Heckler & Koch art links to anti-H&K info

Artist Alex Tsander has created a piece of artwork about Nottingham-based arms company Heckler & Koch. The North Somerset-based artist is exhibiting a series of images incorporating QR codes – two-dimensional bar codes. One of the images depicts a young woman holding a H&K rifle. When decoded, the QR code in the picture yields the address of a page on the website of War Resisters’ International, which contains information about the unethical nature of H&K’s business.

Nottingham Dealers at World’s Biggest Arms Fair

Once every two years, in the London Docklands, the world’s biggest arms fair takes place. It’s spelt DSEi, it’s pronounced “Dicey”, and this year it took place from 8^th-11^th September. Joining over 1 000 arms companies from around the world were a couple of outfits from Nottinghamshire, catering to opposite ends of the small arms market.

Peru protesters killed by police armed with H&K

Peruvian security forces armed with Heckler & Koch rifles and submachine guns have killed dozens of indigenous protesters near the northern city of Bagua.

Indigenous communities of the Peruvian Amazon have been protesting against new “Free Trade” laws that would open up their ancestral lands to drilling for gas and oil.  Since April 2009, indigenous protesters have stepped up their protest, blocking road and river transport and shutting down oil and gas pumping stations.  On June 6, Peruvian President Alan García ordered in the troops, and police opened fire using live rounds on a crowd of protesters.

Peruvian police armed with H&K rifles take up positions in Bagua

LV= profits from the arms trade

An anti-arms-trade campaign in Nottingham has discovered that Bournemouth-based company LV= is knowingly profiting from the arms trade.  LV=, formerly known as Liverpool Victoria, is a financial services company that sells insurance, savings and investments.  Nottingham-based campaign Shut Down H&K discovered that LV= is the landlord of none other than Heckler & Koch – the world’s second-largest manufacturer of small arms.

What’s wrong with NATO?

Saturday April 4^th is the 60^th anniversary of NATO, the world’s most powerful military alliance.  The NATO summit in Strasbourg will be attended by mass demonstration and resistance, and there will be local protests throughout NATO member countries.  So what’s wrong with NATO?

• NATO is militarising the world. NATO promotes the idea that militarism guarantees peace, and its members currently account for 70% of the world’s military spending.  From its origins as an ostensibly defensive alliance, NATO has developed a strategy of military intervention in order to expand its sphere of influence, as tested in 1999’s unjustified and tragic high-altitude bombing campaign against Serbia.
• NATO threatens nuclear war. As part of NATO’s arsenal, hundreds of US nuclear weapons are sited across Europe, in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. NATO rejects a “no first use” policy, meaning that it reserves the option of a pre-emptive nuclear strike.  Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons are assigned to NATO, and could be used against any country perceived to be threatening a NATO member.
• NATO sponsored terrorism. From the 1950s to the 1980s NATO operated a network of clandestine army forces across Western Europe, codenamed Operation Gladio.  These secret NATO paramilitaries carried out terrorist attacks for which they framed communist groups in order to frighten populations into voting for right-wing governments.
• NATO is a tool of the “War on Terror”. The September 11 attacks provided the casus belli that NATO’s masters were waiting for.  Under the banner of a Global War on Terrorism, NATO immediately militarised the Mediterranean and went to war in Afghanistan.  Tens of thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed already and NATO forces are killing more every week in this expensive, bloody and unwinnable war.
• NATO is provoking a new Cold War. NATO was established to oppose expansion of the Communist Bloc.  However, far from dissolving after the Cold War ended, NATO expanded to the East, adding many former Warsaw Pact countries. Now NATO’s plans to place missile defence systems near Russia’s border have provoked Russia to aim its own missiles back at Europe.

NATO is not a benign force for peace, security and democratic values; it is an engine of war working to expand the domination of Western interests through military means.  It is an obstacle to global nuclear disarmament and world peace.

NATO’s expansion must be halted, its foreign interventions brought to an end and its military bases and nuclear weapons decommissioned.  NATO should be dismantled and its resources used to achieve a nuclear-free, less militarised and therefore more secure world.

Demo at German HQ of Nottingham arms company

Four activists from Nottingham travelled to Germany to take part in a demonstration against arms company Heckler & Koch at the company’s international HQ in March.  H&K is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of small arms, and its guns are used throughout the world; from Darfur to Iraq, from Nigeria to Nepal.  The company has long been opposed by peace campaigners in Germany, and since 2008 its Nottingham office has been the target of a local campaign called Shut Down H&K.

