Bøger udgivet af OR Books

In this characteristically turbocharged book, now in a new post-election edition, celebrated Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi provides an insider's guide to the variety of ways today's mainstream media tells us lies. Part tirade, part confessional, it reveals that what most people think of as "e;the news"e; is, in fact, a twisted wing of the entertainment business.In the Internet age, the press have mastered the art of monetizing anger, paranoia, and distrust. Taibbi, who has spent much of his career covering elections in which this kind of manipulative activity is most egregious, provides a rich taxonomic survey of American political journalism's dirty tricks.After a 2020 election season that proved to be a Great Giza Pyramid Complex of invective and digital ugliness, Hate Inc. is an invaluable antidote to the hidden poisons dished up by those we rely on to tell us what is happening in the world.

The WikiLeaks publisher and free speech campaigner Julian Assange has, since April 2019, been remanded at a maximum security prison in London facing extradition to the United States over WikiLeaks' groundbreaking 2010 publications. Now, in this crisp anthology, Assange's voice emerges erudite, analytic and prophetic.Julian Assange In His Own Words provides a highly accessible survey of Assange's philosophy and politics, conveying his views on how governments, corporations, intelligence agencies and the media function. As well as addressing the significance of the vast trove of leaked documents published by WikiLeaks, Assange draws on a polymathic intelligence to range freely over quantum physics, Greek mythology, macroeconomics, modern literature, and empires old and new.Drawing on his insights as the world's most famous free speech activist Assange invites us to ask further questions about how power operates in a world increasingly dominated by a ubiquitous internet.Assange may be gagged, but in these pages his words run free, providing both an exhortation to fight for a better world and an inspiration when doing so.

Traditionally, American Jews have been broadly liberal in their political outlook; indeed African-Americans are the only ethnic group more likely to vote Democratic in US elections. Over the past half century, however, attitudes on one topic have stood in sharp contrast to this group's generally progressive stance: support for Israel.Despite Israel's record of militarism, illegal settlements and human rights violations, American Jews have, stretching back to the 1960s, remained largely steadfast supporters of the Jewish "homeland". But, as Norman Finkelstein explains in an elegantly-argued and richly-textured new book, this is now beginning to change.Reports by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the United Nations, and books by commentators as prominent as President Jimmy Carter and as well-respected in the scholarly community as Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer and Peter Beinart, have increasingly pinpointed the fundamental illiberalism of the Israeli state. In the light of these exposes, the support of America Jews for Israel has begun to fray. This erosion has been particularly marked among younger members of the community. A 2010 Brandeis University poll found that only about one quarter of Jews aged under 40 today feel "very much" connected to Israel.In successive chapters that combine Finkelstein's customary meticulous research with polemical brio, Knowing Too Much sets the work of defenders of Israel such as Jeffrey Goldberg, Michael Oren, Dennis Ross and Benny Morris against the historical record, showing their claims to be increasingly tendentious. As growing numbers of American Jews come to see the speciousness of the arguments behind such apologias and recognize Israel's record as simply indefensible, Finkelstein points to the opening of new possibilities for political advancement in a region that for decades has been stuck fast in a gridlock of injustice and suffering.

In a characteristically explosive barrage, Ljubljana's most famous philosopher takes a passionate stance on the war in Ukraine, surveys the latest Hollywood blockbusters, and delivers detonations into a range of contemporary issues, from sexual politics in India to the prospects for a new Cold War. Ever attentive to moments where the bizarre and the epic join forces, among the questions Žižek considers here are: Is the giant orgy, planned to take place in Ukraine in the event of a Russian nuclear attack, really all that morbid? And what should society do, whether on the big screen or the battlefield, in preparation for the end of the world?Agree with him or not, Žižek rarely fails to provoke in a productive fashion. By examining matters through a lens that is bold and original, and often joyfully outlandish, Žižek helps us to better grasp a world in which, increasingly, the dominant motif is one of madness.

In real life, there is a person like "e;Anonymous"e;, who, for the sake of this story, I'll call Huey Carmichael. I was friends with this person for a while before I learned about his other life. The real Huey knows more than a thing or two about the weed business. He keeps rules.The Business Secrets of Drug Dealingtells the story of a hyper-observant, politically-minded, but humorously pragmatic weed dealer who has spent a working life compiling rules for how to a) make money and b) avoid prison.Each rule shapes a chapter of this fast-paced outlaw tale, all delivered in Huey's deliciously trenchant argot. Here are a few of them: No guns but keep shooters. Stay behind the white guy. Don't snitch. Always have a job. Be multi-sourced. Get your money and get out.Part edge-of-the-seat suspense story, part how-to manual in the tradition ofThe Anarchist Cookbook,The Business Secrets of Drug Dealingis as scintillating as it is subversive. Just reading it feels illegal.

