by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Dec 5, 2012 | Property & Material Destruction, Strategy & Analysis
It is important to note that this analysis and perspective is not meant to be authoritative on, nor instructive towards the objectives, organization and operation of Agenda 21; those are always their own to determine, as they see fit. This is definitively an outsider’s perspective, gleaned from publicly available information, and is undoubtedly lacking insight in various ways. Apologies for such inadequacies.
*DGR SUPPORTS THE EFFORTS OF AGENDA 21 AND ALL MILITANT DIRECT DISMANTLING OF INDUSTRIAL INFRASTRUCTURE*
It doesn’t take much to sink a ship.
The physics of buoyancy are somewhat precarious; thousands of pounds of iron & steel, carefully shaped to stay balanced and afloat. The smallest rupture in the hull can drag all the sophisticated design and calculations to cold and watery depths. In some instances, one may not even need to create a rupture, so much as expand existing weak-points—like the salt water intake valve—to submerge a vessel.
That simple technique has become the calling card for a mysterious organization in Norway, which has been targeting the country’s whaling fleet since 1996. They’re called Agenda 21, the name being a reference to the 1992 UN Conference on the Environment in Rio de Janeiro, which proposed an international “sustainable development” program under the name Agenda 21. To date, they’ve claimed responsibility for the sinking of 6 commercial whaling ships.
The style has been more or less identical in each of the attacks: the group scouts a ship, boards at night, and opens the salt water intake valve in the engine room. They’ve been more successful in some instances than in others; in a 2010 attack, a ship alarm alerted the captain the ship was flooding, and the sabotage was discovered before the vessel had fully sunk. Nonetheless, they’ve been engaged in a campaign of underground direct action for close to two decades, and have maintained effective security; to the police who have investigated the actions, Agenda 21 is as mysterious today as it was when it emerged in 1996.
The story of Agenda 21 goes back to before the genesis of the group itself, to 1986, when the International Whaling Commission set a moratorium on commercial whaling around the world. Norway objected to the ban, and international politics being the absurdity that they are, suddenly the rule didn’t apply to the Scandinavian country. Paul Watson, of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, then threatened to sink any Norwegian vessel that violated the moratorium. The Sea Shepherds made good on their promise too: in 1992, they sank the whaler Nybraena, and two years later in 1994, they sank the Senet.
Agenda 21 (A21) is said to have taken over the effort in 1996, when they sank the Elin-Toril; it is unclear whether this was a coordinated take-over of the campaign by local Sea Shepherd supporters, or figurative language, but Watson and the Sea Shepherds say they don’t know anyone involved in A21.
The next attack came two years later, in 1998. The whaling ship Morild was scuttled, and A21 claimed responsibility, and was credited with the action.
There weren’t any subsequent attacks for a number of years, until August of 2007, when the group sunk the Willassen Senior in Svolvaer, causing more than £2,000,000 in damage, bankrupting the whaler.
Less than two years later, Agenda 21 struck again. In an effort to pre-empt the whalers, the group sunk the Skarbakk, a commercial whaling vessel docked in Henningsvaer in late April, shortly before the whaling season began in 2009. This action saw a marked increase in media coverage, especially foreign media, with reports, articles, and the group’s communique being published on alternative websites in the U.K. and the U.S. The Sea Shepherds also issued a press release praising the action and Agenda 21; Paul Watson compared the individuals involved to those who resisted Nazi occupation of Norway 60 years prior, and added, “The Agenda 21 team did an excellent job: no injuries, no evidence, no mistakes, and no more whaling. These are results that we can appreciate and admire.”
In A21’s own words, “We came to Henningsvaer. We saw the Skarbakk. We sank the bastard.”
The 2009 sinking of the Skarbakk began a string of more frequent attacks. Only a year after the action in Henningsvaer, A21 struck again; “Norway announced an increased quota of minke whales so we decided to increase our quota of sunken whalers.”
The target was the Sofie, docked in Svolvaer (only a “stone’s throw” from where the Willassen Senior had been when it fell prey to A21 in 2007). On the evening of April 2nd, members of Agenda 21 snuck on board the vessel, and (according to the communique issued afterwards) “[e]ntry was made through the wheelhouse. The engine room was accessed by removing the locked door from its frame using axe and crowbar. Two sea valves were opened fully submerging the engine and electrical systems.”
