University Occupations

Students across the country are holding occupations and sit ins in solidarity with Gaza. SOAS shut down a MOD exhibition on their campus whilst students at LSE declared victory after seven days when the university agreed to all of their demands.

They are followed by others at King’s College,Essex, Warwick, Sussex , Birmingham and over 80 Oxford University students have occupied the historic Bodleian building to demand that the university releases a statement condemning the attack on Gaza and cancel the lecture series at Balliol College inaugurated by Israeli war criminal Shimon Peres. There are also early reports of occupations at Manchester Met, Newcastle, Leeds and Cambridge universities.

In Yorkshire, students have occupied a building at Leeds University whilst the Bradford AGM voted to give the university the weekend to comply with demands to support the Palestinians, or expect action on Monday.

The students say they “are enraged and horrified by the unspeakable atrocities that have been committed by the Israeli military on the people of Palestine, and … will not tolerate the complicity of … institutions of education in this violence.”

The Birmingham occupation was ended after just 12 hours when the university and police besieged the occupation. They attempted to cut off water supplies, succeeded in preventing food from being brought in and forced the students to blockade themselves in. The occupiers decided to accept a meeting with the Vice-Chancellor to discuss their demands in exchange for leaving the building.

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Reclaim the Campus

The Autonomous Students Network (ASN) was founded at the October 2008 London Anarchist Bookfair at a meeting organised by London Autonomous Students Network (LASN). ASN has a strategic outlook based on tackling our problems at source, from the bottom up, which enables us to directly create alternatives to capitalism ourselves. This is why we choose to work on issues directly affecting us at our colleges, because we can have a real effect on these, which in turn have knock-on effects for people elsewhere.

We favour methods such as going on strike with canteen workers and spreading information to others on campus about companies here, rather than going on a general anti-war demo or twinning our college with a less well off college elsewhere.

Our common values are autonomy, anti-capitalism and horizontal organising and direct action.

It is a federation of groups based at different colleges and individuals, not everyone involved is a student, but the issues we focus on are often education-based. We’re keen to work with like-minded people, so get in touch if you want to struggle with us!

Email: autonomous-students-network [at] riseup.net

Mailing list: autonomous-students-network [at] lists.riseup.net

 

 

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Ground Zero

Earlier this week, following the withdrawal of Israeli troops from
the Gaza Strip, residents returned to some of the areas which had
become no-go zones during the attacks, such as Jabalia just outside Gaza City . On Tuesday 20th January, ISM Gaza Strip volunteers joined a university professor as he visited his house in the east of Jabalia. We were shown from room to room around the bombed-out shell of what had once been a beautiful home. When asked if he and his family would continue to live there, he replied calmly that it was their right to and that they would never leave their land.
 
As we made our way up the hill through the orange grove beyond the
professor’s house, we encountered evidence of where tanks had been positioned – churned up ground, tank tracks, uprooted olive trees.  At the top of the hill, from where the Green Line was clearly
visible, we began to see homes which had been totally destroyed,
several stories concertinaed. Families sat together on the rubble of
their homes. Children collected firewood from the dismembered limbs of fruit trees.
 
At first it seemed as though it was ‘just’ a cluster of ten or
fifteen destroyed houses, which would have been bad enough in its
own right. However, as we continued walking it became apparent that the devastation extended into the next street and the next, more and more destroyed and damaged homes following one another. This entire neighbourhood on this easternmost edge of Jabalia had been virtually wiped off the face of the earth. It resembled the site of some massive natural disaster. However this ground zero was entirely man-made.
 
The gouged-out windows of some of the homes still standing were
filled with dark green sand bags. This was a sign these houses had
been used by the Israelis as sniper positions. One could barely
imagine how the situation must have been in this neighbourhood when it was under attack.
 
We met a blind woman who had been held prisoner for 11 days in one room of her home, along with a paralysed man, whilst Israeli
soldiers used it as a base. Terrified and expecting to be killed at
any time, they were given water twice during their ordeal. When the
Red Crescent evacuated them, the woman said she could finally
breathe for the first time since the soldiers arrived. The walls had
been daubed with Hebrew graffiti, empty plastic food trays were
strewn around and the stairway stank of urine.
 
In the wake of a Gazan holocaust, thousands of people are finding
themselves in truly desperate situations. A traumatized but
resilient population is somehow beginning to pick up the pieces.

Merely continuing to exist is a form of resistance.

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Bristol Anarchist Bookfair Goes Live

Get involved – stalls, meetings, ideas

The Bristol Anarchist Bookfair Collective is delighted to announce the date and location for 2008:
St Werburghs Centre, Horley Rd, Bristol BS2 9TJ
Saturday 13 September, from 10am to 5pm
All welcome – free entry

We hope that this year’s Bookfair will be the first of an annual event, as there has been a 15-year gap in Bristol! We want to attract people from across the south west and into south Wales.

