Category Archives: Weapons

Suella Braverman’s ‘hurricane of migration’ is fuelled by Tory arms sales abroad

Suella Braverman: she’s quick to fearmonger about the number of people coming to the UK from abroad – but less eager to mention the fact that her government is responsible for it.

Suella Braverman grabbed a lot of headlines with her Tory conference speech threatening a “hurricane of migrants” coming to the UK.

Here’s the relevant segment:

She said, “the future could bring millions of migrants to our shores – uncontrolled and unmanageable unless the government they elect next year acts decisively to stop that happening.”

Why wait until next year? The Tory government could stop it right now – by stopping this:

The image above, I’m told, is of arms that UK manufacturers and dealers ship off to repressive foreign regimes in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Ukraine is another area of concern.

They get to send these weapons abroad because the government – which is currently run by Tories including Suella Braverman – issues what are known as Single Issue Export Licences (SIELs) allowing them to do so.

In 2022, the value of the arms exported doubled to £8.5 billion – the highest level since records began. And the highest number of exports went to these repressive regimes that have poor human rights records.

The figures are from the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), which has claimed that “the UK is complicit in fuelling conflict around the world”.

It is this kind of conflict that displaces people. And then some of them come to the UK. You can read further details here.

It seems to This Writer that at least part of the illegal migration problem can be solved right here, in Whitehall – simply by scaling back the amount of weaponry UK businesses send abroad.

Ah, but that would be bad for corporate profits, wouldn’t it? So it seems that, yet again, money is worth more than life to the Tories…

And if they get a divisive, headline-grabbing controversy out of it, they seem to think it is a bonus.

Remember that, next time you hear Braverman blathering about a “hurricane” of migrants totalling “millions”: she and her government are responsible for it.

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Rishi Sunak is giving Ukraine long-range air weapons. What will Vladimir Putin do?

Rishi Sunak is taking a huge gamble.

He has promised to give Ukraine long-range air defence weapons, along with jet fighter planes, to allow that country to better defend itself from Russian aggression.

And he wants Russia’s warlords to face justice after peace is brought about.

But what kind of peace will we get?

Sunak is gambling that Russian leader Vladimir Putin will not dare to use his nuclear arsenal.

But the easiest way to stop the UK from providing anything to Ukraine is to wipe the UK off the map.

It would be a suicidal strategy for Putin as well, because the UK’s allies would respond. But that would be scant consolation.

And, if you believe Boris Johnson (ha ha!), Putin has already threatened the UK with nuclear reprisals.

So one has to question whether sabre-rattling of the kind that Sunak is doing is really a sane way forward.

Here’s his speech to the Munich Security Conference:

What do you think?

Tone-deaf Truss backtracks – but not far enough – on warplanes for Ukraine call

Headbangers: Liz ‘War Head’ Truss and Dominic ‘Air Head’ Raab.

Don’t get your hopes up – she hasn’t learned her lesson.

Instead of demanding that the UK send warplanes to Ukraine – thereby provoking Vladimir Putin to nuke us until we glow, Liz Truss is now suggesting that we merely send the parts.

So now she wants us to send self-assembly kit planes to the eastern Europe conflict. How is that better?

It seems War Head Liz has been reminded that Nato policy is not to provoke Putin; the United States recently vetoed a Polish plan to deliver fighter jets for that very reason.

But she – and Air Head Dominic Raab, it seems – is still calling for western nations to declare in as loud a way as possible that they are helping Ukraine.

So my question remains: what is wrong with these people?

If they want to help a beleaguered fellow nation, then they can do it in the tried and tested way – covertly. They send it by secret routes and they don’t talk about it.

Blathering loudly and continually that they are ignoring Putin’s threats and will do whatever the hell they like will only attract harm.

Perhaps that is what Truss and Raab and the rest of the Tory headbangers really want.

Source: Liz Truss backtracks on call for West to send war planes to Ukraine

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Somebody please shut Liz Truss’s mouth before she gets us all bombed

Warmonger Liz: the foreign secretary has been rattling the sabre too loudly at Vladimir Putin when any conflict between the UK and Russia would be like sending this toy tank out to shoot down a nuclear missile.

Q. When a maniac with his finger on the nuclear button is warning that sending weapons to help another country will be an act of war, what do you do?

