OR Books, Author at OR Books

“Human activity is causing the disappearance and deterioration of wildlife at a rate that could represent an existential threat to humanity within our lifetimes.” —Democracy Now during a segment featuring ASHLEY DAWSON, author of EXTINCTION

Thursday, May 9th, 2019

A segment of Democracy Now discussing the recent U.N. report featured Ashley Dawson, author of EXTINCTION: A RADICAL HISTORY, as a guest.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Ashley, you’ve written an entire book on the radical history of extinction- your response to this report?

ASHLEY DAWSON: Well, the report, I think, is really a landmark report, and it shows that the crisis we face isn’t just one of climate change. In some ways, it’s comparable to the IPCC report from last October, which really sounded a really important alarm about the system that we face and its potential collapse. But, what this shows is [that] it’s a crisis of multiple different dimensions, and that it’s driven by an economic system, which is fundamentally destroying the terrestrial systems that we all depend on.

…

SHAIKH: So, scientists warn that melting sea ice in the arctic due to climate change will have catastrophic [effects] on coastal cities, biodiversity, and the global economy. President Trump, of course, has called climate change a “Chinese hoax.” So Ashley, your response to what Pompeo said- just hours after this U.N. report was released,

DAWSON: I think it typifies the kind of “extractivist” attitude, which, as I said, is destroying the planet. I mean, to give one concrete instance, we have been exploiting land so much, and degrading land, that we only have about 60 harvests left, right- 60 agricultural harvests left.

SHAIKH: What does that mean?

DAWSON: It means about only 60 more years of food, potentially. So, we’re not only talking about the kind of crash of biodiversity and potential extinction for a lot of species out there; we’re talking about a kind of fundamental crisis of humanity, its relationship to the natural world, and our relations to one another.

Watch the whole segment here.

“You know, there are reasons to be angry. You know, if you’re not angry, you’re not, you’re not awake right now.” —ELI VALLEY, author of DIASPORA BOY to Bob Garfield for On the Media

Wednesday, May 8th, 2019

Bob Garfield and Eli Valley, author of DIASPORA BOY, discuss antisemitism in media and modern society during an interview for On the Media

BOB GARFIELD: And the other thing about you is that you’re really, really an angry dude.

ELI VALLEY: I’m increasingly angry because, well, I mean just look outside. You know, there are reasons to be angry. You know, if you’re not angry, you’re not, you’re not awake right now.

GARFIELD: So as this anti-Semitism flame war has unfolded since the Pittsburgh shooting last year, you’ve been drawing cartoons caricaturing various political commentators–maybe chief among them Meghan McCain of “The View”. And haha, can you describe your first depiction of Meghan McCain because it’s equally horrifying and hilarious.

VALLEY: Thank you. It’s just Meghan McCain. It’s a satire of her appropriation of Jewish kitsch and Jewish trauma when she said on “The View” and then repeated elsewhere.

Read or listen to the full interview here.

“You can’t do a keystroke on your computer, or make a call on your cell phone, or even go to the doctor without the government knowing exactly what you’re doing.” —MICHAEL STEVEN SMITH, author of LAWYERS FOR THE LEFT during an interview for Economic Update

Tuesday, May 7th, 2019

Richard D. Wolff interviews Michael Steven Smith on his upcoming title, LAWYERS FOR THE LEFT for Economic Update

RICHARD D. WOLFF: Tell us a little bit; what makes a lawyer a “lawyer for the left?” What is it that he or she does or how they proceed or what their issues are that would make you find them appropriate for such a book?

