arms trade
Small arms, big bangs
Submitted by ni-radio on July 2, 2008 - 1:54pm.
A thousand people die every day from gunshot wounds, and 3,000 more are severely injured. Surprisingly, those targeted are not troops. Nearly three quarters of guns are in the hands of civilians not armies; and three quarters of people who die are citizens, not soldiers. If a 1,000 people were dying each day from bird flu, it'd be treated as a global emergency. So why don't Governments just pass laws to outlaw them? It's just one of many conundrums targeted by the International Action Network on Small Arms - a global movement of 800 civil society organizations working in 120 countries to get rid of small arms and light weapons. It's Director, Rebecca Peters, joins today's guests to take aim at gun traders, and shoot down the old idea that the more guns we have, the safer we'll be.
- Yukiko Murasaki arrived in Cambodia to find that guns were part of the household furniture. But by the end of last year, she and her colleagues from Japan's Assistance Team for Small Arms Management in Cambodia had collected around 28,000 guns. She tells us how.
- John Rodsted - part of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines that won the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize - was firing on all cylinders again in Dublin this year when over 100 countries committed to a ban on cluster munitions. He swaps strategies on negotiating international conventions.
- Author Alasdair Soussi is researching the first US invasion of Lebanon, which took place 50 years ago this month. Ally takes us to the beaches of Beirut on 15 July 1958 to introduce us to the unusual ‘enemies' confronting US troops as they landed.
As disarming communities and countries is today's target, the CD for this week is Ceasefire, inspired by peace-talks in Sudan between the Moslem North and the predominantly Christian South. Reflecting the hope by both sides for a peaceful future, Christian rapper Emmanuel Jal gets together with Moslem musician Abdel Gadir Salim to show what colourful, dynamic sounds are produced when two different cultures work side-by-side.
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Depleted Uranium
Submitted by ni-radio on November 21, 2007 - 12:00am.
Just one microscopic particle of depleted uranium lodged in the lungs can start a reaction in a single cell that could lead to fatal cancer. It's unfortunate, then, that the world has an estimated one million tonnes of this dangerous waste - and a very limited means to get rid of it. In this program we'll hear how, why and where it's being dumped… and the injuries and deaths that are being caused as a result.
Storing depleted uranium (DU) is not a viable long-term option: it takes 4.5 billion years for just half of it to turn into lead, and keeps eating through the containers in which it is stored. So countries are giving it away - to weapons manufacturers, who turn it into weaponry that they sell back to governments. It's very effective in weapons: piercing tanks and armor like a hot knife through butter. However, its long-term impacts are cruel and inhuman. With a range of international guests, New Internationalist co-editor Dinyar Godrej joins Chris Richards to report on how DU waste now contaminates a string of ‘enemy' countries. As a result, thousands of civilians are – and will continue to be – reporting cancer and abnormalities at rates never before experienced well after their war is over:
- Having sent troops into places marked on maps as being contaminated with depleted uranium, the US army told their troops in Iraq that depleted uranium was so safe that it could be sprinkled on breakfast cereal. Now Retired Staff Sergeant Herbert Reed is living with the legacy - including nerve damage, respiratory problems, pain, paralysis, and internal bleeding.
- When John LaForge from Nukewatch went knocking at the door of the number-one producer of depleted uranium weapons in the United States, he and three other non-violent protestors were arrested for trespassing. In his defence, he asked a jury to find that the munitions manufacturer was the real criminal, not those who protested against it. The jury did.
- The movement against DU is growing. In March this year, the Belgian Parliament voted to ban depleted uranium ammunition. Then there's the ultimate campaign result - peace glorious peace. Dekha Abdi is a peace-builder - forging viable ways to resolve conflict without violence. She's one of the recipients this year of a Right Livelihood Award (also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize) for outstanding vision and work on behalf of the planet and its people. She shares some of her rich experiences with us.
Reflecting our hope for the future, today's CD is called Ceasefire. Inspired by peace-talks in Sudan between the Muslim North and the predominantly Christian South, Emmanuel Jal, a Christian rapper from the South, gets together with Abdel Gadir Salim, a Muslim musician from the North to show what colourful, dynamic sounds are produced when two different cultures work side-by-side.
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Depleted Uranium developments
Submitted by Dinyar Godrej on November 15, 2007 - 11:30am.
The ball of activism against DU weapons has been rolling ever onward after our current magazine on the subject.
Readers may be aware that Belgium has become the first country to ban these DU armaments altogether and that the European parliament has been calling for a ban as well. Now, after intense lobbying by the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW), wheels at the UN are beginning to creak. The UN First Committee in New York has just passed a resolution by a landslide majority urging UN member states to re-examine the health consequences of DU weapons. The resolution requests that states and international bodies submit a report on DU to the UN General Assembly during next year’s session. DU will also be on the Assembly’s agenda. A second vote will be needed to confirm this resolution and will take place early next year. Read more »
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Bombs away
Submitted by ni-radio on July 18, 2007 - 12:00am.
