The Cost of Dependence
As the Labour government announces billions of pounds worth of cuts to welfare benefits and slashes overseas aid with the stroke of a pen to create a war economy, the true cost of Scotland being tethered to the British state becomes clear.
Just as we cannot control whether Donald Trump gets invited for a state visit to Scotland, we cannot control the British army recruiting in our schools nor will we be consulted when we go to war. Now we hear that the US has banned Britain from sharing intelligence from Washington with Ukraine, The Mirror.
Now, as Coll McCail notes in The Jacobin (Rebuilding Fortress Scotland): “…for the first time since the 1990s, the US has a direct military presence in Scotland.”
So we have a foreign country with military bases on our land who have completely different strategic military interests to our own.
We have no control over any of this. Here’s No. 10 using grotesque propaganda to recruit young people for war:
We asked young people and businesses how our increase in defence spending would impact them.
This is what they said 👇 pic.twitter.com/bQap83za7u
— UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) March 4, 2025
Suddenly, there’s money for weapons and weapons for war. Remember when Labour got in and were shocked and surprised to find a £22billion Black Hole in the economy? “Tough decisions” had to be made and none of the things that needed to be done after fourteen years of Tory Rule could be done after all. It seems that’s all changed. The government couldn’t find the money to solve the housing crisis, or fund a Just Transition, or respond to energy poverty or improve education, but it can find billions in an instant for war.
We know there is already huge waste within the defence budget. As Owen Jones writes: “Billions have been squandered on aircraft carriers described by the former chief of the defence staff David Richards as “unaffordable vulnerable metal cans”; they are plagued by faults, not to mention outmoded in the face of armed drones and anti-ship missiles. Another £5.5bn was thrown at Ajax armoured vehicles, which were delivered eight years late after being beset by multiple problems, such as shaking so violently that soldiers developed nausea, swollen joints and tinnitus.”
Today we hear that HMS Westminster – a Type 23 frigate – will be scrapped due to a lack of sailors. From the Portsmouth news: “According to the Daily Telegraph, HMS Westminster will be scrapped or sold to an ally despite the long-held plan to renovate the warship. Rumours have swirled for months about whether the Type 23 frigate, currently being held in Devonport, Plymouth, would ever be back on the open sea.
Claims of her poor condition and the economic viability of a full restoration project were considered stumbling blocks to the process. HMS Westminster had a refit in 2017, and was due to undergo another £100m refurb. The Daily Telegraph said HMS Argyll will join in HMS Westminster in being put out of service due to the lack of sailors at the Royal Navy’s disposal.”
This is what staying within the United Kingdom means, no control over your military, security outsourced to a rogue and hostile power, and no control over when and why you go to war. The plan that we were presented with as “Starmer’s finest moment” was that we destroyed UK overseas aid to fund an army to defend the USA pillaging Ukranian rare earth metal resources. That’s the price we pay, but what do we get in return? It’s not clear at all. Ukraine, it turns out, has a third of all European lithium deposits. Musk needs lots of lithium for his Tesla batteries.
And to what extent does Russia pose a threat to us? In the fog of war little is clear. Trump, parroting Putin, suggests that Ukraine are losing and could never win. Is this true? Jones again: “After three years of invasion, and 11 years of conflict, the Russian army has managed to capture a fifth of Ukraine’s land mass, inhabited by a 10th of its prewar population.”
That doesn’t sound like winning, does it?
There are important issues at stake to defend Ukraine: the defence of a sovereign European democracy from invasion. But Britain’s instantaneous ‘war economy’, its vassal status to the USA, and the threat posed by having nuclear weapons based on our soil and in our lochs makes independence from the war-mongering British state a greater need than ever before.
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Europe is in lot of a pickle here.
We can increase defence spending to 50% of GDP, it wouldn’t make any difference. When your GDP is near zero or negative, whatever percentage you use is also near zero or negative.
