Time to Act on Climate Change marchers sit down in The Strand, London,
21 March 2015. Photo: Milan Rai.
Two of the most important things the next British government will do are: take part in the Paris climate negotiations in December, and decide on the replacement (or not) of the Trident nuclear weapon system next year.
On both issues, smaller, more progressive parties like the Scottish National Party, the Green Party and Plaid Cymru are likely to have a bigger impact than…
CAAT national gathering at Conway Hall,
London, 21 March 2015 Photo: CAAT
One of the most powerful speeches at the CAAT national gathering this year came from Sayed Alwadaei, a Bahraini activist who was imprisoned for taking part in pro-democracy demonstrations and then had his citizenship revoked in Bahrain.
Sayed reminded us of the terrible human cost of the arms trade, and the impact that those of us campaigning over here can have. ‘Your action gives Bahrainis a voice’, he…
There is a recurring theme, common to many if not all public meetings I attend: everyone is assumed to have good hearing.
In reality, there are more than 10 million people in the UK with some form of hearing loss – one-in-six of the population – including more than 70 per cent of over-70-year-olds and 40 per cent of over-50-year-olds.
More than 800,000 people in the UK are severely or profoundly deaf. So, many people aren’t going to clearly hear what is said, and,…
On 2 March, after five years of action by Earth Quaker Action Team, PNC bank announced a shift in its policy that will effectively cease its financing of mountaintop-removal coal mining in the Appalachia mountain region in the eastern United States.
This marks a major turnaround for the seventh-largest bank in the US, which for years refused to budge on this issue. After more than 125 actions, their desire to continue business as usual proved no match for Earth Quaker…
Commonweal is a free library which specialises in works on peace and radical politics. Its aim since inception has been to provide a service for activists and academics alike. It has been housed since 1976 within the main JB Priestley Library at Bradford University, West Yorkshire. It has had strong links from its early days with Peace News.
The library had its origins in the private collection of books, journals and pamphlets of David Hoggett, whose life in many ways…
The massive twin bombings at mosques in the capital that shook Yemen on 20 March, killing over 100 and wounding many more, were immediately claimed by Daesh (the Arab acronym for ISIS/ISIL). Since the mosques were largely attended by members of the Houthi movement who subscribe to Zaidi, Shi’ite Islam, and Daesh is ultra-Sunni, the bombings also suggest Sunni-Shi’ite conflict of the sort that has characterised Iraq’s recent sectarian violence.
But Daesh doesn’t in fact have a…
In his recent book on the US civil rights movement, This Nonviolence Stuff’ll Get You Killed, Charles Cobb argues that ‘although nonviolence was crucial to the gains made by the freedom struggle of the 1950s and ’60s, those gains could not have been achieved without the complementary – and underappreciated – practice of armed self-defence’. Indeed, the willingness to use deadly force, Cobb asserts, ‘ensured the survival not only of countless brave men and women but also of the…
NB This piece accompanies this article.
Charles Sims, one of the best-known proponents of armed self-defence within the US civil rights movement, was asked in 1965 how activists could best advance the movement without nonviolence.
He responded: ‘I believe nonviolence is the only way.’
Robert F Williams - smeared here on an FBI
‘That is also us, the possibility of us, if the wonderful accident of our birth had taken place elsewhere: you could be the refugee, I could be the torturer. To face that truth is also our burden. After all, each of us has been the bystander, the reasonable person who just happens not to hear, not to speak, not to see those people, the invisible ones, those who live on the other side of the border.’
Karen Connelly, The Lizard Cage
It was a little…
1. What was this an attack on?
Was that attack an attack on freedom of speech as such, on democracy, even on the whole Western culture and lifestyle, as was maintained throughout? Or was it, more limited, a revenge directed at one weekly magazine for what some perceive as blasphemy?
2. Is freedom of expression practised or curtailed for various reasons?
How real is that freedom in the West? Just a couple of days before the Paris massacre, PEN [the literary…
US peace activists Frances Crowe (left) and Kathy Kelly, Northampton, Massachusetts, 19 June 2014. photo: Milan Rai
22 January: The US bureau of prisons contacted me today, assigning me a prison number and a new address: for the next 90 days, beginning tomorrow, I’ll live at FMC Lexington, in the satellite prison camp for women, adjacent to Lexington’s federal medical center for men. Very early tomorrow morning, Buddy Bell, Cassandra Dixon, and Paco and Silver, two house guests whom we…
A passionate feminist, the Irish pacifist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington viewed war and anti-feminism as ‘branches of the same tree – disregard of true life-values’. It is therefore unsurprising that, less than a fortnight after Britain’s declaration of war in 1914, the paper he edited, the Irish Citizen, produced a poster bearing the immortal slogan: ‘Votes for…
Rhubarb-chopping at Findhorn ecovillage. Photo: Jenny Pickerill
All too often eco-villages are romanticised and celebrated, rather than analysed and critiqued. Their limitations, failings and contradictions are well known to their members, but even academics like Karen Litfin [1] present a rosy picture of alternative harmony. It was refreshing, then, to read Leslie Barson’s experiences at Sieben Linden (PN 2576–2577) and her conclusion that there are three problems with eco-…
My favourite local pub is the Horse & Groom – up at the top of Norman Road. It proudly boasts its history as the oldest pub in St Leonards-on-Sea, in East Sussex, and is a fine example of what I have always called ‘OMPs’ – Old Man’s Pubs. That’s not an insult, it’s just a special kind of pub.
You enter and there’s usually a warm, quiet atmosphere – a bit of chat at the bar, a few small groups of people sat around tables, a solitary chap reading a paper with a well-behaved dog…
Moments Later: ‘Shell Shocked US Marine,
Vietnam, Hue 1968’, printed 2013 © Don McCullin.
Don McCullin speaks eloquently about this image
on the Tate website. He clearly recalls taking the
photograph – in fact, he took multiple pictures
‘Did you enjoy the show?’ asked the woman in the Tate Modern bookshop, whilst I purchased a copy of the Conflict, Time, Photography catalogue.
‘Enjoy’ wasn’t the verb on the tip of my tongue as I stood at the counter,…
The horrific murder of the editor, cartoonists and other staff of the irreverent satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, along with two policemen, by terrorists in Paris was in my view a strategic strike, aiming at polarizing the French and European public.
The problem for a terrorist group like al-Qa’eda is that its recruitment pool is Muslims, but most Muslims are not interested in terrorism. Most Muslims are not even interested in politics, much less political Islam. France is…
Emily Johns (Peace News co-editor) and Gabriel Carlyle (PN promotions worker) are ready to tour the UK, speaking about PN’s mammoth project ‘The World is My Country: A Visual Celebration of the People and Movements that Opposed the First World War’.
A year in the making, the 10 posters feature stories from a history of police raids and buried documents, feminist peace initiatives and clandestine printing presses, Maori princesses and striking German munitions workers.
…
The world reacted with horror to the murderous attack on the French satirical journal Charlie Hebdo. In the New York Times, veteran Europe correspondent Steven Erlanger graphically described the immediate aftermath, what many call France’s 9/11, as ‘a day of sirens, helicopters in the air, frantic news bulletins; of police cordons and anxious crowds; of young children led away from schools to safety. It was a day, like the previous two, of blood and horror in and around…
Over 80 people crowded into Peace News’s successful ‘Weaving Our Own Web’ dayschool in Islington, London, on 10 January, to learn how we can use the internet more effectively in our campaigning for peace and justice. We had really great feedback from people (see box).
We achieved our main goal of drawing in people across the spectrum – people at the early stages of learning about digital tools, as well as folk with moderate abilities and the technically-advanced. We had quite an…