An Anarchist Bookfair is a day of anarchist books, ideas, pamphlets, discussions, merchandise, networking, free info, help & solidarity, games, bike workshops, tools, history, planning, speakers, resistance, and an all day vegan cafe. All the resources you need to reclaim your future.

It is our intention that the Bookfair will be:

• – A perfect introduction to anarchist ideas & practice for those seeking an alternative to the chaos & greed of capital, the boredom of party politics, the abject failure of centrally controlled state communism, and the unsustainability of present energy consumption.
• – An excellent opportunity for anarchists old and new to recharge their batteries and reading lists, to catch up with old friends, to sharpen their ideas, and to re-energise their enthusiasm for the struggle for a free world.
• – And for those who are critical, you are welcome to come along to join the discussions, to air your reservations, and to cut through the myths of anarchism to the reality.

Organising:

Questions, offers of help, donations etc can be directed to us at bristolanarchistbookfair@riseup.net or we can be contacted at our bi-weekly meetings from 6.30 to 8.30pm, at 14 Robertson Rd, Bristol BS5 6JY.

Peace & Freedom!
The Bristol Anarchist Bookfair Collective

http://www.bristolanarchistbookfair.org/

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The Bombing of the UNWRA Elementary School , Beit Lahiya

Saturday January 17th 2009
By Ewa Jasiewicz

The roads of Beit Lahiya were lit up with phosphoric flaming
ordinance. 6am on Saturday morning and hundreds of smoking burning darts were raining down onto the deserted streets. We were driving down Beit Lahiya main street in our ambulance responding to calls from terrified residents and the elderly suffering from chemical inhalation and reports of burns. The roof of the Salim Mosque was on fire. Flames were licking upward from the flat rooftops of homes, from down alleyways, atop kerbs, and all along
Beit Lahiya Street itself.
 
Families were beginning to flee their homes, both the young and the
infirm, scarves and rags up to their mouths to prevent choking on
the thick chemical mist. We were picking them up, packing our
ambulance full of them, 20 people at a time, with oxygen for the
elderly, encourgament and kindness, and /elf salamaats/ (a thousand blessings) for everyone . Some were carrying plastic knotted bags of full of clothes, blankets over shoulders, belongings scrambled together in terrified hands. An imminent invasion was expected, the white fog a cover for troops to advance and take up new positions, occupy new homes and install fresh snipers. People had heard of the blasting and bombing and crushing of homes in Atartura, North Beit Lahiya.. The bulldozing of arable land, lemon groves, greenhouses and graveyards. The use of Beit Lahiya High School as a prison for most of the area’s men aged 16 to 40.
 
We took the families, trip after round trip, from the Beit Lahiya
roundabout to Kamal Odwan hospital. At around 6.30am we got the call – Beit Lahiya UNRWA elementary school had been bombed.
 
When we arrived at the school, panic reigned, people were screaming, some were holding onto one another under metal shelters in the playground, terrified of another strike, others had their heads in their hands, sobbing. Arms were pointing here and there to mystery wounded. A UN car was on fire. Suddenly there was another hit,everyone ran for cover. Where were the casualties? ‘Cover’ didn’t
exist, even the flimsy metal shelters or the brick buildings could
be no match for 2 foot long tank shells that could pierce them like
a hot rock through butter.
 
Phosphoric flares continued to fall down around us.. Wearing
surgical masks, we searched for casualties, running to and fro
to avoid the burning darts around us. A man carried a lifeless, limp
boy into our ambulance. He had a deep, round shrapnel wound to his thigh. /’Lets Go’/ – we had to move, we reversed out, another flare exploding above us raining more poisonous darts down onto the playground. ‘He’s a shaheed’, said one of the volunteers with the
ambulance, ‘a martyr’. ‘He’ was Bilal Mohammad Ashkar, aged seven from Beit Lahiya.
 
Both he and his brother Mohammad Ashkar, aged five, died from
multiple explosive injuries, and major traumatic injuries to the
head when a two-foot long tank shell smashed into the classroom they were had been living in. Blood and flesh were stuck to the walls and ceiling of the room. 35 people had been sheltering inside. Two
people were killed and 36 people injured including 14 children and
three cases requiring amputation of limbs.
 
The boys’ mother, Anjoud Al Ashkar, 29, was lying on a rickety bed
at Kamal Odwan Hospital when we came in. Her bandaged head was seeping blood – her skull fractured by flying shrapnel. ‘My sons, My sons’, she was groaning and moving her part amputated hand up and down. Days later, at the men’s grieving house in Beit Lahiya, I
would learn that she had been transferred to Egypt for brain
surgery, had had her whole right hand amputated and that ‘She
doesn’t know that her two sons have died, she could die if she knew’.
 
