The truth about Lockheed Martin the company targetted on Mayday
Realist | 18.05.2003 08:29
Lockheed are one of the only arms manufacturers still to offer a nice line in anti-personnel land mines, with a life span of up to one hundred years, which they flog for as little as £2 each - surely it can’t be good business to make them so they last that long? Across the world, landmines claim a new victim every twenty minutes, that’s more than 26,000, mostly civilian, deaths and injuries each year.
Since lining its pockets through war, suffering, and destruction is what Lockheed Martin is all about - just check out its latest “Making Weapons For the World” advertising - it comes as no surprise that the company’s most lucrative export item is the F-16 combat aircraft. Since the mid-1970s, they’ve managed to flog over 3,000 of them to such freedom-loving customers such as Israel, Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia and Egypt.
Lockheed are leaders in the design and development of nuclear technology and its by-products in the US and are responsible for the production and maintenance of British nuclear warheads at their Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire where they specialise in “state-of-the-art hit-to-kill” precision weapons. They receive $1 billion per year from the US Dept of Energy to help run the notorious Nevada Test Site where it carries out “sub-critical testing”, which attempts to exploit loopholes in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. They are also heavily involved in the Trident programme in the US, as well as here in the UK which costs us £1.5 billion a year. British nuclear-powered Trident submarines are on patrol, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Each submarine can carry 48 independently targeted nuclear warheads, each of which has seven times the explosive power of the first atomic bomb at Hiroshima, which killed 140,000 civilians.
Lockheed produce the AUP-3(M) depleted uranium missiles that have been deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. These indiscriminate weapons are classified illegal by the United Nations. When a DU shell explodes, it sends out contaminated dust particles small enough to be inhaled - high doses kill, low levels cause cancer. Unfortunately dust particles are not smart enough to distinguish between civilian and military victims and since the last Gulf War incidences of leukaemia and Hodgkins disease in Iraq have increased tenfold, as has the proportion of babies born with birth defects, that is without heads, brains, spines and limbs.
Lockheed also does a good line in bribery and corruption. According to Tim Weiner, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, “Lockheed has a criminal history that includes paying millions of dollars in bribes.” Since 1990 they’ve been done a total of 63 times, handing over $230 million in fines and settlements.
So how come they seem to get all the contracts? The US Centre for Responsive Politics reports that Lockheed spent more than $9.8 million lobbying members of Congress and the Clinton administration during 2000 and gave $225,000 to the Bush-Cheney inaugural fund.
Lockheed are leaders in the design and development of nuclear technology and its by-products in the US and are responsible for the production and maintenance of British nuclear warheads at their Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire where they specialise in “state-of-the-art hit-to-kill” precision weapons. They receive $1 billion per year from the US Dept of Energy to help run the notorious Nevada Test Site where it carries out “sub-critical testing”, which attempts to exploit loopholes in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. They are also heavily involved in the Trident programme in the US, as well as here in the UK which costs us £1.5 billion a year. British nuclear-powered Trident submarines are on patrol, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Each submarine can carry 48 independently targeted nuclear warheads, each of which has seven times the explosive power of the first atomic bomb at Hiroshima, which killed 140,000 civilians.
Lockheed produce the AUP-3(M) depleted uranium missiles that have been deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. These indiscriminate weapons are classified illegal by the United Nations. When a DU shell explodes, it sends out contaminated dust particles small enough to be inhaled - high doses kill, low levels cause cancer. Unfortunately dust particles are not smart enough to distinguish between civilian and military victims and since the last Gulf War incidences of leukaemia and Hodgkins disease in Iraq have increased tenfold, as has the proportion of babies born with birth defects, that is without heads, brains, spines and limbs.
Lockheed also does a good line in bribery and corruption. According to Tim Weiner, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, “Lockheed has a criminal history that includes paying millions of dollars in bribes.” Since 1990 they’ve been done a total of 63 times, handing over $230 million in fines and settlements.
So how come they seem to get all the contracts? The US Centre for Responsive Politics reports that Lockheed spent more than $9.8 million lobbying members of Congress and the Clinton administration during 2000 and gave $225,000 to the Bush-Cheney inaugural fund.
Realist
