PN staff
The news that US billionaire Elon Musk is buying Twitter has sparked a wide range of concerns. One worry has been the emphasis Musk has placed on boosting free speech on the platform. Below are reactions from three different campaigning groups, giving their different perspectives on the issues.
The EFF (based in San Francisco in the US) says it ‘champions user privacy, free expression, and…
It’s actually been around for a while now, but we should formally announce in these pages that Peace News has a new website!
After tons and tons of hard work theme-ing, template-ing, module-ing, database-ing and so on, we have a more secure, more up-to-date and more attractive website.
Thank you, Emma Sangster, our tireless web worker!
Thank you, Pastel!
Pastel (who built the site under Emma’s guidance) are a web design and development team with over 20…
Over 330,000 young people took part in the 25 March global school strike for the climate, according to Fridays for Future (FFF), the youth-led global climate action group founded by Greta Thunberg. The main slogan was ‘people not profit’; FFF also called for climate reparations. 1,152 events were organised in 639 cities in 92 countries, higher numbers all round than the strike last November. More info: fridaysforfuture.org
Image…Russian citizens continue to protest against the invasion of Ukraine despite harsh repression by the Russian authorities. As of 27 March, 15,106 arrests and detentions at anti-war actions had been recorded by the human rights monitoring group OVD-Info, who provided the following information. These arrests took place in 151 Russian cities, starting from the day of the invasion, 24 February.
That protests continue is astonishing, given the level of harassment, physical brutality and…
On 26 March, the people of Slavutych caught the imagination of the world with their nonviolent defiance, apparently driving Russian soldiers out of their city.
Slavutych, in the very north of Ukraine, was built in 1986 to house workers evacuated from the nearby Chernobyl nuclear power plant after the disaster.
Russian forces captured the power plant on the first day of the war, as it is right on the border with Belarus, a launching pad for the invasion. The Russian military had…
Human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov’s Russian-language petition against the war with Ukraine has gathered 1.2 million signatures as of 27 March. Tens of thousands of Russians have signed petitions or open letters against the invasion of Ukraine – groups of Russian doctors and nurses, Russian teachers, academics and students, Russian architects, Russian lawyers, Russian culture workers (artists, curators, architects, art critics, art managers) and many more.
Below are a few of the…
Boris Johnson told the Conservative spring conference in Blackpool that the Ukraine war was ‘a moment of choice... a choice between freedom and oppression’, where victory for Russia would be ‘a green light for autocrats everywhere.’ (19 March)
He had already given that green light to the autocrats by backing the Saudi war in Yemen wholeheartedly, ever since he became foreign secretary in 2016.
Saudi Arabia’s record on democracy, freedom and human rights is even worse than that…
Towards the end of March, a new British anti-war statement appeared online. Unlike the two main anti-war groups in the UK, ‘No War on Ukraine’ does not mention NATO expansion as a factor in the Ukraine crisis.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the Stop the War Coalition are part of the international ‘Peace in Ukraine’ coalition which organised the global day of action against the war in Ukraine on 6 March.
Members include US groups such as CODEPINK, Food Not Bombs…
Below is the text of an international open letter to US president Joe Biden.
We are writing to express our outrage over your 11 February executive order regarding the $7 billion of Afghan funds invested in the US Federal Reserve Bank.
We believe that your decision to divide the funds in two, with half going to compensate 9/11 families and the other half going to humanitarian aid, is unjust and will cause grave harm to the Afghan people.
Your decision has been denounced…
When: 7pm (GMT), Wednesday 9 March
Where: Zoom
Register here: https://tinyurl.com/paulrogers2022
Paul Rogers gives an overview of the crisis and how we got here, in the context of the legacy of the Cold War's proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; the impact of human activity on the global ecosystem; the growth of hypercapitalism and resulting poverty and insecurity; the competition for energy resources and strategic…
Tuesday 1 March: Claire Poyner & Network for Peace
Your chance to find out more about PN admin worker Claire Poyner and the UK-wide Network for Peace (which she co-ordinates), following on from our interview with Claire last issue. Claire will be interviewed by PN editor Milan Rai, and then there will be Q&A. 6pm – 7pm. On Zoom. Register here:…
A host of right-wing voices have spoken out against the acquittal of the Colston Four, describing it as ‘perverse’ and claiming – or assuming – that the jury had ignored the law.
Former justice secretary and Conservative MP Robert Jenrick attacked the acquittal by tweeting: ‘We undermine the rule of law, which underpins our democracy, if we accept vandalism and criminal damage are acceptable forms of political protest. They aren’t. Regardless of the intentions.’
The Secret…
After 15 years, the Wales Page is suspending service!
Thank you so much, Lotte Reimer and Kelvin Mason for all your years of dedication. We are very, very grateful to you – and to all your loyal contributors.
Lotte has been pulling the Wales Page together every issue since 2012. Before that, she shared editing duties with Kelvin, starting in 2007.
Based in Aberystwyth (is it the real heart of Wales?), Lotte and Kelvin have helped to bring all sorts of activism to the…
Six climate activists from Insulate Britain (IB) were freed from prison on 14 January after serving their sentences (with time off for good behaviour). The only remaining prisoner from that group was Ben Taylor (27), who had one more month to go.
Two IB prisoners had been released earlier, on New Year’s Eve: Louis McKechnie (21) and Ana Heytawin (58).
Louis McKechnie told the Big Issue after his release that the group will be employing different tactics this year: ‘I’m not sure…
We’re still at 100 seconds to midnight – as close to ‘civilisation-ending apocalypse’ as we’ve ever been. That’s the view of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists which, on 20 January, set its Doomsday Clock at 100 seconds to midnight for the third year running.
The board concluded that a positive change in US leadership was not enough ‘to reverse negative international security trends that had been long in developing and continued across the threat…
