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Tag: international

Houdremont (Belgium): sabotage of wind turbine project

Posted on by ellipsism

Houdremont wind farm measuring mast vandalized
Matele, May 17, 2025

An unusual act of vandalism took place last weekend in the heart of the Ardennes countryside, in such a remote part of Houdremont (Gedinne) that the crime was only discovered yesterday. The measuring mast installed a few weeks ago as part of the wind farm project in the communes of Bièvre and Gedinne had been blown down. Some ill-intentioned person had cut the cables holding up the 80-meter tower. The wind is said to have done the rest.

According to the promoter of the wind farm project, Watt Else, quoted by the mayor of Bièvre, Michaël Modave, the damage amounts to over 80,000 euros. As a reminder, the wind farm project involves the construction of 10 wind turbines: 4 on Gedinne and 6 on Bièvre [250 meters high!]. Both municipalities have already made it clear that they are not necessarily in favor of the project.

Found on: Act for Freedom Now!

(France) Communiqué for sabotage against electrical installations on the Côte d’Azur

Posted on by ellipsism

Sabotage on the Côte d’Azur: And… cut!

[On the night of May 23 to Saturday, May 24, 2025 in Tanneron (Var) and Villeneuve-Loubet (Alpes-maritimes), the hydroelectric power station and a high-voltage pylon were visited, just hours before the closing of the Cannes Film Festival. The former was set on fire at around 2:45 a.m., plunging the eastern Var and western Alpes-Maritimes into darkness, and the latter collapsed in the morning after its legs were sawed off, depriving the town of Cannes and the surrounding area of electricity for a second time, this time in the middle of the day. This double attack, which Sans Nom published about yesterday, was claimed the next day by “two crews of anarchists” against the Festival and also against Thales Alenia Space, in a communiqué published on Indy Nantes].

Communiqué for sabotage against electrical installations on the Côte d’Azur

AND… CUT!

Two crews of anarchists here. We claim responsibility for the attack on electrical installations on the Côte d’Azur. On the eve of the Cannes Film Festival awards ceremony and gala evening, we sabotaged the main substation supplying the Cannes area, and sawed through the 225 kV line coming from Nice.

The aim of this action was not only to disrupt the festival, but also to cut power to Thales Alenia Space’s research centers and factories, its dozens of subcontractors, the French Tech start-ups who thought they were safe, the airport and all other industrial, military and technological establishments in the area.

An unexpected cut to a bad horror film that drags on and on. The same script is used over and over again to the point of nausea. The scenes change, as do the special effects, but the backdrop is always the same: a world that won’t stop bombing, exploiting, mining, hoarding, raping, ravaging, starving, machine-gunning, polluting and exterminating until everything is under its control.

We know we’re not on a film set, but the phrase “CUT!” seemed to sum up our desire: to switch off this deadly system.

AND… CUT! Your spectacle that serves as a showcase for a grandiose French Republic, defender of the values of Progress on the international stage, but above all the second largest arms exporter in the world. French excellence in this field arms NATO and sows death, from Yemen to Gaza, from Ukraine to the Sahel.

AND… CUT! Your obscene ceremony on a coast that’s become a refugee graveyard, and the industrial trashcan of a society that loves to bring revolt to the screen, but represses and imprisons anyone who rises up against its domination of the world.

AND… CUT! The promotion of the surrogate world you create with your TV shows and movies, which wants us to forget the real planet, rotten with factories, highways, concrete and mines.

AND… CUT! The testicles… No? (Tempting!) Well, the hands! … No more?! The tongue then!

In short, silence all those who say: “Those hysterical women are exaggerating!” To put an end to these oppressors with their thousand masks, who turn bodies into objects, and who defend the rape culture so prevalent in the film industry, from the screen to the shooting location, but just as prevalent elsewhere…

AND… CUT! The power of your military-technology industries. Thales-Alenia Aerospace, a leader in the defense sector, manufactures gun sighting and missile guidance systems, and space telecommunications. Thales-Alenia Aerospace is by far the leading satellite manufacturer in Europe, particularly for military use. Labs and workshops at the Cannes site run 24 hours a day. Several thousand engineers and technicians work daily on the refinement of these military satellites (observation, communication, missile and drone guidance) and civilian satellites (telecommunications, surveillance).

