USA – Page 5 – Dark Nights

Which Countries Supply Arms to “Israel”?

Posted on 2024/02/19 by darknights

As civilian casualties continue to mount in Gaza, global calls for countries to halt arms sales to Israel grow. The United States Senate has approved a bill committing $14bn to support Israel’s war on Gaza this week.

Even before the start of the war last October, the US firmly supported Israel with the supply of military equipment, contributing $3bn annually in military aid. Many other countries provide military support to Israel via arms sales.

Civilian casualties continue to mount in Gaza – currently standing at more than 28,000 dead with thousands more trapped under rubble and presumed dead in just four months of bombardment and ground invasions. The rising death toll is prompting international condemnation.

On Monday, the European Union foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, commented on US President Joe Biden’s description of Israel’s response to the October 7 Hamas attacks as “over the top”. “Well, if you believe that too many people are being killed, maybe you should provide less arms in order to prevent so many people being killed,” Borrell told reporters.

So which countries continue to send weapons to Israel?

Who supplies arms to Israel?

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s arms transfers database, 68 percent of Israel’s weapons imports between 2013 and 2022 came from the US.

The US military also stockpiles weapons on the ground in Israel, presumably for use by the US army itself. However, the US has allowed Israel to make use of some of these supplies during the Gaza war.

Besides the US, Israel also receives military imports from other nations.

Weapons imported from Germany make up 28 percent of Israel’s military imports. Germany’s military exports rose nearly tenfold in 2023 compared with 2022 after it increased sales to Israel in November, according to figures from the German Economic Ministry. Germany primarily supplies Israel with components for air defence systems and communications equipment, according to the German press agency dpa.
The United Kingdom has licensed at least 474 million pounds ($594m) in military exports to Israel since 2015, Human Rights Watch reported in December 2023. These exports included aircraft, missiles, tanks, technology and ammunition, including components for the F-35 stealth bomber used in Gaza.
In Canada, dozens of civil society groups have recently urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to end arms exports to Israel. The government says it does not send full weapons systems to Israel, but these civil society groups claim it is downplaying the amount of military support it provides. “Canadian companies have exported over $84m [114 million Canadian dollars] in military goods to Israel since 2015,” said Michael Bueckert, vice president of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, an advocacy group, adding that the government has continued to approve arms exports since the start of the war.
Australia’s foreign affairs minister has said the country has not provided weapons to Israel since the start of the war. However, The Australian Greens party’s defence spokesperson, David Shoebridge, has asked for the government to be more transparent about exactly what items have been exported to Israel, adding that the country has one of the most secretive weapons export systems in the world. Amnesty International has also called on Australia to halt arms sales to Israel and claims the country has approved 322 defence exports to Israel over the past six years.
In France, a pro-Palestine demonstration on February 7 called on French companies, including Dassault Aviation, to stop selling arms to Israel. Demonstrators said, according to the Anadolu news agency, “all French companies that sell arms to the Tel Aviv administration are complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza”.

Source: Abolition Media

Lakewood, Atlanta, U$A: Atlanta Police Department Patrol Car Torched

Posted on 2024/02/11 by darknights

One APD vehicle was burned overnight as an initial response to the repressive operation of February 8, which involved three house raids and the arrest of John “Jack” Mazurek, who is being held without bail.

We wish to dispel any notion that people will take this latest wave of repression lying down, or that arresting alleged arsonists will deter future arsons.

Jack is accused of participating in the arson attack of July 1, 2023, when eight APD motorcyles were burned at the current police training center that Cop City is intended to replace. The group that claimed responsibility for that action called for the movement against Cop City to develop into an urban guerrilla struggle. This is still the only sensible course of action for anyone in Atlanta who considers themselves a serious revolutionary.

In light of recent arsons of construction equipment belonging to Cop City contractor Brent Scarbrough, the police needed to make a move to reassure their contractors and funders. Let’s not panic or be discouraged; we have them on the back foot. We will answer their aggression by keeping up the pace of attacks.

The cop car we burned was part of the APD’s “take-home car” program. There are at least 40 (well… 39) cops around Atlanta with patrol cars parked right in front of their houses. The opportunity to have a shiny new take-home car is reportedly the number-one reason for police retention. It is also intended to act as a crime deterrent in the neighborhood; we think that’s funny. This particular car was in Lakewood, the same neighborhood where two of the house raids took place. Our message is simple: if our comrades cannot sleep soundly in their homes, neither can the pigs.

