Our government protects us - well not really!

An interesting argument in The Guardian shows the British Government protecting those accused of torturing British citizens rather than the interests of people who have suffered greatly.

I really wish that I wasn't a cynical old grump but increasingly our government leaves me with little alternative. Saying you are against torture is all well and good but surely words should be backed by actions.

Increasingly, I am asking if the British Government is selling its citizens down the drain as part of its infatuation with the whoredom of death that is the arms industry. In October it was reported that the Saudi Government had been stalling on a lucrative arms deal. Their demands were then reported to be the expulsion of two dissidents, the resumption of British Airways flights to Royadh and the dropping of a corruption investigation that implicated British Aerospace and members of the royal family. It is totally consistent that the gangsters of Riyadh would be prepared to use similar pressure for the sake of their pet torturers. The once welcomed Pinochet ruling which meant that torturers could never be immune from action in the courts has therefore been endangered.

Why should the Saudi gangsters have such a power over the British Government? The answer is simple. The British Government is proposing £40 billions in arms sales to this regime. The Prime Minister and the Defence Secretary are heavily involved in the deal. The Government's credibility has therefore been put very much on the line on this issue. How low will they go to to please the Saudis? Well judging by the decision to put torturers before their British victims, the answer is very low indeed.

I think the time has come to demand a bit of morality from our masters. It is all very well them telling us that the Saudis are our biggest defence export partner and that jobs are on the line but how can a nation prosper when it sells its soul.

A Government that has overseen a five fold increase in gambling is obviously a stranger to morality. Surely the time has come for a bit of people power to be exercised. The arms industry has long been riddled with corruption. Back in September the Guardian rvealed British Aerospace to be running a £60million Saudi slush fund. Allegations have long abounded of lucrative gifts to Prince Turki ibn Nasser who oversaw the 1985 Saudi-BAE Al Yamanah arms contract which at the time was the largest ever arms contract in British history. As for our Government, whilst they talk the talk of helping poor nations, their true face is revealed by the US Congressional Research Service which showed the UK to come third among all arms suppliers to developing nations.

Surely it is time to cry out, "Enough is enough!" This trade of evil and the shoddy compromises that goes with it needs to be brought to an end just like that other calumny, slavery, was brought to an end in defiance of all the clever devils who argued that abolition would mean ruin. No better start could be made than by ending the arms trade supporting policies of the Government's death machine that is DESO.

This is a moral calling. Surely the time has come to defy any Government that continues to collude in this demonic trade in death. For Christians, given the Christian profile of this Government, surely the time has come to turn to Downing Street and cry out "Shame on you! You do not rule in our name!"