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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.

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.

"This penetrating study asks whether the actual evidence concerning alleged Russian interference in the US elections of 2016 justifies the enormous hue and cry it has elicited ... A highly instructive inquiry into our current malaise." - Noam ChomskyCold War, Hot War upends conventional thinking about the defining story of the Trump era-the supposed threat of Russia to American democracy -and offers revelatory insight about the U.S. political and media culture in which it arose. Drawing on his writing for The Nation, Real Clear Investigations, The Grayzone, and original reporting for this book, journalist Aaron Mate offers a rigorous, and mordantly entertaining account of how and why supposed Russian interference in US elections became what Mother Jones described as "the biggest scandal in American history."Russiagate reporting is a densely populated field. But, unlike other accounts, this book sidesteps the inflammatory speculation shared by Democrat and Republican talking points. Instead, Mate raises two questions that no major work has previously addressed: Do the facts about Russiagate match what we have been led to believe? And, if not, why has it become one of the biggest news stories of recent years? Russiagate, Mate argues, is not a genuine "scandal" based on the merits, but a kind of Privilege Protection Racket: a product of the interests-and entrenched dysfunctions- of those in power. This is not some reverse conspiracy theory of "Deep State" subterfuge.  Cold War, Hot War brilliantly exposes the way the Russiagate phenomenon reflects the common elite interests of both liberals and conservative. In short, Russiagate is a pathology of the privileged.

Ongoing relevance/likely persistence of QAnon in the US, particularly in the 2022 and 2024 election years: new reporting continues to indicate that QAnon supporters are remaining politically active and adapting the core ideology to new aims (see, for example, The Atlantic's latest piece).While the first major book on the topic, The Storm is Upon Us (Melville House, June 2021) functioned as an authoritative explainer of QAnon's communications, activities, and scope, Operation Mindfuck is an irreverent but urgent call to intellectual action, offering mastery in the analysis of the movement's largely-borrowed source material and cult-mentality triggers. Guffey says: "Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the QAnon psyop is not the identity of its architects, but the mere fact that it worked . . . and worked so damn well."Operation Mindfuck contextualizes QAnon not only within existing conspiracy theory formulas and satanic panics, but also traces its bizarre lineage in the American collective unconscious, from Cold War paranoia to the midcentury counterculture?Guffey's particularly effective in highlighting QAnon's exploiting of political performance tactics pioneered by 1960s radical leftists. Untangling this web of influence and pointing to its far-from-supernatural sources, Guffey argues, is key to breaking QAnon's mesmeric spell.The book's uniquely freewheeling style is marked by Guffey's gonzo-journalistic plunges into the subculture himself, including pursuing an email correspondence with a recent QAnon convert, clicking on YouTube links at his own risk, and joining the mailing list of a QAnon talk show, using the pseudonym Edgar Allan Poe.

The term 'Mexican Drug War' implies that the ongoing bloodbath, which has now killed well over 100,000 people, is an internal Mexican affair. But this diverts attention from the U.S. role in creating and sustaining the carnage. It's not just that Americans buy drugs from, and sell weapons to, Mexico's murderous cartels. It's that ever since the U.S. prohibited the use and sale of drugs in the early 1900s, it has pressured Mexico into acting as its border enforcer-with increasingly deadly consequences.Mexico was not a helpless victim. Powerful forces within the country profited hugely from supplying Americans with what their government forbade them. But the policies that spawned the drug war have proved disastrous for both countries.Written by two award-winning authors, one American and the other Mexican, A Narco History reviews the interlocking twentieth-century histories that produced this twenty-first century calamity, and proposes how to end it.

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

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.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Maximillian Alvarez conducted a series of intimate interviews with workers of various stripes, from all around the United States, about their jobs, their lives, dreams, and struggles, and about their experiences living through a year when the world itself seemed to break apart.--Adapted from back cover summary.

"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.

With the invasion of the Ukraine, America's relations with Russia have moved right to the center of global politics. The Russiagate story has engulfed US media and politics since 2016 and Maté one of only a handful of journalists who got it right.Russigate has had massive consequences on US and global politics that continue to play out until this day. Aaron Maté's coverage of Russiagate in the Nation magazine has been honored with an Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media, and International Journalism award from the Club de Periodistas de MexicoThis is a returnable Print To Order Hardcover.

