Image from YouTube (Video uploaded by Hindustan Times on June 3, 2025)
On the outskirts of Berlin, you can visit what’s left of Sachsenhausen, one of the first Nazi concentration camps, set up in 1936, as a model for the more than 44,000 such camps they ran between 1933 and 1945.
I was struck by the efficiency shown by the way that the Nazis carried out mass murder in this camp – which became a model for how to run this operation as quickly and with as little fuss as possible.
In the early days of the camp, the inmates were used as forced labour. Systematic extermination was carried out. Many thousands died by hunger, disease, overwork, medical experiments and mistreatment. But by 1941, tens of thousands of Jews and Soviet prisoners were being directly murdered.
I saw where this happened. Originally, the prisoners were forced down a brick path, and shot. You can still see stains on this path. But here’s the interesting bit: It turned out that the German soldiers who did the shooting became badly affected by it. Sometimes they would miss, or have to make several shots to actually kill a man. It made the soldiers unwell, having to rather messily murder their victims – it’s not like being in combat, not at all fair. It was making those soldiers mentally ill.
Here’s where the practical genius of the Nazis came in. They devised a special unit (which was still there when I visited a few years ago). In this unit, the shooter could be sure of doing one direct lethal hit, but the victim was placed in such a way that the shooter was unable to see him. This system solved the psychological problem of upsetting the man doing the shooting. No more mental illness, and the mass killing could proceed in an orderly way.
In a sort of sequel to this discovery, the Americans in recent years developed the efficiency of drones. targeting and killing suspected terrorists and militants in countries like Pakistan, Yemen, and Afghanistan. Once again – such a beneficial effect on the operator’s mental health. From thousands of miles away – press a button, no sight of any mess, and a beneficial effect on the public too – all this killing being done so neatly, and so far away – so much better than an old-fashioned war battle.
And so it is that the thought of war becomes much less unpleasant. With drones, and missiles, it has become a sort of distant, sort of “clean”, precision operation.
This new palatability of war comes to add to the already existing beneficial aspects of war. Getting ready for war shows that our great leaders are strong and decisive. It’s patriotic. It defends our democratic values. There are those other – nebulous, but still real, concepts of courage, heroism, and past glorious victories. The new “war-readiness” shows that we are aware, and awake-up to the threats of other countries, who undoubtedly want to attack us. And on top of all that – getting ready for war provides jobs, jobs jobs!
Now Sir Keir Starmer’s UK Labour government is not so sure that the British public is convinced of all this. So they’re accentuating the already existing British trend to promote militarism. The Daily Mail announces the new education programme:
Defence chiefs will work with the Department for Education to develop understanding of the Armed Forces among young people in schools, by means of a two-year series of public outreach events across the UK, explaining current threats and future trends.
Schools and community-based cadet forces will also be expanded, with an ambition of a 30 per cent rise by 2030 with a view to the UK having 250,000 cadets, many of whom will then go on to join the armed forces.
Those radical terrorists, the Quakers, have provided an alternative view – The military in education & youth activities. But I’m not sure that their view is widely known.
It looks as if mass education on the necessity of war is now well underway. Strong, smart Western leading men are brainwashing the public with the doctrine that authoritarian Russia and China are about to invade our peace-loving democracies. Sir Keir Starmer takes the initiative, showing how Labour there is in concert with the Tories. We must be ready to fight back, or perhaps better still, to pre-empt such attacks. No doubt the strong, smart Russian and Chinese leading men are teaching their populations the same sort of message about the war intentions of the West.
What now makes it easier is that we tax-payers can buy ever more of those glorious distance methods, so much neater and more orderly than sending our boys out for messy personal danger. The efficient Nazis got the ball rolling on this. In education, Sir Keir Starmer now takes the initiative. Labour in the UK is enthusiastically backing their own and the USA’s arms manufacturers. Weapons-making is the big thing in business now – in Europe too, and of course in the USA. It’s all good – the problems are under control, aren’t they?
See also: Off to War We Go: Starmer’s Strategic Defence Review
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To top it off, Australia has become part of the arms export industry, so we are in this global militarisation up to our necks.
Media Realease from April 2025 -- The Australian Centre for International Justice (ACIJ) responds to the ABC’s exclusive report revealing the export of a remote weapon system developed by a Canberra-based defence company to Israel despite the Australian government’s continued insistence that there have been no Australian defence exports to Israel since 7 October 2023.
The Australian-designed weapon was tested by the Israeli military in early 2025 as part of Israel’s trials of ‘counter-drone’ technologies. Despite the Australian government’s repeated claims that no Australian weapons have been exported to Israel since 7 October 2023, this revelation suggests Australian components were sent to Israel via third country channels, specifically the US, before being exported as a weapons system to Israel, bypassing Australian export controls and in violation of Australia’s international legal obligations, including under the Arms Trade Treaty.
