According to the US State Department, Russia has sent tanks, heavy weapons and rocket launchers into Ukraine over the past days, in order to support pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, confirming statements recently provided by Ukrainian media sources. The State Department said there was video proof.

“We assess that separatists in eastern Ukraine have acquired heavy weapons and military equipment from Russia, including Russian tanks and multiple rocket launchers,” said US State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf in a statement Friday.

Three T-64 tanks, several MB-21 “or Grad” multiple rocket launchers, as well as military vehicles crossed into Ukraine from Russia in recent days, Harf said.

Harf said the tanks are a type that Russian forces no longer use and predicted that Moscow would claim the tanks were taken from Ukrainian forces.

Hraf’s statement referred to the type of tanks–ones Russian no longer used–and said, “Russia will claim these tanks were taken from Ukrainian forces, but no Ukrainian tank units have been operating in that area,” said the State Department. “We are confident that these tanks came from Russia.”

“We also have information that Russia has accumulated multiple rocket launchers at this same deployment site in southwest Russia, and these rocket launchers also recently departed,” went the State Department statement. “Internet video has shown what we believe to be these same rocket launchers traveling through Luhansk.”

Hraf stated, “This is unacceptable. A failure by Russia to de-escalate this situation will lead to additional costs.”

IIP

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Military surplus equipment, including vehicles–most familiarly the  Mine-Resistant Ambush-Proof (MRAP) BearCat–are becoming common tools of community law enforcement in the US. These battlefield tools are now owned by over 500 communities nationwide. At a cost of around half a million dollars each vehicle–although the first one is often free–police departments seek grants by applying for various federal programs–applications council members have admittedly lied on.

Richland County’s “Peacemaker”

BearCats are heavily-fortified MRAP vehicles usually used by specialized military tactical teams. The vehicles are build to withstand mines and bombs in combat zones. They are equipped to be mounted with weapons the US military specifically refrains from using on people–and sometimes come equipped with these weapons, such as the belt-fed, .50 caliber turreted machine gun atop Richland County, South Carolina’s “Peacemaker.”

Columbia Police Department SWAT Commander Captain E.M. Marsh, who received a new $658,000-valued MRAP for free before Veterans Day last year, said around 500 similar vehicles went to agencies around the country. Five hundred vehicles at that price adds up to $329 million of tax-funded Department of Defense (DOD) spending. In 2013, the US government is considering requests from 750 additional communities, according to the Wall Street Journal.

According to Mark Wright, spokesman for the Defense Department, the Pentagon is planning to give away 11,000 MRAPS, each of which is priced at between $400,000 and $700,000 new, and there is “vigorous interest” from police departments, commented Wright.

Approximately 100 BearCats are distributed to local police departments per year, and many of the buyers are recipients of federal grants from the US Justice Department, the Defense Department, and the Homeland Security Department.

Cities and towns governments aren’t the only organizations interested in military vehicles. In 2013, Ohio State University also acquired a MRAP.

The possession of military vehicles and weapons by police has struck some as a highly visual manifestation of government waste, and critics have made various complaints, including unnecessarily maintaining defense industry profits, lack of public oversight, militarization of law enforcement, and contributing to the growth of SWAT and military technology.

The backlash against police militarization has taken the form of legislation in New Hampshire–a state in which there are already 11 communities with armored vehicles–where a bill was introduced in February in response to the Concord City Council accepting a $258,000 federal grant to buy a BearCat. The council voted in favor of the grant despite intense opposition from their citizens, who submitted a 1,500-signature petition and staged a rally outside City Hall in protest. The bill would ban municipalities from accepting military vehicles without voter approval.

The backlash against government waste has cited the most recent figures available for funding of the vehicles, which dates back to 2010. Of the nearly $1 bn Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grants in 2010 to fund protection against potential terrorist attacks, six million of that went to armored vehicles. Opposition politicians have complained that over $34 bn has been spent since 911. $4.2 bn worth of equipment went to domestic police through the DOD’s 1033 excess property program and other programs aimed at fighting the War on Drugs and the War on Terror.

The military “recycling” program for unneeded equipment has 13,000 participating agencies in all 50 US states. The amount of equipment given out each year is expanding. In 2012, $546 million worth of military equipment was handed out.

The tanks–and therefore the spending, some argue–are not needed. Last year a Keene (pop. 23,409 with a violent crime rate almost half the national average), New Hampshire City Councilmember admitted to ACLU that the city lied to DHS on its application money to buy a BearCat. The police used the word “terrorism” on the federal funding application, but the council member stated, “Our application talked about the danger of domestic terrorism, but that’s just something you put in the grant application to get the money.” He continued, “What red-blooded American cop isn’t going to be excited about getting a toy like this? That’s what it comes down to.”

The defense industry’s sales to local agencies was projected to reach $19.2 bn for the 2014 year, according to a report by the Homeland Security Research Corp.

Last year, the ACLU launched a nationwide investigation into the police use of military technology and tactics, stating, “Equipping state and local law enforcement with military weapons and vehicles, military tactical training, and actual military assistance to conduct traditional law enforcement erodes civil liberties and encourages increasingly aggressive policing, particularly in poor neighborhoods and communities of color. We’ve seen examples of this in several localities, but we don’t know the dimensions of the problem.”

The ACLU filed 225 public records requests in 23 states to question the nature of the military weapons, the training provided, the funding sources, the oversight mechanisms, and the legal protections in place before use is allowed for military weaponry, equipment and vehicles, and drones, as well as whether there existed and cooperative agreements between police and the National Guard counter-drug program.