We are not special. Our skills are not overly technical or advanced, and our tools are simple to acquire. If you are reading this, you are capable of doing what we do. We all have something to lose; it is simply a matter of living out our beliefs or submitting to the police state. Inaction is a choice just as much as action, and we all have to live with the choices we make.

Submitted Anonymously Over Email

Source: Scenes from the Atlanta Forest

Portland, U$A: Machines burned at Urban Alchemy construction site

Posted on 2024/02/05 by darknights

We burned bulldozers and excavators being used to build another Urban Alchemy site in North Portland, where homeless Portlanders will be sent to live behind chainlink fencing and barbed wire under threat of violence and sweeps.

UA says it “provide complementary strategies to conventional policing and security”, and, like police, it’s employees have consistently used their positions to bully, degrade, steal from, and sexually assault those living within their fences.

We do not believe the destruction of their machines will halt construction long, but hope to see increasing offensive attacks accompany strategies of sweep and eviction defense.
The city will pay $40,000 per person per year for the planned site, far more expensive than renting each person their own apartment.

Of course, the city government is happy to pay a premium for ghettoization, pushing the most visible poor out of sight, out of mind, isolated from the rest of the city in an industrial corner behind the city’s waste processing facility.
We answer with fire.

submitted anonymously on rosecitycounterinfo

Via: Act for freedom now!

Philadelphia, U$A: New Issue of Anathema, Volume 10 Issue 1

Posted on 2024/01/25 by darknights

Volume 10 Issue 1 (PDF for reading 8.5×11)

Volume 10 Issue 1 (PDF for printing 11×17)

In This Issue:

What Went Down
Fashion
Things Are Getting Weirder
Shifts In The Philadelphia Anarchist Space
World War III?
What The Fuck Does Reconstruction Even Mean To Y’all?

Portland, U$A: Claim of responsibility for arson at Mercedes-Benz dealership

Posted on 2024/01/10 by darknights

After weeks of indiscriminate bombing and a ground military invasion of Gaza, leveling homes, hospitals, and schools, the cost to human life has been over 18,800 deaths — 8000 of which are children — and over 51,000 injured. The bombings along with the ongoing Israeli blockage has created a humanitarian catastrophe leaving hundreds of thousands of Gazans displaced with little to no access to food, clean water or medical care. This genocidal assault has also taken the form of intensified repression against Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank — mass arrests, targeted military raids, and an escalation of settler violence. We are all too aware that this war waged by Israel is made possible in large part by weapons and equipment supplied by the United States and their allies. As anarchists living behind enemy lines, we refuse to sit by and watch yet another genocide unfold before our eyes.

So, in the early morning hours of 12/11, a fire was started at the Mercedes-Benz dealership in downtown Portland. The blaze destroyed a delivery van and burned out the exterior of their ‘wholesale parts’ garage on SW Market St. This was done as an act of economic sabotage against a corporation that develops military vehicles for the Israel Defense Forces and profits from the dispossession and occupation of Palestinians.

Apart from selling luxury cars Mercedes-Benz also produces weapons of war—in the form of light infantry vehicles — for militaries across the world. In regards to Israeli, Mercedes-Benz has partnered with Israeli based military contractor Plasan to produce a light-infantry vehicle. The Plasan Hyrax — which utilizes the Mercedes-Benz G-wagon chassis — was developed to replace the IDF’s aging fleet of ‘David’ patrol vehicles. As of 2019 the Hyrax has been certified for use with the IDF

Mercedes-Benz’ sister company Daimler Trucks, and their subsidiaries — in which Mercedes-Benz owns a 30% share — has supplied transport vehicles to the IDF in the past. As recently as 2020 Daimler Trucks was awarded a contract to supply busses to Israeli based company Egged for inter-city bus transport. Egged provides transportation between Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory. Egged busses use roads off limits to Palestinians and operates segregated busses. This racist apartheid system is a defining aspect of the Israeli settler colonial project, built on the displacement and denigration of Palestinians.

In the broader context of resistance throughout world against war and militarism — from the anti-war partisans in Belarus and Russia derailing trains of military cargo, to the Palestinian youth in the West Bank standing down tanks with a slingshot and stones — this action was our modest contribution to that struggle.

