Illegal torture equipment – right on your doorstep! The adverts shaming Britain’s arms trade

“Horrific killer drones! Ankle-shattering leg irons! Cluster bombs! And electric stun batons that cause excruciating pain but leave no trace!” The cheery voice and cartoon imagery leave no doubt that this advert for the world’s biggest arms fair is a sharp spoof, produced for Amnesty International to highlight the British government’s willingness to flog weapons to repressive regimes via the Defence and Security Equipment International’s jamboree at the ExCeL Centre in London’s Docklands.

But a separate campaign is also leading to many posters cropping up at bus stops and on tube trains that require a second glance. “Important announcement, Travelling on the DLR from 15th to 18th September?” reads one, using London Underground fonts and branding with the DLR line turning into the image of a tank. “This September, a swarm of arms dealers will be descending on the DLR … Customers are requested to help stop the arms fair.”

The 300 posters are by artists who exhibited work at the Museum of Cruel Designs (PDF) in Banksy’s Dismaland. A collective called the Special Patrol Group helped distribute it around London using “Ad Space Hack Packs”, a £6 pack of Allen keys which it claims “gain access to around a third of bus stop advertising space on the planet”. (Transport for London is not amused by this flyposting “vandalism”.)

More at the The Guardian

The World Must Stand Together

On June 17-18 , Presidents Obama and Putin will meet on the side of the G8 Summit, with cutting nukes on the agenda. We must stand together for a world without nuclear weapons. Join the Global Zero movement and demand zero!

Texas Says It's OK to Shoot an Escort If She Won't Have Sex With You

A jury in Bexar County, Texas just acquitted Ezekiel Gilbert of charges that he murdered a 23-year-old Craigslist escort—agreeing that because he was attempting to retrieve the $150 he'd paid to Lenora Ivie Frago, who wouldn't have sex with him, his actions were justified.

Gilbert had admitted to shooting Frago in the neck on Christmas Eve 2009, when she accepted $150 from Gilbert and left his home without having sex with him. Frago, who was paralyzed by the shooting, died several months later.

Gilbert's defense argued that the shooting wasn't meant to kill, and that Gilbert's actions were justified, because he believed that sex was included as part of the fee. Texas law allows people "to use deadly force to recover property during a nighttime theft."

gawker.com

Protest against warlords in Amsterdam

Picket line at shareholders meeting EADS in Amsterdam.. shareholders arrive at the hotel in Amsterdam for the meeting.. European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company is one of the biggest European arms producers.. due to inadequate arms export regulation the company can export its weapons all over the world, also to dictatorships.. moreover the company is a nuclear weapons producer..

Campagne tegen Wapenhandel

The rifles made especially for children

As they descended on Houston for their three-day annual convention, the faithful of the National Rifle Association were not about to be knocked from their path to gun-owning righteousness by a little breaking news, even if it did involve a Kentucky boy killing his two-year-old sister with a gun made specifically for children.

“I don’t see a problem with that,” said Angela Armstrong from Ohio when quizzed about Keystone Sporting Arms, a Pennsylvania company that specialises in making guns for minors. It was one of their products, a .22 Crickett, that fired the bullet that killed the little girl on Tuesday. “They are not toys,” Ms Amstrong, a lifelong NRA member, said. “It’s all about adult responsibility. You have to be a responsible owner.”

The Independent

China defends growing military spending

China has defended its booming military spending saying vast investments in the armed forces have contributed to global peace and stability, despite concerns among the US and Beijing's Asian neighbours over sharpening territorial disputes.

However, in a break with previous years, no figure for this year's defence budget was presented on the eve of the annual legislative session which will see new leaders placed into top government positions after they were elevated at November's Communist Party congress. Speaking at a news conference on Monday, Fu Ying, a spokeswoman for the National People's Congress, said the figure would appear in the overall budget to be released Tuesday.

On the same day, party leader Xi Jinping will take over from Hu Jintao as president, as well as head of the government's Central Military Commission, as part of China's once-a-decade power transition. In addition, the session approves top cabinet appointments such as the defence minister.

China's defence spending has grown substantially each year for more than two decades, last year rising 11.2 percent to $106.4bn, an increase of about $10.7bn. Only the US spends more on defence.

More on Al Jazeera English (with video)

Guns..

