Флориан Гроссе0.0 During the cold war, the US government sought to establish an overseas military presence in the Indian Ocean. This graphic novel is a shocking account of British complicity in the forced exodus of the Chagos Islanders from their homeland to make that plan possible. Between 1965 and 1973 the inhabitants of the Chagos archipelago were forcibly removed from their homeland and dumped in Mauritius and Seychelles. Diego Garcia, the largest island in the group, was leased to the USA by the United Kingdom to accommodate the largest US military airbase outside the US mainland. The agreement continues until 2036.
Florian Grosset’s searing account of the eviction, and the harsh life faced by the Chagossians after their displacement, looks back to the first generation of slaves who arrived on the archipelago and the lives of their descendants. It charts the present-day diaspora of Chagossians, their fight for the right to return through protests and court cases, and the different strategies still being used to keep them away from their land. Although in 2016, the British government denied the right of the Chagossians to return to the islands, the islanders continue to fight for the right to return, many of them now to a homeland they never knew. In February 2019, the International Court of Justice ruled that the UK decolonisation process of the Chagos islands was unlawful and that the UK should end its control of the Indian Ocean archipelago, which includes a US military base.
Эллен Клиффорд0.0 In 2016, a United Nations report found the UK government culpable for “grave and systematic violations” of disabled people’s rights. Since then, driven by the Tory government’s obsessive drive to slash public spending whilst scapegoating the most disadvantaged in society, the situation for disabled people in Britain has continued to deteriorate. Punitive welfare regimes, the removal of essential support and services, and an ideological regime that seeks to deny disability has resulted in a situation described by the UN as a “human catastrophe.”
In this searing account, Ellen Clifford—an activist who has been at the heart of resistance against the war on disabled people—reveals precisely how and why this state of affairs has come about. From spineless political opposition to self-interested disability charities, right-wing ideological myopia to the media demonization of benefits claimants, a shocking picture emerges of how the government of the fifth-richest country in the world has been able to marginalize disabled people with near-impunity. Even so, and despite austerity biting ever deeper, the fightback has begun, with a vibrant movement of disabled activists and their supporters determined to hold the government to account—the slogan “Nothing About Us Without Us”has never been so apt. As this book so powerfully demonstrates, if Britain is to stand any chance of being a just and equitable society, their battle is one we should all be fighting.
Джони Питтс0.0 'Afropean. Here was a space where blackness was taking part in shaping European identity ... A continent of Algerian flea markets, Surinamese shamanism, German Reggae and Moorish castles. Yes, all this was part of Europe too, and these were people and places it needed to understand and embrace if it wanted fully functional societies. And Black Europeans, too, need to demand the right to document and disseminate our stories ... With my brown skin and my British passport - still a ticket into mainland Europe at the time of writing - I set out in search of the Afropeans, on a cold October morning.'
Afropean is an on-the-ground documentary of areas where Europeans of African descent are juggling their multiple allegiances and forging new identities. Here is an alternative map of the continent, taking the reader to places like Cova Da Moura, the Cape Verdean shantytown on the outskirts of Lisbon with its own underground economy, and Rinkeby, the area of Stockholm that is eighty per cent Muslim. Johny Pitts visits the former Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, where West African students are still making the most of Cold War ties with the USSR, and Clichy Sous Bois in Paris, which gave birth to the 2005 riots, all the while presenting Afropeans as lead actors in their own story.
Лиз Фекете0.0 An expansive investigation into the relationship between contemporary states and the far-right
It is clear that the right is on the rise, but after Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and the spike in popularity of extreme-right parties across Europe, the question on everyone’s minds is: how did this happen?
An expansive investigation of the ways in which a newly configured right interconnects with anti-democratic and illiberal forces at the level of the state, Europe’s Fault Lines provides much-needed answers, revealing some uncomfortable truths.
What appear to be “blind spots” about far-right extremism on the part of the state are shown to constitute collusion—as police, intelligence agencies and the military embark on practices of covert policing that bring them into direct or indirect contact with the far right, in ways that bring to mind the darkest days of Europe’s authoritarian past.
