Books Folder - 2008 onwards!!!

[KarthikSan]

Well, it is a question about a book Still new to the little posting quirks on BR!!! I'll post it in the Nukkad thread. Thanks.

[ramana]

Son, those are guidelines and not quirks. Cant have order with quirks.

[SwamyG]

This book: A Comparative History of World Philosophy: From the Upanishads to Kant by Prof.Ben-Ami Scharfstein is a must to have in your library. I fell in love with this book few years ago. As the title suggests it goes over the philosophies of the World - focusing on Europe, India and Chinese.

It is a good book because it whets the appetite and gives a nice summary of different darsanas and lists different proponents. I also liked the book references the author provides. This is valuable to know the books that treat each darasana in detail.

It is not a voluminos book, but is dense because the author compresses the different school of philosophies into few pages and is a good 101 for the European and Chinese schools of thought.

[sunilUpa]

I am reading 'Deception Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons' by Adrian levy & Catherine Scott-Clark. About 30% done and I can't put it down. Very interesting info all European countries/US 'non-proliferation' efforts. More interesting is thr funding of kahuta compex. A must read and after reading every statement/ news reports originating in USA takes a different meaning altogether.

Has very interesting bit about how Presler amendment was actually designed to shoot down another proposed by Sen Glen..

Will try to post more later, but one should definately read it. You will start looking at nuclear deal in different light altogether.

[JE Menon]

>>You will start looking at nuclear deal in different light altogether.

[svinayak]

a book in local library was found called Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire. by historian Alex Von Tunzelmann (never heard of her before). And the book's pretty good.
In the book, during 1857 war, Alex refers to one police constable fleeing Delhi toward Kashmir. His escape's aided by the fact that his daughter who was along with him had pretty fair skin and blue eyes - Kashmiri who could have easily been mistaken for a British memsahib.

Name of the police constable: Gangadhar Nehru.
Name of his daughter: Indrani (who in another couple years gives birth to Motilal Nehru)


BTW, the begining of the book pretty much sets the tone:

In the beginning, there were two nations. One was a vast, mighty and magnificent empire, brilliantly organized and culturally unified, which dominated a massive swath of the earth. The other was an undeveloped, semifeudal realm, riven by religious factionalism and barely able to feed its illiterate, diseased and stinking masses. The first nation was India. The second was England. The year was 1577. . . .

[ramana]

Marching towards Hell:America and Islam

From Publishers Weekly
Scheuer, former CIA analyst and trenchant critic of U.S. terrorism policies (Imperial Hubris) develops his argument that America suffers from a collective insistence on sustaining Cold War paradigms in a fundamentally altered world. For all its culpable errors, the current administration is merely the present-day incorporation of willful historical ignorance, a paucity of common sense, and... a disastrous degree of intellectual hubris. These fundamental shortcomings are exacerbated by a pattern of making policy decisions on the basis of how a liberal-pacifist media and intelligentsia will react, rather than objectively considering the national interest. That interest, Scheuer argues, requires prioritizing the Islamic threat in security considerations and understanding that it does not manifest intractable, theologically based hostility to American values and lifestyles. The Islamic challenge instead reflects a series of concrete U.S. policy decisions, beginning in 1973, committing the U.S. to supporting an endless war to the death between Arabs and Israelis. An increasingly desperate effort to sustain a fundamental regional imbalance—and Scheuer does not spare the Clinton administration—has led to direct military involvement, culminating in the debacles of Iraq and Afghanistan. These defeats, Scheuer declares, are the inevitable result of seeking to change the Middle East's dynamics by exporting the unique American patterns of democracy and republicanism. Controversial in its details, Scheuer's analysis suffers fundamentally from Occidentalism. Interpreting Islamic behavior as a consequence of American actions keeps the U.S. at the center of events in precisely the Cold War model Scheuer excoriates. (Feb. 12)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Book Description
When Michael Scheuer first questioned the goals of the Iraq War in his 2004 bestseller Imperial Hubris, policymakers and ordinary citizens alike stood up and took notice. Now, Scheuer offers a scathing and frightening look at how the Iraq War has been a huge setback to America's War on Terror, making our enemy stronger and altering the geopolitical landscape in ways that are profoundly harmful to U.S. interests and security concerns.
Marching Toward Hell is not just another attack on the Bush administration. Rather, it sounds a critical alarm that must be heard in order to preserve the nation's security. Scheuer outlines the ways that America's foreign policy since the end of the Cold War has undermined the very goals for which we are fighting and played right into bin Laden's hands. The ongoing instability in Iraq, for example, has provided al Qaeda and its allies with the one thing they want most: a safe haven from which to launch operations across borders into countries that were previously difficult for them to reach. With U.S. forces and resources spread thinner every day, the war has depleted our strength and brought al Qaeda a kind of success that it could not have achieved on its own.

A twenty-plus-year CIA veteran, Scheuer headed the agency's Osama bin Laden unit, managed its covert-action operations, and authored its rendition program. Scheuer spent his career developing strategies to keep America safe, by any means deemed necessary by the presidents he served. It was his job to take available intelligence and devise plans to protect Americans, without considering bias, position, or even existing alliances. In Marching Toward Hell, Scheuer takes on the questions of "What went wrong?" and "How can we fix this?" and proposes a plan to cauterize the damage that has already been done and get American strategy back on track. He lists a number of painful recommendations for how we must shift our ideological, military, and political views in order to survive, even if that means disagreeing with Israeli policy or launching more brutal campaigns against terrorists.

America holds its destiny in its hands, Scheuer says, yet not nearly enough has been done to defend America and destroy its Islamist enemies. This is an eye-opening, alarming, contentious, and ultimately fascinating examination of how far off track the War on Terror has gone, and a critical read in understanding what we must do to save it.

Former top spook is critical of U.S. foreign policy. Very pessimistic, February 13, 2008
By Citizen John (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

Michael Scheuer, PhD and former CIA career officer, made a big splash in June 2004 as the anonymous author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror. At that time he contradicted Rumsfeld and other officials by informing us there was an insurgency in Iraq.

Now Scheuer tells us where we're going. We're going to hell.

Marching Toward Hell claims that U.S. foreign policy is often based on faulty assumptions and is driven by some lobbyists whose interests are different than those of the American people. This book goes well beyond the themes of Imperial Hubris.

Scheuer gave up his career at the CIA in order to publicly denounce the 9/11 Commission for having become politicized. He did this at a time when other insiders protected their careers and are only now coming out. That is one reason why I gave Scheuer's book 5 stars. He's also superb at explaining the relationship between the intelligence community and elected officials in the U.S.

Scholars take Scheuer seriously because of his 22-year career as a top intelligence analyst and also the success of his first book, Imperial Hubris. He stalked and studied Osama bin Laden (ObL) for years, urged superiors to remove ObL at rare opportune times, but saw that no action was taken each time for political reasons. Ironically, ObL later recommended Imperial Hubris to the American people in a taunting missive.

Some points from Marching Toward Hell: U.S. policymakers still prefer to present the bin Laden Movement as a lunatic fringe even though it has broad appeal in the Islamic world; U.S. support of Israel and U.S. troop presence contributes to the popular perception within the Muslim world that the West is bent on destroying Islam; some officials possibly never intended to win in Iraq, otherwise more troops would have been sent; the fact that very few political leaders have children serving in the wars is disturbing on many levels; the divide in the U.S. between the political elite and the rest of the people has never been wider; and young people will be sent to war in the coming 8 years regardless of election results.

Scheuer concludes that the U.S. cannot avoid war with Islamists, that it will be much more violent that what we've seen so far, and also that it's too late to win in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Scheuer is angry for several reasons including the reluctance of Americans to understand Muslim viewpoints, the Bush administration dismissal of Middle East experts' wisdom and advice, and the lack of political leadership regarding energy policy.

Marching Toward Hell includes a thoughtful proposal that is already being discussed seriously in the nation's universities. A summary of Scheuer's proposal (The Scheuer Proposal) is that the U.S. must reduce its foreign commitments and to first focus on domestic security, including stationing the Army along America's borders. Problems with U.S. foreign policy include operating without regard to the best interests of the country and also budget limitations. Simultaneously, the country would take steps to reduce oil dependency. (I don't think enough specifics are given for reducing energy dependency.) Then the U.S. would prepare to defeat its enemies such as Al-Queda. Among other things, this means effective use of intelligence assets and willingness to use the military differently, more violently. The Scheuer Proposal is filled with surprises and brings into question to what extent it speaks for the intelligence community as a whole.

The author says foreign policy is going to become more important, not less. He wants America to change its message to Muslims by changing foreign policy. This means, among other things, to stop the current brand of support provided to Israel and to remove troops from the Arabian Peninsula. The wars, he says, are lost regardless - that we're in a fourth generation war where adversaries have a scorched earth strategy, leaving nothing for the occupier to occupy anyway. Remarkably, he goes much further and includes Russia, China and India as countries against Islam that the U.S. supports. Even so, he concludes that the U.S. cannot avoid an even more violent war with Islam.

In my view, the Scheuer Proposal cuts across so many emotional pressure points that Scheuer is guaranteed to get the attention of Middle America this time. I think the least contentious point is to change the way the President and Congress use the intelligence information and assets provided by taxpayers at great expense. The most controversial point is probably assignment of blame to Israeli lobbyists for encouraging the war in Iraq. (Notably Scheuer does not blame these lobbyists for the mismanagement of same. He also says this has made Isreal less secure.) And the weakest point of the Scheuer Proposal is probably the lack of specifics for how the U.S. will reduce its energy dependency. The Scheuer Proposal relies heavily on a successful new energy policy.

Possibly Scheuer thinks hell is our destiny as the Proposal holds that alarming horror is in our future. Such an approach from such a man attracts and holds the reader's interest as if by a spell.

he was on KGO810 radio last night(8:00 pm) and an archive of his talk should be there on the station website.


My thinking is that he has not understood why did the Bush admin go into Iraq despite all the evidience?And the Congress did vote for them to go into Iraq. Nice account but only for time pass.

[svinayak]

The Case for Civility: And Why Our Future Depends on It
by Os Guinness (Author)


# Hardcover: 224 pages
# Publisher: HarperOne (January 22, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0061353434
# ISBN-13: 978-0061353437

Popular evangelical writer Guinness (The Call) worries that the culture wars are destroying the United States. If Americans don't find a way of living with our deepest differences, the republic will decline. He forcefully defends religious liberty, noting that it was crucial for the founding generation and should be just as crucial today. To that end, he calls Christians to rethink their enthusiasm for government-sponsored faith-based initiatives, and to remember that evangelicals were the victims of earlier church-state establishments. The religious right—whose discourse of victimization, says Guinness, is silly and anti-Christian—comes under fire. Nor is Guinness a fan of the nascent religious left—he prefers a depoliticized faith. For all Guinness's rhetorical vim, his proposals ultimately feel anodyne: his boilerplate conclusion is that in order to restore civility we need leadership and a remarkable articulation of vision. Furthermore, although Guinness notes that he is a European, the book is oddly marked by the old rhetoric of American cultural imperialism. Echoing JFK, Guinness wants his essay to be taken as one model for fostering civility around the world and helping make the world safe for diversity. Many readers may prefer Charles Marsh's lively, provocative manifesto Wayward Christian Soldiers. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Book Description

In a world torn apart by religious extremism on the one side and a strident secularism on the other, no question is more urgent than how we live with our deepest differences—especially our religious and ideological differences. The Case for Civility is a proposal for restoring civility in America as a way to foster civility around the world. Influential Christian writer and speaker Os Guinness makes a passionate plea to put an end to the polarization of American politics and culture that—rather than creating a public space for real debate—threatens to reverse the very principles our founders set into motion and that have long preserved liberty, diversity, and unity in this country.

Guinness takes on the contemporary threat of the excesses of the Religious Right and the secular Left, arguing that we must find a middle ground between privileging one religion over another and attempting to make all public expression of faith illegal. If we do not do this, Guinness contends, Western civilization as we know it will die. Always provocative and deeply insightful, Guinness puts forth a vision of a new, practical "civil and cosmopolitan public square" that speaks not only to America's immediate concerns but to the long-term interests of the republic and the world.


Os Guinness, The Case For Civility. HarperOne, 2008. As an Englishman born in China, and as an astute sociologist and social critic, Guinness offers a wise and compelling vision for civilizing the public square and moving beyond the machinations of endless culture wars.

While writing as a Christian, Guinness charts a course for "a civil public square" in which citizens of any religion or of none are allowed and encouraged to let their voices be known and to respect those of others. He argues against both "the sacred social square" (where pluralism is defrocked and one religion dominates at the expense of others) and "the naked public square" (in which religious citizens are not allowed to participate socially and politically on the basis of their deepest convictions).

Guinness grounds his reflections on a profound understanding of The First Amendment and its entailments. Contrary to many, he argues that civility is a higher virtue than mere tolerance. Moreover, civility requires knowledge and discipline; it is not the fruit of relativism, which despairs of objective moral knowledge and the pursuit of objective truth.

Readers of Guinness's previous and much larger work, The American Hour (1992), will find echoes in The Case for Civility, but the latter is far more than a digest of the former; it is, rather, a timely and clarion call to principled pluralism tied to the essence of the American experiment.

"It would be a safe but sad bet that someone, somewhere in the world, is killing someone else at this very moment in the name of religion or ideology." Thus begins "The Case for Civility" by Os Guinness. Every day the media brings us stories of death and mayhem and often religion and ideology are to blame. The bookshelves at your local bookstore are groaning under the weight of books by atheists--Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins--who blame religion for many of the world's ills. But the record of nations that turned from religion have fared even worse. Guinness says, rightly I'm sure, that no question today is more urgent than this one: how do we live with our deepest differences--and especially our religious and ideological differences. This book is a proposal for restoring civility.

But it is deeper than that. It is a proposal for restoring civility first in America is a model for the rest of the world to follow. It is a call for the United States to take the lead in restoring civility. "The place at which we must begin to search for answers is the United States. Not because the problem is worse here than elsewhere--on the contrary--but because America has the best cultural resources, and therefore the greatest responsibility to point the way forward in answering the deepest questions." America is uniquely equipped to take the lead and Guinness urges her on.

Much of the answer to whether or not we'll learn to live with our deepest differences depends on rejecting two erroneous responses to the culture wars. First, we must say no to a "sacred public square"--a situation where one religion has a position of privilege or prominence that is denied to others. As he refutes the sacred public square, Guinness laments the state of the Religious Right and the damage it has done to faith in America. We must also say no to a "naked public square"--the situation where public life is left devoid of any religion. This is what is advocated by the new atheists. Both of these responses to the culture war are in contradiction to the Constitution.

The alternative to both is a "civil public square." "The vision of a civil public square is one in which everyone--peoples of all faiths, whether religious or naturalistic--are equally free to enter and engage public life on the basis of their faiths, as a matter of `free exercise' and as dictated by their own reason and conscience; but always within the double framework, first of the Constitution, and second, of a freely and mutually agreed covenant, or common vision for the common good, of what each person understands to be just and free for everyone else, and therefore of the duties involved in living with the deep differences of others." If we are to have a civil society, we must first have a civil public square.

Anticipating an objection that is sure to arise, Guinness makes sure the readers knows that he is not advocating some kind of false tolerance, the likes of which is too often advocated in our society. The tolerance he advocates is true tolerance--one that understands and affirms that there must be differences. It does not seek to eradicate differences, but instead seeks respect despite differences. It is important to understand that "the right to believe anything" does not mean "anything anyone believes is right." Though we need to respect a person's right to believe anything, there are times that we have a right and a duty to disagree with them.

Guinness concludes the book with a short list of challenges--places to begin in the quest to restore civility. These are things society must do, but things that must be spearheaded by individuals just like you. As an afterword Guinness includes the text of the Williamsburg Charter which he helped draft.

A particularly interesting thing about this book is that it is written by a man who, by virtue of his British birth, is excluded from being a leading part of the solution. He can write and propose, but not act. What he proposes, he proposes to American citizens. Meanwhile, I read and reviewed this book from a Canadian perspective. And I agree with much of what Guinness states here. America, it seems to me, is the nation best equipped to champion and to model the restoration of civility. Though not revered as she once was, America continues to be a nation that is looked to with respect and which has a global presence. She is a nation who has the constitutional foundation to model a truly civil public square. But the question remains: will she show the way forward?

[shyamd]

CONFLICT & DIPLOMACY: US AND THE BIRTH OF BANGLADESH, PAKISTAN DIVIDES
by Jaswant Singh & Major General S.P. Bhatia
Rupa
Pages: 278; Rs 395
But Where Is The Book?
Declassified CIA papers are a better read than MoD narratives, but a structure would have been welcome

Thirty-seven years after the last full-fledged war India fought comes a book that goes into the primary sources of the events as they were seen in Islamabad, Washington and New Delhi. Readers have to be grateful to the authors who sifted through 1,300 pages of recently declassified US government records to piece together a historical work that greatly improves upon either the ministry of defence’s low-grade narrative, or the vulgar, jingoistic Indian works on how we cut "Pakistan down to size".
The central character is clearly Nixon for whom this war turned into tragedy, chiefly because he suffered Shakespeare’s definition of "the tragic fatal flaw"—an unremitting dislike bordering on hatred for India and its premier, Indira Gandhi. It would be a mistake to merely relate the narrative to events as they occurred. Far more interesting are the characters, revealed through dialogue, as in any good play. There is Nixon, with a brash exterior, crudely spoken but deeply insecure within, and in need of constant reassurance of his capabilities and his place in history. And there is Kautilya—Henry Kissinger—ever willing to provide that reassurance, when Nixon’s words often turn into beseeching incoherence, with an overlay of—drunkenness?

Much of the inputs into Washington come from their envoys in Dhaka, Islamabad and New Delhi.

Kissinger is Kautilya here, providing reassurance when an ageing Nixon’s words often descend into beseeching incoherence.


More dissimilar characters one cannot imagine. Kenneth Keating, 71 years old, a wise and respected figure in Delhi, accused of having fallen in love with India, as apparently all US envoys do. Archer Kent Blood, the consul-general in Dhaka, who took the extraordinary step of joining 17 of his
colleagues in putting in writing his strong dissent towards the US policy of supporting Pakistan and predicting the formation of Bangladesh as early as April ’71. And lastly, Joseph Farland, probably in love with Pakistan, who in retrospect, misrepresented every event as it occurred. Farland’s access and closeness to Yahya Khan were a curse that blinded him into losing the perspective required of the envoy of a great power in a provisional capital. Kissinger, as stated earlier, dominates the scene. What strikes one in the entire narrative is the impotence of the US state department and the Indian mea in shaping events, despite their better analyses on the developing crisis. Of course, Kissinger gathered all executive power to himself under Nixon, and no nsa has since then been permitted the latitude he was given.

The CIA got all the low level stuff right, like military and aircraft dispositions; and the big stuff all wrong. They predicted in June 1971 that the Indians would never launch an all-out attack in the East, and later they insisted they had a coup when they deciphered the Indian strategic objectives as the liberation of ‘Bangladesh’, the incorporation of southern Azad Kashmir into J&K, and the destruction of the Pakistani army, converting Pakistan into a ‘vassal’ state. This spectacular error led the US into a tailspin with the Russians and the Chinese. When Nixon realised that East Pakistan was lost, he panics about the Indians conquering West Pakistan, facing down the Chinese with Russian help and ending up victorious in Southern Asia. The consequences for the US, Nixon apprehends, is a Russian-inspired Arab victory over Israel in West Asia and the immediate loss of Vietnam.

It is this descending domino spiral that led the Nixon-Kissinger duo to send the Enterprise and, as we now learn, plan the blockade of Haiphong, to ‘pick up’ Vietnam. So despite the incredibly soothing influence of Russian envoy Voronstov, who guarantees the integrity of West Pakistan, Nixon goes into incoherence at about the same time as Yahya—on December 13, 1971—constantly badgering Kissinger to ask if the Chinese have mobilised, to scare the Indians.

Despite the engrossing read this is, the question does arise: is this a book? One assumes that a book must be written by someone—normally the author. Stringing together a bunch of US government dispatches with an Introduction is not a book. If the authors didn’t realise this, Rupa should have, apart from providing five staffers to arrange the manuscript. Reading this work and looking at the scene in Pakistan, one can’t help wondering whether history can ever be prevented from repeating itself.

[Raju]

http://www.latimes.com/features/books/l ... 3134.story

From the Los Angeles Times
BOOK REVIEW
'Human Smoke' by Nicholson Baker
An inside look at the inexorable march of Britain and the United States toward World War II.
By Mark Kurlansky

March 9, 2008

Human Smoke

The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization

Nicholson Baker

Simon & Schuster: 576 pp., $30

Not long ago, because there is no winter baseball in this country, I was channel surfing in search of amusement and ended up watching a debate of Republican presidential candidates. Sen. John McCain was attacking Rep. Ron Paul for opposing the Iraq war. He called Paul an "isolationist" and said it was that kind of thinking that had caused World War II. How old, I asked myself, is John McCain, that he is keeping alive this ancient World War II canard? Is it going to pass down to subsequent generations? All wars have to be sold, but World War II, within the memory of the pointless carnage that then became known as World War I, was a particularly hard sell. Roosevelt and Churchill did it well, and their lies have been with us ever since.

Nicholson Baker's "Human Smoke" is a meticulously researched and well-constructed book demonstrating that World War II was one of the biggest, most carefully plotted lies in modern history. According to the myth, British and American statesmen naively thought they could reason with such brutal fascists as Germany's Hitler and Japan's Tojo. Faced with this weakness, Hitler and Tojo tried to take over the world, and the United States and Britain were forced to use military might to stop them.

Because Baker is primarily a novelist, it might be expected that, having taken on this weighty subject, he would write about it with great flare and drama. Readers may initially be disappointed, yet one of this book's great strengths is that it avoids flourishes in favor of the kind of lean prose employed by journalists. "Human Smoke" is a series of well-written, brilliantly ordered snapshots, the length of news dispatches. Baker states that he wanted to raise these questions about World War II: "Was it a 'good war'? Did waging it help anyone who needed help?" His very effective style is to offer the facts and leave readers to draw their own conclusions.

The facts are powerful. Baker shows, step by step, how an alliance dominated by leaders who were bigoted, far more opposed to communism than to fascism, obsessed with arms sales and itching for a fight coerced the world into war.

Anti-Semitism was rife among the Allies. Of Franklin Roosevelt, Baker notes that in 1922, when he was a New York attorney, he "noticed that Jews made up one-third of the freshman class at Harvard" and used his influence to establish a Jewish quota there. For years he obstructed help for European Jewry, and as late as 1939 he discouraged passage of the Wagner-Rogers bill, an attempt by Congress to save Jewish children. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said in 1939 of German treatment of Jews that "no doubt Jews aren't a lovable people. I don't care about them myself." Once the war began, Winston Churchill wanted to imprison German Jewish refugees because they were Germans. What a comfort such leadership must have been to the Nazis, who, according to the New York Times of Dec. 3, 1931, were trying to figure out a way to rid Germany of Jews without "arousing foreign opinion."

Churchill is a dominant figure in "Human Smoke," depicted as a bloodthirsty warmonger who, in 1922, was still bemoaning the fact that World War I hadn't lasted a little longer so that Britain could have had its air force in place to bomb Berlin and "the heart of Germany." But no, he whined, it had to stop, "owing to our having run short of Germans and enemies."

Churchill was not driven by anti-fascism. In his 1937 book "Great Contemporaries," he described Hitler as "a highly competent, cool, well-informed functionary with an agreeable manner." The same book savagely attacked Leon Trotsky. (What was wrong with Trotsky? "He was still a Jew. Nothing could get over that.") Churchill repeatedly praised Mussolini for his "gentle and simple bearing." In 1927, he told a Roman audience, "If I had been an Italian, I am sure that I should have been entirely with you from the beginning to the end of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism." Churchill considered fascism "a necessary antidote to the Russian virus," Baker writes. In 1938, he remarked to the press that if England were ever defeated in war, he hoped "we should find a Hitler to lead us back to our rightful position among nations."

As Baker's book makes clear, between the two World Wars communism, not fascism, was the enemy. David Lloyd George, who had been Britain's prime minister during World War I, cautioned in 1933, the year Hitler came to power, that if the Allies managed to overthrow Nazism, "what would take its place? Extreme communism. Surely that cannot be our objective." But even more than the communists, Churchill's enemy No. 1 in the 1920s and early '30s was Mohandas Gandhi and his doctrine of nonviolence, which Churchill warned "will, sooner or later, have to be grappled with and finally crushed."

In the 1930s, U.S. industry was free to sell the Germans and the Japanese whatever they'd buy, including weapons. Not to lose out, the British and French sold tanks and bombers to Hitler. Calls by Joseph Tenenbaum of the American Jewish Congress to boycott Germany were ignored. There was no attempt to contain, isolate, hinder or overthrow Hitler -- not because of naiveté but because of commerce. It was the Depression. There were Germans trying to overthrow Hitler, but the U.S. and Britain and their industries were obstructing that effort.

Baker shows that the Japanese, as early as 1934, were complaining that Roosevelt was deliberately provoking them. In January 1941, Japan protested the U.S. military buildup in Hawaii. Joseph Grew, our ambassador to Japan, reported rumors that the Japanese response would be a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Yet according to World War II mythology, America was blissfully sleeping, unprepared for war, when caught by surprise by the dastardly "sneak attack." (Isn't it curious that Asians carry out "sneak attacks," whereas Westerners launch "preemptive strikes"?) A year earlier, Baker shows, Roosevelt began planning the bombing of Japan -- which had invaded China, but with which we were not at war -- from Chinese air bases with American planes and, when necessary, American pilots. Pearl Harbor was a purely military target, but Roosevelt wanted to bomb Japanese cities with incendiary bombs; he'd been assured that their cities would burn fast, being made largely of wood and paper.

Roosevelt evinced no desire to negotiate. In fact, Baker writes, in October he "began leaking the news of his new war plan," with $100 billion earmarked for airplanes alone. Grew again warned Roosevelt that he was pushing Japan toward armed conflict with the United States, but the president continued his war preparations. Finally, the night before the Japanese attack, Roosevelt sent a message to Emperor Hirohito calling for talks. He read it to the Chinese ambassador, remarking that he thought the message would "be fine for the record."

People are going to get really angry at Baker for criticizing their favorite war. But he hasn't fashioned his tale from gossip. It is documented, with copious notes and attributions. The grace of these well-ordered snapshots is that there is no diatribe; you are left to put things together yourself. Read "Human Smoke." It may be one of the most important books you will ever read. It could help the world to understand that there is no Just War, there is just war -- and that wars are not caused by isolationists and peaceniks but by the promoters of warfare. *

Mark Kurlansky is a journalist and the author, most recently, of "Nonviolence: 25 Lessons From the History of a Dangerous Idea."

[svinayak]

Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet
by Jeffrey D. Sachs (Author)

# Hardcover: 400 pages
# Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The (March 18, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 1594201277
# ISBN-13: 978-1594201271

In this sobering but optimistic manifesto, development economist Sachs (The End of Poverty) argues that the crises facing humanity are daunting—but solutions to them are readily at hand. Sachs focuses on four challenges for the coming decades: heading off global warming and environmental destruction; stabilizing the world's population; ending extreme poverty; and breaking the political logjams that hinder global cooperation on these issues. The author analyses economic data, demographic trends and climate science to create a lucid, accessible and suitably grim exposition of looming problems, but his forte is elaborating concrete, pragmatic, low-cost remedies complete with benchmarks and budgets. Sachs's entire agenda would cost less than 3% of the world's annual income, and he notes that a mere two days' worth of Pentagon spending would fund a comprehensive antimalaria program for Africa, saving countless lives. Forthright government action is the key to avoiding catastrophe, the author contends, not the unilateral, militarized approach to international problems that he claims is pursued by the Bush administration. Combining trenchant analysis with a resounding call to arms, Sachs's book is an important contribution to the debate over the world's future. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"Common Wealth explains the most basic economic reckoning that the world faces. We can address poverty, climate change, and environmental destruction at a very modest cost today with huge benefits for shared and sustainable prosperity and peace in the future, or we can duck the issues today and risk a potentially costly reckoning in later years. Despite the rearguard opposition of some vested interests, policies to help the world's poor and the global environment are in fact the very best economic bargains on the planet."
-Al Gore, Winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and Former Vice President of the United States

"Jeffrey Sachs never disappoints. With powerful illustrations and moving words, he describes what humanity must do if we are to share a common future on this planet. By making sense of economics as it affects the lives of people, this book is an excellent resource for all those who want to understand what changes the 21st century may bring."
-Kofi Annan, winner of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize and former secretary-general of the United Nations

[svinayak]

Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making
by David Rothkopf (Author)

# Hardcover: 400 pages
# Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (March 18, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0374272107
# ISBN-13: 978-0374272104

Starred Review. Books on world elites tend to focus on the superwealthy, but political scholar Rothkopf (Running the World) has written a serious and eminently readable evaluation of the superpowerful. Until recent decades, great-power governments provided most of the superclass, accompanied by a few heads of international movements (i.e., the pope) and entrepreneurs (Rothschilds, Rockefellers). Today, economic clout—fueled by the explosive expansion of international trade, travel and communication—rules. The nation state's power has diminished, according to Rothkopf, shrinking politicians to minority power broker status. Leaders in international business, finance and the defense industry not only dominate the superclass, they move freely into high positions in their nations' governments and back to private life largely beyond the notice of elected legislatures (including the U.S. Congress), which remain abysmally ignorant of affairs beyond their borders. The superelites' disproportionate influence over national policy is often constructive, but always self-interested. Across the world, the author contends, few object to corruption and oppressive governments provided they can do business in these countries. Neither hand-wringing nor worshipful, this book delivers an unsettling account of what the immense and growing power of this superclass bodes for the future. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Publisher's Weekly (starred review)
"[P]olitical scholar Rothkopf (Running the World) has written a serious and eminently readable evaluation of the superpowerful...Neither hand-wringing nor worshipful, this book delivers an unsettling account of what the immense and growing power of this superclass bodes for the future."

[Paul]

http://www.amazon.com/First-Second-Sikh ... 1594160570

A reprint of this book, first published in 1911, almost 100 years ago is available on the bookshelves of Barnes and Noble.

I am curious to know what prompted the publishers to reprint this book. Surely it cannot be public demand.

Book Description
The First and Second Sikh Wars of the 1840s were the final battles that secured British domination of the Indian subcontinent for the next century. Noted for both their brutality and sophistication in tactics--with large-scale cavalry clashes, sieges, and artillery and infantry engagements--the wars against the Sikh principalities not only handed control of India to Great Britain, but the defeated Sikh armies ended up becoming some of the most loyal and ablest soldiers of the British Empire. The lessons from these wars also influenced changes in British military policy and strategies.
In 1911, the British Army command asked its historical branch in India to prepare a military history of the Sikh Wars. The result, The First and Second Sikh Wars, is a publication rich in detail and analysis and a treasure trove of background information about the British Army in India, Sikh culture at the time, and the battles of Ferozeshahr, Aliwal, Chilianwala, and Gujerat. Despite the importance of these wars in the history of both the nineteenth century and the modern era, there are no similar complete narrative accounts of these conflicts available that rely on official records of the period. This facsimile is enhanced by historian Jon Coulston's new introduction and suggestions for further reading.

About the Author
Reginald George Burton (1864-1951) was a military historian and author of From Boulogne to Austerlitz: Napoleon's Campaign of 1805, and Wellington's Campaigns in India, among other works.

Jon Coulston is a historian at St Andrews University, Scotland. He most recently reintroduced Cavalry: Its History and Tactics, also available from Westholme.

[svinayak]

[quote]Koelnische Rundschau, Germany
http://watchingamerica.com/News/422/the ... -of-power/

The U.S. Confronts
the Limits of Power


By Laszlo Trankovits and Friedemann Diederichs

Translated By David Vickrey

2008-03-20
Germany - Koelnische Rundschau - Original Article (German)

The candidate was in a good mood despite wearing the bulletproof vest. When the Republican presidential candidate John McCain arrived last weekend in Iraq, his visit served one primary purpose: he wanted to showcase his credibility and experience in military affairs. The fact that he happened to pick the most controversial military adventure in recent American history as a platform for this rests on the fact that the Vietnam war hero has chosen national security as the number one campaign issue.

No End in Sight for the Conflict

Five years after the invasion of Iraq by US troops on March 20, 2003, even the war’s most ardent supporters see the mission as a failure. And there is no end in sight for the conflict despite the improved security situation and the campaign promises by the Democrats, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, that they would quickly end the war should one of them make it to the White House.

The Iraq War is the legacy of President George W. Bush, and threatens to remain America’s destiny for some time to come. Of course, the President harbors the hope that some day “history will show it was the correct decisionâ€

[svinayak]

Global capitalism teeters on the brink
We've moved from a world of risk to a world of uncertainty
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ ... mment/home

THOMAS HOMER-DIXON

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

March 19, 2008 at 6:56 AM EDT

The U.S. central bank is slashing interest rates, accepting piles of near-worthless securities from commercial banks as collateral for emergency loans, and pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy. A problem that began last summer in the lowest-grade U.S. mortgage market has spread around the world, moved relentlessly up the quality ladder and sucked credit from the global financial system like oxygen from a flame. Each intervention by U.S., European, Japanese and Canadian central banks to stabilize the situation has been swamped by surprises that have escalated the crisis to a new level.

Over the weekend, experts talked about the risk of the financial system's wholesale collapse. Some even drew parallels between today's situation and the credit crisis that produced the Depression.

What's going on? Are we simply in the midst of another gut-churning fluctuation of a world economy that's prone to intermittent volatility but that always seems to find its footing? Or are we glimpsing a deeper emergency, one that goes to the heart of modern global capitalism?

The U.S. Federal Reserve's latest efforts may stabilize markets for the time being; stock markets were sharply higher yesterday. But there's reason to believe the crisis is the product of systemic problems in the world's economy.

Three key factors - each operating and gaining momentum over decades - have come together to cause this crisis. The first is the sheer productivity of modern global capitalism. The world's businesses, spurred by global competition and a never-ending race to boost productivity and keep costs down, excel at producing a steadily rising flood of goods and services. To ensure that these goods and services are bought and that factories and businesses keep humming, the global economy needs a constant infusion of liquidity provided by cheap debt.

Second, in the past three decades, a neo-conservative ideology that asserts markets are infallible and, as a result, disparages any kind of state regulation has come to dominate thinking about economic matters, especially in the United States. Alan Greenspan, the long-time Federal Reserve Board chairman until 2006, was an ardent advocate of this view, and it became an article of faith in powerful U.S. political and economic circles - not surprisingly so, since it justified letting economic elites pursue their interests with little government interference.

Third, enormously powerful computers and software, along with fibre-optic communication, have allowed financial wizards to conduct business transactions in the blink of an eye around the world and to create financial instruments - derivatives, swaps, structured investments and the like - of mind-boggling complexity. For all intents and purposes, these new instruments have blurred the boundaries of what we call money. Several decades ago, central bankers could sensibly talk about and, if necessary, control the money supply. Now, what counts as money isn't at all clear, and many things that look and behave like money can't be regulated.

Since the dot-com implosion and the recession in the early years of this decade, these three factors have converged in a toxic brew. Central banks, especially the Greenspan Fed, wanted to reinflate their national economies, so they looked the other way as unregulated quasi-banks created a colossal edifice of credit - a tightly coupled global architecture of debt instruments that no one fully understands. And we're now realizing that something close to endemic fraud aided and abetted this enterprise: Credit-rating agencies such as Moody's and Standard & Poor's put their triple-A imprimatur on securities underpinned by crummy assets; investment banks held major liabilities off their books; and nearly everyone in the business established the value of complex securities by reference to numbers churned out by impenetrable computer models - not by reference to prices in real markets.

So the rules of the game have now changed. Our global financial system has become so complex and opaque that we've moved from a world of risk to a world of uncertainty. In a world of risk, we can judge dangers and opportunities by using the best evidence at hand to estimate the probability of a particular outcome. But in a world of uncertainty, we can't estimate probabilities, because we don't have any clear basis for making such a judgment. In fact, we might not even know what the possible outcomes are. Surprises keep coming out of the blue, because we're fundamentally ignorant of our own ignorance. We're surrounded by unknown unknowns.

Commentators and policy-makers are still talking in terms of risk. Markets, they say, need to reassess and reassign risk across securities and companies. But, in reality, markets are now operating under uncertainty. No one really knows where the boundaries of the problem lie, what surprises are in store, or what measures will be adequate to stop the bleeding. And the U.S. Fed is making policy on the fly.

We do know, however, that we're not dealing with a liquidity problem. We face a massive solvency problem: Banks and investment firms aren't so much worried about financing their next investment; instead, they fear for their survival, because core assets - particularly loans on their books - have been suddenly and dramatically devalued. In this environment, the tools available to central bankers may not work. You can encourage people to borrow by pumping money into the economy, but you can't force people to lend.

Thomas Homer-Dixon holds the George Ignatieff Chair of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto and is author of "The Upside of Down"

[shyamd]

Black Gold

The best basic text on energy and compulsory reading for all of us interested in India’s long-term security interests
Talmiz Ahmad

BLOOD OF THE EARTH—THE BATTLE FOR THE WORLD
by Dilip Hiro
Penguin
Pages: 427; Rs 450

Energy security is now so integral a part of India’s security discourse that it is hard to recall that until five years ago discussion of energy interests had little resonance for the public. The situation changed with former petroleum minister Mani Shankar Aiyar, who put energy security at the top of our strategic agenda, recognising that energy would be a critical factor in the coming years in realising high growth rates and the promise of prosperity to millions.

Energy security became an urgent national priority, and India’s voice came to be heard with respect at world energy fora. Indian companies self-confidently pursued new engagements in territories like Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Sudan, Venezuela, Angola, Siberia and sought cooperative ventures with more traditional partners such as Iran, Pakistan, Myanmar and, above all, China.

This national focus on energy has long required a comprehensive text that would put together the various aspects of this complex subject—geology, history, economics and geopolitics—into a coherent narrative.
Dilip Hiro has achieved this in his latest venture.

Hiro’s research is that of an academic but his writing is that of a journalist. He goes into the early history of oil and gas exploration and production, the complex aspects of oil pricing and, above all, international China and India’s rise has transformed the global oil economy by ensuring the bulk of Asian production is consumed within Asia.

politics, with oil a key factor in the affairs of West Asia through the last century to the present day. More recently, oil politics is at play in Central Asia and Africa, where terminologies that belong to another era, such as ‘New Great Game’ and ‘New Scramble for Africa’, have already gained wide currency.

While the first half of the book relates to the economics and politics of oil in the global context, the second half focuses on two recent developments in the international energy scenario: the rise of China and India as global players, and the search for alternative sources of energy. The significant increase in energy consumption in China and India has transformed the global oil economy by ensuring that the bulk of Asian production is now consumed within Asia. Again, given international apprehensions regarding the world’s depleting oil resources, attention now is increasingly being given to alternatives to oil—natural gas, coal, uranium, renewable energy.

Hiro has correctly focused on the impact of recent changes in the international energy scene on global power equations, which have included an enhanced regional and international role of China and India; the re-emergence of Russia as a global player; US concerns regarding the role of China and Russia in regional and world affairs, and the competition for control over the untapped potential in Africa and Central Asia. This has set the stage for what some Western commentators have referred to as the ‘New Cold War’, even as China and India have tended to reject this conflictual discourse, emphasising instead the importance of achieving energy security through pooling together of global resources—technological, financial and human—for common benefit.

After Daniel Yergin’s book, The Prize, published 16 years ago, Blood of the Earth is the best basic text on energy, and compulsory reading for all of us interested in India’s long-term security interests.

(Talmiz Ahmad is India’s ambassador to the UAE. These views are his own.)

[Paul]

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2008/ ... uperclass/

Rothkopf announces that he and his researchers have identified "just over 6,000" people who match his definition of the superclass -- that is, who have met complicated (and vaguely explained) metrics designed to determine "the ability to regularly influence the lives of millions of people in multiple countries worldwide." These include heads of state and religious and military leaders -- even the occasional pop star, like Bono -- but the core membership is businessmen: hedge fund managers, technology entrepreneurs and private equity investors.

Money alone doesn't cut the mustard. A fabulously wealthy widow living out the end of a quiet life isn't in the superclass; you must not only possess power, but also freely exercise it. Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the Blackstone Group, is the paradigm: In addition to running a huge private equity firm, he sits on the boards of a half-dozen cultural foundations and belongs to a laundry list of forums and councils, including the WEF. (He also granted Rothkopf a lunch interview at the Four Seasons Grill Room, as the author takes pains to inform his readers.)

Important pre-requisites for joining this superclass:
1. Born as a male.
2. Be a baby boomer.
3. Trace cultural roots to Europe.
4. Be rich early.
5. Go to a top school
6. Have finance or business background.

Other trivia about the super-elites:
1. Don Rumsfield and Frank Carlucci were Chaddi yaars from their undergrad days.
2. Kissinger and Brezenski know each from their college days.
3. Madeline Albright's father(Josef Korbel) taught Condy Rice during her college days.

and of course, we know that Clinton and Robin Raphael know each other from their Oxford days.

[svinayak]

The Future of Faith in American Politics: The Public Witness of the Evangelical Center
by David P. Gushee (Author)

# Paperback: 275 pages
# Publisher: Baylor University Press (January 15, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 1602580715
# ISBN-13: 978-1602580718

In this important book David Gushee gives the lie to the sorry myth that Evangelicals are all right-wing extremists. Not only does he show that many are politically progressive, but also that most of them are actually or potentially political moderates with a strong biblical conscience.
--George Hunsinger, Princeton Theological Seminary

In an election year, we badly need this careful, reasoned reflection on how Christians should confront the pressing moral issues of our time. Gushee offers a refreshingly balanced point of view.
--Philip Yancey, Author and editor-at-large of Christianity Today

The Future of Faith in American Politics offers a cogent review of contemporary political engagement among evangelical Protestants. David Gushee s description of an;emerging evangelical center; displays the diversity of this engagement, while his advocacy for such a center reveals its vitality. This book deserves to be taken seriously by evangelicals and non-evangelicals alike.
--John C. Green, Senior Fellow in Religion and American Politics, PEW Forum

The Future of Faith in American Politics challenges Jim Hightower's famous maxim that the only things in the middle of the road are yellow stripes and dead armadillos. Gushee offers here a cogent and balanced agenda for evangelical activism, a most welcome addition to this important conversation.
--Randall Balmer, Professor of American religious history at Barnard College, Columbia University

Gushee offers a valuable survey of Evangelical subgroups and their varied responses to some of the most significant and divisive ethical issues of our time. It is a timely response to questions that demand informed and immediate attention in the academy and the pulpit.
--Bill J. Leonard, Dean and Professor of Church History, Wake Forest University Divinity School

Will there be a kinder, gentler, wiser Evangelical ethos in the future - less strident, rigid, politically entrenched, and reactive, and more thoughtful, robust, politically independent, and constructive? If so, I believe it will develop in large part because of David Gushee and the new/renewing identity articulated in this important book.
--Brian D. McLaren, Author(brianmclaren.net)

Excellent. Carefully researched, lucidly argued, urgently important. A must read; for anyone interested in American evangelical political engagement today.
--Ronald J. Sider, President, Evangelicals for Social Action

Gushee makes a strong case for an emerging evangelical middle; in American politics. For that middle to become more than an occasional, aggregate voice, however, its constituents will have to take more seriously than they do now the responsibilities of citizenship and government. Today, that middle lacks leaders in government and the political process with the comprehensive agenda Gushee advocates.
--Jim Skillen, President, The Center for Public Justice

You must read this book. Why? It not only explains who the players are in an evolving religious and political awakening occurring within the evangelical world, but it also explains the ideas, conflicts, and controversies that are making news. ----Richard Cizik, Vice President for Governmental Affairs, National Association of Evangelicals

Review
In this important book David Gushee gives the lie to the sorry myth that Evangelicals are all right-wing extremists. Not only does he show that many are politically progressive, but also that most of them are actually or potentially political moderates with a strong biblical conscience. --George Hunsinger, Princeton Theological Seminary

[svinayak]

India: The Definitive History
by D. R. Sardesai (Author)

# Paperback: 486 pages
# Publisher: Westview Press (August 30, 2007)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0813343526
# ISBN-13: 978-0813343525

Book Description
Utilizing a nonwestern, indigenous approach, award-winning author D.R. SarDesai presents the history of India in its entire civilizational depth.

In this compelling new text, author D.R. SarDesai presents the definitive history of India in its entire civilizational depth from tradition to modernity. India has recently been receiving considerable global attention thanks to its spectacular economic growth at more than 7 percent for a decade. Along with China, these two ancient civilizations are responsible for one-third of the human race and are poised to become the third and fourth largest economies in the world. With apprehension about China's growing military strength, democratic India is regarded by the West as a likely counterbalance to the Communist giant.

SarDesai covers the process of change in India through the centuries affecting different segments of the society, including the subalterns. He deals with the sweep of traditional Indian history as well as the post-independence events, judiciously balancing narrative and analysis in the conceptual framework of postcolonial and postmodernistapproaches. This is the first major survey that deals with the entire Indian history along the lines of tradition and modernity instead of the old and largely inapplicable divisions of ancient, medieval, and modern timeframes. In adopting such a periodization, the book supports the presentation followed by most instructors in their courses on India.


This definitive history is perfect for a traveller interested in the background to this marvellous complex society. It gives a no frills account of its history dating back almost to the year dot. The reviews I read in order to purchase this as a gift were spot on with their recommendations. My husband is enthralled by the depth of knowledge it offers. He has been travelling for business a lot and finds the people and culture fascinating. He now has an insight into their beliefs and cultural ways he always wanted. If you are looking for a book that is not for an academic outlook but just plain facts and questions answered, this is it!

To have written something definitive on any subject is a bold claim, more so for a historian and all the more so for writings on the history of India. And yet, except for a couple of places in the book where the author claims that there IS no evidence to support views that oppose his own, without acknowledging the limitations of any search for historical truths, this book's title seems justified. This book needs to be translated into as many languages as possible and all those interested in the history of a great and inclusive ancient civilization should read it. Much like Vinayak D. Savarkar's "Saha Soneri Pane" (Six Golden Pages), this is a book that every library must have.

[svinayak]

China Shakes the World: A Titan's Rise and Troubled Future -- and the Challenge for America
by James Kynge (Author)


# Paperback: 288 pages
# Publisher: Mariner Books; 1 edition (October 11, 2007)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0618919066
# ISBN-13: 978-0618919062

Since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, binding its billion-plus population more tightly to the global economic system, the Asian giant's prodigious appetite for food, technology and natural resources has dramatically accelerated profound changes already well underway across the planet. Kynge, the Financial Times's former Beijing bureau chief, makes the voracious "appetites" of the new China his constant concern, as he uncovers the sources of and limitations on the giant country's epochal growth. Beginning with a scene in Germany's postindustrial Ruhr—where a steel mill is sold, deconstructed and shipped more than 5,000 miles for reassembly near the banks of the Yangtze River—Kynge assesses the socioeconomic transformations of China's low "Industrial Revolution–era" labor costs and modern production technology at home and abroad. But for all its world-shaking potential, notes Kynge, "China's endowments are deeply lopsided." Key weaknesses—such as a shortage of arable land, serious environmental devastation and pollution, systemic corruption and a dearth of resources—are conversely helping to ensure that China will have to manage its growing hegemony in a symbiotic manner with partners on the economic and geopolitical playing fields. Despite the subtitle, and a chapter devoted to China's acquisition of U.S. technologies, Kynge focuses at least as much on China's significance for Western Europe. Overall, Kynge's crisp assessment of the dynamics involved is both authoritative and eye-opening. (Sept. 27)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
A former bureau chief of the Financial Times in Beijing, Kynge demonstrates how China's thirst for jobs, raw materials, energy, and new markets--and its export of goods, workers, and investments--will dramatically reshape world trade and politics. China's appetite, though unpremeditated and inarticulate, has become a source of major change in the world. Napoleon said, "Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world." In the early days of the twenty-first century, China has started shaking the world with its prowess in manufacturing. Not all is rosy, however, because China has serious problems with its environmental resources, severe pollution, and institutionalized corruption within the government, the legal system, the police force, and the media. The question Kynge offers answers to is how the world will cope with China's extremes of both strength and weakness. Gail Whitcomb
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.



In "China Shakes the World: A Titan's Rise and Troubled Future--and the Challege for America" (270 pages), Kynge spends the first part of the book bringing us a vivid picture of the awakening economic giant that China is becoming, and things will only get more vivid from here on. Interesting tidbits that the author brings us include that the architecture of the once-historic (and now revitalized) city of Chongqing is patterned after Chicago, itself once the fastest growing city; or that suicides among young rural women in China rank as one of its greatest social ills (500 per day, and 56 percent of the world's femal suicides occur in China). After going into a thorough anaylsis of the Italian textile industry's problems, Kynge makes the dry observation that "the simple, unpalatable truth is that in many areas of manufacturing, European companies cannot compete in the long run, no matter what countermeasures they or the EU may take".

As for China's "technology gap", Kynge observes that "the potent lure of the 1.3 billion person market, no matter how illusory it may be, has helped China to leapfrog some of the technology barriers that had stymied several of the Southeast Asian 'tiger' economies in the 80s and 90s". In the second part of the book, the author exposes some of the problems China faces. Corruption exists at every level, the gray and black economies play a large role in everyday life, and these factors have resulted in the "collapse of social trust". In the final chapter, Kynge has a lot to say about the "waichi" (friendship) concept in China (hint: it's not what ours is).

In all, this book is outstanding from beginning to end, and absolutely worth buying. Anything we can do to understand the challenge tha China presents is recommended, and this book certainly contributes to the debate.

James Kynge, Financial Times bureau chief in Beijing, discusses not only the challenges faced by America in this excellent new book, but those faced by China itself. One of these challenges is the enormous demographic and economic growth that China has experienced in the last 20 years. Today there are 40 cities with populations of over a million and another 53 with populations between 500,000 and a million. The city of Chongking is growing by about 300,000 a year. In 2005, 400 million people were urban and by 2050 another 600 to 700 million will be urbanized. The accompanying challenge is sustaining the 10% annual economic rate to support this population surge.

China has probably broken every record in the history of economic development and Kynge goes over many of the statistics that other China-watchers have already enumerated. What is unique about this book is that it gives equal time to the dark underside of this story. Front and center is the problem of pollution and environmental degradation. Of the 20 most polluted cities in the world, 16 can be found in China. A majority of the largest cities - 400 of the 668 largest - are experiencing water shortages. By 2050, two-thirds of China's ice field will have melted due to global warming. China is already the second largest producer of greenhouse gases after the US. The challenge will be growing without doing irreparable damage to the environment.

China a major and growing importer of natural resources and driving up global commodity prices. With their growing appetite for raw materials such as lumber, many of the world's rainforests in Indonesia, Myanmar, Central Africa, and Brazil are being logged - illegaly - to be sold in China. An area of rainforest about the size of Belgium disappears every year. Kynge's anecdote about missing manhole covers in surrounding countries illustrates the demand for steel. And no one should be surprised that the recent increase in global oil prices is a result of Chinese demand.

Kynge points out that as a developing country, not quite yet a superpower, and as a not fully capitalistic country, since the government still controls many of the levers of the economy; China has been able to evade superpower responsibility. In the case of Iran, China has been very reticent about halting nuclear development, only a reluctant supporter of sanctions for fear of disrupting their oil supply. Likewise, in the case of Sudan, China has looked the other way while ethnic cleansing is being conducted in Darfur. Worse yet, China is powerful enough as a manufacturer and lender to prevent anyone else from intervening as well, the US included.

China's growing size and influence will be one of the greatest challenges faced by the US and the rest of the world in the new century. In what Kynge calls the "compression of developmental time," Chinese workers are using the latest high-tech manufacturing technology and the most modern infrastructure, yet the average industial wage is only about $.50 an hour. Neither the West nor other countries can compete with this combination. How long this can be sustained is an open question. Kynge points out that they have an unbeatable advantage at the moment but that it cannot last.

