Editorial

During the last two weeks WRI has tested a new format of meeting by having our first Electronic Council meeting. Council meetings are where WRI reviews its work and plans for the future. During this e-Council one major topic was our work against war profiteering, where people from outside the WRI inner circle also joined in.

Since the Nonviolence Programme of WRI started working on war profiteers, it has always been a challenge to define a focus for its work. For example, how to define who is a war profiteer? There is a wide spectrum of involvement, starting from very clear cut ones like weapons manufacturers and sellers to others where the links are not that clear such as dams or mines that threaten whole communities with displacement, need military-style thugs to do their dirty work, and perhaps supply something the military need. After all the discussion at the e-Council there is a proposal that war profiteers would include:

* Arms and other products sold to the military. So it is not just the product but the client that defines what companies we target.
* The private military sector, a booming business especially in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and with the US programme of re-organising its overseas military bases into superbases.
* Military entrepreneurship i.e. where the military uses its position to dominate economic sectors, as in Indonesia, Turkey and Pakistan.
* Companies directly exploiting war (e.g. those "reconstructing" Iraq, those making profits from the occupation of Palestine, etc.)

During the e-Council the proposal of having an international conference against war profiteering came up. Such a conference would aim at bringing together campaigners from all continents. It should also assess the potential for forming a Global Network Against War Profiteers.

At the e-Council we also made further plans for WRI's upcoming International Conference "Nonviolent Livelihood Struggle and Global Militarism: Links & Strategies" that will take place in India in January 2010. This conference plans to have war profiteering as one main focus, not only seeking to identify where war profiteers are responsible for depriving local communities of their sources of livelihood but also learning about the nonviolent resistance to this. We very much invite you to join us in India.

We thank everyone that has taken part in this e-Council planning process. If you are interested in forming transnational alliances against war profiteers, or you are interested in coming to India for WRI's International Conference, please contact the WRI office.

Last but not least I would like to thank Jim Haber who contributed with the Campaign of the Month section.

Thanks,

Javier Gárate