behind tgv sabotage in france: manipulations and provocations

7/31/2019 Behind TGV Sabotage in France: Manipulations and Provocations

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52 International EIR December 12, 2008

In the early hours o Nov. 11, 2008, one hundred and

ty policemen, operating over the entire territory o

France, arrested nine individuals suspected o being the

authors o coordinated sabotage actions against the

French high-speed TGV lines the previous weekend,

which caused long delays or more than 100 trains and

several thousand Paris commuters.

The Invisible Cell, as they call themselves, hadset up its headquarters at a arm which they transormed

into a local grocery store in Tarnac, in the heart o the

sparsely populated Corrze region, in central France.

The brains o the youthul group is believed to be an

idealistic philosopher, Julien Coupat (34), and his

sidekick Benjamin Rosoux (30), once the ormer exec-

utive president o the Brussels-based Federation o

Young European Greens (FYEG).

Were these young people just brilliant young stu-

dents, disgusted by our society o over-consumption,

and trying to ound a new society, as some mediaclaimhonest militants o the anarcho-autonomous

ultra-let who went too ar? Or is this a real terrorist

group, attempting to bring down the democratic

state?

We dont know yet. Violent anarchism and terror-

ism have very oten been the instruments o irregular

warare conducted by the nancial oligarchy against re-

publics and other nation-states. It is well documented

today that the waves o let- and right-wing terror hit-

ting Europe in the 1970s, were part o a strategy o

tension orchestrated by specic networks insideNATO, such as the British-dominated stay behind

networks o Gladio, and aimed at imposing ascist dic-

tatorships in Europe.1 Is such a scenario back on the

agenda? Nothing would be more dangerous in the cur-

rent global systemic breakdown crisis.

1. See Claudio Celani, Strategy o Tension: The Case o Italy,EIR,

March 26, April 2, April 9, and April 30, 2004.

Julien CoupatJulien Coupat, born in 1974, is the only son o a

doctor and a woman who holds a high-level position in

a major French pharmaceutical company. While the

media presented Julien as a brilliant student, rst, o an

Ivy League-style commercial school, and later, o an

even more prestigious university o social sciences,

Julien in act has multiple aces.According toLe Figaro o Nov. 21, J.C. heads a

tiny real estate company, located at his parents home,

in charge o rental o land and other real estate, a

business that provided him with over Euro 60,000 in

2007. Juliens sidekick, Benjamin Rosaux, is the com-

panys manager. That income is estimated to be more

than enough to run the arm and grocery store, even at a

loss. The group o nice young people have become

somewhat popular among local elected ocials, as they

appear to bring some economic and social activity to

the area.Juliens Dad told Le Figaro that he would like to

understand whats on the mind o this generation. But

according toLe Monde, it was the same Dad who dis-

covered Tarnac one year ago, and bought the property

with its grocery. He also bought or his son, in the 20th

arrondissement [district] o Paris, a 50-square-meter

ormer workshop o a cratsman, which was to house

the editorial sta o a uture project or a militant news-

paper.

Far more worrying than his parents help, is the sup-

port he received rom other quarters. Beore moving toTarnac, Coupat was involved in the Parisian intellectual

scene, o those whom Erasmus used to call the olly-

sophers.

According toLe Monde, in Paris Coupat developed,

a real relationship with the Italian philosopher Giorgio

Agamben, whom he met at a seminar. They played

soccer once in a while, and the philosopher helped him

when he launched Tiqqun magazine, by nding him a

Behind TGV Sabotage in France:

Manipulations and Provocationsby Karel Vereycken


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December 12, 2008 EIR International 53

publisher in Italythe prestigious Einaudi rm in

Turin. Coupat became the main writer o that post-situ-

ationist-inspired paper, whose rst issue appeared in

Venice, in 1999, where Agamben was teaching at theuniversity. (Tiqqun in Hebrew means to heal, as in

tikkun olam, heal the world, but also has been used by

Kabbalists and other mystics as redemption.) Tiqqun

denes itsel as the conscious organ o the imaginary

party, and claims that the historical period which we

are entering has to be a time o extreme violence and

great disorders.

Enter Giorgio AgambenCoupats real mentor and mind controller, Giorgio

Agamben, signed one o his articles as philosopher-mutineer. This Italian is considered an expert on Aris-

totle, Karl Marx, and Walter Benjamin (a collaborator

o Theodor Adorno o the Frankurt School) and also o

the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, a ormer

member o the Nazi party, whose seminars on Heracli-

tus and Hegel Agamben attended in 1968.

