Sabotage – Earth First!

UK: 4 new releases from green anarchist zine Return Fire (PDFs)

Just now we’ve sent out the PDF versions of our recent releases, for downloading and printing (for past issues, see 325).

https://en-contrainfo.espiv.net/2016/06/05/uk-4-new-releases-from-green-anarchist-zine-return-fire-pdfs/ for links to the PDFs

Just now we’ve sent out the PDF versions of our recent releases, for downloading and printing (for past issues, see 325). To summarise, there’s the full length edition of Return Fire vol.3 (Winter 2015-2016), full of news, theory, poetry and antagonism (download in low-res here); a companion piece consisting of our ‘glossary’ entry for the issue, on Colonisation; an imposed and print-ready version of ‘Smarter Prison?’ as a supplement to vol.3, which we received from ‘Radical Interference’ and released for December of 2015; and lastly, we’ve uploaded one of the feature texts from vol.3, ‘The Veil Drops’, to theanarchistlibrary.org as a separate file for reading and reproduction. Also, there is both colour and black-and-white versions of the cover included, in case some comrades want to do their own printing.

Return Fire vol.3

A continuation of our project to bring incisive anarchic content from around to world to an anglophone readership. New editorial content, reprints of things we’ve found useful, artwork, action listings, foraging information, the usual.

There’s a few previously-untranslated articles in this issue. For example, one is an extract from the latest cover story of Italy’s eco-insurrectionary periodical Terra Selvaggia, on ‘The Advance of Urbanisation’ and, simultaneously, cracks opening in the concrete which we could utilise… Annie Archet meanwhile tells a life-story of evading identity, in Portrait of the Invisible Woman in Front of Her Mirror. To name some out of the texts we’ve assembled from selections of pre-existing ones, David King looks at the reductionist and patriarchal implications of modern reproductive technologies in ‘Into Her Inner Chambers’, and Nicola Gai speaks to acting within ‘The Maximum That Our Abilities Allow’ (from his contribution to the founding issue of the Croce Nera Anarchica).

The content we have harvested whole includes The Intensification of Independence in Wallmapu, John Severino’s poignant reflections on a project within an indigenous Mapuche community; The ‘Wild’ as Will and Representation, about commodified and alienated approaches in the urgent need for land reconnection, simply signed M.; and Sean Dunohoe’s harrowing (if limited) polemic against the Close Supervision Centres within the British prison system. (We note that this year the organising collective for the June 11 project of solidarity with long-term anarchist prisoners has called for a focus on such units wherever they are in the world; hence we’d like to dedicate this version in that direction.)

As for our usual columns… We take a retrospective look at some Global Flash-Points of insurgent activity in the months following our last volume. Rebels Behinds Bars covers the State’s aggressions against our comrades, and the latter’s thoughts on topics from surviving incarceration or repression to (anti-)organisation for the attack on authority. ‘To Create & Maintain Their Wealth’ and ‘Sensuality, Magic & Anarchist Violence’ address gendered and speciesist domination through reviews of Silvia Federici, Arthur Evans and Jason Hribal.

The Poems for Love, Loss & War are from Rydra Cosmo, Henry Zegarrundo, Natasha Alvarez and other appreciators of all things feral. For our Memory as a Weapon segment, we’ve used Unsettling America’s spellbinding telling of civilisation’s spread through Europe from the south and beyond, and subsequent trajectory, in The Witch’s Child.

And of course, much more! (All prisoner addresses and also some court-case news is now up to date in the PDF version.)

Colonisation

This time, we ended up printing the ‘glossary’ separately to the main body of the zine. This sizeable essay could be a stand-alone on the subject (one which we feel to be both key and misunderstood by anarchists in much of the world) and distributed as such, but is also relevant to several items in contents of vol.3.

‘Smarter Prison?’

Newly laid out in A5 imposed format, this exploration of the ‘Internet of Things’ and the technological ideology which it advances was first submitted to us during the Black December mobilisation. (We’re happy that since then, Silvia, Billy and Costa, who are referenced in ‘Smarter Prison?’, have been told they will not face trial again for their thwarted attack on the IBM facility.) The struggle against the nano-world continues…

‘The Veil Drops’

This is a reader on counter-insurgency through the lens of ‘crisis’, the social and de-civilising. It’s the longest editorial piece from vol.3, and up on The Anarchist Library for wider accessibility.

Until next time,
R.F.

