From the Daily Freeman

WOODSTOCK, N.Y. – At least nine people, some who put their arms in concrete tubes, were arrested as part of a pro-Palestinian protest that greeted Ametek Rotron employees at 6 a.m. on Tuesday and ended a little over nine hours later after state police and sheriff’s deputies from the Ulster County and Orange County cleared two entrances.

Some in the anonymous group of about 35 protesters, who declined to be identified individually but who identified themselves in an earlier email about the action as Protesters for a Free Palestine, were arrested and taken to state police headquarters in Hurley for booking, according to Woodstock Police Chief Clayton Keefe.

The arrests were made after police cut through concrete tubes in which protesters had put their arms, as other members then secured with what appeared to be duct tape over cloth material. At the delivery entrance, there were two people with both arms in a tube and two more with one arm each.

For the first nine hours, there were back-and-forth discussions with police between a representative for the protestors, who would then immediately call an off-site person with an update while the Ulster County Sheriff’s and state police would then contact their agencies.

After more than six hours that Ulster County Sheriff Juan Figueroa had engaged in on-site discussions, there was no agreement with protestors.

“It’s kind of fluid right now,” Figueroa said hours before the arrest. “We’re trying to negotiate … but the company has rights. This is private property so we’re trying to come up with a compromise.”

Earlier in the day, Supervisor Bill McKenna said that blocking access to private property was an issue.

“There are a group of folks who are expressing their First Amendment rights and I think everybody here is in full support of that,” McKenna said. “They are blocking private property, which is problematic, and I think everybody is trying to come up with a solution that ends this peacefully.”

Figueroa, who was at the scene throughout the day, had said that the protestors were disrupting a private business operation.

“I respect people’s First Amendment rights but you can’t block roads and you can’t interfere with others,” Figueroa said, adding that being on private property “makes a huge difference.”

One of the protesters who would only identify themselves as “L” said the protestors were making a point.

“This action is to hopefully not only educate our community that we have a weapons manufacturing plant in our backyard, but also to say, no weapons to Israel, let Gaza live,” the protester said.

The gaggles of police became more animated as they maneuvered the press first to one location and then across state Route 375 as vehicles arrived for the plan to carry prisoners. At about 3 p.m., a state police transport left off about 15 helmeted troopers with bulletproof vests, with that contingent taking orders briefly before walking up to replace the less protected troopers who had lined up in front of the protesters some 20 minutes earlier.

Police preparations for the arrest had begun at about 2 p.m., when they gave the protestors a warning that they would be taken into custody if they did not move off of the property. They largely complied by moving to the state Route 375 right-of-way only to creep closer and closer to the property until ordered back, with a state trooper finally making the point they would be joining their friends if they did not stay behind a rock that seemed to mark the property line.

Protesters who would only identify themselves as being “Hudson Valley neighbors,” said they chose Ametek because the site manufactures fans used by the Israeli Defense Force.

“This has been many months planning,” a woman, who would not provide a name, said.

Following the arrests most of the remaining dozen protesters stayed behind at the delivery entrance to continue their demonstration along the highway.

 

 

Cancel the failed F-35 fighter plane

The F-35 Lightning II fighter jet program is a failure. Billions have been spent over a generation and still this aircraft isn’t fit for purpose. Meanwhile education, healthcare, and climate action are woefully underfunded. Click here to urge Congress to cancel the failed F-35 fighter jet program and invest our resources in programs that actually help our communities recover and rebuild from the COVID-19 pandemic.

One Third of Biden's Pentagon Transition Team Hails From Organizations Financed by the Weapons Industry

 By Sarah Lazare, In These Times

In July 2019, while campaigning for the Democratic nomination for president, Joe Biden declared in a foreign policy speech, ​“It’s past time to end the Forever Wars, which have cost us untold blood and treasure.” But the president-elect — who as vice president oversaw wars in Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan and more — is already embracing personnel with strong ties to the military apparatus driving this endless combat.

On November 10, Biden announced his agency review teams, which he says ​“are responsible for understanding the operations of each agency, ensuring a smooth transfer of power, and preparing for President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris and their cabinet to hit the ground running on Day One.”

