Wednesday, November 07, 2012

The Gun-Runners

Cameron is often quite keen to stand in front of the TV cameras and lecture the public on the values of peace and democracy in an unstable world. In 2011, he was in Egypt mouthing platitudes about democracy and human rights as the Mubarak regime fell. Then he moved on with his arms dealers in tow to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia- those bastions of democracy and human rights, who were invited by the Cameron government to attend a London arms fair. When the London fair was in full flow, Cameron was in Libya wallowing in the limelight on the political platform of ‘protecting' Libyans from Gadhafi. Thousands now lie dead in Libya, countless others were maimed and much of the country's physical and social infrastructure is in ruins as a result of British-French military rockets and bombs. What sheer hypocrisy. While Cameron and British Foreign Secretary William Hague stand in front of TV cameras and make warm sounding speeches about humanitarianism and the precious nature of human life, they and their arms dealing buddies are all to willing to play fast and loose with the lives of millions of people through their militarism

Under Cameron, Britain is not only involved in stoking conflict in Syria right now, but also helped destroy Libya by supporting and taking part in an illegal NATO bombing campaign. Moreover, Britain not only exported weapons and crowd control equipment to Gaddafi months before attacking him, but also to dictator Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and to the regime in Bahrain, a clique which last year carried out the fiercest of crackdowns on protesters.

This week, Cameron accompanied salesmen of British weapons manufacturers to Saudi Arabia and the UAE to win lucrative defence contracts for UK firmsTheBritish government are fond of telling the media that tens of thousands of British jobs depend on the defence industry and that huge arms deals are ‘good for the country', it is well worth considering that defence companies are privately owned and that each worker employed in the UK by BAE Systems, the country's largest defence contractor, is subsidised to the tune of around £13,000 a head. It has been calculated that the arms trade as a whole received about £852 million a year in subsidies. It begs the question, media sound bites aside, who really benefits from the arms industry?

The arms sector's contribution to the British economy is minimal, but the industry constitutes a very powerful and effective lobby and the links and revolving door between government and self-serving arms manufacturers have been well reported. Top man at BAE Ian King pockets around £1 million a year base salary, according to the 2010 BAE annual report and already has a pension pot of £11 million. That's not even taking into account his various share options.

But who cares when there is a fast buck to be made? Certainly not the British government. Despite apparent concerns over repression and human rights abuses and despite soothing official statements about the stringent conditions for issuing sales licences for arms, Cameron has few qualms about selling to Algeria, Israel, Bahrain, Libya, Iraq, Saudi, Pakistan and the UAE, some of which constitute his government's ‘arms export priority markets'.

Adapted from here

No comments: