VOICES NEWSLETTER # 51 (May / June 2007)

After Blair
Bringing Fallujah to Baghdad
Iraq Polls
40,000 prisoners?
Five More Years
Britain's Abu Ghraib
Deaths Survey Was "robust"
Stealing Iraq's Future
Attacking Iran: Bombs and Terror
In Brief
Campaign Update
Resources

After Blair
‘[In Iraq] This Labour government, which includes Gordon Brown as much as it does Tony Blair, is party to a war crime of monstrous proportions … [and is] continuing to commit one of the worst international abuses of human rights in the past half-century … It is inexplicable why we are not demanding this government’s mass resignation’
Lancet editor Richard Horton, Guardian, 28 Mar.

‘I don’t accept that what America has tried to do has failed’ Gordon Brown, BBC, 19 Jan.

The upcoming change in Labour leadership should be an opportunity for a radical change in British foreign policy: withdrawing British troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, scrapping Trident, and making a firm public commitment not to support any future attack on Iran. Instead, Tony Blair’s replacement by Gordon Brown – the man who bankrolled and supported all Blair’s wars – means that it will be business as usual. We must respond by stepping up our resistance.

According to ‘insiders in [his] camp,’ Brown has ‘no plans for a “cut and run” strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan’ but instead hopes to ‘dilute the influence of Iraq by moving other issues [such as universal education] up the policy agenda’ (Guardian, 4 Jan). He has been an outspoken advocate of Trident renewal (BBC, 26 Jun 06), has refused to pledge ‘to always seek UN approval before taking military action’ – the cornerstone of international law and the UN Charter – and “believe[s] that there is a collective interest … [in] Nato playing a bigger role out of theatre” (BBC, 19 Jan).

During a recent trip to southern Afghanistan, Brown declared that British troops there were fighting “on one of the front lines against … international terrorism,” and ‘took the opportunity to clamber aboard an Apache attack helicopter’ (Times, 31 Mar). No mention was made of the hundreds – maybe thousands – of Afghan civilians killed there by NATO forces last year (see Voices #50) or the fact that British commanders now want to equip the UK’s Apache helicopters with thermobaric missiles – weapons which, when ‘used in confined spaces like buildings and caves, create a pressure wave which rips apart the internal organs of anyone caught inside’ (Sunday Times, 25 Mar).

A reliable ally
According to John O’Sullivan, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher and fellow at the Washington-based Hudon Institute, “the Republicans are not going to worry if [Brown] goes in for taxation and redistribution as long as he remains a reliable ally” (Sunday Times, 28 May 06).To this end Brown has been ‘shoring up contacts with American conservatives’ and is on ‘good terms’ with one of the Iraq war’s principle architects, Paul Wolfowitz.

Henry Kissinger – one of the 20th century’s leading war criminals - ‘regularly stops by the chancellor’s home in Downing Street on his visits to Britain.’ “Gordon finds it absolutely fascinating to sit down with somebody like Kissinger, who has been making key decisions for over 30 years,” a close aide explained.

The anti-war majority
For the most part, Brown will be flying in the face of British public opinion in all this. According to a 26-28 Mar YouGov poll, a majority of the British public wants to see all British troops withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan ‘more or less immediately’ (tinyurl.com/24rear). 59% favour such a withdrawal from Iraq, 53% from Afghanistan.

Moreover, 72% say that ‘Britain should be reluctant to become involved in any foreign conflict unless it is absolutely clear that it is in Britain’s own interests to do so’ and 65% that Britain should spend less on the military and ‘not seek to have as much military influence in the world as [it] has at present.’

We are the majority.

Prosecution
Baltasar Garzon – the Spanish judge who had Pinochet arrested in Britain – has recently called for ‘Bush and his allies to [be held] to account for waging war in Iraq’, noting that ‘Those who joined the US president … have as much if not more responsibility than him’ (Reuters, 20 Mar). Such prosecutions – though a distant dream at present – should be firmly on the anti-war movement’s long-term agenda.
In the meantime - and as a matter of urgency - we need to terminate Britain’s participation in the ongoing crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

ACTION
- Join the ‘War is Still the Issue’ peace camp in Parliament Square this June and ‘See out Blair with Brian’ (see below).
- Plans are afoot for a mass anti-war civil disobedience action at this September’s Labour Party Conference in Bournemouth. Sign the pledge to take part NOW (see below)
- Contact your Labour MP / Councillor / Constituency Official and urge them to sign the Stop the War Coalition’s ‘Declaration to the New Prime Minister’, urging him to ‘withdraw all British troops from Iraq no later than October 2007’ (www.stopwar.org.uk or 0207 278 6694).

