Blog
September 2014
MESSAGE: The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation Ltd.
The leaders of 28 NATO member countries and others gather for a summit meeting in
Newport, the third city of Wales, on 4-5 September 2014. For days together, this small city has been besieged while fences, gates and barricades are erected to protect those attending. The cost is substantial, and there is considerable inconvenience to the people of Newport and to the activists of the international peace movement who have organised a counter-summit there. NATO’s uselessness is never more apparent than when it rudely disrupts people’s lives in order to exult in 65 costly years of existence ...
To read the full message by Tony Simpson please visit:
http://spokesmanbooks.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/nato-no-thanks.html
***
August 2014
Saturday 11 October will see London's Imperial War Museum host the 2014 Peace History Conference, organised by the Movement for the Abolition of War. Keynote speakers include Cyril Pearce, John Gittings, Ingrid Sharp, Clive Barrett and Bethan Clarke.
Visit http://www.abolishwar.org.uk/ for more information
http://spokesmanbooks.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/peace-history-conference-2014.html
***
German experts point finger at Ukrainian air-force jets.
By John Ward July 28, 2014
Surface to air missile attack ruled out as calibre of cockpit bullet holes puts Ukraine pilots in the frame for MH17 murders.
http://spokesmanbooks.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/did-ukraine-air-force-shoot-down-mh17.html
***
July 2014
Review by Gabriel Carlyle
In the UK, the centenary of the First World War has already
prompted a deluge of books, events and media coverage. The BBC
alone has announced 2,500 hours of programmes, which – like 99%
of the mainstream response – will doubtless run the A to B of
the mainstream political spectrum ...
A. W. Zurbrugg (ed), Not Our War: Writings Against the First World War (Merlin Press, 2014; 264pp; £12.95) / Ernst Friedrich, War against war! (Spokesman, 2014; 242pp; £9.99)
See: http://spokesmanbooks.blogspot.com/2014/07/review-by-gabriel-carlyle.html
***
Dearest friends -
The last night was extreme. The "ground invasion" of Gaza resulted in scores and carloads with maimed, torn apart, bleeding, shivering, dying - all sorts of injured Palestinians, all ages, all civilians, all innocent.
Please. Do what you can. This, THIS cannot continue.
To read all of this open letter visit: http://spokesmanbooks.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/mail-from-dr-mads-gilbert-norwegian.html
***
Richard Falk
Disappointing global response to Israeli aggression calls for more grassroots efforts to help Palestinian struggle.
For the third time in the last six years, Israel has cruelly unleashed the full fury of its military machine against the defenceless 1.7 million people of Gaza, inflicting heavy civilian casualties and further devastation on the long besieged and impoverished Gaza Strip.
For the full article go to:
http://spokesmanbooks.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/tormenting-gaza.html
***
Ireland refused the invitation from the United States to join NATO when it was founded in 1947, and has maintained its military neutrality ever since. Roger Cole, Chair of the Peace and Neutrality Alliance (PANA), recently published this article in the IRISH TIMES:
http://spokesmanbooks.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/shannon-policy-facilitates-irelands.html
***
May 2014
Dear Madam/Sir,
Dear Colleagues,
Dear Friends of Peace,
In 8 days the largest international peace gathering of the year will begin, bringing together reflections on and analyses of the political situation with the current challenges and actions regarding peace and the threats to peace all around our world.
Over 190 workshops, the Round Table discussions, the Peace Assembly and the opening and closing events will all deal with a range of aspects of creating peace in the face of global challenges such as climate change and food crises. They will discuss the topics of violence and oppression, with the aim of developing alternatives such as non-violence and civil conflict resolution and then ensuring their political acceptance – in spite of the political culture worldwide which almost exclusively relies on war and violence.
Together with affected people from the region we want to continue the process of dealing with the terrible war in and over Yugoslavia. Here we also hope to learn lessons for our local and global peacework.
