Category: National insecurity

The money we are spending on weapons would be better spent on almost anything else – no civilised state should sell weapons and all civilised states should be working to avoid war, not enable it

Jenny has worked with Caroline Lucas MP, lawyers and campaigners to scrutinise political assassinations by drones, to oppose the sale of arms and to argue against the renewal of the Trident nuclear missile

Read on for her latest posts on this issue

A women’s revolution under attack

Published on by iwin1961

There are so many things to celebrate and campaign about this International Women’s Day, but the immediacy of the crushing violence being inflicted on the women’s revolution in Afrin, Syria, deserves more attention.

Afrin is one of the three cantons in the north of Syria, where women have taken active leadership in all spheres of society –  a rarity in this region. The area was liberated from the grip of ISIS by Kurdish forces who received the backing of the USA, but the area has now been invaded by Turkey in a clear violation of international law. Continue reading “A women’s revolution under attack” →

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Why I wear both the red and white poppy

Published on by iwin1961

I wear a red poppy, but I wear a white one too. One of the defining features of modern wars is the vast numbers of civilians who are killed as well. Over 140,000 civilians are estimated to have died in the Iraq war or its aftermath. The white poppy is one way of remembering them. From those thousands in Iraq to the Londoners who died in the blitz and the citizens of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the white poppy speaks for them. When the red wreaths are laid at the cenotaph and at numerous memorials around the country, would a wreath of white poppies be out of place? Should we remember all of the dead, or only those in uniforms? Continue reading “Why I wear both the red and white poppy” →

When the NHS catches a computer bug are security services to blame?

Published on by iwin1961
There is no doubt that the delays and disruption caused by the NHS computer virus could have been avoided. The government could have used a fraction of the multi-billion security budget to enable hospital trusts to update ageing software. However, instead of being focused on designing out crime as they promised to do, western security services are doing the opposite. The US government and our own, are pressuring companies like Microsoft and others to create ‘backdoors’ which open up our privacy and security to attack if they are leaked.

Continue reading “When the NHS catches a computer bug are security services to blame?” →

Green supporters who switched to Corbyn will feel let down by a Labour Party supporting an expensive, damaging, dinosaur technology like Hinkley

Published on by jonesjb

“Nuclear power was the future when I was growing up. My very clever Cambridge-educated late brother even worked on the house-sized new computers at a nuclear power station in the early 60’s. Back then, the talk was of free energy for the masses. Continue reading “Green supporters who switched to Corbyn will feel let down by a Labour Party supporting an expensive, damaging, dinosaur technology like Hinkley” →