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Broken Rifle No.71, September 2006

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Colombia exploitation map

The Revolving Door: who really benefits from war?

Editorial

This issue of The Broken Rifle focuses on war profiteers. During War Resisters' International Conference "Globalising Nonviolence" that took place in Eringerfeld Germany between the 23-27 of July 2006, we had a theme group who worked on war profiteers. This theme group was an essential step in the develop of WRI's Global Initiative Against War Profiteers. Most of the material you will find in this issue comes from the work of that week.

During the theme group we learned from several organizations campaigning against war profiteers. A common understanding of how to target these corporations was the need of working to eliminate the power that these corporations have to influence government policies to get their contracts. The first article of the Broken Rifle describes how corporations influence the government and the decisionmaking bodies that decide military policy and military contracts, and what can we do to stop them.

During the last week of August a meeting in Colombia organized by Red Juvenil de Medellin on antimilitarist initiatives and US intervention will be looking at the role that corporations have in that region. An article written by the organizers of the meeting reveals how these big corporations have dirty hands in Colombia. At the end of September a conference of grassroots working to Stop the Merchants of Death, organised by War Resisters' League, is taking place in Minneapolis USA. Starting with the case study on the Honeywell project that was based in Minneapolis, we see at how nonviolent campaigns can be effective against the war profiteers.

I encourage you to read this issue of The Broken Rifle with an eye on how you can get involved in campaigning against the war profiteers.

Javier Gárate

"The Revolving Door, A Revolting Access"

War profiteers depend mainly on government contracts. Imagine what Lockheed Martin would be without their Pentagon contracts! At the same time governments need an excuse for spending such huge sums of money e.g. "war against terror", "national security", "peace forces", etc. Since war profiteers depend on government contracts they need to be in the position to influence them. Through the years they have positioned themselves to have an immense political power within governments, and they enjoy privileged access to decision-makers that the general public can only dream of.

In order to sell their products, the war profiteers need access to information, and access to the different decision bodies. How do they do it? By the so-called revolving door factor, and heavy lobbying.

The term "revolving door" refers to the movement of employees between government and corporations. Former military generals or members of defence ministries move to high positions in the war industry. As they move to "defense contractors" they come with all their connections and information from the inside for how to get those precious contracts. The revolving door also works the other way around, when ex-corporate bigwigs working for war profiteers move to the defence departments or other government defence contract decision bodies, where they are in the best position to influence which companies the contracts are award to.

There are many cases of the revolving door, Dick Cheney being the most famous one, when he went from being the Secretary of Defense to the CEO of Halliburton to vicepresident of USA. But he is not the only one!

Just to mention two in the UK: Julian Scopes is BAE Systems' most senior political lobbyist and a former MoD civil servant, Scopes is reported to have retained his all-area access pass to the MoD, where he could easily view confidential information. BAE has not confirmed or denied whether other senior members of staff have similar access. In another case Lord Inge, Chief of Defence Staff from 1994-1997, became Non-executive Chairman at Aegis Defence Services.

Heavy lobbying happens when companies have an official role in making policy and contract decisions. Examine the European Union to see how this works. For many years the arms industry tried hard to influence Brussels' decision makers, promoting the concept that a strong military Europe needs a strong arms industry. While drafting the text for the constitution the European Convention's working group on defence invited a number of "experts" to give advice on what should be included in the treaty text. Three of the thirteen experts represented the interest of the arms industry: Corrado Antonini, president of the European Defence Industries Group, Anthony Parry from BAE Systems and Jean-Louis Gergorin from EADS. The message of a strong European arms industry for a strong military Europe was there.

A similar situation exists in the USA with the Defense Policy Board which was created in 1985, made up of 30+ representatives of industry, technology and military contractors. The Defense Policy Board meets four times a year to advise the Secretary of Defense on what weapons systems to buy, what countries are "threats", where they need a "preemptive strike", what country they should occupy. For example, in 2006 the Defense Policy Board includes Jack Sheehan who was in the US Marine Corps, General in NATO, Supreme Allied Commander in the Atlantic who left the military and became Senior Vice President at Bechtel. Bechtel is one of the largest contractors groups in the world, and has one of the largest contracts in Iraq to work on its reconstruction.

In many countries war profiteers can legally donate large sums of money to political candidates, expecting their loyalty when votes come up for weapons systems. Of course bribery also takes place. In the US there are many instances of Congress voting for contracts that the Pentagon has not even asked for, but the corporation has a "special friend" in Congress who has pushed the defense contract through.

Weapons manufacturers have become so powerful that they can tell the government what they want and don't want. BAE Systems (formerly British Aerospace) has told the UK government that if it does not buy from them they will pull out of the UK and go to the US. According to the US Department of Defense, BAE Systems (they dropped the word "British" to become more transnational) was the Pentagon's seventh largest supplier in 2005. The companies claim that they leave the moral decisions to the government, and that they are only "doing their patriotic duty" by responding to what the government needs.

What can we do?

An important step towards stopping the war profiteers is to stop their powerful influence over government spending on weapons. How can we do that? The power of war profiteers seems so overwhelming, more powerful even than the powerful governments they sell to.

A common anti-corporate strategy, boycotts, is difficult with war profiteers because the major companies do not have civilian products. The ones they do have - airliners, construction projects - are not consumer products, but are bought by corporations or municipalities.

Ann Feltham of Campaign Against Arms Trade suggested we "tackle this around the edges", and we discussed many of those strategies at the War Profiteers Theme Group at the War Resisters' International Conference Globalising Nonviolence.

To effectively challenge the war profiteers we need campaigns that target the various links in the chain of how the corporations get military contracts. To do that we need to coordinate among groups working against arms trade, financial institutions and Export Credit Agencies that support arms sales and the wider antimilitarist and nonviolent movement.

Joanne Sheehan and Javier Gárate

Colombia: War Profiteers - Clarifying "who" they are

War profiteers are not only those that benefit from the arms industry, but also those that impulse military action and elaborate strategies to profit from war. Among war profiteers we can include:

Large private corporations

Here we refer to the transnational and multinational corporations that need control over our natural resources and our national territories in order to support their hegemonic project and so that relations of economic and political solidarity cannot be improved (which would permit true development of Latin American countries).

These profiteers also base their corporate strategy on the aggravation of armed conflict and the consolidation of military and paramilitary actors with the goal of imposing megaprojects which in turn allow them to appropriate large portions of our national territories and political power.

The following are some of the corporations that intervene as profiteers in our country:

CompanyMegaproject
Coca-ColaHydroelectric Dam in the Water and Biodiversity reserve of the macizo colombiano
NestléRanching and dairy production in the Cauca, Caquetá and Putumayo
Amoco, Texaco, ExxonGas pipeline that crosses Colombia, Venezuela and Panamá
Drummond Carbon and the methane gas exploitation in La Loma, Magdalena
MonsatoHydro resources in the Vega, Cauca (near the triple frontier of the Amazon region)

Under globalization these transnationals buy local public companies, in this was gaining control of natural resources such as petroleum, water, oxygen, nickel, leucite, plutonium, and mercury. These last four are used in the arms industry.

The consequences of these megaprojects include the expropriation of local communities' land, exploitation of the local labor force, and the aggravate of conflict because such projects deepen the structural causes of poverty and inequality.

Financial institutions

contribute to war in two ways: (1) through the lending of money to war investers, and (2) through the devastating accumulation of wealth which again deepens the structural causes of war in Colombia. 21.9 million people or 49.2% of the population of Colombia live in poverty, with the 14.7% of the population classified as very poor. It is worth mentioning Santander and BBVA banks which are today's leaders in mortgage lending and among the larges financial institutions in Colombia. These companies, at the international level are partners to the arms industry in Europe as well as lending to arms investors.

Nation-states

World powers: through economic, military and political intervention in other countries, the world's most powerful nations look to control the wealth and territories of less powerful regions. In the case of Colombia, the USA invests more than US $350 million per year in the internal war in Colombia. Furthermore, multilateral organizations such as the World Bank, the IMF, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the WTO lend money to developing states, increasing the internal and external debt and imposing the requisite of adapting their economies to the neoliberal economic model.

And the third world countries, through national security and defense policies make the conflict even deeper. Public order is maintained at the detriment of fundamental human rights. Moreover, beginning in the 1990s, the consensus in Washington has been to promote the weakening of the welfare state and civil liberties while actively backing an essentially inactive promarket state which cedes many of its most important roles to private corporations and transnationals.

