Category: Blog

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Why I’ll be protesting against a Trident replacement at Aldermaston | Natalie Bennett

By Sharon Black

The cost of replacing a dangerous and immoral nuclear missile system could pay for green jobs and university places On Easter Monday – or April Fools’ Day, depending on your preference – I am joining people from all areas of Britain to protest against one of the coalition’s greatest potential follies. Thousands of people, including Green party MEP Keith Taylor , members of CND and I, will be at Aldermaston for a protest rally against the Trident nuclear weapons system and its suggested replacement.

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British dead and wounded in Afghanistan, month by month

By Sharon Black

What is the human cost of the war in Afghanistan for British forces? As British troop deaths reach 441, these are the latest figures – including the most recent wounded and amputation statistics • Get the data • Amputation statistics explainer • Afghanistan civilian casualties • Interactive guide With the latest deaths caused by the war in Afghanistan, the total number of British troop fatalities during the conflict now stands at 441. The number of British deaths in Afghanistan is now much higher than Iraq and even the Falklands conflict .

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1975: Sea King helicopter heralds new era in search and rescue

By Sharon Black

A chopper that was tasked for anti-submarine operations is now deployed ‘for the greater good’ In 1975, the sinking of the cargo ship the Lovat with the loss of 11 lives in rough seas off Penzance raised questions about the effectiveness of Whirlwind helicopters for use in sea rescues. The Guardian leader column below was published in the aftermath of the Lovat tragedy and echoed the growing call for the more powerful Sea King helicopters to be used instead.

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Tottenham’s first black player should be awarded the Military Cross | Garth Crooks

By Sharon Black

David Cameron can do justice to Britain’s black first world war hero Walter Tull by posthumously awarding him a military honour I had been at Tottenham Hotspur for a few seasons and experienced a good deal of success . But when, for the first time, I experienced a long-term injury, requiring weeks of treatment and tortuous rehab, I found myself wandering around the club, often in deep reflection, waiting for the pain of the next physio session. On one such afternoon I came across a photo of a Spurs team from 1910

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Budget reality check: some grand-sounding claims – but do they stack up?

By Sharon Black

Guardian writers test the validity of some of the key assertions made by George Osborne in his budget speech “We’ve seen more people in work than ever before – including a record number of women. A quarter of a million fewer workless households than two years ago. And the unemployment rate is lower than when we came to office” Unemployment was at 7.8% of the workforce when the coalition was elected in May 2010 – and is back at that figure now

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Iraq war: make it impossible to inflict such barbarism again | Seumas Milne

By Sharon Black

The US and Britain not only bathed Iraq in blood, they promoted a sectarian war that now threatens the region If anyone doubted what kind of Iraq has been bequeathed by a decade of US-sponsored occupation and war, today’s deadly sectarian bomb attacks around Baghdad against bus queues and markets should have set them straight. Ten years to the day after American and British troops launched an unprovoked attack on a false pretext – and more than a year since the last combat troops were withdrawn – the conflict they unleashed shows no sign of winding down. Civilians are still being killed at a rate of at least 4,000 a year, and police at about 1,000.

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Iraq: guilt by association

By Sharon Black

• failure to speak truth to power • mistakes repeated in Afghanistan Ten years ago today, thousands of British troops joined the US and invaded Iraq. They were unprepared and ill-equipped because their political masters did not want to alert parliament or the public in advance that Britain was about to embark on an unpopular and – as the most senior government lawyers warned, illegal – war. Thousands of words have been written and spoken to mark the tenth anniversary of the invasion.

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Labour is finally beginning to see the light on Trident | Kate Hudson

By Sharon Black

Ed Miliband’s calls for Trident to be scaled back bring Labour into line with the Lib Dems – and public opinion, at last It’s almost three years since Nick Clegg made Trident a general election issue. He used the much-trumpeted televised leadership debates to outline a distinctive policy: no like-for-like replacement of the Trident nuclear weapons system.

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Civvy Street March Available (#free)

By Sharon Black

Hey all, our March edition of Civvy Street is now available online via the following link. http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk//launch.aspx?eid=82eadf69-8be8-4649-8927-f450698a1fa8     If…

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The lonely soldier and the moral scars of war | James Jeffrey

By Sharon Black

Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan find little ethical defence in the ‘just war’. Each of us struggles to make peace with our actions In trying to understand the ongoing suicide epidemic among soldiers and veterans a third factor in addition to physical injuries and PTSD is now being discussed: the moral injuries they bring back

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I survived the bombing of Dresden and continue to believe it was a war crime | Victor Gregg

By Sharon Black

As a prisoner of war held in Dresden, I still suffer the memories of those terrible events and my anger refuses to subside I wasn’t new to murder and bloodletting. I had enlisted two years prior to the outbreak of the second world war and by the time I was 21 I had taken part in one major battle and various smaller ones. I had been in fights where the ground in front of me was littered with the remains of young men who had once been full of the joy of living, laughing and joking with their mates

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The secret history of drones

By Sharon Black

The prototype of the drones now used in Afghanistan was actually conceived in 1916, even if it was a monoplane made of wood and tin The drones now snooping over Afghanistan have a longer history than you might think. In 1916, a military scientist conceived of an “aerial torpedo” designed to be loaded with explosives and steered into the deadly Zeppelins on their bombing raids over southern England. In a lecture to the Royal Aeronautical Society on Monday evening Michael Draper, author of Sitting Ducks & Peeping Toms , will lift the wraps off the secret century of unmanned air vehicles, starting with the prototype referred to by the innocuous initials “AT”

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Royal Navy Lynx aids capture of suspected pirates

By Sharon Black

Flight 217 of 815 Naval Air Squadron is currently deployed on board the French frigate FLF Surcouf as part of Operation Atalanta, the EU ’s counter-piracy mission off the Horn of Africa. The Lynx was sent ahead by the French warship to find the suspected pirates after the USS Halyburton, operating as part of NATO ’s Operation Ocean Shield , received a distress call from a merchant vessel reporting she was under attack from 6 men armed with rocket-propelled grenades. Boarding teams approach a suspected pirate vessel as Flight 217’s Lynx helicopter hovers above [Picture: Crown Copyright/MOD 2013] Although the MSC Jasmine, sailing 260 miles off the Somali coast, managed to repel the attack themselves, a German EU maritime patrol aircraft was scrambled to track the suspect vessel, which was by then towing another boat with several more men on board.