From the 8th to the 11th September 2009 thousands of private companies will converge at the Excel centre in docklands, East London, for Defence Systems Equipment International (DSEi), the world's largest arms fair.

These are the companies making money out of the bloodbath in Iraq and Afghanistan and who enabled the Israeli massacre in Gaza earlier this year. Exhibitors include BAE Systems, Raytheon and ITT, all of them war criminals. It is of utmost importance to resist this arms fair.

The international arms industry is financed by banks and investment companies. Barclays Bank holds the largest number of shares in the international arms industry, £7.3 billion, and serves as a principal banker for three arms companies: VT Group, Cobham and Meggitt. Royal Bank of Scotland is the largest financier of the industry having loaned £44.6 billion in the last ten years. RBS also holds £36.4 million in shares and is the principal banker for BAE Systems, Rolls Royce, Babcock and Ultra Electronic.

This is a call to action, in the weeks leading up to DSEI, against Barclays and RBS. Already autonomous groups around the UK have begun to target banks who are complicit in the arms trade. Around the time of Smash EDO's Mayday protest in Brighton activist scaled scaffolding outside Barclays Banks to hang a banner against their investment in the arms trade, HSBC, another investor, had their windows smashed and RBS was graffitied. During August actions against Barclays and HSBC, where windows have been smashed and ATMS glued shut, have taken place in Somerset.

In the run up to the DSEi arms fair it is time to gear up these actions. The banks as major shareholders in the arms trade, are complicit in the crimes committed with the weapons being peddled at DSEi. They are also vulnerable, direct action can force the banks to divest their shares in the arms trade.

During the next two weeks lets show Barclays and RBS that we will no longer the financing of international mass murder... Battle the Banks