World Anti-militarism Newswire Archive

CIA bombing campaigns and assassinations, conducted by the mercenary group Blackwater (Now Xe Services), are part of an effort to keep the “barbarians from coming together” and create a situation requiring a continuation and expansion of the contrived global war on terrorism.

"We do not negotiate with terrorists". The mantra has long been a cherished value of western democracies. In reality all the major powers have at some stage been lowered to discussions with militants, from Northern Ireland to Iraq. Now Israel seems on the verge of granting their fiercest enemies of Hamas a major coup with the mooted released of up to 1,000 prisoners. What message does this send?

To Palestinian students there is nothing strange about suffering for their degree. Israeli restrictions seem designed to thwart academic potential, arresting lecturers, embargoing equipment and shutting down whole universities

Not only does one country account for the overwhelming plurality of world military expenditures, but that nation also has troops and bases on all six habitable continents (as well as a 54-year military mission in Antarctica, Operation Deep Freeze) and eleven aircraft carrier strike groups and six navy fleets that roam the world's oceans and seas at will. It is also expanding a global interceptor missile system on land, on sea, in the air and into space that will leave it invulnerable to retaliation.

Capitalism needs an enemy, real or invented and the demise of communism deprived them of a handy hook onto which they could hang the planet.

All the ‘war on terror’ has done is terrorize everybody and drag us deeper and deeper into the quagmire of the ‘new world order’.

From the former Yugoslavia to Somalia the Anglo-Saxon Empire is busy turning the planet into a graveyard.

Why the tar sands are important for anti-military campaigning

Representatives from London and Brighton solidarity groups picketed the Maison
Languedoc-Rousillon office in London today in protest at the LR department's plans
to build facilities for Carmel Agrexco in Sete harbour. We handed in the attached letter to the office director.

Here is detailed report of the demonstration against NATO in Edinburgh last weekend. 20 photos of the day are included.

"In an unprecedented defeat for the Federal Reserve, an amendment to audit the multi-trillion dollar institution was approved by the House Finance Committee with an overwhelming and bipartisan 43-26 vote on Thursday afternoon despite harried last-minute lobbying from top Fed officials and the surprise opposition of Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who had previously been a supporter."

10 months ago, on 18 January 2009, Elijah Smith A former British Soldier was arrested in Brighton. He had spent the previous night decommissioning the EDO/MBM/ITT factory in Brighton, in an attempt to stop it providing parts for weapons being used by the Israeli army to bomb civilians in Gaza. Nobody was injured or harassed during their action, which was one of property damage. He and his co-defendants did not resist arrest.

"This, then, is the future that you can see just as well as I can. When the Obama administration decides to up the ante on drone use in Pakistan and Afghanistan, as it's soon likely to do, it will be ensuring not the end of al-Qaeda or the Taliban, but the long life of robot war within the US's ever-more militarized society. And by the time this set of robotic dreams fails to pan out, it won't matter. Yet another mini-sector of the military-industrial complex will be etched into the American grain.

Whatever the short-term gains from introducing drone warfare in these past years, we are now locked into the 24/7 assassination trade - with the US's own set of non-suicide bombers on the job into eternity. This may pass for sanity in Washington, but it's surely helping to pave the road to hell.

Haven't any of these folks ever seen a sci-fi film? Are none of them Terminator fans? Are they sure they want to open the way to unlimited robot war, keeping in mind that, if this is the latest game in town, it won't remain mainly an American one for long. And just wait until the first Iranian drone takes out the first Balochi guerrilla supported by American funds somewhere in Pakistan. Then let's see just what we think about the right of any nation to summarily execute its enemies - and anyone else in the vicinity - by drone. "

Citing a “serious deterioration of human rights since the coup,” Schakowsky reflected on the executive decree PCM-M-016-2009 (declaring a state of siege) published on Sep. 27 which was set in place to supposedly defend national security and public order but that “seems to be defined as anything that is said against the coup.”

On Friday the 13th November 2009 in Nottingham, Anti-Militarists and other activists marched to the gun makers Heckler and Koch in Lenton, Nottingham.

Beyond the demolitions in its suburbs and the frequent, violent clashes around Al-Aqsa, Jerusalem hides a quieter shame. Southeast of the holy city live the Jahalin Bedouins, a community that has been repeatedly displaced, now enduring subhuman poverty beside Jerusalem’s largest garbage dump. An embarrassment to Palestinians and Israelis, the Bedouins' unique way of life is under grave threat.

When the Iranian Revolution exploded on the world scene three decades ago, John Limbert was a greenhorn diplomat assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. After that station was taken over by revolutionary students, he spent 14 months as a political hostage in the building that came to be known as the “Nest of Spies.”

Today Limbert is the newly appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary for Iran in the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. That makes him Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's point person on Iran, just as pressure is building in Congress to impose more sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

While Limbert's preferred methods may differ from those of his predecessor Dennis Ross, it would be naive to think that his political goals are any less ambitious: undermining Iran's growing ability to oppose U.S. policy in the Middle East by restricting its access to alternative energy sources while promoting a change to a government friendlier to Western corporate interests.

“Somebody had to stand up and say the emperor had no clothes, and it was our responsibility as African Americans more than any other people in the world,” said Omali Yeshitela, chair of the Uhuru Movement and top organizer of the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations. The emperor is, of course, President Barack Obama.

Brooklyn Councilman Charles Barron, a former Black Panther, declared: “We don’t want a president to transfer the war from Iraq to Afghanistan. We’ve come to Washington to say to President Obama, end the war in Iraq, end the war in Afghanistan, end the war in Pakistan.”

After months of mobilising and planning today the NATO Welcoming Committee set up the Smash NATO Convergence Space in Edinburgh. The space will act as a base for activists resisting the NATO Parliamentary Assembly meeting in the city from Friday.

One false and contradictory claim after the next was disseminated last night by the establishment media with regard to the core facts of the Fort Hood shootings.

Perhaps most irresponsible of all is the unverified claim that Hasan had written on the Internet in defense of suicide attacks by Muslims, even though the origins of those writings are entirely unverified. Similarly, certain news organizations -- like NPR -- used anonymous sources to disseminate inflammatory claims about Hasan's prior troubles allegedly grounded in activism on behalf of Islam.

Copyleft artwork by Brazilian cartoonist Latuff.

The Empire strikes back – right when when public support for the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan sinks to all time lows, an anti-war Islamic extremist with links to suicide bombers goes on a shooting rampage at a U.S. army base, reinvigorating support for the war on terror and demonizing opposition to it as anti-American extremism. The scam would be believable if it wasn’t so perfectly staged.