China's rise has inspired fear at least since the time of Napoleon who originally uttered the phrase about China shaking the world. Kynge tells us that most of the Chinese he knows wish nothing more than to make a better life for themselves and do not see China as a superpower, let alone a threat to the world order. I agree, the Chinese are more aware of thei shortcomings and also more aware that superpower status is still elusive. Kynge is good at articulating the obstacles that the Chinese still face as they modernize their economy. In Napoleon's time China represented about one-third of the world's economy as opposed to 5% today. If they are going to achieve their former market share they still have a whole lot of shakin' to do.

[svinayak]

China: Fragile Superpower: How China's Internal Politics Could Derail Its Peaceful Rise
by Susan L. Shirk (Author)


# Hardcover: 336 pages
# Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (April 16, 2007)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0195306090
# ISBN-13: 978-0195306095

Susan L. Shirk starts out her revelatory book on China with a nightmare scenario. A Chinese SU-27 fighter and a Taiwanese F-16 collide over the Taiwan Strait. The incident spirals out of control when the Chinese do what they always do in a crisis: blame the other guy. Demonstrations erupt in Beijing. Protesters demand that the Communist Party confront Taiwan and the United States. "When will China finally stand up?" read the signs. Washington scrambles as Beijing readies for war.

This brief, fictional opening frames Shirk's book, dramatizing the possibility that China's communist leadership could lurch into combat with Taiwan and the United States, which is obligated to defend the island nation under the Taiwan Relations Act. She sets out to explain why it is not a mere fantasy and why we, basically, need to be nice to China to keep the nightmare at bay.

At a time when much writing about China frothily presumes the unstoppable rise of a global titan, it is refreshing that a respected academic and former government official (Shirk was the deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia during the second Clinton administration) questions the notion that China is going to run the world. "China may be an emerging superpower," she writes, "but it is a fragile one."

Inside China, she argues, the party leadership is hemmed in by threats to its stability: a rapidly aging population, the rise of the Internet, privatization of the economy, a widening gap between urban rich and rural poor, a restive population fed up with corruption, pollution that not only sickens but kills, mounting unemployment in an economy that needs to grow 7 percent annually just to provide jobs for 25 million new people entering the workforce. "All around them," Shirk contends, "the leaders see new social forces unleashed by economic reforms that could subvert the regime." Moreover, Shirk describes a regime -- half Mafia, half corporate board -- so obsessed with staying in power that it is ill-equipped to deal with these challenges. In a country where communist ideology is dead and a dog-eat-dog form of capitalism is ascendant, you'd think economic interests would be supreme. That's not the case, Shirk argues. After the crackdown on student-led protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the military and security services gained even more power than they already had in a society built on Chairman Mao's maxim that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."

The minister of public security is a Politburo member for the first time since the Cultural Revolution, Shirk notes, but only one person with business experience has become an alternate member of the party's Central Committee, a significantly lower rank. The security services have joined with the organizations that handle propaganda and personnel to create what Shirk calls "the control cartel" devoted to pushing the party's new ideology, a virulent form of nationalism.

Force-fed to China's people through programs such as the "Patriotic Education Campaign" (for all college students), nationalism nurtures "popular resentments against Japan and America and an expectation that Taiwan would soon be reunified," Shirk writes. Look at China's reaction to the food, toy and toothpaste scandals created by shoddy products: Instead of acknowledging the concerns of Western consumers, the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda organs have gone into attack mode, branding these worries as a campaign to isolate and weaken China. The problem, Shirk says, is that this form of nationalism has "boxed the CCP and its leaders into a corner." With reactions like these, she asks, "how can they stabilize relations with these important countries on which China's economic growth, and its political stability, depend?"

Shirk's book shines when she shows how this resentful nationalism has hurt China's relations with Japan and the United States. She depicts ties with Washington as prone to troubles, partly because the Chinese government lacks a crisis-management system. Shirk uses two case studies -- the accidental U.S. bombing of China's embassy in Yugoslavia in 1999 and the collision between a U.S. spy plane and a Chinese jet fighter in 2001 -- to show how the Chinese leadership has become hostage to the expectations churned up by the very nationalism it has fomented. She contends that the Ministry of Propaganda and the People's Liberation Army jumped to blame the United States for both crises and presented unrealistic demands that made it difficult for the Chinese government to back down.

So how to deal with this economic giant that exhibits all the maturity of a muscular teenager? Here Shirk's fine book breaks down. She wants the United States to soft pedal China's human rights violations because, she argues, "America's overriding national interest lies in averting a war." In addition, she calls on the U.S. government to stop pressuring Japan to build up its military. And she advises U.S. officials to give China "face" -- or respect -- whenever possible.

I'd counter that, while Shirk is right to be vigilant about preventing a conflict, she exaggerates the threat. To bolster her argument that Chinese nationalism needs our utmost attention, she compares resurgent China with Japan and Germany in the 1930s. Squeeze China too much, she argues, and you'll get World War III. But, historically, China has been a far more fragmented society than either Germany or Japan. Faced with a grave threat to their nation's survival from the Japanese invasion that began in the '30s, what did China's elite do? They barely battled the Japanese and continued their civil war. One Chinese person is a dragon, a Chinese saying goes, but three of us are just an insect.

Shirk has written an important book at an important moment, with the Beijing Olympics approaching and a new Chinese product scandal breaking practically every week. China: Fragile Superpower should change our assessment of China's leadership, which is a lot less stable than many of us thought. But her overriding fear of war skews her view of the Chinese and of how America should deal with them.

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Review
"Susan Shirk has written the definitive book at the right time. For those seeking an objective look at the new China, your search is over. The bonus is that Fragile Superpower is as fascinating as it is informative. A great accomplishment."--Madeleine K. Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State

"Shirk's depth of knowledge about China - including personal acquaintance with many of its leaders - makes this book a valuable read."--Christian Science Monitor

"Ms. Shirk's magisterial book gazes down on China from above."--The Economist

"Now more than ever we need a realistic approach for dealing with China's rising power. Susan Shirk has an insider's grasp of China's politics and a firm understanding of what makes its leaders tick. China: Fragile Superpower is an important and necessary book."--Brent Scowcroft, former U.S. National Security Advisor

"In this eye-opening work, Susan Shirk details China's incredible economic progress while lifting the rug on its severe internal problems. She has injected a dose of realism into a distorted vision of China which has been promoted by gushing China watchers who focus on Shanghai's skyline."--James Lilley, Former American Ambassador to South Korea and China

"Although other problems dominate the news today, a rising China presents America's greatest long-term challenge. Susan Shirk's excellent book argues compellingly that it also poses the greatest challenge to China's leaders. How they meet this challenge affects not only China, but also the U.S. and, indeed, the world."--William J. Perry, former U.S. Secretary of Defense

"Susan Shirk's lively and perceptive book examines the constraints on Chinese foreign policy in an era of rapid socio-economic change. Shirk brings a wealth of experience as an astute observer of Chinese politics and as a practitioner of track I and II diplomacy toward China to illuminate the relationship between domestic legitimacy dilemmas and foreign security dilemmas."--Alastair Iain Johnston, The Laine Professor of China in World Affairs, Harvard University

"Susan Shirk's lively and perceptive book examines the constraints on Chinese foreign policy in an era of rapid socio-economic change.... Shirk brings a wealth of experience as an astute observer of Chinese politics and as a practitioner of track I and II diplomacy toward China to illuminate the relationship between domestic legitimacy dilemmas and foreign security dilemmas."-- Alastair Iain Johnston, The Laine Professor of China in World Affairs, Harvard

"A major statement about the present condition of China's political system and the hidden hazards on the road ahead."--Andrew Walder Professor of Sociology, Stanford University

"In her extremely convincing book, she shows that there is another emotional side which, driven by unresolved internal tensions, could still push China into a military confrontation."--Financial Times

Susan Shirk gives her readers some useful tools to better assess the future behavior of a fast-resurging China after being "humiliated" for a century and a half (pp. 153 - 55, 185 - 87). Shirk clearly explains that Chinese communist power has two faces. China wants to be seen as behaving responsibly to foster economic growth and social stability (pp. 105 - 139). Shirk correctly states that actions rather than words will make it more credible. Establishing this reputation requires China to accommodate its neighbors, to be a team player in multinational organizations, and to use economic ties to make friends (pp. 109, 199, 223, 257 - 61).

In case of a major crisis, especially one involving Taiwan, Japan or the United States, China could show its other face by acting irresponsibly due to the absence of effective checks and balances of the Chinese system. Party leaders could recklessly play the nationalistic card again as they did with Taiwan in 1996 or with Japan in 2005 if they need to look strong domestically with other leaders, the mass public, and the military (pp. 10 -12, 43, 63, 69, 77, 139, 151, 173, 179 - 80, 186 - 90, 197, 205, 219).

The Communist Party has bet on jingoism since the 1990s because communism in China is a dying ideology in which almost no Chinese believes (pp. 11, 63 - 64, 145, 148, 164 - 70, 186). The Party implausibly claims that ordinary Chinese are unworthy of Western democracy because their country, unlike India, does not have religion to manage them responsibly (p. 53). Chinese leaders know that Chinese nationalists can turn against the Party if they appear too weak to deal with foreign pressures (pp. 61, 66, 173, 180).

Economic interdependence has had a somewhat moderating effect on the relationship of China with the outside world, including Taiwan, Japan, and the U.S. (pp. 24, 96, 145 - 46, 190, 195, 233, 241, 247). Due to their fear of widespread instability and their lack of political legitimacy, Party leaders, however, have not displayed much courage in taking unpopular measures such as enforcing intellectual property rights or stopping currency manipulation in trading abroad (pp. 26 - 27, 53 - 54, 60, 73 - 74). Chinese leaders are well aware that the increased protectionism in the U.S. against the fast-growing trade deficit with China and the rampant piracy of U.S. products in China are not politically sustainable, especially in case of a majority change in Washington in 2009 (pp. 25 - 26, 248). At the same time, Shirk correctly points out that the ongoing fiscal profligacy of the U.S. is weakening the country at the profit of China (pp. 26, 249).

Of all China's challenges, the need for "social stability" overrules all other considerations, even it means sacrificing long-term diplomatic objectives for short-term domestic political gains (pp. 38, 52 - 54, 109, 148, 183 - 87, 197, 224, 234, 254 - 55). For the Chinese communist leaders and their families, losing power could result in the loss of their possessions or even their death (pp. 7 - 9). To keep its authoritarian grip on power, the Communist Party has articulated a three-pronged policy (p. 39):

1) Avoid public leadership splits

Shirk gives a useful overview of the "selectorate," the group of Party members who have the power to choose the leaders, and the modus operandi of the Party (pp. 39 - 52). The Communist Party is not known for its openness in framing domestic and foreign policies (pp. 43 - 44). Patronage is essential for keeping the Party in power, which feeds an endemic corruption from which many communist bigwigs enrich themselves at the expense of ordinary Chinese (pp. 60, 68 - 69). Party leaders learn from the Tiananmen fiasco that destabilizing internal dissent can undermine the Party's grip on power (pp. 48, 53, 162). Keeping elite contests for power hidden from the public is increasingly difficult as the audience-driven media are testing the limits on what can be reported (pp. 39, 50, 52, 55, 78, 183). Although China is a still a long way from having free mass media, resourceful Chinese increasingly give the Communist Party a hard time for censoring "undesirable news (pp. 82 - 83)."

2) Prevent large-scale social unrest

Shirk demonstrates with conviction that Communist China's obsession with internal stability paradoxically makes the Party very sensitive to public opinion due to the lack of any democratic institution to allow ordinary Chinese to express themselves peacefully (pp. 52 - 53, 66). Shirk overviews with mastery the multiple possible threats to one-party-rule and which means the Party uses to either neutralize or reduce these threats (pp. 52 - 69). Paradoxically, the more developed and rich China becomes, the more insecure and threatened Communist Party leaders feel (p. 5).

3) Keep the People's Liberation Army on the side of the Party

Unlike their predecessors, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, Communist Party leaders Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao are less politically secure and have a greater need to keep the military satisfied to safeguard them from domestic rebellion (pp. 46, 73, 77, 158 - 60, 202). Communist Party leaders seem to have a harder time saying no to the military demands for weaponry buildups and aggressive policies (pp. 70, 75 - 76, 222 - 23). The senior leadership of the PLA uses the Taiwan issue as the paramount factor for getting more "toys" approved (p. 74). By covering foreign policy, audience-driven media are making it harder for Communist Party leaders not to treat foreign policy as domestic politics (pp. 78 - 104, 140 - 254). Furthermore, history is not on the side of China because rising powers are likely to provoke war (pp. 4, 9 - 10, 210 - 11, 219, 243 - 45, 261 - 69). All of these factors undermine the credibility of the "peaceful rise" that Jintao - Wen Jiabao have promoted since 2002 (pp. 108 - 09, 252).

To summarize, China's behavior cannot be correctly understood without a proper grasp of the tectonic forces that have molded the country's history, geography, and culture.

[svinayak]

Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past
by Bruce Bartlett (Author)

# Hardcover: 288 pages
# Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; First Edition edition (January 8, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 023060062X
# ISBN-13: 978-0230600621

"Bruce Bartlett brandishes a damning history of the Democratic Party, which for 100 years after the Civil War provided a fertile ground for Jim Crow and white supremacy. Democrats have long acted behind an ethos of racial equality, yet, as Bartlett powerfully illustrates, the reality of their patchy record over the last two centuries in fact lends little credibility to that claim. Compelling and incisive."--Grover G. Norquist, President, Americans for Tax Reform



"Wrong on Race is an important contribution to the study of party politics in America. Bartlett offers a thorough, well documented account of the racial roots of the Democratic party. This book should be a required reading for African-Americans of all ages, and especially for the nation's youth."--Carol Swain, Professor of Political Science and Law, Vanderbilt University, and editor of Debating Immigration



"Wrong on Race powerfully recapitulates a twentieth century journey into racial pettifogging and outright confusion, and in doing so shines a light as clear as the meridian sun on the realities of racial politics…Bruce Bartlett has done what no one before him has done, and it is all the more remarkable, therefore, to say that it will probably never be better done."--Professor William B. Allen, Michigan State University; and former chairman, U.S. Civil Rights Commission



"The Democratic party is widely credited, not least by black writers, as the party that has done the most for civil rights. Yet for most of its history it has been the other way around. As Bruce Bartlett points out in Wrong on Race, Democratic icons like Woodrow Wilson worked to impose segregation on blacks, and even Franklin Roosevelt did little for equal rights."--Michael Barone, syndicated columnist, co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, and author of Our First Revolution

Praise for Imposter: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the American Legacy:

"It's a fairly devastating indictment of the current administration's economic policies from a conservative-to-libertarian perspective."--Chris Suellentrop, The Washington Post
"Liberal commentators gripe so frequently about the current administration that it's become easy to tune them out, but when Bartlett, a former member of the Reagan White House, says George W. Bush has betrayed the conservative movement, his conservative credentials command attention."
--Publishers Weekly
"Bruce Bartlett is no impostor. He's the real thing--a reality-based conservative who searches for supportable truths and then speaks them loudly and clearly."
--Ron Suskind, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Price of Loyalty
"Bruce Bartlett has long been one of Washington's most searching, thoughtful, and uncompromisingly candid analysts. That's a view shared not only by those who agree with him, but also by people like me, who differ with him about 80 percent of the time. This book is a perfect reflection of Bruce's gifts: he cares far more about being honest and consistent than about following anyone's party line."
--E. J. Dionne Jr., author of Stand Up Fight Back and Why Americans Hate Politics


Book Description
In Wrong on Race, Bruce Bartlett sets the record straight on a hidden past that many Democrats would rather see swept under the carpet. Ranging from the founding of the Republic through to today, it rectifies the unfair perceptions of America's two national parties. While Nixon's infamous "Southern Strategy" is constantly referenced in the media, less well remembered are Woodrow Wilson's segregation of the entire Federal civil service; FDR's appointment of a member of the KKK to the Supreme Court; John F. Kennedy's apathy towards civil rights legislation;and the ascension of Robert Byrd, who is current President pro tempore of the Senate, third in line in the presidential line of succession, and a former member of the KKK. For the last seventy years, African Americans have voted en masse for one party, with little in the end to show for it. Is it time for the pendulum to swing the other way? With the Republican Party furiously engaged in pre-2008 soul searching, this exhaustively researched, incisively written expos will be an important and compelling component of that debate as we head towards November.

[svinayak]

His Panic: Why Americans Fear Hispanics in the U.S.
by Geraldo Rivera (Author)

# Hardcover: 272 pages
# Publisher: Celebra Hardcover (February 26, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0451224140
# ISBN-13: 978-0451224149

[quote]

A rare, unflinching look at one of today’s most important issues—from one of today’s most well-known journalists.

In this insightful, well-researched book, Peabody and Emmy® Award-winning journalist Geraldo Rivera examines the growth of the Hispanic population in the U.S., fueled partly by what may be the single most divisive issue in America today: illegal immigration. With objective clarity and personal conviction, Rivera sheds light on an issue that is muddled with confusion and prejudice —and too often blamed for everything from terrorism to welfare.

