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"In this stunning overview, Ford draws from his work for Black Agenda Report, one of the most incisive and perceptive publications of the progressive left, to examine competing struggles for class power and identity in the Black movement. In a survey stretching from the violent gentrification of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, through the engineered bankruptcy of Detroit, to the "more effective evil" of the Obama presidency, Ford casts a caustic eye on the empty posturing and corruption of the Democratic Party. This, he insists, depends on a Black constituency for electoral success, while using a co-opted "Black misleadership class" to sell out working people's interests. Profiling along the way storied Black leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Brown (for whom Ford once worked), The Black Agenda looks, too, beyond American shores, at US intervention in Libya, the Congo and the Middle East, showing how these are imbricated with racism at home. Ford concludes with a discussion of the Black Lives Matter movement, setting out both its pitfalls and potentialities."--Provided by publisher.

The science is conclusive: to avoid irreversible climate collapse, the burning of all fossil fuels will have to end in the next decade. In this concise and highly readable intervention, Ashley Dawson sets out what is required to make this momentous shift: simply replacing coal-fired power plants with for-profit solar energy farms will only maintain the toxic illusion that it is possible to sustain relentlessly expanding energy consumption. We can no longer think of energy as a commodity. Instead we must see it as part of the global commons, a vital element in the great stock of air, water, plants, and cultural forms like language and art that are the inheritance of humanity as a whole.People's Powerprovides a persuasive critique of a market-led transition to renewable energy. It surveys the early development of the electric grid in the United States, telling the story of battles for public control over power during the Great Depression. This history frames accounts of contemporary campaigns, in both the United States and Europe, that eschew market fundamentalism and sclerotic state power in favor of energy that is green, democratically managed and equitably shared.

As we emerge (though perhaps only temporarily) from the pandemic, other crises move center stage: outrageous inequality, climate disaster, desperate refugees, mounting tensions of a new cold war. The abiding motif of our time is relentless chaos.Acknowledging the possibilities for new beginnings at such moments, Mao Zedong famously proclaimed "e;There is great disorder under heaven; the situation is excellent."e; The contemporary relevance of Mao's observation depends on whether today's catastrophes can be a catalyst for progress or have passed over into something terrible and irretrievable. Perhaps the disorder is no longer under, but in heaven itself.Characteristically rich in paradoxes and reversals that entertain as well as illuminate, Slavoj A iA ek's new book treats with equal analytical depth the lessons of Rammstein and Corbyn, Morales and Orwell, Lenin and Christ. It excavates universal truths from local political sites across Palestine and Chile, France and Kurdistan, and beyond.Heaven In Disorder looks with fervid dispassion at the fracturing of the Left, the empty promises of liberal democracy, and the tepid compromises offered by the powerful. From the ashes of these failures, A iA ek asserts the need for international solidarity, economic transformation, and-above all-an urgent, "e;wartime"e; communism.

This explosive account by Jeremy Corbyn's former speechwriter and author of The Candidate Alex Nunns reveals how the Labour Party threw the 2017 general elections and stopped their own leader from becoming the prime minister. The full extent of Labour MPs’ treachery is exposed for the first time—the incessant negative leaks and briefings to the press, the procedural stitch-ups, and the abuse meted out to Corbyn and his staff. Names are named and no blushes are spared. Nunns weaves together separate threads to argue that this was a grad effort by the establishment to crush Corbyn.

Charlie Parker is an African Grey Parrot. He entered the life of the Smith family three decades ago when they first encountered him in a downtown Manhattan bird shop and found him so irresistible, they had to bring him home.Charlie is many things in the Smith family, articulating them all in an astonishingly diverse and colorful vocabulary. He can be demanding, squawking imperiously "e;Clean my cage"e; or "e;Want some water."e; He can be very direct, warning an aggressive business associate who had been yelling at Debby "e;I'm going to kick your ass, you sonofabitch"e; He can be mischievous, making meowing noises to a neighbor's confused dog in the elevator. He is a survivor, who ended up recovering on an IV after the collapse of the World Trade Center filled the Smiths neighboring apartment with toxic dust. He is often the entertainer, with a songbook that extends across the opening bars of "e;Home on the Range"e; and "e;The Yellow Rose of Texas."e; Most of the time he is affectionate, as when he hangs upside down against the side of the cage and asks for his tummy to be tickled.In hearing Charlie's tales in this charming book, we come to realize that parrots are intelligent, sociable and loving creatures, to an extent that, as the renowned avian scientist Professor Irene Pepperberg insists in her introduction, they cannot meaningfully be owned by humans but should rather be enjoyed as companions.

