Born in a small Oklahoma town in 1987, computer whizz-kid Bradley Manning enlisted in the US army in 2007.
Two years later, he was posted to Iraq where he worked as an intelligence analyst in a remote forward operating base close to Baghdad.
Increasingly concerned about US actions in Iraq and unhappy about his role in them, Manning allegedly sent hundreds of thousands of documents to the organisation Wikileaks.
The documents published by Wikileaks in 2010 included the Afghan War Logs (91,731 ‘significant action’…
The three audio tours are for Tate Britain and Tate Modern (in London), and the Tate Boat that runs between them.
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Without clear thought and accurate definitions, he believes, ‘description,…
In the end I found it an engaging read, simply written, about complex ideas. He refuses to hedge words, to compromise in order to create allies, and in some cases he seems to have gone over the top, intentionally provoking friends and enemies alike.
Atzmon grew up in Israel, the grandson of one of the…
As if the peace movement hasn’t enough on its plate already, the military-industrial complex invents a new and easier way to wage war: the unmanned drone.
For the busy activist trying to grapple with the growing development of the drone wars, what’s needed is a well-written, easy-to-read book, coming from a committed nonviolent perspective, that lays out the issues in an accessible but not simplistic way. Thankfully, long-time US peace activist, Medea Benjamin, has written…
Andrew Cornell’s Oppose and Propose offers an extraordinarily well-researched examination of the 1971-1988 US-based organisation Movement for a New Society (MNS).
Cornell mixes documentary evidence and interviews with key participants in MNS to provide a comprehensive account of the movement, from its roots in Quaker anti-war groups through 17 years of rich and varied history, during which MNS was the only US-wide organisation explicitly advocating and working towards…
Think of those occasions in a group when it feels like you are collectively crashing into rocks or going round and round in a dreary, draining eddy. Starhawk is the Wise Woman of activism who you want to turn to for a magic spell to make it all better.
While she doesn’t give a magic bullet, she does offer an analysis of how groups can work most productively. She gives tools to embrace conflict rather than avoid it, recognising that the strength of a group is in nurturing its capacity to deal with difficulties intelligently and…
A big book in every sense, The Death of Others looks at the fate of civilians in American wars since 1945 – focussing on the Korean War, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
John Tirman, executive director of the Center for International Studies at MIT and the person who commissioned the 2006 Lancet study on deaths in Iraq, argues that the American public is indifferent to the suffering of civilians in the wars their tax dollars pay for – just as the US military has little concern for civilians in the warzone itself.
The basic…
The Tricycle Theatre, ‘Britain’s leading political playhouse’ according to The Times, is running a packed season of events examining nuclear weapons and the nuclear debate.
A centrepiece of this season is an ambitious two-part, five-hour sequence of 10 new short plays exploring nuclear issues, the performances punctuated and complemented by verbatim readings, archive footage and images.
The 10 plays explore nuclear weapons from a refreshingly diverse range of perspectives, from Attlee wrestling with the decision to develop…
This is an important new book on a topic that could hardly have greater political relevance or urgency.
Its author, April Carter, comes from a background of nonviolent activism and has established herself as a leading academic specialist in this field and in the broader arena of political philosophy. She examines ‘people power’ with dispassionate thoroughness, taking account of the conceptual ambiguities in the term itself and theoretical and practical issues related to its implementation.
‘If people power provides no panacea…
Bongo-player, brilliant raconteur and Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Richard Feynman was also one of the scientists who helped to build the first atomic bombs at Los Alamos.
After the first successful test Feynman was elated, playing an improvised drum on the hood of a jeep, but later sank into a deep depression, convinced that global nuclear war was inevitable. To his credit he later came to regret at least part of his role, and decided never to work on classified projects again.
If you haven’t already read Feynman’s…
People forget too quickly. This little book is a great reminder of much that has been achieved, so far, by Labour Action for Peace which began life in 1940 as the Labour Pacifist Fellowship.
Long before then, back to the days of Keir Hardie, there have been those in the Labour party with the same vision and hope.
The book is a fascinating trip down memory lane, from the introduction by Tony Benn to the cheery photo of current LAP president, Jeremy Corbyn.
The cast is enormous. Included amongst many others are Frank…
As the BBC Newsnight economics editor, Paul Mason has become a familiar face on television over the last few years, reporting on the protest movements, revolutions and revolts that have been “kicking off” across the globe since 2009.
Mason is also a keen blogger, and it is these (albeit now cleaned up) postings that form the backbone of this electrifying new book.
The essence of his argument is that “we’re in the middle of a revolution caused by the near collapse of free-market capitalism combined with an upswing in technical…
A common argument in the leadup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein could only be toppled by a foreign invasion, that it was impossible for Iraqis themselves to remove such a brutal dictator.
An insightful and stirring look at the life and work of Gene Sharp, How To Start A Revolution demolishes this argument. Countering the widely accepted view of nonviolence as hopelessly naïve, the 84-year-old professor of political science has spent his life documenting the numerous examples of nonviolent resistance that have…
“The question,” Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty memorably asserted about words “is which is to be master – that’s all.” And the same goes for the digital technologies that now play an increasingly important role in our lives.
“Like the participants of media revolutions before our own,” Rushkoff notes “we have embraced the new technologies and literacies of our age without actually learning how they work and work on us. And so we, too, remain one step behind the…