Anarchist Blogging

The Swindon Anarchist Group have a new blog - worth checking out;

http://swindonanarchistgroup.wordpress.com/

Also there is the reboot of Anarchoblogs:
http://radgeek.com/gt/2009/01/03/anarchoblogs_rebooted which collects lots of anarchist blogs in one place. So if you know bloggers who you think ought to be on Anarchoblogs, send them a note with the address http://anarchoblogs.org/how-to-join
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War of Terror: 7 Years On

Well here we are again, another anniversary of the co-called War of Terror's start on September 11th. Also known as Bush's Crusade, The Long War and the Endless War. I had calculated that the War of Terror - just the Iraq bit - had cost the South West £1.2 billion. Yes folks - £1.2 billion. Add Afghanistan and all the other war related costs (such as the hike in the oil price) and it must be up to £2 billion. Yes folks, the War of Terror has cost us in the South West around £2 billion. We keep getting told about great victories in Afghanistan - important strategic victories that have broken the resistance, the killing of hundreds of militants, capture of key towns - and yet victory itself is elusive and always just around the corner. How many more wedding parties will we need to bomb before we have won?

So on another anniversary of September 11th here is a few suggested bits of reading and stuff;

Ending Occupations to End War

While counter-terrorism activities can be usefully pursued in these three areas, it is clear that the local perception of foreign occupation is part of the problem, and a long-term occupation is likely to exacerbate the violence rather than reduce it.

Afghanistan: The Value of None

We have no idea just how many civilians have been blown away by the U.S. military (and allies) in these years, only that the "collateral damage" has been widespread and far more central to the President's War on Terror than anyone here generally cares to acknowledge. Collateral damage has come in myriad ways -- from artillery fire in the initial invasion of Iraq; from repeated shootings of civilians in vehicles at checkpoints, and from troops (or even private mercenaries) blasting away from convoys; during raids on private homes; in village operations; and, significantly, from the air.

The Failure of the Iraq War

A few weeks [after Bush got into power in 2000, his] speechwriter David Frum offered an even more exuberant version of the same vision to the New York Times Magazine: "An American-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and the replacement of the radical Baathist dictatorship with a new government more closely aligned with the United States, would put America more wholly in charge of the region than any power since the Ottomans, or maybe even the Romans."....[Yet - here we are in 2008] The respected Iraqi newspaper Azzaman pointed to one of these forces in a recent editorial: "Iran has emerged as the country's top trading partner. Its firms are present in the Kurdish north and southern Iraq carrying out projects worth billions of dollars. Iranian goods are the most conspicuous merchandise in Iraqi shops. Iraq, though occupied and administered by America, has grown to be so dependent on Iran that some analysts see it as a satellite state of Tehran."

And a couple of vids;
McCain the Warmonger - http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/09/warmonger_mccain.php
Resisting the Republicans - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwYHupGVj9o

Police Try to Stop EDO Film Screening

There is a company, EDO, that makes weapons including bomb-release mechanism that are used in places such as Iraq. It has a factory in Brighton, a place that was also named an 'International Peace Messenger City' - a title that was subsequently scrapped due to the EDO factory. In the meantime, a group of people acting for peace and around the idea that; "Every bomb that is dropped, every bullet that is fired in the name of this war of terror has to be made somewhere. And wherever that is, it can be resisted”.. created the campaign group 'Smash EDO' This campaign used various forms of protest and non-violent direct action to achieve its aims. The group, who quote both Gandhi and the Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal following World War II as validity and inspiration to the campaign seemed to be doing quite well in getting the message out. And then the repression against the campaign began. Targets included UK Indymedia who received legal threats from lawyers Reynolds Porter Chamberlain in 2005 over articles posted on the site;

"We act for EDO MBM Technology Limited. Our client has become aware of false and defamatory information about our client that has been posted on your website at www.indymedia.org.uk.
We refer in particular to the statements that our client "war-mongers", is "complicit in the deaths of innocent people" and makes "things to kill children" ...Provided that you comply with our client's requirements, our client will refrain from commencing proceedings against you for libel in respect of your unlawful activities to date, although, of course, our client reserves all its rights in the event of any breach by you of the undertaking."

Indymedia stood its ground and their lawyers ultimately withdrew the writ. There has also been massive police complicity with the bomb-makers with arbitrary arrests and detentions of protesters on flimsy pretenses - until the whole sordid affair began to unravel;

After evidence came to light in the High Court that Sussex Police may have colluded with EDO Corporation to exaggerate the threat posed by demonstrators to the safety of employees, defence solicitors in related criminal cases began to investigate further. Then in what appeared to be a domino effect, the Crown Prosecution Service proceeded to drop all criminal charges, against all protesters, in all related cases, in an effort to protect the confidentiality of internal Sussex police documents which may have helped defendants prove such collusion had taken place.

Complicity that continues to this day. With echos of the whole 'Injustice' film saga, the film made about the protests, 'On The Verge' was canceled after Sussex police pressured the venue. The police denied that they had anything to do with the censorship, then the council confirmed the police had and the police had to scrabble around to make their lies fit the facts. Not only this, but the police have been busy putting pressure on screenings in Bath, Southampton, Oxford and Chichester too!

One of the venue people who had found their planned event canceled remarked;

“I grew up in South Africa and this feels awfully familiar. This has nothing to do with protecting the public - this is nothing but censorship”.