Examining the past—his own parents’ struggle to be “realâ€

[svinayak]

What Orwell Didn't Know
by Andras Szanto (Author)

# Paperback: 272 pages
# Publisher: PublicAffairs (November 5, 2007)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 1586485601
# ISBN-13: 978-1586485603

Three years before he published 1984, Orwell wrote Politics and the English Language, an attack on the use of political speech "in defense of the indefensible." That essay (reprinted in full) serves as the point of departure for these 20 articles on modern methods of American propaganda, which editor and freelance journalist Szántó calls "subtle, insidious, sugarcoated, focus-grouped, and market-tested." Contributors are consistently thought-provoking, but happily diverse in background and concern: Farnaz Fassihi, senior Middle East correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, takes on war reporting; USC journalism professor Martin Kaplan explains why he refers to television news as "the Infotainment Freak Show"; and cognitive scientist George Lakoff discusses the psychological principles manipulated to goose the efficacy of political messages. An epilogue from moneyed progressive George Soros (whose Open Society Institute co-sponsored the publication) expresses hope that this book will "inoculate the public against false arguments"; timed to coincide with the 2008 presidential election, Szántó's collection should indeed resonate with Americans increasingly put out by the obfuscating tactics of many political campaigns (and careers).
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Book Description
Propaganda. Manipulation. Spin. Control. It has ever been thus—or has it? On the eve of the 60th anniversary of George Orwell's classic essay on propaganda (Politics and the English Language), writers have been invited to explore what Orwell didn't—or couldn't—know. Their responses, framed in pithy, focused essays, range far and wide: from the effect of television and computing, to the vast expansion of knowledge about how our brains respond to symbolic messages, to the merger of journalism and entertainment, to lessons learned during and after a half-century of totalitarianism. Together, they paint a portrait of a political culture in which propaganda and mind control are alive and well (albeit in forms and places that would have surprised Orwell). The pieces in this anthology sound alarm bells about the manipulation and misinformation in today's politics, and offer guideposts for a journalism attuned to Orwellian tendencies in the 21st century.


This book is published to coincide with a one-day conference on "Orwell and the American society" to be held at the New York Public Library November 7, 2007 sponsored by the Open Society Institute and the graduate schools of journalism at UC Berkeley, Columbia, and the Annenberg School at USC. This year is chosen because it is near the 60th anniversary of the publication of George Orwell's famous essay, "Politics and the English Language" (1946).

But what this book is really about is the perversion of truth by the Bush administration and the concomitant failure of the American mass media to do anything about it or to even comprehend what is going on. Editor Andras Szanto writes in his "Editor's Note," "the deans of five prominent journalism schools...were worried about what was happening to political language, which seemed to be divorcing itself from reality at an alarming rate." (p. ix) This book with essays by 18 heavyweight political thinkers, cognitive scientists, psychologists, journalists and others is an attempt to address that worry.

Aside from the many Ministry of Truth sort of lies cynically concocted by the Bush administration, there is the striking and very scary fact that Bush is acting out the Orwellian nightmare in that he has put the United States on what appears to be a permanent "war" footing just as was the case with Oceania in Orwell's novel, 1984, and for pretty much the same reasons. As several of the contributors have noted, George W. Bush has invented an endless and fraudulent "war on terror" as a means to keep the populace in fear and to control both the Congress and the media in order to enhance his own power as chief executive.

But there is much more. As Drew Westen notes in his essay, "The New Frontier: The Instruments of Emotion," there is the example of "Polluters" drafting "a bill which became law," which was "named, as if in cynical tribute to Orwell, the 'Clear Skies Initiative.'" (pp. 75-76) Of course it was, and is, anything but. Westen goes on to make the salient point that "What Orwell could not have foretold is...Orwellian language can be as effective in a democracy as in a dictatorship." (p. 79) These are points that George Soros also makes in his essay, "What I Didn't Know: Open Society Reconsidered."

What strikes me is how corporate control of the media in all its aspects, including especially advertising and news reporting, can insure that only politicians sympathetic to corporate interests can possibly be elected, and once elected can work with their corporate sponsors to bring about something close to dictatorial control. Congresspersons and reporters in fear of losing their seats or their jobs are as easily controlled as citizens terrified of secret police and brown shirts. What Bush, Cheney, Karl Rove and the minions working for them have done--and this is the thrust of the book--is beyond what Orwell could possibly have foreseen. As George Lakoff explains in his essay, "What Orwell Didn't Know About the Brain, the Mind, and Language," we think metaphorically, and the many metaphors of life are charged with emotions that can be activated by certain political words or phrases, "War on Terror, tax relief, illegal immigration...abortion on demand...cut and run, flip-flop...," etc. These words "can activate large portions of the brain." (p. 70) He further notes, "every time such words and phrases are repeated, all the frames and metaphors and worldview structures are activated again and strengthened--because recurring activation strengthens neural connections." (p. 71)

Lakoff recalls how the word "liberal" was destroyed by conservatives through incessant repetition of such phrases as "tax and spend liberal, liberal elite, liberal media, limousine liberal," and so on. This is brainwashing postmodern style. Orville Schell in his introductory essay sees this sort of thing as "penetrating 'the inner heart' of individuals." (p. xx)

Nicholas Lemann in his essay "The Limits of Language" makes the point that the corruption of language, which is what Orwell was writing about in "Politics and the English Language," is one thing, but "an even more frightening political prospect" is "the corruption of information." (p. 15) Bush invaded Iraq under the auspices, as it were, of such a corruption of information. Lemann laments that "there often is no corrective mechanism at hand" when "the facts of a situation have been intentionally corrupted by people in power." (p. 15) Personally I am concerned about the truth hiding in plain sight, in news stories, in articles, in books, on the Internet, while remaining largely unrecognized and unappreciated amidst the massive information and misinformation overload that is burying all of us.

Mark Danner takes this quote from Orwell as the wellspring for his essay, "Words in a Time of War: On Rhetoric, Truth, and Power": "From the totalitarian point of view history is something to be created rather than learned." He goes on to show how this perfectly fits the mentality of Karl Rove, AKA "Bush's Brain." Quoting Ron Suskind, he reveals that Rove disdains what he calls "the reality-based community," opining that "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality...we'll act again, creating other new realities...." (p. 23)

I wish I had the space to say something about the other excellent essays in this collection, but I am up against Amazon's 1,000-word limit, so just let me say this is an outstanding book, wonderfully conceived, eminently topical and profound. I suspect it is going to appear on college reading lists all over America in the next few years, and hopefully it will help a new generation of Americans resist the kind of political propaganda and fact manipulation ubiquitous in recent years.

By the way, Orwell's famous essay appears as an appendix.

"What Orwell Didn't Know" is an eye-opening compendium of pieces about the insidious use of propaganda in our time. Editor Andras Szanto presents outstanding works by eighteen intellectuals who compare Orwell's classic 1946 paper on propaganda, 'Politics and the English Language' (reprinted in its entirety) with the propaganda industry of today. Convincingly demonstrating how the science of propaganda has in fact metastisized into a very real threat to the Enlightenment ideal of progress, the authors implore us to sharpen our critical thinking skills as we seek to immunize ourselves to manipulation and struggle to keep our democracy alive.

Part One: Language and Politics includes six essays about how deceptive language serves political ends. Orwell believed that clarity in writing was essential to reasoned discourse and understood that fear is the gateway to despotism. The authors connect these concepts to the Bush administration's well-documented misrepresentations that have led the U.S. into its perpetual war on terror. Among many insights, we learn how the deceptive use of language has allowed the corporate-controlled state to deepen its control over the public consciousness and impose a far right-wing political agenda.

Part Two: Symbols and Battlegrounds contains six articles that explore how culturally-charged symbols are routinely exploited for political advantage. The authors discuss how post-Orwellian discoveries in cognitive sciences have demonstrated that reason is not just rational but emotional, complicating the task of disputation against the skilled propagandist. For example, the authors cite President Reagan's Star Wars proposal as an emotionally-appealing but unattainable solution to the overblown Communist menace that has distracted us from the real problem of nuclear proliferation. Similarly, the authors discuss how liberal causes such as women's rights and the environment have been revoiced in born-again Christian terms to the detriment of human progress and nature. Fortunately, the authors detect a growing challenge to the Christian Right by socially-conscious religious organizations and individuals such as Al Gore, whose cinematic jeremiad 'An Incovenient Truth' has succeeded in bringing attention to global warming by reframing the problem as a moral issue.

Part Three: Media and Message consists of five compositions on the dangers of concentrated media ownership plus an Epilogue by George Soros. Writing before television came into maturity, Orwell's concerns about the printed word seems almost quaint when compared with the ubiquitously persuasive powers of television on the public mind. The authors are appalled with the rise of the postmodern infotainment industry and the media's stakeholder role in promoting the spectacle of disaster; others voice their concerns about the lack of diverse perspectives and self-censorship practices which makes it more and more difficult to reach broad consensus on critical issues. And in an astute closing chapter, Mr. Soros concludes that the role of the media watchdog is more important than ever if we hope to curb dishonest reporting and reconnect the masses with reality.

[svinayak]

Global Financial Warriors: The Untold Story of International Finance in the Post-9/11 World
by John B. Taylor (Author)


# Paperback: 320 pages
# Publisher: W. W. Norton (January 28, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0393331156
# ISBN-13: 978-0393331158

Exactly one month after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, President Bush declared that "the first shot in the war was when we started cutting off their money, because an al-Qaeda organization can't function without money." In this data-heavy memoir, former Treasury Under Secretary for International Affairs Taylor, currently an economics professor at Stanford, describes in exceptional detail that first salvo and the campaign it ignited: how the world economy was transformed in 9/11's aftermath and how his team became, quite literally, soldiers of fortune. Taylor brings readers face to face with a President making his hardest decisions and behind the scenes at many important G7 (later G8) meetings. Documenting every word and action, Taylor chronicles the financial reconstruction of both Afghanistan and Iraq-including the development of new currency, reformations at the IMF and the daunting work getting countries to forgive Iraqi debt-in too much detail, making this a longer than necessary read. Though the data and decisions he documents constitute irrefutably world-changing history, readers may find many of Taylor's section headings sufficiently informative ("Struggling to Move a Large, Disparate Group," "Getting the President's Approval for Stage One") to skip the thousand-plus words that follow.

Global Financial Warriors" is John B. Taylor's compelling personal account of his five years as the Commanding General of the economic and financial troops fighting the War on Terror from his command center in Washington to the finance ministries and central banks of Kabul and Baghdad. This book reveals an exciting new facet of what used to be the dull and arcane world of international finance. It's essential reading for those wanting a behind-the-scene's look at the critical role of international finance in the War on Terror. Taylor's title is not just hype. Financial practitioners really have been transformed into warriors in the War on Terror.

[svinayak]

The Strange Death of Republican America: Chronicles of a Collapsing Party
by Sidney Blumenthal (Author)

# Hardcover: 352 pages
# Publisher: Union Square Press (April 1, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 1402757891
# ISBN-13: 978-1402757891

Sidney Blumenthal—trenchant analyst, best-selling author, and senior adviser to former President Bill Clinton (and more recently, Hillary)—offers a penetrating journalistic and historical examination of the ongoing collapse of Republicanism. Closely charting the Party’s imploding reputation in America and the world, as well as the potential consequences of George W. Bush’s radical presidency for the 2008 election, The Strange Death of Republican America will be required reading for anyone interested in politics and concerned about the fate of the nation. In these essays and opinion columns written by Blumenthal over the past few years for The Guardian of London and salon.com, along with a new and stimulating introduction, Blumenthal provides a unifying and overarching perspective on the Bush years.
Blumenthal scrutinizes the past and present state of the Republican Party, which he believes portends the incipient demise of their vaunted political machine and the Republican era since the Nixon administration. The issues on the table range from the legacy of Nixon’s imperial presidency and its influence on Dick Cheney to Karl Rove’s failed strategy for political realignment, as well as conflicts within the military and intelligence communities over Bush’s policies, and the underlying political shifts that are demonstrably weakening the once-strong foundations of Republican philosophy and governance.
These essays have the cumulative effect of an irresistible factual and historical tide—a portrait of a party in self-destructive decline that will grab the attention of anyone fascinated by the world of politics.

[svinayak]

A Year Without "Made in China": One Family's True Life Adventure in the Global Economy
by Sara Bongiorni (Author)

# Hardcover: 256 pages
# Publisher: Wiley (June 29, 2007)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0470116137
# ISBN-13: 978-0470116135

Journalist Bongiorni, on a post-Christmas day mired deep in plastic toys and electronics equipment, makes up her mind to live for a year without buying any products made in China, a decision spurred less by notions of idealism or fair trade-though she does note troubling statistics on job loss and trade deficits-than simply "to see if it can be done." In this more personal vein, Bongiorni tells often funny, occasionally humiliating stories centering around her difficulty procuring sneakers, sunglasses, DVD players and toys for two young children and a skeptical husband. With little insight into global economics or China's manufacturing practices, readers may question the point of singling out China when cheap, sweatshop-produced products from other countries are fair game (though Bongiorni cheerfully admits the flaws in her project, she doesn't consider fixing them). Still, Bongiorni is a graceful, self-deprecating writer, and her comic adventures in self-imposed inconvenience cast an interesting sideways glance at the personal effects of globalism, even if it doesn't easily connect to the bigger picture.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
Journalist Bongiorni, on a post-Christmas day mired deep in plastic toys and electronics equipment, makes up her mind to live for a year without buying any products made in China, a decision spurred less by notions of idealism or fair trade—though she does note troubling statistics on job loss and trade deficits—than simply "to see if it can be done." In this more personal vein, Bongiorni tells often funny, occasionally humiliating stories centering around her difficulty procuring sneakers, sunglasses, DVD players and toys for two young children and a skeptical husband. With little insight into global economics or China's manufacturing practices, readers may question the point of singling out China when cheap, sweatshop-produced products from other countries are fair game (though Bongiorni cheerfully admits the flaws in her project, she doesn't consider fixing them). Still, Bongiorni is a graceful, self-deprecating writer, and her comic adventures in self-imposed inconvenience cast an interesting sideways glance at the personal effects of globalism, even if it doesn't easily connect to the bigger picture.(July) (Publishers Weekly, August 6, 2007)

"a wry look at the ingenuity it takes to shun the planet's fastest-growing economy." (Bloomberg News)

"The West's dependence on Chinese exports was neatly summed up" (The Telegraph, Sunday 12th August 2007)

"What the year-long experiment did achieve, was to switch on Bongiorni as a consumer and make her alive to the complexities and shifting power of the international economy. (Financial Times, Saturday 25th August)

"...a fascinating and entertaining look at just how much of a challenge an average consumer faces...to avoid buying Chinese goods." (Supply Management, Thursday 31st January 2008)
WOW what an eye opening book. While the author got the idea of not buying anything from china right at Christmas, my awakening has come while packing to move. When I have discovered even the upscale items I had paid thru the nose for, from LL Bean, Smith and Hawkens, even Lenox items, all had Made in China on them.

I also appreciate the authors sense of humor which makes this book an easier read, since it makes you see the problem without becoming a xenophobic type person who also hates the Chinese. In fact she notes its American businesses who have taken American jobs overseas where they can have cheap made goods and higher profits at home that is the real problem.

Am so happy the author wrote this book, which I think should be in every library in America not only because it reminds us of how made in China makes up a good 90% of what we have in our homes. It also goes beyond the issues of out souring and loss of American jobs, to the whole comsumerism and materialism that has Americans by the throat. Even the dang plastic they use to make Visa, Mastercard, Discovery and American Express is made in China.

Look at the millions of cell phones, iPods, iPhones, video games, and all the high tech items Americans stand in line to be the first to buy. All made in China. And bought by an increasingly obese sit at home and do nothing, consumers.

And as she noted the shoes for kids whose feet grow faster than a corn field, and sold at all the major stores that families with kids frequent, all seem to have the made in China label. Same with virtually every toy and most school supplies. She even writes of going out of her way to buy made in Italy shoes for the kids. Makes me wonder where Stride Rite shoes we used to buy that were made here in the states are now made.

Even her husband found that when a repair for something in the house needed doing that places like Lowe's, Home Depot etc had the parts needed but also Made in China on the box. Items may be cheaper on the surface but what are the deeper costs?

If Americans were willing to pay fifty cents more and they knew the item would result in Made in USA and a job here at home for a fellow American I firmly believe that people would pay up.

[svinayak]

Defeat: Why America and Britain Lost Iraq
by Jonathan Steele (Author)
# Hardcover: 304 pages
# Publisher: Counterpoint (February 28, 2008)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 1582434034
# ISBN-13: 978-1582434032

[quote]
“Critics of the U.S. and British invasion of Iraq often begin with the faulty (or deliberately skewed) intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction. Even those politicians who continue to support the venture are willing to criticize the military and political mistakes that followed the initial thrust into Iraq. Steele, a senior correspondent for the Guardian, offers a deeper and more damning indictment. He asserts that the effort was preordained to fail, doomed by the twin sins of ignorance and arrogance. At the core of these sins was the inability of policy makers to comprehend that even the best-intentioned and “benignâ€

[svinayak]

Linguistics in a Colonial World: A Story of Language, Meaning, and Power
by Joseph Errington (Author)

# Paperback: 216 pages
# Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell (September 10, 2007)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 1405105704
# ISBN-13: 978-1405105705

The recently published work on mleccha/mlecchita vikalpa emphatically declares that Indus script encodes mleccha speech, questions the very foundations of IE linguistics -- what is referred to as now-proved-to-be-mythical Aryan invasion/tourism as a linguistic doctrine -- points to the declaration of IE linguistics as an endangered parasite and declares the imperative of studying the linguistic area of Sarasvati civilization on the foundations of Bharata, Tolkappiyan, Panini, Patanjali, Hemacandra, Bhartruhari and work on Munda (Austro-asiatic) languages by David Stampe and Shashibhushan Bhattacharjee.

