Spokesman Books

Spokesman Books have published 'Constructive Bloodbath' in Indonesia: The United States, Britain and the Mass Killings of 1965-66 , by Nathaniel Mehr , with a foreword by Carmel Budiardjo . It is receiving postive reviews, as these two notices show: Joyo Indonesia News - David Jardine Jakarta Globe - Armando Siahaan

THESE ARE THE TIMES – TOM PAINE REMEMBERED Readings and Discussion to mark the 200th anniversary of Tom Paine’s death 9 – 10.30pm, Monday 8th June 2009, Old Red Lion Theatre, Angel, London. With Tony Benn, sculptor Michael Sandle, publisher Tony Simpson, musician Elizabeth Green and Neil Sheppeck of Love and Madness Theatre, alongside contributions from actor and playwright Jack Shepherd and writer Mike Marqusee. * An intimate event, on the 200th anniversary itself of Tom Paine's death , to celebrate and discuss the enduring legacy of one of the most influential radical writers and thinkers in history, at Islington's Old Red Lion Theatre, where Paine actually wrote some of his profoundly important work The Rights of Man. Featuring a rehearsed reading, directed by and featuring Neil Sheppeck of Love and Madness Theatre, of Jack Shepherd’s play In Lambeth, imagining a meeting between William Blake and Tom Paine. * Tickets: £7, £5 (concs. Please provide or bring evidence when book...

James Kirkup has died, aged 91. In 2004 he sent us a copy of No More Hiroshimas . He had originally collected together this volume of hia A-bomb poems in 1983, but it took twenty years before we published it 'as a real book'. James recounts 'My A-Bomb Biography' in his preface. Here are the opening lines of the title poem, No Mor e Hiroshimas . At the station exit, my bundle in hand, Early the winter afternoon's wet snow Falls thinly round me, out of a crudded sun. I had forgotten to remember where I was. Looking about, I see it might be anywhere - A station, a town like any other in Japan, Ramshackle, muddy, noisy, drab; a cheerfully Shallow impermanence: peeling concrete, litter, 'Atomic Lotion, for hair fall-out', a flimsy department store; Racks and towers of neon, flashy over tiled and tilted waves Of little roofs, shacks cascading lemons and persimmons, Oranges and dark-red apples, shanties awash with rainbows Of squid and octopus, shellfish, slabs o...

Following on from Spokesman 103 , Unholy Land , our new issue, Revolutions , continues with the Palestine question. John Dugard writes on Apartheid in Palestine. Richard Falk (UN Special Rapporteur on the situationof human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967) reports on the 'Human Rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab Territories.' Nurit Peled , co-founder of Israeli-Palestinian Bereaved Parents for Peace, encourages people 'to arise and go to Gaza ... or to any other city of oppression in Palestine to see with their own eyes the horrifying ghettoes ... ' Ken Coates situates the Russell Tribunal on Palestine in the context of earlier Russell Tribunals. George Galloway MP dissects the Charity Commission's obstruction of his remarkable efforts to provide help fpr Gaza. The Spokesman is available to buy now through our website or any good bookshop.

‘The first King Herod was born in 73 BC and followed a military career, starting out as a general … his fame among present generations is attributable to the Gospel of St. Matthew, which tells us that the King sent for the wise men who famously came from the East to Jerusalem and asked them where the Christ should be born. They told him that He would arrive in Bethlehem of Judaea, whereupon Herod sent them to search diligently for the young child ‘that I may come and worship him also’. But the wise men were too wise to fall for that one, although according to Matthew they had the advantage of being ‘warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod’. Be that as it may, ‘they departed into their own country another way’. At this point, an angel told Joseph to take the young child and his mother ‘and flee into Egypt … for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him’. With his victims holed up safely in Egypt, Herod ‘was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the c...

The Shape of Things to Come The EU Future Group By Tony Bunyan of Statewatch £2.00 - Order Online The Shape of Things to Come examines the European Union’s plans for justice and home affairs, and warns that the Union is embarked on several highly controversial paths. These include: using the ‘digital tsunami’ to create a surveillance society for law enforcement purposes by gathering personal details on the everyday lives of everyone living in the European Union; allowing law enforcement and security agencies, in collaboration with multinational companies, to determine new technologies to be introduced – including recording details of all phone and mobile phone calls and internet usage; removing ‘obstacles’ (judicial authorisation) to the exchange of intelligence between all European Union agencies; and the outrageous idea that a Euro-Atlantic area of co-operation with the United States should be set up to decide on policies fundamentally affecting the rights and liberties of the pe...

Slump and War The Spokesman 102 Edited by Ken Coates The election of Barack Obama came as the culmination of a profound surge of optimism in the United States, and of hope against hope in large parts of the rest of the world. Widely detested, the Bush administration was the most unpopular in living memory. Obama had fought an audacious campaign, calling in question not only the war in Iraq, but the train of events which had brought the United States into contempt all around the world. The American military, far from exercising full spectrum dominance, was arousing full spectrum detestation. Its symbols were Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, water boarding and extraordinary rendition. As the American economy raced from recession to slump, Obama’s campaign seemed to gather momentum. Earnest crowds of young people were seen on television singing the anthem of Woody Guthrie: ‘This land is your land, this land is my land, from California to New York Island.’ Would that it were so. This land crea...