Book Review

Scheer Intelligence: War Is A Multi-Trillion-Dollar Racket

October 1, 2021 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Book Review, Pentagon Budget, War on Terror, Wars and Militarism

Twenty years since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the human and financial cost of the United States’ failed “War on Terror” is plain to see: as one headline put it, “20 years, $6 trillion, 900,000 lives.” The estimates of lives lost and trillions spent vary throughout media sources, but even the most conservative estimates speak for themselves. Yet, while the Pentagon billed America’s latest imperial endeavors as an imperative series of operations aimed at protecting U.S. national security, there is a simpler, far more cynical and obscene motivation behind these forever wars, according to the Washington editor of Harper’s Magazine, Andrew Cockburn: money. On this week’s installment of “Scheer Intelligence,” Cockburn joins host Robert Scheer to discuss his most recent book, “Spoils of War: Power, Profit and the American War Machine,” released by Verso Books on September 21.

Scheer Intelligence: Something’s Rotten In The Science Of Food

July 16, 2021 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Big Ag, Book Review, Corporatism, Food and Agriculture

Leading nutritionist Marion Nestle has spent much of her long illustrious career writing about what we eat and the science of food. The James Beard award-winner and author of the blog Food Politics has written a whopping 14 acclaimed books on subjects related to nutrition, including “Soda Politics” and “What to Eat.” And yet, “Unsavory Truths: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat, ” a book journalist Robert Scheer calls one of her most important books to date, has gone largely ignored by mainstream media. On this week’s installment of “Scheer Intelligence,” Nestle joins Scheer to discuss some of the shocking revelations the author uncovered about the links between food science and the incredibly powerful food industry.

Kucinich Memoir Is A Moving Account Of The Battle Against Corporate Power

July 9, 2021 Chris Hedges, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Book Review, Chris Hedges, Corporatism, Dennis Kucinich

The Division of Light and Power,” by Dennis Kucinich, like Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York,” is a gripping, moving and lucidly written account of the hidden mechanisms of corporate power in the United States and what happens when these corporate interests are challenged. It is essential reading, especially as we face an intensified corporate assault, done in the name of fiscal necessity following the financial wounds imposed by the pandemic, to seize total control of all public assets. Kucinich warns that this assault is more than the seizure of public assets for private gain. These corporate forces, which function as a shadow government in Washington and cities across the country, threaten to achieve a monolithic lock on all forms of power and extinguish our anemic democracy.

Book Review: The Revolution Won’t Be Stopped

April 10, 2021 Roger Stoll, Alliance for Global Justice. Educate! Book Review, Nicaragua, Revolution, US Imperialism

Republican strategist Karl Rove often advised his clients to attack not the enemy’s weaknesses but its strengths. The bipartisan US foreign policy disinformation machine has taken Rove’s advice with tedious devotion. So, to attack Nicaragua, the machine’s fabrications and propaganda have targeted some of that country’s strengths: gender equity, Indigenous rights and autonomy, democracy, sovereignty, and a successful response to the pandemic, as well as the Sandinista government’s great popularity. This should not surprise. It’s the same Rovian method used against Nicaragua’s friends and allies and countries the US designates enemies. For example, to attack Venezuela, the machine ignores the country’s electoral hyper-democracy and dubs the popular government “dictatorial.”

Kim Stanley Robinson’s ‘The Ministry For The Future’

April 3, 2021 David Schwartzman, Washington Socialist. Create! Book Review, Capitalism, Ecosocialism, Green New Deal

The Ministry for the Future (Orbit, 2020) is a magnificent novel but also an especially welcome resource for thinking about ecosocialist initiatives for a near-future global Green New Deal. Could not be more timely! This was my initial impression upon reading it last week. After some reflection, I am somewhat more critical but still highly recommend this novel for its inspiration and provocation — particularly because of how Kim Stanley Robinson (KSR) concretely addresses the radical transformation of real existing capitalism dominated by its militarized fossil legacy. Ministry should certainly be subject to critique, but KSR has his heart in the left place! After reading KSR’s novel 2140 in 2019, I sent him an email suggesting that his scenario for this post–climate catastrophe New York City would be more relevant to the near-future pre–climate catastrophe early 21st century.

One-Click Shopping Has Brought American Workers To The Brink

March 31, 2021 Andru Okun, In These Times. Educate! Amazon, Book Review, Labor Union, Worker Rights

A historic union drive at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama officially came to a close on Monday. Now comes the tallying of votes. The election represents the first large-scale effort to organize an Amazon warehouse and a landmark moment for the labor movement in the U.S. South. If the majority of votes are in favor of unionization, the roughly 6,000 workers of the facility will be represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). Predictably, Amazon — the country’s second-largest employer — has made considerable attempts to undercut the campaign, including heavily-funding anti-union propaganda, changing traffic light patterns to deter canvassing and even paying workers to quit.

