NON-LETHAL WEAPONS FOR PEACE CAMPAIGN

Weapons at the Royal Wedding

It was a lovely wedding and they seem a terrific young couple. There were plenty of swords and other symbolic weaponry - but there were also some very lethal and visible guns in the hands of the guardsmen and not a few police (these ones were not traditional English bobbies). No doubt there were skilled marksmen on many of the roof tops and discretely armed secret service officers among the crowds and in the abbey.

In the context of today, it was - unfortunately - probably a wise precaution. At present, the only way to stop a mad and ruthless assassin may indeed be with bullets and no-one would wish any harm on Will and Kate.

The other lethal weapons in evidence were the aircraft in the fly-past - a WW2 Bomber and a range of fighter planes. Interesting and impressive indeed, but these planes were machines designed for killing people. Yes, of course they were a representation of the power of the British Nation - but they were still instruments of death.

Let's look forward to a popular public wedding in the not-too-distant future (even a royal one if you like that sort of thing) where the guardsmen and the police carry non-lethal devices and the fly-past is of aircraft armed with non-lethal technology. Wouldn't that be a better symbol for a happy and wonderful wedding?

"Army Chief open to women serving on front line" (current news story)

Amost certainly before long, female defence force personnel in Australia will be able to serve 'on the front line'. In other words, they'll be able to kill the enemy directly like male soldiers. In most senses, this is logical. Women deserve equal responsibilities to men.

The reason we may feel uncomfortable about this idea is that it highlights the fact that armies still operate by killing human beings. A woman, who is biologically closer to nurturing human life than a man, will obviously seem less appropriate in the role of a killer (even if she may be just as competent in it - if not more so - than a man.)

With non-lethal technology, in the armies of the future women and men may be able to protect against aggression without taking the lives of the other women and men.