“If I must die, let it bring hope, let it be a tale.”This rich, elegiac compilation of work from the late Palestinian poet and professor, Refaat Alareer, brings together his marvelous poetry and deeply human writing about literature, teaching, politics, and family. The renowned poet and literature professor Refaat Alareer was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City alongside his brother, sister, and nephews in December 2023. He was just forty-four years old, but had already established a worldwide reputation that was further enhanced when, in the wake of his death, the poem that gives this book its title became a global sensation. “If I Must Die” is included here, alongside Refaat’s other poetry.Refaat wrote extensively about a range of topics: teaching Shakespeare and the way Shylock could be appreciated by young Palestinian students; the horrors of living under repeated brutal assaults in Gaza, one of which, in 2014, killed another of his brothers; and the generosity of Palestinians to each other, fighting, in the face of it all, to be the one paying at the supermarket checkout.Such pieces, some never before published, have been curated here by one of Refaat’s closest friends and collaborators. This collection forms a fitting testament to a remarkable writer, educator, and activist, one whose voice will not be silenced by death but will continue to assert the power of learning and humanism in the face of barbarity.

In the past five years Israel has mounted three major assaults on the 1.8 million Palestinians trapped behind its blockade of the Gaza Strip. Taken together, Operation Cast Lead (2008-9), Operation Pillar of Defense (2012), and Operation Protective Edge (2014), have resulted in the deaths of some 3,700 Palestinians. Meanwhile, a total of 90 Israelis were killed in the invasions.On the face of it, this succession of vastly disproportionate attacks has often seemed frenzied and pathological. Senior Israeli politicians have not discouraged such perceptions, indeed they have actively encouraged them. After the 2008-9 assault Israel’s then-foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, boasted, "Israel demonstrated real hooliganism during the course of the recent operation, which I demanded."However, as Norman G. Finkelstein sets out in this concise, paradigm-shifting new book, a closer examination of Israel's motives reveals a state whose repeated recourse to savage war is far from irrational. Rather, Israel's attacks have been designed to sabotage the possibility of a compromise peace with the Palestinians, even on terms that are favorable to it.Looking also at machinations around the 2009 UN sponsored Goldstone report and Turkey's forlorn attempt to seek redress in the UN for the killing of its citizens in the 2010 attack on the Gaza freedom flotilla, Finkelstein documents how Israel has repeatedly eluded accountability for what are now widely recognized as war crimes.Further, he shows that, though neither side can claim clear victory in these conflicts, the ensuing stalemate remains much more tolerable for Israelis than for the beleaguered citizens of Gaza. A strategy of mass non-violent protest might, he contends, hold more promise for a Palestinian victory than military resistance, however brave.

Jeremy Corbyn and Len McCluskey collaborated to help achieve the biggest electoral success for socialism in recent British history. The two men share a passionate belief in a fairer, more equal Britain, encapsulated in Labour's election slogan "For the many, not the few."That slogan, inspired by Shelley's famous poem The Masque of Anarchy, points to something else the two have in common: a lifelong enthusiasm for poetry. In this sparkling anthology they discuss the poems that have moved and enlightened them. Their choices travel over centuries and continents, with poets ranging from Shakespeare and Juana de la Cruz, through William Blake and Emily Dickinson, to Bertolt Brecht, Stevie Smith and Linton Kwesi Johnson.Rounding out the collection are appreciations of poems selected by guest contributors Melissa Benn, Rob Delaney, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Ken Loach, Morag Livingstone, Francesca Martinez, Karie Murphy, Maxine Peake, Michael Rosen, Alexei Sayle and Gary Younge.With the burgeoning popularity of poetry, especially among Gen Z, this joyful celebration of the power of verse is bound to delight and inspire across a wide audience.All royalties from sales of this book will be donated to the Peace and Justice Project.

