ConAction – Call to the demo and action against the Nato Security conference

international | anti-war / imperialism | event notice Tuesday December 23, 2003 00:12 by no-nato info at no-nato dot de

Fight global war!

This is a call to the demo and action against the Nato Security conference being held on the 6th and 7th of February in Munich, Germany.

Friday 06.02.04, 4.00pm: The streets leading to the Hotel Bayerischer Hof will be filled with people. The traffic will be stopped. General Naumann will be under pressure as he remembers the warning given by Horst Telschiks, “This year the mob is intending to shut the conference down…”

This is how we expect the situation to look in Munich on this Friday afternoon. Many different groups having already called for demonstrations on Saturday have also called for a massive presence around the Nato-security conference on Friday. No pasaran! They won’t get through. This is the consequence of two successful mobilisations during the last few years, which have succeeded in reaching an ever larger public. Last year, despite attempts to split the public and even a downfall of snow, 25,000 people showed up to voice their disapproval of the war conference. This conference has for the last 40 years, provided a meeting place for the military, politicians, weapons experts, who have been invited by Horst Telschik.


The globalisation of war.

With the fall of the Soviet block, capitalism has become the uncontended global economic system. Capitalism promised prosperity and security but in fact it has lead to a decline in living standards for most people and to the collapse of economies of whole regions. For a long time now the leftist liberal powers have been calling for political regulation of economic globalisation. In the meantime the problem has undergone a cynical transformation: the global capitalistic exploitation is now accompanied by global war, in which the rich northern states and their allies maintain unlimited military control. War has gone from being the exception to the norm. War is ubiquitous, springing up in the discussions and practices throughout our society. War enables the concentration of power and gives rise to patriarchal oppression, racial exclusion and capitalistic exploitation. During wartime the patriarchal structures are strengthened and forced prostitution and rape become more common. The racist discourse against everything ‘foreign’ and ‘different’ results in giving more power to the traditionally dominant forces in society. It has, for example, resulting in the militarization of the Europe`s borders and in the racist immigration laws of the EU. War creates its own priorities. In Europe social services have been cut back in order to save money, while at the same time a 50.000 person European interventions army has been assembled and a globally ready police force created. This police force will be used to control the protectorate. When war is permanent, that is when it becomes an integral part of the organization of our nations and societies, the line between war and peace becomes blurred. We have arrived in a state where German soldiers are currently active in ten different countries, and yet no one seems to feel that we are in a war. When war is no longer called war, but instead ‘peaceful measures’, and the next war is discussed as if it was normal to use military force to carry through imperial interests, then we really have arrived at the point which was so eloquently described by Orwell in his book, 1984, ‘war is peace’.


What security and for who?

In the last few years, ’security’ has become a central propaganda call for politicians, economists and the media. It has been the justification for new international wars and greatly strengthened internal repression. It would be cynical or naïve to still believe that capitalism can make the world more secure. Under our current system, economic security and stability are only created for those very few on the winning side of profit-maximization equation. The logic of the world market treats most people as superfluous, especially in the so called third world, where more and more people lives have been reduced to a state of abject poverty and misery. At the same time the governments of the rich countries are outbidding themselves in a race to the bottom, destroying the rights of workers and the unemployed. In Germany, Agenda 2010 will play a central role in the redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich. Abandoning the luxury tax and lowering the percentage of the social security costs paid by the employer on behalf of the employee, will cause money to stay in the pockets of the rich, at the cost of the rest of the population. The employer-employee relationship is becoming more and more precarious, while the social divide is widening. In the name of ‘domestic security’ ever more laws are pushed through, the purpose of which is to exclude and control people who have been deemed unworthy of a place in the society. As more and people join this group, for whom capitalism has nothing more to offer, the more police and even military will be used to manage the crises created, and more war will go from the exception to the permanent condition. In this process the US and Europe are not always acting in concert. In fact their respective politics reflect in part massive contradictions, resulting from competition for international markets and influence. For us it is very clear that the situation is not that of ‘evil doers’ against whom the good and free peoples of the world must fight, but rather that of NATO states and their allies militarizing the world.


War is not invincible

War is entwined in everyday lives, which ironically is exactly what makes it vulnerable to attack. Its points of vulnerability are all around us. Take for example the military airports, from which Yugoslavia was bombed. Or in the case of our most recent war on Iraq, the military bases, train stations, and ports, which were used in the deployment of soldiers and supplies to Iraq, and those which are still being used to keep supplies going to Iraq. And there exists of course the production zones of the weapons manufactures. There is the vocabulary and concepts of the current ruling ideologies, which legitimize war. Words like security, that are supposed to deceive us into believing, that we are all benefiting from the current war against ’global terrorism’, hiding the truth that our actual security is growing less every day, due to the constant cuts in social security, pensions and medical benefits. There are the concepts which force us to think in categories such as friend-foe, good-evil, man-woman, which make it possible to militarize our society. And there are also the places at which politicians, the military and their advisors gather to make their plans and strategic decisions. If you want to live in a world without war, then you must come to such places, where war is bought and sold as a normal part of life. You must come to the meetings of the global war planners, to the think tanks and events that shed a light of legitimacy on the dqrk face of war. You must come to the streets and the train tracks over which the machinery of war runs.

You must come to Munich!


ConAction (Group working on Internatonalism in Munich, AKM – fight against fascism Munich, JAM the young autonomous group Munich, The Paula Group)

Supporters:
Autonomous Antifascist [f], Antifa hg Bad Homberg), Bernhard Schmid (journalist), a.l.d.e.n.t.e. (Augsburg), Group Weed (Oberhausen)


Here you can support the ConAction call:
con_action@no-nato.de