Peace News readers are invited to join Cymdeithas y Cymod (the Fellowship of Reconciliation in Wales) on their pilgrimage to the military training ground on Epynt in mid-Wales on 25 June.
The area between Epynt and Aberporth on Cardigan Bay is one of the two places in Europe where testing drones is permitted. These unmanned aeroplanes are part of the recent development in robots used as arms. Those used in Afghanistan and Libya are controlled thousands of miles away in a centre…
Emily Johns’ collection of pictures was exhibited at the University of Wales, Trinity St David in Carmarthen on 6 May. The event was hosted by the chaplaincy. The planning was undertaken by chaplain Ainsley Griffiths, the well known bardic poet Mererid Hopwood, Jeni Williams, poet and tutor at the University of Wales, Amnesty International and myself.
Mererid Hopwood read, in Welsh and in English, a moving poem she had composed for the occasion. Oghpgho Okpako from the Niger Delta…
PHOTO: Janet Fenton
The subs will be built with the more expensive PWR3 nuclear reactor rather than the less safe PWR2 one, but this will further increase the costs of the Trident replacement programme.
The aim is to base the new nuclear missile submarines at Faslane in Scotland until 2060. This is a decision that flies in the face of the will of the people of Scotland who have just elected a parliament with a clear majority of MSPs who are strongly opposed to nuclear weapons.
…On Good Friday, I headed down to a sunny Sizewell beach on the picturesque Suffolk coast. The nuclear power station, directly overlooking the beach, was, for the third successive year, the target for the annual spring weekend camp of the Stop Nuclear Power Network.
As usual, it was timed around the anniversary of Chernobyl – the world’s worst ever civil nuclear disaster (prior to Fukushima, at least) – which this year coincided with Easter.
Within a few hours of arriving, a…
One of the most significant attempts to broker a peace deal to end the war in Libya failed in mid-April, undermined by western leaders who assured Libyan rebels of a military victory over Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
The African Union (AU) sent a peace delegation to Libya’s capital Tripoli on 10 April. Led by South African president Jacob Zuma, the delegation met with Gaddafi, who, according to the AU, agreed on a roadmap for the resolution of the Libyan crisis.
The roadmap…
“[W]e must talk to the Taliban. Without that, we will leave a broken country. Our present strategy, says one official who has been at the heart of it, “is all a big, big lie”” - Guardian columnist Julian Glover.
Following “extensive interviews in Washington with many of the key players involved in Afghan policy”, renowned Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid recently reported that the US is “preparing for extensive diplomatic initiatives in the next few months to take the fledgling peace…
For the last two years, Peace News has sponsored Unarmed Forces Day as a modest initiative to counter the ministry of defence’s celebration of militarism, “Armed Forces Day”.
Unarmed Forces Day, held on the same day, is a chance for groups around the country to celebrate the power of nonviolent action.
Recruitment day
Officially, Armed Forces Day (AFD) is “an annual opportunity for the nation to Show Your Support for the men and women who make up the Armed Forces…
Anti-war campaigner Brian Haw has lost his last appeal to keep his peace camp on the grass in Parliament Square, after the mayor of London was granted a possession order by the high court on 17 March.
The central green is controlled by the greater london authority (GLA), while the pavement surrounding the grass belongs to Westminster city council (WCC). Separate eviction proceedings brought by the WCC in relation to the pavement are due to come to trial before 9 May.
The 62-…
Vittorio Arrigoni, an outspoken Italian peace activist, was murdered in Gaza on 14 April, after being abducted by an anti-Hamas, al-Qa’eda-inspired group. Arrigoni arrived in Gaza on a Free Gaza Movement siege-busting boat in 2008.
After Arrigoni’s kidnap by a group known as “Tawhid and Jihad”, a video was posted on YouTube showing the 36-year-old, who was working with the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement (ISM), being tortured and beaten. The group demanded the…
The event planned for October formerly known as “the Radical Media Conference” has been forced to change its name after being subjected to legal threats by an international PR and production company calling itself “Radical Media”. There will be a protest against this corporate bullying on 3 May.