MICHAEL STEVEN SMITH: Well, one of the propositions that a number of the lawyers in my book talk about is how, increasingly, democratic rights and the rule of law are not compatible with capitalism or imperialism– and we saw that happen right after 9/11. The first thing they did was pass the 340-page Patriot Act, which allowed for spying on everybody. You can’t do a keystroke on your computer, or make a call on your cell phone, or even go to the doctor without the government knowing exactly what you’re doing. I was at the cardiologist with my wife last week, and we drove home through the Battery Park Tunnel, and there’s a face recognition gadget when you go through the tunnel; so they knew who she was, they knew what cardiologist she went to, and they knew what her EKG was even before we even got home! That’s the kind of society we live in. So Michael and I thought, “This is not good,” and then, they passed the National Defense Authorization Act, and that act allows for the government to pick up and detain– kidnap– and detain forever even American citizens. So Chris Hedges and Noam Chomsky brought a lawsuit in lower Manhattan in federal court 2 years ago, and they won the lawsuit. Judge Catherine Forest, a good constitutional upholder, decided in their favor. The government appealed that afternoon. So Chris and Noam went down to D.C. and they met with Nancy Pelosi, or their lawyers met with Nancy Pelosi, and they said, “Pelosi, if you take the provision out of this law that you’ve passed that allows the indefinite kidnapping of American citizens, we’ll drop the appeal,” and Pelosi said “No,” and Chris Hedges said, “You know why? Because they know what’s coming.” So it was draconian laws like that that got Michael and I thinking, and that’s why we started the radio show, and out of that came this book Lawyers for the Left.

Watch the full interview here.

“For NYT, Israel Is Always Nearing ‘Apartheid,’ but Never Quite Gets There” —GREG SHUPAK, author of THE WRONG STORY for Fair

Friday, May 3rd, 2019

GREG SHUPAK discussing the NYT’s coverage of apartheid in Israel

Setting aside the troubling assertion that Israelis and Palestinians living as equals would be not only a “disaster,” but as bad a “disaster” as apartheid, Friedman ignored the fact that just two months earlier, the Knesset had passed the Nation State Law that defined Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people. The law asserted that “the realization of the right to national self-determination in Israel is unique to the Jewish people,” even though 20 percent of the population living inside Israel is not Jewish; encouraged “the development of Jewish settlement” and vowed that the state will “promote its establishment and consolidation.” It declared that “the state’s language is Hebrew,” deprecating Arabic, the first language of roughly half the people under that state’s control.

The Nation State Law demonstrates that the bad faith, future tense descriptions of Israeli apartheid are overly narrow, in that they focus exclusively on the Palestinian territories that Israel has occupied since 1967. Yet on the Israeli-held side of the Green Line, Palestinians are systematically discriminated against.

It’s not only the occupation that make Israel/Palestine apartheid. It’s the Israeli state’s foundational principles and actions: driving two-thirds of the indigenous Palestinian population from their homes at its birth, subsequently making more than 2 million of them refugees, and then denying their right to return, despite its being mandated under international law.

Meanwhile, Jewish people anywhere on Earth are given the right to immigrate, because Israeli leaders want to maintain a demographic advantage. They pursue this goal—with decisive help from their sponsors in Washington—through their longstanding operational policy mantra: maximum land, minimum Arabs.

Read the full article here.

**“These women must now decide between their faith and their families.” —CATHY OTTEN, author of WITH ASH ON THEIR FACES: YEZIDI WOMEN AND THE ISLAMIC STATE for Foreign Policy**

Thursday, May 2nd, 2019

CATHY OTTEN examines Iraq’s Yazidis struggle with the future of the children of rape by Islamic State fighters.

For Iraq’s Yazidi minority, the defeat of the Islamic State has magnified an existing theological split, with painful real-world consequences. The group’s Spiritual Council, their highest religious authority, announced on Saturday that children born to women and girls who were raped by Islamic State fighters won’t be accepted back by the community, leaving dozens of Yazidi women and their children stranded in eastern Syria. These women must now decide between their faith and their families.

Read the full article here.

“ Tackling contentious questions about rock and pop music, forcing us to look deeper into our relationship with music; how we shape it, and how it shapes us.” —Showcase on SETH KAUFMAN’s METAPHYSICAL GRAFFITI

Wednesday, April 24th, 2019

An interview with Seth Kaufman about his title METAPHYSICAL GRAFFITI for Showcase

SHOWCASE: But as I understand from the book, you’re an avid supporter of air guitars, and I wonder why that is. Can you please tell us what is there to like about air guitars at all?

KAUFMAN: Yeah, well, air guitar, like singing, like clapping, like dancing, is a way in which people have come to react to music. But it’s a funny way to react to music. It makes you look foolish, often. It’s silly. But what I like about air guitar is the idea that we know guitars are real, but air guitar is not real, and yet, we all know what air guitar is. So on a philosophical level, it both is and isn’t, and there are many things that don’t have a physical, ya know… Thoughts; that are abstractions, and air guitar is one of those. But I like to ask people when they’re playing air guitar, what kind of air guitar are they playing, and no one ever thinks about this.

