Critique of ‘Do Not Support the ALF’

By Jake Conroy (SHAC 7), from Because We Must:

I don’t tweet or tumbl or any of that stuff, so I don’t really have a place to put this besides here. Nor can I contact websites like Animal Liberation Frontline or NAALPO due to my legal issues. But this ridiculous article about how we need to do away with ALF supporters has been heavy on my mind. So I thought I would share my thoughts. Feel free to share on your social media outlets if you feel inspired to:

While I share in the anonymous author’s desire to see more action and less talk, the arguments laid out in their article are tragically flawed, dangerous, and counterproductive (and somewhat laughable as it is being posted on blogs and all things social media, thus creating just the opposite affect of the original argument). I have spent awhile thinking about and being angered over the article and how best to respond. Ultimately, my own personal story, which I think is fairly commonplace for a lot of us, was the best rebuttal:

I think my story is pretty typical for anyone coming up in the mid 90′s. I moved to the Northwest in 1995 when I was 19. I quickly became vegan and interested in politics. I didn’t know any other activists or even vegans at the time. However, I found myself captivated by hardcore and punk music, and zines that espoused the lifestyle. I would go to places like Fallout Records and dig through the dusty box they had in the corner, full of old magazines. Here I would find old Sea Shepherd journals and issues of The Underground (the ALF Supporters Group newsletter). I would go to hardcore shows and pick up literature at tables. I spent hours in used bookstores digging through the history sections for books on radical activism. I would spend days pouring over these materials, reading and rereading them, and dreaming and scheming.

Eventually I would find my way into my local animal rights group. I worked with the Northwest Animal Rights Network in Seattle that was a mix of the greatest group of people. Our tight-knit core group of 10 or so had retired naval lawyers in their 70s down to punk rock teens with mohawks. But the one thing we all had in common was that we unabashedly supported the ALF. One of the first demonstrations I ever went to was an ALF support demo after a local Honey Bee Ham restaurant had its windows smashed in. Myself and a friend started passing out information on animal rights and animal liberation at the local hardcore shows. We would be doing tables upwards of 3-4 times a week. There wasn’t much in the way of ALF support merchandise at the time, so we screened pro-ALF shirts and hoodies we got from the thrift store and sold them to cover the costs of photocopies. While I certainly don’t attribute it entirely or even remotely to the two of us, there was definitely a genuine feeling of support for direct action and the ALF within the community.

Over the next several years I would redirect my focus from simple protests to civil disobedience, to direct action in the form of whale hunt sabs off the coast of Washington, to helping get the SHAC USA office off the ground and working on the anti-HLS campaign for 5 years. During that time I also worked on and helped start some of the biggest and most important direct action support magazines of those times. Those magazines would help build, among other things, community support for imprisoned activists around the world. That support would come in many forms, including leaflets and magazines, t shirts, videos, benefits, and support funds. Eventually myself and 5 friends would be found guilty in the SHAC 7 trial. I would be sentenced to 48 months in federal prison, partly because we chose to publicly share ideas. Controversial ideas, like supporting direct action and the ALF.

All of this started with zines I found in a box in the corner of a record store. It led to high-fives with friends, wearing black shirts and taking goofy pictures with disposable cameras at hardcore shows (that’s what we did before Instagram). I started out as a kid listening to music and reading propaganda. I never was a press officer, or a convicted (or not convicted) operative, nor am I disabled. But I think I’ve accomplished some really exciting things in my 17 years as an activist – from getting fur out of major retailers in Seattle, to using direct action to stop the killing of whales off the coast of Washington to organizing with SHAC USA, one of the most successful grassroots animal rights campaigns in our history. And I started out exactly as the kid you are saying needs to stop their “madness”.

Do you know who else started out the same way I did? Being inspired by listening to the music you want to end and reading the zines (now online, called blogs) you would like to do away with? ALF activists like Rod Coronado, Keith Mann, Peter Young. Andy Stepanian, Darius Fullmer. Do you know how ALL of those folks survived their prison experiences? By receiving books and letters and photos and donations by all those people who you suggest do nothing more than “work and watch movies with friends”.

The bottom line is, for over 40 years there has been ALF support work going on all over the world. (Please learn the history of that work at Conflict Gypsy) That work has created a community of people that might not be exactly what you want them to be, but ultimately will support those people you revere so much when they need it the most. Their simple presence will keep that community around, will foster that support when its needed, and keep the issues as relevant as possible. Of course we want more action, less words. But ultimately we need both, because that’s what will keep these ideologies going throughout the peaks and the troughs, the highs and the lows. To not show your support publicly for direct action is what may be the final blow to one of the most important elements of the animal rights movement.

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Do Not Support the Animal Liberation Front

From Animal Liberation Frontline:

Message to ALF supporters from “an anonymous liberator”.

This week I received an anonymous article, which I am posting below. It is signed “an anonymous liberator”. There is no way to verify the authenticity of the author as being a “liberator” or ever having carried out an Animal Liberation Front action. However there is a tenor to this article that is hard to fake.

This article calls out a particular form of imposter: those who exploit the risk and sacrifices of the ALF (and others) to increase their social status. Specifically, a subculture of aspiring scene celebrities and keyboard gangsters who build a social identity around ‘supporting’ the ALF.

This takes many forms, from ALF t-shirt-wearing by those who have never lifted a finger to help animals to “militant” blogs written by those who leave their computers only to go to restaurants or anarchist meetings.

The messages of this article are long overdue:

1) Those who use use the animal liberation movement to look cool need to start helping animals or be shown the door.

2) There is no such thing as “supporting the ALF”. The ALF doesn’t need “support” – it needs participation.

This is the article, in full:

DO NOT SUPPORT THE ANIMAL LIBERATION FRONT
by one anonymous liberator

The Animal Liberation Front is in desperate need of fewer supporters. It has far, far too many, and the madness has to stop somewhere.

The supporters are legion in their black t-shirts – tapping away at laptops, surfing crowds at shows, bussing tables at the local vegan eatery, distributing zines. Thousands of them share their support every day on Facebook and Tumblr. They post and re-post, like and comment. They are ever proliferating.

But, sadly, while all of this reaches new heights in the frenzy of the internet, the underground is largely at a standstill in the real world. ALF support, at one point a recruiting mechanism subservient to the action that it helped empower, has now become the main event. So, since it no longer serves its purpose, it is kindly but firmly requested that you abandon your support.

Take off your t-shirts – here is the wake up call. If you are able-bodied and you have built an entire social identity around ‘supporting’ sabotage and liberation, you are now required to go out and do those things. Your support will not be missed. You will no longer be able to hold on to the comfortable fiction that it ever mattered in the first place. And you will not be able to speak about your nighttime activities, so you will miss out on scene points.

But you will be able to relish accomplishments far more meaningful than anything you could ever do on Instagram or at a show. When you are old and your tattoos have faded, these memories will still be clear. You will be able to make a true and direct impact in the midst of a cold and vast system. And you will be able to look a creature in the eyes and save her life. For those who truly believe, it will be no sacrifice to change roles and take risks in order to keep alive this thing they hold so dear. It takes no specialized skill, only common sense and courage.

Perhaps, as a community, it is time for us to start changing our lifestyles through a new collective paradigm. If you are a self-identified ‘radical’ who spends their life going to work and watching movies with friends, the only thing currently separating you from the average American is ideas. This must no longer be acceptable.

We cannot explicitly speak about, and thus cannot socially reinforce, a culture of underground activity. However, we certainly can build a “culture of crime,” whereby we encourage not only disrespect (easy and functionally irrelevant) but disregard for the law. Jaywalk, shoplift, trespass, whatever – get acquainted with ignoring the rules as a way of life. Start in an area where you feel comfortable, get your friends doing it, and then put what you learn to use in the dead of night.

Accompany this with a culture of institutional privacy – encryption for casual conversation, proxy web surfing, releasing ourselves from the need to share every move we make on social media. While it is most important that individuals take action, these collective steps might be useful.

As for those who do not change, who continue to post their blogs or write their songs, they should not be given the respect or recognition that they seek. It is not respectable to align oneself in words with a phenomenon based on action. And when one gains social clout from doing so, it is parasitic, or at the very least cowardly. It contributes to an activist culture where such inaction is somehow a reasonable, even honorable, manner of behavior.
While others offer liberation and risk prison time, these individuals offer ‘support’ and risk too many high-fives. But those whose support is only as good as their own comfort can keep both.

Press officers, convicted operatives, and the disabled can continue to speak up for the ALF. If actions surge to an all-time high, but no one is sharing the news on Facebook, the animals won’t mind. They do not care about our theories, ideas, beliefs, or our drama. They are in desperate need of fewer supporters and more actors.

If your support for the Animal Liberation Front is genuine, it will end tonight.

Call for Insurrection Days

We don’t demand anything,

we want everything!

People all over the world are taking their protest to the streets fighting for their rights and freedom to overturn the current conditions. But why not here? The German reality is marked by social exclusion and cuts in the supply of basic essentials. Simultaneously, the media is brainwashing people’s mind against every existing resistance that criticises this inhuman oppression by the state and capital. It isn’t just the police who beat us up or arrest us and it isn’t just the political legislative which establishes laws to enslave us. Also responsible are those people who are not offering resistance to this situation and those who are making it possible through their ever-so-important (wage-) labour so that the “machinery of administration” runs smoothly. This machinery kills in agreement with German bureaucracy whether on the street or from one’s desk. Silence gives consent. We don’t know why hardly anyone says “Stop!”. Maybe it is because it is not yet bad enough for people or is it just the result of a traditional submissiveness resulting from centuries of monarchist and subsequently fascist leadership, which is burnt in people’s brains. There are nearly no noteworthy protests in Germany against the current shitty situation. That’s a fact. For sure, there are demonstrations which are sometimes joined by a quarter of a million people but the majority of these people, most of whom are members of parties and unions, are therefore directly responsible for what is going on here. Besides, these people are not willing to fight for real changes. Just complain and that’s all. Real changes would mean the loss of one’s own social rank and of all the privileges with which some people have made themselves damn comfortable. For example, economical privileges that exist because other parts of the world were continually ransacked. These conditions have been maintained for a long time with brutal force.