Bringing Fallujah to Baghdad
‘Civilians may find themselves in a “controlled population” prison’ as US forces ‘seal off vast areas of [Baghdad], enclosing whole neighbourhoods with barricades and allowing only Iraqis with newly issued ID cards to enter,’ Robert Fisk reports (Independent, 11 April). A former senior US officer has predicted that insurgents will attempt to destroy at least one of the “patrol bases” that the US intends to establish within these sealed-off areas and that “The American reaction will be to use massive firepower … destroy[ing] the neighbourhood that is being ‘protected’.”

Following a public outcry the Iraqi PM ordered a halt to the construction of a 3-mile wall around the Sunni district of Adhamiyah but in his response the US Ambassador ‘stopped short of saying construction would stop’ (AP, 23 Apr). “I resent the barrier. It will make Adhamiyah a big prison,” one resident, a 25-year-old computer programmer, told AFP.

The model
The US plans for Baghdad are explicitly based on its experiences in Fallujah, which the commander of “coalition” forces in Iraq, General Petraeus, considers ‘a model for other communities’ (Times, 10 Feb). Following the devastating Nov 2004 US assault on it, in which hundreds of civilians were killed, the mainly Sunni city became ‘virtually a police state, with random checkpoints and frequent street patrols by marines and Iraqi soldiers, largely Shiite Arabs’ (NYT, 14 Nov 05).

On 30 Mar Inter Press Service reported allegations by residents in Petraeus’ ‘model community’ that ‘US troops and Iraqi security forces working with them [we]re … executing people seized during home raids and other operations.’ “Seventeen young men were found executed after they were arrested by US troops and Fallujah police,” 40-year-old Yassen told IPS. “My two sons have been detained by police, and I am terrified that they will have the same fate. They are only 17 and 18 years old.”

ACTION
‘ Fallujah’ - a play using testimony from those at the heart of the US attacks on the city in 2004 – will be running in London from 1 May – 2 Jun (see listings). Contact voices if you can help leaflet one or more of these performances: 0845 458 2564. A special workshop for grassroots anti-war activists, ‘The Battle of the Story’, will also be taking place on 14 May (see events listings).

Iraq Polls
Two recent opinion polls paint a bleak picture of the situation in Iraq. Twenty-six per cent of Iraqis have experienced ‘the murder of a member of [their] family/relative’ in the last three years, 15% said that members of their family had left Iraq over the previous four years as a result of the security situation [1] and 69% think that the presence of US forces in Iraq is ‘wors[ening]’ the security situation [2].

As in previous polls, opposition to the occupation was overwhelming: 78% ‘strongly oppose’ (46%) or ‘somewhat oppose’ (32%) the presence of Coalition forces in Iraq; 82% said that they had no (52%) or ‘not very much’ (30%) confidence in US/UK occupation forces; and 77% that the US is playing a negative role in Iraq right now [2].
Fifty-nine per cent believed that the US ‘currently controls things in [Iraq]’ and 51% that attacks on Coalition forces were ‘acceptable.’

Withdrawal?
Given a restricted range of options and asked how long US and other Coalition forces should remain in Iraq, only 35% chose ‘leave now’ [2]. However, the BBC poll denied Iraqis the option of a timetable for withdrawal – which previous polls have shown is backed by the overwhelming majority of Iraqis [3] – and couched those options it did offer in highly leading terms.

Thus Iraqis were asked if they would like Coalition forces to ‘remain until security is restored’ (emphasis added) - the option chosen by 38%. Yet, according to the ORB poll [1], 53% of Iraqis think that the security situation will be ‘a great deal better’ (29%) or ‘a little better’ (24%) ‘in the immediate weeks following a withdrawal of Multi National Forces’ and only 26% think that it will get ‘a little’ (15%) or ‘a great deal’ worse (11%).