For a more dangerous solidarity

some anarchists

Submitted Anonymously Over Email

Source: Scenes from the Atlanta Forest

“If the Cops Kill Me I Want You to Riot”

Posted on 2024/01/09 by darknights

“If the cops kill me I want you to riot
Burn down their stations and set their cars alight
Know that I went out fighting and wish we all
Could just have peace and be free
…
We cannot have peace until this empire falls. Even then, peace takes work and freedom is a constant struggle. If the cops kill me I want you to riot, to kill as many of them as you can.” – Tort’s diary p. 121

Tortuguita lived and died fighting for the dispossessed, the wild, and the feral; against the world of empire, prisons, and police. It was a true warrior who made the forest its home, devoted their life to the struggle, and was willing to die a revolutionary death rather than be captured. We invite all those who knew Tort, and all who were impacted by its life from afar, to take the anniversary of their death as an opportunity to reflect on our own commitments and deepen our resolve, so that we might invigorate and intensify our conflictuality.

Rather than retreat into the bounds of comfort and safety, let us allow our memory of Tort to remind us of what it means to truly act in accordance with our values, and to challenge ourselves to follow through. We are rendered harmless only when we allow our fear of the enemy to eclipse our desires to defend the land and reduce this capitalist hellworld to ashes. Remember that the mechanisms of subjugation and control encroach all around us. Wherever you are, you need not venture far to find the veins of industry; go out and sever them.

We need not be concerned with optics and media portrayals. We have no interest in seeking validation, recognition, or understanding from the same media outlets — agents of the society we wish to destroy — that deadname and misgender Tortuguita and relentlessly whitewash its life as one of nonviolence and passivity. Additionally, to contort our actions to render them acceptable to the general public is to inevitably dull them to the point of irrelevance. To work only within the confines of the existent is to disarm ourselves completely. As anarchists, we are able to speak to each other in a language all our own. When we redecorate walls, shatter windows, and set fires, we speak to each other in ways that the media and the general public need not understand; we become beautiful. When we refuse legibility, when we refuse sympathy and demands, we refuse cooptation, we refuse recuperation, and we seek out life.

Avenge Tortuguita — Avenge the Forest

Submitted Anonymously Over Email

Source: Scenes from the Atlanta Forest

Narrm/Melbourne, Austarlia: Attack on US Consulate in Solidarity with Palestine

Posted on 2024/01/04 by darknights

NARRM.
From the river to the sea.
Always was always will be.

Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. blood money since WWII, shamelessly funding genocide, occupation and ethnic cleansing in Palestine for 75+ years.

U.S. terrorists have provided unwavering support for the IOF and show no remorse for the 30,000 martyred as a result of their murderous actions.

The people of Narrm condemn the U.S. for its crimes against humanity and refuse the existence of the U.S. consulate on Stolen First Nations Land.

LONG LIVE PALESTINE.
LONG LIVE GAZA.
LONG LIVE THE INTIFADA.

WHAT WILL YOU DO?

Source: Radical Graffiti

Via: Abolition Media

USA: Anarchist Prisoner Eric King Released to Halfway House After Ten Years

Posted on 2023/12/17 by darknights

Source: It’s Going Down

Following nearly ten years of incarceration and numerous attempts by the State to frame, murder, and break him – anarchist prisoner Eric King has now been released and is headed to a half-way house “for several weeks,” reports supporters.

Imprisoned for taking direct action in solidarity with the Ferguson uprising, Eric King survived everything from COVID, to attacks by neo-Nazi prisoners, and years of abuse from guards. In a statement from 2016, King stated:

I stand by my actions. After seeing what happened in Ferguson, so close down the road, I was disgusted by the lack of mobilization in my city. Three hours away people were fighting for their lives and we weren’t even taking to the streets. We were doing nothing. My act as a very personal display of my anger and rage toward the state as well as an act of solidarity to everyone in Ferguson. We never know our own strength until we are tested and even with my ridiculous sentence I feel at least proud to have been able to stand strong and refuse to cooperate with the state.

In 2022, Eric King was victorious in court against a frame-up attempt by guards, after they attacked him in a supply closet and attempted to slap him with an additional 20 years in prison.

Currently there is a fundraiser set-up for Eric to help him with his post release. Eric is also one of the co-editors of the new book, Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners, published by AK Press, sales of which benefits the Anarchist Black Cross warchest program and Eric King’s family.

