“This is Hell is a weekly longform political interview program broadcast across Chicago on WNUR since 1996. Every Saturday morning, Chuck Mertz works off his news hangover by talking to the journalists, authors, and activists working to make this world a slightly less hellish place….”
James Boggs, born in Marion Junction, Alabama, never dreamed of becoming President or a locomotive engineer. He grew up in a world where the white folks are gentlemen by day and Ku Klux Klanners by night. After graduating from Dunbar High School in Bessemer in 1937, Boggs took the first freight train north, bumming his way through the western part of the country, working in the hop fields of the state of Washington, cutting ice in Minnesota, and finally ending up
“It seems as if we could write the history of the nearly the whole of the Western World by detailing the history of the island that I believe Cristobal Colon dubbed Hispaniola, or perhaps it was Bartolomé de las Casas, the 16th-century Spanish historian, social reformer and Dominican friar who deserves the credit for this. And the naming of the Island itself is a microcosm of conquest or imperialism. The Taino Amerindians, according to de las Casas, called the island ‘Haiti’ or Mountainous Land,” and in 1804 revolutionary leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines recovered it as the official name of independent Saint-Domingue, as a tribute to the
This book should be of interest to anyone constructing an understanding of the causes of violence, particularly as fed by the power motive and influenced by hidden psychological processes. It is a “must read” and a valuable reference for one’s personal library….
I used the 2008 book in my psychology of aggression class and my peace psychology class. I feel that book was one of the best resources I had and an education for our students. I am now making plans to use the 2015 book in adult learning classes. | more…
These outstanding works have been selected for excellence in scholarship and presentation, the significance of their contribution to the field, and their value as important—often the first—treatment of their subject. | more…
“This short book is an excellent example of how large scale historical changes can be examined through the microcosm a relatively small geographical area. White settlers profoundly transformed the areas they arrived in. Before their arrival, these areas had been the domain of various Native American tribes who had used the land in radically different ways to the Europeans. The destruction and displacement of those tribes is a key part of Tully’s story. As part of doing this the Europeans completely transformed the whole landscape….” | more…
On December 2, 2015, 14 people were killed and more than 20 wounded in a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. Mass shootings have become routine in the United States and speak to a society that both lives by violence and uses it as tool to feed the coffers of the merchants of death. Violence runs through American society like an electric current offering instant pleasure from all sources of the culture, whether it be the nightly news and Hollywood fanfare or television series that glorify serial killers. At a policy level, violence drives an arms industry, a militaristic foreign policy, and is increasingly the punishing state’s major tool to enforce its hyped-up brand of domestic terrorism, especially against Black youth. The United States is utterly wedded to a neoliberal culture in which cruelty is viewed as virtue, mass incarceration the default welfare program and chief mechanism to ‘institutionalize obedience’… | more…
News stories and academic studies generally focus on the decisions made by presidents, prime ministers, and other world leaders. But where do those options decided upon come from in the first place? Why are some options never even considered? Behind the scenes, think tanks play a large part in what policies are considered by central governments. In the U.S., the most influential think tank of them all is the Council on Foreign Relations. From the 1920s right up until today, the CFR has been shaping policies, advising presidents, and helping ensure the U.S. remains the dominant superpower in the world. | more…
In the United States today, the term “terrorism” conjures up images of dangerous, outside threats: religious extremists and suicide bombers in particular. Harder to see but all the more pervasive is the terrorism perpetuated by the United States, itself, whether through military force overseas or woven into the very fabric of society at home. Henry Giroux, in this passionate and incisive book, turns the conventional wisdom on terrorism upside down, demonstrating how fear and lawlessness have become organizing principles of life in the United States, and violence an acceptable form of social mediation. He addresses the most pressing
Continuing our series of book reviews in time for the holiday gift-giving season, here’s a quick look at Michael Perelman’s Railroading Economics, a title, and a subject, that intrigued me for two reasons. Trivially, as readers know, I’m by way of being a rail fan; more importantly, when I was a mere sprat, I read Matthew Josephson’s Robber Barons. Josephson’s tales of Jim Fisk watering the stock of the Erie Railroad — ‘Gone where the woodbine twineth’ was Fisk’s answer to where the money went — and his running buddy Jay Gould — ‘I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half’ (attributed) — trying to corner the gold market would inoculate anyone from belief in the ideology of ‘perfect competition.’ They certainly did me…. This is a long and complicated story, and Perelman tells it well. | more…
When the serious work of building a better world starts, we will have no choice but to use some of the bricks of the current world as we begin that construction…. When ideas become rooted in masses of people, they become a natural force, argues Michael Lebowitz in his latest book, The Socialist Imperative: From Gotha to Now. He uses the example of the “socialist triangle” to explicate a structure for a better, democratic system. | more…
ave Our Unions is a sprawling collection of essays, covering everything from the Bread and Roses strike of 1912 to the current struggles of the British Labour Party. The text includes movie and book reviews, as well as journalistic accounts of many contemporary U.S. labor struggles, and even author Steve Early’s personal experience over many years of working for the Communication Workers of America (CWA). The book will offer practitioners a wealth of details with strategic implications for ongoing efforts. Academics will find hints of theory throughout, and a series of cases with implications for longstanding debates in labor and social movement studies. | more…
