April 4, 2009
“Protesters demonstrating against a NATO summit in Strasbourg set fire to a hotel in the city near the river Rhine on Saturday, AFP journalists witnessed.”
Described as “hardline,” the Black Bloc provocateurs, “armed with metal bars,” also wrecked a wrecked a chapel, a pharmacy, an empty police post and other buildings at the French end of the Europe bridge connecting Strasbourg with Germany, according to AFP.
In order to demonize the anti-NATO protests as the work of violent “anarchists” (agents provocateurs), the New York Times described participants as “a mix of anti-globalization and anti-military activists (who) set a hotel and border post on fire, while riot police used tear gas to keep them back.”
Sky News (owned by Rupert Murdoch) reports: “Some of the protesters — throwing rocks — tried to storm a massive police blockade at the Pont d’Anvers bridge, and were driven back by water cannon, tear gas, flash bombs and rubber bullets.”
The BBC filed a video report highlighting the staged violence.
Police used the staged violence as an excuse to arrest demonstrators. “Police later detained dozens of demonstrators, lying them face down on the ground before hauling them away,” Sky News reports elsewhere. “Journalists were stopped by police from approaching the campsite area… The campsite had been set up to house demonstrators during the two-day talks.”
As noted in the video here, the legitimate anti-NATO protesters are determined to use non-violent civil disobedience to block the summit. In order to provide an excuse to use batons and rubber bullets against them, agents provocateurs masquerading as Black Bloc anarchists have been dispatched with instructions to burn down hotels and vandalize churches.
Earlier in the week, “anarchist” agents provocateurs were dispatched during the G20 with orders to smashed up the Royal Bank of Scotland. The corporate media used images of this vandalism to demonize non-violent demonstrators.
“The British authorities seemed to have little problem with allowing a group of violent black bloc anarchists to smash up the RBS building while provoking police yesterday, despite the group announcing their target in advance, yet a legitimate anti-poverty organization has had its ‘accreditation’ to protest at the G20 removed on the orders of Downing Street,” wrote Paul Joseph Watson on April 2. The authorities “knew that the building was a prime target, and yet it was the only one in the street not boarded up. A cafe across the street was boarded up and yet the RBS building was left completely vulnerable to attack.”
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