Special forces and special operations forces (SOF) are military units trained to conduct special operations. NATO defines special operations as “military activities conducted by specially designated, organized, trained, and equipped forces, manned with selected personnel, using unconventional tactics, techniques, and modes of employment”.
In the past, we have argued for the formation of clandestine ecological special forces units as part of our strategy, Decisive Ecological Warfare. We believe this DEW strategy is one of the only chances we have for stopping runaway global warming and preserving some chance of a livable future.
The skills that differentiate special forces units from regular soldiers often fall into categories already possessed by people in the environmental movement. For example, wilderness survival, stealth and stalking, movement across rugged terrain, travel in winter conditions, emergency medicine, watercraft, ropework, robust physical fitness, and other outdoor skills are staples of special forces training. Many environmentalists already have these skills and capabilities.
Many of us, however, do not have the military-type skills possessed by special forces units. We must normalize training in these skills within our communities. As an aboveground organization, we at DGR are not engaged in DEW directly. Regardless, military-style training in firearms, small unit tactics, physical security, hand-to-hand combat, and other relevant skills will be useful for self-defense and community defense as society becomes increasingly fractured and unstable due to climate chaos, financial collapse, inequality, rising fascist movements, etc.
Participating in outdoor activities like hunting can also help us develop further competency with firearms, stalking, terrain analysis, survival skills, and so on—in addition to helping us deepen a spiritual and physical connection to the land that supports all life.
Female Special Forces Units
As a radical feminist organization, Deep Green Resistance has a special interest in seeing women lead and participate in militant action. There are countless resistance movements that have been led by female warriors. And in the special forces arena, Norway created the first all-female unit in 2014.
Candidates are selected based on attitude and physical fitness, the minimum physical standards are: one pull-up; 20 push-ups; 35 sit-ups in two minutes or less; 20 back extensions; swim 200 metres (660 ft), with no underwater phobia; and perform a 7-kilometre (4.3 mi) road run carrying 22 kilograms (49 lb) in 59 minutes. In addition there are required tests in 10 kilograms (22 lb) medicine ball throw, standing long jump, and 3000-meter run which will not disqualify, but do count towards selection. There is a 3 week pre-selection course learning basic skills before commencing the week long selection course named “hell week” that is a test of mental and physical strength involving long marches over several days with little time for rest, and minimum amounts of food and water.
Applicants then face a 10 month training program that includes a patrol course, survival course, shooting course, communications course, medical course, parachute course, winter training, winter exercise, close combat course, close quarter battle (CQB) course, vehicle course and urban special reconnaissance course culminating in a final exercise. To complete the program, candidates must be able to march 15 km (9 miles) in full gear (22 kilograms (49 lb) backpack, weapon, boots) through forests within two hours and 15 minutes or less; perform 50 sit-ups in two minutes, six pull-ups and 40 push-ups; run 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) in 13 minutes or less; and swim 400 metres (1,300 ft) in 11 minutes or less, the first 25 metres underwater.
Nigeria is the largest oil producer in Africa. In the Niger River Delta, offshore oil platforms, drilling rigs, and processing facilities dot the landscape. As a formal colonial vassal state to the British Empire, oil extraction is headed by Shell Oil, which has extracted billions in value from the country.
Nigeria has been called “the world capital of oil pollution.” It is estimated that the Niger Delta has absorbed oil spills equivalent to an Exxon Valdez (~20 million gallons) every single year for more than half a century. The land, air, and water is highly poisoned. Acid rain from gas flaring is a major issues, killing crops, poisoning land, and destroying building. And the revenues from the extraction have accrued almost entirely to Shell and a few hand-picked colonial lackeys.
In the wake of decades of this industrial devastation of the largest wetland in Africa, nonviolent resistance movements arose, led by people such as poet and activist Ken Saro Wiwa. These movements were violently destroyed by the Nigerian state in cooperation with Shell’s private military. Saro Wiwa who was executed by the Nigerian military dictatorship in 1999 on blatantly false charges.
