30 YEARS OF CONTINUOUS PROTEST.

        You may not like camp anymore, or agree with camp but you have to respect 30 years, lets make this the biggest yet people!!

Faslane Peace Camp           30 Days of Action at Faslane Faslane Peace Camp are announcing 30 days of non-violent direct action against the Faslane Naval Base to mark the 30th birthday of the Peace Camp. Over the last year, a small group of us  have been endeavouring to make Peace Camp a healthy and happy place to facilitate direct action against Trident. We are ready for action! The birthday celebrations will commence on Saturday 9th of June 2012 and continue until the 9th of July. This week the First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond announced that an independent Scotland would be a nuclear free Scotland. Whilst these are welcome words, the response is that the MOD are reportedly looking into new venues south of the border in the fear that Scotland will win independence. We need to give a clear and unmitigated message that simply moving them is not enough. We are in a unique position to make this potential removal from Scotland mean an ipso facto end to nuclear weapons in the UK but our message needs to be full volume. We are inviting local, national and international groups to  take responsibility for a day of anti-nuclear activities, this can be a  march to the base, a demo at the gates, a blockade, a mass trespass, a die-in... get creative! If you are a small group or an individual and want to team up with others, we can help choreograph partnerships. We can also facilitate workshops on peaceful direct action at Faslane so no activist experience is necessary. There will be lots to be done day to day and plenty of roles to fulfil during the 30 Days campaign and the time leading up to it so enthusiastic helpers (and donations) will be welcomed with open arms! Communal meals will be provided and there will be plenty of sleeping and camping spaces. For more information, legal stuff and for details of our safer spaces, residency and alcohol agreements please contact Faslane30@riseup.net or write to us at:
30Days, Faslane Peace Camp, Shandon, Helensburgh, G84 8NN.

FEMINIST SAUDI ARABIA!!!!

         Is it worth it, all that marching and demonstrating against the war, does it make any difference? Well of course it is worth it and of course it makes a difference, if you don't put your ideas on the table, they'll never be taken up. Also, little by little you expose the brutal lies of this corrupt system, consciousness shifts one small step at a time. There is now no doubt in the majority of the people across the world that the Afghan war was built on a series of lies and is maintained by more lies.
      Comedian Mark Steel, with his great sense of the absurd, mocks the endlessly changing justification for the war in Afghanistan - whether it's democracy, the heroin trade, terrorism or women's rights - and celebrates how the anti-war movement across the world has changed people's view of wars and the lies our leaders tell to take us into them.

       Mark Steel will be performing at the Antiwar Mass Assembly in Trafalgar Square on 8 October 2011, alongside John Pilger, Billy Bragg, Jemima Khan, Brian Eno, Julian Assange and many more.

Antiwar Mass Assembly details...

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REMINDER - ANTIWAR ASSEMBLY SATURDAY 8 OCTOBER.

All the signs are that the Anti-war Assembly in Trafalgar Square on Saturday is going to be a memorable day. Grace McCann, will be there, the women who has come closest so far to carrying out a citizen's arrest on Tony Blair. 

      Films, visuals and audio will be an integral part of the day, and when the Assembly ends at 4pm, we will march to Downing Street, led by ex-soldiers and relatives from military families, with the demand that the government bring the troops home now.

      The need to build the political pressure to make the politicians reflect the majority view of public opinion that all the troops should be withdrawn from a futile and unjustified war, was never more apparent following the statement this week by the new US commander of the occupation in Afghanistan, US General John Allen, who said: "We're actually going to be here for a long time."

      Which is why this week, in Trafalgar Square in Britain, and on Freedom Plaza, Washington DC, in the United States, there will be major anti-war events on the tenth of anniversary of the start of the Afghanistan war.

      Please do all you can in these last few days to help publicise the Anti-war Assembly as widely as possible and encourage everyone you know to join us. Users of social networks please spread the word, share and tweet as much as you can.

ANTI-WAR MASS ASSEMBLY
SATURDAY 8 OCTOBER
12 NOON TO 4.00PM
TRAFALGAR SQUARE LONDON
Called by Stop the War Coalition, CND and British Muslim Initiative http://www.antiwarassembly.org/

Transport from Scotland: http://glasgowstopwar.blogspot.com/

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ETHICAL KILLING.

A short extract from Stop the War.  