Why we don’t demand anything!

It makes no sense to go to a government with a list of demands. You cannot hope to find sympathetic ears in a political system which puts power into the hands of politicians who are not even elected by a quarter of the people. They will not listen to concerns dealing with people’s lives but will instead focus on issues with capitalistic relevance. That is why it makes absolutely no sense for us present a list of demands to a government.

We do not have to submit to the rule of those who want to control us!

We do not have to degrade ourselves by pleading and begging!

We have to make sure that the things we don’t like do not exist any more!

It is absolutely possible for us to live a self-determined life. But this will only work if the wish to be ruled and to rule is destroyed, if the state’s repressive apparatus is smashed, if the government is overturned, if the “cop-in-your-head” is killed and to break free from your self-imposed boundaries. Afterwards it will be possible to replace the logic of capitalistic values with collective self-organisation. A fight against the system has to be a part of our everyday life, as anti-hierarchical as possible and we have to show solidarity to one another.

Insurrection Days

For many people it is difficult to find access, to organise themselves and to act beyond their own borders. We want to give you an opportunity to get to know one another, to create networks, to fight together and to learn from each other. Together we want to try to take the initiative and to create a climate of insecurity and fear for the state and social authorities, at least for a couple of days. Its aim is to shock the normative structure of the state and social authorities, consequently to question the state’s monopoly on violence. On May Day the police know where and when it could kick-off and were well organised in recent years. However the nights and days before should be defined by us. Sometimes colourful but also in black. Sometimes peaceful and decisive but also with fiery rage.

Insurrection Days

26th of April – 1st of May 2012 // Berlin

Everytime // Everywhere

Sixth communique from Individualists Tending toward the Wild

“For now there is no movement that positions itself radically against Technology, neither organized nor solid, if some day there is (if it triumphs and we are alive) then we will accept our mistake, in the meantime we will not accept futurist speculations that bet on a movement that helps to destabilize the system in its totality. Those who believe in the uprising of such an anti-technology movement can keep hoping or can put all their strength into that task. It seems that some have not realized that in speaking of a “sufficiently strong and organized anti-technology movement” they are also entering into the language of leftism.”

From culmine, translated by war on society:

The following text is intended to be a self-critique, in addition to accepting publicly the mistakes that we made in past communiques and in claiming responsibility for some attempts against the Techno-industrial System.

Certainly, ITS will always accept critiques that are based in reason, those that are not founded upon strong and well-cemented criteria will be rejected as has been done before.

I

ITS considers it to have been an error in past communiques to substitute the letters that denote gender with an “x” since we do not focus on things like this, nor do we want to denote a certain inclination to the linguistic postures of the politically correct. And we say that we do not focus on these kinds of grammatical currents because the attack on the system is our view, and no other struggle. Generally, those people who write with these kinds of corrections have roots in their postulated senseless struggles like “equality,” “solidarity,” “egalitarianism” (etc), that is, they defend the ideology of leftism and reductionism, which we do not share. It is for this reason that we reject this kind of “grammatical subculture” (as it is called).

II

Many of the things that we have written in the first as well as the second communique–such as the supposed liberation of animals and the earth, which are based in sentimentalism, insurrectionalism, which in many cases justifies itself with emotions of vengeance, the poor choice that we had with the thing about the earthquakes, the critique that one must see with respect to the poor interpretations of some ideas of Ted Kaczynski (truthfully speaking, very few)–we have discarded and now for us they have no validity. The lack of more printed material that correctly explains, or at least has a certain closeness to, Kaczynski’s ideas does not make the task of understanding them with clarity easy for many.

Obviously, we continue to defend the critique against the terminology “revolution-revolutionary,” without a doubt.

Because:

– The so-called “revolution” that so many bet on perverts the nature of the human being because it always tends to reform the system.

– “Revolution” is a blind hope (faith) that many want to see achieved, if they do not achieve their task (which has never been done) their efforts will be in vain, and everything, absolutely everything for which they fought will sell them short, making such efforts useless.

– “Revolution” is a leftist concept.

– Many leftists want to make from their puposes and/or approaches something so profound that they exaggerate themselves, digress and come to limits outside of reality. There are many examples: “the destruction of capitalism,” “a world without states or borders,” “a planet without animal exploitation,” “world peace,” and among others the so-called “anti-technology revolution.”

The struggle against the Techno-industrial System is not a game which we should win or lose, defeat or be defeated, that is what many have still not understood and it seems that many are still expecting to be “recompensated” in the future for the current actions of “revolutionaries.” One must accept that many things in life are not recompensated, that many tasks and/or ends are never achieved (including Autonomy) and the destruction of the techno-system by the work of the “revolutionaries” is one of them. Now there is not time to wait for the imminent collapse, for those who want to take their time as if technological progress is not growing by leaps and bounds and devouring our sphere of individual Freedom little by little. We are the generation that has seen technological progress grow before our eyes, the specialization of nano-bio-technology in various fields of civilized non-life, the creation and marketing of graphene (a), nuclear disasters such as in Fukushima, accelerated environmental deterioration, the growth of biometrics (b), the qualitative and quantitative expansion of artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, neuroeconomics, etc. That is why ITS sees in terms of what is tangible, palpable and immediate, and that immediate is the attack with all necessary resources, time and intelligence against this system. We are individualities in the process of achieving our Freedom and Autonomy, within an optimal environment, and together with it we attack the system that quite clearly wants us in cages, obeying our wild human instincts. With this we apply ourselves as individuals in affinity to try to keep ourselves as distant as possible from leftist and civilized concepts, practices and ideologizing.

That is our real purpose, what we seek, and not an unreal dream with irrational tintings and full of speculations.

For now there is no movement that positions itself radically against Technology, neither organized nor solid, if some day there is (if it triumphs and we are alive) then we will accept our mistake, in the meantime we will not accept futurist speculations that bet on a movement that helps to destabilize the system in its totality. Those who believe in the uprising of such an anti-technology movement can keep hoping or can put all their strength into that task. It seems that some have not realized that in speaking of a “sufficiently strong and organized anti-technology movement” they are also entering into the language of leftism.

III

Now, we have become aware of an increase of discourse against Civilization in claims of responsibility for actions that are poorly directed and useless with respect to the point of reference (against the Techno-industrial System). One must take into account that the critique in a communique against Civilization or against Technology does not do anything if the action is not effective and well-aimed against these.

This “fashion” (to call it such) has been expanding year after year, we believe because the ideas against civilized progress have spread greatly through the internet and other media.

If we turn to look at history, we would realize that the same thing has happened before and after the arrest of the Unabomber in 1996, we remember the pathetic campaign that was initiated in those years called “Unabomber for president” (c), and the emergence of the Earth Liberation Front in the United States (d), and while the individuals coming together in that group were for years the strongest domestic terrorism threat in that country, nevertheless the majority of their discourses were carried on the path of sentimentalism, irrationalism and biocentrism. In other words the “radical environmentalist” fashion was popular those years, as the “anti-civilization fashion” is now. But it is worth remembering with this that every wave or fashion ends some day, and only those who have well established the critique against the Techno-industrial System will keep the same path, over the years what has to happen will happen, and the things that have to occur will occur.

We are aware that ITS has been responsibile in large part for this “fashion” having grown in great proportion, we accept this mistake, and what we want to do (for now) is only to wait for those individuals who have copied our discourse and have mutated it, to stop doing so, or for them to recognize, accept and take on the critique with these kinds of texts not only because we have made it but also because it is absolutely necessary to reject the deceptive leftism and attack the Techno-industrial System in a congruent and radical manner (if that is what the intended objective is, of course).

IV

We have analyzed these questions to the source and it seems that for the moment there are two important parts within the struggle against the Techno-industrial System.

To summarize we will put it thusly: there are those who question and critique the system and others who not only do this but also attack, like ITS (e).

Faced with this, the critical and not active part (that is to say the part that doesn’t place in its sights the attack against the system by means of violence) will always say that what the ideas against Technology and Civilization need least is to be related with those tactics. Which we do not share. The majority of these people (anti-civilization, primitivists, salon “anti-technology revolutionaries,” etc) speak of destroying the system but feel an apparent fear in seeing that the ideas are related to the attacks on the same system that they want to destroy.

Sooner or later, through ourselves and through others, the ideas against the Techno-industrial System and/or Society will relate themselves with attempts and acts of violence, undoubtedly.

V

With respect to our position that has to do with the war against leftism. We have reevaluated what we said before and we have analyzed that leftism is just a factor that deseves only rejection, critique, and the distancing of those of us who fight against the Industrial Technological System, nothing more. We made the effort to send an incendiary package to Greenpeace Mexico (f), another package of similar characteristics to the leftist director the the Milenio paper in Mexico City in November 2011 (Francisco D. Gonzales), and an explosive package to the leftist director of the same paper in its office in the city of León, Guanajuato in December 2011 (Pablo Cesar Carrillo). But in seeing our mistake, we have ceased these attacks and now focus all our efforts for the frontal attack against the Techno-industrial System.

The leftists can kill one another, or can be “victims” of the state and its apparatuses of control (as has traditionally happened), but not by us anymore. We will not stain our hands with their dirty blood, nor will we persist in attempting against their lives since there are more important and certain targets than their dispicable lives.

We know our tactics, to speak of leftists is one of them, we know what we do and that is all.

