Global Initiative Against War Profiteers Appeal

During the last week of July War Resisters' International celebrated our International Conference "Globalising Nonviolence" with more than 200 participants from all continents and more than 30 countries.

The stated aims of the conference were:

• making nonviolence more central in the global movement of resistance to war and economic domination
• adapting nonviolent analysis and strategy to the threats we face today, and
• consolidating and reviving our antimilitarist, nonviolent, global network.

It can be questioned if it was possible to achieve all these – certainly high- aims, but surely the conference was a step in that direction, and contributed to WRI's understanding of these issues. Together with this appeal you will receive the latest issue of our newsletter The Broken Rifle. This issue focuses on war profiteers. During the “Globalising Nonviolence’ we had a theme group on the topic of war profiteering. Most of the material you will find in this issue comes from the work of that week. In the article on the front page “The Revolving Door, A Revolting Access’ describes how corporations influence government and the decision-making bodies that decide military policy and military contracts.

An article contributed by a Colombian collective working on peace taxes, wrote an introductory article on who are profiteering from the Colombian conflict. They say in their article “One would have to arrive at the conclusion that being a war profiteer is an easy and more lucrative business than being an actor in armed conflict. Also it is apparent that those involved in war profiteering are often more Machiavellian than the soldiers themselves. They control the fine strings of power and death, but they don't directly get their hands dirty because they are not the ones who do the actual killing.’

During the theme group at “Globalising Nonviolence’ we agreed that WRI needs to play a role in coordinating an exchange of information on what various groups are doing, and promote their work to the wider antimilitarist-nonviolent network. To do so, we need your collaboration by making a generous donation.

Thank you,

Click here to make an online donation for WRI's programme work.