From banks to blood

So i've been inspired to write this blog post by a fine comrade i follow on twitter called@ leaveitmark well worth a follow if your not already. She is a good friend of the socialist way who i have hosted and re blogged some of his excellent work on this blog in the past too.

The idea from this blog post has come from the recent events in the middle east and north africa. The helplessness we humanitarian socialists feel in the west. We live so far away and feel our governments do not represent our views anymore.

We are left wondering how we can help our brothers in these countries under such oppressive rulers. I have been following events in Tunisia, Egypt and now with colnel gadafi and his fightback against the anti governments protests in Libya.

Quite often the mainstream media outlets like the BBC and Sky news will not show or tell you the whole story. As journalists are banned from entering Libya we can only go by what we hear through independant sources.

Before the internet was taken down by colnel gadafis government to oppresse his countries people even more lots of videos of amatuer videos posted on the website You Tube showing some horrific human killings. I heard of one you tube video of a whole hospital being bombed to the ground by gunships, this to me is a mindless act of revenge on his own people for having the bravery to stand up and fight back. The bloodshed has been terrible. We still dont know the total death toll and i suspect it will continue to grow as colnel gadafi
looks to hit back at anti government protesters who have taken several towns along the eastern border.

What has saddened me most about all this tradegy of human lives lost to the hands of a evil dictator intent on crushing the rebellion of people wanting a new fresh start similarly to what has happened in Egypt and Tunisia is the fact that we as a country in Britain have funded this mad ruler for years and years arming him with weapons in exchange for oil which the ruling class's seem to fascinate over. The UK once had its own storage of oil off the coast of Britain in the north sea we did sell all this off for profit and now find ourselves buying up oil from rogue arab states around the middle east doing dodgy deals.

This press release from

http://www.caat.org.uk/press/

ebruary 2011
CAAT condemns empty words from Government as arms sale drive continues

Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) today condemned the Government's reaction to revelations about UK arms exports to the Middle East. It calls on the Government and UK companies to withdraw from a controversial Middle East arms fair which starts this weekend and for fundamental reform to the UK's irresponsible arms export policy.

Yesterday it was revealed that the UK Government had approved the export of goods including tear gas and crowd control ammunition and sniper rifles to Bahrain and Libya, as well as a wide range of other military equipment to authoritarian regimes in the region.

CAAT calls for an immediate arms embargo to the region, for a thorough review of why such exports were ever licensed in the first place and for fundamental reform to the UK's irresponsible arms export policy.

The UK must cancel its participation in the IDEX arms fair which starts this weekend.

The Government's arms promotion unit, UK Trade & Investment Defence and Security Organisation (UKTI DSO) will be exhibiting at the International Defence Exhibition and Conference (IDEX), the largest defence and security event in the Middle East and North African region. The UK arms industry body Aerospace|Defence|Security (A|D|S) claims that 10% of exhibitors will be from the UK and says “our sizable presence at IDEX 2011 shows that we mean business.” IDEX takes place from Sunday 20th – Thursday 24th February, in Abu Dhabi, UAE.

Sarah Waldron Campaigns Coordinator at CAAT said:

“It is astounding that the government is still insisting it has a responsible arms export policy while, in the same breath, admitting that it was happy to supply authoritarian regimes with the means to crush dissent.

Far from seeking to restrain arms sales, the UK government actively promotes them . While this policy stands there is no prospect of meaningful arms control.

The UK must cancel its participation in the IDEX arms fair this weekend, end its irresponsible arms exports and stop using taxpayers' money to promote arms sales.”

ENDS

This little press release sums a lot of the British current policy is to sell deadly arms to rogue leaders around the world in exchange for resources such as oil or important allowances.

I for one believe that the British ruling class's who have been up to these dodgy back hand deals for years now have blood on their hands. They bring great shame on the british people for pulling our name through the dirt with all these deals they carry out behind our backs. We never get a say whether we should support a foreign dictator or sell arms to them. This sort of democracy never happens. I do wonder why? I imagine it would never happen that would be why. Most british people have a sense of the world and would not tolerate this i'm sure of it but alas we have no say in such matters. Such deals are left to the ruling class's at the very top, the ones who hold all the power and most of the worlds money to decide our futures in many ways.

As my mum said to me earlier what if colnel gadafi went off his head and on one of his mad rants decided to use his military might we have armed him with against us if we fall out with him which we seem to be doing now rightly so. The guy is completely unstable and unpredictable as shown with his attacking of his own citizens.

The title of this blogpost was titled from banks to blood which i feel is very apt for what is currently going on at the moment as the constant drive for profit be it through arms or oil or even playing with peoples lives is just highliting to me how far the ruling class's will go to preserve their capitalist state of society.

I think going back to the title of this post the role of banks and ethical banks could be brought to the front here with our banks in the west still holding money from dictators from the ex president of Egypt apparently his funds have now been frozen but why only now ?

We have surely known about these regimes


for decades now so why cant we block them off from storing money in our banks and not funding their dirty horrible habbits and buying up more arms to use against their own people.

I do think that a ethical bank needs to be created or formed that does refuse to do business with any of these evil dictators around the world. Perhaps we could stop them in their tracks a lot sooner this way.

We do owe it to the people of these countries to send our solidarity and stand by them against these tyrants even though the powers that be in our country decided they were good enough to stay there for years. This is no more apparent than our very own Tony Blair has been photographed on several ocasions shaking hands and coming across all very friendly with colnel gadafi. This to me just smacks of complete hypocrisy by someone who is now a appointed middle east envoy i'm still not sure by whom exactly probably himself as he does seem very keen to be teh policeman of the world sorting out every countries troubles and thrusting his own brand of democracy on these nations.

I personally feel helpless living back in the Uk while all this is going on out in the middle east i wish there was more i could do to help the people on the ground facing hardship every day.

I think its a fine effort from Malta who have offered their country as a safe havan to disaffected Libyans looking to flea the humanitarian crisis and colnel gadafi's iron fist.

I do think if there is anyway the United Nations can possibly step in and help civilians wishing to leave the country to a neighbouring safe havan they should do so. I think the international response to colnel gadafi and his cronies in the middle east so far has been one ofa passive nature not getting too involved. But as i have said in previous blogposts and i raised at the last debating society i attended you can bet your bottom dollar that America and Britain and other major world players will be plotting behind the scenes with what will happen next in terms of their own national interests of capital and investments in the regions as we do tend to rely on their oil a lot. With threats to cut off oil supplies and pipelines this must worry western governments greatly especially if their economy starts to stall due to lack of oil.


So in conclusion i say that we must stand shoulder to shoulder with the innocent oppressed people of these nations. Stand by them in solidarty and offer any support we possibly can as no one deserves to live under such rule and i for one cant even begin to imagine how awful things must be on the ground there.