The Global Intelligence Files,
files released so far...
2106
The Global Intelligence Files

### Index pages

List of Releases

### by Date of Document

unspecified
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011

### by Date of Release

2001-03-13
2010-03-10
2011-03-05
2011-03-15
2012-01-29
2012-02-27
2012-02-28
2012-02-29
2012-03-01
2012-03-02
2012-03-03
2012-03-04
2012-03-05
2012-03-06
2012-03-07
2012-03-08
2012-03-09
2012-03-10
2012-03-11
2012-03-12
2012-03-13
2012-03-14
2012-03-15
2012-03-16
2012-03-17
2012-03-19
2012-03-20
2012-03-23
2012-03-25
2012-03-26
2012-03-27
2012-04-01
2012-04-02
2012-04-24
2012-04-26
2012-04-30
2012-05-10
2012-06-18
2012-06-20
2012-07-01
2012-07-24
2012-07-28
2012-07-29
2012-07-30
2012-07-31
2012-08-01
2012-08-02
2012-08-05
2012-08-06
2012-08-07
2012-08-08
2012-08-09
2012-08-10
2012-08-11
2012-08-12
2012-08-13
2012-08-14
2012-08-15
2012-08-16
2012-08-17
2012-08-18
2012-08-19
2012-08-20
2012-08-21
2012-08-22
2012-08-23
2012-08-24
2012-08-25

### Our Partners

ABC Color - Paraguay
Al Akhbar - Lebanon
Al Masry Al Youm - Egypt
Asia Sentinel - Hong Kong
Bivol - Bulgaria
Carta Capital - Brazil
CIPER - Chile
Dawn Media - Pakistan
L'Espresso - Italy
La Repubblica - Italy
La Jornada - Mexico
La Nacion - Costa Rica
Malaysia Today - Malaysia
McClatchy - United States
Nawaat - Tunisia
NDR/ARD - Germany
Owni - France
Pagina 12 - Argentina
Philip Dorling - Fairfax media contributor - Australia
Plaza Publica - Guatemala
Publica - Brazil
Publico.es - Spain
Rolling Stone - United States
Russian Reporter - Russia
Ta Nea - Greece
Taraf - Turkey
The Hindu - India
The Yes Men - Bhopal Activists
Sunday Star-Times - New Zealand

### Community resources

Supporters Support Wikileaks Follow us on Twitter Twitter this Follow us on Facebook

courage is contagious

# The Global Intelligence Files

On Monday February 27th, 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files, over five million e-mails from the Texas headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The e-mails date between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor's web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques and psychological methods.

## [CT] Mexico hippy bombers

Released on 2012-02-27 12:00 GMT

Email-ID | 5512760
Date | 2011-12-12 15:33:57
From | stewart@stratfor.com
To | ct@stratfor.com
List-Name | ct@stratfor.com

