Stephen Lendman

Michael Fallon supports arms sales to despotic regimes like Saudi Arabia, Britain complicit in its aggression on Yemen - Obama’s war, now Trump’s.

He’s escalating it recklessly, the UK complicit in US/Saudi high crimes of war and against humanity in Yemen and other regional war theaters.

Fallon praised missile maker MBDA, calling the company a “role model” for business Britain seeks post-Brexit.

It’s “strengthening the reputation of this country,” he blustered. It has “a great reputation (for providing) sterling service.”

Its expertise is mass slaughter and destruction, profiting from doing business with the devil, despotic regimes like Saudi Arabia - using terror weapons and toxic agents, supplying them to terrorists, raping Yemen, brutalizing its own people.

MBDA missiles are used to terror-bomb Yemeni schools, hospitals, mosques, food storage facilities and residential communities.

Defense companies profit from warmaking, conspiring with tyrants, aiding their high crimes.

According to Fallon, MBDA built “a great reputation manufacturing missiles that keep us safe” - from invented enemies, he failed to explain.

At the company’s Stevenage headquarters, he said “we are leaving the European Union, but in leaving…we are going to become an even more global country, reaching out to our friends and allies across the world.”

“If you want to know what that means in practice, look at yourselves, look at your company here.”

“A partnership that already combines British, French, German, Italian skills in one company, forming the only European group that is capable of creating these kinds of missile systems that meet the multiple demands of all the different domains: land, sea, and air.”

“You are a role model here for the kind of partnerships we’ll be seeking in future: for our defense, for our manufacturing, and for our country.”

Asked about Britain permitting arms sales to rogue states, Fallon lied claiming “our arms export criteria are some of the strictest…in the world, and we take very good care to look at every single license application to make sure they conform to the criteria.”

Also asked about selling missiles and other weapons to Saudi Arabia, using them to massacre Yemeni civilians, Fallon again lied, claiming Rihadh “has the right to defend itself,” falsely saying it was attacked, ignoring its genocidal naked aggression.

“Are we supporting” UK arms makers and regimes like Riyadh? Absolutely,” Fallon blustered. According to London’s Independent, “Britain has sold weapons to 22 of the 30 countries on its own human rights watch list since 2010” - rogue states responsible for horrendous high crimes.

It’s policies are being judicially challenged by anti-war activists, maintaining it consistently violates its own arms exporting criteria by doing business with despotic regimes.

According to Campaign Against the Arms Trade’s Andrew Smith, “(i)f Fallon believes MBDA is a role model, then it says very worrying things about how he sees the UK’s post-Brexit future.”

“MBDA is a company that profits from war and arms tyrants, it is among the last companies Fallon should be encouraging others to replicate.”

“If the UK is to play a positive role on the world stage, then arms companies like MBDA need to be condemned, not celebrated and glorified by Government ministers.”

Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs spokesperson Tom Brake called Fallon’s Tory party an “arms dealer of choice for the world’s most repressive regimes.”

“If this is Theresa May’s vision of a global Britain, it is one which millions of people across the country are disgusted by and want nothing to do with.”

The same goes for US duopoly governance, Republicans and Democrats in bed with a rogue’s gallery of despotic regimes.

In January, Fallon said banned cluster munitions sold by Britain to Riyadh were used in terror-bombing Yemen.

America, Britain, NATO, Israel, Saudi Arabia and other regional rogue states are responsible for horrific high crimes of war and against humanity in the Middle East, North Africa, Asia and elsewhere.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at http://www.sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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