Watch the full interview here.

“ You’ll find yourself plunged into the contradictions and swirling through the vortex where that question—what is the law?—is on everyone’s mind all the time.” —Portside on MICHAEL STEVEN SMITH’s LAWYERS FOR THE LEFT

Friday, April 19th, 2019

Bill Ayers on Michael Steven Smith’s new title LAWYERS FOR THE LEFT in Portside

Their analysis of the law as an instrument serving the status quo becomes a vital and clarifying lens in every case they pursue. Anatole France observed ironically that “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.” Exactly: we are equal under the law, and neither Bill Gates nor Jeff Bezos nor the homeless woman outside the coffee shop is allowed to loiter or ask for spare change. Because these advocates recognize that we live under a system of racial capitalism, they fight every case and each battle with an eye to the inherent injustices spawned by that reality.

Frederick Douglass famously said, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.” These movement lawyers have had those words inscribed on their hearts as they’ve fought for voting rights, Puerto Rican independence, an end to Jim Crow, women’s freedom, LBGTQ plus justice, and more. The country would look dramatically different today if it weren’t for the good work of Arthur Kinoy and Bill Kunster, Lynne Stewart and Haywood Burns, Jan Susler and Bruce Wright.

Read the full review here.

“Like a con man who can lift a wallet in the middle of a melee, Trump thrived amid the chaos” —MATT TAIBBI, author of HATE INC. on Russiagate and Trump’s weaponizing of disarrayed media in Rolling Stone

Friday, April 5th, 2019

MATT TAIBBI discusses how inadequate and inappropriate media coverage lead to Trump’s election, a primary subject in his upcoming book Hate Inc.

If Trump insulted an innocent person like Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who is disabled, his goal wasn’t to try to win a popularity contest. He was after the thing that always came next: the endless “scornful rebukes” from press and celebrities. These rituals always went on just a bit too long, to the point where it was clear both Trump and the media were milking the incidents for publicity.

Trump would push right up until he caught the press having too much fun with something outrageous he’d done (the Washington Post running “Donald Trump’s ‘Schlonged’: A linguistic investigation” was an infamous example), at which point he’d declare victory and move on to the next outrage.

The subtext was always:I may be crude, but these people are phonies, pretending to be upset when they’re making money off my bullshit.

I thought this was all nuts and couldn’t believe it was happening in a real presidential campaign. But, a job is a job.

Read the full article here.

“…shaking up the status quo by challenging power relations and prosecuting those with total impunity is undeniably a first step towards justice.” —Fiorella Lecoutteux on WOLFGANG KALECK’S new book, LAW VS. POWER in Peace News

Tuesday, April 2nd, 2019

Fiorella Lecoutteux calls LAW VS. POWER “a manifesto for international law and how it can be used to change the status quo”

How can we hold dictators to account? The list of those who have enjoyed complete impunity is long. Lawyer Wolfgang Kaleck has spent his whole life fighting to reverse this state of affairs: using the law to challenge Latin American ex-dictators, representing the families of US drone-attack victims in Yemen, and filing criminal complaints against the likes of ex-US secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld.

Kaleck’s latest book is a manifesto for international law and how it can be used to change the status quo. As Edward Snowden writes in the foreword: ‘when the history of our era is written not by the torturers and their apologists, but by those who never gave up on the promise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights… Wolfgang Kaleck will be one of the primary authors.’

A compelling read, Law Versus Power offers much more than the dry rhetoric of a seasoned lawyer. Kaleck’s writing is personal, passionate and self-questioning. The narrative thread provides a chronological and reflective account of the cases that he and his partners have researched and submitted over several decades.

Ranging from the first conversations with the victims to the first tentative results (or disappointments) emerging years later, his writing skilfully draws us into the complexities of each case and what’s at stake.

Read the full review here.

