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This episode of "It's The End Of The
World As We Know It And I Feel Fine",

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was made possible by contributions
from slaves like you!

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Spank you very much!

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A lot of people involved in the black bloc
on saturday

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and many of them 6 months ago were members of the labor party,

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working for the democrat party and people who really believed back then

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that parliamentary democracy could work
for them

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and now they believe it's not gonna work
for them.

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It's the end of the world as we know it
and I feel fine.

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Gooooooooood morning slaves and
welcome to another sedition of

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"It's The End Of The World As We Know It
And I Feel Fine",

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the show where all our heroes were masked!

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I'm your host the stimulator,

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and with global may day protests and
the occupy wave of actions coming up

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I thought it would be nice to do a little
segment about the tactic of tactcs.

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The cancer in Chris Hedge's colon.

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Too big to fail, big enough to fall!

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The most widespread and mimicked
street formation of the last 6,000 years.

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And the craze has police departments
and politicians wetting their dockers.

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Yep.

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The black bloc - But what about madrid?

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You are right, agitator.

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I must first pay my respects to the
lion-hearted peeps in madrid

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who daringly attacked the fuzz during
anti-austerity protests last month.

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The underpinnings of this movement
are confrontational and radical.

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Many people out there think
that the black bloc

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is a gang or a crew that one can join.

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The radical group called the black bloc
anarchists

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openly brag about using terrorist-type
tactics.

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There are no black bloc anarchists
you thick-nost shit rocket.

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The black bloc is simply a fucking tactic!

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Black bloc is not a group
or social movement,

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it's simply a tactic used by protesters to
protect themselves from police agression

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and express a complete
rejection of capitalism.

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Like the tactic of blockading a street.

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The blockade is used with the objective
of stopping police or industry traffic

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into an area you're trying to hold
or protect

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and it could be part of an overall strategy
to protect that forest

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or autonomous zone, for example.

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The black bloc tactic can be used for
the purpose of securing streets

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with the strategic goal of creating
autonomous spaces for discent

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within a context of
intense police repression.

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It can also be used to attack corporate
and state infrastructure

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allowing the saboteurs
to remain anonymous.

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This tactic has spread around the world
like wildfire

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and we have witnessed its power
in places such as turkey,

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egypt, brazil and colombia.

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So, to find out more about the history
of the black bloc,

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I bring you francis dupuis-déri,
a motherfucking anarchist

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and author of
Who's Afraid Of The Black Blocs?

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Hey francis, how the fuck are you?

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Huuuuuuuuh I don't know!

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When was the tactic of black bloc
first deployed?

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The black bloc the way we know it
appeared the first time in germany

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in west berlin, at the end of the 70s,
beginning of the 80s.

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The first time the term "black bloc"
was coined in germany was in 1980

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and it was called at the time the
autonomen movemen,

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movement mainly of political sqatters
who were involved

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in the protest agains the nuclear industries
and nuclear weapons

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and the neofascist movement in germany.

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So at the time in germany they were
wearing leather jackets,

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that was fashionable at the time,
so black leather jacket,

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black motorcycle helmet and they were
merging in black bloc to get a mass of

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anonymous people, because you can't
recognize people in a homogeneous

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mass of people wearing black and
masks and they were using this tactic

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to confront and fight the police, which was
coming to expulse them from their squats,

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for instance, or to fight agains neo-nazis
in the streets.

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In the description of your book,
"Who's afraid of the black blocs",

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it states that the image of the window-smashing thugs hides a complex reality.

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Can you fucking explain?

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Too often the black bloc is described by
politicians, by police officers, by journalists,

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by scholars, even, as something really not
interesting from a political point of view.

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They're described as a bunch of
hooligans and as apolitical individuals

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who just like to riot, like to smash things
without any political rationale.

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The black bloc, which are primarily white,
sort of nihilistic, destructive...

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embracing confusing, petty vandalism
in this repellent sort of cynicism with revolution...

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And of course when you listen to them,
when you watch them in action,

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when you look at them, when you
follow them

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and when you try to understand
what they do in germany, in france,

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in great-britain, in greece, in brazil,

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you rapidly understand that
it's only about politics.

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There are 50 thousand other people
that are gonna be here

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and I figured even if they are here
protesting in a way that I don't like,

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advocating a reform or abolishing
some particular institution

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at leat there's 50,000 people that really
care and are worked up about something

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and hopefully we can come out here and
give them a show

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of a little more radical direction.

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About politics, about the economics, of course, also about power relationships,

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about domination, and it's a way to
express a radical criticism of

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these systems: the state system,
the capital system, the bank system,

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and their targets is the message.
It's what they target that give us

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the meaning of their action.

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Thanks francis.

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Stay tuned after the break for an
interview with a montreal streetfighter.

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Viewers of this fucking show know that
in 2012, thousands of people took part

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in the 6 months insurrection in montreal.

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What is popularly known as
the maple spring

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began as a student strike but evolved
into a popular revolt that included

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many sectors of society.

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The sheer fucking number of protester
and the non-stop use of militant

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street tactics exhausted non only the cops
but also their budget.

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Since-then the montreal po-po have
smarten up and have consistently

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cattled anticapitalist demonstrations
as a way to avoid a repeat of 2012.

