicalism’ and ‘anarcho-syndicalism’, and how the once revolutionary syndicalist French labour movement came to be dominated by Communism, this is the book for you.) A second historical-sociological book followed in 1998 on the iron and steel industry—and its owners, the famous ‘iron barons’ or forge-masters—in Saint-Etienne from the mid-nineteenth century to the First World War. Colson explained once in a talk he gave on ‘Proudhon and the contemporary relevance of anarchism’—the main thrust of which was to argue for the rehabilitation of Proudhon, who remained unpopular in anarchist circles—that he had discovered Proudhon at about the same time in the 1970s that he discovered “the left-wing Nietzscheanism” of Foucault and especially Deleuze. Deleuze, he argued, “developed an emancipatory thought which had a lot in common with Proudhon.” Indeed, moving away from his earlier sociological work, and after writing books on Proudhon and Malatesta, Colson became increasingly focussed on philosophy, and was especially interested in Spinoza, Leibniz, Nietzsche, Deleuze and Guattari (among others) and how their thinking related to anarchism. This led to a number of conference papers, journal articles and books on these subjects—in 2022, for instance, he published a book on ‘working-class anarchism and philosophy’. Unfortunately only one of his books has been translated (by Jesse Cohen) into English: the Little Philosophical Lexicon of Anarchism. From Proudhon to Deleuze—“a provocative exploration of hidden affinities and genealogies in anarchist thought”. The post Daniel Colson (1943-2026) appeared first on Freedom News.

Someone hacked an Italian ferry. It looks like the malware was installed by someone on the ferry, and not remotely.

I assume I don’t have to explain last week’s Louvre jewel heist. I love a good caper, and have (like many others) eagerly followed the details. An electric ladder to a second-floor window, an angle grinder to get into the room and the display cases, security guards there more to protect patrons than valuables—seven minutes, in and out. There were security lapses: > The Louvre, it turns out—at least certain nooks of the ancient former > palace—is something like an anopticon: a place where no one is observed. The > world now knows what the four thieves (two burglars and two accomplices) > realized as recently as last week: The museum’s Apollo Gallery, which housed > the stolen items, was monitored by a single outdoor camera angled away from > its only exterior point of entry, a balcony. In other words, a free-roaming > Roomba could have provided the world’s most famous museum with more > information about the interior of this space. There is no surveillance footage > of the break-in...

FRENCH POLICE DIRECTED THE DEMONSTRATION WITH FLASH GRENADES AND TEAR GAS ~ from Contre Attaque ~ Saturday, 13 September, a rainy day in Nantes. The police patrolled the entire city centre; the hundreds of law enforcement officers dispatched to Nantes by Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau to crush the blockades on 10 September had clearly decided to keep the city under siege. Three days earlier, unbridled state violence had attacked the popular movement, causing dozens of injuries and arrests. That day, a large Popular Assembly, bringing together more than 1,500 people, had decided to maintain the pressure and call for a demonstration this Saturday to continue the “Block Everything” movement without delay. At the meeting point for the demonstration, facing the deterrent system, there were only a few hundred people. Then thousands more joined, and the procession continued to grow. France Info spoke of the “record for the largest mobilisation”, which should not be a source of pride but rather of concern about the collective ability to sustain the groundswell that began on 10 September. The Nantes procession, completely surrounded, was unable to escape the police stranglehold that confined it to a handful of major arteries and tear-gassed it several times, without reason. Back at the starting point, the police fired grenades again to end the demonstration, after dictating the route and pace. The turnout at this demonstration demonstrates that the momentum has not waned, that the desire to organise and make the movement sustainable is present: this is a warm-up lap for another major day of strikes and blockades planned for Thursday, 18 September. However, we’ll need to be more inventive and responsive: repeating the same old recipes won’t be enough this time around. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Edited machine translation. Photos: Estelle Ruiz, Théo Prn, CA The post Nantes: 4,000 on the streets for Bloquons Tout appeared first on Freedom News.

