------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- From: EuroDusnie <robbel@stad.dsl.nl> Subject: for a-infos Date: Sun, 9 Nov 1997 18:44:54 +0100 To: a-infos-raw@tao.ca Reply-to: a-infos-work@tao.ca
What was cooked up for us at the Eurotop?
This text is from an anarchist leaflet against the Amsterdam treaty. It was printed looking like the official goverment propaganda leaflet. We distributed, due to lack off funding, onley 4000 of them in Holland and Belgium but ar currently getting money together to distribute them on a larger scale.
THE LOOT OF
"THE AMSTERDAM"
A return to the days of old
A EuroDusNie publication
FACT: The LOOT has been divided
During the Amsterdam Eurotop in June of this year, 15 old men, protected by 5,000 policemen, have discussed the future of 380,000,000 people. In between the many working dinners and receptions they have divided up the loot and put the resulting agreements on paper. This text is referred to as "the Amsterdam Treaty". According to our political leaders, theirs was a fabulous achievement which should make everybody happy. After all, European unification is inevitable, necessary and good for all of us! And so the Euro-propaganda machine continues on its merry course. The mainstream media voice little or no criticism about the plans the European leaders have with us. Yet not everybody is jumping for joy at European unification. Resistance against the stealing ways of the rich upper classes is growing, even as politicians try to ignore these voices or silence them with mass arrests such as the one in June at the Amsterdam Eurotop. This brochure is a reaction to the new feat of arms of the Euro-propaganda machine, the Postbus 51 brochure "the Treaty of Amsterdam". (Postbox 51 = Dutch government information service)
FACT: The European UNIFICATION is ANTISOCIAL
Officially, the EU counts over 20 million unemployed, and some very creative statistical manipulation has to be employed even to keep it at this level. At the same time, more and more people are forced to accept unexisting jobs created within the framework of work experience or employment projects. Since these jobs wouldn't even exist in a normal world, they come with unworldly low wages and offer no future prospects at all. And then there is the flexibilisation (cretinisation) of the labour market. At all times we are supposed to be ready for our boss, who can give us the boot anytime he wants by using short-term contracts or temping agencies. Anyway, there exists a far bigger problem: the employment problem. Five days a week, eight hours a day, tens of millions of people are forced to subject themselves to the will of their bosses. Even apart from the fact that employees are generally not allowed to disagree with their bosses, they are also frequently underpaid. While all over Europe social security systems are dumped on the dungheap of history, more money than ever before is diverted to the big corporations. In the guise of great structural projects, for example, or as research programs funded with heaps of taxpayers' money. All of this happens in the name of the protection of competitiveness and thus of employment, but the net result is that there is no money left for a social policy while companies merrily continue to lay off employment or to relocate subsidiaries to countries where people can be exploited even more easily. Thanks to the Amsterdam Treaty, the European investment bank is allowed to give away even more cheap loans to small and medium-sized companies, while more money will also be spent on new airports, roads, canals and superfast trains. As if we don't have enough of those yet...
FACT: Total government CONTROL
The Schengen Treaty will become part of the European Union. This treaty states that the control which is now still enforced at interior borders will be replaced by more control at exterior borders. Yet the interior borders are still heavily controlled, only now by mobile controlling squads. Schengen is mainly directed at the prevention of illegal immigration and asylum seeking and at increasing cooperation among police forces. At the same time, however, the disappearance of control at interior borders is used as an excuse to increase control inside the different countries. At the moment, it is mainly the dark-skinned among us who are more heavily controlled under Schengen. The main purpose of the Schengen treaty is to prevent the so-called 'illegal aliens' to get a share in our prosperity by allowing themselves to be exploited for a starvation wage as illegal workers.
FACT: Europol: ALL HAIL the POLICE STATE!!
Thanks to the Amsterdam Treaty, European police force Europol will have its jurisdiction increased - all so as to be able to better protect us from crooks. But who will protect us against the biggest robbers of them all, those in politics and business? Instead of protecting us, Europol will mainly become a political instrument used to put social rebels behind bars. Like those who dare to question the sacred property rights (the so-called thieves), or those who organise themselves politically against the increasing theft by the already too rich politico-economical elite. The computer systems at Europe's disposal make Orwell's 1984 sound like an innocent fairy-tale. The scariest thing is that Europol's jurisdiction is international and the force is only accountable to itself. It is a monster which, moreover, in good European tradition, has been conceived and developed in extreme secrecy and, of course, without the European population having a say in the matter.
FACT: POLITICAL ASYLUM within EUROPE
No need to expand on this one. In the glorious Amsterdam Treaty, the European leaders have simply abolished the possibility of Europeans seeking political asylum within Europe. All governments consider themselves and their countries models of democracy. Meanwhile, in France and Spain, hundreds of Basques suspected of ETA membership are deliberately detained thousands of kilometers from their families even as human rights commissions talk of Spanish government death squads and the systematic torture of prisoners. But even countries such as Italy, Germany, the UK and Greece often persecute political radicals. The French secret service committed an assault on a Greenpeace ship, in Italy a mass court case against some 70 anarchists is entering its second year, in Germany the editors of some leftist magazines are persecuted, in the UK the same is happening to the editors of radical ecological magazines while in Greece the right to conscientious objection does not even exist and draft dodgers spend years in jail. Plenty of examples, which unfortunately rarely if ever make it into the media and thus remain invisible.
