[Friday July 6th 2007]
I am lying in a 7' by 10' pink room with a blood red floor, a ceiling light of 36 glass squares, a toilet, a 1" mattress and 2 clean sheets. It is comfortable, and the police officers who are my captors could not be nicer. They do not beat us up, and although they are 100% professional in not entering into political discussion, their body language suggests that they, like us, do not agree with the mass murder implicit in the Trident nuclear submarine base on their patch. However, we both have our duty to perform. Ours is to block access to the Faslane WMD site. Theirs is to pick us up with exemplary gentleness,, carry us to their white vans, charge us with breaching the peace, (ha!) and put us in the cells for 10 hours.
I sleep, do a little Yoga and Tai Chi, eat hyper-microwaved meals and read the history of Scotland, which is a catalogue of seizures of power by individuals who would frankly have done better to learn skills such as joinery or agriculture. McA kills MacB and seizes power, only to be poisoned by McC &c…
At six in the evening we are released. It is great to be free, although the freedom is slightly tarnished by the fact that the only place for a celebratory meal while waiting for our support team is the cafeteria of the local ASDA.
Augustine said :
"No man can understand the state until he has been in its prisons".
Lao Tzu said :
"When people no longer fear prison, the state's power to do harm is broken".
(Or if he did not say that, he could well have done).
I said :
“We can save the planet from ecosystem collapse, or we can do militarism. We cannot do both.”
There are pictures and stuff here:
And I got to speak with Angie Zelter who is one of the bravest persons alive on the planet today, IMHO
No comments:
Post a Comment