    A defining feature of state power is rhetoric about a ‘moral’ or ‘ethical’ role in world affairs. Errors of judgement, blunders and tactical mistakes can, and do, occur. But the motivation underlying state policy is fundamentally benign. Reporters and commentators, trained or selected for professional ‘reliability’, tend to slavishly adopt this prevailing ideology.

How an "ethical" war looks from the receiving end.

         Thus, on the ten-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, an editorial in the Independent on Sunday gushed about ‘Bush's desire to spread democracy as an end in itself’. It was, the paper said, ‘the germ of a noble idea’. There was ‘an idealism’ about Blair’s support for Bush. The drawback was that the execution of the righteous vision had been ‘naive, arrogant and morally compromised by torture and the abrogation of the very values for which the US-led coalition claimed to fight’.

Continue reading HERE.

NOT THE TEN O'CLOCK NEWS???

       

         While NATO pulverises the Libyan people in the name of freedom for the Libyan people, our subservient media paints a picture of peace loving rebel fighters running around the country freeing their fellow citizens. The method they use to free them is to sit back and wait until NATO blasts the hell out of them and then rush in all guns blazing. If that doesn't work, then they lay siege to the town or city, starve it of food, water and medical supplies, after which they will ask NATO to go back in and terrorise the citizens with a massive bombardment from the air. Thus, Western style freedom crawls its bloody way through Libya.

       What is vomited from the mainstream media has no relation to the truth as it is happening on the ground in that unfortunate country. What is happening is tribal faction killings, looting and ethnic cleansing of towns and cities across Libya, aided and abetted by NATO and its paymasters. The following is a short extract from BEFORE IT'S NEWS.  It is well worth reading the whole article. You certainly will not get the information on the Ten O'clock News.

        ---- Despite desperate attempts by Wall Street and London to proclaim their intervention in Libya a success, even going as far as sending their political proxies Nicolas Sarkozy of France and David Cameron of the United Kingdom for a quick photo opportunity at the rebel held airport in contested Tripoli, vast swaths of the nation are still fiercely resisting NATO and their proxy rebel forces. This includes entire cities still standing in defiance against rebel attempts to "starve them out" and dozens of daily NATO airstrikes (NATO report for September 22) aimed at breaking the population's will to fight on.

         Weeks ago, the rebel forces, led by US State Department and UK Home Office listed terrorists from the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a subsidiary of Al Qaeda, boldly announced plans to starve out cities resisting their unelected, foreign backed seizure of the North African nation. The London Telegraph reported in an article aptly titled, "Libya crisis: Rebel leaders hoping to starve Gaddafi stronghold of Sirte into submission," that under the cover of heavy NATO bombing rebel leaders hoped "to starve Col Gaddafi's home town of Sirte into submission, laying siege to his last remaining stronghold in an attempt to avoid mass bloodshed, according to the man spearheading efforts for a peaceful takeover."

A NATO PEACE MISSION!!

       Fox News would relay an AP report on September 2, 2011, that rebel commanders declared, "we want to save our fighters and not lose a single one in battles with Qaddafi's forces. In the end, we will get Sirte, even if we have to cut water and electricity and let NATO pound it with airstrikes." AP cited Mohammed al-Rajali, a spokesman for the rebel leadership in the eastern city of Benghazi. Ironically, the article was titled, "UN Warns Libya is Short of Water, Fuel, Medicine," a crisis admittedly being caused by the premeditated denial for entire cities of critical supplies for their civilian populations, enabled by NATO bombing and under the cover of UN recognition of the terrorist rebels - a move that has soundly resigned the UN's legitimacy and stated purpose to the scrapheap of history. ___ READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE.

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SETTLERS - ARMY OF OCCUPATION.

        Like most rational people I have always seen the Israeli settlers  in the Palestinian lands as part of the Israeli army, an army not wearing the usual uniform, but still an army of occupation. They move in, occupy and secure the foreign territory and defend it against the rightful owners, the Palestinians. If need be, they call in reinforcements in the shape of the unformed Israeli army. It seems now that even the Israeli army is admitting this, as they are starting to train the settlers to defend the land they have occupied. Settlers occupying land frees up the uniformed army to get on with the job of repressing the local indigenous people. A similar type of genocide that was pursued by the settlers on the indigenous people of that land we call America, but with a much more efficient weaponry. Palestine is the "Wild West" and the Palestinians are the "indians" of the 21st century.

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BOMBS AND DEATH OR NURSES?

