03/06/2008 by admin.

What is the true cost of Britain’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan?

An invite for academic, research papers and investigations.

  We would like to invite researchers, students and campaigners to investigate and research the true costs of Britain’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to then present their findings at a key session during the Convention of the Left which is taking place Manchester in September 2008. This idea is inspired by the economists Joseph Stigliz and Linda Bilmes book. “The Three Trillion Dollar War “.   

 Stigliz & Bilmes book brought together for the first time the ’facts we need to understand the financial, economic and social consequence of the Iraq conflict”.  The main focus of the book was on the USA.  The authors devote a small section in their book on the cost of the Iraq war to Britain. Stigliz and Bilmes put forward an estimated cost to the UK of the Iraq war (table 6.1) of £20.9 billion.  It this area that we believe needs further research, investigation and exposure.  What is also not been subject to any rigorous and meaningful examination is the true cost of Britain’s involvement, up to now and in the future, in Afghanistan.

  We would like to encourage research and investigation in all or of any part of the financial, economic or social cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 We would envisage the results of any research being produced to published on a website and to become freely available as a resource for campaigners, journalists and the general public

If you are interested or want further information, please contact us 

Richard Searle - 07760 224 580 / gearie@aol.com

Linda Clair - 07985 624 968 / lindaclair@btinternet.com

For the Convention of the Left

&

Jacqui Burke. Greater Manchester & District CND

(0161) 273 8283 / gmdcnd@gn.apc.org

Please forward this message to anyone you think may be interested in participating in this project

Posted in Peace, Planning | 2 Comments »

13/02/2008 by admin.

By Richard Searle

The economic system we all live under was born, as Marx succinctly put it, ‘red in tooth and claw’. The arms trade, the defence industry, security interests, national interests, which every way they call it,  they  are all prefaced on killing.   

There’s no polite way of putting it: for this economic system to succeed, continue and renew itself, others must die. The wars of the 20th century have killed millions. We have turned it ‘art of war’ into an industrial process   

In the eight short years of  21st century, and estimated one million more have joined the tally of war dead, from Central Africa and the Middle East, to the Caucuses and the Andes    How far we come from the slaughter of the trenches of WW1?

We now have high-tech wars in Afghanistan and Iraq where missiles fired from pilotless drones are directed from thousands of miles away in command rooms in the USA.  Those who fire the missiles never have to step foot in the country of those they kill. This is the iron fist of globalisation.

We can now turn on our televisions or Log-on and see wars being fought in real time.   Our society puts its best brains to work finding more efficient ways of killing people. Our governments subsidise the arms industries, gives bribes to the purchasers and justify this by saying it’s protecting jobs.  There exists an absurd and obscene contradiction at the very heart of capitalism. It provides the potential to extend life but is driven to end life. The combined defence budgets of the world for one year would eradicate world hunger, provide clean drinking for every person on the planet, an education for every child, could provide the medicine for every person with HIV and still have plenty of change left over.   Resistance to this logic, this drive to destruction, has always been there. It has been resisted by passive and active means. There have been those who have refused to fight and those who have turned their guns on their masters.  The 15th February 2003, turning point in modern history.   The convergence of global protests on one day in 2003 marked a first in human history. Protests moved through 12 time zones around the world, Those protests were organised from the grassroots up. They combined differing forces, movements and traditions. Those protests joined up the world as never before This is our immediate heritage not an event from another era.  It showed how far we have come together, our potential, our ability to communicate with new technology but it showed us how far we still need to go.    

Those protests were at once a victory in mobilisation, but within short space of time some participants read the 15th February as a defeat. The threat of war that had brought them on the streets had gone ahead. ‘We had marched in our millions but the bombs still fell’.   

Un-ravelling all the lessons, layers and contradictions of the 15th February 2003 provides the key to developing our strategies to stop the masters of war.   

What is the impact of 15th February ? Is it too early to tell?  

Discuss

Posted in Peace, Statements | 1 Comment »