This is a book which has three separate - but related - parts to it. It starts with an essay by Micah Ian Wright entitled “Moment of Clarity”, in which he writes about his experiences in the US military during the invasion of Panama in 1989 - something which made him question the aims of US foreign policy, and which eventually led him to his remixed poster project.
The most striking part of this work is the remixed (mainly) US military propaganda posters taken from WW1 and WW2 and…
Did 9/11 force us to redefine our understanding of “war zones”, and acknowledge that the continuum of war and violence has no temporal or spatial boundaries?
As the editors of Terror, Counter-Terror argue, feminists have long been involved in identifying and challenging the continuum of violence experienced by women, and are in a unique position to address the issues of militarism and terrorism, gender and nationalism, globalisation and discrimination that were thrown into…
Many journalists enter their profession motivated by some idea, however vaguely defined, of doing some good in the world. Speaking truth to power; uncovering wrongdoing; bringing us the information we need to reach our own opinions, and make choices in a democracy.
Readers may find that idealism difficult to square with the journalism they meet in daily life. Various factors intercede between aspiration and reality - editors and reporters in different parts of the world are constrained…
It is a sign of the times that books about the international use of military muscle are increasingly about “intervention” rather than “war”, and that the interventions most often discussed are “humanitarian” ones.
While not all of the thirteen papers in this collection are primarily concerned with humanitarian intervention, that is the single most dominant theme. The countries most often mentioned are Rwanda and Kosovo. They provide obvious focal points for the discussion. As the…
When WRI planned a visit to the South Caucasus, to develop co-operation with local groups on antimilitarism and conscientious objection, it was clear that this wouldn't be an easy task. However, it proved even more difficult than expected.
I arrived in Tbilisi in Georgia on 26 July, on an Aeroflot flight from Moscow. Georgia, which suffered a civil war in the early 1990s, still has two unresolved conflicts - Abkhazia and South Ossetia. While there is no war at present, neither is…
One of the world's most famous arms dealers, Sam Cummings, said of the arms trade almost forty years ago: “It is almost a perpetual motion machine. We all agree that the arms race is a disaster, and we all agree that it could lead to an ultimate conflict, which would more or less destroy the civilised world as we know it. The old problem is, who is going to take the first move to really pull back?”
Since those days the Cold War order, and the omnipotent bipolar hostility that ruled…
The essays in this volume address the tension between two widely held principles. The first is that a nation's borders should be respected, the second is that human rights should be protected.
The tension obviously arises when it is thought that in order to uphold the latter, it is necessary to override the former. The individual contributions to this debate (all originally conference papers) approach this central issue in a number of ways, with different emphases and varying degrees…
At first sight, this book looks exciting and compelling. The blurb focuses on its relevance to debates about warfare and world security post-S11. And the title, to my mind, conjures up images of nuclear tests, Agent Orange, dirty bombs and the spraying of dangerous fungicides over Colombian hillsides. Inside, however, one finds a lost opportunity - or perhaps a cynical attempt to grab a marketing opportunity by the judicious addition of current buzzwords to a historical study of fairly…
“Migrant workers from different nationalities in Korea stand united against the US war against Iraq. We join in solidarity with other peace--and freedom--loving people in Korea and the rest of the world, and with millions of our fellow migrants and compatriots in our homelands and overseas, in saying NO! to this unjust war.”. So read the text on a leaflet ETU-MB (Equal Trade Union Migrant's Branch, a part of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions/KCTU) members distributed during the anti-…
The world is in grave danger. The global scenario has completely changed since 11 September, with just one terrorist attack on the United States. In the name of wiping out terrorism from the world the US are now engaged in counter-terrorism with the large-scale killing and torture of innocent people. Those who were earlier considered freedom fighters are now branded terrorists.
Today the United States has assumed the role of a messiah with its disciple-like Great Britain delivering “…
Gore Vidal knows how to write. The only problem is that you get the feeling he's written it all before. Literally. Nowhere on the cover (front or back) are you warned that three-quarters of the book is a reprint of articles that appeared previously in Vanity Fair (three) or The Nation (one), which were published as long ago as 1997 (although I can't say the material feels dated, far from it).
The drawback of having read it all before won't apply to everyone of…
On 26 September 2002, British freelance TV journalist Roddy Scott was killed after being shot in the head while filming in Ingueshetia. He was murdered while covering the ongoing war between Chechen separatist fighters and Russian state forces.
In a statement released by his family shortly after his untimely death they said: “Whether it was Kurds, Chechens, Afghans or Palestinians, he was committed to ensuring that issues were not sidelined and received the international attention…
Few writers can take two seemingly different subjects like river dams and the war on terrorism and turn them into a coherent, informed, impassioned indictment of the nation state, elitist greed and militarised globalisation. Arundhati Roy can, and does.
India is a country where 70% of the population has no electricity and where more than the total population of Canada might be displaced and made homeless from their villages and farms by dam building. I say might because as Roy states…
What do you associate with Colombia? Biodiversity? The writer Gabriel García Márquez? The painter Fernando Botero? Or do you think of the world's main source of cocaine, the country with the highest rates of killing and kidnapping, the site of a multi-sided war that has now lasted nearly 40 years?
The point of dedicating this section of Peace News to Colombia is partly to show some of the processes at work behind the headlines, and more still to show what people - Colombians…
Although the US may have been racheting up international tensions over North Korea in recent months, this has not stopped representatives from both North and South Korea getting together to chat about economics. In early November representatives from both countries met in Pyongyang for four days of talks.
In October North Korea made a “nuclear confession”: that it has been enriching uranium to support a nuclear weapons program. But the government in the south maintains that…