        Ten years of bloodshed, death, pain and anguish for the Afghan people, over 1500 US deaths and almost 400 UK deaths, for what? The cost of the Afghan 10 year war is shattering both in its cost in human life, also the financial cost. What could that financial package have done other than kill and maim? Billions for death and destruction while at the same time cutting back on social services. It is hardly the hallmark of a civilised society. 

 

The only beneficiaries of war are the arms traders and their associates.

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DEADLY CARGO.

         Through the night, through our narrow country lanes a deadly nuclear cargo rolls from one end of the country to the other. Did you consent to have this illegal convoy of nuclear weapons of mass destruction pass by your home, your kids school, your local retail park? Are you told when it is going to pass, or are you, like most of the public, completely unaware of this government illegality? Perhaps one night you will go to sleep and that will be that, a little accident on the road and oblivian for an entire city. There are records of many small accidents with these convoys, but up until now we have been lucky, no nuclear explosion, but how far would you push your luck when dealing with the lives of thousands of people?

 Sleep well my love.

DEADLY CARGO from Camcorder Guerillas on Vimeo.

19 mins - Scotland / UK 2008

There's been some collateral damage!!

          Fully assembled nuclear convoys are regularly transported in secret convoys on ordinary roads, day and night right across Britain. The authorities are asking us to keep an eye out for suspicious looking bags at train stations. Nukewatch is asking us to keep an eye out for suspicious looking trucks carrying weapons of mass destruction on our motorways.

        Find out the chilling truth about these lethal convoys, how they are tracked by the people in the Nukewatch network.

Sound track by Zoviet France (en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Zoviet_France)

DVD Available with Spanish, Dutch, German, Finnish, Swedish and English subtitiles

nukewatch.org.uk

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PROFIT FROM KILLING!!!

        We all know that the corporate world is not a compassionate beast and it will try to squeeze a profit out of anything, including wars, death and destruction. However there must be limits and making investments in cluster bombs when over 100 countries have banned them, is surely the bottom of the barrel, even for the greed merchants in the corporate world.

The following appeal is from Amnesty International.

        Cluster bombs kill and maim indiscriminately – 98 per cent of victims are civilians and a third of those are children. This is why over 100 countries – including the UK – have signed up to an international treaty banning their manufacture and use.

       Yet over a year after this treaty came into force, and despite the fact that cluster bombs are now banned in the UK, some UK-based banks continue to invest in companies which make them.

Stop investment in companies that make cluster bombs

        The worst of these is the Royal Bank of Scotland – which, don’t forget, is now over 80 per cent owned by UK taxpayers. RBS is known to have invested $80 million in companies which manufacture cluster bombs in the past year¹.

Take action: email the Chief Executive of RBS now

        Cluster bombs can remain deadly for years, much like landmines. So civilians in places like Georgia, Kosovo, Lebanon and Laos are at risk long after the fighting has ended. As a member of the global Cluster Munition Coalition², we’re working to end the suffering cluster bombs cause. But we need organisations like RBS to take responsibility for the part they play.

        Should a taxpayer-funded bank be investing in companies making weapons which are banned by this country? Should any bank invest in companies which make these appalling weapons?

If you think not, please take action now

Thank you.

1. Worldwide investment in Cluster Munitions: a shared responsibility – May 2011 update [IKV Pax Christi (the Netherlands) and Netwerk Vlaanderen (Belgium)]

2. The Cluster Munition Coalition is an international civil society campaign working to eradicate cluster munitions, prevent further casualties from these weapons and put an end for all time to the suffering they cause. The Coalition works through its members in around 100 countries to change the policy and practice of governments and organisations towards these aims and raise awareness of the problem amongst the public.

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PROTECTING PEOPLE BY BOMBING THEIR CITY!!!

          
     Cameron's Libyan war crashes on with the anticipated escalation and so another night of heavy bombing in Tripoli, this blows wide open the sham about NATO protecting civilians. The West wants Gaddafi's oil and wants him out of the picture, protecting civilians is just the attempted slim badge of legitimacy. So Gaddafi goes, the West rushes in to support the "rebels" in Benghazi and a long civil war ensues. The West sends in a peace-keeping force and starts to take control of the oil as in Iraq, and as in Iraq, not giving a shit about what state the country of Libya ends up in, just as in Iraq. The people can fight and kill each other while the Western corporate world gets on with the business of milking the people and the country of its oil. When Gaddifi goes it will be interesting to see if the new regime spends as much of the oil revenue on free health care and free education as the Gaddafi regime, time will tell.

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THE POPE OF HOPE, THE PRINCE OF PEACE!!!

