test blog 8

Continuing the series, started here . I've decided not to review these books, but instead to post a cover image and a quote. It was difficult to choose quotes for these books, since they are books about ideas and events, with hundreds of different people quoted and referenced. After flipping through the books and seeing quote after beautiful, stirring, inspiring, infuriating quote, I decided to pull the lens back to more general thoughts from introductions and prefaces. Wobblies!: A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World , edited by Paul Buhle and Nicole Schulman (many contributors) The world of the Wobs was made up of immigrant workers without steady employment, health plans, social security or drug benefits (like the future that Republicans and many a Democrat envision), without any responsibility on the part of the filthy rich for the growing class of poor -- so much like the society around us today. The world of the Wobblies was one realized in its best moments ...

Syria's Secret Library: Reading and Redemption in a Town Under Siege is a tribute to the power of books to heal, to offer refuge, and to nourish communities. It's also a tribute to the spirit of resistance to tyranny and oppression. In 2013, the Syrian town of Daraya was targeted by the country's dictator, Bashar al-Assad. Many residents managed to evacuate, but others stayed, determined to hold the historic and then-thriving town as a stronghold against the Assad regime. There, as their town was bombed and burned, a group of young men built an unlikely refuge: a library. The story of how these young Syrians salvaged and rescued books, often placing themselves in great danger to do so, is remarkable -- but even more remarkable is the community they built. Every book was catalogued, dated, and signed out when borrowed. The origin of every book was noted, so that its owners might reclaim it in happier times. There were book clubs and lectures. Some rebel fighters took books ...

I have so many cool stories about libraries and librarians, scattered through multiple email and social media accounts. Lucky for you, I wanted to gather them all in one place. Thanks to everyone who ever sent me one of these. * * * * * Librarians in laundromats! Community librarians are all about taking literacy to the people. In library jargon, we're trying to reach the non-users. If that sounds a bit drug-dealer-ish, it's not a bad analogy: come get a taste, then come back for more. The puns just write themselves: front-loading literacy , unhampered access... but the issue is deadly serious. You already know about food deserts. Well, there are book deserts , too. Neighbourhoods where libraries have been de-funded, bookstores are nonexistent, and families can't afford to buy books. In the US, great swaths of whole cities are book deserts. After all, there's no profit in bringing books to people who can't buy them. * * * * * Librarians as detectives! Meet the squa...

Eleven people, on war. *  *  *  * Imprisoned for opposing U.S. involvement in the war in Europe, Debs ran for President from jail. He garnered 1,000,000 votes, at a time when the US population was 103,208,000, and only men could vote. These are the gentry who are today wrapped up in the American flag, who shout their claim from the housetops that they are the only patriots, and who have their magnifying glasses in hand, scanning the country for evidence of disloyalty, eager to apply the brand of treason to the men who dare to even whisper their opposition. . . . No wonder Sam Johnson declared that “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” He must have had this Wall Street gentry in mind, or at least their prototypes, for in every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the people. . . . Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder...

Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom , David W. Blight's monumental biography of that greatest of Americans, is a long, challenging, and utterly fascinating read. After waiting for months to borrow it from the library, I ended up returning the library copy and buying it from Amazon. The book is filled with so many fascinating, inspiring, horrific, and thrilling views on some of the most pivotal moments of United States history,  including the "Second Revolution" -- the Civil War. Here are a few random factoids. After winning the battle for Blacks to join the Union forces, Douglass used the slogan Men of Color! To Arms!  on his long recruiting tours.  1. The expression "personal of color" is at least 150 years old. Frederick Douglass frequently referred to African Americans as people of color. 2. When Malcolm X said "the ballot or the bullet" and "by any means necessary," he was hearkening back to Frederick Douglass. Douglass wrote that Amer...

Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom , David W. Blight's monumental biography of that greatest of Americans, is a long, challenging, and utterly fascinating read. After waiting for months to borrow it from the library, I ended up returning the library copy and buying it from Amazon. The book is filled with so many fascinating, inspiring, horrific, and thrilling views on some of the most pivotal moments of United States history,  including the "Second Revolution" -- the Civil War. Here are a few random factoids. After winning the battle for Blacks to join the Union forces, Douglass used the slogan Men of Color! To Arms!  on his long recruiting tours.  1. The expression "personal of color" is at least 150 years old. Frederick Douglass frequently referred to African Americans as people of color. 2. When Malcolm X said "the ballot or the bullet" and "by any means necessary," he was hearkening back to Frederick Douglass. Douglass wrote that Amer...

Harry Leslie Smith, who sometimes called himself "the world's oldest rebel," died in late November 2018. I was unable to acknowledge his passing on wmtc at the time. Smith, a writer and an activist, was a steadfast critic of neoliberal policies, especially the austerity agenda. He spoke out constantly and consistently for a more generous, more just, and more inclusive society -- in short, for the preservation of social democracy. His obituary in The Guardian quotes him: I am one of the last few remaining voices left from a generation of men and women who built a better society for our children and grandchildren out of the horrors of the second world war, as well as the hunger of the Great Depression. Sadly, that world my generation helped build on a foundation of decency and fair play is being swept away by neoliberalism and the greed of the 1%, which has brought discord around the globe. Today, the western world stands at its most dangerous juncture since the 1930s. Sm...

