[In Germany’s seventh-largest city, Düsseldorf, located in the North Rhine-Westphalia region, the “Angry Birds Commando” is regularly in the news.
In August 2024, for example, it claimed responsibility for setting fire to railway signal cables in Mettmann, adding to its previous sabotage attacks on rail traffic: one in Düsseldorf in January 2024, and five others in the same city claimed in May 2023. And since the angry birds can also be generous, last September they published a little manual entitled “Setting fire to cables for beginners”, which contains a number of homemade retardant techniques.
But let’s move on to more recent news: on Thursday night, shortly before 6 a.m. on Friday January 24, a fire broke out in a cable shaft near Eller station, a district in the south-east of Düsseldorf, interrupting rail traffic on the city’s most important freight line, as well as passenger line S1 between Düsseldorf and Solingen. This time, while the Angry Birds Commando’s communiqué no. 3 was written in rhyme, the one published the following day on de.indymedia and entitled “Switch off Deutsche Bahn – Communiqué no. 4” is in the form of an Open Letter.
Below is a translation from the German of this text, which develops its own vision of collapse, as a contribution to the ongoing debates within the revolutionary movement. To put this statement from across the Rhine into context, it’s worth rereading the brochure “Switch off! Radical interventions against the destruction of the planet”.
On Friday morning (January 24), we used tried-and-tested methods to take Düsseldorf’s most important freight line out of service for at least 12 hours. For at least 24 hours, its use was only possible with severe restrictions. In addition to the immediate economic damage, we would like to draw your attention to the following appeal. We would also like to apologize to the travelers affected, and hope that at least one or other of the commuters was able to enjoy a day off in this way.
Dear fellow citizen,
We were lied to. We’ve been told that our leaders always act in our best interests. We were told that we lived in the best of societies. That we were the envy of the world. That nowhere had it ever been better. That the answer to every question was “technical progress!” and that the answer to all the problems that ensued was “even more!”. We’re supposed to believe that we can live without whales, beetles, bats, forests and clean water, but that without the state, the economy and the police, we couldn’t survive a week. We’ve been led to believe that Elon Musk and his gang will build us a paradise on Mars and download our consciousness into the cloud, but that a life without smartphones and cars is utopian, that economic change is even impossible.
And we were told that everything would be fine if we did our jobs well, voted, and let the politicians do their jobs.
Let’s look at ourselves: sick, cowardly and lazy, we stare at our screens wondering what went wrong. Under the blows of constant propaganda, too dumb and confused to recognize genocide as such, it’s no wonder they can even sell us natural gas, fighter jets and solar power as sustainable. Cancer, diabetes, bad posture, severe depression and many others are no longer exceptional these days, even among the young. We drag ourselves into minimum-wage jobs where we’re treated like sub-humans. We’re then allowed to do things that don’t really make sense to us. But maybe things will get better with the next vacation. Or the new television. Or retirement. Or simply when the next beer has been drunk. Continue reading “Düsseldorf, Germany: The “Angry Birds Commando” and the collapse…”