Notes
[1] ‘Public Attitudes in Iraq – Four Years On’, 10 – 22 Feb poll conducted by ORB, tinyurl.com/38ky5f.
[2] ‘Iraq: Where Things Stand’, 25 Feb – 5 Mar poll conducted by D3 Systems for the BBC.tinyurl.com/3573ke.
[3] In a 1- 4 Sept poll conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (tinyurl.com/ndz9g) 71% of Iraqis backed full withdrawal of all US-led forces within a year.

40,000 Prisoners?
Even as the number of Iraqis in US detention skyrockets, the US is planning to imprison thousands more.

The US is currently detaining 18,000 Iraqis - up from 14,000 in Dec 06 (NYT, 17 Dec) – and the number of detainees ‘could reach 20,000 by the end of this year’ (WP, 15 Apr). The average length of detention is about a year, ‘but about 8,000 of the detainees have been jailed longer, including 1,300 who have been in custody for two years.’
According to Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, the US has no legal authority “to detain Iraqis or judge them under [a] tribunal system.”

The US is currently expanding its prison facilities in Iraq as well as helping the Iraqis to build their own detention centres, and the commander of “coalition” forces in Iraq, Gen David Petraeus, ‘is planning for the possibility of holding as many as 40,000 captives’ – presumably using both US and Iraqi facilities (CSM, 6 Apr).

Stun guns
One former detainee, Laith al-Ani - released this January after being held for over 2 years - described the US prison Camp Bucca in southern Iraq ‘as a bleak place where guards casually used their stun guns and exposed prisoners to long periods of extreme heat and cold’ (New York Times, 18 Feb).

He said that electric prods ‘were commonly used on him and other detainees as punishment’: “One time they used it on my tongue. One guard held me from the left and another on my back … for four or five days I couldn’t eat.”

ACTION
Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi AP photographer detained by US forces on 12 Apr 06 (see voices 49), has now spent over a year in detention. Please write to: Robert Holmes Tuttle (U.S. Ambassador, US Embassy, 24 Grosvenor Square, W1A 1AE) and call for Mr Hussein to be either released or charged.

Five More Years
Though Britain is scaling-down its mission in Iraq – while escalating its presence in Afghanistan - current military plans envisage maintaining British troops in Iraq for at least the next five years.

On 21 Feb Blair announced that he would be withdrawing 1,600 British troops from Iraq in the coming months and that 500 more might be withdrawn by the end of the summer (Washington Post, 22 Feb). A few days later it was announced that Britain would also be increasing its troop strength in Afghanistan by 1,400, ‘taking the number of British troops [there] to around 7,700 until 2009’ (Guardian, 8 Mar).

Losing the South
According to veteran US military analyst Anthony Cordesman, Blair’s 21 Feb announcement ‘reflected realities on the ground,’ the British having ‘decisively lost [southern Iraq to Shiite Islamist groups] … more than two years ago.’ (‘The British Defeat in the South and the Uncertain Bush “Strategy” in Iraq’, 21 Feb, tinyurl.com/33hsv2).

Today, “[i]nstead of a stable, united, law-abiding region with representative government and police primacy, the [southern Iraqi provinces of Basra, Maysan, Dhi Qar and Muthanna are] unstable, factionalised, lawless, ruled as a kleptocracy and subject to militia primacy,” (Knights and Williams, ‘The Calm Before the Storm: The British Experience in Southern Iraq’, Feb 07, tinyurl.com/2mr58k) – and British forces appear to be all but powerless to alter this situation.

5 more years
Nonetheless, according to a confidential planning document (Operation Tour Plot) parts of which have been seen by the Sunday Telegraph, Britain’s armed forces will be fighting in Iraq ‘for at least another five years’ (8 April). Just how many will stay remains unclear. Reported figures range from ‘at least 4,000’ (Telegraph, 22 Feb) to ‘a few hundred’ (Telegraph, 17 Apr). Either way, their principle role would appear to be to demonstrate British support for the US-led occupation.

Britain's Abu Ghraib
A British Army Major has admitted that the ‘most senior legal advisers’ of the British Army’s 19 Mechanised Brigade approved the use of torture techniques on Iraqis in 2003 (BBC, 13 Mar).

The techniques – which the Army refers to as “conditioning” – ‘involved the hooding, handcuffing and placing of terrorist suspects into stress positions, as well as depriving them of sleep’ (Telegraph, 14 Mar). According to Amnesty International the use of such techniques ‘which, particularly when applied simultaneously or cumulatively, amount to torture or other ill treatment were used routinely on [Iraqi] detainees held by the UK authorities’ in 2003 (Public Statement, 15 Mar).

