On 21 June, British peace activists Maria Gallastegui and Simon Moore will embark on a 3,500-mile voyage from London to Lebanon in solidarity with the people of Syria, sailing in a 16-foot Wayfarer dinghy.
Sail4Syria updates: http://syriapeaceandjustice.wordpress.com
On 16 May, London CAAT carried out a banner drop inside the London Transport Museum to protest at their decision to take sponsorship money from Thales, the 11th-largest arms company in the world. Thales has used the museum’s rooms to meet with the government’s arms export-promoting body (the UK trade & investment defence & security organisation). Follow ‘London Campaign Against Arms Trade’ on Facebook or on Twitter (@londoncaat) to get involved. Next monthly demo at 2pm on 21 June.…
A 90-by-60-foot poster of a Pakistani child who has lost both her parents and two young siblings in a US drone attack, displayed in a field in the Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa region of Pakistan, where a drone strike in November 2013 killed five people and led to a road blockade by thousands of people. This image was created by a collective of artists in Pakistan and the US, who gave it the title #NotABugSplat. US Predator drone operators often refer to kills as ‘bug splats’, as viewing the body…
In mid-April, Peace News managed to interview the man known as ‘Megaphone Mitch’, who organized the 800-strong ‘March against Corruption’ on 1 March. The report in PN described some of the fascination surrounding a man with ‘little track record’ of activism. (PN 2568-2569).
Some accused Mitch and his supporters of having links with British intelligence or the police; others accused him of being anti-semitic or being too ‘rightist’. Many demanded on social media to know who he was.…
The sun shone down on Cardiff city centre, the day made even more attractive and colourful by the trade union banners of the May Day march.
The main focus of the march was the unrelenting attacks by the Tory/Lib Dem government on the poor, disabled and pensioners.
Over 3,000 homes in South Wales, mainly one-parent families, have been caught up in the Bedroom Tax. Every benefit to the unemployed and disabled has been ruthlessly cut; and even though the financial crisis was…
Nant Llesg opencast coalmine protest.
PHOTO: WALESONLINE
Desperate to stop the plans for the opencast coalmine development at Nant Llesg, campaigners staged a spectacular mock funeral ‘the death of the valley’ at Caerphilly County Borough Council’s headquarters on 22 April. The council decision is still pending.
Ray Davies (centre) and Gerald Williams (right)
at Hedd Wyn’s cottage. PHOTO: WENDY LEWIS
On our way through North Wales, we passed through Trawsfynydd and called on Hedd Wyn’s nephew, Gerald Williams. He led us over the threshold of the poet’s isolated farmhouse amidst the beautiful mountains of Snowdonia. Hedd Wyn’s mother had kept the cottage exactly as it had been – the books with his handwritten notes on the shelves by the fireplace, the photos on the walls, the small parlour…
On 24 April, Palestinian prisoners in Israel began a new open-ended hunger strike. The detainees are being held on rolling six-month administrative detention orders without charge or prospect of trial, and they are demanding their release on the grounds that they are being held in violation of international law, that they should be put on trial, and that there should be an end to the repeated renewal of detention orders.
At the time of…
At the close of the event, Howard’s daughter Violeta said that when she was asked at school what work her father did, she hadn’t known what to say – he seemed to do some teaching, some writing, some peace work: ‘I thank you because now I know.’
During the preceding two hours, we heard from friends and collaborators, including April Carter, Diana Francis, Bob Overy and Michael Randle, who testified to Howard’s intellectual capabilities, dedication, and talent as an editor.…
Rolls-Royce directors were confronted with the harrowing testimony of Setsuko Thurlow, a Hiroshima survivor, at their AGM on 1 May. Although the quote was lengthy, the chair was too disorientated to interrupt, and the board responded with nervous laughter.
Rolls-Royce provides power systems for Britain’s Trident nuclear-powered, nuclear-missile-carrying submarine system. In June 2012, Rolls-Royce was awarded a £1bn contract to produce new reactor cores for the Trident replacement…
The US is going to spend £189m on converting the US air force (USAF) base at Croughton, near Milton Keynes, ‘into one of its largest intelligence hubs outside the mainland United States’, the Independent on Sunday reports.
Croughton is one of a number of bases in Britain involved in drone warfare, including RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire (from where Britain’s own drones are piloted) and RAF Marham near King’s Lynn, which receives and feeds information and intelligence gathered by US…
‘Far from reducing international terrorism... the 2003 invasion [of Iraq] had the effect of promoting it,’ a study by a military think-tank at the heart of the British establishment has concluded. The report by the Royal United Services Institute, ‘Wars in Peace: British Military Operations Since 1991’, concludes that: ‘The rise of Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was a reaction to this invasion, and to the consequent marginalisation of Iraq’s Sunni population (including de-Ba’…
On 4 May, three members of the US National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance (NCNR) were arrested at the headquarters of the US national security agency (NSA) at Fort Meade in Maryland. This was part of a wave of action against military drones throughout the US during April and May, involving at least 43 arrests and one imprisonment.
On 11 April, seven women were arrested at US air force base (AFB) Creech, in a Code Pink protest…
International Women’s Day in Aberystwyth. Photo: Jaci Taylor
International Women’s Day Eve, 7 March 2014: an ominous crowd, women dressed overwhelmingly in black, gathers behind the Old College of Aberystwyth overlooking the sea and the setting sun. Such a gathering has never taken place here before: these women plan to Reclaim the Night.
Reclaim the Night marches are a tried-and-tested way of building solidarity and sisterhood. There is something oddly exhilarating about loudly…
Following the controversial Ffos-y-Fran open cast mining in Merthyr Tydfil, the mining conglomerate Miller Argent now push to extend their operations towards Rhymney to open cast at Nant Llesg for the next 15-20 years.
Residents Against Ffos-y-Fran, (RAFF), and the United Valleys Action Group are gearing up to protest against the planning application at Caerphilly Council offices in Pennallta on Tuesday 22 April. They are planning a full day of action, starting with a demonstration…
This year’s NATO summit will take place at the Celtic Manor Resort in Newport on 4th-5th September. Earlier this year, local campaigns met to start planning events to coincide with the summit, using the occasion as a platform to publicise alternatives to endless war and austerity through mass meetings and protest.
Events will be organised under the banner of No NATO Newport, the coalition initiated by activists from Cardiff Stop the War Coalition, CND Cymru, Newport People’s Assembly…
On 19 March, two Palestinian prisoners suspended their 69-day hunger strikes after receiving assurances that they would be released within months. Muammar Banat and Akram Fasisi told Jawad Bulous of the Palestinian prisoner’s society that the Israeli authorities had finally agreed to set time limits for their administrative detention without trial: Banat must be released by May, and al-Fseisi by August.
The two were among six prisoners who had been on hunger strike since January and…
Not Mitch. Photo: Rikki Blue
Sporting a wide range of banners, the ‘March against Corruption’ in London on 1 March was a strangely mixed crowd, with overtly right-wing elements, ‘anons’ in V for Vendetta masks, and anti-capitalists. Aside from one minor scuffle leading to an arrest, the march passed off as intended, peacefully, but I’m not sure if many passers-by would have understood the message.
The London event was organised on Facebook by a controversial character named ‘Mitch…
On 15 March, Moscow saw its largest demonstration in over two years, a protest against Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and impending annexation of the Crimea.
News agency AFP reported that some demonstrators carried placards comparing Putin’s actions with the Nazi annexation of the Sudetenland before the Second World War. AFP counted 50,000 demonstrators; the Moscow police only 3,000.
Kidnapped and beaten
Only one arrest was reported at the 15…
