alks

Preliminary remarks from the authors

We are at the beginning of a new age of wars. Wars between transnational power blocs, wars between existing and emerging nation states and wars against fleeing and rebellious populations. Wars over strategic resources, wars over food and water, wars over geostrategic power constellations and territorial claims. But no matter what the wars of the present and future may be about, we firmly refuse to join any party in them, as every war is directed exclusively against the exploited and oppressed of this world and only benefits the powerful to increase their wealth and their dominion over life. However, it cannot follow from this that we will passively watch as the rulers prepare the slaughter, commit genocides and massacres and bring destruction and misery upon people and life itself. While it is clear that we will never turn our guns on each other at the command of the LORDS, nothing in the world will prevent us from fighting with our own weapons against the sheer facilitation of war, against nationalist propaganda, the military-industrial process of progressive genocide, and not least the sheer infrastructure of war. And it is precisely this infrastructure of war, or today's modern “dual use” infrastructure of the “peaceful” exploitation of people and nature as well as the military destruction of the two, that we want to focus on in this article using the example of the so-called ScanMed corridor (Scandinavian-Mediterranean corridor) as one of the EU's most important infrastructure transport axes and some of its current sub-projects for expansion and upgrading. In doing so, we do not want to show once again that the fight against war always includes the fight against “peaceful”, i.e. frictionless, exploitation and destruction, i.e. against the industrial and colonial project, but rather to make a small contribution to pointing out concrete points of attack in this fight and at the same time to encourage people to carry out their own analyses of the military-industrial complex, its raw materials and its logistics, with nothing less in mind than its efficient sabotage. For we miss such an analysis all the more painfully because we are of the opinion that our ability to fight domination (and its wars) is irrevocably dependent on knowing its infrastructures, understanding its functional mechanisms and, last but not least, having the necessary skills and a certain routine in attacking it at identified weak points.

The Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T)

The trans-European transport network (TEN-T or TEN-V for transeuropäische Verkehrsnet) is a network of road, rail, air and waterways planned by the EU to ensure the fast and smooth transportation of goods, raw materials, in some cases also energy (carriers) and finally, often unmentioned, but in the strategy papers, military equipment, supplies and troops across national borders. It consists of a core network, which in turn is spanned by nine so-called multimodal core network corridors across the entire territory of the EU. These corridors connect, for example, the North Sea region with the Mediterranean region, the Baltic Sea with the Adriatic, the Mediterranean cities in a west-east direction, along the Rhine and Danube or the Atlantic coast. They are multimodal, which means that they consist at least of road and rail routes, often also – or at least partially – of waterways, that they connect airports and deep-sea ports by land, i.e. if one mode of transportation fails or is delayed, it should be easy and uncomplicated to replace it with a parallel transport route along the same transport axis. It is no coincidence that this redundancy of transport routes, this multimodality, is a requirement for military transport axes used for the movement of troops and their equipment and supplies, as is the suitability for axle loads over 22.5 tons on around 94% of the route; after all, this military usability was taken into account by the EU and its member states from the outset.

The ScanMed corridor

The ScanMed corridor, i.e. the transport corridor connecting the Scandinavian countries with the Mediterranean, is the longest core network corridor in the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) and runs from Oslo and Helsinki via Rostock – Berlin – Leipzig / Hamburg – Bremen – Hanover, Nuremberg – Munich – Innsbruck (Brenner) – Verona – Bologna – Florence – Rome – Naples – Palermo to Malta. It crosses the North Sea – Baltic Sea core network corridor in Bremen, Hanover, Berlin and Hamburg, the Mediterranean core network corridor in Verona and the Rhine – Danube corridor in Munich and Regensburg. It also connects the seaports of Hamburg, Gothenburg, Bremen, Rostock and the airports of Munich, Berlin, Leipzig and Hamburg to the transport routes on land. Around 1100 freight trains leave the port of Hamburg every week for inland destinations along the ScanMed corridor. Conversely, this corridor connects most of the larger and medium-sized Mediterranean ports in Italy with Germany via the Brenner Pass. Here, it allows time savings of several days when transporting goods from or to the so-called Far East, if they can be handled by land instead of taking the sea route via the port of Hamburg. What applies to “civilian” goods also applies to military goods and troops thanks to the “dual-use” strategy in the area of infrastructure. The ScanMed corridor not only connects the North Sea naval bases of the German Armed Forces with the Mediterranean ports of Italy, but also makes it possible to balance troop and material movements via some of the west-east axes. For example, we still remember well how US military equipment that landed in ports such as Palermo or Bremerhaven as part of the NATO exercise “Defender 2020” took precisely these routes to the respective US bases, especially in Germany, from where it would have left for Poland if the exercise had not been canceled. From a military point of view, the ScanMed corridor is also hardly dispensable with regard to the German arms industry and its supply of raw materials and semi-finished products, both in “peacetime” and in the event of war. The arms industry based in the Munich/Ingolstadt/Augsburg metropolitan region in particular, as well as the Bavarian chemical triangle near Burghausen/Burgkirchen/Trostberg/Waldkraiburg, handle their logistics along this corridor which is relevant for the arms and oil supply of southern Germany, mainly and “out of necessity” (as there is largely no alternative).

Current bottlenecks and corresponding expansion projects

The two most significant bottlenecks in the ScanMed corridor are currently at the Brenner Pass and the Fehmarn Belt, and they particularly affect rail traffic. At the so-called Fehmarn Belt, motor vehicles and trains travel on the so-called “Vogelfluglinie”, the most direct connection between the metropolises of Copenhagen and Hamburg, an approximately 19-kilometer route between the German island of Fehmarn and the Danish island of Lolland, so far by ferry. The Fehmarn Belt Tunnel, which is to be built as a road and rail tunnel with 4 tubes for traffic, as well as a rescue and maintenance tube by 2029, is intended to upgrade this section of the route in the future and thus eliminate the bottleneck caused by the ferry service. At the same time, the Fehmarnsund Bridge, which connects the German mainland and Fehmarn, is to be replaced by another sea tunnel, the Fehmarnsund Tunnel, which is to be built at the same time to accommodate the growing volume of traffic and in particular the 835-metre-long freight trains that will then run there.

The second major bottleneck of the ScanMed corridor is in the Alps, more precisely at the Brenner Pass. On one of the most important Alpine crossing routes in Europe, rail transport in particular, especially rail freight transport, poses such a major challenge due to the steep gradients of the route that it is often more economical to transport goods by truck. The Brenner Base Tunnel, which is due to be completed by 2032, aims to change this. In order to guarantee a stable connection, new access routes are also being built or expanded both in the north (Austria and Germany) and in the south (Italy) to allow capacities of several hundred trains per day.

In addition, there are numerous smaller bottlenecks and expansion stages on sections of the ScanMed corridor that do not comply with the EU's requirements for the core network corridors. In rail transport, for example, the northern access route of the Brenner Base Tunnel, which is to be newly built between Grafing and Rosenheim, as well as the planned bypass routes between Hanover and Hamburg to be built as part of the Optimized Alpha E + Bremen, and the upgrading of existing routes in Germany are still missing. The railroad line between Hof and Regensburg, which is part of the so-called Eastern Railway Corridor, has not yet been electrified. A new Munich-Ingolstadt line with a connection to Munich Airport is also included in the specifications for the ScanMed corridor to be completed by 2030. Numerous freight handling stations also do not currently meet the required standards, particularly with regard to a freight train length of more than 740 meters, including Munich, Nuremberg, Hanover, Rostock, Lübeck, Großbeeren, Schkopau and Hamburg-Billwerder.

Requirements for military usability of the corridor

To ensure that the transport axes, which are primarily built for civilian purposes, can actually be used for military purposes as part of a “dual use” strategy, a number of requirements must be met, such as those defined in the European “Action Plan on military mobility”. These include, for example, permissible axle loads of 22.5 tons, as well as the multimodality of the corridors, i.e. the ability to switch more or less at any time from road to rail or waterway and vice versa, should one of the parallel infrastructures be seriously damaged. In addition to parallel transport routes of various types, these are primarily transhipment stations and ports that can transfer goods from road to rail and vice versa, or from ship to road/rail. Such transhipment stations, known as Rail-Road Terminals as part of the EU infrastructure project, are located along the ScanMed corridor in a south-north direction within Germany in Munich, Nuremberg, Hanover, Berlin, Bremen, Bremerhaven, Hamburg, Lübeck and Rostock.