Salah Shehde Al Ashkar, 35, was in a room below when the attack
happened. His 18-year old daughter Mona was seriously injured. ‘We were drinking tea at the time and then we heard a great smash. I thought it had happened outside the school, I said don’t worry to
everyone, don’t worry, its outside, and went downstairs to see what
was happening. Then I saw my daughter, Mona, her leg was all gone, just shredded, I took her to the ambulance and we went to Shifa directly’. Mona’s leg could not be saved, and was amputated from the thigh down.
 
Both Salah and other relatives had deliberately avoided sheltering
in Government schools, fearing they could be attacked. ‘We came here for shelter and never imagined that they would hit and then they hit the women and the children on the third floor’.
 
I came across Sahar Askar, 42, the boys’ aunt along with their
sister Madleen Ashkar, 7, in the parking lot of the Al Awda Hospital
a few hours later. They were both dusty and shocked; Madleen
barefoot with shrapnel injuries to her face and Sahar dazed and
walking gingerly due to shrapnel wounds to her thigh. Sahar
explained to me. ‘A missile hit our room on the third floor. Missile
and rock pieces fell on top of us’. I asked what they were doing
immediately before the hit. She said they hadn’t been sleeping,
there had been too much noise. ‘We were putting out our mattress to
dry, on the balcony, because Mohammad had wet the bed in the night, he was so scared of the bombing. The building behind us had been hit with phosphorous, then after 15 minutes, they hit us. There was one bomb that hit the roof, and then another as we were coming down the stairs. We couldn’t see anything, everything was black smoke, from the dust or the phosphorous, I don’t know’.
 
After evacuating Bilal, we had returned to the school and picked up
Nour Basoura, five years old, suffering shrapnel injuries to the
back, She had dry hair, stiff hair and a small stiff body. Her eyes
were huge with shock and she couldn’t speak.
 
According to Shelter manager Ashraf Madhoum, two tank shells –
around two feet long – and four phosphoric bombs had been fired onto the area – the tank shells and one phosphoric bomb hitting the
school directly. He confirmed that there were no fighters or armed
men in the area at the time.
 
When we returned again to the school a room was on fire on the third floor. We kicked the door in and tried to gain entry but thick black acrid smoke smothered our sight. UNRWA Co-Ordinator at the shelter Raouf Asfour explained that 40 people had been staying in the second classroom that was hit. Thankfully they had evacuated after the first shelling. Inspecting the blacked shell of a room, we saw
charred discs of white bread mangled with plastic bags of belongings and foam mattresses, broken glass, torched nappies and burnt blankets.
 
‘If the international community is talking about war crimes, then
this is one’, said Raouf Asfour, Shelter co-ordinator. He’s a
resilient, welcoming, can-do man who says he hasn’t seen his own
family for weeks. Asking how sustainable the shelter is he explains,
‘As long as we are here, we will keep going’. Yet he recognises that
no-one can be kept safe. ‘Most are asking are we safe here? This is
a question we can’t answer’.
 
The Market round the corner from the school had been bombed four
days before the school attack. An F16 had struck at 1.30am. Raouf
explains, ‘Much of the glass of the windows was smashed, it
shattered onto people, many needed hospital treatment, they were
terrified’. The night before the tank shell attack, 13-year-old
Palestine Tamboura was sleeping in her bed. An Apache fired bullet
entered through the window and struck her in the leg as she slept.
She had to have one of her legs amputated at the knee.
 
Families are still living in the UNRWA School . Many came from the
Atartura and Sheyma areas, now in ruins following Israel’s three
weeks of intensive bombing, home demolitions and killing. Many have no homes to return to. An estimated 40,000 people have been made homeless through Israel ’s onslaught and wilful property
destruction, in violation of the fourth Geneva Convention of the
protection of civilian and state property. Israeli authorities
justify each demolition with the charge of
 
‘Military Necessity’.
 
The Israeli military justifies the crushing of homes as a means to
knock out possible fighter posts, vantage points and any structure
or foliage or trees which obscure Israeli occupation forces’ lines
of sight and movement. All must be razed and crushed in the name of advancing and cutting deep into Palestinian territory in an endless
‘war on terror’.
 
This physical bulldozing over land and international human rights
law matches a political advancement of a colonial project of
long-term occupation, spearheading these repeated incursions and
assaults, backing them up and pushing them forward and leaving
churned deserts in the heart of communities, scorched earth and
fresh graves for those who ‘got in the way’ deliberately or not,
armed or not.
 
Israel also openly practices illegal collective punishment in the
form of targeting the homes of wanted fighters and their families,
political activists and suicide operation martyrs. Thousands of
homes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been levelled under this policy.
 
