Editorial

With all the talk about the financial crisis, the world of war profiteering seems to be business as usual. Deals continue to take place at deadly arms fairs as we report in this issue. I would like to thanks Martin Parr and Magnum Photos for sharing with us the strong images from the arms fair in Abu Dhabi. There are other fairs taking place this year as we also announce – ITEC and DSEI – organisations are already making plans on how to disrupt these events, so please get in touch with them if you want to join in.

In this issue we report on the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space and we also announce the next meeting of the European Network Against Arms Trade. WRI and the Global Initiative Against War Profiteers works closely with different networks working on the subject. We know that it's much easier to build regional or specific thematic networks, but we in WRI believe in the importance of going beyond a specific regional area or one aspect of war profiteering to build alliances that enable us to tackle war profiteering and war in all its fronts. This is what WRI plans with its forthcoming International Conference “Nonviolent Livelihood Struggles and Global Militarism: links and Strategies” that will take place in Ahmedabad, India in January 2010. This conference relates two phenomena usually considered separately: community struggles defending the livelihood of local populations, and global militarism and in particular the role of transnational arms producers and war profiteers. At the conference we want to have representatives of networks/movements working in all these areas from all regions. Please get in touch if you are interested in joining it.

WRI over the past months has been collecting information on Campaigns Against War Profiteers, to build a Wiki up-to-date on as many campaigns as we know about. You can find a draft version at: http://wri-irg.org/node/6903. For this effort we urgently need your help, if you are involved in a campaign that would be good to include or you have the information of a campaign, please send us the information to warprofiteers-editor@wri-irg.org so we can share it with the rest of the network.

Javier Gárate