Interview

1 April 2005News

You've been in the peace movement a long time - what got you started?

In the 1950s I became a chaplain for Pax Christi - the first priest to take an interest apparently! I was rather bored for the first year, until I heard about conscientious objection in Spain and Portugal and became active in CO issues.

Later I got involved in CND - it never stopped! There's not just one issue - they all interconnect.

You are the current Chair of the Movement for the Abolition of…

3 December 2004Comment

In October PN met up with former Greenpeace director Rex Weyler while he was in Britain promoting his new history of the international campaign organisation. Tensions in tactics, the need to put the "peace" back into organisation's campaigns focus, and the importance of learning from our own histories, all got an airing.

PN: So, tell us a little bit about this book... how it came about, why you decided to do it now

Rex: I wanted to leave a good record of what happened cos I felt that the existing record was spotty and not particularly correct historically... I just wanted to leave a better record.

Myself, I'm a journalist, throughout my career in Greenpeace in the 1970s, I was also a journalist. I'm still a journalist and - I approached the story as I would approach it as a journalist and as an…

3 June 2004Comment

Despite intense losses in the recently ended war with neighbouring Ethiopia, and a few worrisome signs of incursions on freedom of speech and the press, the hopes amidst the people of the horn of Africa rested on hard-fought victories and advances in areas of education, youth and women's mobilisation, and popular political participation.

Eritrea was poised to be part of the community of nation-states rejecting passive victimisation by the forces of globalisation, a leader amongst…

3 March 2001Comment

Nonviolent revolution? Perhaps not, but certainly one of the biggest nonviolent grassroots movements to contribute to radical political change. Ippy met the OTPOR activists from Serbia.

Personal responsibility is the key to the OTPOR movement in Serbia a movement which has been credited with contributing to the fall of Milosevic. With up to 80,000 activists, a wide variety of tactics and a belief in nonviolence, OTPOR has continued to keep the pressure up on the new incumbents. Since Kostunica took office he has been warned that only the removal of corrupt power-bases in the police, military and government will be enough to stave off future mass action.

At the end…