In addition, a sufficient supply of fuel along the transport corridors is essential for their military usability. This is because the transportation of troops and military equipment consumes a gigantic amount of energy, which cannot simply be conjured up. Countless fuel stations for cars, trucks, trains, planes and ships are needed to supply the civilian transportation system, which is supplied with the necessary fuel on a daily basis using sophisticated logistics consisting of pipelines, freight trains and tankers. Roughly speaking, the fuel produced in the refineries (where the crude oil required for this usually arrives via pipeline, see below) is transported via pipelines, tank ships and tankers to so-called tank farms, from where it is also transported by tanker or truck to the various filling stations, as well as to smaller and more distant tank farms. Some strategically important tank farms for the military in Germany and throughout Europe are connected by a NATO pipeline network, which is now sometimes also operated by civilian operators, but ensures military priority use if necessary. There are a total of 12 active fuel refinery sites in Germany, located in Burghausen, Brunsbüttel, Gelsenkirchen, Hamburg-Haburg, Hemmingstedt (Heide), Ingolstadt, Karlsruhe, Cologne, Leuna, Lingen (Ems), Schwedt (Oder) and Neustadt an der Donau / Vohburg an der Donau. They are supplied via four central pipeline systems: the North-West oil pipeline, which together with the North German oil pipeline supplies the refineries in Lingen, Cologne, Gelsenkirchen and Hamburg-Harburg with crude oil via the Wilhelmshaven oil port, the South European pipeline, which supplies the refinery in Karlsruhe from the port of Marsaill and is also connected to the Transalpine oil pipeline (TAL), which in turn pumps oil from the port of Trieste to Burghausen, Ingolstadt, Karlsruhe and Neustadt/Vohburg on the Danube, as well as a pipeline from Rostock to Schwedt and from there to Lingen, which has reached its capacity limits, particularly since the boycott of Russian oil, which previously also arrived in Schwedt via the Freundschaft oil pipeline, and is to be developed and expanded at a cost of 400 million euros. From the refineries, the fuel takes a mostly opaque and logistically constantly rescheduled route via pipelines, tankers and trucks to the corresponding tank farms or directly to the various filling stations.

However, NATO's Central European Pipeline System (CEPS), which has military sites in Lauchheim-Röttingen (Aalen), Altenrath, Mainhausen (Aschaffenburg), Bellheim, Niederstedem (Bitburg), Boxberg, Bramsche, Wonsheim (Fürfeld), Hademstorf (Hodenhagen), Hohn-Bollbrüg, Untergrupppenbach-Obergruppenbach (Heilbronn), Huttenheim, Kork (Kehl), Weichering (Neuburg an der Donau), Littel (Oldenburg), Pfungstadt, Bodelshausen, Würselen and Walshausen (Zweibrücken), as well as civilian facilities in Ginsheim-Gustavsburg, Honau, Krailing (Unterpfaffenhofen), Oberhausen (Neuburg an der Donau) and Speyer, totals 24 fuel depots in Germany alone with an estimated fuel capacity of between 20,000 and 100,000 cubic meters per depot. The refineries in Wesseling (Cologne), Lingen (Emsland) and the Gustavsburg tank farm, which is strategically located at a railroad junction and on the Rhine and even has its own port, serve as feed-in points for fuel supplies within Germany. In addition, numerous other fuel depots connected to the CEPS have rail links and can therefore be converted into feed-in points. Finally, there are the North Sea and Mediterranean ports, as well as the numerous fuel depots in Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and France, and the refineries connected to them, to compensate for any fuel shortages. However, this is also desperately needed, as the fuel requirements of an army on the move are almost immeasurable. A tank, for example, consumes at least around 150 liters of diesel per hour of operation (large battle tanks can also consume a good 600 liters!), while a fighter jet can quickly consume between 5,000 and 10,000 liters of kerosene per hour of operation. Of course, you can count the days on one hand until the fuel reserves in the military fuel depots are used up. For the ScanMed axis in particular, it is of course noticeable that the route between the Munich-Ingolstadt metropolitan area and Bremen/Hanover is relatively far removed from the CEPS military pipeline network, which is essential for Germany, and that either corresponding feeder corridors must be used on this route, which run via road and rail, or that in this area there would also have to be increased military recourse to civilian fuel supplies. Incidentally, the company operating the CEPS on German soil is Fernleitungs-Betriebsgesellschaft (FBG), while the tank wagons required for rail transportation were once handed over to VTG. Some of the tank farms are also currently managed by TanQuid.

In the future, the new hydrogen pipelines to be built and the infrastructures that are being created around the emerging energy source, which are being pushed with great vigor by the Green War Party in particular, will become increasingly important for supplying the military with fuel. These will presumably initially supply the refineries that continue to supply fuels, but in the longer term, fuel conversions to hydrogen-powered engines are certainly to be expected. At the very least, the planned hydrogen core grid envisages opening up all regions along the ScanMed corridor.

https://sozialerzorn.blackblogs.org/2023/12/01/ten-v-und-militarische-logistik-und-verfugbarkeit-am-beispiel-des-scanmed-korridors-und-seiner-aktuellen-teilprojekte/

“We have inherited many great ideas about how to confront domination, we know that nothing is set in stone. From the bones and broken tools of our predecessors we make our weapons. Nothing is guaranteed to work, but we attack regardless” (Müller).

Throughout history we have witnessed how techno-industrial progress has reinforced social control, securing every gear for its perverse reproduction. Capital and the state speak no other language than that of property, commodity, production and profit, and is willing to devastate everything in its path if it implies the perpetuation of its power through citizen-civilized servitude. The interconnection of the metropolis is possible, in part, thanks to the means of transportation throughout the cities. These means, more than a “service”, are the main tools for the transportation of merchandise within the cities. Yes, when we speak of merchandise we are also referring to humans, since in the empire of the market, all existence is reduced to the quantification of capital.

Without magic recipes or manuals written in stone, we experienced anarchy to the rhythm of the frontal and direct attack against the dominion. On this occasion, we plnted an incendiary/explosive device inside a RED bus, which failed to detonate and was found inside a bus terminal. We were not discouraged by the outcome. We analyzed the technical errors, studied the causes and continued on the path of attack, seeking to be more and more dangerous and imperceptible. We know that anarchic warfare is not reduced to relations of material force against the enemy, much less to technical operation capabilities. For this reason, we decided to proudly claim this action, since we think that reducing anti-systemic actions to the result (successful or not) of these, is typical of an exitist paradigm that would only lead us, inevitably, to a militaristic understanding of anti-systemic praxis. Our methods and practices are deployed from informality and individual freedom, this as an antibody against any authoritarian attempt to direct our destructive power; be it “leader”, “ruler”, “collective” or any name that assumes dominance in our relationships.

This action is framed within what is another Black November in memory of comrade Kevin Garrido, murdered on November 2, 2018 in the prison-company Santiago 1. The indomitable and chaotic spirit of the comrade is present in this insurgent attempt against the civilizing domestication that imprisons all of us who cannot stand this horrible and caged world.

A fraternal and complicit embrace to our kindred and comrades. To those who for their audacity and insolence expect to be locked up with exemplary sentences and who have not been victimized or bowed down after their conscious and consistent actions. Free Francisco Solar, Mónica Caballero, Juan Flores and all the prisoners at war throughout the world!

ONWARD, SAVAGES, ICONOCLASTS, ANARCHISTS AND NIHILISTS!

FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF POWER, CIVILIZATION AND ALL AUTHORITY, TO RETURN TERROR AGAINST EVERYONE WHO ATTACKS FREEDOM.

DOWN WITH THE CAGES OF CIVILIZED SOCIETY!

KEVIN GARRIDO LIVES!

