Reply #11: Chomsky Zinn and that similar vein

[Tinoire]

What a good thread! I still need to read Lakoff- is it really that interesting? Tell me more.

Currently I'm reading these books because my sister gave me a nice little credit at Common Courage Press and now I'm hooked on their whole store because it's geared to Progressives and Progressive thought.

So in answer to your question- anything and everything by Chomsky and Zinn in order to get real perspective on how our understanding of history and world events have been completely manipulated.

Right now, I'm reading/about to read these:



Freeing the World to Death
Essays on the American Empire

A collection of essays written by William Blum, some of which were published over the past decade in various magazines and anthologies, some appeared in his regular internet newsletter: The Anti-Empire Report, some which appeared only on his website, and some written explicitly for this book. The essays include:
The bombing of PanAm Flight 103: Case not closed
Cuban political prisoners ... in the United States
What do the imperial mafia want in Iraq?
Myth and denial in the war against Iraq.
Hiroshima: Needless Slaughter, Useful Terror
Hostages in Peru: Their terrorists, our freedom fighters
Madeleine Albright: Ethically challenged
The myth of America's booming economy
A New Yorker trapped in Los Angeles
Treason: None dare call it nothing

AUTHOR BIO
William Blum is the author of:"Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II", "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower", and "West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir"
http://www.commoncouragepress.com/index.cfm?action=book&bookid=306



On the rampage
Corporate Predators and the Destruction of Democracy
by Russell Mokhiber Robert Weissman

On the Rampage is a cool, clear and sprightly written down-to-earth series of stories about how the relentless greed and power of corporations control human beings here and abroad. It informs you of the kind of resistance to these corporate supremacists and how you can be alert and avoid some of these erosions of your daily living standards. Mokhiber and Weissman demonstrate how to blend unassailable evidence with irresistible rhetoric.
-Ralph Nader

Mokhiber and Weissman again strike at the heart of corporate power and malfeasance in this excellent book, On The Rampage. Chronicling the seamless transition the corporate elite enjoyed from the Clinton to the Bush administrations, these journalists uphold the time-honored and now all-too-rare tradition of dogged muckracking, exposing corporate criminals and their bought politicians in the spirit of Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, and I.F. Stone. In this age of endless war and limitless war profits, we need Mokhiber and Weissman and independent journalists like them now more than ever.
-Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!

On the Rampage treats readers to 71 trenchant essays on corporate soulessness from two of America's leading reporters on corporate misbehavior.
-Congressman Dennis Kucinich

"Mokhiber and Weissman are veteran trackers of the corporate beasts that pillage the globe. In On the Rampage, they are on the tail of GM, Exxon, Philip Morris and other snakes, showing how they prey on workers, the environment and consumers. To escape from being snack food for the corporate godzillas, We The People need to get On the Rampage."
-Jim Hightower, radio commentator and author of "Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush"

www.commoncouragepress.com/index.cfm?action=book&bookid=214



The Broken Promises of America Volume I
At Home and Abroad, Past and Present, An Encyclopedia for Our Times Volume 1
by Douglas F. Dowd
Introduction by Howard Zinn


"As I could say also of Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn: there's no one in my life from whom I've learned more than my friend and mentor Douglas Dowd. I have been strengthened in my determination to help make good our country's so-far broken promises."
--Daniel Ellsberg

"A master reference work by a guy who personifies everything that is great about America."
-Robert McChesney

With 160 entries from arrogance to zoos, Douglas Dowd puts the U.S. back in its cage. The ultimate primer and reference work on what has gone wrong in our country. Biographical sketches from Kissinger to Sacco and Vanzetti, combined with solid analysis of horrific deeds provides the reader with an education like no other.

This is a must-have reference work that's as entertaining as it is profound. From racism to violence, from militarism to power, Dowd's entries provide an education by provocation.

"The bitter truth is that although we have had every opportunity to become a truly wonderful society, we have failed to shed our past faults and are now evolving toward something the opposite of wonderful: The gap between our realities and our ideals, despite important changes now and again, widens to resemble the Grand Canyon."-from the preface

A professor of economic history at Johns Hopkins University in Italy and also at the University of California, Douglas F. Dowd has written over 10 books critical of capitalism, including Capitalism and Its Economics: A Critical History, The Twisted Dream: Capitalist Development in the United States Since 1776, and Understanding Capitalism: Critical Analysis From Karl Marx to Amartya Sen.

http://www.commoncouragepress.com/index.cfm?action=book&bookid=312



Oil, Power and Empire
Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda
by Larry Everest

This unique volume compiles in one place a history of US intervention against Iraq and the devastating consequences for the people and the region. It shows the ways in which war today is a continuation of that history, but also a radical leap to more direct military control in Iraq and around the world. The “Bush Doctrine” is both built on our imperial history and yet new and far more dangerous.


In Oil, Power and Empire, Everest rips away the shroud of Bush pretext. He

1. Exposes the true U.S. agenda: war on Iraq is part of plan for U.S. global domination, monopolizing world energy sources, and restructuring the Middle East.

2. Dissects Bush Administration arguments -- “weapons of mass destruction,” the al-Qaeda connection, violations of UN resolutions -- as pretexts for pre-planned agenda.

3. Shows that for 80-some years, U.S. actions in Iraq and the Middle East, often Machiavellian in the extreme, have been guided by considerations of oil, power and empire, have brought horrendous results for the peoples of the region (including helping Saddam Hussein to power), and led not to justice and stability, but a deepening spiral of U.S. military intervention.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. PLOTTING WAR AS THE TOWERS BURNED
How the Bush Administration decided to go to war on Iraq within 2 months of Sept. 11, despite the lack of an Iraqi connection.

2. IMPERIALISM AND THE CREATION OF IRAQ.
A history of imperialism shows how the conflicts and tensions of today arose and why a U.S. colony would be no better.

3. 1945-1979: BUILDING A MIDDLE EAST PILLAR OF EMPIRE
After World War II the US moved in initiating a spiral of greater military involvement and intervention in the region, which is now going to take another leap.

4. THE 1980s: DOUBLE-DEALING DEATH IN THE GULF
Encouraging the IRan-Iraq war, arming Iraq, assisting in chemical warfare; everything Bush charges Hussein with, the US was complicit in.

5. NEW WORLD ORDER, TAKE 1: DESERT STORM & KILLER SANCTIONS
The Persian gulf war was the first conflict after the collapse of the Soviet Union and intended to send a global message more about that than any concern about Kuwait.

6. IRAQ and THE BUSH DOCTRINE
September 11 gave the U.S. an opportunity to achieve a long-held agenda and it forcefully and deliberately and step-by-step nothing less than an imperialist master plan for world domination.

7. CREATING PRETEXTS: THE POST-9/11 CAMPAIGN FOR WAR.
As they were preparing pretexts, they had already decided to attack and were already positioning materials.

8. AN UNJUST WAR OF EMPIRE. <[BLURBS} “An excellent book with analytical discussions of all the relevant matters of foreign policy which all to often in the current era are left undiscussed or are framed in slogans and propaganda. Should be made 'required reading—especially for policy makers in Washington.” [br />--Dwight Simpson, Prof. International Relations at San Francisco State University.

http://www.commoncouragepress.com/index.cfm?action=book&bookid=246



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