military and law enforcement
News and articles about work, policy and mutinies in armed forces and police services around the world.
Mutinies in the American army, 2004-2005 - Echanges #111
A brief discussion of incidences of dissatisfaction in the US Army during the Iraq War.
Mutinies, the word can seem excessive because Iraq is not (yet) Vietnam. However, a refusal to obey in the army, whatever the reason, is a mutiny and quite often such acts of insubordination have started with minor acts. Even isolated, such acts are indicative of "troop morale", an essential element for continuing war.
An Introduction to The Angry Brigade - Jean Weir
An article about controversial UK urban guerrilla group, the Angry Brigade looking particularly at anarchist criticism of them at the time. While we disagree with much of the article we reproduce here for reference.
The eight libertarian militants on trial in the Old Bailey in 1972 who were chosen by the British State to be the `conspirators' of the Angry Brigade, found themselves facing not only the class enemy with all its instruments of repression, but also the obtusity and incomprehension -- when not condemnation -- of the organised left.
The story of the Irish Citizen Army, 1913-1916 - Sean O'Casey
An important document of Irish labour history, freely available online for the first time here, O'Casey's book tells the history of the formation of the Irish Citizen Army in 1913.
The workers' militia was formed by the Transport and General Workers Union in Dublin in 1913, shortly after the great Dublin lockout and strike of that year. Originally formed to defend workers' demonstrations from attacks by police, O'Casey charts developments as they conclude with the Citizen Army participating in the nationalist Dublin Easter Uprising of 1916.
Detroit bus drivers on wildcat strike
All of Detroit's bus drivers walked out yesterday over concerns about safety and crime.
About 800 bus drivers of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 26 were involved in the stoppage.
Union president Henry Gaffney said that the strike grew from his members' frustration with the growing dangers on the unpatrolled buses - two drivers were assaulted in the last two days.
Fiji: minister attacks bloggers
Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, the interim attorney-general appointed after last year's coup, has criticised bloggers.
A local businessman, Ulaiasi Taoi, has been detained twice over the past month in relation to a blog and Mr Sayed-Khaiyum has warned of the dangers of bloggers using their anonymity to attack the government. A wave of blogs sprang up after the coup, with many bloggers publishing uncensored accounts of the coup and of the actions of its instigators once in power.
Spatial Deconcentration in D.C. - Midnight Notes
The story of a covert US Government housing policy - conceived in the aftermath of the 1960s ghetto riots - to remove concentrations of potentially rebellious Blacks and other poor people from the inner city and disperse them in small groups to the suburbs.
Published in 'Midnight Notes', Vol. II, #2, July 1981, MA, USA
Original article first published by the Yulanda Ward Memorial Fund, Washington, 1981(?).
War is the health of the state - Randolph Bourne
This classic first part of an essay entitled "The State," left unfinished at Bourne's untimely death in 1918, it explores the connection between patriotism, war, and the State.
To most Americans of the classes which consider themselves significant the war [World War I] brought a sense of the sanctity of the State which, if they had had time to think about it, would have seemed a sudden and surprising alteration in their habits of thought.
Operation Northwoods: Justification for US military intervention in Cuba documents
Below is the complete text from the Freedom of Information Act-released US government document detailing the Pentagon plan to murder innocent civilians and blame the Cuban government as a pretext to invade Cuba.
[b]Code-named Operation Northwoods, US Navy members were also to be killed as part of a "terror campaign" This plan, which President John F. Kennedy refused to implement, had the written approval of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Louis Lemnitzer, and every other member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The Truth about the Bonnot Gang - Ezra Brett Mell
A short account of the Paris-based anarchist robbers - and inventors of the getaway car - who operated in 1911-12 and the political debate that went on as to the worth of 'illegalist' activity.
A fuller account was given in the book 'The Bonnot Gang' by Richard Parry; published by Rebel Press, London, 1987.
This pamphlet was published by Coptic Press and then reprinted by Solidarity Bookshop Publications, Chicago, 1969.
Join the army: be depressed - anti-military recruitment flyer
Anti army-recruitment flyer in pdf format from April 2007 which focusses on the mental ill-health many servicemen and women suffer.
This .pdf flyer (two to a sheet) was produced by the State of Emergency group, and is up to date as of April 2007. The group has an archive of resources on their website.
