Over with Minatec (before it starts)

Since 8 o'clock this monday december 13th, a group is occupying a Minatec's building
site's crane, in order to interrupt the construction for a day (two banners have been tied: "we stop everything" and "nanotechs = giga-control"). The
occupiers, supported by demonstrators on the ground, have unrolled a
banner against nanotechnologies (« here the industry of
totalitarianism »)
and distributed some tracts to the passers-by, calling them to join them
fast.

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Over with Minatec (before it starts)
...or why we're climbing up Minatec's cranes while they're building it.

Minatec will be, provided nothing unexpected happens, Europe's most
important research, teaching and implementation center on
nanotechnologies. It seems that most people are bound to ignore to some
extent how much social and urban harms due to the existing Grenoble's
technopolis are bound to get worse: creation of an Isère Silicon Valley,
fast increase of rents and trafic jams, soaring prices, mass arrivals of
executives drawing away the poors to the suburbs... However, local
authorities keep putting forward the fact that « this future european
innovation center, designed by people involved in research and teaching,
as well as local authorities, is already internationally famous1. » But,
politically, socially, what does this Minatec project imply?

What on earth are nanotechnologies?

Nanotechnologies deal with experimenting on and reproducing mecanisms
that
occur to atoms and molecules at the nano-scale ( one nanometer= one
billions of a meter). Some corporations are already patenting matter's
constitutive elements. Carbon's nanotubes, considered as « miracle
molecules » of nanotechnologies, are implemented in pharmaceuticals,
electronics, aerospace industries, in energy and cloth-manufacturing. A
company owning key-patents on nanotubes might gain a huge economic power
over various economic fields.

When medias deal with nanotechnologies, they mention « smart » fabrics,
super-strong coatings for vehicles (to reduce breaking and crumbling in
collisions), but they conspicuously omit to mention what this kind of
research is mostly about: more and more powerful, less and less visible
weapons, biocensors and chips, destined to localize very precisely those
who wear them.

In the name of medicine or progress, are being launched research
programs, aiming at body manipulations, cerebral control, and human
beings
standardization, whose practical uses are closer to eugenistic and
orwellian nightmares, and do not deal with any kind of promotion of
individual liberties, or social links and diversity.
All this research work is clearly aiming at increasing more and more the
state's control on the people in the name of security (with a little
interested help from some multinationals), and dependency to constantly
emerging machines handled by others. In the same way as with GMOs or
nuclear stuff, marketing is the priority, without any knowledge or
perfect
consideration of risks.

Nanotechs for war...

The most important goal of research on nanotechnologies is obviously
military. State power and capitalism rely partly on war economy. The
great
love story between research and army is illustrated by the close
partnership between CEA (Commissariat à l'énergie atomique) and DGA
(Direction générale de l'armement) on the Minatec project.
« Weapons based on nanotechnologies will be mass destruction weapons, and
to such an extent that nuclear, chemical and biological technology can't
hope to reach2. »

Employment or life....

Even if Minatec's morbid goals are easy to show, one of the most popular
point made by local politicians to justify its existence is the usual
employment blackmail. So, aren't our lives worth more than our jobs?
Do we
exactly know what we're doing when we're doing these jobs? Should we
submit to this blackmail if these jobs make us responsible of crimes and
catastrophes? What power should we have upon our lives?
Economically speaking, Minatec is the number one investment for the Isère
departement. The figures are so gigantic- and constantly raising- that it
is difficult to give a precise account. Let's say that for Minatec, it
involves hundreds of millions of euros (half of which coming from local
authorities), and more generally, if we include other high-technology
projects (Crolles 2 and Nanotec 300), it involves billions of euros. All
this naturally contributing to the enrichment of a handful of start-ups
and multinationals.
Never was the investment of such amounts, with such implications, decided
by the population as a whole. Allowing Minatec to build itself would mean
accepting once more to surrender our powers and our lives to a future
that
doesn't seem to us (voting once in a while being the only political
statement the State may tolerate from us).
There's no reason why we should accept as a necessity the pressure put on
us to yield and bend our backs. During the winter 2003/2004, the
occupation of the « parc Mistral » showed (among many autonomist
initiatives close to ours) that an important part of the population from
Isère (and elsewhere) is willing to put its desires to life, here and
now,
through direct and collective action on the city.

Nor obscurantists, nor scientists...

To cut short on all sorts of silly accusations that are frequently
made to
criticisms of technological development in Grenoble, let us state clearly
that we are neither obscurantists nor « against science ». Unfortunately,
it turns out that, in this social context, potential consequences and
benefits drawn by research can't be nor debated nor controlled by the
populations. Until now, this research consists only in furnishing new
power instruments, gimmicks to be sold by those who fund them and
naturally expect to make huge and immediate profit out of them.
On the other hand, technologies such as nuclear or nanotechnologies are
not neutral: they imply such degrees of specialization, power and money
accumulation that they constitute an essential part of a centralised
authoritarian and militarised society model, liable to protect them.

Over with Minatec...

In this world there's not much left for us to loose (except our chains).
And we know for good that Minatec perpetuates the surrendering of our
lives to an economical, political and technological system whose logics
point to totalitarianism. Minatec is a war project. Weapons and social
control improvement will be as useful to make wars abroad, as to renforce
national security and a general control of population...
It is for all these reasons that we're occupying Minatec's construction
site. Shutting this site for only a couple of hours is attempting to stop
a project that we refuse. It's an opportunity to launch once again the
idea of a necessary social change, here and elsewhere. To stop and think.
It seems to us essential to interrupt « development »'s headlong rush.
What we want more than anything are not « revolutionary3 » (and « smart4
») microscopic chips but revolutionary and smart ways to reorganize our
lives.

The occupiers of Minatec's building site, in Grenoble (France).

(1) « La première pierre de Minatec est posée », V. Grangier, Isère
Magazine, p. 29, october 2004, n°56.
(2)J.P. Dupuy, teacher at the Ecole Polytechnique, Stanford University
and
member of the conseil général des Mines, in L'Ecologiste, n°10, june
2003.
(3)« La première pierre de Minatec est posée », op. cité.
(4)« Dossier -Minatec, une chance pour l'Isère », Isère Magazine, p. 48,
n°57, november 2004.