In 1974, Agamben was a Fellow o the London-

based Warburg Institute, invited by Dame Francis Yates,

the leading British expert on occult

neo-Platonism and the Rosicrucians,

and a member o the Order o the

British Empire (OBE). Agamben

taught at several American, German,

and Swiss universities, and at the

Paris-based Collge International de

la Philosophie.Agamben developed relations

with many important gures o his

time, among whom, to name only a

ew, are Pier Paolo Pasolini in Italy,

and the major situationist, structural-

ist, and deconstructionist French

thinkers, such as Guy Debord, Jean-

Luc Nancy, Jacques Derrida, Jean-

Franois Lyotard, as well as with An-

tonio Negri, an ideologue close to

the Italian Red Brigades, who livedand taught or several years in

France.

It is not possible to summarize

Agambens philosophy in a ew

lines, especially given the infuence

it had on the minds o those who,

charmed by the magic o his ideas,

have been drawn into the current o the Invisible Cell.

One can, however, describe some o the basic traits o

the mindset that inspired those who revolted.

Against the Bio-Power of the Nation-StateTo lure in people who are traumatized by the current

state o our society, Agamben invokes the very real dan-

gers that threaten democracy and reedom when a

global systemic nancial, economic, and political crisis

breaks out. In this context, he says, certain states will

call or a state o emergency, such as that decreed by

German Nazi crown jurist Carl Schmitt. Agamben

rightly denounces the permanent warare policy o U.S.

Vice President Dick Cheney, as leading to the suspen-

sion o civil rights, as can be seen in the treatment othe prisoners at Guantanamo.

However, through dierent nominalist acrobatics,

Agamben then arrives at the conclusion that, in prac-

tice, there is hardly any dierence between the so-called

democratic rule o our states, and open, ull-fedged

ascist dictatorships. Thereore, sovereignty, says

Agamben, is reduced to the mere right o the sovereign

to declare a state o emergency. The nation-state, re-

GDU FDU/Hendricke

Anti-nuclear demonstrators battle with police near the Gorleben Nuclear WasteDisposal Center, May 1966. Waste rom Germanys nuclear power plants is sent toCherbourg, France, or reprocessing; what remains is shipped back to Germany or

fnal storage at Gorleben. Recent attacks on trains, including the TGV, have beentraced to the act that the saboteurs wanted to block the nuclear waste convoys.


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characterized as a permanent state o emergency, is

thereore the enemy o any citizen.

The worrisome increased policing o our society

becomes the pretext to justiy violent action. In line

with Michel Foucault, Agamben denounces the bio-

politics conducted by the bio-power o states, which,

by this denition, reduces man to what the Greeks

called the naked lie (z), an existence reduced tothe simple act o being alive. Sovereignty, according

to Agamben, is no longer the instrument to deend the

citizen, his speech, and his rights, but the power to

impose the naked lie and the silence that is orced

upon reugees, deportees, and the exiled. Agamben de-

nounces police-state control over our modern societ-

ies, which are incapable o real human relations, but are

well equipped with surveillance cameras, biometric

passports, geo-traceable cell phones, and DNA police

les.

However, instead o calling or a rebirth o true re-publics, and or the type o non-violent action needed to

reconstruct them politically, Agamben calls or an-

other policy, which is to do away with all sovereignty,

by conronting it or by subverting it. Hence the attrac-

tion o the vast autonomist milieu or his thinking. To

resist, the victims can use minor bio-power as a coun-

terpoint to the bio-power o a state which, he concludes

(as does Negri), is nothing but an empire. That resis-

tance can be carried out by hunger strikes or the strict

reusal to submit to any biometric control mechanisms

whatsoever.Agamben himsel, or example, reuses to return to

the United States, since a biometric passport is now

required or entry. By demanding the physical means

to live, retroviral treatment or HIV/AIDS, guaranteed

minimum income, ree housing, or legal and sae

drugs, the victims o bio-power can conront the em-

pires power structure where it is maniest: in the ad-

ministrations, in the public health bureaucracies, or in

ordinary courts, among other state institutions. But

Agambens message is a call or revolt, not or revolu-

tion. Conronting the empire means legitimizing it, soconronting the state is not necessaryanyway, it

will destroy itsel. Thereore, it is sucient to ab-

stain rom it.

