One of the most significant attempts to broker a peace deal to end the war in Libya failed in mid-April, undermined by western leaders who assured Libyan rebels of a military victory over Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Anti-war campaigner Brian Haw has lost his last appeal to keep his peace camp on the grass in Parliament Square, after the mayor of London was granted a possession order by the high court on 17 March.
Vittorio Arrigoni, an outspoken Italian peace activist, was murdered in Gaza on 14 April, after being abducted by an anti-Hamas, al-Qa’eda-inspired group. Arrigoni arrived in Gaza on a Free Gaza Movement siege-busting boat in 2008.
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”.
On 14 April, the high court ruled that police acted illegally when they cordoned (“kettled”) Climate Camp protesters in Bishopsgate, London, at the G20 protest on 1 April 2009.
The Irish environmental group “Shell to Sea” has published a video in which a police sergeant suggests to another Garda (Irish police officer) that they should say to an arrested protester: “Give me your name and address or I’ll rape you”.
Four years ago the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP), in coalition with the Greens, formed a minority Scottish government. Its manifesto and campaign literature had prominently declared opposition to the Trident nuclear weapon system.
“The RAF’s over-budget Typhoon fighter jets are being deployed in Libya on missions for which they are ill-equipped, because military chiefs are anxious to justify their high cost,” military sources revealed to The Times on 23 April.
The report that led to its author, a young Egyptian peace activist, being imprisoned on 12 April for three years. Its title refers to the demonstrators’chant in Tahrir Square: “the army and the people are one hand!”
“We got rid of the dictator, but not of the dictatorship”. Maikel Nabil Sanad wrote this in a post on his blog, in which he analysed the role of the Egyptian military during and after the revolution that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak.
