Author of 'The March That Shook Blair: An Oral History of 15 February 2003' (Peace News Press, 2013) and co-author of 'A Timeline of the Plague Year' (2021).
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Articles by Ian Sinclair
The AI con: How to fight big tech’s hype and create the future we want
The Guardian • Current Issue This September, Sam Altman, the CEO of Open AI, claimed “a kid born today will never be smarter than AI ever.” A couple of days before, Demis Hassabis, the head of Google’s DeepMind, said, “We’ll have something that we could sort of reasonably call AGI [artificial general intelligence], that exhibits all the cognitive capabilities human have, maybe in the next five to ten years, possibly the lower end of that.” With hype about AI at fever pitch, this new...
British Foreign Policy: The Elite Vs The Public
Above photo: Scaring the elites: An anti-war march in Manchester city centre, where the 2008 Labour Party Conference was held. Statistics show conclusively that the majority of Brits have repeatedly frightened the Establishment by consistently opposing military adventurism abroad. Two polls published earlier this month make interesting reading.
2672 | Peace News
The government is trying to intimidate anti-militarists into ending their campaigns Doesn’t support an immediate permanent ceasefire?
Extract: Pariah Genius by Ian Sinclair
Ian Sinclair is a writer, film-maker, and psychogeographer extraordinaire. He began his career in the poetic avant-garde of the ‘60s and ‘70s, alongisde the likes of Ed Dorn and J. H. Prynne, but his work resists easy categorisation at every turn. Reality shudders against and into its incarnation as fiction; documentary is riddled with the imagination’s brilliant glare; genre-bounds are ruinously questioned. Poetry, biography, film, essay: each form ghosts the next in restless disarray.
Ian Sinclair
Ian Sinclair is a writer, film-maker, and psychogeographer extraordinaire. He began his career in the poetic avant-garde of the ‘60s and ‘70s,... Nezouh review - seeking magic in a war The 21st century learnt afresh about the reality of carpet-bombed cities thanks to the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011. And the Syrian war... Album: Dua Lipa - Radical Optimism This album has a lot to live up to. Its predecessor Future Nostalgia came along just as the Covid crisis was properly kicking...
8 wonderful wetlands in South Africa
Wetlands are biologically diverse ecosystems that provide a habitat for many vital species, acting as buffers against coastal storms and as a natural water filter water, breaking down harmful pollutants. They could not be a more important gatekeeper, helping protect the natural world by providing a vital sanctuary for animals. South Africa has 23 designated Ramsar Sites, wetlands of international importance. Here are eight of them. 1.
Self-Defense And The Right To Resist In Palestine
“ISRAEL has a right to defend herself.” This supposed moral truism has been repeated incessantly, by public figures on the right and left, since the Hamas terror attacks on October 7. Marjorie Cohn, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego and a former president of the US National Lawyers Guild, has a different view.
Everything You Need To Know About Rashid In Street Fighter 6
Street Fighter 6 has gotten off to a hot start, and it hasn't shown signs of slowing down anytime soon. The latest entry in the long-running fighting game franchise has seen an overwhelmingly positive response from critics, long-time veterans, and new players alike. Its two million units sold in its first month is far outpacing Street Fighter V, although SFV did not release on Xbox consoles.
The U.S. invasion and occupation of Syria that ‘never happened’
“It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them.” Sadly, Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize for Literature lecture continues to be as relevant today as when he gave it in 2005.
The US Occupation of Syria That ‘Never Happened’ - Global Research
Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. The Centre of Research on Globalization grants permission to cross-post Global Research articles on community internet sites as long the source and copyright are acknowledged together with a hyperlink to the original Global Research article.
UK - We need to talk about the politics of climate experts
IT IS widely understood that the very powerful forces of climate change denial have delayed action to address the climate crisis and thus are responsible for a huge amount of suffering and deaths attributable to climate breakdown. Less appreciated is the unintended impact these dark corporate interests have had on the popular perception of climate experts.
‘Closing the gap’: the conditions under which children in care are most likely to catch up in mainstream schools
BSTRACT Children ‘in care’ have, on average, lower educational attainment than their peers. This article tests the hypothesis that many of these children can ‘catch-up’, if in stable placements and secondary schools ‘apparently effective’ with other children with ‘similar’ difficulties. In a cohort of 542,998 16-year-old English children in mainstream schools, those in care for at least a year were on average 148,465 ranks behind their peers on measured attainment at age 7.
Des Freedman (ed), Capitalism’s Conscience: 200 Years of the Guardian
Pluto Press, 2021; 304pp; £16.99 ‘The Guardian’s mission’, the paper’s editor Katharine Viner recently stated, ‘is one that allows – and even encourages – [me]… to challenge the powerful, whatever the consequences.’ This collection, edited by Des Freedman, professor of media and communications at Goldsmiths university, does a good job of demolishing this self-serving view.