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090930_mexico_emergence_unexpected_threat
Mexico: Emergence of an Unexpected Threat
* View
* Revisions
September 30, 2009 | 1745 GMT
Decrease Text Normal Text Increase Text
PRINTPRINT Text Resize: Size Size Size
0 0ShareThis6
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Algeria: Taking the Pulse of AQIM
By Scott Stewart
At approximately 2 a.m. on Sept. 25, a small improvised explosive device
(IED) consisting of three or four butane canisters was used to attack a
Banamex bank branch in the Milpa Alta delegation of Mexico City. The
device damaged an ATM and shattered the bank's front windows. It was not
an isolated event. The bombing was the seventh recorded IED attack in the
Federal District - and the fifth such attack against a local bank branch -
since the beginning of September.
The attack was claimed in a communique posted to a Spanish-language
anarchist Web site by a group calling itself the Subversive Alliance for
the Liberation of the Earth, Animals and Humans (ASLTAH). The note said,
"Once again we have proven who our enemies are," indicating that the
organization's "cells for the dissolution of civilization" were behind the
other, similar attacks. The communique noted that the organization had
attacked Banamex because it was a "business that promotes torture,
destruction and slavery" and vowed that ASLTAH would not stop attacking
"until we see your ashes." The group closed its communique by sending
greetings to the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), the Animal Liberation Front
(ALF) and the "eco-pyromaniacs for the liberation of the earth in this
place." Communiques have also claimed some of the other recent IED attacks
in the name of ASLTAH.
On Sept. 22, authorities also discovered and disabled a small IED left
outside of a MetLife insurance office in Guadalajara, Jalisco state. A
message spray-painted on a wall near where the device was found read,
"Novartis stop torturing animals," a reference to the multinational
pharmaceutical company, which has an office near where the IED was found
and which has been heavily targeted by the group Stop Huntingdon Animal
Cruelty (SHAC). Novartis is a large customer of Huntingdon Life Sciences,
the research company SHAC was formed to destroy because Huntingdon uses
animals in its testing for harmful side effects of drugs, chemicals and
consumer items. A second message spray-painted on a wall near where the
device was found on Sept. 22 read, "Novartis break with HLS." Two other
IEDs were detonated at banks in Mexico City on the same day.
These IED attacks are the most recent incidents in a wave of anarchist,
animal rights, and eco-protest attacks that have swept across Mexico this
year. Activists have conducted literally hundreds of incidents of
vandalism, arson and, in more recent months, IED attacks in various
locations across the country. The most active cells are in Mexico City and
Guadalajara.
For a country in the midst of a bloody cartel war in which thousands of
people are killed every year - and where serious crimes
like kidnapping terrorize nearly every segment of society - direct-action
attacks by militant activists are hardly the biggest threat faced by the
Mexican government. However, the escalation of direct-action attacks in
Mexico that has resulted in the more frequent use of IEDs shows no sign of
abating, and these attacks are likely to grow more frequent, spectacular
and deadly.
The Wave
Precisely quantifying the wave of direct-action attacks in Mexico is
difficult for a number of reasons. One is that the reporting of such
incidents is spotty and the police, the press and the activists themselves
are often not consistent in what they report and how. Moreover, is often
hard to separate direct-action vandalism from incidents of plain old
non-political vandalism or tell the difference between an anarchist IED
attack against a bank and an IED attack against a bank conducted by
a Marxist group such as the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR). Then there
is the issue of counting. Should a series of five Molotov cocktail attacks
against ATMs or the destruction of 20 Telmex phone booths in one night be
counted as one attack or as separate incidents?
If we count conservatively - e.g., consider a series of like incidents as
one - we can say there have been around 200 direct-action attacks to date
in 2009. But if we count each incident separately, we can easily claim
there have been more than 400 such attacks. For example, by our count,
there have been more than 350 Telmex phone booths smashed, burned or
otherwise vandalized so far this year. (Activists will do things like glue
metal shavings into the calling-card and coin slots.) However, for the
sake of this analysis we'll go with the conservative number of about 200
attacks.
Now, Telmex seems to be the most popular target so far for direct-action
attacks. In addition to hitting phone booths, activists also have attacked
Telmex vehicles and offices and have cut Telmex cables. From their
statements, the activists appear to hold a special hatred for Carlos Slim,
one of the richest men in the world and the chairman of Telmex and several
other companies. In many ways, Slim - a patriarchal billionaire
industrialist - is the personification of almost everything that the
anarchistic activists hate. In addition to Telmex and banks, the activists
also have attacked other targets such as restaurants (including McDonald's
and KFC), meat shops, pet shops, fur and leather stores, luxury vehicles,
and construction equipment.
The activists' most common tactics tend to be on the lower end of the
violence scale and include graffiti and paint (frequently red to symbolize
the blood of animals) to vandalize a target. They also frequently release
captive birds or animals as well as use superglue and pieces of metal to
obstruct locks, pay phones and ATM card readers. Moving up the violence
continuum, activists less frequently will break windows, burn buildings
and vehicles, and make bomb threats - there have been at least 157
incidents involving arson or incendiary devices so far in 2009. To help
put this into perspective, these activists have conducted more arson
attacks in Mexico to date in 2009 than their American counterparts have
conducted in the United States since 2001.
At the high end of the violence spectrum are the IED attacks, and this is
where there has really been an increase in activity in recent weeks. In
the first six months of 2009, there were several bomb threats and hoaxes
