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Defence industry protesters are wrong

By Peter Bowden - posted Monday, 30 September 2024


Defence industry protestors are wrong on two counts, One being the way they protested and the second is that we still need weapons, According to newspaper reports, police officers were pelted with horse poo, rocks, eggs and rotten tomatoes.Their horses were also punched. Traffic was disrupted and attendees abused.

The daughter of a good friend was also arrested. Her time would be better spent following some of the suggestions below.

Until we stop war, we do need to defend ourselves. There are too many incidents of potential conflict involving Australia. This opinion writer has written a book Ending War in which he analyses the causes behind war and offers suggestions by which we can end war – the cause behind the countless millions of deaths and untold suffering over the centuries. Those suggestions include ending the international manufacture and selling of armaments and strengthening the capability and willingness of the United Nations to fulfill its charter. – to bring about peace. Article 1 states

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The Purposes of the United Nations are:

To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace,

The book lists a continuum of failed peace keeping efforts by the United Nations, The answers to these failures appear to be an ending to the veto power of the big five, and establishing a competent UN policing force . Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked a few weeks into the Russian involvement:

What is the point of the UN if it can't act against crimes against humanity and punish the perpetrators?

The Ending War book attempted to ascertain the causes behind all wars over the history of humanity. All told, this writer identified almost 157 wars, which is not all wars, but a sufficient number to give us a reliable answer to the question on the cause of war. The frequency of war is one every 22 years. This frequency does not seem to be a great a problem but remember that we have defined a war as a series of battles. These usually were spread over several years. Some wars lasted up to a hundred years.

The earliest war is evidenced in the Jebel Sahaba collection, a group of skeletons from Sudan about 13,000 years ago, and now in the British Museum. These skeletons have numerous cut marks from weapons as well as stone arrowheads embedded in the bones. These injuries occurred over a lengthy period of time. However, we have no recorded history of this war, and so do not know the causes.

Six classifications methods were used to define the causes of all wars. In every case, almost without exception, where the instigator of the war and his followers, sought to gain territory, it was seen as an attempt to gain control over the resources of that area, and its people, and has been labelled as Power. The five of the six classifications are:

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1. Power: wars fought to gain territory &/or power.

2. Religion/power: wars of religion (although the crusades are uncertain).

3. Civil war: a war within one country, although those that are clearly fought to gain power have been labelled as such

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About the Author

Peter Bowden is an author, researcher and ethicist. He was formerly Coordinator of the MBA Program at Monash University and Professor of Administrative Studies at Manchester University. He is currently a member of the Australian Business Ethics Network , working on business, institutional, and personal ethics.

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