Joel Bakan, The New Corporation: How ‘Good’ Corporations Are Bad For Democracy
Vintage, 2020; 231pp; £12.99 Joel Bakan’s The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, was published in 2004 alongside a film documentary of the same name. Those were timely and influential assaults on the central institution of contemporary capitalism.
How we made 'A Timeline Of The Plague Year'
Ian Sinclair, Rupert Read and Joanna Booth explain how they ended up publishing the most comprehensive record of the UK government’s response to the pandemic to date After creating and then updating a timeline of the pandemic every week since April 2020, in April 2021 Ian Sinclair and Rupert Read, working with editor Joanna Booth, published a free eBook A Timeline Of The Plague Year: A Comprehensive Record of the Government’s Response to the Coronavirus Crisis.
Ruaridh Arrow, Gene Sharp: How To Start A Revolution
The Big Indy Books, 2020; 366 pp; £14.99 Having directed the award-winning 2011 documentary about Gene Sharp, How To Start A Revolution, Ruaridh Arrow has now published an engrossing biography of the man who CNN once called ‘the father of nonviolent struggle’. Sharp, who died in 2018 aged 90, led an extraordinary life.
A Timeline of The Plague Year: A Comprehensive Record of the UK Government’s Response to the Coronavirus Crisis
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Vicky Osterweil, In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action
Hachette USA, 2020; 288pp; £28 Written in the wake of the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri, Vicky Osterweil’s central argument is that looting and rioting are positive actions, which ‘in most instances… transform and build a nascent moment into a movement’. Unserious and incurious, In Defense of Looting won’t change the minds of seasoned peace activists though, worryingly, it might influence those who are in the process of forming their views on protest and political change.
Vicky Osterweil, In Defence of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action
Hachette USA, 2020; 288pp; £28 Written in the wake of the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri, Vicky Osterweil’s central argument is that looting and rioting are positive actions, which ‘in most instances… transform and build a nascent moment into a movement’. Unserious and incurious, In Defence of Looting won’t change the minds of seasoned peace activists though, worryingly, it might influence those who are in the process of forming their views on protest and political change.
How advertising fuels the climate crisis
Morning Star With the climate crisis likely to be high on the political agenda this year — Britain is hosting the next round of United Nations climate talks in November — a new publication from the New Weather Institute think tank and the climate action charity Possible is well timed. The report, Advertising’s Role in Climate and Ecological Destruction: What Does the Scientific Research Have to Say?
Information-rich high-throughput cellular assays using acoustic mist ionisation mass spectrometry
Information-rich high-throughput cellular assays using acoustic mist ionisation mass spectrometry† Martin Bachman, *ab Ian Sinclair,b Delyan Ivanovc and Jonathan Wingfieldc Author affiliations * Corresponding authors a Discovery Science & Technology, Medicines Discovery Catapult, Alderley Park, UK E-mail: martin.bachman@md.catapult.org.uk b Sample Management, Discovery Sciences, R&D, AstraZeneca, Alderley Park, UK c Mechanistic Biology and Profiling, Discovery Sciences, R&D, AstraZeneca,...
Natalie Fenton, Des Freedman, Justin Schlosberg & Lina Dencik, The Media Manifesto
Polity Press, 2020; 142 pp; £9.99 A product of the Media Reform Coalition – a group of academics, activists and journalists working for progressive media reform in the UK – The Media Manifesto is a tightly-argued, inspiring call to action.
Groundhog Day | Peace News
The government’s shameful response to the second COVID surge The UK government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has been a ‘national scandal’, as I wrote in PN six months ago. (See PN 2642 – 2643) Reaching its peak in terms of infections and deaths in March and April, the virus killed an estimated 65,400 people in the UK by mid-June, according to the Financial Times. At the time, this huge death toll was the highest in Europe, and the second-highest in the world after the United States.
The Clit Test: changing the sex script
Ian Sinclair reports on a new feminist-driven initiative Coined by cartoonist Alison Bechdel in 1985, what has become known as The Bechdel Test – whether a movie includes at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man – is now widely discussed by consumers and creators of popular culture. But just as we have got our heads around one necessary and very welcome feminist-driven test, along comes a shiny new challenging feminist-driven test: the Clit Test.
The March that Shook Blair: An Oral History of 15 February 2003
by Ian Sinclair To mark the 10th anniversary of Britain's biggest ever protest, Peace News Press have publishing Ian Sinclair's new book The March that Shook Blair: An Oral History of 15 February 2003. Praise for The March that Shook Blair: “This is a fascinating book – a moving and nostalgic piece of oral history.
Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History
Bloomsbury, 2020; 463pp; £20 The basic argument of this book is very simple. Contrary to the ‘persistent myth that by their very nature humans are selfish’, Dutch author Rutger Bregman argues that ‘most people, deep down, are pretty decent.’ The assumption of human selfishness underpins huge portions of mainstream political and economic thinking, including the influential veneer theory – ‘the notion that civilisation is nothing more than a thin veneer that will crack at the merest provocation’.
More power than we know
It’s time to celebrate how the peace movement has managed to limit British inverventions from Afghanistan to Syria On 15 February 2003, perhaps a million people marched in Central London against war on Iraq.
Neil Clark and other ‘anti-maskers’ vs. the scientific evidence and the public’s wellbeing
There is a small, but vocal group of people who are strongly opposed to the wearing of masks to reduce the transmission of Covid-19. One of the most prominent ‘anti-maskers’ is Neil Clark, a self-professed socialist writer and broadcaster. Clark has been posting increasingly absurd, conspiratorial and very dangerous tweets about masks. Here are a few examples: · ‘I’m quite disconcerted by the number of people with “Socialist” on their bios who seem to be v.
The UK government’s criminally negligent response to coronavirus
Ian Sinclair lays out the case for the prosecution Londoners during covid19 pandemic PHOTO: NICKOLAY ROMENSKY FROM LONDON, UK / CC-BY-2.0 VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Due to the extraordinary nature of the crisis, the UK government has had an unprecedented opportunity to control the narrative about their response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Coronavirus crisis: Where is the British left?
Morning Star From mid-April onward the government came under intense pressure to start lifting the lockdown it had imposed on March 23. A relatively early loosening of restrictions was supported by business groups and their cheerleaders in the right-wing press and the Cabinet (Chancellor Rishi Sunak, Home Secretary Priti Patel and perhaps Michael Gove too). Pressure was also applied by the leaders of the Labour Party and the Scottish National Party.
Evan Perkoski and Erica Chenoweth, Nonviolent Resistance and Prevention of Mass Killings During Popular Uprisings
International Centre on Nonviolent Conflict, 2018; 30pp; free download. Influenced by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan’s seminal 2011 study _Why Civil Resistance Works_, this short report looks at the circumstances surrounding mass killings by government forces during popular uprisings. ‘Mass killings’ are defined as the intentional killing of 1,000 or more civilians in a continuous event.
Governed by Opinion? Governments and the Public Mood in a Crisis – Byline Times
Ian Sinclair looks at the role of Opinion Polls in shaping the Politics of the Pandemic and compares with the precedents of Afghanistan and Iraq. “All politicians recognize the force of public opinion”, Richard Gregg wrote in his 1934 book The Power of Nonviolence. There is evidence this truism applies to the coronavirus outbreak in the UK.
“A National Scandal”: a timeline of the UK government’s response to the Coronavirus crisis
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, 22 March 2020 @ Prime Minister’s Office, 10 Downing Street Speaking on BBC Question Time on 26 March 2020, Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief of the Lancet medical journal, described the government’s response to the Coronavirus pandemic as “a national scandal”. A look through the key moments in the crisis explains why (timeline updated on 10 October 2020).
A timeline of the UK government's response to the Coronavirus crisis
Updated regularly, the timeline records key moments in the crisis (timeline last updated on 30 March 2021). The timeline has now been published as the ebook and pay-to-print book 'A Timeline Of The Plague Year: A Comprehensive Record of the UK Government's Response to the Coronavirus Crisis': https://covidtheplagueyear.wordpress.com/.
'A National Scandal' - Timeline of the UK Government’s Response to the Coronavirus Crisis - Byline Times
Ian Sinclair and Rupert Read’s regular update on how Britain came to have one of the highest COVID-19 per capita death rates in the world. Timeline 18-24 April 18 April 2020 Data collated by Care England, the country’s largest representative body for care homes, suggests the number of care home residents who have died of suspected coronavirus may have reached 7,500 (Telegraph).
WEEKLY UPDATE 20 APRIL: 'A National Scandal' - Timeline of the UK Government’s Response to the Coronavirus Crisis – Byline Times
Ian Sinclair and Rupert Read with a weekly update on how Britain came to have one of the highest COVID-19 per capita death rates in the world. Weekly Update : Full Timeline (with additions in red) beneath Speaking on the BBC’s Question Time on 26 March 2020, Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief of the Lancet medical journal, described the Government’s response to the Coronavirus pandemic as “a national scandal”. Here is a look through the key moments which explain why.
