Milan Rai
The Ukraine War has had a horrifying impact on the people of Ukraine, and has been a disaster for people around the world hit by rising food and energy costs. There are some important facts about possibilities for ending the Ukraine War that are often swept under the carpet, that are important for us to remember to help find a way out of this tragedy.
The first and most significant fact is that Ukraine and Russia came right to the edge of agreeing a peace deal back in March 2022 – and…
Yemen, ‘the worst humanitarian crisis in the world’, is experiencing a fragile semi-peace, where the UN-brokered truce that officially came to an end last October has held in practice, with some big exceptions.
There are hopes of progress towards a true peace deal, especially because Saudi Arabia and Iran, which back different sides in Yemen, have agreed to resume diplomatic relations and seem to be agreeing a non-aggression pact with each other.
Another positive sign was a UN-…
Image John McDonnell. Image: Rwendland, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Dear John McDonnell,
I’m sure every reader of Peace News is aware that you are a man of principle with an impressive record of standing up for peace and justice – and that your are an outstanding Labour MP.
I’ve read your long, thoughtful statement explaining why you support the British government arming Ukraine.
Putting aside the fundamental…
‘In 2003, I and my family were displaced from Baghdad, we went to Diyala [about 50 miles south-east of Baghdad]. I saw on TV the statue of Saddam Hussein collapsing and falling apart and I felt happy because we got rid of this dictatorship. But, on the second day, when I went back home, I found the sight of US tanks and military troops rather painful. Even though I was only 17 years old at the time, I had these very intense negative emotions that almost overwhelmed me. I wished that change…
This note is addressed to the many people who are gathering in London in April, brought together by Extinction Rebellion (XR), hoping to contribute to positive action to tackle climate change.
In promoting this event, XR suggested that: ‘Gathering peacefully in such large numbers at the nation’s seat of power will create a positive, irreversible, societal tipping point.’ They referred to ‘the power of people power’, as shown by the success of nonviolent mass demonstrations in the…
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…
The Ukraine War has had a horrifying impact on the people of Ukraine, and has been a disaster for people around the world hit by rising food and energy costs.
There are some important facts about possibilities for ending the Ukraine War that are often swept under the carpet, that are important for us to remember to help find a way out of this tragedy.
The first and most significant fact is that Ukraine and Russia came right to the edge of agreeing a peace deal back in March…
Could the anti-war movement have prevented the US-UK invasion of Iraq in March 2003? I think there was a real possibility, slim though it was.
In my view, the British anti-war movement came very close to halting British participation in the invasion – and derailing the war entirely.
Well, that’s not only my view. Just days before the war began, the British government told the US government that it might be forced to pull out of the invasion force. Britain’s ministry of defence…
Sometimes, Western nuclear threats against non-nuclear weapon states have been covert operations, signalled secretly by mobilising strategic nuclear weapon systems (like the British V-bombers sent out to Singapore during the Malaysian Confrontation – see PN 2659).
Sometimes, Western nuclear threats have been very, very public.
Such was the case in the run-up to the March 2003 US-UK assault on Iraq.
It was a very long run-up to war, for reasons discussed…
On 15 February, British anarchists will mark their first ‘Aggravated Activist Day’, after the event was called by participants in a workshop at the Anarchist Bookfair in London last September.
The workshop was run by Netpol, the Network for Police Monitoring, which pointed out in March 2021 that the police had stopped using the label ‘domestic extremist’, and replaced it with ‘aggravated activist’.
Anarchists are classified by the police as taking part in ‘high-level aggravated…
Do I support mobilising large numbers of people to join in the climate protest in Central London taking place on 21 April, organised by Extinction Rebellion (XR)?
Yes.
Do I think it will have a positive effect on the political debate in Britain and maybe elsewhere?
Yes.
Do I agree with how XR are describing and explaining this protest?
No. Definitely not.
I think that XR has taken ‘talking big’ to a whole new level that is damaging to their own…
What has anti-racism got to do with nuclear weapons? They seem to belong in different worlds.
When we hear the word ‘anti-racism’, we might think about police violence, like the fatal shooting of Chris Kaba, the unarmed black 24-year-old killed by the Metropolitan police in South London last September.
Or we might think about brutal anti-immigrant policies, like the way the government crowded 4,000 asylum-seekers into Manston detention centre, built for 1,600 people.
…
As we head towards the second year of the horrifying war in Ukraine, the British government should be supporting a rapid, negotiated end to the war (see p3 for more on this).
Prime minister Rishi Sunak should be helping to remove obstacles to peace. This includes pressing Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to lift his ban on negotiating with Russia while Vladimir Putin remains president (see PN 2663).
Instead of seeking peace, the British government is supporting…
In October 2014, Second World War conscientious objector Godric Bader was awarded the Gandhi Foundation’s International Peace Award, in recognition of the alternative business model he and his family created for their industrial manufacturing company, the Scott Bader Commonwealth.
Scott Bader has been and continues to be a successful industrial manufacturing company. Being owned by its workers did not stop it reaching sales of £270mn in 2021 (with gross profits of £76mn).
…
Why would a Nigerian philosopher be against decolonisation? Olúfémi Táíwò explains that, in Africa, ‘decolonisation’ means two very different things.
Decolonisation1 is simple: a colony gains its independence and becomes self-governing.
Decolonisation2, on the other hand, means the ex-colony throwing out ‘any and every cultural, political, intellectual, social and linguistic artefact, idea, process, institution and practice that retains even the slightest whiff of the…
