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The subject of numerous biographies and history books, Winston
Churchill has been repeatedly voted as one of the greatest of
Englishmen. Even today, Boris Johnson in his failing attempts to be
magisterial, has adopted many of his hero's mannerism! And, as
Tariq Ali agrees, Churchill was undoubtedly right in 1940-41 to
refuse to capitulate to fascism. However, he was also one of the
staunchest defenders of empire and of Britain's imperial doctrine.
In this coruscating biography, Tariq Ali challenges Churchill's
vaulted record. Throughout his long career as journalist,
adventurer, MP, military leader, statesman, and historian,
nationalist self belief influenced Churchill's every step, with
catastrophic effects. As a young man he rode into battle in South
Africa, Sudan and India in order to maintain the Imperial order. As
a minister during the first World War, he was responsible for a
series of calamitous errors that cost thousands of lives. His
attempt to crush the Irish nationalists left scars that have not
yet healed. Despite his record as a defender of his homeland during
the Second World War, he was willing to sacrifice more distant
domains. Singapore fell due to his hubris. Over 3 Millions Bengalis
starved in 1943 as a consequence of his policies. As a peace time
leader, even as the Empire was starting to crumble, Churchill never
questioned his imperial philosophy as he became one of the
architects of the postwar world we live in today.
MULE. Who created us? ROCINANTE. What kind of dumb question is
that? The great master Cervantes, of course. Who else? MULE. God.
ROCINANTE. Listen you obstinate fool. We're animals. We don't have
to believe in God. That's meant for the superior species. MULE. Why
did Cervantes create us? ROCINANTE. Because he was a genius. I
think he made me a bit like himself. But those who ride us were not
so lucky. Tariq Ali's latest play, The New Adventures of Don
Quixote, can be read as homage to German poet and playwright
Bertolt Brecht as much as a playful tribute to Cervantes's
masterwork. The central characters from the original novel, Don
Quixote and Sancho Panza, are mounted on their beasts of burden,
Rocinante and the Mule, and Ali has them ride into the twenty-first
century, where they are confronted by old vices familiar to them:
war, greed, ethnic and religious prejudices, disappointed love, and
economic crisis. Their story is satirical, and their songs are sad
and angry. But there are odd moments of happiness for Quixote, when
he imagines that a wounded US colonel is Dulcinea and allows
himself to be seduced by her in a military hospital in Germany.
Primarily interested in discovering the meaning of life and how it
is molded by the world in which we live, Ali's theatrical device is
the conversation between the two animals - Rocinante the
philosopher and Mule the everyman who questions her relentlessly.
Accompanied by numerous color performance stills of the play from
its 2013 production in Germany, this volume is as intellectually
stimulating as it is uproariously humorous.
Who killed Mrs Gandhi? We know the name of the assassins, but did
they act alone? In this fictional filmscript, Tariq Ali suggests
that larger forces were at work, exploiting genuine Sikh grievances
to settle their own score with a prime minister who, whatever her
faults, was fiercely independent of Washington and safeguarded
Indian sovereignty with a zeal inherited from her father.
Provocative and suggestive, this script planned as the second of a
series was never completed. The Assassination is published here for
the first time and completes Ali's trilogy, with The Leopard and
The Fox and A Banker For All Seasons.
Marx once wrote that history weighs like a nightmare on the brain
of the living.' Perhaps he did not know how right he would be. Even
twenty years after the Soviet Union's collapse, activists are still
confronted by the legacy of Communism, particularly in regards to
Stalinism. Tariq Ali's The Stalinist Legacy aims to deepen
understanding of the origins, impacts and enduring prominence of
Stalinism, so as to help exorcise these ghosts of the past. Edited
by Tariq Ali, author of The Obama Syndrome (Verso, 2011) and editor
of the New Left Review.'
