Corporate Watch Newsletter Issue 11-12

Special Double Issue - Corporations and War

Links to individual articles below - you can also download the whole newsletter as a pdf (with pictures!) at www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue11/newsletter11.pdf. Paper copies £1.50 inc. p+p from us, or a whole year's subscription for just £5.

Private Power Partnerships
It has all the makings of a Tom Clancy bestseller. The government plans to sell a stake in its top-secret defence laboratories currently working on technology to enable people to live on the moon (anyone remember Ben Elton’s Stark?). The buyer? a shadowy American organisation, with ex-presidents and prime ministers as special advisors, that has invested millions of dollars for the Bin Laden family and Saudi royalty.  http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue11/isue11_part1.htm

War and Corporations - a brief primer
As the military machine gears up for another war it seems worth taking a closer look at the links between business and conflict. Corporations were born out of the wars of colonisation and today the relationship between military expansion and companies remains.  http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue11/isue11_part2.htm

Oil and War
by Milan Rai
Is the projected war on Iraq intended to reinforce US domination of the energy resources of the Middle East? Milan Rai argues that it is, but not in the way most people think.  http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue11/isue11_part3.htm

War is Business, Business is War
Dave Whyte, University of Leeds
One of the most bizarre features of the various propaganda efforts in the preparation for the latest all out assault on Iraq is the frequent bandying around of references to WWII figures. Whilst politicians and media sources in the West frequently compare Saddam Hussein with Hitler, the Iraqi leader himself has been quoting speeches by Winston Churchill. Dave Whyte looks at the history of Iraq, corporations and war.  http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue11/isue11_part4.htm

The Invisible Handout Of The Market:
Defence companies and government not quite getting the hang of free trade
Pippa Gallop
The emergence of global arms companies sits very uneasily with the state-centred concept of international politics which still dominates military thinking. ‘National Security’ goes, by its very nature, against the grain of globalization, relying as it does on a view of the world as a collection of independent states acting in their ‘national interest’. It is virtually the only area of trade which is excluded from World Trade Organization agreements.  http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue11/isue11_part5.htm

Propaganda Diary
News on the role of PR companies in promoting war against Iraq.
 http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue11/isue11_part6.htm

Genetix RoundUp
Soya, Soya, everywhere… Monsanto’s attempted takeover of Argentina. New Markets for GM crops in India and elsewhere. Syngenta in Identity Crisis why the GM giant is pretending to be an NGO.
 http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue11/isue11_part10.htm

Babylonian Times
True stories from the other side of the corporate looking-glass.  http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue11/isue11_part8.htm

PLUS:

Missing plutonium found in house and garden near Reading
Good news for Burma
Fate of public services ‘in the hands of unelected trade lawyers’
NATO expands but at whose expense?
 http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue11/isue11_part7.htm

Book reviews ‘Some common concerns imagining BP’s Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey pipelines system’ by the Baku Ceyhan campaign. ‘PFI vs. Democracy’ pamphlet series by Melanie McFadyean and David Rowland.
 http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue11/isue11_part9.htm