Ian Sinclair
Written in the shadow of the worsening, potentially existential, climate crisis and accompanying government inaction, professor Dana R Fisher makes two central arguments in Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action.
First, while many people believe the shocking, disruptive civil disobedience carried out by groups such as Just Stop Oil (JSO) is detrimental to their cause and to the wider climate movement, Fisher argues that ‘the evidence to date does not support this…
James Lawson, who died in June aged 95, was described by Martin Luther King Jr. as ‘the greatest teacher of nonviolence in America.’
Best known for his activism during the US civil rights movement, Lawson travelled to the then segregated city of Nashville, Tennessee in the late 1950s, after King implored him to join the struggle.
Heavily influenced by Gandhi and working as a field secretary for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), Lawson started running regular workshops on…
At its most basic, Unarmed Civilian Protection (UCP) refers to ‘civilians protecting themselves and other civilians, without the use or threat of violence,’ co-editor Ellen Furnari explains in her introduction.
Fellow co-editor Randy Janzen lists three broad categories of UCP: creating space for nonviolent activism (for example, North American activists accompanying human rights defenders in South and Central America in the 1980s); traditional peacekeeping; and protecting communities…
On 21 May, the Nuclear Education Trust, an independent charity that aims to inform and educate decision-makers, the public and media about nuclear weapons, launched its new report The Future for UK Defence, Diplomacy and Disarmament in the House of Lords.
Written by Dr Tim Street and based on a survey of UK parliamentarians, think tank experts, academics and representatives of civil society organisations (including PN editor Milan Rai), the report considers ‘how the…
At over 650 pages, White Malice may look daunting but is actually written in such an engrossing journalistic style that it sometimes reads like a spy thriller.
Dr Susan Williams, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, focuses on US covert intervention in the Congo and Ghana in the late ’50s and early ’60s.
In particular, she writes about the fate of two popular politicians – Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of…
From Che Guevara to Gandhi and Lenin, revolutionaries and historians of revolutions have tended to focus on so-called ‘Great Men’.
She Who Struggles is an admirable attempt to correct this imbalance, an edited collection highlighting women who played key roles in revolutionary, anti-colonial and socialist struggles during the twentieth century, including in Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Kurdistan, Mali and Palestine.
‘Within these movements, women’s liberation was often placed as…
Earlier this year, Brown University’s Costs of War project calculated that the US-led ‘war on terror’ has led to nearly one million people being killed due to direct violence, many more being killed by indirect causes connected to the conflict, and 38 million people being displaced.
In his new book, US writer and activist Norman Solomon highlights how the government, military and media hide the murderous impact of US military interventions from the US public.
Relying largely on…
Concise, accessible and well-referenced, this is a wonderful book about a protest I wasn’t previously aware of.
Vincent J Intondi, professor of history at Montgomery College in Maryland, USA, sets the scene: surrounded by ‘advisors who believed nuclear war was a reasonable option to deal with adversaries’ in the early 1980s newly-elected US president Ronald Reagan massively increased both military spending and his warmongering rhetoric.
In response, the anti-nuclear movement,…
Due to the impacts of global warming, ‘human movement on a scale never before seen will dominate this century and remake our world.’
This is the central proposition of this important popular science book. Gaia Vince, an honorary senior research fellow at University College London, believes we are on course for a 3 – 4 °C of temperature rise by 2100, with tens of millions of people forced to leave their homes by mid-century.
Vince points to some African cities: by 2030, Dar es…
Following the January 2023 mass trespass on Dartmoor, the 2014 – 2018 campaign to stop the felling of trees in Sheffield and the government’s 2011 U-turn on the privatisation of the forests, Saving The People’s Forest is a timely reminder that activists working today are part of a long line of popular struggles to protect public access to nature in the UK.
The book’s title refers to Epping Forest, on the border of Greater London and Essex. At 5,900 acres, it is the largest…
A long-time war correspondent with the Washington Post, Thomas E Ricks has turned his attention to the US civil rights movement.
Why?
‘The overall strategic thinking that went into the Movement, and the field tactics that flowed from that strategy’ reminded him of US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The comparison with war-fighting is certainly interesting but it’s his focus on strategy and tactics, including recruitment, training, planning,…
At 875 pages, including a 50-page bibliography and 90 pages of references, this is a huge tome, and a serious investment of time.
Those looking for a much shorter primer covering much of the same ground may want to check out John Newsinger’s The Blood Never Dried: A People’s History of the British Empire (Bookmarks, 2006).
However, those who persist will discover a hugely impressive tour de force, providing a deep dive into the massive violence that ‘was…
In 2019, the Washington Post published a treasure trove of documents proving that ‘US officials had repeatedly lied to the public about what was happening in Afghanistan, just as they had in Vietnam.’ This industrial-scale deception was spread across the three presidencies of Bush, Obama and Trump.
The papers included notes from over 1,000 interviews with people who played a direct role in the war – taken from huge ‘Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction’…
‘We seem trapped in a world where fossil fuel producers and financiers have humanity by the throat,’ UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated in June. ‘For decades, many in the fossil fuel industry have invested heavily in pseudo-science and public relations — with a false narrative to minimise their responsibility for climate change and undermine ambitious climate policies.’
Written by two Rutgers University academics A Strategic Nature explores the relationship between…
Opening with a quote from the lawyer Otto Gritschneder – ‘Those who sleep in a democracy will wake up in a dictatorship’ – Nils Melzer notes that his new book is intended as ‘an urgent appeal… a wake up call to the general public.’
The United Nations special rapporteur on torture from 2016 until March 2022, Melzer provides a damning indictment of the US, UK, Sweden and Ecuador for their treatment of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Writing in methodical and accessible language, he…
