<nettime> revistaebeldia.org - Casarini, Elorriaga and HEMISPHERIC FORUM AGAINST MILITARIZATION

["ricardo dominguez" <rdom@thing.net>]

Originally published in Spanish by Rebeldi'a
*******************************
Translated by irlandesa

Rebeldi'a
Issue #5
http://www.revistarebeldia.org

Throughout Italy: The Multitude Against the Empire

Luca Casarini

Throughout Italy, ever since the beginning of the bombing of Iraq, there
have been continuous, nonstop demonstrations against the war.  Marches
around military bases - our country is, unfortunately, full of them -
thousands of persons laying siege to US and British consulates and
embassies, strikes by students, occupations of universities.  Rallies,
sit-ins, the blocking of highways and railroad tracks, meetings in
workplaces, marches with torches, prayers by Catholics in churches,
motions for peace approved by town councils.

The reasons for such a constant commitment by so very many persons -
despite the fact that the war has already begun - must be sought in what
happened prior to this phase.

What must be analyzed, above all else, is what happened, here and in the
world, before Bush and Blair's bombs exploded.  A multitudinous movement,
millions and millions, who simultaneously invaded all the plazas of the
planet, in order to try - preventatively - to stop the war.  All of us
hoped that what the Washington Post had described as "the greatest moment
of rupture between the governed and their leaders" - or, according to the
New York Times:  "The birth of a new superpower, Global Public Opinion" -
would be enough to interrupt the tragic plans of the White House and
Downing Street.  We hoped that, by demonstrating in the plazas and by
carrying out very radical actions prior to the war, the forceful position
taken by humanity could combine with those conflicts which had arisen
within the empire's constituents, among leaders of nations that were not
at all peaceful or pacifist, like Chirac, Putin and the Chinese
government.

Nonetheless, the war began, without consensus among the people, nor among
all the powerful.  This tragedy causes one to think, it should make one
reflect.  We are faced, in reality, with a Coup within the Empire, and the
consequences will be suffered by not only the old diplomatic and political
institutions, like the United Nations - which has been completely
shattered - but, above all, by humanity and its means of constructing a
new democracy.  We must trust that the people, so numerous, will continue
mobilizing for this as well:  they are perfectly aware of the fact that
the war has a global objective, although the Iraqi civilians are suffering
it materially, and that objective is the construction of a new permanent
model of domination in the world.

The leaders of the United States have transformed September 11 into the
new Pearl Harbor.  There were two possibilities:  this one, that is making
the world think that the World Trade Center killings were caused by an
enemy attack from the outside.  The other one, which is taking hold every
day, especially in the consciences of millions of US citizens, concerns
the economic system of dictators, fundamentalists and CIA officials, oil
men, bankers, financiers, sometimes friends and sometimes enemies,
sometimes competitors in the global market, other times allies.  The idea
that this system has collapsed, exploding from within, in the exact same
place where it was produced.  If the Pentagon's propaganda had wanted to
transform September 11 into Pearl Harbor, the war in Iraq could be
Hiroshima:  the affirmation through force of a model which they want to
impose on a global and permanent basis.  The most worrisome aspect of all
of this is that, exactly as in Hiroshima, it is base!
 d on war against civilians.  Ever since Hiroshima, throughout all modern
wars, civilians have made up between 70% and 80% of the victims.  The same
ones who had been previously granted dictators, sanctions, blockades, all
kinds of suffering, and who are then bombarded, always at the hands of the
same, extraordinarily generous, soldiers of good.

The truth is that global public opinion has not managed to stop the war,
but it has become established as a new public space, as an alternative to
the single belief system.  The very concept of war has been transformed,
as war against civilians.  The concept of peace has also changed, since it
is no longer the period of time between one war and the next.  How, then,
can we refer to a situation as peace which, even without bombings, causes
millions of deaths every year from hunger, thirst, AIDS, pollution?  
These changes in the perception of war and peace were evident during the
great demonstrations prior to the attack.  Many people had signs and
posters which associated the universal "stop the global war" with slogans
against neoliberal globalization.  For the activist, global public, being
against the war means fighting against the World Trade Organization (WTO),
the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the group of 8
(G-8).