VI

ITS’ actions and its discourses are an attack in every sense of the word, and that is why we utilize offensive language against those who make the system keep functioning.

Technologists, leftists and the Techno-industrial Society in general do not deserve flowers nor good treatment, they deserve hard critique; which will be uncomfortable for some (and in truth, we do not consider our language exaggerated, we have never written with high-sounding or highly vulgar words since by our criteria if we utilize them then we discredit our ideas).

We are a group of radical environmentalists who carry out attempts against the physical integrity of persons specializing in developing, maintaining and improving the system that reduces us to artificialization; we are not a group of critics of the cafe who hold themselves solely in theorizations, if we were then we would watch our language a little.

We decided to publish this in order to dispel all doubt with respect to what motivates us to carry out acts of violence against the technologists, since one will surely say that the way we refer to these people shows a supposed lack of self-control in our emotions, or that we are motivated by psychological necessities based in feelings of hostility. Which we do not share in the least. ITS bases its attacks (as we have already stated before [g]) on reason and on instincts.

We critique by reason and we act by instinct, the two go hand-in-hand, one serves us for deeply analyzing and critiquing what is presently happening and the other serves us to attack in a frontal way without any compassion and rejecting any consideration of Civilization’s pseudo-morality.

We said it in our first communique and we repeat it again:

“Because although some elements within Civilization tell us that we have been domesticated for years biologically, we nevertheless continue to have Wild Instincts that we hurl in defense of the whole of which we are a part — the Earth.”

Unlike many others, ITS does not hate this system, nor do we base our actions and discourses on sentiments like vengeance, frustration, hate and/or desperation (even though some want us to accept that), as we have already said, what moves us is reason and instinct, the defense of Wild Nature (including human) and consequently Freedom and Autonomy. Do not dig deeper, because you will not find more than that, since those are our real motivations.

VII

With all that said, ITS makes itself responsible for the following attempts against the Techno-industrial System:

– August 28, 2011: Attempt on CINVESTAV (Center of Research and Advanced Studies [of the National Polytechnic Institute]) in the municipality of Irapuato in Guanajuato. The objective was all of the researchers-biotechnologists who were working and studying in that place, but because the Mexican army intervened, the attempt was frustrated.

– November 2011: Package with incendiary charge addressed to Dr. Pedro Luis Grasa Soler, general director of Monterrey Tec campus in Mexico State.

– November 2011: Threat on Dr. Manuel Torres Labansat director of the Institute of Physics of UNAM (Autonomous National University of Mexico) and on the director of scientific research Carlos Aramburo of HOZ in Mexico City. The package contained a .380 caliber bullet along with a threat from ITS, part of which read:

“[…] As we have shown in our previous communiques, the system would not be the same without mathematicians, physicists, researchers and other technoswill like YOU (and by YOU we refer to you, to the researcher Carlos Aramburo of HOZ and to those who work in the Institute of Physics), that is why when YOU are determined to create nanoscience and carry out technological projects that attempt against Wild Nature (including the human), we place ourselves in its defense and we attack.

“Without any doubt, YOU are a key component for the system, those who have the technical and intellectual knowledge for perverting the ecosystems on this Earth where we try to develop. YOU modify matter for the creation of a life totally dependent on Technology, which will lead us and is leading us to self-destruction. The Reality is this, the more animal and human species that are domesticated, the more disastrous will be the consequences of using all possible means to keep that modern “stability” on its feet.

Planet Earth already has enough with urbanization, deforestation, contamination, wars that affect the natural equilibrium, ecological epidemics, oil spills (and more) for YOU to come and hypocritically try to help it, as if to undo the damage that we have done depends on the pathetic altruistic scientists, as if something is helped by saying that YOU develop nanoscience and advanced technologies for the “well-being” of humanity and of the Earth.

In no way do we pretend to change the way of thinking of a civilized person, an alienated person, one who graduated from the Faculty of Sciences at UNAM and who received a doctorate at the University of Oxford some years ago. Something brought your studies to the maximum point, there is some reason you are where you are, but we have news for you, what you have lived is nothing more than a life absorbed by the system, which will pay you very little.

This is a direct threat against your person and all the researchers and department heads who hide themselves between four walls tending toward the Domination of all that is potentially free. This is only a warning, it will cost us nothing to leave an explosive package in your facilities […]

As you must have realized, Mr. Manuel, this package carries with it a bullet, which can symbolize many things: detonation, explosion, wounds, terror, force, gunpowder, death. But now we use it to symbolize the material that we will use to puncture your head and/or those of your colleagues […]”

– December 8, 2011: Package with incendiary charge for the director of research Marcela Villafaña of the Polytechnic University of Pachuca in the municipality of Zempoala in Hidalgo. In the attempt an academic who opened the package was wounded, a story similar to our first attack in April 2011 at the UPVM (Polytechnic University of the Valley of Mexico) in the State of Mexico.

For the moment that is all that we have to say…

Individualidades tendiendo a lo salvaje
(Individualists tending toward the wild)

The Telescope or the Kaleidoscope: A Critique of the ELF

From War On Society:

(a critical individual’s proposal for a diffused offensive attack)

“Our lives are at stake and we will not renounce any weapon that we can use as our own.”
– Anonymous

In regards to the brief history of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), an organization which has brought much inspiration to the North American context and drawn significant media attention, I would like to present a few points in order to critique, clarify and highlight the ways the ELF can be understood as a methodology instead of as an ideology. At the end of this piece, a proposal is drawn out for anarchists to develop their own actions separately in cells, groups or any informal structure they see fit whether or not these are aligned with the “ELF guidelines”.

Obviously this is something that is difficult, because on the one hand the ELF does exist as an organization but is also made up of many dispersed cells and individuals. So the critique will follow the ELF guidelines and not critique the individuals themselves.

An Ideology: Single issue and lobbying with dynamite.

“The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.”
– Albert Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus”

The reasons that the ELF proposes for doing actions is something I would like to question. These guidelines state:

1. To cause maximum economic damage to a given entity that is profiting off the destruction of the natural environment.
2. To educate the public on the atrocities committed against the environment and life.
3. To take all necessary precautions against harming life.

The guidelines are very similar to the goals of the ELF with one major exception. The third of three guidelines states that one must take all necessary precautions against harming life. The ELF considers itself a nonviolent organization as no physical harm has come to a human as a result of the group’s actions. This is by no means a sheer coincidence but in fact a commitment to the guidelines. Individuals interested in becoming active in the ELF need to follow the above guidelines and create their own close knit anonymous cell made up of trustworthy and sincere people. Remember the ELF and each cell within it is anonymous not only to one another but also to the general public. So there is not a realistic chance of becoming active in an already existing cell. Take initiative, form your own cell and do what needs to be done to protect all life on the planet! ¹

Since they put the Earth before their decision as conscious individuals,² a psychosis, a martyrdom complex for the Earth, begins to develop. This is similar to how most of the left today functions, by feeding a psychological need for self-justification in everyday life. When for example activists put so much energy into certain types of actions (petitions, lock downs, passive sit ins, etc.), for all the right and justified reasons for doing so and not seeing the desired results, they become hopeless in their own actions. I think it is important to have a sense of individual intention and self-motivation, rather than becoming blind to reasons for acting against the world around oneself. By blind I mean not having the ability to not see beyond the ways one is making decisions upon what actions to take and see the cause and effect of those actions. This blindness constructs a martyrdom complex similar to that of Sisyphus, who rolled the rock up a mountain day after day. This tunnel vision is caused by focusing solely on the theater of political affairs while neglecting the rest of life.

Having this type of perception about one’s own reality can create something similar to what is called a “single issue campaign”. Only in this case instead of doing tree sits like Earth First!, an individual or a group is setting incendiary devices to call upon the “unjust actions” of some company. When the company itself has no interest to change the reasons that it exists, it purely becomes a moral battle between the “just” and “unjust” – speaking truth to power when power has no interest in listening. This becomes an endless pursuit for some sad form of change.

The ELF in its FAQ’s claims to not follow a leadership or central hierarchy, but an ideology. I would question the use of an ideology, instead proposing the use of a particular methodology that is anarchist in practice. Once an individual begins to believe in an ideology they put it – the ideology – above themselves, acting only in accordance with that ideology, weighing the rights and wrongs of a certain course of action. This can be seen in the mentality of leftists, Christians, Catholics, vegans and anyone who adheres to an ideology through belief or action.

There is no ethical equation toward the understanding of how “we as society need to change capitalism”, where by acting in accordance with the state and one’s morals we see how things can become equal within the sphere of exploitation. To play within the ethical debate is to place oneself in a position of making compromises with the state and capital, using ethical and moral positions. This can be seen in this quote from the ELF’s facts:

“Anyone seeking to create actual positive social and political change must reflect on past attempts throughout history to learn what worked, what didn’t, and what can be taken to aid in the current pursuit. A refusal to make this reflection is also a refusal to make an honest life commitment to the cause of justice and protection of life on this planet.”

What and where is this “justice” coming from? Is it justice we are actually seeking? Justice implies a universal morality that everyone shares. Is it instead a matter of vengeance against civilization for denying one the ability to live a life one chooses?

We return to the use of methods rather than an ideology. A method can be defined as “a procedure, technique, or way of doing something, especially in accordance with a definite plan.” Hence one does not submit to an ideology of protecting the earth, but sees ways and courses to attack what surrounds them – these being the technique or practice. Once an individual or a group can become unhinged from the trap of ideological thinking and self-justification, their desires become in accordance with the interests and aims.

A Name: Calling oneself a thing?

