Sign the Support Derry Anti War Protesters (The Raytheon 9) Petition
On 9th August 2006, 9 protesters from the Derry Anti-War Coalition (DAWC) broke into the Derry offices of Raytheon, the world's third largest weapons manufacturer.
They were protesting against the Israeli's use of Raytheon weaponry and software in their attack on Lebanon which has resulted in at least 1000 civilian deaths, a million injured, many more displaced from their homes, and extensive destruction of Lebanise infrastructure. This weaponry, according to the World Policy Instiutute includes Stinger man-portable air defense missiles, Standard and Maverick Tactical Air-to-Ground missiles, Sparrow and Sidewinder Tactical Air-to-Air missiles, and PAC-2 air to surface missiles.
On occupying the building the protesters barricaded themselves in and threw computers and paper files out of the windows. About 50 police officers surrouded the building and blocked all approaches to it with the result that police operations could not be observed. About twenty to thirty people protested on the main road outside. Police brought in trained police negociators from Belfast, then at 4 o'clock after 8 hours occupation the police stormed the building and arrested the protesters.
They then came out in force and searched those protesting on the main road claiming that the protesters could be in posession of Raytheon documents. Two refused to be searched stating the reasons to be spurious and were arrested and taken to Strand Road police station Derry. It was clear theat the police did not want to charge them formally. They did however try to change the protesters minds by pretending to take them to Coleraine police station some twenty five miles away. Their bluff called they returned to Strand Road where the charges were dropped after performing the searches under threat of force.
Appearing in court this morning the DAWC protesters, wearing blue guantanamo style "jump suits" were charged with "Unlawful Assembly" and "Aggravated Burglary".
Speaking from the building, Eamonn McCann said:
"We've decomissioned a number of items of computer equipment in a political protest against Raytheon....
Raytheon is a major supplier of high-tech equipment to Israel and other western forces. We feel that we've been successful in focussing the public's attention on Raytheon's involvement in the events in the Middle East.
The notion that the Derry plant is some benign operation independent of the overall Raytheon Arms Manufacturing is just nonsense.
There are two ways of signing the petition: one using the on-line petition at www.petitiononline.com/dawc/petition.html and the other by emailing your name and email and any query you might have to . The difference is that the on-line petition gives no feedback.
last revised: 27th August 2006
Hello and Welcome
"How does one fashion a book of resistance, a book of truth in an empire of falsehood, or a book of rectitude in an empire of vicious lies? How does one do this right in front of the enemy?
Not through the old-fashioned ways of writing while you're in the bathroom but how does one do that in a truly future technological state? Is it possible for freedom and independence to arise in new ways under new conditions? That is, will new tyrannies abolish these protests? Or will there be new responses by the spirit that we can't anticipate?"
The freedom and prosperity we enjoy in the west appear to be dependent upon the poverty, suffering and oppresion of others. Increasingly our own prosperity and liberties are being diminished. Current govenments and big business are rapacious of the planet and its people.
If we have any care for ourselves, our families, communities and what is left of the vanishing life of this planet then it is imperative that we devise and explore better ways of organising ourselves. What might those new and better ways look like?
It is only some 14,000 years since the last ice age wiped out any civilisations that existed before. We haven't had long since then to try out different forms of govenment. So it is unlikely that the political systems we know about represent all that is possible.
We need to examine known systems and in our successive inventions include what was good and replace the bad with something better.
last revised: 17th February 2004
Black Shamrock
Visit http://www.blackshamrock.org/
for news aboput the protests against amongst others
a) use of Irish and Northern Irish airports as stopover
for US planes flying troops and armaments to Afghanistan and Iraq
b) use of Derry airport by CIA for
extraordinary rendition
c) the presence of Raytheon (the world’s largest Missile manufacturer) in Derry, and companies like Timoney, Data Devices Corporation, Zillings and Moog Ltd
(all of whom make components for the international arms industry) in the south.
last revised: 23rd March 2006
Anarchy
Anarchy is the only moral politic because it starts from the premise that people are essentially good.
last revised: 2nd April 2004
Flying Spaghetti Monster
The flying spaghetti monster appears to have taken off in a big way. For some of the background (if you still need it) see the Wikipedia entry and the corresponding Uncyclopedia entry. There is now a game and free for all product fest. And then with a desire to direct you to it, there is the art work including flying spaghetti monster and pirates fighting global warming and again lighting their farts and also monster and pirates watching the bombing of baghdad - babylon More gruesomly anti-war and globalisation are to be found with the flying spaghetti monster (monstruo spaghetti volador) there by implication here and here
last revised: 7th November 2005
Free Software, free Documentation, free literature, free music and Sharing
There are a myriad problems associated with copyright and our ability to share. Here are a handful of sites interesting in this respect.
Sites using the free documentation licence
http://en.wikipedia.org
For sites using the Creative Commons licence see
http://www.commoncontent.org/
Criticism of the free documentation licence
http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html
http://people.debian.org/~branden/fdl/
last revised: 2nd April 2004
Site purpose, structure and state of implementation
We want to provide a forum for developing people's thinking on various issues.
We would appreciate suggestions regarding all aspects of how this site might be developed.
We are limited in the effort we can bring to building and maintaining this site. Hence we only cater for browsers running javascript and implmenting CSS1. This excludes Opera earlier than version 7, Netscape 4.73 and earlier, Internet Explorer versions earlier than 5, and iCab (current version 2.9.7).
On occasion the site will have rough edges. Please let us know when you encounter them.
last revised: 21st March 2004
Link to a site
The Northwest Social Forum is a loose organisation of people trying to do some good in the Derry /Londonderry area of Northern Ireland.
last revised: 4th November 2004
Experimental nonsense text for encouraging search engines
(Text that is not to be read by human beings unless they are spiders)
This World Is Not For Sale
This world is not for sale,
anti-globalisation world not for sale,
anti-globalization world not for sale,
for sale this world it is not,
stop corporate globalization from selling our world,
not for sale this world by the WTO,
Seattle's new politics of our world not being for sale,
philosophy of our world is not for sale,
morality of the world is not for sale,
politics of which world is not for sale,
sociology of this world not is for sale,
art of our world is for sale not,
drama of your world is for sale,
theatre of everyone's world is for not sale,
street theatre of this world is not for sale,
politics of the world is not for sale,
not this world,
it is this world that is not for sale,
why not?
because this world is not for sale that's why.
Submit your own spider text
If you have text that you think might further encourage the search engines to put this page higher on their rankings then send it to
last revised: 30th September 2004
