15. Graham Greene, No Man's Land

This is a recently uncovered Graham Greene story about a British spy who crosses into the Russian controlled zone of Germany to complete a mission.  Once he crosses the border he discovers a strange group of Catholic zealots who believe that the virgin mary appeared in a cave in the mountains.  Upon visiting the cave he falls in love with a beautiful woman and discovers that she works in his captor's jail.  This is a great old cold war spy story.

14. Philip K. Dick, Now Wait for Last Year

This story takes place in and around the year 2055 when the world is allied with the heartless people of Lilistar in an all out inter-planetary war against the reegs.  The world's capital is located in Cheyenne, WY and the world's leader, the UN Secretary, is a guy who goes by the nickname the Mole.  The story follows the lives of Virgil Ackerman, the vein older wartime profiteer;  Dr. Eric Sweetscent and his wife Kathy, the kind man and the shrill woman caught in a loveless marriage;  and the Mole, the calculating but misunderstood good leader of the world.

The Lilstar spies who have posted themselves throughout the world begin to introduce a potent drug, intended to be a weapon to be used against the reegs, called JJ-180 to selected humans.  Kathy is one of their victims.  Once taken, the drug transports the user either backwards, forwards or laterally in time and, after the high is over, unless the user takes another dose it slowly shuts down the user's liver until he dies.  In this way it is instantaneously addictive.  Kathy takes the drug one night and is blackmailed to join her husband, who by now has become one of the surgeons taking care of the Mole, in order to spy on both her husband and the Mole.

Desperate to feed her habit, Kathy shows up in Cheyenne and drops a JJ-180 pill in her husband's water and gets him addicted to the drug.  He then secures a supply of the drug for Kathy and returns her to the west coast and then sets off to find the antidote for the drug by taking the drug, traveling into the future and buying the cure.  In the mean time he discovers that the Mole has been prolonging his rule over the people by traveling laterally in time using JJ-180 and bringing other Moles back with him to replace him each time he dies in the current time line.

The story is made more complex by both Eric's search for a peaceful end to the war as he bounces back and forth in time and the Mole's complex strategy of staying in power using his counterparts from other time lines.

In this short book Philip K. Dick weaves a futuristic war time political thriller and a psychological drama together with a group of diverse and eccentric characters into one coherent story line.  Then he adds a lot of depth to all of the characters, even the minor ones, by, for example, giving them telepathic or pre-cognitive skills.  It is this complex weave which makes this one of the better PKD stories that I have read.  I urge you to pick it up as soon as you can.

13. Michael Crichton, The Andromeda Strain

A&E recently aired a made for TV remake of the Andromeda Strain that was broadcast over two nights.  My wife, who is not a fan of science fiction, really enjoyed the first night of the series - she missed the second night - which is why I decided to pick up this book.  I got an old 1969 edition of the book in pretty good condition along with tear out advertising in the middle, anyone want a 20 week subscription to Time magazine for $2.67?

This is a mass market science fiction story with a happy ending.  A secret experimental satellite lands in a small town in Arizona and when the town doctor opens up the casing all but two of the town's residents die.  The overseers of the program send their team in to find the satellite and the team is also instantaneously killed when they open their van's doors in the town's main street.  The leader of the program decides to activate Wildfire, a secret government contingency plan designed to try to deal with extraterrestrial bacteria that are brought back to earth.

The Wildfire team assembles in a secret underground lab and tries to first identify and then cure the bacteria that killed the residents of Piedmont.  They go through the usual steps to do this and then they discover that the bacteria first mutates into something that destroys plastic and then mutates into something entirely benign.  There are some obvious tense moments in the Wildfire lab with potential breaches of seals letting the disease out through the lab and things like that.

The book has an awesome premise, it is amazingly well researched and Crichton's prose is fluid and easy to follow but it is a mass market story and it epitomizes why I tend to stay away from authors like Crichton:  they take an idea that has so much potential and then they dumb it down to the point that it is entertaining but ultimately unsatisfying.

Padding My Stats

Every night around 8 I sit down with my young daughter and read her a story.  Sometimes I read a few pages from the book that I am reading and other times I read stories about Grufallos, naughty mice or some other appropriate theme.  I want to know if I can count these books as part of my reading for 2008 because with these books I would be reading fifty books per month!

12. Georges Simenon, Tropic Moon

This is another one of Georges Simenon's roman durs.  It is the story of a young Frenchman, Timar, from La Rochelle who uses his politically well placed uncle's connections to get a job at a French company's colonial outpost in Gabon.  When he gets there to report for duty he finds that the only launch that can take him to his post in the interior is broken and, even if it worked, the guy who is currently in the post refuses to leave and has threatened to shoot anyone who tries to come and replace him.  With that plan on the shelf for now he checks into a local ex-pat hotel run by the beautiful Adele and her husband.  One morning Adele comes to him in his room and starts a tormented love affair that eventually drives him insane.

After their first morning together Adele withholds her tenderness which makes him increasingly wanting and insecure.  He wears his emotions on his sleeve and becomes the butt of the jokes of the more rugged ex-pat loggers who live in the hotel.  One night Adele's husband succumbs to an indigenous virus and dies the next day.  On the same day the police chief calls Timar in to question him about the shooting of a native which has caused a lot of tension among the native population.  Shortly after Adele's husband's death, the two recommence their love affair in a more bona fide manner and Adele, manipulative temptress that she is, convinces him to buy a logging concession in the interior.  After getting themselves organized the two of them set off for the interior.

Things go poorly from the start.  They first stop at a small native village and Adele mysteriously heads into one of the huts and comes out fifteen minutes later but refuses to say what she was doing in there.  This begins to drive Timar crazy which, compounded with the infection that he has picked up, makes him attack the boat's captain as they are pulling into their concession's dock.  Timar spends the next few days with a high fever, hearing things and behaving erratically towards Adele.  In these three days he figures out that Adele was the person who killed the native man in the city and that she hid the murder weapon in the hut that she went into on their way up here.  Before he is fully recovered, Adele is called back to the city to appear as a witness in the framed person's trial.  On hearing this, Timar canoes back to the city partially because he cannot bear to be without her and partially because he wants to tell the truth.

He shows up at the trial and after hours of testimony he screams that Adele is the real culprit and not the poor black man who's on trial.  Adele ends up in jail, though it's not entirely clear as the book leaves a lot to the reader's imagination at this point, and he ends up on a steamer back to France having gone insane and muttering "it isn't real," over and over again as he walks up and down the ship.

This is a murder story that is tightly tied up with a tortured love story.  It is excellent.

11. Richard Matheson, I Am Legend

This book is so much better than the movie!  Where the movie is a superficial, pleasant, happy ending show this is a dark, angry, sad ending book.  The book is set after the end of a war, maybe a nuclear war though the author never says so.  The chemical weapons used in the war have released some kind of germ which turns people into vampires.  Because of the nuclear winter-like dust storms the germs are quickly transported throughout the world and they turn almost everyone into vampires except Robert Neville.

After his wife and daughter turn into vampires, Neville turns into a hermit drunk spending most days drinking from the morning till the night until he starts doing research on the germ which becomes an all consuming project for him.  He is joyous one day when he finds a dog that hasn't turned into a vampire already but he crashes a few nights later when the dog returns as a vampire.  At the same time as he is trying to find a cure for the vampire germ the vampires themselves are evolving and the story hits its climax over a physical and emotional battle between Neville and the advanced vampires.

This is nicely told but short story.

10. Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

To my surprise I never read this rite of passage book when all my friends were reading it in high school.  What a great and sad story.  I am sure that my paltry audience of three or four has read this book so I won't bother summarizing the story for you.  The ending didn't come as a surprise, you knew that the bitch nurse was going to lobotomize him from about halfway through the book, but it still left me saddened that the tortured good guy lost his life.

We all have a lot of unread books on our shelves but this strikes me as one of those books that is worth re-reading.

9. Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murad

Pulling out the big guns for the ninth book of the year!  I don't remember where I heard about this book, it could have been a book review somewhere, it caught my eye because it is the story of a tough Chechen fighter's interaction with his Russian adversaries.

