Ken Livingstone Praises RT’s Coverage of the War in Yemen

Okay, this is a clip of RT getting one of their fans to blow their trumpet for them, but ‘Red Ken’ Livingstone is right. He praises RT’s coverage of the war in Yemen, and its news reporting, as it reveals the stories that the Americans would rather not be covered. He states that during the evening he flicks between the news on the BBC, RT and Sky, and all of them inevitably have a bias that reflects their national interests. But when he looks back at the American coverage of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and ’70s, the bias was horrendous. RT is much better, as it shows the British public what the Saudis are really doing in Yemen.

And not just the Saudis. The Americans and we Brits have been very keen to sell them all that ‘marvellous kit’ David Cameron enthused about when he went to see a BAe System plant in Lanchashire. Yemen is a human rights atrocity, with seven million people starving in famine, and the Saudis deliberately butchering civilians, including women and children, in schools, factories and mosques. But we’re allied to the Saudis through big oil, and are desperately keen to sell them arms they don’t need and can’t maintain, simply to keep our own bloated military-industrial complex awash with money. All while ordinary Brits starve.

You can expect the Tories and their Zionist bedfellows to go berserk at this one. ‘Red Ken’ was regularly slandered in the 1980s as a ‘Communist’. Those, who knew him, were very frank in denying this. He wasn’t. He was not averse to using bits of Marxist ideology or phraseology when it suited him, and he certainly used them when it was convenient, but he wasn’t one himself. But he was a real danger to entrenched capitalist interests, not least because he believed in workers’ control. And that really loosened the bowels of the newspaper proprietors.

And the appartchiks at New Labour and their friends in the Israel lobby have been trying to smear him as an anti-Semite since. Just like they’ve been smearing thousands of others. It’s because he dared to point out that Hitler briefly made an agreement with the Zionist pioneers to smuggle a few Jews out of Germany to the nascent White European Jewish colony in Palestine. This was entirely factually correct. It was the Ha’avara agreement. But you’re not allowed to mention historical fact. It’s anti-Semitic if you do. Never mind that ‘Red Ken’s’ administration in the GLC was regularly mocked for being anti-racist, anti-homophobic and pro-feminist. Never mind that he gave money to real Jewish Socialist groups, which upset the Tory Jewish establishment at the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and condemned anti-Semitism along with other forms of racism – against the Blacks and Irish, for example, in his book, Livingstone’s Labour. He’s an anti-Semite. Because he dares to criticise Israel, when few others will dare to do so, and he frightens the Blairites by actually standing up for workers’ rights when they just want to kow-tow to big business.

From RT: McDonnell States We Will Not Sell Arms to States Abusing Human Rights

In this short clip from RT, presenter Afshin Rattansi asks John McDonnell about the party’s policy regarding arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Both he (McDonnell) and Jeremy Corbyn have both said that arms sales to Saudi Arabia should be suspended because of their use against civilians in the war in Yemen. Rattansi then asks him if he doesn’t find it odd walking past posters for BAE Systems. McDonnell replies that their stance is that Britain has an arms trade, but we must stop selling arms to human rights abusers, like Saudi Arabia. And this has to stop immediately, because people are dying.

I find it grossly immoral that the Labour party has accepted sponsorship from BAE, which has for decades sold arms to every dictator and butcher on the planet, as well as desperately poor states, who don’t need them, can’t maintain them, and whose purchase diverts money that could be better used on welfare or development programmes for their people. They are also responsible for making weapons that are illegal under international law, such as electric shields and batons.

Unfortunately, big business has wormed its way into the sponsorship of the Labour party, and Tony Blair was as fully supportive of the merchants of death as the Tories were. McDonnell’s statement that he and Corbyn won’t sell arms to the Saudis and the other repressive regimes around the globe sound like a restatement of the late Robin Cook’s ‘ethical foreign policy’, which became a dead letter almost as soon as Labour got into power.

Cook was, in many people’s eyes, the man who should have been head of the Labour party instead of Blair. Speaking at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature nearly two decades or so ago, Giles Brandreth said that when he was a minister in Major’s cabinet, Cook was the man they were most afraid would lead Labour because of his ‘forensic intelligence’. He was genuinely further left, and Private Eye opined that Blair included him in the cabinet because ‘it was better to have him in the tent p*ssing out, than outside p*ssing in.’