After being forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy, Julian
Assange is now in a high security prison in London where he faces
extradition to the United States and imprisonment for the rest of
his life. The charges Assange faces are a major threat to press
freedom. James Goodale, who represented the New York Times in the
Pentagon Papers case, commented: "The charge against Assange for
'conspiring' with a source is the most dangerous I can think of
with respect to the First Amendment in all my years representing
media organizations." It is critical now to build support for
Assange and prevent his delivery into the hands of the Trump
administration. That is the urgent purpose of this book. A wide
range of distinguished contributors, many of them in original
pieces, here set out the story of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, the
importance of their work, and the dangers for us all in the
persecution they face. In Defense of Julian Assange is a vivid,
vital intervention into one of the most important political issues
of our day.
Baruch Spinoza (1632-77) is considered one of the great rationalist
thinkers of the seventeenth century. His magnum opus, Ethics, in
which he criticized the dualism of Descartes, solidified his
reputation and greatly influenced the Enlightenment thinkers who
would build from his work. Born in Amsterdam into a family of
Sephardic Jews who had to take refuge there after they were
expelled from Portugal, the precocious young scholar imbibed
skepticism at an early age. By the time he was twenty-four, he had
challenged what he called the "fairy tales" of the Old Testament
and was excommunicated by the Synagogue. In this biographical play,
Tariq Ali contextualizes Spinoza's philosophy by linking it to the
turbulent politics of the period, in which Spinoza was deeply
involved. Ali originally wrote The Trials of Spinoza as part of a
series on philosophy for British Channel Four television, and this
publication also includes a DVD of that original television
production. This work will be welcomed as a testament to the
continuing interest in and relevance of Spinoza's work and as an
example of Ali's eloquent and always politically engaged writing.
Amusing, well researched, and surprisingly sophisticated, Leon
Trotsky: An Illustrated Introduction is the perfect primer on the
life and thought of the great leader and chronicler of the Russian
Revolution. With sympathy and humour, Tariq Ali and Phil Evans
trace Trotsky's political career, from prison to the pinnacle of
revolutionary power, and finally to his eventual exile and murder
by Joseph Stalin.
Tariq Ali revisits his formative years as a young radical. Reissued
for the 1968 anniversary, Street-Fighting Years captures the mood
and energy of the era of hope and passion as Ali tracks the growing
significance of the nascent protest movement. Through his own
story, he recounts a counter history of the 60s rocked by the
effects of the Vietnam war, the aftermath of the revolutionary
insurgencies led by Che Guevara, the brutal suppression of the
Prague Spring and the student protests on the streets of Europe and
America. It is a story that takes us from Paris and Prague to Hanoi
and Bolivia, encountering along the way Malcolm X, Bertrand
Russell, Marlon Brando, Henry Kissinger, and Mick Jagger. This
edition includes a new introduction, as well as the famous
interview conducted by Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn with John
Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1971.
The NATO occupation of Afghanistan is over, and a balance-sheet can
be drawn. These essays on war and peace in the region reveal Tariq
Ali at his sharpest and most prescient. Rarely has there been such
an enthusiastic display of international unity as that which
greeted the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Compared to Iraq,
Afghanistan became the 'good war.' But a stalemate ensued, and the
Taliban waited out the NATO contingents. Today, with the collapse
of the puppet regime in Kabul, what does the future hold for a
traumatised Afghan people? Will China become the dominant influence
in the country? Tariq Ali has been following the wars on
Afghanistan for forty years. He opposed Soviet military
intervention in 1979, predicting disaster. He was also a fierce
critic of its NATO sequel, 'Operation Enduring Freedom'. In a
series of trenchant commentaries, he described the tragedies
inflicted on Afghanistan, as well as the semi-Talibanisation and
militarisation of neighbouring Pakistan. Most of his predictions
proved accurate. The Forty Year War in Afghanistan brings together
the best of his writings and includes a new introduction.
The subject of numerous biographies and history books, Winston
Churchill has been repeatedly voted as one of the greatest of
Englishmen. Even today, Boris Johnson in his failing attempts to be
magisterial, has adopted many of his hero's mannerism! And, as
Tariq Ali agrees, Churchill was undoubtedly right in 1940-41 to
refuse to capitulate to fascism. However, he was also one of the
staunchest defenders of empire and of Britain's imperial doctrine.