Old racisms may be structured deep in European thought, but they have been revitalised and spun in new ways: the war on terror, the cultural revolution from the right, and the migration-linked demonisation of the destitute “scrounger.” Drawing on more than three decades of work for the Institute of Race Relations, Liz Fekete exposes the fundamental fault lines of racism an tarianism in contemporary Europe.
Рени Эддо-Лодж4.2 'One of the most important books of 2017' Nikesh Shukla, editor of The Good Immigrant
A powerful and provocative argument on the role that race and racism play in modern Britain, by award-winning journalist Reni Eddo-Lodge
In 2014, award-winning journalist Reni Eddo-Lodge wrote about her frustration with the way that discussions of race and racism in Britain were being led by those who weren't affected by it. She posted a piece on her blog, entitled: 'Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race'.
Her words hit a nerve. The post went viral and comments flooded in from others desperate to speak up about their own experiences. Galvanised by this clear hunger for open discussion, she decided to dig into the source of these feelings.
Exploring issues from eradicated black history to the political purpose of white dominance, whitewashed feminism to the inextricable link between class and race, Reni Eddo-Lodge offers a timely and essential new framework for how to see, acknowledge and counter racism. It is a searing, illuminating, absolutely necessary exploration of what it is to be a person of colour in Britain today.
Алекс Наннс0.0 In September of last year an earthquake shook the foundations of British politics. Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong and uncompromising socialist, was elected to head the Labour Party. Corbyn didn’t just win the leadership contest, he trounced his opponents. The establishment was aghast. The official opposition now had as its leader a man with a plan, according to the conservative Daily Telegraph, “to turn Britain into Zimbabwe.”
How this remarkable twist of events came about is the subject of Alex Nunns’ highly-readable and richly-researched account. Drawing on first-hand interviews with those involved in the campaign, including its most senior figures, Nunns traces the origins of Corbyn’s victory in the dissatisfactions with Blairism stirred by the Iraq War and the 2008 financial crash, the move to the left of the trades unions, and changes in the electoral rules of the Labour Party that turned out to be surreally at odds with the intentions of those who introduced them. The system of one-member-one-vote, which delivered Corbyn’s success, was opposed by those on the left and was heralded by Tony Blair who described it as “a long overdue reform that… I should have done myself.”
Giving full justice to the dramatic swings and nail-biting tensions of an extraordinary summer in UK politics, Nunns’ telling of a story that has received widespread attention but little understanding is as illuminating as it is entertaining. He teases out a plot-line of such improbability that it would be unusable in a work of fiction, providing the first convincing explanation of a remarkable phenomenon with enormous consequences for the left in Britain and beyond.
Джереми Сибрук0.0 Labour in bangladesh flows like its rivers in excess of what is required. Often, both take a huge toll. Labour that costs $1.66 an hour in china and 52 cents in india can be had for a song in bangladesh 18 cents. It is mostly women and children working in fragile, flammable buildings who bring in 70 per cent of the country?s foreign exchange. Bangladesh today does not clothe the nakedness of the world, but provides it with limitless cheap garments through primark, walmart, benetton, gap. In elegiac prose, jeremy seabrook dwells upon the disproportionate sacrifices demanded by the manufacture of such throwaway items as baseball caps. He shows us how bengal and lancashire offer mirror images of impoverishment and affluence. In the eighteenth century, the people of bengal were dispossessed of ancient skills and the workers of lancashire forced into labour settlements. In a ghostly replay of traffic in the other direction, the decline of the british textile industry coincided with bangladesh becoming one of the world?s major clothing exporters. With capital becoming more protean than ever, it wouldn?t be long before the global imperium readies to shift its sites of exploitation in its nomadic cultivation of profit.
Хелена Эрншоу, Ангарад Пенрин Джонс0.0 A fascinating and unique anthology about contemporary women campaigners and how they were changed by the process of changing the world.
"A beautiful and necessary book full of passion, humour, encouragement, information and hope. This is the kind of writing that saves lives." A.L. KENNEDY
Through a series of interviews and articles, 17 key British women campaigners talk intimately about the difficult and exhilarating nature of their work.
These women are dreaming of a better world. But they are not just dreamers. They have organised, marched on the streets, joined protest camps, opened refuges, blogged from war zones, and smashed up military equipment. They have gone undercover, lived in trees, stormed Parliament, and taken on the world's largest corporations. They have been sacked, attacked, psychologically abused, jailed, shot at, sued, deceived by police spies, and even disowned by their families. But still they keep dreaming; still they march on. And they are changing history.
