by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Dec 3, 2012 | Property & Material Destruction, Repression at Home
By Noelle Crombie / The Oregonian
A 39-year-old woman accused of eco-sabotage in three Western states turned herself in to U.S. authorities at the Canadian border on Thursday morning.
Rebecca Jeanette Rubin, a Canadian, had been on the run for a decade before surrendering in Blaine, Wash. She is accused of multiple counts of arson as part of a conspiracy with 12 other people from 1996 to 2001 in five Western states.
The charges against Rubin include a Nov. 30, 1997, arson at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management Wild Horse and Burro Facility in Harney county near Burns and the Dec. 22, 1998, attempted arson at the offices of the U.S. Forest Industries, Inc., in Medford. She’s also accused of involvement in the Oct. 19, 1998, arson attack that destroyed the Two Elk Lodge and other buildings at the Vail ski resort in Eagle County, Colorado.
Rubin faces federal charges in California as well in the attack Oct. 15, 2001, of the Bureau of Land Management Wild Horse and Burro Corrals near Susanville, Calif.
Federal authorities say Rubin was part of the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front, both underground movements that the government has labeled terrorist organizations. She was indicted on federal charges in Oregon along with 12 others in January 2006 in connection with a coordinated campaign that caused an estimated $23 million in damage between 1996 and 2001 in Oregon, California, Washington, Wyoming and Colorado.
When the indictment was issued eight had already been arrested in a nationwide sweep in the most extensive bust of suspected eco-saboteurs in U.S. history.
The group took oaths of secrecy and called itself “The Family.” They built firebombs, scouted their targets, took dry runs then dressed in black, donned masks and carried two-way radios during attacks.
Rubin shares a name with an 18-inch American Girl doll, produced by a Middleton, Wis., company which was released in 2009. The FBI hoped publicity from the doll would help bring Rubin to justice, according to a story in The New York Times.
“Any publicity that gets the word out that our Rebecca Rubin is wanted on various charges is certainly beneficial,” said Beth Anne Steele, a spokeswoman for the F.B.I. in Oregon.
In August 2007, 10 other defendants were sentenced to prison terms from about three to 13 years after pleading guilty in U.S. District Court in Eugene to conspiracy and multiple counts of arson. Two defendants — Joseph Mahmoud Dibee and Josephine Sunshine Overaker — are still at large.
Rubin will make an initial court appearance in U.S. District Court in Seattle and then will be transferred to Oregon to face trial.
From The Oregonian: http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2012/11/accused_eco-saboteur_rebecca_r.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 13, 2012 | Indigenous Autonomy, Property & Material Destruction, Reclamation & Expropriation, Worker Exploitation
By Agence France-Presse
Work on Brazil’s controversial $13 billion Belo Monte mega-dam ground to a halt Monday after protesters torched buildings at three dam construction sites over the weekend, the developer said.
Saturday, “a group of 30 people set fire to prefab structures at the Pimental site. They went into the cafeteria, destroyed everything and robbed the till” before setting it ablaze, said Fernando Santana, spokesman for builders Consorcio Constructor Belo Monte (CCBM).
And late Sunday, groups of 20 people set structures ablaze at Canais and Diques, two other dam construction sites, said Santana.
“On Monday, as a precautionary security measure, all activities were suspended at the construction site,” said Santana, suggesting that “vandals” might be trying to derail salary renegotiation under way.
The state-owned Norte Energia hired CCBM to build the dam, which is set to be the world’s third largest when it has been completed. Between 12,000 and 13,000 workers would be employed at the site on two shifts, Santana said.
The incidents broke out after CCBM proposed a seven percent wage hike to the workers in an area where the inflation rate is at 30 percent, said Xingu Vivo, a non-governmental group opposing the dam.
On October 9 protesters — 150 natives and local fishermen — interrupted dam construction, accusing Norte Energia of backtracking on accords signed in June when people occupied the Pimental area for three weeks.
Indigenous groups fear the dam across the Xingu River, a tributary of the Amazon, will harm their way of life. Environmentalists have warned of deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions and irreparable damage to the ecosystem.
