On Sunday, Chris Hedges reviewed an unusual war memoir, presented in the form of a graphic novel interspersed with genuine photographs.  --  Hedges, who has seen a harrowing amount of warfare (see his War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002) and *Losing Moses on the Freeway (2005)), calls The Photographer a book about Afghanistan capable of bridging the vast gap "between what we are told or what we believe about war and war itself."[1]  --  NOTE:  In the original this work was entitled simple Le photographe and was published in three volumes published between 2003 and 2007 by Dupuis in the typical B.D. format that is so popular among French readers.  --  The originals can be sampled on the website of amazon.fr....

David Gilmour of UFPPC mused this past week about the future of reading in the digital age.[1]  --  Gilmour has a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Washington, so some reflections on Classics are his point of departure....

"[S]ome of the criticisms that Marx and Engels levelled at mid-19th century capitalist economic systems do not appear out of place 150 years later," Financial Times reviewer Tony Barber allowed on Saturday while reviewing three new volumes on the history of Communism.[1] ...

A new book reviewed in the latest number of the London Review recounts Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's attempt in September 1997 to assassinate Hamas political bureau head Khalid Mishal in Amman, Jordan, which was foiled only when President Bill Clinton at Jordan's King Hussein behest pressured Israel to turn over the antidote to the poison — levofentanyl, a chemically modified painkiller — that had been sprayed in Khalid's ear.[1]  --  Ironically, "[t]he greatest beneficiary of the failed assassination . . . was its intended victim, whom Mossad had turned into a star of the Islamic resistance," writes Adam Shatz, who traces the career of this "Kuwaiti Palestinian who’d never lived a day under occupation."  --  Mishal is "a contemplative, bookish young man, a reader of Camus and Dostoevsky," who studied physics at Kuwait University and who had joined the Muslim Brotherhood at the age of 15.  --  Shatz portrays the movement Mishal has led for more than ten years as a politically pragmatic movement that cannot be ignored:  "Hamas is part of the fabric of Palestinian politics, and neither force nor diplomatic isolation will make it go away.  Its history is one of tenacity in the face of enormous odds:  it has been nourished by the efforts to destroy it.  No one is in a better position to appreciate this than Israel’s new prime minister who, once again, finds himself facing the martyr who would not die." ...

Reviewing in the New York Review of Books a new book published by Princeton on the history of the U.S. military base on Diego Garcia, Jonathan Freedland calls Island of Shame "a case study for the way contemporary empire operates, exploding the myth that the United States differs from its British, Spanish, and Roman predecessors by eschewing both the brute conquest of land and the dispossession of those unfortunate enough to get in the way."[1]  --  "In [anthropologist David] Vine's persuasive telling, it is from the expansionist instincts of the military services, rather than the conscious decisions of civilian policymakers, that the imperialist project draws much of its energy."  --  Freedland endorses historian Chalmers Johnson's concept of an American "empire of bases," noting:  "[T]here are one thousand U.S. military bases and installations 'on the sovereign land of other nations.'  This 'base world,' as Johnson calls it, is presented benignly, as the product of voluntary, bilateral pacts between the U.S. and those states that agree for their land to be occupied.  But often this presentation is . . . a 'fiction.'"  --  COMMENT:  Freedland, an editorial-page columnist for the London Guardian, reaches for, if not a happy ending to this tale, at least a happy thought, albeit an implausible one that is oblivious to everything we have just been told about "the way contemporary empire operates":  "[O]ne likes to think that if Barack Obama were somehow to stumble across a copy of David Vine's fine book, he would instantly realize that a great injustice has been done — one that could easily be put right."  --  Sure.  --  For a denunciation of this imperial crime that possesses a greater sense of conviction, see Ch. 1 of John Pilger's Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire (New York: Nation Books, 2007), pp. 20-61.  --  Pilger recounts the eviction of the 2,000 people who lived on the Chagos archipelago, principally on Diego Garcia, after the secret decision made in 1961-1964 by the U.S. and the U.K. to establish an Indian Ocean base; there the U.S. now maintains "four thousand service personnel and contractors, two bomber runways, each two and a half miles long, anchorages for a fleet of ships, living conditions the U.S. Navy describes as 'indispensable,' 'outstanding' and 'unbelievable,'" though habitability was one of the ruses used to justify the eviction of the Chagossians.  --  See also this excellent timeline....

