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Stop The Arms Fair!
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
On Tuesday 11th of September there will be a protest against the DSei arms fair which is the largest arms fair in Europe being held at the Excell Centre in Londons' docklands. Britain still exports arms to waring countries and this is why this protest has been organised. Meet at 12 noon on Tidal Basin Road, E16 near Canning Town. Full details of the days events are at www.disarm-trade.org
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Do they let private citizens into the fair?
Steelgate...whats wrong with selling weapons? We sell cigarettes, cars, kitchin knives etc..Worldwide cars cause far more deaths than guns and missiles.
Guns dont cause wars...If a country is at the point where it needs to buy weapons then its at the point where it would use practically anything to fight with.
roflmao..just glanced at that website...Well its all very admirable wanting an end to all wars but banning ALL weapons of war is a joke..What happens if we stop all arms sales, some small country in africa has no weapons and then one of its neighbours who doesnt believe in your war is nasty ideals then invades that disarmed country...
oh man that website is funny..gotta love hippies
"An Englishman's never so natural as when he's holding his tongue." --Henry James
There is also no such thing as a just war either. Wars are only fought to protect the interests of the ruling class of each country involved in a war. In wars it is the working class who suffer it is they who are ethnicaly cleansed, they who are massacered on battlefields and they who are killed in bombing raids on cities. The working class of each country have more in common with each other than with their rulers and there fore should refuse to support any wars fought by their rulers.
[This message has been edited by Steelgate (edited 01-09-2001).]
So says the dialectic, so it shall be done.
Sounding awfully like a communist there Steel
"An Englishman's never so natural as when he's holding his tongue." --Henry James
Maybe you should take a look at some of the recent conflicts in Africa, where machetes and spears have been used to conduct massacres.
peacechild
And if I show you my dark side
will you still hold me tonight
and if I open my heart to you
and show you my weak side
what would you do
A lot of people join the army in order to serve their nation, which is a lot bigger than the people who rule it. Take world war 2 for example. The British population didnt fight because the government told them too, they fought because it was a fight for survival.
Peacechild, these weapons are sold to countries like Turkey and Israel who use them against innocent people. Turkey which is a NATO member has been conducting ethnic cleansing against the Kurdish minority in south east Turkey since 1984 causing over one million refugees and killing 30,000 people. Indonesia was also sold arms by western countries too until recently. In 1975 Indonesia invaded East Timor killing a quarter of the population in the civil war that followed.
The worldwide refugee crisis is also caused by the international arms trade too. Nearly all refugees in the world are fleeing war torn areas of the world where wars are being fuel by the international arms trade.
Diesel
88888888
They are, you idiot.
[This message has been edited by Sean_K (edited 01-09-2001).]
Just what the hell is the matter with that???If they didnt then someone else sure as hell would...People like to kill each other..Maybe in your dream world people are nice but in the real world people are bastards.
A MINOR conflict??? Is killing someone with a high tech tank any worse than killing someone with a machete or a rifle??
Turkey and Israel are perfectly capable of producing their own weapons if need be..Again, what is the difference between killing a bunch of people with rifles than killing a bunch of people with tanks?
You honestly believe they wouldnt have invaded if they had to rely on older weapons of death instead of newer ones? My god you take the biscuit.
You use the same arguments as every liberal who wants to ban guns of any kind...Guns do not make a killer...If a country wants to go to war, its gonna go to war..
Weapons do not cause conflict, they are merely tools used in conflict.
All arms dealers are in effect governments. It isnt possible for individuals or companies to obtain weapons in any number in order to fight a war.
The government is the only agency capable of supplying weapons in any numbers, and I seriously doubt they would sell their latest technology!
The tanks we sold to the Africans e.t.c were obsolete Chieftans and that generation of AFV. But we also sold the other nations weapons that could destroy those tanks.
Countries of the world are very rarely supplied with high technology weaponry, take the IRA, they use 50 year old AK47 rifles and unguided missiles from Russia.
I think you will find that these innocent people have weapons of their own got from probably the same arms traders.
The worlds refugee problem is caused by the arms trade, oh look a flying pig.
peacechild
[This message has been edited by peacechild (edited 01-09-2001).]
Peacechild, the international arms trade makes wars far worse therefore it causes more refugees! As the more weapons countries have the bigger a war they can fight.
Also, last year there was a stall at the fair openly selling anti-personnel mines in front of MOD police – anti-personnel mines that were internationally banned.
Sorry to pick up on you personally peacechild but of the top 15 countries of origin for asylum-seekers last year, nearly all were regions of conflict - and in many cases there is a stunningly obvious link with British arms dealing. Not surprisingly, Iraq came top with 7,080 people-seeking asylum last year; although we don't sell arms to Iraq any more, we certainly made up for this in previous years. I dare say that our habit of bombing the place, refusing export licences for basic medicines such as diphtheria vaccines, and allowing the Turkish military into the "safe havens" to wreak havoc has contributed to one or two of the 7,080
In 1999, according to the government's Strategic Export Controls report, we sold heavy and general-purpose machine-guns, grenades and military software, among other items, to Sri Lanka. Lo and behold, in the year 2000, 6,040 people fled Sri Lanka to Britain
Britain receives one asylum-seeker from Turkey for every £47,898(!) of UK weapons sales.
