by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 25, 2013 | Indigenous Autonomy, Noncooperation, Protests & Symbolic Acts, Repression at Home
By Colombia Informa; translation by Molly Fohn
After two weeks of peaceful protesting against oil exploitation in Arauca, on February 12 that department’s social organizations began a strike announced a few days earlier as a response to the repeated broken promises by the national government and transnational companies.
The last attempt at dialogue took place on Monday, February 11, between the Commission’s spokespeople (composed of a delegation of indigenous people, peasants, youth, women, workers and community members) and representatives of the Minister of the Interior, as well as oil companies that operate in the region, with the goal of establishing the conditions that would allow the fulfillment of those promises that they’ve been making since May 2012.
The repeated lack of follow-through by the government and businesses, and the delay in the negotiation process caused the fracture in the space for dialogue, followed by the use of state force: approximately 1,200 members of the Mobile Anti-Disturbance Squadron (the ESMAD in Spanish) arrived to violently evict the communities at the protest sites.
The first act occurred on the walkway San Isidro, over the de Tame road toward the Arauca capital, at the gate to the petroleum complex Caricare, which is used by the transnational company OXY, where ESMAD, the Police, and the Army assaulted the mobilized communities by setting fires to the surrounding pastures, discharging their weapons, destroying common buildings (a school), taking away the food supplies to the protestors, and beating and retaining four people.
As a result of the violence, a pregnant indigenous woman who was passing through lost her baby because of the effects of the tear gas, and had to receive emergency attention at a medical center.
The police had kept local and national reporters from contacting CM&, RCN, and other local media that moved to Caricare; the national army set up a checkpoint in the sector of Lipa that prohibited the passage of reporters “for security reasons.” It should be noted that in the Quimbo (Huila) events the police also restricted the presence of the media and acted out a series of violations of basic human rights and International Humanitarian Rights (DIH).
In the face of the this situation, the Human Rights Foundation Joel Sierra posted an Urgent Action which stated its concern for the detention of people, aggression and brutal violence exercised against the peasants and indigenous peoples, the infractions of the International Humanitarian Rights committed by the police to violate and destroy civil installations, and the removal of supplies for feeding those protesting. The Foundation also insisted that the Colombian State respect human rights and the International Humanitarian Rights norms.
In similar form, Urgent Action denounced a series of violations to the protestors’ rights by the police, whose members have dedicated themselves to constantly photograph those that participate in the protests, have retained, interrogated, and reported some of them, and have appeared in civilian clothing and armed in the middle of the night at the edges of the protest sites, among other cases.
In the rest of the protest sites, like the gate to the petroleum complex of Caño Limón in the municipality of Arauca, the town of Caricare in Arauquita, the bicentennial pipeline in Tamacay and el Tigre (Tame) and in Villamaga (Saravena) and the fire substation of Banadías (Saravena), the authorities have sent contingents from the army, the national police, and the ESMAD, because they fear the same will happen in those places that happened in Caricare.
It’s important to note that at this time people and vehicles cannot travel by land to get outside of the department of Arauca by the only two major roads (Casanare and Norte de Santander), and all commerce and activity is completely paralyzed in that region of the country.
From Upside Down World: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4140-colombia-riot-police-attack-communities-protesting-oil-exploitation-in-arauca-
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 20, 2013 | Lobbying, Movement Building & Support, Obstruction & Occupation, Property & Material Destruction, Strategy & Analysis
Resistance against exploitation is nothing new. History is full of examples of people—perfectly ordinary people—fighting back against injustice, exploitation, and the destruction of their lands and communities. They move through whatever channels for action are open to them, but often, left with no legal or political power, they turn to militant means to defend themselves.
It is hardly a simple decision, and rarely the first or preferred option, but when all other paths have been explored and found to lead nowhere, militant action becomes the only realistic route left. Movements and communities come to that truth in many different ways, but almost without fail, they come to it borne by a collective culture of resistance. One inspiring example is the Bolt Weevils.
The Bolt Weevils were a group of farmers in Minnesota who spent several years in the late 1970s perfecting the fine art of sabotaging interstate electrical transmission lines. Their efforts have been memorialized in numerous books and songs, and their story is a hopeful one we would do well to remember and re-tell.
