Of all of the deadly weapons used in today's world, one of the dirtiest is "cluster bombs" that has been used relentlessly by so many nations across the planet today primarily against civilian populations....I have seen some interesting videos over the last 10 years via Youtube and other sources showing how this horrendous weapons tears its victims to bits.... It is no wonder that most nations actually have signed protocols to remove this weapon from their arsenals...But of course several nations, including the United States, continues to manufacture and use this weapon in combat!BUT... What is not known to a lot of people and is rarely discussed are the manufacturers of this deadly weapon as well as the corporations that have heavily invested in its production.... And lo and behold, but Greencrow, over at Greencrow As The Crow Flies, at www.greencrowasthecrowflies.blogspot.com, has just come out with a startling new report that shows evidence of the Canadian Corporations that have heavily invested into the companies that manufacture cluster bombs... The article is entitled: "Cluster Bomb Manufacturing Investment: How Canadian Corporations Make Money Off Human Suffering" and is a must see by everyone, and especially my Canadian readers... I have that report right here and my own thoughts and comments to follow:
Thursday, May 25, 2017
Cluster Bomb Manufacturing Investment - How Canadian Corporations Make Money off Human Suffering
Cluster Bombs - How they work and theDamage They're DESIGNED TO DOPAX, an international foundation for Peace- has just come out with an update on a concern it has been reporting on since 2009...what corporations from what countries are investing in the Cluster Bomb Industry. Yes, it is an industry and some "humans" are getting very wealthy designing and manufacturing evil implements of war that instantaneously tear people apart. These bombs explode into tiny shrapnel fragments that scatter at tremendous speed, tearing limbs from bodies and heads from torsos. That is what they are DESIGNED to do. They are DESIGNED to rip the human body apart...and they are used to kill massive numbers of civilians, including children, in urban areas.What is just as disgusting is that the financial set-up for manufacturing these brutish tools of Satan included huge corporate investment from well known corporations and banks that are the mainstay of the economic fabric of their home countries. It is almost a form of blackmail. The big armaments corporations get their funding quietly...from Insurance Companies and Banks that are used by average citizens who are unaware that this is where their savings and health dollars are going...it is evil beyond belief. So I read the PAX update released yesterday (and thereafter immediately buried under the salacious distracting headlines churned out by the M$M) and was shocked [not] to read that three very common Canadian Companies, including the Bank that I deal with...are investors in Cluster Bomb manufacturing Companies. Those corporate entities are: The Royal Bank of Canada; Manulife Insurance Company and Sun Life Financial.Regular readers will remember how I've frequently named and targeted big Insurance Companies as being behind the Healthcare scandal/swindle in the US...and who are desperate to install the same healthcare Insurance format here in Canada. What a coinkydink that these same health insurance companies are investing in tools of human destruction...shows you their morality. It would appear from this report that the primary manufacturers of Cluster Bombs are the following corporations:Textron United StatesOrbital ATK Orbital ATK IncAlliant Techsystems IncI have read the report as it pertains to my own country of origin...Canada. Readers are encouraged to look at the report and click on the links that pertain to THEIR countries. Please read the summation from the PAX report and I will have more thoughts in comments to follow:*****************PAX "May 2017 update - Worldwide investments in CLUSTER MUNITIONS a shared responsibilityExecutive SummaryPAX (this edition, dated May 2017, published the first report on “Worldwide Investments in Cluster Munitions: a Shared Responsibility” in October 2009.1 It was a state-of-the-art report on financial institutions’ investment in companies that develop or produce cluster munitions, on financial institutions disinvesting from producers of cluster munitions and on states banning investments in cluster munitions.Updates of the report appeared in April 2010, May 2011, June 2012, December 2013, November 2014 and June 2016.2 This edition by PAX, dated May 2017, updates the earlier reports.IIThe Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) categorically bans the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of cluster munitions. 94 countries signed the convention at the Oslo Signing Conference held 3 – 4 December 2008. The convention entered into force on 1 August 2010.Article 1(1)c of the CCM states, “Each State Party undertakes never under any circumstances to assist, encourage or induce anyone to engage in any activity prohibited to a State Party under this Convention.” It seems obvious that financing the production of cluster munitions constitutes ‘assistance’ or ‘encouragement’, as the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) also points out in its policy paper.3 However, States Parties’ implementation of this convention might not automatically result in a ban on investments in cluster munitions. The process to ban cluster munitions is well underway. Many countries that have signed the convention are now drafting national implementation legislation, and/or