Tag Archives: war

Fracking in the Aylesbury Vale

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Less than a week ago I learnt that pre-planning applications had been made to Aylesbury Vale District Council for hydraulic fracturing. If that means nothing to you then maybe the term “fracking” does. It is highly controversial. It is time we started reading about this in our local newspapers. Fracking is quite an old technology but since oil prices have risen it has been dusted off and refined. It allows us to extract oil and gas from places we never previously considered to be economical. How about the Chilterns? Continue reading →

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed “A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization and how to save it”

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ISBN 978-0-7453-3053-2. “A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization and how to save it” was written by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed and published by Pluto Press in 2010. Also see our review of the “film of the book” here. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is the Executive Director of the London-based think tank the Institute for Policy Research and Development. His previous books include “The War on Truth” (2005) and “The London Bombings” (2006). His previous work (as this suggests) was more closely related to studying the links between Western Security forces and Islamic Terrorist groups. However Nafeez also appear in the film “Oil, Smoke and Mirrors” which covered Peak Oil and the politics of the War on Terror (tag line “there is no war on terror;only a war for oil”). Digging into the murky realities of international terrorism remains his strongest point and the rest of “crisis” is built around his latest research on this one topic.

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The Crisis of Civilisation

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“The Crisis of Civilization” is the documentary feature film (77 minutes – a film by Dean Puckett, animations by Lucca Benney, cinematography by Suresh Kara) version of Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed’s 2010 book “The User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization and how to save it” (Pluto Press ISBN 978-0-7453-3053-2). Nafeez himself is the central character as it is based around interview with him only. No others are featured. So, does it work? Actually it does the business quite well. Anyone who couldn’t be bothered to read his book would be well off sitting down to watch this. Ahmed’s central thesis has grown significantly his book “The War On Truth” came out in 2005. Continue reading →

John Pilger “The War on Democracy”

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John Pilger is somewhat of a romantic and this comes across in his 2007 documentary charting the American Empire’s attempts to crush South American Democracy since 1945. In content there is not a lot here that you could not read about in far more detail in Chomsky’s brilliant “Deterring Democracy”. However, Chomsky is a hardened realist who would probably not put quite such a shine on recent events. For it is the very idea that Latin America must not be self-governed – under ANY circumstance that is so very frightening. The struggle has been bitter and countless lives have been lost. In fact this is a very painful documentary to watch. Continue reading →