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Cluster Bomb Trade Funded by World's Biggest Banks
HSBC earned more than £650m in fees from work for Textron, US manufacturer of cluster weapons
The deadly trade in cluster bombs is funded by the world's biggest banks who have loaned or arranged finance worth $20bn (£12.5bn) to firms producing the controversial weapons, despite growing international efforts to ban them.
HSBC,
led by ordained Anglican priest Stephen Green, has profited more than
any other institution from companies that manufacture cluster bombs.
The British bank, based at Canary Wharf, has earned a total of £657.3m
in fees arranging bonds and share offerings for Textron, which makes
cluster munitions described by the US company as "leaving a clean
battlefield".
Campaigners maintain the deadly weapons can explode years after combat, killing or maiming innocent people.
HSBC will face protests outside its London headquarters today. Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JP Morgan and UK-based Barclays Bank are also named among the worst banks in a detailed 126-page report by Dutch and Belgian campaign groups IKV Pax Christi and Netwerk Vlaanderen.
Goldman Sachs, the US bank which made £3.19bn proft in just three months, earned $588.82m for bank services and lent $250m to Alliant Techsystems and Textron.
Of the banks named, only Barclays was prepared to comment. It said: "Barclays group provides financial services to the defence sector within a specific policy framework. It is our policy not to finance trade in nuclear, chemical, biological or other weapons of mass destruction.
"Our policy also explicitly prohibits financing trade in landmines, cluster bombs or any equipment designed to be used as an instrument of torture." A spokeswoman added that Barclays had supplied money to Textron, which makes cluster bombs, but that the US firm was a broad-based weapons manufacturer.
Last December 90 countries, including the UK, committed themselves to banning cluster bombs by next year. But the US was not one of them. So far 23 countries have ratified the convention. The UK has yet to do so, but the Foreign Office confirmed that it would form part of the government's legislative programme before the next election.
A Foreign Office spokesman said the tightest export control order had been placed on cluster bombs, which extended to banks supplying money to manufacturers. The government was aware the control order was not working and "is working on it".
Esther Vandenbroucke, of Netwerk Vlaanderen and one of the report's authors, said: "The responsibility to ban cluster munitions is a shared responsibility. It requires courage, and it requires an effort. We are just months away from an international treaty entering into force and it is time for signatory states to the Convention on Cluster Munitions for non-signatory states and for financial institutions to act now."
Last December, the New Zealand government's pension fund sold shares in Lockheed Martin because of its link to the manufacture of cluster bombs. Similar actions have been taken by the Irish and Dutch governments.
Millions of people will be endangered by up to tens of millions of cluster bomblets that have not yet exploded, causing lasting economic and social harm to communities in more than 20 countries for decades to come, campaigners have warned. The vast majority of cluster bomb casualties occur while victims are carrying on their daily lives.
On Monday, a Lebanese 20-year-old man had his leg amputated after a cluster bomb exploded in southern Lebanon Houla village. A security source said he was collecting wood in his border village when the explosion occurred.
The Israeli army made extensisve use of cluster bombs during the war in south Lebanon three years ago. Cluster bombs were most recently used by both the Georgians and the Russians in the dispute over South Ossetia. They were also used in the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions.
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22 Comments so far
Show AllAnd the US continues to pressure Cuba about human rights! So absurd. As the empire declines, the horrors and cruelty increase!
Here is where we find the heart of the insanity!!! Textron says that these cluster bombs leave a 'clean battlefield'. Corpses, dead and maimed children and mothers, are part of the 'clean battlefield'....evil monsters ascended from the very abyss of hell. The Anglican 'priest'... what an abysmal joke that could only garnish a smile from the lords of darkness!! Thank God that Ireland, New Zealand and Holland have the moral courage to ban these weapons and to divest from the companies that make them! Invest in these countries and divest from the US and Israel....the two greatest terrorist states on the planet today!!