Hadji Murad is the tough fighter and his former superior, Shamil, feeling threatened by Murad's courage and success has taken Murad's family hostage and has sent Murad into exile.  Murad turns to the Russians and gives himself up with the promise to fight on their behalf as long as the Russians give him his personal Cossack guard.  The Russians agree and Murad returns to Chechnya to fight Shamil.

This passage from the book could apply today just as well as it did 100 years ago:

No one spoke of hatred of the Russians.  The feeling experience by all Chechens, from the youngest to the oldest, was stronger than hate.  It was not hatred, for they did not regard those Russian dogs as human beings, but it was such repulsion, disgust, and perplexity at the senseless cruelty of these creatures, that the desire to exterminate them - like the desire to exterminate rats, poisonous spiders, or wolves - was as natural an instinct as that of self-preservation.

8. Kurt Vonnegut, Armageddon in Retrospect

This is a book of short stories published after KV's death.  Most of them are stories about the goings on in POW camps towards the end of WWII, others are about the havoc that followed the allied victory and there are a couple of other random ones about different subjects.

The stories are all quite sarcastic in the traditional KV style.  I particularly enjoyed the title story which is about an institute that is set up on Oklahoma to proove that people are crazy because they are possessed by the devil.  The institute is backed by a rich oil magnate who pours his entire wealth into the thing and the "scientists" there conduct experiments - and one large scale clinical trial - with devices that are supposed to rid the body of the devil.  One device is a headset that shoots a low intensity current between the person's ears.

There is some controversy about how finished these stories actually were when they were found and how much work the author's son, Mark, put into finishing them.

7. John Christopher, The World in Winter

This is a PA love story (better reviewed by the Mount Benson Report and Olman's 50).  A sudden reduction in solar radiation results in a significant cooling of the northern hemisphere and the emergence of a new ice age.  The story centers around Andrew, David and their wives.  Andrew produces a television show and David is a mid-level civil servant.  They are introduced to one another at a cocktail party.  Andrew's wife subsequently leaves him for David and David's timid wife begins a loving relationship with Andrew even though it lacks intimacy.

As the weather gets colder, critical supplies begin to dwindle and violence increases.  The government gives up most of the country and establishes "green zones" around key cities leaving most of the population outside the zones to fend for themselves.  Carol, Andrew's ex-wife, leaves with their children and moves to Nigeria and soon afterwards Andrew and David's ex-wife move to Nigeria as well on the promise that David will follow them soon.  There is subtle social commentary throughout the book focused on racism in the west, this commentary is magnified when the elite white's move to Nigeria and find that they are the underclass and are forced into doing menial low paying jobs for their black task masters.

In Nigeria, after a dark false start, Andrew manages to land another television production job and begins to lead a good life for himself and David's ex.  At the same time his ex-wife becomes a live in prostitute for a wealthy Nigerian business man.  The Nigerian authorities concoct a plan to invade England and Andrew joins the mission and returns to London where he finds David's ex-wife who had left Andrew and moved back to England in order to be with David.

I have not described the soap opera aspects of this book in as much detail as I could but I think that you catch the drift.  It's a good book and a quick read.

6. Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

In a word this book is gruesome, for example:

Two thick ropes of blood and two slender rose like snakes from the stump of his neck and arched hissing into the fire.  The head rolled to the left and came to rest at the expriest's feet where it lay with eyes aghast.

They found the lost scouts hanging head downward from the limbs of a fireblacked paloverde tree.  They were skewered through the cords of their heels with the sharpened shuttles of green wood and they hung gray and naked above the dead ashes of the coals where they'd been roasted until their heads had charred and their brains bubbled in the skulls and steam sang from their noseholes.  Their tongues were drawn out and held with sharpened sticks thrust through them and they had been docked of their ears and their torsos were sliced open with flints until the entrails hung down on their chests.

...those right pilgrims nameless among the stones with their terrible wounds, the viscera spilled from their sides and the naked torsos bristling with arrowshafts.  Some by their beards were men but yet wore strange menstrual wounds between their legs and no man's parts for these had been cut away and hung dark and strange from out their grinning mouths.

Blood Meridian is the story of the wild west in the 1870s as told through the eyes of a 24 year old always referred to as the kid.  The kid joins up with a division of the army who doesn't want to give up fighting the Apaches even though the American-Mexican war is officially over.  The division wanders down into a valley and is promptly slaughtered by the Apaches.  The kid gets away and joins a band of protection for hire thugs who provide protection to, at this time, Mexican villages and towns and are paid by the number of scalps that they bring in.  The band does reasonably well, if you can call it that, indiscriminately killing whomever crosses their path - Apaches or otherwise - however, it meets its end when one day it is attacked by the Yumas.

As with his other books the writing is so light and fluid that one does not ever feel absorbed by the book.  Nevertheless, it is a great story that is well put together and nicely told.

5. Barbara Smit, Sneaker Wars

The subtitle - the enemy brothers who founded adidas and puma and the family feud that forever changed the business of sport - says a lot about what the book's about.  Adi (short for Adolf) and Rudi (short for Rudolf) Dasler founded a shoe company in the town of Herzegonaurach in what became West Germany.  At first the outfit can best be described as a cobbler's shop where Adi made custom sports shoes and Rudi went out team to team and tried to sell the shoes.  As the business grew the brothers and their wives began to feud until shortly after WWII they decided to split the company into two.  Adi came away with the manufacturing side of the business and Rudi came away with the sales side of the business.  Adi named his company Adidas (short for Adi Dasler).  Rudi was going to name his company Rudas (short for Rudi Dasler) but felt that the name was unwieldy and changed it to Puma instead.

The book recounts the early years of the sports shoe and apparel business, the competition between the two brothers' companies, the emergence of Nike and later Reebok, the decline of both Adidas and Puma and the re-emergence of both companies in their current form.  The most interesting part of the story takes place in the earlier years:  the fight between the two brothers and the transformation of the sports business from an 'amateur' enterprise to the big money business that it is today.  After that the book is not so interesting.

4. Patricia Highsmith, Ripley Underwater

I've lost track where this book falls in the Ripley series but I think that it falls immediately after Ripley's Game.  In this story two inquisitive Americans move into Ripley's suburban village and start making uncomfortably invasive inquiries about Ripley's life.  It later becomes clear that the Americans are on a mission to out Ripley.  I have to say that the suspense is a little more flat in this one and the ending is a little weaker.  Nevertheless it is an enjoyable book.

One, Two and Three

Cabeza de Vaca, The Shipwrecked Man

Georges Simenon, Inspector Cadaver

Michael E. Porter, Competitive Analysis

The Shipwrecked Man was given to me by Kate and Jason and since I really enjoy reading about Spain's colonial adventures in Southern and Central America I quickly got into it.  Admittedly at 145 pages or so it was a quick read.  This is the story of a mission to explore Florida and Mexico gone horribly wrong.  Led by an incompetent Governor the explorers land somewhere in southern Florida, their group is divided and the ones that remain on land slowly die from various diseases.  One man, the narrator, survives the ordeal and recounts his point of view in this book.  "They perished one after the other.  The survivors sliced the dead for meat...."

Simenon is my new Dick Francis.  His Maigret novels are simple yet suspenseful.  This tells the story of Maigret's assignment in a rural French farming town where a beautiful young girl's boyfriend has been murdered.  I really can't say more without spoiling the story.

Porter is an Harvard Business School professor who specializes in the theory of competition.  His books, which date back to the 1970s, have formed the backbone of this field and he is widely renowned as a great business theorist.  As with many business books they are more common sense than anything else.  This one lays out a framework for analyzing your own company's competitive position and applying the framework to your industry as well as the competitors in your industry.  Once you have done that then you will be in a strong position to further analyze and change your competitive stance in a way that will increase your chance of success.  Anyone involved in business should read this.

I Am Back!

I took a long break from reading and blogging.  I was just getting bored of it all and couldn't find anything to keep me motivated.  Then, earlier this year, I picked up a Patricia Highsmith book.  I chose it because the Ripley series are always an easy and entertaining read and are good to get you back in the game.  It did the trick.  I ploughed through it.  Then I turned to a Maigret mystery for the same reason and I killed it and now I am onto a couple of new books that I am enjoying.  I will blog about all of these in the next few days.  Right now, you should just be happy that I am back.

Just Awesome!

"Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig, the Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, was arrested on ‘peeping’ and disorderly conduct charges based on allegations from an undercover police officer who was "investigating allegations of sexual conduct in the public bathroom" at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport.

According to the charges, Senator Craig initially stood outside a bathroom stall occupied by the officer, and then "look[ed] through the crack between the stall door and its frame into the stall that Sergeant Karsnia was occupaying," repeatedly "gazing into the stall" over a period of roughly two minutes. Craig allegedly "peered long enough" that the officer could “observe that the Defendant had blue eyes.”

After entering a bathroom stall next to the undercover officer’s, Craig allegedly moved his right foot from his own stall into the officer’s stall where he allegedly “touched Sergeant Karsnia's left foot” Next, the Idaho Senator was accused of swiping his hand under the bathroom stall divider three times with his palm up, moving it back and forth. The officer alleged that he "observed a gold ring" on the ring finder of Craig’s left hand.

Approximately six (6) minutes after he first observed Craig allegedly peeping into his stall, followed by the bathroom stall encounter, the officer reported showed Senator Craig “his police identification under the stall,” and Craig allegedly “exclaimed 'No!'”

As frequently happens in criminal cases, Senator Craig ultimately chose to plead guilty in order to settle the charges. He opted to represent himself (i.e., on a pro se basis), without the help of an experienced criminal defense attorney. In his plea, Craig admitted guilt only to the misdemeanor offense of disorderly conduct, paid $575, and was placed on probation.

In his defense, the Idaho Senator relatesed a statement contendng that "[a]t the time of this incident, I complained to the police that they were misconstruing my actions. I was not involved in any inappropriate conduct. I should have had the advice of counsel in resolving this matter. In hindsight, I should not have pled guilty.”

In 1982 when he was a Republican U.S. Congressman representing Idaho, Larry Craig issued a public denial against having improprieties with Congressional Pages. According to an ABC News investigation by reporter Carol Simpson at the time, “the names of Congressman alleged to be involved in the scandal have remained secret, but Idaho Congressman Larry Craig, concerned that his name had been implicated, issued a public denial:”

As this YouTube video shows, Craig’s public statements about the Congressional Page scandal included telling constituents that “persons who are unmarried as I am, by choice or by circumstance, have always been the subject of innuendos, gossip, and false accusations. I think this is despicable.”

ABC’s report followed the FBI’s interview with a then 20-year-old former Congressional Page who disclosed that the FBI interviewed him for two hours about allegations that members of Congress shared sex and drugs with Congressional pages in 1979.

According to Craig’s Senate website, he is now married to the former Suzanne Thompson, has three children, and nine grandchildren. Craig’s office says that he is "one of America's foremost defenders of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.""

There aren't enough words to describe how bizarre this is.

29, 30 and 31. Books I read between Christmas and New Year

29. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

This book is part business book and part pop psychology. The book is about a concept that the author calls "thin slicing," or what we normals would describe as how it is that people can make decisions about both trivial and important things based on very little data and sometimes be right about their decisions.

Setting the sound bite nomenclature that the author makes up aside, I found this to be a somewhat interesting book. I didn't learn anything that I could use in business but I was fascinated by some of the people that the author describes and their peculiar talents for thin slicing. I was most taken by the guy who was so subconsciously pescient that he could read minute inflections in people's facial muscles and figure out if they are telling the truth or if they were mad etc.

This is an interesting book but probably not for the reasons that the author intended. There is also a spoof book that is out called, "Blank: The Power of not Thinking All."

30. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

This book is about an average man living in a futuristic version of the late 1990s who has the ability to dream things that subsequently become reality. For example, one night he dreams that he owns a secluded get away home near a forest somewhere and when he wakes up he not only owns a home but he has also changed history so that he has always had that home.

The protagonist, Geroge Orr, however, cannot control these dreams and becomes scared by them and starts taking various drugs to supress his ability to dream. The big brother like system busts him for drug abuse and sends him to an enterprising shrink for treatment. The shrink picks up on Orr's abilities and starts using them to change the world. By hypnotic suggestion he makes Orr dream what he wants, for example, in one of the sessions the shrink makes Orr dream that there are no overpopulation problems and Orr responds by dreaming of a plague that has killed two thirds of the world. Orr, however, is not a willing participant in the shrink's enterprising ways.

The shrink is akin to a benevolant dictator who is a mixture of a benefactor with good intentions and a power hungry maniac. Le Guin suffuses the story with a thinly veiled ethical argument about whether the shrink's activitst benevolance is the right way to go or whether Orr's pacifist approach is better.

Excellent book.

31. The Vanishing by Tim Krabbe

This book is the inspiration for The Shining. It is a short, edge of your seat kind of psychotic thriller. Highly recommended for a good afternoon read.

The Beginning of the End?

There were news reports today that Canadian scientists discovered that the Ayles Ice Shelf snapped away from the coast of Ellesmere Island and became an ice island of its own. It happened in August 2005 but it took scientists 18 months or so to figure out when and how it happened. Apparently it took an hour for the ice shelf, which is the 66km in area or the size of 11,000 football fields, to break off.

28. The War of the World: Twentieth Century Conflict and the Descent of the West by Niall Ferguson

Dr. Ferguson is a pop historian who’s stock is rising above even Simon Schama’s. This 1,100 page tome is a survey history of the late 19th and entire 20th centuries with a particular focus on the role of war in our society.

In general it is a good book but the problem with survey histories, I find, is that most readers will know a lot more about certain periods covered by the book than the author cares to get into, which means that sometimes hundreds of pages of the book should be skipped. For me, anyway, I found the book to be a little too much of a survey and a little short on the details that make history interesting.

If you’ve got the time, I would read it, but I wouldn’t make the time for it.

22 to 27. Books I Read on Vacation

22. Red Lights by Georges Simenon - This book was flat out awesome, the guy is such an amazing writer. This is the story of a young married couple who set out one Labor Day weekend to drive to Maine from New York to pick up their two children from summer camp. Written in the 1950s when there were far fewer prohibitions against drinking and driving, the husband and wife get into an argument about the husband's need to stop at the road side bars for drinks. And it gets darker after that.

23. The Road by Cormac McCarthy - This is a PA novel about the life of a father and son as they travel westward after some kind of massively destructive event has burnt out and killed most of North America. It is a superficial but entertaining novel.

24. Ernest Hemingway A Life Story by Carlos Baker - There are no shortage of Hemingway biographies but this one is widely acclaimed to be the best of the lot. Partially because it was written in the late 1960s when many of Hemingway's compatriots were still alive and were able to share stories about him and partially because the author doesn't hold back any punches. He portrays Hemingway as a literary genius but also shows him for the petulant self centered man that he was.

25. The Whistleblower of Dimona by Yoel Cohen - In 1986 Mordechai Vanunu gave information to the London Times who published a story disclosing, what many people already knew, that Israel was in fact a nuclear power. This book is the story of Vanunu his conflicted childhood and early adult years, his rejection of Judaism, his disclosure to the London Times and his eventual capture by Mossad agents. The author is a professor of mass communications so he spends a lot of the book discussing the details of how the Times handled the story which was not that interesting for me. The story of Vanunu himself, however, was fascinating.

26. Monsieur Monde Vanishes by Georges Simenon - This one is not as good as Red Lights but nonetheless it is better than most novels. This is the story of a successful business man in a loveless second marriage who one day disappears mysteriously and ends up living a seedy life in the south of France. It's a good quick read.

27. White Death by Robert Edwards - The badness of this book cannot be described and I was so looking forward to it. It is supposed to be the story of the Russian invasion of Finland in WWII but the author screws up the writing so badly that reading it almost resulted in my White Death.

My Take on the Mid-Term Elections

Democrats across America are seemingly overjoyed by their election victory on Tuesday. They shouldn't be, because a big reason that the Democrats won was because they fielded right wing candidates. For example, in Philadelphia the Senate candidate who beat the incumbent and absurdly Christian Rick Santorum, is pro-gun, anti-gay and anti-abortion. The Senate candidates who won in Montana, Virginia and Ohio share the same vintage. Further evidence of this is that one of the few anti-war candidates, the Republican Senator from Rhode Island, lost in his bid for re-election.

