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Growing Up White in America - Unlearning the Myth of American Innocence (and American Nationalism, Racism and Exceptionalism)

Suzy Hansen The Guardian
When she was 30, Suzy Hansen left the US for Istanbul – and began to realize that Americans will never understand their own country until they see it as the rest of the world does. In college, she read James Baldwin, giving the sense of meeting someone who knew her better, than she had herself. This came as a shock, not necessarily because he said I was sick. It was because he kept calling me that thing: “white American”.

Tidbits - June 15, 2017 - Reader Comments: Impeachment, Not McCarthyism - Differing Views; Who Were Trump Voters; Bernie Sanders, and Working Families Party; United and Popular Front Lessons; Why Corbyn Won; Healthcare for All God's Children; and more...

Portside
Reader Comments: Impeachment, Not McCarthyism - Differing Reader Views; Who Were Trump Voters; Bernie Sanders, Our Revolution and the Working Families Party; United Front, Popular Front Lessons; Why Corbyn Won; Healthcare for All God's Children; California Single-Payer; A Message to Our Community on 50 Years of Occupation; Resources: When Black Women Succeed, All Women Succeed; Iran 1953: State Department Finally Releases Updated Official History of Mosaddeq Coup; more..

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Literary Agents

Patrick Iber The New Republic
In the age of "fake news" and other mysterious media distortions, this book reminds us of a "simpler" time. Joel Whitney offers a new history of how, beginning in the late 1940s, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) simply (if much of the time secretly), paid writers, musicians, and artists, and sponsored publications, concerts, exhibitions, and cultural institutions as part of its Cold War arsenal.

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Weaponizing Modernist Culture

Alan Wald Against the Current
At first glance, modern art and contemporary imperialism make strange bedfellows. The book under review both charts the history of the CIA's work in promoting US corporate interests through its manipulation of culture--what was then called cultural diplomacy-- while also working to define modernism. The reviewer congratulates the author on his first task, but criticizes him on the second.

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The CIA Story, from Phoenix to Now

Paul Buhle Special to Portside
For those of us who need a reminder of the notorious record of the CIA over the last sixty-plus years, here is a useful up-to-date history. Reviewer Paul Buhle shows some of this new book's high points.

Hypocrisy Behind the Russian-Election Frenzy

Robert Parry Consortium News
The madness sweeping Official Washington and the mainstream media about alleged Russian interference in the U.S. election is pervaded by breathtaking hypocrisy, writes Robert Parry.

Tidbits - June 30, 2016 - Reader Comments: Bernie Sanders-What We Want; Clinton Obstructing Democratic Platform; Supreme Court Rules on Abortion; Syria; Mexico; Brazil; Guatemala; James Green; more...

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Reader Comments: Bernie Sanders - What We Want; Clinton Campaign Obstructing Change to Democratic Platform; Supreme Court Rules: Abortion Clinics in Texas Cannot be Shut Down; Brexit - Warning Signal for Trump-Era America?; Bombing Syrian Troops Would Be Illegal; Mexican Teachers Being Jailed and Killed; Chilean Military Liable for Victor Jara Murder; Report Clears Rouseff; Remembering James Green; This Week in History - Arbenz Guzman Deposed in Guatemala; and more...

Snowden Leak Reveals Obama Government Ordered NSA, CIA to Spy on Venezuela Oil Firm

teleSUR
Increasing surveillance on the leadership of PDVSA, the most important company in a South American nation seen as hostile to U.S. corporate interests, was a priority for the undisclosed NSA division to which the analyst reported. “Plainly speaking,” the analyst writes, they “wanted PDVSA information at the highest possible levels of the corporation – namely, the president and members of the Board of Directors.”

Tidbits - October 15, 2015 - Kunduz bombing;; NLRB at 80; Grace Lee Boggs; Pinochet Murder - CIA knew; prison divestiture, Ethel Rosenberg, Announcements and more...

Portside
Reader Comments: Kunduz, Doctors Without Borders and War Crimes; U.S. Labor Law at 80 - a dissenting view; Grace Lee Boggs; Congress in Chaos; Pinochet Murder and the CIA; Connecticut's Malloy attacks college unions; TPP; Henning Mankell; Prisons and Campaign to Divest from Private Prisons; Ethel Rosenberg Celebrated on 100th birthday in New York; Announcements: Eastampton, MA; New York; San Francisco; Brooklyn' Labor Notes is Hiring
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