Issue: 2514

“Are you really asking me this goddamn silly question?” – Walt Rostow, National Security Adviser to Lyndon Johnson

Over 700 people from around the UK have now signed up to support the Gaza Freedom March.

Between 8-11 September the ExCeL Centre in London’s Docklands hosted the Defence Services Equipment International exhibition (DSEi), the world’s largest arms fair.

In an interview with the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, Lord Bingham compared drones with cluster bombs and landmines.

Following Climate Camp Cymru in mid-August, Wales set up a neighbourhood at the Climate Camp in London. The first of the Wales crew arrived with our enormous marquee squeezed into a small camper van.

Across the UK, companies are planning to cash in on a subsidy bonanza for electricity from burning biofuels.

Edinburgh’s refuse workers are currently in dispute with City of Edinburgh Council over “modernisation” plans that would see them lose £300 a month in wages. They are conducting a work-to-rule, which means no overtime.

Scottish CND has succeeded in obtaining copies of two risk assessments on the dangers incurred if there should be a major accident involving a Trident submarine in the shiplift at the submarine base at Faslane.

Since Climate Action Scotland (see PN 2513), the camp at Mainshill Wood, site of a proposed opencast mine in Lanarkshire, has continued into its third month with the support of the local Community Council.

This year, the number of school leavers applying for university places rose by almost 10%. But what of those who don’t have the qualifications needed to ride out the recession at college?

Confronted with evidence of wide-ranging fraud on his behalf in Afghanistan’s recent presidential election, Hamid Karzai told Le Figaro: “There was fraud in 2004, and there is today, and there will be tomorrow.”

Joe Glenton – the British lance corporal who refuses to return to Afghanistan on grounds of conscience (see PN 2513) – has had two charges of disobeying a lawful command dropped.

PN was for many years the mass circulation weekly of the Peace Pledge Union, the pacifist group founded 75 years ago. The PPU celebrated its birthday on this year’s Unarmed Forces Day, 27 June.

We reprint Peace News front page 15 September 1939. A pacifist socialist response to the outbreak of war:

A member of Plane Stupid, Tamsin Omond, 23, is the media’s favourite eco-activist. She co-founded the women-led climate action group Climate Rush, which uses visual references from the suffragette campaigns. PN columnist Maya Evans, 29, an anti-war activist and first person to be prosecuted under SOCPA, met Tamsin to share thoughts across movements.