The Tories, Lib Dems, the Beeb, the rest of the media, and big business are terrified of Corbyn and McDonnell. This strongly suggests to me that they are afraid that Corbyn, unlike Blair, means what he says. And McDonnell is right: the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia needs to be stopped now. The war hasn’t just killed the people hit by the bullets and bombs. It’s also created a famine that may kill 7 million people.

The Saudis have butchered innocent civilians in factories, mosques and schools, simply because they’re Shi’a. They were also responsible for the 9/11 attack that plunged us into the War on Terror and which was falsely blamed on Iraq. They have also funded and supplied other aid to ISIS in its trail of murder and chaos across the Middle East. I’m aware that the Saudis have turned against ISIS after they released a video trying to encourage the people there to rise up against their rulers. Even so, my guess is that support for the jihadis is nevertheless very strong. Any guns and other ‘wonderful kit’ – in the words of David Cameron – we sell to the Saudis therefore has a strong chance of being passed on to the fanatics to be used against our troops.

There are thus very strong humanitarian and selfish reasons for not selling any further weapons to the Saudis.

South African Politico Andrew Feinstein on the Evils of the Arms Trade

Hat tip to Michelle, for sending me this video on the immense harm and global corruption due to the arms trade.

In this video, the South African politician Andrew Feinstein talks in detail about the arms trade. This creates death and chaos, not just through the weapons themselves, but through the web of corruption and kickbacks western governments, and here he talks specifically about the British government, use to sell them to countries that don’t need them and can’t afford them.

Like South Africa. BAe Systems and the British government were involved in a very corrupt deal to sell arms to his country. This diverted money, that should have been spent feeding the starving masses. Instead it went into the pockets of the merchants of death, and tens of thousands of children died of starvation as a result.

Another instance he cites is the Al-Yamamah arms deal, in which Britain sold arms to Saudi Arabia, in return for which one of the Saudi princes, Prince Bandar, received a kickback of a cool $1 billion. The agency that investigates corrupt business dealings were about to bring a prosecution, when Tony Blair’s government stepped in and stopped it. It was only when some of that money ended up in the accounts of two of the 9/11 hijackers that the authorities thought fit to investigate it.

http://realmedia.press/arms-trade-make-killing-andrew-feinstein/

None of this should be surprising to Private Eye readers. The magazine has cover the British arms industry for decades and the way it flouts international law. Under Maggie Thatcher, we were supplying arms to Saddam Hussein despite a ban on weapons sales imposed by the Americans. These were weapons that were turned on our squaddies when we invaded in Gulf War I. The Eye has also documented ad nauseam the countless times Britain has sold its lethal products to extremely repressive governments, like those of Indonesia and the Gulf states.

And BAe systems also manufactures weapons that are illegal under human rights legislation. Way back in the 1990s the Eye reported how the company was making and selling, quite illegally, electric shields and batons.

The massive arms fair held in London last week is now over, but the issues surrounding it haven’t gone away. We are still manufacturing and exporting these weapons to brutal, oppressive regimes with the complete support of the government. Remember how David Cameron went up to a weapons manufacturing plant in the North the other year to enthuse about the ‘wonderful kit’ they were making? Britain’s part in the global arms trade is small – much smaller than the American’s, whose expenditure on weapons vastly outstrips that of the other leading countries combined. But the trade, and the death and chaos it causes, still needs to be stopped. Hopefully this won’t just help to stop some of the supply of lethal weapons to brutal and oppressive regimes, it will also help stop the poverty and corruption this immoral trade generates.

‘Bomber’ Fallon and the Merchants of Death Arms Fair in London

Mike today has put up a piece over at Vox Political commenting on Michael Fallon’s speech yesterday at the DSEI arms fair in London. Fallon, who earned the monicker ‘Bomber’ because of a speech in which he declared that Britain had a moral duty to bomb the peoples of the Middle East, now went on to say that, thanks to Brexit, Britain’s future as the world’s leading arms exporter looked good. And that we should try to sell armaments to anyone in the world, regardless of morality.

