Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 01:14:55 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: M-G: Campaign to save Barsebäck N-plant under way


Campaign to save Barseb=E4ck N-plant under way
[Posted: 13.04.97]

In Sweden, a campaign to organize the people's
resistance against the ruling reactionaries' mad and
criminal scheme to close down and destroy the perfectly
well functioning Barseb=E4ck nuclear power plant is
developing.

A small Committee Save Barseb=E4ck (Kommittén R=E4dda Barse-
b=E4ck) was founded in March. With a poster campaign
"HANDS OFF BARSEB=C4CK!" and with an invitation to a
public meeting here in nearby Malmoe (pop. 250 000) next
Friday, 18.04, it seeks to contibute towards mobili-
sation.

So far, some 1300 posters of different kinds have been
placed at different locations, mainly in Malmoe and
mainly outdoors, and contact is being sought not only
with people in general but also with some local trade
unions and other organizations, for joint struggle.

>From within one of those trade unions, SIF Syd, which
i.a. organizes many of the technicians employed at the
plant itself, there already has come an initiative
towards broad mass manifestations, if possible in many
cities and towns simultaneously, against this outrageous
plan of mass destruction.

The Barseb=E4ck plant produces no less than 6% of all
electricity in Sweden. If the governmental reactionaries
were permitted to sabotage it, this would mean the
wilful destruction of values corresponding to between
$3 bn and $6 bn. Furthermore, it would set up a
precedent also internationaly, in that it would signal
the possibility for the ultra-reactionary forces in
society in other countries too of accelerating their
tearing down of important parts of modern civilization
in a similar manner.

Why are they seeking such destruction?

The Committee Save Barseb=E4ck as such advances no theory
on this. It's an organization that simply seeks, in the
words of its brief programme, by "disseminating
information and organising manifestations to contribute
towards preventing the realization of" the present
closure and destruction plans, and it's a body "indepen-
dent of political parties and of commercial enterprises".

I took the initiative to create this Committee but am
not posting this on behalf of it. My own views on the
reasons behind this apparently "irrational", indeed
one might think "completely mad", behaviour on the part
of the (main) ruling forces here and elsewhere I have
already advanced in several previous Net postings, e.g.
in my "UNITE! Info" series:

Those governing forces, more and more during the last
two-three decades, have come to hold the view that the
present social system, by which they profit so much, in
reality has become quite obsolete and must encounter
stronger and stronger resistance from people in general,
in particular from the workers, if and when modern
industry and modern technology develops further - thence
their fear of this, a fear of its creating the
conditions for a radical movement that would topple them
and deprive them of "everything they own", produced by
others in the first place, of course. Their destructive
actions are directed squarely at the workers in the more
highly-developed countries and also against the oppres-
sed peoples and nations.

Internationally, an important moving force behind the
infamous anti-industrial and anti-modern campaigns has
been the US imperialists. The Russian new tsarists and
their and their partner/competitor's muppets in many
countries (sometimes even masquerading as "Marxists")
are co-perpetrators. This shows up in the present
struggle here in Sweden too.

The Barseb=E4ck N-plant in southern Sweden since long,
since more than 20 years back in fact, has been a
certain focal point in northern Europe for these anti-
industrial campaigns. Considerable numbers of people
in the mid/late 70s were misled into taking part in
reactionary anti-nuclear-energy demonstrations precisely
directed against this plant. And it should be noted
that these demonstations were not only against nuclear
energy but against a whole range of industries precisely
in this region, which constitutes a connecting link
between Scandinavia, on the one hand, and continental
Europe, on the other - a connecting link which it has
been in the reactionary interest of the rulers both of
the USA and of the Soviet Union / Russia to sever, by
emptying it of industry as far as only possible.

This is why the campaigns against the Barseb=E4ck plant
and against the construction of a bridge between
Sweden and Denmark (=D6resundsbron, the Sound Bridge)
>from the very beginning have been so closely connected
to each other. And in the reactionary leaflet calling
for an anti-Barseb=E4ck march in 1978, several other
industries in the area were openly attacked too, such
as the Sturup airport and a planned expansion of the
harbour at Landskrona.

Today, the Sound Bridge is finally being built after
all - only a few days ago, a first big cassoon was
towed out into the water between Malmoe and Copenhagen.
The decision to build it was taken in 1991, when the
Soviet social-imperialist empire was crumbling and
*that* big opponent of it thus decisively weakened.

And not many Swedes today can be fooled into taking
part in the medieval anti-nuclear-energy campaigns.
There was a provocative "celebration" of the plot to
sabotage the Barseb=E4ck plant perpetrated here in Malmoe
by some 10 reactionary organizations yesterday (Sat.,
12.04) but it was only, even according to the rotten
bourgeois media, attended by less than 100 people.   

What's necessary today is a pro-future, pro-industry,
pro-modern-science mass campaign, not only here in
Sweden. This is not easy to accomplish. Practically all
politically organized forces today are against it. But
it must be done and can be done.

And in the final instance, those ruling forces that
are destroying civilization, are creating mass unemploy-
ment and retrogression and are oppressing and exploiting
foreign peoples even more than before, must be toppled
>from power, and a government really for the people and
by the people put in their place.

Rolf M.







     --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---