UK Parliament Endorses Terracidal Nuclear Terrorism

Gideon Polya

The UK Parliament recently overwhelmingly supported renewal of the Trident nuclear weapons system, with a psychopathic  new UK PM Theresa May declaring her preparedness to kill vast numbers of people with nuclear weapons. Total nuclear disarmament can and should happen. On the eve of the 71st anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, decent people around the world must declare a peaceful war on nuclear terrorist supporters and countries  by Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) that are most likely to be  effective when applied to small nuclear powers like the UK , France, North Korea and Apartheid Israel.

In July 2016 the UK Parliament had a 5 hour debate over the renewal of Trident, the UK’s submarine-borne nuclear weapons system that with other national nuclear arsenals threatens Humanity with annihilation.  The UK Parliament (647 members) shamefully and disgustingly voted in favour of Trident renewal by a majority of 355, with virtually all of the 330 Conservative Party MPs and about 140 Labour MPs – more  than half of Labour MPs – voting for prospective mass murder, including Labour Party leadership challengers Angela Eagle and Owen Smith. Some 41 Labour MPs squibbed this key existential moral issue by being absent or abstaining, the cowardly abstainers including shadow defence secretary, Clive Lewis, and the shadow foreign affairs secretary, Emily Thornberry.

Trident renewal was opposed by all 54 Scottish National Party MPs, the 8 Liberal Democrats and a mere 47  Labour MPs, most notably Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn who has been resolutely  opposed to nuclear terrorism and who told the House of Commons:  “What is the threat we are facing that one million people’s deaths would actually deter? … I make it clear today I would not take a decision that kills millions of innocent people. I do not believe the threat of mass murder is a legitimate way to deal with international relations.”

In stark contrast, after the Scottish National Party MP George Kerevan asked of PM Theresa May: “Is she personally prepared to authorise a nuclear strike that can kill a hundred thousand innocent men, women and children?”, UK PM  Theresa May replied: “Yes. And I have to say to the honourable gentleman the whole point of a deterrent is that our enemies need to know that we would be prepared to use it, unlike some suggestions that we could have a deterrent but not actually be willing to use it, which seem to come from the Labour party frontbench.”

We are approaching that time of year when we commemorate the evil and war criminal American atomic bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 (up to 150,000 Japanese civilians killed and over 20,000 military killed) and of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945 (up to 80,000 Japanese civilians killed), atrocities for which US presidents up to Barack Obama refuse to apologize. The fundamental  reasons for these successive mass murder atrocities seem to have been (a) an obscene proof of principle of nuclear annihilation in war, and (b) an  American desire to threaten the newly victorious  Soviet Union that had overwhelmingly borne most of the burden of defeating Nazi Germany, with up to 27 million Soviet citizens dying in WW2 as compared to 600,000 French, 450,000 British, and 420,000 Americans.

The Soviet Union, the UK and France went on to acquire a nuclear deterrent after WW2. China, which had lost 40 million people under Japanese Occupation in 1937-1945, subsequently acquired nuclear weapons. India provided 2 million men to the Allied armies in WW2  but suffered the man-made 1942-1945 Bengali Holocaust (Bengal Famine) in which 6-7 million Indians were deliberately starved to death by the British with Australian complicity;  post-independence  India and Pakistan also eventually acquired nuclear deterrents. With genocidal fanaticism  paradoxically assertedly justified by the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million Jews killed and part of the wider WW2 European Holocaust in which over 30 million Slavs, Jews and Gypsies were killed),  Apartheid Israel  also acquired nuclear weapons with American help.  North Korea, in which an estimated 28% of the population was killed by US bombing in the 1950-1953 Korean War, has also acquired nuclear weapons.