“We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, –”
– Anonymous

The ELF is referred to by the Department of Homeland Security ^3,4 as an organization, which classifies them as a thing with a name or single like-minded identity. In a time of widespread revolt or flourishing milieu it can be useful to have a name in order to communicate why an action was taken and tie it to the continued presence of a certain group or set of ideas, especially to differentiate amongst many tendencies existing within a specific context. However, by taking on a name, a group becomes an organization and becomes reified. It begins to be understood as a thing, an entity in and of itself. This further facilitates identification by authorities who begin to chart and map the movements of an organization or group in order to see where and how it moves, how it functions, what language it uses (environmental, anarchist, communist, etc). Not all investigations are carried out in this way (for example, in the Bombs Case in Chile and the Marini Trials in Italy, anarchists were framed as members of fictitious clandestine organizations), but the naming of oneself as a thing does make it easier for the state to repress the milieu as a whole. It’s easy for the state to comb through the different groups that exist or existed at a determined period of time and go through arrest documents or do outright surveillance (the surveillance and subsequent arrest of the members of Direct Action in Canada can be a perfect example of this). Inevitably they find those who are more above ground and interrogate them about those specific activities, hold them under false pretexts and send in infiltrators to groups who try to establish long-term relationships. Although they don’t know whose entirely involved these practices can eventually lead them to identify suspects.

There is no panacea to repression – it will exist as long as action is taken against the current world. It is only a matter of how deep relationships are rooted in commitment, honesty, and revolutionary courage between those who are partaking in different actions, which will directly correlate to refusal to cooperate with the state. It is worth noting that the ELF as a whole did not consider itself anarchist or revolutionary; it originally spawned from the environmental group Earth First!.

With this in mind, what if a group decided to not give itself a name? Making it harder for the cartographers of power to draw maps, where the longitude and latitude were unable to be connected, diffused and multifarious actions constituted themselves as a thing. Rather than one decisive group with a name, similar to the cellular structure proposed by the ELF, but on the basis of revolutionary activity against the current world.

Violence and Terrorism?

The ELF is critical of the use of violence and harming individuals.⁵ They state this in their FAQs⁶ section, in which they give examples of other kinds of actions individuals and groups have taken throughout history. In this point they lack a critical assessment of these different groups, their motivations, and the intentions of their actions. The Boston Tea Party, Suffragette Movement and Gandhi did what they did on the basis of a certain interest to change the existing order through illegal means in some hope for positive change. Essentially these references reinforce an interest tending toward social change, an interest in altering the existing order, not destroying it in its entirety. This position is leftist, not anarchist. Again they constantly referred to this in their referential use of abolish, rather than destroy.⁷

Violence is a necessary tool for anarchists, one that must be constantly thought about and processed, especially for revolutionary individualist anarchists taking an offensive position aimed at the destruction of the current world and its existent order. This violent methodology should not be blind to a critical eye, rather it should be honed in through various actions, inflicted directly or indirectly against an enemy. This means that one cannot just go out right and say that one “wants to ensure that all of the time life will be taken into consideration”. This statement in and of itself does not take into consideration the war we find ourselves amidst, nor does it consider the positions that others like our enemies, “the people”, etc, take in relation to our position against them. We have to consider that there will be casualties at some point, and have already been casualties. We have many enemies (the judges, lumber companies, the police, scientists, politicians, biotechnologists, the left, the right, etc.) and to not harm them would be due to our own pacification.

If and when we choose to act violently (as defined by the state), we will be called terrorists. There is not doubt about it and it is part of the state’s larger strategy of isolating groups and individuals that oppose it, to fabricate a hostility and an ‘other’. The state creates an enemy of “the people,” the community, or whatever massified term the state uses to distinguish itself and those who identify with it from others.

The Conscious Individual and Self-Motivation

“courage to never yield or submit”
– Arthur Schopenhauer

Anarchists at times fall into a very limited view of acting upon their ideas. They build an organization by constantly waiting for this or that moment, yet when its capacity to act is finally reached, what each individual wants is largely misunderstood. Federations, collectives, organizations, and any other large formations are structured in such a way that individuals give up their own agency and desires for a set of guidelines or an ideology. Anarchist individual self-motivation is the ability to consciously understand one’s own desires, intentions, and motivations for acting. Rather than under the banner of a large formation or ideology, actions are taken on one’s own or with other individuals with an informal group who know what they want and why they desire to act together during a certain time period. This requires friendships and relationships that are trusted, understood and long-lasting (the topic of security is left out here because it is such a complex subject, maybe to be visited at another time), rather than political relationships built on an assumed affinity and polite platitudes. These friendships come together and are shaped by mutually-developed histories, individual aims, and intentions. This does not mean one has to act with the same four people all the time, but that there are many relationships one can share which have the ability to come together to act.

Attacking different institutions and mechanisms of power is a leap, one that must be taken if one is interested in seeing this world destroyed. Each attack can be easily played out in one’s head and their physical capacity to act in the most immediate sense, but this leap is a constant evaluation. A question of how to do such things in each instant, a collection of experiences of acting within differing situations that help one gain confidence and courage. Again, these are specific experiences, experiments and practices such as setting fires, throwing rocks through windows, building barricades, scouting for exit and entrance routes, the location of the police, doing research on the placement of different targets within a geographical area, etc.

Opening up an illegal plane of existence

“My daughter raises the smooth
brass kaleidoscope
and watches
as coloured glass slivers
conspire together.
New worlds create themselves before her eyes.”
– Anonymous

Through all the critiques I have tried to flesh out specifically about the ELF as a loose network of cells, I would like to make an open proposal to all anarchists critical of the ways anarchists currently engage in North America who desire to see the current world of Capitalism, the State and Civilization destroyed immediately on an international level.

As anarchists, especially the individualist tendency of this milieu, conscious of our own decisions to partake in a practice of refusal and continued attack, we have every method at our disposal. We have the use of different kinds of weapons: fake ids, improvised explosives, guns, disguises, accomplices, safe houses, robberies, etc etc. (manuals for all of which are readily available online).

It is not very easy to take a step in this direction or realm of actually living in an unchained and free way, and it has not been seen in sometime in the North American context. It is a great leap, but a leap nonetheless, for which some may be ready, but others may not. This should not deter solidarity and support in the most specific ways possible towards those who choose to this path.

This proposal is to be an immediate wager on an offensive in the continual war that surrounds every one of us, individually and collectively, whether we consider ourselves anarchists or not. We are part of the existing order; a giant prison with loose and open cells surrounding us. We make conscious choices to continue amid this miserable life (work, school, family, etc) of alienation and imposed exploitation on an international scale.

This proposal is not for a “front” of the organized masses, but for a diffused and open network of cells across North America and internationally. Cells that are not fighting on a militarist front nor see themselves as the “people’s army”. This has nothing to do with the masses being on one’s side, but with the ability for conscious individuals to activate themselves on a plane of existence that is continually practiced in all its composed elements. Similar to the FAI-IRF (Informal Anarchist Federation – International Revolutionary Front), an open network that is anarchist and anti-authoritarian in nature, except without a name. Communiques only released on an as-needed basis when it is necessary to do so, with actions that speak for themselves. Choosing the most critical targets of the existing order.

From defensive to offensive: A metaphysics of refusal and attack

“As our desire to create our lives as we see fit, to realize ourselves to the fullest extent, to reappropriate the conditions of our existence, develops into a real project of revolt against all domination and oppression, we begin to encounter the world with a more penetrating eye.”
– Wolfi L.

With this in mind, we as human beings are also vessels, political vessels, conscious and always evolving in the plane of war against the existing world of capital, state and civilization. To negate the cause and effect of our surroundings is to limit oneself to a life of misery as a commodity, to the subjugation of all life, to the domination of time by a sedentary existence, to a society that needs one more human cog to speed itself up, to a civilization that imposes the domination of capital within all social relations. To say we are political vessels is to not just stroke a pen upon paper, but to acknowledge that our everyday lives are a melding of ideas with practices and practices with ideas. To put it another way, to experiment with the hypothesis and wager of what is called life.

Attacking from an offensive position means actions should be rehearsed, understood and gone through many times so that if a plan goes wrong, a group or cell would have the ability to change its movements and tactics very efficiently and quickly.

An offensive position does not wait for our enemies to make a move before attacking them. This means not waiting for someone to be killed by the police and then reacting to it, nor waiting for some crisis in capitalism to strike a group of people and then trying to push the iceberg out of the water. These situations and points do have certain social implications to act within, and provide an opportunity to generalize anarchist methods and illegal practices on a much more social scale that is not isolated to any specific group. But the offensive position is not always social; while the actions themselves may have a social resonance to a specific situation, they can come from an anti-social place of offensive attack, one that is not predetermined nor understood as such a reaction to the state or capital. An attack that is made instead by studying (through the use of different anonymous research technologies – phone books, computers, etc) of the already-existing networks of exploitation and domination in which one or a group of individuals can select a decisive point to hit. This is where the use of the ELF as a method comes in: small cells with an interest in attacking aspects of the civilized order, on the basis of a common hatred of civilization, not based on a common ideology. In its practical sense this means sabotaging railroad lines, destroying electricity infrastructure (telecommunication lines, fiber optics, electrical power lines, cell phone towers or any other unsecured electrical target left open), bombing government buildings or companies that are identified as targets by our individual research.

With this offensive position we must also have the strength and courage to carry on in our individual motivations and intentions. Even if we are carrying on alone, and desire to do so. Understanding when and where to attack our enemies (whether physical or psychological) within the places they reside. To put it another way, this is when we are able to put down the telescope and our limitations based on ideological containers, and open up our field of vision to the colorful world of the kaleidoscope, where the expansive potential of possibilities arise.