The Illustrated Guide to American Fascism is a concise yet comprehensive exploration of the historical roots and contemporary manifestations of fascism in the United States leading up to and following the rise of Donald Trump, as well as a stark warning for the future. This fierce, smart interweaving of punch-packing illustration and punctilious text lays bare the authoritarianism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and misogyny fueling Donald Trump's political rise, the fervor of MAGA extremism, and the alarming political landscape we are travelling through, notably the upcoming 2024 presidential election campaign.Designed especially to inform and activate younger readers, it pays particular attention to the attempted stealing of the 2020 election, including the harrowing Capitol insurrection on January 6th 2021, and Trump's efforts to evade its legal consequences. Beyond the crimes of Trump, Coe and Eisenman explore the threads of fascism in U.S. history and in today’s foreign policy under President Biden, including the proxy war against Russia, support for genocide in Gaza, and the brutal treatment of asylum seekers along the U.S./Mexican border.Sue Coe’s art in these pages is, by turns and often all at once, tough, satirical, bracing, sweet, and sober. It secures her place in a pantheon that features the zine illustration of Art Spiegelman, the realism of Philip Pearlstein, the caricatures of Honoré Daumier, the expressionism of Käthe Kollwitz, and the Dadaism of John Heartfield.

Return to Fukushima captures the aftermath of the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima, chronicling the resilience of displaced communities navigating life amidst radioactivity. Thomas Bass explores the transformative journey from desolation to revitalization, offering a survival guide to our atomic future.Fukushima is an ongoing nuclear disaster. The four reactors that melted down and exploded in 2011 are still deadly, even to the robots that get burned up trying to explore them. Over a hundred thousand people remain displaced, their homes frozen in time, eerie ghost towns where slippers sit undisturbed at doorsteps and tables are set for absent guests. Wild animals have moved into the houses. Vines overgrow buildings surrendering to entropy. Visiting these places, we stare at the vacant world remaining after we have ended our brief tenure as overlords of the Anthropocene.The world is dotted with nuclear exclusion zones. Atolls blown to smithereens. Test sites in the Mojave Desert. Disasters at Soviet bomb-making factories. The red forest around Chernobyl. These zones are growing in number and melding one into another. What if our future demands that we learn how to live in nuclear exclusion zones? Learn how to master the risks and develop resistant crops and other survival skills?Nowhere is this future more evident than in Fukushima, where the Japanese government is pushing people to resettle in towns that are supposedly decontaminated. These attempts have largely failed. But what has not failed are the grassroots efforts at reviving Fukushima. This is propelled by the ingenuity of local farmers and entrepreneurs, citizen scientists, artists, and immigrants from around the world who are intrigued by starting new lives in the red zone.In 2018 and again four and a half years later, Thomas Bass travelled to Fukushima. The difference was dramatic The place had been cleaned up and reopened, not fully, but little-by-little people are learning to live with radioactivity, decontaminate their fields, monitor their food, and prepare for the next wave set to wash over this seismically precarious part of the world. After six years of research, including travels to Chernobyl, Bass gives us a remarkable account of how Fukushima's argonauts of the anthropocene are guiding us into our atomic future.

Published to coincide with the release of Joker: Folie à Deux, the sequel to Todd Phillips’ iconic blockbuster, this imaginative reading sees Joker as an economic and political allegory, presenting unexpected and dazzling insights into contemporary capitalism.What could be more surprising than the cinematic presentation of the Joker as a key to solving our present economic and political predicament? But Send In the Clowns! leads us precisely there. Grip this movie’s visual language, its authors insist, and we can also grasp a political grammar, available to all, that articulates a new, world-changing solidarity.The predicament Send In the Clowns! diagnoses is urgent: the way late capitalism ensures astonishing inequality, unleashing a backlash in conspiracy, violence, and authoritarianism. These pages map this unravelling onto the narrative of Joker. When the movie begins in 1981, neoliberal tides are shifting the sands: the rise of insecure work; the destabilizing of welfare; the explosion of racialized incarceration. A close reading of the film allows Kennedy and McNaughton to isolate and confront these phenomena.Send In the Clowns! shows how melodrama has become late capitalism’s preferred genre. It appears in neoliberal economic theory; in a media seduced by caricatured villainy; in state justifications for war. Melodrama allows demagogues to depict themselves as saviors and decry political opponents as criminals, threatening the foundations of democracy itself.The myth of the lone superhero has brought us to the brink of disaster. If we don’t want jokers for president, we must empower the clowns!

