Rai, Milan

On 17 October, 30 Pacific Climate Warriors from 12 different Pacific islands are arriving in Australia to paddle traditional canoes they have built themselves into the harbour of the world’s largest coal port – Newcastle – to stop coal exports for a day.

Newcastle port shipped 150m tonnes of coal in 2013, and is set to expand its capacity by another 70m tonnes a year. The Pacific Climate Warriors, supported by 350.org, describe the carbon emissions of the coal and gas industries…

End of camp photo in front of the main marquee, 4 August 2014. Photo: Roy St Pierre

This year’s Peace News Summer Camp yet again enjoyed magnificently-sunny weather, marvellously-enriching workshops, and a spirit of warmth and inclusiveness that is hard to find.

Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell brought decades of activist experience to bear in his workshop on ‘The ABC of Campaigning — How we won same-sex marriage’; Kofi Klu scrutinised the concept of reparations…

On 20 September, the British Campaign against Climate Change Trade Union Group launched a revised, expanded and updated edition of its excellent One Million Climate Jobs booklet at an ‘International Fight for Climate Jobs’ conference.

Speakers at the launch event included Kjersti Bartos, vice-president of the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions, Fernando Losado from the US Nursing Union, and Philip Pearson, the TUC’s senior officer for energy and climate change. There…

When I’ve heard white people committed to social change start talking about racism and activism, the conversation has often veered rapidly to the question: ‘How can we get more of them to come to our meetings/activities?’ In Towards Collective Liberation, a powerful, humble and thought-provoking book that deserves the widest possible readership, white US activist Chris Crass poses very different questions: ‘How can white radicals work with other white people against racism?’ and ‘…

If you want a concise, thoughtful background briefing on the ISIS crisis, this is it – written by a journalist with three decades of experience in the region. This is a compelling account of how the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) has managed to conquer an area the size of Britain. Patrick Cockburn knew something was coming: he nominated Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of ISIS, as the Independent’s ‘man of the year’ for the Middle East on
1 January, days before ISIS…

The British view of the world, even today, is fundamentally shaped by a 100-year-old lie, a powerful myth that contrasts German aggressiveness with the US-UK defence of small countries and high principles. In reality, it is a documented fact that the sovereignty of ‘plucky little Belgium’ was irrelevant to Britain’s decision to enter the First World War. In reality, it is a documented fact that the military alliances that Britain entered into were born of a desperate need to shore up…

The crisis in Iraq has reached truly frightening proportions, with the brutal ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’ (ISIS) controlling a large swathe of territory in both countries – something that may trigger the partition of Iraq.

It is easy to get the impression from the mainstream media that violent conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims in Iraq is something that goes back millennia, and has merely re-surfaced in the recent conflict between Sunni ISIS and the Shia-dominated…

Why travel thousands of miles (chucking over a tonne of carbon into the atmosphere) to a strange city on a different continent to spend three weeks with people you’ve mostly never met in order to learn about facilitation and training?

There are plenty of facilitators and trainers in Britain to learn from – plenty of activist trainers. There are a lot of books available about different approaches to facilitation and training.

Training for Change have loads of material on…

I cannot recommend Missing Class too highly. Studying this book – and acting on its insights – will make our movements stronger.

Some books stimulate you intellectually – you end up seeing the world a different way. Some books deepen awareness – you finish them with a greater understanding of yourself, and of the web of relationships that you are part of. Some books are practical; full of immediately-useable how-to tips.

It’s rare to find a book that does one…

At the close of the event, Howard’s daughter Violeta said that when she was asked at school what work her father did, she hadn’t known what to say – he seemed to do some teaching, some writing, some peace work: ‘I thank you because now I know.’

During the preceding two hours, we heard from friends and collaborators, including April Carter, Diana Francis, Bob Overy and Michael Randle, who testified to Howard’s intellectual capabilities, dedication, and talent as an editor.…

In Marge Piercy’s wonderful visionary work, Woman on the Edge of Time (1985), a young visitor from a future North American utopia wants to see a car. Dawn says: ‘I studied about them. I saw them on holi. How the whole society was built around them, they paved over the earth for them to run on and sit on right in the middle of where they lived! Everyone had to have one. And they all set out in their private autocar to go someplace at the same time and got stuck in jams and breathed…

Last night, 21 people crowded into the Friends Meeting House in South Villas, Hastings, to hear Peace News co-editor Emily Johns tell the story of Walden Pond Housing Co-op, which was set up in 1998 and now owns a house and a flat in the town.

The main point of the evening was to explain 'How to Set Up a Housing Co-op', with a lot of help from the Radical Routes handbook of the same name (44 pages, £3 or download for free…

Nuclear promises

It is difficult to see the Crimea crisis clearly through the choking fog of western hypocrisy that surrounds it. Before trying to do so, there is one factor that we should deal with straightforwardly. When Ukraine became independent (after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991), it inherited 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads, more nuclear weapons than China, France and Britain held…

There is a saying in the field of community development finance – providing credit to disadvantaged groups – that if you never have a bad loan (that isn’t re-paid), you aren’t doing it right. You ought to be going to the risky, hard-to-reach areas, where things don’t work out.

I think something like this happened to the Peace News Winter Gathering, which turned into the Peace News Spring Training, which has unfortunately been withdrawn by Seeds for Change, who were going to be…

Labour party left-winger and committed peace activist Tony Benn was one of those dangerous figures who can start to make you believe that the system might work after all.

He was a hereditary peer who campaigned (successfully) to be allowed to go back to being a commoner – and a member of the house of commons (where he served for 50 years). He was a cabinet minister who supported workers…