Spokesman Books

NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, NOT PROLIFERATION! The Japan Council against A and H Bombs (Gensuikyo) has sent the following message to the 16th Summit of Heads of State or Government of the Non-Aligned Movement, meeting in Tehran, Iran from 26 to 31 August 2012. Hiroshi TAKA, representative director of Gensuikyo, presented the message in person. On the occasion of the 16th summit of Heads of State or Government of the Non-Aligned Movement, we extend warmest greetings of solidarity to you, and through you to the people each of you represent, from the movement against atomic and hydrogen bombs working in Japan, the only A-bombed country in the world. During the period of the Cold War, which followed the end of World War Two, the Non-aligned Movement played the key role in establishing a peaceful and just world order based on the UN Charter, by opposing the division of the world by military blocs and the nuclear arms race, and firmly promoting non-alignment, national independence and sovereig...

The cover picture of The Spokesman (no.117) was entitled 'Jeju Moon' by its photographer, Bruce Gagnon . Jeju Island, in the Korea Strait, is something of a paradise, as Esther Koohan Paik describes in this new issue. Paradise is threatened by the construction of a huge new naval base to provide port facilities for US Navy ships which carry the AEGIS ballistic missile defence system, a substantial additon to US 'Star Wars' capacity. In this issue, Bruce describes how, after repeated test failures, the US missile defence architecture is becoming more effective; a development which pressures Russia and China greatly as they feel increasingly encircled by US military facilities. However, the residents of Jeju Island have different ideas for the future of their island, as this new seven-minute video makes clear. Bruce provides his own commentary: http://space4peace.blogspot.com/2012/08/grand-march-report-with-music.html   *** Copies of The Spokesman 117 can be bo...

Paragraph 6-8-12 Dear friends, hello After weeks of complete absence from your screens, and the cascade of events occuring during this time, this mail might take the charachter of a letter, more than that of a brief Paragraph dispatch. We will deal here with many news, starting with the ... weather here: horendously hot; the hottest summer we remember since we were doing national service in the Navy, way back then, 1988 ... We do not intend to talk about the weather, albeit with all those rapid (and worrisome) developments in Syria one could be easily tempted to do just that ... Incidentally, this ("talking about the weather") is what most political parties do in Greece regarding Syria, and possibly with with good reason. Given the terrible socioeconomic straits Greece is now going through (whose effect is mirrored in the apprehension one discerns in every Greek, of all social strada and persuassions) many a politician know that anything they say on this matter might ...

6 August 2012 In October, it will be fifty years since the Cuban Missile Crisis, known as the ‘October Crisis’ in Cuba, and the ‘Caribbean Crisis’ in Russia. During those days in 1962, the United States and Soviet Union came closer to conflict than at any other time. It has been described as the worst week of the Cold War. That the conflict did not erupt probably has quite a lot to do with the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The suffering of those cities and their hibakusha was indelibly etched on the consciousness of the post-war generation. One prominent member of that generation, Robert McNamara, was US Defence Secretary from 1961 to 1968. Decades later, in 2005, he observed that: ‘ Much of the current US nuclear policy has been in place since before I was secretary of defence, and it has only grown more dangerous and diplomatically destructive in the intervening years. ’ Mr McNamara then assessed the average modern US warhead as having a destructive power 20 times that of...

A political purge is under way in Turkey. Since 2009, thousands of activists from the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) have been arrested in police raids and interned in extended pre-trial detention. Following elections in June 2011, the BDP currently has 36 members of the Turkish Parliament, elected mainly with the support of Turkey's substantial Kurdish minority. Now, a series of trials has begun. In the latest of these, more than 200 people are before the ‘Tribunal with Special Powers’, charged with support for, and involvement in, the Union of Kurdish Communities (KCK), which is a banned organisation. This grouping, it is alleged by the Turkish Government of Prime Minister Erdogan, acts as the 'urban branch' of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), also banned in Turkey because of its long-term armed campaign against the Turkish state. On this pretext, the Turkish authorities continue to arrest large numbers of activists throughout the country in regular raids. In recent...

Ayse Berktay Hacimirzaoglu was one of the main animators of the World Tribunal on Iraq, which held sessions in Brussels, Tokyo and New York before concluding in Istanbul in 2005. She proposed the Tribunal in 2002, at a meeting of the European Network for Peace and Human Rights, which the Russell Foundation convened in the European Parliament in Brussels. She works as a translator, and her Turkish translation of Black Beauty has been widely acclaimed. She has been held in prison in Turkey since October 2011. An international delegation is currently in attendance at the trial of Ayse Berktay (Hacimirzaoglu) and over 200 other people in Silivri, Turkey. The trial is due to end on Friday. For further details please visit the Ayse Berktay Free Her Now Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ayse-Berktay-Free-Her-Now/262009723913600 and www.russfound.org .

Punishing the Innocent in the Name of Justice What we * are witnessing in Silivri (near Istanbul) nowadays is simply a scar of shame on the forehead of humanity. Otherwise, philosophers, theorists, humanists, law makers, activists should work on finding new definitions for all the values we were taught in school, above all justice, because what is happening here is using the devices of law and justice to criminilize and punish the innocent, in the name of peace, justice and, of course, fighting terrorism. Early in the morning of the first day of the trial, 2 July, hundreds of people gathered in Taksim Square, the main square of Istanbul, to catch buses to Silivri where the court is held, only to find that the police were waiting for them and preventing buses from going there. The police actually did this. However, some people were luckier and managed to go, taking private cars, taxis, and so on. We were among them. After driving for more than an hour we found ourselves in front...