By Ralph Rashleigh

The memoir has been edited from its original Victorian novel style to a more direct and vivid narrative. Ralph Rashleigh, a pseudonym, was a London apprentice who turned to crime, leading to his transportation to Australia. Rashleigh endured brutal treatment in the Australian penal system, reflecting the harsh and often sadistic practices of the time. The memoir provides a vivid account of the penal system and criminal law in the early 19th century, highlighting its brutality and inefficacy.

I929 BY JONATHAN CAPE AND HARRISON SMITH INCORPORATED

By C.M. Macinnes

The document provides a detailed history of England’s involvement in the slave trade, focusing on the pre-Emancipation period. It covers various aspects such as the rise of the slave trade, the organization and purchase of slaves, the Middle Passage, and the abolition movement. The book is based on unpublished materials and rare books from the 18th and early 19th centuries. The author expresses gratitude to several individuals and institutions for their assistance in the research and publication of the book.

J. W. ARROWSMITH LTD, 1934

Edited by Anson Shupe, William A. Stacey, and Susan E. Darnell

Child-molesting priests, embezzled church treasures, philandering ministers and rabbis, even church-endorsed pyramid schemes that defraud gullible parishioners of millions of dollars: for the past decade, clergy misconduct has seemed continually to be in the news. Is there something about religious organizations that fosters such misbehavior? Bad Pastors presents a range of new perspectives and solidly grounded data on pastoral abuse, investigating sexual misconduct, financial improprieties, and political and personal abuse of authority. Rather than focusing on individuals who misbehave, the volume investigates whether the foundation for clergy malfeasance is inherent in religious organizations themselves, stemming from hierarchies of power in which trusted leaders have the ability to define reality, control behavior, and even offer or withhold the promise of immortality. Arguing that such phenomena arise out of organizational structures, the contributors do not focus on one particular religion, but rather treat these incidents from an interfaith perspective. Bad Pastors moves beyond individual case studies to consider a broad range of issues surrounding clergy misconduct, from violence against women to the role of charisma and abuse of power in new religious movements. Highlighting similarities between other forms of abuse, such as domestic violence, the volume helps us to conceptualize and understand clergy misconduct in new ways.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2000. 269p.

By Calvin L. Warren

In Ontological Terror Calvin L. Warren intervenes in Afro-pessimism, Heideggerian metaphysics, and black humanist philosophy by positing that the "Negro question" is intimately imbricated with questions of Being. Warren uses the figure of the antebellum free black as a philosophical paradigm for thinking through the tensions between blackness and Being. He illustrates how blacks embody a metaphysical nothing. This nothingness serves as a destabilizing presence and force as well as that which whiteness defines itself against. Thus, the function of blackness as giving form to nothing presents a terrifying problem for whites: they need blacks to affirm their existence, even as they despise the nothingness they represent. By pointing out how all humanism is based on investing blackness with nonbeing—a logic which reproduces antiblack violence and precludes any realization of equality, justice, and recognition for blacks—Warren urges the removal of the human from its metaphysical pedestal and the exploration of ways of existing that are not predicated on a grounding in being.

Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. 233p.

By JM Berger

Can legal codes and court rulings function as extremist ideological texts? 

Academics usually define extremism as a set of beliefs that fall outside the norms of the society in which they are situated, but entire societies have at times been organized around recognizably extreme beliefs. This paper will examine the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Scott v. Sandford, 60 US 393 (1856), more commonly known as the Dred Scott decision. Widely considered the worst Supreme Court decision of all time, the opinion written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney decreed that Black people, whether enslaved or free, could never become citizens of the United States and that they had no rights under the Constitution. 

This paper will analyze the Dred Scott decision to consider whether and how it implements and institutionalizes many widely recognized tropes of extremist ideology. The paper will conclude with a discussion of empirical frameworks that can enable and empower the study of lawful extremism. 

United States, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Montery. 2023, 57pg

By Katrin Frisch

Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and Wyndham Lewis have all, to varying degrees, been the subject of studies that explore their ideology. All too often, however, these studies have not tackled the issue adequately, limiting their analytical approach to fascism or other phenomena such as anti-Semitism. Frequently, they have also sought to exculpate these writers or to normalise their political tendencies in an effort to circumnavigate the dilemma of how to address the paradox of right-wing artists who are both harbingers and opponents of the imagined trajectory of progressive modernity. This interdisciplinary study analyses the connections between literary Modernism and right-wing ideology. Moreover, it is the first academic study to explore the reception of these Modernist authors by today's far right, seeking to understand in what ways they use strategic readings of Modernist texts to legitimise right-wing ideology. By raising fundamental questions about the relationship between aesthetics and politics, this study ultimately challenges its readers to see their cultural practices as political. It wants to make visible and problematize the interdependencies of right-wing ideology and cultural production as well as reception in order to explain the (far) Right as a phenomenon deeply rooted in European history and cultural development. It thus lays bare the misconceptions, the gaps as well as the complicity in the debate about right-wing ideology in literature.