A 'Desperate, Cornered Rat,' 'Lobbyist For Mass Murderers'

Lawrence O'Donnell condemned NRA president Wayne LaPierre for Friday his press conference about the Newtown massacre in a special edition of his MSNBC show.

O'Donnell does not usually work on Fridays, but he made an exception for LaPierre. The gun lobbyist called for armed police officers in every school. His comments were widely criticized.

Huffington Post

US Gun (lobby) Safety

Hooray, assault weapons! Shoot-em-up Charlie is back, this time working with the NRA to get their message out about the Aurora theater shooting in this gun (lobby) safety video. Learn all about the perfect solution to the tragic problem of mass shootings in the USA.

Japanese Government working on cyberweapon

The Japanese Defense Ministry is in the process of developing a computer virus capable of tracking, identifying and disabling sources of cyber-attacks, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned. The development of the virtual cyberweapon was launched in 2008. Since then, the weapon has been tested in a closed network environment.

Cyberweapons are said to already be in use in countries such as the United States and China. However, in Japan there is no provision on the use of cyberweapons against external parties in existing legislation on foreign attacks. With this in mind, the Defense Ministry and Foreign Ministry have begun legislative consideration regarding the matter, according to sources.

The most distinctive feature of the new virus is its ability to trace cyber-attack sources. It can identify not only the immediate source of attack, but also all "springboard" computers used to transmit the virus. The virus also has the ability to disable the attacking program and collect relevant information. 

The Daily Yomiuri

Japanese Journalist Accuses Israel Of Fukushima Sabotage

A leading Japanese journalist recently made two incredible claims about the Fukushima power plant that suffered a nuclear meltdown in March 2011, sending shockwaves around the world. First, the former editor of a national newspaper in Japan says the U.S. and Israel knew Fukushima had weapons-grade uranium and plutonium that were exposed to the atmosphere after a massive tsunami wave hit the reactor. Second, he  contends that Israeli intelligence sabotaged the reactor in retaliation for Japan’s support of an independent Palestinian state.

According to Yoishi Shimatsu, a former editor of Japan Times Weekly, these nuclear materials were shipped to the plant in 2007 on the orders of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, with the connivance of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The shipment was in the form of warhead cores secretly removed from the U.S. nuclear warheads facility BWXT Plantex near Amarillo, Texas. While acting as the middleman, Israel transported warheads from the port of Houston, and in the process kept the best ones while giving the Japanese older warhead cores that had to be further enriched at Fukushima.

Shimatsu credits retired CIA agent and mercenary Roland Vincent Carnaby with learning the warheads were being transported from Houston. In a strange twist, Carnaby was mysteriously shot dead less than a year later by Houston police at a traffic stop. He was shot once in the back and once in the chest. He did not have a weapon in his hands. Intelligence sources said he had been tracking a Mossad unit that was smuggling U.S. plutonium out of Houston docks for an Israeli nuclear reactor.

In an even more explosive charge, the journalist says that 20 minutes before the Fukushima plant’s nuclear meltdown, Israel was so upset with Japanese support for a Palestinian declaration of statehood that it double-crossed Japan by unleashing the Stuxnet virus on the plant’s  computers. The virus hampered the shutdown, leading to fallout from a section of the plant housing uranium and plutonium retrieved from the warheads supplied in 2007.

More on American Free Press and Secret Weapons Program Inside Fukushima Nuclear Plant?

Fukushima Disaster TEPCO Status Report 22 October 2011

U.S. Sending Mercenaries to Secure Libya’s Weapons

The State Department is sending dozens of American contractors to Libya to help that country’s fledgling efforts to track down and destroy heat-seeking antiaircraft missiles looted from government stockpiles that could be used against civilian airliners.

The contractors, weapons and explosives specialists, are part of a growing $30 million American program to secure Libya’s conventional weapons arsenal, which was ransacked during the fall of the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

American and other Western officials are especially concerned that as weapons slip from state custody, they can be easily sold through black markets to other countries, fuelling regional wars or arming terrorist groups. Analysts are particularly worried about the dispersal of the SA-7, an early-generation, shoulder-fired missile in the same family as the more widely known Stinger.

Full story on The New York Times

Also see: What To Do About Libya’s Weapons on The World