In "[t]he last 20 years, [Adam] Zamoyski argues [in Poland: A History (2009)], perspectives on Polish history have utterly changed.  Before, it was justifiably written as the story of 'a failed state.'  Today, it is the tale of a 'society that created a social and political civilization of its own,'" Stefan Wagstyl noted in a brief review in Monday's Financial Times of London.[1]  --  Zamoyski's book is a rewritten version of a 1987 book entitled The Polish Way, and the author has wished not only to recount the history of Poland but also to demonstrate how "interpretations of history change in response to events." ...

Unfortunately, a recently reviewed 2007 volume of philosophical discussions about the "war on terrorism" is more interested in bucking up the morale of academic philosophers than it is in undermining the intellectual foundations of a U.S. national security state run amok.  --  Reviewing Philosophical Perspectives on the "War on Terrorism," philosophers Charles Brown and C.E. Emmer of Emporia State University in Kansas do make some good points.  --  For example, they point out that it is ironic that those who examined the moral questions raised about American society by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were often charged with "moral relativism," since "the proclivity of the [Bush] administration and its apologists to apply an all-but explicit double standard speaks much more of relativism than the opposed demand for context, criticism, and care."[1]  --  And Brown and Emmer note that "the discourse surrounding the 'war on terrorism' operates on a shockingly rudimentary level" (though do we really need philosophers to see this?).  --  The reviewers propose two lines of thought pertinent to the current Afpak conflict:  1) "the 'war on terrorism' paradigm promote[s] a misunderstanding of many regional conflicts from around the world and thus limit our ability to promote constructive solutions"; and 2) "wars all too often impose new conditions of dependency on the liberated countries by integrating them into the capitalistic world order."  --  But however welcome this volume, it certainly does not "help restore the social and political role of philosophers."  --  And the reviewers are resolutely blind to why this is so.  --  The dependence of "professional philosophers" for their livelihood on universities increasingly beholden to the corporate national security state that is responsible for devising the "war on terror" is a problem they ignore, just as they fail to comment on the volume's ludicrous price, $135.00, and the collection's failure to reach its public (its sales rank on Amazon.com is 2,057,909 two years after publication).  --  And "[t]here are no customer reviews yet."  --  The suggestion by Brown and Emmer that this 2007 volume, which H-Peace has taken twenty-three months to review, "takes up the task of restoring philosophical reflection as an integral part of public discourse traditionally valued by democratic societies" is only whistling in the dark....

Carl Anderson of UFPPC reviews Mark Rudd's Underground, and reports on Rudd's recent appearance in Seattle.[1] ...

A recently published discussion of why the English lost the Battle of Hastings in 1066 relies, in the end, on a national myth of English virtue, Tom Shippey argued in a recent number of the London Review of Books.  --  But "[i]t may also be that Harold wasn’t quite the ‘people’s prince’ that [Harriet Harvey] Wood claims."  --  There is lots of evidence that "One could . . . charge the entire pre-Conquest ruling class of England with cronyism . . .; with putting factional politics above national interest; with spreading alienation and disaffection in areas not felt to be important; and for good measure, with determined military conservatism."[1]  --  "[T]he squabbling self-interested ruling Anglo-Saxon elite . . . do not . . . in the end deserve Wood’s well-intentioned and forcefully argued advocacy." ...

Reviewing Godfrey Hodgson's new book, The Myth of American Exceptionalism, the Financial Times of London found it "interesting and lucid as it examines the errors and exaggerations in the national self-image,' but lacking in balance, since "[m]ost, if not all, nations cherish national myths, and, standing back from the current economic crisis, the U.S. still has better grounds than most to be pleased with itself."[1]  --  BACKGROUND:  Godfrey Hodgson, 75, has written half a dozen books on American history, society, and politics, and as documentary filmmaker, biographer of Henry Stimson and Ronald Reagan, sometime college teacher on a number of U.S. campuses, and former Washington bureau chief of the London Observer, he has been a close observer of the United States for decades....

