Ice-skaters Ryom Tae-ok and Kim Ju-sik competing in 2017; they are representing North Korea in the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea. Photo: Garrett Wollman CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
There is one simple first step that can help the world to avoid a war between the United States and North Korea: extend the Olympic peace pause in US military exercises and North Korean nuclear/missile testing.
Possibly the most urgent task of the global peace movement is to…
On 5 February, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, visited Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi in an Israeli prison.
Ahed, then 16, was filmed slapping and kicking armed Israeli soldiers at the entrance to her home in the village of Nabi Saleh in the occupied West Bank on 15 December. Just an hour earlier, she’d learned that her 14-year-old cousin, Mohammed Tamimi, had been shot in the face at close range by Israeli soldiers with a rubber-coated metal bullet.…
Activists and curious members of the public gathered in the comfortable confines of Housmans Bookshop in central London on 5 February to discuss the indoctrination of young people into the military, and how to prevent it.
During the War Resisters’ International (WRI) forum, representatives from WRI-affiliated groups in Turkey, Finland, the Czech Republic and the UK shared their experiences in countering conscription, militarised culture, and media controlled by authoritarian…
A new, aggressive US nuclear posture review was released on 2 February. The review advises removing restrictions on the use of nuclear weapons, as well as the development of new low-yield, or tactical, warheads.
The US is looking to add a number of long-range weapons to its arsenal, with accompanying sea/air-based delivery systems. One is a modified Trident D5 submarine-launched missile that can be equipped with either a conventional or a low-yield nuclear warhead. These less-…
On 24 January, Peter Anderson and Jamie Watson were both found guilty of ‘breach of the peace’ at Dumbarton justice of the peace court for blockading the Coulport nuclear weapons store during the Trident Ploughshares summer disarmament camp last July.
Two Finns who were arrested and charged with them, Esa Noresvuo and Kaj Raninen, did not turn up. Peter and Jamie accepted prosecution evidence that none of the four who locked-on across an access road to Coulport had moved when asked to…
In January and early February, there were acquittals for 12 of the 102 people arrested during the set-up of the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair last September (PN 2610–2611).
Most of the 102 were charged with obstruction of the highway, some with aggravated trespass, and a few were released without…
On 25 January, Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, announced: ‘Because of the extraordinary danger of the current moment, the Science and Security Board [of the Bulletin] today moves the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock 30 seconds closer to catastrophe. It is now two minutes to midnight – the closest the clock has ever been to Doomsday, and as close as it was in 1953, at the height of the Cold War.’
The central concern of the…
On 6 November, peace group British Pugwash, the Polish Heritage Society UK and the Polish embassy unveiled a plaque for Joseph Rotblat on the corner of Bury Place and Great Russell Street in London. The Polish nuclear scientist won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995 for campaigning against nuclear weapons. Photo: Polish Heritage Society
Tim Deere-Jones has created quite a stir by researching a scheme by French power company EDF to dredge up more than 300,000 tonnes of mud from the Bristol Channel and dump it off Cardiff Bay.
The sediment in Bridgewater Bay is potentially contaminated by radionuclides and other toxins released from the nuclear power stations at Hinkley Point A and B. The mud is being dredged in preparation for the construction of another nuclear power station, Hinkley Point…
On 6 October, the Norwegian Nobel committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2017 to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). Executive director Beatrice Fihn laughed in disbelief when the committee rang to inform her.
ICAN was awarded the prize for drawing attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons, and for its work on a nuclear…
Many a woman peace activist has been incarcerated in Holloway Prison. There have been many poor women imprisoned there, some jailed for non-payment of fines (being fined for not having a TV licence was once a speciality of the British judicial system). Holloway saw the suffragettes force-fed and Ruth Ellis hanged. Then there are the women who were imprisoned after killing an abusive partner, and the long list of women who were neglected by prison staff and died there.
Activists…
On 3 November, 10 Greenpeace anti-fracking activists were acquitted of highway obstruction by Blackpool magistrates court. The 10 had locked themselves together for eight hours, blockading the entrance to the Cuadrilla shale gas exploration site at Preston New Road near Blackpool in May.
In his judgement, the district judge said: ‘I have to consider location, duration, interference with the rights of others and overall reasonableness. If the crown cannot show that these defendants…
I sing with ‘Sanctuary of Song’ in Swansea, a singing group for women, forming bonds between local community and the marginalised ‘asylum-seeking’ and refugee community of Swansea.
Bright and early on 17 October we drove to London, en route practising the songs we’d sing in parliament that afternoon under the banner of Black History Month. A motorway services stop gave us a chance to practise ‘…
Members of Veterans for Peace UK line up in Whitehall, London, on 12 November for a Remembrance Day ceremony at the Cenotaph. VfP UK lays a wreath of white poppies and remembers all those killed in war, including civilians and enemy soldiers. The banner at the front says: ‘Never Again’. Photo: Veterans for Peace UK
On 7 November, the first centenary of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and the 35th anniversary of Cymru Cuba’s foundation, Denbigh Town Hall was host to a historic first visit to Wales.
A full house of 400 people gathered to hear Dr Aleida Guevara, daughter of the Argentinian-born guerrilla fighter Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, passionately calling for unity among the left. She emphasised love as the heart of the revolution, evidenced by Cuba’s tradition of sending medical staff when…
Women made up more than half of the speakers at November’s high-profile ORGCon digital freedom conference, which in the world of ‘tech’ is refreshing. The conference organiser, Open Rights Group (ORG), should be praised for achieving such a balance. ORG is the UK’s only grassroots organisation working to protect our right to privacy and free speech online.
ORGCon drew a mix of activists, academics and digital professionals to Friends Meeting House, London to hear some of the world…
The two-week COP23 climate talks in Bonn, Germany, in November were met with a 25,000-strong march; a 4,500-strong mine invasion (above right); the occupation of a nearby coal-fired power station; a banner-hang on a coal ship in Bonn itself;…
On 10 November, a trial at Stratford magistrates court in London descended into farce when the prosecution declined to show police bodycam video evidence because it ‘showed nothing’ and dropped the case. This was the first trial arising from a week of action in September aimed at disrupting the DSEI arms fair held in London’s Docklands (PN 2610–2611).
Chris Maunder was facing the most serious charge brought against any of the 102 DSEI arrestees: assaulting a police…
Three members of Nukewatch UK briefly stopped a convoy carrying nuclear bombs on 16 November. The vehicles were leaving a base near Bannockburn on their way from Atomic Weapons Establishment Burghfield to the royal naval arms depot at Coulport near Helensburgh where the warheads are loaded onto Trident submarines.
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Welsh language campaigners call on assembly member Alun Davies to bin his plans for the Welsh Language Bill, while blockading his office in Brynmawr on 26 October. The bill would abolish the Welsh language commissioner and weaken regulations that ensure organisations provide services in Welsh. Photo: Cymdeithas yr Iaith
