Rai, Milan

This issue we carry a report from a participant in this year’s Uncivilisation festival, inspired by the Dark Mountain project and manifesto (see p3). This is a very intriguing initiative, self-consciously metaphorical. There are two faces to the Dark Mountain manifesto, it seems to us. On the one hand, it is refreshing to hear despair honestly spoken: “our sense that civilisation as we have known it is coming to an end; brought down by a rapidly changing climate, a cancerous economic system…

Ten years after al-Qa’eda’s 11 September attacks on New York and Washington, the global antiwar movement is preparing to mark the tenth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Three official lies stand out.

The first lie is that the war was inevitable, that it was the only way of bringing the perpetrators of 9/11 to justice.

In October 2001, not only had the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan offered in principle to extradite Osama bin Laden to a third (Muslim)…

In the aftermath of the fall of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, anxious questions are being asked about the capacity of the NATO military alliance to learn the “lessons of Iraq”. The debate is testimony to the power of the western propaganda system to obscure plain facts, both about Libya and about Iraq.

It has been clear for a very long time that western leaders are seeking in Libya not a democratic revolution, but something resembling a coup. In this, they have been partially…

The third Peace News Summer Camp in late July (not long after PN’s 75th birthday party) was the best yet. Over 120 people came together at the lovely Crabapple Community near Shrewsbury for five days of discussion, debate, tripod-climbing, singing, compost-toilet-making, marquee-erecting, collective childcare and brilliant entertainment from some of the most talented and committed performers on the circuit.

Of course, the core of the camp was the workshops. There was a joint workshop…

Theodore Roszack, historian, novelist, social critic and anti-war activist, was born in Chicago and had an academic career at universities across America.

Of 1964, Roszack wrote: “For those who were part of it, the American peace scene for the years 1963-64, during that paralytic lull following the partial test-ban treaty and preceding the recent, turbulent rise of the ‘New Left’, was rapidly suffocating in pessimism and dismal introspection”. In the summer of ’64 he became editor of…

Asked days after the 11 September 2001 attacks if US president George W Bush’s “war on terror” was winnable, Noam Chomsky responded: “If we want to consider this question seriously, we should recognise that in much of the world the US is regarded as a leading terrorist state, and with good reason. We might bear in mind, for example, that in 1986 the US was condemned by the World Court for ‘unlawful use of force’ (international terrorism) and then vetoed a Security Council resolution calling…

First act

7:45 at a school in Germany. A group of pupils stand outside the door of a school building. One of them needs to get into the building urgently: He needs to use the toilet.

Just then, two trainers from the Trainingskollektiv Kölner (Cologne Training Collective ) approach the door, which is being guarded by a caretaker. Over the next two days they will carry out de-escalation training with a fifth form class. The two trainers reach the entrance hall of the school after…

Mark Faulkner, coming to the end of two years chairing Room 13 Lochyside, described how the organisation had opened up “a whole new world” to him, making him realise that art was not about painting landscapes, but about “painting a brain on a piece of paper”.

Mark, 12, went on: “My own pieces are quite cryptic. I quite like it when instead of just walking past a piece, you have to look at it for about 30 minutes. And there’d be no piece of writing next to it, because that would be the…

The first-ever Peace News Summer Camp was held at Westmill Farm near Watchfield in Oxfordshire from 23-27 July. Over 120 people came to take part in discussions, trainings and debates on topics as varied as nonviolence (does it protect the state?), education (can education be libertarian?), and the fate of the anti-war movement (who’s more to blame for our limitations, the Stop The War Coalition or the anti-authoritarian wing of the movement?).

Fuelled by wonderful (vegan) food…

There were torrents to the right of them and torrents to the left of them, but Peace News Summer Camp 2010 was remarkably free of rainfall, despite the weather forecasts and the downpours in surrounding districts. The weather was warm and pleasant, and so were the 120 participants!

Among the 43 workshops, there were three whole-camp discussions this year: first “How has the world changed?” about what had happened in the world and in the UK since Summer Camp 2009 (most people…

The 15 February 2003 demonstrations, showed, as The New York Times observed, that “there may still be two super- powers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion.”

On the other hand, the grassroots mobilisation failed to prevent the invasion of Iraq. Media support? The heavy reporting of the British demonstration on 15 February seems to disprove the idea that the mainstream media opposes, under-reports or belittles grassroots movements. A Daily Telegraph columnist was…

On 4 August, the first day of Climate Camp, Paul Morozzo, 41, was one of five environmental activists to publicly defy bail conditions banning him from attending the camp, knowing this could lead to days, perhaps weeks of imprisonment. Paul was arrested at an entrance to the Camp (the others were able to enter, apparently because of police incompetence) and served a week in prison. He was released by Selby magistrates on 11 August. He is believed to be the first person in Britain to be…

Over the last few years there has been a growing critique in the West of committed nonviolence (see the G8 article on the Wales page). There are now at least three English-language books whose main purpose is to criticise nonviolence.

The key text is Ward Churchill's Pacifism as Pathology (1986) which has had a number of responses, including by George Lakey (available online).

The latest addition is Peter Gelderloos's How Nonviolence Protects the State (…

PN: Looking over the postwar period in Britain, is there one experience that stands out as an inspiring advance towards workers' control and industrial democracy?
KC: The obvious thing is the UCS [in June 1971]. The government decided to rationalise the shipyards and close down the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders [with the likely loss of over 6,000 jobs]. The workers announced a work-in, that they wouldn't accept dismissal, and they'd work on and appeal for money from the labour…

How would you describe the state of democracy in Nepal one year on from the jana andolan II?

Symbolically, people-power triumphed, thus giving way to some semblance of a democratic dispensation. Structurally, at least on paper, the interim parliament has almost dismantled the old order that derived much of its powers from the palace. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, in terms of their aspirations, attitudes and behaviours - the grassroots signs of a democracy in…