PN

More info here: http://thecockpit.org.uk/show/come_out_we_have_you_surrounded

Satta Hashem grew up in Buhrez, Diyala province, and left Iraq in 1978 aged 18, having been involved in opposition to Saddam Hussein’s regime. He trained in Algeria and the Soviet Union, later moving to Sweden and then the UK. He has kept a daily diary of drawings throughout the wars of 1990-1 and 2003-. A departure from his practice in painting, in which Hashem draws on scientific theories of…

Due to a misunderstanding by the PN editors, the article by Marc Morgan published in last month’s PN was an early version, which left out important information. 

The fast in Paris, still organized by the Maison de Vigilance, will be held in conjunction with a fast in Burghfield held by Action AWE, and a fast at Büchel NATO base, in Germany, organized by the Atomfrei Jetzt campaign.

Fasters at the three sites will take part in symbolic actions, silent vigils and…

This issue of PN has been commissioned and edited by a black person (co-editor Milan Rai); all the writing and the images are by people with a global majority heritage. 

This global majority issue is to accompany and be useful to Peace News Summer Camp (25-29 July, see p7) which is this year being organised by a group of global majority folk.

Taksim Gezi Park, Istanbul, 4 June 2013, before the park was cleared. Photo: James Cem Yapicioglu

In Turkey, plans to ‘develop’ Gezi Park next to Taksim Square in Istanbul sparked a two-week occupation of the square, and protests on a range of issues throughout the country. Clashes led to the deaths of three protesters and one police officer.

In Brazil, demonstrations began in reaction to planned rises in public transport fares. Even after these were cancelled, protests…

Fletcher went to Kenya in December 1954 as a colonial social worker ‘rehabilitating’ women and girls in British detention camps and prisons for Mau Mau militants and sympathisers. She resigned in protest after trying to improve conditions for seven months.

Labour MP Fenner Brockway waved a copy of Peace News in a house of commons debate on Kenya on 6 June 1956, quoting Fletcher.

Fletcher had witnessed children of 11 and 12 being held in prisons in Kenya, and gave details,…

I don't like it when things get ascetic. Enjoying ourselves has potential for liberating us. My general philosophy is: pleasure is a good thing. In our affinity group we have made a commitment to enjoying ourselves. We realised that a lot of our motivational energy comes from guilt. That got us thinking what other motivations we could discover. Enjoying ourselves is a vehicle that will be more exciting and appeal to other people.

There is a lot about pleasure that is to with class and…

When a small group of weavers, colliers, woolsorters and cloggers opened a shop in north of England on 21 December 1844, Gabriel Carlyle writes, they can hardly have imagined the massive global impact their enterprise would ultimately have.

Though not the first consumer co-operative (Scotland’s Fenwick Weavers established an enterprise for the bulk purchasing of food in 1769), their far-sighted principles – which included not only a commitment to selling unadulterated food, but…

The ceremony was followed by a panel discussion ‘Conscientious Objection: from personal right to universal responsibility’ with the following speakers: Albert Beale (Peace Pledge Union), Derek Brett (International Fellowship Of Reconciliation), Hannah Brock (War Resisters International), Ozgur Heval Cinar (co-author of Conscientious Objection: Resisting Militarized Society), Joe Glenton (author of Soldier Box: Why I Won’t Return to the War on Terror, published on International Conscientious…

For my parents, people who go to court are people who have done something wrong. Even when they know you, they are not going to change their mind. They may think “my daughter is not a bad person”, but they have stereotypes. And they will worry because I am in another country. Maybe they think I don’t know what I am doing, because my brother is police and they listen to him everyday.

But because I travel, then it changes my perspective. I realise that the law…

Cheap and powerful

Texting can put important or urgent information directly into your supporters’ hands. Combe Haven Defenders (CHD) are the latest campaign group to venture into mass texting of supporters – here’s how and why they do it (cheaply).

In addition to Facebook, Twitter and their Wordpress blog, CHD has relied heavily on texting to keep people updated.

Over 90% of…

I do find that quite a lot of people think that to ‘get back to nature’ we should spend our time wallowing in mud. The practical problems of that [anti-roads] camp in Combe Haven [East Sussex]…. I’m quite glad I only turned up the day before the evictions happened, otherwise I would have had to spend days living in all that mud.

The thing I enjoyed most about being in a tree for three days [during the evictions] was being out of the mud for three days.…

A third of people in Britain are currently boycotting the products or sevices of a company because it does not pay its fair share of tax in the UK, according to a new Christian Aid survey.

Two out of three Britons believe tax avoidance is morally wrong, and 80% say that multinationals’ tax avoidance makes them feel angry.

A massive 89% of those questioned said it is unfair that they have to pay their…

Britain’s banks are avoiding billions in tax, using an accounting loophole, The Times reported on 1 March.

Banks borrow money by issuing IOUs called ‘bonds’. If confidence in a bank grows, the value of its bonds increases, and it could in theory cost more to buy back the bond than to pay off the money owed.

Using the ‘fair value on own credit’ rule, a bank could then enter a loss in its accounts. The…

The Fellowship of Reconciliation in Wales are petitioning the Welsh national assembly to stop army recruitment in schools. See Petition P-04-432 on the national assembly website and respond to the consultation letter by 16 April.