arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

On February 1st and 2nd, the NATO Conference on Security will be taking place in Munich, Germany. Under the pretext of discussing security strategies, high ranking army officers and politicians of NATO member countries will gather in order to discuss strategies of carrying out their war against the poor and exploited.

NATO is the military arm of imperialism. It is its main instruments to wage war against whatever country or people who dares to resist imperialist subjugation. In the last decade we have seen NATO bombing Iraq, once a prosperous country, back to the medieval times, causing in 11 years millions of deaths. We have seen NATO attacking Yugoslavia, bringing death, destruction, devastation, nuclear contamination to millions of people. While we are reading, we know that troops from NATO member countries are bombing and destroying Afghanistan, one of the poorest and suffering countries of the world - all that in the name of Freedom and Justice.

NATO is the military arm of a political and economic system - imperialist globalisation - that means nothing else than war, famine, exploitation and oppression for the big majority of the world population.

Against globalisation, a broad resistance movement has been growing in several countries in the very heart of imperialism, protesting against its various institutions in Seattle, Prague, Nice, Goteborg, Genoa and Brussels. Genoa has shown that imperialism does not hesitate to massively use violence also in its own countries. However, Genoa has also clearly shown, what had already been apparent before: the anti-globalisation movement is highly heterogenous. Its numerous components have strongly differing political approaches and aims, reaching from openly reformist forces who call for a "differenet globalisation" to anti-imperialist and revolutionary communist organisations.

It is apparent that imperialism has been trying to split the movement co-opting those who expressed their readiness to serve as the "better" side of globalisation - that is to say globalisation from "below". Under the guise of human rights and democracy they provided the NGO's cover for the imperialist aggressions. Those forces who have been hesitating or refused that choice got violently repressed as we have seen in Gothenburg, Genoa and Brussels resulting in the first martyr of the anti-globalisation movement - Carlo Giuliani. Therefore we have to defend ferociously the democratic right to resist against globalisation, capitalism and imperialism which is being more and more restricted.

We refuse the division put forward by the bourgeois media between "peaceful and responsible protesters" and "violent and irresponsible radicals". It was essentially the state machinery which attacked and self-defence has been a necessity. At the same time we warn certain parts of the movement not to get caught in that very same trap. To proclaim the attack in exacerbated verbal radicalism (actually seeking the media spectacle covering up lacking political consequence to side with the wretched of the world like the people of Yugoslavia, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Colombia and to fight the imperialist attacks) under the given disproportionate relationship of forces leads inevitably to defeat. This is not only true for those who just talk about attacking but also those who actually did attack regarding the use of violence as a matter of principle. The Genoa defeat in terms of street fighting should teach us a lesson.

September 11 has shown us what really does separate the anti-imperialist forces fighting consequently against globalisation and those ready to compromise with imperialism. September 11 was a political acid test for the anti-globalisation movement challenging it to show how deep its opposition against this imperialist system was rooted. A worldwide massive propaganda campaign against "terrorism", unprecedented in its racist and imperialist contents, was preparing the ground for the latest imperialist war, the so-called war of Good against the Evil. Instead of totally rejecting the imperialist approach, instead of negating any right to whatever imperialist institution to call whoever "terrorist", instead of unconditionally defending the right of the oppressed and exploited masses of the South to take up their liberation struggle regardless of its forms, the anti-globalisation movement has in many of its components either openely sided with imperialism or maintained a position!
of "neutrality" equally condemning the imperialist war as well as the "terrorist" attacks. Thus, as a final consequence it has failed to side with those, who it proclaims to be fighting for: the dispossessed, the exploited, the suffering masses of the South of the world.

Today, under the pretext of its "war against terrorism" imperialism is preparing itself to definitely wipe any resistance against its domination. Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Palestine, Colombia are presently or potentially places where imperialism is overtly or covertly waging war. Today, it is the duty of all sincere anti-imperialists to defend the right of these people to resist the imperialist agression and to fight for their self-determination.

With the "war on terror" waged by US imperialism and immediately seconded by its European junior partners also any possibly antagonistic opposition in the very metropolises aligning with the wretched of the world should be extinguished before is becomes effective. In the West which claims for itself to be the palladium of democracy, the most basic civil rights are being suspended in an unprecedented way exceed the dark times of McCarthyism. The way the prisoners of war from Afghanistan are treated violating any human right is only a first taste of what is still to come. The ruling imperialist oligarchy is preparing the ground for a new totalitarian regimes to defend its global tyranny not only subduing the billions of wretched in the capitalist periphery but also crushing the opposition in the imperialist centres.

While the anti-imperialists do not share the illusion that globalisation can be reformed, we do strive for a front as broad as possible of all forces opposing the new common enemy - imperial totalitarism. At the same time the Anti-imperialist Camp calls upon all those forces whose opposition against imperialist globalisation does not stop with the demand for taxes and for a humanized globalisation and whose solidarity with the oppressed is unconditioned to join hands in a common anti-imperialist front.

Smash NATO!
Stop the "war against terrorism"!
Defend the elementary democratic rights in Europe and the USA!
For the right of the oppressed to fight for their liberation - in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Colombia and anywhere else!
Imperialism sows death - death to imperialism!

Join the block of the anti-imperialist camp in Munich!
February 2, 12 am, Mariannenplatz
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