Features

Sometimes a place – it could be a town, a camp, a crossing, or some muddy field – becomes a concentration point, a sink, a trap, for all the latent evil of the system of power that surrounds it.

Calais is not just a symbol of the brutality of the European border regime, of the violence of colonialism turned inwards and compressed by “Fortress Europe”.

The repression and misery here is very real, every day. Calais is the only town where the French police division…

The annual Peace History conference, organised by the Movement for the Abolition of War in association with the Imperial War Museum and the International Peace Bureau, has been held at the Imperial War Museum annually since 2007.

While it may seem somewhat incongruous to hold a peace history conference in a museum that examines, and to a large part, commemorates war, the venue has grown on me over the years for a few reasons.

I believe that by providing a space for…

Islamabad: On 12 May, the day after a US drone strike killed 24 people in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, two men from the area agreed to tell us their perspective as eyewitnesses of previous drone strikes.

One is a journalist, Safdar Dawar, general secretary of the Tribal Union of Journalists. Journalists are operating under very difficult circumstances in the area, pressured by both militant groups and the Pakistani government.

Six of his colleagues have been killed…

Much of our understanding of the world and its peoples is based on sometimes unconsciously- absorbed accounts of history.

When Martin Bernal first published Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization in 1987, he set out to show the impact Egyptians and other dark-skinned peoples had on Greek civilization, a history he argued had been covered up by classics scholars for largely racist reasons. Understandably, the academic community launched intense…

On 8 April, while helping to launch the new US nuclear posture review (NPR), state department official Robert Einhorn laughed as he said: “there’ll be a lot of Iranian propaganda that this whole thing is about an implicit threat to Iran. It’s not about an implicit threat to Iran.” As radical journalist Claud Cockburn used to say, “Never believe anything until it’s been officially denied.”

At its core, the nuclear posture review announced on 6 April says two things. First: if you…

It’s difficult to avoid the feeling that the military are becoming increasingly embedded into civil society. With high-profile initiatives such as “Armed Forces Day”, lengthy media coverage of soldiers in Afghanistan and targeted recruitment campaigns online, on TV, on billboards and in our schools and communities, there is a growing urgency to resist the militarisation of our everyday lives.

A new campaigning network has been created to resource and empower groups and…

Allegations of British complicity in the torture and abuse of detainees in Afghanistan are being scrutinised at a judicial review in the high court, as PN goes to press. The review, brought on behalf of PN columnist Maya Evans, is challenging the policy of transferring persons captured by UK forces in Afghanistan into Afghan custody. The ten-day case is scheduled to last until 29 April.

Detainees transferred from UK custody have allegedly suffered a wide range of abuses at the…

If the US public looked long and hard into a mirror reflecting the civilian atrocities that have occurred in Afghanistan, over the past ten months, we would see ourselves as people who have collaborated with and paid for war crimes committed against innocent civilians who meant us no harm. Two reporters, Jerome Starkey of the London Times, and David Lindorff of the radical US magazine Counterpunch, have persistently drawn attention to US war crimes committed in Afghanistan. Makers of the…

As politicians warn of post-election cuts in public spending, the question arises: how much could be saved by reducing Britain’s military presence worldwide?

This is what many Britons think the government should be doing. In a 2007 Daily Telegraph poll, 55% of respondents felt Britain should stop trying to “punch above our weight”, and reduce the country’s foreign military involvement.

In real terms, military spending – like public spending in general – has increased…

Recent opinion polls suggest an increased likelihood of the 6 May general election resulting in a hung parliament, something last seen in 1974. In order to avoid this, one party must win a minimum of 326 seats. The Labour party will forfeit its absolute majority if it loses 24 seats; the Conservatives will only achieve an absolute majority if they gain 116 seats. Otherwise, a hung parliament results and smaller parties gain value as the two major parties try to pass legislation.
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The Catholic Worker is a paper. It’s a house of hospitality for homeless people. It’s a communal farm. It’s a soup kitchen. It’s a movement. It’s radical, pacifist, anarchist, and Catholic. It’s 77 years old as of May Day 2010.