Why did Hamas attack? What is Israel trying to achieve? Did this catastrophe have to happen? And is there a way forward? The book’s expert contributors address these and other questions, which have never been more urgent.In September 2023, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan boasted that the Middle East “is quieter today than it has been in two decades.” One week later, unprecedented violence in Gaza and Israel shattered the status quo and shocked the world.Hamas’s Operation Al-Aqsa Deluge punctured delusions of stability as hundreds of militants burst forth from the Gaza prison camp. In the ensuing carnage and firefights, 1,200 Israelis were killed and hundreds more taken hostage.Israel’s retaliation turned the besieged enclave into a howling wasteland. Nearly 30,000 people were killed in four months, including more than 12,000 children, and over 60 percent of homes were damaged or destroyed. Israel targeted the wounded and infirm, newborns and near-dead, as Gaza’s healthcare system—hospitals, clinics, ambulances, medical personnel—came under a systematic attack unprecedented in the annals of modern warfare.The Hamas massacre and the genocidal Israeli campaign which followed together mark a historic turning point in the Israel-Palestine conflict. The reverberations have also shaken politics far beyond, not least in Europe and the United States, where gigantic, round-the-clock protests for Palestinian rights pitted politicians against the public and exposed a growing statist authoritarianism.In this groundbreaking book—the first published about the 2023 Gaza war—leading Palestinian, Israeli, and international authorities put these momentous developments in context and provide an initial taking-stock.Contributors: Musa Abuhashhash, Ahmed Alnaouq, Nathan J. Brown, Yaniv Cogan, Clare Daly MEP, Talal Hangari, Khaled Hroub, R. J., Colter Louwerse, Mitchell Plitnick, Mouin Rabbani, Sara Roy, and Avi Shlaim

The first English-language anthology of contemporary Tibetan fiction available in the West, Old Demons, New Deities brings together the best Tibetan writers from both Tibet and the diaspora, who write in Tibetan, English and Chinese.Modern Tibetan literature is just under forty years old: its birth dates to 1980, when the first Tibetan language journal was published in Lhasa. Since then, short stories have become one of the primary modern Tibetan art forms. Through these sometimes absurd, sometimes strange, and always moving stories, the English-reading audience gets an authentic look at the lives of ordinary, secular, modern Tibetans navigating the space between tradition and modernity, occupation and exile, the personal and the national. The setting may be the Himalayas, an Indian railway, or a New York City brothel, but the insights into an ancient culture and the lives and concerns of a modern people are real, and powerful.For this anthology, editor and translator Tenzin Dickie has collected 21 short stories by 16 of the most respected and well known Tibetan writers working today, including Pema Bhum, Pema Tseden, Tsering Dondrup, Woeser, Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, Kyabchen Dedrol, and Jamyang Norbu.

"It is a must read for anyone ¿ young or old ¿ inclined to see the Weatherman as right on, or badass, or as pioneers of a form of political struggle useful for the United States¿s future. Lerner was there. He now sees the weather very differently."¿Los Angeles Review of BooksThis crisp, contemplative memoir of an American radical arrives at a moment of surging activism and rage. It is essential reading for progressives struggling with how to act and survive in the Age of Trump. Against the vividly evoked chaos and conflicts of the Vietnam Era, Jonathan Lerner probes the impulses that led a small group of educated, privileged young Americans to turn to violence as a means of political change. Beyond that, he tells the true story of an intellectually adventurous but insecure gay man immersed in the macho, misogynistic and physically confrontational environment of the Weathermen.Variously known as the Weather Underground, the Weathermen, or Weatherman, the group unleashed a series of bombings across the United States, attacking the Pentagon, the Capitol Building, and the U.S. State Department, among many other places. At its height, the organization consisted of several hundred people, all committed to violent change and toe-to-toe battles with the police.Inventing himself first as "minister of propaganda" for a movement ¿ and along the way participating in the Venceremos Brigade in Cuba and observing the Native American uprising at Wounded Knee ¿ and then reinventing himself as high-rolling gay hustler, Lerner recounts a wild and utterly American journey from idealism to destruction and beyond. Other Weatherpeople have written memoirs; none has explored the painful history of the consequential group with such penetrating honesty.

The power of refusing to participate has never been on people's minds as much as it is today. Non-violent and supremely effective, cultural boycotts are in place around the world and gaining in popularity. The essential anthology on a topic that's constantly in the news.

A highly-entertaining account of two young professors attempt to improve themselves through the techniques of the burgeoning self-optimization movement, including drugs, surgical implants, the administering of electric shocks and stripping naked in public.

