Carlyle, Gabriel

Carlyle, Gabriel

Gabriel Carlyle

1 October 2005News

On 8 Nov 2004, after more than two months of aerial attacks, the US began its second major assault on Fallujah, devastating the city and killing hundreds of civilians. Serious war crimes were committed, including the bombing of a health centre and a shoot-to-kill curfew. UK forces played an active support role, with hundreds of troops redeployed from Southern Iraq to form part of a "ring of steel" around the city.

Today, an estimated 100,000 Iraqis who fled the attack have yet to…

1 February 2005Review

The New Press, 2004; ISBN 1 56584 948 5 (hb) £12.99

In one of many memorable scenes in his new book, Christian Parenti asks a doctor in Ramadi, Iraq, whether he sees many children with symptoms related to possible radiation poisoning – a potential legacy of depleted-uranium weapons used by US forces in 1991 and 2004. “I cannot answer,” the doctor replies. “Why not?” Parenti asks. After a long pause the doctor finally offers a coded apology: “This is the freedom,” he explains. “Ah, the freedom … [w]e have the gas-line freedom, the looting…

1 September 2004Review

Trolley, 2003. ISBN 1 904563 05 8; 173pp

Between 1961 and 1971 the United States dropped approximately 46 million litres of Agent Orange - a herbicide containing the highly toxic waste product dioxin - on South Vietnam. Some 20,000 villages were sprayed, affecting an estimated five million people.

In 1965 an official for the Dow Chemical Corporation wrote an internal memo in which he recognised that dioxin was “exceptionally toxic ... [with] tremendous potential for producing chloracne [a skin disorder similar to acne] and…

1 April 2004Review

The Forging of the American Empire, Pluto Press 2003, ISBN 0 7453 2100 3; £16.99. Incoherent Empire, Verso 2003, ISBN 1 85984 582 7; £15

There was a time when anyone caught talking about “US imperialism” was instantly branded a mad Leninist. No longer. Today, aided and abetted by the ever-more brazen antics of the Bush administration, talk of American “empire” and “imperialism” can be found across the political spectrum.

Sidney Lens's excellent historical overview of US imperialism first appeared in 1971 and its reissue now, with a new introduction by Howard Zinn, is extremely timely. For one thing Lens's survey helps…

1 April 2004Review

Live from Palestine: International and Palestinian Direct Action Against the Israeli Occupation, South End Press 2003; ISBN 0 89608 695 X. By Theft and Murder: A Beginners Guide to the Occupation of Palestine, Spare Change Books 2003; ISBN 0 9525744 3 8

One of the few glimmers of hope in relation to the Israel-Palestine conflict in recent years has been the growth of a movement of international solidarity with the Palestinians calling for a just resolution to the conflict and utilising the techniques of nonviolent direct action to oppose the Israeli occupation, the best known example of which is the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

Activists from around the world - many from the US and Britain - have travelled to the…