What has happened is that the Republicans have maintained the shift to the right introduced by the Bush II Presidency and the Democrats have also shifted to the right leaving Americans to choose between the far right and the center right.

So, what has happened is not necessarily good for left leaning liberals.

The good thing about the election is that it has ended the rule of the Neo-Cons in Washington and ended the Bush Doctrine that America should proactively promote democracy in foreign countries. The Neo-Cons's demise is signaled by the departure of Donald Rumsfeld and his replacement with Gates who served under the first President Bush and by the Senate's stated refusal to confirm John Bolton as Ambassador to the UN. It is further reinforced by the increasingly important role that Bush I stalwarts such as James Baker are playing in setting strategy for the government. With the Neo-Cons gone so goes the Bush Doctrine.

21. Parliament of Man by Paul Kennedy

Parliament of Man
Originally uploaded by buzby.

This somewhat superficial political history of the United Nations essentially concludes that it is a flawed entity but that it has been the source of much good in its 60 odd year history.

The author divides the work of the UN into three broad categories: world security, economy and charity.

The security council is the center of the UN's activities and its most powerful body but the ability of a single state to veto a security council resolution and, most recently, America's decision to do things without security council backing have left it quite impotent. The author is a little more kind on it than I am.

Throughout the cold war, as the Russians and Americans jockeyed for position the security council was totally hamstrung as either the Russians or Americans would veto resolutions backed by their adversary. There was a short rebirth after the collapse of the Soviet Union when the security council did a lot (some of it quite poorly) such as Bosnia, Somalia and Iraq 1 but with the emergence of Putin and the new order of world wide power politics that died. And today, as we see by the council's inability do anything difinitive against North Korea and Iran it is once again largely impotent.

Those countries unable to influence the security council embraced the economic and charitable realms of the security council where, again, the UN has done a lot of good but has been plagued by inneficiency and graft.

This is a reasonable book but one doesn't close the back cover feeling like you've learned something new.

20. The Scarlet Plague by Jack London

Another book that Mount Benson suggested that I read. This is one of Jack London's few science fiction books (although at 62 pages I think that it really is more of a short story). It was first published in 1912 London magazine and later as part of a book. It is the story of the world after almost all of its population has been killed by a devastating pandemic called the Scarlet Plague. The main character is an old man who is the last known person to have lived in the old world.

The author focuses on the general - moral, physical and sociological - decay of the world after the pandemic and is fascinated by how, in such a short period of time, civilization has been set back tens of thousands of years and has to rebuild itself to its previous majesty.

Even though it was written in 1912, London is stunningly prescient about what the future would look like. At the time of the pandemic which happened in about 2008 (note that today pandemic fears are all the rage) the world had eight billion people and there were motor cars everywhere according to London.

I highly recommend this book.

19. Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison

Written in 1967 and set in 1999 New York city, this is the story of a cop, a beautiful woman and a Chinese boy as they struggle through their lives. By 1999 the world is severely over populated and replacable resources have come to an end. England is one giant city, New York has a population of 35 million, the rest of the US is similarly over populated, water has to be rationed, there is no more food as we know it today and people are basically at each other's throats.

I am not going to reveal the plot of the story as it would be too easy to spoil it for you. I do recommend this book it is an entertaining read.

17 and 18. Scarlet Surf at Makaha and Hang Dead Hawaiian Style by Patrick Morgan

I will quote what my good friend Mt. Benson had to say, "[n]eedless to say, you get more groovy babe-ballin', ass-kickin' surfer action once again with Bill Cartwright, agent for the secret undercover organization: Operation Hang Ten!" Both Excellent surfing action books.

Coup d'Etat

Coup
Originally uploaded by buzby.

Wow! It's been a long time since we had a good old cold war/third world style coup d'etat. The PM was in New York so the army, allied with the King, came in and overthrew him, took control of the television and radio stations and we're off to the races!

16. Globalized Islam by Oliver Roy

As with many books written in English by Frenchmen this is written in exceedingly complicated English to the point that many sentences deserved a second read.

The main thesis of the author is that Moslems living in Western Europe feel deterritorialized and their paradoxical way of Westernizing Islam is by reaching back to an imaginary super pure form of Islam that has never existed.  Consequently these Western Moslems are becoming even more extreme than their counterparts living in countries with a Moslem majority.

Similarly, Moslems living in the Middle East have become disenchanted with the ossification of Islam in the hands of the ruling elite and are reacting by also reaching back to a similar super pure form of Islam.

I am not educated enough on this subject to be able to tell you that his arguments are sound but they do sound reasonable.

Roy also makes another interesting point.  He explains that Western intellectuals often search for an explanation for the current world in Islam itself and suggest that it is an extreme religion which has always put violence on a pedestal.  He argues that this kind of thinking is wrong.  Instead he posits that the ruling elite of the Middle Eastern countries have taken command of Islam and have prevented it from growing with the times as other Western religions have grown.  He says that Islam has become an instrument of the Middle East elite and is not something that controls the elite.

I firmly believe in this part of his argument.

Shameless!

WASHINGTON -- President Bush acknowledged the existence of previously secret CIA prisons around the world and said 14 high-value terrorism suspects -- including the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks -- have been transferred from the system to Guantanamo Bay for trials.
Mr. Bush said the "small number" of detainees that have been kept in CIA custody include people responsible for the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 in Yemen and the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in addition to the 2001 attacks.
"The most important source of information on where the terrorists are hiding and what they are planning is the terrorists themselves," Mr. Bush said in a White House speech with families of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks making up part of the audience. "It has been necessary to move these individuals to an environment where they can be held in secret, questioned by experts and, when appropriate, prosecuted for terrorist acts."

Bush and his cronies are taking liberal democracy turning it upside down and inside out all for the advancment of their own marginal and extreme ideologies.  Absolutely reprehensible.

15. The Foreign Correspondent by Alan Furst

This is the first book that I have read by Furst who, annoyingly, refers to himself as the "pre-eminent historical spy novelist of our time." I don't think so. Notwithstanding his ego, the book is an excellent if short read. It is the story of a group of Italian political resistors living in Paris in 1938 and 1939 as Mussolini strengthened his power in Italy and became ever more closely allied with Nazi Germany. The resistors main business is publishing an underground liberal paper in Italy until the Italian secret service starts killing members of their editorial committee. The resistors are naive in the world of spy craft and almost accidentally get involved in it.

It is a well written book, good summer reading.

Is Rumsfeld such an Idiot?

I preface all of my remarks with a disclaimer that I have never been a fan of Rummy. I find his support for the war in Iraq, going into Iraq without a long term plan, thinking that he is a movie star more than the Secretary of Defense and his general neo-conservativeness quite abhorrent. But I read an op/ed piece that he wrote for the LA Times today and I wholeheartedly agree with this part of his assessment:

"The enemy we face today is different from the enemies we have faced in the past, but its goal is similar: to impose its fanatical ideology of hatred on the rest of the world."

I disagree with how he proposes to deal with "the enemy" but I don't disagree that we face this enemy and we must deal with it. Interestingly, he never actually defines this enemy other than to call it terrorism, maybe he is afraid of offending Arab Americans or our Saudi allies. So, in case anyone is unsure, the enemy he refers to is fundamentalist Islam spread from the Middle East to South East Asia.

14. Dirty Snow by Georges Simenon

This book is one of Simenon's psychological thrillers unrelated to his world famous Maigret detective stories. It is an amazing book both in its writing and in its story. Frank is an eighteen year old son of a prostitute coming of age in an unknown country in occupied Europe. He is morally bankrupt - murdering people without forethought or regret, inflicting emotional pain on women when they are desperately in love with him and emotionally torturing anyone who comes in contact with his life.

WARNING SPOILERS BELOW

The first half of the book relates Frank's exploits: the night he kills an army officer just for his pistol, the multiple times he screws the prostitutes in his mother's whore house and leaves them longing for some emotional output from him, the night he arranges for Sissy, his young virgin girlfriend, to be raped by Kromer and the night he kills the woman who brought him up as a child when his mother was absent just to steal a watch collection that she had.

All of this eventually catches up with him and one of the sections of the occupation authorities arrests him, and the second half of the book relates the story of his slow psychological breakdown and decay as he is held and tortured in a school converted to a prison.

This is a thoroughly 'entertaining' and well written book. I highly recommend that you read it.

