PNeditorial's blog

    07 Mar 2024

    PN staff

    Just ahead of the second anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, a former head of the British armed forces called for a negotiated end to the war, trading ‘peace for land’. General David Julian Richards, lord Richards, said on 20 February: ‘War is the very last resort and we seem to too often treat it as the first resort and we’ve got to get back to diplomacy and seek some sort of resolution to it.’ Richards was echoing views expressed by a top US general back in November 2022.

    Ukraine should negotiate an end to its war with Russia, and be prepared to trade ‘peace for land’.

    That’s the view of one of Britain’s most senior retired military leaders, a former chief of the defence staff, general David Richards (lord Richards), expressed in a surprising interview with the BBC on 20 February. The full transcript of his interview is below. We should point out that we have not found any reporting of this interview, or of Richards’s call for negotiations, in any…

    22 Feb 2024

    PN staff

    A peace activist is not arrested despite police witnessing her spraypainting a pro-Gaza message on the outside of the city's naval base.

    In mid-February, longtime British peace activist Rosy Bremer spraypainted an anti-war message on the walls of Portsmouth naval base, which also houses an arm of the giant arms company BAE Systems.

    As you can see in the video shot by Linda Spence, Rosy spraypainted: '♥ Gaza ♥ Rafah ♥ peace'.

    Rosy told the Portsmouth News:

    'I'm a normal person and I believe we…

    11 Dec 2023

    Radhya Almutawakel

    An interview carried out by CIVICUS and published on its website on 3 December 2023, with a leading Yemeni human rights campaigner, discussing the current situation in the Yemen War.

    What’s the current situation in Yemen, and what are the prospects of the conflict being resolved in the near future?

    First, it’s crucial to note that the conflict in Yemen goes beyond a mere civil war, as it spans three distinct dimensions: local, regional and international. It started in 2014 when the Ansar Allah (Houthi) armed group seized control of Sana’a, the capital, and escalated with the intervention of a Saudi-led coalition in 2015. The ongoing conflict has…

    02 Dec 2023

    Yorkshire CND

    An art exhibition and a music performance in York raised awareness about the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted by the UN in 2017.

    On 26 November, CND and Extinction Rebellion (XR) activists gathered in York as part of a global day of action to call for an end to nuclear weapons and to bring attention to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). The event took place at the start of the second Meeting of States Parties (MSPs), a gathering of countries who have ratified…

    04 Jul 2023

    Helen Kidan

    Eritrea is a highly-militarised state, with at least 18 months' compulsory military service for all men and women aged 18 – 40 ('indefinite national service'). This is the text of a speech given by Helen Kidan, chair of Eritrean Movement for Democracy and Human Rights, on 17 June 2023 at Antimilitarist Roots, the War Resisters' International gathering in London. The material in [hard brackets] and embedded links have been added by Peace News to help the British reader. Helen Kidan has also made some minor changes to her text.

    [Lying on the Red Sea coast in North East Africa,] Eritrea is a former Italian colony, and it was federated to Ethiopia after Italy lost the Second World War to allied forces. Haile Selassie [emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 – 1974] broke the agreement by forcing Eritrea to be annexed. Therefore, in 1961, the 30-year war for independence broke out, this became the longest conflict in Africa.

    Eritrea and Eritreans were isolated during the war of independence and the outlook of Eritreans…

    05 Apr 2023

    Janet Fenton

    On 15 February, Nicola Sturgeon announced that she was resigning as the leader of the Scottish National Party – and therefore as the leader of Scotland's government (in coalition with the Scottish Greens). Humza Yousaf was elected leader of the SNP on 27 March and then, on 28 March, he was elected to the position of first minister (FM) by members of the Scottish parliament (MSPs). The new FM has a track record of strong support for nuclear disarmament – and for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in particular.

    When Nicola Sturgeon resigned from her position as first minister (FM) of Scotland, many people from in Scotland – and from outside – were aware of her unwavering support for Scotland's commitment and action for nuclear disarmament, her rock-solid commitment to  the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (which is supported by an overwhelming majority of UN member states), her actions in sending messages to the TPNW negotiating conference in 2017, and exchanging very public letters…

    10 Mar 2023

    Kathy Kelly

    Those who have an insatiable appetite for war seldom heed the wreckage they have left behind, says longtime US peace activist Kathy Kelly, reflecting on her experiences in Iraq during wartime.

