Stop the Nuclear Dump, Plymouth October 2009

The 31st of October saw a demonstration through Plymouth against the proposal to cut up old nuclear submarine reactors in the Devonport Dockyard.  It is sheer lunacy to attempt this experimental and highly dangerous work in such close proximity to the homes of some 250,00 people.  It is already bad enough that the Trident submarine are refitted and serviced here, without endangering the environment and the people of the city even further.  Despite the people of Plymouth being against such work, as found in previous consultations, the MOD is going ahead with yet another ‘consultation’, probably until it gets the answer it is looking for.  This demonstration showed that ordinary Plymouthians are not as pliant and gullible as the MOD and Babcock Marine seem to think.  DON’T DUMP ON OUR CITY! (or anyone elses for that matter.)

Marching through Plymouth City Centre.

About 2-300 people gathered in the City Centre at noon and marched through the town. 

After listening to speeches outside the Guildhall, many of those gathered then headed towards Devonport Dockyard to march around the gates, and listen to yet more speeches and calls to action at the Camel’s Head gate.

Those of us based in Plymouth would like to add our great thanks to those who travelled to come to this demonstration.  Special mention must go to Tower Hamlets CND, Southampton CND, Yorkshire CND, Rochdale Peace Group, London CND, the ‘nuclear leeks’ of Kingsbridge Peace Group, Penzance CND, Tavistock Peace Action Group, and the varied groups of trade unionists, particularly from Unison.  Thanks all.

Peace out.

PS – more pics are available on the Plymouth CND Facebook page.

This week in 1945…

On the 6th of August 1945, the United States of America dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.  The subsequent firestorm destroyed about 13 square kilometres of the city, which is about 5 square miles to imperialists.  Well over half the buildings in Hiroshima were completely destroyed, and something like 90% of all structures were either destroyed or damaged by blast and fire.  As many as 180,000 people were killed – out of a population of 350,000. 

Three days later, on the 9th of August, a second atomic bomb was detonated over the city of Nagasaki.  Nearly a quarter of Nagasaki’s buildings were consumed in the inferno, while up to 100,000 people lost their lives – out of a population of 240,000. 

In total, around 250,000  people died in the first few days.  This is roughly the equivalant of the entire population of Plymouth being wiped out in 3 days.

Everyone within half a mile of the bombs was instantly vaporised by the intense heat.  All that was left of them was their shadows burnt onto the ground.  Beyond that, those caught in the open were killed by heat and blast waves.  Huge winds destroyed anything left standing from the explosion.  Thousands of people were killed by falling debris, or suffocated because the oxygen in the air had been burnt away.  In the days, weeks, months, and years that followed, many more died of their injuries, or from the effects of radioactive fallout.  To this day, survivors of the explosions have developed radiatoin-induced cancers and intestinal problems.  The children of survivors are more likely to be born with genetic deformities or develop leukaemia.

In both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the overwhelming majority of people killed were civilians, ordinary men, women, and children.

All of this death, suffering and destruction was caused by just two nuclear weapons.  Today we live in a world where there are around 30,000 nuclear weapons.  The UK’s Trident warheads are about 8 times more powerful than the bomb that exploded in Hiroshima.  Some US, Russian, and Chinese warheads are hundreds of times more powerful.

These weapons are perfectly capable of destroying ALL life on earth many times over.

How much longer can we tolerate this suicidal folly?

We must act now to ensure this barbarity never happens again.

The Reason for the War in Afghanistan.

(copied from Medialens, originally from http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/pers-j10.shtml )

The largest military operation since the Obama administration took office is now underway in the southern Afghan province of Helmand. Some 4,000 marines, along with hundreds of British troops, are attempting to impose control over an ethnic Pashtun population that has opposed the US-led occupation ever since the 2001 invasion overthrew the Taliban government and installed the Karzai regime.

At the same time, the Pakistani government, primarily because of financial and political coercion by Washington, has ordered its military into a brutal offensive against the Pashtun people of northwest Pakistan. Their crime is that they share a common history, language and culture with the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and provide support to the Taliban insurgency over the ill-defined border between the two countries.

