Hamas features in the European list of terrorist organisations. Is this fair? Hamas, like many other movements in the Middle East, is essentially a political party with a military wing. It is not homogeneous.
I know one Hamas mayor with posters of Gandhi and Martin Luther King in his office. I know others understandably consumed with bitterness. Their supporters are an even more diverse bunch.
Many Palestinian Christians cast their votes for Hamas, an avowedly Islamist…
The atmosphere when I arrived with most of the other campers at 12.30pm and throughout the day was excellent – there were workshops all afternoon, a working kitchen, compost toilets, a farmers market, music - samba, Céilidh, guitars, folk bands – a real carnival feel. The event was entirely peaceful all day with the police calm and friendly, some walking through the camp, at least one holding a daffodil and at least one seen hugging a protester!
At 7pm, the mood changed…
My sympathies go to the family and friends of Ian Tomlinson. At the G8 in Germany in 2007, the peaceful demonstrator next to me was beaten to the ground by a policeman wielding a similar baton, probably supplied by the same arms manufacturer. Unprovoked, another policeman punched my wife.
Intimidation and violence are not confined to London or “The Met”; they are the stock-in-trade of police the world over when dealing with peaceful democratic protest. Peaceful, I hear some…
As PN went to press, Iran and the United States were preparing to make significant peace offers (or at least gestures) to each other. Iran’s proposal is almost certain to include international co-ownership and joint operation of its enrichment facility, the “consortium” option rejected by the US and Britain in the past.
In this delicate situation, Israel, predictably was doing its best to provoke a wild statement from Iran that might destabilise diplomacy. Thus the threats to bomb…
Western attention has focused once again on the plight of women in Afghanistan, as the result of the Shia Family Law, passed by Afghan president Hamid Karzai in March. The law, which gives Shia husbands enormous legal powers over their wives, provoked 300 women to mount an almost-unprecedented demonstration outside a madrassa run by one of Afghanistan’s most powerful Shia clerics, Mohamad Asif Mohseni, on 15 April.
Another view
Nelofer Pazira, Afghan-Canadian film-maker…
The clever young things at Plane Stupid recently came up with a great idea for forging closer links between environmental activists and concerned residents threatened by the proposed third runway at Heathrow. The idea was to twin residents up with existing affinity groups, and for each affinity group to support their resident in their fight against the new runway, ultimately helping them defend their homes if necessary.
To get the campaign off the ground, an initial group of activists…
In 2008, a small group of women in Kandahar, Afghanistan, decided to gather in a public square to pray for peace with justice in Afghanistan on International Women's Day. They expected only a few women to show up, but more than 1500 women gathered in Kandahar that day. This year on Women's Day thousands of women across Afghanistan demonstrated for peace and women's justice wearing sky-blue scarves to highlight unity and solidarity across generations, languages, geographic locations, ethnic…
Obama’s Guantanamo
On coming into office, US president Barack Obama promised to shut down the US prison camp for suspected terrorists on Guantanamo within a year and to fight terrorism “in a manner that is consistent with our values and our ideals”. As our last issue went to press, Obama quietly indicated that he will continue to deny the right to trial to hundreds of terror suspects held at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, a place human rights lawyers call “Obama’s Guantanamo”. Bagram…
In the wake of so much loss, grief and destruction, it is sometimes difficult to imagine how Gaza will ever recover. This is compounded by the fact that despite Israel’s massive assault officially ending in January, the Israeli military continues to attack the strip almost daily. Most of the international journalists have left and the international community considers the war as being over, but Palestinian civilians are still being killed and injured on a regular basis. Fishermen and…
Short, wispy silver hair surrounds her freckled and slightly worn face. She speaks with a decisive tone, and though the tongue in which she speaks is unfamiliar to me, I was fascinated by the story of Hana Ibrahim when I met her in February at SOAS in London.
