Needham, Andrea

Needham, Andrea

Andrea Needham

1 November 2007Review

Green Books, 2006, ISBN 190399876X; 160pp; £10.95

I must declare a bias here: I hate cars.

Hate what they do to the environment, hate the way they destroy our communities, hate that my three-year-old isn't safe even on the pavement, hate the hours I spend waiting to cross the road whilst streams of cars shoot past, belching out filthy fumes and deafening me with their roar.

Lynn Sloman clearly isn't keen either (and manages to live in rural Wales without a car), but she has managed to produce a readable - not ranting - book…

1 October 2007Review

Bad Men: Guantanamo Bay And The Secret Prisons, Weidenfield and Nicolson, 2007; ISBN 0 29785 221 3; pp 320; £16.99. Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights, Melville House Publishing, 2006; ISBN 1 93363 309 3; pp 208; $23

A US State Department lawyer once explained the goal of kidnapping, “extraordinary rendition” and imprisonment of “terrorist suspects”: to “find the legal equivalent of outer space”. That this goal has been largely achieved is illustrated by Clive Stafford-Smith, in a first-hand account of his legal visits to Guantanamo Bay. He describes the torture suffered by his clients, the conditions they endure, and the risible legal process offered to them.

This book, whilst deadly serious and…

1 June 2007News

Some years ago, the BAE AGM was an annual free-for-all, with dozens of token shareholders shouting, standing on chairs, trying to stop the meeting and generally causing mayhem.

After a few years it started to feel ritualistic and I began to question the value of such tactics. In more recent years, however, things have got a lot quieter.

This year the focus was the abandoned SFO enquiry into corruption in BAE's deals with Saudi Arabia. Everyone trooped in quietly, sat quietly,…

1 March 2003Review

Ocean Press 2003; ISBN 1 876175 49 4, 130pp

The five chapters of this book were originally part of a longer book, And justice for all, published in1963 (the other five chapters can be found at http://www.oceanbooks.com.au ). The author, William Kunstler, who died in 1995, was a radical US defence lawyer whose clients included Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

The reissue is in response to the current attack on civil liberties in the US in the wake of 11 September 2001, and…