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Marles & Thales

Marles and Thales: a match made in the military industrial complex, 01.02.23.

This is what Defence Ministers and Foreign Ministers do. They swan around the world on tax payer funded junkets arranging the transfer of public money to private corporations, aka selling weapons.

Gunpowder, manufactured by Thales, in Australia, will fuel the disaster that is the war in Ukraine. We pay for this climate and humanitarian catastrophe now, through our taxes, and for decades to come, through climate collapse and war trauma.

THERE IS NO END TO THE HARM THAT WEAPONS DO.

Gunpowder will not keep us safe. Gunpowder will not keep Ukraine safe. The people of Ukraine and Russia are united in wanting the war to STOP and the dialogue to begin.

Our elected representatives, meanwhile, are wining and dining in Paris to gain contracts for one of the most corrupt companies in the military industrial complex – and that is a VERY high bar.

Thales: turning our future to dust.
Fuck you Marles.
Fuck you Thales.
May your falacies explode, your gunpowder never.

Smashing the Social License of an Industry Geared to Terrorise.

A SHORT HISTORY OF DEFENCE MINISTERS

Richard Marles is the most recent “Defence Minister” for Australia. Before him, Australia had Kim Bomber Beazley who went on to work for Lockheed Martin, Brendon Nelson who became head of Boeing Australia and then Boeing the World, and Christopher Pyne who is advisor to many Australian weapons company ‘Primes’ – Noia, Elbit, EOS – and is Chairman of the Australian Missile Corporation.

We went to Marles’ office in the south part of the Great South Land and asked the $30bn question: who do you represent and when do or DID you make the actual switch from public servant to weapons advocate? Marles recently sent Australian troops to support the US proxy war in the Ukraine. Which government or corporation was behind this? Does Marles now “represent” Raytheon and the rest?

At Defence Minister Richared Marles’ office, November 2022

Visting Marles

In November 2022, we visited Richard Marles’ office to question the operations of the weapons industry. We wanted to show that ordinary people find the weapons industry unacceptable. Our disapproval is such that we are willing to attend publicly, with some effort, and make some noise.

Marles is currently Minister of Defence. His predecessors – the previous Defence Ministers – have very close relationships with the weapons industry. Three of the previous five defence ministers have ended up in significant executive roles leading or advising weapons corporations after leaving parliament. Beazley, Nelson and Pyne moved very quickly to leadership positions with Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Elbit and Nioa.

These relationships require transparency and investigation. Our question is: “Who does the Defence Minister represent?” Its matching question is: “When did the other Defence Ministers start to work for the weapons corporations?” We’ll let that question hang for now.

Those of us watching the rise and rise of the weapons corporations decided to move into the public arena to challenge their so-called “social license”. We have been identifying their presence and calling them out in public places: in museums, hotels, events, libraries, neighbourhoods, factories, office buildings, ship yards, memorials, children’s camps; all those places the (h)arms dealers make an appearance.

Social license

According to the Ethics Centre, the term ‘social license’ – or ‘social license to operate’ – “refers to the acceptance granted to a company or organisation by the community.” https://ethics.org.au/ethics-explainer-social-license-to-operate It represents tacit approval, strengthened each time there is an encounter with the company and people in the community choose to say or do nothing. Our consent, signified by inaction, makes them bolder and enlivens their operations. It has enabled weapons corporations to position themselves to receive $30bn a year in additional public funding for 10 years. They now participate in a program whereby immense amounts of money move from the public “common wealth” to private entities, or weapons corporations, mostly owned by wealthy US citizens.

The US weapons corporations have moved into Australia. They promote unrestrained militarism across our precious Earth, our common home. While promoting the flawed, dishonest discourses of the US elite, they “agitate for war”. When was the last time you heard a weapons dealer promote diplomatic peaceful methodologies? And where are they quietly sponsoring peacemaking? The truth is that weapons corporations’ executives are clear that a sense of imminent war and ongoing violence is good for profits and share prices. Financial gain is their only aim and war is good for business.

What can we do?

Where do we find them? And how can we act?

They are amongst us in plain sight. Weapons corporations are present in our spaces both physically, with offices, factories and warehouses, and socially, with key individuals attending industry and political functions with sickening regularity. Weapons executives and lobbyists attend luncheons and events. They make public appearances as guest speakers and keynotes. Both physically and socially, weapons companies are accessible, and available to activism.

The corporations show up at training and industry events in various sponsoring roles. We found Lockheed Martin sponsoring a ‘STEM in Defence’ event. The weapons corporations extend their tentacles through ‘civilian’ contracts and partnerships. Each new partnership offers the possibility of a new target, a new opportunity for smashing the social license of (h)arms dealers..

In 2021 we found Brendan Nelson introducing Dutton at a luncheon put on by the American Chamber of Commerce. At the Land Forces weapons expo in October 2022 we encountered Brendan Nelson emerging from the gala dinner. Christopher Pyne had his car splashed with fake blood. Both polite and less polite discourse was had with ex-SAS soldier Andrew Hastie. They were all there at Land Forces, making deals.

Richard Marles now presents a new ‘target’ as a potential representative of the weapons industry. Marles has met with ex-Raytheon executive and current US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin 3 times (publicly) since he came to office 4 months ago..

What to do and how?

First we create ‘evil brand recognition’. We call them out AND those they associate with.

It can be a bit hard at first. It’s not necessarily nice.

Some of us folk in the colony have been socialised to be overly ‘polite’ in the face of all sorts of bullshit. Not everyone, obviously. But ‘generally speaking’, people have been discouraged from speaking truth to power.

This is not a politeness born of real respect and inclusion. This is a set of behaviours whereby people are trained to look away, to not speak, to not take up the space and make intellectual effort required to notice and act. We may have been harshly humiliated or traumatised in order to NOT speak. In the sixties we were hit, and had our ears pinched if we saw something we were not supposed to notice. We may feel a deep discomfort when people tell the truth. So addressing the weapons industry directly is not necessarily easy. We have been trained to be quiet and to not speak of what we see with our own eyes.

Removing social license requires us to be out and proud, loud, confident and relaxed. It needs us to take up large and high spaces that speak powerfully about the truth.

Truth Telling must be seen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydvh__kKx1g

Partner with us

Wage Peace is looking for partner groups and campaigns to work alongside, parallel campaigns with the same targets, other campaigns that have ALSO identified the weapons industry as a problem. For example the BDS campaign has identified Elbit as a target and Wage Peace has done a number of actions and events together with the BDS campaign. Any group engaging in struggle against militarism and enforced extractivism may also be potential collaborators.

Following are some of the methods we use which assist us to become creative with targets and tactics.

We show up in the locations that the arms dealers show up.
We make it performative using the artistic skills and interests of individuals in the group.
We use the locations to shape the activity and tell the story.
We try different tactics from the many articulated in the politics of nonviolence.
We take up space.
We are loud, we are high.
We put our bodies where we may not be expected.
We are invisible, then visible, then invisible again.
We use elements of the culture we want to see.

We try to draw them into the light and then we smash their social license.

We make BEAUTIFUL TROUBLE. We dissent.

We are dissenters.

Interrupting the Pipeline: Defence in STEM

On the 15^th of August 2022, the Emporium Hotel in Meanjin (Brisbane) was just putting the final touches on their Magnolia room. The staff had spent the previous night setting up tables, chairs, and stunning floral center pieces. They wanted everything to look good for their client.

The client, and the organiser of the event was the Australian Defence Magazine – which functions simultaneously as a publication and an industry advocacy body. It organises “networking events” often, as was set to go ahead at the Emporium hotel. The platinum sponsor for the event was Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest weapons corporation – worth over $70 billion USD. The name of the event was “Defence in STEM” and aimed to bring together representatives of weapons corporations, the Australian Defence Forces, and…. educators.

Representatives from TAFE, from different universities, and from the Department of Education were all invited to attend. To what end you ask? Defence likes to call this “securing the talent pipeline” – one of the conference’s sessions was in fact named “The primary to defence pipeline”, providing space for attendees to discuss ways to funnel primary school aged children towards a career working for an arms dealer. The number of people employed in the defence industry in Australia has been falling in recent years, and the industry has noticed. They understand that in order to induce more young people to dedicate the best years of their lives to “providing enhanced lethality solutions” – as Lockheed Martin puts it – the conditioning must begin early. The earlier the better. Boeing sponsors a Lego competition for pre-school children that aims to expose children to their brand early in life and form a mental association between the fun that they had playing with Lego and the multi-billion-dollar corporation Boeing. It also provides a reliable source of cute photos for their PR department and internal reports on corporate social responsibility, so it is a multi-purpose investment.

By twenty past eight in the morning, some conference attendees were enjoying the complimentary tea and coffee, and mingling happily in the mezzanine lobby area outside the conference room. A small number of people were beginning to filter in and sit down at the beautifully set tables. Suddenly, one of them stood up on top of a chair, and produced a small banner from her hand bag.

It read “War Crimes Start Here”.

Though dressed like she was interning at a law firm, the young woman appeared suddenly transformed – from quiet, forgettable, anonymous member of a crowd to a steadfast leader, stoic and calm in her resolve. She began speaking,

“We are here today”

And members of the crowd responded

“We are here today”

“Because Lockheed Martin kills.”
“Because Lockheed Martin kills.”