The lifelong Iraqi resident began campaigning for women’s rights about ten years ago and founded the Women’s Will Association, an Iraq- and Syria-based NGO, in Baghdad in 2004 and Gender magazine, which discusses women’s rights…
Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), remarked of US president Barack Obama on 11 March: “He is not going to say by 2020 I’m going to reduce emissions by 30%. He’ll have a revolution on his hands. He has to do it step by step.”
Within the mainstream, the kind of protest and turmoil that might be thrown up by a strict climate policy amounts to a “revolution”.
Frankly, we do need that kind of revolution. We need to force political…
As PN went to press, Iran was digesting US president Barack Obama’s surprise New Year (Nowruz) message to the Iranian people. It appears that both the Obama speech and British prime minister Gordon Brown’s recent initiative are designed to mask an unwillingness to accept a compromise on the Iranian nuclear crisis that is supported by former diplomats and by the government of Iran itself. In his 554-word video speech on 20 March, Obama offered a “new day” (but no specific proposals) to both “…
The Free Gaza Movement is, at the time of going to press, preparing to break the Israeli siege on Gaza again. They hope to send a cargo ship (with building supplies and medical equipment), and a passenger boat (with at least 50 passengers), and are appealing for funds to enable this to happen. Whether or not they succeed in acquiring additional boats, they will be des Spirit of Humanity, which was turned back by Israeli gunboats in January, intends to depart for Gaza in mid-March.
…
At the very heart of the British Museum there is a gentle murmuring in many languages. The English voices are fretting from the very start of the exhibition: “Have these things been destroyed?” “What has been the impact of the current war on the archaeology of Babylon?”
Babylon: myth and reality has a crowded audience of the knowledgeable and concerned. Usually the blockbuster shows have a large proportion of the compelled-by-advertising-shufflers, but this was a display where one…
The nine activists who decommissioned the EDO arms factory in Brighton in January, in protest against the supply of British arms to Israel and the assault on Gaza, are now facing the much vaguer charge of “conspiracy to cause criminal damage” as well as the charge of criminal damage itself, following a court hearing on 16 February.
The charge of burglary was dropped against all nine. Because of this change, the three activists who were arrested outside the factory, and who caused…
British anti-war groups active in the first years of the new century, in the era of the “war on terror”, are united predominantly by opposition to particular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Protest events have been composed of a great array of activists, from feminists to Islamic patriarchs, the Liberal Democrats to Socialist Workers Party, from the deeply religious to the entirely secular, and from bereaved military families to supporters of the Palestinian cause.
So anti-war…
“Already a legend, this awesome creation has manifested itself at countless gatherings, events, festivals and protests the length and breadth of the UK. There are thousands upon thousands of hungry campaigners who have feasted on these top-notch meat-free burgers at all hours of the day, all points of the compass. Truly a legend.”Vegan Environmental Awards
Whilst there is a long way to go to catch up with Peace News, Veggies of Nottingham have covered a lot of history. From…
The most firmly held myth of our time is that no society can exist without a government and that we need the state to protect us – including from environmental destruction.
Let’s begin by not confusing two terms. Anarchy is the condition of a society without a ruler. Anarchism is a rich nineteenth-century political philosophy. Anarchists are not against democracy, they want to deepen it and make it our servant, not our master.
While it does reject the idea of governments…
As Israel commits brutal war crimes in Gaza, it also continues to covet the land of Palestinians living in the West Bank. The 790km-long apartheid wall snakes through the occupied West Bank annexing Palestinian land to Israel.
Israel is also progressing with the annexation of the entire eastern section of the West Bank, known as the Jordan Valley, the most fertile region of the West Bank, which constitutes a further 28.5% of the land inside the 1967 green line.
Israel already…
I thought this would be a vox pop bit in Peace News but as it goes, I am beginning to feel weirder and weirder about walking around with a pen and a little notebook in my hand asking people questions about their lives.
I had it all planned; I was to do what I generally like doing best anyway – wander around the village early in the morning, say my usual “namaste” to all, most of whom are small land holding farmers.
Last week I received some ripe cucumbers and pears from…
