David Cameron, our fearless leader, is touring the Middle East. He stopped off in Egypt yesterday to see how things were going on, and his progress has now taken him to Kuwait.

What’s he doing out there? Selling guns.



So what kind of arms are being peddled by Cameron and his cronies



So,not defence type arms - the kind you’d go to war with (though Eurofighters are on the table), but the tools of civil oppression. Rubber bullets are used for crowd control. Now, unless you have been asleep the last few weeks, you’ll have probably noticed the need for “crowd control” in Egypt, Libya and other arab countries. Kuwait is not well known for its democratic process.

So, Cameron is peddling the weapons of oppression. I can only think that he’s looking at the long game to a time when he’s not in government anymore and needs an advisory job on a company board.

He really is an odious little turd.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011 ... ence-trade

This.

I can't put into words just how angry and annoyed I am right now.

A saving grace, if there is one, is the Tories will potentially be kicked into the wilderness for another decade come the next general election. The problem is who will there be left we can trust to govern anything.

Indeed, we'll kick out the Tories, sign in Labour, kick out Labour, sign in the Tories...

True. That's the way it's been since the 1940s.

But it doesn't have to be that way. We just need to get over the apathy.

I know. It won't happen. Nothing will change. Different @rsehole, same old sh!t.

It’s self-serving interests and nothing more, I feel. A trip to Kuwait, visit an arms fair, press the flesh and return knowing that he’ll get a cushy directorship job when he stops being PM. It’s not in our national interest to be involved with the oppression of civil uprisings, yet here we are - muddled in with some pretty shady characters in the Middle East who have little more than their own self-interest at heart. We’ve seen how the despots in that region crack down on their civilians, and here we are adding to the mess.

Unless you're in Libya, where jet fighters do seem to be considered a viable solution to crowd control.
We need a 'shakes fist with rage' smiley, frankly.

Jon

To be brutally honest, I am surprised that they haven’t been used before. I was expecting Egypt’s to start using military to start using the helicopters for more than just observation. I’m glad their army saw sense and adopted a protective stance.


+1

Well it might not be quite a jet fighter, but the RAF used biplanes to bomb unruly Kurdish villages in the 20s. So there's another fine British export for us to view with pride.

Tbh, if we sell them rubber bullets and CS gas, that at least removes the temptation for them to use dum-dum bullets and mustard gas, so those democracy campaigners might well want to thank mister Cameron. On the negative side, they may want a word with mister Blair who sold electric cattle prods to the Bahraini secret police.

Events not missed by a certain Belgian cartoonist going under the name of Hergé. In The Land of Black Gold, there are Spitfires with RAF roundels dropping leaflets. The artwork was redone for the UK translation and the aircraft have Arabic insignia instead. Despite being Anglophiles, it’s good to see that the Belgians are bold enough to call a spade a spade when necessary.

So, for historical (and interest), here is the original black/white artwork:


Then the 1950 colour revision:


Note the RAF roundels!

Now for the artwork we got:


And just to ram the point home, the 1950s artwork shows this reaction from the people being leafletted:


Again, this is changed for English language readers:


(images from http://dardel.info/tintin/variantesE.html)

We have a deep and troubled history with the region, and we are partly to blame for the mess its in today. We need to really work to fix it, not send over greasy politicians and salesmen to sell more guns.

Britain needs 'a healthy slice' of the Middle East's defence market, says Liam Fox



Which ethical limits are those?

More here (DM)

The Eleventh Commandment.

More here too.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog ... intcmp=239