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We all have something to share and sometimes the most effective way of imparting information, offering and combining this with opportunities for safe discussion and exploration, is via a workshop format. In my experience, workshop organisers often forget that participants are supposed to do some “work”! and session are often very loosely structured, with no clear and specific outcomes expected. This can be extremely frustrating: being precise about what's on offer, or pinning down what…

Bear in mind that the police are probably much better equipped and trained for close combat than you or we. They have been psyching themselves up for hours, are likely to have plenty of reserves standing by, and usually feel confident with the law behind them. Beating the police is about outwitting them, not necessarily hitting them over the head.

In Britain the Public Order Manual of Tactical Operations and Related Matters provides the police with clear instructions for dealing…

Some actions can be traumatic and disempowering. In my experience, public genetix (GM crop-pulling) rallies are most likely to produce these situations. But much of this can be avoided through careful preparation and good support.

Typically, at open/public genetix rallies, people surge on to the GM crop,apparently “spontaneously”, but in reality many have inwardly planned it.

Often a few inexperienced and unprepared people get swept up by the tidal wave and end up getting…

When you put strangers, caffeine and ideas in the same room, brilliant things can happen. For that very reason, the British Parliament banned coffee-houses in the 1700s as hotbeds of sedition. Might we brew up a similar social liveliness now? With democracy, critical thinking and “the ties that bind” all under siege, this may be the most radical cup of coffee you ever drink.

Conversation Cafe's arose from the questions, “How can we create a culture of conversation?…

We are killing each other and the planet: the arms trade, car-culture, exploitation of other species, domestic violence, racism, cash and GM crops, capitalism and ingrained militarism — the list seems endless.

It can seem so bleak, overwhelming and dispiriting, it can fuel the belief in the ultimate futility of human existence: if we are going to live, why should we live like this?

Feel like giving up? Feel like getting on with our relatively comfortable lives and…

It's quite simple when you think about it: every injustice is a direct consequence of a power imbalance. People do unjust things ... well, because they can. The advantages out-weigh the disadvantages and any resistance can be overcome. It seems to me, then, that achieving justice is all about evening up the power.

A big "Aha!" moment for me was when I came across Gandhi's idea thatpower was not a possession that you acquire, like a house or a better job title, but a relationship.…

Territorial disputes have torn the South China Sea region over recent decades. The region was calm until the 1960s and 1970s when international companies begun prospecting for potential hydrocarbon resources, mainly oil and gas. Since then the region has suffered a string of low-intensity hostilities, with the underlying danger of an escalation to full-blown conflicts in the future.

Territorial claims are made over a number of islands, including the Paracelislands, Macclesfield…

“When you see something horrible happening, your instinct is to do something about it. You can freeze in fearful apathy or you can even talk yourself into saying that it isn't horrible. I can't do that. I have to act. This is too horrible. We know it. Let's all act.”

So wrote Albert Bigelow, skipper of the Golden Rule, as he contemplated sailing his vessel into the US Atomic Energy Commission's nuclear test site at the Eniwetok Proving Grounds in the Marshall Islands (see p28-29…

Between 1969 and 1977 Paul Watson was involved in the groups and actions that would spawn Greenpeace International. He was one of the relatively small number of people who participated in early sea-actions against nuclear testing, whaling and seal hunting.

It is fairly common knowledge that the Greenpeace co-founder and “life member number 7” left/was pushed from (depending on who you read) the organisation as it began its journey towards becoming the respectable face of…

Mars calling Earth: “what is all that blue stuff?”

If an alien spacecraft made an emergency landing on earth, then managed to repair itself and return to its home planet, it is very likely that it would report earth's environment as cold, dark, bleak and highly pressurised.

This is because, with the deep sea covering some 64% of our planet and average depths of 3,800 metres, there would be a very strong probability that our alien would have landed deep beneath the ocean's…

The Marine Connection, an international London-based charity dedicated to the conservation of dolphins and whales, regularly highlights its concerns about the use of dolphins in war. Iraq 2003 was no different.

Once again the US Navy used marine mammals from its Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit Three (EODMU3) based in Coronado, California, and nine dolphins were flown to the Gulf, along with a number of trained sea lions from the navy's Mammal Maritime Unit in San Diego.…

On 1 May 2004 we celebrated the first anniversary of the end to 60 years of US navy bombing and presence here on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. An intense four-year campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience disrupted navy manoeuvres to the point of forcing an end to over half a century of military use of this island municipality, six miles south east of the main island of Puerto Rico.

The death of a civilian Navy employee - David Sanes Rodri'guez - caused by an errant bomb…

In August 2001, during an Australian election campaign, about 400 people seeking asylum in Australia were saved from a sinking boat by the Norwegian ship, the Tampa.

The Australian government forced the Tampa out of Australian waters through the use of commandos and the navy. Tampa followed the old unwritten law of the sea to save those in distress and the conservative Howard government ignored and denigrated this unwritten law.

Australia and the…

Taking on board a deep and rolling theme like this certainly offers vast opportunities for useless metaphors.

However, that was hardly our intention when we began discussing an issue focusing on the salty stuff. We thought it would make an interesting - and potentially fun - change to take a slightly different look at something that affects every human being - and indeed every living thing - on earth.

The oceans and seas cover two-thirds of the surface of…

Before you get stuck into reading this thematic section on nonviolent action in Israel/Palestine, we thought it important to point out some inconsistencies in language that you are about to discover.

Firstly, we have not altered, attempted to standardise, or drawn any specific political inferences from the way in which contributors have described geographic locations in the region. Peace News house style attempts not to make any implicit comment on the “solution” to the…

The “Apartheid Wall”, intended to be about 350 miles long and which confiscates 60% of the occupied West Bank's land and encloses numerous communities in several enclaves or Bantustans, is being built at great speed. Already almost 100 miles have been completed in the north and south West Bank and in the Jerusalem area.

Salfit in the north West Bank and Budrus in the West Ramallah district, are two places in Occupied Palestine where women and girls are playing a strong role in…

“Can you dance your tragedies? Can you dance your dreams? If you are Palestinian, you almost have no choice but to try doing both, for if you do one without the other, you choose to indulge in obsessive victimness or naive illusion” [From the introduction to El-Funoun's latest production]

On 9 March 2004, El-Funoun will celebrate its Silver Jubilee. For a quarter of a century, El-Funoun has indeed danced some of the Palestinian tragedies and dreams, challenges and ambitions. But…

I spent last summer as a volunteer on the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel. Participants in this World Council of Churches initiative spend three months living in the region to try to learn more how the conflict affects ordinary people.

On a day-to-day basis we were monitor-ing violations of human rights and international law, providing protection by our presence, and supporting both Israelis and Palestinians in their non-violent acts of resistance to the…

As a Palestinian dance choreographer working in the midst of conflict, I am often asked: what is the rationale of your artistic engagement under the circumstances?

If “engagement” with something is interpreted in a passive sense, as a mere relation to that thing, then the question implies a certain degree of volition in deciding whether or not to relate to issues of conflict and trauma. I personally do not think that in a situation of conflict artists have a choice of whether or…

In January 2004 Rudi Friedrich met Gush Shalom activist and member of the Refuser Parents Forum Adam Keller at his home. A few days earlier five refusers, Haggai Matar, Matan Kaminer, Noam Bahat, Adam Maor and Shimri Tzamaret were sentenced to prison terms of one year by a military court - after more than 14 months' detention already - for their refusal to “serve” in the Occupied Territories. Rudi asked Adam to discuss the situation and relevance of the refuser movement.

RF: How…