Adding his voice to the current debate about the US occupation of Iraq, in poems written in the tradition of such poets as Wilfred Owen, Yusef Komunyakaa (Dien Cai Dau), Bruce Weigl (Song of Napalm) and Alice James' own Doug Anderson (The Moon Reflected Fire), Iraqi war veteran Brian Turner writes power-fully affecting poetry of witness, exceptional for its beauty, honesty, and skill. Based on Turner's yearlong tour in Iraq as an infantry team leader, the poems offer gracefully rendered, unflinching description but, remarkably, leave the reader to draw conclusions or moral lessons. Here, Bullet is a must-read for anyone who cares about the war, regardless of political affiliation.
The best-selling Censored series highlights the year's twenty-five most important underreported news stories, alerting readers to deficiencies in corporate media and the resurgence of alternative media. Among the top censored stories of the year, Censored 2007 highlights the environmental and economic repercussions of Hurricane Katrina, the newest findings on global warming, escalating trends in human trafficking, and the use of napalm in Iraq.
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A former undercover agent who infiltrated neo-Nazi terrorist groups in the United States, German explains the terrorist’s point of view and discusses ways to counter the terrorism threat. Based on his unusual experience in the field, Thinking Like a Terrorist provides unique insights into why terrorism is such a persistent and difficult problem and why the U.S. approach to counterterrorism isn’t working.
Violence begets violence?so believes the majority of people around the world who have stood up in protest against war. Includes essays by acclaimed peace activists, experts, and visionaries, including Eve Ensler, Barbara Lee, Arianna Huffington, Janeane Garafalo, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Hong Kingston, and many more. The book shares expert insight on the issues and powers-that-be that encourage war, including the media, politicians, global militarization, and the pending scarcity of natural resources. With vitality, joy, and a dash of CODEPINK-style humor, Stop the Next War Now insists that the time is ripe for the first-ever global movement to put an end to war?and tells readers what they can do about it.
With chilling frankness and clarity, Flynn describes how we have become increasingly vulnerable to disaster by grossly neglecting the complex infrastructure that provides our water, food, health care, electricity, and transportation. Through a series of realistic scenarios, he dramatizes the prime areas of documented risk. But it doesn’t have to be this way. After examining why we are more vulnerable to disaster than ever before, Flynn turns the tables and explores what we can do about it, as individuals and as a society. He outlines a detailed, pragmatic program we can embrace right now to enhance our preparedness across the board and ensure true national security. Hard-hitting yet ultimately optimistic, The Edge of Disaster is a passionate call to make resiliency to disaster our top national priority. With the wounds of recent national tragedies still unhealed, this is a book no American can afford to ignore.
It's about self educating, knowing the issues and seeing for yourself.
Relying on sources that include high-ranking officials in the Pentagon and the White House, "Rumsfeld" goes far beyond previous accounts to reveal a man consumed with the urge to dominate each and every human encounter, and whose aggressive ambition has long been matched by his inability to display genuine leadership or accept responsibility for egregious error. Cockburn exposes Rumsfeld's early career as an Illinois congressman, his rise to prominence as an official in the Nixon White House, his careful maneuvering to avoid the fallout of the Watergate scandal, and his skillful infighting as secretary of defense under President Ford. Cockburn also chronicles for the very first time Rumsfeld's subsequent tenure as CEO of G. D. Searle (and his devoted efforts to get governmental approval for the controversial artificial sweetener aspartame) as well as his interesting behavior in secret high-level government nuclear war games in the years he was out of power.
The US is less than two years away from "financial Armageddon," according to Michael Panzner. When the stock market bubble burst in March 2000, the collapse that followed wiped out over two-thirds of the value of the technology-laden Nasdaq Index and decimated the hopes and dreams of millions of Americans.
Now, imagine not one, but four such disasters looming on the horizon. Four key elements--Debt, Derivatives, Government Guarantees, and the Retirement system--are quickly unraveling, and because they are so intricately connected, there will be an unremitting domino effect. With time running out, this is a disaster-in-the-making on which every American must be informed so they can protect themselves, their families, and their economic well-being before it's too late.
