Arms Industry and the Business of War

There is not a state or kingdom whose history has not been stained with the brutality of war. The armed conflicts, conducted by the economic forces, have never brought anything but misery and deaths among countries, while the ones in power will never die on the battlef ield. It has always been this way, sending pawns to defend a country and interests that only rich will benef it from. Here we leave these classic and wise words in order to focus on the current subject:

Today we keep witnessing the cruel barbarity, with more military and armament technology. Once again, instead of using science for making our lives easier, it is being used to defend the interests of the states and its high classes. In this way, being helped by the huge technology advances, the war has become one of the biggest businesses of the world’s leaders. With this, in this semi globalised world and big armies, we encounter the largest exodus and genocide in the history of humanity.

We scandalize when we watch the rising tide of refugees on TV, the battlefields, and so on; but we soon forget that everything starts here: in our governments and their corporations. The war begins in our cities’ and towns’ factories, because it is clear that without the sale of weapons wars would not be possible to carry out. Where some of us see sadness and death, others see business; and disgracefully, while the business exists, this is situation going to exist.

The Spanish state is the fourth country/company exporting weapons to all over the world, a small space in the globe that supplies a huge amount of warships, drones, mortar shells, cannons, etc. to anyone who takes out the wallet. The TV is entertaining us with series of narcos, murders and dealers, trying to brutalize the society; and we do not realize that inside the political class and the Spanish companies’ offices one can find the best material to create the most brutal TV show.

Many companies of our country have a direct contact with the production of armament and others are exclusively dedicated to it. That is how it works, first they create the conflicts and then they sell the weapons. On the one hand, these corporations are made up of unscrupulous businessmen ready to profit from death, and on the other hand, of workers willing to produce wealth for the leaders and death for the unlucky countries. This workers’ behaviour is not something unpredictable, since they have only lived on the work culture and have learned to fill their refrigerators without considering the damage they are generating to other families. Toys like Action man are going to be bought by them with no bad conscience.

Behind it all there are always banks like BBVA, Santander, BBK; companies like Nantia, Sener, Espal; or even Education, if we consider that on Engineering Schools students learn how to design weapons, and the people in charge do not care to which companies are these students sent to do an internship. We are governed by real psychopaths, while they talk about peace and democracy from their high-backed chairs. They are the most dreadful criminals.

For instance, in the case of the Basque Country, the leaders of its autonomous government (PNV) invest in an indirect and concealed way huge amounts of money in the military business. Then, at a personal level, they become managers and shareholders of these companies. This obscure business was one of the reasons why the big ships left Bilbao’s harbour every week headed for Saudi Arabia. After many protests and different actions, it was possible to stop the armament departure from the Basque coast. However, they started to use Santander’s harbour, so the fight on the Cantabrian harbours continues.

In the same way that media bombard us with the message that the people living in a war-torn areas are terrorist beings without feelings and heart, these people are being bombed by our planes and real ammunition produced by our all-heart and extremely soulful neighbours. But make no mistake, in this world we all have feelings, we all thrill, we cry, we fall in love, we fight... We are all human and none should die because of the economic interests.

This cannot be allowed! Let’s not let weapons be produced! We all know that only the working class society is able to produce them and that it is the one with the power to stop it. The leaders do not produce anything, they only keep the benefits and leave thousands of dead bodies behind. It seems impossible, but as everything, the solution lies in our hands.

We want to make clear that we are not just pro-refugees, we are anti-war and therefore, anti-capitalists. The origin of the problems must be found in order to fight it and find a solution. Capitalism is always the main problem, this savage-advanced capitalism, devastator of all trace of life. Capitalism and nationalism are two inventions created many years ago in order to end with solidarity among peoples and to incite hatred and violence in the society, as well as to send people to war in order to benefit rich peoples’ interests.

The system is going to keep working in this way unless we work to help out our comrades. For this purpose, solidarity and consciousness are going to be necessary. Let’s organize and stop being war and its murders complicit! Today they are being killed in any other place, but tomorrow this could be our situation. They are killing us with a smile on their faces! Let’s fight!