Lucy-Anne Holmes, Don’t hold my head down: in search of some brilliant fucking
Unbound, 2019; 320pp; £14.99 ‘If feels like we’re always talking about it, but never really talking about it’, British author Lucy-Anne Holmes observes about sex.
Greg Philo, Mike Berry, Justin Schlosberg, Antony Lerman & David Miller, Bad News For Labour: Antisemitism, The Party & Public Belief
Pluto Press, 2019; 272pp; £14.99 The headline findings from this new study of the Labour Party’s anti-semitism controversy are astonishing. Between June 2015 and March 2019 eight national newspapers printed a massive 5,497 stories mentioning Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and anti-semitism.
Jeremy Corbyn and the peace movement
Peace activists should mobilise in support of Corbyn, argues Ian Sinclair As the Guardian noted, Jeremy Corbyn’s landslide victory on 12 September in the Labour leadership contest was ‘one of the most stunning electoral upsets of postwar politics.’ Billed at 200-1 by bookmakers when he entered the race in June, the Islington North MP won 59 percent of the vote, giving him ‘the biggest party mandate for any political leader in UK political history’, according to the Guardian’s chief political...
Priyamvada Gopal, Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent
Verso, 2019; 624pp; £25 In this book, Cambridge university academic Priyamvada Gopal confronts the now infamous 2014 YouGov poll which found 59 percent of Britons thought the British empire was ‘something to be proud of’. Resistance to empire was frequent, she notes, with connections formed between critics of imperialism based in the UK and rebels in the colonies.
R.T. Howard, Warmongers: How Leaders and Their Unnecessary Wars Have Wrecked the Modern World
Amberley Publishing, 2019; 296pp; £9.99 RT Howard is a writer specialising in intelligence and ‘defence’.
Nathan Stoltzfus, Hitler’s Compromises: coercion and consensus in Nazi Germany
Yale University Press, 2016; 432pp; £30 Think of Adolf Hitler and invariably an image is conjured up of an all-powerful leader, the most evil individual in modern history, using extreme barbarity to crush his opponents at home and abroad. The latest study from Nathan Stoltzfus, professor of Holocaust Studies at Florida State University in the US, challenges this simplistic representation, raising profound questions for historians, citizens and activists alike.
David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory
Penguin 2019 (2018); 368pp; £9.99 Originating in a 2013 essay for the radical magazine Strike!, David Graeber’s provocative book is an engrossing, if sometimes uncomfortable, read.
Laura Basu, Media Amnesia: Rewriting the Economic Crisis
Pluto, 2018; 272 pp; £24.99 This is an essential read for anybody – activists very much included – who wishes to gain a deeper understanding of the 2007–2008 economic crash and its subsequent political after-shocks, from the election of Donald Trump in the US to Brexit and rise of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK. However, first and foremost, the book is a sharp critique of the media’s coverage of the economic crisis.
Covering Western foreign policy: the Morning Star versus The Guardian
Earlier this month the Morning Star newspaper found itself in the middle of a media shitstorm. The trigger was their front page headline about the final stages of the battle of Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city: ‘Final liberation of Aleppo is in sight’. The response from some Labour MPs and liberal commentators was immediate and indignant. ‘Absolute disgrace’, tweeted Tom Blenkinsop MP. ‘All parliamentarians, especially party leaders, should condemn false propaganda as was displayed in the Morning Star.
(VIDEO) Singer Shawna Caspi to perform in Pottersville on Saturday, Nov. 3
Do you have questions about living with your hearing loss that you have been meaning to ask?… Read more
Steve Howell, Game Changer: Eight Weeks That Transformed British Politics
Achieving 40 percent of the vote – a record-breaking 10 percent increase on its 2015 performance – Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party carried off one of the biggest political upsets ever at the 2017 general election, dealing a serious blow to the Tory government and broader neoliberal ideology. Steve Howell, deputy director of strategy and communications in the Labour leadership team, gives a detailed and engaging insider account of the election campaign.
The Alice in Wonderland nature of the Labour Party anti-semitism controversy
The Alice in Wonderland nature of the Labour Party anti-semitism controversy Over the last few months the mainstream media coverage about anti-semitism and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party has reached Alice in Wonderland proportions. How surreal, you ask? Here are a few examples.
Florian Zollman, Media, Propaganda and the Politics of Intervention
‘The biggest immediate single problem we face… is mainstream media reporting’, British historian Mark Curtis recently argued in an Open Democracy interview about UK foreign policy. Florian Zollmann’s deeply impressive first book – which expands on his PhD, supervised by Professor Richard Keeble – goes a long way in engaging with this long-running issue for peace activists.
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