Polden, David

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…

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…

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…

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…

On 31 January, about 300 Palestinian activists re-occupied Ein Hijleh, a village in the Jordan Valley that was forcibly depopulated when Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967.

The Palestinian popular struggle coordination committee, which organised the occupation, said the aim was to ‘refuse the political status quo, especially given futile negotiations destroying the rights of our people for liberation and claim to their land.’

During the occupation, activists began to make…

On 18 February, US peace activists Greg Boertje-Obed and Michael Walli were each sentenced to five years and two months in prison, followed by three years’ ‘supervised release’. Sister Megan Rice, a nun and the oldest of the three at 84, was sentenced to two years and 11 months (plus three years’ probation) for her part in their action at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the US’s primary storehouse for weapons-grade uranium.

During the July 2012 action ‘Transform Now Plowshares’ action, the…

On 31 January, four intrepid individuals from Oxford CND braved continuous rain to hold up banners outside the main gate of RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, calling for an end to drone warfare.

Inside the base, British prime minister David Cameron and French president François Hollande held an Anglo-French summit at which they agreed to jointly invest £200 million in a two-year study into a future military drone – the study to be carried out by French company Dassault and Britain’s…

On 10 and 13 January, Reading magistrates court dismissed charges of ‘obstruction of the highway’ against two groups of Trident Ploughshares (TP) activists because of procedural errors by the crown prosecution service (CPS).

On 10 January, Leonna O’Neill, Jamie Watson and Julia Mercer were on trial for their participation in the international Action AWE blockades outside the atomic weapons establishment (AWE) Burghfield on 2 September last year (see PN 2562). Julia Mercer had…

On 10 December, 15 soldiers from 1st Battalion the Yorkshire Regiment were sentenced to jail at Bulford Military Court for a concerted act of disobedience. (A 16th is yet to be sentenced.)

This courageous action was carried out during a parade in front of 1,000 other soldiers at Archers Post British army barracks in Kenya. The 16 soldiers were ordered to stand to attention, but instead their corporal, Anthony Brown, shouted ‘sit down’ and the dissenters dropped to…

Palestinians and Israelis at the negotiating table in a town square. 
Photo: Minds of Peace

Alongside official peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators which never seem to get anywhere, a group called ‘Minds of Peace’ has for over a year been carrying out what it describes as a ‘campaign of grassroots Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on the streets and public squares of Jerusalem’ and other cities.

Currently before the house of lords, and expected to receive royal assent next spring, the anti-social behaviour, crime and policing bill will make behaviour perceived to, or potentially able to, ‘cause nuisance or annoyance’ a criminal offence.

The new law also grants local authorities, police and even private security firms the power to bar citizens from assembling in public places.

The bill claims to simplify the large number of ‘orders’ legislated into…

On 17 October, five ‘No Dash for Gas’ protesters successfully appealed against their sentences of 150 hours of community service. Nottingham crown court reduced their sentences to conditional discharges.

A year earlier, ‘No Dash for Gas’ members had occupied the chimneys of West Burton gas-fired power station in Nottinghamshire to protest against government plans to build up to 20 new gas-fired power stations (see PN 2552-3).

When the 21 climate activists came to trial…

On 18 October, immigrant activists in San Francisco blocked a bus carrying foreign nationals in the custody of immigration officials, shouting: ‘Undocumented, unafraid!’, part of a growing US campaign of nonviolent resistance to the deportation of ‘undocumented’ Latinos.

During October, activists chained themselves to the tyres of buses carrying immigrants to court, blocked traffic on Capitol Hill, surrounded Tucson police when they targeted two immigrants during a traffic stop,…

On 2 September, 21 people were arrested as Action AWE and Trident Ploughshares held an international – Argentine, Belgian, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Japanese, Spanish and Scottish – blockade of AWE Burghfield in Berkshire. ‘Atomic Weapons Establishment’ Burghfield and AWE Aldermaston nearby are where Britain’s nuclear weapons are produced. Action AWE and Trident Ploughshares…

On 21 August, a military judge sentenced the 25-year-old US army private formerly known as Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison, with time served (almost three years) in pre-trial custody counted towards this.

The next day, Bradley Manning publicly asked to be referred to as Chelsea Manning from that point on, and asked people to use the feminine pronoun to refer to her (except in official post to the prison), saying: ‘I am a female’.

The judge in Manning’s trial counted…