<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="font: inherit;" valign="top">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span
style="font-family: Helvetica;" lang="EN-GB">Dear
friends,</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span
style="font-family: Helvetica;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Helvetica;" lang="EN-GB">Attached
you will find an English translation of
a callout for the action “Trainstopping!” (“Castor
Schottern!”), which will
take place in early to mid-November of this year in
Norther Germany. This
action promises to be both one of <b>the
most exciting anti-nuclear action in Germany for
many years</b>, and one of the
most <b>promising steps forward in the
development of the kind of mass civil disobedience</b>
we saw at the ‘Block G8’
actions in Heiligendamm, and the anti-Nazi blockades
in Dresden earlier this
year. But before you have a look at the callout –
and maybe decide to spread it
in your networks – I thought that an explanation of
the significance of what we
hope to be able to pull off in a few months might be
useful.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><font
face="Helvetica"><br>
</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Helvetica; font-weight: bold;">A
“nuclear renaissance”?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><font
face="Helvetica"><br>
</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Helvetica;" lang="EN-GB">The
nuclear energy lobby in Germany has recently
smelled blood. While for many years, it looked like
nuclear energy would slowly
(all too slowly, to be sure) be phased out, the
recent growth in awareness of
‘Peak Oil’ and future energy scarcity, together with
a largely
technofix-oriented debate around climate change has
led to what some have
called a ‘renaissance’ of nuclear energy. It seems
as though the industry feels
it can finally crawl out of the PR-hole it fell into
after Chernobyl, while governments
around the world are looking to nuclear power for
their ‘energy
security’-needs. The result: a strong push from big
energy companies and their
allies in government to extend the lifespan of
nuclear power, with a
governmental profit guarantee in case anything goes
wrong. This is both
anti-social: why guarantee the profits of energy
companies if social,
education, or health-care budgets are being cut?;
and anti-ecological: a recent
study by a governmental think-tank made it clear
that if we want 100% renewable
energy supply in Germany, the time to stop expanding
coal and nuclear power is
now, not in ten years. The government’s argument
that nuclear is a mere
‘bridge-technology’ is clearly bogus. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><font
face="Helvetica"><br>
</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span
style="font-family: Helvetica;" lang="EN-GB">Hell
no! The
anti-nuclear movement in Germany</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><font
face="Helvetica"><br>
</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Helvetica;" lang="EN-GB">This is
where we, the movements come in. For 30
years, the anti-nuclear movement has been one of the
strongest social movements
in Germany: not only has it been able to
continuously mount powerful mass
actions, involving, over the years, hundreds of
thousands of people in direct
action and civil disobedience, it is also embedded
in a social ‘common sense’,
a social majority, that is clearly opposed to
nuclear power, <i>and</i> that views civil
disobedience and
collective rule-breaking as legitimate when it comes
to this form of energy.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><font
face="Helvetica"><br>
</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Helvetica;" lang="EN-GB">Long
ago, the movement identified the question of
the disposal of nuclear waste as a key point of
leverage. Organising around one
particular location – the proposed nuclear waste
dump in Gorleben, a small
village in the Wendland-region of Northern Germany –
the movement has aimed to
make disposing of nuclear waste so difficult and
(politically as well as
economically) expensive that nuclear energy would
ultimately become
unprofitable. Roughly once every two years, a train
filled with to the brim
with highly radioactive nuclear waste – the <i>Castor</i>
(Cask for Storage of Radioactive Materials) –
running to Gorleben has thus been
a flashpoint for large-scale actions of civil
disobedience, and Gorleben has
become the epicentre of a movement that, uniquely in
Germany, unites
left-radical and autonomous groups with NGOs, local
residents and farmers with
scientists, and all of them with the majority of
society. Every time this train
is on the tracks, thousands, sometimes tens of
thousands of people get organised
to slow it down, to make it more expensive, to try
to stop it. Every time, the
government has to deploy up to 30.000 cops to
protect their dangerous cargo.
Every time, they lose legitimacy, we gain it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><font
face="Helvetica"><br>
</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b><span
style="font-family: Helvetica;" lang="EN-GB">Civil
disobedience:
taking the next step</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><font
face="Helvetica"><br>
</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Helvetica;" lang="EN-GB">This
year, another <i>Castor</i> will be running through
Germany, at the usual time in the 1<sup>st</sup>
half of November. But this year, things will be a
little different. Not just
because it’s decision time in energy politics. But
also because the radical
movements in Germany have over the last few years
had some amazing successes
with actions of mass civil disobedience. Pushed
partly by the <i>Interventionist Left</i>, a
network of what
some call ‘post-autonomous’ groups, the idea has
been for the more ‘radical’,
or ‘militant’ wing of the movement to publicly state
that our actions are not
about fighting with the police, but about achieving
our stated objective
(stopping a Nazi march, or blockading a G8-summit).
This commitment to
transparency and calculability in turn has made it
easier for more ‘moderate’
groups to get involved in forms of action that they
might otherwise have shied
away from: collective rule-breaking, civil
disobedience, direct action. With
these tactics, the movements in Germany mounted not
only the effective blockades
of the G8 in Heiligendamm in 2007, but also shut
down Europe’s biggest Nazi
march in Dresden in February of this year. Not by
fighting with the cops, but
by simply making it possible for thousands of people
to sit down on the street
in a way that they felt comfortable with, and the
police obviously felt
uncomfortable just blasting off the street (the
keyword here is ‘legitimacy’).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><font
face="Helvetica"><br>
</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Helvetica;" lang="EN-GB">With
these experiences in mind, at this year’s
Castor we are planning to go one step further. With
the history and legitimacy
of the anti-nuclear movement in mind, we are openly
calling on people to get
organised to not ‘just’ sit down on the train
tracks, or the street – but to
undermine the tracks, to openly dismantle the
infrastructure of the everyday
madness of capitalist energy politics. In this
struggle, it’s the nuclear
industry. But if this succeeds, we will have
expanded the concept of mass civil
disobedience in Germany beyond sitting down. It will
once again mean standing
up.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Helvetica;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Helvetica;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-family: Helvetica;" lang="EN-GB">Tadzio
Mueller </span></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<br>
<br>
To subscribe/ unsubscribe, change your address on the list etc.
you can find help at: <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://help.riseup.net/lists/subscribers"
target="_blank">http://help.riseup.net/lists/subscribers</a>.<br>
To defintely unsubscribe write an email to <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:g8-int-unsubscribe@lists.riseup.net">g8-int-unsubscribe@lists.riseup.net</a>
from the subscribed adress.<br>
If you have no success, write to <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:g8-int-admin@lists.riseup.net">g8-int-admin@lists.riseup.net</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
</div>
<br>
<br>
</body>
</html>