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Overseas |
AFGHANISTAN: Get us out of this foreign Civil War
Britain has no business sending our solidiers to die in this far-away middle-eastern country. Afghanistan, just like Iraq, has got nothing to do with Britain. This is the 21st Century, not the Victorian colonial period; it is up to Middle Eastern moslem countries to look after their own affairs. We're fighting on one side of a local Civil War
Bring Them Back
From Iraq
and Afghanistan NOW !
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What is the U.N. and why is it there? It was set up in 1945, by Britain, France, the U.S.A. and Russia - to prevent any more wars, by resolving disputes between countries peacefully. In this it's totally failed - there's been hundreds of major wars since then. The latest United Nations shambles over Iraq - when they were "sidelined" by the U.S. - is only the latest example of how totally ineffective, and unrespected, this organisation has become. Hardly surprising - they spend most of their time, interfering in the internal affairs of member countries (something forbidden in their charter). A U.N. committee recently told Britain that our children are deprived of their rights. Committee Members included someone from Thailand - a country where children are bought and sold as sex-slaves. The United Nations is a useless, bossy, politically-correct talking shop. Its past its sell-by date. FAMILIES FIRST would push to replace it with a completely new organisation "PEOPLE'S WORLD". People's World would reflect the democratic wishes of the planet. Dictator States (like China or Burma) would only be able to SPEAK - but not VOTE. And the normal states would have votes according to their populations. So huge democracies like Indonesia, India and the USA, would have more votes than little ones such as the Netherlands or Luxemburg. (In the UN, tiny islands with almost no people, count equally as representatives, as countries with 100 million people. When Yugoslavia broke up in the 1990s into six little "countries", their single U.N. seat suddenly became six seats.) Another big difference is that People's World would be able to question, and if necessary change, existing state boundaries. Most of the borders in Africa are artificial - put there by the colonial British and French. This has been a source of constant war in the continent, almost since the end of colonial rule in Africa 50 years ago. So where the UN dithers and talks and does nothing, while millions die (like in Darfur); People's World could say "Sudan cannot work as one political unit. The colonial borders are stupid and must be changed". They could re-draw Sudan as two countries - one for the ethnic arabs, the other for the Darfur region. We pour grants and loans into the Third World (this is principally Africa). This is patronising (treating them like children receiving pocket-money). It's self-defeating. Most of the money gets hoovered up by their elite and middlemen. Then they end up with such huge debts, that some countries have to use their entire earnings, just to repay the INTEREST on the "loans". We need to (a) let them Trade ! They're locked out of World Trade by vested-interest cartels like the EEC's Common Agricultural Policy. We keep talking about reforming this - nothing gets done. We would stop the C.A.P. IMMEDIATELY by holding back our EEC sub - until the C.A.P. gets binned. We need to (b) see environmental problems of Africa such as desertification, water supply and disease as planet-wide problems, to be fixed by the West using our technology; not regarding them just as local problems which they have to try and fix themselves, out of charity money we give them. Not long now till 2022, and Ireland will have been partitioned for 100 years. All the "breakthroughs" of the Tories and New Labour, the "Good Friday Agreement", have all come to nothing. How long are the troubles going to go on? This agreement hasn't really brought peace; if anything it's encouraged the men of violence, by "letting off" all previous terrorists, and allowing the paramilitaries to keep all their weapons hidden away. We know who the "Real IRA" are, who did the Omagh bombing - but the Irish government has failed to do anything about them; going against the spirit of Good Friday. It's obvious we're never going to get things sorted, if we leave it to the British and Irish governments to fix; London and Dublin have too many vested interests, and emotional baggage from the past. It needs the people of Ireland - of North and South - to sort things for themselves. The people of Ulster are never going to freely join the Republic of Ireland, in its present form - anybody can see that. But they could re-unite as equals, in a totally NEW country. A country called simply "Ireland". The republican tricolor replaced by the Shamrock of St. Patrick. The national language to be Irish-English, not Gaelic - reflecting the reality of what families actually speak in their homes, in Galway and in Cork, just as much as in County Down. De Valera would probably turn in his grave - but we would have peace and normality at last. After