OK - I confess, I am a Neal Stephenson fan (the sole purpose of my visits to bookshops at the moment is to ask whether his latest novel - Quicksilver - is out in paperback yet!). Before I stumbled across Zodiac I had already read his three other (predominantly sci-fi - sometimes called cyberpunk) novels and been entertained, intrigued and in the case of his epic - Cryptonomicon - been fascinated.
Zodiac is a great read, but in style and…
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…
Tatamkhulu Afrika, 83 this year, had his first novel obliterated by the Blitz. Of Middle Eastern origin, he fought the Nazis in World War Two and apartheid in South Africa. In German prison camps he performed with Denholm Elliott. And in South Africa he is a renowned poet.
Now, finally, his prose is available in print. It's powerful stuff, based on his experiences as a PoW in North Africa and Occupied Europe. In content and style, though, the book is less a standard WWII…
The lyrics were recognisably Korean, but then the song became understandable as the chorus burst forth in punk staccato: “Fucking USA”.
It was the title refrain from a hitherto obscure Korean singer, Yoon Min Suk,that has struck a cord recently with young Korean music fans. The Koreanhigh school students, many clad in Usd esigner labels, reveled to the beat. KwonHyuk Hwan, 17, was particularly forthcoming: “I hate fucking Bush. US must get out of Korea.” Kim Myung Su, 16, said: “…
Ever find yourself losing your edge? Descending into woolly liberalism? Perhaps even thinking (No!) that those corporations might just, possibly, be reformable?
If there is any mental brake to that slippery slope, this book of cartoons is it. Polyp applies his cruelly sharp wit to globalisation, militarism, corporate power and hypocritical greenwash, exposing the intellectual and moral inconsistencies of so many official statements and positions that we have become so used to that…
AWOL magazine is the product of a “workshop of artists, activists and revolutionaries”.
Started in 2000 and jointly funded by the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors and ROOTS/War Resisters League, AWOL aims to “provide a space for marginalised voices to dialogue to be heard, a place to resist and grow”. The emphasis is on providing an alternative to a dominant culture “saturated with pro-military propaganda”.
In practice the AWOL “project” is a combination…
In Serbia the REX/B92 cultural centre describes itself as “a laboratory for research of new fields of culture”.
The centre is a member of TEH (Trans Europe Halles), network of European independent cultural centres and the coalition of centres for creative development and use of new media (ECB - European independent cultural centres network).
REX projects include
Ring Ring. International New Music Festival (held every year in May, since 1996) Mladi YU vizuelni (Young…The fragile peace of the impoverished African country of Mozambique rests uneasily on caches of thousands of weapons left over from 16 years of civil war.
Albino Forquilha, coordinator of the Transforming Arms into Ploughshares project of the Christian Council of Churches, recently explained to Canadian peace and development activists how this project helps his country.
After the devastation of the civil war, Mozambique has a high level of unemployment and of violent crime. Ex…
War and Peace addresses the prime question of the moment, something which has been shaping itself threateningly into a mushroom cloud over South Asia during the past few months (or should we say decades - see the interview with Anand Patwardhan on p22-23 of this issue).
Patwardhan's three hour long film is epic in its scale through its rich collage of small voices from four different countries -- India, Pakistan, US and Japan. Despite fears to the contrary, the film turned…
Could it be that cities get the literary detectives they deserve? What does Ian Rankin's Rebus tell us about contemporary Edinburgh, or even Colin Dexter's Morse about Oxford's dreaming spires?
Well, it's time to add a new name and metropolis to the pantheon, and this guy is distinctive in that he manages to occupy an unlikely middle-ground when it comes to attitude and inclination.
Jean-Claude Izzo's complex creation, the Marseille-dwelling Inspector Montale, is a bon viveur…
Perhaps if I had known who half the (predominantly) men in this book were before I read it, Marc Estrin's novel could have been quite irritating. Thankfully my ignorance of famous 20th Century male thinkers, scientists, inventors and so on, probably saved me!
In fact, I rather liked this book. Its main character is one Gregor Samsa - half-man, half-cockroach. Samsa is an escapee from a Kafka novel (Metamorphosis) and this is a tale which reflects on some of the last century'…
This is not normally something I would purchase out of choice, as I had never heard of the artists, but from the first play there is something intriguing about Dreams and Secrets. It becomes clear that this is not something that you can dip into and come back and listen to; it really needs to be listened to as a whole.
Much like a dream there are lots of different levels to it. And much like a secret you're never quite sure where it started or where it's going! Each track…
Palestine, Palestine is an unusual creature, a film about this beautiful and terrible land which shows something of everyday life in the West Bank.
It is not a documentary as such, although it deals with real people and their day-to-day existence. It has more life and lyricism than that. But it is also grounded in reality and makes inescapable the way that the Israeli presence is not just a matter of the brutal incursions which hit the Western news but a daily challenge to the…
This powerful play received its first British production at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester last year. It tells, through the experiences of a small group of characters, of the pivotal events in the liberation struggle of an unnamed African state.
The beginnings of armed struggle are met by the British authorities not with dialogue but violent oppression, including the arrest of moderate leaders. These tensions are played out through the characters of Tshembe Matoseh, an…
The name Arthur Wragg will no doubt be familiar to some of PN's more senior readers. He joined the Peace Pledge Union in 1935, and contributed regularly to Peace News in the late 1930s. Later, he would design posters for the PPU, and his pacifism and social radicalism would inform much of his work during a career which spanned over five decades.
It is difficult now to fully appreciate the impact that Wragg's drawings would have had on contemporary audiences. Yet…
