Blog posts

    05 Sep 2024

    This statement was first published on 31st August 2024

    The staff of Peace News have printed an issue of PN which includes 8 pages under the headline “Peace News To Close”.

    The pages are biased and false in so many ways that we are unable to rebut every misrepresentation, correct every inaccuracy, or fill in every omission. Much of it is so extreme and personal that it…

    02 Sep 2024

    Marc Morgan

    Despite the success of a left-wing coalition in the latest French parliamentary elections, French military and foreign policy is likely to remain much the same as it was before July.

    The second round of French parliamentary elections on 7th July yielded a hung parliament with three main blocks, none of which could command an absolute majority. The largest of those blocks, with 183 deputies; was the Nouveau Front Populaire, a coalition of four left-wing political parties: LFI (France Unbowed), EELV (the Greens), the Socialist Party, and the Communist Party.

    The centrist coalition Ensemble (seven parties of which the largest is Macron’s Renaissance party)…

    02 Sep 2024

    Peter Burt

    The world's military powers see advanced computing methods – known as artificial intelligence or AI – as a way to revolutionise warfare. Israel is already using these methods in Gaza.

    The deadly wars in Ukraine and Gaza are giving us an insight into how battles may be fought in future.  Both wars are acting as trial zones for new military technologies, particularly automated technologies driven by artificial intelligence (AI) to undertake intelligence analysis and targeting. In each case, AI has allowed soldiers to sift rapidly through huge volumes of data - with deadly results.

    Artificial Intelligence (AI), automated decision making, and autonomous technologies…

    30 Aug 2024

    Question-mark over future of eighty-eight-year-old peace movement paper

    Press release
    The Peace News staff
    30 August 2024

    IMAGE 1: https://tinyurl.com/resigningstaffandboard. CAPTION: The resigning PN staff and board (left–right): Leslie Barson, Gabriel Carlyle, Emily Johns, Muzzamal Hussain, Milan Rai, Emma Sangster, Henrietta Cullinan, Eve Wedderburn. PHOTO CREDIT: Erica Smith
    IMAGE 2: https://tinyurl.com/…

    30 Aug 2024

    Ian Sinclair

    An obituary of a legendary civil rights activist.

    James Lawson, who died in June aged 95, was described by Martin Luther King Jr. as ‘the greatest teacher of nonviolence in America.’

    Best known for his activism during the US civil rights movement, Lawson travelled to the then segregated city of Nashville, Tennessee in the late 1950s, after King implored him to join the struggle.

    Heavily influenced by Gandhi and working as a field secretary for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), Lawson started running regular workshops on…

    30 Aug 2024

    Kathy Kelly

    A US peace activist calls on the international peace movement to join with the call of the South African government which has bravely upheld international law: 'We must clamor for the UN general assembly to enact the “uniting for peace” resolution.'

    During a week of action focused on UN potential to end Israel’s genocidal attacks, I was part of a coalition that met with 12 different permanent missions to the United Nations. We urged that if countries that are parties to the Genocide Convention or the Geneva Conventions stop trading with Israel as international law demands (see the 19 July advisory opinion of the international court of justice), the genocide…

    25 Jun 2024

    A new PN briefing for Hiroshima/Nagasaki stalls.

    On 6 August 1945, the US destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima with an atomic bomb. Three days later, Nagasaki was wiped out.

    The two nuclear bombs killed over 100,000 men, women and children.

    It was said that using the Bomb was the only way to avoid a long, drawn-out land invasion of Japan costing tens of thousands of lives.

    This was not true. In mid-1945, there were two other possible ways of ending the war quickly, without using the Bomb or invading Japan.