The paths which lead from Seattle, from Genoa, are intersecting with those
which are just beginning to be followed in an attempt to stop the
barbarity of the bombs.  The global war is broken down into different
levels of intensity.  There is a perpetual state of injustice, of lack of
liberty and dignity, which is caused by the multinationals and neoliberal
policies. These decisions are made around the sanctuaries of the Empire,
and this condition is already being perceived as a real war, since it
causes millions of deaths and devastating consequences throughout the
world.  The movement which is fighting against the war has defined the
conflict in Iraq as a war for oil, and the Bush administration is
identified with the multinational Exxon, which sells fuel to the
Anglo-American troops.  The multinationals of arms, which sold Saddam
everything necessary for massacring Kurds and Iranians, are now speaking
through the voice of Donald Rumsfeld, the minister of the North America!
 n war.  The people know all of this.  And they know that the war for
water has begun alongside the war for oil.  Almost two billion people
throughout the world do not have access to sources of clean water.  In
September, the next WTO summit will be promoting the privatization of
water sources. Opposing it, blockading it, it will be the same for all
those who are opposed to the global war.

The movement against the war has established itself as a global and
activist public, unifying, in fact, those experiences which have been
accumulating throughout the world in the struggles against the neoliberal
policies of the Empire's great economic summits, with the ethical
dimension of condemnation of the genocide of humanity.  Catholics and
laypersons have found themselves together in this terrain, and this fact
is relevant and unprecedented, most especially in Italy.

The fact that the bombing started despite the uprising of millions of
persons, did, however, bring about an energetic debate on the methods of
the struggle.  If marching and refusing to accede to the governments would
have been enough, then that would have represented a great and positive
novelty for everyone.  What is happening, unfortunately, emphasizes the
fact that the degree of authoritarianism, of dictatorship, in the makeup
of the Empire, is extremely high , and it is reducing, as never before,
the real spaces for democracy.  According to those who rule, public
opinion is not heard, it is created.  If it is favorable to the new
emperors' plans, it is used in order to create staged public spaces, in
order to support the actions of the sovereigns.  If it is opposed, it must
be annihilated.  In any manner.  With television and clubs, with bombs and
with Hollywood.  How, then, are we going to oppose such a reality?  
Obviously, the question is still without any definitive !
 answers, but it is essential for us to begin positing it throughout the
world.  It is essential, in the universities in Arab countries throughout
the world, that they begin to shout "Stop the War!" before "Allah is
Great!" It is also essential that it is understood in the west that
conflict, direct action, the methods of rebellion, active civil
disobedience against the war, are not the romantic details of some
antiquated revolutionary dreamers, but the only way to think, in this
context, that another world is possible.

But how can we preserve and broaden a public space, a substantive public
opinion against the Empire (and one which is also quite fragile from the
blows which it receives from the sovereigns), and at the same time
traverse that space with methods of struggle appropriate to a substantive
movement capable of change?  It is a dilemma, but there has already been
some experimenting, and there will be much more.  The fact is that those
who say it was enough to march, or vote, or participate in the decisions
of power, have very little voice in the discussion.

The Italian Practice of Train Blocking

During the period which preceded the war, there were two moments in Italy,
among many others, of extraordinary importance for the beginning of a
response to that question.  The first moment was undoubtedly, as it was
throughout the planet, February 15, the day of the global uprising against
the war.  In Rome, millions of persons from throughout the country
occupied the city.  It was something which had never been seen before, a
multitude of people, aware of being part of something quite large,
enormous, which was occupying all the capitals of the world at the same
moment.  A river of people, united in condemnation of the war, who dreamed
of being able to stop it.  The fact that this took place based on a call
which had been made from Porto Alegre presents us with the idea of the
intertwining of the movement of the movements and the new "Stop the War"
sentiment.  Hours of demonstrations, with the city completely stopped and,
at the end, the reading of a new letter from the Su!
 p, read by the mother of Carlo Giuliani, our brother who was assassinated
in Genoa by the carabinieri in the battle against the G-8.  It should be
emphasized that, in addition to the incredible strength of this multitude,
was how everyone wanted to know how many people were marching in other
place s in the world.  How many in the United States, how many in South
Africa or in the Philippines, how many in London or in Mexico.  
Communication went from being something technical to something political,
becoming the means of organizing directly and simultaneously.  Without
belonging to a single organization, being one single multitude.  
Satellite television and radio channels were turned on, connected
throughout the world, in an attempt, among other things, to speak to the
Iraqi people.  The red zone of information was violated, through direct
production, outside the official media.  In Italy, GlobalTV and
Globalradio were the disobedient means for being inside that multitude.

