[On April 7, around 4 a.m., in the city of Bourges (Cher) and its surrounding countryside, three acts of incendiary sabotage were carried out against the electrical substations that power the war industry, which has infested the region:
– Several structures went up in smoke inside the “Orchidée” high-voltage substation, located on Avenue de l’Europe at the entrance to the town of La Chapelle-Saint-Ursin. The substation is situated a few hundred meters from the munitions manufacturer KNDS.
– An electrical transformer was set on fire in Saint-Florent-sur-Cher, not far from Le Subdray, where the missile manufacturer MBDA is based.
– High-voltage cables were set on fire along a pylon in Bourges, at the entrance to the greenway on Chemin de Villeneuve. It is located near the other MBDA plant, and graffiti reading “Actions Against War” was found at the scene.
The Cher Prefecture estimates the cost of the damage from this coordinated act of sabotage at “several million euros,” with restoration work expected to take “several months,” but is careful not to mention the production delays caused on these military production lines, which operate on a just-in-time basis in “war economy” mode. Power was not restored until around 7 a.m. for the 4,000 nearby households that had been without electricity. The case was referred to the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office, which assigned it to the SDAT on the grounds that these acts could constitute “an attack on the fundamental interests of the Nation.” The claim of responsibility released the following day is provided below.]
In the Face of Wars Between States: Insubmission and Sabotage!
On the night of April 6, we sabotaged the power grid in and around Bourges that supplies this “stronghold of national land defense,” where military schools, the General Directorate of Land Systems Armaments, and technical training centers coexist alongside “the leading hub for defense contractors in Europe”: missile manufacturer MBDA, artillery manufacturer KNDS (Nexter), equipment suppliers Roxel, Michelin, Mécachrome, Auxitrol Weston, ASB Aerospatiale, etc., and their dozens of subcontractors.
Wars are the birth certificates of states; their arsenals and armies are their lifelines and calling cards.
For states, the race for military power is a matter of survival, where attack and defense become indistinguishable, and where it is always the people who pay the price. Weapons aren’t produced for July 14th parades but to sell and use them. This shitty country is, after all, the world’s second-largest exporter of lethal technology, supplying some sixty different states. This militarization everywhere breeds obedience, conquest, massacres, rape, imprisonment, and destruction.
War and Peace are the false alternations of a strategic continuity shared by all power: to dominate and appropriate everything they can reduce to the status of resources. This harsh reality is veiled daily by propaganda that is as subtle as it is crude. Each side pulls the same strings: “the other is a threat,” “the other is a monster,” “our values and our cause are the only just ones,” “we are merely responding to aggression.”
We are among those who want to shatter the myths that bind the oppressed to their oppressors. From the front lines to the home front, the war effort relies on our support and our massive mobilization, just as it does in this military-industrial area. Here and elsewhere, each and every one of us, whether actively or passively, bears a share of the responsibility for the fact that this war machine continues to keep running. Yet, far from the virile hierarchies and their disciplinary stench, what would prevent us, one fine morning, from embarking on a struggle that grinds down and exhausts all wars and their causes – systems of domination?
Opposing the warmongers is always possible and absolutely necessary, so let’s desert the ranks and forge ahead!
