Tags
adam curtis, cnd, game theory, mp, select committee, trident
2 agitprop requests in email today. The first to contact MPs about the vote tomorrow in the HoC whether to proceed with the work necessary to maintain the UK’s ‘nuclear deterrent’; the other to petition the G8 at a climate change summit in a few days to take radical measures to cut CO2 emissions.
I used to be in CND in my 20s and as a teenager. I took a unilateralist position about nuclear disarmament.
The select committee on the nuclear deterrent white paper was televised a few weeks back and coincided with me lying in bed all day with a cold. I must have watched 8 or 10 hours of it. The key question that remains for me is, if 70-80 billion pounds were spent in a different, clever way, how far would it go towards achieving similar overall objectives of insurance against attack?
Adam Curtis’s filmic analysis of the notion of Freedom in the west, the first part of which was broadcast this weekend, tells us that the policy of nuclear stand-off in the cold war was a symptom of the application of game theory, a cynical-sounding theory which proves that the most logical way to be in society is never to trust anyone else as this guarantees social stability and the most favourable material outcome for individuals.
Optimistically, I faxed Glenda Jackson with my appeal:
I would ask you to vote against the Government on this issue so that equally
expensive alternatives, designed to achieve the same security goals as Trident,
and that might better reinforce international respect for the spirit of the NPT,
can be imagined and explored.
