Melbourne Unitarian Peace Memorial Church

Presentation by Pauline Mitchell, Campaign for International Cooperation and Disarmament, to the Melbourne Unitarian Church, April 24, 2004

Wars are never entirely futile; it all depends on where you are. Wars are fought to extend influence, empires and secure riches and resources and those that declare war usually don't take part in it.

Wars are futile only for those that fight it, they have the grief and suffering; if they do return as victors from the battlefield they are no better off materially and have to live with the horrors that they have seen and done. Reasons may vary as to the causes of war but the common thread is greed.

Historians have calculated that a total of more than 14,500 wars have been fought in the world, the worst was the 2nd World War where over 50 million were killed, but the death toll in small wars since then almost rival that of the 2nd WW.
Is it any wonder then, that there is a saying that 'There have always been wars and there always will be' in fact there are two sayings that one often hears people quoting to explain away recurring circumstances.

1. There have always been wars and there always will be … and
2. There has always been hunger and there always will be.

Soon after the 2nd World War it was decided to investigate these two old sayings to see if they had any relevance to some sort of natural law. The first to be investigated was 'There has always been hunger etc…'

The task was undertaken by Josua DeCastro a former President of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations he was assisted by a number of scientists and other experts from a number of countries. Anthropologists examined deposits and fossilized skeletons of the most primitive of human groups and none showed signs of chronic hunger; some skeletons showed signs of dietary deficiencies but it was not long standing and was put down to weather and crop failure at that particular time in history.

Examinations were carried out up the human family scale, and it was only in skeletons of the more advanced societies that showed the biological etchings of hunger. Then they made another discovery - they found caches of weapons and signs of organised warfare. From this it was concluded that hunger and war arrived together when humankind had reached a stage in development when he began to accumulate reserves and goods and needed armies and weapons to defend that collected wealth.
Hunger and War began when the unequal distribution of natural riches began; today the end result of that inequality is the economic system of Capitalism.

Under the exploitive system of Feudalism, as well as the wars, the King and ruling class sent their soldiers around to extract crippling taxes from their people, plunging them even deeper into hunger and poverty. Under Capitalism, there are taxes but things are much more sophisticated, it's all about markets. Food is destroyed, ploughed back into the ground or dumped at sea and cattle are slaughtered, all to keep market prices high for the capitalist enterprises, and some governments, particularly the United States pays its farmers to keep land out of production. Also the system profits from others misfortune. If crops fail in other lands or stock has to be destroyed because of disease, it opens up markets for other capitalist to supply - but only if those in need have the money to buy. It doesn't matter how hungry people are, or sick, if they haven't got the money to pay the price for food or medicine, they don't get it.

Another United Nations report in 1957 said that 10% of the world's grain production was being destroyed by rodents, insects and fungi, because of poor methods used in storage. This amount is large enough to feed 250 million people a year. Farming and storage methods have improved enormously now and even though the world's population has increased we still have the capability to feed everyone. The problem is not production it is distribution and the will to distribute. It is this exploitive and unequal system that breeds war and unrest.

Every country excels at something and has something valuable, it need not be poor. Early in the 1970's the United Nations held a conference on a New International Economic Order. It did not seek a revolutionary change of capitalisms economic system but it did call for the people to be allowed to own their own resources and to get a fair price for selling their products.

The Capitalists, though, did not like that suggestion and it was never carried out. However it would have been beneficial to them in the long run because it would have opened up more markets for them as the poorer countries would have had more money to spend on buying other goods from the industrialised countries - but the capitalist corporations want their profits now. not in one or two years time.

If a country has oil, it is considered rich. Africa, the poorest continent on Earth, abounds in oil and Western oil executives have called Chad the New Persian Gulf. But the people in the oil town in Chad are still living in mud huts and are still waiting for amenities including AIDS drugs. There is a number of oil fields in Africa - Nigeria, Angola, Gabon, Congo, Cameroon, Chad and others and oil represents 70% of Africa's exports to the United States. But for the bulk of citizens in Africa oil has not improved their quality of life at all.

Oil companies also have their own private armies to control and protect the oil from people's wrath … and there are other pitfalls - some oil companies make payments to repressive regimes and corruption flourishes as dividends from oil continue to be appropriated by the rich and powerful elite. So far from being a blessing oil is making the people's lives even worse by providing the funds to keep authoritarian regimes in power. In Angola a quarter of the oil revenue is still unaccounted for each year.

In Equatorial Guinea, one of the most criminalised states in the world, oil companies do business with its brutal regime. With one of the smallest populations and oil revenues of $500 million last year Equatorial Guinea should be one of the richest countries in Africa, instead it is the third from the bottom on the United Nations Human Development index.
Congo Brazzaville has a $6.4 billion overseas debt, although it is the fourth largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa.
And there are other riches in Africa, the minerals, which provide money for warring groups. Then there is Australia's action regarding the oil in East Timor. East Timor is one of the world's poorest countries, but Australia has claimed nearly all of its oil. When Australia went into East Timor in 1999 to assist the people could there have been a hidden agenda?

