This article is about Sabotage, the destructive action. The term sabotage can also refer to: an early Black Sabbath album (Sabotage), the Alfred Hitchcock films (Sabotage or Saboteur), a Beastie Boys song, or a type of shock site.

Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening an enemy through subversion, obstruction, disruption, and/or destruction. In war, the word is used to describe the activity of an individual or group not associated with the military (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, or supply storage. Unlike acts of terrorism, acts of sabotage do not have a primary objective of inflicting casualties (but do not exclude this). Saboteurs are usually classified as unlawful enemy combatants.

The name derives from the early industrial age, when powered looms could be damaged by the wooden shoes (known in French as sabots) of the displaced weavers (proto-saboteurs) being thrown into the machinery. Literally it means, "clattering in sabots". Radical trade unions, such as the IWW, have advocated sabotage as a means of self-defense and direct action against unfair working conditions.

One of the tasks of security guards is the prevention and detection of sabotage.

Sabotage has also been used more loosely in a political-economic sense, as for example, the accusation that major US automobile manufactures sabotaged their own electric vehicle efforts by various means (particularly in the state of California) , where the production of zero pollution vehicles had been mandated upon them through legislative measures.

Literature

• Emile Pouget, Le sabotage (1913). notes et postface de Grégoire Chamayou et Mathieu Triclot, Mille et une nuit, 2004, engl. Sabotage, ISBN 0898754593, Paperback, 112pp, University Press of the Pacific 2001

See also:

• direct action
• guerrilla warfare
• terrorism
• partisan
• Kedyw

External links, Resources, and References

• Central Intelligence Agency sabotage manual (http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Opening/7482/ciaintro.html)
• Ozymandias Sabotage Handbook (http://www.reachoutpub.com/osh/)
• Employee Sabotage (http://www.uncc.edu/ragiacal/sabframes.html)
• Brian Martin, Sabotage (http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/01nvc/nvcp08.pdf), Nonviolence versus Capitalism [PDF]

Web Site

"Sabotages" are practical joke websites, in which the user is subjected to a scene or series of scenes, to lull the viewer into a false sense of security, only to have a scary or disturbing picture and/or screaming sound effect pop up, thus "sabotaging" them.