Anti-war Christian Activist Margie Pestorius explains why she will protest at the upcoming “Land Forces” weapons expo in Brisbane.
From the 4th- the 6th of October this year the Brisbane Exhibition Centre will host the Land Forces weapons exhibition. Not so much as an exhibition but a massive shower and exchange of money and deals for instruments of death and destruction.
“People who manufacture weapons or invest in weapons industries are hypocrites if they call themselves Christian” asserted one significant Christian figure, the leader of one billion Catholics, Pope Francis. He was speaking in 2015, before Ukraine, and before Afghanistan fell, at a time as Syria continued to boil and people began to move in unprecedented numbers. Since then the weapons industry has grown massively in profits. Their executives – frequently ex-defence ministers – are obsequiously proud when wars start and push up their profit potential.
The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, said in 2019:
“The way much of the arms trade currently works continues to be a blot on the global moral landscape. Governments have been negligent or collusive about the role played by arms exports in sustaining brutal and even genocidal conflicts, and the recent court judgement about arms exports to Saudi Arabia has highlighted the issue.
The principles of ethics and international law need to be defended more robustly than ever in a world where local wars of great savagery are fuelled by what often seems to be willfully irresponsible attitudes, and I welcome this fresh effort to alert citizens to the cost of indiscriminate, profit-driven trading in weapons of death and mutilation.”
These are moral positions asserted by contemporary Church leaders. But they resonate with the message in Matthew 5: The Sermon on the Mount “Blessed are the Peace Makers”. Not to mention large tracts of Jerimiah and various prophetic warnings sprinkled through the Hebrew scriptures.
So from the 30th of September till the 7th of October a bunch of ordinary people Christians and friends will be disrupting Land Forces. We will start with Sacred Fire acknowledging the terrible impact of militarism on First Nations people here and throughout the world. We’ll have a “Peaceful Assembly” starting at 8 am on the 4th of October as the corporation’s men start to arrive.
It’s large. 700 exhibitors. 12500 exhibitors. That allows for a lot of disruption for an event that just should not exist. That allows for a lot of unwelcoming disruption by Quakers, Anglicans, Catholics with Buddhists and secular friends.
Here is a person making a speech at Land Forces 2021 on a Hanwha weapons station. That’s a vehicle so crammed with weapons, it can hardly carry any humans to operationalise the killing and destruction of ecosystems it is built for. That weapons station shares components with vehicles in Indonesia. Weapon systems developed by Australia will be used for increasing State violence in West Papua. Exporting terror is one of the games they play. They don’t care about the victims.
Not welcome
We want them to know that weapons dealers are NOT welcome in South Brisbane. We want them to FEEL unwelcome. We want them to BE unwelcome. We want to treat them with disdain. No happy junkets here.
This is where, like Jesus addressing the dealers in the adapted ‘temple’ space, we can be furious about these people’s role in destroying the planet and dispossessing First Nations peoples.
Weapons companies are amongst the most corrupt companies in the world. They provide a direct mechanism for public money to move into private hands depriving the poor and destroying our common home, the Earth, a planet so beautiful and so abundant that it has the ability with our co-creation to feed billions of people and creatures. It sustains life on Earth.
Our work is relational. As entry-level activities for people wanting to be with us, we will hold a vigil and fast in the City Centre, meditative walking, processions between the vigil and the conference centre, daily prayer and singing installations. We need people to hold the space and care for those people who, with prophetic voices, are speaking up about extraordinary injustices
Weapons enforce resource extraction. Weapons in the hands of public and private security agencies enforce resource extraction, providing corporations with the coercive force they need to log rainforests, dig coal, frack farmland and burn the earth for palm oil.
Here are 12 reasons weapons corporations exacerbate evil in our world. Each can be a prayer centre or place for action.
- Weapons companies are making a killing.
- Weapons cause climate chaos.
- Weapons devastate wildlife and ecosystems.
- Weapons cause famine
- Weapons are a waste product
- Weapons enforce resource extraction.
- Weapons drive dispossession.
- Weapons cause refugees.
- Weapons turn public wealth into private profit.
- War = peak toxic and violent masculinity
- End the war on women!
- Their weapons are meant for us.