11 anti-war books, parts 1 and 2 . 11 anti-war songs. Robert Fisk: "...Heaven be thanked that the soldiers cannot return to discover how their sacrifice has been turned into fashion appendage ." Why no red poppy, why no white poppy: It's that time of year again, the week when no one dares show their face on Canadian television, or indeed in any public place in Canada, without a red poppy symbol dutifully stuck on their lapel. What was once (supposedly) a remembrance of the horrors of war drifted first into a celebration of war and finally into obligatory, reflexive display. Many of my friends are wearing a white poppy today, and I wish them good luck with their campaign. I myself have no wish to display a physical comment on a symbol that is meaningless to me. It would feel like wearing a Star of David to show that I am not Christian. There is only one symbol that can express my feelings about the war dead - the Canadians, the Americans, the Germans, the Japanese, the V...

I recently read these somewhat old, but still relevant, letters to the New York Times Book Review. Cost of the Crash To the Editor: In his review of “Crashed,” by Adam Tooze (Aug. 12) , Fareed Zakaria asserts that “the rescue worked better than almost anyone imagined.” He notes there was no “double-dip recession” and growth returned “slowly but surely.” But this misses what was the major criticism of the “rescue.” It merely hit the re-set button — keeping the big banks solvent. Meanwhile, the stimulus did little to put people back to work. It was not the double-dip recession that critics feared but a long sluggish recovery that failed to affect the majority of the people. For example, it took six years (2009-15) for the unemployment rate to return to the pre-recession number. The share of income received by the top 1 percent had been 23 percent before the recession. After falling to 18 percent in 2010 it jumped back to 22 percent by 2015. Meanwhile, as late as 2015, the bottom 99 perc...

First of all, I do not apologize. I have nothing to apologize for. No one should apologize for having an unpopular opinion, or an opinion that the majority finds offensive. Second, I said nothing disrespectful to veterans. My utter lack of respect -- my undying contempt -- is for rulers whose policies send humans into unnecessary armed conflict. Those rulers pay lip-service to "supporting" troops, while their policies ensure more humans will suffer from the effects of war. If you're joining us in progress, here's what you missed.  Before the election, I took all my personal social media offline. We knew that the opposition would dedicate vast resources to digging up or fabricating anything they could use against NDP candidates. For some reason, no one directed me to remove wmtc links from the Wayback Machine (i.e., internet archives). This proved to be a grave error. A right-wing political hack who masquerades as a journalist received excerpts from some old wmtc posts...

I see by the wmtc tag "graphic novels" that I intended to write about graphic books I read and enjoyed...and I see by the scant number of posts with that tag that I have not been doing so! The last wmtc post tagged for graphic novels is from four years ago , almost to the day. In any event, I want to tell you about a graphic book I just finished and really enjoyed: Sarah Glidden's Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq . In 2010, Glidden traveled with three friends who had journalism visas to the three countries in the book's title. Two of the three were part of a nonprofit, progressive media collective; the third was a former US Marine who served in the Iraq War, and was a childhood friend of one of the journalists. Glidden doesn't merely report on what they found -- which would be interesting in itself. She stands outside the frame, as it were, and writes about their process and all its implications -- the ethics of their interviews, the indu...

I've posted 11 anti-war songs , and I've done Labour Day readers' advisory , but I don't think I've ever done anti-war readers' advisory.*** Here are 11 great books with an anti-war themes. 1. The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins 2. Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut 3. War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Chris Hedges (nonfiction) 4. Regeneration, Pat Barker 5. Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo 6. Hiroshima, John Hersey (nonfiction) 7. Mother Courage and Her Children, Bertolt Brecht (drama) 8. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway 9. Catch-22, Joseph Heller 10. The Deserter's Tale, Joshua Key with Lawrence Hill (nonfiction) 11. And finally, the greatest anti-war novel of all time, All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque There are many, many others: here are some lists . Honour the dead by working for peace. *** Turns out I had done this very thing, just two years back! The post was incorrectly tagged, so didn't come up in the search. Here...

In case everyone hasn't seen this yet, written by someone named Ben Feral Selinger. July 6 Okay, I'm fucking sick of the idiocy and done with writing a diatribe every single time a friend posts about how they're upset that Trudeau is giving a terrorist $10m. You people are.... wilfully ignorant and hypocritical. Here's why. (And I thoroughly suggest reading the entire post. If you know me, you know I'm neither stupid, nor an apologist. I am pure fucking science, and this post is such. Read it before making an ass of yourself by posting about how we just gave a terrorist money). The story (the facts we know). * Canadian born Khadr was taken to Afghanistan at age 9, by his father. We don't know if he wanted to go, and we don't know why they went. There has been zero evidence put forth to suggest the trip had anything to do with terrorism. Regardless, as he was only 9, he had no choice in the matter. * Khadr, aged 15, was found in critical condition following a...