Article in: Junge Welt, 10.01.2006

Munich: Opponents of war announce actions against NATO security conference. 5,000 articipants expected at large-scale demonstration on February 4, by
Nick Brauns

The alliance against the NATO security conference (SeCo) calls this meeting of war ministers, military and armament lobbyists taking place every year on the first week-end in February in Munich “dance of the vampires”. Here, there meet those, who have been breaking international law for years. “Those responsible for torture meet those here, who aid and abet it”, declared alliance speaker Claus Schreer on Monday at a press conference in Munich. As already in the last few years, the war opponents want to prevent, by multiple counter-actions, the war strategists and profiteers from convening unbothered by the large public in the spaciously shielded luxury hotel Bayerischer Hof .

The action alliance of 50 organisations - ranging from the trade union for education and science (German abbr. GEW) by way of the Left Party and the refugee council to left-radical groups - counts on up to 5,000 participants at the mass demonstration on February 4. Already on the day before, there will take place protest events, thus an anti-capitalist evening walk to the fashionable restaurant Beetle (“Käfer”), where a banquet is given for the conference participants every year. “We want to spit the rulers into their soup, so that the food may get stuck in their throats”, thus Hans-Georg Eberl of the city plenary session of left-radical groups.

Ever more youth are recognizing the connection between education and social demolition, on the one hand, and war policy on the other, Johannes Jonic of the SDAJ utters optimistically. As opposed to the press reports, not only “professional demonstrators” but also numerous pupils and trainees were taking part in the protests against the SeCo, and at many schools, there had lately formed working circles on political questions.

Alternatives to war and militarism will be discussed at two counter-summits: at the conference organised among others by attac, ver.di and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation on February 1 and 2, there will talk, among others, the European deputy Tobias Pflüger, the Kassel peace researcher, professor Werner Ruf, and Peter Strutynski of the federal executive of the Peace Council. One major point of emphasis of the International Peace Conference taking place under the auspices of the alternative Nobel Prize winner Hans-Peter Dürr, organised by pacifist groups on February 3 and 4, is the impending war against Iran.

In contrast to recent years, the organizers of the security conference up to now keep their guard. Neither the precise topic nor prominent participants nor this year's recipient of the “peace medal” were named this year by the conference organisers or by armament lobbyist Horst Teltschik.

Also from the police, who during recent years, fulminated about thousands of autonomous protestors ready to put Munich into ash and ruins, there has up to now not yet been a statement on the protests to be expected. Apparently, the security agencies do not want to make a fool of themselves, after the violence during past years has clearly been the doing of the police and also the courts have reprimanded police measures at the SeCo.

Original on www.jungewelt.de , January 10, 2006; print edition p. 5
Translated by Carla Krüger, January 10, 2006