Few urban critters are more reviled than the hipster. They are notoriously difficult to define, and yet we know one when we see one. No wonder: they were among the global cultural phenomena that ushered in the 21st century. They have become a bulwark of mainstream culture, cultural commodity, status, butt of all jokes and ready-made meme.But frightening as it is to imagine, for more than a century hipsters have been lurking among us. Defined by their appearances and the cloud of meaning attached to them-the cool vanguard of gentrification, the personification of capitalism with a conscience-hipsters are all looks, and these looks are a visual timeline to America's past and present.Underlining this timeline is the pattern of American popular culture's love/hate/theft relationship with Black culture. Yet the pattern of recycling has reached a chilling point: the 21st century hipster made all possible past fads into new trends, including and especially the old uncool. InDecolonize Hipsters, Grgory Pierrot gives us a field guide to the phenomenon, a symptom and vanguard of the wave of aggressive white supremacist sentiment now oozing from around the globe.

An audacious collaboration between an award-winning novelist and a leading environmental philosopher,Love in the Anthropocenetaps into one of the hottest topics of the day, literally and figurativelyour corrupted environmentto deliver five related stories (Flyfishing, Carbon, Holiday, Shanghai, and Zoo) that investigate a future bereft of natural environments, introduced with a discussion on the Anthropocenethe Age of Humanityand concluding with an essay on love.The love these writer/philosophers investigate and celebrate is as much a constant as is human despoliation of the planet; it is what defines us, and it is what may save us. Science fiction, literary fiction, philosophical meditation, manifesto? All the above. This unique work is destined to become an essential companiona primer, reallyto life in the 21st century.

I have created for each of you a fate, one tailored specifically for your needs and desires. Each of you has a defining momentnot before, not afterwhen a wrong turn or decision led to the disastrous outcome that you and I mourn. To isolate that malignant moment is an exacting, exhaustive process, which only the most well-trained and competent professionals, armed with the most sophisticated of predictive models and processing power, can accomplish. You can put your trust in me, as you would in an expert surgeon, a surgeon of the soul.On a distant planet overlooking Earth, the nameless protagonist ofThe Compensation Bureauis one of a team of Actuaries at work on the innovative Lazarus Project. Conceived in response to the shocking violence observed in humankind, the project identifies people who have wrongfully died at the hands of otherswhether victims of war, hate crimes, or random brutalityand attempts to compensate for the cruelty and pain they faced in life and death.But balancing the accounts for the sufferings and wrongdoings of humanity proves hardly a clinical exercise. The Actuary soon finds himself personally invested in the projects mission, and the goals of the project itself are complicated as the fate of Earths inhabitants becomes more uncertain.The Compensation Bureauexplores the power of individual and collective action, from a writer hailed byThe Washington Postas a world-novelist of the first category.

A mesmerizing mix of Charles Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson, and Philip K. Dick, Chameleo is a true account of what happened in a seedy Southern California town when an enthusiastic and unrepentant heroin addict named Dion Fuller sheltered a U.S. Marine who'd stolen night vision goggles and perhaps a few top secret files from a nearby military base.Dion found himself arrested (under the ostensible auspices of The Patriot Act) for conspiring with international terrorists to smuggle Top Secret military equipment out of Camp Pendleton. The fact that Dion had absolutely nothing to do with international terrorists, smuggling, Top Secret military equipment, or Camp Pendleton didn't seem to bother the military. He was released from jail after a six-day-long Abu-Ghraib-style interrogation. Subsequently, he believed himself under intense government scrutiny - and, he suspected, the subject of bizarre experimentation involving "e;cloaking"e;- electro-optical camouflage so extreme it renders observers practically invisible from a distance of some meters - by the Department of Homeland Security. Hallucination? Perhaps - except Robert Guffey, an English teacher and Dion's friend, tracked down and interviewed one of the scientists behind the project codenamed "e;Chameleo,"e; experimental technology which appears to have been stolen by the U.S. Department of Defense and deployed on American soil. More shocking still, Guffey discovered that the DoD has been experimenting with its newest technologies on a number of American citizens.A condensed version of this story was the cover feature ofFortean Times Magazine(September 2013).

With Joe Biden stepping back into the national scene, the time is ripe for a close assessment of the administration in which he served as vice-president.The Center Did Not Holdweighs the progressive-and not so progressive-contributions of the Obama-Biden White House across more than a hundred issues involving international relations, domestic cultural and economic matters, and social justice.While Obama and Biden campaigned in the early 2000s on a host of progressive promises, Eisenberg's meticulous accounting shows that, over eight years, they failed to achieve any substantial, lasting change to that end, instead perpetuating a tradition of cautious centrism.Among the disappointments, the former president and vice-president reneged on environmental promises, pandered to lobbyists, prosecuted a record number of whistle-blowers, and failed to implement the simplest of financial reforms in response to the 2008 crisis. Under Biden's trademark "e;counterterrorism plus"e; strategy, they oversaw tens of thousands of civilian deaths in Afghanistan, and escalated violence in the Middle East.

