Today, with the Commando Khaled Aker [1],
we attacked the Secretary of State for the Minister of Finance, Hans
Tietmeyer.
Tietmeyer is a strategist and a key figure in international crisis
management, which, on the national, European, and international levels,
strives to
render the economic crisis of the imperialist system governable and to
prevent the collapse of the economic and financial system. He is deeply
involved in the formulation, coordination, and establishment of
imperialist
economic policy - in recent years he had a part in every important
monetary
and economic decision that was taken.
He is responsible for genocide and widespread misery in the Third
World. As a delegate to the IMF and World Bank [2], to G5 and G7 [3]
meetings, world economic summits (which, since 1982, he has organized
as the government’s representative), he developed and enforced the
imperialist policy of extermination through hunger and
counterinsurgency against the people in the dependent countries in the
South - a policy which for the majority of the world means misery and
death, all in order to secure profits and power for international
capital.
He is responsible for the intensification of exploitation, poverty and
oppression in West Europe. In different EC [4] Committees, on the bilateral (as in the
German-French Economic and Financial Advisory Committee) and on the
national level, he has laid the groundwork for the aggressive
restructuring of capital and
the expansion of transnational banks and corporations throughout West
Europe
- which means greater exploitation and the destruction of millions of
people’s livelihoods - especially in the poor countries of Southern
Europe and in
Ireland.
Imperialist crisis management means more and more misery and death in
the metropole and in the Third World. It is the attempt to stabilize by
any and all means the current intensified and
catastrophic confrontation
between imperialism and liberation; it means countering the growing
liberation
struggles and the system’s internal breakdown, as well as preventing
any
further collapse.
Imperialism can only develop destructive power; its essence is
destruction. By establishing world rule, imperialism imposes the
extermination of peoples through genocide; it imposes a senseless and
degrading existence, in the face of which there is the constant reality
that people, wherever they are, cannot live in
this system. For this reason
people everywhere are developing and reinforcing themselves in
opposition
to imperialism and in favour of self-determination and human dignity.
These
shared conditions and goals form the basis of struggle for all sections
of the international front; they provide the basis for unity and are
the
source of progress around the world.
Life is not possible in this system of profit and power, and it is the
experience of this fact that is at the root of all revolutionary and
antagonistic struggles in the metropole - everyone whose senses have
not become completely dulled experiences this destructiveness and
senselessness as an attack
against themselves and all oppressed people, and experiences the fact
that
this system is hostile to all individual needs and all conceptions of
humanity
and human dignity.
Opposing this is the concept of self-determination in life, the
reappropriation of natural capacities and human richness and the goal
of a free and humane society in which the person is central. This is
only possible by struggling for the radical overthrow of society. These
values, as current and future goals, must always be formulated anew,
and re-established in relationship to those struggles which are
victorious.
Our shared goals can and must be characterized as the shared
subjective moment for the UNITY OF REVOLUTIONARIES and for the
conscious uniting of revolutionary struggles in the West European
center.
Revolutionary struggle requires the deepening of the subjective and
political processes of consciousness - that means transforming one’s
existential
experience of the system into political terms, developing individual
ideas
and goals, and being clear about the objective conditions, i.e. the
power
of imperialism, which stands against the above and which must be the
target
of revolt. Revolutionary identity consists of the conscious and
irreversible
decision to develop the struggle for the fundamental overthrow of the
empty
spiritual condition and negative quality of individual lives; it stands
for an offensive and continuous praxis and against capitulation and
betrayal.
The goal of revolutionary struggles around the world is to stop the
destructive form of development which imperialism is from spreading in
all directions and to replace it with development for
the people. The goal is to create a possibility for ending imperialist
rule and barbarism. In
this struggle, the West European Front (as a section of the
international
front) has a special importance given the centrality of West Europe and
its increasingly important political-economic-military function within
the
unified imperialist system. The struggle against the concrete projects
of
imperialist strategy must be carried out with the goal of establishing
politico-military
barriers to their projects, of blocking and hindering them and of
encouraging
their breakdown.
BUILD REVOLUTIONARY UNITY!
CARRY OUT THE STRUGGLE IN THE IMPERIALIST CENTER IN STRATEGIC UNITY
WITH THE STRUGGLE OF THE 3 CONTINENTS! [5]
SOLIDARITY WITH THE UPRISING OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE!
Commando Khaled Aker - Red Army Faction
September 20th 1988
We did not succeed in shooting Tietmeyer. We intended to eliminate the
driver first so as to bring the car to a stop, but the automatic pistol
jammed. By this time two members of the Commando were already out of
their
hiding places, so they had to try to stop the car with only a “pump” -
which
failed.
Red Army Faction
September 21st 1988
Footnotes
N.B. All footnotes in this document
were added by the translator and editor. None are originally from the
RAF.
[1] Khaled Aker, a member of the Popular Front
for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), was killed
on November 25, 1987 during an attack on an Israeli militay base. [return to text]
[2] IMF - International Monetary Fund, a body
overseeing international imperialist economic policy World Bank
- The IMF’s Bank. [return to text]
[3] G5 and G7 - meetings of heads of the most
powerful industrialized states to establish a common imperialist
policy. [return to text]