A selection of events and actions will also serve to allow us to express our solidarity with the victims of the devastating flooding in the region.
The diversity of cultural events characterising the peace event ranges from interesting exhibitions through workshops to cultural challenges and open air concerts. Culture is inseparably connected to our commitment to peace.
A youth camp will lend its own substantive and action-oriented character to this commitment, providing a large discussion forum for young people from Europe and beyond. There are still places free!
Colourful, varied, international and pluralist – our peace event will bring together history and current affairs, analysis and action.
The chances for international dialogues and encounters are varied and will include the people from Sarajevo and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Whitsun 2014 - it is well worth visiting Sarajevo from June 6-9!
For further information, more details of the plans, and an overview of the abundance of events, please visit the website: www.peaceeventsarajevo2014.eu
Not yet registered? The please register now! Quickly and easily at www.peaceeventsarajevo2014.eu/registration-peace-event-june-2014.html or by e-mail to: registration@peaceeventsarajevo2014.eu.
Then you will be informed of all the current news and you help the organisers to solve the considerable logistics of an event such as this festival.
If you still have questions, please contact: info@peaceeventsarajevo2014.eu
It really is worth participating in this huge demonstration of our desire for peace and our rejection of war and violence. It is worth helping to bring about the breakthrough we need towards a culture of peace!
Peace and disarmament demand movement – June 2014 in Sarajevo is the place to act for peace.
Hopefully together with you!
We hope to see many of you reading this letter in Sarajevo,
Kristine Karch (Network No to war – no to NATO),
Lucas Wirl (INES),
Reiner Braun (IPB/IALANA),
and everyone else who is also actively contributing to the international organisation of the peace event Sarajevo.
***
Warwick University Ltd: Lessons from 1970 and the higher education sector today
A conference sponsored by Warwick Universities and Colleges Union (UCU)
Friday 6 June 2014, 10 am - 4 pm, Woods-Scawen Room, Warwick University Arts Centre
“Is it inevitable that the university will be reduced to the function of providing, with increasing authoritarian efficiency, pre-packed intellectual commodities which meet the requirements of management? Or can we by our efforts transform it into a centre of free discussion and action, tolerating and even encouraging ‘subversive’ thought and activity, for a dynamic renewal of the whole society within which it operates?” (E P Thompson, Warwick University Limited)
Warwick University Limited, edited by E.P.Thompson, the great historian of the English working class and one of Warwick's leading academics, was published as a Penguin Special in 1970. It followed events that began with a student occupation of the administration building and the discovery that some academic staff and students, in their activity outside the university, had been spied upon by local businesses. Thompson argued that this, and other correspondence discovered there, revealed surprisingly close links to business that compromised the university as an open, academic community. This conference marks the book’s republication by Spokesman, and is an opportunity to commemorate a key moment in the university's early history and to examine the book’s prescient analysis of the ‘business university’ and its relevance to higher education today.
For further details visit
Spokesman's blog
***
Box Office now open! 0115 966 3219
Summer 2014
Hello - we are very happy to welcome you to the 15th Lowdham Book Festival, hard to believe!
We look forward to sharing this special landmark with you, and to welcoming festival regulars and new friends to Lowdham this summer.
We hope you enjoy this year's mix of music, comedy, crime, poetry, drama, cricket, history - and knitting... see you in June!
Please note that tickets for the evening with Ruby Wax are only available from the Box Office at Nottingham Playhouse (details in the programme) and that this event starts at 8pm.
Jane Streeter and Ross Bradshaw
Click here to download the programme as a PDF document.
After the Festival....
We have a lovely Autumn programme which includes our First Friday series of talks, a weekend of events in September with the theme of The Great Outdoors, and a Crime season in November at Southwell Library.
Please keep in touch with us by emailing Jane or Ross on:
janestreeter@thebookcase.co.uk
info@fiveleaves.co.uk
and keep an eye on www.thebookcase.co.uk and
www.lowdhamfestivals.co.uk for events details.