The human cost has already been staggering. In a savage act of collective punishment, the Pakistani military has forced at least 2.5 million people from their homes in tribal agencies such as Bajaur and Mohmand and from the Swat Valley district of North West Frontier Province. The US is complementing the assault with almost daily airstrikes on the homes of alleged Pakistani insurgent leaders, particularly in the agencies of South and North Waziristan. This week alone, American missiles have killed at least 80 men, women and children.

After nearly eight years of fighting in Central Asia, Obama has escalated the conflict to a new and bloodier level—the “AfPak War” being waged on both sides of the border. It has no end in sight. David Kilcullen, the former advisor to General David Petraeus, who helped plan both the Iraq and Afghanistan troop surges, told the British Independent this week what is being openly discussed in the White House and on Downing Street:

“We are looking at 10 years at least in Afghanistan, and that is the best case scenario and at least half of that will be pretty major combat. This is the commitment that is needed, and this is what the people in America and Britain should be told, and they should be told that there will be a cost involved.”

The truth is that the governments of the US, Britain and the other countries taking part in the war are telling their people as little as possible. They are being assisted by a corrupt media establishment that allows itself to be censored and provides only the most sanitised reports.

British journalists who have been “embedded” with NATO forces in Afghanistan told the Guardian last month that the coverage of the war was “lamentable”, “outrageous” and “indefensible”. Thomas Harding of the Telegraph admitted: “We have constantly been told that everything is fluffy and good and we, and the public, have been lied to.” (See: “A lack of cover” http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jun/15/afghanistan-embedded-journalists-mod )

Typical of the official lies was the statement of US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, quoted in the USA Today, that American troops were in Helmand to “create a new atmosphere where the people reject the Taliban and their culture of fear and intimidation”.

In point of fact, as the New York Times acknowledged last week, the Taliban is gaining support due to hatred for the US and NATO occupiers and their puppet government in Kabul. On July 3, correspondent Carlotta Gall noted that “the mood of the Afghan people has tipped into a popular revolt in some parts of southern Afghanistan” and that people had “taken up arms against the foreign troops to protect their homes or in anger at losing relatives in airstrikes”.

To suppress the resistance, the Marine Corps is imposing a regime of “fear and intimidation” on the 250,000 inhabitants of the Helmand River Valley. The tactics being directed by General McChrystal are modelled on the counter-insurgency methods he applied in the rebellious areas of Iraq. The main towns have already been placed under military rule. The movement of the population to markets, shops and hospitals will be controlled and monitored by curfews, checkpoints and constant searches and street interrogations. Local leaders will be pressured into identifying insurgents, who will then be targeted for assassination or capture by special forces’ death squads—whom the media dutifully call “combat reconnaissance patrols”.

It is remarkable that even as the Obama administration has escalated the war, it has virtually dropped the original pretext that was used to justify it.

What ever happened to Osama bin Laden? He is rarely if ever mentioned and Al Qaeda is increasingly relegated into the background in the official propaganda and media accounts.

This is no small matter. The ostensible legal basis on which American troops are in Afghanistan is the “Authorization for Use of Military Force”, the joint resolution passed by the US Congress on September 18, 2001—one week after 9/11. The resolution authorised military force for the purpose of capturing or destroying the Al Qaeda leadership, beginning with bin Laden, so as to prevent further terrorist attacks.

Nearly eight years later, there is barely the pretence that American troops are in Afghanistan to hunt down Al Qaeda. Instead, the war is declared to be against the “Taliban”—a label indiscriminately applied to any Afghan who resists the US-led occupation. At no time, however, was there an accusation that the Taliban had a role in 9/11. The Bush administration’s justification for targeting the Islamist government in Kabul was that it rejected an ultimatum to turn over the Al Qaeda leadership to the United States.

The dropping of the original pretext for the invasion poses the question: with what purported legal justification has the US government and its allies continued and escalated the war? The truth is they have none. Nothing remains but the reality of an imperialist war of plunder and domination.

The US-led occupation of Afghanistan and the terrible violence engulfing Pakistan is the culmination of 30 years of American imperialist intrigue in Central Asia to establish strategic and economic dominance over the resource-rich region.

