NATO the armed wing of capitalism

The yearly military meeting in Munich should be held from the 31. January to the 3. of February. This was an importing meeting to show up to, specially taking in consideration the big roll the military has played in the ongoing globalization. Today you really can say " No McDonalds without McDouglas". The economical globalization are in other words dependent on a strong and repressive military. Now as always the resistance against the elites is important, and the resistance against the militarism is crucial. Specially because values as civil rights, democratization and decentralization is pushed aside in favor of what has been called for the war against terrorism, done by an coalition of the world's most powerful and aggressive elites. In this meeting they should plan the development of the military globalization and plan the new wars.

I therefore hitched from England to Munich. It was a nice trip, except from that I had to show passport before I came into Munich. The police had clearly full control. On metro stations, street corners and parks there stood a lot of police. Cars, in groups of 10 to 20, drove from location to location and helicopters flew above over heads. The police came from the entire Germany.

One of the reasons there where so much police I got told was because the local political chief was from the extreme right, and that he tried to become the political chief of the whole of Germany. He had ambitions. Ambitions which hopefully doesn't become true. It is enough that both Italy and Austria has got right wing administrators. Hopefully the Germans has learned from the past. It is sad with recurrence.

There was a committee which had planned and organized the demonstration, and there where sleeping places in the city. I went there. They could here tell me that the demo had been disallowed from the police. Nothing of what had been planned could be done. The police didn't want any public demonstrations at all, and didn't want to accept any compromise. This was the day the civil rights had been taken away and the rights of expression didn't any longer occur. The reason the police gave for this was that it had been rumors about that it would come 3000 violent demonstrators. Something which was quite doubtful and surely not the real reason, taken in consideration that these violent demonstrators likely didn't even existed. The only violent thing which happened in thew entire weekend was that somebody with paint had written "We love you" on a car. This demonstration was the most peaceful demonstration I have ever been to. Anyway the commercial media wrote about how dangerous and violently the demonstrators was. Another reason was that the police meant that the slogan "From Genoa to Munich", meant the same as an invitation to violence. The police had more or less put the whole city in state of emergency.

The police had forbidden the demo, which had been agreed upon since September, barely 30 hours before it should start. This left the committee little time to discuss the conditions and reorganize. There where to little time to bring the issue to a higher level, the supreme court, something which they should do later on. The police had also tried to split the committee, by pressing the groups that got support and where dependent on governmental support, not to actively support the demo. Also in this case they would complain to higher authorities, but it would be all to late. Many German authors and artists, for instance Konstantin Wolchsen, supported the demo and assisted the committee in their affairs with the police and the authorities.

A question is what we in the future should do if this kind of strategy is going to be applied to other events. Is the only way to show political resistance to build barricades and throw molotov cocktails like in 1848? The danger is if it becomes a strategy to ban demonstrations and in that way stop the political resistance, something which will mark the final end of social democracy. As an alternative a creative company showed a good strategy by demonstrate in another way. There where four people, each of them wearing a T-shirt where one letter was written. All together the letters spelled "D" "E" "M" "O".

Because of the forbidding of all kinds of resistance and expression, the committee became rather unorganized. Nobody knew the program or what where going to happen. On the schedule some of the people from the committee and others should keep speeches on the Marienplatz Friday at 17.00, the place where the local government where placed. It could happen that nobody had gone there to show resistance at all. What met me was a lot of police standing in clusters ten and ten. There where a lot of police there, even if it also begun to show up more and more people who went for "shopping". There where no official "demonstrators", and nobody had banners etc. They wasn't allowed to demonstrate. There wasn't either anyone who kept a speech either. The leader of the committee and many others had already been arrested - without having done anything.

After a while some people started to dance and shortly after the crowd started to shout some slogans. First silently, then higher. The police went directly to action and you could hear the warning "acthung", "achtung". They tried to get people away from Marienplatz. The police made new formations, isolated and arrested people. The demonstrators didn't do anything else than looking at what the police did. It was surrealistic. They let them self be jailed. 3-400 got arrested, some where let out the following day and some didn't get out before Monday, when everything was over. This fight between the police and the demonstrators kept on the whole evening. The demonstrators tried to come with some slogans, and the people arresting them.

The next day there where around 8.000 demonstrators. Under this demo the police tried to isolate the demonstrators into clusters. Many got arrested. For instance became entire 6-8000 people isolated on Frauenstrasse under a demonstration. And very many didn't arrive. They had been stopped, either outside the city or on the border. Many busses had been stopped at the border from France, Italy and Austria In these countries there where also being kept big demonstrations in many cities, also in other cities in Germany.

In the evening there where held a press conference. The police also here tried to stop what was going on. People got stopped on the road and put into clusters. There they where kept for many hours. Anyway the press conference where kept. Afterwards some of the people who should have kept speeches on Marienplatz now kept them. We discussed the militarism, which in fact was the reason why we where there. As we discussed the police closed us in so that we couldn't go out from the building. We discussed what we should do, nobody wanting to follow the command from the police that we should go out in small groups. People stayed and in fact they started to be happy. There was like we got the smell of victory. The police had gone to far. We called for the union leaders, since we where in the union house. We also called different authorities. It was a positive ambience and people began to sing International along with attached fist. Radio Munich invited all union members to come. All this made the police to go away. They where afraid of making to many difficulties for themselves. We stood with triumph and with our attach fist.