Gen-x not on same page just because. Cons just love it when da yutes overintellectualize protest. Sure, pop up beside a premier with a cream pie, but could you say anything cogent to the microphone? My MP is vital-signs-absent but she still knows how to call the cops and spin the reason why. Build your capabilities and be the media.

The Olympic Police State desperately needed some supposedly "violent" incident to occur, to justify the billion dollars that they've spent on "security", and all the various forms of repression that are passed off under that label.

Now they've got just what they wanted. It's almost as if somebody planned it that way.

Perhaps it's worth considering the possibility that those who do the work of police provocateurs, may in fact be exactly that.

http://www.google.ca/search?q=montebello+provocateur

I'm sorry but this response is whack. The media ALWAYS denounces radicals! Get with it already. They will denounce us no matter what tactics are used.

The only thing that makes me sad is that there wasn't even more windows smashed and an even larger presence of the black bloc. I mean come on, how badly do we want to stop oppression? Comrades, you've read the articles. You know how much we are being fucked by this system. Look at how there is such a large number of people willing to denounce these tactics, and so so quickly! How are we ever going to end this shit if we hide our tails and keep marching and chanting?

The more we pender to the media and what the elties want, the more disorganized we will become, and be uncapable of overthrowing oppression. Smash the state!

Though inspiring to radical youths and such it does nothing effective but maybe stop a symbolic torch. On the other hand if one were to clog the highways where the supplies for hundreds of thousands of olympic revelers were to be clogged can you imagine the effect of 100,000's of people w/ no food and no toiletries. If you want to express how the impoverished live their lives in protest make the wealthy temporarily impoverished. Just a suggestion the next time people think that  a simple tactic of smashing windows gets attention.

Bakunin, we all know the trite slogans ("smash the state"), but some of us would like to hear an actual argument made for the political utility or effectiveness of breaking a couple windows and overturning some newspaper boxes. How do such actions build and foster the anti-colonial/anti-capitalist/ anti-olympics movement? In what way do tactics which have no material consequence for the operations of capital, and yet which overwhelmingly invoke the ire of the general public (and not just elites), "stop oppression"? 

The non-violent protest the day before the Heart Attack action drew an alliance of approx. 2000 people into the streets (including the black bloc) with clear, articulate speeches and signs connecting the Olympics and their corporate sponsors to gentrification, homelessness, ongoing colonial oppression of indigenous peoples, and environmental devastation, and was lead by indigenous elders (women) of Vancouver's embattled Downtown Eastside. Many of the people mobilized to protest the Olympics do not condone the black bloc's tactics and find them counter-productive. This communique makes no attempt to address, or show any respect, to that share of the movement (arguably the larger share).

Instead of an intelligent defense of the black bloc's tactics--and an acknowledgement of any dialogue or dissensus within the movement--it uses self-congraluatory language of "courage" and heroism. Meanwhile, the consensus among some in the anti-Olympics movement is that the black bloc actions on Saturday were "stupid acts of two-bit vandalism"  which have better enabled the mass media to ignore the legitimacy of the movement as a whole, while serving to legitimate the police state in the eyes of the general public. If we acknowledge that the black bloc's actions have been very controversial (and arguably unpopular) within the anti-Olympics movement itself, is it too much to ask for a reasoned explanation of their tactical value? What were they suppose to accomplish? Did they accomplish it? 

Any serious activist reflects upon the effectiveness of political tactics and actions. Thus far, members of the black bloc and their supporters haven't demonstrated any sense there was a tactically acheivable goal to begin with.

So let's hear it.

And the Black Bloc is losing.  In fact they have set back the progression of social uprising and political protesting.  I was going to say years but that would have been a good thing because the protest movement used to be much stronger.  Now, the mainstream media and the public at large sees those who protest as the lunatic fringe.  They haven't the foggiest idea as to why anyone would protest and furthermore they cringe at those who are loud and billegerant.  And then along comes the BB to confirm all of what they have been told.  Then come the generalizations of painting the entire protesting body with the same brush.  You can almost hear the collective idealism being flushed down the toilet.

It's simple.  The anarchists which guide the BB serve as useless idiots to appease the whims of the ruling class.  They are the bad child to which our masters can point out and say, see - we don't condone that sort of behaviour now do we?  And we don't.  We don't like seeing things smashed to bits.  We don't like seeing innocent bystanders taking a shit-kicking for fun.  We don't get that anger.  We don't know what the hell it is you are trying to say.  No one understands collonialism.  It is a word that gets used maybe once every two years in the public vernacular.  The lot of you are not getting your message across.

This is an information war.  You are fighting a gigantic mega mothership of information and propaganda with tiny miniscule pebbles that pop like air bubbles against its large hull.  Instead of bullying your way like some wild chimpanzees, use your intellect to get your point across.  Be creative.