Few people know that Canada provided most of the uranium for the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Even fewer know the devastating effect that the uranium ore extraction had on the Dene people of Great Bear Lake.
Peter Blow travelled to the north to record this story. White men came to the Dene land and found the “money rock”, as the residents called it. In the 1940s they started mining it, using local people for labour. At the same time the Dene…
Teachers of citizenship courses who wish to explore the topic of war and peace with their students will find a new short video, War No More, invaluable.
It is suitable for year ten and year eleven students, and is accompanied by a booklet of useful background information on each of the main topics, well thought out discussion points to take up with students and lists of further sources of information. The printed information is intended for free photocopying.
Topics…
In December 1994, days after the first modern invasion of Chechnya by Russian forces, Time magazine wrote, “Unless someone backs down, Moscow's advance into Chechnya threatens to start a guerrilla war that could wreck Yeltsin's presidency or end Russian democracy.”
Yeltsin is long gone, and so now, following the recent re-election of President Putin, with the attendant, and embarrassingly muted, concerns about it perhaps not being entirely free and fair, is an ideal time to revisit…
This book - “neither a lament nor a cheap forecast of doom” - is written in a kind of discursive hand-wringing fashion much loved by American journalists of the “left” (Harpers, Atlantic Monthly, The Nation), full of picture portraits standing for large (hush at the term) economic forces, local colour and exotic details. On the right subject, it works very well (see McKibben's The End of Nature, or Hertsgaard's Earth Odyssey). This case is less clear-cut.
…
Any TNI production merits close attention, and this handsomely produced, tightly argued and informative briefing is no exception.
As stated in the introduction;
”The Kyoto Protocol has begun laying the foundation for a completely new global marketplace in greenhouse gases. Six gases... will be traded interchangeably in the brokerage houses and trading floors of the world markets. These `environmental markets' are being left to the private sector and neo-liberal government…
High Tide is the result of three years spent travelling the world in search of evidence that climate change is taking place now.
Lynas's travels include the experience of ducking England's increasingly excessive downpours; surveying the damage of melting permafrost whilst gathering local opinion on the oil industry in “baked” Alaska; and sealing all windows as unprecedented dust storms whirl in China.
Alongside excellent photos, Lynas's stories show that…
With even the Pentagon now facing up to the reality of the threat of climate change, we might spare a thought or two for those who are likely to first feel its effects. The people of Tuvalu may have the unhappy distinction of becoming the world's first climate-change refugees. Trouble in Paradise is a snapshot of their increasingly precarious life.
The group of Pacific islands known as Tuvalu constitute the world's second smallest nation, after the Vatican. Its 11,000 inhabitants are…
It may not be quite as informative as the tomes normally scrutinised on these pages; it may be almost twelve years old; and yes, it may only bear a tangential, titular connection to the sea, but this recording of Bill Hicks from his home town of Austin, Texas, is still required listening.
Many of the names have changed but, almost exactly a decade after Hicks' death from pancreatic cancer, the pantomimes of popular culture and politics which define our public life are essentially the…
There was a time when anyone caught talking about “US imperialism” was instantly branded a mad Leninist. No longer. Today, aided and abetted by the ever-more brazen antics of the Bush administration, talk of American “empire” and “imperialism” can be found across the political spectrum.
Sidney Lens's excellent historical overview of US imperialism first appeared in 1971 and its reissue now, with a new introduction by Howard Zinn, is extremely timely. For one thing Lens's survey helps…
This book is a collection of interviews with Israeli soldiers who at some stage decided to refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories.
Some of these soldiers are familiar to readers of WRI's co-alert email lists, as their imprisonment was reported to generate support. Others were lucky and didn't spent time behind bars (so far). None of the soldiers interviewed in this book is a pacifist. All of them continue to serve in the IDF. Still, this book gives some insights into their moral…
During the 1948 war that resulted in the establishment of the state of Israel, some 750,000 Palestinians fled their homes and became refugees. Following the 1967 war in which Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip many more Palestinians were displaced. There are now somewhere between four and six million - two thirds of the Palestinian people - living outside the borders of historic Palestine.
In many ways I think of my friend Hassan as a typical Palestinian refugee. His…
One of the few glimmers of hope in relation to the Israel-Palestine conflict in recent years has been the growth of a movement of international solidarity with the Palestinians calling for a just resolution to the conflict and utilising the techniques of nonviolent direct action to oppose the Israeli occupation, the best known example of which is the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).
Activists from around the world - many from the US and Britain - have travelled to the…
Although various human rights groups have documented and examined the practices used by the state of Israel against Palestinian political detainees, including child prisoners, this book is the first to be published which also provides an in-depth critical analysis of the political motivations behind these actions.
Separated into three sections - Framework and Context, Arrest through Incarceration, and Analysis & Conclusions - this book sets out not only to tell the complete story…
One of the stickiest problems for individuals and organisations trying to engage with the horror that is the conflict between Israel and Palestine is the issue of antiSemitism. It lurks as a spectre of guilt for those coming to the topic without a “legitimate” interest, ie being Jewish or Palestinian. And it is hurled at anyone who dares to criticise the state of Israel by those who support any of that state's actions, however bloody.
This little book - hardly more than a pamphlet -…
In his introduction to this beautiful memoir, the late Edward Said says: what gives this book an unmistakeable stamp of profound authenticity is its life-affirming poetic texture. This is no surprise as Barghouti is indeed a poet of great sensitivity, he is the author of nine books of poetry; few of his poems are translated into English. For us in the English-speaking minority world, the idea that there is a body of Palestinian literature is probably as remote and unbelievable as…
