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Editorial: making peace, exposing lies
Congratulations!
After fighting their case through almost every court in the land, the B52
Two are not guilty and they richly deserve it!
Falklands, Palestine, Darfur
In this issue, we see that in all these cases, there have been real diplomatic alternatives available, which had a genuine prospect for radically
reducing conflict and violence.
And in all of these cases, those with power have avoided peace. They
have crushed negotiations by force (Britain in the Falklands), they have
simply pretended that peace offers did not exist (Israel with Palestine),
or they have set an agenda and a timetable that ignored the needs of
the parties to the conflict (the West with Darfur, and Israel at Taba).
We need not speak of Iraq.
Our movements for justice and peace can and will intervene to support diplomatic and non-military solutions to conflict. We can and will
resist the cry that "something must be done", violence must be done.
What is unfolding in the north of Ireland is extraordinary testimony to
the way that the logic of war can be reversed, and peace no longer
avoided.
Free the Memo Two
On 9 May, two men were sent to jail for leaking a secret memo. David
Keogh, a cypher expert who took a copy of the document while working
in the Cabinet Office communications centre in Whitehall, was imprisoned for six months. Parliamentary researcher Leo O'Connor, who David
Keogh gave the copy to, and who in turn passed on the memo to a
Labour MP was jailed for three months. (The "anti-war" MP handed the
memo to the government.)
The memo was an official minute of a meeting between Tony Blair and
George Bush in the White House on 16 April 2004. Mr Justice Aiken, as
well as sending the men to prison, imposed a ban on disclosing any
allegations based on or contained in the memo, even if they have been
printed before -- on the same page as any article referring to the document or the court case.
He made one curious exception, allowing media organisations to refer
to the threat made by President Bush to bomb the Arab broadcaster al-Jazeera's head office in Qatar.
Very few media organisations in Britain have taken advantage of this
loophole - apart from the Guardian - demonstrating the level of self-censorship
the media are exercising. Peace News regards the court ban as
an assault on the freedom of the press, and an assault on the anti-war
movement.
.
Write to the Memo Two via their solicitors: David Keogh, c/o Carter Slater &
Co, 41 Harborough Road, Kingsthorpe, Northampton NN2 7SH;
Leo O'Connor, c/o Neil Clark Solicitors, 65 Weedon Road, Northampton
NN5 5BG.
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