Conspiracy for the Savage Iconoclast – Kevin Garrido Cell.

https://informativoanarquista.noblogs.org/post/2023/11/29/chile-reivindicacion-de-atentado-incendiario-explosivo-fallido-contra-bus-red-noviembre-negro/

“Anti-maskers help the state”

Because the anarchy fair was being organized by anti maskers, we wanted to remind attendees we actually can protect us. Last night we left messages at entrances and a few visible locations as well as added a bit of stench that will make attending in a mask more pleasant than maskless. The state wants us dead! We want you here to fight with us.

https://rosecitycounterinfo.noblogs.org/2023/11/anti-maskers-help-the-state/

Ableism at the Anarchy Fair

On November 25th 2023, a small group of disabled trans anti-eugenicists confronted a festival of ableist violence in so called “Portland, Oregon”. This was done against libertarians posing as anarchists whom avoid taking responsibility for the violence they have perpetrated by spreading SARS-CoV-2 and its strains without mitigation. Their violence follows the logic of settlers who unleashed smallpox on the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island.

The fake anarchists who organized this festival have published a statement supporting the continuation of the COVID genocide through promoting anti-masking rhetoric in a publication called Anarchy Anarchy Anarchy!. In this newspaper, they wrote that anti-ableists who wheat pasted demands of leftist spaces to require masks are the equivalent of health cops and that mask requirements are “gulag as fuck”. These are in line with common talking points that fascists in this country make in support of the COVID genocide, claiming that mask and vaccine mandates are “authoritarian” even though they directly mitigate ableist violence. The millions dead and disabled from COVID show that refusing to mask is the real authoritarianism, because it makes space lethally inaccessible for disabled people and is killing & disabling marginalized people in mass unlike mask requirements.

This narrative also obscures the true role of the police as shock troopers for reproducing all systems of oppression. It ignores how police forces across the country & globally are responsible for pushing anti-masking practices & COVID denial in their own ranks. This violence functions as a further enforcement of genocide through their systemic power, such as exposing prisoners to COVID while withholding masks, tests & vaccines, leaving them to long term disabilities and in worst cases, death.

Our original intentions as a group were to go in, burn their ableist newspapers, make our statement at the firepit and leave, without creating bodily harm or fighting anyone. Yet upon collecting the materials we were dog piled, beaten and swung at. This forced us to respond in self defense, resulting in at least two anti-maskers getting directly damaged by our attacks. The way these reactionaries resorted to bashing the disabled trans women whom confronted their anti-masking rhetoric does not compare to the lethal violence of their willing spread of COVID. Yet we found it hypocritical that the TERFs who invaded town on 11/19/2023 and many local fascists were beaten less hard than what disabled trans women received for calling out ableism in this “anarchist” space, as unfortunately TERFs and local fascist rarely are inflicted the brutal retaliation they deserve here. We believe this intense reaction against vocal disabled trans people reveal the fascist taint in these “anarchist” anti-maskers, who rarely enact that level of violence onto other right wingers. We urge people to deplatform their crypto-fascist newspaper and these ableist talking points everywhere.

We also call for people to create space to grieve the ongoing losses & deaths from the COVID genocide, as state power & its organizational control continue to push its colonial legacy from our collective memory. From AIDS activists worldwide, to the antifascists who had fought against Pinochet, disrupting public spaces to create living sites of greiving against the ongoing violence can be a powerful act to end the silence which both obscures these deaths & benefits from their erasure. We believe that it is legitimate for people to force events like anarchy fair to be locations of grieving, so the violence is not ignored and the proud perpetrators are revealed.

We are proud of resisting the COVID genocide, because to remain passive in the face of violence, or to spend our time & efforts convincing committed ableists to stop the violence, only perpetuates the reproduction of ableism. We will fight until all disabled people are liberated from the domination of ableism, and until the grip of white supremacy is destroyed by the fury of anti-colonial rebellion! We know that only in direct conflict will hierarchy begin to crumble.

For the destruction of all oppression! Long live the struggle for the liberation of disabled people!

LONG LIVE ANARCHY!!!!!!

ⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶⒶ

initially published by evdas, can also be found on The Anarchist Library or 🧅

edit: a response to the first action that also gives details about the second action but seemingly unaware of the claim of responsibility which, as you just read, explains the ableist position of the organizers (which the author also seems unaware of) has later been published.

In the afternoon of Black Friday, roughly 100 people gathered in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood to disrupt capitalist tradition and call for an end to the ongoing genocide in Palestine. An autonomous call to mobilize to “Block Black Friday” began circulating in anarchist and radical circles the week of so-called “Thanksgiving,” calling for “No business as usual,” to “Shut it down for Palestine” and to meet at the Starbucks Roastery in Capitol Hill.

As people began to gather at the Starbucks, there was a line forming around the block of 30+ customers waiting to get inside. Within 20 minutes, the line had disappeared and Starbucks had stopped letting customers in. Within an hour of the posted start time, the front door to the Starbucks Roastery had been locked from the inside and customers were being turned away. The targeting of Starbucks was deliberate. Starbucks is a main funder for the Seattle Police Department’s labor union, the Seattle Police Officer’s Guild. SPD has long participated in what activists call “the Deadly Exchange Program,” where SPD and Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) cooperate in trainings in counterinsurgency. As well, Starbucks has engaged in blatant union busting in response to the national-scale labor-organizing efforts taken up by in recent years underpaid and overworked Starbucks employees. Starbucks also recently sued the Starbucks workers’ union after they posted a tweet declaring solidarity with Palestine. While people rallied, chanted, and sang songs on the sidewalks, the facade of the Starbucks was defaced with graffiti reading “Free Gaza,” “No Jewish Hate, No Jewish State,” a Palestinian flag, and wheatpasted posters that read “Disrupt the Death Machine.” One of the windows of the roastery was also smashed, the security cameras on the roof were sprayed with paint and someone scratched “free Palestine” into the large wooden front door. During all of this, the atmosphere was upbeat but chill, with people eating tamales and drinking coffee that were being distributed from a truck parked next to the demo.

At about 4pm, the roughly 100 people who had gathered on the sidewalk in front of Starbucks began to reorient themselves in the street to prepare to march. Banners moved to the front, bikes lined the sides of the march and cars held the back in an attempt to dissuade would-be road-ragers from driving through the march. Someone was overheard saying on the megaphone “We will be marching in the street. If you are worried for your safety, we understand that sidewalks may be safer than streets, yet we must understand that safety is never guaranteed.” Banners led the march reading “From Turtle Island To Gaza: Land Back”, “From Seattle To Palestine”, “Demilitarize Everywhere!”, “Free Them All”, “Free Palestine, Fuck The Police” and a banner was hung on the I-5 overpass reading “While you’re shopping, bombs are dropping.” The march proceeded down Pine Street from Capitol Hill all the way to Westlake Plaza, where a scheduled Christmas tree-lighting ceremony was about to take place.

Once the group descended upon Westlake Plaza, they spread out within the hundreds of christmas capitalists gathered for the absurd celebration of excessive consumption. The street was blocked off by police barricades to allow for the crowd to gather and perceive the spectacle. On the right side of the street was a giant Christmas tree. On the left side of the street was a stage prepared for a performance and programming to accompany the tree lighting. People took over the stage soon after arriving and started throwing Christmas decorations to the ground and trashing the scenery. About 5 people stayed on the stage with a banner reading “From Turtle Island to Gaza: Land Back” and held it for the following hour.

The demo had effectively shut down the programming for the christmas tree lighting ceremony, but did not stop the lighting of the tree itself. As someone read out names of young Palestinians killed by bullets or bombs in Gaza, the crowd of spectators chanted “light the tree” and soon after the lights on the tree came alive and fireworks began booming overhead. It was surreal to hear hundreds of people cheer on the “spirit of Christmas” while someone else on a megaphone shouted commemorations of children killed by U.S.-funded Israeli bombs. Regardless of failing to stop the lighting of the tree, which had been performed remotely as the tree was literally surrounded by police officers, the demo had successfully shut down the Starbucks Roastery, disrupted the Christmas tree-lighting ceremony, and elevated the call to end the genocide in Palestine.

