How to stop war — Make Wars History

A recent Make Wars His­tory event in the UK Par­lia­ment, hos­ted by John McDon­nell MP, with Chris Cover­dale and myself speak­ing.  Some prac­tic­al steps we can all take to make wars history:

Make Wars His­tory talk in Par­lia­ment, April 2013 from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

Organisations I’m involved with

 

I sup­port and work with a num­ber of organ­isa­tions that share my con­cerns about account­ab­il­ity and trans­par­ency in areas such as intel­li­gence and secur­ity, the failed war on drugs, free­dom of inform­a­tion, human rights, pri­vacy issues, civil liber­ties, and the war on terror.

The Cam­paign for Press and Broad­cast­ing Free­dom, which does what it says on the tin! One of the cam­paign organ­isers, Barry White, is cur­rently on the NEC of the UK Nation­al Uni­on of Journ­al­ists, and writes a great blog: www​.fromthenecup​.org​.uk.  Here’s a link to a piece I’ve just writ­ten on my website.

 

200px-Piratpartiet.svg Pir­ate Party (NL).  Affil­i­ated to the Pir­ate Parties Inter­na­tion­al, this group cam­paigns around issues such (digit­al) civil liber­ties, trans­par­ency, pri­vacy and copy­right.  PPNL fielded can­did­ates in the Dutch gen­er­al elec­tion in 2010.  Shortly before the elec­tion, I was invited to provide some media train­ing to the candidates.

 

Law Enforce­ment Against Pro­hib­i­tion (LEAP).

Pro­hib­i­tion has nev­er worked, as proven through­out his­tory. And now around the world many judges,lawyers, pris­on gov­ernors, and officers from police, cus­toms, and intel­li­gence organ­isa­tions, as well as many oth­er experts, are chal­len­ging the failed concept of the “war on drugs”.   This policy, in place for dec­ades now in many coun­tries des­pite its mani­fest, abject and repeated fail­ure, crim­in­al­ises great swathes of our pop­u­la­tions, causes health prob­lems, social prob­lems and untold suf­fer­ing, and funds organ­ised crime and ter­ror­ist groups.  It is time for a mature, calm debate about the issue, rather than hys­ter­ic­al, tabloid headlines.

I am hon­oured to be one of this group speak­ing out, and now to be work­ing as the Dir­ect­or of LEAP, Europe.

 

Make Wars His­tory is a non-profit peace group that aims to end war by uphold­ing the inter­na­tion­al and nation­al laws that make war­fare illeg­al under any con­di­tion except self-defense. It spe­cific­ally seeks account­ab­il­ity for the illeg­al and dis­astrous inva­sion of Iraq and a form­al invest­ig­a­tion of the people who were instru­ment­al in start­ing it. Here’s the launch of the cam­paign in the Houses of Par­lia­ment in Janu­ary 2008.