**“I’ll believe that a corporation is a person the day it gets a colonoscopy.” —MICHAEL STEVEN SMITH, author of LAWYERS FOR THE LEFT on radio show Leonard Lopate at Large**

Friday, March 29th, 2019

Michael Steven Smith, author of Lawyers for the Left: In the Courts, In the Streets, and On the Air on what he describes to be our current “constitutional crisis” on the radio show Leonard Lopate at Large

LEONARD LOPATE: Michael, you write that America is in a constitutional crisis?

MICHAEL STEVEN SMITH: Well I think—and increasingly after 9/11—there’s been a huge agglomeration of power in the hands of the executive branch, irrespective of the creature that holds office today. After 9/11, the congress passed the Patriot Act, as you know, which is a horrible surveillance apparatus, and then the authorization to use military force, and then the National Defense Authorization Act. That act allows for the executive to both kidnap and hold—really, forever—anybody, including American citizens. That was challenged by Chris Hedges and Noam Chomsky in federal court; they lost. And it also allows for, and we challenged it at the Center for Constitutional Rights with Al-Aulaqi case, it allows for the United States government to assassinate an American citizen. You can’t get any worse than that, so that’s why I [said] what I did.

LOPATE: Your book collects profiles and interview with lawyers, many of whom that began their careers as progressives in the 1960’s. Do you see a parallel between that era and today?

SMITH: Yes. The book profiles twenty-three different lawyers. Lawyers my age, I’m in my mid-seventies, and then lawyers my parents’ age, who would be in their hundreds now, but they’re not here. And the parallel, I think, is the fight, increasingly difficult, to keep the rule of law and the democratic rights.

Hear the full interview here.

“Punching the Nazi in the face was the only way that Améry could resist being reduced to a mere body, a passive object, a thing. ” —ERIC ANTHAMATTEN revisiting philosopher Jean Améry’s case for violent resistance, featured in #CHAROLOTTESVILE: WHITE SUPREMACY, POPULISM, AND RESISTANCE from TANK Magazine

Friday, March 22nd, 2019

Punching Nazis in the face: a philosopher makes the case for violent resistance

As white supremacist Richard Spencer was being interviewed on camera, a masked protester punched him square in the jaw. Many conservatives looked at this as evidence of cry-baby liberalism: when unable to handle alternative points of view, leftists resort to violence to stifle free speech.

Fifty years ago, philosopher Jean Améry made a sustained argument for punching Nazis in the face, not only as an acceptable action, but one that might be required. A victim of torture by the Gestapo and a survivor of the Holocaust, Améry described his disturbing experience of torture at the hands of fascism, and defended, contra Nietzsche, the role of resentment (ressentiment) as an essential element of human identity, dignity, will, and freedom, including its manifestation in violence, as in the time he punched a Nazi in the face.

Punching the Nazi in the face was the only way that Améry could resist being reduced to a mere body, a passive object, a thing. He had to punch to restore the boundary between his personhood and the intrusion of the torture, the fascist, the racist: the boundaries of my body are also the boundaries of myself. My skin surface shields me against the external world. If I am to have trust, I must feel on it only what I want to feel.

Améry’s argument for Nazy face-punching isn’t a version of the argument for defence, however. Crucially, he acknowledges that his punch was not only futile, but would lead to even more pain being inflicted upon him, perhaps even death. In this way, Améry’s argument cannot be seen as a mere act of self-preservation, but as something that was demanded of him, as a human being, to preserve the integrity of the human world. His reasoning for Nazi-punching moves beyond ethical discourse into an ontological justification: what is at stake is not his individual body, but all of our bodies, and, perhaps, our world itself.

ERIC ANTHAMATTEN’s essay from #CHARLOTTESVILLE is featured in TANK Magazine

Read ERIC ANTHAMMATEN’s essay featured in TANK Magazine here.

#CHARLOTTESVILLE: WHITE SUPREMACY, POPULISM, AND RESISTANCE is available for purchase. Order your copy here.

“When you’re in such a warped mindset, it’s natural you’re going to call a piece of Jewish art antisemitic” —ELI VALLEY, author of DIASPORA BOY in conversation with Shuja Haider for Popula

Friday, March 15th, 2019

Eli Valley, author of Diaspora Boy on recent controversy with Meghan McCain for Popula

HAIDER: Right. I mean, a drawing of someone who is not Jewish, by the son of a rabbi, she called the most antisemitic thing she’d ever seen. How does that work?