have started to implement the convention.Even before the CCM opened for signature, there was an international consensus on problems stemming from the indiscriminate nature of cluster munitions. This means that from a moral perspective financial institutions should not have needed the CCM to terminate their investment in companies producing cluster munitions. Some financial institutions took this step and banned all investment in cluster munitions even before the convention was negotiated in May 2008; others persisted in supporting the production of these indiscriminate weapons.We emphasise that, at this point, there is still a lack of official information in the public domain about the production of cluster munitions and investment in cluster munitions producers. That is why the information in this report is by no means exhaustive. We explain our methodology in this executive summary and at the beginning of each chapter.We hope that this information will stimulate states, financial institutions and civil society to further the convention’s goal to halt the unacceptable humanitarian harm to which cluster munitions give rise. There have been positive developments since the first edition came out in October 2009. Civil society in many countries has engaged with financial institutions and government representatives to talk about ways to disinvest. Parliamentary initiatives emerged; in some cases financial institutions disinvested or states took action by adopting legislation on investment in cluster munitions (producers).4Unfortunately, a lot still needs to be done. Ending the human suffering directly attributable to cluster munitions requires national legislation that reflects the spirit of the CCM. Governments must present clear guidelines by introducing and enforcing legislation that prohibits investment in cluster munitions producers. Until such legislation is in place, financial institutions have a moral obligation to act on their own and disinvest from cluster munitions. When they finance companies that produce cluster munitions, financial institutions assist these companies to produce an indiscriminate weapon that has been the object of opprobrium of states and civil society worldwide. We have identified many of the financial institutions that still invest in cluster munitions producers – even more than nine years after the text of the Convention on Cluster Munitions was negotiated in Dublin. You will find the names of these financial institutions in the first part of the report, the Hall of Shame....""...CanadaCanada signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions on 3 December 2008, ratified it on 16 March 2015 and became a State Party to the convention on 1 September 2015.743 Canada’s implementation legislation does not contain a specific prohibition on investment in cluster munitions.However, in a debate in the Senate in May 2012, the Honourary Suzanne Fortin-Duplessis said that “under the bill it is prohibited to assist, encourage or induce anyone to engage in any prohibited activity including knowingly and directly investing in the production of cluster munitions.”744 On 9 July 2012, a Senior Defence Advisor from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade stated in an email to Human Rights Watch that: “an investment that is executed with the knowledge and intention that it will encourage or assist cluster munitions production would be captured by the legislation’s prohibition on aiding and abetting any primary offence.”745 On 29 May 2013, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs reiterated the view that investment is prohibited under the bill.746In December 2016, a bill was tabled in the Senate that would amend the Prohibiting Cluster Munitions Act by inserting an explicit prohibition on investments into the act. 747 The proposed Bill is discussed in the section on draft legislation.Manulife*1.2.107 Manulife Financial (Canada)Manulife Financial (Canada) has made an estimated US$ 54 million available to the companies on the red flag list since June 2013.Manulife Financial owns or manages bonds of the companies to the amount of US$ 54 million in Textron United States * This corporation is renowned for its "nickel and diming" of Canadians who have been placed in the unfortunate situation of needing to receive benefits from it for sickness and/or injuries. It is relentless in harassing and denial of benefits...sometimes causing more suffering than the actual injury or sickness...I am NOT at all surprised to see it on this List of Shame.Royal Bank of Canada (Canada)Royal Bank of Canada (Canada) has made an estimated US$ 100 million available to the companies on the red flag list since June 2013.XXIIRoyal Bank of Canada has underwritten bond issuances totalling approximately US$ 100 million to the companies since June 2013Orbital ATKAlliant Techsystems IncSun Life Financial (Canada)Sun Life Financial (Canada) has made an estimated US$ 28 million available to the companies on the red flag list since June 2013.Sun Life Financial owns or manages bonds of the companies to the amount of US$ 28 million (see table below).Textron United States.......Recommendations of the Report: States that have joined the CCM should make clear that in prohibiting assistance, article 1(1)c of the convention prohibitsinvestment in cluster munitions producers.• States should draft national legislation prohibiting investment in producers of cluster munitions. This provides clear guidelines for financial institutions and is in the spirit of the CCM and in line with the Dubrovnik Action Plan.