By Andrew Wight & Taran Volckhausen / Colombia Reports
Colombia’s second largest rebel group the ELN detonated explosives Wednesday at four crude oil holding pools along the Caño Limon – Coveñas pipeline in the state of North Santander.
A large blaze caused by the attacks created panic in the local population, who were forced to flee their homes, according to local media reports.
Authorities were taking measures to prevent further environmental damage after the attacks as well as reconstruct the damaged holding pools.
The attack marks the first attack by the ELN in 2014, although the rebel group has been coordinating attacks on Colombia’s oil production infrastructure for the past few months, declaring war against multinational oil companies operating in the country in November.
In a statement released on the ELN website Tuesday, Colombia’s second largest guerrilla group declared war on the multinationals and oil companies “plundering” the country’s natural resources.
The ELN’s Eastern War Front Commander, Manuel Vasquez Castaño, confirmed that a slew of recent attacks directed at Colombia’s oil infrastructure have been intended to hurt the pockets of multinationals active in the country.
Once again, we reaffirm our belligerent stance to confront multinationals and their repressive apparatus: the plunderers and exploiters of natural resources,” he said. “Colombia is a colony of North American imperialism — bourgeois elites in power sold to the highest bidder and in the name of democracy deliver natural resources to their Yankee masters.
The statement went on to discuss the high prices of Colombia’s internal combustible market, which lead to nationwide strikes in the trucking sector this past summer and have been sited by farm organizers involved in ongoing negotiations with the government as a reason for the financial insolubility of the agricultural market.
“We are one of the top oil-producing countries worldwide,” said Vasquez, “but Colombia has (some of) the world’s most expensive gasoline.”
The rebel group has asked for broad talks along the lines of the peace deal currently being negotiated in Havana, Cuba between government officials and the FARC, Colombia’s largest rebel group.
But despite agreeing to initiate the process, the Colombian government has yet to reach out to the ELN central command, which has repeatedly called for the start of discussions, and recently launched an offensive against oil and gas pipelines in rural Colombia, in what is believed to be a measure to pressure the Colombian government into talks.
Despite the ELN’s efforts, Colombia’s state-owned Ecopetrol oil company reported a net profit of $2.05 billion in the third quarter of 2013 and record levels of oil production.
The Colombian government has yet to respond to the ELN’s most recent announcement, and hasn’t indicated that any plan to develop talks will be forthcoming.
The ELN, which continues to employ the anti-capitalist rhetoric of its origins as a Catholic-Marxist revolutionary group, has since become dependent on the illicit mining and gold trade, running operations throughout the country that exploit Colombia’s rural poor and generate sizable revenue streams for the group’s other activities.
A 90-car train derailed and exploded in rural Alabama early Friday morning, spilling its crude oil cargo into the surrounding wetlands and igniting a fire so intense that officials said it will take 24 hours to burn out. No one was injured.
The train was crossing a timber trestle above a wetland near Aliceville late Thursday night when 20 railcars and two of three locomotives derailed. Earlier reports said fewer cars had derailed.
On Friday morning, about 10 train cars were burning, according to a statement from train owner Genesee & Wyoming.
Emergency responders decided to let the cars burn out. Though the bridge is also burning, the fire is contained, officials said.
Scott Hughes, spokesperson for the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, told the Los Angeles Times that the oil has been spilled into the wetlands area.
“Typically wetlands are a sanctuary for a variety of different types of aquatic species, so once we’re able to get in and assess environmental impacts, we’ll certainly look at any impacts to aquatic organisms and other types of wildlife,” Hughes told the Los Angeles Times.
There are extensive wetlands near Aliceville, according to the state’s Forestry Commission website.
Hughes said that it’s difficult to determine how much oil has been spilled, because responders can’t get close to the fire. Hughes said his agency checked the drinking water wells in the area, and said there will be no effect on the water.
“The area’s pretty rural, there’s not a whole lot around,” Alabama Emergency Management spokesperson Yasamie August told the Los Angeles Times.
One family was evacuated, but has already been returned home, she said
The Environmental Protection Agency has one person on scene who is overseeing the clean-up and monitoring of air quality to assess the impact of the crude oil spill, regional Environmental Protection Agency spokesperson James Pinkney told The Times.
The train was en route from Amory, Miss., to Walnut Hill, Fla., according to the Genesee statement.
