£205 billion (a price tag that has doubled since 2015) is an extraordinary amount of money to spend on renewing a bunch of pointless doomsday machines that nobody in their right mind would ever use.
Nuclear weapons are a massively expensive hangover from the Cold War. They are literally useless in the kind of asymmetric warfare the the United Kingdom keeps getting involved in. Nuclear weapons are of no use against the likes of ISIS and Al Qaida, and neither are they of any use against homegrown terrorists. France's stockpile of nukes hasn't stopped them from suffering one terrorist atrocity after another and the same goes for Pakistan.
The idea that the UK would be open to invasion (from Russia? China? Who?) should we stop wasting vast fortunes on maintaining the capacity to commit mass indiscriminate slaughter is utterly absurd. Italy has no nukes, Spain has no nukes, Japan has no nukes, Australia has no nukes, Brazil has no nukes. If countries without the means to commit mass genocide are so ripe for invasion, why have none of them been invaded?
Another thing to consider is the fact that operation and maintenance of the UK's "independent" nuclear deterrent was privatised back in 1994. The consortium that operates our nuclear weapons is 66% owned by US corporations, and 33% owned by the corporate outsourcing giant Serco.
Serco are so incompetent that they couldn't even run the GP out of hours service in Cornwall properly, but somehow they're in charge of maintaining nuclear weapons!
If just half of the £205 billion (and rising) cost of renewing the UK's ability to commit mass indiscriminate slaughter was spent on improving the UK's conventional (useable) military capacity, the UK would be militarily stronger, it would create far more jobs, and there would be plenty of money left over to invest in infrastructure and services to actually benefit British people.
That's not going to happen though, because there are too many vested financial interests in digging a pointless new Trident money pit to shovel £billions into, and because there are an awful lot of people in Britain, and especially in the Westminster establishment club, who see international relations as some kind of dick waving competition where those with the biggest stockpiles of pointless Cold War relics have the most important voices.
So the conventional military is going to continue to be shrunk with one cut after another as it has been since the Tories came to power in 2010, British soldiers are going to continue to be sent into combat with inadequate equipment, and the country as a whole is going to continue suffering a debilitating lack of investment in infrastructure and services, all so that Theresa May and her successors can maintain the ability to trigger nuclear Armageddon.
They don't care about whether such weapons of mass destruction are necessary. Even if they do honestly believe that they are necessary, they don't give a hoot whether Trident renewal represents the best value for money, or whether a less expensive, more versatile weapons system could be developed.
The UK military-political-media establishment want the money to be wasted in this way, so it's going to happen no matter how little sense it makes, and anyone who dares object (for moral reasons, or on cost/feasibility grounds) will be routinely derided and condemned as raving extremists.
How the parties stand
Tories: The Tory party strongly favour renewing Trident, and are determined to press ahead with the Trident renewal vote in order to score political points against Labour, despite the fact that a lot of funding and technical issues remain completely unclear. Theresa May even tried fearmongering about the threat of Russia in order to justify the Tory stance that Trident renewal is the only option!
Labour: The Labour party is deeply divided on Trident. Jeremy Corbyn and a significant share of the party membership oppose Trident renewal as morally indefensible and/or a vast waste of money, but the majority of Labour MPs support the Tories writing a blank cheque for the private companies that stand to profit from Trident renewal.
UKIP: The 2015 UKIP manifesto pledged to scrap Trident renewal and invest in a cheaper more flexible form of nuclear deterrent, but like most of their manifesto the policy is lacking in specific detail.
SNP: The SNP are united in their opposition to Trident, and especially the location of the Trident nuclear base at Faslane, just 25 miles from Glasgow (Scotland's most populous city with 600,000+ inhabitants).
Liberal Democrats: The Lib-Dems want a "value for money" review to consider Trident renewal alongside alternatives to a like-for-like replacement.
Green Party: The Greens strongly oppose nuclear weapons and propose nuclear disarmament.
Plaid Cymru: The Welsh national party strongly oppose Trident renewal too.
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Two weeks before the London Mayoral election David Cameron used parliamentary privilege to launch an utterly desperate effort to smear the Labour candidate Sadiq Khan with accusations that he had associated with an Imam called Sulaiman Ghani. David Cameron described Ghani as being an extremist who "supports ISIS".
Cameron's "pick a Muslim, any Muslim" smear tactics soon fell apart when it became clear that not only had Sulaiman Ghani spoken out against ISIS barbarity on many occasions, but that he had recently been invited to a Tory party event aimed at encouraging high profile Muslims to become Tory politicians!
