Features

In mid-October, the United Nations reported that 2,000 Iraqis flee their homes every day. 2.2 million are refugees in their own country, while more than 2.2m have fled to neighbouring countries. (1m were displaced prior to the 2003 invasion.)

In Syria, the 1.2m Iraqi refugees amount to 7% of the population; while in Jordan, 500,000 - 750,000 Iraqi refugees make up perhaps 10% of the population.
    A comparable inflow in Britain…

Last month, over a thousand Iraqis took to the streets of Baghdad in protest at the building of a separation wall in the poor, mainly Shi'ite neighbourhood of al-Washash.

It is not the first wall to be built in the city: the US military - which regards separation walls as a centrepiece of its strategy to end sectarian violence in the area - began construction of a three- mile, 3.6-metre-high concrete wall in April and are currently in the process of erecting more in at least five…

Can the built environment influence human behaviour? In the post-WWII era , most architects and planners would have answered that question with an emphatic “YES”. Many decades and some failures later most would probably answer that the built environment is one of many factors influencing behaviour for good or ill.

The Scandinavian countries, together with Holland have been strikingly successful in creating new settlements which enjoy social cohesiveness, low crime and which are…

Being activists isn't easy. Many of us are on low incomes, living at the whim of private landlords or in debt to banks, tied to unrewarding jobs, forever scrabbling to get to a position where we can do the things we feel are really important.

Taking control of basic aspects of our lives can be an important step in changing this.

For almost 20 years, Radical Routes has been promoting the co-operative model as a tool to build radical communities, bases of inspiration and…

When the polling agency ORB's findings came out [see last issue], I was sure that The Guardian, The Independent, The New York Times and other major papers would cry out in outrage and pronounce in thick, black ink across their respective front pages that 1.2 million Iraqis had died because of the Iraq war: a genocide revealed.

I expected fervent discussion, indignation and controversy across the entire world.

I was wrong: the poll was ignored.

Although it…

This content has been removed from the website on request of the author.

A poll of 1,461 adults in 15 of Iraq's 18 regions indicates that as many as 1.2 million Iraqis have died violently because of the conflict since the invasion

British polling agency ORB, which has conducted polls for the BBC and the Financial Services Authority, asked randomly-selected adults in face-to-face interviews in mid-August how many members of their immediate households had “died as a result of the conflict (ie as a result of violence rather than a natural death such as old…

After four years of mounting tension, Iran has finally agreed to answer by December all questions about its nuclear programme posed by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The United States, however, seems to want to undermine the Iran-IAEA agreement reached on 21 August, arguing that it does not halt Iran's uranium enrichment capability immediately.

    According to IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, the purpose of the new “work…

On 9 August, charges against ten women (and a dog), brought under the Aldermaston byelaws, were dropped ( “Women arrested at cocktail party”, July/Aug PN).

The women had been charged with “camping” and “lighting a bonfire”, following the introduction of new bylaws on 31 May 2007. Their original arrest - on 8 June - was, frankly, bizarre; Ministry of Defence (MoD) police took more than three hours to get women to the nearest police station - partially due to women vanishing,…

By the time parliament voted in March 2007 to replace the Trident nuclear submarine fleet, AWE was busy building new facilities to test, design and build new warheads -- while the government continued to tell us that a decision on the new warheads would not be needed “until the next parliament”.

Britain has designed, tested and built nuclear warheads at Aldermaston for 50 years, including the warheads for the current Trident missiles. In 2002 AWE published their Site Development…

I refuse to be conscripted because it is a denial of human liberty.

I claim, as an individual, the right to act towards my fellow individuals, and no less to all creation, in the manner that my intelligence and my convictions guide me through the medium of my conscience.

Whatever may be the reason for the Universe, I see it as a whole - composed of subsidiary parts and each part is again made of smaller units.

The perfection of the whole is dependent on the…

I was born in Leigh Park, a council estate just outside Portsmouth, the second-largest housing estate in Europe. I lived there until I was 17. My father was a bus driver for 32 years, and my mum worked as a school dinner lady.

The lovely thing was, there were fields and trees and a big reservoir as part of the estate. At the infants school I went to, they had big oak trees. I was quite a day dreamer, and I'd always be mesmerised by all these trees.

Living in that environment…

Bicycology is a cycle activism and education collective that formed after the 2005 G8 Bike Ride. Bicycology is run non-hierarchically through regular meetings rotating around the country.

In 2006, Bicycology organised a cycle roadshow from London to Lancaster, then went on to the Camp for Climate Action near Selby.

This year Bicycology did a tour of south-west England. Around 20 of us cycled from Aylesbury to Exeter over two weeks, stopping in towns to promote…

On Friday morning, Church bells awakened me, which I found strange in a Muslim country. After a little breakfast with my host Kathy Kelly, I was wide awake and raring to go.

The market was extremely crowded because the children will start school on Sunday. Stalls were full of rucksacks, notebooks and children's shoes.

For many Iraqi children, the decision to let them enter government schools means they can begin their education again, here in Jordan. Some of them were out of…

Climate change is a danger to the whole human race (and a lot of other species), and is caused by greenhouse gases. One way we can cut down on the amount of greenhouse gases that we create is by stopping eating meat. Did you know a kilo of beef generates as much greenhouse gas as driving a car for 250km! It's partly the gases given off by the cow (mostly burping), but mostly all the energy used to produce and then transport the artificial food for the cows. (Cows and similar animals pro-…

Could it really be done? Could over 700 people - many of whom had never met before - not only build and manage a massive camp site on the perimeter of Heathrow, whilst organising a day of mass direct action against the aviation industry, but do so using participatory, consensus decision-making?

This was the utopian vision outlined in the pre-publicity for the `Camp for Climate Action', and from what I saw as a participant during days three to five the answer was yes.

Arriving…

On 23 August, many anarchists will mark the 80th anniversary of the execution by electric chair of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two working class (male) Italian anarchist immigrants to the United States, whose fate seized the world's attention.

Peace News is marking the anniversary by addressing two of the issues raised by the Sacco and Vanetti case - the situation of immigrants in rich Western societies, and the question of violence in social change. Sacco…

On 23 August, many anarchists will mark the 80th anniversary of the execution by electric chair of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two working class (male) Italian anarchist immigrants to the United States, whose fate seized the world's attention.

Peace News is marking the anniversary by addressing two of the issues raised by the Sacco and Vanetti case - the situation of immigrants in rich Western societies, and the question of violence in social change. Sacco…

When I arrived at the test centre, I wasn't worried at all. Instead of buying the 145 page book Life in the UK - A Journey To Citizenship for #10, I visited my library and scanned through it quickly - noting that it was dull and packed full of facts/figures/dates. It seemed crazy that they might test us simply on factual matters, so I assumed the test would test your grasp of key concepts (which seemed straightforward to me).

To my dismay, the questions were fiendishly…

Once again, Britain is enduring terrorist attacks. Once again, the Prime Minister is denying obvious realities, flying in the face of a near-national consensus.

Now it is Gordon Brown claiming that the attacks in London and Glasgow happened “irrespective of Iraq, irrespective of Afghanistan”. Brown and his ministers are fully aware that this is not the judgement of Britain's counter-terrorism experts.

After the 7/7 London bombings, British police involved in…