"We Are Hizbullah"

"We Are Hizbullah"
Originally uploaded by buzby.

Let me point some things out about these placards. First, how big is the woman in the forefront's mouth, amazing. Second, there's a placard that says, "support a caliphate." Which means that one should support a Pan-Islamic/Pan-Arab regime focussed on Sunni Islam to take over the Middle East. This is something that this is really deserving of our support. Third, we have the previously mentioned "We are all Hizbullah" poster shamelessly using injured innocents to promote an agenda that is very far removed from peace. These people make me sick.

13. The Shia Revival by Vali Nasr

The Shia Revival
Originally uploaded by buzby.

Nasr's main argument is that intertwined with the general anti-Americanism and anti-Israelism of the Arabs and Iranians is a deep seated rivalry between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims.

For background, after the death of the Moslem prophet Mohammad two sects of Islam began to take shape: the Sunnis and the Shi'as. The main difference between the two is that the Sunnis believe that after Mohammad Islam should be governed by caretaker Caliphs who do nothing more than insure that Koran is implemented throughout Islamic life; while the Shi'as believe that after Mohamad's death his sons and relatives took over the administration and execution of Islam and that they continued to interpret Islam as it applied to the world. Most Shi'as believe that after Mohamad there were twelve Imams (prophets or relatives of Mohamad) who presided over their religon and they believe that the twelfth Imam disappeared before he died and will reappear in the future when Mohamad is about to return to earth. Sunnis believe in the Caliphate structure and believe that there were a number of important Caliphs after Mohamads death. The concept of Caliphs has been somewhat subordinated in today's world.

The bitterness between the two sects began immediatly after Mohamad's death but became more fierce in about 700 CE when the Shi'a Imam Hussein was on his way to what is now Saudi Arabia to claim the Caliphate but was ambushed by an army of Sunnis who killed him in Karbala in what is now Iraq.

Since then there has been a bitter divide between Sunnis and Shi'as.

Nasr believes that there is a great divide between Sunnis and Shi'as that explains much of the dynamic of current Middle East affairs. He argues that after the revolution in Iran when Khomeini was trying to export his Islamic republic to Saudi Arabia, the Arabs countered Khomeini's Shi'a ideology by promoting fundamental Sunni ideology instead. So, Saudi Arabia financed the nuclear bomb in Sunni Pakistan, supported the Taliban in formerly Sunni Afghanestan, supported (or simply did not criticize) Sunni led Iraq and tried to isolate Shi'a led Syria. The Saudi Arabian strategy led to somewhat out of control fundamentalist regimes throughout the Middle East and the current 'civil war' in Iraq.

In the mean time, Nasr argues, Iran, which is the largest Shi'a nation in the world, understood that it had lost the battle with the Saudis and focused its energies internally. Nasr claims that today Iran is ascendant, it is culturally the most vibrant country of the Middle East, it is politically the most democratic and it is intellectually the most advanced. Furthermore, Iran is now surrounded by Shi'a dominated Iraq which is being assailed by a Sunni onslaught and Shi'a dominated Afghanestan which is finding its way in the world. Nasr argues that the real battle in the middle east will be between the Sunnis and the Shi'as as they fight for influence over Iraq and Afghanestan and, to a lesser extent, Syria and Lebanon. He almost suggests that the anti-western rhetoric and actions of the Islamic fundamentalists is a by product of the greater Sunni-Shi'a war.

I personally don't believe in this great divide theory for a variety of reasons. First, the author provides little in support of his argument. He conceeds at the beginning of the book that it is a book of "big ideas" written for a mass audience so he will not be providing much support for his ideas which is okay, except that if he really wants me to buy into his arguments then I need the support. Second, there are a number of cases where his theory breaks down in real life. For example, based on his theory, Sunni Hamas should not be working with Shi'a Hezbollah - but they work very closely with each other.

This is an interesting and educational book and provides a different perspective of what is going on and even though I don't agree with all of the author's arguments, I recommend that you read it.

The French Committment

The Financial Times reported the following:

France has said it will command the UN force, but on Thursday announced it would send just 200 engineers immediately to help with the deployment of Lebanese army forces in southern Lebanon.

They have also said that they might provide naval support.

Nice.

Israel, Lebanon and the Idiot Bush

When the latest war between Israel and Lebanon began I said (and I have witnesses) that America should pursue one of two strategies: either they should come down hard on the Israeli's immediatly after the conflict began and make them stop or they should let Israeli move forward unchecked and allow them to destroy Hezballah.

Bush and the idiot Rice did neither. Instead they let the conflict go on for a few weeks, Israel did not emerge as the victor and it did not manage to destroy Hezballah. The result of this policy is that the one thing that was going well in the Middle East, Lebanon, is now a disaster on a similar scale as Iraq.

By virtue of the fact that Israel did not achive its objectives, Hezballah has emerged victorious and is now the effective ruler of southern Lebanon and Lebanon is no longer a real country. This is reinforced by the deal that the Lebanese government has struck with Hezballah "allowing" them to keep their weapons so long as they don't show them off to the world. Hezballah's victory has undermined the legitimacy and power of the elected moderate and largely secular Lebanese government. Finally, the investigation into Rafik Harriri's assasination has all but ended in failure.

Bush's policy results in a loss for Israel, a victory for Hezballah and, most importantly, a victory for Hezballah's backer, Iran.

Seperately, I want to draw your attention to a couple of funny or ironic things that I saw during this conflict.

First, when I was looking over the pictures of the anti-war protests in London, I saw a bunch of pasty yellow toothed English people carrying sings that read, "we are Hezbollah." What does that mean? We are a bunch of people who launch missiles with the sole aim of killing Israeli civilians? We are a bunch of people who use innocent Lebanese villagers as human shields to launch these missiles? We are a bunch of people who receive arms and money from Iran? I am sick and tired of the panzys who don't understand the gravity of what is going on in the Middle East.

Second, after the war ended and after the French had committed to the UN peacekeeping force that will be going into Southern Lebanon, the French leadership come out and state that they will not provide any soldiers until Hezballah has been disarmed. Who is supposed to disarm them - the good for nothing Lebanese military or perhaps some mysterious alien force? This French request is so disingenuous that I cannot find words to describe it.

12. The Chinese Bell Murders by Robert Van Gulik

Bell Murders
Originally uploaded by buzby.

A highly entertaining detective story. Written in the 1920s by a Dutch diplomat living in China but set in an unknown period in ancient China, this, and other stories in the series, follow Judge Dee as he solves crimes in the town of Poo-Yang. Judge Dee is the head of the local tribunal and seems to also serve as the head detective of the local police force. The Judge and his four loyal servants solve the Half Moon Street rape-murder, the case of the dishonest buddhist temple and the long running dispute between the Lin and Liang families. I highly recomend that you read this.

Landis

This morning Landis' "B" sample test results confirmed that there was a lot of testosterone in his system after his amazing ride on Stage 17 of this year's Tour.

While it is possible that one of the four excuses that Landis and his handlers have given over the past week is reasonable, I doubt it.

When this news first broke a lot of experts and reporters questioned why Landis would have taken testosterone because, in an endurance sport like the Tour de France, testosterone doesn't do you a lot of good.

What these people missed, however, is that after breaking on the final climb of Stage 16 and losing minutes to his chief rivals, Landis was desperate to do something.  He was dehydrated, suffering from a sore hip and he didn't have a lot of energy.  He needed the kind of pick me up that a healthy dose of testosterone would give an athelete.

My theory is that, out of desperation, Landis took a bunch of testosterone and it worked better than he expected.  He came out for Stage 17 and he crushed his competitors.  At the beginning of the stage he was over 8 minutes behind the leader, at the end of the stage he was just 30 seconds behind the leader.  In two days, Landis lost the race and won it back.

My other theory is that someone either working on Landis staff (like a cook or something) or one of the technicians at the French drug testing lab spiked his food or his sample with testosterone.

11. Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon

This is the second Loen book that I have read and once again I found it to be a light and enjoyable mystery. The story revolves around her ususal protagonist, Commissario Guido Bruneti of the Venice Police, as he finds his way around the mystery and pulls a surprising resolution out of the bag.