Julien Coupat conrmed his loyalty to this radical

mindset, when taken into custody. He vehemently re-

used to give a blood sample or to have any physical

contact with anything that could provide material or

genetic identication. He even washed his own under-

wear, and made sure not to touch a ork or knie while

eating.

The Black BlockLet us now take a look at his close riend and ac-

complice, Benjamin Rosoux, whose case is probably

even more revealing.

Around 2001, Rosoux arrived in the French univer-sity city o Rennes in Bretagne, western France, ater

having studied developmental sociology and envi-

ronmental responsibility in Edinburgh, U.K. As noted

above, the Belgian-born Rosoux was, or a short period,

the head o the Brussels-based Federation o Young Eu-

ropean Greens (FYEG), a position that gave him the

opportunity to establish contacts with the Green parties

vast networks all over Europe. In 2005, he became the

manager o Coupats tiny real estate company.

According to the regional daily Ouest-France,

Rosoux was known in Rennes as the ounder o twosquats (apartments occupied illegally by youth squat-

ters), started by students o the Institut des Etudes Poli-

tiques (IEP or Science-Po), an elite political science

school that gave Rosoux his degree. The rst squat, La

Marmite [the kettle], was an artistic squat, according

to a ormer resident. Ater it was closed down, Rosoux

opened a new one, lEkluserie, which was more politi-

cal. They lived on welare and retrieved ood rom the

garbage cans o supermarkets ater closing hours, con-

essed a ormer riend.

Everything remained nice and riendly until the July2001 Genoa G-8 summit, a strong marker that branded

the minds o a whole generation, according to the

newspaper. Several residents o lEkluserie made the

trip to Italy, where they took part in the violent clashes

between the police and the demonstrators that let one

demonstrator dead. They came back in total shock,

convinced they had been ace to ace with modern as-

cism. The action o the Black Blocks, partisans o vio-

lent conrontation with the police, had ascinated them,

Ouest-France continued.

The Black Block phenomenon suraced in the early1980s, with the German autonomous group Schwarzer

Block, in demonstrations such as that against the

Brokdor nuclear power plant, the deense o the

Freirume (autonomous living areas), and demonstra-

tions o solidarity with the imprisoned members o the

Baader Meinho gang (Red Army Faction, RAF).

A Black Block might appear on the ringe o any

demonstration, which its members eventually would


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use as a shield. At a pre-

determined moment, the

Black Block members

let- and right-wing ex-

tremistsput aside theirideological dierences,

unite, don black masks,

and go into action.

They then proceed

rom the doctrine o

direct action: destroying banks, ocial buildings or

those o transnational corporations, shops, surveillance

cameras, etc. The aim is not to attack persons, but the

property o capital. The goal is to cause maximum -

nancial losses to those companies targetted. Activists

do not hesitate to directly conront the police orcesconsidered as the armed arm o capitalism.

Ater a long absence, the Black Block reappeared,

with the demonstrations against the 1991 Gul War. Al-

though there were only 200 o them to protest against

the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle in

1999, where they created a temporary autonomous

zone, the movement attracted over 5,000 at the June

2007 Heiligendamm G-8 summit in Germany.

A ormer riend o Rosoux

decribed his shit o attitude:

He was non-violent, anti-glo-

balization, but I saw him slip-

ping away progressively to-

wards libertarian ecology and

radical action. In the end, I even

remember German militantscoming to the Rennes squat to

explain how to block train con-

voys transporting nuclear

waste. . . .

German ConnectionsThe German angle

o the investigation

became clearer with

the Nov. 8 sabotage

o the TGV lines inFrance. A Castor

convoy transporting

nuclear waste rom

the French nuclear

reprocessing plant

near Cherbourg to the

German nuclear stor-

age center at Gor-

leben, took 80 hours

to arrive, because

radical greens, espe-cially on the German

side o the track,

physically tried to

stop it; over a thou-

sand blocked the en-

trance to the Gorleben acility.

Also, according to well-inormed sources, a letter

was sent to the German dailyBerliner Zeitung rom Ha-

nover, claiming that the actions conducted both in

France and Germany were in protest against that convoy.