One asylum-seeker from Algeria for every £3559 of UK weapons sales.
One asylum-seeker from Pakistan for every £4,071 of UK weapons sales.
One asylum-seeker from India for every £30,914(!)of UK weapons sales.
And considering that the UK is the second largest arms dealer in the world I wonder what the figures would be if you included the US’s input in all this
Well our foreign policy is horrific..I've no problem with arms sales but I do find it sad that our government claims to be ethical in any way.
They bomb women and kids all over the world. What they are doing in Iraq and the Balkans is criminal Government sanctioned murder
Steelgate said "The worlds refugee problem is caused by war" it isn't "THE" cause but it is one of the factors.
There will always be wars, that's life so why not cash in on it, countries will always sell arms, let's stop pretending we are ethical in who we flog the stuff to.
The land mine ban is a farce, they will still be used, except we don't use them, the 3rd world will continue, so every time a Brit serviceman is killed because the do gooders got this so called ban imposed on us, I wish a pox upon them.
peacechild
All wars are fought for the interests of the ruling class, that includes every war that has ever been fought including world war two. World war two was the same as any other war, caused by economic competition between the German ruling class and the British ruling class.
The working class of every country has far more in common with each other than with their rulers. The workers who go to fight in wars are told they are fighting for their country. Yet the land, the factories and vast majority of the wealth of a country is not owned by the workers but by a small capitalist elite, who use the workers to fight their wars.
That is why all wars are wrong, and why workers of different countries should not fight in them. Instead they should fight the reall enemy capitalism.
Hmm i wonder what the jews of Poland would have said to that..Or the gays, blacks, gypsies etc etc..They were just normal people..What would have been their fate if the people of the world united and refused to fight? Oh yeah they would have been systematically exterminated.
If Germany and Britain only fought because of a conflict between their rulers then why did Hitler not even want to fight us? Why did he send numerous requests for peace? We didnt fight hitler for commercial gain. We fought him because he invaded poland. We fought him because he was a dispicable dictator. We fought him because he was going to murder tens of millions of workers.
wake up steel
Wars are started by the ruling class and finished by the working class
Jews werent the only ones being killed..Poles were up for the chop as were anyone else the Germans saw as untermenschen(subhuman). I happen to think that WW2 was worth it. Would you have rather not had the war and let tens of millions of innocents die?
WW2 may have been started by the ruling class but they did it for the working class. Just because the ruling class start it does that automatically make it bad? Are ALL rulers bad in your book?
But think of this: When has it been right and just to start a war? When have the ruling classes fought another country for anything other than personal gain or to satisfy their religious beliefs? Who else would start a war other than the ruling classes?
In the words of Muhammad Ali when he received his draft papers: “Charlie never called me a ****** ” meaning that he was being sent of to fight against people who had done him no harm on the bidding of the ruling classes.
As for all leaders being bad? Well you never hear the phrase “trust me, I’m a politician” do you? <IMG alt="image" SRC="http://www.thesite.org/ubb/wink.gif">
The more we find ways of saving life the more strain we put on this world.
peacechild
Would it have been "Luke the Gook never called me a member of the oppressed ethnic minority ?"
Any excuse to get out of fighting for your country.
peacechild
If your seriously an advocate of war to combat population growth peacechild then lets hope its your nearest and dearest lined up in the snipers crosshairs shall we?
I missed the etc, I apologise..I didnt imply anything. I posed a question I knew you would answer in the negative.
Im confused why you bring up this point. Ive just been making the argument for defence and deterrent. Im saying its just to fight a war to defend house and home and we should not deny weapons to those who need them.
To preserve their freedom? America for example, they didnt fight the revolution for the material gains, they fought for their freedom..They were just normal people, not the elite.
Now you can be cynical in this argument and dispute the motives of governments. Well that can go on forever but there have been a lot of wars fought to free the lowly workers rather than to secure gains for the ruling elite.
Vietnam really isnt a good subject to bring up here seeing as there are those who agree with the communist state ideology. Thats also a little offtopic seeing as not all countrys have the draft or national service. Of course I dont believe in forcing people to fight for things they dont believe in but a volunteer army brought about for the defence of their homes is a fine thing that i dont have a problem with
Better fighting the foe in a far off land than waiting until they are in your street ?
Most of my family have at some point, in some war, been there. (The males anyway).
added: You can't have a military force or individuals that choose which war it fights otherwise you'd never get a war going would you.
And war is what we should have instead of a happy childhood (I'm joking......I think)
peacechild
[This message has been edited by peacechild (edited 03-09-2001).]
With regards to the war of independence it could be argued that the British ruling classes started it by oppressing America in the first place. Without this oppression there would have been no need to start a war in the first place. (all this who started it business is sounding like a playground fight!)
I uses Ali’s comments as an example of how the working classes are made to fight by their rulers rather than having to fight to defend themselves. And when I say made I don’t just mean drafted – I mean being taken in with the all the propaganda needed to make a man up and fight.
Anyway – I’m off home, More tomorrow no doubt
So much better to fight a war in a country that's been oppressed for hundreds of years and is nice and close by...