The Many Burdens Of Women’s Work

March 30, 2021 Chelsea Nash, Rabble.ca. Educate! Book Review, Labor Union, Patriarchy, Women

My younger sister, 18, is in her first year of college studying marine navigation. She sees herself travelling the world one day, the captain of a cruise ship or similarly large vessel. Already, she has faced overt and repeated sexism, from her male peers. Both my sister and her female roommate have found themselves subjected to sexist jokes and unwanted sexual advances from those who do not appear to understand the meaning of the word "no." They have been told by a female teacher that for the two per cent of women in the industry, sexual assault is an inevitability. My mother, an airline captain, has been counselling her on how to make it in an industry where women are not easily accepted. A great deal of her advice hinges on keeping the peace with male colleagues; knowing what to let slide, when to confront colleagues directly about their behaviour, and when to report them.

That’s Not ‘How Fascism Works’

March 9, 2021 Madeleine Freeman, Left Voice. Strategize! Book Review, Fascism, Liberal democracy, Propaganda

Donald Trump’s election in 2016 was a watershed moment in the national and international arena, one that marked a new step in the accelerated decline and crisis of the U.S. empire after 2008. Trump’s popularity and the support he found in sectors of capital signaled, from the right, a growing rejection of the traditional neoliberal leaders of U.S. capitalism who had led the United States into a multipronged crisis from which it could not fully recover. Internationally, the U.S. faced the decline of its imperialist hegemony and challenges from growing powers like China; nationally, it faced growing inequality and discontent from sectors of the working class and “middle class” whose living conditions had been severely degraded while President Obama bailed out banks and corporations. Trump, with his unabashed individualism and promises to “Make America Great Again,” gave a right-wing populist voice to a certain sector of the disaffected petit bourgeoisie — mostly white, mostly located outside the biggest cities, and more than ready to find scapegoats among the Right’s traditional boogeymen: migrants, marginalized communities, and leftists.

Lessons From Mariame Kaba’s “We Do This ‘Til We Free Us”

March 2, 2021 Micah Herskind, Medium. Educate! Book Review, Prison abolition, Prison Industrial Complex, Prisons

We can and must collectively build a world without policing, prisons, surveillance, punishment, and capitalism––a world in which all are equipped with the tools to prevent and transform harm, one in which everyone has what they need to thrive in community with others. This is the through line of Mariame Kaba’s powerful new book, an expansive and instructive collection of essays and interviews drawn from Kaba’s decades of work building toward abolition — work that has focused particularly on the experiences of Black women and girls and criminalized survivors of sexual violence. We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice is seamlessly accessible yet deeply demanding.

Dean Spade’s New Guide To Mutual Aid

February 2, 2021 Renee Feltz, The Indypendent. Create! Book Review, COVID-19, Mutual Aid, New York (NY)

Out of both compassion and necessity, the COVID-19 pandemic prompted many of us to engage in mutual aid projects — such as signing up to buy groceries for an immuno-comprimised neighbor, or helping tutor a child struggling with remote learning — even if we don’t fully understand the concept. Fortunately, Dean Spade has written an accessible primer with practical tips for people who want to start mutual aid projects or who are already in them and want to see them flourish. At just over 150 pages, his book can easily live in your day bag in order to be consulted regularly. It is broken into two parts. The first defines mutual aid as “collective coordination to meet each other’s needs’’ and examines key elements.

The Violent Story Of American Whiteness

December 26, 2020 Kim Kelly, In These Times. Educate! Book Review, Confederate Monuments, United States, White Supremacy

The United States of America is a white supremacist nation. It always has been. Its white founders, venerated and lionized though they are in textbooks and on courthouse lawns, explicitly intended the country to be this way. The country’s founding documents make that goal clear. Through the centuries, the predominantly white ruling class has worked overtime to uphold this status quo, even as the goalposts periodically shift. A trio of new books delve into this rotten heart of American whiteness and explore how its bloody footprints smudged the nation’s past and continue to influence its uncertain future. Connor Towne O’Neill’s Down Along with That Devil’s Bones: A Reckoning with Monuments, Memory, and the Legacy...

Capitalism On A Ventilator

December 19, 2020 Kollibri Terre Sonnenblume, Counterpunch. Educate! Book Review, Capitalism, China, COVID-19

Asian countries have been far more successful than the US in responding to the COVID pandemic, but you’d never know that from the US media. Even most alternative media has been largely US- & Euro-centric. While our domestic issues here are important, we have been missing out on important lessons from other places. A partial remedy to this dearth of information is provided by the just released, “Capitalism on a Ventilator: The Impact of COVID-19 in China & the U.S.” The book is an anthology of writing by over fifty activists and independent journalists, edited by Sara Flounders & Lee Siu Hin. The first section, “Warnings from China,” details China’s response to the virus, which included quarantines, closing businesses and schools, and restricting travel right away.

The Origins Of Anti-Extractivism

December 10, 2020 Nick Serpe, Dissent Magazine. Educate! Book Review, Extraction, Indigenous Resistance, Latin America

In the social science literature, there’s this sense that countries or states that rely on mining or oil for their revenues are doomed to some kind of pathology: they’re going to be authoritarian, or stuck in underdevelopment. There’s a related notion that resource politics are an elite affair: that what governs the global oil economy is corporations, or the members of OPEC, or oil ministers—and likewise for mining. What I learned doing ethnographic research in Ecuador is that resource politics is much more contested and interesting. Focusing on resource politics as this vibrant field of contention gives a different view of the stakes of...

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