Media Things: Books

Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam

2006-09-08T18:22:48-08:00

A history of militant fundamentalism in Islam: We hear more about Muslim extremists than ever before, but Kepel argues that the terrorism seen today throughout the world results from the failure of Islamic fundamentalism and not its success. Beginning his history with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran, Kepel details the rise of Islamism as an alternative to the nationalist visions of the postcolonial Islamic world. Although the growth of this new kind of Islam among poor and bourgeois alike was indeed astounding for a time, these groups met with little political success. Covering the entire Islamic world, from Malaysian extremists to bin Laden and the Taliban, Kepel exposes a pattern of failure. The inability of Islamic militancy to sustain popular support and implant its impractical ideology (which failed spectacularly in Afghanistan) resulted in increased militancy and the tolerance of terrorism. Fascinating despite its copious detail, Kepel's history has a wider focus than Ahmed Rashid's Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia and more analytical depth than Robin Wright's Sacred Rage: The Wrath of Militant Islam (1986). The first in-depth history of political Islam appropriate for newcomers to Islamic history. -- Booklist

Gilles Kepel, Anthony Roberts (Translator)

Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama Bin Laden, Radical Islam and the Future of America

2006-09-08T18:17:47-08:00

An unflattering perspective: Here "a senior U.S. civil servant with two decades of experience in the U.S. intelligence community's work on Afghanistan and South Asia" argues that the U.S. was unprepared for September 11 because "our own naivet� and insularity led us to underestimate the complexity and determination of our adversaries." Examining bin Laden's words and his leadership qualities, the author says that Al Qaeda remains largely intact and that its next attack will be more lethal than September 11. -- Publisher's Weekly

Anonymous

The War on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked, September 11, 2001

2006-09-08T17:59:05-08:00

The news behind the events; the news mainstream media isn't reporting: The most complete book I know of, summarizing the relevant background and foreground intersecting upon the events of September 11... -- Barry Zwicker, Vision TV Insight

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

Silent Night, Holy Night: The Story of the Christmas Truce

2005-12-30T03:46:00-08:00

The third of three books written about the Christmas Day Truce of WWI. For the full story see this entry.

Stephen Wunderli

Christmas Truce: The Western Front December 1914

2005-12-30T03:43:15-08:00

The second of three books about World War I's Christmas Day Truce. For the full story see this entry.