and a few acid bombs, but only two real IEDs were used. In June, July and
August there was one IED attack per month - and so far in September there
have been seven IED attacks in Mexico City alone and one successful attack
and one attempted attack in Guadalajara. Again, by way of comparison,
these eight IED attacks by Mexican activists in September are more than
American activists have conducted in the United States since 2001.
Proliferation of IEDs
There are several factors that can explain this trend toward the
activists' increasing use of IEDs. The first is, quite simply, that IEDs
generate more attention than graffiti, glue or even an arson attack -
indeed, here we are devoting a weekly security report to activist IED
attacks in Mexico. In light of the overall level of violence in Mexico,
most observers have ignored the past lower-level activity by these
activist groups, and IEDs help cut through the noise and bring attention
to the activists' causes. The scope and frequency of IED attacks this
month ensured that they could not be overlooked.
The second factor is the learning curve of the cells' bombmakers. As a
bombmaker becomes more proficient in his tradecraft, the devices he crafts
tend to become both more reliable and more powerful. The improvement in
tradecraft also means that the bombmaker is able to increase his
operational tempo and deploy devices more frequently. It is quite possible
that the few IEDs that were reported as hoaxes in March, April and May
could have been IEDs that did not function properly - a common occurrence
for new bombmakers who do not extensively test their devices.
The third factor is thrill and ego. In many past cases, militant activists
have launched progressively larger attacks. One reason for this is that
after a series of direct-action attacks, the activists get bored doing
lower-level things like gluing locks or paint-stripping cars and they move
to more destructive and spectacular attacks, such as those using timed
incendiary devices. For many activists, there is a thrill associated with
getting increased attention for the cause, in causing more damage to their
targets and in getting away with increasingly brazen attacks.
Finally, in recent years, we have noted a shift among activist groups away
from a strict concern for human life. Many activists are becoming
convinced that less violent tactics have been ineffective, and if they
really want to save the Earth and animals, they need to take more
aggressive action. There is a small but growing fringe of hard-core
activists who believe that, to paraphrase Lenin, you have to break eggs to
make an omelet.
The Ruckus Society, a direct-action activist training organization,
explains it this way in a training document: "There is a law against
breaking into a house. However, if you break into a house as part of a
greater good, such as rushing into the house to save a child from a fire,
it is permissible to break that law. In fact, you can say that there is
even a moral obligation to break that law. In the same way then, it is
permissible to break minor laws to save the Earth." In general, activists
do not condone violent action directed at humans, but neither do they
always condemn it in very strong terms - they often explain that the anger
that prompts such violence is "understandable" in light of what they
perceive as ecological injustice and cruelty to animals.
In recent years there has been a polarization in the animal rights and
environmental movements, with fringe activists becoming increasingly
isolated and violent - and more likely to use potentially deadly tools
like IEDs in their attacks.
Confluences
The very name of ASLTAH - the Subversive Alliance for the Liberation of
the Earth, Animals and Humans - illustrates the interesting confluence of
animal rights, ecological activism and anti-imperialism/anarchism that
inhabit the radical fringe. It is not uncommon for one cell of independent
activists to claim it carried out its attacks under the banner of
"organizations" such as ELF, ALF or SHAC. In true anarchistic style,
however, these organizations are amorphous and nonhierarchical - there is
no single ELF, ALF or SHAC. Rather, the individual activists and cells who
act on behalf of the organizations control their own activities while
adhering to guidelines circulated in meetings and conferences, via the
Internet, and in various magazines, newsletters and other publications.
These individual activists and cells are driven only by their consciences,
or by group decisions within the cell. This results in a level of
operational security that can be hard for law enforcement and security
officials to breach.
As noted above, these activists have been far more active in Mexico than
they have in the United States. One reason for this is that the operating
environment north of the border is markedly different than it is in
Mexico. In the United States, the FBI and local and state police agencies
have focused hard on these activists, and groups like ELF and ALF have
been branded as domestic terrorists. There have been several major
investigations into these groups in recent years.
South of the border it is a different matter. Mexican authorities are
plagued with problems ranging from drug cartels to Marxist
terrorist/insurgent groups like the EPR to rampant police and government
corruption. Simply put, there is a vacuum of law and order in Mexico and
that vacuum is clearly reflected in statistics such as the number of
kidnappings inside the country every year. The overall level of violence
in Mexico and this vacuum of authority provide room for the activists to
operate, and the host of other crime and violence issues plaguing the
country works to ensure that the authorities are simply too busy to place
much emphasis on investigating activist attacks and catching those
responsible for them. Therefore, the activists operate boldly and with a
sense of impunity that often leads to an increase in violence - especially
within the context of a very violent place, which Mexico is at the present
time.
This atmosphere means that the activist cells behind the increase in IED
attacks will be able to continue their campaigns against assorted
capitalist, animal and ecological targets with very little chance of being
seriously pursued. Consequently, as the IED campaign continues, the
attacks will likely become more frequent and more destructive. And given
Mexico's densely populated cities and the activists' target sets, this
escalation will ensure that the attacks will eventually turn deadly.
Read more: Mexico: Emergence of an Unexpected Threat | STRATFOR