Posts Tagged ‘Arms’
Thursday, March 18th, 2010
Diarmuid Jeffreys; 18/3/10
The three-year conflict that set Communist North Korea against a South Korea supported by a UN coalition headed by the US. It was the first armed confrontation of the Cold War and by the time a truce was agreed in 1953, two million soldiers and two million civilians had been killed or wounded. Six decades on, the conflict is still not formally resolved. Troops from both sides continue to face each other across the 38th parallel, while the relationship between Washington and Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, is dominated by acrimonious quarrels over the latter’s nuclear weapons programme. But there is another bitter and intractable dispute that continues to haunt both sides. North Korea alleges that the US used biological weapons against Korean civilians during the war– dropping “germ” bombs containing insects, shellfish and feathers infected with anthrax, typhoid and bubonic plague on villages across the country.
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Tags: Arms, Korea, Terrorism, USA
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Monday, March 15th, 2010
Dennis Shanahan; 15/3/10
Diplomatic relations between Australia and Japan are spreading beyond the emotional issue of whale hunting in the Antarctic, as Japanese resentment grows at Kevin Rudd’s decision not to attend a nuclear disarmament meeting in Washington next month. Tokyo’s anger over the Rudd government’s renewed threat to take it to the International Court of Justice over whaling has fuelled disappointment at the Prime Minister’s shifting emphasis on nuclear non-proliferation. Last week, senior Japanese officials circulated an assessment of Japan-Australia relations after the first visit of new Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, which praised progress on trade, defence, disaster relief and nuclear non-proliferation. But the assessment contained blunt views about the Australian government’s threat to take Japan to the ICJ and the refusal to cite the legal grounds for any action outside the International Whaling Commission talks. It also stressed the importance of continuing discussions on the nuclear issue.
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Tags: Arms, Australia, Japan, Nuclear, UN, USA
Posted in Arms, Environment, Japan, USA, United Nations | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
Peter Alfordl; 10/3/10
Japanese governments lied to their people for more than 30 years about a “tacit” secret agreement allowing nuclear-armed US vessels to use their ports, a special Foreign Ministry panel reported yesterday. The tacit agreement, an undisclosed adjunct to the 1960 revision of the US-Japan Security Treaty, allowed breaches of Japan’s Three Non-Nuclear Principles until 1991 when Washington officially halted deployment of tactical nuclear weapons on warships. Successive conservative governments “offered dishonest explanations, including lies from beginning to end”, the panel convened by Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada reported yesterday. “This attitude should not have been allowed under the principle of democracy,” Mr Okada said. He said it could not be discounted that nuclear weapons passed through Japan during that period – many experts believe it happened frequently – but that current security arrangements between the two countries were unaffected.
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Tags: Arms, Environment, Japan
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Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
Troy Lennon; 2/3/10
The documentary “Contact”, screening on the ABC (Australia)_ on Thursday, looks at the moment that first contact took place between the last wandering band of Martu Aborigines and white people in the West Australian deserts less than 50 years ago. In 1946, the Australian government had announced plans to establish a rocket- testing range at Woomera in South Australia, with a target zone in Western Australia. But right in the path of the rockets were thousands of hectares of land still inhabited by bands of nomadic Aborigines. In the ’40s the government appointed a native patrol officer, Walter MacDougall, whose job was to make sure no people lived in the rocket target zone. MacDougall had to cover a vast, arid area – an easy place for people to hide. He cleared many of the people out but even after more than a decade, some still remained.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Arms, Australia, Human Rights
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Monday, February 15th, 2010
Steven Freeland; 15/2/10
There are approximately 300,000 children acting as front-line troops in armed conflict worldwide, with another 500,000 who are conscripted into government, paramilitary and guerilla groups as sex slaves, porters, cooks, spies and to plant landmines. These young boys and girls, who under international law are regarded as ”children”, are often forced to participate in the commission of heinous crimes. This horrific trend has a number of root causes. Children are seen as ”attractive” participants in armed conflict. They are vulnerable to outside influences, can be trained to become efficient soldiers and can be made to perform the most dangerous (and brutal) of tasks, through intimidation, manipulation, or under the influence of drugs. In addition, the proliferation of lightweight weapons such as the AK-47 means that children can be effectively deployed in active combat.
