Neither side comes off as sounding pretty clever or persuasive.

Is this really a news item or just trying to get more people involved in an already stupid flame war?

This act of property damage is certainly news to me!

Smashing windows at Selex is ineffectual as sabotage since the insurance company will have the damage repaired and paid for. However as a publicity stunt it obviously was a great success. Similar actions occur all the time but aren't normally publicised. The Scotsman seem to have their court-reporter covering IM-Scotland for any mention of FTWC every day.

The 'flame war' on Scotland-IMs board seems to be between activists who weren't there, Selex workers and online punters from the Scotsman comments page. To equate the activists with the defence workers seems supine and superficial dk. The activists broke a dozen windows, which is vandalism or 'malicious mischief' under Scots law. The workers build weapons-systems that have killed over a million innocents, which isn't a crime. One activists are illegal but moral, the workers are legal but immoral.

The arguments used do tell you a lot about the people who work for 'defence' companies. Their reliance on arguments about the Second World War shows they are still fighting that war in their heads, and haven't developed their moral-logic since 1945. Their assumption that WW2 shows the need for arms-manufacturers today shows a total lack of intellectual curiousity or depth, a child-like assumption that they are the good guys and . The defence-workers should remember anarchists didn't wait until 1939 to battle fascism. And anarchists didn't arm Hitler, defence-workers did. Anyway any industry whose biggest accomplishment was Dresden or Nagasaki or Falljah is unsustainable and unbearable. To compare the smashing of Selexes windows with KrystalNacht was laugh-out loud hilarious. "First they came for the war-profiteers, and I did not speak up as I wasn't a war profiteer, now they come for the arms-manufacturers,..."

Unlike their racial insults (pikey) the attempts to demean activists with get-a-job/get-a-mortgage advice is telling. The extension of this argument is the number of people who do a job that they know is morally corrupt but who justify it to themselves by 'paying the mortgage'. This starts by wanting to provide shelter for your family. These people know if they spoke out or protested at work they will never be premoted, that they are selected for obedience more than ability. If you play the game, you pay the mortgage. This soon reduces human worth to the amount of property that you own. Property protection becomes paramount so they are genuinely shocked at someone breaking a window. For them damage to property is indistinguishable from violence against the person. Which just reinforces their career philosphy. I bet none of the people who posted attacking the action were motivated enough to write a post about the destruction of Fallujah. For those people who helped smash up an entire country for personal profit to now complain about petty vanadlism as Nazi, that is pretty sickening.

Breaking windows doesn't damage a corporation financially, but it does raise awareness in the local community that this is not a reputable or moral business. Eric Blair once said kill four hundred technicians and you'd end the British Empire overnight. Anyone here could find the home addresses of the key arms-manufacturer employees, they leave their CVs online. Do a search on SELEX+CV and see what I mean. Then refine your search by product name or technology. I'm not suggesting murdering them, even specialists are cheap today and can be replaced much like windows, but you could hold a die-in outside their house. Let their children know what daddy did in the war.

Now the defence industry has proven itself knowledable in how to destroy Iraq. So who better to rebuild Iraq ? Deport every defence company and worker to Iraq and let us await positive results.