International activists taking peaceful action against the Alcoa Dam in Iceland are at risk of being deported from the country following the passing of a new law which came into force on 13 August.
In a move which supresses the right to peaceful protest, Icelandic police are seeking to rearrest 21 protesters, who are mainly of British nationality, as well as some Spanish, Swedish and Polish, and serve deportation orders.
Activists from Iceland and around the world set up a…
For several years a consortium consisting of Shell, Statoil, and Marathon have attempted to build an unprecedented high-pressure up-stream raw gas pipeline going 9 kilometres inland to a refinery in Erris, Mayo, in the north-west of Ireland.
Since the middle of June, mass pickets have halted all work on this development, and Shell, the main party in the consortium, have recently announced a suspension of all work until next year. Effectively, people power has prevented them from…
On 14 April the Greenwash Guerrillas (GG) worked outside the Annual General Meeting of British Petroleum to prevent the public from being contaminated with greenwash (dangerous profit-seeking environmental whitewash).
While most shareholders, hypnotised by the surfeit of friendly green BP logos, by the thought of ever-greater dividends, and by the prospect of a free lunch, brushed aside warnings (both personal and planetary) and marched into the meeting, at least two shareholders…
Using a single entity or idea to tell a wider story has been a saleable strategy for popular historians since Longitude became such a resounding hit. People expecting something similar in Joe Sherman’s Gasp: the Swift and Terrible Beauty of the Air may well start out by being a little disappointed. Sherman is an excellent writer, and the book’s first half carries an impressive array of facts and anecdotes. However, their assembly is as formless as their subject. In this exploration of our…
PN: So, tell us a little bit about this book... how it came about, why you decided to do it now
Rex: I wanted to leave a good record of what happened cos I felt that the existing record was spotty and not particularly correct historically... I just wanted to leave a better record.
Myself, I'm a journalist, throughout my career in Greenpeace in the 1970s, I was also a journalist. I'm still a journalist and - I approached the story as I would approach it as a journalist and as an…
It was a pleasure to be given this to review - it's a book I'd want to buy if I could afford it.
Rex Weyler has written a history of a major part of this movement, assessing many of the personalities, and narrating some of the dramatic stories. (See interview p10-12.)
Lots of this has been told before, but this might be the first attempt to pull so much of this history together by someone so close to it. It is a pity it concentrates on the 1970s, though that means it gives a…
A protest camp against the incinerating of ballistic missiles took place from the beginning of July to the end of August in the central Russian city of Perm.
The action aimed to stop the authorities' plan to burn the missiles in the open air, as the fuel contained into the rockets would release large amounts of the highly toxic dioxin which, even in small concentrations, can cause cancer and destroy the immune system.
Back in 2001, the Kirov Factory in Zamask was chosen for…
Territorial disputes have torn the South China Sea region over recent decades. The region was calm until the 1960s and 1970s when international companies begun prospecting for potential hydrocarbon resources, mainly oil and gas. Since then the region has suffered a string of low-intensity hostilities, with the underlying danger of an escalation to full-blown conflicts in the future.
Territorial claims are made over a number of islands, including the Paracelislands, Macclesfield…
Between 1969 and 1977 Paul Watson was involved in the groups and actions that would spawn Greenpeace International. He was one of the relatively small number of people who participated in early sea-actions against nuclear testing, whaling and seal hunting.
It is fairly common knowledge that the Greenpeace co-founder and “life member number 7” left/was pushed from (depending on who you read) the organisation as it began its journey towards becoming the respectable face of…
Mars calling Earth: “what is all that blue stuff?”
If an alien spacecraft made an emergency landing on earth, then managed to repair itself and return to its home planet, it is very likely that it would report earth's environment as cold, dark, bleak and highly pressurised.
This is because, with the deep sea covering some 64% of our planet and average depths of 3,800 metres, there would be a very strong probability that our alien would have landed deep beneath the ocean's…
OK - I confess, I am a Neal Stephenson fan (the sole purpose of my visits to bookshops at the moment is to ask whether his latest novel - Quicksilver - is out in paperback yet!). Before I stumbled across Zodiac I had already read his three other (predominantly sci-fi - sometimes called cyberpunk) novels and been entertained, intrigued and in the case of his epic - Cryptonomicon - been fascinated.
Zodiac is a great read, but in style and…
In spite of mounting state repression of campaign groups - the spurious arrests of ecological activists, the death in suspicious circumstances of Mr Shekochikhin, the Minister of Defence accusing the Soldiers' Mothers Committee of being a dodgy outfit funded by shady organisations - campaigners in Russia are as active as ever on a wide range of issues.
In Azov, Kaliningrad, blockades organised by Rainbow Keepers and Autonomous Action - and supported by local residents and…
Steve Schofield is one of the foremost experts on demilitarisation and the conversion of military resources to civilian use. He is a kind of practical utopian, someone who has always used his specialist knowledge and rigorous analytical approach to inform his pursuit of a world without war.
In his latest book he takes a clear look at how the search for the twin goals of peace and prosperity - through the three pillars of federalism, international trade and comprehensive disarmament…
Most radical thought and action about the environment could be described as “utopian”, since it envisages a radically different society with strongly sustainable development where the integrity of “natural” ecosystems is maintained.
Utopianism, popularly associated with a literary genre, is also a “state of mind” found in the constitutions, outlines or blueprints of any ideal republic. It always reflects existing social conflicts, and rejects existing society. The utopias of 1960s…
As an individual involved in nonviolent direct action, I'm often suspicious of academic books about activism. What purpose do they serve? They are too often "studies of" rather then any advancement of debates or ideas.
They seem to have little effect in informing the mainstream press or persuading them to be any more open or honest in what they write - as seen in media coverage of the Mayday "riots", which became "riots" some…
