The proposed free trade agreement between the US and Europe (TTIP) causes concern about the European right to self-determination. The most controversial part of TTIP is ISDS: investor-state dispute settlement. ISDS will make it possible for companies to sue governments that damage their investments. But is this arbitrage system where a few investment lawyers decide over billions of taxpayers money a protection of our business interests, or a threat to our democracy?

WITH THE DECISION to upgrade Britain’s nuclear weapons system due this year, Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader couldn’t be more unwelcome to the British establishment. The pro-nuclear lobby is in overdrive, trying to discredit his commitment to scrapping Trident.

The moral case against nuclear weapons is clear and powerful. Even the most adamant of nuclear advocates cannot go as far as to argue that inflicting indiscriminate destruction on millions of people and and on the planet is justifiable. Instead, they label Corbyn as ethical but unworldly, and so unfit to lead Britain.

The practical case against Trident is equally clear and just as strong. Britain’s nuclear weapon simply doesn’t do what it says on the tin – protect Britain from threats to its security.

Real security threats

At the end of November, the government published its National Security Risk Assessment (NSRA) 2015, alongside the Strategic Defence and Security Review. Nuclear attack is considered a Tier 2 threat, the same as it was in 2010. Nuclear attack is not among the short term dangers facing Britain; it’s one of seven potential long term threats.

Terrorism and cyber-attacks were high on both lists, alongside overseas instability in the Middle East and North Africa where the UK has been militarily embroiled for the past 15 years. Three others are threats of a different character: public health epidemics, natural disasters, and activities by transnational criminal organisations and terrorist groups such as people trafficking.

In the case of the seventh threat – from weapons of mass destruction – the NSRA considered chemical and biological attacks against Britain or UK military forces were the more likely scenarios.

What good Trident in any of these situations? Indeed, experts are beginning to worry about threats to Trident – possibilities such as a cyber-attack which takes it out of operation, or underwater drones becoming capable of detecting its ‘silent’ submarines.

Truth out: Trident is a billion-pound anachronism. If we didn’t replace it, the government would have funds to invest in productive ventures like house building and improvements to our road and rail networks – activities that would help grow the economy and generate more resources for health, education and social spending. And, of course, more cash to spare for actual threats to human security.

Deterrent or target?

What then explains this stubborn commitment to Trident? Nuclear weapons are, it’s claimed, a deterrent. Their very presence makes predatory powers such as Russia, or rogue states such as North Korea think twice before getting into a confrontation with Britain. Supposedly, the mere possession of nuclear weapons will keep us safe; we’ll never use them.

Unfortunately for the pro-nuclear lobby, Defence Secretary Phillip Hammond let this particular cat out of the bag recently when asked to comment on a North Korean missile launch. ‘North Korea,’ he said, ‘seems to think having a nuclear weapon keeps them safe. In fact the opposite is true. Nuclear weapons make them a target.’

Quite right Mr Hammond. And the same goes for Trident

Nuclear proliferators

The danger of proliferation by states such as North Korea is another favourite of the pro-nuclear lobby. Unilateral nuclear disarmament is madness, they say. Multilateralism is common sense. We are to place our trust in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; Britain’s willing to get rid of its nuclear weapons just as soon as everybody else gets rid of theirs. But as the case of North Korea illustrates, the possession of nuclear weapons by powerful states is the driving force behind proliferation.

The NPT came into force in 1970, reflecting international concern about the spread of nuclear weapons and the ever-growing stock piles of the nuclear armed states. The Treaty has three components: nuclear states agree to take steps to disarm; non-nuclear states agree not to acquire nuclear weapons; and everybody agrees to inspections which verify their status.

Britain is one of 188 signatories and has ratified the NPT. In theory at least, this means the government is obliged to take steps to disarm. There are already two legal opinions that replacing Trident by a new, more-powerful nuclear weapons system is proliferation and would put Britain in breach of the NPT.

A political tool

Bottom line is, nuclear weapons have always been used as a political tool. The pro-nuclear lobby believes Trident keeps the Great in Britain, and us at the top table alongside the Americans. But individual advocates of Trident often fight shy of admitting this.

At the outset the United States used its monopoly of nuclear weapons to bolster its ability to shape the terms of the post-war settlement. US Secretary of War Henry Stimson regarded the atom bomb ‘as a master card of diplomacy’. The then Secretary of State James Byrnes claimed it enabled America ‘to dictate our own terms at the end of the war’.

Not to be left behind, the Churchill and Attlee governments alike were committed to building a British bomb – just as the Soviet Union, China, France, and others thereafter wanted their own bomb. Ernie Bevin, Attlee’s Foreign Secretary, is remembered as ‘the real patron of the British bomb’ – and for his colourful statement that there had to be a Union Jack flying on top of the atom bomb.

Trident is not independent

But Britain’s nuclear weapon are not, and never have been, independent. The UK relies on American technology. Trident is dependent on the United States in the following ways:

Britain leases Trident missiles from the US;
British submarines must regularly visit the US for maintenance and missile replacement;
British warheads are a copy of US warheads, and some components are bought directly from the US;
even though Trident submarines are built in Britain, many components are bought from the US; and
Trident is dependent on US systems for practical information such as weather and navigational data necessary to target a nuclear weapon.