There were some annoying elements about the book: the tenderness that this hard boiled detective feels for his wife, the hurt that he feels because his teenage son is behaving as teenagers should and the repeated references to how hard it is to be a lesbian in Italy (two of the characters in the book are lesbians). But they were not annoying enough to overwhelm the quality of the book.

10. Solar Lottery by Philip K. Dick

Solar Lottery
Originally uploaded by buzby.

I thought that I was reading this on Mount Benson's recomendation but as it turns out he's never heard of it. As with other PKD books this was an excellent story which begins with the protagonist getting fired from his job. In the 23rd century the world works on pure chance and is run by machines called the Bottles. Most people have P-Cards which are the same as lottery tickets so that when the Bottles twitch and call a person's P-Card then he becomes the leader of the world. The leader is know as the Quizmaster and even he is not immune from the twitches of the Bottles.

The story follows a guy called Bentley as he leaves his job, moves to the capital of the inter-planetary system and gets a job with the Quizmaster. Excellent book, as I said, well worth the read.

9. Glorious Revolution by Edward Vallance

Glorious Revolution
Originally uploaded by buzby.

This one was tough to get through.

Historians and Britains make much of the country's so called "Glorious Revolution" when comparing it to the revolutions of their European counterparts. They say that the revolution was peculiar in its lack of blood shed and in its failure to overthrow the establishment regime - not that it was trying to do so.

James II was a Catholic king who succeeded his brother in the midst of a lot of anti-Catholic hysteria. At first he cooled his heals and didn't do anything to upset the Anglicans but slowly he began to ask parliament to pass religious toleration bills, he appointed Catholics into the army and as his advisors and stacked the committees that picked the candidates to run in each riding with Catholics. These measures gripped the country in fear that the French would invade England or the King would somehow pledge allegiance to the Vatican. So, a bunch of noblemen went to William of Orange, the King of Holland who was married to James' daughter, and asked him to invade Britain, which he successfully did. Thus began the rein of William and Mary.

This was an interesting book I would recommend it but you need to be in the right frame of mind to read it.

Economic Nationalism Part II

There has been yet another case of economic nationalism recently in Europe.  Last week the New York Stock Exchange, which is now a publicly traded company, made an offer for a stock exchange in Europe called Euronext.  The bid was accepted by the board of Euronext who agreed that it was superior to the bid that they had received from Deutsche Bourse (the German stock exchange).  Within days of the board's announcement leaders in France and Italy came out and said that they prefer an all European merger for social reasons.

What a crock.

I would agree that there might be social reaons to prefer one deal over another when, say, some strategic asset of one country is being acquired by a foreign country.  But there cannot be any social reasons to prefer one or the other stock exchange merger.

In fact, the only social reason is that Chirac continues to show the long tradition of French insecurity over its place in the world:  they think they're a super power but really they're not even close and they are constantly trying to show that they are.  And Prodi, the newly elected Italian PM, wants to distance himself from Belusconi's trans-atlantic ties.

In stark contrast, the NASDAQ exchange has purchased 26% of the London Stock Exchange and is on its way to acquiring the whole thing.  There is not even muted protest in Britain over this tie up.

If I were President I would announce to the world that until the continental Eruopeans open their markets to American capital then they cannot expect to have open access to American markets.  Unfortunately, Bush even falls short in this conservative idealogical stronghold.  He can't fight wars, he lies and he can't run the economy.  Why do people vote for him?

The Reprehensibles Part X - Was I Dreaming?

I was listening to CNN this morning as I was shaving and I heard a new story about congressional aides who had accepted travel worth about $30 million from various private lobby groups.  These aides had accepted 200 trips to Paris, 150 trips to Hawaii and 140 trips to Italy, all of which are places that are highly deserving of a congressional aides attention.

I have searched Google, CNN, USA Today, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Yahoo! and I can't find any mention of the story.  I know I wasn't dreaming.

The tenth edition of my prize goes to all of these aides.

The Reprehensibles Part IX

Joe Thiesman is the winner of this installment of the increasingly prestigous award for lambasting Ricky Williams all because he smoked pot. Honestly, how many skeletons do you think that Joe Thiesman has hiding in his closet?

"I don't ever want to be mentioned in the same breath as Ricky Williams as a football player. He's a disgrace to the game. The man doesn't deserve to play football. He should go on with his life and treat his drug addictions or go do whatever he wants to do. He's been suspended from the National Football League on multiple occasions. Doesn't anybody have any class anywhere? For gosh sakes, let the kid go do what he wants to do. He doesn't want to play football," Theismann, who is part of ESPN's Monday Night Football announcing crew, said.

I also like the usage of the phrase, "For gosh sakes."

Sports Post Trifecta

I am pleased to relay to you that Ricky Williams, of Miami Dolphins fame, has signed with the Canadian Footbal League's Toronto Argonauts.  In Canada not only do we have an unlegislated but practical decriminalization of small amounts of marijuana we also take in any player who has been suspended for marijuana use as our own!

Oil Slick!

Last night, Edmonton became the first number 8 seed ever to advance to the Stanley Cup finals. Nice.

Excitement

Both the NBA and NHL playoffs have been very exciting this season although, I admit, that I just follow the NHL during the playoffs and even then I don't watch any games but read about them and look over the box scores.

But the Oilers of Edmonton, a true Cinderella team, has got the Might Ducks of Anaheim in a precarious position.  The Oilers could have closed it out two days ago at home but failed, tonight they will have to try to get the job done on the road.  Exciting.

On the other coast you have a lesser Cinderellala, the Sabers of Buffalo, in a tied series against the Hurricane of Carolina.

I admit that what I like is that none of the colossal hockey machines - NJ, Ottawa, Toronto, Pittsburgh, Colorado etc. - have made it into the playoffs and instead you have four small market teams fighting it out.

The NBA is equally exciting to the point that I can't decide who I should support.  The Dallas - Phoenix series with its run and gun style of play is very attractive almost like going to a great action movie that doesn't require a lot of thought.

On the other coast, the Miami - Detroit series is equally attractive but more like a thought provoking drama.

June will be a good sports month!

8. People and Places by Richard Cobb

It has been a prolific month of reading for me so far but I fear that things will slow down with my next book. Richard Cobb is my favorite author, so much so that my dog bears his last name. This book is a compilation of short biographies of important historians and descriptions of some of his favorite places. It is written in classic Richard Cobb style and is very well worth reading.

7. JPod by Douglas Coupland

The only book that I have read that is only ever so slightly worse than this one is Confederacy of Dunces which I was forced to put down without reading the whole thing.

This edition of Coupland's Generation X franchise is about a group of people working at a sports game software developer in Vancouver, a thinly veiled reference to Electronic Arts. The reason it is called jPod is that the last name of all five of the employees sitting in this particular pod of desks begins with J.

The main character in the book is Ethan, a nerdy C++ programer, whose father has given up his real job in a futile effort to land a speaking role in a movie, whose mother has a surprisingly high tech and productive home based grow operation and whose brother is a highly paid realtor catering to the Asian community. His four other pod mates are also programers and suffer from similarly unbelievable families. And, coincidentally, all of the jPod-ers families have large grow ops. The story, if you can call it that, is about Ethan's life at work, his interaction with his parents and with an ironically friendly Asian criminal who smuggles people and drugs to and from Hong Kong and China.

Now let me tell you why this book is so bad:

1. The author incorporates himself into the book, at first by strange third person references to himself and then as a character in the book. He begins by inserting a paragraph claiming that the idea for the show Melrsoe Place was stolen from his book Generation X and suggesting that the producers of the show should pay him or that he should sue them. He then inserts a dialog about how Douglas Coupland is so cool and cutting edge. He moves on by inserting himself as a character that Ethan meets on a flight to Shanghai and re-inserts himself by bumping into Ethan in rural Guangxho Province.

2. The book is 500 pages long but could easily be 300 pages long because the author has inserted about 200 pages of useless information into the book. For example, the jPod-ers are discussing Scrabble, one of them comes up with a list of the 900 possible three letter words that one can use in Scrabble and Coupland then spends the next 40 pages listing out the words. Or, the jPod-ers are having a conversation when one of them says that he has found a web site that shows pi to the millionth decimal place. Coupland spends the next 90 pages showing pi to the millionth digit.