In 2009 Heckler & Koch will be 60 years old.  In order to pre-empt the company’s birthday celebrations, German peace groups organised a protest with the slogan 60 Jahre Heckler & Koch: kein Grund zum Feiern (60 Years of Heckler & Koch: No Cause for Celebration).  The Nottingham activists were invited to a March 7^th demonstration by the peace groups RIB, ORL and DFG-VK, who also funded their journey.

Nottingham campaigners to visit Germany

Four Nottingham anti-arms trade campaigners are visiting the German town of Oberndorf-am-Neckar in early March to attend a major protest at the international headquarters of arms manufacturer Heckler & Koch, whose British branch is based in Nottingham.

The Nottingham delegation

The Nottingham activists will be joining their German counterparts to protest about Heckler & Koch’s role in supplying arms used in murderous conflcts around the world. It has been revealed that H&K guns have been used by the Janjaweed militias in Darfur, by Blackwater mercenaries in Iraq, by the Georgian army in South Ossetia, and by criminal gangs in the UK.

The four will represent a Nottingham-based campaign called Shut Down H&K, which has been building friendship links with German organisations who also oppose the arms trade. A German peace group caled the Armaments Information Office (RIB) invited them to attend the demonstration and offered to pay their travel expenses.

The March 7^th protest has been organised by German campaign groups to pre-empt H&K’s 60^th anniversary celebrations. The theme of the demonstration will be “Masquerade of Death” and the marchers will be split into two columns – one mourners dressed in black to commemorate the victims of war, and one dressed as arms dealers celebrating their booming business. There will also be a rally at which the delegation will deliver a speech about the Nottingham campaign against Heckler & Koch.

Making a killing: Heckler & Koch guns in the hands of an African child soldier, a Taliban fighter in Pakistan, Serbian special forces, a Nepalese soldier and a Palestinian militant

press release in PDF

Shut Down H&K Spead The Word!

A small demo was held in Market Square on Thursday 22^th January to raise awareness and spread the word about the campaign against arms manufacturer Heckler & Koch. Hundreds of flyers were handed out to passers-by with the aim of raising awareness that Nottingham is home to the international sales headquarters of a multinational arms company. Conversations were had with Nottingham residents not only about the presence of H&K in their city but also about the arms trade in general, creating an effective space to engage in dialogue with the public. For more details and pictures, see Indymedia.

Shut Down H&K campaigners raising awareness in Market Square (photo courtesy of Tash)

There will be further demos in Market Square every fourth Thursday of the month, as well as continuing demos outside the headquarters in Lenton industrial estate every second Monday.

Quantum Of Solace: Don’t Buy Bond

Bondmania is back! Everyone loves Bond, especially since the franchise’s gritty 2006 reboot, fronted by a brooding, steely-eyed Daniel Craig. As with recent Bond films, Quantum Of Solace is being used to sell various lifestyle products. Big name brands pay handsomely to be associated with Bond, and Quantum Of Solace has racked up £50 million pounds for product placement. Let’s take a look at what the film is selling.

Promotional tie-ins for Quantum of Solace include Heineken lager, Smirnoff vodka, Coca-Cola, Ford cars, Virgin Atlantic airline, Sony TVs, National Lottery Scratchcards and The Sun newspaper. Launching a new perfume, Avon claims that “through this unique partnership, every woman can feel like a Bond Girl – smart, empowered, confident, and sexy,” while package holiday company Orbitz tells us “you can’t do it better than Bond, but you can certainly travel like him.”

If some of those promotions make you feel slightly queasy, hold on; the best is yet to come. The new Bond films feature product placements for, yes, you guessed it, Heckler & Koch firearms. In Casino Royale, Bond defeats the villainous Mr White with a H&K UMP9 submachine gun – a weapon that he carries on using in Quantum of Solace.

Promotional graphic for Quantum of Solace showing James Bond wielding a Heckler & Koch UMP9 submachine gun

Students Target Unethical Career Corporatism

On Monday 20th October the annual AISEC Careers fair commenced at Nottingham University, featuring many organisations with despicable or at least dubious ethical credentials and social-responsibility records, including BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, Qinetiq, E.On, BP, RBS, MoD and the army. The fair also featured some student activists and Grim Reapers who had made an appearance in order to remind fellow students of the deadly consequences of working in the arms trade or climate change industry.