2002 The New Rulers of the World
2005 Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism That Changed the World (29 authors, edited)
I read this book with the advantage of having first gone through the two listed above. C. Middleton has summarized the chapters so I will not do that. Here are my fly-leaf notes for those that follow my reviews (Amazon deletes votes from my 500+ “fans” something else that rankles).
Chapter 1. The entire nation of British CITIZENS that once inhabited the island group known as Diego Garcia was destroyed by US-UK secret agreement without Parliamentary knowledge. This is a crime against humanity, a genocide. The US Executive lied to the US Congress about the matter.
Chapter 2. The author damns Israel as a Zionist actor (not to be confused with the goodness of the Jewish faith) and accuses them with an array of facts for their destruction of an entire society and is archival history (both official records and cultural works). By this account Israel (20% of whose budget is funded by US taxpayers) has expelled over one million Palestinians while committing constant conscioius atrocities against those who remain. My stomach is turned by the passing account of Israeli occupying soldiers defacating everywhere EXCEPT in the working toilets. The author honors Yaffa Yarkoni and notes that Israeli historians are stirring and may be on the verge of doing honest history. He notes that there is satravation everywhere and calls for a global boycott of Israel such as helped lead to the end of apartheid once US policy was forced to acknowledge public concerns. I agree, and I also feel that the US taxpayer should demand an end to ALL military assistance in the Middle East, an end to all US funds being spent on Israel, on arming Arabs, and on the occupation of Iraq.
Chapter 3 addresses India, which may well be the most complicated “nation-state” on the planet, and laments the growing gap between the elites and the masses. One tidbit: 40 people out of 200,000 applicants are accepted into the Indian IT advanced placment program. The author suggests that Indian cities could be on the verge of exploding.
Chapter 4 covers South Africa after the ANC victory and what stays with me is the ANC sell-out of its people, in essence increasing wealth of the whites by 15% while wealth of the larger black population has decreased by 19%. Just as Obama in the USA does not really represent any gain for people of color–he is a sell-out to Wall Street just as Bradley, Clinton, and others have been–so also this chapter suggets that the ANC has been a sell-out to the mining interests and international investors whose demands have been met such that South Africa's wealth is being monetized by foreigners and not for the benefit of the larger public.
On page 247 I learn of and am impressed by, here I quote from the author:
Ubantu is a subtle concept from the Nguni languaes that says a person's humanity is expressed through empathy and solidarity with others; through community and standing together. A Xhosa proberb is “Ubantu ungamntu ngabanye abantu” — “People are people thorugh other people.” I have a low social IQ and am late to the concepts of appreciative inquiry and deliberative dialog including citizen wisdom councils, but this strikes me as so powerful, so authentic, that it merits special attention.
The last chapter on Afghanistan simply makes me sad. I have reviewed many books regarding our imperial incursions into both Afghanistan and Iraq, and the words facade and fraud from the author's telling resonate. We took opium from zero to 80% of the world's supply there, we backed a drug-addicted president whose brother is now the top opium dealer on the planet (working closely with Mussaref and the ISI in Pakistan where the opium is converted into #4 heroin). I am just sick with all that has been done “in our name” for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the public interest and everything to do with the enrichment of a few at the expense of the many.
Here are eight other books I recommend, four negative, four positive:
War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (BK Currents (Hardcover))
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence and the Will of the People
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
I pray for the restoration of the Republic Of, By, and For We the People. What our government does in our name is neither moral nor rational–merely corrupt.
NOTE: Amazon now buries my reviews and has deleted over 350 of my images to delete the twelve that show Bush-Obama sharing the same face. You can see all of my reviews by category (something Amazon does not offer) with external links (something Amazon does not allow), as well as the deleted images in my Graphic section at the Public Intelligence Blog. I will continue to post reviews on Amazon, but they have lost their integrity and my contributions can be better accessed at the Public Intelligence Blog (all with links back to Amazon).
