Police called after man refused to leave City Hall
By David Hutton, The StarPhoenix May 31, 2011
James Kernaghan, a 42-year-old downtown business owner, says he was told he had to leave City Hall on Friday by police after he refused to budge from a chair in the reception area
Photograph by: Gord Waldner, The StarPhoenix
A Saskatoon man says city officials were “overzealous” in calling police and forcing him to leave City Hall after a dispute over an unpaid parking ticket.
James Kernaghan, a 48-year-old downtown business owner, says he was told he had to leave City Hall on Friday by police after he refused to budge from a chair in the reception area.
Kernaghan says he received a summons to court over an unpaid parking ticket last week. He gets around 15 to 20 parking tickets a year, he said, but didn’t receive this ticket on his windshield or get a letter indicating payment wasn’t received, he said.
He wanted the ticket reduced to $10, the minimum payment, but was told by the customer service clerk he must fight the ticket in court.
Kernaghan, who runs a sales training and recruitment firm, asked to speak to the clerk’s supervisor, he said, who reiterated the policy.
“How do I fight a ticket I never got?” Kernaghan said he told the supervisor. “They told me, ‘You have no choice you have to take it to court,’ and I said, ‘That’s ridiculous. I’d like to speak to your boss.’ ”
Kernaghan consciously didn’t raise his voice to intimidate anyone, he said. He asked for identification from the last manager he spoke to because he wanted to file a complaint. He eventually requested to speak to the city manager, claiming it was his right, but was refused, he said.
In protest, he sat in a chair at a kiosk, which was closed after he sat down, while waiting to speak to a manager.
After 10 minutes, five security staff arrived and one guard approached Kernaghan and asked him to leave.
“I looked at him and said, ‘Sir, I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m sitting quietly in a chair asking to speak to someone further up the line.’ ”
Five minutes later, two police officers arrived and requested Kernaghan leave the building, he said.
“I told them, ‘I’m not leaving. I’m not swearing, I’m not causing a scene.’ They said, ‘You’re disrupting work.’ I said, ‘Unless you’re telling me you’re going to arrest me – I’m not leaving. I’m sitting in a public space.’ ”
After another senior officer arrived, Kernaghan was asked to leave the premises or be charged with mischief, he said.
At that point, he had no choice but to leave, he said.
“I’m not going to fight a mischief charge,” Kernaghan said.
City treasurer Shelley Sutherland wouldn’t comment on the specifics of the incident. She said the city’s general manager of corporate service, Maryls Bilanski, has been asked to look into the matter.
Once a summons has been issued for an unpaid parking ticket it’s a matter for the courts, Sutherland said.
This is the first time in at least 30 years police have been called to City Hall to deal with a customer service dispute, she said.
“Things are sometimes difficult,” she said. “But, generally speaking, we’re able to deal with people’s issues or at least give them answers they can live with. Our intention is that people are satisfied – not always happy, but satisfied.”
Kernaghan says the situation could have been dealt with differently. The manager could have directed him to make an appointment with the city manager or city solicitor to have his complaints heard or waited him out.
“You’ve got to assume at some point in time I’ll get bored, but within five minutes (of silent protest) I’m dealing with security guards and police,” he said.
“Police and security were doing nothing wrong. To bring in security and the police is an overreaction. It was over the top. (The manager) attempted to accelerate the situation into an incident. He’s upset that I said no to him and said I wouldn’t leave.”
Kernaghan said he would also like an envelope placed on parking tickets to ensure they remain on the windshield.
Beyond our defense partnerships, Lockheed Martin Corporation stands ready to continue and grow our support to Canada’s Census, health care management, information technology, as well as infrastructure and border security to ensure the safe, secure and efficient transit of people, goods and services between Canada and the US. To this end, Lockheed Martin Corporation has been an active participant supporting improvements to security and prosperity through the North American Competitiveness Council.
This statement from the horse’s mouth (Lockheed Martin’s website) makes a point that I could not make in Court, because of the way the Justice System works:
– What Lockheed Martin is doing today in the Canadian census is not what they will be doing in the longer term: They will “GROW their SUPPORT“.
The way business works is to make customers more and more dependent upon their services, to expand their services (make more money) and effectively create a situation where it is too costly for the customer to get rid of them. At that point the Corporation is in control (the essence of a dependent relationship).
Note the last sentence of the above excerpt from the Lockheed Martin website regarding the North American Competitiveness Council. The NACC is the SPP (so-called “Security and Prosperity Partnership”) which is all about the integration of Canada and the U.S. under a Corporate Agenda that includes access to tar sands, oil and gas, and water. It’s about making money from resources that the Americans are running out of and that the American Corporations want to control. People don’t have to believe me when I say that Lockheed Martin’s involvement in the Canadian census is extremely dangerous.
2005 November: Ivan P. Fellegi, Chief Statistician of Canada,
“I would like to emphasize that only 20% of the work for the 2006 Census will be contracted out while the remaining 80% is being done by Statistics Canada. The distribution, collection, follow-up and storage of questionnaires will be done strictly by Statistics Canada … ”
scanned optical character recognition (OCR) technology to process the handwritten forms
Lockheed Martin provided hardware and software integration for Statistics Canada’s dress rehearsal and full 2006 census, including the first successful use of the secure Internet channel.
In every census we support, Lockheed Martin’s team strives to:
• Provide the general public with multiple, easy-to-use and secure methods of response. • Help census authorities collect and capture the data accurately and completely. • Employ robust processes and tools to ensure complete protection of individuals’ personal information.
Lockheed Martin’s Census Business Practice represents technology expertise that make census taking highly accurate, more automated and efficient, and easier for citizens as well as for governments to use.
ELIZABETH: Or is it that they have designed the software program which is being used by Stats Canada to process the data? Either way, I don’t want my tax dollars going to a U.S.weapons manufacturer. However, I would like to be clear on exactly what their role is and how much access they have to the data collected.
RESPONSE:
as explained, the issue is that Lockheed Martin will evolve their participation in the census over time.
I use the example of Canadian National Railways: privatized in 1995, in spite of public outcry. The Government soothed Canadians by saying: we listened to you. In order to ensure the CNR remains Canadian we are going to enact legislation, CNR head offices have to remain in Montreal, blah, blah, blah.
What is the situation today? CNR is now “CN” (NOT “Canadian National”) and it is American-owned
There is a note about the “propaganda” aspect in the APPENDED.
ELIZABETH: Does L-M decide what questions are on the form? I ask this because you seem to be saying that, in addition to the problem of Lockheed-Martins’ involvement, there is the problem of detailed personal information being gathered on individuals.
RESPONSE: Under the Statistics Act, the Government (Cabinet) has to give assent to the questions on the census form. So for example, in preparing the defense for my trial I looked up in the Canada Gazette to ensure that they had okay’d the 2006 questions. They had. The questions come through StatsCan to Cabinet.
BUT NOTE: When following the U.S. census in 2010 I was struck by the similarities between the questions on the U.S. and Canadian forms.
I should not have been surprised: the integration (“harmonization”) between Canada and the U.S. is being carried forward by the “agencies” of Government, through strategically-placed bureaucrats who won’t buck the system. (Ron Covais spelled that out in the Maclean’s Magazine article mentioned at the top of this page.) They serve corporate interests and are rewarded accordingly.
Data collection on citizens is being coordinated in many western democracies through Census Bureaus. That was explained by the then-head of the StatsCan Census operation during the trial in Provincial Court. Anil Arora sold it as a positive.
FOREIGNERS IN THE CANADIAN CENSUS. Your email touches on this related aspect: if it is not Lockheed Martin (working with IBM, one of the sub-contractors), it could as well be one of the other large American corporations that are into the same games as Lockheed. For that matter, Lockheed could morph itself into some other identity and continue to carry on its work for StatsCan, but under a different name. Or, if it was a Canadian company it could be bought up later by a foreign corporation, as has happened to so many Canadian companies.
/Sandra
APPENDED
Excerpt from:
1. 2010-07-24 Email to Munir Sheikh, Chief Statistician. IMPORTANT. Comprehensive argument with chronology.
” PROPAGANDA: Contracting-out census work to Lockheed Martin and then arguing that Lockheed Martin will not have access to the data component.
Probably the most influential proponent in the decision by the Bush Administration to drop bombs on Iraq in order to secure oil was Lockheed Martin Corp. The war was sold with lies and propaganda. Please do not expect me to believe that Lockheed Martin will not have access to the data – their record speaks for itself. I am not quite so dumb or naïve.”
2. 2008-09-04 Lockheed Martin awarded contract for work on the 2011 Canadian census. Transnational corporations manipulate contract specifications so only they can meet the requirements, with collaborators.
” It is naïve to believe the reassurances given by the Government that Lockheed Martin will not have access to the data base. They will have access, if not today, in time. It is no different than what happened to CNR. To assuage public protest when CNR was privatized, they passed legislation to require that CNR would remain Canadian with head offices in Montreal. Today CNR is American owned.
You do not even need to guess at what the intentions of the American “security” forces (corporations) are. I have circulated newspaper reports from a security conference in Ottawa, etc. There are open and unequivocal statements: the Americans want the data on all Canadians and they want it by 2011.”