The story of the Bolt Weevils begins in the mid-1970s, when the Cooperative Power Association (CPA) and United Power Association (UPA) proposed construction of a new interstate high-voltage transmission line. Taking its name from the two cooperatives, the CU Powerline would carry current from a generating station in North Dakota across west-central Minnesota to feed the urban centers of the Twin Cities.
In determining a route for the powerline, small farmers land was rated less important than large industrial farms, and as a result, the proposed route crossed the property of nearly 500 landowners. Outraged at being trodden over to for the benefit of industry and urbanism, resistance against the project began immediately in earnest.
Once residents found out about the project, they refused to sign land easements. Local towns passed resolutions opposing the project and reject construction permits. The powerline went to review before the State’s Environmental Quality Council, which went ahead and granted the necessary permits in the face of overwhelming public opposition.
When surveyors showed up out of the blue in one farmer’s fields, he smashed their equipment with his tractor and rammed their vehicle. The action of that one farmer helped catalyze popular sentiments into action. Farmers began using CB radios to notify one another about surveying activities, and would turn out in groups to stop the work. As resistance began to build, local radio stations would broadcast times and locations of protestor gatherings. Farmers and others who opposed the project began meeting every morning in the Lowry town hall, hosting others who’d come from neighboring counties, to make plans for each day.
As surveying and construction continued, the locals escalated their efforts. They would erect signs in their fields to block the sightlines of the surveyors, and stand next to survey crews running their chainsaws to disrupt their work. Survey stakes disappeared overnight. Farmers used their trucks to make roadblocks and their tractors to pile boulders in the construction sites. One group even gained permission from the county to improve a rural road—they dug a ditch across it to stop all traffic.
They filed more lawsuits, and the issue was eventually taken up by the Minnesota Supreme Court, which in the spirit of everything it represents, decided against the farmers and in favor of the powerline. Many of the citizens opposing the pipeline had earnestly believed in institutions like the Supreme Court and the structures of power. After their battles through the courts, many of them were disillusioned and had been radicalized.
Law enforcement began escorting construction and survey workers, and the situation came to a head on January 4th 1978, when 100 farmers chased powerline crews from three different sites, fought with police, and even tore down part of a tower. The next week, the Minnesota Governor ordered the largest mobilization of the State Troopers in Minnesota’s history, with 200 Troopers—fully half of the force—descended on the rural area to ensure construction continued.
Protests continued and grew, as the issue began to draw national and international media attention; hundreds turned out for rallies at survey sites, and some schools even let out so students and teachers could attend. In St. Paul, thousands of farmers rallied and demonstrated, and in March of 1978 more than 8,000 people marched almost ten miles through freezing temperatures from Lowry to Glenwood to protest the CU powerline.
It was in the heat of August that the kettle boiled over. Bolts on one of the transmission towers were loosened, and soon afterwards, it fell over, as the Bolt Weevils entered the scene. Then three more fell over. Guard poles and bolts were cut and loosened, insulators were shot out. Over the next few years, 14 towers were felled and nearly 10,000 insulators were shot out. Soon, helicopters patrolled the powerline, and it was made a federal offense to take down interstate transmission lines.
There were numerous arrests, some 120 in all, but only two individuals were ever convicted on felony charges, and even then they were only sentenced to community service. Opposition to the powerline was so common that in some instances, witnesses refused to testify against farmers.
In the end, unfortunately, the powerline was built and went into operation, despite the protests and the disruptions by the Bolt Weevils. While they were unsuccessful in ultimately stopping the project, there’s much from their efforts that we can learn and apply to our work today against exploitation and civilization.
As in most social struggles that turn to property destruction and militancy, that wasn’t the first choice of tactics for those on the ground. They fought for years through accepted legal and political avenues, turning to material attacks after all other courses of action had proven ineffective. But more than that, the popular agitation and organizing in the years leading up to the emergence of the Bolt Weevils didn’t merely precede militant direct action: it laid the groundwork for it.
The work of the local farmers—their protests, demonstrations, civil disobedience, and community organizing—paved the way (forgive the phrase) and set the conditions for the sabotage that would later occur. By mobilizing residents and community members against the project, building social networks, and agitating and raising opposition against CU powerline, a collective culture of resistance was created, planting and watering the seeds from which the Bolt Weevils were born.