The use of rail to move oil amid rapidly expanding U.S. production is coming under growing regulatory scrutiny after the horrific explosion of an oil train in Canada’s Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killed at least 42 residents in July, The Times reported in September. A train with 72 tank cars hauling crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale fields rolled downhill into the city and ignited an inferno that destroyed half of downtown.
Don Hartley, a regional coordinator for the Alabama Emergency Management Agency, told The Times that the train in Alabama likely originated in North Dakota.
The Times also reported that railroads are carrying 25 times more crude oil than they were five years ago. And though railroads have improved their safety in recent years, moving oil on tank cars is only about half as safe as in pipelines.
Brazil’s first regional federal court suspended the environmental permit for the massive Belo Monte dam project in Amazonia and ordered an immediate halt to construction, Efe learned on Monday.
Judge Antonio de Souza Prudente’s ruling came in response to a motion from federal prosecutors.
Work on what would be the world’s third-largest dam began in March 2011, despite opposition from indigenous people, farmers, fishermen and environmental activists.
Prudente’s decision is subject to review, but a environmental permit will not be issued until the project meets all the conditions laid down in the original permit.
The judge also urged consultation with the affected indigenous communities and threatened to fine the Norte Energia consortium 500,000 reais ($228,000) per day until it complies with his ruling.
The decision likewise bars Brazilian government development bank BNDES from signing any contracts with Norte Energia until the environmental issues are adequately addressed.
The $10.6 billion hydroelectric complex will flood a 503-sq.-kilometer (195-sq.-mile) area, affecting more than 60 communities.
Due to oscillations in the flow of the Xingu River, guaranteed minimum capacity generation from the Belo Monte Dam will be 4,571 MW, or roughly 40 percent of its maximum capacity of 11,233 MW, according to government estimates.
The first regional court has already stopped work on Belo Monte on a previous occasion, in March 2012, but the Supreme Federal Tribunal overturned that ruling two months later.
Environmental activist group Generation Alpha has released a video of their confrontation with Aurizon CEO Lance Hockridge. The group’s Over Our Dead Bodies campaign has started targeting Aurizon over their crucial financial and infrastructure role in mining the Galilee Basin in Australia.
The coal mining complex planned for the Galilee Basin is the biggest in the world, and will challenge the Tar Sands as the most damaging resource project on the planet. Mining the Galilee would produce 330 million tonnes of coal, enough to fill a train wrapped around the world one and half times.
The activists visited the CEO at his $4.5 million mansion to place giant carbon footprints coming from his front gate, to demonstrate his personal responsibility for what is seen by the environment movement as an impending environmental catastrophe. He saw the action and approached the activists, accusing them of trespass, even though they were clearly outside his property.
In the confrontation between Lance Hockridge and campaign coordinator Ben Pennings, Hockridge firstly denies the importance of Aurizon. However, when Pennings asks how the mining companies will transport the coal without a rail line the CEO simply says, “That’s a matter for them isn’t it”. Afterwards, Pennings said:
Mining the Galilee Basin is like setting off a bomb. 700 million tons of extra carbon pollution each year is a deadly catastrophe, an environmental crime. CEOs shouldn’t be able to hide behind a corporate entity for their life threatening decisions. We will continue to target Lance Hockridge, to tell the truth about this crime to his neighbours, his community, the world. We will do this and much more till he considers what’s best for the future, not just his wallet.
Industrial civilization is killing the planet. It is, by its very nature, entirely dependent upon tearing & rending apart the fabric of the living world for the raw materials which sustain industrial society. As civilization fells ever more forests, blows apart ever more mountains, dams ever more rivers, vacuums ever more fisheries, drains ever more wetlands, plows ever more prairies, and replaces ever more of the natural world with concrete and fields growing food for solely human use, the bloody hands of empire must reach ever further afield to grasp for new pockets of wilderness to seize.
As industrial society becomes more and more globalized, so too does industrial destruction. Wild places that may once have been too remote to access find the crushing weight of civilization brought to bear upon them.
While the reach and presence of this way of life accelerate around the planet, the privileges and material prosperities afforded by its war against life remain the property of a small minority at the center of empire. It is to this center that the overwhelming portions of planetary plunder flow. It’s coded into the way empires—and civilizations—operate. The center of power conquers outlying lands, colonizing them and forcefully extracting resources, which flow back to feed the bloated power base.