3. It is a fundamentally badly researched and poorly put together book. There is no depth to the characters or their lives and what depth there is, is absolutely unbelievable.

All copies of this book should be incinerated and the author should be exiled from Vancouver, he gives the place a bad name.

6. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell

Down and Out in Paris and London
Originally uploaded by buzby.

I had forgotten how cool Orwell's writing was. This is an excellent book that should be on everyone's must read list.

5. Fleshmarket Close by Ian Rankin

Fleshmarket Close
Originally uploaded by buzby.

I got to this book because of a book review in the G&M and because of a post on the famous Mount Benson Report.

Ian Rankin tells the story of several race based crimes in Edinburgh through the eyes of DI Rebus and his colleagues. The story begins with four seemingly unrelated crimes whose arcs become intertwined because of the common people working on them and some of the common protagonists in the crimes.

It is a good detective story although I found that it could have been more suspensful.

4. State and Society in Iran by Homa Katouzian

1845112725
Originally uploaded by buzby.

This book presents a fascinating account of the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 and the coup d'etat of 1921 that brought the Pahlavi dynasty (subsequently deposed in 1979) to power.

The authour begins by making a compelling argument that to date Iranian history, politics and, most importantly, revolutions have been studied using western revolutionary models when in reality none of the models are truly applicable to Iran. He argues that Iranian society has long been based on arbitrary power which is a concept that has not applied to western states for at least two centuries. The author then describes a theory that is more applicable to the particular style of Iranian arbirary power.

The theory forms the basis of the rest of his analysis of the events between 1906 and 1921, although he focuses more on the period from 1991 to 1921. I found it to be a very interesting book but definitely not for the casual reader.

3. Endgame by Jennifer Siegel

Many historians contend that the Great Game ended in 1907 with the signing of the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 which settled the posturing between the Russians and English in Persia, Afghanistan and Tibet – the three important Great Game countries.  Historians have given different reasons for why the Russians and English entered into this agreement.  Some of have said that it was because both countries needed to focus on European issues and could not afford to be distracted by Central Asian issues.  Others have suggested that the British finally realized that they were no match for Russia’s overwhelming military might.

This book is a detailed examination of these theories.  The author contends that the Great Game did not end with the signing of this agreement, it simply took a different form.  Furthermore, she argues against those historians who argue that the genesis of this agreement was a need to focus on European issues.  For the most part her analysis is thorough and convincing.

For those of you interested in the Great Game I would highly recommend this book.

The Reprehensibles Part VIII

My first award of 2006 cuts across both parties and both houses of Congress. Chuck Schumer, Democrat, New York, is the nominal recipient but the award has to be shared with Hillary Clinton, Peter King, Bill Frist, all of the members of the House Foreign intelligence Committee, Lou Dobbs and the mass media. They are recipients of this prestigious award for the work that they did to kill the Dubai Ports World deal.

Dubai Ports World, one of the largest operators of ports worldwide, acquired the British company, P&O, in a transaction valued at about $6B. P&O also operates ports throughout the world including 5 high profile ports in the US: New York/New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia. Dubai Ports World is owned by the Government of the United Arab Emirates. Soon after the acquisition was announced Lou Dobbs, the CNN anchor, reported in his usual biased way that a UAE company will be in charge of operating five important US ports and he went on to report that two of the 9/11 hijackers were citizens of the UAE. He left his viewers to make the connection: UAE = 9/11 hijacker or selling these ports to Dubai Ports World = more 9/11 like events.

Step in Chuck Schumer the loudmouth senator from New York. For two weeks Schumer and his band of liars, trashed the deal between Dubai Ports World and P&O, the President's approval of the deal and anyone who stepped up in favor of the deal. They relentlessly argued that Dubai is unsafe, the home of terrorists and a deal with them will mean that terrorists will be able to get into the US and do more damage. They pointed the finger at Bush claiming that he is soft on terrorists, he doesn't have a plan and that he mishandled the approval of the deal. They so dominated the news cycle with their message that nobody was able to argue the other side.

Not once did they mention that the deal was approved by the non-partisan body which approves all major foreign investments in the US. Not once did they mention that Dubai Ports World is not taking over the coast guard or the INS - the bureaucracies that are responsible for the safety of our ports. Not once did they think about the damage that this could do to foreign investment in the United States. Not once did they consider that the US economy is surviving in large part because of investments in the US' debt by China, Japan and the Middle East and that the US would quickly slip into a recession without this foreign financing. Not once did they think that they were behaving just like the French who they so love to pillory. Not cone did they think that they were being racist.

This was the worst case of election year posturing and lies that I have seen in a long time. Absolutely reprehensible.

2. Curzon Imperial Statesman by David Gilmour

This biography of George Curzon was generally a reasonable one except that it seemed to lack a lot of substantive criticism of Curzon's life and work. It was somewhat critical but it could have been more critical. I became interested in Curzon because when he was Foreign Minister in the post war years he was responsible for a failed treaty with Persia. I have always felt that the treaty was an anachronism borne out of the mind of a man who did not understand the new realities of the post-WWI world. This book helped me understand some of the reasons behind the treaty.

Curzon was an accomplished imperialist. He had a short tenure as an MP, a few years as undersecretary to the India Office, seven years as the Viceroy to India, a number of years as a member of the Imperial War Cabinet and four years as the Foreign Minister.

He became familiar with the near and middle east as well as the Indian subcontinent by taking regular six month voyages traveling to Egypt, the Sudan, the Arabian Peninsula, Persia, Afghanistan, Turkey and India.

He was a consummate imperialist and a great believer in the Great Game - the decades long cold war between Russia and Britain to control the land passage to India and the Caucuses. It was this Imperialist philosophy that blinded him to the realities of the post world war one world: he continued to believe that it was important to try to restrain Russia even though England was under huge economic pressure to cut its expenditures on the empire and the Russian revolution had significantly reduced the military might of the Tsarist empire.

For me this book answered a lot of questions. For those of you interested in great imperialists and/or the Great Game this is a worthwhile read.

1. A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin

0805068848L
Originally uploaded by buzby.

Finally I am on the board, it took me a while to slog my way through this book. Not because it was uninteresting but because I was in a bit of a reading funk. Fromkin's book is a detailed account of the political and military campaigns in the Middle East during WWI that led to the partition of the Middle East along the geo-political lines that we see today. It is an interesting and informative read and sheds new light on the causes of the Middle Eastern mess that we have today.

For example, I was surprised to learn that the pan-arab nationalist movements that caused a lot of turmoil in the Middle East in the mid-twentieth century were actually orginiall advocated by the British.

24. America, Russia and the Cold War by Walter Lafeber

Just nosed this one in. This book is a great survey of the cold war and highly recommended for those of us not too familiar with the period.

The similarity between the tactics used by Truman (democrat) and Bush (republican) to get what they wanted is quite stunning.

I highly recommend that you read this. Not only is it an excellent history but it provides an excellent context for today's mess.

23. Hardball by George Stalk et al.

This book was recommended to me by a consultant friend of mine. It is a reasonable business book that focuses on how one can build a company that is aggressively competitive.

It is short and sweet and I would recommend it.

22. The Lights that Failed by Zara Steiner

I read this 800 page beast in one week - I love holidays! Zara Steiner does an admirable job at describing European international history between 1919 and 1933.

Ideologically she is neither in AJP Taylor's camp (who believe that the the Treaty of Versailles caused the rise of Hitler and WWII) or Hugh Trevor-Roper's camp (who believe that the two events cannot be related). Instead she falls squarely in between them. She acknowledges that Versailles did have some impact on the rise of Hitler then she cautions that the period is far too complicated to tie the two together as simply as the Taylorites do.

If you have the time, this is a very good history of the period and I would recommend it.

Honestly, we don't all listen to this stuff!

Western Music Is Banned

TEHRAN, Dec. 19 (AP) - President Ahmadinejad has banned Western music from Iran's radio and television stations, reviving a cultural decree from the early days of the 1979 revolution.

Songs like George Michael's "Careless Whisper," Eric Clapton's "Rush" and the Eagles' "Hotel California" have regularly accompanied Iranian broadcasts, as do tunes by the saxophonist Kenny G.

