Sunday 21 August 2011

The world's largest "defence and security" fair


Arming repressive regimes. Boosting arms company profits. Displaying the latest killing technology. It’s an event you don’t want to miss.

The world’s biggest arms fair – DSEi – is coming to East London this September. Unless we stop it.

This year we’ve witnessed more of the horror that comes when the UK arms repressive regimes — armoured vehicles used to suppress protest in Libya and Bahrain were sold by the UK, along with crowd control equipment and tear gas.

With over 1200 companies exhibiting, and military delegations from all over the world, DSEi 2011 is back and bigger than ever, selling everything from F16 planes to unmanned drones.

There are also training sessions happening across the UK in the run up to DSEi.

Stop The Arms Fair coalition have called a day of action on 13th September and there’s loads of other actions planned…

Further reading.

Monday 15 August 2011

I guess it was bound to happen one day


Yesterday, Sunday afternoon, I saw a young lady, obviously going to the city centre here in Amsterdam, carrying a black linen shopping bag with an encircled A on it. That, unfortunately, may be part of the modern marketing mix of rebellion (think of Levi's advertising a riot just in the days of the #ukriots).
This A within an O was different however. It had an extra vertical line through the horizontal line of the A, making it a cross symbol.

She walked verry hurriedly, as if not wanting to miss a second of the modern day Sunday worship of buying, so I could not take the opportunity of stopping her to ask what this printed symbol was supposed to mean.

Search engines yield no significant results.
Christian anarchism cannot possibly be that hip, can it?
Especially when you think that it is supposed to be critical of consumerism.
If anyone sees one...

Updates

Here is some commercial "offering" but it is the Alpha-Omega type.
This comes closer to what I saw, see the illustration. The thing I saw yesterday was a bit more modestly looking.
Don't know if I should laugh or cry now.