Like the invention of casteism, invention of IE linguistics starting with William Jones now shown wearing a Pontiff's cap on an Oxford college chapel (aha, missionary) is also a non-falsifiable excursion into realms of fanciful ** hypotheses building on unpronouncable, unauthenticated words prefixed with **.

It is time to understand Language X of Indian linguistic area and explain why thousands of lexemes common across spoken languages of India do not have IE cognates. Mleccha-work is only a beginning, together with the Indian Lexicon for over 25 ancient languages of India, establishing the essential semantic unity of the linguistic area.

Like colonialism which is dead, IE linguistics which is a colonial parasite is in its last gasps on life-support systems before it is declared as brain-dead . It is time to reinvent language studies based on general semantics and cultural foundations and NOT built on slippery foundations of phonetic gimmickry, at worst or intellectual gymnastics, at best.


"This book provides both an introduction and an innovative argument about the development of colonial linguistics and its place in the rise of 19th century European linguistics as a field of expert knowledge. This is stimulating scholarship and a valuable teaching resource for linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, history of linguistics, cultural studies and historiography."
Kathryn Woolard, University of California: San Diego<!--end-->

"This splendid history of ideas is a nuanced reflection on how language and humanity became each other's deepest theoretical mirrors as the world made the transition from colonialism to the more recent forms of globalization. It is also a superb contribution to the general dialogue between linguistics and its cognate human sciences."
Arjun Appadurai, The New School

"In this concise, eloquent yet wide-ranging book, Joseph Errington demonstrates the importance of understanding linguistics as a special kind of colonial encounter. Linguistics, he shows, has always operated within particular relations of power, constructs of sameness and difference, and ways of reducing languages to writing. The European science of language helped legislate on the one hand national difference in Europe and on the other human inequality in European empires. Linguistics, Errington shows, may claim scientificity but it can never be insulated from the speech of those it studies; it is always entangled with contexts, projects and linguistic ideologies from the past. This book therefore provides not only key historical discussion of the long and fraught connections among colonialism, linguistic description, literacy practices, and social imaginations, but also challenges any contemporary practising linguist – whether engaged in pan-human speculations about universal language, continuing missionary linguistic projects, or attempts to save and preserve endangered languages – to understand current postcolonial linguistic projects in relation to the colonial past."
Alastair Pennycook, University of Technology-Sydney

Product Description
Drawing on both original texts and critical literature, Linguistics in a Colonial World surveys the methods, meanings, and uses of early linguistic projects around the world.


* Explores how early endeavours in linguistics were used to aid in overcoming practical and ideological difficulties of colonial rule
* Traces the uses and effects of colonial linguistic projects in the shaping of identities and communities that were under, or in opposition to, imperial regimes
* Examines enduring influences of colonial linguistics in contemporary thinking about language and cultural difference
* Brings new insight into post-colonial controversies including endangered languages and language rights in the globalized twenty-first century

[svinayak]

Rivals: How the Power Struggle Between China, India and Japan Will Shape Our Next Decade (Hardcover)
by Bill Emmott (Author)
# Hardcover: 336 pages
# Publisher: Allen Lane (3 April 2008)
# Language English
# ISBN-10: 1846140099
# ISBN-13: 978-1846140099

POLICY WORLD
The Asian Century

This century, global peace and prosperity will depend on relations between China, India and Japan

BY BILL EMMOTT
11 Jan 2008

In the 1970s and 1980s, the 21st century was labelled as the ‘Pacific century’, as it was assumed it would be dominated by countries around the Pacific Ocean — Japan, the US and, in a smaller way, South Korea. Now, with the dollar declining, the US slipping into recession and China about to dominate headlines in 2008 with growth and the Olympics, it looks like the ‘Asian century’ has begun. But what does the phrase really mean?

When Henry Luce, founder of Time and Life magazines, used an editorial in Life to call for the ‘American century’, he was urging his countrymen to enter World War II and take a position of leadership that corresponded to the economic and technological pre-eminence the US had already attained.

Clearly, Asia is now attaining economic importance. Japan and China are the world’s second and fourth largest economies, with India climbing the ranks at No. 13. Asia has four of the world’s dozen biggest exporters, and the largest foreign-exchange reserves in the world. As a whole, Asia in 2006-07 accounted for more than a fifth of world GDP, almost 30 per cent of world exports and a third of its cross-border capital flows.

Economic power, then, is shifting to Asia. Well, until the dollar began to decline two years ago, that wasn’t true. The percentages of world GDP accounted for by the US, the European Union (EU) and Asia in 1990 and 2006 haven’t changed much: Asia’s share rose from 20.6 per cent to 22.3 per cent, while the US’s, 22.5 per cent to 27.5 per cent. Taking the EU as the 15 members it had in 1990, its share has slipped only from 30.1 per cent to 28.2 per cent.

These figures, though, are distorted by three things: decline in energy and commodity prices in the 1990s, which depressed global GDP shares of resources producers; stagnation in Japan in the 1990s, which meant that Asia’s share was being redistributed from Japan to China and other fast-growing economies; and by the strength of the dollar.
Click here for more Column

Those distortions have begun to unwind: high energy and commodity prices are transferring wealth from the developed world; Japan’s economy is growing again, adding to Asia’s share; and the dollar is declining. The currencies it has not declined against much so far, however, have been Asian ones, especially the Chinese renminbi and the Japanese yen. But that is likely to happen during the next year or so.

In the next decade or so, Asia is likely to account for a share much closer to its share of world population (about 50 per cent). So the ‘Asian century’ could be coming true, but ‘Asia’ is different from Henry Luce’s ‘America’ in a crucial way.

America is one country, Asia is many. So Asia cannot exercise global power as America did, unless by Asia you mean one country, China. Further, Asia is, in fact, a hotbed of rivalry. Among the world’s oldest enemies are China and Japan who, despite sharing many cultural traits, have been fighting each other for a thousand years. For the five years of Japan’s most notable recent prime ministership, that of Junichiro Koizumi in 2001-06, no top-level summits were held between Chinese and Japanese leaders after October 2001, such was the rancour between them.

Many will say this doesn’t matter: China is the future while Japan is the past. That is not a wise way to look at the world’s second biggest economy, but let us look at the rest of Asia. China’s neighbour, India, which is at least a decade behind it in terms of industrialisation and living standards, is now growing by 9-10 per cent a year. Might China and India work together to exert global power?

It is unlikely. The pair fought a border war in 1962, they have unresolved disputes over land, and India provides refuge for one of China’s greatest enemies, Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. There is a good reason why President George Bush signed a civil nuclear deal and a defence pact with India: he knows India wants help to stand up to China, and the US can use India as a counterweight in Asia to growing Chinese power.

The Asian century is a period in which Asia will become more important: as an economic region, as a source of global warming, as a source of capital, as a market. But also, it is a period in which divisions within Asia will become more important. Asia is full of danger zones — Korea, Taiwan, Pakistan and Tibet, to name but four. For the first time, the region has three powerful countries — China, India and Japan — at the same time. The peace and prosperity of the world will increasingly be shaped by whether the rivalry between these three powers turns out to be constructive or destructive. That is the real sense in which this is the Asian century.



The rising economic and political power of Asia is the biggest story of our times. But it is often misunderstood, either as a story of West v East or as a story simply of the rise of China and its challenge to America. My new book "Rivals: How the Power Struggle Between China, India and Japan will Shape our Next Decade" aims to challenge those views. The biggest story, I argue, is and will be the rivalry within Asia now that, for the first time in history, the continent contains three great powers simultaneously, all of which are starting to think of Asia as a coherent whole. The other big stories will be the economic and social changes that China, India and Japan are all destined to go through during the next decade. For more information please [ click here ].

[svinayak]

The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America's Politics and Culture
by Brink Lindsey (Author)

# Hardcover: 400 pages
# Publisher: Collins (May 8, 2007)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0060747668
# ISBN-13: 978-0060747664

More than any other cause, economic prosperity transformed the United States after World War II into a nation unlike any other in recorded history, posits Lindsey of the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute. Although Lindsey (Dead Hand: The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism) acknowledges that millions of Americans live below the poverty line, he argues that mass prosperity changed the equation in many areas, including gender relations, race relations, labor-management relations, parent-child dynamics and organized religion. The result was the rise of a politically liberal counterculture, a politically conservative backlash, the labeling of blue states and red states, and a multitude of other political phenomenon. Although the book offers details about political campaigning, drug use, and the rise of rock and roll music among other events that made headlines from the 1950s into the 21st century, the details often overwhelm Lindsey's hypothesis. Ultimately, the book reads more like a college freshman survey course textbook than a compelling narrative. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Freed of the struggle to meet basic needs, Americans have been privileged to focus on their wants. With breathtaking analysis, Lindsey, vice president of research at the Cato Institute, offers a dizzying look back over American economics, politics, and culture to examine the complexities of abundance. Improvements to everyday life, from electricity to clothing, have led to preoccupations with self-realization, equal rights, and relentless struggles between the political Left and Right. Drawing on observations from Karl Marx, Abraham Maslow, and Herbert Marcuse, among others, Lindsey traces the transformation of American culture as prosperity has shaken tried-and-true social conventions and the organizing principles that centered on the allocation of scarce resources. Prosperity has brought with it a sense that anything is possible. Lindsey pinpoints the current tensions between the political Left and Right to a 1967 San Francisco love-in and the opening of Oral Roberts University, both "eruptions of millenarian enthusiasm." Despite the tumult, Lindsey sees common ground as more Americans adopt a libertarian view, affirming core values while making allowances for different lifestyles. Readers from a broad spectrum of beliefs will appreciate the breadth and ardor of Lindsey's analysis, if not his conclusions. Vanessa Bush


Yes it's true, at no other time and place in history than America now has the average person enjoyed so many amenities. So why the doom and gloom pessimism? Politicians want us to think things are bad in order to justify government expansion, that's why. A few decades ago a top USSR reporter and a USA reporter changed places in a "cultural perspective" piece. When the soviet reporter toured some of the worst neighborhoods in the USA in order to do a piece on American poverty, what was his conclusion? That there is no poverty in America! What? No poverty in America? Not really. The average person who lives below the poverty line in America has a refrigerator, a car, air conditioning, a cell phone, a microwave, cable TV and a DVD player. In the average below-poverty household in America people have more square feet per person than the average middle and upper-middle class people in Europe. The average person who lives below the poverty line in America, by the way, is not starving; in fact they eat way more than the average upper-class person and their only danger is that they are more likely to be overweight! So if the man isn't "keeping them down," or whatever other hippy BS slogan you prefer, then what's the deal? Well, consider this: In the USA, right now, the average person who lives below the poverty line spends $2.50 for every $1.00 earned and only works 16 hours a week. That's right, 16 hours a week! If they simply upped that to the standard 40 hours a week this in and of itself would lift most of them above the poverty line! This is not a societal problem; it's a behavioral problem. It's also important to keep in mind however that statistics without context are meaningless. Many people in the "below the poverty line" bracket are actually college kids whose lives are in no way lacking, or are younger people just starting their working life and earning minimum wage. For a long time the town with the greatest number per capita of people living in poverty was an upscale college town! Comparing high income to low income percentages is often confounded with comparing older people's earning power to the earning power of young people. Also, the majority of people in the "uninsured Americans" bracket are actually upper-class citizens who wisely CHOOSE not to have health insurance. (Why pay an insurance company when you can invest and pay yourself?) Only 6% of uninsured Americans are uninsured because they can't afford it, and even then, do they REALLY need cell phones or cable?

Brink Lindsey of the libertarian Cato Institute recounts the story of American prosperity that followed World War II. Although countless others have written about this phenomenon, Lindsey's take of these events is fresh and insightful, and, not surprisely, vindicates his libertarian worldview.

According to Lindsey, the mass affluence that ushered in after World War II lifted us out of "the realm of necessity" and into "the realm of freedom." For the first time in human history the vast majority no longer struggled to obtain the basic necessities of life. Many would debate this point, but statistically one could prove that even the poor were better off than in previous time or place.

Leaving the age of scarcity and entering the age of abundance, Americans were suddenly faced proliferation of choices, arguably turning them into a different kind of people. Not only did this unleash a quest for material wealth, but also a desire for political and cultural change. The age of abundance produced two antithetical social movements that upended the peaceful harmony of the 1950s. For the left of the 1960s and 70s, mass affluence created new possibilities for personal growth and greater tolerance and opportunity for women and minorities. The left, however, was dismissive of business culture and traditional family values, and failed to see how they were in fact responsible for the prosperity that they were enjoying. On the other side was the evangelical Christian right who was more protective of capitalism and tradition, but who were very intolerant of the newfound freedoms and lifestyles that were being explored.

During the 1980s and 90s, the cultural wars between these two camps raged, especially on election years. The blue-staters calling for greater political freedoms and the red-staters holding the fort on traditonal family values. Lindsey argues that these two camps are of late coming around to seeing the merits of the other's point of view. He writes that "today's typical red-state conservative is considerably bluer on race relations, the role of women, and sexual morality than his predecessor of a generation ago." And likewise, "the typical blue-state liberal is considerably redder than his predecessor when it comes to the importance of markets to economic growth, the virtues of the two-parent family and the morality of American geopolitical power." According to Lindsey, we are now living in a period of "libertarian synthesis."

This book could be called a feel-good libertarian parable. It praises the wisdom of the broad middle-class that not only reveres tradition but also tolerates greater freedoms than previous generations. The majority now feels comfortable with libertarianism. During election years hot-button issues are still ignited and battlelines are still drawn, but this has more to do with the media and electioneering than the real viewpoints of the majority. The reality is more complex and less divisive than the media would have us believe. We now have social peace because there is a greater tolerance for alternative views and lifestyles.

[svinayak]

Against the Dead Hand: The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism
by Brink Lindsey (Author)

# Hardcover: 368 pages
# Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (December 21, 2001)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0471442771
# ISBN-13: 978-0471442776

"For every copy of Jihad sold, I hope 10 copies are purchased and read of the new book Against the Dead Hand." (Chief Executive Magazine, December 2001)

"compelling...excellent". (The Wall Street Journal, April 4, 2002)

GLOBALISATION is often described as an irresistible new force that, depending on your perspective, will either wreck or save the planet. Brink Lindsey provides an eloquent, much needed corrective by putting international integration into historical context.
Mr Lindsey points out that today's period of globalisation has a precursor in the free markets and economic integration of the mid-19th century. That early bout, however, was cruelly interrupted by what Mr Lindsey calls the industrial counter-revolution: an enthusiasm for collectivism, for national economic planning, and, in its most extreme cases, for communist economies. For much of the 20th century, the invisible hand of the market gave way, he writes, to the dead hand of the state.
That changed when large parts of the world emerged from communism and statism. But the process is far from finished. With his stories from the Russian steel mills of Magnitogorsk to backyard makers of "boogis" (bare-boned home-made vehicles) in India, Mr Lindsey explains how the effects of state ownership, price controls, trade barriers and other leftovers from the statist era still grossly impede the global economy.
He regards the failings attributed to globalisation (the financial crises of the late 1990s, for instance) as the result of a collision between markets and statism. Yes, globalisation has been unstable. The cause is less market liberalisation as such than the fact that the liberalisation remains incomplete. At times Mr Lindsey's faith in the market may be extreme, but mostly this book is full of elegantly argued good sense. (The Economist, May 2, 2002)

"...Brink Lindsey provides an eloquent, much needed corrective by putting international integration into historical context...full of elegantly argued good sense..." (The Economist, 3 May 2002)

"...should be required reading for professional eceonomists..." (City to Cities, June 2002)

Brink Lindsey's Against the Dead Hand: The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism (John Wiley & Sons, 2001) is the most intellectually stimulating of all the recent books on globalization. Lindsey articulates a fervent defense of open markets at the same time he poses serious concerns about their future. Director of the libertarian Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies, a Washington think tank, Lindsey worries that too many people assume that the continuation of globalization is inevitable. He instead believes that globalization is in its infancy and will be threatened by a series of childhood maladies that could include national and regional financial crises, protectionist backlashes, and antiglobalization political movements.
Lindsey recasts the history of trade and commerce over the past 150 years in a highly original way that will intrigue anyone involved in international business. His thesis is that the first great wave of globalization, which lasted until World War I, arose both because of the strength of the intellectual argument in its favor and because of the technological innovations of the Industrial Revolution. But as early as the 1880s, he finds the beginnings of what he calls "the Industrial Counterrevolution." Starting with the writings of Karl Marx and the rise of German state socialism under Otto von Bismarck, the political opposition to free trade and globalization mounted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, taking the form of protectionism, imperialism, and militarism.
It all culminated in World War I, which, Lindsey writes, "provided both the means and motive for the collectivist spasm that followed." In the social and economic chaos that gripped the world from the start of World War I to the end of World War II, the earlier progress toward globalization, writes Lindsey, "was interrupted, its achievements demolished."
In his view, the creation of the modern multilateral financial institutions of the international economy in the postwar years, along with the championing of free trade by the United States, slowly recreated the conditions that enable globalization, but it was a long road back. Lindsey notes that world merchandise trade as a percentage of world output has been estimated at 11.9 percent in 1913 - a level of export performance that wasn't matched again until the 1970s. And still, the ideas and movements that produced the Industrial Counterrevolution live on, he says, to distort and frustrate the world's economic development. This is the "dead hand" of his title.
Most of the ills commonly blamed on globalization, he argues, are caused by "the continued bulking presence of antimarket policies and institutions" in many of the developing and emerging market countries. The real blame for Russia's problems, for instance, should be placed on such matters as the efforts of its federal and regional governments to prop up moribund industrial enterprises from the Communist era. Such explicit subsidies, the author notes, have been as high as 8 to 10 percent of GDP in recent years. Allover the Third World, protectionism is still strong, with tariff rates averaging 13.3 percent in developing countries, compared with rates of 2.6 percent in the industrialized nations.
Yet Lindsey concludes Against the Dead Hand optimistically: "For a century the world was enthralled by the false promises of the Industrial Counterrevolution; the chains of misplaced faith have now been broken, and the revival of globalization is one consequence. The present era, uncertain and trying as it sometimes may be, is thus a time of deliverance. Furthermore, there is good reason to believe that we are on our way to somewhere better." (Strategy+Business, Issue 29, Fourth Quarter 2002)

"...the most intellectually stimulating of all the recent books on globalizatin..." (Strategy & Business, December 2002)

"...the most enthralling work of economic history I've ever read." —Gene Epstein's "Economic Beat" (Barron's, July 7, 2003)


So far, Lindsey's "Against the Dead Hand" may be the best book I have read about globalization. Lindsey does not beat around the bush--he is clearly a classical liberal who favors market forces. One would not expect anything less from a senior researcher at the Cato Institute. But the fact that he is a researcher clearly shows. The book has far more of a research base than any other text I have read on this subject. There is certainly more than mere anecdotal evidence in each chapter. But at the same, it is not a boring research text. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.