The pattern is the same, whether we’re talking about cities extracting food via agriculture from the surrounding lands or the global economy extracting oil, steel, wood, etc. from the Global South. It is the same dynamic of empire—of colonies and conquerors. We may rationalize the pattern through complex social and economic theory, but it doesn’t change the underlying relationship of exploiter and exploited.
Central to the smooth function of this way of life are the logistics and transportation necessary to physically transport those materials from the site of extraction to the center of empire. The global economy is incredibly complex, so much so that how exactly it operates in the physical world may seem inexplicable, and only comprehensible in the abstract. But despite this, there are very specific infrastructures—foundations of support—that are fundamental to its function. The infrastructure of globalized transportation and logistics is among these; without them, the precarious balance of industrial society would collapse.
In the incessant drive towards ever-greater efficiency—the drive to expand “economic production” (read the conversion of living landbases into private wealth) beyond any limitations—the industrial economy is becoming ever more dependent upon fast-paced transportation and logistics. It’s why most grocery stores only have a 72 hour supply of food in-store. By reducing inventory capacity and relying upon “Just-in-Time” transportation systems, industrialism has accelerated its pace, but at the expense of its stability.
For those who understand the destruction and horror that is this way of life—those who understand that it must be stopped and dismantled at any cost—the centrality and fragility of the systems responsible for the transportation of resources & goods presents a strategic target for disruption and sabotage.
Fortunately, these transportation networks are large and poorly defended. A paper recently released by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, written by Douglas Bland, cited the criticality and vulnerability of Canada’s rail transport infrastructure as weaknesses which could be exploited to cripple the entire Canadian economy. The report talks specifically about the potential of an “aboriginal uprising” in Canada and how such a mobilization could impact the industrial economy of the nation:
In the event of an insurgency, the Canadian economy could be shut down in weeks. The 2012 CP Rail strike cost an estimated $540-million a week, as it hit industries including coal, grain, potash, nickel, lumber and autos. Some First Nations leaders like Terry Nelson in Manitoba have already concluded that a covert operation involving burning cars on every railway line would be impossible to stop.
This vulnerability in the structure of modern civilization is present outside of Canada; indeed, it is characteristic of the global economy. These transportation and logistical networks—those that connect and maintain the flow between the different nodes of industrial production—are fragile, sprawling, and poorly guarded. And they’re very vulnerable to sabotage.
As just one recent example, some anonymous folks sabotaged rail lines in Central Oregon in celebration of May Day a month ago. In their own words,
Late at night on May Day we sabotaged a rail line in Central Oregon to interrupt the flow of commodities. Capital depends more than ever on the metropolis, the constant flow of commodities, services, capital, information, and any interruption of that flow is a small victory… This action was quick and easy. Using copper wire with the ends stripped, we wrapped both ends of wire around the rail and buried the middle section. This sends a false signal that there is a train on the tracks, delaying any other movement until the blockage is cleared.
Like many forms of sabotage, it doesn’t take much, as the communique issued by those behind this particular action so kindly describes.
Of course, while we understand that disrupting a single rail line on a single night will have little to no measurable impact on the masticating gears of industrialism, such sustained actions—as described by Bland’s paper—could translate into effective systems disruption. With the whole of the globalized economy so dependent upon such a precarious & precisely balanced transportation infrastructure, the impacts of such a campaign of sabotage could have massive and far reaching effects.
This way of life cannot last. It remains steady and standing only through actively destroying and consuming the fabric of the living world. The movement of materials—the blood soaked corpses of its victims—through the industrial system is central to this. To stop that movement is to stop the machine. While it may not be the first course of action many would turn to, and while it may make some uncomfortable, sustained and coordinated sabotage against the industrial transport infrastructure presents a strategic way to disrupt and halt the monstrous activity of industrial civilization.
Civilization is not static; it is a holocaust in motion. As we all know, an object in motion stays in motion, unless acted upon by an outside force. It’s long past time to apply that force.
Time is Short: Reports, Reflections & Analysis on Underground Resistance is a biweekly bulletin dedicated to promoting and normalizing underground resistance, as well as dissecting and studying its forms and implementation, including essays and articles about underground resistance, surveys of current and historical resistance movements, militant theory and praxis, strategic analysis, and more. We welcome you to contact us with comments, questions, or other ideas at undergroundpromotion@deepgreenresistance.org
