2008-12-31
February, 2009 - once again, the leaders of the NATO-states and their allies, as well as representatives of the military industry will be meeting in Munich. The so called Security Conference is, according to it's new chairman Wolfgang Ischinger, the "most important forum for decision-makers in international security policy to exchange their thoughts". The result of this military "security policy" means death and oppression for millions of people.
April, 2009 - on a date close to the "Security Conference", the warmongers of the NATO-states want to gather in Strasbourg/Baden-Baden, to celebrate the NATO's 60th birthday. 60 years of murderous politics - for them, a reason to pat themselves on the shoulder. Not for us!
We'll be planning, demonstrating, sabotaging - we won't allow them to prepare wars or celebrate imperialist politics! So, come to Munich, come to Strasbourg!
No peace with NATO's politics of war!
In october, 2008, the German parliament has extended the mandate for the German ISAF-troops in Afghanistan and decided to send more soldiers, for a total of 4500. Thus, a policy of war is acknowledged and continued, a policy with devastating consequences that become increasingly clear in an Afganistan that is occupied by NATO for 7 years now.
Tens of thousands of people were killed in the course of the war, hundreds of thousands are fleeing. Besides the direct dangers of an open war, the population is facing disastrous foodshortages and the destruction of the social infrastructure. The neoliberal capitalism that has been violently enforced by the western powers, with a heavy participation of Germany, for their own profit is worsening the poverty of the population. One example for this policy is the treaty for the protection of investments that has been dictated by the west. Aside from reductions in tariffs, it offers protection for foreign investors: 100% ownership of enterprises with a far-reaching protection against expropriation, tax breaks and complete transfer of any earnings out of the country are all guaranteed. The cynical talk about "reconstruction" and a humanitarian mission as one of the official reasons for the occupation is completely false. The alleged civil "development aid" is subordinated to the military logic and turned into profits for the west. A good deal of the money Germany provides for "development aid" is used for training and equipping the Afghan police which is under German supervision. Most people in Afghanistan oppose the occupation.
In Europe, the critical voices against an endless, escalating war are becoming louder - but for a fundamental change, we need to put anti-militarism into practice. The so-called "War on Terror" in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere has to be denounced as what it is - a brutal war, led by capitalist interests and fought in the context of western drives for hegemony and control. We´ll confront it with our diverse forms of resistance!
Against your wars, against your peace!
The participants of the "security conference" know the power of harmless terms quite well, when they're gathering again in February 2009 to plan wars und push arms deals. The word "Security" is trendy. Only recently, a NATO chief of staff titled a strategy-paper as "Towards a Grand Strategy in an Uncertain World", thus describing his belligerent thesis as a way out of an supposedly all-encompassing "Insecurity". There's hardly any political context in which some "Security" is not the, supposedly self-explaining, aim. These times, there's hardly another label that indefinite, while at the same time circumscribing and legitimating that much violence.
While wars are being fought for "external security", the "interior security" won´t stop bothering the ruling class, too. With their paper "Security-Strategy for Germany", the CDU/CSU faction in the German parliament is once again pushing to enable a deployment of the German army in the interior. "The seperation between interior and foreign security or between a state of war and peace" can't be kept up any longer, they claim. "A completely new understanding of security-policy" has to be the basis for a new "German security architecture".
The seemingly evolutionary blurring of the line between war and peace and "interior" and “foreign security", which is used as to argue for repressive innovations, isn’t cause, but consequence of politics repressively enforcing capitalist rule and control locally and globally. On a European level, new organizations are constantly beeing formed, in which military, police and organizations for civil aid are cooperating, with far-reaching competences on international territory. It's their aim to establish the fortress Europe as the globally most powerful economy, to enforce its global control, to arm its borders and to be able to combat political opposition and resistance more efficiently. The EU is not only creating repressive and military-regimes around the globe, it's also constituting itself as such.
Once again, this is affirming our knowledge about the so-called "security" - It's the security of the ruling class, for most of humanity this "security" means poverty, social insecurity, war, repression and oppression.
We don't want their "security"! Let's smash it!
Abolish Frontex! For an unlimited Freedom of Movement!
Frontex, the agency for guarding the EU's external borders, is one of the organizations active in the amalgamation of police and military. Frontex' policy of fighting migration is not "only" about guarding the EU-border - the war on refugees is to be waged everywhere along the routes of migration: In the countries of origin and transit, border police are equipped and transporting firms are obliged to enable deportations. In the Mediterranean Sea, but also in the coastal waters of of several West-African countries, European warships are patrolling, to interdict boat people. These missions force refugees and migrants to choose longer, more dangerous routes, leading to thousands of deaths each year in Mediterranean and the Atlantic sea. The immediate border of the EU is also militarized, for example by the use of military drones or by including the ministries of war in the "border management".
For the interior of the EU, Frontex is planning a database that registers all entries and exits af EU-territory, to automatically produce warrants of arrest for "visa-overstayers". The tens of thousands of refugee camps in the EU, on the other hand, are older than Frontex, as are the countless denials of their basic rights refugees and migrants are facing all over Europe.
