Category Archives: General

General

so-called United States: Notes on September 26th: Reflections on looting, black liberation and anarchism

Notes on September 26th: Reflections on looting, black liberation and anarchism

Submission

On Monday August 14th 2023, Philadelphia police officer Mark Dial shot and killed Eddie Irizarry as he sat in his car. Police initially lied saying that Eddie attacked the cop with a knife, but video footage showed that Eddie was shot in mere seconds while seated in his car with the window up. Following this Dial was suspended for 30 days pending termination. In early September Dial was charged with a number of crimes including murder but the presiding judge would eventually dismiss his charges. The cops who attended the court date in uniform cheered and celebrated when the charges were dropped. On September 26th, that same day Eddie’s family and the Party for Socialism and Liberation (alongside Black leftist groups like Black Alliance for Peace and the W.E.B. DuBois Movement School) organized a peaceful march through Center City protesting the decision. That demonstration dispersed after a couple hours but was followed by looting, initially in Center City before spreading to West, North, and Northeast Philly as the night went on.

The Black liberation movement is alive! Those who say it’s dead are either racist or not in the street and these revolts are the proof. Although the number of people in the streets was smaller than in 2020, there was widespread revolt across Philadelphia. Police killed Eddie Irizarry, a non-Black Puerto Rican, and Black people responded with revolt. Similarly in 2020 in Kenosha, WI when Kyle Rittenhouse killed two white people in the midst of a riot against police and later had his charges dropped, Black people rioted in the Bay Area. These are both examples of a Black consciousness that recognizes anti-Black systems regardless of if they are targeting Black people in a specific instance.
Continue reading so-called United States: Notes on September 26th: Reflections on looting, black liberation and anarchism →

General, Solidarity Means Attack

EN/ES : Communique claim for placed an explosive device made with dynamite and butane gas in a cargo truck on 31st Street in Escarcega, (Mexico)

Actforfree receive anonymous and translated to English.

——–

CARE AND THE SWEET SMELL OF DYNAMITE! Communique year 1. Number 1.

“Women, slaves of the slave: encourage your comrades to shake off the yoke that oppresses us all equally. Reject the lies and deceit of the vestmented executioners: throw their “relics” and their ridiculous suits to the pigs and swell the ranks of the libertarian women who, united with the rebels, make propaganda with the pen, the word, and also with the rifle or dynamite, destroying the dens where the wolves of power, money and religion dwell. Forward libertarian women!”

Francisca J. Mendoza

¡Tierra! #481

December 28, 1912

At approximately 10 p.m. on September 9, 2023 we placed an explosive device made with dynamite and butane gas in a cargo truck on 31st Street in Escarcega, Campeche, with the intention of sabotaging the war that the Mexican government is waging against the jungle with the construction of the so-called “Mayan train”.

I. IT IS NOT JUST A TRAIN, IT IS NOT MAYAN!

It is a project of destruction by territorial reordering that intends to establish a model of “development poles” leading to the expansion of fully capitalist relations in the Yucatan peninsula, which will provoke proletarianization, forced displacement, generalized contamination, dispossession and destruction of our ways of life. WE DO NOT ACCEPT IT.
Continue reading EN/ES : Communique claim for placed an explosive device made with dynamite and butane gas in a cargo truck on 31st Street in Escarcega, (Mexico) →

General, Library

How The Wind Rustles And The Acorns Fall: A Few Days Of Freedom! by Thomas Meyer-Falk -Freiburg (Germany)

How The Wind Rustles And The Acorns Fall: A Few Days Of Freedom!

On 29.08.2023, after almost 27 years of imprisonment, I was released from the high-security area of Freiburg prison with two hours notice. How does a person feel in such a situation? I would like to report on this after the first 14 days.

On 29.08.2023: The release!

At 8 a.m. I was still sitting in the visiting area of the prison with the probation officer, who might be responsible for me in the future, and we puzzled over when and if a release would take place. At 2 p.m. the time had come – I was discharged and on my way to my new place to live.