In the weeks after David Cameron's lies about him Sulaiman Gani has suffered death threats, but all David Cameron has done is offered a pathetic mealy-mouthed apology over any "misunderstanding".
David Cameron can't be sued for slander because he's completely free to make up whatever lies he likes when addressing parliament, however the Tory defence secretary Michael Fallon and the BBC presenter Andrew Neil have no such defence because they repeated David Cameron's lies outside of parliament (in a radio interview and on BBC television).
Just one week after David Cameron spouted a load of lies about Muslim man with no connections to ISIS whatever in order to score cheap political points against a Muslim political rival, the Home Secretary Theresa May allowed a real Islamist hate preacher into the UK to give a speech at a mosque in Luton!
Hanif Qureshi is a notorious Pakistani hate preacher who promotes discrimination and intolerance towards Ahmadi Muslims. Not only does he promote intolerance and discrimination, the Pakistani authorities claim that one of Qurashi's hate sermons was the direct inspiration behind the assassination of the liberal governor of Punjab in 2011.
The events of the last few weeks make the Tory strategy on Islamist hate preachers absolutely clear. They think it's fine to publicly accuse an innocent Muslim of being an ISIS supporter in a pathetic effort to smear one of their their political rivals who happens to be a Muslim, whilst simultaneously handing out Visas to genuine Islamist hate preachers so they can come to the UK to give speeches!
The Tories see Islamist fanaticism as a brilliant propaganda tool (for smearing political rivals or trying to scrap our human rights) but when it comes to genuine Islamist fanatics coming to the UK, they clearly couldn't give a damn.
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On the 9th of October 2012 an Islamic extremist wearing a fake police uniform shot 14 year old Malala Yousufzai in the head and leg as she waited to return home on her school bus, several other young girls were also injured in the attack. After the attack Malala was airlifted to hospital where doctors managed to stabilise her condition because the the bullet in her head had miraculously missed her brain.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the shooting and justified it by claiming that she was "pro-west" and that she had been "speaking against the Taliban" and "promoting secularism and so-called enlightened moderation". They also claimed that if she survives her injuries they will try to kill her again and that anyone preeching a similar path will also be targeted.
Malala was only 11 when she started documenting how difficult it was to
get an education in Pakistan. At first she
documented the atrocities committed by the Taliban as they occupied her
native Swat Valley between 2007 and 2009 but she soon focused her
writing upon the subject of female education in Pakistan.
In 2011 she became the first ever recipient of Pakistan's National Peace Prize for her campaign for female education rights. Here are a few of her most famous quotes:
"I dreamt of a country where education would prevail."
"I don't mind if I have to sit on the floor at school. All I want is education. And I am afraid of no one."
"Sometimes I imagine I'm going along and the Taliban stop me. I take my
sandal and hit them in the face and say what you're doing is wrong.
Education is our right, don't take it from us... So even if (God let this not happen)
they kill me, I'll first say to them, what you're doing is wrong."
In the wake of the shooting, the vast majority of Pakistanis united in condemnation. Government officials, media personalities and religious leaders all spoke out against the attack and praised Malala's bravery.
Talk show host Hamid Mir said: "I
can see the whole nation's head bowed in shame today. I want to ask
those who shot a girl who only wanted to go to school: Do you think you
are Muslims?"
These questions, to me, are of fundamental importance. What kind of warped belief system would provide a person justification to shoot children? What kind of morality was the attacker attempting to defend as he decided to shoot a child in the head? How on Earth could he have believed that Allah would have approved of such a brutal attack?
Given that the vast majority of Pakistani Muslims have united in condemnation of this attack, it is quite clear that the Taliban interpretation of Islam is at odds with everyone else's. That in the minds of most Pakistanis, the Taliban are not genuine Muslims. It is a great shame to see so many shouty atheist ranters and Islamophobes using this disgusting attack as an invitation to wade into the debate with their divisive "Islam is evil", "all religions are evil" diatribes, especially given that the vast majority of Muslims, people of other faiths and people of none are united in condemnation of this kind of barbarism.
At a moment where voices of moderation within the Muslim faith have a wonderful opportunity to present their interpretation of Islam; that in their view it is an ideology of peace, tolerance and scholarship, the atheist ranters and Islamophobic hate groups would prefer to use the actions of the very worst religious extremists as an excuse to launch the kind of offensive, ill-informed and generalisation laden diatribes they specialise in, and drown out the voices of moderation with their intolerant ranting.