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Tags: Arms, Childrens Rights, Global
Posted in Health & Children, Human Rights, War | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010
Bret Stephens; 10/2/10
There are some excellent arguments for ending the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. And there are some lousy ones. Leave it to the people who mistake moral preening for thought to make the lousiest ones of all. For instance: ending the policy is the great civil-rights cause of our time. As compared to what? On the scale of moral precedence, “don’t ask, don’t tell” is trivial compared to the abuse of women in the Muslim world, or of political dissidents in Cuba, or of homosexuals in Iran, or of American children in inner-city public schools; the support of Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen for ending the policy is the last word on the matter. The argument might have been more convincing if Adm. Mullen hadn’t located his conscience at this moment of maximum political convenience, after saying he’d served alongside homosexuals since 1968.
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Tags: Arms, Homosexuality, USA
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Monday, February 8th, 2010
8/2/10
After ignoring and dodging the issue for years, the US army is being forced to face the alarming numbers of soldiers who are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The suicide rate among troops on active duty is at an all time high and rising, while veterans are bringing the war home to their families and communities in the form of addiction, abuse and even murder. They are committing suicide at the rate of 18 a day. Al Jazeera’s The War Within programme examined the toll repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan are taking on soldiers. To understand the symptoms and causes of PTSD from a medical perspective, Al Jazeera spoke to Barbara Van Dahlen, a clinical psychologist and the president and founder of Give An Hour (GAH), a nonprofit organisation that provides free mental health services to US military personnel and their families who have been affected by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan
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Tags: Arms, health, USA
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Thursday, February 4th, 2010
Matt Wade; 4/2/10
The guns fell silent more than eight months ago but the brutal conclusion to Sri Lanka’s civil war is still being felt by Tamils caught up in the conflict. Anthony Pillai, his wife and four children were among thousands of civilians who fled fighting in the north-east two days before the Tamil Tiger rebels were defeated last May. During the escape, disaster struck. Mr Pillai trod on a landmine hidden beside a lagoon. It blew off his right leg below the knee and sprayed his wife, Mary Josephine, with shrapnel. But worse was to come. When the couple’s son, 26-year old Jayadevan, heard his mother’s scream and turned to help he, too, trod on a mine that shredded his right foot. ”It was so terrible; we couldn’t tell where the mines were,” Mr Pillai told the Herald.
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Tags: Arms, Human Rights, Sri Lanka
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Robert Milliken; 30/1/10
From the air above Maralinga you can still see the sites where Britain tested nuclear weapons in the South Australian desert 54 years ago. At least one is still contaminated with plutonium. The township that once hummed with Australian and British servicemen and nuclear scientists is just a shell. But if the new owners have their way, this secret place, once an unlikely flashpoint of the Cold War, may soon have a fresh life. The new owners are really the old owners: the Maralinga-Trarutja Aborigines, who were pushed aside when their traditional lands became an atomic testing ground. Late last month dignitaries again flew in, this time to witness a ceremony marking the symbolic closure of one of Australia’s most bizarre stories.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Arms, Australia, Environment, UK
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Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Simon Moyle; 30/1/10
As reported in The Age last week (22/1), the Australian Defence Force has swiftly removed biblical references from soldiers’ gunsights manufactured by US company Trijicon. The gunsights, which some US Army commanders have dubbed ‘’spiritually transformed firearm[s] of Jesus Christ”, have scripture references stamped next to their serial numbers. These revelations have once again raised questions over the connection between religion, particularly Christianity, and violence. As a Christian and a church leader I could not be more appalled at the distortion of Christianity these inscriptions represent. It seems timely then to make a solid defence of the non-violence of Christianity. As the great Indian independence leader, Mahatma Gandhi, said: ”Jesus Christ is the most perfect example of non-violence in history,” and paused before adding, ”And the only people who don’t realise this are Christians.’
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Tags: Arms, Australia, Christianity
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Friday, January 29th, 2010
Ian McPhedran; 29/1/10
The Rudd Government has refused to help Australian veterans suing the British Government over radiation exposure during atomic bomb tests in the 1950s and ’60s. A group of survivors and their families are joining a class action after 800 British nuclear veterans were granted permission to sue the UK Ministry of Defence. Many of the soldiers were covered in radioactive fallout from the blasts while wearing just a hat, shorts and boots and were later treated for radiation sickness. They were never told of the risks involved and many were used as human guinea pigs to test deadly chemicals, including mustard gas.
