automatonrevolution

Those of you who were masochistic enough to subject yourselves to the inane ramblings of my previous blog, “Storm In An Ale Mug”, may remember a post I did called “Not a Democracy…A Hypocrisy”. In it I ranted about the state of the Union, about how we arent being democraticly represented if Labour could get in with a majority even though 64% of the electorate didnt vote for them, and how we’d been steamrollered into a crazy war on a false premise yet Blair somehow hadn’t been arrested…

Well. This is part two.
Its taken me a few days to calm down about this. If I’d posted about this on Wednesday most of it would have been swearing.

They’re replacing Trident.
Rather than actually keeping to our signatorial obligations and working to reduce our nuclear weapon capability (when I say “our”, I mean the “USA”…more on this later) as per the Non-Proliferation Treaty that Britian is signed to…our Government is going to replace Trident, each missile already many times more destructive than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, with all-new and improved even more deadly missiles.
The Hypocrisy of this staggers me.
Let me explain.
- Iraq has been reduced to a blood-soaked hellhole, its infrastructure destroyed and hundreds of thousands of people killed…on the pretext that Saddaam had WMD’s..
- We’ve nearing the end of a long and fraught dimplomatic process with North Korea to get them to dismantle their current Nuclear capability in exchange for consessions from the West,
- The drums of war are beginning to start again..this time aimed at Iran, because the US insists that the Iranians are building Nuclear Weapons instead of a civil nuclear power plant.

In short we, the West (especially Britian and the US) have a long history of telling other countries that they cant have Nuclear weapons, because of the Non-Proliferation treaty…the examples above are just the most recent ones…yet Blair and co are going to spend billions of pounds replacing Trident with a new, more powerful weapons system. Classic hypocrisy…We’re telling everyone else they cant do it, then turning round and doing it ourselves.
It makes me sick to my stomach.

The part line is “Better to have them and not need them, than need them and not have them.” This would seem like wisdom….but….
The actual success of the so called Nuclear Deterrant concept is unproven at best. Its one of those things that we can never truly know if it actually made a differance or not, and more to the point, we are continually being told that the threat now comes from rogue groups like Al Quaeda rather than enemy states…a Nuclear Deterrant isn’t going to bother terrorist organisations at all. If they use nukes, it wont be a missile, it’ll be a dirty bomb.
And the other problem is that we will have them, but not be albe to use them without foreign permission. Thats right folks…just like Trident, this new nuclear system will incorporate so much US technology (on loan, not bought outright) that again we won’t be able to launch them if we need to without first calling Washington and asking if its ok. The launch codes for Trident are held by the US…not us. This new system will be no differant.

And, dammit, is it really so naive to believe and hope that these treaties that our Government signs aren’t just words on a page? That when they sign up to prevent the proliferation of these vile, disgusting devices of mass-murder that they actually MEAN it?

Over 90 MP rebelled against the Government in this vote…with a number of them resigning as well (including some I really didnt expect to), but still its going ahead. Blairs legacy has a skull carved upon it.

Not a Democracy. A Hypocrisy.