YESTERDAY’S DAY OF ACTION SAW BLOQUONS TOUT STEPPING OUT OF THE SHADOWS NATIONWIDE—AND FACING MAJOR POLICE REPRESSION ~ punkacademic ~ Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in France on Wednesday (10 September) as the first day of action organised under the banner Bloquons Tout (“Block Everything”) saw widespread protests and blockades in defence of jobs, pensions, and public services. By the evening, mainstream news outlets reported 812 individual actions across the country, along with 262 blockades. The police had deployed 80,000 police officers and gendarmes, making over 500 arrests by late afternoon. Government sources had been briefing that only 100 thousand protestors could be expected to turn out, but the Interior Ministry conceded that the numbers on the streets had been at least double that. The CGT said that a quarter of a million people had mobilised in the course of the day, while anti-capitalist website Contre Attaque reported up to 360 thousand protesters. https://contre-attaque.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/signal-2025-09-10-125917.mp4 Several universities closed in anticipation of potential occupations, and local authorities across the country pre-emptively ordered shops and businesses to close—effectively surrendering before action began. In Paris, a major demonstration took place at the Place de la Republique, and at Les Halles the shopping complex was blocked off to prevent access. Another demonstration against the government’s foreign policy and in support of Palestinian freedom took place at the Gare du Nord, where a thousand protestors attempted to enter the station. Activists also attempted to blockade the Paris ring road, but these actions were only briefly successful, as police on motorbikes dismounted and brutally pursued the protestors. Paris, Place des Fêtes Outside of Paris, blockades had greater success. Huge crowds marched in Marseille and Rennes, where a bus was torched and major roads effectively blocked. In the northern town of Laon, the Anarchist Federation was involved in actions alongside feminist comrades, opening a free thrift store which was attacked by police. One comrade described scenes of ‘almost unprecedented violence‘. With Macron’s most recent Prime Minister, Francois Bayrou, toppled by the National Assembly days before the mobilisation, tensions were heightened by the President’s choice of conservative defence minister Sebastien Lecornu as a replacement. Many protestors cited Bayrou’s budget cuts as a motivator, with Lecornu’s appointment seen as clear evidence that the oligarchical politics of Macronism would never change. Supermarket action, Perpignan The mainstream media has characterised Bloquons Tout as far left extremists and implying far-right involvement. There has been a persistent sneer at the idea of a ‘leaderless’ movement, betraying the anxiety caused to social and political elites. While the unions have only called a major day of action on 18 September, strikes already took place yesterday at hospitals bearing the brunt of cuts, building the momentum towards a continued wave of disruption. The post France blockades: The leaderless escalate appeared first on Freedom News.

A DECENTRED LEADERLESS MOVEMENT AIMS TO SHUT DOWN FRANCE ON 10 SEPTEMBER IN A POWERFUL ATTACK ON THE BANKRUPTCY OF MACRONISM ~ punkacademic ~ It’s unusual that the loss of a Prime Minister and their government might not be the worst thing to happen in a week for a sitting French President, but this week might be the exception. Emmanuel Macron’s intellectually-bankrupt political project hit the skids again on Monday night when his Prime Minister, Francois Bayrou, was compelled to resign after losing a confidence vote in the National Assembly. The writing was on the wall (literally, in some places) – the reaction to Bayrou’s proposed austerity budget, which would have frozen pensions, implemented 44bn in cuts, and axed two bank holidays, had made his demise inevitable. But a greater threat to Macron looms; the threat of direct action on the part of a leaderless, decentralised movement, which has one simple call to arms – ‘Block Everything’. The bloquons tout, as they are known, originated online and have evolved into a mass movement which has drawn parallels with the Gilet Jaunes (Yellow Vests) of 2018-2020, but which has a vastly different political profile. With many participants aged between 25 and 34, the bloquons tout are often graduates and hail from a different end of the socioeconomic spectrum than the disappointed retirees who manned the Yellow Vests’ blockades. These rebels are of the left, as recent research has shown. With mainstream political parties and unions not wanting to miss out on a train leaving the station, they have drawn support from the CGT, the Socialist Party, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise. The energy comes from outside the parties and unions, however, with the French authorities preparing for significant disruption in centres of left-wing activism including Nantes, Rennes, and Lyon. The Federation Anarchiste is mobilising in Rennes, Paris and across France, manning blockades, encouraging workers to strike, and broadcasting an online radio show covering developments from the participant perspective. French analysts are divided on whether Bayrou’s resignation will draw the sting of the Block Everything movement, with some claiming the fall of the government will demobilise the protestors, whilst others claim it will ‘galvanise’ them. Estimates from the French security establishment that 100,000 people can be expected to take part across France seem like wishful thinking on their part and an attempt to demotivate protesters. Block Everything represents a rejection of conventional politics that has repeatedly been shown wanting in France. In mid-2024, following a disastrous political gamble in calling an election to face down Marine le Pen, Macron’s determination to freeze out the left-wing New Popular Front which had gained a plurality of seats has led to crisis after crisis and a revolving door of Prime Ministers. Each time a Macronist Prime Minister seeks to raise the rhetorical temperature in political terms is a clearer demonstration than the last that French political institutions cannot deliver the change younger voters want and need, with some economists claiming the fiscal ‘crisis’ has been blown out-of-proportion. The Federation Anarchiste is using this moment as a teachable one, with comrades using the venues and spaces opened up by the 10th November day of action to communicate the nature and possibilities of anarchism. Though one pundit (rightly) stated that the CGT has strayed far from its revolutionary roots at the dawn of the 20th century, their ability to close down workplaces remains pivotal. Calls for a general strike have been heard from the left. Though a general strike is unlikely, workplace occupations and cross-sector action have been mooted. With air-traffic controllers also set to go out on strike the following week, the potential for continued disruption is real. ‘Block Everything’ promises to be significant, with some pundits claiming it could witness the biggest turnout since the May ’68 events. Whether it does or not, it represents a major challenge to Macron’s politics of zombie neoliberalism, with the mainstream press claiming France ‘may have become ungovernable’. We can but hope. The post Tomorrow, France revolts appeared first on Freedom News.