The November 2020 US election was arguably the most consequential since the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln—and grassroots leaders and organizers played crucial roles in the contention for the presidency and control of both houses of Congress.Power Concedes Nothing tells the stories behind a victory that won both the White House and the Senate and powered progressive candidates to new levels of influence. It describes the on-the-ground efforts that mobilized a record-breaking turnout by registering new voters and motivating an electorate both old and new. In doing so it charts a viable path to victory for the vital contests upcoming in 2022 and 2024.Contributors include: Cliff Albright, Yong Jung Cho, Larry Cohen, Sendolo Diaminah, Neidi Dominguez, David Duhalde, Alicia Garza, Ryan Greenwood, Arisha Michelle Hatch , Jon Liss, Thenjiwe McHarris, Andrea Cristina Mercado, Maurice Mitchell, Rafael Návar, Deepak Pateriya, Ai-jen Poo, W. Mondale Robinson, Art Reyes III, Nsé Ufot and Mario Yedidia

For those interested in continuing the struggle for decolonization, the word “multiculturalism” can seem like a sad joke. After all, institutionalized multiculturalism today is a muck of buzzwords, branding strategies, and virtue signaling that has nothing to do with real struggles against racism and colonialism. But Decolonize Multiculturalism unearths a buried history.The book focuses on the student and youth movements of the 1960s and 1970s, inspired by global movements for decolonization and anti-racism, which aimed to fundamentally transform their society, as well as the fierce repression of these movements by the state, corporations, and university administrations. Part of the response has been sheer violence—campus policing, for example, only began in the ’70s, paving the way for the militarized campuses of today—with institutionalized multiculturalism acting like the velvet glove around the iron fist of state violence.And yet today’s multiculturalism also contains residues of the original radical demands of the student and youth movements that it aims to repress: to open up the university, to wrench it from its settler colonial, white supremacist, and patriarchal capitalist origins, and to transform it into a place of radical democratic possibility.

Elegantly written and charmingly illustrated, The Activist Angler shows how lessons learned from angling can guide political activism and vice versa. Patience, preparation and precision are needed to catch fish . . . and to build a movement.Looking for a retreat during the stress of the pandemic, the activist and teacher Steve Duncombe took up fishing, a sport he had abandoned in his youth. After many years away from his rod, he had to re-learn how to fish and approached the practice with what Zen masters call “Beginner’s Mind.” Having no recent experience to fall back on, every fish successfully caught or line hopelessly snarled served as a lesson. Hours spent doing little more than casting and retrieving meant plenty of time to think. One of the things Steve thought a lot about was activism. The art of angling, he discovered, has a lot to teach about the art of activism.The Activist Angler brings together these lessons in an engaging journey from the street to the beach and back. The format is simple: one reflection on fishing followed by another on what might be learned and applied to activism, with each accompanied by an illustration. Topics range from telling fish stories and the trap of activist nostalgia, to the impossibility of thinking like a fish yet the necessity for an organizer to understand their audience, with detours through reflections on self-care, catch-and-release, and taking responsibility for the human cost of one’s political actions.

Corporate Coup looks at the attempted overthrow of the elected government of Venezuela, an intervention which, despite open backing by the United States, failed dismally.In January of 2019, the Trump Administration decided to recognize a previously little known opposition lawmaker named Juan Guaidó as President of Venezuela. The policy was unprecedented — while Washington’s history of coups in Latin America is well documented, never before had the United States taken the step of legally recognizing a new government before an actual change in leadership had taken place. Within months it became clear that the attempt at regime change had fallen flat: all Venezuelan territory, government ministries, and the country’s military remained under the control of President Nicolás Maduro. While US officials, such as Trump Venezuela Envoy Elliott Abrams boasted that roughly 54 countries followed Washington’s lead and recognized Guaidó’s authority, the vast majority of United Nations member states rejected the coup policy and maintained relations with Maduro’s government. Three years on from the coup attempt, Venezuela’s government is firmly in place and Guaidó is virtually nowhere to be seen. So what did this ham-fisted regime change effort truly achieve?Parampil provides a narrative history of the Chavista revolution and offers character sketches of the figures who have come to lead it since Hugo Chávez’s death in 2014. She shows how Guaidó’s shadow regime consisted of individuals with deep connections to transnational corporations which sought to overturn the revolution and exploit Venezuela’s resources, revealing their plot to steal Citgo Petroleum, the country’s most valuable international asset.Corporate Coup exposes the hidden personalities and interests driving US policy on Venezuela, revealing that while the recognition of Guaidó failed at changing reality on the ground in Caracas, it succeeded in providing cover for the unprecedented looting of the country’s internationally-stored wealth. It is based on the extensive investigation and on-the-ground reporting Anya Parampil has conducted since the US coup attempt began, during which she cultivated relationships with top Venezuelan government officials as well as members of the country’s opposition who oppose Guaidó and US sanction policy.This gripping story from Venezuela encapsulates the tenor of a US foreign policy that is happy to trample on democratic norms and illustrates how a new, multipolar world is rising in order to resist it.

