The conflict against RWE at hambacher forst has intensified with every day since the beginning of this new year.
Many individuals embracing a diverse variety of tactics have been hard at work bringing anarchic mischief to the mine.
Some elements of practical refusal from the occupiers of the forest include:
* The continuous barricading of the roads used by security and construction vehicles, as well as structural damage to the bridges they use with fire and pick axes.
*Tree-spiking and the placement of “potential improvised explosive devices” in threatened areas of the forst, as well as more and more barricades, platforms and tree-defenses deeper in the woods.
*The technological apparatus of RWE such as pumping stations, radio-masts and electrical transformers being set aflame almost daily.
*Sabotage of coal-transporation infrastructure, such as short circuiting the power lines running above the train tracks and burning of electrical components alongside the railway.
*Numerous attacks with stones, slingshots, fireworks and molotov cocktails against the mines security forces, either ambushed on their patrols, or directly confronted at checkpoints. Many of these acts have now been carried out in revenge for the attempted murder, hospitalization and subsequent imprisonment of one comrade on the 21st of January.
Of course this has not gone unnoticed by the cops, who have openly acknowledged the area surrounding the mine as “outlaw territory”. For over a week now, surveillance of the forst occupation has increased, with helicopters hovering above for some time almost every day, and sending groups of cops in riot armor into the forst. They also make many attempts to ID-control people who are coming to the forst from the train station.
It should go without saying that we will not be intimidated by the presence of some vans of cops, skirting fearfully around the woods. Every time, the helicopter has been greeted routinely with fireworks, and one cop car which ventured a little too deep into the autonomous zone was smashed up, as was the vehicle sent to retrieve it.
Day and night, we lay in the woods, watching, waiting, ready to strike at any moment, and should you imprison or strike down any one of us, as you now well know, there will be consequences, here in Germany, or anywhere else in the world where RWE spreads its sickening tentacles.
It is now of importance to address that of course RWE is not just responsible for opencast lignite mining and deforestation in the Rheinland in Germany, RWE, its subsidiaries and accomplices are to be found everywhere. Their projects, their offices, their cars, their machinery, our targets, are to be found everywhere.
They are responsible for the running of coal mining operations worldwide, such as the collaboration with Hrvatska Elektroprivreda to run the Plomin coal-fired power station in Croatia, the lignite and gas-fired Mátra Power Plant in Hungary, where RWE is the 2nd largest competitor in the national electricity market, with shares in the ELMŐ/ÉMÁSZGroup, FİGÁZ and TIGÁZ. They also seek to expand the development of the coal industry in the Asia-Pacific region with offices opened in Singapore, and operations based out of their offices on the 22nd floor of The Plaza Office Tower in Jakarta, Indonesia.
RWE also makes a killing (literally) from its part played in the increased development of the atomic menace, running and servicing nuclear power stations across the world, with the collaboration of the Technical Association of Large Power Plant Operators and VGB Power Tech.
And what would RWE be, without its contributions to the industry of hydraulic fracturing and the construction of gas-fired powerplants such as the CCGT power plant in Denizli, Turkey, with the aid of Turcas Petrol and Metka, or increased oil and gas exploration in Poland, under the banner of RWE east, whose central offices are located at Limuzská 12/3135, 100 98 Prague 10, Strasnice, Czech Republic.
RWE Innogy, the subsidiary complicit in the farce of greenwashing industrialism, which boasts of “renewable” or “sustainable” energy operations. With this approach, RWE feeds the insatiable hunger of the industrial leviathan and at the same time satisfies the manufactured needs of those “benevolent” and “conscious” consumers, so that they too may spend all their lives in the glow of artificial light, with dead eyes staring blankly into screens, as they attempt to distance themselves from the harsh realities of the mechanised and systemic dominion that they depend on and contribute to, whilst at the same time sacrificing themselves upon the altar of the “green economy”.
With biomass power plants, solar, wind and hydro farms – all highly dependent on the same ecocidal methods used in their production, operation and maintenance, such as the extraction of rare minerals for circuitry and other sophisticated technologies and the burning of immense amounts of fossil fuels just to keep them in working order and fully integrated into the electrical grid – in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, the UK, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland the USA, and many other countries (which are listed conveniently on their website, along with the locations of their offices and so on).
RWE are also working together with Siemens to build virtual power plants… “What the fuck is a virtual power plant” you ask?
According to RWEs web page “A virtual power plant is a link-up of small, distributed power stations, like wind farms, CHP units, photovoltaic systems, small hydropower plants and biogas units, but also of loads that can be switched off, in order to form an integrated network. The plants are controlled from one central control room.”
With this, Siemens and RWE seek to create an interconnected, easily controllable and digitalized electrical grid, so that the functioning of capitalism, and the smooth flow of profit and products can be managed with ease, by some cabal of technocrats, plugged in, locked away, working towards the total control and destruction and of the natural environment which all life is dependant on.
In the words of Siemens-puppet Thomas Zimmermann: “With this technologically leading system, RWE will be well equipped to meet the challenges of an increasingly digitalised energy world.”
RWE is also making major contributions towards the approaching technological singularity, which seeks to encompass all aspects of life under one suffocating, automated, artificial reality. With the aid of its research project “E-DeMa”, they are working on projects such as “smart homes” and “smart meters”, so that each individual/familial consumer-unit is completely integrated into the automated capitalist-industrial machine.
Plugged in permanently one can use their “smart” phone to manage their levels of electricity consumed, turn heating and lights on and off whilst slaving away at some mindless job, simultaneously booking in appointments and sending “emoticons” to their so-called “friends” on disgracebook, ordering the latest automated vacuum cleaner to keep the prison-home sterilized, all from the comfort of your place of employment-imprisonment, working for digital money, to spend on mind numbing drugs and healthcare, and the latest distraction, all kept safe and secure under the surveillance of countless corporations, working hand-in-glove to spy on, collect and database every aspect of your life… all this for your security, all this in the name of convenience.
Of course this dystopian vision of the future offered by RWE and the nerds of the techno-industrial system is only available for those those eager to comply and bend themselves to the will of another, and those privileged enough that the increased development of this technologically driven society has not already landed them in prison or some distant mass grave.
We conclude this text with a call out to all cells and chaotic individualities tending towards the international anarchist offensive against power, for the direct attack against RWE, its subsiduaries, its partners such as Siemens and VGB Power Tech and their projects.
Our targets are everywhere. Opportunities present themselves everywhere.
From expensive, isolated and indefensible pieces of infrastructure on the edges of the prison-cities, such as power lines, substations, transformers, wind/solar/hydro farms and so on, which if destroyed will all have a wide knock-on effect, to the densely packed clusters of targets in cities, such as offices and groups of vehicles parked outside, CCTV surveillance cameras, telekomm masts and electrical boxes full of fibreoptic cables line the streets, begging to be sabotaged, shattering the hold of civil normality for a time, perhaps long enough that some will look away from their glowing screens and see the fire of chaotic anarchy on the streets. With a little research, the homes of the technocrats are uncovered, and their daily lives can be ruptured at any moment, their ostentatious cars burning on their driveway, windows shattering in the night.
With easily reproducible and simple methods elaborated in the numerous communiques of anarchist action cells, such as the placement of a single firelighter cube, or the indiscriminate application of bolt cutters, crowbars, rocks, hammers and molotov cocktails, our targets are all too easily destroyed.
Our targets are everywhere. Our tools are many, and the automatons of order cannot be everywhere at once.
In solidarity with imprisoned warrior Fledermaus.
For international coordination and combative anarchy!
Translations are welcomed.
- Some anarchist