Milan Rai
In terms of economic mobilisation, Dr Glenford D Howe notes that, in the West Indies alone: ‘Gifts [in kind] to the value of several thousand pounds were contributed by the colonies to the war effort; these included sugar, rum, oil, lime, cotton, rice, clothing, logwood, and nine aeroplanes. A total of 11 ambulances and adequate funds for their maintenance were donated, and approximately two million pounds sterling was given to the British government and charities.’…
There are a lot of issues that are debatable about the First World War. There is one fact, though, that ought to be beyond debate, and which ought to be acknowledged on all sides in the national conversation during this centenary year.
Reasonable people can differ, for example, on how important imperial rivalry was in causing the war. What all reasonable people should agree on, however, is that if, by some miracle, the major European powers had managed to stabilise their relationships…
The social centre before it was occupied.
Photo © Enredadera Tetuán
On 3 February, the PN co-editors interviewed a key figure in the Centro Social Okupado la Enredadera (the Vine occupied social centre) in northern Madrid. The social centre is one small part of the huge, nonviolent, anti-austerity, non-hierarchical ‘15M’ movement which began in May 2011, and has shaken up Spanish politics and empowered millions of people.
Peace News What was the beginning of the social centre…
On 1 February, over 300 people squeezed into an auditorium in southern Madrid designed for half that number, to remember and celebrate the life of Howard Clark, a key figure in Peace News and War Resisters’ International (WRI) for several decades.
The evening event, organised by WRI, was attended by peace activists from across Europe, as well as many folk from Madrid, where Howard has lived with his partner Yolanda Juarros Barcenilla since 1996. (Yolanda organised a weekend programme…
It’s still unbelievable that he has gone. Howard Clark has been a key figure in Peace News for several decades – as a co-editor, collaborator, contributor, (re-)organiser, trustee, director, defender. His 1971 essay Making Nonviolent Revolution, which we re-published as a pamphlet two years ago – over his modest objections – with a new, very valuable afterword by Howard, remains one of the most important explanations published of the liberatory politics that PN aims to…
After some deft public relations interventions in September and November, Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is not expected to make any serious moves before the March 2014 local elections.
In April, we speculated that Erdogan was spurred to initiate peace talks with the PKK by the mass nonviolent uprising of Turkish Kurds last autumn, sparked by a Kurdish prisoners’ hunger strike that began last September (see PN 2556, and 2552-2553). It may need another…
Effective nonviolence at the Reclaim the Power camp in Balcombe, West Sussex, part of a summer of action against fracking exploration by Caudrilla. PHOTO: Reclaim the Power
Nonviolence study groups underpinned much of the success of the US civil rights movement in the 1960s (see editorial, p12). Campaign Nonviolence, a new year-long project initiated by California-based peace group, Pace e Bene, aims to promote the formation of such study and action groups. Campaign Nonviolence has been…
We remember the lunch counter sit-ins that electrified the civil rights movement in the US in 1960. We remember the dignity and persistence of the hundreds of young African-American who asserted their right to be served as equals, day after day, despite repeated beatings and arrests.
The direct action of these Black students achieved desegregation of many businesses within weeks, and dramatically escalated the confrontation with institutional white racism. Many of the students…
Nuclear weapons have been used since 9 August 1945. They have been used ‘in the precise way that a gun is used when you point it at someone’s head in a direct confrontation, whether or not the trigger is pulled.’
These are the words, over 30 years ago, of analyst Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon insider who leaked the US government’s top secret internal…
On 14 September, instead of launching air strikes on Damascus, US president Barack Obama was forced to agree to a Russian plan for disarming Syria’s chemical weapons under the supervision of a UN agency, the organisation for the prohibition of chemical weapons (OPCW). The resolution of the Syrian chemical weapons crisis by diplomacy was a triumph for what the New York Times in…
We are of the generation who came of age in the 1980s, terrified that the world might end at any moment through nuclear holocaust. In the decades since then, the people of the world have grown less frightened of a nuclear war.
The risk is still there, as the number of nuclear weapon states increases, and conflicts continue around nuclear tinderboxes, but the fear has declined.
Recent studies suggest that even a ‘small’ nuclear war between India and Pakistan, with each…
This year’s fifth Peace News Summer Camp was a satisfying, at times electrifying, five-day experience, bathed yet again in good weather and good humour.
The camp broke new ground in a number of ways. We moved to a new venue (in Diss, Norfolk); we invited international speakers for the first time (flying them in from Colombia and Egypt); we had an almost entirely new organising group, composed entirely of people of colour; and our presenters were mostly people of colour for the first…
Parecomic: The Story of Michael Albert and Participatory Economics is a clear, thoughtful and compelling introduction to some of the most challenging ideas around, and to an inspiring life of radical construction. After leading revolutionary student activism in the top scientific university in the US, MIT (the sanctuary described above had a huge impact), Michael Albert was…
Chemical bombing of Halabja, 1988, pencil (30 x 42cm).
Osman Ahmed
As the US and Britain threaten to attack Syria on the basis of an alleged chemical weapons attack on the Ghouta suburb of Damascus, confirmation has emerged of US government complicity in Iraqi chemical weapons attacks during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war.
As PN went to press, UN…
It was a year ago that I came up with the idea that this issue only have content created by people of colour (photos, articles, cartoons). Why are we doing it this way?
Well, from a political point of view, this helps to counter (perhaps unconscious) racist preconceptions. It helps to celebrate what people with a global majority background are capable of. It also gives an opportunity for people of colour who might otherwise not have chosen or been chosen for the spotlight, but who…
