The first of Ginzburg´s satires is wrapped in whimsical drawings and brief statements. In this book he mocks the foreign development ´business´ where white experts travel abroad to help the poor and starving. After the assessment reports, the charts, the meetings, the social exchange and patronization the hungry man is still hungry. A good guide for sensitive aid workers to help them avoid the pitfalls of our culture´s assumed superiority and to really think about our attitudes and strategies for change.
(Website: www.hungrymanbooks.com) Read more [...] Ginzburg, Oren. THE HUNGRY MAN. 2005. Geneva Switzerland.
The first of Ginzburg´s satires is wrapped in whimsical drawings and brief statements. In this book he mocks the foreign development ´business´ where white experts travel abroad to help the poor and starving. After the assessment reports, the charts, the meetings, the social exchange and patronization the hungry man is still hungry. A good guide for sensitive aid workers to help them avoid the pitfalls of our culture´s assumed superiority and to really think about our attitudes and strategies for change.
(Website: www.hungrymanbooks.com) Read more [...] Comments Off on Ginzburg, Oren. THE HUNGRY MAN. 2005. Geneva Switzerland.
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Galeano, Eduardo. Walking Words (With woodcuts by Jose Francisco Borges). W.W. Norton & Co. London, UK and New York, USA.
Any book by Galeano is a treat with his vivid imagery and brilliant insights into Latin American history and colonization; the Borges’ illustrations are particularly delightful. Galeano’s most famous book is OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA.
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Galeano, Eduardo. OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA: five centuries of the pillage of a continent. 1973, 1997. Monthly Review Press. New York, USA.
“In the years since the first edition of Open Veins, history has not ceased to be a cruel mistress to us…The system has multiplied hunger and fear; wealth has become more and more concentrated, poverty, more and more widespread. That is recognized by the documents of specialized international agencies in whose aseptic vocabulary our oppressed territories are countries in the process of development” and the pitiless impoverishment of the working class is “regressive income distribution.”
“Our fate as Latin American writers is linked Read more [...] Comments Off on Galeano, Eduardo. OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA: five centuries of the pillage of a continent. 1973, 1997. Monthly Review Press. New York, USA.
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Frederici, Silvia. CALIBAN AND THE WITCH: Women, the body and primitive accumulation. 2004. Automedia. USA.
This is only a brief review, more of a recommendation to read the book, than an in–depth analysis of a very fine scholarly work. It is a formidable, but highly readable, history and enquiry into the roots of the oppression of woman and workers. There are hundreds of references cited and throughout the book Frederici refers to many events whose origins and results have been obscured and denied.
Frederici says that she wants in this volume to rethink not only women’s history from a feminist viewpoint, but a whole human history. Caliban, the Read more [...] Comments Off on Frederici, Silvia. CALIBAN AND THE WITCH: Women, the body and primitive accumulation. 2004. Automedia. USA.
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Fox, Nicols. AGAINST THE MACHINE: THE HIDDEN LUDDITE TRADITION IN LITERATURE, ART AND INDIVIDUAL LIVES. 2002. A Shearwater Book, Island Press. USA.
An interesting and original work about “taking control of one’s life”, this is about making conscious choices about the mindless acceptance of the technology which floods our lives. This is mainly a book for people who live in the minority world or live minority world lives in the majority world. Most of those living on this planet don’t have many choices to make.
The author believes we don’t need to live in mud huts in order to lead a considered life. She says... “we must find ways of incorporating subjectivity; we must find a place Read more [...]
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Francis, Diana. RETHINKING WAR AND PEACE……..ETC. 2004. Pluto Press. UK and USA.
A Greek philosopher once said “How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?”
That is the problem of thinking and writing about peace and probably why people write about war and anti-war, not peace. But this writer, Diana Francis is admirably qualified to write about peace. Her sole credential is that she is a lifelong peace activist. She does not seek credibility thorough professional status or titles. Now a grandmother, Francis dates her activism back to her teens. Then she was the child of Read more [...]