Tiyo Attallah Salah-El died in 2018 on "e;Slow Death Row"e; while serving a life sentence in a Pennsylvania prison. He was a man with a dizzying array of talents and vocations: author, scholar, teacher, musician, and activist: he was the founder of the Coalition for the Abolition of Prisons. He was also, as is apparent from the letters written over a decade and half to his friend Paul Alan Smith that make up this book, an extraordinarily eloquent correspondent.Tiyo's missives present a vivid picture of the tribulations faced by those incarcerated, especially the nearly 60% who are non-white: habitual racism, arbitrary lockdowns, brutal beatings and hospitalizations, stifling heat and bitter cold. Here too are descriptions of Tiyo's individual struggles with cancer, aging, and the sirens of personal demons.Tiyo's refusal to succumb to such hardships is evident in dispatches that are generous, philosophical and often laugh-out-loud funny. Through them we learn of his many friendships, including those with the historian Howard Zinn, a range of activist/advocate supporters on the outside, and two fellow people in prison who were leaders of the Black liberation group MOVE.At a time when the appalling racial bias of America's police and criminal justice system is under the spotlight as never before,Pen Palis both a vital intervention and moving portrait of someone whose physical confinement could never extinguish an extraordinary free spirit.

Bernie Sanders' tilt at the US presidency has come under fire from an establishment that derides his social democratic policies as alien to the American way. But, as Ted Hamm reveals in this engaging and concise history, the sort of socialism Bernie advocates was commonplace in the Brooklyn where he grew up in the 1940s and 50s.Policies like free college tuition, rent control, and infrastructure projects including extensive public housing, parks and swimming pools were part of the New Deal city run by a progressive Mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, and supported by FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt. While Arthur Miller, resident in Brooklyn Heights, was stagingDeath of a Salesman, a play with which Bernie's dad closely identified, Woody Guthrie was penning his paeans to the American worker in Coney Island and Jackie Robinson was breaking the color bar on Ebbets Field in a Dodgers team yet to be relocated in California.Drawing deeply on interviews with his brother and friends, and delving skillfully into the history of the borough,Bernie's Brooklynshows how, far from being an anomaly in US politics, Sanders' 2020 platform is rooted firmly in the progressivism of the New Deal.

"e;When I first committed to three full months in El Salvador, the feeling that I was signing up for the equivalent of marriage and reproduction was assuaged only by the awareness that, come March 2020, I'd be dashing around Mexico before flying to Istanbul and resuming freneticism in that hemisphere. Little did I know that the scribbled itinerary would never come to fruition, and that I'd only get as far as the coastal village of Zipolite in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, where March 13-25 would turn into March 13 until further notice."e;Since leaving her American homeland in 2003 Beln Fernndez had been an inveterate traveler. Ceaselessly wandering the world, the only constant in her itinerary was a conviction never to return to the country of her childhood. Then the COVID-19 lockdown happened and Fernandez found herself stranded in a small village on the Pacific coast of Mexico.This charming, wryly humorous account of nine months stuck in one place nevertheless roams freely: over reflections on previous excursions to the wilder regions of North Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe; over her new-found friendship with Javier, the mezcal-drinking, chain-smoking near-septuagenarian she encounters in his plastic chair on Mexico's only clothing-optional beach; over her protracted struggle to obtain a life-saving supply of yerba mate; and over, literally, the rope of a COVID-19 checkpoint, set up directly outside her front door and manned by armed guards who require her to don a mask every time she returns home.

It's tough being an author these days, and it's getting harder. A recent Authors Guild survey showed that the median income for all published authors in 2017, based solely on book-related activities, was just over $3,000, down more than 20% from eight years previously. Roughly 25% of authors earned nothing at all. Price cutting by retailers, notably Amazon, has forced publishers to pay their writers less. A stagnant economy, with only the rich seeing significant income increases, has hit writers along with everyone else.But, as Jason Boog shows in a rich mix of history and politics, this is not the first period when writers have struggled to scratch a living. Between accounts of contemporary layoffs and shrinking paychecks for authors and publishing professionals are stories from the 1930s when writers, hard hit by the Great Depression, fought to create unions and New Deal projects like the Federal Writers Project that helped to put wordsmiths back to work.By revisiting these stories, Boog points the way to how writers today can stand with other progressive forces fighting for economic justice and, in doing so, help save a vital cultural profession under existential threat.

