Mercenaries

Andrew Feinstein

The global trade in arms is a business that counts its profits in billions and its costs in human lives. It is arguably the most damaging of all trades, accounting for around 40% of all corruption. It has massive influence on the way our governments operate, ensuring that war is a preferred option to diplomacy, and that we spend billions of dollars every year on weapons we often don’t need. It perpetuates, makes more deadly and sometimes even causes conflict and repression.

Global military expenditure is estimated to have totalled $1.77 trillion in 2014, that is more than $250 for every person on the planet. This was a fall of 0.4% on the previous year and is about 2.3% of global GDP.

Emily Masters, originally printed in 'Peace News'

After a four-month campaign, the international Stop the Shipment campaign succeeded in stopping a shipment of over a million canisters of tear gas to Bahrain on 8 January.

The government of Bahrain has been using tear gas to repress pro-democracy demonstrations since the Arab Spring spread to the Gulf state in February 2011.

A Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) report in 2012 found that ‘Bahraini law enforcement officials routinely violate every UN principle’ in their ‘unusually relentless and indiscriminate campaign… weaponizing toxic chemical agents – so-called tear gas’.

Stopping the War Business, our international seminar on war profiteering, starts in Seoul in two weeks time!

Disrupting war profiteering takes a whole range of activities, from research, lobbying and legal challenges to mobilisation, direct action and creative campaigning techniques. This seminar will provide a space for activists using a whole range of different methods to gather together, learn how a spectrum of tactics interlink and help each other to be more effective.

The seminar is being jointly coordinated by World Without War in Korea and War Resisters' International.

What is war profiteering?

'War profiteering' includes all those who profit financially from war and militarisation, or whose money makes war possible. That includes a complex network of companies, financial institutions, and individuals. The obvious thing that people think of when you talk about war profiteering is weapons manufacturers, but it goes much further than that.

We believe that so long as violence remains profitable, war will persist, because the short-term economic interests of the powerful will be put before longer-term peace and liberation. So that's why it's important – because without preventing war profiteering, we can never see an end to war.

This September, one of the world’s biggest arms fairs arrives at London’s ExCeL centre. The arms fair, due to take place on 15-18 September, involves more than 1000 companies and 30,000 attendees. A week of action will take place in the week before the fair, from 7 – 12 September, to make it as difficult as possible for it to go ahead. Each day different groups will be organising actions highlighting the different impacts of the arms trade and repression. Many groups will be using the #WarStartsHere slogan, also used by the European Antimilitarist Network.

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Our CO-Update this month is a reminder that, as we work together as an international movement against war, the repercussions of resistance to militarism is often felt by individuals refusing to fight. Our Finnish friends have written of the history of the movement in Finland where resistance to conscription began, in some form, in 1901.

In October 2015 War Resisters' International and our South Korean affiliate World Without War will host an international seminar against war profiteering. This seminar will provide a space for activists using a whole range of different methods to gather together, learn how a spectrum of tactics interlink and help each other to be more effective. The seminar will coincide with a WRI council meeting, and will be followed by a nonviolent direct action against the ADEX arms fair, which will take place in Seoul and is the largest arms fair in the Asia region. For more information and the registration form, visit: /stopping-the-war-business

Through May and June, WRI affiliates across Europe have been taking action against war profiteers and the military. On 26th May, 'Switzerland Without an Army' blockaded the entrance to a military facility to obstruct a sales pitch by Drones company Elbit Systems. On the same day, Belgian affiliates Vredesactie and Agir Pour La Paix occupied the offices of four government parties in protest at the plan to purchase new F-35 fighter jets. On 8th May, ten protesters in Turkey protested against the IDEF 2015 arms fair in Istanbul, despite heavy resistance from the police (you can see a video of their statement in Turkish here). A few days later, arms dealers attending the IDET arms fair in Brno, Czech Republic, were welcomed to the fair by a host of grim reapers and a banner reading "Death stalks Brno".

[an international seminar on war profiteering]  Stopping the War Business talking tactics and linking methods
16 - 17 October 2015: Seoul, Republic of Korea

 

Please register here

For antimilitarists, disrupting war profiteering means knocking out the economic pillars that make war inevitable. It goes far beyond the arms trade (although that is an important part of it), and includes all those who fund and profit from war and militarisation.

Disrupting war profiteering takes a whole range of activities, from research, lobbying and legal challenges to mobilisation, direct action and creative campaigning techniques.

This seminar will provide a space for activists using a whole range of different methods to gather together, learn how a spectrum of tactics interlink and help each other to be more effective. It'll answer questions like 'How can we make our direct action more strategic using research? 'How could a public campaign support our lobbying work?' 'What tools or methods can help my campaign be more effective?'

This international seminar Stopping the War Business will be held in Seoul, Republic of Korea, 16-17th October. The seminar is jointly coordinated by World Without War in Korea and international antimilitarist network War Resisters' International.

Around ten protesters met today in front of the IDEF 2015 Defense Industry Fair in Istanbul. The protesters, who came together with the call of Conscientious Objection Association were met with heavy police presence including 15 civilian police, tens of riot police and one water cannon truck.

Despite attempts to prevent the protest by the police, the protesters read their statement in front of the building. “President Erdogan opened the fair by saying 'I hope this fair will bring fortune to the peoples of the world'. But the weapons that are present here will bring only death to the people all around the world” told Merve Arkun, the co-president of Conscientious Objection Association. Arkun criticized the increase of defense budgets worldwide, reaching to 1.6 trillion Euro per year. “The taxes taken from the poor peoples are spent for developing weapons of mass destruction. We're calling the states to stop their arms race” she told. Arkun ended her speech by referring to the latest developments in the defense industry like self guiding bullets and autonomous UAV's and telling “Don't forget that these weapons are killing people all over the world every day. You can never know when you'll be the next target. Militarism kills”.

Terry Crawford-Browne

Terry Crawford-Browne is a former international banker who became a peace activist during the 1980s. He lives in Cape Town.

Wendela de Vries describes the action Stop Wapenhandel took against the presence of Dutch companies at the IDEX arms fair.