Hypocrisy

[tinyjo]

Listened to a very interesting interview on the World at One yesterday with a representative of India's defence ministry. Nick Clarke was asking him about his understanding of whether Britain was prepared to sell arms to India and whether he didn't think it was a bit odd for us to be trying to calm things down on one hand and selling weapons on the other. He replied 'Oh, everyone's doing that. All the western nations who are demanding we cool things down are rushing over here to sell anything they can'. It's just so annoying - I knew it would be like that but it's depressing to have it confirmed somehow. Our position on arms sales seems ridiculous to me - we have a policy where we won't sell them if we think they're going to be used for external aggression or internal repression. So what do we think they are going to be used for? Fly-pasts? We want the cash but we also want to pretend that we don't have the moral responsibility (as we did with the "training" jets we sent to Indonesia to use in East Timor) so that we can be pious and preachy when situations like this blow up.

Comments

[andypop.livejournal.com]

Saw an Indian govt representative on Newsnight last night saying of course they'll have peace negotiations with Pakistan - just as soon as they've "stopped terrorism". So in other words, never. Terrorism is the big excuse for every govt in the world right now to crack down on anything they see fit, wage war, and generally set the clock back 500 fucking years.

I think I'm going to be an anarchist again...

What are they going to be used for?

[(Anonymous)]

One use for arms and armies which is neither external aggression nor internal repression is to pile them up in heaps near your borders so that your crazy neighbours don’t get any funny ideas about invading you.

And of course the government gets to define ‘aggression’ and ‘repression’ to suit its own requirements. External actions that Britain approves of don’t count as aggression, so from their point of view their rules on arms sales are consistent enough.

At least India is a democracy, and not a military dictatorship like Pakistan.