Quote of the Week

"Liberty is a word of much sophisitication, but it means, when it means anything, opportunity to live one's own life in one's own way . . . The original sin of the world is not contempt for arbitrary laws, but respect for them."
—Charles Ferguson

(Our Quote of the Week is taken from The Heretic's Handbook of Quotations, Charles Bufe, ed. When we're in the mood, we change our Quotation of the Week between 15:00 and 18:00 GMT on Monday mornings; ditto for our Definition of the Week.)

Definition of the Week

EVIL EMPIRES n., pl. One down, one to go. (And we are not referring to the New York Yankees.)

Our Definition of the Week is taken from The Devil's Dictionaries (Second Edition, revised & expanded): The Best of The Devil's Dictionary, by Ambrose Biercee, and The American Heretic's Dictionary, by Chaz Bufe. This week's definition is by Bufe.

About See Sharp Press

See Sharp Press (distributed by Independent Publishers Group) is a cause-driven small press, dedicated to making the world a freer, more rational place. We publish nonfiction in the areas of anarchism, atheism, music intruction/reference, psychology, skepticism, classic anarchist/socialist/atheist reprints, and (starting in 2012) anti-authoritarian science fiction. If you'd like more info, here 'tis.

(For those interested, the entire site is written in html; we do not run any scripts; and we do not collect user info. We never contact those who order from us, and we never share information with anyone.)

Recent Releases

• Our newest book, Spiritual Snake Oil: Fads & Fallacies in Pop Culture, by Chris Edwards, scathingly and entertainingly dissects the preachings of the most prominent new age snake oil salesmen (and women), and also goes after the advocates of the "prosperity gospel" and oxymoronic "intellectual Christianity."

  Tom Flynn, editor of Free Inquiry, says, "Watching Chris Edwards wield his critical thinking skills is like watching someone walking a brace of pit bulls. . . . No folly escapes unmauled, and no reader will want to miss the fun."

  Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic, says, "Spiritual Snake Oil is an important contribution to the burgeoning skeptical literature."

  Spiritual Snake Oil is currently available as a PDF e-book and will soon be available in all e-book formats.

  The author's previous book, Disbelief 101 was just picked up by the Polish publishing house WYDAWNICTWO CZARNA OWCA SP.ZOO and will appear in Polish translation later this year.

• Our other recent book, Venezuela: Revolution as Spectacle, is a groundbreaking work. In it, Venezuelan human rights activist Rafael Uzcátegui contrasts the reality of the "Bolivarian Revolution," as reflected in the daily lives of Venezuela's working class, with the "revolutionary" image projected by the Chávez regime and its apologists (notably Noam Chomsky) in the U.S. and Europe. The author strongly argues that the rightist portrayal of the Chávez regime as dictatorial or communist is deranged, and that the Chávez government is simply another in a long line of Latin American populist regimes ultimately subservient to the transnational corporations that control their economies. The author concludes by arguing that there is a bottoms-up third path (neither mindless support nor opposition to Chávez), based in Venezuela's autonomous social movements, that will lead to truly revolutionary social change.

  Venezuela has been receiving very favorable reviews, notably in Anarcho-Syndicalist Review (ASR) and In These Times.

  Venezuela is currently available as a PDF e-book and will soon be available in all e-book formats.

Upcoming Releases

• Our Spring 2012 releases will all be published in April. The first two are science fiction novels: The Messiah Game: A Comedy of Terrors (Part I) by Tom Flynn; and Free Radicals, by Zeke Teflon. Our third title will be Hungry for Peace, by Keith McHenry, a how-to book on Food Not Bombs.

• For Fall 2012, we'll issue Part II of The Messiah Game, Kathy DeGrave's new science fiction novel, The Hour of Lead, and second editions of two of our music books. For Spring 2013, we'll issue Part III of The Messiah Game, an as-yet-untitled sci-fi novel, a book on consensus process by Keith McHenry, and a book on religious intrusion into daily life by Marie Castle.

Recent Rants

To financially support Manning and Wikileaks, we urge readers to go to bradleymanning.org and Wikileaks online store, which sells t-shirts, tote bags, etc. (They're not yet selling Wikileaks bumper stickers, but as soon as they do we'll stop. For now we'll continue to do so because we think it's important to get the word out.)

We should also note that the criminal acts revealed by Wikileaks are going almost entirely uninvestigated and unprosecuted, while the Obama Administration instead viciously persecutes Manning and other whistleblowers, notably Thomas Drake.

Obama's "Justice" Department has refused to indict any of the criminals in the Bush Administration, and has refused to even investigate Bush et al.'s crimes and incredible incompetence—such minor matters as stealing the 2000 election; being asleep at the switch prior to 9/11; lying the U.S. into an illegal war of aggression; allowing Osama Bin Laden to escape in 2001; the slow, incompetent response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster; wholesale spying on everyday Americans; torture; politicization of the Justice Department; massive contractor corruption in Iraq; etc., etc.

As well, the Obama Administration has not even investigated the banks and brokerage firms responsible for the financial collapse at the end of the Bush Administration. This collapse has resulted in massive, continuing unemployment, the financial gutting of pension plans nationwide, and the loss of millions of homes. Yet Obama won't investigate those responsible for it and instead has put Wall Street insiders in charge of his administration's financial policy.

Barack Obama protects criminals and criminalizes whistleblowers. He's a shameless corporate tool, a hypocrite, and an enemy of free speech. As Richard Nixon's felonious attorney general, John Mitchell, once put it, "Watch what we do, not what we say." If you strip away Obama's progressive rhetoric—trotted out just in time for the upcoming election—and look at what he's done, you're left with the realization that he's an authoritarian and, above all, Wall Street's bought-and-paid-for guy.

(This is what the coming presidential election comes down to: the "choice" between an authoritarian Wall Street tool and an even more authoritarian Wall Street tool who's a sadistic theocrat to boot. [It's a safe bet that the Republican nominee will fill the bill.] This has been Obama's strategy all along: toadying to those who supply his campaign funds—the corporations and Wall Street—while banking on the fact that the 2012 Republican nominee will be even more odious than he is.)

Finally, check out Courage to Resist, whose goal is to "support the troops who refuse to fight." Among other things, they carry Free Bradley Manning t-shirts, buttons, and "silent agitator" stickers. Also check out Anonnews, the news site of Anonymous, the hero hackers group which is Wikileaks' primary online defender.