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Monstrous Anger of the Guns

Monstrous Anger of the Guns

How the Global Arms Trade is Ruining the World and What We Can Do About It

Edited by Rhona Michie, Andrew Feinstein and Paul Rogers

With Jeremy Corbyn

Peace activists uncover the truth of the most destructive business in the world

'Equips readers with the information they need to resist the lies that feed humanity's urge to commit suicide. Read it!' Yanis Varoufakis

'Devastating testimony. Faultless research. It's impossible to exaggerate the timeliness of this powerfully written book' Peter Oborne

We are seeing injustices caused by war and occupation unfold in real-time via social media, and we are speaking out in our millions against these horrors. Yet, from Gaza to Ukraine, the bombs continue to fall. We must understand why this is happening if we are to end it.

Monstrous Anger of the Guns lays bare the dark and deceitful world of the global arms trade, which, often funded in our name, is a business that counts its profits in billions and its losses in human lives. Leading activists and campaigners connect the dots, showing how notions of citizenship, democracy and trust in governments are misguided, and how we can fight back by building mass movements, using direct action and legal justice to end the flow of weapons and the environmental and human devastation they bring.

Rhona Michie is the Director of Projects and Planning at Shadow World Investigations and a co-founder of the Corruption Tracker. She was listed as an Emerging Expert by the Forum on the Arms Trade in 2022 and is a member of the Steering Committee of Campaign Against Arms Trade.

Andrew Feinstein is the Executive Director of Shadow World Investigations. He resigned as an African National Congress Member of Parliament in South Africa in 2001, protesting the government’s refusal to investigate corruption in a $10 billion arms deal. He is the author of The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, an internationally acclaimed exposé later adapted into a prize-winning documentary.

Paul Rogers is an Emeritus Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University and International Security Advisor to openDemocracy. He is the author of Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century and The Insecurity Trap: A Short Guide to Transformation.

Jeremy Corbyn is a socialist MP, founder and director of the Peace and Justice Project. He has served for 40 years as MP for Islington North in London, was twice elected leader of the Labour Party and is a Parliamentary Member of the Council of Europe. He is a lifelong campaigner for peace, justice and human rights and has been awarded prizes for promoting peace, including the Seán MacBride Peace Prize for his sustained and powerful political work for disarmament and peace.

'Merchants of industrial-scale death spend fortunes on marketing war as the only policy, the only plan, the only potential across the globe. This book equips readers with the information they need to resist the lies that feed humanity’s urge to commit suicide. Read it!'

- Yanis Varoufakis

'Devastating testimony. Faultless research. Hideously relevant. It's impossible to exaggerate the timeliness of this powerfully written book.'

- Peter Oborne, journalist and broadcaster

'As illegal white phosphorus rains down on Palestinians in the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the importance of this book cannot be overstated. We must reverse the dystopia that we live in where people look at the sky to discern whether they are seeing bombs or food packages.'

- Mary Nazzal, barrister and legal activist

Preface by Jeremy Corbyn (Peace and Justice Project)
Introduction by Andrew Feinstein (Shadow World Investigations), Rhona Michie (Shadow World Investigations and the Corruption Tracker), and Paul Rogers (University of Bradford and openDemocracy)


Part I: The Global Arms Trade
1. The Global Arms Trade: How It Works, and How We Might Control It - Anna Stavrianakis (University of Sussex)
2. If You Have a Hammer, Everything Looks Like a Nail: How guns define international relations - Vijay Prashad (Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)
3. The Palestine Laboratory 2024 - Antony Loewenstein (Declassified Australia)


Part II: The Humanitarian Impact of the Arms Trade
4. Militarism and the Climate Emergency - Stuart Parkinson (Scientists for Global Responsibility)
5. The Human Cost of the Arms Trade in Gaza - Ahmed Alnouaq (We Are Not Numbers)
6. Undermining the Chance for Peace in Yemen - Mwatana for Human Rights
7. The scourge of arms in East Africa - Tabitha Agaba and Ian Katusiime
8. Arms Trade in the Land of Gandhi: The Military Industrial Complex and Its Impact on India - Binalakshmi Nepram (Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network)
9. The Market of Death as Seen from Latin America - Ana Penido (Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)


Part III: Global Campaigns Against the Arms Trade
10. A Mass Movement Against Weapons and War - Lindsey German (Stop the War)
11. Direct Action Against the Arms Trade - Palestine Action
12. Workers Against the Arms Trade - Lorenzo Buzzoni
13. Youth Campaigns Against the Arms Trade - Carmen Wilson (Demilitarise Education)
14. Strategic Litigation Against the Global Arms Trade: Countering Irresponsibility under International and Domestic Arms Control Law - Valentina Azarova (Emergent Justice Collective)
15. Lynchpin of the Pacific: Ending the Militarisation of Hawaiʻi - Kawenaʻulaokalā Kapahua (Hawaiian Independence movement)


Conclusion - Andrew Feinstein, Rhona Michie, and Paul Rogers
Glossary

Published by Pluto Press in Aug 2024
Paperback ISBN: 9780745350363
eBook ISBN: 9780745350370

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