Mike makes the point that Fallon’s comments are insensitive, coming as they do when Britain is selling arms to Saudi Arabia, which is using it to kill innocent civilians, including children in schools and madrasas, in Yemen. And Saudi Arabia has no qualms whatsoever against using such armaments against us. 17 of the 19 people involved in the 9/11 hijacking were Saudis, and the trail of responsibility for that atrocity goes right up to the top of the Saudi government itself.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/09/17/warmonger-fallon-wants-the-uk-to-sell-arms-to-anyone-who-wants-them/

This weekend’s Counterpunch also carries an article by Michael Dickinson, ‘Stop the London Death Fair’, about the DSEI trade fair and its dealings with some of the world’s most evil and repressive governments. It begins

Roll up! Roll up! Ballistic missiles and hand grenades! Drones, helicopters and warships! Rocket launchers, tanks and assault rifles! Welcome to the biennial London Arms Fair! Showing now until 15th September at the Excel Centre in Docklands, the Defence Systems and Equipment International (DSEI) – “a world-leading event that brings together the defence and security sector to innovate and share knowledge” – presents one of the world’s biggest arms bazaars, displaying the latest high-tech arms and surveillance technology, crowd control and weaponry. This year the exhibition is split into five key zones: air, land, security and joint, all showcasing the latest equipment and systems. DSEI is organised by Clarion Events, with extensive cooperation from the British government.

Military personnel, politicians, private defence contractors and consultants mingle as they shop. Countries accused of war crimes and human rights abuses, Algeria, Angola, Colombia, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, the UAE, and Ukraine are among the invited. Although not an official guest, the Israeli arms industry has special pavilions at the venue, where over 34,000 visitors are expected to view the latest in killing weaponry for sale, exhibited by more than 1,600 arms companies, including the US and UK giants Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and BAE Systems.

With authoritarian regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and Azerbaijan among the official UK government guests in attendance, this year’s keynote speakers at the opening day conference included British Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox and many of the top brass in the UK military establishment. Fox said that overseas governments had an inaliable right to defend themselves and that if they could not buy the equipment they required from developed countries with effective controls, like the UK, they would look elsewhere. Last year Britain’s arms export industry turned over 3 billion pounds.

Andrew Smith, a spokesman from the activist group Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) said: “DSEI is one of the biggest arms fairs in the world. It exists purely to maximise arms sales. Prime Minister Theresa May and her colleagues may talk about promoting human rights but DSEI could not happen without the full support of government. A lot of the regimes in attendance have been linked to terrible human rights abuses, and events like DSEI only make them more likely in future. It is vitally important to spread as much awareness as possible of this terrible arms fair taking place. ”

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/15/stop-the-london-death-fair/

Conservative governments, including Margaret Thatcher’s, keenly supported the British arms industry, and this policy was taken over, along with just about everything else, by Tony Blair and New Labour. It’s hardly surprising. George Orwell remarked when he finally gave up his anti-War stance in the face of the Nazi threat, and went to work for the BBC writing anti-Nazi and pro-war material, that if you’re a member of the British upper and upper middle classes, you’re bred for war. This has always been true, ever since the modern armed forces emerged from the military aristocracies of the Middle Ages. The officer elite has always been solidly middle class, although there has been some efforts to make it more diverse.

The government has tried to defend its massive support for the arms industry by arguing that arms sales open up foreign markets to British industry generally. After buying some of that ‘wonderful kit’ David Cameron enthused about, foreign nations would go on to buy other British products and services. But they don’t. They buy British weapons, tanks and other pieces of hardware, and nothing else.

And the British ruling class, its politicians and senior civil servants, also stand to benefit personally from the arms trade. Private Eye for decades has exposed the revolving door between the MOD and British defence ministers, and the arms industry, in which British generals and officials find very lucrative places on the boards of defence contractors and arms manufacturers once they retire or leave office.

As for the private military contractors, previously known as mercenaries, that the British government has supported, these have been used by the Tories to give unofficial support to regimes, where it would have been otherwise embarrassing for Britain to send in the regular army. Like Sri Lanka.

It hardly needs stating that the arms industry is a deeply immoral trade, and that by lauding Britain’s role in it Fallon has shown the complete absence of any kind of moral consideration for the victims of these weapons and a complete indifference to the nature of the regimes he intends to sell them to.

As far as he’s concerned, war is a business. And business is good.

Close down the arms fair, and kick out Fallon and the rest of his vile government.

Private Eye on Britain’s Arms Sales to both Russia and Ukraine

I found this piece in Private Eye issue for 8th – 21st August 2014, reporting how Britain was selling arms to both Ukraine and Russia during the conflict over the country’s civil conflict over links with Russia.

World at War

It’s not just UK arms sales to Russia and Israel that should cause concern: there is plenty of equally fascinating material about other deals buried in the 56 page parliamentary report [Scrutiny of Arms Exports and Arms Controls (2014)]

The UK has been exporting arms to Russia for at least a decade – but lest anyone accuse us of taking sides, we have also been supplying arms to Ukraine at the same time.

