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Rage against the NATO war conference
no-nato - 31.12.2005 03:17
The days of war-planners meeting in Munich, going largely unnoticed by the general public, are a thing of the past. Meanwhile they have to barricade themselves behind a mass of police units because in the last few years thousands of people have confronted the military's generals, the war ministers and the arms lobbyists/dealers with their resistance.
There are reasons enough for this. The German armed forces (Bundeswehr) celebrate in their 50th year of existence as a globally active "peace-keeping" force and increase their participation in the "war on terrorism" not only in Afghanistan. The USA and Great Britain and their occupying regime in Iraq have created a system that in reality offers the Iraqi people only terror and a fight for survival.
Rage against the NATO war conference – they make war, we make trouble
The rulers in the EU continue to aspire to the formation of a European military force despite the failure to implement a Europe-wide constitution: The supposed protection from terrorist attacks serves as a convenient springboard for racist exclusion tactics, repression and deprivation of human, civil and international rights.
For these reasons the exponents of such policies are getting together in Munich’s Hotel Bayerischer Hof from 3rd to 5th February 2006.
Let’s prepare a suitable reception for them!
Siko reloaded
The Conference on Security Policy (SiKo), hosted by Horst Teltschik and financed by the German government, is a significant interface between states, the military and the private economy, where military strategies and economic interests come together.
Wars worldwide, and the concomitant military occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan stood at the heart of the programme in the last few years of the conference. The German government uses the conference as an important forum to push forward the militarization of the EU and to present itself as a military global player.
In 2005 the financing conference of the federal association of German industry took place in Munich, firmly interlinked with the security conference and concerning the financing of North Africa, the Near East and Iraq: The overlapping of themes and personnel reflected clearly the connection between capitalist globalization and its militaristic confinement.
Since the security conference fell into difficulties of its own legitimization due to the strong anti-war protests, the organisers of last year’s conference attempted to impart upon the meetings the appearance of a ‘peace conference’ by inviting the UN general secretary Kofi Annan.
In his speech, and stepping into line with the event’s new image, Annan attempted to justify ‘preventive’ wars.
The upcoming Conference on Security Policy will offer the EU and the USA an opportunity to evaluate their war plans with regard to Iran. At the 2005 conference the representatives of Germany’s CDU/CSU conservatives, who in the new government will be predominant, were already demanding the further development of the Bundeswehr for global combat deployment, the strengthening of NATO, and deployment of the Bundeswehr within Germany.
The warmongers in Hotel Bayerischer Hof must be confronted with our anger and our resitance!
Smash racist identities!
Virulent, racist agitation against “Arabic” or “oriental” looking people who in the course of public discussion are declared to be ‘terrorist suspects’ has increased since 9-11. This hounding and baiting lurks within the bounds of the debate over migration whose aim was and is, to portray ‘foreigners’ as a threat, with the help of racist and culturalist stereotypes. Societies such as those in Afghanistan or Iraq appear thus as a barbaric counterpart to the ‘free western world’.
Here, within the bounds of this discourse even exponents of the patriarchic model regularly denounce the oppression of women in Muslim society, and in reality military invasions do not bring about any positive changes for these women: Everywhere the NATO states go with thier coterie of civil personnel and NGOs, there is a boom in the exploitation of women and girls through forced prostitution. The resistance of women against these conditions, for example in Iraq or in Afghanistan, is ignored in much the same way as the patriarchal structures here in the big cities.
Withe the conception of “western values” with which the capitalist-patriarchal system legitimize the “western world”, an “outside” is created requiring a martial democratization via a supposed “civilization”.
For the peoples of the global South, this “logic” means only derogation, exclusion suppression and war. for the majority of the peoples of the western industrial nations this logic signifies racist “anti-terror” paranoia, “preventive” wars and social cuts.
With the patriarchal division of the world into “good” and ”evil” there is no room for emancipation and liberation unless we struggle for it ourselves!
Global Error / Game Over
The dominant dividing of the world into “civilization” and ”barbarism” ignores the fact that the NATO states and their allies are befouling the world with war and terror. Quite cynically they legitimize this at the conference as a “challenge to poverty and oppression”. In reality they have nothing else to offer the peoples other than praising the free market and military “liberation” which is nothing other than an endless continuation of the license to make war and to institutionalize lawlessness.