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This year, comrades have been having
conversations as to how to regain

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the street power that was obtained
on that insurrectionary moment.

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So to review some of their tactics used
in the balance of that year,

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I bring you nick, a university student
involved in much of

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the street fighting of 2012.
But first, a fucking disclaimer.

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So enough of that noise.

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Hey nick, how the fuck are you?

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I'm feeling great.

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So, how the fuck the street fighting
progress in montreal?

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From the beginning of the strike,
We saw the use of masks

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go from being an isolated practice
to something that became normal

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for hundreds of people to do.

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This explosion in the use of masks
wasn't magical.

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It took anarchists consistently masking up
and explaning why they mask up

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in flyers and in conversations.

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The same can be said for attacks
agains police.

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As the strike progressed, the isolated
attacks on police that characterized

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the demos during the beginning
of the strike, so does a couple of rocks

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thrown in their direction eventually
became more popular to do

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up to the point where demos sometimes
became very uncontrollable for hours.

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This is simply a matter of persistence.

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Fuck! Holy shit!

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As people continue to see massed up
street fighters getting away

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with attacking the pigs we'd been
clubbing them for weeks.

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They start to see themselves as capable
as acting conflictually as well.

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I imagine that this involved many different
groups of friends in the students milieu

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making plans to come to demos
with these intentions for the first time

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but also probably involved many people
coming back themselves.

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The tension that can be felt against the
police during strike initially mostly only

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manifested itself in chance. But over time
this transformed into the more

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empowering practice of attacking police
directly.

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And as more and more people took this
up it snowballed into being normalized.

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And what are some of the tactical lessons
learned from that period?

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When you look at the confrontation with
police that we've seen here,

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it can basically be broken down
into two things:

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confrontation that frees up
space in the police, and

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confrontation that doesn't have the force
to make police retreat

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but is still valuable obviously. From what
I've seen the factor that make

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projectile attacks, for instance,
capable of winning the space

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are coordination and
widespread participation.

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With an offensive mentality that doesn't
wait for police to attack us first.

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This is how fear changes camp, severing
the cycle of police inevitably attacking

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the demo and dispersing it as everyone
runs from police charges.

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In montreal the courage to confront police
is already held by many people,

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while often the level of self-organization
is not quite developed enough

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to make these confrontation long-lasting.

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Something that some anarchists
quickly realized

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was that if we want to hold the streets
after things start to get wild,

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projectiles must be collected
as soon as possible.

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During the demos with more militant tone,
like march 15th, the night demos,

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the book fair weekend, april 25th,
may day and others,

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whithin the first 10 minutes you would see
crews running to houses and gardens

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to collect rocks inside bags, using
hammers to pry rocks up from the street,

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or thrashing the larger pieces into
throwable sizes on the sidewalk.

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People who collected rocks
would then distribute them amongst

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the masked portion of the demo.

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Something that also started to happen
more often with people counting down

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for throwing, so that instead of just one or
two rocks actually connecting with police,

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there were volleys that could
make police retreat.

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Another tactic to accompany
rock-throwing that has been used

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pretty extensively is throwing paintballs.
These often have a limited effect

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unless aimed well enough to hit a visor.
I've seen this happen only once.

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Fire extinguishers filled with paint,
on the other hand, as seen in oakland

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during the general strike,
are the perfect weapon agains police.

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With one swoosh you can blind
an entire riot cop line

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and take them out for as long as it takes
them to clear their visors.

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The same goes for police vehicle's
front windshileds.

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Fireworks are also often shot
at police lines, but the few times

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road flares have been used, they've been
far more effective than fireworks.

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It's also really important for undercovers
and corporate media to be fought

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out of the demo as soon as things start
to get rowdy,

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to make it safe or to eventually disperse
and demask.

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And finally, wearing black socks
over shoes and ditching them

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with everything else can save you
a lot of trouble.

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So can wearing cotton gloves.

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Yep, that's about it.

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Thanks, nick!

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And that's about it for this sedition of

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"It's The End Of The World As We Know It
And I Feel Fine".

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As always, this here labor of love
and rage is brought to you by slaves

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who shared their fiat currency so that
we can keep the lights on.

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So muchas motherfucking gracias to...
jason, samantha, katie, kylon, fiona,

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rahina, daniel, patrick, miguel, gavon,
adrian, tim, angela, thomas,

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00:12:57,705 --> 00:13:02,587
preston's production, rosemary,
tom, alexander, gregory, jimmy,

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00:13:02,587 --> 00:13:07,963
dylan, christian, kyle, valentine, françois,
alyssa, jennifer, liam, richard, justin,

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00:13:07,963 --> 00:13:13,888
james, robin, chris, aaron, mika, steven,
shawn, serena, patrick, (inaudible), F.G.,

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bruce and... steven. (inaudible).

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Also I wanna give a warm welcome to the
newest members of the taconspiracy:

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ashley, emilia and... justine.

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Bienvenidas!

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For links to information about militant
street tactics, just visit my fucking website:

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And to quote from sun tzu's
The Art Of War:

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The ultimate skill is to take up a position
where you are formless.

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If you are formless, then most penetrating
spies will not be able to discern you,

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or the wisest counsels will not be able
to do calculations against you.

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See you in the streets...