There are several characteristic components of this demonstration that are worth highlighting. Of most importance is that this demo was organized autonomously – not in relation to or coordination with any of the big organizations of various political stripes that have been organizing under the slogan “Shut It Down.” Despite ANSWER & PSL’s attempts to co-opt and swoop this demonstration on social media, this demonstration had nothing to do with them or any other national/international organizing body but instead was coordinated by several crews with varying levels of experience in organizing radical street demonstrations in Seattle over the years. This is a strong example of decentralized organizing, where there was no “leadership” but rather a convergence of radicals with a shared interest in materially disrupting capitalism the ways they knew how.

While people held space with megaphones in front of the Starbucks, they made it abundantly clear that a diversity of tactics would be utilized and accepted. This foregrounding of this rhetoric created a space where small crews could feel comfortable knowing this was a space where they were free to sabotage, attack, spray paint, blast sound systems, wheatpaste, serve hot food, without the expected pressure of someone telling them to stick to the organizers’ plan. It’s also noteworthy that those with megaphones were able to keep the energy up throughout the demonstration through speeches and chants without controlling the demonstration, or creating a “WE talk, YOU listen” atmosphere.

Hot food and coffee were served out the back of a pick-up truck while people forced the Starbucks Roastery to close, creating a more inviting and participatory vibe as well as helping to connect strangers to each other. These elements of radical struggle, mutual aid and sabotage, are not separate from each other, but in fact are strengthened when harnessed together.

The decentralized nature of the demonstration allowed room and space for individuals to take advantage of unforeseen openings to act quickly to sabotage and disrupt the Christmas tree ceremony. The absence of a definitive plan allowed for more flexibility, rather than constraining participants to a rigid set of approved and agreed-upon action. This also allowed different crews to find each other in the streets and act alongside others they may not have previously known, creating space for building of relationships through building affinity, a type of trust that cannot be mimicked no matter how many days one spends in discourse on group chats.

We know this is a small gesture of solidarity, but we hope that the autonomous spirit of this demonstration will take root in this current moment of rebellion in solidarity with Palestinian liberation. We look forward to our friendships in struggle blossoming through spontaneous yet coordinated sabotage of capitalist society in furtherance of liberation, from Turtle Island to Gaza.

https://pugetsoundanarchists.org/reportback-from-an-autonomous-demo-to-disrupt-black-friday-in-solidarity-with-palestine/

It was early morning on October 15, the sky was completely dark. Municipal election day. We waited for the voters and the cops to move into the neighbourhood. The streets were almost empty. We reached our goal. We looked at each other with that spark in our eyes. Everything was clean. Nothing was stopping us. A few seconds before the action we wondered if it was worth it, fear took hold, but it is worth it for all the reasons in the world. Determination, the burning heart takes the place of fear. It’s one of the few times you smile. We give the final OK. The person activates the incendiary device, places it under the car. He makes the signal. We walk away, each in turn, seeing that no one in the neighbourhood noticed what had happened. Minutes later, when we were away, in the safety of the dark of night, the device activated and reduced five cars to a flaming mess. If the neighbours hadn’t been woken up by the sound of the fire, the fire siren certainly did it.

The only thing that makes sense in this miserable world we live in is to try to destroy it thoroughly. To resist it in every possible way. This small action is a contribution to this resistance. It is also an invitation to other individuals and groups to participate. There are state and capitalist goals everywhere all we need is a well organized plan and to overcome our fears individually and collectively.

At a time when despair and futility have prevailed, we respond that we do not need to hope for a better future to be able to resist a present that is killing us. With or without hope we will always fight.

We refuse to integrate into a system that is crushing our lives. Our desires are created and controlled by family, education, television. The reason we are useful to power is because we are profitable at our own expense and every four years they throw us a card to choose who will destroy our lives and sell us the fairytale of freedom. We are not fighting for a better democracy that will give us more crumbs, that will make us better consumers, that will kill a little more civilly. We are fighting for a world of solidarity, equality, freedom, for anarchy and this can only be done through the destruction of the state, capitalism, patriarchy, society and power.

How many more state murders, how many more wars, how many more immigrant women must drown and burn, how many more trains must collide. How many more people must be beaten and thrown off a ship, how many more children must be locked behind a garage door and murdered before the guilty eyes of the workers? How many times must the state arm the hand of the cop who shoots and kills anyone who disobeys its orders and challenges its authority, until we realise that we must take life into our hands and throw it into the fire. In the fire that can manage to create blows to those who oppress our lives. The only thing left in the war we have with the state, capitalism, patriarchy, is to become an impetuous wave of resistance. To bring conflict back into everyday life and suppress oppression, exploitation, racism, power.

IN THE SPRING NAHEL WAS KILLED BY FRENCH COPS JUST AS 17-YEAR-OLD

ROMA CHRISTOS MICHALOPOULOS WAS KILLED BY GREEK COPS ON NOVEMBER 11.

REVENGE FOR 17-YEAR-OLD ROM CHRISTOS MICHALOPOULOS

NO STATE MURDER WILL GO UNANSWERED

VICTORY IN PRISONERS’STRUGGLE

IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF THE ANARCHIST KOSTAS DIMALEXIS

PS In general, we don’t need specific reasons to attack multinationals because they are all shit. However, Renault produces and sells cars, and like all carmakers it makes patrol cars and cabs. Renault is a car company partially owned by the French state. And the French state has recently expanded its cooperation with the Greek one. Besides selling weapons to Greece (fighter planes and warships) French cops come to Greece with the intention of training cops for camera surveillance and advanced crowd control. France also supports the Greek state and Frontex in the war against migrants.

https://actforfree.noblogs.org/post/2023/11/25/athensgreece-taking-responsibility-for-the-confidential-attack-on-the-renault-dealership-by-anarchists/

Pamphlet about a young high school student sent to pre-trial detention, and another under judicial supervision, suspected of having attacked their high school with firework mortars in revenge against a disciplinary council!

When school sends you to prison...

Friday, November 10, 7:30 a.m. Lyon's Lycée La Martinière Monplaisir opens its doors. It's the start of another ordinary day at the lycée: a day of hard work for the students, punishments, vexatious measures and constant humiliation for the recalcitrant who don't want to fit into the mold promoted by the Republic's school system and its selective sorting of future workers. But this was without counting on a group of recalcitrants, who came to ring in the new school year with repeated blasts of fireworks, and set up a pretty fire of dustbins and scooters at the entrance to the lycée. In an e-mail sent to parents, the school principal even claims to have been personally targeted. This beautiful attack on one of the many barracks of the National Education is said to be a response, a revenge, to the following week's disciplinary meeting of one of the alleged participants (or an attempt to block the school).

Since then, the pupil concerned by the disciplinary board and another high school student have been arrested and charged with, among other things, aggravated violence and damage by dangerous means. Of the two high school students in question, the first, aged 16, has been remanded in custody, while the other, also a minor, has been placed under judicial supervision. They were identified by one of the many cameras that have been sprouting up around and inside high schools for years.

The state and politicos of all stripes, who we know are attached to the so-called school of “equal opportunities”, vaunted as a fair means of social advancement and producer of enlightened and virtuous citizens, have reacted unanimously: “It's the republican school as a whole that's under attack”, “it's the authority of the school, for which I'm fighting, that's being challenged here” declared Attal [current Minister of National Education and Youth] and others, in addition to calling of course for a firm judicial response and increased police patrols around high schools. On Friday November 17, many of the school's teachers were on strike! To demand the release of the student and the abandonment of this disgusting procedure? No, the teachers, those eternally good students, chose to feel targeted as well, and demanded better means to “raise [their] students and give as much as possible a taste for learning” and “put a stop to episodes of violence”, and offered their support to the principal apparently targeted in this attack.

Last [school] year, fearing the explosiveness and determination that high school student movements have often shown, the rectorats, in collaboration with high school and college administrations, tried to organize repression: in Paris and elsewhere, disciplinary councils were held to punish – or at least discourage, since they often failed to obtain sanctions for this reason – those suspected of having repeatedly taken part in organizing and holding “blockades” in these establishments. A few weeks later, the riots that ravaged the country for several days targeted schools, colleges and lycées, much to the dismay of parliamentarians on all sides who defend this practical tool for pacifying and bringing young people into line. Lately, in the wake of the recent tragic events in Arras, but also with the movement and riots of last year in the background, it's anxiety and the all-out security approach that has prevailed in schools, with all pupils considered potential assailants: bags searched, entrances checked, and even in some lycées, bans on hydro-alcoholic gels! Yet it's obvious to anyone interested in subversion and emancipation that the Arras attack had nothing to do with the Lyon mortars, either in means or ends. It's hard not to see in the judicial and political response to the events at the Lycée La Martinière Monplaisir, a translation into action of the State's radically repressive response to last summer's riots and its obsession with the “re-education” of young people who have not embraced the values of the Republic.