This piece is dedicated to:

Conspiracy Cells of Fire
The Informal Anarchist Federation
The International Revolutionary Front (Chile, Italy and elsewhere)
The Black International
Tortuga
Individualists Tending Toward the Wild
The eco-prisoners of the United States

Suggested Reading:
– FAQ page on the ELF press office web page
– Points of ELF pamphlet
– A few topical question concerning anarchist and others
– Call from the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire – Commando Horst Fantazzini for an International Network of Action and Solidarity – Informal Anarchist Federation
– Our lives of a Burning Vision
– Escalation #1
– Igniting a Revolution – Earth Liberation Front (2 part movie)
– Resistance (magazine about the ELF)

Mexico: Brief communique from Individualists Tending Toward the Wild

From culmine, translated by war on society:

– we have sent a package with an incendiary cargo to the offices of Greenpeace Mexico –
brief communique from ITS, December 2011

* * *

Since the last public communique from ITS (21 September 2011) many things have happened, we have continued with the attacks that characterize us, but within this short text we will not claim responsibility for them (only one). Since the purpose of sitting down to write this and placing our fingers on a machine again is to deny all the mediocre information and disqualification that is emerging from a minority of leftist cells.

While it is certain that ITS is alien to everything that happens in the virtual world, that is, we are not aware of what happens in the full spectrum from anarchists of action to those who defend passive anarchism, the case is simply that some time ago this information has come to us.

We have heard of a commotion that is forming with respect to our ideas and actions within those circles; they accuse us of being a fabrication of the “repressive state” (phrase that the wretched leftists so love to mention), they say that we are the work of a Machiavellian supernatural evil force that controls the minds of the entire world, they call into question our critical words against all the system’s values because they do not appreciate that someone who has Reason to make them see the Truth.

To begin with, on hearing so many atrocities we decided to remain silence, but seeing that the racket continues we decided to write these lines.

ITS may be everything that “important” (and not so “important”) members of the techno-industrial society have repeatedly said we are, but never accomplices of the System of Domination.

We categorically reject all those labels that they have put on us, we are not “eco-anarchists” or “anarcho-environmentalists” as we have made quite clear in our September 21st communique, if anyone has not understood it, they may read it again.

It is logical that before a discourse and actions like ours there must be reactions from all parties and it seems that the “indignant” wing of anarchism has responded, although not very intelligently. We are against the values that they preach left and right, we are against various concepts that they consider sacred, we are against their strategies because everything that they defend is deposited in the system. Idiots who do not tack the ship and will soon sink, irremediably. Thus they find something (or a lot) “strange” about ITS, they find themselves to be like civilized people within a forest of sylvan vegetation when they read our communiques, they do not know where they are. Confused leftists who perhaps some day will learn or else will remain stopped in the quicksand, immobile and passive, waiting for their environmental conditions to consume them. But that in reality does not concern us in the least.

ITS has seen an analyzed that the leftists are a real threat who only seek to reform the system and create alternatives in order to “fight” against it, but (although they don’t realize it) they are useless, since this only feeds it. The war against academics and technologists is declared (that is more than clear and we have shown it) but also the war against leftism, thus we have sent a package with incendiary cargo to the offices of Greenpeace Mexico (which arrived [according to the authorities] on 25 November of this year).

The package was sent to the activist Alejandro Olivera, who insists on carrying out hypocritical campaigns in “favor” of the environment in order to gain public notoriety, his psychological necessities make his activism a pathetic surrogate activity that sugarcoats artificial necessities like self-realization that he acts like it is his “moral duty” to do the “right thing” in the face of the devastation that ecosystems are undergoing.

Surely Olivera will not realize this (since his reasoning does not allow for more) because of this action, he will not realize that Greenpeace is one of so many highly reformist organizations, that they only want to change the laws for other ones in order to illusorily achieve a supposed rescue of the Earth, and here comes the threat–the change of economic, political, social and cultural aspects so that the system continues on its path. (On this point we will not say more, it will have its time when we write a long communique that brings all the rational explanations to such attacks.)

Before this kind of leftist organization we respond with direct attempts, all those who seek a world that is “more just,” “more humane” and “more green” are on our list, ITS have finished with consideration, have fininished with what they will say, we do not pretend to be “well-intentioned activists” with a moderate and good image, we are a group of radical environmentalists, anti-industrialists of a terrorist stripe (towards society and its defenders).

ITS shows its true face, we go to the central point, the fierce defense of Wild Nature (including human); we do not negotiate, we carry out our task with the necessary materials, without compassion and accepting the responsibility of the act. Our instincts make us do it, since (as we have said before) we are in favor of natural violence against civilized destruction.

All leftists be warned (and by leftists we refer as much to those of the left as to those of the right): ITS does not hesitate to make an attempt on the physical integrity of any one of you, you are our enemies and thus our threats will materialize in bullets and dynamite.

With this said, we declare that we will not make further mention about the attacks of the leftist eunichs for the moment; they do not merit any consideration, since these mediocre people (with much lack of attention) act toward the impossible (and go to ridiculous extremes) in order to gain notoriety within some movement (a completely pathetic deed); as they say: the fish dies by its own mouth.*

To the humiliating leftist mythomaniacs who seek to destroy our discourse and attacks with false arguments founded not in Reason but instead in speculation, irrationality and animism, do not expect our attacks to stop, do not expect dialogue with ITS, do not expect any answer to questions you may have; from ITS, only expect the worst…

Individualidades tendiendo a lo salvaje

(Individualists tending toward the wild)

____________________________
* An expression referring to the way in which things that one said carelessly can return with a vengeance. It seems (it’s not quite clear) that the expression’s sensibility is that humans live in and by words in the way that fish live in and by water, and so do we also die by them. – transl

Joint declaration of the insurrectional anarchist and eco-anarchist groups of Mexico

From culmine, translated by war on society:

Joint declaration of the insurrectional anarchist and eco-anarchist groups of Mexico (second public communique) [1]

To the anarchist comrades of Mexico and the world,

To the arsonists and unmanageables [2] in affinity of the whole planet,

Health, imprisoned brothers and sisters in Mexico, Germany, Chile, Spain, United States, Greece, Italy, England, Switzerland and the world!

Health, comrade Gabriel! Health, comrade Tamara! Health, comrade Luciano! Health, comrade Camenisch! Health, comrades of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire held captive in Greece! Health to all those who fight for Total Liberation!

The coordination of the unmanageable struggle solidifies and extends over the whole world. The anarchist fire and explosion leave their mark and awaken libertarian conscience. From Santiago de Chile to Mexico City, the chaotic night is illuminated with gasoline and black powder in solidarity with our captive comrades. Montevideo, Lima and Portland raise themselves to anarchic arson. In Greece, in Germany, in Italy and Argentina, the roar of dynamite is heard. The fire spreads from Russia to Indonesia. The condemnation of the States is unanimous no matter the ideological color of whatever governments. The prisons of the world keep hostage our sisters and brothers in struggle. With this horizon and in the face of the extension of the anarchic struggle, the attacks and slander from the opportunists on the left side of Capital were to be expected. Leftist liberals and diseased Bolsheviks sealed with french kisses their disgusting alliances in search of power, and anarchists threatened once again to ruin the party; thus they call us the “public enemy number one” and hasten their onslaught. Toward these ends they do not have any scruples in carrying out the orders of the State and offering themselves as volunteer police. In the final assessment, they do not fight to destroy the system of domination but to “transform it.” Leninists and leftist liberals fight to take State power, not for its elimination. Thus in Greece and in Chile, they hold delegations and public posts, defending the system of domination from the anarchists, as we see recently in Greece with their defense of Parliament.

Leftists and Leninists rely on semantics, word games and doublespeak to camouflage their intentions, trying to mislead the naive with a grotesque gymnastics that try to establish a supposed difference between instituted Power and instituting Power. Crushing to death the supposed goodness of their “Popular Power” (the same shit in a different bottle!) and pulling out of their sleeve an “anarchism” aligned with Power and inclined toward “proletarian” dictatorships and populist governments, they intend to give body to an incompatible mishmash which puts a Leninist project into practice with a libertarian discourse, with the objective of halting the anarchic contagion and attracting the ingenuous to their ranks.

The opportunists from “saboteamos.info” adhere to this strategy with their attacks on the Individualists Tending toward the Wild (ITS). “Communique” after “communique” (and even with a shit sandwich they call “documentary”), they try to present the anti-civilization anarcho-environmentalists who make up the cells of ITS as “government agents” and “as a distraction from the population in order to intimidate and characterize anti-systemic expressions.” With the Cantinflesque language that characterizes them and with their use and abuse of leftist verborrea [3], they try to sow distrust and division through slander, suspicion and defamation. Old techniques frequently used by the mercenaries of the system of domination, as by the volunteers on the left side of Capital aspiring to Power.

We may have theoretical differences and discussions with the comrades of ITS (polemicizing always in a comradely way in a constant attempt to actualize ideas and for the construction of a unitary critique attuned to the reality of the anarchist struggle) but we have never disagreed over the methods used, understanding anti-authoritarian violence and propaganda by the deed as valid practices in accordance with our ethical principles. With this, we not only want to make clear that we recognize their anarchist anti-civilization trajectory but also that we see nothing “strange” nor “suspicious” about a direct attack against the representatives of the techno-industrial system of domination; nor do we see any difference between an attack made against a smaller or larger piece of shit, since what matters is to realize the attack against the system of domination, putting into practice permanent conflictuality and, above all, choosing the target that entails the least risk for ourselves. This has been the basis of the practical coordination between the new anarchic insurrectionalism and the anti-civilization anarcho-environmentalism.

From their virtual “reality,” the opportunists of “saboteamos.info,” playing at “investigative journalism,” rely on the same strategy recently implemented by so-called Carolina Romero and those who write under the name Notices from the Rebellion, demonstrating a fictitious dichotomy that tries to present two positions within the anarchist movement: “the good anarchists” and “the bad anarchists,” praising dead anarchists and defaming the living ones, promoting the old saying: “The best anarchist is the one who is dead.”