VALLEY: I think she identified so much as a victimized Jewish person under the onslaught of the supposed terrorist Ilhan Omar that any criticism of her is a criticism of the Jewish people. So when you’re in such a warped mindset, it’s natural you’re going to call a piece of Jewish art antisemitic.

HAIDER: What did you think of Ilhan Omar’s statements themselves?

VALLEY: Honestly, I think there is room for nuance here in the discussion. Let’s establish this first: she didn’t make antisemitic remarks, she criticized monolithic support for Israel. In America, that’s led by mostly rapture-thirsty Evangelical Zionist antisemites, and to equate Israel with Jews is itself antisemitic—à la Trump’s insistence that Israel is “our” country, and American Jews aren’t exactly American. Having said that, and knowing the discourse will be tainted from the start by bad-faith assholes, it’s worth the trouble to be sensitive about the language. Don’t give them an open! Some people, especially among older generations, will be triggered by certain phrases even if you’re not talking about Jews.

So with that in mind, ideally she could have phrased things to avoid any unintentional or momentary overlap with the historic vernacular of antisemitism. But what she said doesn’t make her an antisemite. People are making it a big deal because they’re pretending Israel equals Jews, and antisemitism is now defined as criticism of AIPAC and Likud. When talking about fealty to Israel, by, let’s be honest, mostly fucking Evangelicals, okay, the language can unfortunately overlap, or be confused with, this mythology. And if we were operating in good faith—and I’m thinking especially of Democrats here—we could have her back and help her understand these nuances instead of appeasing right-wing creeps with show trials.

Read the full article here.

**“Dystopia is already here, and we are living in it.” —Salik Shah on GORDON VAN GELDER’s book, WELCOME TO DYSTOPIA: 45 VISIONS OF WHAT LIES AHEAD for Strange Horizon Magazine**

Friday, March 8th, 2019

Salik Shah reviewing Gordon Van Gelder’s book Welcome to Dystopia: 45 Visions of What Lies Ahead in Strange Horizon Magazine

Welcome to Dystopia, edited by Gordon Van Gelder, is a collection of forty-five short stories set in the near future. Subtitled “45 Visions of What Lies Ahead,” the anthology offers contrasting snippets and frightening scenarios of the kind of life we might find ourselves living tomorrow. Indeed, while reading these stories, the reader gets the feeling that they are not so far-fetched visions of what might be: the dystopia is already here, and we are living in it.

I don’t intend to review every story in the collection. Instead, I will attempt to introduce you to the stories that struck these chords with me, and have stayed with me even after several weeks.

…

If you haven’t read these books, perhaps it’s time to do so before they disappear from the mind-database of the world. And in the coming elections, vote wisely. If you don’t, be prepared to register your vagina or what have you at the nearest Registry. It’s compulsory. If you think I’m joking, read Lisa Mason’s story, “Dangerous.” Welcome to Dystopia is a must-read—and may well be worth adding to your own list of books to pass on to the next generation in any such dystopian scenario.

Read the full article here.

“The repression of BDS shows how the American and Israeli ruling classes are deeply enmeshed” –GREG SHUPAK, author of THE WRONG STORY: PALESTINE, ISRAEL, AND THE MEDIA for In These Times

Thursday, March 7th, 2019

Greg Shupak on how the repression of BDS shows just how deeply enmeshed the the American and Israeli ruling classes really are

The first bill to be considered by the 2019 U.S. Senate defends Israel by giving American state and local governments the legal authority to punish U.S. companies that are participating in the Palestinian-led boycott against Israel. According to the legal advocacy organization Palestine Legal, 26 states have adopted anti-boycott measures. The federal bill strengthens the legal basis to defend those Israel-protecting laws from constitutional challenges.

Alarmingly, the bill could be used to punish individuals, given that, as The Intercept recently explained, because “individual contractors often work for state or local governments under the auspices of a sole proprietorship or some other business entity.”

The bill would also codify a 2016 deal between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government guaranteeing Israel $38 billion in “security” assistance over 10 years, a provision that would undermine any current or future president’s ability to undo the arrangement. Such a move would hamstring what passes for American democracy by obstructing the population’s ability to stop participating in the mass murder of Palestinian civilians should it wish to do so.

