For Your Delectation

Apologies for the paucity of posts over the last week or so. Various things got in the way. Unfortunately with exams looming this state of affairs is likely to continue. Hopefully the smorgasbord of thoughts below will go some way towards making up for my absence.

Dave Riley pointed me in the direction of this report from Australia's Green Left Weekly about Mauritian socialist Ram Seegobin's participation in the Asia-Pacific International Conference (ASPIC), held in Sydney at Easter. Ram is a member of Lalit and was talking (among other things) about a campaign against US bases, focusing particularly on the question of Diego Garcia. Quoth he:

“We have got to demand that all foreign troops leave Iraq certainly, but let’s also demand that the troops come back from the US bases around the world, not just the war zones. We need to mobilise against the [current] wars, but also against militarisation and for that the US bases have to go.”

The rest here. Stan Goff a US based anti-imperialist activist and former special forces officer who also attended the conference has some interesting reflections on the campaign.

In other news, the BNP launched their general election manifesto (in secret) over the weekend. It apparently contains (although I can't be bothered to waste my time actually reading the thing) all the stuff you would expect about cracking down on immigration and abolishing multiculturalism. My favourite idea, however, is the suggestion that those who have undergone national service (which they would make compulsory) would be required to keep a "modern assault rifle" at home. According to party leader Nick Griffin, "It's there to shoot burglars with if they want, it's there to shoot people who invade this country if they want, and if in the end a tyrannical government wants to usurp the rights and freedoms of the people it is there to use against the government as well." I don't know about anybody else, but I can't help but feel that ifwe had to be subjected to a fascist government, it would be a good thing if everybody all had assault rifles. I for one certainly wouldn't be wasting mine on burglars...

Elsewhere, those nice people at the Radical Activist Network have reprinted my latest article on the Chagos Islands. They've also just set-up a page focusing on the little-discussed corporate takeover of Iraq which is worth checking out and brings together a variety of useful resources.

That'll have to do for the timebeing.