The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) are often associated with a bunch of grey-clad number crunchers in Washington DC. Too boring, too technical, too obscure. Its true that their jargon and formula-cluttered reports can easily put off or intimidate anyone.
Perhaps best known for its role in the debt crisis and being a target of protesters in Prague, the World Bank is now expanding its role to a global knowledge bank.
Producing research and setting standards on…
Anarcho-punk legends Oi Polloi have been around since 1981, but recently their music's taken a completely new turn. Their latest album, Ar Ceòl, Ar CÃnan, Ar-a-mach (a pun, meaning Our Music, Our Language, Revolt) is entirely in Gaelic.
Scottish Gaelic (pronounced “gah-lick”, rather than “gay-lick”) is a minority-language based around the north-west of Scotland with about 60,000 fluent speakers and up to 100,000 with a good grasp of it.
…
The last two years have seen a remarkable development in a new peace movement – the local anti-militarism campaigns. Following a model developed in Brighton back in 2004, people across the country are beginning to focus on the arms dealers and weapons manufacturers in their own backyards.
Lacking a commitment to pacifism or legality, the methods and motives of these new campaigns have been questioned by the older, more established peace movement (not least the co-editor of this…
Dear Andrew,
Thank you for writing in last month’s PN on Smash EDO’s outlook on strategy and movement-building. As I’d thought, Peace News and Smash EDO have a great deal in common, much more than divides us. There are differences in our thinking, but, after reading your article, I’ve come to the conclusion that you/Smash EDO aren’t so much in disagreement with “the Peace News approach”, as unaware of the position that PN represents.
There are all kinds of mixes in the…
Anxieties and demands in connection to the financial crisis and the government’s so-called “recapitalisation” of the banks were voiced in Edinburgh on 24 October.
A small crowd gathered in the gloaming outside the headquarters of HBOS, formerly the home of the Bank of Scotland. The building features prominently on the Edinburgh skyline, topped with a golden female figure that appears to be juggling a pair of doughnuts.
The gathering included Scottish Socialist Youth, Praxis…
Morning vigils are being planned to take place during parliamentary sittings up ’til the end of 2008. The aim is to maintain awareness amongst MSPs about Trident replacement by creating a presence at the entrance to the Scottish Parliament.
Following the decision of the Scottish Parliament in June 2007 not to replace Trident, a Scottish Parliament working group on Trident replacement was set up to take this further.
The group, chaired by Bruce Crawford MSP, (see photo)…
Five protestors were arrested on 29 August, and charged with disrupting the performance of the internationally-acclaimed Israeli Jerusalem Quartet at Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall.
The Quartet were playing as part of the official Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) program and have other tour dates in the UK. The protest, organised by Scottish Palestine Solidarity (SPS), stopped play on four occasions during the concert, whilst a leafleting protest took place outside the building…
It’s hard to imagine what it’s like at Faslane. If you think about a port, then images of dockland housing, pubs and assorted services spring to mind. But Faslane is an isolated port, with none of the usual hinterland, surrounded by an impenetrable perimeter fence. It sits in a fabulous loch-side setting with a jagged mountainous backdrop.
Military bases focus our minds on the reality of what state power is and what that power represents. Power created through the acquisition of…
PN: Tell us some background about ACE.
M: ACE dates back to the council-funded Edinburgh Unemployed Workers' Centre in the 1980s. The Centre had been prominent in the movement for non-payment of the poll tax and other sorts of direct action.
In 1992 the council cut off all funding. So the Centre users took it over and ran it collectively.
In summer 1994, the council issued an eviction notice and then we occupied the building 24 hours a day until…
Passengers hurrying into the main check-in at Edinburgh International Airport on August 22nd were greeted by an unusual sight. A massive banner proclaimed: “MEXICO... Sun… Fun… bloomin’ nice beaches…”, alongside a painting of a palm tree. A somewhat eccentric Mexican tourist board initiative perhaps?
Not exactly. “Torture… Death squads… Human Rights Breaches…” continued the lower half of the banner, with a carefully painted AK47 illustrating the point.