But more sinisterly and more acutely felt by people here, is that a
historic, obvious and long-term campaign of terror is being waged
against the Palestinian people, with the aim of forcing a mass
transfer, an eviction and an expulsion of a people from their land
which an occupying power seeks to control. Every attack in this
context, is seen as systematic and pre-meditated, the terror
exacerbated by the fact there is no shelter and no protection by or
through any state, international organisation, political faction,
Hamas authority or personal relationships. As Shadi Yassin Ashkar,
60, the grandfather of Mohammad and Bilial, explained to me, ‘I told
them, we shouldn’t all stay in one place, what if they hit us like
they hit families in Fakhoura? We could all be wiped out, better to
keep apart, spread apart, so we cannot all be killed at once’.
 
The vast majority of the people here don’t feel the Hamas authority
has been the sole target of Israeli F16s, apaches, white phosphorous bombs, surveillance drones, snipers, tanks and bulldozers – they think it’s them and their homes and their children. It ordinary Gazans that bear the scars on their bodies, who have lost their homes and limbs and members of their families, bearing this loss and ruin and constant insecurity in the dark tents and shelters they now live in.
 
Israeli forces continue to attack despite the ‘ceasefire’ –
according to Kamal Odwan Hospital authorities, farmer Nasser Salah Nasser, 20, was shot in the head yesterday in Eastern Jabaliya, and tank fire injured a woman and her child in Beit Hanoun two days ago.
 

Gun ships have continued to shell the coast, military bulldozers
have continued to shred land north of Beit Lahiya, F16s kept soaring
low over the population and spy drones keep menacing the skies above us – all reminding us that the threat of open war upon Gaza remains ranging over our heads.

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Gaza Demo in Swindon. And Chomsky on Gaza

For Freedom

For Solidarity

For Mutual Aid

For Anarchism

For Revolution

 

 

http://antimilitaristnetwork.noflag.org.uk/

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Shut Down NATO

Nonviolent action against NATO

On 4 April 1949, the North-Atlantic Treaty Organisation was founded with the signing of the NATO treaty. On 3 and 4 April 2009, the heads of state and government of the 26 member states and their delegations will meet in Baden Baden and Strasbourg to celebrate NATO’s 60^th birthday with a NATO summit (ed.).

Since its foundation in 1949 NATO pretended to defend the so-called “free West” against the allegedly aggressive communism. If this would have been the real reason of NATO’s existence, NATO would have had to dissolve in 1991 after the end of the Warsaw Pact. But this did not happen.

During the Cold War NATO fueled for more than 40 years the arms race, which is not to legitimise the senseless actions of Russia’s armament policy. But recently released documents show: the strategic objective of NATO has been – at least for many years – the military push back of the Sowjet Union and the revision of the outcomes of the Second World War. During the Cold War NATO participated with its secret operation Gladio in repression against leftist movement with the NATO countries, and was linked also to the military coups in Greece in 1967¹ and in Turkey in 1980².

After the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact NATO quickly turned itself to new tasks.

 

From a defence alliance to an alliance for military interventions

Already with the Rome Declaration of 1991 NATO positioned itself with a new strategy. An attack from the the East was no longer likely, instead NATO formulated as “news threats” the consequences of economic, social and political difficulties in central and eastern Europe, for which NATO had to be prepared³.

Based on this new definition the “defence alliance” became very active with a range of military interventions outside of its old area of operations. From July 1992 on NATO warships began to verify the UN arms embargo against Serbia and Montenegro in the Adriatic Sea, and later also enforced it⁴. This was the beginning of a development that led to the NATO military interventions first in Bosnia and later to the illegal bombardment of Yugoslavia and the NATO military intervention in Kosovo.

Today, NATO is active militarily in a variety of places: in Afghanistan since 2003 with about 60,000 soldiers, in Kosovo since 1999 with today about 16,000 soldiers, in the Mediterranean sea since October 2001 with up to 2,000 soldiers as part of Operation Active Endeavour, and in Iraq since August 2004 with a training mission with 140 soldiers. With this operation NATO in fact support and legitimises the fact created by the US and UK occupation of Iraq, and the Iraqi government created by the occupiers. The ”Anti-Pirate-operation” in front of the coast of Somalia⁵ was handed over to the European Union on 12 December 2008 and is now named ATALANTA⁶.

From these military operations the one in Afghanistan is central for NATO⁷. And NATO’s actions in Afghanistan are more and more aggressive and reckless. The outcomes of this occupation are more and more obvious: a brutalisation of society, more misery and more bomb deaths. From January 2006 to July 2008 more than 1,000 Afghan civilians were directly victims of NATO and US military operations⁸.

Via civil-military cooperation as it is practised in Afghanistan, even development aid is being integrated into the NATO war efforts. Caritas International criticised NATO in June 2008, saying that “the distribution of aid money is not linked to the real need for aid, but oriented towards the need of counter-insurgency“. At the NATO summit in Bucharest it was decided to make civil-military counter-insurgency generally the focus of present and future NATO missions.⁹.

