A piece for the Llanelli Star to report on progress in our commonwood:
Welcome to Troserch Wood, but leave your motor at the gate! Troserch Wood is a strip of ancient woodland, along the Morlais river north of Llangennech. The 80-acres of former Forestry Commission plantation was acquired three years ago to secure it for public access and wildlife. The aim was to keep an unspoiled wooded valley in the public domain – a greenwood and a commonwood! - while gradually replacing conifers with native broadleaved trees
.
The woods are managed by the Troserch Woodland Society (TWS), a voluntary association open to anyone with £5 to spare who shares these aims. An elected committee doubles as a not-for-profit limited company.
When we succeeded in getting the wood, with a grant from its former Forestry Commission owners (renamed Cyd Coed), we hadn’t really thought what to do with it. Luckily, the committee includes two foresters. With their advice and expertise, we organised the felling and replanting of about ten acres east of the river. Now, at last, the woods are free of heavy machines and the tracks more or less clear of mud. Gone are acres of dark pines. In their place, between lines of stumps and brush, several thousand newly planted ‘whips’ are sprouting leaves: oak and ash, rowan, elder and wild cherry.
With the felling and replanting, as with the original purchase of the woods, we’ve been very lucky with Cyd Coed and other grants. A new bridge and improved tracks serve to open up an area that had been effectively out of bounds for a generation, too steep, dark and dense for man or beast.
Now the landscape is revealed and sunlight flooding in. Dormant acorns, roots and bluebell bulbs have sprung to life, birds returned to nest in the brush left by the felling. Among the outcrops, springs and streams are manmade features, the outlines of old walls and tracks, spoiltips and ruins of old mineworkings…
Please heed the WARNING sign on the fences around old mine openings!
We hadn’t envisaged telling other people what to do or not to do. But with the property come responsabilities, and liabilities (and it will take some time before the Coal Authority makes good the caps on all the old drifts and shafts.)
We must also find our way through conflicts of interest. Forest tracks draw motorbikes and fourwheel drives, but we cant square that with wildlife commitments and the desire of most visitors for peace and quiet. In the event of a collision, who suffers, and who picks up the costs?
So the decision was taken to ban all motor traffic - motorbikes, quadbikes and fourwheel drives – from the forest paths (they’re already illegal on rights of way, though NOT on the ‘Roman Road’ that forms the western boundary). Mountain bikers and horseriders are welcome, on the understanding that wheels and hooves give way to traffic on two feet.
It’s hard to keep a proper balance between over-caution and irresponsibility. We don’t want to turn a wildish river valley into a bland pleasure park, or litter the place with warning signs and notices. The proceeds of timber sold may cover basic woodland management, but not the construction of immaculate footpaths or rangers to patrol or empty litter bins. Instead we rely on goodwill and common sense, we trust people to look after themselves and each other, respect the nature of the place and the feelings of other visitors.
So, come and have a look if you haven’t already. To get to the main carpark, at the north-west end of the wood, follow the Troserch Road north from Llangennech. Cross the A4138 roundabout and head up the hill. After a mile-and-a-half, where the road swings sharp left, turn right, heading north towards Llannon. After another half mile, and you’ll see a carpark on the right, with signboard and map of the woods and paths. There’s a picnic site nearby.
We also welcome proposals from groups and organisations for new activities – camping, orienteering, forest-school or woodcraft skills. School groups, scouts, you name it (whatever happened to the Woodcraft Folk?): get in touch.
For contacts and information on wildlife, history, see www.troserchwoods.co.uk . All TWS members are welcome to management meetings, first Wednesday every month, at 7 pm in Llangennech Community Hall.
Monday 26 October 2009
Stolen fruit: a date for lawmakers and enforcers
Latest round in the date war, this letter below went to a selection of ministers, law officers and local police. With each letter went a single stolen date, removed by me from the Swansea Tesco store.
