Features

On 8 September, the Fellowship of Reconciliation commemorated “the burning of the bombing school” with a protest against the proposed St Athan military training academy.

The burning of the bombing school took place at Penyberth near Pwllheli in 1936. Ignoring the objections of the people of Wales, the British government developed an RAF bombing school on a site of particular importance in Welsh literary culture.

When the bombing school was set on fire, Plaid Cymru members…

http://www.sipri.org/

SIPRI - Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

This site contains online books along with lectures and conferences available (all in PDF format) and a lot of information to wade through. It is worth bearing in mind that this website is mainly aimed at academic research. There are however less monolithic texts on the website in the form of “what's new?” which provides news updates not generally found in the…

http://www.schnews.org.uk/diyguide/blockadingforbeginers.pdf Amazingly comprehensive guide to carrying out blockades, with advice on everything from what to wear to building obstruction devices. Also contains useful tips on how to organise your action and liaising with the police and the media. Some of the legal guidance is specific to the UK. http://www.…

As part of Bike Week 2008 (14-22 June), cyclists from all over Wales will be riding to a rally in Cardiff. Youth, cycling and environmental groups, including the Welsh Youth Forum on Sustainable Development (WYFSD), Scouts and Grwp Beic Aberystwyth, are promoting the ride, which in mid-Wales will start on Wednesday 18 June, finishing in Cardiff on the Saturday.

En route, cyclists will stop off to find out about local environmental campaigns. In Merthyr Tydfil, for example, cyclists…

Where’s the nearest army recruitment centre to you in Wales? Is there a company in your town selling combat raiding craft or “rugged use” military laptops? Is your local university teaming up with Rolls Royce to research the latest military technology? The Khaki Dragon project aims to bring together information on how the land, people, skills and knowledge within Wales contributes to war. The initial Khaki Dragon report Mapping Military Wales is soon to be available bilingually. It shows…

On 25 April, campaigners from all over Wales took part in a demonstration against plans to build a military academy at St Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan. Courses at the proposed academy will train any military or security personnel who can pay. St Athan will be an institution whose purpose is to profit from violence and war.

CND Cymru is particularly concerned that those training for nuclear warfare will do so in our nuclear-free nation.
Chair of CND Cymru, Jill Evans, said…

The following is a brief listing of helpful publications, books, websites and radio stations that are alternative sources of media, or offer a means of communication that leaves the mainstream. The list covers independent media sources from around the world.

The Association for Progressive Communications, or APC, is an international organisation that is dedicated to helping groups learn to use information technologies to…

Here we have tried to compile basic facts about each of the countries this issue focuses on. We have specifically included information about issues such as military service, the arms trade, refugees and human rights, all of which should be of particular interest to our readers.

North-East Asia is rich in spiritual currents, with Buddhist, Christian, Taosit, Confucian and shamanic traditions.

The British government's Home Office " Research, Development and Statistics Directorate" produce a publication called Research Findings. It covers many topics pertinent to policy-related research and has periodically provided information on the world prison population.

The man responsible for producing these particular briefings - Roy Walmsley - has since gone on to work with the international centre for prison studies, at King's College in London (see details of…

Anti-racism

http://www.united.non-profit.nl/pages/info18.htm
Accessed via the website of UNITED, a network of 550 European antiracist groups, this online guide contains a few detailed paragraphs on several aspects of working with the media, from drafting a press release to establishing your own magazine or radio station. Much of the information is relevant to other kinds of campaign groups. Also available in leaflet form,…

The Prison Activist Resource Centre is an online prisoner support site. While predominantly US- oriented the site is available in English and Spanish, and does offer information about internationally- relevant resources.

These are divided into categories such as “prisoner support”, “activist groups” and “prison law” (US). One of the great things about this site is that it has a rather fantastic and massive bibliography, divided into sections such as “women”, “history”, “black activism”, “…

David Anderson, Sensible Justice: Alternatives to Prisons (New Press, 1998. ISBN 1565843894, 182pp). Sensible Justice explores creative solutions for the US prisons “problem”. It also makes an important contribution developing an effective national crime strategy. Mary Bosworth, Engendering resistance: Agency and Power in Women's power (Ashgate Publishing, 1999. ISBN 1840147393) . This book contributes a different perspective to women's studies, criminology and prison studies…

Street campaigning has become a visual event enabling people to get high media coverage with innovative ideas and actions.

The visual images too often are the police charging in full riot gear or protesters being carried away. Certainly the press in Europe runs these pictures time and time again. Seldom do we see the peaceful side of any protest, it just does not make good copy.

For this reason I suggest to you that the picture we need to generate must therefore be new and…

The global, Co-operative Commonweal a long desired dream is now becoming a practical reality: it is a vision of global peace and security, through practical, local and co-active co-operation.

Over the past seven years, this dream has been turning into real, tangible action. Here, I hope to share these developments and give some pointers to the next steps.

These developments got under way in 1995, when The International Co-operative Alliance (the ICA) met to refresh the…

Plans for protest at DSEi this year are large-scale and thorough. Training and skills share provision for activists taking part in the protests is similarly ambitious, with a sizeable collective of NonViolent Direct Action (NVDA) trainers offering a programme of workshops both before and during the event.

This article explains who these trainers are, what we're planning to offer, and why we hope that we'll be making a useful contribution to efforts to Disarm DSEi.

This is not in any way intended to be a definitive statement - more a pointer to some of the more significant developments in the theory and practice of community.

6 th Century BCE: Pythagoras founds Homakoeion, a vegetarian commune based on intellectualism, mysticism and equality of the sexes. Also, followers of Buddha in India join together in ashrams to live in a productive, spiritual manner.
2 nd Century CE: Essenes communes, based on the morality of the Hebrew Bible, flourish in…

A collaboration between the Law School of King's College at the University of London and Roy Walmsley, has produced an excellent website for the International Centre for Prison Studies.

The site provides the most recent statistical information about the world’s prison population, using clickable maps of the world, organised by region. It also provides specific information about 200 countries, with statistical information on gender, young prisoners, and foreign prisoners, for each…

Fiction George Orwell, 1984 (New American Library Classics, 1990. ISBN 0451524934, 268pp).
Orwell's prophetic view of the future of the world is a chilling dystopia in which totalitarian control and conformity prevail. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (Harperperennial Library, 1998. ISBN 0060929871, 268pp)
In exchange for crime being virtually non-existent in Huxley's imaginary utopian world, there is an absence of personal freedom. Margaret Atwood,The Hand-maid'…

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) are often associated with a bunch of grey-clad number crunchers in Washington DC. Too boring, too technical, too obscure. Its true that their jargon and formula-cluttered reports can easily put off or intimidate anyone.

Perhaps best known for its role in the debt crisis and being a target of protesters in Prague, the World Bank is now expanding its role to a global knowledge bank.

Producing research and setting standards on…

In 1948 the UN introduced a new category called Weapons of Mass Destruction: atomic explosives, radioactive material weapons, chemical and biological weapons.

Declared nuclear states:

USA (1945)
Soviet Union (1949)
Britain (1952)
France (1960)
China (1964)
India (1998)
Pakistan (1998)

Undecleared:

Israel

Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrated the devastation that nuclear weapons cause.…