Rai, Milan

Congratulations!

After fighting their case through almost every court in the land, the B52 Two are not guilty and they richly deserve it!

In this issue, we see that in all these cases, there have been real diplomatic alternatives available, which had a genuine prospect for radically reducing conflict and violence. And in all of these cases, those with power have avoided peace. They have crushed negotiations by force (Britain in the Falklands), they have…

b>From 28 April to 6 May, the LaUnf (nonviolence) network of Iraqi peace activists organised a second “Week of Nonviolence”, this time at 13 locations, reaching 7300 people all over Iraq. Sites included, in the north, Irbil, Kirkuk, and Mosul; in the south, Basra and Fao; and Baghdad in the centre.
PNspoke to Ismaeel Dawood, a key support person for the LaUnf network, in his capacity as Iraq worker for the Italian activist NGO Un Ponte Per... Baghdad (A Bridge to... Baghdad…

This summer, long-time US peace campaigner/researcher Joe Gerson is visiting the UK for a speaker tour to launch his brilliant new book Empire and the Bomb: How the US Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World.

Joe Gerson documents operational planning for the use of nuclear weapons in the Korean war, the Vietnam war (early French phase as well as the later US debacle), and later.
Empire and the Bomb records the use of US nuclear threats during…

May Day is workers' day

The struggle for the eight-hour day which began in the 19th century (and which goes on, even now) involved strikes and demonstrations throughout the world, and a coordinated day of action on 1 May 1886. In a related demonstration three days later, in the Haymarket in Chicago, a bomb was thrown at the police, killing eight. The anarchist organisers of the demonstration and the speakers were then arrested and prosecuted for the murders, on the grounds that the bomb…

On 20 April, author Maya Anne Evans and PN editor Milan Rai were called to stand trial at Horseferry Road Magistrates' Court, London, for “contempt of court”.
At an earlier hearing on 10 April, when they were meant to have been tried for alleged offences under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (2005), the judge had refused to continue with the trial after the pair had refused to give their dates of birth.
Judge Newton sent the activists to the cells for an…

A myth is being created. The myth of William Wilberforce, the great white liberator, as perpetuated by Amazing Grace, the Hollywood version of the abolition of the slave trade.

The reality is captured in Adam Hochschild's magisterial study, Bury the chains: the British struggle to abolish slavery, which brings to life “a pioneering mobilisation of public opinion, via boycotts, petitions, and great popular campaigns, all powerfully reinforced by the armed slave…

Yes, we are facing daunting threats (as Noam Chomsky points out in his interview). At the same time, on an international scale there are social movements of a size and sophistication which have never been seen before, and in Britain there is a tangible restlessness and dissatisfaction with things as they are, and enormous opportunities for education and organising towards radical social change.

One part of making a better, stronger movement (along the lines sketched out in the last…

What is Trident for? Launching the Trident debate on 14 March, former CND member and current foreign secretary Margaret Beckett said Britain needed nuclear weapons because we cannot be sure that “no power hostile to our vital national interests and in possession of nuclear weapons would emerge” over the next 50 years.

The crucial question then is what these “vital interests” are.

In November 1993, the then defence secretary Malcolm Rifkind said that in…

A number of polls have been conducted in Iraq to mark the fourth anniversary of the invasion, demonstrating enormous and growing hostility to the occupation.

An ORB poll found 53% of Iraqis think things would improve immediately after US/UK withdrawal, and only 26% fear conditions would get worse.

The BBC found that 76% think the occupation forces are doing a “bad job” (up from 59% just last year); and 78% oppose the US-led forces (up from 65% in 2005). The proportion of…

As US troops begin their “surge” into Baghdad, the Bush administration is preparing a scapegoat for the failure of this latest escalation: Iran.

After weeks of hints, a “dodgy dossier” accusing Tehran of supplying weapons to Iraqi insurgents was finally presented in Baghdad on 11 February (but no paperwork was handed over, reporters weren't allowed cameras or tape recorders, and the three US presenters insisted on anonymity). On the one hand, the briefers said the “highest levels”…

Another unmissable book. If you're not keeping current with Chomsky, you're not keeping current with reality. In Failed States, Chomsky once again delivers an exhilarating/ depressing panorama view of the contemporary scene, inside and outside the United States, at dizzying speed.

He begins with the theme of his last book, Hegemony or Survival - the increasing threat to human survival posed by US military and energy policies - and ends with the contradiction between…

The crisis over the Muhammad cartoons is not, despite appearances, primarily about free speech, or the prohibition on depicting the Prophet. The damage to community relations is enormous, but there is a real opportunity before us to try to strengthen connections between Muslims and non-Muslims.

How do we know that the non-Muslim European uproar is not really about free speech? Look at the differing reactions to the two big decisions of Flemming Rose, culture editor of the Danish…

People who want to change the world must buy this book.

Avian influenza, or “bird flu”, is going to change the world, and affect every struggle we are involved in, from global trade to the war in Iraq, via the world economy, immigration and animal rights. Mike Davis has put together a dense, readable book setting out the nature of the problem, and the deeper roots of the crisis in the present world system - in intensive agro-industry, dispossessed Third World slums, and corporate…

Despite the subtitle, this is not “The story of Britain's biggest mass movement”. There are brief inspiring accounts scattered throughout and some wonderful poems and posters, but these are in the margins, drowned in a sea of analysis and national pol

The elections in Iraq have been an unprecedented opportunity for ordinary people to influence the destiny of their country, but the National Assembly they have elected is so hedged in with US imposed restrictions that the cabinet it produces will be more like a chain-gang of prisoners than an independent government. A prominent Iraqi politician in the Shia coalition told the New Yorker in January that the US had quietly told the parties before the election that there were three…