World War 2, which saw so many millions of men and women killed because of German Nationalism, people realised how dangerous Nationalism is; and Europe had no Nationalist parties for a long time. But eventually, people forget the past: By the 1990s, Nationalism was beginning to spread again - especially in the Balkans. There the splitting of people into ethnic, nationalist groups, caused hundreds of thousands more to die. At the same time we've seen a frightening growth of Nationalist parties in the rest of Europe. In Russia, in France; even in Britain, where there are now at least five political parties with the word "Nationalist" in their names; and many other parties which quite openly, claim to represent one ethnic group. We used to be thankfully, free of Nationalism in Britain. But now when the Tories, Labour and LibDems stand for election in the Edinburgh Parliament, they magically change their names; and call themselves the "Scottish Conservatives", the "Scottish Liberal Democrats" and "Scottish Labour". (And the same in Wales.) Why do they need to change their names like this? This just encourages Nationalism, and the re-defining of people by ethnic group. Do Labour think if they hadn't added the word "Scottish" in front of their name, that nobody would have voted for them? We need to clamp down on Nationalist parties all over Europe - before it's too late. We should limit their TV broadcasts; say a maximum of one minute in an Election campaign. It's time we had a more balanced Middle-East Policy - not the one-sided policy we have now. What the west - led by the U.S. - has given to the Palestinians, you can hardly call a "country": Two tiny bits of land, not big enough to swing a cat on. I'd like to see a major re-drawing of boundaries - to create a larger, stronger Arab state, to balance against Israel. (Say by combining "Palestine", Lebanon, Jordan and Syria into one country). New Labour came to power with big words about "Ethical" foreign policy. The idea was we wouldn't trade with countries if they had regimes which repressed their own people, or denied them Human Rights. Our "ethics" follow the same hypocritical rules as the United States' foreign policy. You don't trade with countries which are deemed to have repressive governments - but only as long as the countries are small; and the volume of trade doesn't amount to very much. (Like Cuba.) But what if the country is large and powerful, and provides a big marketplace - like China ? This is one of the world's most repressive regimes, where people have very few human rights and babies - especially infant girls - are not treated as human at all. Over 10,000 prisoners are executed every year (this puts Death Row, USA into context!) . Another 10,000 at least, are killed in the coal mines alone - and thousands more in a land whose Industrial Safety record would have shamed even Victorian Britain. But a ban on trade with communist China would hurt America. So the "ethics" go overboard. They trade: they buy and sell. And Britain under Blair, does exactly the same. Britain was the only country to join the U.S. in its "Coalition of two" which invaded Iraq. So we should have at least a little bit of influence over American policy. Then we should be using our influence to do something about the prisoners being held in Cuba for the past 18 months. All Blair's government has done is try to help two of the prisoners who've got British nationality. Forget about these two! They fought against us for a foreign power - as far as I'm concerned, they don't deserve to keep their British nationality anyway. What's wrong is that the prison camp is still there at all, holding what the U.S. calls "unlawful combatants". If any of these are terrorists, connected with September 11th - they should be charged and tried and imprisoned in the USA. But nearly all are just soldiers; they're prisoners-of-war. Just because they tried to fight to the death, or didn't want to surrender, doesn't make them not POWs! (Many fanatical Japanese and German soldiers in World War 2 tried to fight on: when they were captured, they were Prisoners of War - not Unlawful Combatants.) These prisoners should be sent back to where they were captured - Afghanistan. If any of them are non-Afghans, it's up to them to get back to their own countries any way they can. And what are they doing in Cuba anyway? As P.O.W.s they should have been imprisoned in the USA - just like German prisoners in the last war. The Pentagon didn't want them in America, because the U.S. legal system is so stupid it gives a whole raft of legal "Rights" to anybody who sets foot on American soil - even if they're not U.S. citizens, but "enemy" prisoners-of-war. Whose fault is that? The United States should put it's own laws in order. This would be a minor change to the U.S. constitution. Instead of that, they took the Taliban prisoners to their naval base at Guantanamo in Cuba; where they are kept hooded and in cages. This is a total abuse of the treaty by which the U.S. leased this base from Cuba. It's also deeply insulting to the people and government of Cuba. |
FAMILIES FIRST Key Initiatives Overseas: