Red Pepper News

Around the web

First of all, peace activist Milan Rai is currently in prison for Defacing the British Foreign Office. Please send messages of support to Milan Rai, HMP Lewes, 1 Brighton Road, Lewes, East Sussex, BN7 1EA. He's keeping a prison diary which can be viewed here.

Secondly, with the COP 11 (the Conference of the Parties to the Climate Change Convention) in Montreal coming up from 28 November to 9 December, it's worth checking out www.carbontradewatch.org. Their new book Trouble in the Air: Global Warming and the Privatised Atmosphere is edited by Patrick Bond and Rehana Dada and can be downloaded from here.

And finally... it seems that the British neo-cons are getting organised.

Remembering Fallujah

Justin Alexander writes: Today marks an ignoble aniversary. On 8 November 2004 the US military, with approval and support from Britain, began the systematic destruction of a city of 200,000 people in an operation originally and appropriately codenamed "Thanksgiving Massacre". When I visited 5 months later the 1000+ bodies had been buried and the blood had been washed away, but the devastation remained.

Reading that 60% of the buildings had been seriously damaged is one thing, looking around a once populous neighbourhood and seeing only rubble in all directions is something else entirely. The people of Fallujah were promised large amounts of compensation and reconstruction but my friends at Christian Peacemaker Teams who visited a few days ago testify that a year on the situation remain dire.

http://www.rememberfallujah.org/... and Ramadi, Hit, Mosul, Qaim, Tal Afar, Haditha...

US and Iraqi military launch new attack on Al Qaim, Western Iraq

Doctors for Iraq are reporting that a new offensive has been launched on the city of Al Qaim in Western Iraq. The city is under curfew and eyewitnesses have reported heavy bombing. US and Iraqi forces have attacked Al Qaim several times in the past few months, and the health and humanitarian situation inside the city and surrounding areas is desperate.