They intend to use to their favor that portion of anarchism that we have constantly pointed out as immobilist and evolutionist, opposed to anarchic action and partisan of waiting, of quantitative growth and of centralist bureaucratic organization; nevertheless, to them we declare that we can distinguish perfectly well (despite our differences) between these anarchists and the anarcho-Leninist fetal monstrosity aligned with the populist governments and “proletarian” dictatorships that they try to promote. We are all aware of this intention that attempts to mislead the unsuspecting. An irrefutable proof is the note dedicated to Carolina Romero in the pages of the most recent issue of the periodical Apoyo Mutuo, giving an account of the slander and defamation by this opportunist at the service of the Cuban hierarchy against Cuban anarchist comrades.

But these virtual “saboteurs,” in addition to slandering and defaming, cynically lie, trying to sow discord and division between affinities. Likewise they have involved the Chilean comrades from Liberación Total in their bickering, pretending that they received “confidential” information from this site for the diffusion of global anarchic action, in order to then conclude that it deals with their very particular paranoid and bad-intentioned “interpretation.” Likewise they mention in their endless bullshit affinity groups and even signatories of this new Joint Declaration and sites of solidarity with unmanageable anarchism (Viva la Anarquía, Portal OACA, and Culmine) of proven integrity, creating doubt and pretending to have a nonexistent support from these anarchist counter-information media closely in affinity with our project of struggle. It becomes clear that it is not a coincidence that this scenario presents itself here, while in Germany and Switzerland, a similar campaign goes on the march and from anonymity there appears a letter to the anarchist Galaxy, critiquing the unmanageable action of comrades held captive by the State.

We know well how these opportunists expend themselves, more now that the whole leftist pile of shit closes ranks in the face of next year’s elections. The opportunist rats also prepare to board the ship of López Hablador [4], discovering in the former PRI-ist the new messiah of the Mexican left in search of that supposed “Popular Power” they so preach. It is not an accident that the subcomediante [5] faced with this moderates his tone, describing him now as a “scoundrel,” nor is it an accident that la Otra Campaña (supposedly created to confront the electoral campaign) keeps absolute silence toward the new presidential plans of López Hablador, after accusing him in the past of being a “corrupt rat at the service of the powerful.” They try to disguise Peje with the glowing look [6], presenting him as the Mexican Chavez, Morales or Castro. Thus they view with profound distaste the extension of unmanageable anarchism — it worries them that the contagion is spreading. They know that for us anarchists it is the same fucking shit one government or another; it means the same to us that there is a rat from the left or the right in Power. Anarchists (as the word indicates) are against all authority, against all government, against all Power. Thus, we are not of the left nor the right. We do not place ourselves on one side or another of the system of domination: WE ARE AGAINST ALL DOMINATION. Thus, whoever wins, we will continue in struggle until Total Liberation because the only thing we have “below and to the left”[7] is our left ovary or testicle (as the case may be) — NOTHING MORE. And in our hearts the only thing that beats with force is Anarchy…

The times of the elections are approaching, and the choice is ours: [8]

Let us again become their worst nightmare!

Strength, compañerxs kidnapped for the “Bombs Case”!

Strength, compañerxs imprisoned from the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire!

Strength, compañero Tortuga!

Strength, compañera Tamara! Strength, compañero Gabriel!

Against the techno-industrial system of domination!

For the demolition of the prisons!

For the destruction of everything that dominates us!

For Total Liberation!

For international anarchist coordination!

For Anarchy!

May it illuminate the night!

– Anonymous Anarchist Action / Informal Anarchist Federation (AAA/FAI)

– Revolutionary Action Brigades for Propaganda by the Deed and Armed Action – Simón Radowitzky (BARPHAA-SR)

– Insurrectional Cell – Mariano Sanchez Añon (CI-MSA), fraction of the Informal Anarchist Federation of Mexico (FAI-M) Mexico City and Guanajuato

– Terrorist Column of the Revolutionaries in Black (CTRN)

– Former members of the Eco-anarchist Cell for Direct Attack (CEAD)

– Conspiracy of Cells of Fire / Informal Anarchist Federation – Mexico City (CCF/FAI-DF)

– Conspiracy of Cells of Fire / Informal Anarchist Federation – Jalisco (CCF/FAI-J)

– Conspiracy of Cells of Fire / Informal Anarchist Federation – Veracruz (CCF/FAI-V)

– Earth Liberation Front (FLT)

– Free, Dangerous, Savage and Incendiary Individuals for the Black Plague (ILPSIPN)

– Luddites against the Domestication of Wild Nature (LDNS)

Mexico, Planet Earth, December 12, 2011

Chile: Letter to the CCF from a nihilist accused in the bombs case

14 anarchists, libertarios, and social fighters were arrested on August 14th and accused of terrorism by the Chilean state, around the media-driven "Bombs Case". They have all been released into house arrest. 10 of them carried out a 65-day hunger strike from 2/21 to 4/27, winning several of their demands. Some of the "association" charges were dropped, but 5 comrades are still facing political trial beginning November 28. The struggle continues until all are free and the prisons are destroyed! INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY with the compañerxs kidnapped by the Chilean democracy. The passion for freedom knows no borders!

From culmine, translated by war on society:

Greetings brothers and sisters of the CCF, and to Theofilos Mavropoulos, I send you a fraternal embrace full of affection and complicity across the distance…

It is certain that we are judged by some for being anarchists, the eternal enemies of power, and that it is our theory made practice for long years that they now intend to severely punish.

Your voice has reached my heart, those sincere words full of solidarity caress my face, that strength animates me and your conviction I love; knowing that behind those bars there are not groans of sorrow, but rather screams of hatred, rage, hope — this gladdens me and makes me reaffirm that we are on the right path; it is then that I realize that each day new comrades are born who return to give sense to our new urban guerrilla, which is no longer merely local but is international, thanks in great part to the FAI and the contribution by you the CCF. Moreover I consider important the contribution that you are making in the circles linked to anarchist individualism, and our new and beautiful Nihilism.

We feel the same hatred toward the state, the same total disregard towards the new happy slave, towards the stupid mass that lets itself be led, we feel the same impotence of not being able to demolish the extermination centers that hold us captive, we feel multiple orgasms when we deliver ourselves completely to the realization of anarchy…

We are far away, but from here the distance is nothing, we are sure that sooner than later we will find each other whether in Greece, Italy, Chile or Mexico; our insurrectionalist-Nihilist international has battle camps in the streets of the entire world and there will always be space for individuals who understand that anarchy is not a cheap ideology but rather an idea that lives and conceives itself in direct action, because we know that the damned powerful will not give up their privileges and will defend them to the end of their dirty lives…

It is for this reason that we must communicate the importance of the threat of our new nihilism, it is for this reason that we have to accept that in order to triumph with our idea, we must drown the enemy in blood, and so with our sharp knives we will continue advancing toward the encounter with chaos, toward the creative nothing, and we will throw ourselves naked into that beautiful abyss where there is complete individual freedom…

I endorse the FAI-IRF. The Informal Anarchist Federation – International Revolutionary Front that is doubtless the Black International of the anarchists of action, since it has shown its capacity to respond in the face of the challenges that are emerging around the world…

But your call is not only for those who are in the bombs case, but rather has passed also to our dear brother Luciano, to whom our greatest homage will be to give him the harvest of actions that we realize with our hands…

You have also dedicated words to our brother Cristóbal Bravo, who was recently beaten by paid cowards, and it is here that it becomes important to shout loudly that the attack on property is not sufficient, which our Russian nihilist comrades understood very well and showed us that we must go further, without fear of disaster, it is your lives or ours or that of some comrade in prison, for now the impunity of that deed strikes me hard in the heart; they say that revenge is a plate best served cold, they also say that vengeance kills the soul and poisons you, I believe strongly that vengeance is the dessert in a meal for a nihilist, therefore one must not wait for facts before acting, and the main course will be to take the offensive since there are stupid cowards on all sides…

Comrades, my most heartfelt respect to your organization CCF and for the revolutionary anarchist Theofilos Mavropoulos, for all your contribution to the anarchic struggle and all the dignity that has been shown during your trial and your time in prison, I want to tell you that as great as those walls may be they cannot hide the enormous dignity and the great courage that you have shown to us the anarchists of the entire world.

Today you raise your fist, yelling “SOLIDARITY” in the international language of anarchy. And at the same time, with the other hand you hold firmly the knife of nihilism to sink it into the bowels of this world of Power and submission, well good; I from here send you all strength and energy that you may never wane! And know that nothing can separate us, we have begun an international anarchist offensive and we will not stop until we get to see the total end of all authority, of all society, of all gods, of all morals…

I take with my two hands, firmly and without hesitation, your knife of nihilism so that together we sink it into the heart of every tyrant, of every cop, of every jailer, of every bourgeois so that upon their corpses we can dance, laugh, fuck, enjoy and conquer once and for all our total freedom!

The death of our brother Mauricio Morales and the death of comrade Lambros Fountas, the loss of Luciano‘s hands and the loss of Simos Seisidis‘s wounded leg are an eternal call to fight, no anarchist wounded or killed in combat will be forgotten, it is the hour to thrust our dagger into the heart of the capitalist beast, they are our nourishment.

HONOR TO THE COMRADE LAMBROS FOUNTAS!

HONOR TO THE ROBBER COMRADE HORST FANTAZZINI!

LONG LIVE THE CONSPIRACY OF CELLS OF FIRE!

LONG LIVE THE FAI – LONG LIVE THE IRF!

FOR AN EGOISTS’ INTERNATIONAL, LONG LIVE NIHILISM!

