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Sodastream, a carbonated beverage manufacturer is based in the Mishor Adumim settlement industrial zone. Mishor Adumim is an industrial are attached to the residential settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, East of Jerusalem in the Israeli occupied West Bank. Read the rest of this entry »
Dear Ecotricity,
We are writing to you regarding your contract with G4S Utility Services, which provides you with meter reading services. Read the rest of this entry »
The family of a woman who was crushed to death by a Caterpillar D9 bulldozer in 2003 have called for divestment from companies complicit in Israels occupation. The family have asked supporters in the US to pressure investment firm TIAA-CREF to divest from Caterpillar and other companies.
The call can be read here – http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/blog/2012/08/10/call-to-action-mark-the-verdict-in-the-corrie-civil-case-in-israel-august-28th Read the rest of this entry »
The two activists who occupied the roof of G4S’ HQ near Crawley for eight hours on 2nd July 2012 appeared in court today to plead guilty/not guilty to an ‘aggravated trespass’ charge under Section 68 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. Read the rest of this entry »
Campaigners in the UK and Sweden have taken various actions against G4S over the last month. Meanwhile, various discussions and meetings are taking place to coordinate efforts aimed at forcing the multinational security giant to halt its “unlawful and criminal activities”, as well as to put pressure on public authorities to withdraw from and not award new contracts to the notorious company. Read the rest of this entry »
In May John Eaton, a director of arms manufacturers EDO MBM, spoke on behalf of the company at an arms conference in Washington about work being done in Brighton to develop bomb release units with a footprint “the size of a dollar bill”.[1] In his abstract for the talk Eaton contends that “flexible responses require new approaches to the delivery of small non traditional weapons from non traditional airframes involved in the kill chain.”[2] Read the rest of this entry »
An article entitled ‘Predicting a Riot’, on the Eurosatory Land Defence and Security Exhibition website sheds light on the non-lethal weapons currently being developed to control dissent. The article alludes to the British Summer 2011 riots and the Toronto G20 protests as examples of a “new form of mass crime” that justifies the use of new technology by police forces:
“2011 was a year of global political upheaval, as politics and technology converged to change the face of protest, direct action and mass criminal behaviour. In stark contrast to the legitimate protest, which has driven democracy in states such as Egypt, or raised political questions in Western states, a new form of mass-crime has brought massive property damage, injury and death.
…the evolution of police weapons and tactics has become necessary and justified. To support responders, policy-makers must establish new systems to rapidly stop a peaceful gathering from becoming a criminal free-for-all, while protecting a vital right to free expression.” Read the rest of this entry »
Israeli company Soda Club, which owns the Sodastream brandname, is reportedly planning to open a store in Brighton. Read the rest of this entry »
Corporate Watch recently wrote to B&Q concerning the supply of goods manufactured by companies that work out of illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank. The open letter to B&Q, reproduced below, asked for clarification of whether the store will cease its supply of Keter Plastics products.
In January this year, activists held a protest against the sale of garden sheds made by Keter Plastics, an Israeli company that has a factory in the Barkan settlement industrial zone in the West Bank.
Since then B&Q has pledged, in correspondence with Palestine solidarity campaigners, not to sell products “sourced from conflict zones and/or occupied territories”. However, it remains unclear whether this means that B&Q will discontinue the sale of Keter products, some of which are manufactured outside Israel.
Israeli settlements in the West Bank are established on land taken from Palestinian civilians by military force. The settlements are illegal under international law and their illegality is recognised by British Foreign Office policy, which states that the settlements are an “obstacle to peace”.
Barkan, attached to the residential settlement of Ariel, was established in 1982 on the land of the Palestinian villages of Haris, Bruqin and Sarta. The industrial zone hosts a disproportionate number of factories that pollute the environment. For example, waste from Barkan runs down the hillside of the Al-Matwi valley, damaging Palestinian farmland. Palestinian labourers are employed in the industrial zone and are paid, in several documented instances, below the minimum wage and denied the right to unionise.
In the above-mentioned letter to campaigners, Terry Anne Rowland of B&Q’s Customer Care Team said: “we will work with our suppliers to identify which, if any, products are manufactured in countries associated with conflict/occupation (eg Afghanistan/Israel) and seek confirmation that the product has not, at any stage been made by a company operating in a conflict zone or occupied territories. We will put in place exit strategies for the product and/or supplier where progress to our aim, over a defined period, is not achieved.”
