Around Bris­tol between June 9th-10th, we left 7 mobile phone anten­nae in flames. Dai­ly con­tin­u­a­tion of cap­i­tal­ist soci­ety is depen­dent on unin­ter­rupt­ed flows (of goods, peo­ple, data, and ener­gy) and the com­mu­ni­ca­tions grid is no excep­tion. The lim­it­ed uses most of us can make from these flows only mask the way they are main­ly used to over­see and impose the dom­i­nant order, and increase its’ reach and con­trol. You need only look to how the val­ues of con­nec­tiv­i­ty, speed, and mobil­i­ty that are embod­ied in a mobile phone (for exam­ple) facil­i­tate a relent­less con­sumer cul­ture and the require­ment to be avail­able and flex­i­ble at all times: as much for the ben­e­fit of the boss and the adver­tis­er as for your fam­i­ly or friends. This is ful­ly con­sis­tent with the mod­ern restruc­tur­ing and decen­tral­i­sa­tion of the gigan­tic pro­duc­tive sys­tem which this soci­ety sub­jects us to. Hin­der­ing all this was our objec­tive.

2 anten­nae went up simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, in Ham­brook and out­side Ram Hill busi­ness park in Coal­pit Heath, both owned by O2. This is also not the first time O2 have been sin­gled out for dam­age acts because of the con­tracts they hold in the migrant deten­tion indus­try, with cops, and tag­ging for the pro­ba­tion ser­vice. Some hours lat­er a 3rd O2 anten­na went up in Coombe Din­gle, at the same time as a 4th fire was lit after gain­ing access to trans­mis­sion units con­nect­ed to the huge BT telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion tow­er in Lock­leaze. Sig­nals that will have been affect­ed are those of O2, T‑Mobile, Orange and Voda­phone. These cor­po­ra­tions var­i­ous­ly are con­nect­ed to the field of mil­i­tary equip­ment and arma­ment, use prison labour, and are famous for read­i­ly col­lab­o­rat­ing with elec­tron­ic polic­ing by the secret ser­vices (now that wide­spread data-sur­veil­lance is well known) while not even stop­ping at financ­ing Oxford uni­ver­si­ty with its’ exten­sive ani­mal exper­i­men­ta­tion labs. This has already led to their inter­ests being attacked in Berlin (T‑Mobile’s par­ent com­pa­ny*), Paris (Orange*), and Ban­bury (Voda­phone*).

For all above rea­sons it is always good to harm these cor­po­ra­tions, struc­tural­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly, and then there is the issue of the anten­nae them­selves radi­at­ing who knows how much harm­ful­ness to near­by species. There were the pub­li­cised cas­es in Bris­tol even some years ago of a woman in Shire­hamp­ton who com­plained of the affects of an anten­na put up on her high rise flat­block and lat­er died from a brain tumor, while an anten­na nick­named The Tow­er of Doom was with­drawn from Sta­ple Hill after can­cer rates soared. Evi­dence has mount­ed up that pro­longed use of mobile phones dam­ages the immune sys­tem, decreas­es fer­til­i­ty, and caus­es brain tumors and can­cers: espe­cial­ly in the young. We should men­tion that the anten­na we burned in Coombe Din­gle is one of three on the grounds of a uni­ver­si­ty sports pitch also mar­ket­ed for schools, as are many oth­ers. Addi­tion­al­ly, twist­ed lab tech­ni­cians claim to have deduced from exper­i­men­ta­tion on oth­er mam­mals (built on tor­ture like so much sci­en­tif­ic research) that expo­sure while still in the womb “sig­nif­i­cant­ly dam­ages brain func­tion, struc­ture and behav­iour and sug­gest­ed that these expo­sures could con­tribute to chil­dren’s behav­iour­al dis­or­ders”.

