Arms dealers make billions exporting terror

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 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 causes 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.

War creates 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.

War is a carbon bomb

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 with 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 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.

Take the toys from the boys

was a refrain of the Second Wave Feminist movement from Greenham Common through to Pine Gap. Women and children are the most heavily impacted by war and its toxic aftermath. Feminists have pro-actively resisted conscription, militarization and the arms trade since Australian women successfully opposed the draft in World War One. Today, West Papuan (and millions more) women uphold this century old resistance to the toxic masculinity of war when they assert their right to give birth to and raise children free from the threat of murder by the military.

Saya tidak melahirkan anak saya untuk menjadi sasaran TNI .

I didn’t birth my child to be a military target.

All humans will be better off when we can separate masculinity and manhood from mechanized violence.

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 rainforests, dig coal, frack farmland and burn the earth for palm oil.

Weapons enforce 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.