Berlin: Logos Verlag Berlin GmbH , 2019. 378p.

By The World Rainforest Movement

Almost 30 years of UN climate negotiations have resulted in the establishment of policies and practices that facilitate the constant expansion of the fossil fuel-based economy (and its profits) while hiding its implacable negative impacts for the territories where it expands. Almost 30 years of UN climate negotiations have resulted in the establishment of policies and practices that facilitate the constant expansion of the fossil fuel-based economy (and its profits) while hiding its implacable negative impacts for the territories where it expands. Particularly, the fantasy of carbon offsetting as a solution to the climate crisis is ever more present among the methods of corporate greenwashing for expanding their businesses, despite the mounting evidence of its complete failure to reduce emissions or deforestation - as recently denounced by several organizations. However, the strategies adopted by corporations are unable to hide the oppressive and colonial essence of their advances in the Global South. Precisely for this reason, they keep encountering much resistance when they arrive in the territories of the Peoples and communities. This issue of the WRM Bulletin shares articles that can be divided in two parts. The first part exposes four initiatives that dress themselves up as ‘green’ or ‘socially beneficial’ so as to ensure that extractive and production activities carry on unhindered. After all, these are the engine of the capitalist economy, which in turn is the main cause of the problems that such ‘green’ ventures claim they help solving. The second part highlights three experiences of resistance from the territories to such corporate assault. The first article highlights the embedded contradictions of the so-called “energy transition” by exposing how “the largest green industrial area in the world”, in Kalimantan, Indonesia, will in fact lead to an increase in coal extraction in the region. At the same time, this multi-billion dollar project threatens to appropriate and destroy the livelihoods and interconnected spaces of life on land and sea from which grassroots communities depend upon. These communities are at the frontlines resisting this industrial park in order to defend life. The next two articles show the different consequences of two kinds of projects that claim to be offsetting carbon and which largely depend on community territories. One exposes the trend to expand problematic tree plantations, above all in the Global South, with the argument that the trees will “offset” the pollution emitted somewhere else. This includes the whole gamut from large-scale monoculture plantations sponsored by the pulp industry to those nicely sounding plantations promoted by investment funds by means of abusive contracts with indigenous communities. The other article reflects on the abusive contracts for establishing REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) projects in the brazilian Amazon region, specifically on how they compromise millennia-old indigenous practices and communities’ future generations.  The fourth article presents an overview of the perverse logic of certification schemes that over the last 30 years have given ‘sustainability’ and ‘responsibility’ seals to companies from different industries that cause destruction, such as the pulp and paper, palm oil and carbon offsets industries, among others. Such seals often completely ignore violations caused by corporations and legitimize their presence in community territories. The following two articles also expose the greenwashing of industrial monoculture plantations through certification, yet, the focus is turned to highlight the experiences of people’s resistance and organization. In Cameroon, women organized in the Afrise association have shouted a fearless and determined “Enough!” against oil palm plantation company Socapalm/Socfin, which is responsible for decades of “suffering, abuses, violations, theft, hunger, frustration and violations” of their bodies, rights and dignity. We express our full solidarity with these women who, with each others’ support, have declared that they will not tolerate the replanting of oil palm monoculture plantations in their territories. The next article reflects in an interview with Pablo Reyes Huenchumán, member of a Mapuche community in Chile, on the impacts of the violent forestry model imposed on the country which is based on large-scale monoculture plantations. But also, on the achievements and challenges of the Indigenous Mapuche to defend their communities and lives. Pablo explained how the Mapuche have been reclaiming their territories for over 20 years, showing that self-organization and resistance are key.

WRM Bulletin 268 December 2023

USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP.

