Pension Funds Weigh In on Iran
By Craig Karmin, The Wall Street Journal, July 24, 2007
With states around the country working on bills to force their public pension funds to unload shares of foreign companies doing business in Iran, a coalition of large public funds has begun pressuring companies to reconsider their ties to that nation.
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Are You Investing in Terrorism?
Many well-known American companies and those that do business in the United States also operate in nations that the U.S. labels as supporters of terrorism. Is it wrong to own their stocks?
By Michael Brush, Company Focus, July 9, 2007
Take a look at your stock portfolio. Are you supporting, at least indirectly, terrorist activities like the failed car-bomb attacks in London and Glasgow two weeks ago?
The idea may not be so far-fetched.
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Florida Becomes First State with Law to Divest Pension Funds from Iran, Sudan
The Associated Press, via The International Herald Tribune, June 8, 2007
BOCA RATON, Florida: Florida became the first U.S. state on Friday to outlaw pension fund investments in any companies doing business with Iran's energy sector and with Sudan.
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Iran Divestment Bill Passes
Assembly Sends the Senate a Measure with Mandates for CalPERS and CalSTERS
By Gilbert Chan, The Sacramento Bee, June 6, 2007
California lawmakers took a step closer Tuesday toward ordering the state's two giant public pension funds to unload more than $2 billion in retirement money invested in foreign companies doing business in Iran.
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Calpers Pressed to Drop Iran `Terrorism' Investments
By Alison Fitzgerald, Bloomberg News, March 19, 2007
California lawmakers are considering legislation that would force state pension funds to sell billions of dollars of shares in companies doing business with Iran.
The California Public Employees' Retirement System, the largest U.S. pension fund, and the state teachers' fund would have to unload shares in companies including BNP Paribas of France, Siemens AG of Germany and Eni SpA of Italy.
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Missouri Pioneers Iran Divestment Efforts
By Michele Kelemen, NPR, Morning Edition, March 16, 2007
Divestment was used to fight apartheid in South Africa, and has been used to shame Sudan. Now, Missouri has taken action to divest from companies that do business with Iran and other nations on the State Department's list of countries that sponsor terrorism. Missouri officials and others hope that more states will consider similar action.
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Missouri Treasurer Tout 'Terror-Free' Investing
By Grant Slater, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 15, 2007
WASHINGTON — Missouri state Treasurer Sarah Steelman was in the nation's capital this week to trumpet her efforts to keep state investments from companies that do business in countries believed to sponsor terrorism.
Steelman appeared here Tuesday at a news conference with the Center for Security Policy, a Washington think tank.
Federal and state officials have noticed Steelman's establishment of the first "terror-free public trust fund," and the Center for Security Policy showcased Steelman as an example for fund managers across the country.
Steelman manages the Missouri Investment Trust, a $27 million fund that collects taxes paid by entertainers and athletes to fund Missouri cultural organizations, $6 million of which undergoes screening for investments in countries such as Iran.
She also sits on the 11-member board of the Missouri State Employees Retirement System, where she said she fought to wrest control of the 20 percent to 25 percent of the $8 billion fund that is invested internationally and ensure it was not going to blacklisted countries.
Her office supported resolutions in the Missouri Legislature in the past two weeks that strongly encouraged the managers of $46 billion in public pension funds to scrutinize $1 billion in international investment across Missouri in companies that do business in countries such as Iran, said her spokesman, Mark Hughes.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., other members of Congress and representatives from a half-dozen states have contacted Steelman for advice referred to as "divestment from terror," Hughes said.
In Congress, her issue is becoming increasingly popular. Rep. Ben Sherman, D-Calif., said a bill introduced last week would force the State Department to enforce the terms of sanctions on Iran by providing a list of companies that invest in Iranian oil and otherwise violate them.
A second bill, which is still being drafted, could make it easier for investors to pull money out of companies doing business in Iran.
Poll Indicates Support for Divestment from Iran
By Eli Lake, The New York Sun, March 13, 2007
WASHINGTON — Nearly 80% of Americans would rather invest in mutual funds and other financial products that exclude companies that do business with state sponsors of terrorism, according to a new poll released today and obtained by The New York Sun.
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States Look at Companies Tied to Terror
By Sam Hananel, Associated Press, via San Francisco Chronicle, March 13, 2007
The latest front in the war on terror begins on Wall Street.
A growing number of states are considering pulling their investments out of companies that conduct business with Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria, all of which are on the State Department's list of terror-sponsoring nations. Missouri led the way last year when it became the first state to order its employee pension funds to dump shares of companies that deal with those four countries. At least five other states - California, Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey and Texas - have similar legislative proposals pending.
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Romney: Divest Pension Funds from Iran
By Glen Johnson, Associated Press, Feb. 23, 2007
BOSTON — Republican Mitt Romney, seeking to make U.S. policy toward Iran his issue, on Thursday urged several elected New York officials to divest any state pension funds from Iran.
