(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The new documentary The Shadow World by Johan Grimonprez is based on Andrew Feinstein's journalistic digging – a book on the West's huge arms trade and weapons production (see film criticism page 31). If you read the book from 2012, you will soon realize what a sick world the proliferation of weapons has created.
Global annual military consumption has now exceeded 13 000 billion, of which the United States accounts for about half. Feinstein's and director Grimonprez's business is to uncover the shady and secret weapon trade of conventional weapons. Here, most Western governments are involved in secrecy, with a circle of more or less corrupt and criminal intermediaries and producers. The western "shadow world" is, for example, the United States, England, Italy, France and Sweden, but also South Africa, where Feinstein lives.
Sweden? Yes, here you can read about how Olof Palme participated in a large-scale trade for the Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors in India, where Rajiv Gandhi demanded payment to a friend of his company to accept this somewhat inferior artillery than the French offered. It was a scandal. When Palme later became prime minister, he chose to stop further Swedish arms sales, this time to both sides during the Iraq-Iran war. This is an industry full of criminals, where human lives are not saved. As is known, Palm was murdered three weeks later.
Arms sales are lucrative, and can prolong a number of civil wars – whether in Sierra Leone (Charles Taylor) or today's Syria (Assad and the rebels). Money and sex cause morally blunt people to move metal and gunpowder around the globe. For example, South Africa's weapons were sold for NOK 500 billion under President Thabo Mbeki – who was virtually unused – while 350 people living with HIV and AIDS died. After all, they couldn't afford medication ...
And in these Nobel Prize days we can remember the Swede behind the dynamite – who was also behind the aforementioned Bofors. Could one learn from his bad conscience, where both Sweden and Norway today appear hypocritical as "neutral" or "peacemakers"? With an arms industry to the contrary? Do we really need to help create tensions against Russia and others by now buying advanced aircraft for 240 billion? What blind mentality has created the need to be powerful and create enmity when war and disaster are often the result?
Journalists who reveal this game are at risk of being killed. WikiLeaks' Assange was mentioned by Hillary Clinton as someone who could "drone". And what about Manning and Snowden?
Around 500 recently reported military cases for corruption and crime have ended up with only one verdict! Today's pervasive use of violence should make every civilized person blush. Too bad there are so few of us.
See also the article on the Berlin Peace Conference: "We have to stop being so naive!"