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Forche, Carolyn. THE COUNTRY BETWEEN US. 1981. Harper & Row. USA.
“Your voices sprayed over the walls/ dry to the touch by morning.”
I had not read these fine poems for many years until I was asked recently to read poetry at the memorial for a Salvadorian political leader. One again I was moved by Forche’s spare and graphic lines, her sure control of her subject matter and her astute awareness of the political evils she portrays with startling images.
The 1880s were a time of cruel and bloody civil war in El Salvador and Forche’s government, the USA, was a major contributor to it, supporting Read more [...]
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Flinker, Jean et al. L´affaire Luk Vervaet. 2011. Revue Contradictions. Bruxelles, Belgique.
English review by Theresa Wolfwood. French translation by Andrée Scott follows the English
On July 14, 2011, I received a press article from Belgium that states in part, “A Belgian prison teacher has won a two year battle against a work ban on security grounds. Luk Vervaet, who had taught in prisons for five years when he was summarily dismissed from his post in August 2009, was a regular commentator on prison issues for national newspapers and had collaborated with academic research projects into prison conditions, high suicides rates, Read more [...]
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Fisk, Robert. THE GREAT WAR FOR CIVILIZATION: The Conquest of the Middle East. 2005. Fourth Estate, UK & Alfred A. Knopf. USA.
“Peggy [his mother] became a flame of optimism in my young life. [during WW2] And when I once asked what was the point of struggling with my homework when we were all going to die, she replied: “By the time you grow up, they may have found a cure for that”…
“She asked me repeatedly [during the Israeli siege of Lebanon in 1982] why governments spend so much money on guns.” page 793
For nearly thirty years, Fisk has been a journalist in that part of Asia, called the ‘Middle East’ now (it used to be the “Near East’) Read more [...] Comments Off on Fisk, Robert. THE GREAT WAR FOR CIVILIZATION: The Conquest of the Middle East. 2005. Fourth Estate, UK & Alfred A. Knopf. USA.
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Fiennes, William. THE SNOW GEESE: A story of home. 2002. Random House. Canada.
´We tend towards home. Migrant birds don´t travel for the sake of it…In any species, an individual that remains within a familiar environment has more chance of finding food and water, more chance of avoiding predators and exposure, than an individual that strays into unknown territory. Homesickness may simply have evolved as a way of telling an ape to go home.´
On one level this is a fresh and personal travelogue, a journey that follows thousands of snow geese from their winter home in Texas to Baffin Island, their summer nesting home. Read more [...]
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Farmer, Paul. The Uses of Haiti, 3rd Edition. 2006. Common Courage Press. Maine, USA.
Canada is totally committed to a state of oppression in Haiti where a democratically elected government was overthrown with our support because it would not obey the edicts of international financial oppression. The USA has a long history of ensuring that the independent country, founded by freed slaves in 1804, never gets to be truly independent.
This is an authoritative work that details a history that Noam Chomsky in his introduction fears may be slated for oblivion. But The Uses of Haiti has sold well and is in its third edition, one rare Read more [...] Comments Off on Farmer, Paul. The Uses of Haiti, 3rd Edition. 2006. Common Courage Press. Maine, USA.
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Engler, Yves. Lester Pearson’s Peacekeeping – The Truth May Hurt. 2012. RED Publishing/ Fernwood Publishing. CANADA.
My earliest memory of Canada´s famous, so–called peace maker is when he made Canada a nuclear nation. I remember that after his well–funded campaign defeated Diefenbaker, Bowmarc nuclear missiles entered Canada on the back on a truck on New Year´s Eve, 1963. They stayed across Canada in various military bases until Trudeau phased them out in 1971. So much for peace–keeping and the Nobel Peace Prize (awarded to Henry Kissinger in 1973, thereby losing all credibility anyhow).
However it should be no surprise, as Engler documents in the Read more [...] Comments Off on Engler, Yves. Lester Pearson’s Peacekeeping – The Truth May Hurt. 2012. RED Publishing/ Fernwood Publishing. CANADA.
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