 

Nuclear sharing

Part of the present NATO strategy is the so-called nuclear sharing – the involvement of non nuclear weapon states in NATO’s nuclear weapons. The strategy paper of 1999 stresses the requirement of “widespread participation by European Allies … in nuclear roles, in peacetime basing of nuclear forces on their territory and in command, control and consultation arrangements.” It concludes that “[t]he Alliance will therefore maintain adequate nuclear forces in Europe”¹⁰.

Because of this, US nuclear weapons are based in Germany at Büchel, in Belgium at Kleine Brogel, in the Netherlands at Volkel, in Italy at Aviano and at Ghedi-Torre, and at Incirlik in Turkey¹¹. “Nuclear sharing” allows that in times of war pilots from a non-nuclear weapon state, which is a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, can use nuclear weapons, which would be a violation of the treaty¹².

In addition, neither NATO, nor the nuclear weapon states within NATO – the USA, Britain and France – did rule out the first use of nuclear weapons.

 

A new NATO strategy: more military interventions

The NATO summit in Strasbourg and Baden Baden is not just about celebrating NATO’s 60^th birthday. The main discussion will be to continue the development of NATO into an aggressive alliance for interventions, as it was started with the Rome Declaration from 1991. The summit will therefore begin a discussion on a new NATO strategy which will replace the strategy of 1999, which has been agreed during the Kosovo war, in 2010 – if everything goes well.

Important elements of such a new strategy have been proposed in a paper called “Towards a grand strategy” of five former high ranking NATO officers at the end of 2007. In this paper, the threats are even more global. Future threats are especially religious and political fundamentalism, the “dark” side of globalisation (international terrorism, organised crime and the spread of weapons of mass destruction), as well as climate change and securing access to energy resources (control of resources and conflicts as a result of climate change and climate change induced migration).

To be prepared for these challenges, NATO needs to stick with the option of first use of nuclear weapons, so the authors of the paper.¹³

The authors also make proposals for changes to NATO’s structure, so that NATO will be “better” able to act. They propose for NATO to abolish the principle of consensus for decisions within NATO, and propose to introduce majority decisions, which means faster actions through abolishing the veto right of member states. Especially important is the proposal to abolish national caveats in NATO operations of the kind that “plague” the Afghan campaign. In the future, NATO members that are not part of a NATO operation should not have any say about the operation.

International law will be weakened even more though the use of military force also without the authorisation of the Security Council of the United Nations, if “immediate action is needed to protect large numbers of human beings”¹⁴.

Although at present these proposal are not official proposals, it can be assumed that they will be an important part of the discussions.

While the US are already trying to build a missile defence with bases in Polen and the Czech Republic, NATO too will develop its own missile defence. This will also be one of the topics of the NATO summit in April 2009 in Strasbourg and Baden Baden.¹⁵

The further expansion of NATO, especially towards the east, will be part of the development of NATO. At the summit in Strasbourg and Baden the new NATO members Albania and Croatia will probably finally be accepted as members¹⁶. NATO also attempts in include Ukraine, Georgia, Macedonia and Bosnia and Hercegovina, and with all these countries exist bilateral partnership agreements with the long term objective of NATO membership¹⁷.

 

Even without war: NATO kills

Already now NATO kills even without war. The financial resources committee to military spending are no longer available for other purposes, such as social welfare, the fight against poverty or health care. And this is not just ‘peanuts’. The total of the military expenditure of all NATO members amounts to more than 70% of global military spending. Of this, the USA alone is responsible for almost 50% of global military spending, followed by France and Britain with another 10%.

According to the Stockholm based peace research institute SIPRI in the last decade global military spending increased by 45%, and amounted to 1339 billion US dollar in 2007. In Eastern Europe military spending increased by 162% between 1998 and 2007. In the view of experts, the NATO membership of formerly communist countries in Eastern Europe is the main reason for the increase in military spending in these countries, which try to bring their military structure in line with the standards in other NATO countries¹⁸.

Shut down NATO – Nonviolent action against NATO

A broad international coalition is preparing a range of protest activities for the NATO summit in Strasbourg and Baden Baden. The concept that has been agreed at an international preparatory conference in Stuttgart on 4/5 October 2008 includes:

• a counter-conference on 3 April 2009 in Straßburg;
• an international demonstration on 4 April 2009, also in Strasbourg. There will also be a feeder demonstration from Kehl on the German side;
• action camps
• actions of civil disobedience.

Several groups are preparing actions of civil disobedience for the working dinners of the foreign and defence ministers and the heads of state and governments on 3 April in Baden Baden and for the morning of the NATO summit on 4 April in Strasbourg.

