Bailed Out Banks are Financing Cluster Bomb Production
A new report from IKV Pax Christi and Netwerk Vlaanderen was recently release that might give more cause for rage directed at US banks. The report is entitled “Worldwide investments in Cluster Munitions: A Shared Responsibility.” One of the more revealing aspects of this report was the fact that some of the US-based banks that were bailout out by taxpayers last year are also financing the production of Cluster Bombs.
The report found that since January 2007 at least 138 financial institutions from 16 different countries have invested in eight producers of cluster munitions. These companies include: Alliant Techsystems ATK (USA), Hanwha (South Korea), L-3 Communications (USA), Lockheed Martin (USA) Poongsan (South Korea), Roketsan (Turkey), Singapore Technologies Engineering (Singapore) and Textron (USA).
Banks and other financial investment companies were found to be involved in the Cluster Munitions industry in three ways:
- Investment banking services to companies producing cluster munitions: HSBC, Goldman Sachs, Merril Lynch, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan Chase provided the largest amount of investment banking services since Jan. 2007
- Loans to companies producing cluster munitions: Twelve of the largest banks provided 58% of the loans. Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Barclays and Goldman Sachs provided the largest amount of loans since Jan. 2007
- Asset management services that invest in companies producing cluster munitions: Fidelity, Vanguard Group, AXA, BlackRock and T Rowe Price Group provided the largest asset management services based on their portfolio (by summer 2009).
The US banks and other financial institutions that benefited from the taxpayer bailout last year and are funding cluster bomb munitions are Goldman Sachs, Merril Lynch, Bank of America, Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase. Many of these same institutions also gave their CEO’s huge bonuses, despite the taxpayer bailout and now it is documented that they are war profiteers as well.
We mentioned in a posting last week about the US use of Cluster Bombs in the occupation of Afghanistan, despite the fact that over half of the world’s nations are signatories to the Convention on Cluster Bombs. As of now, the US is not a signatory to that convention.
Local Artists Host “Day of the Dead” Event
Local artists Alynn Guerra and Brett Colley are hosting an art exhibit and celebration of the traditional Mexican festival, Dia de los Muertos – Day of the Dead. The art exhibit features small prints from a variety of people who were invited to create a piece for this show.
The Dead End Prints exhibit is this Friday & Saturday
October 30 & 31
5 – 10 PM (both days)
Location: Red Hydrant Press Studios
314 Straight St. SW, Door M, Grand Rapids
Below are three videos we posted that are related to the event.
The first video is a montage of all the prints submitted for the exhibit.
The second video is with Alynn Guerra talking about print making, the use of skeletons in her work and the Mexican tradition of print making.
The third video is with Brett Colley talking about the Dead End Prints event, print making and the Day of the Dead, and some of the themes represented in the prints that work submitted for this exhibit.
The Grand Rapids Press and the Afghanistan Narrative
On Wednesday, the Grand Rapids Press ran a front-page story from the Associated Press that dealt with the ongoing debate in Washington about whether or not the US should increase troop levels in Afghanistan.
The article is framed with the assumption that what the US and NATO military commanders are doing is to bring more stability to that country. Troop levels should increase, the reporter writes, is because there is a growing Taliban insurgency. However, nowhere in the story does it question whether or not the Taliban’s growing influence is a result of the eight-year US/NATO occupation.
The article does cite to counter-insurgency experts, Andrew Bacevich from Boston University and Ljubomir Stojadinovic, a military analyst from Serbia. The comments from both experts are vague, which is unfortunate, since Bacevich has very clear analysis of why increasing US troops levels would be problematic. Recently, Bacevich was sourced as saying:
Implementing the McChrystal plan will perpetuate the longstanding fundamentals of US national security policy: maintaining a global military presence, configuring US forces for global power projection, and employing those forces to intervene on a global basis. The McChrystal plan modestly updates these fundamentals to account for the lessons of 9/11 and Iraq, cultural awareness and sensitivity nudging aside advanced technology as the signature of American military power, for example. Yet at its core, the McChrystal plan aims to avert change. Its purpose – despite 9/11 and despite the failures of Iraq – is to preserve the status quo. . . .
