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

Editorial

During the last months two conferences took place with the aim of building networks against war profiteers.

The fist one happened at the “Globalising Nonviolence” War Resisters' International Conference, were we had a theme group dedicated to working against war profiteers. You can read the full report in the latest BrokenRifle.

The second one was organised by WRI affiliate in the United States, War Resisters' League with their Stop the Merchants of Death Conference.

In both conferences the challenge of how to work coordinated between different groups working against war profiteers came out. In the first one, how to network internationally? and in the second, how to build a national network?

The challenge is: How can we work together against these corporations? There are many different corporations that groups tackle. Clearly we can not all work against one corporation, as there are too many of them, and different corporations work in different ways and areas.

So how to network against war profiteers?

Some ideas came out of these two meeting. Clearly there is a need for resources. Resources on the corporations, but also about campaigns and strategies against these corporations. A coordination of action was also suggested, with international support to local actions/campaigns. For this we need to know what is happening and were, by having a common calendar of actions against war profiteers. The idea of a global day of action against war profiteers is a project to be worked out, but could be a good step to make this a global movement.

Building these networks is a big challenge WRI is working on, but we need you!

Javier Gárate

Upcoming events

Monday 16 October:

Shut DESO Action Day in the UK

The most important day in the Shut the Denfece Export Services Organisation (DESO) campaign calendar.
CAAT will be joining other groups for a day of action to shut DESO.

DESO exists to sell arms for companies and to lobby for arms exports within government. It identifies potential opportunities for arms sales then works with the companies and other elements of government to push for deals.

They will encircle the headquarters of DESO, designating it a "global danger zone", and send a clear signal that DESO's place in Government is unacceptable. You'll also have the chance to lobby your MP in the afternoon, as part of our 3-month lobby.

For more information:
http://www.caat.org.uk

18th-24th November 2006: International NATO Complaint Action

The Bombspotting campaign is looking for international support for the next phase in our campaign for the global abolition of nuclear weapons. We focus our campaign on the withdrawal of the US nuclear weapons from Europe, and the end of NATO’s nuclear weapons strategy, and we try to link the specific role of nuclear weapons to the role of the military in the processes of globalisation.

Concretely, we are now looking for groups who wish to take part in an international complaint action against NATO nuclear weapons in November 2006, and groups who can mobilise people to come to our action conference and alternative NATO summit in Brussels on 25th November 2006. The international complaint action and the alternative NATO summit will run in parallel with the official NATO summit of November 28th-29th in Riga, Latvia, where NATO leaders will meet to discuss the new strategic concept of the North-Atlantic Alliance.

More information:
http://www.bomspotting.be/
en/home_en.php

1 December - Prisoners for Peace Day: Focus on Russia

Prisoners for Peace Day 2006 will highlight the situation in Russia, with the new NGO law threatening the work of independent NGOs and the war in Chechnya also leading to increased persecution in Russia itself.

The Prisoners for Peace campaign pack will be available early November in English, Spanish, French, and German. Contact the WRI office for more information.

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War Profiteer of the Month

Monsanto

Monsanto has been by far the most prominent and controversial corporation promoting the introduction of biotechnology in agriculture. The company has a long and messy history of manufacturing hazardous chemicals. Their products have included chemical warfare agents (Agent Orange), industrial materials (PCBs), food additives (NutraSweet), agrochemicals and pharmaceuticals. Monsanto was the first major agrochemical and pharmaceutical company to pursue the ‘life sciences’ concept. During the 1990s it shed many of its chemical concerns and embarked on a spending spree investing heavily in biotechnology research, and spending nearly $10 billion world wide acquiring seed companies. In the late 1990s Monsanto was the first company to widely market first generation GM crops. This was accompanied by an aggressive public relations campaign aimed at persuading a concerned public that GM crops were a safe and desirable innovation. The campaign backfired, resulting in Monsanto becoming the primary focus of a rapidly growing global resistance to GM crops (to a large extent drawing attention away from the likes of Aventis (Agrevo) and Syngenta (Novartis/AstraZeneca) who were quietly getting on with introducing similar products). By late 1998 a combination of Monsanto’s status as an international bogeyman, and a need for returns on their extensive investments resulted in a loss in market confidence in the company and their share price plummeted. Stability was regained through a merger with pharmaceutical giant Pharmacia/UpJohn in April 2000. As a result of this merger the combined company, known as Pharmacia, has taken over Monsanto’s pharmaceutical wing Searle. The infamous agrochemical and biotechnology division, still known as Monsanto, has been spun off as a nominally separate company with Pharmacia retaining an 85% share.

