quote: 'I have become even more convinced that the people we have leading us are psychopaths, making and cutting deals with other psychopaths.'

Well, some of us have been telling you that for decades but we were dismissed and ridiculed as "conspiracy nuts" now look where that has gotten us, to the brink of a global social cataclysm, of which Gaza is just a taster.

There is little point in bringing fuel, food and medicines into this concentration camp anyway, because Israel will simply burn it, with white phosphorus, like they did at the UN compound. This is genocide, there is no other word for it.

At the same time as offering to make Britain co-jailers of the Gazan people, Brown said:

"I'm more hopeful that there will be a ceasefire. We will do everything we can to prevent the arms trading at the root of the problems."

We can be shit sure that he means he wants to stop the Gazans from getting arms whilst his government continues to help the western world arm Israel to the hilt. And we know that Israel will continue to execrise the utmost care in making their 'surgical strikes' right?

(Brown is a Murderous Two Faced Cunt - Part 1: -  http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/01/gordon_brown_is.html)

There is however no talk of making Britain's arms industry comply with international law and stop supplying war criminals Israel. But what more would you expect from a government that killed a criminal prosecution in BAe Systems corruption- because the cabinet is virtually on a sales commission.

We need to embargo and divest not send Britain's poor kids out to the Med to help these mass murderers.

This is just getting surreal!!!

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7835794.stm

So Olmert says first: Hamas have been defeated, but then says Israel would respond with force if Hamas continued firing rockets... doesn't sound very defeated to me.

"We will do everything we can to prevent the arms trading at the root of the problems." - Gordon Brown

Britain is the world’s biggest arms exporter
 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4161341.ece

Britain was the world’s biggest arms seller last year, accounting for a third of global arms exports, the Government’s trade promotion organisation said. UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) said that arms exporters had added £9.7 billion in new business last year, giving them a larger share of global arms exports than the United States.

But what you don't understand is that fine upstanding countries like Israel, Saudi, Indonesia, Sudan etc. all need defend themselves against "terrorism." And if it weren't for companies like BAe it'd have taken Suharto forever to kill all those children...

The strange this is, from the little I know, that much of that £9 billion is bullshit anyway, as a huge chunk of tax payer's money goes into subsidising the arms trade, so that should be factored in to a real figure.

So you have got to question what the hell is going here. Obviously, on the surface it's just a massive benefit fraud scam just like the Pentagon is. A way of laundering poor people's money into the hands of the rich.

But you have to also wonder, if there is a strategy going on, much like when whites started handing guns & whiskey over to the American Indians...

My resolution for this year is to get better educated in this stuff. For every second we are waiting on a political solution to this, the weapons keep pouring out our borders and are used to kill millions.


Well there are other things that are Brown too that I would also recommend washing your hands after touching.

Suharto did most of his domestic slaughter without British arms, he just used ours later to slaughter Timorese. Indonesia is a much improved place now the wicked witch is dead, but I fully agree with you. A predominance of gun and liquor stores in the US today mean you are in an african-american neighborhood.

My impression is hi-tech spending in the US is a public subsidy to boost domestic military dominance, whereas in the UK it is just the last manufacturing we have. Only me and the other electronics apprentice from my company were not working for defence companies in our entire college year. And that company eventually turned itself into a defence company to survive the sector downturn - to stop their jobs being exported to cheaper overseas workforces.

It obviously isn't in the national interest to export so many arms, as the UK squaddies will end up facing them, but it is in the interest of the owners and shareholders who never need fear war. The unions, and even some pseudo-leftist groups, don't oppose this as long as the workers get as high a salary as possible, which is kind of shortsighted since it is their kids who do the dying.

