Arms from blacklisted companies

It is difficult to be ethical, left-leaning and in power. The Norwegian Ministry of Defence buys weapon components from companies that the Minister of Finance deems unethical.

This week the Norwegian Ministry of Finance excluded seven companies from the Government Pension Fund - Global (previously the Petroleum Fund) because they are involved in production of nuclear weapons. Last fall the Fund sold it’s investments in six companies involved in the production of cluster bombs, among them Canadian L3 Communications and Lockheed Martin Corp.

In November the Norwegian Air Force signed a contract with L3 SPAR Aeropspace, and the partially government owned Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace has a development contract with Lockheed. The Norwegian Defence Force also buys laser equipment from Northrup Grummen, which as blacklisted this week, according to the newspapers Vårt Land and Aftenposten.

- The Government has decided to extend the list of companies who are excluded from the Pension Fund. This does not affect the states’ acquisition policy regarding weapon systems. There is a principle difference between owning a share in a company and buying weapons from it, says Deputy Defence Minister, Espen Barth Eide to Vårt Land.

Many NGOs and supporters of the new red-green-alliance government cannot quite see the difference.

The Ministry of Finance says in a statement that the exclusion from the fund is based on a recommendation from the Ethics Council for the fund:
The Advisory Council on Ethics for the Government Petroleum Fund recommends that the companies BAE Systems Plc., Boeing Co., Finmeccanica Sp.A., Honeywell International Inc., Northrop Grumman Corp., United Technologies Corp. and Safran SA be excluded from the Petroleum Fund because they are presumed to be involved in production of nuclear weapons.

by Jan Speed

Comments

[Mike Andresen]

L3 Communications is not a Canadian company, it is US-owned.
The company that is doing the C-130 work is SPAR Aerospace, a Canadian company that is owned by L3 Communications.