Disciplinary boards involve the same mechanisms as those of the bastard justice system, but this time in a process internal to the National Education. You're officially accused of certain misdeeds, you have the right to be assisted and represented (by a lawyer if necessary, but also by any adult) in a session that's supposed to be adversarial (with the added hypocrisy that the school institution is judge and jury, as in all internal justice systems), you have the right to explain yourself, and the parents, on whom the school relies so much to keep the kids in line, are also summoned... and finally, after deliberation, a verdict is reached by the jury, with sentences that mimic conventional justice (community service, probation, etc.). Of course, discussions also focus on the student's personality, general behavior, grades and involvement in the life of the school – individualized justice is the rule!

The disciplinary board is also the paroxysm of what schools do best in terms of forced adaptation to what exists and what represents their main goal today: the taming of pupils. At school, obedience to teachers and educational staff is taught above all, as is respect for rules and regulations, the internal law of the establishment, and a somewhat softened form of deprivation of freedom with compulsory attendance, hours of detention and absurd punishments. We are also taught normalization, conforming to what society wants of us. We're taught to be good citizens who vote, who respect the sacrosanct democracy that insinuates itself into class delegate elections, who keep their mouths shut and bow to hierarchy. Our position in the capitalist system is assimilated gently or by force, reinforced by the sorting of students along the way through forced counseling and specialized classes: you have an academic profile, you're good enough to be a manager, but you on the other hand will probably be a cashier and as for you, you're simply unemployable! The school is the barracks, and it's already the company!

It's clear that the school doesn't want to see protests take root in its offices. It is in our interest, as we seek to destroy the State, its police, its justice system and its schools, which are only good for sorting students and crushing their dreams, to see rise and gro everywhere, and inside the School itself, a radical and offensive subversion against it.

AGAINST TAMING, AGAINST JUSTICE, IN COURT OR AT THE DISCIPLINARY BOARD! FREEDOM FOR THE ASSAILANTS OF THE LYCÉE LA MARTINIERE MONPLAISIR!

https://rebellyon.info/Quand-l-ecole-envoie-en-prison-Au-sujet-d-25416
http://e7nkzth74kcn6j54u6a75pbh2q2yxjsyramuta5z7seix26gnpsq36ad.onion/Quand-l-ecole-envoie-en-prison-Au-sujet-d-25416 🧅

edit: to allow myself a personal comment

Read the 23rd part of our periodical summary, suspended since early summer of this year...

https://assembly.org.ua/

We welcome you to join our team's fundraising to work on this international column and offline volunteering activities. A couple of cups of coffee in your country, even before the war, could be equivalent to a day's earnings of a worker in Ukraine. Thank you all in advance!

Let's start with how the spontaneous strike in Voronezh against the return to the front ended. As reported on November 1 by the Telegram channel ASTRA, which covered it, most of the 30 or so soldiers who refused to board the plane bound for Avdeevka were nevertheless persuaded to go to fight. Prosecutors and psychologists worked with them at the base. It is unknown how many soldiers were held at this Pogonovo training camp, but on October 28 alone, according to an ASTRA source, between 100 and 150 fighters were brought to this base from the notorious Zaitsevo field prison for refusers.

On the same November 1, a group of mobilized men of the 20th RF Motorized Rifle Division in Crimea allegedly liquidated a Russian colonel surnamed Musurbekov. This was reported by the Ukrainian military intelligence. “An officer of the occupation army held the position of deputy regiment commander. On November 7, 2023, Musurbekov's death from his injuries was confirmed in a hospital in Simferopol.” On the same day, the suspects, having dressed in civilian clothes, allegedly left without permission their place of deployment in the Simferopol district and fled to the territory of Krasnodar. We have not found confirmation of this information from other sources.

An individual from the Trans-Baikal Territory attacked an enlistment center. On October 3, guards of the Chernyshevsky district military commissariat saw an unknown man who set fire to a cloth and threw the burning material through the window of the building. The cloth was extinguished, there was no fire, the man disappeared. Shortly afterwards a 25-year-old Chernyshevsk resident was arrested on suspicion of attempted arson. Sergei L. stated that he tried to burn down the facility as revenge for his brother Ivan. According to ASTRA, the brother went to fight in Ukraine voluntarily, but then left the unit without permission. According to Sergei, his commanders treated Ivan badly during the war. This allegedly pushed him to set the fire. A criminal case was initiated against the detainee under Part 1 of Art. 205 of the Russian Criminal Code (terrorist act). He was taken into custody.

Yesterday, November 14, in the Kabardino-Balkan city of Prokhladnyi, the enlistment office at 57 Gagarin street also caught fire. The area of the fire was 1 square meter, it was quickly extinguished by a watchman. Daniil K., 24, was arrested on suspicion of arson. He explained the arson by the fact that this military commissariat recruited him to the Russian army.

Elsewhere, in the Transcarpathian region of far western Ukraine, Vasyl Stetso, 49, was found barely alive near a military training camp with a broken head. He died on his way to the hospital on August 21. Before the war, he was a children's soccer coach, then a junior sergeant at the Uzhgorod district enlistment center. According to one version, the serviceman threatened one of the conscripts with a summons, the latter agreed to give him a bribe for a “white ticket”, but their meeting turned into a conflict. According to another, Stetso knew too much: he could have been dismissed so that he would not talk about corruption. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the murder coincided with large-scale raids of military commissioners across the country on suspicion of bribery. It is also possible that it was revenge by the relatives of those he sent to their deaths. The police initiated a criminal case under Art. 115 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (premeditated murder), but the circumstances of the incident remain a mystery.

Ukrainian media reported a wave of attacks on the property of prosecutors. On October 26, two such incidents occurred: in Chernihiv (Chernigov), at about 9:00 p.m., unknown persons set fire to the Ford Fiesta car of Daria Lukyanets – head of the Specialized Environmental Prosecutor's Office of the Chernihiv Regional Prosecutor's Office. During the search of the car, the police found two bottles of gasoline. The second arson occurred in the village of Minai, near the aforementioned Uzhgorod. There the car of the prosecutor of the Uzhgorod district prosecutor's office, Olexandr Trofimenkov, was doused with gasoline and set on fire. Two more such cases were recorded on November 4. The first took place in the Cherkassy region, where at about 11:00 p.m. the unfinished house of the head of the organizational and legal support department of the Cherkasy Regional Prosecutor's Office, Anna Volodina, was set on fire. Preliminary damage amounts to 500,000 UAH. And again in the Chernihiv region, unknown assailants smashed the windows of the car of Yevgeny Lazarenko, prosecutor of the Chernihiv Regional Prosecutor's Office. At the moment, the attackers are being identified by the investigation.

On the night of November 10, someone tried to set fire to the premises of a local police officer in Kiev. At 2 a.m., an unknown person threw a burning improvised object. It landed on a plastic awning over the entrance to the policeman's office and caused fire damage to the roof. This occurred in the Pechersk district of the city, where the Ukrainian government is located.

Given that we obtained the information through open source intelligence, we can only guess to what extent these acts are ordinary street crime, and to what extent they are desperate popular resistance against the system as a whole. In any case, these series are unprecedented since the beginning of the total war!

And two examples of individual resistance to capitalist exploitation. On September 14, police in the Kharkiv region reported a girl who caused losses to a private company amounting to UAH 380,000. On August 2, the owner of a delivery service in Kharkiv filed a complaint with the police, alleging that the female operator placed an order for food, marked the payment, although the money was not received on the service account, and then the courier delivered the orders to the specified addresses. In this way, the 26-year-old employee delivered prepared food to family and friends free of charge, sometimes also indicating her own details and address. This continued throughout last year and this year. The investigator opened a criminal case under part 2 of Art. 190 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (fraud). The suspect was informed of the suspicions.

