Anti-Militarist Network Gathering in Nottingham

The Anti-Militarist Network will be holding its next gathering in Nottingham on the weekend of July 11th-12th. The AMN is a non-hierarchical, UK-wide network of autonomous campaigns, groups and activists opposed to militarism and the arms industry. It is at gatherings such as this that the AMN makes its decisions.

Over the course of the weekend there will be various sessions and workshops, including planning mobilisations against the DSEi arms fair in London in September and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Edinburgh in November. The AMN gathering is a great opportunity for activists from around the country to network and build a national anti-militarist movement.

The provisional timetable is as follows:

SATURDAY 2009-07-11

10:00 Introduction

10:30 Reports from regional groups and recent events

11:30 Break

11:45 AMN infotour and publicity

12:30 Lunch

13:30 NATO Parliamentary Assembly

15:30 Break

16:00 Direct action workshops

18:30 Dinner

19:30 Social night

SUNDAY 2009-07-12

09:30 Disarm DSEi 2009

11:30 Break

11:45 EDO Decommissioners support

12:30 Lunch

13:30 Activist Trauma Support discussion (TBC)

14:30 Conclusion

The conference will be held at the Sumac Centre, 245 Gladstone St, Nottingham NG7 6HX. Directions are available on the website. For those needing accommodation, there will be crash-space at a nearby housing co-op. Please check in at the front desk or the bar in the Sumac Centre on the Friday or Saturday evening, or contact the Sumac Centre on +441159608254. There will also be limited accommodation at the homes of local activists, which you can request by e-mailing Notts Anti-Militarism.

Vegan meals will be provided by Veggies catering campaign and local volunteers. On the Friday and Saturday night the Sumac social club will be open, with bar and music. (Non-members must be signed in.) Delegates to the gathering will be asked for small donations to help cover costs.

If you have any enquiries, special requirements or problems, please e-mail Notts Anti-Militarism. Hope to see you there!

Peru protesters killed by police armed with H&K

Peruvian security forces armed with Heckler & Koch rifles and submachine guns have killed dozens of indigenous protesters near the northern city of Bagua.

Indigenous communities of the Peruvian Amazon have been protesting against new “Free Trade” laws that would open up their ancestral lands to drilling for gas and oil.  Since April 2009, indigenous protesters have stepped up their protest, blocking road and river transport and shutting down oil and gas pumping stations.  On June 6, Peruvian President Alan García ordered in the troops, and police opened fire using live rounds on a crowd of protesters.

Peruvian police armed with H&K rifles take up positions in Bagua

LV= profits from the arms trade

An anti-arms-trade campaign in Nottingham has discovered that Bournemouth-based company LV= is knowingly profiting from the arms trade.  LV=, formerly known as Liverpool Victoria, is a financial services company that sells insurance, savings and investments.  Nottingham-based campaign Shut Down H&K discovered that LV= is the landlord of none other than Heckler & Koch – the world’s second-largest manufacturer of small arms.

What’s wrong with NATO?

Saturday April 4^th is the 60^th anniversary of NATO, the world’s most powerful military alliance.  The NATO summit in Strasbourg will be attended by mass demonstration and resistance, and there will be local protests throughout NATO member countries.  So what’s wrong with NATO?

• NATO is militarising the world. NATO promotes the idea that militarism guarantees peace, and its members currently account for 70% of the world’s military spending.  From its origins as an ostensibly defensive alliance, NATO has developed a strategy of military intervention in order to expand its sphere of influence, as tested in 1999’s unjustified and tragic high-altitude bombing campaign against Serbia.
• NATO threatens nuclear war. As part of NATO’s arsenal, hundreds of US nuclear weapons are sited across Europe, in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. NATO rejects a “no first use” policy, meaning that it reserves the option of a pre-emptive nuclear strike.  Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons are assigned to NATO, and could be used against any country perceived to be threatening a NATO member.
• NATO sponsored terrorism. From the 1950s to the 1980s NATO operated a network of clandestine army forces across Western Europe, codenamed Operation Gladio.  These secret NATO paramilitaries carried out terrorist attacks for which they framed communist groups in order to frighten populations into voting for right-wing governments.
• NATO is a tool of the “War on Terror”. The September 11 attacks provided the casus belli that NATO’s masters were waiting for.  Under the banner of a Global War on Terrorism, NATO immediately militarised the Mediterranean and went to war in Afghanistan.  Tens of thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed already and NATO forces are killing more every week in this expensive, bloody and unwinnable war.
• NATO is provoking a new Cold War. NATO was established to oppose expansion of the Communist Bloc.  However, far from dissolving after the Cold War ended, NATO expanded to the East, adding many former Warsaw Pact countries. Now NATO’s plans to place missile defence systems near Russia’s border have provoked Russia to aim its own missiles back at Europe.

NATO is not a benign force for peace, security and democratic values; it is an engine of war working to expand the domination of Western interests through military means.  It is an obstacle to global nuclear disarmament and world peace.

NATO’s expansion must be halted, its foreign interventions brought to an end and its military bases and nuclear weapons decommissioned.  NATO should be dismantled and its resources used to achieve a nuclear-free, less militarised and therefore more secure world.

