Bremen , attack on “Space Tech Europe” trade fair

Attack on Space Tech Europe – Europe’s largest trade fair and conference for aerospace technology and services.

Space Tech Expo Europe

Space Tech Europe takes place from November 14 to 16, 2023, for the sixth time in the exhibition halls of the city of Bremen. It is Europe’s largest and most important exhibition and conference for space technologies and services. Here, the facets of the aerospace industry are brought to life through in-depth discussions and the companies involved. The aim: business, networking and presentation of new developments. Halls 4 to 6 of the show are dedicated to space production and services, components and systems engineering for spacecraft, as well as space launchers and satellite programs. More than 650 exhibitors from over 40 countries are present. A significant proportion of these exhibitors operate under the Military keyword. Alongside the five largest space companies Ariane, Orbitale Hochtechnologie Systeme (OHB), Airbus Defense and Space, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Center for Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM), DSI Aerospace, Polaris Spacecraft, Shieldex and Ferchau, the city of Bremen and its university (Humans on Mars) will also be represented. Parallel to the show and at the same venue, a conference is held to discuss technical, political and strategic details.

Attack from the rear

We took advantage of the trade fair to take an offensive action by an anti-capitalist and anti-militarist climate movement in the late afternoon of November 14. As participants gathered inside for networking, we met to express our hostility. We blocked off the street behind the exhibition center with barricades of burning tires, and threw bottles of paint and fireworks against the glass facades of the halls. It all came crashing down. The aim was to interrupt their comfortable exchanges with an offensive intervention. Representatives of the arms industry had to be confronted with the consequences of their business.

Bremen, the bastion of armaments

It’s no coincidence that the Space Tech Expo takes place in Bremen. Bremen is a bastion of armaments. No other city in Germany has such a high density of armaments. With satellites and drones, electronics for the navy and army, and the construction of naval vessels and warplanes, Bremen’s armaments companies make a considerable contribution to the development of the German army’s ability to intervene worldwide, and to the distribution of weapons of war and armaments to the four corners of the globe. The city benefits from crises and wars, and the weapons exported from here fuel conflicts all over the world.

Bremen is home to five national, and in some cases European and even international, armaments companies: Atlas Elektronik, EADS Airbus, Rheinmetall Defence Electronics, Friedrich Lürssen Werft and OHB. Despite criticism and anti-militarist attacks against OHB, this company is developing major projects to make the Bremen/Bremerhaven axis more attractive to the high-tech arms industry. The German Offshore Spaceport Alliance consortium, to which OHB belongs, was recently established. The insane goal: a floating spaceport in the North Sea. Over the next few years, thousands of small satellites will be sent into space for commercial purposes. The first missions are already scheduled for April 2024. With this initiative, the consortium aims to turn the Bremen site into an international hub for commercial aeronautics. But how high will the ecological costs be if thousands of liters of rocket fuel are permanently burned in a space as fragile as the North Sea?

War, high technology and masculine fantasies of omnipotence

Satellite technology is marketed as a research tool for monitoring disasters and environmental change. Space agencies such as NASA and ESA present themselves as scientific research institutions. In fact, from its very beginnings to the present day, aerospace has been dominated by the military sector. Communication and imaging satellites are an important infrastructure for monitoring other states or one’s own population, for locking down Fortress Europe, for reconnaissance of the enemy during war or in preparation for it. They are an indispensable component of military communications and industrial processes. The aeronautics industry is one of the key players in the arms industry! War, high technology and masculine fantasies of omnipotence have a long patriarchal tradition. In space, various forms of oppressive power structures are dangerously intertwined. From military virility to the egocentric symptoms of turbo-capitalism, from misogyny to colonial thought patterns, the problems of our world are connecting and extending into new spheres. The personification of this evolution in the form of Elon Musk is not an accident but the logical expression of this realm of capitalism.

Climate

At least since 2022, it has been clear to global public opinion that, if the current trend continues, by 2100 the earth will be warming not by 1.5 degrees Celsius but by 2.5 – 3, and that many tipping points will soon be reached. This will result in the chaotic collapse of climatic and ecological systems, the devastation of entire territories, extreme weather situations, rising sea levels, species extinction, famine and the flight of hundreds of millions of people. Technologies such as satellite technology are touted as a solution to climate catastrophe. Yet, as usual, something else lies behind this ideology. Dynamic entrepreneurs sell their start-ups as planet-saving machines and, fearful of being too late for capitalist space colonization, politicians the world over finance their megalomaniac plans. 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 also need to unmask the ideologies that sell us the destruction of the earth as the engine of humanist progress. The Space Tech Europe exhibition is part of this propaganda strategy. Let’s stop it! By all means!

Switch-OFF! The system of destruction

Some anti-militarist ecologists

source : de.indymedia

via:sansnom

Translated by Act for freedom now!