I should have been overflowing with happiness, but my focus was on the speedy handling of the move and my first official visits. Already around 3 p.m. I was at the job center and then at the health insurance company. The evening became long, ended after midnight. I got to know people in the new living environment, talked to friends on the phone and immediately started texting. The world of the 21st century had integrated me in a short time: thanks to the local group of the Rote Hilfe e.V. from Freiburg, my smartphone and laptop were ready. It felt surreal to sit on the tram and talk on the phone – just hours before I had sat in a cell with a corded phone and was only allowed to call numbers approved by the prison, and the conversations would be monitored and recorded, as it was always said in an announcement text before calls.
Continue reading How The Wind Rustles And The Acorns Fall: A Few Days Of Freedom! by Thomas Meyer-Falk -Freiburg (Germany) →

General, Library

A factory that is less and less ordinary… (France)

A factory that is less and less ordinary…

One visit can hide another

On March 30, 4th graders from Les Deux Vallées secondary school in Cheylard, in the Vivarais region of France, paid a visit to a seemingly ordinary company. While the more assiduous students had to restrain themselves from yawning at the presentation of the various aeronautical professions, the more sensitive ones may have thought that, after all, a school day away from the four walls that confine dreams was something to be welcomed. On the same day, a second group was also touring the plant, but in a much more interested way, as it was made up entirely of entrepreneurs and elected representatives.

Both visits took place in La Voulte-sur-Rhône (Ardèche), and more specifically at the headquarters of Fregate Aero, which builds “structural sub-assemblies for airplanes and helicopters, using metal, sheet metal and machined parts. Our main customers are Airbus, Dassault and Safran”, according to Frédéric Guimbal, the company’s president. That day, the man with the tense smile dishing out a clumsy promotion for his death box had other things on his mind. Three days earlier, at around 5am on Monday March 27, an arson attack had hit the Fregate Aero group’s second factory, located in the village of Beauchastel, less than five kilometers away.
Continue reading A factory that is less and less ordinary… (France) →

General, Solidarity Means Attack

Cops’ summer hunt for rioters (France)

Cops’ summer hunt for rioters

Riots: how police track down delinquents who escaped arrest
Le Figaro, August 17, 2023

Police investigators carried out a colossal task throughout July to track down 314 delinquents who had escaped arrest during the nights of violence.

As France suddenly tumbled into chaos during the riots following the death of Nahel, killed on June 27 after refusing to obey the law in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine), the forces of law and order had to absorb a double shock. The first, filmed hour by hour, was a tsunami of violence that resulted in 3,800 arrests, made in real time and red-handed, across the country. The second, much less well known, was the result of an extraordinary judicial hunt, the details of which Le Figaro is able to reveal. As of July 31, no fewer than 314 additional rioters, thugs and arsonists had been arrested by the investigation departments of public security and the judicial police. The latter alone was entrusted with the task of carrying out just over 170 particularly sensitive investigations into the most serious acts.

From the very first days, the judicial authorities referred emblematic events to the judicial police, such as the destruction and arson of town halls, attacks on police stations, major looting, and even threats or attacks on elected representatives,” explains Frédéric Laissy, head of the national police force’s communications department. While public order measures were still being maintained at their maximum, the first arrests were made at home, often with the assistance of the BRI or Raid.”
Continue reading Cops’ summer hunt for rioters (France) →

General

Death is a master from Germany – Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland

Around two years ago hundreds of us were trying to block a deportation flight in BER-Airport. It ended up with us watching as families were entering the plane and being forced back to Afghanistan. We were enough people to stop the flight, but we lacked the creativity, the anger and determination. How could we stand still in face of such racist cruelty?
Within the ongoing brutalization of the borders all over the world, the German state started to propagate the need for a particularly isolated deportation prison. This means an expansion of the existing one in Schönefeld with a capacity of 120 imprisoned people by 2025.