Good news: a translation of How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth, Hervé Kempf's important book, came out in November 2008.  --  Bad news:  No one in the U.S. seems to be paying much attention.  --  The Hindu reviewed it in India, however, on Feb. 1 and said that it "makes its point cogently and briefly," but unfortunately its review failed to communicate what that point is.  --  For a better idea of what Kempf has to say, see UFPPC's April 19, 2007, statement, "Are the Ecological Crisis and the Social Crisis Two Sides of a Single Coin?" — or buy the book....

Financial Times drama critic Jan Dalley detects a widespread reversion to '80s or even '50s cultural forms in the disillusioned idealism apparent in much of contemporary culture, but also in a short new play being staged at the Royal Court in London.  --  In Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza, Caryl Churchill presents "seven dialogues between small groups of Israeli parents or relatives, bitter new immigrants or old wise ones, angry fathers or pacifying mothers, discussing what to tell" a Jewish child.[1]  --  The refrain of the play is "Tell her/Don't tell her."  --  "Tell her they're good people and they work for us.  Don't tell her she can't play with the children.  Don't tell her she can have them in the house."  --  "Don't tell her the trouble about the swimming pool.  Tell her it's our water, we have the right.  Tell her it's not the water for their fields.  Don't tell her anything about water."  --  "The company makes each scene urgently real, and delineates perceptible characters and scenarios where there are none:  it's brilliant theater in bare essence." ...

In an "important book that traces the development of human rights law [in the U.S.] under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), the crucial role of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in creating and litigating these cases, and the implications such cases have for relations among government branches and with other nations," lawyer and political scientist Jeffrey Davis claims to "demonstrate that the federal courts are slowly shedding traditional norms of sovereignty, territorial jurisdiction, and judicial restraint in international issues.  In limited cases, some federal judges appear to be embracing emerging doctrines of universality and internationalism" (Justice across Borders: The Struggle for Human Rights in U.S. Courts [Cambridge UP, 2008], p. 264).  --  Davis's book refers to many interviews with NGO attorneys and the Departments of State and Justice.  --  "[P]laintiffs' attorneys discuss the important effects for the victims of having brought suit: holding an accused accountable, giving name to the horrors visited upon them, and feeling a sense of empowerment," wrote reviewer Paul Parker of Truman State University in his review for H-PEACE....

A new book by a semi-retired investment manager recounts the history of international finance from the eve of World War I, in July 1914, to the Great Depression.  --  Liaquat Ahamed's Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World (Penguin, 2009) was reviewed on the web site of the Financial Times on Friday by Prof. Niall Ferguson of Harvard University, whose own The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World was published in November.[1]  --  Ahamed describes the decisions of and the relations among "the most exclusive club in the world, four men who together presided over international finance  —  Émile Moreau, governor of the Banque de France; Montagu Norman, governor of the Bank of England; Hjalmar Schacht, president of the German Reichsbank; and Benjamin Strong, governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.  --  Ferguson reports that history has not been kind to them:  "[T]heir favored prophylactics had, in combination, made the [economic] apocalypse [of the collapse of capitalism] more likely.  By 1931 the capitalist system was on its knees, and democracy with it.  Schacht was soon flirting with the rising star of the German right, Adolf Hitler; he later served as his economics minister.  --  As the world teeters on the brink of another great financial cliff, we can only hope that the modern-day Lords of Finance will co-operate to better effect.  I suspect none has much time for bedtime reading these days.  But should Messrs Bernanke, King, and Trichet need a reminder of what can go wrong when central bankers achieve only the semblance, but not the reality, of co-operation, Lords of Finance is the book they should read." ...

Writing in the new issue of the New York Review of Books, Marcia Angell, the author of The Truth about Drug Companies, said she estimates from the annual reports of the top nine U.S. drug companies that the total amount provided by drug companies to physicians "comes to tens of billions of dollars a year.  By such means, the pharmaceutical industry has gained enormous control over how doctors evaluate and use its own products.  Its extensive ties to physicians, particularly senior faculty at prestigious medical schools, affect the results of research, the way medicine is practiced, and even the definition of what constitutes a disease."[1]  --  Angell reviewed three new books that detail the workings of this vast, corrupt system.  --  The use of "off-label" prescriptions — perhaps as many as half of all prescriptions are written for off-label purposes," she writes — is endemic, and has proved a source of corruption.  --  Universities have also been corrupted:  "A recent survey found that about two thirds of academic medical centers hold equity interest in companies that sponsor research within the same institution," and "[a] study of medical school department chairs found that two thirds received departmental income from drug companies and three fifths received personal income."  --  Angell concludes:  "It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines.  I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine." ...

