THE LASER GUN This Year
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"You are not guilty because you are m m anarchtstmtfortnightiy ignorant but you are guilty when you resign yourselves to ignorance. " Guiseppe Mazsini FreedomFIFTY PENCE (1805- 1872) Vol. 55 No.6 19 MARCH 1994 THE LASER GUN this year. Such a weapon could easily - made in Britain? be copied for production elsewhere". part from the Sunday Times which could cause instant incurable e are constantly, and rightly, report (quoted in Freedom, ‘No blindness are being manufactured A reminded - now with a film - of More Hiroshimas (perhaps)’, 22nd and could soon proliferate through W the ‘Holocaust’, the example p a r January) the media have shown very the world’s trouble spots”. little interest in the warnings and excellen ce of man’s inhumanity to man, but there is very little interest, pleadings of the International “Laser weapons are silent; their beams are Commission of the Red Cross (ICRC) totally invisible and their effects let alone indignation, shown in the to have the laser gun banned. The Instantaneous, making it impossible for West for the two atomic bombings on public, it would seem, is much more human targets to defend themselves.” Hiroshima and Nagasaki or the block interested in the excavations and bombing of the civilian population (by exhumations at 25 Cromwell Street, It would appear that military conventional bombs) of Dresden and Gloucester. laboratories in the US, Russia, Hamburg. (Indeed the Brits recently Be that as it may, we are more Britain and France have been (continued on page 2) interested in the potential of the laser working on “blindness’ weapons for gun, more horrific, more cold-blooded some years, not only to counteract and sick than the actions of the ‘mass’ their effect on their own equipment murderers in Gloucester or in but also for ‘offensive use’. The Paper-W ealth- Hebron, because it is the dream-child According to the G uardian's report, of our society’s respected scientists, the Red Cross appeal made at the end Producers are now technologists, industrialists. of last month (we have seen no reports of government reactions) was A h ead h e G uardian (19th February) probably prompted by the fact that ccording to a report issued by the Treports from Geneva some of the the US “may begin manufacturing A Corporation of London in ICRC’s warnings: “portable laser guns laser guns, mounted on an M-16 rifle, conjunction with the London Business School, the City’s financial services industry accounts for more than a quarter of UK gross domestic product (GDP). And this, according to NEW DEAL FOR Professor Richard Brealey of the LBS, was larger than manufacturing in revenue terms. PART-TIME WORKERS? So what do those 120,000 busy bees NOT WITHOUT WORKERS' MILITANCY! employed in the City's square mile ‘produce’ which is so profitable? he Neanderthal members of the and hire as he pleases the part-time Shipbuilding - no, shipbrdking TTory Party are up in arms at two workers, and no holiday pay or commissions; international insurance judicial rulings: one gives part-time redundancy, no insurance and no ‘earns’ about £1.8 billion a year and workers the same rights as their minimum rate of pay. And for the as much from Forex (foreign full-time fellow wage slaves; the full-time workers: if the bosses have exchange) trading; and the Stock got to p ay in su ra n c e a n d holiday pay, second limits the maximum number Exchange s international trading of working hours to 48 in the week. make ’em work more than 48 hours a system is “the other main success The first ukase came from the Law week and employ fewer workers, sto ry ”. Lords by a four to one majority; the which m eans less of the silly frills like Thats very good news! But can we second was a Brussels directive from holiday pay, sick pay and National Insu ran ce. on ^11 the output of paper the European Union. Produced in that vital ‘square mile’ The notorious Tory MP William (Bill There was old Bill-the-Neanderthal- which obviously makes a few people to his friends) Cash who always man explaining that if Britain was to very rich though we are sure they appears on ‘Newsnight’, let the cat out survive we must be able to co m p ete don t eat any of that paper. They too of the bag when, as to be expected, he with the developing Far East and this rely on the real producers ofw ea lth . denounced both decisions (so for old means wages must also com pete. the under-paid farmworkers to start Bill not only is Brussels out of order This will prove somewhat difficult, With, and all those engaged in but even his own Law Lords) and his we imagine, since the wages in some Providing the services we all need for reasons are the usual ones - which of these countries are about $2 a day a civilised existence. When re!j certainly meet with the approval of — not £2 and not per hour! realise that