Despite government “concerns”, components for sniper rifles, among other weapons paraphernalia, have been sold to Ukraine – the same components for the same sniper rifles that have been sold to Russia. In the Ukrainian deal, the weapons were described as “hunting rifles”, perhaps to avoid the embarrassing prospect of the UK being outed as a supplier of similar weapons to both sides of the same conflict, which it is.

Meanwhile, the Syrians have also been sold UK “dual use chemicals”, which could easily be turned into a weapon.

At the same time, Iraq, now embroiled in its own conflict with Jihadists spilling over the Syrian border is also a recipient of British weaponry, including small arms and ammunition. Inside Iraq a bevy of “sneaky-beaky” special forces types are tasked with stopping the Jihadis from Syria from cutting off Iraqi oil supplies. “They”-the SAS-are not covered by export licences, but they will be fighting Jihadists using equipment that is.

I’ve put up pieces before about the government profiteering from selling arms to some of the worst despots in the world, such as Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are using some of the ‘wonderful things’ Cameron raved about when he visited BAE Systems plant in Wharton, Lancashire, to butcher Shia civilians in Yemen. And then there’s this, showing that Cameron’s government was merrily supplying guns and equipment to both sides in the murderous conflict in that country.

Private Eye on the Companies Sponsoring the Tories in 2008

Private Eye in their issue for 5th-18th September 2008 printed this piece listing the companies sponsoring the Tory party conference that year.

Meet the Tories’ Brum Chums

The Conservative party conference will see Team Cameron entertaining a plethora of wealthy bedfellows from industry when it kicks off in Birmingham on 28th September …

The Arms trade…
Labour have been too embarrassed to be seen mixing with the weapons makers, but if shadow defence secretary Liam Fox becomes a real minister all that will change. Fox is timetabled to speak for the Defence Industries Council, an arms trade group led by BAE Systems chief executive Mike Turner.

Fox shares the enthusiasm of the “Vulcan” wing of the US Republicans for military reaction to perceived threats, reflected in the title of another meeting he is addressing on “Resurgent threats: Terror, Russia and Iran?” The meeting is sponsored by yet another arms firm, EADS, who hope to sell loads of kit to a future Tory government.

The Greens…
Cameron is fighting to make green a new Tory, colour, but it’s a very pale shade indeed. The Tory Green Initiative’s first meeting at the conference is paid for by the British Cement Association and has cement lobbyist Mike Gilbert on the platform. The link makes the TGI look more like an industry-friendly lobby group than an environmental campaign. Hardly surprising, as the Initiative is run by Nick Wood-Dow, the boss of lobbying firm Chelgate, which assists clients from the construction industry who have problems with “disproportionate response from the community, or from pressure or environmental groups.”

The Poor…
Shadow Treasury minister Mark Hoban is demonstrating the new Conservative interest in poverty with a meeting on the credit crunch, sponsored by Cattles plc, one of the Britain’s leading sub-prime lenders. Cattles makes millions through its “Shopacheck” loans to the low-paid that have APRS as high as 400 per cent.

The Lobbyists…
Last year Tory MP Peter Luff was outraged that the Canary Wharf Group gave £120,000 to Labour while promoting Crossrail, the line that will improve access to Canary Wharf. Boris Johnson also backs Crossrail, and Luff will presumably be horrified that the Canary Wharf Group is paying the London Assembly Conservatives. The group is funding a political “speed dating” lunch, where delegates can meet “the most influential people in London politics, from London Assembly members to deputy mayors.”

Elsewhere, shadow Treasury bod Mark Hoban is advertised as the top speaker at the “invitation-only financial services reception” of lobby firm Lansons, which makes a living from trying to influence politicians on behalf of big-money clients such as HBOS bank. It’s easy to see why Lansons has invited a shadow minister to their party, but harder to see why Hoban would accept.

The list of curious sponsors goes on: shadow health minister Stephen O’Brien is speaking on problem drinking – sponsored by brew SAB Miller. And Frances Maude, a key member of Team Cameron, is speaking on “Preparing for Power” – that to money from management consultants PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

…and the Labour ex-ministers
Of course, the Tories aren’t the only one who know on which side their bread is buttered – three former Labour ministers will address the conference, getting in practice at sucking up to Cameron’s crew. Former trade minister Brian Wilson was once a left-wing MP and enthusiastic supporter of Castro’s Cuba; now he is chairman of the pro-airports lobby group FlyingMatters. Steven Twigg, the man once famous for defeating Portillo, and former Culture secretary Chris Smith complete the trio.