With civilization churning onwards towards biotic collapse and underground resistance the only real hope left, caring for those seeds is our primary duty today. The story of the Bolt Weevils—like countless other stories of resistance—shows that militant resistance emerges from strong and supportive cultures of resistance. The time to start building such a culture was yesterday. For those of us who choose to organize and work in an aboveground and legal way, building such a culture that embraces and celebrates sabotage and the use of any means necessary to stop the omnicide of industrialism is our foremost task.
The story of the Bolt Weevils isn’t empowering and inspiring because they “fought off the bad guys and won.” They didn’t win. The power lines were built, forced down their throats in the face of their resistance. No, their story is inspiring because it so clearly and undeniably demonstrates how simply feasible sabotage and material attacks truly are. Often, we talk about militant resistance and direct action as mysterious and abstract things, things that wouldn’t ever happen in our lives or communities, things that no one as ordinary as any of us would ever do.
Whether we romanticize underground action or are intimidated by it, we generally talk about it as though it is something out of a movie or a novel. The truth is that such actions are simply tactics—just like petition-drives or street marches—that can be used to dismantle systems of power. The Bolt Weevils—a group of farmers with hunting rifles and hacksaws*—serve as a stark reminder that one doesn’t require military training and high-tech gadgets to act in direct and material ways against the infrastructure of destruction. We’re all capable of fighting back, and while sabotage against industrial infrastructure can be daunting for many valid reasons, technicality isn’t one of them.
We may have to fail working through other channels (as if we haven’t already) before collectively turning to sabotage and attacks on industrial infrastructure as a strategy, and we will certainly need to build a supportive and strong culture of resistance. But if we’re serious about stopping the destruction and exploitation of civilization, we will be left with no other choice.
*This is speculative. I don’t actually know how they shot out insulators or cut through guard poles, although there are plenty of accounts of hunting rifles and hacksaws being used in this fashion, and it’s from those stories that I hazard this guess.
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 | Feb 10, 2013 | Colonialism & Conquest, Human Supremacy, Strategy & Analysis
The following speech was given as part of the Warrior Up Resistance Tour in January 2013.
Good evening friends, allies, relatives, I hope and pray that I say something tonight that makes you feel uncomfortable. You cannot live in these times—in the thrashing endgame of industrial Civilization, in the thrashing endgame of industrial capitalism, in the thrashing endgame of the so-called American empire—without feeling at least somewhat uncomfortable.
I am part of the radical environmental movement Deep Green Resistance. Our goal is gigantic in scope: “The goal of DGR is to deprive the rich of their ability to steal from the poor and the powerful of their ability to destroy the planet.” We believe lifestyle and consumer choices like recycling, taking shorter showers, or changing light bulbs, will not save us. We believe industrial civilization is destroying the planet and needs to be taken down and turned into rubble. The dams need to be taken out, the cell phone towers need to be knocked to the ground. We believe that, if a culture of resistance forms immediately, we all can help to soften the inevitable crash of this death culture. As a movement, we believe that when it comes to tactics and strategy, we need it all. We need aboveground actions, and we need underground actions. We need people willing to be on the frontlines and countless others supporting them with loyalty and material support. If you come from the occupying invader culture, it is your duty to put your body on the line in defense of Mother Earth and indigenous peoples. That is what makes a good ally.
The state of the planet where we live is this: Over 90% of the large fish in the oceans are gone. There is 10 times as much plastic in the oceans as there is phytoplankton, the small creatures that supply half the oxygen we breathe. 97% percent of native forests have been destroyed. 98% of native grasslands have been destroyed. The water in 89% of U.S. cities is contaminated with carcinogens. If you are under 30 years of age, half of you will get cancer at some point in your lifetime. In the last 24 hours, 200,000 acres of rainforest has been destroyed and 13 million tons of toxic chemicals have been released onto the Earth and into the water. Over 45,000 fellow human beings have died from starvation or lack of water, 38,000 of them children. Between 120-200 species went extinct today never to breathe life on this planet–that’s 73,000 a year. Indigenous cultures and languages are going extinct at an even faster relative rate.
As you know now this death culture is waging war on all life. This is a war and we need to say that. I say it again: this is a war. And I ask you: what the hell are you going to do about it? Those of us on the frontlines are willing to do what is necessary to save and defend the living by any means necessary. Are you willing to do the same?
One of my Lakota allies Chase Iron Eyes wrote: “We owe allegiance to the trees, the four leggeds, the winged ones, the water, the salmon, the buffalo, the deer, the elk, the moose, the caribou, the bears, the corn, the wild rice and all living things which find a way to live together. All of us are making a choice everyday about whether or not we will choose a better path or continue complacently down this path that leads to the death of the planet.”
