War Profiteers

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Last month's protest in Burma revealing the violence and crimes of the Burmese military dictatorship has also helped identify the war profiteers that are supporting this Burmese military dictatorship. While many governments came up with strong declarations against the Burmese dictatorship many of the big companies that these government support are making high profitable business thanks to their relations with the dictatorship.

Blackwater our war profiteer of the month of June has made war profiteers to be main-stream news more than ever. Mainly because Blackwater personnel killed 11 Iraqis and wounded 14 during what the company said was an attack on a U.S. diplomatic convoy travelling through the Mansour district of Baghdad. Blackwater employees have been involved in at least 195 shooting incidents since 2005.

War profiteers have been highly present in the mainstream media in recent weeks, mainly because of Blackwater and their crimes in Iraq. It is a challenge for our movement to develop effective campaigns against these private military contractors. We know that these private militaries are even more dangerous because of the lack of regulations. WRI thanks Karolina our intern for a few weeks who researched mercenaries and private military contractors and their legal regulations, which can be found on the Wiki.

Arms Fairs are the trade exhibitions for military industry which are an integral and important part of the international arms trade. They happen all over the world, from Paris to Jakarta and provide arms companies with a forum for marketing their goods and services, and an opportunity to discuss collaboration on military projects.

EADS is a perfect example for our war profiteers of the month. As one of the biggest arms manufactures.

A new public opinion poll, has found that a majority of Iraqis oppose plans to open the country's oilfields to foreign investment. 63% of respondents said they would prefer Iraq's oil to be developed and produced by Iraqi public sector companies rather than foreign multinationals. The US government has been pressing Baghdad to pass an oil law by September but most Iraqis say they do not feel adequately informed about the law. Meanwhile UPI is reporting a top member of the Iraqi prime minister's party says the new oil law should be delayed until U.S. occupation forces leave Iraq.

Tuesday, July 3 - Nine legal shareholders of Alliant Techsystems stock were denied entry to the annual shareholders meeting and arrested when they refused to leave. Images and report at: http://www.alliantaction.org

For the past ten years San Francisco Bay Area-based CorpWatch has been educating and mobilizing people through the CorpWatch.org website investigating multinationals that profit out of war, fraud, environmental and human rights abuse. It a very good resource on war profiteers, you can now read their annual report at: http://corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11314
This year long with their in-depth investigative reporting, CorpWatch supported three films on war profiteering and helped arrange whistleblower testimony to four Congressional hearings.

More information: www.corpwatch.org

In a press release AXA announes to pull out investments of companies that produce anti-personnel mines and cluster munitions. This is surprising good news from the Paris headquarters of this bank-insurance company. For last years AXA has shown heavy reluctance to adopt stricter weapon investment policies.

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

Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) has welcomed the Prime Minister's announcement that the Defence Export Services Organisation (DESO) is to be shut down. The news follows a high-profile campaign by CAAT and other groups for the closure of DESO, a Government unit whose purpose is to promote sales for private arms companies, despite being funded with taxpayers' money. CAAT hopes that with the closure of DESO, the undemocratic power of arms companies in the UK will be brought to an end.

From August 6th–9th a US national coalition marched, rallied, and held vigils, teach-ins, and non-violent direct action in over 70 cities in 27 states, commemorating the 61st anniversary of the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki under the banner, “From Hiroshima to the Yucca Mountain to the Middle East: No Nukes! No Wars!

These last months have come with many new developments around campaigns against war profiteers. We have already announced some of them in previous issues of the WPN - for example that Reed Elsevier will not organise the DSEi arms fair any longer. Now this month comes with news from the UK and the closure of the Defence Export Services Organisation (DESO). Also we learnt that AXA who was our War Profiteer of the Month in April, has started to disinvest partly from landmines and cluster munitions.