Military propaganda portrays the armed forces as protectors of ‘the people’. Since the first civilisations this has been used to justify conquest and occupation of territory for the ruling classes, sacrificing their lackeys to build up empires big or small.
We’re expected to believe (or at least act as if we believe) that what’s in the politicians, the generals and the economists interests is really in our interests.
But we’re not fooled. This morning smoke rose above Clifton from the two vans and one large white personnel transporter we’d torched with low-tech firestarters after breaching the compound of the Royal Marine Reserve’s Bristol detachment, who’ve been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s disgusting how these part-time commandos think they can operate here with immunity while elsewhere they and their colleagues slaughter, rape and terrorize. Alexander Blackman – the British Marine executioner exposed recently for his actions in Afghanistan – is only one example of their systematic wider brutality, and not the pitied aberration he’s painted as. Besides, wherever the military are they’re a symbol of the State domination they enforce. Perhaps to anyone with a view over this compound that symbol is now a little shaken. For the gears of the warmachine these guerrilla strikes behind the lines remain a constant threat.
We see them recruiting in the towns, colleges and jobcentres, luring in the exploited and excluded classes with bloodmoney, moronic patriotism and the promise of adventure to replace their misery, with macho bootcamps or the controlrooms for videogame-style remote killing technology. Despite cuts Britain still has the fourth largest military budget in the world as it clings to an imperial legacy of genocide and enslavement. Today the Western armies are flexible for democratic-expansionist wars, ‘peacekeeping’ interventions to facilitate the new colonial age of corporate globalisation, counterinsurgery, geopolitical manoeuvrings and resource control, or prepared for internal policing and strikebreaking. Their ends are the same as ever, here as in Afghanistan, Mali or Libya – the rulers lie, the poor die, capitalism profits.
War is a permanent feature of the global system, propelled to previously-unimaginable scales by new technology and mass social organisation, and is necessary to the powerful both for social control and economic growth. Terror war, drugs war, oil war, soon even war over clean water – this is the death-march of industrial civilisation. The drudgery of locked-down ‘peace’ in ‘post-industrial’ Britain is really only thin ice upheld by the loot from numerous engineered conflicts abroad over land, minerals and labour. By widening the cracks we find in this veneer, we ground our attack in a rich heritage of uprisings and insubordination. Social war, that is between us and all coercion and the exploitation of the earth, is the only war we accept and wage. We take aim in order to highlight the clear opportunities to cast aside our passivity in a social order founded on our collaboration with what oppresses us. We can revolt with all suitable means for the possibility of a life free from authority, individually or with those close to us, while overcoming the ones constantly despoiling our minds, our relationships and the environment. The system – which includes the military and more – tries to turn all that we love into a regime of obedience, alienation and lifeless commodities. For this reason they must be met with intolerance and hostility wherever they tread. They should have expected us.
Against the elite’s global power games – international solidarity!
Against the Queen’s militarised peace – social war!
- Mutiny Group of FAI -
nb. – This is the way we choose to honour the tragically short life of our comrade Darko Mathers. In ‘this world we must leave’, Darko got an early escape. We only wish he could have stayed so we might one day dance in the ruins together. As it is, we hold him close not for a minute of silence but for a lifetime of combat. Once more, the words of Bruno Filippi:
“Souls who are grieving for this world, this is why I call you to gather together.
The flag is already waving.
It is black; it stands for mourning. Forward then, wild Promethei. The cry of vengeance is music sweet and dear.”
Our target’s security force counterparts in Russia are presently gathered for the Winter Olympics. Remembering the huge spectacle of troops and guards for the London Games and bearing in mind that the event always means militarised repression among the other atrocities, our arson demonstrates that the anti-Olympic flame lives on. Also strongly in our thoughts when going into action was Ilya Romanov who got injured in October in that country and is now held once again by the fucking cops.
Our full support is with the indomitable stance of Monica Caballero and Francisco Solar as they await trial for direct action in Zaragoza (Spain) – no retreat, no surrender. Lastly this attack welcomes Brazil’s anarchist explosion of black-bloc streetfighters and internationalist incendiary cells (among them the FAI), and sends a hearty salute to International Direct Action Group – GADI [1 & 2]- in France and to the inmates who rose up last month at HMP Oakwood here in England, beautiful in their rebellion. Onwards, more fire to the State, armies, schools, churches, bureaucracies, prisons and the civilisation creating them.