Eric’s bravery and courage in the face of years of torture and abuse is a testament of our collective ability to resist and weather the horrors of state repression. For future updates, be sure to check out the Support Eric King page, here.

Greece: POPULATION GOVERNANCE THROUGH THE STRATEGIC THEORY OF TWO OR MORE EXTREMES: THE CONTRIBUTION OF LEFTISTS AND ‘ANTI-AUTHORITARIANS’ TO THE CONSTRUCTION OF THIS STATE STRATEGY

Posted on 2023/12/10 - 2024/01/10 by darknights

DN Note: Our collective presents and translates a text written by ‘Assembly against Biopower and Confinement’ detailing a Greek academic who is in alliance with the Greek state, cops and their counter-insurgency tactics against our comrades and any manfestation against the social order. A similar incident in this country of ‘Aufhebengate/Libcom‘ comes to mind when we post this text, how the parasites of academia and its involvement in counter-insurgency, has not only spread to other countries such as Greece, that there is also international co-operation occuring on a far larger scale than before. As seen by the text there is a move to include all theories that are deemed ‘extremist’ and ‘terrorist’ as one emcomapssing threat especially because of their use of violence. Academia is the breeding ground of the new technoligcal shift that has already arrived, collabaration with cops in order to repress our circles is unforgivable and anyone connected to such scum as Rosa Vasilaki are not our comrades.

POPULATION GOVERNANCE THROUGH THE STRATEGIC THEORY OF TWO OR MORE EXTREMES: THE CONTRIBUTION OF LEFTISTS AND ‘ANTI-AUTHORITARIANS’ TO THE CONSTRUCTION OF THIS STATE STRATEGY

or

Do we all hate the police? Not all of us…

(on the occasion of the Event-Discussion in Chamadou entitled “The New World Order of the Far Right” by Asymmetric Threat & Opposition Publications)

“I decided to make an international career as a civilian, because Greece doesn’t fit me. Here is my article on the electoral rise of the far-right, hosted by Jakobin…

(Actually, the truth is that without Rosa Vasilaki’s invaluable help I wouldn’t even have made it to Bitola…)”[1]

Nikolai Polykarpov

One year ago, on 13/12/2022, the “Left-Right Lies Observatory”[2] publishes a video with an interview of former Contra Dystopia member Iason Baggeris on the show of the anti-vaccine cop Telemachus Bossios. We all believed at the time that the denunciation of I. B. by the meth/vaccine activists/vaccinators of the Observatory was done in the name of an anti-authoritarian authority: “we never talk to cops and cops’ associates”. The refutation of this erroneous initial impression was not long in coming. A few months later, on 28 August 2023, the main contributor to the Observatory, Polykarpos Georgiadis (Nikolai Polykarpov), published an article on the “coalescence of left and far-right in Greece” in Jacobin, the magazine of the left wing of the ruling Democratic Party in the US. [3] The publication of the article, as he informed his petty followers in a public post on his online profile, was mediated by Ms. Roza Vasilaki, among other “academic ” collaborators of the Greek Police – the latter of course conveniently for him avoided mentioning it. What happened in the meantime? Did Mr Georgiadis renounce his principles in order to make a face to the American democratic readers of Jacobin? No! As we will show in the following text, these “principles” are simply non-existent. But we will not limit ourselves to that. Because the issue for us is not simply the morally unacceptable or inconsistent behaviour of “anti-authoritarian” or “communist”, but the size and depth of the network of surveillance and repression of “dangerous” political activities that the security mechanisms have set up in Greece. And we will start by first answering the question: well, the “prominent member” of the Class Counterattack, Polikarpos is well-known, but who is Ms. Vassilaki?

Ι. TO WORK OR NOT TO WORK (FOR THE POLICE)?

In broad strokes, R.V. is another career researcher among those who use the language of the state and social movements simultaneously and have knowledge gained from participating in research projects that are at the service of capital, its state and the mechanisms of disciplining labour power and repressing class struggles. As such, it has acquired the capacity to be marketed differently depending on the audience. These days she tends to present herself as a militant researcher of the emergence of far-right discourse in Greece, as she writes in the promotional bio on her personal blog: ‘she has conducted extensive research on the far-right, football violence, religious fundamentalism, immigration and refugee integration, as well as feminism and gender-related issues.’[4]

By this point, one might reasonably wonder where the real problem lies. From the quotation of this autobiography, we seem to be talking about a left-wing researcher, one of many in the academic industry, who is conducting in-depth scholarly research on important issues that inevitably have occupied almost all social movements in recent years. Is there something wrong with all this and with Mr Georgiadis’ collaboration with R.V.? Are we referring to the classic combinations of academics of the antagonistic movement with other “networked” members of the academic community which can provide them with a few extra contacts and some professional and political career opportunities? Are we not referring to the various theoretical all-encompassing “conflict politics workshops”, from which indeed some careerists may later end up in the practical conflict politics workshops of the security apparatus of the capitalist state?

