For 78 days in 1999, US and NATO forces launched round-the-clock aerial attacks against Yugoslavia, killing upwards of 3000 people in the name of humanitarianism. This book challenges mainstream media coverage of the war and uncovers hidden agendas behind Western talk and a decade-long disinformation campaign waged by western leaders.

Richly informed and written in an engaging style, Against Empire exposes the ruthless agenda and hidden costs of the U.S. empire today. Documenting the pretexts and lies used to justify violent intervention and maldevelopment abroad, Parenti shows how the conversion to a global economy is a victory of finance capital over democracy.

As much of the world suffers unspeakable misery and the Third-Worldization of the United States accelerates, civil society is impoverished by policies that benefit rich and powerful transnational corporations and the national security state. Hard-won gains made by ordinary people are swept away.

From market crisis to market boom, from welfare to wealth care, from homelessness to helplessness, and an all-out assault on the global environment-these are just some of the indecencies of contemporary economic life that Profit Pathology takes on. Here, Michael Parenti investigates how class power is a central force in our political life and, yet, is subjected to little critical discernment. He notes how big-moneyed interests shift the rules of the game in their favor while unveiling the long march by reactionaries through the nation's institutions to undo all the gains of social democracy, from the New Deal to the present. Parenti also traces the exploitative economic forces that have operated through much of American history, including the mass displacement and extermination of Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans. Parenti is a master at demonstrating the impact of monomaniacal profit accumulation on social services-especially health care-and human values. Here he takes us one step further, showing how unrestrained capitalism ultimately endangers itself, becoming a "self-devouring beast" that threatens us all. Finally, he calls for a solution based on democratic diversity and public ownership-"because it works."

"Blackshirts & Reds" explores some of the big issues of our time: fascism, capitalism, communism, revolution, democracy, and ecology--terms often bandied about but seldom explored in the original and exciting way that has become Michael Parenti's trademark.

Parenti shows how "rational fascism" renders service to capitalism, how corporate power undermines democracy, and how revolutions are a mass empowerment against the forces of exploitative privilege. He also maps out the external and internal forces that destroyed communism, and the disastrous impact of the "free-market" victory on eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He affirms the relevance of taboo ideologies like Marxism, demonstrating the importance of class analysis in understanding political realities and dealing with the ongoing collision between ecology and global corporatism.

Written with lucid and compelling style, this book goes beyond truncated modes of thought, inviting us to entertain iconoclastic views, and to ask why things are as they are. It is a bold and entertaining exploration of the epic struggles of yesterday and today.
Michael Parenti is one of the nation's leading progressive thinkers. He lectures widely around the country and is the author of Dirty Truths, Against Empire, Democracy for the Few, Land of Idols: Political Mythology in America, and many other books. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Most historians, both ancient and modern, have viewed the Late Republic of Rome through the eyes of its rich nobility. In The Assassination of Julius Caesar, Michael Parenti presents us with a story of popular resistance against entrenched power and wealth. As he carefully weighs the evidence concerning the murder of Caesar, Parenti sketches in the background to the crime with fascinating detail about wider Roman society. In these pages we find reflections on the democratic struggle waged by Roman commoners, religious augury as an instrument of social control, the patriarchal oppression of women, and the political use of homophobic attacks. The Assassination of Julius Caesar offers a whole new perspective on an era we thought we knew well.

Essays on how history's victors distort and suppress the documentary record in order to perpetuate their power and privilege, and how historians are influenced by the professional and class environment in which they work.