From 1979, US governments funded and supplied an Islamist insurgency to overthrow an Afghan government backed by the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, the Clinton White House encouraged its Pakistani ally to help install the Taliban in Kabul in the belief it would be favourable to the aspirations of US companies to win control of major oil and gas projects in Kazakhstan and other Central Asian states, and build pipelines through Afghanistan. When civil war and instability prevented the realisation of those plans, the presence of Al Qaeda was exploited, at least by 2000, to begin preparations for a direct US conquest of the country.

The September 11 attacks provided the pretext to set the plan into operation. As well as potential access to the resources in neighbouring countries, the occupation of Afghanistan provides the US and its NATO allies with a strategic forward base to project force against rival claimants for regional influence such as Russia, China, India and Iran.

The AfPak War is not a war against terrorism, or for democracy, or to help the long-suffering Afghan people. It is an indefinite, colonial war whose central aim is to turn Afghanistan into a US client state and ensure that Pakistan remains firmly under Washington’s geo-political influence.

Homepage: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/pers-j10.shtml

George Galloway…

…. and I have not always seen eye to eye, but after watching his speech on Gaza in the House of Parliament he has gone some way to redeeming himself.   He brought a tear to my eye.  You fucking tell them, George.

 

Ich Bin Ein Palestinian – A Report from the London Demo, by Ali T.

An account written by a friend of mine, Ali,  of the 10/01/09 (STWC) Gaza demonstration at London Hyde Park/Israeli Embassy.  Reprinted here with permission.

“On the train from Durham to London, I had several hours to contemplate the perceived ineffectualness of protests, such as the latest I was about to attend; that many people will, as always, ask ‘how are you going to change anything?’; that it will be seen as no more than a charitable gesture.  When faced with such questions and perceptions, many of which meander in and out of the realms of apathy, I remember the words of the Jewish Nobel Laureate, Elie Wiesel: “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest”.   Moreover, I remind myself of the reasons why thousands have decided to march in the same direction, in defiance of the same injustices and in support of a people, many of whom would doubtless extend to us the same courtesy, as human beings, should we be in their shoes and they be in ours.

What should be noted is that not only do we protest about the atrocities of the last fortnight, but the horrors inflicted upon the people of Palestine for over 60 years. In the spirit of ‘not forgetting’, it must be made clear that such atrocities are intertwined, as for generations; both oppressor and victim have remained the same, as has the indifference and support to the former, by our own governments.  While Israel plays the same old ‘victim card’, all too easily forgotten are the 250 Palestinians exterminated at Deir Yassin in 1948, the hundreds murdered at Lydda, Ramla and Eilabun in the same year, to mention but a few of many instances of ethnic cleansing.   All too easily forgotten is the subsequent sacking of over 400 Palestinian villages and the depopulation of their inhabitants.   All too easily forgotten, is the sobering fact that since the start of the last century, the state of Palestine has been gradually eaten away in the name of the ‘repopulating the rightful home of the Jewish people’.   Inevitably this has meant the systematic depopulation of the Palestinian people, who had called Palestine ‘home’ for hundreds of years. In 1917, 97.5% of the region constituted Palestinian land.   As of 2006, Palestinians could barely call 13% of the same region ‘home’.

There are some who would prefer to consign the earlier atrocities to the history books in the name of ‘fresh starts’ and disassociation.  More recent Israeli atrocities however, are far less easily consignable to the archives of shame: The 15,000 Lebanese civilians massacred in the Israeli invasion of 1982 and the 1,000 killed in the more recent 2006 conflict, roughly a third of whom were under the age of 13, according to UNICEF.  Dare the apologists and appeasers forget the Sabra & Shatila massacre in the same year of the first invasion of Lebanon, which left almost 4000 dead in its wake?  Dare they forget the massacre of 110 refugees at Qana over a decade later?  Dare they forget the hundreds butchered at Jenin in 2002?  How dare they?  The answer is anyone’s guess.  On the 2nd January 2009, the Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni rejected a call for a ceasefire to allow passage of aid into Gaza and in doing so, declared: “there is no humanitarian crisis”.  10 days on, and an estimated 900 Palestinians, most of them civilians and a large percentage of them women and children have been butchered, thousands injured and the rest of the population of the concentration camp which is Gaza, denied aid and urgent supplies.  This, in the name of retaliation against a ceasefire that Israel and the Hawks in Washington and Downing Street all too eagerly claim that Palestine broke by firing rockets into its territories in late December 2008, when in-fact the ceasefire was broken by Israel on the 4th and 17th of November 2008 respectively, leaving 10 Palestinians dead, ironically the same number that Hamas have killed in the ensuing invasion by Israel compared to the aforementioned 900 killed by the IDF. How dare they?

