Sweet enough

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Good news today that Norman Kember and the Canadian detainees have been released after spending months kidnapped in Iraq. Congratulations to Anas al Tikriti from the Muslim Association of Britain for campaigning in Iraq on their behalf.

I hope the government isn't going to claim credit for this. Norman Kember was in Iraq campaigning for peace. What he went through is what many Iraqis go through and is just one part of the mosaic which is the hell of Iraq.

Messages from the demo keep flooding in. Hardly any are negative, and most of those are from the US. But we also get brilliant messages from the US. People write and say we are so glad you are doing something.

One mail today was about Palestine. Why do we raise this issue, surely it has nothing to do with the war on Iraq. But it has. Instability in the region is connected both to the wars, the presence of foreign troops and western support for Israel. This was shown graphically over the Jericho jail, where US and British observers left and allowed the Israelis to attack. Britain and France drew up the Middle East boundaries after the First World War and Israel was established after the Second World War.

Western policy and the new imperialism are intimately connected with Palestine and any solution to the Middle East crisis has to involve justice for the Palestinians.

It isn't all politics in the Stop the War office. Our biggest disputes are about chocolate and who is going to unload the van. There are a couple of people in our office (men I might add) who love chocolate although they're quite fussy about what sort. We get squabbles over the Green and Black's (which isn't easily available here in King's Cross) plus it is now obligatory whenever anyone goes abroad to stock up in the duty free. So we've had recently Lindt dark chocolate from Istanbul, Neuhaus from Frankfurt and chocolate from Venezuela so hard you had to cut it with a knife.

Just as well there's an international movement to keep us stocked up.

Off now to speak at City University on Guantanamo _pressure is building up and even the Guardian printed some good letters including our own. But then again it also printed an appalling apology for the US goverment's torture camp.

3/23/2006 04:27:00 PM | Permalink