Today the police of the Dnipropetrovsk region revealed the details of the attempted attack on the director of Dniprospetsremont LLC in Krivoy Rog (Kryvyi Rih). As a result of the investigative actions, a local resident born in 1958, an employee of this construction company (in English: Dnipro Special Repair), was detained. It was established that on the night of October 9 he tied an F-1 grenade to the door of his boss because of her non-payment of a bonus. The grenade exploded when the woman opened the gate. During the search of the visitor's apartment, two other RGD-5 grenades and an F-1 grenade were seized. The man said that he brought the seized ammunition to his place of residence from the Donbass war zone in 2014. Criminal cases have been opened under part 1 of Art. 263 of the Criminal Code (illegal handling of weapons, ammunition or explosives).

To spice it a bit, let's recall an earlier story about a hacker who took funds from Russian drug traffickers and donated them for humanitarian aid in Ukraine.

In addition, our fascinating historical research on how Kharkov in 1919 became the center of anarchist expropriations and an attempt to end the Civil War by assassinating Red and White leaders.

https://www.alasbarricadas.org/noticias/node/53455

this translation had initially been published here because the rant.li server had crashed. it links a now-deleted but essentially identical version of the communiqué, hence the different source linked here.

Space Tech Expo Europe

Space Tech Expo Europe will take place for the 6th time in Bremen's exhibition halls from November 14 to 16, 2023. It is Europe's largest and most important exhibition and conference for space technology and services. This is where the facets of the aerospace industry come to life based on the content debates and the companies involved. The declared aim: business, networking and presentation of the latest developments. The exhibition in Halls 4 to 6 will focus on space production and testing services, components and systems technology for spacecraft as well as launch vehicles and satellite programs. Over 650 exhibitors from more than 40 countries will be presenting their products and services. A significant proportion of the exhibitors will be exhibiting under the heading Military. In addition to the five largest aerospace employers Ariane, Orbital High Technology Systems (OHB), Airbus Defense and Space, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM), DSI Aerospace, Polaris Raumflugzeuge, Shieldex, Ferchau, as well as the city and the University of Bremen (Humans on Mars) are also represented from Bremen. Parallel to the exhibition, a conference will be held at the same location to discuss technical, political and strategic details.

Attack from behind

We took the ongoing trade fair as an opportunity to carry out a militant action by an anti-capitalist and anti-militarist climate movement in the late afternoon of November 14. While participants met inside for networking, we made an appointment to express our aversion. We barricaded the street behind the exhibition grounds with burning tires and threw colored glass and pyrotechnics at the glass facades of the halls. It rattled violently. The aim was to disrupt the relaxed exchange with an offensive intervention. The representatives of the arms industry were to be confronted with the consequences of their business.

Bremen as an armaments base

It is no coincidence that the Space Tech Expo is taking place in Bremen. Bremen is an armaments stronghold. No other city in Germany has a comparable armaments density. Bremen's armaments companies make a considerable contribution to the development of the [Federal defense forces of Germany]'s global operational capability and to the spread of weapons of war and equipment around the world, particularly with satellites and drones, electronics for the navy and army, warships and aircraft construction.

The city profits from crises and wars, and weapons exported from here promote conflicts around the world. Bremen is home to five armaments companies of German, in some cases European and even global importance: Atlas Elektronik, EADS Airbus, Rheinmetall Defence Electronics, the Friedrich Lürssen shipyard and OHB.

Despite anti-militarist critique and attacks against OHB, the company is attempting to make the Bremen/Bremerhaven region more attractive for the high-tech armaments industry with major projects. The German Offshore Spaceport Alliance consortium, to which OHB belongs, was recently founded. The ludicrous goal: a floating spaceport in the North Sea. Thousands of small satellites will be launched into space for commercial purposes in the coming years. The first missions are already planned for April 2024. With this initiative, the consortium is pursuing the goal of establishing Bremen as an international hub for commercial space travel. But how high will the ecological costs be if thousands of liters of rocket fuel are repeatedly burned over an already unstable habitat such as the North Sea?

War, high-tech and male fantasies of omnipotence

Satellite technology is touted as a research tool for detecting environmental disasters and changes. Space organizations, such as NASA or ESA, present themselves as primarily scientific institutions. The fact is, from its beginnings to the present day, aerospace has been dominated by the military. Communication and imaging satellites are an important infrastructure for the surveillance of other states or one's own population, they serve to seal off Fortress Europe, to reconnoitre the enemy during war or in preparation for it. They are an indispensable component for military communication and industrial processes. The aerospace industry is one of the key players in the arms industry!

War, high-tech and male fantasies of omnipotence have a long patriarchal tradition. In space travel, various forms of oppressive power structures intertwine in a dangerous way. From militaristic masculinity, misogyny and colonial thought patterns to the egomaniacal symptoms of turbo-capitalism, the problems of our world are combining and shifting into new spheres. The personification of this development in the form of Elon Musk is no coincidence, but a logical expression of this area of capitalism.

Climate

Since 2022 at the latest, it has been clear to the global public that if things continue at this rate, the earth will not warm by 1.5 degrees Celsius but by 2.5 – 3 degrees Celsius by 2100 and numerous tipping points will soon be reached. The consequence: a chaotic collapse of climate and ecosystems, the devastation of entire regions, extreme weather conditions and rising sea levels, species extinction, hunger and the flight of hundreds of millions of people.

Technologies such as satellite technology are propagated as the solution to the climate catastrophe. Behind this ideology, however, is a business-as-usual approach. Dynamic entrepreneurs sell their start-ups as world-saving machines and politicians all over the world finance their megalomaniac plans for fear of being too late in the capitalist colonization of space.

We must act now to limit the consequences of climate change! Instead of catapulting capitalism into a new orbit, we should – no, we must – do everything we can to sabotage it! To do this, we must also expose the ideologies that sell us the destruction of the earth as a humanistic engine of progress. Space Tech Expo Europe is an element of this propaganda strategy. Let's prevent it! By any means necessary!

Switch-OFF! The system of destruction

Some eco-anti-militarists

https://switchoff.noblogs.org/post/2023/11/14/angriff-auf-space-tech-expo-europe-2/

the following article should be read in addition to the reportbacks of the “Block the Boat” action from Tacoma.

There is a genocide in Palestine. We need to block the boats – to stop and disrupt Zim ships, as a means to attack and undermine the Israeli killing machine. Right now, our efforts are being misdirected – by organisations who adopt the rhetoric of direct action, smear it over events which are not that, and undermine movements which truly have the will to act against Zionism.

Two recently announced rallies, both titled ‘Block the Boat’, have been organised in a way which does not reflect any intention of actually blocking boats, but instead actively frustrates attempts to do so. At time of writing, the first rally (in Melbourne) had already occurred. Some disruption of a road took place in spite of the organisers, through attendees defying and ignoring their instructions. The second rally, in Sydney, has been planned for a time and place where no ZIM ship will be present, and organisers have misled attendees about the ZIM line’s scheduling and movements.

Despite working to inhibit both the road blockade and direct action in general, organisers have basked in credit on social media for the action that happened in Melbourne, also significantly exaggerating its size and impact.

People have a courage and capacity to act which overflows the bounds of A-B marches – symbolic demonstrations outside the empty halls of power. The purpose of this piece is to undo the misdirection so we can get on with disrupting the flow of weapons, goods and commerce to Israel, in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

A plan that didn’t make sense

There were signs from the start something was not right about these rallies. The words ‘Block the Boat’ implied, well, blocking boats, and that was how many people interpreted it. Yet less prominent lettering on promotional materials indicated that the purpose was actually to say ‘Block the Boats’, and to ‘call for’ a boycott – a message addressed to ZIM and Albanese. It wasn’t clear why we had to go to the port to do this. Albanese isn’t on the dock.

The timing of the rallies also seemed suspiciously rigid, and convenient. If the goal was to intercept a Zim ship as it arrived in port, it seemed strange this could be scheduled several days in advance for the Melbourne event and a week for Sydney. That’s not how the sea works. It also seemed odd that the mighty ocean would conspire via time and tide to bring a boat to port at ideal rally hours, 12pm on a Saturday and 5:30pm on a working day respectively.

