Military - new material (53)
01 May 2005
The reality of this barbaric bombing, Robert Fisk. Independent 8.7.05, p. 33. Fisk's insightful article points out the absurdity of the government's claim that July's indiscriminate London bombings were aimed at some abstract notion of "destroying what we hold dear", by citing Osama bin Laden's warning that "If you bomb our cities...we will bomb yours." Fisk argues the intent was to force public opinion to persuade Blair to withdraw from his adherence to Bush's policies in the Middle East, and Iraq in particular, as the Madrid bombings achieved in Spain. He points out the ease with which Blair describes London's bombings as "barbaric" asking "but what were the civilian deaths of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the children torn apart by cluster bombs, the countless innocent Iraqis gunned down at military checkpoints? When they die, it is "collateral damage"; when "we" die, it is "barbaric" terrorism." He also points to the failure of the security services - so adept at finding nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, so inept at uncovering "a months long plot to kill Londoners." Finally, Fisk warns, that part of the point of the bombings was to divide "British Muslims from British non-Muslims...to encourage the kind of racism that Tony Blair claims to resent." Here Fisk points out that the denial of the significance of the illegal invasion of Iraq and the lauding of the "values" argument advocated by Blair falls into the hands of the terrorist by encouraging racism. Fisk observes, as bin Laden has asked: "Why do we not attack Sweden"?
The Rise of Europe's Defense Industry, Seth G. Jones (RAND). Brookings Institution US-Europe Analysis Series, May 2005
http://www.brook.edu/fp/cuse/analysis/jones20050505.htm
Defence procurement in the European Union - the current debate, Burkard Schmitt. EUISS Task Force report (Paris) May 2005.
http://www.iss-eu.org/books/bk05-01.pdf
Make nukes history, Bruce Kent. Socialist Worker 28.5.05. Article by the vice-president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) that discusses the heavy involvement of the Labour Party - at leadership and the grassroots level - in CND demonstrations against Cruise and Trident missile systems while they were in opposition during the 1980s. He considers the Labour Party's move away, and eventual abandonment of supporting disarmament and the abandonment of the Labour Party by CND: "New Labour is not the party that I once joined - it's a privatising party, its a party of big business. It has slick PR people working for it, but an awful lot of the membership has left."<