Let us agree about climate change. It is happening fast, potentially spiralling out of control. The latest messages from scientists who have been measuring the shrinking arctic ice cap demonstrate that the situation is dire.
However, our problem is that very few people are heeding the climate threat.
It has been said that the environmental and climate movement is the 'largest mass movement ever' (Paul Hawken in Blessed Unrest, Penguin 2007). Maybe. But the movement is…
Road building is back on the national agenda. Courtesy of the chancellor, George Osborne. It had been assumed that major new roads were a thing of the past, killed off by the 'anti-roads' protests of the 1990s. But, in an attempt to pull the country out of recession, the treasury has been looking to invest in infrastructure projects, including new roads.
The first major scheme to come on-stream could be the £100 million, 5.6 km Bexhill to Hastings Link Road. It would cut straight…
Questioning France's nuclear arsenal is not quite taboo, but the myth that it enables the country to retain great power status is accepted slavishly by most politicians, and with resigned passivity by the majority of the press and population.
Nevertheless, there is a strong and diverse protest movement.
One strand, closest to the Green party, opposes nuclear weapons as an extension of its opposition to nuclear energy. Just as nuclear weaponry is supposed to guarantee military…
Heavily kettled
'Saturday's Committee of 100 demonstration, held despite a ban from the Ministry of Works, lacked real effectiveness…. [The demonstration ended up at the US embassy.] The police were there in force and were obviously determined to be rough. A police bus charged some demonstrators at 30mph. The police first stopped the demonstrators by cordoning them off, and then charged them, pushing and kicking in the process. The arrests made at this point were made with extreme roughness…
On 27 October 1962, a Russian naval officer named Vasili Arkhipov saved the world.
Twelve US navy ships (part of the US blockade of Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis) were dropping practice depth charges on B-59, a submerged Soviet submarine, trying to signal that the sub should surface. The captain of B-59, Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, panicked, believing that the Third World War had started. He gave orders to fire a nuclear torpedo, saying, according to one account: 'We're…
In July, I participated in a Peace News Summer Camp workshop which discussed 'diversity of tactics' — the idea of including violent tactics in our actions and strategies for change. I was a little surprised when my fellow panellists wanted to turn it into a conversation about pacifism and whether violence can ever be justified.
Although I'm a pacifist, I didn't get their point. Most people who participate in nonviolent campaigns aren't pacifists; they choose nonviolent action…
Every time I tell someone about 'anarchist sabbath', they're intrigued, curious, sometimes envious – the conversations start exploring lifestyle, family, personal decisions, community, spirituality, emotional support, political strategy.
This is rather gratifying. So what is it?
Most Sundays, my friend, whom let's call 'Jack', and I meet up in my kitchen and pour ourselves a cup of tea. We take our tea down to the garden pond and sit next to each other without talking for…
In addition to killing hundreds of civilians and fuelling anger and terrorism directed against the West, US and British airstrikes by pilotless drones could also be a major obstacle to negotiating an end to the war in Afghanistan, according to a report by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
Based on interviews with ‘four senior Taliban interlocutors’, the September 2012 briefing paper reports: that the Taliban ‘would be open to negotiating a ceasefire as part of a general…
There are not so many anarchist pacifist poets in print that we can afford to overlook any one of them. In John Rety’s case he was – what ever else – a hard man to overlook or ignore. He was by nature a (nonviolent) combatant and faced with an empty room he’d have had an argument with himself. A cliché, I know but its truth suited him to the ground. So, this posthumous collection of new and selected poems is a welcome arrival and worthy of attention.
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Drawing by Joss Williams
As I pondered how to write this article – about the way conflict is approached at the school in which I work – a friend introduced me to ‘Conflicts as Property’ written by Norwegian criminologist Nils Christie and published in an issue of The British Journal of Criminology in 1977. Although it is the legal system that preoccupies Christie as he sketches out a model of court procedure that restores the participants’ rights to their own conflicts, the parallels with…
‘The ideal of the Olympic Truce can itself be a sign that if it is possible to live without conflict for today, it might be possible to live without conflict tomorrow. But I need to invest in this peace, by laying down my own arms, and by joining hands with my neighbour, especially those I am most fearful and suspicious of.’ said Bishop Stephen Cottrell, speaking at a service in June at Chelmsford cathedral, welcoming the opportunity of peace-making through the Olympics.
