Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs


Noam Chomsky - 1999
    Rogue States is the result of his tireless efforts to measure the world's superpowers by their own standards and to hold them responsible for the acts they commit in the name of their people.The United States and its allies come in for particular scrutiny for their numerous blatant violations of the very international laws they claim to uphold. With analysis of the United States's bombing campaign against Iraq, NATO'S intervention in Kosovo, US support for a regime terror in East Timor, and the political crisis in Colombia, Chomsky interrogates the rhetoric of Western foreign policy to reveal the insidious interests behind insupportable actions —from paralyzing economic sanctions to surgical military strikes.Chomsky also turns his penetrating gaze towards continuing US involvement in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America to trace the enduring combined effects of military domination and economic imperialism on these Regions.Throughout, Chomsky reveals the United States's increasingly open dismissal of United Nations resolutions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and international legal precedent in justifying its motives and actions. As his analysis of US statecraft and warmongering amply reveals, the rule of law has been reduced to a mere nuisance in the United States's brazen bid for the title of "rogue state."Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a world-renowned linguist, philosopher, and political analyst. He writes extensively and lectures around the world on international affairs, US foreign policy, and human rights. He has published many books with South End Press, including Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians and Powers and Prospects: Reflections on Human Nature and the Social Order.Table of Contents 1. Rogues' Gallery: Who Qualifies? 2. Rogue States 3. Crisis in the Balkans 4. East Timor Retrospective 5. "Plan Colombia" 6. Cuba and the US Government: David vs. Goliath 7. Putting on the Pressure: Latin America 8. Jubilee 2000 9. "Recovering Rights": A Crooked Path 10. The United States and the "Challenge of Universality" 11. The Legacy of War 12. Millennium Greetings 13. Power in the Domestic Arena 14. Socioeconomic Sovereignty Notes Index An Excerpt from Rogue States by Noam ChomskyThe concept of "rogue state" plays a pre-eminent role today in policy planning and analysis. The current Iraq crisis is only the latest example. Washington and London declared Iraq a "rogue state," a threat to its neighbors and to the entire world, an "outlaw nation" led by a reincarnation of Hitler who must be contained by the guardians of world order, the United States and its British "junior partner," to adopt the term ruefully employed by the British foreign office half a century ago. The concept merits a close look. [...]A secret 1995 study of the Strategic Command, which is responsible for the strategic nuclear arsenal, outlines the basic thinking. Released through the Freedom of Information Act, the study, Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence, "shows how the United States shifted its deterrent strategy from the defunct Soviet Union to so-called rogue states such as Iraq, Libya, Cuba and North Korea," AP reports. The study advocates that the US exploit its nuclear arsenal to portray itself as "irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked." That "should be a part of the national persona we project to all adversaries," in particular the "rogue states." "It hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational and cool-headed," let alone committed to such silliness as international law and treaty obligations. "The fact that some elements" of the US government "may appear to be potentially 'out of control' can be beneficial to creating and reinforcing fears and doubts within the minds of an adversary's decision makers." The report resurrects Nixon's "madman theory": our enemies should recognize that we are crazed and unpredictable, with extraordin

Crowds and Power


Elias Canetti - 1960
    Breathtaking in its range and erudition, it explores Shiite festivals and the English Civil war, the finger exercises of monkeys and the effects of inflation in Weimar Germany. In this study of the interplay of crowds, Canetti offers one of the most profound and startling portraits of the human condition.

This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality


Peter Pomerantsev - 2019
    In this surreal atmosphere created to disorient us and undermine our sense of truth, we’ve lost not only our grip on peace and democracy — but our very notion of what those words even mean.Peter Pomerantsev takes us to the front lines of the disinformation age, where he meets Twitter revolutionaries and pop-up populists, “behavioral change” salesmen, Jihadi fanboys, Identitarians, truth cops, and many others. Forty years after his dissident parents were pursued by the KGB, Pomerantsev finds the Kremlin re-emerging as a great propaganda power. His research takes him back to Russia — but the answers he finds there are not what he expected.Blending reportage, family history, and intellectual adventure, This Is Not Propaganda explores how we can reimagine our politics and ourselves when reality seems to be coming apart.

