SECURITY IS NOT WAR, TORTURE AND TERRROR

By German action committee against the 2008 NATO Security Conference

[This article published in: Sand im Getriebe, Nr. 64, 2008 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.attac.de.]

[Translator’s note: “Truth is the first casualty of war.” (Aristotle) “The swan that floats and doesn’t sink represents the intransitory in the transitory.” (Heidegger) The Great Unraveling provokes the Great Refusal. (Krugman) “You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.” (Jeanette Raskin) “Every war has two losers.” (William Stafford). Normalization of war and militarization of foreign policy are perversions like confusing offense and defense and sickness and health. We are called to resist the normalization of war by creating a new language and a new mathematics.]

They speak of “security” but their policy is war, torture and militarization.

The “security conference” in Munich is a meeting of military advisors, government representatives, generals and weapons lobbyists. Entrenched behind barbed wire fences, water hoses and a gigantic police power, five European Union (EU) and NATO representatives meet annually in a Bavarian hotel to plan war operations, international military strategies and armament sales. The official wars against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq were prepared. In this way the crucial framework is set for the so-called “global war against terror.”

NO FOREIGN OPERATIONS OF THE GERMAN ARMY

The economic and political elites of the world claim the right to unhindered access to markets and raw materials all over the globe. With military force, they enforce their economic interests and claims of power. The wars of occupation of NATO states and their allies waged under the slogan “combating terror” are themselves terror against the population” bombardment, expulsion, destruction, rape and reintroduction of international torture as in Guantanamo and secret prisons.

NATO wars and occupation regimes escalate conflicts worldwide. Self-determined projects and a democratic development have no chance.

AGAINST WAR AND TORTURE – FOR A FREE AND SELF-DETERMINED LIFE FOR ALL PEOPLE

The new militarization of German foreign policy has long led to internal militarization. This policy of the preventive “security” state involves the limiting of all civil rights by data storage, telephone conversations, monitoring PC data, surveillance of public places and private dwellings. Anti-militarists are systematically criminalized through police raids and repression before and after the G8 summit. For a long time the German army has marched on the domestic front as for example with soldiers, patrol tanks and tornados against the protests in Heiligensdamm in June 2007. For years the German army enforced the domicile law during security conferences in the Bavarian court.

AGAINST THE SURVEILLANCE STATE – FOR FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND CIVIL RIGHTS

We oppose a power system oriented in profit that stops at nothing in times of peace and times of war, a system of rigorous screening of EU-borders against refugees and migrants. The racist and anti-foreigner laws in Germany, abolition of the right of asylum, deadly attacks and the Europe-wide mass deportation of refugees to the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan are mockery of human rights and international law.

OVERCOMING THE CAUSES OF FLIGHT. OPENING THE BORDERS FOR REFUGEES AND MIGRANTS INSTEAD OF BARBED WIRE AND CAMPS

The self-appointed world rulers and war strategists are unwanted here in Munich and elsewhere. We oppose their policy of neoliberal economic power and exploitation, rearmaments and social cuts with worldwide protest and resistance. Another world is possible – a just society, a peaceful world without war and torture.

INSTEAD OF SOCIAL DISMANTLING AND REARMAMENT – REDISTRIBUTION FROM THE TOP TO THE BOTTOM

Join in the many protests and counter-events in Munich. The protests and blockades in Heiligensdamm against the G8 summit show our success. Despite demarcated zones and demonstration prohibitions, we successfully and effectively blocked access roads to the summit through civil disobedience and resistance actions. In February 2008, we will protest and resist the war criminals and torture enthusiasts expected in Munich.