And what are we going to spend it on? France is the only European country with anything like a thriving war industry. But it cannot ramp up to the scales required. Whilst each country makes bits, no body makes whole tanks/planes/warships/radars/missiles en masse at the scale required. If we are to be serious about fighting Russia, analysis of the Ukraine war shows NATO would need to build the following each year, AND find the people to man much of them:
1500 Main battle tanks
3500 Infantry fighting vehicles and armoured personnel carriers
500 light armoured reconnaissance vehicles
2000 self-propelled artillery pieces
500 MLRS/HIMARS equivalents
500 air defence missile launcher vehicles
200 armoured recovery vehicles and bridgelayers
30,000 infantry anti-tank missile launchers (Javelin style) and 300,000 missiles
20,000 infantry portable anti-aircraft launchers and 100,000 missiles
#000s of none-existant anti-drone weapons
I haven’t even included aircraft for air forces, and ammunition, and ships. Imagine a NATO without the US having to replicate the US Navy……
Those numbers are not because we don’t currently have NATO armies, they are because of attrition. Highly mechanised warfare is very intensive in weapons depletion. The existing NATO force in Europe is capable of a 2-week intense combat, probably do very well, create a TV-spectacular war just like the US did in Iraq in 2003 – and then it’ll run out of spares, tanks, guns, ammunition. As long as Putin is determined enough, the Russians will keep coming and will be capable of expending lives at a greater rate than Europe will tolerate, even if it didn’t run out of weapons.
If the UK went to war now, it would have to surrender after 6 days because we would have run out of ammunition.
The UK has been running the equivalence of DOGE on the quiet since 1981, neo-liberal privatisation and austerity has affected the armed forces just as much as the other public services. The examples of unmanned warships and the Ajax project mentioned in the article are classic symptoms. We have become victims of ideology inflicted on us by a minority, who fed us a lie and should have been put in prison back in 2008. These chickens have come home to roost.
At the same time as EROEI is down to 6:1 (ie for every 6 units of energy we use in the world, it costs 1 to get it out of the ground, transported to where its needed and converted to a usable format). For comparison’s sake, in 2010 EROEI was 12:1, in 2000 it was 20:1, in WW2 it was 50:1 Approximately, individual energy sources vary around these ratios. It’s the magnitude of the decline that is the key.
To replace the US army NATO in Europe would have to raise another 35 brigades (each about 3000 troops). In addition, a quarter of NATO’s strength is in the Turkish army – Turkey doesn’t seem to be onside that much, so west European NATO may need to replace those forces as well. One commentator recommended NATO-Europe having to raise 50 brigades. And there is talk of giving Germany atomic weapons. That’ll go down well in the Kremlin!
Germany can build 5 MBTs a month currently, the UK completely zero. In the Cold War West Germany could make 300 tanks a month. One-third of Germany’s energy came from Russia before the embargoes and export bans in 2022, so now German steel and aluminium smelting plants have shut down and moved to Asia.
That’s just bare bones. I don’t think people realise the magnitude of the task at hand. Where are the factories? Where are the resources going to come from to make the factories, then make the machine tools and computers, then make the actual weapons and ammunition? Where are all the skilled workers who can make these machine tools? Where are the ores required, weren’t Euorpe’s depleted long ago? Where all the microchips going to come from? Modern weapons are electronic intensive.
Etcetera.
Then who is going to join these armies? Are we looking at EU-wide conscription? Can we conscript all those climate refugees fleeing from Africa, use them as a mercenary army so that the middling classes don’t have to send their prescious offspring to war? This is all assuming we go down the road of uparming. It might be cheaper and easier for Europe to tell America to eff-off** and start being nice to Russia. Maybe the EU should join BRIXS and abandon the petro-dollar. The Overton Window needs a massive expansion.
Russia doesn’t need more land, it needs more people. On current demographic trends, before spermageddon*, Russia would cease to exist within 150 years just because of declining population. Ukraine isn’t far behind. Wouldn’t it have been easier, way back when, for the EU to just send all those migrants every populist is whinging about to be settled in Russia? Come to some kind of arrangement so that we kept getting our cheap energy and they got a quick source of labour to exploit their untapped resources better? It’s all a bit late now. EU experts claim it would take 5-10 years to re-arm to some level of expectation to deter Russia, or to liberate Ukraine from Russian occupation. I don’t think we have that time.
It’s a shitshow, Europe fucked up just for the sake of rich people keeping their entitlements, and will now find in trying to deal with the consequences, they cannot physically do it.
I don’t think there are any answers. The elites of Europe will try hard as possible to keep their relative affluence and influence, and their allies in the media will put on the show. There may be war, there may not, probably the safest bet for outlier provinces such as Scotland, Ireland, rural northern England, Wales Portugal, Basque region etc is to have as few targets as possible that are worth the waste of a Russian or American cruise missile or bomb load, and hope you are considered so insignificant that the bullies and carnage passes you by.
