arms industry

A boat carrying an arms shipment destined for Zimbabwe is anchored at the South African port of Durban. However the South African Transport Workers' Union has already announced that their members will not offload any of the cargo, nor will any of their truckers transport it.

The machinists, who work at the company's plant in Tucson Arizon, voted 1,000-4 in favour of the strike yesterday at a meeting of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Local 933. Workers will be striking over a new contract which has yet to be agreed by the company.

In the 1970s workers at the Lucas Aerospace Company in Britain set out to defeat the bosses plans to axe jobs. They produced their own alternative "Corporate Plan" for the company's future. In doing so they attacked some of the underlying priorities of capitalism.

The major elements of the Iran/contra story were well known long before the 1986 exposures, apart from one fact: that the sale of arms to Iran via Israel and the illegal contra war run out of Colonel Oliver North's White House office were connected.

In case you missed it while checking your portfolios(!), last week ‘defence research’ group QinetiQ was floated on the stock exchange, which even in the world of cut-throat capitalism raised quite a few eyebrows and mutterings of ‘rip off’ - even from those unconcerned about the whole profiting-from-killing-people business.