The potential effects of militarizing police forces has also been criticized. The “transformed local police departments into small, army-like forces, and put intimidating equipment into the hands of civilian officers. And that is raising questions about whether the strategy has gone too far, creating a culture and capability that jeopardizes public safety and civil rights while creating an expensive false sense of security.” noted journalists Andrew Becker and G.W. Schulz, who reported on the issue in 2011.

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The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) needs 50 ratifications to become legally binding international law, and it already has 40 ratifications, with the eight ratifications added June 3. Ten were expected to ratify.

A total of 118 states have signed the treaty. Four of the world’s major arms producers–USA, France, Germany and USA–signed in September. Appeals have been made to the 155 states who voted last year to adopt the ATT at the UN General Assembly in New York last June 3, groups such as Amnesty International have made appeals to stop hesitating. Most of the 43 states who have yet to sign are from Asia, Africa and the Middle east.

The ATT prohibits conventional weapons and munitions sales to states when there is knowledge the weapons would be used to commit or fascilitate serious human rights abuses, such as genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. States will be required to conduct objective assessments to avoid risks.

Amnesty International estimates that 500,000 people are killed each year due to armed violence and conflict. In addition, millions of people are displaced, abused and injured.

Amnesty also called on states not to wait for the treaty to come into effect before observing its human rights provisions. Antigua and Barbuda, Belgium, Costa Rica, Germany, Iceland, Mexico, Norway, Serbia, Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, and the UK have decided to implement the treaty’s human rights provisions sooner than the required date.

Currently, international commerce in weapons accounts for the equivalent of billions or trillions USD each year. The ATT is 20 years in the making–it started out as a group of civil activists expressed concern about unregulated global arms trade and its impact on human security. The idea was a set of ethical standards for arms trade.

China and Russia have abstained from signing so far. Both were expected to sign the treaty soon, but on May 20 Voice of Russia reported that Moscow would not sign the ATT because it was “not completely thought through,” and because it “discriminates against the Russian military industrial complex.”

The ATT will come into force 90 days after the 50th ratification. Ratification means adopting the ATT into a nations laws. The ATT will be the  first legally binding instrument ever negotiated in the United Nations to establish common standards for the international transfer of conventional arms.

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The 15-member UN Security Council unanimously voted to lift the 2005 resolution banning rough diamond imports from Cote d’Ivoire, as well as partially lift the 2004 arms embargo on the West African nation.

A review of progress made by the Republic of the Ivory Coast showed that the nation had made headway towards the 2003 Kimberley Process Certification Scheme implementation and better governance of the sector, which had aimed to prevent conflict diamonds from entering mainstream markets.

Another review–of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) of combatants as well as security sector reform (SSR), national reconciliation and the fight against impunity–also showed progress in Cote d’Ivoire. The UNSC therefore voted to lift the ban on small arms and non-lethal equipment, training, technical assistance and financial assistance in order to enable Ivorian security forces to maintain public order without the Sanctions Committee. Heavy weapons imports still require approval by the Sanctions Committee.

The weapons ban was to last until April, 2015 and prohibited “the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer to the West African nation, from their territories or by their nationals, or using their flag vessels or aircraft, of arms and any related material.”

The UNSC will continue financial and travel restrictions until April, 2015.

Source:

International Law Prof Blog

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“A well guarded Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

The U.S. Constitution drew upon the Virginia Constitution, written by Geoge Mason, for its language.  The Virginia Constitution, adopted in 1776, had 16 sections.  The right to bear arms was the 13th:

“That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.”

It is clearer in the Mason guarantees what was being provided for: that the proper defense of a state is an organized militia composed of state citizens; that national armies are dangerous to liberty and should be avoided in times of peace; that civil authorities should control strictly any national military.  In Madison’s Amendment, the language is confused, but looking to the Mason document for clarity, the Amendment’s meaning is available: A state militia is necessary to a state, and therefore state citizens shall always have the right to keep and bear arms.  The unwritten reason why a state needs a militia is the defense of state, including its defense against a national military that could endanger the liberty of state citizens, if ever such a defense were necessary.

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The vagueness of Madison’s Second Amendment has caused confusion and disagreement in the matter of Americans’ right to keep and bear arms, and so shows a lack of clarity in the U.S. Constitution. In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the vague meaning of the Second Amendment was finally ruled on, but not conclusively.  The decision was 5-4 that the Second Amendment meant the right to keep and bear firearms unconnected with military service in a militia and to use those firearms for self-defense within the home.  The large minority argued that the Second Amendment protected only the right to keep and bear arms in connection with militia service. In order to decide the meaning of the Second Amendment, Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, went into a long, complex investigation of the language of the Second Amendment, examining grammatical elements, comparing the language with the language of other Amendments, comparing definitions of the words used in the Amendment, and decided upon possible and less possible meanings of the Amendment.  Scalia’s conclusion in large resulted from his conclusion that “the operative clause is consistent with the announced purpose” while the “prefatory clause does not limit or expand the scope of the operative clause.” Scalia’s study of the language was not persuasive for at least four of the nine justices.  The large dissenting opinion believed that the meaning of “bear arms” was not, as Scalia defined it, “any thing that a man wears for his defense,” but rather an idiom meaning “to serve as a soldier, do military service.”

By Day Blakely Donaldson

Source: Cornell University

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