Needham, Andrea

On 18 January 2009, as Israeli bombs – many of them containing British-made components – rained down on the people of Gaza, six people entered the EDO arms factory in Brighton, and proceeded to carry out a people’s decommissioning. Equipment used to make weapons’ components was smashed, and computers and filing cabinets were thrown out of windows. EDO claimed they had suffered £300,000 of damage – no mention, of course, of the damage being caused by their weapons in Gaza. All six were…

Kate Evans’ Thank you Greenham (Laughing Moon Press; 2008;ISBN 978-0956006103; 100pp; £7) is an account of her visits to Greenham in the early ’80s, with a particular stress on “how difficult it was to be a part-time activist”.

Interesting, it’s often hard to read: it’s a very honest account, brutally so at times. The experience seems to have damaged the author emotionally, yet she still manages to make the book a positive read, looking at Greenham as part of a wider struggle against…

A plaudit for this book calls it “proof that you don't have to stop rockin' once you become a parent”.

Having never started rockin', I'm perhaps not the intended audience but found it an interesting addition to the panoply of parenting books I've read over the past four years. The book started life as columns for US zine Maximum Rock and Roll, on the theme of “punk parent[ing]”, and much of the content reflects this origin.

There is some useful stuff here, not covered in other…

Why do we need another book on climate change? According to George Marshall, because climate change is “the greatest moral challenge we have ever faced” but is generally presented in a way which is “baffling, boring, and irrelevant” (oh, and we're all in denial about it anyway).

He aims - by presenting only the bare scientific facts, and concentrating on the essential issue of how to come to terms with the problem we face and reduce our personal emissions - to give us a book which…

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…

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…

Some years ago, the BAE AGM was an annual free-for-all, with dozens of token shareholders shouting, standing on chairs, trying to stop the meeting and generally causing mayhem.

After a few years it started to feel ritualistic and I began to question the value of such tactics. In more recent years, however, things have got a lot quieter.

This year the focus was the abandoned SFO enquiry into corruption in BAE's deals with Saudi Arabia. Everyone trooped in quietly, sat quietly,…

The five chapters of this book were originally part of a longer book, And justice for all, published in1963 (the other five chapters can be found at http://www.oceanbooks.com.au ). The author, William Kunstler, who died in 1995, was a radical US defence lawyer whose clients included Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

The reissue is in response to the current attack on civil liberties in the US in the wake of 11 September 2001, and…