In this coruscating biography, Tariq Ali challenges Churchill's
vaulted record. Throughout his long career as journalist,
adventurer, MP, military leader, statesman, and historian,
nationalist self belief influenced Churchill's every step, with
catastrophic effects. As a young man he rode into battle in South
Africa, Sudan and India in order to maintain the Imperial order. As
a minister during the first World War, he was responsible for a
series of calamitous errors that cost thousands of lives. His
attempt to crush the Irish nationalists left scars that have not
yet healed. Despite his record as a defender of his homeland during
the Second World War, he was willing to sacrifice more distant
domains. Singapore fell due to his hubris. Over 3 Millions Bengalis
starved in 1943 as a consequence of his policies. As a peace time
leader, even as the Empire was starting to crumble, Churchill never
questioned his imperial philosophy as he became one of the
architects of the postwar world we live in today.
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Hopeless (Paperback)
Jeffrey St.Clair, Joshua Frank, Jeremy Scahill, Tariq Ali, Kathy Kelly
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R398
Discovery Miles 3 980
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The revolutionary world leader's extraordinary life, published for
the centenary of Lenin's death Commissioned by Oliver Stone in 2015
to commemorate the Russian Revolution, Tariq Ali's captivating
screenplay of the life and times of Vladimir Lenin puts flesh on
the bones of the historical record and gets its pulse racing. From
the author of The Dilemmas of Lenin, the drama captures the enigma
of its central character. Ali shows Lenin in his rush from
Switzerland to Petrograd by train to grasp his moment in history
and the force of his personality on the tumult he found there. He
made a revolution and remade a nation. Interwoven with the politics
is an exploration of Lenin's personal life, especially his love for
Inessa Armand. In the introduction, Ali argues that, despite the
difficulties, a serious cinematic assessment of Lenin is still
needed. Unfortunately, two very different attempts to film one
failed. This first draft provides the basis for something on a
grander scale at some stage in the future. Praise for The Dilemmas
of Lenin: 'Aims to rescue Lenin from both liberal caricature and
Soviet hagiography by recovering the realism and dynamism of his
political thought' David Sessions, Nation 'An incredibly powerful,
panoramic, and insightful study of the central revolutionary figure
of the twentieth century' Paul LeBlanc, author of Lenin and the
Revolutionary Party
During the late Seventies and Eighties a new logo began to jostle
for space with the more traditional landmarks on high streets
throughout Britain. It was the badge of a remarkable Third World
Bank...the BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International).BCCI
soon become a global corporate empire with former US Presidents,
ex-British Prime Ministers and a range of dictators on its payroll,
all helping with promoting the company. Tariq Ali was the first
public voice to warn that the Bank was not all it seemed to be.
Indeed, many of its own employees called BCCI the "Bank of Crooks
and Cheats Incorporated". Some political analysts also predicted
the companys collapse. The Bank finally imploded amidst a welter of
scandal. This revealing screenplay presents an account of the rise
and fall of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. Here,
Ali reveals how BCCI lasted so long, how financial regulators
failed to see what was going on and how BCCI pioneered a mode of
operation that prepared the way for an even greater financial
cataclysm, the fall of Enron.
