The email newsletter of WRI's Global Initiative against War Profiteers || Index of past issues

Editorial

Welcome to the first edition of the War Resisters' International's War Profiteers' News!!

This new email newsletter will provide information on the new developments on arms trade; the increasing role of private companies in the outsourcing of the military and private financial institutions as they profit from the arms trade.

It will also provide information and reports from what organisations and movement are doing on this issues.

Regular columns will be the war profiteer and the campaign of the month highlighting one company and promoting one campaign.

In addition we will also provide news of events related to campaigns against war profiteers. To be able to do so, we will need your support - we need your information on war profiteers and related issues. Send your information to warprofiteersnews-editor@wri-irg.org

Javier Gárate

Upcoming events

Globalising Nonviolence

WRI International Conference, 23-27 July 2006, Germany

Are you interested in both nonviolence and globalisation?
Are you campaigning against war?
Are you involved in nonviolent direct action or curious to learn more?

The War Resisters' International conference Globalising Nonviolence will be a great opportunity to meet activists from all over the world, to get to know what makes them tick, and to see how you can help each make another world possible. Around the world, a movement of movements is converging. This movement seeks to counterpose the perspective and values of people's power to those of global financial institutions, transnational corporations or governments. This is a movement of globalisation from below.

WRI believes that this movement of movements has a major role to play in this globalisation from below. Hence the theme of our upcoming international conference - Globalising Nonviolence.

Conference discussions will:

Analyse the contemporary situation of economic, cultural and political globalisation. How are capitalist globalisation and militarism related?
Develop strategies for nonviolent resistance towards the unjust aspects of globalisation. How do we create nonviolent social change?
Bring together people from the globalisation critical movement and WRI's network of pacifists and anti-militarists for mutual exchange of ideas on nonviolent opportunities for resistance.
Strengthen networks and create new links between activists from all over the world.

More information at www.globalisingnonviolence.org

Conference: Stopping the Merchants of Death

A Strategic Conference for Grassroots Activists

Calling all organizations working to expose and stop corporations' war making and war profiteering! Drawing upon the spirit, the experience and success of the Honeywell campaign*, the War Resisters League, in conjunction with Alliant Action, Nukewatch,Veterans for Peace-Twin City Chapter, University of St. Thomas Justice and Peace Studies Dept., and the Des Moines Catholic Worker are sponsoring a national networking and strategy conference to build a cohesive local and national anti-corporate movement to develop strategies for stopping corporate merchants of death.

When: Friday, Sept. 29 - Oct. 2, 2006
Where: University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN
RSVP: Simon Harak, WRL Anti-militarism Coordinator, amc@warresisters.org,
ph: 212-228-0450; Please RSVP by August 15, 2006
(Housing for strategy conference participants available.)

"US Intervention and military expenditure"

A Latin American Conference on antimilitarist initiatives, organised by Red Juvenil de Medellin Colombia: 24, 25 and 26 of August 2006

For more information redjuvenil@redjuvenil.org

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Email newsletter of War Resisters' InternationaI's Global Initiative against War Profiteers
War Resisters' International, 5 Caledonian Road, London N1 9DX, Britain; tel +44-20-7278 4040; fax +44-20-7278 0444; email warprofiteersnews-editor@wri-irg.org

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War Profiteer of the Month

Sodexho

"Sodexho is committed to Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and in developing Public Private Partnerships (PPP), both as a Facilities Management (FM) service provider and as an equity investor" Sodexho UK website.

Without British and American government policies over the last twenty years encouraging the privatisation of public services known as Public Private Partnership, Sodexho would probably have stayed an inoffensive medium-sized catering company. 'Privatisation' and the lucrative contracts that go with it have turned Sodexho into a multinational giant

The Military

Apart from helping Multinationals exploit natural resources, Sodexho's Remote Site Management also help pave the way for the military, In this area, the U.S. Military are their biggest customer. The Center for Public Integrity reveals that Sodexho won a US$324,000 contract to provide food and equipment in Afghanistan.

In 2001, the US Marine Corps also awarded Sodexho Inc. an US$850 million contract to serve meals at 55 Marines Corps mess halls.
They also support t the French army and UN's KFOR in Kosovo, NATO in Kabul, and the US forces in South Korea, as well as supplying the 379th Expeditionary Contracting Squadron in Qatar.

Enviromental destruction

Sodexho has contracts with numerous natural resource exploiting companies such as BP Amoco, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Occidental Petroleum, Shell, Texaco, Bechtel, Daewoo, Hyundai, Caspian Drilling, Rio Tinto and Halliburton. One of Sodexho notably un-environmental projects includes collaborating with the destruction of mangrove swamps on Bonny Kingdom, at the southern edge of River State, in the Niger Delta of Nigeria.