*latest data shows western countries will be infertile by 2045 without artificial insemination, due to the combination of population stress, PFAS forever chemicals, micro-plastics, nano-plastics and general toxification of our environment. I wouldn’t be surprised if wi-fi turns out to be a big contributor too. There may well be no children after 2060. Makes all this conflict a bit silly really.
** Somebody remind Vance that we burned down Washington once already, don’t make us come back and do it again. Except this time we’ll bring the Ghurkas and Finns.
And the latest icing on the cake, a couple of recent mathamatical analyses show warming may well reach +2*C by 2026-27, and +3* by 2034-35, which matches my long-held expectations based on analysis of ecological overshoot. For those with a bent to go to war, they will find soon that they are not phsyically capable of doing it.
Thanks Mark, where did you get those figures for ‘what we need’ to fight Russia?
” where did you get those figures for ‘what we need’ to fight Russia?” two sources, one is this website
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com
which is generally recognised within military history research sites as the most accurate and impartial, documenting losses for both sides.
And the other is I write historical orders of battle for a living, studying TOEs we call them (tables of organisation and equipment) for 30 years+, so it’s an area I know a bit about. A typical NATO brigade might have 50x tanks, 150x IFV and APC, 20x recce vehicles, 18-24x self-propelled artillery, 12 air defence vehicles, 12 armoured engineer vehicles, ~12-80x anti-tank missile launchers, 24x mortars.
For additional context, the 50 brigades comment came from here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/3/can-europe-guarantee-ukraines-security-without-the-us
which has some useful graphics on NATO strengths and relative Russian strength.
Thanks
@Mark Bevis, that isn’t how GDP works. Perhaps you mean something else?
But how can Russia afford to fight NATO or Europe if it can hardly afford to fight Ukraine (and has to ‘borrow’ North Koreans)? I’d heard one estimate that another year of war would bleed its economy dry.
Here we come to what philosopher’s often use to disprove arguments as invalid: reductio ad absurdum, or reducing an argument to contradictory statements. But you can also see it in flickering, as in the rapid fluctuation of phase change states. We’re conditioned to accept flickering from our dwelling in the Cave of Shadows, but you might also see it in optical illusions (duck or rabbit) or the moments when you see through a mask or start to lose faith.
So, one good example comes from Umberto Eco’s essay on ur-Fascism where the enemy of the Fascist is absurdly both strong and weak (not strong) at the same time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism
Now, one minute Putin’s Russia is so weak it will collapse in a year anyway (so, perhaps we are justified in buying the oil that will sustain it?), the next it is so strong that we need to plunder our populations (except the rich) and the Earth to ‘defend’ against it. So weak as to make us laugh at their ideological economy (not in this case too different from our own oligarchies), but so strong that we need to destroy some of our liberties to match it.
So, as the rate of handbrake turns increases, previously proscribed terrorist organisations now become trusted allies (and vice versa), the populace will become aware of this flickering between states (or contradictory statements), and there expect dissent to be exponentially suppressed as people point out the discrepancies. Of course, such flickering suggests a system under stress, and the approach of a tipping point. This applies as much to Russians as people elsewhere, of course, under the shadow of their own state’s weapons, particularly in nuclear-armed regimes and/or those in military alliances.
Absolutely right, this is all indeed the flickering at the end of empire, as it becomes harder for the establishments to hide from the truth of ecological overshoot. Russia, EU, America, China, are all both strong and weak at the same time as you say. The wheels are falling off the wagon of unlimited-growth-on-a-finite-planet, and more and more people are beginning to notice. Hence the increased clamp downs on protest, the circling of the media wagons attempting to narrow the Overton Window, and so on.
Well, yes, we live under a military dictatorship (among other things), as I’ve said. The anti-democratic statements trip off the lips of British politicians apparently confident that the British public will never have a say in foreign, diplomatic or military policy (under the royal prerogative here). Apparently our course for the next hundred years has already been decided. Elections clearly don’t count here.
https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-plan-for-uk-growth-the-ukraine-war/
In Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (2016), author Viet Thanh Nguyen writes, in Chapter 4 on War Machines, p112:
“All war machines program their passengers to identify with the machinery.”