Still impressed by something which we had never seen before, and something
which had taken place before, and not after, the outbreak of the war, a
few days later we experimented with the substantive potential of the
attempt to stop the war.  All of us had listened to Marcos' words and
those of our brothers and sisters from the Selva, and we always had the
same question in our minds:  How to avoid the easy trap of believing that
it was enough that we were many and to produce great events, while the
powerful still continued to move forward in their path of death?  How to
do everything possible in order to stop and to attack that machine of
death, without separating ourselves from that huge multitude?  How to
build conflict and consensus, how to transform a symbolic movement into a
substantive one?

The occasion presented itself to us with the beginning of the transfer of
US war machinery from a base in northern Italy to the center, using three
Italian trains.  The Italian government had authorized it, thus marking
its direct participation in the organization of the war.  It used trains,
ports and airports for the North American army without a debate in
Parliament.  We learned from reports from railroad and information workers
among activists that trains were en route, carrying weapons.  In a small
station in the province of Padua, on the line to the south, at seven in
the evening, two hundred disobedients occupied the station, blocking the
train traffic, including the train of death.  Fires were set on the
railway, as a large number of anti-riot police began arriving.  The news
was heard immediately, thanks to Globalradio, which began transmitting 24
hours a day, via satellite, the Internet and modular frequency.  The train
was blocked, but what was extraordinary was t!
 hat thousands of persons, throughout the 300 kilometers from one base to
the other, upon hearing the news, began organizing blockades, in case the
police had attacked the first group.

That is how the biggest act of disobedience against the war began,
organized by communication, and developed around an impressive number of
different methods, whose central objective was blocking the trains of
death.  That action, which continued for 7 days, without interruption,
involved very many, and a wide variety, of persons.  From those who
provided information about the arrival of the trains and about the police
movements, to those who organized stoppages of other trains, activating
the emergency brake in order to stop traffic and to allow activists to
organize.  After workers refused to drive those trains, the government had
to militarize them.  A debate began throughout the country, and also
within the movement, because the State obviously considers blocking trains
to be an illegal action.  The discussion, however, became quite
interesting, since waging an illegal and illegitimate war was much worse.

One of the most interesting aspects was the use of communication as a
means of organizing the initiative.  Everyone turned into an activist:  
from the railroad workers who explained the trains' paths to us, to the
passengers on the other trains who called the radio if they saw anything
strange.  From the young people who were willing to sit down on the
railroad tracks day and night, to the retired workers advising us as to
how we could block the traffic through small acts of sabotage.  
Globalradio no longer had just an information role.  It was directly
organizing the most extensive action. The radio itself was action, heart
and collective head for the multitude in action.  The train blocking
initiative - called train-stopping - demonstrated that the war was inside
our country, and that it is completely just to disobey laws in order to
obstruct it.  It secured the enforcement of humanitarian laws, the
prohibition of the transporting of military apparatus to be utilized in I!
 raq, against the laws of the Empire imposed by the Italian government
against the views of its citizens.

At that moment, the movement not only turned rebel, but also substantive.
As in all wars, all of us turned into deserters, and resistance begins at
precisely that point, with desertion, with rejection.  The powers had to
show their true face:  the trains, after many days, had reached their
destination, in Tuscany, protected by an army, conducted by soldiers and
with blockades on all sides.  Then blockades began of civilian airports,
as well as incursions into military airports, both of which were being
used for the transportation of North American troops.  The soldiers often
had to carry out transport operations of war materiel cargo in the ports,
because the civilian personnel refused.

The Practice of Disobedience Becomes a New Language

War is a complex machine, this war especially.  In addition to being
different from old wars because it is directing its terror and destruction
against civilians and not against armies - which are useless in the face
of the appalling technology of death - it is made up of commercial,
political and communications mechanisms which have already been revealed,
made public. For example, always within the framework of actions
attempting to block the war, we discovered that the General Markets of
Padua, in northern Italy, were earning millions of dollars for warehousing
fruits and vegetables for US soldiers in the war.  The North American
military administration even had their own commercial contract agencies in
that public market, and they were sending the products to military bases
throughout Europe through private companies.  The disobedients have
already, on two occasions, blocked that market.  The slogan, "No food for
killers," has been joined with the more well-known one of !
 "No blood for oil," which underlines the importance of the role of oil
multinationals in this war.  In this context, the Esso gas station chain,
Italian affiliate of Exxon, has been boycotted and sabotaged in Rome
during a public action by the disobedients.  Five of them, disobedients
from the Corto Circuito social center, were jailed.