Unfortunately, as previously mentioned, an alarm alerted the ship’s owner who was asleep in his nearby home, and the fire department arrived before the vessel was entirely submerged. However, both the engine room and electrical equipment were put securely to rest under several feet of water. Apparently undeterred, the owner vowed to repair the damage and be hunting whales in less than a month, but whether or not he succeeded in his sadistic intentions is unconfirmed.
The repeated actions have certainly hurt the industry, and after the Sofie attack, the head of one whaling organization complained to the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, “It is outrageous that this can be done year after year without anyone being caught!”
There was a final attack, in October of 2011. The whaling boat Onsoyvaeringen was found on the morning of October 6th, with its bow in the air. The night before, Agenda 21 boarded the ship and opened repurposed one of the valves to let water into the ship, rather than keeping it out. In the communique issued after the action by A21, Onsoyvaeringen was said to have been the last whaling ship in Oslofjord. The statement also indicated the continued resolve of A21 to bring a permanent end to whaling in Norway by any means necessary and to continued escalation, reiterating that any vessels planning on whaling would be targets and that as Norway increases the Minke whale quota, A21 will step up its attacks.
Agenda 21 remains at large, as it has been for 16 years. It is difficult to talk about their organization and function, because they’ve done such an impeccable job of keeping any knowledge of themselves—other than their name and their actions—secret. However, there are still lessons to be learned and new insights to be gleaned in regards to strategic underground action.
To operate successfully for so long demonstrate an undeniable conviction as an organization, but also a careful patience, a keenness that ensures action is effective rather than simply self-actualizing and serves as a counterweight to the (often) blind urgency that strong conviction can fuel.
However, others have questioned whether Agenda 21 has been effective in the fight to end commercial whaling, or whether the organization has been just another group using glorified tactics but making little material difference. Critics point to reports that the numbers of whales killed in the summer season haven’t declined, or that there is a surplus of whaling ships and simply too few processing centers for the meat.
These are important considerations, and critical reflection on ourselves and the effectiveness of our particular strategies is absolutely vital if our movements are to be successful. This is true whether our goal is to end whaling in a particular region, restore grasslands, destroy institutional racism, or dismantle civilization.
A simple breakdown of Agenda 21’s strategy (as I interpret it based on their actions and their public statements) is that at the core, they are fighting a battle of attrition (this seems to be the unconsciously preferred strategy of most activists—liberals and radicals alike—and is a separate discussion in itself), in which they hope to wear down the ability of their enemy (the Norwegian commercial whaling fleet) to operate. In order to be successful in a war of attrition, one must damage and deplete the enemy’s resources quicker than the enemy can replace them. Eventually, this drawdown reaches a critical point, and the enemy loses the ability to function as a force. This leaves us with two important factors to consider: first, how A21 draws down the resources of the commercial fleet, and secondly, the speed with which the fleet is able to replace those resources.
Obviously, A21’s preferred tactic is sinking commercial whaling vessels. The technique which they use to do this is simple, and seems relatively simple and to cost them little (in terms of time, technical knowledge, money, etc.). However, there are some additional, smaller ways in which the sinking of these ships may sap the resources and capacity of the whaling fleet: the attacks have seriously raised insurance premiums for whaling boats, and may discourage investors from fronting the capital for new whaling ships. They’re both smaller, and perhaps less directly measurable effects, but they’re impacts A21 has mentioned explicitly in their communiques.
As for the fleet itself, the most important fact to note is that the entire Norwegian fleet consists of less than two dozen ships: in 2012, only 18 ships participated in the whale hunt, one less than last year. This small fleet-size makes the loss of a ship a significant blow for the industry, much more serious and detrimental than a smashed window or graffiti on a storefront would be, and creates a (rare) situation that lends itself to a strategy of attrition.
It’s not necessarily possible to draw a clear line on whether Agenda 21 is definitively effective or not. Given that the number of whales hunted hasn’t significantly declined or changed, it would be hard to say A21 is close to bringing commercial whaling in Norway to a close. But at the same time, we cannot deny that there are 7 fewer vessels hunting for whales each summer due to A21. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that the A21 strategy has very real potential, and for Agenda 21 to ultimately be successful in winning their war of attrition against the whaling industry will require that they escalate the frequency of their actions to impose a fatal (for the industry) drawdown. If the reports of bottlenecks at the over-stressed processing facilities are true, they would represent another vulnerable node. If anything were to happen to those processing facilities resulting in their being temporarily or permanently shut down, the difficulties facing the industry wound undoubtedly be compounded, and the system as a whole would be further disrupted.
