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I remember learning about “collateral murder”: the unfortunate people killed by drones for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I imagine what it would be like if I were taken out in a drive-by shooting. Someone would care, but I would be dead. But the war machine doesn’t care. It doesn’t have a heart, or a head. It makes my skin crawl, thinking that there are people who have deliberately made the economy what it is, so that more guns go out into the world, so that more people are killed. Even from an economic point of view, that is of no benefit to me. It is the bad karma that I feel when I wake up angry in the night because the CEOs of companies like Boeing are taking advantage of us and our ignorance, because we know not the people taken out by our weaponry.
And it will be “our weaponry”, for as long as I am a citizen of a country that makes those weapons. I don’t like this. It’s like being a citizen of a country that is an environmental vandal and a poor global citizen… no, wait. We are a country of environmental vandals. We had perfectly good Cloud Forest until James Cook arrived, and the quality of our forests went downhill from then. But why should war mongering companies care about my bleeding heart? I watched Doctor Samantha Nutt and her TED talk.
She made an impact on me with her case for de- weaponising, discussing the collateral damage of warfare on the environment, famine, disease, malnutrition, and dehydration. War is called a humanitarian crisis, but this is just brainwashing. War is people setting themselves up to kill other people. Australia is making weapons, using my tax money, siphoning it up the food chain to companies like Boeing, paying them to make drones that can target civilians
and kill them and then claim human error. It stinks.
AK47 rifles can be purchased by 8 year olds for $10, to shake down their fellow humans for money. Some people will say “Never again” to war, but they don’t realise that weapons manufacture is an integral part of our economy. Our Prime Minister is setting us up to be one of the world’s top ten weapons manufacturers. He’s not going to listen to me, to the sickness in my stomach. The PM wants us to make weapons because they are the easiest way to place our country on the global stage, because selling weapons is the easiest way to make shit-tons of money.
Every year, I go mental about ANZAC Day, because the ANZACs have a holistic condition, called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Pharmaceutical medicine is ineffective in the holistic treatment of PTSD, which refers to the spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical effects. They don’t talk about it all! They aren’t getting better by not talking about it. We just have to pretend that we are OK with it. No one asked me whether I wanted people to go to war for me. I’m just the collateral damage.
There is a near-infinite supply of small weapons throughout the world. In some places it is easier to get access to a weapon than to clean drinking water. People are dying in poorer countries from war. War is enabling the rich exporters of weapons to profit from the collateral murder of the users of these weapons. The five member-nations of the UN Security Council produce most of the weapons in circulation in the world. That’s not security. Security does not come from the barrel of a gun.
Since the American War on Terror began, the business of the small arms trade has grown 300%. Deaths have risen exponentially. This relationship is worthy of scrutiny. Many of these arms are in the hands of ISIS. In Africa, they cross the Sahel from Libya, and end up in the hands of other militant groups, like Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda. Small arms anywhere are a menace everywhere, and their first stop is rarely their last. Money spent per person per year on war is twelve times that spent on humanitarian assistance. It follows the simple economic game of supply and demand.
But we can push our government to utilise transparency agreements, like the Arms Trade Treaty, so that rich countries are held more accountable. This will not solve the problem of war, but it is a step in the right direction. Generations around the world have been, are still being, lost to war. We can disrupt this cycle of war: by investing in education, especially for women and girls; by strengthening the rule of law; by investing in local people, income generation, and
human rights. War is ours, we buy it, we sell it, we spread it, we wage it. Therefore we are not powerless to solve it, and we are the only ones who can.
Then there was the day I went to the Land Forces Exposition: an arms fair at Southbank! Come and get yourself a tank! I went to see whether the defence industry gives a shit about the environment. The single astonishing fact that remains, that I just can’t seem to get over, is about PFAS (Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances). Every single greaseproof paper wrapping our takeaway food comes in is coated in PFAS. And it is used everywhere the army trains, as fire extinguisher. It gets into the water table, the underground aquifers… it is an ever-increasing environmental hazard. If I, as a business, wanted to carry out similar activities, I would need to have an Environmental Impact Assessment. Not so the defence industry. They are above those laws. They are environmental vandals. There is no way yet known that we can break down PFAS. It is carcinogenic, but our environmental laws do not curb this travesty. I was
sickened by what I saw at the Land Forces Expo, this industry that our Prime Monster, I mean Minister, aspires to drag Australia into.
My father was a Serbian Yugoslav. I wanted to become a dual citizen so that I could travel more easily in Europe. I assumed that Serbia would be in the European Union. I was gobsmacked to find out the steps and the procedures they have to employ, to dismantle the unexploded land mines and ameliorate the chemical pollution from warfare, that are all over Serbia, before they can move up from probationary candidacy in the EU.
But the worst, most sickening, environmental consequence of warfare, in my opinion, is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Children grow up too fast, and take on the rigid family roles of their sick parents suffering from the effects of war. This is how multigenerational trauma perpetuates itself; children learn to be seen and not heard. They learn from the parents to stay silent, deny, ignore, and isolate history, and what has gone before.
“Love it or leave it” O? I don’t love it, but I can’t leave. Who would have me?
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