The Fault in Our SARS in the news
February 20, 2024
As usual Rob Wallace has made the media rounds, this time with his latest book, The Fault in Our SARS. Listen and watch!
Monthly Review Press
Listen: Chris Gilbert’s Commune or Nothing! featured on ‘Venezuelanalysis’
February 20, 2024
Listen to Chris Gilbert, author of 'Commune or Nothing!' as he details how Venezuela’s communards have plowed ahead with the construction of socialism even under the most difficult circumstances.
A history which is far from over (The War Against the Commons reviewed in ‘Counterfire’)
February 20, 2024
Capital’s war against the commons continues today in the Global South, as does resistance to it. The removal of the people from the land to work in industrial cities is also part of the mechanism which creates the metabolic rift, one of the reasons for capitalism’s inherent environmental destructiveness. The route to overcoming this does not lie in individuals or communities returning to an idealised communal past. As Angus says, this has been the expectation of utopian communal groups since the Diggers established themselves on St George’s Hill in 1649...
The “un-American” treatment of a leftist sci-fi fan (The Prosecution of Professor Chandler Davis reviewed by Hugo Book Club)
February 20, 2024
“Almost all HUAC witnesses with Communist connections were avoiding the jeopardy of contempt prosecution either by naming the names of others or declining to answer questions under the Fifth Amendment.,” explains biographer Dr. Steve Batterson.
Human destiny in Ukraine (Washington’s New Cold War, in ‘Counterpunch’)
February 20, 2024
...Russian leaders believe, probably correctly, that this is a fight for their survival. Ukrainian leaders, ditto – except there’s no “probably” about it; it’s definitely. And it is pointless to attempt to judge those leaders under such circumstances. But for American leadership, this is a proxy war. It is not existential. It is a proxy war of choice.
“Highly original in…its narration of intercolonial processes” (The Dawning of the Apocalypse reviewed in ‘Journal of African-American History’)
February 20, 2024
Horne’s book is primarily a synthesis of information found in secondary sources, but it is a masterful blend of the interrelated events happening in Europe, Africa, West Asia, North, Central, and South America, and the Caribbean in the critical centuries before and after 1492.
“Book of the year, and the next year…and the year after that” (The Return of Nature reviewed in ‘Science and Society’)
February 20, 2024
Book of the year? A very bold “yes!” But it is also the book of the next year, and the year after that, and the year after that.
Theory that brings us closer to a world that places “capitalism” firmly in the past (The Dialectics of Dependency reviewed in ‘Systemic Disorder’)
February 20, 2024
Rather than believe in Santa Claus or fairy tales, far better that the dynamics of capitalism be grasped in their full dimensions. Only by understanding how and why, and drawing appropriate conclusions, rather than simply observing, can the world’s exploited — the vast majority of humanity — hope to see a better world come into being, a world that will have put capitalism into the history books.
The undaunted I.F. Stone (The Hidden History of The Korean War reviewed in ‘The Progressive’)
February 20, 2024
To this day, memories of cities flattened by U.S. bombers—a scale of technological devastation almost unthinkable even after the atomic bombs of 1945—resonate among Koreans on both sides of the border.
Hierarchies leveled by solidarity around a shared hatred of fascism (International Brigade Memorial Trust on !Brigadistas!)
February 20, 2024
The simplicity of the story, as well as the excellent historical summary provided in Fraser Ottanelli’s foreword, also make it a useful, accessible introduction to the International Brigades. There is, as the afterword by Paul Buhle suggests, something inherently comic-book-worthy about the anti-fascists who volunteered for Spain. Theirs is a story of ordinary – not invincible – people pushed into performing heroic and terrifying feats of bravery for no gain but the greater good. It is to Ferguson and Timmons’ credit that they really do capture this truth in the book.