The dam is expected to flood some 500 square kilometers (200 square miles) along the Xingu and displace 16,000 people, according to the government, although some NGOs put the number at 40,000 displaced.
The natives want their lands demarcated and non-indigenous people removed from them, as well as a better healthcare system and access to drinking water.
Expected to produce 11,000 megawatts of electricity, the dam would be the third biggest in the world, after China’s Three Gorges facility and Brazil’s Itaipu Dam in the south.
It is one of several hydroelectric projects billed by Brazil as providing clean energy for a fast-growing economy.
“Avatar” director James Cameron and actress Sigourney Weaver support dam opponents, drawing parallels with the natives-versus-exploiters storyline of their blockbuster Hollywood movie.
From Bangkok Post: http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/world/320956/trouble-at-brazil-mega-dam-stops-construction-for-now
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 7, 2012 | Property & Material Destruction, Strategy & Analysis
Civilization is not a static force. It has metastasized across the world by accelerating its own development, by transforming the blood and corpses of its victims into new weapons with which to wage its relentless war against all life
Grasslands become grain monocultures feeding armies, conquering forests and mountains that become ships and swords that kill other cultures, conquering more forests and mountains, whose trees and minerals are turned into timber mills and trains, going forth to dam rivers, turning the relentless fluidity of their being to electricity to smelt iron and steel and aluminum, which in turn become guns and ocean tankers, which expand this superstructure ever further, tirelessly taking in what little wild remains, absorbing everything and everyone into this accelerating death march.
And yet, as the world is tied and bound tighter into this brutal arrangement, civilization (and especially industrialism) becomes more and more vulnerable, more open and fragile to disruption and destruction.
This brittleness is exemplified by the near-total dependence of the industrial economy on “advanced” technology, and the internet. This dependency upon a decentralized and accessible system that is poorly regulated and controlled—at least compared to other physical structures, like the offices of the same corporations— presents a potential point of powerful leverage against the operation of civilization.
Activists and resisters around the world are beginning to realize this, and seize the opportunity it presents to groups engaged in asymmetric forces against destruction.
Such as in Saudi Arabia; from a recent article in the New York Times;
“On Aug. 15, more than 55,000 Saudi Aramco [described as the world’s most valuable company] employees stayed home from work to prepare for one of Islam’s holiest nights of the year — Lailat al Qadr, or the Night of Power — celebrating the revelation of the Koran to Muhammad.
That morning, at 11:08, a person with privileged access to the Saudi state-owned oil company’s computers, unleashed a computer virus to initiate what is regarded as among the most destructive acts of computer sabotage on a company to date. The virus erased data on three-quarters of Aramco’s corporate PCs — documents, spreadsheets, e-mails, files — replacing all of it with an image of a burning American flag.”
This attack presents a good example of targeting a systemic weak point within the infrastructure of Saudi Aramco and maximizing impact through effective use of systems disruption: destroying three-fourths of corporate data will have impacts that last for weeks, and inhibit the company’s operation for some time. In fact, the attack leveraged the company’s response against itself:
“Immediately after the attack, Aramco was forced to shut down the company’s internal corporate network, disabling employees’ e-mail and Internet access, to stop the virus from spreading.”
The cyber-sabotage also highlights the importance of careful planning and timing.
“The hackers picked the one day of the year they knew they could inflict the most damage…”
This smart and strategic approach to action planning is something that is too often overlooked, ignored, or dismissed entirely. Yet for resistance to be effective, it must follow the same principles. Rather than striking at weak points to cripple the operation or function of industrial activity, attacks are typically made against symbolic or superficial targets, leaving the operation of the brutal industrial machine unscathed. We cannot continue to stumble with strategic blindness, lashing out all but randomly, and no more than hoping to hit the mark.
Again, civilization is not a static force: every hour, more forests, prairies, mountains and species are destroyed and extirpated. Every hour, civilization is pulled further into biotic collapse. We are out of time. With everything at stake, we are not only justified in using any means necessary to bring down civilization; it is our moral mandate as living beings to do so. But for that resistance to truly be meaningful and effective, it must also be smart. It cannot be reactive and sporadic, but strategic and coordinated; designed not just to inflict damage or dent profit margins, but to disable the fundamental support-systems that sustain industrial civilization and bring it all to a screeching halt.