And so we protest. At Hyde Park alone, I stood among an estimated 100,000 people in the bitter cold, some of whom clambered over the bare branches of trees to catch a glimpse of guest speakers, who included Annie Lennox, Brian Eno and the Children’s Laureate, Michael Rosen.   As these thousands and more marched in the direction of the Israeli embassy at Kensington, cries of “Palestine, don’t you cry – we will never let you die” and “Free, free Palestine” drowned out sporadic bursts of religious zeal among Muslim attendees, proving that these and other act of solidarity are not part of some ‘greater battle between Islam and Judaism’, but simply an acknowledgement of atrocities rained down on the Palestinian people by an Israeli regime that does not support the best interests or wishes of her own people, let alone those who suffer in Gaza.

As night fell, following inspirational speeches by the likes of Tariq Ali and George Galloway, which marked the end of the rally at Kensington, I came to realise that such a heartfelt and passionate protest was not simply intended to call for a stop to the Israeli offensive.  Even when the bombs stop dropping, when the blood stops pouring from the heart of a nation as freely as it has for the past fortnight – every single innocent life, taken in the name of everything that is the antithesis of ‘justice’ and ‘freedom, has to be accounted for.  The indifferent and complicit, as well as the directly accountable, must answer for this genocide; and if they don’t – our collective voices should continue to rise.  The world must never forget what has happened in Gaza and easily it might.  As I stood in Kings Cross station, Sky News provided its own report on the day’s proceedings.  They, as a large portion of our so-called ‘free press’ has done, chose to focus on the isolated incidents of violence; the shoes thrown in the spirit of Muntadar al-Zaidi; the sporadic cries of ‘Allahu Akbar’, instead of that which constituted the main protest.

On the train back from London to Durham, my feelings on the outwards journey were not only vindicated, but strengthened.  That over one hundred thousand men, women and children marched in the same direction, irrespective of creed, colour, age or nationality; that the very notions of ‘freedom’ and ‘justice’, transcended such divisions, cemented for me the reality that freedom is not necessarily freedom from iron shackles, but freedom of the mind.  Such freedom gives these marching thousands moral license to paraphrase these immortal words: ‘All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Palestine, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words –  ‘Ich Bin Ein Palestinian’.”

Plymouth Protests Disgraceful BBC Gaza Reporting

Despite the freezing cold, 50 or so people attended another protest in Plymouth at Charles Cross this evening in response to the ongoing slaughter in Gaza. Once again, it was obvious from the abundant beeps of support from passing motorists that a great many people are disgusted by the ongoing aggression of the Israeli military. After the rush hour traffic had died down, a sizeable contingent of us then headed for the BBC building on Seymour Road, to register our displeasure at the biased reporting of the British Broadcasting Corporation. For more on the BBC’s shameful one-sided reporting, read http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9307

Read more about media bullshit and propoganda at http://medialens.org/index.php (click on ‘message board’)

Solidarity With Gaza from Plymouth

About 40 or so people took part in a vigil today in Plymouth, to show solidarity with the people of Gaza, and to protest the inhumane bombing and invasion by the Israeli military. The turnout was especially heartening as the event was called at very short notice, with it only being organised last night on finding out that Israel’s ground forces had entered the Gaza Strip. Also encouraging was the great number of beeps of support from passing motorists, far more than I have ever heard at previous events. It is obvious that a huge number of people are outraged and disgusted with the actions of Israel this past week or so. A further vigil is planned for 5.30pm at Charles Cross on Wednesday evening.

STOP THE KILLING. END THE OCCUPATION. JUSTICE FOR PALESTINE NOW.