Tactical Questioning - Scenes from the Baha Mousa Inquiry

Not much blogging last week due to a confluence of domestic turmoil and political activity. Firstly, I am having a new combination boiler installed and the kitchen is like a building site at present, the kitchen is also being completely redone so with fitters and others coming and going there is not a moment's rest. I was also quite tied up with various internal activities around the Green Party and also attended the Steering Committee of the Coalition of Resistance on Friday as well as preparing the papers for the London Ambulance Service Patients Forum meeting happening tonight at Lambeth PCT in Lower Marsh.

I spent the whole weekend on Stop the War Coalition business - attending the conference on Saturday on 'Afghanistan - Ten Years On' with an array  of really interesting speakers and I shall blog about this later. I also attended the Steering Committee meeting of Stop the War yesterday.

At the conference on Saturday, Jane Shallice, one of the STWC officers, referred to an excellent play being peformed at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, North London. The play is about the investigation into the death  of Baha Mousa at the hands of British soldiers in Iraq. The very same theatre ran a series of plays on Afghanistan last year entitled 'The Great Game' which I went to see. Peformances of the play were later seen by members of the general staff and by Hilary Clinton and senior officials at the Pentagon when  it toured New York.

I think that it raises very serious issues and is a clear link also with the way that NATO and UK forces are treating civilians in Afghanistan and other theatres of war. War is a brutalising business for both occupiers and occupied and that is why I support the petition launched by Stop the War at the weekend for all UK forces to be withdrawn from Afghanistan by Xmas.