AND… CUT! Your sickening speeches that want to draw us into your war preparations. Your announcements of reindustrialization and nuclear revival. Your talks about ecological transition and the continuation of industrial society. Your rhetoric against those who fight against your cement factories, freeways, nuclear sites, chemical plants, high-speed trains and cell towers. Your calls for national unity, for the “rearmament” of the nation-state, for the defense of your values and your vision of the world.

So yes… Cut the power to what’s destroying us!
Sabotage is possible!

Cut the screens
Cut the highways
Cut the pylons
Cut artificial light
Cut high-speed train lines
Cut telecommunications
Cut bulldozer cables
Cut power to the military industry
Cut power to factories
Cut oil and gas pipelines
Cut wind turbine measuring masts
Cut army supply lines
Cut off water to industrial agriculture and electronics plants
Cut cables to solar power plants
Cut cell towers
Cut the bars of prison cells (and long live attacks on the prisons!)
Cut short reformist and authoritarian discourses
Cut short the silencing and minimization of patriarchal violence
Cut off the pedestal of celebrities and other men of power, who assault and rape behind the scenes as well as on the battlefield
Cut short those who say to wait

And… hold in there. Courage.

And since you love bringing rebellion to the screen…
And you’ve got to have a sense of humor!

Here, inspired by the latest hits in international cinema, a self-production released especially for the 2025 edition of the Cannes Film Festival!

Sabotage 2: Night in Cannes
An anonymous self-production

Production
Unknown and determined to stay that way

Screenplay
Inspired by real-life convictions

Release date
May 2025

Synopsis
Set in a world on the brink of apocalypse, the film follows the adventures of an anti-authoritarian commando group whose mission is to sabotage technological factories of great military importance. When they decide to strike during a prestigious cultural event, a race against time begins…

If you love women who short-circuit aluminum production, middle-schoolers who burn down factories, Fremen who rise up against the intergalactic empire, or commandos who take on the oil industry, you won’t be left wanting with this latest production.
The Untouchables

The special effects sometimes leave something to be desired, which is not surprising given the limited means at this production’s disposal, but the script and strategic cunning more than make up for this shortcoming.
Cannes Matin

An irresistible tale of good versus evil. A favorite in these times of confusion and disarray.
Allocinéma

It’s hard to excuse the lack of nuance, the absence of constructive dialogue and the clear democratic deficit of the radical message conveyed by the protagonists, but it’s in the air of the times.
Le Phigareau

Idealistic thriller with consequences more real than ever.
Senshypercritique

A vibrant call to rearm… radical opposition.
L’univers diplomate

To absolutely be put into practice.
Greta Thunberg

————————————————————————————-

Russia: Anarchist partisans sabotage the war machine

Posted on by ellipsism

The trial and sentencing of Ruslan Sidiki has exposed both the terror of an authoritarian state and the power of clandestine direct action

~ Josie Ó Súileabháin ~

At the Ryazan garrison military court, Judge Oleg Shishov on 23 May sentenced Ruslan Sidiki to 29 years of imprisonment for bombing railway tracks leading to the front and a drone attack on a military base. Sidiki will have to spend the first 7 in a high-security prison and after that in a high-security penal colony. He would also have to pay about 58 million roubles in fines and damages (about 640,000 Euros).

Russian Railways reported damages of more than 17 million Rubles and the disruption to 61 trains using the same line. Petrochemical outfit Apatit said that 700 tonnes of concrete crumbled and mixed with the soil, causing damage of 38 million Rubles. Bogdan Fedak, a representative of the Ministry of Defence, confirmed the drone at Dyagilyevo airfield caused minimal damage, but it did  threaten “the combat readiness of the military unit” although when pressed, he could not say what the threat was.

