"Fearless" Petras Wins International Journalism Prize
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By Club de Periodistas de México. Les Blough. Axis of Logic
CLARITY PRESS, INC. AXIS OF LOGIC.
Tuesday, Dec 14, 2010
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James Petras, Caracas, January, 2008 |
"Fearless" describes Jim Petras well among the many other terms that can be rightly spoken of him and his life work. Through the decades Petras has worked directly with indigenous workers as an organizer, advised left wing presidents like President Papandreou (Greece 1981-85), President Salvador Allende of Chile (1970-73) and in recent years, President Hugo Chavez, defended the rights of the indigenous in Latin America and has consistently and skillfully applied a unique and powerful blunt force against U.S. imperialism and entrenched Zionism. His excavating research, formidable logic, incisive essays, popular radio broadcasts (in Spanish) and widely read books add up to a major contribution to contemporary critical thinking from the Left.
Among the thousands of contemporary western thinkers, writers and activists on the Left, only a few like Eduardo Galeano, John Pilger, Tariq Ali and Edward Said, have advanced untainted to the front lines in the Great Media War. James Petras undoubtedly occupies his place among them on that battleground. And yet, in our face to face meetings, in our relationship as author and editor/publisher and in our friendship that has developed over the years, I've found him to be one of the most humble and unassuming people I've ever known. We were gratified when he agreed to be listed among our columnists on Axis of Logic several years ago and as such his essays have been of great value to the growing awareness of Axis of Logic readers. We congratulate James Petras for this recent honor given him as a recipient of the International Journalism Prize in Mexico.
- Les Blough, Editor
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On December 8 2010 The Club of Mexican Journalists awarded James Petras its prestigious INTERNATIONAL JOURNALISM PRIZE for outstanding Research and Analysis of World News. He was cited for the depth and breadth of his publications as well as his fearlessness in challenging established powers.
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"Dr. James Petras is one of the greatest personalities of critical intellect of our time. His numerous books, which have been translated into many languages, and his opinion articles which are invariably defined by their rigor and decisive data, widely documented and placed within their social context, have turned this thinker into one of the most lucid and coherent minds of recent times. Naturally, this has earned Dr. Petras the resentment of those who feel affected by his tireless efforts. Nevertheless, countless readers all over the world seek the words of this thinker to defend themselves from propaganda that intends to make us sympathize with the single-minded thinking of neoliberalism."
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WAR CRIMES IN GAZA and the ZIONIST FIFTH COLUMN IN AMERICA
ISBN: 0-9845255-0-5 ISBN13: 978-0-9845255-0-8 / $15.00 / 126 pp. / 2010
The texts and illustrations in this book provide graphic accounts and visual evidence of why Israel has provoked a worldwide 'Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions' campaign by human rights activists, trade unions and a multitude of other groups, including individuals in Israel and Jewish organizations in Europe and North America. It includes the Executive Summary of the Goldstone Report, an in depth case study of Israel's war crimes in Gaza. The US governments' sustained complicity with Israeli war crimes in the face of worldwide reprobation, and the conduct of the Obama White House and nearly 90% of the US Congress in denouncing the Goldstone Report are addressed in the chapters discussing the political, economic and cultural power of the Presidents of the Major American Jewish organizations, including but not confined to AIPAC. |
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GLOBAL DEPRESSION AND REGIONAL WARS
ISBN: 0-932863-68-X ISBN13: 978-0-932863-68-3 $16.95 / 234 pp. / 2009
This book exposes the roots of the crisis in the unsustainability of the United States' military-driven empire building based on a volatile speculative economy, and influenced by Zionist policy makers committed to the colonialist state of Israel. It offers a critical study of the collapse of the empire and a profound indictment of the respectable and prestigious personalities either responsible for the debacle, or for its continuance. Petras provides clear insight into how the ramifications of the world depression and regional wars that originated in Washington and on Wall Street are extending throughout the world, provoking popular challenges especially in Latin America, while reinforcing the belligerency and increasingly fascistic nature of the state of Israel. He demonstrates how unending wars and a deepening capitalist depression have demolished the ideology of free market neo-liberalism and forced to the forefront the need for structural changes. |
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ZIONISM, MILITARISM AND THE DECLINE OF US POWER
ISBN: 0-932863-60-4 / 978-0-932863-60-7 / $16.95 / 192 pages / 2008
Only Zion-Con demands and Israeli interests can explain the current US moves against Iran---threats, infiltrations, naval blockades, US Treasury-imposed sanctions on the entire Iranian financial sector including threats to global finance for any linkages---policies which are contrary to the interests of Big Oil, US corporations, and the weakened US military. Petras empirically demonstrates that while the interests of the US do not in fact coincide with those of Israel, the effective power of the pro-Zionist Lobby gives Israel the capacity to replace the US agenda with its own. At a time when our national economy is in deep crisis, the Israel Lobby is pushing for a new military confrontation and war with Iran, oblivious to its catastrophic consequences for the American people. Major pro-Israel officials and the White House are passing more police-state legislation to control and silence the growing majority opposition to the expansion of wars in the Middle East promoted by the Israel Lobby. |
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RULERS AND RULED IN THE US EMPIRE:
Bankers, Zionists, Militants
ISBN: 0-932863-54-X / 264 pp / $16.95 / 2007
This book provides a comprehensive guide to the systemic dimensions of the US empire. Petras elaborates the changes within the US ruling class, as its manufacturing sector declines and gives way to the ascendancy of finance capital, illustrated by its dominance of both the US economy, and the parameters for political debate on the US role in the world economy (globalization, trade liberalization). Petras addresses the fallacy of discussions on the imminent collapse of capitalism when what is occurring in reality is the collapse of workers’ rights. He elaborates the contradictions in current immigration/trade liberalization policies, and how these work toward forcing the displacement of peoples, and furthering the underdevelopment of third world countries. He reveals the dark heart of modern empire, in the emergence and proliferation of holocaust-scale carnage.and further outlines how the world capitalist system is laced together in an intricate hierarchy where the US pulls most of the strings, even outside its ostensible area of < dominance. The role of corruption in securing world markets is addressed, as are the reasons for the spectacular global growth in new billionaires. |
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THE POWER OF ISRAEL IN THE UNITED STATES
ISBN: 0-932863-51-5 / 192 pp. / $16.95 / 2006
This book is a chapter-by-chapter analysis and documentation of the power of Israel via the Israeli, Jewish or Pro-Zionist Lobby on US Middle East policy. It raises serious questions as to the primary beneficiary of US policy, and its destructive results for the United States. The extraordinary extent of US political, economic, military and diplomatic support for the state of Israel is explored, along with the means whereby such support is generated and consolidated. Contending that Zionist power in America ensured unconditional US backing for Israeli colonization of Palestine and its massive uprooting of Palestinians, it views the interests of Israel rather than those of Big Oil as the primary cause of the disastrous US wars against Iraq and threats of war against Iran and Syria. It demonstrates and condemns US imitation of Israeli practice as it relates to conduct of the war on terrorism and torture. It sheds light on the AIPAC spying scandal and other Israeli espionage against America; the fraudulent and complicit role of America’s academic “terrorist experts” in furthering criminal government policies, and the orchestration of the Danish cartoons to foment antipathy between Muslims and the West.
It questions the inability in America to sustain or even formulate a discourse related to the subject of Israeli influence on the United States |
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BY JAMES PETRAS ON AXIS OF LOGIC
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