On 9 July, 17 enthusiastic young cyclists from Dyfodol (The Welsh Youth Forum for Sustainable Development) set off from Corris in Gwynedd on a five-day, 160-mile bike ride to Cardiff.
Funded by The Co-operative, this is the fourth consecutive year for the Carbon Cycle, and numbers continue to grow. The ride was to increase awareness and call for better cycling provisions in Wales and raise sponsorship money for Project Mongolia, a collaborative venture between young climate activists…
On 17 September, Glasgow’s George Square was the venue for the Make Peace Festival, organised by Scottish CND. Hundreds gathered for the event which included speakers, stalls and live music. A large selection of four hundred children’s pictures was also exhibited in the square, each inspired by the theme “Paint for Peace”.
Speakers included Scottish Green MSP Patrick Harvie and Bill Kidd, the Scottish Nationalist MSP. Those who came along combined to form a large CND symbol, in human…
On 17 September, students began an occupation of Edinburgh University’s George Square lecture theatre that lasted 36 hours. A hundred students were involved in the occupation, which followed the university’s announcement that tuition fees would be raised to £9,000 per annum for UK students from outwith Scotland, with Scottish students remaining exempt under Scottish law.
Standard Scottish degrees consist of four-year courses, taking the fee total to as much as £36,000. Students asked…
This year’s Coal Action Scotland Outdoor Skillshare event brought over 100 people to a gathering in rural South Lanarkshire to share skills, ideas and experiences about all aspects of life and activism, and to increase mutual capacity for effective action.
For four days, the Talamh housing co-operative became a hive of mini-projects, massive marquees, geodomes and inclusive participatory skillsharing.
The diversity of people was truly inspiring. People came to South Lanarkshire…
Indeed, according to a recent report for Inter Press Service (IPS) by journalist and historian Gareth Porter, the Taliban’s leadership is prepared to negotiate a peace settlement as soon as the US “indicates its willingness to provide a timetable for complete withdrawal.”
Ready to withdraw?
Taliban officials explained the movement’s position in late July during a meeting in Kabul with the former Afghan Prime Minister Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai.
“They said once the Americans say…
Drones may be “the perfect weapons for a war weary nation on a tight budget” as one journalist wrote recently, but reported civilian casualties from drone strikes continue to rise. For the first time the British ministry of defence (MoD) has admitted that one of its drone strikes killed Afghan civilians in March 2011. The deaths of the unnamed Afghans was revealed by an anonymous correspondent from the UK’s permanent joint headquarters (PJHQ) at RAF Northwood in reply to one of my Freedom of…
Michael Lyons, a navy medic was jailed for seven months for refusing to be trained to use a rifle. He felt that he “wasn’t able to carry out the order on ethical and moral grounds”.
Michael joined the navy when he was 18 but later developed a moral objection to the war in Afghanistan. At his Conscientious Objector hearing he said “If you're at a patrol base or forward operating base, it's likely you'll have to use your weapon and will have to turn civilians away who are in need of…
Over 1,200 arms companies will attend the world’s largest arms fair this September to hawk their deadly wares to 25,000 buyers from around the world. The Defence & Security Equipment International (DSEi) exhibition is taking place from 13-16 September at the ExCeL centre in east London.
DSEi is organised by Clarion Events (who also run family-friendly events such as the Baby Show) and by the government’s UK Trade and Investment Defence & Security Organisation (UKTI DSO).
…Dale Farm in Essex is the UK's largest Travellers' community. They have been fighting for ten years to remain there but now 500 people face eviction from 31 August. The Conservative-led Basildon council has set aside £18 million for an eviction, while supporters have set up a solidarity camp at the site.
There are mostly Irish Travellers at Dale Farm where many have lived for 30 years. They own the site but were refused planning permission because the land, a former scrap-yard, is…
Uncivilisation 2011, the Dark Mountain festival, sold all its 300 (£60) weekend tickets and took place from 19-21 August at the Sustainability Centre in Hampshire. The festival was born out of the Dark Mountain Project and its manifesto, conceived by Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine. The manifesto, which “starts with our sense that civilisation as we have known it is coming to an end; brought down by a rapidly changing climate, a cancerous economic system and the ongoing mass destruction of…
At 4.45pm on 21 June, No Borders and refugee solidarity activists blockaded the access road to the Harmondsworth and Colnbrook detention centres near Heathrow airport, to stop a mass deportation flight to Baghdad.