Indeed. This is all against a backdrop of a company that seems to be able to flout the law, gets a personal police censorship service and is still loosing money;

Last week EDO MBM published their 2006 accounts nearly five months late, a criminal offense under the Companies Act.....As a result financial business information firm Creditgate now list the company under a maximum risk credit rating of ZERO and colour code of RED for danger....The 2006 accounts that were signed and ready to file in August 2007 are particularly embarassing for the company as they reveal a year end loss of (£497,000) down from the 2005 profit of £923,000- a plunge of around 150%. A exceptional expense item (£842,000) is blamed on the closure of EDO RUGGED Ltd, a subsidiary of EDO MBM that was closed in 2006, but the cost coincides with a massive unexpected payout by the company when their high court injunction bid against anti-war protesters failed in the same year. However no mention is made of this legal cost in the accounts, while parent firm EDO Corp accounts for the same year refer to legal costs of $2.7million.

As was noted, the screening in Bath got pressured to close, but the Bath Activist Network made alternative plans to fight this censorship and screened the film anyway.

There is a screening due at the Kebele in Bristol on the 27th - will the cops try to close that one too?
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5 Years on, Never Forget the South West Politicians Who Took Us to War

"My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." –Vice President Dick Cheney, "Meet the Press," March 16, 2003

Five years on and the total and utter disaster and complete charnel house that is Iraq is still killing, maiming, breeding terror and eating money like a black hole. So how did we get into this? We must not forget that there are people in our communities who put us there. They must take their share of the guilt and blame for the over a million dead, the millions of refugees, the boost to militant Islam and that they have leached they from the South West - just over £1.2 billion by my calculations.

(I make it £1,232,590,223 - that is the proportional SW cost per person in the UK based around the independent Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz's calculation that the war will cost the UK £20 billion)

There is still, rightly so, so much anger at this clusterfuck, to quote John Harris writing about the failed protest march before the war;

"But the larger tale of what the march and its aftermath say about our estrangement from Westminster still seems bleak. At its heart is a feeling that is still with us: the disorientation that comes from passing through the biggest political rupture in living memory - a matter not just of the disastrous invasion, but the deceit that surrounded it - and beholding a political elite that still wants to keep the public's sustained disquiet at arm's length, and carry on speaking the language of Business As Usual."

Just so we don't forget, this is a list of the South West politicians who voted against the rebel amendment saying there was no moral case for war against Iraq in 2003;

Avon

Ms Jean Corston (Lab, Bristol East)
Ms Dawn Primarolo (Lab, Bristol South)
Dr Liam Fox (Cons, Woodspring)

Devon

Gary Streeter (Cons, Devon South West)
Hugo Swire (Cons, Devon East)
Ben Bradshaw (Lab, Exeter)
David Jamieson (Lab, Plymouth Devonport)
Mrs Linda Gilroy (Lab, Plymouth Sutton)
Mrs Angela Browning (Cons, Tiverton & Honiton)

Dorset

Laurence Robertson (Cons, Tewkesbury)

Somerset

Ian Liddell-Grainger (Cons, Bridgwater)
Adrian Flook (Cons, Taunton)
David Heathcoat-Amory (Cons, Wells)

Wiltshire

Michael Ancram (Cons, Devizes)
Michael Wills (Lab, Swindon North)
Ms Julia Drown (Lab, Swindon South)
James Gray (Cons, Wiltshire North)
Robert Key (Cons, Salisbury)

This list is far from exhaustive; there are other ways you could interpret the various twists and turns in the run-up and persecution of the war. There are also plenty of people within big-business and the media of the South West who, either through subtle or blatant policy and editorial helped to push us into war; for example newspaper magnate Sir Ray Tindle’s decision to stop printing anti-war stories. They must also share the blame.

Iraq is not going to go away. It is good to see people looking at the root causes of war; such as the arms trade and how we can stop it, such as the Smash EDO tour. The elites cannot be trusted to stop the killing or with our future. Take the words of Tom Bradby speaking on the ITN Evening News, April 10, 2003;

"This war has been a major success"

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Shocking Rape Statistics

Recently released figures have shown the shockingly low rate of convictions for rape in the UK. The average conviction rate is now 5.29% - this means that for every 100 reported rapes (and remember there are always more rapes occur than are reported) the number of perpetrators found and convicted is 5. To put it another way, the other 95 people rape somebody and get away without facing justice. This is shocking. Really shocking. The rape conviction rate in 1977 was 32%. OK, so there are more rapes reported now than then because of better reporting procedures, but its still shocking. Figures from 2002 showed that the rape conviction rate is lower than any other form of violent crime. But wait, for this area, the news gets worse. In the South West only Wiltshire comes out above (only just) the shockingly low average. The hall of shame is as follows:

• Wiltshire: 6%
• Average: 5.29%
• Avon & Somerset: 4.7%
• Devon & Cornwall: 4.01%
• Dorset: 3.6%
• Gloucestershire: 0.86%

Did you do a double take on the Gloucestershire figure? No, it is that shit. Gloucestershire, out of 116 reported rapes managed one single rape conviction.

Maybe we should stop paying our police tax and the percentage of income tax that pays for this incompetent (or should I say misogynistic?) system until the rates improve?

Further Reading Links:
http://www.rightsofwomen.org.uk/
http://www.rapecrisis.org.uk/
http://www.womensaid.org.uk/