This is one reason why cyber-sabotage has such potential as a tactic to be used in dismantling industrial civilization. Most, if not all, of the critical systems that sustain it are by now reliant upon computer networks, which as the Saudi Aramco attack demonstrates, are very vulnerable to disruption.
Online attacks also lend themselves as a tactic to asymmetric forces, and allow a very small group of people to carry out decisive, coordinated strikes from a distance, rather than requiring people on the ground to coordinate across the country to achieve a similar effect.
Civilization’s relentless growth and accelerating technology-spiral has rendered murder and death across the planet on a scale that would be unimaginable if it weren’t the horrific reality we now find ourselves in. But this process of unceasing centralization and control has also become its weakness, and for all its imposing gigantism, the tower of civilization is incredibly unstable, and now begins to sway precariously. It’s time to push with all our might, and topple it once and for all.
Learning to leverage key systems against themselves is crucial to the success of a militant resistance movement, and ultimately is at the core of any effective strategy to disable the function of industrial civilization and ultimately to dismantle it. Cyber-sabotage presents a vital opportunity to use the dynamics of industrial operations—such as the complete dependency of the electric grid or oil refineries upon complex computer systems—to accomplish that most fundamental and necessary goal.
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
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Oct 24, 2012 | Property & Material Destruction, Strategy & Analysis
The industrial machine dismantling the planet is incredibly vast, made as it is of the activity of hundreds of millions—billions—of people. Chainsaws and feller-bunchers topple forests, dams and canals drain wetlands and kill rivers, excavators tear apart mountains, dragnets scrape the ocean(s) sterile, the prairies plowed and paved over, and everything everywhere poisoned as we erase the genetic code of nature.
As civilization pushes the planet towards complete biotic collapse—speeding at the murderous pace of two hundred species a day—resistance becomes a mandate. Having seen the depressing failure of traditional & legal courses of action at slowing, never mind stopping, this death march, we are left with militant underground resistance as our only real hope for success.
While such resistance has been gaining speed worldwide in recent decades, much of the underground action taken thus far in defense of earth (at least in industrialized countries) has not been aimed or designed to cripple or stop industrial civilization. Actions have largely been defensive and reactive, with strikes against targets that—while primary causes of ecocide—aren’t critical to the larger function of industrialism or civilization.
While the courage of anyone who puts themselves on the line, risking their life and freedom in defense life, is undeniable and praiseworthy, we need more than piecemeal resistance: we need to prevent the function of industrial civilization. We don’t need to strike at the most obvious targets; we need to disable the critical support systems, to crumble the foundation of industrial civilization.
Because for all its awful horror, and despite its gargantuan sprawl, it is incredibly fragile. It is dependent on several very brittle systems (specifically electricity and oil) to sustain itself on even a daily level. These systems underlie all other industrial activity, at one level or another, and without their undisrupted operation, nothing else could function.
By disrupting these systems, that machine of industrial civilization can be brought to a screeching (and with preservation, irreversible) halt. By striking at critical nodes within the systems that sustain and enable industrial civilization, a serious militant resistance movement could seriously disrupt these systems. With some coordination, it could collapse them entirely, leveling the foundation of the oppressive & murderous social structure itself.
This process of strategically selecting and attacking targets and coordinating strikes to sabotage entire global systems is known as ‘systems disruption’. The idea is to leverage the structure and dynamics of the system against itself; identifying and attacking structural weak points, nodes that are critical to functionality, specific bottlenecks in the industrial process without which the larger system cannot function. Striking at these points yields the maximum impact of any attack on a system, and by coordinating attacks to strike at multiple, interconnected and interdependent nodes, a small force can disrupt or disable entire industrial superstructures, such as a national electric grid or international oil extraction/transportation/refining/distribution system.