About 70 Iraqi refugees, mostly Kurds, were due to be flown out on a specially-chartered flight at 11pm. They had been assembled at the centres from other detention centres around the country, including 20 from Campsfield who were on hunger strike against deportation.
…On 28 June, Sheikh Reed Salah, leader of the largest Palestinian political party in Israel, was arrested by UK border police, held in Bedford high security prison and served with a deportation order.
Salah had entered the UK on 25 June, using his Israeli passport, as he had before, for a speaking tour and had already spoken to MPs in the Commons and to gatherings at Queen Mary University, Conway Hall and Leicester.
On 18 July, Salah won an appeal against detention and was…
My father was a coal miner in the Llynfi / Maesteg valley from 14 to 26; both my grandfathers were colliers in that valley; and a great grandfather was a miners’ agent and founding committee member of the South Wales Miners Federation which preceded the NUM.
People of my generation greatly admired the mining traditions of our Welsh communities. It was a particular privilege for me to have been trained as a journalist in the Heads of the Valleys and to have become editor of the weekly…
On 26 June, about 100 people went on a pilgrimage to the military training ground on Epynt mountain in mid-Wales. On “Armed Forces Day” they showed their objection to the militarisation of Wales and in particular to the testing of unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs or drones.
A service was held in the remains of Babell chapel led by the reverend Guto Prys ap Gwynfor, chair of Cymdeithas y Cymod (the Fellowship of Reconciliation in Wales). He said that the authorities wanted us to remember…
When London was experiencing the aftermath of looting, Edinburgh commenced its annual festival season. But the political backdrop to the explosion of sometimes nihilistic, often materialistic anger and frustration vented in England was not forgotten.
Public service union UNISON brought a “festival against cuts” to the Edinburgh Festival this year. “Mobilise, The Anti-cuts Festival” was held in an attic space in Edinburgh’s West End, hosting free events with artists and performers…
In July, the Edinburgh Peace and Justice Centre received a promising reply to an open letter sent to the Scottish government immediately after the Scottish elections in May. The letter was concerned with the Scottish government’s role regarding the removal of Trident and the wider debate on nuclear non-proliferation.
In the reply, Bruce Crawford MSP, the cabinet secretary for parliamentary business and government strategy, restated the government’s opposition to the possession and…
Students at the University of Glasgow are celebrating after the university’s principal Anton Muscatelli conceded defeat, so ending the longest student occupation in UK history. Hard-won concessions include a new postgraduate club, no further cuts to courses and no compulsory redundancies at the university. As part of the deal, students will be able to question the principal in a mass open meeting in October as there has been a perceived lack of transparency surrounding management decisions…
In the aftermath of the fall of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, anxious questions are being asked about the capacity of the NATO military alliance to learn the “lessons of Iraq”. The debate is testimony to the power of the western propaganda system to obscure plain facts, both about Libya and about Iraq.
It has been clear for a very long time that western leaders are seeking in Libya not a democratic revolution, but something resembling a coup. In this, they have been partially…
International Conscientious Objectors’ Day, 15 May, was marked by four events in Britain. At the CO Commemorative Stone in Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury, London, Norman Kember, post-WW2 CO and more recently a hostage in Iraq, spoke, before white carnations were laid to symbolise 70 named COs from countries around the world and over the past century.
Similar commemorations were held in Peace Gardens, Bath Row, Birmingham, on 11 May, and in the Peace Garden, St Peter’s Square,…
Rob Newman, in a set that was surely as politically and historically informed as comedy gets, said that, when our descendants look back, the Camp for Climate Action will be the single most important moment of 2007. George Monbiot believes “a new political movement has been born”, though he is surely aware that this movement has been alive and doing its best to kick for some time. Whatever else we think about the Camp for Climate Action, it was certainly a major “victory” for creative NVDA.…
