D, Ippy

Terrorist atrocities are a daily occurrence around the world. Bizarrely, a cutting from the 6 July Times was lying on the floor of the meeting room at Caledonian Road; found on 7 July, the headline read “The 28,000 victims of terrorism” and was a report o

The Labour government may have received a good “telling off” at the polls last month but, even with their much-reduced parliamentary majority, they have wasted no time in setting out a controversial agenda for this term.

Through the Queen's Speech and the unseemly haste with which non-elected advisers - such as Andrew Adonis - were pushed through the back door into positions of influence, no-one can be in doubt about the authoritarian course this government has chosen.

The…

“It's not racist to impose limits on immigration.” This catch-all election slogan from the Conservative party can, conveniently, be interpreted in several ways. As can Labour's rather ambiguous “our country's borders protected”. What are they talking about?

Apart from being grammatically challenged, both manage to say everything and nothing in one vague non-sentence. So ask the questions: why do we need to impose limits on immigration and who do our borders need protecting from…

March was a good month for taking nonviolent action, all over Britain and beyond - as the positive and energising stories and images in this month's Peace News show.

This issue of PN only manages to squeeze in reports on a small proportion of these actions but, rest assured, there are many more taking place each and every week.

Politicians and commentators may publicly wring their hands in despair at “voter apathy”, but they fail to recognise (or are disturbed by) the…

On Saturday 11 June, Aldermaston Women's Peace Camp will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of the camp with a women-only party to which all women who have ever been to the camp- and those who have never been before - are invited.

This issue of Peace News has been produced against the backdrop of war on Iraq and, in particular, the attacks on Fallujah.

While the editorial team spent their evenings deciding on the right font for a heading, warplanes and mortars struck fear into the hearts of ordinary people thousands of miles away.

It's distressing to see the blatant hypocrisy, lies, inconsistencies and ironies surrounding this war and to realise that many of the public - and, it seems, much of…

I am a big APC and TooL fan, so when I heard the chaps were going to knock out a covers album I was a bit hesitant.

What if a band you really like starts churning out cheesy covers in a weird, referential, “we're all rock gods together” kind of way?

Well, no worries on that front: this album surpassed my expectations, both musically and politically, and has been played non-stop at the PN office for the past couple of weeks.

Running up to the US election APC announced…

Those pesky Euro bombspotters have been up to their naughty tricks again recently.

Kicking off a series of “Bombspotting small” actions, a group representing Flemish NGOs and individual activists, paid a visit to the Kleine Brogel nuclear weapons base in north-east Belgium on 11 October. After breaking into the base the group occupied its runway.

The “small” actions are the unannounced dimension of a wider Bombspotting campaign, which includes large public actions such as…

It is hard to believe that, just ten years after the genocide in Rwanda, new reports of massacres against Tutsis by Hutus have started coming in.

As PN went to press more than 150 Tutsi refugees were reported to have been macheted and shot by a Hutu during a raid on a nearby Burundian military base.

As Peace News went to press the 2004 Olympics had just kicked off.

Like music, sport is often said to be a great bridger of divides. It can bring…

Over the past three months there have been growing protests at the ongoing violence in Darfur.

Thousands of people from the Sudanese diaspora, pan-Africanists, and the broader peace movement have taken to the streets - particularly in the US and Britain - including in London, New York, Glasgow and Washington.

In London, demonstrations have been attracting over 500 people and have been very mobile - visiting the embassies of several African countries and the British…

The latest series of revelations regarding the torture and inhuman and degrading treatment of Iraqi prisoners by Coalition forces make for yet more depressing and horrible news.

However, the dominant discussion - in the west at least - has centred on a misplaced ideal: that the “rules” of war are observed and that citizens should expect their government and militaries to “play nice” and that, accordingly, we should be outraged when they don't.

Not to detract from the terrible…

OK - I confess, I am a Neal Stephenson fan (the sole purpose of my visits to bookshops at the moment is to ask whether his latest novel - Quicksilver - is out in paperback yet!). Before I stumbled across Zodiac I had already read his three other (predominantly sci-fi - sometimes called cyberpunk) novels and been entertained, intrigued and in the case of his epic - Cryptonomicon - been fascinated.

Zodiac is a great read, but in style and…

The fact that George W Bush's military record (or lack of) is of such concern to the US public (or certainly the US and international media), illustrates how militarised masculinity continues to be seen as a criterion on which the ability to lead a country is judged. Pitched up against a “real” veteran, even George W, leader of the “war on terror” has been found wanting.

The US peace movement needs our help.
More information and contacts at:…

Well, not quite, but we would like to take the opportunity to say fond farewells and enthusiastic welcomes to volunteers and staff on the PN team and to flag up two opportunities for you to comment on Peace News in its current incarnation and on the kind of Peace News you would like to see in future.

Many thanks to everyone who made a donation to last year's Peace News Annual Appeal. In total, more than £1,000 was…

Before you get stuck into reading this thematic section on nonviolent action in Israel/Palestine, we thought it important to point out some inconsistencies in language that you are about to discover.

Firstly, we have not altered, attempted to standardise, or drawn any specific political inferences from the way in which contributors have described geographic locations in the region. Peace News house style attempts not to make any implicit comment on the “solution” to the…