    Twenty years ago, in Baghdad, I shared quarters with Iraqis and internationals in a small hotel, the Al-Fanar, which had been home base for numerous Voices in the Wilderness delegations acting in open defiance of the economic sanctions against Iraq. US government officials charged us as criminals for delivering medicines to Iraqi hospitals. In response, we told them we understood the penalties they threatened us with (12 years in prison and a $1mn fine), but we couldn’t be governed by unjust…

    26 Feb 2023

    Milan Rai

    China's 12-point peace plan is not designed to achieve a breakthrough in ending the Ukraine War, but it has performed a service by raising the profile of peace talks as a way forward. The position paper is designed to appeal to many different groups of countries, including those in the Global South, while maintaining China's strategic partnership with Russia.

    On the first anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, 24 February, the Chinese foreign ministry released a 12-point position paper on resolving the Ukraine crisis.

    Is the Chinese peace plan helpful? Yes, but only in the most general sense of raising the profile of the need for peace talks (Point 4) – and a ceasefire (Point 3…

    26 Feb 2023

    Martyn Lowe

    A tribute to a warm and humorous peace activist and community worker.

    The death in January of Neil Collins has left a gap in my own and many other people’s lives.

    Neil Collins was one of those individuals who, though involved in many campaigning groups and organisations over the years, was not someone who wrote all that much.

    He was very knowledgeable about many aspects of the early history of the anarchist movement and the peace movement. I learnt a lot about this history and honed much of my radical political thinking while having long chats…

    08 Jul 2022

    Matt Gannon, Kathy Kelly

    Instead of using its resources to solve world poverty and homelessness at home, the US government continues to ship weapons abroad. Unexploded US weapons including cluster bombs continue to litter Afghanistan, causing casualties every day. What the world needs is a healing of the Earth – perhaps through permaculture, a US anti-war conference suggests.

    'No War 2022, July 8 – 10', hosted by World BEYOND War, will consider major and growing threats faced in today’s world. Emphasizing “Resistance and Regeneration,” the conference will feature practitioners of permaculture who work to heal scarred lands as well as abolish all war.

    Listening to various friends speak of the environmental impact of war, we recalled testimony from survivors of a Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Berlin,…

    20 Jun 2022

    Milan Rai

    In this online telling of the tale, over twice as long as the article we printed in PN 2660, we hear from the activists behind the landmark legal ruling that deliberately obstructive protest can be legal.

    Two slogan-covered boxes are bundled out of a van in East London. People lie down on the road next to the boxes.

    Within seconds, the police are there.

    So are the activists’ support team and other protesters.

    DSEI, one of the biggest arms fairs in the world, is being set up in the nearby ExCeL Centre.

    Within minutes, the four people lying in the road – Chris Cole, Henrietta Cullinan, Jo Frew and Nora Ziegler – have been arrested.

    *

    This small action,…

    15 Jun 2022

    PN staff

    The Faslane Action for Bomb Ban Camp has led to at least four arrests outside RNAD Coulport, the nuclear warhead storage facility in west Scotland

    At least four people have been arrested among the many actions this week at the FABB (Faslane Action for Bomb Ban) Camp in Peaton Wood, in western Scotland.

    According to the FABB organisers, one of the arrestees was deprived of her heart medication for nine hours by police and threatened with being held overnight without access to her medication.

    The FABB Camp is very close to RNAD Coulport in western Scotland, which holds the…

    13 May 2022

    Ken Jones

    Reject Raytheon AVL, a local anti-militarist campaign group in North Carolina, USA, shut down the construction of a military plant in the US.

    It was an Earth Day to remember. On a beautiful sunny spring day, our local citizen coalition Reject Raytheon (in Asheville, North Carolina, USA) pulled off a three-part demonstration for the protection of the earth and earthlings and against the US military-industrial complex. We rallied, we paraded, and we performed a direct action.

    The event, on Friday 22 April, began at 10am in the Bent Creek River Park, on the banks of the French Broad River. The park sits exactly next to the new…

    11 Jun 2019

    Tatiana Garavito

    'Positive social change results mostly from connecting more deeply to the people around you than rising above them, from coordinated rather than solo action.' – Rebecca Solnit

    In times of crisis, people often react by coming up with quick fixes, quick strategies and quick actions to address the challenges we face. Although quick responses are sometimes necessary, we need to be careful in how we articulate our demands and how we organise. Climate breakdown, white supremacy and so many other ‘crises’ in the news right now are not actually new. For many communities around…

    09 May 2019

    Sam Walton

    Extinction Rebellion (XR) deserves praise for the impact it is having in streets, in the media and in public discourse. The XR leadership should also be questioned for its approach to diversity and privilege, to climate justice, and to strategy. (This is part of a series of articles discussing XR.)

    Extinction Rebellion (XR) has sprung upon us and is mobilising thousands of people to take direct action demanding radical action on climate change. They’ve filled the streets. Thousands of new people are taking action. Despite this most established environmental activists have reacted with criticism, much of which is justified.

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