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Author: James Petras
Publisher: SCB Distributors
ISBN: 0997287063
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
Are we approaching “peak America”, where the Republic has failed, and the Empire which put paid to it cannot be achieved?Seasoned political analyst James Petras addresses in broad brush the four major upheavals that loom:1) For the first time, the goal of socialism has been raised in the presidential primaries, backed by tens of millions of voters. The likely Republican candidate leads a mass right wing revolt which opposes globalization, capital flight and the free entry of immigrant labor. The US presidential elections are everything abnormal, with both major party candidates arousing popular revulsion. Not since the New Deal, nearly a century ago, have class relations come into sharper confrontation.2) Not since World War II have the US and Russia drawn closer to the possibility of mutual annihilation through nuclear war due to US empire building. The Presidency, in pursuit of a global legacy, draws on the support of the extremist mainstream media, prestigious Harvard mandarins of war, and military factions to pursue global hegemony, even as rebellious working peoples resist, and Russian and Chinese adversaries rearm and advance.3) Popular movements in France, Spain, South Africa, Argentina and Brazil, call for popular revolutions. Right wing nationalist parties are rising in Europe. Though the traditional center-left parties have been ousted or co-opted by elites, under the duress of capitalist wars and austerity, mass electoral upheavals, general strikes, and armed resistance openly challenge the empire in all its bastions.4) Who rules America and who sets the military agenda in the most contentious regions of the Middle East is in open dispute. A neoconservative domestic policy elite reflecting Zionist influence has gained ascendancy under dubious claims of meritocratic credentials. Their economic policies have plunged the country into repeated crises, systematic swindles and spiraling inequalities, while their foreign policy has led to prolonged, losing wars resulting in disastrous human and financial losses. The political and economic power of the Zionist configuration in America has severely repressed critical debate and political action seeking to challenge its dominance.
Author: James Petras
Publisher: SCB Distributors
ISBN: 0997287063
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Get Book Here
Book Description
Are we approaching “peak America”, where the Republic has failed, and the Empire which put paid to it cannot be achieved?Seasoned political analyst James Petras addresses in broad brush the four major upheavals that loom:1) For the first time, the goal of socialism has been raised in the presidential primaries, backed by tens of millions of voters. The likely Republican candidate leads a mass right wing revolt which opposes globalization, capital flight and the free entry of immigrant labor. The US presidential elections are everything abnormal, with both major party candidates arousing popular revulsion. Not since the New Deal, nearly a century ago, have class relations come into sharper confrontation.2) Not since World War II have the US and Russia drawn closer to the possibility of mutual annihilation through nuclear war due to US empire building. The Presidency, in pursuit of a global legacy, draws on the support of the extremist mainstream media, prestigious Harvard mandarins of war, and military factions to pursue global hegemony, even as rebellious working peoples resist, and Russian and Chinese adversaries rearm and advance.3) Popular movements in France, Spain, South Africa, Argentina and Brazil, call for popular revolutions. Right wing nationalist parties are rising in Europe. Though the traditional center-left parties have been ousted or co-opted by elites, under the duress of capitalist wars and austerity, mass electoral upheavals, general strikes, and armed resistance openly challenge the empire in all its bastions.4) Who rules America and who sets the military agenda in the most contentious regions of the Middle East is in open dispute. A neoconservative domestic policy elite reflecting Zionist influence has gained ascendancy under dubious claims of meritocratic credentials. Their economic policies have plunged the country into repeated crises, systematic swindles and spiraling inequalities, while their foreign policy has led to prolonged, losing wars resulting in disastrous human and financial losses. The political and economic power of the Zionist configuration in America has severely repressed critical debate and political action seeking to challenge its dominance.
Author: Chris Hedges
Publisher: Knopf Canada
ISBN: 0307398587
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
Pulitzer prize–winner Chris Hedges charts the dramatic and disturbing rise of a post-literate society that craves fantasy, ecstasy and illusion. Chris Hedges argues that we now live in two societies: One, the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world, that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other, a growing majority, is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. In this “other society,” serious film and theatre, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins. In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Hedges navigates this culture — attending WWF contests as well as Ivy League graduation ceremonies — exposing an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion.