These prod­ucts were and still are pushed on us as harm­less, although near­ly every study that claims this was fund­ed by the indus­try itself, when we had no idea of the long term affects, sim­i­lar­ly to the mar­ket­ing of asbestos or smok­ing before they began to show their dead­ly toll (to use only 2 bet­ter known exam­ples among thou­sands). These days even researchers at Bris­tol uni­ver­si­ty con­cede the dan­gers of cel­lu­lar use. What a surprise.…the per­ma­nent­ly wired envi­ron­ment turns out to be tox­ic, while com­pa­nies make a killing in prof­its and the gov­ern­ment receives bil­lions in tax­es and licens­ing. For most peo­ple pro­longed con­tact with mobile phones or wire­less net­works in gen­er­al seems unavoid­able, for work or to avoid social mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion, in the street, on pub­lic trans­port, or at home: we are soak­ing in one more accu­mu­la­tive bar­rage in a poi­so­nous, anti-human and anti-life civil­i­sa­tion that grows by the day.

A recur­ring fea­ture of the estrange­ment that tech­nolo­gies such as mobile phones actu­al­ly cul­ti­vate between indi­vid­u­als, is how many addict­ed to their con­stant use now pre­fer to text mes­sage or to “tweet” to avoid the prospect of real life con­tact, and how many only feel safe com­mu­ni­cat­ing from behind a device. It is now com­plete­ly stan­dard for peo­ple to spend the major­i­ty of their wak­ing hours inter­fac­ing with one screen or anoth­er. Up and com­ing inven­tions such as Google Glass attempt to make this enclo­sure near total (although also depen­dent in part on unin­ter­rupt­ed trans­mis­sion infra­struc­ture). As a soci­ety that lives through high­ly com­plex tech­nolo­gies, we no longer ful­ly inhab­it our bod­ies and envi­ron­ment but instead some part of the tech­no-hive: and it is no longer only nerds and the young who prac­ti­cal­ly call this vir­tu­al real­i­ty their home. As the sphere dom­i­nat­ed by infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy expands, what is con­sid­ered social­ly of impor­tance in our actu­al lives shrinks to what can be con­veyed and received by the device, and so nar­row­ing human emo­tion and expe­ri­ence. Or think about the obses­sive urge to treat mod­ern life as some­thing less to be lived than to be doc­u­ment­ed in each detail for pas­sive con­sump­tion on the “social” net­works, as anoth­er exam­ple of coloni­sa­tion by cap­i­tal­ism and its’ tech­nol­o­gy.

Plan­ning and car­ry­ing out your exis­tence dig­i­tal­ly also allows the pos­si­bil­i­ties of unprece­dent­ed sur­veil­lance, and it hin­ders active rebel­lion or even ques­tion­ing of the dom­i­nant order by flag­ging up “abnor­mal­i­ties” in what you often vol­un­tar­i­ly share with your friends or “Friends.” At the same time, con­cert­ed exploita­tion of the base pop­u­la­tions around the world and eco­log­i­cal pil­lage to the point of col­lapse con­tin­ues to fat­ten the same rich par­a­sites’ pock­ets, and tech­no­log­i­cal immer­sion helps peo­ple nei­ther relate nor care. On the con­trary mil­lions now hunger for their part in the way of life that is killing every­thing.

With an anar­chist per­spec­tive in search of free and ful­fill­ing exis­tence, we fight to do away with all tech­nolo­gies born from the tox­i­fi­ca­tion and slav­ery of mines, fac­to­ries, and indus­tri­al infra­struc­tures, and for our dai­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tion to be as unmedi­at­ed as pos­si­ble. Tak­ing down these few nodes was not enough for us, it is not a case of sim­ply aban­don­ing the uses of a par­tic­u­lar device alone, but it is eras­ing the whole social sys­tem which first trapped us in its’ “neces­si­ty” which is the chal­lenge. We found anten­nae an easy way to start: it is sim­ply a mat­ter of burn­ing tires between the exposed cables and away you go. In North Lanark­shire, Scot­tish vil­lagers even felled one. By reflect­ing on rad­i­cal and anti-indus­tri­al his­to­ry in Britain (such as the Swing and Lud­dite insur­rec­tions), as well as con­tem­po­rary anar­chist guer­ril­la prax­is, we can see the advan­tage of low-tech, cheap, and eas­i­ly repro­ducible tac­tics to wreck machin­ery that enclos­es and impov­er­ish­es us, on an even more inti­mate lev­el present­ly than ever before. These ubiq­ui­tous (and high­ly expen­sive) struc­tures are spread around every town or city and fur­ther indus­tri­al­is­ing the coun­try­side, where they are some­times paint­ed green in the attempt to cam­ou­flage them: and dis­gust­ing­ly even have bird and bat nest­ing box­es mount­ed on some. Their guardians can­not always be watch­ing them all so it is up to our inge­nu­ity to remain a step ahead and stretch their forces thin. This and every net­work has its’ weak points, in these cracks in the archi­tec­ture of con­trol that afford us lever­age: a destruc­tive capac­i­ty we are appro­pri­at­ing. As the promis­es of hyper-tech­ni­fied mod­ern cul­ture con­tin­ue to show their shal­low­ness, rebels will car­ry on act­ing against the nox­ious instal­la­tions and the way of life they feed.

