Highjacking Catastrophe : 9/11,Fear & the Selling of the American Empire

by Sut Jhally, Jeremy Earp (Editor)

The 9/11 terror attacks continue to send shock waves through the American political system. Continuing fears about American vulnerability alternate with images of American military prowess and patriotic bravado in a transformed media landscape charged with emotion and starved for information. The result is that we have had virtually no meaningful public debate about the radical turn US policy has taken since 9/11.

Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire is a riveting collection of 28 interviews with leading political thinkers that shows how the Bush administration has used the trauma of 9/11 and the war on terrorism to advance a radical and longstanding neo-conservative plan for global geopolitical domination. At the same time, it will clarify the ideological vision that has driven US international and domestic policy since 9/11, and will examine the political strategies that have been used to sell this ideological vision to the American people.

This collection includes interviews with Tariq Ali, Benjamin Barber, Noam Chomsky, Marc Danner, Fernando Suarez del Solar, Shadia Drury, Daniel Ellsberg, Michael Franti, Stan Goff, William Hartung, Bill Israel, Janine Jackson, Chalmers Johnson, Michael Klare, Karen Kwiatkowski, Norman Mailer, Zia Mian, Mark Crispin Miller, Kevin Ramirez, Scott Ritter, Vandana Shiva, Norman Solomon, Greg Speeter, Immanuel Wallerstein, Cindy Williams, Jody Williams, and Max Wolff.

256 pages, Paperback

First published November 25, 2004

About the author

Sut Jhally is Professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Founder and Executive Director of the Media Education Foundation (MEF). He is one of the world's leading scholars looking at the role played by advertising and popular culture in the processes of social control and identity construction. The author of numerous books and articles on media(including The Codes of Advertising and Enlightened Racism) he is also an award-winning teacher (a recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award at the University of Massachusetts, where the student newspaper has also voted him "Best professor"). In addition, he has been awarded the Distinguished Outreach Award, and was selected to deliver a Distinguished Faculty Lecture in 2007.

He is best known as the producer and director of a number of films and videos (including Dreamworlds: Desire/Sex/Power in Music Video; Tough Guise: Media, Violence and the Crisis of Masculinity; and Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire) that deal with issues ranging from gender, sexuality and race to commercialism, violence and politics. Born in Kenya, raised in England, educated in graduate studies in Canada, he currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.