Under the working title “Shut down NATO – Nonviolent Action against NATO” several nonviolent organisations – among them War Resisters’ International, Vredesactie in Belgium, the Werkstatt für gewaltfreie Aktion Baden, the Bund für soziale Verteidigung, DFG-VK and others – and individuals formed a coalition to organise an action in Strasbourg within the framework of the blockades that are being organised by a broad spectrum of groups.

The objective of the action is to block the main access routes to the summit in Strasbourg with a blockade and a “human carpet”. This will symbolise: the participants in the summit (i.e. chancellor Merkel, president Sarkozy, president Obama) will need to leave their limousines and have to walk over people lying on the floor to get to the summit. Thus they will experience the reality of 60 years of NATO: that NATO walks over corpses.

At present, the above mentioned organisations are working on the practical preparation for the action. Help is urgently needed. Take part in the action! Mobilise for the actions! Organise nonviolence training, and come to Strasbourg and Baden Baden from 1-5 April 2009.

Andreas Speck

Andreas Speck is staff at the London office of WRI and represents WRI on the International Coordinating Committee No to NATO 2009.

Contact for the action: Andreas Speck, War Resisters’ International, Email andreas@wri-irg.org, Tel +44-20-7278 4040.

This is a translated version of an article that will be published in Graswurzelrevolution February 2009

Notes

The Guardian, 5 December 1990 

1

Secret Warfare: Operation Gladio and NATO’s Stay-Behind Armies, Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact, Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich and the National Security Archive at the George Washington University, http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/coll_gladio/chronology.cfm?navinfo=15301, accessed on 18 January 2009 

2

The Alliance’s Strategic Concept agreed by the Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council, Rome, 8 November 1991 , http://www.nato.int/docu/basictxt/b911108a.htm, accessed on 17 January 2009 

3

Westliche Militäreinsätze im früheren Jugoslawien, Handelsblatt, 22 August 2001, http://www.handelsblatt.com/archiv/westliche-militaereinsaetze-im-frueheren-jugoslawien;452265  

4

Ständige Vertretung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland bei der Nordatlantikpakt Organisation, Brüssel: Militärische Operationen, http://www.nato.diplo.de/Vertretung/nato/de/04/Milit_C3_A4r.__Operationen/Milit_C3_A4rische__Operationen__Unterbereich.html, accessed 17 January 2009 

5

NATO hands over counter-piracy operation to EU, 15 December 2008, http://www.nato.int/docu/update/2008/12-december/e1215a.html  

6

see for example Bucharest Summit Declaration, Issued by the Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Bucharest on 3 April 2008, http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/2008/p08-049e.html  

7

Human Rights Watch: Afghanistan: Zivile Opfer durch Luftangriffe, 7 September 2008, http://www.hrw.org/de/news/2008/09/07/afghanistan-zivile-opfer-durch-luftangriffe  

8

Tobias Pflüger: 60 years of NATO are enough! The Broken Rifle no 79, September 2008, http://wri-irg.org/node/3646; see also: Jürgen Wagner: Zivil-militärische Aufstandsbekämpfung. Ossietzky Nr. 24/2008, http://www.sopos.org/aufsaetze/494d310a681ff/1.phtml  

9

The Alliance’s Strategic Concept: http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/1999/p99-065e.htm, number 63 

10

See for example: Otfried Nassauer: US – Atomwaffen in Deutschland und Europa, updated version June 2008, http://www.bits.de/public/stichwort/atomwaffen-d-eu.htm  

11

Otfried Nassauer: US – Atomwaffen in Deutschland und Europa, updated version June 2008, http://www.bits.de/public/stichwort/atomwaffen-d-eu.htm  

12

Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World. Renewing Transatlantic Partnership (http://www.worldsecuritynetwork.com/documents/3eproefGrandStrat(b).pdf), quoted from: Ian Traynor: Pre-emptive nuclear strike a key option, Nato told, The Guardian, 22 January 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jan/22/nato.nuclear 

13

Ian Traynor: Pre-emptive nuclear strike a key option, Nato told, The Guardian, 22 January 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jan/22/nato.nuclear 

14

Bucharest Summit Declaration, Issued by the Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Bucharest on 3 April 2008, http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/2008/p08-049e.html, number 37 

15

Meeting of the North Atlantic Council at the level of Foreign Ministers held at NATO Headquarters, Brussels – Final communiqué, http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/2008/p08-153e.html, accessed 20 January 2009 

16

Auswärtiges Amt: NATO-Außenminister: Einigung über NATO-Beitrittsprozess für Georgien und Ukraine, 2. Dezember 2008, http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/diplo/de/Aussenpolitik/InternatOrgane/NATO/081202-NATO-AM-Bruessel.html  

17

Steigende Militärausgaben weltweit, I.R.I.B., 28. Juni 2008, http://german.irib.ir/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11496:steigende-militaerausgaben-weltweit-&catid=66:politische-beitraege&Itemid=32

18

Also see the Anti-Militarist Network (AMN)

The Anti-Militarist Network was created on November the 30th during an anti-militarist gathering in Edinburgh. It aims to provide support across the network between campaigns and groups across the UK, and organise to resist the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Edinburgh, November 2009.