An official inquiry into the use of such techniques in Northern Ireland in the early 70s concluded that psychological torture had “played an important part in [British] counter-insurgency techniques in the British Cameroons (1960-61), Brunei (1963), British Guiana (1964), Aden (1964-67), [and] Borneo / Malaysia (1965-66)’ (Alfred McCoy, A Question of Torture, p.54).

Baha mousa
That these techniques were approved for use in Iraq was revealed during the trial into the death of Baha Mousa, an Iraqi father-of-two who was beaten to death in British custody in Sept 03, sustaining 93 separate injuries (Observer, 18 Mar).
Due to lack of evidence, no-one has yet been held responsible for Mr Mousa’s death. According to one analysis, 10 of the witnesses – all members of the same unit of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment – ‘told the court martial variations on ‘I cannot remember’ or ‘I don’t know’ 667 times.’

ACTION
Write to your MP and ask why no charges appear to have been brought regarding the authorisation for British soldiers to employ torture techniques in Iraq in 2003. Urge them to demand an independent public inquiry into both the torture scandal and Mr Mousa’s death.

Deaths Survey Was "Robust"
A report on war-related deaths in Iraq that was publicly rubbished by the US and British governments, was assessed by the MoD’s chief scientific adviser as being “robust” in its design, “employing methods … regarded as “close to best practice” in this area” (BBC Press Office, 26 Mar). The assessment was brought to light by a Freedom of Information Act request filed last Nov by the BBC.

The report, Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey, was published last Oct in The Lancet, and concluded that, as of June 2006, there had been 655,000 excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war - including at least 186,000 Iraqis killed by “coalition” forces (see voices #49). Immediately after its publication, the Prime Minister’s official spokesperson declared that its conclusions were “not one[s] we believe to be anywhere near accurate” (tinyurl.com/39yz9s).

Stealing Iraq's Future
“What is happening now is very simple … it will test the validity of the view of those whose protest goes far wider than merely condemnation of the war in Iraq and extends to the whole of American and UK foreign policy. For this large body of people, the coalition is an army of occupation … [and] we are out to steal Iraq’s oil” - Tony Blair, 10 Nov 03, tinyurl.com/2onhvj

On 26 Feb, ‘amid immense pressure from British and American diplomats to enable foreign involvement in what was a nationalised industry’, Iraq’s Council of Ministers approved a draft oil law ‘opening the country’s oil reserves to foreign investors’ (Telegraph, 27 Feb).

If approved by the Iraqi Parliament the new law – which was ‘drafted with the assistance of BearingPoint, an American consultancy firm hired by the US government, which had a representative working in the American embassy in Baghdad for several months’ (Independent on Sunday, 7 Jan) - could result in multinational oil companies controlling and profiting from the majority of the country’s oilfields for up to 20 years (see Articles 6, 9, 12b and 13f of the ‘Draft Oil And Gas Law’, 15 Feb, tinyurl.com/2fxksb).

Avoiding “media fuss”
The draft does not refer explicitly to Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs) - the form of contract favoured by the big oil companies - however on 16 Jan a ‘senior Iraqi oil official … close to the committee entrusted with drafting the law’ told Dow Jones Newswires that the omission was cosmetic: “We have changed the text of the law from PSA to development and production contract in order to avoid (media) fuss,” he explained.

Under PSAs ‘[t]he government can be seen to be running the show – and the company can run it behind a camouflage of legal title symbolising the assertion of national sovereignty’ (Crude Designs: The Rip-Off of Iraq’s Oil Wealth, Platform, Nov 05, www.crudedesigns.org). Iraq stands to lose scores of billions of dollars by signing such agreements.

In any event, the draft permits the signing of ‘development and production contracts’ with multinational oil companies for all of Iraq’s known oilfields not currently in production – 51 of 78 fields – as well as any that are discovered in the future (Wall Street Journal, 4 Mar). The latter may be as much as 100bn barrels, compared to Iraq’s known reserves of 116bn barrels (FT, 18 Apr).

