Political Web Resources


On-line systems for your use.  Their appeal comes from being general purpose tools, not specifically concerned with war and peace issues, so they are not placed in an electronic ghetto.

 

 

Freedom of Information Act

 

www.whatdotheyknow.com

 

Use it ask questions in public and create a public archive of official answers. You can also set email alerts on search terms like "nuclear" to see whenever a question or reply shows up on that subject.

 

Leave your contact email or website in an annotation if you want people who are interested in a question you have pursued with government to contact you about it later. 

 

Be creative.  Here is a request regarding SOCPA.   

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/parliament_protest_actions  (and here is my blog about it http://www.freesteel.co.uk/wpblog/2008/02/criminalising-protest-around-parliament/ )

 

 

 

UNdemocracy.com

 

www.undemocracy.com

 

Bill Rammel said to the conference that there were disagreements about the interpretation of whether UN resolution 1441 authorised the invasion of Iraq.  This is false.  But he can say it because he believes that the transcripts of the Security Council meeting are too hard to find. 

 

They are here:

 

http://www.undemocracy.com/securitycouncil/meeting_4644#pg004-bk01-pa06

 

Sir Jeremy Greenstock (UK):  ... Let me be equally clear in response, as a co-sponsor with the United States of the text we have just adopted. There is no "automaticity" in this resolution. If there is a further Iraqi breach of its disarmament obligations, the matter will return to the Council for discussion as required in paragraph 12. We would expect the Security Council then to meet its responsibilities.

 

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The purpose of the whole site will be served if people make him account for this falsehood, now that this information is accessible.  Leave notes here if there is any follow-up.

 

Beyond this, there are many features to help you add references in wikipedia. 

 

 

UK Parliamentary resources

 

Votes and speeches in Parliament can be accessed using www.theyworkforyou.com and www.publicwhip.org.uk where you can compare batches of votes on a particular issue and set email alerts for particular words or MPs. 

 

There are many features in these websites that are too complicated to explain.  But if you want help with any specific ideas, please contact me.  ( julian@publicwhip.org.uk )

 

 

The Election leaflet project

 

Whenever you get delivered a political election leaflet, wherever you are, please upload them to http://www.thestraightchoice.org/ so we can build up a live database of all leaflets across the country before and during the process of the election campaign. 

 

The political parties are masters at targeting for votes they need to win their seats.  The rate of election leaflets in a particular area exposes their tactics.  This is their one and only point of vulnerability in the system.  If you can get people to ask about policies on nuclear war instead of second home expenses and their answers (or lack of a good answer) exposes them to defeat, then things might change.

 

 

Wikipedia articles

 

There are numerous articles concerning peace and war affairs that could be improved with better writing and further information.  Perhaps the polling results about the public popularity of the UK's nuclear weapons could be mentioned (and linked to) from the following article:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_the_United_Kingdom 

 

Another person mentioned an ILAP booklet referring to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions_(Amendment)_Act_1995 

 

The article about this act needs to be expanded to explain its meaning and to provide an explanation for why it was passed then, and why it doesn't represent the full implementation of the geneva conventions in UK law.

 

A small group of enthusiasts could go through many of these articles systematically, improving the writing, and documenting the arguments and authorative points of view from all sides (including links to good articles) as a resource for everyone. 

 

 

Media and Video

 

The full movie for the Fog of War is here: 

 

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8653788864462752804&ei=7W-fSqyGGpKF-Qb4ibT-Cg&q=fog+of+war

 

It's an extended interview with Robert McNamara where he strongly repudiates the possession of nuclear weapons by any nation, especially his own, and reports how nuclear war very nearly broke out 3 times during his 7 year term as Secretary of Defence. 

 

What are these three instances? 

 

On the Today program this morning, at 8:19 they introduced the piece about the outbreak of the second world war, adding that the use of nuclear weapons forced Japan to surrender. 

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8235000/8235137.stm

 

This is seriously disputed and is pure PR in favour of nuclear weapons.  This needs to be monitored and systematically challenged because the BBC says it every single time.