London Terror Attack - Westminster in Lockdown

Photo credit The Independent

The terrorist attack in and around Parliament today, where five people died, including the attacker and an unarmed police officer, with forty injured, some seriously, has brought a strange mood in the area.

I work in Westminster, and our building, along with many others was in lockdown this afternoon. We were finally allowed to leave the building at 4.45 pm, but told to 'disperse' quickly. The area was much quieter than normal at rush hour as I made my way home, with large sections of Whitehall and around Parliament Square roped off by the police, and police and security vehicles sirens continually blaring as a backdrop. The mood reminded me of the 2005 tube bombing in London, which carried on for weeks.

The attack came exactly one year to the day after the Brussels underground attack, and is being treated by police as a terrorist incident, which seems to be the case. I've been thinking, with all of these terror attacks in Europe, in France and Germany mainly, there was sure to be an attack on London at some stage. Today it happened.

It bore similarities with the vehicle attack in Cannes in France, and the knife wielding ones in Germany, in fact it was a combination of the two. These 'lone wolf' type of attacks are very difficult to prevent. How you know what is going on in one person's mind? You can't, you can only prepare a response, and the security services do look to have responded quickly and efficiently to it.

With these events, if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time you are unlucky, it is unfortunately a fact of modern life, but it isn't so easy to be philosophical about that. I've been inside Parliament myself, and the police look like Robo Cops, very heavily armed, but somehow it does not make you feel safer, it kind of makes you nervous. It is though necessary, unfortunately, as today's events demonstrate, though 'softer' targets are impossible to protect. Parliament and its surrounds is the most protected area in the country, and it happened there.

Life carries on, I suppose, but the city has taken a big knock today. Thoughts with those affected and their friends and family, a dreadful day in London.

Kurdish Women's Movement in Europe (TJK-E) - Statement on Million Women Rise

AGAINST FASCISM, WOMEN ARE EVERYWHERE

On the 8th March we welcomed the 107th International Women's day, we salute the memory of Rosa Luxemburg, Sakine Cansiz and all revolutionary women who paid the heaviest prices to protect us and show us the values of a free life, resistance, hope and the culture of the Mother Goddess who birthed the history of resistance.

We salute the Kurdish people's leader Abdullah Ocalan (Apo) who has supported us in our journey to find our true essence, to create a meaningful self-defence, to organise ourselves and to create our system for Women's liberation. We take today as an opportunity to renew our promise of liberation to our comrade Apo who has broadened our boundaries of freedom.

On the 8th of March 2017, we are proud to be part of the Kurdish women's movement, which proved that the revolution of women is a reality, not a utopia. This movement allowed us to believe in justice, equality and freedom in the face of fascist and nation-statist mentalities that ensure their survival through wars, destruction, injustice and rape. The pinnacle of the patriarchal system, capitalist modernity, thrives with world wars, economic crises, deregulated economies, and erased democracies which is causing the explosion of society. We must answer by deepening our critical consciousness, resisting, further organising ourselves, fighting and developing our self-defence and building meaningful solidarity with one another.

Ocalan observed, "Women left to the 'goodwill' of men are doomed to lose." Therefore, we will continue our organisation by expanding our communalism and our asemblies that are essential to a confederal system of women. We will strengthen our system of self-defence through the courage, creativity and aesthetics of the women's fight in their battle against the barbarism of Daesh in Kobane, Shengal and in the whole of Northern Syria.

We will develop this system with promise to the of the Cizre massacre, from Miray of 3 months to Mother Taybet of 57 years whose corpse remained in the street for 7 days, to the mother of Cemile Cagirga who had to keep the dead body of her 13 year old daughter in a freezer, for her burial was banned. Armed with our unconquerable self-defence and strong-will, we will confront the male-mentality of the vile attackers of the corpses of Ekin Van and other women.

We will strengthen the presence of women in politics against the shameless fascism of Erdogan's AKP, at a time when elected women politicians are the first victims of his political genocide. HDP co-chair Figen Yuksekdag, who recently had her MP title revoked is the latest to be subject to this political genocide.

Just like our comrades Seve Demir, Pakize Nayir and Ftma Uyar, who were brutally massacred by Turkish state forces in Sur and Cizre, we will never give up on our politics. The people are our strength, no attack can revert us from our path to truth. Through our resistance, we will hold Erdogan's AKP to account for the destructions in Sur, Cizre and Nusaybin.

The development of women's cooperatives will strengthen our means of self-defence. We will defend all women who are forced to marry their rapists to 'clear' their honour. As women, we will say 'NO' to the upcoming referendum in Turkey and be an obstacle to the efforts of establishing a 'one-man' executive presidency.