There is also the role of the Patriotic Act to consider. If Lockheed Martin has access to the Statistics Canada data base on Canadians, so does the Pentagon (explained in other postings).
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43199200/ns/technology_and_science-security (Link no longer valaid)
Hackers broke into Lockheed Martin networks: source – Technology & science – Security – msnbc.com
Other U.S. military contractors’ networks also may have been hacked
By Jim Finkle and Andrea Shalal-Esa
Reuters
updated 5/27/2011 8:18:35 PM ET 2011-05-28T00:18:35
BOSTON/WASHINGTON — Unknown hackers have broken into the security networks of Lockheed Martin Corp and several other U.S. military contractors, a source with direct knowledge of the attacks told Reuters.
They breached security systems designed to keep out intruders by creating duplicates to “SecurID” electronic keys from EMC Corp’s RSA security division, said the person who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.
It was not immediately clear what kind of data, if any, was stolen by the hackers. But the networks of Lockheed and other military contractors contain sensitive data on future weapons systems as well as military technology currently used in battles in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Weapons makers are the latest companies to be breached through sophisticated attacks that have pierced the defenses of huge corporations including Sony, Google Inc and EMC Corp. Security experts say that it is virtually impossible for any company or government agency to build a security network that hackers will be unable to penetrate.
The Pentagon, which has about 85,000 military personnel and civilians working on cybersecurity issues worldwide, said it also uses a limited number of the RSA electronic security keys, but declined to say how many for security reasons.
The hackers learned how to copy the security keys with data stolen from RSA during a sophisticated attack that EMC disclosed in March, according to the source.
EMC declined to comment on the matter, as did executives at major defense contractors.
Rick Moy, president of NSS Labs, an information security company, said the original attack on RSA was likely targeted at its customers, including military, financial, governmental and other organizations with critical intellectual property.
He said the initial RSA attack was followed by malware and phishing campaigns seeking specific data that would link tokens to end-users, which meant the current attacks may have been carried out by the same hackers.
“Given the military targets, and that millions of compromised keys are in circulation, this is not over,” he said.
Lockheed, which employs 126,000 people worldwide and had $45.8 billion in revenue last year, said it does not discuss specific threats or responses as a matter of principle, but regularly took actions to counter threats and ensure security.
“We have policies and procedures in place to mitigate the cyber threats to our business, and we remain confident in the integrity of our robust, multi-layered information systems security,” said Lockheed spokesman Jeffery Adams.
Executives at General Dynamics Corp ,, Boeing Co , Northrop Grumman Corp, Raytheon Co and other defense companies declined to comment on any security breaches linked to the RSA products.
“We do not comment on whether or not Northrop Grumman is or has been a target for cyber intrusions,” said Northrop spokesman Randy Belote.
Actions prevented widespread disruption
Raytheon spokesman Jonathan Kasle said his company took immediate companywide actions in March when incident information was initially provided to RSA customers.
“As a result of these actions, we prevented a widespread disruption of our network,” he said.
Boeing spokesman Todd Kelley said his company had a “wide range” of systems in place to detect and prevent intrusions of its networks. “We have a robust computing security team that constantly monitors our network,” he said.
Defense contractors’ networks contain sensitive data on sophisticated weapons systems, but all classified information is kept on separate, closed networks managed by the U.S. government, said a former senior defense official, who was not authorized to speak on the record.
SecurIDs are widely used electronic keys to computer systems that work using a two-pronged approach to confirming the identity of the person trying to access a computer system. They are designed to thwart hackers who might use key-logging viruses to capture passwords by constantly generating new passwords to enter the system.
The SecurID generates new strings of digits on a minute-by-minute basis that the user must enter along with a secret PIN (personal identification number) before they can access the network. If the user fails to enter the string before it expires, then access is denied.
RSA and other companies have produced a total of about 250 million security tokens, although it is not clear how many are in use worldwide at present, said the former defense official.
The devices provided additional security at a lower cost than biometrics such as fingerprint readers or iris scanning machines, said the official, noting that the RSA incident could increase demand for greater use of biometric devices.
The RSA breach did raise concerns about any security tokens that had been compromised, and EMC now faced tough questions about whether “they can repair that product line or whether they need to ditch it and start over again,” he said.
EMC disclosed in March that hackers had broken into its network and stolen some information related to its SecurIDs. It said the information could potentially be used to reduce the effectiveness of those devices in securing customer networks.
EMC said it worked with the Department of Homeland Security to publish a note on the March attack, providing Web addresses to help firms identify where the attack might have come from.
It briefed individual customers on how to secure their systems. In a bid to ensure secrecy, the company required them to sign nondisclosure agreements promising not to discuss the advice that it provided in those sessions, according to two people familiar with the briefings.
TOPIC: GOVERNANCE AND ADMINISTRATION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN
– Conflicts-of-interest
– Irregularities in hiring practices
– Gender issues
– Poisoned work environment
TOPIC: COMMUNITY AND STUDENT NEEDS VERSUS THE CORPORATE AGENDA
– independent credibility of research
– corporate influence over research into issues of environment, toxicology, pharmaceuticals, agricultural genomes, etc. at the U of S.
– Empowering Communities of people with diseases and disabilities (diseases and disabilities, consequence of poisoning, consequence of failure of the University).
– University for the Owners of the University (us): Toxicology, Agriculture, Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacology, Environment
– Making the University experience richer and more rewarding for Students
– stressed out, depressed, on meds
– High drop-out rate
TOPIC: ARCHAIC MEASURES OF PROGRESS; FALSE CRITERIA
– economic/business models used to measure university success/productivity and to set rankings vis-à-vis other universities. Illegitimate.
– Manipulative questions on surveys
– Decimation of culture (Arts and Humanities)
– Propaganda
– The role of the University in society – whose interests are being served? What about departments and programs that have been, or will be, downgraded or discontinued recently?
TOPIC: PURPOSE AND ROLE OF THE UNIVERSITY IN SOCIETY AS SEEN BY THE OWNERS OF THE UNIVERSITY. WHO WOULD BE A GOOD CHOICE FOR “NEXT PRESIDENT”?
Values (corporate versus humanitarian)
– Purpose (well-balanced individuals with critical thinking skills, democractic instincts)
4. Letters-to-editor, 2010, individual protests (Last year StatsCan was collecting information via “surveys” under threat of prosecution, a fine and jail time):
a. Edmonton Journal, March 31, 2010 Susan Crowther, “Edmonton Woman spurns StatsCan Survey” (news article)
b. Saskatoon Star Phoenix, July 31, 2010, Margaret Fehr, “Harassed by StatsCan”.
c. Calgary Herald, August 03, 2010, Janette Doering, “Politely Declined”
5. INPUT TO OUR NETWORK, WHAT OTHER PEOPLE ARE DOING:
2011-07-13 Census: Don’t know what to do about the census? What’s happening to other people? some actual questions and answers might be helpful. And 2011-07-13 continued .
6. Important: THE ORIGINAL MOTHER’S DAY PROCLAMATION, 1870, A CALL FOR WOMEN OF ALL NATIONALITIES TO UNITE TO FORCE DISARMAMENT. IN THE SACRED TRADITION OF MOTHER’S DAY, REFUSE TO BE AN ENABLER OF LOCKHEED MARTIN IN THE CANADIAN CENSUS.
The ORIGINAL Mother’s Day Proclamation (1870): (excerpt from posting 2007-05-14).
“Arise then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
“Say firmly”: ‘We will not have questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience. We women of one country will be too tender to those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own, it says “Disarm! Disarm!” The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.’
“As men have forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace.
“In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality be appointed to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.”
7. UNDERSTAND THE PSYCHOLOGY. THANKS TO MY OLD FRIEND, JOHN KEEN. (scroll down)
8. THE CENSUS “LONG FORM” IS NOW CALLED THE “NATIONAL HOUSEHOLD SURVEY” (scroll down for more details).
I began this email with the idea of using the 140-year-old Mother’s Day Proclamation to strengthen the fight against Lockheed Martin’s growing role in Canada. But then the question: WHY have the 2,000 year-old intentions against destructive forces not succeeded? The “war to end all wars”, the anti-war and protest songs of the 1960’s that brought an end to the Viet Nam War, and so on – – If we haven’t been successful so far, maybe we better ask WHY NOT?
There isn’t ONE reason, of course. What I do know is that, as wonderful as it may be, reciting the Mother’s Day Proclamation isn’t enough. It isn’t going to prevent us from enslaving ourselves.
Excerpt from an email:
I don’t think we see that we are actually WORKING WITH the people who elected Harper.
(A) They elected the dictator who has no regard for the rule-of-law
(B) People on “the left” have been insisting that the Government must have extremely detailed files on individual citizens (police state)
Put A and B together, add in
(C) Armoured vehicles being rolled out in cities across Canada (military state). No protest taking place.
(D) Throw in Lockheed Martin for good measure (surveillance, biometrics, corruption, weapons par excellence)
and we are in deep doo-doo. It is writ in large upon the wall. All the while, “the left” blames the “the right” and vice versa.
We are actually a joint force working together to kill democracy.
Get out and fight the census. Especially with Lockheed Martin (the American military) involved in it. You might be tired of hearing me say it. I just think that “the left” should stop being naïve and ignorant about its role in driving us into a police state. I don’t understand why you think that the lessons of history do not apply to us. We aren’t special.