they ^ rf deClde to do No possible fr e e m a rk et caprtalist producers of wealth an ^ b u t i o no f most of Major’s cabinet: namely that something about the ‘redJ stn employment of labour must be solution exists so long aS e Is - - - • * ■■ . f n n n t in u e0** d P&QB 2 ) w e a l t h ”? w EDITORIAL COMMENTS FREEDOM • 19th March 1994 THE LASER GUN - made in Britain? NEW DEAL FOR PART-TIME WORKERS? NOT WITHOUT WORKERS’ MILITANCY! (continued from page 1) following the technology's development erected a status to ‘Bomber’ Harris’s (that is of the portable laser gun). He (continued Jrom page 1) get work, any work, even at slave labour memory.) thinks the ICRC is right to raise the issue a vast difference in the standards of living pay - potential scabs) are the only It would seem that the brainwashed of legal control (note: not of abolition) between East and West, as at present. practical demands, coupled with direct public cannot see that the scientific “because if this form of weaponry gets out Even within the ‘prosperous’ West, where action, that can even justify their killing of man by man is just as heinous of control it could introduce a new and all the former Central European countries continued existence. and sick as the Holocaust and the various unnecessarily harmful form of warfare" are wanting to join the European ‘club’. The unions know full well that the Cromwell Streets, Hebrons, Wacos, et (our italics). Germany’s neighbour Czechoslovakia is a employers will get round the Law Lords’ alia. Until society will condemn, banish Presumably for Rupert Pengelley, “some ukase about part-time workers’ rights those scientists and technologists who case in point An industrialised country, weapons are more unnecessarily harmful but the workers’ wages (according to a simply by sacking them shortly before are prepared to engage in the than others" - surely we are living in a they have worked two years (when their development of even more ghastly news item on BBC World Radio) are a worldwide madhouse! sixteenth of what a German worker gets equal rights with full-time workers weapons of destruction, as enemies of operate). And as for the 48-hour week, mankind, it will go on and the merchants nd last but not least, the Ministry of in the same job. of death will go on profiting from it. The ‘free market* is a fiction of the that surely can be fiddled by a bit of skilful A Defence when approached said it was book-keeping! All these new weapons are, after all, good aware of the ICRC’s concern but would capitalist fundamentalist sect. The fact is for business. Ministers who have been give no information on its own research it doesn’t work. After all, is not the USA appearing before the Scott Inquiry into and the Royal Navy’s programme. threatening sanctions against Japan s we write, young working women who the supplying of military weapons and For those readers who have forgotten unless they open their markets to reduce Abecome pregnant are now legally equipment to Iraq right up to their what the laser gun’s function is, we quote the export-import imbalance? entitled to all kinds of benefits at the invasion of Kuwait emphasised that an again from the Sunday Times feature of employer’s expense. Needless to say, important consideration was the number 9th January: The purpose of the laser ut the other basic fact is that the latest when top CBI spokesmen were of jobs dependent on this dirty arms gun is “to blind enemy troops byBruling from the Law Lords and interviewed on television’s ‘Newsnight’, as business. No such consideration, burning out their eyes". Brussels will not work so long as there are to be expected they were not alarmed. All however, for the 100,000 and more And in our 22nd January editorial four million unemployed, most of them they said was that they would obviously miners who have lost their jobs as a result comment we maintained that all involved desperately looking for a job, and trades employ fewer young married women! of the privatisation of the electricity in the research and development of the unions which are impotent so long as they When will the workers of the world industry. laser gun should be named and cannot, or refuse to, see that realise that no legislation, no articles in denounced as Enemies o f the Peoplel work-sharing, the shorter working week Freedom, will change the status quo until hat we are living in a sick society is and solidarity with the unemployed (who there is a massive revolt worldwide by all Tsurely demonstrated by the public’s should be encouraged to Join: after all, who are dependent on an employer for the hen will the tabloids, those basic needs for their survival? acceptance as normal the ‘Research and Wself-declared amis du peuple, give they are - because they are desperate to Development* into ever-more lethal less space for their ghoulish fascination weapons of destruction.