A list of reviews up to 2012
Another unmissable book. If you're not keeping current with Chomsky, you're not keeping current with reality. In Failed States, Chomsky once again delivers an exhilarating/ depressing panorama view of the contemporary scene, inside and outside the United States, at dizzying speed.
He begins with the theme of his last book, Hegemony or Survival - the increasing threat to human survival posed by US military and energy policies - and ends with the contradiction between…
When this documentary premiered in Caracas last year, the Venezuelan Ministry of Culture cancelled its second screening at the National Cinema unless the producers removed the ministry's name as funder of the film. Why were they so upset?
The film exposes the contradiction of building socialism through oil wealth. The state oil company PdVSA is revealed as a corrupt, bureaucratic monster destroying communities and the environment in its relentless search for hydrocarbons.
Sure…
Ever felt so righteously outraged at the state of the world, the greed of the corporations, humanity's insane militarism, the fact that we are killing the planet (etc) that you considered blowing shit up? Well, that's what Ann Hansen found herself doing across Canada in the early 1980s.
Damaging nuclear weapons components manufacturers, porn chains and electricity substations, carrying out burglaries and car thefts (they needed explosives, guns and getaway vehicles for their actions…
Amidst the horrors visited on the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, the fate of the “Palestinian citizens of Israel” is often forgotten, by those who see Israel solely as the Jewish state it aspires to be, and by those working to raise awareness of the plight of Palestinians. Even organisations such as Sindyanna, a fair trade co-operative of Palestinian and Jewish Israeli women in the Galilee, have appeared on the boycott lists of less enlightened solidarity organisations.
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Peace Journalism should give a fair and balanced report on conflict without forgetting to set the context in which the fighting takes place.
This is what News from the Holy Land, an educational video for media students, civil society groups and NGOs, tells us. Using the example of the Israel-Palestine conflict, Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick seek to show that in focusing on bloodshed and violence, standard news reports give British audiences the impression that the two…
Alien penguins, thought-powered spacecraft and some doddery members of Green Peas race through this children's book to stop an evil fast food empire. Marcellus Guzzle, despot of the toadburger chain, and his henchmen will murder anyone who gets in his way.
While his dreams of ecological disasters and unlimited financial profits seem to be coming true, an unlikely adversary appears on the scene. Eddy Tumble is just a fat 14-year-old who loves fast food until he dies at the dinner-…
Subtitled “A big event in a small town in the big country”, this chirpy little pamphlet is the work of a Stirling local, outlining his experience of the “spectacle” that was last July's G8 protests.
In the introduction Declan says “Its about a time when the world was very briefly focused on ... where I happen to live and work. It was a strange but exciting time for me and that's why I have been drive to write about it.” It's divided into two distinct sections - the first dealing with…
Shut Them Down is a collection of reflections on the anti G8 mobilisation which took place in July 2005. It was created by activists whose stated aim was to “harness the energy created in Scotland to move in productive directions”. In the introduction the editors humbly deny speaking for the movement as a whole, and aim only to provide reflection on this particular instance of mobilisation within the wider “movement of movements”.
The book is extremely varied in content,…
For a number of reasons, and this book explores some of them, “just war” theory has come under various kinds of strain in recent years.
As a result, some would seek to jettison it altogether, arguing that it is no longer relevant because the world has changed in too many ways since the theory was developed and formulated. Some try to patch it up on the basis that having something is better than having nothing, but without any real commitment to it. Some, however, continue to insist…
Winterbottom's gripping film charts the “incredible journey” of the Tipton Three - from a planned wedding in Pakistan to their imprisonment in Guantanamo Bay: at times surreal and constantly disturbing. Shown on Channel Four in March, this film can now be watched online (for a streaming/rental fee). Visit http://www.tiscali.co.uk/guantanamo
Timing and space dictate that this second offering from Verso - a slim volume of anti-Iraq war essays - gets a rather slim space in this issue of PN.
This collection of six short articles, written over the past three years by contributors Brian Eno, John Le Carre, Harold Pinter, Richard Dawkins, Michel Faber and Haifa Zangana, was published in March to mark the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.
To a large degree this book is essentially “recycled material”: I…
Messages to the World is the first time that all the written statements and audio broadcasts of Osama bin Laden have been brought together in a single volume in English. Starting in December 1994, with what is generally considered to be his first published statement intended to reach a broad audience, the text covers the decade up to December 2004, and another attack against the ruling family in his homeland of Saudi Arabia.
It is strange that it has taken so long for such a work to…
The New Internationalist's mini books are packed with quotes, cartoons, photographs and nuggets of information, which makes them ideal for dipping into. These three titles pursue pacifist, environmental and animal rights agendas as one would expect from this magazine group, run by a co-op. The New Internationalist was originally sponsored by Oxfam, Christian Aid and the Cadbury and Rowntree Trusts, and still focuses on poverty and inequality.
Although most of the quotes support an…
This book is a useful introduction to some of the philosophical issues and theories relating to war and peace. It begins with an account of three basic approaches to the morality of war; political realism, internationalism and cosmopolitanism.
Political realism argues that moral values have no leverage in international politics, while internationalism looks to give those values some international status, primarily through the medium of international law. Cosmopolitanism, on the other…