Of the 23 people who comprise the Department of Defense agency review team, eight of them — or just over a third — list their ​“most recent employment” as organizations, think tanks or companies that either directly receive money from the weapons industry, or are part of this industry. These figures may be an undercount, as In These Times was not immediately able to exhaustively source the funding of every employer.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is listed as the ​“most recent employment” of three individuals on Biden’s Department of Defense agency review team: Kathleen Hicks (a former defense official under President Obama), Melissa Dalton and Andrew Hunter. CSIS is a hawkish and influential foreign policy think tank that receives funding from General Dynamics Corporation, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman Corporation, Lockheed Martin Corporation and other weapons manufacturers and defense contractors, as well as oil companies. 

Raytheon is a key supplier of bombs to the U.S.-Saudi war in Yemen, and has aggressively lobbied to prevent any curbs on arms sales to the Saudi-led coalition. Among the weapons that Northrop Grumman manufactures is drones, which have been used by the U.S. military in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, among other locations. Notably, a New York Times investigation in 2016 found that, based on a cache of email leaks, CSIS was effectively doubling as a weapons industry lobbying firm, pushing for expanded drone sales. Lockheed Martin is a key contractor for the THAAD missile system in South Korea — a system that CSIS has also advocated for without disclosing their conflict of interest. The company also manufactured the bomb that struck a school bus in Northern Yemen in August 2018, killing at least 26 children.

CSIS also receives money from a host of governments, including the United States, as well as the United Arab Emirates, which has joined with the United States and Saudi Arabia to wage war on Yemen. CSIS, in addition, receives money from the state-run oil company Saudi Aramco, which effectively amounts to a donation from the Saudi government.

Two of the individuals named for Biden’s Department of Defense agency review team — Ely Ratner and Susanna Blume — list the think tank Center for a New American Security (CNAS) as their most recent employer. CNAS takes a significant chunk of its money from Northrop Grumman Corporation, as well as the U.S. State Department ($500,000 or more per year on both counts), and from Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and a host of corporations, including oil companies. 

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris drew heavily from CNAS to advise her presidential primary campaign. The think tank is known for embracing conventional, pro-war foreign policy, as well as escalation toward Russia and China.

Three people from the team — Stacie Pettyjohn, Terri Tanielian and Christine Wormuth (also a former defense official under Obama) — hail from the RAND Corporation, a hawkish think tank that receives significant funding from the U.S. Army and the Department of Homeland Security. (These individuals are not being included in the tally of people who work for organizations funded by the arms industry, but nonetheless their involvement shows the political bent of Biden’s Department of Defense transition team.)

“It’s telling the think tanks represented here — RAND, CSIS and CNAS — are among the top recipients of Department of Defense and Department of Defense contractor funding,” says Ben Freeman of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative, which recently authored a report on think tank funding. ​“CNAS and CSIS are literally number one and number two in terms of donations received from U.S. defense contractors in the last six years. RAND is, by far, the top recipient of Department of Defense funding of any think tank.”

Sharon Burke, on Biden’s team, works for New America, which calls itself a ​“national network of innovative problem-solvers.” The organization receives funding from Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and U.S. Army War College.

Shawn Skelly’s most recent employer is listed by the Biden team as CACI International, which provides information technology for U.S. military weapons systems. (Because Skelly’s LinkedIn page says she worked at CACI until ​“November 2020,” In These Times is including her in the tally of people who receive money from or are employed by the weapons industry, given the relevance to her present finances.) Before Skelly started working there, CACI was sued by Iraqis formerly detained in the notorious U.S. military prison Abu Ghraib, on the grounds that contractor played a direct role in their torture. (The lawsuit is still ongoing.)

Victor Garcia lists ​“Rebellion Defense” as his most recent employer. This software company says it helps ​“our defense and national security agencies unlock the power of data across all domains.” It was founded by former defense officials and ​“analyzes video gathered via drone,” according to the New York Times.

Of those remaining, one team member works for JPMorgan Chase & Co., another is retired from the State Department, a few work for universities and other organizations, and one works for the Nuclear Threat Initiative, which says it strives to ​“prevent catastrophic attacks with weapons of mass destruction and disruption — nuclear, biological, radiological, chemical and cyber.” Lisa Coe, also on the team, lists as her most recent employer OtherSide Consulting, a defense industry consultant, according to Defense News. However, because In These Times was unable to independently verify this, Coe is not being included in our count of team members funded by the military or weapons industry.