“Of course, any loud bang and news of an explosion can scare someone”, Sidiki said in his final statement to the court. “Just as missiles flying over houses and the start of military operations carry with them intimidation of the population of the country against which these actions are being carried out”.

Sabotage of the railways carrying military equipment through Russia into Ukraine rose sharply after the announcement of the full-scale war in 2022. The violent suppression of street protests and anti-war demonstrations has left no avenue but clandestine direct action.

“Early in the morning of February 24th” Sidiki wrote, “I was riding in the train Ryazan-Moscow… I began to monitor the news and saw that a large-scale invasion had begun. It was a very unpleasant feeling (knowing) that you couldn’t do anything. I saw how trains with military equipment are going, out of desperation I wanted to overshadow the gun trucks”.

By early March, Sidiki had written to a comrade in Ukraine to ask if they would fight in the armed forces. The comrade replied: “We burn their equipment in the hundreds, and they wipe our cities from the face of the earth”.

‘Beware, Moscow’

63 trains had de-railed in Russia in the first four months of full-scale war, according to media reports seen by The Insider. Several underground groups were claiming responsibility, uploading reports to social media and sharing recipes for explosives. Russian Railways has claimed that half of these derailments were due to technical problems rather than political sabotage—preferring to be accused of criminal negligence than admit to the scale of actions.

Already in 2020, the Rail Guerrillas in Belarus were active in sabotaging state infrastructure as part of the uprising against dictatorship in the country. In 2022 the focus mainly changed to sabotaging the Russian war machine in Belarus. The same year the Belarussian regime passed legislation that would allow the death penalty for attempted acts of sabotage, and violently crushed the movement in the country.

In April 2022, the Russian security service (FSB) announced it they had detained two Russians who were “supporters of Ukrainian Nazism” and were being charged with sabotage. A video was released as ‘evidence’ for their crimes, with one blurred-faced man talking to camera and wearing a shirt with Union Jacks on it. Their names were not released, but even after an investigation by The Insider, no data could be found on charges being brought in the region reported.

The announcement by the FSB did fit the public narrative of the “de-Nazification of Ukraine” as propagated by Russian leadership a little too well. Behind the scenes, the FSB was looking for the anarchists and other political activists. In the public chat ‘Beware, Moscow’ a message warned that the security service was after a “militant organisation of anarcho-communists”.

According to investigators, the group responsible for several acts of sabotage were not supporters of Ukrainian fascism but their political counterforce; the Combat Organisation of Anarcho-Communists (BOAK). The underground militant direct action group had managed to delay military freight trains by unscrewing 8 nuts, splitting a rail joint and partially dislodging the tracks. “As anarchists and revolutionaries”, a member of BOAK wrote in February 2025, “it was obvious that we needed to stand in defence of society when it faced fascist imperial aggression”.

“The defeat of Ukraine will bring about the triumph of the most reactionary forces in Russia”, another statement from BOAK reads, “finalizing its transformation into a neo-Stalinist concentration camp, with unlimited power concentrated in the FSB and totalitarian Orthodox imperialist ideology”.

Several BOAK comrades went to fight in the resistance in Ukraine, including one of the founders of the combat organisation Dmitry Petrov. From the first day of the invasion of Ukraine, Petrov worked to establish anti-authoritarian and autonomous military units, including the Anti-Authoritarian Platoon that fought until the summer of 2022.

“Right now we are going through a turning point in the history of eastern Europe”, Petrov wrote in ‘To be an independent force’. “In the abyss of events, the small black sail of the anarchist movement is clearly visible”.

In the following year, Dmitry Petrov was killed alongside Finbar Cafferly and Cooper Andrews as they were fighting close to Bakhmut in Ukraine.

Terror state

As Sidiki reflected in court, he was forced underground when “all opportunities to influence the situation peacefully” were cut off. “Whoever opposes war is declared a traitor and subject to repression… it is not surprising that someone would prefer to leave the country and someone will take up the explosives”.

