Sinclair, Ian

Sinclair, Ian

Ian Sinclair

1 August 2019Review

Amberley Publishing, 2019; 296pp; £9.99

RT Howard is a writer specialising in intelligence and ‘defence’. His latest book looks at ‘individuals who were responsible for starting, conducting or extending an unnecessary war or show of force.’

Echoing the broad tenets of ‘Just War’ theory, four examples of what constitutes an ‘unnecessary war’ are provided: the decision to pursue military force rather than diplomacy or negotiations; the use of excessive force; ‘war undertaken for no obvious reason’; and futile wars.

1 June 2019Review

Yale University Press, 2016; 432pp; £30

Think of Adolf Hitler and invariably an image is conjured up of an all-powerful leader, the most evil individual in modern history, using extreme barbarity to crush his opponents at home and abroad.

The latest study from Nathan Stoltzfus, professor of Holocaust Studies at Florida State University in the US, challenges this simplistic representation, raising profound questions for historians, citizens and activists alike.

Citing a huge range of German- and English-language…

1 April 2019Review

Penguin 2019 (2018); 368pp; £9.99

Originating in a 2013 essay for the radical magazine Strike!, David Graeber’s provocative book is an engrossing, if sometimes uncomfortable, read.

A professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics and an anarchist, Graeber helpfully works up a functional definition of what he considers a bullshit job: ‘a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though as part of…

1 December 2018Review

Pluto, 2018; 272 pp; £24.99

This is an essential read for anybody – activists very much included – who wishes to gain a deeper understanding of the 2007–2008 economic crash and its subsequent political after-shocks, from the election of Donald Trump in the US to Brexit and rise of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK.

However, first and foremost, the book is a sharp critique of the media’s coverage of the economic crisis.

As well as interviewing journalists, Laura Basu, a researcher at the Institute for…

1 August 2018Review

Accent Press, 2018; 368 pp; £15.99

Achieving 40 percent of the vote – a record-breaking 10 percent increase on its 2015 performance – Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party carried off one of the biggest political upsets ever at the 2017 general election, dealing a serious blow to the Tory government and broader neoliberal ideology.

Steve Howell, deputy director of strategy and communications in the Labour leadership team, gives a detailed and engaging insider account of the election campaign. There are no big reveals, but…

1 June 2018Review

Peter Lang Publishing, 2017; 276pp; £29

‘The biggest immediate single problem we face… is mainstream media reporting’, British historian Mark Curtis recently argued in an Open Democracy interview about UK foreign policy.

Florian Zollmann’s deeply impressive first book – which expands on his PhD, supervised by Professor Richard Keeble – goes a long way in engaging with this long-running issue for peace activists.

‘The news media in liberal democracies operates as a propaganda system on behalf of state-…

30 April 2018Blog

What is a sustainable diet? Is a vegan diet necessarily sustainable? And what's blocking moves to a more sustainable food system? Ian Sinclair investigates.

Last year public health nutritionist Dr Pamela Mason and Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at the Centre for Food Policy, City University of London, published their book Sustainable Diets: How Ecological Nutrition Can Transform Consumption and the Food System with Routledge.

After reviewing the book for Peace News, Ian Sinclair asked…

1 April 2018Review

Routledge, 2017; 368pp; £32.99

Far from being simply a personal choice, our diet is deeply political.

As Dr Pamela Mason and professor Tim Lang explain, the spread of the standard Western diet has had devastating consequences for people and the planet. Worldwide, obesity has nearly doubled since 1980. Poor dietary patterns in rich nations have been the greatest contribution to non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. ‘North America and Europe consume biological resources as though…

1 December 2017Review

Routledge, 2017; 250pp; £26.99

The concept of meritocracy – ‘a system structured around advancement of people who are selected on the basis of individual achievement’ – has been a powerful idea in post-war industrialised societies, especially in the more economically-unequal US and UK.

As with its close cousin ‘equality of opportunity’, meritocracy has ‘become the key means of cultural legitimation for contemporary capitalist culture’, endorsed by Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and now Theresa May. So argues Jo…

11 October 2017Blog

Ian Sinclair talks to George Lakey, Matt Kennard and Alex Nunns

Ian Sinclair writes: My new Peace News article ‘The biggest fight of our lives’ includes comments from George Lakey, Matt Kennard and Alex Nunns. Due to space considerations I could only include a small portion of the commentary each of them sent me in the article itself. Below are their full comments.

Why is Jeremy Corbyn seen as such a threat to the British establishment?

Matt Kennard, author of…

1 October 2017Feature

For many people in the peace movement (but not everyone), the central question now is how the movement can help Jeremy Corbyn become the most radical British prime minister in decades – and stay radical

An ‘epic fight’ between the broad left and the forces of the establishment has begun (see PN 2586–2587). The prize couldn’t be bigger. The British left, for the first time in decades, has a very real opportunity to implement significant progressive change on the epoch-altering scale of the 1945 and 1979 elections. As Novara Media’s Aaron Bastani tweeted: ‘If we win, and survive, and enact a major program of economic and political change, the whole world will watch. The UK really…

1 August 2017Review

Underhill Books, 2016; 436pp, £12 from www.ninemiles.org

First published in 2006, with a new edition last year, this is an engaging memoir of the mid-’90s anti-roads movement – one of the most successful UK nonviolent campaigns of recent times.

Jim Hindle tells the story of his time camping at Newbury, Fairmile in Devon, and Stanworth in Lancashire, resisting what the Thatcher government called ‘the biggest road-building programme since the Romans’.

While the activists lost the battles – each road was eventually built –…

1 June 2017Feature

How a human rights lawyer was destroyed

Victory palms. GRAPHIC: EMILY JOHNS

On 2 February 2017, Phil Shiner, the award-winning human rights lawyer who brought the UK government to account for the 2003 killing of the Iraqi hotel receptionist Baha Mousa, was struck off by the solicitors disciplinary tribunal (SDT). In March 2017, Shiner, who was also ordered to pay interim costs of £250,000, was declared bankrupt, and was reported to be in poor health.

Shiner and his legal firm, by fighting for victims of the Iraq war, had…

1 June 2017Review

YouCaxton Publication, 2016; 252pp; £10

‘But what about Nazi Germany?’ No doubt many Peace News readers have been asked this question when they have voiced support for nonviolence.

Summarising a range of published material, George Paxton shows that nonviolent resistance to Adolf Hitler’s government was widespread. And though it is often poorly-referenced and somewhat repetitive, this feels like one of the most important books I’ve read in a long time.

From underground newspapers, open letters, graffiti, and…

1 April 2017Review

Spinifex Press, 2016; 192pp; £14.95

A professor of journalism at the University of Texas, Robert Jensen has a long history of activism focussing on US foreign policy, progressive journalism, climate change and pornography.

With The End of Patriarchy, he makes a strong, often deeply personal, case for radical feminism, which he believes has lost significant ground to individualistic liberal feminism and postmodern feminism in the broader culture and academia, respectively. For Jensen, the central tenet of…