A budget of 315 million euros has been decided for 2023-24 to finance the planned deportation prison at BER Airport.
Under one roof,all the institutions will function accordingly to enable asylum procedures and deportations to be fast: whether in the airport asylum procedure, in transit detention or in exit detention, people are held and locked up in Schönefeld during the asylum processes or/and until been deported.

Continue reading Death is a master from Germany – Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland →

General

Beyond the Screen, the Stars

From Ungrateful Hyenas Editions

PDF (Print)

“Nothing is boring if you are aware of it. It may be irritating but it is not boring. If it is pleasant the pleasure will not fail so long as you are aware of it. Being aware is the hardest work the soul can do, I think.” — Solitude by Ursula LeGuin

As technological expansion hurtles forward at an increasingly dizzying pace, the presence of smartphones threatens to become normalized across the anarchist space; in many places, this presence has already been normalized for a long time. Among anarchists in the US, critiques of adopting smartphones, or any other new tech gadget, have generally failed to escape the dead-end binaristic logic of moralistic lifestyle politics. Choosing to live without technology is reduced to a form of consumer activism — an arbitrary personal code that is irrelevant to the struggle, or even harmful in terms of redirecting hostility against the state into judgments of individual consumer choices.

The concept of ‘there’s no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism’ has, predictably, become a banner of the ‘radical’ social media consumption frenzy that has engulfed anarchist milieus in these territories and paved the way for the current state of things. Today it is nearly unheard of to live without a smartphone; when attending a meeting or event, one must assume there is a smartphone in each and every pocket, and any critique of this reality is largely viewed as the squawking of old-timer, out of touch wingnuts.

In some places anarchists have resisted this process of normalization and maintained a clear and consistent critique of the impact of smartphone adoption, warding off the incursion from taking hold in the first place. Everywhere that this is not the case however, including but not limited to the US, where any such critique has long since faded, is there any going back? What would it look like to propose that anarchists ditch the technologies we have become increasingly dependent on and addicted to for over a decade, that have come to mediate so much of our lives, relationships, and forms of struggle? Continue reading Beyond the Screen, the Stars →

General, Sabotage, Arsons Attacks

London (UK): 288 surveillance cameras sabotaged in four months

London. Mass sabotage of surveillance cameras

Le Matin (Switzerland), August 18, 2023

London police reported on Friday that hundreds of cameras had been sabotaged in the run-up to the controversial extension of the tax on the most polluting vehicles, scheduled for the end of the month in the British capital. Restricted to central London when it was introduced in 2019, the ULEZ (ultra low emission zone) had already been considerably expanded in 2021 and is due to be extended to the whole of Greater London on August 29.

The extension of the tax, in the midst of the UK’s cost-of-living crisis, has been strongly criticized by local residents, and some opponents are attacking the cameras placed on the roads – which are supposed to read license plates to check that the vehicle is exempt or that the tax has been paid.
Continue reading London (UK): 288 surveillance cameras sabotaged in four months →

General, Sabotage, Arsons Attacks

Fleurus (Belgium): cop and military collaborator loses 10 vehicles

sansnom

Fleurus : cop and military collaborator loses 10 vehicles

[As a reminder, the logistics group UPS (United Parcel Service) is the holder of the North American Department of Defense’s contract to transport packages around the world, and has been for decades (along with FedEx & Polar Air Cargo), making it, for example, the preferred logistician for military personnel at American NATO bases in Europe. It’s also one of the major companies currently donating to the Cop City project in Atlanta; and it’s also a zealous recruiter of US veterans and army reservists, whose “skills” and “values” UPS proudly claims to share in its promotional campaigns].

Fleurus: ten vans set on fire on a company site
Belga/DH, August 16, 2023 (excerpt)

On Tuesday evening, shortly after 11 p.m., firefighters from Jumet and Charleroi (Hainaut-Est zone) were mobilized in Fleurus, on Avenue de l’Espérance, in the zoning area. They were alerted to a van on fire near the hangar of a company [the UPS group’s subcontractor].

