Dick Bennett's latest bibliography

OMNI BIBLIO #30

WE, THE PEOPLE BUILDING A CULTURE OF PEACE THROUGH KNOWLEDGE, July 25, 2008, Compiled by Dick Bennett



Why the silence? Public subservience to our authoritarian presidency: “…it is this tilt toward deference, this willingness to hold our tongues and sit on our principles, that truly threatens us, even more than the manifold abuses of this administration, because it makes them possible.” Mark Slouka, “Notebook: Democracy and Deference,” Harper’s (June 2008).



Each of us is responsible for defending and improving our democracy.



OMNI SEEKS A WORLD FREE OF WAR AND THE THREAT OF WAR, A SOCIETY WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL, A COMMUNITY WHERE EVERY PERSON’S POTENTIAL MAY BE FULFILLED, AN EARTH RESTORED. GRASSROOTS NONVIOLENCE, WORLD PEACE, HUMAN RIGHTS, SOCIAL and ECONOMIC JUSTICE, ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP PROTECTING SPECIES AND THE EARTH. These are OMNI’s ideals. Read our brochure and our newsletters, attend our Steering Committee, become an active member of one or more of our committees, participate in our dozens of activities to see how these broad goals are realized in action. There is nothing vague about Building a Culture of Peace, including this bibliography, which leads to concrete action; for example, see the Hope and Victims entries.



SENATOR LINCOLN (202) 224-4843 Fax: (202) 228-1371.

Fayetteville office: 251-1380; www.lincoln.senate.gov; http://www.lincoln.senate.gov/index.cfm; http://www.lincoln.senate.gov/webform.html

SENATOR Mark Pryor: Phone: (202) 224-2353 Fax: (202) 228-0908. www.pryor.senate.gov ; http://pryor.senate.gov/contact/

CONGRESSMAN Boozman: Lowell office: 479-725-0400.

DC address: 1708 Longworth House Office Bldng., Washington, DC 20515; 202-225-4301.



Needed: someone to gather these biblios. into one. In these books you will find the deep, wide, concrete ideas necessary for changing the USA into a peaceful and just nation. All together they will make your hair seem to catch on fire with knowledge and hope.







ABRAMOFF, JACK (see: Capitalism, Corruption, GOP, Right Wing, Congress)

Frank, Thomas. The Wrecking Crew. Metropolitan, 2008. See Frank’s “The Wrecking Crew: How a Gang of Right-Wing Con Men Destroyed Washington and Made a Killing.” Harper’s (August 2008), taken from the book.



ACTIVISM (see: Children’s Books, Foreign Policy, Farrell, Gandhi, Heroes, Hope, Popular Protest, Political Change, Resistance)

--Bobo, Kim. Organizing for Social Change (Seven Locks Press, 2001); Lives Matter: A Handbook for Christian Organizing (Sheed and Ward, 1986).



AFGHANISTAN (see: Imperialism, Iraq)

Kolhatkar, Sonali. Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence. 2006.

Bleeding Afghanistan

“Bleeding Afghanistan is without a doubt the most realistic and sincere reflection of the ongoing tragedy in my ill-fated Afghanistan, covering every aspect ...
www.bleedingafghanistan.com/ - 18k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this



AIR WAR (see: Afghanistan War, Iraq War, Vietnam War, War Crimes, World War II)




ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT (see: Conscientious Objection)

Ritter, Scott. Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement.



ARABS in USA (see: Israel/Palestine, Palestine)

Shaheen, Jack. Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People and Guilty: Hollywoood’s Verdict on Arabs after 9/11. Rev. WRMEA (May/June 2008): “Arabs remain the most maligned group in the history of Hollywood.” See Shaheen’s article, “Attacks on Barack Obama Reinforce Anti-Muslim Sentiment.” The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (May/June 2008).

--El Rassi, Toufic. Arab in America. Last Gasp, 2007. Graphic novel about author’s experience as a first generation Arab American.



BILL OF RIGHTS (see: Democracy)

Bodenhamer, David, ed. The Bill of Rights in Modern America. Indiana UP, 2008. Short, lively essays.