We invite you to explore this book by military ethicist Dr Ned Dobos who discloses the intricacies of deceit that underpin the militarising of society in his books. Ethics, Security, and the War Machine: the True Cost of the Military (Oxford University Press 2020). You’ll be able to quote it in each of your above essays.
OR you can join us and learn real politics with ordinary people cooking, singing and being together in the way of the war machine. It’s very serious work.
You can find public events here https://disruptlandforces.org/upcomingevents/
And you follow social media at Fb/WagePeaceAu and Instagram
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Extra reading
This expo is not actually about defence it is about the business of war. The Qld government as the major sponsor exemplifies the capture of the state by the military-industrial complex. This behemoth garners contracts worth billions of dollars from both State and Federal governments, all eager to please the large defence primes and assist small and medium enterprises all over Australia to pivot to making parts and products for the machines of death. Since 2018 this industry has been benefiting from the at least 30 billion dollars a year that automatically flows to the ‘defence export’ sector. Australia currently pours a staggering $98.9m a day into our so-called defence forces and related agendas
In 2018 then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced a strategic plan to make Australia a top-ten weapons exporter within the next ten years. Making weapons a larger part of our exports would put Australia in a position where our economy was reliant on the perpetuation of armed conflict to generate demand. Yet successive governments have continued to pursue this vision, with the current Albanese Government even pledging before the election to “match the Liberals” on defence spending, never letting it fall below 2% of GDP. While many would welcome a revival of Australian manufacturing, the capital-intensive nature of weapons manufacturing makes it an inefficient choice for Government investment in terms of job creation when compared with the manufacture of other goods. Furthermore, defence contracts are overwhelmingly awarded to the industry’s largest firms none of which are Australian-owned, so much of the taxpayer money invested in the sector ends up offshore anyway. All of this is to say nothing of the lives lost, homes destroyed, refugees created, and trauma and displacement generated by the deployment of these valuable commodities.
Land forces makes visible the reality that war starts with weapons corporations, the same corporations: BAE Systems, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, that are right now talking up the benefits of the war in Ukraine to their shareholders and announcing record profits. These companies and others represented at land forces like Rheinemetall and its Australian partner NIOA are benefiting from the Australian government Defence Export Strategy, designed to make the weapons industry our biggest export. These corporates will be speed dating their way around a conference that will also include Australian Defence Force representatives, Defence Ministers and armed force and trade delegations.
In 2021 there were 12,766 attendances from Industry, Government and Defence from over 70 nations. Sessions like “Export Readiness in Defence – Global Opportunities and Support”, hosted by Austrade and ADEO, are nothing to do with defence but are all about building the arms business and the arms trade. Right now when climate disaster is the new normal, and there are climate refugees in all countries and continents, it is the time to focus on #Earthcare, not Warfare.
That’s the key message being pushed by the coalition of peace activists organising “Disrupt Land Forces” – a 7-day festival of resistance to the expo. Lilli Barto, a member of the core organising group, elaborated further “We are calling for a massive reallocation of resources away from war profiteering and into responding to the climate crisis, including support for people displaced by natural disasters, and info life-affirming services like health and education, including giving workers in those and other caring professions decent pay and better ratios. For example, we are spending half a billion dollars on ten weaponized vehicles from Rheinmetall, with that money we calculate you could rehome 1000 flood-affected families still facing homelessness or precarious housing situations. That’s just one half-billion of the $270 billion of extra funding that’s been promised to defence over the next ten years.”
“We are also echoing the calls from the Karrinjarla Muwajarri campaign to disarm police, along with their other demands. NIOA is a key sponsor of Land Forces, and also the company that provides the vast majority of the Australian police’s bullets, bullets that end up in black bodies. NIOA has profited from the NT intervention and the ongoing militarisation of domestic police, they have the blood of every death in custody on their hands” Miss Barto said.
Last year, the inaugural Disrupt Land Forces event brought around 100 activists together from across the continent. They engaged in a variety of tactics both inside and outside the convention centre to “make the conference pleasant and empowering for us, and deeply unpleasant and uncomfortable for the arms dealers” organisers said. This year they are vowing to make the festival even bigger, in a show of community solidarity against militarism and war-for-profit.
More on the reasons to resist
Weapons companies are making a killing.
Weapons sales directly cause immense human suffering. Occupying armies and police forces kill, rape and mutilate human beings in every part of the world. The arms industry is profiting from the misery of others in the most direct way possible. Weapons companies are literally making a killing.