Prisons

The prison industry accounts for 1% of Sodexho's total revenue. In addition to providing ancillary services (food, grounds keeping, etc.) to a number of prisons throughout continental Europe, Sodexho Alliance owns for profit private prison companies in the U.K. and Australia. Overall, Sodexho have some involvement with ninety one prison facilities in the U.K., Australia, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal and the Netherlands.

Anti-Unionist

At http://www.workersliberty.org/node/2719yo can find information about the anti-unionist policy of Sodexho.

So war, prisons, anti-unionism and oil. All this and so much more!!
For more information http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=347

Campaign of the Month

Preventive Boycott

Five organisations from Catalunya, Organización Plataforma Detengamos la Guerra, Red de Localidades de la Consulta Contra la Guerra, Espacio Liberado Contra la Guerra,Observatorio de la Deuda en la Globalización, Observatorio de las Transnacionales, and many people that had enough of war have joined for the Preventive Boycott Campaign.

A preventive boycott for a preventive war that you disagree with. The campaign proposeds that you don't consume products from companies related to war and that support war.

How to participate

Send and email to boicot@debtwatch.org
Spread the information of the campaign through friends
Look at the list of companies and products at their website http://www.boicotpreventiu.org/ and study which ones you consume and introduce a change in your daily shopping
Choose every week one product and spread the information to your friends, on the importance of boycotting that product
Search for a place were you can do the boycott, and with an affinity group organise actions in front of them, to promote the boycott

Criteria for choosing the companies to boycott

Direct connection with war: Connection with arms manufactures; Profiteering from post-war: Reconstruction, Oil companies (e.g. Halliburton, BP); Connection with G.W. Bush's election campaign (e.g. Time Warner); A position in favour of the invassion of Iraq
Collateral benefit: Tax Paradise (e.g. BBVA); Responsibility with enviromental attacks (e.g. EXXON); Labor exploitation (e.g. nike); Corruption and murder of unionist (e.g. Coca-Cola in Colombia); Violent trade (e.g. Nestle)

Private Military Contractors

USA Amnesty International Annual Report

armed men from Amnesty report The USA section of Amnesty International focuses in their 2006 annual report on the role of private military contractors. PMCs are one of the most scandalous part of the spectrum of war profiteering and the U.S. government is their main contract provider “the U.S. government is outsourcing key security and military support functions, particular in Iraq and Afghanistan, to private companies whose civilian employees carry out the work. The civilians conduct functions ranging from logistical support to providing security for US government personnel, and reconstruction projects, training military and security personnel, operating and maintaining weapons systems, and rebuilding schools, hospitals, and other infrastructure. But they also serve in more sensitive roles, such as interrogation and translating during questioning of alleged terrorist suspects”

The same report denounces how the PMCs and the outsourcing of the military permit serious human right violations, as there are almost no regulations on these contractors, “Business outsourcing may increase efficiency, but war outsourcing may be facilitating impunity. Contractors illegal behaviour and the reluctance of the US government to bring them to justice are further tarnishing the United States reputation abroad”

These companies committed to violent conflic are difficult to target as many of the companies involved do not provide any other services, and the companies generally are not visible in public. This makes them a difficult but most needed target for campaigns against war profiteers.

Some of these PMCs:

Blackwater is well known because four of their employees were killed and hung from a bridge in Fallujah in 2004. Blackwater has been profiteering from the war with a number of “security” forces deployed in Iraq, as well as profiteering from the blast of hurricane Katrina, where they provided security to private business.

CACI International Inc provides technology services, and was awarded a contract worth as much as US$155 million to provide technology to help commanders in the field to collect intelligence and to interrupt enemy communications and intelligence systems. Corporate Watch discovered that their private employees worked as interrogation experts at Abu Ghraib prison.

CSC (Dyn Corp) purchased the private military company Dyn Corp. They say in their website “CSC's Global Security Solutions address all aspects of the enterprise to ensure total protection – from facilities and systems to people and information to provide cost-effective risk management to deliver flexible, scalable, reliable and robust security." They have won a contract for creating and training the new Iraqi police.

British companies are making a killing as well. Aegis is perhaps the biggest UK success story in Iraq, having won a £246m Pentagon contract to provide private security and to co-ordinate military and security companies in Iraq.

Erinys specialises in security for the petroleum, construction and mining industries. In Iraq, it has been responsible for the creation of an oil protection force. Between August 2003 and December 2004, Erinys Iraq trained, equipped and mobilised a 16,000 strong Iraqi guard force to protect the pipelines.

For more information: http://www.amnestyusa.org/
annualreport/2006/overview.html

The Financial factor

Campaigns against the role of banks and Export Credit Agencies in financing arms trade

On May 13 in Ghent Belgium, ENAAT (European Network Against Arms Trade) together with the local host Netwerk Vlaanderen, Vrede, Forum voor Vredesactie and For Mother Earth, organised a strategy meeting for campaigners, working on the links between private financial institutions/governmental Export Credit Agencies and the arms industry.