In this novel from esteemed political writer Tariq Ali, a father,
Vlady, loses his job when he refuses to renounce socialist beliefs
in the newly unified Germany--and as a result wants to explain to
his alienated son what their family's long and passionate
involvement with communism has really meant. The story he tells is
of Ludwik, a Polish secret agent and Gertrude, Vlady's mother,
whose desire for Ludwik is matched only by her devotion to the
communist ideal. As the plot unfolds through the political
upheavals of the twentieth century, Vlady describes the hopes
aroused by the Bolshevik revolution and discovers the almost
unbearable truth about the family's betrayal. Written with deep
political insight and sensitivity, Fear of Mirrors relates the
extraordinary history of Central Europe from the perspective of
those on the other side of the Cold War. "Ali folds his drama
around the tight, cultlike atmosphere of Communist Party life,
peopled by idealists who find their lives encumbered by betrayals,
power grabs, and corruption and who, in the post-Communist era,
must come to terms with their complicity with Stalinism. . . . This
is a valuable book, especially for those interested in the current
thinking of the European left."--Publishers Weekly, on the first
edition
We are living in an age of crisis-or an age in which everything is
labeled a crisis. Financial, debt, and refugee "crises" have
erupted. The word has also been applied to the Arab Spring and its
aftermath, Brexit, the 2016 U.S. election, and many other
international events. Yet the term has contradictory political and
strategic meanings for those challenging power structures and those
seeking to preserve them. For critics of the status quo, can the
rhetoric of crisis be used to foment urgency around issues like
climate change and financialization, or does framing a situation as
a "crisis" play into the hands of the existing political order,
which then seeks to tighten the leash by creating a state of
emergency? Critical Theory at a Crossroads presents conversations
with prominent theorists about the crises that have marked the past
years, the protest movements that have risen up in response, and
the use of the term in political discourse. Tariq Ali, Rosi
Braidotti, Wendy Brown, Maurizio Lazzarato, Angela McRobbie,
Jean-Luc Nancy, Antonio Negri, Jacques Ranciere, Saskia Sassen, and
Joseph Vogl offer their views on contemporary challenges and how we
might address them, candidly discussing the alternatives that new
social movements have offered, alongside an exchange between
Zygmunt Bauman and Roberto Esposito on theories of community.
Sparring over crucial developments in these past years of
catastrophe and the calamity of everyday life under capitalism,
they shed light on how crises and the discourse of crisis can both
obscure and reveal fundamental aspects of modern societies.
The BBC commissioned Tariq Ali to write a three-part TV series on
the circumstances leading to the overthrow, trial and execution of
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the first elected prime minister of Pakistan.
As rehearsals were about to begin, the BBC hierarchy--under
pressure from the Foreign Office--decided to cancel the project.
Why? General Zia ul Haq, the dictator at the time, was leading the
jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. He was backed by the
USA. According to expert legal opinion, there was a possibility of
a whole range of defamation suits from the head of state to judges
involved in the case. In consequence, it was decided not to
broadcast this hard-hitting and provocative play. The Leopard and
the Fox presents both the script and the story of censorship.
In this fully updated edition of his coruscating polemic, Tariq Ali
shows how, since 1989, politics has become a contest to see who can
best serve the needs of the market. In this urgent and wide-ranging
case for the prosecution, Ali looks at the people and the events
that have informed this moment across the world. This reaches its
logical conclusion with the presidency of Donald Trump, the success
of En Marche in France and the dominance of Merkel's Germany
through Europe. But are we starting to see cracks within the fabric
of the extreme centre? In a series of new chapters Ali suggests
that there is room for hope. He finds promise in developments in
Latin America and at the edges of Europe. Emerging parties across
Europe, Greece and Spain, formed out of the 2008 crisis, are
offering new hope for democracy. In the UK, the rise of Jeremy
Corbyn indicates that the hegemony of the centre may be weaker than
imagined.
A new beautiful edition of the Communist Manifesto, combined with
Lenin's key revolutionary tract It was the 1917 Russian Revolution
that transformed the scale of The Communist Manifesto, making it
the key text for socialists everywhere. On the centenary of this
upheaval, this volume pairs Marx and Engels's most famous work with
Lenin's own revolutionary manifesto, "The April Theses," which
lifts politics from the level of everyday banalities to become an
art-form. The Communist Manifesto "Oppressor and oppressed, stood
in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted,
now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in
a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the
common ruin of the contending classes." The Communist Manifesto is
the most influential political text ever written-few other calls to
action have stirred and changed the world. Now, in the wake of a
punishing financial crisis, in a world built on regimes of
permanent austerity, each rife with horrific disparities in wealth,
this short book remains a reference point for those trying to
understand the transformations being wrought by capitalism and its
concomitant forms of exploitation. This centenary edition includes
a new introduction by Tariq Ali, contextualizing the period-the eve
of the 1848 revolutions-in which Marx and Engels penned their
masterpiece and argues that it desperately needs a successor. "The
April Theses" "The chain breaks first at its weakest link." In
Lenin's "April Theses," written in 1917, he presented his ten
analytical maxims, outlining a programme to accelerate and complete
the revolution that had begun in February of that year. Now, on the
revolution's centenary, Verso presents them here alongside Lenin's
'Letters from Afar', written in exile that March and addressed to
his comrades in Petrograd. In these missives, he offers advice and
instruction to comrades pushing ahead with their ideals in the
aftermath of the February revolution. The introduction by Tariq Ali
traces The Communist Manifesto's influence on Lenin's "April
Theses," the text that brought the manifesto to life and made it
one of the most widely read books in history. For Lenin, writes
Ali, it was the birth of imperialism, the legitimate offspring of
capitalism, that signalled the end of the latter's "progressive
capacities."