More banners were produced from jacket pockets, from under shirts, and within briefcases – suddenly visible, more peace activists joined in the call and response lament led by the young woman on the chair.

“We lament those”

“We lament those”

“Who Lockheed Martin kills”
“Who Lockheed Martin kills”

More activists were filtering into the lobby from the street, marching up the stairs and onto the mezzanine. Hotel security sprang into action, they were unsure exactly what was happening but they knew that it was probably their problem. As most attendees were not yet in the conference room, they attempted to close the doors and contain the activists inside, but they sat in front of the doors and used their bodies to keep them open. Conference goers filtered out of the main room and back into the tea and coffee mingling room, now looking at the people around them with wild eyes wondering who among them was in fact, not there to build a pipeline, but to jam one.

the

They called to divert the pipeline, and instead equip young people with the skills they will need to solve the numerous existential threats faced by society – rather than build weapons for companies who seek to further entrench and multiply those threats. They called for #SkillingNotKilling, #EarthCareNotWarfare, and #SkillsforLifeNotForDeath. They filled the mezzanine – not just with their bodies, but with their songs, poems, eulogies, and solidarity.

Eventually, the police arrived and directed everyone to leave. They said that they would arrest anyone who failed to comply with their directions. They were operating under the same directions that they always do, protect property rights. Protect the ability of the wealthy to make money. Even if it’s at the expense of human rights. There is an amusing irony contained in the perceptions of the weapons executives, who literally sell missiles, that they need protection from a group of unarmed civilians holding banners and calling for peace.

It dovetails nicely with the perception held by Western English-speaking cultures more broadly that it is improper to cause a scene. If the people facilitating war crimes do so quietly and politely from inside closed board rooms and conference centers, then it must be the people who are shouting who are in the wrong. They are the ones causing a fuss, making a ruckus, inconveniencing ordinary people, etc. They have broken the social contract of propriety in the face of injustice. They have committed the heinous crime of making some middle-class people feel uncomfortable about their complicity in violence. They have brought the consequences of the decisions made in board rooms to the decision makers’ feet and said simply “look”. And they don’t like what they see. They need their body guards to shield them from this strange and uncomfortable new feeling called accountability. These people have expanded their political space beyond simply ranting with friends at the pub, or over dinner, or shouting at the TV in privacy of their living room. They have translated their dissent into action and made it visible. This is the worst crime of all.

After being threatened with arrest the activists raised their fists high and marched out of the hotel into the street where they congregated around the hotel’s entrance. They played music and made speeches to passersby, explaining what was happening inside the hotel. They dragged the arms dealers into the proverbial light. This is again, very confronting for an industry that enjoys essentially zero public scrutiny and operates in the shadows.

The hotel staff practically pleaded with the police to make them stop, but as they were now on a public footpath they could no longer be accused of trespassing, and as they were committing no offences, not obstructing the entrance or the foot traffic outside, the police actually had no power to make them leave. Their songs, oratory, and viola playing rang out across the CBD, until after around an hour they left on their own terms. Nourished and replenished by each other’s support and conviction, they debriefed in a near by park, and resolved to continue the struggle.

#DemilitariseSTEM
#Demilitarise
#Decolonise
#Regenerate

Disrupt Land Forces 2022

BREAKING: Conference of world-leading high tech weapons companies baffled by activist’s cunning use of ladder…

We laughed, we cried, we screamed, we sang, we danced and we shared an incredible experience together. Take a look through our gallery to check out some beautiful people creating beautiful disruptions.

check out our Disrupt Land Forces site

The military has invaded our classrooms.

Militarism in our culture is not something that we think about often. When we don’t think about something, we don’t talk about it. When no one is talking about something, it has space to move around without anyone noticing or scrutinizing what it’s doing.

Recent rising tensions with China have caused some people to start talking about the way we view war, the military, and their roles in society. The way we frame these issues matters. Hawks will generally speak about war as if it is both necessary and inevitable. There will always be bad people out there, and thus the good guys will always eventually be called to fight the bad guys. This is noble and natural.

In a logical argument, this is a premise. It is something that is established at the outset and thus not up for debate. It is the starting point from which logical argument sets out. This is important because it sets boundaries on what is up for discussion. If we begin with the premise that war is essentially unavoidable, then the project becomes being on the right side of the war. Choosing which wars are “just” and which are “unjust” wars to fight.

*Whose interests does it serve to presume war is inevitable?*

From where do we get our premises? I argue that most of the time, they are culturally ingrained. No one really teaches us these things, we just infer them from our surroundings, things others say, ways others act, and our own unique set of experiences. Often, they are assumptions that we don’t even realise we are making, because we treat them as premises so their validity is not questioned.