In any case, the story of Agenda 21 is a hopeful and promising one. And like all stories of resistance, it’s one that needs to be told. History is full of stories of people, even if only a few of them, organizing to find collective strength and shatter systems of abusive and destructive power that only months before seemed invincible. Those stories are taking place right now, around the world. We need to listen to them, learn from them, find our connection and meaning in them, and share them. We need to tell these stories of resistance, because resistance is a story; whether of mysterious folks scuttling ships on a spring evening so Minke whales can swim free, or Indian women training each other in self-defense and dealing retribution to abusers and batterers, or indigenous and Chicano neighborhoods marching on and scattering a Columbus Day march, or masked groups torching transmission substations to blackout the death culture of civilization: it’s a story larger than ourselves. We need to tell those stories, and then live them out.
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 | 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 21, 2012 | Obstruction & Occupation
By The Canadian Press
Members of a First Nation in northern B.C. have evicted surveyors working on a natural gas pipeline project from their territory and set up a roadblock against all pipeline activity.
A group identifying itself as the Unis’tot’en clan of the Wet’suwet’en Nation said surveyors for Apache Canada’s Pacific Trails Pipeline were trespassing.
“The Unis’tot’en clan has been dead-set against all pipelines slated to cross through their territories, which include PTP [Pacific Trails Pipeline], Enbridge’s Northern Gateway and many others,” Freda Huson, a spokesperson for the group, said in a statement.
“As a result of the unsanctioned PTP work in the Unis’tot’en yintah, the road leading into the territory has been closed to all industry activities until further notice.”
Huson was not available for comment.
It’s unclear what road is blocked, or where. The group said its territory is along the Clore River, located west of the Williams Creek Ecological Reserve about 30 kilometres southeast of Terrace.
Company spokesman Paul Wyke confirmed Wednesday that surveyors were asked to leave the area.
“We had some surveyors in the area last evening and they were asked to leave traditional territory by a small group of members from the Unis’tot’en, and they complied,” Wyke said.
“We understand that there are some members of the Unis’tot’en that have expressed some concerns with the proposed PTP project, and we continue to consult with First Nations along the entire proposed pipeline right-of-way.”
Wyke said the company will continue ongoing consultations with aboriginal groups. The project has the support of 15 of 16 aboriginal groups along the route, he said.
The blockading group said the province does not have the right to approve development on their traditional lands, which lie northwest of Kitimat, the future home of an Apache Canada liquefied natural gas plant and the tanker port for the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline.
From the CBC: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/11/21/bc-pipeline-surveyors-evicted.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 21, 2012 | Strategy & Analysis
Why are we losing?
Why, after 40 years of struggle, education, petitions, letters to the editor, reusable coffee mugs, marches, protests, direct action and even sabotage, are we still losing? Why do mountains, old growth and glaciers keep disappearing? Why are children born with 200 toxic compounds in their bodies? Why do the levels of carbon in the atmosphere continue to rise as the species count plummets? And why is the trend accelerating?
Is it because civilization functions by destroying landbases, vacuuming them up and turning living communities into dead objects? Is it because people are scared to fight back, or don’t want to lose the privileges and material prosperity afforded to them by this arrangement of power? Is it because those doing the destroying have nearly inexhaustible resources at their disposal?
There are many factors over which we have no control, to be sure. But that’s no reason for us to focus on what we can’t change, instead of what we can.
And above all else, what we do have control over is our own strategy; our plan to achieve that most necessary goal of stopping industrial civilization from destroying the planet. We do not have control over what the majority of people think or do, we do not have control over what those in power think or do, we do not have control over the amount of time we have, we do not have control over the devastating rate of biotic collapse, but we do have control over how we choose to fight back.
Yet the strategies we’ve chosen to pursue as a movement haven’t worked at all. This is true whether we talk about idealist strategies of converting “the masses”, isolated individuals and communities withdrawing from mainstream culture, reformist attempts to “green” capitalism, or spontaneously inspired popular uprising. None of these have been effective. In fact, one could argue that by diverting energy back into supporting industrialism and capitalism (both of which are functionally at odds with a living world), many of the popular strategies have actually helped those in power to solidify their domination and hegemony.