Continue reading Fleurus (Belgium): cop and military collaborator loses 10 vehicles →

General

Action Against Luxury MTL Real Estate Agency (Canada)

Action Against Luxury MTL Real Estate Agency

July 1st is moving day in Montreal. It’s always chaotic, but with the threat of Bill 31 rent reforms the situation may become far worse.

We are told there is a housing crisis, a term used to avoid naming those responsible. Why is housing scarce, unsafe, expensive, and precarious in Montreal?

Greedy landlords who renovict, charge damage deposits and “finder’s fees” to maximise profits.
To avoid rental laws and increase profit landlords convert housing into short-term rentals (e.g. Airbnb). This caused several deaths in the spring.
New housing is built for investors, not residents. While low-income housing is “impossible”, dozens of towers with luxury housing are built, units sold to investors just to sit empty and appreciate in value.

Continue reading Action Against Luxury MTL Real Estate Agency (Canada) →

ALF. ELF. E.T.C., General, Sabotage, Arsons Attacks, Solidarity Means Attack

Switch off! – the system of destruction

Switch off!  – the system of destruction

About 20 people storm a construction site of the Coastal Gas Link pipeline in western Canada. They are armed with axes and flares, threaten employees, hijack heavy construction vehicles, destroy the site’s building and ultimately the vehicles themselves. The damage amounted to millions. That was almost a year ago. It is still unclear who sabotaged the construction of the pipeline in the province of British Columbia. Fracked gas was soon to flow through the pipeline, which runs right through indigenous land, to the West Coast, from where it would be shipped on to Asia.

A call…

Whether you occupy universities, schools, trees or streets. Whether you spend your nights worrying or sabotaging. Whether you strike or write about it.

The certainty that the current system will result in the collapse of the massively damaged ecosystem has already inspired countless people to resist. Tens of thousands are taking to the streets against the “business as usual” of the capitalist machinery, people are resisting the destructive large-scale projects en masse, the infrastructure of the system is being blocked and courageous fighters are setting fire to the machines that are being used to rob them of the very basis of life. What we need in the struggle against the destruction of nature and the resulting social misery is the shared pursuit of real revolutionary rupture and freedom of all. Pursuing an initiative that rejects all compromises and cosmetic corrections of the state and brings about a transformation of our social relations. Because the destruction of the planet by the neoliberal economic system is inextricably linked to patriarchal patterns of thought, racism and colonialism. The initiative for this must necessarily come from below. From the struggles of the excluded. From the struggles of those who enact a self-organized solidarity against the state’s promises of salvation. From the struggles of those who see that there can be no compromises in the fight against the systemic destruction of the biosphere.
Continue reading Switch off! – the system of destruction →

General, Solidarity Means Attack

Manifesto of the October 18th Movement

Note: This communique was previously excerpted in “Triple explosive attack against critical infrastructure.”

To the people of Chile.

As a first point, as Movimiento 18 de Octubre we take responsibility for the three explosive attacks on capitalist infrastructure, sabotages carried out in Valparaíso by the Comando Mauricio Arenas Bejas, in Bío Bío by the Comando Lafkenche Pilmaiquen and in Ñuble by the Comando Luisa Toledo. The reasons are explained below.

A dark period is approaching in Chile, marked by an incipient fascism penetrating the masses, which today has positioned a conservative and backward right wing in charge of drafting the new constitution, which will govern the destinies of the country for the next decades or, failing that, will perpetuate the constitution emanating from the dictatorship. But how did we arrive at this scenario, less than four years after the beginning of the popular revolt that uncovered the structural abuses of this capitalist state, that mobilized millions in rejection of the AFP, the commercialization of health and education, the safeguarding of water for human life, the protection of the environment and the rejection of precarious work? Everything seems to be very well elaborated. Continue reading Manifesto of the October 18th Movement →

General

Threat Library: Six Repressive Operations Added

Chile: 2019-2020 case against Mónica and Francesco

In 2020, anarchists Mónica Caballero and Francisco Solar were arrested in Chile, accused of sending parcel bombs to a police station and an ex-Minister of Interior in 2019, and placing bombs in a park in an attempt to harm cops in 2020. Both were charged with attempted murder.

