NEW BOOKS FROM THE ‘COUNTERBLASTS’ SERIES:
A series challenging the apologists of Empire and Capital. COUNTERBLASTS is a new Verso series that aims to revive the tradition of polemical writing inaugurated by Puritan and leveller pamphleteers in the seventeenth century, when in the words of one of them, Gerard Winstanley, the old world was “running up like parchment in the fire.” From 1640 to 1663, a leading bookseller and publisher, George Thomason, recorded that his collection alone contained over twenty thousand pamphlets. Such polemics reappeared both before and during the French, Russian, Chinese and Cuban revolutions of the last century. In a period of conformity where politicians, media barons and their ideological hirelings rarely challenge the basis of existing society, it’s time to revive the tradition. Verso’s Counterblasts will challenge the apologists of Empire and Capital.
NEW TITLES:
THE IMPERIAL MESSENGER: THOMAS FRIEDMAN AT WORK
By BÉLEN FERNÁNDEZ
OUT NOW
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Factual errors, ham-fisted analysis, and contradictory assertions—compounded by a penchant for mixed metaphors and name-dropping—distinguish the work of Pulitzer Prize–winning NEW YORK TIMES columnist and author Thomas Friedman. THE IMPERIAL MESSENGER reveals the true value of this media darling, a risible writer whose success tells us much about the failures of contemporary journalism. Belén Fernández dissects the Friedman corpus with wit and journalistic savvy to expose newsroom practices that favor macho rhetoric over serious inquiry, a pacified readership over an empowered one, and reductionist analysis over integrity.
THE IMPERIAL MESSENGER is polemic at its best, relentless in its attack on this apologist for American empire and passionate in its commitment to justice.
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PRAISE FOR THE IMPERIAL MESSENGER:
“Filleting the silliest man on the planet needs a sure scalpel, and Belén Fernández wields hers with deadly finesse.” — ALEXANDER COCKBURN, Editor of COUNTERPUNCH
“A long overdue takedown of a dangerous fraud … The book is a vaccination that should be given to all college freshmen lest they too get infected, an antidote for those suffering from admiration of Friedman and a palliative for those of us who have had aneurysms in reaction to his every latest bloviation.”
—NIR ROSEN, author of AFTERMATH: FOLLOWING THE BLOODSHED OF AMERICA’S WARS IN THE MUSLIM WORLD and IN THE BELLY OF THE GREEN BIRD: THE TRIUMPH OF THE MARTYRS IN IRAQ
“The hubris, sophistry, consistent hypocrisy, and buffoonery of the New York Times’s most widely read columnist is systematically deconstructed and laid bare. A must-read.”
—DAHR JAMAIL, journalist and author of BEYOND THE GREEN ZONE: DISPATCHES FROM AN UNEMBEDDED JOURNALIST IN OCCUPIED IRAQ
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BELÉN FERNÁNDEZ is an editor and feature writer at PULSE MEDIA. Her articles also have appeared ON AL-JAZEERA, AL-AKHBAR ENGLISH, COUNTERPUNCH, PALESTINE CHRONICLE, PALESTINE THINK TANK, REBELIÓN, SALEM-NEWS, TLAXCALA, ELECTRONIC INTIFADA, UPSIDE DOWN WORLD, AND VENEZUELANALYSIS.COM, among others. She earned her bachelor’s degree with a concentration in political science from Columbia University in New York City.
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PRAISE FOR BELÉN FERNÁNDEZ:
“[If the NEW YORK TIMES] wanted to start rectifying its own journalistic deficiencies, it would do well to start by replacing Friedman with Fernandez. ”
– CYRIL MYCHALEJKO, editor, UPSIDEDOWNWORLD.ORG, TOWARD FREEDOM
“Fernández subjects Friedman to careful scrutiny and assigns him failing grades for logic, consistency, and integrity. After reading Fernández dissect Friedman column by column, the unavoidable question is: How did Friedman ever pass himself off as a journalist? Why isn’t Belén Fernández the New York Times' lead columnist? The answer is clear. Fernandez won’t lie for the establishment.”
– PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, INSTITUTE FOR POLITICAL ECONOMY
“Belén Fernández is a revelation to those who don't know her yet and a confirmation for those happy few who have known her sublime sense of political satire—subdued, innocent, piercing, frightful. She is a political satirist of the generation X vintage—low-key, self-effacing, happenstance, ‘what-ever’-type who crawls under your skin and begins to tickle and before you know it bite. She insinuates so effortlessly, you think she is just chilling—she is not. Her book on Thomas Friedman is an act of restitution, a declaration of independence from a young, idealist, brave, and defiant generation of Americans who have had it up to here with barefaced banality that has been fed to them for too long. She is talking back—boldly, patiently, chapter and verse, going in for the kill.”
– HAMID DABASHI, author of IRAN, THE GREEN MOVEMENT AND THE USA: THE FOX AND THE PARADOX
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ISBN: 978-1-84467-749-8/ £9.99/$16.95/ Paperback / 240 pages
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MICHAEL IGNATIEFF: A LESSER EVIL?
By DERRICK O’KEEFE
OUT NOW
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“To be perfectly, and vulgarly, blunt, when you’ve read as much of his writing as I have, it’s hard not to be left with the impression that Ignatieff is a man simply incapable of turning off the flow of bullshit.” —DERRICK O’KEEFE
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One of the most influential intellectuals in the English-speaking world, Michael Ignatieff’s story is generally understood to be that of an ambitious, accomplished progressive politician and writer, whose work and thought fit within an enlightened political tradition valuing human rights and diversity. Here, journalist Derrick O’Keefe argues otherwise. In this scrupulous assessment of Ignatieff’s life and politics, he reveals that Ignatieff’s human rights discourse has served to mask his identification with political and economic elites.
Tracing the course of his career over the last thirty years, from his involvement with the battles between Thatcher and the coal miners in the 1980s to the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel’s 2009 invasion of Gaza, O’Keefe proposes that Ignatieff and his political tradition have in fact stood in opposition to the extension of democracy and the pursuit of economic equality. MICHAEL IGNATIEFF: THE LESSER EVIL? is a timely assessment of the Ignatieff phenomenon, and of what it tells us about the politics of the English-speaking West today.
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DERRICK O’KEEFE is a Canadian writer and social justice activist. He is the editor of RABBLE.CA, a popular website featuring progressive news and analysis. He has written widely on Canadian and international politics, and is the co-writer, with Afghan politician MALALAI JOYA, of A WOMAN AMONG WARLORDS.
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ISBN: 978-1-84467-615-6 / £9.99/$16.95/ Paperback / 144 pages
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COMING SOON—NEW TITLE:
THE IMPOSTER: BHL IN WONDERLAND
By JADE LINDGAARD and XAVIER DE LA PORTE
Published: FEBRUARY 2012
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How do we explain what Perry Anderson calls “the bizarre prominence of Bernard-Henri Lévy,” easily the best-known “thinker” under sixty in France? “It would,” he continues, “be difficult to imagine a more extraordinary reversal of national standards of taste and intelligence than the attention accorded this crass booby in France’s public sphere, despite innumerable demonstrations of his inability to get a fact or an idea straight. Could such a grotesque flourish in any other major Western culture today?”
This book, based on a careful investigation comparing BHL’s words with his deeds, seeks to explore the remarkable persistence of this celebrity pseudo-philosopher since he burst onto the scene in 1977. Delving into his networks in the spheres of politics, the media and big business, Lindgaard and de la Porte reveal what the success of this three-decade long imposture tells us about the degeneration of contemporary French intellectual and cultural life.
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PRAISE FOR THE IMPOSTER: BHL IN WONDERLAND:
“A familiar figure in the celebrity media, friend of the stars, big bosses and politicians of Left and Right, accompanied or not by Arielle Dombasle, BHL appears, in this effective investigation, as an intellectual with ‘an oversized ego whose commitments serve his personal interests’.” —AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE
“Cruel enough to be funny, serious enough to be credible … The angle and method of the two journalists has the merit of simplicity: to take Bernard-Henri Lévy at face value, in other words to read his books, articles, interviews, to watch his films, to listen to his public talks and interventions in the media.” —TÉLÉRAMA
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JADE LINDGAARD is a journalist for the news site MEDIAPART, and she COEDITED LA FRANCE INVISIBLE, with STÉPHANE BEAUD and JOSEPH CONFAVREUX (2006); XAVIER DE LA PORTE is a journalist for the radio station FRANCE CULTURE.
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ISBN: 978-1-84467-748-1/ £9.99/$16.99/ Paperback / 288 pages
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For more information about the COUNTERBLASTS series, or to buy the books visit:
http://www.versobooks.com/series_collections/28-counterblasts
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