Contribution on united front webinar by Mirjam Umweltgewerkschaft Germany

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Dear friends

My name is Mirjam and I am from the federal board of the German organization „Umweltgewerkschaft“. We have come forward to organise active resistance against the main perpetrators of the impending environmental catastrophe in banks, governments and corporations. Above all we want to organize the unity of the workers - and environmental movement. We have active local chapters in 30 cities. We are a non-partisan association that has the alliance from religion to revolution in our program, for which we are often attacked anti-communist by bourgeois NGOs.

We were and are active in the now founded new peace movement against fascism and war. Our experience in this work so far is that there is no pro-nuclear sentiment and many advocates, but there is a greater insecurity that keeps people from active resistance. Most also simply can't imagine nukes being used and say "They won't do it." This is how it is currently conveyed in the media in D as well. We say, "Yes, they do!"

We are very close to nuclear war. If neither side achieves its military goals, the danger increases. Putin is openly threatening it and the US is warning Russia of "dire consequences" in the event of a nuclear strike. The old legend of nuclear deterrence is being taken out of mothballs again. It was used to justify the arms buildup in the 1980s, and the dynamic back then was already that deterrence amounts to dropping, because you have to prove that you can do it and that you are not bluffing. The German government is doing a U-turn - instead of shutting down all nuclear power plants at the end of 2022 as promised, 2 are now being left running in reserve and there are plans from the employers' association to even build 3 new nuclear power plants. This is justified with an electricity crisis that does not exist.

Another lie is that of limited nuclear war, and the use of tactical nuclear bombs. Atomic bombs are weapons of mass destruction, no matter how big they are. When a nuclear bomb is used, people and animals in the near radius are instantly vaporized, people in the wider radius suffocate because of the tremendous heat, the blast wave sets off firestorms and razes houses and factories to the ground. The landscape is uninhabitable, consequences would be epidemics, deformities in children, famine. This is what the imperialists call limited. But we also want to point out that the danger of nuclear power has been systematically downplayed by the rulers for years. Already the radioactive contamination of the earth with uranium mining, nuclear waste etc. is a factor in the turn to the global environmental catastrophe. We also oppose the lie of limit values, at which allegedly radioactivity would be harmless for the human organism. Civil use is the precondition for military use. Those who are in favor of nuclear power plants accept contamination and war. We would be glad to win you all also for the resistance against and entire nuclear industry.

No nuclear power has so far ruled out a first strike, even if the media claim that the use of nuclear bombs is taboo for "the West". This is simply a lie. We support the decades-old demand to the imperialists to sign the nuclear weapons ban treaty immediately.

150 of these nuclear weapons are stored in Europe, and we propose active resistance at these sites as well, in Germany this is in Büchel. The people living in the vicinity there are highly endangered by the storage alone, and they often know this very well.

Worldwide, the entire course of energy policy is currently being further conserved and expanded on burning fossil fuels, with the justification that they only want to get us all "warm through the winter." In unity with the fight against the threat of nuclear war, we must make the positive demand for the immediate conversion to 100% renewable energy.

We have been doing more work among the population on the issue in recent months. We have designed a poster for this purpose, take them in larger numbers to demos and distribute them to people who want to support us (show). In this way we also gain new contacts. In addition, a brochure especially for young people with the title "Nuclear power is not a climate saver" to refute the "green image" of nuclear power that has been widespread for some time. We called for activities on the Hiroshima - anniversary, on the anti-war day, among others. We were also at the WFK and would like to intensify an international coordination and cooperation of the work with the won contacts, and also to take up again the already older consideration of the execution of an environmental council.

Many thanks for your attention.