IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS:

Frantz Fanon
by James S. Williams
Reaktion Books, 2024

[Publication date: January 1, 2024]

A biography of the revolutionary philosopher and psychiatrist.
 
Doctor, militant, essayist, ambassador, teacher, journalist, pan-Africanist, Frantz Fanon sought to decolonize mid-twentieth-century culture as he embodied a new kind of intellectual. Born in colonial Martinique, he fought for France during World War II but later renounced his citizenship and fought in the Algerian War of Independence. This book emphasizes Fanon’s gift for self-invention and performance as it follows his short but extraordinary life and explores how his pioneering work in psychiatry influenced his revolutionary philosophy.

The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution
by Ryan Grim
‎Henry Holt and Co.

[Publication date: December 5, 2023]

Semafor's Best Political Book of 2023

A riveting insider account of the progressive movement in Congress centering A.O.C., Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, Ayanna Pressley, and Ilhan Omar―their rise, their efforts to set an ambitious agenda for the country, and their struggle to find their footing within the Democratic party.

The Squad is the definitive, must-read book about the most exciting figures defining our new era. The story is urgent, and the stakes are high―for the country and the world―and Grim, an experienced political reporter who covered the Squad before they were the Squad, is uniquely qualified to tell it.

When Bernie Sanders, an obscure Vermont senator, launched his quixotic 2016 presidential campaign, few could have seen just how radically the Democratic Party would transform in just a few short years―or that such a transformation could be led by a Bronx bartender volunteering for Bernie in her spare time. The world as it was when that campaign began is almost unrecognizable today, and the Squad has both shaped and been shaped by the seismic social, cultural, and political changes underway.

Referred to informally as the Squad, led by the preternaturally politically savvy Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the group laid down a marker for an aggressive left-wing agenda. Grim takes you behind the scenes as that new energy makes impact with Washington, and the Squad spends as much time fending off assaults from Donald Trump―who regularly singled them out and led chants of “send them back” at rallies―as they did battling their own party’s sclerotic leadership. As they’ve grown in office, they’ve had to contend with the eternal question that confronts outsiders who power their way into the inside: Are they still radical organizers willing and able to lead a political revolution? 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Ryan W. Grim is an American author and journalist. Grim was Washington, D.C. bureau chief for HuffPost and is the Washington, D.C. bureau chief for The Intercept. He is also a political commentator for Breaking Points and appears frequently on The Majority Report with Sam Seder,. His writings have appeared in several publications, including Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, and Politico. He is the author of This Is Your Country on Drugs and We've Got People: From Jesse Jackson to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the End of Big Money and the Rise of a Movement

 

The Rebels: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Struggle for a New American Politics
by Joshua Green
‎Penguin Press, 2024

[Publication date: January 9, 2024] 

From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Devil’s Bargain comes the revelatory inside story of the uprising within the Democratic Party, of the economic populists led by Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

In his classic book Devil’s Bargain, Joshua Green chronicled how the forces of economic populism on the right, led by the likes of Steve Bannon, turned Donald Trump into their flawed but powerful vessel. In The Rebels, he gives an epic account of the long struggle that has played out in parallel on the left, told through an intimate reckoning with the careers of the three political figures who have led the charge most prominently. Based on remarkable inside sourcing and razor-sharp analysis, The Rebels uses the grand narrative of a political party undergoing tumult and transformation to tell an even larger story about the fate of America.

For many years, as Green recounts, the Democrats made their bed with Wall Street and big tech, relying on corporate money for electioneering and embracing the worldview that technological and financial innovation and globalization were a powerful net good, a rising tide lifting all boats. Yes, there were howls of pain, but they were written off by most of the elites as the moaning of sore losers mired in the past. There were always some Democratic politicians representing the old labor base who resisted the new dispensation, but these figures never made it very far on a national level. For one thing, they didn’t have the money. But as income inequality ballooned, widening the gulf between the wealthy elite and everyone else, pressures began to build.

With the 2008 crisis, those forces finally erupted into plain sight, turning this book’s protagonists into national icons. At its heart, The Rebels tells the riveting human story of the rise and fight of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from the financial crisis on, as outrage over the unfairness of the American system formed a flood tide of political revolution. That same tide that would sweep Trump into office was blunted on the left, as the Democratic party found itself riven by culture war issues between its centrists and its progressives. But the winds behind economic populism still howl at gale force. Whether the Democrats can bridge their divisions and home in on a vision that unites the party, and perhaps even the country, in the face of the most violently deranged political landscape since the Civil War will be the ultimate test of the legacies of all three characters. 