Ater blasting capitalism, the letter stated that they hadacted that night by using metal rodsheavy, Y-shaped,

steel barsour o which were ound by the French au-

thorities on the TGVs power cables. The letter was

signed in memory o Sbastien, reerring to Sbas-

tien Briat, a French radical green who died opposing a

Castor convoy in 2004. German police told their French

counterparts that the use o steel rods, identical to those

ound in France, is common practice among the German

Terrorists at the Genoa summit o the G-8 in July 2001. That summit,with the explosion o Black Block violence, branded the minds o ageneration.

GNU FDL/Ares Ferrari

Vehicles are burned byterrorists on the main routeto the July 2001 Genevasummit.


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green radicals. The last incident in which these devices

were used, took place on Oct. 12, 2008, in Bischo-

sheim. Moreover, a German riend o Coupat is on trial

or similar deeds committed in 1996.

Given these elements, there is good reason to be-

lieve that the pairing o the Agambenist Coupat and

the radical green Rosoux supplied the intellectual in-

gredients or an explosive cocktail. One can easily con-ceive how the initial situationist mindset, during a

breakdown crisis, would tend to mutate into de-hu-

manizing and regenerative violence, la Georges

Sorel.

Provocations, from Genoa to VichyIt was at the July 2001 G-8 Genoa summit that

Coupat and Rosoux, the duo suspected o sabotage

against the TGV, had direct experience with Black

Block techniques.

In LAppel (The Call), a pamphlet circulating inthe autonomist milieu in praise o direct actionas

opposed to simple militance or impotent activismone

can read the ollowing revealing anecdote:

We remember the scene in Genoa: some ty mili-

tants o the [French] Ligue Communiste Rvolution-

naire (LCR) show their fags labelled 100% to the let.

They are immobile, timeless. They shout their careully

calculated slogans, protected by their own goons. At the

same time, just meters away, some o us conront the

carabinieri, throw back tear gas bombs, break apart the

sidewalks to produce projectiles and prepare Molotovcocktails with bottles ound in the garbage cans, and

gasoline rom overturned Vespas. The militants speak

about adventurism, irresponsibility. They claim that

conditions are not yet ripe. We answer that nothing was

lacking, everything was there, except or them.

Ater Genoa, lEkluzerie became the meeting place

or all radical causes. Those that went there despised

any orm ocitoyennisme (citizenry), a term designat-

ing all those who accept democracy, including Jos

Bov and the LCR.

The squat was closed on Feb. 24, 2005, when thebuilding was demolished. Its ounders let Rennes and

spread all over France, to create new urban and rural

squats, such as the one at Tarnac.

In France, the demonstrations in 2006 against the

CPE (Contrat de Premier Emploi, a law oering low-

wage, useless jobs to youth) served as the initial labora-

tory to test new urban guerrilla techniques. In a booklet,

The Coming Insurrection, thought to be written by

Coupat and Rosoux, one reads: The movement against

the CPE didnt hesitate to block railroad stations, belt-

ways, actories, highways, supermarkets and even air-

ports. Three hundred persons were sucient in Rennes,

to block the highway around the city or hours and to

cause a orty-kilometer trac jam. To block everything,

is rom now on the rst refex o any orce opposing the

current order. In a globalized economy, where compa-nies operate with the just-in-time method, and where

value comes rom connection to the network, where the

highways are but elements o the de-materialized pro-

duction chain, going rom one subcontractor to another

and then to assembly in the actory, to block produc-

tion, means blocking circulation as well.

More recently, at the EU summit on immigration in

Vichy Nov. 2-4, Coupat and his group maneuvered to

transorm the peaceul counter-summita just and

lawul challenge to the unsavory anti-immigration poli-

cies adopted by the EUinto a riot. Rosoux was on thesite, and Coupat was seen at the head o a little army o

50 men, instructing his troops to storm a police barri-

cade protecting the conerence hall. A young accom-

plice o Coupat who participated in that storming, ad-

mitted she had been active with the Black Block in

Germany, and had participated in blocking train sta-

tions during the 2006 anti-CPE demonstrations.

In lAppel, one also reads: We dont contest any-

thing, were not claiming responsibility or anything.

We constitute a material autonomous orce at the center

o a world civil war. The urgency o the situation reesus rom any legal consideration or consideration o le-

gitimacy. The perspective o orming gangs doesnt

righten us; that o appearing as a maa rather amuses

us. On the one side, we want to live communism; on the

other, we want to spread anarchy.

