Four combined pressures for militarisation

Within our society there are four powerful bodies with an interest in increased militarisation:

  • the bureaucracy always seeks greater power for itself, as any bureaucracy always does;
  • the military seeks new tactical weapons and greater destructive power from those it has;
  • academia wants sources of funding and bids for money from government and the arms industry in exchange for more developing more powerful and new types of weaponry;
  • arms industry corporations want to increase profits and look for more powerful and novel destructive weapons to sell and new markets to sell them to.

The bureaucracy supports the military’s expansion, funds academic military research and provides trade to the arms industry.

The military funds academic military research and encourages the arms industry to develop more powerful weapons and new types of weapon and pressures the bureaucracy to allow greater novelty in weaponry.  It campaigns for greater acceptance of militarisation within society, especially children.

Academia develops more destructive weapons, greater killing efficiency from weapons and devises new ways to be destructive benefiting the military’s aims for faster and greater destruction and opportunities for the arms industry to make profits.

The arms industry campaigns for less controls on weapon use, funds research into novel types of weaponry, promotes the threat and use of violent conflict as a diplomatic approach by the bureaucracy.

Between them they have the power, desire, intellect and money to promote war-making.

It’s amazing the peace sector makes any progress against them at all.

 

“We need to maintain defence spending to protect jobs”

“We need to maintain defence spending to protect jobs”

Protecting jobs does not seem to matter in any other sector.  Why should defence be different from other sectors such as health, social services or education?

The defence sector comprises private industry, other government spending is mostly public sector.  Why should private industry jobs be protected by the government when public sector jobs are being cut?

“We need to maintain defence spending to protect jobs”

It is illegal under European law to prop up a filing industry to make it competitive.  This has been applied a number of times, for example to stop the French government propping up French airlines.  Counter argument: Why is the defence industry being propped up with government money?

“We need to maintain defence spending to protect jobs”

The UK defence industry is hailed as a great success as it is our biggest exporter.  If it is so successful and bringing in so much money, Why does the defence industry need propping up?

“We need to maintain defence spending to protect jobs”

If the purpose of defence spending is to protect jobs, why not give them jobs in another useful sector, working in a constructive way, such as civil engineering, major environmental projects, improved land management, improved water management, pollution control or research?  Why should they continue to work in the arms industry and not something else?

“We need to maintain defence spending to protect jobs”

It’s not really jobs that matter to maintain votes, it is standard of living.   If the purpose of defence spending is to keep these people in a manner to which they are accustomed, pension them all off.  Sell off their places of work, stop buying raw materials, stop using energy making stuff for the sake of it and stop producing unnecessary products that will require careful storage and subsequent disposal.  Why not save money by paying those people to stay at home?

Claiming “we need to maintain defence spending to protect jobs” does not stand up.

What do you think?

“Let Us Begin”, John Denver

In June 1986 John Denver released the album One World which has the track Let Us Begin, an anti-war song, which had been released as a single.  On this day of that year, 30th July 1986, his record label, RCA, pulled the single.  RCA had been acquired by General Electric, a major arms manufacturer, and they did not like this song with its lyrics of feeding the war machine but not babies.  Thus the powerful, who get rich from making killing devices, get to silence the pacifists to protect their profits.

A video John produced to go with the song, with a short introduction from him, is here on YouTube.

The lyrics.

This is simply the best piece of work that I’ve done in my career.

John Denver, 10th December 1987

Source: www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=10947# amongst others.

The USA is happy with itself as it is: frightened

Having wasted most of the weekend online arguing with pro-gun people in the USA, I have given up.  I have tried this before and keep coming to the same conclusion: they are happy as they are.

They believe the level of violence and gun-related deaths is quite low compared to other causes of death, and so is quite acceptable.

They believe there is a huge threat to society waiting to get them and, unless there is a ready civilian militia armed to a military standard, it could get them at any time.  They need to be ready.

They believe that people being armed is why their society is so peaceful, that it is only unarmed people that are victims of crime, and it is their own fault for not being armed.

It is a belief system.  Facts and statistics are immaterial and disregarded.  You cannot argue using logic against a belief system.