Sidiki’s defence lawyer had argued that the charge of terrorist training should be dropped, referring both to the defendant’s prior knowledge of explosives and drone operations, and the court’s recognition of the defendant as a prisoner of war. Destruction of the property of the military is known as sabotage, Sidiki argued, whereas it is the Russian military targeting of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure that fits the legal definition of terrorism  — “committing an explosion or other actions that frighten the population in order to influence decision-making by the authorities”. Access to water, electricity and gas were severely restricted in order to put pressure on Ukraine’s leadership.

As reported by Mediazona, Sidiki previously reflected from prison, “did I feel like a guerrilla? I think I could be called that. If during the Second World War, people opposing the Third Reich on its territory were called partisans, then I can be attributed to them…”

“Torturing  with electricity and beating up a tied up person is an extremely low act” Sidiki said at his last hearing. “Here, responsibility falls not only on the one who used these methods, but also the one who knows, and the one who does not react and helps hide it”.

Standing in a cage, his final words to the court were from a fragment of a poem by Nestor Makhno:

Let them bury us now,
but our essence will not
sink into oblivion
It will rise at the right time
and win. I believe in it

Found on: Freedom News UK

Dockers successfully block arms shipment to Israel

Posted on by ellipsism
Dockers successfully block arms shipment to Israel

French and Italian dockworkers unite in practical resistance to the Israeli genocide in Gaza

~ David TNnzk ~

On Thursday, 5 June, workers at the port of Marseille unionised with CGT and backed by a solidarity presidium, successfully refused three containers full of military equipment which were scheduled to be loaded onto the Contship Era, chartered by Israeli shipping company ZIM. 

The shipment included 14 tonnes of machine gun components and spare parts bound for Haifa.

The ship was due to make a technical stopover for refuelling at Genoa on Friday 6 June. A protest presidium was called by the Genoa Port Workers’ Collective (CALP) and the USB trade union. 

Contingency plans were in place: in the event that the French comrades had failed to sabotage the cargo, the Italian dockworkers were prepared to prevent the shipment proceeding further.

However, with the successful action of the Marseille dockworkers, the ship’s departure was delayed. 

The solidarity event on the Italian side was therefore postponed Saturday 6 June.

Once the ship eventually reached the Genoa port, chants demanding ‘stop genocide!’ were heard as a demonstration of more than 300 people marched into the port crossing. 

As requested by their French colleagues, the dockers in Genoa inspected each container to ensure that no military cargo was on the ship.

The next stop was scheduled for Sunday 8 in Salerno, Italy, where demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine were expected to continue. In fact, the Contship Era decided to change course, heading for Sicily.

This event does not come out of the blue. In 2023, the Genoa Port Workers’ Collective had already launched an international mobilisation against the shipment of arms to war zones under the slogan ‘lower the guns, raise the wages’. Earlier this year, after the Greek national strike that opposed both the conservative government and European austerity policies, the International Coordination of Dockworkers was founded. On that occasion, workers in 54 cities of other countries joined in solidarity with the Greek strike, paving the way for wider collaboration. Today, workers’ organisations from Greece, Turkey, Morocco, France and Italy are currently members. The lever that drove this alliance is the desire to jam the war machine by targeting the ports that keep it moving.

Earlier still, in 2019 and 2020, the harbours of Genoa had refused to load war shipments on the Saudi ‘Bahri’ fleet bound for Yemen, inspiring similar blocks in other ports across Europe like: Marseille, Le Havre (Normandy) and Bilbao (Basques).

The Genoa Port Workers’ Collective are also trying to put pressure on the institutions by appealing to law 185/90, which prohibits the transit of armaments to theatres of war. Additionally, dockworkers have raised issues regarding non-compliance with safety regulations concerning the docking and mooring of ships loaded with weapons and explosives. 

The first major stance against the genocide in Gaza was organised by Moroccan dockers in Casablanca, preventing the loading of F-35 components on a ship headed to Haifa.

These partial successes give positive energy and hope in difficult times of war and repression. The logistics sector once again proves to be a focal point for capital; it has itself been developed to supply the armies more effectively. For this movement to be truly effective, all logistics actors must continue to use their structural leverage to enforce a generalised embargo.

