Features

At the end of February, over 250 young people converged on US senate majority leader Mitch McConnell’s office in Washington DC for a sit-in marking one of the latest escalations in the youth-led campaign for a Green New Deal.

The action, led by youth from McConnell’s state of Kentucky, was planned in direct response to what they saw as his attempt to quash a senate resolution on the Green New Deal by scheduling a premature vote. (The senate in Washington DC is the upper chamber of…

Image Sea Tangle by Sarah Gittins.Click to enlarge.

Sarah Gittins: Seaweed could be cast as a heroine in a story about the ecosystem of Ullapool in relation to climate change. It has been found to be very effective in absorbing carbon, and if it is allowed to grow in abundance it could play an important role in mitigating the effects of climate…

In September 2018, the ‘Don’t Bank on the Bomb Scotland’ campaign group (DBOTB Scotland) published a guide for divestment from nuclear weapons entitled Stop Funding the End of the World – Working to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons Through Divestment: A Guide for Scotland.

The guide was launched as part of the Nae Nukes international series of events in Scotland including a march and demonstration at Faslane. The aim of the divestment movement in Scotland is to persuade Scottish…

On 7 February, a radical new congressmember from New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (known as ‘AOC’), introduced legislation into the US house of representatives calling for a ‘Green New Deal’. Fellow Democrat Ed Markey introduced the same resolution into the senate on the same day.

The importance of AOC’s resolution is not that it will lead to laws being passed and budgets being set. (It’s a ‘simple resolution’, a nonbinding congressional opinion, not a ‘bill’ or a ‘…

Burning fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas) is the main driver of global warming. Just 100 fossil fuel producers – including Exxon, Shell, BP and Total – account for 71 percent of all global industrial greenhouse gas emissions since 1988.

These companies – who are still actively looking for more fossil fuels to fill our atmosphere with carbon for years to come – are arguably the major obstacle preventing us from tackling climate change effectively.

Yet many schools and sixth-form…

Tens of thousands of children are school striking for the climate on the streets of Brussels. Hundreds of thousands are doing the same all over the world. And some are here today.

We are school striking because we have done our homework. People always tell us that they are so hopeful. They are hopeful that the young people are going to save the world. But we are not.

There is simply not enough time to wait for us to grow up and become the ones in charge. Because by the year…

Chelsea Manning, who bravely exposed atrocities committed by the US military, is again imprisoned in a US jail. On International Women’s Day, 8 March, she was incarcerated in the Alexandria, Virginia, federal detention centre for refusing to testify in front of a secretive grand jury. [In the US system of law, grand juries decide (in secret) whether someone should be charged with a major crime – ed.] Her imprisonment can extend through the term of the grand jury, possibly 18 months, and the…

Below is the official summary of the UN human rights council’s independent international commission of inquiry into the weekly demonstrations in Gaza, named ‘the Great March of Return’, that began on 30 March, 2018. It is followed by an extract on the events of 14 May 2018.

Summary

The Commission found reasonable grounds to believe that during these weekly demonstrations, the Israeli Security Forces (ISF) killed and gravely injured civilians who were neither…

Let’s face it. We’re divided.

People who share progressive or radical values in lots of ways – who oppose the same wars, who are equally passionate about stopping climate change, who would all unilaterally ditch British nuclear weapons, and so on – are divided on the hottest topic in British politics: our relationship with the European Union.

Opinion polls have shown that since the EU referendum in June 2016, people in Britain generally have become more and more attached to…

The biggest danger facing the left today is no longer a shortage of ideas or a lack of positive vision.

The biggest danger is lack of preparedness – that we are not yet ready for the hard work of turning that vision into reality. If the left has been unused to being propositional, it has been even less used to holding and wielding power.

If we are serious about fundamentally transforming our economy, we must rapidly build our understanding of the scale of the challenge…

Noted historian Margaret MacMillan took war as her theme in five Reith Lectures she delivered for the BBC in mid-2018.

The overall title of the lecture series was ‘The Mark of Cain’, referring to the story in the Hebrew Bible of the first murderer. Cain, the oldest child of Adam and Eve, murdered his brother Abel, then denied his crime. According to scripture, God cursed Cain and put a mark on him – the Hebrew is not clear whether this was a physical mark on his body or some kind…

‘Norn Iron’ is a colloquial, phonetic term for ‘Northern Ireland’ and there are certainly some ‘Norn Ironies’ about.

One is that the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) have done more for a united Ireland in the last couple of years than republicans have done in decades.

Another irony is just when more Catholics and even some Protestants have started thinking about a united Ireland, in mid-January, the New IRA should think it worthwhile to explode a car bomb and hijack vehicles in…

Although in its infancy, the new climate direct action group Extinction Rebellion (XR) seems to be finding those rare people who are willing to form ongoing campaigns from a one-off protest. [See PN 2624–2625 for reports and a critique of XR. – ed] People who recognise that the type of social change needed to stop climate change simply cannot come from the top down.

Roads have been blocked in London, Middlesbrough and Oxford. Banners have been hung over main roads bearing the XR…

At the beginning of January, 50,000 people flooded the streets of France for the first protest of 2019 organised by the yellow vests, or gilets jaunes.

This protest was a continuation of a national movement for economic justice that has shaken the country since November. While mainstream French and international media have largely characterised the yellow vests as violent troublemakers, many people throughout France see the movement as a long-needed popular uprising against a…

Noted historian Margaret MacMillan took war as her theme in five Reith Lectures she delivered for the BBC in mid-2018.

The overall title of the lecture series was ‘The Mark of Cain’, referring to the story in the Hebrew Bible of the first murderer. Cain, the oldest child of Adam and Eve, murdered his brother Abel, then denied his crime. According to scripture, God cursed Cain and put a mark on him – the Hebrew is not clear whether this was a physical mark on his body…

Noted historian Margaret MacMillan took war as her theme in five Reith Lectures she delivered for the BBC in mid-2018.

The overall title of the lecture series was ‘The Mark of Cain’, referring to the story in the Hebrew Bible of the first murderer. Cain, the oldest child of Adam and Eve, murdered his brother Abel, then denied his crime. According to scripture, God cursed Cain and put a mark on him – the Hebrew is not clear whether this was a physical mark on his body or…

4 December: Several days ago, I joined an unusual Skype call originated by young South Korean founders of ‘The Hope School’. Located on Jeju Island in South Korea, the school aims to build a supportive community between island residents and newly-arrived Yemenis who seek asylum in South Korea.

Jeju, a visa-free port, has been an entry point for close to 500 Yemenis who have travelled nearly 5,000 miles in search of safety. Traumatised by consistent bombing, threats of imprisonment and…

Poster by Dennis Gould

Image Click to enlarge

Lino etching: Emily Johns

Displayed during Peace News’ The World is My Country exhibition in November at Hastings Arts Forum, St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex. It is one of the occasional pictures that I have made of my family history and how my personal stories intersect with the century of war. My grandmother…

After four years of touring, PN’s The World is My Country exhibition had its final show in Hastings from 30 October to 11 November.

Emily Johns displayed her powerful posters celebrating anti-war resistance during the First World War – and some other political and war-related work.