Free Malcolm. posted by Richard Seymour

Sign this petition launched by Military Families Against the War to demand that Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith be freed. He has been handed an eight month sentence and is obliged to pay £20,000 in costs for refusing to serve in an illegal war. Some commentators are unhappy about this. Simon Heffer, the lioniser of Enoch Powell and Tory columnist, writes for the Telegraph today that "A pity the firing squad was having a day off, I think". It is, but not in the sense that Heffer imagines: applying the standards of the Nuremberg trials, the Prime Minister is the one who ought to be slumped against a wall following the attention of a firing squad. Incidentally, I might add, staying with the Nuremberg theme, that Simon Heffer should pause and consider the unfortunate career of Julius Streicher before urging that our government's become even more criminally extreme. Those who refused to participate in the vicious invasion and occupation of Iraq are heroes - we can't allow heroism of this kind to be an imprisonable offense, as it presently is in imperialist states.