BUSH ADMINISTRATION

Jacked: How "Conservatives" are Picking Your Pocket (whether You ... - Google Books Result by Nomi Prins - 2006 - Political Science - 151 pages
As an insider--including stints as managing director at Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns--Nomi Prins can speak with authority about the Bush administration's...

--Bugliosi, Vincent. The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. Rev. Seattle Times Newspaper July 8, 2008.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2008035063_bugliosi070.html



CANADA (see: Industrial Chemicals/Capitalism, Investigative Journalism)



CAPITALISM USA (see: Consumerism, Corporations, Free Trade, Imperialism, Inequality, Right Wing, Unions)

--Chait, Jonathan. The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hood-winked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics. Houghton Mifflin, 2008.

--Johnston, David Cay. Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill). Portfolio, 2008.

Both books rev. by Steve Fraser, The Progressive (July 2008). The books “join a vast armada of literature chronicling the astonishing inequalities of wealth and income that have earned our own era the dubious sobriquet ‘second Gilded Age.’”

--“Ecosocialism against cynicism: a review of Joel Kovel's The Enemy of Nature “ by Cassiodorus Tue Feb 06, 2007 at 05:01:13 PM PDT
This is a revisitation of Joel Kovel's (2002) book The Enemy of Nature in light of a discussion I had with Joel, who says he is currently working on a 2nd edition. Kovel's work is the quintessential manifesto of ecosocialism (notwithstanding the actual "Ecosocialist Manifesto" he co-wrote with Michael Lowy). The ecological crisis is dire, and capitalism is at fault. But there are many other reader-accessible works which display an ecosocialist bent; what is important about Kovel's work, I argue here, is its attack on the cynicism of our time.

--“Ecosocialism or Barbarism,” a film by Joel Kovel based on his book. (Title might be “The Really Inconveient Truth”).

-- Ecosocialism or Barbarism edited by Jane Kelly and Sheila Malone.
Ecosocialism or Barbarism explains that the twenty-first century has opened on a catastrophic note, with an unprecedented degree of ecological breakdown and a chaotic world order beset with terror and warfare. In this book, socialists Jane Kelly and Sheila Malone have gathered together articles from some of the world’s leading ecologists and Marxists to discuss how the profoundly interrelated crises of ecology and social breakdown should be seen as different manifestations of the same structural forces. Joel Kovel and Michel Löwy’s ecosocialist manifesto sets the framework for a discussion which is unfolding around the world. They argue that capitalism cannot regulate, much less overcome, the crises it has set going. It cannot solve the ecological crisis because to do so requires setting limits upon accumulation—an unacceptable option for a system predicated upon the rule: Grow or Die! And it cannot solve the crisis posed by terror and other forms of violent rebellion because this would mean abandoning the logic of empire, imposing unacceptable limits on growth and the “way of life” sustained by empire.

--“The Corporation” film, shown on FSTV 6-29-08 on liabilities of capitalism, esp. US corporate power. Argues: need to eliminate legal corporate personhood, corp. opposition to democracy, corp. vs. sustainability, corp. unaccountability, etc. Hope: if we could decommodify slavery, we can free ourselves from the corp. yoke, for there is a moral order superior to profit making. Dirs. Marck Achbar, et al.

--Greenhouse, Steve. The Big Squeeze. 2008. Pressures on working people today increasing—stagnant or declining wages, eroding benefits and job security, etc., on account of the power of the owners and the destruction of unions. Interviewed on “Grit TV” 6-28-o8.

--Gosselin, Peter. High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families. 2008. Rev. TMN (6-15-08), Anne McFeatters: “…a majority of US public are in danger of taking steep financial falls” largely on their own, “buffeted by financial forces far beyong our control, sometimes even beyond our knowledge.”

--Fraser, Steve. Wall Street: America’s Dream Palace. Yale UP, 2008. See his rev. of Chait’s The Big Con and Johnston’s Free Lunch.

--Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007). See Klein’s essay, The Nation (July 21/28, 2008), “Disaster Capitalism: State of Extortion.”

--Salter, Malcolm. Innovation Corrupted: The Origins and Legacy of Enron’s Collapse. Harvard UP, 2008. Why success without an ethical foundation leads to disaster.

--Schechter, Danny. Plunder. Interv. by Amy G 7-17.



Greider, William. Come Home America. Interv. Bill Moyers’ Journal 7-18-08. Esp. the ruinous results of bipartisan deregulation by Congress, and therein esp. accelerated by Congress accepting usury in 1980.



C02 (see: Coal, Climate Change)



CENSORSHIP

Hajdu, David. The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America. Farrar, Straus and Girous, 2008. Rev. The Humanist (July-Aug 2008). See: Paul Blanshard, The Right to Read: The Battle Against Censorship; “Fanning the Flames” by Rob Boston (The Humanist July-Aug 08).



CHILDREN’S/YOUNG PEOPLE’S BOOKS

The Best Children’s Books of the Year. 2008 Ed. Annoted guide to over 600 books: www.bankstreet.edu/bookcom/

Johnson, Becky. Wicked Cool Sustainable Solutions for the Earth: An Activity and Coloring Book. Teaching K-6 studnts about community gardens, windmills, composting, etc.

ChinLee, Cynthia. Akira to Zoltan: Twenty-six Men Who Changed the World. An alphabet book for students in grades 3-6 that fouses on men who brought about change through peaceful methods.

Cohen, Richard. Students Resolving Conflicts: Peer Mediation in Schools. Guide to designing and operating a peer mediation program for students in grades 6-12.



CHINA

--June 2008 no. of FCNL’s Washington Newsletter entirely on China.

--Jian, Ma. Beijing Coma. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008. Rev. The Nation August 4/11, 2008. China portrayed as “a vast graveyard” with “a gruesome history.”



CHRISTIANITY: FROM PEACE TO WAR (see: Conscientious, Imperialism, Iraq, National Security State)

--Brock, Rita and Rebecca Parker. Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us. 2001. How the Crucifixion of Jesus Chris and the doctrine of substitutionary atonementt has sanctioned violence and war.
--Brock and Parker. Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire. 2008. Jesus’s teachings and the practices of the early church affirmed life in this world as the place of salvation. But in the 2nd millennium, the church shifted to belief in atoning death and redemption through violence, and relegated paradise to a distant afterlife, following the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne's demand for empire.

See their summary “’This Present Paradise’” in UU World (Summer 2008) 27-32. [A third book could explain why and how in 2008 most Christian nations have turned back toward the early Christianity while the US has continued Charlemagne’s campaign of terror. D] [On Just War theory see Paul Rasor’s “Prophetic Nonviolence,” UU World Spring 2008, and letter responses UU World Summer 2008.]



CIA (see: Imperialism)

--Risen, James. The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration.

--Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. Anchor, 2008.

--Goodman, Melvin. Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA. Rowman & Littlefield, 2008.

--Betts, Richard. Enemies of Intelligence: Knowledge and Power in American National Security. Columbia UP, 2008.

--Zegart, Amy. Spying Blind: The FBI, the CIA and the Origins of 9/11. Princeton UP, 2008.

All 4 books rev. The Nation (July 14, 2008): “The CIA is what it is—an unaccountable, dysfunctional and occasionally amoral entity—because America is what it is.”



CIVILIANS KILLED (see: Afghanistan, Imperialism, Iraq, War v. Terrorism, Wars)

Hedges, Chris and Laila Al-Arian. Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians. Nation Books, 2008. www.collateraldamageiraq.com Devastating expose of an unplanned military occupation becoming lethal to the people there, daily life become terrifying. Here are the true consequences of the war that the White House-Pentagon-Corporate-Congress-Mainstream Media unleashed in Iraq.





CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Etheridge, Eric. Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders. Atlas, 2008. Rev. TMN (July 13, 2008). Their actions altered “the course of history, paving the path for the Civil Rights Act of ’64, “ and other advances. Book explores who they were and what they did afterward with their lives.



CLASS (see: Middle Class, University)



CLIMAT E CHANGE/DISRUPTION (see: Capitalism, Coal)

Krupp, Fred and Miriam Horn. Earth: The Sequel—the Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming. Norton, 2008. Focuses on innovation and solutions.



COAL

Burning America's Addiction to Coal (David Novack) A great article on why filmmaker David Novack dedicated a year of his life to making his documentary, Burning the Future: Coal in America.


For the rest of the biblio. go to: www.omnicenter.org, click on "Biblios."
Dick Bennett
jbennet@uark.edu
(479) 442-4600