Demo at German HQ of Nottingham arms company

Four activists from Nottingham travelled to Germany to take part in a demonstration against arms company Heckler & Koch at the company’s international HQ in March.  H&K is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of small arms, and its guns are used throughout the world; from Darfur to Iraq, from Nigeria to Nepal.  The company has long been opposed by peace campaigners in Germany, and since 2008 its Nottingham office has been the target of a local campaign called Shut Down H&K.

In 2009 Heckler & Koch will be 60 years old.  In order to pre-empt the company’s birthday celebrations, German peace groups organised a protest with the slogan 60 Jahre Heckler & Koch: kein Grund zum Feiern (60 Years of Heckler & Koch: No Cause for Celebration).  The Nottingham activists were invited to a March 7^th demonstration by the peace groups RIB, ORL and DFG-VK, who also funded their journey.

Nottingham campaigners to visit Germany

Four Nottingham anti-arms trade campaigners are visiting the German town of Oberndorf-am-Neckar in early March to attend a major protest at the international headquarters of arms manufacturer Heckler & Koch, whose British branch is based in Nottingham.

The Nottingham delegation

The Nottingham activists will be joining their German counterparts to protest about Heckler & Koch’s role in supplying arms used in murderous conflcts around the world. It has been revealed that H&K guns have been used by the Janjaweed militias in Darfur, by Blackwater mercenaries in Iraq, by the Georgian army in South Ossetia, and by criminal gangs in the UK.

The four will represent a Nottingham-based campaign called Shut Down H&K, which has been building friendship links with German organisations who also oppose the arms trade. A German peace group caled the Armaments Information Office (RIB) invited them to attend the demonstration and offered to pay their travel expenses.

The March 7^th protest has been organised by German campaign groups to pre-empt H&K’s 60^th anniversary celebrations. The theme of the demonstration will be “Masquerade of Death” and the marchers will be split into two columns – one mourners dressed in black to commemorate the victims of war, and one dressed as arms dealers celebrating their booming business. There will also be a rally at which the delegation will deliver a speech about the Nottingham campaign against Heckler & Koch.

Making a killing: Heckler & Koch guns in the hands of an African child soldier, a Taliban fighter in Pakistan, Serbian special forces, a Nepalese soldier and a Palestinian militant

press release in PDF

Shut Down H&K Spead The Word!

A small demo was held in Market Square on Thursday 22^th January to raise awareness and spread the word about the campaign against arms manufacturer Heckler & Koch. Hundreds of flyers were handed out to passers-by with the aim of raising awareness that Nottingham is home to the international sales headquarters of a multinational arms company. Conversations were had with Nottingham residents not only about the presence of H&K in their city but also about the arms trade in general, creating an effective space to engage in dialogue with the public. For more details and pictures, see Indymedia.

Shut Down H&K campaigners raising awareness in Market Square (photo courtesy of Tash)

There will be further demos in Market Square every fourth Thursday of the month, as well as continuing demos outside the headquarters in Lenton industrial estate every second Monday.

Quantum Of Solace: Don’t Buy Bond

Bondmania is back! Everyone loves Bond, especially since the franchise’s gritty 2006 reboot, fronted by a brooding, steely-eyed Daniel Craig. As with recent Bond films, Quantum Of Solace is being used to sell various lifestyle products. Big name brands pay handsomely to be associated with Bond, and Quantum Of Solace has racked up £50 million pounds for product placement. Let’s take a look at what the film is selling.

Promotional tie-ins for Quantum of Solace include Heineken lager, Smirnoff vodka, Coca-Cola, Ford cars, Virgin Atlantic airline, Sony TVs, National Lottery Scratchcards and The Sun newspaper. Launching a new perfume, Avon claims that “through this unique partnership, every woman can feel like a Bond Girl – smart, empowered, confident, and sexy,” while package holiday company Orbitz tells us “you can’t do it better than Bond, but you can certainly travel like him.”

If some of those promotions make you feel slightly queasy, hold on; the best is yet to come. The new Bond films feature product placements for, yes, you guessed it, Heckler & Koch firearms. In Casino Royale, Bond defeats the villainous Mr White with a H&K UMP9 submachine gun – a weapon that he carries on using in Quantum of Solace.

Promotional graphic for Quantum of Solace showing James Bond wielding a Heckler & Koch UMP9 submachine gun

Students Target Unethical Career Corporatism

On Monday 20th October the annual AISEC Careers fair commenced at Nottingham University, featuring many organisations with despicable or at least dubious ethical credentials and social-responsibility records, including BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, Qinetiq, E.On, BP, RBS, MoD and the army. The fair also featured some student activists and Grim Reapers who had made an appearance in order to remind fellow students of the deadly consequences of working in the arms trade or climate change industry.

Karaoke To “Heckle Those Kochs”

The Sumac Centre hosted a hilarious fundraising event for the campaign against local arms company Heckler & Koch. On Friday September 19^th, singers of varying abilities, some solo and some in groups, took to the stage for a karaoke night billed as Heckle Those Kochs.

Reflecting H&K’s lethal trade, several of the songs had a gun theme, including Shot You Down and Guns Don’t Kill People, Rappers Do. Other songs had their lyrics specially altered for the occasion, including Gun Shack and These Guns Are Made For Shootin’.

done

Not only was the night hugely entertaining for all, it raised nearly £50 for the campaign, which has helped to pay for new flyers to be printed. To carry our message of joyful defiance, the recorded songs will be replayed at future demonstrations outside the office of Heckler & Koch.