A further problem is the creation and maintenance of paramilitary structures, be it by the state - as in the case of Colombia - or as the summation of the interests of the private sector.

Some examples of corporate power and war speculation in Colombia:

The Colombian government exhibits complete complacency in the face of demands and strategic plans from the US. Some examples:

The media:

The media plays the role of information merchant, trafficking and profiting from stories about the war in Colombia. Furthermore, the media is very skewed toward supporting the status quo, supporting the consolidation of the armed forces, and reinforcing the idea that any kind of opposition is a form of terrorism or rebellion. The media tend to cast a positive light on the security plans of the government, the promotion of private security, and foreign investment and appropriation of natural resources.

In Colombia the mass media implicated in war speculation includes:

One would have to arrive at the conclusion that being a war profiteer is a easy and more lucrative business that being and actor in armed conflict. Also it is apparent that those involved in war profiteering are often more Machiavellian than the soldiers themselves. They control the fine strings of power and death, but they don't directly get their hands dirty because they are not the ones who do the killing.

FOKA (Acción Kolectiva por la Objeción Fiscal)
Translation: Matt Yarrow

The Honeywell Project

A case study on a nonviolent campaign against war profiteers

The Honeywell Corporation was based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

Honeywell produced cluster bombs (bomblets), small steel ball bearings embedded in a steel shell. When this antipersonnel weapon explodes, the steel ball bearings shoot out 2, 200 feet per second. Honeywell also made other weapons and civilian products.

Several things inspired people to focus on this corporation. In 1967 the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal which took place in Stockholm, condemned the use of cluster bombs against Vietnamese civilians. The October 1968 issue of Liberation Magazine Staughton Lynd wrote an editorial urging people to take on the corporations that were involved in producing weapons, particularly those involved in the war on Vietnam.

In December 1968 people in Minneapolis started the Honeywell Project. From the beginning, they were clear about their goals:

There was a commitment to nonviolence from the beginning. The founders also had a class analysis, believing it was important to put pressure on the people who profit, recognizing they are the decision-makers not on the workers. Marv Davidov, one of the founders, encouraged the group: "Let's not do it unless we can do if for 5 years."

They began by doing research for 6 months to find out everything they could, mapped offices and plants, met with workers, focused on the lie that cluster bombs were used against fighting forces not civilians.

In the spirit of nonviolence, organizers met with Honeywell Board Chair Jim Benger, who formed a relationship with Marv Davidov, Honeywell Project coordinator.

The Honeywell Project started leafleting the two plants where the cluster bombs made.

In April 1969 fifty activists demonstrated outside Honeywell's annual shareholders meeting, making visible the horrible reality of cluster bombs. They were given10 minutes to speak to the meeting, the corporations' response was that "the government comes to us, it's our citizenly duty." Publicity from that resulted in a union executive and progressive people contacting the Project.

Honeywell Project created an organization of 14 local and regional groups. People bought stock to get into the Shareholders meetings. In April 1970 Honeywell Project organized 3,000 demonstrators outside and inside the Honeywell annual shareholders meeting, which lasted only14 minutes as a result. The national press corp was there to cover this new strategy in the antiwar movement.

Speaking tours inspired other corporate campaigns. In 1971 two national groups entered the campaign to stop Honeywell's production of cluster bombs. According to Marv Davidov, "We were organizing locally while doing outreach globally." The local organizing included students demonstrating against corporate recruiters on campus, and a Professor doing research on peace conversion possibilities.

The focus on cluster bombs created a situation where some people quit working for Honeywell. The corporation got more sophisticated, They produced a 4 page pamphlet responding to every issue the Honeywell Project was raising and distributed it to their 100,000 workers worldwide. They sent memos to workers encouraging them not to talk with demonstrators, claiming they were threatening their job. Honeywell began to give more donations to the community. They created ads that said they "do good things". They were clearly feeling the pressure.

