Conservative MPs may be in revolt against proposed cuts to "defence", but the latest that this country ever fought a defensive war was in 1982, and we have had no shortage of adventures since. Several of those have actively created threats that did not previously exist, notably in Iraq and in Libya.
We function as a satrapy of Saudi Arabia, the global nerve centre of Islamist terrorism. Not only do we arm it, thus arming every Islamist faction by what barely even qualifies as proxy, but we even have personnel in the command room of its wicked, wicked, wicked war in Yemen.
We function as a satrapy of Saudi Arabia, the global nerve centre of Islamist terrorism. Not only do we arm it, thus arming every Islamist faction by what barely even qualifies as proxy, but we even have personnel in the command room of its wicked, wicked, wicked war in Yemen.
When the British arming of the Saudi war in Yemen was last brought to the floor of the House of Commons, then anti-Corbyn Labour MPs ostentatiously abstained. But since then, the hateful Michael Fallon has been forced from office, and it has been found that British-made cluster bombs were being used by Saudi Arabia in Yemen. Since as long ago as last December, that has been admitted by absolutely everyone.
Saudi Arabia is not poor. It is fabulously rich. Its British-made cluster bombs, in use in Yemen and soon (if not already) by Saudis against Saudis, are not from the 1980s. On this country's absolutely toxic relationship with what is jointly the most repressive regime in the world, matched only by North Korea, Jeremy Corbyn has been right all along.
The supply of British arms to Saudi Arabia needs to be brought back to the floor of the House of Commons as a matter of the utmost urgency. The rather good Labour Chief Whip ought to publish in advance the list of MPs with leave of absence. For anyone else, abstention this time ought to mean deselection in due season, and universal moral revulsion with immediate effect. No such person ought to be re-elected. Therefore, no such person ought to be reselected.
The attackers in Egypt were waving the flag of the so-called Islamic State. Well, so were the hundreds of fighters whom we allowed out of Raqqa, even though they were not supposed to display it. I have no idea whether they and the attackers in Egypt were the same individuals. But they might as well have been.
Still, never mind. Theresa May has just given away £100 million to "counteract Russian propaganda in Eastern Europe". From the Baltic to the Adriatic, neo-Nazi glorifiers of those of their compatriots who fought for Hitler are looking forward to a payday, if they have not already had it, or even if they have. Heaven forfend that any good might be spoken of those who, for all their faults, have been, and who remain, on the right side of the fight against the greatest evil in the world since 1945.
It entirely defeats me that torchlit neo-Nazi processions are objectionable in Virginia, as of course they are, but are positively laudable in Ukraine. Another attempted Far Right putsch assisted by the CIA, no more a popular uprising than anything else that is capable of staging a helicopter grenade attack on the Supreme Court, is being attempted in Venezuela.
If there is one thing worth knowing about Venezuela, then it is that the people who are now beating the drum against it have been wrong about every foreign policy of the last 20 years, and that they had barely heard of the place, which they still could not find on a map, until they needed a stick with which to beat Jeremy Corbyn. That, and the fact that no policy of Corbyn's resembles anything in Venezuela, except coincidentally while already being the norm in places like Germany and Scandinavia.
Had I the money, then I would bring an action before the High Court of Justiciary of Scotland, asking it to exercise its declaratory power against Tony Blair and his accomplices in relation to their crime of aggression against Iraq in 2003. At worst, the Court could say no. I continue to demand the Coroner's Inquest that has never been held into the death of Dr David Kelly, whose remains were recently exhumed and cremated in anticipation of a Corbyn Government. Why is there any other news than that?
It is not bleeding heart stuff to oppose the arms trade. It is good strategic sense. We never know where the arms might end up. Or, in the case of Saudi Arabia and of its other satrapies, we do know that the arms run a very high risk of ending up in the hands of the so-called Islamic State or of forces that are in no meaningful way distinguishable from it.
BAE Systems ought to be renationalised as the monopoly supplier to our own Armed Forces, while all other sale of arms abroad ought to be banned. The State has a responsibility, not least to its own defence, to enable the diversification of the skilled work that is currently being done in the arms trade.
The same is true of Trident, the ever more eye-watering cost of which ought to be diverted to rebuilding the conventional Armed Forces (and not least the Royal Navy, which has gone to rack and ruin, having been the world's mightiest before nuclear weapons were ever thought of), to caring for veterans, to flood defences, and to the real nuclear deterrent, which is civil nuclear power.
That, and the exploitation of Britain's vast reserves of coal, need to be the backbone of an "all-of-the-above" energy policy with its commanding heights in reformed public ownership, even while appreciating that if the shale gas is there at all, which unlike the coal we do not know, then it is in places that do not want or need fracking, unlike the coal that is very definitely in areas in dire need of mining, both as an industry and as a culture.
I have always said all of this. That is but one of the many, many, many reasons to want to send me to prison.
Still, never mind. Theresa May has just given away £100 million to "counteract Russian propaganda in Eastern Europe". From the Baltic to the Adriatic, neo-Nazi glorifiers of those of their compatriots who fought for Hitler are looking forward to a payday, if they have not already had it, or even if they have. Heaven forfend that any good might be spoken of those who, for all their faults, have been, and who remain, on the right side of the fight against the greatest evil in the world since 1945.
It entirely defeats me that torchlit neo-Nazi processions are objectionable in Virginia, as of course they are, but are positively laudable in Ukraine. Another attempted Far Right putsch assisted by the CIA, no more a popular uprising than anything else that is capable of staging a helicopter grenade attack on the Supreme Court, is being attempted in Venezuela.
If there is one thing worth knowing about Venezuela, then it is that the people who are now beating the drum against it have been wrong about every foreign policy of the last 20 years, and that they had barely heard of the place, which they still could not find on a map, until they needed a stick with which to beat Jeremy Corbyn. That, and the fact that no policy of Corbyn's resembles anything in Venezuela, except coincidentally while already being the norm in places like Germany and Scandinavia.
Had I the money, then I would bring an action before the High Court of Justiciary of Scotland, asking it to exercise its declaratory power against Tony Blair and his accomplices in relation to their crime of aggression against Iraq in 2003. At worst, the Court could say no. I continue to demand the Coroner's Inquest that has never been held into the death of Dr David Kelly, whose remains were recently exhumed and cremated in anticipation of a Corbyn Government. Why is there any other news than that?
It is not bleeding heart stuff to oppose the arms trade. It is good strategic sense. We never know where the arms might end up. Or, in the case of Saudi Arabia and of its other satrapies, we do know that the arms run a very high risk of ending up in the hands of the so-called Islamic State or of forces that are in no meaningful way distinguishable from it.
BAE Systems ought to be renationalised as the monopoly supplier to our own Armed Forces, while all other sale of arms abroad ought to be banned. The State has a responsibility, not least to its own defence, to enable the diversification of the skilled work that is currently being done in the arms trade.
The same is true of Trident, the ever more eye-watering cost of which ought to be diverted to rebuilding the conventional Armed Forces (and not least the Royal Navy, which has gone to rack and ruin, having been the world's mightiest before nuclear weapons were ever thought of), to caring for veterans, to flood defences, and to the real nuclear deterrent, which is civil nuclear power.
That, and the exploitation of Britain's vast reserves of coal, need to be the backbone of an "all-of-the-above" energy policy with its commanding heights in reformed public ownership, even while appreciating that if the shale gas is there at all, which unlike the coal we do not know, then it is in places that do not want or need fracking, unlike the coal that is very definitely in areas in dire need of mining, both as an industry and as a culture.
I have always said all of this. That is but one of the many, many, many reasons to want to send me to prison.
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