Boycott time
Dannyboy | 24.04.2003 12:17
There are many excellent ideas for tactics floating around at the moment, here are a few that should be implemented by the anti-war movement:
1) Continue protesting and creatively breaking though into the public consciousness. Many people came close to awakening to their responsibility and power as citizens (as seen in the F15 multitudes), only to fall back into a despondant slumber once their efforts were ignored. These people need to be given fresh hope, ideas, information and support to bring them back into the fold.
2) Targetted civil disobedience. I don't mean sitting in the road and blocking ordinary citizens getting home from work (and hence turning them against us). I mean heading down to your local pro-war MP's office with pictures of the Iraqi dead and refusing to leave until they have studied every one and explained themselves. I mean dumping shit on Labour-party offices and pouring (fake) blood on arms-dealing company's steps (a la Mark Thomas - genius, go and see his current tour for more ideas!). Blockading petrol stations, breaking into army facilities and throwing buckets of fake blood around... so many possibilities!
3) BOYCOTT!!!! There are many companies that are complicit in this murder. Stop buying what they are selling, don't let them get away with murder.
Check this website for boycott campaign info:
http://www.motherearth.org/USboycott/index.php
The boycott is the most important in all this - the other tactics are mainly strength-building exercises to build numbers. Recent events have shown that the "powers that be" can and will ingnore protest. They must be hit where it hurts - in their bloated wallets.
If we can harness and direct the masses of people who are thrashing around for effective methods of combatting this evil and channel their efforts into a coordinated boycott of all these morally dubious corporations, just maybe we can hurt Dubya's campaign contributers badly enough to make them reign him in.
It must become unfashionable to support this war with your money, the list of products must become household names synonimous with mass murder.
I became convinced of the power of boycott by the recent Nestle campaign. That company was forced to back down on its extortion of the Ethiopian government due to a co-ordinated boycott. I read an article in The Economist recently, written by some corporate bigwig, that basically said (in reference to the Nestle boycott) that CEOs shit themselves whenever they come under attack from influential NGOs. Profit margins drop like lead balloons when Greenpeace turns its guns on a company. Well we should be heartened by that and attack the warmongers with the only thing they fear. Withdrawl of our monetary support - the thing that gives them their power in the first place.
1) Continue protesting and creatively breaking though into the public consciousness. Many people came close to awakening to their responsibility and power as citizens (as seen in the F15 multitudes), only to fall back into a despondant slumber once their efforts were ignored. These people need to be given fresh hope, ideas, information and support to bring them back into the fold.
2) Targetted civil disobedience. I don't mean sitting in the road and blocking ordinary citizens getting home from work (and hence turning them against us). I mean heading down to your local pro-war MP's office with pictures of the Iraqi dead and refusing to leave until they have studied every one and explained themselves. I mean dumping shit on Labour-party offices and pouring (fake) blood on arms-dealing company's steps (a la Mark Thomas - genius, go and see his current tour for more ideas!). Blockading petrol stations, breaking into army facilities and throwing buckets of fake blood around... so many possibilities!
3) BOYCOTT!!!! There are many companies that are complicit in this murder. Stop buying what they are selling, don't let them get away with murder.
Check this website for boycott campaign info:
http://www.motherearth.org/USboycott/index.php
The boycott is the most important in all this - the other tactics are mainly strength-building exercises to build numbers. Recent events have shown that the "powers that be" can and will ingnore protest. They must be hit where it hurts - in their bloated wallets.
If we can harness and direct the masses of people who are thrashing around for effective methods of combatting this evil and channel their efforts into a coordinated boycott of all these morally dubious corporations, just maybe we can hurt Dubya's campaign contributers badly enough to make them reign him in.
It must become unfashionable to support this war with your money, the list of products must become household names synonimous with mass murder.
I became convinced of the power of boycott by the recent Nestle campaign. That company was forced to back down on its extortion of the Ethiopian government due to a co-ordinated boycott. I read an article in The Economist recently, written by some corporate bigwig, that basically said (in reference to the Nestle boycott) that CEOs shit themselves whenever they come under attack from influential NGOs. Profit margins drop like lead balloons when Greenpeace turns its guns on a company. Well we should be heartened by that and attack the warmongers with the only thing they fear. Withdrawl of our monetary support - the thing that gives them their power in the first place.
Dannyboy
Comments
Hide the following 3 comments
Time for change
24.04.2003 13:02
You don't have to step far to see corruption, oppression and all these people who in power refusing to accept what they are doing. Your local town hall, the coucillors that refuse to say, I would advise anyone looking to MP's for answers to also write to whoever at the house of commons. Yes you may be quoted sections of law which is there usual way of not answering, but keep at them. Local goverment are a disgrace, they should be made to answer but never do. They hold PUBLIC MEETINGS where we are not allowed to speak without permission, regarding the war in Iraq, the mayor has refused after consultation with the borough solicitor and secretary, saying it fell outside the scope of procedures, then quoted rule 3.7920
"THE DEPUTATION SHALL NOT CONCERN APPROVAL OR OTHERWISE OF A CURRENT PLANNING OR LICENSING APPLICATION BUT MAY ADDRESS ANY OTHER ISSUE WITHIN THE DIRECT RESPONSIBILIT OF THE COUNCIL, OR WHERE THE COUNCILCOULD BE REASONABLY EXPECTED TO LOBBY ON BEHALF OF RESIDENTS."
There was other local issues we did not include in our request, but the coucillor leader, MP Harriet Harman and Charles Clarke (house of commons) recieved these the day after our request. This was a serious issue concerning W.S.Atkins a private company brought in to Southwark, london education, who have now backed out breaking a five year contract.
I have asked in writing to transfer our original request with this other issue, as the letters were given in to the town hall regarding W>S>Atkins the next day, it was a matter of priority for us, but as we were refused on our original request it is only right we should be heard on this other issue, especially when we were not consulted in the first place about W.s. atkins, and the extremely dodgy ways this happened. I will not hold my breathe, but there is one thing for sure I will be at the public meeting.
antijen
Stop apple pickers!
24.04.2003 15:55
Instead of dividing action, I mean day to day actions not another much awaited ...pushed off pavement by pigs protest..is what is needed.
The only solution is education. Education about what is the problem we are trying to face. Dannyboy says war-machine ... I think it is much more than that.
First that we are all frogs in a stale well with a queen and the other crap. This is where all the points on Dannyboy apply. Antijen's council crap is valid stuff but it is diverging more within this well.
There are other wells and oceans out there.
They pigs amongst us do not want the truth to be told (about life outside this stinky well).
We are in more shit when we take on a anti-Globalisation agenda because it also proposes local action and all but in a better future.
For now we all (in all wells and oceans) need to listen out for croaks and croak at the same time tearing away all the traditional barriers for these wells.
The main one I am sure about is RACISM! Not as taught in our fucked up schools/media instead the one that makes the well.
A bit like the no borders campaign...I mean the core thought behind it.
We need to educate ourselves and others for any unjust suffering to go away!
(anyone who cannot understand this needs the proper education I am on about.)
ram
Revo-Stance= council bollocks
25.04.2003 00:45
Hardly a revo stance, a way of telling them
there shit will be spread. Not diverging in the well,
but hitting them with the truth.
WS atkins health advisors, rail track Aldamaston
nuclear plant allowed emmisions to poison strams
rivers, the same Atkins that was fined £10,000
for not spotting deadly asbestos at a primary
school. Yes its all shit and more. You Ram
can sit with the queen in the crap, me, I prefer to
spread it around. And maybe even keep the bastards on there toes.
Local, central, global,
for fuck sake connect.
antijen