Rai, Milan

When US president George W. Bush said on 15 June that Iran had “rejected this generous offer out of hand”, you could assume that (a) the offer was not generous and (b) Iran had not rejected it. You wouldn’t go wrong, either, assuming that the media would assist Bush by erasing memories of the recent breakthrough Iranian offer.

The proposal Bush was referring to came from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (plus Germany), which was conveyed to Tehran by the European…

Movements need people who can think big. It would be hard to find someone who thinks bigger than Michael Albert, co-founder of South End Press, Z Magazine and ZNet, the sprawling online home of global radicalism.

Remembering Tomorrow is a memoir (mainly of Sixties activism on-and-off campus – at MIT); a manifesto (for Michael Albert’s intriguing brand of anarchism – though he prefers the term “participatory economy” or “parecon”); and a thoughtful reflection on actions, initiatives…

There is something surreal about the holding of a Peace History conference attended by some of the country’s longest-serving peace activists right in the heart of the Imperial War Museum.

The outgoing director of the museum, Sir Robert Crawford CBE, welcomed us all to the two-day event, thanking Bruce Kent of the Movement for the Abolition of War, a conference organiser, for his cooperation over the years.
We then heard an array of speakers on a wide variety of topics, almost…

Two figures towered over Black America in the 1960s. Martin Luther King Jr called for racial integration, for nonviolence, for love of the enemy. Malcolm X advocated racial separation, armed self-defence and self-love – black pride. Martin Luther King came out of the Black middle classes, the American South, the traditional Christian churches. Malcolm X came out of the Black underclass, the North, some new form of Islam. King spoke for reconciliation; Malcolm X for rage.

And yet, in…

One dramatic development in relation to Iran has been the revelations that, according to the MoD’s own documents, the 15 British sailors and Marines captured by Iran last April were in waters that are not internationally agreed as Iraqi; the US and UK unilaterally drew a dividing line between Iraqi and Iranian waters – without informing Iran where it was; and that Iranian Revolutionary Guard vessels were crossing this invisible line three times a week.
All this contradicts defence…

Elsewhere in this issue we report the significant progress made by government propaganda in relation to the war in Afghanistan. Public support for the war is growing, despite - or because of? - the intensity of the conflict.

More people still oppose the war than support it, but the trend is worrying if the “Harry effect” is a lasting one.
Over the past two years there has been a conscious, systematic and well-resourced attempt to re-legitimise Britain's armed forces (and…

When my son was coming up to school age, a friend introduced me to John Holt's book Teach Your Own, which I liked very much. I wouldn't have had the courage to home educate if it wasn't for the fact that my son also taught himself to read without help from me. (I'd started teaching him, and he said: Eugh

As Peace News went to press, the official death toll in Lhasa rose to 22 - generally assumed to be a massive under-estimate - and solidarity demonstrations were taking place around the world.

On 22 March, a Free Tibet Campaign march in London pressured China into allowing the Red Cross back into Tibet to treat people hurt in the violence. The day before, more than 30 protesters broke into the Chinese embassy in Delhi after foreign journalists were expelled from Tibet to…

There are different ways of criticising the media. One method has just been demonstrated by Nick Davies, Guardian journalist, in his recent book Flat Earth News, which has received a mostly favourable reception in the industry that he excoriates.

There are three broad approaches to media criticism: conspiracy theory, internal debate and institutional critique.

The conspiracy theory accuses certain powerful individuals of acting outside their institutional…

On 19 March, the British prime minister launched the much–delayed National Security Strategy (NSS) – to little enthusiasm. The Daily Telegraph (which accompanied its report with a picture from Dad's Army) described the document as "a disappointing damp squib".

The report says that Britain faces "diverse and interconnected" threats, including pandemic influenza, failed states, transnational crime, terrorism and the proliferation of WMD. These have "diverse and interconnected"…

On 16-17 February, CND celebrated its fiftieth birthday in style; holding a “Global Summit for a Nuclear Weapons-Free World” at London's dramatic glass-walled City Hall (courtesy of mayor Ken Livingstone, who opened the conference).

The most striking aspect of the gathering was its resolute focus on the future.

Despite its being a birthday event, there was no massive exhibition detailing CND's turbulent and fascinating history, no panel of long-experienced…

Despite his loud protestations to the contrary, Martin Amis's collected essays about the post-9/11 world demonstrate that he is indeed hostile to, and fearful of, Islam as a religion. At times in The Second Plane, Amis is careful to distinguish between Islam, the world religion, and “Islamism”, a violent and intolerant strand of belief.

Over and over again, however, Amis lets slip his underlying prejudices. In a chapter on “demographics”, he relays uncritically some scaremongering…

The theme of this issue - and of Peace News in general - is “the power of nonviolence”.

As this issue goes to press, Peter Gelderloos, the author of How Nonviolence Protects The State (partially reviewed in PN2487-8), begins a UK speaking tour devoted to denigrating the power of nonviolence (tour details on p16).

Peace News welcomes debate, and therefore we welcome Peter Gelderloos to the UK, despite our profound disagreements with him on strategy and principle.…

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), visited Iran in January, and was allowed a rare meeting with Iran's supreme leader, ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

ElBaradei, who announced that the IAEA's investigation into Iran's past nuclear activities (following the “work plan”) would be completed by mid-February, was making use of a window of opportunity caused by events in Washington.

The US attempt to escalate confrontation with Iran suffered a…

While UN nuclear inspectors report “good progress” on their “work plan” to clear up suspicions about Iran's past nuclear activities, the United States has been deliberately undermining Russian diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis.

Meanwhile, urged on by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian government seems to be edging closer to a climbdown over its nuclear programme.

On 18 November, Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian lawyer who won the Nobel…