Jun 072016
 

The link to Dr. Nutt’s excellent TED Talk. 

http://www.ted.com/talks/samantha_nutt_the_real_harm_of_the_global_arms_trade

“War is ours,” she says. “We buy it, sell it, spread it and wage it. We are therefore not powerless to solve it.”

ACTION?   Will you forward to your friends?   TED Talks are popular.  The number of views should hit 1 million with some help from us.   June 7, 2016 there are 195,465 Total views

These young people like Samantha are powerful. We can help them achieve their visions.  Which are ours, too.

If we enrich Lockheed Martin through complicity with lucrative Government contracts,  we are working against Samantha.

We become enablers of what Lockheed Martin does in the world,  listed in the email of solidarity (below) to Samantha.

 

The killing ways are becoming obsolete.   We have had enough.

It is as Dwight Eisenhower said back in the fifties:   I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

In our case,  getting IN the way is the responsible action by citizens!

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More about Samantha Nutt:  http://samanthanutt.com/

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Email sent to Dr. Samantha Nutt, follow-up to her TED Talk

 

From: Sandra Finley  Sent: June 7, 2016

Subject: Support.  Your TED Talk.

 

Dear Samantha,

 

I cannot thank you enough for your excellent TED Talk on the insane arms trade.

 

I would like you to know that a network of thousands of Canadians have battled since 2003 against the use of our money to enrich one of the largest arms dealers, Lockheed Martin Corporation.   Public Works and Statistics Canada awarded long term contracts to Lockheed Martin.

 

Citizens dig into one pocket to help fund constructive initiatives such as War Child (yours).  Meanwhile the Government is in our other pocket taking money to give to Lockheed Martin Corporation that negates the good work.   Makes a lot of us very angry.   Non-violent resistance, on-going since 2003, takes the form of refusal to cooperate with StatsCan censuses and surveys.

 

Census non-compliance had gone from 2% to 11% by the 2011 Census, if the interpretation of (transcript) figures given under oath at the trial of Audrey Tobias is correct.

 

Appended, please see the “why” of the resistance.

 

In order to drive Lockheed Martin out, however, it is necessary that citizens of other countries fight them, too.    Links to the international collaboration between Governments and Lockheed Martin are in the posting:  2016-03-18   Does Lockheed Martin Corp have a role in the 2016 Census?   

 

Your TED Talk video is going into our network today.   Once again, thanks – – you are compelling and succinct.

 

We choose to tread your path with you; be damned if we will follow the path laid down by the bureaucrats and politicians who are collaborators with the war corporations.

 

The means do not justify the ends, whether for war or for statistics.  As far as I can understand history, they lead to destruction of the state and of the self who partakes in the treacheries.  Russian communism would be one example of many (Ref:  Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, 1941).

 

Best wishes,

 

Sandra Finley

 

APPENDED

What were the earlier causes of resistance to Lockheed Martin at StatsCan?   (today it is these, plus the Surveillance issue) 

Outrage that Public Works and StatsCan would award contracts to a company with the track record of Lockheed Martin:

 

  • Producer of land mines, illegal under International and Canadian law.

 

  • Producer of cluster munitions, illegal.

 

  • Played a promotional role in the decision by the U.S. and U.K. to launch an illegal war of aggression on Iraq.

 

  • Number one “contract interrogator” in the Torture done at American offshore prisons such as Gitmo (Guantanamo Bay) and Abu Ghraib.

 

  • Have been convicted numerous times of breaking American arms export control laws.  In general they consider themselves to be outside the rule of law.

 

  • This video explains a lot – the annual arms bazaar in Jordan.  Lockheed Martin is there – – all nations and players, anyone who wants to buy weapons.  People ostensibly at war with each other but they are partners in business.  The “terrorists” are there buying weapons, too.    http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=13349    A must see:  The Business of War: SOFEX – YouTube

 

  • Involved in terrorizing people in Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, etc, through the dropping of bombs by remote control from drones  (“drone warfare”.  The RQ-170 Sentinel drone used in the Middle East is made by Lockheed Martin.)

 

  • They are corrupting of democracy through the huge amounts of money they spend on lobbying and contributions.

 

  • The Americans have an accumulated federal debt well over $18 trillion, growing continuously.  War is expensive.  Jumping into bed with Lockheed Martin means growing an economy that becomes dependent upon the waging of war.   Think of how much money individual Americans pay through taxes that just goes to the banks to pay costs of $18 trillion in Government debt – – that only continues to escalate.   Not much wonder there is poverty and huge infrastructure deficits in the U.S..  We don’t aim for the same in Canada.

 

  • Application of the business model by a war corporation, words from the current CEO of Lockheed Martin, Marillyn Hewson, to potential investor Deutsche Bank:  (The plan is actually one that helps de-stabilize the world.) Even if there may be some kind of deal that is done with Iran, there is volatility all around the region and each one of these countries believes they’ve got to protect their citizens and the things that we can bring to them help in that regard. So similarly, that’s the Middle East. And I know that’s what you asked about, but you can take that same argument to the Asia-Pacific region, which is another growth area for us. A lot of volatility, a lot of instability a lot of things that are happening both with North Korea as well as some of the tensions between China and Japan. So in both of those regions, which are growth areas for us, we expect that there is going to continue to be opportunities for us to bring our capabilities to them.More:   http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=8972   Strategy, scenarios, and the global shift in defense power

 

  • They gouge the public purse.  The helmet alone, for each pilot of an F-35 stealth bomber that they are trying to stuff down our throats  is a million dollars.   (the F-35 contracts will be back on the table in 2018)More:   http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=8906    Lockheed Martin is desperate – – to get our money!   And what is the cost of one F-35 stealth bomber?     See also,  Iraq for Sale youtube, not specifically Lockheed Martin, but makes the point:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cJlJudDtVE

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