If the president assents to McChrystal’s request, he will void his promise of change at least so far as national security policy is concerned. The Afghanistan war will continue until the end of his first term and probably beyond. It will consume hundreds of billions of dollars. It will result in hundreds or perhaps thousands more American combat deaths – costs that the hawks are loath to acknowledge.
As the fighting drags on from one year to the next, the engagement of US forces in armed nation-building projects in distant lands will become the new normalcy. Americans of all ages will come to accept war as a perpetual condition, as young Americans already do. That “keeping Americans safe” obliges the United States to seek, maintain, and exploit unambiguous military supremacy will become utterly uncontroversial.
The Press version of the article also omits roughly two-thirds of the original AP story. In addition, there is a box embedded in the article that directs readers to an additional story with the heading, “US officials say militants trying to scare Afghans from voting.” This article affirms the premise that whatever problems confront Afghanistan civil society is due to the behavior of the Taliban and continues a narrative that supports current US policy, which is the same conclusion we came to with a recent 100-day study.
Republic Windows & Doors Workers at GVSU
Last night, union members from Chicago who were involved in the Republic Windows & Doors factory occupation, spoke at GVSU’s downtown campus. Armando, one of the representatives who participated in the occupation, spoke briefly about what happened. He talked about how the company was moving equipment out of the factory and some semi-trailers were hauling equipment outside of Chicago in November of last year and that it what tipped them off to the threat of the factory being closed.
People began to talk and the labor union (UE) suggested that an occupation might be a good strategy. 270 workers appeared the day they decided to occupy the plant. They asked for volunteers to take on certain tasks and discussed the risks involved. Next they went to Bank of America, the bank that had told the company they would not provide any more loans or credit. The workers asked for an extension of the credit to keep the factory open and Bank of America said no, despite the fact that they received $15 Billion in the government bailout.
The workers received thousands of letters and e-mails and roughly 3,000 different people came to bring food and provide support to the workers during the occupation. After six days they won their demands and received back pay, holiday and vacation pay.
Once the occupation was over they began to think, “What could we do after the occupation?” They began doing research about doing research in the area to determine where they might want to organize workers who were also as vulnerable as they were. Abe Mwaura, another organizer from Chicago, asked the audience where their cell phones made and most responded “China.” Abe then asked how these products came to the US. He said after the products are shipped to the US, most of it get sent to warehouses on the west coast or Chicago. In fact, Abe said that 65% of train freight in the US goes through Chicago. He also said there were 100,000 warehouse workers in Chicago alone.
So the UE started doing outreach this year to speak with warehouse workers, most of them temp workers, with a majority being Latina women. Many of these workers make less than minimum wage, have work injuries but don’t ask for help, either because they don’t know their rights or out of fear of deportation. Abe shared the story of one woman who was 6 months pregnant while working in a warehouse. She asked to be moved and they refused. She was sent to the hospital where they induced childbirth and 2 days later the child died. Abe asked those in the audience if their cheap cell phones were worth the price of this dead child?
Organizing warehouse workers in the Chicago area seems to be their next major project. Abe and Armando said this is an opportunity to organize workers and to create a new economy. “Imagine,” Abe said, “if workers in a Wal-Mart warehouse began an occupation just weeks before Christmas demanding change, what impact would that have on the country?”
The workers said that they will have a website up soon at warehouseworkers.org and they encouraged people to get involved in labor struggles locally and build solidarity for more actions like the Republic Windows & Doors occupation.
Afterwards we were able to interview Abe Mwaura. The interview is in two parts.