Corporate Watch welcomes the sentiments expressed in the letter but would like to clarify whether this statement means that B&Q will no longer deal with Keter Plastics.
Regards
Corporate Watch
this article was originally written for Red Pepper
Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaigns allow ordinary people to take action in their communities and workplaces and be a part of the popular struggle for freedom in Palestine. The following BDS actions are amongst those recommended in Corporate Watch’s new handbook for the BDS movement, Targeting Israeli Apartheid. Read the rest of this entry »
At least three people have died in Cairo’s Tahrir Square after inhaling toxic tear gases. Reports suggest that, in addition to CS gas made by Combined Systems Inc (CSI) and other American and British companies, Egyptian security forces have used other, stronger gases against protesters, such as the illegal CR gas. Meanwhile in Palestine, yet another person was killed by a high-velocity gas canister fired by Israeli soldiers during a weekly demonstration in the village of Nabi Saleh. Read the rest of this entry »
A French court has acquitted 12 Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaigners of “discrimination and inciting hatred and violence toward a group or nation,” after they called on customers at two branches of Carrefour to refuse to buy Israeli goods. Read the rest of this entry »
Veolia, the world’s biggest listed water utility company, has announced that it will pull out of half of the 77 countries it operates in due to financial difficulties. Veolia is the subject of a mushrooming campaign by the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement due to its operations in Israel and in occupied Palestine (see still doing israels dirty work veolias tovlan landfill in the jordan valley). Campaigns by grassroots groups have cost the company billions of dollars through exclusion from public tenders. At the beginning of August 2011 it was announced that Ealing Council in London had failed to select Veolia for a comprehensive tender for its domestic refuse, street cleaning and parks maintenance contract. The contract is worth approx £300m in total over 15 years and one of Ealing Council’s largest single contracts.
In a victory for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against apartheid Israel, Ahava, a multinational Israeli Dead Sea products company, will be forced to close its flagship store in Monmouth Street, central London.
Police arrive at Ahava, Monmouth Street
On Monday 21st November 2010 two campaigners locked themselves inside the Ahava Dead Sea laboratories store in Monmouth Street, Covent Garden.
Ahava is an Israeli settler company, owned by the illegal settlements of Kalia and Mitzpe Shalem. The London store has admitted that all the products stocked in the shop, barring tweezers from China, are manufactured in their factory in Mitzpe Shalem. Read the rest of this entry »
On January 17th 2009 six people broke into EDO MBM/ITT in Brighton and caused £189 000 worth of damage to computers, servers, lathes and other equipment. The activists, calling themselves the ‘decommissioners’, took their action in response to the Israeli assault on Gaza which had claimed 1400 lives by the 17th. EDO MBM/ITT manufactures the arming unit for the Israeli F16 bombrack. The six were arrested, along with three people alleged to have supported the action. All nine were charged with conspiracy to cause criminal damage. At a month long trial at Hove Crown Court seven of the activists argued that they had a lawful excuse to damage EDO’s property as the company was complicit in war crimes. All seven were acquitted on July 2nd 2010 after the jury gave five unanimous not guilty verdicts and the judge directed that the final two should be acquitted. One activist had been found with no case to answer earlier in the trial due to lack of evidence. Read the rest of this entry »
EDOM signage on packing house in Tomer
After Corporate Watch sent an open letter to Valley Grown Salads (VGS), which has a 20% share in the Israeli company EDOM UK, we were immediately contacted by Jimmy Russo – the company’s director who is also the chairman of EDOM. Claiming that we had got our facts wrong, he was eager to dispute our claim that EDOM had been seen packing vegetables in the illegal settlement of Tomer in the Jordan Valley. Expressing concern that his company could become a ‘target’ as a result of any settlement connections, he emphasised that VGS would not trade with growers who used child labour or breached labour regulations and indicated that EDOM and VGS would not trade with the settlements in the future. Through written correspondence and a number of phone calls we have since attempted to get to the truth about EDOM’s business in the settlements and inside Israel, asking Russo to explain the various pieces of evidence that point to exports from Tomer. Read the rest of this entry »