Dear Peter Mandelson
FREE SAMPLE: CONFISCATED TESCO ‘WEST BANK’ DATE
You are now in receipt of stolen goods and whoever is in charge of import regulations may need to decide who’s responsible and what should be done.
I have recently removed this date among others, in packets labelled ‘Origin: West Bank,’ from the shelves of Tesco’s Swansea Marina store. Since last January I have confiscated a number of similar packets and written to Tesco CEO Terry Leahy explaining why. I offered to refund the price in full if he could show the dates were not the product of illegal Israeli settlements. In the ensuing correspondence, Tesco neither addressed the settlement issue nor took up my refund offer. I was banned from their stores but not prosecuted.
A more public ‘citizen’s seizure’ was then organised at the same Tesco store. Filmed and reported in the press, aYoutube clip of the event drew 50,000 hits. Although a woman accompanying me was charged, for some reason I was not. When the woman’s case came to Swansea Crown Court in June, the judge dismissed it.
Through my MP, Alan Williams I have written to government ministers urging them to bring UK law into line with the Geneva Conventions and UN Security Council resolutions to which we are signatories. Bill Rammell (then at the FCO) put the contradiction baldly in his reply: ‘…the building of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories is illegal under international law. However the import and sale of products from Israeli settlements…is not prohibited by law in the UK, and we consider this is consistent with the UK’s international law obligations.’
This week I learned that that the government is citing a Security Council resolution to justify an otherwise illegal freeze on suspects’assets. This prompts me to adopt a similar line in a further citizen’s seizure. Where a process is inadmissible, not to mention cruel, so is its product – whether settlement dates, ‘blood diamonds’, evidence obtained by torture, or lampshades made of human skin. Where government lawmakers and enforcers fail to uphold our commitments in international law, citizens have a right and duty to step in.
Import and sale of settlement produce amounts to handling stolen goods, it undermines international law and helps prolong a conflict for which Britain bears heavy responsibility. I have auctioned previous consignments of confiscated West Bank dates in aid of Gaza relief (at £1 per date). Unless you need this sample as evidence, you may care to do the same. Or eat it and serve justice in some other way.
Yours sincerely
Greg Wilkinson (dgregwilkinson@yahoo.co.uk, phone 01792 455335)
Dear Peter Mandelson
FREE SAMPLE: CONFISCATED TESCO ‘WEST BANK’ DATE
You are now in receipt of stolen goods and whoever is in charge of import regulations may need to decide who’s responsible and what should be done.
I have recently removed this date among others, in packets labelled ‘Origin: West Bank,’ from the shelves of Tesco’s Swansea Marina store. Since last January I have confiscated a number of similar packets and written to Tesco CEO Terry Leahy explaining why. I offered to refund the price in full if he could show the dates were not the product of illegal Israeli settlements. In the ensuing correspondence, Tesco neither addressed the settlement issue nor took up my refund offer. I was banned from their stores but not prosecuted.
A more public ‘citizen’s seizure’ was then organised at the same Tesco store. Filmed and reported in the press, aYoutube clip of the event drew 50,000 hits. Although a woman accompanying me was charged, for some reason I was not. When the woman’s case came to Swansea Crown Court in June, the judge dismissed it.
Through my MP, Alan Williams I have written to government ministers urging them to bring UK law into line with the Geneva Conventions and UN Security Council resolutions to which we are signatories. Bill Rammell (then at the FCO) put the contradiction baldly in his reply: ‘…the building of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories is illegal under international law. However the import and sale of products from Israeli settlements…is not prohibited by law in the UK, and we consider this is consistent with the UK’s international law obligations.’
This week I learned that that the government is citing a Security Council resolution to justify an otherwise illegal freeze on suspects’assets. This prompts me to adopt a similar line in a further citizen’s seizure. Where a process is inadmissible, not to mention cruel, so is its product – whether settlement dates, ‘blood diamonds’, evidence obtained by torture, or lampshades made of human skin. Where government lawmakers and enforcers fail to uphold our commitments in international law, citizens have a right and duty to step in.
