St Athan protest creates more wind from big Rod

For a man supposedly fluent in both Welsh and English, Wales First Minister Rhodri Morgan sometimes struggles to make any sense at all. His comment on the anti-St Athan protest at the Senedd on Jan 17 was a prime example:

"The reference to Raytheon and cluster bombs by campaigners is a simple guilt by association argument with absolutely no supporting evidence"

Translation anybody?

Raytheon is part of the Metrix consortium which plans to build the giant privatised defence academy at St Athan. And as we have already pointed out on this site, Raytheon most certainly do make the delivery systems for cluster bombs, and, indeed, depleted uranium weapons. How do we know this? Because they admit it themselves!

Or maybe the chief clown at the Cardiff Bay circus intends a different meaning: that the rest of the Metrix consortium, and the Welsh Assembly government, cannot be held responsible for the actions of their business partners.

Does anyone else in Wales share this bizarre view?

Wales' great leader goes on to conclude:

"They should be ashamed of themselves for using such a smear as a substitute for intelligent argument"

Psychologists call such a statement projection.

The St Athan campaign should perhaps be grateful the protest got any press coverage at all, given the craven attitude of the media towards the St Athan development and its willing repetition of the lies about how many jobs it will create in South Wales. Once again the BBC failed to report the action, even through its online news: the truth is that BBC newsrooms have existed in a state of paranoia since the Hutton Report - not the fault of individual journalists, most of whom undoubtedly hold the report in the same contempt as the rest of us - but of a management determined never again to incur the wrath of its paymasters.

The Senedd demo, though fully justified, was a small one: only to be expected for a protest on a weekday lunchtime. Congratulations to all who took part, however - the occasion's been marked, and we can now look forward to a major demo in the Spring which even the BBC will be unable to ignore, however much big Rod might wish it.

Campaign leaflets and posters can be downloaded from our Cardiff branch site.

Sat 19, January 2008 @ 11:37