Review

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I very much enjoyed reading this book, although its title is something of a misnomer, as it is mostly a history of war resistance and anti-war thought. Another slight irritant is the amount of pages devoted to events within the US, compared to the rest of the world. But that is more than enough criticism, for this is an excellent little book.

Starting with a review of anti-war thought within the main religions - and arguing strongly that each was fundamentally anti-violence and anti-…

Starting in 2000, a wave of “people power” revolutions - spearheaded by vibrant youth movements - toppled governments in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine.

Each involved an unpopular government with authoritarian tendencies, a rigged election, an explicit commitment on the part of the “revolutionaries” (crucial to their success) to use only nonviolent tactics and, most controversially, financial support from Western governments and “democracy” foundations.

According to the Financial…

Gandhi and Beyond is divided into three parts: the first two chapters look at the work of Gandhi and Martin Luther King; the next three at how their ideas have been used by other activists such as Cesar Chavez and Dorothy Day; and the final two at issues of gender and principles for action. The author says in his introduction that he hopes it will add to academic knowledge about nonviolence, whilst also inspiring people to act. I think he is more successful in the former objective, than the…

Originally produced as a catalogue to accompany an exhibition of prints which took place on artist Emily Johns' return from an Fellowship of Reconciliation peace delegation to Iran in May 2006, Drawing Paradise on the 'Axis of Evil' is ever more pertinent as the United States ratchets up its aggression and imposes more sanctions on Iran with UK backing.

Her pictures, exuding a calm stillness and beauty, are drawn with particular reference to the historical relationship between Britain…

Not long after the discovery of oil in Persia in 1908, Winston Churchill instigated a programme to convert the British navy from coal-to oil- powered vessels. Control over the oilfields of the Middle East - including, of course, those of modern-day Iraq - became a major priority of western foreign policy, and to a large extent has shaped the face of the peace movement today.

Jon Sack's Iraqi Oil for Beginners is a comic history of Iraq which takes us through the fascinating (and for…

This series of academic papers focuses on how gender relations - masculinities and femininities - have been represented in the “war on terror”, exploring how gendered narratives were used in the US to justify both the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, and domestic measures taken to control those perceived as a threat to security.

Perhaps the most accessible example is the assertion - used by the Bush administration following 9/11 to sell “the war on terror” - that the (initial)…

“Peace News ... [is] always being accused of anarchism”, observed Nicolas Walter in 1963, and even today the charge retains much of its force.

Indeed, as Walter notes in this posthumously-collected book of his essays, the First World War - and the resistance to it “brought a permanent pacifist element into anarchism”, and whilst “[t]he campaigns for nuclear disarmament, racial integration and workers control do not belong to the territory of classical anarchism ... there is no doubt…

Living in an area being ravaged by development in the name of the Olympics, in a London changing fast with the influx of foreign capital, I recognised a lot in this study of the experience of seeing much of the heart and soul removed from your community.

Written from within, and at the height of, “the siege”, this book reads as a call to action to those whose lives will be fundamentally affected to take control over the forces of change.

Solnit mixes anecdote, research and a…

If the phrase “war comics” conjures up for you images of magazines with names like “Warlord” and “Commando”, and simple-minded celebrations of militarism and empire, then, please, just ignore the title.

Indeed, the first two selections in this wonderful collection - Keiji Nakazawa's “I Saw It!” (precursor to his epic account of the bombing of Hiroshima and its aftermath, Barefoot Gen) and Raymond Briggs' “The Tin Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman” - are as anti-war a pair of…

I must declare a bias here: I hate cars.

Hate what they do to the environment, hate the way they destroy our communities, hate that my three-year-old isn't safe even on the pavement, hate the hours I spend waiting to cross the road whilst streams of cars shoot past, belching out filthy fumes and deafening me with their roar.

Lynn Sloman clearly isn't keen either (and manages to live in rural Wales without a car), but she has managed to produce a readable - not ranting - book…

The privatisation of so much of the US military machine has been more than just a subplot of the Iraq war, and Jeremy Scahill's comprehensive study of the rise of mercenary company Blackwater is a useful guide to the reconfigured military-industrial complex the anti-war movement now faces.

Blackwater was founded by Christian conservative Erik Prince in 1997 to meet the “anticipated demand for outsourcing” in the US military.

From a relatively low-key initial training role, it…

On first approach, Hollow Land appears to be very much an academic study, aimed at architecture/political science/anthropology students.

The language is convoluted, and challenging and demands much of the reader's existing understanding of both post-modern academic discourse and the history and context of the Israeli occupation.

But stick with it. Hollow Land deconstructs and reconstructs architecture and archaeology as never neutral - but instead fundamentally political -…

Following the “collapse” of the Taliban in November 2001, Afghanistan fell off the radars of most anti-war activists. Consequently, many of us have quite a bit of catching up to do - which makes the publication of Bleeding Afghanistan extremely welcome.

Written by two US activists whose work with the Afghan Women's Mission - a non-profit organisation raising funds and awareness for the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) - pre-dates 9/11,…

A US State Department lawyer once explained the goal of kidnapping, “extraordinary rendition” and imprisonment of “terrorist suspects”: to “find the legal equivalent of outer space”. That this goal has been largely achieved is illustrated by Clive Stafford-Smith, in a first-hand account of his legal visits to Guantanamo Bay. He describes the torture suffered by his clients, the conditions they endure, and the risible legal process offered to them.

This book, whilst deadly serious and…