Gabriel Carlyle
Anti-road protesters in Hastings are celebrating the release of embarrassing secret information about the £100m Bexhill-Hastings link road (BHLR), and the dropping of charges against many direct actionists.
Out of a total of 17 activists awaiting trial for nonviolent direct action, 13 had been charged with ‘obstructing an enforcement officer engaged to execute a high court writ’. On 15 May, these charges were dropped, leaving the 13 charged only with ‘…
As European countries step up their lobbying of the US to sell them armed drones, German activists have been leading the charge against the ‘competitive rush of governments in Europe and elsewhere to acquire and use’ the robotic killing machines.
On 30 April, during a visit to Washington by the German defence minister Thomas de Mazière to meet his US counterpart Chuck Hagel, Der Spiegel reported that the US was ready to approve a German request for three armed…
‘Ah, here they are!’
As the bearded South Asian gentleman and the young woman in her 20s hoved into view, clutching their coffees, our coach driver fired up the engine.
It was 8.50am, and having travelled up to London the night before and slept on a floor to guarantee making the 8.30 rendezvous, I was somewhat peeved that we still hadn’t left.
‘Why did we wait for these two?’ I mused uncharitably,…
‘What if something that didn’t happen had happened differently?’ is the tricksy question at the heart of Scottish Trotskyist Ken Macleod’s 2001 sci-fi novella The Human Front, re-printed here alongside two short essays and an interview with the author.
Like the shark in Jaws, the non-event in question is not revealed immediately, but its consequences are on display from page one.
It is 1963, and our narrator John Matheson – then a young boy living on the Isle of Lewis – hears…
PN co-editor tummy-to-tummy with the forces of the State Photo: Marta Lefler
In the unlikely event that anyone were to ask where I was when I heard that Margaret Thatcher had died, I’ll be able to say that I was attempting to get into the department for transport (DfT) to search for secret documents.
Specifically, I was at their London HQ for ‘Operation Disclosure’: a two-day attempt by the anti-road group Combe Haven Defenders to find and distribute the DfT’s secret…
Almost half the British public think that drones ‘make it too easy for Western governments to conduct military strikes in foreign countries’, but are split on the question of whether such strikes have made the west more or less safe overall, recent polls have revealed.
On the other hand, almost a third (32%) of Britons — and 40% of Conservatives — would support the UK government assisting a drone strike ‘to kill a known terrorist overseas’ even if it were ‘likely that 10-15 innocent…
As peace activists prepare for the first national demonstration at the UK’s new drone base in Lincolnshire on 27 April, new information has emerged regarding British complicity in US drone strikes in Africa, and the UN has condemned the CIA’s deadly drone warfare in Pakistan.
In mid-March, Ben Emmerson QC, the UN special rapporteur for counter-terrorism and human rights, made a three-day trip to Pakistan.
On 15 March, Emmerson issued a statement…
Stepping down from his role as commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, general John Allen declared: ‘Afghan forces defending Afghan people, and enabling the government of this country to serve its citizens. This is victory, this is what winning looks like, and we should not shrink from using these words.’
However, fresh reports of atrocities by Afghans linked to US special forces – and moves by the Afghan government to rein in both – have thrown a stark…
Black women’s movement and civil rights activist Olive Morris – who became a symbol of the squatting movement in ’70s Brixton – is one of 30 women profiled and ‘icon-brush[ed] ... with Che Guevara glam’ in the Queen of the Neighbourhood Collective’s book of stencil designs, Revolutionary Women, inspired by the question ‘Who and where are our revolutionary women icons?’ Others featured include Egyptian feminist Doria Shafik, who led the 1951 storming of the Egyptian parliament by 1,500 women…
‘I think we may be about to get steamrollered.’
Fellow activist Emily Johns and I had just returned from a packed public meeting in Crowhurst, the small village northwest of Hastings that would be severely affected by the planned Bexhill-Hastings Link Road (BHLR). In the final evaluation the participants had been near-unanimous in saying how energised they felt by the meeting. One man even said that he’d never felt more optimistic about our prospects for stopping the road.
…
As the UK doubles its fleet of armed Reaper drones in Afghanistan and starts shifting their control to British soil, new figures have underlined the lack of credibility of UK claims concerning civilian deaths at the hands of these remotely-piloted killing machines.
On 26 October, Number 13 Squadron was reformed at RAF Waddington, from where it will start piloting five new British Reapers in early December. Until now, British Reapers have been piloted by RAF personnel from Creech air…
The British government is attempting to overturn a moratorium on the transfer of Afghans captured by British forces to the Afghan secret police (NDS), despite longstanding accusations by a Canadian diplomat that NDS director Asadullah Khalid ‘was known to personally torture people’ in a dungeon under his guest house in Kandahar.
In May, the UK was forced to halt all transfers…
‘When I hear the word gun I reach for my culture’, quipped Malcolm Muggeride in response to Nazi playwright Hanns Johst’s infamous (and often misquoted) line that ‘When I hear the word culture... I release the safety on my Browning!’
‘When I hear the word social theory, I reach for clarity, simple prose and common sense’ could be the catchphrase for this volume, the first of three volumes about ‘winning social changes that reorient whole societies by altering institutions at the heart…
Formerly the Guardian’s Moscow bureau chief – and with over thirty years of reporting on Afghanistan with distinction — Jonathan Steele makes a comparative analysis of the US and Soviet occupations the backbone of his latest book. Alternating reportage with a careful dismantling of ‘Thirteen Myths About Afghanistan’ he finds many similarities and at least one crucial difference.
Both were essentially interventions in a civil war, pitching a high-tech military against a poorly…
While campaigning against drone strikes reached new heights this autumn, including the Imran Khan convoy in Pakistan, the last two months were dominated by two drone-related reports.
The British government has spent or committed £2bn towards developing and deploying pilotless military drones, and it plans to spend at least another £2bn on developing and deploying an armed drone called 'Scavenger',…
