We need peace, justice, equality and civil liberties
This book contains 9 texts by 9 different authors and one excellent anti-war strip by Joe Sacco. All the texts treat different aspects of power (war) relations in our modern world.
Power, free markets, democracy
For A. Roy, power is the crucial political, economic and social factor in human affairs.
Private corporations use their power through the Free Market doctrine to undermine democracy: `Today Corporate Globalization needs an international Confederation of corrupt and authoritarian governments in poor countries. It needs a press that only pretends to be free. It needs courts that pretend to dispense justice. It needs nuclear bombs, standing armies, sterner immigration laws to make sure that it is only money, goods, patents and services that are globalized.'
War
N. Klein lambastes the war and disaster profiteers.
War on Terror
For J. LeBlanc and P. Bennis, the War on Terror is a smokescreen for US military aggression in order to gain full spectrum world dominance. The weapons of mass destruction are in the US, not elsewhere.
For T. Nguyen, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni goes after colleges and universities which are described as working against the interests of Western civilization because they are weak in the War on Terror.
War in Iraq
H. Zangara unveils the resistance of the majority of the Iraqi people against the US occupation and its puppet regime. They see control of Iraqi oil as the only reason for this occupation. She draws our attention to the systematic (!) murder of academics, journalists and clerics, the gagging of the media and the lack of freedom of speech in Iraq. But the Iraqi people, of whom 650,000 died (the equivalent of 7 million US citizens), continues to resist through the cultural sector.
L. German remembers the fact that the war created 4 million Iraqi refugees.
The `September 11th Families' stress rightly that the brutality of Saddam Hussein's regime does not justify the brutality, death and destruction visited upon Iraq and its citizens.
The Palestine question
For A. Soueif, as long as `ordinary citizens are not allowed to live their daily life in a human way, the influence of the world's only superpower will be proved to be irredeemably malign.'
This book with its sometimes belligerent attacks on current international policies, is a must read for all those interested in the world we live in.
War with No End
It is a great and very easy book to read. I respect the Authors and what they have written.
Useful collection from the anti-war movement
This useful anthology gives some idea of the vast range and depth of the US and British anti-war movements. It explores the impact of the `war on terror' from Palestine to Iraq, and looks at the US and British states' attacks on civil liberties and on public opinion.
In her excellent contribution, Arundhati Roy claims that capitalism undermines not national sovereignty, but democracy: in fact it undermines both. She rightly links the `war on terror' to the economic system that drives it, and points out that capitalism's international bodies, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation are all undemocratic, anti-national and secretive.
The best-researched piece is by Naomi Klein, author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine. She calls our current system `disaster capitalism'. She observes that after 9/11, Israel increased its military spending by 10%, financed by social services cuts. This increase funded 350 new hi-tec firms specialising in security, surveillance and weapons: one firm is revealingly called `Instinctive Shooting International'. Israel now holds six counter-terrorism conferences a year, and Forbes Magazine calls it `the go-to country for anti-terrorism technologies'.
Similarly, in the USA the Spade Defense Index, for defence, security and aerospace stocks, has risen by 15% every year since 9/11. Firms profit from the destruction caused by the wars that their states begin, then they profit again from contracts for rebuilding, then profit again by not actually rebuilding anything. Klein has rediscovered Lenin's insight that "war is terrible - and terribly profitable."
(3 reviews)
