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

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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

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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

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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".