Lindsey takes an extremely broad perspective and looks at globalization within a 150 year window. From this perspective, Lindsey argues that globalization is not a recent phenomenon. Instead, he claims that we are only beginning to approach the levels of global trade that existed prior to World War I. Achieving that same level of globalization is, however, quite a struggle. The "dead hand" of centralized, collectivist, and protectionist government/philosophy still exerts considerable force on the politics and policies of today. Lindsey is convinced that collectivist government, in multiple forms, has failed and that a return to market-oriented practices is really the only viable choice remaining. Overall, I find Lindsey's arguments persuasive, researched, and sensical. He makes a strong case.

On the other hand, I had great difficulty with the final two chapters of this book. In these chapters Lindsey discusses the social safety net and labor. I was both disappointed and troubled by Lindsey's discussion. His notion of a social safety net, based on Chapter Ten, seems to be providing retirement funds for those who work all their life. While I agree that retirment is important (I work too), Lindsey simply ignores and avoids the many people and issues that a social safety net should address. I was left asking about children who are ignored by their parents. What about the homeless? What about our vets? I could not help think of my recent experiences with poverty in Argentina or war-torn cities like Sarajevo. It is impossible to say what Lindsey would think about these concerns because he simply ignores them. I was left with the impression that he "simply does not get it." He risks presenting market-forces as a cure-all, which it clearly is not.

This book would have been five stars, in my view, had Lindsey eliminated Chapters Ten and Eleven. The rest of the book is superb, well thought out, and well written. I highly recommend this book. I find that it makes a nice complement to Friedman's "The Lexus and the Olive Tree." The contrasts are many and at times explicit. Lindsey takes a clear stance and, regardless of whether or not you agree, I think most reasonable readers will have to admit he has made his case well.

Of all the books on the politics of international trade, this one stands out because it offers a big picture view of how the collapse of communism changed everything. Unlike other international economists and trade scholars, Brink Lindsey begins from the premise that, because critics of open trade lost the war of ideas, it is only a matter of time before liberal civil society flourishes. His book details problems caused by lingering flawed ideas that still exist - particularly the defense of non-tariff barriers to trade - and how those problems can be overcome.

Lindsey's point is that, because the global movement toward market liberalism is occurring amid the remnants of the failed economic apparatus that opposed it, its journey continues to be marked by skirmishes with proponents of the discredited system. The leaders of that system - which Lindsey calls the "Dead Hand" - are the root of much of the global poverty witnessed today because of their long-standing efforts to block the spread of reliable security for property rights and the rule of law. They prevent people in poor nations from making long-term investments and obtaining the windfall gains of congregating in economic spheres in which they hold a comparative advantage.

The Dead Hand's fatal mistake was its failure to understand the concept of economic uncertainty. Its belief that a small set of central planners could bring together all of the information necessary to make sound decisions to govern people's lives stifled the creative process throughout much of the less-developed world. People victimized by the notion that their leaders should run their society are now rejecting that system. As Lindsey states, "Hostility to markets remains, and remains formidable, but only as a force of reaction."

He bases his argument on the fact that open trade produces sustained, long run economic growth. The success of Richard Cobden and John Bright's Anti-Corn Law League in securing free trade in staple food products in nineteenth century Great Britain was the world's first step toward building an international economic framework that enables poor people to obtain the products they need. Cobden and Bright's vision took hold over the last few decades as trade barriers for goods, services, and capital began to fall around the globe. Over time, a larger and larger share of domestic economic activity was exposed to foreign competition, creating net benefits for consumers in every nation involved. The evolution of legal institutions in many nations facilitated the development of markets in which the costs of finding trading partners, setting the terms of trade, and enforcing agreements were reduced. This increased productivity in most sectors of these nations and raised living standards.

Lindsey believes that, historically, leaders who rejected the benefits free trade offers tended to resort to warfare to obtain wealth. Politicians who actively stifle the development of new products and innovations cannot stay in power without somehow placating the desires of their constituents. Lindsey endorses Noble Laureate Friedrich Hayek's view that dictatorship is the natural result of efforts to adopt socialism on a large scale. Because drastic measures are necessary to spur people to engage in productive activities when incentives for doing so are removed, only the most ruthless dictators can perpetuate socialism's existence over time.

In a way, the Dead Hand is a refusal by intellectuals in wealthy nations to admit that Hayek is correct. Until they do, corrupt leaders in less-developed nations will continue to pursue socialism under the rubric of "self-sufficiency" or "community-based growth" and stifle their people's enormous creative potential.

The global economic instability witnessed today is not the result of the international spread of capitalism, but rather, of the international collapse of socialism. The new problem for those who advocate market competition is that the Dead Hand has convinced many people that the opposite is true - that the only cure to the alleged problems of global capitalism is global socialism. Combating this grossly distorted worldview will take time. Because of this, stability in the global economic order is still many years away.

My only criticism of Lindsey is that he chooses not to include a detailed discussion of rent seeking. In the debate over trade, it is important for people to understand that certain companies and industries utilize the legal apparatus to stifle their competition. They frequently disguise their efforts as promotion of "market-based mechanisms." Explaining why this problem has the same effects as non-tariff barriers to trade is key to shedding light on much of what takes place on the K Street corridor today.

Overall, Lindsey does an exceptional job detailing why the intellectual war over trade has ended and what will occur as a result. His words will serve to inspire the courageous trade ministers who rejected then-President Clinton's demands for increased protectionism during the WTO's failed summit in Seattle in 1999. More importantly, his advice to young defenders of free trade - to keep pummeling away at their critics - will only accelerate the onset of the global liberal economic order.

[svinayak]

Inevitable Surprises: Thinking Ahead in a Time of Turbulence
by Peter Schwartz (Author)


# Hardcover: 247 pages
# ISBN-10: 1592400272
# ASIN: B00030KOOE

Schwartz uses the techniques of scenario planning he presented in The Art of the Long View (1991) to create a new version of what tomorrow's world might look like. Unsurprisingly, it's a mixed picture, where the "potential for progress is enormous, but the potential for disruption is equally great." The futurist and chairman of Global Business Network thinks the long-awaited population bomb will actually be an explosion of the elderly. He sees a "continuing, ongoing flood" of people migrating to better lives in the richer nations, the return of a decades-long economic boom he predicted in a previous book written before the bubble burst, the U.S.'s continued flirtation with unilateral action as the world's only superpower, and major scientific and technological breakthroughs. More ominously, Schwartz claims there will be "no plausible future in which terrorism has been permanently neutralized," no end to the chaos and religious wars among the have-not nations and dire results from the AIDS epidemic. On the plus side, "the biosphere is becoming healthier every year" and the energy we use will be cleaner and more efficient. On the minus, environmental crises and as-yet-unknown diseases are coming. To top it off, there's the eventual collision with a killer asteroid. How accurate are these predictions? "All of them are inevitable," declares Schwartz. He admits, however, that the effects of these major events, especially as they interact and influence each other, are largely unknowable. So ready or not, the future will bring a "world of maximum surprise." Schwartz's predictions are interesting in a speculative way, but, naturally, have limited practical utility.

Previously, Schwartz wrote The Art of the Long View as well as The Long Boom (which he co-authored with Peter Leyden and Joel Hyatt) and When Good Companies Do Bad Things (which he co-authored with Blair Gibb). In this volume, he addresses many of the same issues as in his previous works. However, in my opinion, he examines them in much greater depth while addressing other issues suggested by questions such as these:

1. In an increasingly more turbulent environment, how to recognize and understand "the inevitable surprises that lie ahead of us, particularly in the next twenty-five years"? For example, how to know what is needed to be known and then obtain that knowledge?

2. Given those "inevitable surprises," which steps must be taken that would allow a company or organization to thrive? For example, how to overcome "two different types of natural [but fundamentally irresponsible] reaction": denial and defensiveness?

3. What to do when new complications reveal themselves? For example, how can an "early-warning system" identify them so that appropriate and effective responses can be made in a timely manner?

Schwartz's response to only one of these questions is worth far more than the cost of his book. As he explains in Chapter 1, "Underneath the specifics, between the lines on every page in this book, you will find a basic message about the future in general: The challenges facing civilization right now are immense -- arguably more difficult than they have been during the lifetime of any living person. At the same time, because of advances in knowledge and technology, the human race has never been so capable. And since most of our challenges are caused, at least partly, by our own activity, this expanded capability is a double-edged sword." In ways and to an extent which Schwartz carefully explains, these are (in Dickens' words) the best of times and the worst of times.

The material is carefully organized within nine chapters whose titles range from "Inevitable Surprises" to "Inevitable Strategies." Of special interest to me is what Schwartz has to say in Chapter 5, "The Thoroughly New World Order." Here is a representative portion of Schwartz's rigorous narrative: "In the words of Robert Kagan, Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus. And then there is a third set of nations, increasingly chaotic and disorderly, in danger of being written off as marginal by the rest of the world. Their power, when they have it, is the power of terrorism. And if that is the only power available to them, they will use it more and more frequently." How prescient.

It is important to keep in mind when reading this book that Schwartz is not relying on a real or imagined crystal ball. He would be the first to insist that, at best, useful speculation identifies degrees of probability. This is especially true of efforts to reduce the number of what would otherwise be "inevitable surprises."

Here's a hypothetical example. (Mine, not Schwartz's.) Let's say that you learn that your next competitive environment will probably involve competition by teams. You cannot (as yet) identify the specific sport but you already know that, whatever it proves to be, members of the team must be in superb physical condition and possess certain qualities such as speed, agility, sufficient intelligence, hand-eye coordination, commitment to teamwork, etc. You should also know where to obtain, on short notice, the equipment needed. Also the correct sizes for various uniforms. Terms and conditions of appropriate behavior can be formulated. Nutrition can be controlled. You can also be alert for "signals" generated by your early-warning system. For example, at some point, you learn that the competition will be indoors. You then learn that height is irrelevant. That rules out basketball. You get the idea.

In all of three of his books that I have read, Schwartz helps his reader to (a) identify relevant probabilities, (b) ask the most important questions bount each, (c) know how and where to obtain the information needed, (d) complete contingency preparations, and (e) modify plans as new information becomes available.

Over the past 50 years, there have been so many examples of this in the business world. They include the pressurized cabin which was essential to airline travel and the rapid adoption of facsimile machines which substantially reduced the volume of overnight delivery of 1-5 page documentsas well as the Internet and WWW which enabled those online to communicate with others online (anywhere and any time), obtain information and complete commercial transactions almost instantaneously. As Schwartz explains so well, once relevant probabilities and heir implications have been identified, better decisions can be made and more effective actions can be taken.

Schwartz is generally optimistic that those who share the "thoroughly new world order" can overcome the chaos and turbulence to come if (a huge "if") they build and then maintain sensory and intelligence systems; cultivate a sense of timing; put in place mechanisms to engender what Joseph Stumper once characterized as "creative destruction"; avoid denial of the chaos and turbulence; "think like a commodity company" (see page 232); remain aware of the competence of judgment and the level of judgment that new situations require, then move deliberately and humbly into new situations that stretch that judgment; place a very, very high premium on learning, on environmental and ecological sustainability, and on financial infrastructure; and finally, cultivate "deep, candid" connections.

Schwartz does not assert that these values and strategies will guarantee the total elimination of all of the problems we have now nor the prevention of others in years to come. However, he has convinced me that these values and strategies can -- and will -- improve the prospects for human survival. I agree with him that "There is no recipe or playbook for doing this. There is only the ongoing knot of life to unravel. Perhaps the string that is easiest to pull first is the string in inevitable surprises."

Since the future isn't what it used to be and only seems to get stranger by the day, Peter Schwartz's latest book should be a welcome guide to the "inevitable surprises" ahead. Schwartz isn't just any futurist; he's a kingpin at the Global Business Network and frequently consults to governments and large corporations. Schwartz argues that many of the big surprises ahead can be foreseen if we use scenario thinking to closely examining existing signs. With this point as well as in some details - such as the impact of shrinking populations - Schwartz is in accord with Peter Drucker. This book lays out the dramatic transformation and volatility we face over the next quarter century. The book's scope is wide enough that everyone is likely to find themselves startled and stimulated.

In case you read Schwartz's previous work and wonder whether he still believes in "The Long Boom", the answer is an undeniable and unashamed *yes!* Productivity and accelerating technological advances will return the economy to a long-term path of strong growth. This doesn't mean that Schwartz paints a pastel portrait of the future. We can expect a cleaner environment and opportunities in abundance, but must also anticipate massive migrations of people, declining populations in large parts of the Western world, a confusing and unruly international situation, global climate crises, plagues, and possibly an asteroid strike. Study this book, challenge Schwartz's thinking, and prepare yourself and your business for a wild ride ahead.

Schwartz believes that his forecasts and scenarios will stand up to the test of future history better than those of most prognosticators. The reason is that, in the grand tradition of "predetermined elements" in scenario planning, he is drawing out the implications of events that have already happened. Many of the big surprises are, in fact, inevitable. So why are we continually caught off guard? Schwartz pins the blame on our tendency as decision makers to react to the drivers of change either with denial or defensiveness. Neither kind of response is effective and both are "fundamentally irresponsible" as Schwartz puts it. In this book, he aims to help us understand the kinds of inevitable surprises lying ahead, and to suggest steps that organizations can take to thrive.

In the author's view, humanity faces greater challenges now than ever before. At the same time we have greater capabilities than ever before. Our greatest challenge is "to master our own accelerating power, without being swept away by it." Along with a few other well-grounded futurists, Schwartz has laid down a challenge along with weapons for tackling the future. Inevitably, most readers will read this book and find it both informative and engaging but few will incorporate the resulting ideas for action into their plans. When it comes to these large-scale shifts, *doing* has always been disadvantaged compared to *denial* and *defensiveness*. Being proven wrong about this would be a surprise but, alas, not an inevitable surprise.

[svinayak]

Open Society and Its Enemies (Volume 1)
by Karl Raimund Popper (Author)
The Open Society and Its Enemies: Hegel and Marx (Routledge Classics)
by Popper Karl (Author)

# Paperback: 368 pages
# Publisher: Princeton University Press; 5 Revised edition (February 1, 1971)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0691019681
# ISBN-13: 978-0691019680

The Open Society and Its Enemies

Popper was born in 1902 to a Viennese family of Jewish origin. He taught in Austria until 1937, when he emigrated to New Zealand in anticipation of the Nazi annexation of Austria the following year, and he settled in England in 1949. Before the annexation, Popper had written mainly about the philosophy of science, but from 1938 until the end of the Second World War he focused his energies on political philosophy, seeking to diagnose the intellectual origins of German and Soviet totalitarianism. The Open Society and Its Enemies was the result.

In the book, Popper condemned Plato, Marx, and Hegel as "holists" and "historicists"--a holist, according to Popper, believes that individuals are formed entirely by their social groups; historicists believe that social groups evolve according to internal principles that it is the intellectual's task to uncover. Popper, by contrast, held that social affairs are unpredictable, and argued vehemently against social engineering. He also sought to shift the focus of political philosophy away from questions about who ought to rule toward questions about how to minimize the damage done by the powerful. The book was an immediate sensation, and--though it has long been criticized for its portrayals of Plato, Marx, and Hegel--it has remained a landmark on the left and right alike for its defense of freedom and the spirit of critical inquiry.

This is a paperback in two volumes: volume I subtitled "Plato", and volume II subtitled "Hegel and Marx". Each volume has a table of contents, text, addenda, truly awe-inspiring endnotes, an index of names, and of subjects. This is a review of BOTH volumes.

"If in this book harsh words are spoken about some of the greatest among the intellectual leaders of mankind, my motive is not...to belittle them. ...we must break with the habit of deference to great men. Great men may make great mistakes..." (from the intro to the 1943 edition)

Karl Popper was fighting the war in his own way. He saw what was essentially the same in Stalin and Hitler: a monstrous confidence. They may have drawn on different philosophies of the state, but it came to the same thing in the end: wholesale murder as a tool of social engineering.

