Barry Healy

Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball: The Best of Joe Bageant By Joe Bageant Scribe Publications, 2011 $32.95, 298 pp. Joe Bageant was a feature on many United States left-wing websites, such as Counterpunch, over the years. His writing is witty, outrageous and with a penetratingly cynical view of working-class American life. Bageant, who died last year, came from a depressed, working-class community in Winchester, Virginia, and never lost his love/hate relationship with the people he knew so well there.

The Honoured Dead By Joseph Braude Scribe Publications, 2011 336pp, $32.95 This fascinating documentary book gives insights into the roots of the Arab Spring that is sweeping dictatorships away across the Middle East and North Africa. Written as a first person narrative by US reporter Joseph Braude, The Honoured takes the reader into the lived experience of the poor in Morocco, explaining a good deal about the country’s history and culture in the process.

The Vatican has attacked the largest group of American nuns for allegedly promoting radical feminism. It appointed a bishop to “reorganise” the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR). This is in stark contrast to how the church has handled its ongoing sexual abuse scandal among its men.  

The Yiddish language, developed out of German by Ashkenazi Jews, was the major language of European Jews before the Holocaust. With the development of modern Hebrew in Israel it started to fade.

By Barry Healy Which Side Are You On? is Veteran United States indie folk artist Ani DiFranco’s first CD release in years and her legion of fans will be pleased to hear that she has lost none of her edge.

Why Marx Was Right By Terry Eagleton Yale University Press, 2011 272 pp., $32.95 In August, the Wall Street Journal website ran a video of an interview with Nouriel Roubini as its top story under the headline, "Roubini: Marx was Right." Roubini is a mainstream economist who achieved fame by predicting the 2008 financial collapse, earning himself the nickname "Dr. Doom" among the Wall Street speculators.

In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary By Ngo Van AK Press, 2011 264 pages, $43.99 Australians know of the Vietnam War from the arrival of Australian troops in 1965 through to their withdrawal in 1973. People in the United States generally date it from the arrival of US advisors through to the inglorious departure of US helicopters in 1975. However, for the Vietnamese the struggle began long before that, from their colonisation by the French in the 19th Century.

Inside Al-Qaeda and the TalibanM By Syed Saleem Shahzad Pluto Press, 2011 260 pp., $39.95 Deadly Waters, The Hidden World of Somalia’s Pirates By Jan Bahadur Scribe, 2011 300 pp., $29.95 The Interrogator, A CIA Agent’s True Story By Glenn Carle Sribe, 2011 321 pp., $32.95 The Wizard of Lies, Bernie Madoff & the Death of Trust By Diana B. Henriques Scribe, 2011 419 pp., $35.00

More corporate managers are psychopaths than the general population, a detailed research project has discovered. The University of British Columbia study “Corporate Psychopathy: Talking the Walk”, published in Behavioural Sciences and the Law, March/April 2010, looked at professionals who had been spotted as potential management material, the people thought to have the skills that could get them to senior positions.

The huge number of transnational capitalist firms straddling the planet are effectively controlled by a very small group of centrally important players, says a ground-breaking survey conducted by Swiss researchers. Deploying statistical methods normally used in physics, Stefania Vitali, James B. Glattfelder and Stefano Battiston of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, data-mined information held by business intelligence firm Bureau van Dijk. The data, which included company ownership structures, allowed a new insight into the relationships between 43,060 corporations.

Fremantle in Western Australia is emerging as a key battleground between a Liberal-National state government committed to building freeways at any cost and a community that wants to see better public transport and an expansion of rail freight. Container movements at Fremantle Port are predicted to double by 2020, yet the percentage being carried to port by train has declined from 17% in 2007 to 11% in this year. It is predicted to dwindle to 8.5% by next year.

“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the oppressed and loving the people doing the oppressing,” African American revolutionary Malcolm X, assassinated in 1965 at the age of 39, once said in a comment on the capitalist media that applies to contemporary reporting on English riots or refugees.