ON JULY 4, 1905, THE FRENCH ANARCHIST ÉLISÉE RECLUS DIED IN TORHOUT, NEAR BRUGES IN BELGIUM ~ Maurice Schuhmann ~ Reclus, after whom a street leading to the Eiffel Tower in Paris is named, was one of the most well-known anarchist propagandists in France—and at the same time one of the country’s most important geographers. His Geographie universelle, written between 1876 and 1894, is considered a foundational classic in the field, alongside his posthumously published work L’Homme et la Terre. Born on March 15, 1830, in Sainte-Foy-la-Grande, France, Jacques Élisée Reclus studied in various places, including Berlin in the early 1850s, where he encountered the work of Max Stirner and studied geology. It was also during this time that he first came into contact with anarchist ideas, which would deeply shape his thinking and to which he would significantly contribute. He later became a co-founder of the French section of the First International and maintained contact with figures such as Mikhail Bakunin. When the Paris Commune broke out, he declined a political post that was offered to him and instead actively participated in the military defence of the social experiment. After the Commune was crushed, he was—like many of his comrades, including Louise Michel, with whom he would later give lectures—exiled to New Caledonia. The exile did not break him; quite the opposite. Upon returning to Europe, he co-founded the anarchist newspaper Le Révolté (1879–1885) in Switzerland. Among his collaborators at the time were Peter Kropotkin, who wrote important articles in the publication, and Jean Grave. The paper was one of the most influential anarchist publications in Europe at the time. It was also during this period that Reclus became a vegetarian for ethical reasons. He went on to advocate for this way of life—no easy task, especially in France, where vegetarian or vegan lifestyles have remained marginal, even in anarchist circles. Combined with his geographical observations and his affinity for naturism, he is sometimes regarded— alongside Kropotkin —as a forerunner of modern eco-anarchism. Because of his research and his resolutely anti-nationalist stance, Spanish educator Francisco Ferrer reached out to him. Ferrer asked Reclus to write geography textbooks for his newly founded Escuelas Modernas. These were intended to be explicitly anti-nationalist textbooks, free of the chauvinistic poison that characterised most school books of the time. Reclus ultimately settled in Belgium. In 1894, he was involved in the founding of a free university—the Université Nouvelle. He lived and worked in France’s neighbouring country until his death. The post Élisée Reclus—Communard, geographer, vegetarian appeared first on Freedom News.

FRENCH AND ITALIAN DOCKWORKERS UNITE IN PRACTICAL RESISTANCE TO THE ISRAELI GENOCIDE IN GAZA ~ David TNnzk ~ On Thursday, 5 June, workers at the port of Marseille unionised with CGT and backed by a solidarity presidium, successfully refused three containers full of military equipment which were scheduled to be loaded onto the Contship Era, chartered by Israeli shipping company ZIM.  The shipment included 14 tonnes of machine gun components and spare parts bound for Haifa. The ship was due to make a technical stopover for refuelling at Genoa on Friday 6 June. A protest presidium was called by the Genoa Port Workers’ Collective (CALP) and the USB trade union.  Contingency plans were in place: in the event that the French comrades had failed to sabotage the cargo, the Italian dockworkers were prepared to prevent the shipment proceeding further. However, with the successful action of the Marseille dockworkers, the ship’s departure was delayed.  The solidarity event on the Italian side was therefore postponed Saturday 6 June. Once the ship eventually reached the Genoa port, chants demanding ‘stop genocide!’ were heard as a demonstration of more than 300 people marched into the port crossing.  As requested by their French colleagues, the dockers in Genoa inspected each container to ensure that no military cargo was on the ship. The next stop was scheduled for Sunday 8 in Salerno, Italy, where demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine were expected to continue. In fact, the Contship Era decided to change course, heading for Sicily. This event does not come out of the blue. In 2023, the Genoa Port Workers’ Collective had already launched an international mobilisation against the shipment of arms to war zones under the slogan ‘lower the guns, raise the wages’. Earlier this year, after the Greek national strike that opposed both the conservative government and European austerity policies, the International Coordination of Dockworkers was founded. On that occasion, workers in 54 cities of other countries joined in solidarity with the Greek strike, paving the way for wider collaboration. Today, workers’ organisations from Greece, Turkey, Morocco, France and Italy are currently members. The lever that drove this alliance is the desire to jam the war machine by targeting the ports that keep it moving. Earlier still, in 2019 and 2020, the harbours of Genoa had refused to load war shipments on the Saudi ‘Bahri’ fleet bound for Yemen, inspiring similar blocks in other ports across Europe like: Marseille, Le Havre (Normandy) and Bilbao (Basques). The Genoa Port Workers’ Collective are also trying to put pressure on the institutions by appealing to law 185/90, which prohibits the transit of armaments to theatres of war. Additionally, dockworkers have raised issues regarding non-compliance with safety regulations concerning the docking and mooring of ships loaded with weapons and explosives.  The first major stance against the genocide in Gaza was organised by Moroccan dockers in Casablanca, preventing the loading of F-35 components on a ship headed to Haifa. These partial successes give positive energy and hope in difficult times of war and repression. The logistics sector once again proves to be a focal point for capital; it has itself been developed to supply the armies more effectively. For this movement to be truly effective, all logistics actors must continue to use their structural leverage to enforce a generalised embargo. The post Dockers successfully block arms shipment to Israel appeared first on Freedom News.

