On Democracy by Saddam Hussein (2012)
Filed under book | Tags: · democracy, iraq, politics
In 2003, after returning from a month-long stay in Baghdad, Paul Chan was given a gift from a colleague in the human-rights group Voices of the Wilderness: a copy of three speeches on democracy written by Saddam Hussein in the 1970s, before he became president of Iraq. The speeches, compiled here for the first time in English, are politically perverse, yet eerily familiar. The then vice president of Iraq characterizes social democracy as demanding authority, and defines free will as the patriotic duty to uphold the good of the state. This volume takes the speeches as an opportunity to ask what democracy means from the standpoint of a notorious political figure who was anything but democratic, and to reflect on how promises of freedom and security can mask the reality of repressive regimes.
With drawings by Paul Chan, including a new suite in its entirety, and essays by Bidoun’s Negar Azimi, philosopher and artist Nickolas Calabrese and journalist Jeff Severns Guntzel.
Edited, and with Artwork by Paul Chan
Publisher Badlands Unlimited, Brooklyn, New York, with Deste Foundation, Athens, 2012
ISBN 1936440326, 9781936440375
144 pages
via Badlands Unlimited
An interview with Paul Chan about the book (Paul Schmelzer, WalkerArt.org)
Note: Apple and Amazon ebook version includes original video clips.
Comment (0)Jeremy Scahill: Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army (2007/2008)
Filed under book | Tags: · afghanistan, iraq, military, politics, united states, war on terror
On September 16, 2007, machine gun fire erupted in Baghdad’s Nisour Square leaving seventeen Iraqi civilians dead, among them women and children. The shooting spree, labeled “Baghdad’s Bloody Sunday,” was neither the work of Iraqi insurgents nor U.S. soldiers. The shooters were private forces working for the secretive mercenary company, Blackwater Worldwide.
This is the explosive story of a company that rose a decade ago from Moyock, North Carolina, to become one of the most powerful players in the “War on Terror.” In his gripping bestseller, award-winning journalist Jeremy Scahill takes us from the bloodied streets of Iraq to hurricane-ravaged New Orleans to the chambers of power in Washington, to expose Blackwater as the frightening new face of the U.S. war machine.
First published in 2007
Revised and updated edition
Publisher Nation Books, 2008
ISBN 156858394X, 9781568583945
550 pages
interview with the author (WeAreChange.org, 14 November 2012)
interview with the author (Democracy Now!, 2009)
Scahill’s speech at the Miami Book Fair (2008)
interview with the author (PBS, 2007)
interview with the author (Democracy Now!, 2007)
Stephen Graham: Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism (2010)
Filed under book | Tags: · city, iraq, israel, military, neoliberalism, security, surveillance, technology, terrorism, urbanism, war
A powerful exposé of how political violence operates through the spaces of urban life.
Cities are the new battleground of our increasingly urban world. From the slums of the global South to the wealthy financial centers of the West, Cities Under Siege traces the spread of political violence through the sites, spaces, infrastructure and symbols of the world’s rapidly expanding metropolitan areas.
Drawing on a wealth of original research, Stephen Graham shows how Western militaries and security forces now perceive all urban terrain as a conflict zone inhabited by lurking shadow enemies. Urban inhabitants have become targets that need to be continually tracked, scanned and controlled. Graham examines the transformation of Western armies into high-tech urban counter-insurgency forces. He looks at the militarization and surveillance of international borders, the use of ‘security’ concerns to suppress democratic dissent, and the enacting of legislation to suspend civilian law. In doing so, he reveals how the New Military Urbanism permeates the entire fabric of urban life, from subway and transport networks hardwired with high-tech ‘command and control’ systems to the insidious militarization of a popular culture corrupted by the all-pervasive discourse of ‘terrorism.’
Publisher Verso Books, London, 2010
ISBN 1844678369, 9781844678365
432 pages
review (Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian)
review (Jeff Heydon, review31)
review (George Steinmetz)
review (Alice O’Connor)
review (Jennifer Light)