the people vs. the arms fair

on wednesday last week i had the opportunity to make my feelings known about the arms trade to delegates to europe's largest arms fair. DSEi (or 'dicey') takes place at the excel centre in london's docklands every other year, and has been an obvious target for those who campaign against war and torture. campaign against the arms trade and disarm dsei facilitated a week of actions against the arms fair which were conspicuously left out of the corporate press, who seemed content to merely question whether 'banned' weapons were being sold, and skirted round the central issue of the legitimacy of the arms trade. it seemed to me to be in particularly bad taste that a fair selling bombs and guns should be taking place in east london, an area massively bombed during the second world war, and subject to the terrors of gun crime in the present, especially as the fair would represent a potential terrorist target that would be policed at the taxpayer's cost.

wednesday was 'no rules' day for the protestors, in which anyone using any tactics was invited to make their protest. the day saw people locked onto concrete weights blocking roads, people climbing onto the roofs of trains, a critical mass further disrupting traffic, and lorries full of bricks mysteriously being left on main roads. these were met with some fairly thuggish policing, including an incident i personally witnessed where a man was told he was going to be arrested for obstruction of the highway even though he was on the pavement. when the policeman in question was made aware of this he promptly forced the guy into the road before proceeding. for full details of the protests see the uk indymedia site, and for my personal account go here. disillusioned kid was at the street party the weekend before dsei, and his account is here.

the comedian and activist mark thomas somehow managed to get into the fair posing as a buyer, and got dealers to reveal all kinds of juicy details about the 'under the table' items on offer. apparently some companies were offering cluster bombs too. some suited activists managed to get into the dorchester hotel during the dsei dinner on the thursday night. so much for the 4m pound policing operation then... it was an interesting experience being able to come face to face with the buyers and sellers of arms. due to the massive disruption of rail and road links to the centre delegates were often forced to walk to entrances past large crowds of protestors. the sight of delegates coming home on the docklands light railway, arms loaded down with goody bags from such dealers of death as raytheon, picturing the latest weapons technology was bizarre indeed, and a rare opportunity to confront those whose participation maintains the industry. it was also an opportunity to remind yourself about the realities of our society - whilst hideously rich arms dealers glided through heavily policed gates in their mercedes, a few hundred yards away poor londoners looked on without such optimism. whilst the government sent in 4000 police to protect the parasites, the protesters were being criminalised.

don't doubt that we'll be back in 2007!

There's A Blogging Going On...

Today is September 1, Uzbekistan's independence day. It is being marked in the blogosphere by an assortment of bloggers writing about the situation in the country and possible responses (primarily a cotton embargo). I've already said my bit over on my main blog as has Dan. There's a fairly comprehensive list of participating blogs here. Take the time to read some or all of them. I guarantee you'll learn something. If you're inspired to action as well, all the better.