Relentless pressure
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given its contents, Bush adminstration officials and top American commanders ‘have pressured Iraqi leaders relentlessly to make [the passage of the new oil law] a priority’ (New York Times, 27 Feb).
Just how much pressure was revealed on 13 Mar when AP – citing ‘close associates’ of the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki – reported that Maliki ‘feared the Americans w[ould] withdraw support from his government – effectively ousting him – if parliament d[id] not pass a draft oil law by the end of June.’

Britain’s role
Meanwhile, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act have ‘reveal[ed] extensive efforts [by the British Government] since at least 2004 to push for companies such as BP and Shell to receive long-term contracts, which would give them exclusive rights to extract Iraq’s huge oilfields’ (Platform press release, 9 Mar).
According to the documents, British officials advised the International Tax and Investment Centre – a lobbying organisation pushing for PSAs in Iraq on behalf of BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Total and ENI - on their strategy for influencing the Iraqi government and formally sent ITIC’s lobbying document to the Iraqi Finance Minister.
Moreover, the Foreign Office hired a former BP executive to lead its work on Iraqi oil policy in 03 and 04. He wrote a ‘Code of Practice’ for the Iraqi Oil Ministry, calling for multinational companies to play the major role in developing Iraq’s oil, and for the Ministry’s policies to be compatible with those of BP.

Very simple
The US and British governments, Big Oil and the IMF have all played key roles in shaping Iraq’s new oil law. Ordinary Iraqis and Iraqi civil society were excluded from the process. Nonetheless, the moment of decision is not the passage of the new law – expected to take place in the next couple of months – but the signing of contracts.
Iraq’s future is being stolen. The global anti-war movement must act to help stop this theft before it’s too late.

ACTION
- Join the ‘Hands Off Iraqi Oil’ demo outside Shell’s AGM on 15 May (see listings).
- A new UK coalition, ‘Hands Off Iraqi Oil’, has formed to campaign against the signing of long-term contracts with Iraq by British oil giants Shell and BP. Similar campaigns are forming in Italy and the US. See www.HandsOffIraqiOil.org.
- Iraqi trade unions are at the cutting edge of resistance to the new oil law. A model trade union resolution, calling for solidarity with them, is now available. See www.HandsOffIraqiOil.org or 0845 458 2564.
- Contact your MP and urge them to sign EDM 1180, calling on the Government to ‘disclose to the House all representations it has made in relation to the oil law.’ So far at least 54 MPs, including Tories, Lib Dems and Labour have signed. You can contact your MP on-line via www.WriteToThem.com.
- Order copies of Voices free postcard to MPs, ‘Iraq’s Future is Being Stolen’, calling on them to sign EDM 1180.

Attacking Iran: Bombs and Terror
[T]he Pentagon is continuing intensive planning for a possible bombing attack on Iran … [and] a special planning group has been established … charged with creating a contingency [plan] …that can be implemented, upon orders from the President, within twenty-four hours,’ Seymour Hersh reports (New Yorker, 5 Mar).

According to the BBC, ‘US contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country’s military infrastructure’ (20 Feb). ‘[T]he trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran [is] developing a nuclear weapon’ though ‘a high casualty attack on US forces in [Iraq]… could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran.’

A former senior intelligence official told Hersh ‘that the current contingency plans allow for an attack order this spring’ (New Yorker, 5 Mar). On 28 Mar the Telegraph reported that two US aircraft carriers were ‘leading military exercises … involv[ing] 10,000 personnel and more than 100 warplanes flying simulated attack manoeuvres off the coast of Iran.’

Terrorist methods
Meanwhile America is also ‘funding militant ethnic separatist groups in Iran … dealing with movements that resort to terrorist methods in pursuit of their grievances against the Iranian regime’ (Sunday Telegraph, 25 Feb). ‘Funding for their separatist causes comes directly from the CIA’s classified budget but is now “no great secret”, according to one former high-ranking CIA official in Washington.’

According to ABC News – citing US and Pakistani intelligence sources – a Pakistani tribal militant group known as Jundallah ‘has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005’ (ABC News, 3 Apr). The group recently ‘took credit for an attack in February that killed at least 11 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard riding on a bus in the Iranian city of Zahedan.’

ACTION
- Stop the War are currently circulating a pledge ‘to take immediate protest action’ in the event of an attack on Iran. 0207 278 6694 or www.stopwar.org.uk.
- Useful background info for understanding US/UK policy towards Iran can be found in JNV’s exhibition catalogue ‘Drawing Paradise on the Axis of Evil’, available from voices price £4.50 incl p&p.