At the same time, in Venice and Falconara (central-east), disobedients
have blocked Esso's storage facilities for an entire day.  Many bank
agencies, such as the National Bank of Labor and the Bank of Italy, who
are investing money in large weapons company actions, are being blocked
during demonstrations, and they write on their windows:  "Armed banks."  
British and North American consulates and embassies are, of course, being
laid siege to, protected by the police and surrounded by thousands of
people in the marches.  These acts of disobedience and boycott are
referencing a new language:  the movement has become substantive because
it is implementing its own laws, from below, in order to end crimes
against humanity.  It is implementing blockades of the merchandise of war,
sanctioning those who are speculating in the war, breaking off diplomatic
ties with political representatives of the governments at war.  That
movement is dreaming up another possible world, and it knows that, in
order to achieve that world, it must remove the dimension of unjust and
cynical legality of the market of war, in order to make room for humanity.

<<<MORE>>>

Originally published in Spanish by Rebeldi'a
******************************* Translated by irlandesa


Rebeldi'a Issue #5 http://www.revistarebeldia.org



"As If We Had Drivers Licenses"


Javier Elorriaga


General, your bomber is powerful. It flies faster than the storm and
carries more than an elephant. But it has one defect:  It needs a pilot.
General, man is quite useful.  He can fly and he can kill. But he has one
defect:  He can think.

 - Bertolt Brecht



Twenty-four hours after attempting to eliminate Hussein by blitzing a
residential district in Baghdad with missiles - marking the formal
beginning of the Iraqi invasion - we could hear an analyst on the radio
explaining to us why another Vietnam was no longer possible.  Because the
technological superiority of the imperial troops made any kind of
resistance impossible.  And he said this rather sadly, not like those
enslaved consciences of Azteca Television who speak with fascination, from
a distance of thousands of kilometers from the impacted houses, about the
destructive capacity of the yankee weapons.  What the commentator never
told us was that it is that very sadness - that dropping of arms in the
face of global tyranny's historic fatality, which he himself was feeling -
which is also one of the objectives of this new battle of the 4th World
War, the war which neoliberalism has been waging against the human species
for a decade.

By following the zapatista interpretation - that the Cold War was, in
reality, the Third World War of the modern age, and that the 4th World War
began with the disintegration of the so-called real socialism - we are
able to see how seemingly unconnected events are, in reality, battles
which are defining the exact nature of this 4th War.  The pulverization of
the Yugoslav State and the new parceling out of territories brought by the
Balkan War.  The invasion of Afghanistan, which changed the geopolitical
map of that region, with a new distribution of lands.  The torpedoing of
the United Nations and its Security Council, those legal instruments which
were constructed in order to control the balance between the superpowers
during the 3rd War and which are now obsolete for this new phase of
globalized capital.  And, lastly, the bestial aggression against Iraq and
the reaccomodation which it will bring to the entire geopolitical map of
the region.  These acts cannot be analyzed exclusively as the product of a
gang of crazy messianic hawks, but must be seen from the perspective of
their being consistent actions, from their criminal point of view, in
order to define the new neoliberal world order.  The 4th World War which
they are waging requires new rules, new instruments, the complete
submission of the allies under the formula. You are either with us, the
good guys, or with them, the bad guys.  One extreme or the other.  It is
not possible to have another role in the script which the Powers have
already established.  That is the reason for their contempt towards the
world, for the other powers, for world public opinion.  They are acting
within their own logic: that this is the moment for setting the rules for
the New Order - upper case - and the yankee power believes that its
military superiority is a sufficient argument for imposing them.

What we are going through today was outlined in the Powers' words in the
days following September 11, 2001, when the North American State decided
that it had a good platform for defining the battle fronts of its global
war.  It was at that time, under the umbrella of anti-terrorist hysteria,
when the Pentagon chiefs and those in charge of the yankee government's
security agencies cynically declared that anything was allowed in their
war against terrorism.  For example, making the old illegal practice of
assassinating opponents legal again.  Or utilizing mass media in order to
lie, to deceive, to cover up and to disseminate whatever was considered
necessary in the wars which they were preparing to carry out.  And, above
all, when they allowed us to see that anyone who was not prostrate in
front of them, and the New Order they wanted to impose, would be
considered a terrorist, as the enemy to be defeated.  It was then that the
ideologues of the yankee right, grouped in the Project for the New
American Century - the same ones who think and speak in the media for the
Pentagon and for Vice-President Cheney's office - began crowing again
about Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine, now retrofitted for the
entire world, deeming that the vital interests of the United States were
to be found in any part of the world:  in any dark corner of the world,
said the fanatic Bush.  The military arm of the empire had, therefore, the
duty and the responsibility to act anywhere, without any justification
other than that of declaring its security to be threatened.

That is why this military campaign has not one, but several, objectives
for the new order which they want to create:  it has to do with destroying
Iraq and then rebuilding it afterwards with private contracts. Of ensuring
control of the oil reserves of the Middle East.  Of striking another
economic and political blow at the European Union.  Of imposing the new
yankee geopolitical concept on the world.  And also of totally defeating
an alternative vision of the world, through the use of terror.

This is one of their messages to the world, to those governments which
told them in the UN that we would not support their waging war without
first fulfilling the protocols of balance which still applied among the
powers.  That is why they were not concerned about world opposition. They
are thinking beyond short term political losses, to those rules which they
are seeking to impose for global operations.

One of their greatest successes, then, is not when they destroy a hundred
tanks or a hundred houses, but when someone in the world openly states
that another Vietnam is no longer possible.

That is why it is our duty to say NO to this battle of the 4th World War.
Because it is a war against us, not just for Iraqi oil.  It is a NO to the
world order which they are establishing, a NO which means a 'yes' for
humanity, a 'yes' built with the excluded. With the marginalized, with the
millions of us who are unnecessary for those few who are already being
defeated by the yankee military power's stupid bombs, without them even
being on top of them yet.  Those few who are seeking nothing less than how
to reconfigure themselves and to insert themselves into the new global
enterprise, as local managers in the best of cases, as trusted employees
at the worst, but, at the end of the day, within it.

That is why we must fight this battle for NO to the war with those same
persons with whom we are fighting the battle for humanity and against
neoliberalism.  With the same ones who make resistance their daily action
and who have nothing to lose, since they will have already lost everything
if they are defeated by the neoliberal order.  We cannot expect much from
the governments of the world, which are, at the end of the day, in the
main in agreement with the North American State, that is, that this world
must be neoliberal since there is no other path.  The governments of
France, Germany, Russia and China see the danger of being left as
secondary actors when the rules of the 4thWorld War are being defined, and
that is why they are opposed to attacks being made without prior consensus
among the powers.  But it is a great stretch from that to being an ally in
the fight against neoliberalism and for humanity.  Their dispute with the
power of the United States is taking place on a playing field in which the
people do not play.  We have no other role than as pawns, expendable
according to circumstances.

The same thing is going on with the majority of the political parties.
They can scream against the war which is being fought thousands of
kilometers beyond our borders, but they are doing little against the local
war, which is in line with the global one.  That war which is being
imposed on our lands, that one which condemns the majority to being simple
spectators, simple buyers of merchandise or a source of cheap and
malleable labor.  It is inconsistent to yell NO to the invasion of Iraq
and to shout YES to the dislocation of indigenous communities.  Yes to
approving and keeping the IPAB every year, while realizing that that
entails reduced spending in health, education, food and housing for our
children, yes to zero tolerance.  The NO to the war cannot be separated
from the NO to the system of exploitation and exclusion in which we are
being kept in every country.  The political parties are also playing on
another field, one on which we have nothing to do.

We must build this NO with the young people, with women, with those who
have been marginalized because of their political, sexual, cultural
positions, with all of those who have always, throughout history, found
themselves in a position of technological inferiority with the weapons of
the masters, of the conquistadors, of empires.  Empires which have,
certainly, always asserted that their weapons were invincible, from the
heavy lance and the catapults of the Roman legionnaires, to the B52s which
peppered the Vietnam jungles with napalm.  To say nothing of those smart
bombs which stumble across a smokescreen along their way and become even
more stupid and explode wherever they want.  Very, very bright... the ones
who are selling them.  The more they fail, the more they sell. Their
helicopters are so sophisticated that they are of no use when there are
sandstorms, and they are in the desert!

The extremely powerful weapons of the empire are dependent on high
technology, satellites, electronics, immaculate environments, electricity,
just about everything which does not exist where the majority of people
live against whom these weapons are bring directed. Our lands are crossed
regularly by storms of sand and rain, there is generally no electricity,
and growing up on the street, surviving in the ghettoes, on the bottom of
the urban and rural ladder, where they want to keep us cornered, develops
a sixth sense which all the technology in the world will never be able to
equal.

