PN

On 19 December, the Daily Telegraph reported that British Tornado fighter-bombers and armed Reaper drones could continue to fly after the official British ‘withdrawal’ from Afghanistan in 2014. 

British military sources told the paper that it would be easy to overfly Afghanistan with aircraft and drones based in the Gulf states or elsewhere in the region.

In mid-January, a NATO rocket strike killed 14 villagers in Hasan Khel in Wardak province, Afghanistan, according to a report in the Sunday Times, quoting an Afghan army officer, second lieutenant Mohammad Jawed, who lost his father, two brothers and an unborn child in the attack.
Villagers believe they heard a rocket-like whooshing sound, indicating a drone strike.

This banner was designed and made by the women of Llandrindod, Wales in 1981. The banner, which is now in the Bradford Peace Museum, was made for the ‘Women for Life on Earth Peace March’ from Cardiff to Greenham Common which marked the start of the Greenham Common women’s peace camp.  Photo: Bradford Peace Museum

On 1 February, Morocco was due to finally put on trial 23 Sahrawis arrested when Moroccan security forces destroyed the Gadaym Izik protest camp (the forerunner to the more celebrated Arab Spring uprisings) in November 2010. 

The 23 Sahrawis have carried out four hunger strikes to bring attention to the brutal treatment they have received in prison, and to the fact that despite being civilians they are facing trial in a military court.

Western Sahara has been illegally…

The slow-motion train-wreck that is the Nepali peace process tumbled further out of control in January, with new levels of inter-party hostility and deepening cracks within the Maoist camp.

The two main opposition parties, the Nepali Congress and the United Marxist-Leninists (UML), have stopped trying to reach an agreement with the ruling Maoist party (UCPN-M).

On 26 January, Congress and UML supporters attempted to blockade the prime minister Baburam Bhattarai and…

Protests continue in Tamil Nadu, India, against the Kudankulam nuclear power plant (see PN 2550) which has still not yet gone online.

On 10 December, more than 100 fishing boats marked international Human Rights Day with a ‘sea siege’ of the plant.

On 21 January, there was another protest by the National Fishermen Forum. The NFF secretary, T Peter, said: ‘If the plant starts its operation, the lives of thousands of fishermen will come to a standstill…. Today, on the…

On 19 November dozens of protestors formed a human chain to stop heavy machinery moving around the path of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline through Texas. Four locked themselves to machinery and three suspended themselves from 50-foot pine trees with lifelines anchored to construction equipment.

Cherokee County sheriff’s deputies were reported to have used ‘pain compliance’ measures, including pepper spray, to remove the locked-on protestors, who were dragged away ‘very…

On 25 January, Nestlé, the world’s largest food company, was finally sentenced to pay compensation for planting spies inside the Swiss campaigning group, ATTAC Switzerland. The civil court of Lausanne, which heard the case against Nestlé a year earlier, in January last year, has apparently ordered Nestlé to pay €3,000 per person for ‘moral damages’. 

The two exposed spies were infiltrated into ATTAC with false names in 2003 and then in 2008.

On 4 December, three US peace activists, including an 82-year old nun, sister Megan Rice, were charged with injuring national defence premises, a crime under the US Sabotage Act with a maximum sentence of 20 years. 

In July 2012, sister Rice, Greg Boertje-Obed and Michael Walli (the ‘Transform Now Plowshares’) entered a uranium storage facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and splashed blood and spray-painted messages of peace on the walls.

The three acknowledge their…

On 14 January, a London group of Trident Ploughshares handed out hundreds of leaflets in Regent Street, London. The Muriel Lesters affinity group were informing passers-by of the nearby headquarters of the world’s largest arms manufacturer, Lockheed Martin. Lockheed has one-third ownership of Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Establishment, the UK’s nuclear warhead factory, as well as a share of the Faslane Trident nuclear submarine base in Scotland, and the Coulport Trident nuclear warhead depot…

On 27 December Poland finally ratified the landmine ban treaty and in doing so brought the whole of the European Union into the treaty with all 27 nations now committed to the international treaty. Having doing so, Poland has also left the United States as the only NATO country not to have ratified the treaty.

Poland signed the treaty in December 1997 but had resisted ratifying it and bringing it…

They don’t want us to know.

They want us to forget that the anti-war movement managed to shake the warmongers to their bones, and make them scramble to draw up new plans.

Spread the word about ‘Wobbly Tuesday’.

Reading the October issue of PN, the pieces about the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the people working on Peace News getting an issue out the door but not knowing whether they would live to put another issue together again, reminds me of the 1980s and that same sense of desperation I had then, lots of us had, that the end of the world could be coming any day, that nuclear weapons were about to obliterate us.

It is a very different feeling today. With climate change, it is almost certainly…

Please help an Afghan family survive this winter, by giving a donation to the Peace News Kabul Winter Appeal. Please make your donation before Friday 21 December to enable us to send your contribution directly to the camp, with nothing deducted for administration, at the beginning of January.

300 families live in the Chamne Babak refugee camp on a derelict site in District 2 of Kabul. They have no access to electricity or clean water. Most of them returned to Afghanistan in early…

Activism and partying? I haven't really experienced linking these together. If you're talking about a 'regular party', it doesn't really link to my peace activism.

It sounds interesting having those two things linked together. What comes into my head is people with different views who feel strongly about something coming together in a party and discussing things in a casual way.

You have to have music at a party, but I feel it should not be a mainstream band. 

I haven't…