Arms trade

One of the special guests at Eurosatory this year was Mr Kalashnikov. His world famous invention - the Kalashnikov sub-machine gun - is now used in most conflicts across the globe. These same conflicts are what companies such as the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), GIAT Industries, British Aerospace Systems (BAeS), and so on, need in order to keep global defence expenditures on the increase - and thus their profits. This is probably why Mr Kalashnikov, a venerable 83-…

Arms traders spread suffering and death wherever they can profit from it. Their political and lobbying power has a huge impact on the violence committed by states and paramilitaries within states all over the world.

Like many other monsters, arms traders don't really like the spotlight. Fortunately for them the mainstream media rarely provides detailed accounts of the realities behind contracts signed between company managers from so-called human rights upholding countries, or of…

The Bourget air show is generally presented as being a fair for big kids, with aeroplanes, and parachutists performing impressive technical feats.

One leaves with the impression of having been to the circus, and of having entered the cocooned world of the arms dealers. Indeed, the positive or, at best, indifferent reaction of the public to the material exhibited at the show leaves one feeling a deep sense of irony.

Sunday 24 June, the last day of the…

McKenna was speaking at a “teach-in” on the arms trade and the militarisation of Ireland, organised as part of a weekend of events in Derry to highlight the contradictions posed for the Irish peace process by local cross-party support for the Ministry of Defence contractor, Raytheon.

The world's third biggest arms manufacturing giant has been invited to establish a software centre at Derry Science and Technology Park, to work on the British Ministry of Defence's military Airborne…

The Defence White Paper released in May 1996 had noted that there is no foreseeable conventional military threat to South Africa, and that the government has prioritised the daunting task of addressing poverty and the socio- economic inequalities resulting from the system of apartheid.

The South African Constitution similarly declares in Chapter 11, Section 198 (a) that: National security must reflect the resolve of South Africans, as individuals and as a nation, to live as equals,…

This is a book which looks at what has traditionally been regarded as “gun running”, but which is in reality a covert aspect of many nations' foreign policy.

This covers the “small arms” (guns and rifles to you and me), which are used to fuel many of the world's civil wars. This includes arms that are also sold on, from nation to nation and from nation to insurrectionary groups, as a form of covert government activity. Plus arms which might publicly be represented as a form of aid to…