In Brief

Somalia
The US-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia has, as predicted (see voices #50), plunged the country back into its ‘long night of anarchy and warlordism.’
In ‘the worst fighting [in Mogadishu] in 15 years … [a]llied Ethiopian and Somali government troops fired tank and mortar rounds into heavily populated areas’ and used helicopter gunships to ‘pound rebel positions’ (Times, 2 Apr).

“Where are all those human rights groups who go on about Mugabe now?” asked one outraged Somali working for the UN (Times, 2 Apr). “This is ethnic cleansing dressed up as a war on terror.” Over 1,000 people have been killed since Feb (BBC, 10 Apr) and over 300,000 people have fled the city according to the UN (Guardian, 21 Apr).

The EU is ‘the largest donor to both Somalia and Ethiopia’ (Guardian, 7 Apr) and ‘[a] senior European Union security official has warned … that donor countries could be considered complicit if they do nothing to stop them.’ (Independent, 7 Apr).

Covert ops boosting al-qaeda sympathisers
US-backed covert operations, aimed at weakening the Lebanese group Hezbollah, have ‘bolster[ed] … Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant version of Islam … are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda,’ Seymour Hersh reports (New Yorker, 5 Mar).

“ We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shiite influence, and we’re spreading the money around as much as we can,” a former senior intelligence official explained. “In this process we’re financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences.”

Campaign Update
Brian wins channel 4 award
Channel 4 viewers have voted Brian Haw – whose one-man 24-7 peace vigil in Parliament Square is now in its 6th year – Britain’s “Most Inspiring Political Figure” (Telegraph, 8 Feb). Brian received 54% of the vote, followed by Gen Sir Richard Dannatt - the head of the British Army, who has called for British troops to be withdrawn from Iraq “soon” - who got 18%. Tony Blair received a mere 8%. For more info see www.parliament-square.org.uk or visit the ‘State Britain’ exhibition at Tate Britain (see listings).

Parliament Square Peace Camp this June: See Out Blair with Brian
A special Parliament Square Peace Camp will be taking place this June to celebrate Blair’s departure and to demand: the withdrawal of all British troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, the scrapping of Trident, and a firm public commitment that the UK will not support any future attack on Iran.

Stay for as long – or as short – a time as you want. The Camp will begin at 12 noon, on Saturday 23 June and finish at 12 noon on Thursday 28 June (Blair is scheduled to step down - and Brown become PM - on 27 June).

Please note that this is an unauthorised demonstration within 1km of Parliament and that under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act it is a criminal offence to participate in such a demonstration (max fine £1000).

A nonviolent direct action workshop and legal briefing will take place the evening before the Camp (see here) Accommodation will also be available on request for that night. Contact 0845 458 2564 or voices@voicesuk.org.

War on trial
Five peace activists who took part in disarmament actions at RAF Fairford in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq will be retried this summer following hung juries in their original trials.

Toby Olditch and Phil Pritchard - who entered RAF Fairford on 18 Mar 03 with the intention of disarming the USAF B-52 bombers there that were subsequently used to bomb Iraq – will be retried from 14 May. Contact 07910 329 211 or inspiraction2003@yahoo.co.uk.

Josh Richards is scheduled to be retried from 30 May, and Margaret Jones and Paul Milling – who non-violently disabled three tankers used for refuelling the bombers – from 2 Jul (nabataat@yahoo.co.uk).

All trials will take place at Bristol Crown Court, The Law Courts, Small Street, BS1 1DA. Please be there to support them if you can.

Other upcoming trials include the 20 Aug trial of Milan Rai and Maya Evans for participating in last October’s “No More Fallujahs” action (see voices #48), and the Jul trial of the Lakenheath Eight – eight activists charged under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act for entering USAF Lakenheath and chaining themselves to the gates of a munitions storage area to stop the movement of cluster bombs (see listings for details).

The Occupation Project
On 5 Feb, voices’ US partner organisation ‘Voices for Creative Nonviolence’ launched ‘The Occupation Project: A Campaign of Sustained Nonviolent Civil Disobedience to End the Iraq War.’