Observers could be forgiven for wondering why the U.S. government goes to these lengths to suppress support for Palestinian liberation. In the following essay adapted from my book, The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel, & The Media, I explain why the U.S.-Israeli alliance is so deep and durable.

Read the full article here.

“We should say no to any coup d’etat, no to any military takeover, no to foreign interference in the internal affairs of Venezuela.” – ARIEL DORFMAN, author of HOW TO READ DONALD DUCK: IMPERIALIST IDEOLOGY IN THE DISNEY COMIC from BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight

Thursday, February 28th, 2019

ARIEL DORFMAN on his lived experience of the 1973 Chilean coup d’état and Venezuela today.

“We suffered a coup d’etat against a government which was democratically elected, a socialist government, but was working within the law. We were also the object of foreign intervention, because the United States had blocked and sabotaged our economy, and they were also constantly interfering by sending millions and millions of dollars for the destabilization. These are not my words, these are the words of Kissinger and Nixon, “to make the economy scream.”

We should say, no to any coup d’etat, no to any military takeover, no to foreign interference in the internal affairs of Venezuela, but we should also say no to the anti-democratic oppressive measures which Maduro is taking, and the way in which his corrupt regime has really ruined that country.

Maduro is giving socialism a bad name. And I have consistently said that Maduro should think also of what he’s doing to the left in Latin America. All over Latin America there’s a nostalgia for dictatorship, for strong men, so I would tell Corbyn that as a man of the left, he should be very very clear, Maduro has problems, serious problems, we should criticize them, we should criticize all the forms of human-rights abuses that he’s got, and at the same time, we have to condemn any form of foreign interference, and any attempt to have a military takeover. ”

Listen to the full radio interview here.

“Valley’s been having a series of good mornings, by which I mean terrible mornings. His career’s going great, but that’s partly because everything else is going to hell in a handbasket.” – Abraham Riesman on ELI VALLEY, author of DIASPORA BOY for Vulture

Friday, February 22nd, 2019

ABRAHAM RIESMAN on the work of ELI VALLEY, author of DIASPORA BOY

Valley’s been having a series of good mornings, by which I mean terrible mornings. His career’s going great, but that’s partly because everything else is going to hell in a handbasket. As the weight of humanity’s chaos has become more and more unbearable, Valley’s lewdly honest cartooning, fueled by his personal rage at a world gone wrong, has become a staple in the angrier corners of the American left, especially among its Jewish partisans. For well over a decade, Valley has unsparingly attacked political and communal leaders in the United States and Israel for their venality and sadism. Now, with two books on the stands and a devoted online following showering him with likes and retweets, Valley is demonstrating that he’s one of the only political cartoonists willing to enter into a staring contest with the abyss.

Read the article here.

“I wanted to give Baldwin his body back, to reclaim him for myself and many others as the maverick queer artist that drew us to him in the first place.” – HILTON ALS on curating a collective portrait of Queer Black author and activist, James Baldwin, for the David Zwirner gallery in NYC, in The Paris Review

Thursday, February 21st, 2019

HILTON ALS on curating a collective portrait of Queer Black author and activist, James Baldwin for the David Zwirner Gallery

After the Alice Neel show I curated closed in 2017, David Zwirner asked me what I’d like to do next. I immediately said James Baldwin, for some reasons that were clear to me and some that revealed themselves only when I began to meet with artists and see their work. I wanted to give Baldwin his body back, to reclaim him for myself and many others as the maverick queer artist that drew us to him in the first place. It’s difficult to visualize those feelings—complex, almost nonverbal feelings—and, as it turns out, difficult to get the right mix that further articulates those expressions of thought and feeling. But I think what we have here in this show, “God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin” (on view through February 16), is exactly as I wanted, which is to say a myriad portrait of a significant figure. And as everyone knows, when an artist is making a portrait, they are also making a portrait of themselves.

