Interview

Born in 1947, Michael Albert has been a radical activist since he opposed the Vietnam War as a student at MIT in Boston in the 1960s. He has gone on to write more than 15 books and establish some of the most important organisations of the American radical left – from the progressive publishing house South End Press, to Z Magazine, and the popular website ZNet. A visionary and strategist, Albert, along with Robin Hahnel, has developed a form of “participatory economics”, or Parecon, as an…

Since setting up the Media Lens website in 2002, David Edwards and David Cromwell have been publishing regular free Media Alerts “correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media”. Dissecting the reporting of issues such as Iraq, Iran, Venezuela and climate change in the liberal media (the BBC, Guardian, Independent and so on) Media Lens encourages readers to email individual journalists to take them to task, always urging those that do “to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non…

Most of us have a grand vision, but few of us dare to make our dreams reality. In the 1970s the Atlantis community formed as a therapy community, by the `80s they had ecological communities in Ireland and Colombia. However, their dream was shattered when they lost 6,000 acres of land and two of their young adults at the hands of a band of FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces Columbia) paramilitaries.

Lauren Kelley: How did the Atlantis community come to be established in Ireland…

On 16 October 1985 (international World Food Day), London Greenpeace -- an independent, anarchist/anti-militarist group originally set up in 1971 by people around Peace News -- launched an annual international day of action against "McDonald's and all they stand for."

The group's leaflets brought together criticisms of McDonald's business practices made by different movements in relation to the environment, workers' rights, cash crops and world trade, nutrition, advertising to…

How would you describe the state of democracy in Nepal one year on from the jana andolan II?

Symbolically, people-power triumphed, thus giving way to some semblance of a democratic dispensation. Structurally, at least on paper, the interim parliament has almost dismantled the old order that derived much of its powers from the palace. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, in terms of their aspirations, attitudes and behaviours - the grassroots signs of a democracy in…

Norman Finkelstein, author and academic, was punished for his principled stand against Israeli brutality by being denied tenure at DePaul University in June 2007. On 12 November, during a whirlwind British speaking tour, and before delivering a talk in Maastricht about Gandhi’s relevance to the Middle East conflict, Norman Finkelstein sat down with Peace News to discuss nonviolence, Gandhi and the role of the intellectual.

Peace News: What are the current peace prospects in Israel…

PN: Tell us a bit about yourself, what kind of work you do and what your focus is - in terms of the reports or opinion pieces you write.

BS: I am a full-time journalist with a visual arts background, but over the last decade the painting has been sidelined bymy professional involvement with journalism - as well as activism in human rights issues, which includes, of course, women's issues and peace issues - and, for the past couple of years, television documentary. (I did an…

PN: For some years now Macedonia has been on the receiving end of “humanitarian” military interventions [see box below for a list of international missions to Macedonia]. NATO peacekeeping forces have been deployed in Macedonia for several years already, and will probably remain there for years to come. Can you briefly explain the different “peacekeeping” missions that have taken place in your country and what their aims were?

Bobi: The first NATO troops arrived in…

The following interview was conducted with filmmaker Anand Patwardhan, who recently produced War and Peace - a three-hour film of epic proportions about the state of affairs in Pakistan and India. We spoke in Toronto during the Hot-docs Film Festival after the showing of his film.

CS: Anand, do you call your self a Gandhian? I am going by what I saw in War and Peace where you trace your relationship to Gandhi through your uncles and other Gandhians in the…

Over the summer there was a minor media storm as, in the run up to 7/7, journalists and politicians heard about Fun Da Mental's new album All is War. It's a provocative and challenging album (see review opposite) and the track that caught the media's attention is called Cookbook DIY. We caught up with main man Aki Nawaz and, at his request, tried to ask him some “hard” questions!

PN: The mainstream media have given you a seriously hard time over the album…

PN: What is your background in relation to Darfur?

ADW: I travelled extensively in Darfur when I first went as a PhD student in 1985. I wrote my first book on famine in Darfur. Subsequently I've spent almost all of the last 22 years working on the Horn of Africa.

PN: What are the origins of the Darfur crisis?

ADW: The underlying factors are the economic and political marginalisation of Darfur, including both Arabs and non-Arabs. Darfur…

Coskun, you were imprisoned for almost 12 years, from 1979 to 1991, when the rest of your sentence was changed to a suspended sentence. What was important for you in prison and where did you get your strength from ?

The most important source of strength was my belief in being right. But this wasn’t a blind belief. I was objecting to exploitation and human rights violations. I desired democratic and economic development in our country. These were quite simple demands, compared to…

Ippy: Your music is politicised by design, but what did you get into first, music or politics, and when?

Adam: We all know that music (noise) and politics (anything that governs our lives) are every day, act to act, moment to moment continuums that inform and shape our lives. I can say that in 1971 a nine-year-old (who would later become the brilliant but derided political theorist and Kant scholar-professor Arthur Strum) exposed me to Nixon's secret bombing of Cambodia, as well as…

Climate scientists have reached an international consensus that devastating runaway climate change is inevitable unless significant changes are made. How radical do these changes have to be? Is it possible to make these changes within the current framework of industrial capitalism? Below are edited highlights of responses from a variety of activists from radical movements – the full text of the interviews are available on the Peace News blog.

PN: In your view, can we halt runaway…

Hicham Yezza, a Nottingham university peace activist, was convicted in February on immigration charges - which he is appealing. (See PN 2499-500 for the original smears against him.) Hich spoke to PN after being released from prison in mid-August.

PN What happened after you were given your sentence of nine months in prison?
HY I was led away to a cell downstairs where my details were taken and I had a few minutes to thank my solicitors for the work they did.
I was then…