But the official daily Iran reported Monday that Mr. Ahmadinejad, as the leader of the Supreme Cultural Revolutionary Council, ordered the enforcement of a ruling by the council in October to ban Western music.

Music was outlawed as un-Islamic by Ayatollah Khomeini soon after the revolution. But as the fervor of the revolution started to fade, light classical music was allowed on radio and television. Some public concerts reappeared in the late 1980's.

21. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris

This is a sequel to Me Talk Pretty One Day and it is a poor one. The stories are, for the most part, not funny and are rather average.

Not recomended.

The Reprehensibles Part VII

You might have read that on Monday the Supreme Court agreed to hear four law suits brought by various organizations regarding the mid-census redistricting that went on in Texas.

The story is that Tom Delay and his cronies engineered a redistricting of the Texas congressional districts in 2003. They relied on 2000 census data even though Texas' population had been increasing by about 1.5M people per year. They gerrymandered the districts in such a way that the Democrats ended up losing 5 congressional seats.

The controversy was fueled last week when the DOJ leaked a memo written by its bureaucrats unanimously condemning the attempted redistricting. Any time there is an attempted redistricting a team 4 lawyers and 2 statisticians - all DOJ bureaucrats - review the submission. In this case they all said that this was unconstitutional. This is the memo that has been leaked.

What the Republicans are doing is simply bad for democracy in addition to being dishonest.

The Reprehensibles Part VI

Just look at her. You know that she has been torturing people. I would like to go on record to say that I believe that the US is running secret torture camps, they are breaking at least the spirit of international law with their rendition programs and they have killed numerous prisoners by torturing them to death.

This practice and by association this government goes against everything that was good about America and everything that America was founded upon.

All Americans should hang their heads in shame and in sorrow for this is the darkest day of US government in living memory.

20. Post War by Tony Judt

Post War
Originally uploaded by buzby.

This is a beast of a book at about 900 pages but I am proud to have made it through.

The relationships drawn by the author between the psychological impact of the war on European people, the subsequent birth of social democracy (as opposed to comunism or conservatism) and the resulting differencs between European political thought and American political thought is quite enlightening. As are the authors descriptions of the period between 1945 and 1955 when cold war communism was being born, the cold war battle lines were being drawn and there was still widespread persecution of Jews and other minorities.

It is a challenging book to make it through becuase it is so filled with facts, figures and arguments but it is rewarding to have read a book like this. I would recommend it.

The Fallacy of American Democracy

Federal congressional redistricting and State sanctioned redistricting has gotten so out of hand that even though, based on Tuesday's elections, many voters appear to want to oust their republican incumbent congressmen in the 2006 mid-term elections they will not be able to do so because, as the Wall Street Journal says:

"Even in their improved position, Democrats will have limited numbers of targets. Because congressional boundary lines place most lawmakers in districts clearly favoring one party or the other, fewer than 10% of House seats held by Republicans currently are considered at risk. Most Senate Republican incumbents facing re-election next year remain favored to win."

Between the Electoral College and overt partisan redistricting, how can we really say that there is a great American democracy?

19. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

Fiction! This story is set in a late 1960s world where the allies had lost WWII to the Germans and Japanese who have split North America in half - the eastern half is German and the Western half is Japanese. It is an interesting story filled with unexpected twists and turns. I recommend it.

The Reprehensibles Part V

With a single stroke -- the nomination of Harriet Miers -- the president has damaged the prospects for reform of a left-leaning and imperialistic Supreme Court, taken the heart out of a rising generation of constitutional scholars, and widened the fissures within the conservative movement. That's not a bad day's work -- for liberals.

There is, to say the least, a heavy presumption that Ms. Miers, though undoubtedly possessed of many sterling qualities, is not qualified to be on the Supreme Court. It is not just that she has no known experience with constitutional law and no known opinions on judicial philosophy. It is worse than that. As president of the Texas Bar Association, she wrote columns for the association's journal. David Brooks of the New York Times examined those columns. He reports, with supporting examples, that the quality of her thought and writing demonstrates absolutely no "ability to write clearly and argue incisively."

The administration's defense of the nomination is pathetic: Ms. Miers was a bar association president (a nonqualification for anyone familiar with the bureaucratic service that leads to such presidencies); she shares Mr. Bush's judicial philosophy (which seems to consist of bromides about "strict construction" and the like); and she is, as an evangelical Christian, deeply religious. That last, along with her contributions to pro-life causes, is designed to suggest that she does not like Roe v. Wade, though it certainly does not necessarily mean that she would vote to overturn that constitutional travesty."

Who do you think wrote this editorial? It wasn't some democrat upset at how badly he's been spanked for 6 years. It was Robert Bork - the conservative of all conservatives, the neo of all neo-cons and one of the biggest Bush supporters around.

With his nomination of his personal lawyer (that's right not district attorney or even a justice department lawyer) Bush has chosen the single least qualified person he could to fill the O'conner vacancy. Some politico, I can't remember who, said that Harriet Miers would not make it on anyone's list of top 100 conservative lawyers in America. Why? Because she is simply not bright enough!

Bush is surpassing the Clinton white house's cronyism with this appointment.

I'm Happy to be Arrested!

Hi, I'm Tom Delay. I am so happy to be arrested by the Houston police.

18. A Wrinkle in the Skin by John Christopher

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Originally uploaded by buzby.

Other than that the last quarter of the book is dense with somewhat annoying romantic themes and, more importantly, that the author never once writes about how these people go to the bathroom in the post apocalyptic world this book is excellent.

You laugh about my last statement but the author spends a lot of time on diseases coming from all the dead bodies lieing around but spends no time talking about diseases from all the fecal matter that must be all over the place.

Also, the book is very well reviewed by my friend Lantzvillager

17. America Unbound by Ivo Daalder and James M. Lindsay

I don't need to read any more books about why Bush decided to wage war on Iraq because nobody appears to know why. The reasons are variously: (a) revanche! for Saddam trying to kill his father; (b) to help American oil interests; (c) because he really believed that Iraq had WMDs; (d) because after 9/11 he had no policy and invading Iraq was the only choice on the table; (e) because he really believes that he can democratize the middle east and tame fundamentalist Islam.

Bush himself may not even know why.

This book does not add anything new to the picture.

The Reprehensibles Part IV

The Republican Study Committee ("RSC") is a group of over 100 House Republicans organized for the purpose of advancing a conservative social and economic agenda in the House of Representatives. Most of the brilliant ideas to pay for the $200B+ tab for Katrina come from this group.

Last week these people launched "Operation Offset," a way to find money to pay for the costs of Katrina by cutting government expenses. Some of their ideas are not bad but many of them are just dumb, like cutting Medicare and Medicaid coverage, eliminating national science foundation grants, cutting back on foreign aid or eliminating funding for NPR.

These 100 Representatives should really be reprimanded.

The Reprehensibles Part III

hedcut_delay
Originally uploaded by buzby.

Oh, there are so many things to say about Tom Delay (rhyme not intended).

He is a truly incorrigable Representative, constantly pushing the envelope of appropriate behavior.

He is a guy who wanted to bring the judiciary under the control of the legislature after the Schiavo debacle; he has taken golf trips (described as fact finding missions) to Scotland with the now notorious lobbyist Jack Abramoff; he has been indicted by a grand jury in Texas for campaign finance violations; as a result he has been kicked out as Majority leader of the House of Representatives; and finally, he headed the Texas congressional redistricting which resulted in one of the most lopsided congressional redistricting efforts in history.

If you don't dislike him for all of the above reasons, then you should dislike him just because his nickname in the House is "Delay the Hammer".

The Reprehensibles Part II

hedcut_frist
Originally uploaded by buzby.

There are not enough bad things to say about Bill Frist. First his name is far too similar to the word first. Second, he is a doctor and he came out during the whole Terry Schiavo situation and said that he felt that all of the doctors that had actually examined Schiavo and said that she was brain dead were wrong. He mad this assessment despite the fact that he had never met, much less examined, Terry Schiavo. Third, he is just George Bush's little panzy. Fourth, he regularly signs up for broadcasts on the closed circuit church network which is aired in many US churches every Sunday morning.

His only redeemning quality is that he has disagreed with Bush et al about stem cell research.

He is going to run for the Republican nomination in 2008. I hope that he gets beaten badly.