IMMEDIATE FREEDOM TO LUCIANO PITRONELLO!

LONG LIVE ANARCHY!!!

 

NIHIL, an irreducible awaiting trial…

Mexico: An analysis of recent anti-tech attacks, after the murder of a biotechnologist

Short circuits, robberies and accidents to cover up the truth…

From culmine, translated by war on society:

On November 8th of this year, biotechnologist Ernesto Méndez Salinas, who works in the Biotechnology Institute at UNAM in the city of Cuernavaca in Morelos, was assassinated by a shot to the head.

The murder sparked the outrage of the Head of Studies, who declared himself in mourning for the death of the researcher.

The Attorney General (PGJ) of Morelos state confirmed the next day (November 9th) that the man assassinated in the middle of Tuesday night was a recognized and awarded researcher at UNAM, whose death had not yet been confirmed.

According to initial investigations, Méndez Salinas was traveling in a car Tuesday night on Av. Teopanzolco (one of the busiest in Cuernavaca) when he was overtaken by persons unknown who shot him in the head, causing the vehicle to crash.

Méndez, 51 years old, who belonged to the National System of Researchers (SIN), with degrees in chemistry, pharmacy and biology, was also a doctor in biotechnology since 1993 and had carried out studies at the University of Washington, in Saint Louis (Missouri, United States) in 1995; he was one of the most important researchers in the country with respect to biotechnology.

The two lines of investigation that have been initiated, according to Morelos state authorities, is an supposed failed attempt to rob his car or an act by persons unknown who wanted to hurt the scientist.

Some important information should be noted here–the second line of investigation refers to some threat that some persons unknown could have made, but to what does “persons unknown” refer? Perhaps they are speaking of some group of anti-industrial style who had previously declared that their hands would not tremble to harm or even kill some scientist?

Remember that the first lines of investigation when Monterrey Tec was bombed were inclined toward some disgruntled student or to some concrete group that was opposed to technological development. In the end, it turned out that the second option was the correct one.

The assassination of the biotechnologist was made exactly November 8th, and also remember that on August 8th there was an attempt against academics at Tec in the State of Mexico that left two technologists wounded.

So, after exactly three months, a biotechnologist is assassinated by a single shot to the head and that moreover, in the place there couldn’t be found the casing from the 38 caliber gun that was used to pierce Dr. Méndez’s head. It seems that the persons unknown did it so as to not leave a trace.

On September 21st, Individualities Tending toward the Wild (ITW) released their final public communique (claiming responsibility for sending a explosive package to director Pedro Bajcich of INIFAP and sending a incendiary package to the nanotech professor Flora Ganem of FES-C, in addition to giving an extensive analysis on various themes), declaring that they would continue taking actions but without claiming them; after this it was announced on October 3rd that a package bomb had exploded at the Multipack courier company in Guerrero Colonia of Mexico City while being handled by employees, three of whom ended up with various wounds, the press reported that there had been two explosions from two packages, although this hypothesis has not yet been confirmed, after several days prosecutor Miguel Ángel Mancera confirmed through a radio interview that Mexico City’s specialized experts had gathered information on who the package was addressed to, but the information has not seen the light of day.

After this, on October 18th an anonymous call warned of the placement of a bomb at “Madero Tec” in Tamaulipas. Although this all turned out to be a false alarm, it added to a series of bomb threats at Tamaulpias universities, the others being in the Autonomous University of Tamaulipas (UAT), in the Monterrey Tec campus in Puebla, and in the Polytechnic University of Pachuca in the city of Zempoala, Hidalgo (where there are nanotechnology researchers) where hundreds of students had to be evacuated. Security measures in universities have increased since the threats against UPVM (in Tultitlan), Monterrey Tec (in Atizapan) and FES (in Cuautitlan), all of these in Mexico state, and against INIFAP (in Mexico City) this year, later claimed by ITS.

The possibility that some group that opposes technological development fired on a biotechnologist on November 8th is one of the investigations that Morelos state authorities, and surely federal authorities, are following.

After the kidnapping of the researcher Yadira Dávila Martínez (August 5th of this year) of the same Biotechnology Institute of UNAM, and her body was found dead on August 9th, some pointed to ITS as responsible for the assassination of the researcher since that same day the claim of responsibility in Mexico state would be made known, but everything points to common thugs or delinquents of the area who, upon not receiving money for the kidnapping, ended the scientist’s life.

The assassination of the biotechnologist Méndez Salinas is completely different than what happened to Yadira Dávila. Care was taken to not leave traces, in being sure to fire a single bullet.

They have tried to cover this up with the supposed robbery of the scientist’s car, but by now in Mexico nobody believes anything; according to the government, all the fierce arsons that the CCF-Mexico and the CI-MSA have claimed are short circuits and the recent death of the Secretary of the Interior and other persons close to the president have been an accident.

Threatened universities, the assassination of the scientist, and an anti-technology group that has previously said it continues with the war against academics, scientists, researchers, or as they call them “technonerds,” is what is happening in Mexico.

Mexico: Claim of responsibility for two bombing attacks

Mexico: Claim of responsibility for two bombing attacks and contributions to the development of praxis against the industrial-technological system and civilization

From liberaciontotal, translated by war on society:

Communique:

September 2011. Mexico City

“The system is dedicated to fooling all aspiring revolutionaries and rebels. Its trick is so astute that, if it had consciously planned it, one would have to admire it for its almost mathematical elegance.”

First of all we would like to begin by pointing out something we believe to be of utmost importance. To begin we are not a formal and organized group, nor do we wish to call ourselves anarchists, vegans, environmentalists, nihilists, primitivists, or by any other ism, since to do so would be to fall into reductionism, to “attack” or to fancifully believe that we “attack the enemy,” but we would only focus on one reduced part of the problem, and thus would only satisfy our psychosocial-emotional necessities (as the leftists do in grand form), falling thus into the system’s game of irrationalism and in believing that we are standing against it, when the reality is much different and all we would be doing is fortifying the values of the industrial-technological system (ITS). But perhaps some will say “but direct action is reductionist since one only attacks a small part of the problem and thus does not attack all at once.” Our response to this is, of course, actions are greatly reductionist, for example: some individuals attack a biotechnology research center; in carrying out this action they are only focusing on that small center and thus cannot stop or change anything, perhaps only momentarily the center was attacked but nothing more, the other laboratories will continue operating as normal, perhaps with more caution and with greater security measures. Not even a large number of individuals spread all over the world in agreement to attack all the biotechnology laboratories would arrive at a real change since the industrial-technological system and all those who sustain it would search for a way to keep it alive without needing to use biotechnology as recourse for artificialization (remember that there now are endless technological ways to artificialize the wild). Thus we believe that actions are indeed reductionist in a certain way since they only focus on one small factor of the system; what we do not believe would be reductionist are the causes or arguments that are used to defend the action, so, we put forward the same example mentioned above, some will be able to argue that the action carried out against biotechnology is bad for human “health” (whatever that is) and because it threatens the life of animals and working in favor of the “powerful” with millions of pesos, dollars or euros–this argument would be falling into reductionism and irrationalism of two issues very well rooted in society since they only focus on some small, very reduced aspects, as “health” is, a very deteriorated idea in industrial societies since it only specifies individual and physical “health,” leaving aside the psychological and neural, and the “health” of the environment where we develop ourselves and one cannot be completely healthy living in a sick environment (artificial environment). Because it threatens animal life–here one would be falling into irrationalism because unconsciously one would be putting emotions ahead of reason, since one would be exalting this fear of death very well rooted in civilized societies, when the only thing that death is serving is an imminent process of self-regulation; and as for the latter, that of favoring some with money–this is the most serious problem of reductionism that the leftists have in making capitalism the principal and only problem out of all evils and believing that collectivizing the means of production would lead to a more comfortable life, leaving the real problem which is the industrial-technological system. To attack this (the industrial-technological system) or to make arguments against it is actually what we do not believe is reductionist since today the industrial-technological system and civilization are everywhere, and thus we consider these two as primary agents of the artificialization of non-artificial systems of self-regulation and of the domination of potentially free individuals. But why do we focus on these two and leave aside capitalism, questions of gender equality, minorities’ rights and similar aspects? This would not also be falling into reductionism? We will respond to the first question.

The industrial-technological system and civilization have created (involuntarily and unconsciously) an effect farce for all the activists and radicals who would like to stand against the system’s values, mediating individuals and making them believe that they stand for something, when the only thing they do is reaffirm the values of civilization and satisfy their own psychological needs–for example vegans who are in favor of animal liberation, many of them are people only in the “movement” to satisfy their psycho-affective needs (feelings of inferiority) responding only to emotional issues so that it’s common that when you ask a person related to animal liberation why they carry out actions in favor of their cause, they respond: “because animals are our friends,” “animals also have feelings,” “nothing justifies the killing of an animal” and reasons of this type, but they only use irrational justifications (sentimentalism in this case) such as the idea that animals are our friends (no matter what they do), when not even individuals within the same species associate in this way with others outside their pack, in many cases engaging in physical aggression and even death to defend their interests (food, shelter, territory, etc), so to believe that animals are our friends is irrational by exalting feelings of affection (friendship) known as empathy; they would believe that if one of us were in the wilderness and faced with carnivorous and hungry animal that it would leave us in peace because “it is our friend”–illogical, is it not? It happens in like manner with other alternative movements, better called leftism (feminism, classism, environmentalism, anarchism, communism, primitivism, etc.) which only seek to eliminate a small aspect of the problem, so that if the feminists (or whatever other group of leftists) achieve their goal the system still would stay on its feet since it would know how to assimilate that small “rupture.” It would keep women within its values, so this would produce the same as man, and artificialization would accelerate (something the system has already achieved); if the means of production are collectivized and capitalism does not exist, that does not matter much for civilization since technological progress would continue on its course without needing to utilize a symbol like money as a medium, and the process of artificialization of wild environments would continue on its course.