The network has the following principles.

• The AMN organises along the principles of autonomy and non-heirarchy
• We embrace a diversity of tactics
• We will not condemn other peoples actions

The network makes decisions at gatherings.

http://antimilitaristnetwork.noflag.org.uk/about/

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EDO Smashed

Anti-militarist activists entered the ITT/EDO MBM arms factory in Moulescombe, Brighton in the early hours of this morning, where they are believed to have caused extensive damage to the offices, and to equipment used to make arms, including the ‘zero retention force arming units’ and ‘ejector release unit 151’ which the Smash EDO/ITT campaign says are supplied to the Israeli Air Force. The campaign became aware of the action when they received a phone call from those inside the factory this morning who said that they were ‘decommissioning’ the factory in solidarity with the people of Gaza, who are currently at the receiving end of the factories products.

The arms factory has been targetted by the Smash EDO Campaign for a number of years. In 2005 EDO MBM took High Court action in an attempt to curtail protest at the factory. They lost the action, which proved to be an expensive own-goal as it gave the campaign increased exposure, and brought it to national attention. In 2008 the factory was taken over by ITT.

Weekly protests have been held outside the factory since 2004, and there have been a number of national demos, at the factory and on the streets of Brighton. On October 15th, the SHUT ITT Demo succeeded in shutting the factory for the day.

According to reports in the national media, todays action may have the effect of shutting down the factory for some time. The BBC quotes Det Ch Insp Graham Pratt as saying: “Windows had been smashed and offices turned over in what I would describe as wanton vandalism, but with machinery and equipment so targeted that it could have been done with a view of bringing business to a standstill….The damage is significant and the value substantial.”

Prior to entering the factory, the activists made a video (attached) in which they explained their reasons for the action. One commented: “Israel are committing a gross crime now in Gaza. Israel have killed hundreds of children. I think its absolutely disgusting that weapons made in our cities and in our country are being used to kill innocent women and children. They have been used indiscriminately. If the law and the police cant do anything about it its about time somebody else did.”

About 30 police are believed to have attended the factory, where they witnessed computers and office equipment being thrown out of first floor windows. Nine people are believed to have been arrested and taken to the Hollingbury and Worthing Police Stations, where police say they are being held on ‘suspicion of burglary’. One protestor is believed to have required hospital treatment.

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Attempted murder of Oaxacan activist

In the latest of a string of intimidations and attacks, an attempt is made on the life of the libertarian activist and former APPO Councillor RUBÉN VALENCIA NUÑEZ.

 

Oaxaca of Magon
City of Resistance
Saturday 10th January 2009-01-11

Urgent Action: ATTEMPTED MURDER OF COMRADE RUBÉN VALENCIA NÚÑEZ

We wish to denounce the intimidatory actions that have endangered the life of our comrade in the popular movement in Oaxaca

FACTS:
Tonight, Saturday 10th January at approximately 10:57 at night, our comrade RUBÉN VALENCIA NUÑEZ and another person were walking on the street Porfirio Díaz, headed for the politico-cultural space ‘CASOTA’, found at 408 Crespo, in the centre of the city of Oaxaca. A number of persons (aprroxiamtely 3), on board a moving vehicle, colour electric blue and apparently a Puegeot began to shout insults. One of them shouted “Fucking APPO” in the direction of comrade RUBÈN., amongst other things. One then attempted to exit the vehicle but was dissuaded by the others not to do so before the vehicle continued on, stopping about a block away.

Faced with this situation, the comrades continued walking and took refuge in a café on that same street. Only five minutes after arriving and whilst comrade RUBÉN VALENCIA NUÑEZ was in the bathroom washing his hands, the same person who had shouted at him in the street entered the premises full of people, and installed himself next to the bathroom with our comrade inside it. Without any exchange of words he produced a sharp, stabbing weapon and between pushes and shoves, aimed three blows at our comrade at the level of his neck, nape and head, causing three wounds. At this time the comrade only felt the blows (not realising they were wounds) as due to the pushing he had exited the bathroom area with the aggressor. During the confusion a waiter was caught up and was wounded in the neck by the same weapon.

The attacker, approxiamtely 28, robust and with short hair (of the style common to the ministerial or judicial Police) remained blatantly barefaced in the place for several seconds more before later retreating, leaving behind the weapon. It was at this point that our comrade became aware of his injuries due to the blood that was quickly staining his clothes.