On 5 April, as the conference organising group began pulling together suggestions for workshops, Peace News (which initiated the event) was surprised to receive an email from Joan Aceste,…
On 14 April, the high court ruled that police acted illegally when they cordoned (“kettled”) Climate Camp protesters in Bishopsgate, London, at the G20 protest on 1 April 2009. The case was brought by two people who were among 5,000 kettled by police for five hours.
The judgment does not rule the tactic of kettling illegal, but places limits on its use, concluding that: “The police may only take such preventive action as a last resort catering for situations about to descend into…
The Irish environmental group “Shell to Sea” has published a video in which a police sergeant suggests to another Garda (Irish police officer) that they should say to an arrested protester: “Give me your name and address or I’ll rape you”. A suggestion that provokes laughter.
The recording was made on a video camera confiscated from the protesters but not switched off. Only after a protest outside the Irish parliament did the Gardai apologise for the remark.
Chorus:
We will rise, we will rise
We will not accept those politicians’ lies
So come on get out and fight, unite against the right
We will rise, we will rise!
“Cut it all”, cries Cameron; “cut them off”, cries Clegg
“If you lose your livelihood, well, just go out and beg!
One and all must share the pain, ’cause we have done the sums
We’re all in this together - oh, but not our banker chums!”
The government goes on about this Big…
Four years ago the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP), in coalition with the Greens, formed a minority Scottish government. Its manifesto and campaign literature had prominently declared opposition to the Trident nuclear weapon system.
After the Westminster government authorised design work for the replacement of Trident submarines, the Scottish parliament answered with a resolution calling upon the UK government not to replace Trident.
Then, in October 2007, the Scottish…
At the end of March, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) published a 100-page document to “inform and prompt wider debate” on the use of military unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), commonly known as drones. The UK Approach to Unmanned Aircraft Systems examines technological and scientific issues related to current and future use of armed and unarmed drones and also sets out, for the first time, what the MoD sees as the legal, moral and ethical issues that arise from using such systems. The document…
“The RAF’s over-budget Typhoon fighter jets are being deployed in Libya on missions for which they are ill-equipped, because military chiefs are anxious to justify their high cost,” military sources revealed to The Times on 23 April.
The first combat attack by the Eurofighter Typhoon was carried out on 12 April, the day before a highly critical report on the £37bn* Typhoon programme by the public accounts committee (PAC) of the house of commons was due to be published. The…
After several years of the Faslane peace camp maintaining not much more than just a token presence, the campers have decided to start a drive towards bringing it back to life in time for the thirtieth anniversary in June.
There have been several small events just with friends and associates, starting with a communal rebuilding on 1 January and several clean up days. The momentum of progress has been steady and greater than expected, and the camp is now busy and active once more…
It was in January 2003 that Mary entered Shannon airport in Ireland and took an axe to a US warplane bound for Iraq. She was arrested and held in Limerick prison before being charged with $1 million criminal damage and released on bail.
A few days later, the same warplane was disarmed by the Pit Stop Ploughshares after being repaired. They were charged with $2.5m criminal damage, but were unanimously acquitted after four trials. In Mary’s case, after two trials, one resulting in…
Departing in May, a boat carrying a contingent from Britain will join a convoy from 20 countries to the besieged people of Gaza.
This will be largest sea-borne mission yet to break the Israeli siege of Gaza and will mark the first anniversary of the Israeli attack on a six-ship aid convoy in international waters which resulted in the deaths of nine people and injuries to 54 others on the Mavi Marmara, the largest ship in the convoy.
Israel refused to permit a UN…
CND has never and will never advocate military spending.
What we have done is explain the impact that replacing the Trident nuclear weapons system will have on jobs in the defence sector.
Why have we done this? To explode the myth that Trident is good for jobs. As the controversial briefing Trident, jobs and the UK economy was aimed at a trade union audience, which is understandably most concerned about the jobs issue, we thought it was right to spell out in full…
