War Profiteers

The High Court the 10th of April ruled that the Director of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) acted unlawfully when he stopped a corruption investigation into BAE Systems' arms deals with Saudi Arabia.

The judgment was handed down by Lord Justice Moses and Mr Justice Sullivan in response to a judicial review brought by Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and The Corner House.

In the light of this judgment, the Serious Fraud Office must reopen the BAE-Saudi corruption investigation immediately.

The 16th Annual Space Organizing Conference and Protest was held in Omaha, Nebraska, USA on April 11th to 13 , co-sponsored by the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space and local hosts Nebraskans for Peace. The weekend began with a protest at Offutt Air Force Base, the home of the U.S. Strategic Command. Known as StratCom, it is considered “The most dangerous place on the face of the earth”.

It has a been busy times for the movement against war profiteering as you will read in this edition of WPN. We congratulate the work done by CAAT and The Corner House, with their court victory that ruled that the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) acted unlawfully when he stopped a corruption investigation into BAE Systems' arms deals with Saudi Arabia. At the same time the fact that a documentary exposing the arms trade was censored in the UK shows the level of impact that the Smash EDO Campaign has had.

During the last weeks of November and during most of December of 2007 a state of emergency (militarization of the zone) was declared in the Province of Orellana in the Amazon region of Ecuador, due specifically to the actions of the inhabitants of the Dayuma settlement who have raise up in protest because of the situation of abandonment on the part of the Ecuadorian government.

This militarization and repression has lead to various arrests and unlawful entry into homes of the residents, violating their Human Rights, only because they demanded that their basic needs be met.

"Mining-induced displacement ... was one of the most underreported causes of displacement in Africa, and one that was likely to increase, as mineral extraction remained a key economic driver in the whole region," was one of the conclusions of a official report by SADC, the Southern African Development Community, early 2006.

Aluminium's countless applications in modern civilian life tend to mask its numerous uses in weapons technology, which make it one of a handful of metals classed as “strategic” by the Pentagon, meaning that a top priority of the world's most powerful Governments is to ensure its constant supply at lowest possible cost.

Mining as fuel for war, is the title and main theme for this issue of The Broken Rifle. War Resisters' International works against war profiteering, supporting local nonviolent campaigns against these corporations. Most of the campaigns that we have worked together with are campaigns targeting well kno-wn war profiteers – the arms traders and service suppliers to the military. In this issue we want to take a next step and start to look closer to the con-nections that the mining industry has with the globalisation of militarism.

Together with this Appeal Letter you will find enclosed the latest issue of The Broken Rifle on "Mining as a fuel for war". With this issue we want take a new step in our work on war profiteering by looking at the connections between the mining industry and the arms trade. The relationship between both industries has a long history, documented in Felix Padel 's article.

Aluminium has become the most important single bulk material of modern warfare.

Disarm UCL is a campaign in the UK which has widespread support among University College London students, staff and alumni. UCL Student Union fully supports the campaign.

It aims to get UCL to divest its shares in arms company Cobham plc, which profits significantly from the sale of military components. Cobham plc is the world's 46th largest arms producer by military revenue. UCL as a major university sets an important precedent for the whole sector.

General Dynamics has long been one of the largest military contractors for the Pentagon and many foreign governments. The company’s roots go back to the pioneering work on military submarines by the Electric Boat Company, but it later expanded into surface ships, aircraft, tanks and, most recently, military information technology.

Reported by: Kory Raftery

Tuesday, February 12, 2008: Students at UC Santa Barbara in the US take to the streets over U.S.

Hands Off Iraqi Oil held a demonstration outside the Middle East Energy 2008 conference at Chatham House in London on Tuesday 5 February.

Iraqi oil minister Dr Hussain Al-Shahristani and UK minister Malcolm Wicks spoke at the conference, which was financed by the British companies BP and Shell, as well as ExxonMobil and StatoilHydro.

Demonstrators were warning that Iraq would lose billions of pounds in oil income under a proposed new law which the British and US governments are pressing the Baghdad administration