Again I ask you: are you willing to do the same?
For far too many years, this invader culture has done its best to divide us. What we need desperately is solidarity—solidarity with life and standing in solidarity against this death culture. I stand here a proud traitor to this dominant culture of death and destruction.
Are you willing to say the same?
Where there is death and destruction, there is always life fighting to live; where there is oppression there is always resistance. Let’s be very straight forward and honest about fighting back. Our mother is being tortured right in front of our eyes. Our relatives are being killed and poisoned by this invader death culture. None of us can win this fight alone. We need each other, and it has always been done this way. We need each other and we need it all. Andrea Dworkin said, “I found it was better to fight, always no matter what.” Again I ask: are you willing to do the same? A lesson from her-story shows that it is in the best interest of life to fight back: the Jews that fought back against the Nazi during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising had a higher rate of survivability then those who just went along with the system of death that was in place. We must always fight back. Again I ask: are you willing to do the same?
Real resistance looks like MEND, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta. The Niger Delta has been destroyed and poisoned by Royal Dutch Shell. The people of that land tried peacefully to petition their government for redress, and to ask that the land be cleaned up and that the bodies of their families not be poisoned. Instead of listening to the people, the military government hung 8 of the leaders of the peaceful nonviolent movement, including Ken Saro Wiwa. After that happened, more than 200 brave human beings took up arms to protect the people and the land. They masked their faces, and wore camouflage clothing, the colors of Earth’s Army. They have sabotaged oil equipment and kidnapped oil workers. They have said to Royal Dutch Shell, “Leave our land while you can or die in it.” Again I ask: are you willing to do the same?
Trans-Canada thinks they will be building a pipeline through my Lakota allies’ territory. I stand before you today unafraid when I say this will happen over my dead body. Only over my diead body will they poison the water, and poison countless children and countless generations. Again I ask you: are you willing to do the same?
I leave you with a quote by author and activist Derrick Jensen: “We need all the courage of which the human heart is capable, forged into both weapon and shield to defend what is left of this planet. And the lifeblood of courage is, of course, love…The songbirds and salmon need your heart, no matter how weary, because even a broken heart is still made of love. They need your heart because they are disappearing, slipping into that longest night of extinction . . . . We will have to build the resistance from whatever comes to hand: whispers and prayers, history and dreams, from our bravest words and braver actions. It will be hard there will be a cost, and in too many dawns it will seem impossible. But we will have to do it anyway.”
This is a war!
Join us!
Thank you.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 9, 2013 | Indigenous Autonomy, Obstruction & Occupation
By Agence France-Presse
A Malaysian state minister Friday said the government would not push ahead with building a dozen new dams on Borneo island, acknowledging they have caused outrage from local tribes and environmentalists.
The proposals sparked fears that the dams would destroy pristine rainforests, endanger wildlife, and displace natives in Sarawak, a Malaysian state crossed by powerful rivers with rich jungle habitats.
“It is not a firm plan to build 12 dams. I don’t think we will need that. We will only need four,” James Masing, Sarawak’s state minister of land development, told AFP in an interview.
Masing said the government was backing off in response to widespread criticism. Protests over the years have seen activists and locals staging blockades of roads into dam areas.
“I’m pleased that this type of thing (protests) takes place. Not all that we do is correct, and this shows we need to refine our plans and think again,” he said.
The now-complete Bakun mega-dam, which is not part of the new dam proposal, has already been dogged for years by claims of corruption in construction contracts, the flooding of a huge swathe of rainforest and the displacement of thousands of tribespeople.
Despite that, the government mooted constructing more dams as part of an industrial development drive to boost the resource-rich state’s backward economy.
Another dam at Murum, also deep in the interior, is nearing completion and two others are in the planning stages as part of the new proposal.
Together the four dams — at Bakun, Murum, Baleh and Baram — are already expected to put out nearly 6,000 megawatts of power, six times what Sarawak currently uses, Masing said.
“The protests are becoming more vocal on the ground so (the dam rethink) is a very good development for me,” said Peter Kallang, member of a Sarawak tribe and chairman of SAVE Rivers, an NGO that has campaigned against the dams.