Malcolm Brown, Shirley Seaton

Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce

2005-12-30T03:36:47-08:00

One of three books about the impromptu WWI Christmas Day Truce. Here's the story: GLW: The soldiers' Xmas truce http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2002/480/480p21.htm BY PHIL SHANNON It was the war that was supposed ``to be over by Christmas''. It very nearly was. A spontaneous soldiers' truce broke out along the Western Front on Christmas Eve 1914, four months after the start of hostilities. ``Peace on Earth'', ``goodwill to all men'' -- British, French and German soldiers took these usually hypocritical Christmas sentiments for real and refused to fire on the ``enemy'', exchanging instead song, food, drink and gifts with each other in the battle-churned wastes of ``no-man's land'' between the trenches. Lasting until Boxing Day in some cases, the truce alarmed the military authorities who worked overtime to end the fraternisation and restart the killing. Stanley Weintraub's haunting book on the ``Christmas Truce'' [Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce] recounts through the letters of the soldiers the extraordinary event, routinely denigrated in orthodox military histories as ``an aberration of no consequence'', but which was, argues Weintraub, not only a temporary respite from slaughter but an event which had the potential to topple death-dealing governments. With hundreds of thousands of casualties since August from a war bogged down in the trenches and mud of France, soldiers of all countries were tired of fighting. There had already been some pre-Christmas truces to bury the dead rotting in ``no-man's land'' but these truces had needed the approval of higher authority. ``Soon'', however, ``few would care about higher authority'' as an unauthorised and illegal truce ``bubbled up from the ranks''. The peace overtures generally began with song. From German trenches illuminated by brightly lit Christmas trees would come a rich baritone voice or an impromptu choir singing Silent Night (Stille Nacht). Other carols and songs floated back and forth over the barbed wire. A German boot tossed into the British trenches exploded with nothing more harmful than sausages and chocolates. Signs bearing ``Merry Christmas'' were hung over the trench parapets, followed by signs and shouts of ``you no shoot, we no shoot''. The shared Christmas rituals of carols and gifts eased the fear, suspicion and anxiety of initial contact as first a few unarmed soldiers, arms held above their heads, warily ventured out into the middle to be followed soon by dozens of others, armed only with schnapps, pudding, cigarettes and newspapers. The extraordinary outbreak of peace swept along the entire front from the English Channel to the Switzerland border. Corporal John Ferguson, from the Scottish Seaforth Highlanders shared the pleasant disbelief -- ``Here we were laughing and chatting to men whom only a few hours before we were trying to kill''. Uniform accessories (buttons, insignias, belts) were swapped as souvenirs. Christmas dinner was shared amongst the bomb craters. A Londoner in the 3rd Rifles had his hair cut by a Saxon who had been his barber in High Holborn. Helmets were swapped as mixed groups of soldiers posed for group photographs. Some British soldiers were taken well behind German lines to a bombed farmhouse to share the champagne from its still intact cellar. Soccer matches were played in `no-man's land' with stretchers as goalposts. Bicycle races were held on bikes with no tyres found in the ruins of houses. A German soldier captivated hundreds with a display of juggling and magic. ``You would have thought you were dreaming'', wrote captain F. D. Harris to his family in Liverpool. The high command ordered the line command to stop the fraternisation. Few line officers did or could. The truce momentum could not be arrested. Deliberate or accidental breaches of the tacit truce failed to undermine it. Stray shots were resolved by an apology. If ordered to shoot at unarmed soldiers, soldiers aimed deliberately high. Sergeant Lange of the XIX Saxon Corps recounted how, when ordered on Boxing Day to fire on the 1st Hampshires, they did so, ``spending that day and the next wasting ammunition in trying to shoot the stars down from the sky''. By firing in the air, as the sergeant noted with approval, they had ``struck'', like the class-conscious workers they were in civilian life. They had had enough of killing. Military authorities feared fraternisation -- a court-martial offence, punishable by death, it weakens ``the will to kill'', ``destroys the offensive spirit'', saps ``ideological fervour'' and ``undermines the sacrificial spirit'' necessary to wage war. It was politically subversive -- ``A bas la guerre!'' (``Down with the war!'') from a French soldier was returned with ``Nie wieder Kreig! Das walte Gott!'' (``No more war! It's what God wants!'') from his Bavarian counterpart. After ``mucking-in'' with British soldiers, a German private wrote that ``never was I as keenly aware of the insanity of war''. Soldiers reasserted their shared humanity -- Private Rupert Frey of the Bavarian 16th Regiment wrote after fraternising with the English that ``normally we only knew of their presence when they sent us their iron greetings''. ``Now'', we gathered, ``as if we were friends, as if we were brothers. Well, were we not, after all!''. If ordinary soldiers acted on these sentiments, a big danger loomed for governments and the ruling class. If left to themselves, the soldiers would have been home from the shooting war by Christmas all fired up for the class war at home. As Weintraub says, ``many troops had discovered through the truce that the enemy, despite the best efforts of propagandists, were not monsters. Each side had encountered men much like themselves, drawn from the same walks of life -- and led, alas by professionals who saw the world through different lenses''. Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Sherlock Holmes creator, who had turned from jingoistic imperialism to spiritualism after the death of his son in the war, shot an angry glance to military and civil authority -- ``those high-born conspirators against the peace of the world, who in their mad ambition had hounded men on to take each other by the throat rather than by the hand''. The high command on both sides were desperate to restart ``the war that had strangely vanished''. Replacement troops with no emotional commitment to the truce were rushed in. The 2nd Welsh Fusiliers who had not fired a shot from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day were relieved without notice, an exceptional practice. Sometimes threats were necessary -- when German officers ordered a regiment in the XIX Saxon Corps to start firing and were met with replies of ``we can't -- they are good fellows'', the officers replied ``Fire, or we do -- and not at the enemy!''. To prevent further spontaneous truces after 1914, the British high command ordered slow, continuous artillery barrages, trench raids and mortar bombardments -- immensely costly of lives but effectively limiting the opportunities for fraternisation for the rest of the war. To discourage others, conspicuous disciplinary examples were made of individuals. For organising a cease-fire to bury the dead, which was followed by half an hour of fraternisation in ``no-man's land'' with no shooting for the rest of Christmas Day 1915, Captain Iain Colquhoun of the 1st Scots Guard was court-martialled. Merely reprimanded, the message was nevertheless clear for career-minded British officers. Tougher medicine was needed when French soldiers refused to return to the trenches at Aisne in May 1917 -- 3427 courts-martial and 554 death sentences with 53 executed by firing squad were necessary to crank-start the war on this sector of the French front. Repression from above won the day against the Christmas Truce of 1914 but it was the lack of soldiers' organisation from below that stifled the potential for turning the truce into a movement to stop the war. On the eastern front, on the other hand, fraternisation and peace were Bolshevik policy and in Germany, it was mutinies by organised sailors and home-based soldiers, which finally put paid to Germany's war effort. Weintraub has resurrected a beautiful moment in history, made all the more beautiful in the darkness of the carnage that was to follow when four more years of war took the lives of 6000 men a day. Far from a ``two-day wonder'', the Christmas truce ``evokes a stubborn humanity within us''. As folksinger John McCutcheon put it in his 1980s ballad Christmas in the Trenches, the war monster is a vulnerable beast when the common soldier realises that ``on each end of the rifle we're the same''.