Done correctly, this process is similar to that of explosive demolition, wherein massive, multi-story buildings are brought tumbling down in several seconds by carefully placed explosives. The idea is not to blow the building to dust, which would not only require countless explosives, but would also endanger everything around it. Instead, by analyzing the construction and structure of the building, workers identify specific locations at which to place explosives, and carefully time the blasts to collapse the structure in on itself.
Continuing the metaphor, by strategically selecting appropriate nodes in the system, success can be achieved with the minimal resources necessary. Consider the amount of explosives necessary to blast apart a building entirely versus the amount needed to destroy key foundational supports. The same is true of dismantling the superstructure of civilization as compared to disabling the key support systems that prop it up: refined liquid fossil fuels for transportation and electricity to power industrial activity. By allowing a small force with limited resources to topple disproportionately large and complex systems through precise attacks, systems disruption is a perfect offensive doctrine for asymmetric forces, and must be part of any smart anti-civilization underground resistance.
Also, in the same way that a proper building demolition collapses the structure in on itself without damaging anything around it, by attacking properly selected nodes, an underground resistance could collapse civilization in on itself, minimizing damage done to the planet (and oppressed humans). Rather than a protracted bloody struggle of attrition (whose success would be dubious), coordinated and decisive systems disruption would effectively pull the plug.
The doctrine of systems disruption has been used around the world in countless conflicts for the very simple (and very compelling) reason that it is incredibly effective.
In the Niger Delta, militants from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta used effective systems disruption to cripple the oil industry. By coordinating strikes against specific pipelines, pumping stations, and oil platforms, the resisters in the Delta shut down 40 percent of oil output, and in one series of attacks, this margin was increased to 80 percent of production.
Using the same doctrine, resistance forces in Iraq limited oil production by 70 percent. By carefully selecting vulnerable and vitally important nodes within the oil infrastructure system, a small force has been able to disable a national oil production system.
It’s time earth defense movements adopted similar convictions of strategic rigor. The electrical and oil systems are not only crucial to the hourly function of civilization; they are incredibly vulnerable to systems disruption. Both of these systems are designed for efficiency, a design constraint that yields configurations that are ripe for coordinated disruption.
For example, one report estimated that a loss of only 10-20 electrical substations could shut down 60 percent of power distribution, potentially for weeks.
These systems are very inflexible, and if struck with the right force in the right place, they would cease to function entirely. Often, these systemic fulcrums aren’t the places or nodes we might expect. In general, these bottlenecks—whose disruption or disabling yields the maximum impact on the rest of the system—fall into one or more of several categories: they are highly connected or cluster-connection nodes; they are high-load nodes, meaning they experience a lot of traffic, relative to other nodes in the system; or are sources of systemic flow, such as a power plant.
In systems as complex as those that sustain industrial civilization, there won’t be a single keystone piece of infrastructure the disabling of which would collapse the whole system. Rather, there will be a number of such bottlenecks. Striking any of them would be beneficial, but coordinating decisive attacks against multiple such nodes will have an exponential effect, and can cause cascading failures within the system.
These sort of strategic attacks—those that coordinate strikes against weak points and manipulate system dynamics to turn small attacks into large events, disrupting and disabling key industrial systems—are what give those standing against planetary murder the best chance of success. All smart strategic planning starts from the basis of what people, resources, and time is available, and then formulates a strategy within those constraints.
As a movement, radical earth-defense doesn’t have the resources or the numbers of people necessary to engage in open battles with those in power, nor the time to wait for civilization to collapse on its own. By operating along principles of asymmetric struggle, and using coordinated attacks against bottlenecks, an underground resistance could destroy civilization’s ability to function. In no uncertain terms, a relatively small number of people, placing the charges in just the right spots, could bring down civilization, just like a ten-story office building.
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
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jul 28, 2012 | Defensive Violence, NEWS, Obstruction & Occupation, Property & Material Destruction, Toxification
By Shiv Malik for The Guardian
Officials in eastern China have cancelled a planned industrial waste pipeline project after up to 1,000 environmental demonstrators occupied a government office, overturned cars, destroyed computers and beat police officers.
The demonstration in the city of Qidong was the latest in a string of protests sparked by fears of environmental degradation.