Essentially what they have developed is a Gun Faith.  Guns are worshipped, adored, protected by the constitution and idolised.  ‘Idolised’ being the operative word.  Some people carry a St Christopher, some wear a cross, some carry a picture of Mary and some wear a birthstone crystal.  In the USA people carry a gun for the same reason: faith it will protect them.  Despite the factual evidence to the contrary.

A funny thing about religions is how people take it to extremes to prove their faith: growing a couple of locks of hair really long, totally covering their women, refusing to shave.  In the USA Gun Faith the extremists carry semi-automatic rifles simply as symbols of devotion.  The NRA is the church of this religion.  I get all that now.

That’s why people have started referring to the pro-gun lobby online as The American Taliban.

Would an anti-apartheid style campaign work regarding guns?

I’ve just been cheerfully posting this in various groups’ pages on FaceBook:

Idea: someone maintain a site of what international companies support the NRA so those of us in the rest of the world can boycott them in our countries.
We’re sick of this insane gun mentality too – what starts in America usually spreads elsewhere and the insane gun-worship mentality needs to stop.
So let’s start an international NRA boycott campaign like the anti-apartheid campaign!
We just need to know who to boycott, starting with any of this lot with overseas divisions:

Those companies are, of course, all arms manufacturers or retailers.  Yes, the NRA really is the marketing and political arm of the arms industry.

The Kalashnikov assault rifle as “a sacred weapon”

I can understand why the Russians want statues to The Great Patriotic War, fought for survival against a treacherous Nazi Germany that was hugely important in the eventual end of World War 2 for the allies.

I can also understand the desire to recognise the tools of this victory, such as the remarkably effective T-34 medium tank.

But a statue to the Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle seems a bit odd.  Firstly, because it was produced after WW2, but especially because of its history since then for unlicensed production, illicit black market trade and as the weapon of choice for revolutionaries, terrorists, drug cartels, pirates and criminals.  It made the BBC news because the statue’s designer put the wrong parts diagram on a plate on the statue.

What the BBC did not say was the statue is unpopular locally and the unveiling of the statue to the AK47’s inventor resulted in the arrest of the sole protestor,  link, proclaiming “a creator of weapons is a creator of death”.

But I am puzzled by the words of Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin of the Russian Orthodox Church who describes it as “a sacred weapon.  What a strange Christian.  But then, he also endorses female genital mutilation, so his opinion is not that worthwhile.

Incidentally, the roughly estimated 100 million genuine and copied AK-47s in the world are responsible for about a quarter of a million killings every year.

The Woman-Power Debate, March 1941

In learning about the workforce requirements of total war, specifically the debate in the House of Commons about conscripting women to work on the land and in munitions factories in March 1941 Britain during World War Two, I saw a quote which gave me pause.

Agnes Hardie MP was arguing that “it has been a tradition for generations that war is a man’s job and women have the bearing and raising of children and should be exempt from war“.  I bet that comes up a lot in the gender studies modules of Peace Studies degrees.  (Hansard, House of Commons, 5th series, vol. 376 (1941–1942), Parliamentary Debates November 12–December 19, 1941, Debate on Maximum National Effort 2/12 (1941), col. 1,079.)

While one side argued in the Woman-Power Debate that female war work was heroic and liberating, this was countered with concerns that increasing state management of women’s lives threatened to undermine both family life and femininity.  Agnes Hardie argued that mothers were “doing a far more important job for the future generations…than filling shells with which to kill some other mother’s son” (Hansard, vol. 370 (March–April 1941), Woman-Power Debate, cols 351–3).

As King Baudouin I of Belgium said: “It takes 20 years or more of peace to make a man; it takes only 20 seconds of war to destroy him”.

Note for later: I wonder if the Bill to conscript women permitted the the right to conscientious objection, like the Miltary Service Act 1916 did for men?  I think it may have been the National Service (Armed Forces) Act 1939, but there’s also “In December 1941 Parliament passed a second National Service Act. It widened the scope of conscription still further by making all unmarried women and all childless widows between the ages of 20 and 30 liable to call-up.”  If so, I think it permitted them the right to object to military service, but does that include filling shells?  They did, however, get the choice whether to work in factories or on the land.