From Anarchist News
On the night of November 29, we snuck into the engineering department of McGill University and jammed the locks of the Aerospace Mechatronics Lab using superglue as a minimum gesture of solidarity with the survivors of the Israeli state’s summer attack on Gaza, in which 800 drone strikes took place over the course of a 50 day period.
Official documents obtained by campus group Demilitarize McGill through an access-to-information request reveal that the Aerospace Mechatronics Lab has received upwards of 262,000$ from the Canadian military to develop software for miniature drones or “strikebots” designed for surveillance and urban warfare.
The advent of drone technology originally offered an oblivious public the “feel-good” fantasy of surgical-precision in the exercise of deadly force, whereas today we now know very well that there exists a significant body of data documenting the fact that Us & Israeli drone campaigns have killed, injured, and displaced thousands of non-combatants in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and the occupied territories.
Drone strikes are also known to cause considerable and under-accounted-for suffering in the daily lives of ordinary people, beyond death and physical injury. For instance, drones hover 24 hours a day, 7 days a week over communities in the federally administered tribal areas (FATA) of North Western Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles and public spaces without warning. Their ubiquitous presence terrorizes entire populations, producing a social climate of unremitting psychological pain and horror. Womyn, men and little children whose only “terrorist activity” is to have been born on the wrong side of white supremacy and capitalist imperialism, are forced to live under the shadow of flying killer robots, attempting to live normal lives amid the permanent buzz of a distant propeller: a constant reminder of round-the-clock surveillance and imminent, violent death.
We took this action, in part, to send a message. Not to the Administration (to whom we have NOTHING to say other than, perhaps: “fuck you.”) but rather to our fellow subversives — we know you’re out there — in the general student body. Our goal is to create an increasingly unpleasant situation for the Administration through a sustained series of anonymous acts of sabotage, from which their only escape is to terminate their current, ongoing project of for-profit weapons-development at McGill University — and we’re inviting you to join us! To join AIA, all you need to do is simply come up with your own plan and put it into effect.
Believe it or not, it’s alot easier than you think, and fun too!
Learn and practice strong security culture. In organizing actions, be conscious of security cameras, fingerprints and your electronic trail. Work with people you trust and know very well or work alone. Think about and try to be prepared for possible consequences, and if you’re working with others; keep in mind that people come from different places and may not be able to assume the same level of risk — and that’s okay! After that, there’s virtually no limit to what we can get away with. Cover security cameras with plastic bags, tape or paint, damage security vehicles, vandalize on-campus ATMs, pull a fire alarm just as an exam starts, let hundreds of insects loose in a research facility, put glue in door locks, use zip-ties strategically, or set off a stink bomb in the James Admin. building, etc.
Finally, consider using spraypaint or a permanent marker to tag any given surface at the scene of your action with the acronym AIA. Of course, this may not always be possible or tactically expedient and it’s up the groups and individuals to make that call for themselves. At any rate, we hold the acronym to be of particular importance because, in this way, our actions are linked to one another, stepping up their momentum by placing them within an overall context.
Actions gain meaning when they happen in relation to each other, when they cannot become isolated as “individual incidents”. Relatively innocuous actions can become politicized, and potentially threatening as a result of the context in which they occur and the discourse through which they communicate.
So let’s get going! We have nothing to wait for, so let’s organize ourselves today into a fluid and mobile antagonism the likes of which the Administration’s security forces will be powerless to contain and control. As of this moment, the smooth and uninterrupted flow of knowledge, capital and technology will no longer be taken for granted around here, and the military establishment will rue the day it ever decided to set foot in any way, shape or form onto our campus.
The University is at war; so are we.
AIA (Anti-Imperialist Action)