Weapons cause climate chaos.
The climate breakdown and emissions caused by weapons are appalling; the US military is the highest carbon emitter in the world. Weapons have a massive carbon footprint, both in the manufacturing phase and in their deployment. Weapons are burning our planet, both with actual ‘firepower’ and greenhouse gases.
Weapons devastate wildlife and ecosystems.
Tanks, missiles, jets, bombs, grenades and chemical agents rip out forests, destroy ecosystems, pollute waterways and maim wildlife. The toxic waste warfare leaves behind can contaminate soil and water for decades.
Weapons cause famine
Weapons cause starvation and famine. Armies intentionally destroy crops and supply systems, starving cities. Occupying armies make it unsafe to farm, alienating farmers from arable land. Forests and waterways become unsafe, so that wild food is no longer available. Long after hostilities have ceased, contaminated soil and water impact food production. Wherever you see famine, there you will find weapons of war.
Weapons are a waste product
There are no ‘eco-friendly’ weapons. The arms industry creates 100% waste products – products designed to destroy and to be destroyed. Warfare is the opposite of sustainable. Weapons are there to lay waste and to be waste.
Weapons enforce resource extraction.
Weapons in the hands of public and private security agencies enforce resource extraction, providing corporations with the coercive force they need in order to log rainforest, dig coal, frack farmland and burn the earth for palm oil.
Weapons drive dispossession.
Armed soldiers and police ensure that private corporations can ‘invest’ and extract against the will and without the consent of sovereign peoples. People who resist extractive projects are frequently murdered or arrested by security forces. Sovereign people lose access to the material and cultural means of survival and become outcast, alienated, dispossessed and impoverished.
Weapons cause refugees.
War and militarism are what cause people to flee from their homes and seek refuge in other, safer countries. Warfare and persecution by armed forces cause millions of people every year to leave their homes and begin a risky journey into the unknown. After suffering through war, persecution, torture, famine, rape and terror, refugees finally reach ‘safe’ countries like ours, only to find themselves vilified and locked up. Most weapons in the world are exported from ‘safe’ countries like ours. Let’s stop weapons exports where they start – right here where we live.
Weapons turn public wealth into private profit.
The weapons sold at Land Forces end up in the hands of state security institutions – armies, navies, police forces etc – and as such are paid for with public money. At Land Forces, hundreds of billions of dollars will be siphoned from working people, via taxes, into the bank accounts of weapons corporations. Climate breakdown, ecosystem degradation, forcible extraction, land alienation, famine and war itself form a vicious cycle that harms everybody – except the profit-seeking corporations – and we pay for it.
War = peak toxic masculinity
Feminists have pro-actively resisted conscription, militarization and the arms trade since Australian women successfully opposed the draft in World War One. Toxic masculinity, sexual assault, misogyny and racist objectification are core values in our military institutions, and they reach their peak in war. All humans will be better off when we can separate masculinity and manhood from weapons and violence.
End the war on women!
Women and children are the most heavily impacted by war and its toxic aftermath. Today, wars are raging against indigenous peoples in West Papua, the Amazon, the Philippines, Myanmar, Kurdistan, Palestine and Sudan. Rich men get richer through the arms trade, while the poor, the indigenous, women and our children are impoverished, dispossessed and harmed in multiple ways. Let’s end the war on women. Let’s “take the toys from the boys”
Their weapons are meant for us
Whether we live in a ‘safe’ country or in a war zone, the weapons sold at Land Forces will ultimately point at us. Police forces around the world are increasingly militarised, meaning that they use military-grade weapons, uniforms, vehicles and surveillance technology. Weapons are used to suppress civil society movements with disturbing regularity, from tear gas and water cannons to machine guns and sniper rifles. We have seen the police in Chile aiming rubber bullets at people’s eyes, blinding many. At least 60 West Papuan civilians were killed by the army and police during 2021-2, deliberately or in ‘crossfire’. Two of those killed were 12 years old and one was 2 years old. The Amazon is a particularly dangerous place to be an environmental activist, as is the Philipines, while Australia and the US are dangerous places to be black. There is no safety where there are heavily armed soldiers and police. Whoever and wherever we are, those weapons are meant for us.