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DSEi 2011 - Life Neutral Solutions

info@spacehijackers.org (Space Hijackers) | 16.09.2011 13:55 | London

You’ve heard of the importance of being carbon neutral? Well, being Life Neutral is the same - but with people. For every* life lost as a result of the use of products from our member organisations, we make sure that a new life flourishes.

Join today and your next child could be a Life Neutral™ child. Read more...


Every two years DSEi the worlds largest arms fair rolls into town, and every time the media seem to cover it less and less. It's as if the fact that the nastiest people on the planet gathering together under one roof to sell weapons and torture equipment to corrupt regimes is not news worthy. Bahrain was recently exposed as using UK supplied weapons against pro-democracy campaigners, how did our government react to this news? They invited them to DSEi again to buy some more...

Well if that wasn't disgusting enough to tempt the press, what would be?
and so, Life Neutral Solutions was born... www.lifeneutralsolutions.com

....................................................................................................................................

Why did we do this? 

Every two years the DSEi "defence and security exhibition" (the world's largest arms fair) arrives in the East End of London. With thousands of weapons companies plying their wares to delegates from dozens of reprehensible regimes, some of the nastiest people on the planet are gathered under one roof. Previously companies have been found to be advertising illegal weapons such as cluster bombs, or even torture equipment at the fair, yet our government still host and sponsor the event. 

We as a group find this disgusting. As a nation we preach about peace keeping and tolerance, yet regularly sell weapons to countries with abysmal human rights records. Even after it hit the news that UK sold weapons were being used against pro-democracy demonstrators in the Arab Spring uprisings, we still invited the dictators to come and buy more at this year's fair. 

Our group started attempting to shame the arms dealers back in 2003, by selling them prosthetic limbs (arms) on the DLR as they travelled to the fair. Alas we realised their moral compass is well and truly broken, and they are beyond shame. Next we tried selling them sex toys, we figured that perhaps all the phallic shaped weapons were trying to compensate for a lack of firepower elsewhere, this tactic didn't stop the fair either. 

A few years ago we realised that despite huge public outcry against the fair, the media were not covering it. The ExCeL Centre itself was advertising that it was "closed for refurbishment" on their website whilst hosting THE WORLD'S LARGEST ARMS FAIR. Yet the press were barely picking up on the story. We bought a tank and called a press conference, surely an armed anarchist group attempting to drive into the fair would be news worthy? We did make the papers, but all the stories had headlines like "anti-war protesters fool police" as opposed to "the nastiest bastards in the world are in East London selling weapons to corrupt regimes". 

This year, due to once again an utter lack of interest from the media in a weapons fair in the area of London that was most destroyed during the war by weapons, we decided to try and outrage people. 

And so Life Neutral Solutions was born, the company based on the carbon neutral model, but offering to replace dead bodies with new babies. Turning a profit and making nice shiny new western babies to make up for collateral damage in our overseas adventures. Surely this is a joke, people cried out, it can't be real. The real joke we thought was that it took something this disgusting, this far into a moral vacuum before ears were pricked up. 

Some people say the arms industry is essential for the economy, but we're sure people once said that about the slave trade and many other things that we've thankfully stopped doing in the name of progress. Perhaps one day we'll look back on these times, where our government flies Ministers around the world to sanction weapons deals, as another dark age that we've moved on from.


info@spacehijackers.org (Space Hijackers)
- Original article on IMC London: http://london.indymedia.org/articles/10190

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