Reviews

This, eighth in the series of SchNEWS annuals, follows a predictable formula laid down in its predecessors, and is predictably fantastic.

The standard compilation (of approximately 50 issues of the weekly Brighton-based SchNEWS newsletter, alongside longer features, interviews, cartoons, photos, and material from around the world largely ignored by the mainstream media) covering April 2002 to April 2003 is distinct from previous annuals in the coverage it gives to the anti-war movement. And inevitably so - as the annual's foreword…

“...The rebels search each other out. They walk toward one another. They find each other and together break other fences.” Part of the scene-setting statement from the latest volume to claim space on the shelf marked “new world order, resistance to”. Have we been here before? And yet... sometimes a book, a film, an action, grouping or artefact feels like a step shift, feels like it embodies a significant new dimension of thought or relevance.

With this 500 page “brick” of a book, designed, as the ubiquitous Luther Blissett declares…

The recent death of Edward Said robbed the Palestinians of their most eloquent advocate in the West. One of the most committed and articulate of Palestinian allies still with us however, is the Professor of International Law at Illinois University, Francis A Boyle. Boyle has produced a tool for the reader “to go out and work for peace with justice for all peoples and states in the Middle East”.

While eschewing polemic for an analysis that is rooted in international legal principles this is no dry legal tome - law is only used to the…

For all its failings, it's sometimes worth reminding oneself that some of the best journalists (as well as some of the worst!) work for the corporate media. Amira Hass is one such reporter.

The daughter of survivors of the Nazi holocaust, Hass was, until September 2002, the chief West Bank and Gaza correspondent for Ha'aretz, Israel's leading liberal daily. Between 1993 and 1997 she lived in Gaza - the only Jewish Israeli journalist to have done so - covering the Oslo “peace” process from the inside, a period eloquently described in…

As a follow up to the highly successful UK version, PNW people have teamed up with Mordam Records in the dis-United States to release this new Peace not War 2-CD compilation.

With 32 tracks, ranging from Crass, Midnight Oil and Chumbawamba to Ani Di Franco, Seize the Day and Ms Dynamite, they have produced an amazingly strong message to Bush, Blair and their buddies: that any future invasion of an oil rich state is not going to be allowed to happen. This is music that reawakens energy - it's a compilation that calls for party,…

At times worryingly naïve this is a book that goes some way to readdress the myth of “transition” in Post Soviet Russia.

Packed with tables and charts there is no doubt that Mssrs Haynes and Hasan have done serious research, and it shows. They avoid many of the cliche's that appear in books about Russia: centuries of endurance, the mysterious Russian Soul etc, and for anyone new to that part of the world, the facts and figures of (Post)Soviet life and death will be truly horrific.

Their premise? That transition failed as…

Tariq Ali has delved deep into the scholarship on 20th century Iraq to produce his provocative and timely book Bush in Babylon, which takes as its focus the history of Iraqi resistance to the British empire and what this suggests for the future.

Whilst polemical in tone the book is never less than engaging - though the reader should be warned that Ali often asserts interesting claims without providing his sources. Hopefully Bush in Babylon will inspire Ali's readers to delve further into Iraq's recent history for themselves…

One of the hardest tasks for a writer to do well is to write an authorised history of an organisation devoted to social justice. It is easy to write a public relations puff piece, avoiding mention of internal divisions and crisis that hurt the organisation and potentially affect its image. The authors avoided this trap.

It felt strange to read about the origins and struggles of an organisation that seems to have always been around. In my more than 30 years of activism there has been a prod to effective action arising from War on…

Empire has never completely gone out of style, but now in the early 21st Century it has very become popular for describing the current international system. In particular, there is a growing recognition that the United States is an empire. 1 Of course, most of the world saw the US this way already, but it comes as a bit of a shock to the “homeland.”

Accepting the “new” US Empire is usually linked to the claim that the US is the only remaining superpower and that it will continue the civilising missions of the…

Had they not become leaders in the field of exposing government spin doctoring and propaganda, you suspect that Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber would make pretty effective PR consultants themselves.

I recently spotted Weapons of Mass Deception riding high in the best-seller lists in a mainstream British bookstore. How many of those buying it were seduced by the snappy title and the Saddam/Bin Laden comic-strip on the cover? Those expecting the Michael Moore approach to US politics might find this a little sober by…

This book is fascinating, funny, at times truly hopeful - and at others pretty despairing - and certainly provocative. It took a year for the publishers to send it to us, and a further six months for me to find the time to read and review it. However, it has been worth the wait. If you are interested in the politics of technology in any way - read this book. It will stimulate your mind and make you ask questions.

Its author is frequently referred to as a “guru of cyborg theory”, which makes him sound kind of nerdy and…

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 editors point out in their introduction (p5), “For…

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 of directness.

As is the way with such…

As its subtitle suggests, this ain't exactly bedtime reading.

But if you've ever wanted a clear, concise guide to how exactly peace processes work, this is it. Who gets to be involved? What do they talk about, and how is that agenda set? How are these decisions translated into practice? And how are transparency and ethical process observed?

Illustrated by examples from Tajikistan to Guatemala via Burma and Mozambique, the book looks at the common themes of success and failure, all in a language so neat and concise that the…

As its title suggests, Norman Finkelstein's Myth and Reality explodes a series of myths about the Israel-Palestine conflict. Among the myths tackled are: that the dispossession of the Palestinians in 1948 was “born of war, not by design”; that the 1967 war was a “live or perish” battle for Israel's national existence; and that Israel's victory in the 1973 war forced Sadat to sue for peace with Israel (in fact the reverse is true). In each case Finkelstein's analysis, backed by prodigious scholarship, is devastating.

This second…