By Huston Smith

FROM THE PREFACE: “In the spring of 1995 I gave a course on The Religions of Man over KETC, The St.Louis educational television station. The response revealed a real hunger on the part of Americans to know the great faiths that have motivated and continue to motivate the peoples of the world. Over 1200 men and women in this one community enrolled as tuition-paying students while the viewing audience rose to the neighborhood of 100,000. The second thing the response revealed was the need for a different kind of book on world religions, a book which without sacrificing depth would move more rapidly than the usual survey into the meaning these religions carry for the lives of their adherents…”

NY. Harper & Row. 1986.

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By Edith Hamilton

FROM THE COVER: “The Classic Of Classics ...A father and husband caught up in a quarrel between gods and who finds his short sail home turning into a twenty-year journey filled with witches, storms, and one-eyed monsters. A family cursed by the sacrifice of a daughter in return for favorable sailing wnds a curse that can only be expiated in blood. A worried goddess who exacts a promise from all living things never to harm her son--but who misses one little, fatal shrub ….

"Classical mythology has long needed such a popular exposition as Miss Edith Hamilton has given us in this volume, which is at once a reference book and a book which may be read for stimulation and pleasure." -New York Times Book Review.

NY. Warner Books. 1942. 347p.

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By Sam Harris

FROM THE COVER: “In The End of Faith, Sam Harris delivers a startling analysis of the clash between reason and religion in the modern world. He offers a vivid, historical tour of our willingness to suspend reason in favor of religious beliefs- even when these beliefs inspire the worst of human atrocities. While warning against the encroachment of organized religion into world politics, Harris draws on insights from neuroscience, philosophy, and Eastern mysticism to deliver a call for a truly modern foundation for ethics and spirituality that is both secular and humanistic.

"The End of Faith is a genuinely frightening book. ... Read Sam Harris and wake up." -Richard Dawkins, The Guardian

NY. W•W• Norton. 2004. 341p.

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By Susan Jacoby

FROM THE JACKET: At a time when the separation of church and state is under attack as never before, Freethinkers celebrates the noble and essential secularist heritage that gave Americans the first government in the world founded not on the authority of religion but on the bedrock of human reason. In impassioned, elegant prose, Susan Jacoby offers a powerful defense of more than two hundred years of secularist activism, beginning with the fierce debate over the omission of God from the Constitution. Moving from nineteenth-century abolitionism and suffragism through the twentieth-century's civil liberties, civil rights, and feminist movements, Freethinkers illuminates the neglected accomplishments of secularists who, allied with tolerant and liberal religious believers, have stood at the forefront of the battle for social reforms opposed by reactionaries in the past and today. Rich with such iconic figures as Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Clarence Darrow--as well as once-famous secularists such as Robert Green Ingersoll, "the Great Agnostic"-Freethinkers restores to history generations of dedicated humanist champions. It is they, Jacoby shows, who have led the struggle to uphold the unique combination of secular government and religious liberty that is and always has been the glory of the American system.

NY. Henry Holt and Company. 2004. 441p.

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By Frank Morison

FROM THE COVER: “I wanted to take this last phase of the life of Jesus, with all its quick and pulsating drama, its sharp, clear-cut background of antiquity, and its tremendous psychological and human intersEt - -to strip it of its overgrowth of primitive beliefs, dogmatic suppositions, and to see this supremely great Person as He really was.”

Such was English journalist Frank Morison's drive to learn of Christ. The strangeness of the Resurrection story had captured his attention, and, influenced by skeptic thinkers at the turn of the century, he set out to prove that the story of Christ's Resurrection was only a myth. His probings, however, led him to discover the validity of the biblical record in a moving, personal way. Who Moved the Stone? is considered by many to be a classic apologetic on the subject of the Resurrection. Morison includes a vivid and poignant account of Christ's betrayal, trial, and death as a backdrop to his retelling of the climactic Resurrection itself.”

Grand Rapids. Michigan. Lamplighters Books. 1958 (1930) 192p.

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By Dr. Benjamin Spock and Michael Zimmerman

FROM THE COVER: “The Untold Story of Vietnam- WHAT IS THE TRUTH? What would happen if the U.S. stopped the bombing? Or pulled out her troops? Or else went after total military victory? Are we in Vietnam because of a request from the Vietnamese people? Or because of treaty obligations? Or because of past pledges? Do the Viet Cong hold the people in check through terror? Is the war in the South an invasion from the North? What was the significance of the recent South Vietnamese elections? How valid is the "domino theory? What is the danger from China? Is the United States being threatened? Can we believe what our own government tells us? You may think you have the answers to these ques tions. You may not be quite as sure when you finish this book by a famous American who could no longer remain silent.

NY. Dell. 1968. 96p.

