A few years ago, the Goliath of online booksellers, Amazon.com, purchased a company called BookSurge which offers on-demand publishing of thousands of books. Rather than keep an inventory of books in a warehouse, on-demand publishing allows buyers to choose the title they want and have it printed for them. This reduces the overhead associated with publishing a book, and so allows books that otherwise might not be published-since publishers expect they wouldn’t recoup the costs of producing them-to make their way to readers.

As a result of this foray into the on-demand book business, Amazon has become a publisher of books as well as a seller, and so has taken on an unusual level of responsibility for some of the content it now sells to readers.

I tell you all this because this morning I received a press release by email from BookSurge, informing me in breathless tones of the publication of an exciting new book called Persecution, Privilege & Power, edited by Mark Green, and offering “a searing collection of articles about the organized-but often unrecognized-exploitation of political and cultural power in the United States.” Here is how the email describes the book:

In Persecution, Privilege & Power, Green has collected the sharpest commentaries and analyses from 30 different writers as they critically examine the role that Zionism plays in shaping U.S. policies abroad as well as cultural transformations at home. This riveting volume provides a broad and exhilarating inspection of Zionist machinations as well as the entrenched taboos and covert alliances that sustain them. Green’s array of commentators includes James Petras, Charlie Reese, Alison Weir, Kevin MacDonald, Gilad Atzmon, Ray McGovern, Joe Sobran and many others. Persecution, Privilege & Power unearths the unchecked malfeasance within the political wing of organized Jewry, specifically examining that international lobby’s political excesses from a multiplicity of perspectives.

The email is signed by Amanda Sullivan Wilson, BookSurge’s public relations manager, and it details the company’s status as “a subsidiary of Amazon.com Inc., (NASDAQ AMZN)”.

You have to wonder if anyone at Amazon realizes they are now the publishers of conspiracy theories about the “Zionist machinations” of “organized Jewry,” and that BookSurge is actively promoting the book in their name.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at 11:25 AM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.