For techniques used during this repressive operation, visit CSRC.

Germany: Repression against Zündlumpen

In April 2022 and October 2022 several apartments and cellars, a print shop and a library were raided by cops as part of an investigation against the alleged editors of the German anarchist newspaper Zündlumpen published from 2019 to 2021.

During the April 2022 raid on the print shop, cops seized thousands of books, zines and newspapers, as well as all printing equipment and materials, seemingly in an attempt to disrupt the printing capacity of local anarchists.

For techniques used during this repressive operation, visit CSRC. Continue reading Threat Library: Six Repressive Operations Added →

General, Library

A dance with time. Greetings, year seven

A dance with time. Greetings, year seven

Greetings from nowhere.

“Freedom is secured not by the fulfillment of one’s desires, but by the removal of desire.”
– Epictetus

My journey into clandestinity began 7 years ago today. It was July 10, 2016, the sun was heating up the city and for most of the people I met that day it was just another Sunday. For me, that day was both an end and a beginning. Giving up my old and beloved reality of life, replaced by the great unknown variable. Leaving the old behind me, welcoming the new. A painful and overwhelming start of the journey… From then on I was confronted with the unknown every day, resembling a person who has lost their sight from one day to the next and now has to focus on their other senses.

I wandered around, looking for anchor points, and after long months, with patience and persistence, finally regained my bearings. My life was back on track, or so I thought… What had to come was coming. The next big shock hit me and once again life held its instruction manual in front of my nose; leave the old behind, welcome the new. Clandestinity is a rigorous study full of hardships, but the fruits of it will be a lifetime harvest for me.
Continue reading A dance with time. Greetings, year seven →

General, Library

Number of the day: 89,502 preventive surveillance measures (France)

Number of the day: 89,502 preventive surveillance measures

Among the tedious publications that the French state releases every year to offer a semblance of democratic veneer is the annual report of the Commission Nationale de Contrôle des Techniques de Renseignement (CNCTR), the body created in 2015 to monitor the proper use of spying measures deployed by these agencies. The release of its 2022 Annual Report on June 15 may have passed somewhat unnoticed, but it’s still worth extracting a few bits of information. All the more so since the report details the official array of surveillance measures carried out on their own initiative, upstream and as a preventive measure, by all the intelligence agencies, leaving us to imagine how this expansion can then be translated into additional prolonged surveillance in a judicial rather than administrative framework (in the form of opening a preliminary investigation or inquiry, which the person who is targeted will not immediately be aware of).

To begin with, let us remind you of the list of agencies concerned by the following figures, which are the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE), the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure (DGSI), the Direction du Renseignement et de la Sécurité de la Défense (DRSD), the Direction du Renseignement Militaire (DRM), the Direction nationale du Renseignement et des Enquêtes douanières (DNRED) and the Unité de Traitement du Renseignement et Action contre les Circuits financiers clandestins (Tracfin), plus the so-called second-circle agencies, namely the Direction du Renseignement de la Préfecture de Police de Paris (DRPP) ; the Service central du Renseignement territorial (SCRT, ex-RG), the Sous-Direction de l’Anticipation opérationnelle (SDAO) and the Service national du Renseignement pénitentiaire (SNRP). It should also be pointed out that these figures are, of course, the tip of the iceberg, i.e. those recorded within the “legal” framework of supervision by the CNCTR, and not the raw reality in all its complexity, which is obviously greater.

Continue reading Number of the day: 89,502 preventive surveillance measures (France) →