The assault and capture of Iraq-and the resistance it has
provoked-will shape the politics of the twenty-first century. In
this passionate and provocative book, Tariq Ali provides a history
of Iraqi resistance against empires old and new, and argues against
the view that sees imperialist occupation as the only viable
solution to bring about regime-change in corrupt and dictatorial
states. Like the author's previous work, The Clash of
Fundamentalisms, this book presents a magnificent cultural history.
Detailing the longstanding imperial ambitions of key figures in the
Bush administration and how war profiteers close to Bush are
cashing in, Bush in Babylon is unique in moving beyond the
corporate looting by the US military government to offer the reader
an expert and in-depth analysis of the extent of resistance to the
US occupation in Iraq. On 15 February 2003, eight million people
marched on the streets of five continents against a war that had
not yet begun. A historically unprecedented number of people
rejected official justifications for war that the secular Ba'ath
Party of Iraq was connected to al-Qaeda or that "weapons of mass
destruction" existed in the region, outside of Israel. More people
than ever are convinced that the greatest threat to peace comes
from the center of the American empire and its satrapies, with
Blair and Sharon as lieutenants to the Commander-in-Chief.
Examining how countries from Japan to France eventually rushed to
support US aims, as well as the futile UN resistance, Tariq Ali
proposes a re-founding of Mark Twain's mammoth American
Anti-Imperialist League (which included William James, W.E.B.
DuBois, William Dean Howells, and John Dewey) to carry forward the
antiwar movement. Meanwhile, as Iraqis show unexpected hostility
and independence, rather than gratitude, for "liberation," Ali is
unique is uncovering the depth of the resistance now occurring
inside occupied Iraq.
Night of the Golden Butterfly concludes the Islam Quintet-Tariq
Ali's much lauded series of historical novels, over twenty years in
the writing, which has been translated into a dozen languages
Completing an epic panorama that began in fifteenth-century Moorish
Spain, the concluding novel moves between the cities of the
twenty-first century, from Lahore to London, from Paris to Beijing.
The narrator is rung one morning and reminded that he owes a debt
of honour. The creditor is Mohammed Aflatun-known as Plato-an
irascible but gifted painter living in a Pakistan where "human
dignity has become a wreckage." Plato, who once specialized in
stepping back from the limelight, now wants his life story written.
As the tale unravels we meet Plato's London friend Alice Stepford,
now a leading music critic in New York; Mrs. "Naughty" Latif, the
Islamabad housewife whose fondness for generals forces her to flee
to the salons of intellectually fashionable Paris, where she
becomes an overnight celebrity, hailed as the Diderot of the
Islamic world; and there's Jindie, the Golden Butterfly of the
title, the narrator's first love. The daughter of a Chinese family
long settled in Lahore, Jindie is now married to his best friend, a
Republican heart surgeon in DC, whose children cannot forgive him
for saving the life of a much-despised politician. Interwoven with
this chronicle of contemporary life is the turbulent history of
Jindie's family. Her great forebear, Du Wenxiu, led a Muslim
rebellion in Yunnan in the nineteenth century and ruled the region
from his capital Dali for almost a decade as Sultan Suleiman. Night
of the Golden Butterfly shows Ali in full flight, at once
imaginative and intelligent, satirical and stimulating.