A masterful account of one of the defining political stories of our age, The Rebels cements Joshua Green’s stature at the first rank of American writers explaining how we’ve arrived at this pass and what lies ahead.

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

 

 

Joshua Green is author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, "Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency" (Penguin), a national correspondent for Bloomberg Businessweek, and a CNN political analyst. Previously, Green was an editor at the Atlantic and the Washington Monthly, and a political columnist for the Boston Globe. He's also written for the New Yorker, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair and other publications. Green regularly appears on CNN's shows, HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, and PBS’s Washington Week and Frontline. 

 

Bernie Sanders Is The Most Progressive, Consistent, and Reliable Antiwar Candidate Running For the U.S. Presidency Today

https://truthout.org/…/bernie-sanders-touts-antiwar-record-…

News Analysis
War & Peace

Bernie Sanders Touts Antiwar Record as Trump Barrels Toward War With Iran

by Mike Ludwig
January 4, 2020
Truthout

PHOTO: Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at a town hall at the National Motorcycle Museum on January 3, 2020, in Anamosa, Iowa. Stephen Maturen / Getty Images

As Democratic presidential hopefuls scrambled to respond after President Trump ordered the assassination on Thursday of a top Iranian military commander, Sen. Bernie Sanders touted his antiwar voting record on the campaign trail and laid out a vague but bold vision for removing U.S. troops from the Middle East while redirecting overseas military spending to programs that improve life for people back home.

The United States and Iran appear to be at the brink of war, or at least a proxy war, which could sow bloody chaos in Iraq and further conflict in the region. After supporters of an Iran-backed Shia militia besieged the U.S. embassy in Baghdad this week in protest of deadly U.S. airstrikes against the group, Trump ordered a drone strike near Baghdad on Thursday that killed up to 10 people and assassinated Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force and one of the most powerful men in Iran. Iran has vowed to seek “severe revenge.”

The strike has raised fears of war across the globe and divided lawmakers largely along party lines. Republicans generally applauded the killing of a commander accused of targeting U.S. forces during the Iraq war while leading Democrats characterized the move as a dangerous escalation made without approval from Congress. While presidential contenders Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren referred to Suleimani as an enemy of the U.S., they questioned whether Trump had considered the consequences of the strike and the president’s long-term plan for dealing with Iran.

“Now we must deal with the consequences of this action, beginning with the immediate and very real dangers to American citizens in and out of uniform in the Middle East,” said Buttigieg, a former military intelligence officer, in said in a statement. “We must prepare for the impact on regional stability, complex forms of retaliation, and the potential for escalation into war.”

However, the airstrike also exposed divisions among Democrats, whose progressive wing in the House rose in protest just three weeks ago when language that would have prevented Trump from attacking Iran without congressional approval was dropped from a massive, $738 billion military spending authorization package. Republicans were able to win major concessions on the package due to their majority in the Senate, and most House Democrats voted for the package as a year-end deadline loomed.

Sen. Sanders voted against the package, as he has several times in the past. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is jockeying with Sanders for support from progressive voters in the Democratic presidential primaries, came out later against the military spending legislation.

Speaking at a town hall in Iowa on Friday, Sanders reminded voters that he voted against going to war with Iraq in 2002. At the time, he warned that the war would become a bloody and expensive quagmire that would further destabilize the Middle East. Unfortunately, his prediction turned out to be true. Today, Iraq suffers from rampant corruption, unrest, poverty and Iranian interference that spurred riotous protests in recent weeks. War, Sanders said, must be “our last recourse in international relations.”

“All of that suffering, all of that death, all of those huge expenditure of money for what?” Sanders said. “It gives me no pleasure to tell you, that at this moment, we face a similar crossroads fraught with danger. Once again, we must worry about unintended consequences and the impact of unilateral decision making.”

Sanders also laid out a vision for U.S. foreign policy centered around peace and diplomacy, in stark contrast to nearly two decades of military adventurism and endless conflict in the Middle East sparked by the War on Terror under the Bush administration and expanded under the Obama administration. In a world where authoritarianism is rising and nuclear weapons continue to proliferate, Sanders said the U.S. must chart a very different course.

“I believe, in the midst of all that, the role of the United States, as difficult though it may be, must be to work with the international community to end conflicts, to end the threat of war, not to promote war, as President Trump is doing,” Sanders said. “This is how the true power of the United States is shown, and that is how I will use American power as president.”

