John Pilger is one of the world's pre-eminent investigative journalists and documentary film-makers. His best-selling books of reportage, which include HEROES and HIDDEN VOICES, have in the words of Noam Chomsky 'been a beacon of light in often dark times'. In FREEDOM NEXT TIME he looks at five countries, in each of which a long struggle for freedom has taken place; in each the people, having shed blood and dreams, are still waiting. In Afghanistan, Iraq and South Africa there has been the promise of hope, and even an 'official' freedom, but the reality of these divided societies is that they are still waiting for real freedom. In Palestine, the cycle of violence continues with no resolution in sight. And the island of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, is a microcosm of the ruthlessness of great powers. The island was sold by the British to the American military in the 1960s. The indigenous population, descended from slaves, were forcibly removed to the slums of Port Louis in Mauritius. They have continued to fight for the return of their homeland ever since uathree years ago the High Court granted them the right of return, but this has subsequently been blocked. The island remains the US's third biggest military base; a base from which they are able to launch attacks against the Middle East. Once again John Pilger gives a voice to the people living through these momentous times and, in gripping detail, shows us the lives behind the headlines. Source: Publisher

ISBN-13: 9780593055533

ISBN-10: 0593055535

Language: English

Publisher: Bantam Press

Year: 2006

Pages: 356

Cataloged: Feb. 10, 2025, 5:09 p.m.

"Relying on a rich cache of previously classified notes, transcripts, cables, policy briefs, and memoranda, Andrew Cooper explains how oil drove, even corrupted, American foreign policy during a time when Cold War imperatives still applied,"* and tells why in the 1970s the U.S. switched its Middle East allegiance from the Shah of Iran to the Saudi royal family. While America struggles with a recess ion, oil prices soar, revolution rocks the Middle East, European nations risk defaulting on their loans, and the world teeters on the brink of a possible global financial crisis. This is not a description of the present, however, but the 1970s. In The Oil Kings, Andrew Cooper tells the story of how oil came to dominate U.S. domestic and foreign policy. Drawing on newly declassified documents and interviews with some of the key figures of the time, Cooper follows the political posturing and backroom maneuvering that led the U.S. to switch to OPEC as its main supplier of oil from the Shah of Iran, a loyal ally and leading customer for American weapons. The subsequent loss of U.S. income destabilized the Iranian economy, while the U.S. embarked on a long relationship with the autocratic Saudi kingdom that continues to this day. Brilliantly reported and filled with astonishing revelations--including how close the U.S. came to sending troops into the Persian Gulf to break the Arab oil embargo and how U.S. officials offered to sell nuclear power and nuclear fuel to the Shah--The Oil Kings is the history of an era that we thought we knew, an era whose momentous reverberations still influence events at home and abroad today.

ISBN-13: 9781439155189

ISBN-10: 1439155186

Language: English

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Year: 2012

Pages: 544

Cataloged: Feb. 10, 2025, 5:08 p.m.

A bold and eye-opening exposé on how power and propaganda distort the news, now more relevant than ever • With an updated introduction “[A] compelling indictment of the news media’s role in covering up errors and deceptions in American foreign policy.”—The New York Times Book Review Renowned scholars Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky reveal how U.S. news media, far from being independent watchdogs, often function as tools of elite influence. With probing analysis, they present their Propaganda Model, a framework that explains how systemic bias shapes the stories we’re told, the voices we hear, and the truths that remain hidden. Through deeply researched case studies, from the Vietnam War to coverage of “worthy” vs. “unworthy” victims, Manufacturing Consent exposes the structural forces that drive news organizations to reinforce power rather than question it. It’s a sobering portrait of a media system more interested in maintaining order than informing the public. This edition includes an introduction updating key examples and expanding the Propaganda Model’s relevance to issues like the coverage of NAFTA, the media’s treatment of global protests, and environmental regulation. Manufacturing Consent is a powerful assessment of how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically new way. Whether you’re a student, activist, or citizen looking to see beyond the headlines, this book will transform how you understand the media—and the world around you. Source: Publisher

ISBN-13: 9780307801623

ISBN-10: 0307801624

Language: English

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Year: 2011

Pages: 480

Cataloged: Feb. 10, 2025, 5:07 p.m.

J IS FOR JUNK ECONOMICS is an A-to-Z guide that explains how the world economy really works - and who the winners and losers are. The book includes more than 400 concise and acerbic entries, several essays, and a full topic index. Expanding on KILLING THE HOST: HOW FINANCIAL PARASITES AND DEBT DESTROY THE GLOBAL ECONOMY, Prof. Hudson's new book covers contemporary terms that are misleading or poorly understood as well as many important concepts that have been abandoned - many on purpose - from the long history of political economy. Two key concepts are RENT THEORY and DEBT, which explain how Unearned Income and the Financial Sector impoverish governments and populations the world over as power and riches flow upward into the hands of the few. Several additional essays provide background for key points and explore today's uncertain political and economic environment. To understand what's really going on, it's not necessary to re-invent the wheel; the major issues that guide healthy economies were known to the Ancients and were expanded upon by the classical economists of the 18th and 19th centuries, including Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, E. Peshine Smith, Simon Patten, Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen, and others of many political stripes whose aim was to leave the brutal legacy of feudalism behind. Their ideas and principles are brought back into the spotlight here. It is hoped that this book will deconstruct today's "value-free," watered-down and deceptive economics that favor the wealthy, allowing the next generation to create a successful economy with proper checks and balances that will benefit everyone. This is a book you will want to refer to again and again. Source: Publisher

ISBN-13: 9783981484250

ISBN-10: 3981484258

Language: English

Publisher: Islet-Verlag

Year: 2017

Pages: 404

Cataloged: Feb. 10, 2025, 5:04 p.m.