     

      The President of America, once the Pope of Hope, the man of change, is visiting the UK next week. He will be visiting the Queen at Buckingham Palace, he sure knows where the power lies in this country. Far from bringing an end to George. W. Bush's marauding wars, the man of change has lived up to his promise and changed in to a higher gear when it comes to wars and killing. Drone attacks in Pakistan have dramatically increased during his term, with the resultant massive increase in innocent deaths from these attacks. He has presided over attacks in Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia and Libya and continues to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq. Remember all the euphoria when this man was elected? At last, an end to the macho war stance of George W. Bush, enter the Prince of Peace, St. Obama. Well this man of peace is spending more on military operations than any other president of America.

      His latest waft of wind to come from his mouth, the rhetoric about reaching out to the Muslim world and finding a path to peace for the Palestinians, while at the same time involved in bombing and occupying three Muslim countries. This reaching out, also involves supporting and propping up ruthless dictators across that same Muslim world, while supporting Israel in its land grabbing and genocide of the Palestinian people and supporting Israel financially and military as they flaunt countless international laws. The violence inflicted on the Palestinian people by Israel is never criticised let alone condemned by this reaching out, path way to peace, president of America.

    I always refer to Libya as Cameron's war, every prime minister and president seems to want their own war, but he couldn't have got his way without the wink and nod from the Prince of Peace, St. Obama. We in the West belong to an empire of violence, the West will bomb and occupy any country that has resources that we want if that is the best way to get those resources. We live in a world of corporate fascism. For our corporate beasts to grow they must have all those cheap resources and the states put their stamp of legitimacy on the brutal conflicts to grab what the corporate world demand.

      There is an alternative, a world free from the grip of corporate greed, a world of co-operation, mutual aid and sustainability based on the needs of all our people. A world free from the profit motive that belongs to the people, a world that we would be proud to hand to the next generation, our kids and our grand kids. A world free from the fear of exploitation and deprivation. First we have to stop looking to leaders, Popes of Hope, Princes of Peace and take control of our own lives, control our own communities and in federation with other communities take control and shape our own world. It is their world, or it is our world, there is no compromise.

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WHEN IS A BOOT NOT A BOOT???

       The UN No-fly Zone resolution 1973, specifically ruled out foreign military action on the ground in Libya. The enforcers of the No-fly Zone have always said that in this operation there would be no “boots on the ground”. Of course that doesn't include Special Forces who have been there more or less from the start, probably on a photo shot for some travel agency. Now the UK is sending in high ranking military officers. No doubt to comply with the UN resolution they, like the Special Forces, will go in barefoot. It is the usual creep process. If they can't get what they want with the rules then we can indulge in some euphemisms. First there will be advisers, then training and support, then there is humanitarian help, which will need military protection, and of course then comes the “Peacekeeping Force”.

        Is there anybody out there who believes that we are doing this for the good of the Libyan people? Today the “rebels” stated that there has been 10,000 killed and 50,000 wounded, (the figures can't be independently verified), the city of Tripoli has suffered over 200 strikes by weapons of mass destruction with fancy names like Pathfinder, etc. followed by claims that we killed no civilians. Think of all the money the arms industry will make replacing all those missiles at prices ranging from £500,000 to £800,000 a shot. Very smart missiles these, they don't explode if there are civilians in the area. The country has now been turned into another African nation where civil war rages. Our support has hurtled Libyan against Libyan in a bloody struggle that wont be healed for generations. The country's infrastructure is smashed, now there's an opportunity for Haliburton, what hope now for the Libyan people, with the West calling the shots, one thing for sure, they can say goodbye to their oil.

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CLOSE THE S.O.A.

      For more than half a century the School of Americas SOA has been a cancer that has spread its death inducing tentacles across the whole of South America. Its products have been the dictators and oppressors of the poeple of that part of the world. Where ever freedom and independence dares to raise its head the graduates of the SOA have trampled and attempted to crush them before they can gain a foot hold. The only product that has ever come out of the SOA has been death, repression and brutality. The campaign to close the SOA still goes on, driven by people who have been tortured and friends and family of those who have died at the hands of the graduates of the SOA and all decent human beings.  

