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Title: Electric Funeral Author: The Havoc Mass Date: Winter 2004 Language: en Topics: Anarchy, Green Anarchy #15, sabotage, attack, strategy Notes: from Green Anarchy #15, Winter 2004
In a single superpower world, there is a single best target for those
dissatisfied with the status quo. Critical infrastructures are the best
target sets within that best target, and the electric power
infrastructure is arguably the most vulnerable of the critical
infrastructure.
-Lt. Colonel Bill Flynt, Office of Homeland Security
It’s 2004 and the planet is under assault by an exterminist megamachine
following its own techno-logic of self-annihilation. This now monolithic
power structure, with its vast web of administrative grids and military
networks, is the suicidal unconscious(ness) of patriarchal history
marshalling toward armageddon – the burning, blood-soaked finale of
civilization’s pathological death instinct. Two worlds, uncompromisingly
opposed to one another, have come into furious collision: the flowing
waters of free life and the stagnant, poisoned wells of
techno-industrial civilization.
A storm is gathering, and out of the death rattle of our age a wave of
new life is arising: new anti-authoritarian resistance movements that
are awakening to the horror and desperation of our plight, movements
that are ready to throw themselves into open warfare with the
techno-industrial system and its omnicidal trajectory. These new
movements – born out of a hope for liberation in our Earth’s darkest
hour – have inspired millions worldwide and have opposed the system with
a ferocity that hasn’t been seen in this country in decades.
But one thing many of these new rebel movements seem to be lacking is an
overall strategy, a strategy which calls for and which can actualize the
collapse of the Death Machine. If we’re in agreement that our objective
is to shut down the Megamachine, then we need to take a close look at
the physical anatomy of the Mechanistic Order and figure out actions we
can take to “level the playing field”. Machines, institutions and
“reality” itself are socially constructed and are thus amenable to
de-construction. The civilization we inhabit (or more accurately, of
which we are prisoners) is an Electrical Civilization and it seems
obvious to us that the electrical grid offers a soft underbelly to
saboteurs at every turn. Let’s face it: the eleventh hour is
approaching, Moloch is feeding on war victims beyond measure, the
genetic structure of life itself is being manipulated by the death
merchants of science, and we’re running out of air to breathe...
Our tactics NEED to escalate if we’re going to tear this diseased system
down – physically – and drag its filthy corpse off the planetary stage
once and for all.
These writings appeared in Palermo in solidarity with the actions where
electricity pylons of the ENEL company were sawn through in Caorsa and
Montato (the central line). These are the latest examples in a series of
acts of sabotage that have been carried out for some time now all over
Italy. Why are the police and the judiciary unleashing such a
disproportionate response to this kind of action? In our opinion these
direct actions that anyone can accomplish at any time and in any place,
possibly frighten them more than the very formation of a closed armed
group. This is because the specific armed group is controllable due to
the programme and logic that it adheres to, while the spreading of acts
of sabotage puts the power structure in difficulty because anyone can
carry out such acts. It is enough to obtain a hacksaw and hoose a pylon.
This does not please the Greens, the pacifists or environmentalists
because such actions undermine their work as politicians tending to
homogenize the movement to their practice of platonic dissent.
Against the high priests of ecology we reaffirm our antagonism and
disdain. For we antagonists direct action is an attack against the
structures producing nuclear energy.
-Palermo anarchist group, 1987
In the late 1980’s in Italy a heated (and we mean this literally) battle
was being fought against the construction of nuclear power plants and
the industries and think-tanks responsible for producing this
technology. On one side of the struggle were all the various reformist
political forces (Greens, the Communist Party, “environmentalists”,
pacifists) who proposed anti-nuclear legislation and referenda and who
attempted to put the struggle on an institutional level, thoroughly
integrated into governmental/parliamentary logic. But an equally
important component of the struggle was a loose confederation of
insurrectional anarchists, libertarians and non-aligned comrades who
operated outside and against the institutional framework and who
actualized their resistance, not just as blockades at the nuclear power
plants, but as a generalized attack on atomic energy.
