THALES

On 1st April, activists the Make West Papua Safe (MWPS) campaign occupied the lobby of a Thales Australia building, and displayed images of West Papuan activists killed by security forces in the last year.

Belgian company CMI Defence and French company Thales have announced new agreements with Saudi Arabia, in response to a new Saudi program of investment in industry and infrastructure.

A new report reveals that the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) is actively funding research into technology supporting the development of armed autonomous drones.

In Australia, the coalition government has been accused of succumbing to pressure from the French arms company Thales, and spending nearly twice as much as was necessary on a new fleet of combat vehicles.

Former South African President Jacob Zuma is scheduled to appear in court on July 27th on 16 charges (and 783 counts) of racketeering, corruption, money laundering and fraud relating to South Africa’s long-running and convoluted arms deal scandal. Long time anti-arms activist Terry Crawford-Browne gives his take on the South African arms trade scandal.

A new report from the Transnational Institute exposes the huge impact of the European Union's “border externalisation” policies, the companies that profit, and the huge numbers of people impacted. Expanding the Fortress explores how migration control has become a major part of the EU's foreign relations, with externalisation policies requiring neighbours to “act as Europe's border guards”.

Thales is a French company, part owned by the French government, that builds a vast range of radars, sonars and electronic surveillance satellites, tactical communication systems and combat management systems, drones, helicopter avionics, armoured vehicles, mortar systems and missiles.

The Australian War Memorial (AWM) is one of our pre-eminent national institutions. It rightly holds a special place in commemorations of our war dead, not only as the nation pauses on Anzac Day, but right throughout the year. In the memorial’s own words, “Its mission is to assist Australians to remember, interpret and understand the Australian experience of war and its enduring impact on Australian society”.

A new report from the Transnational Institute and StopWapenhandel exposes the companies profiting from the militarisation of Europe's borders.

Theodore Baird1

A number of scholars, journalists, and activists have argued that we may be witnessing the development of a ‘security-industrial complex’ in Europe which resembles the earlier ‘military-industrial complex’ of the Cold War. The border security-industrial complex refers to the relations between military, security, and private industry within a global market for the design and implementation of border security technologies. The main actors are governments, suppliers of security technologies, and security forces demanding use of new technologies for controlling and managing state borders.

Stephanie Demblon

“Europe is at war against an imaginary enemy” - this is Frontexit’s campaign slogan regarding the respect of migrants’ human rights at the borders of the European Union. Usually addressed from a humanitarian angle (guilty of negligence to basic migrant rights) or a political one (the question of migratory flux management and distribution), the subject is rarely connected to the European arms market. And yet…

Tim Wright

Each year, the nine nuclear-armed nations spend a combined total of more than US$100 billion on their nuclear forces – assembling new warheads, modernizing old ones, and building ballistic missiles, bombers and submarines to deliver them. Much of this work is carried out by private corporations, which are financed by a vast web of financial institutions around the world.