PN Staff

Most Critical Mass cycle protesters arrested on the eve of the Olympic Games in London (PN 2549) will face no further action, according to solicitors representing the protesters, speaking on 13 September.

Of the 182 people arrested on the outskirts of the Olympic Park, only 16 were interviewed by the police at the end of September.

On 7 September, two Bristol-based anti-fracking protesters were found not guilty of aggravated trespass, but a third was convicted of failing to leave as soon as practicable, at the Cuadrilla Resource’s test drilling rig beside the Ribble estuary in Lancashire. The three had shut down the gas-extraction operation for 13 hours on 1 December 2011.

During the trial it was established that Cuadrilla had been drilling for two months longer than allowed at the time of arrests.
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On 23 August, two Smash EDO activists were found guilty by Brighton magistrates court of aggravated trespass at the EDO MBM arms factory in Moulsecoomb.

Jessica Nero and Gavin Pidwell used superglue to lock themselves to the gates of the factory on 26 April, causing 100 lost hours of work, according to EDO managing director Paul Hills.

After several days of legal argument and evidence-giving about EDO’s breach of the Cluster Munitions Act (2010), magistrates fined the…

On 17 September, the Metropolitan police finally fired the police officer who hit passerby Ian Tomlinson with a baton and pushed him to the ground during protests against the G20 in London in April 2009.

Despite the fact that a inquest jury found in May 2011 that Ian Tomlinson had been unlawfully killed by a police officer, PC Simon Harwood was…

On 28 August, Dr Shakir Hamoodi, 59, an Iraq-born US citizen, began a three-year sentence for sending money between 1991 and 2003 to his relatives in Iraq, and the families of friends living in Iraq, to help relieve suffering caused by the UN sanctions.

A five-year FBI investigation found the father of five had not sent any money to the Iraqi government.

Rats fed a popular strain of genetically-engineered corn for two years developed large tumours and died earlier than rats in a control group. This is the conclusion of a paper by a French university research group published in a peer-reviewed journal in mid-September.

The maize in question is genetically-modified (GM) to withstand spraying with Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller. The rats were divided into groups; one fed the GM corn; another fed with GM corn sprayed with Roundup; a…

On 11 September, leading Muslim anti-war activist Salma Yaqoob announced her resignation from the left-wing Respect party which she had helped to found, and of which she was the leader. Yaqoob made it clear that ‘necessary relations of trust and collaborative working’ had broken down over remarks made by Respect MP George Galloway in relation to the rape allegations against Wikileaks leader Julian Assange.

On 4 September, CND general secretary Kate Hudson had stood down as a…

On 28 August, protests marked the AGM of mining corporation Vedanta Resources, including in central London, where the AGM was held. Thousands took part in a parallel demonstration in Goa, India, (pictured) demanding an end to operations at Sesa Goa’s Amona pig iron plant. Dongria Kond tribals whose sacred mountain is threatened by Vedanta’s mining ambitions (see PN 2520, 2528) joined protests in Odisha, India. In Zambia, activists marked the AGM by publishing a report on the contamination of…

8,000 women joined the annual “Million Women Rise” International Women’s Day march on 6 March, according to organisers. That’s 3,000 more than last year.

Women travelled from Birmingham, Bournemouth, Bradford, Cornwall, Leeds, Lincoln, Manchester, Nottingham, Oxford, Ireland and Wales, among many other places, to demand an end to male violence against women and children. One placard read: “It’s more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier.” Hundreds of other IWD events took place…

Both Maya Evans, imprisoned in HMP Bronzefield on 29 February, and Gabriel Carlyle (PN promotions worker), sent to Lewes prison on 21 March, were sentenced to £355 in fines and court costs; both were imprisoned by Hastings magistrates court for two weeks for refusal to pay, after two years of fending off bailiffs.

The May 2009 action was a die-in for NATO’s victims in Afghanistan, held outside the gates of a base in north London.

On 9 April, Easter Monday, former SAS soldier Ben Griffin will officially launch Veterans for Peace in the UK. The group, founded in the US over 25 years ago, is committed to resisting war through nonviolent action.

Speaking at the event will be British and US veterans of the Second World War, the Malayan Emergency, Vietnam, Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ben Griffin said: ‘We live in a society that is constantly bombarded with one view of the wars that we…

17 December 2011:
Arriving in Kabul

The sun was setting as my plane approached to land in Kabul. My first sights of Afghanistan were the snow-capped hills and gigantic mountain ranges which seemed to stretch forever.

As I got off the airport bus, I immediately headed for a queue with some other women in it. My pious Islamic outfit purchased from Whitechapel market only a week beforehand was probably too authentic as all the Afghani women wore western jeans and tops with…

January is always a desperate time of year for the occupants of the Chamne Babak refugee camp in Kabul. Temperatures at night drop to well below freezing and the little work that the men in the camp can find dries up as the snow begins to fall. This year however some relief was delivered thanks to the readers of Peace News and members of the National Union of Journalists at the Financial Times.

Well over £2,000 was raised (over £1,700 through Peace News) and on 3 January it was delivered…

On 16 January, Chris Cole, 48, a peace activist from Oxford, appeared before Westminster magistrates’ court in Marylebone Road, London, to be tried for a protest at the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEi) arms fair in September 2011. Chris was arrested for spraying “DSEi Kills” and “Stop the arms trade” at the entrance to the fair, as delegates queued to enter. 

Chris, who has pleaded “not guilty” to charges of criminal damage, was prepared to argue that he was acting…

Past issues of Peace News, stretching back over its 75 years of publication. The old masthead was used for a glossy magazine (top left), a less glossy magazine (bottom left) and the current newspaper format (bottom center). PHOTO: Erica Smith

A new design!

We’re beginning 2012 with a new look to Peace News. We hope you like it. The changes we are making (they will continue over the next couple of issues) are the product of a lot of…