Critical Times

by Diet Simon
(No verified email address) 24 Oct 2006
Imagine the entire NSW police force of 13,300 people assigned to one event for several days. A few hundred more than that will shortly be deployed into a north German county to guard a nuclear waste transport against demonstrators.

The transport will cost German taxpayers at least 50 million euros.

Once a year the insanity of the nuclear power economy goes on public display in Germany. The next shipment of spent nuclear fuel leaves France for Germany on 10 November.

Gorleben, the northern village where the nation’s waste gets dumped, in 25 years of resistance has developed the most imaginative form of resistance.

It’s a place where our own fighters against John Howard’s coming nuclear madness could learn a lot of skills. I urge them to go there.

Two previous Australian visitors, Nina Brown and Karina Lester, were welcomed. Nina ran the office side of the Irati Wanti campaign against a nuclear dump in South Australia, Karina is the granddaughter of respected senior Aborigine Eileen Kampakuta Brown.
Nina spoke of “an absolute experience” that was “useful” in the Australian context.
I suggest you initially contact the Gorleben protest group, Luechow-Dannenberg Citizens’ Initiative for Protection of the Environment, Drawehner Str. 3, 29439 Luechow, Tel: #49 5841-4684 Fax: 3197, bi-presse (at) t-online.de, www.bi-luechow-dannenberg.de .
They’ll link you with people willing to put you up and feed you. It might be on straw bales in a barn, but it’ll be warm and the company will be great – some of the most-alive young Germans you’d ever meet. And you’ll learn a lot about anti-nuclear activism.
For a taste of the kind of police state that kicks in when the waste rolls into Gorleben, see
http://germany.indymedia.org/2005/11/133416.shtml,
http://germany.indymedia.org/2005/11/133014.shtml,
http://germany.indymedia.org/2005/11/131862.shtml,
http://germany.indymedia.org/2005/09/126642.shtml
about past occasions.