***
A PUBLIC DEBATE
"Britain's participation in World War One was just and should be defended"
Speaker for the Motion:
Patrick Mercer, former Member of Parliament for Newark and former colonel in the Sherwood Foresters. He writes and publishes on military affairs.
Speaker against the Motion:
Neil Faulkner, Research Fellow at Bristol University and editor of Military Times. He is the author of ‘No Glory: The Real History of the First World War’.
19.00, Thursday 29th. May
at
The Nottingham Mechanics,
3 North Sherwood Street,
Nottingham, NG1 4EZ
The issues around World War One are still of significance in the world today. Come along to hear different views on this important matter and, if you wish, join in the debate.
ALL WELCOME
***
The Spokesman 124ISBN: 978 0 85124 834 9
Price £6.00
'Ukraine’s precipitate economic decline in recent decades, since it separated itself from the Soviet Union, is charted in this issue of The Spokesman ... Even before those momentous changes, beginning in late 1991, greater influence in the Soviet periphery had long been an objective of Western strategy. Once Ukraine became independent, the chosen methods to achieve such influence combined sponsored developments of Ukrainian ‘civil society’, much of it courtesy of the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy, with long-term economic, political and military interventions by the European Union and NATO. Instability and conflict in Ukraine may not trouble the Americans much, located as it is on Russia’s borders, but it should certainly concern Europeans who, among other considerations, will be asked to pick up much of the tab.'
Tony Simpson,
Editor
Read all of Tony's Editorial on the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation website
To buy this title visit Spokesman Books.
***
INTERNATIONAL CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR'S DAY CEREMONY
15 May 2014, at 12 noon
Conscientious Objectors Stone
Tavistock Square
London WC1
For more information please visit our blog
***
WAR against WAR!By Ernst Friedrich
Foreword by Bruce Kent
Originally published in Germany on 1st May 1924, this classic pictorial record of the First World War has long been hard to obtain.
‘War Against War! is one of the most shocking books I have ever seen. As much a series of photographs as a book, it first appeared in 1924, the work of Ernst Friedrich, an anarchist, socialist, internationalist and peace worker'
Bruce Kent
It contains 200 black and white photos and drawings from the First World War, with commentary in four languages.
Publication date: 1st May 2014 | Price £9.99
Available to buy from Spokesman Books
***
April 2014
It’s time to shift priorities.
Last month, another £570 million of public money for upgrading the UK's nuclear weapons was announced. Budget Day confirmed that when it comes to military spending, there's no such thing as austerity: it was set at a huge £38 billion for the coming year.
For details on how to share the message go to Spokesman's blogspot.
***
28 February – 11 May 2014
Keywords: Art, Culture and Society in 1980s Britain, is a new take on how the changes in the meaning of words reflect the cultural shifts in our society. This dynamic exhibition takes its name and focus from the seminal 1976 Raymond Williams book on the vocabulary of culture and society.
For more information visit: http://spokesmanbooks.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/keywords-art-culture-and-society-in.html
***
March 2014
Launch Event 31st March 6pm LSE Old Building Room 3.21
Universities driven by business goals and values....
Covert surveillance by employers and the police....
The law deployed to stifle protest....
These are some of the crucial issues facing universities in today's Britain. But they were important also in February 1970, when the University of Warwick was convulsed by one of the largest and most significant of the student protests of the late1960s and early 1970s.
For further details see: http://www.russfound.org/Blog/WarwickUniversityLtdPressRelease.pdf
***
A partial transcript of the intercepted phonecall between Estonian foreign minister, Urmas Paet, and EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Catherine Ashton, is available on Spokesman Books' blog.
