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“Detailed information about contemporary Iran – the origins and functioning of its political system, its regional role, its citizens’ way of life.” – INSIDE IRAN reviewed in Survival: Global Politics and Strategy
Thursday, September 27th, 2018MEDEA BENJAMIN on the Trump administration’s push for regime change in Iran at Sputnik
Thursday, September 27th, 2018Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink: Women for Peace joins us to talk about the Trump administration’s continued sanctions against the Iranian people, the misinformation campaign around the new sanctions, and the efforts by the US to push for regime change in the country.
Listen to the full interview here.
“Expertly guiding the reader through the ‘toughest questions’ affecting the Israel-Palestine relationship… A complex format, that works brilliantly.” – MOMENT OF TRUTH reviewed in Open Democracy
Tuesday, September 25th, 2018A very different though complementary approach is taken by Jamie Stern-Weiner in his edited collection Moment of Truth…
Read the full review here.
“Enormously welcome… Enabling new, younger, audiences to discover Marqusee’s magnificent prose and acute political insight.” – DEFINABLE TRACES IN THE ATMOSPHERE reviewed in Open Democracy
Tuesday, September 25th, 2018My favourite writer of the political-culture mix of the current era is Mike Marqusee, who so tragically passed away in 2015, the year his friend and longstanding comrade Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party.
Read the full review here.
See MEDEA BENJAMIN, author of INSIDE IRAN, confront the head of Donald Trump’s Iran Action Group at The Real News
Monday, September 24th, 2018At a public event in Washington, DC, CodePink’s Medea Benjamin confronted Brian Hook, the head of Trump’s Iran Action Group, over the US withdrawal from the JCPOA and re-imposing crippling sanctions on the Iranian people. Benjamin joins us to discuss her action, which went viral online
Watch the video here.
“Reading the collection is akin to diving headfirst into a freezing body of water; one emerges refreshed, invigorated, and slightly shaken: brace yourself.” – GRABBING PUSSY reviewed in Vanity Fair
Friday, September 21st, 2018In Grabbing Pussy (OR Books), performance artist and professor Karen Finley achieves the unthinkable: out of America’s unstoppable news cycle and its disturbing undercurrents of psychosexually charged politics, she forges poetry with a punk sensibility (plus, a dash of unfiltered raunchiness, in keeping with the times), skewering Donald Trump, the Clintons, Harvey Weinstein, and Anthony Weiner in the process.
Read the full review here.
Publishers Weekly on author MICHAEL COFFEY joining the OR Books board of directors.
Thursday, September 20th, 2018Michael Coffey, author and former editorial director of Publishers Weekly, is joining the OR Books board of directors.
Read the full article here.
“An excellent book which reads like a novel, laced with drama and full of secrets.” – THE HISTORY OF HAVANA reviewed in CubaSí
Thursday, September 20th, 2018Read the full review by subscribing to CubaSí here.
“Elegant and accessible stories… this collection will go a long way to encouraging further interest in Tibetan literature.” – OLD DEMONS, NEW DEITIES reviewed at the Asian Review of Books
Wednesday, September 19th, 2018Modern Tibetan literature has been rather hard to find, with the exception of religious and spiritual writings, and some poetry, notably Woeser’s Tibet’s True Heart: Selected Poetry, the only book of modern Tibetan poetry I have come across. Woeser has a short story in this new collection, and was the only Tibetan writer represented that I actually knew by name..
Read the full review here.
“Readers seeking a literate crash course in bottom-of-the-barrel geopolitics will quickly devour this book.” – STRONGMEN reviewed at Kirkus
Tuesday, September 18th, 2018Strongmen come in many flavors, writes editor Prashad (Red Star over the Third World, 2017, etc.), but they share a commonality: They “are nothing other than cowardly when it comes to social reality.”
The fascist dictators in modern clothing, writes Prashad in his introduction to this edited volume, “do not advertise themselves as fascists,” but they speak the same language: Protect the homeland from outsiders, obey, and worship your leader. “Older, decadent language can be heard,” writes Prashad, “the language of death and disorder.”.
Read the full review here.
“Exceptionally well written… an inherently interesting and ultimately inspiring contribution.” – A NEW HOPE FOR MEXICO reviewed at Midwest Book Review
Tuesday, September 18th, 2018Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s stunning victory in the Mexican presidential election signals the end of decades of conservative government and the promise of fairer, more honest politics south of the Rio Grande.
