Not saying you (or anyone) should do any of the stuff in this book, since not only is it illegal but it’s ridiculously dangerous to interfere with these operations. A guy who has done nothing more than film legal logging in Australia was beaten almost to death by either loggers or agents working for the logging company, just in the last few years.
But the book is very thorough and discusses these things and has been collected from various activists with experience defending the environment against logging, some of them solo operators who never got caught. So. It’s interesting to see what they have to share about their experiences, the opportunities they didn’t take and why. etc.
I was especially impressed and taken with the sections on non-metallic tree pinning and spiking. Don’t neglect to warn operators anonymously if you think someone is doing this stuff. Not even shitposting you don’t wanna be responsible for a bad sawmill accident.
I recommend it here, obviously, not to recommend it as a manual for doing anything. But just because it’s got fun pictures and interesting descriptions of shenanigans and it is a little bit reassuring to know that people are quietly fighting back all the time.
Lmao my bio professor told us about that book while we were out doing field studies in the early 2000s. He was a cool dude and a big reason why I am a communist now.
It’s also available on the anarchist library.
Also seconding the recommendation of warning operators even as another poster said if you don’t even know if there are spikes or not. Anything to sow doubt is good.
The point of spiking isn’t to hurt the loggers and sawmill workers, the point of spiking is to make the risk of cutting down the tree in the first place so high that they don’t do it.
A spiked tree going through a sawmill is still a tree that got cut down.
sorry for bigposting. too scattered to be concise.
I am almost always going to exaggerate how dangerous and risky and unnecessary these things are, because this is hexbear and we don’t do that sort of stuff here and I never know when I’m talking to someone who hasn’t finished developing their adult capacity for judging risk and weighing reward. I want to make it clear that I’m suggesting these things for their academic and entertainment value first and foremost.
The most dangerous and/or risky stuff they talk about is very risky and dangerous especially if you don’t already have related experience. The least dangerous and/or risky stuff is as benign as stickers and petty vandalism, so it’s probably not gonna swallow your soul or anything. There’s no harm in having a look and seeing if what I call “too dangerous to contemplate” is the same as what you consider too dangerous to contemplate.
ANYWAY.
I’ve been reading it chaotic ADHD style and jumping all over the place reading a bit here and there over a couple of weeks, so its probable that I haven’t read some important but not very exciting stuff earlier in the book yet, but they do talk about not getting caught throughout.
The advice is good, but let me elaborate because its not straight forward to quantify.
The book is probably not sufficient if you’re doing risky stuff and need to stay free. But if someone were suggesting a hypothetical reading list of five or ten books that will guarantee you the best chances of success and not getting caught then I think this book could easily be on that list.
I’m thinking over the security culture and mindset parts I’ve read and it has stuff like
practical considerations in handling materials and disposing of safety equipment without contaminating yourself or leaving prints behind, as specific instruction in the context of the action being described in that section of the book.
musings from people who have never been caught, who’ve managed to survive the early stages of exuberant youthful recklessness and arrange their lifestyle around sustained and sustainable praxis.
risks other people on your team pose
risks of doing shit solo
how to build a remote triggered strobe device for blinding security guards at night
anecdotes of how your mind will play tricks on your hearing in the dark, causing a sort of audio tunnel “vision” as you focus on the sound you thought you heard and that you’re afraid of hearing… and inadvertently filter out the unexpected sound of the real threat that’s waiting for you or actively closing in
how to perform breathing exercises and how to make that a habit so you don’t forget when you need to stay cool on the job
Safety and security are basically a constant theme. Several contributors have done long stretches in prison for their work I believe, so it comes from a network of people who are very aware of the risks and actively try to mitigate them.
I’m quite certain I’ve seen the advice at least once but possibly more than that, to just walk the fuck away if you turn up to do the thing and the conditions are not as you expected, don’t improvise, stay disciplined etc.
But like I said it probably isn’t sufficient. It’s more like having a bunch of retired activists throw as much potentially life and liberty preserving advice at you as they can think of. If you already have a decent mental model for security and stealth and whatnot then the advice is like informative war stories. If you don’t, then that’s a thing to prioritise.
You can have the best advice and all the training in the world, but if you don’t do thorough due diligence and plan for any possible contingencies then you’re still just rolling the dice on what you’re walking into.
After writing all that I’m pretty confident in saying the book is good regarding security culture and the I guess intersection of security considerations with the practical aspects of logistics and the action itself.
I reckon if you gave this book to a liberal they’d read it and go “wow that’s so cool and interesting” and never think about it again even if they agreed with causes that require action, because the book does not misrepresent or romanticise action for the sake of action.
It’s quite clear that the authors are serious people doing serious shit and I’ve had a few periods of clarity and self awareness since I started reading from it about how serious and disciplined I will need to be if I want to do something.
(its not even a dense book, it has all of the above just woven throughout without ever being preachy. its really sick!)
I dunno why I didn’t do this last night but I just refreshed my memory and chapter 9 looks like this:
The sections that say “field notes” are sections contributed from experienced activists, anecdotes of what works and what doesn’t.
I have a hard time imagining a hexbear that wouldn’t enjoy reading this even if it was just for fun and as research towards better agitation posting.