This book documents the struggle to unionize Amazon’s warehouse on Staten Island, New York.The campaign is ongoing. A ballot will take place later in 2022.If successful, Staten Island will be the first unionized Amazon facility in North America.The book is being written with the full cooperation of those involved in the union drive, including the widely-reported Chris Small, leader of the campaign.

Much has been written In English about the experiences and treatment of immigrants from south of the Rio Grande once they have entered the United States. But this account, by the itinerant, effervescent and highly original journalist Beln Fernndez, offers a different and wholly original take.Beln Fernndezshows us what life is like for would-be migrants, not just from the Mexican side of the border but inside Siglo XXI, the notorious migrant detention center in the south of the country.Journalists are prohibited from entering Siglo XXI; Fernndezonly gained access because she herself was detained as a result of faulty paperwork when she attempted to return to the US to renew her passport. Once inside the facility, Fernndezwas able to speak with detained women from Honduras, Cuba, Haiti, Bangladesh, and beyond. Their stories, detailing the hardships that prompted them to leave their homes, and the dangers they have experienced on an often-tortuous journey north, form the core of this unique book. The companionship and support they offer to Fernndez, whose antipathy to returning to the United States, the country they are desperate to enter, is a source of bemusement and perplexity, demonstrates a spirited generosity that is deeply moving.In the end, the Siglo XXI center emerges as a strikingly precise metaphor for a 21st century in which poor people, effectively imprisoned by American political and economic policies, nevertheless display astonishing resilience.

Racism is like a Cadillac, they bring out a new model every year. Malcolm X (a former auto worker)Written in a lively, accessible fashion and drawing extensively on interviews with people who were formerly incarcerated,Cars and Jailsexamines how the costs of car ownership and use are deeply enmeshed with the U.S. prison system.American consumer lore has long held the automobile to be a freedom machine, consecrating the mobility of a free people. Yet, paradoxically, the car also functions at the cross-roads of two great systems of entrapment and immobility the American debt economy and the carceral state.Cars and Jailsinvestigates this paradox, showing how auto debt, traffic fines, over-policing, and automated surveillance systems work in tandem to entrap and criminalize poor people. The authors describe how racialization and poverty take their toll on populations with no alternative, in a country poorly served by public transport, to taking out loans for cars and exposing themselves to predatory and often racist policing.Looking skeptically at the frothy promises of the mobility revolution, Livingston and Ross close with thought-provoking ideas for a radical overhaul of transportation.

President Biden has announced the battle against cancer, a disease experienced by 50% of the population at some point in their lives, as a priority of his administration.This accessible but fastidiously researched book shows how the priorities of the medical system need to be fundamentally redirected in order for this project to achieve success.It argues that rather than investing enormous sums in treatment of late-stage cancer, widespread and persistent screening, education and early treatment provides far better cost benefit results.

"The 11 lives given voice here are unique, each an expression of the myriad displacements that war and occupation have forced upon Palestinians since the Nakba of 1948. At the same time, they form a collective testament of a people driven from their homes and land by colonial occupation. Each story is singular; and each tells the story of all Palestinians." --provided by publisher.

Offers a decolonial feminist update to earlier books critiquing the wellness industry and “the power of positive thinking.” Examines the ways in which self-care marketers often leverage the power of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” sloganeering to further their products and profits.Offers an accessible account of why, from a decolonizing perspective, care and wellness cannot be bought or sold by individuals. These transactions instead amount to nothing more than an attempt to withstand increasingly toxic social, political, economic, and ecological environments, and do not support real human thriving.For the audience of Barbara Ehrenreich

This book offers examples of the way grassroots organizing has found practical solutions to problems inflicted by poverty and racism around the world.In these pages are inspiring stories from North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Turtle Island too. Our problems are inter-connected and international; our solutions must be too.Featuring concrete examples from every area of our economy—from food and finance to energy and education—Beautiful Solutions demonstrates that, amidst the chaos, another better world is already under construction.Written by a wide range of contributors, Beautiful Solutions brings together some of the world's most innovative community leaders to share their stories.Designed to be used in classrooms, community groups, social change organizations, Beautiful Solutions provides inspiration for anyone looking to build a better world in the here and now.