The upper  estimates of stored  nuclear weapons  are as follows: US (7,315), Russia (8,000), Apartheid Israel (400), France (300), UK (250), China (250), Pakistan (120), India (100), and North Korea (less than 10). India , Pakistan and North Korea have not ratified the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Nuclear exchanges have almost occurred accidentally several times in the last half century and in several instances have only  been averted by the sane actions of particular  courageous and humane individuals e.g. Commander Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov (1962) and Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (1983). A nuclear exchange would wipe out most of Humanity (current population about 7.5 billion) , successively through the initial instantaneous destruction of cities, subsequent deaths from burns and  radiation sickness from radioactive fallout, and  finally  through a “Nuclear Winter” decimating agriculture, photosynthesis and photosynthate-based life in general. In contrast, as of March  2016,  127 countries have signed up to support the UN Humanitarian Pledge for the banning of nuclear weapons.

Sea-girt Britain was last successfully invaded about 1,000 years ago in 1066 (an invasion associated with the genocidal Norman subjugation of  the English Saxons),  and since then successfully saw off threats  by the Spanish Armada, Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany. The only conceivable European threat to the UK, and hence a target for UK nuclear terrorism,  is US- and NATO-threatened Russia, a distant country which has never sought to invade Britain (what for ?) but which has been repeatedly invaded by Britain. However there are many Developing  Countries that  are potential targets for British nuclear terrorism. Indeed over the last millennium Britain has invaded 193 countries including  nearly all but a few of the present-day UN-recognized or de facto countries of the world. Most of these British invasions in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe,  Australasia and the Pacific were variously  associated with genocidal atrocities.

In the 21st century, nuclear terrorist Britain has continued invading other countries as a US lackey. The UK is presently  involved in its Sixth Iraq War and Third Syrian War in a century; is involved in a continuing  Iraqi Genocide and Afghan Genocide (post-invasion deaths from violence or imposed deprivation totalling 2.7 million and 5.5 million, respectively);  as part of the France-UK-US (FUKUS) Coalition helped devastate Libya, formerly the most prosperous country in Africa; and presently has armed forces in the war-torn African nations of Somalia and South Sudan. The genocidally racist and violent  British Establishment just cannot help itself.

It gets worse.  Each year 17 million people die avoidably from deprivation in the Developing World on Spaceship Earth with the first World, including the UK, in charge of the flight deck. Globally, 1.5 billion people have died avoidably from deprivation since 1950.  It is estimated that 1.8 billion Indians died avoidably from deprivation under brutal British domination in the period 1757-1947. 1950-2005 avoidable deaths in countries occupied by the British  in the post-WW2 era have totalled 727 million.

What can decent people do in the face of British nuclear terrorism and indeed nuclear terrorism by other nuclear weapons –possessing states? In relation to the horrifying threat of mass extinction of Humanity and most of the Biosphere from nuclear weapons one can be more specific about the targets of Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) that obviously should apply to all nuclear weapons-possessing countries and nuclear weapons supporters:

1.  “Small” nuclear powers like the UK, France, Apartheid Israel and North Korea are most likely to be pressured successfully by carrot or stick and should be particularly   subject to Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) as were successfully applied to  Apartheid South Africa and are currently being applied against nuclear terrorist, racist Zionist (RZ)-run, genocidally racist, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel.
2. Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) should also be applied against the numerous countries that (a) host US bases, (b) host US nuclear weapons, (c) host  nuclear-armed warships, (d) host nuclear terrorism-related communications facilities or (e) otherwise support US nuclear terrorism. Thus  when a US nuclear-armed warship is in an Australian port,  Australia is effectively hosting US nuclear weapons  and making Australia a nuclear target,  in addition to  hosting a US Marine base in Darwin, hosting nuclear-armed warships in general, diplomatically opposing a Nuclear Weapons Ban,  and hosting  joint US-Australian  nuclear terrorism-related communications facilities such as that at Pine Gap in Central Australia.
3. Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) should also be applied against all those nuclear terrorism-supporting countries that refuse to join the present 127 decent nations who support a Nuclear Weapons Ban.