By Jake Olzen, Waging Nonviolence With polls showing that a majority of the public is war-weary and that there is growing support for cutting military spending, the peace movement finds itself in a rare moment of opportunity. Concentrating efforts on building broad coalitions, there is a renewed energy among peace and economic justice groups to radically influence the Pentagon’s budget, which has more than ...

Pressenza publishes the press release from the organisation, World without Wars and Violence. Today the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute announced that the year 2012 saw an estimated US$ 1 750 000 000 000 spent on weapons and the military machine. This is in a moment of global financial crisis, billions of human beings living below the poverty line, thousands dying needlessly from war, malnu ...

World military expenditure totalled $1.75 trillion in 2012, a fall of 0.5 per cent in real terms since 2011, according to figures released today by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).* The comprehensive annual update of the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database is accessible from today at www.sipri.org/databases/milex The fall—the first since 1998—was driven by major spending cuts in the ...

Today the Dutch Fair Banking guide launched a report showing seven Dutch banks invest more than 1.5 billion Euros in nuclear weapons producers. The report shows that Dutch banks invest more than 1.5 billion Euros in the twenty nuclear weapons producers identified in the report.  Major media attention has been given to the scandal in the Netherlands, with prime-time television news last night featuring an ex ...

Secret Pentagon studies have cast serious doubt on the effectiveness of the US-planned multi-billion-dollar missile system in Europe, congressional investigators say. The classified studies by the Missile Defense Agency were summarized in a briefing for lawmakers by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a congressional nonpartisan investigative body. The GAO investigators said the briefing cast seriou ...

Groups organised in the European Network Against Arms Trade (ENAAT) strongly oppose any moves to amend the current EU arms embargo on Syria as proposed by the United Kingdom. A proposal to do so, to enable military equipment to be sent to anti-Assad groups, will most likely be presented to the Council of the European Union by the UK on Thursday 31 January. Syria is already awash with weaponry. Any further w ...

The "Fourteenth Annual Report on Control of Exports of Military Technology and Equipment" reveals that in 2011 European Union (EU) countries licensed arms exports valued at €37.5 billion - an increase of almost one fifth on 2010. The largest and fastest growing markets for weapons were in the Middle East and Asia, including countries embroiled in the uprisings of 2011, while Saudi Arabia replaced the USA as ...

We are saved —so our politicians tell us —from a plunge off the fiscal cliff. In all reports, however, it is mentioned that President Obama settled for a slice of what he claimed to be after, which was to raise taxes on those whose income is more than a $quarter million annually. Instead, the Republican bravehearts kept that rapacious goal at bay and made certain that taxes would only increase for those mak ...

Because the world spends roughly 1.7 trillion dollars each year on armaments, it follows that very many people make their living from war. This is the reason why it is correct to speak of war as a social, political and economic institution, and also one of the main reasons why war persists, although everyone realizes that it is the cause of much of the suffering of humanity. We know that war is madness, but ...