Media

1 June 2011News in Brief

On 29 April, while the mainstream media was distracted by royal goings-on, around 60 left-wing Facebook sites were removed from the web. The sites were mainly anti-cuts groups including Anti-Cuts Across Wigan, Arts Against Cuts, Bristol Ukuncut, Chesterfield Stopthecuts, Leeds City College Against Fees and Cuts and Notts-Uncut Part-of UKUncut. Student, SWP and anarchist groups were also hit.

Someone had used the fact that these groups had wrongly set up “profiles” (meant to be for…

1 June 2011Feature

Albert Beale makes a personal selection of a few of the more noteworthy images and pieces of writing that have appeared in Peace News over the last 75 years. Some of the items are chosen because of their eloquence, some because they typify PN's often lonely and unique take on the world, and some because they connect with major world events. And sometimes all three.


The paper reports from the first meeting of War Resisters' International after the Second World War (10 January 1947)

The Hitler question

One of the challenges still regularly thrown at pacifists today is the “But what about the Second World War?” question. This might be thought to have been even harder to deal with at the time. But James Avery Joyce rose to the challenge on the front page of PN on 26 September 1941.

“At this…

1 May 2011Comment

Reflections on the deaths of two war photographers.

The deaths of Western war photographers Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros in Misrata in Libya on 20 April sparked considerable reflection in the British press. Many voices were raised saluting the courage – and recognising the social importance – of front-line photo-journalists, who take extraordinary risks in order to connect the global public with the reality of war.

Few have done more in this regard than Tim Hetherington, the videographer and co-director of Restrepo (2010) a worm’…

1 May 2011News

The event planned for October formerly known as “the Radical Media Conference” has been forced to change its name after being subjected to legal threats by an international PR and production company calling itself “Radical Media”. There will be a protest against this corporate bullying on 3 May.

On 5 April, as the conference organising group began pulling together suggestions for workshops, Peace News (which initiated the event) was surprised to receive an email from Joan Aceste,…

1 December 2010News

The news the papers didn’t print about Wikileaks and Gaza

Evidence that the death toll in Iraq may have been grossly underestimated and documents revealing that Israel approved, in principle, “a policy of deliberate reduction” for basic goods in the Gaza Strip, have both been rated “X” in recent mainstream media coverage.

In the wake of Wikileaks’ 22 October publication of nearly 400,000 secret US military logs, the mainstream media briefly returned to the issue of the post-invasion civilian death toll in Iraq. In particular, much…

1 October 2010Feature

The Nuclear Resister marks 30 years of supporting imprisoned activists and reporting on anti-nuclear and anti-war resistance

Thirty years ago this October, the first issue of the Newsletter of the National No-Nukes Prison Support Collective (later renamed the Nuclear Resister) reported on just one anti-nuclear civil disobedience action – that of the Plowshares Eight.

On 9 September 1980, eight US activists made their way into a General Electric factory in Pennsylvania, where they hammered and poured blood on nuclear missile nose-cones. This action inspired a global movement, and scores of similar acts…

3 June 2010Comment

38 Degrees started in May 2009, named after the angle at which an avalanche occurs. It’s modelled after other international social-avalanche attempts such as MoveOn.org in the US, the Australian GetUp.org.au, and worldwide Avaaz.org. Recently it’s gained attention for its work (with others) on voting reform in the UK.

38 Degrees is a non-partisan people mobiliser: mostly by using technology (online petitions, emails to MPs and corporate executives) and sometimes through more…

1 May 2010Feature

As Peace News heads towards its 75th anniversary next year, we cast an eye at some of our sister peace publications. This month, the extraordinary Catholic Worker.

The Catholic Worker is a paper. It’s a house of hospitality for homeless people. It’s a communal farm. It’s a soup kitchen. It’s a movement. It’s radical, pacifist, anarchist, and Catholic. It’s 77 years old as of May Day 2010.

Dorothy Day meant to start a labour paper to announce to the unemployed of the Depression era that the Catholic church has a body of social teaching capable of re-shaping society along the lines of justice and peace. Little did she know what she was in…

1 May 2010News in Brief

Over the 4 July weekend, Nuclear Resister magazine (30 years old) and Nukewatch (31 years old) will be celebrating their anniversaries with a “Resistance for a nuclear-free future” conference and action in Tennessee.
www.bit.ly/peacenews253

1 February 2010News

A recent alleged massacre by US-led forces in Afghanistan has been greeted with near-total silence on the part of the British press.

On 31 December, The Times’ Jerome Starkey reported allegations that ten civilians – including seven children – had been killed during a night-raid on the village of Ghazi Kang. According to the local headmaster – who provided Starkey with their names and school registration numbers – the children, whose ages ranged from 11 to 17, were…

1 November 2009Review

Pluto, 2009; ISBN 978 0 745 328 93 5; 304pp; £16.99

Since setting up the Media Lens website (www.medialens.org) in 2002, David Edwards and David Cromwell have been publishing regular media alerts “correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media”, encouraging readers to write directly to individual journalists to take them to task.

Largely made up of edited versions of these alerts, Newspeak in the 21st Century’s central thesis is that there is “a profound, consistent bias favouring…

1 September 2009News

Hicham Yezza, a Nottingham university peace activist, was convicted in February on immigration charges - which he is appealing. (See PN 2499-500 for the original smears against him.) Hich spoke to PN after being released from prison in mid-August.

PN What happened after you were given your sentence of nine months in prison?
HY I was led away to a cell downstairs where my details were taken and I had a few minutes to thank my solicitors for the work they did.
I was then…

1 June 2009Review

Palgrave Macmillan, 2008; ISBN 978 0 230574 49 6; 256pp; £50

Written by three British-based scholars – a political scientist, a human geographer and a sociologist – Anti-War Activism is the first book-length academic analysis of the post 9/11 anti-war movement in the UK.

Focusing on six organisations – Stop the War Coalition, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Faslane 365, Muslim networks, the Quakers and Justice Not Vengeance – the study is based on 60 interviews with activists, including Peace News editor Milan Rai and columnist Maya Evans.…

1 April 2009Review

New Press, 2007: ISBN 978-1595584137; 301pp; £13.99

Though some of us may not fully appreciate it, media and communication systems (and the policies and subsidies that helped create them) should be a central concern for all activists. For example, without docile and generally compliant media it is difficult to see how the British government could have taken part in the disastrous and illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq – or survived the aftermath of having done so – or how it could continue to drive us at full pelt towards the cliff-edge of…

1 March 2009Feature

 The purpose of writing a letter is that it should be read. This may sound obvious but it’s important to consider your letter from the point of view of the recipient. Someone once rang the West Midlands CND office asking us to complain to the Birmingham Post because his letter hadn’t been printed. When he told us how long it was, we knew exactly why! Start positively, by thanking or praising, if you can (not always possible). Keep letters short, clear and concise – you want them to be read. Be…