North American and European states collaborate worldwide with authoritatian regimes and with reactionary religious movements as long as they are willing helpers for economic investments, neoliberal restructuring programmes and in countering rebellions. That such “partners” such as the Baath regime can become amongst other things a quick pretext for the next war of aggression, does not conflict with these considerations. Peripheral warlike conflicts are represented in the media as “religeous fundamentalism” or “ethnic conflicts” and thereby viewed as a product of irrational violence. However, the rise in the privitisation of violence such as civil war militias, paramilitary units or so-called security firms which are aimed in the main against the civil population is in reality the result of the globalization of neoliberal capitalism which is driven by the dominant states in the west.
It is indivisibly bound up with the caüpitalist logic in which military force has or is a significant economic factor and large areas of the world are sacrificed to misery. The “western democracies” create zones of lawlessness especially in those places where capitalist economics can no longer offer the people a decent life. Zones of lawlessness in the form of an occupational regime with an unlimited, unconstrained warrant to govern, such as in Kosovo where mainly European NATO troops militarily ensure the destruction of Yugoslavia while under the watchful control of German banks, where the German Mark and then the Euro was introduced as official currency to drive forward the economic carving up of a former sovereign land.
Zones of lawlessness such as at the militarily controlled frontiers of Fortress Europe, for instance at the fences around the Spanish exclave of Ceuta where deadly force is used against refugees and migrants. Zones of lawlessness in ex-territorial refugee camps in North Africa or in prisons or torture centres such as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Zones of martial law such as in New Orleans where, following a hurricane, the national guard was sent against the Afro-American civil population with a shoot-to-kill policy.
In the "new world order" of global capitalism the borderline between war and peace is blurred. The state of emergency of depriving of rights and of war becomes a normality. Let us create realms for a worldwide emancipating resistance against war and oppression!
Resist Old Europe!
Despite the failure to implement an EU constitution via a broad resistance against a neoliberal Europe of militarizing and social cuts, the old plans are still being aspired to, and these will play a central role at the conference. In the “European Security Strategy” (ESS) and in the "European Defense Paper" European military strategists have designed scenarios for worldwide combat deployment for the “defence of European interests” including “preventive” wars of aggression and use of atomic weapons. The core of such plans is made up of the 60,000 strong European intervention force, which is to be strengthened via mobile "Battle Groups" and will be deployed on combat missions mainly in Africa from 2007 onwards. Not only the EU intervention force and the "Battle Groups" as well as the "NATO Response Force", (which has been at the ready since 2003 for a worldwide war on terrorism) but also the German Bundeswehr is at the forefront of such plans. The military great-power ambitions of Germany and the EU effect massive cuts into our living standards in the form of social services cutbacks educational reductions and the destruction of wage tariff rights. And right there, where it is especially hard to find a job, an apprenticeship or a tertiary education without fees, that’s just where you’ll find the military recruiting young people with the promise of a secure job in times of crisis.
lndeed, the connection between neoliberal social cutbacks and militarization is deeper still: The increased capitalist competition within locations in particular regions forces a neoliberal mobilization of society, which finds a logical continuum only in military mobilization in the worldwide struggle for raw materials and markets for their products.
Global resistance against global war!
The neoliberal ideology of the ruling elite requires in addition the idea that there is no alternative to global capitalism in its multifarious forms. However there are ever more and more people who are no longer satisfied with these miserable conditions and circumstances. Women’s groups and students in Iraq defend themselves against sexist and homophobe attacks by religious militias and demand at the same time an end to the occupation of their country.
Workers and the unemployed begin to rebel against the miserable living conditions under the regime of the occupying forces. The Iranian left wing in resistance against the regime want anything but a "regime change" via US and European bombing terror and rely instead on the struggles of the women, the workers and the students. We must seek practical solidarity with just such movements. As a part of worldwide movements against global capitalism and against militarisation, we are mobilizing against the NATO war conference in Munich and against the World Economic Forum in Davos. In 2007 together with many others we shall counter the G8-meeting in Heiligendamm near Rostock, Germany with our resistance.
Struggle together for a better life beyond the violence of the patriarchy and capitalist exploitation, beyond war and reppression, racist exclusion, national and religious narrow-mindedness – here and worldwide!
Resist against the Bundeswehr’s oath-taking and against military bases!
Sabotage the wars of the ruling elite!
Put pressure on the NATO war conference in Munich!
Contact:
 stadtplenum@no-nato.de
Friday 3rd February 2006
17:00 Meeting at Marienplatz (Munich’s central square).
18:00 Bicycle-demo from Marienplatz to Prinzregentenplatz
19:30 Anti-capitalist evening walkabout at Prinzregentenplatz
Saturday 4th February 2006 | 12:00
International demonstration at Lenbachplatz
(join in the internationalist block)
Convergence Center
open from Thurs 02.02. – Sun. 05.02.2006
 Website: http://no-nato.de/cms1
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