Business as usual

Even though this blog has not been publishing details lately, the largest employer in Woodstock, NY, continues to produce essential components for a wide variety of weapons systems. The GovTribe website shows $1.9 million of federal contracts for Ametek Rotron so far in FY2015, including $1.1 million for the Department of the Navy and $620,000 for the Defense Logistics Agency. Of course this is small fry in the $300-billion-plus world of Defense Department contracts. But it shows how, even in communities famous for peace and love, our economy is warped towards destructive military production rather than anything useful.

As an example, a recent $27K made-in-Woodstock contract on 5/20/2015 was for fans destined for the "ICC Patriot". What's that, you ask? It's the Information Coordination Central (i.e., command and control center) for a battalion of Patriot missiles. The Patriot, made by Raytheon and pictured here, is a mobile long range surface-to-air missile system with anti-ballistic missile capability, whose primary mission is now the US Army's ABM system.

More than 40 years ago, Woodstock's main employer received an award for its role in the US nuclear missile program. This tradition continues...

Is Woodstock helping to launch cluster bombs in Yemen?

M26 cluster munition found by Human Rights Watch in Yemen.

Human Rights Watch reports that US-made M26 cluster munition rockets have been used in Yemen, no doubt by the Saudi-led coalition, "killing and wounding dozens of civilians". The M26 is launched by the MLRS Multiple Rocket Launch System, for which we know that Woodstock's Ametek Rotron makes (or has made) components. So it seems likely that here is yet another war in which Woodstock is complicit.

Cluster munitions are banned under an international treaty signed by more than 100 countries (not including the US or Saudi Arabia).

Of course, Woodstock undoubtedly has its fingerprints on many of the other US-supplied weapons systems that the Saudis and their partners have unleashed on Yemen -- notably the warplanes used to make airstrikes.