This statement was first published on 31st August 2024
The staff of Peace News have printed an issue of PN which includes 8 pages under the headline “Peace News To Close”.
The pages are biased and false in so many ways that we are unable to rebut every misrepresentation, correct every inaccuracy, or fill in every omission. Much of it is so extreme and personal that it…
The second round of French parliamentary elections on 7th July yielded a hung parliament with three main blocks, none of which could command an absolute majority. The largest of those blocks, with 183 deputies; was the Nouveau Front Populaire, a coalition of four left-wing political parties: LFI (France Unbowed), EELV (the Greens), the Socialist Party, and the Communist Party.
The centrist coalition Ensemble (seven parties of which the largest is Macron’s Renaissance party)…
The deadly wars in Ukraine and Gaza are giving us an insight into how battles may be fought in future. Both wars are acting as trial zones for new military technologies, particularly automated technologies driven by artificial intelligence (AI) to undertake intelligence analysis and targeting. In each case, AI has allowed soldiers to sift rapidly through huge volumes of data - with deadly results.
Artificial Intelligence (AI), automated decision making, and autonomous technologies…
James Lawson, who died in June aged 95, was described by Martin Luther King Jr. as ‘the greatest teacher of nonviolence in America.’
Best known for his activism during the US civil rights movement, Lawson travelled to the then segregated city of Nashville, Tennessee in the late 1950s, after King implored him to join the struggle.
Heavily influenced by Gandhi and working as a field secretary for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), Lawson started running regular workshops on…
During a week of action focused on UN potential to end Israel’s genocidal attacks, I was part of a coalition that met with 12 different permanent missions to the United Nations. We urged that if countries that are parties to the Genocide Convention or the Geneva Conventions stop trading with Israel as international law demands (see the 19 July advisory opinion of the international court of justice), the genocide…
On 6 August 1945, the US destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima with an atomic bomb. Three days later, Nagasaki was wiped out.
The two nuclear bombs killed over 100,000 men, women and children.
It was said that using the Bomb was the only way to avoid a long, drawn-out land invasion of Japan costing tens of thousands of lives.
This was not true. In mid-1945, there were two other possible ways of ending the war quickly, without using the Bomb or invading Japan.
…
John Heathershaw is a professor of international relations at the University of Exeter, UK. He is also an English Baptist, with Anabaptist leanings. He brings theology and politics together in his book Security After Christendom.[1] He builds on ‘social scientific and historical evidence’, but his arguments ‘are driven by theological reasoning.’[2] He is immersed in global politics, has worked on the issue of kleptocracy (rule by (…
PN has received this request for letters of support for a Belorussian deserter who did not want to become involved in the Russian war against Ukraine. The text of a draft letter of support is below.
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23 May 2024
Dear friends!
In May 2022, 19-year-old Belarusian Mikita Sviryd…
On 25 April our trial for Criminal Damage took place following our arrest on 29 December at Downing Street to protest the UK government’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza. We had poured red poster paint on the gates, and made bloody handprints, held placards and read the names of children killed by Israel and Hamas.
The evening before our trial we held a gathering at the wonderful London Catholic Worker where we spoke about our…
On 5 April 2024 Erella, on behalf of The Villages Group writes:
To our friends wherever they be,
Incidents with settlers in the South Hebron Hills villages take place all the time, night and day. We, visiting our friends there most days of the week, reach…
4 April: The international Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) will sail in mid April with multiple vessels, carrying 5,500 tons of humanitarian aid and hundreds of international human rights observers to challenge the ongoing illegal Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.
This is an emergency mission as the situation in Gaza is dire, with famine setting in in northern Gaza, and catastrophic hunger present throughout the Gaza Strip as the result of a deliberate policy by the Israeli…
Sorry For The People Not The Wall
I am sorry for
The people
Not the wall;
The wall is solid
And brick
But people
Are soft
And bleed;
Bleed from BAE bombs
And Elbit
Drones.
They bleed
And they
Starve;
People get shot
When they
Queue
For food.
The wall
Stands silent;
Indifferent to
Suffering,
A defence we
Cannot breach,
Unlike the everyday,…
On 25 March, the UN security council finally adopted a ceasefire resolution – because the United States finally stood aside and did not use its veto.
Resolution 2728 called for a two-week ceasefire in Israel's war on Gaza, the release of hostages being held in Gaza and an 'expansion' in the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza – none of these items was made conditional on any other (see below for the full text of the resolution).
The resolution called for a ceasefire lasting 'for…
If elections were held today, Hamas would likely win the presidency and definitely be the biggest party in Palestine’s parliament, according to an independent poll carried out in early March in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The poll was conducted by a respected independent think tank, the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research (PSR).
The PSR…
‘Artificial Intelligence (AI) presents enormous global opportunities: it has the potential to transform and enhance human wellbeing, peace and prosperity.’
As highlighted in the Bletchley Declaration – the outcome of the AI Safety Summit, hosted by the UK government in November 2023 and held at…
