PN

PN

PN

5 February 2013News in Brief

On 25 January, Nestlé, the world’s largest food company, was finally sentenced to pay compensation for planting spies inside the Swiss campaigning group, ATTAC Switzerland. The civil court of Lausanne, which heard the case against Nestlé a year earlier, in January last year, has apparently ordered Nestlé to pay €3,000 per person for ‘moral damages’. 

The two exposed spies were infiltrated into ATTAC with false names in 2003 and then in 2008.

5 February 2013News in Brief

On 4 December, three US peace activists, including an 82-year old nun, sister Megan Rice, were charged with injuring national defence premises, a crime under the US Sabotage Act with a maximum sentence of 20 years. 

In July 2012, sister Rice, Greg Boertje-Obed and Michael Walli (the ‘Transform Now Plowshares’) entered a uranium storage facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and splashed blood and spray-painted messages of peace on the walls.

The three acknowledge their…

5 February 2013News

Raising awareness in the heart of London

On 14 January, a London group of Trident Ploughshares handed out hundreds of leaflets in Regent Street, London. The Muriel Lesters affinity group were informing passers-by of the nearby headquarters of the world’s largest arms manufacturer, Lockheed Martin. Lockheed has one-third ownership of Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Establishment, the UK’s nuclear warhead factory, as well as a share of the Faslane Trident nuclear submarine base in Scotland, and the Coulport Trident nuclear warhead depot…

29 December 2012Blog

Poland's decision leaves US as only NATO country not to have ratified the Landmine Ban Treaty

On 27 December Poland finally ratified the landmine ban treaty and in doing so brought the whole of the European Union into the treaty with all 27 nations now committed to the international treaty. Having doing so, Poland has also left the United States as the only NATO country not to have ratified the treaty.

Poland signed the treaty in December 1997 but had resisted ratifying it and bringing it…

1 December 2012News

Spread the word about Wobbly Tuesday.

They don’t want us to know.

They want us to forget that the anti-war movement managed to shake the warmongers to their bones, and make them scramble to draw up new plans.

Spread the word about ‘Wobbly Tuesday’.


1 December 2012News

 

Please help an Afghan family survive this winter, by giving a donation to the Peace News Kabul Winter Appeal. Please make your donation before Friday 21 December to enable us to send your contribution directly to the camp, with nothing deducted for administration, at the beginning of January.

300 families live in the Chamne Babak refugee camp on a derelict site in District 2 of Kabul. They have no access to electricity or clean water. Most of them returned to Afghanistan in early…

26 September 2012Feature

Stories from the Cuban Missile Crisis...

Heavily kettled

'Saturday's Committee of 100 demonstration, held despite a ban from the Ministry of Works, lacked real effectiveness…. [The demonstration ended up at the US embassy.] The police were there in force and were obviously determined to be rough. A police bus charged some demonstrators at 30mph. The police first stopped the demonstrators by cordoning them off, and then charged them, pushing and kicking in the process. The arrests made at this point were made with extreme roughness…

28 August 2012News

Armpits 4 August ...

PHOTO: Hannah Daisy

At the end of July, women restored missing hair to statues of women in central London to promote a month-long campaign of body-hair-growing. Armpits4August aims to combat ‘a physically-, socially-, and mentally-damaging image of what is “natural”’. The group said: ‘by growing our body hair we are working towards having pride in our body hair, not shame.’ The group also raised money for Verity, the charity for women with polycystic ovarian syndrome.  

28 August 2012Feature

Looking back at PN Summer Camp 2012


Considering nonviolent revolution at the PN Summer Camp. PHOTO: Beatrice Kabutakapua

This year’s Peace News Summer Camp was, as promised, bigger and better than ever before. The skies cleared and the ground dried out to give us a gloriously sunny five days (26-30 July). Mysteriously, the heavens opened after our camp, raining on the Earth First! Summer Gathering, which came immediately after us, also at the wonderful Crabapple Community.

We had over 220 people attending over…

28 August 2012Feature

PN hosts visit of veteran US radical

In July, Peace News organised a speaking tour for US activist and author George Lakey (we also re-published his excellent book Toward a Living Revolution, available from us for only £15 post-free). George travelled all the way from Brighton to Edinburgh and Glasgow, as well as spending five days at PN Summer Camp in Shropshire.

Here’s one report from one stop along the way.

Lucy

George Lakey made a visit to ‘Take Back the Land’, an action camp held in South Lanarkshire,…

9 July 2012Blog

Anti-war banners from Hastings artists. See article here for background.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

30 May 2012News in Brief

In May, East Cheshire’s new mayor was criticised after trying to stop a local resident voicing her opinion during a council meeting.
On 23 May, Charlotte Peters Rock, 66, obtained permission to address the council for five minutes to protest against the closure of a local respite centre for people with dementia.
Having checked the rules to make sure it was not banned, Mrs Peters Rock launched into a protest song. The mayor ordered her to stop, switched off the microphone, and…

30 May 2012News in Brief

In late May, the government of Saudi Arabia announced that it had awarded a £1.6bn training contract with BAE Systems. The order includes the purchase of 22 Hawk trainer/fighter jets from BAE (to be supplied in 2016) and 55 aircraft made by a Swiss company.

The aircraft will be used to train Saudi pilots to fly 72 Eurofighter Typhoons made by a European consortium including BAE. The Typhoon order, signed in 2006, was worth more than £6bn.

The latest deal has saved 278 jobs at a…

30 May 2012News in Brief

The queen’s speech, delivered on 9 May, revealed details of the government’s plan to give the police and security services access to every UK phone call, email and text message, without requiring a warrant.
The Justice and Security bill, announced in the same speech, will allow ministers to declare evidence in civil trials to be too sensitive to be made public, and only to be revealed in secret court sessions, secret even from the litigant and their lawyers. Such secret evidence may…

30 May 2012News in Brief

On 14 May, 18-year-old Israeli Noam Gur was exempted from further military service, soon after she finished her second 10-day prison sentence this year for her conscientious objection.

Noam said in April: ‘I refuse to join an army that has, since it was established, been engaged in dominating another nation, in plundering and terrorising.... the Palestinian people have been increasingly choosing the path of nonviolent…