It’s a usual perspective on USAmerican propaganda (whose existence is more denied than even their war crimes, apparently), which Nguyen rates as significantly more effective, being outsourced, than the often drab and clunky Vietnamese, Chinese or Soviet propaganda (although I think there has been some classic Soviet animation and cheery Maoist propaganda posters).
Who supports USAmerican soft power more than the British? Whose creatives are so supportive? Perhaps there is a Special Relationship amongst artistes; although I don’t follow awards shows, the Guardian recently suggested that there was a significant USAmerican presence at the BAFTAs while the political sap seems to have largely drained from the Oscars. After all, without the colossal output of such professionals, there would be little to effectively satirise (see the Cannon Fodder poster above). So, who is doing this programming?
https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-plan-for-uk-growth-the-ukraine-war/
A useful link, thanks.
” author Viet Thanh Nguyen writes, ….: “All war machines program their passengers to identify with the machinery.”
That’s an interesting observation, fits in with the American love of the car, and their warfighting obsession with technology. Because blowing up a hospital is much easier from 30,000′ with a laser guided bomb than it is sending in a battalion of marines to escort a company of sappers to blow it up by hand using C4 charges. Even though the dollar cost of the former is greater.
I think the technology does bamboozle people, and the Ukrainian war kinda confused the expectations of joe publics. I allus remember Biden let slip, talking about Javelin anti-tank missiles, admitting that for every Russian tank knocked out the US were sending 10 missiles.
In other words, one of the most successful weapons systems ever has only a 10% success rate. Que puzzled looks from the peasantry and stumm from the media pundits.
Missiles are high-technology, and are oft quoted as having a 80% hit rate, or whatever. They don’t tell you about the 10% dud rate, that the smoke on the battlefield and hiding in trees can reduce that 80% hit rate to 40%; that once hit the warhead doesn’t perform 100% as it did in the lab and doesn’t penetrate the armour; or hits a none-vital bit like the mudguard or crew stowage and makes a loud smokey bang but doesn’t knock the tank out. The higher the technology, the higher the number of variables where it fails to perform to expectations. We all are aware of Ukrainian videa footage of missiles and drones knocking out tanks in spectacular fashion – they don’t mention the other 9 videos where the missile missed or did nothing…..
This is one of the reasons why the superpowers have so many nuclear weapons – they are at cutting edge of their technology, and thus have a relatively high failure rate, so they need to fire more than one per target to ensure one actually gets there and goes off. Plus, the defence contractors make a lot more money that way….
@Mark Bevis, plus the friendly fire incidents; whatever the modern version of fragging is; the civilian, noncombatant and nonhuman casualties; the captures of weaponry (physically and by hacking) by the enemy; the war crimes; the effective and sometimes embarrassingly low-tech countermeasures… ‘not on brochure’, I guess.
I noticed yesterday the newly elected Labour MP for Bolsover stating that government had to keep in with Trump for a trade deal with USA for her constituents jobs.
I also note that Justin Trudeau met Charles at weekend and informed him that Trump wishes to annex Canada as 51st state and replace Charles as head of state.
Trump obviously fawns over royals and is desperate for a state visit. I wonder how much thought Starmer gave Canada, Ukraine, EU (or Scotland) with his premature and obsequious offer of a state visit in a desperate attempt to get a trade deal and avoid tariffs.
Be in no doubt if push comes to shove Westminster will sell allies and friends down the river if they think it will benefit them.
With regard to CDN, I wrote this in another place:
Seems as if Big Ears at the Big House has annoyed the Canadians. Now, if the Canadians of all people (I have family there) can and are p*ssed off with the British Monarchy, where their Head Honcho is the same as our Head Honcho, then things have really come to a pretty pass.
Skier reminds us that the Caribbean is now probably already in its endgame with the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Battenberg-Windsors. The Ozzies (and now the otherwise mild-mannered) Kiwis and Canucks are flexing their muscles too and expressing their disgust at Blighty.
A few more nudges from the Jocks and Taffs and the whole edifice will come tumbling down – and far quicker than anyone would think (and we could hope for).
The end is nigh.
So cast the die:
The die is cast;
‘Twill be the last.