I remember some zapatistas talking to certain persons of good will who
were explaining to them how suicidal it was to confront the Powers and
their weapons, and, even though they had managed to defeat the federales,
there's the gringos, and just look, they have satellites that can
photograph drivers licenses from space, said the city folks.  The compas
looked at them and answered, as if we had drivers licenses.

All empires, past and present, have boasted about their military
superiority, about their present conquests as if they were of the future,
and we have already seen where they end up.  In the black pages of
history, in the sad nostalgia of the official textbooks, in those films
where the powers praise and justify themselves at the same time.

It is not necessary to drop one's arms, the empire is vulnerable. Because,
despite their powerful weapons, they never take the most powerful weapon
of all into consideration:  the conscious, the innate rebellion which
every human being carries within against injustice, against fear, against
the lack of hope.  Ask the little invading soldiers, on their purported
triumphal march towards Baghdad, where the subjects to be liberated, they
said, were going to receive them with flowers.  After less than one week
of combat the commanders ordered the civilian population to not approach
their military units.  For their protection, they said.  For whose
protection?

It is one thing to massacre children from the air and from a great
distance, and another to physically occupy the public spaces, the streets,
the daily life of people who have for millennia resisted all kinds of
invading armies, of idiotic empires, excuse me, I mean to say
'invincible.' The mobilizations which are taking place all over the world
reflect the fact that people are not only rejecting this war, but that
they are willing to fight against it in the most diverse ways.  It is
absurd to want to standardize the civil response.  Many of these actions
are defying current legality, and they constitute acts of clear civil
disobedience.

Criminalizing those responses would mean nothing more nor less than
playing into the hands of the Empire, while illegitimacy and even
illegality are entirely theirs.  That is why the only thing that comments
from CNN or Fox about the violence of the mobilizations provokes in us is
laughter.  The violence is on the other side.  Lying down on the tracks of
trains which are transporting war materials, as they are doing in Italy,
or interrupting traffic on Fifth Avenue in New York, are actions which
have all our sympathy.  Despite the fact that some paid commentators are
trying to denigrate them.

The struggle of human beings against stupidity and barbarity should not be
renounced.  It cannot be.  It is history itself, and there are still many
pages left to be written.  Let us write them with rebellion, the future is
ours and, from today, it shall be so.

<<MORE>>

INVITATION TO:

HEMISPHERIC FORUM AGAINST MILITARIZATION

CHIAPAS (MEXICO), MAY 6-9, 2003

www.desmilitarizacion.org

=== Please post widely. If you want on/ off this elist:
info@rightsaction.org. ===

1st Hemispheric Forum Against Militarization: "Para Callar las Armas,
Hablemos los Pueblos" / "The People Speak to Silence the Weapons"

May 6-9, 2003, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico

In the midst of an international economic crisis, the United States
government launched a fierce military campaign throughout the world,
promoting wars and the weapons industry.  Throughout the Americas, the
phenomenon of militarization continues to invade every facet of society.
Corporate-led globalization is inextricably linked to the increase in
militarism on our continent and is manifested in the Plan Puebla-Panama,
Plan Colombia and the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

We the people must not remain silent in the face of the arrogance and
abuse of power of those who impose a future of death, domination and
economic injustice.

A number of continental networks in Latin America (the Continental
Campaign against the FTAA, Grito de los Excluidos, COMPA, and Jubilee
South/Americas) together with local and national organizations throughout
the hemisphere believe that it is imperative to unmask the way
militarization promotes war, repression and neoliberal economic policies.  
It is time for the people to speak out and take action to silence the
violence.

WE ISSUE AN INVITATION: to Civil Society in Central, South & North America
and the Caribbean to come to the First Hemispheric Forum Against
Militarization.

OBJECTIVES: To share information and analysis about the militarization of
the American Continents in all of its levels and spheres.

To share experiences about the significance of militarism and its causes,
effects and consequences on rural and urban social, political, economic
and cultural life.

To unite forces, hearts and wills in order to create alternatives and
coordinate actions for peace facing this continental militarization.

To create a permanent, long-term process of analysis, reflection,
experience sharing and search for alternatives through the Continental
Campaign to Counter Militarization.

Together building peace with justice and countering militarism,

***

WOULD YOU LIKE TO ATTEND, and/or FOR MORE INFORMATION:
www.desmilitarizacion.org.




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