Dicey goings-on at arms fair
The protests against the DSEi (or Dicey) arms fair in London on September 11 turned out to have been badly timed. Press coverage was virtually nil as any story was overtaken by the news of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon.

The main marches led over 1000 people - samba band, pink and silver bloc, Critical Mass, CND, Campaign Against the Arms Trade and others to the west gate of the centre, where a thoroughly over-policed party went on for several hours. Meanwhile, a smaller group was attempting to blockade the side entrance. The presence of a contingent of Wombles had the police severely rattled - they made periodic attempts to stop the crowd during the march and arrested one woman for attempting to leave the group to go for a pee. A full Section 60 (the law wrongly used to corrall, search, photograph and take details of demonstrators at Mayday this year) was not applied. It was left to Schnews to point out the irony of searching demonstrators for weapons just outside an arms fair where machines capable of killing and maiming thousands were openly on sale. Slap a Section 60 on the ExCel Centre - there's people in there tooling up for a breach of the peace…

Meanwhile, over at Trafalgar Square the Redhanded Activists had made one of the fountains run with 'blood' in memorial to the 'millions maimed and killed, people dispossessed of their land, environmental destruction, communities shattered, entire populations displaced and forced into exile'.

DSEi itself clearly has no sense of shame. It seems that the organisers could see no connection between their trade in death and the attacks on the US. Business continued as usual through to Friday 14th, and not so much as a message of condolence appeared on the official website.

Genetix RoundUpTM

‘Elstree Eleven’ - Not Guilty
On 22nd February, activists blockaded Sainsbury's Elstree depot at Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, along with four other sites around the country, in protest at their continued use of GM animal feed. Eleven arrests were made for aggravated trespass and obstruction at Elstree, but on 28th September all 11 activists received a 'not guilty' verdict, since the prosecution failed to prove that they were on private land, and failed to provide a witness to attest that the use of GM-fed animal products complies with food safety and labelling requirements. For more on this, see: www.uk.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=12745

11th September Gives Rise To Outrageous Claims
It was fairly predictable that the tragic events in the US would give rise to the erosion of civil liberties and hasten the expansion of the term 'terrorist', but nowhere has this been more evident than in the bizarre world of the GM fanatic. CS Prakash's AgBioview e-list has recently played host to a particularly rabid attack by one Andrew Apel, (who runs a biotech industry newsletter,) who claims that GM critics have blood on their hands, and compares Greenpeace and Vandana Shiva with the perpetrators of the 11th September attacks. If this is what GM advocates are reduced to, then the activists must be doing something right.

International News
Last month Sri Lanka dropped plans to introduce the world's strictest anti-GM regulations, which would have required importers to certify their food's GM-free status. The US had threatened to take Sri Lanka to the WTO, claiming the ban was aimed at discriminating against US exports. It is clear that the US and biotech corporations are worried about the example a GM-free Sri Lanka would set to other countries.

On August 29, in the Philippines, the Philippine peasant organisation Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) along with students and church groups, carried out a mass decontamination of Bt-corn at a Monsanto Agro-corporation field testing site in South Cotabato. Around 800 people descended on the test field and uprooted the quarter-hectare test crop in less than ten minutes. Chair Rafael Mariano said that 'the uprooting of Bt corn in Mindanao serves a strong political message to greedy agro-chem TNCs like Monsanto and the Macapagal-Arroyo government which sanctioned field trials of Bt corn in particular and GMOs release into environment in general.'

Can of Worms
In another great leap in progress, scientists now believe it is possible to genetically engineer mosquitoes so that they cannot carry malaria. The difficulty with this is that no-one knows what they might take to carrying instead. If you thought pollen was a problem, think where mosquitoes can get…