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The Forum > Article Comments > Talisman sabre military exercises, war and the environment > Comments

Talisman sabre military exercises, war and the environment : Comments

By Sue Wareham, published 10/7/2009

Armies damage the environment even when they aren't at war.

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I didn't hold out much hope of an intelligent post or two popping up here, but this condescension-fest from the usual bunch of hawks have exceeded expectations.

Isn't it nice to have centuries of boys-own conditioning about the glories of war and the nobility of the military to fall back on, rather than actually attempt to change a mindset or two about whether all these hideously expensive and destructive paranoia games are really needed?

I guess we have to have somewhere to try out all those lovely shiny toys our military buyers were seduced into purchasing at the latest arms fair with the multi-billion dollar budgets entrusted to them from the public purse. And I suppose we have to do something to justify their gun-metal shopaholism.

And I suppose that if there weren't any bad guys beyond the horizon wanting to annihilate us with their weapons of mass destruction, we'd just have to invent them.

Oh, wait a minute ... we already have.
Posted by SJF, Saturday, 11 July 2009 9:15:09 AM
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SJF, do you place any value at all in us having at least a half-reasonable defence capability?

Could you possibly see that for all the war-like bravado being exhibited at Talisman Sabre, the main motivation is to prevent war from coming our way? That is, to show a strong deterrence factor to any would-be aggressors.

I don’t like the enormous expense involved with this military exercise and I can’t help wondering whether our defence capability couldn’t be maintained at its best state of preparedness without something like this or something of the scale of this operation. But ultimately, we’d be making a grave mistake if we were to allow our defence capability to dwindle.
Posted by Ludwig, Saturday, 11 July 2009 9:49:57 AM
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The reason we practice our skills at how to make war, is so that in the event of needing them, we will have experienced people to train the rest of us.

Would you prefer the skills to be completely lost? Do you think running a defence force is a trivial skill that can be picked up overnight when needed?

If we are threatened and attacked at short notice, how should we build up those skills again, get a government tender put out - e.g. RFT: Build up a defence force and get it on a war footing within 6 weeks.

I can imagine if someone like Mosman Council made the lowest bid and was awarded it, or Fred's Video shop, we won't even have the skills to define what a military should look like or what it should do.

We have an all but ineffectual defence force now, it is probably at a bare minimum to retain the skills required for a military force, which can prosecute an activity without everyone being killed through mistakes and lack of procedures.

The world is strewn with the relics of war, but really it is such a tiny percentage of territory affected it is irrelevant. What are you doing about it all, beside pontificating and insisting someone else do something?

I have no problem letting a small piece of Australia be used so we can retain a proud and necessary skill. I am happy for it to be completely and irrevocably destroyed for all time, if that keeps our country safe.

It's an easy target to pick on a government funded defence force, lots of finger wagging and sneering available isn't there. We don't have nukes, though some think we should, if that's your problem. The last mob that needed to be nuked have not shown their heads above the parapet again, so effective is the deterrent.

There are lots of opinions on this, that's mine.
Posted by odo, Saturday, 11 July 2009 11:45:43 AM
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Women & pro-immigration, baby-bonusing, BIG marketplace, big-business interests make the ARMIES that degrade our land, rivers and biodiversity. All in the name of 'infinite economic growth' on a 'finite maternity-ward' planet.

While greed and media-incited-overpopulation stupidity rules, WAR and the newly bred & trained killers that fight them will be needed alright. It's POWER.

There's a reason POWER is the greatest aphrodisiac.

You see that's nature's way. The way of extermination of species that fail to ADAPT to the extant THERMODYNAMIC regime which supports a particular biological living-pyramid (organic chemistry) at any geological ERA.

Only adaptive INTELLIGENCE can circumvent that extermination,in the ultimate game, POWER, ownership-by-media, at the top of the planet's living-pyramid.

But where does the blame really lie, and it lies well:

It takes two to make a baby warrior BUT ONLY ONE to choose to have that future killer of environments and sub-standard, misunderstood or different people.

The prescribed formula for POWER right now, as its always been, is:

Equal rights + unrestricted reproductive rights for women = WAR.

Its no secret why women have only just been emancipated, again,for the n'th time, in a historical sense: new generations forget the lessons of the past.

