Unfair TradeUKWatch.net - 6 May 2008As the AGM of BAE Systems takes place in London today, the company’s supporters will again pop up in the media to trot out the usual phrases about “living in the real world”. In reality, it is these very supporters of the arms trade who display staggering levels of naivety. This became very clear last month, at the time of a landmark High Court ruling in favour of the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and The Corner House. The judges ruled that the government had behaved unlawfully in cutting short a corruption investigation into BAE’s Saudi arms deals. Among the congratulatory messages which flooded into the CAAT office were a few abusive ones and the odd death threat. But one message left on my phone began: “I’m a member of the British public and I live in the real world.” The anonymous caller claimed that were “thousands of British jobs” dependent on Saudi arms deals. His comment was typical of people who believe that it is naive to oppose the arms trade but who simply accept assertions about employment figures without scrutiny. Such scrutiny is vital to those of us who believe that everybody’s livelihood is extremely important. As a child in the early 1980s, while my unemployed father quite literally got on his bike to find work, I experienced the realities of unemployment far more closely than most of those who are willing to make questionable claims about jobs to claw back public support for BAE – such as Norman Tebbit in the Daily Mail recently. This sight was common in 2006, when BAE was lobbying for the Saudi corruption investigation to be dropped. BAE’s supporters rushed onto radio and television, pausing only to pluck random figures from the air. A report by arms companies had previously suggested that BAE’s latest Saudi arms deal might create 11,000 jobs across the whole of Europe. By November, BAE was citing the figure of 16,000 British jobs, while the figure of 50,000 regularly appeared in the media. After the investigation was dropped, and the deal signed, BAE admitted that most of the jobs would not even be based in the UK. Saudi Arabia was to receive 72 Eurofighter aircraft, the first 24 of which had been intended for the RAF, who now have to take second place; so much for British jobs and national security. BAE is keen to present itself as good for Britain, having reacted to the recent bad publicity with an advertising campaign covered in union flags. This is rather rich, given that BAE is developing away from the UK. George Bush’s aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan has created countless business opportunities for those who profit from war and BAE now has more staff and shareholders in the USA than in the UK. Far from enhancing our country, BAE has weakened it. In the High Court last month, judges found that the BAE investigation had been dropped following a Saudi threat. They described this as a “successful attempt by a foreign government to pervert the course of justice in the United Kingdom”. Giving the impression that Britain will give into threats sends an appalling message to terrorists. Most of all, BAE’s supporters are naive about the arms trade itself. I have lost count of the times that I have been accused of opposing arms deals “even when countries need arms for self-defence”. This displays an utterly unrealistic perception of what the arms trade is about. The main players in the arms trade are often those using weapons for aggression and repression. Indonesia has been a good customer of BAE, not the people of West Papua who have they so easily bombed. Morocco and China both appeared at the DSEi arms fair in London last year, but no representatives from the Western Sahara or Tibet. People suffering aggression are victims of arms companies, not their customers. Sometimes the attitude of arms trade supporters goes beyond naivety. Some suggest that corruption is a western concern and “they play by different rules to the ones we stand by here”. This ignores the reality that when bribery leads to ministers wasting public money on arms they will not use it to provide health care or tackling poverty. The victims of bribery are the poorest people in the poorest countries. Yet people here in Britain are also victims of the arms trade. The unhealthy influence of arms companies over government distorts democracy and leads to about 850m of taxpayers’ money being spent every year on subsidies for the arms trade, although only 0.2% of UK jobs depend on it. In these circumstances, it is no surprise that BAE can boast about how many engineers it employs. I am often told by engineering students that their career prospects will be severely damaged if they are not willing to work in the arms trade. Is this where British taxes and British skills should be going? Future generations may not understand why we chose not to subsidise the engineering needed to tackle the unprecedented horrors of climate change but to assist the sale of weapons to dictators. They will think that anyone who thought this would help Britain must have been shockingly naive. The world in which supporters of the arms trade live is not based on reality, but on fantasy. It is a world straight out of 1950s boys’ adventure stories. It is a place in which honest British arms companies work hard to provide jobs and to sell arms to grateful democracies in need of self-defence. It is a world in which any British company engaging in bribery would do so reluctantly and only because you can’t expect foreigners to live up to our standards. It is based in a fictitious Britain in which millions of people work in the arms trade and climate change isn’t real. This is a world as real as Narnia and most British people know it. They would rather see their taxes used for health and education, just as many engineering graduates would rather use their skills to fight climate change. They know that corruption kills, that the arms trade fuels aggression and that arms trade bosses are moved to emotion not by the union flag but by profit graphs. A dwindling minority of people – among them a disproportionately high number of politicians and columnists – still remain oblivious to this. After a year which has seen an unprecedented rise in public opposition to the arms trade, it’s time for such people (as they would put it) to move into the real world.
