On 29-30 November 2008, Edinburgh Anti-Militarists hosted a gathering to build momentum against the NATO Parliamentary Assembly taking place in 2009.
What came out of this was a UK-wide network of anti-militarists, committed to mutual aid and a joint effort to shut down the NATO assembly with direct action.
Bringing together
When we started putting together an agenda for a gathering for opposing NATO in the coming year, a larger purpose became obvious.
We…
On 10 January 100,000 people from all over Britain joined a march in London to protest at the Israeli embassy against the continuing relentless attacks on Gaza’s civilian population.
Ray Davies, 79-year-old vice-chair of CND Cymru, sustained head injuries, concussion and cuts when he was trapped with hundreds of others against the embassy gates by the Metropolitan Police.
The march had gone peacefully until it reached the embassy. Many shoes were thrown over the fence in a…
After months of silence, during which it seemed the idea had died quietly (like the much-derided “British Day”), the British government announced on 21 January that Armed Forces Day will after all be taking place – 27 June.
It now falls to the British peace movement to respond appropriately.
The central event of the first Armed Forces Day is to take place in the historic dockyard in Chatham, Kent. The five unsuccessful bidders – Cardiff, Blackpool, Plymouth, Southend and…
On 6 December, two of us from Wales joined with a larger group to blockade the runway at Stansted Airport. I’ve now been sentenced for this action at Margam magistrates’ court.
This is the statement I gave to the judge explaining my actions:
“On 6 December I felt that I had no other option but to join 56 other worried citizens on a taxi-way at Stansted airport, directly halting the emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and drawing attention to the absurdity of…
On 10 December, the former minister Kim Howells, who was in charge of Afghanistan at the Foreign Office for over three years before he stepped down in October, spoke up in the House of Commons, and lambasted the war effort.
Howells accused Afghanistan of corruption at the “institutional, provincial and personal level”. There are “few signs that the chaotic hegemony of warlords, gangsters, presidential placemen, incompetent and under-resourced provincial governors and self-serving…
According to the Washington Post, “the incoming [Obama] administration does not anticipate that the Iraq-like ‘surge’ of forces will significantly change the direction of a conflict that has steadily deteriorated over the past seven years” but instead “expects that the new deployments… will help buy enough time for the new administration to reappraise the entire Afghanistan war effort and develop a comprehensive new strategy for what Obama has called ‘the central front on terror’” (13…
The much-heralded US withdrawal from Iraq is turning out to be nothing of the kind. The US-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA - see PN 2504) – which commits the US to withdrawing its combat forces “from Iraqi cities, villages and localities… no later than June 30, 2009”, and to withdrawing all US forces “from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011” (article 24) – was ratified by the Iraqi Parliament on 27 November, and approved by Iraq’s presidential council on 4 December.…
Two of the nine activists arrested for “decommissioning” hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of equipment at the EDO/MBM arms manufacturer in Brighton on 17 January were still being held by police at the time of going to press.
The remaining seven are out on bail, but on strict conditions: they are not allowed to return to their homes in Bristol and Brighton until their trial dates, they cannot communicate with one another and they cannot protest at EDO/MBM.
Though only…
Seven animal-rights activists of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) were jailed on 21 January, with sentences ranging from four to 11 years in prison.
On 23 December, Gerrah Selby, Daniel Wadham, Gavin Medd-Hall and Heather Nicholson were found guilty of conspiracy to blackmail companies associated with Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), which kills five hundred animals daily conducting research for pharmaceutical companies. They were sentenced to four, five, eight and 11 years,…
The Free Gaza Movement has broken the siege of Gaza twice since the last issue of PN.
On 29 October, the SS Dignity, carrying 27 people from 13 countries, including member of the Palestinian legislative council Mustapha Barghouti, Israeli peace activist Gideon Spiro and Nobel peace laureate Mairead Maguire, landed with 500kg of medicine.
Then on 8 November, the Dignity landed with 11 journalists, human rights and peace activists and 12 European parliamentarians, including…
On 7 November, I was due to appear, with others, at Newbury magistrates’ court for “obstruction of the highway” at Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Establishment on 27 October.
