Reviews

Winterbottom's gripping film charts the “incredible journey” of the Tipton Three - from a planned wedding in Pakistan to their imprisonment in Guantanamo Bay: at times surreal and constantly disturbing. Shown on Channel Four in March, this film can now be watched online (for a streaming/rental fee). Visit http://www.tiscali.co.uk/guantanamo

This new DVD offering from Undercurrents - released on 8 March to mark International Women's Day - compiles nine short films produced by women film-makers. Includes Helen Iles award winning Life Before Death, which reflects on women's experience of terminal illness and brief shorts taking a, sometimes humorous, look at topics such as ID cards, the mental health system, disability, the Clown Army and direct action against nuclear waste shipments in Germany. An eclectic mix and an ongoing project which Undercurrents hope will be “a showcase…

Messages to the World is the first time that all the written statements and audio broadcasts of Osama bin Laden have been brought together in a single volume in English. Starting in December 1994, with what is generally considered to be his first published statement intended to reach a broad audience, the text covers the decade up to December 2004, and another attack against the ruling family in his homeland of Saudi Arabia.

It is strange that it has taken so long for such a work to appear. Perhaps this says a great deal about the…

The New Internationalist's mini books are packed with quotes, cartoons, photographs and nuggets of information, which makes them ideal for dipping into. These three titles pursue pacifist, environmental and animal rights agendas as one would expect from this magazine group, run by a co-op. The New Internationalist was originally sponsored by Oxfam, Christian Aid and the Cadbury and Rowntree Trusts, and still focuses on poverty and inequality.

Although most of the quotes support an activist agenda, thought-provoking opposing voices…

This book is a useful introduction to some of the philosophical issues and theories relating to war and peace. It begins with an account of three basic approaches to the morality of war; political realism, internationalism and cosmopolitanism.

Political realism argues that moral values have no leverage in international politics, while internationalism looks to give those values some international status, primarily through the medium of international law. Cosmopolitanism, on the other hand, begins from what is sometimes called “world…

Timing and space dictate that this second offering from Verso - a slim volume of anti-Iraq war essays - gets a rather slim space in this issue of PN.

This collection of six short articles, written over the past three years by contributors Brian Eno, John Le Carre, Harold Pinter, Richard Dawkins, Michel Faber and Haifa Zangana, was published in March to mark the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

To a large degree this book is essentially “recycled material”: I didn't find much new or challenging here. Three…

Years ago I wrote admiringly (in NvA) of Pat Arrowsmith's poems and illustrations, Drawing to Extinction (Hearing Eye 2000), but now - with too little time and too few words to do them justice here's another clutch of books from Hearing Eye (hearing_eye@torriano.org). This is recommendation in itself and I envy the poets for being so chosen.

Miroslav Jancic (1935-2004), who was born in, exiled from, and returned to die, in Sarajevo, has something to say about being “…

“It's always too soon to go home. And it's always too soon to calculate effect.” Activists who feel despondent and or just plain tired will read this book and take heart in our work and find purpose in the creative search for a better world. Solnit believes we've had many successes; we can and should rejoice - and then carry on.

“I once read an anecdote by someone in Women Strike for Peace, the first great antinuclear movement in the United States, the one that did contribute to a major victory: the 1963 end of aboveground…

On 7 July 2005 four young British men detonated bombs on London's public transport system, killing 52 people as well as themselves. Why they did it and how we can prevent future such attacks are the two central themes of Milan Rai's latest book, which combines a deeply moving tribute to the bombers' victims with the gripping, page-turning qualities of a good detective novel.

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks - and before the Government shrewdly re-focused the public debate onto the role of “preachers of hatred” - opinion…

Katharine von Schubert's book tells the story of a period of a year and half, when this young woman joined Quaker Peace and Social Witness's human rights observation programme in the West Bank. As such, I approached it with some trepidation. In the last few years, a number of volumes have emerged recounting the experiences of international activists in Palestine, from the International Solidarity Movement, Christian Peacemaker Teams and a range of other groups. Some have been very good, and offered genuine insights into the situation in…

Jarhead is yet another Sam Mendes tour de force. This time bringing the Anthony Swofford memoirs of a US marine scout/sniper in the first Gulf War in Iraq to the big screen, once again Mendes has brought the same intensity and throw-away realism that his previous Hollywood adventures have also had.

Just like his previous big-budget outings, Jarhead adds an abstract or almost surreal quality to the very real and mundane nature of one aspect of the US way of life - this time it is modern warfare.

In …

Spirited Living is an essay written from the 2004 Swarthmore Lecture in which Simon Fisher, an experienced peace worker, lends a personal viewpoint to a call for Quakers to become more actively involved in peace activism or conflict transformation.

From the first chapter, the current status of the overall Quaker movement is challenged. It is represented as a somewhat confused and benign force in the global peace movement. The brief history of the Quakers given, including some of the courageous and successful peace-work…

One Voice is a compilation of two pieces by the renowned pacifist Vera Brittain, written during World War II. The first, Humiliation with Honour, is a reproduction of a series of letters from mother to son. The second, Seeds of Chaos, provides detailed and gruelling evidence of the human and cultural destruction stemming from the “obliteration bombing” policy adopted by the RAF in the 1940s. A foreword by her daughter, Shirley Williams, and introduction by Y Aleksandra Bennett give context to the two works.

…

White Rose was the name of a student group in Munich that was engaged in the production of clandestine publications - leaflets that stated that the Nazi dictatorship were losing the war, and showed that it was totally futile to continue the conflict, especially after the horrific loss of German lives at Stalingrad.

The film concentrates on Sophie Scholl and, to a much lesser extent, her brother Hans, who were both leading figures within White Rose. It covers what happened to the pair of them during just a short period in February…

Margaret Legum has written a good and interesting book, but not the one she set out to write.

Part of the problem is that the book emerged from a set of lectures given at a University of Capetown Summer School. There is therefore an expectation that the reader already has a relatively clear understanding of the social and ecological costs of unfettered capitalism. While this is true for South Africa, other parts of the world still have a (diminishing) cushion of illusion. I fear that the density of her prose (suited to speaking, not…