Asphalt plant of VINCI/EUROVIA on Fire – for a black spring, for the prisoners in the Ampelokipoi case
A circular economy of death and destruction
Faced with climate crisis, extractivist devastation, and imperialist aggression, a burning asphalt mixing plant owned by one of the world’s largest construction and infrastructure companies actually speaks for itself. Nevertheless, we would like to say a few words about our motives and the company that has been attacked. Because VINCI/EUROVIA is much more than just a producer of asphalt and concrete. This company embodies pretty much everything we despise and that makes this world a place full of oppression, suffering, and misery: highways, airports, dams, (deportation-) prisons, nuclear facilities, military equipment, oil and gas pipelines, mining, and much more…
Everyone who wants to know already knows – the biosphere is suffocating under the gray burden of civilization, and in the near future, many regions of the planet will be uninhabitable as a result of our imperial ways of life and economic practices. Battles over living areas and resources on an unseen scale seem unavoidable, and the current escalation of military conflicts and the relentless war against migrants on the streets of US cities or at the EU’s external borders are already grim signs of what this will look like. Since long we running out of time. The late capitalist world system is in the midst of profound upheaval, and war is becoming the new normal, while the remaining natural world serves only as a source of raw materials to be plundered before others do.
Companies such as VINCI are benefiting across the entire spectrum from these developments. By constructing nuclear reactors, oil pipelines, and gas terminals (such as the one in Brunsbüttel), the company understands how to secure the future of fossil fuel dinosaurs while simultaneously profiting from the illusion of green energy through huge wind farms and hydroelectric power plants. With its motorway and road network spanning several thousand kilometers and over 70 airports in 14 different countries, built and operated by VINCI, the company is also a major pillar of the global transport infrastructure, fueling, inch by inch, a parasitic system that knows only one direction – and that’s leading straight into ecological collapse. Land grabbing, wars, and genocide are inextricably woven into this system and have enabled the triumph of capitalism, whereby our “wealth” and Western dominance are undoubtedly a product of this deadly (colonial) history. However, in the international scramble for power, influence, and resources, that Western dominance must increasingly assert itself against other players, which leads once again to senseless bloodshed, while creating a good mood in the management suites of the arms industry. ReArm Europe is the battle cry from Brussels to prevail in this conflict, and VINCI is also playing a major role in this front of rearmament and militarization. Therefor the company recently acquired Wärtsilä SAM Electronics, which maintains several German Navy shipyards or provides infrastructure services for dozens of British Army facilities. Wars and environmental destruction, which have always gone hand in hand with the expansion of capitalist exploitation, are forcing more and more people to leave their homes, and never before have so many people been displaced worldwide as today. The „dispensable“ masses of people from the global south are being fought with all severity, and their escape routes have long since turned into mass graves with countless deaths. For those who nevertheless manage to make it all the way here, it is not empathy and compassion that await them, but humiliation, racism, and repression. All of these characteristics, which have shaped the public debate on migration in almost all political camps for years, and thus significantly promote (neo-)fascist tendencies. And here comes full circle. Because even the suffering of refugees can be exploited for profit, and VINCI benefits from the construction of deportation centers and border controls under Europe’s rigorous border regime. Continue reading “Schönerlinde/Wandlitz, Germany: Asphalt plant of VINCI/EUROVIA on Fire – for a black spring, for the prisoners in the Ampelokipoi case”