I wish we were just talking about this early stage of a political scientist’s career. In a more explicit, previously posted biography of R.V. on the internet, we read that “she has taught history and sociology at universities in Greece, Israel, and the United States. : we have the feeling that she did not teach anything that glorified the ‘Palestinian resistance’] and in Great Britain” and that her “main research interests focus on the changing place of religion in modernity, the emergence of post-secular and post-Western knowledge and theories, and the manifestations and genealogy of violence in the modern world, such as religiously and politically motivated violence and the particular role of security forces in modern states”. [5] Indeed, her professional activities cover a very broad field that basically centres around counter-insurgency policies and technologies, intelligence gathering and methods of preventing and suppressing activities ranging from youth rebellions to Islamist terrorism. Continue reading “Greece: POPULATION GOVERNANCE THROUGH THE STRATEGIC THEORY OF TWO OR MORE EXTREMES: THE CONTRIBUTION OF LEFTISTS AND ‘ANTI-AUTHORITARIANS’ TO THE CONSTRUCTION OF THIS STATE STRATEGY” →

Firminy (Loire) and Les Ancizes-Comps (Puy-de-Dôme), France: Double attack on Aubert et Duval steelworks, supplier to war industries

Posted on 2023/12/03 by darknights

During the night of November 19th to 20th, we attacked the power supply to two production sites of the Aubert et Duval group:

– At Firminy, we sawed through a pylon on the 220kV line supplying the site. It only partially fell.

– In Ancizes-Comps, we also set fire to a 220kV line, at the point where the high-voltage cables went underground. We were able to get close and place our devices at the foot of the sheaths, without danger.

Aubert et Duval is a key player in the French military industry. It supplies parts for Naval Group submarines, Dassault Rafales and Framatom nuclear power plants.

Our action resonates with the international call for a week of action against all wars, from November 17 to 25, 2023, published in early November (careful, it’s a bit late…) on Iaata.info. We welcome this kind of initiative, and in turn call for an attack on the military industry everywhere and at all times.

What’s certain is that we’ve achieved our goal of hitting the military industry. While we don’t have the means to know exactly how much damage we’ve caused, we do know that these industries know they’re being targeted, and that their weak points are highlighted by our actions.

“Behind the war, ordinary factories”.

As the tag left on the site of an aeronautics factory burnt down in March 2023 in Beauchastel so aptly put it, the war we’re told all day long must end and is unjust, starts here; and is made possible by seemingly innocuous businesses too.

It’s no secret that global conflicts are escalating in intensity. For almost two months, bombs have been falling on the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, at an unprecedented rate, and with broad political, military and financial support from the United States and most Western countries. The same people who call for a truce, respect for civilians and international law, are producing the bombs that massacre in a way they claim to condemn, there or elsewhere, since several billion people live in war zones; with the horror that this engenders and that we all know about: rape, torture, forced displacement, etc. This hypocrisy would be laughable if it weren’t so macabre.

These wars are the very concrete result of a military-industrial complex, with its factories, laboratories and technicians. In France, the eight major military industry groups – Airbus, Arquus, Dassault, MBDA, Naval group, Nextor, Safran and Thales – are celebrating record sales. Some 4,000 companies work for the defense industry, with the active, ongoing support of the state, which has earmarked a budget of 417 billion euros to increase its killing power and export its arsenal worldwide. Machines of death that are used directly for massacres, as in the case of Dassault fighter jets or Nexter tanks and guns used by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in Yemen.

We don’t want to remain indifferent to this. We also want to send a message to the workers in these industries. That our actions will deprive them of their work for a while, and make them face up to their responsibilities. We also hope that these acts, and the words we put on them, will help to raise the profile of these most discreet factories of death.

Our thoughts go out to those who fight for their freedom, to those who face repression.

Let’s attack everywhere!

Source: lille.indymedia

Via: Attaque