7. UNDERSTAND THE PSYCHOLOGY. THANKS TO MY OLD FRIEND, JOHN KEEN.
It is absurd that I will write a two-minute explanation of the psychology. I don’t understand it. But I know a couple of things.
John Keen periodically reminds me:
We are vulnerable because we assume or want to believe that “they” are like us. But they are not.
(It reminds me of the cautions in “Women Who Run with the Wolves” and in the children’s book, “Julie and the Wolf Pack” (Julie of the Wolves). )
We like to be “nice”. We are raised to be “nice”. We are conditioned to be “nice”. Most of us are “nice”. It’s easy.
But not everyone is nice. The wolves who survive are the ones who are not naïve. They pursue life, but with a pinch of wariness.
We are both good and evil. Good and evil evolve inside us and outside us.
We know that when you mix the corporate/commercial (money) interests of society together with the guardianship function (government), corruption is the inevitable outcome (author Jane Jacobs and others). It cannot be otherwise.
The corporatocracy that we now have is a step in the evolution of evil in our society. Don’t be naïve. They might be smooth but they are not nice.
“Common sense, Ethics, Imagination, Intuition, Memory, Reason”: Qualities are most effective in a society when they are recognized as of equal, universal value and so are integrated into our normal life. Ralston Saul says (among other interesting things) that we divorce “reason” from everything else. It becomes distorted. We are out of balance.
In the case of the census, a failure to fight hard against it because Lockheed Martin is involved, and because it is more and more the construction of detailed files on individual citizens, is a complete failure to integrate the human faculties of Common sense, Ethics, Imagination, Intuition, Memory, and Reason. I want to shout:
– Common sense tells us not to trust anything that Lockheed Martin says, or the reassurances given to us by Statistics Canada. THINK FOR YOURSELF.
– Ethics tell us that we should not, under any circumstances, be allowing our tax dollars to be funneled to Lockheed Martin Corporation. Look at their public record. They are without conscience. Corporations are without conscience, by law.
– Imagination, let it run just a little wild. Look at what the American military-industrial complex has done in other countries. It’s not even hard to imagine that they will do the same thing here: puppet governments.
– Intuition: I don’t know about you. Intuitively I have no doubt about the need to use every single opportunity to fight against the place that the corporatocracy is taking us. It is a “no holds barred” battle. We do not have the luxery of being timid or fearful or willfully ignorant. And I will be REALLY annoyed if “the right” delivers the dictator while “the left” delivers the largest, most comprehensive data base on individual citizens into the hands of the military-industrial complex.
– Memory: cripes! Have we forgotten the lessons of Nazi Europe? If you need a reminder, click on:
2008-12-06 MIGHT BE THE MOST IMPORTANT PAGE ON THIS BLOG: Edwin Black, author of IBM and the Holocaust, the Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation (2001). Black’s new book The Plan – the kicker is oil security for the U.S.. . Oil security, Homeland Security, Security and Prosperity Partnership with Canada.. security, security, ha!
– And lastly, Reason: Is it that Reason, divorced from (Common sense, Ethics, Imagination, Intuition and Memory), goes to Utilitarian values? Is that it’s downfall? … We MUST HAVE statistics. We NEED statistics. Why? One reason is that it makes the work of the intelligentsia easier. Could that be because they are divorced from their communities? And they have to “publish or perish” according to the faulty criteria used by the Universities. “Reason” leads these “left”, community-minded organizations and individuals to demand that detailed files on individual citizens should be mandatory. It is a short-sighted position. Common sense, Ethics, Imagination, Intuition, and Memory tell me that in the long term, the cost is way too high.
8. THE CENSUS “LONG FORM” IS NOW CALLED THE “NATIONAL HOUSEHOLD SURVEY”.
Changing the name of things can create confusion, shifting the ground beneath our feet.
It breaks connections with images, not always for bad. I remember when canola seed was only known by the name “rape” seed.
The “census long form” is associated in many minds with “Lockheed Martin, American military” (rape).
So far, the National Household Survey (NHS) is “clean” (canola), even though it is PRECISELY THE SAME THING as the census long form with Lockheed Martin involvement (canola = rape), except that there is nothing benign about the real rape (Lockheed Martin)).
Going a step further, if you don’t have a name for something it almost goes away, like the “SPP” (so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership) – – disbanded, but not really. It’s still there.
Remember that Ron Covais, “President of the Americas for Lockheed Martin” is a top-player in the SPP. And the American military-industrial complex wants the information on “all Canadians”. It is well-documented in mainstream newspaper and magazine articles collected by people in our network and posted on www.sandrafinley.ca – – see the category “Lockheed Martin … “ in the right-hand sidebar.
When I yanked the beige census form from my overstuffed mailbox last week, two thoughts crossed my mind: damn you, flyer deliverers who ignore my homemade “no junk mail” sign; and poor Munir Sheikh.
When Lynn Marie Murphy opened her census form, she thought of bombs and fighter planes. She knew something I didn’t know — that the federal government has paid Lockheed Martin about $81 million for “optic recognition” software to process the mailed-in census forms.
That’s right, Lockheed Martin — the world’s largest weapons manufacturer, which is building Canada those F-35 fighter jets at a price tag still unknown.
I did some research and discovered Murphy was right.
Since the late 1990s, the weapons manufacturer has branched out into information technology systems, landing its first contract for the U.S. Census in 2000. It seems an odd fit for a company that builds “tactical battlefield missiles,” spy satellites and warships. But, according to the company’s 2010 annual report, information systems now make up 22 per cent of its $46 billion net sales.
The United Kingdom followed its American ally’s path and contracted Lockheed Martin for its census in 2001, and in 2004, Canada jumped on board, too. We paid Lockheed Martin $61 million for its software to scan — and therefore, automate — our 2006 census forms, and then more recently, another $19.7 million for updates for the 2011 census. (In the government’s defence, Lockheed Martin was the only company to bid on both contracts, according to Statistics Canada’s census manager Marc Hamel.)
That means when you fill out your census form and mail it in, you are unintentionally supporting a war machine.
This disturbs me.
Two clear protest movements have been built over this since 2006.
The first calls for guerrilla tactics — using Roman numerals or filling out the census form with your weaker hand, so Lockheed Martin’s scanning system can’t decipher your answers and Statistics Canada is forced to process your form the old-fashioned way, with human eyes.
“That way you are nullifying the cost savings Lockheed Martin creates,” explains Don Rogers, a former Kingston councillor who created the protest website Count Me Out ( www.countmeout.ca). His initial concerns that Lockheed Martin would have access to Canadian’s private information have been assuaged by Statistics Canada, which insists only its employees run the system. But the underlining moral issue still remains. “Those four Canadian soldiers killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan? They were fired from a Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter.”
The second movement is civil disobedience. While the Conservative government has made the long-form census voluntary, the short form is still mandatory. Right on the envelope it states: “Complete the census — it’s the law.”
Since 2006, at least three Canadians have been tried for refusing to comply. All three were found guilty, but only one was fined in the end, and only $300 at that.
Sandra Finley was the last. She was once the leader of the Green Party of Saskatchewan, and ran — unsuccessfully — as a candidate in Saskatoon last week. Although she was found guilty, the judge let her off the hook — ruling that she needn’t pay a fine, go to jail or have a criminal record. But she is still appealing on moral grounds.
She considers Lockheed Martin’s business not just immoral, but illegal under both Canadian and international humanitarian law. Case in point: Canada signed the international convention on cluster munitions, banning the use of the scattering bombs. Lockheed Martin profits off cluster bombs by manufacturing the steering mechanisms for the bombs.
“Lockheed Martin is the No. 1 beneficiary of dropping bombs on Iraq, an illegal war of aggression made possible through deliberate lies,” she writes on her website. “It’s not right that our tax dollars enrich them.”
The Canadian census contract is pocket change for Lockheed Martin. It’s scraps for the Canadian government, too. There are bigger targets if we want to protest our taxes padding the coffers of the American military machine — like those fighter jets, which the parliamentary budget officer estimates will cost us $29 billion.
But there is something insidious here. You expect the government to buy weapons from a weapons manufacturer. You don’t expect it to shop for office equipment there. It warns of a creeping militarization of our country.
I asked the woman who alerted me to this what she planned to do.
“I really would like to complete the census, as I think the information collected is important, but I’m not willing to participate in it on these terms,” said Murphy, a 41-year-old teacher.
She called Statistics Canada and lodged a complaint. And she’s refusing to complete her form.
“This is a company that is about violence and death and destruction and all kinds of cultural imperialism and I, in good conscience, can’t be part of that.”
I have another week to complete my census. I plan to go the guerrilla route, answering numeric questions with math equations.
What will you do about it?
Catherine Porter’s column appears on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. She can be reached at cporter AT thestar.ca
Thanks to Tony for sending this in. It is sobering.
There is a strong link between the North American Integration Plot and Lockheed Martin. As you read the leaked information, remember that Ron Covais, “President of the Americas for Lockheed Martin” was a spokesperson for the SPP (so called “Security and Prosperity Partnership” between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico). He is quoted in Maclean’s Magazine in the Meet NAFTA 2.0 article, Sept 2006, explaining how the corporations will bypass democratic process to get what they want from “the Ministers” through the SPP.
I did a bit of googling around. There seems to be a black-out on coverage (of anything from wikileaks?).
It is spelt out very clearly by CNN in this youtube NORTH AMERICAN UNION EXPOSED on Lou Dobbs w/ Marcy Kaptur & Bill Tucker.
I wonder why people don’t take to the streets in consternation and protest?
WikiLeaks Exposes North American Integration Plot just confirms the unfolding we have been watching over the last few years:
As early as January of 2005, high-ranking officials were discussing the best way to sell the idea of North American “integration” to the public and policymakers while getting around national constitutions. The prospect of creating a monetary unit to replace national currencies was a hot topic as well.
Some details of the schemes were exposed in a secret 2005 U.S. embassy cable from Ottawa signed by then-Ambassador Paul Cellucci. The document was released by WikiLeaks on April 28. But so far, it has barely attracted any attention in the United States, Canada, or Mexico beyond a few mentions in some liberty-mindedInternetforums.
Numerous topics are discussed in the leaked document — borders, currency, labor, regulation, and more. How to push the integration agenda features particularly prominently.
Under the subject line “Placing a new North American Initiative in its economic policy context,” American diplomatic personnel in Canada said they believed an “incremental” path toward North American integration would probably gain the most support from policymakers. Apparently Canadian economists agreed.
The cable also touts the supposed benefits of merging the three countries and even mentions what elements to “stress” in future “efforts to promote further integration.” It lists what it claims is a summary of the “consensus” among Canadian economists about the issues, too.
Merging the United States, Canada, and Mexico
Integration is a little-used term employed mainly by policy wonks. But while it may sound relatively harmless, it generally describes a very serious phenomenon when used in a geopolitical context — the gradual merging of separate countries under a regional authority.
Similar processes are already well underway in Europe, Africa, and South America. And according to critics, the results — essentially abolishing national sovereignty in favor of supranational, unaccountable governance — have been an unmitigated disaster. But the U.S. government doesn’t think so.
In North America, integration has been proceeding rapidly for years. The New American magazine was among the first to report on the efforts to erect what critics have called a “North American Union,” encompassing Canada, the United States, and Mexico. But more recently, the topic has received more attention:
After the creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) — similar in many ways to the European Common Market that preceded the political union in Europe — the integration scheme has only accelerated. And the bipartisan efforts have been going on for years.
Back in 2005, the cable released recently by WikiLeaks explained how it would be done. And looking back, the document was right on the mark.
Moving Forward
The best way forward, according to the cable, is via gradual steps. “An incremental and pragmatic package of tasks for a new North American Initiative (NAI) will likely gain the most support among Canadian policymakers,” the cable states in its summary.
“Our research leads us to conclude that such a package should tackle both ‘security’ and ‘prosperity’ goals,” the document claims, using the two key words that have been emphasized at every step along the way. “This fits the recommendations of Canadian economists who have assessed the options for continental integration.”
Toward the end, the cable offers more advice on how to advance the integration agenda by tailoring the narrative. “When advocating [the North American Initiative to integrate the three countries], it would be better to highlight specific gains to individual firms, industries or travelers, and especially consumers,” the cable states, noting that it’s harder to “estimate the benefits” on a national or continental scale.
Unsubstantiated Claims
In a section headlined “North American Integration: What We Know,” the cable offers nothing but praise for the merging of the continent’s once-sovereign nations that had already been achieved.
“Past integration (not just NAFTA but also many bilateral and unilateral steps) has increased trade, economic growth, and productivity,” it claims, despite the fact that countless economists disagree. Of course, true free-trade advocates also correctly point out that the thousands of pages of regulations making up the agreements should hardly be considered examples of genuine free trade.
So-called “security,” the other big integration selling point, is featured prominently in the document as well. “A stronger continental ‘security perimeter’ can strengthen economic performance,“ the cable states. “It could also facilitate future steps toward trilateral economic integration, such as a common external tariff or a customs union.”
And law enforcement “cooperation” is good too, the embassy and the U.S. ambassador claim matter-of-factly.
“Cooperative measures on the ‘security’ side, a critical focus of current bilateral efforts, can deliver substantial, early, and widespread economic benefits,” the cable alleges, offering no evidence to substantiate the assertions.
“Security and law enforcement within North America have evolved rapidly since 9/11,” it continues. “Collaboration to improve these processes could yield efficiency improvements which would automatically be spread widely across the economy, leading to general gains in trade, productivity, and incomes.”
The Alleged “Consensus”
According to the document, “many” economists agree with the scheme. The cable says they support the principle of “more ambitious integration goals” such as a customs union, a single market, and even a continental currency to replace the dollar. On top of that, they supposedly believe such a union should involve all three major North American countries — the United States, Mexico, and Canada.
The cable cautions, however, that “most” of the economists believe the gradual approach is “most appropriate” — for now, at least. And all of them apparently agree that such an approach “helps pave the way to these goals if and when North Americans choose to pursue them.”
The embassy cable also included a summary of what it calls the “professional consensus” among Canadian economists on various issues related to integration.
“At this time, an ‘incremental’ approach to integration is probably better than a ‘big deal’ approach,” the document states under the “process” subheading, supposedly referring to the economists’ opinions. “However, governments should focus on choosing their objectives, and not on choosing a process.”
Next in the cable is the question of “border vs. perimeter,” as the formerly secret document puts it. “Even with zero tariffs, our land borders have strong commercial effects,” the embassy said. However, “some” of the effects — such as law enforcement and “data gathering” — are described as “positive.”
“Canada and the United States already share a security perimeter to some degree; it is just a question of how strong we want to make it,” the 2005 document notes. Apparently Canadians’ main reason for seeking a perimeter approach to security and borders, as opposed to a border between the two nations, is to avoid the “risk” that “discretionary” U.S. decisions to stop terror or disease might impede commerce. And evidently, the nations’ rulers did decide to make the perimeter stronger.
As The New American reported in February, U.S. President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper met in Washington, D.C., to hammer out a deal on solidifying the common “perimeter” around the two countries. Also part of the agreement, which conspicuously bypassed both countries’ legislatures, was a diminished role for the nations’ shared border. The development of a biometric system to track North Americans was agreed to as well, as were numerous other controversial measures.
In terms of labor markets, the so-called “consensus” among the unidentified Canadian economists is also — surprise! — the pursuit of even more integration. “Many Canadian economists point to labor markets — both within and among countries — as the factor market [sic] where more liberalization would deliver the greatest economic benefits for all three countries,” the document states.
Next, the cable release by WikiLeaks highlights another startling proposition about how to achieve an end-run around the Canadian Constitution. “Inter-provincial differences [in regulation] are important here, since Canada’s federal government does not have the benefit of a U.S.-style ‘interstate commerce’ clause,” the document states. “While much of the problem is domestic in nature, an international initiative could help to catalyze change.”
Yes, the U.S. embassy referred to the wildly abused and misapplied “commerce clause” as a “benefit” that Canada lacks. And it actually suggested, hiding behind unnamed “economists,” that the constitutional “problem” could be minimized by foisting an “international initiative” on the Canadian people.
The cable also claims the “economists” support a customs union, a feature developed in the European Union once the integration process was well established. “A common external tariff, or a customs union which eliminated NAFTA’s rules of origin (ROO), is economically desirable,” it states.
And finally, the document summarizes the “consensus” on the subject of a currency union. It said the supposed economists were “split” on the issues of returning to fixed exchange rates or even abolishing Canada’s fiat dollar and replacing it with American Federal Reserve fiat currency.
The cable gives the final word on the topic of a currency union to the Canadian central bank boss. He is quoted as saying that “monetary union is an issue that should be considered once we have made more progress towards establishing a single market.”
Secrets, Backers
The scheme to merge North America into a political unit with its own legislature and currency is largely the brainchild of the world government-promoting Council on Foreign Relations. But though documents leaked earlier this year revealed that governments were trying to keep the process under wraps, integration is now proceeding out in the open for the most part.
Where the campaign will eventually end remains to be seen. But if North American Union advocates get their way, the U.S. Constitution and its Mexican and Canadian counterparts could soon be rendered irrelevant. After that, plugging the regional units into a global system would be a relatively simple matter, critics and supporters both agree.
This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.
281556Z Jan 05
UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 OTTAWA 000268
SIPDIS
SENSITIVE
STATE FOR WHA/CAN – BREESE AND HOLST
WHITE HOUSE/NSC – SHIRZAD
STATE PASS USTR FOR CHANDLER
USDOC FOR 4320/OFFICE OF NAFTA/GWORD/TFOX;
3134/OIO/WESTERN HEMISPHERE
TREASURY FOR IMI
GENEVA FOR USTR
E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: ETRD EINV CA
SUBJECT: PLACING A NEW NORTH AMERICAN INITIATIVE IN ITS ECONOMIC POLICY CONTEXT
¶1. THIS MESSAGE IS SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION OUTSIDE USG CHANNELS.