In April 1975 the Vietnam War ended. From 1975 through 1980 the campaign was dormant except for a lawsuit. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued Honeywell and the FBI for conspiracy to deny constitutional rights of members of Honeywell Project and other local peace groups. The FBI had informants in their group from 1969-1972, they admitted it but never admitted they did anything wrong. The case was settled in 1985, $70,000 was awarded. Honeywell Project gave money to Shovels for Laos which enabled peasants to dig slower so that when they hit the metal cluster bombs they could stop.

In 1981 Honeywell Project regrouped. At the 1982 Shareholders meeting opposition to the MX missile contracts dominated the discussion. In 1982 the Honeywell Project also discovered that Honeywell manufactured the cluster bombs used by Israeli forces shelling Beirut. That year 36 people were arrested at a nonviolent action at corporate headquarters. The Honeywell Project created a participatory structure to organize large demonstrations.

Nonviolence training was important. Rallies included a cultural component. In 1983 577 people were arrested before the deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles to Western Europe, shutting down the headquarters for a day. The trials were part of the strategy. They were able to raise the issue of the damage caused by these weapons and tied up the court for a year .

From 1982 through 1990, twice a year Honeywell Project organized nonviolent civil disobedience actions. They wrote shareholders resolutions to stop the making of cluster bombs and for economic conversion. Their strategy was based on local organizing, while doing regional, national and international networking. National and international pressure was important.

They raised their visibility during the 1980's with the participation of well known people. Media coverage was good, although it focused more on human interest stories than the issue of economic conversion. "60 Minutes", a popular US TV news show, filmed a segment on Honeywell Corporation but submitted to pressure to cut the focus on the Honeywell Project.

Jim Benger was Honeywell's Chairman of the Board from 1968 to 1975. However, meetings with Honeywell officials ended when he left. The new CEO recognized that worker's morale was low because of decades of protests, and refused to meet with the group.

In 1984 Honeywell Corp did a forum on "Prospect for Peacemaking" to show they were interested in peacemaking. They met with other peace groups, and refused to meet with Honeywell Project.

A boycott of Honeywell consumer products was not called for, although many choose not to buy products made by weapons manufacturers.

In 1989 Honeywell tried to sell the weapons division but no one would buy it. When it could not sell its weapons division they created another corporation: Alliant Tech Systems.

Honeywell said selling off their weapons division was due to a combination of economic factors including the "end of cold war". Yet rather than disbanding that division they created a successful new company. Alliant Tech is the biggest producer of land mines and bullets in the world. Honeywell said that demonstrators had no effect, but their actions contradict that. In 1995 Alliant Action was created.

The Honeywell Project can claim a number of successes - everyone knew what a cluster bomb was, these weapons were no longer invisible. This fueled opposition to the use of such weapons and to the wars they were used in. Honeywell Project helped make the corporate role in war visible, became a model for other anti-corporate campaigns, particularly in its use of nonviolent direct action. The organizing gave rise to a strong progressive movement in Minneapolis that remains today. But despite those successes, production of cluster bombs continues. Our challenge is to find successful ways to stop these merchants of death. According to Honeywell Project founder Marv Davidov, "Given the permanent war economy, the movement must be local, regional, national and international to be effective."

Joanne Sheehan

Global Initiative against War Profiteers

Report from the "Globalising Nonviolence" theme group

During WRI International Conference "Globalising Nonviolence" we had a theme group on the topic of war profiteering. Meeting every day of the conference, we were able to go through a process of learning about war profiteers, campaigns against them, and explore how WRI's Global Initiative Against War Profiteers can help groups in this important work.

The aims of this theme group were:

We started by describing war profiteers and analyzing strategic opportunities to stop them. Ann Feltham from the Campaign Against Arms Trade (UK). Explaining that there are two kinds of arms trade: small arms/light weapons and the major weapons, she focus on the big companies that make the large weapons systems and high tech components. While these products can kill, a lot are never used. Even if the product does is not used, it can give moral support to human rights violators, damages economies and the environment, helps the military myth continue. Such weapons are bought by any government with money.

French activist Tikiri explained military outsourcing - how private companies now profit by providing services that were once done by the military. These fall into three categories:

Reconstruction is another newer form of war profiteering. A presentation by Simon Harak from War Resisters League's Stop Merchants of Death Campaign (US) explained how companies such as Bechtel and Halliburton reap huge profits from contracts to "rebuild" Iraq after the bombs of other war profiteers have destroyed it.