Demonstrators from…
The Big Blockade Faslane 365, street demonstrations are familiar lively, colourful, noisy campaigning experiences.
Lobbying MSPs to get rid of Trident, leafleting their staff and the civil servants at the Scottish Parliament, was quieter and greyer. It was accentuated by the day – 11 November, Remembrance Day – and by being a soberly-dressed, placard-wearing group of seven anti-nuclear campaigners from around Stirling.
Standing at the two Canongate entrances at 8am, the…
During the Big Blockade of Faslane on 1 October 2007, Emily Freeman was arrested. Charged with breach of the peace, she was finally brought to trial in Helensburgh on 18 May 2008. Reflecting rather badly on police competence, the case was dropped due to lack of evidence. Here is an excerpt from Emily’s defence, which deserves a hearing:
Breach of the peace is defined as “conduct which does present as genuinely alarming and disturbing, in its context, to any reasonable person…
Nothing in the disruption to me and my family described here compares with the continued suffering and desperation of those driven off their land in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.
My father’s family were of Crusader stock and came from Malta via Greece, hence the name and the fair looks. My father was Anise Saleem George born in Haipha in 1906. His father, Saleem, was a Palestinian-born grain merchant. My father was the only son amongst five sisters, all born and raised in…
In May 2007, Scotland elected a minority government committed to getting rid of Trident.
Opinion polls showed that opposition to Trident was the foremost reason cited by people who transferred their votes from the Labour Party to the Scottish National Party (SNP). It is important to recognise that the outcome was not due to an upsurge in nationalist opinion, but reflected disgust with Tony Blair's government, not least over Labour's decision to renew Trident for a further 30 years.…
Mark Faulkner, coming to the end of two years chairing Room 13 Lochyside, described how the organisation had opened up “a whole new world” to him, making him realise that art was not about painting landscapes, but about “painting a brain on a piece of paper”.
Mark, 12, went on: “My own pieces are quite cryptic. I quite like it when instead of just walking past a piece, you have to look at it for about 30 minutes. And there’d be no piece of writing next to it, because that would be the…
2 May saw University of St Andrews students take to the streets in protest against the closure of Fife Park, one of the University’s two budget halls. A proposed replacement hall would see prices for accommodation rocket from the present £52 per week to a possible £110–130!
The Lower Rents NOW! campaign, a self-organised and independent student and supporters group, has been organising to stop the closure and organised and mobilised for a march and protest camp.
St Andrews…
On 4 July 2005, during the G8 summit, 2,000 people blockaded Faslane Naval Base, home of Britain's Trident submarines, armed with nuclear missiles, and closed it for the day. The police strategy was to leave the street party and not attempt to clear the gates. At 5pm folk got up and went home. And for Faslane, it was business as usual.
A few weeks later an email arrived with a “Proposal for year-long blockade”. The concept was simple: get 100 people to arrive each day and blockade…
These days the Faslane machine, as far as can be seen from the outside, goes on as normal. The hundreds of cars and coaches that form the work shifts, the supply vehicles in all their variety, drift in unhindered. However, if Faslane 365 lives up to its promise, from the first of October all this will change.
The British state is trampling on the basic laws of humanity by wielding Trident, a weapon of terror capable of killing millions. How do we respond? There are many equally…
I work for a group that helps refugees and asylum seekers, something which would not, I realise, send me to the top of the Christmas card list of the average Red Top editor or reader. Sometimes people ask me why I do it.
As I am not the kind of person who, poised like Rodin's Thinker, probes his deepest motives, I don't find this question easy to answer. Perhaps, though, some purpose might be served if I try to answer it here.
The group I work for is based in Hastings and…
I arrived in this country from Hungary in 1947 to three feet of snow in London and very little electricity.
The scars of war everywhere, bombed buildings, unheated rooms, horses and carts, very few cars, but a very efficient transport service, on buses and underground. The sounds around me were chirpy cockney, now rarely heard in London.
Alien registrationI had to register my movements and was issued with an identity card and a ration book for essential items. Books were…
