The Root of All Evil: Arms sales: Capitalizing on conflict: How defense contractors and foreign nations lobby for arms sales

The defense industry's business prospects are tightly controlled and in many ways entirely decided by official decisions made in Congress and the Pentagon in a way that other industries don't have to contend with. Despite those restrictions, business is undeniably good both at home and abroad. Foreign sales delivered an average of $12 billion worth of arms per year between 2016 and 2018, according to Security Assistance Monitor data analyzed by the Center for Responsive Politics.

That's on top of a sizable portion of the $740 billion Pentagon budget spent on weapons for use by the U.S. military. When it comes time for Congress to decide funding levels for a Pentagon that spends nearly three times as much as any other military in the world, arms manufacturers and military support sellers have an extensive network of lobbyists and former government employees pushing their business interests to members of Congress who have taken contributions from them and also often have constituents employed by them.

Read more at: https://www.opensecrets.org/news/reports/capitalizing-on-conflict

Arms Sales versus Human Rights: US approves sale of $290m in bombs to Saudi Arabia

Arms deals with Middle East dictatorships are being rushed through by Trump, critics say, despite opposition over human rights records.

The US state department has approved the sale of $290m in bombs to Saudi Arabia as part of a flurry of arms deals with Middle Eastern dictatorships in the last weeks of the Trump administration.

Critics of the sales say they are being rushed through despite broad congressional and public opposition to such military support because of the human rights records of the regimes involved and in the case of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the huge civilian death toll from the war in Yemen.

Read more at: US approves sale of $290m in bombs to Saudi Arabia | US news | The Guardian

Britain: suspends new arms sales to Saudi Arabia

UK government suspends new arms sales to Saudi Arabia after court ruling

Read more at: 

https://www.euronews.com/2019/06/20/uk-government-suspends-new-arms-sales-to-saudi-arabia-after-court-ruling

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US - Saudi Relations: Republican controlled Senate votes to block Trump arms sales to Saudis

Republican-controlled Senate votes to block Trump’s arms sales to Saudis

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/20/saudi-arabia-arms-sales-trump-faces-senate-vote-block?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

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Middle East: Saudi Arabia and U.S. on collision course as Mohammed bin Salman's standing ebbs

Trump has pledged that he won’t whitewash the murder and that the United States will do what’s necessary regarding whoever was involved, though he hasn’t mentioned Prince Mohammed’s name. The time to cash the check has come earlier than Trump expected. 

Saudi Arabia tried last week to lighten the load for the president by announcing the arrests of 21 suspects and the indictment of 15, while the attorney general said he would demand the death penalty for five, though he didn’t provide any names. 

Earlier King Salman fired Ahmed al-Asiri, the deputy intelligence chief, and Saud al-Qahtani, Mohammed’s senior adviser. In so doing the king set a ceiling on how high the punishment could go. But now it seems there will be no choice but to examine his own son’s future. 

According to The Washington Post, Prince Mohammed’s brother Khalid, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, was the one who phoned Khashoggi and encouraged him to go to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. The prince’s adviser and aide, intelligence man Maher Abdulaziz Mutrib, allegedly led the ring and after the murder phoned Qahtani and asked him to tell the boss that it was mission accomplished. 

Mutrib didn’t explicitly say the boss’ name but Qahtani has only one boss and that’s Prince Mohammed. The Saudi ambassador has strongly denied having any telephone conversation with Khashoggi, and a Post reporter has written that their last meeting came in 2017; afterward they corresponded several times. The top Saudi prosecutor said Thursday that Khashoggi was murdered by a “lethal injection” and that his body was dismembered, with his organs handed to someone outside the consulate for disposal.

Read moire: Saudi Arabia and U.S. on collision course as Mohammed bin Salman's standing ebbs - Middle East News - Haaretz.com

Weapons Industry - the root of all evil: Global arms exports on rise: SIPRI

Overall, the volume of international weapons transfers between 2005-2009 and 2010-2014 went up by 16 percent, according to an annual update of the SIPRI Arms Transfers Database, published on Monday.

The reports claims that US exports of major weapons increased by 23 percent between the periods of 2005-2009 and 2010-2014. The share of exports from the US was 31 percent in 2010-2014, SIPRI said, compared with 27 percent for the next largest exporter, Russia. Exports of major weapons from the Kremlin increased by 37 percent during the same period.

The findings were confirmed by Amnesty International. "As the main arms supplier to Egypt, the US authorized the sale of small arms, millions of rounds of ammunition and chemical agents for riot control, despite the security forces' violent crackdown on protesters," a spokesperson for the international human rights organization told DW in a statement.