Farooq Mitha, also a member of the Department of Defense team, is on the board of Emgage, which has garnered criticism for its affiliation with anti-Palestinian organizations.

The news prompted disappointment from anti-war groups. ​“Biden building a team of people with connections to weapons manufacturers and the military industrial complex is a prime example of how militarism and imperialism are bipartisan,” says Sidney Miralao, an organizer with Dissenters, a group of young people who oppose U.S. militarism and the war industry. ​“Democrats and Republicans alike perpetuate and profit off of war and violence in our communities at home and abroad. By continuing the legacy of the revolving door with the defense industry, Biden and his team are setting themselves up to be able to continue growing the military and strengthening the narrative that war is necessary to safety.”

While campaigning, Biden made some overtures to the surging left wing that nearly catapulted Sen. Bernie Sanders (I‑Vt.) to the Democratic nomination, forming a unity task force with Sanders backers that issued a series of recommendations, from climate to labor. Yet these efforts to reach out to the left largely omitted issues of war and militarism, leaving critics of U.S. aggression concerned that a Biden administration would bring a continuation of the wars he’s supported throughout his career. Biden played an influential role in backing the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, has been a career-long supporter of Israel’s aggression toward Palestinians, and has defended the open-ended occupation of Afghanistan, among other acts.

Outgoing President Donald Trump, for his part, hoisted people with close ties to the arms industry into prominent Department of Defense positions, appointing Mark Esper, a former lobbyist for Raytheon, to the position of Sec­re­tary of Defense. (Trump fired Esper and a number of other senior military officials in recent days, in what appears to be a sign of Trump’s effort to stay in power despite losing the presidential election.)

“Has Biden already forgotten who put him in the position he’s in?” says Ramón Mejía, anti-militarism national organizer with the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, an alliance of community organizations. ​“The only reason he’s president-elect is because Black, Brown, Indigenous youth mobilized to vote out Trump’s fascism. Biden shouldn’t make the mistake that Democrats are commonly known to make, which is to abandon the same people who put them there.”

“War-making and corporate profiteering is a non-starter,” Mejía adds. ​“We must divest the bulk of our budget from a war-fueling extractive economy, and prioritize investing in a life-sustaining regenerative economy.”

 

Ulster County's weapons contractor expands

Woodstock's weapons contracting business is booming as the rest of the economy struggles. Should we change our priorities and support peaceful, green manufacturing instead of yet more weapons production? After all, we know that peaceful, green manufacturing creates more jobs (per $ invested) than military contracting.

Empire State Development Announces Completion of Ametek Rotron Expansion In Ulster County

"Ametek Rotron has completed its $2 million expansion in Woodstock, Ulster County. As part of this project, the company has committed to creating 15 new full-time jobs. Ametek Rotron specializes in high-performance fans for the defense and commercial aviation industries, working with companies like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman, and other high-end electronic users. ... The project will increase the manufacturing capability of the current facility by 30% and will allow the company to expand into advanced and additive manufacturing arena." [sic]

So once again our tax dollars (in this case, $604,000 of our state taxes) are going to support the expansion of the military-industrial complex rather than creating peaceful, green jobs.

Local politicians chimed in:

Assemblymember Kevin A. Cahill: "I am proud to have supported the funding that led to this much-anticipated project coming to fruition.” 

Ulster County Executive Patrick K. Ryan: "We are proud to have Ametek Rotron as an important part of the Ulster County community."

Woodstock Supervisor Bill McKenna: “I am glad to see this addition to Ametek Rotron.”

It's a pity none of them has a word to say about Rotron's supplying parts for all major US weapons systems including nuclear missiles, and to prominent human rights violators such as Saudi Arabia and Israel. Nor about Rotron's long history of poisoning the wells, groundwater and soil of local homes with the toxic byproducts of its weapons components manufacturing.