Found on: Freedom News UK

Athens, Greece: Taking responsibility for the incendiary attacks on the houses of the politician Maximos Charakopoulos and the cop Giannis Meidanis

Posted on by ellipsism

We take responsibility for the double attack with low-powered incendiary devices at dawn on 14/05/25 at the entrances of the apartment buildings where the MP of the New Democracy Maximos Charakopoulos and the uniformed scum of the Greek National Police, Giannis Meidanis, reside.

Our moves were not at all accidental as they are a first sign of aggressive solidarity with those arrested for the events at the DAP-NDFK event at the Law School. Our attack had been decided to take place some weeks later. However, we found it necessary to bring it forward because of the events, redefining the climate of fear that Chrysochoidis in unbridled collaboration with the media wants to imbue us with and returning fear to the eyes of those who should be blooming. Because for every visit you make to the homes of your comrades and comrades-in-arms, we will make a visit to yours.

A very faint layer of light unites the political and the personal, like the light of the twilight in the early morning, where you don’t know when the night ends and the day begins, where the boundaries of one are blurred within the boundaries of the other. Our twilight is the moment of explosions, where we gave the night its first colors in the hope that something new would dawn, where we united these two poles (political/personal) through action. But for us the personal does not stop at the individual but starts from it, is not limited to its narrow logics but extends from it. We are not just individuals we are what we stand for, the past has led us to the present and our present to the future. We are our decisions then, these gentlemen have consciously decided to be in the party of the rulers and we are consciously against them. But what happens when your social roles suppress our individuality and our collective evolution? That’s when resistance comes, that’s when the war begins. A thin thread connects us to the struggles of yesterday and we continue so that the struggles of tomorrow have somewhere to stand in order to evolve.

So here we go, one MP and one cop, one represents/exercises the executive power and the other imposes through repression the power of the political leadership of the day. Together they make up two of the four pillars of the state apparatus (the other two legislative, propaganda) the reasons for hitting these targets over time and perpetually for us are self-evident. But in the present day our reasons are concretized and analyzed in particular. Our strategic planning is about bringing justice to the crime of Tempi where our inner sense of justice found you guilty and this is a first glimpse of your “sentence”. It is heard here and there that you put the stationmaster in his place, it is heard that you colluded with your brother Agapios Charakopoulos then director of the Larissa police department where he personally took over the protection of the scene of the incident where he allowed the crime scene to be tampered with and was promoted to brigadier general as a reward for his excellence in covering up your government. You politically abet the criminals and continue to unrepentantly defend your party’s grammar. Isn’t there a lot of that going around, Maxime? They say where there’s smoke there’s fire, and in your case there was both for sure. We heard you say you couldn’t breathe, that you woke up to smoke and flames and that you were afraid of getting hurt. What could the 57 people on the first wagons of the trains have to say, you piece of garbage? What can they say to those who will live with the nightmare of that night haunting them forever? With the smell of burning flesh with the image of severed limbs forever etched in their memory? What are the parents to say as they try to calm down but you and your filthy gang won’t let them? What to say to all of us who know we could have been on that train that night? We could have because we recognize our economic class in this society.

You are wagging your finger at us and telling us that these things do not fit into “democracy”, that you are more powerful, that all these criminal and terrorist elements will be caught. In your democracy and your friends’ democracy nothing else fits because you have taken care of it, as you would not exist if you did not impose your social system and you know it. That is why you have shielded this complex and seemingly impenetrable system of yours with the defences of interlocking. These mechanisms were evident from the very first hours when you began to weave your cover-up plan. Shall we talk about the montage of the dialogue between the stationmaster and the engineer that was created from the first issue and promoted in all the mass propaganda media? About the broken doors and the missing camera footage? For the fuel? For the right-wing think tank findings? For unfinished contracts while brazenly questioning a safety issue through Transport Minister Kostas Karamanlis? About roadside repairs? About prosecutors sending parents to priests? This and much more for your congregation in your attempt to get away with it.