Following this unsuccessful resistance campaign, the people of the Niger River Delta decided to escalate. Some went underground and formed The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) in 2005. Using sabotage, speedboats, and surprise attacks, MEND was at one point able to destroy 40% of the oil export capability of Nigeria, the largest oil exporter in Africa.
You may be thinking, what does this have to do with me?
Regardless of where you live in the world, there is much to learn from MEND. Here in United States, where I write this article on occupied stolen land, the environmental movement has been unable to stop even the growth of oil production. The U.S. is now the leading oil producer globally (14.46 million barrels per day). The environmental movement has failed to stop this, let alone reverse it.
New research released yesterday shows that Shell Oil and other major producers are expected to ramp up oil production by 35% in the next ten years.
Meanwhile, a few hundred poor Nigerian people, with limited training and funds, were able to stop 40% of their nation’s oil production. They did this by acting as a liberation movement and attacking the colonizing force’s ability to maintain war. In other words, they targeted infrastructure.
In 2016, we published an article calling for serious resistance in the form of “ecological special forces”—trained, small units of activists operating clandestinely to sabotage and otherwise stop industrial capitalism, civilization, and empire.
This article will expand on that piece by looking at skills and techniques that serious underground resistance actionists would require to be more effective.
Skills for Serious Resistance
Knowledge of industry operations
To be effective, ecological commandos need to study the industries they are fighting. They need to understand factors such as:
Type of equipment necessary for a given operation
Basics of mechanics
How to identify critical and vulnerable components of heavy machinery and infrastructure
Common security measures taken at industrial sites
Work rotations and scheduling
Basic physics and engineering
To effectively dismantle and/or sabotage larger infrastructure, resisters will need to understand the applied principles of force, mass, momentum, pressure, structural integrity, and so on.
Chemistry
It goes without saying that the ability to use common substances to create demolitions charges is essential for effective underground resistance work. This includes how to access the necessary raw materials without exposing your identity.
Electrical
Knowledge of circuits and timers is essential for clandestine resistance fighters and relatively easy to learn.
Security
This includes digital security (such as the ability to conduct digital research anonymously), operational security, stealth, and social engineering (acting). It should also include knowledge of the forensics and research tools (both physical and digital) used by law enforcement, and a mastery of basic activist security culture.
Physical fitness
There are scenarios in which physical fitness can make-or-break success for resistance groups. Ecological commandos take their health and fitness extremely seriously.
Money
As a ballpark figure, a continental-scale resistance movement might need a budget between $100,000 and $1 million to gather supplies, maintain cover stories, and for basics like food, lodging, and transportation. Funding is critical for ecological commandos. Additionally, they should have secure methods for buying materials (preferably with cash).
Much of the above will depend on networks of support. These networks need to be prepared to maintain an “underground railroad” where no questions are asked. They should also know and use secure/anonymous communications channels, preferably offline.
Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) eco-saboteurs Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya have been arrested and charged with multiple felonies.
They face up to 100 years or more in prison. Their next hearing is currently scheduled for December 2, 2019, before U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger in Des Moines, Iowa.
Statement of Support from Deep Green Resistance
Deep Green Resistance officially stands in solidarity and full support of the actions taken by Jessica and Ruby.
We expect they will find no justice in the colonial courts of an imperialist state, in a city founded as a military fort to oversee the destruction of local indigenous inhabitants and facilitate the settler-colonial invasion project, but the struggle does not end with incarceration. Revolution is bigger than any individual, and we struggle in solidarity with comrades locked in cages.
In an era of mass extinction, climate chaos, and ecological collapse, an era in which mainstream environmentalism has failed to even partially reverse these problems, militant action against industrial infrastructure such as pipelines is, without any question, justified.
In fact, militant resistance is a moral and physical obligation—a matter of planetary self-defense.
How to Support Jessica and Ruby
We invite you to join us in pledging our full support to their legal defense and to work in solidarity outside the courtroom. We are currently gathering more information about their legal situation. Pending information, we are now taking donations for their legal defense and expenses.
To donate, click here and follow the instructions. Be sure to earmark your donation (using the “comment” field or memo of a check, etc.) for Jessica and Ruby legal defense.
For more updates on this case, visit this site regularly, or subscribe.
Their Actions: Eco-Sabotage Against the Dakota Access Pipeline
Between July 2016 and May 2017, Jessica and Ruby are believed to have committed at least 10 acts of eco-sabotage against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) using oxy-acetylene torches and improved incendiaries.
These attacks delayed pipeline construction by several months. In terms of material effectiveness vs. resources invested, their ecosabotage was roughly 1000 times as efficient as the aboveground fight at Standing Rock.
We say this not to disparage aboveground resistance, but to highlight the efficacy of militant underground struggle. Two people with a tiny budget were highly effective at fighting this project
Comparison of material effectiveness and efficiency of various pipeline resistance techniques. Image via “Pipeline Activism and Principles of Strategy.” Click the image for the source.
Interview with Jessica and Ruby
In July 2017, two days after Jessica and Ruby publicly admitted to carrying out the eco-sabotage campaign, Deep Green Resistance interviewed the two women. You can listen to that interview here:
The Charges They Are Facing
Press release from the U.S. Department of [In]Justice, Southern District of Iowa:
Wednesday, October 2nd, 2019
DES MOINES, Iowa – On September 19, 2019, a federal grand jury returned an Indictment charging defendants, Jessica Rae Reznicek and Ruby Katherine Montoya, with one count of conspiracy to damage an energy facility, four counts of use of fire in the commission of a felony, and four counts of malicious use of fire, announced United States Attorney Marc Krickbaum. Montoya was recently arrested in the District of Arizona and detained pending court proceedings to determine her appearance in the Southern District of Iowa. Reznicek appeared in Des Moines on October 1, 2019 and was conditionally released pending trial. Trial is currently scheduled for December 2, 2019, before United States District Court Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger.
According to Count 1 of the Indictment, from at least as early as 2016 and continuing in 2017, in the Southern District of Iowa and elsewhere, Reznicek and Montoya conspired to knowingly and willfully damage and attempt to damage the property of an energy facility involved in the transmission and distribution of fuel, or another form or source of energy, in an amount exceeding or which would have exceeded $100,000, and to cause a significant interruption and impairment of a function of an energy facility.
Counts 2 through 9 of the Indictment allege specific instances of damage or attempts to damage portions of the Dakota Access Pipeline in the Southern District of Iowa by Reznicek and Montoya on various dates in 2017.
The public is reminded that an Indictment is merely an accusation, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless they are proven guilty.
If they are convicted of Count 1, conspiracy to damage an energy facility, Reznicek and Montoya face up to 20 years imprisonment, not more than a $250,000 fine, or both such fine and imprisonment.
If they are convicted of Counts 2, 4, 6 and/or 8, use of fire in the commission of a felony, Reznicek and Montoya face a mandatory minimum 10 years imprisonment to be served consecutive to the sentence imposed on Count 1. For each second or subsequent conviction of Counts 2, 4, 6 and/or 8, Reznicek and Montoya face a mandatory minimum 20 years imprisonment to be served consecutive to the sentence imposed on Count 1.
If they are convicted of Counts 3, 5, 7 and/or 9, malicious use of fire, Reznicek and Montoya face a mandatory minimum 5 years imprisonment and a maximum of 20 years imprisonment, not more than a $250,000 fine, or both such fine and
imprisonment.
The investigation is being conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and is being prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa.
Humanity has a long history of environmental activism, likely extending far beyond the reaches of recorded history. It’s easy to imagine warring tribes of indigenous peoples struggling against exploitative and excessively greedy neighbours. Competing tribes probably used violence to prevent each other from overconsuming fisheries, harvestable plants, and driving game to extinction. These actions maintained equilibrium within the broader ecosystem and allowed the indigenous humans to survive indefinitely. Fulfilling these obligations to nature would not have been easy; people would have experienced more frequent hunger, higher rates of mortality, and for frequent incidents of violence. Most of these cultures had warrior classes whose obligations often included ritualised violence against competing groups, though rarely did conflict escalate into total war.
