Ruth and Jimmy kiss in their car on the Moors. A fighter jet roars ominously overhead. Potential violence erupts into the everyday. Some of the images in Threads - a mushroom cloud rising over Sheffield, a middle-aged woman urinating in fear - are etched forever into my mind’s eye. Watching the film again, the same cold fear washes through my guts at the thought that such destruction is still within the reach of several world leaders…
PNblogeditor's blog
Every year an International fast is held between Hiroshima and Nagasaki days (6th-9th August) in Burghfield, Paris, and Büchel, the last Nato base in Germany at which nuclear weapons are stationed. PN has covered the fast in both Paris and Burghfield with several articles in the past (see PN September 2012, June 2013 and September 2013).…
Rolls-Royce directors were confronted with the harrowing testimony of a Hiroshima survivor, Setsuko Thurlow, at their AGM on 1 May. Although the quote was lengthy, the chair was too disorientated to interrupt, and the board responded with nervous laughter.
Rolls-Royce provides power systems for Britain's Trident nuclear-powered, nuclear…
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On the 28th of March, 2014, at about 4 p.m., the Afghan Peace Volunteers heard a loud explosion nearby. For the rest of the evening and night, they anxiously waited for the sound of rocket fire and firing to stop. It was reported that a 10 year old girl, and the four assailants, were killed.
Four days later, they circulated a video, poem and photos prefaced by this note: “We had been thinking about an appropriate response to the violence perpetrated by the Taliban, other militia…
The Freedom Collective, publishers of Freedom, the anarchist periodical founded in 1886, decided at a meeting on 3 March 2014 to discontinue printing and concentrate on online publication. After the second printed edition of 2014, the intention is to publish a special edition for the anarchist bookfair in October, and after that to print only occasional free sheets.
Peace News and Freedom have much in common. Donald Rooum, who has contributed cartoons to Peace News since 1962, has…
How many of us are in some way dissatisfied with the way things are in the world? Perhaps you've witnessed some grave injustice or you're even the victim of a social ill? Maybe you've spent years in academic settings trying to understand what's wrong with the world, but isn't the point to change it? Maybe you just know, things aren't meant to be like this.
Chances are you can relate to most if not all of the above and if so you might have been drawn to do something about it. Making…
Following recent attacks in Chiapas, a Week of National and International Solidarity “If they touch the Zapatistas, they touch all of us” has been called, to be held from 16th to 23rd February, 2014, to “denounce the counterinsurgency war” and emphasise that “the Zapatista communities are not alone.”
The new aggressions were made against the iconic Zapatista community of 10 de Abril, by government supporters from the group CIOAC democratic who live in a nearby community, and who have…
Two weeks ago in a room in Kabul, Afghanistan, I joined several dozen people, working seamstresses, some college students, socially engaged teenagers and a few visiting internationals like myself, to discuss world hunger. Our emphasis was not exclusively on their own country’s worsening hunger problems. The Afghan Peace Volunteers (AVP), in whose home we were meeting, draw strength from looking beyond their own very real struggles.
With us was…
There is a long tradition of official war art where artists are commissioned to draw in war zones. My work reverses this tradition. Instead of drawing war zones to commission, I draw the arms trade uninvited. My drawings are made undercover in arms fairs, arms company dinners, and AGMs. I draw in A6 concertina sketchbooks -…
On Saturday 25 January, Zoe Lawlor and John Lannon of Shannonwatch visited Margaretta D'Arcy in Limerick Prison. She has been there now for 10 days, as a result of her conscientious refusal to sign an undertaking that she would stay away from the restricted areas of Shannon…
Emily Johns, Peace News co-editor and Hastings-based activist, was arrested last spring and sentenced last week after protesting for government transparency.
Her trial is part of a larger issue. With the Combe Haven Defenders, she is…
Kabul: The fire in the Chaman e Babrak camp began in Nadiai’s home shortly after noon. She had rushed her son, who had a severe chest infection, to the hospital. She did not know that a gas bottle…
Najib, his grandma and Hakim
From Sherif in Egypt
My dear enemy, I kill you with love…
As my mind was growing, by reading and opening my eyes, my enemy took different shapes. At first, I thought he was the guy who beat the teenager pride out of me in a train fight over a girl, but that went…
Apart from being Haitian Independence day whereby former slaves successfully removed the cruel grasp of colonial slavery 210 years ago in 1804, today is also supposed to see a much needed increase in the minimum wage in Haiti but has sparked controversy.
Protests have broken out in Haiti demanding a greater increase than has been proposed whilst a somewhat inevitable a race down to the bottom backlash from industry and the international community has argued against even the modest…