Andres’ landslide electoral success was built on a campaign that pledged to tackle corruption, halt privatization of the energy industry, invest in education and infrastructure, open a dialogue with the country’s drug cartels, and oppose Trump’s border wall..
Read the full review here.
Whitewashed Saudi ‘Reformer’ Prince Boosts Authoritarian Crackdown on Dissent – MEDEA BENJAMIN interviewed at the Real News Network
Monday, September 17th, 2018The regime of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is punishing satire on social media with 5 years in prison and sentencing women’s rights activists to death. CODEPINK’s Medea Benjamin speaks about the Western whitewash of MBS..
Watch the full interview here.
“Finley finds her ultimate target in the current president. Unsparing diatribes serving as an implicit rebuttal of the ‘kill ’em with kindness’ approach.” – GRABBING PUSSY reviewed at Kirkus
Wednesday, September 12th, 2018The controversial performance artist and social commentator indulges in a Trump-bashing frenzy.
Finley (The Reality Shows, 2011, etc.) finds her ultimate target in the current president. This amalgam of creative prose and freestyle poetry floods vitriol on the words and actions of Trump. Like in some of her previous works—e.g. George and Martha, her burlesque of a love affair between George Bush and Martha Stewart—the author attempts to transmogrify a bottomless liberal rage into moving, provocative, and occasionally hilarious art..
Read the full review here.
LIZA FEATHERSTONE on the history of the focus group at KPFA UpFront
Tuesday, September 11th, 2018Liza Featherstone is a journalist and a contributing editor to The Nation, where she also writes the advice column “Asking for a Friend.” Her latest book is “Divining Desire: Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation.”.
Listen to the full interview here.
“Always interesting and often illuminating.” – MOMENT OF TRUTH reviewed at The Morning Star
Monday, September 10th, 2018COVERING some of the most knotty questions about Israel-Palestine, Moment of Truth is an important resource for those who wish to drill down into the details of the debates to gain an in-depth understanding of the conflict.
Edited by Jamie Stern-Weiner, a graduate in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford, the book is structured in an interesting way, with the expert contributors make their conflicting cases in a series of exchanges, with other respondents also weighing in.
Read the full review here.
Modi’s Political Grammar – read an excerpt from STRONGMEN at Indian Cultural Forum
Tuesday, September 4th, 2018An old Persian fable – The Devil’s Syrup – highlights the purpose of the Devil: to disrupt, create chaos and gain power through anarchy. An honest man enters a confectioner’s shop. The Devil quietly drips a drop of sugar syrup on the confectioner’s balding head. A fly sits on his head and begins to suck the syrup. The honest man sees the fly, takes off his shoe and whacks the fly on the confectioner’s head. The confectioner is angry. He doesn’t believe that the honest man was merely hitting the fly. The honest man says that was the only reason, but the confectioner does not believe him. A fight ensues. Others arrive. The shop is destroyed.
Read the full excerpt here.
“The new Mexican president represents a break from neoliberalism.” – A NEW HOPE FOR MEXICO reviewed at Counterfire
Monday, September 3rd, 2018André Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) victory in Mexico’s presidential election on the 2nd July was greeted with a dose of scepticism by Counterfire. ‘AMLO’s accession to the Presidency is definitely an event to be welcomed by the left; not least, because senior members of the Trump administration have previously expressed their disapproval of the possibility, argued Sean Ledwith. However, ‘the likelihood is that AMLO as President will disappoint many of the millions who voted for him.’
Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first century we have seen various reformist governments, especially in Latin America, and we know how the story ends. The unshakeable faith that the state can be reformed from within eventually leads to a confrontation where the working class loses. Paraphrasing Lenin, it seems like one step forward, but two steps back.
Read the full review here.
ARIEL DORFMAN discusses the extraordinary history of HOW TO READ DONALD DUCK at NPR Latino USA
Thursday, August 30th, 2018Later in the podcast, we learn more about How to Read Donald Duck, a 1970s critique of Disney’s Donald Duck comics written by Ariel Dorfman. The book came out after Chile had the first democratically elected socialist in the Americas. We find out how one small book changed the author’s life—and why the book is hard to find even today.
Listen to the full interview here.