COMMUNIQUÉ DESCRIBES CANNES FILM FESTIVAL AS AN “OBSCENE CEREMONY HELD AT THE EDGE OF A SEA THAT HAS BECOME A CEMETERY FOR REFUGEES” ~ Cristina Sykes ~ Two anarchist groups have claimed responsibility for a series of power outages that struck southeastern France over the weekend, affecting over 200,000 households in Cannes and Nice. In a communiqué published yesterday (May 27) under the slogan “ET… COUPEZ!” (“and… cut!”), the unnamed groups stated: “On the eve of the Cannes Film Festival awards ceremony, we sabotaged the main electrical substation supplying the Cannes area and severed the 225 kV line coming from Nice”. The first blackout occurred on Saturday, May 24, coinciding with the final day of the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, affecting approximately 160,000 homes. The outage was caused by a fire at an electrical substation in Tanneron and damage to an electricity pylon, prompting local officials to suspect coordinated acts of arson. Despite the disruption, the festival managed to continue using backup generators. Shortly after midnight Sunday, a second blackout hit Nice, leaving around 45,000 households without power. This outage was linked to the arson of an electrical transformer, as confirmed by the city’s mayor, Christian Estrosi. Power was restored by 5.30AM While mainstream media reported condemnations of the attack, the groups elaborated on their motivations in their statement, declaring, “This unexpected blackout in a bad horror movie drags on. The same scenario is played and replayed ad nauseam. The backdrop remains the same: a world that continues to bomb, exploit, extract, seize, violate, ravage, starve, shoot, pollute, and exterminate, as long as everything is under its control”. They emphasised their desire to “turn off this deadly system”, stating, “We want to cut the current to what destroys us!” The groups condemned the Cannes Film Festival as a “spectacle that serves as a showcase for a grandiloquent French Republic, defender of Progress values on the international stage, but also the second-largest arms exporter in the world … Your obscene ceremony is held at the edge of a sea that has become a cemetery for refugees, and an industrial dump for a society that loves to portray rebellion on screen but represses and imprisons anyone who rises against its domination”, said the communiqué. The declaration concluded ironically with a ‘movie listing’ titled Sabotage 2: Nocturne à Cannes. “Set in a world on the brink of apocalypse, the film chronicles the adventures of a libertarian commando unit tasked with sabotaging technological factories of great military importance”. The listing came complete with mock reviews, including “If you love women who short-circuit aluminium production, students who burn factories, or commandos who take on the oil industry, you won’t be disappointed with this latest production” and “The special effects sometimes leave something to be desired, which is not surprising given the limited resources available to this production, but the script and strategic cunning more than compensate for this shortcoming”. The post France: Anarchists claim mass power outages in Cannes, Nice appeared first on Freedom News.

A WINDING DISCUSSION STARTS WITH CHINA’S DEEPSEEK AND ITS IMPACT ON US DOMINANCE IN THE SPHERE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. We then move on to Belarus, the Hungarian pursuit of anti-fascists, and the ineffectiveness of liberal governments in holding back fascism (again) before rounding off with some discussion on the fight against high speed rail in France. The post Anarchist News Review: Cheap AI panic, Extremism (un)defined and Water palavers appeared first on Freedom News.