A. You remove Liz Truss from public view because she will instantly decide that it’s a good idea to dare him.

That’s right – after Vladimir Putin said he would consider it an act of war if western countries send aid to Ukraine, Truss is saying we should provide warplanes.

She’s a lunatic.

The sensible course of action for any national government wishing to help a beleaguered fellow nation is to provide that aid covertly. In fact, the UK has already been accused of this, with Russia alleging an SAS operation has taken place.

But of course, with no proof, any government has what’s known as plausible deniability. We can say any claims are nonsense and we wouldn’t dream of it.

Truss should follow the example of an alleged 56 fellow MPs – on all sides of the House of Commons – who find it extremely easy to hide their alleged sexual misconduct from us all.

Did #PritiPatel really want to attack asylum seekers with #sonic weapons?

Labour left-winger Diane Abbott has been attacked by the Tories and their client media – including the Express – for claiming that Priti Patel wants to use “sonic booms” against asylum seekers as they cross the English Channel in small, flimsy boats.

But was she wrong?

Here’s what Ms Abbott wrote:

The Express admitted,

Long-Range Acoustic Devices (LRAD) are already installed on two Border Force vessels but are used to issue voice commands, the Home Office said.

However, Downing Street policy experts called for them to be used as sound cannons that emit loud, high-frequency noise powerful enough to induce vomiting.

So there was evidence to support what she was saying. Apparently these sound cannons can induce ear damage so bad that people could go permanently deaf.

But while Downing Street may have been all in favour of deafening people including refugees from Afghanistan who were abandoned in the UK’s withdrawal from that country last year, the Home Office denied that any such plan was being considered…

… after Ms Abbott made her claim.

Are you convinced by that?

Whatever the truth of the matter, the good news is that the Tory government cannot, now, use LRADs aboard Border Force ships in the way Ms Abbott described, without causing severe reputational harm to the Home Secretary and her department.

Refugees seeking asylum in the UK can take comfort from that – if from little else.

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Here’s why this #Israeli arms firm was forced to close UK #weapons factory

[Image: Palestine Action.]

Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Ferranti has been forced to shut down and sell a weapons factory in Oldham, here in the UK, after nearly 18 months of occupation, blockade and other action by campaigners.

According to activists at Palestine Action, drones built at the factory were sold to the Israeli Ministry of Defence and used to attack people in Palestine.

For example, the group says the Hermes 450 drone is “one of the most used drones in the world. The company markets the drone as ‘combat proven’, having battle-tested it on Palestinian people.

“It was used to bomb targets, including people, in the 2014 assault on Gaza – Operation Protective Edge – which killed 2,202 Palestinians.

“During the attack on Gaza, four young children, all aged between 10 and 11, were murdered when they were targeted by Israeli drones. They were playing on the beach when a Hermes 450 captured footage of them. An Israeli air force commander then ordered the operators of a second drone to fire, killing one of the boys. After firing the first missile, the operators of the second drone pursued the rest of the boys. They did not receive orders to shoot again, but fired anyway, killing the other three.”

That is what this arms dealer was making in the UK, in order to kill people in the Middle East.

The members of Palestine Action object to these remote-control killers being built in Britain, and launched a sustained campaign against the Oldham factory in August 2020. On Monday (January 10), they celebrated victory.

According to the group’s press release, “After 18 months of sustained direct action taken at the Elbit Ferranti site in Oldham, Greater Manchester, with 36 people arrested, Elbit have now sold Ferranti technologies, with its continued operation in Oldham appearing unfeasible.

“Activists have occupied, blockaded, smashed, disrupted, and protested regularly at the site, ultimately succeeding in ending the factory’s production of specialist military technologies for Israel’s fleet of combat drones.”

Let’s be perfectly clear: This Site does not condone the employment of illegal methods to achieve a goal. But while 36 activists have been arrested at various times during the campaign, none have been successfully prosecuted for crimes of occupation, disruption and/or protest.

On the other hand, Elbit’s drones have been used to kill thousands of Palestinians. Who would you say occupies the moral high ground?

Former Labour MP, now leading light in the Resist movement, Chris Williamson is clear on the subject:

So is Asa Winstanley of The Electronic Intifada:

And so is This Writer.

Let’s hope Elbit’s other UK factories suffer similar misfortunes in the near future and these death-mongers are forced out of the UK for good.

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