Ecological exploitation became problematic when one group became excessively powerful, often through some form of conquest. Once they grew large enough to establish cities they invariably began to strip the surrounding regions of natural resources, always reaching farther and farther afield until the reach of the city turned into an empire, and until the empire grew too large to be managed and collapsed under its own weight. The development of increasingly efficient forms of communication, and eventually the discovery of fossil fuel, allowed empires to grow in scale until they spanned across large sections of the world. It seemed inevitable that one of these empires would eventually encompass the entire planet.
Humanity will never reach the point of developing a unified, global empire because the ecological cost of such a system strips a planet of its living systems at astonishing speed. The empire of industrialisation has infested most of Earth’s ecosystems, even poisoning the deepest regions of the oceans with plastic excrement. We are witnessing a metastatic culture rushing toward annihilation, as all cancers do, by devouring the few functioning organs of nature on this crippled planet. Each human is a cell in this system and most of us have been infected by the toxic culture of industrialism. Some humans resist these urges, our instincts and intellect tell us that our actions are wrong and will lead to annihilation, but our minds have been conditioned by industrial culture to inhibit effective resistance. After centuries of trial and error, structures have developed to prevent effective opposition to dominant cultures: people are divided by social fictions, communities are fractured into suburbs, children are indoctrinated in schools, workers are oppressed by debt and subsistence wages, and political systems have been designed to preoccupy people with the illusion of control.
Having been brought up outside the borders of civilisation, I sometimes find it perplexing that people restrict themselves to the theatre of resistance, despite failing consistently to achieve any meaningful victory. Protesters continue to wave signs, perform street theatre, and organise public forums, while patting themselves on the back for a job well done. Meanwhile, their quality of life consistently diminishes, their ecosystems continue to collapse, and their social bonds fracture. Occassionally, the masses are fed a small victory on a minor issue and they revel in their glorious victory, ignoring the fact that they’ve simultaneously accrued a long list of devastating losses. When they become frustrated they blame the professional scapegoats in government, who rotate frequently, while largely ignoring the real forces of power which dominate their world (corporations and industry).
One of the greatest fallacies that imprisons these people is the perception that the only way to effect change is to mobilise large masses of people, either for the purposes of voting or rebellion. In this way, the individual gives up most of their personal obligation to the larger crowd; they say “why should I do more than wave a sign or stage an act of symbolic resistance when the masses won’t even go that far?” Each individual waits to take meaningful action until everyone else takes meaningful action, and so they are all paralysed. Paradoxically, when someone does take meaningful action they are often scorned by the mainstream protesters. Why? Because by taking legitimate action they have highlighted the inadequacy of their comrades, and forced them to confront their own cowardice; the psychological pain of facing such a personal failing is generally too great and instead those people resort to mental gymnastics to condemn the action as extreme or counterproductive. Frequently, the less courageous members of rebellions hide behind a wall of pseudo moralism, claiming that anything outside of pacifism is profoundly wrong — meanwhile they often continue to participate in, and benefit from, the dominant culture’s economy, which itself perpetuates extreme violence.
In reality, effective acts of revolution against a dominant culture begin with individuals who refuse to wait for the crowd. One courageous person decides to take action regardless of the odds, they find a few others who have made a similar decision, and they begin. Invariably, they are initially condemned by mainstream protesters, but they persist anyway. Their commitment is to live and succeed, or fail and die. In order to reach this stage, conditions must become dire enough for survival in the dominant culture to be equal to or worse than death for the potential revolutionaries. Additionally, there must be a viable path toward a future which is so worthwhile that revolutionaries will endure significant suffering in the interim.
