Counter-Terror Expo protest banner (source: Demotix)
Demotix reports that a small group of protesters gathered outside Kensington Olympia yesterday to speak out against the Counter Terror Expo 2010 in London. There was a strong police presence inside and outside the event and one protester was arrested for writing “No more death for profit” and “Capitalism sucks” on the ground in front of the entrance.
The exhibition is sponsored by arms company Thales and organised by Clarion Events [responsible for Defence & Security Equipment International (DSEi), the world’s largest arms fair and a long-standing target of anti-arms trade campaigners] and officially supported by a host of military, police and private security organisations. It features over 250 exhibitors, including leading arms companies such as BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin, and is formally endorsed by the likes of the MoD and NATO.
You can read more about the goings on at the Counter-Terror Expo 2010 in SchNEWS and on Open Democracy, where Clare Sambrook has taken a close look at New Labour’s cosy relationship with the surveillance and detention industry.
16 April 2010 at 12:19 pm
Paraniod or not? The protestors outside the expo have never had a freind who has been left permantly crippled as a result of a terrorist blast. What ever the global picture an dthe rights and wrongs of teh poltical situation, terrorists target normal british people who have no involvment in teh Global situation. International Criminals cross trade with terrorists for money luandering. The nieve young woman who was questioning me outside teh expo then went onto say we should be letting all the immigrants currently at Calias into teh UK as it would’Provide more taxes and skills’. I cant believe how stupid some of these protestors are! It would probably account fo rthem not working and having time to protest. I gave up trying to talk to her as I realised Protesting was a fashion and lifestyle chioce for her and I was just a facist controll ‘Suit’. They seem incapable of seeing individuals and see any delagate as part of the illuminati or some other strange conspiracy theory.
On th ebright side it did give me something to do while queing to get in