Political Media Review

David Solnit asks, “who has the power and resources to define our history and thus shape what people think?” It is a premise that shapes the awkwardly titled AK Press offering The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle, a primer for activists

This richly illustrated and designed volume, featuring indigenous art and photographs on nearly every page and unprecedented interviews with members of the early villages, is a result of the seven years Mexican journalist Gloria Muñoz Ramírez’ spent with the Zapatistas in Southern Chiapas.

With this book anarchist sociologist, Luis Fernandez, writes on his studies of policing protests (broadly speaking). At first glance, the references and style of the book might make one think it is written for other academics–dispassionately studying the behaviors of our political masters and their domestic army, the police.

A collection of essays by and interviews with some of the well-known faces of the anti-capitalist/globalisation movement, including Subcommandante Marcos, Naomi Klein and the McDonalds – trashing Jose Bove, amongst others.

To read Augé’s book is to be given a slightly nauseating look at one’s world, and one could just pass through the book as through a non-place. But it can also provide an analytic tool; the critical potential of Non-Places is discerned by enacting it that way.

Brilliant debunking of anything you thought was ever good about corporations (which may not have been much). Bakan goes through the rise of the entity of the corporation, from its humble beginnings a mere 150 years ago, to the Globe-strangling monster that it is today.

In reading Environmentalism in Popular Culture: Gender, Race, Sexuality and the Politics of the Natural, one cannot help but be reminded of historical blind spots regarding the nature of profit — a spot progressive idealists miss regularly.

One need look no further than something like progressive advocacy of drug legalization as an example of collective amnesia about North American economics.