• Financial institutions should develop policies that exclude all financial links with companies involved in cluster munitions production. Because all investment facilitates this production, no exceptions should be made for third-party financial services, for funds that follow an index or for civilian project financing for a company also involved in cluster munitions. Policies should not be narrowed to refusing project financing for cluster munitions.• Financial institutions should inform producers of their decision to end investment because of the producers’ involvement with cluster munitions. Financial institutions can set clear deadlines with a limited time frame within which a company must cease production of cluster munitions if it wishes the disinvestment decision to be reversed. When a company persists in producing cluster munitions after the deadline, the financial institution will disinvest until such time as the company terminates production of cluster munitions. New applications for investment will be declined until the company has halted all activities related to the production of cluster munitions.• Financial institutions should apply their disinvestment policy to all activities: commercial banking, investment banking and asset management. All such activities aid and abet a company’s production of cluster munitions. When this new course of action requires a change in investment fund management, investors should be notified of this and given a deadline for withdrawing from these funds. After this deadline, management strategy will change and shares and obligations in companies involved in cluster munitions will be sold.*****************PAX should be commended for coming out with this update to their courageous Report of 2009. It is not good enough to come up with an original report...it is necessary to follow up over the succeeding years to see what changes have been made and reward or punish investors in cluster bomb manufacturing based on their willingness to change...or not.When I analyze topics such as corporate investments in war weaponry I look for a couple of things. Firstly, I look for evidence of blackmail. That is how all the perpetrations of evil are done on this planet..via some form of blackmail. What are the elements of blackmail here? These insurance companies and the Royal Bank have stupendous monopolies on their source of income...the public. Are they being threatened that these monopolies will be cut back? That some other competition will be introduced into their captive markets? When you think about it...it resembles a huge money laundering scam. The "dirty money" earned via the diabolical manufacture of limb-burning and tearing mechanisms...is laundered into pristine investment earnings--that benignly appear on citizens' yearly bank reports.The second element I look at is the "bloody hands" factor. The reason the demonic designers of war want the investments of these corporate entities is precisely because of their good corporate reputations. They want to involve the mainstream corporations in their demonic activities so that thereafter the "honourable" corporations will have their hands bloodied and be subject to blackmail...so it is a vicious circle of blackmail, reward and punishment. In fact, it is same old same old...same schemes they use to co-opt politicians, celebrities, etc. These perps reallyARE one trick ponies dontchaknow.Finally, in summation, this report pulls back the curtain of obfuscation and disinformation that surrounds the wildly profitable manufacture of deadly and disgusting anti-human weaponry of war. Cluster bombs are nothing more or less than child killers. That is what they are designed to do. Everybody knows that. Look at the photo of the child above and wonder where he is today (actually I believe he came to live in Canada to undergo intensive medical follow up to his horrific injuries). Do the people who work for the big weapons manufacturing companies that assembled the bombs that tore his limbs off ever think about him or his countrymen? Do the CEO's of the big investment companies listed above ever think about the children they have indirectly maimed and killed? Do the millions of investors (like myself) who deal with the investing corporations [like the Royal Bank] ever think where their investment dollar is going...and where the profits accruing to their investments come from?At the moment, it appears that the criminally complicit corporations have the upper hand...they are operating under the protection of the government, the complicit media and the Deep State. All the children of the planet can hope for is a day of reckoning. Posted by greencrow at 9:47 AM Labels: activism, atrocities, banksters, Canada, Crimes, Empire,healthcare, Middle East, Military, NATO, the economy, USA, war, War Crimes, ZiofascismNTS Notes: I want to thank Greencrow for bringing this report forward, for it shows how dastardly some major corporations are here in Canada for investing their money into these companies that manufacture a weapon that tears humans apart....Yes, these companies are obviously investing in this weapon for the business of manufacturing weapons is actually in this "recession" are still making phenomenal profits.. Yes, GREED is indeed good.....Luckily, I personally have no investments in any of these banks or corporations here in Canada that are profiting off of human suffering.... AND I do hope that others here in Canada that actually have investments with these corporations take notice and either stop their investments with these firms or contact these firms to ask them the hard question as to WHY they continue to invest in these weapon manufacturers....More to comeNTS