***
The Russell Foundation has received a nice postcard from Margaretta D’Arcy, who is in Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison for protesting about US military use of Shannon Airport. We sent her some books by Bertrand Russell when she complained about the poor library at Limerick Prison, where she was held previously. The Irish Times published our letter about this on 14 February. Margaretta can now be reached at the address below.***
Margaretta D’Arcy 79759
Dóchas Centre
Mountjoy Jail, North Circular Road
Dublin 8
Thank you so much for the books which arrived safely at this jail. The women are delighted as of course they know about Bertrand Russell but have not read of him so there is strong [interest] there.
Yours in solidarity,
Margaretta D’Arcy
***
February 2014
Aramaic Chants and Classical Music from Iraq
With a tribute to Ziriab
7.00 - 7.05 Welcome and thank you (Victoria Brittain)
7.05 - 7.30 Aramaic chants by Behnam Keryo with Francisco Iannuzzelli on Oud
7.30 - 7.40 Alberto Portugheis - Isaac Albeniz's piano canticle CORDOBA
7.40 - 8.10 A Tribute to Ziriab (789-857)-Mini-Recital by Khatchatur I. Pilikian (Tenor) and Alberto Portugheis (Piano)
8.10 - 8.25 --------- Refreshments ---------
8.25 - 8.40 Francisco Iannuzzelli - Iraqi Maqams on Oud: Samai Huzam and Kapris by Sherif Muhiddin Haydar, and Asfour Tar (the flying bird) by Munir Bashir
8.40 - 8.50 Narmeen Zangana: Homage to Baghdad on Piano
8.50 - 9.00 Behnam Keryo: Epic of Gilgamesh with Francisco on Oud
For further details visit: www.russfound.org/Blog/VfPParticipantsProgramme.pdf
***
Mauritian personalities bravely stand up against new compulsory biometric ID Card system25 Mauritian personalities against compulsory biometric ID Card including two former Presidents of the Republic
“We express grave concern regarding the new compulsory biometric ID Card System.”
For further information visit Spokesman Books blogspot.
***
Millions of US troops have landed in Shannon Airport in Ireland since 2002 on their war to and from their endless wars. PANA and other groups have organised many demonstrations in protest against the destruction of Irish Neutrality and its integration into the US/EU/NATO military structures since then.
The Irish State's commitment to the doctrine of perpetual war reached a whole new level when it imprisoned a 79 year old peace activist , Margaretta D'Arcy, for three months on the 15th of January. PANA, Shannowatch, the Galway Alliance Against War and other groups and individuals have continued to demand Margaretta's release. We need international solidarity, and we need it now. Please email a statement of support to: info@pana.ie and cc to: newsdesk@rte.ie
Please pass on this video to all your contacts and to social media. We need the support of progressive media such as Democracy Now. We need you to hold vigils outside Irish Embassies and Consulates.
Thanks
Roger Cole
Chair
Peace and Neutrality Alliance
www.pana.ie
https://vimeo.com/86370040
***
January 2014
Iraqis have always strived to convey hope in their future on their journey towards peace and justice, despite the many wrongs and destruction of their homeland.
From the Mesopotamian Aramaic chants of lament and repentance to classical music based on Maqam, from the epic of Gilgamesh in search for eternal life to the music of the exile.
Tadhamun: Iraqi Women Solidarity cordially invites you to attend a musical evening: “Voices for Peace - Aramaic Chants and Classical Music from Iraq” to celebrate Iraqi culture and people, at St Barnabas’ Church – often described as one of the most beautiful churches in London.
Date: Friday 28th Feb 2014
Time: 7.00 pm to 9.00 pm
Venue: St Barnabas’ Church.
St Barnabas Street,
London SW1W 8PF
Nearest tube stn: Sloan Square
Admission: Free
For further details of the programme see: http://www.russfound.org/VOICESFORPEACE2014.pdf
Tadhamun – Iraqi Women Solidarity: http://solidarityiraq.blogspot.com
For more info pls call: 07989861380/ 07969029321
***
Japan and Turkey: Nuclear Proliferators?Turkey's draft atomic cooperation agreement with Japan would allow Ankara to use sensitive technologies that have potential nuclear-weapon applications.