Import and sale of settlement produce amounts to handling stolen goods, it undermines international law and helps prolong a conflict for which Britain bears heavy responsibility. I have auctioned previous consignments of confiscated West Bank dates in aid of Gaza relief (at £1 per date). Unless you need this sample as evidence, you may care to do the same. Or eat it and serve justice in some other way.
Yours sincerely
Greg Wilkinson (dgregwilkinson@yahoo.co.uk, phone 01792 455335)
I want my DNA back
This letter was prompted by Weekly Guardian articles on Justice and Civil liberties. A bit of unfinished business:
Ian Arundale
Chief Constable, Dyfed Powys Police
PO Box 99, LlangunnorCarmarthen SA31 2PF
Sir
Data Protection: please return or destroy DNA evidence taken from me in Llanelli, Spring 2003
One morning soon after the allied invasion of Iraq I was arrested, with one or two others, in the road outside Colleg Sirgar in Llanelli. I had joined students in a sit-down protest and remained seated when asked by police officers to clear the way.
I was lifted and manhandled. Although I did not resist, my arms were forced up behind my back, thumbs were pressed into the soft space under my ears, and my head banged down on the bonnet of a police car.
After a few hours in the cells, I was charged, then cautioned and released. I cant remember the exact charge, but I was asked if I agreed to a caution on the base of it. To get back to my family, I did, but only on condition that a reference to abusive language and behaviour was deleted.
In the presence of the desk officer, I asked the arresting officer to describe the abusive language and behaviour he accused me of. (This was the man who kept shouting ‘pressure points’ and sticking his thumbs under my ear; he also called me ‘a stupid old man’ and tightened the plastic cuffs until they hurt.) When he was unable to recall any abusive words or gestures I might have used, the desk officer agreed to delete the reference.
At the time, I did not object to the DNA swab and made no formal complaint about the manner of the arrest (as a young man I’d got used to some casual violence, both on the rugby field, and in protests over the Vietnam war). It was only later, when I discovered that the ‘abusive’ passage had not been deleted from the charge, that I felt a real injustice had been done: if I’d known the lies were staying in I would have refused the caution and fought the charge in court.
As it is, I was not convicted and did not accept the charge as given. Innocent of any crime, I ask you to destroy or return any DNA evidence retained by your force and ensure that related computer records are deleted.
I await your response - yours sincerely
David ‘Greg’ Wilkinson (formerly of Graig Fach, Llangennech, Llanelli SA14 8PX)
Ian Arundale
Chief Constable, Dyfed Powys Police
PO Box 99, LlangunnorCarmarthen SA31 2PF
Sir
Data Protection: please return or destroy DNA evidence taken from me in Llanelli, Spring 2003
One morning soon after the allied invasion of Iraq I was arrested, with one or two others, in the road outside Colleg Sirgar in Llanelli. I had joined students in a sit-down protest and remained seated when asked by police officers to clear the way.
I was lifted and manhandled. Although I did not resist, my arms were forced up behind my back, thumbs were pressed into the soft space under my ears, and my head banged down on the bonnet of a police car.
After a few hours in the cells, I was charged, then cautioned and released. I cant remember the exact charge, but I was asked if I agreed to a caution on the base of it. To get back to my family, I did, but only on condition that a reference to abusive language and behaviour was deleted.
In the presence of the desk officer, I asked the arresting officer to describe the abusive language and behaviour he accused me of. (This was the man who kept shouting ‘pressure points’ and sticking his thumbs under my ear; he also called me ‘a stupid old man’ and tightened the plastic cuffs until they hurt.) When he was unable to recall any abusive words or gestures I might have used, the desk officer agreed to delete the reference.