A 2007 book on U.S. covert operations in Chile from 1964 to 1974 is "a well-documented analytical study that argues persuasively that the real hostility toward Chile originated in the Nixon White House and that the CIA, far from being omnipotent, was often a mere instrument of White House directives that frequently ignored intelligence in favor of ill-conceived solutions," wrote Steven Schwab in a December 2008 review on H-War.[1] ...

On Dec. 3, on his Empire Burlesque web site, Chris Floyd identified American exceptionalism as the doctrine underlying Barack Obama's national security policy — the same doctrine that has been embraced by two centuries of U.S. foreign policy and that was effectively turned long ago to hegemonic uses by the American corporatocracy.[1]  --  This doctrine was recently critiqued by Vietnam-veteran-turned-anti-imperialist international relations prof Andrew J. Bacevich in The Limits of Power, a précis of which is posted below.[2] ...

A glowing review of Gérard Prunier's From Genocide to Continental War, an in-depth study of what some call "Africa's first world war," appeared in Saturday's Financial Times of London.[1]  --  BACKGROUND:  The review made no mention of another volume slated for publication by Prunier this month:  Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe (Oxford University Press, 2008), perhaps because it's hard to keep up with the work of this prolific CNRS researcher now in his 50s (I think).  --  In this review William Wallis calls him a "maverick," but Prunier is a widely cited and much admired authority in his field.  --  He has published half a dozen books and more than 100 articles.  --  He was also a key figure in the French Ministry of Defense’s crisis unit in Rwanda, which oversaw France’s intervention in Rwanda in Operation Turquoise, and participated last year in a Global Conference on the Prevention of Genocide at McGill University, where he said:  "I don't think genocide can be prevented, because government is responsible. . . . In my view, it is the very people that are involved that have to take things into their hands and try to bring it to end.  Foreign intervention would be better done in supporting them than substituting ourselves for them.  As we see in Iraq, the removal of a partly genocidal regime led to more mayhem that the regime itself.  The people who are in it know what they are doing.  It doesn't mean beautiful, peace and quiet, but they would be at central process in taking care of their own lives," calling the approach he recommends "that of a lesser evil." ...

Emmanuel Todd warns that globalization may lead to "a democratic meltdown in France, and perhaps more generally in the developed world," in a new book entitled Après la démocratie ('After Democracy'), released three weeks ago, and the volume's conclusions "certainly deserve to be read, challenged, and debated," John Thornhill said Sunday in a Financial Times review.[1]  --  "Mr. Todd paints a picture of a collusive political-media élite that benefits from globalization while being disconnected from the people who suffer from it.  As arrogant as the aristocracy on the eve of the 1789 revolution, this élite blithely ignores the views of voters whenever it suits them.  French voters rejected the European Union’s constitutional treaty, but a modified version was later adopted by parliament.  Britain’s voters protested massively against the war in Iraq, but the government sent in the troops regardless."  --  "[T]there is no doubt that the intellectual assault on free trade is intensifying," Thornhill concluded.  "Mr. Todd’s book is an impassioned salvo in that war of ideas." ...

Pronouncing himself "astonished and delighted" that Americans have "rejected the politics of fear and division that did such damage to their country" and elected "an intellectual, a prophet of unity, and a man with a Black Kenyan father and a white American mother," Martin Wolf analyzed the economic challenges facing the new president in Tuesday's Financial Times (London).[1]  --  But how likely is it that Wolf's advice, a key element of which is "a global fiscal stimulus, with surplus countries implementing the biggest packages," will be palatable to non-Western nations?  --  In a review of two recent volumes in the Nov. 6 issue of the London Review of Books, Pankaj Mishra quoted from Parag Khanna's The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order (Allen Lane, 2008):  "'[T]he West can expect no allegiance to a Western order masquerading as representative of global values.'  His unvarnished assessment of America — 'a first-world economy in need of a Marshall Plan to stay where it is' — also sounds more acurate now that the scale of the crisis brought on by recklessly deregulated capitalism and the War on Terror is becoming clear."[2]  --  For the 39-year-old Pankaj Mishra, Martin Wolf is merely a typical member of what he calls "the Anglo-American commentariat." ...