Broadcasting Legend Bill Moyers on the 2008 Elections, the Rev. Wright Controversy, the Media, Vietnam and MoreDemocracy Now - 6 May 2008Legendary broadcaster Bill Moyers helped organize the Peace Corps and served under President Johnson before going on to a distinguished career in journalism that continues today with the PBS series Bill Moyers Journal. His latest book, just published, is Moyers on Democracy. Moyers joins us to talk about the 2008 elections, the media and war. He addresses the controversy over Barack Obama’s former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. It was nearly two weeks ago on Bill Moyers Journal where Wright first spoke out since his criticism of US government policies became a major issue in the 2008 Democratic presidential race. [includes rush transcript – partial]
Headlines for May 7, 2008Democracy Now - 6 May 2008Obama Widens Lead Over Clinton with Big N.C. Win, Narrow Indiana Loss, Burma Toll Could Top 80,000, White House Missing Emails Around Iraq Invasion, Gitmo Lawyers Allege Government Spying, San Diego Orders Probe of Blackwater Permit, House Subpoenas Cheney Chief of Staff on Interrogation, U.S. Re-establishes Navy Fleet in South America, Studies: Racial Disparity in Drug-Arrests Grows, Newly-Published Photographs Depict Hiroshima Aftermath, Brazilian Jury Overturns Rancher Conviction for Killing of U.S. Nun, N.Y. Activists to Protest Sean Bell Killing
The ANZAC-Palestine connectionElectronic Intifada - 6 May 2008rr r r rr r rr r rr r rr r rr rrr r”ANZACS BACK AGAIN” was the front-page headline of Jerusalem’s Palestine Post on 13 February 1940. The ANZAC reputation for courage and daring was legendary after their victory at Beersheba in 1917. That was the Palestine Campaign that saw the celebrated charge of the 4th Light Horse Brigade on the unsuspecting Turks. It was a battle that turned the tide of that campaign and led to the subsequent end of Ottoman rule in Palestine. EI contributor Sonja Karkar comments.
Houston Palestine Film Festival opens 9 MayElectronic Intifada - 6 May 2008rr r r r rr r rr r rr r rr rr rrr rWe are pleased to present the second annual Houston Palestine Film Festival. This exciting festival, cosponsored by The Station Museum, Rice Cinema, Museum of Fine Arts – Houston, KPFT Houston and many others, will bring cutting edge new cinema from Palestine and about Palestine. The second annual Houston Palestine Film Festival brings an honest and independent view of Palestine, its diaspora, culture and political travails through the art of film.
Gaza improvises under siegeElectronic Intifada - 6 May 2008rr r r r rr r rr r rr r rr rr rrr rJERUSALEM/GAZA, 6 May (IRIN) – Intense political divisions in the Gaza Strip have split people on most issues, except one: the situation has never been worse, nearly everyone agrees. “I never remember Gaza being this bad,” said one man in his early 40s. “Living here has become a game of survival.” With fuel supplies nearly dry, many people no longer have cooking gas in their homes, leading some to search for alternative methods to make a meal.
Sixty years ago in Battir (Part 2)Electronic Intifada - 6 May 2008rr r r rr r rr r rr r rr r rr rrr rFor a long time any discussion of the “Arab-Israeli conflict” has skipped one basic fact: Israel, whether one loves or hates it, was created at the expense of the Palestinians. An entire people and hundreds of communities that had lived for centuries in tranquility had to be ruthlessly and unjustly shattered to make room for the Zionist state. The story of my village, Battir, southwest of Jerusalem, is only one of hundreds. EI contributor Hasan Abu Nimah recalls his village’s story.