However, he said plans for the Baram and Baleh dams should be scrapped as well, noting that the Baram dam would displace about 20,000 people, compared to about 10,000 at Bakun, and destroy irreplaceable forest.
He said SAVE Rivers last month organised a floating protest along the Baram river that cruised down river for three days and was met with support along the way by local tribespeople.
Kallang and other activists have also travelled abroad to lobby against the dams, including meeting officials of Hydro Tasmania, an Australian corporation that advises the Sarawak government on the dams.
The Tasmania government corporation pledged in December after meeting the activists that it would pull its personnel out of Sarawak by the end of 2013, Kallang said.
Sarawak’s tribes — ethnically distinct from Malaysia’s majority Malays — fear that they will lose their ancestral lands and hunting and burial grounds, as the government encourages them to make way for projects and move into new settlements.
Those are equipped with medical clinics, electricity, and Internet access. But village elders and activists say alcoholism, drug use, and crime are on the increase and anger is rising over continuing encroachment on native lands.
In one of the blockades in 2011, Penan tribespeople blocked roads into their lands for a week to protest logging and alleged river pollution by Malaysian firm Interhill until the blockade was dismantled by authorities.
Read more from Global Post
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 6, 2013 | Noncooperation, Property & Material Destruction, Strategy & Analysis
In our last bulletin, Time is Short presented an overview of the need for strategic target selection. With the industrial economy barreling ever onwards, dragging the world towards biotic collapse, the importance of targeting our efforts cannot be overstated. Identifying and striking at key targets is necessary for any social change movement to be successful, and this is all the more true for radical movements that seek to fundamentally change systems of oppressive power.
Yet for all our earnestness and urgency, our movements have (for the most part) failed to target the key nodes of capitalist and industrial systems.
With so many terrible things happening, we slide into a mode of reflexive defensiveness, shifting haphazardly from one manifestation of civilization’s destructiveness to another, without any coherent plan to stop the machine responsible for all the carnage.
Devoid of a way to make tangible progress towards that goal, we are doomed to ineffectiveness: we become fixated by symbolism and direct our efforts towards symbols of that which we oppose, rather than material structures of power.
Take for instance, this communique from Indonesia, published at 325.nostate.net:
Covered by the night, we burned a private car in Tomohon (small city in North Sulawesi), owned by an unknown person. It was a car located near the local TV station in that town. A car as a symbol of slavery, eco-disaster and the meaninglessness of life.
Yes, cars are terrible. Countless people and animals are killed every day by vehicles. And car culture has become emblematic of industrial society and the lack of meaning and connection available in modern capitalist society.
But how does this advance the cause of revolution? How does this change the structures (industrial society and capitalism) that are to blame for “slavery, eco-disaster and the meaninglessness of life”?
Or this communique from Greece, published on the same site:
We claim the responsibility for the incendiary attack at the house of ex-minister of Economy and National Defence, Giannos Papandoniou. We arrived outside the door of his mansion on Olympias street in Kifissia and torched the two cars used by him and his “wife” Roula Kourakou for their meaningless movements….Far from a populist rhetoric we identify in the face of Giannos Papandoniou an officer of authority. We are not interested in listing the dodgy things he has done, although he surely has done many. Either way, corrupted or not corrupted, state officers, irrelevantly if they hold their positions in the state mechanism, are a permanent target for the insurrectionist dignities.
None of us like politicians, nor the riches and rewards they receive for presiding over oppressive and destructive systems of power. In exchange for their proactive allegiance to and proliferation of the status quo, they’re afforded power and privilege, which lasts long after their terms in office end.
But again, how does burning the car of an ex-politician move us tangibly closer to achieving our goals, towards dismantling the system of which politicians are a single component? How does such an attack effect change on the systems which preserve and enable injustice and oppression?
This isn’t meant to be a hostile attack on the courage or conviction of those who take action like this; neither their commitment nor their readiness to take action is at question. This is simply to pose the question “is this really the most effective way to accomplish our goals?”
And needless to say, this cuts both ways. Most of the more mainstream groups and initiatives fall just as flat. Currently, one of the most prominent progressive campaigns is 350.org’s ‘Fossil Free’ campaign, which seeks to target universities and religious institutions to divest their endowments from fossil fuel companies. This strategy is definitely an improvement on past efforts, which consisted of pleading to politicians; this new initiative identifies a structural problem and aims to address it. Yet there are some obvious and immediate problems with the strategic viability of this plan, and whether university investments in fossil fuels present a worthwhile target.