 Washington, DC

March and Direct Action to Close the SOA and Resist Militarization
Sunday, April 10, 2011  kick-off at Dupont Circle at 2:45pm

      Sunday's march will include Son Jarocho music by Cosita Seria, a puppetista pagent speeches by SOA Watch founder Father Roy Bourgeois, Haitian activist Eugenia Charles, Gerardo Torres; a representative of the Popular National Resistance Front of Honduras, the artist/activists Hector Aristizábal, Catalina Nieto and Olmeca, Simón Sedillo, Perla de la Rosa; an anti-militarization activist from Ciudad Juarez. Join the march at 2:45pm at Dupont Circle following the Anti-Militarization conference at American University.

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NO MONEY FOR HEALTH - MONEY FOR DEATH.

       Since NATO took full command of the Libyan bloodshed, and that is approximately one week, it has carried out over 500 “sorties” (nice word that for “killing exercises”). Each missile fired costs between £700,000 and £850,000, while the running costs of the “sorties” varies from £30,000 to £70,000 depending on the planes involved. During all this devastating bombardment all we hear of is the casualties on the “rebels” side. If the Gaddafi forces can inflict this sort of carnage with small arms fire, tanks and field artillery, what sort of slaughter is the NATO deluge of weapons of mass destruction, doing to the Libyan people on the other side?

        At a time when the ordinary people of every country in the NATO alliance are suffering cuts to every fibre of the fabric of their society, because of the proclaimed lack of money, how can we still afford this massive outpouring of money for the purpose of killing Libyan people. Make no bones about it, all the talk of no-fly zones and protecting the rebel forces, is just double speak for war, slaughter and the destruction of a country's infrastructure. No matter the euphemisms trotted out in the media, this is death and mutilated bodies in large numbers and the largest number will be the result of the UN/NATO operation. Looking around the world at all the brutal dictators and their vicious oppression of their people, and our approach to them, prove to me that in this case, there was no other way!!!

 

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THE CARING COMPASSIONATE WEST!!!

      
         No matter what argument that is put forward to justify the bombing of Libya, the REALITY is that it will be ordinary Libyan people that will die, young, old and innocent. Our wonderful cruise missiles do not just hit bad guys and they go off with a helluva big bang, we can be sure that and one certain beneficiary will be the arms industry. Of course, to the politicians sitting ever so safe in their corridors of power, these lives are a price worth paying!! The world is peppered with dictators that repress “their” people with a vicious violence, some we put there and some we help stay there and most of them are armed to the teeth by the same benevolent West, and of course we do lots of profitable business with them. So now the West has placed its bets and we have Libyans cheering and Libyans dyeing. The result will be a divide country potholed by cruise missiles and pockmark with graves of innocent Libyans. I object very strongly to being labelled as a Gaddafi supporter because I oppose the bombing. Is brute force the only answer that the so called moralistic and civilised West has to these problems? If so can we really call ourselves “civilised”? It is surely naive to think that the West is pouring all this money and blasting off all these very expensive missiles out of compassion for the Libyan people. We have proved in the past the the West doesn’t give a shit about the people of the Middle East nor North Africa, and many other places. The ordinary people of the West might care, but the Western state apparatus? Don’t make me laugh, it’s not funny.

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THE DOGS OF WAR SMELL BLOOD.

STOP THE WAR COALITION   19 March 2011

Email office@stopwar.org.uk
Tel: 020 7801 2768
Web: http://stopwar.org.uk/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/STWuk
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/stopthewarcoalition

EMERGENCY PROTEST:
HANDS OFF LIBYA: STOP THE BOMBING NOW
SUNDAY 20 MARCH 3-4PM
DOWNING ST, WHITEHALL, LONDON

     Britain and the USA have bombed Libya with more than one hundred Tomahawk  cruise missiles. These are not precision guided weapons but weapons of mass destruction that will create many civilian casualties in Libya. The United Nations resolution authorising a no-fly zone begins as it will continue, with a full-scale military attack on the country.

   

       Stop the War condemns this barbarous attack which will result, not in protecting the people of Libya, but in enslaving them under the domination of the West. We know only too well the death and destruction that imperialism has brought to the peoples of the region. We call on all those who oppose these attacks to demonstrate at Downing Street at 3pm on Sunday 20 March.

SOLIDARITY

LOCAL STOP THE WAR GROUPS

     We are asking all local Stop the War groups around the country to call protests in their area. If you would like to be involved in local protests where you live, contact your nearest Stop the War group: SEE http://bit.ly/dRSlpl

     A leaflet putting the case for non-intervention and a petition, initiated by Tony Benn, John Pilger and others, are both available to download for printing, here:

LEAFLET: http://tinyurl.com/6henp2l

PETITION: http://tinyurl.com/6z9lk2x

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