By Donelson R. Forsyth

This fascinating new book examines diversity in moral judgements, drawing on recent work in social, personality, and evolutionary psychology, reviewing the factors that influence the moral judgments people make. Why do reasonable people so often disagree when drawing distinctions between what is morally right and wrong? Even when individuals agree in their moral pronouncements, they may employ different standards, different comparative processes, or entirely disparate criteria in their judgments. Examining the sources of this variety, the author expertly explores morality using ethics position theory, alongside other theoretical perspectives in moral psychology, and shows how it can relate to contemporary social issues from abortion to premarital sex to human rights. Also featuring a chapter on applied contexts, using the theory of ethics positions to gain insights into the moral choices and actions of individuals, groups, and organizations in educational, research, political, medical, and business settings, the book offers answers that apply across individuals, communities, and cultures. Investigating the relationship between people’s personal moral philosophies and their ethical thoughts, emotions, and actions, this is fascinating reading for students and academics from psychology and philosophy and anyone interested in morality and ethics.

New York: Routledge, 2010. 211p.

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By Gerald R. Cragg

FROM THE PREFACE: “This span in the history of the Christian church stretches from the age of religious and civil strife which existed before the middle of the seventeenth century to the age of industrialism and republicanism which followed the French Revolution and the beginning of the Napoleonic wars. The church in general, reacting strongly against the turbulences of the Civil War and the Thirty Years' War, placed a premium on order, moderation, and stability. Movements suspected of enthusiasm, such as Puritanism, Quietism, and Jansenism, fell into disrepute, and the authority exercised by the state in religious affairs became more pronounced. It was an age dominated by Reason, which, until it provoked a reaction in such movements as Pietism and Evangelicism, posed a formidable challenge to Christianity.”

London. Penguin. 1960. 297p.

By James Carroll

FROM THE COVER: In this "rare book that combines searing passion ... with a subject that has affected all of our lives" (Chicago Tribune), the novelist and cultural critic James Carroll maps the profoundly troubling two-thousand-year course of the Church's battle against Judaism and faces the crisis of faith it has provoked in his own life as a Catholic. More than a chronicle of religion, this dark history is the central tragedy of Western civilization, its fault lines reaching deep into our culture. A courageous and affecting reckoning with difficult truths that will touch every reader, Constantines Sword is truly a book for our times.

A Mariner Boo.k Houghton Mifelin Company. 2002. 757p. USED BOOK. CONTAINS MARK-UP.

By Richard Berstein

From the cover: “At the beginning of 1945, relations between Anerica and the Chinese Communists couldn't have been closer. Chinese lead ers talked of America helping to lift China out of poverty; Mao Zedong himself held friendly meetings with U.S. emissaries. By year's end, Chinese Communist soldiers were setting ambushes for American marines; official cordiality had been replaced bychilly hostility and distrust, a pattern which would continue for a quarter century, with the devastating wars in Korea and Vietnam among the consequences.

NY. Vintage. 2015. 473p. USED BOOK. CONTAINS MARK-UP

Compiled By Vincent Cronin

From the introduction: “…With the portrayal of saints, on the other hand, artists have felt no nced to transcend the limitations of time and place. Such portraits accurately reflect the ciilization which gave them birth, without, however, being merely local or national. Hagio-iconography has scldom been tainted by chauvinism. St George, a martyr in Palestine, is patron saint of England, while St Nicholas is honoured no less in Italy than in Russia. I can remember my surprise and delight in finding a stained- glass window of St Thomas à Becket in a church in Sicily, and a picture of St Theresa of Lisieux in a peasant cottage in the depths of Yugoslavia. The portrayal of saints, though some may regard it as merely a side-line in the history of Western civilization, can actually claim to be one of its most central and distinctive features…”

Westminster. Newman Press. 1963. 381p.

By Giza Lopes

From the series foreword by Graeme R. Newman: “ Lopes convincingly argues that not only have the clergy as the shepherds of Death been replaced by modern medicine’s doctors and technologies, but that the rule of law has intervened to codify the ways and rights of helping people to die. She catalogues, with fascinating case studies and detailed historical observation, the quite different ways that the United States and European countries have tackled this problem of all problems. This is an erudite book that leaves no detail untouched; relentlessly unravels the moral, judicial, and political events that arguably precede—seen and unseen—not only every assisted death but arguably every single death on earth; and shows how these events have relentlessly set the stage for the coming movement to quicken the time it takes to die.”

Santa Barbara. Praeger. 2015. 256p.