The bilateral accord would permit the export of Japanese nuclear technology to Turkey, which has contracted with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to build four atomic reactors in the city of Sinop. The deal includes a clause that permits Ankara to extract plutonium from spent nuclear fuel and to enrich uranium -- practices that could be used to produce either reactor fuel or bomb-grade material, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed the nuclear accord when he met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo on Tuesday. The two men agreed to work to expedite the process for approving the $22 billion reactor-construction project, the Associated Press reported.
The Japanese parliament likely will debate passage of the nuclear cooperation agreement when it reconvenes later this month, according to Asahi Shimbun.
An unidentified high-ranking Japanese Foreign Ministry official said Ankara sought the enrichment-and-reprocessing provision.
However, some oppose Turkey's access to these sensitive processes, contending it runs counter to Japan's longstanding support of nuclear nonproliferation.
"There is a risk that [the government] accepts unreasonable demands in relation to projects sponsored by a prime minister," onetime industry ministry official Shigeaki Koga said.
A number of Japanese lawmakers also object to the provision. The international relations wing of Abe's governing Liberal Democratic Party did not give its blessing for Turkish enrichment or reprocessing.
Previous atomic-cooperation deals that Japan struck with Jordan, Russia, South Korea and Vietnam all included limits on reprocessing and enrichment. A trade accord with the United Arab Emirates, which has yet to win parliamentary approval, also would not permit domestic fuel-making.
(Original article)
***
Bertrand Russell in translationPosted on January 8, 2014 by europeancollections
As an academic with a strong Cambridge connection, it is perhaps unsurprising that Cambridge University Library has a fairly extensive collection of books by and about Bertrand Russell. Rather more surprising perhaps is the fact that we have a substantial number of works by Russell in translation. The Library holds many Russell translations published in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, which were usually acquired by donation and which were interspersed within the general intake. Then there was a hiatus until relatively recently, when the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation resumed donations. These new acquisitions stand together in a small special collection in CCC.64.1- and can all be consulted in the Rare Books Reading Room.
The translations in this special collection currently number over 60 volumes. They are in a wide variety of languages including French, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish and Italian, as well as Chinese and Japanese. According to LibrarySearch, which allows for quick identification of titles by language, the Library also has a single Russell translation in each of Catalan, Galician, Hebrew, Hindi and Slovak.
For the most part, the UL is the only library in the UK to hold copies of these books. The foreign language editions often include substantial critical introductions by a native speaker, sometimes – but not always – the translator. They are also useful source material for those interested in translation studies. The Library sometimes has two or three different translations of the same text in one language.
The University Library is grateful to the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation for its generous donation.
Josh Hutchinson
***
Video: Angela Davis and Gina DentI am excited to share a video with you from our latest event, ‘On Palestine, G4S and the Prison Industrial Complex’ with eminent feminist scholar-activists Angela Davis and Gina Dent.
http://waronwant.org/news/events/previous-events/18046-angela-davis-video
War on Want, the School of Law at SOAS University and the Russell Tribunal on Palestine were honoured to host Angela Davis and Gina Dent for a discussion on Justice for Palestine and the Stop G4S campaign.
It was a unique opportunity to hear Angela and Gina discuss Palestine and the struggle for liberty in a world of growing militarisation, privatised repression and the proliferation of prisons.
In 2007, the British security company G4S signed a contract with the Israeli Prison Authority to provide security systems and other services for major Israeli prisons, which hold Palestinian political prisoners.
G4S also provides equipment and services to Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank that form part of the route of Israel’s illegal Wall and to the terminals isolating the occupied and besieged territory of Gaza.
After watching the video please do share this email with your friends and help us expose G4S's complicity in Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine.