In working together on two challenging new documentaries - South of
the Border and the forthcoming Untold History of the United States
- Oliver Stone, the filmmaker, engaged with author and filmmaker
Tariq Ali in a hard-hitting conversation on the politics of
history. Their dialogue brings to light a number of forgotten - or
buried - episodes of history. From the U.S. intervention against
the Russian Revolution to the connections between Presidents and
the Saudi royal family, no stone is left unturned and no topic is
sacred in this insightful exchange.
Throughout the ages and across every continent, people have
struggled against those in power and raised their voices in
protest-rallying others around them or, sometimes, inspiring
uprisings many years later. This anthology, global in scope,
presents voices of dissent from every era of human history:
speeches and pamphlets, poems and songs, plays and manifestos.
Every age has its iconoclasts, and yet the greatest among them
build on the words and actions of their forerunners. The Verso Book
of Dissent should be in the arsenal of every rebel who understands
that words and ideas are the ultimate weapons.
Ken Livingstone is a product of the political changes that have
already taken place in the Labour Party. As Leader of the Greater
London Council he has provided a voice and a vision for tens of
thousands of party activists and Labour supporters, in the process
implementing a set of measures that indicate the possibilities of a
real alternative to Thatcherism. His determined opposition on the
Falklands War, subsidised public transport, Ireland, the 1984
miners strike, sexual liberation and racism has made him a far more
effective spokesperson for Labour than the shadow luminaries who
occupy the front benches in the House of Commons. In these
fascinating conversations with Tariq Ali, the Marxist writer and
activist debarred from the Labour Party by Kinnock/Hattersley, the
two men discuss the future of Labour and socialist politics in
Britain. What emerges is a picture of Livingstone as a formidable
socialist politician and an adroit tactician, who displays a
refreshing ability to discard the stale and battered formulae of
traditional Labourism. Socialism is defended with humour, warmth
and passion in a discussion that ranges from the merits of
proportional representation to the delights of herbaceous borders
in London's parks. In a polemical introductory essay, 'Labourism
and the Pink Professors', Tariq Ali contests the views of Bernard
Crick and Eric Hobsbawm, which have become the 'common sense' of
the consensual Establishment in the Labour Party and the liberal
media.
Landscapes of War: From Sarajevo to Chechnya is an incisive
examination of the tensions that exist between the West and Islamic
societies of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. These
essays, originating in Goytisolo's travels in the late 1990s,
provide rich historical analysis and moving first-person reportage
of life in four explosive war-zones: Sarajevo, Algeria, the West
Bank and Gaza, and Chechnya. From the 17th century to the Gulf War,
the West has regarded Islam as the enemy on the doorstep, and this
book elucidates how relations between Islam and the West continue
to be shaped in a climate of ideological, political, and cultural
confrontation. Goytisolo examines the fratricidal frenzy in Algeria
and the war waged by French police against North African migrants
in France, and he describes a besieged Sarajevo transformed into a
concentration camp surrounded by barbed wire. He contemplates the
despair and poverty of Palestinian youth living in the Occupied
Territories and details the brutality of the Russian war in the
Caucasus. Whether reporting on the fate of the Bosnians after the
break up of the former Yugoslavia or analyzing the growing appeal
of fundamentalisms - Islamic, Jewish, and Russian Orthodox -
Goytisolo displays the same blend of intelligence, vision, and warm
fellow-feeling that has made him one the most imposing literary
figures of our time. Many of these succinct and eloquent essays
first appeared in Spain's leading newspaper El Pais, and English
translations were published in the Times Literary Supplement
(London). Juan Goytisolo was born in Barcelona in 1931. In 1993 he
was awarded the Nelly Sachs Prize for his literary achievement and
contribution to world culture. His translated works include a two
volume autobiography, Forbidden Territory and Realms of Strife, the
trilogy Marks of Identity, Count Julian and Juan the Landless, and
the essays, Saracen Chronicles. Other works by him and published by
City Lights Publishers includeThe Marx Family Saga, published in
1999, and A Cock-Eyed COmedy published in 2005. Peter Bush is
Director of the British Center for Literary Translation and
translated Juan Goytisolo's The Marx Family Saga, which was awarded
the Premio Valle-Inclan.
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