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Holding `Tech Toolbox Action Camp'
The All-American anarchists who tore through Seattle during the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting are looking to bring their distinctly destructive brand of activism to a corporate mainframe or website near you.
Trading in bricks for laptops, the Ruckus Society (www.ruckus.org) will convene its first "Tech Toolbox Action Camp" later this month north of San Francisco. (Where else?) The weeklong session aims to arm activists with the latest high-tech tools.
Though claiming to be non-violent, Ruckus has previously used such camps to teach demonstrators how to create confrontations with police and destroy property, all in service to the group's radical anti-establishment, anti-capitalist, anti-free-trade agenda.
So, while the "Tech Toolbox" curriculum appears innocuous enough with classes in online organizing and such, there is ample reason to think Ruckus is taking its street fight with modern America into cyberspace.
In recent years, Ruckus has held "direct action camps" for hundreds of recruits prior to mass protests. Budding hooligans are trained in "police confrontation strategies," "street blockades" and "urban climbing." They are also taught how to "scout" industrial facilities. Only scouting isn't scouting: It is snooping around breaking things.
To date, Ruckus has held two-dozen camps and trained 3,000 people. Trainees, in turn, have boldly taken Ruckus' message and methods to the streets, spearheading the most...