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DaimlerChrysler to Exit Iran
Reuters, Feb. 12, 2007
DaimlerChrysler intends to divest its majority stake in the company that is its exclusive distributor for Mercedes-Benz vehicles in Iran, Germany's WirtschaftsWoche magazine reported on its Web site.
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Iran Can Be Stopped Without Resorting to Violence
By Greer Fay Cashman, The Jerusalem Post, Feb. 6, 2007
There is no need for violent action to stop Iran from moving forward with its nuclear program, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations on Tuesday night.
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U.S. Cautions Europeans to Avoid Oil, Gas Deals With Iran
By Steven Mufson, The Washington Post, Feb. 1, 2007
The Bush administration is warning European oil and gas companies against investing in Iran, trying to head off a push by Tehran to attract new investment by international petroleum giants.
In the past two weeks, the administration has met with European oil company executives about the Middle East, and during one session a senior State Department official cautioned that the situation with Iran was "hot and is going to get hotter," one executive said.
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Bibi to US officials: Divest from Iran
Associated Press, via The Jerusalem Post, Jan. 24, 2007
Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu on Tuesday asked New England officials to divest state pension funds from Iran, a step he said could pressure Iran into backing away from its nuclear ambitions.
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Dark Cloud Over Good Works of Gates Foundation
By Charles Piller, Edmund Sanders and Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 7, 2007
Justice Eta, 14 months old, held out his tiny thumb.
An ink spot certified that he had been immunized against polio and measles, thanks to a vaccination drive supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
But polio is not the only threat Justice faces. Almost since birth, he has had respiratory trouble. His neighbors call it "the cough." People blame fumes and soot spewing from flames that tower 300 feet into the air over a nearby oil plant. It is owned by the Italian petroleum giant Eni, whose investors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Justice squirmed in his mother's arms. His face was beaded with sweat caused either by illness or by heat from the flames that illuminate Ebocha day and night. Ebocha means "city of lights."
The makeshift clinic at a church where Justice Eta was vaccinated and the flares spewing over Ebocha represent a head-on conflict for the Gates Foundation. In a contradiction between its grants and its endowment holdings, a Times investigation has found, the foundation reaps vast financial gains every year from investments that contravene its good works.
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Chinese CNOOC Pledging $16 billion to Develop Iranian Natural Gas Fields
Lou Dobbs Tonight, CNN, Jan. 4, 2007
DOBBS: Now the results of our poll tonight: 94 percent of you do not believe companies that do business with nations that sponsor terrorism should be allowed to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange; 6 percent disagree.
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Multinational Corporations Aid Terrorist Regime In Iran: Do You Own Any Of These Stocks?
By Christopher Holton, Center for Security Policy, Dec. 29, 2006
Millions of American investors, as well as their pension funds, mutual funds and other institutions, have unsuspectingly invested their hard-earned wealth in foreign companies that aid and abet the Islamofascist theocracy in Iran.
If you are reading this article, you’re probably one of those unsuspecting investors....
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U.S. Embassy Is Warning Beijing on Iran Gas Deal
By Eli Lake, The New York Sun, Dec. 28, 2006
The Bush administration and Congress are warning that a proposed $16 billion deal between a Chinese company and Iran could trigger economic penalties under an American law aimed at starving Iran of funding for terrorism and nuclear weapons.
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Hit Iran Where It Hurts
By Dick Morris, New York Post, Dec. 27, 2006
The sanctions adopted by the United Nations are too weak, too puny and too late to have any deterrent effect on Iran's drive to build a nuclear bomb. But there is something the U.S. government, state governments, labor unions, pension funds and each of us as individuals can do: We can stop investing in companies that help Iran exploit the oil and gas resources on which its economy depends.
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How American Investors Fund the Islamofascists in Iran
By Christopher Holton, Center for Security Policy, Dec. 15, 2006
The war against Jihadist terrorism is the defining issue of our time. For more than 25 years America has been attacked—and continues to be attacked—by Jihadist terrorist groups bent on the destruction of our way of life. This war is different than any war in our history and we must fight on fronts on which we have never fought before—geographically, ideologically, and practically.
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Terror-Free Investing
Missouri Won't Buy Stock in Companies That Do Business with Rogue Regimes
By Sarah Steelman, The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 14, 2006
The idea of "shareholder democracy" is today much bruited about, but whatever connotations that term has acquired, at bottom it means investors have a "vote" -- that is, they can choose where to put their money, and where not. That kind of democracy assumes a new urgency in the post-9/11 world, as tens of billions of dollars are currently surging into countries that sponsor terrorism.
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Freedom's New Weapon
Center for Security Policy Decision Brief, Sept. 12, 2006
At a moment when things are not going particularly well in the War for the Free World - the global conflict with Islamofascism and its aiders and abetters in which, like it or not, we are currently embroiled - there is a bit of very welcome good news: America is employing at last a powerful new "weapon," one that may help turn the tide.
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