SABOTAGE

'Sabotage' is a deliberate action aimed at weakening an enemy, oppressor or employer through subversion, obstruction, disruption, and/or destruction.
The name derives from early in the Industrial Revolution. It is often said that powered looms could be damaged by angry or disgruntled workers throwing their wooden shoes or clogs (known in French as ''sabots'') into the machinery, effectively ''clogging'' the machinery. This is often referenced as one of the first inklings of the Luddite Movement. However, this etymology is highly suspect and no wooden-shoe sabotage has been proven from the time of the word's origin. [1]

Contents

Sabotage in war

Sabotage as part of a crime

Workplace sabotage

Sabotage in defense of the environment

Political sabotage

Product sabotage

Notes

References

See also

External links, resources, and references

Sabotage in war

In war, the word is used to describe the activity of an individual or group not associated with the military of the parties at war (such as a foreign agent or an indigenous supporter), in particular when actions result in the destruction or damaging of a productive or vital facility, such as equipment, factories, dams, public services, storage plants or logistic routes. Prime examples of such sabotage are the events of Black Tom and the Kingsland Explosion. Unlike acts of terrorism, acts of sabotage do not always have a primary objective of inflicting casualties. Saboteurs are usually classified as enemies, and like spies may be liable to prosecution and criminal penalties instead of detention as a prisoner of war.
It is common for a government in power during war or supporters of the war policy to use the term loosely against opponents of the war. Similarly, German Nationalists spoke of a stab in the back having cost them the loss of World War I. Also see [2].
The cold war included a subtle form of sabotage. One well documented case is the Soviets Trans-Siberian Pipeline Incident, triggered by the Farewell Dossier.
Subtle sabotage has also been employeed for other reasons, including attempting to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear capabilities.^[1]

Sabotage as part of a crime

Some criminals have engaged in acts of sabotage for reasons of extortion. For example, Klaus-Peter Sabotta sabotaged German railway lines in the late 1990s in an attempt to extort DM10 million from the German railway operator Deutsche Bahn. He is now serving a sentence of life imprisonment.

Workplace sabotage

When disgruntled workers damage or destroy equipment or interfere with the smooth running of a workplace, it is called workplace sabotage. This can be as part of an organized group activity, or the action of one or a few workers in response to personal grievances. Luddites and Radical labor unions such as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) have advocated sabotage as a means of self-defense and direct action against unfair working conditions.

The IWW was shaped in part by the industrial unionism philosophy of Big Bill Haywood, and in 1910 Haywood was exposed to sabotage while touring Europe:

The experience that had the most lasting impact on Haywood was witnessing a general strike on the French railroads. Tired of waiting for parliament to act on their demands, railroad workers walked off their jobs all across the country. The French government responded by drafting the strikers into the army and then ordering them back to work. Undaunted, the workers carried their strike to the job. Suddenly, they could not seem to do anything right. Perishables sat for weeks, sidetracked and forgotten. Freight bound for Paris was misdirected to Lyon or Marseille instead. This tactic — the French called "sabotage" — won the strikers their demands and impressed Bill Haywood.Roughneck, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983, page 152.

For the IWW, sabotage came to mean any withdrawal of efficiency — including the slowdown, the strike, or creative bungling of job assignments.Roughneck, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983, pages 196-197.

Sabotage in defense of the environment

Certain groups turn to destruction of property in order to immediately stop environmental destruction or to make visible arguments against forms of modern technology considered as detrimental to the earth and its inhabitants. The FBI and other law enforcement agencies use the term eco-terrorist when applied to damage of property. Proponents argue that since property can not feel terror, damage to property is more accurately described as sabotage. The image of the monkeywrench thrown into the moving parts of a machine to stop it from working was popularized by Edward Abbey in the novel The Monkeywrench Gang and has been adopted by eco-activists to describe destruction of earth damaging machinery.

Political sabotage

The term political sabotage is sometimes used to define the acts of one political camp to disrupt, harass or damage the reputation of a political opponent, usually during an electoral campaign.

Product sabotage

Main articles: Product sabotage

Notes

1. U.S. Working To Sabotage Iran Nuke Program

References

★ Emile Pouget, ''Le sabotage; notes et postface de Grégoire Chamayou et Mathieu Triclot'', 1913; Mille et une nuit, 2004; English translation, ''Sabotage'', paperback, 112 pp., University Press of the Pacific, 2001, ISBN 0-89875-459-3.

See also

★ Cichociemni

★ Colin Gubbins

★ Direct action

★ Edmund Charaszkiewicz

★ Espionage

★ Fifth column

★ guerrilla warfare

★ Kedyw

★ Monkeywrenching

★ Norwegian heavy water sabotage

★ partisan

★ Special Operations Executive

★ Terrorism

★ Tom Mooney

★ Les Dégonflés

External links, resources, and references

★ SABOTAGE MC the Lyricist from Illtown Representing Junior Assassins

★ News, accounts and articles on workplace sabotage and organising - Sabotage, employee theft, strikes, etc.

★ SABOTAGE The New Musical Thriller

★ Central Intelligence Agency sabotage manual

★ Ozymandias Sabotage Handbook

★ Online text of the third edition of ''Ecodefense''

★ Brian Martin, ''Sabotage'', Nonviolence versus Capitalism [PDF]

★ Article on malicious railroad sabotage

★ Elizabeth Gurley Flinn, Sabotage, the concious withdrawal of the workers' industrial efficiency