Love and Hatred: The Troubled Marriage of Leo and Sonya Tolstoy


William L. Shirer - 1994
    Shirer's new book - written in his ninth decade - explores the passionate, highly charged, and extraordinary lives of Leo and Sonya Tolstoy. It is a compelling illumination both of the nature of genius and of the universal problems of love, sex, and marriage - themes that Tolstoy played out in his great fiction and that haunted him in his tangled domestic life. Rich in anecdotes, wise, full of sweeping history, and imbued with Shirer's profound knowledge of literature and life, Love and Hatred ranks beside such works as Robert Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra and Nigel Nicolson's Portrait of a Marriage as a masterly, intuitive, and sympathetic exploration of the love/hate relationship between two famous, bigger-than-life people. Beginning in 1862, when Tolstoy committed the blunder of asking his young bride to read his diaries of his bachelor life so there should be no secrets between them, and ending with his tragic flight from home (and marriage) in 1910 while the whole world waited for news of him, Love and Hatred tells the story of a great romance between two people who could live neither together nor apart - a romance that exhausted and obsessed them both, and that forms the basis for much of Tolstoy's work. The final book of William L. Shirer's long and brilliant career, it is - appropriately - a masterly re-creation of a time, of two extraordinary people, and of the very nature of love, marriage, and old age.

The Cornel West Reader


Cornel West - 1999
    Whether he is writing a scholarly book or an article for Newsweek, whether he is speaking of Emerson, Gramsci, or Marvin Gaye, his work radiates a passion that reflects the rich traditions he draws on and weaves together: Baptist preaching, American transcendentalism, jazz, radical politics. This anthology reveals the dazzling range of West's work, from his explorations of ”Prophetic Pragmatism” to his philosophizing on hip-hop.The Cornel West Reader traces the development of West's extraordinary career as academic, public intellectual, and activist. In his essays, articles, books, and interviews, West emerges as America's social conscience, urging attention to complicated issues of racial and economic justice, sexuality and gender, history and politics. This collection represents the best work of an always compelling, often controversial, and absolutely essential philosopher of the modern American experience.

Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook


Mark Bray - 2017
    They could be seen in news reports, clad all in black with balaclavas covering their faces, fighting police at the presidential inauguration, and on California college campuses protesting right-wing speakers…Simply, antifa aims to deny fascists the opportunity to promote their oppressive politics—by any means necessary. Critics say shutting down political adversaries is anti-democratic; antifa adherents argue that the horrors of fascism must never be allowed the slightest chance to triumph again.In a smart and gripping investigation, historian and former Occupy Wall Street organizer Mark Bray provides a one-of-a-kind look inside the movement, including a detailed survey of its history from its origins to the present day—the first transnational history of postwar anti-fascism in English. Based on interviews with anti-fascists from around the world, Antifa details the tactics of the movement and the philosophy behind it, offering insight into the growing but little understood resistance fighting back against the alt-right.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century


Timothy Snyder - 2017
    Against all predictions, one of the most-disliked presidential candidates in history had swept the electoral college, elevating a man with open contempt for democratic norms and institutions to the height of power.Timothy Snyder is one of the most celebrated historians of the Holocaust. In his books Bloodlands and Black Earth, he has carefully dissected the events and values that enabled the rise of Hitler and Stalin and the execution of their catastrophic policies. With Twenty Lessons, Snyder draws from the darkest hours of the twentieth century to provide hope for the twenty-first. As he writes, “Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism and communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.”Twenty Lessons is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.

The Gospel in Dostoyevsky: Selections from His Works


Fyodor Dostoevsky - 1988
    Drawn from The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, Crime and Punishment, and The Adolescent, the seventeen selections are each prefaced by an explanatory note. Newcomers will find in these pages a rich, accessible sampling. Dostoyevsky devotees will be pleased to find some of the writer’s deepest, most compelling passages in one volume.Full-page woodcuts by master engraver Fritz Eichenberg enhance the book.

