Jesse Schust
Mike Marqusee has an amazing story to tell in If I Am Not For Myself. Although the book follows his own journey through life, it reaches well beyond this and becomes a fascinating hybrid of family autobiography and detailed history of the Jewish left during the 20th century. The book traces the threads of leftist radical thought and Zionism through three generations of his family.
As a young adult, Marqusee’s anti-Zionism put him at odds with his family and many other Jewish…
What happens when the earth's climate warms by several degrees? Mark Lynas's latest book discusses changes predicted at various levels of global warming. By assigning each of the six chapters to degree of warming, Lynas illustrates the range of scenarios from one degree to six degrees. Some ideas presented will be familiar (rising ocean levels, crop failures, violent storms), but many more will come as a shock (more rainfall predicted for the Sahara desert, the Amazon rainforest easily…
When I arrived at the test centre, I wasn't worried at all. Instead of buying the 145 page book Life in the UK - A Journey To Citizenship for #10, I visited my library and scanned through it quickly - noting that it was dull and packed full of facts/figures/dates. It seemed crazy that they might test us simply on factual matters, so I assumed the test would test your grasp of key concepts (which seemed straightforward to me).
To my dismay, the questions were fiendishly…
O-I-L (One In Love) held its annual Valentine's Day action of collectively concentrating love and sending it out to the world.
A festive atmosphere with free T-shirts and a live samba band was kindled around the Eros statue in Piccadilly Circus, London.
People were invited to form a circle to send love and healing to all the beings in this world.
The response was phenomenal. The statue and steps of Eros were cleared as people walked out to take their position in the…
On 22 March 2003, three coaches set off from London to protest against the bombing of Iraq by US B52s which were flying missions from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire. Police stopped, searched, turned away, and detained the London coaches before they reached the demonstration. The police actions have consequently become the subject of an ongoing legal case which had a ruling at the Court of Appeal on the 8 of December 2004. The recent ruling was unsatisfactory to the protesters even though…
Even though Ireland remains officially a neutral state, military landings at Shannon Airport in County Clare have nearly tripled in 2004.
The bulk of these landings are US troops travelling in and out of occupied Iraq. It is estimated that a quarter of the US soldiers currently posted in Iraq have travelled via Shannon. In order to allow the US military use of the airport, the government often turned a blind eye to the military presence. It is not known what the contents or…
