Kristian Williams

I am pleased to announce Between the Bullet and the Lie: Essays on Orwell.

Approximately the first half of the book forwards an interpretation of Orwell’s thought, especially as it relates to the intersection of ethics and politics; the second half applies his thought to our present moment, with particular attention to issues of intellectual clarity, personal integrity, pessimism in politics, and the failures of the left.

If you would like a copy, send me $18 and I’ll put it in the mail to you.

Or better still, if you are in San Francisco on Sunday, November 19th, you can find me at the Howard Zinn Bookfair. I’ll be speaking at 2:45 in Room 315, and tabling all day.

And as always, drop me a line if you’d like to bring me to speak at your school, church, union hall, bookstore, or pub.

Episode 6 of the Submedia video series Trouble serves as a good introduction to counterinsurgency, the military science of counter-revolutionary warfare. Featuring interviews with Gord Hill, Dawn Paley, and me (among others), the video connects COIN with the history of policing, the drug war, and indigenous resistance.

Check it out.

Image from the Baltimore Book Fair:

Last time I was in Baltimore, a police captain bought Our Enemies in Blue and asked for a bag precisely so no one would take his picture with it.

I guess the lower ranks are not so cautious.

My essay, “The Politics of Denunciation,” has now been translated into Russian. I can’t speak to the veracity of the translation, and I wonder how it will be understood in such a different context. But apparently my name looks like this: Кристиана Уильямса, which I am happy to have learned.

The essay remains my most controversial work, which is kind of saying something. You can still read it in English at Toward Freedom.