If we hope to ever make a real material difference, to seriously disrupt and dismantle the operation of the industrial machine, we need to start thinking, planning, and acting strategically. If we don’t, we will continue to stumble around blindly in circles, re-hashing the same failed plans and ideas over and over again—and the world burns.
Fortunately, there is a wealth of strategic advice and doctrine available to learn from. There is much of value that we can discover from those who have been the best at using strategy—predominantly militaries—and although we have decidedly different objections and convictions than them, the underlining principles are essentially the same.
There are virtual libraries of this sort of information, but the ‘Nine Principles of War & Strategy’ is a great basic primer on good strategy. The list outlines nine simple strategic principles, tools for strategic analysis that can serve as a foundation for establishing strategy and devising operations.
Objective: Direct all operations toward a clearly defined, decisive and attainable objective. A clear goal is a pre-requisite to devising a strategy. A decisive objective is one that will have a clear impact on the larger strategy and struggle; there is no point pursuing a goal of questionable or little value. And obviously, the objective itself must be attainable; otherwise efforts toward it are a waste of time, energy and risk.
Offensive: Seize, retain and exploit the initiative. To seize the initiative is to determine the course, place and nature of the battle or conflict. Seizing the initiative positions the fight on our terms, forcing them to react to us.
Mass: Concentrate the effects of combat power or force at the decisive place and time. Resistance groups engaging in asymmetric conflict have limited numbers and a limited force, especially compared to those in power; we must engage where we are strong and they are weak, and strike when and where we have overwhelming or decisive force, and maneuver instead of engaging when we are outmatched.
Economy of Force: Allocate minimum force to secondary efforts. Economy of force requires that all personnel are performing important tasks that tangibly help achieve mass and accomplish the objective, regardless of whether they are engaged in decisive operations or not.
Maneuver: Place the enemy in a disadvantageous position through the flexible application of combat power. This may mean concentrating forces; it may mean dispersing them, moving them, or hiding them. In all cases, it hinges on mobility and flexibility, which are essential for asymmetric conflict. This flexibility is necessary to keep the enemy off balance, allowing resisters to retain the initiative. It is used to exploit successes, to preserve freedom of action, and to reduce vulnerability. It continually poses new problems for the enemy by rendering their actions ineffective.
Unity of Command: For every objective, ensure unity of effort under one responsible commander. This is where some streams of anarchist thought come up against millennia of strategic advice and experience. No strategy can be implemented nor decisions made by consensus under dangerous or emergency circumstances. That’s why the anarchist columns in the Spanish Civil War had officers even though they despised rulers. A group may make strategic or operational decisions by any method it desires, but when it comes to on-the-ground implementation and emergency situations, some form of hierarchy is required to take more serious action.
Security: Never permit the enemy to acquire an unexpected advantage. Knowledge and understanding of enemy strategy, tactics, doctrine, and staff planning improve the detailed planning of adequate security measures. When fighting in a panopticon, this principle becomes even more important. Security is a cornerstone of strategy as well as of organization.
Surprise: Strike the enemy at a time or place or in a manner for which they are unprepared. By seeking surprise, forces can achieve success well out of proportion to the effort expended. Surprise can be in tempo, size of force, direction or location of main effort, and timing. This is key to asymmetric conflict—and again, not especially compatible with open or participatory decision making. Resistance movements are almost always outnumbered, which means they have to use surprise and agility to strike and accomplish their objectives before those in power can marshal an overpowering response.
Simplicity: Prepare clear, uncomplicated plans and clear, concise directives to ensure thorough understanding. The plan or strategy must be clear and direct for easy understanding and the simpler it is, the more reliably it can be implemented by multiple coordinating groups.
Of course, these principles don’t apply the same way in every situation, and aren’t meant to constitute a checklist.
Yet when we compare these principles to the popular strategies put forward by the environmental movement, their absence is striking. There is no critical analysis or serious planning.
We are in the middle of a war, a war against life. But we don’t seem to remember that fact. Or if we remember it, we don’t act accordingly. That needs to stop. The stakes could not be higher; everything worth loving is being killed. Living in this dire reality, it is our duty to fight back, by any means necessary.
