[On Sunday night, July 29, a double sabotage of cables along railroad lines in Bremen and Hamburg paralyzed some of Germany’s high-speed trains. This attack was already published about here, to which we must now add another identical sabotage in Berlin on Thursday night, August 1, at around 3 a.m., in the Charlottenburg district. According to the German railway company Deutsche Bahn, several switches and signals are out of order between Berlin’s main station and Berlin-Spandau, following the arson of several meters of cable on a bridge, causing hundreds of cancellations and delays to both regional and high-speed trains, which will last at least through the weekend.

On August 2, a communiqué was published on de.indymedia claiming responsibility for the attacks on the railway network in Bremen, Hamburg and Berlin, which we translate from the German here, and which sends greetings to the unexpected delegation and saboteurs who successively lit the Olympic flame in the cable shafts of the SNCF, then in those of the internet network and cell towers…

Attacking Deutsche Bahn infrastructure – sabotaging war and colonialism

This week, incendiary attacks on the infrastructure of Deutsche Bahn took place in Bremen, Hamburg and Berlin. The breakdowns caused by these attacks will hopefully create effective interruptions in the capitalist routine. Like no other company, the state-owned railway corporation is the backbone and vital arteries of the German economy, providing the fuel that feeds and drives it: every day, tons of raw materials plundered from all over the world are transported by rail via its freight branch, DB Cargo, to the workshops and factories of the major steel, chemical and automotive industries, to satisfy this society’s insatiable appetite for consumer goods and construction materials.

At the same time, we are in the midst of a vast process of transformation, from the age of fossil fuels to a highly technological, electrified world, which the Federal Government is selling to us under the misleading term “energy transition”. Deutsche Bahn logistics plays a key role in this process. For example, it is currently developing transport solutions for hydrogen and lithium batteries to stimulate the development of a “green” economy in Germany, and make the country attractive to companies wishing to locate and invest in new technologies. Tesla’s gigafactory in Berlin-Grünheide is perhaps the best-known and most controversial example to date of this deceptive folly. It goes hand in hand with the emergence and expansion of extractivist projects and new transport routes for coveted resources such as cobalt, lithium, nickel, copper or silicon – essential for supposedly sustainable technologies – from mines to processing plants and production sites. While politics and industry hope for new markets and lucrative business, this development means one thing above all for the planet: progress towards its widespread destruction. Now, with its green label and in the name of climate protection, Deutsche Bahn is at the forefront of this movement.
Continue reading Germany: plenty of good reasons to sabotage the rail network! →