Stanley Weintraub

The Manipulated Mind: Brainwashing, Conditioning and Indoctrination

2005-12-21T09:20:53-08:00

One of my site visitors bought this book today. Looks interesting. It's a bit of a perk for being an Amazon.com affiliate: monitoring my site's Amazon sales and clicks stats is constantly expanding my reading list.

Denise Winn

The U.S. Constitution for Everyone

2005-09-26T06:36:21-08:00

RTFM is an acronym used often in the computing industry' Read the Fucking Manual. Typically, it's an epithet thrown at colleagues asking simple questions regarding easily available information they should already know. There's a certain amount of exasperation implicit in the phrase. Why would any programmer choose to write code in a system they've not taken the time to fully understand? Take the constitution, for example, framework for American society. How many Americans have read it since their secondary school introduction to it? Well, now they don't have an excuse. The U.S. Constitution for Everyone presents the text of the Constitution, explains its fundamentals, and traces events leading up to its adoption in 1788.

Jerome B. Agel, Mort Gerberg

The War Prayer

2005-08-28T09:43:24-08:00

The disconnect between vocal support for the Iraq War and actual support (eg: willing to enlist in the army) seems to be a reflection the illogical dichotomy that is of the result of political ideology vs plain self-interest. That's too simplistic. There's a brutal subtlety to Mark Twain's The War Prayer that gets down to the individual and collective refusal to reflect on the true nature of war and its consequences. The War Prayer It was a time of great exulting and excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest depths of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast doubt upon its righteousness straight way got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way. Sunday morning came � next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams � visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! � then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation: "God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest, Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!" Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory � An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there, waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!" The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside � which the startled minister did � and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said: "I come from the Throne � bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import � that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of � except he pause and think. "God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two � one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this � keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it. "You have heard your servant's prayer � the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it � that part which the pastor � and also you in your hearts � fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory � must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen! "O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle � be Thou near them! With them � in spirit � we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with hurricanes of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it � for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen." [After a pause.] "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits." It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

Mark Twain

Fugitive Writings

2005-08-05T16:30:34-08:00

These essays, which either have not been previously published or have been out of print, embrace Kropotkin's philosophy at a time when he first gave it expression. This collection contains selected essays by Peter Kropotkin who was, unquestionably, the most widely read and respected theorist of anarchism. It is intended to make some of his most representative writings more accessible. The material consists of essays which either have not been previously published or have been out of print since their original publication. While the entire scope of Kropotkin's political thinking cannot possibly be projected in a single volume, it is hoped that many of his most fundamental conceptions have been exemplified here, for these essays embrace Kropotkin's philosophy at a time when he was struggling to first give them expression. In this context, Kropotkin's very first political essay, Must We Occupy Ourselves With An Examination of the Ideal of a Future System, written in 1873, which foreshadows most of his later writings, is of particular value. Apart from a general introduction to the most significant aspects of Kropotkin's life and thought, George Woodcock has prepared a preface to each essay allowing the reader to enter into the spirit of the time.

Peter Kropotkin

Squandered Victory : The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq (Hardcover)

2005-07-22T15:51:18-08:00

I must say, the title and subject of this book caught my attention. Then a reviewer on amazon.com reminded me of the pitfalls of expert pundits. The review: This shallow book is the evidence why America lost a chance, June 11, 2005; Reviewer: Hussain Abdul-Hussain (Arlington, VA USA) Larry Diamond's Squandering Victory stands out as the best evidence on why America found itself in an Iraqi quagmire. If this is the best analysis of the Iraqi situation a Stanford professor deployed to Iraq could come up with, then it is perfectly understandable how the United States was never able to grasp what's going on there. Read the book's description: "America's leading expert on democracy delivers the first insider's account of the U.S. occupation of Iraq." The leading expert on democracy is not an Arabic speaker and his background on the Middle East seems minimal. His knowledge on the Arab world, like his expertease on democracy, comes mainly from Western media and secondary English sources rather than from primary Arabic texts or sources. As for the "the first insider's account of the U.S. occupation of Iraq," well, the account was of such an insider that during his stay in Baghdad, he spent all of his time inside the heavily fortified Green Zone - according to his own account - save for a single trip that he made to Babylon in an armored SUV. Put all of this given together and here's what you get: A Stanford professor and fellow at one of Washington's prestigious think tanks, National Endowment for Democracy, received a call from his personal friend, then National Security Advisor and today's Secretary of State Condi Rice, seeking his participation in salvaging America's attempt to establish democracy in Iraq. With no Arabic and minimum knowledge about Iraq and the Arab world that were apparent in the form of factual mistakes in his book, Diamond joined the American-made Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. His interpretation of what went wrong there came through his observation of the head of CPA Paul Bremer instead of trying to understand the behavior of Iraqis. And if that's not enough, Diamond even came up with some recommendations that he thought could rectify the situation there. Why not send UN envoy Algerian (Arab) Lakhdar brahimi, who is Sunni, to patch things up in Iraq? After all, he succeeded in a similar mission in Afghanistan. For those who don't know, the majority of the population in Iraq is Arab-speaking Iraqi Shiites. The majority in Afghanistan is Urdu-speaking Pashtun Sunnis. Does the cultural and ethnic difference ring any bell? To the majority in Afghanistan, Brahimi was an impartial Arab UN envoy, Sunni like they are. To the majority of Iraqis, this Sunni Arab was an official of the Arab League which Iraqi Shiites abhorr. He had good links with the toppled Saddam Hussein who oppressed these Shiites. He sumpathized with the agenda of the region's Arab Sunnis, which was in conflict with that of the Arab Shiites. Does he look impartial at all to Iraqi Shiites? Of course not. To many Americans, he does. I cited this one example to illustrate how shallow and superficial the knowledge of this expert on Iraq is... and he still has the guts to criticize the administration for squandering a chance in Iraq. His book is the best example of why America lost an opportunity there in the first place, not a guide on how it could have been avoided.