The locations weren’t conducive to disruption. The Sydney rally was planned for a recreational boat ramp some distance away from any container ship or cargo. The Melbourne event took place at a point which is 7-8km away from where Zim ships are typically scheduled to dock (East Swanson dock, Patrick terminal). It’s possible that, as per claims that have been circulating, docking points can be changed without updating the online information. I don’t have the knowledge of ports to evaluate this.

It was hard to verify claims made by organisers that we were there to meet a ZIM ship, because no-one specified which ship we were supposed to be meeting. This would have been understandable if we were conducting a clandestine action relying on the element of surprise, but we were not – the time and place were splashed all over social media and flyers.

Apparently, the lack of information was because we were relying on inside tips from contacts in the MUA (Maritime Union Australia). But shipping schedules and positions are publicly available – both from Zim and on independent sources such as Marine Traffic or Vessel Finder. For the Melbourne event, I couldn’t find any Zim ship that was meant to be in the port at the same time as we were. I don’t see how Zim or anyone else can change, hide or falsify this – it is a ship weighing thousands of tonnes, tracked via GPS.

The boat that wasn’t

Here I’ll give an account of the Melbourne rally, with the caveat I arrived shortly after midnight, then stayed until the event ended around 4:30 am. Details from before then have been sourced from footage and accounts on social media (I’ve also cross checked with comrades who came earlier.) I’d initially planned to show up at 5:30 pm, but was too depressed by the state of it all.

My sense of malaise was not assisted by footage and commentary I saw on Twitter – organisers making claims that were frankly unbelievable. Two speakers said the Zim boat had been delayed or had bypassed Melbourne port entirely to avoid the rally, a claim that has since made its way around the world. But as stated above, this didn’t match the scheduling and when I went on Marine Traffic to check live positions, I couldn’t find any vessel that seemed to line up. In any case, delays and congestion at ports happen fairly often, and it would take some pretty strong evidence to attribute this to a rally.

Were we supposed to believe a massive container ship, carrying millions of dollars’ worth of cargo, had skipped a port due to an inland speakout several kilometres away from where it was supposed to dock? To misquote Amilcar Cabral: ‘Tell lots of lies, claim the most implausible victories’.

Life finds a way

Then something happened. A few trucks came through bearing Zim-branded containers, evoking what a comrade who was present describes as ‘jeers from the crowd and the collective middle finger’. At some point, these jeers escalated into action and people blocked the road to stop one such truck from coming through. Some lay down in front of it, others sat down. Eventually the truck was redirected to another entrance, facilitated by a police escort. People still wouldn’t leave and within hours there was a whole line of trucks backed up. Estimates I’ve heard range from 50-60 to ‘hundreds’.

It was not the organisers (Trade Unionists for Palestine, with a speaker from APAN) who made this happen. People on Twitter posted in real time to say they ‘tried to get us to leave’ and ‘the crowd are having none of it’. One comrade who was present describes organisers yelling at people to move, actually attempting to grab one or two people, and being ‘quite physically intimidating’ – though by their account, it was more words and shouting than physical force.

Observing this in fragments from home, my feelings were quite mixed. It seemed really cool that people were acting with will and courage and autonomously, creating logistical disruption and exercising real economic power. That said, I was concerned people might believe they had much more proximity to Zim than they actually did. It seemed one plausible outcome was that people would throw down – perhaps leading to arrests and etcetera – in the correct belief that economic disruption is powerful and necessary. But also thinking they were stopping a Zim ship from being loaded, which was not the case.

(I’ve since heard that this fear was unfounded, and that there was a realistic sense of what was going on. There may have been variation between Activists™, who tended to be plugged into a ridiculous, proliferating series of Signal chats, and people who just genuinely took the statement they were there to ‘block’ things literally.)

Either way, a blockade is a blockade and interrupts the flow of logistics/ goods/ profit, which is cool in my opinion. It seemed like people were going to stay the night and potentially longer, so I grabbed some blankets and made my way in.

Some beautiful moments of solidarity undermined by Activists™

When I got there the vibe was nice and chill. There were a few cops but they were mostly just hanging round in the middle distance. I met a couple of comrades, ate corn chips. The terminal wasn’t blocked, per se – there is more than one entrance – but the road had been diverted, the trucks which had been backing up were now being forced to take an alternative route. This is real disruption and costs $$, it enacts a cost on the ‘Australian’ colony and economic system. As a Palestinian participant put it, ‘If Gaza doesn’t eat, no-one eats.’

While there wasn’t much traffic at midnight, there was a pretty comfortable impromptu camp set up – LOTS of food and about 70 people from a mix of demographics. Some were Activists™ – these were mostly, but not entirely, white. I don’t have a precise definition except that there was a lingo and a claim made (explicitly or implicitly) to possession of expertise/knowledge compared to the more ‘vulnerable’ in the gathering.

Also people, mostly Arab and/ or Muslim, who seemed very ready to throw down and who didn’t speak or present with that lingo or move according to those norms. I had the impression that they were the ones who had initiated and driven the impromptu action in the first place.

Every half hour there was a call by the Activists™ for another discussion, a ‘general assembly’. It was annoying and, in my opinion, kind of paralytic. The process wasn’t really distinguishable from people just repeatedly initiating votes and discussions until they got their way. The one thing that hadn’t been consented to was use of the general assembly model. The terms of the interaction under which ‘consent’ was gathered, had to conform to the social and cultural norms of the people ostensibly seeking to find out what the group wanted.

There was some disagreement about what the blockade was actually for – was it to send a symbolic message to someone (who?), and get attention in the media? Or to extract an economic cost?

There was a pattern of projecting vulnerability onto other people, without substantiation. The claim was made that other people present didn’t know what it means to be arrested, had no ability to manage their own risks, and that the group as a whole had to make decisions on their behalf. I can’t recall anyone saying that they, personally, felt vulnerable. I myself had no desire to be arrested and good reasons for avoiding such, but felt perfectly capable of stepping away at a point where such escalation might occur.

There was a general inflation of threat levels. The claim was made that cops would indiscriminately arrest everyone in the gathering and that this had happened at another, recent event for Palestine (it hadn’t). It was also stated that any port worker who refused to load a ship bound for Israel would be fined $500,000 (the maximum fine for a wildcat strike is $13,320.)

There also seemed to be a talismanic clutching of symbols of officialdom and safety. A lot was made of the fact the legal observers had to go at some point – not by people who admitted feeling vulnerable themselves, but by people who claimed others in the gathering were vulnerable (who?). It felt like there was a paradoxical over and underestimation of risk – that cops were going to brutalise us en masse with no ability to leave, but also, a couple of people in pink vests were substantive enough that their presence or absence could be a deciding factor in our safety.

While there was a range of views, the people most keen on staying – and potentially escalating the action, for instance by moving to a more disruptive intersection – were not Activists™, and most were not white.

In the end we all slunk off home at the silliest possible hour, 4:30 am, just before more trucks would be coming and we might begin to have a heightened economic impact. I fell into bed around 5 am, filled with the frustrations of the evening, a sense of chances not taken and corn chips.

Miseducation intensifies

In the days which followed, there was a huge inflation of what had just happened on social media, and then actual media. To be clear, we did not block the port. We blocked one road leading to the port, causing diversion of traffic. That is not nothing, but it is very different from blocking the boats.

This did not stop the same organisations that had tried to prevent the blockade from happening, and failed to support it when it did, from accepting the exaggerated credit. While some information can be found to clarify, none of this has come from the organisers themselves (Trade Unionists for Palestine). Judging by the online presence of affiliated individuals, you would think this group and its orbiters had always applauded direct action in general, the Melbourne action in particular, and even that they were the progenitors of the blockade which they tried to shut down.

The really weird stuff, though, happened around the planned Sydney rally. Organisers (Trade Unionists for Palestine and Palestine Justice Movement Sydney) released a statement that claimed the following:

That the ship people were ‘blocking’ in Melbourne and Sydney was the Contship Dax

That the protests in Melbourne and Sydney had been timed to coincide with its arrival

That shipping schedules had been changed so that ZIM ships would not arrive at the same time as protests

That they applauded the direct action which had happened in Melbourne and wanted similar to occur in Sydney

That they wanted to get everyone’s details for fast mobilisation against ZIM ships, so we would be ready when they docked.