Years of weekly protests against the Israeli separation wall in Bil’in in the West Bank have proved successful following an announcement by the Israeli military that part of the wall will be re-routed. This comes two and a half years after an Israel Supreme Court ruling ordering the Israeli state to return land to Palestinian farmers in the village of Bil’in, over which the state has twice been held in contempt. Read the rest of this entry »
In January 2009, there was a solidarity demonstration in London regarding the Israeli bombardment of Gaza from 27th December 2008 until 18th January 2009. At the demo, many people were arrested, the majority being young Asians below the age of 19, some as young as 12. The police used indiscriminate baton charges, kettles and heavy surveillance. Their repressive tactics began to take a less visible form in the months following, with numerous dawn raids, denial of communication with solicitors and physical and psychological abuse. Almost all have now been charged with “violent disorder” and so far, 10 people have been jailed for 15 months to 3 years. In this climate of intimidation and isolation, and in spite of flimsy evidence, 50 people have pled guilty and the sentencing began on 12th February at Isleworth Crown Court. Read the rest of this entry »
Israeli companies profiting from the occupation of Palestine are increasingly subject to blacklisting and divestment due to the growing pressure exerted boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. The movement of Palestinian organisations and solidarity activists pushes for divestment from Israeli companies involved in and profiting from the occupation and in recent months has seen millions of dollars withdrawn from Israeli companies, in particular Israeli military contractor Elbit Systems, a company involved in the construction of the apartheid wall and connected to the manufacture of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) , or drones. Read the rest of this entry »
A couple of weeks ago, on 28th January 2010, Corporate Watch wrote an open letter to Cargoflora, a freight company, involved in the distribution of imported flowers to UK supermarkets . The company’s partner, J and E Distributors Ltd, based in the same office as Cargoflora, advertises that it imports flowers from Israel. Read the rest of this entry »
In our last News Update, on 5th January 2010, we published an open letter to multinational fruit exporter Fyffes on the subject of trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Corporate Watch had been supplied with a photo of boxes of dates bearing the Fyffes logo inside a packing house in the settlement of Tomer. Read the rest of this entry »
Israel is planning to build a new security fence around the Red Sea city of Eilat, close to the border with Egypt. Companies set to tender for stakes in the $270 million project include Motorola Israel, which manufactures the Wide Area Surveilance System (WASS) sensors for settlements in the West Bank; Ortek, a subsidiary of Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit; Magal Security Systems, an Israeli company that had built parts of the West Bank and Gaza walls; D-Fence and El-Far. Israel has already built fences and walls along its borders with Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and inside the West Bank and Gaza. The construction of many of these barriers has resulted in land grabs and everyday suffering for Palestinians trying to cross through the countless checkpoints.
It’s Valentines Day in a couple of weeks and tonnes of cut flowers from Israel and the Occupied Territories are set to be exported to Europe. Many of these flowers come from the besieged Gaza Strip, a captive market for Israeli companies like Carmel-Agrexco. Israel has eased its siege on Gaza specifically to allow the export of flowers to Europe through Israeli companies. Roughly 450,000 flowers have been passing through the Gaza crossings each week, bound for the UK, Holland and other parts of Europe. Agrexco’s flowers are also sourced from the occupied West Bank. Read the rest of this entry »
Ever since the first Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel in 2005, French multinational Veolia has been on campaigners’ list of boycott targets for its investment in the controversial East Jerusalem tram line and involvement in ‘settlers only’ bus routes. As a result of high profile boycott campaigns around the world, Veolia last year attempted to abandon its part in the tram line project (see previous articles: 1 | 2). But Veolia’s shameless facilitation of settlement infrastructure does not end there. On a recent visit to the area, Corporate Watch investigated the impact of Veolia’s other big operation on occupied land: the Tovlan landfill. Read the rest of this entry »
The Christmas period is one of the busiest times of the year for date importers. Tonnes of dates are imported into the UK from illegal Israeli agricultural settlements on Palestinian land. Campaigners have been focusing on Israeli companies, such as Carmel Agrexco, importing these dates into the UK but little is known about Fyffes, a transnational company that has also sourced dates from Israeli settlements.
