Johns, Emily

There is something surreal about the holding of a Peace History conference attended by some of the country’s longest-serving peace activists right in the heart of the Imperial War Museum.

The outgoing director of the museum, Sir Robert Crawford CBE, welcomed us all to the two-day event, thanking Bruce Kent of the Movement for the Abolition of War, a conference organiser, for his cooperation over the years.
We then heard an array of speakers on a wide variety of topics, almost…

Imagine travelling the world in your dreams, navigating your way through its war zones with a set of dream maps – maps with some of the traditions of Western cartography, indications of lines of longitude and latitude, perhaps the outlines of countries – as well as beautiful colours rising off the land.

Bomb after Bomb is an atlas of places the United States has bombed, stretching from 19th century Nicaragua to 21st century Iraq, using hypnotically beautiful paintings by US artist…

Elsewhere in this issue we report the significant progress made by government propaganda in relation to the war in Afghanistan. Public support for the war is growing, despite - or because of? - the intensity of the conflict.

More people still oppose the war than support it, but the trend is worrying if the “Harry effect” is a lasting one.
Over the past two years there has been a conscious, systematic and well-resourced attempt to re-legitimise Britain's armed forces (and…

The theme of this issue - and of Peace News in general - is “the power of nonviolence”.

As this issue goes to press, Peter Gelderloos, the author of How Nonviolence Protects The State (partially reviewed in PN2487-8), begins a UK speaking tour devoted to denigrating the power of nonviolence (tour details on p16).

Peace News welcomes debate, and therefore we welcome Peter Gelderloos to the UK, despite our profound disagreements with him on strategy and principle.…

You may or may not have noticed that since 10 June - for over five months - the people of Belgium have struggled on without a government.

Well, we say “struggled on”. The political deadlock in the country has been a factor in declining “consumer confidence” apparently (does this mean people are spending less on things they don't need, and borrowing less money that they can't pay back?), but otherwise the people of Belgium have managed to keep breathing, eating, feeding themselves…

After four years of mounting tension, Iran has finally agreed to answer by December all questions about its nuclear programme posed by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The United States, however, seems to want to undermine the Iran-IAEA agreement reached on 21 August, arguing that it does not halt Iran's uranium enrichment capability immediately.

    According to IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, the purpose of the new “work…

The Camp for Climate Action at Heathrow has been hailed, rightly, as one of the most important protests of our time.

Climate change is not simply one of the greatest threats facing future generations of humanity, it is one of the greatest threats facing the people of the Global South, whose homes and livelihoods are being destroyed today - as a consequence of the power and greed of Western corporations and states, and the apathy and irresponsibility of Western consumers.

…

On 14 August, Marcus Armstrong, a 46-year-old anti-war protester who entered the cockpit of a US Air Force plane at Prestwick Airport, Scotland, a year ago was imprisoned for 28 days for “entering a restricted zone” and “trespassing” in a military aircraft.

Marcus entered Prestwick with seven other Trident Ploughshares “weapons inspectors” to investigate claims that the airport was being used to refuel US aircraft supplying arms for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon…

On 23 August, many anarchists will mark the 80th anniversary of the execution by electric chair of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two working class (male) Italian anarchist immigrants to the United States, whose fate seized the world's attention.

Peace News is marking the anniversary by addressing two of the issues raised by the Sacco and Vanetti case - the situation of immigrants in rich Western societies, and the question of violence in social change. Sacco…

The British legal system has begun finally to re-consider the conviction of the two Libyans jailed for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which came down over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, causing the deaths of 270 civilians in all.

The suspicion at the time of the bombing was that the Lockerbie bombing might have been retaliation for the destruction of an Iranian civilian airliner, a year earlier, on 3 July 1987, by US sea-to-air missiles, causing the deaths of 290 civilians…

The greatest danger to the peo ples of the Middle East, including the people of Israel, comes from Israel's determination to retain control of the land it conquered 40 years ago, and its willingness to use nuclear weapons to maintain its dominance of these territories.

Israel is committed to a semi-open nuclear policy referred to as the “Samson option”, a threat to bring down the entire Middle East, and perhaps even the world, to maintain its controlling position, and to prop up…

Congratulations!

After fighting their case through almost every court in the land, the B52 Two are not guilty and they richly deserve it!

In this issue, we see that in all these cases, there have been real diplomatic alternatives available, which had a genuine prospect for radically reducing conflict and violence. And in all of these cases, those with power have avoided peace. They have crushed negotiations by force (Britain in the Falklands), they have…

b>From 28 April to 6 May, the LaUnf (nonviolence) network of Iraqi peace activists organised a second “Week of Nonviolence”, this time at 13 locations, reaching 7300 people all over Iraq. Sites included, in the north, Irbil, Kirkuk, and Mosul; in the south, Basra and Fao; and Baghdad in the centre.
PNspoke to Ismaeel Dawood, a key support person for the LaUnf network, in his capacity as Iraq worker for the Italian activist NGO Un Ponte Per... Baghdad (A Bridge to... Baghdad…

May Day is workers' day

The struggle for the eight-hour day which began in the 19th century (and which goes on, even now) involved strikes and demonstrations throughout the world, and a coordinated day of action on 1 May 1886. In a related demonstration three days later, in the Haymarket in Chicago, a bomb was thrown at the police, killing eight. The anarchist organisers of the demonstration and the speakers were then arrested and prosecuted for the murders, on the grounds that the bomb…

On 20 April, author Maya Anne Evans and PN editor Milan Rai were called to stand trial at Horseferry Road Magistrates' Court, London, for “contempt of court”.
At an earlier hearing on 10 April, when they were meant to have been tried for alleged offences under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (2005), the judge had refused to continue with the trial after the pair had refused to give their dates of birth.
Judge Newton sent the activists to the cells for an…