The foremost issue is that industrial society is entirely dependent upon fossil fuels in order to function and without an abundant & available supply would quickly collapse (which would be a very good thing!). Fossil fuel companies already receive tens of billions of dollars in federal subsidies; if their viability was in serious jeopardy, we can safely assume that governments the world over would rush to their aid. Indeed it would be dangerous to assume otherwise. The extraction and use of fossil fuels can’t be effectively challenged or stopped working through the industrial capitalist system, because fossil fuels are an integral structural support of industrial capitalism and it could not exist without them.
And beyond this, it’s entirely un-established whether divestments by universities would even have a meaningful impact of the economic viability of fossil fuel companies. How much such investments constitute is unknown.
This isn’t to say that such a campaign is a waste of efforts or that it’s a bad thing. Anything that brings people together around structural problems inherent to this way of life is a good thing. And economic pressure, as we saw in South Africa, can contribute to a larger campaign that includes other tactics, such as forceful nonviolence, international political pressure, and strategic sabotage. This is just to say that if the goal is to shut down fossil fuel production or corporations, universities’ investments in the industry don’t present a very important target.
A quick evaluation of these actions through the lenses of the CARVER Matrix gives us a more critical analysis of the value of these targets.
In the last bulletin on target selection, we presented an overview of the CARVER Matrix, a tool used asses the strategic value of attacking a target. Obviously, this is not an end-all-be-all; how a target appears through CARVER is not the final and absolute determination as to whether it presents a worthwhile target. But it is undeniably a strong analytical tool from whose use we can benefit and learn much.
Criticality: will the destruction, damage or disruption of the target have significant impact on the operation of an entity?
The personal cars of one or two individuals are irrelevant to the functioning of industrialism or capitalism—consider all the thousands of cars wrecked every year in collisions. This goes for the cars of political figures, such as Giannos Papandoniou, as well.
As for university investment portfolios, they aren’t critical to the function of industrialism or the fossil fuel industry either. Such corporations don’t have much trouble finding capital (as the vitality of the entire economy rests upon an available supply of fossil fuels), and they already receive massive subsidies from governments.
Accessibility: how feasible it is to reach the target with sufficient people and resources to accomplish the goal?
Cars are very accessible; people park them all over the place and they are almost never guarded or protected, as was the case in both of the actions mentioned above.
Investments are not very accessible at all as targets, with decision making power resting within the complex structures of university administrations. Additionally, people with access to these systems (e.g. students or faculty) are necessary for each distinct university, requiring engagement on a massive scale. Furthermore, it is entirely unknown how much such investments even amount to.
Recuperability: how quickly will the damage done to a target be repaired, replaced or bypassed?
Personal cars are widely available and can easily be replaced, provided one can afford them. For powerful institutions and individuals, vehicles are easily replaced, but for the average person randomly targeted by insurrectionary arson, not so much. And a political figure who can afford two luxury cars and bodyguards is unlikely to declare bankruptcy for the loss of one (or two, or a dozen) of their personal cars.
Again, fossil fuel corporations are not starved for funds, and continue to post record profits. And being that the ‘goods’ they produce are fundamental to industrial society, they can pass on any losses they sustain to consumers at the pump, who have little choice but to pay the price. Fossil fuel companies are incredibly profitable (because our way of life is dependent upon the products they supply), and that makes them desirable investments—that will continue to be true whether or not universities and churches hold stock in them. Thus these investments can be considered very recuperable.
Vulnerability: Are there sufficient means to successfully damage, disable, or destroy the target?
Destroying a car doesn’t require many people, many resources, or hardly any technical knowledge, so they are definitely vulnerable targets.
To change the investment behaviors of educational institutions requires a massive number of people working from within their universities to lobby their administrations to change. Because many universities are private institutions, there are few ways to agitate and force change (private institutions can kick out students and aren’t obligated to listen to them), and the only option left is to lobby the administration to enact policy change. Due to these factors, it’s doubtful whether such university investments can be considered vulnerable.
Effect: What are the secondary and tertiary impacts of successfully attacking the target?
The destruction of a single random car (or even the car of a former government official) is unlikely to have significant political or social effects—except for the person the car belonged to. If cars were repeatedly attacked, it’s possible there would be a response by local police. But it won’t have much of any impact on any major effects other than creating one more pedestrian.
