COMMUNIQUÉ DESCRIBES CANNES FILM FESTIVAL AS AN “OBSCENE CEREMONY HELD AT THE EDGE OF A SEA THAT HAS BECOME A CEMETERY FOR REFUGEES” ~ Cristina Sykes ~ Two anarchist groups have claimed responsibility for a series of power outages that struck southeastern France over the weekend, affecting over 200,000 households in Cannes and Nice. In a communiqué published yesterday (May 27) under the slogan “ET… COUPEZ!” (“and… cut!”), the unnamed groups stated: “On the eve of the Cannes Film Festival awards ceremony, we sabotaged the main electrical substation supplying the Cannes area and severed the 225 kV line coming from Nice”. The first blackout occurred on Saturday, May 24, coinciding with the final day of the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, affecting approximately 160,000 homes. The outage was caused by a fire at an electrical substation in Tanneron and damage to an electricity pylon, prompting local officials to suspect coordinated acts of arson. Despite the disruption, the festival managed to continue using backup generators. Shortly after midnight Sunday, a second blackout hit Nice, leaving around 45,000 households without power. This outage was linked to the arson of an electrical transformer, as confirmed by the city’s mayor, Christian Estrosi. Power was restored by 5.30AM While mainstream media reported condemnations of the attack, the groups elaborated on their motivations in their statement, declaring, “This unexpected blackout in a bad horror movie drags on. The same scenario is played and replayed ad nauseam. The backdrop remains the same: a world that continues to bomb, exploit, extract, seize, violate, ravage, starve, shoot, pollute, and exterminate, as long as everything is under its control”. They emphasised their desire to “turn off this deadly system”, stating, “We want to cut the current to what destroys us!” The groups condemned the Cannes Film Festival as a “spectacle that serves as a showcase for a grandiloquent French Republic, defender of Progress values on the international stage, but also the second-largest arms exporter in the world … Your obscene ceremony is held at the edge of a sea that has become a cemetery for refugees, and an industrial dump for a society that loves to portray rebellion on screen but represses and imprisons anyone who rises against its domination”, said the communiqué. The declaration concluded ironically with a ‘movie listing’ titled Sabotage 2: Nocturne à Cannes. “Set in a world on the brink of apocalypse, the film chronicles the adventures of a libertarian commando unit tasked with sabotaging technological factories of great military importance”. The listing came complete with mock reviews, including “If you love women who short-circuit aluminium production, students who burn factories, or commandos who take on the oil industry, you won’t be disappointed with this latest production” and “The special effects sometimes leave something to be desired, which is not surprising given the limited resources available to this production, but the script and strategic cunning more than compensate for this shortcoming”. The post France: Anarchists claim mass power outages in Cannes, Nice appeared first on Freedom News.