"The US has long seen arms exports as a major foreign policy and security tool, but in recent years exports are increasingly needed to help the US arms industry maintain production levels at a time of decreasing US military expenditure," said Aude Fleurant, director of the SIPRI Arms and Military Expenditure Program.

The US and Russia, though the world's largest exporters by volume, were surpassed by China with regard to weapons export growth. According to SIPRI, Chinese exports of major arms increased by 143 percent, making it the third largest supplier in 2010-2014.

Read more: Global arms exports on rise: SIPRI | World | DW.DE | 16.03.2015

EU suspends arms sales to Egypt over crackdown

EU member states have agreed to suspend export licences for any equipment that could be used for repression in Egypt, but humanitarian aid will continue. 

The decision was announced by EU foreign policy chief Baroness Ashton after emergency talks in Brussels.

She said EU governments "feel very strongly that they want to continue to support vulnerable people in Egypt".

The foreign ministers met after a week in which more than 900 people have died in Egypt's political violence.
Lady Ashton said the EU would review its assistance to Egypt and was urging all sides to "stop the violence and provocations" and "engage in inclusive national dialogue, open to all".

Read more: BBC News - EU suspends arms sales to Egypt over crackdown

Obama cites national security to block Chinese purchase of wind farm - Europe also cautious about Chinese Government influence in trade

Today President Barack Obama took the unusual step Friday of citing national security grounds to block a Chinese-owned company from owning or building four wind farm projects in Oregon — acting little more than a month before an election in which he and Mitt Romney have traded accusations of going soft on China.

It was the first time in 22 years that a U.S. president has blocked such a foreign business deal, The Associated Press reported.

The Treasury Department said in a statement that Obama’s order was a matter of national security, citing the wind farms’ location “within or in the vicinity of restricted air space at Naval Weapons Systems Training Facility Boardman in Oregon.”

The European Commission during a recent visit of the Chinese PM Wen said China still needs to show less government influence over its businesses, including those in the financial sector, and to adopt transparent laws on corporate governance, property and bankruptcy to be eligible for market economy status.

There are also serious irritants about the E.U for Beijing, including the ban on arms exports to China, and the reluctance of Europe to classify China as a modern, open economy, which would clear the way for advantages on tariffs. 

The EU bloc is certainly attractive to Chinese investors with a market of 500 million consumers, a highly educated labour force and the most innovative economy in the world.

It is predicted that China will make between €800 billion and €1.6 trillion worth of new investments abroad between 2010 and 2020.

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DW: Germany backs global arms trade treaty, China and Russia abstain

Forthe complete report fromthe Deutsche Welle click on this link

Germany backs global arms trade treaty, China and Russia abstain

Germany, along with other key United Nations members, has backed talks on a global treaty to regulate the global trade of weapons. Two major arms suppliers, Russia and China, refused to support the measure.The United Nations resolution calls for talks aimed at agreeing a treaty to police the world's 37-billion-euro ($55-billion) arms trade.US President Barack Obama decided to back the treaty providing that the final round of talks, set for 2012, were run on the basis of consensus, granting countries veto powers. Germany and several other states, were angered by that demand, arguing it would lead to a watered-down treaty. Diplomats said Britain had persuaded Berlin that US involvement would strengthen the legitimacy of any treaty, as Washington controls around two-thirds of the global arms trade.

AlterNet: European Arms Manufacturers Pump Weapons into Troubled Regions - by David Cronia

For the complete report from AlterNet click on this link

European Arms Manufacturers Pump Weapons into Troubled Regions

Despite the EU code of conduct, European corporations continue to supply the world's most dangerous groups with arms. A stronger law is needed.Located in the west of the country, Eldoret is also home to an ammunition factory opened in the mid-1990s by the Belgian company FN Herstal. The plant has been blamed earlier for providing supplies to armed factions in the genocide that swept through Rwanda in 1994. Now Amnesty International has documented human rights violations by Kenyan forces using weapons manufactured at the same site. The continued involvement of a firm from the European Union in Kenya comes despite a decade-old EU code of conduct on arms sales. The code stipulates that licenses to export weapons cannot be issued if there is a threat they will be used for internal repression or in armed conflicts. But because the bullets in Eldoret are made outside the EU, they are not covered by the code.

The EU's governments agreed in 2005 to make compliance with it mandatory. Yet the formal steps needed to give effect to that decision have not yet been taken, largely due to the stance adopted by France. Paris has indicated it would only be prepared to agree to upgrade the code's legal status when an EU arms embargo on China, imposed after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, is lifted.