You could be forgiven for thinking that the new Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), the result of an almost unprecedented to and fro between the Commons and Lords, is a much-watered down version of the Government's proposals for the replacement of the heavily criticised detention powers in the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act.
But the parliamentary tussles perhaps tell us more about the shortcomings of most Westminster debates than about any actual gains made by defenders of…
Well m'darlings, today's Easter love-your-enemy-bunny is Sir Jock Stirrup. I kid you not.
His formal title is Air Chief Marshal Sir Graham Eric Stirrup. But inexplicably he prefers to be known as Jock.
His CV is so acronym-heavy it makes you proud. He's been an “OC 2” a “PSO”, a “CO RAF”, an “AOC No1”, a “FIMgt”, a “FRAeS”, a “KCB” and an “AFC”. Know what they stand for? Suggestions on a postcard please.
So you see, he knows a thing or two about planes, and was director…
In a pre-emptive attack on the US, the Campaign Against Climate Change organised a march in London on 12 February to draw attention to the Kyoto protocol - which came into force on the 16th.
The US, Australia, Monaco and Liechtenstein are the only developed nations that have failed to ratify the treaty. We decided to give Monaco and Liechtenstein a little leeway, and marched past the Australian High Commission (Ozzies are the biggest producers of greenhouse gases per capita) on the…
Regular Mole-istas will know that this column finds it hard to resist an opportunity to criticise once-Red Ken, Mayor of Greater London. And we all know very well, from recent evidence, that Ken “turn-again” Livingstone similarly finds it impossible (especially when in party mood) to resist slagging off the Daily Mail. Which leaves The Mole, also a hater of the Daily Wail, in an ambiguous position.
The Mail's wilful pandering to (and generation of) the ill-informed…
Ever since I got into some warm water for including in a press release a quote which compared Trident to Auschwitz I have been alert to the potential danger of such comparisons. The Dresden commemorations have raised the issue again, with much use of the term “moral equivalence”.
Boggy groundThe phrase itself has an interesting history. William James used it in 1906 in an essay proposing a civil substitute for military service which would retain some of the “moral” benefits of war…
Well my lovelies, this month we're meeting mister Kevin Stanley Beeston.
Not heard of him? Shame. He's a busy man. He's top dog at SERCO. Not heard of it? Chances are it's heard of you. It does it all: leisure centres, hospitals, prisons, railways, national rail enquiries, and nuclear weapons. In 2003 it made #11million gross profit from PFI and it's ambition is to be “up there” with KBR in the global “support services” industry.
Who ya gonna call?When a 54-year-old coughed…
This issue of Peace News has been produced against the backdrop of war on Iraq and, in particular, the attacks on Fallujah.
While the editorial team spent their evenings deciding on the right font for a heading, warplanes and mortars struck fear into the hearts of ordinary people thousands of miles away.
It's distressing to see the blatant hypocrisy, lies, inconsistencies and ironies surrounding this war and to realise that many of the public - and, it seems, much of…
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…
Who are the biggest and most willing purchasers of arms? Tyrants. Why? They need to oppress their own people and to conquer others, to do this one needs the appropriate tools. Who are the biggest sellers and producers of arms? Democracies. Why? They have the market capacity to produce them. Strange bedfellows, but supply and demand brings them together. A cynic would contend that wars and violence are manufactured to make profits, because wars are boom times for almost all involved, except…
Peace News readers will understand the sick feeling many Americans had when we woke up on 3 November and found George Bush had been re-elected. That feeling was deeper because the exit polls on Tuesday afternoon suggested John Kerry would win the election. The exit polls were wrong, Bush won, Kerry lost, and unlike 2000, when the election really was stolen, this time the Bush margin was so clear - over two million votes ahead of Kerry in the popular vote - that the Left must…
During the weeks and months leading up to the London European Social Forum (ESF) there was much controversy as to whether a minority had managed to undermine the democratic nature of the forum itself. The history surrounding the ESF, the World Social Forum (WSF) and the World Economics Forum (WEF) needs to be understood to see clearly how serious a de-democratisation of the ESF could be.
The WEF has been running for over thirty years in different forms, but always acting as a think…
January 1986. In the northern hills of Nicaragua, surrounded by Ronald Reagan's murderous Contras, a group of some 300 peace activists from all over the world find their path into Honduras blocked. The US and Honduran mililitaries are conducting joint exercises - no way through for anyone who believes in reconciliation and gentle peace.
Unnerved by the brooding hills and by their just-completed visit to a tiny cooperative where mothers showed pictures of their "Santos inocentes" (…
It is hard to believe that, just ten years after the genocide in Rwanda, new reports of massacres against Tutsis by Hutus have started coming in.
As PN went to press more than 150 Tutsi refugees were reported to have been macheted and shot by a Hutu during a raid on a nearby Burundian military base.
Red cards all roundAs Peace News went to press the 2004 Olympics had just kicked off.
Like music, sport is often said to be a great bridger of divides. It can bring…
It repeats itself: the main hospital has been closed down by US troops and is being used for military operations, ambulances are being prevented, again by US troops, from moving around the town, which is being pounded from the air while the US and the Iraqi militias, disparate armed groups, fight in the streets and US soldiers drive around with loudspeakers, ordering civilians to leave or be killed.
It could be Falluja in April; this time it's Najaf. I hear that Kut has been bombed…
There can be no peace without the unity of humankind and specific structures of inclusive social justice. That thought reflects the mature form of every major religion. Yet institutional drag across the years, usually draws most adherents of each faith tradition towards the preservation of the institution, rather than to a dynamic response to specific faithfulness in an always-changing world.
In light of that trend, the signs of the times are not propitious for the building of the…
World military spending has returned to Cold War levels. Between 2001 and 2003, world military spending increased by 18 percent to reach US$956 billion - very close to the Cold War peak in 1987. Three quarters of that spending was by high income countries, who together spent well over ten times more on the military than on official development assistance to poorer countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.
There is a deep irony in the rich world going to ever-…
As Ariana flight 404 from Dubai touched down at Kabul International Airport, its applauding passengers straining to locate family members among those standing on top of the arrivals building, Mosa Gholam personified impatience. And a little aggravation.
It might have been because he hadn't slept for a week. It may have been because he nearly missed the flight after a fellow returnee with an incorrectly named ticket nearly grounded the group in Dubai.
And of course much of…
Colombia's president Alvaro Uribe Velez is, by his own admission, a man of the right. Unlike most recent Colombian Presidents, Uribe is from the land-owning class. He inherited huge swathes of cattle ranching land from his father Alberto Uribe Velez, himself subject to an extradition warrant to face charges of drug trafficking in the USA, until he was killed, allegedly by left-wing FARC guerrillas, in 1983. Uribe Jnr grew up with the children of Fabio Ochoa, three of whom were to become…
Russia after the election is a grim place. With electoral doubts safely swept under the carpet, Putin has been sworn into Office.
Greeted by Putin Youth Rallies in Moscow, and an explosion in Chechnya killing “Putin's man in the region”, Kadyrov, Head of Parliament Hussein Isaev and, at time of going to press, possibly Finance Minister Ely Isaev. No accidental irony this attack: on the Day of Victory. Putin's promise: the liquidation of the terrorists.
Speaking of which - one…
I write as a lifelong peace campaigner who has been on all the big demos against the Iraq war, and at the same time is very concerned that the peace movement is failing to come to grips with the dangers posed by international terrorism.
The tendency is to blame the US for terrorist atrocities rather than the terrorists themselves, thus making it difficult to confront the issue of terrorism directly. However, terrorism in general and Al Qaeda in particular pose dangers to peace in…