¶2. (SBU) An incremental and pragmatic package of tasks for a new North American Initiative (NAI) will likely gain the most support among Canadian policymakers. Our research leads us to conclude that such a package should tackle both “security” and “prosperity” goals. This fits the recommendations of Canadian economists who have assessed the options for continental integration. While in principle many of them support more ambitious integration goals, like a customs union/single market and/or single currency, most believe the incremental approach is most appropriate at this time, and all agree that it helps pave the way to these goals if and when North Americans choose to pursue them.
¶3. (SBU) The economic payoff of the prospective North American initiative – in terms of higher incomes and greater competitiveness – is available, but its size and timing are unpredictable, so it should not be oversold. Still, a respectable economic case has been made for such an initiative, and this message spells it out. We believe that, given growing Canadian concern about “border risk” and its effects on investment, a focus on the “security” side could also produce the most substantial economic/trade benefits.
END SUMMARY/INTRODUCTION
CANADIAN ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE
—————————–
¶4. (SBU) Canadian economists in business, academia and government have given extensive thought to the possible options for further North American integration. Nearly all of this work assumes that each of the three countries is pursuing standard economic policy goals – growth, productivity and competitiveness (rather than more specific concerns raised by Mexican analysts such as migration management, regional development, or environmental protection). Since 9/11, Canadian economists working in this area have generally endorsed a comprehensive initiative with the United States on security, trade, and immigration. Following is our summary of the professional consensus:
PROCESS: At this time, an “incremental” approach to integration is probably better than a “big deal” approach. However, governments should focus on choosing their objectives, and not on choosing a process.
BORDER VS. PERIMETER: Even with zero tariffs, our land borders have strong commercial effects. Some of these effects are positive (such as law enforcement and data gathering), so our governments may always want to keep some kind of land border in place. Canada and the United States already share a security perimeter to some degree; it is just a question of how strong we want to make it.
BORDER RISK: The risk that business will be obstructed at the border by discretionary U.S. actions, such as measures to defend against terrorism or infectious disease, in addition to growing congestion, have become major risks to the economy, inhibiting investment in Canada. For small businesses, the complexities of navigating the border are apparently even more intimidating than the actual costs. Reducing this risk is Canada’s top motive for pursuing further integration.
LABOR MARKETS: Many Canadian economists point to labor markets – both within and among countries – as the factor market where more liberalization would deliver the greatest economic benefits for all three countries. They advocate freeing up professional licensing laws, and developing a quick, simple, low-cost work permit system, at least for U.S. and Canadian citizens.
REGULATION: Canadian economists agree that Canadian regulations (if not their standards, then their complexity) are needlessly restricting foreign investment and impeding food, communications and other industries. (Inter-provincial differences are important here, since Canada’s federal government does not have the benefit of a U.S.-style “interstate commerce” clause). While much of the problem is domestic in nature, an international initiative could help to catalyze change.
CUSTOMS UNION: A common external tariff, or a customs union which eliminated NAFTA’s rules of origin (ROO), is economically desirable. NAFTA’s ROO are so restrictive that importers often prefer to pay the tariff rather than try to prove North American origin. However, economists differ on the size of the benefits available and on whether these would justify the effort of negotiation. One study estimated that a full customs union which eliminated ROO would only raise national income by about one percent.
CURRENCY UNION: Canadian economists are split on whether a return to a fixed exchange rate, or adopting the U.S. dollar, would benefit Canada in current circumstances. (Canada last tied its dollar to the U.S. dollar from 1962 to 1970). The central bank governor has taken the position that “monetary union is an issue that should be considered once we have made more progress towards establishing a single market.”
NORTH AMERICAN INTEGRATION: WHAT WE KNOW
—————————————–
¶5. (SBU) Past integration (not just NAFTA but also many bilateral and unilateral steps) has increased trade, economic growth, and productivity. Studies suggest that border efficiency and transportation improvements (such as the lower cost and increased use of air freight) have been a huge part of this picture. Indeed, they may have been more important to our growing prosperity over the past decade than NAFTA’s tariff reductions. Freight and passenger aviation are critically important to our continent’s competitiveness, and businesses are very sensitive to the timing, security, and reliability of deliveries – hence the “border risk” which so concerns Canadian policymakers.
¶6. (SBU) A stronger continental “security perimeter” can strengthen economic performance, mainly by improving efficiency at land borders and airports. It could also facilitate future steps toward trilateral economic integration, such as a common external tariff or a customs union, if and when our three countries chose to pursue them. Paradoxically, the security and law enforcement aspects of the envisioned initiative could hold as much – or more – potential for broad economic benefits than the economic dimension.
WHERE’S THE UPSIDE?
——————-
¶7. (SBU) Some international economic initiatives (such as FTAs) produce across-the-board measures that generate broad benefits for a country’s industries and consumers on a known time-line. This was true of NAFTA but it is less likely to be true of the economic aspects of the NAI. Non-tariff barriers such as standards and regulations generally must be tackled one- by-one. This is a piecemeal process and the ratio of payoff to effort is likely to be lower than with across-the-board measures. Governments naturally focus on resolving the problems which their firms or citizens bring to their attention. While this approach has merits, it tends to deliver the payoffs toward particular interests. If there are hidden costs, there might be little impact on national performance. As we move toward a list of barriers to tackle, it will remain important to balance those interests. For example, some Canadian economists have suggested that NAFTA fell short of expectations with respect to increasing consumer choice in Canada; that may be a theme we should stress as efforts to promote further integration take shape.
¶8. (SBU) In contrast, cooperative measures on the “security” side, a critical focus of current bilateral efforts, can deliver substantial, early, and widespread economic benefits. Security and law enforcement within North America have evolved rapidly since 9/11, leading to many less-than-perfect processes for handling legitimate international traffic. Collaboration to improve these processes could yield efficiency improvements which would automatically be spread widely across the economy, leading to general gains in trade, productivity, and incomes.
A NOTE OF CAUTION
—————–
¶9. (SBU) There is little basis on which to estimate the size of the “upside” gains from an integration initiative concentrating on non-tariff barriers of the kind contained in NAI. For this reason, we cannot make claims about how large the benefits might be on a national or continental scale. When advocating NAI, it would be better to highlight specific gains to individual firms, industries or travelers, and especially consumers.
Lockheed Martin: World’s Largest Weapons Manufacturer
Included below is information on Lockheed’s Contribution to:
“Shock and Awe” campaign
Arms exports and human rights violations
Land mines and depleted uranium weapons
Nuclear and ballistic missile defense contracts
Violation of corporate ethics
Health and environmental concerns
Influence peddling: abuse of political connections
I. Lockheed’s contribution to “Shock and Awe”
The current US war against Iraq is based on a campaign of Shock and Awe.
Lockheed Martin Corporation manufactures several of the tactical strike weapons including air to surface and cruise missiles (AGM-142 and HAVE LITE air to ground missiles, AUP and BLU-109 conventional “bunker buster” missiles and the JASSM long range conventional air to ground missiles) used in this Shock and Awe campaign.
“Shock and Awe” warfare explicitly targets civilian infrastructure such as water supplies, food processing, electricity power grids and sanitation. It emphasizes bombing in such a way as to “create fear” and cause severe, widespread “psychological and emotional effects.”i This is in explicit violation of a 1977 protocol of the Geneva Convention, Article 54 “Protection of objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population”. For actual text go to: http://www.deoxy.org/wc/wc-proto.htm.
The “smart” weapons manufactured by Lockheed Martin have been used in the US bombing within Baghdad and throughout Iraq resulting in over 1000 confirmed civilian casualties (for the most recent numbers go to http://www.iraqbodycount.net/) so far ii. Some examples include:
March 2nd at approximately 9:45 AM the UK and US use tactical air strike capabilities to strike target in Basra killing six civilians.iii
March 22nd at approximately 11:30 AM Basra is bombarded using missiles and cluster munitions killing up to 77 civilians and injuring hundreds.iv
March 22nd missiles strikes kill approximately 100 civilians in the Vicinityof Khormal, Kurdistanv
March 23rd an air to surface missile strikes a Syrian passenger bus carrying Syrian civilians out of Iraq killing at least 5 people and injuring many more.vi
March 26th cruise missiles hit Al-Shaab neighborhood in Baghdad killing approximately 15 civilians and injuring hundreds.
March 29th Explosion at a Baghdad market that killed at least 62 civiliansvii
April 1st At least 11 civilians, most of them children, were killed when U.S. bombs hit a residential district in the town of Hilla in central Iraqviii
These numbers do not reflect the overall number of casualties in Iraq. They do not show the number of Iraqi soldiers or government personal that have been killed. These figures also ignore deaths caused by factors such as bombed water treatment plants, destruction of medical facilities and supplies, toxic residues from weaponry (such as Depleted Uranium), and
malnourishment resulting from social disruption. These numbers also do not show the exact numbers of Iraqi people permanently injured from US / UK attacks. In supplying missiles for the “shock and awe” tactic that directly affects non-combatant populations and severely damages key civilian infrastructure, Lockheed Martin missiles has contributed to the violation of
international humanitarian law.
