Political Media Review

Victoria Fontan offers a fascinating perspective on the Iraq War and War on Terror, arguing that humiliation plays a key role in both. She starts with the premise that humiliation was instrumental in the shift from liberation to counterinsurgency in Iraq and, more generally, serves as the central rallying cry for fundamentalist terrorism across the globe.

Andy Worthington’s hard-hitting new book shines a stark light into the black hole that is Guantanamo Bay prison, describing the process and consequences of a US intelligence project which is at the same time both ruthless and cackhanded; all the while failing to achieve its intentions.

Empty Cages: Facing the Challenge of Animal Rights is a highly accessible introduction to animal rights alongside leading animal rights philosopher Tom Regan’s own story of transitioning to an animal friendly lifestyle.

Teaching Rebellion: Stories from the Grassroots Mobilization in Oaxaca reflects the spirit of the historical teachers’ struggle in Oaxaca, Mexico in the spring of 2006, which is rooted in the principal of radical (direct) democracy and social justice. The narratives assembled in this book are the voices of political implications of theory drawn from the experimental frameworks within this community struggle for “living wage, infrastructure repair, free school books and social services for poor students” (p.25).

Mao Tsetung was famously quoted as saying there was no such thing as art for art’s sake, or art detached from politics. In Chicana and Chicano Art: ProtestArte, Carlos Francisco Jackson probes such concepts, as well as their limits.

Social justice-oriented creative expressions have proven a transformative force in many eras, from the Black Arts Movement to the explosion of Mexican-American humanities from the 1940s to 1970s.

Since the election of U.S. President Barack Obama, mainstream commercial and noncommercial media have hailed a shift in America’s disquisition around race. The leading conversation here, however historically stunted, is how Americans conceive of race has changed because whites voted for a man with a Black father and white mother.

Peter McLaren and Nathalia Jaramillo’s Pedagogy and Praxis in the Age of Empire (PPAE) best collects their founding theoretical work on the post-9/11, emergent international anti-capitalist/imperialist movement that reflects an active example of revolutionary critical pedagogy.