These original testimonies are uplifting, shocking and moving. They will rouse you, and encourage you to ask for more.
Contributors include: Franny Armstrong, Zoe Broughton, Skye Chirape, Eileen Chubb, Liz Crow, Kate Evans, Zita Holbourne, Shauneen Lambe, Sharyn Lock, Emma Must, Jasvinder Sanghera, Mary Sharkey, Helen Steel, Angharad Tomos, Anuradha Vittachi, Jo Wilding, Angie Zelter.
Джо Глентон0.0 "I looked around my cell and saw the sheet of paper taped to the door at chest height. It listed everything in the room, chair, bed, soldier box … For a moment I thought it meant the cell itself; a box to put soldiers in."
When the War on Terror began, Briton Joe Glenton felt compelled to serve his nation. He passed through basic training and deployed to Afghanistan in 2006. What he saw overseas left him disillusioned, and he returned home increasingly political and manifesting symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
When he refused to return for a second tour, he was denied his right to object and called “a coward and a malingerer.” He went absent without leave and left the country, returning later to the UK voluntarily to campaign against the wars. The military accused him of desertion and threatened years in prison.
Soldier Box tells the story of Glenton’s extraordinary journey from a promising soldier to a rebel against what he came to see as unjustified military action.
Сяо-Хун Пай0.0 Each year, 200 million workers from China 's vast rural interior travel between cities and regions in search of employment: the largest human migration in history. This indispensable army of labor contributes half of China 's GDP, but is an unorganized workforce scattered sand and the most marginalized and impoverished group of workers in the country.
For two years, the award-winning journalist Hsiao-Hung Pai traveled across China to uncover the exploitation of workers at locations as diverse as Olympic construction sites and brick kilns in the Yellow River region, the factories of the Pearl River Delta and the suicide-ridden Foxconn complex. She witnessed AIDS-afflicted families and towns; recorded acts of labor militancy; and was reunited with long-lost relatives, estranged since her mother 's family fled for Taiwan during the Civil War. What she finds is a peasantry expected to sacrifice itself for the sake of national glory just as it was under Mao.
Дэвид Гребер4.2 Масштабное и революционное исследование истории товарно-денежных отношений с древнейших времен до наших дней, предпринятое американским антропологом, профессором Лондонской школы экономики и одним из «антилидеров» движения Occupy Wall street, придумавшим слоган «Мы – 99 %». Гребер, опираясь на антропологические методы, выдвигает тезис, что в основе того, что мы традиционно называем экономикой, лежит категория долга, которая на разных этапах развития общества может принимать формы денег, бартера, залогов, кредитов, акций и так далее. Один из императивов книги - вырвать экономику из лап «профессиональных экономистов», доказавших свою несостоятельность во время последнего мирового кризиса, и поместить ее в более широкий контекст истории культуры, политологии, социологии и прочих гуманитарных дисциплин.
Для широкого круга читателей.
«Одна из самых важных книг последнего времени. Гребер рассматривает возникновение кредита в контексте становления классового общества, разрушения обществ, основанных на "сетях взаимных обязательств", и постоянной угрозы применения физического насилия, на которой зиждутся все общественные отношения, основанные на деньгах».
Пол Мэйсон, THE GUARDIAN
«Необычная... завораживающая... Книга Гребера не просто заставляет задуматься – она еще и удивительно злободневна. История, которую он пишет широкими мазками, показывает, что многие из наших устоявшихся представлений о деньгах и кредите ограниченны, если не ошибочны».
Джиллиан Тетт, THE FINANCIAL TIMES
«Детальное полевое исследование о нашем безнадежном экономическом и нравственном положении. В лучших традициях антропологии Гребер рассматривает потолок долга, высокорискованную ипотеку и кредитные свопы так, как если бы они были экзотическими обрядами какого-то племени, стремящегося к самоуничтожению. Эта книга, написанная в ярком, захватывающем стиле, является также и философским исследованием природы долга, раскрывающим его истоки и эволюцию».
Томас Мини, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
