Silvia Swinden

Whilst protesters are shot at in demonstrations against long standing autocratic regimes in the Middle East the British style of avoiding protest and opposition during the Royal Wedding is simply to arrest people **before** they have the opportunity to express themselves. The few who did manage to stage small and peaceful protests are arrested for “Breach of the peace”.

Bradely Manning was arrested on the assumption that it was he who sent cables to Weakileaks whose disclosure led to the offensive against Julian Asange, director of the whistleblowing website dedicated to revealing secret information of public interest. Manning’s treatment in the military prison is tantamount to torture. Here’s the Avaaz campaign to stop this.

During the March 26th demonstration in London a group of nonviolent protesters from UK Uncut occupied the Fortnum and Mason luxury store in Piccadilly to bring attention to it’s owners tax avoidance strategies. In spite of their not causing any damage the protesters were arrested after being promised by the police they would not be if they agreed to leave peacefully.

Documents reveal that the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan had not been properly inspected, safety procedures had been bypassed and economic considerations had been put first in spite of the risk posed by decisions such as prolonging the life of an obsolete model and accumulating more spent radioactive fuel rods than the plant was supposed to handle.

The culture of minimising and hiding the true extent of nuclear danger raises its ugly head again. A fire at Aldermaston nuclear bomb making establishment on August 3rd was reported in the newspapers as a minor incident which, although neighbours were evacuated for some hours, did not really represent a nuclear risk. Well, not exactly…

Almost 25 years after Spielberg’s film *Back to the Future* predicted the use of rubbish as a fuel for cars several projects that transform household waste into fuel are on their way thanks to bacteria originally used for compost heaps, which have been now genetically engineered to produce Ethanol by braking down the cellulose in food and other organic substances.

This year International Conscientious Objectors’ Day will be celebrated as usual in the UK with a small ceremony at the CO’s Memorial consisting of a lump of volcanic rock in Tavistock Square, London, close to the statue of Gandhi and the Hiroshima blossom tree. It commemorates those who refused to kill, even when they faced their own death for disobeying military orders.

Up to eight hundred anti-nuclear campaigners from all corners of the UK and other countries joined a blockade of the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire, UK, on February 15th in order to prevent the construction of new nuclear bombs making facilities. Every gate was closed by blockaders in the course of the morning. Twenty-six arrests were reported.

Christine Blower, the General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers (NUT), Europe’s largest teachers’ union representing approximately 300,000 teachers in the United Kingdom, has endorsed the World March for Peace and Non-violence and expressed her wish for the National Union of Teachers to contribute to the objectives of the March.

The co-chair of Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases to spend 45 days in prison