Those in power have no qualms about the use of explosives to blow up mountains; we shouldn’t have any about the use of explosives to blow up dams and transmission lines. Those in power also have no qualms about devising and implementing effective strategy, we shouldn’t have any qualms about doing so ourselves.
Again, lest we forget; we are in the middle of a war; if we don’t act like it, then we’re doomed to failure. If we want to stop losing, if we want to stop the last vestiges of old growth and wetlands from disappearing, the ancient glaciers from melting, we need to develop strong and serious strategies to win. And we need to put them into action.
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 | Nov 19, 2012 | Protests & Symbolic Acts
By Deep Green Resistance Great Basin
The Great Basin Chapter of Deep Green Resistance participated in a demonstration in solidarity with the ongoing Tar Sands Blockade today in Salt Lake City.
The Tar Sands blockade has been obstructing the construction of the southern portion of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would eventually carry oil from the Tar Sands in Alberta to the refineries of the Gulf Coast. Working primarily in rural areas of Texas in collaboration with locals, activists from Tar Sands Blockade have been suspended high in trees for 57 days, blocking the route of the pipeline construction.
Activists from DGR today took part in a rally in Salt Lake City at the Bureau of Land Management office where Tim DeChristopher executed his direct action to halt illegal oil and gas leases in December 2008.
Utah is currently under threat from many capital-intensive industrial projects. It is the proposed site of the second Tar Sands project in North America, which would destroy large portions of wilderness in remote eastern portions of the state. The Salt Lake City region is home to several oil refineries and deepest open-pit mine in the world, and the valley (home to 2 million people) has some of the worst air quality in the country.
Utah Governor Gary Herbert has brought forward a plan to increase the construction of roads and other industrial projects in wilderness areas of southern Utah that many are calling a land grab. In other part of the bioregion, ongoing coal mining, water theft, and the aftermath of uranium milling is devastating communities, particularly indigenous communities and the poor.
The Great Basin chapter of Deep Green Resistance is a new group organizing in the region that is committed to fighting against these injustices. We advocate for the dismantling of capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism, white supremacy, and industrial civilization – and we have a plan to confront power, without compromise.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 17, 2012 | Lobbying, Mining & Drilling
By Ken Ward, Jr. / West Virginia Gazette Mail
Patriot Coal has agreed to phase out mountaintop removal and other forms of strip mining, in a move Patriot officials say is in the best interests of their company, its employees and the communities where it operates.
In a deal with citizen groups and environmentalists, Patriot said it would never seek new permits for large-scale surface mining operations, according to details of the settlement that were made public in federal court Thursday afternoon.
St. Louis-based Patriot can continue some existing and smaller mining projects, but must also implement a cap on surface production and eventually stop all strip mining when existing coal leases expire.
Ben Hatfield, president and CEO of Patriot, said the plan should help his company emerge from bankruptcy, focus on underground mining, and curb mountaintop removal’s effects on coalfield communities.
“Patriot Coal recognizes that our mining operations impact the communities in which we operate in significant ways,” Hatfield told U.S. District Judge Robert C. Chambers. “We believe the proposed settlement will result in a reduction of our environmental footprint.”
The deal does not require Patriot to immediately close any mines or lay off any workers. The company must cut corporate-wide surface production starting in 2014, and gradually reduce it to no more than 3 million tons annually — less than half of 2011 surface output — by 2018.
Patriot, the second largest producer of surface-mined coal in West Virginia, becomes the first U.S. coal operator to announce plans to abandon mountaintop removal, a controversial practice linked to serious environmental damage and coalfield public health problems.
“Patriot’s decision that mountaintop removal and other large surface mines are not in its best interests is the inevitable conclusion for any mining company that actually has to pay the costs of the environmental harm it creates,” said Joe Lovett, an Appalachian Mountain Advocates lawyer who negotiated the deal with Patriot on behalf of the Sierra Club, the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy and the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.
Lawyers for both sides unveiled the settlement — which has quietly been in the works for months — during a surprisingly low-key hearing in U.S. District Court in Huntington.
Unlike most developments involving West Virginia’s coal industry, elected officials and other government leaders did not rush Thursday to issue public statements offering their views on the Patriot settlement.
From The West Virginia Gazette Mail
