Online Abingdon Peace Group Meeting; Ukraine Crisis

Since this meeting was planned, the Ukraine Crisis has escalated into a full-scale war as we have all looked on, horrified.

Pictures of the devastation have filled our TV screens, but there has been less discussion of the causes, or what (if anything) can be done now.

Paul Rogers (Prof of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford) gave an online lecture hosted by Peace News on 8th March which we plan to watch in part.

Discussion will follow. If there is a particular article/viewpoint/fact which you have found helpful, do come and share it, or even email it to us in advance so that we all have a chance to absorb it.

Below is a small slice of some of the emails and tweets which have been coming in to our inbox in the last month. I particularly recommend the Rethinking Security blog comparing Ukraine and Costa Rica!

From Rethinking Security: Rethinking Security : Ukraine

The horrors of the Russian invasion of Ukraine continue to dominate the headlines and our thoughts. As you will hopefully have seen, we have had a wide range of content on the Blog in response to the invasion since its very first day and I put my thoughts into a longer commentary piece on where we go from here: Building from Ukraine: From Solidarity to Systemic Change.

I was delighted that Clive Lewis MP (Labour) picked up on the piece as a framework for his lengthy contributions to the Commons’ main debate on Ukraine on 15 March, cited RS and made some lengthy quotations. I am looking forward to meeting with Clive to discuss how we can take forward some of the issues proposed in the report.

Blog

We have never been so busy on the Blog as during March, including but not only on the Ukraine crisis:

Everyday Peace Indicators: A way to measure and build peace by Yvette Selim & Roger Mac Ginty

To the victor go the spoils … a heap of ashes by Diana Francis & Andrew Rigby

Moving the Immovable Object: Obama’s Climate Securitisation by Francesca Kilpatrick

From Aleppo to Mariupol: Stopping the use of explosive weapons in populated areas by Ian Davis

Missing in Action: UK arms export controls during war and armed conflict by Anna Stavrianakis

Physical Security: Borders, Movement and the Fear of Migrants by Brian Dikoff

Ukraine and Costa Rica: A tale of two futures? By Sean Howard

Resisting the Policing Bill by Kat Hobbs

From Martin Birdseye via MAW:

Relevant to emails about dangers of ongoing war in Ukraine and the futile “nuclear status quo”, I took an opportunity this week to send a letter to the Tablet

MartinB To: The Editor of the Tablet

Father Barry Grant thanks God (Letters 2nd April) for our nuclear deterrent. The fact is that as citizens of a nuclear armed state we could all be dead by the time you might print this letter; banished from this world and, but for the grace of God, from the next as well, for the crime of being among the western ‘Christian’ nations that have consistently furthered the concept and the technology of genocidal mass destruction.  

 Someone pushed to the limit by failure of conventional military power, and condemned as a war criminal, will not in any case be operating with the rational calculation on which the theory of deterrence depends. In fact the policy of nuclear deterrence also relies upon our determination, confirmed by our Government, to equal the crime of incinerating millions of innocent people. (And this is leaving aside the point that we actually have a first-use policy.) It leaves us right now with no way to defend Ukraine and leaves the whole world in danger of nuclear destruction.

 If we are all dead by Friday we would be the lucky ones. In the outcome of a nuclear war the rest would die slowly in the unspeakable agony of radiation poisoning or by starvation in a global nuclear winter, victims of the greatest crime in history. Probably the last crime in history. God help us.

Hope to see you on Tuesday at 8pm!

Sally