The Conquest of Bread


Pyotr Kropotkin - 1892
    A combination of detailed historical analysis and far-reaching Utopian vision, this is a step-by-step guide to social revolution: the concrete means of achieving it, and the world that humanity’s “constructive genius” is capable of creating. Includes a new introduction that historically situates and discusses the contemporary relevance of Kropotkin’s ideas.

Talking Peace: A Vision for the Next Generation


Jimmy Carter - 1993
    This book is the first by a former United States president to address younger readers. Part personal narrative and part thoughtful exposition of current history, the vivid text examines the causes and effects of conflict and explains the urgent call for nonviolent conflict resolution in the world today. The author introduces readers to the peacemaking techniques that he developed in the Oval Office and has continued to use at the Carter Center, in Atlanta, Georgia, a nonpartisan public-policy organization that he and his wife, Rosalynn, founded in 1982. Among other projects, the Carter Center has monitored elections in Latin America and Africa, conducted mediation talks between parties in conflict, brought improved cultivation methods to thousands of African farmers, and spearheaded the global attack against several deadly diseases. The fearless idealism and practical approach that have long characterized the public work of the architect of the Camp David Accords shine through the pages here. Readers will discover the implied power and responsibility behind the author's message that all people - regardless of age, race, gender, and nationality - share common needs, common rights, a common dignity, and a common quest: the pursuit of peace.

Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?


Martin Luther King Jr. - 1966
    Martin Luther King, Jr., isolated himself from the demands of the civil rights movement, rented a house in Jamaica with no telephone, and labored over his final manuscript. In this prophetic work, which has been unavailable for more than ten years, he lays out his thoughts, plans, and dreams for America's future, including the need for better jobs, higher wages, decent housing, and quality education. With a universal message of hope that continues to resonate, King demanded an end to global suffering, asserting that humankind-for the first time-has the resources and technology to eradicate poverty.

The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History


Isaiah Berlin - 1953
    The masterly essay on Tolstoy's view of history, in which Sir Isaiah underlines a fundamental distinction between those people (foxes) who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things and those (hedgehogs) who relate everything to a central, all-embracing system.

The Captive Mind


Czesław Miłosz - 1953
    The second chapter considers the way in which the West was seen at the time by residents of Central and Eastern Europe, while the third outlines the practice of Ketman, the act of paying lip service to authority while concealing personal opposition, describing seven forms applied in the people's democracies of mid-20th century Europe.The four chapters at the heart of the book then follow, each a portrayal of a gifted Polish man who capitulated, in some fashion, to the demands of the Communist state. They are identified only as Alpha, the Moralist; Beta, The Disappointed Lover; Gamma, the Slave of History; and Delta, the Troubadour. However, each of the four portraits were easily identifiable: Alpha is Jerzy Andrzejewski, Beta is Tadeusz Borowski, Gamma is Jerzy Putrament and Delta is Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński.The book moves toward its climax with an elaboration of "enslavement through consciousness" in the penultimate chapter and closes with a pained and personal assessment of the fate of the Baltic nations in particular.

Azadi


Arundhati Roy - 2020
    Ironically, it also became the chant of millions on the streets of India against the project of Hindu Nationalism.Even as Arundhati Roy began to ask what lay between these two calls for Freedom—a chasm or a bridge?—the streets fell silent. Not only in India, but all over the world. The coronavirus brought with it another, more terrible understanding of Azadi, making a nonsense of international borders, incarcerating whole populations, and bringing the modern world to a halt like nothing else ever could.In this series of electrifying essays, Arundhati Roy challenges us to reflect on the meaning of freedom in a world of growing authoritarianism.The essays include meditations on language, public as well as private, and on the role of fiction and alternative imaginations in these disturbing times.The pandemic, she says, is a portal between one world and another. For all the illness and devastation it has left in its wake, it is an invitation to the human race, an opportunity, to imagine another world.

Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate


Jean-Paul Sartre - 1944
    Nothing of the anti-Semite either in his subtle form as a snob, or in his crude form as a gangster, escapes Sartre's sharp eye, and the whole problem of the Jew's relationship to the Gentile is examined in a concrete and living way, rather than in terms of sociological abstractions.