'City of London Closed to Bush' banner hang

well done for trying people :-) an inspiration.

For Immediate Release

City of London Closed To Bush

At 8.30 this morning protesters scaled Admiralty Arch as a protest against George Bush's state visit to the UK. They unfurled a banner reading “Bush Free Zone' and decorated with a (Bush choking) pretzel , and handed out leaflets which quoted the memoirs of George Bush Senior where he said occupying Iraq would be “unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate,” and “Had we gone the invasion [of Iraq] route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.”.

The activists claimed that Bush's government is working to an agenda set by wealthy corporations, for example in his scuppering of the Kyoto protocol, which may have helped reduce the impact of global warming, or the fact that most of the contracts for the rebuilding of Iraq will go to large US multinationals like Bechtel and Halliburton. They also cited the enormous pressure that the US government is putting on the EU to introduce GM crops as another example of Bush's anti environmental stance.

Sam Monella, 25, from Oxford said, “We wanted to make it very clear to Bush that his colonialist foreign policies, his contempt for international law and his disregard for human rights and our environment are not welcome in Britain. His illegal invasion of Iraq has killed and continues to kill thousands. The people of the world have a duty to resist the terror inflicted on them by dangerous fundamentalists like Bush.”

“Bush claims to respect our right to freedom of speech,” said another protester, Anna Quay, “but what about the draconian laws he's introducing in his own country, like the USA Patriot act which allows the FBI to spy on anyone without even having to give a reason. He claims to want to fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic, but his flagship $15billion programme has actually only resulted in about $2billion of spending by the US, much of this going to programmes which advocate abstinence as the only way of preventing the spread of the disease (not condoms).”

Notes For Editors

1. George Bush Senior, in his memoir, "A World Transformed"
(1998) said, "Trying to eliminate Saddam...would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible.... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq.... there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."

2.In December 1997 industrialised countries agreed to reduce their emissions of the gases that cause global warming as a first step towards stabilising the world's climate. In March 2001, just weeks after his inauguration, President Bush announced that the US would not ratify the Kyoto Protocol. He declared it "dead". See  http://www.stopesso.org/background?text_id=kyoto

3.“Bechtel Group Inc., one of the lead contractors in the reconstruction of Iraq, has a 100-year history of capitalizing on environmentally unsustainable technologies and reaping immense profits at the expense of societies and the environment”, see  http://www.citizen.org/publications/release.cfm?ID=7249

4.“The US Army said in early April that Halliburton had been paid $50.3m [for the reconstruction of Iraq's oil infrastructure] out of [a] contract that could be worth up to $7bn over two years.”, see  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3006149.stm

5. The current EU moratorium on new genetically modified (GM) crops has particularly angered the United States, the world's major GM crop grower, it regards the biotechnology issue as a major transatlantic trade dispute, outweighing even the other rows it has with Brussels over bananas and hormone-treated beef. See  http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/EUmayLiftBan.cfm and  http://www.geneticsaction.org.uk/

6. The ACLU says that the USA Patrriot Act means that “without a warrant and without probable cause, the FBI now has the power to access your most private medical records, your library records, and your student records... and can prevent anyone from telling you it was done”. See  http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=12126&c=207

7. For more on AIDS See  http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/develop/aids/2003/0502test.htm

Does anyone have a photo of the banner? It sounds great!

The 3 people arrested this morning for trying to hang a banner across Admiralty Arch are still being held at Charing Cross police station over 9 hours after they were arrested. As far as we know they were only arrested for causing a public nuisance. It seems that the police are deliberately holding them for ages to prevent them having any more fun today.

They've been released, charged with causing a public nuisance. They have a court
date set but I don't have it handy; maybe somebody can post it here if they want
supporters etc :)

Pictures and video of the action will be available soon. If you took pictures please post them on indymedia as well! :-)

hi,
We're in Bow St magistrates court on tues the 25th at 10.
lots of love

Good luck on 25th. Sorry I can not make it.