No 6 / April 2007
War Profiteers’ News
The email newsletter of WRI's Global Initiative against War Profiteers || español | Index of past issues
Editorial
With this issue we continue with our section on resources for developing your campaigns against war profiteers. In our last issue we presented a list of useful links for doing your research on the companies you want to campaign against. Now we move into developing your campaign. First looking at how to describe and analyse what you are campaigning against and for. And what is the change that you want to bring. The article in this newsletter is a shorter version of an article that will be included in the Handbook for Nonviolent Action that the WRI's Nonviolence Programme is working on. The aim of this handbook is to help you in your nonviolent campaigning work, with a special aim to make this resource as cross-cultural as possible collecting experience from groups working in nonviolence around the world. You can already look at the resources we have in our Wiki (http://wri-irg.org/wiki/index.php/
Nonviolent_Handbook) page, where you can also give comments to articles already written or include your own resources. The handbook will have both a print and an online version, and we hope that the online version will be permanently updated through this Wiki system.
In this issue you will also find the dates for some of this year's shareholders meeting. This are good opportunities to confront directly the directors of these war profiteers, and also to get the attention of other shareholders.
So if you live close to where these meetings are taking place, please don't miss the chance to tell them in their face about their corporate crimes. In our next issue we'll be reporting back from what happened at these events. So if you took part on them, please send us your own reports
These last months came with two pieces of good news, as we report in this issue. The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust in the UK withdrew their shares in Reed Elsevier and Amnesty International and Handicap International in France withdrew their shares in AXA because of the companies connections with the arms trade, and the pressure from the campaigns against these war profiteers. We hope to continue with more of these good news!
Javier Gárate
Upcoming events
Annual General Meetings:
4 May:
Serco - Join the actions at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, London at 11 AM.
For more information:
9 May:
BAE Systems - Join the action inside or outside at :
The Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, Broad Sanctuary, London SW1P 3EE, UK
For more information:
www.caat.org.uk
14 May:
AXA - Join the actions at 2:30 pm at "Carroussel du Louvres", 99 rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris, France
16 May:
Halliburton - Join the actions outside the Four Seasons Hotel in Houston, USA
13 June:
Caterpillar - Join the actions at 1:30p.m Q Center 1450 N. 5th Avenue St. Charles, IL 60174, USA
For more information:
www.stopcat.org
Shut down DSEi
11TH SEPTEMBER 2007
ONE DAY – MANY ACTIONS
Blockade? Party? March? Infiltrate? Invade? Picket? Clown? Dance? Light candles? Lock on? Vigil? Disrupt?
YOU DECIDE!
From 11-14 September, DSEi (Defence Systems Equipment International), the world’s largest arms fair, returns to East London’s ExCeL Centre.
For more information:
www.dsei.org
WRI's Gender and Militarism Seminar and Council 2007 in Israel
The annual WRI seminar and Council meeting will take place in Israel in 2007, probably in August. The theme of the seminar will be on militarism and gender. Please contact the WRI Office if you are interested in participating, and want to be kept informed.
The programme and registration for the seminar is available in our website:
http://wri-irg.org
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Email newsletter of War Resisters' InternationaI's Global Initiative on War Profiteers
War Resisters' International, 5 Caledonian Road, London N1 9DX, Britain; tel +44-20-7278 4040; fax +44-20-7278 0444; email javier@wri-irg.org
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War Profiteer of the Month
AXA
AXA Financial Protection is a French financial group, that offers to their customers - individuals as well as small, mid-size and large businesses – a wide range of product and services that include insurance, protection, savings, retirement and financial planning.
They provide a variety of services:
AXA Assistance:
An international network of assistance and services for Corporate and individual clients.
AXA Assistance is present in more than 30 countries, on 5 continents. It has a workforce of 3,600 people worldwide.
AXA Corporate Solutions:
AXA Corporate Solutions is the AXA Group subsidiary that provides property-casualty insurance to large European corporations and marine and aviation insurance to corporate clients worldwide. In 2004, AXA Corporate Solutions generated revenues of 1.6 billion euros and it is resent in more than 80 countries.
