Global south

Given his canonisation by mainstream culture as the icon of peace and nonviolence, one might have imagined that Gandhi would have led a strong campaign of resistance to the war. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the case.

In April 1918, Gandhi gave his unconditional assent to British plans to raise half a million more Indian troops. Attempting to recruit 12,000 men from the Kheda district of Gujarat, Gandhi did not shy away from employing moral coercion, telling them…

The British view of the world, even today, is fundamentally shaped by a 100-year-old lie, a powerful myth that contrasts German aggressiveness with the US-UK defence of small countries and high principles. In reality, it is a documented fact that the sovereignty of ‘plucky little Belgium’ was irrelevant to Britain’s decision to enter the First World War. In reality, it is a documented fact that the military alliances that Britain entered into were born of a desperate need to shore up…

Does Fairtrade work? In May, a four-year study by academics at London University reported that, for wage workers in Fairtrade and non-Fairtrade producer organisations in Ethiopia and Uganda, Fairtrade status made no difference to poverty levels. The researchers also found evidence that the benefits of the Fairtrade premium, distributed to producer communities, were not fairly shared.

The Fairtrade Foundation responded that the results were not representative of the success of…

Last year, Peace News featured the story of the assassination in Chiapas, Mexico, of the community leader and defender of the land, Juan Vázquez Guzmán. In recognition of the first anniversary of his killing, 'Two Weeks of Worldwide Action: Juan Vázquez Guzmán lives! The Bachajón struggle continues!', have been called, from Thursday 24 April to Thursday 8 May. As part of this initiative, the…

Press, supporters and passers-by stop to hear South African president Jacob Zuma at the Hector Pieterson Memorial in Soweto.photo: Marcela Teran

With Nelson Mandela’s illness earlier this year, the eyes of the world’s media looked to South Africa. More specifically they looked to a single building in South Africa – Pretoria’s Mediclinic Heart Hospital, host to a man who more than…

Nuclear weapons have been used since 9 August 1945. They have been used ‘in the precise way that a gun is used when you point it at someone’s head in a direct confrontation, whether or not the trigger is pulled.’

These are the words, over 30 years ago, of analyst Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon insider who leaked the US government’s top secret internal…

This book explores the revolutionary politics and activism that sprang up in Argentina in December 2001. With the state collapsing in the midst of a severe economic crisis, sections of the population responded by organising demonstrations and neighbourhood assemblies.

In the months and years following this societal rupture, workers began to occupy their workplaces and…

Members of Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) were arrested and beaten by police for organising marches in Harare, on 19 September, and in Bulawayo on 20 September.

Demonstrators waved placards, sang songs, and presented Zimbabwe’s new government with a list of demands, according to SW Radio Africa. While onlookers applauded the women, police tried to disperse the crowds and injured many protesters with baton strikes.

The marches celebrated the International Day of Peace,…

On 9 July, the Mexican indigenous national congress, in conjunction with the Zapatistas, issued a statement of solidarity and support for the people of the Yaqui nation, who have been blockading an international motorway to Arizona in the US. 

The Yaqui River valley, in Sonora, northern Mexico, is the ancestral home of the indigenous Yaqui tribe, and their ancestral source of water. In 2010, the state governor launched the ‘Independence Aqueduct’ project, designed to extract 75…

From 12-16 August, the Zapatistas hosted a course in freedom and autonomy for 1,700 supporters from Mexico and abroad. Originally they had planned on 500 students, but such was the response that they expanded the school to hold 1,200 more people, and announced two more little schools will be held, in December this year and in January 2014.

The main requirement for any applicant is ‘an indisposition to speaking and judging, a disposition to listening and seeing, and a well-placed heart…

Puerto Rican nationalist Oscar Lopez Rivera has the dubious distinction of being one of the longest-serving political prisoners in the world.

Having served in the US army in Vietnam, Rivera returned to Chicago and started working to improve living conditions for Puerto Ricans in the city.

Radicalised during this period, he became a forceful advocate for Puerto Rican independence from the United States. Facing police repression, Rivera went underground for several years. In 1981…

Wambunga Wa Nyingi and Jane Muthoni Mara outside the High Court, London. Photo: Leigh Day

More than 60 years after Britain declared the Kenyan ‘Emergency’, the British government has been forced to provide compensation to over 5,000 Kenyans for atrocities committed during its counter-insurgency campaign.

During the Emergency, an anti-colonial coalition, Mau Mau, responded to British imperialist control in Kenya. As a result, thousands of Kenyans in Kikuyu, Embu and Meru areas…

The most serious threat of nuclear terrorism comes not from some fragmented, vengeful jihadist network, but from the western states who form the nuclear core of the NATO alliance, who have issued repeated threats against non-nuclear weapon states in the Global South.

It is in fact official policy that Britain will use or threaten to use its nuclear weapons to preserve its economic and financial advantages throughout the world. You just have to join the dots.

This is one of the…

It is a famous, but apocryphal exchange: ‘Mr Gandhi, what do you think of western civilisation?’ ‘I think it would be a very good idea.’ Europeans like to see their culture as springing directly from the fountains of Greek creativity, being refined within the formality of the Roman empire, then surviving ‘the dark ages’ to flower in the Renaissance and all that has followed.

The Irish journalist and UN civil servant Erskine Barton Childers wrote a passionate corrective in 1966: ‘I…

Mohamed dresses for the UK summer

Peace News Summer Camp is proud to announce that Mohamed Moghazy, an organiser from the Egyptian Committees to Defend the Revolution, has accepted our invitation to speak at our camp at the end of July.

So, as well as the usual delights of PN Summer Camp – a warm and welcoming atmosphere, fascinating fellow campers, beautiful countryside, wonderful childcare and friendly campfire evenings – we are going to hear…