Those were the companies seeking to profit from the Tories gaining power that year. And looking at this, and the way Cameron very swiftly dropped his Green initiative when it appeared to have worked, it’s clear that this always was a sham. His Green Initiative was simply an astroturf organisation to get the Tories and their backers in the very un-Green cement industry back into No. 10. And since then, the Tories have dropped it completely. Cameron took down that windmill from his house, and has put his full support behind fracking, another industry which comprehensively wrecks the environment.

David Cameron is still firmly behind the arms industry. He was up at the BAE systems base the other week in Wharton, boasting about how he’d sold millions of their products to the war criminals and mass murderers in Saudi Arabia. He wasn’t bothered, calling their armaments ‘brilliant things’.

And the hypocrisy and deceit behind their lobbying bill, which shuts out charities and other organisations from influencing government, while leaving the real lobbyists to pursue their sordid trade, should be no surprise given their appearance sponsoring so much of the Tory conference.

And then there’s the matter of the 95 Tory and Lib Dem ministers with links to health care companies, who are hoping to get rich from the privatisation of the NHS.

Vox Political on Cameron’s Boasting about Selling Arms to Saudi Arabia

Mike over at Vox Political has a report from the Guardian about Cameron boasting about his arms sales to Saudi Arabia on a visit to the BAE Systems factory in Warton, Lancashire. He did so on the same day that the European Parliament voted for an arms embargo because of the country’s indiscriminate killing of civilians in Yemen. Mike in his comments says that Cameron simply doesn’t appear to understand why selling arms to these people is wrong. It is, according to Mike, the most indictment of him.

David Cameron boasts of ‘brilliant’ UK arms exports to Saudi Arabia

Mike’s right: this is truly scandalous. The Saudi regime has been condemned by a number of international bodies for its bombardment in Yemen. This has included the indiscriminate killing of civilians in what has been cautiously described as possible war crimes. In addition to killing Houthi rebels, the Saudis have also targeted Shi’a mosques, destroyed four hospitals operated by Medecins Sans Frontieres. They’ve also destroyed factories and even taxi drivers. The weapons dropped include cluster bombs, which remain to kill and mutilate in former war zones long after the war has actually stopped. They’re still a real problem in the former Yugoslavia, where people are still being killed and maimed by them, or at least they were a few years ago, long after the war in Bosnia and Kosovo officially ceased. International observers have stated that Saudi Arabia’s campaign in the Yemen looks very much like an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Shi’a. By selling the country arms, Cameron is making Britain complicit in their crimes against humanity.

And Saudi Arabia has also funded terrorism, including al-Qaeda and ISIS, under its head of intelligence, Prince Turki al-Faisal. They’ve had something of a volte-face since then, after ISIS told the Saudis that they were next and issued an ultimatum urging its people to rise up. Nevertheless, we have no business arming a state which, while claiming to represent peace and stability in the region, actually gives aid and succour to our enemies.

The arms trade to Saudi Arabia and elsewhere is extremely lucrative. I’ve blogged elsewhere that Cameron has sold weapons to autocratic states, and countries like South Africa, which have neither need for them, nor the ability to maintain them properly. It’s simply Cameron lining the pockets of the ‘merchants of death’.

Most telling is the childish joy in which he described the arms and warplanes sold as ‘brilliant things’. It reminds me of a spoof of a NATO general way back when I was a lad in the early 1980s. It was on a sketch show called End of Part One. That particular skit was about a British general going to buy nuclear warheads, rather like a young boy trying to buy fireworks, and saying really childish comments like, ‘I want that one. It goes ‘whizzzzzz”, and throwing a tantrum when they don’t have those he wants in stock. The sketch was directed at Britain’s military establishment at the time when Thatcher’s and Reagan’s new Cold War was at its height, and there were real fears that a nuclear war was about to break out. CND was on the rise again, and so the sketch attacked Britain’s generals and its supposed nuclear deterrent as literally puerile warmongers, intent on seeing big bangs without any thought of the consequences, the mass death and mutilation these weapons cause. I wasn’t terribly impressed with the sketch, as it seemed a mite too simplistic. And besides, it simply wasn’t funny or very subtle. On the other hand, it does describe part of Cameron’s attitude and rhetoric here.

David Cameron boasts of ‘brilliant’ UK arms exports to Saudi Arabia

Cameron’s a disgrace, a wannabe dictator over here, and the enabler of autocrats and dictators around the world through the arms trade.