II. Arms exports and Human Rights Violations
Since 1992, the United States has exported more than $142 billion dollars worth of weaponry to states around the world.ix The U.S. dominates this international arms market, supplying just under half of all arms exports in 2001, roughly two and a half times more than the second and third largest suppliers.x U.S. weapons sales help outfit non-democratic regimes, soldiers who commit gross human rights abuses against their citizens and citizens of other countries, and forces in unstable regions on the verge of, in the middle of, or recovering from conflict. The United States supplied arms or military technology to more than 92% of the conflicts under way in 1999.xi
In addition to paying billions of dollars every year to support weapons exports, Americans may also feel the impact of increasing instability overseas. The United States military has had to face troops previously trained by its own military or supplied with U.S. weaponry in Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan and now in Iraq.
Lockheed Martin with a share of 24% of US arms exports xii is the world’s largest arms exporting company. Former company CEO Norman Augustine was a major lobbyist on behalf of the more than $7 billion per year in grants and subsidized loans that the U.S. government provides to U.S. arms exporters each year to help them hawk their products around the world.
Both Augustine and company Vice President Bruce Jackson have also been major supporters of the expansion of NATO, in hopes of selling combat aircraft and other weapons systems to new NATO members states.
Lockheed Martin’s most lucrative export item is the F-16 combat aircraft. The company has sold over 3,000 F-16s to overseas customers since the mid-1970s, and the client list for the plane includes Israel, Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, Egypt, and Venezuela. In late 2001, the company won what has been touted as “the largest defense
contract in history,” a $19 billion development contract for the $200 billion Joint Strike Fighter program. Potential customers are Germany, Turkey and Israel in addition to the US and UK Armed forces.
A report by Human Rights Watch on the decade-long conflict in Kurdistan, Turkey (in which about 2,200 Kurdish villages have been destroyed, and an estimated 19,000 people, many of them civilians, have died) said “The US is deeply implicated in the Turkish government’s counterinsurgency policy and practices through its provision of arms and political support, and is aware of the abuses being committed, but has chosen to downplay Turkish violations for strategic reasons.” Among the weapons sold to Turkey are those produced by Lockheed Martin including the F-16 fighter jet.
Israel has violated International Humanitarian Law by using Lockheed Martin’s ‘Hellfire’ missiles to attack civilian facilities in Lebanon and kill hundreds of Lebanese civilians. It has used helicopters manufactured by Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin, General Electric and Longbow LLC to carry out more than 50 extra-judicial executions of Palestinians.xiii
III. Landmines, Depleted Uranium Weapons
Some of most blatant violation of Human Rights that Lockheed Martin is actively participating in is the production of anti-personnel landmines and depleted Uranium weapons.
Anti-personnel mines are inherently indiscriminate and therefore are a violation of international human rights law. Global landmine contamination has been recognized by the international community as a pressing humanitarian crisis. In some sixty-eight nations, fields, deserts, forests, roads and waterways are littered with an estimated 110 million mines.
Antipersonnel mines claim a victim every twenty minutes–more than 26,000 each year. Almost all of the killed and maimed are civilians, often women and children, nearly always after the cessation of active hostilities. Mines have an average life span of fifty to one hundred years. Many are nearly undetectable because of their low metallic content. Some of the most popular varieties of antipersonnel mines cost as little as $3. Companies around the world have declared that they will not longer be involved in the production of anti-personal land mines. Lockheed Martin and many other companies, have refused to stop the production of anti-personnel mines.
Lockheed Martin produces AUP -3(M) Depleted Uranium missiles. The US is using depleted Uranium shells in the war against Iraq and deliberately flouting a United Nations resolution which classifies the munitions as illegal weapons of mass destruction alongside nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, napalm, and cluster bombs. The 2002 UN sub commission report ruled that the use of Depleted Uranium weapons breaches humanitarian and human rights laws including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the charter of the United Nations, the Genocide Convention, the Convention against Torture, the four Geneva conventions of 1949, the Conventional Weapons Convention of 1980 and the Hague conventions. Depleted Uranium contaminates land, causes respiratory ailments, cancers and other diseases among the soldiers using the weapons, the armies they target and civilians, leading to birth defects in children. It is cited as the most likely cause of the six to ten-fold increase in cancer in Iraq after the Gulf war of 1991.xiv
IV. Nuclear Weapons and Ballistic Missile Defense Contracts
Lockheed Martin is a major developer of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile defense.
The company received over $2 billion for nuclear weapons design work from the Department of Energy. Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor for the Trident II Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM), a multiple-warhead, long-range missile which is produced for deployment on the Trident submarine. The Trident II is the only long-range U.S. nuclear missile currently in production. The company is also involved in the design and production of nuclear warheads through its role as the prime contractor for Sandia National Laboratories, a nuclear weapons engineering and design lab funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. The company also has a major subcontract at the Nevada Test Site to carry out “subcritical testing” of new nuclear weapons designs, a form of testing that attempts to exploit possible loopholes in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (which the United States has failed to ratify.)
Even as it profits from working on the next generation of nuclear weapons, Lockheed Martin is also heavily invested in ballistic missile defense. The company is the lead contractor for the Theater High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) program, a system designed to intercept medium-to-long-range ballistic missiles. Even though the THAAD system has failed in 6 out of 8 tests to date, last year the company received a contract extension worth up to $4 billion for continuing work on the system. Lockheed Martin is also designing and building the payload launch vehicle which is slated to be used to launch the interceptor and “kill vehicle” for the land-based version of National Missile Defense; serving as prime contractor for the Space-Based Infrared System-High (SBIRS-High), a space-based early warning system for missile defense which has been plagued by cost overruns and technical problems; serving as a major contractor for the Space-Based Laser (SBL) program, a favorite of Star Wars boosters which is currently scheduled for its first test in 2012, but may be accelerated under the Bush/Rumsfeld missile defense plan; and playing a central role in “Team ABL”, a partnership which involves Boeing, TRW, and Lockheed Martin in the design and production of the Airborne Laser (ABL), which is meant to place lasers on 747 aircraft for use in attacking medium-range ballistic missiles in their boost or ascent phases.
According to World Court Opinion (July 8, 1996) “the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict.” Ballistic Missile Defense is contrary to the requirements of the U.S.-Russia Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty of 1972 which is called “the cornerstone of the contemporary process of nuclear deterrence and non proliferation” and Article VI of the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty. It encourages other countries to build more nuclear weapons and delivery systems to overwhelm any missile defense system.xv By developing nuclear weapons and Ballistic Missile Defence systems, Lockheed Martin Missiles is guilty of violating international law.
V. Lockheed Martin’s systematic violation of corporate ethics xvi
Lockheed Martin has been convicted in numerous cases of violating corporate ethical principles
Contract violations – In May 2000, a $4.25 million settlement agreement was reached between the Government and Lockheed Martin Naval Electronics and Surveillance Systems. Lockheed Foreign Military Sales (FMS) funds were improperly used while performing a FMS contract with Egypt to upgrade four sonar systems used by the Egyptian military.
Foreign Corrupt Practices – Lockheed was convicted of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) during the sale of three cargo planes to Egypt in 1993 and was fined a total of $24.8 million. In 2000, Lockheed received the largest fine in the history of the U.S. Arms Export Control Act for illegal technology transfers to China that may have been utilized to improve Beijing’s ballistic missiles.
Conspiracy and Retaliation – In 1996, Lockheed was sued by a former employee who alleged a conspiracy to prevent him from testifying during the 1993 FCPA trial mentioned above and then retaliated against him by firing him after he testified.
Bribery – According to Tim Weiner, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist with the New York Times, “Lockheed has a criminal history that includes paying millions of dollars in bribes.” From the late 1970s when Lockheed admitted to paying $22 million in bribes to win contracts in Europe and Japan in the infamous ‘Lockheed scandal’, Lockheed has a history of convictions for bribing government officials including those of Japan, Holland, Italy, Korea, Taiwan and Egypt. It is the second largest repeat corporate offender in the US with 63 violations, having paid total fines and settlements of over $230 million since 1990xvii. Lockheed is currently barred from bidding on contracts in New York City where officials of Mayor Dinkins were caught showing it favoritism during a contracting bid.
Racism – In 2000, workers at Lockheed’s plant in Marietta, Georgia, filed a lawsuit charging Lockheed with racial and other forms of discrimination. The workers claimed that corporate officials systematically passed over the group of mostly black workers for promotions, discriminated in pay, and fostered a hostile work environment. In one case a worker whose supervisor was a member of the Ku Klux Klan with his robes openly displayed in the office, was forced to get a pass to go to the restroom and had to be escorted there. In another case a worker found a hangman’s noose in his workplace. The parties arrived at a partial settlement.
Payoffs for Layoffs – When Lockheed merged with Martin Marietta in 1995 they used U.S. taxpayer money to fund the $1 billion cost of plant shutdowns and employee relocations and then fired 19,000 taxpaying workers. During the same merger, the two companies rewarded their top officials with $31 million in federal money, one-third of the total bonus package they gave themselves.
VI. Health and Environmental Concerns
Lockheed Martin has systematically polluted the environment surrounding its weapons manufacturing plants.