These people and the very loose networks they move in are basically at war against capital in defense of the environment and have been for many decades and its quite literally life or death way more often than you’d think. The scale is mind numbing, consider things like the dakota access pipeline militarized counter-protest fuckery or the spycops operation in the UK.
annas-archive.gl/md5/007f9f435ff165cc9e5c1fc0116c2ab0
https://efmechanicsguild.wordpress.com/
Not saying you (or anyone) should do any of the stuff in this book, since not only is it illegal but it’s ridiculously dangerous to interfere with these operations. A guy who has done nothing more than film legal logging in Australia was beaten almost to death by either loggers or agents working for the logging company, just in the last few years.
But the book is very thorough and discusses these things and has been collected from various activists with experience defending the environment against logging, some of them solo operators who never got caught. So. It’s interesting to see what they have to share about their experiences, the opportunities they didn’t take and why. etc.
I was especially impressed and taken with the sections on non-metallic tree pinning and spiking. Don’t neglect to warn operators anonymously if you think someone is doing this stuff. Not even shitposting you don’t wanna be responsible for a bad sawmill accident.
I recommend it here, obviously, not to recommend it as a manual for doing anything. But just because it’s got fun pictures and interesting descriptions of shenanigans and it is a little bit reassuring to know that people are quietly fighting back all the time.
Lmao my bio professor told us about that book while we were out doing field studies in the early 2000s. He was a cool dude and a big reason why I am a communist now.
It’s also available on the anarchist library.
Also seconding the recommendation of warning operators even as another poster said if you don’t even know if there are spikes or not. Anything to sow doubt is good.
The point of spiking isn’t to hurt the loggers and sawmill workers, the point of spiking is to make the risk of cutting down the tree in the first place so high that they don’t do it.
A spiked tree going through a sawmill is still a tree that got cut down.
given how dangerous you say it is, i have to ask: how much advice does the book contain for not getting caught, and is the advice good?
sorry for bigposting. too scattered to be concise.
I am almost always going to exaggerate how dangerous and risky and unnecessary these things are, because this is hexbear and we don’t do that sort of stuff here and I never know when I’m talking to someone who hasn’t finished developing their adult capacity for judging risk and weighing reward. I want to make it clear that I’m suggesting these things for their academic and entertainment value first and foremost.
The most dangerous and/or risky stuff they talk about is very risky and dangerous especially if you don’t already have related experience. The least dangerous and/or risky stuff is as benign as stickers and petty vandalism, so it’s probably not gonna swallow your soul or anything. There’s no harm in having a look and seeing if what I call “too dangerous to contemplate” is the same as what you consider too dangerous to contemplate.
ANYWAY.
I’ve been reading it chaotic ADHD style and jumping all over the place reading a bit here and there over a couple of weeks, so its probable that I haven’t read some important but not very exciting stuff earlier in the book yet, but they do talk about not getting caught throughout.
The advice is good, but let me elaborate because its not straight forward to quantify.
The book is probably not sufficient if you’re doing risky stuff and need to stay free. But if someone were suggesting a hypothetical reading list of five or ten books that will guarantee you the best chances of success and not getting caught then I think this book could easily be on that list.
I’m thinking over the security culture and mindset parts I’ve read and it has stuff like
Safety and security are basically a constant theme. Several contributors have done long stretches in prison for their work I believe, so it comes from a network of people who are very aware of the risks and actively try to mitigate them.
I’m quite certain I’ve seen the advice at least once but possibly more than that, to just walk the fuck away if you turn up to do the thing and the conditions are not as you expected, don’t improvise, stay disciplined etc.
But like I said it probably isn’t sufficient. It’s more like having a bunch of retired activists throw as much potentially life and liberty preserving advice at you as they can think of. If you already have a decent mental model for security and stealth and whatnot then the advice is like informative war stories. If you don’t, then that’s a thing to prioritise.
You can have the best advice and all the training in the world, but if you don’t do thorough due diligence and plan for any possible contingencies then you’re still just rolling the dice on what you’re walking into.
After writing all that I’m pretty confident in saying the book is good regarding security culture and the I guess intersection of security considerations with the practical aspects of logistics and the action itself.
I reckon if you gave this book to a liberal they’d read it and go “wow that’s so cool and interesting” and never think about it again even if they agreed with causes that require action, because the book does not misrepresent or romanticise action for the sake of action.
It’s quite clear that the authors are serious people doing serious shit and I’ve had a few periods of clarity and self awareness since I started reading from it about how serious and disciplined I will need to be if I want to do something.
(its not even a dense book, it has all of the above just woven throughout without ever being preachy. its really sick!)
I dunno why I didn’t do this last night but I just refreshed my memory and chapter 9 looks like this:
The sections that say “field notes” are sections contributed from experienced activists, anecdotes of what works and what doesn’t.
I have a hard time imagining a hexbear that wouldn’t enjoy reading this even if it was just for fun and as research towards better agitation posting.
These people and the very loose networks they move in are basically at war against capital in defense of the environment and have been for many decades and its quite literally life or death way more often than you’d think. The scale is mind numbing, consider things like the dakota access pipeline militarized counter-protest fuckery or the spycops operation in the UK.