Anti-militarist campaign Target Brimar has begun 22 days of protest to commemorate not only those killed in Gaza during the Israeli attacks last year, but also all those killed by UK and US forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere around the world. Brimar is a Manchester-based company whose targeting display systems are used by UK, US and Israeli forces.
December 19th saw the international day of action against Ahava, an Israeli settlement-based spa products company that is known for exploiting Palestinian resources and land. In London, around 20 campaigners held a protest at the company’s store in Covent Garden. Besides the police, protesters were this time confronted by some Zionists demonstrating ‘in support of Ahava.’
Link: www.stolenbeauty.org
Origial article at http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=3505
ITT, the owner of EDO MBM in Brighton, has announced a new $39.3 million contract to produce the BRU-57/A bomb rack for the F-16 at Robins Air Force Base in the US. Apparently, “these will be installed on F-16 aircraft used by U.S. and allied nations.” Israel is a major recipient of F-16s.
Link: http://es.is.itt.com/pr2009/pr09_1011.htm
Original article at http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=3503
In the lead up to the Counter Terror Expo in April 2010, Corporate Watch is taking a closer look at the companies helping to create, and profiting from, the terror/security culture (see the previous article). The trade fair, which is taking place at Kensington Olympia in London, is an opportunity to make huge profits for any company that can link its products to Western governments’ ‘wars on terror’. Amongst the 250 exhibitors are several companies developing security systems using biometric technologies and increasingly oppressive surveillance systems, bidding for lucrative contracts to create state-of-the-art security systems, for both state agencies and private clients. Read the rest of this entry »
Veolia sponsors Wildlife Photographer of the Year
This year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition is being sponsored by Veolia Environmental Services, which is accused by campaigners of profiting from the Israeli occupation of Palestine (see http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10909.shtml). The international showcase for the “very best” nature photography is owned the Natural History Museum and the BBC Wildlife Magazine. The award is no stranger to controversial sponsorship deals; recent years saw fossil fuel giant, Shell, acting as sponsor.
Links: http://www.veoliaenvironmentalservices.co.uk/pages/wildlife.asp
http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=3474
In a climate in which the call for a consumer boycott of Israeli goods is finally gaining strength, one area of Israel’s economy is, as yet, surprisingly under-researched. Most of Israel’s industrial zones in the West Bank are connected to illegal residential settlements and provide an indispensable economic backbone to the local settler economy. Mishor Adumim is the second largest industrial zone in the Occupied Territories and the one through which the Palestinians have the most to lose. Read the rest of this entry »
For most consumers, the name GoreTex means water-proof jackets, hiking trousers or maybe skiing gloves. Since 1958, US-based W.L. Gore has pioneered research into fluoropolymer materials, marketing ‘high performance’ outdoor wear under the brand names GoreTex and WINDSTOPPER. However, in the shadows of its more reputable business, W.L. Gore is supplying American arms giant ITT with these specialist materials.
The material is used in ITT’s FRCS ‘umbilical’ release mechanisms, installed in fighter planes to allow the more ‘efficient’ deployment of weapons. The FRCS mechanism is manufactured at the ITT-owned EDO MBM factory in Brighton. The factory has been the focus of a five year long campaign of direct action, aiming to stop the company producing mechanisms such as the FRCS, and to highlight that even supposedly ‘minor’ weapons components play a massive part in the functioning of the military machine (see, for example, Corporate Watch’s http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=3199”> Campaign Spotlight on the Smash EDO campaign).
W.L. Gore’s involvement in the development of the FRCS is by no means an incidental one. Unlike some companies who (often falsely) claim innocence because they supply raw materials or services to arms companies as part of their general business, W.L. Gore has actively worked with ITT to produce the FRCS. In a 2008 press release regarding the FRCS, Paul Hills, managing director of EDO MBM in Brighton, spoke of how “closely” ITT has been working with W.L. Gore “for a number of years” and the degree to which this has “strengthened” ITT’s market position.
The FRCS release mechanism is currently in use in the F 16 plane. The F 16 is being used by the US army in its wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as being a staple of the Israeli Air Force in its attacks in Palestine and Lebanon.
