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.
One of the most transcendent poets of his generation, Darwish composed this remarkable elegy at the apex of his creativity, but with the full knowledge that his death was imminent. Thinking it might be his final work, he summoned all his poetic genius to create a luminous work that defies categorization. In stunning language, Darwish's self-elegy inhabits a rare space where opposites bleed and blend into each other. Prose and poetry, life and death, home and exile are all sung by the poet and his other. On the threshold of im/mortality, the poet looks back at his own existence, intertwined with that of his people. Through these lyrical meditations on love, longing, Palestine, history, friendship, family, and the ongoing conversation between life and death, the poet bids himself and his readers a poignant farewell.
In this book readers are led on a powerful and inspiring journey through the inner dimensions of a range of Islamic acts, including prayer, almsgiving, fasting, and pilgrimage.
Consisting of a selection of writings by a great figure in Islamic history, Imam al-Ghazali, this book helps readers realize the benefits of the upliftment of their spiritual, social, and moral qualities.
Al-Ghazali (10581111), a towering figure in Islam, was born at Tus, near Mashhad in Iran, in the early Seljuq era. He wrote a large number of works, of which his magnum opus was the Ihya' Ulum al-Din compiled during his period of retirement and contemplation.
‘Intellectual Intifada’ traces the steps of the Prophetic model for the establishment of just governance—stepping round the misconceptions and misrepresentations of Islam, laying bare the collective responsibility of each believer to bring the Caliphate into being. Far from becoming an autocratic tyranny, Rashid shows that a concerted attempt—under the guidance of ijtihād and the ahl al-ḥall wa al-ʿaqd—to eliminate the unjust taxes, the punishment by inflation through usurious banking mechanisms, and the wastefulness of warmongering military budgets, may produce something close to the perfect example of society as established in Madinah. The intelligent way to change the disastrous state of affairs, or affairs of the state—Rashid never shies from calling a spade a spade—is to change oneself. To shake off the shackles of the monocultural consumer slavery that binds us requires—not in violent reaction—but an acute grasp of how things are.
The Pelican Original is the work of a sociologist who has specialised in education and delinquency. It stresses the present n=inadequacies in the passage leading from school to work, particularly for the thousands educated in secondary modern schools.
The more we educate, it seems, the vaguer school leavers are becoming about thier future careers. They wander unarmed into the jungle of industrial society: to the tiger they are merely fodder.
In this chronicle of political awakening and queer solidarity, the activist and novelist Sarah Schulman describes her dawning consciousness of the Palestinian liberation struggle. Invited to Israel to give the keynote address at an LGBT studies conference at Tel Aviv University, Schulman declines, joining other artists and academics honoring the Palestinian call for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel. Anti-occupation activists in the United States, Canada, Israel, and Palestine come together to help organize an alternative solidarity visit for the American activist. Schulman takes us to an anarchist, vegan café in Tel Aviv, where she meets anti-occupation queer Israelis, and through border checkpoints into the West Bank, where queer Palestinian activists welcome her into their spaces for conversations that will change the course of her life. She describes the dusty roads through the West Bank, where Palestinians are cut off from water and subjected to endless restrictions while Israeli settler neighborhoods have full freedoms and resources. As Schulman learns more, she questions the contradiction between Israel's investment in presenting itself as gay friendly—financially sponsoring gay film festivals and parades—and its denial of the rights of Palestinians. At the same time, she talks with straight Palestinian activists about their position in relation to homosexuality and gay rights in Palestine and internationally. Back in the United States, Schulman draws on her extensive activist experience to organize a speaking tour for some of the Palestinian queer leaders whom she had met and trusted. Dubbed "Al-Tour," it takes the activists to LGBT community centers, conferences, and universities throughout the United States. Its success solidifies her commitment to working to end Israel's occupation of Palestine, and it kindles her larger hope that a new "queer international" will emerge and join other movements demanding human rights across the globe.
Left Cultures will delve deep into the left’s cultural past to discuss gems of storytelling within film, literature, music, art and poetry. Culture which has influenced and inspired an eclectic bunch of comrades to continue in this tradition by creating new cultural endeavours on the left today. Colliding together the past and present to celebrate the power and rich diversity of storytelling on the left with personal accounts, beautifully illustrated throughout.
In 1993 prisoners took control of the maximum-security prison in Lucasville, Ohio. Their 11-day ordeal started with a dispute between the warden and Muslim prisoners and ended with a negotiated settlement, but only after nine prisoners and one hostage had been killed. In the months that followed, leaders of the uprising were singled out by the state, tried, and sentenced to death despite compelling evidence of their innocence. Lucasville tells the inside story of the uprising, the subsequent trial and sentencing. Eminent historian and lawyer Staughton Lynd brings the full power of evidence to bear as he retells the Lucasville story. He argues compellingly that the five men sentenced to death have been unfairly convicted. In addition, he describes the uprising from the inside-how the prisoners worked together, black and white, even Muslims and members of the Aryan Brotherhood, for the improvement of conditions. The ease with which the state has been able to use its resources, and the court's, to bring the Lucasville 5 to the point of execution raises questions that will make readers want to rethink not only the justification for these convictions, but the legitimacy of the death penalty in any case.