The Taliban
are degenerates who completely disregard the elements of Islam that
contradict their agenda, they preach a message of hate, intolerance and
anti-intellectualism. However Islam was once a religion of tolerance and scholarship.
The
Islamic caliphate of Córdoba famously allowed Christians and Jews to
freely practice their religions, which contrasts strongly with the
religious intolerance, persecution and widespread use of torture by the Catholic regime that
replaced Moorish rule in Spain. During the great age of Islam, Islamic scholars preserved and translated
countless Greek works of philosophy and mathematics, they invented
algebra and became the first civilisation in history to comprehend irrational
numbers.
Many millions of Muslims still believe that peace, tolerance and scholarship are the most vital aspects of their faith, but it suits the narratives of imperialist warmongers, right-wing hate groups and intolerant atheists
alike to characterise all Muslims as backwards, education hating and murderous fanatics. However the widespread condemnation of the attack on Malala Yousufzai by Muslims from across Pakistan and the World demonstrate the falsity of this simplistic narrative.
In order to understand the assassination attempt against Malala Yousufzai, it is important to understand how the Taliban came to be operating in Pakistan in the first place.
- 1. Before the "War on Terrorism" there were no Taliban in Pakistan.
- 2. The Pakistani Taliban came into existence in 2004 when the Pakistani government carried out severe military operations in the tribal belt, under direction from the United States military.
- 3. US drone strikes have killed countless innocent people in the tribal belt of Pakistan.
- 4. The tribal belt suffers high levels of illiteracy and poor education, meaning that the victims of such attacks are easily manipulated by religious extremists. When the Pakistani state and "western forces" are killing innocent people, it should be easy for us to see how fanatics present themselves as the only people fighting on the side of the victims.
It should now be beyond question that the single clearest consequence of the "war on terrorism" has been the effect of stirring up and popularising Islamic fanaticism. This is as clear in the tribal belt of Pakistan as it was in post-invasion Iraq.
When the only exposures to "the West" that uneducated and illiterate people get, are the consequences of drone strikes, overwhelming military force and civilian massacres, it shouldn't take a great deal of empathy to understand why they would want to fight back against these violent and murderous Western forces.
Islamic fanatics like the Taliban thrive on suffering and ignorance, which makes it all the more obvious why they are so fundamentally opposed to female education. If they succeed in preventing half of the population from even attending primary level schools, they succeed in maintaining the culture of ignorance that they need in order to thrive.
The fact that the Taliban's morality relies so heavily upon the denial of education demonstrates the pathetic weakness of their "faith". That they are so afraid of allowing the education of children is clear evidence that they believe that their "morality" is so fragile that it can be destroyed simply by allowing children to learn. The bravery of Malala Yousufzai in standing up to these religious fanatics contrasts sharply with their moral cowardice. A cowardice that allows them to believe that they must kill children in order to avoid the eradication of their feeble "morality".
It is quite remarkable that so-called followers of the Prophet Mohamed would stoop to assassination attempts against a child that defends their right to an education, especially given that Mohamed once said that “the ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr”.
Through her scholarship and her campaign for education rights Malala Yousufzai has demonstrated that her work is more sacred than the violence of the Taliban and that at the age of only 14 she is already more of a Muslim than they ever will be. Not only that, but through her fearlessness she has demonstrated that she is prepared to become a martyr in defence of women's right to education.
Once she recovers from the attack and hears of the Taliban's threats to try to kill her again, I'm sure this brave young woman will say "let them try". At 14 she is wise enough to know that by attempting to make her a martyr to womens' education rights, the Taliban has actually inflicted infinitely more damage to their warped fundamentalist ideology than they would have done by simply leaving her alone.
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The idea that the UK would be open to invasion (from Russia? China? Who?) should we stop wasting vast fortunes on maintaining the capacity to commit mass indiscriminate slaughter is utterly absurd. Italy has no nukes, Spain has no nukes, Japan has no nukes, Australia has no nukes, Brazil has no nukes. If countries without the means to commit mass genocide are so ripe for invasion, why have none of them been invaded?
So the conventional military is going to continue to be shrunk with one cut after another as it has been since the Tories came to power in 2010, British soldiers are going to continue to be sent into combat with inadequate equipment, and the country as a whole is going to continue suffering a debilitating lack of investment in infrastructure and services, all so that Theresa May and her successors can maintain the ability to trigger nuclear Armageddon.