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Tags: Arms, Australia, Nuclear, UK
Posted in Arms, Australia, Environment, Health & Children, Human Rights | No Comments »
Monday, January 25th, 2010
Riyadh Mohammed; 25/1/10
Fraud charges have been laid against a British supplier. IRAQI officials have reacted with anger to news that the director of a British company that supplies bomb detectors to Iraq has been arrested on fraud charges, and the export of the devices has been banned. ”This company not only caused grave and massive losses of funds, but it has caused grave and massive losses of the lives of innocent Iraqi civilians, by the hundreds and thousands, from attacks that we thought we were immune to because we have this device,” said Ammar Tuma, a member of the Iraqi parliament’s security and defence committee. But the Ministry of the Interior has not withdrawn the devices from service, and police continue to use them at checkpoints throughout Baghdad.
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Tags: Arms, Iraq, Trade, UK
Posted in Aid / Trade, Arms, Iraq | No Comments »
Saturday, January 23rd, 2010
Brandan Nicholson; 23/1/10
Defence Minister John Faulkner has told the defence forces to find a way to remove biblical messages etched into gunsights that are prized by Australian special forces in Afghanistan. The use by US, British, Australian and New Zealand troops of sights bearing references to scriptural passages has raised alarm among military and political leaders that it could reinforce the view that the West is waging a crusade against Islam. Senator Faulkner examined some of the US-manufactured sights during a tour of defence facilities in Victoria yesterday and asked Defence officials to suggest options to get rid of the controversial inscriptions. “It’s a sensitive matter and we’ll have to deal with them,” Senator Faulkner’s spokesman said later.
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Tags: Arms, Australia, Religion, Terrorism, USA
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Monday, January 11th, 2010
Amos Harel; 11/1/10
The U.S. Army will double the value of emergency military equipment it stockpiles on Israeli soil, and Israel will be allowed to use the U.S. ordnance in the event of a military emergency, according to a report in Monday’s issue of the U.S. weekly Defense News. The report, written by Barbara Opall-Rome, the magazine’s Israel correspondent, said that an agreement reached between Washington and Jerusalem last month will bring the value of the military gear to $800 million. This is the final phase of a process that began over a year ago to determine the type and amount of U.S. weapons and ammunition to be stored in Israel, part of an overarching American effort to stockpile weapons in areas in which its army may need to operate while allowing American allies to make use of the ordnance in emergencies.
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Tags: Arms, Israel, Mercenaries, USA
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Friday, January 8th, 2010
Duncan Campbell; 8/1/10
More than five years ago, Mordechai Vanunu, a former technician at the Israeli nuclear facility in Dimona, was released from prison after serving 18 years for revealing Israel’s nuclear weapons secrets. This week he was arrested again in Occupied Jerusalem, accused of talking to foreigners, in breach of conditions imposed on his release. It was in 1986 that Vanunu told his story to the Sunday Times and was lured to Italy by a Mossad agent, where he was drugged and sent back to Israel, charged with treason and espionage. He emerged from prison in 2004 believing even more passionately in a nuclear-free world, and non-violence as a solution to the problems in the Middle East. His defiance has taken the form of talking to whoever will listen, and for this he continues to be prevented from joining his adoptive parents in the US or supporters who have offered him a home elsewhere. His latest arrest stems from a relationship with a Norwegian woman. As his lawyer said this week: “He is not accused of divulging any information. She is not interested in nuclear matters — she is interested in Mordechai Vanunu, who seems to be interested in her.”
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Tags: Arms, Israel, Nuclear, USA
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Friday, January 1st, 2010
Jonathan Power; 1/1/10
If in 2010 the big nuclear weapons powers and UN Security Council permanent members — the US, Russia, China, Britain and France — don’t make significant reductions with their nuclear weapons then an important opportunity will be lost. Presidents Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitri Medvedev appear to be of a mind on this. One has to go back to the presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson to get the full picture on the dismal progress on nuclear disarmament. Their Defense Secretary Robert McNamara told both presidents nuclear weapons were unusable. Henry Kissinger, when national security adviser to President Richard Nixon, publicly said the same, chiding the Europeans for thinking that they were under an American umbrella. He told them bluntly that America would never sacrifice its own cities to revenge European ones.
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Tags: Arms, Global
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