Kathy Kelly on the need for a peace economy

From Counterpunch

" ... The time for manufacturing of weapons of war has passed as a viable industry for our nation, despite the way some of our political leadership clings to economies of the past. The global pandemic emphasizes for us all the interconnectivity of our global society and the folly, wastefulness, and moral failure of war in all forms. We must transform facilities like BIW [Bath Iron Works, Maine, maker of Aegis naval weapons systems] and Marinette [Fincantieri Marinette Marine shipyard, Wisconsin, maker of warships for the Pentagon and Saudi Arabia, visited by Trump on June 25] into hubs of manufacturing for solutions to the climate crisis, including public transportation, resources for the creation of renewable energy, and disaster-response vessels.

Building clean energy systems would generate up to 50% more jobs than making arms systems according to research by leading economists. The two biggest security threats to the United States are currently the climate crisis and COVID-19. The Pentagon’s contractors have long contributed to the climate crisis, and the time for conversion is now. ..."

Read Kathy Kelly's full article

Woodstock's Biggest Business Is War

Local residents joined the international May Day Strike by gathering at the entrance to the local military contractor (Woodstock's largest employer) with posters urging Rotron to manufacture materials for life not death.

Ventilators for national security?

Woodstock's own weapons contractor is still open as an "Essential Business" under the category of "defense and national security-related operations". What if, instead of making yet more components for weapons of war, it turned to making something much more crucial to our national security at this moment -- ventilators? Or at least, components for ventilators? As a company whose main products are sophisticated air-moving devices and electronic equipment, it might seem they were well placed to help with this urgent need.

A portal into the next world

Arundhati Roy in the Financial Times:

"Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.

We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it."

Delgado takes time to call for more F-35s in the midst of the coronavirus crisis

In this moment of unprecedented social and fiscal crisis, Rep. Antonio Delgado is among the members of Congress who have taken the time to sign a letter calling on the Federal government to fund even more F-35s than the Pentagon had requested. These boondoggle planes won't fight the coronavirus -- indeed they will be useless in any actual war situation too -- and will take badly needed funding away from providing help for the overwhelming needs of individuals and institutions as we try to face and recover from this crisis and the economic crash that it's bringing.

We urge you to contact Rep. Delgado and tell him to reconsider his position and put pressing human and social needs first.

The Best We Can Do?

A letter to the Woodstock Times, 1/31/2019:

Thanks to DeeDee Halleck for her letter about Rotron’s expansion. Here’s a bit more on that from woodstockpeaceeconomy.org, "The Rotron facility has the distinction of being Woodstock's only Superfund site, after Rotron poured TCE  in the groundwater for decades -- the byproduct of earlier generations of Rotron ballistic missile, tank, fighter jet, rocket launcher and warship components. . . The TCE is still there."

Sure, jobs are important. Bills have to be paid, kids have to go to school, play ball, rents have to be paid etc. Essentials and more. Rotron does a good job of supporting all that in our community. It’s just a shame that in order to survive and thrive families here in Woodstock are dependent on jobs that contribute to the horrific and inexcusable deaths of other children and families in places like Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Niger, Somalia, and Palestine – Rotron also sells essential parts for weapons to Israel. Rotron also sells warplane parts to Saudi Arabia, even as it bombs Yemen.

Is this the best we can do? 

It all comes down to dollars, huge profits for weapons manufacturers, doesn’t it? Do those executives making millions from war give a damn about the workers, or about the thousands of innocent children being injured and dying from our global war-making? Are these wars about democracy and freedom or about profits and power? 

OK, what about jobs? Yes, Woodstock needs all the jobs it can get. How about jobs that don’t indirectly contribute to death and injuries? Green economy, funding human needs creates more jobs (per dollar spent) than funding military technology. Rotron has the technology, with a little effort, to lead the effort for conversion to a “Green Economy.” If we want that, it’s we, the people, that must demand it. See saisjournal.org/posts/the-transition-to-a-green-economy for more on that.  

Tarak Kauff
Woodstock, NY

Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace, Love and Music -- 72 Years of Weapons Contracting

This ad for Ametek Rotron's parent division, Ametek Aerospace and Defense, appeared in Jane's Defence Weekly in 2007. As Woodstock gears up for the 50th anniversary of the festival that didn't happen here, perhaps this graphic can remind us how our town's largest employer has been making critical contributions to the hatching of tanks, warplanes, helicopters, multiple rocket launchers, etc., year in year out since 1947 ... polluting their neighbors' groundwater as they did so.