Media Bites – Froot Loops & Child Marketing
This week’s Media Bites takes a look at a recent Kellogg’s Froot Loops commercial, where children are used to market the sugar cereal as a healthy choice. We look at the actual ingredients listed in the cereal and discuss the growing trend of using kids to sell products, a theme that is explored in the documentary Consuming Kids.
The GR Press, Green and Grassroots?
On the front page of Sunday’s Grand Rapids Press the headline read, “From the Grass Roots: It’s Up to Advocates to Fund Green Initiatives.” The article by reporter Jim Harger tells the public that while the City of Grand Rapids is getting ready to finish up with its revised Master Plan, there is no money for some of its “Green” initiatives.
The first section of the article cites the new City Manager Greg Sundstrom who says the city has no money to implement the recommendations that came out of the Green Gathering meetings hosted by the City of Grand Rapids. Also cited in the first part of the article is one of the Green Grand Rapids Committee members Jack Hoffman. Hoffman thinks that the volunteers in this effort can create a “Green Power movement.”
The rest of article is a summary of the six areas that Green Grand Rapids has identified; bicycling, local water, local parks, the Grand River, urban trees and local food.
Bicycling is the first theme presented and the Press story tells readers that the demand for more bike paths has resulted in a Bike Summit and a local bike coalition, but there are no plans offered on how the City will become more bike-friendly. The section ends with City Planner Suzanne Schulz saying, “A design team that reviews all city street projects will make sure bicycles are considered.” Not exactly a clear commitment.
The section on Parks and Recreation cites Steve Faber, the Executive Director of Friends of Grand Rapids Parks. Faber states that for the City to protect the existing urban green space “This is going to take an investment from private and public dollars to make this dream come true.” The organization asks people to spend time in the parks, participate in park clean ups and to contribute money.
There are two sections that deal with water, one specifically for the Grand River and the other for local streams and water runoff. The focus of this section is on efforts to make the river more accessible for Kayakers and cites someone with the group Grand Rapids Whitewater. The group is focused on recreation and not on improving the water quality of the Grand River.
The other water section deals with contributing streams and storm water runoff. The West Michigan Environmental Action Council is sourced in this section, since the group makes local stream projects a priority. WMEAC does stream clean ups, education and some stream restoration such as planting trees near streams. Nothing was mentioned about the current condition of the streams and whether or not local industry contributes to contamination.
WMEAC is also the lead group for the urban forestry section. The article cites a member of the Urban Forestry Committee about the importance of protecting and expanding trees. “Green Grand Rapids wants the City to add 500 trees a year plus replace the ash trees that die.” However, there is no information about how this will happen and if there is any money available. The article does provide a link to the Save Your Ash Campaign, but that link does not include information on how saving trees or planting trees will be funded.
The last section to be dealt with is local food. The emphasis here is on the need to have more community gardens and local farmers markets. Some ideas are listed in the article but the only concrete plan seems to be to have a year-round farmers market downtown that is being spearheaded by a group called Grand Action. Grand Action was founded by local businessman such as John Canepa, David Frey and Dick DeVos. This “non-profit development group” was behind the construction of the arena and the convention center. Here the reporter doesn’t ask any questions about whether or not the effort to bring a year-round farmers market to downtown Grand Rapids would benefit the downtown business community primarily, particularly the friends of DeVos, Canepa and Frey.
While there is certainly a great deal to be done to make Grand Rapids a more sustainable community, the Grand Rapids Press needs to do a better job at investigating the claims made by such efforts as Green Grand Rapids in order for residents to be better informed about what is really being done in their name.
Workers to Talk About Factory Occupation This Tuesday
Several members of UE Local 1110 in Chicago will be in grand Rapids this Tuesday to speak about their historic factory occupation from last December.
260 workers occupied the factory of Republic Windows and Doors where it was announced that they would not only lose their jobs, but their severance pay as well. The workers defied the law and convention union practice and thought that an occupation of the factory was their only recourse. After nearly a week-long occupation, the company was forced to concede.