But WWII is over, and we won. Moreover, the Soviet Union has collapsed, and we won again. So what is the fuss? Relax: Marxism is dead, Platonism sounds quaint, and who the hell is Hegel, anyway?

But don't rest easy just yet, free-market man! Every four years we seem to reaffirm our need for a philosopher-king. And while the historicist faith is now all tarted-up with computers, networking, and the Fable of the Bees and re-christened "emergent order", it still leaves us feeling smug and moral in doing nothing but tending our own gardens.

Popper is pithy throughout, but I only started noting things (this time around) at the penultimate chapter of the work, 24:

"... the fight against suffering must be considered a duty, while the right to care for the happiness of others must be considered a privilege confined to the close circle of their friends."(vII, p237)

[on language, and the aim of rationalism] "... to use it plainly ... as an instrument of rational communication ... rather than as a means of 'self-expression', as the vicious romantic jargon of most of our educationists has it." (p239) See also II, pp276/7 on the aims of education.

[On bullshit] "... irrationalism will use reason too, but without any feeling of obligation."(II,240)

A brilliant look at Hegelian thinking in the sociology of knowledge (II,242/3), which must be read whole, but ends: " ... their thoughts are endowed ... with 'mystical and religious faculties' not possessed by others, and who thus claim that they 'think by God's grace'. This claim with its gentle allusion to those who do not possess God's grace, this attack upon the potential spiritual unity of mankind, is, in my opinion, as pretentious, blasphemous and anti-Christian, as it believes itself to be humble, pious, and Christian."

Popper is relentlessly brilliant in moral indignation. See his pointing out that moral futurism (e.g. 'the meek shall inherit the earth') condones the abdicating of individual moral responsibility, since one need do nothing toward this certain end. His answer: "...it is certainly possible to combine an attitude of the utmost reserve and even of contempt towards worldly success in the sense of power, glory, and wealth, with the attempt to do one's best in this world, and to further the ends one has decided to adopt...for their own sake."(II, 274)

This is one of the great works of practical philosophy of the century. Awesome in scholarship, relentless in moral vision, yet as fair-minded as his own high standards dictate, Popper has produced a book that is at once an explication of important philosophers who have had a malign impact and an attempt, largely successful, to demythologize them, and to give the average reader intellectual weapons to combat their legacy. His care is, at all times, to be clear and rational. He is concerned to communicate, not to obscure. The spirit of civilization shines through this work; it exemplifies what is best in our intellectual and spiritual heritage.

A hint: read a few of the notes to convince yourself that Popper has completely mastered his material (in several languages), that he has anticipated all the main counterarguments to his positions, and that he stands ready to defend in severe philosophical jargon anything he seems too-casually to advert to in the text. Then just read the books, and dig into the notes later, when you go back to a section for some serious research.

Popper is famous for attempting to shift philosophy from various idealist systems to one of empiricism. He is famous for suggesting that the basis of the scientific method is the falsification of false theories by empirical analysis. He describes earlier systems such as those of Plato as "essentialist" or such that cannot be disproved by experimentation and thus rejects them.

Popper's importance is more than just a philosopher. He is a person who was of the twentieth century and was revolted by the development of totalitarian systems. In his view these systems were the product of "essentialist" philosophical systems or ideologies. He favored pragmatic systems in which ideology could be challenged by his method. This work is a work that is one of the most learned and systematic attacks on ideological systems which has been written in the last hundred years.

Despite the difficulty of its content the book is readable and simple. Over half of the book is devoted to footnotes. Its exposition of the Platonic and Marxist systems is learned and erudite.

In its time the book has been heavily critiqued by Platonists. Ignore such criticism, this book is one of the most important books to be written in the last hundred years.

[sanjaychoudhry]

RED SUN — Travels in Naxalite Country: Sudeep Chakravarti; Penguin-Viking, 11, Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110017. Rs. 495.

[quote]Reading Sudeep Chakravarti’s Red Sun, a travelogue-cum-political narrative of his travels through India’s ever lengthening Red corridor, is intimidating. The picture of young Indian intellectuals, a collection of educated, unemployed and unemployable youth coming out of schools in JNU fashion is demolished by the stories that Sudeep unveils. One better watch, he warns of the imminent peril that a large chunk of India may explode any moment, for the stories are real.

Perpetual losing war

When we gloat over the expanding list of native billionaires, and a shining India, Sudeep pours freezing water with the travails of a perpetual losing war. As we turn the pages, one is frightened by the tragic image of a growing India that is being perilously and needlessly, but increasingly, taken over by a revived combination of naxals, fanatics, parochial chauvinists and insane insurgents of many sorts.

After 9/11, we thought the rest of the world will be afflicted with the destructive terrorism of the Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and our native brands may cause us some “concernâ€

[Arun_S]

This is the firthcoming book by Shri B Raman

TERRORISM---YESTERDAY, TODAY & TOMORROW
[quote]B.RAMAN
Dedicated to all victims of terrorism--- whether civilians or members of the security forces and agencies, whether Indians or foreigners.

PREFACE

Terrorism is a continuously evolving threat. From a uni-dimensional threat involving attacks with hand-held weapons, it has evolved into a multi-dimensional threat involving the use of hand-held weapons, improvised explosive devices, suicide bombers, landmines, mobile phones as triggers, aircraft hijackings, cyber attacks through the Internet etc. Terrorism of today is different from terrorism of yesterday. Terrorism of tomorrow is likely to be different from terrorism of today.

Terrorists no longer come from under-privileged and economically and socially handicapped families. Many of them have come from affluent and socially well-placed families. They are no longer ill-educated who are manipulated by their leaders. Many of them are highly-educated----doctors, engineers, IT experts etc. They are irrational in their objective of mass casualty attacks, but very precise in planning and executing those attacks. They are technology savvy, but not technology slavish. Their modus operandi keeps changing.

One of the important lessons of 9/11 was the need to anticipate and prepare oneself to prevent other similar unconventional scenarios of a catastrophic potential and, if prevention fails, to have in place a capability for coping with the resulting situation. Amongst such likely scenarios of catastrophic potential increasingly receiving attention since 9/11 are those relating to maritime terrorism, terrorist threats to energy security, terrorism involving the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) material and terrorist threats to critical information infrastructure.

Since the attempt to blow up the New York World Trade Centre in February,1993, one has been talking of old and new terrorism. The old terrorists----who had taken to terrorism for ethnic or ideological reasons or even on religious grounds--- had a Laxman Rekha, a dividing line, which they tried not to cross. They were concerned over the impact of their actions on public opinion.

Since 1993, the world is confronted with a new brand of terrorists----also called the jihadi terrorists--- for whom there is no Laxman Rekha. They believe in mass casualty or catastrophic terrorism. They want not only to kill human beings, but also destroy economic, technological and other capabilities. They talk of their religious right and obligation to acquire weapons of mass destruction and use them, if necessary, to protect their religion and safeguard its interests.

It is important to be aware of their mind-set, thinking, planning and capabilities to have their plans executed. To be aware is to be prepared. How to create an awareness of them and drive home to the people and the policy-makers the importance of dealing with them in an effective manner, without unwittingly contributing to a demonisation of the community from which they have arisen? That is the question facing all of us today.

The purpose of this book is to create such an awareness by focusing on some of the important dimensions of the evolving threat. For this exercise, I have drawn upon some of my past writings on the subject and presentations made before international conferences and appropriately edited and updated them. Some new material has also been included.

I have tried to make each Chapter self-contained so that the readers do not have to keep moving backward and forward in order to refresh their memories. For this purpose, the repetition of some of the points in different Chapters has become necessary.

I am grateful to Capt.Bharat Verma of the Lancer Publishers for coming forward to publish this book too. This is my fourth book being published by them---- the earlier three being “Intelligence---Past,Present & Futureâ€

[Paul]

Dark days ahead?



Pakistan's Nuclear Future: Worries beyond War
Edited by Henry D. Sokolski
Published by Strategic Studies Institute of US Army War College, January 2008
Pages: 383
Available online

By Rabia Akhtar

'Pakistan's Nuclear Future: Worries beyond War' is an edited book by Henry Sokolski which was released online on January 16, 2008. This book is the ninth edited volume in a series of volumes produced by the collaboration of Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC) and Strategic Studies Institute (SSI), US Army War College on International security and strategic issues. This volume is a compilation of commissioned studies (some of which have already been published earlier elsewhere) contributed by various prominent scholars highlighting the concerns related to Pakistan's nuclear future in eight chapters divided in three categories preceded by an introductory chapter by the editor.

The first set of papers are compiled under the theme of Islamabad's Proliferating Past addressing the concerns that surfaced with the AQ Khan network and the lessons that the international community can draw from the activities of the network. The second set of papers are assembled under the theme of Maintaining South West Asian Deterrence and the papers cover the nuclear force requirements for Pakistan's minimum deterrence, analysing Islamabad's nuclear posture and the presence of fissile materials in South Asia examining implications of the Indo-US deal. The last theme explores the future of nuclear concerns and worries that are likely to emanate, given an unforeseen unstable political environment in Pakistan, from a futuristic perspective. The papers under this theme relate to nuclear terrorism, security issues related to the future of Pakistan's nuclear power programme and the measures that can be taken to secure Pakistan's nuclear weapons and materials, in case Pakistan disintegrates ensuing any unforeseen political crisis in the future.

'Pakistan's Nuclear Future' is the recent most literature addressing concerns pertaining to Pakistan's weapons and civilian nuclear programmes. Given that this book addresses worst case scenarios, views expressed herein do not present an overall pessimistic picture about the future of nuclear Pakistan. A primary assessment shows this book to be a combination of both positive and negative indicators about Pakistan, where the positives overwhelm the negativity that does surround some of the futuristic assessments. Such negative connotations have been similar to the scenarios we have recently read in last three months on the security aspects of Pakistan's nuclear programme. Sokolski, who has contributed the introductory chapter in this book, thinks that the point of departure of this book from the current debate about Pakistan's nuclear programme is the examination of future challenges that a moderate government in charge of the nuclear arsenal and materials might face while enjoying peace time with India.

In the first theme, exploring Pakistan's proliferation past tracing historical roots of the nuclear programme, Bruno Tetrais and George Perkovich conclude that Pakistan is likely to proliferate in the future. According to Bruno Tetrais some sanctioned and unsanctioned transfers are likely to take place in future. The fears of unsanctioned transfers arise, given the factor of religious sympathies, crisis scenarios where Pakistan would, in desperation, give pre-delegation authority for fear of preemption or decapitation or in the absence of real checks and balances in an undemocratic political setup. These fears are, however, speculative in nature and should not appear disconcerting because both the authors in their separate pieces, exhibit their confidence in the existing nuclear establishment to rise up to the challenge of proliferation, acknowledge Pakistan's excellent export control mechanism and applaud the Strategic Plans Division (SPD) for the seriousness with which it conducts nuclear matters post-A.Q Khan episode.

Tetrais concludes by making a case for long term Pakistan-US alliance "based on the recognition of enduring common interests, allowing the restoration of mutual trust; and the diffusion of a culture of responsibility in the vast Pakistani nuclear complex, beyond the elites." George Perkovich (Part I, Chap III) understands the reason for Pakistan's covert nuclearisation pre-1998, given its obsession with India and concludes that regardless of sanctions and stringent export controls, nobody could have done anything to stop it.

Gregory Jones (Part II, Chap IV) in his analysis of Pakistan's nuclear force requirements for minimum deterrent suggests that Pakistan should not move towards war fighting strategy in future because such a move would require doubling or even tripling of its nuclear arsenal. However, Jones concludes safely that Pakistan is content with its current nuclear forces which significantly raise the stakes for India in any major future conflict. He nevertheless predicts that any increase in Pakistan's nuclear forces is dependent upon an increase in Indian nuclear forces.

Peter Lavoy (Part II, Chap V) examines Pakistan's strategy for ensuring security and survivability of its nuclear deterrent in peace time, crisis and war which has become a crucial question for Pakistan given the Indo-US deal which sets the balance in favour of India, if it materialises. The author is highly appreciative of the responsive strategic command and control arrangements in Pakistan. He has, however, highlighted some strategic concerns which have long term implications for Pakistan. According to Lavoy, the Indo-US deal will allow India to expand its fissile material production, access hi-tech intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities (which could prove lethal for Pakistan) and allow India to influence US policy circles in the advent of any future conflict with Pakistan. The author has left this debate open-ended raising some very important policy points that must be seriously considered by the Pakistani nuclear establishment before the Indo-US deal survives the test of time.

Zia Mian, A.H.Nayyar, Rajaraman and Ramana (Part II, Chap VI) have explored the fissile material stocks in South Asia and the implications of Indo-US nuclear deal. According to the authors, India currently faces severe domestic uranium constraints and if the deal materialises it will provide India the ability to seek a fourfold increase in weapons production. The authors have analysed Pakistan's plans to expand civilian nuclear power by 2030 to 8.8 gigawatts generating capacity thereby giving Pakistan a nuclear-weapon-making mobilisation base in case India continues weapons buildup. However in case India does not continue with making more nuclear weapons, Pakistan would also be making power. Their overall conclusion complements the dangerous trend in weapons build-up by the Indo-US deal as suggested by Lavoy in the preceding chapter.

Nullifying Pakistan's civilian reactor sector sabotage and attack threats, Abdul Manan (Part III, Chap VII) appears confident that "the controls around various nuclear installations and radiation facilities in Pakistan are enough to deter and delay a terrorist attack and any malicious diversion would be detected in early stages." Manan calculates the consequences of terrorist acts against Pakistan's nuclear facilities a very remote probability bordering on impossibility. The author, an official of Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority (PNRA) very confidently rejects any possibility, whatsoever, of fabrication of Radiological Dispersal Devices (RDD) or WMD by a terrorist within the context of Pakistan.

Chaim Braun (Part III, Chap VIII) extensively deals with the terrorist threat to Pakistani nuclear power plants in view of the current nuclear power expansion plan Pakistan is envisioning. Despite conducting some terrorist attempts at nuclear power plants scenarios, the author suggests that since the current nuclear trade bars Pakistan to construct large sized nuclear power plants, Indo-US deal can open space for similar deals for Pakistan with possible sponsorship from China, France, Canada or even Russia. Braun also positively asserts that a global communications and technical support network should exist to encourage technical flow between Pakistani nuclear personnel and their global partners. The author has re-played the insider-outsider threat in Pakistan that is also currently being projected in the West in general. However, he suggests that if Pakistan's internal security situation improves, then foreign experts can provide technical assistance to their Pakistani counterparts. This thought is encouraging and suggests that Pakistan should make internal political stability its foremost priority so as to benefit from the fruits of globalisation in the realm of nuclear commerce.

The last chapter of the book has been written by Thomas Donnelly (Part III, Chap IX). The author has played out hypothetical strategic, operational and tactical scenarios whereby Pakistani government requests US assistance in liberating its strategic nuclear facility (e.g. Kahuta, chosen by the author) from the control of terrorists. Much like a James Bond scenario, the author concludes that the situation would be hopeless if attempted by the US and suggests that in order to deal with this kind of futuristic scenarios where terrorists capture sensitive nuclear facilities in Pakistan; the case for long-term Pakistan-US policy of engagement serves the best bet. Thereby, making a case where Pakistan should seek US help in securing its facilities and materials.

Suggestions like these based on "hopeless scenarios" as depicted in this chapter are not surprising. We have recently witnessed a surge of such submissions by various American thinktanks and even from US Presidential candidates hinting at long-term Pak-US collaboration in the nuclear sphere.

What does then this book overall suggest about Pakistan's nuclear future? The lessons we can take home are plenty but positive. We should not have any doubts that Pakistan figures very prominently in US strategic calculations as a state with which they cannot work unless Pakistan sets its own rules of engagement. This fact is evident from the conclusions drawn by the authors of this book.

Regardless of all the worst case scenarios about the safety and security of Pakistan and the subsequent war games to secure Pakistani assets, it is clear that not even a single analysis in this book suggests that Pakistan will behave irrationally as a state with its nuclear weapons or use them recklessly. Although the authors have analysed extreme hypothetical scenarios which include terrorists and non-state actors endeavouring to gain access to nuclear weapons and materials, but one must understand that these fears are as true for Pakistan as they are for any other nuclear weapon state in this world. Even before Pakistan went nuclear, multitude of studies carried out in the West expressed similar concerns emanating from terrorism.

All, what post 9/11 world has managed to do is to heighten these fears, BUT it certainly did not give birth to them. Pakistan understands that the threat of non-state actors for sabotage and attempts of the sort is real, thus it has put in place safety and security mechanisms under a highly efficient command and control set up that confidently surpasses any international standards existent today. Although this book presents a fair analysis of the challenges that the present or any future government in Pakistan might face, given its nuclear policy or expansion strategy, but most importantly the broader conclusions of this volume do not undermine Pakistan's ability to effectively deal with these challenges. For now, Pakistan's only limitation in achieving excellence in its nuclear ambitions is the challenge of achieving internal cohesion and stability -- a fact Pakistan is fully cognisant of and is determined to handle, with a positive outlook towards a bright nuclear future.

Rabia Akhtar is a doctoral candidate in DSS, QAU working on nuclear issues. Email [email protected]

[SwamyG]

I am sorry, I did not know where else to ask. What would members say should be the top 3 or 5 books on India on one's book shelf?

[svinayak]

One of the book

Asia and Western dominance by K. M. Panikkar

[svinayak]

http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Mod ... I0BCQY9XM1