I am still surprised the UK has managed to overtake the US as the worlds largest exporter of arms, even given the fact our companies aren't prosecuted for corruption except perhaps by the US justice dept. For a start, our weaponary is comparitively shit and overpriced. Tornadoes crashing in the Kuwaiti desert with concrete in the nose-cone as ballast since the radar didn't fit for example. Plus the last time I posted on the subject we were fourth, behind the other UN 'security council' nations, although just ahead of France. I remember the tabloid outrage in the Falklands when the French had the temerity to sell Exocets to a country we also sold arms to, which I feel was damaged pride that French weapons were better than British weapons. But then, they are not really British companies for the most part anymore, mostly they are as British as Nissan-UK or Microsoft-UK.
I think the British armies main role today is to train soldiers to become mercenaries and to provide political cover to the US.

Do you work in the defence industry yourself or is your pseudonymn purely ironic? I've been out hitting companies over the past couple of days and notice that security has tightened significantly since 2006, even on the internet. It helps that I am still in contact with a lot of people in the industry so can just ask what is made where. There is a company that isn't on the CAAT list who won't be working on Monday, or Tuesday hopefully, who are perilously close to bankruptcy. They make the gear that allows warships bobbing in the waves fire accurately, I don't know if they export to Israel or not but what the fuck, it's better than panning in the windows of my local Tesco.

Oh no, the title is purely vitriol. I nearly said, "sadly...", because if I were I'd be well positioned to revolt. No, I just resolved to get more educated on this stuff.

Yeah the industrial electronics world is massively intertwined with arms. The only two industrial electronics engineers I know have both had jobs that required them to sign the Official Secrets Act, and all they worked on were small parts of something bigger.

Britain has just become the gobby little shit that lurks near the big bully (USA) And yes the MOD has become one big mercenary exercise. British kids, sucked up from housing estates, now die to ensure that we get cut in on whatever illegal war the US declares next.

Yeah, we send our troops abroad to train people like the KLA and the Mujahadeen, we send our politicians off to arm people like Saddam, we broker deals with dictators like Musharraf, and we flood the planet with weapons, just to send out kids out to face all these enemies we have created ourselves... well "we"

But if you look at the flow of coffins and the flow of cash the immediate obvious issue about the British arms trade is that is a class struggle as much as anything else. The rich playing the rest of us like puppeteers. The poor nicely shackled to crippling debt.

Look at all the public money being siphoned off into weapons. Again mostly coming from the poor, who shoulder the biggest tax burden collectively. It's a scam.

Oh, Exocet:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/nov/22/books.france As if grubby arms dealer Britain would have provided the codes!

Anonymity is not necessarily cowardice, can simply be prudent.

All the best with your endeavours. The bottom is falling out of global economy, so who knows what we are on the cusp of!

I don't often get to say that here, and I keep get new reasons for not posting from my PC here even as I keep get new reasons for posting from my TV.

Stick to that moniker and read up by all means but even when I've stormed off I will follow your progress if/when I can. Don't claim my mantle though as that is both a very poisoned chalice and also a mixed metaphor

You write well, you've got a pretty shitty little attitude informed by reality, you seem to know how to research stuff enough to out post people. The trick on IM is to have the actions to back up your words, and that means facing down fear.

AnonymousCoward and @Pseudonymn are affectations from ElReg, a generally right-wing yet generally well informed tech mag. I'd recommend reading CAAT, Chomky and Ewa Jasiewicz f you haven't, but as sources not teachers. Slap down anyone arrogant enough to claim to teach you what you already knew.

Cheers! You come across as very intelligent com/passionate soul.

Cheers for the tips. I have read copious Chomsky (great researcher, shitty public speaker); read bits and bobs of Ewa J's, and at the business end of the deal, I'm just trying to get my head round the stodgy CAAT stuff, with the view to carrying on in that direction. Which is a bitter pill since I know the diamonds are found in a mountain of shitty paperwork.

Unfortunately, my route to action is going to have to be indirect, much like the more sedentary groups. So I'm going to have to work twice as hard to at least provide some good ammo (pardon the pun) for those who aren't going to blanch at a criminal record and prison time.

At any rate, I don't like the idea that I may go to my grave having done nothing to stop what was going on under my nose.

All the best!