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Planned war date - 25th October

anon | 26.09.2002 23:33

A well-connected journalist friend of mine has been given a Foreign Office briefing to "stay away from Baghdad on the 25th October!

The journalist has been to Iraq on several occasions in the past and is one of the few people I know who is actually pro the war. He has seen Saddam's regime first-hand and wants the people of Iraq to be free from their terrible tyranny.

He believes this is necessary who ever does it and for whatever motives. (I've been trying to persuade him about what I feel is really going on, and my grave doubts that ordinary Iraqis can possibly be made better off by the uncouth, illiterate unelected cowboy Bush and his big business backers.)

Anyway, on Tuesday he was briefed by the Foreign Office and was told that the UN Weapons Inspectors would be obstructed or refused at that time and that Baghdad is likely to be attacked. How can they know all this unless the whole thing is staged?

With this sort of inevitability, I worry that little can be achieved by Saturday's march although I will still be going, and am still persuading many others to go. I support those that feel able and willing to do conscious and credible direct action, especially if it demonstrates positive alternatives through creative energies.

Everyone should plan to cause maximum disruption all over the UK on the day of news of any attack - Tony Benn suggested mass stoppages and obstructions. Small teams of local individuals could plan road sit-downs, chainings, blocking with cars, whatever. If lots of groups get on with planning local actions, and those actions are co-ordinated to occur at the same time, then large cities will come to a virtual standstill and it won't matter if the media ignores the huge public uprising against this phoney war.

I believe one suggestion was of timing was 11 o'clock on the day after first attack - can anyone confirm this and suggest links to publicise this idea?

The key to making a success of this is to not only push it on the independent networks but to try and make it common knowledge and news - I think it could really spark the imagination of a British public not really into this war and could become the focal action of a truly revolutionary mass of people.

Although I hate Piers (Capitalist) Morgan, wouldn't it be great to get The Mirror doing a campaign of "Stop The Traffic, Stop The War". He might just be stupid enough to think he won't be one of the first against the wall:), and that sort of publicity could really snowball a mass civil disobedience movement which would scare the shit out of Blair.

If we could make it Europe wide and across the US too...!

I know war's good for business - how about if it were good for anti-capitalists too!

anon