In 1986, a vital crossroads in the struggle was reached, when
anarchists - frustrated with the constrained “game-playing” of the
nuclear reformers – began to develop a movement against the nuclear
project that was autonomous and radical. As the “ProvocAzione” editorial
group put it at the time: “To the mountains of scrap paper produced by
those who support and practice parliamentarian referendums, we propose
direct action, the only possibility of really transforming this society
because it points out the need for attack against the structures of
dominion (including the nuclear ones) and the objectives to aim at. Our
allies and accomplices are the antagonists and rebels, because they want
to live, not vegetate, rising up and making a mockery of the reformists
preaching survival.” It was in this social context that new and
effective strategies against nuclear energy and the power grid itself
began to emerge...
-On July 12, 1987, a high tension ENEL (Ente Nazionale per L’Energia
Alternativa) pylon in Cosenza, Italy, was sawn at the base. After having
sawn the pylons, the unknown nightworkers pulled them down, putting out
of action an electroduct line of 150 thousand volts. The same fate
befell another ENEL pylon in the area of Pec del Brasimone on September
9, 1987. That pylon, which feeds the nuclear reactor of Pec, was also
sabotaged by unknown persons who left a leaflet at the spot: “No to the
nuclear and coal power stations, no to war, no to the energy bosses.”
-On March 8, 1988, a group calling itself Antinuclear Revolutionaries
attacked another electrical pylon in Italy. Here is an excerpt from
their communique:
On March 8, we cut down a high tension pylon in the Cosenza region. In
this way we mean to strike at the infamous ENEL gang, protagonists in
the atomic project in Italy and abroad. We delegate our freedom to
control our lives to no one and want to destroy the one they have
organized for us now. The misery of waged work, nuclear death, the
increasing militarisation of our territory and society itself are the
prisons that call themselves social democracy.
The nuclear nightmare is an effective policeman for terrorising the
population, creating that state of impotence and delegation in order to
continue to govern us. The complicity of the political parties, with
words and power games and sweet illusions through referendums, is
clearly trying to kill the antinuclear struggle and bury it in an
institutional field. We refuse this.
The farce of the National Energy Conference called by the ENEL and the
Government, shows the clear will to make a choice decided long ago seem
like something to be discussed in Parliament. Let us spread sabotage
over the whole territory, striking the structures that are bringing
about such projects of death.
-During the night between March 12 and 13, 1988, another two pylons were
sawn down: one in the area of Rome Settebagni, another in the Cosenza
area. The sabotage was claimed with a letter to the press agency Ansa,
in which unknown comrades declared themselves to be against nuclear
power stations.
-On April 13, 1988, the day on which the Regional Administrative
Tribunal of Lazio granted a repeal to ENEL who were asking for work to
be allowed to recommence on the electronuclear plant at Montalto di
Castro, three bomb attacks took place against the nuclear industry.
During the night, paper bombs exploded at an ENEL research laboratory
and at two firms: the Carlo Gavazzi Control Co., which produces
condensers, and the Passoni and Villa Co., which produces electrical and
electronic components. The attacks were claimed by anarchist comrades in
a leaflet which reached the ANSA press agency and Radio Popolare in
Milan the next day. About a week later, on April 19, another antinuclear
bomb exploded at the FITRE electronic communications agency in Milan.
This attack was signed with an encircled A.
-On June 9, 1988, a main electrical line of the municipal firm of
Vicenza was destroyed by flames. A leaflet was published in Sicilia
Libertaria concerning the attack on this power line:
We have sabotaged a high tension pylon above Crotone, where factories
pour out toxic clouds, pollution, exploitation, products as useless as
they are poisonous. THE MAFIA OF CAPITAL AND ITS STATES IS PUTTING INTO
EFFECT THE ABSOLUTE DESTRUCTION OF LIFE ON EARTH! Their accomplices are
the politicians, parties, trade unions, “men of culture”, “scientists”.
The enforced accomplices to their own extermination are the people
corrupted and subjected by the myths of “wellbeing”, “commodity”,
“civility”, “progress”. We are fighting to free ourselves from this
imminent perspective. That can only seriously come about after the
elimination of the exploitation of man by man and of the environment.
So we are attacking with sabotage, with the refusal of consumerism and
waste, and say: stop immediately every kind of industrial production and
carburation (traffic, heating, industry) that is even slightly
polluting, and all the other processes of plundering of the environment
that are just as stupid and homicidal.