ITT has recently signed a major contract with Lockheed Martin, to supply the FRCS as a component in the F 35 multirole fighter. The IAF has been in talks since 2006 to purchase $5billion worth of F 35s from the US, to gradually replace the ageing F 16. Twenty-five F 35s may be in the IAF’s possession by 2014, continuing W. L. Gore’s complicity in international war crimes.
Original article at http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=3472
As part of an international day of action against the Languedoc-Rousillon regional council in France, Palestine solidarity campaigners picketed the Maison Languedoc-Rousillon offices in London, Milan, Brussels and Montpelier on 21st November in protest at the council’s plans to build facilities for Carmel-Agrexco in the French harbour of Sete.
Link: www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/11/442075.html
or: www.protection-palestine.org/spip.php?article8021
Original Aricle at http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=3475
Brighton’s Smash EDO has launched a new campaign against Barclays, with a first picket at the bank’s Brighton branch on North Street on 28th November. Pickets also took place in Wrexham and Falmouth, while in Cambridge anonymous activists wrote “Barclays – £7bn invested in arms trade” in six foot letters above their local branch. The group is calling for autonomous actions against Barclays Bank to force it to cease providing ‘market maker’ services on the NYSE stock exchange for ITT Corporation, which owns Brighton-based arms manufacturer EDO MBM/ITT.
Link: www.smashedo.org.uk/target-barclays.html
Action report: www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/11/442430.html
Original article at http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=3475
Over the last year Corporate Watch has reported on the growing international campaign against Veolia and its attempts to extract itself from a controversial contract with the Israeli government. Read the rest of this entry »
The culture of fear and distrust that has grown up around this century’s terror culture and its associated wars has created vast new markets for anything that can be branded with the words security or defence. In April 2010, London’s Kensington Olympia will play host to a Counter Terror Expo, put on by DSEi’s infamous events’ organiser, Clarion, and sponsored by French arms company, Thales. Officially supported by a plethora of military, police and private security associations, the expo will showcase over 250 security, surveillance and specialist logistics companies; state agencies including NATO and the MoD; and anyone else claiming to provide protection against terrorism for both the armed forces and civilian populations. Joining the fray are a number of corporations involved in creating identity verification technologies. The biometrics and database management companies whose invasive products, based on the recognition of physiological characteristics, are finding voice as futuristic ‘solutions’ in, what is deemed, an ‘increasingly dangerous world’.
The promotion of ID-for-all follows a peculiar logic whereby individual safety is equated with collective criminalisation. In the wake of 9/11, state agencies, aided by the corporate media, can single out individuals, named or otherwise, as posing a threat to all, not necessarily because of what they do or have done, but because of who they are. This has created a framework in which it seems perfectly reasonable, under the auspices of preventing a ‘terrorist attack’, to individually identify each member of the population, to establish whether they are ‘threatening’ or ‘safe’ by categorising them using a highly specific set of criteria. Identifying, marking and categorising a population is a continuous process and the attempt to identify those who pose a ‘threat’ in truth criminalises all members of the community by virtue of subsuming all in a system of suspicion, surveillance and identification. Aside from the stark possibilities for abuse that increasingly comprehensive cataloguing of a population creates, the advisability of, and motivations behind, the safety-in-databases concept remains relatively unchallenged in the mainstream. Despite the mandatory nature of proposed national identity schemes, as it stands biometric security systems do have to be sold to, or at least accepted as unavoidable by, whichever population they are applied to. The manufacturers of these systems employ a potent mix of nowhere-is-safe fearmongering with a sycophantic insistence that those who invest in its technologies are wisely ahead of the pack. They are providing unparalleled safety for their employees/students/personnel/establishment, whilst simultaneously buying a “bespoke” piece of the future, complete with suitably high-status branding and a form of corporate vanguardism that maintains, perhaps correctly, that it is perched on the brink of a new world.
Exhibitor Focus
Identification technologies are by no means a side issue in terror-profiteering; five of the 26 specialist areas laid out in the Counter Terror Expo’s Exhibitor Profile list fall under the bracket of identity verification technologies, in addition to those relating to various forms of surveillance. In coming months, Corporate Watch will be focussing on the projects of a number of companies involved in biometric technologies and that will be profiting under the Counter Terror banner at next year’s expo.