Germany: Largest Lignite Mine in Europe Shut Down for 2 Days by Sabotage

Germany: Largest Lignite Mine in Europe Shut Down by Sabotage for 2 days.

In the early hours of Monday Morning April 25, in the dark of the night, power corridor with 10 power mains supplying current to the massive diggers, conveyor belts and all other facilities of the Largest Lignite Opencast Mine in Europe have been set ablaze resulting in the whole mine being shut down for 2 days and continuing to operate to this moment in limited capacity. This act of ecotage follows by a week damaging of a power pylon to neighbouring Indien mine. Both mines exploit lignite which with its high moisture and contaminant content and low energy coeficient is only used to supply power generating plants, a series of which surrounds the mines with one power plant exclusively powering the the Hambach mine.

This act of ecotage and destruction of equipment without the injury or loss of life has taken aim at the industry which according to still rather conservative 2015 study of World Health Organisation on the Effects of Airborne Fossil Fuel pollutants is responsible for seven million deaths around the world each year, making it the single greatest environmental health risk, contributing to one out of every eight global deaths. Even more drastic and irreversible effects on climate change(not included in the above mentioned study), to which coal is the leading contributing factor, estimated to reach a run-away effect at 2 degrees centigrade global change by IPCC committee with a new consensus forming placing that point at 1.5 degree annual temperature change on which brink we are presently. Having already caused global bleaching and die-off to the rainforests of the oceans – the coral reefs, the combined temperature change and the increased acidity from carbon absorbtion to worlds ocean is about to make this largest habitat on earth unlivable to the next most sensitive organisms: plankton. Plankton which constitutes the very foundation of the whole ocean eco-system causing in effect unprecedented global die-off and decimation of life, putting one of the largest human-caused planetary extinctions aready taking place into higher gear still.
As this March became the hottest month on record and as Greenland ice cover underwent unprecedented melting a month ahead of its usual time, and as empty non-binding promises are made at more and more policed, militarised world climate summits all of this as the world slides into the future of chaos and instability it is in this case at least that the future generations will be able to know that not all stood silent and complacent when faced with a global hegemony of extreme energy extraction and its not so silent partners of disinformation, apathy and repression. We are however still at a very high risk of these same future human descendants and ecosystems facing a dire reality in which so little has been done.

That is why Hambach Forest Earth-First salutes those responsible for reminding all that it is not a crime to commit a lesser “crime” in order to prevent a much larger one of global destruction, death and ecocide from taking place as it has for so long in full impunity and in broad daylight……

Hambacher Forest EarthFirst!

http://hambachforest.blogsport.de

[Ed: More info here & here]

Attacking UK’s coal transport system – Severing the lines that feed the machine

Severing the lines that feed the machine is not impossible. When people take up civil uprising in the UK, if people are able to shove their obligations to one side to open up an avenue, they mainly have the ability and possibility to be able to grasp their will for something new. The war is not over when those moments stop, it sparks up in little raptures here and there, showing that we are not crushed, things can be brought to a grinding halt again, even for a split second.

It just takes a few bright spirits and we see it clear, when the smug confidence of authorities is knocked, a few pins get hit out and things can be seen in a different light. Out of synch and off balance, everything no longer appears structurally sound, life feels more up for grabs.

The new horizon peaked through our cloudy day, Sunday 6th March, and we hope this uncomplicated act of sabotage we have undertaken exposes the vulnerability of their complex matrix.

We took a risk assessment and as night just started to close in we entered the 1st railway tunnel, we cut both lines with a portable disc cutter, we didn’t imagine de-railing a locomotive but wrecking disruption and economic damage (time is money). We entered a 2nd and did a further two cuts, marking them all with pink paint, and leaving a banner as a warning.

The line in question runs through the Avon Gorge from Royal Portbury Dock over from Avonmouth, it’s freight only (no passengers), 70% of the UK’s imported coal for power generation comes through these docks. This line is a bottle-neck to the country’s dispersal. Most of it from USA where they blow apart mountains to get it out and Russia from the Shor and Teleut ancestral lands laid waste in Siberia, also places like Indonesia which drive back the forests for sprawling mines and plantations. That’s to keep factories running and city lights on, when we’ve got a feeling for escaping the work prisons and regaining the stars. Other loads carried on the line include construction aggregate and new built vehicles on their way to the show room. More high-speed trainlines are coming to the UK, more roads, more ancient woodland and wildlife wiped out in the frenzy of progress.