The essays collected in this new volume reveal Isaiah Berlin at his most lucid and accessible. He was constitutionally incapable of writing with the opacity of the specialist, but these shorter, more introductory pieces provide the perfect starting-point for the reader new to his work. Those who are already familiar with his writing will also be grateful for this further addition to his collected essays. The connecting theme of these essays, as in the case of earlier volumes, is the crucial social and political role—past, present and future—of ideas, and of their progenitors. A rich variety of subject-matters is represented—from philosophy to education, from Russia to Israel, from Marxism to romanticism—so that the truth of Heine’s warning is exemplified on a broad front. It is a warning that Berlin often referred to, and provides an answer to those who ask, as from time to time they do, why intellectual history matters. Among the contributions are “My Intellectual Path,” Berlin’s last essay, a retrospective autobiographical survey of his main preoccupations; and “Jewish Slavery and Emancipation,” the classic statement of his Zionist views, long unavailable in print. His other subjects include the Enlightenment, Giambattista Vico, Vissarion Belinsky, Alexander Herzen, G.V. Plekhanov, the Russian intelligentsia, the idea of liberty, political realism, nationalism, and historicism. The book exhibits the full range of his enormously wide expertise and demonstrates the striking and enormously engaging individuality, as well as the power, of his own ideas. “Over a hundred years ago, the German poet Heine warned the French not to underestimate the power of ideas: philosophical concepts nurtured in the stillness of a professor’s study could destroy a civilization.”—Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, 1958. This new edition adds a number of previously uncollected pieces, including Berlin’s earliest statement of the pluralism of values for which he is famous.

ISBN-13: None

ISBN-10: None

Language: English

Publisher: Novosti Press Agency Publishing House

Year: 1978

Pages: 101

Cataloged: Feb. 10, 2025, 5:04 p.m.

ISBN-13: 9780745321400

ISBN-10: None

Language: English

Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)

Year: 2003

Pages: None

Cataloged: Feb. 10, 2025, 5:03 p.m.

A primer on Democratic Socialism for those who are extremely skeptical of it, from the founder and editor of Current Affairs . "A scrupulous, carefully argued work that will challenge liberals and confound conservatives." —Ryan Cooper, national correspondent for The Week America is witnessing the rise of a new generation of socialist activists. From the heyday of Occupy Wall Street through the 2020 presidential election and beyond, young progressives have been increasingly drawn to socialism—today, the movement has more support than it has had since the 1920s. The Democratic Socialists of America, a big-tent leftist organization, has well over 70,000 members nationwide, including some of the most influential politicians in the country. But what does this all mean? Should we be worried about our nation, or should we join the march toward our bright socialist future? In Why You Should Be a Socialist, Nathan J. Robinson gives readers a crash course in twenty-first-century socialism: what it is, what it isn't, and why everyone should want to be a part of this exciting new chapter of American politics. This charming, accessible, and well-argued book will convince even the most doubtful readers of the merits of socialist thought. "A welcome and useful addition to the bumper crop in cases for left-wing politics. . . . Robinson persuasively lays out the moral case against capitalism, a system of brutal exploitation, oppression, and waste that Robinson dissects and disposes of in short order." — Jacobin Source: Publisher

ISBN-13: 9781250200877

ISBN-10: 1250200873

Language: English

Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Year: 2024

Pages: 325

Cataloged: Feb. 10, 2025, 5:02 p.m.

ISBN-13: 9780822353614

ISBN-10: None

Language: English

Publisher: Duke University Press

Year: 2013

Pages: None

Cataloged: Feb. 10, 2025, 5:01 p.m.

History and art connect in the study of material culture. Material culture records human intrusion in the environment. It is the way we imagine a distinction between nature and culture, and then rebuild nature to our desire, shaping, reshaping, and arranging things during life. We live in material culture, depend upon it, take it for granted, and realise through it our grandest aspirations. Thirty years ago, it seemed that material culture would become the realm within which relativistic and existential thinking would be extended to history and art, the issues of human significance and human excellence. Then the gears locked, the machine stopped, and began to run in reverse. We slid backward, rediscovering the energies of early modernism and naming our effort - in obeisance to the ideology of progress - postmodern. Humanist busied themselves with the reinvention of ideas they could have learned from the old masters of anthropology. Social scientists struggled to contrive ideas they could have learned by reading the great literature of the past. This retrograde motion was caused by more than adjustment to the conservative mood of the age. another. What has changed can change again; the moment at which I write will pass. Groping over old territory, relocating the critical purpose of scholarly endeavour, rediscovering subjectivity and situation, the diversity of orders and the interconnectedness of things, we will find points of convergence that will become the basis for a new transdisciplinary practice, at once humanistic and scientific. Renewed in oneness, we will be able to get on with our work, fashioning a view of humanity fit to the needs of the world's people. The concept of culture seems a secure achievement. In the future, history and art, as well as science and philosophy, will be understood to be, like culture, the creations of people who are alike in humanity, but different in tradition and predicament. Problematising is easy and endless. New ideas are a dime a dozen. What matters is how ideas fare in the world, what they yield in hard application. Our work will recognise the reality of the individual. traditions that unfold only within human control and among uncontrollable circumstances. It will expand through cross-cultural comparisons that bring us understanding at once of the universal and the particular. - Henry Glassie, from the Onward. Source: Publisher

ISBN-13: 9780253335746

ISBN-10: 0253335744

Language: English

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Year: 1999

Pages: 413

Cataloged: Feb. 10, 2025, 5:01 p.m.