In the rich industrialised countries the majority of the people haven't all they need either - there has never been full employment, never been enough houses, health care or education facilities and as the system of capitalism develops into monopoly capitalism the division between rich and poor becomes wider and more noticeable. Although there is a safety net of social security payments, it is not nearly enough as the numerous charitable organisations will tell you and they are finding it increasingly hard to cope with the growing number of people that desperately need food assistance and other basic help. Different political parties may have a different approach to the problems facing the country and its people but as capitalism develops there is less and less room to manoeuvre to benefit the people and stay within the capitalist framework.

A capitalist society is for the benefit of capital and everything is geared towards making profits, and those profits must increase every year. To increase these profits the company must sell more, or increase prices, or decrease services, or sack workers, or go to another country where labour is cheaper - when this happens and companies more off-shore some people say that it indicates that wages are too high here and the Unions are the problem. No one blames the Companies insatiable appetite for profits and no one including the government says that the companies have any responsibility at all towards the people.

It is bad enough when civilian industries make huge profits at the expense of the working people but the most profitable of all the capitalist enterprises are the armament firms - they profit from deliberately manufacturing instruments of death and destruction. The arms companies sell to any government or group willing to pay their price, there are few restrictions, the government gets taxes from them and export revenue. Another plus to the government is that these huge companies are big employers although they are not as labour intensive as they once were.

The arms manufacturers have on-going security, huge government contracts, the government buys their product, if these killing devices are not used in wars, they become outdated and superseded and the government then buys the new system. So the armaments industries are always working to capacity and always making mega-profits. Military spending is rising in all countries of the world and military spending in the developing countries, the ones that can least afford it, is growing by about 6 or 7% annually; but no one country can come even close to the United States military spending or to their access to weapons. It takes a group of the Industrialised countries.

The circumstances of eternal poverty and oppression spawns National Liberation Fronts, people that are struggling for a better future and national liberation struggles are the Just Wars. It is not against international law to struggle to promote social progress and a better standard of life. The United Nations Charter sets out the right to develop equal rights and the self-=determination of people and the Geneva Convention also sets out the right of people to fight for their liberation.

The Palestinians have the right to fight for their liberation and the Geneva Convention also distinguishes between war and occupation. An occupied people should be protected and their occupier is responsible for their safety. But that is not happening in the case of Palestine or in Iraq. World War 2 was a Just War - to fight fascism - but it did have many more trends towards the end.

The expenditure on armaments takes money from much needed social services. Each day in the paper we see accounts of poverty, the health system is in tatters, there is a shortage of nurses, doctors, teachers, nursing homes, child care, schools are being run down and university students have to go into debt if they want to pursue their studies.
The government complains of shortages but doesn't encourage young people to further their education in these or any other field.

Instead the government is talking about filling this void with skilled migrants - creating a Brain Drain for other countries. But just one item - we are going to buy 50 second-hand tanks from the United States, tanks that are said to be unsuitable for Australia's needs. The tanks cost just over $9 million each, so what could the cost of one tank - $9 million - do for our civilian economy, for our students … plus that money flows out of Australia's economy entirely.
So besides threatening us with war, armaments do enormous damage to the civilian economy by slowing down economic growth in the civilian sector.

Now we have globalisation and Free Trade Agreements. Whatever the government tries to tell us these agreements are made to benefit capital and big business. After the 2nd WW the confrontation between the two economic systems of Capitalism and Socialism became very dangerous; a study of the history of confrontation between these two powers will show that the USSR made many efforts to secure peace and détente and for the two social systems to live side by side. But the predatory nature of capitalism and the need to keep increasing profits plus the expansion of the most profitable business of all, the arms industry, finally saw the end of the USSR and its bloc of countries. The system of socialism could not cope with the wasteful and bottomless pit of arms expenditure and stay within its social intent or its constitution.
Webster's dictionary definition of Socialism is - that it is a theory of social reform the main feature of which is to secure a reconstruction of society, with a more equal division of property and the fruits of labour through common ownership."

After the fall of socialism about 98% of the world is now capitalist and the mega-corporations have penetrated everywhere. Industrialised countries depend on oil so the United States made a special effort to secure the vase oil deposits of the Caspian Basin by making sure there were US friendly governments in the former Republics.
One of the oil pipelines was to go through Afghanistan but the Taliban were not being very co-operative , so when the United Sates invaded Afghanistan in search of Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban government was overturned and the oil pipeline is on again.

The War on Terror has now taken the place of the confrontation between the two social systems - but actually the war on terror is better for the USA than the Cold War because there are now no restrictions, no balances, and the war on terror has no boundaries, no limits, no end; it is not defined at all and can be used in any circumstances also the laws that have been passed in the name of terrorism can be used to protect corporations against protesters and anti-globalisationists, in fact, against any kind of decent.

