Saturday, August 22, 2009

Divesting from Death

Not all space contractors are death contractors, but many NASA contractors are.

My focus when not working on deals and my book has been to create the blog at Divest from Death to promote Antiwar.com. The divestment project arose from a conversation with Angela Keaton that caused me to reconsider some of Rick Maybury's ideas from his newsletter (to which I used to subscribe). You can read more about it at the above captioned blog.

The basic idea is simple. Why invest in companies that do business with the government, especially the ones that do business with the military or the CIA? Why not invest in companies that don't do business with the government as contractors of any sort?

When I posted the idea on my Facebook profile as a note, Eric Pavao showed up with some comments. He has already implemented this policy for his own investments. And he listed some stocks that he has researched which don't do business with the government.

Can this work? I don't know. I do know that it can work for an individual investor, to make you feel better. If you are profiting from death, consider the mangled bodies of those killed in the current wars.

It might work. Divestment was proposed for companies that supported Jim Crow in the South back in the 1950s and 1960s. Eventually, we got rid of Jim Crow and segregated facilities in most companies in America.

Divestment also worked in the 1980s as a way of focusing opposition toward the apartheid policies of the government of South Africa. Again, it worked. It might not be the only thing that brought down apartheid, but it was one thing in the "arsenal" for liberty. (I am not saying that I like the socialist gov't of South Africa of today. But I like apartheid not at all.)

So, give it a look see. Feel free to comment on what is questionable. We just started this project in June, and the site a few days ago. It is the first WordPress site I've run, and I can only imagine how many things could be done better. Please feel free to make suggestions.

Thanks for all your work on freedom. The world is a better place because you work on freedom.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Quick update

Just a quick update. We found some funding for our documentary film project. Meg is on her way to Newspace 2009. She'll be doing interviews and other work for the project all weekend. Anyone who is going to be coming in from the SF airport and wants to share a ride should contact her. "Destination Resorts in Orbit" meets another milestone!