This murder is a state crime in a huge list of crimes either in the field of wage slavery such as the deaths of port workers who work for shipowners who make millions, or in hospitals where health workers struggle with minimal resources to save lives that are being lost as the National Health Service becomes increasingly understaffed, or crimes like Pylos with its anti-immigration death policies and the murders of the garbage of the police. Police and the garbage of the riot police on migrants in the hellhole or out on the streets. These are all murders that revolve around the altar of profit and the survival of the powerful.

The time has come, therefore, to smash the bastards who oppress us with their political hegemony, those who daily reveal to us the most violent facade of institutionalized power. People who are insolent, scoundrels and trumpeters like the whining Maximus who, throwing out dry humanist garbage, talks about ‘defending’ weak citizens and about thugs who poison society in an attempt to victimize it. Your abject self-pity only makes us sick, when you were paving the way for the sympathy of the 57 murdered in Tempi with your brother we didn’t see your ears sweat. You talk about terrorists and we will agree with you because for us it is an integral part of our action to give you back as much of the pain and violence you have caused and to terrorize you to the point of utter terror. For the only true vindication is that which comes at the hands of the urban guerrillas.

The choice of the double attack indicates that our targeting is not only limited to the current events and the search for temporary responsibility but is part of the timeless pattern of counter-attack against the state, capital and power. We are becoming the direct attack, the armed hand that does not wait for when it will be bitten to arm itself but strikes first if it deems it necessary. We become both the prevention and the cure of a sick reality by striking the individual MP and his uniformed protector where they feel most secure. In their homes.It’s time for the anti-authoritarian movement to re-emerge as a threat in the public sphere with attacks of small or large force against the world of power. We must stand up to our political identity. We respond to the repressive barrages with incendiary ones and to the state pressure with more from our side.

We are building in the here and now another world in rupture with the existing one. Organized authoritarianism will always find us in the protection of property and the monopoly of violence. The state is the best means to preserve individual property, the system of injustice and inequality. It is the harmony of organic evolution that creates the variety of colour and form. This is what we admire in the flower. The organized action of people bound together in the spirit of solidarity so that at some point fear will change sides and one day cease to exist.

PS: We dedicate this action as a tribute to the individuals who recently through their action lost their lives by choosing to walk the paths of urban guerrilla.

KYRIAKOS XYMITRIS PRESENT

SNIZANA PARASKEVAIDOU PRESENT

And at the same time to all those who carried the heavy burden of history.

NO RETRIBUTIVE BAIL FOR THOSE ACCUSED OF THE EVENTS OF THE LAW SCHOOL, YOU WILL FIND US IN FRONT OF YOU.

SOLIDARITY TO THE SQUATS.

A SYMPHONY OF OFFENSIVE SOLIDARITY TO ALL IMPRISONED COMRADES.

MARIANNA AND DIMITRA STRENGTH

NOTHING’S OVER. EVERYTHING CONTINUES.

Gang of Offensive Solidarity

Found on: Dark Nights

Nord-Toulouse: destroy the power cables of the future Bordeaux/Toulouse high-speed line (France)

Posted on by ellipsism

Communiqué from the Group of Enraged Irreverent Cormorants 

For several months now, we, the Cormorants of Saint-Jory, have been welcoming zadists to our little forest to defend our meagre patch of nature, one of the few still left here, squeezed between shopping centers, industrial zones and expressways. We’re surviving as best we can, and last year we learned that this habitat would be destroyed to make way for a high-speed rail link that will save a few minutes for a handful of human beings. Apparently, for them, this represents progress.

For the fourth time, on Monday April 7, we saw men arrive in our habitat, all dressed in ocean blue, accompanied by iron monsters who had come to destroy the cabins of our ZAD protectors, lay waste to the soil that feeds us and uproot the young trees that sheltered us. We know this is just a taste of what awaits us here.

So, overcome with anger, we gathered in a Cormorant general assembly. Knowing that our zadist friends were going on vacation, we decided to intervene on the tentacular electrical supply system: thick cables encased in red plastic tubes laid all along the tracks.

