Just three years ago my son Yinnon approached me and told me that he could not serve in the military on moral grounds. He said he knew with growing certainty that pacifism was his ideal. He was sixteen years old.
The soul-searching that followed this declaration was not just my son's. It became mine as well, and that of the entire family. The process was deep and often painful. It forced us to question our core values, demanding a re-evaluation of ourselves as parents, siblings, as…
When Peace News asked me to write this essay, I found myself in a strange position. Here I am, a conscientious objector to military service, and a feminist, asked to write about the connection between conscientious objection and gender identity from my particular personal perspective, and not knowing where to begin. After all, strange as it may seem, I had never thought of this connection in this respect before.
I would like to begin by explaining why I never thought of my…
These thoughts prompted twenty of us to get together for a weekend workshop in Amsterdam at the end of January, an opportunity for in-depth discussion of women's current and future anti-militarist and anti-war strategies.
Some of the women at the Amsterdam workshop came from women-only groups. Some were active, as feminists, in groups with men. While some of us were more “specialised” in one kind of activism or another, women were commonly doing a bit of several kinds of things: non-…
The relationship between military violence and economic exploitation is not new nor is it limited to modern capitalist economics. The dynamic was present in the former Communist societies and it was present before industrial capitalism developed.
Many have argued that globalisation began more than five hundred years ago when the Europeans first sent their armies to the New World. The conquest of the Americas (and subsequent subjugation of Africa and Asia) produced fantastic wealth…
As thousands of protesters filled the streets of Washington in April 2000, closing the US capital to oppose the policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, their peers in Bolivia were demanding the right to drinking water.
Following massive protests against the privatisation of the nations water supply, the Bolivian government had declared martial law. A leader of the Bolivian movement, Oscar Olivera, escaped the repression just in time to join the Washington…
Several years ago the Croatian Department of Tourism led a big marketing campaign to try to attract the long dreamed about tourists who were still afraid of the instability in the region. The Department promised a small country for a great holiday. The only thing left out of the entire advertising trick is in the title of this article.
The minister who devised this tourism slogan subsequently had to step down from government due to being exposed for nepotism, after hiring his wife who…
“On the night of 2 July [2000] Mexico finally became a democracy.” This statement, in Time, expressed the view of the media pundits celebrating the outcome of the elections in Mexico as another step forward in the implementation of the neoliberal agenda.
At the grassroots, the people were also celebrating, but for very different reasons. They had no illusions about the implications of the elections. “For us,” said an indigenous leader on 3 July, “the system is like a snake;…
President Foxs order for a withdrawal of military forces from Zapatista communities should not only be seen as a step in the right direction toward the reversal of the Mexican governments terrorist policies in Chiapas it must also be seen, and appreciated, as a victory for the Zapatista communities that have held out with so much courage during these long years of repression.
Whatever happens next, these current actions, that reportedly include the dismantling of military checkpoints…
In the post-Thatcherist political landscape of British society we continue, in a truly British fashion, to maintain the notion of the level playing field, meanwhile progressing the ethos of protectionist privatisation with a ruthless and self-serving agenda.
New phrases (and concepts) such as public-private-partnership and private finance initiative are commonplace in the political language of modern Britain under Tony Blair's personal version of caring capitalism.
A cynical…Nowadays, the Angolan war has become silent almost perfect for both the warmongers and the outsiders who profit from the death and destruction of the country. The Angolan war does not disturb public opinion any longer. It is an old and intractable affair. It causes indifference.
In a recent interview with the Catholic-run Radio Ecclesia, the Angolan minister of defence, Kundy Paihama, dismissed the civilian death toll of a rebel attack against the capital of the Northern province of…
When I was finally sold here in Brcko I was sold for DM 4,000. I heard that when you are sold once you are going to be sold many times again and you will never be able to earn the money to pay the original price. I thought that I would never be able to return home and never be able to pay the money to get me home.1
Since at least the 19th century, the military has sought to regulate the lives of prostitutes and other women working around military bases, and in so doing recreated…
The Defence White Paper released in May 1996 had noted that there is no foreseeable conventional military threat to South Africa, and that the government has prioritised the daunting task of addressing poverty and the socio- economic inequalities resulting from the system of apartheid.
The South African Constitution similarly declares in Chapter 11, Section 198 (a) that: National security must reflect the resolve of South Africans, as individuals and as a nation, to live as equals,…
We agree then, that the war system has to be taken apart. Trident by Trident, military by military, resource by resource. It is we who must do it, with our hammers and bolt-cutters, our court cases and treaties, our letters and votes, our non-payment of war taxes. With these same hands and hope we must simultaneously build a viable and compassionate alternative to those killing sanctions and NATO bombs. The Global Nonviolent Peace Force proposes to do just that, by offering energetic and…
Standing on the wharf, an Esgeno'petitj community member looked out at the water of Miramichi Bay, out at the buoys that mark the community's lobster traps. Sometimes I imagine what it would be like, she said and paused. Sometimes I imagine what it would be like if we could fish in peace. If we didn't always have to look over our shoulders to make sure the DFO (Department of Fisheries and Oceans) arent there. This could be a beautiful place.
In my mind I'm transported halfway across…
She's just coming home from Ramallah, she's been away, you have to let her through explained Anita, with her Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) armband and hat, a signal of her role as interventionist. The two soldiers did not look convinced, their sole purpose, to maintain curfew. No one can go now argued the young Israeli, and as if to add reason to his statement he added Anyway they are not human, you saw on the TV. Implying the lynching in Ramallah of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF)…
Send in 1000 grandmothers, sang Holly Near, in response to Natos bombing of Yugoslavia wonderfully inspiring idea and perhaps not as bizarre as it sounds. Its certainly not a new suggestion, although as women's nonviolent interventions are seldom discussed you'd be forgiven for thinking so.
I am particularly talking about grassroots nonviolent action that either occurs or impacts across national borders, aiming to prevent violence or assist social change. Firstly I want to share…
Why intervention? Let the Bosnians sort it out for themselves! How many times did we hear variations on that sentiment, usually but not always by people trying to justify the destruction being done by the Yugoslav and Bosnian Serb armies and the militias?
The easy pacifist answer to that challenge (I know, because I frequently made it myself) was that something had to be done, short of military intervention, or else the calculated hatred we were seeing in that small region of Europe…
Civilian third party interventions are one of the new paths currently being explored for transforming conflicts and keeping and building a sustainable peace, beyond the traditional diplomatic and strategic interventions (and also beyond their traditional objectives). But this new path goes into uncharted territory, and we still have to ask ourselves some key questions in order to gain a sense of direction and, as a result of this process, learn directly from our experiences.
One of…
On 5 May 1999, the United Nations and the governments of Indonesia and Portugal signed an agreement to hold a consultation as to public opinion, in East Timor, about Indonesia's offer of special autonomy for the territory.
The rather byzantine agreement, the result of Kofi Annan's seizing upon an impulsive remark of Indonesian President Habibie, who in an unguarded moment had said that if the Timorese didn't want autonomy he would let them just go was in fact a thinly-disguised vote…
MP urges UN peace force for Arab-Israeli border
In a letter to the Manchester Guardian last week, outlining several methods whereby the United Nations might police the borders between Israel and its Arab neighbours, Henry Usborne, MP, has called for the use of a corps of 10,000 unarmed men. He advocated the use of an unarmed cosmopolitan corps of some ten thousand men under General Burns to be recruited on a voluntary basis by the UN Secretariat. This would be a UN peace force equipped only…