Michael Ratner (1943-2016) was one of America's leading human rights lawyers. He worked for more than four decades at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) becoming first the Director of Litigation and then the President of what Alexander Cockburn called "e;a small band of tigerish people."e; He was also the President of the National Lawyers Guild.Ratner handled some of the most significant cases In American history. This book tells why and how he did it.His last case, which he worked on until he died, was representing truth-telling whistleblower and now political prisoner Julian Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks.Ratner "e;moved the bar"e; by organizing some 600 lawyers to successfully defend habeas corpus, that is, the ancient right of someone accused of a crime to have a lawyer and to be brought before a judge.Michael had a piece of paper taped on the wall next to his desk at the CCR. It read:4 key principles of being a radical lawyer:1. Do not refuse to take a case just because it is long odds of winning in court.2. Use cases to publicize a radical critique of US policy and to promote revolutionary transformation.3. Combine legal work with political advocacy.4. Love people.Compelling and instructive,Moving the Baris an indispensable manual for the next generation of activists and their lawyers.

After being forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy, Julian Assange is now in a high security prison in London where he faces extradition to the United States and imprisonment for the rest of his life.The charges Assange faces are a major threat to press freedom. James Goodale, who represented the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case, commented: "The charge against Assange for 'conspiring' with a source is the most dangerous I can think of with respect to the First Amendment in all my years representing media organizations."It is critical now to build support for Assange and prevent his delivery into the hands of the Trump administration. That is the urgent purpose of this book. A wide range of distinguished contributors, many of them in original pieces, here set out the story of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, the importance of their work, and the dangers for us all in the persecution they face. In Defense of Julian Assange is a vivid, vital intervention into one of the most important political issues of our day.

When Luke O'Neil isn't angry, he's asleep. When he's awake, he gives vent to some of the most heartfelt, political and anger-fueled prose to power its way to the public sphere since Hunter S. Thompson smashed a typewriter's keys.Welcome to Hell Worldis an unexpurgated selection of Luke O'Neil's finest rants, near-poetic rhapsodies, and investigatory journalism. Racism, sexism, immigration, unemployment, Marcus Aurelius, opioid addiction, Iraq: all are processed through the O'Neil grinder. He details failings in his own life and in those he observes around him: and the result is a book that is at once intensely confessional and an energetic, unforgettable condemnation of American mores.Welcome to Hell Worldis, in the author's words, a "e;fever dream nightmare of reporting and personal essays from one of the lowest periods in our country in recent memory."e; It is also a burning example of some of the best writing you're likely to read anywhere.

Maud Gonne, the legendary woman known as the Irish Joan of Arc, left her mark on everyone she met. She famously won the devotion of one of the greatest poets of the age, William Butler Yeats. Born into tremendous privilege, she allied herself with rebels and the downtrodden and openly defied what was at the time the world's most powerful empire

An engaging, accessible history of the focus group, Featherstone's survey shows how the primary purpose of the focus group has shifted from determining what we want, to selling us things we don't. The focus group, over the course of the last century, became an increasingly vital part of the way companies and politicians sold their products and policies with few areas of life, from salad dressing to health care legislation to our favorite TV shows, left untouched by moderators questioning controlled groups about what they liked and didn't. Divining Desire is the first-ever popular survey of this topic. In a lively, sweeping survey, Liza Featherstone traces the surprising roots of the focus group in early-twentieth century European socialism, its subsequent use by the "e;Mad Men"e; of Madison Avenue, and its widespread employment today. She also explores such famous "e;failures"e; of the method as the doomed launch of the Ford Edsel, and the even more ill-fated attempt to introduce a new flavor of Coca Cola (which prompted street protests from devotees of the old formula).As elites became increasingly detached from the general public, they relied ever more on focus groups, whether to win votes or to sell products. And, in a society where many feel increasingly powerless, the focus group has at least offered the illusion that ordinary people can be heard and that their opinions count. Yet, the more they are listened to, the less power they have. That paradox is particularly stark today, when everyone can post an opinion on social media - our 24 hour "e;focus group"e;-yet only plutocrats can shape policy. In telling this story, Featherstone raises profound and fascinating questions about democracy and consumer society.

Governor Andrew Cuomo, scion of Mario Cuomo, is today as famous as his father, also a governor of New York state for three terms. Like Robert Moses, he is one of New York's great and infamous power brokers. Though initially lavishly celebrated for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, not least by himself, it is now apparent that Cuomo's management of the crisis was a juddering and fatal failure. Thousands died because, ignoring the advice of experts, he shut down too late and returned still sick patients to nursing homes. The crisis was intensified by his previous commitment to austerity, which saw the slashing of funding to hospitals.A vital riposte to Cuomo's recently published book about the pandemic, now increasingly derided as self-serving and deceitful,The Princeis a searing indictment of Cuomo's handling of coronavirus and his time overall in the highest office of the state.