Rai, Milan

Rai, Milan

Milan Rai

1 November 2007News

Hopes for a peaceful resolution of the Iran crisis rest on the success of a “work plan” devised by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to resolve concerns about Iran's nuclear past.

Iran's new chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, closer to confrontational president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than his predecessor Ari Larijani, stated on 26 October that Tehran's nuclear policy remained “totally unchanged”.

“Stop hyping threat”

On 28 October, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei…

16 October 2007Feature

After four years of mounting tension, Iran has finally agreed to answer by December all questions about its nuclear programme posed by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The United States, however, seems to want to undermine the Iran-IAEA agreement reached on 21 August, arguing that it does not halt Iran's uranium enrichment capability immediately.

    According to IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, the purpose of the new “work…

3 September 2007Comment

The Camp for Climate Action at Heathrow has been hailed, rightly, as one of the most important protests of our time.

Climate change is not simply one of the greatest threats facing future generations of humanity, it is one of the greatest threats facing the people of the Global South, whose homes and livelihoods are being destroyed today - as a consequence of the power and greed of Western corporations and states, and the apathy and irresponsibility of Western consumers.

1 September 2007Feature

I was born in Leigh Park, a council estate just outside Portsmouth, the second-largest housing estate in Europe. I lived there until I was 17. My father was a bus driver for 32 years, and my mum worked as a school dinner lady.

The lovely thing was, there were fields and trees and a big reservoir as part of the estate. At the infants school I went to, they had big oak trees. I was quite a day dreamer, and I'd always be mesmerised by all these trees.

Living in that environment…

1 September 2007News

On 14 August, Marcus Armstrong, a 46-year-old anti-war protester who entered the cockpit of a US Air Force plane at Prestwick Airport, Scotland, a year ago was imprisoned for 28 days for “entering a restricted zone” and “trespassing” in a military aircraft.

Weapons inspectors

Marcus entered Prestwick with seven other Trident Ploughshares “weapons inspectors” to investigate claims that the airport was being used to refuel US aircraft supplying arms for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon…

16 July 2007Feature

On 23 August, many anarchists will mark the 80th anniversary of the execution by electric chair of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two working class (male) Italian anarchist immigrants to the United States, whose fate seized the world's attention.

Peace News is marking the anniversary by addressing two of the issues raised by the Sacco and Vanetti case - the situation of immigrants in rich Western societies, and the question of violence in social change. Sacco…

3 July 2007Comment

The British legal system has begun finally to re-consider the conviction of the two Libyans jailed for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which came down over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, causing the deaths of 270 civilians in all.

The suspicion at the time of the bombing was that the Lockerbie bombing might have been retaliation for the destruction of an Iranian civilian airliner, a year earlier, on 3 July 1987, by US sea-to-air missiles, causing the deaths of 290 civilians…

3 July 2007Feature

On 23 August, many anarchists will mark the 80th anniversary of the execution by electric chair of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two working class (male) Italian anarchist immigrants to the United States, whose fate seized the world's attention.

Peace News is marking the anniversary by addressing two of the issues raised by the Sacco and Vanetti case - the situation of immigrants in rich Western societies, and the question of violence in social change. Sacco…

1 July 2007Feature

Terrorism is connected to British foreign policy

Once again, Britain is enduring terrorist attacks. Once again, the Prime Minister is denying obvious realities, flying in the face of a near-national consensus.

Now it is Gordon Brown claiming that the attacks in London and Glasgow happened “irrespective of Iraq, irrespective of Afghanistan”. Brown and his ministers are fully aware that this is not the judgement of Britain's counter-terrorism experts.

The police say it

After the 7/7 London bombings, British police involved in…

1 July 2007News

On 26 June, riots broke out in Tehran after the government announced petrol rationing. Iran does not have the refineries to produce its own petrol, and is facing a major financial crisis as domestic energy demand starts to overtake growth in oil production. Meanwhile negotiations on Iran's nuclear programme drag on.

16 June 2007Feature

The greatest danger to the peo ples of the Middle East, including the people of Israel, comes from Israel's determination to retain control of the land it conquered 40 years ago, and its willingness to use nuclear weapons to maintain its dominance of these territories.

Israel is committed to a semi-open nuclear policy referred to as the “Samson option”, a threat to bring down the entire Middle East, and perhaps even the world, to maintain its controlling position, and to prop up…

3 June 2007Comment

Congratulations!

After fighting their case through almost every court in the land, the B52 Two are not guilty and they richly deserve it!

Falklands, Palestine, Darfur

In this issue, we see that in all these cases, there have been real diplomatic alternatives available, which had a genuine prospect for radically reducing conflict and violence. And in all of these cases, those with power have avoided peace. They have crushed negotiations by force (Britain in the Falklands), they have…

1 June 2007Review

This summer, long-time US peace campaigner/researcher Joe Gerson is visiting the UK for a speaker tour to launch his brilliant new book Empire and the Bomb: How the US Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World.

Living history

Joe Gerson documents operational planning for the use of nuclear weapons in the Korean war, the Vietnam war (early French phase as well as the later US debacle), and later.
Empire and the Bomb records the use of US nuclear threats during…

1 June 2007News

b>From 28 April to 6 May, the LaUnf (nonviolence) network of Iraqi peace activists organised a second “Week of Nonviolence”, this time at 13 locations, reaching 7300 people all over Iraq. Sites included, in the north, Irbil, Kirkuk, and Mosul; in the south, Basra and Fao; and Baghdad in the centre.
PNspoke to Ismaeel Dawood, a key support person for the LaUnf network, in his capacity as Iraq worker for the Italian activist NGO Un Ponte Per... Baghdad (A Bridge to... Baghdad…

3 May 2007Comment

May Day is workers' day

The struggle for the eight-hour day which began in the 19th century (and which goes on, even now) involved strikes and demonstrations throughout the world, and a coordinated day of action on 1 May 1886. In a related demonstration three days later, in the Haymarket in Chicago, a bomb was thrown at the police, killing eight. The anarchist organisers of the demonstration and the speakers were then arrested and prosecuted for the murders, on the grounds that the bomb…