Zhang Guohua, mayor of the eastern city of Nantong, announced the cancellation of the pipeline, which would have emptied waste water from a Japanese-owned paper factory via the coastal town of Qidong into the sea. It is the second industrial project to be cancelled in a month.
The decision came hours after about 1,000 protesters marched through the city of Qidong, about one hour north of Shanghai, shouting slogans against the pipeline.
Several protesters entered the city government’s main building and were seen smashing computers, overturning desks and throwing documents out of the windows to loud cheers from the crowd. Five cars and one minibus were also upended, according to Reuters reporters at the scene.
At least two police officers were dragged into the crowd at the government office and punched and beaten bloody.
Environmental worries have stoked calls for expanded rights for citizens and greater consultation in the tightly controlled one-party state and come before a once-in-a-decade leadership transition this year.
The protest followed similar demonstrations against projects in the Sichuan town of Shifang earlier this month and in the cities of Dalian in the north-east and Haimen in southern Guangdong province in the past year.
The government in Shifang halted a multimillion-pound copper alloy plant project because it said there was insufficient public understanding and support after teargas was used to disperse protesters.
The Chinese government has vowed to clean up China’s skies and waterways and increasingly tried to appear responsive to complaints about pollution.
But environmental disputes pit citizens against local officials, whose aim is to lure fresh investment and revenue into their areas.
From The Guardian
Photo by Yiran Ding on Unsplash
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jul 4, 2012 | Property & Material Destruction, Repression at Home, Toxification
By Tania Branigan / The Guardian
Thousands of anti-pollution protesters took to the streets of a south-west Chinese city on Monday, halting the construction of a multimillion pound molybdenum copper plant.
Police used tear gas to disperse the crowds after rioters lobbed bricks at government offices in Shifang, Sichuan province, the English edition of the state-run newspaper Global Times reported. Other accounts said a dozen police vehicles were overturned or attacked.
Authorities said they had temporarily suspended the project while they conducted inquiries, but warned they would investigate anyone who spread rumours.
The demonstration is the latest in a series of “not in my backyard” grassroots protests in China, testifying to growing fears about the toll that development is taking of the environment and health. Last summer, tens of thousands of people in the north-eastern city of Dalian marched to demand the relocation of a chemical plant.
The demonstrations in Shifang began on Sunday night, when students and residents gathered to protest. A local police officer told the Global Times there were “several thousand” protesters on Monday, while the South China Morning Post reported that tens of thousands were involved.
Photos posted online showed protesters carrying banners reading: “Safeguard our hometown, oppose the chemical factory’s construction” and “Unite to protect the environment for the next generation”.
Residents told the Global Times that some had filed complaints against the project, but officials had taken no action.
“The local government will definitely carry out supervision during the entire process of constructing the project. If the company fails in the environmental protection assessment, the local government would not allow it to go into production,” Xu Guangyong, mayor of Shifang, told protesters on Monday morning, the state-run China News Service reported.
But by Monday night, authorities had vowed to suspend construction of the 10.4bn yuan (£1bn) molybdenum-copper alloy factory by Shanghai-listed Sichuan Hongda.
Shifang government said on its microblog account that police officers had been injured along with 13 protesters.
Others said the number of injured protesters was far higher, the South China Morning Post reported.
“Many protesters were injured when police sprayed tear gas at the crowds, from teenage students to elderly residents,” one witness told the newspaper.
The newspaper said a petition letter circulated by protesters warned: “It will be too late to protest once the factory is built … How many Shifang people have enough money to move away from the city? We’ll have to unite to keep the chemical factory out of Shifang.”
Ma Jun, the director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, said the case showed the lack of public participation in environmental decision-making.
“Heavy metal projects are always highly polluting. Of course the public has concerns about this,” he said.
“The government only released the short version of the plant’s environmental report, which did not have information about the solid waste and waste water. It should have released the full version.
“At the least, they needed to hold a public hearing. In other countries the public have legal recourse when their right to participation cannot be guaranteed, but that is not possible in China.”
Sichuan Hongda could not be reached for comment.
From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/03/china-anti-pollution-protest-copper