In November 2002, the Los Angeles Times reported that a former Lockheed plant is the likely cause of the contamination of water wells with per chlorate (a toxic component of rocket fuel) in San Bernardino County. In 2001, the EPA began national testing of water supplies for per chlorate in preparation for setting national regulations on the chemical. If Lockheed Martin can persuade the state and EPA not to set strict standards for per chlorate allowed in drinking water, the company will save millions of dollars in cleanup costs. The Times reported that on behalf of Lockheed Martin, Loma Linda University is conducting the first large-scale tests of per chlorate on human subjects (up to 83 time the current ‘safe’ level) by paying 100 people $1000 each to eat a six-month daily dose — a step medical researchers and environmentalists called morally unethical and scientifically invalid.
Lockheed has caused significant toxic contamination in Silicon Valley and elsewhere and has been sued by workers for exposing them to toxics in irresponsible ways. In Palo Alto, Lockheed has a toxic leach site. In 1986 the state Health Services Department sued Lockheed for illegal storage and treatment of hazardous wastes (including toxic leaks and removal of hazardous waste pipelines) at its Sunnyvale plant. Lockheed agreed to pay $1.3 million. In 1988 1,500 gallons of water containing chromium flowed into a storm drain at the plant. In the same year a Lockheed employee sued saying her stillborn baby’s defects were caused by exposure to toxic chemicals during pregnancy while working at the Sunnyvale plant.xviii As of 1989 toxic plumes were identified in both shallow and deep groundwater under the Lockheed Sunnyvale site and were spreading. (They are now believed to be contained but not eliminated.) In 1991 when selling its surplus land in Burbank, Lockheed spent an estimated $200 million to cleanse contaminated soil but recovered most of the cost from the Department of Defense at taxpayer expense xix
Press reports in l988 note that the secrecy imposed by Silicon Valley military contractors hinders toxic inspectors, requiring inspectors to give weeks or even months notice before they are given access. Firefighters have been impeded in their work by company security guards and employees’ doctors are often not told about their patients’ toxic exposures. In Burbank, California, Lockheed workers sued in l988 over toxic exposure in the plant believed to have built the Stealth fighter airplane. Over 160 workers, nearly all working in the same area of the plant became ill. Citing national security, Lockheed refused to allow inspectors without security clearances full access to the plant and workers said that they were not allowed to explain to their own doctors what they thought might be causing them to become ill.
In Paducah, Kentucky workers at the enriched uranium plant operated by Lockheed Martin from l984 until the spring of 2000 suffered extreme exposure to uranium and plutonium. Workers there worked in a fog of uranium and plutonium contaminated dust that coated the floor, their skin and even their teeth. They were told that uranium was non-hazardous and were not told that some of the material they handled was contaminated with highly dangerous plutonium. Despite the extreme negligence, the plant’s status as a nuclear production plant and as a Superfund site limits lawsuits. The National Resources Defense Council has, nonetheless, brought suit on behalf of the U.S. government. They argue that Lockheed obtained money from the government fraudulently since it disposed of radioactive waste illegally and violated federal regulations concerning worker health and safety.xx
Martin Marietta was also an illegal polluter prior to its merger with Lockheed. William Sanjour, chief of he Hazardous Waste Technology and Assessment Branch from l974 to l978, writes that DOE contractor Martin Marietta knowingly shipped radioactive waste to incinerators not permitted to accept radioactive waste, while taking pains to eradicate that fact from the shipping papers. At present, in Russia, Lockheed Martin is disposing of its used rocket engines by a process so toxic it is outlawed in the US.
VII. Influence Peddling: Lockheed Martin’s Political Connections
Lockheed Martin is the “leader of the PACs” * Political Action Committees * among U.S. weapons manufacturing firms. According to data assembled by the Center for Responsive Politics, the company made over $10.6 million in campaign contributions to candidates and party committees from 1990 to 2000, including $3.4 million in donations in the run-up to the year 2000 elections. The company’s contributions are targeted towards the politicians that are in the position to do it the most good. For example, Lockheed Martin served as one of a select group of corporate sponsors that pitched in $60,000 each to support the “Lott Hop,” a dance party fundraiser that was held in honor of then Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott during the Republican convention in Philadelphia in the summer of 2000. The company has also pledged a $1 million contribution in support of the “Trent Lott Leadership Institute” at the University of Mississippi. Lockheed Martin was the top corporate contributor to members of the House Armed Services Committee during 1999/2000, and among the top ten contributors to the powerful House Appropriations Committee. The company has strong ties to both major parties. Lockheed Martin Vice-President Bruce Jackson was a top fundraiser for the Dole for President campaign in 1996, and he was the chief drafter of the foreign policy platform of the Republican party for the year 2000 elections. Meanwhile, former Lockheed Martin board member and major shareholder Bernard Schwartz, the CEO of Loral Space, was a top soft money donor to the Democratic Party during the 1996 and 2000 presidential elections, contributing $601,000 and $1.1 million to Democratic committees during those election cycles, respectively.
—————————————————————————-
i “Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance” by Harlan K. Ullman, James P. Wade et. al. NDU Press
ii Iraq Body Count Project
iii Reuters 03 Mar
iv Reuters 23 Mar
v ABC[AU] 22 Mar
vi Reuters 24 Mar
vii The Independent,UK 02 April
viii Reuters 01 April
ix Foreign Military Sales (FMS) deliveries and Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) deliveries, FY1990-FY2000
x “Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1993-2000.” CRS Report for Congress, R.F. Grimmet.
xi World Policy Institute.
xii SIPRI arms industry database, 1999.
xiii Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment(LAW)
xiv The Sunday Herald, UK
xv “A Maginot line in the sky – International perspectives on Ballistic Missile Defense” edited by D. Krieger & C. Ong
xvi ‘The Real Rogues’, K. Martin et. al., Z magazine, 2000
xvii Project on Government Oversight fact sheet
xviii San Jose Mercury News
xix Los Angeles Times, 1992
xx Amicus Journal of the NRDC, Winter, 2000
Vietnam Veterans of America tell us that landmines kill or maim 26,000 people, mostly civilians, a year. This maddening slaughter motivated President Bill Clinton to announce on May 16, 1996: “Today I am launching an international effort to ban antipersonnel landmines…. The United States will lead a global effort to eliminate these terrible weapons and to stop the enormous loss of human life.”
Unfortunately, despite the rhetoric, the U.S. refuses to ban or even suspend production of anti-personnel mines. So it is important to keep the pressure on Clinton to support the Canadian-led diplomatic initiative for a comprehensive treaty, to be signed in Ottawa December 3-4, banning production, stockpiling, export and use of antipersonnel mines.
Historically, the U.S. has been one of the world’s biggest producers and exporters of antipersonnel landmines. Until the mid 1970s, these were “dumb” mines, which can remain active for decades. Today, the Pentagon promotes the use of “smart” mines, those which carry a self-destruct mechanism. Four million dumb mines remain in the Pentagon stockpile of 15 million antipersonnel weapons. The stockpile includes one million Claymore mines, which the Pentagon prefers to call command-detonated munitions, rather than landmines. From 1969 to 1992, the U.S. exported 4.4 million mines to some 32 countries, including Afghanistan, Angola, Chile and El Salvador.
Clinton, like other fawning presidents, called to congratulate teams for winning the World Series, the National Basketball Association title and the Super Bowl. However, when Jody Williams, Coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmine (ISBLM], won a Nobel Peace Prize, she did not hear from the White House.
The United States Campaign to Ban Landmines, a coalition of more than 180 nongovernmental organizations across the country, is part of the ICBLM. Human Rights Watch, which serves as chair of USCBL’s Steering Committee, produced an invaluable resource [April 1997]: Exposing the Source U.S. Companies and the Production of Antipersonnel Mines. Exposing the Source indicates there are 47 U.S. companies which have been involved in the manufacture of mines, two of them from Maryland-Lockheed Martin, 6801 Rockledge Drive, Bethesda, MD 20817 (301-897-6561 or FAX: 301-8976252) and AAI Corp., P.O. Box 126, Hunt Valley, MD 21030-0126 (410-628-8710 or FAX: 410-683-6498). The report states that there is no production of antipersonnel mines currently underway.
Human Rights Watch wrote letters to the 47 companies notifying them they would be named in a report and would be a target of a stigmatization campaign carried out by USCBL. Surprisingly, 17, Motorola being the first, responded by agreeing to renounce future involvement in antipersonnel mine production. But the “Dirty Thirty” refused.
Lockheed Martin tried to have its name removed from the landmine list, claiming it has not produced landmines since the Vietnam era. Actually, though, Lockheed Martin New Jersey received landmine production contracts worth $52 million from 1985-90, and Lockheed Martin California obtained a landmine contract worth $850,000 in 1990.
AAI also expressed concern and requested that its name be removed from the Human Rights list as it would no longer accept landmine contracts. After receiving a congratulatory letter, though, AAI wrote back: “We do not wish to be so named.” It is assumed AAI would consider future contracts.
Alliant Techsystems in Hopkins, Minnesota was the major landmine-producing corporation, receiving $336 million in Pentagon contracts from 1985-95; and its Wisconsin subsidiary, Accudyne Corp., was awarded similar contracts worth $150 million in 1985-95.
Alliant CEO Richard Schwartz responded to Human Rights Watch’s letter: “The International Campaign to Ban Landmines has served an invaluable role in shedding light on a terrible problem that must be addressed.” But he refused to accept personal responsibility: “It is irresponsible to imply in any way that companies such as Alliant Techsystems have contributed to the world’s landmine problems. To do so wrongly maligns responsible U.S. citizens, and diverts resources that could be applied toward stigmatizing the governments that violate international law.”