All the best,
Rafeef Ziadah
Senior Campaigner for Global Justice
P.S. Please take action to end G4S complicity in Israel’s prison system and illegal occupation
***
December 2013
Safe at Work?by Sarah Friday
The health and safety fringe meeting at featured Dave Putson, PCS trade union activist speaking about a book he wrote recently on the history of health and safety in the UK, ‘Safe at Work? Ramazzini versus the attack on health and safety’.
Read more: http://naponewsonline.org/2013/11/14/safe-at-work/
November 2013
The Middle East free of WMD?
The Bertrand Russell Peace Russell Foundation supports an important initiative from Greece (see below). A nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East would enhance security in the region and the wider world. For decades, Israel's large nuclear arsenal has created instability, with Saudi Arabia now identified as the latest regional power seeking its own nuclear weapon. A nuclear arms race in the Middle East is of direct concern to the European Union, which abuts the region in the Eastern Mediterranean. So, as Greece prepares to assume the rotating Presidency of the EU in January 2014, it is vital that the Greek Government keeps in mind the interests and concerns of the wider Union and ensures these are represented at the proposed conference in Finland, initiated by the UN under the auspices of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, whenever it takes place. Greece has a vital role to play in securing Europe's peace and security. This cannot be done in absentia, and we trust that the Greek Government will attend in Helsinki.
http://ippnwgr.blogspot.gr/2013/11/blog-post_9.html
COMMON DECLARATION ABOUT IRAN
The Hellenic Medical Society against Nuclear and Biochemical Threat (Greek Affiliate of IPPNW) and the Observatory for International Organizations and Globalization (PADOP) consider as a positive development the progress in talks between Iran and the Group 5 +1 countries - the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (U.S., Russia, China, France, UK ) and Germany.
We applaud the historic agreement about the Iranian nuclear program and the lifting of some sanctions imposed on that country in the Middle East that have serious consequences for the life and health of people.
This development is a crucial first step for peace in the troubled Middle East. It creates better conditions for flourishing, and promotes the UN initiative to transform the region into a zone free of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, with the participation of all countries in the region and for the benefit of all the peoples (Israelis and Palestinians included).
In the light of this development we believe that the absence of Greece in the international initiatives for peace in the Middle East is a big mistake. Finland has again stirred the initiative for an international conference in mid December 2013 on the conversion of the Middle East zone free of nuclear and other WMD.
We suggest that Greek government should participate in this conference, even if only as an observer.
Panos Trigazis, President of PADOP
Maria Arvaniti Sotiropoulou, President of the Greek affiliate of IPPNW
Dirty Wars at Broadway, Nottingham
Cinema-goers in Nottingham will have the chance to see Dirty Wars next month at Broadway Cinema, Hockley. The film will be screened on Tuesday 17 December at 6.30pm, with an introduction by Roger Bromley, Emeritus professor of Cultural Studies at Nottingham University.
Dirty Wars film
Film producer Anthony Arnove on the UK cinematic release of Dirty
Wars.
On Friday, 29 November 2013, the Sundance award-winning documentary
Dirty Wars, featuring the journalist Jeremy Scahill, releases in
theaters across Britain, from BRITDOC Films (www.britdoc.org)
and Picturehouse DOCS.
For further information visit:
http://spokesmanbooks.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/dirty-wars-film.html
Safe at Work?
Dave Putson, Spokesman, 183 pages, paperback, £15
How many times have the tabloid headlines screamed: ‘Health and safety gone mad!’
The idea that the rules governing our health and safety are an ‘albatross around the neck of British businesses’, as David Cameron announced recently, gives a clue to the reasoning behind the media offensive.
Dave Putson’s book, Safe at Work? is a welcome riposte. Putson, a health and safety rep for London courts, traces the development of health and safety legislation, from the campaign to eradicate ‘phossy jaw’ suffered by Victorian match women and legal disputes over compensation, to the role of factory inspectors.
Before the comprehensive 1974 health and safety legislation, there was carnage across industry, with death and serious injury at work commonplace. The new laws were an important breakthrough, yet the number of people who still lose their lives or contract serious illness is frighteningly high – in 2012-13 some 148 people died at work.
