PNedit's blog

The week of 6 June 2011

It’s mostly been a week of paper. Those who try and marginalise us as only interested in “action” have no idea just how much paper NVDA (nonviolent direct action) can generate!

I start the week helping Brian with preparing his international law defence for his court case for blockading the Trident refit area of Devonport in November last year. So it’s copying, collating, stapling and labelling new information found on the internet, while out of the cupboard come piles of documents used in past cases. And with them the memories of many…

Chuck out the bombs and the bankers.
Prepare to turn the world upside down …

PEACE NEWS SUMMER CAMP 2011!

28 July – 1 August 2011
near Shrewsbury, Shropshire

More info: www.peacenewscamp.info
Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/pncamp
Twitter: pnsummercamp
Contact: peacenewscamp@googlemail.com or 0207 278 3344
PURCHASE TICKETS: http://…

In Paris, Dora Maar was in tears and Picasso had found the subject for the painting he had been commissioned to do by the Spanish republican government for the Spanish pavilion at the international exhibition that was due to open in the French capital in May. With time running out, the exhibition finally opened on the 1900 exhibition site between the Champs de Mars and the Trocadero in June. The Spanish pavilion was not ready until July.

Picasso worked quickly with an intense fury of creativity, trying out ideas on the huge (11 feet by 25 feet)  canvas that he head crammed into his…

"The morning after seeing Tactical Questioning – scenes from the Baha Mousa Inquiry, I woke up in a cold sweat. Harrowing images of people being tortured were still in my head. Tactical Questioning is a brilliantly-constructed play about the infamous Baha Mousa inquiry, covering the perspectives of those detainees who were horrifically tortured, the soldiers who took part in the savage free-for-all and the people at the top who carry a great deal of responsibility for what happened.

"Everyone should know about the innocent 26-year-old hotel receptionist Baha Mousa…

I was 60 on world environment day – 5th June 2011 and a few days later took a 2-day hike along the Offa’s Dyke path, with panoramic views of the welsh borders, a contested area for so many centuries, I had time to reflect on years of campaigning for peace and environmental justice.

I often feel despair, and wonder what’s the point of all our protests when Britain is still threatening mass destruction by renewing its nuclear arsenal[1], still sells weapons to repressive regimes, still supports Israel despite its criminal occupation of Palestine[2], and is embroiled in wars in…

Saturday 4 June 2011, 4pm onwards (till late) at the London Catholic Worker building, Giuseppe Conlon House, 49 Mattison Road, London N4 1BG. Tube: Manor House. Bus: 29. Map: http://tinyurl.com/6hgf3sl

Performances will include:
- Leon Rosselson: http://www.leonrosselson.co.uk/
- the Carbon Town Cryer: http://www.myspace.com/carbontowncryer
- the Red and Green Choir
- poets Jeff Cloves, Dennis…

“On December 23, April 6 activist xxxxxxxxxxxx … alleged that several opposition parties and movements have accepted an unwritten plan for democratic transition by 2011; we are doubtful of this claim” – secret cable from the US Embassy in Cairo to Washington [1]

“Nonviolent action is not just about non-violence, but also about joy and happiness … [People] saw in Tahrir what Egypt could possibly be in the future and they wanted to be part of this new Egypt” – Wael Adel, Academy for Change [2]

In the popular imagination, mass nonviolent action (“people…

I was in two minds as to how to write up the interview with Nicolas Kent. Our usual format in PN is to just to present the transcript of the interview, and that’s what we did in the end (for an unusually long three pages), but I was very tempted to write it up in a more traditional journalistic style. These notes are a small move to bringing a bit more of the flavour of the thing over.

When I called up to arrange the interview, Nicolas Kent was very gracious, but it was clear he was under a lot of pressure of work and he had only half an hour to spare. This meant that a lot of…

Two months on, the opinion polls show the British public is largely undecided about the Libya war, undecided and unenthusiastic.

The first two polls were contradictory. A Comres poll showed greater opposition than support: 35 per cent in favour of the military action and 43 per cent against it. A YouGov poll showed 45 per cent of people supporting action by Britain, the US and France, and 36 per cent stating…

On Good Friday, I headed down to a sunny Sizewell Beach on the picturesque Suffolk coast. The nuclear power station, directly overlooking the beach, was, for the third successive year, the target for the annual spring weekend camp of the Stop Nuclear Power Network.

As usual, it was timed around the anniversary of Chernobyl – the world’s worst ever civil nuclear disaster (prior to Fukushima, at least) – which this year coincided with Easter.

Within a few hours of arriving, a sizeable tent village had magically sprung up on the beach…

The Judge Lord Justice Laws looked over his glasses, he was a no messing kind of guy with a habit of cutting to the chase immediately. “So this £50- £100 k figure, where did it come from? Is it the governments?”

The defence Lawyer for the Secretary of State Mr Grodzinski flicked through his papers to find the source. Indeed it was the government’s calculated annual expense for judicial reviews- cost was the main justification which the Ministry of Justice had used to cut legal aid for judicial review cases.

Justice Laws looked truly astounded, he had obviously followed the…