So to a very great extent, this is not a group show but, I hope, a new and valuable way of showing artists who are interested in exhibiting aspects of themselves, their thinking in relation to their times and the history that made them. Baldwin certainly helped make me, and in recent years I have been disturbed by the conversations around his work—largely, shall we say, heteronormative conversations that elevate the imitator and plunge the so-called liberal into a very comforting cold bath laced with guilt and remorse. These are reflexes, not thoughts, really, and so in order to help give Baldwin himself, I thought we had to start from the beginning. The first part of the exhibition is rooted in biography, and the second part is about metaphor: artists making the art Baldwin could not make himself.

Read the article here.

“I still call Lula president because he was condemned by a Brazilian kangaroo Supreme Court justice and forced from office.” – Ken Silverstein on LULA DA SILVA’S forthcoming manifesto, TRUTH WILL PREVAIL (WHY I WAS CONDEMNED) , in Washington Babylon

Thursday, February 7th, 2019

KEN SILVERSTEIN on LULA DA SILVA’S forthcoming manifesto, TRUTH WILL PREVAIL (WHY I WAS CONDEMNED)

“That’s my man right here. Love this guy. He’s the most popular politician on earth. It’s because of his good looks.” — Barack Obama, in a characteristically unfunny and self-revealing remark, about Lula.

I met Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the early-1990s, when he was a union activist and political opposition leader. A few years later I co-authored a book about him and the Workers’ Party (PT) with Emir Sader, which was published by Colin Robinson, then at Verso.

So I am pleased to announce that Colin, now at O/R Books with the illustrious John Oakes, have published a book by President Lula, It’s called “Truth Will Prevail: Why I Was Condemned.”

I still call Lula president because he was condemned by a Brazilian kangaroo Supreme Court justice and forced from office and then his equally heroic elected successor, Dilma Rousseff, was overthrown in a coup that the U.S. media routinely describes as her legal impeachment.

Anyway, President Dilma’s impeachment led inexorably to the “election” of a murderous right-wing fascist — since Lula, who polls showed would have won easily, was barred from running — named Jair Bolsonaro. The kangaroo court “Justice” who led a witch hunt that drove Lula from office was named Sérgio Moro. Right after he was “elected” the blood-soaked Bolsonaro named Moro his regime’s justice minister. You actually can’t make this shit up.

All I want to add for now is that everyone should buy Lula’s book as soon as it comes out on February 25th and I’ll be writing more about it closer to its publication date, when I’ll also provide ordering information from O/R Books.

Read the article here.

“Roma is a cinematic triumph. Can it teach Trump’s America the value of compassion?” – ARIEL DORFMAN, author of HOW TO READ DONALD DUCK: IMPERIALIST IDEOLOGY IN THE DISNEY COMIC, in The Guardian

Tuesday, February 5th, 2019

ARIEL DORFMAN, AUTHOR OF HOW TO READ DONALD DUCK (IMPERIALIST IDEOLOGY IN THE DISNEY COMIC)

Staying in Santiago, Chile, at the moment, I see echoes and reflections of Cleo – the servant at the heart of Alfonso Cuarón’s wondrous film Roma – everywhere. Cuarón’s consummate recreation of his Mexico City childhood in the early 1970s has garnered 10 Oscar nominations and is a favorite for the top prizes later this month – including best picture, best actress, for Yalitza Aparicio who plays Cleo, and best director for Cuarón.

I see Cleo, as Cuarón does, in the nanas. This is the euphemistic term here for domestic servants, the word that serves as a way of pretending they are part of the family rather than paid servants who can be fired at the drop of a hat.

When we visit Chile, my wife and I stay in a house we own in a condominium for educated professionals. One of the delights is a small swimming pool and its icy-cold water, perfect for escaping the fierce summer heat of the southern hemisphere. One of the rules that govern the use of the pool is that servants and their progeny cannot refresh themselves in it.

It seemed unfair to the nanas, who would swelter under the sun while the kids they were supervising frolicked and splashed around. That parents would trust these women with the lives of their offspring but not allow them into the communal water was not only cruel but smacked of something more ominous. For those who are well-to-do, the poor can do the dirty work as long as their dirty bodies don’t sully the supposedly pristine lives of their privileged employers. As the saying goes in the United States: not in my backyard.

Read the article here.