BOA AND CITIBANK THERE WHEN YOU NEED THEM! not only will
they now put you into foreclosure they can blow you up
too. wonder what they give you with the change back
program. if it comes in a box i'm running like bolt!
now for a word from our advertisers. when war is not
on tv like it used to be people today think its a video
game or something.i remember in feb 1968 being summoned
to the church as a choir boy to sing at a dear friends
brothers funeral. actually the whole family were friends.
all 14 of them. their 19 year old brother had stepped
on a land mine and while there was a casket there wasn't
enough left of him to put in it. he was vaporized.
as i'm sitting in the loft i was wondering how our
government could do this to a kid. i'm still wondering!
when we post here on matters like this one please friends
do the same as i did.tell a personal story like this. it
will make us human as we touch each other and steel our
resolve to fight our government to stop this from happening
again. we also must stop our kids from playing video games
that makes killing people ok! the pentagon also funds these games
and uses them to target teens to enroll in the military!
how fucking evil is that? they know who their target audience is and its your
children!
I had the exact same experience as you that year!
Who is manufacturing these bombs and where?
I know someone who has one of those combat video games for the kids and when I go over their house next time I am going to find it and break it and then tell them I did it. I hope it was expensive.
"as i'm sitting in the loft i was wondering how our government could do this to a kid. i'm still wondering!" –(tell the truth)
–The point is to stop "wondering" why or "how," but to KNOW why and how. Then make the concomitant adjustments in consciousness where a real oppositional politics may begin to develop. This "government" and this country has not changed nor will it. Cluster bombs, white phosphorous, Predator drones is what America does, and what America does– is what it is. There are no options for America. Nor does America even consider options. Those horses have long left the barn.
"Wondering" why the American government does what it is, leaves open the possibility that the atrocities it commits are aberrant, circumstantial or temporary and can be 'influenced' to change. These are fallacies of consciousness. There should be no doubt. To "steel one's resolve" to fight the 'inhuman' many times involves a perilous internal sacrifice, where one must become inhuman oneself, or else think that way.
America is not about allowing others 'wiggle room;' nor should we allow America any 'crawl space.' One does that by seeing America implacably for what it is. What the rest of the world sees clearly and takes for granted, American myopia continues to distort the lens annulling perception.
–(Jill Bains)
To "KNOW why and how" is important but it is not enough.
There is another thing one can do: Be outspoken and proactive.
That scum has to live and move within society. Whenever I meet persons and find out that they are directly or indirectly involved, connected, benefiting or earning their money from the plight of others or are part of the system (i.e. the MIC, Wall street banking, Rep or Dem politics, health insurance, lawyers etc.), I make it vehemently clear what I think of them and WILL NOT ASSOCIATE/SERVE/WORK for them. Behind these ruthless, inhumane, marauding institutionalized entities hide the faces that enable such abominations. THESE are the faces of evil and I DO have the power to expose them, to humiliate them, to shame them and to make their life as miserable as possible whenever I can.
I realize that many of us do not have this luxury because the system has cleverly demoted many of us to serfs. Still, there is nothing more satisfying than to loudly expose these cons and to see their flustered gaze scrambling for the door, their kids in tow asking "Daddy, why did the man call you 'scum without morals'?"
You really have to quit making jokes like these.
How do you get us out? We elect these Bozo's and they are too busy fiddling with their little political games to be bothered with getting our kids out of the quagmire the last bunch got us into.
Bring America Back !!!!.........!!...Indeed it was cluster bombs the Israeli Defense Forces dropped on innocent civilians in Lebanon, and it was Phosphorous Bombs dropped by the IDF on defenseless Gazans in the Inauguration Day Genocide.
****No doubt, the Zionists do enjoy using these American manufactured death devices, and obviously official USA enjoys providing them to little sister Zion !
The IDF has well earned the reputation of "Butchers of Beirut", and Uncle Sammy sits idly by without the Nerve,
or the slightest inclination to speak out in protest, and
in favor of Humanity !!
**When it soon comes time to Vote out Team Obama, for its silence on the Gaza Genocides, for its complicity in these insidious weapons of human destruction==and in giving them to Radical Neocon Zion=====the cry should be: Remember Gaza !
...So, if we do business with these banks, we are in fact building bombs? ...and here I thought I was building Barbies!
The true policy makers, the most wealthy 1% understand two things: money and bullets.
They are holding so much of both that we are rendered helpless to force change.
The rest of the world will ignore this crumbling empire and move on.
The rich will get richer. The poor will eat shit.
Do the 1% obscenely rich and obscenely unscrupulous understand that bullets can have many destinations?
When other countries get drones to rain death on American cities, just listen to the whining and outrage lack of comprehension as to why they hate us so much.
SEE: "Made in Mass., Bomb Stirs Global Debate", by Bryan Bender, "Boston Globe", 09/20/09
(excerpt) The Sensor Fuzed Weapon is a marvel of military technology, says its maker, Textron Defense Systems. An advanced "cluster bomb,'' it is designed to spray 40 individual projectiles of molten copper, destroying enemy tanks across a 30-acre swath of battlefield.
But the bomb - which is made at a Textron facility in the Boston suburb of Wilmington - violates terms of a landmark international treaty limiting cluster bombs to 10 bomblets or less. The pending treaty, signed by 98 nations last year in Oslo, has been sought for decades by human rights groups, which say that cluster bombs kill indiscriminately and leave behind duds that kill or maim unsuspecting civilians.
Now Textron, with the support of the Pentagon and the State Department, is mounting a campaign to derail the cluster-bomb treaty and write a new set of rules under the United Nations that would make it easier to sell its weapon around the world.
Textron's primary argument for scrapping the treaty is that 99 percent of the bomblets released by the Sensor Fuzed Weapon will explode in combat, leaving only a tiny amount of unexploded ordinance that could be picked up by a child or hit by a farmer's plow. Textron calls this capability "clean battlefield operation.''...
...The US Air Force has purchased 4,600 of the new weapons, at a cost of several billion dollars. Textron has also sold them to Turkey, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. And it is in the final stages of reaching a deal with India for 510 of the weapons at an estimated cost of $375 million...
Textron Defense Systems is a division of the Providence-based conglomerate Textron Inc...As part of its public relations push, Textron has established a new website, dontbanthesolution.com
ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/09/20-4
BRUCE COCKBURN - "If I Had A Rocket Launcher" (Some SOB Would Pay)
MUSIC VIDEO - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7vCww3j2-w
Don't you like the clever marketing BS words like "clean battlefield", "smart bombs". etc.....?
I have nothing but contempt for anyone that would suggest there is anything "clean" about a "battlefield" or a "battle zone" for that matter.
They simply display their ignorance.
That 'priest' and all the shareholders of HSBC are guilty of murder.
That is Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation AKA:
Marine Midland
Midland
Do not leave out the sick people who make mines and bombs; and, other "banking enterprises" that find it far too easy to purchase a congress here and a dictator there.
98% of cluster bomb casualties are civilians. 40% of these are children.
Tell President Obama to ban these gruesome weapons and sign the convention on cluster munitions today:
http://bit.ly/6rFYT
Cluster bombs have primarily been a terror weapon used against civilian populations since their first use by the Germans in WW2.
There is no legitimate battlefield use for them. They kill as many of our men as the enemy when they are not indeed blowing some civilian to bits.
CB's are not as horrific as Willie Pete, but its close enough. Any asshole that argues for their use should be made to traipse through the Jungle or City where they have been dropped.
We'll wait for them to get back.
obama left the sign up at the white house that all previous
administrations did as well. what does the sign read?
open for business. as herbert hoover so famously said
the business of america is business.
Our problem is the same problem we've always had. The Morally Bankrupt Business schools of Harvard and Yale. They are "centers of despotism" according to Thomas Jefferson, which is why he founded Virginia University to give Americans an alternative choice for education.
Built to look like castles, they harbor evil, soulless societies like the "Skull and Bones" tomb in the middle of Yale, otherwise known as "the Brotherhood of Death" which worship WAR as the highest level of attainment. Look at most of the boards of directors of companies engaged in unspeakable evil, and you will find a "Skull" on the board. "Bonesmen" are found in the highest Courts, CEO positions and Banking apparatus like the wicked Federal Reserve Central Bank.
Both Bush and Barrack were graduates of Harvard. Now you know why they kill.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Corporations are required by their charters to maximize shareholder value by any means within the law...
Take the profit out of war, war will stop.
CORP IS BORG.