With this racist border-regime, the EU is violently excluding all those who aren't needed as cheap, rightless labor in Europe. The shutting out of all the unwanted people is also a form of capitalist crisis-management; whenever people are fleeing from wars or the results of economic breakdowns, the metropolitan states try all they can to stop refugees far before they can reach Europe. It is no coincidence that NATO states "uncontrolled movements of migration" as a reason for war.
Against these politics, we offer our practical solidarity with the struggles of refugees and migrants! Open borders for everyone - Freedom of movement is everybody's right!
You can't forbid resistance!
The amalgamation of "interior" and "foreign security" will also be visible in the situation we'll be facing in February in Munich: It's not one of history's little jokes that the "security" of the "security conference" will be "secured" by a new law that comes close to an abolishion of the right of assembly. Again, it becomes clear the discourses of the "security"-strategists about "civil-military cooperation" and "networked Homeland Security" are put into action not only in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also on our very doorsteps.
July 2008, the state of Bavaria has passed a new law regulating the right of assembly. This law practically means the abolishing of the freedom to gather, and gives the police a huge leeway for arbitrarily forbidding or stopping demonstrations. Probably the most absurd part of law is the "prohibition of militancy". According to this, it is forbidden to "wear similiar clothing as an expression of a common political attitude, if it has an intimidating effect." Wether a demonstration is intimidating or not is, of course, up to the police to decide. This paragraph could be used to criminalize the black block, as well as a unionist strike post. And it would be wrong to see this law only as an expression of the well-know repressive "Bavarian way": It wouldn’t be the first time for repressive laws tried successfully in Bavaria to become a nationwide standard.
The new Bavarian law governing the right of assembly is a fitting building block for a repressive state, that's answering to a growing social insecurity in a crisis-ridden capitalism with supervision and control.
But this new law won't impress us! We and only we choose the style and means of our resistance!
Globalize Anticapitalism!
If there's one consequence of the financial crisis, then it's a further intensification of the redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich.
It's not only the evaporating pension funds and vanishing savings; the states are spending billions to save their financial institutions and in the end they'll raise the money through income- and wage-tax, through shortening the spending for social security systems or social aid programs. The amazement politicians show when talking about this crisis - a crisis that's supposedly result of an "abnormal deviance" of the marketpowers, and that wasn’t predictable - is hiding its origins. Crises belong to capitalism, and the creation of gigantic bubbles of debt is an integral part of neoliberalism, that has been enforced by the globally dominating governments and the economic elites from the 1980ties onwards by deregulating the finacial markets. Those important aspects of globalization shift the social relations of power. The effects of the recent financial crisis will be hitting hardest the poor population of the global South.
Everyone defending themselves against the destruction of their basis of lifelihood is facing militarization and repression. It's not new for a crisis-ridden capitalist system to be only keeping itself running through a global, endless war.
Let’s develop global strugggles for appropriation against the redistribution from the poor to the rich! For an emancipatorical worldwide resistance against their repression!
Direct anti-militarist action!
The strategists of the ruling "security" aim at dissolving the differences between "interior" and "foreign security", between police and military, between raid and war - we should turn their strategy into our weapon and connect our struggles against the different facets of their politics.
Time and again, around the globe, there have been attempts to render military equipment unusable for war. Some refer to this as an active initiative for disarmament, peace activists talk about "ploughsharing" ("swords to ploughshares"), while those in power call those actions damaging of property, arson or terrorism. In Germany, it's the 129ff. in criminal law, that are used to criminalize antimilitaristic actions. But what's the destruction of military equipment, of weapons compared to its deadly use in warfare?
So, it will remain our aim to undermine military morale and to disturb the peace in the hinterland. For more local disarmament initiatives!
Let´s make sure that there is scant regard for the military, let´s take them their feeling of beeing backed by the popuplation.
The militarization of society has proceeded far, we're meeting military personnel everywhere - while riding a train or attending a family event, at recruiting-events in schools and at employment agencies - so we'll be disturbing and intervening everywhere!
Bundeswehr dismissed!
The undermining of military morale can't be separated from the fight against patriarchy, and its most brutal expression, sexual violence.
Wherever war and military dominate people's everyday lives, rape, forced prostitution and trafficking in women are common. This is no coincidence:
Military mobilization and drill use dominant images of masculinity.
Machismo is a ressource for war! Let´s fight patriarchal society!
We express our solidarity with all soldiers worldwide, who have decided to defect from the injustice and cruelty of war, and are put in military prisons or facing other repression! Organize aid and support for deserters!
Solidarity with Olli, Florian and Axel, who are accused of attempting to set fire to military vehicles of MAN in July 2007!
Fight the war, fight the crisis: Let’s develop anti-militarist resistance! Let’s appropriate social wealth.
So, come to munich on 6/7th. February! We'll meet in the internationalist block!
Let's spoil the 60th. anniversary of NATO in Strasbourg on April 4-8!
As every year, there'll be a convergence center at the Kafe Marat, Thalkirchnerstr. 104, 2. entrance, near subway station U3/U6 Goethplatz.
www.no-nato.de
www.natogipfel2009.blogsport.de