patrick.net

Early Saturday morning, lunatic eco-terrorists from the so-called “Volcano Group” attacked these cables with pyrotechnic charges, cutting off power to 45,000 households and thousands of commercial customers in the Zehlendorf, Nikolassee, Lichterfelde and Wannsee neighbourhoods of Berlin. The attack came at the start of an arctic coldsnap and unusually low, freezing temperatures. Despite these dire conditions, authorities plead that they cannot fully restore power to many customers until Thursday – five days after the attack.

Blackouts like this represent much more than an inconvenience. So many systems depend upon electricity that the sudden loss of power can easily represent a life-threatening disaster, particularly when that loss happens in the middle of winter. Without electricity, most buildings cannot be heated, and in this case thousands of structures will suffer broken pipes, water damage and mould infestations. The added stress of the cold and disruptive emergency measures will surely kill some older and more vulnerable people, even if the press never associates their deaths with this sabotage. And to all of that comes the fact that, as people are abandoning their unheated homes for hotels, entire neighbourhoods have emptied out – opening opportunities for looters to attack in total darkness because there are no street lights. ...

It looks for all the world like authorities have allowed the eco-terrorists responsible for this assault on Berlin’s power grid to operate with impunity for years and years. I want to ask how it is that our aggressive domestic intelligence agencies, which have resources to spy on tens of thousands of alleged “right-wing extremists,” have so little curiosity about the saboteurs of the Volcano Group and claim to know basically nothing about them despite the years of destruction they’ve wrought. I want to ask why, when authorities did stumble upon probable Volcano Group saboteurs a few years ago, Berlin judges were so quick to let them go.

All of this is very strange; all of it really gets the noggin joggin, as the kids say.

opening opportunities for looters to attack in total darkness because there are no street lights.