Once an adequate cadre of life-or-death revolutionaries has formed, support networks of less committed people form around them to provide material and social support. So long as the revolutionaries are strategically effective, their support base grows over time and eventually collapses or subsumes the dominant culture. This critical tipping point cannot be achieved until the general public loses faith in the dominant culture’s capacity to provide for their needs. So long as the average person believes that the status quo is preferable to the uncertainty of change, they will vehemently oppose any efforts to collapse the structures of the dominant culture. It is worth noting that humans are intensely afraid of unknown and they will generally endure great suffering before preferring an uncertain outcome; this is why most large revolutions have involved spiral theory, a strategic approach adopted by some revolutionary movements in which violent acts are undertaken against state targets with the intention of provoking an indiscriminate repressive response against an associated social group that is relatively uninvolved with the action itself. This repressive response is sought for its ability to radicalise a population that is currently apolitical or unsupportive of violent revolution. Spiral theory played a significant role in revolutions in Ireland, Cuba, Russia, China, North America, and many other countries throughout various periods of history.
After a cadre has formed, the next most essential step is to form support networks between less committed individuals. Their most essential role is to build wider public support, because the cadre generally operates underground and cannot defend their own actions in public settings. These support networks are they key mechanism behind expanding broader acceptance of revolutionary actions and increasing the size of the cadre.
Contemporary climate movements have been crippled because the dominant culture, which perpetuates climate collapse and ecological destruction, has been able to provide for the basic needs of the majority of the public. This allows them to frame effective direct action as extremist and as a threat to the basic needs of the public, which elicits strong opposition to effective activism. Moreover, climate activism has been ineffective because any truly successful outcomes would involve diminishing the quality of life of the majority of people (at least of those residing in the dominant culture). Peoples’ short-term awareness and their aversion to temporary suffering is greater than their reaction to long-term risk, and so they will continue to oppose meaningful action against climate collapse until their basic needs can no longer be met by industrialism.
The only way to escape this cycle is to convince the public that their political systems cannot meet their basic needs, and that those governmental structures pose an existential and near-term threat. So long as the public has faith in the processes of government to save them, they will continue to perpetuate industrial scale ecological destruction, either through their active participation or through their opposition to revolutionary actions. Therefore, it is essential that revolutionaries and their supporters prioritise the erosion of public faith in government while simultaneously inciting legitimate dread about existential and near-term threats.
Beginning tomorrow, Friday September 20, and going through September 27, there are a whole host of climate-related actions happening nationally (USA) and globally, including climate strikes and marches. These climate strikes are being heavily promoted by big green organizations on down to local communities, and the media plays along by making sure to note in coverage about the upcoming strikes that they are “youth-led”. Unfortunately nothing could be further from the truth. The youth themselves, of course, believe they are doing the right thing, and certainly their message that we need to do something about the climate catastrophe is true. But these youth are being supported and, one might even say, manipulated by a tangle of pro-business, pro-capitalism, pro-growth, anti-natureorganizations, corporations, and governments.
Bill McKibben writes about the climate strikes in The Guardian (“Why you should join the global climate strike” Wednesday, September 18, 2019). As in other recent articles he’s written, McKibben gives himself away as a front-man for big green organizations, including the one he started himself, 350.org, which have been co-opted by the solar, wind, and carbon capture industry.
He asks us to strike because…
“… sun and wind are now the cheapest way to generate power around the world”—if you ignore the impacts of land-grabbing, mining, manufacturing, transportation, maintenance, and disposal…
“… this could be the great opportunity…Green New Deals have been proposed around the world; they are a way forward”—the “great opportunity” he is speaking of is a way to keep our capital-demanding growth economy going so that the rich can continue to get richer at the expense of the natural world and the poor… Green New Deals are all growth plans, they all involve extracting more, building more, destroying more of the natural world…
“… batteries are ever cheaper – we can now store sunshine at night, and wind for a calm day”—again he is acting as front man for the solar and wind industries which are, as I write this, destroying forests, rivers, deserts, wildlife, habitat, and poor communities around the world, while the materials required for batteries and battery storage (lithium, iridium, copper, zinc, etc) are incredibly destructive to mine and manufacture…
“… indigenous people around the world are trying to protect their rightful land from the coal and oil companies”—and they are also trying to protect their rightful land from mines and dams and solar and wind factories and installations, because all those are harmful to land and communities just like oil is…
“… young people have asked us to. In a well-ordered society, when kids make a reasonable request their elders should say yes”—in fact it is the “elders” who are running the show, the elders who are running organizations like We Mean Business and GCCA who are working feverishly behind the scenes of the so-called youth-led movements to make sure that governments and corporations will make plenty of money on the fourth industrial revolution “demanded” by the people.
