A £37 million deal has been struck by Westminster with the US government
for a dozen huge new Trident missile launchers more than a year before
the UK parliament decides if the nuclear weapons system should be
renewed.
ACTION AT FASLANE TODAY: Peace Activists target UK’s Nuclear Hypocrisy FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday 3rd February
In the early hours of this morning (Monday 3rd February) two peace
activists, Sylvia Boyes and Mary Millington were arrested attempting
to enter Faslane home to the UK’s nuclear submarines. Their actions
come a week after David Cameron pledged to increase defence spending
including investment in nuclear weapons. The Ministry of Defence also
admitted that chancellor George Osborne is already signing off
millions of pounds worth of investment on nuclear submarines before a
parliamentary decision on the issue is to be taken[i]. Sylvia
Boyes, a long term term Peace Activist and member of Trident
Ploughshares[ii] said: “When the
government of my country fails in its democratic duty to disseminate
the necessary information to initiate real debate on nuclear weapons
how can I continue not to act? The building work and development for
the Trident replacement at Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Establishment
continues unabated despite the government saying no decision is to be
made until the next Parliament in 2015. We here in the UK must face
up to our role in the silent acceptance of the proliferation of
weapons of mass murder and mass destruction.
I remain convinced that all nuclear weapons are weapons of mass
murder and mass destruction and are therefore illegal under
international laws of war. This is not a one off action but one of
many to create a climate of opinion to enable the government to take
part in real disarmament negotiations. My banner ‘Nuclear
Disarmament if not now, when?” is asking that question for us all
to answer” Large protests are expected in April this year at both
Aldermaston and Faslane as campaigners continue to press for a real
debate on nuclear weapons and to scrap plans for over £100bn to be
spent on a Trident Replacement system.
On learning of their arrest Dave Webb, Chair of CND[iii], commented:
“At a time when people are suffering the consequences of such
brutal cuts to welfare and social services – the government needs
to take action on its choices for spending. Why is the government so
intent on wasting billions of pounds on useless nuclear weapons while
citizens suffer severe economic hardship? It is hardly surprising
that citizens like Sylvia and Mary become so frustrated with the lack
of progress that they feel they have to personally challenge the
tragic waste of money and morally indefensible Trident system.”
For further details contact Dominic Linley at
Dominic@yorkshirecn.org.uk or on 01274 730 795 / 07939 143 698
As you all know, those millionaires in the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption keep mouthing off about austerity, (for you and me, not them), this message from Faslane Peace Camp once again highlights there blatant bloody warmongering and two-faced hypocrisy. As quick as a wink, or a nod and a nudge-nudge and they can pour £160 billion to the pockets of their mates in the arms industry. Ah, that's capitalism for you.
The MoD (Ministry of Disregard-for-the-basic-principles-of-democracy) strikes again... they really are a law onto their own. "The Ministry of Defence has revealed how it intends to spend £160bn
over the next decade on new weapons systems, including a fleet of
Trident nuclear missile submarines, two large aircraft carriers,
helicopters, armoured vehicles, and unmanned drones. The MoD
says the money has been signed off by the chancellor, George Osborne,
even though parliament will not vote until after the general election on
whether to give the go-ahead to a new Trident fleet which, it is
estimated, would consume at least a third of the MoD's equipment budget
after 2020."
The 30 November is approaching, a day when thousands of people will take to the streets of the UK in anger at the attack on their pensions. The cuts are all deemed necessary to reduce the UK deficit. One line of thought that our millionaire political school thugs will not mention in deficit reduction is war.
One third of our budget deficit could be wiped out by ending spending on foreign wars and scrapping trident. Reports today say that even if NATO leaves Afghanistan the West will be picking up the bill for the keeping the Taliban at bay to the tune of $7.2 billion dollars annually. Think of the billions that the millionaire cabal spend on death and destruction in other countries, while the elderly die of the cold and children go hungry, right here in the UK. It is the economics of insanity, unless of course you are in the corporate club. These vampires make billions from war, the arms industry loves war and the big corporate construction companies love destruction, it's all good for business. We need a change of system, not government.
In the US
65% of all the governments available spending is on the military. At
present America is fighting in seven countries across the world,
Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and its latest
war machine adventure, Uganda. If we add the “war-on-terror” that
is eight brutal ventures through which the military industrial
complex is reaping tax payers money and feeding it to their
shareholders bank accounts to the tune of more than a trillion
dollars over the last ten years. In the UK, a much smaller country,
this year alone we have spent £9 billion on two wars, Afghanistan
and Libya plus maintaining that illegal missile system Trident.
Apart from the death, destruction and misery these wars cause to ordinary people, every
penny spent is tax payers money and it goes straight to the corporate
world's shareholders. What kind of transformation would have taken place in
America if that trillion dollars had been spent back into the service
of the people who had donated it in the first place through their
tax? What changes could we have made in the last year here in the UK,
if that £9 billion of our money had been re-invested in our civil
society, after all, it is our money, why should we want it to be used
to kill and maim and in the process enrich the arms industry.
How
can we proclaim to be civilised when we spend such large proportions
of our resources on death and destruction in other peoples home
lands. It is not as if the world has not got problems of poverty and
deprivation to be sorted out. The poverty and deprivation across the
world is expected to rely on charity, while wars get the full backing
of governments and all the resources they can muster. Ah, that's
capitalism for you.
The war in Libya
will soon have cost the UK two billion pounds. We were told at the start of
the NATO intervention that the cost to Britain would be "tens, not hundreds
of millions". The war is in its seventh month and British planes have
flown around one in five of all the bombing raids on the country,
destroying or damaging more than 900 sites. The £2 billion spent on
Libya comes on top of £5 billion a year on the war in Afghanistan and the
£2 billion a year spent maintaining the Trident nuclear missile
system.
Just as we're being told there is no alternative to deep cuts in
the NHS, in disability allowances, pensions, and every area of the
public services, £9 billion is being spent on two wars opposed by the
majority of the British public, and on maintaining the militarily pointless
Trident system. Britain is facing its worst economic crisis since the
1930s, but David Cameron in his speech last week to the United Nations,
called for yet more war, adopting from Tony Blair the justification
of "humanitarian intervention" for western powers to wage war wherever they
please. (SEE: http://bit.ly/rk11ZC).
It will be the main purpose of
the Antiwar Mass Assembly on 8 October (see below) to mobilise as big a
display of popular opposition as possible to this government's policy of
spending billions on wars abroad while waging a war at home to cut
billions from our public services.
