Pamiers (Ariège) : the new car of the police station is no longer

Update on the investigation following the arson of a police vehicle in front of Pamiers police station

La Dépêche, May 2, 2022 (excerpt)

“In front of the police station! This is not a joke! It’s the first time I’ve seen this since I’ve been in Ariège”. The fire that struck a police vehicle parked right in front of Pamiers police station this weekend has left its mark on the world of law enforcement. Continue reading Pamiers (Ariège) : the new car of the police station is no longer (France) →

via:sansnom

New electrical sabotage: Inovallée targeted in turn?
Le Dauphiné, April 14, 2022

After the large high-tech companies of the Crolles basin last week, it is most probably Inovallée, the main technology park of the Grenoble region, which was the target, on Wednesday, of a new sabotage action carried out on an electrical installation. A destructive action which, according to our information, is not in doubt, the public prosecutor of Grenoble having moreover, two hours after the facts, confirmed to the Dauphiné Libéré that the hypothesis of a “criminal act” was privileged. The fire broke out at about 3:30 pm in the enclosure of a high voltage source station of Enedis located at 19, chemin du Vieux-Chêne in Meylan. This installation is located between company buildings and the A41 motorway, in the heart of a technology park with around 380 companies working in the field of digital technologies. Continue reading Meylan (Isère): cutting the power to the digital technology park →

via: sansnom

A vehicle of the penitentiary administration burned in front of the prison of Beauvais

Le Parisien/Courrier picard, April 21, 2022 (excerpt)

During the night of Wednesday to Thursday, a vehicle of the penitentiary administration was burned in front of the prison of Beauvais. An investigation was opened by the public prosecutor’s office and entrusted to the city’s police station to try to identify and arrest the suspect, a hooded individual dressed in black, spotted by the prison’s video surveillance cameras around 1:45 am. Continue reading Beauvais (Oise): fire to the prison vehicle →

via: sansnom

Lacroix-Falgarde. The burned antenna must be completely rebuilt

La Dépêche, April 22, 2022

On the night of Friday 25 to 26 February, the telecommunications tower overlooking Lacroix-Falgarde was destroyed by a fire of criminal origin, rendering the 4G/5G antennas of Bouygues, Free and SFR and those of TDF for TV unusable.

In mid-March, temporary repair work began with the installation of new antennas on the burnt out tower. Today, the antenna’s supporting structure is too damaged for the equipment initially installed to be restored to its original state. For example the TV service cannot be reinstalled. In order to regain full functionality, a new antenna has to be rebuilt in order to be able to re-equip it properly. Continue reading Lacroix-Falgarde (Haute -Garonne): the antenna did not withstand the shock →

ST-Microelectronics semiconductor manufacturing unit

[Following the double sabotage on the nights of April 4 and 5 against high-voltage lines, which temporarily shut down the ST-Micro and Soitec semiconductor plants, it seems that the return to normal is not so simple. Here’s a look at some of the articles from the business press].

Grenoble’s Silicon Valley back on line after a fire on its power lines
La Tribune Auvergne-Rhône Alpes, April 6, 2022 (excerpt)

The power outage, caused by a fire on several high-voltage lines that passed over the Brignoud bridge (Isère) on Monday night, was both unprecedented and particularly impactful for the Grésivaudan basin, an area near Grenoble that is home to several major microelectronics companies such as STMicroelectronics and Soitec.
Continue reading Crolles/Bernin (Isère): no immediate return to normal →

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Arson of several electric lines in Isère: the hypothesis of a new sabotage
Le Dauphiné/France bleu, 5 April 2022

This Tuesday, April 5, 2022, at 1:44 am, a fire of electric cables under the bridge of Brignoud which spans the Isère between Villard-Bonnot and Crolles was declared. Eight 20,000 volt lines and one 225,000 volt line caught fire. A security perimeter has been set up to prevent any risk to the population or the environment. Security services are on site. The fire was completely extinguished during the day.

The fire is reminiscent of the one that affected the ST Micro company in Crolles on Monday, April 4. The link between the two events has been made, announced Eric Vaillant, the Grenoble prosecutor. The research section of the gendarmerie has been informed. This Tuesday morning, smoke was still coming out of the burned cables, the Brignoud bridge being closed to traffic. The gendarmerie has cordoned off the whole area and forbidden access to the bridge, with major traffic jams being recorded in the whole sector.