-And finally, on October 15, 1988, in the mountainous area of “Noce” in
the province of Catanzaro, a 150 thousand kilowatt ENEL electricity
pylon was partly sawn down. At the base of the pylon, the Carabinieri
(Italian pigs) found a timer device and some leaflets which the unknown
saboteurs had left behind.
Since that period of time, attacks on the electrical power-structure
seem to be a favored tactic of anarchists in Italy. In the 90’s–
alongside the blitzkrieg infestation ofcomputers and cell phones – came
a deepening of the critique and a broadening praxis that addressed the
whole electrical web by which we are ensnared. Microwave towers and
cellular antennae are now common targets for revolutionary sabotage, as
it becomes more and more obvious that our planet is being transformed
into an all-pervasive, deadly electro-magnetic field where invisible
emissions and silent currents of cancer course through our bodies daily.
(See this issue’s “Direct Action” news sections for more recent
examples.)
There have also been several noteworthy instances in North America of
radicals hitting the electrical infrastructure “where it hurts”, though
they’ve been more sporadic and more censored by the State. Still, bits
and pieces of radical folklore concerning these incidents survive in the
“oral tradition” of certain anarchist circles, and the memory of these
rebellions hasn’t been completely smothered by decades of establishment
propaganda. One of the more interesting (and widespread) incidents of
electrical sabotage in North America occurred during the so-called
“Trouble on the Prairie” which erupted in the 1970s, during the “energy
wars” between Minnesota farming communities and both public and private
electrical utilities.
For example, in Lowry, Minnesota, a community group named “General
Assembly to Stop the Powerline” organized to stop a powerline
“right-of-way” crossing through their rural farmland. It was decided by
the community that a “total tactic” would be used: demonstrations were
staged, protest letters were written to State representatives, but the
power plans still moved ahead. Then foundations and building materials
were destroyed, and tractors pulled down dozens of transmission towers
as they were erected. Finally, the State Police were called in, people
were arrested, and the power-plants and power-lines were finally
constructed and made operational. But in their 1981 manifesto, the
community of Lowry discusses how their confrontation with the government
dispelled many illusions they once had about “democracy”:
We survive. We were not stopped when we were repeatedly and shamefully
betrayed by the politicians. We continue to endure the injuries
inflicted by a parade of incompetent bureaucrats acting in collusion
with the utilities. We were not defeated when callous judges kept
deciding that the time and money of the power companies was more
important than truth, and even more important than their law. The
combined brute force of the FBI, the BCA, the State and local police,
and private armies hired by the utilities, has not been strong enough to
destroy us. And we have survived the lies, the threats and intimidations
and deceits, and the arrogant destruction brought upon us by the power
companies themselves. The line went into commercial operation two years
ago, and we are still survivors! That has never happened before...
On July 3, 1981, near Moab, Utah, saboteurs toppled a Utah Power and
Light transmission tower carrying 345,000-volt power lines seven miles
south of Earth First!’s second annual Round River Rendezvous. No one was
ever arrested for this action, nor for a similar one that occurred a
year earlier in Colorado in which 3.2 miles of power lines were downed
after their line supports were sawn through – costing the Colorado Ute
Electric Association $270,000 in repair bills.
There are a few more incidents of electrical sabotage in the nineties
that we know about, but sadly, the practice has yet to really catch on
in North America (the purpose of this article is to discuss this). In
1990, after Earth Day celebrations, unknown individuals calling
themselves the Earth Night Action Group made two consecutive hits in
Freedom, California, sawing first through two wooden power poles and
then toppling a steel transmission tower belonging to the Pacific Gas
and Electric Company. This caused a massive power failure that cut off
electricity for Santa Cruz County residents for 10 to 18 hours. And in
February 1996, pipebombs were used to attack a SCADA system at a
hydroelectric plant in Oregon.