Dorothy Day meant to start a labour paper to announce to the unemployed of the Depression era that the Catholic church has a body of social teaching capable of re-shaping society along the lines of justice and peace. Little did she know what she was in…

Three Christian peace activists, charged with burglary and unlawful damage at a US spy base in New Zealand, were acquitted on 17 March.

Father Peter Murnane, Adrian Leason and Sam Land stood trial for NZ$1m damage to a 30m-high pressurized dome covering a satellite at the Waihopai spy base. Waihopai is New Zealand’s biggest contribution to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and part of Echelon, a five-nation network of global surveillance.

The three broke in by…

Shortly after the lunch adjournment on the second day of the trial, 2 March, Adi Leason took the stand and commenced giving his testimony. His counsel, Michael Knowles, led Adi through a description of his life as a Christian, and his story as a teacher, community worker and political activist.

Adrian James Leason is 44 years old, married with seven children, presently living in Otaki. He made three of the banners used in the Waihopai Ploughshares action. “USA War on Terror: a…

In the run-up to Hollywood’s Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles in February, an advertisement was placed in Variety, the US film industry magazine, calling on director James Cameron to support a small people locked in struggle with a rapacious mining enterprise. [1]

Stephen Corry, director of the charity Survival, which campaigns on behalf of indigenous people, drew parallels between the plight of the Dongria Kond in the state of Orissa, India, and the fictional Na’vi people…

More than 500 activists shut down access to the Aldermaston nuclear bomb factory in Berkshire on 15 February to protest against the expansion of the Atomic Weapons Establishment’s research, design and testing of advanced nuclear warheads – without parliamentary approval.

Beginning at 6.30am, demonstrators, including Nobel Peace Prize winners Jody Williams and Mairead Maguire, prevented workers from entering all eight gates for nearly four hours.

Reading Gate was…

At the War Resisters’ International Triennial in Ahmedabad, I met a 100%, thorough-going Indian unilateralist. He’s spent his life critiquing the Indian nuclear power programme and, since India acquired the Bomb, arguing for unilateral nuclear disarmament.

He’s the kind of person who, in Britain, would be fervently supportive of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and trying to use it as leverage to force the major powers towards the abolition of nuclear weapons. When…

The UN COP15 climate conference in Copenhagen in December was a shambles. The little that was agreed reads like a paltry preamble to a treaty that never was – global average temperature rises should be held below 2oC; carbon emissions must be cut, but in a way that does not hinder economic progress of the developing world; a fund should be established to help poorer countries adapt to the threat of climate change (with an initial annual outlay of only $8bn, or about a third of what Shell…

The anniversary of the Israeli assault on Gaza was marked with protests in the Middle East and in Britain. Internationals converged on Egypt for the Gaza Freedom March, others took part in a land convoy taking aid from London to Gaza itself with Viva Palestina, and people around the world took part in demonstrations against the continuing siege.

Gaza Freedom March

The Gaza Freedom March – initiated by US author Norman Finkelstein and organised by the US women-led group, Code…

I’m neither a summit-hopper nor a pacifist, yet the plan for mass nonviolent action at the COP15 Climate summit in Copenhagen caught my imagination.

“Using only the force of our bodies”, went the call-out by the Climate Justice Action network, “we will overcome any physical barriers that stand in our way” to “push into the conference area and enter the building, disrupt the sessions” and hold a “horizontal” assembly.

Images of the raid on the Dharasana salt works, 21…

The War Resisters International Triennial (now held every four years, in a cunning ploy to avoid police detection and repression) is being held here in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, at Gujarat University or “Gujarat Vidyapith”. Coming from the recent ice, snow and slush of southern England, Ahmedabad is jarringly hot – but not too hot, dusty but not too dusty. The university, which was closed down three times by the British authorities during the national freedom struggle, was founded by Gandhi…