Maxis
Through the wider organizations of AXA and MetLife, MAXIS provides multinational companies with international employee benefit solutions. MAXIS is present in over 65 countries with more than 70 member companies
AXA in their website declares that they are “Aware and proud of our industry's contribution to the economic and social development of the community, we seek to do business responsibly by living up to consistent values and stakeholder commitments throughout the world”
Here are some ways AXA is “developing the community”:
A 2006 report by Netwerk Vlaanderen in Belgium on banks groups investing in cluster munitions, showed that AXA invests more than US$ 5.5 billion in all 13 researched companies producers of cluster munition. This includes big arms trade: ATK, BAE Systems, EADS, Lockheed Martin, Thales, Raytheon, Textron, Thales to name some of the 13.
In a new report in February 2007 from Netwerk Vlaanderen called “Explosive Investment Financial Institutions and Cluster Munitions” it was presented that by September 2006 AXA had 7.55 % of the shares of Textron. Textron is an US company that produces the CBU – 105 Sensor Fused Weapon, a cluster bomb, for the US airforce, which was first used in 2003 during the Iraq war. Other arms traders that they have major investments are BAE Systems with 8,62 % and Northrop Grumman with 4,36 % at the year 2006. Both are on the list of the 10 biggest arms producers in the world.
As the Explosive Investment report says: “ Bank, insurance companies... play a crucial role in allocating financial resource. As a large majority of companies and governments in the world are dependent on the financial markets and these financial institutions to find the capital needed to operate...Unfortunately financial institutions are generally taking investments decision based solely on profit maximising criteria. Most of the time the impact of these investments on human rights, armed conflict or environmental destruction are not taken into account...This combination of a huge leverage power and a lack of social responsibility is a dangerous cocktail posing a serious threat to the sustainable development of our planet”.
For more information:
Campaign of the Month
International campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel
On 9th June 2005, after the International Court of Justice's ruling against Israel's apartheid wall, a coalition of Palestinian Civil Society Organisations issued a ‘Call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against apartheid Israel until it complies with International Law'.
Why of this campaign:
Israel destroys Palestinian lives, livelihoods and homes daily, refuses to stop building its illegal settlements and apartheid wall on stolen land, continues to control Gaza while slicing the West Bank into Bantustans, denies Palestinian refugees their right to return, grows produce and sets up industrial zones on stolen Palestinian land, and operates an apartheid, racist system on both sides of the ‘green line’.
International pressure can help Israel cease its violations of international law and human rights. As Governments have failed to hold Israel accountable, it is up to people of conscience in civil society worldwide to heed Palestinian calls for protection and justice.
Despite the International Court of Justice ruling in 2004 that the Apartheid Wall is illegal, not a single government has acted to impose sanctions, ignoring the ICJ’s call to all states and parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention to take immediate action.
Boycott Israeli goods intends to campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions in line with this call from Palestinian civil society.
The campaign works to:
- Boycott Israeli goods and services
- Boycott Israeli cultural and sporting institutions who do not condemn Israel's ilegal occupation
- Boycott Israeli academic institutions and academics who do not condemn Israel's ilegal occupation
- Promote a campaign against tourism in apartheid Israel
- Promote divestment from companies who invest in apartheid Israel or profit from Israel's occupation and apartheid policies
- To camapign against companies who invest in apartheid Israel or profit from Israel's occupation and apartheid policies
- To persuade businesses to stop trading with apartheid Israel
- To campaign for an end to European Union government trade agreements with Israel
- To campaign for UK and EU sanctions against apartheid Israel until it complies with international humanitarian law
- To promote initiatives to decrease the isolation of the occupied Palestinian people and promote ethical, fairly traded Palestinian goods.
For more information:
http://bds-palestine.net/
http://bigcampaign.org.uk/
Campaigning against war profiteers
Towards developing your campaign strategies:
We know that protest isn’t enough to make the deep changes we want.
Demonstrations alone do not end a particular war or reduce the influence of war profiteers. Faced with an overwhelming task, it’s easy to do the nonviolent equivalent of lashing out – jumping into action or activity without an analysis and strategy. Radicals need to not only get to the roots of a problem — we need to root ourselves and our own actions in something more comprehensive. We need to develop effective nonviolent campaigns.