This was one…
Considering nonviolent revolution at the PN Summer Camp. PHOTO: Beatrice Kabutakapua
This year’s Peace News Summer Camp was, as promised, bigger and better than ever before. The skies cleared and the ground dried out to give us a gloriously sunny five days (26-30 July). Mysteriously, the heavens opened after our camp, raining on the Earth First! Summer Gathering, which came immediately after us, also at the wonderful Crabapple Community.
We had over 220 people attending over the five…
Munich 1972. I am seven, enthralled by Korbut’s gymnastics, Spitz’s seven golds for swimming. This is the first time I’m old enough to get the Olympics. I am vaguely aware something bad has happened to some Israeli athletes, but too young to realise that politics and the Olympics go hand in hand.
Moscow 1980. I am 15, old enough to understand the US is asking us to join their boycott (because of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan) but young enough not to know what I think. I do…
In July, Peace News organised a speaking tour for US activist and author George Lakey (we also re-published his excellent book Toward a Living Revolution, available from us for only £15 post-free). George travelled all the way from Brighton to Edinburgh and Glasgow, as well as spending five days at PN Summer Camp in Shropshire.
Here’s one report from one stop along the way.
Lucy
George Lakey made a visit to ‘Take Back the Land’, an action camp held in South Lanarkshire,…
PHOTO: Emily Johns
“This banner is one of many that I and Lorna Vahey have made for the peace movement. Our first banner was made when Hastings Against War was formed ten years ago. We have also made ones for International Women’s Day and against domestic violence. They are all used for demos, conferences and stalls in the High Street. Our speciality is making banners for individuals at times of celebration marking their lives as peace makers. There is one we gave to Connie Mager (see BBC…
Gabriel writes: Gabriel Carlyle. PHOTO: Purshi
The renowned Japanese scholar DT Suzuki was once asked what it was like to attain the Buddhist state of satori, or enlightenment. ‘Well, it’s like ordinary, everyday experience,’ he is supposed to have replied, ‘except about two inches off the ground.’
After a week-long Buddhist-inflected workshop on burnout earlier this year, my feet were still planted firmly on the ground – and I certainly hadn’t reached enlightenment – but I did feel…
The first thing that really struck me about the ‘International Symposium on Nonviolent Movements and the Barrier of Fear’ was that it was really international. It brought together activists and academics from Zimbabwe, Uganda, Sweden, South Korea, Palestine, Kenya, Israel, India, Hercegovina, Germany, the UK and the US – and that was just in my first small-group discussion! Apart from the World Social Forum and the War Resisters’ International Triennial, it was the most international event I…
19 March 2013 will mark the tenth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. Although 15 December 2011 marked the end of the formal war, violence persists. Dr Nadje Al-Ali of the University of London’s School of Oriental and Asian Studies, an advocate of women’s rights and other issues in Iraq, said of the invasion: ‘It mobilised people who weren’t necessarily political before to come out onto the street. It also led to the demise of the peace movement because it contributed to people’s sense…
Consensus decision-making has become dominant in activist circles. Not everyone practises it, but almost everyone wants to be using it, or to lay some claim to be using it. Among some folk, consensus decision-making has become not only an essential part of social change, but a pre-condition of working in a group.
We discovered in earlier segments of this interview (PN 2544 and 2545), that US activist and trainer George Lakey was one of the people who helped spread the ‘affinity-group-…
Central America is currently the most violent region on the planet. Some of that is attributable to the drugs trade, which itself feeds on the atomisation and insecurity produced by global neoliberalism. Some of it stems from the region’s brutal and traumatic past, when state forces could commit atrocities with total impunity. But much of it is due to the attitude of the United States, which continues to look for military solutions to social issues.
As a result, the Obama…