The imperialist nature of the power grid has long been recognized and
resisted by indigenous communities as well, but space constraints
prohibit us from tackling this subject in too much detail. Among the
numerous examples of indigenous resistance to the encroachment of the
electrical world is the struggle of indigenous Venezuelans against the
state-run company “Electrificacion del Caroni” (EDELCA). In the late
1990’s, the Indigenous Federation of Boli’var State, which encompasses
the Pemon communities and other native groups, protested the
construction of an electrical line system, fearing that it would lead to
new mining settlements, tourism and urbanization in their ancestral
lands. When their protests were ignored people began knocking down
electrical towers intended to carry electricity from the Guri Dam in
southeast Venezuela to northern Brazil. EDELCA reported at least four
incidents of sabotage in September of 2000, including one in which seven
towers were toppled overnight.
The grand project that is cyberspace is grounded in the mundane
realities of what is required to sustain it. The artificial, virtual
worlds of the internet are completely interconnected with the Electrical
Order that permeates everything that exists, and are still reliant upon
ancient and recurring themes tying the diagnostic “health” of
civilization to its sources of energy, war and ecologic exploitation.
Together this infrastructure materially represents and sustains the
spectacle of otherworldly immateriality while simultaneously depending
upon a physical assemblage of wires, plugs and sockets to distribution
lines and poles, to transformers and electrical power plants. Without
these extensions – and without electricity – cyberspace would cease to
exist, and so too would the new global economy as it depends upon
electrical power, media and technology in order to function. Given the
magnitude of the telecommunications industry (particularly the internet)
and its criticality to other infrastructures, it’s easy to see how the
vulnerability of information communications systems could cripple even
the most “impervious” power structure.
An AT&T network failure, for instance, would definitely affect the
airline industry, which would have to cease operations because control
towers could not communicate with each other. Computer viruses – another
form of electronic warfare – could easily be unleashed with the intent
of damaging networked computers on a global scale, including electronic
banking and stock markets. In fact, we don’t need to look any farther
than the U.S. military for an idea of how effective electrical warfare
can be. In Serbia, the U.S. and its Allies tested a “graphite bomb”
cruise missile, in which canisters of graphite tape exploded into great
nets of ribbon above power lines, which then short-circuited the
electrical grid by causing power spikes and arcing. In the Gulf and
Serbian wars, electronically guided “smart bombs” sought out electrical
power plants and telecommunication facilities via artificial
intelligence (AI) software and global positioning systems (GPS), so as
to nullify the electrical command of the enemy forces.
As these recent nation-state conflicts have shown us, the first step
towards defeating your opponent lies in disabling or destroying their
sources of artificial power. In addition to rioting outside of global
economic summits, perhaps it’s time for anarchists to look for ways to
render industrial civilization inoperative by pulling the plug on its
power grid (liberals who love their computers and the “networking”
opportunities they supposedly afford us are advised to reflect on the
Greek root of the word “cyber” – kybernan – which means to control or
govern).
It could be that, in the future, people will look back on the American
Empire, the economic empire and the military empire, and say, ‘They
didn’t realize that they were building their whole empire on a fragile
base. They had changed that base from brick and mortar to bits and
bytes, and they never fortified it. Therefore, some enemy some day was
able to come around and knock the whole empire over.’ That’s the fear.
-Richard Clarke, head of the President’s Critical Infrastructure
Advisory Board
The U.S. power transmission grid alone has 204,000 miles of transmission
lines served b y four regional grids located across North America:
Western Interconnection, Eastern Interconnection, Electricity
Reliability Council of Texas, and Province of Quebec. The grid has a
generating capacity of 800,000 mega-watts and is divided into
Electricity Generation, Transmission and Distribution Sectors. These
sectors contain a nationwide network of 5,000 power plants fueled by
natural gas, nuclear energy, hydropower (dams), oil, and coal, as well
as a physical network of more than 4000 miles of gas pipelines,
refineries, communication systems, and substations.
The basic structure of an electric power transmission and distribution
system consists of a generating system, a transmission system, a
subtransmission system, a distribution system, and a control center.
Generally, the communication between the control center system and the
field equipment takes place over utility-owned communications networks.
Today, the majority of these networks are based on analog and digital
microwave technology, though dedicated leased lines, power line
carriers, satellites and fiber optics certainly play their role. This
field equipment, called Remote Terminal Units (RTU’s), acts as a
clearing house for incoming data.
Digital control systems, such as SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data
Acquisition Systems) supervise and regulate real-world structures like
gas pipelines, oil refineries, and power grids. There are four or five
companies, three of them European, that make the SCADA software that’s
widely used in the electric power industry. Most SCADA systems are
running Microsoft-operating software, which means they can be
manipulated remotely and that their users essentially have a target
painted on their foreheads.
Transformers, microwave towers, and transmission substations can often
be found in isolated, unpopulated areas. Electrical substations will
almost always be secured with nothing more than a lock on an access
gate. Once inside, an experienced saboteur might destroy an entire
substation. High voltage power lines are run on massive pylons, which
are built on concrete foundations but are not designed to withstand
sabotage. Each pylon has from four to eight legs, which are secured to
their concrete foundations by massive bolts. Wrenches, blowtorches and
explosives would all be sufficient to destroy the integrity of the
entire structure; many of these power lines run through desolate areas
and are only inspected once a week by maintenance crews, usually by
helicopter.
Probably the main thing that makes the electrical grid such an enticing
target is the fact that it’s already falling apart, on its own! The 1996
blackout on the West Coast that affected 4 million people from British
Columbia to Mexico (including parts of the U.S. stretching from Oregon
to Wyoming) was caused when Bonneville Power Administration (BPA)
transmission lines sagged into tree limbs. Similarly, on September 28,
2003, a tree uprooted by storms in Switzerland was blamed for paralyzing
electricity supplies across Italy when it cut a vital power line over
the Alps. All of Italy, along with areas of Switzerland and Austria,
were hit by the blackout. And of course, last August’s huge blackout in
the Northeast and parts of Ontario, lasted for days, and was the largest
single power-outage in U.S. history.
The strong inter-linkages between industry sectors has also allowed
non-humyn rebels to strike effective blows against the Empire: In 1986,
in California, a beaver strategically felled a 10-inch thick tree so
that it fell across a major powerline. As a result, 400 residents of
Cottage Grove and several industries lost their electricity for 3 hours
(the victorious monkeywrencher was not caught!). In 1987, in Ft. Pierce,
Florida, two onslaughts by jellyfish (unfairly considered by many as one
of Earth’s more ignominious species) at the St. Lucie nuclear power
plant caused two separate shut-downs (the first jellyfish attack blocked
the ocean-fed coolant system of the plant, while the second covered the
water filtering system: the combined financial loss to the Florida Power
and Light, Co. was more than $1 million). And in New York, thousands of
dollars are spent every year to replace cable TV wires that are used as
tooth sharpeners by rodents, much to the consternation of boob-tube
enthusiasts.
As technology advances, so do its dependencies on other sectors: certain
infrastructures are the customers of other infrastructures, and when
electrical transmission capacity is unexpectedly lost, electrical
generation must immediately be taken off-line. Otherwise, the
generator’s output will reroute and overload remaining transmission
lines, causing “voltage oscillations” that will ripple through the power
grid and pull down significant portions of it. Thus, a well-planned
attack that cripples key energy facilities might severely hamper the
distribution of natural gas and could easily lead to cascading failures
of the power grid and the telecommunications system.
The costs associated with the August 2003 blackout in the U.S. are
currently estimated at $700 million and growing. One week after the U.S.
power failure, Georgian separatist rebels shut down the Inguri
hydroelectric station (in the zone of the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict),
when two sections of a 500,000 volt powerline were damaged by shots from
an automatic weapon. As a result, the Inguri hydroelectric station shut
down automatically, leaving all of Georgia without electricity. And
indeed, the efficaciousness of infrastructural sabotage has not been
lost on the Iraqi insurgents, who routinely engage in attacks on the oil
infrastructure, directly thwarting attempts at coalition
“reconstruction” and undercutting the funding for the installation of a
CIA-backed puppet regime. In Basra, circuits running underground and
belonging to the Bechtel Corporation are routinely attacked by people
who pour gas on them and set the fuel ablaze.
So welcome to the Wasteland! It’s time to start anew...time to reclaim
the earthly paradise our ancestors once knew... prophecies are coming
true as a cycle nears completion... global warming, acid rain, advanced
ozone depletion... the signs of the times are everywhere, so let’s make
sure that we’re prepared... to finish off the Megamachine before it can
be repaired... when the power lines come crashing down and the roads
disintegrate... we’ll blend in with the pounding rains and move to smash
the state!