alks

this translation had initially been published here because the rant.li server had crashed. it links a now-deleted but essentially identical version of the communiqué, hence the different source linked here.

Space Tech Expo Europe

Space Tech Expo Europe will take place for the 6th time in Bremen's exhibition halls from November 14 to 16, 2023. It is Europe's largest and most important exhibition and conference for space technology and services. This is where the facets of the aerospace industry come to life based on the content debates and the companies involved. The declared aim: business, networking and presentation of the latest developments. The exhibition in Halls 4 to 6 will focus on space production and testing services, components and systems technology for spacecraft as well as launch vehicles and satellite programs. Over 650 exhibitors from more than 40 countries will be presenting their products and services. A significant proportion of the exhibitors will be exhibiting under the heading Military. In addition to the five largest aerospace employers Ariane, Orbital High Technology Systems (OHB), Airbus Defense and Space, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM), DSI Aerospace, Polaris Raumflugzeuge, Shieldex, Ferchau, as well as the city and the University of Bremen (Humans on Mars) are also represented from Bremen. Parallel to the exhibition, a conference will be held at the same location to discuss technical, political and strategic details.

Attack from behind

We took the ongoing trade fair as an opportunity to carry out a militant action by an anti-capitalist and anti-militarist climate movement in the late afternoon of November 14. While participants met inside for networking, we made an appointment to express our aversion. We barricaded the street behind the exhibition grounds with burning tires and threw colored glass and pyrotechnics at the glass facades of the halls. It rattled violently. The aim was to disrupt the relaxed exchange with an offensive intervention. The representatives of the arms industry were to be confronted with the consequences of their business.

Bremen as an armaments base

It is no coincidence that the Space Tech Expo is taking place in Bremen. Bremen is an armaments stronghold. No other city in Germany has a comparable armaments density. Bremen's armaments companies make a considerable contribution to the development of the [Federal defense forces of Germany]'s global operational capability and to the spread of weapons of war and equipment around the world, particularly with satellites and drones, electronics for the navy and army, warships and aircraft construction.

The city profits from crises and wars, and weapons exported from here promote conflicts around the world. Bremen is home to five armaments companies of German, in some cases European and even global importance: Atlas Elektronik, EADS Airbus, Rheinmetall Defence Electronics, the Friedrich Lürssen shipyard and OHB.

Despite anti-militarist critique and attacks against OHB, the company is attempting to make the Bremen/Bremerhaven region more attractive for the high-tech armaments industry with major projects. The German Offshore Spaceport Alliance consortium, to which OHB belongs, was recently founded. The ludicrous goal: a floating spaceport in the North Sea. Thousands of small satellites will be launched into space for commercial purposes in the coming years. The first missions are already planned for April 2024. With this initiative, the consortium is pursuing the goal of establishing Bremen as an international hub for commercial space travel. But how high will the ecological costs be if thousands of liters of rocket fuel are repeatedly burned over an already unstable habitat such as the North Sea?

War, high-tech and male fantasies of omnipotence

Satellite technology is touted as a research tool for detecting environmental disasters and changes. Space organizations, such as NASA or ESA, present themselves as primarily scientific institutions. The fact is, from its beginnings to the present day, aerospace has been dominated by the military. Communication and imaging satellites are an important infrastructure for the surveillance of other states or one's own population, they serve to seal off Fortress Europe, to reconnoitre the enemy during war or in preparation for it. They are an indispensable component for military communication and industrial processes. The aerospace industry is one of the key players in the arms industry!

War, high-tech and male fantasies of omnipotence have a long patriarchal tradition. In space travel, various forms of oppressive power structures intertwine in a dangerous way. From militaristic masculinity, misogyny and colonial thought patterns to the egomaniacal symptoms of turbo-capitalism, the problems of our world are combining and shifting into new spheres. The personification of this development in the form of Elon Musk is no coincidence, but a logical expression of this area of capitalism.

Climate

Since 2022 at the latest, it has been clear to the global public that if things continue at this rate, the earth will not warm by 1.5 degrees Celsius but by 2.5 – 3 degrees Celsius by 2100 and numerous tipping points will soon be reached. The consequence: a chaotic collapse of climate and ecosystems, the devastation of entire regions, extreme weather conditions and rising sea levels, species extinction, hunger and the flight of hundreds of millions of people.

Technologies such as satellite technology are propagated as the solution to the climate catastrophe. Behind this ideology, however, is a business-as-usual approach. Dynamic entrepreneurs sell their start-ups as world-saving machines and politicians all over the world finance their megalomaniac plans for fear of being too late in the capitalist colonization of space.

We must act now to limit the consequences of climate change! Instead of catapulting capitalism into a new orbit, we should – no, we must – do everything we can to sabotage it! To do this, we must also expose the ideologies that sell us the destruction of the earth as a humanistic engine of progress. Space Tech Expo Europe is an element of this propaganda strategy. Let's prevent it! By any means necessary!

Switch-OFF! The system of destruction

Some eco-anti-militarists

https://switchoff.noblogs.org/post/2023/11/14/angriff-auf-space-tech-expo-europe-2/