We begin here with Human Recognition Systems. Originally a Liverpool based company, Human Recognition Systems has expanded seismically into an international venture and claims to be the UK leader in biometric technologies and consultancy. Boasting that it is a key member of “global consortia” developing national ID schemes, HRS is working to significantly extend its operations to the Middle East and elsewhere. The company has invested in a multitude of security systems ventures. Partnered with a host of other biometrics and surveillance companies, HRS is a provider of iris, hand, finger, face and vein biometrics. The company also develops the behaviour recognition technologies being used at airports to identify potentially ‘threatening’ individuals by computer rather than by eye. Current high profile contracts include consultancy and ‘solutions’ for the Department of Health, the MoD, the Prison Service, the Home Office, Manchester Airport and the Latvian government. HRS has recently completed a project for the London 2012 Olympics, involving the cataloguing of the iris and hand specifications of 8,000 workers at the Olympic construction site in East London. The project is the first of its kind in the UK in that it combines iris and hand recognition in one system. HRS chief executive Neil Norman (formerly of corporate management consultancy, Accenture) stated rather oddly in the Liverpool Daily Post that the new system was accurate and effective “for the typical worker”, and both Olympic officials, ministers and the media have fallen over themselves to point out what a “stringent anti-terror” measure this constitutes.
Involvement in Universities
Human Recognition Systems’ business is extremely broad, particularly as it combines biometrics with surveillance through its behaviour recognition arm. However, of particular significance to the growth of a database society is the considerable investment that HRS has received over the past two years from the Capital Values Group. Indeed, the executive vice president of the Capital Values Group, Andrew Lee, is also chairman of HRS. Engaged in a similarly ruthless mission of international expansion, the Capital Values Group capitalises on the rebranding of real estate, turning it into high end student accommodation, kitted out with all the security specifications a client could wish for. The “discreet, proactive” security offered by the company includes 24 hour management by actual staff, as well as unmanned biometric entry systems. Aside from its contribution to an increasingly exclusive, corporately driven system of higher education, by working with HRS, the Capital Values Group is helping to push biometric technologies on a favourite guinea pig group: students. Existing as a reasonably closed community, essentially governed by their university management and often living in homogenised, maintained accommodation, student populations form a social microcosm that is ideal for the testing and application of biometric security systems. Last year, the UK government unveiled the first stage of its varyingly successful attempt to implement a national ID card scheme by requiring all non-EU foreign students to carry an ID card containing biometric data at all times.
Although the Capital Values Group’s major completed projects are in Australia, the company has an office in London and is planning to move into Asia, the Middle East and Europe, beginning with student accommodation developments in London. The corporate website plays heavily on parents’ fears for their children flying the nest for a new city as a justification for the high levels of security technology involved in its developments. The UK has already seen instances of racial and political profiling by universities of their students, with severe crackdowns on campus politics and tutors asked by the state to ‘keep tabs’ on foreign students and their work and to log their attendance. HRS is supplying all the products necessary to facilitate and heighten this discrimination, but also to feed into wider society generations of graduates, brought up under the looming ‘threat of terrorism’, for whom the constant logging of personal information and physiological data is normalised and almost unchallengeable. As universities across the UK move towards more business-based models for both education and facilities, high tech security systems can fit very neatly into the ethos and design of the glossy, branded utopias that campuses increasingly aspire to be.
Potential for unhindered growth
The identification technology sector has in its very nature the potential to be immensely profitable. Whether paid for by governments employing its technologies, the individuals subjected to them or the corporations adopting increasingly high tech, high status security systems, the products are designed for a universal market as their whole purpose requires the inclusion of every individual in a particular population, national or otherwise. The discourse of the terror-threat is not only politically and financially profitable, its strength also lies in its endless potential for expansion.‘Terror’ as a buzzword is now so strong that it can, and is, being applied to everything from warfare, weapons sales and immigration policy to surveillance expansion, political dissent and policing practices. Moreover, it is an inexhaustible resource: the ‘Wars on Terror’ are used to create more, not fewer, reasons to fear terrorism, whilst police anti-terror operations identify more and more people as ‘domestic extremists’. For every new ‘threat’, there is of course a new technology to ‘combat’ it. The apparently unstoppable growth of the omnipresent danger of ‘terror’ legitimises constant development in biometric technology, requiring users of these products to constantly update and replace existing systems, in line with new security requirements and neatly ensuring technological market remains dynamic and profitable.