At the time, I did not object to the DNA swab and made no formal complaint about the manner of the arrest (as a young man I’d got used to some casual violence, both on the rugby field, and in protests over the Vietnam war). It was only later, when I discovered that the ‘abusive’ passage had not been deleted from the charge, that I felt a real injustice had been done: if I’d known the lies were staying in I would have refused the caution and fought the charge in court.
As it is, I was not convicted and did not accept the charge as given. Innocent of any crime, I ask you to destroy or return any DNA evidence retained by your force and ensure that related computer records are deleted.
I await your response - yours sincerely
David ‘Greg’ Wilkinson (formerly of Graig Fach, Llangennech, Llanelli SA14 8PX)
Remembrance Day: killing as we mourn?
A letter/feature for the local paper, trying to pull together race and war, focussing on next month's Remembrance Day ceremonies. I wrote the piece partly to atone for not going to London for a big Stop the War demonstration on the same day.
Saturday Oct 24th
To the Editor
South Wales Evening Post
I missed the BNP debut on Question Time. That was partly because here in Wales the programme was pushed into a late-night slot, partly because I felt people had already put up a good anti-racist showing job in Swansea last week. My wife helped make a big banner saying ‘Equality, Welcome, Respect’ and I joined the crowd behind it for a while, across the road from the Swansea Mosque.
That silent protest was called by Quakers, a sideshow to the larger demo in Castle Square. What I’m wondering about now is whether there should be another silent presence alongside the usual Rememberance Day event at the Swansea Cenotaph.
Like Nick Griffin, I have a father who served, in the Second World War, and like Jack Straw’s father, I myself refused to join the army. Instead I did a three-year stint in voluntary work-camps. Earlier, when we lived in wartime London, we had our windows blown out, twice. I hardly remember that, but what does stand out is my mother getting the news of her younger brother’s death. An army engineer, he was blown up, not long after the allied landings, by what would now be called an IED. At that time, we were sharing our house with a family of Jewish refugees: during the V1s and V2s we children camped happily under tables in the basement.
In my father’s or uncle’s place, faced with Hitler’s attack, I don’t know what I would have done. But that wasn’t the sort of war facing me when my turn came. Self-defence is one thing, but that didn’t seem to be the issue in Malaya, Cyprus, Kenya, Aden or Suez. Then, as now in Afghanistan, it wasn’t clear who or what were we fighting for.
The BNP links war and race, but in the wrong way. Like Harry Patch, I believe there’s no such thing as a good war and I want to remember the dead on both sides, all sides. Since the Hitler war, most of our foreign engagements have set ‘us’ - mainly white – against ‘them’ in various shades of brown and black, with maybe 10 of ‘them’ killed to every one of ‘us’. Add religion, as in Iraq, Afghanistan and the ‘war on terrorism,’ it’s worse, and the wounds take longer to heal.
One of my first work-camps was in an Algiers shanty-town, at the start of the Algerian independence war. One workmate, an Algerian student, was later killed. Another, a young French officer, joined us when he could because he wasn’t happy in his army role. After that war, I knew another Algerian, ‘freedom fighter’ or ’terrorist’ who never quite recovered from the killing he’d done. In Egypt, soon after Suez, I shared a flat with a black, gay, former US serviceman. Later became press-spokesman for the militant Black Panthers, but in Cairo his presence was a talisman to me: a lot of Egyptians were still bitter about our Suez attack, and I was easy to pick out.
Earlier this year, an old Algerian journalist colleague came to stay with us in Swansea. He was more religious than I remembered him. We took him to the Swansea Mosque – to pray for us, he said – and we enjoyed the halal chicken and lamb we bought in St Helen’s Road.
So… The equation of Islam = extremist = terrorist makes no sense to me, and I cant make sense of a world divided on religious or racial lines. I may not have fought in wars, but I have got close enough to know and respect people who did. I want to show my respect and remember the dead. But can I stand in mourning for the dead while turning my back on the ongoing waste of lives in Afghanistan? ‘Organised murder,’ to quote Harry Patch again, or bloody chaos, oil on the flames, a gift to the enemy.
It’s a couple of weeks from Remembrance Sunday and I would like to know what other people think, in Swansea or further afield. Especially those who have fought and suffered themselves, lost family or friends, welcomed home the disfigured or deranged.
Yours sincerely
Greg Wilkinson
dgregwilkinson@yahoo.co.uk
Saturday Oct 24th
To the Editor
South Wales Evening Post
I missed the BNP debut on Question Time. That was partly because here in Wales the programme was pushed into a late-night slot, partly because I felt people had already put up a good anti-racist showing job in Swansea last week. My wife helped make a big banner saying ‘Equality, Welcome, Respect’ and I joined the crowd behind it for a while, across the road from the Swansea Mosque.
That silent protest was called by Quakers, a sideshow to the larger demo in Castle Square. What I’m wondering about now is whether there should be another silent presence alongside the usual Rememberance Day event at the Swansea Cenotaph.
Like Nick Griffin, I have a father who served, in the Second World War, and like Jack Straw’s father, I myself refused to join the army. Instead I did a three-year stint in voluntary work-camps. Earlier, when we lived in wartime London, we had our windows blown out, twice. I hardly remember that, but what does stand out is my mother getting the news of her younger brother’s death. An army engineer, he was blown up, not long after the allied landings, by what would now be called an IED. At that time, we were sharing our house with a family of Jewish refugees: during the V1s and V2s we children camped happily under tables in the basement.
In my father’s or uncle’s place, faced with Hitler’s attack, I don’t know what I would have done. But that wasn’t the sort of war facing me when my turn came. Self-defence is one thing, but that didn’t seem to be the issue in Malaya, Cyprus, Kenya, Aden or Suez. Then, as now in Afghanistan, it wasn’t clear who or what were we fighting for.
The BNP links war and race, but in the wrong way. Like Harry Patch, I believe there’s no such thing as a good war and I want to remember the dead on both sides, all sides. Since the Hitler war, most of our foreign engagements have set ‘us’ - mainly white – against ‘them’ in various shades of brown and black, with maybe 10 of ‘them’ killed to every one of ‘us’. Add religion, as in Iraq, Afghanistan and the ‘war on terrorism,’ it’s worse, and the wounds take longer to heal.
One of my first work-camps was in an Algiers shanty-town, at the start of the Algerian independence war. One workmate, an Algerian student, was later killed. Another, a young French officer, joined us when he could because he wasn’t happy in his army role. After that war, I knew another Algerian, ‘freedom fighter’ or ’terrorist’ who never quite recovered from the killing he’d done. In Egypt, soon after Suez, I shared a flat with a black, gay, former US serviceman. Later became press-spokesman for the militant Black Panthers, but in Cairo his presence was a talisman to me: a lot of Egyptians were still bitter about our Suez attack, and I was easy to pick out.
Earlier this year, an old Algerian journalist colleague came to stay with us in Swansea. He was more religious than I remembered him. We took him to the Swansea Mosque – to pray for us, he said – and we enjoyed the halal chicken and lamb we bought in St Helen’s Road.
So… The equation of Islam = extremist = terrorist makes no sense to me, and I cant make sense of a world divided on religious or racial lines. I may not have fought in wars, but I have got close enough to know and respect people who did. I want to show my respect and remember the dead. But can I stand in mourning for the dead while turning my back on the ongoing waste of lives in Afghanistan? ‘Organised murder,’ to quote Harry Patch again, or bloody chaos, oil on the flames, a gift to the enemy.
It’s a couple of weeks from Remembrance Sunday and I would like to know what other people think, in Swansea or further afield. Especially those who have fought and suffered themselves, lost family or friends, welcomed home the disfigured or deranged.
Yours sincerely
Greg Wilkinson
dgregwilkinson@yahoo.co.uk
Afghanistan: Swansea rally address
This piece was written as an address to a Swansea 'troops out' rally. We made a banner and did all we could to promote it, but the Swansea Evening Post forgot to publish the piece advertising the event. Only about 100 people turned up, and we felt a bit lost in the crowd... So I didnt say all I'd intended, and I dont know how many people got the drift...
Friends, brothers and sisters – I can call you that because we’re all much like beneath our skins. Whatever the religion, race or language, we all laugh and cry, we all get wet when it rains. We all feel it when our people are attacked or someone dear to us is killed.
The first thing for us here now is to mourn the dead. Not just the 204 British servicemen and women, but all the people killed in Afghanistan. As Harry Patch reminded us, me must remember those on the other side of the line. For every coffin and flag carried off a plane in Wilthshire, there are ten white bundles in Afghanistan, bodies quickly buried in the ground they lived on..
As a child in the second world war, I was with my mother when she got the news of her brother’s death in Belgium. He was blown up by an IED, or boobytrap as they called them. And his widow came to live with us..
Some things ought to change, but don’t. Now again, we get public ceremonial, ritual mourning, then wives and families are left to their tears. Somewhere in Wales or Helmand a woman a woman will wake up at night, and believe for a moment it was all a bad dream, reach out in bed and find the empty space….
Let’s now take two minutes to remember ALL the dead and their families.
Our next task is even more important: to do what anything we can to stop this waste. Sacrifice is to fine a word. If we really respect our soldiers, we should bring them home, alive and in one piece. We’ve sent them on a fool’s errand: you cant impose democracy or free other people’s women by force. This war is unwinnable, it’s unaffordable and it does more to prompt terrorist attacks than stop them.
Our troops are doing the job we pay them to do. Bravely and as best they can. Not long ago, I heard a British para say the same about the Taliban: ‘They’re good,’ he saisd, and Jeremy Paxman blinked., ‘They know what they’re doing and they believe in what they’re fighting for.’ And a lot of the Afghan fighters, like are own, are doing what they do because there weren’t many other jobs around.
More than 40 years ago, as a journalist I helped cover dead-end wars in Algeria and Vietnam. Then too Western governments and generals kept saying ‘We’re winning: just one more push, more troops, a bit more time. Luckily we had a Labour prime minister then who refused to follow the US to Vietnam. Later we watched the route of Russian forces in Afghanistan and only recently, we heard a commander in Basra say that British troops in Iraq were part of the problem not the solution.
If you’re in a hole, stop digging, but our sad clown prime minister drops us deeper in it. There’s talk about talks with the Taliban, and we send more troops. To kill and die in our name as we foot the bill. Every other day, another one or two. And, you wouldn’t know it from the media, but people round the country are coming out to call a halt. When Gordon Brown comes back from his holiday, there will be a packet of 1000 signatures from Swansea waiting for him, demanding withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan.
TROOPS OUT! WHEN DO WE WANT IT? NOW!
In two months time, on Saturday October 24th, the Stop the War coalition is planning a national troops out march in London. Maybe we could get some buses organised for that.
Friends, brothers and sisters – I can call you that because we’re all much like beneath our skins. Whatever the religion, race or language, we all laugh and cry, we all get wet when it rains. We all feel it when our people are attacked or someone dear to us is killed.
The first thing for us here now is to mourn the dead. Not just the 204 British servicemen and women, but all the people killed in Afghanistan. As Harry Patch reminded us, me must remember those on the other side of the line. For every coffin and flag carried off a plane in Wilthshire, there are ten white bundles in Afghanistan, bodies quickly buried in the ground they lived on..
As a child in the second world war, I was with my mother when she got the news of her brother’s death in Belgium. He was blown up by an IED, or boobytrap as they called them. And his widow came to live with us..