The message is clear for anyone interested in pure truth and not their own personal prospects for pleasure through POWER:

You don't have to have children to make love & you don't have to make love to have an orgasm. But you do have to have children to DOMINATE, to make armies,WAR, environmental destruction & ultimately the extermination of our species.

In the end, continual economic growth, through a thinly-veiled executive order to BREED, is just THE idol, the GLODEN CALF, the Miley Cyrus, to be worshipped in the new Soddom & Gommorah.

And if you can escape the vicious cylcle of women's rights and growing armies ....

DON"T EVER LOOK BACK!
Posted by KAEP, Saturday, 11 July 2009 12:31:53 PM
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Ludwig

‘Could you possibly see that for all the war-like bravado being exhibited at Talisman Sabre, the main motivation is to prevent war from coming our way?’

Yes, but that motivation is misguided.

Look at Costa Rica – which has had no military since 1949, before which it suffered the conveyor belt of military coups common to Latin America. Since 1949, it has enjoyed a political stability that is rare in those parts and it hasn’t been invaded by any of its neighbours, despite its ‘vulnerability’.

And look at New Zealand. Over 20 years ago it was booted out of ANZUS for refusing to cooperate with US nuclear aims. Since then, it has saved hundreds of billions of dollars in unnecessary ANZUS-related military spending. Yet its political standing in the world has remained unchanged – and no one has invaded it yet.

In over 220 years, we’ve had only one possibility of an invasion but 1000s of major natural disasters bringing major loss of life. Yet, what do we do? We throw billions of wasted dollars at the military, while forcing our emergency services to operate on volunteer labour and to beg cap-in-hand for funding. It should be the other way round.

Odo

‘The reason we practice our skills [is to learn] how to make war … Would you prefer the skills to be completely lost?’

The trouble with that theory is that all this ‘war training’ is not about war. It’s about keeping up to date with war technology that is being deliberately rendered obsolete by new war technology. By the time those ‘skills’ are learned, they’re already out of date.

KAEP

‘Equal rights + unrestricted reproductive rights for women = WAR.’

It’s the other way round. Militaristic societies glorify masculinity and reduce the role of women to mothers of future warriors. Thus they restrict women’s freedom and strive to bring women’s reproduction under state control. Abortion and birth control was once widely practiced in the West, but at the height of European miltarism in the late 19th century, abortion was criminalized and birth control heavily restricted.
Posted by SJF, Saturday, 11 July 2009 3:39:46 PM
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During 2003, and the bombing of Lancelin in WA for target practice by the nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and her battle group, visiting physicist, Dr Rokke, the former director of the Pentagon’s Depleted Uranium project said “it was laughable that the Australian Government and the Australian people allowed a foreign power to contaminate the West Australian coastline through bombardment and weapons testings..

“The US military is in total environmental violation of environmental law in the US and they don’t have to comply with any of your laws,” he said.

The Department of Defence announced that the US would carry out its bombardment of Lancelin July 6-8 and 15-16, 2003 and stated that “No depleted uranium would be used during the training.”

Dr Rokke said while he had no proof of the use of the DU munitions at the training facility it was “100 per cent likely” that the US had used the facility to test DU munitions.

“They said they weren’t using DU weapons in the US and then Congressman Jim McDermott in Seattle Washington found out they were.”

High levels of bombing residues, include toxic heavy metals such as arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, lead, nickel, tin, and vanadium and have been found in soil samples taken from bombing ranges.

The very hazardous ammonium perchlorate is widely used throughout the aerospace, munitions, and pyrotechnics industries as a primary ingredient in solid rocket and missile propellants and explosive charges. It is a component of more than 350 types of munitions, according to the US Department of Defence.

Given America’s track record with overseas military bases, where these operations have caused environmental and human carnage in foreign lands, I would not be welcoming the US to use Australia as cannon fodder.

Thirty thousand military personnel on Shoalwater Bay, playing war games, is an environmental catastrophe in the making – albeit an insidious one for now.

As Dr Rokke advised: “What you have got to understand is that the US doesn’t care. Australia is so low on the totem pole that you people just don’t matter.”
Posted by Protagoras, Sunday, 12 July 2009 9:12:57 PM
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