A campaign is forming against the Counter Terror Expo, for more information see http://www.dsei.org
Original Article at http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=3453
A new anti-militarist campaign is brewing in Manchester against Brimar, a company involved in the manufacture of display units for military aircraft and vehicles that are being used by the US and Israeli military. Local activists have set up the Target Brimar campaign, aimed at forcing the company to end production of military components. In September, Target Brimar published a dossier entitled The Case Against Brimar’, which profiles the company and lists the campaign’s demands. Read the rest of this entry »
In August 2009, Corporate Watch reported on a lawsuit being brought in Canada by residents of the Palestinian village of Bil’in against construction company Green Park, which has been building condominiums on the villagers’ land to sell to Israeli settlers. A Quebec judge has now ruled that the case could, in theory, be pursued, although in Israel rather than Quebec. Read the rest of this entry »
In 2005, just after the publication of the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid, Palestinians began calling for an international boycott campaign against Veolia, a company involved in the Citypass Consortium, a scheme to build a tramline on occupied territory in the West Bank. Veolia is a huge multinational, that arguably has the biggest financial commitment of any international company to Israel’s colonisation of the West Bank. Read the rest of this entry »
A US judge has ruled that lawsuits can be brought against a number of multinational corporations accused of aiding South Africa’s apartheid regime. The ruling in April 2009 by New York District Judge Shira Scheindlin means that companies, known to have supplied the South African security forces at the time with equipment used to suppress dissent, can be sued by thousands of apartheid victims for “aiding and abetting the apartheid.” Read the rest of this entry »
Corporate Watch has learned that the Director of ITT Defence International has applied to the UK government for the right not to file his details with Companies House. Bruce K. Scott, an American citizen, made the application 10 months ago, when ITT took over EDO MBM in Brighton. EDO MBM has been the subject of a concerted direct action campaign over the last four and a half years due to their manufacture and supply of weapons used by the US and UK military in Iraq and Afghanistan and by the Israeli army in Palestine (see here, for example). Read the rest of this entry »
Over 400 people took part in a mass demonstration in Brighton on 14th October with the aim of closing the EDO MBM/ITT arms manufacturing factory. Despite a huge police operation, protesters managed to block a main road, while others managed to get to the factory through the woods to decorate it with red paint. EDO MBM/ITT was forced to close for the day. Read the rest of this entry »
An occupation of the roof of the Raytheon oces in Bristol has reached its second week despite sub-zero temperatures. The direct action began in protest at Raytheon’s supply of weapons used in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. Anti-militarist activists have been targeting Raytheon since October and have formed the Smash Raytheon campaign. Read the rest of this entry »
VisionOnTV and Corporate Watch host a video feed of grassroots films about resistance to corporate power. Every month we will showcase one of these films. All films are collected at http://corporatewatch.visionon.tv.
This month we have chosen Boycott Carmel-Agrexco, a short film about the campaign against Carmel-Agrexco. Carmel-Agrexco is an Israeli agricultural export company importing fresh produce into the UK from Israel and Israeli settlements in the West Bank (see http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=3192). The film features interviews with Palestinians working for Carmel-Agrexco and direct actions against the company in the UK. Watch the film here.
Human rights activists shut down the Carmel-Agrexco depot in Hayes, Middlesex, for 12 hours on 28 September, 2008, as part of a week of action called by the Boycott Israeli Goods campaign. Both gates to the depot were blocked, with four protesters locking themselves inside a cage blocking one gate, while another was D-locked to the other. At least 14 trucks were prevented from entering the premises during the day. Read the rest of this entry »
An Israeli ministerial committee has decided that Agrexco Agricultural Export Company Ltd. is to be privatised. The company, which is worth half a billion Shekel (nerly £78m) and employees some 500 people, markets most of Israel’s exports of fresh fruit, vegetables and flowers. Agrexco’s biggest fresh agricultural produce brand is Carmel. British supermarkets account for 60% of Carmel-Agrexco’s total exports. Read the rest of this entry »
Corporate Watch - Tracking Corporate Complicity in the Occupation of Palestine 