In order to develop effective strategies groups need to go through a process: name and describe the problem or situation, analyze why it exist, create a vision of what we want with clear goals and then develop a strategy to reach those goals.
Too often groups go directly from naming a problem to picking a tactic. Or we suffer from the “paralysis of analysis”, educating ourselves and others with information and analysis, but never getting to action. We are too often products of the microwave culture, thinking we can change things quickly, forgetting the determination and patience of successful nonviolent campaigns and movements.
First Steps in Developing Effective strategies:
Name and describe the problem. This may seem too simple of a first step for some, but if it is not shared collectively the group may have different descriptions and therefore different stories. We can live with a situation a long time before we can name it and until we name it we can’t change it. And we can’t move to analysis without clarity on what we are analyzing. The process of a group coming together to do this is important to developing collective action.
There are several processes groups that can be use to describe how they, and others, see the problem.
Listening Projects Community Surveys and Facilitated Dialogue (www.listeningproject.info) are organized ways of asking questions that encourage people to look deeper at an issue, describing their feeling and perceptions, creating the potential for transformation while gathering information for developing strategies. Used internationally on many issues, including in areas economically dependent on weapons production, they help a group understand how people describe the problem and give a basis for strategy development.
Describe the Problem Tree – A facilitator draws a tree with roots, a trunk, and branches with fruit. Participants identify the roots (causes), the fruits (consequences), the trunk (the institutions that uphold the system.) Start with the root causes, taking into consideration the culture and political situation. You can also add the values that are found in the soil that “nurtures” these root causes.
Pillars of War – Instead of a tree, use pillars that hold up the war profiteers. The pillars, like the trunk of the tree, uphold the system we have defined as the problem. Once we describe what makes up the pillars, we can begin to describe how to chip away at them, weakening the system.
Analyze why the problem exists. Without an understanding of the problem and why it exists and how it functions and who potentially supports and opposes it, we cannot successfully eliminate it. Who has the power, who has the power to create change? What are the strengths, opportunities, weaknesses and threats that we face?
What theories do we bring to this analysis? Are we proponents of nonviolent social change? How does that affect our analysis?
These questions, and the following exercises, can be used to move from description to analysis of the problem.
The Spectrum of Allies exercise (www.trainingforchange.org /content/view/69/39) helps us describe who are our allies and our opponents, and where they stand in relationship to us. This analysis helps us understand who we want to move strategically.
SmartMeme (www.smartmeme.com) focuses on “changing the story.” Their strategic resources includes “The Battle of the Story”, based on their belief that “Crafting a successful campaign message requires analyzing and understanding the power of storytelling to structure information in a way that reaches and convinces people.”
Joanne Sheehan
Hands off Iraqi oil!
A Hydrocarbon Law which advocates a radical restructuring of Iraq’s oil industry was approved by the Iraqi cabinet in February. It was crafted in secret over an eight month period from July 2006, in consultation with 9 foreign oil companies, the US and UK governments, and the IMF. Iraqi Parliamentarians saw it for the first time this February. Iraqi civil society has had no involvement in the process – despite lobbying for inclusion.
If passed by parliament, the law will mark a milestone in Iraqi history – a shift of Iraq’s massive reserves from public to private hands. Private companies will develop and profit from Iraq’s oil for 15-30 year periods with virtually no possibility for the Iraqi state to renegotiate terms and conditions.
For more information:
In France Amnesty International and Handicap International break up with AXA
Amnesty International France and Handicap International France decided to break off all their insurance contracts with the French group AXA. This rift has been caused by AXA’s ongoing investments in producers of cluster munition and anti-personnel mines. These investments are strongly opposed to the struggle of the two organisations against these civilian-killing weapon systems. The decision was made public on the 1st of March, on the 8th anniversary of the activation of the Ottawa Treaty against anti-personnel mines.
For more information:
http://www.netwerkvlaanderen.be/en/
http://www.amnesty.fr
http://www.handicap-international.fr/
Reed Elsevier feels the heat
The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust in the UK ditched nearly £2 million worth of shares in the company in protest at the continued involvement of the company in the arms trade. Reeds are the organisers of DSEi the biggest arms fare in the world that is taking place in the month of September in London.
More information:
The email newsletter of WRI's Global Initiative against War Profiteers || Index of past issues