Local arms parts factory expanding

A letter to the Woodstock Times, 1/17/2019:

In the last Woodstock Times there was a casual mention in the report from the town council  that our local arms parts factory was expanding . I hope that this newspaper (the only source for local information in our community) can do due diligence and give us more substance on this development. Has Rotron received more Department of "Defense" orders? Where do their parts (and the weapons they complete) go? Are they making essential ingredients for new cluster bombs for Yemen or Israel or Saudi Arabia? 

Our local weapons contractor is similar to the thousands across this country (one in every Congressional district) that perpetuate our war economy. We tax-paying citizens deserve to know what our money is doing across the world and especially next door.

I recall the terrible environmental problems that Rotron created some years ago--with highly toxic chemicals leaching into the water table. Has that been totally remedied? Will this expansion exacerbate that sort of problem? 

DeeDee Halleck

Willow

Woodstock's military contractor expands

In December 2018, Woodstock's Ametek Rotron was awarded $604,000 of New York State regional economic development funding for an expansion of its facilities off Route 375. Now they'll need some zoning changes to go through with the expansion project, which will bring them the latest digital technology in their quest for the ever-more-perfect weapons component.

The Rotron facility has the distinction of being Woodstock's only Superfund site, after Rotron poured TCE  in the groundwater for decades -- the byproduct of earlier generations of Rotron ballistic missile, tank, fighter jet, rocket launcher and warship components. This Woodstock Times front page from 1995 reminds us of that era. The TCE is still there.

The local economy needs all the jobs it can get, including the ten that this expansion will allegedly provide. State development grants are a great idea and to be encouraged. But even as we support militarism with over half our Federal taxes, we find that some of our State taxes are also feeding the military-industrial complex. We should demand our taxes fund human needs instead. Studies indicate that funding human needs creates more jobs (per dollar spent) than funding military technology.

State policy could be nudging companies like Rotron to devote their know-how to peaceful ends and a green economy, rather than driving them even further into the arms [pun intended] of the military.

A glimpse of some of our neighboring military contractors

Recently Congressman Faso, whose spidery district includes Woodstock, NY, emulated the President who on arrival home from bullying NATO to hike its military spending boasted of the business he had thus drummed up for Lockheed Martin and other buddies. Being sure, like his mentor, to name-drop his beneficiaries, Faso celebrated the passage of the $700-billion military spending bill by touting some of our local military contractors: "Upstate businesses such as Ducommun AeroStructures in Coxsackie (Greene County) and Amphenol Aerospace in Sidney (Delaware County) produce components for equipment authorized in this bill that is used by our troops."

What is the nature of this equipment made with the help of our neighbors being used by our troops and how is it used? Well, for one example, the Naval Strike Missile (NSM), pictured here. The Coxsackie facility is part of the manufacturing matrix of the California-based Ducommun corporation, whose website is currently boasting of their partnership with Raytheon to build crucial components for the NSM. Much like Woodstock's Ametek Rotron, Ducommun make components and subassemblies for many big-ticket military weapons systems, for example Apache, Chinook and Blackhawk helicopters. Ducommun state in their 2017 annual report that "Our largest end-use markets are the aerospace and defense markets and our revenues from these markets represented 90% of our total net revenues in 2017", enthusing about the "uptick in defense spending that includes major platforms we serve."

As for the Amphenol facility in Sidney, which employs about 1,000 people, they also boast of making components for a whole gamut of weapons systems: tanks and ground vehicles (their website features this picture of the Stryker Command Vehicle), helicopters, aircraft, AWACS, surveillance systems and more. When we see all these weapons systems at work we should perhaps think of all the bits and pieces that are made-in-Ulster County, made-in-Greene County, made-in-Delaware County, made-all-over-the-place. Then we might wonder about all the good uses to which our society might choose to put all this ingenuity, skill, hard work and resources, and reflect on how many more jobs (per dollar invested) these other uses provide compared to the military options.

The US is responsible for half of all global arms trade

Excerpted from a report in The Guardian, Dec. 26 (with emphases added):

The sale of global arms dropped slightly last year to $80bn from 2014’s $89bn, according to a new congressional study, with the US maintaining its position as the world’s dominant supplier.