For too long, religion has been a political plaything of the right-wing in this country. American churches seem more concerned with what people do with their bodies than with their souls. Now, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend issues a spiritual call to arms to those who feel like her that today's churches--Catholic and Protestant alike--are failing to promote the welfare of those who depend upon them. After recounting her personal story in one of the most prominent Catholic families in America, she shows how America's neediest are now forgotten while their churches fight political battles against abortion rights and homosexual marriages. She provides hope through powerful examples of individuals effecting change, from obscure social workers to The Purpose-Driven® Life's Rick Warren, and maintains that our individual actions can return our churches to their traditional role as shepherds to their flock.
Buzzing with ideas, stories, and anecdotes spanning from the Revolutionary War and the War with Mexico through to World War II, Vietnam, 9/11, and the U.S. occupation of Iraq, Zinn’s view of American history is not a praise of famous leaders, but those who rebelled against them in the name of social justice. While writing extensively on current events and the consequences of U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Iraq, Zinn also dedicates entire chapters to troublemakers like Henry David Thoreau, Eugene Debs, Philip Berrigan, Italian immigrants Sacco & Vanzetti, and heralds not the soldiers who fought for George Washington, but those who deserted the Revolutionary Army because of intolerable mistreatment from elitist commanding officers. For Zinn, the voices and stories of ordinary working Americans, immigrants, working people, and soldiers comprise the real storyline of our history.
Mark LeVine wrote Why They Don't Hate Us because he was scared. Scared of the implications of an American foreign policy: policy founded on misinformation about both the historical and present-day Middle East and the people who live there. And angry because he has spent over fifteen years living in and researching the Middle East: a Middle East where the distinction between 'them' and 'us' has little basis in reality. Writing against the backdrop of the war on terror and the Bush administration's axis of evil, Why They Don't Hate Us uncovers a world behind the mask of the suicide bomber, where the battle against religious zealotry and the worst excesses of globalization might one day be fought by people on both sides, under the banner of an axis of empathy.
In Oath Betrayed, Miles explains that not only were doctors, nurses, and medics silent while prisoners were abused; physicians and psychologists provided information that helped determine how much and what kind of mistreatment could be delivered to detainees during interrogation. Additionally, these harsh examinations were monitored by health professionals operating under the purview of the U.S. military.
Oath Betrayed is not a denunciation of American military policy or of war in general, but of a profound betrayal of traditions that have shaped the medical corps of the United States armed forces and of America's abdication of its leadership role in international human rights. This book is a vital document that will both open minds and reinvigorate Americans' understanding of why human rights matter, so that we can reaffirm and fortify the rules for international civil society.
At a café table in Lahore, a bearded Pakistani man converses with an uneasy American stranger. As dusk deepens to night, he begins the tale that has brought them to this fateful meeting...
Changez is living an immigrant's dream of America. At the top of his class at Princeton, he is snapped up by the elite "valuation" firm of Underwood Samson. He thrives on the energy of New York, and his infatuation with elegant, beautiful Erica promises entry into Manhattan society at the same exalted level once occupied by his own family back in Lahore.
But in the wake of September 11, Changez finds his position in his adopted city suddenly overturned, and his budding relationship with Erica eclipsed by the reawakened ghosts of her past. And Changez's own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and maybe even love.
Since 2002, at least 775 men have been held in the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. According to Department of Defense data, fewer than half of them are accused of committing any hostile act against the United States or its allies. In hundreds of cases, even the circumstances of their initial detainment are questionable.
This collection gives voice to the men held at Guantánamo. Available only because of the tireless efforts of pro bono attorneys who submitted each line to Pentagon scrutiny, Poems from Guantánamo brings together twenty-two poems by seventeen detainees, most still at Guantánamo, in legal limbo.
If, in the words of Audre Lorde, poetry “forms the quality of light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change,” these verses—some originally written in toothpaste, others scratched onto foam drinking cups with pebbles and furtively handed to attorneys—are the most basic form of the art.
“Sebastian Copeland's stunning photographs are a stark reminder of what we stand to lose. He has ventured to the bottom of the world and returned with a message that we cannot afford to ignore.” — Sting
Photographer and author Sebastian Copeland won two first place awards in the 2007 International Photography Awards—first place in the "Nature" category for photography books, and first place overall in the Book Category. For more information on these awards, visit photoawards.com. And he was a recent guest at Authors@Google, and you can see the full video of his hour-long presentation on YouTube. Or see the much briefer report on Current.tv.