    25 May 2024

    Andrew Bolton

    Andrew Bolton reflects on John Heathershaw's recently published book

    John Heathershaw is a professor of international relations at the University of Exeter, UK. He is also an English Baptist, with Anabaptist leanings.  He brings theology and politics together in his book Security After Christendom.[1]  He builds on ‘social scientific and historical evidence’, but his arguments ‘are driven by theological reasoning.’[2] He is immersed in global politics, has worked on the issue of kleptocracy (rule by (…

    25 May 2024

    Our House

    Take action to support a Belorussian deserter

    PN has received this request for letters of support for a Belorussian deserter who did not want to become involved in the Russian war against Ukraine. The text of a draft letter of support is below.

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    23 May 2024

    Dear friends!

    In May 2022, 19-year-old Belarusian Mikita Sviryd…

    26 Apr 2024

    Chris Cole, Virginia Moffatt

    Chris Cole and Virigina Moffatt report on their trial

    On 25 April our trial for Criminal Damage took place following our arrest on 29 December at Downing Street to protest the UK government’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza. We had poured red poster paint on the gates, and made bloody handprints, held placards and read the names of children killed by Israel and Hamas.

    The evening before our trial we held a gathering at the wonderful London Catholic Worker  where we spoke about our…

    21 Apr 2024

    The Villages Group

    Another report from the West Bank by the Israeli-Palestinian peace group The Villages Group

    On 5 April 2024 Erella, on behalf of The Villages Group writes:

    To our friends wherever they be,

    Incidents with settlers in the South Hebron Hills villages take place all the time, night and day. We, visiting our friends there most days of the week, reach…

    06 Apr 2024

    Freedom Flotilla Coalition

    The Freedom Flotilla Coalition is ready to try to break the siege on Gaza.

    4 April: The international Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) will sail in mid April with multiple vessels, carrying 5,500 tons of humanitarian aid and hundreds of international human rights observers to challenge the ongoing illegal Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.

    This is an emergency mission as the situation in Gaza is dire, with famine setting in in northern Gaza, and catastrophic hunger present throughout the Gaza Strip as the result of a deliberate policy by the Israeli…

    05 Apr 2024

    Rosy Bremer

    In February, we reported on an action by longtime peace activist Rosy Bremer, who painted a message on the outside of Portsmouth naval base: 'Love Rafah, Love Gaza, Love Peace'. Rosy has written to us that she was visited by two police officers in March, a PC and a WPC: 'They had come to tell me the Inspector had decided to offer me community resolution, instead of making me pay £280 to clean the naval base walls. They said if I wrote to the base commander and said sorry, that would draw a line under the matter.' Below is the message that Rosy wrote in response. The original 'Love Rafah, Love Gaza, Love Peace' message was still on the wall of the base as of 5 April.

    Sorry For The People Not The Wall
    I am sorry for
    The people
    Not the wall;
    The wall is solid
    And brick
    But people
    Are soft
    And bleed;
    Bleed from BAE bombs
    And Elbit
    Drones.
    They bleed
    And they
    Starve;
    People get shot
    When they
    Queue
    For food.
    The wall
    Stands silent;
    Indifferent to
    Suffering,
    A defence we
    Cannot breach,
    Unlike the everyday,…

    01 Apr 2024

    PN staff

    Despite the arguments of the United States, the ceasefire resolution passed by the UN security council is legally binding on Israel.

    On 25 March, the UN security council finally adopted a ceasefire resolution – because the United States finally stood aside and did not use its veto.

    Resolution 2728 called for a two-week ceasefire in Israel's war on Gaza, the release of hostages being held in Gaza and an 'expansion' in the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza – none of these items was made conditional on any other (see below for the full text of the resolution).

    The resolution called for a ceasefire lasting 'for…

    01 Apr 2024

    PN staff

    After five months of Israel's war of destruction in Gaza, there is strong support for Hamas and its leaders among Palestinians, certainly compared to Fatah, the political coalition that controls the Palestinian Authority and the West Bank. That is the finding of a poll in early March, carried out in both the West Bank and Gaza itself.

     

    If elections were held today, Hamas would likely win the presidency and definitely be the biggest party in Palestine’s parliament, according to an independent poll carried out in early March in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The poll was conducted by a respected independent think tank, the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research (PSR).

    The PSR…