Johns, Emily

The massive election protests in Iran are an inspiring example of human courage and the power of ordinary people to affect powerful institutions. At the time of going to press, we do not know what the outcome of this clash is going to be.

One possibility is that there will be a replay of the 4 June 1989 massacre in China. One of the most thoughtful reflections on Tienanmen Square came in the Financial Times, where James Kynge (who reported the demonstrations first-hand) argued that…

13 years after the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni human rights activists Shell was brought to court in New York for complicity with the Nigerian government for these state murders.

The Ogoni were to use US Alien Tort Statute but Shell settled with them out of court on 8 June with a payment of $15.5m (the equivalent of four hours profit for Shell), seemingly to prevent evidence about their corporate entanglement with the Nigerian military dictatorship reaching the…

As a CND poll demonstrates massive public opposition to US Star Wars plans, it seems the nuclear log-jam in Britain may be moving. On 17 June, the Liberal Democrats became the first mainstream political party to reject the replacement of the Trident nuclear weapon system with a similar nuclear submarine-intercontinental ballistic missile system.

After seeing estimates of the total costs of Trident replacement in the region of £100bn in 2009 figures (10% of the military budget), Lib…

The declaration of a semi-closed, semi-open, no-blame inquiry into the Iraq war is said to be part of British prime minister Gordon Brown’s strategy to secure his position as leader of the Labour party.

Interestingly, the announcement also hampers any thoughts the Conservatives may have of initiating their own inquiry with a broader remit if they win the next general election (the most likely outcome at this point) .

More important than these power games is the opportunity…

Britain doesn’t need an Armed Forces Day, recently invented by Gordon Brown. We already have Remembrance Day. What Britain needs is an Unarmed Forces Day - when we can remember those people, like Tom Hurndall, Rachel Corrie, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi, who dedicated their lives to nonviolent social change.

Unarmed Forces Day is a Peace News initiative. It is a celebration of the power of nonviolence, a call for real support for our damaged veterans,…

Russian social movements are struggling with Putin's repression and economic “liberalisation”, the war in Chechnya, neonazis and the mafia. (Organised crime apparently now controls over 20% of Russia's gross domestic product.)
On 14 and 15 April, unauthorised “Dissenters' Marches” in Moscow and St Petersburg by the new liberal-led coalition “The Other Russia”, were met with arrests and police beatings.
Veteran radical Boris Kagarlitsky observes that, “As things stand today, the…

Anti-virals

Two years ago, we helped to initiate a letter to the Guardian signed by, among others, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Caroline Lucas, John Pilger, Mairead Corrigan Maguire (Nobel Peace Prize Winner) and Hans von Sponeck (former UN Assistant Secretary-General).

The letter said that humanity faced a massive global threat from pandemic influenza, which might kill over 60 million people – 96% of them in the global South, and called for an end to corporate patents that…

The tragic death of Ian Tomlinson has cast a pall over the public reputation of British policing. As the eyewitness accounts (and photograph) in this issue indicate, and as the legal report compiled by the Climate Camp demonstrates, there was, on 1 April, a systematic pattern of brutal action by the police forces dealing with nonviolent protesters in the City of London.
It is shocking, but nevertheless true, that the mainstream media would not have scrutinised this criminal police…

On 9 April, 14 peace and social justice activists were arrested at Creech US Air Force Base in Indian Springs, Nevada, in what is believed to be the first act of mass nonviolent civil disobedience against the military use of pilotless drones. “Predator” and “Reaper” drones have reportedly killed hundreds of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan (see Gabriel Carlyle’s analysis on p2 for more details).

The Creech 14, including Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly, were arrested…

Ian Tomlinson, 47, was a newspaper seller on his way home from work on 1 April.

6pm: Eyewitness Ross Hardy sees four riot police drag Mr Tomlinson to the pavement after he does not move out of the way of a police van, standing in the road.

7.15pm: Photographer Anna Branthwaite sees Mr Tomlinson pushed to the ground by a policeman near Threadneedle Street: “he did actually roll…. [he] bounced because of the force of the impact…. The officer hit him twice with a baton when…

Peace News invites local and national peace groups in Wales, Scotland and England to join us in celebrating “Unarmed Forces Day” on 27 June, when the Ministry of Defence intends to celebrate “Armed Forces Day” (with a service and a fly-past at Chatham Docks, and parades in other towns and cities). “Unarmed Forces Day” will have two main messages.

Celebrate nonviolence!

Our first message is that we want to celebrate people who have used and are using nonviolent means to seek…

e began our last editorial with these words: “The Israeli assault on Gaza has left many of us angry and sick at heart.” Our last front cover depicted the horrible wounds of a Gazan teenager. The photograph was taken by a Totnes peace activist (in Gaza with the International Solidarity Movement), who wrote our front page story, and sent us the accompanying image. This picture left some readers feeling angry and sick.

One letter from an experienced activist said: “I did not need the…

When are we going to wake up? When is the war in Afghanistan going to become a burning issue in this country? When is it going to become a burning issue for the British peace movement?

As we approach the eighth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, we see a welcome, if belated and timid, awakening of concern about the war in mainstream circles in both Britain and the US. What about the peace movement? If we are honest with ourselves, neither the traditional peace movement nor…

At the very heart of the British Museum there is a gentle murmuring in many languages. The English voices are fretting from the very start of the exhibition: “Have these things been destroyed?” “What has been the impact of the current war on the archaeology of Babylon?”

Babylon: myth and reality has a crowded audience of the knowledgeable and concerned. Usually the blockbuster shows have a large proportion of the compelled-by-advertising-shufflers, but this was a display where one…

The Israel assault on Gaza has left many of us angry and sick at heart. The glaring injustice of the conflict is reflected in the wildly disproportionate casualty figures. The government of Israel says it was motivated by fear of Palestinian rockets and mortars.

From November 2001 to November 2008, precisely 23 people were killed inside Israel by Qassam rockets (15) and by mortars (8) fired from Gaza (not all by Hamas), according to the pro-Israeli-government group The Israel…