“Shows how age-old tactics have moved into new forms of cybertechnology as governments on both sides have sown disinformation in order to create chaos.” – CREATING CHAOS reviewed at Kirkus
Thursday, August 30th, 2018With investigations continuing regarding Russian interference in American elections, Hancock provides context dating back to Machiavelli.
A veteran analyst of covert actions, the author doesn’t judge according to right or wrong, let alone good or evil. He works under the assumption that this is the way that power sustains, defends, and extends itself, and he generally sees the Russian intelligence initiatives in the wake of the Cold War and the Soviet breakup as the mirror image of America’s perspective after World War II.
Read the full review here.
“Deserves a place on the shelves of schools, colleges, universities and public libraries in those countries who treasure their democratic heritages and who don’t want to see them destroyed.” – STRONGMEN reviewed at ColdType
Thursday, August 30th, 2018Until recently, progressives believed the retreat of liberal democracy after the end of the Cold War would be like water running uphill. “There is no coherent alternative to liberal democracy,” wrote Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History (1992). A better quote to describe large parts of the world as it is now came from George Orwell half a century ago in his long essay, Inside the Whale. “Almost certainly we are moving into an age of totalitarian dictatorship – an age in which freedom of thought will be at first a deadly sin and later on a meaningless abstraction.
Read the full review here.
“A book of promises and projections that, now that López Obrador has proved victorious, becomes a checklist for action.” – A NEW HOPE FOR MEXICO reviewed at Kirkus
Wednesday, August 29th, 2018“Confronted with Trump’s orders to persecute migrants, we must join together to denounce his human rights violations”: Mexico’s president-elect delivers a few choice words for his counterpart north of the border.
In this collection of campaign-trail speeches and articles, leftist politician López Obrador offers a program for—well, making Mexico great again, inasmuch as a long reign of neoliberalism has left it “one of the poorest countries on the continent.”
Read the full review here.
“We want to thank those who don’t fight in wars and recognize John McCain as a symbol of the glorification of the military that we have to fight against.” – MEDEA BENJAMIN on the death of John McCain at Democracy Now
Tuesday, August 28th, 2018We host a roundtable discussion on the life and legacy of John McCain, the Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war, six-term senator and two-time presidential candidate, who died Saturday at the age of 81 of brain cancer. We speak with Mehdi Hasan, columnist for The Intercept and host of their “Deconstructed” podcast. He’s also host of “UpFront” at Al Jazeera English. He’s been tweeting in response to McCain’s death and wrote a piece last year headlined “Despite What the Press Says, ‘Maverick’ McCain Has a Long and Distinguished Record of Horribleness.” We are also joined by Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink, which McCain once referred to as “low-life scum,” and by Norman Solomon, national coordinator of RootsAction, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and author of “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”
Watch the full interview Women’s Review of Books here.
After School Bus Massacre in Yemen, US Media Finally Begins to Pay Attention – MEDEA BENJAMIN on the war in Yemen at Loud & Clear
Friday, August 24th, 2018A leading US anti-war activist told Radio Sputnik Tuesday she is “so glad” to see the Saudi war in Yemen finally getting mainstream media attention after having been ignored for three years. “Cable networks don’t cover international news” anymore, she lamented, “unless it has to do with Russia.”.
Listen to the full interview here.
LARRY HANCOCK on the history of US-Russian relations at Ochelli Effect
Thursday, August 23rd, 2018Historian and author Larry Hancock returns to continue the discussion on the existing and emerging history of U.S. and Soviet/Russian relations.
Over a century of interaction between The American Empire and the post-Communist-Revolution Russian Empire we observe many covert and overt changes.
What would the Wikileaks Clinton e-mail issue look like 100 years ago? The tools change despite unyielding objectives. Is Putin looking for pay-back?
What is the reality of organized crime as it relates to the intelligence of the Russian Federation, and how did it get that way?.
Listen to the full interview here.
LIZA FEATHERSTONE on the history of the focus group at Inc. Uncensored
Thursday, August 23rd, 2018This week, Inc. editors and writers talk about how 20 small business owners who appeared on CNBC’s “The Profit” allege that Marcus Lemonis took advantage of some of the companies he’s claimed to save. The crew also talks about how an American paper straw company dealt with insane 5,000 percent growth. Lastly, author Liza Featherstone comes to the studio to talk about her book Diving Desire, which is about the history of the focus group and how it transformed from being a tool to determine what things people want to a way to sell us stuff we don’t need..
Listen to the full interview here.