After seeing the firey activities against the coal flow in the Hambach forest of Germany since New Years – don’t give up the fight!, or the cutting of the coal belt in Scotland some years back by persons unknown when the battles against coal mining raged, we realise we’re not original. It’s not even the first time for eco-sabotage ambushes on that line from Portbury or the troublesome cargo, over the years. We see attacks following attacks on trainlines in different countries, it’s within reach to hinder the circuits powering the giant, we just have to harness our courage, keep an eye peeled for soft spots, maybe starting small but always dreaming big. Right now we’re reading about economic damage this month from trainline saboteurs in the north of Spain, we affirm our solidarity and respect too for the anarchists there with showcase court cases or police attention otherwise, we laugh to hear about the rowdy spirits that keep up when repressed for the fight to reject dominion. Maybe the sparks kicked up in the train tunnels even reflected over the Alps and beyond to light the sky for those in dark cells for trying to stop high-speed capitalism and also its nano-world technologies.

Joining our strength with the near and distant tribes, refusal and attack! Block the flows, up the fighters!

Toward a life that’s wild and free from coal, quarries, cars or cops. Avon Gorge sabotage group “Sand In The Gears”, signing out…..

Sabotage at Hambach open-cast mine

On Monday night, we sabotaged some construction machinery at the open-cast mine Hambach, Germany.

29.10.15

On Monday night, we sabotaged some construction machinery at the open-cast mine Hambach, Germany. Five diggers, two bulldozers, one road roller and one other, expensive looking machine ahd their hydraulics and electronic cables cut. the fuel and oil tanks were filled with sand, some mechanic parts damaged and all the windows were smashed. Despite the massive security-measures RWE and the police put up against us, it was still really easy to do serious damage to these tools of destruction.

This action is targeted against the mine’s operator RWE and its accomplices, which are destroying the basis of life on this planet.

While the big mass of people in germany is sitting silently in front of their television screens, distracted from the daily destruction of our lives by smart entertainers and prophets of constant growth, hundrets of thousands of people are dying on the other side of the world through the effects of climate change.

While most people should be aware that we can’t go on like this, it is unfortunately only a small minority that is acting against this destruction, risking their health and freedom in the process.

Three of these eco-defenders are currently imprisoned in Aachen and Cologne, for their attempts to stop the clearcutting of the Hambach forest throughthe energy-giant RWE.

All three were heavily abused during their arrests, either by police or RWE’s private securities, with one person even getting their nose broken and several teeth smashed in. Therefore we want to dedicate our action to the imprisoned people of Hambach and send our solidarity to them.

Also we want to make it clear that we will not be scared into submission and hope that more people will be motivated by our action, to commit similar acts of resistance against the brown-coal-death-machine.

The Chaos Engineering Crew

French Monsanto Research Site Damaged in Suspected Arson Attack

A Monsanto research center in western France suffered heavy fire damage in a suspected arson attack early Wednesday morning, the official in charge of the site said.

October 28th, 2015

A Monsanto research center in western France suffered heavy fire damage in a suspected arson attack early Wednesday morning, the official in charge of the site said.

The official, Jakob Witten, said police investigators “strongly suspect it was a crime as no electrical or other sources were found.”

The fire was ignited from two different places at the site, where about 10 people work and which is specialized in corn research. The smell of gasoline lingered near the building, which had heavy damage in its reception hall and offices.

“No Monsanto sites in Europe have so far been the victim of fires of criminal origin, this is unprecedented violence,” Witten said.

However, forty tons of GM sugar beets were torched in Oregon, sparking an FBI investigation, so the sentiment behind this latest arson, if it indeed was an act of violence, is not unprecedented.

The Creve Coeur-based company is the frequent target of criticism in France over concerns about genetically modified crops it has developed.

The government said last month it would use a new European opt-out scheme to ensure a ban on the cultivation of GM crops in France remains in place.

Two Moments of Oil Railway Sabotage in Montreal

The infrastructures of State and capital continue to spread their tentacles, seeking to accelerate the extraction and transportation of resources to the market.

September 10th, 2015

from Anarchist News

The infrastructures of State and capital continue to spread their tentacles, seeking to accelerate the extraction and transportation of resources to the market. The vast territory that is the Canadian North, often sparsely populated due in large part to the displacement, isolation, and genocide of indigenous peoples, is an immense source of profit; oil, gas, forestry, hydro-dams, uranium mines, etc. Various monstrous infrastructural expansion projects are currently trying to connect the Alberta Tar Sands through pipelines along the St. Lawrence river to the Atlantic. These projects entail expanding and constructing new infrastructure such as ports, rail lines, and highways all along this route on colonized territories.

