Mike
Rann, the Premier of South Australia has recently announced that
Adelaide will be host to the Asia Pacific Defence & Security
Exhibition in November 2008. The
Asia Pacific Defence and Security Exhibition is an arms fair.
Its purpose is to provide military companies from all over the
world with an opportunity to display their latest war fighting
machinery
The Governments of France, Germany, Israel, Italy, South Africa,
UK and USA have already booked major exhibition space for their
military corporations to come to Australia and take up Mike Rann’s
offer to “survey the terrific business and investment opportunities”
that APDSE will provide. No doubt many other nations will join
the throng in the coming year.
These seven countries are together the source of at least 80%
of all military equipment, from bombers and warships, through
to cluster bombs and depleted uranium munitions, down to the more
mundane run-of-the-mill guns, boots, bullets and surveillance
equipment used to in the dozens of wars around the world today.
They
are responsible for 80% of all the pain & suffering caused
by militarism. For the deaths, for the amputees, for the rapes
at gunpoint, for the detainees and refugees, for the orphans and
the parents denied the right of dying before their children.
In
a cruel twist the organiser of this death fair, Alex Nicholl,
who also organises similar atrocities in the UK, has set the date
for APDSE as 11 November, the day we normally stop and reflect
on the horrors of war. To these people the remembrance of war
holds no horror, only profit.
The
best we can hope for is that Remembrance Day reminds them of the
last time the masters of war came to Australia to peddle their
wares.
This
is the first major weapons trade fair since the Australian people
put an end to the AIDEX 89 & 91 exhibitions in Canberra. In
coming months the campaign to stop Australia being turned into
a shopping mall for the world’s killers will begin in earnest.
We urge you to join us in stopping this happening for another
17 years.