Monsanto in Colombia

The aerial fumigation program that has grown out of the U.S. government's so-called "war on drugs" is caried out with Monsanto's products and is endangering the fragile ecosystems and indigenous cultures of Colombia's Amazon Basin.
The fumigation program, which the U.S. finances as part of Colombian aid package is designed to eradicate coca and other plants used to manufacture illicit drugs. The program indiscriminately wipes out legitimate subsistence crops as well as natural plants, and kills birds, mammals and aquatic life. The chemicals are applied by aircraft and frequently fall on Columbia's indigenous peoples, subjecting them to a variety of health afflictions.
Though carried out by Colombian police and military authorities, the aerial fumigation program utilizes U.S. government aircraft, fuel, escort helicopters and private military contractors.
"Fumigation violates our rights and our territorial autonomy,It has intensified the violence of the armed conflict and forced people to leave their homes after their food crops have been destroyed" said Emperatriz Cahuache, president of the Organization of Indigenous Peoples.
The enviromental cosencuence are huge too, For every hectare of forest sprayed, another is lost to [pesticide] drift and another to additional clearing of displaced crops.

For More information:
http://www.corpwatch.org
http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk
http://www.monsanto.com

Campaign of the Month

Block the Builders

Block the Builders is a campaign in Great Britain which aims to nonviolently prevent the building of a new laser facility at AWE Aldermaston, the first stage of a series of proposed developments which would enable AWE Aldermaston to build new nuclear weapons. Block the Builders holds a monthly nonviolent blockade of the site. As and when details of companies profitting from the development of new nuclear weapons emerge, we also protest at that companies offices or site. In 2006 there have been five or six blockades of AWE and visits to concrete company LaFarge's Aldermaston depot, local haulier John Stacey's yard and the Chippenham offices of M+W Zander - the German company which has a £20m contract for overseeing the design and build of Orion. The Orion project is estimated to cost £183m in total and tens if not hundreds of companies - big and small - are in the process of turning a profit from AWE's development. Construction, engineering and design compaies like Laing, Jacobs Engineering and WS Atkins all have major contracts. Companies known to be exploiting the illegal expansion of AWE are based all over the UK and overseas.

Some background:

On 23 June 2004, the Thatcham planning committee accepted the GB Ministry of Defence's proposal to build a state of the art laser facility (the Orion laser) at AWE Aldermaston. The facilities, which will enable the development of new nuclear weapons at Aldermaston, received less scrutiny by the planning committee than a supermarket. All planning applications made to West Berkshire District Council by AWE have now been passed and new building work has begun at various sites within AWE including the Orion laser project.

Many people, and local Councils, now demand a public inquiry into the proposed developments at Aldermaston, but the outcome of such an inquiry would not be legally binding. It seems the public has less opportunities to make its voice heard in the planning of a nuclear weapons factory, than if your neighbour wants to build a new garage.
Any new nuclear weapons would be immoral – and unlawful. They are indiscriminate weapons which cannot distinguish between military and civilian targets, and which have a deadly legacy for generations. Any nuclear weapon – even a targetable low yield weapon – violates international law. The radiation released by any nuclear weapon cannot be contained in either space or time.

New weapons would mean that the UK would continue to break its international obligations under the Nuclear Non–Proliferation Treaty (NPT) – to make progress, in good faith, towards disarmament. The new facilities at AWE also undermine the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (signed and ratified by the UK, but not yet in force), as they would enable research on nuclear weapons to continue without underground testing.

The Block the Builders campaign aims to increase awareness of the new developments, and to mobilise for nonviolent action against these developments.

'Stop the Merchants of Death' Conference

The conference started on Friday 29^th of September at the University of St. Thomas, St Paul Minesota, with the screening of the film “Iraq for Sale” directed by Robert Greenwals with the attendance of about 150 people. The film is mostly about “Private Security Firms”, CACI, Titan, Black Water, Etc. and the so called “reconstruction” corporations Halliburton & KBR, with a focus on US loss of life, and how people were “duped” into trusting the corporations.

After the film we started to create a time line of the history of war profiteering and another one of the resistance to it. Then we had a panel discussion with:

Frida Berrigan: Arms Trade Resource Center
Eddy MacGregor: Global Network against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space and WILPF
Loring Wirbel: Citizens for Peace in Space
David Meiran: Uprise Tour

On Saturday, we started with a panel on case studies:

Carol Urner told us her experience building a women anti-war movement in the state of Oregon.
Brian Payne shared with us the campaign against Taco Bell, and how by using a diversity of tactics they managed to make Taco Bell change their trade policies with farmworkers. And how now they are campaigning strongly against McDonald.
Marv Davidov, co- funder of the Honeywell Project, a movement campaigning against Honeywell, a corporation that produced cluster bombs. He mentioned the successes of their campaign which made the corporate role in war visible in the US. But he also addressed that today we face maybe even greater challenges for stopping these corporations, and the need of a strong movement to stop them.

During the Saturday afternoon we worked in different interest groups: Youth organiser meeting, Stop Caterpillar, People Power and Profiteering, Peace in Space and Colombia. Most of these groups of interest, also met on Sunday. They were a good opportunity to learn from movements and campaigns and to come up with proposals on how we could work more coordinated between all of us. The idea of supporting each others' work, by having a system for sharing information and resources was presented, as well as the idea of having a national day of action against war profiteers.

All these ideas were further discussed in a closing session called “Weaving the Web” a session on strategies and needs for building a network and working coordinating strategies against war profiteers.

We divided in four groups: resources, networking, shareholders and counter-recruitment.

The reports back :

- Counter- recruitment: the group proposed to link the work against military recruitment to the recruitment of corporations, especially at universities.

- Resources: there are many good sources for resources, with Arms Trade Resource Center and Corpwatch as two key ones. There was the idea to keep sharing information on the email list profiteers@lists.riseup.net, and create a web page for the network. Pratap Chaterjee from Corpwatch said that they are working on setting up a Wiki on their website, were people will be able to add and edit information on war profiteers.

- Shareholders: Joe Carr from the campaign against Caterpillar explained the work they do on shareholders and mentioned some of the different tactics that they used to be as effective as possible. He mentioned that at their last AGM it was impossible for the CEO of Caterpillar to avoid the subject of what their company is doing in Palestine.

- Networking: This group looked into what is needed for a better networking of groups working against war profiteers and to build a national network. Some of the ideas proposed were:

Build a team to train groups who want to work against war profiteering
Form a steering committee to follow up the proposals from the conference
Do merchants of death tours
Write a tool-kit on how to tackle war profiteers
Have a joint calendar of what is happening around war profiteers

On Sunday evening we had a Concert & Rally with almost a full auditorium at the St. Catherine College. It was an energetic evening with great music and key speakers that included Winona LaDuke, former candidate for Vicepresident, Frida Berrigan, ATRC, Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink, Paul Krassner, comedian, Tom Battolome and Pepper Wolf from Alliant Tech Action and Marv Davidov as speakers and Utah Phillips and The Prince Mishkins for the music.

On Monday morning we had an action at the Headquarters of Alliant Tech, where more that 70 people got arrested, for trying to deliver a message to the managers of Alliant Tech to stop the production of cluster bombs.

It is still to early to see if a US national network is born from this weekend of work, but it was clearly a good step forward. People involved in different areas of work - some coming more from a research background, some more from a campaigning one - got together to share experiences and challenges, in our commitment to work against the war profiteers and ultimately against war and the causes of war.

For more information contact War Resisters League at:
amc@warresisters.org
http://warresisters.org/smod/smod_hp.shtml

The toll of small arms

Congo remains in the grip of civil war. The reason is clear. A flood of small arms and light weapons undermines the 17,000 United Nations troops' mandate to protect civilians.

In this country where war has raged since 1998, the results of the uncontrolled small arms trade have been brutish, but they have not been unique. Similar devastation from small arms occurs worldwide. Though the United Nations held a conference this summer to review efforts to control the trade, nothing was accomplished. To their shame, governments could not agree even on possible steps forward.

Suffering will continue until governments recognize the obvious - that the vast majority of illicitly traded arms begin as legally produced weapons. They must agree to control legal transfers of arms by adopting specific global guidelines to ensure that those who buy weapons use them in compliance with international law and human-rights standards.

No such international agreement exists today, which is one reason imported weapons swamp countries like Congo, jeopardizing the genuine efforts of their people to find stability and build lasting peace.

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, a journalist, recently traveled in Congo on a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Rachel Stohl is a senior analyst at the World Security Institute's Center for Defense Information. Mgmt. Design is a New York graphic design studio.

Banks continue to invest in cluster munitions

Since the spring of 2006, Belgium is the first land to introduce a ban on cluster munitions. Despite this, the bank groups AXA, Dexia, Fortis and ING invest in cluster munitions. This has been revealed on the 14 of September in a new report ‘Explosive portfolios’ published by Netwerk Vlaanderen. Although pressure from the campaign ‘My Money. Clear Conscience?’ forced four bank groups to announce their withdraw from investments in cluster munitions, it is apparent that only KBC has completely ended its investments. Meanwhile this summer Israeli use of cluster munitions in Lebanon has been the starting shot for a new humanitarian disaster.

Explosive portfolios

Netwerk Vlaanderen has researched the financial links between five bank groups (AXA, Dexia, Fortis, ING and KBC) and thirteen producers of cluster munitions. The report reveals that these banks invest more than six billion dollars in these companies. The French company Thales, the US company Raytheon, the Korean Poongsan, and the European EADS are examples of companies that are involved in cluster munitions.

The report shows that the defence policy of Dexia, Fortis and ING is not satisfactory. These three companies announced in 2005 that they would end their direct investments in, and financing of, cluster munitions. Their investment funds, including some available in Belgium, allow their customers to continue investing in these weapons. Despite the new policies, the investments of Fortis and ING in some cluster munitions producers have even increased.

For more information: http://www.netwerkvlaanderen.be/en/