“.…Resis­tance against the Tech­no­log­i­cal-Indus­tri­al Machine lives only through the path of lib­er­a­tion from every pow­er and order, runs towards an event hori­zon where noth­ing has been writ­ten yet.” ‑let­ter from Gian­lu­ca Iaco­v­ac­ci, from C.R. San Michele prison

Our attack is not sep­a­rate from over­all anar­chist sub­ver­sion by all means, which nat­u­ral­ly includes sol­i­dar­i­ty with our pris­on­ers in ene­my hands. A wild greet­ing from Bris­tol to Adri­ano Antonac­ci, no less than to his friend and com­rade Gian­lu­ca (FAI/IRF Sub­ver­sive Anti-Civil­i­sa­tion indi­vid­u­al­i­ty) whose brave lone acts in Rome he is also accused of. Hel­lo to the new anar­chist and anti-colo­nial groups in Hong Kong and Aus­tralia, and sol­i­dar­i­ty to the Paris ten accused of sab­o­tag­ing prison prof­i­teers.

Our attack came at a time when the net­works are already set to be over­loaded by the World Cup hys­te­ria, to show our com­plic­i­ty with the insur­gent fight­ers in Brazil as they answer mas­sive dis­pos­ses­sion and mil­i­tarised slum clear­ances for the opu­lence of the games with street bat­tles and arson. Because it should be remem­bered that the enthralling spec­ta­cle, that is staged to make the rich yet more mon­ey and to dis­tract us from our dai­ly humil­i­a­tions, is based on the State and Cap­i­tal’s vio­lence against resisters, the indige­nous, and the poor­est in Brazil­ian soci­ety.

Let’s not for­get Marie Mason and Eric McDavid: both are still behind bars after State repres­sion and entrap­ment which fol­lowed an ear­ly string of Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front strikes in the USA. Years lat­er the earth lib­er­a­tion strug­gle is not defeat­ed either in spir­it or in prac­tice. The fight goes on with fur farms raid­ed and emp­tied across North Amer­i­ca, and our incen­di­ary-mind­ed sis­ters or broth­ers prowl­ing the besieged Turk­ish forests, the streets of the Cos­ta Rican metrop­o­lis, or the tech­no-indus­tri­al devel­op­ments in Switzer­land (on the last note: a quick reminder that the con­tin­u­ing legal threats against the released anar­chists Sil­via, Costas and Bil­ly, and also the lat­est vin­dic­tive treat­ment of Mar­co Camenisch around his prison trans­fer, have not gone unno­ticed by the inter­na­tion­al fire-starters).

Down with the soci­ety based on dom­i­nat­ing earth and all its’ crea­tures. Live Wires, FAI/ELF
(14th con­tri­bu­tion to the inter­na­tion­al Phoenix Project, one more part of a war that will nev­er be con­tained by a legal code)

* http://en.contrainfo.espiv.net/2013/01/08/berlin-incendiary-attack-on-deutsche-telekom-vehicle-in-friedrichshain/
* http://nantes.indymedia.org/articles/28902
* http://www.directaction.info/news_mar12b_06.htm