"Michael Parenti, always provocative and eloquent, gives us a lively as well as valuable critique of orthodoxy posing as 'history.'"--Howard Zinn

"Solid if surely controversial stuff."--"Kirkus"

Table of Contents

Prologue: Against the Mainstream
History as Miseducation
Mainstream Orthodoxy
The Hunt for Real History
Textbooks: America the Beautiful
For Business, Against Labor
The School as a Tool
Priests and Pagans, Saints and Slaves
Triumph of the One True Faith
Silencing the Pagans
Accepting the Powers that Be
Affluent Believers
Saints For Slavery
Bishops and Barbarians, Jezebels and Jews
The Myth of the Devout Peasant
The Curse of Eve
The Burning of Books
Preparing the Holocaust
History in the Faking
Suppression at the Point of Origin
Cold War in the Archives
Classified History, USA
Listening to the Muted Masses
In Ranke's Footsteps
His Majesty's Servant
An Aristocratic Profession'
Purging the Reds
Publishing and Privishing'
Marketing the Right Stuff
The Strange Death of President Zachary
Taylor, a Study in the Manufacture of
Mainstream History
Examining the Examination
Confrontation with the Slavocracy
A lethal Dose of Cherries and Milk?
Honorable Men and Official History
Against Psychopolitics
Depoliticizing the Political
Dubious Clinical Data
Lenin as Oedipus
The Compulsive Hoover
The Political Hoover
When the Political Becomes Personal
Afterword

In the last half-century we have witnessed a dramatic expansion of American corporate power into every corner of the world, accompanied by an equally awesome growth in U.S. military power. This book analyzes this global empire: what interests it serves and what effect it has on the peoples of the world and on their struggles for real democracy and social justice. The enormous cost of this superpower expansionism is borne by the U.S. public. The empire feeds off the republic. A richly financed corporate-military complex is matched at home by increasing poverty, the defunding of state and local governments, drastic cutbacks in human services, decaying infrastructure, and impending ecological disaster. This book shows that the people of the targeted nations suffer expropriation of their communal wealth and natural resources, complete privatization and deregulation of their economies, loss of local markets, deterioration of their living standards, growing debt burdens, and the bloodstained suppression of their democratic movements. The empire s wars help maintain the international system of finance capital. Countries that attempt to pursue an independent course of self-development apart from global free-market capitalism are demonized as anti-American and anti-West and subjected to sanctions, economic strangulation, regime change, and if necessary, direct aerial attack and invasion."

In the last half-century we have witnessed a dramatic expansion of American corporate power into every corner of the world, accompanied by an equally awesome growth in U.S. military power. This book analyzes this global empire: what interests it serves and what effect it has on the peoples of the world and on their struggles for real democracy and social justice. The enormous cost of this superpower expansionism is borne by the U.S. public. The empire feeds off the republic. A richly financed corporate-military complex is matched at home by increasing poverty, the defunding of state and local governments, drastic cutbacks in human services, decaying infrastructure, and impending ecological disaster. This book shows that the people of the targeted nations suffer expropriation of their communal wealth and natural resources, complete privatization and deregulation of their economies, loss of local markets, deterioration of their living standards, growing debt burdens, and the bloodstained suppression of their democratic movements. The empire s wars help maintain the international system of finance capital. Countries that attempt to pursue an independent course of self-development apart from global free-market capitalism are demonized as anti-American and anti-West and subjected to sanctions, economic strangulation, regime change, and if necessary, direct aerial attack and invasion."

From market crisis to market boom, from welfare to wealth care, from homelessness to helplessness, and an all-out assault on the global environment-these are just some of the indecencies of contemporary economic life that Profit Pathology takes on. Here, Michael Parenti investigates how class power is a central force in our political life and, yet, is subjected to little critical discernment. He notes how big-moneyed interests shift the rules of the game in their favor while unveiling the long march by reactionaries through the nation's institutions to undo all the gains of social democracy, from the New Deal to the present. Parenti also traces the exploitative economic forces that have operated through much of American history, including the mass displacement and extermination of Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans. Parenti is a master at demonstrating the impact of monomaniacal profit accumulation on social services-especially health care-and human values. Here he takes us one step further, showing how unrestrained capitalism ultimately endangers itself, becoming a "self-devouring beast" that threatens us all. Finally, he calls for a solution based on democratic diversity and public ownership-"because it works."

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 domination.

Moving from the political to the personal, Parenti shows the links between seemingly disparate social and political forces. Dirty Truths also contains three poems and moving accounts of his own ethnic family life and the political intolerance he encountered in academia.

