Rai, Milan

Rai, Milan

Milan Rai

1 November 2008Feature

As I made my way around the upper floor of London’s Barbican Art Gallery, I gradually realised that I’d come with a preconception, an assumption which had turned out to be wildly wrong. I’d presumed naïvely that an art exhibition entitled “This Is War!” would be basically an anti-war exhibition.

The Robert Capa-Gerda Taro photography exhibition (focussed on the Spanish Civil War) on the top floor is actually a pro-war exhibition, though no less fascinating for all that. It…

1 November 2008News

Two more US war resisters have been put on notice of deportation from Canada, where they have sought refuge.

On 8 October, US Iraq war resister Patrick Hart, his wife Jill and son Rian were told that they had to voluntarily leave Canada or be deported to the United States on 30 October.

The next day, Matt Lowell, of London, Ontario, was ordered to leave Canada by 28 October.

Patrick Hart is a former sergeant and a nine-year veteran of the US military. After serving…

1 November 2008Review

Simon & Schuster, 2008, ISBN 978-1-84737-355-7; 288pp: £17.99

One of Tariq Ali’s identities (activist, novelist, broadcaster and so on) is participant-observer of his native Pakistan.

The Duel is a highly timely, well-informed, readable, sometimes-not-very-chronological study of Pakistan’s political evolution. Peace activists will probably skip straight to chapters eight and nine, dealing with US influence on Pakistan (heavy), and recent Afghan-Pakistani interactions (mutually destabilising). There is a lot of interesting material here, but not…

3 October 2008Comment

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has sparked enormous enthusiasm throughout the world – and a fair amount back home in the United States – as a symbol of change. Many progressive-minded people are hoping that he will bring about genuine reform in domestic and foreign affairs.

Our opinion, to be blunt, is that Barack Obama is another Tony Blair.

It is difficult to remember at this point – steeped as we are in the blood and lies of the Iraq war – the excitement…

1 October 2008News

The Israeli government has more than doubled the size of a dozen of its settlements on the West Bank, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, by seizing Palestinian land for “special security areas” – by military order.
The justification is that these lands are needed as “warning areas” – but they are used by settlers, exposing their real purpose: the seizure of Palestinian land.
Figures compiled from official sources by Israeli peace group Peace Now indicate…

1 October 2008News

The US raids inside Pakistan (see p1) raise the risk of terrorist attacks in London, said Wajid Shamsul Hassan, Pakistani high commissioner to Britain, on 14 September.
“This will infuriate Muslims in this country and make the streets of London less safe,” he added. “The Americans’ trigger-happy actions will radicalise young Muslims. They’re playing into the hands of the very militants we’re supposed to be fighting.”
Pointing out that no high-level Taliban or al Qa’eda leader…

1 October 2008Feature

China, which spent £6bn on green energy projects last year, may soon become the world’s largest investor in renewable energy.

The ministry of public security has listed pollution as one of the top five threats to China’s peace and stability. In 2005, China experienced 51,000 riots or demonstrations of 100 or more people protesting against pollution – according to official estimates.

Li Junfeng, an energy expert at the National Development and Reform Commission said in…

1 October 2008News

From Afghanistan to Palestine to Minnesota, video activism has been proving its value over the past few months.
It was video shot on a local doctor’s mobile phone that forced the Pentagon to drop its claim that only seven civilians died in Nawabad.
The footage, viewable on the web (see p2), shows dozens of bodies lying in the local mosque the morning after the massacre.

Point-blank
In July, in Palestine, video recorded by Salam Kanaan, 17, showed the world a…

1 October 2008News

Once again, Iran’s recent cooperation with UN inspectors, and its positive proposal for an international consortium to control its uranium enrichment, are being ignored, and the Iranian government is being pilloried in the press.

As PN goes to press, a new report on Iran is being presented to the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), accusing Tehran of failing to cooperate with IAEA investigations into alleged “weaponisation” research.

The IAEA has also…

3 September 2008Comment

Climate Camp has rightly been described as both “the world’s most organised protest” and “the most important protest of our time”. The severity of the climate crisis that is looming is not easy to imagine. If we do see a temperature rise of 4C above pre-industrial levels, up to half the world’s species could die out, and our descendants will face apocalyptic consequences.

The Camp is the confluence of several streams of organising going back decades. It demonstrates, among other…

1 September 2008Feature

It is customary to mark significant dates in a scholar’s life with a festschrift – a publication containing original work in fields that the honoured academic has been involved in.
I think we can be sure that Noam Chomsky has little interest in such honours, but it seems churlish to allow his 80th birthday to pass on 7 December without some public marking of the value of his work and example to several generations of activists around the world. (I note with alarm that German historian…

1 September 2008News

The US-Iran nuclear crisis continues, as the world’s great powers disagree on how to move forward, and the west snubs Iran’s proposal for an international consortium to control the enrichment of uranium on Iranian soil.
Iran’s consortium proposal was made on 13 May, but has been studiously ignored, not only by diplomats, but by the western mass media.

Public support

This is despite the fact that a majority of people in Britain, France and the US support Iran’s…

1 September 2008Review

Streetwide Worldwide: Where people power begins, Jon Carpenter 2008; ISBN 978 1 906067 03 8; 306pp; £14.99. From Poverty to Power: How Active Citizens and Effective States can Change the World , Oxfam 2008; ISBN 978 0 85598 593 6; 522pp; £15.95. The Urgency of Now, Oxfam 2008; ISBN 978 0 85598 629 2; 62pp; £3.99.

Tony Gibson’s previous book The Power in Our Hands (Jon Carpenter, 1996) demonstrated truly participatory grassroots organising using methods as open to the verbally unconfident as to the fluent.
Surprisingly (to me), his follow-up book is an autobiography. But what an autobiography!

Tony Gibson’s experiences in just-pre-revolutionary China with the (Quaker) Friends Ambulance Unit are a wonderful description of how outsiders can truly support and empower poor people

His…

16 July 2008Feature

The third and biggest British Camp for Climate Action fed, watered and educated perhaps 3,000 people from 3-11 August, sparked actions around the country, triggered 100 arrests and two prison sentences and culminated in a massive day of action against the proposed new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Essex.

Climate Camp highlighted the importance of the Kingsnorth decision as a key indicator of whether or not Britain is serious about avoiding catastrophic climate change (see…

3 July 2008Comment

There were many acts of remembrance around the country when the hundredth British soldier was killed in Afghanistan, names of the dead were read out. The occasion highlighted the enormous importance of Iraq Body Count’s work in collecting the names of non combatants killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. There are in contrast so few names of Afghans killed, there is no one doing an Afghan body count. Uncounted Afghan’s have lost their lives, and without their names who knows if they ever…