This report raises serious questions regarding the claims of the Australian government and Department of Defence that no weapons or ammunition have been directly exported from Australia to Israel in recent years, and that any approved exports have been strictly for items destined to return to Australia.
In June 2024, correspondence sent on behalf of our clients, Palestinian human rights organisations, forced the Department of Defence to undertake a review of extant permits. The Department of Defence identified only 66 extant permits it has undertaken to review, and in November advised it has ‘amended or lapsed’ only 16 permits. The ACIJ has raised doubts about whether that review includes exports of parts and components sent via third country channels, including F-35 parts and components.
“It is outrageous that despite this incontrovertible evidence of Australian arms being sent to Israel and used by the Israeli military, ready for its genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people in Gaza, the Albanese government and the Defence Department are holding fast to the falsehood that Australia has not sent any exports to Israel for the last five years. Our clients, Palestinian human rights organisations, have put the government on notice several times. These are obfuscations which have cost lives in Gaza. We see through these obfuscations, exports through third countries are a violation of Australia’s international legal obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty and Australia’s defence export regulations.”
Its a dirty business in which we should play no part.
Some more on the dirty business.
The main character in the excellent Nicholas Cage movie Lord of War is based on a true story.
Lord of War’s Yuri Orlov is based on several real international arms dealers from recent history, chief among them being the notorious Viktor Bout. Many of the details from Orlov’s life in Lord of War were directly lifted from the allegations surrounding Bout’s personal life and illegal activities, the connections implied by these allegations, and Bout’s own testimonies during his trial. Soon after the release of Lord of War, human rights group Amnesty International not only praised but even endorsed the movie because of how it shines a spotlight on the global illicit arms trafficking industry — represented by fictional protagonist Yuri Orlov being such a believable version of real arms dealers like Viktor Bout.
After Orlov’s arrest by the US he is told that while he is a criminal, he sometimes serves the interests of the U.S. government by covertly arming the enemies of its enemies. He is subsequently released.
The film concludes with a statement that the world's largest arms suppliers—the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China, and France—are also the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
Who could respect "Law" when it is a human construct much abused, distorted, perverted? The symbol of "World Law" should be the UNO Security Council, permanent members with veto powers, and large scale arms dealers. All are descended from regimes of terror, murder, theft, rebellion, bloody revolution, agonies...replacing lawful regimes and masters. Charles I, Louis XVI, Nicholas II, the British colonial masters, the Chiang regime, all went the hard way. "World Law" kills, lies, distorts, grabs. (but, drive carefully, pay bills and listen "to the missus.)
It's been said a million times by those brave enough and frank enough to speak the truth; war is a dirty business promoted & promulgated by those who stand to gain, the arms manufacturers, bankers and financiers, supply chain providers, and politicians along with the professional military classes themselves.
The pathology and ponerology is clearly evident, in your face as it were, yet the protagonists, all with immense experience in the game, prosecute it with ruthless efficiency. Men & women conscripted or recruited to act as the expendable fodder, the operatives at the coalface of conflict, those who will actually experience the horrors of warfare and consequently suffer for the rest of their lives along with their families, are merely ciphers, pawns on the chess boards of the puppet masters who instigate and prosecute these works of the devil. It's always been thus, and will continue to so be, until it isn't.
Something deeply askew within the human psyche, deeply buried, unfathomable and unavailable for scrutiny and the necessity of rigourous examination as to the nature of this psychological defect.
Canga, well put, and there's practical problems as well that are tied to the human psyche.
A problem with arms manufacturing for defence for example, is that it tends to be self-perpetuating.
If Australia decided to establish a missile production industry, it would be at great expense, and when sufficient missiles had been produced after a few years, what would happen to all the highly trained staff and the hi-tech gear? The pressure would be applied to keep producing and start selling.
Civilised countries in the future will ensure that such factories be designed to be dual purpose -- military and civilian.
But that involves planning and intervention in the economy, two features notably absent, now that our economies are run by economists and accountants who know nothing.
Numbers are great, but there’s no morality in mathematics.
I was fortunate to spend time perched on a pair of milk crates on the stern of a ship in Broome harbour. My companion was the ship electrician, and we were observing the steps in a program which would give us plenty of time for a cuppa.
The ship was crewed by Indians, so the turban was appropriate.
He suggested that he would share a tale from his culture to pass the time.
It was long, and beautifully told, and the intent was to pass on a story of arms dealers, their methods and the harm it brings to society.
Set in India where several religions live in harmony, the dealer (from USA) settles himself into the village and talks to all. But the line of chat has him supplying small arms to the varied religious groups for their defense, and an escalating bunch of weapons while he stirs up resentment between the groups.
Of course this leads to a war with religious foundations, and I cant do justice to the feeling he put into the telling of the tale.
The harm that is done in society in the name of defense seems to permeate just about every culture on the planet