Continue reading Villard-Bonnot (Isère): sabotage of the production of two semiconductor giants [updated] →

Fire in Froges on a site of RTE: the company ST Micro targeted, the ultra-left suspected

Le Dauphiné, April 4, 2022

The hypothesis for an act committed by activists of the ultra-left is favored by the investigators of the gendarmerie, learned the Dauphiné Libéré this Monday near the public prosecutor’s office of Grenoble after the destruction by fire committed in the enclosure of a transformer site of RTE (Réseau de transport d’électricité) in Froges.

As we revealed this Monday morning, this site was targeted in the night of Sunday to Monday by incendiaries: unknown people managed to enter the premises and to spread the fire to cables on a transformer. The damage would be important on this site but would not impact the distribution of electricity in the sector at the moment.

Inscriptions including the symbol of anarchy were found, targeting the ST Microelectronics company based in Crolles, accused by these same tags of being an excessive consumer of electricity. According to the public prosecutor’s office, the power supply to the ST Micro site was not significantly disrupted by this action. The research brigade of the Meylan company has been assigned to the investigation.

Continue reading Froges (Isère): cut the juice to the producer of electronic chips →

May Day, International Worker’s Day, is a day of struggle. It was established out of the struggle to free Chicago anarchists, arrested following the armed defence of a workers’ strike for the eight-hour day in May 1886. Four anarchists were hanged for it, and one more robbed the hangman with a bomb. From the moment the hangman’s rope was set around their necks on an autumn’s day in 1887, this day has been commemorated as a day of revolt by anarchists and anti-capitalists around the world. For, as has been proven time and again, the only dead movements are the movements that forget their dead.

Today, we find ourselves in the midst of a so-called “cost of living crisis”. We have lost count of the unending capitalist crises we have lived through in the past few years; market crashes, wars and pandemics. This one takes the form of a direct attack on the most exploited within society, as the cost of our most basic nessecities (housing, energy, water and food, among others) skyrockets. Once again, we are the ones expected to bear the brunt of their crisis, to sacrifice ourselves at the altar of profit for crumbs. Continue reading [Glasgow] May Day Action Against Landlords(pictures) →

“Sabotage”: several severed cables at the root of a major internet outage in France
L’Obs/Toms Guide, April 27, 2022 (excerpts)

This Wednesday morning, April 27, many French people are complaining of difficulties to connect. And for good reason: incidents are multiplying in France, following a major sabotage. An official state source confirmed to “L’Obs” that this was a “coordinated act of malice”, particularly “serious” and “very rare”. According to AFP, several French cities have experienced Internet connection cuts during the night after cables were cut. Paris, Lyon, Grenoble, Reims, Strasbourg and Lille were particularly affected.

A telecom engineer said that “around 3:20, 3:40 and 5:20, cables of several long-distance fiber networks have been partially cut.” These were cables “from Paris to Strasbourg, Lyon and Lille“. These “long-distance” fiber optic cables connect major French cities, particularly for infrastructure such as data centers. It is also through this network that fixed Internet access (ADSL and fiber) and certain telephone lines function.

The quasi-simultaneity of the outages last night (between 3:20 and 5:20) indeed seems suspicious, especially since it is not just “general public” connections that have been affected, but strategic underground long-distance links used for peering and IP transit, linking Lyon, Strasbourg, Caen, Lille, and Rennes to Paris, and on at least three locations, they were several hundred kilometers apart.

By domino effect, several local and (inter)national operators using these conduits or leasing bandwidth on these fiber links, such as Sparkle, Alphalink, euNetworks, Colt, F5, Zayo or Netalis, are affected by these events. At Netalis, the failure was confirmed this morning via a particularly transparent announcement, the operator adding that the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region would have been for a moment totally isolated from the Internet. The major incident has in practice isolated varied transmission equipment from the Internet backbones of long distance transport operators.

It is important to understand that the locations of these cables are not very accessible. They are not cabinets that can be found in the street, but buried pipes [under covers, or along SNCF tracks, highways and VNF canals]. A source in the telecom industry tells us that the cut on the Paris-Lyon cable is located in the village of La Chapelle-la-Reine (Seine-et-Marne) and is due to “an act of vandalism”. “Le Parisien” reports that cables were cut in Fresnes-en-Woëvre (Meuse), Meaux and Souppes-sur-Loing (Seine-et-Marne), and Le Coudray-Montceaux (Essonne). Continue reading And one beautiful night, internet was cut in a good part of the country… →