Anti-war protests cite Caterpillar’s role in Israel/Palestine conflict
It’s getting so you can’t build an honest tractor these days without some fools shoving them into a war zone and dragging your good name through the muck with it. From a newspaper report in Birmingham, UK, where protesters want the fighting in the Gaza Strip to end.
Demonstrators also claimed companies, such as Caterpillar, should look at their own part in the attacks for supplying Israelis with equipment, such as bulldozers that are now flattening Palestinian homes.
Simon Furze, a member of the Stop the War Coalition in Birmingham, said: “These protests are to help build up interest in the public meeting.
“It is very important that we keep the pressure on the Government and ordinary people’s consciences.
“Companies in Britain are reticent about their part in the slaughter going on. Those providing machinery are implicit. Caterpillar for example, whose bulldozers are being used to pull down homes by the Israelis. It’s appalling.
Cat’s defense: “We can’t help what people do with our equipment.”
Well, they’ve got a point there: Osama Bin Laden’s family supposedly had the world’s largest fleet of Cat tractors for awhile there.
(On-topic observation: Mideast Unrest seems to be helping give oil prices a bit of a bump, which is among the factors propping Cat’s stock at the moment).