On the night of April 7 to 8, following the 4th round of destruction of the ZAD, we organized ourselves into a swarm, beaks covered in our best balaclavas, and threw two tubes onto the rails in retaliation. The cables inside were cut by the first train of the morning.

This sabotage, like that south of Bordeaux, is a meagre response to the disaster that threatens us all. The profound change needed for our survival will not come from our executioners.

In the name of all the animals threatened by this high-speed rail link, we invite kindred spirits to pursue other sabotages along their route.

All

Cormorans

Are 

Beautiful

Found on: Act for freedom now!

Nice (Alpes-Maritimes): electrical sabotage on the rise -France

Posted on by ellipsism

After Cannes, Nice targeted by electrical sabotage

Le Monde/Le Parisien, May 25, 2025 (excerpt)

The day after a power cut in and around Cannes, a transformer was deliberately set on fire in Nice on Saturday night. According to a police source and the public prosecutor’s office, the transformer in question is located in the Moulins district, to the west of the city.

“On May 25, 2025, at around 2 a.m., an electrical transformer on Avenue Paul Montel in Nice was deliberately damaged and set on fire,” the public prosecutor’s office said. “Traces of tires” were found, and a source close to the case referred to ‘a broken door [of the transformer’s premises]’.

Some 45,000 households were temporarily without power in Nice and the neighboring towns of Saint-Laurent-du-Var and Cagnes-sur-Mer, said Enedis. Nice’s streetcar network was briefly impacted, with a delayed resumption in the early morning, and the airport was temporarily without power. By 6 a.m., power had been restored.

A flagrante delicto investigation has been opened for “destruction by fire in an organized gang” and entrusted to the judicial police. For the time being, there is nothing to link this fire with the events of Saturday, when 160,000 people were left without power not far from Cannes.

RTE to step up security at sensitive sites after sabotage causing widespread power cuts
Var Matin, May 25, 2025

Following a series of targeted attacks on electricity infrastructures in the Alpes-Maritimes and Var regions, network operator RTE is stepping up surveillance of sensitive sites in the face of an unprecedented threat.

A new guarding measure has been deployed at certain sites deemed to be at risk. These human reinforcements complement existing security measures, including fencing, video surveillance and other confidential means of detection “which we cannot detail for obvious reasons”, says RTE.

This switch to active security comes after three attacks in two days: a substation set on fire in Saint-Cassien, within the grounds of the Tanneron plant, on Friday night; a pylon sawed down in Villeneuve-Loubet in the steep Vanade sector, leading to a massive power cut on Saturday morning; and a transformer burnt to the ground west of Nice, on Saturday night. These potentially coordinated actions targeted key points on the network, causing significant disruption despite rapid restoration of service.

Permanent surveillance of pylons impossible

The network managed by RTE extends over 106,000 kilometers of extra-high-voltage lines, supported by a network of pylons scattered throughout the country, often in the middle of nowhere.

This extensive model makes permanent surveillance impossible. And while electrical substations – some 2,800 in France, including dozens, if not hundreds, in the Alpes Maritimes and Var regions – are easier to monitor, not all can benefit from the same level of protection.

Priority is therefore given to the most strategic ones, identified in conjunction with local authorities and law enforcement agencies.

Individuals who knew about the security loopholes?

“Existing tools, such as the sensors installed on the lines, can detect anomalies, but without specifying their origin”, explains RTE. In the event of an incident, teams must therefore travel to the site to observe the damage, which can be complicated when access is difficult, as was the case in Villeneuve-Loubet. The choice of this isolated pylon also suggests a meticulously prepared action, carried out by individuals familiar with the terrain and the network’s vulnerabilities.

Faced with these limitations, RTE adjusted its strategy. In addition to reinforcing human presence, discussions are underway with public authorities to improve prevention and response in the event of intrusion or sabotage. But protecting a network designed to transport electricity, and not to resist targeted attacks, remains a real headache… Its structure, by definition open and distributed throughout the country, cannot unfortunately be secured like an enclosed building.

Found on: Act For Freedom Now!

Bordeaux (Gironde) France: fire at TGV construction site

Posted on by ellipsism

Bordeaux Sud: AFSB (high-speed line) construction workers set fire to electrical connections with a cigarette!

