The "Security Conference" - A Fraudulent Labeling

THE ‘SECURITY CONFERENCE" – A FRAUDULENT LABELING


By Walter Listl


[This address at the February 18, 2017, demonstration is translated from the German on the Internet.]


The term "security conference" is a fraudulent labeling. This weekend weapon dealers, war strategists, climate criminals and causal agents of flight meet at a Bavarian hotel for their annual propaganda forum.


They are responsible for intervention wars, environment catastrophes, refugee misery and worldwide poverty.


Preserving their cannibalistic world order is central to them, not the peaceful solution of conflicts or security. Enforcing the worldwide hegemony claims of western superpowers and corporations is uppermost. An economy that kills is maintained.


They are the real dangers and threats.


Only the worldwide resistance against their world of barbarity helps, not shackles or leg irons. Therefore we take to the streets for a world without war and exploitation of humans and nature, for a solidarity society where the dignity of all persons is inviolable. With the new US president's assumption of office, we have experienced a special kind of "Trump effect." Three to four million Americans took to the streets of the US to demonstrate against the policies of Trump.


The US experienced the greatest protest day in its history: 250,000 in Chicago, 250,000 in Boston, 400,000 in New York and between 500,000 and a million in Washington D.C. That gives us hope. The US consists of millions who resist and not only actors of ignorance, racism and war policy. Stefan Cornelius writes of this resistance in SZ (Sueddeutsche Zeitung). The fascism suspicion is on the rise in the US.


Our protest today is also a form of solidarity with the peace movement in the US and the whole world. With our actions, we are part of this worldwide protest- and the anti-war movement. This so-called Security conference certainly deserves our demonstration. A glance at Trump's horror cabinet shows the importance of this movement. Apocalypticists like Stephen Bannon are represented alongside representatives of the super-rich and the military. Bannon insists the old order must perish in a great war. "In five to ten years, we will be in a war in the South China Sea" – against the nuclear power of China. The most influential hawk in a National Security Council of the US government and Trump's closest advisor said that, not a crazed or psychotic hallucinating crackpot.


His loudmouthed chief Trump asked the question in the election campaign: "Why not use nuclear weapons if we have them?" Trump wants to cancel the Iran agreement and bury the two-state theory of Israel and Palestine. Both will increase the danger of a big war.


We say: No more world war fantasies and war preparations. Peace instead of NATO – Human dignity instead of the military – Reason instead of Trump.


Our demonstration is directed against the war- and rearmament policy of the German government, against the screening of the EU toward refugees and against the deportation pact with the despotic Erdogan regime in Turkey. Trump now serves as a welcome pretext – as an accelerant – to realize the militarization plans. Europe must wake up and become stronger militarily with the goal of establishing the EU as a world power eye to eye with countries like the US and China. That is the credo in Berlin, Brussels and in the new EU global strategy…


The EU needs to build and develop more effective European defense structures, the SIKO chief Wolfgang Ischinger declared and urged the German chancellor and the defense minister to double Germany's military budget to more than 70 billion euros.


We have a different conception of security. We turn against the military mobilization against Russia that is revived as a new scapegoat. One of the largest NATO troop redeployments is now underway on Russia's western border. An entire tank brigade, 2000 tanks, howitzers and military vehicles are shifted from Bremerhafen to Eastern Europe. To those reviving the Russian bugbear, we ask: Are Russian troops at the US borders to Mexico and Canada or are NATO troops with German military tanks at the western Russian border?


We have a different idea of security. Our security means: Germany out of NATO, dissolve NATO and replace it with a collective security system that includes all countries and makes disarmament possible.


We demand: US nuclear weapons out of Germany.


Germany signed the 1974 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. In 2010, the Bundestag with a large majority demanded the withdrawal of these nuclear weapons. However, these nuclear weapons are still stored in Buchel and are modernized so they can be operational in a big nuclear war.


It is said only NATO can decide over the withdrawal of US nuclear weapons. But that is a brazen lie of the government. The German government does not need either the approval of the US or the other NATO states. Neither the US government nor NATO decides whether weapons of mass destruction are stationed in Germany or not. Only the government of the Federal Republic of Germany decides that.


Therefore we say: All nuclear weapons out of Germany for a world free of nuclear weapons.


What we need is a different social system, a system where all people can live in dignity without fear and misery and not have to leave their homes in the millions. "The wretched of this earth today are the refugees. They flee war and torture and hunger and poverty and are excluded from the world where a fifth of the world's population consumes four-fifths of the wealth. These excluded ones press on the showcases behind which sit the squanderers of the riches of the earth," Heribert Prantl decries.



The dumb gossip that "all refugees cannot come to us" passes by the real problem. In 2016, over 5000 persons drowned in the Mediterranean. This is equivalent to the number of casualties from 25 airplane crashes. They were drowned by those who prevent legal escape routes and create ever new causes of flight with their war- and trade-policies.


Germany is the export world master in causes of flight through its weapon exports, support of despotic regimes like Saudi Arabia and Turkey and the destabilization of the economic structures of developing countries. The German government makes the Mediterranean Sea and the despot Erdogan into allies. Europe protects itself from refugees with dead refugees. This European Union kills. The phrase refugee problem is a one-word lie. This is like a corporation terminating a thousand co-workers while describing this as an efficiency problem. What nonsense in playing fast and loose with words!


The problems are the causal agents of flight, not the fleeing ones. The causal agents are responsible for the mass murder in the Mediterranean! They are responsible that people must flee from war, emergency, destruction of the environment and oppression. With their wars and trade intrigues, they ravage whole regions and force people to flee in order to survive.


These persons have every right to protection and our solidarity. They are our neighbors and friends deserving a just share of the wealth of this country and should not be misused as competitors for work, social benefits or affordable housing. They jointly create this wealth. Refugees are our work colleagues of tomorrow.


We say to those who come here: you are welcome. We are glad to have you in our demonstration.