PN Staff

PN Staff

PN staff

7 March 2024Blog

Just ahead of the second anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, a former head of the British armed forces called for a negotiated end to the war, trading ‘peace for land’. General David Julian Richards, lord Richards, said on 20 February: ‘War is the very last resort and we seem to too often treat it as the first resort and we’ve got to get back to diplomacy and seek some sort of resolution to it.’ Richards was echoing views expressed by a top US general back in November 2022.

Ukraine should negotiate an end to its war with Russia, and be prepared to trade ‘peace for land’.

That’s the view of one of Britain’s most senior retired military leaders, a former chief of the defence staff, general David Richards (lord Richards), expressed in a surprising interview with the BBC on 20 February. The full transcript of his interview is below. We should point out that we have not found any reporting of this interview, or of Richards’s call for negotiations, in any…

22 February 2024Blog

A peace activist is not arrested despite police witnessing her spraypainting a pro-Gaza message on the outside of the city's naval base.

In mid-February, longtime British peace activist Rosy Bremer spraypainted an anti-war message on the walls of Portsmouth naval base, which also houses an arm of the giant arms company BAE Systems.

As you can see in the video shot by Linda Spence, Rosy spraypainted: '♥ Gaza ♥ Rafah ♥ peace'.

Rosy told the Portsmouth News:

'I'm a normal person and I believe we…

1 February 2024News

Switzerland to host phony ‘Peace Formula’ conference this year

Ukraine continues to push its phony ‘10-Point Peace Plan’, which demands the prosecution and conviction of Russian leaders for war crimes, the seizure of Russian assets to compensate Ukraine for war damage and total Russian withdrawal from Ukraine, among other points, as the precondition for negotiations (PN 2668).

At the Davos summit for the rich and powerful in January, Ukraine persuaded Switzerland to…

1 February 2024News

Protest to challenge removal of legal defence used by Palestine campaigners

Campaigning group Defend Our Juries (DOJ) is planning a mass sit-down in the high court in London on 21 February to challenge the government’s attempt to remove the defence of ‘consent’, used by Palestine Action activists recently to win acquittals (see previous page).

This follows actions outside more than 50 crown courts across England and Wales on 4 December: 500 activists held signs defending the right of juries to reach their own verdicts, independently of the instructions they…

1 February 2024News

150,000 sign petition opposing deportation of German climate activist

There don’t seem to have been any Just Stop Oil (JSO), Extinction Rebellion or Insulate Britain arrests since PN last came out, in late November.

On 8 January, JSO began negotiations with the Metropolitan police over its ‘slow walking’ campaign of disrupting traffic in London.

JSO presented the Met with evidence that the government was guilty of the crime of ‘genocide by oblique intent’, by developing new oil and gas projects.

JSO offered to pause disruptive…

1 February 2024News

New solidarity group takes action in Bournemouth, Brighton, Blackburn and Glasgow

On 7 December, a new Palestine solidarity group, Workers for a Free Palestine, organised 1,000 trade unionists and other protesters to blockade four sites connected to the Israeli war machine: Eaton Mission Systems in Bournemouth, Dorset; the L3Harris factory in Brighton, East Sussex; BAE Systems’s Samlesbury Aerodrome just outside Blackburn in Lancashire; and the BAE Systems Govan site in Glasgow.

All four arms company sites are linked to the manufacture of the F-35 warplane…

1 February 2024News

Acquittals, victories and more actions

The direct action group Palestine Action (PA) has again been generating more news than we can cover. They bumped up their acquittals total, won victories targeting suppliers of the Israeli-owned arms company Elbit Systems UK, and carried out a string of property damage actions.

Also, PA had their first known infiltrator, a journalist named Max Parry from the Daily Express, who gave information to the police that led to five arrests for ‘conspiracy to commit public nuisance’…

1 February 2024News

Over 2,400 arrests in US and Canada since 11 October

At the end of December, four radical Christians were arrested protesting against the Gaza War, around Holy Innocents Day (28 December), which marks the massacre of male infants by Herod, according to biblical tradition.

On 28 December itself, two US Catholic Workers were arrested at the Pentagon in Washington DC, the Nuclear Resister reports.

The arrestees were Bill Frankel-Streit (67, from Little Flower Catholic Worker Farm in Virginia) and Kim Williams (from Norfolk…

1 February 2024News

Spray paint action at International Armoured Vehicles fair

On 22 January, Richmond and Kingston Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Kingston Peace Council and other campaigners protested outside the International Armoured Vehicles arms fair at the Twickenham rugby stadium in West London. Arms companies present included BAE Systems and Leonardo and two Israeli firms: Elbit Systems and Rafael. Palestine Action had sprayed part of the stadium front in blood red paint earlier in the day.
 

1 February 2024News

Ten-year cost of UK nukes leaps 62%

Last year, there was a 62 percent jump in planned spending by the defence nuclear organisation (DNO) over the next 10 years on equipment related to British nuclear weapons. That’s according a government national audit office (NAO) report published in December, comparing 10-year spending plans published in 2022 and 2023.

The DNO is responsible for most British nuclear weapons equipment acquisition, including the development of new ‘Dreadnought’ submarines to replace Trident.

1 February 2024News

Organisers accuse police of 'politicised' approach to ceasefire protests

The policing of the major Gaza ceasefire marches in London has been aggressive, hostile and ‘politicised’.

That was the charge put to the Metropolitan police in a letter on 22 January from the organisers of the national marches for Palestine in London.

The organisers are: Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Stop the War Coalition, Muslim Association of Britain, Palestinian Forum in Britain and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).

The organising…

1 February 2024News

US mission to the UN blockaded for two hours over nuke-ban treaty

As the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) moved towards its second anniversary of ‘coming into force’, 18 US peace activists were arrested for blockading all three entrances to the US mission to the United Nations in New York City – for two hours.

The 30 November action took place as 90 countries who had signed the TPNW were gathering in New York for the second ‘meeting of states parties’ to the treaty. This conference of countries that have signed the treaty is…

1 February 2024Cartoon

1 February 2024Feature

How one British business could stop Israeli jets bombing Gaza

Rishi Sunak’s government has supported Israel’s criminal war on Gaza, both diplomatically and in practical terms: weapons including spare parts, surveillance missions and intelligence gathering through US spy bases hosted by the UK on Cyprus.

A War on Want report in December called for a ‘two-way arms embargo on Israel without delay to end [the government’s] complicity in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people.’

Yasmine Ahmed, the UK director of Human Rights Watch,…

1 February 2024Comment

Alcoholism and Messiahs

Here are two examples from what was a long-running column on this page. Oldies but goodies.

From PN 2502 (October 2008): Activism & alcohol

On 17 September, the department of health announced that it had identified nine personality types of heavy drinkers who are at risk of liver damage and other alcohol-related illnesses. By pure chance, on that same day, Peace News announced that it had identified nine…