They’d been warned it was serious to smoke near an area as flammable as the Bordeaux-Toulouse high-speed line construction site. But they wouldn’t listen.

It’s true that since the A69 project was halted by Toulouse’s administrative court, there’s plenty to be nervous about. There’s a whiff of unemployment about the LGV… And it can’t be easy to be involved in a project that received over 90% negative opinions during the public inquiry. You can’t feel at your best! It’s like feeling like you’ve betrayed your own and are fattening up the very people who exploit workers more and more. But don’t complain when there’s no money left for public services. As JP Farandou of the SNCF so aptly put it: “the high-speed train is not a public service”… And yet, it’s our tax money that’s going to pay for this high-speed line. It’s beyond comprehension… In any case, this is the result of their recklessness:

SNCF deplores the delays and cancellations caused by this event. Usually, they encourage them through their strategic choices, leaving existing lines to deteriorate further and further. But no! It deplores them… If ever the staff of the companies working on these sites are reminded that there is a “right of withdraw” allowing them to recover a little lost honor under the ballast.

The League of Track Guards

Found on: Act for freedom now!

Number of the day: 5 million euros ( France)

Posted on by ellipsism

The fire at the large Enedis electrical transformer in Saint-Chamond, which started just before 3 a.m. last Tuesday night, was sabotage, according to the anti-militarist ultra-left activists who claimed responsibility.

The destruction of the high-voltage to low-voltage transformer opposite the Saint-Chamond police station left more than 3,000 households without electricity for several hours. According to several sources, the cost of restoring the installations will take several months and could amount to as much as 5 million euros.

(Excerpt from Essor de la Loire, May 13, 2025)

Found on: Act for freedom now!

Saint-Chamond (Loire): action against the arms industry (France)

Posted on by ellipsism

[On May 7, 2025 in Saint-Chamond (Loire), the electrical station at the entrance to the town received a nocturnal visit. Responsible for converting high-voltage electricity into low-voltage, with its cables and large transformer, it was partially set on fire at around 3 a.m., plunging part of the town and its businesses into darkness. Sans Nom reported on this attack here, and three days later it was claimed against the arms dealers in a communiqué which we republish below. It should be noted that a “KO KNDS” tag was left at the scene, which the prefecture spokesmen were careful not to specify].

KO KNDS?

In the early hours of May 7 in Saint-Chamond, we took action against a transformer station. A KO KNDS tag was left behind.

We hope to have interrupted the power supply to the city’s southern industrial zone. We particularly targeted the eco-district, formerly an arms production site. Renovated and certified, this area now boasts children’s playgrounds, bars, shops and restaurants… Erasing the past? Not quite. On the other side of the consumerist inferno, the metallurgical eco-system has been modernized. These include Atlante (electric vehicles), Marlin (automotive equipment), SICAF (industrial automation), Arcelormittal (steel giant) and, as a historic legacy, KNDS. KNDS stands for KMW+Nexter Defense Systems.

Still unclear? Let’s clarify. The company was born of the merger of two major land armament groups. It sells its products to over 50 armies worldwide. Its favorite weapon: the CAESAR self-propelled gun. Its favorite vehicle is the Leopard 2 battle tank. In addition to artillery and tanks, KNDS develops military robots and remotely operated munitions. In October 2024, it opened a new subsidiary in Kiev, Ukraine, to produce and maintain its lethal technologies in the field. While bodies fall daily, mowed down by western and eastern states, KNDS is making its return on experience and investment. Without arms dealers, neither this war, nor the Palestinian massacre, nor so many other bloody tragedies would take place. Tonight, we wanted to attack one of these merchants’ hideouts, modestly, with no regard for the commercial and industrial abjectness of the surrounding area. Paradoxically, this is what we wanted to bring to light, by turning off part of the city.

PS: And let’s not forget, alongside the arms dealers, the states, proto-states and their proxies. As long as a single one of them remains standing, there will be no peacetime, no wartime. Only an era of oppression and repression.

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