Larry Diamond

Gilead

2005-04-05T05:15:47-08:00

Gilead By Marilynne Robinson Published: November 28, 2004 Pulitzer Prize Winner, Fiction, 2005 It seems an odd choice for a Pulitzer, at least on the surface a mundane-seeming clergyman's story. Last year's winner, Edward P. Jones' The Known World took an unflinching look at slavery and the initial years of abolition, a more popular Pulitzer theme. Then, on second thought, in these times, perhaps it's an old perspective from which fresh insights can be gleaned. Perhaps also, the perspective itself requires some fresh insights, both from within and without. An excerpt, followed by some links. It's a plain old church and it could use a coat of paint. But in the dark times I used to walk over before sunrise just to sit there and watch the light come into that room. I don't know how beautiful it might seem to anyone else. I felt much at peace those mornings, praying over very dreadful things sometimes -- the Depression, the wars. There was a lot of misery for people around here, decades of it. But prayer brings peace, as I trust you know. In those days, as I have said, I might spend most of a night reading. Then, if I woke up still in my armchair, and if the clock said four or five, I'd think how pleasant it was to walk through the streets in the dark and let myself into the church and watch dawn come in the sanctuary. I loved the sound of the latch lifting. The building has settled into itself so that when you walk down the aisle, you can hear it yielding to the burden of your weight. It's a pleasanter sound than an echo would be, an obliging, accommodating sound. You have to be there alone to hear it. Maybe it can't feel the weight of a child. But if it is still standing when you read this, and if you are not half a world away, sometime you might go there alone, just to see what I mean. After a while I did begin to wonder if I liked the church better with no people in it. . . . In the old days I could walk down every single street, past every house, in about an hour. I'd try to remember the people who lived in each one, and whatever I knew about them, which was often quite a lot. . . . And I'd pray for them. And I'd imagine peace they didn't expect and couldn't account for descending on their illness or their quarreling or their dreams. Then I'd go into the church and pray some more and wait for daylight. I've often been sorry to see a night end, even while I have loved seeing the dawn come. Trees sound different at night, and they smell different too. Review: The New York Times Author Profile: The New York Times Review Religion & Ethics Newsweekly Review: Slate Marilynne Robinson Bibliography Housekeeping (1980) Mother Country: Britian, the Welfare State and Nuclear Pollution (1989) Puritans and Prigs (1999) The Death of Adam: Essays On Modern Thought (2000)

MARILYNNE ROBINSON

The Fever

2005-01-07T01:16:59-08:00

This little play, Wallace Shawn's monologue of 112 pages, rocked me when I first encountered it at the Vancouver Fringe Festival sometime in the mid '90s. Perhaps I'll add some commentary later, but for now, try these links: A reading by the author, Wallace Shawn Analysis/Review Review: performance at the fritz theatre, san diego, CA, 19 April 99 which provides the most erudite observation of the meaning underlying this play: "Shawn's theater is not of didacticism, but of dialectic, of disturbing questions posited to provoke us rather than simple answers to soothe." Keep that in mind when reading the reviews by Library Journal and Publisher's Weekly on Amazon.com, which are in stark contrast to those by readers.

Wallace Shawn

Terrorism and War (Open Media Pamphlet Series)

2004-11-20T11:04:10-08:00

Howard Zinn, Anthony Arnove

Censored 2005

2004-11-20T10:53:01-08:00

Peter Phillips