Olympic Park Energy Centre contractor GDF attacked by anarchists in Bristol (UK)

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25 July 2012

GDF corporation exposed and attacked in Bristol

Last night we visited GDF’s office on the Anglo Office Park in Speedwell, broke around 20 windows around the unit (on both the ground floor and first floor) and left spray-painted tags next to the front door, ECOCIDE (with an arrow pointing to the company logo) and A.C.A.B. with an anarchist symbol.

GDF (while not a house-hold name over here yet) is a global energy and utility corporation with many arms, which among other things was a pioneer of nuclear power in Europe (including the UK, where they’re now in line for a new reactor in Sellafield), are involved with building police infrastructure here in the South-West, run 15 private-public prisons and surveillance camera systems in hundreds of cities and towns in France, provide communication systems for the defence industry, security for Total’s oil rigs in Nigeria…



GDF might not have pulled the trigger killing Mark Duggan, swung the baton killing Ian Tomlinson, or lined the streets to protect the English Defence League, but they are one of many components of corporate-authoritarian control. GDF are the company providing facility management for constructing and maintaining Avon and Somerset’s two new police stations, new operations base (Bridgwater), two custody and crime investigation centres (Patchway and Keynsham) and a firearms training centre (Portishead) to share with police from Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. The question GDF will have to ask themselves is: can their new partners keep them safe everywhere?

GDF’s collaboration with the forces of law and order extended to equipping cops with a mobile Smart CCTV system for use at the G20 summit of world leaders in Cannes last November. Our action followed the call to support the ten just sentenced heavily for the rebellion against the G8 summit in Genoa back in 2001, and the anniversary of Carlo Giuliani’s fatal shooting by police on July 20th during those clashes. The G8 returns to Britain next year: let’s make this a taste of the reception they’ll get.

GDF put a lot of effort into portraying themselves as an ecologically-minded enterprise, with predictable rhetoric about “the third industrial revolution” of low-carbon energy, hydrogen storage, electric vehicles and the rest. The GDF Energy Centre in the Olympic Park claims it will reduce the emissions of the London Games – a ridiculous attempt to greenwash one of the crowning jewels of world capitalist rule, which is in reality a disaster for the environment and the exploited everywhere it goes. The aim of all these technological solutions is not to address the tremendous damage Civilisation has caused the planet and our own wild nature, but to indefinitely perpetuate the same system that’s devouring the earth.

An example of this is GDF’s building of the Jirau hydroelectric dam in Brazil. This project is infamous for its total disregard for a vast rainforest ecosystem, deforesting the region, threatening to eradicate tribes who are in voluntary isolation or who are totally uncontacted, and bringing several migratory fish species to face extinction.

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Previous attacks on GDF and their interests in other countries: 1, 2, 3, 4

Tags: Bristol, GDF, GDF Suez, Olympics 2012, Sabotage, UK

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 25th, 2012 at 6:40 pm and is filed under Direct Action.