This is why we often hear young people referred to as “impressionable”. They are still forming their set of premises. They have been on the planet for less time than older folks, so they simply have fewer experiences over-all from which to base assumptions. This means their world view is malleable during this stage of life. The clay from which they build their mental model of the world has not yet dried and set.

Having outlined my premise above (see what I did there) I now want to question the role of corporations within education. Every state and territory department of education in Australia states that it encourages corporate partnerships and other commercial arrangements with schools. It is not difficult to justify this if we view the purpose of education as being exclusively to obtain a job. Industry informs schools of what skills they need their workers to have, and schools deliver those skills to young people thus making them more “competitive” in the job market. I am not here to say that we shouldn’t be equipping young people with skills that will be relevant in their adulthood, in fact I intend to argue the opposite. I am however questioning whether that should be regarded as the sole purpose of education.

Given that high school is a crucial period in the development of one’s sense of self, and sense of relationship to the world – should education not be designed with this in mind? What assumptions about the world do we unknowingly leave in young people’s minds in our single-minded quest to get them employed? If we allow businesses to decide what skills are necessary and important, and design education around their needs, what do we NOT teach young people simply because businesses do not demand that they know about it?

Enter weapons companies. The Medical Association for the Prevention of War (MAPW), released a report in which they identified more than twenty STEM education programs that are wholly or partly delivered through sponsorship from weapons companies. Some of these programs include students being taken on a tour of weapons company lab facilities. Some of them are designed for primary school children. In 2017, the NSW Government released a document that outlined their plans to grow the NSW defence industry. One their five “key strategy areas” identified in this document was “Provide defence and industry with their future workforce”. Five years later we have a proliferation of STEM programs being delivered via weapons company sponsorship.

Weapons companies, like all companies, exist to make profit. Any good or bad that they do is secondary to this imperative. Furthermore, our global economic system is designed around the premise of eternal growth so companies not only exist to make profit, but each and every year they are expected to make more profit than they did last year. If your company happens to make profit from selling weapons, then you must sell more and more weapons every year. In times where there are fewer wars, demand for weapons slumps. This might be bad for the shareholders and executives of Lockheed Martin, but I think we can all agree that it is net good for the world.

So, if our education system is taking cues from the weapons industry about what skills are necessary and important for young people to learn, we are actually prioritizing the need for weapons companies to make profit over the need for peace and stability in the world. We teach young people skills relevant to manufacturing lethality, and the moral frameworks to justify this manufacture.

Furthermore, we teach these moral frameworks implicitly and in a seemingly depoliticized context (i.e. science class). But questions of war are inherently political. They necessarily involve value judgements, something which science cannot inform when it is taught devoid of context. Nuclear physics, devoid of context, is apolitical. It’s application to bombing Japan in WWII, is absolutely and unavoidably political. But the ability to contextualise sciences and technologies is not demanded from graduates by industry, so there is no point in teaching it.

Lots of things which are valuable are not profitable, and lots of things which are profitable are not actually that valuable. I cite the incomprehensible volume of minions merchandise and the profits made from their sale as evidence for this claim. As a corollary, fire fighting is a socially valuable service, but it is not profitable which is why the government has not managed to privatise it.

Young people today stare down the barrel of an adulthood of precarity and instability. The world is becoming increasingly volatile and current trends will only intensify as the climate continues to collapse and loses the ability to provide ecosystem services. The global weapons industry stands to do very well for itself.

This means that the weapons industry has an interest in preparing young people for a future full of armed conflict, as this will secure it the greatest profits. It does not have an interest in equipping young people with a STEM education that might allow them to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, address income inequality to make the economy fairer, or avert famines caused by agricultural collapse. There is just no money in it. In fact, if you do anything that largely benefits poor and marginalised people, there tends to be no money in it.

In NSW, this phenomenon which could be described as a conflict of interest, has been identified and certain industries are prohibited by Department policy from having commercial relationships of any kind with schools. Those industries are tobacco, alcohol, gambling, and “anything illegal”. So we have, as a society, already kind of identified that certain industries, which have certain sets of interests, simply have no place in schools. We are not comfortable with the Bundaberg polar bear, Ronald McDonald, or Joe Camel teaching our kids nothin’ about nothin’. But we are okay with Raytheon? A company whose missile struck a school bus full of children just like them – but in Yemen?

We need to examine the role of profit-driven corporations in education, and to do that, we need to examine the role of education in society. Education as it is lived is not just the transfer of knowledge and skills, but also the environment in which young people spend most of their time. Whether we like it or not, that environment shapes them – but what does it shape them into? Can we aim a little higher than simply “employable”?

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Visting Marles

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