Editorial

It has a been busy times for the movement against war profiteering as you will read in this edition of WPN. We congratulate the work done by CAAT and The Corner House, with their court victory that ruled that the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) acted unlawfully when he stopped a corruption investigation into BAE Systems' arms deals with Saudi Arabia. At the same time the fact that a documentary exposing the arms trade was censored in the UK shows the level of impact that the Smash EDO Campaign has had.

The ongoing struggles against Eurosatory arms fairs in Paris and the conference of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power of Space are also reasons to be optimistic. The Disarm the Budget Campaign in Paraguay is a good example of a long term commitment for disarmament and the efforts to boycott ExxonMobil shows how the general public can have an impact against these corporations.

We are not saying that you should only act if you have a long term plan, as that many times would stop you from acting in the first place. But we do recognise the importance of keeping the pressure against these war profiteers as long as is needed and finding ways to escalate the pressure on these corporations and looking for creative ways to make the impact you aim for.

International cooperation can bring new elements to your campaign by helping you look at the bigger picture, looking at how these mega-corporations and governments are acting transnationally, but also to help you learn from other campaign experiences and looking at potential areas of cooperating.

Javier Gárate