Responses from rival Democratic candidates were more tempered, reflecting a shrewd political calculation of how centrist voters will respond to news that Trump killed a commander portrayed as the violent mastermind behind Iran’s “expansionist agenda.” Robert C. O’Brien, Trump’s national security adviser, said on Friday that Suleimani was plotting attacks against U.S. service members in Iraq but would not provide any further details about the alleged plans when pressed by reporters.

While Sanders focused on his vote against the Iraq war, Warren called Suleimani a “murderer” responsible for thousands of deaths, including U.S. casualties. However, Warren also called the assassination a “reckless” act that could lead to greater violence, arguing that avoiding another costly war should be the top priority. Sen. Cory Booker, another presidential hopeful, said Trump has “no strategic plan for Iran and has only made the region less stable.”

Biden voted for the 2002 invasion of Iraq and served as vice president in the Obama administration, which signed off on deadly drone strikes, supported the overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, intervened in the Syrian civil war and launched the war against ISIS. Biden claimed Suleimani “supported terror and sowed chaos” and “deserved to be brought to justice for his crimes.” But he also said Trump “just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox.”

“I hope the administration has thought through the second- and third-order consequences of the path they have chosen,” Biden said in a statement. “But I fear this administration has not demonstrated at any turn the discipline or long-term vision necessary — and the stakes could not be higher.”

Democrats are largely united in their criticism of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran. Since taking office, Trump has pulled out of the Iranian nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration that would have placed strict limits on the country’s nuclear weapons program. The Trump administration has withdrawn from the agreement, slammed Iran with devastating economic sanctions that harm the Iranian population and designated the Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group.

As Trump has taunted Iranian leaders on Twitter, a series of tit-for-tat strikes and escalations has taken police, often involving various proxies throughout the region. Earlier this week, the U.S. launched deadly airstrikes against a militia with ties to Iran in Iraq and Syria after accusing the group of rocket attacks against U.S. and coalition forces, including one that killed an American security contractor last week. Supporters of the Shia militia in Iraq responded by besieging the U.S. embassy, and the latest U.S. drone strike killed the militia’s commander along with Suleimani.

The Constitution gives Congress — not the president — the ability to declare war, and the Trump administration has not yet revealed its legal justification for the assassination of a foreign military commander, which Iran clearly views as an act of war. O’Brien said the attack on Suleimani was consistent with the 2002 Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF) that allowed President Bush to invade Iraq int the first place — legislation Biden infamously supported. Observers expect the administration to use a controversial interpretation of the AUMF to justify the assassination to Congress.

Language that would have repealed the 2002 AUMF and required Trump to get permission from Congress before attacking Iran were among the progressive provisions stripped from the military spending authorization bill passed by Congress last month. Democrats used their majority in the House to put these provisions on the table, only to have them dropped after negotiations with the GOP-controlled Senate. A bloc of 41 progressive Democrats and a handful of isolationist Republicans in the House voted against the package in protest.

Biden, Warren, Buttigieg and other Democrats are attempting to draw a contrast between themselves and Trump’s blundering, shoot-from-the-hip approach to foreign policy as the conflict with Iran looms over the 2020 elections. But their statements on the assassination of Suleimani and the very real threat of war with Iran were eerily similar.

Sanders was an original opponent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and has spoken for decades against massive military budgets, and he recently championed an effort in Congress to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen’s brutal civil war. As the conflict with Iran continues, expect to hear him tout this record on the campaign trail. (It should be noted that Sanders has also been criticized by antiwar activists for supporting President Clinton’s intervention in the 1999 war in Kosovo and other U.S. overseas operations.)

Sanders is betting that voters want the violence to end and for their tax dollars funding overseas military operations to be spent on rebuilding infrastructure, fixing the health care system and addressing climate change.

“We must invest in the needs of the American people, not spend trillions more on endless wars,” Sander said.

He is also betting that voters want to see a brand of foreign policymaking that is different than the status-quo, which only the progressive wing of the Democratic party has consistently challenged.

“We must end our involvement in the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, which is now one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes on Earth,” Sanders said on Friday. “And we must bring our troops home from Afghanistan. Instead of provoking more volatility in the region, the United States must use its power, its wealth, and its influence to bring the regional powers to the table to resolve conflicts.”

Sanders did not elaborate on how exactly he would end U.S. military options in the Middle East, though it is clear he favors diplomacy where Trump favors aggression when it comes to Iran — and he is prepared to use his record to set himself apart from Biden and rival Democrats.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Mike Ludwig is a staff reporter at Truthout and a contributor to the Truthout anthology, Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? In 2014 and 2017, Project Censored featured Ludwig’s reporting on its annual list of the top 25 independent news stories that the corporate media ignored. Follow him on Twitter: @ludwig_mike.