What follows is under construction and will be expanded.

Recommended Books & Other Resources

On General Politics

Chronicles of Dissent: Interviews with David Barsamian - by David Barsamian and Noam Chomsky
- Interviews with Chomsky are much more accessible than his writings. This is a clear overview of Chomsky's ideas, even if from 1988 it is still relevant.

America's Deadliest Export - by William Blum.

Topics

Guatemala: Bridge of Courage - by Jennifer Harbury
On the murder of hundreds of thousands of Guatemalan civilians by the United States in the late 20th century
Colombia: U.S. Colombia Policy - by Noam Chomsky.
This is a speech given May 12th, 2000 in Boston, with follow-up Q&A. This pre-dates 9/11 but is every bit as relevant today as it was then.
Yugoslavia: To Kill a Nation - by Michael Parenti

Yugoslavia: Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice - by John Laughland

Yugoslavia: Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato, and Western Delusions - by Diana Johnstone

Other Organizations

Unfortunately, there aren't many organizations that are worth your time as a person with true left values. But there are a few.

counterpunch.com is a mixed bag. They publish among the best legitimately left material. But a considerable portion of what they publish is misguided (e.g. their continual promotion of war criminals as laudable politicians) if not utter garbage (e.g. anything by Mike Whitney). One should read CounterPunch but one has to be extremely careful and approach that site with full intellectual self-defense against the noise.

FAIR.org FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) is a good organization. As is the case with CounterPunch, FAIR is a mixed bag with them also supporing war criminals like Sanders for president. But for the most part FAIR publishes with a legitimate Left perspective.

antiwar.com These guys get it right most of the time. The acid-test of 2016 on whether a Left organization can be considered true Left is whether or not they promote Bernie Sanders in any way. We have seen wonderfully refreshing material on antiwar.com giving the straight dope on Sanders and little giving him praise. However, it's not perfect, there are articles that get it dangerously wrong, for example this one claiming erroneously that Sanders is anti-interventionist.

Z-Magazine You can find good true left material in Z-Magazine but much of it is drivel. This organization is run by Michael Albert, an egotistical never-say-die fanatic who unfortunately has his head in the coulds who is as confused as everybody else on where to draw the line in promoting war criminals. For example, Z has articles touting Sanders as the peace candidate without even mentioning Serbia or his vote to attack Libya. In fact Michael Albert was transparently confused in 1999 during the war against Serbia, yet he carried himself as the voice of the left, telling his followers what to believe even though he had no clue, and declaring he was speaking as representative of some elite left wing clique that includes Noam Chomsky. Our final assessment of Z-Mag is that your time is better spent elsewhere - there's just too low of a signal-to-noise ratio.

 

 

 

 

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