An updated, revised edition of OR's straight-to-consumer's takedown of the "sharing economy"

Thomas Piketty created a classic bestseller of economics: dense, huge, and expensive. Here's the cheat sheet.

With the rollback of net neutrality, platform cooperativism becomes even more pressing: In one volume, some of the most cogent thinkers and doers on the subject of the cooptation of the Internet, and how we can resist and reverse the process.

Poet, essayist and performer Eileen Myles' chronicle transmits an energy and vividness that will not soon leave its readers. Her story of a young female writer, discovering both her sexuality and her own creative drive in the meditative and raucous environment that was New York City in its punk and indie heyday, is engrossing, poignant, and funny.

Set in the tumultuous aftermath of the Iranian revolution in 1979, Remembering Akbar weaves together the stories of a group of characters who share a crowded death row cell in Tehran's notorious Evin prison. A teeming world is evoked vividly through the relationships, memories, and inner lives of these political prisoners, many of whom were eventually executed.Told through a series of linked memories by the narrator, Akbar, whose striking candor is infused with a mordant sense of humor, the story takes the reader beyond mere political struggles and revelations, to a vibrant alternative history, written, as it were, by losers.The characters whose stories Akbar recounts are brought to life within the mundane rhythms of a bleak institution, in its simple pleasures as well as its frequent horrors, and in the unexpected connections that emerge between the world inside and a past before imprisonment.Rather than exalting the heroic, or choosing to focus merely on despair or redemption, Remembering Akbar reveals eloquently how life unfolds when death is starkly imminent. It is a deeply moving story of great camaraderie, biting humor, and soulful remembrance.

The diminutive co-founder of Code Pink has become famous for fearlessly tackling head-on subjects the left and right studiously avoid. Sometimes, she does so in person--as at President Obama's speech at the National Defense College, or in Egypt, where she was assaulted by police. Here, she's researching the sinister nature of the relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.In seven succinct chapters followed by a meditation on prospects for change, Benjamin--cited by the L.A. Times as "one of the high profile members of the peace movement"--shines a light on one of the weirder, and most important, elements of our foreign policy. What is the origin of this strange alliance between two countries that have very little in common? Why does it persist, and what are its consequences? Why, over a period of decades and across various presidential administrations, has the United States consistently supported a regime shown time and again to be one of the most powerful forces working against American interests? Saudi Arabia is perhaps the single most important source of funds for terrorists worldwide, promoting an extreme interpretation of Islam along with anti-Western sentiment, while brutally repressing non-violent dissidents at home.

A monograph on "Untopia"—neither capitalism nor socialism, but a practical combination of the two—by the bestselling author of the "Easy Rawlins" series

From Facebook to Talking Points Memo to the New York Times, often what looks like fact-based journalism is not. It’s advertising. Not only are ads indistinguishable from reporting, the Internet we rely on for news, opinions and even impartial sales content is now the ultimate corporate tool. Reader beware: content without a corporate sponsor lurking behind it is rare indeed.Black Ops Advertising dissects this rapid rise of “sponsored content,” a strategy whereby advertisers have become publishers and publishers create advertising—all under the guise of unbiased information. Covert selling, mostly in the form of native advertising and content marketing, has so blurred the lines between editorial content and marketing message that it is next to impossible to tell real news from paid endorsements. In the 21st century, instead of telling us to buy, buy, BUY, marketers “engage” with us so that we share, share, SHARE—the ultimate subtle sell.Why should this concern us? Because personal data, personal relationships, and our very identities are being repackaged in pursuit of corporate profits. Because tracking and manipulation of data make “likes” and tweets and followers the currency of importance, rather than scientific achievement or artistic talent or information the electorate needs to fully function in a democracy. And because we are being manipulated to spend time with technology, to interact with “friends,” to always be on, even when it is to our physical and mental detriment.

"Elegant and incendiary." —Naomi Klein. Beautiful Trouble brings together dozens of seasoned artists and activists from around the world to distill their best practices into a toolbox for creative action. Sophisticated enough for veteran activists, accessible enough for newbies, this compendium of troublemaking wisdom is a must-have for aspiring changemakers. Showcasing the synergies between artistic imagination and shrewd political strategy, Beautiful Trouble is for everyone who longs for a more beautiful, more just, more livable world – and wants to know how to get there.

"Calculated for the year 2024, for the meridian of New York, NY"--Title page.