D, Ippy

Perhaps 2003 will be remembered as the year the world's nuclear states (and aspiring ones) began another chapter in the development of genocidal weapons of mass destruction. Hopefully not.

In early November, while commenting on Iran's cooperation with nuclear inspections, Mr El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency warned that somewhere between 35 and 40 countries were believed to now have the ability to build nuclear weapons.

During the…

One morning, during the recent invasion of Iraq, I was at home when I idly flipped the tv on.”Daytime tv!” I thought - haven't seen this for a good while. Expecting a banal chat, problem or quiz show. What I got was real time combat coverage from the British military's advance towards Basra. Real, live, war - and at 9.30am.

We need to start our manifesto with epistemology. Not just…

This book is fascinating, funny, at times truly hopeful - and at others pretty despairing - and certainly provocative. It took a year for the publishers to send it to us, and a further six months for me to find the time to read and review it. However, it has been worth the wait. If you are interested in the politics of technology in any way - read this book. It will stimulate your mind and make you ask questions.

Its author is frequently referred to as a “guru of cyborg…

As Peace News went to press, US conscientious objector Stephen Funk was about to stand trial (scheduled for 4 September) in a military court for “desertion”.

In February 2003 his unit was called up to “serve” in the war on Iraq. Funk failed to report for “duty”, though for the next six weeks he kept in touch with his commanders while continuing the process of formally applying for CO status. A man with an activist history (WTO protests, supporting political prisoners etc…

US anti-sanctions activists have had a long-threatened civil action brought against them by the US Treasury Department.

At the end of June, campaign group Voices in the Wilderness (US) were sent a summons for “judicial enforcement of a civil penalty of $20,000 assessed by the United States Department of Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for violations of the Iraqi Sanction Regulations”. The summons gave the group 20 days to respond, otherwise a default judgement…

War is not an inevitable fact of life - though it may seem so when we look at the entirety of human history - it is something that we create.

The long build-up to the war on Iraq, the disastrous mess the occupiers have created (and no doubt, eventually, will leave behind) may appear to be just another sorry chapter - a predictable consequence of the global power structures and aspirations of our, predominantly, militarist, capitalist, mode of operating.

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Typical Western concerns about China have focused - in recent years at least - on the issue of Tibet. And while the Tibet issue remains a challenging problem, not least for the nonviolent political movement led by the Dalai Lama, it may not be the most pressing thing on the agenda of local Chinese activists.

The emergence of a Chinese NGO-based environmental movement, the continuing activities of “pro-democracy” campaigners, a number of recent unauthorised anti-war demonstrations,…

While May Day might have been a relatively muted post-Iraq war affair in much of northern Europe and the US, across Latin America hundreds of thousands took to the streets to highlight and take action on a wide range of issues. Protests also took place in Korea, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Japan, India and many other countries.

Traditional worker struggles - unemployment, pay, conditions and workplace control - featured strongly, along with the wider issues of global capitalism, poverty,…

What are you? Some kind of apologist for Saddam? In our binary world it is not an unexpected question; apparently you are either “for” us or “against” us, things are always “right” or “wrong”. It is a way of thinking - indeed a lens through which to view the whole world - that has been vastly encouraged over the past 18 months, during the course of the “war on terror”. It is a very convenient way of approaching problems because it completely avoids dealing with any kind of context or…

On 26 September 2002, British freelance TV journalist Roddy Scott was killed after being shot in the head while filming in Ingueshetia. He was murdered while covering the ongoing war between Chechen separatist fighters and Russian state forces.

In a statement released by his family shortly after his untimely death they said: “Whether it was Kurds, Chechens, Afghans or Palestinians, he was committed to ensuring that issues were not sidelined and received the international attention…

Just in case anyone needed a reminder as to the motivation for any of us involved in taking action against militarism and all its symptoms, the British government published its own report into arms exports from Britain during 2001.

At once the Peace News office started getting odd emails from around the world containing some of the details in the report. The contents are of great concern to activists in many parts of the world. And so they should be, because the report -…

In the spirit of satyagraha, three survivors of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster began a hunger strike outside the Indian parliament on 28 June.

In July around 100 survivors took to the streets of New Delhi for a nonviolent sit-down. The “indefinite” hunger strike has been taken up by sympathisers in what, according to organisers, is becoming “a mass action, taken up in relay by people all over the world”.

These actions are being taken in protest at the possible…

Perhaps if I had known who half the (predominantly) men in this book were before I read it, Marc Estrin's novel could have been quite irritating. Thankfully my ignorance of famous 20th Century male thinkers, scientists, inventors and so on, probably saved me!

In fact, I rather liked this book. Its main character is one Gregor Samsa - half-man, half-cockroach. Samsa is an escapee from a Kafka novel (Metamorphosis) and this is a tale which reflects on some of the last century'…

It seems the Tamil Tigers have begun to take small steps towards at least the possibility of a change, away from the violent tactics of their lengthy "liberation" struggle against the Sri Lankan government. Was it - as reported in some of the mainstream press the pressure being brought to bear by the "war on terror" that prompted them?

Unlikely perhaps, but not completely implausible, and that's certainly what the “war on terror's” promulgators…

Since the violent breakdown in February of the three-year-old peace talks, Colombians have been plunged into yet another round of skirmishes and killings.

From the Colombian state military's massive bombing raids on the demilitarised zone and unofficial support for right-wing paramilitary groups, to FARC's supposedly accidental killing of hundreds of civilians during combat, Colombians are experiencing intensified military activity across the country on a scale not seen for several…