Similarly, there are unlikely to be any serious second-hand ramifications of university divestment campaigns, simply because it is a relatively minor facet of the fossil fuel industry. However, the success of this campaign would certainly be a way to broaden the conversation about climate change and fossil fuels, as well as broaching on a conversation about the structural determinants of capitalism itself.
Recognizability: will the attack be recognized as such, or might it be attributed to other factors?
I can’t imagine anyone attributing the burning of a random car to revolutionary groups, and if so, I doubt they would do so in a positive light. The attack of a specific political figure’s car may be different, but again, it’s unclear without further explanation that such an attack was carried out with revolutionary intent, as opposed to pyrotechnic hedonism.
In regards to 350.org’s campaign, if activists were to successfully move scholastic endowment funds out of fossil fuel stocks and investments, they would undoubtedly be recognized for doing so, primarily because there’s simply no way it would happen otherwise.
Clearly, none of these present especially desirable targets—neither individual cars nor university endowment investments in fossil fuels are particularly critical to the function of the systems of power we seek to dismantle, and that must be our foremost criteria.
One could argue that these targets are primarily symbolic, that they were chosen in hopes of raising awareness about the problems of capitalism and industrial society. This however, is precisely the problem. For decades we’ve been crusading against symbolic targets, attacking microcosm-manifestations of the larger structures which are actually dismembering the planet, instead of focusing our efforts on those structures themselves. Earth is not being strip-mined, clear-cut and plowed to death by symbols or metaphors; physical infrastructure is required to do that. Our work needs to reflect that materialism; like the machines doing the damage to the biosphere, our targets need to be material, critical components of industrial infrastructure.
This is a strategic rut of disastrous proportions into which we’ve collectively gotten ourselves stuck, and we’re in desperate need of a strong push if we’re to get out of it, and move onto successfully dismantling the destruction perpetrated by industrial society.
As so many have so rightly said, political change requires the application of force. But that force needs to be precise, aimed at the correct targets—vital nodes within the dominant structures of power. Unless we select and strike at the right targets—the ones that are critical to system function, accessible, minimally recuperable, and are vulnerable given our resources—we’ll be ineffectually burning random objects and pleading hopelessly with the powerful until the cows come home, or until they too pass from Earth.
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 | Jan 30, 2013 | Obstruction & Occupation
By Agence France-Presse
Anti-whaling activist group Sea Shepherd said Wednesday it had intercepted the Japanese fleet in its annual Southern Ocean hunt “before a single harpoon has been fired”.
Sea Shepherd claims to have saved the lives of 4,000 whales over the past eight whaling seasons with ever-greater campaigns of harassment against the Japanese harpoon fleet.
The militant environmentalist group said the Brigitte Bardot, a former ocean racer, had intercepted the harpoon ship Yushin Maru No. 3 in the Southern Ocean at a relatively northern latitude.
“Given that the large concentrations of whales are found further south, closer to the Antarctic continent where there are high concentrations of krill, this would indicate that they have not yet begun whaling,” said Brigitte Bardot captain Jean Yves Terlain.
Former Australian politician Bob Brown, who assumed leadership of the anti-whaling campaign from fugitive Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson due to legal issues earlier this month, said it was welcome news.
“It is likely that we have intercepted these whale poachers before a single harpoon has been fired,” said Brown.
Watson is wanted by Interpol after skipping bail last July in Germany, where he was arrested on Costa Rican charges relating to a high-seas confrontation over shark finning in 2002.
He is on board Sea Shepherd’s main ship, Steve Irwin, but has stepped down as skipper and has vowed to abide by a US court ruling in December banning the group from physically confronting any vessel in the Japanese fleet.
The ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit requires Sea Shepherd to stay at least 500 yards (metres) from whaling vessels and prohibits “navigating in a manner that is likely to endanger the safe navigation of any such vessel”.
The whaling fleet left Japan for the Southern Ocean in late December, planning to catch up to 935 Antarctic minke whales and up to 50 fin whales.
Tokyo claims it catches whales for scientific research — a loophole in the international ban on whaling — but makes no secret of the fact that they ultimately end up on dinner plates.
Sea Shepherd’s campaign this year is its biggest yet, involving four ships, a helicopter, three drones and more than 100 crew members.
Read more from The Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/29/anti-whaling-group-intercepts-japanese-fleet/
Photo by Phillip Flores on Unsplash