Some things ought to change, but don’t. Now again, we get public ceremonial, ritual mourning, then wives and families are left to their tears. Somewhere in Wales or Helmand a woman a woman will wake up at night, and believe for a moment it was all a bad dream, reach out in bed and find the empty space….
Let’s now take two minutes to remember ALL the dead and their families.
Our next task is even more important: to do what anything we can to stop this waste. Sacrifice is to fine a word. If we really respect our soldiers, we should bring them home, alive and in one piece. We’ve sent them on a fool’s errand: you cant impose democracy or free other people’s women by force. This war is unwinnable, it’s unaffordable and it does more to prompt terrorist attacks than stop them.
Our troops are doing the job we pay them to do. Bravely and as best they can. Not long ago, I heard a British para say the same about the Taliban: ‘They’re good,’ he saisd, and Jeremy Paxman blinked., ‘They know what they’re doing and they believe in what they’re fighting for.’ And a lot of the Afghan fighters, like are own, are doing what they do because there weren’t many other jobs around.
More than 40 years ago, as a journalist I helped cover dead-end wars in Algeria and Vietnam. Then too Western governments and generals kept saying ‘We’re winning: just one more push, more troops, a bit more time. Luckily we had a Labour prime minister then who refused to follow the US to Vietnam. Later we watched the route of Russian forces in Afghanistan and only recently, we heard a commander in Basra say that British troops in Iraq were part of the problem not the solution.
If you’re in a hole, stop digging, but our sad clown prime minister drops us deeper in it. There’s talk about talks with the Taliban, and we send more troops. To kill and die in our name as we foot the bill. Every other day, another one or two. And, you wouldn’t know it from the media, but people round the country are coming out to call a halt. When Gordon Brown comes back from his holiday, there will be a packet of 1000 signatures from Swansea waiting for him, demanding withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan.
TROOPS OUT! WHEN DO WE WANT IT? NOW!
In two months time, on Saturday October 24th, the Stop the War coalition is planning a national troops out march in London. Maybe we could get some buses organised for that.
Afghanistan: troops out
Here's a leaflet handed out in Swansea last month, when we took a table into town with a petition calling for troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan. A thousand people signed.
AFGHANISTAN: ANOTHER DEAD-END WAR!
The British death toll approaches 200, with about thirty-times as many Afghans killed by allied forces. For every death, several are disfigured or maimed…
The government says war will help stop terror attacks in this country. The truth is the opposite. Explosives and poisons can be made anywhere. The London bombers planned their action in revenge for British actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The more Afghans killed by US and UK troops, the more friends and relations join the Taliban.
You cant impose democracy or free other people’s women by force. The more you use, the more they cling to old ways (European Churches grew stronger under Stalin).
The war in Afghanistan is unwinnable, a cause of terror not the cure. Iraq and Afghanistan are dead-end wars. The real threats to our way of life are not from jihad but inequality, climate change and all-consuming, well-armed greed (aka Capital!).
TROOPS OUT: BRING THEM SAFELY HOME!
Swansea Stop-the-War 07792720667 / 07895063020
AFGHANISTAN: ANOTHER DEAD-END WAR!
The British death toll approaches 200, with about thirty-times as many Afghans killed by allied forces. For every death, several are disfigured or maimed…
The government says war will help stop terror attacks in this country. The truth is the opposite. Explosives and poisons can be made anywhere. The London bombers planned their action in revenge for British actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The more Afghans killed by US and UK troops, the more friends and relations join the Taliban.
You cant impose democracy or free other people’s women by force. The more you use, the more they cling to old ways (European Churches grew stronger under Stalin).
The war in Afghanistan is unwinnable, a cause of terror not the cure. Iraq and Afghanistan are dead-end wars. The real threats to our way of life are not from jihad but inequality, climate change and all-consuming, well-armed greed (aka Capital!).
TROOPS OUT: BRING THEM SAFELY HOME!
Swansea Stop-the-War 07792720667 / 07895063020
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