Carlyle, Gabriel

Carlyle, Gabriel

Gabriel Carlyle

1 February 2008Feature

Recently, reading about Ukraine’s 2004 “Orange Revolution” – with its iconic tent-city occupation of Kiev’s Independence Square, the Maidan – my memory was sent hurtling back to the 2003 “Day X” protests in London on the day that Britain invaded Iraq.

Then, in what was probably the most dramatic UK protest against the war, thousands of schoolchildren left their classes to occupy the roads around Parliament as part of a national school strike involving scores, if not hundreds, of…

1 February 2008Review

Serpents Tail, 2007; ISBN 185242964X; 224pp; £12.99

Starting in 2000, a wave of “people power” revolutions - spearheaded by vibrant youth movements - toppled governments in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine.

Each involved an unpopular government with authoritarian tendencies, a rigged election, an explicit commitment on the part of the “revolutionaries” (crucial to their success) to use only nonviolent tactics and, most controversially, financial support from Western governments and “democracy” foundations.

According to the Financial…

1 December 2007Review

Five Leaves, 2007; ISBN 1905512163; 192pp; £9.99; A Dangerous Woman: The Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman, New Press, Fall 2007; ISBN 1595580646; 128pp; £11.99

“Peace News ... [is] always being accused of anarchism”, observed Nicolas Walter in 1963, and even today the charge retains much of its force.

Indeed, as Walter notes in this posthumously-collected book of his essays, the First World War - and the resistance to it “brought a permanent pacifist element into anarchism”, and whilst “[t]he campaigns for nuclear disarmament, racial integration and workers control do not belong to the territory of classical anarchism ... there is no doubt…

1 December 2007Review

£4 incl p&p. Send cheques (made payable to `Voices in the Wilderness') to: Voices UK, 5 Caledonian Road, London N1 9DX

Not long after the discovery of oil in Persia in 1908, Winston Churchill instigated a programme to convert the British navy from coal-to oil- powered vessels. Control over the oilfields of the Middle East - including, of course, those of modern-day Iraq - became a major priority of western foreign policy, and to a large extent has shaped the face of the peace movement today.

Jon Sack's Iraqi Oil for Beginners is a comic history of Iraq which takes us through the fascinating (and for…

1 December 2007News

Much has been made in recent weeks of the apparent success of the US “surge” the massive increase in US troops deployed to Iraq.

In fact, the picture is less rosy when we look closely.

In a report published on 5 November, former Pentagon analyst Anthony Cordesman observed that the recent decline in the worst kinds of violence in Iraq was due to a combination of factors, “the most important of which had little to do with the `surge' in US troops”.

“Much of the…

16 November 2007Feature

In mid-October, the United Nations reported that 2,000 Iraqis flee their homes every day. 2.2 million are refugees in their own country, while more than 2.2m have fled to neighbouring countries. (1m were displaced prior to the 2003 invasion.)

4m refugees?

In Syria, the 1.2m Iraqi refugees amount to 7% of the population; while in Jordan, 500,000 - 750,000 Iraqi refugees make up perhaps 10% of the population.
    A comparable inflow in Britain…

1 November 2007Review

Constable & Robinson, 2007; ISBN 1845295862, 512pp; £12.99

If the phrase “war comics” conjures up for you images of magazines with names like “Warlord” and “Commando”, and simple-minded celebrations of militarism and empire, then, please, just ignore the title.

Indeed, the first two selections in this wonderful collection - Keiji Nakazawa's “I Saw It!” (precursor to his epic account of the bombing of Hiroshima and its aftermath, Barefoot Gen) and Raymond Briggs' “The Tin Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman” - are as anti-war a pair of…

16 October 2007Feature

A poll of 1,461 adults in 15 of Iraq's 18 regions indicates that as many as 1.2 million Iraqis have died violently because of the conflict since the invasion

British polling agency ORB, which has conducted polls for the BBC and the Financial Services Authority, asked randomly-selected adults in face-to-face interviews in mid-August how many members of their immediate households had “died as a result of the conflict (ie as a result of violence rather than a natural death such as old…

1 October 2007Review

Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence, Seven Stories Press, 2006; ISBN 1 583227 31 8; 336pp; £10.99. Desert of Death: A Soldier's Journey from Iraq to Afghanistan, Faber and Faber, 2007; 208pp; ISBN 0 5712 3 688 X; £14.99

Following the “collapse” of the Taliban in November 2001, Afghanistan fell off the radars of most anti-war activists. Consequently, many of us have quite a bit of catching up to do - which makes the publication of Bleeding Afghanistan extremely welcome.

 

Written by two US activists whose work with the Afghan Women's Mission - a non-profit organisation raising funds and awareness for the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) - pre-dates 9/11,…

1 September 2007News

Gordon Brown is succeeding with his first great spin campaign, appearing to distance himself from the aggressive policies of his predecessor while at the same time escalating his two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

YouGov found in early August that 73% of respondents think the new prime minister is not as close to US president George W. Bush as Tony Blair was, and 57% think Brown has got the relationship with the US “about right”.

At the same time, according to the Sunday…

1 September 2007Review

Earth-scan, 2007; ISBN 1 84407 426 9; 326pp; £14.99

The fundamental premise of this surprisingly gripping book is that “individuals rather than governments or companies are going to be the driving force behind reductions in greenhouse gases.”

Annual UK CO2 emissions amount to 12.5 tonnes per person, roughly half of which is generated by individuals running their houses, cars and taking transport. The other half is generated by activities such as agriculture, industry, and transporting goods. By a closely examining the emissions…

16 July 2007Feature

Could it really be done? Could over 700 people - many of whom had never met before - not only build and manage a massive camp site on the perimeter of Heathrow, whilst organising a day of mass direct action against the aviation industry, but do so using participatory, consensus decision-making?

This was the utopian vision outlined in the pre-publicity for the `Camp for Climate Action', and from what I saw as a participant during days three to five the answer was yes.

Arriving…

1 November 2006Review

Macmillan, 2005; ISBN 0 3339 0491 5; £20.

At the end of the 18th century well over three-quarters of humanity lived in bondage of one form or another, in a world in which, in the words of one historian, “freedom, not slavery, was the peculiar institution”. This amazing book - packed full of unforgettable heroes and villains - tells the story of the pivotal role played by popular campaigning in the termination of two of the worst manifestations of this global system: the British slave trade and Britain's West Indian slave plantations…

1 October 2006Feature

This October, a month of activities - culminating in a weekend of nonviolent civil disobedience against the occupation - will mark the anniversary of the 2004 attack on Fallujah. Gabriel Carlyle outlines the programme.

On 8 November 2004, the US -- with British assistance -- launched a massive assault against the Iraqi city of Fallujah. Hundreds of civilians were killed, tens of thousands of people forced to flee their homes, and white phosphorus -- a substance that burns down to the bone -- used as a weapon.

“I cannot forgive the American crimes when they bombed my town. An entire family made up of 18 members, which used to live nearby, was killed.” Fallujah teacher Ishraq Shakir…

1 March 2006Review

Pluto Press 2006; 208pp; ISBN 0745325637; £11.99. Available in the UK with free p&p from http://www.j-n-v.org

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…