Arms Trade Protest - A New Way Forward

Tony Goring | 30.07.2004 16:22

A way to stop the fighting an form an organised group.

It has been clear for some time that the groundswell of popular support that grew during the Stop The War protests has not been expoited as well as it could have been. In particular protest against the Arms industry has been nothing short of a debacle. The recent cock-up by the DSEi organising group at Farnborough Arm Fair being a case in point.

The DSEi Group has tried their best but presumably lacks experience and as such we have seen a year of failure since the event at Excel. A number of us who care pasionalty about stopping the Arms trade with effective action ( beer sales ?) are forminig a new organisation to do that. Thos of you simply interested in handing out leaflets or visiting empty offices (!!) need not apply, we are into action, direct action.

The Website below has details of a forthcoming meeting and we will be preparing for a fullscale stopping of the next DSEi. No leaflets, no empty gestures, no placards or rainbow flags. We are going to stop these bastards.

www.StopTheArmsTrade.org.uk

Tony Goring
Homepage: http://www.StopTheArmsTrade.org.uk

Comments

Hide the following 13 comments

About time !

30.07.2004 17:19

About fucking time. Direct action is the only way, we have seen it work in other countries so let's rise up here. The public schoolboys at Stop DSEI can claim the credit afterwards.

Mick

your website not working

30.07.2004 18:36

Your website doesn't seem to be working. Any chance you could post details of your meeting here on Indy?

Kate Jackson

what we need is more action

31.07.2004 08:44

Personally think any new initiative against the arms trade is a good thing. However I'm reluctant to go to yet more public meetings to be filmed and harassed by the cops and think this is something that a lot of people feel. DSEi people didn't fail because of lack of interest in militant action but because of the lack of people interested in militant action.

If we're serious about fucking up next year's DSEi (and other areas of the arms trade) then we need to start now and we need to learn from the animal rights movement and really hit them where it hurts. If we can get to the point where everyone from the organisers of DSEi to their cleaners or insurers don't know whether they can get through a day without a visit to their offices or their homes then we can begin to pull them apart piece by piece. Just concentrating on getting people onto the streets will not do this.

We need to work in small groups and just do this - no more talking and faffing around in public meetings. Take action now!!!!

activist

NV direct action

31.07.2004 10:50

Direct action I am all for but you make no mention of non-violence. I hope you follow the NV ethos because the bloody arms trade is all about the perpetuation and expansion of violence. I say I hope because your website ain't working. Not much use to anybody so far.

Matt

Web Attack

31.07.2004 10:52

About 2 houts after details were posted on Indymedia the site came under a massive "Denial of Service" attack. We are fortunate that one of our group is a former hacker and as such left in the site what are known as "mantraps". These have led us to those responsible.

Details to follow. The site will be back up by Monday.

Tony Goring

campaigning

31.07.2004 11:33

Direct Action is an important tool, but it needs to be part of an effective strategy, not a strategy in itself.

Decide your strategy and then find the right tactics, which experience has indicated is best made up of a wide range from the fluffy to the spiky. A big problem is campaigns getting bogged down in set pieces that cater more for a certain section of activists, and loosing sight of the end goal.

That's my two pence.

But best of luck in your campaign

FtP

Can I get sause with that?

31.07.2004 15:41

D- action thats what army does and monkey do, education is what makes you smart.

Arms tec is licenced through isreali and american instalations each feeding each other while british small arms race and tourture equipment reaches the places where other products fail to reach, if you become their enimey they will have to devise another weopon to repel your advances no matter how gentle. You will fall between the gaps in the Terrorist safty net campaign,
Sure you have to do something, but then so do they, anglo populations the world over are in decline and their not so white neighbors are threatening boarders suplies and resorces, what if black soldiers refused to fight? refused the orders of whites? what then? we will have no army, america would have no armed forces thats why deployment of one nuke or du devestation wins a fight, can't take em on fairly cos we havent got the numbers or a spare generation of men to fight,cant make the sacrifice. We've got just women and Black men in the army now.
There I think thats got it, black men have pride, its the only thing we never took away from them...if you can offer them a better alternative to becoming an army slave then the Army will starve befor they develop the ray gun..
Corse if your successful... the UK will have to pull out of Iraq...OPEC will regain control sell oil to China and we will be well fucked economically while I eat humble pie.
Oh now you see what you made me do...I gave away a plan.

Simon willace

-==-

31.07.2004 16:00

I also think the arms trade in this country has been let off the hook but public meetings are only really any good for protesting within the boundaries given to us by those in charge. As soon as you think about taking more radical action I reckon public meetings are a liability. Organise into small groups of people you trust and decide on your plan, execute the plan and post the results anonymously from an internet cafe not from your home pc.

Lets learn from each other...

1 public meeting with everybody just gives the cops a way of photographing/videoing everybody

lots of autonomous groups all over with no hierarchy just gives them lots of headaches.

(A)

arms

31.07.2004 23:17

its great news that more people are getting active against the arms dealing bastards. why do you have to start out with such divisive crap about other activists tho? so far your only acheivement is to post a link to a website that doesn't work, maybe that will teach you a bit of humility and to be less arrogant about others who ARE ON THE SAME SIDE AS YOU.

armless + independent

Good Luck

31.07.2004 23:31

Maybe the farnborough arms fair "cock-up" was because incorrect info was deliberately posted to mislead people. So it was removed.

Desai are doing things. Everyone else can do things too. Don't start by having a go at others though.

Joan x

Joan P

Right on Tony

01.08.2004 07:56

Great,

more divisive comments. It's almost as if Tony Goring was being paid to slag off other protestors.

Web site attack

02.08.2004 11:04

The site is now up and running but as I said in an earlier post we know who took it down. So much for us all being on the same said eh Richard ?

Tony Goring

hmmm this is all very dodgy again!

04.08.2004 09:11

have been watching this interplay between some group of people who slag off dsei people AND who at the same time post troll content on other threads.

anyway - this now sounds like utter rubbish - within 2 hrs the website was subject to a DoS attack - hmmmmm yeah right

given that the domain name: stopthearmstrade.org.uk has no whois record - ie it has not even been registered!!

the results are:
No match for "stopthearmstrade.org.uk".
WHOIS database last updated at 10:05:01 04-Aug-2004

Now you're not suggesting someone hacked the nominet servers are you?

you can search for it yourself at nominet:

http://www.nic.uk/index.html

info