FACT: MULTInational ENVIRONMENTal pollution
Multinationals and the excessive environmental pollution they cause, are a problem which stops at no border. The Amsterdam Treaty makes life even easier for them. The debilitating 'economic growth' is sacred and to stimulate this growth even more the Treaty has given the go-ahead for enormous structural investments. The Trans European Network will provide more roads, more airports, more freight traffic, more private traffic and more superfast trains which must allow further growth. According to this utterly insane plan, the total infrastructure must be expanded by a third. Gorgeous nature areas (yes, you can still find some outside Holland) are about to be destroyed. The last colony of bears in the French Vall,e d'Aspe, the last of the sea turtles that have been nesting on the beaches of the Greek Peloponnesos peninsula will have to go, oil is being drilled on the Dutch Wadden, ... The list is long and frightening. Of course, we must admit that the number of paper and glass bins is on the rise in Europe. As if this kind of fluffy measures would be anything more than mopping water in a tropical rainstorm...
FACT: The EU does NOTHING for WOMEN
According to European ministers, the Amsterdam Treaty is a major step ahead for women: in future they will get the same wages as men for doing the same work! What they don't say is that this rule has been a part of labour legislation in the various European countries for ages. No major forward move after all. It's just women's tough luck that it is a law which is not applied. But what can you expect from governments, courthouses and company boardrooms filled for nearly 100% by old men who have been keeping each other in these positions for decades. At the top of European politics, it isn't any different either: at the Eurotop there were exactly 0 women taking part in the meetings and gluttoning feasts.
FACT: Old TIMES are coming BACK
The plans for a unified capitalist Europe did not come about by coincidence. In fact they are a logical step ahead in the growing globalisation of the economy. More and more power is concentrated in the hands of monstrous multinational behemoths who fill their pockets at the expense of people who have less and less control over their own lives. These border-crossing companies are only interested in one thing: increasing their profits. They throw dust into people's eyes by donating to the occasional good cause, then recover the cost with price rises for their products. At the end of the day, their only motivation is maintaining and optimising the global exploitation machine. In the days of the United East Indian Company (V.O.C.) it was seen as the noble task of christians to civilise the "natives and cannibals". The European overseas territories were looted and in a very short time tens of millions of people fell victim to this process of civilisation, which was offered them from behind guns and swords. Now the guns and swords are not needed anymore, since the robbed countries are kept imprisoned in a murderous economy, aided by corrupt local governments installed with our cooperation. The loot transported by V.O.C. ships such as "De Amsterdam", are now transported digitally and divided with the help of banks, the International Monetary Fund, Wall Street, the Damrak and in a while the entirely independent and uncontrollable Central European Bank - faster and more efficient than ever before...
FACT: ALTERNATIVES do EXIST
The answer to a question asked by many, but at this stage it would be stupid to put into words a concrete and detailed plan which everyone would then be required to obey... However, in Eurodusnie we do agree that most or all of the world's problems are due to the fact that people want to govern other people. When using power, we will always have to ask whether it is necessary. History has taught us that power is mainly abused by people who call themselves leaders. But the ones in power turn out to be the ones who play people off against eachother. In the name of churches or, for example, nations, many senseless wars have been fought. Recognising the truth of this, you can either resign yourself to it or put up resistance. We have chosen to resist the phenomenon of power in all its guises. Resistance against those in power and their mercenaries can emerge in different shapes, it is not up to us to judge these. However, organising as anti-authoritarian collectives and practising your alternative is every bit as important as the resisting itself. The alternative does not exist and it won't come into existence until people reach the conclusion that capitalism is an unfair system and rise up against it in non-commercial, horizontally organised groups where people work together on a voluntary basis. This is the first step on the way to a society of solidarity in which autonomy and respect for nature can replace the currently dominating law of the jungle.
Information
This is just a small brochure, so if you want to find out more about the European Union or e.g. anarchism, you will have to go look for it yourself. TV and newspapers don't usually tell you a lot. The Dutch version of this leaflet contains a list of anarchist points. If you would like to distribute this leaflet in your own country/city go ahead! If you could help us distributing or translating it in other languages then English and Dutch please contact us at...
Action/infocenter: EuroDusNie, postbus 2228, 201 CE Leiden. Or e-mail to robbel@stad.dsl.nl Web site(in Engish): http://stad.dsl.nl/~robbel Tel/fax: 00 31 (0)71 517.30.19 EuroDusNie is an anti-authoritarian collective organising and stimulating resistance against neo-liberal excesses such as the plans for a unified Europe. Our organisation is housed in a squatted school at 345, Boerhaavelaan in Leiden. In the building you can also find a vegan cafe, workshops, living spaces and places where various political and/or cultural activities take place such as info-nights. None of these are commercial enterprises. The building is run cooperatively by all its users.
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