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“Washington Bullets” = Washington dollars (Marx and Philosophy Review of Books)

“Prashad’s guidebook to US imperialism acts as a springboard for readers for their own journey in understanding imperialism and the role of the US in global politics. Reference is made to economic sabotage in Cuba, Venezuela, and Russia; to trampled revolutions in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and Grenada; to hybrid wars, outright killings, and other forms of subversion from Burkina Faso to Greece; Iran to Iraq; from Indonesia to Japan…..” | more…

Digging up a review of Ian Angus’ “Facing the Anthropocene,” from the Journal of Anthropological Research

Angus recounts the history of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). First developed in the late 1920s, by 1970 more than 750,000 tons of CFCs had been pumped into the earth’s atmosphere. In the mid-1970s, scientists began to discover the link between CFCs and ozone depletion, and the chemical industry went into full denial mode, arguing that scientists’ arguments were ‘just theories’….As it turns out, the British Antarctic Survey had been measuring ozone levels since 1957…. | more…

“The Return of Nature,” an analysis which captures Marx’s social milieu (Counterfire)

“This is a complex array of themes to pursue, particularly given that the scientific and social dimensions of sexual politics in the lives of many of these figures is highly relevant as well. Bellamy Foster rightly emphasises the importance of such issues within the overall picture, as a genuinely dialectical understanding of society and nature could hardly avoid confronting the alienated character of gender relations in class societies….” | more…

Author Jayati Ghosh on Vaccine Apartheid (Watch: Democracy Now!)

“…this is the problem that has actually plagued the entire attitude to vaccine development and production in this pandemic. A few companies have got the rights, and they are holding onto those rights, and they are only producing themselves. They must share this knowledge, and they must allow other producers, because that’s the only way we’re going to confront the crisis…” | more…

A review of Michael Tigar’s “Sensing Injustice:” Invaluable to law students, and fun for those who like a truly erudite author, too (Jacobin)

Among the cast of characters making cameo appearances are scores of attorneys, judges, and justices (including Justice Brennan, who eventually became Tigar’s friend and admirer), Bill Kunstler, cowboy Roy Rogers (a family acquaintance), Simone Signoret, James Baldwin, Jeremy Corbyn, Peggy Seeger, the great Scots poet Hugh MacDiarmid, Donald Sutherland, and Otto Preminger…. | more…

Fifty Years Later: Steve Early on the Forgotten Story of “Dissenting POWs”

“According to Wilber, and Lembcke, a Vietnam veteran and anti-war activist himself, what distinguished the dissenters from their accusers was their ‘disparate socioeconomic backgrounds.’ As the authors note, the senior ranking officers shot down over North Vietnam, like Stockdale, tended to be service academy graduates, from privileged circumstances which stood “in sharp contrast with the modest origins of war resisters.” U.S. soldiers captured in the South ‘were mostly enlisted personnel, younger and with less formal education.’ And those who joined the controversial ‘Peace Committee,’ during their imprisonment, were also more racially diverse….” | more…

Tigar on Chicago, 1968, and the Trial of the Chicago 8 (Watch: Dick Cavett Show)

The oscar-nominated “The Trial of the Chicago Seven,” has renewed interest in a particular flashpoint during the trials, when Bobby Seale demanded to represent himself. Judge Julius Hoffman ordered him bound and gagged. Seale was removed from the courtroom and thrown in jail. But in Director Aaron Sorkin’s reinvention of the events of 1968, a really good, but perhaps over-complicated story got “airbrushed” out: A lawyer was imposed on Bobby Seale against his will, and that lawyer was then arrested. The lawyer that was assigned to Bobby Seale was…..Michael Tigar. | more…