On 9 April, the People's Weapons Inspectors visited a Roxel factory which builds propulsion systems for missiles. Their aim was to carry out a 'people's weapons inspection', to find out whether parts built at this factory (near Kidderminster in Worcestershire) might be used by the Saudi military in the war in Yemen.
The inspectors believed that the factory was manufacturing components for Brimstone missiles that are due to be exported to Saudi…
Naomi Shihab Nye is a poet and professor of Creative Writing at Texas State. Her father was Palestinian and a refugee journalist. In one of her poems after 9/11, entitled 'Blood,' she writes:
I call my father, we talk around the news.
It is too much for him,
neither of his two languages can reach it.
I drive into the country to find sheep, cows,
to plead with the air:
Who calls anyone civilised?
Where can the crying heart…
On 22 November, B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, issued a press release detailing the continuing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.
The release…
ORGCon, is a high profile conference, featuring some of the worlds foremost speakers on digital freedom. This year's event on 4th November 2017, drew a mix of activists, academics and digital professionals to Friends Meeting House in London.
The conference organiser, Open Rights Group is the UK's only grassroots organisation working to protect our right to privacy and free speech online. Throughout the day, a stream of very engaging…
Poor old British Aerospace. Not only were the first group of people to break in to their Warton site in Lancashire to disarm a warplane acquitted, now the second lot have also been found not guilty. It's curious how difficult it appears to be to convict people for acting peacefully to prevent war crimes.
The first such disarmament action took place in January 1996, when a group of women (myself included) broke in and disarmed a Hawk warplane being sold to Indonesia for use in their…
These are the footnotes for the double pamphlet written by PN editor Milan Rai in October 2017 to mark the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.
Many of these references can be verified online - sometimes whole texts have been scanned and placed online. In other cases, a search for the quoted text will bring up the page in the book referred to.
Footnotes for 1917: The Nonviolent Russian Revolution
1 SA Smith, Russia…
The conference formerly known as Feminism in London is scheduled to start at nine thirty, and to make sure they get everyone there on time, the organisers have booked Cordelia Fine as their keynote speaker. We are told that she has come all the way from Australia specially to tell us about her new book, Testosterone Rex.
But it's not Feminism in…
Ian Sinclair writes: My new Peace News article ‘The biggest fight of our lives’ includes comments from George Lakey, Matt Kennard and Alex Nunns. Due to space considerations I could only include a small portion of the commentary each of them sent…
US author and Quaker activist George Lakey is touring the UK mainly to talk about his new book Viking Economics: How the Scandinavians got it right and how we can too (about how mass nonviolent struggle won radical changes). George is also the author of…
On 20 September, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) handed in hundreds of letters from citizens across the United Kingdom at No 10 Downing St in London. The United Nations had started to accept signatures for the nuclear arms ban treaty earlier the same day.
'British democracy has happened this afternoon. The public have made their voice heard, and we hope that the prime minister will take notice,' said Kate Hudson, CND general secretary. 'There’s a big multi-signature…
The practice of nonviolence was an integral part of the life, teaching and work of Jesus. This was the message heard by those attending the conference Reclaiming Gospel Nonviolence, sponsored by the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship, Pax Christi and the Fellowship of Reconciliation held in Kinnoull, Perth on 14-16 July.
John Dear, a Roman Catholic priest from the USA, looked over the life of Jesus and the lives of the early Christians to draw inspiration for the idea that practising peace…
New York, 7 July 2017: Negotiations of a new international treaty that bans nuclear weapons concluded at the United Nations today as the treaty was formally adopted by states. The United Kingdom, alongside other nuclear-armed states, has boycotted the negotiations despite government claims to support multilateral disarmament and a world without nuclear weapons.
'States that are serious about eliminating nuclear weapons have joined the United Nations treaty negotiations to ban nuclear…
At an April, 2017 Symposium on Peace in Nashville, TN, Martha Hennessy spoke about central tenets of Maryhouse, a home of hospitality in New York City, where Martha often lives and works. Every day, the community there tries to abide by the counsels of Dorothy Day, Martha’s grandmother, who co-founded houses of hospitality and a vibrant movement in the 1930s. During her talk, she held up a postcard-sized copy of one of the movement’s defining images, Rita Corbin's celebrated woodcut listing…
The Movement for the Abolition of War (MAW), organiser of the series of Peace History Conferences, has a strong and creative relationship with the…
If you want a straightforward example of journalistic dishonesty about terrorism, one clear recent case is provided by right-wing columnist Dominic Lawson in his article, 'Put down the nail bomb - Jeremy wants to talk'.
Lawson selectively quotes and misrepresents an Islamic State (IS) document which actually contradicts his argument. The article he quotes in fact says that the west could achieve a suspension of IS terror attacks by ending western airstrikes, invasions, occupations,…