First hearings are always just for “plea and directions”. It is only if you plead “guilty” that the case is dealt with at the first hearing. If you plead “not guilty”, the court adjourns hearing the case.
I wrote to the court asking for a plea of “not guilty” to be entered on my behalf. For the first time,…
At least 40 civilians were killed in an airstrike on a wedding party in Shah Wali Kot in Kandahar province in Afghanistan on 3 November. 40 is the official Afghan government estimate; local residents reported that 90 people had been killed or wounded.
“I counted 90 dead bodies,” said Abdul Rahim, 26, who said he was a survivor of the family that hosted the wedding party. “I saw them with my own eyes,” he said in a telephone interview from Kandahar Province.
Rahim told…
Building on plans and programmes set in motion by the outgoing Bush administration, president-elect Barack Obama intends to escalate the US war in Afghanistan, and to force Britain to sharply increase its troop strength there from 8,000 to 11,000 soldiers on the ground.
There are already plans to spend $100 million next year expanding Kandahar airport to house 26 Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft for a US army ODIN (“observe, detect, identify and…
While the majority of Afghans want a negotiated solution to the present conflict, the outgoing Bush administration seems to see negotiations only as a tactic to weaken the enemy. At the same time, the incoming Obama administration seems to be turning against the idea of holding next year’s Afghan presidential elections.
As pointed out in previous PNs, a September 2007 poll found 74% of people in Afghanistan favoured negotiations between the Kabul government and the Taliban, and 54…
In October, War on Want produced a major report on the involvement of major British banks in the arms trade.
It turns out that all the UK’s high street banks - apart from the Co-operative bank - fund the arms industry through direct investment in shares, participation in loan syndicates and the provision of banking services.
Barclays has the largest amount of shares in the global arms sector, with £7.3bn invested in total. Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland…
As of 17 November, the US has a paper commitment to completely withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011. In reality, such a withdrawal remains extremely unlikely.
On 17 November, the US ambassador to Iraq and Iraq’s foreign minister signed a Status of Forces agreement (SOFA) – not yet agreed by Iraq’s parliament – committing the US to withdrawing its combat forces “from Iraqi cities, villages and localities … no later than June 30, 2009”, and to withdrawing all US forces “from all…
James Burmeister, 23-year-old Iraq war resister, was freed from military prison on 28 October, over two months early. The soldier of colour was jailed for six months on 17 July after going AWOL to Canada for 10 months in protest against the war in Iraq.
James was serving in Baghdad when his vehicle was caught in an IED explosion and he was hit in the face with shrapnel. Suffering from the physical and emotional wounds resulting from his injury, and his experiences working with “bait…
On 10 November, a noise demo was held outside a ceremonial dinner in the City of London being addressed by prime minister Gordon Brown.
War on Want, World Development Movement, Trade Justice Movement, Stamp Out Poverty, New Economics Foundation, CAFOD, Action Aid and Jubilee Debt Campaign came together to draw attention to global poverty and the role of the City.
The Jubilee Debt Campaign is calling for “a radically different economic system which reduces inequality, creates…
Barack Obama seems to be hardening his position on Iran still further, adding to the nuclear threat he made in June.
In remarks that have just come to light, Richard Danzig, Obama’s top foreign policy advisor, said in September that a military attack on Iran was a “terrible” choice, but “it may be that in some terrible world we will have to come to grips with such a terrible choice.”
Obama has been gradually altering his position on Iran since he won the Democratic party…
On 16 October, five Swedish activists (pictured above) broke into factories owned by arms manufacturers BAE Systems and Saab and used household hammer to protest against the Swedish arms trade.
Cattis Laska, 24, and Pelle Strinlund, 37, hammered on components for the BAE Systems Howitzer 77 in a factory in Karlskoga in western Sweden.
Anna Andersson, 26, and Martin Smedjeback, 35, entered a Saab Bofors Dynamics plant in Eskilstuna, and disarmed 20 Carl Gustav grenade…