This month last year, Israel’s military forces were attacking Lebanon. One year later, a horrifying legacy remains. Imagine walking into a field where hundreds of unexploded cluster bomblets lie – just some of the four million that Israel’s military dropped into South Lebanon in the last days of its bombardment. You know that – in this field – living and dying can change with the wind. You have seen the faces and limbs that are blown away with one wrong step. What do you do? What John Rodsted did was grab a camera, film the fields, and take the footage to the Norway Government. Within weeks the Oslo Process had begun – an international dialogue to negotiate a treaty to ban cluster bombs. John is the official photographer to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines – the team that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. Ten years later John is still campaigning against those cruel and life-destroying legacies of war – the anti-personnel bombs that fighting forces leave behind when they withdraw from conflict. To explode the argument that cluster bombs are legitimate weapons of war, he is joined in conversation with other international campaigners:
- Rae McGrath, a driving force behind the campaign to ban landmines, describes the anatomy of this successful international campaign: where to lobby, when to fight, and how to win.
- Simon Conway, the Director of the British NGO Landmine Action, who’s a global advocate effectively prosecuting both landmines and cluster bombs, translates what the politicians are saying.
- Arms traders make their money from dead bodies. Their best products are the ones that kill the most effectively. Siemon Wezeman from the Stockholm International Peace Research explains why the international arms trade continues to be brisk.
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Radio New Internationalist – Inner Conflict
Submitted by ni-radio on March 16, 2007 - 9:42am.
As a radio program that’s always in search of new horizons, this week’s co-host is a pioneering reporter from Somalia – Ahmed Abdisalam Adan – who explains the most recent conflict in his country from his HornAfrik newsroom bunker in the capital, Mogadishu. From here, we step out into the line of fire in search of successful campaigns to rid the world of war and weapons.
- Johan Galtung – a global warrior for non-violent resolution to conflict – sets-out a world without armies;
- Kameelah Rasheed gives a passionate defence of the hijab, and explains how one piece of cloth has become a battleground between the sexes in South Africa;
- Mathias Bienstman talks about how the launch of a new bank has incriminated arms-trade funders.
And – as March marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the British colonies – New Internationalist contributor Clare Goff compares the campaign tactics that won the public then, with those that work now.
In this program, we again feature the CD Rhythm of the River, which showcases a range of artists from the World Music Network’s Riverboat Records series. The extensive variety of sounds and synergies on this CD draws on music from Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific.
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Radio New Internationalist – Landing rights
Submitted by ni-radio on March 2, 2007 - 11:48pm.
Today we accompany Indigenous people through battles won and battles won in Africa and the Pacific. Although these are battles with no gunfire, the cultural and economic injuries are just as momentous. Jim Brooks – an Australian human rights lawyer who’s worked with Aboriginal people for the last two decades and was the chief administrator on Australia’s Stolen Children’s Inquiry – co-hosts today’s program as we start off by exploring the forced removal of Indigenous kids that has shamed countries like Canada, the United States and Australia. Then its off around the world:
- To Botswana, where the Jumanda Gakereborn and the Kalahari Bushmen are returning home triumphant after rolling back attempts by their Government and De Beers to rob them of their land for diamond mining;
- To Hawai’i, to learn the language of self-determination… and dispossession with author and human rights advocate Haunani-Kay Trask. It’s not black and white, you know. Haunani shares also with us some of her poetry about self-determination from her latest book;
- To West Papua, as former Political Counsel in the US Embassy in Jakarta, Edmund McWilliams, updates us about Indonesia’s military occupation of West Papua, and the arms that the US continues to give the Indonesian military effort; and
- To Papua New Guinea, where Annie Kajir from the Environmental Law Centre in Port Moresby tells us how the lobbying done by herself and other PNG campaigners have reduced Europeans imports of PNG wood by 80 per cent.
Some juicy audio morsels pepper this week’s program from Rene Lacaille and Bob Brozman’s fabulous album DigDig … where the pulse of the Pacific melts into the arms of Bluegrass and Latin. You’ll find them in the Riverboat Records Series on the World Music Network’s website.
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Radio New Internationalist – Caste aways
Submitted by ni-radio on February 9, 2007 - 5:22pm.
In this program you'll hear one of the main concepts behind Radio New Internationalist take-off, as progressive people from Asia, Europe and the Pacific drop in to our airwaves to share and compare their experiences from different continents. Today, arms traders and corporate raiders share the space with human rights advocates ...and a stand-up comedian:
- Dr Shaista Shameem, Director of the Fiji Human Rights Commission, co-hosts today's program. She's presently mounting an historic case to obtain compensation for the descendents of Pacific Islanders who were forced into slavery to service Fiji's cotton industry.
- Brokering international sales for electric torture batons is child's play. Literally! British comedian and author Mark Thomas was there when the kids were on their mobiles doing the deals.
- In a country still plagued by the problems of caste, Urvashi Butalia, an Indian writer and publisher who lives in New Delhi, tracks the progress of India's affirmative action legislation - one of the first countries in the world to enact such laws.
- Murray Horton from Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) talks about this year's Roger Award for the worst transnational operating in New Zealand.
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