Tuesday 13 March 2007

Greenpeace demonstrate against Trident renewal.




This afternoon, at enormous expense, YesBut sent Grumpy & Farting’s ace photographer with his box camera to London to photograph the demonstration at the Houses of Parliament.


Three Greenpeace demonstrators have taken up residence on the boom of a crane used by the project to repair Westminster Bridge. They are demonstrating against tomorrow’s debate to renew the Trident missile system.

The banner reads “Tony loves WMD”

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Following on from your answer yesterday, nothing can prevent countries from wanting and indeed attempting to develop weapons, that they think will offer them security, but yes nuclear weapon systems do deter against the use of WMDs.

It is good that greenpeace should demonstrate their strongly held beliefs in the destruction of WMDs, indeed it could easily be argued, that their right to do so has been secured by those very weapons.

That the peace and freedoms that those weapons have secured, will eventually be the reason for the demise of those weapons is something we should all be happy about, but only a fool would see the disposal of an entire defence system, whilst you still need defending.

The problem of someone using a different type of radioactive weapon system to affect close proximity contamination, is I'm afraid one of scale, it represents a different, and in some ways more worrying threat.

It is not practical as a weapon that could have a major impact, it is limited in it's effectiveness (ie it wont kill many) because radioactivity poisoning is a cumulative problem, and it's use will generate two feelings, within your target population, one of fear, and one of anger.

If you tried to use ths kind of weapon against a general population then you had better be prepared to deal with the backlash, because the country that you attempted to target, would have time to discover who and where you were, and their population anger would ensure that they would act against you, and it was you who decided to take the gloves of with your selection of weapon, so you'd be in a no hold's barred situation, and believe me in biological, chemical, and atomic weapons knowledge, the west wins.

Tony said...

Hi Dowelld.

Thanks for posting such a well argued case.

I could put forward the argument for not replacing Trident. Relying in the future on USA protection. I can hear the cries - are you mad. But how independent is the Trident system? Will the UK be able to launch an attack without USA approval?

How can we deny other countries from developing weapons we already have?

There is no easy answer. In fact there are only more questions.

Who do you think are likely to launch a nuclear attack on the UK and under what circumstances?

Isn’t it about time we stopped kidding ourselves, we are a tiny island on the fringe of Europe. We are not a Word Power.

Trident is Viagra for politicians; they think it makes UK more important than it actually is.

So with Trident we can retain our veto and permanent seat in the Security Council - so what, the UN is just an ineffective talking shop.