Latest News: Author Archive

“Human activity is causing the disappearance and deterioration of wildlife at a rate that could represent an existential threat to humanity within our lifetimes.” —Democracy Now during a segment featuring ASHLEY DAWSON, author of EXTINCTION

“You know, there are reasons to be angry. You know, if you’re not angry, you’re not, you’re not awake right now.” —ELI VALLEY, author of DIASPORA BOY to Bob Garfield for On the Media

“You can’t do a keystroke on your computer, or make a call on your cell phone, or even go to the doctor without the government knowing exactly what you’re doing.” —MICHAEL STEVEN SMITH, author of LAWYERS FOR THE LEFT during an interview for Economic Update

“For NYT, Israel Is Always Nearing ‘Apartheid,’ but Never Quite Gets There” —GREG SHUPAK, author of THE WRONG STORY for Fair

**“These women must now decide between their faith and their families.” —CATHY OTTEN, author of WITH ASH ON THEIR FACES: YEZIDI WOMEN AND THE ISLAMIC STATE for Foreign Policy**

“ Tackling contentious questions about rock and pop music, forcing us to look deeper into our relationship with music; how we shape it, and how it shapes us.” —Showcase on SETH KAUFMAN’s METAPHYSICAL GRAFFITI

“ You’ll find yourself plunged into the contradictions and swirling through the vortex where that question—what is the law?—is on everyone’s mind all the time.” —Portside on MICHAEL STEVEN SMITH’s LAWYERS FOR THE LEFT

“Like a con man who can lift a wallet in the middle of a melee, Trump thrived amid the chaos” —MATT TAIBBI, author of HATE INC. on Russiagate and Trump’s weaponizing of disarrayed media in Rolling Stone

“…shaking up the status quo by challenging power relations and prosecuting those with total impunity is undeniably a first step towards justice.” —Fiorella Lecoutteux on WOLFGANG KALECK’S new book, LAW VS. POWER in Peace News

**“I’ll believe that a corporation is a person the day it gets a colonoscopy.” —MICHAEL STEVEN SMITH, author of LAWYERS FOR THE LEFT on radio show Leonard Lopate at Large**

“When you’re in such a warped mindset, it’s natural you’re going to call a piece of Jewish art antisemitic” —ELI VALLEY, author of DIASPORA BOY in conversation with Shuja Haider for Popula

**“Dystopia is already here, and we are living in it.” —Salik Shah on GORDON VAN GELDER’s book, WELCOME TO DYSTOPIA: 45 VISIONS OF WHAT LIES AHEAD for Strange Horizon Magazine**

“The repression of BDS shows how the American and Israeli ruling classes are deeply enmeshed” –GREG SHUPAK, author of THE WRONG STORY: PALESTINE, ISRAEL, AND THE MEDIA for In These Times

“We should say no to any coup d’etat, no to any military takeover, no to foreign interference in the internal affairs of Venezuela.” – ARIEL DORFMAN, author of HOW TO READ DONALD DUCK: IMPERIALIST IDEOLOGY IN THE DISNEY COMIC from BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight

“Valley’s been having a series of good mornings, by which I mean terrible mornings. His career’s going great, but that’s partly because everything else is going to hell in a handbasket.” – Abraham Riesman on ELI VALLEY, author of DIASPORA BOY for Vulture

“I still call Lula president because he was condemned by a Brazilian kangaroo Supreme Court justice and forced from office.” – Ken Silverstein on LULA DA SILVA’S forthcoming manifesto, TRUTH WILL PREVAIL (WHY I WAS CONDEMNED) , in Washington Babylon

“Roma is a cinematic triumph. Can it teach Trump’s America the value of compassion?” – ARIEL DORFMAN, author of HOW TO READ DONALD DUCK: IMPERIALIST IDEOLOGY IN THE DISNEY COMIC, in The Guardian

“There’s nothing like a good migrant scapegoat to detract public attention from elite pillaging of the country and other unpleasantries.” – BELÉN FERNÁNDEZ, author of our forthcoming EXILE : Rejecting America and Finding the World, in Aljazeera

“The tragic history of U.S. military interventions in Latin America in the last decades… is one of the causes of why the world is in such bad shape right now.” – WOLFGANG KALECK, author of our forthcoming Law Versus Power: Our Global Fight for Human Rights, on Democracy Now!

“One of America’s foremost human rights lawyers” — MOVING THE BAR author Michael Ratner remembered in the Guardian