Teach-In

The Portland Buddhist Peace Fellowship held our Teach-in today on RTX, the second-largest weapons producer in the USA, with an office in a suburb of Portland. It was a small event, twenty-one people standing in the cold damp of an afternoon, but we were small enough to break into discussion groups, and it felt like a warm-hearted community builder. We had ten speakers, each with a very short tidbit of factual information glued to an index card. Here is the first speaker, Camilo Marquez, who read this tidbit and had great fun imitating the enthusiasm of the CEO, for whom war is a portfolio-builder:

Days after October 7, shipments of American weapons began arriving in Israel: smart bombs, ammunition and interceptors for the Iron Dome missile-defense system. The conflict between Israel and Hamas is the latest impetus behind a boom in international arms sales that is bolstering profits and weapons-making capacity among American suppliers.

As of last year, the United States controlled an estimated 45 percent of the world’s weapons exports, nearly five times more than any other nation, up from 30 percent a decade ago.

“Lots of good news out there,” Gregory J. Hayes, the chief executive of RTX, whose Raytheon division is one of the world’s largest suppliers of missile systems, said during a Wall Street briefing. “And for us, it’s just a question of getting it out the door at this point.” Source: New York Times, November 17, 2023.

You may perhaps recognize the woman in the blue jacket at the left, who has (though you can't see them) drops in both her eyes.