These are only some small examples to illustrate a little better the tendency against civilization and the development of the industrial-technological system, and it is these two which we focus on and so contest the continuation of research; and no, we do not believe that to solely attack these two aspects is reductionist since civilization is what has given way to large-scale (animal and natural) domination, so has artificialized everything in its path, and its accomplice has been and will be the development of technologies and industrialization, negating thus the self-assurance of potentially free individuals and impeding the development of their potentialities. This is why we believe that to attack the techno-industrial system and civilization itself is not reductionist since it is omnipotent and today is found in all aspects (food, shelter, social relationships, etc.) and to attack civilization is to attack a totality. For these and many other reasons we oppose civilization, but we don’t simply have anti-civilization ideas rooted in us; for us the theories have remained in the past, but we still continue to be congenial with some practical positions expressed by some theories; we are individualists and misanthropes, we despise mass movements and the humans who impede our free development and limit our potentialities and likewise those who artificialize wild nature; we autonomous individuals who aspire to the wild have come to realize the real problem that affects us today is civilization and the progress of the industrial-technological system.

By means of this communique we the terrorist cells for the direct attack – anti-civilization faction (CTPAD) claim responsibility for various attacks* made with explosives on governmental organizations and research organizations responsible for maintaining or helping sustain the industrial-technological system, deciding to directly attack those responsible, utilizing every means at our disposal. CTPAD have been operating in Mexico City for part of the past year with some small actions and others that are a little “bigger.” We have decided to remain anonymous for different reasons which we will expound on a little later, but by means of this communique we only wish to claim 2 attempts, precisely so that the government of Mexico City and the industrial-technological system know that the surge of radical individuals who oppose the technological system and civilization is not mere accident and that the “individualities tending toward the wild” are not the only ones committed to directly attacking those responsible for artificialization (speaking of individuals who oppose civilization and the industrial-technological system within the Mexican territory).

We claim responsibility for the placement of an explosive device in the facade of the INE (National Ecological Institute) located around the periphery at the border of the Tlalpan and Coyoacán districts, which we carried out in early April of this year. Why did we carry out this action? There are many reasons but we will offer our own.

The INE is a department of the government of Mexico City charged (together with other departments, research centers and universities, SEMARNART, INIFAP, SAGARPA, Monterrey Tec, etc) with the artificialization of natural systems utilizing biotechnology as the pretext for a “new and happy” (but we would say hedonist) world. This department is charged with granting the necessary permits for the experimentation and/or growth of genetically modified products–an example being the GM corn currently produced in Mexico.

Another reason to attack this institution is because INE promotes the use of renewable energies, called “green” by the leftists who favorably view all these ways of continuing to maintain the development of civilization and techno-industrial progress and are happy to accept (consciously or unconsciously, rationally or irrationally) these “alternative” methods of wind, solar or whatever other so-called “green” energy, remaining in the mere reductionist act of thinking that this will be “environmentally friendly” without thinking about what all this entails, for which we simply offer an example. Many “revolutionaries” believe that if in place of the use of gasoline (which is nothing but a derivative of petroleum) to propel a car, if electrical or solar energy were used it would be much better since it would greatly reduce the gasses that cause the greenhouse effect and thus would reduce global warming, but how many of these revolutionaries have stopped to think where automobile components come from? (or whatever other component implemented by the ITS) Of course! From the domination of what they call natural resources (which are nothing but systems of non-artificial self-regulation), the exploitation of mines, the felling of immense forests to be able to build roads and/or urban zones so that “environmentally-friendly” cars can travel, and due to the increase in the production of fossil fuels to be able to propel those cars, the production of tools and spare parts for the cars, the maintenance of roads, the construction of “recreational” and “living” spaces for those who reside and travel through the place and a long etcetera, and where does all this bring us? This is the maintenance and progress of civilization. It is for this reason (and of course many others) that we do not stay in the reductionist and leftist struggles of protecting the minority of “exploited” (if anyone knows how to differentiate who is one or the other please let us know, since to a great extent a worker, a woman, a person with different sexual preference or a different race actively participates in the progress of civilization and domination, “exploiting,” “discriminating,” and “depreciating” all those who they believe to be inferior in an absolute way, and for the most part all these “unprotected” individuals do so in a way that satisfies them), making martyrs of them demanding and proclaiming that they also have rights.

Presently there is a huge publicity campaign being launched “in favor of the environment” and this institution promotes it as if it were some new kind of drug for keeping everyone with mental debilities submissive; for this reason we decided to attack it, not only because it deceives with such publicity and microreforms, but because their only and specific goal is to continue the development of the techno-industrial system and thus maintain everything that civilization involves (values, governmental or non-governmental institutions, dogmas, canons, rules, etc, etc, etc–in sum, domination). But what is bad about renewable energies if they take care of and protect the environment? The answer is a little more complex than what appears in plain view, and it is not because “they benefit murderous capitalism” (we have said before that we have long since left aside those questions of capitalism), but rather because, as we have said before, they only serve the self-reparation of the technological system, or if this is not so, why has it been some decades while climate change did not interest the system as it does now? Because it has been some decades while climate change was not so threatening as now and if it was brought to completion, civilization would suffer greatly due to climatic deterioration (prolonged droughts, the deterioration of the poles, acid rain, nuclear fusion, etc, etc) and perhaps the imminent and inevitable collapse of civilization and not only of civilization but of all the individuals who inhabit the planet, so for this reason the system is trying to repair what it has itself provoked and to avoid the only possible cause of its own collapse (since neither do we believe that a revolution will finish the system).

We also claim responsibility for the placement of a false bomb in the IFaB (this is an institution charged with the investigation of pharmaceutical products and biopharmaceuticals) located around the periphery. We carried out this action in December, on the same day that the COP 17 [global climate summit – transl] began in Cancún. In this action we left a note explaining the reason (this note was signed terrorist cells for the direct attack) and then we proceeded to make a warning call to the police concerning the placement of a bomb.

Just as we attacked this institution, we also can attack any other organization that promotes these “alternative” forms of continuing to maintain the present system, such as the reformist groups, leftists, GreenPeace, SEMARNART, Animal Naturalis, etc., or those who artificialize wild nature by means of technologies.

But why wait until now to make a communique and make our existence known? As we said in the beginning, we do not call ourselves anarchists or whatever other ism (although we have ideas in opposition to civilization and the industrial-technological system, we only decide this to delimit and better extend our positions), and for this reason not finding a space of affinity where we could make our actions known, we decided to act without the need to communicate what we had done, in addition to which if we had published those actions or communiques on any internet page that was not in affinity, we would begin to relate ourselves with issues which we have (and intend to have) nothing to do with. Furthermore we do not want anti-civilization ideas and ideas against the ITS to turn into a “trend” or to begin to deteriorate as many theories have, as is happening with what presently passes as anarchism (for example), which can list as anarchists people congenial with anarchist ideas more rooted in leftism such as communism, feminism, environmentalism, veganism, primitivism, pacifism, etc, each with the prefix “anarcho-,” all the way up to the most revolutionary tendencies (whatever that means, since neither do we believe in revolutions) such as insurrectionalism, individualism, some nihilist positions, etc. And so someone who struggles for the dissolution of classes using the “consciousness of the oppressed people” as their method can be called an anarchist, or an anarchist who struggles against the system of domination by means of insurrectionalism and all that entails (sabotage, expropriations, attacks, etc), and under the circumstances we do not want the same to happen with ideas against civilization. So what was it that made us change our minds? Ultimately, we have seen some groups or individuals who put forward a posture truly in affinity–and more than in affinity, also rational and non-reductionist about the development of anti-civilization ideas–as could be the case of the “individualities tending toward the wild” (to give a specific example in the Mexican territory, as also in other parts of the world there are individuals with a critique of the technological system, although as we have noted, some still have entrenched social and/or revolutionary ideas) who, in a short span of time, have made themselves of note with attacks and critiques of the technological system, and this was what originally changed our minds about releasing communiques–the knowledge that there are other truly critical individuals who are not so gullible as to swallow the system’s farces and thus can each carry out corresponding actions against the technological system which are accompanied by a true critique against the progress of civilization.

So we want to conclude by remarking that we are not anarchists, nor are we revolutionaries or potential revolutionaries as Kaczinski put it (we do not believe in revolutions, but to speak on this would protract our statement even more, furthermore we believe that that topic of “revolutions” has already been addressed in one of the communiques of the “individualities tending toward the wild” and we are very close in these positions, only having some small questions to pose at some other time), but this does not mean we will remain with crossed arms or just be intellectuals, since to do this we would be falling again into a game of the system. We believe in violent direct action as a means of attacking a small part of the problem (we spoke on this question above), and thus we believe that property destruction is necessary since the centers for new technology research, the laboratories, and the universities are where tests are conceived and accumulated information is stored, and without this physical space the technologists and scientists would not have anywhere to develop themselves and develop new inventions, and it is necessary to attack those directly responsible for the artificialization of the wild since they are the ones who hold inside their heads the information and the potentiality for this artificialization to be realized.

We are not in the least afraid of the consequences our actions could have, from the destruction of some good material to the death of some person; even more than that, it would please us to know that as a result of our actions some technophile or individual responsible for artificialization had died.

Fire to the industrial-technological system and to civilization.

Terrorist Cells for the Direct Attack – Anticivilization Faction.

* translation note: We translate as “attack” CTPAD’s term “atentado,” which they use in reference to the actions they claim and elsewhere in the communique. The term could be translated as “attempt” or “threat,” but those would fall short in significance, since the actions they refer to are attempts on or threats to people’s lives which they clearly intend to instill terror.