The comrade was taken to hospital to be attended to and is now out of danger. The wounds were: one cut, approximately 3.5cm long and 1cm deep at the nape of his neck. Another, approximately 3cm long and 1cm deep also in the neck, damage from a blow to the head and a scratch from the left eye to the ear, along with other scratches from the same weapon. Six stiches were needed in each wound andi t must be noted that one wound was only 1cm from the jugular vein, which would have had fatal consequences had it reached it. The waiter was admitted with a neck wound by the same weapon, at to which we are unaware of the gravity.

We firmly denounce the acts as part of a strategy of repression and violence orchestrated by the government of the state of Oaxaca, but carried out through para-police groups or civilians in the service of that same state. For this we denounce to the entire world the possibility of the initiation of a selective repression, in the style of the dirty war suffered by the social movements of this country thirty years ago. The aggression suffered at this moment by comrade RUBEN comes at the head of a string of aggressions, intimidations and detentions against different comrades in the social movement over recent months, and whilst none of which have been successful, demonstrate the authoritarian and illegal acts of the State that continue with this latest aggression, which may signal a new and yet more dangerous type of governmental repression and violence carried out by parapolice, paramilitaries and thugs in the service of the bad government of ULISES RUIS ORTIZ, in the style of a dirty war.

WE DECLARE:
-Our decision to continue on our path of building a different Oaxaca, where those who seek justice for the people are not repressed and where assassins are punished. A Oaxaca in which it is possible to live without fear or repression.
-These acts demonstrate the urgency of the need for change and the necessity to continue forward so that in the future murderers will not govern.

WE DEMAND:
-An end to the criminal strategies of repression and intimidation against the diferent struggles of the peoples of Oaxaca on the part of the Mexican State and the State Government.
-Respect for the life and peace of each of those comrades of the people of Oaxaca who continue building alternatives, for a just, dignified and free life.
-Punishment of those responsible for this action against comrade RUBÉN VALENCIA NUÑEZ.

We respectfully request that the peoples of Mexico and the World to be attentive of this situation that Could mark the beginning of a strategy of Dirty or Low-Intensity Warfare against the legitmate movement of the peoples of Oaxaca.

FRATERNALLY,

VOCAL (Oaxacan Voices Constructing Autonomy and Liberty)
CASOTA (Oaxacan House of Solidarity and Self-Sustaining Work)
University of the Earth-Oaxaca
Diploma of Barefoot Investigators.

Sevastopol Homepage: http://vocal.lahaine.org

Ricardo Flores Magón, born in 1874, was the most important and influential anarchist in the Mexican revolutionary movement. He became active in the struggle against the dictator Porfirio Diaz at an early age. In 1901 he came to the forefront of the liberal movement, a reformist organisation opposed to the excesses of the regime and, as editor of the opposition newspapers, Regeneracion (founded by his brother) and El Hijo del Ahuizote he was imprisoned several times by the dictatorship.

Forced to take refuge in the U.S. in 1904 he continued the struggle against Diaz first from St. Louis and later from Los Angeles, in spite of continual persecution and imprisonment by the U.S. authorities at the instigation of the Mexican dictatorship In 1905 Magón founded the Partido Liberal Mexicano which organised two unsuccessful uprisings against Diaz in 1906 and 1908.

During his early years of exile he became acquainted with Emma Goldman, and it was partly through her he became an anarchist.

With the outbreak of the revolution of 1910, the revolution that he and the P.L.M., more than any other group or person, had paved the way for, Magón devoted the rest of his life to the anarchist cause. Through his influence large areas of land were expropriated by the peasants and worked in common by then under the banner of Tierra y Llbertad, the motto of the P.L.M., later to be adopted by Zapata. During the years of struggle Magón opposed and fought successive so called “revolutionary regimes,” resisting both the old and new dictatorships with equal vigour.

In January of 1911, they directed the uprising of Baja California, and seized the towns of Mexicali and Tijuana. Francisco I. Madero, leader of the revolutionary movement against the Porfirio Díaz’ dictatorship, attempted to bring the “Magonistas” to his side, but Ricardo Flores Magón, leader of the rebels, rejected him arguing that Madero was part of a “revolution of the rich.”

A manifesto signed by Ricardo Flores Magón and Librado Rivera, addressed to all the anarchists of the world in 1918, was used by the North American government as a excuse to jail both. Librado was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Ricardo Flores Magón, imprisoned by the U.S. authorities in 1905, 1907, and 1912, was finally sentenced to 20 years under the espionage laws in 1918. He was sent to the prison at McNeil Island, in the State of Washington. He got very ill and was moved to the federal prison of Leavenworth, Kansas, where he died on November 22, 1922.

Ricardo wrote two revolutionary plays: “Tierra y Libertad” (“Land and Freedom”) and Verdugos y Víctimas (Executioners and Victims), works of very intensive social criticism and impressive realism. He wrote many essays, fiction and reports.

See Land & Liberty, (Black Rose Books, 1977)

 

 

 

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Bombing for moderates

Free Abu Mumia Jamal!

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