London Indymedia

The horrifying truth about Lockheed Martin

Rockwell | 08.08.2003 10:57 | DSEi 2003 | London

They still manufacture anti-personnel land mines, which they flog for as little as £2 each. Across the world, landmines claim a new victim every twenty minutes, that’s more than 26,000, mostly civilian, deaths and injuries each year.

Lockheed are the world’s largest weapons manufacturer. The defence company’s share prices rocketed after September 11th and with their fighter jets very busy during the war in Iraq, they’ve reported a doubling of profits in the first few months of this year.

In late 2001, the company won what has been described as “the largest defence contract in history,” a $200 billion development contract to build a Joint Strike Fighter, which according to their own website, aims to “provide the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, and the UK’s Royal Navy and Royal Air Force with an affordable and stealthy tactical aircraft for the 21st century.” One capable of killing thousands of civilians who happen to live in ‘rogue states’ no doubt…

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 human rights abusing countries such as Israel, Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia and Egypt.

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. When a DU shell explodes, it sends out contaminated dust particles small enough to be inhaled - high doses kill, low levels cause cancer. 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.

THEIR UK OFFICE IS AT THE CORNER OF ENDELL STREET AND HIGH HOLBORN IN CENTRAL LONDON.

Rockwell

Kollektives

Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World

Other UK IMCs
Bristol/South West
London
Northern Indymedia
Scotland

London Topics

Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista

London IMC

Desktop

About | Contact
Mission Statement
Editorial Guidelines
Publish | Help

Search :