Blog posts

In the last few decades, one of the major phenomena occurring on the global scale has been the rise of China. In 1978, the country opened to the outside world after nearly 30 years of almost non-existent contact with what lay outside its borders. Since then, China has grown incredibly, in economic terms, and in terms of the global political balance of power. In little more than 30 years, China has become the second largest economy of the world, and a major economic partner for most countries…

In 2003 the UK and US invaded Iraq without a UN resolution. This is common knowledge to anyone who was old enough to pay attention to the news at the time and the following years. Many in my generation also attended the anti-war marches that were organised not only in Britain but across the world, although the London march, attracting between one and two…

Breda Power’s father Billy spent sixteen years in prison as one of the Birmingham Six (1975-1991), for an IRA bombing of which he was eventually shown to be innocent. Campaigning for his release she spoke frequently on the media and at meetings. When he and the other five walked out of prison, one of her first thoughts was that she never had to speak…

Ever since Peace News Summer camp 2012 I had been hankering after getting up to visit Faslane Peace camp, in fact to be totally honest I had wanted to visit and support the peace camp since I heard about it many years previously, and had driven past it during the…

Saturday was the 25th anniversary of the March 16, 1988 gassing of the town of Halabja, which is north-east of Baghdad and whose backdrop is the mountains that make up part of the Iran-Iraq border. This attack killed upwards of 5000 civilians, mostly women and children, injuring thousands…

Back in November I wrote a blog piece for Peace News about what was essentially a media blackout on cross-border attacks by the Turkish military into the northern regions of Iraq. These Turkish attacks into Iraq have a long and deadly…

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) have upheld Mani Hamid's complaint – “the police had wrongfully arrested him, assaulted him and violated his human right to protest.” (please see back history below (1)). He is currently pursuing prosecution of the police…

The jubilant celebrations I witnessed in Palestine when the UN General Assembly voted for an observer state status are in direct conflict with the grim reality on the ground.  All non-violent demonstrations that resist the occupation of Palestine are deemed illegal and suppressed by the…

Today is the third anniversary of the earthquake that struck just outside of Port-au-Prince, the densely populated capital of Haiti.(1) The UN estimated that in the wake of this earthquake more than 220,000 people died and over 300,000 people were injured, fracturing families which directly affected 750,000 children…

Thanks to your generosity we've already reached our original goal of raising £1,250 towards the costs of publishing Ian Sinclair's new book "The march that shook Blair: An oral history of 15 February 2003" (see below). However, further backing is…

Whilst today is the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation it is also the anniversary of another historic event, although one that is little known by comparison, that actually saw the end to slavery, Haitian independence.

It is widely accepted that the signing of the Emancipation…

On 27 December Poland finally ratified the landmine ban treaty and in doing so brought the whole of the European Union into the treaty with all 27 nations now committed to the international treaty. Having doing so, Poland has also left the United States as the only NATO country not to have ratified the treaty.

Poland signed the treaty in December 1997 but had resisted ratifying it and bringing it…

“The problems started for me at eighteen,” Madleen Kulab said quietly, sitting just meters from the shore of the Mediterranean. “The police and port authorities did not want me to sail as a woman.” Though Madleen has emerged from this recent challenge, receiving a permanent permission to fish from the Gazan…

Omission is a key part of the propaganda model proposed by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in their classic text on the subject and it can also be used to ascertain bias within the media. Whilst recent media attention has rightly been focusing on military actions in the Middle East in relation to both Syria and to Israel there has been a virtual blackout on…