We placed a copper wire connecting both sides of the tracks, thus sending a signal indicating a blockage on the tracks and disrupting circulation until the tracks were checked and cleared. This train line in particular is being worked on in order to facilitate the transport of oil eastward to the port of Belledune in New Brunswick.

To block train lines, one can :
1. Obtain at least 8 feet of uninsulated 3AWG copper ground wire (the kind that is used for wiring main service panels in a house).
2. Wrap the wire around each rail of the track, connecting both sides, and ensure good contact.
3. Cover the wire between the tracks so that it is more difficult to detect.
4. Smile at the possibility of causing thousands of tonnes of train traffic to be disrupted.

This simple act is easily reproducible, and demonstrates the vulnerability of their infrastructure despite their surveillance technologies and legal apparatus intent on dulling our teeth. The recent strengthening of the Canadian State’s capacity for repression through Bill C-51, now law, includes legislation requiring a mandatory minimum sentencing of five years for those convicted of tampering with capitalist infrastructure. For us, this legislation further emphasizes how integral the functioning of ‘critical’ infrastructure is to projects of ecological devastation (and the society that needs them), and how powerfully the simple act of sabotage can contribute to struggles against them.

We conceive of our struggle as against civilization and the totalizing domestication it entails; we seek nothing less than the destruction of all forms of domination. As a step in this direction, we hope to contribute to the formation of a specific struggle against these projects of industrial expansion. We want to organize to combat these projects in ways that are decentralized and autonomous, including with consistent and widespread railroad blockades. Autonomous self-organizing escapes a mass movement logic (to impose an agenda through ‘mobilizing’ others while waiting for the ‘right’ conditions to act) and the political recuperation imposed by reformist environmental activism. Convergences can play a crucial role in initiatives flourishing, but it is equally crucial that the struggle against these projects does not start and end there. Let’s up the tension against this world, let’s proliferate the attacks.

Award giving for greedy estate agent CJA in Bristol

Award giving in recognition of services to landlords and their rights. We proudly presented bricks through windows of CJA estate agents in Southville on the night of 31st August. All windows smashed and the international squatter symbol painted on their wall. Because despite the ban on squatting houses everyone should have a decent home.
CJA have showed real resilience and single mindedness to make a stand for maximum profit regardless of the tough conditions faced by tenants everywhere. In a letter to Bristol landlords in March this year they encouraged landlords to hike their rents and cynically take advantage of the housing crisis. Because the crisis is for landlords and property developers another business opportunity. They then arrogantly ignored a campaign by a local community union to hold them to account. So we found another way to encourage them to see the costs of their actions. Thousands of us are trapped in overcrowded, over priced and chronically undermaintained and decaying rented houses. We constantly struggle to pay the rent under the ever present threat of eviction and homelessness. Gentrification and colonisation of our areas pushes rents ever higher and forces us further out. This is social cleansing and it is a very profitable business. For greedy landlords and estate agents like CJA, decent, affordable homes don't come into their sums. It's all about investment opportunities and ruthless profiteering. Meanwhile, there is a huge increase in homelessness and the hostels are full to bursting. We don't have to take this. Let's fight for a world without landlords, where people's homes are not for the profit of the rich.

Tarnac 9 Cleared of Terrorism Charges Over Rail Sabotage

An alleged “anarchist cell” at the centre of one of France’s most politically-charged legal sagas is finally to be tried for sabotaging high-speed train lines.

August 9th, 2015

An alleged “anarchist cell” at the centre of one of France’s most politically-charged legal sagas is finally to be tried for sabotaging high-speed train lines.

But in a major blow to police, who conducted a seven-year investigation into the group, the four will not face terror charges, judicial sources told AFP on Saturday.

The so-called Tarnac group was rounded up in high-publicised raids in November 2008 accused of sabotaging the TGV network around Paris, a powerful symbol of French national pride and technical know-how.

Thousands of passengers and more than 160 train services were delayed after steel rods were put across overhead power cables on three high-speed lines between Paris and London, Brussels and the French regions.

Then interior minister Michele Alliot-Marie branded the group a dangerous “ultra-left anarchist movement”, but the group — who lived in a rural commune in central France — and many on the French left, accused President Nicolas Sarkozy’s right-wing government of trying to frame them.

