Sabotaging capitalist normality – Attack on the rail infrastructure

During the night of 9th April, we set fire to railway signal and electric cables with a number of incendiary devices in various places near Basel.

The cops and the media have kept quiet about our action up until now.

Situated on the borders between three countries with maritime links going as far as the North sea, a highly developed rail and motorway network as well as an airport, the town of Basel is a central logistic node for the flux of goods that keep capitalist normality functioning. Given that we have a very low opinion of this state of affairs, we attacked its infrastructure to put a stop to it, at least for a moment.

Our attack was specifically aimed at the transboundary rail transport of goods and people and the rail link to the port of Kleinhüningen. One of the most important north-south links in Europe passes by Basel. The line between Rotterdam and Genoa belongs to the program Trans-European Transport Network and is constantly under expansion. The three Rhine ports of Basel carry out 10% of Switzerland’s foreign trade. About a third of its imports of petroleum products is loaded on to trains and lorries here. One container in four going to Switzerland passes through the ports of Basel. Loaded with merchandise made starting from raw materials plundered from all over the world or construction material with which more and more motorways, banks and jails are being built, the ground is sealed and everything living is buried under a thick layer of concrete.

Pharmaceutical and chemical industries based in Basel also import machinery and materials that they need for the fabrication of products which will then be exported using the same route. Whether it is carcinogenic chemical products of Syngenta or the anticancer drugs of Novartis or Roche, they are two sides of the same coin. Instead of seriously devoting themselves to globally healing illnesses caused in large part by the techno-industrial complex (and even less to attacking their causes), people are linked to a health system orientated above all towards profits of the pharmaceutical groups as well as keeping us fit to be used for work, day after day.

For the smooth functioning of this life-destroying system, the goods transport railways are of major importance. With their logistic, SBB Cargo and DB Cargo [the two operators of rail freight belonging to the Swiss (the SBB/CFF/FSS) and German (the Deutsche Bahn) rail companies respectively; translator’s note] profit from neocolonialism and war. They belong to the military infrastructure.

The Deutsche Bahn transports the military material of the German army and armies of NATO. The deadly freight of the weapons industry needed for forced displacements, devastation of land, genocide and maintenance of the dominant social relations is transported throughout the entire world. Industrialisation and therefore the deepening of the relations of power and the structures of exploitation would certainly not be possible without the intervention of the railways. Still today this technology serves to colonize territories that are not yet developed and render them accessible to capitalist exploitation (for example, the participation of DB in the project Tren Maya in Mexico and the rail link with a new deep water port, in the east of the Brazilian Amazon).
Now, the question could be asked as to why we are attacking precisely rail transport when it is considered to be more respectful of the climate than road transport for example. First and foremost: we have found that the motorways are also shit. We consider nevertheless that the «process of green transformation» is a lying narrative through which there is an attempt to sell us off hope in an ecological future of the system.

The locomotive of progress, being green, will save us from climate catastrophe with technological solutions, we are told, and is CO 2 neutral!

All the same, it is precisely this progress that is the catastrophe. Moreover the fact that it is not less, but more and more CO 2 which is released into the atmosphere, in the name of green energy and climate-friendly mobility, the lithium, the cobalt and the rare earths are being extracted in increasingly large quantities, thereby destroying ecosystems and biotopes. Extractivism is ravaging more and more vast surfaces of Earth and belongs to the same megamachine that offers to the great majority of human beings nothing but an existence in social misery. It is time to put on the emergency brake.

A few more words on the interruption of passenger transport: right next to the railway line stands the prison of Bässlergut, where people are imprisoned in administrative detention with a view to their expulsion, because they break the rules of the world colonial order and are not integrated into the production chain where they were born. Some of them have been on hunger strike various times over the last few months, struggling for freedom.

These structures of control and submission operate here, at the German-Swiss border, even outside the walls of the jail, in the form of real manhunts. Here, in the area of free circulation of people, the federal German cops patrol en masse, to avoid this being misinterpreted as free movement of people. Because, of course, this doesn’t apply to everybody. The workers and the tourists must be transported here. But those who don’t have the good papers, or don’t have any at all, see themselves refused the right to a train journey from Basel to Germany.

We also see our action as part of the struggle against the murderous regime of immigration and borders. We are in solidarity with all those who cross borders in defiance of the murderous politics of Europe.

In the world in which we are living they tell us that everything we have mentioned above is indispensable. If it’s up to us to make the most of our own lives, we will never be able – left to ourselves – to lead a life as good and sure as the one imposed on us. But there are also other tales. Stories of a life outside the logic of utilisation, stories of intergenerational struggles of communities all over the world against oppression, exploitation and the destruction of nature Stories of resistance, mutual aid and solicitude.

These tales are not just ideas, but also possibilities. We believe in these stories and we want to continue to write them. We want to attack the existent to make room for the possible.

Let’s sabotage capitalist normality!

No borders, no nations!

Found on: Act For Freedom Now!