Members of the Republic Windows and Doors will share their story and show a documentary about the occupation at an event that is FREE and open to the public.
Tuesday, October 27
7pm
GVSU Downtown Campus – Loosemore Auditorium
WOOD Radio Posts News Story that Promotes Station’s Programming
On Friday, WOOD Radio News aired a story the essentially promotes some of the syndicated shows the Clear Channel owned station hosts.
WOOD Radio reporter Rod Kackley, using an October 22 story on Politico.com, interviewed GVSU political science professor Erika King. Kackley wanted King to respond to the Politico story which made the claim that the “flamboyant rhetoric and angry tone” of talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck could be a liability for the Republican Party.
King thinks that people who tune in to listen to Limbaugh, Beck and others will not negatively impact financial donations to the GOP. “Those are people who frequently listen to the talk radio and television shows, and really are enthused and fired up by those commentators.”
This comment by King is followed by other comments, which downplay the issued raised by the Politico article and focuses instead on partisan strategy. “For half of the election campaign you really need the base. For the second half of the campaign, the general election, you need to reach out beyond the base.”
The issue that Politico was raising has to do with the ongoing and consistent incendiary language used by talk show hosts like Limbaugh, Beck and Michael Savage. Researchers like Rory O’Connor have documented the content of numerous syndicated talk show hosts and have concluded that they engage in “hate speech.”
So not only does WOOD Radio news avoid discussing a serious issue like hate speech, they use the story as an opportunity to promote their own programming.
Climate Justice Day in Grand Rapids
On Saturday, about 60 people gathered in Rosa Parks Circle to be part of an action in conjunction with International Climate Justice Day. Students from several colleges brought people together to be part of the international 350 Campaign.
People gathered in rainy weather and listened to music and several speakers. One speaker was a student at Kendall College and belonged to the Green Council. Another student from GVSU was the event host. She said that she would be a youth delegate at the Climate Conference in Copenhagen in early December.
A woman from the West Michigan Environmental Action Council also spoke, but didn’t have much to say about climate change other than their organization was distributing energy efficient light bulbs. The only speaker to address the major causes of climate change was Lee Sprague, an organizer with the Sierra Club.
Sprague is working on a campaign to prevent the construction of eight new coal-fired power plants that have been proposed in Michigan. So far organizing efforts have prevented two of the plants from being built. The Sierra Club organizer said that 40% of the carbon emissions in the world are created from the burning of coal. Sprague also asked those in attendance to go online and counter the messages of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), a coal industry front group.
Once the speakers were done people marched over to the Calder Plaza so they could participate in forming the numbers 350 with their bodies and bikes. This picture would be shared with activists around the world as past of the 350.org campaign.
After most people went home a group of 13 people participated in a Critical Mass bike ride from downtown Grand Rapids to Consumers Energy near 36th street. The bike ride was designed to draw attention to one of the main polluters in the area, Consumers Energy, which distributes electricity that was generated from a coal-fired power plant. Those who organized the bike ride and banner drop talked a bit on camera about what motivated them to take this action.
Kalamazoo Peace Week Features Phyllis Bennis
Phyllis Bennis, with the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, spoke at Western Michigan University last night. The occasion for her talk was the 28th annual Peace Week Celebration that has been taking place on campus in Kalamazoo. The focus of the night was on the US Occupation of Afghanistan.
Bennis began her talk by saying, “9/11 was a crime against humanity, but it was not an act of war. No nation attacked the US.” She continued by acknowledging that this war that began 8 years ago is called the “Good War,” even though it was never that. “After 8 years, it has now become Obama’s war,” Bennis said, “What he has called a war of necessity.” Then Bennis pointed out that those of us in the peace movement can’t claim he didn’t tell us, because he said during his campaign that this would be the war he would focus on.
