books

A Love Story, A War Story and A Story About Brutal Work

Olivia Laing New Statesman
The Patriot Act is a nightmare for immigrants without papers already living precarious lives of dead-end jobs, zero-hour contracts, squats, and physical danger. When a young Asian woman, alone in the U.S., meets an ex-serviceman, himself traumatized by three tours in Iraq and living in a basement flat , the two bond in a tough but brilliant first novel absent stock characters or cartoon emotionality but with a profound and intimate knowledge of life on the margins.

Beware of Official Histories of War:The Vietnam Case; The Power of Protest. Telling the Truth

Harry Targ; Tom Hayden, Heather Booth, et al; Doug Rawlings Portside
U.S. Vietnam policy was built on twenty-five years of lies. The Vietnamese fought Japanese occupation during World War II and sought a free Vietnam after the war free of colonial control. Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon lied about their escalation of the United States involvement. The only way America can avoid becoming "waist deep in the big muddy" again and again is to clearly understand its history. The Power of Protest. Telling the Truth - May 1 - 2.

Tidbits - February 19, 2015 - Vietnam War, Chapel Hill Murders, Radical Change, Adjunct Profs, Coal Miners, Water, and more...

Portside
Reader Comments - Vietnam - What Really Happened?; Chapel Hill Murders - Honor Their Memory; Chocolate, Mayan civilization; Ukraine; How Radical Change Occurs; Adjunct Profs; Teacher Unions; West Virginia Coal and Blood; Public Pensions; Water Privatization; Save the Postal Service; Timbuktu; UMass Backs Down on Iranian Student Ban; Artistic Expression; Support the Greek People; Announcements; Today in History - FDR Signs Order for Internment of Japanese Americans

Post-9/11 US Foreign Policy: A Record of Unparalleled Failure

Tom Engelhardt TomDispatch
"Think whatever you want about war and American war-making, but keep in mind that we are inside an enormous propaganda machine of militarism, even if we barely acknowledge the space in our lives that it fills. Inside it, only certain opinions, certain thoughts, are acceptable, or even in some sense possible."

We Are All Wounded Veterans

David McReynolds, Edge Left Portside
War, for those who actually experienced it ... is hell. Those who saw combat do not return whole. Their dreams reek of death, of comrades torn apart, of foreign children shot by accident.

Out of the Furnace: Movie

From Scott Cooper, writer and director of Crazy Heart, a gripping and gritty drama with an all-star cast. A soldier returning from Iraq gets lured into one of the most ruthless crime rings in the Northeast and mysteriously disappears.

War Overseas, Social Devastation at Home: An Evening with Iraq Veterans Against the War

Kim Scipes ZNetwork
As part of their national convention in Chicago, Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) presented a public forum titled "21st Century American Militarism: Occupation Abroad and Resistance at Home." Featuring talks by Christian Parenti, Michael Rakowitz, Suraia Suhar, and Nick Turse, and followed by an interesting Q&A session - a stimulating discussion of war and militarism in the current day US Empire.

labor

Charley Richardson R.I.P. Union Activist, Protested Iraq War

JM Lawrence The Boston Globe
A former shipfitter at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy and a longtime labor union activist, Mr. Richardson cofounded Military Families Speak Out, an organization that mushroomed to include more than 4,000 families, along with chapters in 18 states. Mr. Richardson, who directed the Labor Extension Program at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and trained union leaders around the world, died May 4 in his Jamaica Plain home. He was 60.
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