Activists in Minnesota took umbrage with Alliant and blockaded the entrance to the company in April to protest its stance on landmines. In court, a Minnesota jury deadlocked for two days in late September trying to decide the fate of nine of the protesters. An arrangement was reached between the prosecution and the defense to allow the nine defendants to represent the other 70 also arrested at the demonstration. After an offer from the prosecution to accept wholesale acquittal if the jury acquitted any one of the defendants, the jury expeditiously returned a verdict of eight convictions and one acquittal. So the judge acquitted all Alliant protesters.
An estimated 110 million landmines are littered about in sixty-eight countries, Angola suffering from about 10 million of these weapons. Human Rights Watch believes that any use of antipersonnel mines is a violation of existing international humanitarian law. The weapon is inherently indiscriminate, and its use clearly fails to meet the proportionality test of humanitarian law: the short-term military benefits are far outweighed by the long-term human and socio-economic costs.
Supporters of a landmine ban might consider contacting the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, 2001 S. St., NW, Suite 740, Washington, D.C. 20009 1PH: 202-483-9222 or FAX: 202483-9312]) or Human Rights Watch, 1522 K Street, NW, #910, Washington, D.C. 20005-1202 (202-371-6592 or E.Mail: hrwdc AT hrw.org.) Stay tuned for further actions.
A number of postings deal with the question of Lockheed Martin’s products and services. The early ones are related to weapons, the later ones related to surveillance. This is an early capture of information, in case of need.
The Govt of Canada out-s0urces work to Lockheed Martin. LM is a manufacturer of land mines and cluster munitions. Both products are in contravention of Canadian and International Law.
The Government must impose sanctions, at the very least, on entities that are in contravention of the Law. In a democracy people who break the law are to be prosecuted. The harms done through the illegal activity of Lockheed Martin are far greater than any committed by any inmate in Canada.
It is not as easy to pin down Lockheed Martin on the land mines as it is to nail them down on the cluster munitions. The cluster munitions treaty is sufficiently recent that the pages from the LM website were captured before they took them down (remove the evidence).
I will look in Bill Hartung’s book.
This report explains the land mines situation and has more info related to LM and cluster munitions. I have used the work of these people in the past.
/Sandra
First, DEFINITION: AP Mines
Anti-personnel mines are a form of land mine designed for use against humans, as opposed to anti-tank mines … Anti-personnel mines may be classified into blast mines or fragmentation mines ….
The mines are often designed to injure, not kill, victims in order to increase the logistical (mostly medical) support required by enemy forces that encounter them. Some types of anti-personnel mines can also damage the tracks on armoured vehicles or the tires of wheeled vehicles. …
The most important producers and exporters of landmines over the last 25 years have been Italy, the former Soviet Union and the United States. In the same period, 200 million AP mines have been produced in 50 countries. 55
China, Russia and the United States belong to the 44 countries that have never signed the Ottawa Treaty on landmines.56
Recent use of landmines
The United States has revealed that in 1991 it dropped 117,634 landmines in Iraq and Kuwait. Of these, 27,967 were AP mines, primarily dropped as part of GATOR cluster bombs.57
In the same war, the British Air Force dropped cluster bombs that included 21,500 HB876 AP mines. Since then, the UK has signed the Ottawa Treaty and destroyed her stocks of HB876 mines.58
(INSERT, Sandra: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-personnel_mine The GATOR mine system is a US system of air-dropped anti-tank and anti-personnel mines developed in the 1980s to be compatible with existing cluster dispensers. It is used with two dispenser systems—the Navy 230 kg (500 lb) CBU-78/B and the Air Force 450 kg (1,000 lb) CBU-89/B. …
The United States has apparently not used landmines in the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In Afghanistan, the American army has made use of mine fields from the Soviet era, in order to defend itself. The US has refused to rule out the use of landmines in the war against Iraq.59
At least 90,000 landmines were held by the United States in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.60
Page 21:
2.2. Companies involved in the production of landmines
Top secret
The production of landmines is a secret business. Even in the defence sector, where companies are not normally shy about their products, companies involved in the production of landmines do not like to advertise this fact. In many countries that is logical. In the 152 countries that have signed the Ottawa treaty, it is forbidden to produce anti-personnel mines.
Even in countries that have not signed the treaty, companies do not boast about their involvement with landmines. You will not find this product advertised on their websites.
It is not surprising that it is very difficult to gather reliable and complete information about the production of these weapons.
Page 23:
American producers
In 1997, Human Rights Watch issued a report concerning companies in the US involved in the production of landmines. In this report, they identified 47 American companies that were involved in one way or another with the production of anti-personnel mines, or components.
After president Clinton made a call in 1996 to work towards a worldwide ban on anti-personnel mines, Human Rights Watch sent a letter to each of these companies asking them to refrain from future involvement in the production of AP mines. 17 companies stated that they wished to fully withdraw from this involvement. The most well known example is Motorola.
The other American companies refused to rule out future involvement with landmines. Amongst these companies are three industry leaders: ATK (Alliant Techsystems), Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.
= = = = = = = = = = = = =
Page 10
Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin is not only the largest weapons producer in the world, but also the greatest supplier of weapons to the Pentagon, and the largest weapon exporting company in the world. It is not surprising that Lockheed Martin is involved in the production and trade in cluster munitions.
The company, and more specifically the division Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control is the producer of the MLRS system (Multiple Launch Rocket System), a highly mobile missile launching system that in less than 1 minute can fire 12 MLRS missiles.29
MLRS is used to fire ground-launched missiles.
The missiles used in the MLRS system are missiles with cluster munitions. These are also produced by Lockheed Martin.
A short overview30:
The basic MLRS missile (M26) consists of a warhead with 644 M77 sub-munitions (DPICM) and has a range of 32 km. This means that a total of 8000 sub-munitions can be fired per minute.
• The ERR missile (M26 A1/A2) has a range of 45 km and contains 518 M77 sub-munitions • The “guided” MLRS XL30 missile has a range of 60 km and contains 402 DPCIM sub-munitions (in production since April 2003).
• The ATACMS Block 1 missile has a range of 165 km, and contains 950 M74 anti-personnel/anti-material sub-munitions
• The ATACMS Block 1A has a range of 300 km and contains 275 M74 sub-munitions
In March and April 2003 MLRS cluster munitions were used in the war against Iraq.
The use of ground-launched sub-munitions (including the MLRS) by American and British ground troops was the largest cause of civilian casualties in the war. These weapons were used in populated areas including Baghdad, Basra, al-Hillal, al-Najaf and Karbala.
There is still a great lack of clarity about the total number of sub-munitions used in Iraq, but the Third Infantry, the First Airborne Division and the 214th Field Artillery Brigade have reported the use of 1014 MLRS missiles and 330 ATACMS missiles. The MLRS cluster munitions were primarily used at long ranges. The majority of the American-used sub-munitions were DPICMs. In Iraq, it was standard practice to fire salvos of six MLRS missiles. Each salvo launched 3864 sub-munitions over a target area with a radius of 1 km. According to a report by the American ‘Office of the Under Secretary of 29 http://www.army-technology.com/projects/mlrs/ 30 The description of these products can be found on the website of Lockheed Martin,http://www.lockheedmartin.com/wms/findPage.do?dsp=fec&ci=20&sc=400www.mijngeldgoedgeweten.be10
A campaign of Netwerk Vlaanderen vzw, in cooperation with Forum voor Vredesactie, For Mother Earth and Vrede vzw
The MLRS systems fires a ATACMS Block 1 rocket composed of 950 sub-munitions (Lockheed Martin)
Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics’ MLRS sub-munitions have a failure rate of 16%. 31
Before the start of the war in Iraq, Human Rights Watch asked the United States to rule out the use of four specific types of cluster munitions. Amongst others, the use of MLRS missiles with M77 submunitions was considered by HRW to be very dangerous for civilians.32
The MLRS system is supplied by Lockheed Martin to 14 countries, including the US, Israel, Bahrain and the Netherlands.
Lockheed Martin is also the producer of the WCMD, the Wind Corrected Munition Dispenser. This is an extension for existing cluster munitions (CBU-87, -89, and -97) that makes it possible to use cluster munitions in unfavourable weather conditions including high wind speeds. Most cluster bombs dropped by the American Air Force in the last war in Iraq were equipped with WCMDs from Lockheed Martin. 33
Lockheed Martin played an important role behind the scenes in support of the war in Iraq. In 2002, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq was formed with the support of the Bush administration.
The former vice chairman of Lockheed Martin, Bruce Jackson, became the chairman of the Committee. The group promoted Bush’s plans for the war against Iraq. Jackson was also involved in the issuing of the statement of the Vilnius 10; ten Central and East European States – the so-called New Europe – that supported Bush in the run up to the war in Iraq. The divide between ‘Old’ Europe (Germany and France) and ‘New’ Europe helped Bush to acquire support for his war against Iraq.
The wife of Vice President Dick Cheney was a member of the Board of Directors of Lockheed Martin.
The slogan of Lockheed Martin is “We never forget who we’re working for”.
