It would be naughty but you could call in some fake tree spiking and pinning warnings. Tell em you used non-ferrous quartz rods or some shit so they have to be really thorough. Might alleviate some of the frustration that leaves us vulnerable to impulsively crashing out without a plan.

Capitalism isn’t a system built and serviced by people, it’s like some kind of god that must be appeased by images of green numbers. Red numbers anger it, and it retracts its job-emitting claws. I know the claws are at our throats but trust me, jobs will come.

We need good comrades more than direct action so stay with us though

How ever you choose to act, be safe comrade

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.

Gotta keep the outrage machine spinning! Nothing is ever good enough

Do elaborate. What precisely you mean by that changes how I will feel about it.