While the document calls or action, it says that its

ollowers do not want to hurt or kill anybodynot or

moral reasons, but or reasons o strategy: It seems

more judicious to attack material equipment than the

people who give it a ace. We have to turn to orms o

operations used by all guerrillas: anonymous sabotage,non-claimed actions.

Whos Backing Coupat?Only days ater his ollowers arrest, Agamben took

up their deense in a column published in the French

dailyLibration, reproduced in English and Italian by

many websites under the title Free the Tarnac 9: The

people involved are Julien Coupat, a young philosopher


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who previously, with some o his riends, led Tiqqun, amagazine o political analysis, certainly debatable, but

still today among the most intelligent o that period. I

knew Julien Coupat at that time, and rom the intellec-

tual standpoint, I still have lasting esteem or him. Lets

examine the sole concrete act o this whole aair. The

activity o those arrested has been linked to malevolent

acts committed against the [French national railroad

company] SNCF, which caused the delay o certain

TGV trains on the Paris-Lille line. The devices em-

ployed, i one believes the declaration o the police and

the SNCF ocials themselves, can in no way injurepersons: at most they can cut o the electricity to the

trains pantographs, causing delays in the trains arrival.

In Italy, trains oten arrive late, but nobody ever thought

o accusing the national railroad company o terrorism.

Were talking about a minor oense, even i nobody

wants to back them up. . . .

Interrogated byLe Monde, Agamben also declared:

Were not going to treat them like the Red Brigades,

nothing comparable! One looks or terrorism and ends

up creating itall o this to spread ear among youth.

Rather astonishing support o Coupat came romGuillaume Dasqui, who is close to certain intelligence

sectors and is currently on the rampage atLibration. In

an article published on Nov. 24 in that paper, Dasqui

claims a vast conspiracy against the ultra-let by Inte-

rior Minister Michelle Alliot-Marie.

The French Direction de la Surveillance du Terri-

toire (DST, counterintelligence), he claims, alerted by

security expert Alain Bauer about Coupats bookThe

Coming Insurrection, would have taken the case

very seriously. The book was published by Edi-

tions La Fabrique, a tiny publishing house

headed by Eric Hazan, the author o Change-

ment de propritaire, la guerre civile continue

(The Civil War Continues, Under New Manage-

ment).

While written in the poetical-political-depressive style la Guy Debord, its authors

remain unidentied and sign their work as the

invisible committee. The book describes with

great delight their temptation to commit sabo-

tage o all kinds, including against TGV lines

and other fuxes, by what they consider to be

actions that could accelerate the end o a civili-

zation in the state o clinical death.

The ormer chie editor o Intelligence

Online, a proessional newsletter o political

risk analysis and economic intelligence, Dasqui is theco-author oLeroyable mensonge (The Awul Lie,

published by La Dcouverte in 2002 and co-written

with spook Jean Guisnel), a book that alsely claims

that Thierry Meyssans bookLEroyable imposture

(9/11: The Big Lie), exposing the inside job done on

9/11, was totally inspired by the babblings o Lyndon

LaRouche and Jacques Cheminade. In this case, Das-

quis imagination seems as delirious as it is opportu-

nistic. Greatly welcomed by both theNew York Times

and the London Financial Times, his writings have

always been appreciated by the upper crust o U.S. neo-conservatism, always ready to accuse those unwilling

to submit to their power o being wild-eyed conspiracy

theorists.

What can one conclude rom this aair? Whatever

the responsibilities and intentions o this or that person

may be, it refects a spirit o impotent revolt, degenerat-

ing into provocations to commit violence. Those who

create the intellectual climate or such actions, aim at

destabilizing the nation-state and thus serve, wittingly

or unwittingly, the aims o the new global governance

called or by the bankers o the City o London and themanaging director o the IMF. The autonomists who

attack public equipment and inrastructure are probably

only an unconscious link in a chain, rather more victims

o their acts than responsible or them, and unaware o

the true objectives. Looking back to the recent past, it is

widely acknowledged that the Red Brigades were ma-

nipulated by a Black Order whose aim was to impose

a ascist coup dtat on Italy.

A poster attacking the G8 meeting in Hokkaido, Japan in July 2008.Autonomist attacks on these meetings have become a regular occurrence.

behind tgv sabotage in france: manipulations and provocations

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