King Charles’ Letter To Trump Has Critics Royally Riled Up | HuffPost UK Politics
I am a republican but I recognise that Charles does nothing without the government’s say so. Starmer will have suggested state visit last Thursday (prior to Zelenskyy being ambushed) so Starmer’s motivation was primarily to ingratiate himself to Trump up to avoid tariffs on UK and get a trade deal. I doubt Canada’s problems with USA and Charles role as Head of State of Canada entered Starmer’s thoughts though Charles should certainly have raised the issue with Starmer. Trudeau certainly raised with Charles at weekend. Many Canadians feel insulted by Starmer and let down by UK government. and Vharles. A feeling many of us know well.
If Charles does not prove himself useful in this crisis then Canadians will probably dump him as Head of State as you say.
I read the article and the previous comments. There is little more to say. We are all in the hands of forces beyond our control. Trump and Putin follow the route taken by Gemany and Russia in the late 1930s regardless of the consequences for those innocent peoples the wish to trample over. Trump and his pals want Ukraine’s resources and Putin wants to recreate the USSR. The Oligarchs pull the strings and run the media pushing their message. All too many of those outside the power bubble take in the propaganda we’re fed. Both were elected without any obvious chicanery other than the power of their tame media..
“No control over your military, security outsourced to a rogue and hostile power, and no control over when and why you go to war”. I think this is the key point. Two further remarks:
NATO is a busted flush. Its premise was always that the USA would come to the rescue if its European members came under attack: that’s no longer true. And secondly, while the UK’s so-called independent nuclear so-called deterrent (as Wilson called it) was never independent, it’s now controlled by a country with nefarious foreign policy objectives.
Both these call for a complete rethink of the UK’s defence strategy. This will not happen under Starmer. All the more reason to make the case for an independent Scotland – without Trident of course, but likely without NATO either now. More positively, we should engage with European partners who are beginning to talk about a European defence alternative. Not necessarily to join them, but at least to to be part of the discussion. While neutrality might turn out to be Scotland’s best option, there might be a need to collaborate on specific issues such as cyber security and protection of undersea infrastructure. As Germany’s new Chancellor has said, Europe needs to be independent the the USA, and look to its own interests. For Scotland, that can only happen if it becomes independent of the UK.
Paddy – I agree with the substantive part of your comment especially NATO being a busted flush. (I fully expect Trump to threaten to withdraw USA from NATO and UN next).
If Scotland becomes independent it will need to consider how it defends itself though. If a MAGA USA threatens Canada it is not inconceivable that a Reform government at Westminster would threaten Scotland. Scotland is also open to attack and interference by Russia (& USA) due to its geographical location. I agree that we will need to join a European defence arrangement but we cannot do this without committing military resources.
Interesting article and very interesting comments. Thanks Mike and Mark Bevis in particular, but all you others too for creating a genuinely informative piece.
The last few days I’ve seen several British Army and Navy recruitment ads when surfing You Tube. I wonder if these adverts are regional?
This whole piece, starting with Mike’s article but particularly the lengthy and detailed additional information and reflection from Mark Bevis, have been one of the most meaningful things I have read in a long time. It has taken a couple of days for me to formulate why it had this impact on me. I can summarise what I have learned as: We Can’t Afford War. We can’t afford war because it requires a massive diversion of human and financial wealth and effort from health, education, social care and justice – areas of collective life that need more – much more – investment, not less. We can’t afford war because it causes enormous damage to the biosphere at a time when our collective efforts (and ultimate survival) depends on restoring and cherishing the more-than-human world. We can’t afford war because of the waves of emotional damage and trauma it causes: each of the items of military hardware in Mark’s list is a death machine, and each death it causes ripples through lives, families and communities for generations.
Where, in all the commitment to building a European defence force, is the commitment to dialogue, negotiation, mutual understanding, and peace-making? Why is no-one talking about how the UN can be reformed or strengthened so that it can do its job more effectively? As well as the development of other, new initiatives along the same lines. Ordinary people, wherever they live, do not want their country to be invaded by soldiers are ruled by outsiders. But neither do they – we – want war.
We can’t afford war.
@John McLeod, if defence is typically several times cheaper than offence, we can afford to deter war by significantly underspending our potential aggressor. I’ve been unable to post my more complex comment reflecting on this, but perhaps others can take up the point.
@John McLeod
Thank you for your comment.
“We cannot afford war.”
Well said. That is the crux of the situation. I think that the best defence any nation can have is to put their best and most experienced diplomats in their foreign office. After all, in any war, one side surrenders at a certain point and negotiations are entered into. So can we just skip the fighting part and go to the negotiations stage?
