“Focuses on exposing the agenda and cost of expansion in the world and documents the lies used to justify violent intervention in world politics, considering how economics plays into political decision-making process and providing a strong case for considering past wrongs and future changes.”

Publisher: City Lights
Paperback: 217 pages

“This eye-opening and entertaining collection of essays investigates media and culture, conspiracy and state power, ideology and political consciousness. Parenti ranges over such crucial issues as free speech, the rise of neofascism, the relationship between wealth and poverty, the ‘terrorism’ hype, the continuing mystifications about the Kennedy assassination, and the deceptions and injustices of U.S. corporate global dominion.”

Publisher: City Lights
Paperback: 232 pages

“Beneath the media world lies our perceptual framework, and digital media may change how we know what we know.” So insists Chris Carlsson in “The Shape of Truth To Come,” one of the more accessible of the 21 essays and political tracts anthologized within this book. And therein, in the theme “political,” lies the biggest problem with this book. Everything revolves around postmodern socialist/Marxist philosophy.
Resisting The Virtual Life is very much a classic university textbook with its own jargon, esoteric knowledge and politically correct jockeying for status. As dull, verbose, self-referential, opaque, presumptuous and complex in its structures and concepts as Scottish Freemasonry. Don’t get me wrong, please, I myself am absolutely on the side of an immense skeptical suspicion of the “World Wide Web.” What a horrible title. Are we all the innocent little insects unwittingly trapped in a gluey binary Armageddon of telephone lines? Who is the spider? Well, control, of course. Corporations, of course, increasingly insipid and acceleratingly effective bureaucratic governments.
The themes of enforced apathy and mobility of labor really circle each other like sumo wrestlers here. And it’s scary. Which makes this the right time to reassess the malignant cancer of personal computers; the intrusion into intellectual privacy and inner space; the surrender of autonomy; the detached Prozac miasma of virtual passivity and loss of identity that comes with all this dull gray plastic.
Look at it this way, simplistic though it sounds: If “Virtual Life” is supported, proselytized and applauded by your worst enemies, and it is profitable for them, then why consent of your own volition to partake of this “cure-all.” No way is this medium benign! Far from it. It’s the greatest chance to survey all you can see from a great height, just like Jesus in the desert, and who was offering HIM that illusory empowerment?
Uh, uh. Please plow through this, despite the turgid and user unfriendly style and semantics. Because it will do you good! The digital revolution is not benign. Don’t kid yourself, or your self. You are as much fodder for this new economic miracle as your ancestors were when they were forced from the arable land to become a disposable raw material for the iron mills and cotton mills of the 19th century.
Worse still, once uprooted, they were trained to consume the surplus they were enslaved to produce. Now, with less need in the West for covert slavery, the primary purpose of the majority of the population is conveniently reduced to overt and insatiable consumption, in and of itself. Oh, in case you wondered where the slaves are now… Well, occupied Haiti, Korea, Thailand and, when the time comes, Africa once again.
It’s the perfect scam. Hell, they don’t even need a semieducated and minimally healthy immigrant workforce anymore. Why else did you think education and medical services are being encouraged to disintegrate? A mediocratic middle class have unwittingly become the “new serfs.” They integrate enthusiastically with the insatiable “virtual life.” They are compelled to consume this quixotic future. They have even been trained to measure their success by their acquisition of its artifacts and their access to an ever-increasing amount of its software. Like lemmings they bless and feed the hand that signals the route to the final cataclysmic cliff. As the introduction succinctly reminds us, mobility of labor is the capitalist dream and computers realize the ultimate exploitative nightmare. All labor can now travel anywhere without physically moving. Much cheaper and more efficient. Everything piped down a phone wire. Perfect! I don’t think so. Count me out. I unplugged my modem ages ago. Best thing I ever did for my creative mind. Unplug yours too. Read this book, privately. Think hard about it, privately. Practice talking, privately. GPO

Publisher: City Lights
Paperback: 278 pages

Superb anthology based around the Chiapas uprising, its context and significance. Includes essays by Marc Cooper on the connections between Chiapas and the L.A. riots; Noam Chomsky on the effects of NAFTA; Ward Churchill on the continuing struggle for the land; Annette James’ “Statement of Support for the Indigenous American Intifada”; an interview with Subcommandante Marcos; various Zapatista communiqués; and much more. AK

Publisher: City Lights
Paperback: 258 pages
Illustrated

An argument forces a handsome 12-year-old boy out of his family home and onto the streets of Tangier. He forms friends and enmities among the drunkards, kif smokers, prostitutes and lechers in this decadent international-port setting. He hones his survival skills and earns the name “The Lemon” as he proves no man to be his better. Transcribed from tapes and translated from the Moghrebi by writer Paul Bowles. JAT

Publisher: City Lights
Paperback: 181 pages

A Moroccan youth risks the displeasure of his British patron and gains the love of a neighborhood beauty through magic. But magic, like love, does not always last forever. Terse phrasing efficiently evokes 1960s Morocco as it feels the encroaching influences of the West. Mrabet was a protégé of Paul Bowles known for his swagger and natural storytelling skills. Transcribed from tapes and translated from the Moghrebi by Bowles. JAT

Publisher: City Lights
Paperback: 198 pages

The term m’hashish means to act in an irrational or unexpected manner, as if under the influence of hashish. Ten short tales depict frequently extreme behavior and have the flavor of classic folk legends with vaguely menacing twists. Excellent as a short divertissement or as highbrow bathroom reading. Transcribed from tapes and translated from the Moghrebi by Paul Bowles. JAT

Publisher: City Lights
Paperback: 79 pages

Eberhardt’s short life was perhaps her greatest work of art. Despite her eventful existence, she was able to artfully chronicle her milieu in a body of remarkably textured prose. Departures compiles in a single volume a significant cross section of her short fiction and her travel journals, as well as supplementary essays which place her in a greater historical and cultural context. JAT

Publisher: City Lights
Paperback: 245 pages

Eberhardt left behind a small body of writing and a large legend of a life. This Swiss-French woman plunged deep into the Sahara and the secrets of Sufism in colonial Algeria. “No one ever lived more from day to day than I, or was more dependent on chance. It is the inescapable chain of events that has brought me to this point, rather than I who have caused these things to happen.”

Publisher: City Lights
Paperback: 88 pages
Illustrated

“Macumba is a way of life and belief that is followed by 15 million Brazilians, as well as millions more across the Western hemisphere. Yet it—along with its sister-religions of Vodun, Santería and Ifa—remains a little-known and largely misunderstood spiritual path… In a series of interviews, Maria José, a Mae de Santa (Mother of the Gods), explains the philosophy and practice of Macumba. She introduces the Orixas, a pantheon of deities who survived the Middle Passage to Brazil along with the African slaves.”

Publisher: City Lights
Paperback: 231 pages
Illustrated