Media Things: Critical Texts

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

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

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

The World According to Bush

2005-02-11T06:56:41-08:00

I missed this one when it premiered at the Vancouver International Film Festival last year. I'm looking forward to catching the DVD. The World According to Bush covers much of the territory of Fahrenheit 9/11, but is a more sober, conventionally made look at the first 1000 days of George Bush's presidency. It was originally scheduled to screen at the Cannes Film Festival in May, but when Michael Moore finished his film at the last minute, Karel's film was pulled because festival artistic director Thierry FrÃ©maux didn't want Cannes to appear too anti-American. The documentary has earned praise from a number of quarters for offering the most coherent exposition of the slide into war through high calibre interviews with the likes of author Norman Mailer, weapons inspector Hans Blix, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Pentagon advisor Richard Perle. However, there has been little U.S. media interest. "Either they don't know or they don't care," said Karel, speaking through a interpreter. Karel said that Michael Moore had omitted some important parts in George Bush's story. "There is hardly anything about the religious right and its relationship with the Bush family and also the dangerous liaisons between Israel and the Bush family." Both films reveal the unholy relationship between Bush and bin Laden clans, but The World According to Bush goes further back in history to the days when Prescott Bush, W's grandfather, was banker to Hitler's Third Reich. -- Rebort (IOFilm Review]

Unprecedented - The 2000 Presidential Election - 2004 Campaign Edition (2002)

2005-02-06T08:25:27-08:00

This is part I in producer Robert Greenwald's Un- Trilogy which also includes Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War and Unconstitutional - The War On Our Civil Liberties (2004). In the course of 47 provocative minutes, Unprecedented leaves little doubt that the 2000 presidential election was a mockery of justice. Focusing on rampant, court-sanctioned abuses of the democratic process in Florida, directors Richard Ray Perez and Joan Sekler present a thorough reexamination of the circumstances that allowed the election of George W. Bush, including the Gore campaign's fatal failure to request the state-wide recount to which the Democratic party was legally entitled. In particular, the political ambitions of Florida secretary of state Katherine Harris are exposed with devastating, irrefutable evidence of cronyism, including the Bush administration's post-election appointment of the son of Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, whose support of Florida's haphazard election results was arguably a violation of his oath. Through it all, Florida's African American voters and discounted "felons" are victimized by a bureaucratic nightmare of exclusion, and uncounted votes remained officially in limbo. The film's liberal bias is obvious (it was executive produced by Robert Greenwald, the director of Outfoxed), but Unprecedented is ultimately an impassioned plea to Americans of every political affiliation: If you don't vote, you will further weaken the democratic principles that were so fatefully violated in Florida. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

Unconstitutional - The War On Our Civil Liberties

2005-02-06T08:21:16-08:00

Part III in Producer Robert Greenwald's Un-Trilogy. Part I is Unprecedented - The 2000 Presidential Election - 2004 Campaign Edition (2002) and Part II Unconstitutional - The War On Our Civil Liberties (2004) Completing a trilogy that should be required viewing for all Americans, Unconstitutional explicitly reveals how the USA Patriot Act violates numerous civil liberties guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Following the equally persuasive documentaries Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election and Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War, this film presents powerful and tragic examples of how the USA Patriot Act--passed with virtually no Congressional debate just 45 days after the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01--has been used to justify the unconstitutional arrest of innocent immigrants based on Arab stereotyping; the illegal detention of vaguely defined "suspects" and their improper treatment (including beatings and torture) during extended confinement; prisoner abuse of alleged terrorism suspects in Guantanamo Bay military prison; the allowance of improper search and seizure without due cause; prohibited travel based on racial profiling; bully tactics employed with impunity by local police in efforts to undermine free speech; and other clear indications of the Patriot Act's unconstitutional enforcement. The more personal these stories of violation are, the more gut-wrenching is the realization that U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft--and by extension, the George W. Bush administration--have used the Patriot Act to justify what is essentially a dictatorial police state. Sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union and full of bipartisan testimony by lawyers, politicians, and victims of Patriot Act abuse, Unconstitutional makes an eloquent case for the careful interpretation of Constitutional law, exploring rising opposition to Patriot Act abuses while exposing how many of our freedoms have been undermined in the name of post-9/11 security. Regardless of your political affiliation, this is a chilling reminder of how seemingly good intentions can corrupt even our most cherished American values. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

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

The Human Zoo

2004-11-20T10:39:43-08:00

Desmond Morris

Uncovered - The Whole Truth About the Iraq War

2004-11-20T10:07:30-08:00

Robert Greenwald

Prisons We Choose to Live Inside

2004-11-20T10:00:55-08:00

Doris Lessing's 1986 Massey Lectures expose many aspects of being human that are agonisingly familiar to our social scientists and psychologists but which have not risen to public consciousness. These include traits used against us as individuals and groups to coerce behaviour counter to our general moral and ethical sensibilities. I think when people look back at our time, they will be amazed at one thing more than any other. It is this--that we do know more about ourselves now than people did in the past. But that very little of it has been put into effect... The sciences in question are sometimes called the behavioural sciences and are about how we function in groups and as individuals, not about how we like to think we behave and function which is often very flattering. But about how we can be observed to be behaving when observed as dispassionately as when we observe the behaviour of other species. There is a great mass of new information from universities, research institutions and gifted amateurs, but our ways of governing ourselves haven't changed. Our left hand does not know--does not want to know--what our right hand does. This is what I think is the most extraordinary thing there is to be seen about us, as a species, now. And people to come will marvel at it, as we marvel at the blindness and inflexibility of our ancestors. -- Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing