Tag: protests

19 Arrested as Riots Break Out in Spain over Right-Wing Influencer Campus Appearance

Riots broke out once again in Spain on Monday evening in the northern city of Bilbao as far-left activists staged protests to pressure the cancellation of an appearance by a right-wing influencer.

The autonomous Ertzaintza Police force of the Basque Country in northern Spain said that they arrested 19 people in Bilbao as a group of radical activists and students set cars on fire, looted shops and destroyed street furniture.

The protest, according to public broadcaster RTVE, was promoted by leftist groups like the Socialist Youth of the Basque Country and other so-called “anti-fascist” groups opposed to a planned appearance by Spanish conservative commentator Vito Quiles at the University of Deusto.

The call managed to see around 2,000 mostly students attend the afternoon demonstration, the Socialist Youth declaring that “Vito Quiles is NOT welcome” at their campus and that they would “not allow their hatred and intolerance to make their way among the youth.”

Among the 19 arrested were seven minors, according to the broadcaster, in addition to three 18-year-olds and a 19-year-old.

Quiles, who is known for his confrontational journalism and campus speaking tours, claimed that the head of the Ertzaina police had warned him of a “very high” risk of an incident, claiming that members of the ETA (Basque Homeland and Liberty) separatist terror group had helped organise the protests against his appearance.

“Given that there are former ETA members, street terrorists, and other criminals leading the protests, the talk is cancelled,” Quiles said. “Freedom of expression is sacred but no more important than protecting the integrity of all the good young people who attend these events and do not deserve to be exposed to violent situations because of a bunch of scum.”

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Macron Admits Government Did Not Anticipate Violence of Islamo-Leftist Youth Riots

President Emmanuel Macron admitted on Monday that his government was caught flat-footed by the outburst of violent riots earlier this month accross France, which threaten to continue for the foreseeable future.

The so-called “Act II” demonstrations on October 17th in France, in which widespread looting and rioting took place as far-leftist groups converged with youths from ethnic minority enclaves, resulted in rampant destruction and injury, with around 2,400 arrests, nearly a thousand police officers, firefighters, and gendarmes injured, and an estimated 3,000 businesses impacted. The riots also saw an alleged far-left arson terror attack which resulted in the destruction of the 143-year-old City Hall in Limoges. According to the liberal think tank Fondation iFRAP, the riots on October 17th and 18th alone likely cost around €1.1 billion ($1.2bn) to the government and private businesses.

Mayors across the country were deeply critical of the federal government’s performance during the riots, which occurred following weeks of youth revolt unrest over supposed complaints about the education system. The mayor of Limoges, Guillaume Guérin, sensationally claimed that the National Police force dispatched to his city had run out of ammunition during the attack on the city hall, providing alleged far-left terrorists free rein of the building for nearly an hour.

More than a week after the fateful events, and after another weekend of riots which saw dozens of police injured and over 1,300 rioters arrested, President Emmanuel Macron finally admitted that his government had failed to properly prepare for the unrest.

Speaking to reporters during a visit to Marseille on Monday, where far-leftists also vandalised the local City Hall, Mr Macron said per the 20minutes newspaper: “We hadn’t anticipated what was going to happen at all… It’s absolutely true that in Marseille, as elsewhere, there weren’t enough police forces (on October 17).”

However, true to form, Macron still sought to deflect blame elsewhere, this time claiming that social media was a principal culprit for the riots, saying such platforms are “damaging our democracies.”

“They were used, especially on the 17th, to bring young people and older people to the scenes of delinquency, attacks, and looting,” the president argued, claiming that online there is a “great deal of confusion, a kind of permanent agitation that is taking place, a fascination with violence.”

Previously, Macron had blamed the “ultra-left” for sowing chaos and even U.S. President Donald Trump for supposedly sparking the energy crisis in Europe with the conflict in Iran, while ignoring the role that his mass migration policies have played in creating a disaffected underclass willing to engage in wanton violence and destruction.

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“They’re not protesting and they’re not French”: The False Narratives Of The Far Right

A masked young lad is filming from his seat on a runaway tourist train as it careens through the Paris streets. “Waaaooh” he shouts as it whizzes along, waving at other kids dressed all in black, to the sounds of cheering. His eyes tell the story – he’s high as a kite on adrenaline and the unexpected joy of total freedom, unshackled, for a fleeting moment, from the grinding manacles of economic necessity.

He is one of tens of thousands. They’ve filled the streets for weeks, clambered onto statues, fought the cops, made demands for their futures. As police violence has escalated against them, they’ve fought back in kind under the slogan “if we burn, you burn.” An increasingly literal interpretation as public buildings collapse in flames. The youth in full, uninhibited revolt the likes of which we haven’t seen for many years.

And their furious rebellion has been caught by the wind, spreading across Europe, reflecting the economic and social malaise that afflicts the entire Western hemisphere, a crisis of capital and demographics that States have decided the young must bear and fix, white offering nothing in return. The motivation for that delirious nihilistic moment of a stolen buggy rampaging down cobbled tourist streets, a wild young man hollering to the crowds, is as understandable as it is universal.

But the kid is brown, and that’s all the excuse the commenters need.

Similar can be found under every news item posted by every news organisation. They’re not protesters, they’re jihadis taking their chance. They aren’t French students, they’re Muslim foreigners. Never mind that in every video we can see how young the people kicking off are, never mind how many white faces are all over the place, never mind what the demands are or the many anarchist and socialist slogans that have been daubed on every wall.

For those of us with a bit of grey along their temples, the words sound all too familiar. We hear some variation on the theme whenever any social rebellion begins, from Hosni Mubarak and pals during the Egyptian revolution in 2011 to Donald Trump shrieking about anteefa after the January 6th riots. It’s the elites’ favourite excuse – outside agitators. It can’t be what it looks like, we must unite against an amorphous, pernicious alien influence and, merely by happy accident, preserve the status quo.

Blah blah blah. It’s as tiresome as it is predictable. We know it’s bullshit. So why are the far-right’s socials full of exactly that rhetoric?

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‘This Is Assault’: Utah Woman Speaks Out After Cop Body Slammed Her at Data Center Protest

A Utah woman is speaking out after video showed a police officer slamming her to the ground as she was protesting against the approval of an artificial intelligence data center.

In a Thursday interview with Fox 13 Salt Lake City, 27-year-old Aspen Azalea demanded the firing of Utah County Sheriff’s Deputy Phillip Crawford after he was caught on video throwing her to the ground during a Wednesday night meeting of the Utah County Planning Commission in the city of Provo.

“Bare minimum, Phil Crawford needs to be fired, bare minimum,” Azalea said. “This is assault. He did throw me to the ground.”

Video of the incident shows Crawford pulling Azalea out of her seat at the meeting and escorting her out of the main chamber. Shortly after bringing her into the lobby area, he slams her face-first onto the floor.

The Utah County Sheriff’s Office claimed that Azalea kicked Crawford in the groin just before he slammed her to the ground, which Azalea denied.

“No, I never kicked him,” she told Fox 13 Salt Lake City. “I absolutely didn’t kick him.”

The woman also noted that, had the deputy thrown her to the ground just a few feet further, she could have hit her head on a nearby bench.

“What really scares me about that situation is that he could have killed me because there was a bench,” she said. “If he threw me into that bench, I don’t think I’d be here today.”

In a separate interview published Thursday by The Salt Lake Tribune, Azalea said that she suffered a concussion, as well as bruises on her jaw, knee, and shoulder.

Azalea acknowledged to The Salt Lake Tribune that she shouted during the Wednesday meeting, as she has shouted at other meetings to protest the development of data centers.

“I have a habit of talking at data center meetings,” she told the newspaper. “But never have I been met with such excessive force.”

Azalea faces misdemeanor charges of assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest, and disrupting a meeting.

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Federal Judge Orders CIA to Release Records Related to Jan 6 Protests Including Information on Whether CIA Had Personnel Deployed Like the 274 Undercover FBI Agents That Day

A federal judge has ordered the CIA to begin releasing records related to January 6 by November 16, including documents on shots fired inside the Capitol, requests for bomb technicians and detection dogs, and whether CIA personnel were deployed. The ruling follows a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch.

OANN reported:

“The CIA must begin releasing records related to January 6th by November 16th.

In a recent ruling, the U.S. District Court for the D.C.— for the District of Columbia ordered the CIA to begin releasing records related to shots fired inside the Capitol.

The agency must also release requests for bomb technicians and bomb-detecting dogs and whether CIA personnel were deployed. The order stems from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit Filed by conservative legal watchdog Judicial Watch.

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France Slaps 8PM Curfews On Cities As Interior Minister Admits Police ‘Lost Control’; Macron Flees To The Gulf

France moved Monday to put riot-hit cities under curfew after Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez admitted that authorities had lost control of the streets in several major cities over the weekend. President Emmanuel Macron refused Nuñez’s offer to resign and then left for a Gulf tour to secure fuel supplies.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu told prefects to impose “very limited” and “localized” curfews. According to France 24’s live coverage, Lecornu ruled out a full curfew for Paris. He said a state of emergency could be declared “if necessary,” but that curfews seemed better suited, adding: “I am absolutely determined to restore order.” Marseille’s prefect banned protests and gatherings from noon to 8 p.m.

By Monday evening, Lecornu’s office had named the first towns, all in the northern Nord department. Lille, Douai, Wattignies and Denain will be under curfew from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. on Monday and Tuesday nights, with each mayor’s agreement, according to Franceinfo. Lille is where Nuñez said rioters broke into city hall, and Wattignies is one of its suburbs. Lille’s Socialist mayor, Arnaud Deslandes, had refused earlier in the day to sign a curfew order, arguing that a late-evening curfew wouldn’t match the hours the trouble broke out. Denain was already under curfew: its mayor ordered a weeklong curfew from 9 p.m. starting Sunday, after what the town said were fires, mortar fireworks and paving stones thrown at police by hooded rioters on Saturday.

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Macron Addresses Nation: Refuses Blame, Ignores Immigration Impact on Riots, ‘How Can French People Do This?’

In an address to the nation on Sunday evening, French President Emmanuel Macron refused to take any accountability for the national riots that erupted on Saturday, as he sought to shift the blame onto the far-left and even external forces like the Iran conflict while failing to acknowledge the role mass migration played in creating a groundswell of support for the unrest.

President Macron, who has become little more than a lame duck in the Élysée with six months left in his term in office, addressed the country for the first time since the youth revolt began nearly a month ago.

Rather than taking a ‘the buck stops here’ approach, Mr Macron did not admit to any personal failings after his government failed to foresee or prevent some of the most destructive riots in recent memory, resulting in historic buildings being torched, thousands of shops being looted, and hundreds of police officers, gendarmes, and firefighters being injured on Saturday.

Instead, the outgoing leader pointed to “extremists from far-left groups” and “criminals” as being solely responsible for the “unrestrained violence” witnessed across France.

Meanwhile, Macron appeared to completely ignore the role that the importation of millions of foreigners into the country has had on the social framework, with many of the rioters being suspected of hailing from the multicultural suburban enclaves like Saint-Denis. Instead, the president questioned, “How can French people do this to France?”

“Why burn down the town hall in Limoges, the tourist office in Lyon, storm the town hall in Marseille, or attack the prefect’s residence in Bordeaux? How can they go so far? Nothing justifies it, nothing explains it, nothing excuses it. We all feel anger and shame tonight. Seeing the streets of our cities so ransacked is unbearable,” he questioned.

The neo-liberal president went on to claim that a distinction should be made between the “several hundred thousand of our fellow citizens [who] demonstrated with the intention of making legitimate demands” and “those who destroyed, vandalised, and looted.”

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Wash.: High school cross-country girls walk off track meet, protesting biological male runner

Nearly half of the girls on the Camas High School cross-country team in Camas, Washington, walked off the starting line during a recent meet to protest the inclusion of a biological male runner on their team.

Footage of roughly 13 athletes linking arms and leaving the course quickly went viral, reigniting debate over transgender participation in girls’ sports.

The protest centered on teammate Logan Mihailoff, who notably began the season in the boys’ junior varsity division — placing 76th place at the Ultimook Invitational on September 5th — before transitioning to compete in the girls’ division midseason.

Mihailoff switched from competing in the boys’ division to the girls’ division midseason between September 5th and September 26th.

Competing under Washington Interscholastic Activities Association rules, which permit participation based on gender identity, Mihailoff then placed second out of 195 female runners at the Nike Portland XC Invitational on September 26th, won a dual meet against Union High School on September 29th, and placed second in the subsequent October 8th meet.

Critics have highlighted that allowing biological male athletes to compete displaces female runners who have trained rigorously for team roster spots and standings, while school officials simply argue they are just complying with established state interscholastic policies.

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Border Patrol Unleashes Violence on Protesters Over Trump’s Border Wall

Since construction began on President Donald Trump’s border wall in haste on October 5, federal agents have clashed with land defenders and arrested roughly two dozen activists who camped out on private land to protest the destruction of fragile desert ecosystems on both sides of the imaginary line that separates Mexico from the tiny town of Lochiel, Arizona.

The protest received media attention after Border Patrol agents extracted and arrested a tree sitter and cut down the “Grandmother Tree,” an ancient cottonwood in a grove of several trees that stood in the way of contractors building the border wall. Estimated to be around 200 years old — older than the current border — the grove’s branches reached from the United States to Mexico, a symbol of international solidarity for the protesters.

The felling of the Grandmother Tree may have also symbolized the Trump administration’s disregard for nature and public opinion, but it did not mark the end of the protests, as construction continues. Video captured by journalist Max Granger shows land defenders climbing into a tree on the Mexican side Tuesday morning and setting up another tree-sit style blockade in a renewed attempt to halt construction. Clashes with Border Patrol continued throughout that day, with activists accusing federal agents of dragging protesters across a barbed wire fence during a chaotic confrontation that was caught on video.

On Wednesday afternoon, a protester locked themselves to moving construction machinery, according to a statement from activists. Border Patrol agents attempted to remove the protester with “extreme pain compliance” and pepper sprayed the surrounding crowd, the activists said. Protester continued to lock themselves down after construction came to a halt and construction crews left, the activists noted. “We do not intend to back down,” said Adriana, a Tierra Libre activist identified only by first name, in a statement on Wednesday. “Our resolve only grows with their violence.”

Jason, an activist from the Tierra Libre protest camp in Lochiel who declined to use his last name due to concerns over state repression, said roughly two dozen people have been arrested. Some received citations on the spot, and others were taken into custody and released onto the streets of Nogales or Tucson hours later, he noted.

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France Street Violence Hits Record Levels Amid Multicultural Youth Revolts

The French Ministry of the Interior states that street violence has reached record levels fuelled in part by the violent student uprisings seen in multicultural hubs across the country in recent weeks.

Following another day of mass mobilisation of students in concert with far-left political parties and radical trade unions apparently intent on sparking more chaos, the Ministry of the Interior released statistics showing an unprecedented level of violence in public spaces.

According to government data, public violence incidents outside the home hit a record high of 20,000 per month in September, or nearly 700 per day, Le Figaro reported.

This represented a seven per cent increase over August, suggesting a significant role for the youth riots that began in the middle of last month and have featured high levels of violent attacks on police, other students, teachers and school administrators, and other innocent bystanders.

Prominent French criminologist Professor Alain Bauer lamented that society is becoming “TikTok-ized”, in which “nothing ever has consequences anymore”, and young people are increasingly becoming “uninhibited, sometimes nihilistic”.

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