This book is a rich buffet, an enlightening and provocative feast for the mind and heart.

Author of Against Empire, Democracy for the Few, Land of Idols: Political Mythology in America, and many other books, Michael Parenti is one of the country's most astute and engaging political analysts. He has taught at a number of universities and now lives in Berkeley, California.

Superpatriots, writes Michael Parenti, are those people who place national pride and American supremacy above every other public consideration, those who follow leaders uncritically, especially in their war policies abroad. "Superpatriotism" is the nationalistic hype propagated by officialdom, the media, and various flag-waving groups.

Parenti demonstrates how superpatriotism attaches itself to religion, sports, the military, the schools and big business. He questions whether its top politico-economic propagators are themselves really patriotic, given how they evade taxes, export our jobs, pollute our land and plunder the public treasury.

With incisive probing and a humorous touch, Parenti addresses such urgent questions as: What does it mean to love one's country? Why is it so important to be Number One? What determines America's "greatness?" He examines how US leaders and the corporate media fan the flames of fear to win support for huge arms budgets, global aggrandizement, and the suppression of political dissent at home and abroad.

Finally, he poses an alternative to superpatriotism, arguing that the real patriots are those who care enough to educate themselves about our country's history and its present plight. He reminds us that it is not "anti-American" to criticize unjust social conditions at home or oppose global policies pursued by our rulers. Rather it is our democratic right and patriotic duty to do so.

Michael Parenti is one of the nation's leading progressive political analysts. An internationally known writer and speaker, he is the author of 17 books, including "Democracy for the Few" (seventh ed.) and "The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome." He has also published over 250 articles in scholarly journals, political periodicals, popular magazines, and nationally known newspapers. He lives in Berkeley, CA.

The political Left has had a turbulent relationship with religion, from outright hostility to attempts to meld religious faith with progressivism. Confronted with contemporary social ills, the progressive Left continues to disagree about the role that religion should play, whether in understanding social challenges and solutions, or stimulating social critique and reform. Radical Religion presents valuable insights, from both religious and secular perspectives, for progressives today as they struggle to formulate a coherent agenda and effective strategies for social change. This book presents arguments from a diverse group of scholars, and offers a snapshot of contemporary, progressive thinking about religion.

The political Left has had a turbulent relationship with religion, from outright hostility to attempts to meld religious faith with progressivism. Confronted with contemporary social ills, the progressive Left continues to disagree about the role that religion should play, whether in understanding social challenges and solutions, or stimulating social critique and reform. Radical Religion presents valuable insights, from both religious and secular perspectives, for progressives today as they struggle to formulate a coherent agenda and effective strategies for social change. This book presents arguments from a diverse group of scholars, and offers a snapshot of contemporary, progressive thinking about religion.

Hollywood is often characterized as a stronghold of left-liberal ideals. In "Reel Power," Matthew Alford shows it is in fact deeply complicit in serving the interests of the most regressive U.S. corporate and political forces. Films like "Transformers," "Terminator: Salvation" and "Black Hawk Down" are constructed with Defense Department assistance as explicit cheerleaders for the U.S. military, but Matthew Alford also emphasizes how so-called radical films like "Three Kings," "Hotel Rwanda" and "Avatar" present watered-down alternative visions of American politics that serve a similar function. "Reel Power" is the first book to examine the internal workings of contemporary Hollywood as a politicized industry as well as scores of films across all genres. No matter what the progressive impulses of some celebrities and artists, Alford shows how they are part of a system that is hard-wired to encourage American global supremacy and frequently the use of state violence.

"Democracy For The Few" is a provocative interpretation of American Government. It shows how democracy is repeatedly violated by corporate oligopolies, and how popular forces have fought back and occasionally made gains in spite of the system. By focusing on the relationship between economic power and political power, discussing actual government practices and policies, conspiracies, propaganda, fraud, secrecy and other ploys of government and politics, this book stands apart in its analysis of how US Government works.