In its first 9 weeks the Project generated 316 arrests at the offices of 38 Representatives and Senators – including John McCain, Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton – as well as in Congressional buildings during the passage of the latest war-funding bill.

And the resistance continues! eg. on 18 April forty members of the University of Wisconsin’s Campus Anti-war Network staged an all-night sit-in at U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl’s Madison office, insisting that the Senator meet with them to hear their demands regarding the war in Iraq. For more info see http://vcnv.org.

Help needed!
Two anti-war plays are currently running in London: “Fallujah” (1 May – 2 Jun) – based on verbatim testimony from Iraqis, US soldiers and others – and ‘Called to Account: The Indictment of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair for the Crime of Aggression Against Iraq – A Hearing’ (19 April – 19 May).

Political comedian Mark Thomas is also on tour, with dates in Brighton (10 May), Bath (15 May), Cambridge (22 May), Bristol (24 May), Reading (2 Jun), London (4-16 June at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn), Oxford (4-5 Jul) and Norwich (19 –20 Jul) among other places. See www.markthomasinfo. com for details.

If you can help leaflet any of these events with info about the June Peace Camp in Parliament Square and / or civil disobedience at the Labour Party Conference this September (see below) then please contact the office on 0845 458 2564.

Mass Civil Disobedience at the Labour Party Conference
Unless there is a radical change in British foreign policy in the next few months, the anti-war movement must organise mass civil disobedience at this September’s Labour Party Conference in Bournemouth.

Nadje al-Ali, Iain Banks, Denis Halliday, George Monbiot, Hans von Sponeck and Haifa Zangana have recently signed an open letter calling on the Stop the War Coalition to organise such an action. A motion to this effect will also be submitted at the next STW Steering Committee meeting on 5 May. If STW decides not to then an ad hoc coalition of groups will be formed to carry this out. Please contact voices if your group would be interested in helping to organise or support such an action.

In the meantime a postcard has been produced (‘Who would Gandhi bomb, Gordon?’) for people to pledge to take part in such an action. Copies are available free from the voices office.

Resources
Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present by Nadje Sadig Al-Ali (Zed Books, 2007)
This book is a moving and engrossing exploration of the lives of Iraqi women, how they have been shaped by the fortunes of the country and how they in turn have shaped it.
Al-Ali starts from her own personal story, having an Iraqi father and living outside the country but with an enduring passion for it and those she got to know on visits as she grew up. She weaves in oral histories of dozens of Iraqi women interviewed across the generations and in a diversity of locations and situations. Many have been displaced from Iraq at different points during the last 60 turbulent years. Their words, and the authors informed and detailed understanding of the social and political history of Iraq reveals the tangled interplay between the personal and the political, memory and experience and the historical and present day differences that exists between Iraqi women in a complexity of ways as well as the wider forces that affected them all.

The momentum of the book is informed by a feminist understanding of inequality. It charts how women’s rights in Iraq have been won and, particularly since the 2003 invasion, increasingly lost, and it allows these women to talk about their lives, experiences and country in their own words. Together these voices form a detailed, often surprising but extremely valuable picture of life and experience for Iraqi women inside and outside of their country.

A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror by Alfred W. McCoy (Metropolitan Books, 2006).
From 1950 to 1962, the CIA – in a ‘veritable Manhattan project of the mind’ - became involved in torture through a massive secret research project into human consciousness that reached a cost of a billion dollars annually.

What it discovered was that, whilst mere physical pain often produced heightened resistance, a combination of simple, even banal procedures involving isolation, standing, heat and cold, light and dark, noise and silence, could create ‘a synergy of physical and psychological trauma whose sum is a hammer-blow to the fundamentals of personal identity.’

Tracing this history McCoy documents how this psychological torture paradigm – with its twin poles of “sensory disorientation” and “self-inflicted pain” (such as that produced through the use of so-called “stress positions”) - was subsequently exported to US allies around the world during the Cold War, later re-emerging with a vengeance after the 9-11 attacks. Indeed, the infamous photos from Abu Ghraib ‘show CIA torture methods that have metastasized like an undetected cancer inside the US intelligence community over the past half century.’

Closing with a brilliant rebuttal of the main arguments used to defend the use of torture (‘the ticking bomb’ etc…) this is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what’s been happening in Iraq, Guantanamo, Bagram and elsewhere over the past 5+ years.