‘The ultimate test of this COP is that it has responded to the voices of the climate vulnerable by establishing a fund for loss and damage.’ That was Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s minister for climate change, speaking at the closing session of COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on 20 November, on behalf of most of the Global South – she was representing the G77/China* group.
Here in the UK, Friends of the Earth welcomed the fund as ‘a first step towards wealthy nations providing loss and…
28 peace activists have volunteered to act as an unarmed civilian protection team at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in Ukraine.
John Reuwer, founder of the Zaporizhzhya Protection Proposal project, writes: ‘Among the most immediate of the many threats faced by Ukrainians is the release of a nuclear dirty bomb by an intentional or accidental mishap at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant.’
The group plans to send a team of trained unarmed civilians to support inspectors…
This winter, Afghanistan faces a humanitarian catastrophe, largely due to the collapse of the economy because of the freezing of the country’s foreign reserves by the United States and other Western countries.
On 16 November, 12 countries in the region called on the US to unfreeze billions of dollars of assets belonging to Afghanistan’s central bank. They were meeting in Russia as ‘the Moscow format of consultations on Afghanistan’, first set up in 2017. The 12 included Saudi Arabia…
14 November:
We’re writing to ask your help for young Afghans who face deeply troubling circumstances and may be able to resettle in Portugal in the very near future.
In Kabul, they were part of a group which has now disbanded for security reasons and which cannot even be named in public documents. The group welcomed internationals to live with them and become part of their efforts for peacemaking. Onlookers watched them pursue remarkable altruism. They agreed to reject all…
‘Although it is difficult to evaluate it precisely, the nonviolent civil resistance has contributed to stopping the invasion in the north’ of Ukraine.
That’s one of the conclusions of Ukrainian Nonviolent Civil Resistance in the Face of War, published in October by the International Catalan Institute for Peace and Novact – International Institute for Nonviolent Action.
The author, Felip Daza, studied 235 nonviolent actions between 24 February – 30 June.
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Zombies visited the Home Office on 29 November with a gravestone saying: ‘Public Order Bill – Stay Dead’. They were there to hand in a petition (organised by Greenpeace and Liberty) signed by over 300,000 people, calling on the home secretary to stop attacking the basic human right to peaceful protest.
That day, the Public Order bill was having its second reading in the House of Lords. It contains restrictions on protest that had been removed from the Police, Crime, Sentencing and…
US peace group CODEPINK is calling on the US to respond to the wave of women-led protests in Iran by lifting ‘the brutal sanctions that harm millions of Iranian women every day’.
At least 448 people have been killed by Iranian security forces during the nationwide protests which began with the death of Mahsa Amini in mid-September, the NGO Iran Human Rights reported on 29 November.
In late September, Palestinian-Indian-American journalist Samaa Khullar wrote in Salon…
Peace campaigners gathered at Birkbeck University on 12 November for the ‘Future Wars: The Shape of Things to Come’ day conference.
Organised by Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and Drone Wars UK, the event focused on looking at the danger of emerging military technology and how campaigners can challenge and oppose new developments in this area.
Professor Paul Rogers set the scene for the day in an opening contribution made via video.
A panel of expert speakers…
Two days before this year’s National Alternative Remembrance ceremony on 13 November, my affinity group, the Mad Hatters, hung placards on the fence by each of the entrances to Tavistock Square in Central London (where the ceremony is held) giving details of the event and inviting people to join it. We also hung wreaths with white poppies by each entrance.
On the day, we gave out leaflets at the entrances inviting people to join the ceremony.
(The Mad Hatters did the same…
Hundreds of people gathered outside Lakenheath, the US air force (USAF) base in Suffolk, at a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) demonstration on 19 November.
They were protesting against the return of US nuclear weapons to the UK.
Originally scheduled for spring 2023, the arrival of the new B61-12 free-fall/glide nuclear bomb at USAF Lakenheath seems to have been brought forward to December.
Speakers at the demo included CND chair Tom Unterrainer, Trident…
12 November was a Global Day of Action called by Egyptian climate justice groups to mark the COP27 negotiations. There were dozens of demonstrations in Wales, Scotland and England.
In London, the Climate Justice Coalition (CJC) had the bright idea of organising the mass painting (in Embankment Gardens) of large colourful banners to be carried on the local march.
On 12 November, the London march set off from behind the Shell building on the South Bank, Shell and other oil…
On 3 December, the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) organised a day of action in solidarity with the people in Yemen and against the companies fuelling the war there, in the run-up to their legal challenge to British arms sales to Saudi Arabia, due to be heard in the High Court on 31 January.
Some events took place before the official day of action. On 2 December, there was a demo outside BAE Systems in Holyhead, on Anglesey, and, in Lancaster, Demilitarise Lancaster, Solidarity…
Palestine Action (PA) has claimed more successes (including eight acquittals) in its direct action campaign against the British subsidiary of Israel’s largest weapons company, Elbit Systems, which supplies military drones to the Israeli Defence Force for use against Palestinians.
Defence procurement minister Alex Chalk confirmed on 24 November that Elbit Systems UK had been removed from a £160mn contract to deliver crew training for the new Dreadnought-class submarine that is…
The British embassy in Israel will not be moving to Jerusalem.
During the Conservative party leadership contest in the summer, both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak expressed support for the move.
While prime minister, Truss ordered a review, but, on 2 November, a spokesperson for Rishi Sunak told the London-based New Arab news site: ‘There are no plans to move the UK embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv.’
The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians had warned in…
Thousands of people came to London from across the UK and around the world on 8 October to create a human chain around the Houses of Parliament, calling for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to be freed.
The demonstration was called by Don’t Extradite Assange (DEA), which campaigns for freedom for Julian Assange, currently in Belmarsh Prison awaiting extradition to the US to face conspiracy charges for publishing secret documents revealing US war crimes in Afganistan and Iraq.
…
In November, there was a surprising development in relation to the Ukraine War, with pressure for a diplomatic solution coming from the US military (pressure that has been resisted fiercely by the civilian political leadership).
The New York Times reported on 10 November that the chair of the US joint chiefs of staff, general Mark Milley, argued in private top-level meetings for…
The United States could make a huge contribution to the safety and wellbeing of the Ukrainian people – and to global security – by giving its full support to a peace process between Ukraine and Russia, and by promising that all US sanctions on Russia will be lifted once a peace treaty is signed and Russian forces are withdrawn.
Instead, US president Joe Biden is playing a cynical game by trying to appear as though he is in favour of peace talks, while actually having no interest in…
On 10 September, some extra captions and exhibits were added to the Shell-sponsored carbon capture exhibition at the Science Museum, London.
Artist Darren Cullen (AKA Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives) ‘thought it was weird that an exhibition about carbon capture, paid for by an oil company, didn’t once mention that 81% of all the carbon ever captured by this technology has been used by oil companies and pumped back into oil wells to help extract more oil’.
He decided to correct…
On 22 September, five more countries signed the UN’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and two more ratified it, making 91 signatories and 68 ratifiers in total.
Barbados, Burkina Faso, Equatorial Guinea, Haiti and Sierra Leone were the signers, and the Dominican Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo the latest ratifiers.
They were called the ‘Magnificent Seven’ by the chair of Britain’s Nuclear Free Local Authorities, David Blackburn of Leeds city…
In early September, the high court in London carried out a judicial review of the British government’s plan to deport refugees to Rwanda.
On the first day, Raza Hussain KC told the court: ‘Rwanda is a one-party state that does not tolerate political opposition. It is a regime that repeatedly imprisons, tortures and murders those it thinks its political opponents. Those who protest or dissent from government directives, including refugees, are faced with police violence.’
The…