Unsurprisingly, Britain’s access to American nuclear know-how comes at a price. It has bred tacit and unacknowledged obligations to support US military and foreign policy goals, while the bilateral Mutural Defence Agreement provides the US with access to British bases around the world and to communications and intelligence support from Menwith Hill monitoring station and Fylingdales radar base.

The government doesn’t publish all the terms of the MDA. Indeed, considerable secrecy surrounds all Britain’s nuclear decision-making, including the allocation of large amounts of public funds. Trident means a democratic deficit for Britain as well as a financial one.

The jobs myth

Last but not least, a small but vociferous lobby within the labour movement has added its own particular twist to the debate over Trident, arguing that the nuclear industry preserves high-skilled, well-paid jobs. Skilled workers are essential to a prosperous economy, and Corbyn’s commitment to a defence diversification commission to deliver sustainable alternative employment was part of his leadership campaign.

However, Trident is not the job-creator that some would have us believe. Studies show that the number of civilian jobs has shrunk considerably over its current life time. One such by Dr Steven Schofield calculates that cost cutting by the private companies which own and run Britain’s nuclear weapons facilities has resulted in a 57% decline in employment between 1990 and 2007 – from 26,300 to 11,300 jobs.

Schofield estimates that Trident’s success or, if built, would generate 35-40% less jobs than the original project, but cost up to 100% more. That’s a poor rate of return for a multi-million investment.

Investment in sustainable alternatives would generate more jobs at equivalent skill levels. A major programme of off-shore wind and wave power, for example, could generate 50% of the UK’s energy needs and create 25-30,000 new jobs. What’s more, if Britain scrapped Trident decommissioning the submarines and warheads would provide employment for between 5 and 10 years – time for alternatives to be bedded down.

Labour’s defence review

The Labour Party acknowledges that the ‘nature of the security threats facing Britain today differs from that of the threats we faced fifty years ago’. The National Policy Forum report to Labour’s 2014 annual conference committed the party to a review of defence policy after the general election. In January 2016, Shadow Defence Secretary Emily Thornberry published its terms of reference. Setting the context, she asks: ‘What role should Britain play in building a world that is more peaceful, more just and safer…?’

For all these reasons, and more, scrapping Trident is the most realistic and hard-headed step that Britain could take towards more effective security for its citizens and a better world for all.

Covert war represents an expansion of US imperialism by means other than invasion and occupation. Historically, the Cold War was always a mixture of confrontation with the USSR through superior forces deployed across a global network of military bases, and the subversion of progressive governments when their attempts to control their own resources threatened Western corporate interests.

Since the end of the Cold War the United States and its allies have maintained this combination of military power projection and covert warfare, including two major conventional wars in the Persian Gulf to secure oil resources, and raids by special operations forces combined with drone strikes
in a growing number of countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. More recently, cyber warfare can also be added to the list of covert actions, with attacks on computer systems at Iran's civil nuclear research facilities

How a trade pact signed in New Zealand could undermine fracktivists in Pennsylvania.

I don’t have all the answers, but I do believe that this is a sign that is significant for the United States.

The bald eagle is the symbol of our nation, and 13 of them died just a few days after Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead on February 13th.

Justice Scalia was the foremost defender of the U.S. Constitution on the Supreme Court, and his death was a massive blow to those that love liberty and freedom everywhere.

Once again, I don’t know what all of this means, but things were already looking incredibly bleak for our country even before the death of Scalia. Our country is dying a little bit more every day, and the signs are all around us.

So could the death of these 13 bald eagles also be a sign that the death of the United States as a whole is rapidly approaching? It won’t happen tomorrow, but it is coming. I have been warning my readers over and over to get prepared for what is ahead, because I believe that we are heading for the worst times that this country has ever seen.

What do you think?

Do you agree with me that the death of these 13 bald eagles could be a sign?

"There's a reason education SUCKS, and it's the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It's never going to get any better, don't look for it, be happy with what you've got. Because the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the REAL owners, now. The REAL owners, the BIG WEALTHY business interests that control things and make all the important decisions -- forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. YOU DON'T. You have no choice. You have OWNERS. They OWN YOU. They own EVERYTHING. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations; they've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the State houses, the City Halls; they've got the judges in their back pockets, and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all the news and information you get to hear. They gotcha by the BALLS. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying -- lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want -- they want MORE for themselves and less for everybody else. But I'll tell you what they don't want. They DON'T want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that, that doesn't help them. That's against their interests. That's right. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting FUCKED by system that threw them overboard 30 fuckin' years ago. They don't want that. You know what they want? They want OBEDIENT WORKERS. OBEDIENT WORKERS. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passably accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And now they're comin' for your SOCIAL SECURITY MONEY. They want your fuckin' retirement money. They want it BACK. So they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it ALL from you sooner or later -- 'cuz they OWN this fuckin' place. It's a big CLUB. And YOU AIN'T IN IT. You and I are NOT IN the big club. By the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long, beating you over the in their media telling you what to believe -- what to think -- and what to buy. The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-workin people -- white collar, blue collar -- doesn't matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-workin people CONTINUE -- these are people of modest means -- continue to elect these RICH COCKSUCKERS who don't GIVE a fuck about them. They don't give a fuck about you, they don't GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU. T HEY DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU -- AT ALL. AT ALL. AT ALL. You know? And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care ... that's what the owners count on, the fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that's being jammed up their assholes every day. Because the owners of this country know the truth -- it's called the American Dream ... 'cuz you have to be asleep to believe it."