In December and January activists from environmental groups Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd battled with a Japanese whaling fleet in the ocean off the coast of Antarctica.
Each year Japan carries out its “scientific” whaling programme in the Antarctic and North Pacific. The 100-day hunt for Minke and endangered Fin whales is illegal and violates international conservation regulations.
The 2005/6 hunt began when six Japanese ships reached their destination off the coast of…
The Saving Iceland campaign began in 2003, when the Icelandic government bypassed a series of laws in order to allow the national power company, Landsvirkjun, to build a gigantic hydroelectric dam, now being constructed in the country's eastern highlands.
The National Planning Agency originally refused to grant permission to the first proposal in 2001 due to the irreversible negative environmental impact the dam would have. Incredibly, the then environment minister (whose only…
In October 2005, the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) relaunched its University Clean Investment campaign with the revelation that nearly half of all UK universities invest in the arms trade.
Using the newly introduced Freedom of Information Act, we discovered that these 67 universities held shares in one or more of the largest six UK-based arms exporting PLCs. The trade in weapons fuels conflict, undermines development and, as a whole, receives #890 million each year from the UK…
Candle-lit vigils for the four peace activists abducted in Iraq were held around the country on the evening of Friday 2 December - including ones in Oxford, Bradford, Evesham, Derby and on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square, London.
The four - including Briton Norman Kember - are all genuinely long-time peace campaigners, who were in Iraq in connection with the work of Christian Peacemaker Teams, an international religious peace network active in anti-war…
On Saturday 3 December, around 10,000 people marched through London to demand urgent action on climate change. This was part of a global protest taking place in more than 30 countries, demanding urgent action from world leaders at the Montreal Climate Talks - and specifically for the US and Australia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
Hundreds braved the rain to turn out for a march in Edinburgh, with participants reporting a very positive mood: one marcher commented, “I think we where all…
The second trial of the “`Pitstop Ploughshares Five” dramatically collapsed in Dublin's Four courts last month after counsel for the Defence alleged the presiding judge had met George Bush in Texas in 1995, attended his presidential inauguration in 2001, and was invited by disgraced Senator Tom DeLay to attend the 2005 “coronation”.
The jury were dismissed by the judge after 10 days of evidence that included expert testimony from former UN Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday…
On Friday 25 November, more than 500 women marched in the evening through the streets of central London to protest against rape and male violence. This Reclaim The Night march was organised by the London Feminist Network and supported by The Lilith Project and tens of other organisations both national and international.
It was particularly apt timing, given the recent news from an ICM Poll commissioned by Amnesty International, which found that over a third of people surveyed…
On 10 November, nine nooses were hung outside the London Shell headquarters, paralleling the hangings of activist-author Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight of his Ogoni colleagues on 10 November 1995. The nine were arrested in Nigeria and held without charges, tortured, and eventually sentenced to death for their peaceful efforts to bring Shell's exploitation of the Ogoni people to light.
At his trial, Saro-Wiwa wrote for his closing testimony, “I and my colleagues are not the only ones on…
Inspired by “Camp Casey” in Crawford, Texas - the protest camp initiated by Cindy Sheehan whose son Casey was killed in Iraq last year - on 18 and 19 October relatives of British soldiers killed in Iraq set up camp outside the Ministry of Defence, opposite Downing Street.
Sheehan had met Rose Gentle at the end of September in the US during three days of anti-war protests - attended by Gentle and other members of bereaved British families. Cindy Sheehan is expected to return the visit…
From under the rubble of collapsed buildings, a gut-wrenching smell of decaying corpses now fills the town. The rats have it good; the one I accidentally stepped upon was already fat. If there is indeed a plan to clear the concrete rubble in and around the town, nobody seems to have any clue. But the people of Balakot are taking it in their stride - nose masks are everywhere.
From this destroyed mountainous tourist base town, situated on the banks of the Kunhar river, a relief group…
In March of this year we attended the first trial of the Pit Stop Ploughshares in Dublin (see PN2460).Despite the eventual mistrial, it was an inspiring scene, both inside and outside court. Harnessing the momentum generated by the stand of the five defendants, we met in a pub opposite the courts to plan further nonviolent resistance. We decided to mark the 60th Hiroshima and Nagasaki anniversaries by planting vines and fig trees ata British nuclear base. With another friend we drew…
Our rights and civil liberties face renewed attack.
Once again, the government has rolled out a set of proposals in a new Bill - and this time they've determined that the best way to prevent radicalisation is, as Liberty commented, to - effectively - reintroduce internment and to make "loose talk" a criminal offence.
New powers which would enable detention without charge for up to three months and a new and particularly vague offence of "glorifying terrorism" are on the…
Being an Indymedia cameraman is becoming a hectic pastime in these, the last days of freedom in the UK. The DSEi weapons convention was a damn fine example of the increasing crackdown on free speech. Independent journalists and activists alike are now on the same level as terror suspects, all rights removed.
Saturday 10 September started peacefully . A hundred pr otesters took to the str eets ar ound Beckton, surr ounded by police, informing residents of the impending weapons…
An important part of nonviolence is respect for the sanctity of life and the rejection of behaviour that humiliates or degrades other humans.
People all around the world make nonviolence a part of their life, work and activism, yet it is a minority who extend the practice to include animals.
Concurrently there are people who campaign for the right of animals not to be mistreated whilst seeming to ignore the same abuses when they are used against people.
I believe that…
After my time as a staff member of War Resisters' International, I moved to Northern Ireland. This is now my home and life which, for me, includes being Chilean and confronting what was going on in Chile for over 25 years, either from within Chile itself or from wherever life has taken me.
Life in peaceful Benone allows me to look at what is going on here and in other places, with both serenity and urgency at the same time. One cannot merely be a spectator, we are also part of what is…
Well maybe not. Plans to build a £20 million state-of-the-art laser facility at Aldermaston are beginning to unravel. Thefate of the laser, which forms part of the massive new developments at AWE Aldermaston, the UK's nuclear bomb factory, currently lies in the hands of the West Berkshire planning committee.
For the past two years, Aldermaston Women's Peace Camp (AWPC) have been attempting to undermine AWE's plans, through opposing the developments as they come up before the planning…
As PN went to press, activists were gearing up for a week of direct action against the largest weapons fair in the world: DSEi (Defence Systems and Equipment International). Undeterred by reports of a planned exclusion zone around the London's ExCeL centre where the heavily-policed event is to take place, thousands are traveling to the capital from around Britain and Europe in a determined effort to shut down DSEi. In a bid to get you all out of your armchairs and off to the arms fair, Emily…
On 1 July, substantial new restrictions on protest around Parliament came into force, the breaking of which becomes an arrestable offence from 1 August. Any person thinking of making a political public statement in the centre of political power in Lond
It is almost hard to know where to start with this - there are so many reasons! But here goes with the main ones...
Reinforcing power: I suppose the first is just that part of me feels as though those eight white men in suits are not wo
Wednesday 6 July marked the first day of the G8 summit, so on Tuesday night, while eight men in suits were preparing to sit down to a meal of Marrbury smoked salmon and roast fillet of Glenarm lamb, thousands of activists were finalising their plans f