But at $40bn the US market share of weapons sales amounted to about half of all arms agreements in 2015, and more than double the orders recorded by France, its nearest rival with $15bn in sales. The US and France both grew their market shares, by around $4bn and $9bn respectively.

Russia recorded a slight decline in arms orders, dropping to $11.1bn in sales from its $11.2bn total in 2014, while China reached $6bn, double the previous year’s estimates.

The latest figures were released last week by the Congressional Research Service, a division of the Library of Congress, and are considered one of the most reliable measures of the global arms trade.
US arms exports in 2016 looks set to remain broadly in line with the previous year’s sales. ...

The report’s findings conform to a study released in November that found that the Obama administration has approved more than $278bn in foreign arms sales in its eight years, more than double the total of the Bush administration, which approved $128.6bn.
  

That's Not Cool

from The Indypendent

By Jesse Rubin

 

WOODSTOCK, NY — On the 12th annual Woodstock Volunteers Day, residents gather in the Andy Lee Field for home-cooked food, folk songs and recognition of “what is good about [their] community.”

Two volunteers tabling for the environmental group Scenic Hudson ask for signatures and email addresses at the park entrance.

Tarak Kauff, a member of the antiwar group Veterans For Peace, lends his name to the environmentalist cause.

When Kauff presents the volunteers with his own petition, they hesitate. The petition, written by a group of local activists known as Woodstock Peace Economy, asks aerospace and military contractor Ametek Rotron to switch over all its production to civilian use. The 70-year-old company is the largest employer in this town of about 6,000 residents.

The two volunteers seem to hide behind their table. “Rotron?” one asks. “I thought they only made fans.”

Kauff tells them about the campaign and about the fans’ essential role in the functioning of F-16 fighter jets, cluster bombs and predator drones.

They decline and continue asking for signatures, some of which likely come from Rotron employees.

Military Contracts

In 2015 Ametek Rotron landed $2.6 million in Pentagon contracts. Compared to Lockheed Martin — one of the largest defense companies in the world with declared revenues of $46.1 billion the same year— this number is negligible.

But for a town that came to prominence as a haven for artists and later became synonymous with ’60s-era idealism and whose council declared it “drone free” in 2014 — any Pentagon dollars are incongruous.

So say activists affiliated with Woodstock Peace Economy who have recently renewed a long-running campaign against Rotron’s manufacture of weapons parts that dates back to the 1980s.

“Located in buildings just out of sight, off Rte. 375, Ametek Rotron makes high-tech fans, balls bearings and other essential parts for weapons used to terrorize and kill people the world over,” reads the group’s latest petition. “As most of us in Woodstock support peace and not war, the signers below request that Ametek Rotron explore how to convert its manufacturing facilities to support peace and not war.”

Route 375 is a main road into Woodstock — but before reaching the downtown, which trades on its image of a hippie haven — visitors must pass an inconspicuous white sign announcing the Rotron factory. While well established, it is unknown outside of the nearby Hudson Valley towns.

Founded in 1946 by Dutch engineer J. Constant van Rijn, the Rotron Manufacturing Company patented and developed high-intensity electronics cooling fans, which soon became critical for the burgeoning aerospace market of the 1950s.

By 1958 Rotron had developed the industry standard muffin fan, a powerful but quiet electronic cooling system. In tangent with his company’s success, Rijn became known as an arts patron in Woodstock. He is known for having contributed a heating plant to the Hudson Valley Repertory Theater so the famous playhouse could operate all year long.

He even “dedicated a statue of the buddha,” Woodstock Peace Economy activist, professor and longtime Woodstock resident Laurie Kirby told The Indypendent. “It’s the largest Buddha statue in North America.”

In 1961, the same year U.S. air and ground forces officially became active in Vietnam, Rotron developed and released the Mil-B-23071 standard for AC fans — the company’s first product strictly for military use.

The U.S. military uses an updated version of this fan to this day.

In the intervening years, as the United States has consolidated its position as arms merchant to the world, Woodstock’s largest employer has steadily increased its military business.

In 2015, Rotron secured 79 Pentagon contracts, its highest number ever, and logged record profits. On the whole, the U.S. armaments industry maintained its status as the largest in the world, accounting last year for 33 percent of global military exports, or $455 billion, according to the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS), the financial branch of the Defense Department.

