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Dogs were howling. I don’t know what breed
but something like wolves; so maybe Alsatians.
They wouldn’t stop, their noise was contagious.
Soon we were all weeping. When they came,

we quietened, but not the dogs. Soldiers picked
through our debris-scorched field. Most wore
balaclavas. Only yesterday, children had skipped
through us, laughing at how tall we were.

We don’t feel tall now. Soon trucks arrived,
more soldiers. The dead were…

As we go to press, Veterans for Peace (US) are taking the Golden Rule across Lake Ontario towards Toronto, as part of a 15-month ‘Great Loop’ around the eastern USA (inland as well as along the coast), educating communities on what they can do to stop the threat of nuclear war.

Back in May 1958, sponsored by Non-Violent Action Against Nuclear Weapons (NVAANW), the very same 30-foot sailboat attempted to enter the US nuclear test site in the Marshall Islands. This led to the…

At the War Resisters’ International gathering in London in June, I kept hearing about the amazing work of the South Korean anti-militarist group, World Without War. After many years of hard work, they won the right for conscientious objectors to do ‘alternative’ non-military service instead of being conscripted, despite South Korea being a highly-militarised state still officially at war with North Korea. The group has pulled off many creative and daring nonviolent actions over the years…

Barbara Deming (1917 – 1984) was one of the most dearly loved civil rights and feminist activists of her time. Born in New York City in 1917 and educated there at the Friends Meeting House Quaker School, she later studied literature and drama at Bennington College and earned a master’s degree in drama from Case Western Reserve University in 1941.

Deming began her career as a poet, professional writer, and film critic, and turned to political writing and human rights activism in the…

There is no doubt that The Russo-Ukrainian War is the best-informed and most-deeply-thought-through book available on the war. It may even be the most grippingly readable book out now on this subject.

Unfortunately, The Russo-Ukrainian War also leaves out or distorts crucial information, meaning that it is also a work of pro-war, pro-NATO, anti-Russian propaganda that makes it more difficult for the reader to come to a rational appreciation of the conflict.

…

Some 30 years ago, a British defence secretary told the world that Britain wanted to be able to launch a ‘limited nuclear strike’ at an enemy in order to deliver ‘an unmistakable message’ of its willingness to defend its ‘vital interests’. That was Conservative MP Malcolm Rifkind, on 16 November 1993, admitting some nuclear ‘credibility’ problems.

His words become clearer if we turn back to the 1991 war on Iraq, where one of the big surprises was that the Iraqi dictator, Saddam…

The leaders of Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea attended the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, 11 – 12 July.

This underlined NATO’s growing involvement in the US military confrontation with China in ‘the Indo-Pacific’. The end-of-summit statement (the ‘communiqué’) said: ‘The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values.... We are working together responsibly,…

By the end, my head was buzzing with new ideas, insights and possibilities. Should ‘care’ be the foundation for radical politics rather than ‘justice’? Is this another way of asking: aren’t relationships the foundation for (sustained and collective) action for change? (That made me wonder also about the relationship-based way of working common in community organising, and how much single-issue campaigning might have to learn from that.) How do submarines today seem normal when, at their…

SoulsINQUEST is a photographic exhibition created by photographer Sarah Booker with 17 families bereaved by deaths in police contact, prisons, mental health and care units, in collaboration with the charity INQUEST, curated by Languid Hands. SoulsINQUEST uses photography and writing as a lens onto state violence, death, grief and resistance. The exhibition took place on Brixton’s Railton Road, a historic centre of resistance to state violence and racism, at the gallery of 198 Contemporary…

Roy St Pierre loved Peace News Summer Camp and Peace News Summer Camp loved Roy.

These are a few of the many, many photos taken by Roy at Summer Camp over the years:

Group picture at PN Summer Camp 2013:

Roy himself would camp with his peace flag and his bicycle. He labelled this 2013 photo ‘my little spot’:

‘In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist: in such a world a non-revolutionary pacifism is a contradiction in terms, a monstrosity.’ – AJ Muste, 1928

This insight is a foundation stone for the tradition of revolutionary nonviolence that Peace News comes out of and, in decades past, has contributed to.

In his classic 1928 essay, ‘Pacifism and class war’, US Christian pacifist AJ Muste warned against the assumption that ‘…

Abraham Johannes Muste, known to the public as ‘AJ Muste’, was a remarkable and in some ways enigmatic figure bridging the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Born in Holland on 8 January 1885, Muste was brought to the US as a child of six and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, by a Republican family in the strict Calvinist traditions of the Dutch Reformed Church. In 1909, he was ordained a minister in that church, and married Anna Huizenga, with whom he was to share the next 40 years…

With a billion users every month, TikTok has gone from a social media platform known for silly dances to a powerful political weapon. This has been demonstrated by the fact that two successive US presidents have tried to ban the app on ‘national security’ grounds.

Back in 2018, Drone Wars UK published Off The Leash, a report which we considered to be a ground-breaking study into the development of armed autonomous drones – ‘killer robots’ able to operate without human control.

Our study showed that the British ministry of defence (MoD) was actively funding research into technology supporting the development of autonomous weapon systems. We mapped out the…

France is experiencing extensive violence and a seemingly broken political system, with increasing numbers of people feeling left behind or left out. There is a lot to feel unhappy about – while also trying to look for the positive signs which can emerge from times of crisis.

The immediate cause of the current political turbulence in France has been the government’s pensions reform plans, which are being passed into law despite widespread opposition.

Such turbulence is not new…

The Russia-Ukraine War has been an unmitigated disaster. Hundreds of thousands have been killed or wounded. Millions have been displaced. Environmental and economic destruction have been incalculable. Future devastation could be exponentially greater as nuclear powers creep ever closer toward open war.

We deplore the violence, war crimes, indiscriminate missile strikes, terrorism, and other atrocities that are part of this war. The solution to this shocking violence is not more…

Tahrir Square in Baghdad was the centre of Iraq’s massive, nonviolent Tishreen uprising in October 2019. Protesters occupied a deserted 14-storey building (next to Tahrir Square) which people call ‘the Turkish restaurant’ – because there used to be a Turkish restaurant in it.

This is an aerial view of the Turkish restaurant and of some of the…

On 20 February, INQUEST published an investigation into the procedures of both the police watchdog, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), and the coroner system, with a focus on accountability for racism. As we head towards the third anniversary of the death of George Floyd on 25 May, PN is publishing extracts from the executive summary of the INQUEST report, I can’t breathe: race, death and British policing. INQUEST campaigns for truth, justice and accountability…

‘For too long the perception, and feeling, has been that young people aren’t engaged on the topic of nuclear weapons abolition – or at least it just isn’t a priority for them. That fell away in an instant. Seeing so many peers at the last MSP in Vienna was like having a fire re-kindled inside you.’ Those are the words of Jake Atkinson, communications co-co-ordinator of Youth for TPNW (Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons), talking about the impact on him of the group’s first…

The Ukraine War has had a horrifying impact on the people of Ukraine, and has been a disaster for people around the world hit by rising food and energy costs. There are some important facts about possibilities for ending the Ukraine War that are often swept under the carpet, that are important for us to remember to help find a way out of this tragedy.

The first and most significant fact is that Ukraine and Russia came right to the edge of agreeing a peace deal back in March 2022 – and…