After Afghanistan came Iraq, the second biggest oil producer in the world, in the war that ensued, and it is not over, 12,000 Iraqi's have been killed and their country ruined and their social system has been destroyed. The oil has now been secured by the big oil companies, it is no longer nationalised, it is foreign owned. By controlling the oil, the lifeblood of industrialised nations, the United States can control most of the world, especially the growing economies of Japan and the European Union, which rely entirely on oil imports for their continuance.

The United States intention to dominate the world was contained in the document 'Project for a New American Century' written by the ultra conservatives of the Bush 2 Administration; but this only spelt out in further detail the Pentagon document that was labelled 'The New World Order' and came out under the Bush 1 Administration, the one that said that it would discourage advanced industrialised nations from challenging United States leadership…..' etc.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union the United States has moved quickly to extend its Empire, and its global presence is like no other Empire in history - it has troops in at least 70% of the worlds countries, no country can match the reach and lethality of the United States armed forces. The United States can deploy a navy across every ocean and there are 12 huge aircraft carriers each carrying a modern air armada larger than the air force of some countries. The US can quickly despatch land forces to any battlefield in the world - now they want to put weapons into space.

Besides the 'War on Terror' there is another danger - the unrestricted march of corporate capitalism is decreasing the world's assets at an alarming rate, fish, forest, wildlife, water, arable land etc. Several conferences have taken place to discuss the environment, in particular the harm of pollution in the ground and the atmosphere. Measures have been taken to phase out CFC's that harm the ozone layer, but the biggest culprit is the burning of oil and fossil fuels - the basis of the industrialised countries economies.

Scientists have warned for years about the danger of Greenhouse gases, the harm to the ozone layer and about Climate Change.
The biggest producer of these 'greenhouse gases' is the United States because of its huge consumption of oil - but the USA will not commit itself to signing the Kyoto Protocol which aims to curb the use of greenhouse gases - in fact the Bush 2 Administration has repeatedly denied that Climate Change exists and says that the weather change is due to a natural cycle.
The Bush Administration has very close links with the high-powered energy and oil companies and this is why the evidence of scientists is repeatedly ignored.

But now, another report has surfaced, a report from the Pentagon and which was forwarded to the White House about the beginning of the year. The report says that Climate Change over the next 20 years could result in global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars natural disasters. It says that climate change should be elevated to a national security concern as the threat to global stability by climate change far outweighed the threat of terrorism…and so on.
It was an absolutely damning report and could be a source of humiliation for President Bush Jnr.
But, President Bush does not have to admit that he is wrong about Climate Change, because all the scenarios outlined by the Pentagon can be dealt with under the 'War on Terrorism'.

Taking measures to curb the greenhouse gasses responsible for Climate Change would affect big business, especially the energy and oil companies. It would not be in their interests. For example, an item in the Australian 19/4/04, tells of a revolt by Victoria's biggest manufacturers over the Bracks Government's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. All the big power users and biggest emitters of carbon dioxide will lobby to try to head off what they call an aggressive policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, saying that it will increase business costs and threaten investments and perhaps force them to go elsewhere where there are no rules.

In the United States it would be worse if the government tries to enforce rules on business. Under President Bush Jnr's administration all the Clean Air laws have been rolled back and environment budgets have been cut.
Then there is the pollution of food. In Victoria we have been told recently that chicken nuggets contain 50% fat and are not good for us - also that there is too much salt in processed food so we must be aware of it an not eat too much, then there is mercury in fish, so we shouldn't eat it more than once a week. It is helpful to be told these things, however the big business producers of these products were not fined or told to clean up their act.
Then there are cigarettes - this is perhaps the craziest of all.

It has been proved over and over again that smoking is bad for your health and notices to this effect has to be prominently displayed on cigarette packets - also all advertising of cigarettes is banned - and smoking is banned in most public places - then the government spends millions of dollars on adds to discourage smoking…..But the production and sale of cigarettes is still a legitimate business! And in the United States the industry is subsidised by the government because it is a big employer.

The system that allows these things is a system that perpetuates and supports inequality, unrest and eventually war and as the system goes to monopoly capitalism it will get worse. People know that there are injustices in the system but say that it is the only system we've got because socialism failed. But, for whom did socialism fail? It failed for the capitalists because they couldn't' buy into it - all enterprises were state owned and the profits went back into the civilian society.
The Reverend Rich Lang from the Trinity United Methodist Church in Seattle USA has written a paper about George Bush, his imperial presidency and his Christian principles. Reverend Lang describes this period in history as 'emerging corporate fascism'.

The United Nations was set up to save succeeding generations from war and it says that everyone has as right to peace, it is a human right. But peace is not merely the absence of war, it also includes the right to be free of social ills, economic deprivation, hunger and starvation and the protection of the environment is vital - it is not only a right for those living today but it is the right of unborn generations to come.

The legality of a system that treats the ever-widening gap between great riches and extreme poverty as normal and tolerates discriminatory practices against developing countries and their people, is a system that causes conflict and war. And a system that knowingly releases dangerous gasses into the very air that we breathe - and lets companies get away with it - is perpetuating a criminal act … we need governments that will enforce rules and laws that benefit all humankind not sections of it.