Meanwhile, the company is reluctant to admit its weapons industry involvement, instead insisting that it is merely a supplier of nonlethal technology. But research conducted by The Indypendent and activists confirms the inextricable link.

According to public Pentagon contracts, Rotron produces centrifugal fans for F-16s, Milstar satellite systems, CV-22 Osprey helicopters, long-range navy radar and M1A1 tanks.

Ametek Rotron, in addition, is the main supplier of the fuel density probe, a critical component in the operation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) aircraft including the Predator Drone.

A leaked contract dated October 1, 2009, confirms Rotron supplied 50 fans to the Israeli Air Force that year.

The final destination of the fans remains unclear, but it is likely they operate in F-16s. In addition, a recently published Pentagon contract shows that Rotron provides a $7,365 motor to the Israeli Defense Ministry, confirming the company’s ongoing direct business with that country’s government. 
...

Read the full article

A Day In The Life

    On September 27, Woodstock’s largest employer signed a new $7,365 weapons contract with Israel’s Defense Ministry, for delivery to its Avionic Armaments division. This happened to be the day before the death of Shimon Peres, the father of Israel’s nuclear bomb program, but otherwise it was a typical day in the life of the territories illegally occupied by Israel, so we thought it might be interesting to look at some other news items from that ordinary day.

    On that day Israeli authorities demolished 33 residential, school and livelihood-related buildings in nine Palestinian communities, making dozens of people homeless including children, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. These incidents brought the total number of houses destroyed or confiscated by the Israeli forces in the West Bank so far this year to 878, a 60% increase over the figure for the whole of 2015.

    The OCHA adds: “Due to discriminatory and unlawful planning processes, it is almost impossible for Palestinians to obtain building permits in the vast majority of Area C and East Jerusalem. The systematic destruction of property in this context, along with other factors, contributes to the generation of a coercive environment pressuring residents to leave.”

    On that same day, in another piece of this campaign, Israeli forces destroyed four water wells in a village near Hebron, three of which had been built with funds from the YMCA.

    On that same day, the Israeli human rights group Adalah criticized Israel’s plan to expand the settlement of Gilo onto wide swaths of land belonging to the Palestinian town of Beit Jala, calling it “an infringement on the rights of the land owners in addition to being a breach of international law.”

    On the following day, Amnesty International reported that “Israeli forces continue to display an appalling disregard for human life by using reckless and unlawful lethal force against Palestinians,” adding that the Israeli military justice system “repeatedly fails to deliver justice for Palestinian victims of unlawful killings and their families.”

Protesting the Manufacture of Components for Military Drones in Woodstock

Local activists on Woodstock's Village Green calling for the local war economy to be converted to a peace economy. Investment for peaceful purposes creates more jobs than investment in war!

End the Manufacture of Weapons for War in Woodstock

Sign this petition

To: Ametek Rotron

Convert production in their Woodstock, NY, plant from parts for military drones, nuclear missiles, cluster bombs and other weapons of war to peaceful production

Why is this important?

Ametek Rotron is Woodstock’s largest employer. Located in buildings just out of sight, off Rte 375, Ametek Rotron makes high-tech fans, ball bearings and other essential parts for weapons used to terrorize and kill people the world over. Here in Woodstock Ametek Rotron is the sole supplier of such crucial parts as the fuel density probe for Predator drones. Ametek Rotron makes parts for missiles, nuclear weapons and many other weapons of death and destruction. In 2015 Ametek Rotron had $2,603,158 in Pentagon contracts. As most of us in Woodstock support peace and not war, the signers below request that Ametek Rotron explore how to convert its manufacturing facilities to support peace and not war.

Sign this petition at RootsAction

Tell Senator Reed to Stop Justifying Cluster Bomb Sales to Saudi Arabia!

From Code Pink
Last week, the House of Representatives failed to pass an amendment that would have halted the sale of U.S. made cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia, which has used the munitions as part of their devastating military campaign against Yemen. Now as our hopes turn to the Senate, we’ve discovered it’s Rhode Island Democratic Senator Jack Reed who is leading the charge to keep the flow of weapons going – weapons manufactured in his own state by a company that donates to his political campaigns!
Tell Senator Reed to stop putting the interests of war profiteers over human rights, and end cluster bomb sales to Saudi Arabia!