Safe at Work? cuts through the fog of misinformation.
The book has an introduction by Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union.
Review by the Bookmarks socialist bookshop. Order online at
www.bookmarksbookshop.co.uk
***
We
are all Greeks
Greece takes over the rotating presidency of the European Union in
January 2014. For six months, including the campaign for direct
elections to the European Parliament in May, Greece will preside over
the affairs of the Union. In foreign affairs, will Greece prioritise
peace in the Middle East and advance the creation there of a zone free
of weapons of mass destruction?
http://spokesmanbooks.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/we-are-all-greeks-amended.html
***
As readers of The Spokesman will know, Ayse Berktay Hacimirzaoglu is an old friend of the Russell Foundation. She is a prominent campaigner for women’s rights and for peace in Turkey and internationally, as well as a celebrated writer and translator. It is two years since she was first arrested, along with hundreds of other activists, on bogus terrorism charges.
An update on Ayse's situtation, by Abi Rhodes, can be found in the new issue
The Middle East free of WMD?
See also Ayse Bertrkay Free Her Now:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ayse-Berktay-Free-Her-Now/262009723913600
October 2013
The Middle East free of WMD?
The Spokesman 122
Encouraging progress towards Syria's full compliance with the Chemical
Weapons Convention has been registered in recent times, with destruction
of some weapons already taking place under international supervision
within a few weeks of the breakthrough agreement in Geneva in September
2013. In the Dossier section, we print the landmark decision on
'Destruction of Syrian Chemical Weapons', agreed in double-quick time by
the executive council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons.
As the Organisation's programme of work is carried out, the success of
which will depend on sustained political support from a range of
governments and interested parties, this process may help to unlock some
other doors. In this issue of The Spokesman, the people at Conflicts
Forum in Beirut examine a 'point of inflection', or point of change,
where new and more peaceful possibilities suddenly become 'fecund', not
only in Syria but also in relation to Iran and the wider region.
http://www.spokesmanbooks.com/acatalog/Spokesman_Journal.html#a776
***
No Glory in War
No Glory in War: campaigning in peace to remember the First World War
Campaign launch Friday, 25 October, 7.30pm at St James's Church
Piccadilly.
Tickets £13/£6 concessions. Book now by calling 020 7561 4830 or online
here: http://bit.ly/1dWpzui
With Billy Bragg, Elvis McGonagall, Kika Markham, Roger Lloyd Pack,
George Hlawiczka, John Landor, I Maestri, Sally Davies, Jeremy Corbyn MP
and others. Performances include Vaughan Williams' the Lark Ascending
played by George Hlawiczka, violin, with I Maestri and London Musical
Arts Orchestra conducted by John Landor.
***
Keep Space for Peace Week and Week of Action Against Drones
5th - 12th October
Starting this Saturday 5th October at midday, join activists from across
Britain at RAF Croughton in Oxfordshire to say Keep Space for Peace and
no to drones! Full details and registration at the CND website.
(See our
blog for further details)
September 2013
The Conquest of Happiness - A Play
The Conquest of Happiness is based on the writings of renowned
intellect and pacifist Bertrand Russell, and is the first work by
leading Bosnian artist Haris Pasovic to be performed in Ireland.
The play will open in Derry-Londonderry on September 21 for two nights
as part of the UK City of Culture 2013 celebrations, before embarking on
a tour of Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia, concluding in a
spectacular finale performance in Belfast.
See our
blog for further details.
***
Arms fair challenged with daily direct action
- get involved!
A key event for the international arms trade is taking place in London
this week: the DSEi arms fair which hosts 1500 arms companies and 30,000
arms buyers and sellers. The UK government's invite list is a roll call
of authoritarian regimes and human rights abusers. But the fair has been
challenged by daily direct action disrupting and blockading its
business. A few highlights can be found at our
blog.