McKibben mixes his pro-business, pro-growth reasons for striking with just enough nice nature-sounding reasons to mask, for most people, that what he’s really doing is helping the corporations behind the fourth industrial revolution, by tricking “the people” into “demanding” action, believing they are part of a grass roots movement, when in fact those demands are being manufactured by the very organizations who will “respond” to those demands with more growth, more capitalism, and more extraction.
Don’t fall for it. True grass roots movements don’t have billionaires backing them. True grass roots movements don’t make vague demands of the very governments and organizations that have failed for 40 years to do anything at all. True grassroots activists take concrete actions that actually help: they sue the government and corporations when they break the law; they stand in front of bulldozers building pipelines and cutting down trees; they help inner city people learn how to build gardens in once empty parking lots to supply fresh vegetables; they change the zoning and planning laws in their own communities. Difficult and sometimes dangerous work that actually makes a difference.
Don’t waste your time on fake movements with vague asks that don’t actually take on the systems of power. The people behind these fake movements don’t give a damn about the planet, and they don’t give a damn about any of us. They care about money and power. That is it.
Do something real instead.
Image by Lunae Parracho for Reuters: Ka’apor Indian warriors tie up illegal loggers in the Amazon rainforest. Tired of the lack of government assistance in keeping loggers off their lands, they and four other tribes monitor their territory themselves.
“Before releasing them, one of the warriors told the loggers on the ground: “We’re doing this because you are stubborn. We told you not to come back, but you didn’t listen.”
They then set fire to five trucks and three tractors equipped to pull down trees and transport them from the jungle. They confiscated chainsaws and shotguns that they carried back to the village saying: “Jande pairata” or “We are strong.””
By Max Wilbert / Featured image: an oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia, Planet Labs, CC BA-SA 4.0
On Saturday, September 14th, a “suicide drone” attack struck the Abqaiq oil processing facility in Buqayq, Saudi Arabia. The drones were destroyed in the attack, but at this time it is not believed that the operators were exposed or harmed in any way.
Abqaiq is the largest oil facility in the world, with the capacity to process 7% of global oil supplies. Before the attack it was refining around 6.8 million barrels of oil per day. The attack is believed to have reduced Saudi Oil production by 50 percent, or 6 million barrels per day. That’s equivalent to the national usage of India and Australia combined, or more than 1/3rd of the United States oil consumption.
Saudi Arabia produces 10% of the global supply of crude oil. Therefore, this single attack, believed to have been carried out with roughly 10 drones with a range of less than 100 miles, cut world oil production by 5 percent.
The use of drones in warfare has risen over the past five years. Initially, large UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) designed by U.S. weapons manufacturers dominated drone warfare. Increasingly, however, small and even off-the-shelf drones are being used in asymmetrical conflict to great effect. For example, in Syria, Daesh (Isis) and Hezbollah have both been recorded using inexpensive off-the-shelf drones to scout and direct fire for ground troops, to drop small bombs, and as “suicide bombers.”
Environmentalists should take heed. This one attack—albeit an attack unlikely to be motivated by concern for the planet and ecology—has been more effective than the entire environmental movement, which has failed to stop the growth in fossil fuel production and consumption. These new tactics change how strategies such as Decisive Ecological Warfare could be implemented.
Some people may worry about the environmental damage caused by such a massive fire. But we should remember that all the petroleum processed at this refinery would have been burned anyway. The only difference is that it would have been burned while powering cargo ships, mining platforms, tanks, and other destructive industrial infrastructure. It is always preferable to see petroleum burn all at once, with no application, than to have it all burned over time while aiding in the destruction of the planet. The destruction of the equipment also means that more fossil fuels will stay in the ground for longer, since if there is no nearby processing capacity for them, extraction must stop. With very few exceptions, the living world would benefit from any fossil fuel infrastructure being destroyed, no matter how “messy” that destruction is.