Bennis criticizes the fact that 21,000 troops were sent by the Obama administration earlier this year before they determined a strategy. “Now they are discussing a strategy, but it is narrowly focused.” The author/speaker said that within the current strategic discussions there are two main options are: 40 – 80,000 additional troops or maintain the current 68,000-troop level and use more un-manned drones. Gen. McChrystal, Obama’s top military advisor on Afghanistan, is advocating a troop increase to engage in a major counter-insurgency campaign. McChrystal is saying that while we need to “win hearts and minds,” we also have to hunt down and kill the terrorists.
For Bennis, having an exit strategy is not enough, because there needs to be a plan for massive reparations – for all the destruction the US occupation has done. And this cannot be done while the US is occupying the country. She says that early on there was a major bombing campaign, in 2001 and early 2002. One of the weapons used were cluster bombs, which are bombs, which when explode send out thousands of smaller bomblets. Many will not explode and remain on the ground as mines, which civilians and particularly children are at risk of picking up. The US has still not signed on the international ban on cluster bombs.
Thousands of people were instantly turned into refugees because of the US bombing in 2001-02. The only response by the US government to this humanitarian crisis was the airdrop food, which was essentially a photo op, according to Bennis. The food packages were only in English, Spanish & French and they were also yellow, which made them look a lot like the cluster bombs. The speaker said that the military would not change the color of the packages because “too many of them were made and had to be used.”
Bennis went on to says that 54-57% of the US population is now opposed to the US occupation of Afghanistan, according to recent polling. There has been a 10% drop of public support in the last month alone. “Yes, he promised escalation, but we need to tell the administration that the occupation will not work and the human cost is too great.”
Bennis also said that part of the counter-insurgency strategy is to get the people to support the local government. The problem is that the US has been backing Karzai, who is a “thug” and “corrupt.” Karzai is often referred to as the “Mayor of Kabul,” because he doesn’t really control much else of the country.
Another justification for the US occupation Bennis said, was that the US needs to be there to save the women of Afghanistan. But this is a myth, since the very misogynist sectors in Afghanistan are remnants of the Mujahideen, that the US trained and funded in the 1980s. The worst could be Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who as a student through acid on a woman’s face to voice his opposition to women in the university. These are facts that women’s groups like RAWA and the Afghan Women’s Mission continue to point out.
Bennis continued by saying that US troops deaths have increased and Afghani deaths have in the tens of thousands. “In addition, the monetary cost of the war has been tremendous.” Phyllis gives the breakdown of how much money has come from Kalamazoo to fund the war in Afghanistan, based on the data provided by the National Priorities Project. “Money could have been spent on health care and education, but instead it is to fund this brutal war,” Bennis said.
Then there is the amount of money that has been committed to Pakistan as part of this war. The Obama administration bragged about sending $7 billion in humanitarian aide, but failed to mention the $100 billion sent for military purposes.
Bennis said, “We need an exit strategy, which means a couple of things. There needs to be real diplomacy, which involves the surrounding countries, like Iran and China.” Those governments have to have something to say about what happens in Afghanistan, so there really needs to be a regional strategy. Bennis also said that the impact of the US policies in Iraq and its support for Israel also impact how these regional countries view the US. “Ask people who saw US made and US supplied weapons bombing Gaza earlier this year. The planes, the helicopters, the bombs, the white phosphorous, are all from the US. So how do you think those people view the US?”
Bennis points out that both the outgoing Bush administration and incoming Obama administration have promised $30 Billion to Israel. Obama has asked for a freeze to Israeli settlements, several times, but Israel has consistently said no and has said they don’t feel pressured by the Obama administration. “These are the things that we have to think about when dealing with the war in Afghanistan, because the rest of the world thinks about this.”
“There are some legislative bills pending, which are calling for an exit strategy before doing anything else, but those members of Congress who are calling for this have not been included in the discussion with the administration on the Afghanistan strategy,” said Bennis. “We need to get the US out of Afghanistan and to pay massive reparations for the damages done. We need to speed up the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, we need to stop US support for Israel. This is the task of the US Peace Movement.”
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 