Carlyle, Gabriel

On 24 July, the Independent reported the results of a questionnaire survey conducted in Fallujah in January and February. These included a twelve-fold increase in the risk of cancer for under-14s (compared to rates in the Middle East Cancer Registry), and an anomalous birth sex-ratio (the ratio of girls to boys) in children under five (Patrick Cockburn, “Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah ‘worse than Hiroshima’”).

The Iraqi city has been the site of some of the worst…

If you could choose any of the characters from your childhood reading, who would you invite to help you spark a revolution? James Bond? Harry Potter? Badger from The Wind and the Willows?

If you’re the central character in Paco Igancio Taibo’s tricksy novella – one of PM Press’s new “Found in Translation” series – you choose Sherlock Holmes, Doc Holliday, D’Artagnan, Dick Turpin, the Light Brigade, and then throw in some Mau Mau fighters for good measure.

Set in the wake of the…

“Give me the directions. There’s loads of people here”, the kilted figure said into his mobile phone, turning to us to make an announcement: “They’ve taken the site and need as many people there as quickly as possible. I’ll take you.” At 10pm it was still 14 hours before activists were scheduled to take the site for the 2010 Climate Camp, but after a gruelling 12-hour journey on the Megabus we had finally made it to Edinburgh’s Forest Café.

Unfortunately, our guide had…

During a much-bally-hooed two-day June visit to British troops in Afghanistan, new British prime minister David Cameron claimed that he could “sum up this mission in two words”: “It is about our national security back in the UK. Clearing al-Qa’eda out of Afghanistan, damaging them in Pakistan, making sure this country is safe and secure – it will make us safe and secure back home in the UK.”

A major mistake?

According to the Guardian, Cameron believes that one of the two “…

During the Vietnam war, peace groups who invited Noam Chomsky to speak often tried to pair him with Howard Zinn. Chomsky’s stark analysis might paralyse some, but Zinn’s humour and optimism would lift people, and inspire them to go out and take action.

No slouch in the action department himself, Zinn was an active participant in the civil rights movement, managed anti-war priest Daniel Berrigan’s movements underground while he was on the run from the FBI, and was arrested numerous…

The Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Omar, “has given his approval for talks aimed at ending the war in Afghanistan and allowed his representatives to attend Saudi-sponsored peace negotiations” (Sunday Times, 15 March).

In April, two of the Taliban’s senior Islamic scholars told the Sunday Times “that their military campaign has only three objectives: the return of sharia (Islamic law), the expulsion of foreigners and the restoration of security”, and that the Taliban’s supreme…

British troops could be moved from Helmand to Kandahar, locking in a British presence in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future.

According to media reports, the RAF’s ground fighting force and UK special forces will both take part in the forthcoming Kandahar offensive.

However, the Telegraph has also speculated that British troops could be moved wholesale from Helmand – where they are now outnumbered by US forces – to Kandahar, “where they could run their own show”.…

Allegations of British complicity in the torture and abuse of detainees in Afghanistan are being scrutinised at a judicial review in the high court, as PN goes to press. The review, brought on behalf of PN columnist Maya Evans, is challenging the policy of transferring persons captured by UK forces in Afghanistan into Afghan custody. The ten-day case is scheduled to last until 29 April.

Detainees transferred from UK custody have allegedly suffered a wide range of abuses at the…

Talks with the Taliban leadership are “long overdue”, the UN’s former envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, told the BBC World Service in mid-March. Also in March, the Washington Post claimed that the British government had “taken the lead in promoting a negotiated settlement” in Afghanistan in the face of “overwhelming domestic opposition” to the presence of British troops there.

Further evidence that London may be taking negotiations more seriously, despite continued American…

The CIA is worried that “a spike in French or German casualties or in Afghan civilian casualties could become a tipping point in converting passive opposition into active calls for immediate withdrawal”, according to a confidential document leaked to the Swedish-based online organisation Wikileaks.

According to the “Red Cell Memorandum”, dated 11 March 2010 and marked NOFORN (“no foreign nationals”), the CIA has privately recommended a “strategic communication program across…

Espousing participatory democracy and direct action, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the iconic American New Left group of the early 1960s, played a key role in organising the first major demonstration against the Vietnam War in 1965.

Recognising that it was necessary to change the political and economic systems in order to stop “the seventh war from now”, it tried and failed to organise an “interracial movement of the poor” before disintegrating, destroyed by various Marxist…

“Rubbish!” cried a man in the audience. The scene was a public meeting against the war in Afghanistan. What prompted his outburst was a reference to the results of an opinion poll conducted there last December.

According to the ABC News poll, 68% of Afghans “strongly” or “somewhat” support the presence of US military forces in Afghanistan. This was unpalatable to our heckler, and so it had to be wrong. A complex picture He is not alone. Last year, in the teeth of similar poll…

Following the publication of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (“The Goldstone Report”) last September, British colonel Richard Kemp, who commanded British forces in Afghanistan in 2003, infamously told the UN Human Rights Council that Israel had done “more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone” during the 2008/2009 invasion of Gaza “than any other army in the history of warfare.”

In reality, as Norman Finkelstein shows in this meticulously-sourced…

Despite “a growing recognition in Washington… that some form of power-sharing deal [between the Afghan government and the Taliban] may be the only way to end the war” (Financial Times, 22 January), the US and Britain remain committed to war-war rather than jaw-jaw for the foreseeable future.

Three years ago, Gordon Brown told the Commons that: “Our objective is to defeat the insurgency by isolating and eliminating its leadership. I make it clear that we will not enter into any…

Tony Blair may be sleeping a little less soundly in his bed following the launch of ArrestBlair.org. Brainchild of author and activist George Monbiot – who attempted his own citizen’s arrest of John Bolton at the 2008 Hay Literary Festival – the website has already raised over £13,000 for a “Justice for War Crimes” fund.

Anyone attempting a peaceful citizen’s arrest of the former prime minister can claim a quarter of the money in the fund, provided their actions are reported in…