Mich Crols from Forum voor Vredesactie, Jan Capelle from Proyecto Gato and Marijn Paperkamp from the Dutch Campaign Against Arms Trade told of their work with private financial institutions and Export Credit Agencies that are involved with arms manufacturers. Banks have shares in the arms industry, or support with loans/credits transactions for arms trade. Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) are publicly backed government or semi-government agencies which give financial guarantees to companies operating abroad, including arms sales.

They are the single largest source of taxpayer support for private sector companies seeking to offload on to the public the financial risks of their business in the South and Eastern Europe.

The presenters all told us how the "revolving door" is a key factor for war profiteers, helping companies reap even larger profits from governments. People who are making the decisions regarding weapons contracts represent strong corporate interest in these deals.

Case studies of campaigns help us understand which are good strategies for working against war profiteers. Several case studies were presented. We heard about Campaign against the Defence Export Services Organisation in the UK which exists to sell arms for companies and to lobby for arms exports within the government. "My Money Clear Conscience" is a Belgian campaign pressuring banks to disinvest in arms producers, with a first step to get them to disinvest from controversial arms producers.

Campaigns against Export Credit Agencies both in the Netherlands and in Belgium. The general aim of these campaigns is to end the financial support for arms exports since this would make the export of large, expensive weapons systems to developing countries almost impossible.

We learned from the Honeywell Project, a nonviolent campaign in the USA against a company that made cluster bombs used against the people of Vietnam.

We learned from these case studies that a successful campaign has to combine clear goals, good research on the companies and an understanding of the situation with a diversity of tactics. It is important to focus on the destructive nature of the weapons and to make visible how corporations carry out their business (e.g insider influencing, bribery, excessive profits made from taxpayers), calling their reputation for being "good corporations" into question. Campaigns need to provide opportunities for people to join organized efforts to eliminate corporate power.

During the theme group we agreed that WRI needs to play a role in coordinating an exchange of information of what various groups are doing, and promote their work to the wider antimilitaristnonviolent network. WRI needs to provide resources such as case studies to help groups develop strategies for nonviolent campaigns. To build a successful initiative against war profiteers, WRI needs to know what your needs are and how we can help you develop your campaigns. If you are doing this work or want to begin to develop efforts to stop war profiteers, please contact us!

Joanne Sheehan and Javier Gárate
co-conveners, war profiteers' theme group

A step towards globalising nonviolence

The 24th War Resisters' International Triennial Conference

From 23-27 July, the 24th WRI "Triennial" conference took place in Eringerfeld, Germany. Surely, participation was more global than at many recent WRI conferences, with more than 200 participants from all continents and more than 30 countries present.

However, German visa regulations prevented Samiira Jama-Ebli from Somaliland from speaking at the conference. Some other participants from Nigeria, Mali, and Senegal were not able to participate because of visa problems.

The stated aims of the conference were:

It can be questioned if it was possible to achieve all these - certainly high - aims, but surely the conference was a step in that direction, and contributed to WRI's understanding of these issues.

A - timely - highlight of the conference was certainly the plenary on Israel-Palestine, with Dorothy Naor from New Profile, Israel, Sheerin Al-Ajab from Palestine, and Angie Zelter from the International Women's Peace Service.

Stellan Vinthagen provoked some discussion with his introduction to a nonviolent strategy for the global peace and justice movement - or the lack of strategy, and the gaps within nonviolent analysis.

And the discussion between Jai Sen from India, and ex-WRIChair Joanne Sheehan on the relationship between the movement for globalisation from below and the anti-war movement pointed to a variety of views on the World Social Forum, and problems within the WSF process.

It is too early to reflect on the outcomes of the conference. However, some concrete plans have been made at the conference:

Andreas Speck and Javier Garate

The Broken Rifle

The Broken Rifle is the newsletter of War Resisters' International, and is published in English, Spanish, French and German. This is issue 71, September 2006. This issue of The Broken Rifle was produced by Javier Gárate. Special thanks go to Joanne Sheehan and Acción Kolectiva por la Objeción Fiscal FOKA from Colombia, and others who provided the information used in this issue. If you want extra copies of this issue of The Broken Rifle, please contact the WRI office, or download it from our website.

War Resisters' International,
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