"Serious but easily readable. The History of Havana employs conventional documentary, written and visual sources and a variety of testimonials from throughout the world to bring to life the complex portraits and challenges of contemporary Havana." -Harry BelafonteSince its founding in 1519, Havana has drawn people from all over the world, including explorers, immigrant, refugees, and the exiled, to create a melting pot of influences and cultures--and a very distinct history. From its colonial roots to its communist revolution, authors Dick Cluster and Rafael Hernández examine not only the ruptures in the city's life, but its continuities as well. The traditions that make the city unique, like its idiosyncratic combination of territorialism and hospitality or its proclivity for protest, are as much a drive for change as an integral element of its character. Drawing on oral histories and cultural artifacts alike, this history acknowledges the rich and artfully selected stories of the citizens, from their fascinating exploits to their grand successes, to be as significant to the very fabric of the city as its dynamic culture and intriguing politics, making it a superbly well-rounded account of the most alluring city in the Caribbean. With grace and precision, in this updated and revised second edition of their classic history of the city Cluster and Hernández offer the divergent but productive perspectives of the American and the Cuban in lyrical and accessible prose on Cuba's magical capital. Generously illustrated with black-and-white photographs and maps.

Reluctant Reformers explores the centrality of racism to American politics through the origins, internal dynamics, and leadership of the major democratic and social justice movements between the early nineteenth century and the end of World War II. It focuses in particular on the abolitionists, the Populist Party, the Progressive reformers, and the women's suffrage, labor, and socialist and communist movements.Despite their achievements, virtually all these predominantly white movements failed to oppose, capitulated to, or even advocated racism at critical junctures in their history, with their efforts undercut by their inability to build and sustain a mass movement of both Black and white Americans.Reluctant Reformersexamines both the structural roots of racism in US radical movements and the impact of racist ideologies on the white-dominated core of each movement, how some whites resisted these pressures, and how Black people engaged with these movements. This edition includes a postscript describing the Black freedom movement of the 1960s and the central role it has played in the development of today's radical social justice movements.

It is all worse than we think. It is even worse than Mike Davis, for whom ¿every day is judgment day¿ (The Nation), could have imagined. The contributions to this volume are explorations of what Davis¿in typical wry fashion¿once referred to as the field of ¿disaster studies.¿ Collectively, they show how our ¿disaster imaginary¿ has been rendered inadequate by the existing order¿s ability to feed off and coopt our resistance to it.Contemporary mass protests are now subsumed as instances of an established, profitable politics of rage. Geopolitical conflict poses not as a threat to hegemonic power but rather serves the interests of a global market which capitalizes on lucrative, permanent war. Climate change itself, if it was ever thought to be a universalizing phenomenon, is now treated as an extensive market opportunity by global risk insurance conglomerates and predatory lenders who bet against any rescue of the planet.Such catastrophic developments resist the language we use to describe and deconstruct them. The contributions to this volume seek to reimagine our understanding of disaster, and, following the example of Davis himself, to refuse outdated models of political transcendence as vigorously as they reject narratives of resignation.

Extensively expanded and revised, with a new foreword by Thomas Frank In the United States, happiness and wealth are often regarded as synonymous. Consumerism, greed, and the insatiable desire for more are American obsessions. In the native tradition of Twain, Veblen, and Mencken, the editor of Lapham's Quarterly here examines our fascination with the ubiquitous green goddess.Focusing on the wealthy sybarites of New York City, whom Lewis H. Lapham has been able to observe firsthand in their natural habitat, Money and Class in America is a caustic, and often hilarious, portrait of a segment of the American population who, in the thirty years since the book was originally written, have become only further removed-both in terms of wealth and social awareness-from everyone else.

¿In the face of all of the trash that continues to pass for news and analysis of the Palestine-Israel conflict, Shupak deserves immense praise for working to set the record straight.¿¿Middle East EyeThe Wrong Story lays bare the flaws in the way large media organizations present the Palestine¿Israel issue. It points out major fallacies in the fundamental conceptions that underpin their coverage, namely that Palestinians and Israelis are both victims to comparable extents and are equally responsible for the failure to find a solution; that the problem is ¿extremists,¿ often religiously-motivated ones, who need to be sidelined in favour of ¿moderates¿; and that Israel¿s uses of force are typically justifiable acts of self-defense.Weaving together the existing literature with new insights, Shupak offers an up-to-date and tightly focused guide that exposes the distorted way these issues are presented and why each is misguided.