But in a major blow to the authorities, anti-terrorist judge Jeanne Duye came down against their demands in her long-awaited judgement Friday to try them for terror offences.

Yildune Levy, suspected of belonging to a ‘terrorist organisation’ with her then-boyfriend

– ‘The Coming Insurrection’ –

She did, however, send the group’s reclusive leader Julien Coupat, his wife Yildune Levy and two others for trial on conspiracy charges, sources said.

The group’s lawyers called the decision a “total repudiation” of the allegations against the four.

“After nearly seven years of trying to pin the blame on them, we finally have a courageous judicial decision. It is a total repudiation of the prosecution case,” Marie Dose and William Bourdon said.

“From the beginning, our clients were considered and treated like terrorists. Finally they have realised that it doesn’t stick,” they added.

“Our arrest was purely political and was based on false testimony from the police,” said another of the accused, Mathieu Burnel. “All this will fall apart at our trial.”

The case centred on the charismatic figure of Coupat, 40, a far-left intellectual from a wealthy family who had gathered a group of 20 followers around him in a remote village in the Correze region of central France.

Relying heavily on passages from a 2007 book attributed to Coupat, “The Coming Insurrection”, investigators claimed the group — the “invisible committee of the imaginary party” — had tipped over from radical anarchist politics into terrorism.

The book discussed sabotage and other ways to “finalise the fall of the state”, and mentioned the high-speed TGV network as an “easy” target.

But Coupat, who refused to confirm he was its author, said it was “risible that terrorism charges could be brought on the basis on a book on public sale.”

Coupat and Levy, 31, admitted being close to TGV lines east of Paris when an iron bar was placed on the track on the night of November 7, 2008, but denied putting it there.

Coupet spent more than six months in jail as police tried to build a case against him, with Levy also locked up for more than two months.

The prosecution has five days to appeal the judge’s decision.

from AFP

Addition: their arrest was in part down to Mark Kennedy, the British undercover cop embedded in Earth First! and the wider ecological direct action movement for over 7 years. More info

Meuse, France: Nuclear Waste Landfill Project Sabotaged

July 14th, 2015

anonymous report / Contra Info

Not far from Bure, an analysis site of ANDRA was attacked by a few determined night owls.

At Bure, in Meuse, power is trying by all its means to have accepted a nuclear waste landfill project 500 meters underground.

Despite that the project has not yet officially started, that of the nuclear waste not arriving before 2025, the ANDRA installations (the National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management, in charge of the landfill project) are already swarming in the area.

One night around the 25th June, a construction site containing multiple electrical installations and a well, to analyse the condition of the rock and water table, was devastated.

The well was then forcibly blocked up with concrete, and all the cabinets were fractured and destroyed by the rage of those who don’t want to wait for the exhaustion of legal resorts to attack this project.

Attack the infrastructure of power wherever they are, in Meuse like elsewhere.

Against Cigéo and its world, resistance and sabotage!

Mexico: Explosive Attack Against Ministry of Agrarian Territorial and Urban Development

from Insurrection News / Contra Info

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT…

Black June. On June 6 at about 3AM we successfully detonated an explosive device made of dynamite that was placed inside the offices of SEDATU (Ministry of Agrarian Territorial and Urban Development) located on Revolution Avenue near the corner of Rio Mixcoac in Mexico City, Mexico. The detonation destroyed the glass front of the building.

In Mexico, this secretariat – using different names – has been responsible for putting an official stamp on the turning of nature and the earth into commodities and of normalizing the dispossession and violence that the state uses in it’s accumulation of capital.

We are a group of insurrectionary anarchist feminist witches who have gathered in a cell of affinity. Our group was born on August 25 2014 when we detonated an explosive device in a PAN (National Action Party) office in the Mexico City and placed another device in the Loreto church in the historic center of the same city.

June is a month of thirty days…

We also denounce the vile way in which the mass media hides the news of the attacks and the resistance.

Solidarity with the imprisoned comrades in Chile, Italy, Greece and Spain. We are with you comrades.

Solidarity with the comrades Mario López and Carlos López. We are with you comrades.

NO VOTES. KILL THEM ALL

Mexico City, June 7, 2015

Lupe la camelina
Por la célula de difusión del
Comando feminista informal de acción antiautoritaria (Informal Feminist Commando Of Anti-authoritarian Action)
(COFIAA)

(via contra info, translated by Insurrection News)