So now it appears that the EU has “found” 800,000,000,000 Euros to fund this defence build up. Shame they couldn’t find the same to fund the defence of its citizens from the rampages of neo-liberalism back in 2008.
Clauswitz said “war is the continuation of politics by other means” but he got that partially wrong.
War is in fact the continuation of business by other means. (which I had bold highlighter here!)
Britain’s most successful growth rate was in around 1941, when it increased 41% and unemployment was as low as 50,000. So we can see why EU leaders leap upon this crisis as an opportunity – not a crisis – but an opportunity for a select band of people to make a very large amount of money. And it makes the economy look good, even when it isn’t. For every £10billion spent on defence, how many hospital beds do you close? How many roads remain potholed? How many children go to bed hungry? Etc
I recall studies that show the military-industrial-complex is the least efficient at job creation, when a government funds growth rather than leaving it to the private sector. This was some decades ago, I think the figures were something like:
a state investment in public workers cost £35,000 pa (you know, social workers, police, nurses, council engineers etc), whereas state funding of a defence employee in a private defence company by way of arms contracts cost £76,000 pa.
Yes indeed, we cannot afford war.
GDP should actually stand for Gross Destruction of the Planet.
@Mark Bevis, plus, nuclear weapons which we already have were supposed to deter a conventional Soviet incursion into Europe. If they don’t work against Russia now, did/will they ever?
There are asymmetries which favour the attacker, such as cyber-attacks and sabotage, but you should be guarding those anyway, against criminals and domestic terrorists.
And the USA and its NATO/UN coalitions have been defeated by countries and armies which were a lot poorer than them, some very recently. NATO specialises in killing women, children and the living environment generally (which are specialised effects of chemical and nuclear warfare, and the kind of genocide by heavy bombardment, sniping, starvation, rape and biological terror inflicted by Israel in Gaza, following the USA in IndoChina, the British in its colonies etc).
So, if Sun Tzu is right that “All warfare is based on deception.”, what are the nature of the lies we are being told, what is the purpose of the deception, and who is the real target of these sabre-rattling militarisations, which will simply empower violent reactionary forces within our own countries? (It’s us; it’s always us, the general public and the living world around us and future generations faced with surviving in the ruins)
If attack costs more than defence, it’s much easier to have a disarmament race than an armament race. So warmongers practice over-estimating the strength of the enemy while bleating about how ill-prepared their own ‘defence’ is, despite typically being in charge of it for the at least the last decade.
I largely agree with you but ” After all, in any war, one side surrenders at a certain point and negotiations are entered into. So can we just skip the fighting part and go to the negotiations stage?”
This assumes rational actors willing to negotiate. In this war Russia has invaded a sovereign country and killed thousands of civilians and is not willing to negotiate.
@Editor, so why doesn’t Europe just stop buying Russian oil instead of rearming (which will bizarrely guzzle oil and increase dependency on foreign regimes)?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/24/eu-spends-more-russian-oil-gas-than-financial-aid-ukraine-report
After all, illegal USAmerican economic warfare seems to work better than their military (its embargoes are enforced against allies as well as enemies, mind).
This doesn’t sound like their governments view Russia as a real military threat.
And why, given all this talk of efficiency when it comes to public spending, is profligacy the watchword in militarisation?
Scottish politicians have the war fever too though, even the Greens are on board. The “neutral” Irish government is desperate to join the uniparty too.
With the SNP, it’s not just a search for respectability or a tactical move. Their elected politicians are absolute frothing muscular liberals. Sturgeon was desperate for a no fly zone that even the Tories weren’t prepared to countenance.
These people have an adolescent mindset that the world must bend to their will. Dangerous.
About the first sensible comment I’ve heard in ages, I’m particular sickened by those that would happily stand back while folk thousands of miles away are indiscriminately slaughtered.
Related powerful speech from Professor Jeffrey Sachs at European Parliament:
https://youtu.be/u4c-YRPXDoM?si=cpzXLyucal8d6CXu
transcript here:
https://jordanlee2liberty.substack.com/p/the-geopolitics-of-peace-jeffrey
The UK Ministry of Defence was recently forced to release a handbook explaining its censorship practices:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/mar/08/mod-secrets-uk-freedom-information-act-overhaul