Author: Cullen Murphy
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547527071
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
What went wrong in imperial Rome, and how we can avoid it: “If you want to understand where America stands in the world today, read this.” —Thomas E. Ricks The rise and fall of ancient Rome has been on American minds since the beginning of our republic. Depending on who’s doing the talking, the history of Rome serves as either a triumphal call to action—or a dire warning of imminent collapse. In this “provocative and lively” book, Cullen Murphy points out that today we focus less on the Roman Republic than on the empire that took its place, and reveals a wide array of similarities between the two societies (The New York Times). Looking at the blinkered, insular culture of our capitals; the debilitating effect of bribery in public life; the paradoxical issue of borders; and the weakening of the body politic through various forms of privatization, Murphy persuasively argues that we most resemble Rome in the burgeoning corruption of our government and in our arrogant ignorance of the world outside—two things that must be changed if we are to avoid Rome’s fate. “Are We Rome? is just about a perfect book. . . . I wish every politician would spend an evening with this book.” —James Fallows
Author: Melissa Gregg
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745637469
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232
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Book Description
This book provides a long-overdue account of online technology and its impact on the work and lifestyles of professional employees. It moves between the offices and homes of workers in the knew "knowledge" economy to provide intimate insight into the personal, family, and wider social tensions emerging in today’s rapidly changing work environment. Drawing on her extensive research, Gregg shows that new media technologies encourage and exacerbate an older tendency among salaried professionals to put work at the heart of daily concerns, often at the expense of other sources of intimacy and fulfillment. New media technologies from mobile phones to laptops and tablet computers, have been marketed as devices that give us the freedom to work where we want, when we want, but little attention has been paid to the consequences of this shift, which has seen work move out of the office and into cafés, trains, living rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms. This professional "presence bleed" leads to work concerns impinging on the personal lives of employees in new and unforseen ways. This groundbreaking book explores how aspiring and established professionals each try to cope with the unprecedented intimacy of technologically-mediated work, and how its seductions seem poised to triumph over the few remaining relationships that may stand in its way.
Author: Pierre Charbonnier
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509543732
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
In this pathbreaking book, Pierre Charbonnier opens up a new intellectual terrain: an environmental history of political ideas. His aim is not to locate the seeds of ecological thought in the history of political ideas as others have done, but rather to show that all political ideas, whether or not they endorse ecological ideals, are informed by a certain conception of our relationship to the Earth and to our environment. The fundamental political categories of modernity were founded on the idea that we could improve on nature, that we could exert a decisive victory over its excesses and claim unlimited access to earthly resources. In this way, modern thinkers imagined a political society of free individuals, equal and prosperous, alongside the development of industry geared towards progress and liberated from the Earth’s shackles. Yet this pact between democracy and growth has now been called into question by climate change and the environmental crisis. It is therefore our duty today to rethink political emancipation, bearing in mind that this can no longer draw on the prospect of infinite growth promised by industrial capitalism. Ecology must draw on the power harnessed by nineteenth-century socialism to respond to the massive impact of industrialization, but it must also rethink the imperative to offer protection to society by taking account of the solidarity of social groups and their conditions in a world transformed by climate change. This timely and original work of social and political theory will be of interest to a wide readership in politics, sociology, environmental studies and the social sciences and humanities generally.
Author: Gordon S. Wood
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197546919
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
Written by one of early America's most eminent historians, this book masterfully discusses the debates over constitutionalism that took place in the Revolutionary era.
Author: Andreas Reckwitz
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509545719
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 167
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Book Description
We live in a time of great uncertainty about the future. Those heady days of the late twentieth century, when the end of the Cold War seemed to be ushering in a new and more optimistic age, now seem like a distant memory. During the last couple of decades, we’ve been battered by one crisis after another and the idea that humanity is on a progressive path to a better future seems like an illusion. It is only now that we can see clearly the real scope and structure of the profound shifts that Western societies have undergone over the last 30 years. Classical industrial society has been transformed into a late-modern society that is molded by polarization and paradoxes. The pervasive singularization of the social, the orientation toward the unique and exceptional, generates systematic asymmetries and disparities, and hence progress and unease go hand in hand. Reckwitz examines this dual structure of singularization and polarization as it plays itself out in the different sectors of our societies and, in so doing, he outlines the central structural features of the present: the new class society, the characteristics of a postindustrial economy, the conflict about culture and identity, the exhaustion of the self resulting from the imperative to seek authentic fulfillment, and the political crisis of liberalism. Building on his path-breaking work The Society of Singularities, this new book will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, politics, and the social sciences generally, and to anyone concerned with the great social and political issues of our time.