We reject masculine, male-dominated modes of thought that destroy collective thought and knowledge production. Jineology, women's science is an important tool for the development and liberation of women, it is our guide in our journey for Xwebun (to be yourself) and the answer to all those who try to dominate our identity, our spirit and our body.

The rejection of the anti-women policies and actions of the global patriarchal system can only be achieved through the union of women's knowledge, our organisations and our struggles. Strengthening Democratic Modernity through solidarity between women will overcome capitalist modernity's statist, class and power oriented structures which is the high-point of a patriarchal system.

No to Sexism! No to Femicide! Against colonialism, we are everywhere! Long live women's solidarity! Jin, Jiyan, Azadi - Women, Life, Liberty!

The Kurdish Women's Movement in Europe (TJK-E)

Taken from a leaflet handed out on yesterday's Million Women March in London.
    

Lib Dem’s New Trident Policy Will Please No-one

At the Lib Dem autumn conference in 2015, ahead of the Parliamentary vote on whether to renew the Trident nuclear weapons system in 2016, delegates voted against a motion calling for Trident to be scrapped by 579 votes to 447. This meant that the party voted against a like-for-like replacement of the Trident system but not to endorse unilateral disarmament by the UK in the Parliamentary vote.

Instead, the Lib Dems established a working group "to develop policy on the future of Britain's nuclear deterrent, if any, following a full consultation within the party." The decision effectively side stepped the Parliamentary vote by kicking the issue into the long grass with only a commitment to report on future policy within 18 months of the conference.

The new leader, Tim Farron and much of the Lib Dem establishment, got their way when delegates voted for an amendment to the motion, which set up a working group to consider the issue and to report to spring conference in 2017. Lib Dem MPs did though vote against a ‘like for like’ replacement of the Trident system in the 2016 vote, mainly on the grounds of costs, whilst the party review was taking place.

Well, the time has arrived, a report has been produced in time for the Lib Dems spring conference on 17 to 19 March this year, entitled ‘Towards a World Free of Nuclear weapons.’ I know this because I was perusing the Lib Dem Voice website, I don’t know why, because I rarely do this, but the piece by Lib Dem activist, Neil Stockley, caught my eye.

The policy paper concludes that the UK should maintain a minimum nuclear deterrent, which is no great surprise for a seasoned Lib Dem watcher like me. They are a party that feigns a kind of radicalism, but when push comes to shove, they meekly adopt a policy which is a millimetre away from the safety of the status quo.

In a political contortion only a Lib Dem could manage, Stockley writes:

“This is an important debate for Liberal Democrats, because we understand all too well the catastrophic consequences of detonating nuclear weapons. The ethical questions they raise go to the heart of our party’s values: we believe that any nuclear war is morally unacceptable and must never be fought. We appreciate that as a founding signatory of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation on Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the UK has a legal responsibility to reinvigorate international nuclear disarmament initiatives. And we have always recognised the Government’s duty to protect the British people from attack and to play a full part in protecting the UK’s NATO allies.”

The paper says the current continuous at-sea deterrent (CASD) that is Trident could be discontinued without threatening the UK’s current or future security. Instead, it recommends adopting a medium-readiness responsive deterrent posture, meaning not being at sea continuously and not carrying nuclear warheads sometimes, in an effort to reduce costs, whilst making any possible nuclear weapon holding adversary, unsure whether we could strike back, or not. There would also only be three submarines, rather four.

This policy is so piecemeal that it is pretty meaningless, unless we were unlucky enough to not have any nuclear armed vessels at sea when attacked, but would save some money. I assume that the committee considered a land based or airborne (carried by aeroplanes) nuclear deterrent, which would save a lot more money, but rejected this approach for some reason. Probably judging it to be too radical?

I have always been against having nuclear weapons at all, but I know the majority of the British public would disagree with me, so I would be prepared to support a much cheaper option, like land or air based systems. At least this would save a considerable amount of money over the Trident system, and perhaps move us towards nuclear disarmament.  

With the new under water drones, it is doubtful whether a submarine based nuclear weapons system is any less likely to be neutralised than a land or air based one, whether they were carrying nuclear warheads or not, so I can’t really see what the point that this Lib Dem stance is meant to achieve?

You can always rely on the Lib Dems to fudge an issue, and to try to please everyone, by having a policy stance which is neither one thing or the other. No doubt they will say this is a realistic, pragmatic position, but in truth it is no position at all, other than a pale imitation of the established policy.

We know the Lib Dems are unprincipled, but they don’t even appear to be able to be properly pragmatic, with this ridiculous compromise. Will the conference delegates approve it? After some bluster, yes, I think they will.