Campaigns against private financial institutions have been successful in the past years. The “My Money Clear Conscience” campaign against the investment of Belgian bank groups in weapons has been successful in getting four large bank groups to scale down their investments in weapon producers.

The reflection around the campaign was that so far the campaign had been successful. Key points for its success were producing high quality reports, having a good strategy for involving the media in the campaign, and creative street action to make the campaign visible in the streets.

There are still some challenges: The campaign has been successful especially in getting banks withdrawing from financing companies involved in the manufacture of land mines, and cluster bombs, where the losses for the companies were not too relevant. But it had not been successful in getting banks to withdraw from the nuclear industry.
Another challenge was the need of further European cooperation as many banks stop investing in one country but move to another. And local groups can not go chancing the companies through all Europe, so a better European network is needed to follow these companies where ever they try to go.

“My Money Clear Conscience” has started a new step in their campaign demanding that banks stop investment related to human rights abuses. This step is a big challenge as human rights is much broader than campaigning against investment in arms trade.

Other groups in Europe also have carried out their own campaigns. In Britain, CAAT (Campaign Against Arms Trade) has been running the "Clean Investment Campaign" since 1991. In Italy, the Campagna Di Banche Armate succeeded in convincing Banca Intesa, the largest Italian bank group, to adopt a stricter and more transparent weapon investment policy. Other organisations like Spas (Sweden) have work on the investments of Pension Funds.

Together with campaigns against private financial institutions the strategy meeting focused on the role of Export Credit Agencies, and their policies on arms exports to developing countries. The impact of the growth of irresponsible corporate globalisation and national debt in the global south export credit agencies is as big - if not bigger - than better-known institutions like the World Bank and the WTO. A considerable amount of their credits is for arms exports, out of all credits possibly the worst ...and today more than ever there is a need for stronger campaigns at an European level to stop them.

Nick Hildyard from the Corner House in the UK said that a successful campaign needs to target all the chain. Campaigning against the governments who want to buy military equipment; the arms traders who want to sell them; private financial institutions that give credit to the governments and the Export Credit Agencies who provide the insurance
to the private financial institutions. To stop the arms trade requires a global coordinated effort.

For more information: http://www.enaat.org/

AGM protest...

BAE Systems

As Campaign Against Arms Trade reports....

BAE Systems is the 4th biggest arms company in the world. Each year it sells around £11 billion of arms around the globe.

These weapons are sold indiscriminately to a wide customer base - to regimes with appalling human rights records, regions involved in devastating conflicts, and impoverished countries with huge development needs.

CAAT holds a number of 'token shares' in BAE Systems which enables them to attend the company's Annual General Meeting and challenge it about its deadly trade. In May 2006, around 40 CAAT supporters attended the AGM and dominated questions to the company's board members on a number of issues.

Supporters challenged the company on its continued contribution to conflict and human rights abuses around the world - particularly by supplying arms and services to Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. One shareholder highlighted the fact that around 80% of victims in conflict are civilians; another asked the chair directly whether he empathised with victims who have been maimed or killed by BAE products.

The Chairman, Dick Olver, replied by saying that he believe that 'BAE supplies products to make the world a safer place' and that 'the people in the company are proud of their contribution to stability in the world'.>

Shell

As Peace News/ noisy Joe reports ...

Shell AGM main meeting took place in The Hague , with a video feed to London or the Novotel Hammersmith, to be precise.

As the meeting was taking place in The Hague, and the only board member present in London was the rather abandoned-seeming Chair of Shell UK James Smith, there was really no heckling to be done that could have reached the ears of those assembled in The Hague, so I sat through interminable questions about whether the management war overpaying itself in order to have a chance to take the microphone for some gratuitous ranting of my own.

Actually, before I had my turn there were some good interventions from members of communities living right next highly polluting and dangerous refineries and other facilities in countries like the US, South Africa, Nigeria and the Philippines. They exposed the sham of Shell's 'good neighbour' policy, but unfortunately seemed keen only to work with Shell to sort out their particular problems, and didn't take the opportunity to call for a turning away from oil and gas production for the sake of the long-term future of the planet.

Hours into the meeting , I finally stood up and said something like "We've been hearing today from the CEO about the company's commitment to expanding massively its production of oil and gas, which is absolute antithesis of sustainability"

Serco

As Peace News reports...

The British "facilities management " company continues to expand their "public service" PFI portfolio and rake in the cash from nuclear weapons, detention centres, and hospitals.

This year Aldermaston Women were joined by women involved in supporting asylum seekers.

There were somevery fine questions this year. One "normal" shareholder even commented that the "board seem hostile to shareholders" and asked how many people they ussually eject from meetings!

A peace flag procession inside the AGM made an impact. Outside, a long supporter was pounced on by SOCPA -notice-wielding plice within minutes of starting his oneman -with-placard protest.