Author: Henry Veltmeyer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429627009
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284
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Book Description
This book explores the dynamics of the recent ‘progressive cycle’ in Latin American politics, associated with a red and pink tide of regime change. With this cycle of centre-left regimes oriented towards an alternative post-neoliberal form of development now coming to an end, coinciding with the end of a ‘primary commodities boom’ (the demand for natural resources exported in primary form on the world market), the authors seek to explore the dynamics of the transition from a progressive cycle of regimes oriented towards the search for a more inclusive form of development towards what appears to be another swing in the pendulum of electoral politics towards the far right and a return to neoliberal orthodoxy. Within the vortex of forces of change pushing towards both the Left and the Right, Latin America lies at the centre of ongoing heated theoretical and political debates as to how to bring about a more inclusive and sustainable form of post-neoliberal and post-capitalist development. Latin America in the Vortex of Social Change crucially aims to cut through these debates and explore the dynamics of the forces of change at work in the current conjuncture of capitalist development. With reference to a theoretical framework based on the interaction of three different forms of capitalism (capitalism as usual, extractive capitalism, narco-capitalism), the authors proceed to an analysis of the development and resistance dynamics of the development process that is unfolding on the Latin American political landscape. The book will appeal to scholars of political sociology and political theory with an interest in the political economy of development and Latin American affairs.
Author: Pablo Servigne
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509541403
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 139
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Book Description
What if our civilization were to collapse? Not many centuries into the future, but in our own lifetimes? Most people recognize that we face huge challenges today, from climate change and its potentially catastrophic consequences to a plethora of socio-political problems, but we find it hard to face up to the very real possibility that these crises could produce a collapse of our entire civilization. Yet we now have a great deal of evidence to suggest that we are up against growing systemic instabilities that pose a serious threat to the capacity of human populations to maintain themselves in a sustainable environment. In this important book, Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens confront these issues head-on. They examine the scientific evidence and show how its findings, often presented in a detached and abstract way, are connected to people’s ordinary experiences – joining the dots, as it were, between the Anthropocene and our everyday lives. In so doing they provide a valuable guide that will help everyone make sense of the new and potentially catastrophic situation in which we now find ourselves. Today, utopia has changed sides: it is the utopians who believe that everything can continue as before, while realists put their energy into making a transition and building local resilience. Collapse is the horizon of our generation. But collapse is not the end – it’s the beginning of our future. We will reinvent new ways of living in the world and being attentive to ourselves, to other human beings and to all our fellow creatures.
Author: Simon Foley
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527574377
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 245
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Book Description
First published in 1988, Herman and Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent remains the go-to book for those interested in understanding why the mainstream media act as vehicles for power-elite propaganda. The analytical heart of Manufacturing Consent lies in what it calls ‘The Propaganda Model.’ According to this model, there are five filters which all newsworthy stories have to pass through before reaching the public sphere. However, a lot has changed in the subsequent thirty-something years. Consequently, a key question that needs to be addressed is whether Manufacturing Consent is still fit for purpose. The conceit underpinning Understanding Media Propaganda in the 21st Century: Manufacturing Consent Revisited and Revised is that the election of Trump in 2016 constitutes the proverbial ‘year zero’ for fourth estate journalism. As a result of the ‘journalistic’ cultural revolution that ensued, it argues that the Propaganda Model needs to be overhauled if it is to retain its epistemological bona fides. To this end, this book is a radical—in the true critical sense of the word—intervention into the propaganda/fake news debate. For students (in the broadest sense of the term) of media studies, journalism, communication studies and sociology, it provides both a compelling critique of Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model, while at the same time proffering a new explanatory model to understand why MSM output typically replicates the ‘stenographer for power’ playbook.
