Selected info & resources
Stop the War analysis and actions
Women in Black calls on the UK government to use diplomacy, discussion, economic sanctions and strategies, NOT BOMBS on Syria. Download the leaflet and send to the Prime Minister
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Anti-war action
1 December 2015News
On 11 November, Italian pacifist Turi Vaccaro carried out a Ploughshares action at a 400-acre US military base near Niscemi in Sicily.
He climbed to the top of one of the three huge radar dishes in the base that are part of the US navy’s MUOS satellite communications system. Once there, 40 metres in the air, he used a hammer to disarm the dish’s electrical systems, causing, it’s claimed, over £500,000 (nearly €800,000) worth of damage.
Local people in the ‘No MUOS’…
31 March 2015News in Brief
On 3 February, Campaign Against Arms Trade staffer Anne-Marie O’Reilly strode onto the stage of the annual ADS arms industry dinner at the Park Lane Hilton in London. She took the microphone and urged the arms dealers present to consider a career change. (Also present were ministers, over 40 MPs, and many top-ranking civil servants and ministry of defence officials.)
Anne-Marie’s opening words were: ‘I’m here tonight because my child is going to be born in four months’ time.... He…
1 February 2015News in Brief
On 29 December, 10 peace activists were arrested at the Pentagon in Washington DC, USA, during a nonviolent witness by over 50 people from the Atlantic and Southern Life Communities.
Commemorating the feast of the Massacre of the Holy Innocents, the group held a procession to the Pentagon. One banner read:
‘Love Your Neighbor Means Don’t Bomb, Occupy and Kill Them!’
After political and religious speeches, the 10 were arrested for refusing a police request to enter…
25 November 2014Feature
Te Puea Herangi, the Maori princess who led the Waikaito tribal confederation’s successful campaign of nonviolent resistance to conscription during the First World War, articulated one of their reasons for not fighting as follows: ‘They tell us to fight for king and country. Well, that’s all right. We’ve got a king.…
28 September 2014News
No to NATO march, Newport. Photo: Marian Delyth
On 2 September, the annual meeting of the international network ‘No to War – No to NATO’ called for the abolition of NATO. They rejected the planned opening of further NATO military bases and the deployment of soldiers from NATO member states to Eastern Europe, and stated that the ‘conflict in Ukraine has been substantially escalated by NATO’. The network went on: ‘Currently, NATO views Russia…
28 September 2014News in Brief
Over 50 people were arrested in August in the US for protesting against nuclear weapons.
On Hiroshima Day, 6 August:
30 people were arrested blockading Livermore nuclear weapons laboratory in California. Three people were arrested at the Pentagon, for refusing to enter a police-designated protest zone. Seven people were arrested for crossing a property line at Lockheed Martin, an arms manufacturer in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.On Nagasaki Day, 9 August:
Six people were…
21 July 2014Review
‘Napalm was born a hero’, argues Columbia University’s Robert Neer about the creation of the sticky, jellied incendiary by US scientists in the Second World War.
Burning at over 800 ° C, napalm played a decisive role in the Pacific War, with perhaps 100,000 Japanese dying in the infamous napalm attack on Tokyo on 9 March 1945. The US ‘scorched and boiled and baked to death’ more people in that one night than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, according to US air force…
18 February 2014News
On 15 January, 79-year old Margaretta D’Arcy, writer, member of Aosdána which honours outstanding contributors to the arts in Ireland, and widow of the late playwright John Arden, was arrested at her home and ferried by squad car to Limerick prison to serve a three-month sentence. Her crime: failure to sign a bond pledging to no longer trespass onto unauthorised areas of Shannon airport.
Margaretta D’Arcy has been arrested twice for sitting on the runway at Shannon…
18 February 2014News
Candle-lit vigil at Syrian embassy, London, 10 December.
Photo: Dan Viesnik
On 10 December, Syria Peace and Justice, a grassroots group formed in October 2013, marked International Human Rights Day with a ‘Peace Pilgrimage’ for the people of Syria.
Two feeder groups visited embassies and offices in central London with a connection to the Syrian crisis (including Downing St and the foreign office) to deliver a letter from the group. The two groups then…
26 January 2014Blog
On Saturday 25 January, Zoe Lawlor and John Lannon of Shannonwatch visited Margaretta D'Arcy in Limerick Prison. She has been there now for 10 days, as a result of her conscientious refusal to sign an undertaking that she would stay away from the restricted areas of Shannon Airport. She has made it clear that she has no problem signing a peace bond - after all, peace is what she is campaigning for.…
24 January 2014Blog
On Wednesday, January 15th, 79-year old Margaretta D’Arcy, writer, member of Aosdana which honours outstanding contributors to the arts in Ireland, and widow of the late playwright John Arden, answered a knock on the door of her small Galway City terraced house. It was the Irish police. She was arrested and ferried by squad car to Limerick Prison to serve a three month sentence. Her crime: failure to sign a bond pledging to no longer trespass onto unauthorised areas of Shannon Airport.…
1 November 2013Feature
On 7 October, six peace activists were found guilty of criminal damage during a protest at a British drones base, RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire. They were given a conditional discharge for six months, were fined £10 and ordered to pay £75 in court costs.
Defendant Keith Hebden told PN: ‘The judge recognised the validity of our arguments, saying Waddington was a “legitimate target for protest”. The token order to pay £10 in compensation reads to me like an invitation to press home the…
1 November 2013News in Brief
On 4 October, three members of the Atlantic Life Community and War Resisters’ International were convicted of ‘disobeying a lawful order’ and each sentenced to a $100 fine with $35 costs, for refusing to return to a designated protest area outside the Pentagon in Washington DC, USA, during a protest on Hiroshima Day, 6 August.
1 November 2013News in Brief
The Transform Now Plowshares support group is calling for letters to help lower prison sentences for Megan Rice (83), Michael Walli (64) and Greg Boertje-Obed (57).
The peace activists are facing 30-year sentences for breaking into a US nuclear bomb-making factory in Oak Ridge, California in July 2012, and ‘transforming’ it with blood, spraypaint and hammers.
The support group asks for letters touching on three points: