Editorial

First of all apologies for the delay in sending out the newsletter. We hope to be back on track for the rest of the year.

In this issue two of the main stories look at areas of war profiteering not strictly related to the production or sales of weapons.

The main article in this newsletter is about the mining industry in Latin America and its impact on local indigenous communities. As Cesar Padilla says, mining continues to expand in Latin America and has more and more impact on the livelihood of people living in the region. This happens despite the rhetoric from "progressive" governments in the region and their posture of "anti-imperialism". Although there are efforts to nationalise mining, the transnational corporations remain the major beneficiaries of Latin American mining. Most countries in the region base their plans for economic growth on mining and other extractive industries - and this despite strong opposition to them from local communities.

The other area is the issue of companies profiteering from "Homeland Security", an issue we have not covered much. The War Profiteer of the Month (Unisys Corp) is a leading global supplier of "Homeland Security" technology, especially technology supplied to states to "control" their borders. While the public rationale for "Homeland Security" is said to be protecting people from "terrorism" - and it is very much part of the "us versus them" policies of the war on terror - in fact "Homeland Security" is a pretext for introducing greater controls on immigration and immigrants and more surveillance of activists involved in social protest. The scale of these polices boggles the imagination - I recommend Ben Hayes' "Arming Big Brother: the EU's Security Research Programme" for a detailed and shocking account of the wider implications of "Homeland Security".

Finally as the issue of the economic crisis remains high on the news agenda, and the different Occupy! movements try to maintain their momentum, the Campaign of the Month is a campaign in the State of Spain denouncing so-called "Civic Banking" and its connections with the arms trade. A good reminder of how banks continue to invest in the arms trade, including some which purport to be ethical, so check your bank!

Javier Gárate