Every one of these points is incredibly implausible, misleading or false.

The Contship Dax was not scheduled to travel from Melbourne to Sydney, but in the opposite direction.

It was not scheduled to be in those respective ports on the date of those rallies.

Trade Unionists in Palestine and other organisers had not initiated or applauded the direct action in Melbourne, they tried to stop it.

For the claim the ship’s movements had been changed to avoid the rallies to be true, the Contship Dax would need to have reversed its planned origin and destination. This would mean changing its position by hundreds of miles, and its schedule by a week or more – all in response to a planned speakout on land, several kilometres away from where it was supposed to dock.

Then, Sydney organisers started signing people up for urgent alerts, promising to text them for rapid mobilisation when a Zim ship was due to arrive – when at that very moment, the Contship Dax was sitting right there in the dock. This was confirmed by several people using four different sources (Zim schedules, Port Botany website, Vessel Finder, Marine Traffic) – including sources that locate ships using GPS positioning, and are not owned by ZIM.

Some people have said or implied that organisers are relying on secret information from MUA insiders, showing that ZIM has changed schedules in response to the planned protest. Again, the nature of supposedly secret information is that it’s impossible to scrutinise. But there’s a reason why the shipping news is public – container ships are big. You can see them. It would seem wildly dangerous to falsify their position, and I can’t imagine how technically this might be done.

To repeat – at the time the Sydney organisers were telling people to sign! Your number! Here! To be ready! To urgently! Block! The boat! – the boat was already in the port.

[Update: the Sydney event has now passed – much like the Contship Dax, which sat in Port Botany for three days, but was far away by the time the rally started.]

The conceptually upside down and nonsensical nature of the rallies in the first place

Here’s the thing: none of this ever made sense.

The call to gather at an event to ‘boycott Zim’ is bizarre – how can the general public boycott a company that doesn’t sell final goods? The only meaningful ‘boycott’ in this case is not a boycott, it’s a strike – the withholding of labour.

I attended a meeting for Trade Unionists for Palestine where some people tried to call for exactly that. The cognitive dissonance was off the charts. There was much talk of wharfies refusing to load ships for South African apartheid. What a glorious past. But when people suggested that the same resistance should happen now, i.e., that workers and unions should refuse to build or transport weapons destined for Israel, organisers responded aggressively and dismissively. The conversation was derailed into discussion of a) bringing more flags to rallies, b) issuing statements and c) general BDS – things like Sodastream or McDonalds.

While BDS is good, giving up McDonalds is not the same as blocking the flow of weapons to Israel. And while statements are nice, it’s not words or lack thereof which kill people, it’s bombs.

In this context, the hypocrisy of the ‘Block the Boat’ rallies is jaw-dropping – to hold an event calling for someone else to boycott Zim and the Israeli arms trade, while you and your organisations are continuing to load and unload ZIM ships, to build and handle arms, and to otherwise enable the supply chain of weapons for Israel.

I suppose some of this is funny, but it’s really not.

Final thoughts

I don’t need to draw any conclusions about people’s motivations and I won’t. It may well be that organisers are attempting to play some kind of 4D chess.

What is clear is that people are telling the public stuff that isn’t true, harvesting their contact details and getting them to turn out to events – on the basis that they can ‘block the boats’ to stop weapons from going to Israel – when these organisers are actually making sure it is impossible to block any ZIM boat at these rallies.

There are ideological differences, differences in analysis, around the value of direct action. If you don’t like or believe in it, don’t do it. But get out of the way. Stop misleading people, stop – frankly – lying. I don’t know what else to call it when people appropriate direct action rhetoric, bask in the credit for actions they didn’t undertake and tried to stop, and tell untruths which demobilise or even render future actions impossible.

Sometime in the night one of the non-Activists™ at the action in Melbourne said (light paraphrase from memory): ‘We are getting 100,000 people coming on the Sunday protests. If one percent, five percent of those people come to the port…’ And why don’t you dear Reader fill in the blanks because this is not about words, this is about the material expression of our opposition to a genocide.

That’s all I have to say.

Appendix

A detailed primer on Block The Boat actions, from Workers in Palestine, can be found here [NdE: the link from the original article seems to lead nowhere, but i suppose they meant to direct to this one].

Schedules for the arrival and departure of ZIM ships can be found here. Use the point to point function to find out which terminal they are scheduled to dock at.

The movement of ships can be tracked in real time here or here. Local port authorities will also have their own websites.

In Oakland, a method which has been used successfully is to picket the port where the ZIM ship is docked. Historically, this has relied on co-operation from port workers and their unions, who agree not to cross the picket line. We are significantly less likely to see support from unions in ‘Australia’. An analogous method might be to blockade the entrances to the terminal where the ZIM ship is docked, physically preventing workers from entering, to create conditions which trigger OH/S laws enabling them to stand down without penalty.

Other strategies could involve physically inhibiting the docking, loading and unloading or departure of the ship, through actions based on land or water (as with actions by environmentalists in the past), or blocking train lines and roads supplying the ports.

Comments and critiques, especially factual corrections, are welcomed.

so i will allow myself a personal comment with regards to the ‘Block the Boat’ actions so far in hope that they will actually live up to their slogan. please check the original article from Backlash Blogs which contains additional images as well as sourced tweets which i did not hyperlink.

on the night of Nov. 2, we placed and set fire to tires blocking both directions of traffic in front of Terna spa's headquarters on Via Egidio Galbani and threw stones to break its windows.

Terna is the main company in Italy for the construction and maintenance of electrical infrastructure, but it also operates abroad in countries such as Chile. Terna is not only responsible for the environmental devastation and pollution that follows the building of power lines and related transformer stations, as a leading actor in the process of the electrification the world as a consequence of the unhealthy idea of progress that this deadly system propagates, but it is also a promoter of the “green revolution” caused by the recent need to restructure capitalism that will only bring further exploitation of ecosystems and people. Unveiling its responsibilities is one of the goals of our action.

This action is to be seen as part of the international campaign for the release of Marcelo Villarroel. Marcelo is an anarchist prisoner in Chile's state prisons incarcerated in 2007 after a period of absconding for a series of bank expropriations. He was sentenced to more than 40 years in prison without the possibility of access to prison benefits because he was held responsible for certain actions that occurred during the years of the military dictatorship in Chile and therefore condemned by military laws.

Despite the rhetoric, Chilean democracy demonstrates perfect continuity with the dictatorial regime when it comes to targeting those who act without compromise for the end of all oppression and exploitation caused by the state and Capital. That is why we join the chorus of actions and initiatives for its immediate liberation. IMMEDIATE FREEDOM FOR MARCELO VILLARROEL SEPULVEDA!

We would like to take this opportunity to send solidarity greetings to anarchist Francisco Solar and anarchist Monica Caballero, who have undergone a lengthy trial in recent months for the planting of explosive devices against institutional targets in the context of the 2019 uprising in Chile of which they were recently found guilty. SoLIDARETY TO MONICA AND FRANCISCO!

We would also like to express our solidarity with Alfredo Cospito who was recently denied for the umpteenth time the cancellation of his classification under the 41bis prison regime. STAY STRONG ALFREDO! the fight is not over!

Solidarity with the anarchist Stecco recently arrested by police special units after 2 years of absconding.

SOLIDARITY TO ALL ANARCHISTS AND IMPRISONED ANARCHISTS, HIT BY REPRESSION OR IN ABSCONDING!

FINALLY WE WOULD LIKE TO SEND OUR SOLIDARITY AND FRATERNITY TO ALL THE PALESTINIANS WHO ARE RESISTING AND FIGHTING AGAINST THE INFAMOUS ZIONIST OCCUPATION AND GENOCIDE OF THEIR PEOPLE.

RESIGNATION IS DEATH, REVOLT IS LIFE. LONG LIVE ANARCHY!

i chose to maintain the typos as they were found, although i may have missed some.