Milan Rai
Over 700 people from around the UK have now signed up to support the Gaza Freedom March. Timed to coincide with the first anniversary of Israel’s brutal 22-day assault, this will involve hundreds of internationals marching nonviolently alongside the people of Gaza on 1 January 2010, breaching the illegal Israeli blockade (see PN 2513).
PN is organising a training for people intending to go on the march. Assuming sufficient demand, this will take place in London on the weekend of 31…
The Israel assault on Gaza has left many of us angry and sick at heart. The glaring injustice of the conflict is reflected in the wildly disproportionate casualty figures. The government of Israel says it was motivated by fear of Palestinian rockets and mortars.
From November 2001 to November 2008, precisely 23 people were killed inside Israel by Qassam rockets (15) and by mortars (8) fired from Gaza (not all by Hamas), according to the pro-Israeli-government group The Israel…
One of the most powerful lies of the current Palestinian crisis is the claim that “there is no partner for peace” – and that Hamas in particular is an irreconcilable fundamentalist force of destruction. The reality, successfully suppressed throughout the British media, is that Hamas has long offered a long-term truce with Israel on the basis of the 1967 borders.
In other words, Hamas (while pursuing many other objectionable policies) has for many years been in close proximity to…
Gaza desperately needs aid, but more than that it needs Israel to lift the near-total closure of Gaza’s borders, according to aid experts. Palestinian estimates of the cost of the first fortnight of the Israeli assault range from $976m to $1.7bn.
Even before the latest attack, Gaza was reeling from the effects of the Israeli blockade. Unemployment was nearly 50%, almost all of Gaza’s 3,900 manufacturers had been forced to shut down, 80% of drinking water was substandard,…
After months of silence, during which it seemed the idea had died quietly (like the much-derided “British Day”), the British government announced on 21 January that Armed Forces Day will after all be taking place – 27 June.
It now falls to the British peace movement to respond appropriately.
The central event of the first Armed Forces Day is to take place in the historic dockyard in Chatham, Kent. The five unsuccessful bidders – Cardiff, Blackpool, Plymouth, Southend and…
Over two-thirds of the British public want all British troops withdrawn from Afghanistan within 12 months, according to a new BBC poll. Meanwhile, five million Afghans are facing a winter of starvation because of “donor fatigue”.
The BBC/ICM poll, published to coincide with a 13 November Radio 4 debate on withdrawal from Afghanistan, met with a resounding silence from the political establishment, and the barest of mentions within the mainstream media.
The Ministry of Defence…
Why should Peace News, a paper devoted to peacemaking, concern itself so much with economic issues? Over the period of our editorship we have come back to class politics again and again and again.
Dan Clawson’s wonderful essay “Fusing our power” back in May 2007, at the start of our editorship, showed how activists from the new social movements have begun to revitalise parts of the US trade union movement, turning them from narrowly-focused bureaucratic monoliths into whole-person…
This year saw some outstanding court victories, including a legal breakthrough in Nottingham on 14 January when 11 East Midlands activists were allowed to present a legal argument known as “defence of necessity”. They had shut down the Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal-fired power plant in 2007.
The big court wins of the year were the 10 September Kingsnorth Six victory, securing an acquittal on charges of causing £30,000 worth of damage to Kingsnorth power station, and the 11 June Raytheon…
Here we are, in a world of financial and economic pain, with millions of people around the world facing unemployment, reduced pensions, and reduced incomes, all because of the “credit crunch” – and most of us are still in the dark as to how it all happened.
I’m a classically-trained economist (B.Sc. (Econ.), University College London, class of 1986), and I have only the foggiest idea of what’s been happening. I don’t feel too bad about this, though.
Alan Greenspan used to…
One million Iraqis
The most-censored story of the year was the estimate by a reputable British polling agency that over 1,000,000 Iraqis had died violently as a result of the invasion and occupation.
The story started in September 2007, when the mainstream polling agency ORB (widely quoted six months earlier and six months later for their work on Iraqi attitudes to the occupation) published an estimate of the number of Iraqis who had died violently since the 2003 invasion.…
Reactions have been mixed to The Baader-Meinhof Complex, a new film encapsulating the history of the ruthless German urban guerrilla group. The Red Army Faction (RAF), founded in 1970, led by Andreas Baader and radical journalist Ulrike Meinhof, killed more than 30 people.
Meinhof’s daughter, journalist Bettina Roehl, has called the film’s portrayal of her mother’s crimes the “worst-case scenario”: “it would not be possible to top its hero worship.” “It glorifies brutal killers as…
Barack Obama seems to be hardening his position on Iran still further, adding to the nuclear threat he made in June.
In remarks that have just come to light, Richard Danzig, Obama’s top foreign policy advisor, said in September that a military attack on Iran was a “terrible” choice, but “it may be that in some terrible world we will have to come to grips with such a terrible choice.”
Obama has been gradually altering his position on Iran since he won the Democratic party…
On 27 October, Britain’s nuclear bomb factory at Aldermaston was blockaded by hundreds of peace activists in the largest nonviolent direct action at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) for a decade. Over 30 activists from Trident Ploughshares and CND were arrested by police.
Roads around Aldermaston began to be blocked before dawn as activists from Scotland, Switzerland, Norway and elsewhere converged on the site where Britain’s nuclear weapons are constructed and maintained.…
Sitting in front of a panel of MPs and lords for the second time this year, Peace News abandoned etiquette and spoke plainly. The problem with giving evidence about the law on protest we said, is that parliament, the judiciary and the police have failed to take the action they should have - against the illegal invasion of Iraq, or those causing devastating climate change, for example.
In such circumstances, it is difficult to be forced to discuss “the policing of protest”, when…
Chinese-American activist-artist Paul Chan embodies another aphorism from Robert Capa (see left): “Like the people you shoot and let them know it.” His three-part contribution to the London Barbican Art Gallery’s exhibition On the Subject of War includes films made of his “enemies”, in which it is clear he has indeed expressed affection and concern for those he is meant to fear.
Chan travelled to Iraq with US peace group Voices in the Wilderness in 2002, moved about independently and…
